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Balance Update Update - PvP


Cal Cohen.2358

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to swing by with an update on the balance patch and respond to some of the main feedback points that we’ve seen. At this point we’re mostly locked down for the release, but we’re still gathering feedback and continuing some investigation for future work.

For reference, the initial post can be found here: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/96744/balance-patch-preview-pvp

0.01There’s been a lot of discussion around CC skills and if all of them should deal minimal damage. We agree that it shouldn’t be a hard rule and there’s room for exceptions. We won’t be making any adjustments to these for the initial update, but expect some changes as we continue to evaluate things moving forward. Even for the exceptions, hard CC skills still won’t be near the top of the damage range, but there’s room to work with above 0.01. In some cases it may make sense for a skill to not have any CC and instead be a higher damage skill, but these would need to be game-wide changes and something that we’ll be discussing with the skills team.

General balance concernsWe’ve read all the feedback and seen the concerns about future metas and the viability of certain professions and specializations after the update. After the patch goes out, we’ll be continuing to iterate as we gather more data and feedback based on actual gameplay. We’re prepared to act quickly in response to anything egregious that pops up, whether it’s an individual build greatly overperforming or a heavy skew of the meta in any particular fashion (unkillable tanks, dominant condition builds pushing out any power builds, etc). Once any major wrinkles are ironed out, we’ll settle back into the faster cadence that we mentioned previously as we work toward improving balance across the board.

Additional changes

  • Concealing Restoration: Reduced stealth duration from 2 seconds to 1 second.
  • Rending Shade: Reduced number of boons stolen from 2 to 1.
  • Assassin's Signet: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
  • Leeching Venoms: Reduced maximum stacks of spider venom provided by this trait from 6 to 2.
  • Malicious Backstab: Reduced power coefficients from 1.2/2.4 to 0.9/1.8
  • Smokescreen: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds
  • Lightning Rod: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.2

There’s still a lot of work to do, but this update should give us a good starting point to build from and we’re excited to see where things go.-The Systems Team

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You rly should consider to rethink balance planes about the 3 outliners (Obsidian Flesh on Ele, Mirage and Soulbeast trade offs), in particular the trade offs are not well made and there are possibilities to do other changes to balance Condimirage without killing other not op builds and skill ceiling as a spin off and balancing Soulbeast without deleting skills, active combos and as well skill ceiling by adding a second or even triple/ quad trade off over the already existing inherent ones. Even though i think normal nerfs are enough and additional trade offs are not needed for both of these classes, you could at least consider a different trade off was suggested from a lot of other ppl (2 clone cap, if you cannot split that to PvE just compensate with higher dmg per clone in PvE and make it 2 clone cap gamewide) or use the trade off will lock Mirage out from Chaosline (and Inspiration) both will have a better effect on solving the actual problem with Condimirage without deleting skill ceiling and active gameplay parts from the elite and without overnerfing currently not overperforming Mirage builds.

@floody.4951 said:very hyped for whats to come! a coefficient reduction to 1.0 would be more fit on lightning rod tho

I also never understand why traits that gets rewards from simple cc spam instead the need to interrupt have better rewards than interrupt skills. LR should have a shorter Weakness duration and less dmg than Powerblock for example. It is just the same unlogic we had with old Lost Time trait on Mesmer.

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@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:

Additional changes

  • Assassin's Signet: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.

Hello there.

This is kind of an underline to what I was getting at on my feedback thread about cooldown increases https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1158393

Right now the way Assassin's Signet is used is mostly by SA or DE stealth oneshot builds as an easy way to put a lot of burst into their next attack. They attempt to oneshot someone, then if it fails they reset the fight by basically running away and re-stealthing until it's back up again. A lot of players find this to be a very uninteractive and low counterplay style, as the way stealth oneshots work is they don't reveal until after the skill has already hit. It can thus be reasonably argued that the way stealth works in GW2 is it effectively makes your next attack that hits an instant-cast, since that is what is experienced by your target.

You COULD nerf it by making them have to wait an additional 10 seconds. It's not inherently a bad way to go about it. But this doesn't really fix the issue that the skill when used is still pretty uninteractive. It slows the play down, but doesn't really change much of anything else.

A better change might be to give it a 1/4 cast time, make the skill reveal you on cast, but then reduce the cooldown to 15 seconds. This way the skill is still worth using, just not on stealth oneshot builds. Thieves would have to slot it on builds like S/D or staff instead that rely more on juking people with positioning.

Overall I think the game is going in a better direction and it's great that you recognize a lot of work will have to be done after the patch to catch anything missed. Just not with cooldowns. "Just increase the cooldown" is more of a band-aid fix that often doesn't touch what is truly wrong with how an ability is used.

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Obviously I'm happy to see Shadow Arts get a bit of toning down. I am also really happy to see that some stuff like the hard line 0.01 CC Coefficient isn't set in stone after the patch lands. The example I always give is that Warrior Hammer is going to be really weird going forward since the CC on that weapon kit are designed to be both your highest damage and most important skills to land for both the CC and damage.

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@bravan.3876 said:

I also never understand why traits that gets rewards from simple cc spam instead the need to interrupt have better rewards than interrupt skills. LR should have a shorter Weakness duration and less dmg than Powerblock for example. It is just the same unlogic we had with old Lost Time trait on Mesmer.this, rn LR deals 3k up to 4k dmg, no ICD, can crit.At least, Powerblock increases rupted skills Cd by 15 seconds :) (3 s ICD, no crit, almost 0 dmg)

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@Hylo.1968 said:

I also never understand why traits that gets rewards from simple cc spam instead the need to interrupt have better rewards than interrupt skills. LR should have a shorter Weakness duration and less dmg than Powerblock for example. It is just the same unlogic we had with old Lost Time trait on Mesmer.this, rn LR deals 3k up to 4k dmg, no ICD, can crit.At least, Powerblock increases rupted skills Cd by 15 seconds :) (3 s ICD, no crit, almost 0 dmg)

True i forgot about the 15s cd increase, that ofc is a more in reward compared to LR. But that already gets compensated by LR not having the need to interrupt. Means Dmg and Weakness should have similar amount to Powerblock and not less (also not more).

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@mortrialus.3062 said:Oh. Nice. My nerf thief thread worked.

Not just the changes you mentioned. I also made a thread for shadow arts and got an exact change I mentioned as well as same thing I’ve mentioned in some other post. But regardless of request I hope these changes will help balance in general and am now more hopeful for the incoming balance patch.

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game patches are based on casual players that cannot handle the lose of a battle they complain and complain infinite (instead of studying a counter build setup) until the game is boring and evry class is kinda playable by a kid having down sydrome u will lose veteran players anet but im sure u guys do not care about that as long the new 1nes stream in that buy blindfolded gems anet just follows the gembuyers like a man follows his thing in pants

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@bravan.3876 said:You rly should consider to rethink balance planes about the 3 outliners (Obsidian Flesh on Ele, Mirage and Soulbeast trade offs), in particular the trade offs are not well made and there are possibilities to do other changes to balance Condimirage without killing other not op builds and skill ceiling as a spin off and balancing Soulbeast without deleting skills, active combos and as well skill ceiling by adding a second or even triple/ quad trade off over the already existing inherent ones. Even though i think normal nerfs are enough and additional trade offs are not needed for both of these classes, you could at least consider a different trade off was suggested from a lot of other ppl (2 clone cap, if you cannot split that to PvE just compensate with higher dmg per clone in PvE and make it 2 clone cap gamewide) or use the trade off will lock Mirage out from Chaosline (and Inspiration) both will have a better effect on solving the actual problem with Condimirage without deleting skill ceiling and active gameplay parts from the elite and without overnerfing currently not overperforming Mirage builds.

@floody.4951 said:very hyped for whats to come! a coefficient reduction to 1.0 would be more fit on lightning rod tho

I also never understand why traits that gets rewards from simple cc spam instead the need to interrupt have better rewards than interrupt skills. LR should have a shorter Weakness duration and less dmg than Powerblock for example. It is just the same unlogic we had with old Lost Time trait on Mesmer.

As a mesmer main I want the 1 dodge to go throught. for the memes.this class is one big fucking meme anyways so might as well go big.

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Lightning Rod really doesn't deserve to get nerfed. The damage is already plummeting due to CC skills, in general, getting their coefficients reduced to 0.01.

And about these Power Block comparisons, who're undoubtedly coming from mesmer players, how many people actually run that trait again? Yeah, exactly, just about no one. Because Power Block is trash. And clearly the main idea about Power Block is the CD increase, which necessitates that it must interrupt to even work, not the damage & weakness application.

I like the direction the patch is heading towards (less powercreep), but I'm afraid this is gonna lead to a bunker meta. I genuinely feel like I'm gonna have to run zerker amulet on my core LR ele to even do damage post patch (and I'm already running demolisher lool).

That said. The two nerfs to LR aren't that bad. Mercy from cmc be praised! :P

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@Garret.1965 said:Lightning Rod really doesn't deserve to get nerfed. The damage is already plummeting due to CC skills, in general, getting their coefficients reduced to 0.01.

And about these Power Block comparisons, who're undoubtedly coming from mesmer players, how many people actually run that trait again? Yeah, exactly, just about no one. Because Power Block is trash. And clearly the main idea about Power Block is the CD increase, which necessitates that must interrupt to even work, not the damage & weakness application.

I like the direction the patch is heading towards (less powercreep), but I'm afraid this is gonna lead to a bunker meta. I genuinely feel like I'm gonna have to run zerker amulet on my core LR ele to even do damage post patch (and I'm already running demolisher lool).

That said. The two nerfs to LR aren't that bad. Mercy from cmc be praised! :P

PB is not trash just that everything else that doesn't even need reactive interrupt gameplay is power creeped op as hell. There are enough power builds using that trait, mostly on Powermirage. And a simple cc spam reward should clearly not be better than an interrupt trait reward. PB is well balanced to the upcoming patch (with nerfing everything) already, it should not get buffed at all (because not trash, just less power creeped than other current stuff). LR was not on par with the upcoming overall nerfs considering that it does more dmg without the need to interrupt atm. And i am coming from simple balance logic as a multiclass player. I said the same to Lost Time what is a Mesmer trait. Simple cc spam should not even be rewarded (aside from the cc itself) at all i would say. LR should get Lost Time treatment (no dmg at all) but can keep the weakness.

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@bravan.3876 said:PB is not trash just that everything else that doesn't even need reactive interrupt gameplay is power creeped op as hell. There are enough power builds using that trait, mostly on Powermirage.

Okay, fine, it's not trash... but currently on the only viable mesmer builds, it is trash (PU shatter takes Mental Anguish. Power Mirage takes Imagined Burden. And obviously condi mirage doesn't run domination). I personally never see mesmers running this trait tbh.

And a simple cc spam reward should clearly not be better than an interrupt trait reward.

Power Block applies a 15s CD to the skill it interrupts. You seem to keep ignoring this facet. The reason why LR is better though, and why PB is trash (woops), is because PB has a prerequisite that can only reliably be executed by instant-cast CC skills. This forces the mesmer to usually take something like Mantra of Distraction (not good).

PB is well balanced to the upcoming patch (with nerfing everything) already, it should not get buffed at all (because not trash, just less power creeped than other current stuff). LR was not on par with the upcoming overall nerfs considering that it does more dmg without the need to interrupt atm. And i am coming from simple balance logic as a multiclass player. I said the same to Lost Time what is a Mesmer trait. Simple cc spam should not even be rewarded (aside from the cc itself) at all i would say. LR should get Lost Time treatment (no dmg at all) but can keep the weakness.

You don't like the nature of LR , fine, we're in simple disagreement with each other. I'm personally cool with it since most of ele's CC has a telegraph. And when we consider the fact that the burst from LR, post patch, will effectively be halved (in reality, its even more), since CC skills are receiving a reduced coefficients via 0.01. LR will be hardly overperforming, even without the nerfs.

And Lost Time on Chrono was only really degenerate because of two things. 1) it was namely proc'd off of instant cast effects (like mantra of distraction & diversion) and 2) it was mostly utilized to amplify mesmers stupid 1 shot potential.

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There’s been a lot of discussion around CC skills and if all of them should deal minimal damage. We agree that it shouldn’t be a hard rule and there’s room for exceptions. We won’t be making any adjustments to these for the initial update, but expect some changes as we continue to evaluate things moving forward. Even for the exceptions, hard CC skills still won’t be near the top of the damage range, but there’s room to work with above 0.01. In some cases it may make sense for a skill to not have any CC and instead be a higher damage skill, but these would need to be game-wide changes and something that we’ll be discussing with the skills team.

Look who is actually paying attention, Arenanet dropped a balance patch and just figure this out that some classes need a rework entirely. Is clear you are throwing away 7 years of balance and doing dramatic changes and nerfs to power builds without seeing the overall repercussions you will cause to some classes that have many knockdowns in their skill including some damage. My solution is you actually take your time and stop nerfing drastically the overall damage of every CC skill have to have 0 damage and learn the class overall Kit, Classes like Warrior primarily are only based on CC and damage. Yet you treat it has if it was a Mesmer and somehow it had evade on attack, torment, Poison included. My point is don't ruin your class diversity, don't make the game boring.

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