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Why?


Math.5123

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I'll start off by saying I'm very pessimistic about the balance patch overall. But at the same time, any changes will be welcomed at this point.

I'd like to address a few concerns that I have about nerfing some very off-meta skills to an insane degree.

To make a few examples, starting with my own main class.

  • Mighty Blow: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 1.82. Increased cooldown from 4 seconds to 10 seconds.This is the only skill that has any form of pressure on the Hammer set currently. Eating a 150% CD increase will result in this weapon set being even more dead than it currently is (if that was even possible)
  • Holo Leap: Reduced power coefficient from 1.25 to 0.91.Holo is in a strange place right now. It sees some play in AT's. Either Prot holo (mostly on NA) or Rifle Holo. It is in no way "meta tier" in organized play but it is a VERY strong ranked carry still. The latter skill not only keeps it's 2 second cooldown. But also the utility (through a spammable leap finisher and gap closer + swiftness). Considering the amount of might an Engineer is able to stack compared to a hammer Guardian, these skills hits for roughly the same amount of damage.

I have this vague memory of reading somewhere that you want "impactful" skills to have a cooldown that corresponds with its power-level. (I may be wrong on this) So this change makes me scratch my head a little bit.

Another change is the "cc skills shall deal no damage". Once again, starting with my own main class.

  • Banish: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01.This skill is a 130 range (melee) skill with a 1 second cast time and a 15 second cooldown. Very hard to land in a meta where aegis, evades, blocks and invulns are flying around left and right (even if it's getting toned down to some extent)
  • Point Blank Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 0.8 to 0.01.This is a 1200 range 1/2 second cast time ability that will do the exact same thing. The same damage, everything.

I get that all skills over classes shouldn't be the same. But still makes me wonder when the weaker skill is on a weapon set that hasn't seen any form of serious play for all but 2 years is getting the very same treatment.

Lastly; and starting with ... Guardian.

We have CC's that are tied to skills that does a bunch of damage. Should these skills also have zero damage? Let me give you some examples.

  • Binding Blade: Reduced initial strike power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01. Reduced pulse damage power coefficient from 0.2 to 0.1.This is a skill that either; Lets you maintain the tether on them (within 600 range) and have a pulsing damage effect, or lets you pull (and losing the damage effect). A very well designed skill that has drawbacks either way you decide to use it. This skill will lose all of it's damage.
  • Thunderclap: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.8 to 0.45. Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.This is the Scrapper Hammer 5 and one of the only comparable skills that has a damage over time + CC tied to the same ability. (both are also potentially aoe)Why is this not losing the damage like Binding Blade is? Why is it so inconsistent?

I'm sure you can find more inconsistencies across other classes, but these are the ones that caught my eye and the ones that are really rubbing me the wrong way.Especially considering the current state of Core Guardian (and any other form of GS / Hammer variations)

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@Gwaihir.1745 said:

@primatos.5413 said:The cc chains are completely unfun combined with high dmg output they are doing good by tuning down

with CC,mobility and damage there is always a thin line.stability and stunbreakes got nerfed, CC damage got removed.who knows, mb it will turn into permastun meta

Stab nerf was reverted.

what stab nerf? every single stab nerf got reverted? have I missed something?

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The idea is that if there's less CC people would try and whack at each other without much caring about the small cooldowns skills, the increase takes care of it and make autoattack more prevalent as a whole.

Hololeap wasn't touched because of the heat factor which means if you haven't noticed yet, nobody ever uses Hololeap to deal damage, only mobility but now might because autoattack of it was nerfed, heat is comparably equal while the damage increase is worth the heat spent with both skills rather than picking one or the other, because right now autoattack is more effective.

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@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

Lastly; and starting with ... Guardian.

We have CC's that are tied to skills that does a bunch of damage. Should these skills also have zero damage? Let me give you some examples.

  • Binding Blade: Reduced initial strike power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01. Reduced pulse damage power coefficient from 0.2 to 0.1.This is a skill that either; Lets you maintain the tether on them (within 600 range) and have a pulsing damage effect, or lets you pull (and losing the damage effect). A very well designed skill that has drawbacks either way you decide to use it. This skill will lose all of it's damage.
  • Thunderclap: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.8 to 0.45. Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.This is the Scrapper Hammer 5 and one of the only comparable skills that has a damage over time + CC tied to the same ability. (both are also potentially aoe)Why is this not losing the damage like Binding Blade is? Why is it so inconsistent?

I agree with most of your assessments. With this one, I would say that Binding Blade and Thunderclap got pretty much the same treatment in the context of the patch reducing CC skills that do up-front damage. Thunderclap doesn't do an initial damage chunk like binding blade, it's basically a symbol/well with a stun. Both the over-time ticks of Binding Blade and Thunderclap got reduced by roughly half.. which seems high, as the blanket damage nerf benchmark is a 33% reduction.

I do see that Binding Blade was reduced overall much more than Thunderclap, due to Binding Blade previously doing a decent up front hit. However, that's true with all CC abilities that do an up front hit. They're all to 0.01... ArenaNet has said they will make exceptions for CC skills that should not be at a 0.01 coefficient for many reasons, I trust Binding Blade would be one of the exceptions.

Now we could make the argument that Binding Blade does a similar job to Prime Light Beam fired with 50+ heat, a 40s cooldown elite skill now, it's all relative to the ultimately flawed cross-profession comparison.

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