[Buff Dagger Autoattacks]

The reason every spec uses sword now is because sword is the only ele weapon with good auto-attacks. We should be long past the 2012 design philosophy, every other class gets to have good auto-attack DPS these days. Make lightning whip less of a waste of time and maybe we will have other options than sword/warhorn.

[Is there any balance update preview?]

I dunno what's worse, the thought that they know the reaction is going to be bad and are just sticking their heads in the sand, or the thought that they can't preview it because they're still cobbling together last minute changes in a crunch.

[Fiery Greatsword Should be a Finisher]

19 hours ago, Downstate.4697 said:

Nah I’d rather it be 90s

Yeah that obviously won't happen since its been pitched a million times already. Maybe a new suggestion might actually see the light of day.

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

4 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

You can nerf ranged weapons as soon as you make buffs and heals range 3k.  If we all have to stack and move as zerg balls in all game modes there isn't a point to nerfing range.

In all game modes??? It's not like that in raids or hardest strikes, so endgame PvE, not in PvP, not in WvW small-scale. Literally only easy-moderate PvE or zerg WvW is "zerg ball". People who say this really expose what kind of content they play.

[Fiery Greatsword Should be a Finisher]

You are dropping a giant sword from the sky on them. It's the perfect flavor for a finisher skill. And it would help with ele being the least suited to standing still and channeling the finisher animation. And the game needs more finishers anyway. It's perfect all around. Might even make it worth the 180s cd (lol).

[Why there is such disbalance between melee and range?]

On 8/28/2023 at 5:04 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

This is a recipe for "ranged is deleted from instanced PvE".

We already know what it looks like when range is objectively superior to melee lol, so put away your hypothetical fantasy. There is no reason to play melee anywhere right now yet people still play it because its close enough. If range is nerfed but close enough it will still get played for all content, and still be superior in some content anyway. Much healthier than ranged being equal for brainless no movement content and way OP for the rest.

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

2 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Exactly, I don't see it's possible, which is why I'm trying to understand what the goal is.

Staff shouldn't be as strong, because it has the option of getting to a safe distance. Axe should be strong because it's up close. But St/Axe Mirage can have the benefits of both?

Sorry my questions are weird, but I'm trying to imagine the experience of playing every profession in a world where melee gets a bigger power budget than ranged across the board. Sucks to be an Ele, great to be a Mez.

You're still not grasping it. Nobody is saying "melee should get a bigger power budget". The suggestion is that "range should be factored into the power budget". Currently you could think of  ranged weapons having the same power budget as melee weapons, except as it is now they also have MORE free power on top of that because they have long range, not paid for in the budget.

The big advantage of long range should be accounted for in the power budget, not this extra thing stacked on top for no reason.

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

58 minutes ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

I think the whole thought process is wrong.  Should take inspiration from zombie games, or just looking at the more recent 40k games like Vermin/Dark tide and Space marine. 

The difference in engagement range matters, and different enemies exploit that.  Its the most easily translated of the concepts, since GW1 and HOT used it, to decent effect.  Smart enemy move sets is all it would take to control it.  

 

 

Few people remember this but the game used to have smarter AI. It would walk out of aoes and avoid stuff like hundred blades. Then everyone complained in the first beta weekend that it was too hard and the entire game was dumbed down before release. Smarter AI is possible but they don’t do it because they don’t think players want it.

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

29 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

To be honest I dont understand the argument that ranged weapons wont be played if they are weaker than melee. 

So you are telling me that people wont use cvirt or scourge if they do like 35-36k dps when pure melee like bladesworn or weaver do 40k? You dont honestly believe that right? Rethink the new PvE endgame content and say that again.

People in this thread are honestly arguing that we should balance for open world blobs so I don’t think they have any idea how much you lose by going melee in real fights. I think a -15% range tax is fair overall but even -20% wouldn’t be out of line.

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

11 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

Balance is relevant everywhere in the game.  Even for easy content, if spec A is doing twice the damage of spec B, then players who play spec B will eventually get fed up with the imbalance.  
 

To answer your question, why doesn’t everyone just play scourge.   It’s because a very high % of players play the spec they enjoy, not the current flavor of the month.  

It’s objectively true that balance matters more where the margins for success are tighter. As anyone with arc can see, most players in the open world do not get fed up even when other players are doing 20x more dps than them, why would they be fed up by a 2x dps difference between specs?

 As you said yourself, people in easy content care more about what they want to play than what is objectively most effective. In that content, the efficacy doesn’t really matter.

 Also, like I said, many contexts in this game are mutually exclusive. You cannot just say balance matters everywhere, inherent contradictions exist between different types of content.

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

14 hours ago, LadyKitty.6120 said:

Problem with nerfing ranged weapons to clearly perform lower than melee weapons is that nobody would use them in most of the instanced content.

Best option would be to have ranged weapons do damage almost equal to melee builds from within 240 range and reduce it dynamically based on distance with max. range causing 25%-50% damage reduction. Though difficulty with that is probably implementing it to the skills, especially condi ones, in a reasonable time. (And dev time is money so would it be worth the cost?)

DH does have a trait with similar function but that's a singular trait that applies to all skills and they'd need to add similar formula (+develop condi version) to every ranged skill.

This is a good idea but too ambitious for ANET. 
 

IMO the balance should be focused on actually interesting content where you actually have to move and do things. Clearly there can’t be an even playing field for both the content that matters and the content that is just standing still in a stack with no thought. 
 

Ask yourself why you don’t see everyone in open world playing scourge? It is highest DPS, most comfortable, most easy by a long shot. It’s because that content doesn’t care at all about balance lol. People talking about the “blob”: let’s be real you would not notice or care if melee was a solid 20-30 percent better DPS than the ranged weapons you use for tagging. 

We should keep balance discussions focused on the situations where it is actually relevant. If you keep the mindless stacking DPS equivalent between melee and range, you are just saying you prefer to balance that at the sacrifice of balance for actually interesting gameplay.

 

[Ranged/Melee Imbalance is a Fundamental Problem.]

Anet, why are you balancing 1200+ range options to have the same DPS as melee options?

It's painfully obvious that there will ALWAYS be an issue with scourge/virt/etc. when they can just do constant DPS from anywhere, while melee has to stop and run around for mechanics. Can we please remind ANET that range is a big advantage which should come with a trade-off? They seem to have forgotten that.

[The balance communication is nice, but we need to see WORKFLOW changes.]

5 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

I mean, suggestions from the subforums can still be filtered by the anet devs. 

Idk about you guys, but Warr sub has the most solid, well-rounded and balanced approaches in the whole forum. 

If you think warr is OP tho, more strength to you ig. 

The point is that they could theoretically read good suggestions from the forum, but the current devs have clearly demonstrated they are not competent enough to even recognize good advice when they read it. 
 

I just want people to recognize that suggesting specific fixes is going to go nowhere fast. Maybe you’ll get one lucky step forwards at the cost of five random steps backwards. There is a fundamental problem with the Anet workflow. They are simply not competent enough to make good balance, and they won’t be until that changes.

[The balance communication is nice, but we need to see WORKFLOW changes.]

In light of the “design notes” I feel this point is even more important to remember. 
 

The balance patches will not improve. The laughable design philosophy will not improve. Nothing will improve until the source of the problem is changed.

[Cele Heal Tempest: How much DPS is enough to justify weak healing?]

6 hours ago, Guybrush.4762 said:

It is purely theoretical at that point but this is my take on the celestial Condi Alac/Heal tempest :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGAFgE26WZEsL2CriRijqkfTF-zxIY1opvMSoIqORk/gICNxmxaCwnG-e

The idea is to rotate between Overload Fire, Earth and Air to maintain alac and damage while only dipping into water for 2-3 seconds in between each Overload. Hopefully maintaining Soothing mist, some Regeneration (about 40% uptime) and procing Healing ripple regularly are enough healing for your group. As far as the rotation is concerned the gist of it is :
Fire : Drake's breath > mash your other skills > Overload fire > Drakes breath (Switch to water while Drake's breath is doing its job)
Water : Cone of cold every time, other skills only if more healing is needed (Ideally Water globe + Frozen burst healing combo goes there because you can blast the water field a second time with Sand squall in Earth)
Earth : Ring of Earth > mash your other skills > Overload Earth > Ring of Earth (Switch to water while Ring of Earth is doing its job)
Water : same
Air : Convergence > mash your other skills > Overload Air > Convergence (Switch to water while Convergence is doing hits job)
Water : same

"Wash the pain away!" is used when needed.
Glyph of lesser Elementals is always used in fire.
Signet of Fire, "Feel the burn!" and Flame barrage (that is the Elite fire elemental skill) are used on cooldown.
Scepter and focus are only there for precasting purpose.
You never overload Water unless it is an absolute healing emergency and you are ok with loosing access to most of your healing for the next 16 seconds !

If you need more healing you should not be afraid to switch your Elite fire elemental for the water one. There is also an argument about dropping Superior sigil of Smoldering in favor of Superior sigil of Bursting and switch the glyph of lesser elementals for Conjure frost bow to cap the burn duration during Fire overload and gain another source of healing.

It looks clunky-ish and I would wait for a rotation wizard to fix things up but in the meantime it is viable enough I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I tried a dagger build and ultimately dropped it because the forced movement is tough to manage in some fights. I will say with around 80% boon duration you can do a 2 element overload rotation instead of 3, so you could drop the air overload part of that. It may be worth looking to see whether that is better or worse, considering the loss of condi runes/sigils on a condi build.

[The balance communication is nice, but we need to see WORKFLOW changes.]

8 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Fix guard scepter noise and axe symbol being slightly inconvenient to place sometimes. GOT IT!

Lol yeah honestly the guard forum is hilarious. Even the dev that balances guard freely admits it is OP but those guys can't...

[Cele Heal Tempest: How much DPS is enough to justify weak healing?]

There is a lot of flexibility to bring more regen/heal. If someone covers a little of your prot uptime of you don’t need projectile reflect you can bring water shout instead of earth; if someone has stab or the boss cc is predictable you can bring the auras regen trait. If you don’t need to completely cover might or you can have people stand in your fire overload, you have water field blasting built into the rotation. Between the swap to water every 10s, heal shout, and water 3/4 there is actually a lot you can throw out there. The problem is mostly having you interrupt your rotation to react to damage. 

 

Personally I feel it is pretty rough having such a tight window to maintain alac, and I am hoping we see some changes. If it gets to a place where you can interrupt rotations to do your water burst without dropping alac, then I would maybe say it’s a much better healer than the old condi Druid.

 

 Until then this is more just a theory craft for low pressure situations where you want more damage, or random stuff you want to be more self sufficient on (pugging fractals is fun with this, it is cute to watch yourself creep up on  the slow  dpsers on arc. Also nice when u want to scratch the healer itch but still want to get stuff done in open world)

[Cele Heal Tempest: How much DPS is enough to justify weak healing?]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgEsEWGBrhtwuYkYZN53UB-zxQY1Io8jeHNUQLnREKg0lAecWafYD-e
A different take on heal alac tempest. Brings alac and all boons just like heal temp.
Worse at healing than most healers. But it benches 16k dps while healing. This is almost like a unique 10% dps buff assuming a 5 man party with 4 dpsers doing 38k+ dps.

The reasoning is that alac tempest is locked into a rotation to maintain alac (cannot reactively burst heal) so we should rely on passive ticks from soothing mist/regen, and get as much dps as we can out of the overloads we are forced to do.

[Completely impartial and unbiased design of professions is a job requirement, full stop, no excuses.]

Completely agree. The efforts to silence the leaks were appalling. 

[The balance communication is nice, but we need to see WORKFLOW changes.]

The community isn't just up in arms because of a bad balance patch, we are up in arms because it has become clear exactly why the balance patches have been so bad. Professions are changed by people who literally don't even understand how they function. A dev literally just keeps guardian OP because he mains it, and we now know that is a self-admitted fact. 

 

I really appreciate the quick updates about new fixes coming down the pipe. But those are mechanical changes, addressing the symptom. When will we hear about the cause?

 

I think we would all appreciate hearing about how Arenanet is going to change the clearly broken culture and attitudes at hand.

[Guardian leaves no room for Catalyst or Harbinger.]

You are the most desperate firebrand defender ever, but the funniest part is that you don't even realize that by constantly bumping this thread so much you are only keeping it in front of more people's eyes and countering your own goals.

[WvW need a new attribute that counters Crit Damage]

What if Agony Resistance in WvW lowered incoming condition damage and critical damage bonus. 0.1% per point capped at 15% reduction for 150 AR 🤔

Then you could make WvW infusions also give AR.

I was trolling at first but I kinda like this idea...

[A "PvE Only" Spec is a Failed Spec.]

13 hours ago, fluffdragon.1523 said:

 

I see your hyperbole and raise you a "a PvP Only spec is a failed spec."

Yeah that's also true, clearly you agree that specs should be viable in multiple modes. 

The only reason I mention PvE only is because that has been the case for many of the new EoD specs. It's an even bigger failure to not even make a spec viable for PvE since you literally don't even need to change any design, just give it bigger coefficients and eventually it will be viable.

[harbinger does huge damage]

6 minutes ago, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

Scg damage is mid tier, several classes out dmg it by quite a bit. 

You shouldn't really try to offer balance input if you can't admit to yourself that scourge is completely overpowered right now.

[Mechanist: Sanctuary Runes + Compounding Chemicals + Channeling conduits+Juggernaut = perma alac & stability... OP!!!!]

Isn’t this just juggernaut scrapper but worse? Flamethrower is the one weapon in the game that probably cares the least about alacrity considering you only auto attack lol.

 

 It is way, way better to have the might and quickness from scrapper.