SummonMinion.7306

WVW/ PVP review Overall review is that the great theme/mechanics of these weapons are overshadowed by poor execution. Currently feels like the dev team balanced the numbers (damage, healing, cd, etc.) on these weapons around requiring the player to use the flip skills every single time. Not using the flip skills feels like you get only half the impact of other currently available weapons. Using both skills (including the flip skills) every single time feels equally as bad since using both skills has the same impact in a fight as singular skills on other weapons but you also get penalized by sacrificing health (Where's the reward for the trade off?). I'm fine if using the non-flip skills alone is slightly less impactful than singular skills on other weapons so there's a trade-off for having access to additional skills but doubling up and using the flip skills should have a greater impact on a fight so I feel rewarded for taking these over other options and for choosing to sacrifice health. For specifics: Auto's hit like a wet noodle which is fine since it's as easy way to sustain while dealing damage. Main issues with the skill are it's unnecessarily slow chain (main culprit is probably the after-cast) and it's janky interaction with the terrain due to being a ground hovering wave. This skill is mainly impacted by mechanical issues rather than numerical issues. I have no issue with ravenous wave but satiate's damage numbers are so low that it's never worth it to use the flip skill even when the target is below 50%. Cool idea to have an execute skill but currently doesn't function as intended due to numerical issues (damage). I have little to no issue with path of gluttony or gorge besides it's weird after-cast which makes it difficult to consistently insta-chain both jumps together. Additionally, I don't see why this skill isn't ground targeted like jump shot on engi rifle so that players have the choice to either use the skill offensively or defensively on a ranged weapon. My main issue with hungering maelstrom is the unnecessarily long cast time. Either keep it's current cast time and boost the damage and/or healing numbers or keep it's current numerical values but bring the cast time down (either 1/2 sec or 3/4 sec). Gormandize is such a cool name for such an un-impactful skill. The damage on the flip skill is way too low for it to ever be worth it to cast. Either increase the strike damage or attach additional conditions so the skill feels impactful and worth the health trade off. Devouring visage is an overall decent skill and my only issue with it is the low life force gain from the skill. Either boost the LF gain from hitting devouring visage or attach additional lf gain on consume so we're rewarded for hitting the skill on it's return path. Consume is the only flip skill that felt impactful due to being a hard cc. My main issue is the difficulty behind being able to consistently use the flip skill when you want to use it. The window to cast the flip skill definitely needs to be longer. My suggestion is to have devouring visage linger a bit at the end of it's path like thief axes to give players more of a window to use consume if they choose to do so. Just look at how tides of time functions on mesmer shield 5 and copy that small window where the wave spins before returning to the player and attach a similar mechanic/window to devouring visage.

I'll be speaking solely for competitive game modes. I completely disagree with their across the board nerfing of boon corrupts/boon strips for both necro and spellbreaker. Boon removal is the only counter play to the excessive amount of boon spam present in competitive game modes. It would have been fine if they nerfed boon removal in conjunction with nerfing boon spam/output. However, we continue to see skills becoming more bloated by adding more random boons to various skills across the board. Anet stating in their stream that they are "paying attention closely to the balance between boon output and removal" when making their balance patches falls flat and almost seems like they're treating the average player base as blind/stupid with the most recent changes. Meta has already been boon spam heavy for way too long and has been heavily opposed for an equally long time by a majority of the competitive community and yet they continue to push the balance towards boon spam. I can't take anything about Anet "in good faith" when they continue to ignore community feedback and make changes in the opposite direction without any explanation or feedback.

You guys have shown zero interest in taking any feedback from the community so we have zero incentive to provide any further when we know full well that we’re all just screaming into the void. I encourage everyone who felt ignored and unhappy with this recent balance patch to not pre-order or buy the next expansion. Maybe they’ll finally listen when money’s on the line.

I disagree with replacing enfeebling blood with a better version of dark pact. Even if enfeebling blood loses its boon corrupt, I wouldn’t want to lose an aoe weakness application as a defensive option. As far as dagger not having defensive options, I’d say the pulsing heal and cc from immobilize on MH and the bouncing blind/condi transfer plus aoe weakness application on OH are decent. My main gripe with dagger is that its auto chain is useless in competitive modes and is only useful as a lf generator in pve. Either make the auto chain ranged to match the other light classes w/ access to dagger (ele and virtuoso), insert a short lunge in the chain so we can actually stick to targets and make use of the chain, or make the auto chain rewarding. By rewarding, I mean within the range of doing something as simple as increasing damage and lf gain to something more interesting like adding an additional life steal affect (like dagger 2’s current functionality and not like what they did to locust swarm) or boon steal effect.

Warhorn's continued subpar performance says hello.

Yep, someone called out that this round of devs somehow created a patch that garnered more negativity than last year's disastrous patch (which also happened on June). Snowflakes couldn't handle being blatantly called out with proof attached to it so they probably removed/switched reactions to make it seem like this round of mentally handicapped intern level devs didn't make a bigger kitten up. We all thought after last year's round of patches that they couldn't sink even lower and could only improve. Guess they wanted to double down and prove us wrong.

Btw, thanks Anet for finally proving to everyone that you don't play anything besides PVE and have zero clue about the state of the game in competitive game modes with this recent balance concerning boon application vs boon removal/corruption. Not only did you manage to kitten off the players who main boon strip classes like necro or spellbreaker (that's an expected reaction), but you finally managed to also kitten off the players who main those boon spam builds (wow imagine how many times/how hard you have to kitten up for that to happen). You should really consider having your next studio project be an auto-battle PVE gacha game since you've shown everyone you're unwilling to play/look at competitive game modes and your "balance" team keeps trying to turn everything into brainless skill spam gameplay. I mean who needs to care about movement, positioning, or skillful timing of skills when everyone can kitten out every boon in the game with 100% uptime and no counter play. It's all good, who cares about being punished for misplays since you can ignore everything if you have all the boons. Just hold the w-key and slam your face against all the other keys so your other hand is free to do whatever because you no longer have to be looking at the game to play effectively.

What I like: "Quickening Thirst + Life Siphon Changes" Anything to buff MH dagger and dagger's usability in general in competitive game modes is appreciated. "Signets of Suffering now removing boons" Anything that adds more tools to counter the brainless boon spam kitten meta is greatly appreciated. Sad to see that many niche builds around its current functionality will be disappearing, but I feel like the addition of more boon counter play on necro results in either a net even or net gain for necros in competitive game modes. What I dislike: "Well of Blood: This skill now applies regeneration with every pulse." This is an unnecessary nerf. I understand the need to tone down scourge's rez capabilities but this could've been done by reducing baseline heal and scaling instead of turning it into pulsing regen. The nerfs to Ritual of Life and Life from Death were arguably justifiable but reworking Well of Blood is an overreach. "Banshee's Wail: This trait no longer increases outgoing healing." Unless Locust swarm gets buffed to the point of being usable in anything outside of PVE or this trait gets buffed to do that same change, both WH and this trait will continue to be ignored since WH will continue being half a weapon as WH4 is the only useful part of the weapon. A 24 sec CD for a singular application of swiftness is weak (all other aspects of WH5 are unusable and have such little impact in competitive game modes that they might as well not exist). "Enfeebling Blood and Lesser Enfeeble no longer corrupting boons." Please don't give players the bs excuse that you're still trying to "balance" boon application vs boon removal in competitive game modes. You've consistently nerfed any and all counter play to boon spam while continuously bloating more skills with more boon application. We're not idiots like the mentally handicapped dev(s) that thought and continue to think that the changes to Locust Swarm were good and its current state definitely doesn't need a complete overhaul. "We don't want there to be a bunch of tiny packets of boon rip/corruption spread across a bunch of different skills, but we're totally okay with continuously adding a bunch of boons to these random skills. Boon rip/corruption should be dedicated to certain skills only so that there's counter play and players can avoid it, but we don't wanna apply that logic to boon application so players can continue to boon spam without thought." To anyone with the counter argument about the Signets of Suffering trait now having boon removal: 1) It'll probably be a worse version of it's past iteration and will only remove a single boon as any more would be "too much counter play against boon spam builds both in smalls and large scale fights". 2) Only one of the signet skills hits multiple targets. Signets of Suffering did little to counter the boon spam meta back when its boon corruption functionality was initially implemented and will do even less now with the far greater boon spam present. I'm fine with the return of this trait having boon counter play but not with removing boon removal/corruption options in other areas (Enfeeble and Lesser Enfeeble). It's 1 step forward two steps back when it comes to countering the boon spam meta no one enjoys. A weapon with boon counter play can be implemented into any build but Signets of Suffering locks boon counter play behind a specific set of utilities under a specific trait line and trait.

Have the same issue, tab shows 6 completed but only gives me credit for 4/6. Seems like it bugged after they added the new tasks for the achievement.

My feedback for the necro/reaper changes from a competitive standpoint is that they were overall okay in handling the things they chose to change but disappointing due to the small scope of changes. Core Warhorn: Honestly, anything that buffs this almost useless weapon is welcome. Banshee’s Wail: Only concern with this trait is it’s just a nerfed trait due to the cd reduction now being baked baseline into the weapon (not complaining about that, WH was trash). The issue is that the trait was never a competitive choice when it offered both the cd reduction and 50% boost (excluding the LF gain per hit). Now it offers half of what it did before as a trait so I’m seeing even less of a reason to ever pick it up. Maybe buffing the 50% bonus effectiveness to 66% or 75% and finally having the effectiveness also affect the LF gain per hit would make this trait more attractive. Dagger: Kinda sad that the auto chain will continue to be useless in anything but PVE but I’m happy overall with the changes. Reaper Augury of Death: Similar concerns to Banshee’s Wail. The CD reduction was the only reason people picked up this skill. Hopefully the lifesteal effect is buffed or the cd reduction is replaced by another useful effect. Note: I wasn’t there to watch the entire stream and some people are saying that this trait now adds chilled to all enemies hit which would be amazing, but since I’m not seeing that in the official post I’ll just assume that it’s speculation for now. Shouts: I like the change of having bonus effects granted when hitting enemies within a certain range threshold. I’m just hoping the range threshold to get those bonus effects isn’t something unusable like a 130 range and is more along the lines of 240 or 300 (to mirror Soul Eater). What Also Could’ve Been Addressed Greatsword: The changes to shouts, WH, and dagger shows that y’all are finally addressing the fact that necro never really had any viable melee options and are finally encouraging closer engagements outside of shroud. GS still maintains the original theme for Reaper being a slow but heavy hitting class and the slow skills overall have a decent payoff except for the auto chain and GS2 (Gravedigger). GS2 never feels rewarding to cast and I’d much rather rely on lucky crits from GS3 than GS2. Also, Reaper’s GS auto chain isn’t marginally stronger than any other classes’ GS auto chain so I don’t see the logic in it being so much slower. Please either make the chain shorter or make it stronger so that it actually makes sense that it has such a slow windup. Soul Eater: I still don’t see why the healing while in shroud was taken away and how the trait gave the Reaper “too much sustain”. If this trait is going to just be a power version of Parasitic Contagion, then I don’t see why the healing while out of shroud shouldn’t be buffed especially since it has a very limiting range threshold.

My feedback for the necro/reaper changes from a competitive standpoint is that they were overall okay in handling the things they chose to change but disappointing due to the small scope of changes. Core Warhorn: Honestly, anything that buffs this almost useless weapon is welcome. Banshee’s Wail: Only concern with this trait is it’s just a nerfed trait due to the cd reduction now being baked baseline into the weapon (not complaining about that, WH was trash). The issue is that the trait was never a competitive choice when it offered both the cd reduction and 50% boost (excluding the LF gain per hit). Now it offers half of what it did before as a trait so I’m seeing even less of a reason to ever pick it up. Maybe buffing the 50% bonus effectiveness to 66% or 75% and finally having the effectiveness also affect the LF gain per hit would make this trait more attractive. Dagger: Kinda sad that the auto chain will continue to be useless in anything but PVE but I’m happy overall with the changes. Reaper Augury of Death: Similar concerns to Banshee’s Wail. The CD reduction was the only reason people picked up this skill. Hopefully the lifesteal effect is buffed or the cd reduction is replaced by another useful effect. Note: I wasn’t there to watch the entire stream and some people are saying that this trait now adds chilled to all enemies hit which would be amazing, but since I’m not seeing that in the official post I’ll just assume that it’s speculation for now. Shouts: I like the change of having bonus effects granted when hitting enemies within a certain range threshold. I’m just hoping the range threshold to get those bonus effects isn’t something unusable like a 130 range and is more along the lines of 240 or 300 (to mirror Soul Eater). What Also Could’ve Been Addressed Greatsword: The changes to shouts, WH, and dagger shows that y’all are finally addressing the fact that necro never really had any viable melee options and are finally encouraging closer engagements outside of shroud. GS still maintains the original theme for Reaper being a slow but heavy hitting class and the slow skills overall have a decent payoff except for the auto chain and GS2 (Gravedigger). GS2 never feels rewarding to cast and I’d much rather rely on lucky crits from GS3 than GS2. Also, Reaper’s GS auto chain isn’t marginally stronger than any other classes’ GS auto chain so I don’t see the logic in it being so much slower. Please either make the chain shorter or make it stronger so that it actually makes sense that it has such a slow windup. Soul Eater: I still don’t see why the healing while in shroud was taken away and how the trait gave the Reaper “too much sustain”. If this trait is going to just be a power version of Parasitic Contagion, then I don’t see why the healing while out of shroud shouldn’t be buffed especially since it has a very limiting range threshold.

This change is probably the most intriguing yet confusing one for this patch. Necro as a class doesn't have much access to heal over time or "regeneration" effects (i.e. ranger's troll unguent or warrior's heal signet". We don't even have that much access to regeneration as a boon. Only other ways a necro can have better access to regen effects is to use the 6th bonus on the Dolyak rune or using food like mango pie. One interesting thing to speculate is if this change will include the healing from traits like parasitic contagion or soul eater. They aren't what one might consider traditional "regeneration" effects but their inclusion would finally make blood bank a more viable gm trait rather than a complete joke. Additionally, how will this trait treat over-healing with regen effects? Say I'm at full health and I got full Dolyak runes and mango pie, will I just continually generate barrier given that I stay in combat? If I'm at full health, pop well of blood, and then immediately pop into shroud, I still get the barrier conversion from the additional pulses from the well while in shroud. Will it treat the included regen effects the same way?

Took them way too long to realize that everyone universally thought of WH as a useless weapon outside of break bar damage and finally buffed it. However, given anet's track record when it comes to changes I'm gonna hold off on pre-emptively giving any praise to the dev responsible for this change. My main concern is that they still might have forgotten to address the glaring and obvious issue that WH only ever had 1 useful skill and was basically half an offhand. If they never addressed WH 5's tiny radius combined with its short duration, then the addition of it being able to heal allies is basically a worthless addition in any PVP or WVW scenario. I'm all for the WH4 change, but if WH5's usability hasn't been addressed then it's still just half an offhand which will only be picked up for its cc and I see no reason to pick it over other offhands. Here's to hoping that the dev that buffed WH is far more competent than the idiot who turned locust swarm into a joke.

While discussing how to balance necro's low skill floor and ceiling defense of face tanking versus every other classes' scalable high skill floor and ceiling defense of blocks, evades, I-frames and greater access to boon spam deserves it's own thread, it cannot be argued that a necro's survivability is largely tied to shroud. Nerfing Rise does little to nothing in addressing that issue. Extra bodies an issue? The skill had a long cooldown and the rats barely had any health bars to sustainably absorb damage. A squad of necro's could spam bone minions and get the same effect of pre-nerf Rise. A squad of mesmers would get the same effect with all the clones and phantasms they can push out even if they shattered on cd. Now I'm not pointing out the mesmer thing to say nerf mesmer. I pointed it out because having short-lived bodies to absorb some instances of damage in a Zerg v Zerg does little to affect the overall gameplay. The extra bodies had little influence on the boonball wet noodle slap fight meta. This change literally has zero effect on the meta or overall gameplay. I see zero justification for this change.

God I love how tone deaf and lackluster our recent "competitive balance" pass was. Instead of doing anything meaningful like making WH 5 useful or addressing the identity of MH Dagger, we get a nerf to Rise of all things. LMAO these slow rats with paper thin health bars are making such massive impacts on large scale fights. Ooh I'm soooo concerned when Augury of Death hits me with the grievously OP 100 dmg poison ticks. At this point I preferred when ANet tried to pass off their "Profession Balance" updates, which literally consisted of nothing but bug fixes, as them caring about competitive game modes. Having your PVE devs handle "Competitive Balance" with this much aggressive incompetence was somewhat expected, but not to this degree. Thank you Anet for never failing to meet and sometimes exceed our expectations.