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Storub.5907

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  1. After re-watching the balance preview stream from the beginning, here's my feedback: Overall My overall impressions are mixed. There are some very welcome buffs and changes, while others are very out of touch with what players find fun to play. Lets do a quick-fire section first: - Cooldown reduction that is supposed to compensate for the relevant trait rework is applied very inconsistently. None of the warrior torch skills got anything for example. Guardian skills that are already absurdly good got the reduction, while lots of the elementalist skills that are barely good enough to take with the trait, did not. I hope developers will take a closer look as to why some skills see play and some don't, instead of relying on pure usage statistics. - Warrior rifle buffs are good, but [Arc Divider] change will make it much less satisfying to use and ultimately feels more like a knee-jerk reaction from a developer who died to it too much in pvp/wvw. - Bladesworn getting alacrity feels wrong, it will also not resolve the issue of it being locked to specific utility skills because you have to run [Flow Stabilizer] + [Dragonspike Mine] + [Overcharged Cartriges] to generate enough flow anyway. Spellbreaker being the alacrity spec feels much more appropriate with its more magical flavor, and not having to rely on its exclusive skills. - Deadeye getting quickness is weird, one would think that Daredevil, the spec all about being quick and jumping around the place is flavored much better for that role. - Berserker has to use very specific utility skills to upkeep berserk, and its almost inevitable to lose it if you have nothing to hit for a while. Putting quick generation on burst skills during berserk means we either have to completely fill our bar with berserk-extending skills, or face the potential 11-second downtime on quickness on every transition phase. Even just passively pulsing quickness during berserk would be less clunky of a solution. Unless of course you let us stack quickness high enough to cover the downtime. - Another patch, another confusion adjustment. While I don't mind better dps consistency for confusion-based specs, it really feels like the team struggles to make confusion its own condition without making it incredibly niche. At this point it may be worth just reworking it into something else entirely. - Core specs are getting completely gutted and left without any boon support options. I was hoping for the opposite. Perhaps every class having every boon is not worth doing if it means destroying class design space. - WvW is going to be even more of a boon-ball circus than it already is. I do not understand the hate developers have towards boon removal, aka the only way to counter boon-balls. Alacrity Specter rework While I get and overall support the decoupling of alacrity from wells, I have some concerns about the proposed change. If the new [Shadestep] will generate alacrity around the tethered target (and not around you), it can theoretically be used to support the group from the distance... But most of your shroud skills are melee-range and rely on hitting enemies to provide their effects... So you have to waste your shroud skills to upkeep alacrity during phase transitions... And you can only change your tether once every 15 seconds (because using Siphon on allies is a dps loss since you dont get initiative this way), so if you auto-tether to someone who dies or goes out of range, you literally cant generate any alacrity for up to 15 seconds. I approve of the flavor of supporting allies around the tethered target, but we need some sort of re-tether logic that kicks in automatically when the previous tether target is no longer valid. Quickness Herald rework This change is a big win for herald flavor, but there is one major concern about viability of healalac herald after it goes live. Every herald-compatible legend has enough viable upkeep skills to maintain uptime, even when not in Glint stance, except Ventari. It has a 6-pip bubble that is decently-useful, but its other skills are very energy-hungry (20 energy for pulse heal and 25(!) for condi cleanse). If you intend to force us to use both legends to upkeep quickness, it will make it essentially impossible to properly do alacheal as herald. When you go into ventari you will be literally 1-2 skills away from running completely dry. There are no easy fixes for this issue. The easiest one is to change [Natural Harmony] into a 4-pip upkeep skill. This way herald in ventari stance can either use it together with [Facet of Nature], or [Protective Solace] alone, to upkeep quickness, while also providing healing and utility to the group. 3-second application interval is very clunky, it is so on harbinger and will be so here. If we had [Drachonic Echo] it would not be such a problem, but having to give it up forces us to play around this interval, while also reducing access to other boons, which feels completely counter-intuitive on a boon support. The best way to fix this would be to put quickness generation on [Rising Momentum] which is very on-flavor for that trait. I dont not feel like I know enough about other specs to comment on the respective sections. Afterword While thinking on this all for the last few days I have come to question the impact the boon-meta has on this game. Is it actually a good thing that your performance is so massively affected by an effect that you cannot provide yourself, up to a point that your rotation falls apart without it? Isn't this essentially the same as having a traditional holy trinity if playing without one role is so sub-optimal it will make people leave? Except in our case its an unholy pentagram of dps, alac/quickdps, and alac/quickheal, which means more than half of each group is set in stone. Maybe it is worth considering nerfing the boons themselves? Cap Might to 10 stacks with each being flat 1% to damage? Make Fury give 5% of crit chance? Quickness and Alacrity being 10% increase each would still be noticeable, just not as absurd of a difference as it is now. Optimized groups would still want all the boons anyway, but maybe it will no longer be the difference between doing 20k dps and 40k, while also bridging the gap in performance between players.
  2. 1. Lucid Singularity changes are a good step in the right direction. Most other supports provide their main boons via uninterruptible or instant cast skills, so being knocked out of the overload felt uniquely bad for tempest. 2. Mantras being reverted back is a win for flavor and skill identity, but I cant help but feel that auto-preparation mechanic is just a crutch for the bigger problem. Having played a bit of mesmer with original mantras, having to prepare them always felt unique. While I understand that it can become annoying after a few hundred hours, I believe it can be solved with worth-while on-prepare effects. 3. Specter buffs are nice, but there are still a few things to do: - Wells feel awful in PvE due to long cast times. They are very clunky to use in rotation. Their range is very short compared to other thief mobility options which, combined with long cast times, means it is frequently faster to just run somewhere instead of using a well for mobility (and if you have superspeed you might even run past the target point and get teleported back!). I understand the caution around making them better in competitive modes, so please at least consider un-clunking them in pve. - Autotargeting on scepter weapon skills targets friendlies which feels awful in pve. Autotargeting is very useful in group play to target enemies that are buried under ally hitboxes. There are specific situations when you want to target an ally in scepter skills, but in those situations you can always click the target you need. Conversely, it is extremely frustrating to try to dps the boss only to end up bonking an ally. I am yet to encounter a situation when bonking a random ally is helpfull. Please consider adding a toggle in options that enables/disables ally autotargeting. - Consume Shadows is still the only choice for dps specter and it still makes no sense. From the beginning, dsp specter had a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to tier1 traits - we are stuck choosing between 3 support traits, none of which increase our damage. Second Opinion is a straight up healer trait, Shallow Grave can screw us over if the (randomly chosen) tethered ally eats a oneshot, and Consume Shadows deletes our shadow force every time we exit shroud. The original numbers around Consume Shadows were overtuned, so even a full-dps specter was able to provide decent healing output simply by doing rotation, and the squad utility of it took the sting out of being forced to take it. This lead to the justified nerf - total shadow force was cut in ~half, shadow force generation was cut by ~half, and healing output of Consume Shadows was severely reduced. After all the changes, specters are barely getting quarter of shadow force we used to, and the squad utility of it is gone. Where before one would comfortably get the full 20k bar before having to go into shroud and full-healing your squadmates on exit, now we can barely get half of a 10k bar in the same time and a value of a single 4k-heal in a group with 2 other healers is minuscule. The additional damage reduction while in shroud is nice, but nowhere near enough when you have an effective HP of 5k. I understand the potential competitive problems with increasing shadow force generation, so I believe it would be better to combine Second Opinion with Consume Shadows, while creating a new condi-dps-focused trait in its place. This will enable more build options for dps-specter - a selfish specter that does not provide healing through shadow force, but has no problems with getting kicked out of shroud, and a support-dps specter that provides increased healing from Consume Shadows (due to additional healing power from Second Opinion), but has to play around having less shadow force.
  3. I'm not sure its worth it to write this, seeing as the thread already has 15 pages, but here we go. The two classes I like and play the most are warrior and thief so I will focus on those. Lets start with the least bad - warrior: As warrior players have been telling from the moment it was proposed, the Wild Blow change is terrible. We lost one of the very few enemy-movement options which provided utility in pve. Now we are forced to choose between Stomp (long cd, does almost no damage, ground-target and hard to aim the direction of movement, less breakbar damage), and Kick (does essentially no damage, less breakbar damage), while also losing adrenaline and other opportunity-cost effects of Wild Blow. I will re-iterate that this change was completely uncalled for and gimps utility of a spec that already barely has any. The thief changes are even worse. I am aware of the hate deadeyes get in wvw, but if their range is an issue in wvw/pvp then it should be adjusted in those modes, preferably without destroying the spec in pve. Lets take a look at long-ranged weapons of other classes: Engineer Rifle - 1200 range on most skills (800 on Blunderbuss), AA pierces, full movement with additional mobility options. Ranger longbow - 1500 range all damage skills (and Point-Blank Shot has 1200 range lmao), full movement, can pierce on all skills with a trait. Guardian Longbow - 1200+ range on all skills (True Shot at 1500), full movement, pierces on all skills. Warrior Longbow - 1200 range on all skills, Fan of Fire pierces, full movement. And now lets compare that to old rifle, and the proposed changes: Old Rifle - 1200 range on all skills with full mobility, Skirmisher's Shot pierces, AA doesn't pierce, Death's Judgment doesn't pierce, Double Tap doesn't pierce. Old Rifle (Kneel) - 1500 range on all skills, cant move except by dodging/shadowstepping, Spotter's Shot pierces, AA doesnt pierce, Death's Judgment doesn't pierce. The proposed changes can be broken down as following: - Kneel - can move at 25% speed now, doesn't break from CC, initiative cost doubled (very controversial change, more below) - Death's Judgement - now pierces (finally, good) - Death's Judgement - range is reduced to 1200 (why?) - Death's Judgement - damage dealt to unmarked enemies is reduced (why?) - Death's Judgement - can now move while casting it (unnecessary with 1/2 sec cast time, why?) - Skirmisher's Shot - range is reduced to 1200 (probably meant Spotter's Shot, since Skirmisher's Shot is already 1200. Shows how much care went into the changes... also why?) - Three Round Burst - range is reduced to 1200 (why?) As we can see, there is 1 (arguably 2) long-overdue buffs, and like 5 nerfs. Now lets shift our focus on the bigger picture - what is deadeye's problem in pve? On the surface (and what most struggle most at first) it seems to be mobility. Being rooted in place to get access to your best dps skills, only marginally offset by increased range, takes getting used to. Surely being able to move while Kneeled would solve the problem? But after playing for a while, especially in high-end pve content, you realize that most of the fights are actually relatively stationary. Sure being able to maintain full dps on the go is nice, but many specs lose dps when forced to move, so its not a unique problem. Additionally, being ranged (and having the longest effective dps range, if only marginally) allows you to delay movement (and maintain dps) until its absolutely necessary. Compare that to any full-melee power spec whose dps goes to zero the moment target moves more than 300 units. That is all to say that (temporarily) being unable to move is not such big a deal if the benefits are big enough. So what is deadeye's problem? Ironically, its forced movement. Deadeye heavily relies on the stealth from Silent Scope to cast Death's Judgement, which results in constant back-and-forth dodging during rotation, when other classes can stay still. In many fights moving around too much is potentially lethal, so deadeyes (just like our daredevil comrades) have to watch very carefully where they dodge since any mistake in positioning would mean either having to expend another dodge to not die, or un-kneel and re-kneel interrupting rotation. So what do I propose? - Range reduction on rifle skills is completely unwarranted in pve (it may be warranted in pvp/wvw but I cannot comment on those modes). It makes the dedicated sniper-rifle spec shorter-ranged than even kitten longbows, completely destroying class-fantasy and the entire premise of the spec. It removes part of the reason to even use Kneel in the first place, reducing it to a glorified kit-toggle with a downside. If anything, only getting 300 units of range is too low of a benefit on its own, and I would like to see 2000 range on Kneeled rifle skills, even though I understand the possible issues in pvp modes. - Rifle skills need much more piercing. Death's Judgement should've had piercing from the very beginning. If you dps skills cant hit the marked target (because there is someone in the way, and none of your skills pierce) you don't get malice forcing you to either waste initiative, or stop dps completely until the body-blocking enemy goes away. Ideally, every skill on a god-kitten sniper rifle should pierce. - Kneel changes are a minor convenience at best and useless in most cases. We need more control over our mobility. 25% movement speed will only help you if you are at the very edge on an aoe circle. It will not allow you to move between Qadim platforms or Vale Guardian pizza slices. In wast majority of cases where you need to move you will still have to toggle Kneel, just like before. One way to solve this is to rework the absolutely useless Sniper's Cower skill into a medium-range short cooldown shadowstep, allowing a Kneeled deadeye to reposition every so often without having to toggle Kneel. Or maybe make it apply 1s of stealth as another way to cast Death's Judgement. Another would be to rework Silent Scope so we are not reliant on it in our rotation, allowing deadeyes stay completely still when needed, and dodge when actually required, without having to roll all over the place as part of our rotation. There are many ways to solve the deadeye problems without destroying spec fantasy, but the ones in this patch are not it. Please reconsider these changes.
  4. I assume that these changes are for all gamemodes. If so, the first one will inconvenience and screw up a lot of muscle memory, while the second one will strip us of the last bit of utility we had in a raid besides unga-bunga monkey smash boss. If this game had per-character keybinds, or even just an ability to move profession skills around like we can utility skills, this would not be a problem. But game does not have such a feature, and I will have to decide between convenient access to my main damage skill on berserker, and convenient access to steal/mark on thief, for example. I understand that this is done to bring more options, especially to pvp, but core warrior burst skills are essentially useless as they are for berserkers in pve. If the QoL-team still exists, the best thing they can do is solve this keybind conundrum that have been plaguing this game since release. As for Wild Blow, it was one of the very few ways to access forced enemy reposition capability for berserkers without completely wasting the skill slot. Samarog, Soulless Horror, Keep Construct and Vale Guardian, or at least heavily benifit from being able to move enemies, and berserkers could, and did help with it, especially in casual groups. I get that this change is done on the hightail of a similar change to scrapper gyro, but where gyro is a massive radius aoe skill which must be used off cd to maintain quickness, wild blow is a melee range skill that can be safely delayed if the situation demands it, with only a slight dps loss. What I am trying to say is that change from knockback to knockdown on this skill has no positives and several negatives.
  5. Choosing to release the update anyway, even with the level of feedback given, does not inspire confidence. We will be stuck with these changes for at least 4 months, making several classes unplayable, with Guardian and Engineer dominating PvE yet again. I have seen such approach ("release on time and kitten the consequences") in a game before. That game is dead now. I do not want this game to suffer the same fate.
  6. As a warrior main it is good to see Bladesworn issues being addressed, but it still feels like our spec weapon - pistol is extremely underwhelming. First, it feels weird to only get an offhand option when Spellbreaker got daggers in both hands. We are losing out on a dual-pistol-wielding samurai imagery here 😒. The two skills we do get are very weird and unlikely to see any use, especially since one of them moves you (which is asking for a wipe in some encounters), and doubly-especially because we lose our second set of weapons. A "three-weapon-set" warrior could perhaps take pistol in one of them, a current iteration of Bladesworn never will. He will take something that can DPS or CC.
  7. So, at this point I believe it is fair to say that the final episode of IBS was a big disappointment for many people. It was enough for me to actually visit these forums for the second time ever, and write this wall of text. A few have compared to the last season of Game of Thrones, since it leaves the same impression of being extremely rushed. We can only speculate as to why such a decision had been made, but the result of it will be with us forever. That is, unless Anet decides to make us a solid and actually update the story down the line. I am not sure how realistic such expectation is, but we can only hope for the best. With that I present to you my vision of how the story can be made to make sense, with minimal (in my understanding) effort required and close-to-no changes to what is already there. First big plot-point that makes little sense in the current version is the biggest one - how do we actually make Jormag face Primordus. The story had been banging the drum about how much more intelligent Jormag is compared to other dragons, and how she will never face her only weakness head-on without being sure of victory. This means that to get them to destroy one-another, they must be close in power-level and Jormag must be forced to face Primordus by some outside force. Primordus also presents a problem. It have been mentioned that Primordus has barely any mental capacity, and certainly not enough to direct his power at his Jormag. In his normal state he content to chill in his lava-bath, continuously spawning destroyers. This is why Braham (however much some people may hate him) had a good idea for once - to "saddle" the fire dragon to direct his attention, and make the confrontation happen. This however is not easy, and by the final chapter we see Braham barely hanging on to his mind, not even remembering who he is. He also clearly needs a push get him to where we need Primordus to be. This "push" is what is critically missing from what was released, together with a massive case of "tell, don't show". Taimi's presented "plan" regarding ley-lines has some massive holes in it. While we knew that dragons are attracted to ley-lines since Season 2, none of the previous ones we faced were in any way constrained in their movement by them. Zhaitan was happily flying around Orr, Kralkatorrik traveled half a world from his emergence zone, and later traveled all over the world, including into the Mists. Mordremoth was the only one content to sit mostly underground, poking his head above every once in a while. There is no reason to believer that once in the same place, Jormag will fight Primordus, instead of high-tailing it out of there to make more frozen and gather more power. While Aurene's whole deal was specifically stated to be able to channel any kind of magic without issue, her being able to literally cut other dragons from magic sources is a bit of a deus-ex-machina. What is ironic, it is clear that writers were keenly aware of it, even explicitly asking the question of "why haven't we done it before?" only to answer it with a hand-wave response of it being the "final measure" and "the only chance". They have also completely glossed over how we are actually supposed to lure both dragons to the designated place. In current story both show up "because plot says so". Once the champions are down and the magic sources are cut, Jormag has no real reason to stick around. Primordus had shown no interest in fighting her over the past thousands of year, and it is unlikely he will pursue Jormag away from the battlefield. Jormag can just cut the losses, leave, get a new champion, make some more frozen. Maybe kill Aurene so this sort of thing does not happen again, she is clearly not in a hurry and has plans many mortal generations ahead. Currently Jormag seemingly loses her cool (get it?) and decides that this is it, now or never, for no discernible reason. So, lets begin patching up the holes. 1. We need to lure both dragons to the same place, and make them want to stay there and fight. There is one big plot-point that was completely dropped in the current version of the story, and that will serve as a perfect "bait" for both dragons, or more specifically, their champions - Eir's Bow. Jormag/Ryland deliberately sat on it for the whole IBS to not let it fall in our hands. It was also mentioned that it does indeed has some power over Jormag, so it would stands to reason that Ryland would be interested in recovering it as fast as possible, especially if he has a reason to believe that it can fall into Primordus' hands. Braham also has a vested interest in recovering the bow, for obvious reasons. Now we just need to steal the bow from Ryland, which can be done in an instanced mission on an existing map. Then we let Braham know we have the bow, perhaps even over the magical radio that he should still have. This is how we actually lure both champions to the Dragonstorm. 2. We need to equalize them in power level so they destroy each other. We cut the dragons from their champions and destroy their ley-siphons during the fight. Taimi does confirm that dragons have equalized in power. No changes necessary here. 3. We need to make sure Jormag does not escape once she realizes what is going on. Maybe Eir's bow alone can be such a reason, depending on how powerful writers make it. Perhaps in Primordus-Braham's hands it will be able to actually kill Jormag, so she decides to try to end it on the spot, instead of hiding and facing the certain doom down the line. This was, however, not her style so far, and it forces us to gamble on her fight-or-flight response. The more sure-fire way to end it is to literally hold both dragons in place using Aurene's magic. During the fight Aurene is busy doing something that is not adequately explained, showing up at the end to absorb the released magic. We can make here play a more active role, and create a massive magical dome over the whole battlefield (if a human mesmer can do it, so can an elder dragon) to prevent Jormag from running away, sealing her doom. As a cherry on top, after realizing what is going on, Jormag can appeal to Aurene, continuing the "Jormag guilt-trips Aurene" sub-plot that had been going on for half the season. After that we watch the existing cutscene, and go looking for survivors. TLDR: To fix the IBS ending we need to steal Eir's from Ryland, use it to lure both champions to one place, and make Aurene prevent Jormag from just running away when things turn sour.
  8. I'm sure this have been requested many times, but just one more time for good measure - let us deactivate crafting professions at will. I have many characters that have crafting profs at level 0 because I planned to level them up or just use them to get some character levels, but plans changed. Now it is impossible to navigate and remember who actually can craft what I need and who is only "technically" a leatherworker. We can already magically "forget" crafting profs when we want to pick a new one, so it should be easy to just have a similar dialog option always available at the respective crafting trainer.
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