Sinclair.3407

Based on my gameplay in fractals and raids in the last couple of months after May 11th, the main problem here is NOT the ranger being mediocore dps in the group, but actually Anet's decision to make condi being PUG meta in most of the pve contents. I highlighted the word "PUG" because elitist groups still have the best benchmark on power classes. However, as a member of general public, who really cares about the power soulbeast or power DH being meta in an elitist group? In the real situation, most people have real life business and can only pug fractals for fun most of the time. Making condition being meta for PUGs simply make the LFG system constantly asking for CDPS. This is exactly the same as ppl constantly asking for pwr DPS before May 11th (from one pole to another pol). There is not any help in encouraging the groups to be more diversified. The statement about the ranger in May 11th patch: "The ranger is a potent damage dealer. We’ve seen that Soulbeast has extreme burst damage potential, and unfortunately in this case, this has helped create some very homogenous group compositions." Let's now assess the degree of homogeneity after the patch, The new homogenous comp has been formed, i.e., condition SCOURGE has been consistently requested in the fractal LFG every now and then. As a result, a 3 scourge comp + hb + alacRen is pretty much a braindead + immortal comp (as long as they all know some mechs of the encounters) for all the fractal encounters including CMs. In most cases, with this comp, you merely stand still and attack bosses, and no dodging is needed with barrier, passive healing, aegis, and protection boons. While if we are looking at the old pwr comp, it required far more thinking and knowledge of fight to pull good numbers. Let's look at the following comparison: Pre - May 11th patch: Fractal LFG: hb/alac/pdps/pbs Diversity in classes break-down: guardian, revenant, any power classes (slb/weaver/DH were top, but they were not mandatory), warrior. Post- May 11th patch: Fractal LFG: hb/alac/3 scourge/cdps (most likely cFB, because other condi classes are essentially ineffective in other fractals outside CM100) Diversity in classes break-down: guardian, revenant, necromancer. From a possibility of having all classes in the group (pre-patch) to only 3 classes (post-patch) in the group, the conclusion is pretty clear.

Yes, with the incoming armory making legendries is finally as rewarding as it is originally supposed to be. It makes playing all classes so much more of ease than before, without tedious unequipping and reequipping the gears and upgrades... I am happy with most of the general updates they bring to the patch. I even think this year they spent so much of time and resource on those quality-of-life updates that they didn't have a right mindset to come up with a proper class balance. As far as I could remember, the negative feedback to this patch is overwhelming compared to some previous major patches.

You suggestion on holo barrage sounds reasonable to me. Burst goes down while the sustain stays almost intact. Virtue guardian has a very limited uses so I have no comments on how impactful the changes will be, because most of the time radiance is still taken and works well especially in fractals. I do agree with what you mentioned in the last paragraph. I still remember the release of PoF expansion when firebrand was firstly introduced. Ever since then, it was OP for a while, and thus being nerfed hard in a series of patches while still busted for a very long time afterwards.. Sometimes I just dont get the point of making something completely useless/unplayerable or broken, and start to doubt whether these devs actually tried on all these classes on their own.

Yeah I understand that. This is also why holosmith is quite good in dmg sustain, because these dmg modifiers on conditions will be more effective to its overall dmg than the burst window if the phase is longer, as long as all the conditions are active. The converse is also true that if no or partial conditions are active, the performance of this class will be more negatively affected. Edit: In most 10 man raid encounters, maintaining a full set of conditions is not hard, including 25 vulnerability, even in less organized groups. In 5-man fractals, it depends on the classes in the party but I would say more than half of the time upkeeping these conditions is not an issue. Sometimes the vulnerability may not be at the full stacks, leading to a 5-10% ish dps loss, which is not a big issue to me given the high dmg sustainability this class has.

Speaking about pve only, personally I think that balance was necessary for holosmith. Before that patch, I just barely saw the usage of holosmith in fractals, especially with the famous meta comp discovered by discretize being weaver/slb/bs/fb/ren, being widely used in fractal clears (i.e. ppl constantly LF hb/dps/alac, sometimes with preference on slb/weaver/DH). I still remember I had one pug experience before that balance patch where a DH player was complaining about the holosmith player doing low dps, while I was speaking for the holosmith player who was actually doing what he could with what he had... While I do think 2020 patch may overbuff holosmith a bit, but it certainly helped holosmith's position in fractals as a dps class. In raids, holosmith is just a bit hard for me to describe its position. Its dps is very good on many encounters, it has much less dependence on other things to hit a good number, unlike virtue DH/pwr chrono/slb. However, at the same time, it is almost not top one for anything it does in organized groups (only except quite a few such as VG, as tested by Lucky Noobs). It is a definition of viable, but not best, in raids. However, in less organized pugs it can still be top one in many situations. If the nerf is to favor the general public groups, I think pwr holosmith deserves a nerf. It is just by how much. The condition variant of it is even harder to describe. It is good for multiple condi-oriented encounters, but the steep learning curve makes it not worth over taking other condi classes that can do similar or even better.... By steep I mean not only its long rotation, but also its connection with the heat management in the real encounters making fully mastering this build really hard. Lastly this may sound biased to you, but holosmith is not a simple DPS class from my view so personally I think it deserves high dmg (might not be highest) in PVE competitive contents given the efforts needed. Again, just my thoughts. Edit: Rifle holosmith benchmark after May 11th path is 36.4k, which if eventually found out to be pushed to the limit, would be appropriate to me

Well yea this is true. I just meant the Sic Em is a big modifier, although not being passive. They nerf the non-passive modifier, while most problems are not yet solved that are created by stance sharing... while on the other side hitting this class very hard.

What do you think are outliers in this case? For me it is hard to say, because for example if one says holosmith is an outlier (the class that has one of the highest burst potential now, while still having high sustained dmg), then should it get nerf-ed? Personally I think maybe but surely not significantly, because it will create other problems, like the one you yourself mentioned in an early post. What else? DH? No way. It will never get nerf-ed because it is 33k benchmark (although it does almost highest in many encounters). Pwr chrono? Certainly no, due to the nature of its dependence on multiple factors to hit high number, and its almost no use in fractals (btw, this is also very disappointing considering ppl not taking it for its low dps, but it actually has insane skip capability in many fractals...). Weaver? well big NOO! it only has about 50k peak (non-precasting case) on golem curve even pre-ptach. And the only way to play it in fractals to hit high burst number is by serious efforts in precasting and organization with your party. This is the prime example of a class that I kept calling being rewarding proportional to the efforts by the players. Also in fractals weaver outshined soulbeast most of the time mainly due to its high consistent dmg (and high consistent is what Anet like to see if I get it right). Idk what you mean by outliers? Not trying to be offensive, but I just don't know what it an obvious outlier to be nerfed in this case. The outlier on the opposite side is the soulbeast, the class being nerfed by a larger portion than other classes, by this patch. I checked this 35k GS benchmark late last night, from the log it has the highest peak of around 52k burst, which is certainly not on par with any other bursty classes such as DH or holosmith, while it has less sustained dps performance than most other classes still. That's why I kept saying it is in a bad position now, because it cannot compete with any bursty classes, nor can its sustained dps be on par with the classes that used to output steady dps (just talking about pwr classes, not any condi classes because we all know they are busted atm). Regarding the last paragraph, I wouldn't deny it got buffed in some historic patches, so did many other classes, depending on multiple factors. Just taking Sic Em and Twice as Vicious as an example, Sic Em May 08, 2018 Reduced the cooldown of this skill from 40 seconds to 35 seconds. April 30, 2013 Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds Twice as Vicious February 25, 2020 Competitive content update: Increased the damage and condition damage bonuses granted by this trait from 5% to 10% in PvE only These buff are exactly on the opposite side of discouraging stack of modifiers, the way you like to call them, but at least I did not see a big problem of these in pve contents (in pvp or wvw they are problematic sometimes but they can totally separate the modifier among these modes, as they did for Sic Em for example, 25% for pvp wvw, 40% for pve, prepatch, although the stacking modifier problem still exists there in wvw), if the final dmg output is within a reasonable range in pve contents (e.g. pre-ptach soulbeast was popular in fractals for its stance sharing and spirit, but it was not top in almost anything in terms of its personal dps; in raids pre-patch soulbeast can be good for certain burst oriented bosses, but certainly not as viable as classes such as holosmith or dps warrior from a global perspective). I am sure you know that my main complaints are only associated with the May 11th patch, by which they created an unacceptable gap in dps between soulbeast and the other common dps classes, either burst wise (big gap w.r.t bursty classes) or sustained wise (medium gap w.r.t. high sustain classes). As a result, the class becomes a bottom dps pick for almost all encounters. You may argue it can still be used for stance sharing or spirit provider, well yeah but that still demonstrates its dps position being ruined.

Classes like power holosmith/reaper/DH do not need spotter. In fractals, crit chance can be increased by AR which means you can spend tons of gold getting +16 or even higher infusions to stack it to 100%. This is also why discretize recommends 200+ AR for most of the meta classes. Before the patch in fractals, soulbeast needed to run marksmanship, not skirmishing, because it cannot flank boss most of the time, unlike in raids. however, the negative change of the exposed buff makes it have less synergy with the trait "predator's onslaught", which may revert to the use of skirmishing which grants extra bonus to critical damage and extra ferocity (which are permanent buff and irrespective of exposed state, unlike "predator's onslaught" trait). Back to the point, fractal groups just don't need spotter, as long as they are willing to invest gold on infusions. Banners are still welcome because not only do they increase the power/condition damage attributes, but also the ferocity even though the precision may not be needed. Looking at ranger utilities and elite skill in terms of their benefits to the group, OWP stance sharing is the strongest with no doubt in a small burst window. Frost spirit is still quite strong to power-based class (5% is actually quite a lot that some players may not even realize). Sun sprit also has some extra bonus to condition-based class. Taking all these into account, it is just a matter of whether soulbeast will be nerfed to the point that its buff to the party will not be worth over having another dps class that drastically outshines soulbeast in dmg. In short, as long as the stance sharing is not nerfed (which is the case in these patch notes), soulbeast still has a spot in fractals. It is just not good in its personal dps output anymore.

Stance sharing for bear stance is not that important especially the cfb has tome 2 skill 5. Having 4 firebrands should make sure you have no problems in cleanse, which is more true if one firebrand is willing to take opening passage in the presence of the condi instab. Moa stance is great as it allows dps classes to negate the usage of concentration equipment, making one c rr renegade able to maintain perma alacrity in sunqua CM, for example. I do wish they could buff soulbeast somehow, given all these unique buff it can bring to the party. Unless its dps really drag behind the party, I would personally not be interested in seeing a 4-5 firebrand comp blowing up in daily fractals, in contrast to the old meta comp which is much more diversified.

Well yea would be happy to see the rework of OWP. I even hope they could add some inflicted condition on the follow-up strikes by OWP like "sharpened edges" trait causing bleeding on crit hits. I agree the benefits of OWP is obvious in CM100, but in CM98 and 99 I will have to see after several follow-up balances (hopefully), because neither power nor condi slb is a promising choice now for CM98 99, compared to other classes.

I think everyone agrees power chrono benchmark would see a dip in a real fight where slow uptime might be an issue or flanking might be hard from inconvenient positioning, etc.. Another drawback of power chrono lies in the fact it is barely used in fractals due to its slow ramp-up dmg output, and benefits the least from the exposed window. With the new patch change on the exposed state, in a power-based group, it may potentially get improved in its dmg contribution to the group because of the the reduced dmg buff on exposed state leading to a longer phase time, making it possible for it to execute its rotation longer. On the other hand, soulbeast seems a niche choice now, because stance sharing will not be that useful for the new daily condition-based group such as 4 FB + renegade comp. Frost spirit is also not useful to the cFB. Sun spirit might be somehow beneficial but I doubt if that little party-wide buff would outperform another cFB. In a speed clear power-based comp, soulbeast should still be used as a source of stance sharing. Overall this patch so far is a big rip for soulbeast mainly owing to the class-defined burst potential being drastically truncated, making its original meta spot quickly diminish at both burst (short phase) and sustain (long phase).