NovaanVerdiano.6174

Thanks for clearing this up and going in-depth, really loving the way you're handling things lately.

Absolutely excellent decision, thank you! If this could be a common thing going forward, I think a lot of people would be very, very happy (just don't attach AP to those titles, perhaps... lmao)

If you think that Cerus CM is only difficult due to "HP bloat", you completely fail to understand the encounter as a whole and why things need to not keel over immediately. I'll agree that it is too tightly tuned right now for most players and needlessly restricts comps, but having a tight DPS check isn't inherently bad and actually quite important for this encounter specifically thanks to the 10% soft enrage and the whole idea behind empowered stacks.

Hi Rubi, thanks for the update. I'm not sure if something like this is possible, especially with a roughly two week time window, but perhaps consider adding another difficulty mote to the fight? That way, the encounter can be preserved in its current form as an even harder difficulty (it wouldn't even need much in the way of rewards imo, perhaps a golden Embodiment of Sin title?) with whatever you're targeting for the nerfs being the normal CM. In general I think it is time for us to have another difficulty setting to allow a more granular approach to difficulty instead of adding extra challenge behind titles (which you can still do!) - Even more so if we will continue to get two Strike CMs per year.

Keep in mind post bug + fix they had the boss HP at 106mil, bugged it was at 160mil and now it's a 130mil. They playtested it with the old values, so it's not comparable.

Except it's not bugged anymore and we now know that Cerus is sitting at a cushy 130mil HP. The DPS check is crazy and while this would be fine in itself, the encounter design also heavily pushes DPS players towards Virtuoso, particularly cVirt, yet again. Yes, obviously once the DPS check gets tight enough you will simply stack whatever is strongest and that in itself is also fine, the real problem arises when you can't even bring much else because nothing can compare to the versatility and freedom of this one build, while even *that* one struggles with meeting the check (skill issue in a way for sure, but even once squads will perform insanely well consistently this is going to be tight)

While I'm happy that you're willing to provide a challenge and a tight DPS-check, please reconsider buffing the total HP of Cerus if you do not make any other changes alongside it. The fight as it is already heavily promotes the use of mobile ranged builds with long-range cleave (and we all know there is only one build that does all of this and is *good* at doing so; Condi Virtuoso) and while I'm sure it is possible to play other builds just fine on the encounter, the requirement is going to be much higher. Please consider things such as lowering Cerus' armor (like in HTCM), giving the Malicious Shadows the Qadim The Peerless treatment (give them a breakbar and make it so they take excessive damage from the puddles we can drop so CCing them inside puddles and watching them wither away is a solid strategy) and similar to even out the playing field.

I hope they do with Febe CM and then go even further, putting in some EoD Strikes and even raids in there as optional objectives. These additions combined with rush weeks have been nothing but major boons for the content they were aimed at.

Insane thread actually. Anyway, while the map closing system could certainly improved (most notably by not popping at the weirdest times and causing issues otherwise), there is a reason you get an hour to jump to a new map instance. Suggesting that we should "simply put everyone on the same map" is lunacy as well; neither would the game be able to handle that well (think of how many adds some of those encounters would have to spawn and what that does for example, as well about the mere existence of a 500 player blob), nor would the players and their machines be. Swapping to a new engine - or even worse, building a new one - is a monumental amount of effort and would equate to more than just rewriting the game from scratch. We may as well get GW3 instead at that point because the game will die during the time this would be in development.

Yes, I'm aware. My point is that the daily chest says it gives 30 AGAIN after it was correctly updated to state it gives 20, yet it still gives 20. So either the tool tip or the amount is wrong; it's likely the former.

As the title says, you still only get 20 AC out of your daily box even though it says 30 now. Either there was some internal miscommunication (because the daily AC was lowered to 20 with the last release, moving it into weeklies instead) or there was an oversight when bringing the daily amount back up.

They have given a very clear road map multiple times ever since BEFORE SotO launched AND they mentioned in every single weapon preview blog post that it will launch as part of the second SotO content update in early 2024. If you missed all that and didn't bother to do *any* checking, that's on you honestly.

Reaction time isn't the same because they won't tell us on patch launch either; people will have to figure it out. They'll do so quickly, yes, but it matters. Patches launch at a specified time, a blog post can happen at "any moment", so to speak. If they say this now, people will begin to hoard excessively and buy up a ton of mats with the purpose of selling later; this being a two month thing is very different from having it happen when the patch launches. Also, Anet hasn't "taken anything away from you", that's being overly dramatic. You still have your six rune bonuses as you had before, you now just so happen to have a new item that has (largely) new bonus effects. Mind you, I want my legendary relic too because I also find it bothersome to use a non-legendary one but it's really not that big of a deal.

Step 1.) Look at Legendary Rune requirements Step 2.) Look at Legendary Sigil requirements Step 3.) Infer from that + all other Legendaries what is normally required for them and apply this to the Legendary Relic Bonus Step: Prep some Kryptis Essences and Map Currencies just in case You now have an extremely high likelihood of knowing what will be required and are just as likely to have everything at hand. Giving out specific information right now would be absolutely insane because it'd make all associated items skyrocket in demand immediately, but we all have functioning brains and many examples to look at in order to get a good idea of what'll be needed.

Literally just had a post from Rubi saying it's fixed. lol And yes, I just did one, it is indeed fixed.

Why should they add all the old rune bonuses back? A lot of them were very similar and/or complete garbage, there's no need for them to return. Having them add entirely new and more interesting/unique effects like they have is a much better approach. Especially the rune bonuses that summoned pets should stay away cause they provide nothing beyond being a punching bag (if you're lucky), and making them actually strong would be an insanely bad move on Anet's part as far as balance is concerned. (Also they'd have to render even more entities at the same time and people would complain about performance even more)

Sounds potentially fun, I do hope some of the champions (at least the bigger ones we get) will come with a bunch of interesting mechanics (great way to teach players some of the basics with spreads, stacks etc.) Edit: Turns out Cameron Rich worked on that system before he left, now I'm definitely intrigued. https://twitter.com/SintorXI/status/1686416955723468806

Good communication and a lot of the changes seem to be good, but definitely consider moving alacrity to the big shade trait on Scourge and/or juice up the numbers on the shade duration again, this seems to be by far the biggest pain point.

Frankly I think Orichalcum and Ancient Wood (and T5 mats too) should get more sinks so their price goes up. If they do that, they can look into lowering leather prices a bit in the same breath.

Then why is Reaper not good in PvP or WvW either? Why does Anet refuse to do anything about the spec to make it good in any game mode and even *nerfed* it with EoD's launch? You cling so hard onto your beliefs because of things you claim to see that you're unwilling to look past that. The history of the game has only shown one thing: Anet is happy to let things run rampant, either for a few months or even many years, it doesn't matter to them and they're tackling whatever they feel like. Even if "just buffing DPS" isn't the only path forward, it is BY FAR the easiest and lowest effort for Anet, which is more than enough to put Reaper into a good place for PvE while they figure out what to actually do with it. That really is not too much to ask for.

What game mode is Reaper good at, then? It's bad in PvP with GS being laughably bad due to how slow it is. I have no idea about it's WvW performance, maybe ok? Everything is good in open world. In group PvE is competes (and continues to get outdamaged) by supports, which will also pack roughly the same amount of CC or other, significant utility generally. It has okay burst, which is also outclassed by many DPS specs. It is far from a "jack-of-all-trades" spec, cause that would require it to do anything beyond DPS and CC. The few extra pulls and chills you get are base Necro, and everything else is also outclassed by other class options. The history of the game says that we currently have things like Condi Virt and Bladesworn with Martial Cadence running around, had multiple months of a ridiculously oppressive pMech (which is still acceptable now, just reigned in and being held back by the fact that it has very little to no burst), years of Firebrand, HAM, Scourge and many other specs that are completely busto. Idk why history of the game you've been looking at, but it sure isn't the same. No they don't because of the above mentioned specs and the rest that hasn't been listed. Other builds also get to be extremely self-sufficient, in better ways even because their self-sufficiency doesn't become obsolete the second you step into a group.

So Reaper is balanced to be dogwater or at best very, very middling at everything you can do in the game? Yeah that makes sense, thanks for clearing that up

The story isn't really difficult for the most part though. I oneshot all of the "final bosses" of "each campaign". This is going to sound harsh, but frankly if you die 30+ times in each of them it sounds like it's a a) skill issue, b) gear/build issue or c) both in your case and you never bothered to reflect/try to learn, thus getting your teeth kicked in by the story encounters.

What you play is your choice and your choice only when playing alone or with friends, yes. The second you step into a group from LFG it starts mattering as four/nine other players rely on you and if you waste their time, that is incredibly disrespectful. That said, this particular build isn't so bad that it equates griefing in a pug setting as long as you play well. Still doesn't change what the topic is actually about; Reaper being too weak and not dealing competitive damage while also having little in the way of utility and CC while being somewhat more punishing than most players perceive, with the build supposedly meant to alleviate some of the potential punishment while losing out on damage, which is a really bad tradeoff here.

It does not. The only strike it works in is Cold War, on account of there being a placed Waystation inside the Strike. Quickness providers are builds that are geared and traited in such a way that they can provide permanent quickness by themselves; Firebrand, Harbinger, Scrapper, Herald and Warrior are examples that can be played in such a way (to different efficiency)