ZeftheWicked.3076

This cannot be be handled by two man balance team. That's simply mission impossible. And yeah, it does make me worry as well. Depending on how much of profession's power budget is in their weapons the results can be quite extreme. Some things are very promising (Staff for warriors sounds like a badly needed healer/support weapon), but others can be right down degenerate (imagine chornomancer shield on all mesmer e-specs. Now you know why they deleted the F5 block on virtuoso..) The current patch changes make a lot more sense now that we see xpac system changes we never knew were coming. And it's clear it's a rushed job without a proper forethought. Like many things getting nerfed baseline due to possibility but not certainty of players using a new feature that could be busted when used in a specific build (but not others).

I've no opinion on quickness atm, but I think alacrity should be removed all together. Instead each profession should have it's own cooldown reducing/resetting mechanics where appropriate based on player skill and profession's own flavor. So everyone would be their own alacrity provider if they play it right and ofc with the amount of such opportunities tailored to each profession's (and specialization's) needs.

I see, thanks for the feeback. That does sound rather dreadful.

Let's not get overly dramatic. here. Xpac announcement ranks far higher in the food chain than balance patch. They did not drop xpansion reveal to cover up patch outrage, but very likely they did not do the balance patch right because of xpac. Maybe they had to divert manpower to new xpac features. Or maybe they know these features will derail game balance anyway, so instead fixing something that will be broken the next day again, they'd rather wait, have both disasters happen and then get to cleaning it up thoroughly.

I have not played yet, so I'll ask to be sure - did you guys trait herald of sorrow in master tier? Because that thing is supposed to pulse barriers to allies for good 5 seconds, so imho provide strongest alac coverage of all scourge skills.

So they didn't add boon removal on top of previous signets of suffering, but replaced them with it? They need a necro main in balancing team, like seriously...

Balls to the wall power builds are supposed to burst down and assassinate their targets before they can start fighting back. Assassins are meant to be squishy and vulnerable if they fail to quickly murder their target. Conditions by design are meant to be the sustained damage, not 2s of them and you're down. Now we know in some cases that balance was broken (*cough* burnguard *cough*), but in general the rule stands. And as such condition damage leaves more leeways to build tanky. Part of game design. That being said power builds aren't as screwed as supports as one might think. They just face more obvious choice that condi supports also get. More damage or more survival. Diviner is zerker light - you're just as easy to kill. But you got stuff like Wanderer or Commander for much more survivable power suppport. Condition builds also aren't without their flaws. Ritualist is a sweet gear set for condi supports but it has 0 power. There's a reason why most meta builds on snowcrows benchmarks run Viper and not Ritualist. These "condi" builds are actually hybrid builds and only then do they catch up to pure power builds that have no problem topping the dps charts. I'd risk saying that ritualist condi support drops off more dps than Diviner one, especially since diviner's concentration is so strong you can mix it with zerker/assassin pieces and still get concentration comparable (if not better) than full Ritualist.

Well as much as I'd like to agree, majority of these issues don't seem malicious, just plain unfinished (like virt F5 shatter being left unchanged save removing it's main purpose - the block). Given more time, they might patch this dumpster fire up..

They should delay this patch. It clearly needs more time in the oven. For almost every big change there's a serious side effect that remains unaddressed. Scourge gets optional party alacrity, but in a way that kills old support grandmaster trait (Sand Savant), leaving it dead in the water with no real purpose. Virtuoso loses block on F5 because he had too much damage immunity uptime, but nothing was done to repurpose the shatter into something that is worth pressing. Core warrior lost party quickness in favour of Zerker while Bladesworn got alacrity. Meanwhile Spellbreaker who was supposed to be the closest to being a support (with boon rip and build in might sharing) is left on ice with neither quickness nor alacrity. Oh but it got another nerf to it's elite, despite the of laws of physics and geneva conventions..

A fair point. Though as a necro main (read: free food for wvw rangers and deadeyes) I find this interaction both hilarious and poetic justice!

I'm honestly surprised how the block seems to be the issue and not distortion. Block at the very least is channeled, it's not like you can just nuke the enemy while blocking. I would let distortion out the door, keep the block and add some player skill based block cd reducing mechanic.

Actually dual wield is getting buffed next patch. ...by removal of party quickness from core. With that much quickness gone, anything non zerker gets much more mileage from this trait. Albeit the requirement to have two weapons of same type is stupid.

1. Martial cadence is supposed to compete with Lungs of Iron. Unlike e-spec tratlines (such as berserker) Tactics has one primary theme - support. So since all 3 grandmasters are supportive it makes total sense for them to compete with one another. The real choice here would be "which is best for my build" as each works wonders for certain build paths. Martial cadence would work wonders for support warrs who want to stay on the dps side of things. Huge in combat swiftness and fury uptime, without having to equip warhorn and be chained to banner of discipline (story of most meta support warr builds). While also outputting aoe healing with soldier's comfort. Price for that? Loss of access to aoe protection. Lungs of Iron is for warriors more dedicated to support role. Healing comes from shouts and warhorn skills (clearly favouring warhorn builds). Here you do get party protection as well to strenghten the "more defense less dps" choice. Also i believe shouts (except for "For Great Justice") are very reactive skills, so healing on them fits. Warhorn skills are quite neutral - you can just cast them off cd if you just want the boons, sure. But they shine when they're used reactively, especially warhorn #5 with big beefy barrier. Adding prot on top of that seems like a good choice to me.

Greetings fellow warrior enjoyers! ..and sunspear dogs. As Joko the Insightful was looking into july 27th warrior patch notes, he could not help but to notice that while the main goals of patch were achieved (no more quickness on core, alac for bladesworn), some changes aren't clearly well thought out. Being the magnanimous incarnation of benevolent wisdom that Joko is, he has come to grace you all with his proposal of support warrior rebalancing. A Tactical problem Changes done to tactics in upcoming patch are in Joko's opinion rushed and poorly planned. This is evident in new Martial Cadence trait - linking a reactive boon (stability) to a proactive mechanic (bursts). Warrior who picks this will either waste stab in order to keep his normal dps rotation going, or butcher his dps, so that the stability proc from Soldier's Focus can be used a the right moment. This design clearly contradicts itself and warrior's general flow. Joko is also quite unsure about protection added to soldier's comfort. Warrior's identity is that of an offensive soldier profession, which was expressed in near non-existant access to protection boon. While one might argue his access to resolution (now for party), the latter does make sense - warriors hate foul play. Conditions are by all means underhanded, while getting bonked on the head by enemy is simply you getting outplayed. A Tactical solution: With these in mind Joko proposes the following changes to tactics line: 1. Martial Cadence - you are now in permanent state of soldier's focus. Grant swiftness and fury to allies when expanding soldier's focus. This change removes 10s icd from the marching orders, meaning that soldier's focus is triggered every time you land a burst (at cost of selecting this grandmaster trait). When landing a burst on enemy you obviously want offensive, combat boons. But due to cooldown being now gated only by bursts (which are quite frequent for berserker and spellbreaker), the boons applied are much more ..tame. In return however, a strong healing option emerges. Soldier's comfort that can be procced even once every 3.5s is a real option for a dedicated healer warrior. 2. Soldier's Comfort - protection boon removed. Due to the above change application of prot to party may get outta hand. And Warrior isn't a profession that should be overflowing with party protection. 3. Vigorous Shouts - renamed to Lungs of Iron. Your shouts and warhorn skills heal nearby allies. Warhorn skills now grant protection. Gain healing power based on your vitality. Vigrous Shouts (especially after shout cd reduction becoming baseline) are not worthy of grandmaster tier. This change expands their use cases to warhorn skills as well (which is a supportive offhand), and also moves the lost protection from Soldier's Comfort into much more predictable and reactionary warhorn skills. Lastly healing power scaling from power was ignoring possibility of condi zerker supports that want to heal allies as well. Vitality is a much more build agnostic stat that also makes logical sense since you need good constitution to yell your lungs out 😉

You clearly don't understand game mechanics properly. Crowd control effects (such as knockback) are absolutely unrelated to the damage of the skill that applies them. If a skill fears for 2s it does so regardless of the damage enemy took. It can tickle them and they'll still be feared for 2s. Barriers are completely unrelated to crowd control effects. Barriers soak up damage, be it direct or condies. That's all they do. They do not stop, nor are stopped by crowd control. Each simply does their own thing. Stability is a boon that prevents crowd control from taking effect. But you don't get boons from gear. Gear provides stats, not active effects. At best you may opt to select gear with concentration - a stat that increases the duration of boons you apply (be it to self or others). What grants stability are your own abilties and those of other players if they can share stability to allies. For Scourge you have Trail of Anguish (scourge utility skill), Well of Power (core necro utility skill) and any stab you'll steal from enemies using Feed from Corruption trait. You can also opt to take the easier route of simply dodging the skill that knocks you back, or blinding the enemy as he casts it.

I say go condi quickness berserker. The arcing slice issue is gone, and the best rune for providing quickness (Rune of Firebrand) is condi, so pure win. There is no "must have" utility for warrior. You're providing dps and quickness and are unlikely to die every 5 seconds because warrior is beefy by default and simple to use. That gets you a place in fractal group. Still if you want to provide utility, there are tons of options. Shouts, banners and the tactics lines are staples offering huge boon share options as well as bit of healing and on demand safety (like banner of defense and especially elite banner). New Doubled Standards in Discipline will now provide party with resolution - a very rare case of anyone sharing that defensive boon. And ofc there's always the might stacking which can range anywhere from padding holes here and there (blasting fire fields which on condi berserker are very accessible), to right down 25 stacks 24/7 for everyone (tactics line with Phalanx Strength and "For Great Justice!" shout). So yeah, you're good. Not need ot be afraid.

I'm sure they'll reduce cooldowns baseline. *looks up patch notes to be sure* @#$$#()(*-!!!!

Arc Divider change...as a condi zerker that is :3 Dodged a bullet there !

it was super ineffective! nerfs hit it hard.. Not that a condi zerk player such as myself would be too affected by it :3

I like the sinister ways your mind works. Nothing will make your allies run faster than a swarm of locusts chasing them. On top of that throw in regeneration so they don't get devoured by your locusts too soon, making the run for their lives more entertaining!

You return to game after 7 years and expect to be at the same place you left off competitive - wise? It should be obvious to anyone you'd get beaten black and blue. Nothing shameful about it, just realize that after such a huge break you need to re-learn things from ground up. The story of your games shows this clearly: Spellbreakers don't get eaten by condies - only poorly build and/or piloted ones do. There's Cleansing Ire, Mending or Defiant stance, there's shield (to block big attacks applying condies like necro plaguelands as you walk out of it) or warhorn (condi cleansing). Spellbreaker don't go mid unless there's really nothing else to do. Their job is to cap a sidenode and bunker there, making one or two enemy players effectively useless and capped node keep ticking points for your team. If you are mid then you should bring stab first and foremost. Great if it's for party (Banner of tactics) but at least some form of self-stab is mandatory (dolyak signet, balanced stance, stomp). Barriers are the last problem you should have as a warrior - there's a dedicated trait in tactics to deal with these. But if you're running a spellbreaker that is going mid to mass cc enemies (hammer) then logically you'd be building as tanky as you can. So don't expect to score kills left and right on a bunker build with control weapon. Your job is to disrupt them, cc them, keep them occupied on you. It's up to your team to melt their healthbars fast.

So let's sum it up: Botched one grandmaster (feed from corruption) - check. Killed off another one (Sand Savant) - check. Nefred Scourge baseline cause optional alacrity - check. Powered it up with outgoing healing boost (too bad barriers and resses don't use it) - check. A-net will keep a close eye on Scourge to make sure it's not overperforming after this patch.

Guild Wars 2 has 8 professions. And a Necromancer. This is a fact that the dev team needs to understand and stop fighting it. Since day one necro is the odd one out, and ironically it does game good. This profession should not be "homogenized" as that was never it's role. It's role is to police and counter the other 8 in their ways, while being countered by them. Necro does not do evades or iframes. But he can deny evades (spectral ring) and wait out Iframes because he's a class of attrition. Necro is not there to vomit out party boons left and right, he's there to corrupt them on enemies. Well now he can share lotsa boons as Harb, but that's an e-spec feature. Gutting boon corrupts on every turn is not an e-spec nerf, it's an overall necro nerf. Necro heals his own unique way - with barriers and ressing instead of big green numbers. And that's good. He's supposed to do things his way without a care for how the rest of the pack does things. But a-net in it's infinite wisdom (nearling 200 years of Riot's game design experience) decides necro needs an outgoing healing boost (which does not work for either barriers or resses) while dimishing scourge barriers baseline, cause alacrity. Which is an option to be selected and not a baseline feature.

Nvm, delete my post pls 🙂

It works much better if you simply prepare fleshwurm for escape, drop the plaguelands then wurm your way out. Especially since parasitic contagion does not heal through shroud:/