2/28 PvP Balance

[Archmage Talaftia.9853]

Just now, Magenall.5374 said:

finally some nerfs to annoying scrappers  and core necro , is super annoying to go against them ,
hope they nerf more stuff like ; rune of trapper, entangle, and invul abilities .

also is funny thief players angry about their ability that '' gives invis, cures condis+ heals'' is getting increased cooldown .

[Gorem.8104]

So, instead of making pvp fun and bringing other classes power levels up to the level of the strongest, instead its still just nerfs upon nerfs with no testing involved as usual I bet. Cause all this will do is once again cause another meta with something else dominant. Will there even be any Scrappers once EoD comes out and they are all mechanists? 

You guys really need a new balance team that can do better then only knowing how to nerf classes instead of idk, balancing all classes. 

[HeroineDark.6287]

And an expanded report button including a reason I'm reporting someone? 

[Fueki.4753]

Whether these changes to Necromancer will put an actual dent into their representation remains to be seen.

And you forgot to nerf finishing when you nerfed reviving. Will you ever do something about that? The least you ought to do is causing instant abilities to interrupt the channel of finishing.

Also, how about you remove the Stealth part of Trapper runes already? It's long overdue.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Peacekid.1463]

8 hours ago, Skie.8904 said:

Feels like they want to kill core necro because it's not an elite spec 😅
Also, with warrior barely being playable as it is now, why wait with buffing warrior options?

oh wow,  i didnt know warrior exist in this game lol, are they adding it now?

[Chaos.9270]

First you take our Mystic Coins away from the "largest single source" / "smallest source" (Fractal CMs) and now you are nerfing the Flamethrower Scrapper, which is the first build I actually start to like in PvP. Can yall also do something good again or just bad - bad - bad - bad - bad and more bad??? 

[grx.8714]

Let's be glad at least they are listening the common pvp, necro issue, guard sup as the only sup, flametrasher 1 button spammer, thief shadow arts problems (let's be honest, a good thief if doesn't wanna die in a match he can do it), finally they are taking steps in the right direction.

I know it hurts when your main gets nerfed, but deal with it, till now you abused some overtuned mechanic, now pay the price.

[nolasthitnotomorrow.8563]

With changes like this I just play spvp to get the legendary armor and then I am switching to wvw.  

Spvp was the only mode I ever played since release, but these changes just make the mode unplayable on any class. I switch from class to class and there is not one fun build to play really.

What's really playable in solo queue now? Ranger?

 

That's all I really have to say about this.  

Edited February 19, 2022 by nolasthitnotomorrow.8563

[W M D Violate.9728]

It makes me angry how funking bad you are balancing this game. Just a bunch of clueless funk heads sitting in in an office .

 

[W M D Violate.9728]

It makes me angry how funking bad you are balancing this game. Just a bunch of clueless funk heads sitting in in an office .

 

Ultimately you've changed nothing

[Vexona.6452]

11 hours ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Signet of Mercy: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 135 seconds in PvP only.

 HOW DO YOU EXPECT PEOPLE TO READ THIS? Look, I get that your devs have zero accessibility teams and you forget colour blind and deaf people exist in the gamer world, but you DO know that black text on a grey background is a terrible idea even for normal visioned people? Please consider using GREEN, YELLOW or BLUE for highlights instead of RED in game while you're at it. Furthermore, please consider allowing us to tell you the SIZE of important text and WHERE it shows up for metas, raids, fractals, etc.  Or, do what most modern games do and allow people to pick their "good" and "bad" circle indicators so we're not at the mercy of listening to people scream at us to get out of stuff. And allow for deaf people to promote their visual clarity for secret shite you have hidden within auditory mechanics that only hearing people can hear. Visual clarity is the one thing this game lacks above all else.

 

That said- thank you for balancing your pvp.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Vexona.6452

[Combatter.5123]

Am I the only one that thinks making so many "PvP only" changes could be a problem for the game as it may discourage PvE players from giving PvP a decent try?

[Phenom.8507]

After 10 years you guys dont know what balance is ....

[Marxx.5021]

Why nerfing scourge? It in no way overperforms.

[frareanselm.1925]

8 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Would have liked to see more love to weaker builds and fewer nerfs at this point, but I can't complain too much about what I'm seeing here. 

Tempest changes are very nice. 2 ammo feel the burn is huge. 

Necro changes are warranted. It's been OP going on 2 years now. 

Don't know enough about thief to comment on their changes, but I'm sure others will. 

Flamethrower scrapper nerfs are also fine. It's not uncommon for devs to balance around lower and higher ranks. 

One gripe I have is with the Flame blast nerf. It's... unecessary and unwarranted.

It doesn't hurt FT scrapper because the majority of the value comes form the Auto Attack.

It's primarily a condi skill, meaning what this hurts is the more Off-meta condi builds. Including Core Condi Engi, which relies on this skill to dish out anything resembling "spike" damage. Smoothing this out just makes it a tiny bit harder to score KO's on core condi before the enemy cleanses, and this was the last build that needed a nerf. 

Maybe this was done in preparation for Mechanist's release? Maybe Anet is worried a short cooldown burn with  alacrity would be too strong? That'd be my guess. 

The trapper DH has been overpowered forme more than 2 years too like the necro. And what they do instead? Nerf support guardian... this is hilarious

[ixon.2496]

4 hours ago, Magenall.5374 said:

also is funny thief players angry about their ability that '' gives invis, cures condis+ heals'' is getting increased cooldown .

 

Because the only thing its accomplished is make shadow arts MORE mandatory to make a skill worth using. So many other ways they could have dealt with it, reduced its stealth duration even. 

 

Its another in a long line of weird or just poorly thought out decisions. 

 

Thief has always been contentious in pvp, it was busted powerful at launch. But since then its never had any improvements to its useless traits. Thief is so shoehorned in build choices. They even changed thief traps to preparations rather than get rid of trapper ruins. Just so many weird decisions.

 

I'm not going to give anet hate for it, its just disheartening, i stopped maining thief a long time ago because of how limited it is in build crafting to actually be effective.

 

 

 

[Vexona.6452]

46 minutes ago, Combatter.5123 said:

Am I the only one that thinks making so many "PvP only" changes could be a problem for the game as it may discourage PvE players from giving PvP a decent try?

Generally, no. Developers have access to metrics we can't always see. They usually have a table of characters/builds/etc in question along with a win rate. Most devs go the route of "nerf damage" without looking at utility. PvP in games does need damage, obviously, but most devs forget that utility is the hidden gem that shines; a bit of speed, a bit of extra damage (via power or condi) or off-healing does more to turn the tide than straight damage numbers. But straight damage is easier to program than nerfing someoene's swiftness or boon duration. Even though that's what they should look at more: durations of utility and utility itself. Doing 5k dps vs a 3k dps person won't matter if your 3k dps has a support that's peeling/buffing/helping.

 

Edit: I'll give a real world example and we're going to use League of Legends because their metrics are available on a bunch of websites. You can see a table of win rates for every single champion. We'll look at ARAM which is entry level participation in League. Basically it's random champions that meet in the middle and duke it out.

In the latest patch, 13.4 , they noticed a support character, Sona, was at a 60% win rate. They auto-assume it's her damage causing her to make high numbers. She has a 40% damage and healing  nerf in aram and takes 40% more damage. But that's not why she's strong. She speeds up her allies, empowers their damage and has a short CD on an ultimate ability that stuns everyone in front of her. Instead of nerfing her damage they could give her a longer CD on her abilities and reduce the duration of her movement speed or damage bonus to bring her more in line with other champions.

Another champion, Ashe, has a high win-rate. She's supposed to be a ranged damage character but the reason she's got a high win-rate is because her passive on attacks will slow anyone in front of her and there's an item that increases the damage done on any slow the charactes adds. So she can shoot out 7 arrows, slow whoever is in front, and tag them with a vulnerability. Her damage doesn't matter. They could disable the item instead but.. they nerfed her damage.

Math only tells one part of the story but when people are on forums complaining "X is OP"!!! the devs look at numbers and if they don't see a really high win-rate they'll ignore you. It doesn't matter that your character of anger does something to turn the tide of battle; if enough people aren't using that character to boost a higher than 50% win-rate, they won't, or can't?, act on it.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Vexona.6452

[Keitaro Dragonheart.9047]

4 hours ago, Magenall.5374 said:

also is funny thief players angry about their ability that '' gives invis, cures condis+ heals'' is getting increased cooldown .

Because now there's literally no reason to pick the skill over other heals, unless you use Shadow Arts. They may as well have deleted the skill from the game. A 40s cooldown heal, untraited? If you're not running Shadow Arts, it's now trash. All they've accomplished with these Thief changes, is forcing thief even further into SA.

Anet once again proving that they either don't play their own game, or suffer from levels of ineptitude that cannot be measured by normal means. Maybe even both.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Keitaro Dragonheart.9047

[Myror.7521]

All those thiefs that crying here lmao. Sure they punish the wrong things for the class.(srsly sa need some nerfs not core things like weapon skills) Also its not like there arent other builds you could also play besides sa daredevil. I sa daredevil Was 100% safe build carry or actually is. I mean how where thief played without stealth and dodge spam? Right is thiefs damage traitlines like crit strikes need some buffs and yes sa need nerfs. Bring love to thiefs again and not those broken spamy stuff.

[Archer.4362]

I think you don't see what anet wants. nerfs professions to make you consider playing the lousy new specs that will appear to have more damage.

[Xaint.7461]

playing reaper for pvp in years i agree that generally necromancer has been a very strong class on that scene, tho those blood magic sustain nerfs seems like ??? to me ontop of the cleanse, i felt it had a great balance already on those points, the flesh wurm cooldown aswell, people barely would run flesh wurm or blood magic now at days due to the fact that spite / fear reaper / fear necro in general is way more value even it lack the sustain from BM, it is still way more worth in most scenarios to run Spite anyways which again makes no sense on why u would nerf blood magic.

never have i seen bm necros doing top stats in support / healing or similarities, which makes sense since its a very passive self sustainable amount and nothing else rly, this just forces the BM out of pvp rather than making it more viable, why would anyone play nerfed BM that already had low sustain over spite.

The Lich nerfs was about time tho.

[Mikali.9651]

8 hours ago, moonbeans.6014 said:

Hey ANet, could you just do us thief mains a favor and delete the class from the game? It's obvious too overpowered and unbalanced. Certainly the pinnacle of PvE and every other game mode for that matter.

 

Purge us for the sin of existing and maybe we could focus our time and energy into playing a totally not broken class like Necromancer, Guardian, or Mesmer. 

I actually agree, they should nerf Thiefs far more

[grx.8714]

3 hours ago, nolasthitnotomorrow.8563 said:

With changes like this I just play spvp to get the legendary armor and then I am switching to wvw.  

Spvp was the only mode I ever played since release, but these changes just make the mode unplayable on any class. I switch from class to class and there is not one fun build to play really.

What's really playable in solo queue now? Ranger?

 

That's all I really have to say about this.  

PvP legendary armor i think it is still the easier to get, on top of that, you make really nice gold to help with mats and all.

It is my go to as well to have main equipped with full legy armor.

 

I don't care of the meta much, but patches like this are needed and hopefully they do them more consistently.

[Kanto.2485]

The only reason stealth is so annoying to a lot of players is that some classes have no viable reveals. Improving access to reveals would've been a much better way to deal with the issue than increasing CDs and nerfing durations.

 

Also support guard is far from overperforming, it's the other supports that have been butchered patch after patch, Tempests still have to slot every cantrip not to get melted by target focus and warrior is a sitting duck once its cds run out. It's because supports got nerfed so hard that we get to deal with immob druids, condi trappers, necros dispensing more condis than you can cleanse and such.

[phixion.9428]

On 2/19/2022 at 9:13 AM, grx.8714 said:

I know it hurts when your main gets nerfed, but deal with it, till now you abused some overtuned mechanic, now pay the price.

Thief mains don't complain about SA nerfs, they complain because SA didn't get nerfed and instead they nerf around the real issues for no good reasons.  What is so hard to understand about that?

Edited January 16, 2023 by phixion.9428