March 29 Game Update Preview

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Hi all, I have a preview of some of the changes from our next game update, which will be March 29. This preview isn't comprehensive–the complete skills and balance notes will be in next Tuesday’s update notes– but it's a look at some of the changes we know you'll all be especially interested in. Read on!

03/29/2022—March 29 Release Notes

Exposed

The Exposed effect is applied when a creature's defiance bar is broken and causes the creature to take additional power and condition damage for a short duration. Previously, there was no consistent duration for Exposed. We are standardizing its applied duration to 10 seconds, which is longer than the previous durations.

With increased duration, we are also adjusting the effect to compensate. Previously, Exposed caused the target to take 30% increased damage from strikes and 100% from conditions. This short window of Exposed overrewarded certain builds with high burst capability in content such as fractals. Moving forward, Exposed causes 10% increased damage from strikes and 20% from conditions over its longer duration of 10 seconds. This allows more time to take advantage of this window of opportunity while more consistently rewarding a variety of builds. We will be keeping a very close eye on the effects of this change.

This change does not affect the Exposed effect on Soo-Won in the final encounter of the Dragon's End map meta-event.

Elementalist

Catalyst

In our previous update, we addressed the fact that the catalyst's pure DPS builds were simultaneously providing 100% quickness uptime for a party while doing among the highest damage output of any specialization in the game. As other boon support builds that provide excellent uptime on critical boons (such as quickness or alacrity) have less damage output than builds focused purely on damage, the catalyst was at risk of supplanting all other quickness providers in group content.

We addressed this by making trait and damage output changes quickly to prevent it from distorting the cooperative play meta-game. However, it left the catalyst's damage builds not meeting our goals for the profession; it's difficult to play well and is only dealing competitive damage on large targets or targets where you can stand inside their hitbox. That's not great! We want every profession and specialization to feel awesome, regardless of the size of your enemy.

We've prepared a list of changes to specific skills and effects to help reach these goals for PvE play. None of the following changes apply to PvP or WvW.

 

Key Issues

Issue 1

Hammer 3's orbiting elemental missiles each give a beneficial passive effect while active, but the skill usage pattern required to upkeep each one is very unforgiving. To address this, the duration of the elemental missiles and their effects in PvE are being increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds. As before, activating a new one refreshes the timer on all of them. It's not only going to be easier to keep them up all of the time—we're also significantly increasing the passive benefits for having each active so that keeping them all up is a rewarding goal!

Rocky Loop and Icy Coil now reduce incoming damage by three times more than they did previously (from 5% up to 15%), while Crescent Wind now gives an increased critical hit chance (formerly 7%, now 10%), and Flame Wheel now increases all of the damage you do (formerly by 5%, now 10%).

Issue 2

Too much of the catalyst's damage is reliant on hitting as often as possible with Hammer 3's orbiting elemental missiles. This can make it hard to play consistently against small targets or in situations where you can't walk inside of your target's hitbox. To address this, the damage from Hammer 3's missiles is being dramatically reduced so that the catalyst is not reliant on keeping them inside an enemy's hitbox for effective play. Instead, we've packed all of that removed damage and a lot more into the other things that you're doing while they're up.

The hammer is a weighty weapon, and it should feel like it when you're crushing your enemies. All of your Hammer 1 and Hammer 2 skills will now deal more damage per hit. Grand Finale deals a lot more damage per missile now, too, so once you have all your missiles from Hammer 3 out, you're ready to launch an attack worthy of that preparation!

Issue 3

The Shattering Ice utility skill is a powerful source of damage, but fully taking advantage of it requires that you hit a target every 0.25 seconds—otherwise you miss out on damage you could have gotten from this skill. To address this, we're increasing the interval on this effect from 0.25 seconds to 1 second, with significantly increased damage. This makes it easier to reliably get the full damage possible out of this utility skill.

Catalyst PvE Updates

Hammer

• Singeing Strike: Damage coefficient increased from 0.67 to 0.9 in PvE only.
• Surging Flames: Damage coefficient increased from 1.5 to 1.8 in PvE only.
• Stream Strike: Damage coefficient increased from 0.7 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Water Rush: Damage coefficient increased from 0.9 to 1.1 in PvE only.
• Chilling Crack: Damage coefficient increased from 1.2 to 1.4 in PvE only.
• Rain of Blows: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.42 to 0.45 (4 strikes).
• Wind Slam: Damage coefficient increased from 0.72 to 0.9 in PvE only.
• Hurricane of Pain: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.513 to 0.6 (9 strikes).
• Stonestrike: Damage coefficient increased from 0.93 to 1.1 in PvE only.
• Whirling Stones: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.51 to 0.65 (5 strikes).
• Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, Rocky Loop: Damage coefficient reduced from 0.1 to 0.001 in PvE only.
• Rocky Loop: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Damage reduction while active increased from 5% to 15% in PvE only.
• Crescent Wind: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Critical Chance bonus while active increased from 7% to 10% in PvE only.
• Icy Coil: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Condition damage reduction while active increased from 5% to 15% in PvE only.
• Flame Wheel: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Damage and condition damage bonus while active increased from 5% to 10%.
• Grand Finale: Damage coefficient per missile increased from 0.7 to 1.0 in PvE only.

Utilities

• Shattering Ice: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.1 to 0.6 in PvE only. Chill duration increased from 0.5 seconds to 1 second in PvE only. Interval between strikes on the same target increased from 0.25 seconds to 1 second in PvE only.

Traits

• Empowered Empowerment: PvP split removed; effectiveness increase in PvE changed from 50% back to 100%, matching PvP and WvW.

 

[Genesis.8572]

Is there more or is it just a break bar and Catalyst update? 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Is that all?

Edit: I wonder why we only get a preview of PvE changes of a WvW/PvP balance patch.

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Raseus.9431]

No it seems to be only the "interesting" notes

Edit: Maybe there is a spoiler in that post? o.O

Edited March 25, 2022 by Raseus.9431

[Parasite.5389]

2 minutes ago, Genesis.8572 said:

Is there more or is it just a break bar and Catalyst update? 

the very first line literally says " This preview isn't comprehensive–the complete skills and balance notes will be in next Tuesday’s update notes"

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

There is more. As I mentioned above, this is not comprehensive--it's just a preview.  The full update notes will be posted on Tuesday when the game build goes live, as usual. 

[Infusion.7149]

Wow 15 seconds for hammer orbs is a great change, I was expecting 8 seconds. 😀

This along with higher auto-attack DPS should make it more playable for the average or casual players.

It's good to see what many people were saying about hammer orbs being a buff rather than a damage source has been taken into consideration.

[Raidillon.8254]

power comps in fractals once again taking a large hit, are you guys only capable of playing condi or smth?

[Linken.6345]

4 minutes ago, Raidillon.8254 said:

power comps in fractals once again taking a large hit, are you guys only capable of playing condi or smth?

Well condi took quite a hit aswell.

[Valisha.8650]

Poor bladesworn with it's burstyness, lol.

[Raidillon.8254]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

Well condi took quite a hit aswell.

condi with consistent dps throughout the 10s compared to a much more inconsistent amount of dps for power, and power is compensated in no way whatsoever

[Kain Francois.4328]

Very good Catalyst changes. Thank you very much for the update!

Once again, thank you very much for the hard work and update!

Edited March 25, 2022 by Kain Francois.4328

[TheBossVeigar.1306]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

We want every profession and specialization to feel awesome, regardless of the size of your enemy.

With this statement, is there any hope DPS Tempest can get some tweaks in this regard? Power Tempest feels really awful on smaller hitbox enemies, due to the way Lightning Orb functions.

 

Love to see some Catalyst changes though, this is definitely a good start! If I may make a suggestion though, please give Grand Finale a 1 second internal CD to prevent double tapping it. Double tapping it and losing it early is rather frustrating.

Last suggestion I'll make is please give us energy upon starting an encounter, like how Druid Celestial Avatar functions now. For Quickness Catalyst especially, it feels bad entering combat and not being able to drop the quickness right away, leaving your subgroup without quickness for 2-3 seconds.

[Kain Francois.4328]

Regarding Catalyst's new unleashed DPS capabilities, how should it compare with Weaver?

Is the Weaver supposed to have more defense, while Catalyst is supposed to have more damage?

[Aetheldrake.6395]

*Happy catalyst noises* maybe it won't be a dead profession anymore! I mean in most gameplay it was pretty difficult to even use and I was getting kicked from strikes just for wanting to play catalyst even though I can still do better than the average player. (lol kicking me but then they die in 2 minutes anyway cuz they can't do mechanics) 

 

I'm EXTREMELY excited to play catalyst next week. Condition still sucks but at least I can play it again. Over the past decade of playing Gw2 ele has always been my favorite to play. I've played it more than anything else. This is the most excited I have ever been to play elementalist in that whole decade of Gw2. 

Edited March 25, 2022 by Aetheldrake.6395
Good stuff

[LadyKitty.6120]

3 minutes ago, Raidillon.8254 said:

condi with consistent dps throughout the 10s compared to a much more inconsistent amount of dps for power, and power is compensated in no way whatsoever

Inconsistency depends on build and how you manage the cooldowns. If breakbar is about to be broken, prepare to burst. It's not like you miss super-much damage by bursting outside 10% exposed, though.

Also, Power takes 7.7% DPS loss during exposed while condi takes 30% DPS loss during exposed with this change so relatively power is the relative winner here.

[Rhokaz.1975]

Thanks for taking our input serious and even more thanks for being transparnt! More <3

[Seraphis Zurvan.6839]

While this addresses many problems, it doesn't address the major one for Catalyst: how it applies boons due to the Jade Sphere nerf.

They rely on wells, which is fine except for two things.

1. They are still fairly small, on par with Chronomancer. However Chronomancer has other ways to generate boons, which makes it less awful. If the wells radius could be larger I think it would feel better. Because 15 seconds after one well is a fairly large chunk of time of being unable to do literally nothing.

2. No energy on start? Like Druid, it would be nice to begin encounters with full energy so boon application can be provided immediately.

 

Overall good changes IMO, but the two above gripes I think would really cement it.

 

Also.....other quickness applicators were in no danger. The amount of utility Firebrand and Harbinger provides.....Catalyst simply can't outdo it.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Seraphis Zurvan.6839
Paragraph spacing to look less awkward.

[Evenaardez.7913]

Hey Ruby could we please get a preview for untamed changes, that’s the other class that needs really big changes to a lot of things and it still has a lot of bugs like the pet cc does not affect your grandmaster trait. Or could we please at least get some information on what you plan to address even if it’s not in this patch. I would truly appreciate it as untamed being such a let down has been a big sore spot for EoD for me and so many other players!

[AtriustheGod.6785]

At the moment, exposed lasts as long as the stun lasts. With this change, is the stun duration from breaking defiance going to increase as well, or will exposed outlast the stun?

Edited March 25, 2022 by AtriustheGod.6785

[Kuma.1503]

I'm surprised. These are really good changes! 

I was hoping the orb duration would be increased. Any kind of stun, daze, boss mechanic, ect. would cause you to drop them. I expected a 2 sec increase in duration tops, but 15 seconds will make these much less frustrating to upkeep. 

The damage changes are also welcome. This spec struggles to justify a slot over other quickness sources (Firebrand), and it's much harder to pull off, so dealing more damage is an appropriate trade-off. 

Love seeing these improvements to underperforming aspects of the game. More of this please! 🙂

Edited March 25, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Doragon.3514]

Someone enlighten me please, why is the difference in break bar exposure for condi always bigger than power?

If it's because condi takes time to be applied then most break bars happen while the boss has tons of condi.

I it seems Fractals will still be a condi playground.

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

2 minutes ago, AtriustheGod.6785 said:

At the moment, exposed lasts as long as the stun lasts. With this change, is the stun duration from breaking defiance going to increase as well, or will exposed outlast the stun?

I’m going to guess that exposed will outlast the stun. There’s no way Anet would let fractals bosses for example be stunned for 10 seconds, that would sound ridiculous.

[shejesa.3712]

Quote

Moving forward, Exposed causes 10% increased damage from strikes and 20% from conditions over its longer duration of 10 seconds

So you gave us 5s more of doing 20% higher damage than without breakbars. Are you aware that you could phase bosses during regular fight + breakbar but now you probably won't? How is that rewarding?
 

Quote

This change does not affect the Exposed effect on Soo-Won in the final encounter of the Dragon's End map meta-event.

at least call it 'exposed for pugs who can't push buttons
Honestly, pick a side, you're nerfing everything or nothing, nerfing just the content where people do proper dps is not the way to fix the huge rift between people who are able to follow a rotation and those who run in masterwork gear in open world. You could, idk, make people work for their skill so there's no other way for them but improve, but I guess you prefer to nerf to the ground everything you think might make people feel bad about themselves. 

 

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

As other boon support builds that provide excellent uptime on critical boons (such as quickness or alacrity) have less damage output than builds focused purely on damage

Didn't stop you from having cqfb doing 30k on golem and providing perma quickness + aegis and stability on demand

Edited March 25, 2022 by shejesa.3712

[Xunlai.3460]

Why don't we just change the exposed buff per piece of content instead?

Not referencing Soo-Won, I am meaning fractals vs strikes/raids.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Xunlai.3460