March 29 Game Update Preview

[Leaa.2943]

You are still not adressing the issue of playing Catalyst in WvW or really any Ele spec because of the low hp. ANY other class can if they want too go full Berserker and can do high risk, great reward game play. Ele still after 10 yeas have a bit over 11 k hp. Anything in WvW can hit with 11 k. So anything can one shot a ele with berserker gear. 

 

And then people gonna say yeah but you can use Marauder. yes we can, but why should Ele be the only class in WvW that has to use Marauder or parts of that. Why do Ele have to pick runes or sigils, infusions or build choices that will add some extra defense when no other class have to do that. They still can but they do not have too. They can pick something in the build or add some other vitality additions but ele HAVE to have this unless they don't want to get one shotted. 

 

And yes i can go in and play berserker ele but my high risk is WAY higher then any other class. And if what was said at the very beginning still was true that ele is a glasscannon and there for low hp then i would be ok with it, but Ele in WvW have been ripped apart and are trapped in some weird cooldown situations, and Tempest that actually was usefull with their aura share have also been nerfed. Are we bad? no we are ok, but as soon as we touch up on being great we get hit hard. And buffs are weird buffs and again NO extra base hp. It is time to give Ele a higher base HP to at least be on pair with other classes who can do way higher dps and still have higher hp. Why can they be glasscannons without trade offs? 

[Sploogesque.2801]

19 minutes ago, Ertrak.9506 said:

good changes. I thought march 29th patch was gonna be a more wvw focused balance pass though

Ruby said more to come.

[Cytoplasma.8216]

Let us all pray for similar changes for the new ranger.
I hope that soon I will be able to go my new favorite class on content pve

[necromaniac.7629]

1 hour ago, LadyKitty.6120 said:

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.

most condi builds are 100% still the winner here

[Syryn.7591]

1 hour ago, shejesa.3712 said:

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

well you see "distorting the cooperative play meta-game" just means you had another choice than blue class for once and that wont do

[Janitsu.6284]

ty for meaningful changes to weed out the toxic hardcore elitist fractal community 💯💯😎🥳🥱😛🤗🤩🥰😘😍

[DEDA.6394]

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

Can't wait to see the update on Revenant 😀

 

[Lex.3986]

Harbinger: (chukles) I'm in danger

[anbujackson.9564]

Whats with the complaining about the exposed change? That was LONG overdue.

Double the damage is just straight up insane. So bosses wont die in 5 seconds now.. oh gods no. Now people will fail content! Because of what exactly? Doing mechanics for once?

10% damage mod for 10 seconds for breaking a blue bar is still free damage. It shouldnt exist in the first place.

[Bast.7253]

Addressing hammer 3 functionality is a great start but I hope between that and minor tweaks to numbers across the board isn't it. I don't know what kind of metrics they use for these things but I feel like I've seen VERY few catalysts this expansion.

[Jokuc.3478]

The exposed change might be good depending on what this exactly means.

When you say 10 seconds, does this mean the STUN duration will be 10 seconds as well? I sure hope not. That is way too much, fractal bosses will just afk until they die. Keep the stun duration the same and have the debuff stay on for its full duration.

10% is really tiny. Why is condi getting 20% when it's much easier to fit the condi dmg into the exposed window since you can apply the condis beforehand?? Should be more like 20% condi 30% power imo.

I do think bosses should take slightly longer to kill because many of them insta melt, but nerfing exposed too much will just make cc kind of meaningless. Lower dps of all classes or raise HP of all bosses instead so that CC still matters.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Jokuc.3478

[shejesa.3712]

58 minutes ago, Xunlai.3460 said:

How does this logic make sense when we have dedicated 5 man content...?

It's pretty easy. 
If you have a 10 man buff, 5 people get that buff in fractals, but also 10 people get it in raids. 
You don't lose anything with 10 man buffs but you do with 5 man. In theory its nice cuz a greater build diversity is nice. But in practice, if renegade is the best at providing alacrity with, let's say mechanist right after him (idc it's the other way around atm) you'll see renegades most of the time but they will take two slots, which potentially lowers build diversity for raids

[shejesa.3712]

29 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Whats with the complaining about the exposed change? That was LONG overdue.

Double the damage is just straight up insane. So bosses wont die in 5 seconds now.. oh gods no. Now people will fail content! Because of what exactly? Doing mechanics for once?

10% damage mod for 10 seconds for breaking a blue bar is still free damage. It shouldnt exist in the first place.

this will cause people to play every single boss the same way they play gorseval in bad teams. Especially stuff like Arkk who is not attacking when he has breakbars :3

[pallas.8150]

I think its time for all professions to start with same HP pool.

[Rising Blade.9206]

so wait for the broken spec to get a revamp(hopefully) in the profession update and in the meantime enjoy a poorly designed PvE spec and its weapon with bloated damage values that's still clunky to use and doesn't welcome other ele playstyles? ok. please nerf it a week after if it overperforms again.

[yourexcellency.1458]

1 hour ago, Leaa.2943 said:

You are still not adressing the issue of playing Catalyst in WvW or really any Ele spec because of the low hp. ANY other class can if they want too go full Berserker and can do high risk, great reward game play. Ele still after 10 yeas have a bit over 11 k hp. Anything in WvW can hit with 11 k. So anything can one shot a ele with berserker gear. 

 

And then people gonna say yeah but you can use Marauder. yes we can, but why should Ele be the only class in WvW that has to use Marauder or parts of that. Why do Ele have to pick runes or sigils, infusions or build choices that will add some extra defense when no other class have to do that. They still can but they do not have too. They can pick something in the build or add some other vitality additions but ele HAVE to have this unless they don't want to get one shotted. 

 

And yes i can go in and play berserker ele but my high risk is WAY higher then any other class. And if what was said at the very beginning still was true that ele is a glasscannon and there for low hp then i would be ok with it, but Ele in WvW have been ripped apart and are trapped in some weird cooldown situations, and Tempest that actually was usefull with their aura share have also been nerfed. Are we bad? no we are ok, but as soon as we touch up on being great we get hit hard. And buffs are weird buffs and again NO extra base hp. It is time to give Ele a higher base HP to at least be on pair with other classes who can do way higher dps and still have higher hp. Why can they be glasscannons without trade offs? 

Yeah I play ele main and a lot in wvw. It's not in a good place that said playing ele as a roamer isn't impossible but you definitely can't play full berzeker. Most classes don't run full berzeker so I wouldn't really say this is an issue. Cele gear works pretty well on tempest and I've run a few different variations with weaver you just need to be quick on the dodges and teleports.

For group comp ele kinda lost its place with the nerf to aura tempest. 

Catalyst was not very appealing to me in the 1st place and I don't see it changing the meta so investing time into it seems counter productive.  As such I've shelved the ele and started playing other classes with the hope I find something else I enjoy.

I just honestly can't deal with the constant carousel of nerfs to ele anymore with the amount of work and practice it takes to get rotations down it just doesn't feel worth it when I can play almost any other class with half the effort and twice the results.

[Eaglebach.7593]

Would love to see the F5 skill no longer require ground targeting and instead create a moving field around the catalyst 

[Kilty.4906]

I have a request: I would love to see a 1/2 second cooldown between the orbs and the Grand Finale skill because it often chains them together, maybe because of my high ping, leading to situations where I'm building up the orbs, then this happens, and I lose all my buffs.

[HotDelirium.7984]

2 hours ago, Velho.8594 said:

The orbs are going to feel so off after this, if they are only passive buffs why aren't they more closely attached to the character? With how far they spin it feels like they should be doing decent damage in the aoe.

I believe they said damage drastically reduced not removed. Since they will last 15 seconds maybe it equals the same.

[KeoLegend.5132]

2 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

You are still not adressing the issue of playing Catalyst in WvW or really any Ele spec because of the low hp. ANY other class can if they want too go full Berserker and can do high risk, great reward game play. Ele still after 10 yeas have a bit over 11 k hp. Anything in WvW can hit with 11 k. So anything can one shot a ele with berserker gear. 

Uhhh, Guardians has 11k HP too. But Ele has much better sustain, specialy weaver.

 

2 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

And then people gonna say yeah but you can use Marauder. yes we can, but why should Ele be the only class in WvW that has to use Marauder or parts of that. Why do Ele have to pick runes or sigils, infusions or build choices that will add some extra defense when no other class have to do that. They still can but they do not have too. They can pick something in the build or add some other vitality additions but ele HAVE to have this unless they don't want to get one shotted. 

Uhhhh. Us Dragonhunters have to use it too.

 

2 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

And yes i can go in and play berserker ele but my high risk is WAY higher then any other class.

As all things should be

 

2 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

And if what was said at the very beginning still was true that ele is a glasscannon and there for low hp then i would be ok with it, but Ele in WvW have been ripped apart and are trapped in some weird cooldown situations, and Tempest that actually was usefull with their aura share have also been nerfed. Are we bad? no we are ok, but as soon as we touch up on being great we get hit hard. And buffs are weird buffs and again NO extra base hp. It is time to give Ele a higher base HP to at least be on pair with other classes who can do way higher dps and still have higher hp. Why can they be glasscannons without trade offs? 

Ele is OK

[Khaldris.9026]

The issue with Catalyst is very much mechanical, not numerical (I also daresay the entirety of Elementalist's core trait lines need reworked). Can we please address the fact that Augments are simply worse Stances? The new Jade Sphere cooldown is just... kind of awful and makes it feel kind of useless to a non-boon-focused build (imo).

[Khaldris.9026]

4 minutes ago, KeoLegend.5132 said:

Uhhh, Guardians has 11k HP too. But Ele has much better sustain, specialy weaver.

 

Uhhhh. Us Dragonhunters have to use it too.

 

As all things should be

 

Ele is OK

 

When even the devs make Elementalist downed state "jokes", it's pretty clear that the class isn't OK.

[Every day pon.5386]

5 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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.

Moving away from Breakbars further blands GW2 into MMO DPS rotations; Breakbars & Exposed builds & gameplay made GW2 DPS unique

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

4 minutes ago, Every day pon.5386 said:

Moving away from Breakbars further blands GW2 into MMO DPS rotations; Breakbars & Exposed builds & gameplay made GW2 DPS unique

WDYM 'makes GW2 more bland'? They're making things more consistent. The only change is to the exposed timer going to 10s universally and the damage is being decreased in a way that does not make condi slanted heavily in favor of fights where breakbars are more common (but phases are not).

[Dragon Dude.7832]

5 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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.

 

While I'll never be able to have an update that reflects something of the sort to what I wish Catalyst could be, this I do like. Its better than what I expected.

 

I think however the traits themselves could use less basic versatile traits and more traits that are thought outside the box. One of the things I hated about the traits is that there were few related to the Coils, "Rocky Loop, Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind", supposedly one of Catalyst's "important" abilities. I think more innovative traits would be nice, and like I said a trait that has to do with these abilities would be interesting.

 

I really think Catalyst could benefit from the original idea "A steady presence in combat" + Wielding Hammer which implies slow plus powerful. At least on the class fantasy outlook of it. Anyways, excellent update, especially in comparison to what I usually expect from Anet.

 

  

3 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

You are still not adressing the issue of playing Catalyst in WvW or really any Ele spec because of the low hp. ANY other class can if they want too go full Berserker and can do high risk, great reward game play. Ele still after 10 yeas have a bit over 11 k hp. Anything in WvW can hit with 11 k. So anything can one shot a ele with berserker gear. 

 

And then people gonna say yeah but you can use Marauder. yes we can, but why should Ele be the only class in WvW that has to use Marauder or parts of that. Why do Ele have to pick runes or sigils, infusions or build choices that will add some extra defense when no other class have to do that. They still can but they do not have too. They can pick something in the build or add some other vitality additions but ele HAVE to have this unless they don't want to get one shotted. 

 

And yes i can go in and play berserker ele but my high risk is WAY higher then any other class. And if what was said at the very beginning still was true that ele is a glasscannon and there for low hp then i would be ok with it, but Ele in WvW have been ripped apart and are trapped in some weird cooldown situations, and Tempest that actually was usefull with their aura share have also been nerfed. Are we bad? no we are ok, but as soon as we touch up on being great we get hit hard. And buffs are weird buffs and again NO extra base hp. It is time to give Ele a higher base HP to at least be on pair with other classes who can do way higher dps and still have higher hp. Why can they be glasscannons without trade offs? 

I think this is what realy bugs me about Elementalist in general, they used to have it so that Elementalist can basically do every role depending on the build, tank, support, power, condi, power-condi, roamer, etc. And the reason it worked back then was cause no Especs, it was versatile, and while all doing that, it still could do a bit of other things but most builds always had a focus.

 

The main problem with Elementalist Especs is rather than making the Espec focused on one or fewer roles, they want it to be still the "Generalist Class", the only reason Elementalist was that in the first place was through  combination of its core Specs, not because one Espec did it all. And this turns out to be ither too op or too weak, as the reason they removed the Jack of all trade stats Celestial.

 

Willbender has a similar issue, rather than having an Espec, which is a subclass/devotion, make the Espec focused on one to two roles, capable of doing something the Class can't normally do. Specter is a better example because of its insane support, and its also a good example of Dual Classing (not Wannabe Classing), Specter feels like the Creepy Cousin of Reaper if you go zerker, or the Creepy Cousin of Scourge if you go support. 

 

What I think Catalyst should be is exactly as described in the trailer, A STEADY PRESENCE IN COMBAT, meaning a bit slower, but when using their hits, they're harder to be CC'd or something to make up for the longer activation time, at least on some hammer skills. I think a good base health upgrade would help this as well, to the 15,992 bracket or an in between bracket like 13,922.

 

Generally I think there should be a traitline that supports this, with the Coils helping it in some way on one trait, another trait replacing Evade with a 1 sec block (uses a full endurance bar like Vindicator), blocking all incoming attacks for 1s(or maybe not a full second, its an example), plus a special effect based on Attunement, as well as either a stronger downed state or perhaps use that thing Elementalist was given called a Jade Sphere to help make him tougher while being in its radius or help ress nearby allies.

 

Hell an elite skill based on the Jade Sphere capable of reviving or making downed allies tougher or something would be better than Elemental Celerity. Just like I think it'd be interesting to see a revise on Hammer Skills on Guardian, I don't want them to make it zergier, I want them to make it more useful and allow powerful tank-ish skills. Meaning like stability grants, harder to cc, things like that.

Imagine this, you're in War, in the world of Guild Wars 2 or one like it, You're a guardian, you wield a Hammer, you're the Leader or Commander or whatever of this war you're about to fight? What does this Hammer do, you do basically what Guardian usually does but this emphasizes the whole "I'm gonna be in the front and tank it". It doesn't have to be like full blown tank, just like we don't have REAL healers in GW2, it's support.

 

Note: Catalyst's Jade Sphere following us would be far more beneficial than ground target as well. Even if its caused by a temp ability buff.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Dragon Dude.7832
added a note