Competitive "Balance"

[SummonMinion.7306]

God I love how tone deaf and lackluster our recent "competitive balance" pass was. Instead of doing anything meaningful like making WH 5 useful or addressing the identity of MH Dagger, we get a nerf to Rise of all things. LMAO these slow rats with paper thin health bars are making such massive impacts on large scale fights. Ooh I'm soooo concerned when Augury of Death hits me with the grievously OP 100 dmg poison ticks.

 

At this point I preferred when ANet tried to pass off their "Profession Balance" updates, which literally consisted of nothing but bug fixes, as them caring about competitive game modes. Having your PVE devs handle "Competitive Balance" with this much aggressive incompetence was somewhat expected, but not to this degree. Thank you Anet for never failing to meet and sometimes exceed our expectations.  

[misterman.1530]

Yeah, they really can't tell the forest for the trees, can they. The nerf to Rise was...odd. Was it really OP? Gave my Core Necro something to munch on with Life Transfer. Really didn't see any issues. Were whole zergs dying to little minions?

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 minute ago, misterman.1530 said:

Yeah, they really can't tell the forest for the trees, can they. The nerf to Rise was...odd. Was it really OP? Gave my Core Necro something to munch on with Life Transfer. Really didn't see any issues. Were whole zergs dying to little minions?

Rise was a great way to get damage reduction on Reaper. That along with protection, infusing terror, shroud, and damage reduction food led to pretty good damage reduction. Reducing the number of minions just reduced the opportunity for that reduction to kick in. Death Nova from 5+ minions dying all at once is funny, but should not be killing anyone...

[Nimon.7840]

5 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Rise was a great way to get damage reduction on Reaper. That along with protection, infusing terror, shroud, and damage reduction food led to pretty good damage reduction. Reducing the number of minions just reduced the opportunity for that reduction to kick in. Death Nova from 5+ minions dying all at once is funny, but should not be killing anyone...

It wasn't just damage reduction for you. It's damage reduction for your whole Zerg/guildgroup. The more bodies take damage, the less damage takes a single player because of target caps

[Dadnir.5038]

8 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Death Nova from 5+ minions dying all at once is funny, but should not be killing anyone...

Well... It should... After all it's punishing the downed guy for the thoughtlessness of it's team that carpet bomb the area (you know, the very strategy that the devs try to tone down in this patch).

Also, the minion's damage reduction only happen when they are within melee range of a foe and actively attacking it which doesn't happen often in ZvZ (or at least it's how it worked when they released the skill).

[KrHome.1920]

8 hours ago, misterman.1530 said:

Yeah, they really can't tell the forest for the trees, can they. The nerf to Rise was...odd. Was it really OP? Gave my Core Necro something to munch on with Life Transfer. Really didn't see any issues. Were whole zergs dying to little minions?

Rise! boosted your core necro? 🤔

Anyway, like ANet mentioned in the patch notes the interaction with the death magic grandmaster was problematic. These 5 exploding minions could deal some ridiculous damage (completely passively/effortlessly , that's the problem!) when you stacked a few reapers.

To be honest a better solution would have been to exclude Rise! from the interaction with the trait but keep its mechanic as it is not even a minion skill but a shout.

Edited May 12, 2022 by KrHome.1920

[The Boz.2038]

7 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Rise! boosted your core necro?

I thunk his logic was "My core necro gets a lot of sustain while fighting enemy reapers that use rise."

[Hotride.2187]

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/113864-skill-lag

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/113503-wvw-zerg-busting-is-dead

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/112701-rise-reaper-nerf-when

To mention a few recent threads where nerfing rise is/was requested. Even 3 years ago I remember comms complaining about necro minion lag, cause of mass use.

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[misterman.1530]

54 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Rise! boosted your core necro? 🤔

 

Yes. With Life Transfer - a minion master with a crap ton of pets out provide my core necro with a lot of Life Force via Life Transfer. Since Life Force on Core Necros (like Reapers) acts as a secondary life pool, the sustain becomes crazy. Then I simply whittle down the Reaper - albeit very slowly. However, couple that with with 20+ stacks of Carapace and Deadly Strength (which gives Power per stack of carapace) and the longer the fight goes on, the stronger my necro becomes.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

It wasn't just damage reduction for you. It's damage reduction for your whole Zerg/guildgroup. The more bodies take damage, the less damage takes a single player because of target caps

True. But that is true of any minion.  Might as well run around with Blood Fiend and Bone Fiend out. if you want to cheese target caps from range.

 

 

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Well... It should... After all it's punishing the downed guy for the thoughtlessness of it's team that carpet bomb the area (you know, the very strategy that the devs try to tone down in this patch).

Also, the minion's damage reduction only happen when they are within melee range of a foe and actively attacking it which doesn't happen often in ZvZ (or at least it's how it worked when they released the skill).

Well, it didn't post Feb2020 right? Now if you had a full Rise and Summon Madness set up, then that is a bad day for someone.

[ZDragon.3046]

 

12 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Rise was a great way to get damage reduction on Reaper. That along with protection, infusing terror, shroud, and damage reduction food led to pretty good damage reduction. Reducing the number of minions just reduced the opportunity for that reduction to kick in. Death Nova from 5+ minions dying all at once is funny, but should not be killing anyone...

The issue i have with this statement implies that the reaper not only takes defensive utility but also takes defensive traits meaning it takes a heavy cut to dps.

The nature of how so many players play wvw these days (with defensive stats) aka cele or trailblazer, etc etc i really have to question  IF IT WAS OP AT ALL or if it the problem really is that players cannot kill the necromancer because they themselves refuse to take enough damage to do so and just get out sustained which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing if someone specifically invest more than you.... that should be expected. Further more if players re dying to death nova it it would likely mean the reaper is condition because the strike damage from death nova is almost non existent which further cuts its sustain and immediate damage down considerably. 

The more people talk about the rise change the more it sounds like people just wanted it nerfed because they couldn't kill something that was more invested in defense than they were or that they were not invested enough in offense to do so and just didnt want to deal with it. 

I do know for a fact that taking death magic in any build is an immediate considerable sustain increase but also a big dps loss for any necromancer build as there are almost no significant dps increasing traits in that line that combo well with any of the elite specs. Which is how most defensive traitlines should be... that said i really cant understand this the more i hear people talk about it from an outside perspective other than nerco.

Like if people think deathmagic + rise is a super super strong op combo i hate to see what happens if almost any other defensive traitline on any other profession becomes popular as almost all of them offer better damage combo traits. 

Edited May 12, 2022 by ZDragon.3046

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

9 minutes ago, ZDragon.3046 said:

 

The issue i have with this statement implies that the reaper not only takes defensive utility but also takes defensive traits meaning it takes a heavy cut to dps.

The nature of how so many players play wvw these days (with defensive stats) aka cele or trailblazer, etc etc i really have to question  IF IT WAS OP AT ALL or if it the problem really is that players cannot kill the necromancer because they themselves refuse to take enough damage to do so and just get out sustained which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing if someone specifically invest more than you.... that should be expected. Further more if players re dying to death nova it it would likely mean the reaper is condition because the strike damage from death nova is almost non existent which further cuts its sustain and immediate damage down considerably. 

The more people talk about the rise change the more it sounds like people just wanted it nerfed because they couldn't kill something that was more invested in defense than they were or that they were not invested enough in offense to do so and just didnt want to deal with it. 

I do know for a fact that taking death magic in any build is an immediate considerable sustain increase but also a big dps loss for any necromancer build as there are almost no significant dps increasing traits in that line that combo well with any of the elite specs. Which is how most defensive traitlines should be... that said i really cant understand this the more i hear people talk about it from an outside perspective other than nerco.

Like if people think deathmagic + rise is a super super strong op combo i hate to see what happens if almost any other defensive traitline on any other profession becomes popular as almost all of them offer better damage combo traits. 

A fair bit of that is due to Soul Reaping giving too much critical hit chance when in shroud and Onslaught from Reaper giving too much ferocity on top of quickness. Its pretty easy to build a reaper with solid defense and offense.

[ZDragon.3046]

2 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

A fair bit of that is due to Soul Reaping giving too much critical hit chance when in shroud and Onslaught from Reaper giving too much ferocity on top of quickness. Its pretty easy to build a reaper with solid defense and offense.

It is also a reaper with very low mobility and not extremely resistant to cc so whats really killing you is reaper dps not rise / death nova We cant exactly complain about reaper ferocity or quickness as it does need to be in melee range (and in shrould) in a group of people to make use of that which i think is more than fair.  Critical hit chance is something that maybe can be considered as it applies to all necromancer build options. At best we can assume rise itself was adding too much defense but i don't feel like making its target cap 2 is the right way to go death nova is pretty irrelevant but its called out any way. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, ZDragon.3046 said:

It is also a reaper with very low mobility and not extremely resistant to cc so whats really killing you is reaper dps not rise / death nova We cant exactly complain about reaper ferocity or quickness as it does need to be in melee range (and in shrould) in a group of people to make use of that which i think is more than fair.  Critical hit chance is something that maybe can be considered as it applies to all necromancer build options. At best we can assume rise itself was adding too much defense but i don't feel like making its target cap 2 is the right way to go death nova is pretty irrelevant but its called out any way. 

The target cap thing was the wrong thing to do certainly.

[Dadnir.5038]

26 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The target cap thing was the wrong thing to do certainly.

I guess they saw that slashing down the target cap "worked" (I mean "deleted") with Scourge's shades so they thought it would be a great idea to do the same with "Rise!".

Anyway, it not the first time that I'm disappointed by the way the devs balance professions and it's probably not the last. I mean, they still managed to nerf the shroud damage reduction in PvE but didn't do it in competitive modes, favoring nerfs to other defensive tools there. Was there someone that was complaining that the necromancer's shroud was soaking to much damage in PvE? Nope...

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

8 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I guess they saw that slashing down the target cap "worked" (I mean "deleted") with Scourge's shades so they thought it would be a great idea to do the same with "Rise!".

Anyway, it not the first time that I'm disappointed by the way the devs balance professions and it's probably not the last. I mean, they still managed to nerf the shroud damage reduction in PvE but didn't do it in competitive modes, favoring nerfs to other defensive tools there. Was there someone that was complaining that the necromancer's shroud was soaking to much damage in PvE? Nope...

I really found that odd as well... Are necros pulling way too high defense in competitive? Sure. Was Rise! the place to nerf it? No. Shroud is the big culprit there. Still amazed that they nerfed the damage reduction it gives in PvE only.

[ZDragon.3046]

3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I really found that odd as well... Are necros pulling way too high defense in competitive? Sure. Was Rise! the place to nerf it? No. Shroud is the big culprit there. Still amazed that they nerfed the damage reduction it gives in PvE only.

The nerf in pve was likely for how the plan to make end game content going forward and one way to ensure a shrouded necromancer will not easily survive hp based mechanics is to nerf the damage reduction it grants. 

 

Its harder to justify nerfing it in competitive modes as it means you would not ever get to use it sense it is tied to not only soft defense but also the majority of your offense. So be careful in what you are suggesting on that one. Suggesting it should be nerfed in competitive modes equally suggest that their kit outside of shroud should be buffed. As much as would love to see another axe buff perhaps lets not touch that for a while and see what happens on june 28th first.

 

WE could argue that you should just play harbinger if you dont want your shroud blown off but if the dps on that proves too be too much for people then they will want that culled too which then leaves necro in a weird place from others perspectives where they cant have shroud for defense but the version where they abandon that and makes them fair game is too strong offensively and unjustifiable. Cant have offense or defense... the best solution for competitive modes would be to find a way of dealing with all all round stat sets like cele then figuring out how to deal with over use of defensive stats particularly ones that still offer nice dps via condition damage. I would much rather see people using utility slots to make tanky plays rather than just sitting on the most defensive gear stats they can find but it seems anet is more so against that and just fine letting people play with defensive stats instead for now. 

[Esorono.1039]

It was really the only change I actually agreed with. This change really won't affect a typical reaper, even a zerg one with the wells nerf. The thing is, there are some groups who take the Rise! skill and run with it, added many reapers with good internet connection to the team, and then about 25 or so reapers use Rise! all at once, adding about 125 bodies to the field. This will turn most people's game into a slide show, and even if you have a really good connection your fps takes quite a hit, after a Rise! ball actually gets into combat, a good portion of the enemies may just freeze while their computers try to register the massive influx of mobs that just entered. Which can then be mowed down almost to their leisure. This is bad enough, but it gets worse.

Almost all cleave AoE in the game have a target cap of 5, which is incidentally the amount of minions you get from Rise! if you hit five people with it, these minions then more times than not soak up the damage the Rise! ball would otherwise take, meaning each Reaper is taking far less damage than they normally would have as they simply are not getting hit. Then finally when they all die, they leave behind a sea of dangerous AoE that pulse poison, meaning your healing is next to worthless while wading through dozens of these packets. Also Rise! is unblockable and gets a reduced recharge for every person it hits, so it can be pretty much spammed, and things like Aegis won't save the group.

But you won't typically be using this in a normal group with a Reaper, even without Rise! Reaper is a rather decent dps option if your group can reliably get into melee while providing some rather useful boon strips in the process. It's mostly just stopping the fps dropping, body blocking, sea of death nova cheese from happening. 

[ZDragon.3046]

14 hours ago, Esorono.1039 said:

It was really the only change I actually agreed with. This change really won't affect a typical reaper, even a zerg one with the wells nerf. The thing is, there are some groups who take the Rise! skill and run with it, added many reapers with good internet connection to the team, and then about 25 or so reapers use Rise! all at once, adding about 125 bodies to the field. This will turn most people's game into a slide show, and even if you have a really good connection your fps takes quite a hit, after a Rise! ball actually gets into combat, a good portion of the enemies may just freeze while their computers try to register the massive influx of mobs that just entered. Which can then be mowed down almost to their leisure. This is bad enough, but it gets worse.

Almost all cleave AoE in the game have a target cap of 5, which is incidentally the amount of minions you get from Rise! if you hit five people with it, these minions then more times than not soak up the damage the Rise! ball would otherwise take, meaning each Reaper is taking far less damage than they normally would have as they simply are not getting hit. Then finally when they all die, they leave behind a sea of dangerous AoE that pulse poison, meaning your healing is next to worthless while wading through dozens of these packets. Also Rise! is unblockable and gets a reduced recharge for every person it hits, so it can be pretty much spammed, and things like Aegis won't save the group.

But you won't typically be using this in a normal group with a Reaper, even without Rise! Reaper is a rather decent dps option if your group can reliably get into melee while providing some rather useful boon strips in the process. It's mostly just stopping the fps dropping, body blocking, sea of death nova cheese from happening. 

Yeah i see your points but we know fps drops was not their intent behind the change at all or they would have just said that its kind of hard to argue something should be nerfed for fps drop as there are many classes that can cause this to happen if you bring enough of them. 

I think if a reaper was in ear shot and close enough to hit 5 people with rise then its fine having 5 people get hit. fun fact of rise is that the minions that slowly limp around (stop moving) then have to swing and hit their target to keep the damage reduction buff up on the reaper. So after the inital cast of the shout you get damage reduction after that the minions need to actually be able to actively hit something to soak the reapers damage. Which is not something that technically should be happening easily if people are moving around regardless i just hope they change it to be 1 target or 5 targets again but give the shout a different effect minion wise. Like just make it summon one of those undead dogs or something turn the 5 weak minons into one decent one and you practically solve the problem without making it a clunky 2 target cap.

[DeceiverX.8361]

Fewer FPS issues, passive damage being removed, and target-cap exploiting being reduced is all upsides.

Honestly, the skill should just be reworked.  It doesn't fit the Reaper's central themes at all, and there probably should be a LF shout that isn't a heal.

Something like:  "Gain LF per foe struck and reduce Shroud's cooldown by 50% of its current value.  Ammo 2."  Keep the current cooldown at 40s.

That has significantly better playmaking potential with shroud flickering and defensive value when thinking ahead, and is more punishable since it's not instant gratification of damage.  It also scales way better into larger scenarios, and fixes all of the above problems.

The damage reduction on wells is more concerning than Rise! minions being nerfed.

[jpsssss.7530]

The nerf to rise was done as it created up to 5 minions and in a blob you always get the 5. The thing about skills in GW2 is that they all have a hard target cap of 5. So basically for every minion hit, it was an ally not hit. Also when they die, if you trait for it, you make a stinky poison field and start chucking poison and weakness like its candy.

[Bale.3851]

28 minutes ago, jpsssss.7530 said:

The nerf to rise was done as it created up to 5 minions and in a blob you always get the 5. The thing about skills in GW2 is that they all have a hard target cap of 5. So basically for every minion hit, it was an ally not hit. Also when they die, if you trait for it, you make a stinky poison field and start chucking poison and weakness like its candy.

 

They did it cause their kittening servers cant handle the traffic of 5 reapers using their "rise" ability. Nice job anet. Fix the back end not the front end.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 5/12/2022 at 5:19 PM, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I really found that odd as well... Are necros pulling way too high defense in competitive? Sure. Was Rise! the place to nerf it? No. Shroud is the big culprit there. Still amazed that they nerfed the damage reduction it gives in PvE only.

Balnce devs play reaper :) they touched there to keep reaper DPS capabilities has ain a smoll/almost like atrade  off effect.

Stil game kinda has several "OMNG necros so tanky" comments, this maybe to make players focus a bit more on trade offs.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Aeolus.3615

[RisenHowl.2419]

I'm a big fan of the theory that Rise! was responsible for all the lag. I especially like how effectively deleting the build has had absolutely no effect on lag.

 

Because the issue is the servers and a small subset of players would rather cry than do some theorycrafting to counter Rise! setups.

 

Seriously, it wasn't that hard to figure out a good answer to an extra 60 bodies. Permeating wrath, spamming multihit aoe autoattacks like flamethrower, or putting down ice fields to control where all the rats go were all great ways to handle it.

[SummonMinion.7306]

While discussing how to balance necro's low skill floor and ceiling defense of face tanking versus every other classes' scalable high skill floor and ceiling defense of blocks, evades, I-frames and greater access to boon spam deserves it's own thread, it cannot be argued that a necro's survivability is largely tied to shroud. Nerfing Rise does little to nothing in addressing that issue.

 

Extra bodies an issue? The skill had a long cooldown and the rats barely had any health bars to sustainably absorb damage. A squad of necro's could spam bone minions and get the same effect of pre-nerf Rise. A squad of mesmers would get the same effect with all the clones and phantasms they can push out even if they shattered on cd. 

 

Now I'm not pointing out the mesmer thing to say nerf mesmer. I pointed it out because having short-lived bodies to absorb some instances of damage in a Zerg v Zerg does little to affect the overall gameplay. The extra bodies had little influence on the boonball wet noodle slap fight meta. This change literally has zero effect on the meta or overall gameplay.

 

I see zero justification for this change.