Game Update Notes Preview: Profession Skills

[Doggie.3184]

Thought you guys said this summer you'd be fixing the things people never use anymore? Is this the full class notes? Poor Steam newbies.

 

[Never.6014]

You had me at Engineer rifle changes. Thank you. Other Engineer stuff looks great at first glance too. Can't comment on other classes.

[Xion.5694]

When we get changes to projectile hate skills? A limit maybe? You know, like stab that prevents ONE KD per stack??? 

Its been YEARS and the balance team still does not play their own game.

 

Please make sure thief get enough boons while in and out of stealth. /s

[Catilena.8729]

3 minutes ago, latlat.4516 said:

which is better design than just having the top 2 boon available baseline in any build you can make with the spec lol. Not making this change would have made catalyst the only spec in the game which is able to pulse quickness without specing into it

 

And this is bad because....why again?

 

I already get funny looks as it is when I play Catalyst in a serious manner, plus having emergency quick-spam for things like, harvest temple when our main quick dies is useful. Elementalist gets kitten on every single patch, and the only class more of a joke than we are is Untamed, but that's not saying much.

[Xeshirem.5038]

I will miss Hidden Thief granting stealth. It was another source of stealth, especially for regular thief's Steal, and instant too, but I really like the barrier/condi removal for the other two (Shielding Restoration/Shadow's Embrace), so I will change to one of traits regardless if Hidden Thief still affects Deception Skills (the wording was unclear to me).

I overall like the change of Enter/Exit stealth instead of duration. The duration made it feel like you had to hide in stealth for a bit and then continue attacking, which is a fantastic thief fantasy but unfortunately the gameplay looks mostly healthier with more player agency and control with Enter/Exit.

Cover of Shadow and Shadow's Rejuvenation are really nice in the situations where enemy boons aren't the niche.

I worry for Meld with Shadows. I liked stealthing and running around, but Superspeed is huge especially if it persists a little bit after exiting stealth, which seems really cool for burst attacking.

I think I like the Shadow Arts changes, speaking as someone who only plays in all open world pve, story, and fractals.

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Xeshirem.5038
minor

[Famine.3164]

Seriously wth is this? I have played since beta and have not always been satisfied with patches, but this takes the cake.. Buffing the strongest classes while gutting others, Warrior, rangers and poor poor eles yet again.. 🤣🤣🤣 Why are you buffing Mech!? This balance team is wack.. 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Famine.3164

[Sebrent.3625]

What is the logic behind these changes?

(1) Well of Action : Now provides Superspeed to allies on the final pulse instead of quickness.

When I want superspeed, I don't want to have to wait 3s for an AOE to end with me in it.

 

(2) Well of Recall : Renamed Well of Senility. Now removes two boons from enemy targets on the final pulse instead of providing alacrity to allies.
So now we have an AOE on a 25s cooldown that pulses chill and last pulses removes 2 boons ... or I could've just taken Null Field which lasts 2 seconds longer and removes a condition and a boon per pulse instead of 2 boons only at the end.

 

These bother me doubly so because the Mesmer forum has said many times over that one of that community's biggest annoyances with wells is how they don't apply particular effects until the very end ... and it's not as if those effects are some big powerful effect.

 

 

[SzalonyIvan.5810]

this game is dying - i play 8 years and now i look from patch to patch and cry more and more - game where is tons sets armor peaces - magi/zaelot/viper/rampager and many more - devs want only to play berserkers - raid is limited time - go zerk or get lost. go for strike mission - zerker or kick. go for normal play on world or WvWvW ??? its imposible that most of runes and traits is change for zerkers - dont belive me ? look at sigil of water from heal on heat is change to heal on crit - my great undead ranger aka druid is trash because i must change for magi not like always and its called CLERIC - its a joke most of build is dissable on that set - i create tons of builds even 7 was in top meta - i loved create build - make legendary armor for what ? for take berserker and shine thats all i can do it in - i cry deaply and still

 

sorry for my bad english but if this dont change me and my guild dont want back to game where is only 1 set and two max 3 playable classes and outher is trash ( buff more nekro he is always got nerf and always is better and better lol )

[ManaPotato.3279]

What a bunch of trash this patch notes is. I expected so much more, just to be proven this game is done for. They did us SO dirty, and its so bad that Blizzard deserves money more than ANET.

[Trigarta.3841]

Not happy with the upcoming changes, as are many others. You held back the CM for Harvest Temple to improve it. You should do the same for this patch. This shouldn't go live Tuesday. Back to the drawing board, take in feedback by the community and work out something better.

[Solstice.5790]

On 6/23/2022 at 5:19 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Thief

Utility

• Seal Area: Reduced duration from 8 seconds to 5 seconds in PvP only.
• Hide in Shadows: Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Blinding Powder: Reduced cooldown from 50 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.
• Shadow Refuge: Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 48 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Shadow Arts

• Concealing Restoration: This trait has been removed and replaced by Merciful Ambush.
• Merciful Ambush: This trait has been moved to adept minor and now heals when entering or exiting stealth instead of applying a pulse heal upon entering stealth.
• Shielding Restoration: This trait fills the slot previously held by Merciful Ambush. It grants barrier to nearby allies after using a healing skill.
• Shadow's Embrace: This trait now removes a damaging condition when entering or exiting stealth instead of at every interval while in stealth. This effect also applies to stealth granted to allies.
• Hidden Thief: This trait has been reworked. Stealing now inflicts blindness, and stealth attacks now inflict weakness.
• Meld with Shadows: This trait has been reworked. Players now gain Superspeed when entering or exiting stealth.
• Leeching Venoms: This trait now grants stacks of Spider Venom when entering or exiting stealth instead of every interval while in stealth.
• Flickering Shadows: This trait has been removed and replaced by Cloaked in Shadow.
• Cover of Shadow: This trait fills the slot previously held by Cloaked in Shadow. Players now gain protection when entering or exiting stealth. This effect also applies to stealth granted to allies.
• Shadow's Rejuvenation: This trait no longer grants healing or initiative while in stealth and instead grants initiative when entering or exiting stealth.
• Rending Shade: Increased the number of boons stolen from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW.

Critical Strikes

• Keen Observer: Critical chance bonus increased from 10% to 15% in PvE only.
• Unrelenting Strikes: This trait now may activate on any critical hit, granting 4 seconds of fury to up to 5 allies in a circle with a range of 360. Internal cooldown is 8 seconds.

Trickery

• Thrill of the Crime: Might stacks granted increased from 3 to 5 in PvE only.

Specter

• Traversing Dusk: Reduced base shadow force gain from 5% to 3% in PvP only.

 

 

Exactly this passage, to me, sums up perfectly the amount of thought and care that has gone into this patch.

 

1. It is not hard for a thief to go perma invisible already, why on earth would you reduce the cooldowns on those abilities and add (traited) superspeed? Have you ever tried to catch up with or find a thief in WvW that decided to kill you later?

2. Set up accordingly the class will now be able to heal (old), grant protection, barrier and condi cleanse with Shadow Refuge. Instead of stealthing on heal, you now heal on every stealth entry and exit? As any thief? Are you kidding?

3. Sa(i)d Specter, which was actually supposed to be improved as a healer, wasn't touched. Same short-range slow shadowstep wells that get you killed in WvW, no changes to healing coefficients, nothing. But you lose stealth on the healing well...

 

 

 

Unique passive buffs turned into uninspired 10 sec pulse / 3 sec duration generic boons those classes already have anyways.

Semi- or full rollbacks on changes the community told them not to do in the first place, yet core issues of several classes unaddressed to this day.

 

Disappointing.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Solstice.5790

[Seon.8402]

3 hours ago, ZDragon.3046 said:

could be worse you could have been power reaper who lost 5% critical damage for no reason because they didnt do the math properly for swapping death perception from 300 ferocity to 15% critical damage.

 

1 hour ago, Seremela the Elf Mage.1748 said:

to add insult to injury 300 ferocity is about 20% crit damage increase so "increasing crit damage by 15% instead" is actually a 5% crit damage NERF.

Usually traits that increase "critical damage" do so on top of your regular crit multiplier. Which means they are multiplicative and much stronger than they sound, such as Ferocious Strikes. If this is the case with this change, which I assume based on the wording, this would actually be better. For example, let's say we have 750 ferocity for 200% critical damage modifier:

1. regular strike: 1000 damage
2. crit damage: 2000 damage
3. with extra 300 ferocity or crit modifier is 220%, so 2200 damage
4. with 15% bonus on top instead, we get 2000 * 1.15 = 2300 damage

So maybe they did do their math correctly. Right now we don't know for certain but most traits with this description are multiplicative. I also won't say all the changes in this patch are for the best but let's wait until next week when we can try them out a bit.

[Nomad.4301]

On 6/23/2022 at 9:19 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Mist Offensive Potion: The Fractal Attunement Masteries now cause this potion to convert a percentage of agony resistance into vitality instead of precision.

I love how this actually end up LOSING  me about 2-3% crit chance overall inside fractals, because currently using the potion gives me ~12.5% crit chance, after the patch I will lose that, only to be made up if running a single specific trait (RIP Warriors) and having Fury which gives back 10%. Vitality being largely useless in Fractals btw, I get by fine with 12k HP.

Going to chock this one up as an L.

[Cthulhu.1432]

Best changes i could've wished for, im happy as guardian main, things couldn't have turned out better ;D keep good changes coming.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Cthulhu.1432

[Ariurotl.3718]

You're... going to BUFF Mechanist? What?

[Ascency.3580]

The blog and the patch notes contradict eachother. By making fury sources aoe, but making the duration less then icd u make most power builds borderline unplayable while solo. There goes the promise to make builds viable both in and out of group content. As is gl having fury uptime with a weaver, or a mesmer or most other power builds for that matter. Oh and now u loose 25% crit instead of 20 while not having it.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

5 minutes ago, Ascency.3580 said:

The blog and the patch notes contradict eachother. By making fury sources aoe, but making the duration less then icd u make most power builds borderline unplayable while solo. There goes the promise to make builds viable both in and out of group content. As is gl having fury uptime with a weaver, or a mesmer or most other power builds for that matter. Oh and now u loose 25% crit instead of 20 while not having it.

Ofc this is working as intended. Now Anet can promote celestial builds even further. You're gonna need that extra concentration on your cele Gear to get that 100% Fury uptime for open world

Edited June 24, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[Nighthawk.2401]

Wow, did someone at Anet get ganked by one too many thieves recently? Jesus those nerfs are rough.

It'll make them less annoying, for sure, but I think they're going to need compensation in some other way if this is the direction you're committing too. All of the "buffs back" are only to PvE, you're really leaving them out to dry in WvW/sPvP  

 

 

Not the biggest fan of a lot of other class changes either, but this is pretty extreme.

[Raizel.8175]

1 hour ago, Washington Irving.2413 said:

I don't really understand this argument.

Open world content can be completed by mashing 1 buttons with enough players.

If you don't have arcdps, and don't care about high end raiding, then why do you care if you are doing 15% less damage with an unoptimized build?

The game should be designed around the top levels of play.

I can't really agree - at least in the case of GW2. GW2 is an action combat MMO in which most builds are more or less skill spammy. Elementalist on the other hand - especially Weaver and Catalyst - is extremely technical which just doesn't suit the action combat genre. The thing is: In a MMORPG, should you really make 99% of the people playing a certain class/build suffer because 1‰ (yes, we're talking permille rather than percent here) of an already small subcommunity break the game with said class/build? At some point, you just have to admit that Elementalist is rather useless for general gameplay, which really isn't healthy. Classes played should be spread out at least somewhat evenly.

[ijxijx.2458]

Near non-existent nerfs to both harbinger and willbender in pvp.

 

Nothing about celestial Harb in wvw

 

And a SA BUFF in wvw?

 

And shadowportal still not disabled after 3 years of breaking wvw. 

 

Ait...

[AliamRationem.5172]

ANet: "We're going to take a look at some underutilized weapons, traits, and skills."

Nerfs conjures and banners, buffs kittening mechanist?  Seriously?

[Raizel.8175]

I wonder why Mechanist - currently probably the most overpowered build at least in PvE - doesn't get nerfs.

[Evasiion.3859]

This patch is a joke. Back to the drawing board, please.

[Khenzy.9348]

Guys, guys! I think most of us are just wrong.

I think we are all just supposed to play Guardian, Engineer or Necromancer.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Khenzy.9348

[Doggie.3184]

3 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

if ur saying no, u prolly havent tried alot of the MMORPGS on the market currently.

this patch. iks basically every patch in WoW :P, the good remain good. the bad remain bad.. "balancing" is so minor it never changes anything just continously saying "how they want to make "bad choices" feel alittle bit better"

im sorry, but this is pretty standard mmorpg balancing. u read WoW forums, every patch full of negativity, you watch ESO patchs full of negativity, FFXIV is about the happiest i've seen aptch launchs be, but even then they've had their moments (I.E Bards and summoners during Shadowbringers launch.)

but FFXIV, has 0 Customization. 0 Options a Set in stone set up for every class + bnasically 0 PvP and no balancing towards it.

 

FFXIV intentionally tries to not revolve their patches around nerfs and focuses on buffing weak things up to their standards or changing stuff about their PvE system overall because they want people to be happy/excited more than crushed when they read notes. PvP was reworked recently and pretty fun, skill-based and strategic despite locked skills. It's never been dead though, just only Frontlines was active over the others.

You have better fashion in FFXIV though which gives insane amounts of customization in PvP with how many ways you can dress up your catboy instead of being locked to ugly butt-capes. So that actually makes FFXIV landslides ahead of GW2 in class/pvp customization and options. The visibility of such in battle is also 100x better instead of being a blinding lightshow where u have no idea wtf is happening like this game~ and FFXIV has flawless performance in a PvP map of 70+ people even when I have GW2 open at same time on another monitor XD

Edited June 25, 2022 by Doggie.3184