Follow up to the June 28 Balance Update Preview

[Lithium.6031]

So this patch will play for 3 months and you agree that fb should be op?wtf

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

I am in the group of people who aren't happy with this balance patch, there will be people who are happy as their main has been buffed.

I have a question for those who's main got buffed, if you are happy with the buff are you overall happy with the patch? The difference between power level of classes is becoming wider, does this worry you at all?

The game is gonna get released on steam soon (eventually?) and it seems like ANet isn't making its current player base happy. If any potential steam user comes to these forums looking for indication whether they should buy the game, will they like what they see? I've commited alot of time, energy and money into this game, which pretty much keeps me coming back, but if some asked "should I buy Guild Wars 2/GW2?" or "is it worth it to buy Guild Wars 2/GW2?", I'd honestly have to say, right now, don't. The game is pretty bad for me right now, others might feel differently. I want the game to get better, for all classes to be as viable and fun as each other, without people watching nerfs after nerfs hit certain classes, while others just recieve buffs.

I know this is coming of as a rant, and I guess it kinda is, but his jsut feels like a poor move for the company. I would like to be wrong and if you can convince me, please do.

[Ashen.2907]

3 hours ago, Albi.7250 said:

What positive change do you and other people think will come from firing that guy?

/sigh

Well, since I do not want him fired, that question does not apply to me now does it?

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

To anyone who "reacts" confused, why are you confused?

[Curennos.9307]

There are some thief changes I'm pretty pleased with - the nuking of Shadow's Rejuvenation, for one, as I considered it a plague on this game for a while. I also really like the removal of the extra +1 sec stealth duration -  it did little for longer stealth skills while disproportionately buffing lower duration stealths. I also like the shift of Shadow Arts more towards a survivable, support-y type traitline.

 

That said, I don't like some other SA changes - for example, the removal of Concealed Restoration and Hidden Thief. To an extent I can understand why they did this, as the changes to Shadow's rejuv would easily make short, low CD stealth overpowered - why, it might have even made acro viable with the Steal cooldown reduction....xD Being able to generate a quick ini burst that much more often. Still, I don't like that they removed them, as it seems thieves across the board are getting less and less access to stealth. Of course, /dagger still exists, but it feels like overall options on how to incorporate stealth into my build are extremely limited now - I basically am forced to take the stealth heal....And then what? Deadeye has the elite (tho they're still gonna suffer), but other thief builds are forced into a very small selection of utilities and weapons. It really feels like feast or famine with stealth after this patch, and I feel a little confused on how much, exactly, anet wants thieves using stealth and using their stealth attacks. I don't think there's a single dps build out there outside DE that regularly does it, except for that one d/d#5 -> backstab spamming build. Most pvp builds I see don't use ANY stealth attacks. Most pve builds for thief don't either, and trying to do so in some cases decreases your effectiveness.

 

Of course, d/p still exists, but...ugh. It just feels very clunky to try and fit into a build now. As I said, feast or famine-y. The two small sources of stealth in SA were very valuable and while I understand why they did it - now that dipping in and out of stealth that quickly is much more beneficial - I don't like how these changes are impacting thief's unique stealth mechanic.

 

Overall, anet doesn't seem to have a clear idea of what they want classes and specs to do, and how they want them to do it. This feels like a huge oversight - imagine the design that went into this, someone going..."Y'know, lets give thieves a stealth attack! A unique attack only available in stealth" and then it was so bad and so limited that very few people ever actually used it? 

 

Blah.

 

That all said, I do like some of the changes. I really enjoy support thief. So, the patch was a mixed bag for me. 

[SlayerXX.7138]

43 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

First: It wasn't a private conversation within his family. It was a chat channel with partners and customers of the company.

Second: Of course it is not OK to call customers/coworkers idiots. It is an insult. Sure, it can happen (in a heated discussion)  and usually an apology is apropriate after such behaviour. Especially if the customer/coworker is aware of the fact that he/she was called an idiot. And the company should made clear in a public statement that such behaviour is in general not tolerated in the future in the company. 

If we would be firing every person who did call a part of their customer base idiots their wouldn't be a single service person, Mechanic or whatever left. Look in any forum were tech support employees or mechanics post, do you want them get fired too. Or when service people tell their horror stories about awful customer we fire them too? Or teacher who unaspiringly may slip that kids in general can be a pain in the kitten we fire them too? People in elderly care who complains in the break room and uses a bad word, after getting kicked by a senile resident, fired! Kindergarten teacher who utters any negative opinion about any parent in any semi public setting. You guessed it, FIRED!

Imagine your loved ones losing their job because of the kittening word idiot and an internet mob.

[Gibson.4036]

There seems to be debate over whether my mains actually got buffed or nerfed.

I honestly can't tell at this point. Maybe I need to be at some higher level of play to feel the difference? Or maybe the ones I happen to play escaped this round?

If someone asked me "Should I buy GW2" I'd reply that you can get it on sale pretty regularly, and that there is a lot of good stuff to enjoy. The game's future feels uncertain right now, but, hey, there's a bunch of fun stuff from 9 years of development that's totally worth $25 for PoF/HoT on sale.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

I'd like a detailed explanation of how the hell they thought banners was supposed to used in it's current format?

[Curennos.9307]

5 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

There seems to be debate over whether my mains actually got buffed or nerfed.

I honestly can't tell at this point. Maybe I need to be at some higher level of play to feel the difference? Or maybe the ones I happen to play escaped this round?

If someone asked me "Should I buy GW2" I'd reply that you can get it on sale pretty regularly, and that there is a lot of good stuff to enjoy. The game's future feels uncertain right now, but, hey, there's a bunch of fun stuff from 9 years of development that's totally worth $25 for PoF/HoT on sale.

GW2 is still one of the best more casual MMOs out there, especially for the price. If you never install a DPS meter and never go past exotic/ascended gear, honestly, I don't think you'll notice the patch notes. The game is quite fun - going just by how something 'feels', I wouldn't notice a difference between specs and classes. Of course, the numbers show a different story, but anet is at least maintaining class fantasy decently well...Except in the scenario of warr, possibly, but I can't speak much to that as I never used banners and am not a big DPS person. Overall still worth it, and imo the game is very good if you only play an hour or so a day/a few hours a week.

[Jski.6180]

For wvw the alacrity trait for tempest with an support build seems worth it if your group has enofe healing already but i cant see it working for any other game type.

The update to conja weapons and the lack of update seems very impossible to think that these ele tools are balanced for any game type.

The buffs to FB and eng seems way too much in all game types and very blind to the reality of trying to balance the game.

[Hotride.2187]

Well I buy games either because I really want to play a game, or because the hour to money ratio is good. If GW2 expansions + living world seasons cost about 100 eu (some thread claims so, maybe its with discounts though), I think you are getting really good value. Lots to do in the game; you'll likely not notice big problems for 100s of hours, maybe even a thousand hours.

For the balance patch, not much to say that has not been repeated 10+ times already. They should not have announced the patch as they did: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-the-future-of-guild-wars-2/

Quote

Speaking of balance, profession balance has a huge impact on the WvW experience, whether you tend to play as a roamer, a havoc player, or if you choose to run with 49 (or more) of your closest friends. This brings us to our next area of focus.

Profession Updates

Balance and maintenance of Guild Wars 2‘s extensive combat system, including the latest elite specializations released with End of Dragons, is important for keeping gameplay engaging and varied across PvE, WvW, and PvP. Moving forward, we’ll be making professions and elite specialization updates a higher priority.

Our plan includes quarterly profession updates, with smaller releases in between as we monitor and respond to how the meta in each game mode takes shape. In addition to the number tweaks that you’re used to seeing, the team will be revisiting some underpowered and underused weapon skills, traits, or utilities for each profession in each profession update to help expand your arsenal. We will continue to make game-mode-specific balance adjustments as needed.

I was actually looking forward to the patch; but it does nearly nothing for spvp/wvw. Other than that, one engi weapon got a rework and you already got videos reacting to it in... unflattering ways. The rest is just raid composition changes that will need even more changes to fix.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Jillian.4502]

after playing enough Alac support Tempest, I'm so mentally done I'm about to gear up some Magi's and never leave Water Staff. 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

On 6/27/2022 at 2:21 PM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Then, in mid-fall, we’ll have our next major professions update.

10 months of waiting for a real balance patch, and there is nothing that guarantees the balance team wont screw it up again. I say this in the most supportive way but you are going to have to do better than that.

[iamreb.9175]

2 hours ago, Albi.7250 said:

Okay maybe I misread your posts then. Lets me rephrase the question: What does fixating on one employee accomplish?

Like thanks to the leaks we know people who design classes have influence on balance of other specs. We know there is limited QA capacity which bottlenecks what can be in a patch. Changes are apparently made without much discussion. The lead designer can apparently make incredibly bias decision without oversight. There seems to be a general lack of hard numbers, professionalism and design philosophy in the Balancing department. Also how could they guy in question even become lead with so little experience.

But but people are hang up on the words Idiots and salt like a gaggle of Karen's who want to speak with the manager.
 

Someone not familiar with the class shouldn't be assigned to apply balance patches to it as well. Having a dev go to the wiki to be familiar with a class isn't a great start. just because you know how something works doesn't mean you know how to use it.

[Vancho.8750]

Lets see, when the game releases on Steam, allot of players would default to the tried and tested Mage, Warrior, Archer classes and if Elementalist, Warrior and Ranger are garbage like now in All modes , the game will get a lot of negative reviews.

[Xenesis.6389]

5 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

I have a question for those who's main got buffed, if you are happy with the buff are you overall happy with the patch?

I'd guess the engineers that used rifle, since it was upgraded into a machine gun.

 

For the record, my mesmer/chrono main did not get buffed and my build got nerfed. I've haven't logged in since Monday, still thinking if I should bother.

[eXistence.3876]

If rumors are true that people making these decisions have not played some of the classes they are changing...this is one of the worst things I have ever heard. I hope it is not true...

[Wintermute.5408]

I have mixed feelings on the whole topic.

On one hand, the community of any game whatsoever is universally inept at offering balance changes for the game. Even the best of theorycrafters and venerated veterans will consistently offer horrible solutions, as I observed multiple times in several different games. A healthy approach from game devs is to gather feedback and information from community, but ignore the solutions offered, and instead get that info processed by a competent dedicated balancing team who actually have the general vision for the game.

Problem is, the current balancing team is self-evidently not-competent, and doesn't have neither vision nor understanding. Which has been illustrated vividly long before the leaks, and only got confirmed by them. This team is unprofessional, and shouldn't remain in their current position.

As long as this is the case,  "listening to feedback" is worthless. And personally I'm absolutely not interested in explanations for this clown fiesta of the patch. Game needs a new, proper balancing team. Untill that team is announced, and actually starts delivering, any other attempts are worthless.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Wintermute.5408

[ResJudicator.7916]

I play all the classes (with a preference towards light and medium armors for aesthetic reasons), so I don't take it personally when one class gets nerfed and another gets buffed.  But I personally don't enjoy the game's trend towards encouraging players to just spam skills off-cooldown, or go through a set rotation.  Obviously there are those who do, which is why the game is headed in this direction. 

 

I think GW2 is going to be more fun for casual PvE players who enjoy fighting a boss by stacking up at the boss's foot and then spamming their skills off cooldown (or, for more advanced players, memorizing a specific skill rotation and repeating that over and over).  This is clearly the type of gameplay the balance devs enjoy and are experienced with, and that's how they're balancing the game.  The devs are not familiar with, and have given zero thought to, concepts like spotting & interrupting key attacks, using mobility skills to kite, baiting dodges, setting up bursts, etc.

 

That's why we see changes like tying Chrono's alac/quickness generation to spamming Shield5 (an aoe stun & projectile block) off cooldown, rather than encouraging players to hold the skill for counterplay.  It's also why Harb Shroud5 and Harb elite have virtually no visual tell or cast time, despite having a greater impact than just about every other skill in the game.  It's also why builds that don't fit into the "spam skills off cooldown" mold have fallen by the wayside.

 

For players that enjoy PvP and/or want more engaging, dynamic combat, I think GW2 is going to be less fun.  Most of my friends are in this camp, and they've all stepped away from the game.  I had just returned from a long break, but will be stepping away as well.  I don't hold any ill will, and I think it's perfectly legitimate for players to enjoy raid-stacking (heck, that's what most MMOs are about).  It's just not for me personally. 

[Foxx.9150]

On 6/27/2022 at 5:41 PM, Jokuc.3478 said:

The concern is not whether axe mirage is good or not. It's about the fact that a balance decision was made simply because a developer did not enjoy a specific playstyle. If there was statistics that 99% of mesmer mains hate how axe work then there's something to work with, but it seems like the motivation here was entirely personal.

as a mesmer main, I don't mind the fact that the staff build was made viable while not murdering the axe build, but rather the fact that the whole chaos traitline got buffed to a point where it became better than the illusions traitline on the Axe build.

especially considering that Duel/Illusions Axe had a very nice flow and loop on the rotation, while Chaos/Dueling Axe ends up having a slower and less satisfying pace to it.

the staff build becoming viable while not nerfing axe (in fact making it stronger, even if by accident) is a pretty good thing, realistically. the major problem is how overloaded staff was on release and how good it still is. and the major bugs that axe has (read the whole transcript, not just out-of-context screenshots please) were not fixed to this day, the rotation became less enjoyable and the overall attitude from the specific developer in question is really not the best. I am not defending said dev, I believe it would be good for PR if they made a public statement on the leak themselves and/or got (even if temporarily) removed from the balance team - bonus points if the firebrand spec got gutted in the meantime, since it seems to be the dev's favored class, which is really in need of a balance bonk - straight up demanding for the dev to get fired, killed or commit suicide is NOT okay, though.

buffing a weapon because you don't like the other option is okay, so long you don't nerf the weapon you don't like.

buffing a class to do a support niche because you like it (firebrand) while at the same time destroying another class that filled a similar niche (chronomancer) for 3 years non-stop is not.

 

if you want to complain about unethical balancing, there's the problem with ANet.

Chronomancer could provide both quickness and alacrity and it was not being played. now it has to pick between one of those boons and the boon application, damage output and healing output have not been made better.

[Ascency.3580]

30 minutes ago, LeopFolkner.2369 said:

Chronomancer could provide both quickness and alacrity and it was not being played. now it has to pick between one of those boons and the boon application, damage output and healing output have not been made better.

it has been made worse. quick chrono sits at about 22k now, pchrono at 32k right around what qfb sits at. qfb ofc being a support variant of a dps build having to sacrifice dps for group quickness and still outperforming a dedicated glass dps build with vastly more complex rotation to master. this is not taking into account that he can do this with 3 slots open for utility of which has the biggest selection of overtuned skills to choose from. all the while chrono has to sacrifice his heal skill and stunbreak pretty much off coolown as part of his rotation to be able to achieve this dps thus being left with no emergency options if kitten hits the fan. this is what this patch along with at least last few patches puts as now. and anet defends this dude and states they have a vision. i call bs.

 

edit: i dont mind chrono being harder to play, and enjoy the fact u have to take a risk to maximise dps. the issues i have is where tf am i suppose to play if im not part of a guild that is willing to take in a dead weight into the group becouse this joke of a balance team cant even do simple stuff like balance dps based on obvious factors like difficulty/range/utility/survivability? its that simple and yet they managed to fail this over and over.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Ascency.3580

[Bunny.9834]

This patch felt like it was done by people who literally just found out gw2 exists. 

 

[Geoff Fey.1035]

I'm going to snip this from Reddit. 

TL;dr Dependency and focus on 100% uptime of Quickness & Alacrity (Q&A) prevents full investigation into tuning of skills, traits, mechanics, and overall balance in the game. Temporarily removing or disabling Q&A has the potential to allow a true balance to be undertaken with Q&A re-introduced at a later date.

 

Spoiler

Statement - Both Alacrity & Quickness should be removed from the game temporarily, ANet then rebalancing of all professions, then Alacrity & Quickness re-introduced to maintain those balances.

**PLEASE NOTE**: Because of GW2's complete and utter dependence on Quickness & Alacrity *specifically*, any changes will result in massive issues in the game until proper balancing is enacted.

TL;dr Summary
Alacrity should be removed from the game temporarily to help identify what skills are over-/underperforming in a vacuum to allow true rebalancing; then have Alacrity reintroduced to help maintain that balance.

Quickness should be returned to the "selfish" boon (2012-2017) and party-wide Quickness should become a rarity rather than the requirement. Individual professions should have access to a Quickness playstyle (100% uptime on self only) OR require that any single character has to specifically spec to provide low-to-middling party-wide Quickness uptime (66% at best).

Alacrity
Alacrity is nice, but it can result in ludicrous CD's (as we saw with Bladesworn on EoD release) which devolves the entire spec to hinge around a single trait (lush forests; defunct) or skill (Tactical Reload), and it makes balancing revolve almost entirely around a single boon.

When Alacrity was first brought out it was unique and interesting but not 100% mandatory in every single facet of the game due to its rarity (Chronomancer only) and difficulty in maintaining 100% uptime.

Now PvE (Raids, Fractals, some Open World Meta) essentially cannot function without it, with WvW being the next dependent mode (PvP is subject to debate).

While I do enjoy lower CDs, Alacrity party-wide is not solving the problem; it's causing balance issues where overtuned skills become highly overtuned due to being easily accessible and undertuned skills become "balanced" because you can use them regularly.

Alacrity itself needs to be reviewed due to how its hides the issues with skill CD's and larger term balancing. That's not to say having a CD reduction boon is a totally bad thing--but it is something that shouldn't be accessible for the entire party 100% by a single profession. A big issue is that it affects ALL skills, including itself, meaning that any changes to alacrity will result in changes to the application of it. An alacrity skills with 20s CD may be balanced assuming 20s CD, but that's not the case--it will always have a lower CD simply because of how Alacrity works.

Solutions? I'm unsure.

I played with the idea of Alacrity being a stack (in the vein of Unblockable) where your next X skills have their CD reduced by a flat %. This causes issues in that auto-attacks will still use up some of those stacks (unfortunately) and if Alacrity is still party-applied it means that timing is more difficult, but that's the current issue experienced by Unblockable stacks where your auto-attacks use up the stacks before you get around to using your "big hit" (i.e. the thing you want to be unblockable).

Alternatively, this means having multiple professions be able to bring alacrity stacks will be more appealing, as you will want to curate your skill use to maximize the CD reduction, and the more stacks that you can accrue the easier it would be to ensure you can make sure that "big hit" skill will get the CD reduction.

Another solution would be to treat Alacrity closer to Quickness from 2012-2017, where it is much more rare. Reducing the skills that can provide Alacrity within each profession and ensuring each profession can provide the same level of alacrity would go towards the "bring the player not the profession" gameplay that ANet professes is their design manifesto.

People like CD reduction--this is why those traits that "reduce CD of X weapon/Y utility skills" are so highly prized in almost every single build imaginable. Alacrity attempts to remove players dependence on those traits but ends up reinforcing that trait selection because it results in an even higher CD reduction.

How could a fix work? Again, I'm unsure. Anything from "alacrity is only accessible via Elite Skills" to "alacrity only available on the 3rd his of auto-attacks" to even "alacrity only affecting utility skills" has passed through my head, each with huge pros and cons with regards to balance.

The problem lies with Alacrity trickling down to every other facet in the game.

Quickness
Quickness is nice, but it invalidates +attackspeed traits (Warrior Dual Wielding), creates a constant "soft fix" to undertuned (i.e. slow & low dps) auto-attacks & skills that constantly hides issues by making balanced skills overperform and result in changes that unbalances everything.

Quickness has always been in the game. It was originally +100% speed and reduced to +50% in 2013. In PvP/WvW this is an incredibly sought after boon because of its utility when engaging in the fast-paced combat that typifies (almost) any fight in those modes. In PvE, this is a massive DPS driver, making it highly sought after to reduce encounter times (thus reducing the need for sustainability by each character--i.e. glass-cannon meta).

The limiting factor of Quickness was always its relative rarity. Most skills would only provide 2s of quickness 12-20s CD while higher such as 6s had a 30s CD.

All of this was self-only which provided the balance.

Elite skills providing Quickness to the group were balanced due to their long cooldowns (Time Warp & Battle Standard) or due to the scarcity of group Quickness ("Feel my Wrath" pre-PoF). Quickness then lost its balance (i.e. rarity) due to the ease that select professions could provide it group-wide.

The increase of professions being able to provide it in a group is not the solution--it's a band-aid for all of the broken skills, traits, and mechanics in the game. Couple this with the fact that 100% Quickness is now an assumption and they might as well simply give every profession a 50% increase in attack speed (or just remove quickness altogether and then rescale/rebalance everything).

What ANet needs is the wholesale reduction (or removal) of party-wide quickness and return it to a more selfish boon, with the "party sharing" hinging around long CD Elite skills or trait combinations that require specific investment to reach high Quickness--such as their attempt with Warrior banners.

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Geoff Fey.1035

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

10 hours ago, Ascency.3580 said:

 

 

edit: i dont mind chrono being harder to play, and enjoy the fact u have to take a risk to maximise dps. the issues i have is where tf am i suppose to play if im not part of a guild that is willing to take in a dead weight into the group becouse this joke of a balance team cant even do simple stuff like balance dps based on obvious factors like difficulty/range/utility/survivability? its that simple and yet they managed to fail this over and over.

+1

Thankfully till the Semptember they will re-value the dps numbers across each proffesion in PvE (PvP+WVw will get different numbers) and where they want each class to be , as Grouch said in the second post

Edited June 29, 2022 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[Ascency.3580]

40 minutes ago, Killthehealersffs.8940 said:

+1

Thankfully till the Semptember they will re-value the dps numbers across each proffesion in PvE (PvP+WVw will get different numbers) and where they want each class to be , as Grouch said in the second post

ye. we waited about 10 months since this omega patch was announce for it to obliterate 80% of the classes to a state of being weak or outright unplayable to then have to wait 3 months for them to go ahead and "fix" it. yeeha