Follow up to the June 28 Balance Update Preview

[Vizardlorde.8243]

I only have 1 major complaint about the patch and that is the current state of warrior is unacceptable. I do not main warrior, but I do play one from time to time. 4 seconds of quickness on a 1 minute cooldown is simply a slap in the face. I cannot fathom how we went back to having to pick up banners and now it is worse because you do not get new skills you dimply lose all weaponskills while carrying the banner. Banners should either pulse quickness have significantly longer quickness or reduced cooldown.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Vizardlorde.8243

[Xerxez.7361]

14 minutes ago, Xae.7204 said:

There are a some hard truths that need realizing here.

 

1. Quickness was a mistake. It is way too powerful for one buff. As long as quickness is in the game the design of all builds will seek to maximize it. It is the uber-strat. Just delete Quickness.

 

2. GW2's balance has been in a rough shape almost since release. Entire specs have been dominating the game for *years* on end and others have been useless for *years* on end.

 

3. ArenaNet is in denial about #2. A couple of 1-2% nerfs every 6 months are not going to dethrone 5year old meta builds. Nor will some 1-2% buffs suddenly make dead builds viable.

 

1. The reliance on Quickness and Alacrity is healthy compared to other games where you are expected to maintain 6+ buffs at all times. I'm sure deleting Might from the game would have a greater impact on min-maxing than Quickness.

 

2. GW2 doesn't really shake up the Meta even with their big balance changes. Without an explanation its definitely confusing to try and understand their decision making.

 

3. The changes were a lot more impactful than 1 or 2% when min-maxing.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Xerxez.7361

[Ruisenior.6342]

33 minutes ago, Xae.7204 said:

There are a some hard truths that need realizing here.

 

1. Quickness was a mistake. It is way too powerful for one buff. As long as quickness is in the game the design of all builds will seek to maximize it. It is the uber-strat. Just delete Quickness.

 

2. GW2's balance has been in a rough shape almost since release. Entire specs have been dominating the game for *years* on end and others have been useless for *years* on end.

 

3. ArenaNet is in denial about #2. A couple of 1-2% nerfs every 6 months are not going to dethrone 5year old meta builds. Nor will some 1-2% buffs suddenly make dead builds viable.

I would prefer classes to be as they were designed first.

 

Engineer/Guardian: jack of all trades a bit of every boon

Revenant:quickness

Warrior:banners

Ranger:Spirits

Thief:Stealth

Mesmers:Alacrity

Necromancers:Aoe utilities + Barriers

Elementalist:Healers

 

Now is a boon condi epidemy Fiesta🥳

[Jillian.4502]

@Josh Davis.7865are you guys seriously gonna ghost us for weeks now with a broken game until you fix it? Pvp is a mess right now. I'm questioning why I even bother logging in. 

[Jillian.4502]

and to add salt to injury, you guys change the ranked PvP to a kittening 2v2. Because, YES! FACING TWO MECHS WHEN YOU HAVE ONLY ONE ALLY BY YOUR SIDE IS TOTALLY REASONABLE!

[Caedmon.6798]

42 minutes ago, Jillian.4502 said:

@Josh Davis.7865are you guys seriously gonna ghost us for weeks now with a broken game until you fix it? Pvp is a mess right now. I'm questioning why I even bother logging in. 

In about 3 months their toilet cleaner will come up with a solution.

[cyberzombie.7348]

3 hours ago, Xae.7204 said:

1. Quickness was a mistake. It is way too powerful for one buff. As long as quickness is in the game the design of all builds will seek to maximize it. It is the uber-strat. Just delete Quickness.

The reduction of endurance generation is what originally kept the boon in check. While it was more powerful then, it came at a cost.

Edited June 30, 2022 by cyberzombie.7348

[Jillian.4502]

All being said, I appreciate the quickness in updates. I was expecting to be ghosted for a few weeks before there was anything at all to announce. So thank you for that. 

[JTGuevara.9018]

But seriously though, feedback is it? There here it is.

Can you FEED warrior BACK its functionality that it used to have? Never mind actual long-overdue improvements...

The banners would be a great start. For one, at the very least, how about some...ahem....SKILLS on them? If you please...

Edited July 1, 2022 by JTGuevara.9018
add

[DeceiverX.8361]

On 6/30/2022 at 4:01 PM, Xae.7204 said:

There are a some hard truths that need realizing here.

 

1. Quickness was a mistake. It is way too powerful for one buff. As long as quickness is in the game the design of all builds will seek to maximize it. It is the uber-strat. Just delete Quickness.

 

2. GW2's balance has been in a rough shape almost since release. Entire specs have been dominating the game for *years* on end and others have been useless for *years* on end.

 

3. ArenaNet is in denial about #2. A couple of 1-2% nerfs every 6 months are not going to dethrone 5year old meta builds. Nor will some 1-2% buffs suddenly make dead builds viable.

It wasn't a mistake when it wasn't sharable and wasn't a boon.

Almost like unique buffs weren't the problem and actually offered a significantly more consistent experience where numerically the classes could be balanced around choice of burst or sustained damage.

 

Boon duration as a readily-available stat and sweeping swaths of sharable offense-oriented boons are the mistake.  If all people could share was the rare clutch Aegis, Protection, and Stability used to keep someone alive from being stunlocked and killed off immediately, the skill expression for actually sharing and playing support goes up and professions can be balanced around their respective abilities moreover than assumptions about their peak performances when every powerful damage buff is stacked simultaneously from all the various professions.

Because the moment you start balancing around idealized scenarios highly dependent on specific configurations of players is the moment where any individual player's agency for decision-making is stripped, and trivializes the game into little more something that automates combat.

If the difficulty in high-tier PvE is supposed to be the mechanics and burn phases, the group support should not matter and the agency returned to individual players; someone who isn't buying into the group support concept is going to be just as uninformed and problematic to the rest of the squad as someone who doesn't know the mechanics and dies, anyways.

The AOE boon-based combat is BAD DESIGN.  It strips player autonomy and their ability to navigate new solutions for completion, because having such wildly inflated stat sticks for 9 other people will always provide superior solutions than new strategies, build concepts, and actual experimentation/learning the encounter's mechanics, and thus also reduces the ability for developers to make interesting and engaging gameplay.

[Loboling.5293]

Warrior Banners should come with a collection skill that grabs all banners in a 600 yard radius. The warrior skill bar doesn't change. When the warrior wants, he can reactivate the skill a third time to replace the banners on the ground. So basically, banners have 3 skills, drop, pickup all, and drop all. Then you can move them around easily, while maintaining your rotation.

[Ascency.3580]

On 6/30/2022 at 7:00 PM, Catilena.8729 said:

And on Catalyst, they took away our Quickness, and if we want it back it'll cost us 10% damage.

Itll at this point cost like 40% dmg. U have to invest 2 traits in order to be able to upkeep quickness now. So u loose 10% dmg from auras, 10% penalty for taking boon duration trait while loosing empowered empowerment so thats another about 10%, and u still need concentration to not drop quickness, unless u do a rotation that will not allow u to maximise grand finale and coresponding buff aplication. Throw in hammer skill nerfs on top.

[Rhingeim.3974]

I would really like to read a some sort of overall game design and profession balance strategy of GW2. What points and problems designers are trying to achieve through changes, are there any specs/professions that are planned to be changed according to global balance strategy, etc. 

 

Something like "We are trying to design each profession be capable of various playstyles favoring both complex rotations and LI newcomer-friendly, to be able to support groups with all/most boons etc."

 

This can help community to better understand the direction where GW2 is heading, and provide feedback with such points in mind. 

[Angesombre.4630]

We remove on the revenant ventari the alac with a rather high blow, and we leave on the basic guard with the elite Quickness. The golem engineer can put everything (alac, Quickness, barriere no worries) it does not pose any question whereas the envout was modified (sorry I did not test it again) the vindi nerf whereas it is not terrible in its gameplay it is already reduced its barriere, it puts only 3 buffs to the allies. It was better for him to play with Quickness rather than heralt, which deserved some improvements. If alac and Quickness were removed the game would be much easier to balance. 

And for the banner warrior, why not do something like the ventari tablet for the displaced? I don't know if it would be good, it's just an idea.

[ChasingDreams.3250]

Can't even get my friends to log on and join for some chill casual raid clears anymore, we've all passed 250kp on everything and it's basically the little joy we still found in the game. I have heard a lot of complaiting about the game before, justified and unjustified. But this time people are actually giving up and see no reason to log in. 

[ClawfingerPL.5263]

4 hours ago, ChasingDreams.3250 said:

Can't even get my friends to log on and join for some chill casual raid clears anymore, we've all passed 250kp on everything and it's basically the little joy we still found in the game. I have heard a lot of complaiting about the game before, justified and unjustified. But this time people are actually giving up and see no reason to log in. 

Yeah almost my whole guild quit and I am on a break myself. It's really sad

[mirage.8046]

adding alacrity and quickness really do not solve the problems for a viable spec (see herald and its DPS; tempest though has good support). also since the whole point of being a remotely viable support revolves around these two boons, it means the problem lies on these two sole boons. I'm not getting why quick cata needs a -10% damage reduction while firebrand and harbinger are able to dps plus provide quickness, and so can sneeze at cata any day of the week. 

Edited July 3, 2022 by Rusty.1362

[Ruisenior.6342]

4 hours ago, Rusty.1362 said:

adding alacrity and quickness really do not solve the problems for a viable spec (see herald and its DPS; tempest though has good support). also since the whole point of being a remotely viable support revolves around these two boons, it means the problem lies on these two sole boons. I'm not getting why quick cata needs a -10% damage reduction while firebrand and harbinger are able to dps plus provide quickness, and so can sneeze at cata any day of the week. 

   People still complaining but firebrand got plenty of nerfs too on every patch since eod kicked. I mean its one well rounded class but by any means they need to start nerfing it to the ground, just make others specs more relevant.

[Hauwlyn.8051]

On 7/4/2022 at 2:45 AM, Ruisenior.6342 said:

   People still complaining but firebrand got plenty of nerfs too on every patch since eod kicked. I mean its one well rounded class but by any means they need to start nerfing it to the ground, just make others specs more relevant.

The problem with firebrand isn't necessarily its output(at least on damage it's reasonable, heal is still overtuned on raw output), it's its raw utility. Guardians have access to plenty of good utility skills already, including the game-changing stability and aegis, and the firebrand tomes round that out extremely well for no additional cost whatsoever. You want to carry a PUG raid? Just master a quickbrand and help solve almost every crisis situation imaginable.

[Bookah pls.9352]

The fact it's taking them what appears to now be at least 2 weeks to come up with explanations on just what the hell they were thinking when they made the June 28 patch tells you even they didn't know what they were thinking.

[Obtena.7952]

On 7/3/2022 at 6:01 AM, ChasingDreams.3250 said:

Can't even get my friends to log on and join for some chill casual raid clears anymore, we've all passed 250kp on everything and it's basically the little joy we still found in the game. I have heard a lot of complaiting about the game before, justified and unjustified. But this time people are actually giving up and see no reason to log in. 

So getting 250kp on everything has NOTHING to do with why your friends don't log in? It's all about the changes? SURE. 

Don't confuse burn out for some other problem you see in the game. I mean, realistically, what actually changed that affected your friends willingness to log in for that 251st KP point in another raid they have done over a hundred times? 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Bookah pls.9352]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I mean, realistically, what actually changed that affected your friends willingness to log in for that 251st KP point in another raid they have done over a hundred times? 

I can't answer for the person you quoted or the people they are talking about but i can answer it for myself.

Meta wise? Almost nothing has actually changed and that's why i have no desire to log in anymore. It's still the same meta, only numerically worse.

[Obtena.7952]

4 hours ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

I can't answer for the person you quoted or the people they are talking about but i can answer it for myself.

Meta wise? Almost nothing has actually changed and that's why i have no desire to log in anymore. It's still the same meta, only numerically worse.

Right ... so that really doesn't have anything to do with THIS particular change. The fact is that ... you are just bored with the current gamestate. That's not unreasonable. That's expected. That's why we get new content. "New ways to play a class so players don't get bored" should not be what balance patches are for. 

[Jillian.4502]

Just a reminder, you guys: IT'S JULY 10th! ONLY TWENTY MORE DAYS BEFORE THEY ANNOUNCE ANY FIX! WE CAN DO IT!

[Kozumi.5816]

This game feels like someone's DnD campaign that only plays by himself because no one wants to play by the persons extremely biased rules.

Except you're forcing paying customers to pay for your biased DnD campaign that no one wants to play. Pfft.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Kozumi.5816