Profession Balance: Next Steps and Preview of June 30 Balance Update

[Josh Davis.7865]

Hi all,

We’re back with an update regarding the June 28 balance changes and our next steps. In this post, we'll outline our plan for the next month and provide a preview of a small balance update coming later today. Our earlier forum post on this topic can be found here.

Today

In just a few hours we’ll be releasing a hotfix update that includes changes for the elementalist, engineer, revenant, and ranger. These changes are previewed at the bottom of this post. For context, hotfixes are ‘emergency updates’ that typically focus on addressing bugs, crashes, and exploits in the latest release. Because of the short dev time for hotfix releases (less than 24 hours from start to finish), they don’t go through the multi-week release process that we normally use to increase stability and quality. This means that today’s balance changes are smaller in scope and lower risk. We felt that it was appropriate to bend the rules a bit and make progress on your concerns, rather than wait for the next scheduled release.

Next Week

Last Monday, I mentioned that we’ll be drafting the design notes for the June 28 release. We’ve made some progress, but we chose to refocus our time on today’s hotfix and future planning. We’ll share the design commentary sometime next week (note: Monday is a holiday).

July 19

After today, our next opportunity to make changes will be the July 19 release. The build for this release is already “locked down” and moving through the pipeline, so we don’t have much time to make changes here. Our priority here will be to address Furious Burst, the warrior’s +5% critical hit chance trait that’s currently residing in the Arms specialization. We may make additional changes in this release as we continue to monitor game metrics and your feedback, but from a development ‘best practices’ standpoint, we’ll be focusing our attention on the following release.

August 2

As we mentioned earlier this week, we’ve added a follow-up balance update to our schedule on August 2. For that release, we'll be looking at addressing warrior banners and chronomancer’s relatively low damage output through chronomancer-specific traits and increasing the damage on core weapons (like the treatment ranger is getting today). Once we’ve released today’s hotfix we’ll move onto planning the details of this update.

October 4

The next major professions update is slated for October 4 (reminder that release dates are subject to change). A public preview of that update and its design goals will be given well in advance. As promised, prior to that release we’ll also share the long-term vision for Guild Wars 2 profession balance and how it applies to PvE, PvP, and WvW.

Wrapping Up

We (I, especially) learned a lot this week, and we’re actively discussing ways to prevent situations like this from happening again. Thank you for your patience and support.

Josh “Grouch” Davis
Game Director

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June 30, 2022 Hotfix Balance Updates

Elementalist

In the June 28 update, the Zephyr’s Speed trait was updated to grant +5% critical chance, but it was only active while the player is in Air Attunement. Staying in one attunement doesn’t match with the gameplay of the elementalist profession, so we’ve updated the trait to apply the critical chance increase in all attunements. The movement speed buff from Zephyr’s Speed still only applies while attuned to Air.

• Zephyr's Speed: The +5% critical hit chance applied by this trait is now active regardless of attunement. Note: The text description is not yet updated to match new functionality. This will be addressed in a future update.

Tempest

Tempest was given access to alacrity via the Lucid Singularity trait in the June 28 update. We’ve seen some interesting build experimentation since then, but we feel that the current base alacrity duration from the trait is too short to be fully effective. We’re increasing it slightly today, and we’ll keep an eye on it for further adjustments.

• Lucid Singularity: Increased the duration of alacrity applied by this trait from 6 seconds to 7 seconds.

Engineer

With the updates to rifle and Aim Assisted Rocket, we wanted to increase viability of power mechanist builds by building synergy between Aim Assisted Rocket and Mech Arms: Jade Cannons. We overshot here. Since the mech also gains the benefit of the Aim-Assisted Rocket trait, it is adding a large amount of passive damage that does not require direct player input and has caused the mech pet to deal more damage than we’d like. We plan on making further specific adjustments to Aim Assisted Rocket in our August 2 update, but before then we’re making some quick corrections by reducing the damage output of the pet’s auto-attacks, particularly with Jade Cannons. We’re also reducing the range of the rifle ability Jump Shot to keep enterprising engineers from going places where they don’t belong.

Rifle

•  Jump Shot's range has been reduced from 900 to 800.

Mechanist

• Mech Arms: Jade Cannons: Damage multiplier reduced from 0.6 to 0.35 in PvE and from 0.28 to 0.2 in PvP and WvW.
• Mech Arms: Single-Edged Cutters: Damage multiplier reduced from 0.6 to 0.45 in PvE. The damage multiplier of the final strike has been reduced from 1.2 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Mech Arms: High-Impact Drivers: Damage multiplier reduced from 0.6 to 0.45 in PvE. The damage multiplier of the final strike has been reduced from 1.2 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Jade Dynamo: The quickness applied by this trait has been reduced from 4 seconds to 2.5 seconds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. Fixed a bug that caused the Mech Command skill cooldown reduction to not apply in PvP.

Ranger

Soulbeast's damage output previously relied on lining up a burst window while the skills “Sic ’Em!” and One Wolf Pack were active, paired with the damage from the off-hand axe skill Whirling Defense. Outside of this, soulbeasts have low sustained damage. This created a high skill floor for playing the specialization effectively, making it difficult to create strong baseline performance for players who did not execute on or were not aware of the mechanics to produce this damage window.

In the June 28 patch, One Wolf Pack was changed to have a lower but more consistent impact on damage output. As a result, soulbeast power damage builds have significantly dropped in performance.

Now that the obfuscating factor of this burst window has been reduced, there is a lot of room to improve damage on core ranger weapons that soulbeast (and core ranger) can use. These will improve sustained damage in normal ranger play and give options that can help nudge soulbeast builds closer to high-end viability.

Longbow

• Long Range Shot: Increased damage multiplier from 0.7-0.9 to 0.9-1.1 in PvE only.

Greatsword

• Slash: Increased damage multiplier from 0.64 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Enduring Swing: Increased damage multiplier from 1.3 to 1.4 in PvE only.

Short Bow

• Crossfire: Increased damage multiplier from 0.4 to 0.5 in PvE only. Bleed duration when not flanking increased from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds in PvE only.
• Poison Volley: Damage multiplier per hit increased from 0.25 to 0.3 in PvE only.

Axe (Main Hand)

• Ricochet: Damage multiplier increased from 0.8 to 0.9 in PvE only.
• Splitblade: Damage multiplier per hit increased from 0.1 to 0.5 in PvE only.
• Winter's Bite: Damage multiplier increased from 1.25 to 1.8 in PvE only.

Sword

• Slash: Damage multiplier increased from 0.7 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Crippling Thrust: Damage multiplier increased from 0.7 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Precision Swipe: Damage multiplier increased from 0.96 to 1.4 in PvE only.
• Monarch's Leap: Damage multiplier increased from 1.25 to 1.8 in PvE only.
• Serpent's Strike: Damage multiplier increased from 0.8 to 1.5 in PvE only.

Dagger (Off Hand)

• Crippling Talon: Damage multiplier increased from 0.75 to 0.9 in PvE only.

Soulbeast

Dagger (Main Hand)

• Double Arc: Damage multiplier increased from 0.5 to 0.8 in PvE only.

Revenant

Invocation

We’ve added the missing +5% critical hit chance via traits in PvE.

• Roiling Mists: Increased the critical hit chance applied by this trait from +20% to +25% in PvE only.

Herald

The June 28 update introduced a source of group quickness to herald via the Draconic Echo trait, but the skill rotation is very tight and has little room for error, which can result in reduced uptime on quickness. We’re increasing the duration of quickness applied by Draconic Echo to improve build viability here.

• Draconic Echo: Increased the quickness duration applied by this trait from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds in PvE only.

[Alakazarm.1847]

sick

[Sollunad.9780]

good changes and I say that as an engineer main

[GingerMeTimbers.7045]

Please get to fixing the Nature Spirit healing priority. It will no longer heal smaller spirits if ANY full health players are nearby. Why are full health players taking healing priority now?

Edited June 30, 2022 by GingerMeTimbers.7045

[Antina.5973]

Cool, that's a good start.

PS: please don't forget to address the epilepsy-triggering animation flashes on mecha https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/vnqeuz/epilepsy_and_seizure_warning_mechanist_animation/

Edited June 30, 2022 by Antina.5973

[TheBossVeigar.1306]

9 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Lucid Singularity: Increased the duration of alacrity applied by this trait from 6 seconds to 7 seconds. 

If I may make a suggestion, I think it'd be nice if after the overload finished casting, alacrity pulses for the remainder of the overload's ground aoe. I think this would help alacrity Tempest be more useable.

 

Very good to see a follow-up and some changes. It's appreciated, thank you.

Edited June 30, 2022 by TheBossVeigar.1306

[Naxx.6203]

Great follow-up! Good to see even some minor adjustments!

[Sweet Potato.3148]

Please remove the flashing animation for aim assisted rockets that's hurting everyone's eyes and is generally hazardous to people's health. Multiple people have reported this issue and ANet has yet to make a statement. Please take accessibility seriously. 

[Sjentra.3409]

Props for actually following through with what you said.

I do wish your turn around time was a little faster though.

[Grimjack.8130]

LF Emergency Balance for PvP and WvW!!!

[mindcircus.1506]

Impressed with the quick iteration here.
Very impressed.

[ArjukKagrim.6049]

I appreaciate many things here like adressing some ranger issues. Also pmech is obviously too strong right now. But why has catalyst to stay dead?

[delaydackel.3219]

Awesome!
Anet showing that they KNOW, and DO!

If this is the direction the game is headed, i wholehearedly approve.

[mirage.8046]

I can live with these changes. Thanks guys.

[SStelter.4712]

So this all PvE changes? Are PvPers stuck with Willbenders and Mechs until October?

[Awesumness.1823]

Quote

As we mentioned earlier this week, we’ve added a follow-up balance update to our schedule for August 2. For that release, we'll be looking at addressing warrior banners and chronomancer’s relatively low damage output through chronomancer-specific traits and increasing the damage on core weapons (like the treatment ranger is getting today). Once we’ve released today’s hotfix we’ll move onto planning the details of this update. 

 

Please include reasoning (in either next weeks notes or Aug notes) for putting the extra 5% crit in Virtuoso traits instead of Dueling, where Chrono could access it as well!

[Narcin Roc.3018]

Sad to see that some of the under-performing support builds created with this patch are being addressed, but warrior and mesmer have to wait.

[Ragnarox.9601]

Fix the zhaitan collection bug, 3 days and no fixes. 

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

Great stuff, I can't wait for the overview of the balance philosophy and the conversation with Cameron. I hope once the balance philosophy is laid out it will end the preferential and personal whims (mechanist, firebrand, etc) to some of the recent changes in the game.

Edited June 30, 2022 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[Razor.9305]

Thank you for making these changes so quickly, this was definitely worth somewhat of a hotfix.

Since you likely read my comment about Herald's quickness I want to make a comment on the changes:

2 seconds instead of 1.5 helps a lot, but it does not actually make a difference in the skill usage - it simply gives a bit more quickness. The real problem was increasing the cooldowns. 15 second (12 with alacrity) recharges does not align well with 10 second legend swaps and players will still be forced to stay in one stance for 14-15 seconds even if the quickness output is higher.

Appreciate that you are iterating on it nonetheless!

Edited June 30, 2022 by Razor.9305

[Note.7139]

Thank you for being this quick to attend to the community requests, still waiting for your profession balance philosophy ;)

[Nightrise.8937]

will tempest get some dps buffs anytime soon :)??? also maybe staff buffs please?? ❤️

[Schyloe.2953]

22 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Draconic Echo: Increased the quickness duration applied by this trait from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds in PvE only. 

Honestly I don't think 0.5 more seconds will be enough. 4 seconds of quickness on 100% boon duration is not a lot especially since the quickness is on Glint and I don't think people want to camp Glint and spam every utility skill forever.  Honestly I think 4 seconds would be okay. 

[Pelda.1896]

i think u have typo in soulbeast dagger main hand (i ment the skill discription, there is copypast of what is said in dagger ofhand)

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Pelda.1896
missunderstanding/missleading

[zealex.9410]

A great qol for chrono that you can do on top of chrono specific trait buffs is move the 5% crit from virt to the dueling trait line.