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

[Duglaive.5236]

38 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

The recent skill changes indicate that ANet no longer adheres to that philosophy. Differences between game modes can now be a matter of functionality.

I'm fairly uncertain that they adhere to anything any longer as it pertains to balance. 

Think about the effort that likely went into the June 28th patch , which was at least 5 months in the making ... And then the effort that went in to the entire fishing/skiff system, and now the effort being put into the Elder Dragon legendary skins. 

They obviously have priorities, and just as obviously balance is not on the top of that list. Much less adhering to any set philosophy of said balance. At this point it would seem the strategy being employed for balance is to toss out what takes the least effort and hope players don't lose their kitten over it ... Then act hurt and prickly when the playerbase does just that.

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

8 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

I've never heard anet saying their going to make specialised spells for pvp content??  Where's this?? 

They should , just like :

Guardians

Mantra of Solace: This skill now grants aegis instead of protection and resolution in PvP and WvW. (It was nerfed because of PvE and guardians could ivalidated Bosses attacks )

Or

Catalyst

Deploy Jade Sphere (Air): The default boon applied by the sphere while in air attunement has been changed from quickness to fury in PvE only. It still provides quickness by default in PvP and WvW

 

Spoiler

 

(Hopefully they should do something about dps meter (or classes like Ranger and not-loved-classes-for-so-long , should be the best dps , or  classes that have to stay for an extended time still amist the aoes (reward vs risk) .Max mid damage 20k , max end 30k

Or generally they dont have to worry about the high end (they will cheeze things) and they will whine about range dps).

edit: You know what ? put  an "timer" on furute strikes . If CM temple had a 10 min , people would graviadate toward the most fast-cheese spec, and tthey wouldnt whine about ranged blalala ,buff my meeleclass.

This could lead to more deaths and more wahcth time in Twitch , because they will always look at the dps meters...

Casual would be attracted to the Teapot , and they make fun of them for  not doddging simple-easy-readable things from their couch (less anxiety) , but they will feel bad for them after few days) .

Edit2:I feel bad for the girl that got hit so hard and flew towards Greenland

Or the "Cuphead" - "Mario Galaxy" is a better format , rather than the Raid-BOss -Chest + Ground-Spikes

 

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[foxof.8752]

Where are the full design notes for the June 28?

It is overdue and broken promises yet again.
 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

21 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

The recent skill changes indicate that ANet no longer adheres to that philosophy. Differences between game modes can now be a matter of functionality.

Has there been any functionality split between PvE and PvP/WvW with the recent changes? Doesn't seem that way to me. 

[Pyrial.2917]

On 6/30/2022 at 6:51 PM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

 

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).

 

 

Content writers, who have no background in a subject, can complete research and produce a 5k word content rich blog within 4-5 hours.  It's hard imagining that it takes this long to put together commentary, into written form, something that ultimately guided your design decisions. At least it should not take this long if this supposed philosophy is what has guided those decisions; it just doesn't pass the sniff test.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Pyrial.2917

[Lonesomechunk.4731]

I've been thinking about tempest alacrity since the change and I like it a lot, although I really hope Anet gives it some quality of life tweaks in the future. Having all the alacrity be granted at the  end of the overload means that if you accidentally interrupt your own overload or if you get knocked down you lose a TON of alacrity uptime and since it takes a few seconds before you can start up another overload it can be really painful in fights that are hectic, so I feel like having it pulse out its alacrity would probably work better, similar to how fire overload pulses out might and water overload pulses out healing, the range of the effect is pretty small too so it seems comparable to Renegade's orders from above if they were to make this quality of life tweak
(PS. please make staff cool again, I would love to see it being used more often in elementalist builds cuz its my favorite weapon ♥)

[SugarJohnson.4596]

Only PvE changes? Because it doesn’t matter if the game is broken in WvW and PvP for 4 more month? You are the worst ANet, seriously. 

[Sansar.1302]

In my opinion  Harbinger and Willbender needs a big nerf in WvW and minor nerf in sPvP

And Warrior needs some buffs, good place to start would be skills on banners you carry

 

 

Rest of classes and specs need some looking at too but this more of a long term thing for me  and excluding  the 3 classes mentioned its not half bad i think

Edited July 7, 2022 by Sansar.1302
bad spelling

[ixon.2496]

On 7/6/2022 at 5:12 PM, foxof.8752 said:

Where are the full design notes for the June 28?

It is overdue and broken promises yet again.
 

Friday now and still no sign of them

[Henrik.7560]

Like you guys claimed this would shake up the WvW meta but it hasn't done anything to the same 4 year old stale meta

You ignored broken things in small scale even like harbinger and the celestial stat, still no address to perma stealth either kekw

Apparently a well practised piano rotation on a glass build in PvE should do the same damage as someone literally afk pressing 1 on a mechanist

And the profession buffs, banner changes were straight up worse than before literally everyone is screaming it into your ears, why are we adding even more brainless boon spam into the game that's already full of it. 

And you are not even taking responsibility to your fellow dev taunting the community but instead defending him.

huge disappointment which has caused me and many others to lose the last glimpse of hope in the devs.

 

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

37 minutes ago, Henrik.7560 said:

You ignored broken things in small scale even like harbinger and the celestial stat, still no address to perma stealth either kekw

Hopefully they will do what Smite will do .

Based on the last night video , all modes exept Conquest will have a difference balance (02:39:00).

 

(can we "tidy our house faster" , and destroy LoL and Smite?...It get in my nerves when they move faster...)

Edited July 8, 2022 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[Karagee.6830]

On 6/30/2022 at 11:51 PM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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).

The week is almost over for you to make good on your promise and post the nonexistent design notes and philosophy behind the June 28 patch. Will you fall at the first hurdle, keep promising change and underdelivering or will you publish something today? I'm thrilled to find out.

Meanwhile I will stay uninstalled.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Henrik.7560]

https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity 

Someone linked this earlier, I will link it again because it clearly shows how screwed up the balance is right now. Worse than it's ever been infact.

Even when ele was dominant in DPS benchmarks it was never as popular as the 2021 FB/Scg stack or the current mechanist stack, because there were so many other viable options that didn't feel like being at a complete disadvantage to play.

 

The state of fractal balance in particular is the worst, and for some reason they continue to nerf power builds by removing the free precision gain on the potion, just because 20 out of tens of thousands of fractal players speed clear bosses using power builds. Power builds also heavily relied on banner/spotter which condi builds do not need! (or at least don't need nearly as much).

 

As someone who mained ele from 2014 to 2020, and was forced off my class because of how useless it became, makes me so sad to see the size of the red and yellow bars and nothing being done about it. I dont play warrior much except from bannerslave a few years ago but definitely feel their pain too.

[wetwillyhip.7254]

Are we going to forget that there are design notes that need to be posted by @Josh Davis.7865? Still waiting. 

[MarkBecks.6453]

Can someone please explain the Silent Scope change from 4 seconds to 1 second stealth, at this point I have taken deadeye and put it on the junk pile because this is a specialization for rifle deadeye, it has changed the survivability of DE in WvW to running away and spamming stealth only, so no more engaging the enemy, but rather trying to stay alive using speed buffs and invis to stay out of combat. I find this extremely drastic, as their was nothing mentioned in patch notes, and this concerns me that such a radical change should have an explanation and the reasons behind it. For the first time in many years, I haven't bothered doing anything more than logging on, doing dailies, then logging off, I will not waste hours and hours playing the game if I do not understand what is going on, when the other professions were so clearly explained and accepted by the community as necessary, and they were good changes that needed reworking, but this...still baffled

 

[anbujackson.9564]

1 hour ago, Henrik.7560 said:

https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity 

Someone linked this earlier, I will link it again because it clearly shows how screwed up the balance is right now. Worse than it's ever been infact.

Even when ele was dominant in DPS benchmarks it was never as popular as the 2021 FB/Scg stack or the current mechanist stack, because there were so many other viable options that didn't feel like being at a complete disadvantage to play.

 

The state of fractal balance in particular is the worst, and for some reason they continue to nerf power builds by removing the free precision gain on the potion, just because 20 out of tens of thousands of fractal players speed clear bosses using power builds. Power builds also heavily relied on banner/spotter which condi builds do not need! (or at least don't need nearly as much).

 

As someone who mained ele from 2014 to 2020, and was forced off my class because of how useless it became, makes me so sad to see the size of the red and yellow bars and nothing being done about it. I dont play warrior much except from bannerslave a few years ago but definitely feel their pain too.

I am actually surprised that warrior dropped so hard that its popularity in raids AND strikes and almost in fractals is now below elementalist. Holy moly.

[Karagee.6830]

14 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

I am actually surprised that warrior dropped so hard that its popularity in raids AND strikes and almost in fractals is now below elementalist. Holy moly.

Why would you be surprised? Warrior has no party utility, berserker played perfectly benches 32k and bladesworn damage is in a single skill with a long casting time (i.e. if you miss that or the boss phases your dps is going to plummet). And it's a fully melee class, if you discount the cringe longbow condition berserker build. When people said warriors were only taken for banners what did they think would happen once banners were gone?

[anbujackson.9564]

3 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Why would you be surprised? Warrior has no party utility, berserker played perfectly benches 32k and bladesworn damage is in a single skill with a long casting time (i.e. if you miss that or the boss phases your dps is going to plummet). And it's a fully melee class, if you discount the cringe longbow condition berserker build. When people said warriors were only taken for banners what did they think would happen once banners were gone?

Take it with a grain of salt, it was half sarcasm. Even now warriors state is excused by some because of BsW benchmark. Cant see how that bench helps apparently (for exactly the reasons you mentioned).

[Karagee.6830]

10 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Take it with a grain of salt, it was half sarcasm. Even now warriors state is excused by some because of BsW benchmark. Cant see how that bench helps apparently (for exactly the reasons you mentioned).

I did say on snowcrows discord that putting out that benchmark with 200k overkill damage wasn't going to help anyone, but hey, they said it couldn't be helped. I'm 99.9% sure that bladesworn is going to be one of the specs with the highest performance drop between golem benchmark and actual fights, but we won't see hard evidence of this with some statistical basis because melee and power classes are already at a disadvantage in many fights and nobody took them even before the further nerfs in the 28/6 patch

Edited July 8, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Esorono.1039]

2 hours ago, wetwillyhip.7254 said:

Are we going to forget that there are design notes that need to be posted by @Josh Davis.7865? Still waiting. 

Do we want it though? Do we really want this flame fanned? I say they drop the idea and focus on their plans on making bad professions better and what they are planning for clearly over performing specs.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

2 minutes ago, Esorono.1039 said:

Do we want it though? Do we really want this flame fanned? I say they drop the idea and focus on their plans on making bad professions better and what they are planning for clearly over performing specs.

I want it because the lack of commentary probably lead to this disaster. It is very easy to make a bad decision when you do not have to justify it.  Knowing you will have to justify your decisions might discourage haphazard balancing.

[Karagee.6830]

52 minutes ago, MarkBecks.6453 said:

Can someone please explain the Silent Scope change from 4 seconds to 1 second stealth, at this point I have taken deadeye and put it on the junk pile because this is a specialization for rifle deadeye, it has changed the survivability of DE in WvW to running away and spamming stealth only, so no more engaging the enemy, but rather trying to stay alive using speed buffs and invis to stay out of combat. I find this extremely drastic, as their was nothing mentioned in patch notes, and this concerns me that such a radical change should have an explanation and the reasons behind it. For the first time in many years, I haven't bothered doing anything more than logging on, doing dailies, then logging off, I will not waste hours and hours playing the game if I do not understand what is going on, when the other professions were so clearly explained and accepted by the community as necessary, and they were good changes that needed reworking, but this...still baffled

 

You know, I haven't been killed 1v1 by any thief spec in a long long time in wvw. Even the ones with max stacks of stat boosting sigils. The smart ones usually bail as soon as they get too low, but normally I let them take me to around 50% hp and don't heal so I can bait them to try again, so that I can kill them.

 

That said, I probably play a hard counter and I imagine there are plenty of others who don't think it's acceptable to have a class with permanent stealth which means almost 0 risk if played right. I mean, you won't win every fight, but you sure as hell can disengage and bail from practically every fight with very little trouble, so you can pick you battles unlike virtually every other profession.

[Karagee.6830]

9 minutes ago, Esorono.1039 said:

Do we want it though? Do we really want this flame fanned? I say they drop the idea and focus on their plans on making bad professions better and what they are planning for clearly over performing specs.

a) there was no reason to promise this if they couldn't deliver it

b) any normal person would think they had reasons when they thought and implemented changes for the 28/6 patch. We don't want to suggest they didn't know why they changed some stuff or they did know but the reason had nothing to do with balance do we? It stands to reason that putting thoughts on paper (unless they were already written down, as they should have been) should be extremely quick and easy to do

Personally I would be more reassured to have a note from the josh guy that they made personnel changes...

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

58 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

I did say on snowcrows discord that putting out that benchmark with 200k overkill damage wasn't going to help anyone, but hey, they said it couldn't be helped. I'm 99.9% sure that bladesworn is going to be one of the specs with the highest performance drop between golem benchmark and actual fights, but we won't see hard evidence of this with some statistical basis because melee and power classes are already at a disadvantage in many fights and nobody took them even before the further nerfs in the 28/6 patch

Turns out BSW does really well against stationary target golems that don't fight back and not much else.

[Karagee.6830]

28 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Turns out BSW does really well against stationary target golems that don't fight back and not much else.

I think bsw is probably ok in spvp, but when I saw Costa's bench I knew people were going to take the number without context or common sense. The next thing they will say is: well if you can't hit those numbers it's not because bsw is not good, it's top dps!!! it's you who are not good enough. Ignoring all the basic facts that sbould be considered alongside the benchmark number (which is debatable in itself because the number would be 2k lower if the golem wouldn't allow overkill damage).

And I get that for other bursty classes the benchmark is higly dependent of where the end of the log is in relation to the rotation burst, but most people simply can't go beyond the actual number.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Karagee.6830