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

[ErisianMoon.1740]

2 minutes ago, xavios.3601 said:

Let's not act like this hasn't been a pattern. 
Backstab has nerfed by about 40% minimum, due to players with the situational awareness of a baked potato. Stealth, without using utility skills or full on depleting Initiative with Heartseeker in a smoke field, was 2-4 seconds, depending if you had SA. But of course, that's beyond so many people. 

 

Bulwark Gyro is no longer a personal defensive utility skill. Again, cause of players with the game sense of a baked potato. Literally just hit the gyro for free. All anyone had to do.

Oh I know, it's just getting more and more obvious and by now it's getting too much for me.
Another example would have been the mantra change on firebrand where you had to pay attention to not blow the 3rd charge unintentionally instead the simple ammo count it is now.
 

[FalsePromises.6398]

Please please please just abandon this notion of "overloads grant alacrity". It's not going to turn out well unless it's strong enough for permanent upkeep with little to no boon duration investment and no attunement swapping. It's already bad enough tempests can't apply alacrity immediately on combat-start like most successful quick/alac builds can, but only after a massive windup attack that can be easily interrupted? Attached to a long cooldown, high telegraph, high cast time skill instead of streamlined into the class's thematic identities? Obnoxious. 

Just make a minor or non-grandmaster trait that makes auras grant alacrity so that not only do your shouts and aura skills have more meaning and water line gets a unique synergy with aurashare, but also so you're not screwing yourself by not being able to run neither the dps nor the support grandmaster options (Transcendent Tempest and Elemental Bastion, respectively). I may not be a hardcore tempest main but even I know that giving up either of those grandmasters is rather off-putting for both alacdps and alacheal. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by FalsePromises.6398

[Xtrem.4931]

So, you add 5% crit chance on "Rolling Mist" , a trait in the same line of  the mandatory "Charged Mists" , ¿you didn't learned anything  about where you added the 5% crit chance on the warrior?

As Main revenant my class is death and there is no any point to play it anymore, our full damage builds can't even reach the damage of the supports Qfb or the Alac Untamed.

We only get nerf after nerf, just delete the class already please. Is very sadge see how the entire class has been destroyed

Edited July 1, 2022 by Xtrem.4931

[xavios.3601]

5 minutes ago, ErisianMoon.1740 said:

Oh I know, it's just getting more and more obvious and by now it's getting too much for me.
Another example would have been the mantra change on firebrand where you had to pay attention to not blow the 3rd charge unintentionally instead the simple ammo count it is now.
 

Yep. Such is why I haven't done any raiding or PVP of any kind, since about halfway into HoT. Even PoF introduced alot of power creep for some classes, and it's now being coupled with dilution of any semblance of "skilled play" for some builds. 

I wasn't a fan of rotating 3 kits and normal weapon abilities for condi engineer, but I realized that that was the price to pay for getting all the DPS I could out of condi Engi. It was up to me to decide whether I wanted to do the rotation or lose DPS. I chose to do the rotation. Alot of people want to have the simplicity of LI builds, with the relative DPS of lower-performing, more involved rotations. Thus, here we are.

Edited July 1, 2022 by xavios.3601

[Razor.9305]

55 minutes ago, Schyloe.2953 said:

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. 

4 seconds baseline would mean you could play the most dps-focused rotation (4 facet activations per 20 seconds) and still almost do 100% quickness uptime, that's probably not how it should be. I know 2 seconds does not sound like a lot, but there are 6 facets after all.

[Osmose.5893]

I appreciate the swift changes and I'm looking forward to the full explanation of the balance patch next week, however, while I understand that any changes and tweaks with numbers have to be incremental to assess progress, the changes to Herald and Tempest are still too conservative.

 

Tempest: The reality is that Alacrity on Tempest only really works as a support and with 100% Boon Duration. Even then, due to movement and needing to complete an overload before generating alacrity, it's still not anywhere near the ease it takes to upkeep boons on classes such as Firebrand, Druid and Mechanist. This change also does barely anything for a DPS Tempest, that struggles to maintain any decent form of Alacrity with Boon Duration less than 60%, which also happens to tank your DPS and ruin the flow of your rotation due to extra overloads being needed.

 

Herald: Simply put, mashing your facets isn't fun. Needing to play whack-a-mole with your facets in order to generate quickness takes away any form of class identity that Herald previously had. Rather than upkeeping your facets tactically and choosing what boons to provide while managing your energy, they only now act as a vehicle for quickness. Also, good luck doing anything but camping Glint, even with these updates to the quickness duration. Being locked out of Glint on legend swap when you need to heal and saying bye-bye to your boons just isn't fun, especially when there are a couple of classes who don't have to compromise in the same way while also having on-hand access to so much more utility. Similarly to Tempest, this doesn't particularly do anything for DPS Boon Herald either, because the boon duration needing to be competitive with quickness tanks your DPS to the point that...why not just take the *better* quickness sources?

 

While I'm glad to see you making changes and responding to urgent issues and also planning for issues in the future, we had the very same issues with Scrapper when quickness was introduced to it via the class rework, that I was surprised to see the exact same mistakes being made over again. I understand that feature changes can be tempremental and need to be assessed on a play-by-play basis, but I hope for the players of these two specs (and the other specs that I haven't mentioned that haven't recieved the changes that they need yet) that they aren't waiting patch, after patch, after patch, after patch, to fix mistakes that probably should have been avoided in the first place.

 

Thank you for being open to feedback.

 

[Donari.5237]

33 minutes ago, Stallic.2397 said:

There's a bug with Ele and the Air Traitline. It still only provides 5% crit chance additive in Air. 

 

Whereas the Alacrity change from 6 to 7 seconds actually went into effect. 

 

So just a heads up. Zephyr's Speed Trait is bugged

The hotfix hasn't happened yet, I think?  At least, the OP was about an hour ago and said the fix would be pushed out in a few hours.  I just opened the launcher for the first time today and there's no patch, though maybe in a hotfix there wouldn't be.a loaded patch.  And it's odd that you're seeing the Alac change if it's not been pushed.  /ponder

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

1 hour ago, Alakazarm.1847 said:

sick

🤢🤮

[coro.3176]

Thanks for the continued updates.

One thing that rubs me the wrong way is that some bugs and issues can clearly be fixed within DAYS (eg. Rifle flashing, Rifle jump distance, weapon damage numbers), but other bugs and issues don't get the same attention (eg. Engineer pistol has been buggy - animation takes 66% longer than it should, misfiring skills, etc.) for YEARS on end.

It's demoralizing to think that the next real patch is going to likely come 4 MONTHS down the road and honestly probably won't even touch many outstanding issues.

But I don't want to end on a sour note. Let's cheer up with some smooth pop. This one goes out to the balance team:

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by coro.3176

[AliamRationem.5172]

Catalyst?  Weaver?  We're at almost 0% class representation.  What year do you suppose you'll do something about that?

[knuckles.9706]

21 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

One thing that rubs me the wrong way is ..

 

"One thing that bugs me is... "

fixed that for you 😁

Edited July 1, 2022 by knuckles.9706

[digitalruse.9085]

1 hour ago, Schyloe.2953 said:

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. 

 

Rev is all about energy management; moreover burning it and flipping legends, not camping in them. Nothing about this trait works with that mechanic or philosophy. Whatever trait this gets tied too, I would recommend making it like Forceful Persistence that the amount of Quickness a Herald pumps out is tied to upkeep. This makes how much comes out when in Glint optimal, but if you switch to Shiro, Jalis, Mallyx, or Ventari their upkeep can sustain it until you flip back.

EDIT: As far as the crit chance being added, I think that needs to be put on a minor trait in invocation instead. No sense Rev losing out on this cause Rolling Mists and Charged Mists are already in stiff competition and crit is always needed when making up for class specific changes.

Edited July 1, 2022 by digitalruse.9085
Clarity on first paragraph and for some reason my first edit with the additional items about crit didn't save.

[Loboling.5293]

I really appreciate the openness and update. I think there's still a lot to address, but I think from a PvE perspective, this helps a lot to address some of the usefulness of the new changes.

I still think quickness for consume skills on herald is too low. But I'd go a different route.

I'd change it to give quickness based on your energy drain. So that way, you get a ton of quickness keeping your facets on (more than you need), and rewarded for using your skills at the right time. Then, you can also profession swap and get a bit of quickness to tide you over until your next swap.

Although herald has the highest capacity for energy drain, all legends have at least 1 skill for this. So it would feel more versatile, reward good play, and be overall more interesting within the profession. 

PS: I hear the new warrior skill is bugged, and their quickness on banner use is a bit too low.

[Dualumina.1760]

Fast response time. Very much appreciated and approved of.

[Oraxis.9705]

A good start, but you need to address Warrior in your upcoming patches and fixes because you absolutely shredded it. The ranger weapon changes should be game wide, not limited to PvE, to make up for the fact that you gutted OWP when frankly ranger didn't need a nerf. Good changes for engi, though I worry the autoattack speed needs to be reduced (I say this as an engi main). And In the future you need to take the nerf bat to Firebrand. If you won't get rid of the dev who can't be named, put some solid supervision over them because this balance patch shows that it has been sorely lacking.

[X T D.6458]

I really like the Engi rifle changes from the update, very fun to use now. I especially appreciate that it now has so much synergy with traits. 

 

I tried to theory craft a Catalyst build but just could not find one that worked for me and the damage was just not there with hammer. I went back to Tempest and would like to use the new Lucid Singularity trait but still need Elemental Bastion and auras for sustain. I like that the 5% crit chance increase will now apply to all attunements because now after the update Fury basically gives an extra 10% if traited in air for Ele's. This leaves a little extra room for stat tweaking and I was able to experiment with different rune sets for more flexibility. 

 

As far as Ranger goes, I think Longbow skills need to pierce by default and the range reduced back to 1200 (or maybe just in WvW), so we don't have to trait into Marksmanship specifically for that ability.

[JTGuevara.9018]

46 minutes ago, Barraind.7324 said:

 

Meanwhile, Bladesworn is already back to benching 38.6k (the top power build currently).

Warrior just needs banners to not be mechanically garbage.

 

 

Because, you know....warrior as a class is not suffering from ANY problems as a whole...melee damage nerfs, sustain nerfs, weapon nerfs...

You raiders need to STOP ruining this class

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

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.

Contrary to popular opinion, firebrand does seem to have eaten a significant damage nerf that's gone under the radar. Damage across the board does seem to have dropped, but pure damage firebrand seems to have dropped to around 30k, with a corresponding drop to condi quickness firebrand. Part of it is direct nerf, part of it is that it turned out that condi firebrand benefited more from Sun Spirit than most professions.

I suspect that's an interaction the balancer didn't consider, though.

 

1 hour ago, Schyloe.2953 said:

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. 

Herald would also need a significant DPS buff to be competitive, given that it isn't also a healer, and needing to consume facets almost immediately for quickness reduces how much it can maintain other boons. Quickness herald seems to be benching around 20k - in the current environment, it'd probably need around 25k to be competitive.

[Donari.5237]

The patch just hit.

[draxynnic.3719]

19 minutes ago, Razor.9305 said:

4 seconds baseline would mean you could play the most dps-focused rotation (4 facet activations per 20 seconds) and still almost do 100% quickness uptime, that's probably not how it should be. I know 2 seconds does not sound like a lot, but there are 6 facets after all.

Pure DPS herald is still only managing about 25k DPS from what I'm hearing, so they could do this and the effect would be "oh, hey, on par with other quickness-DPS builds now".

Part of the problem is just how bad herald damage is to begin with in raid situations. You could literally allow herald to provide full DPS with full Quickness and it would still merely be roughly on par DPS-wise to other options.

[Jillian.4502]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

 

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.

There has been many suggestions from the Tempest players to make this trait more viable. INCREASING THE BASE DURATION OF ALAC BY 1 SECOND was not one of them. Does anyone even read the forums anymore?

[Stallic.2397]

28 minutes ago, Donari.5237 said:

The hotfix hasn't happened yet, I think?  At least, the OP was about an hour ago and said the fix would be pushed out in a few hours.  I just opened the launcher for the first time today and there's no patch, though maybe in a hotfix there wouldn't be.a loaded patch.  And it's odd that you're seeing the Alac change if it's not been pushed.  /ponder

 

Oh I think you're right. I can see the change now

 

...I have no idea why the Alacrity was showing the way it was before though... I was in Pvp when I looked at it. It said 7 sec. But now it says 8. So maybe I missed something before 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Stallic.2397

[Atticus.7194]

Great changes and hats off to living up to your promise of quick iteration but any chance you can take a look at warrior banners cause ya know they're extraordinarily undertuned. 

[Thundabolt.8541]

For goodness sake, put Rifle Leap's animation back to the way it was before, it genuinely looks ridiculous now.

[artio.6807]

Ok. Good start.

But remember, Josh: we won't forget. Keep your promises.