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

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

2 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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

----

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.

The Herald changes are a start to making it better, but the CD increases on the Facets need to get reverted. The rotation is still way too Alacrity dependent and Herald STILL has some of THE WORST DPS in the entire game. These changes are not going to allow it to compete as a "powerquick hybrid support" at all. Herald NEEDS significantly more DPS (and so does Vindicator while we're at it). You say Chronomancer needs more damage and are working on fixing that, yet it's still doing more damage than Herald has done for the last 7 years even in its current state. Please make this a priority to fix.

Edited July 1, 2022 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[DeltaQQ.2178]

Hi,

I'm not experienced enough to add anything constructive to the class specifics but I wanted to say that I love the transparency & open communication.

Keep up the good work!

[ToeJammin.7893]

13 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Staying in one attunement doesn’t match with the gameplay of the elementalist profession,

Nice, Know that they understand core ele, maybe next year they will start to grasp tempest. HELL maybe even weaver in 3 or 4 years

All jokes aside, the 5% crit chance just seems like a slap in the face when hammer is still plagued with bugs that make it incredibly frustrating to play. Orbs will still get stripped anytime they hit Invuln targets or a projectile barrier, or even sometimes when the orb is blocked. Theres a campfire with a pot on it in Battle of champions dusk that will occasionally eat orbs ( The pot  also has a hit box, can be hit to chain mele attacks, as well as take up  a target for aoe spells). Grand finale will sometimes remain on the bar after being cast, preventing you from generating new orbs until you cast GF again after its CD. Its really frustrating to see nerf after nerf for a class thats core mechanic completely breaks in ANY fight where theres invuln targets, projectile walls, or random hungry terrain thats looking to eat some orbs 

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by ToeJammin.7893
Lets be real, no one reads these, or the posts itself

[chronometria.3708]

I dropped one wolf pack and replaced it with strength of the pack. In its current state, especially untraited, it just does nothing....and damage is all it offers. I welcome the weapon buffs, but OWP went from viable to complete junk and now needs a redesign.  Its so bad that it may as well have a 30 seconds refresh time rather than a full minute...and even then i wouldnt use it.

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

37 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

pure damage firebrand seems to have dropped to around 30k, with a corresponding drop to condi quickness firebrand.

Must be so hard for Firebrand mains

*cries in 30k dps no utility daredevil*

Edited July 1, 2022 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[Kain Francois.4328]

Hiya, small request to Engineer:

- Can you please fix the recoil animation on Rifle Auto? (As many of you on the team are probably aware by now.)
- And if possible, a slight aftercast?

While I LOVE the concept of the change, it does feel a bit overturned to the point of looking like a bug. 

A machine gun is something I've wanted in GW2 for a long time, and the rifle rework directly fills that niche. But even machine guns have limited ammo capacity. Perhaps Rifle auto isn't the place for something like this. But it would be neat as a future elite skill. (Suggestion: Supply Drop allows us to "overcharge" our weapons? Or perhaps a Grandmaster Trait in Firearms?)

Edited July 1, 2022 by Kain Francois.4328

[Kuma.1503]

This is a good first step. 

There are some other issues that weren't addressed here. Catalyst was overcorrected in the last patch. The 10% damage reduction was unecessary taking into account the other nerfs the class recieved. Not giving quickness on sphere and missing out on damage from taking Empowered empowerment is enough of a trade-off. The trait does not need a third trade-off. 

Reducing damage on Power Mech. This was expected. This definitely tones down their dps output considerably. I'm glad you went down the route of nerfing mech and not nerfing rifle in this instance.

[Edit]: Rifle has been stealth nerfed.

Aside from the jump shot change which is am a tad confused about. Not upset, just confused as to the purpose of bringing it up to 900 and back down to 800. 

As far as Aim Assisted Rocket goes, all I would say is to avoid overcorrection. Mech definitely took things too far, but there's more to the Engineer class than Mechanist. Holo and Scrapper are lagging behind other dps classes such as Willbender, Virtuoso, Harbinger, and even Berserker, It may be more appropriate to bring Explosive Temper up in line with A-AR than bring A-AR down. 

Most power classes are reaching into the 38-41k dps range, and Holosmith is still sitting at 37k. 

Power Scrapper is also underperforming currently as it struggles to find a slot over Qfb or Harbinger. Both of which can also give quickness without needing to sacrifice their entire utility bar to do it. Impact Savant nerf also hit it quite hard. The durability trade-off which previously compensated them for their low dps is no longer present. 

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Kuma.1503
Sneaky Anet

[SoraLink.5749]

None of these changes do much to fix any of the problems of the balance patch. Everything you added means nothing as the classes are still shafted by tuesday nerfs. Telling warriors to wait over a month is unacceptable. This is utterly ridiculous. You have killed any support this game was having since EoD. This is a slap in the face. its nice you are still communicating, but its communicating the worst info as possible. You need a real balance team that knows what they are doing.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/voo4tr/thanks_for_the_hotfix_i_guess/

[draxynnic.3719]

12 minutes ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

Must be so hard for Firebrand mains

*cries in 30k dps no utility daredevil*

It pretty much kills condition firebrand as a pure DPS option. Sure, daredevil having insufficient DPS isn't good either, but two wrongs don't make a right.

It's probably not healthy for condition willbender either, but I haven't seen the numbers on that yet.

Edited July 1, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[SoraLink.5749]

this should be all hands on deck to fix this patch, not "wait a few more months and it will be fixed" we waited months for this patch and look how that turned out.

[Jski.6180]

It seems mostly nice but most tempest wanted alacrity before and after the overload not realty a duration problem just an risk reward problem (maybe an time issues but still worth pointing out).

I see no gurd nerfs and realty we are at the point of the game where we need them every update to even hope other classes can play at the same level.

[TexZero.7910]

4 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

It seems mostly nice but most tempest wanted alacrity before and after the overload not realty a duration problem just an risk reward problem (maybe an time issues but still worth pointing out).

I see no gurd nerfs and realty we are at the point of the game where we need them every update to even hope other classes can play at the same level.

Or and i know this is crazy talk but we could not kneecap guard and actually focus on bringing others up.

 

You know the opposite of what this forum loves to do.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

It seems mostly nice but most tempest wanted alacrity before and after the overload not realty a duration problem just an risk reward problem (maybe an time issues but still worth pointing out).

I see no gurd nerfs and realty we are at the point of the game where we need them every update to even hope other classes can play at the same level.

You didn't look. They had their burning trait reduced from 15% to 10%, and in 10-man, they had an indirect nerf through the loss of extra burning from Sun Spirit. It seems to add up to a surprisingly large drop in DPS.

[Seremela the Elf Mage.1748]

1 hour ago, Xyonon.3987 said:

Please consider consulting experienced players for individual balance of specific specs. I'm sure we're all eager to provide whatever you need within minutes of dming us on Discord! 🙂

Thanks for trying to fix everything - besides is there anything planned to help Holo a bit too?

That is exactly what got us this patch in the first place. Backroom conversations with cherry picked individuals. If they want class feedback, their own forums would be a great place. Anyone can post their thoughts and feelings on class gameplay, devs have a constant stream of feedback on painpoints, ITS PUBLIC, and there wouldn't be a debate on what qualifies for experience (per game mode? What kind of content you run? What skill level? Etc)

[Xyonon.3987]

1 minute ago, Seremela the Elf Mage.1748 said:

That is exactly what got us this patch in the first place. Backroom conversations with cherry picked individuals. If they want class feedback, their own forums would be a great place. Anyone can post their thoughts and feelings on class gameplay, devs have a constant stream of feedback on painpoints, ITS PUBLIC, and there wouldn't be a debate on what qualifies for experience (per game mode? What kind of content you run? What skill level? Etc)

 

I couldn't disagree more. I do not want to invalidate the opinion of the individual however the way to get to desired results is better understood by experienced players than the whole community. "Backgroom conversations" as you call them were not what caused all this - in fact this has been caused because there wasn't enough communication in prior towards us as a community.

 

Feedback / opinions / feelings should be taken by the whole community - ideas how to reach those goals by experienced players that work with devs for the community goal.

[Delita Silverburg.8632]

The comments at the top of the Soulbeast section hurt my soul. It really just reads as "People didn't read their tooltips so we dumbed everything down." I'm disappointed that being rewarded for playing well is being stripped from the game left and right in favor of things like auto attacking on a single weapon for top dps. I get that they are "nerfing" mechanist back down a bit, but I really need to see the design philosophy to determine if this game is still worth investing the time I currently do into it or not.

[LadyKitty.6120]

Something Kitty would like to see addressed simply to make Quickness actually somewhat useable on Warrior: please swap traits in Tactics around so that Vigorous Shouts and Martial Cadence wouldn't be mutually exclusive by both being Grandmaster traits. One possible way to do that is to move "Shrug It Off" to Adept, Vigorous Shouts to Master and Soldier's Comfort to Grandmaster (for choice of Quickness or heals on Soldier's Focus trigger) and adjusting them accordingly. Or just "Shrug It Off" to Grandmaster and Vigorous Shouts to Master.

And Kitty also had bunch of suggestions as someone who's tested all kinds of builds (including most weapons not in use atm) in instanced content, open-world and at golem. These address the weapons that aren't improved now (thanks for addressing some on this patch!) and aren't being used in PVE by any experienced player except when memeing due to being noticeably weaker than their alternatives. Some of these also allow new build options without causing issues with currently used ones. You're already doing some changes to some weapons on this hotfix so Kitty won't give any suggestions to those before testing them out.
Since these aremostly weapon-based change suggestions, they allow doing larger-scale adjustments with most used weapons if a profession as whole requires changes.

For some weapon-related and trait changes (PVE-perspective)...

Warrior
Main-Hand Mace (to improve it's Confusion-capability while allowing power/confusion hybrid builds)
-Auto-attack sequence: Reduce the cast time of the sequence from 2.9s to 2.1s.
-Mace Smash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.0.
-Mace Bash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.0.
-Pommel Bash: Add 3 stacks of Confusion for 4s. (to match "hit to head causes confusion" as with zerker mace burst)
-Primal Burst Skull Grinder: Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 1.8.
Off-Hand Mace (improve role as power weapon with some CC)
-Crushing Blow: Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 2.2.
-Tremor: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.2.

Off-Hand Sword (to make sword+sword/torch dualist-type build useable though still weaker option)
-Impale: Increase damage multiplier from 0.5 to 1.0.
-Rip: Add 5 stacks of Bleeding for 6s.

Main-Hand Dagger (to make daggers slightly more competitive with axe in PVE)
-Aura Slicer: Increase damage multiplier from 1.2 to 1.32.
Off-Hand Dagger
-Bladestorm: Increase damage multiplier from 2.45 to 2.8. (currently hardly outdamages auto-attacking while being the "ulti")

Hammer
-Currently suffers from exact same issues as Untamed's hammer, being a very similar weapon. When you figure out how to fix Untamed, you can apply many of same stuffs to Warrior's Hammer as well. Auto-attacks currently hit the same as Necromancer's dagger. (which also needs some fixing as skills aren't worth using over auto-attacks on Necromancer's main-hand dagger.)
-Hammer Swing: Increase damage multiplier from 0.9 to 1.1.
-Hammer Bash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.9 to 1.1.
-Hammer Smash: Increase damage multiplier from 1.2 to 1.5.
-Hammer Shock: Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.25.
-Burst Earth Shaker: Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.5. (for comparison, Axe's Burst "Eviscerate" has 2.0/2.5/3.0 while being faster and a lot easier to use)
-Primal Burst Rupturing Smash Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 2.2. (Decapitate has 2.5, for comparison, and Rupturing Smash isn't spammable like that and only has 1s Daze and 2s Immob and being AoE as advantages and this change would bring Rupturing Smash to about same level as Rifle's Gun Flame which has insane range advantage and short daze.)
Traits
-Roaring Reveille: Add Heal for 460 (0.5 Healing multiplier) when using Warhorn skills. (towards heal warrior becoming a thing)
-Signet Mastery: Currently has the issue of giving Ferocity in a condi-based traitline, same issue as Furious Burst's Crit Rate boost basically.

Thief
Main-Hand Sword
-Crippling Strike: Increase damage multiplier from 1.3 to 1.4.
-Tactical Strike (Stealth Attack): Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.4.
-Pistol Whip: Increase damage multiplier from 3.16 to 3.5.

Main-Hand Pistol (to make Power Pistol+X builds more viable, still about 20% behind Dagger+Dagger after this change from Kitty's testing)
-Vital Shot: Increase damage multiplier from 0.575 to 0.67.

Off-Hand Dagger (to make sort of knifethrower build more viable though still inferior to riskier Death Blossom spam)
-Dancing Dagger: Increase the duration of Torment from 6s to 8s.

Shortbow (It's clearly been a condi weapon but it needs some boosting, esp. to make non-detonated Cluster Bombs less punishing as sometimes you need to target too close to hit the enemy that you can detonate the Cluster Bomb even with fastest 22222 spam).
-Trick Shot: Increase damage multiplier from 0.55 to 0.7 on target while keeping it as 0.55 on bounces.
-Cluster Bomb: Increase damage multiplier from 1.45 to 1.6 and increase the bleeding from 1 stack for 4s to 2 stacks for 4s.

Revenant
Hammer
-Hammer is currently in a pretty horrible spot in PVE, even if it works in competitive (from what Kitty's heard.) It does have nice utilities but it hits kinda weakly and it's super-slow. From what Kitty did some testing on Power Renegade to compared swords, shortbow and hammer, in a rotation shortbow did 15755 DPS, sword+sword did 17388 DPS and hammer did...10560 DPS with weapon skills (excluding the DPS from F3 and utilities as common factor). As such, for hammer to be slightly more useful in comparison, it needs about 30-40% DPS boost. Due to long range and utilities on skills 3-4-5, it should stay under shortbow but something like 13,5-14k would be pretty good spot as such. As such, Kitty suggests...
-Hammer Bolt: Reduce the animation from 1.25 seconds to 1 second. Increase damage modifier from 0.95 to 1.0.
-Coalescence of Ruin: Increase damage modifier from 1.75 to 2.1.
-Phase Smash: Increase damage modifier from 1.75 to 2.0.

Guardian
Hammer
-It's currently pretty weak compared to other weapon options on guardian in PVE and the damage is VERY slow backloaded. From what Kitty's been playing over the years, the only real use it's had has been pushing enemies with Banish and then swapping to other weapons ASAP. Hammer also encourages very passive gameplay as it does best damage purely by auto-attacking with symbol and to keep up the symbol boost when using Zeal, using other skills is a DPS loss. To help fix that...
-Hammer Swing: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.0.
-Hammer Bash: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.1.
-Symbol of Protection: Increase hammer hit's damage modifier from 1.0 to 1.6 and reduce symbol's damage modifier from 1.5 to 1.2. (Reduces the effect of symbol-enhancing traits which can be abused for big damage while boosting the base damage.)
-Mighty Blow: Increase damage modifier from 2.1 to 2.4.
-Glacial Blow: Increase the damage modifier from 2.4 to 2.8. (Taking Glacial Blow is mutually exclusive with Inspiring Virtue which is 8-10% DPS boost on Power Guardian builds)

Mesmer
Scepter
-With staff buffs and condi chrono nerfs in the past, it's been kinda pointless to take scepter for any other purpose than for creating clones to trigger Illusionary Inspiration as Heal Chronomancer (which is still too weak to be considered an option by 99% of playerbase atm). To make it worth using again, it needs some boosting and to get it somewhat back in line, Kitty suggests boosting its Ambush to almost same level as staff's Chaos Vortex (which needs to be slightly stronger of the two, doing so by not giving Bleed to scepter ambush) and buffing torment in auto-attack and skill 2 (to reward good, a bit risky gameplay).
-Ambush Ether Barrage: Increase Torment and Confusion duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds per stack.
-Ether Bolt: Increase Torment duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
-Ether Blast: Increase Torment duration from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
-Illusionary Counter: Increase the amount of Torment stacks from 5 to 6 stacks.

Untamed
Hammer
-As everyone knows, hammer has been greatly underperforming in PVE due to being designed for PVE. But,
like with warrior, it might be redeemable to some point by increasing the damage modifiers as, like with warrior, they're low enough to hit like wet noodle. Tbh it greatly looks like the basic idea of this hammer was copied from warrior's in good and bad.
-Hammer Strike: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.0.
-Hammer Slam: Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.2.
-Heavy Smash: Increase damage multiplier from 1.4 to 1.6.
-Wild Swing: Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 1.8 (Greatsword's Maul has 1.75 with a lot shorter cooldown though Untamed does have CD reduction trait to balance it).
-Thump: Increase damage multiplier from 1.25 to 1.4.
-Unleashed Wild Schwing: Increase damage multiplier from 2.16 to 2.3.
-Unleashed Thump: Increase damage multiplier from 2.3 to 2.5.

Engineer
-Engineer currently has lots of good stuff, including some overtly good stuff but also bunch of skills that aren't used at all aside from some very very niche cases. Tool Kit and Elixir Gun are kinda criminally underused due to their underwhelming effectiveness and as such, Kitty has bunch of suggestions to help them out. Tool Kit also could get a small update to mech age.

Elixir Gun
-EG is currently mainly used for healing and some blast finishers though it also has bunch of condi capability that's left completely unused due to inadequate numbers. Effect-wise it's kinda similar to Thief's shortbow but different playstyle. It could use an update to become a poisonous weapon to use.
-Tranquilizer Dart: Increase damage efficient from 0.4 to 0.65. Increase the duration of Bleeding from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. (Slightly better Bleed than in Thief's Trick Shot but this doesn't have bounce for "AoE")
-Glob Shot: In addition to previous effects, apply 3 stacks of Poison for 4 seconds.
-Fumigate: Increase the duration of Poison from 2 seconds to 6 seconds. Increase the damage modifier from 0.4 to 0.8. (It has long cast time and loses to main-hand pistol's Poison Dart Volley, 5 stack of Poison for 8 seconds untraited and 12s traited) a LOT, though shorter Poison duration and longer cast time on Fumigate can be justified with cleanse and Vulnerability.)
-Acid Bomb: In addition to previous effects, apply 2 stacks of Poison for 4 seconds on every pulse. (Currently it's a pure strike damage field which feels weird considering the skill's name and auto-attack+Fumigate being condi skills so for clear role for the kit as hybrid condi/heal kit, this skill should also reflect that idea instead of being random strike damage skill.)

Tool Kit
-This kit has been kind of a mixed bag of stuff with main common factor being names somewhat resembling each other and Gear Shield and Magnet being sort of utility skills. During the mech age, it'd be also kinda fit for an engineer to be able to fix the mech since engineer's already shown ability in fixing Canthan electricity stuffs and Turrets. Since Tool Kit shares some aspects of hammer on some other professions, some of those fixes apply here. Considering that Engineer has confusion in various places across the kit and this also having some in Pry Bar, this could be modified to become a part of Power/Confusion hybrid build. Kitty's suggestions...
-Smack: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.0. Now also heals the mech in addition to turrets.
-Whack: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.0. Now also heals the mech in addition to turrets.
-Reduce the animation time of auto-attack sequence from 3.23 seconds to 2.7 seconds.
-Box of Nails: Increase the duration of of Bleed from 2 seconds to 6 seconds. (Currently it's like poor thief's Caltrops, kinda literally. Considering that auto-attack chain and toolbelt skill are strike damage-focused and Pry Bar is also mostly strike damage, having a random condi skill in the mix is kinda weird unless you add some Confusion to auto-attack chain and increase Confusion in Pry Bar. In Kitty's opinion, Pry Bar could take over this slot and be replaced by Power Drill, Machine Saw or Jackhammer in slot 3. Charrs have already demonstrated their capability of building those.

Flamethrower Kit
-As Kitty mentioned before, this has use in competitive gamemodes as well as in the Open-World due to Juggernaut-trait but when it comes to damage, there's still way better options and if this is taken by condi engineer builds, increasingly rare choice due to Bombs, 'Nades and elite spec-specific skills becoming stronger, it's taken for toolbelt skill, Napalm or Flame Blast. As a niche use in instanced content, Air Blast has also worked for pushes and auto-attack's fast attack rate has made it Kitty's choice for pushing the orb at Keep Construct but it's been a major damage loss. This does have some good potential for Power/Burn hybrid builds, though. But since this is still seeing major use outside instanced content, whether this could use these changes or not is up for your discretion.
-Flame Jet: Apply 1 stack of burning for 2 seconds on every hit and 3 stacks of Burning for 2 seconds on final hit. (The auto-attack takes quite long to fully channel with a short pause between casts and thus some extra damage would be useful. Since we're talking about Flamethrower, it also feels really weird that you basically shoot massive flame jet at something and it hardly catches any burn at all and somehow takes lots of strike damage which is more the type of smashing or slashing stuff O_o Though even then, the DPS of auto-attack is about 20-30% lower than on most DPS-focused weapons. "There's too much boring and too little burning. Torch it all!")
-Flame Blast: Increase the amount of Burning from Explosion from 2 stacks to 3 stacks. (Helps at making Flamethrower more viable again in kitspam e-spec builds).

Elementalist
-This is a bit in Kitty's wishlist territory as most Elementalist weapons are still performing pretty well. Elementalist has relatively wide use for most weapons though these days Scepter is dominating DPS Tempest, Sword is dominating DPS Weaver and Hammer is dominating DPS Catalyst. DPS-wise main-hand Dagger is kinda falling out of fashion due to other options outperforming it and also kinda janky gameplay in Fire. For condi, main-hand dagger is still a good option but at least to Kitty, it's falling a bit short in power DPS, esp. in Air attunement. Staff is also quite underwhelming in non-healing uses. So...

Main-hand Dagger
-Lightning Whip: Increase damage modifier from 1.26 to 1.38.
-Convergence: Increase damage modifier from 1.4 to 1.5.

Staff
-Fireball: Increase the attack speed from 1 attack per 1.4 seconds to 1 attack per 1.2 seconds. Increase damage modifier from 1.0 to 1.2. Apply 1 stack of Burning for 4 seconds. (This skill really needs these due to slow attack speed.)
-Meteor Shower: Increase the minimum damage modifier from 0.32 to 0.4.
-Chain Lightning: Increase the damage modifier of initial hit from 0.66 to 0.8. (Slow attack that requires bounce back from secondary target. 0.66 would work if the skill did a secondary hit at 0.6 on primary target if there was no secondary targets around.)
-Lightning Surge: Increase damage modifier from 1.44 to 1.6. Reduce recharge from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. (If the opponent isn't moving, this is the only attack aside from auto-attack in Air attunement and for slot 2, this has a long recharge compared to most weapons.)

Edited July 1, 2022 by LadyKitty.6120
Finished writing suggestions.

[Kuma.1503]

54 minutes ago, Kain Francois.4328 said:

Hiya, small request to Engineer:

- Can you please fix the recoil animation on Rifle Auto? (As many of you on the team are probably aware by now.)
- And if possible, a slight aftercast?

While I LOVE the concept of the change, it does feel a bit overturned to the point of looking like a bug. 

A machine gun is something I've wanted in GW2 for a long time, and the rifle rework directly fills that niche. But even machine guns have limited ammo capacity. Perhaps Rifle auto isn't the place for something like this. But it would be neat as a future elite skill. (Suggestion: Supply Drop allows us to "overcharge" our weapons? Or perhaps a Grandmaster Trait in Firearms?)

Tested in game and it looks like this has been fixed.

Animation definitely looks a lot less buggy now and it doesn't awkwardly clip into itself. 

[TheBouge.7406]

Very impressed with the response here! Understand getting changes out this fast is difficult so definitely recognize the effort. I am definitely looking forward to the future discussions on roadmap for the classes and the design choices for them. I think one thing that will need to be addressed is if it’s the design teams desire for some classes to only be good at 1 role or provide x boon and for others to be a one stop shop for everything. If so what’s the draw for players to play that other class (damage output, utility, ease of use etc). I think the biggest missing piece right now when looking at builds and classes is understanding what each class/spec is good at and having a reason for players to play it, instead a lot of players just see a couple classes that are far better at everything. I also think there is a fine balance between making classes balanced and accessible but also rewarding skilled players.

Thanks team and have a great holiday!

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

Did you guys forgot ranger also have offhand torch, offhand axe and warhorn as core weapons…

Also can you rework sword so it’s auto attack 2 crippling thrust isn’t single target?

 

Guessing logic for this is...offhand torch and warhorn aren't power weapons (condi and support), and OH axe needs nothing except an overhaul for #4 which is out of scope for the hotfix.

I do wish these changes applied to WvW, but seems some internal micromanagement is happening between PvE and WvW atm as OWP remains same in WvW but no weapon buffs that are seen in PvE.  Guessing it gives them two different scenarios to test and we'll probably get a third coming out of those two and on and on.

[Abyssisis.3971]

1 minute ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Guessing logic for this is...offhand torch and warhorn aren't power weapons (condi and support), and OH axe needs nothing except an overhaul for #4 which is out of scope for the hotfix.

I do wish these changes applied to WvW, but seems some internal micromanagement is happening between PvE and WvW atm as OWP remains same in WvW but no weapon buffs that are seen in PvE.  Guessing it gives them two different scenarios to test and we'll probably get a third coming out of those two and on and on.

That would make sense if they didn’t buff shortbow coefficient and bleed duration.. I’m of the opinion they don’t actually know rangers have these weapons, cause let’s face it the person balancing the class doesn’t even play it.

[Lizardguard.2860]

Yes, I appreciate the effort. I understand that stuff in development takes a long time.
But even agreeing with an overall nerf in pve (the numbers were frankly getting ridiculous), the recent big patch still leaves several things very broken.

Rangers are sad, warriors are sad (and there are possibilities for viable builds on untamed and bladesworn), eles... eh. Any eles still here? Ah ye, crying over there.
The idea on alac + quick on chrono is cool, but the execution was meh.
Heck, even the state of holo compared to mechanist is just sad.

In short order, mechanist got best in slot for heal, dps and alacdps. Thats not good.

And all of that is not even mentioning wvw and pvp.

We'll be reeling for a while from this hit.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Lizardguard.2860

[Lily.1935]

Aesthetics are important to me, so something that bothers me with the engineer change is that the rifle lacks kickback for the multiple shots it fires. Or it has too much kickback. One of the two. For me, how a skill is animated can make or break my enjoyment of a weapon or class. Which is why I didn't make a revenant Asura, its why I haven't shut up about Necromancer Axe auto attack for female Norn, Human and Sylvari for years, Literally I've mentioned this for nearly every balance patch since it was changed to a paddling animation.

But these things matter a lot to me. I HATE running axe on necromancer, not just because its a mediocre weapon but also because its auto attack looks awkward to me. And I'm having the same issue with Engineer rifle.

This is a good post though. Appreciate it. However I'm still going to mention skill animation because its important to me.

[Lizardguard.2860]

Ah, sry for the double post but...
I just wanted to voice once more that I'm not a fan of neither the removal of 10 man benefits (both spirits and banners gave those classes something unique that kept them viable even if subpar in damage)
nor the removal of very profession specific buffs like spotter/pinpoint and so on...

Breaking everything down to just damage... it won't benfit the game.

I would have much preferred to get more of those buffs. Give em to each class. Make them more unique. Make these things viable in other gamemodes too.

Well. I guess that opportunity is gone now. Bit of a shame, imo.
 

[Kodama.6453]

Apparently, the attack speed of the rifle auto on engi got stealth nerfed from 0,75 seconds per cycle to 1 second per cycle....

If you are dropping these preview notes and the actual patch notes, then it would be nice if you included such changes and don't try to hide additional nerfs. Now we have to test everything and look if you didn't nerf anything else on top and just didn't tell us.