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

[Xevius.6174]

Still not a Fan of how Quickness works on Herald but lets see if the additional 0,5 sec will work out. 😕

Edited July 1, 2022 by Xevius.6174

[nutri.1385]

Thank you for this effort and open communication, it's an appreciated step towards improvement. 💛

[Puck.3697]

4 hours ago, TexZero.7910 said:

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.

Because. 

Weather 8 proffessions get levelled off with guardian or guardian gets levelled off with the other 8 proffessions. Is identical. There is no difference

The only difference is 

Buffing everything upto guard is:

8x more likely to go wrong. 

8x more likely to overdo something snd cause more power creep. 

8x more likely to not work. 

When ur looking at variables such as these yoy always nerf. It's safer, it's more likely to go right. 

Always take the bar the majority reach as the bar of balance and balance to that.

[Kuma.1503]

4 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Because. 

Weather 8 proffessions get levelled off with guardian or guardian gets levelled off with the other 8 proffessions. Is identical. There is no difference

The only difference is 

Buffing everything upto guard is:

8x more likely to go wrong. 

8x more likely to overdo something snd cause more power creep. 

8x more likely to not work. 

When ur looking at variables such as these yoy always nerf. It's safer, it's more likely to go right. 

Always take the bar the majority reach as the bar of balance and balance to that.

Or we could do a mixture of the two. 

As far as nerfs go, Guardian needs one thing and one thing only. 

It needs to lose its monopoly over aegis and stability. 

That is it. This is what causes them to fundamentally break so many encounters. The ability to essentially do mechanics for your squad is something that no other profession can reasonably compete with. 

 

That being said, there are some things about guardian that should aboslutely be extended to to other classes. 

 

Feature 1: Guardian has well designed core trait lines. Every traitline is viable in one way or another. Very few traits are useless. 

This is not the case for other classes, and is absolutely one way in which other professions needs to be brought up to guardian's level. 

Acrobatics on thief needs to lose the 300 second CDs in PvP. Tools on Engineer needs to be worth taking over... literally anything. Dead traits like Deathly Chill on Reaper which are never taken in any circumstance need to be  bufed or reworked.

Feature 2: Guardian has well designed core weapons. Each and every one is viable. 

The weakest weapon in Guardian's arsenal is hammer, and even this has niche use in PvP and PvE. Every other weapon is strong and has a place in virtually every game mode. Staff is good for healing. Sword is good for mobility and dps. Scepter is good for ranged damage and might gen. Focus has great defensive value. Torch is good for condi. Shield is great for protecting allies. 

This NEEDS to be extended to other classes. Too many have dead, overnerfed weapons which never see the light of day. DPS staff ele is high effort for no reward. Core engi weapons are the weakest in the game. Phantasms on mesmer weapons were overnerfed because of Chronophantasma. 

Feature 3: Guardian doesn't have to sacrifice it's entire skill bar and spam every skill on CD to provide boons. 

This is a design that needs to be extended to other supports. This mindless gameplay promotes spamming skills with no regard for what they do or what situational value they provide. Firebrand has the luxury of taking situational utility and using it skillfully to interact with mechanics or react to situations as they come. 

Scrapper has to spam its entire skill bar on CD just to maintain a single boon. As does the new Quickness Herald. 

 

Bringing Guardian down won't fix any of these issues. It will just force it to deal with the same outdated, objectively poor design every other class has to deal with. They're now as miserable as the rest of us, but no one is truly happy. 

[draxynnic.3719]

4 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Because. 

Weather 8 proffessions get levelled off with guardian or guardian gets levelled off with the other 8 proffessions. Is identical. There is no difference

The only difference is 

Buffing everything upto guard is:

8x more likely to go wrong. 

8x more likely to overdo something snd cause more power creep. 

8x more likely to not work. 

When ur looking at variables such as these yoy always nerf. It's safer, it's more likely to go right. 

Always take the bar the majority reach as the bar of balance and balance to that.

Problem is that there isn't really a point "everyone else is at".

If we're talking about PvE, engineer is at about the same point, as is necromancer but in different ways. Mesmer is pretty close, or at least was before what was done to chrono, and revenant probably would be if the issues with herald were fixed. The other mediums aren't all that far behind, although they too have problems that need to be addressed. While ele and warrior are in the toilet.

So where is the "get levelled off with other professions" actually at? One third of professions are roughly equal, at that top tier, people just focus on guardian/firebrand (let's face it, mostly firebrand in PvE) because it's been there longer: scourge flew under the radar for a long time, and engineer only really started climbing with quickness scrapper and then mechanist. And everything in lower tiers are in lower tiers because they have problems that need to be addressed. Heck, there are some such problems even in the top tier! (Such as the performance of reaper in group conditions.)

It's really not a case of "one outlier that needs to be brought down", it's more like a string of beads, and the lower ones are mostly lower due to factors that would probably be regarded as design flaws even if the top tiers were outright removed from the game. 

Maybe if those problems were fixed, we'd have the same three at the top and the rest in a tier below, and then we could follow your philosophy. Right now, though, comparing guardian to warrior is like comparing a healthy runner to one with a broken left leg and a sprained right ankle. The solution is to heal the latter and then consider whether the former needs a handicap to make it fair, not to pull out a sledgehammer and start breaking everyone's kneecaps.  

[draxynnic.3719]

3 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

It needs to lose its monopoly over aegis and stability. 

I'm still shocked that EoD didn't bring more stability specialists. Particularly since one of the CMs makes stability all but mandatory. 

[Puck.3697]

17 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Or we could do a mixture of the two. 

As far as nerfs go, Guardian needs one thing and one thing only. 

It needs to lose its monopoly over aegis and stability. 

That is it. This is what causes them to fundamentally break so many encounters. The ability to essentially do mechanics for your squad is something that no other profession can reasonably compete with. 

 

That being said, there are some things about guardian that should aboslutely be extended to to other classes. 

 

Feature 1: Guardian has well designed core trait lines. Every traitline is viable in one way or another. Very few traits are useless. 

This is not the case for other classes, and is absolutely one way in which other professions needs to be brought up to guardian's level. 

Acrobatics on thief needs to lose the 300 second CDs in PvP. Tools on Engineer needs to be worth taking over... literally anything. Dead traits like Deathly Chill on Reaper which are never taken in any circumstance need to be  bufed or reworked.

Feature 2: Guardian has well designed core weapons. Each and every one is viable. 

The weakest weapon in Guardian's arsenal is hammer, and even this has niche use in PvP and PvE. Every other weapon is strong and has a place in virtually every game mode. Staff is good for healing. Sword is good for mobility and dps. Scepter is good for ranged damage and might gen. Focus has great defensive value. Torch is good for condi. Shield is great for protecting allies. 

This NEEDS to be extended to other classes. Too many have dead, overnerfed weapons which never see the light of day. DPS staff ele is high effort for no reward. Core engi weapons are the weakest in the game. Phantasms on mesmer weapons were overnerfed because of Chronophantasma. 

Feature 3: Guardian doesn't have to sacrifice it's entire skill bar and spam every skill on CD to provide boons. 

This is a design that needs to be extended to other supports. This mindless gameplay promotes spamming skills with no regard for what they do or what situational value they provide. Firebrand has the luxury of taking situational utility and using it skillfully to interact with mechanics or react to situations as they come. 

Scrapper has to spam its entire skill bar on CD just to maintain a single boon. As does the new Quickness Herald. 

 

Bringing Guardian down won't fix any of these issues. It will just force it to deal with the same outdated, objectively poor design every other class has to deal with. They're now as miserable as the rest of us, but no one is truly happy. 

Well yeah. I ain't saying slam every proffession down to warrior. 

I ain't saying take the bottom rung and bring everything down to it. 

There's obviously a part where some proffessions need to go upwards while others are brought downwards, but we don't all need to be as strong as guardian to be "happy"

Also miserable? 

We aren't miserable because of the strengths of our proffession. We are miserable because other proffessions have 2x the strength of our proffessions. 

If yoy look at a statistic. 

Weather every proffession was at the same balance bar as warrior, or at the Balance bar of necromancer, it wouldn't actually make a blind bit of difference of your enjoyment. 

The only thing that can affect your enjoyment is your proffessions balancing comparatively to other choices. 

Bringing guardian down to warrior and doing nothing else would ofcourse make guards miserable. Because other proffessions would be 2x stronger then them. 

However for example. 

If they decided ranger was the balancing bar. 

Every proffession did within 5% above or below 36k dps, had access to alacrity or quickness through a elite. 

It wouldn't feel any difference if they decided guardian was the balancing bar

And every proffession did within 5% above or below 40k dps, had access to alacrity and quickness through separate builds, has access to stability and defensive utility at ease. 

The only thing that would matter is your power level compared to the game itself. Which if this would to happen, they'd likely increase the difficulty of future content. 

Meaning all you get is a delayed identical result to the first example. 

No the idea isn't to drop every proffessipn down to the weakest bar. 

Generally the best way forward is 

Draw a line through the middle of every proffessions balancing bar. And then buff up the ones below and nerf the ones above til they meet the bar. 

[Puck.3697]

25 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Problem is that there isn't really a point "everyone else is at".

If we're talking about PvE, engineer is at about the same point, as is necromancer but in different ways. Mesmer is pretty close, or at least was before what was done to chrono, and revenant probably would be if the issues with herald were fixed. The other mediums aren't all that far behind, although they too have problems that need to be addressed. While ele and warrior are in the toilet.

So where is the "get levelled off with other professions" actually at? One third of professions are roughly equal, at that top tier, people just focus on guardian/firebrand (let's face it, mostly firebrand in PvE) because it's been there longer: scourge flew under the radar for a long time, and engineer only really started climbing with quickness scrapper and then mechanist. And everything in lower tiers are in lower tiers because they have problems that need to be addressed. Heck, there are some such problems even in the top tier! (Such as the performance of reaper in group conditions.)

It's really not a case of "one outlier that needs to be brought down", it's more like a string of beads, and the lower ones are mostly lower due to factors that would probably be regarded as design flaws even if the top tiers were outright removed from the game. 

Maybe if those problems were fixed, we'd have the same three at the top and the rest in a tier below, and then we could follow your philosophy. Right now, though, comparing guardian to warrior is like comparing a healthy runner to one with a broken left leg and a sprained right ankle. The solution is to heal the latter and then consider whether the former needs a handicap to make it fair, not to pull out a sledgehammer and start breaking everyone's kneecaps.  

The levelled off would be rhe bar through the middle of every proffession right now. 

Take every proffession make a chart for every role.

List them in relative power to one another. 

Draw a line through the middle of the proffessoons. 

Make that the balancing bar. Nerf down everything above that bar, then buff the ones below that bar. 

Effectively the aim should be every specc to be within 10% of that bar realistically. 

[draxynnic.3719]

2 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

The levelled off would be rhe bar through the middle of every proffession right now. 

Take every proffession make a chart for every role.

List them in relative power to one another. 

Draw a line through the middle of the proffessoons. 

Make that the balancing bar. Nerf down everything above that bar, then buff the ones below that bar. 

Effectively the aim should be every specc to be within 10% of that bar realistically. 

Except that, while I used the most extreme example, placing a bar through the middle point would still involve leaving problems unresolved for professions around that point and actively creating them for those higher up.

For instance, you used ranger as an example for the "target"? The ranger players I play with (not to say I don't play it myself, but I don't bring ranger to top-end content) are complaining bitterly about how "scuffed" their alacrity is: it pretty much requires them to sacrifice all their utility and go through a demanding rotation towards just for performing the alacrity role, as @Kuma.1503 identified as a problem for most of the new quickness/alacrity roles in Feature 3. This hotfix was itself an acknowledgement that soulbeast damage - or perhaps more accurately, core ranger damage in general - was problematically low. And Untamed is pretty much toilet tier in high-end PvE, although buffing core weapons helps there (buffs to hammer would help even more).

Sure, it's not as bad as some, but is that really a desirable level to drag everything down to?

I think not.

Here's the thing: I think it's reasonable to say that every profession should be able to have at least the first two features Kuma identified guardian as having - well-designed core traits, and well-designed and functional weapons (yeah, I know, hammer... but hammer absolutely does have its uses, and is probably just "bad" when compared to other guardian weapons). If this was achieved, I think that would naturally raise everyone to at least somewhere in between Guardian/Necromancer/Engineer tier and Mesmer tier. Then maybe you can draw that line through the middle and balance towards that. But we need to fix the design problems first to find out where the balance point would be with professions that aren't handicapped by dead traits, poorly functioning weapons, unenjoyable mechanics (back to having to move banners around one by one, really?) and other design issues. I suspect that if we did that, the balancing to bring the top professions in line would be much less than people claim now - because the top professions are there, primarily, because they (mostly) aren't plagued the many design issues that the other professions have.

Oh, and break the stability/aegis monopoly, and not by simply adding more to mechanist.  

[AutarchTharn.6728]

I like how you made damage on ranger more easily accessible all across the board by buffing weapons. Can elementalist please get the same treatment so its more usable in general?
Generally, thank you for quick follow up, its kind of sad that generally good patch in general has been seriously dimmed by this , ekhem, "unfortunate" balance update.

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by AutarchTharn.6728

[Kain Francois.4328]

(PvE)

Hot take: It's okay that the Guardian is best at support. It's literally marketed as the blue heal-y class with a cross on it, and weapons with healing icons. It's literally its identity, like how Ranger's longbow has 1,800 range. When a new player is at class selection screen, they want clearly defined roles for their classes.

The point of having other classes cover aspects of support is to fill in for when certain classes are absent, or to bring a special niche. Perhaps not every class excels at every encounter, which is how it should be.

I do think Guardian should be nerfed in some respects, perhaps making it just a bit harder to play than mashing mantras, and bringing it slightly more in line with others. Perhaps also their might and fury output could be nerfed, shifting their role to something more defensive. However, it's fine being the top support overall.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Kain Francois.4328

[stormemperor.3745]

What about epilepsy gained by using aar? 

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Except that, while I used the most extreme example, placing a bar through the middle point would still involve leaving problems unresolved for professions around that point and actively creating them for those higher up.

For instance, you used ranger as an example for the "target"? The ranger players I play with (not to say I don't play it myself, but I don't bring ranger to top-end content) are complaining bitterly about how "scuffed" their alacrity is: it pretty much requires them to sacrifice all their utility and go through a demanding rotation towards just for performing the alacrity role, as @Kuma.1503 identified as a problem for most of the new quickness/alacrity roles in Feature 3. This hotfix was itself an acknowledgement that soulbeast damage - or perhaps more accurately, core ranger damage in general - was problematically low. And Untamed is pretty much toilet tier in high-end PvE, although buffing core weapons helps there (buffs to hammer would help even more).

Sure, it's not as bad as some, but is that really a desirable level to drag everything down to?

I think not.

Here's the thing: I think it's reasonable to say that every profession should be able to have at least the first two features Kuma identified guardian as having - well-designed core traits, and well-designed and functional weapons (yeah, I know, hammer... but hammer absolutely does have its uses, and is probably just "bad" when compared to other guardian weapons). If this was achieved, I think that would naturally raise everyone to at least somewhere in between Guardian/Necromancer/Engineer tier and Mesmer tier. Then maybe you can draw that line through the middle and balance towards that. But we need to fix the design problems first to find out where the balance point would be with professions that aren't handicapped by dead traits, poorly functioning weapons, unenjoyable mechanics (back to having to move banners around one by one, really?) and other design issues. I suspect that if we did that, the balancing to bring the top professions in line would be much less than people claim now - because the top professions are there, primarily, because they (mostly) aren't plagued the many design issues that the other professions have.

Oh, and break the stability/aegis monopoly, and not by simply adding more to mechanist.  

Well yeah if we are talking boons all boons a proffession can provide should be upholdable by 100% to the same category. Sure. 

That's why I said do it per category and not a overall. 

Ensure each proffessions can provide equally as many boons 100% uptime. 

Ensure each proffession can do within 10% of the highest dps number. 

Ensure each proffession can heal within 10% the highest number. 

Etc etc

Nothing will ever be balanced. It's not possible and would make for a very boring game if it was. 

But the idea is to get things as close to one another as possible, there will be a margin as boon builds / role compression / elite speccs will make this harder compared to something like WoW. 

Which generally just have tanks healers and dps instead of support builds and buffers. 

 

[Persnicketous.5903]

I'm honestly surprised by how much communication and follow up there has been the last few days - I agree that the patch wasn't where it needed to be and it didn't hit the mark, but this truly shows how serious Grouch/ArenaNet are and the speed in which things are being decided and communicated is just amazing. I never thought I would see such a degree of communication from ArenaNet, especially not with the speed with which it came, so this is a really nice surprise.

 

Thanks for taking this so serious, for taking the right steps and keeping us in the loop. I truly feel that with Grouch we've got the right person on the right place. So, this is just a post to say thanks for how you are handling things, I think you've proven a lot of things to a lot of players. 

 

Thanks, Grouch!

[akipappi.3917]

im glad about some changes but im quite alarmed by the notes "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." this sounds like a general view on ele gameplay. ferocious winds already increases stats on all attunements. why was 5% crit in air allowed to go live considering it contradicts so much and needed a change after few days. now this raises another questions for me, which is why isnt ele allowed to camp an attunement if easy rotations are the way to play without weapon swapping considering attunement swap is weapon swap basically

 

[Dalv.3065]

Wow, that was quick!

Definitely a good start, thank you!

[voltaicbore.8012]

The ranger coefficient changes don't seem to make up for the utter disemboweling of OWP. How does the June 28th nerf make OWP "more consistent"? Just by making it nearly unusable across the board? 

Seems like you still need to find a dev that actually understands ranger. Color me unimpressed.

[CharmingRogue.8731]

Tempest buff is completely missing the mark again. The problem is that the DPS alacrity build has way too low dps, and the heal build can't fully utilize the alacrity because you don't want to overload water just to keep alacrity up. You waste your best heal and you also lock yourself out of all your healing which is in the water attunement, because you no longer have heals when you cast an aura. Also getting interrupted is very detrimental because the alacrity is at the end, almost making the stability trait while you overload mandetory. 

[Gorem.8104]

I feel like you can tell the person behind the Ranger changes, doesn't play Ranger. 
We went from everything being fine, to an excuse about dumbing down the game that removed an elite skill from play with how hard the nerf was, to now buffs to some weapon abilities (not even every weapon), and some that require flanking. And that's just to do with the terrible SB changes (and stealth changes still not mentioned). 

If this hotfix really needed rushing out, what it should have done is entirely revert every single balance change that happened in the last patch so you could start again. 

Also, seriously, Warrior needs so much help, how were they not in this first one. 

[Gorem.8104]

4 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

The ranger coefficient changes don't seem to make up for the utter disemboweling of OWP. How does the June 28th nerf make OWP "more consistent"? Just by making it nearly unusable across the board? 

Seems like you still need to find a dev that actually understands ranger. Color me unimpressed.

 

Exactly, it went from being a cool and viable ability. To an ability that will always be a dps loss to use. Rangers were in a fine spot and viable for power builds. Then Anet "balanced" a key ability, making the power class not fine, and then does this so we can slowly crawl back into how things were before the huge nerf? 

[Hotride.2187]

10 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

"in PvE only. "

"in PvE only. "

"in PvE only. "

"in PvE only. "

"in PvE only. "

"in PvE only. "

Hello? You know there are balance issues in WvW and sPvP, do you?

The best part is that the next pve changes they do will need even more changes to get right. Despite the promised "updated priority of wvw/spvp profession balancing". Maybe the updated priority is "guys, guys, GUYS, we COMPLETELY FORGOT about competitive, we should make a meeting to discuss what to do with it in 1 year time".

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

Feel free to contact NCSoft West to let them know your thoughts and opinions!
 

https://us.ncsoft.com/en-us

 

Public Relations Email

 

NCWPR@ncsoft.com

[Padrion.7382]

I wish, I was a programmer. I would get paid to break stuff and then get paid again to fix the mess I caused 😉

[Kherae.2109]

@Josh Davis.7865 I'm surprised you guys didn't fix the bugs with Draconic Echo and its interaction with Hardening Persistence and Rising Momentum, when you brought out the quickness stuff. With that trait both the actual upkeep skills' buffs AND the echos consume stacks of those 2 traits' stacks upon expiry, resulting in lost stacks. I even went so far as to update the wiki pages, a long while back, for those 2 traits.

[Hargrove.9102]

For a hotfix, this is encouraging, but I'm scratching my head at the enthusiasm for making Soulbeast "consistent" damage.

 

Power Soulbeast was never about consistent damage. Consistent power damage without DoTs is just a bad condi build.

 

It's nice to know you're not planning to just keep nerfing SB though.