Design Notes for June 28 Professions Update

[Whiskers.7346]

Why exactly is Catalyst "meta-defining" when it was played less than 3% of the time, where as Mechanist and Firebrand are borderline ubiquitous?

[Einsof.1457]

7 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

These are reasonable questions. I just want to clarify that this post wasn't intended to lay out the overarching balance philosophy for PvE, PvP, and WvW. That'll come later. I posted a breakdown of our next steps last week: 

 

Serious question -- Is one of the core pillars of the arenanet philosophy to prioritize fun? Or did that go away when Mike left? Do you think having no wep skills while holding a banner is fun design? Do you think generic homogenous traits across professions are fun? Seriously, what is the point here? Are you trying to make a fun game for your fans or who is your target audience exactly? If your goal is to slowly boil the frog until the whole game is just press 1 to win in a few years, tell us now so we don't waste our time.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Einsof.1457

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

5 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

These are reasonable questions. I just want to clarify that this post wasn't intended to lay out the overarching balance philosophy for PvE, PvP, and WvW. That'll come later. I posted a breakdown of our next steps last week: 

 

These design notes... don't accurately reflect the design philosophy???

 

What kind of fire is consistently occurring in your guy's offices to get this patch then? You saying this makes it feel like someone new was in charge daily, from every balance dev to storyboard artists to Joe the intern who gets the coffee.

[Xarrontas.7948]

Hopefully next patch will be better without excuses like these that explains nothing but 2k firebrand.

[Groggyfrog.9754]

2 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

These are reasonable questions. I just want to clarify that this post wasn't intended to lay out the overarching balance philosophy for PvE, PvP, and WvW. That'll come later. I posted a breakdown of our next steps last week: 

 

Wasn't meant to show philosophy just "design commentary" I see what you did there. Never meant to explain any perceived thought behind the balances just to take more words to say the same exact thing. Very crafty, should look into politics.

[Arilozen.2756]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

In Engineer, we've updated skills on their core Rifle weapon to modernize it to more recent gameplay standards and to better support power builds.

Could we get this for warrior please? It was my first legendary 8 or so years ago and it's still a joke on my main class. 😄

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

4 minutes ago, Groggyfrog.9754 said:

Wasn't meant to show philosophy just "design commentary" I see what you did there. Never meant to explain any perceived thought behind the balances just to take more words to say the same exact thing. Very crafty, should look into politics.

The design philosophy was stated to come after this post. This post was meant to be the commentary to the balance patch from June 28th. In the June 30th follow up post Grouch said that after these were posted they would work on publishing the design/profession philosophy that is guiding their balance. That is something that I really want to see.

[itspomf.9523]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Shadow Arts has long been a source of frustrating gameplay, particularly in competitive PvP and WvW.

 

tl;dr:  "teef op"

 

Joking aside, while I don't disagree with the changes, they don't necessarily feel like a "sidegrade," so much as a step backward, since it now means that Revealed is an even harder counter to the entire trait line -- and a guaranteed 3-second "cooldown" on all traits any time you attack a target from stealth.

 

And yes, while I understand that breaking stealth by any means would trigger the "on exiting stealth" side earlier -- and that revealed has always been a counterpoint to stealth, even before the changes -- it jut means we've gone from slowly building up to a faster burn, so long as you can cycle the effects, something the competitive community has already demonstrated.

[Tycura.1982]

30 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

These are reasonable questions. I just want to clarify that this post wasn't intended to lay out the overarching balance philosophy for PvE, PvP, and WvW. That'll come later. I posted a breakdown of our next steps last week: 

 

Despite the blunders you're still communicating and that's something the old people didn't do. Keep it up.

 

I think you should elaborate your points more but I imagine company policy is holding you back.

 

Give me confused faces all you like but I can count the amount of posts CMC made per year on one hand.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Tycura.1982

[SoraLink.5749]

Anet, I appreciate you guys trying, but these notes still do not address any criticism, they explain very little. They share your thoughts on why you made these updates, but they do nothing to explain the disconnect between why changes were so haphazardly thrown around for such a hyped up patch. You improve fury, but nerf access to precision buffs, you want more access to boons, but you make all these classes objectively worse than FB and Mech, you talk about meta defining, but refuse to nerf Mech and FB, you talk about fractal progression, but don't seem to understand a handful of extra vitality doesn't help, you talk about fractal progression needing more damage, but nerf precision on AR, you talk about selfish dps classes, but make soulbeast more selfish. Homogenizing boons and buffs is inherently bad design, it removes any uniqueness that classes have. But even that isnt the main issue. The main issue is that you have created objective winners and losers in this patch, but are making weak fixes. Warrior is a mess, herald and Tempest still struggle to compete, Druid has a harder time stakcing might now, and is just a worse Mech. Rip my boi Catalyst. Things need to be reverted or reworked. Trying to make Weaver less selfish isnt the issue, the issue is that it is selfish AND its doesnt even have best in slot damage. Sometimes the best thing you can bring to a group is tons of damage, and being a really good dps player. Very frustrating reading all of this. My expectations were low, but still disappointing. I like to hear your thought, but your thought are unnecessary when the changes are just objectively bad.

Edited July 9, 2022 by SoraLink.5749

[Lizardguard.2860]

These are some personal thoughts when reading through your notes.
As other have pointed out, I like the increased communication. I just don't like the direction, the balance is headed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I agree with the removal of unique precision buffs.
I disagree with putting some of the resulting precision in traits. It cuts down on reasonable options in that build tree.
I also disagree with the removal of the squad wide buffs. If precision is a problem, make it a 10 man power or ferocity buff.

 

I agree with more sources for a basic boon like fury.
I disagree with a trait that just autogenerates fury on 5 people.

 

I agree with more 'random' might uptime from classes.
I disagree with dps builds upkeeping 25 might on their own or spread between two of them.
I disagree with whatever the heck you did with banners.

 

I... just disagree with the changes to the fractal potion.
This only becomes relevant for people who go for the higher tier fractals anyway, and at that point, people understand what is happening.
Its even worse that the 'offensive' potion is now giving you a defensive stat.

 

To the above: I agree with more random access of vitality in the game to help out some squishier classes like ele.
I disagree with it being on an offensive buff potion.
I also disagree with the 'add vitality to stuff' mentality within fractals.

 

I disagree with turning weaver away from their intended glass cannon nature. it doesn't need might and fury application, it needs more damage. make it worth taking a selfish build. (like virt right now)
The barrier share is a cool and welcome idea, but its not what weaver needs for organized play.

 

I disagree with catalyst beginning to define meta. It might have defined some speed running compositions, but your average joe maybe saw an underperforming quickness catalyst here and there.
It might have needed a nerf. But it did not need a delete.

 

I agree with removing too long aftercasts to cull stow weapon abuses.

 

I agree with some of the mechanist polishes.
I disagree with its overall dps for autoattacking. Seriously, this class did not need buffs. It still needs nerfs.

 

Same with Guardian. It did not need buffs. Buff other classes for a change.

 

I don't know enough about the mesmer changes to comment on them.

 

Same for Necro.

 

I'm a druid main, but I don't know enough about these changes to comment on them. I dislike untamed, considering its 'thing' only works on one weapon set instead of all weapons. I didn't really play ranger much since the patch, sadly, as both druid and slb just feel sad to me atm. (and yes, i know slb numbers don't look *that* bad rn)

 

Don't know enough about rev. (Alac removal was questionable)

 

From what i heard, thief in wvw got rather worse to deal with than better. But I might be wrong there.

 

I disagree that warrior doesn't have many utilities to increase damage output. The utilities were called banners. And you butchered them. Imagine running around WITH 0 SKILLS. Seriously.
Let me say that again, because i think its one of the main sources of disdain for the patch.
The banners as they are now are unwieldy, unsightly and laughable. I hope you're revisiting them asap.

 

Also, 5% crit chance in arms?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for reading :)

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

my questions have to deal with

1) Amplified Wrath in PvE: originally +33%  burning, now +10% in PvE.... since you keep nerfing the damage in PvE, what's the point of the trait, and are you going to just change the trait soon... (commentary) this is rediculous)

2) soulbeast's one wolf pack: what's the point of the PvE split? it's obvious you want to trade the burstiness of the soulbeast into more reliable sustained DPS, but why retain the burstiness in competitive environments. this screams "favoritism of insta-burst 'one-shot' builds" in competitive environments.

[Vidit.7108]

53 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

When selecting a new attribute here, we had several considerations. Rather than increasing damage further with an attribute like Ferocity, we opted to smooth out fractal progression with the extra health that Vitality brings. This was an opportunity to help ease some chokepoints we see in Fractal progression. One such chokepoint is at Tier 3- this is the point where many fractallers have collected enough mastery points to progress Fractal Attunement, difficulty of the content has begun to climb, and potion use commonly begins (especially as some can be acquired for free daily with 'Recommended Fractals' of lower tier). By adding Vitality onto the mastery bonus to the Offense Potion here, we introduce an additional source of health that can smooth out progression and help teach the necessity of Fractal Potions in higher tier Fractal play.

This bonus will provide greater health increases as higher value Agony Resistance infusions are equipped, helping to smooth out rough spots in daily T4 clears and helping to prepare more players to tackle Challenge Modes.

• Mist Offensive Potion: The Fractal Attunement Masteries now cause this potion to convert a percentage of agony resistance into vitality instead of precision.

I'm not going to harp on the class notes. They don't really change anything I have to say.

I'm having a much harder time understanding how you arrived to this conclusion about T3 fractals. 

If I am leveling fractal progression for the first time and I am stuck in T3, my issue is rarely personal survivability. First off, we're usually talking about players who do not yet have the resources to gear many character for fractals. The gear they do receive from fractals is most usually trinkets with central tyrian stats. If that becomes their infusion slot item they are typically bringing gear that is worse for their build, even by the time they reach T3 they will still have one or two of these sub-optimal gear pieces. To put another way, If me and 5 other people have soldier stats on our trinkets our problem with clearing T3 is not that we don't have enough HP and defense.

Secondly, the other problem T3 has is that there are not enough healer/boon supporters. Credit where credit is due, this patch will go a long way to at least modestly increasing the pool of support builds players might run into. That said, these healers and boon supporters get into groups faster, are more likely to clear with these groups, and not likely to linger in T3 at all once they get into the T4 LFG. They're not likely to get much help in the ascended trinket department from clearing T1 and T2, but unlike dps builds they won't be needing them with Mist potions, they can get around 5-15% extra boon duration as they raise their AR up to T4. Before, If I was still running around with a bad trinket that extra 5-15% crit chance from the mist potion could really help me out with crit capping.

The third sort of issue I have with this part is an underlying assumption that T3 players learn or will learn in T3 to play more optimally. There is nothing that intuitively shows players how to make changes to their build to clear easier. Nothing showing them optimal traits or weapon choices. Many will not listen to them anway because they cleared T1 and T2 fine with their weird build choices.

Most players in T3 that I can tell are stuck in the slow climb of T3, but know what they are doing, have the mist potions. That makes up half the players in there if I had to estimate. The other half are either not bringing mist potions at all or don't understand they need 5 of each and have only one stack of the potion effect. I can't explain to you why there are players that don't see the value of mist potions, but I think that their decision isn't based on whether or not their defense will be raised enough. There is a lot of very stubborn players that linger in T3 and don't like to be told to get potions, or don't do daily recs because the T3 daily is a long slog. In the aggregate, T4 players can kick people like this and find someone else pretty quickly. It's a lot harder to do that in T3, both because it takes a long time to form a group and because they make up a large number of players in that tier. Some new players don't really understand how big of a difference potions make because the tool tip is misleading, so they're not willing to kick people without them when they got by in T2 without them.

I get the first point, you did this to stop players from making builds with the extra precision in mind. But I'm really struggling to see how this is going to help T3 players get to T4 faster. I also fail to see how this listens to players who say they are stuck in T3, many who I do not agree with, that say AR progression is responsible for keeping them in T3. There is diminishing returns on those extra stats when your AR is lower and something that they think they can't easily obtain more of anyway isn't enticing to them.  I don't share their opinion about AR, but this reasoning you've given us for the mist potion changes isn't doing anything to address what they say their concerns are either.

[Mesket.5728]

2 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

With the removal of many sharable attribute buffs, we are revisiting what Warrior's banners do

 

Let us know when you get a clue... currently you got us here wondering the same thing.

[ages.1934]

2 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Critical Chance, Spotter, and Fury

 

When playing a power build, a major component of your damage output is in getting your critical chance capped at 100%.  One major goal for this update is for the same build and equipment to work both in and out of organized play. Unique stacking bonuses to attributes, especially precision, have been a problem here—their existence means that when playing in coordinated groups with Spotter and Banner of Discipline, your critical-hit chance is almost 10% higher than when playing alone.

We saw an opportunity here to make progress on one of our other long-standing goals: raising the floor on player effectiveness and damage output without further raising the ceiling.

In this update, these unique stacking attribute bonuses are being changed to provide boons instead. We’re making the critical-hit chance from them much more accessible by increasing the critical-hit chance bonus from the fury boon from 20% to 25% in PvE and by adding an additional 5% critical-hit chance to many professions’ traits.

With this update, your critical hit chance will be higher in most content, as Fury is stronger and is becoming more accessible.

• Fury: Critical chance bonus increased from 20% to 25% in PvE only.
•  

Arms

• Furious Burst: Now also increases the critical chance from Fury by 5%.

 

 

Ok, putting aside all the condi minor and major traits in Arms (which is another can of worms that rightfully continues to be discussed elsewhere), why was the bonus 5% crit - with its admitted purpose to help the class reach crit cap - put in the same line that has a grandmaster trait that grants 100% crit chance to burst skills. These seem to be contradictory philosophies as to what this traitline is supposed to accomplish.

[Karagee.6830]

2 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Below you’ll find the designer notes for the profession updates that were released on June 28. Please note that these design notes DO NOT reflect any future changes to balance or balance approach that we’ll be making based on the feedback we’ve received over the last few weeks.

June 28 – Profession Update Design Notes

Critical Chance, Spotter, and Fury

When playing a power build, a major component of your damage output is in getting your critical chance capped at 100%.  One major goal for this update is for the same build and equipment to work both in and out of organized play. Unique stacking bonuses to attributes, especially precision, have been a problem here—their existence means that when playing in coordinated groups with Spotter and Banner of Discipline, your critical-hit chance is almost 10% higher than when playing alone.

We saw an opportunity here to make progress on one of our other long-standing goals: raising the floor on player effectiveness and damage output without further raising the ceiling.

In this update, these unique stacking attribute bonuses are being changed to provide boons instead. We’re making the critical-hit chance from them much more accessible by increasing the critical-hit chance bonus from the fury boon from 20% to 25% in PvE and by adding an additional 5% critical-hit chance to many professions’ traits.

With this update, your critical hit chance will be higher in most content, as Fury is stronger and is becoming more accessible.

• Fury: Critical chance bonus increased from 20% to 25% in PvE only.

Increasing Fury and Might Access

Having high uptime on critical boons is the strongest indicator of success when playing in group content. Fury increases your critical hit chance, significantly increasing your overall damage. Might increases your Power and Condition Damage attributes, also increasing damage dealt. Together they have a multiplicative effect, allowing you to hit far harder than you can without these key boons.

In this update, we're adding new sources of each to ensure that you and your allies have effective access to them with less need for planning a stringent group composition.

To that end, we've updated four specific traits across four professions to be key sources of Fury for groups.

Previously, each of these traits were self-only sources of Fury with partial uptime. Now, they'll serve as being able to provide 50% Fury uptime (base, without Boon Duration) for yourself and up to four other nearby allies.

These professions and traits are:

• Elementalist: Raging Storm
• Engineer: No Scope
• Mesmer: Master Fencer
• Thief: Unrelenting Strikes

These traits will allow damage-oriented builds for these professions to help support nearby allies by ensuring high Fury uptime, keeping critical hit chances high.

In addition, Rangers and Revenants can choose to tap into Fury with reworked versions of Spotter and Assassin's Presence, which now will apply Fury to yourself and allies when entering combat, and every 10 seconds thereafter while you remain in combat.

Altogether, if you find you're lacking Fury, there'll be ways to shore it up- and it should become much more commonplace whenever you're playing with someone else nearby!

Might is the other half of this equation, and until now the burden has been squarely on the shoulders of heal support builds. By adding more incremental sources of Might, we're aiming to take some of this reliance off of healing builds, and ensure smoother and more consistent Might uptime whenever multiple players are together.

• Engineer: Rifle now grants Might to yourself and allies with the damage skill Blunderbuss, or by also swapping to the trait Pinpoint Distribution when more is needed.
• Mesmer: Chronomancer boon support builds will provide Might with the Shield skill Tides of Time.
• Ranger: Frost Spirit will now apply Might to allies in the vicinity.
• Thief: Thrill of the Crime, in the Trickery specialization, has had its might application increased.
• Warrior: Banner of Strength and the trait Empower Allies are now both sources of additional group Might.

Fractal Masteries and the Mist Offensive Potion

When playing Fractals, it's well advised to use consumable Mist Potions for bonuses to tackle higher-tier bosses. The Offense Potion increases all damage you deal. However, the 'Fractal Attunement' masteries also cause the consumable Mist Potions to transform your Agony Resistance into attributes. With these masteries, the Mist Offense Potion also increases your Precision.

This causes a similar problem to other unique Precision effects as it means that to optimize your critical hit chance in Fractals to effectively play Power builds, you'll want to have a different (lower) amount of Precision on your equipment than when playing elsewhere.

Since Fractals will be impacted by other critical chance changes (such as the increased bonus in Fury), we're changing the attribute bonus the Fractal Attunement masteries give to the Offense Potion from Precision to Vitality.

When selecting a new attribute here, we had several considerations. Rather than increasing damage further with an attribute like Ferocity, we opted to smooth out fractal progression with the extra health that Vitality brings. This was an opportunity to help ease some chokepoints we see in Fractal progression. One such chokepoint is at Tier 3- this is the point where many fractallers have collected enough mastery points to progress Fractal Attunement, difficulty of the content has begun to climb, and potion use commonly begins (especially as some can be acquired for free daily with 'Recommended Fractals' of lower tier). By adding Vitality onto the mastery bonus to the Offense Potion here, we introduce an additional source of health that can smooth out progression and help teach the necessity of Fractal Potions in higher tier Fractal play.

This bonus will provide greater health increases as higher value Agony Resistance infusions are equipped, helping to smooth out rough spots in daily T4 clears and helping to prepare more players to tackle Challenge Modes.

• Mist Offensive Potion: The Fractal Attunement Masteries now cause this potion to convert a percentage of agony resistance into vitality instead of precision.

Items

• Rune of Sanctuary: This rune now also converts incoming healing from healing-over-time effects such as regeneration into barrier. This effect now only occurs while in combat. To account for healing-over-time effects now activating this rune, the percentage of incoming healing converted to barrier has been reduced from 20% to 10%.

General

• Adrenal Mushrooms and Mistlock Singularities now reset ranger pet and mechanist Mech Command skill cooldowns when used.

Elementalist

Looking at Elementalist, we see room for small but key changes in Weaver and Tempest, but need to pull back on potential top-end damage for Catalyst.

Weaver is known for being very selfish, providing few boons for nearby allies. With changes to 'Raging Storm' in Air Attunement, Elementalists will be able to upkeep a base of 50% Fury uptime on nearby allies. In Weaver specifically, we've also updated their minor trait, Elemental Refreshment, to give Barrier to allies when the Weaver executes a Dual Attack, helping to incrementally prevent incoming damage.

Tempest is gaining the ability to grant Alacrity to nearby allies with an update to 'Lucid Singularity', which now grants allies Alacrity in a circle of radius of 360 when completing an overload. We expect this to be viable with 'Fresh Air' overload builds, but will be watching to see what else the community does with it- and what further tweaks we can make in the future to help it succeed.

Catalyst has recently begun to be meta-defining in raids, with a personal damage potential almost 20% higher than any other specialization, while at the same time eliminating the need for a quickness support role when stacked. We're making a key set of reductions to it to remediate these issues.

Most of the damage reduction to be made to Catalyst is happening by reducing the damage multiplier of the Jade Sphere. However, some particularly unfun gameplay has developed around Hammer autoattacks. Singing Strike, Hammer #1 in Fire attunement, deals its damage after half a second, but has another 700ms of 'aftercast' animation before it can naturally repeat. We've been seeing a pattern of key-binding 'Stow Weapon' and using that to interrupt this skill at the half second mark, so that it can instantly repeat, and doubling autoattack DPS as a result.

Chilling Crack, the third hit in the hammer 1 Water chain, has a similar issue, where interrupting it early allows the chain to be restarted again quickly, raising overall attack damage. To resolve this, we've cut half a second out of that aftercast animation, so that the skills will naturally execute and repeat much faster, while re-tuning damage on all of Catalyst's autoattacks so that they are more closely normalized to their actual animation cast time.

Fiery Greatsword

• Clarified the skill fact for Lesser Fiery Eruption to indicate that each eruption can strike 6 times.
• The tooltip for Lesser Fiery Eruption now matches the actual target cap for this skill.
• Reduced target cap for Fiery Greatsword's Fiery Eruption and Firestorm skills to 5.

Conjure Earth Shield

• Stone Sheath: Increased cooldown from 8 seconds to 12 seconds in PvP only.
• Magnetic Surge: Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP only.

Air

• Zephyr's Speed: Now additionally increases critical strike chance by 5% while attuned to air.
• Raging Storm: Increased fury duration to 4 seconds. This skill now applies to up to 5 allied targets within a range of 360. Increased internal cooldown to 8 seconds.

Staff

• Lightning Surge: Increased power coefficient from 0.91 to 1.13 in PvP and WvW.
• Ice Spike: Increased power coefficient from 0.91 to 1.13 in PvP and WvW.
• Geyser: Increased pulse base heal from 276 to 441 in PvP and WvW.
• Frozen Ground: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Healing Rain: Increased number of conditions removed per pulse from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW.

Weaver

• Elemental Refreshment: Now affects up to 5 allies in a circle with a range of 360.

Tempest

• Lucid Singularity: This trait has been reworked. It now applies alacrity to nearby allies upon successfully completing an overload. Duration is now 6 seconds with a radius of 360.

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.
• Deploy Jade Sphere: Damage coefficient per strike reduced from 0.668 to 0.5 in PvE only.
• Spectacular Sphere: This trait now also increases the radius of Deploy Jade Sphere from 240 to 360 in all game modes. In PvE only, it causes Deploy Jade Sphere in air attunement to additionally provide quickness and reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%.

Hammer

• Stonestrike: Damage coefficient reduced from 1.1 to 0.9 in PvE only.
• Singeing Strike: Damage coefficient reduced from 0.9 to 0.6 in PvE only. Aftercast animation delay before repeating Singeing Strike has been reduced by 0.5 seconds.
• Stream Strike: Damage coefficient reduced from 0.8 to 0.5 in PvE only.
• Water Rush: Damage coefficient reduced from 1.1 to 0.5 in PvE only.
• Chilling Crack: Damage coefficient reduced from 1.4 to 1.2 in PvE only. Aftercast animation delay before repeating Stream Strike has been reduced by 0.5 seconds.
• Rain of Blows: Damage coefficient per hit (4 hits) increased from 0.45 to 0.5 in PvE only.

Engineer

In Engineer, we've updated skills on their core Rifle weapon to modernize it to more recent gameplay standards and to better support power builds.

One of these standards is that your #2 skill should be damage-positive if possible- something you want to use whenever it is available as a regular part of your gameplay. For this reason, we've switched the location of Blunderbuss and Net Shot, so that Blunderbuss is now on #2, and Net Shot on #3. Blunderbuss has had its cooldown reduced, and now additionally applies Might to the Engineer and nearby allies, making this skill key for regular use in combat.

To pair with the updates to Rifle, we've revisited traits that have conflicting range requirements. The maximum range at which High Caliber and No Scope work has been increased from 300 to 450, while the minimum range at which Aim Assisted Rocket functions has been reduced from 450 to 150, creating a zone in between where all these traits can function together.

We've also gotten in some longtime requests for Mechanist polish, such as making the mech's 'Rocket Punch' function with any equipped Engineer weapon and no longer interrupt Mech skills in progress.

Rifle

• Hip Shot has been replaced with Rifle Burst. Rifle Burst delivers a quick burst of fire that pierces targets, followed by an explosive grenade. Total damage coefficient increased from 0.65 to 1.0 in PvE only.
• Net Shot: Moved from second to third in the Rifle sequence. Immobilize duration increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds in PvE only.
• Blunderbuss: Moved from third to second in the Rifle sequence. Now additionally applies might to up to 5 allied targets within a range of 360. Might applied is 5 stacks for 8 seconds in PvE and 3 stacks for 5 seconds in PvP and WvW. Cooldown reduced from 9 seconds to 6 seconds in PvE and from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased minimum power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.87 in PvP and WvW.
• Jump Shot: Maximum range increased from 800 to 900. The launch blast is now an Explosion. Animation updated for more bounce. Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 18 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Utility

• Throw Mine: Reduced number of boons removed from 3 to 2 in WvW only.

Firearms

• Hematic Focus: Critical chance bonus increased from 10% to 15% in PvE only.
• Pinpoint Distribution: This trait has been reworked. It now grants might to allies while in combat, applying 5 stacks of might with a 10-second duration on a 10-second interval.
• High Caliber: Range threshold increased from 300 to 450.
• No Scope: Range threshold increased from 300 to 450. Fury now applies to up to 5 allied targets within a range of 360.

Explosives

• Aim-Assisted Rocket: Minimum range threshold reduced from 450 to 150.

Inventions

• Medical Dispersion Field: This trait now stores self-applied healing while in combat and expends all stored healing at each 3-second interval to heal nearby allies. This trait now functions with healing-over-time effects such as Regeneration, Big Boomer, Backpack Regenerator, and Rectifier Signet. To account for healing-over-time effects now activating this trait, the percentage of healing stored from each heal has been reduced from 50% to 33% in PvE, 25% to 17% in PvP, and 15% to 10% in WvW.

Mechanist

• The mech's defiance bar is now locked so that it is no longer susceptible to control effects in PvE. It can still be controlled in PvP and WvW.
• Mech Arms: Jade Cannons: Now additionally increases the mech's base critical chance from 5% to 25% in PvE and from 5% to 10% in PvP and WvW. If Explosives is traited with Aim-Assisted Rocket, the mech also gains the effect of that trait.
• Discharge Array: This Mech Command skill is now cast instantly. Confusion duration per hit in PvE reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
• When using a Mech Command skill, most other Mech Command buttons display a cooldown equal to the casting time of the Mech Command being used to properly indicate the time remaining until they can be used.
  • Instant F2 skills (Discharge Array and Crisis Zone) do not go on cooldown and may now be used instantly while another Mech Command skill is already in progress, without interrupting that skill.
• Spark Revolver: Damage increased by 10% in PvE only.
• Rocket Fist Prototype: Stun duration increased from 0.5 seconds to 1 second.
• Mech Fighter: The mech's Rocket Punch is now triggered whenever Skill 3 is used on an equipped engineer weapon. Rocket Punch is now instant and no longer interrupts other skills the mech is performing. Rocket Punch no longer stuns and instead deals 100 defiance damage to enemies with an active defiance bar.
• Core Reactor Shot: This Mech Command skill's animation duration has been reduced from approximately 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds.
• Mech Core: Jade Dynamo: This trait has been reworked. It no longer causes mech attacks to sometimes include an explosion, nor does it allow the mech to inherit the effect of Explosives traits. Instead, it now reduces the cooldown of Mech Command skills by 20% and grants quickness after a Mech Command skill is used.
• Sky Circus: This Mech Command skill now has improved visual effects. Instead of firing missiles only at enemies in a forward arc, it now fires missiles at enemies in a circular radius of 600.
• Superconducting Signet: Vulnerability and confusion duration per hit reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

Guardian

With this patch's focus on removing party-sharable stacking attribute bonuses from traits, we're revisiting the trait Perfect Inscriptions, and it is changing to no longer share Signet passives with allies when activated. Instead, it will allow you to maintain your Signets' passive effects while they are on cooldown.

This was a good opportunity to make some updates to the Signet skills themselves.

Signet of Resolve previously did not do very much; every 10 seconds, it'd check if you had a condition currently on you. If you did, it'd remove it. Regardless of if there was a condition or not, it'd then go back to 'sleep' until the next 10 second interval. We've updated this signet to function more like a Condition blocking version of Aegis. While not on internal cooldown, the signet is now watching to see if an incoming condition would be applied, and if it is, it 'wakes up' and immediately removes it, then goes on a 5 second internal cooldown. It'll also work if there's a condition on you when it comes off internal cooldown, too! These changes will make it a lot more useful and able to compete against other strong healing skill options.

Valor

• Strength in Numbers: This trait has been reworked. It now grants protection to allies while in combat, applying protection with a 3-second duration on a 10-second interval.

Radiance

• Amplified Wrath: Burning damage increase reduced from 15% to 10% in PvE only.
• Perfect Inscriptions: No longer grants signet passive effects to allies when activated. Instead, signets continue to provide their passive effects while recharging.

Signets

• Signet of Resolve: Decreased the passive effect's internal cooldown from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. This effect will now protect the player from an incoming condition by immediately removing it, and then it begins its internal cooldown. The active effect now additionally removes two conditions from the player.
• Signet of Mercy: Cooldown reduced from 90 seconds to 50 seconds in PvE only.
• Signet of Wrath: Immobile duration increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds in PvE only.
• Signet of Courage: Cooldown reduced from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Active effect radius reduced from 1,200 to 600. Now heals for a smaller amount in five small channeled heal pulses, followed by one large final heal. Now also channels protection, resolution, and stability on allies in the radius. Does not apply stability in PvP or WvW.

Firebrand

• Mantra of Solace: This skill now grants aegis instead of protection and resolution in PvP and WvW.

Willbender

• Flowing Resolve: Reduced ammunition count from 2 to 1 in PvP only.

Mesmer

For Mesmer, we're making changes to how Chronomancer can apply boons to allies, with a focus on making their boon application methods easier to use, with a consistent size 360 circle, and easier to keep up with moving groups.

An essential piece of this is Shield 5, Tides of Time. The boons applied by Tides of Time are now applied to allies around you immediately when cast, without the wall needing to pass through them. By default, Tides of Time will apply Might and Swiftness, however Chronomancers can now dedicate to either a Quickness or Alacrity boon support role based on their Grandmaster trait selection. Selecting 'Stretched Time' will add Alacrity to Tides of Time, while Seize the Moment adds Quickness.

Stretched Time replaces the former 'Lost Time', and causes all Well skills to apply Alacrity to nearby allies when cast. This effect is immediate when the Well appears, and applies in a 50% larger radius than that of the Wells themselves.

Dueling

• Master Fencer: Now may activate on any critical hit, granting 4 seconds of fury on up to 5 allies in a circle with a range of 360. Internal cooldown is 8 seconds.

Virtuoso

• Quiet Intensity: Bonus critical chance from Fury increased from 10% to 15% in PvE.
• Bladesong Sorrow: Bleed on hit removed.

Chronomancer

• Seize the Moment: Radius increased from 240 to 360. Tides of Time now also applies quickness in a radius of 360 for a duration of 5 seconds when cast.
• Lost Time: Reworked and renamed Stretched Time.
• Stretched Time: The first pulse of a well also applies alacrity for 4 seconds to allies near the well in a radius of 360. Tides of Time now also applies alacrity in a radius of 360 for a duration of 5 seconds when cast.

Shield

• Tides of Time: Cooldown reduced from 40 seconds to 35 seconds. The stun-enemy and ally-boon components of this skill now each have separate 5-target caps. This skill no longer applies quickness and alacrity to allies the wave passes through. Instead, it applies swiftness for 5 seconds and 5 stacks of might for 15 seconds in a radius of 360 when cast. The trait Seize the Moment now also adds 5 seconds of quickness while Stretched Time (formerly Lost Time) adds 5 seconds of alacrity. Damage coefficient increased from 0.8 to 1.3 in PvE only.

Wells

• Well of Action: Now provides Superspeed to allies on the final pulse instead of quickness.
• Well of Recall: Renamed Well of Senility. Now removes two boons from enemy targets on the final pulse instead of providing alacrity to allies.

Necromancer

We're making a key quality of life improvement for Reaper players with a change to 'Death Perception'. Instead of giving +33% critical strike chance while in Shroud, it'll now give +10% critical chance all the time. This change allows you to consistently select your gear to cap critical strike chance all the time, without needing to significantly overcap in Shroud. We're also changing the Ferocity to a +15% damage multiplier to your critical strikes. Overall, this is a small buff to damage.

Warhorn and the related trait Banshee's Wail have also been updated to be an option to provide some healing support to allies. Locust Swarm now heals nearby allies based on the amount number of enemies hit, while Banshee's Wail increases all of your outgoing healing by 10%.

Warhorn

• Wail of Doom: This skill now inflicts 1 second of fear instead of 2 seconds of daze on enemies. This skill inflicts bonus defiance-bar damage on defiant enemies.
• Locust Swarm: This skill now heals nearby allies around the necromancer based on the number of enemies hit, in addition to its previous effects.

Utility

• Corrosive Poison Cloud: Reduced duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP only.

Soul Reaping

• Death Perception: This trait now gives 10% critical chance, regardless of whether the necromancer is in shroud. This trait now increases critical damage by 15% instead of increasing ferocity while in shroud.

Blood Magic

• Blood Bank: Now also converts incoming healing from healing-over-time effects such as regeneration into barrier. This effect now only occurs while in combat. To account for healing-over-time effects now activating this trait, the percentage of incoming healing converted to barrier has been reduced from 15% to 10% in PvE and from 10% to 5% in PvP and WvW.
• Banshee's Wail: This trait now grants a 10% bonus to outgoing healing effectiveness in addition to its previous effects.

Reaper

• Nightfall: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Grasping Darkness: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
•  "Your Soul Is Mine!": Increased base heal from 4,555 to 6,174 in PvP and WvW. Increased base life force generation from 5% to 10% in PvP and WvW.
• "You Are All Weaklings!": Increased weakness duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased base might stacks "Chilled to the Bone!": Reduced cooldown from 75 seconds to 60 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Harbinger

• Elixirs: All elixirs now use normal projectile targeting underwater, instead of using ground targeting.
• Elixir of Ambition: Reduced might stacks from 25 to 10 in PvP only.

Ranger

The main changes being made to Ranger are on the Spirit skills. Spirits no longer apply effects when an ally in the radius strikes an enemy. Instead, each Spirit applies a boon to allied targets in the radius each 3s interval. The Nature's Vengeance trait increases the base duration of these boons by 50%, and causes Spirits' activated skills to apply Alacrity to allies in an area.

We've made some improvements under the hood on how Spirits work. Although the activated skills are the same, Spirits now respond instantly when ordered to do them- previously there was up to a 1 second delay before the spirit would act, as it was listening for an update on a 1-second interval signaling it to use the skill. Now, they'll teleport immediately and, with Nature's Vengeance, Alacrity is instantly applied to nearby allies around your location.

This was a good opportunity to make a change to Druid's grandmaster healing trait, Lingering Light. The old Lingering Light gave very bursty healing with a large increase while in Celestial Avatar. We wanted to smooth this out, and have part of this bonus carry over for 10 seconds after you exit Avatar, so that it's a more reliable option overall to improve your healing output. That didn't seem like enough though, so we're also using it to help increase the reliability of your Astral Force generation. While you're not in Celestial Avatar form, Lingering Light will passively generate Astral Force at a slow rate.

Together, adjusted spirits, a method to apply Alacrity, and steadily improved healing from Lingering Light should provide a much more competitive heal/boon support profile for Druid in groups.

Spirits

• Spirit skills now affect 5 allied targets.
• Spirits no longer apply effects when an ally in the radius strikes an enemy. Instead, each spirit applies a boon to allied targets in the radius at each 3-second interval. The Nature's Vengeance trait increases the base duration of these boons by 50% and causes spirits' activated skills to apply alacrity to allies in an area.
• Spirits and their applied boons are as follows:
  • Water Spirit: Regeneration
  • Sun Spirit: Vigor
  • Storm Spirit: Fury
  • Stone Spirit: Protection
  • Frost Spirit: Might

Beastmastery

• Pack Alpha: Fixed an issue with certain ranger pet skills not having their skill recharges reduced, or reduced incorrectly, by this trait.

Marksmanship

• Clarion Bond: Fixed a bug that caused the icon shown by Clarion Bond to remain on the skill bar after its effect triggered.

Nature Magic

• Nature's Vengeance: This trait now increases spirits' base boon durations by 50% and causes spirit-activated skills to apply alacrity for 4 seconds on up to 5 allied targets in the area.

Skirmishing

• Spotter: This trait has been reworked. It now grants fury to allies while in combat, applying fury with a 3-second duration on a 10-second interval.
• Hunter's Tactics: Bonus damage while flanking increased from 10% to 15% in PvE.
• Vicious Quarry: Bonus critical chance from fury increased from 10% to 15% in PvE.

Druid

• Grace of the Land: Might applied on activation reduced to 1 stack for a 10-second duration in PvE only.
• Lingering Light: Now gives passive astral force generation while not in Celestial Avatar form. While in Celestial Avatar form, grants 20% increased outgoing healing as well as 10% increased outgoing healing for 10 seconds after exiting Celestial Avatar.
• Natural Mender: Increased outgoing healing bonus per stack from 1% to 1.5% in PvP and WvW.
• Glyph of Unity (Celestial Avatar): Healing of tethered allies may now occur once every 0.5-second interval. Healing can now be triggered by regeneration or other healing-over-time effects on the player.
• Ancestral Grace: Increased healing attribute scaling from 0.5 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW.

Soulbeast

• Leader of the Pack: In PvE, the personal stance duration granted by this trait has been reduced to match the PvP value of 20%.
• One Wolf Pack: In PvE, recharge reduced from 80 seconds to 60 seconds and duration reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds, matching PvP values. In PvE only, damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.63 to 0.95, and interval between strikes increased to 1 second.

Untamed

Hammer

• Heavy Smash: Damage coefficient increased from 1.2 to 1.4 in PvE only.
• Wild Swing: Damage coefficient increased from 1.0 to 1.5 in PvE only.

Ranger Pets

• Poisonous Maul (Juvenile Murellow): Fixed an issue in which the poison duration and number of stacks did not match the tooltip.
• Icy Maul (Polar Bear): Fixed an issue in which the incorrect condition was being applied to enemies.

Revenant

On Revenant, we've focused on updates to Ventari legend skills and Salvation to create new opportunities for effective healing builds, and an update to Herald to allow them to provide Quickness to allies.

Ventari is a legend most suited for supporting allies through healing and condition removal, but the rest of its kit struggles to keep up with the range of tools available to other support builds. The usability of the tablet is another limiting factor; it can be extremely difficult to keep the tablet in the correct location, especially in engagements that are more mobile. We decided to remove the healing from Ventari's Will to allow us to significantly reduce the cooldown of moving the tablet so it can always be where it's needed.

We've also added a new mechanic to centaur stance, which grants a bonus effect to the first skill used after summoning the tablet. This was a way to add some additional tools to the kit without just applying extra functionality to every usage of every skill. This bonus effect applies after entering Centaur Stance, and after destroying the tablet via Energy Expulsion and resummoning it with Project Tranquility.

While looking at Ventari, we also wanted to do a pass on its supporting traitline Salvation. The healing orbs created by Salvation have always been a difficult way to provide healing, requiring allies to move to precise locations in order to be healed, instead of simply healing in a radius like most professions do. Between this change and the movement adjustments to Ventari's tablet, we hope to see a significant improvement in gameplay feel for healing revenant builds.

Salvation is another place we wanted to add more diverse tools for support revenant builds. Alacrity was something that needed to be removed from core revenant to allow quickness to be given to Herald, but this made room to give additional boons to each centaur stance skill via Serene Rejuvenation. Protection also makes an appearance in the updated Salvation line, with Fortified Blessing granting it to allies when removing their conditions.

Herald can now grant quickness when activating facet Consume skills with the trait Draconic Echo, creating opportunities new boon support hybrid and healing roles.

• Ancient Echo: This skill now grants regeneration instead of alacrity in Legendary Centaur Stance.
• Rejuvenating Assault: This skill no longer creates healing orbs and instead heals allies around the revenant.

Devastation

• Assassin's Presence: This trait has been reworked. It now grants fury to allies while in combat, applying fury with a 3-second duration on a 10-second interval.

Legendary Centaur Stance

• After summoning Ventari's Tablet, the next Legendary Centaur skill will be empowered. This occurs when entering Legendary Centaur Stance or when using Project Tranquility.
  • Natural Harmony: Healing is increased and endurance is granted to affected allies.
  • Purifying Essence: Additional conditions are removed.
  • Protective Solace: Grant protection to allies in the area.
  • Energy Expulsion: Knockdown duration is increased.
• Project Tranquility: This skill now activates instantly. Increased base pulse heal from 325 to 363 in PvE only.
• Ventari's Will: This skill no longer has an energy cost. Reduced cooldown from 3 seconds to 0.25 seconds. This skill no longer heals allies.
• Natural Harmony: Increased heal attribute scaling from 2.25 to 2.75 in PvE only. Increased heal attribute scaling from 1.25 to 1.75 in PvP and WvW.
• Energy Expulsion: This skill no longer creates healing fragments and instead heals and removes conditions from allies in the area. This skill no longer consumes all energy when used. Increased energy cost from 10 to 35. This skill now knocks down enemies that it strikes instead of knocking them back.

Legendary Demon Stance

• Banish Enchantment: Increased energy cost from 20 to 30 in WvW only.

Salvation

• Healer's Gift: This trait no longer creates a healing orb. It instead heals nearby allies after completing a dodge roll.
• Blinding Truths: This trait now has an internal cooldown of 3 seconds in PvE and WvW. The 10-second internal cooldown in PvP is unchanged.
• Vital Blessing: This trait has been removed. Invoking Harmony has been moved to this slot.
• Tranquil Balance: This trait has been removed and replaced with Eluding Nullification.
• Eluding Nullification: This removes a condition from nearby allies at the end of the player's dodge roll.
• Words of Censure: This trait no longer creates a healing orb and instead heals nearby allies when blinding, immobilizing, or affecting a foe with crowd control effects.
• Fortified Blessing: This trait fills the slot previously held by Invoking Harmony. Grant protection when you remove a condition from an ally. Internal cooldown is 0.25 seconds.
• Serene Rejuvenation: Increased outgoing healing bonus from 15% to 20% in PvE and from 10% to 15% in PvP and WvW. This trait no longer causes Natural Harmony to grant alacrity. Instead, it causes Legendary Centaur Stance skills to apply the following boons:
  • Natural Harmony: Vigor
  • Purifying Essence: Regeneration
  • Protective Solace: Swiftness
  • Energy Expulsion: Resistance
• Generous Abundance: This trait no longer creates healing orbs, and instead heals nearby allies when activating a legend skill. Healing is increased and occurs around Ventari's Tablet when using a Legendary Centaur Stance skill.
• Selfless Amplification: This trait has been removed and replaced with Invigorating Dismissal.
• Invigorating Dismissal: This trait grants endurance when the revenant removes a condition from an ally.

Retribution

• Planar Protection: Increased internal cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.

Herald

• Forceful Persistence: In PvE only, the bonus damage per active-upkeep herald skill has been increased from 4% to 5%. The bonus damage per non-herald active-upkeep skill has been increased from 13% to 15%.
• Draconic Echo: This trait now grants 1.5 seconds of quickness to allies when the revenant uses a consume skill, in addition to its previous effects.
• Elemental Blast: Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. Damage multiplier increased from 1.15 to 1.5. Weakness duration increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds. Chill duration increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Burning duration increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. These changes are for PvE only.
• Burst of Strength: Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 15 seconds. Damage multiplier increased from 1.25 to 1.6. These changes are for PvE only.

Vindicator

• Energy Meld: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Balance in Discord: Reduced base heal from 1,162 to 810 in PvP only.

Thief

Shadow Arts has long been a source of frustrating gameplay, particularly in competitive PvP and WvW. This is partially due to the stealth generated by Concealing Restoration, Meld with Shadows, and Hidden Thief, which compounded with other Thief stealth sources to push stealth access to exceptional levels.

Shadow Arts also has numerous traits that reward staying in stealth for extended periods of time, reinforcing the desire to create builds with high stealth uptime which can be difficult to interact with. We want Shadow Arts to reward stealth, but in a more active fashion than it currently does. To this end, many traits that triggered on intervals while in stealth have been reworked to instead grant their effects when entering or exiting stealth.

This new behavior promotes using shorter duration stealth to quickly reposition and use a stealth attack instead of sitting in stealth to accumulate value. We're also taking this opportunity to add some additional support tools to the line to complement Shadow Savior in builds looking to provide a bit more group utility.

Utility

• Seal Area: Reduced duration from 8 seconds to 5 seconds in PvP only.
• Hide in Shadows: Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Blinding Powder: Reduced cooldown from 50 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.
• Shadow Refuge: Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 48 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Shadow Arts

• Concealing Restoration: This trait has been removed and replaced by Merciful Ambush.
• Merciful Ambush: This trait has been moved to adept minor and now heals when entering or exiting stealth instead of applying a pulse heal upon entering stealth.
• Shielding Restoration: This trait fills the slot previously held by Merciful Ambush. It grants barrier to nearby allies after using a healing skill.
• Shadow's Embrace: This trait now removes a damaging condition when entering or exiting stealth instead of at every interval while in stealth. This effect also applies to stealth granted to allies.
• Hidden Thief: This trait has been reworked. Stealing now inflicts blindness, and stealth attacks now inflict weakness.
• Meld with Shadows: This trait has been reworked. Players now gain Superspeed when entering or exiting stealth.
• Leeching Venoms: This trait now grants stacks of Spider Venom when entering or exiting stealth instead of every interval while in stealth.
• Flickering Shadows: This trait has been removed and replaced by Cloaked in Shadow.
• Cover of Shadow: This trait fills the slot previously held by Cloaked in Shadow. Players now gain protection when entering or exiting stealth. This effect also applies to stealth granted to allies.
• Shadow's Rejuvenation: This trait no longer grants healing or initiative while in stealth and instead grants initiative when entering or exiting stealth.
• Rending Shade: Increased the number of boons stolen from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW.

Critical Strikes

• Keen Observer: Critical chance bonus increased from 10% to 15% in PvE only.
• Unrelenting Strikes: This trait now may activate on any critical hit, granting 4 seconds of fury to up to 5 allies in a circle with a range of 360. Internal cooldown is 8 seconds.

Trickery

• Thrill of the Crime: Might stacks granted increased from 3 to 5 in PvE only.

Specter

• Traversing Dusk: Reduced base shadow force gain from 5% to 3% in PvP only.

Warrior

Keeping an eye on Bladesworn play since EoD's launch has shown us several opportunities for polish to improve the experience here. Warrior players don't have a lot of options for utility skills that increase their damage output, and this has carried over to the Bladesworn skill kit.

Improvements to Dragonspike Mine make it much more impactful as an effective source of damage. We've also added a new Bladesworn utility skill, 'Overcharged Cartridges', which together with an updated Tactical Reload will give you new tools to further increase the power of your Dragon Slash.

With the removal of many sharable attribute buffs, we are revisiting what Warrior's banners do, with an eye to use them to give the Warrior access to boon support roles. Banners will apply Quickness to nearby allies when they're deployed, and then continue to pulse a specific boon for its duration. This isn't intended to cover Quickness alone- the Tactics trait Martial Cadence now causes Soldier's Focus to apply quickness in an area as well, and Warhorn's 'Charge' is now also a source of quickness.

Warhorn

• Charge: This skill no longer grants allies increased damage on their next two attacks. Instead, they grant 2 seconds of quickness to allies. Cooldown increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds. Swiftness duration increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.

Banners

• Banners no longer provide attribute bonuses to allies. Instead, quickness is granted to allies in the area when the warrior uses the banner skill, and then the banner will continue to pulse boons to nearby allies for the remainder of its duration. Each banner provides a different boon, as follows:
  • Banner of Defense: Resistance for 1 second
  • Banner of Discipline: Fury for 1 second
  • Banner of Strength: Might for 5 seconds
  • Banner of Tactics: Regeneration for 1 second
• Picking up a banner no longer reduces the recharge time of the skill. Instead, they can be carried around and dropped to reposition them. Picking up a banner does not grant the warrior additional skills, but they will continue to pulse their associated boons when picked up. The delay before you can pick up a dropped banner has been increased from 1 second to 3 seconds.
• All Banners (except Battle Standard): Recharge time reduced from 80 seconds to 60 seconds.
• Battle Standard: Recharge time reduced from 180 seconds to 120 seconds. Reduced base duration of pulsing boons applied by this banner as follows:
  • Might: Reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
  • Fury: Reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second.
  • Swiftness: Reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second.
• Doubled Standards: This trait now increases the duration of all boons applied by banners by 50%.

Longbow

• Scorched Earth: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.5 to 0.35 in WvW only.
• Fan of Fire: Increased power coefficient per strike from 0.39 to 0.44 in PvP and WvW.
• Arcing Arrow: Increased ammunition count from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW.
• Pin Down: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Utility

• Frenzy: Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Elite Skills

• Signet of Rage: Clarified in the description that the passive adrenaline gain only applies in combat.

Arms

• Furious Burst: Now also increases the critical chance from Fury by 5%.

Tactics

• Vigorous Shouts: Increased healing attribute scaling from 1.2 to 1.32 in WvW only. Increased healing attribute scaling from 0.75 to 1.0 in PvP only.

Spellbreaker

• Breaching Strike: Increased power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.2 in PvP and WvW.
• Aura Slicer: Increased power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.32 in PvP and WvW.
• Bladestorm: Increased power coefficient per strike from 0.235 to 0.28 in PvP and WvW.
• Featherfoot Grace: Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 35 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Bladesworn

• Electric Fence: This skill now blocks projectiles in addition to its other effects.
• Bulletproof Barrier: This skill has been removed and replaced by Overcharged Cartridges.
• Overcharged Cartridges: Using this skill makes your next five Explosion attacks deal 15% more damage. Using the skill again while you still have charges triggers Detonate Cartridges.
• Detonate Cartridges: Using Overcharged Cartridges a second time consumes all remaining charges to cause an explosion in front of the bladesworn that launches enemies. The radius of this skill scales based on the number of charges consumed.
• Dragonspike Mine: Reduced the distance moved by 66%. Reduced the total duration of the skill by 33%. The mine is now planted at the bladesworn's initial location rather than midway through the skill, and it explodes after 3 seconds even when not triggered. This skill now counts as an Explosion skill. Damage increased by 250% in PvE only. Cooldown reduced from 35 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only.
• Dragon Slash—Reach: Increased projectile size by 67%. This skill now strikes targets more accurately in relation to the width and height of the visual projectile. The projectile is now unblockable.
• Tactical Reload: In addition to its previous effects, this skill now also causes the next Dragon Trigger used to gain charges more quickly.
• Daring Dragon: In addition to its previous effects, this trait also causes Tactical Reload to affect Dragon Trigger for the duration of the effect instead of just affecting the next Dragon Trigger.
• Lush Forest: Fixed an issue the prevented several skills from having their cooldowns properly reduced by this trait.

Tactics

• Empower Allies: This trait has been reworked. It now grants might to allies while in combat, applying 5 stacks of might with a 10-second duration on a 10-second interval.
• Martial Cadence: This trait no longer reduces the recharge on weapon skills. It now causes Soldier's Focus to grant allies 3 seconds of quickness in addition to its other effects.

hahaha we should have known better folks.

There is z.e.r.o. explanation for reasoning behind the majority of the changes and the most contentious ones are simply ignored altogether. Person JD 2 weeks ago said we have done A and B (patch notes). Then said we will provide the reasoning and strategy behind change A and change B. Today we get more of we have done A and B.

[SquirrelTeamSix.6073]

Clarity and transparency are good, but honestly may have been better to not address this. The reasoning for this horrendous balance patch isn't as important now that you're addressing that is WAS in fact horrendous. Let's just move on. Looking forward to seeing what you are cooking up for the July off-schedule balance pass that will hopefully make Warrior relevant again, and god forbid, maybe take away some of the things like make it impossible to justify bringing anything other than Firebrand and Mechanist for support roles still. Yes, I know there are classes that provide Alac well now, but when Mech exists and FB spams stab and everything else in the world other than alac, it still just feels pointless.

 

Also, classes doing unique things IS NOT A BAD THING! You're slowly going to make every class feel the same and the only difference will be that color the skills are and who can provide quickness and alacrity easier as well as stability (in fractals)

[raijingeki.8192]

that is, changes that continue to leave everything related to "build powers" useless... for the second time, as you can see that they don't look at their own game. following changes based on interest  from a person instead of listening to the community that boasts that they are one of the best companies, nah, better shoot them in the back and make the game worst xD. With all due respect, shove your patch notes (you know who you are) up your A Z Z, that you don't use to sit down and play such a beautiful game that you've been declining for several years now...yeah that 💕

Edited July 9, 2022 by raijingeki.8192

[Karagee.6830]

 

59 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The design philosophy was stated to come after this post. This post was meant to be the commentary to the balance patch from June 28th. In the June 30th follow up post Grouch said that after these were posted they would work on publishing the design/profession philosophy that is guiding their balance. That is something that I really want to see.

To be quite honest, my understanding of the 'design commentary' and 'design notes' it's to provide some background on why the some changes were made, not to repeat that the changes had been made. We already saw that on 28 June: what's the point of a duplicate post?

Of course, many changes from that patch are impossible to justify rationally, we all understand that, but if he wanted to come clean he should have just be open that some errors were made and give us the rationale for the changes that had some decent reasoning and thought behind them.

[Control.8154]

19 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

hahaha we should have known better folks.

There is z.e.r.o. explanation for reasoning behind the majority of the changes and the most contentious ones are simply ignored altogether. Person JD 2 weeks ago said we have done A and B (patch notes). Then said we will provide the reasoning and strategy behind change A and change B. Today we get more of we have done A and B.

Amazing game direction right? hahahaha

[Shifty.9703]

I feel like this did not address any of the pain points but explained the obvious changes and ignored the confusing ones. I really wanted this to help me feel like Anet knew how their classes worked but it did not.

[Nomad.4301]

Well this is bunch of useless fluff, I was really hoping to hear how any of the changes they made to thief are suppose to make Specter into a viable healer, when it has effectively no way of applying stealth to itself or allies (unless they're downed, which they will be a lot because heal specter sucks😂).

At least they basically confirmed that the entire intent was just to nerf SA and not much else.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Nomad.4301

[Pyrial.2917]

7,337 words, 4,427 cut and paste of the patch notes, 2,910 additional words that gave some marginal insight into balance decisions which were overwhelmingly done for the sake of PVE.  Why would it take so long to produce something that lacks so much?  Fundamentally I don't understand why you have such a hard time communicating to your player base.

[FalsePromises.6398]

I want to say I'm very dissatisfied with how druid is viewed by the balance team, not just because of spirits but also because of the trait changes. Both just spell disaster for druid and probably ranger too in PvE. 

Nerfing Grace of the Land in favor of Lingering Light pushes druid out of the boon support sphere and more into a raw healer, which doesn't spell well for the specialization, but that's explained in the next point. What it does do is reduce the wide scale applicability and usefulness of a druid alone when it has to lean on other specs for something any stronger alac/quick healer support does (might). Also the new frost spirit design has terrible might rampup time (27 seconds to generate 9 might) that also flickers down a stack for the next 27 seconds if you're out of radius for even just 3 seconds. Burst might generation on druid for openers might as well be pulling teeth now that you have to rely on warhorn and an even worse frost spirit instead of getting the job done with CA alone. It's just not a good design choice to have spirits be consistent proximity buffs while still largely immobile, and this used to be glossed over by the fact that spirit buffs were considered extraneous/nonvital and Grace of the Land singlehandedly upkept might, but these notions are no longer.

Furthermore, pushing more boon duty into the spirits and off of druid spells terrible for future elite spec design. This doesn't just say that druid's purely a healing chassis spec now, nor that ranger can't get a quickness spec in the future due to having alacrity in core (as per how Revenant and Chronomancer have been handled), but it also kills diversity for alac boon options if they're ALL forced into using spirits. You kill diversity for ranger in three ways: druid either has to be the sole support spec or is eclipsed completely by the next; ranger can never do quickness in a new elite spec and thus loses a lot of potential diversity options as well as possible flexibility; and now EVERY ranger boon support spec will be running the same skills for alacrity upkeep, just spamming spirits. It's a dismal thought. 

I had quit being a druid main ages ago because of the constant nerfs druid faced making it less and less fun, but I didn't think anet would come back like 3-4 years down the line just to kick it in the balls again. Color me surprised. I've put a good portion of my druid thoughts into a longer thread, with more discussion in the replies. 

Edited July 9, 2022 by FalsePromises.6398

[Nephalem.8921]

12 hours ago, XECOR.2814 said:

The necromancer changes is not a qol upgrade, its a downgrade.
Now you need to put more investment into crit chance by assassins gear or runes which in turn reduces the dps, it creates problems in all gamemodes. I don't think you thought it over completely.
Also if you want to buff power dps on necro just buff the greatsword autos for reaper and that should be enough. They don't do as much damage as they should in pve considering how long it takes to cast them and the after casts is also long.
Also the wail of doom changes completely removed the only use it had which was to interrupt blocks(like engi shield5 etc) or downstates rez, not to mention fear is inherently a worse cc because it can be stabbed, resisted, cleansed, stun broke and even weapon swapped(cleansed) which makes the change a big nerf. On top of that the duration is 1sec which is not enough to get decap in pvp using this skill if you manage to land it.
This needs to be thought over again. Also fix the animation to tracking moving targets better, make it un-blockable again and revert the cast time nerf.
I don't agree with moving from stat bonuses to static % bonuses. It is unneeded change and makes future number balancing work for no reason.
People relate to ferocity numbers and understand it better than damage multipliers that work on top of other multipliers.

You are wrong about the last part. most people dont understand or overvalue ferocity. 20% critdmg sound like a lot but its not when you go from 280 to 300. just a 7% increase if you have 100% critchance. a multiplicative mod will always increase your number by its value. there are a lot of additive mods which create the same problem as critical dmg though.

the reaper change was a net dps buff in pve. pvp shroud nerf i guess. its dmg is still awful though. it was that bad before. playing reaper in raids/strikes is still trolling.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Nephalem.8921