Design Notes for June 28 Professions Update

[Ascency.3580]

Theres all the "what" but still no "why" unfortunately.

Why was catalyst nerfed this hard?

Why was it decided that some power classess should not be able to upkeep 100% fury when alone?

Why didnt warrior get any compensation after loosing a huge amount of stats?

Why was no compensation made to power builds after loosing way more dps then condi builds after removing unique buffs?

Why did all the unique buffs have to go? Precision is one thing and changing spotter and banner giving precision is reasonable, but most other buffs did not affect the buildcrafting aspect this hard?

Why was engi buffed this hard when it already was super strong?

Why didnt chrono get 5% added crit even tho it used to have a very much viable dps build and still has if not counting the global power nerfs.

Why still only 2 proffesions in the game can very effectively role compress and make up almost 40% of whats played in the meta while other classes keep getting hit so that this possibility is removed or come at a cost (fb and mech heal+quick/alac has no tradeoff)?

Why were some of the changes approved to go live while there were clearly rushed and not tought thru, like weaver 5% crit in air, or warrior crit in arms.

Thats some of the changes or lack of them that i would like to know the reasoning behind. 

Im hoping most the issues with this patch will be resolved. Few already have.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Ascency.3580

[Hell Nirvana.9045]

10 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

That would be Bladesworn in competetive. 

"Singing Strike"

[Daniel Handler.4816]

I think an inadvertent effect of changing chrono is nerfing Mesmers only group build in WvW. 

You reduced the target cap on shield and lowered the amount of boon rip we get from sigil of absorption. And the amount of alacrity they can generate for themselves is down since the spec can't afford more than gravity and heal well. https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Support_Chronomancer

In groups that use scrappers for stealth I guess you could hypothetically take well of recall to mitigate the boon rip and alacrity loss. But that is incredibly clunky. 

This is particularly unfortunate since there is no alternative in large scale fights. Virtuoso projectiles are reflected or soaked before they reach their target. And mirage can't double dodge with the group. 

If possible could you make the new grandmaster also give us alacrity on interrupt or better yet increase flow of time to 2 seconds. As for boon ripping, making recall pulse that effect would  make it way more reliable. 

 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Daniel Handler.4816

[pallas.8150]

I'll only add that if you are unhappy with the GW2 team, my recommendation is to simply not support them with purchases.

 

If you don't find that they are putting out quality, the best way to let them know is by targeting their bottom line. 

Edited July 9, 2022 by pallas.8150

[God.5728]

This is extremely disappointing. 😒

[tetmikem.5608]

Perhaps this info is coming at a later date, but I would REALLY love to hear from the Dev team about what their vision is for the different classes/elite specialisations.  

 

I'm an Engi main so I will come at this from that point of view, but I think this question could be asked of most other classes too.  I main Scrapper and after the Quickness update, but before EoD I was having a great time playing Scrapper.  It felt viable in many different game modes. 

 

Heal Quick and qDPS were great in Raids.  I could tank in raids if required with some tweaks.  I could do okay power DPS in raids, though it wasn't great compared to many others, it wasn't embarrassing. Heal Scrapper is obviously Meta in WvW. Open World play was fun with our barrier generation.

 

Then the dev team came along and nerfed our barrier, making our open world play a lot less fun, and nerfing our PVE DPS on a power DPS build because we can't as easily stay in melee range to get that DPS out.  I still for the life of me, don't understand why that nerf was necessary.

 

The Mech was released with EoD.  Now, correct me if I am wrong but apart from in WvW I see no reason for anyone to take a Scrapper over a Mechanist in any PVE/Open world content.  It out performs Scrapper in DPS, it provides better support and has more functionality than Scrapper in raids.  Other classes can now provide quickness while doing better DPS than a qDPS Scrapper so why take one? I feel like my Scrapper is becoming obsolete in anything other than WvW.  And you know, I'd like to play my Scrapper in other areas as well. 

 

It seems like you've decided that Scrapper is only allowed to be really good at being a healing cleanse-bot in WvW, yet Mechanist is allowed to be good at DPS, Healing/Support and functions well in Open World, PvE, and I'm even seeing quite a few in WvW now.  I don't PvP so I can't speak to that. 

 

Why are some specs allowed to be SO good at SO many things in multiple areas of content but others are not?  

Edited July 9, 2022 by tetmikem.5608

[Vekks.6013]

14 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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.

This hasn't really changed to be fair. Other support builds still have access to way more boons, more cleansing, and massive unique utility like superspeed, stealth, auras.... and stability still essentially being only available to guardians in a meaningful way. Outside of herald now giving quickness, which you can't really be in ventari or you'll drop uptime, and ignoring rene, which has no real synergy for a heal support build, you have no access to "key boons." Heal alac mech for example.... has an absurd toolkit, and qHB is still immovable.

 

Essentially, despite some of these being nice changes, Ventari/support Revs still provide basically nothing, and you took away their Alacrity, which wasn't  being utilized anyway because the rest of their kit wasn't good. So now you improved some of the kit, but took away their Alac, and didn't give them access to anything that the overloaded support builds have. I'm just.... not sure what the idea was here. Like it seemed like the intention was to give this build more utility and make them a more viable pick, but you took more away than added. Outside of QoL changes, like the no CD tablet moving, which is fantastic (although I still think the tablet itself needs a larger radius), I really, again, just don't understand the thought process that was had.

[RoastedWalnuts.4618]

These design notes are just further proof that the "Balance" team are completely clueless and harbor extreme biases to their own classes. Still haven't addressed the problems in the patch, still haven't addressed the leaks. Don't let Anet forget about this and brush it under the rug, if we ever want decent balance the people in charge of that department need to be replaced/reprimanded.

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

4 hours ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

And this is EXACTLY why nobody ever takes you seriously Anet.

This actually says nothing. There is no rationale in this post, no design philosophy, no train of thought, just the patch notes copy pasted in again with more words. 

And then you even have the gall to say that this does not reflect any design philosphy going forward, aka we still have nothing to go on. You had months to prepare that balancepatch and you release an absolute disaster filled with ridiculous changes, spearheaded by a balance dev that balances based on his own favouritism, has to search the wiki to understand what skills do, and actively gloats about the dissappointment of players.

 

Then you take 10 days....10 days...to come up with this text that says nothing at all. 

Did you even have any design notes? 

Or is this just a way to hide that you have no underlying balance philosophy at all, you just let your biased devs throw random darts around and just see what stick and hope for the best?

 

Do you know why there are so many negative memes flowing around about this company? 

About 'devs not playing their own game', 'devs being incompetent', ' 1111111111'? 

Because of things like this. 

And do you know why the community is up in arms now? 

Because you have been doing this for years and years. 

Everytime you ignore player feedback (you did it with this patch, you did it with the EoD beta feedback and you did it for every balance feedback in the years prior), make disastrous changes, and then you expect us believe you when you claim you have a 'vision', 'laying the groundwork', 'bigger patch is coming up' 'it is on the table' 'we are working on it' 'yes we consider that' and more of such claims?

 

You keep on disappointing us and then have the gall to ask us to believe you that you will do better next time. 

But you never do. 

You never do better. 

You never listen. 

You never care.

 

You always promise but never deliver. 

So no, we are not gonna be polite and wait for your next promise, or a next patch that will suddenly fix everything, or that in the future you will suddenly listen to us and do things better.

 

We have tried the polite feedback thing for years, and you just ignored it. 

We have believed in your promises for ages, but you simply don't deliver, it is always 'a next patch', but it is never 'this patch'. 

We held out hope for actual fixes, but they never come, not for balance, not for bugs, and at this point nobody believes you when it comes to sPvP or WvW Alliances either. 

We wanted to believe that you would listen to us and our feedback, but it falls on arrogant and deaf dev ears. 

Every patch you screw up you tell us you will do better in the future, yet somehow you never seem to learn.

 

Anet, you, as a company, are lying. 

Promising the world. 

But not delivering. 

Not even having the knowledge about your own game to know WHAT to deliver even if you actually COULD. 

With devs that mock the playerbase while making unchecked balance changes based on whatever they want, laughing at the mess they make.

 

And then, after all of that, you hit us with this empty PR speak, while you had promised actual design notes. 

We gonna wait for a next patch or update to get them? 

Wait for the next time? 

Again? 

No. 

 

This community finally has had enough.

Wait wait, where you the ones of the raiders where saying that the casual should suck it up and  should use the LI builds to progress the EoD meta ?And now the community is using  the 1111 builds , you cry again ? The majority happen to use one of the proposed LI builds that felt comfable and who cares about the population imbalance sin Striokes + Raids ..... almost none do them lol !

 

If you class is doing 20k dps and you are not invited to pro parties , blame the other raiders .

You don't need 30k dps to clear Raid+CMs

This is raider+ dps addon issue (WELCOME TO THE CASUAL CLUB!)

 

Edit: When eles can dp 50k dps , out of bound of the 40k where most reside , then it need a tone down and giving him other tools  instead (OR NERFING OTHER LESSER PUNNY CLASSES TO 30K!)

If we find acceptable for one class to do 50k , then it will an arm-race for the rest demanding the same damage to be invited to the pro parties. While the casuals would face a boss that has a humogous-HP-Bar , because it will be balanced around the 50k mark .

NNNOOOOOO THANKKKK YOU VERRRY MUCH

 

Edit2:

Spoiler

Are you sure you dont want an auto-LFG? Yeah it will breed a toxic instance community...but a different kind of community...

We avoid the scaneario of the blind...leading the blind...for another 10 years..

 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[Boh.4568]

I was waiting for the reaper explaination, and it's as I thought: you either have a fury provider in party or you essentially lost a lot of crit chance for no reason.

Think of solo play, either in open world or wvw roaming. How do you get back the fury you "made easily accessible to everyone"? Trait Curses in a power build. Or trait Dread for an inconsistent fury only on fear, while losing damage bonus from Close to Death. Trait Decimate Defenses and lose Soul Eater.

And the official explaination is the consistency between shroud damage and off-shroud damage? When most of the damage-related traits are disabled out of shroud? Reaper Might? shroud only. Awaken the pain? the might stack is shroud only. Unyelding Blast? shroud only. Soul Barbs? shroud only. The crit damage part of Death Perception? shroud only. Reaper's Onslaught? shroud only.  Self-quickness? Shroud only. Make all these traits and skills work outside of shroud and I could see a consistency.

The very tiny buff you added to crit damage should also make up for the loss of power and ferocity that reapers must face when switching to eagle runes, assassin and marauder gear, etc.

The worst thing about this is that benchmarks will show a slight bump in reaper DPS, because against the golem you have infinite fury so you can keep your valk gear and scholar runes. But not everyone plays in instanced parties all the time.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

15 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

I'd say they're good candidates for some upgrades, yep. There are a lot of out-of-meta weapons across professions that the team would like to bring up a bit. Generally speaking, there are weapons that need more mechanic updates/reworks (like updates to the engi rifle), but others may only need number tuning to bring them into play a bit more consistently.

Is the overall or per-game-mode use of each weapon per profession a possible metric that can be shared with the community? Official numbers would be more reliable and it help guide community discussion on both critically underused as well as critically overused weapons.

Also (or alternatively), would it be possible to share what weapons are being reviewed (mechanically or just retuning) for each profession, if such a list is available?

[Astralporing.1957]

16 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

(I realize it's not ideal to post this on a Friday, but at least it's not a preview!)

It's not an explanation either.

I'm sorry, Grouch. I know you're trying, but it's just not it. In the whole massive post we have almost no explanation for the changes introduced at all. It's just reiterating patchnotes with using more words about how you did the things you did, but without any deeper explanations behind thoughts that led to those changes. In the few cases where the explanations were presented, they either are... well, let's say based on things that aren't really true (the "meta-defining" for catalyst, which is a joke, and not even a good one), are actually contradicted by the actual changes (the whole "closing the gap between solo and group play" for perception/crit chance changes, where actual changes are in reality doing nothing of that sort at best, and the exact opposite at worst), or are not well thought at all (the change to fractal potions).

And, of course, a lot of explanations that really should have been in there are suspiciously absent. If Catalyst "becoming meta-defining" at ~2.5% participation rates is an issue, why firebrands and mechanists that are already meta-defining (and for a long time) aren't? What about the whole new banner usage design idea? What about chrono, already being bad at the support stuff, getting a kick downward? What about that 5% in Arms? What about kicking the less utilized/popular builds while buffing the most utilized ones?

Sorry, those were not the design notes we were looking for. Nor were these the design notes we were promised to be shown.

I really, really hope that next time you guys will do it better. Far better. But for now, i am just seriously disappointed that you're trying to pull that PR stunt on us instead of explanations we should have received.

[Doragon.3514]

This is just a longer version from the previous patch. Basically what you did is what we get in literature exams "Expand on this quote".

 

I am still waiting for the explanation.

 

I had expected you to be like "We wanted to make use of warrior less usable trait lines such as Arms by adding 5% crit, we will be revisiting the arms trait line together with banners to synergies them for hybrid power support build, we want to give warrior access to critical boons so it doesn't fall behind."

 

What a disappoinment, I hurt my eyes reading this for nothing.

[Zaseka.7182]

While I agree Catalyst needed a nerf, because lets face it, no class should push 50k dps, I don't agree how you went around doing it. Catalyst has a very punishing rotation, I'd like to see anet employees attempt it on the golem before hitting it with a drastic nerf stick next time. There needs to be some kinda payoff for being very annoying and tiring to execute..We can't have classes autoattacking and doing more damage than a piano rotation, like please. This is not hard to understand. Elementalist players want to either get a 40k rotation that is accessible to the majority of players, or, make it worth grinding for a better result than the rest of the classes.

[chuiu.4985]

17 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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%.

Not only is the 33% change not QOL, it's a pretty big nerf.  Since Reapers do most of their damage in shroud, this forces us to bring a lot more precision to compensate for that loss, which means we lose a lot of power because it gets traded out.  So it lowers our damage overall.  Not only that but since we spend so much time in shroud, the +10% should be closer to +20% if you wanted it to be a fair change.

The change away from Ferocity would be fine if it weren't for the fact that it hasn't actually increased damage.  Reapers are benchmarking roughly 10k lower than they were before the patch.  I'm hearing there is also a bug with the +critical damage that its not applying all the time, so we're losing a lot of damage we should be getting.  While we're on the topic of bugs, Signets of Suffering is bugged and doesn't apply the increased power to Signet of Spite.  Its been like this for years now, why haven't you guys fixed it?

I would suggest you guys consult people who actually play the classes you're trying to balance, but .... hmm.

Here's a suggestion.  If you want to create an environment where people feel like they can play whatever class they like, then try spreading the boon love around so that every specialization has some way of contributing to the group in a way that is important to players and buffing the damage of certain specializations.  For example, not only do Reapers not share boons, but they do significantly less damage than other classes that do and have very little utility that is useful (eg: they don't have great breakbar damage).  So there is no incentive for groups to allow Reapers in.  The same goes with many other specializations in the game.  You're creating an environment where only a small handful of specs are welcome and wanted in groups and neglecting many specs that people really want to and love to play but can't because they aren't welcome in group content.

Edited July 9, 2022 by chuiu.4985

[Skelly.2867]

3 hours ago, tetmikem.5608 said:

Perhaps this info is coming at a later date, but I would REALLY love to hear from the Dev team about what their vision is for the different classes/elite specialisations.  

 

Why are some specs allowed to be SO good at SO many things in multiple areas of content but others are not?  

This.

9 hours ago, SassyNinja.9716 said:

This pretty much addresses nothing that people wanted to know about. Why do Firebrand and Mechanist get the pass to provide top DPS and support for little effort, but you're incredibly stingy on buffing support on other classes/specs? Why are Warrior banners in the state they're currently in? What was the design process/thought in that? What about putting the extra 5% crit chance in a trait line that goes relatively unused by majority of Warriors? Why do Elementalists have to struggle to be competitive, and the moment they are they get nerfed? Why do incredibly simple builds get to outperform classes like Elementalist where the skill floor is so high?

This.

16 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

I'd say they're good candidates for some upgrades, yep. There are a lot of out-of-meta weapons across professions that the team would like to bring up a bit. Generally speaking, there are weapons that need more mechanic updates/reworks (like updates to the engi rifle), but others may only need number tuning to bring them into play a bit more consistently.

And WHEN? I've been looking in on GW2 for legitimate YEARS for certain buffs to Ele core weapons (STAFF). You have yet to deliver. 

This patch was the patch that I thought you guys would finally pull it together and change things around.

 

Joke's on me, no you haven't. Nothing has changed what-so-ever in the like 2-6 years I've been looking at this game. Should've known better. Frankly I'm tired of all these "promises" of you going to do better. Either do what you say you're going to do or say "no, we're not making any changes at all".

 

I would like to not be forced into certain weapons just so I can be viable in ANY content because the weapons I want to play are that poorly designed. I don't even think Ele Staff is a decent support right now in comparison to some other specs and we can kiss damage staff out the window.

 

Tell me, why should I continue to wait for you to address that instead of moving on elsewhere?

[Rysdude.3824]

Not sure how I can justify (to myself) continued financial support of this game. As much as I love GW2, this whole thing reeks of shoddy leadership and business practices and with these “explanations”, it looks like there won’t be any improving either. Havent found the motivation to play since the leaks and cant see it in the near future. Thanks ANET

[Ipomoea Jalapa.6897]

Dear devs, it's clear that you have good intentions and ideas, but why oh why don't you rely on long-time players who truly understand this game and the ramifications of design decisions? They WANT to help you. The vast game-play experience accumulated in their minds is the most valuable resource you have. It really shows that you haven't engaged with it, but it's not too late to start.

[Loboling.5293]

13 hours ago, Khenzy.9348 said:

I don't like the approach where every group maintains 100% uptime on all boons. Boons are way too powerful for this to be a reality.

 

I miss the days where popping Quickening Zephyr on Ranger, Frenzy on Warrior or Haste on Thief gave you this unique feeling like you're now so much faster than everyone else around you, doing some real damage with a very precious and scarse boon with Quickness. That dopamine hit felt so good when using those skills. Now you are expected to have quickness up at all times.

 

Or when a skilled Guardian preemtively aimed his Shield 4 skill on a cone directed to his party to provide some Protection, another incrediby strong but limited boon at the time, to mitigate a third of the incoming damage. Now, Guardians can provide protection passively through a trait without any kind of interaction. Lame.

 

Boons had a place, a purpose, a meaning. Now you're expected to have them up at all times in all group encounters regardless. No purpose, no strategic meaning, Few to no mechanical interactions anymore. In some cases, it's as egregious as needing to spam skills back to back (Spirits, Herald Auras) completely disregarding their other skill mechanics, it's all about boons now. 

Now, those classes with mechanics outside boon distrubution such as teleports, portals, proyectile blocks and reflects, or with boons that are not yet as spammable such as Aegis and Stability, with Resistance to a lesser degree are the default classes of choice. Because, honestly, you're also terrible at balancing role compression.

 

So now that you already made up your minds in focusing your game balance on this dreadful group stacking and boon spam, in order to even achieve balance among classes you need to start giving away to other classes key mechanics such as portals/teleports, stability, aegis and so on. Further homogenizing things up. It's like a fish eating its own tail. 

This game is now deliverately designed so all classes will eventually be able to do everything (I don't need to tell you how wrong this is). You massively powercrept the game and designed yourselves into a corner. And it's darn shame.

Give this man a job.... please.

[Woof.8246]

What happened  in this pic ? Are people content with existing weapons  ?

[Kredo.5640]

1 hour ago, Loboling.5293 said:

Give this man a job.... please.

But then Anet team wouldn't want him cause he doesn't have the same vision as them. And Anet would basically ghost him, so what's the point of wasting his time on a team that can't listen?

Edited July 9, 2022 by Kredo.5640

[FreshF.5793]

20 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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.

But you took away two major-traits that were necessary to get that much stealth... Not ideal for the Shadow-Arts-Rework!

[Galisaa.8304]

There was nothing added with these notes. I was wishing for an explanation on why the specific design implementation was chosen for a goal. A number of these changes actively go against your stated goals.

[Galisaa.8304]

21 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Banner of Strength and the trait Empower Allies are now both sources of additional group Might.

Is this a joke? 1 might every 3 seconds.

[Galisaa.8304]

16 hours ago, Scorcher.6428 said:

To someone looking at the changes and reading the 'explanation', this just screams "we don't know what on earth we are doing with this class!" Or even worse, no one on the balance team cares. I don't want to think that but honestly after many questionable changes in previous patches before, I feel pushed to lean more and more in that direction.

❤️ except I'm starting to feel this way for most of the classes.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Galisaa.8304