Design Notes for June 28 Professions Update

[SlothPanda.7280]

30 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

we've updated skills on their core Rifle weapon to modernize it to more recent gameplay standards

Recent gameplay standards = Press 111111111 (?)
.Banners are now useless

You dont know know anything about ur classes, pls play your game. Thanks for pepegaexplanations

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Josh Davis.7865, can the balance team bring warrior weapons that aren't axe or great sword up to a more modernized gameplay standard like Engi rifle?

[Kuma.1503]

Stacking Guardians for quickness: 👌

Stacking Catalyst for quickness: 🚨🛑🚨

[Nightrise.8937]

48 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Catalyst has recently begun to be meta-defining in raids

so what about firebrand and mechanist?

[suialthor.7164]

For so many words, very little was actually said.

[schrodingerscat.3872]

48 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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

cool so there was actually no legitimate reasoning behind removing signet share, aside from it falling in line with the whole "homogenizing gameplay" direction of the patch - which in itself is poor reasoning. 

[Draconious.2751]

> Me reading the patch notes

But why?

 

> Me reading the design notes that were supposed to explain the patch notes

But why?

Edited July 9, 2022 by Draconious.2751

[Xerxez.7361]

47 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

 

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.

 

Not that big of a QoL improvement when we already aim to spend most of our time in Shroud... I've learned to live with going from mediocre damage to slightly lower mediocre damage. I don't think to change accounted for the loss in Power on the higher end of Damage to replace the missing Critical Chance.

[CronicDemise.4635]

I really hope the team is aware of the Necro Death Perception bug (the 15% crit damage in shroud isn't applying)

[Pulsefire Jayce.4753]

https://youtu.be/0Ftdu8yrKOw

[Josh Davis.7865]

3 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Josh Davis.7865, can the balance team bring warrior weapons that aren't axe or great sword up to a more modernized gameplay standard like Engi rifle?

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.

[Einsof.1457]

4 minutes ago, CronicDemise.4635 said:

I really hope the team is aware of the Necro Death Perception bug (the 15% crit damage in shroud isn't applying)

I don't think the team is aware of much, at this rate. 

[ShakingMonkey.1743]

Thanks for the update notes, however the changes made on the potion kind of messed up the viability of ranger in fractals. In fractals it's hard to flank, so taking skirmishing is not really an option. Now if we want to crit cap we need to take skirmishing or change our gear, which is the opposite of what was the plan, if I'm reading correctly.

 

If you guys can look it up and try to fix it that would be great.

 

 

[Diruuo.6314]

Also, seriously, Vitality in the Offensive potion is weird. Remove the effect entirely and move it to the Defensive potion. Flip the costs if so inclined (so that the Defensive one is the most expensive). It's incredibly odd and disjointed right now. "Yeah, I'm dying a lot, what potion should I get? - Oh the offensive one of course!" No, weird. 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Diruuo.6314

[supa.8593]

I wish we got some real insight into the banner changes (such as them becoming a kit with no skills, only being able to pick up one at a time, etc), having to sell out so hard for good boon uptime, but here we are. You took away the best unique buff in the game, and gave us so little in return. Sure I can play bladesworn and get that sweet 40k DPS, but I’d like to buff my team up and do OK damage instead, for the greater good of the team. 
 

No offense, but I’ll keep saying it; you guys have been talking about reworking banners since before EOD came out, and I don’t see where the 3-4 months of work went. 
 

I really hope that over the next couple of patches, you have the team put real thought into how you’re going to make them more useful and fun. 
 

signed, 
Supa, an 1800 hour played warrior main since 2012

[SlothPowah.1072]

Hello, why was Wail of Doom's daze removed and changed to a fear?

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

You claim you want to add more might output, but then you nerf Druid's? And not only that, but you don't make a single mention as to why in the Druid section. Druid cannot upkeep 25 might anymore, it's impossible to have 100% uptime. It can reach it, sure, but even with frost spirit changes, it cannot maintain 25 might. I personally have had it drop to horrendous numbers (9, frost spirit might cap, which is a whole other can of worms) when paired with things such as quickness scrappers.

This change is not OK. There was no reason to nerf GoTL (might generation trait for those unaware) to 1 might per skill, as Druid still is forced to use our very limited Astral Power on might generation in addition to being forced to use arguably the second worst spirit (first worst being storm- fury is nice, but we have 2 easy ways of getting 100% uptime that require no additional slots to be taken, max BD warhorn 5 or max BD spotter, both of which were typically taken in the heal druid standard build) and not achieve that important boon. Again, this patch was supposed to make might generation easier, and it just got worse for something that did a pretty good job of overcapping might, and it killed it's viability.

[Merloin.4816]

So, what you are saying is, pre-cast animations and delays were increasing Catalyst's DPS, but instead of fixing animations and delays (and actually balancing it for top players) you decided to throw Catalyst out of the window?

 

I mean, that sounds pretty Anet to me

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

13 minutes 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.

Awesome! There are a lot of great ideas from several mains over in the warrior forums that may be of interest to the balance team if they are open to using them. I don't know if the balance team is open to discussing them on the forums, but the warrior mains are pretty freely giving with ideas to help the class out.

I agree that some need only number tuning, be it cast times, damage values or CDs, but there are others like off hand mace, off hand sword, main hand sword that need more than number tuning. 

[CronicDemise.4635]

and Sanctuary Runes don't work with the Soul Eater trait in Reaper... 🙂

[JayKay.5649]

 

23 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Below you’ll find the designer notes for the profession updates that were released on June 28.

 

Ty for your time. Appreciated.

 

21 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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.

 

Sorry but that tells me you either had a balance vision and scrapped it or there was no vision at all.

I won't go into every detail, but to me most changes are either generic bandaids to artificial problems or changes for the sake of change.

 

Sure catalyst saw play in speedruns, but there will always be a "top pick". Catalyst is punishing to play and now you nerfed dps cata and quickness cata. Before it was good on dummy golems more or less and now it's okay at some and worse at almost every other encounter. Also introducing skills that function differently in different gamemodes is not very new player friendly. (catalyst sphere quickness and firebrand heal mantra aegis)

 

Banner/spirits is similiar. Sure they felt obligatory to bring in a group, but some implementations make the skills worse or straigth unfun. Additionally spirits don't apply boons around them, they puls around the ranger now. Which makes now mechanist the mechanic king + even with 100% boon duration, druid has to stay around the group for good uptimes. And stability was removed aswell. Did you think ranger/druid/untamed would be too broken with one group stab?

 

Anyway I hope you have a master plan or we will just circle around balance forever. 

Imo you shouldn't balance specific builds. If catalyst was so much played, it should get a small nerf. The same rule applies, if firebrand/mechanist or any other build see too much play in every gamemode. But most importantly, rework unused skills again.

Buff weak stuff BEFORE you nerf the middle/high end stuff. Bring more FUN interactions into the game instead of nerfing the remaining cool stuff that is left in the game. Make elite specialisation special. Let them shine in certain parts. Give us the tools, so everyone can choose their own playstyle instead of forcing autoattack builds on your players. Let me play with 10 minions (visually) or let me buff my group so I can feel as a powerful leader. Let me play an easy build, if I choose to, but keep the option to bring a few more buttons into the mix and reward me for those choices. Let me play a devastating mage.

 

Also unique stuff can be shared with other classes and don't have to be removed from the game. For example thief/engi used to be the only class with smoke fields. Now ranger has access to it too. Give 4-5 classes access to a certain things and let the other classes out. Instead they get other fancy stuff. Make a checklist and every class/elite spec gets access to 50-60%.

 

The combat system is still the best for an MMO, please use it at it's full potential. Make fun interactions with traits/runes+combo finishers. Look into unused skills. Most of the time they are outclassed by other stuff or you can't move while casting. Let me interact more activly with my teammates. Pressing buttons in a certain sequence should be rewarding for myself and for my teammates. 

[Dreggon.6598]

I used to have 99% crit chance on my reaper in open world and now I don't, it feels bad 😞 please let us have pulsing fury in shroud on Death Perception!

[Whiskers.7346]

This is like a 32/100.

You didn't even explain why you did any of the things you did. You just restated the patch notes with more words.

[Radon.6710]

You wrote a lot of things but i still don't see what your vision for each class is. You just repeated what you did.
Why do you remove unique buffs? What is the end goal for that? What should classes look like? What should high end content look like? Should every class give every boon without anything unique? Should weapon skills be main source of dmg and utility skills are just for fashion?
What do you want to achieve? Because it just doesn't make any sense. Any of it.

[Josh Davis.7865]

Just now, Radon.6710 said:

You wrote a lot of things but i still don't see what your vision for each class is. You just repeated what you did.
Why do you remove unique buffs? What is the end goal for that? What should classes look like? What should high end content look like? Should every class give every boon without anything unique? Should weapon skills be main source of dmg and utility skills are just for fashion?
What do you want to achieve? Because it just doesn't make any sense. Any of it.

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: