Design Notes for June 28 Professions Update

[Berune.7408]

@Josh Davis.7865 So you nerfed ele damage because some players found a way to cheese the system. Please consider though; as a casual player, I can achieve 15k DPS on my best ele spec with full ascended and a community recommended spec, and squad leaders exclude me from raids because I can't do at least double that (i.e. 30k). I want to know how exactly nerfing that 15k further is going to make raids/strikes or other group content more accessible to me?

[Flapjackson.1596]

1 hour 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: 

 

At a bare minimum, I should expect these notes to cover every change, especially with how controversial this patch was. Seeing something like OWP for SB being excluded from the discussion, it makes it even more obvious that the change was not in the best interest of the class. Frankly, there is a lot in this commentary that is simply not defensible. The warrior section should have just been "These changes were wrong. We will be rectifying them and taking a serious look at overhauling Warrior. These are the goals for the profession and these are the areas we will look to improve." 

 

Laying out the balance philosophy of the team is important. It should be discussed as soon as possible. If patches like these are the fruits of that philosophy though, then a lack of communication isn't the only issue here. The balance philosophy of the team is straight up wrong. There is no clarity here that will help things like Warrior. There is only more fuel for the fire.

[mirage.8046]

Honestly, no one learned anything. This 'balance' patch was the last straw for this sorry state of balance. 😒

[daemoness.6258]

3 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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.

I just came back to this game after a 3 year hiatus over really bad decisions like this.  Where's the data?  My main since September 2012 has been Elementalist.  After the last nerf it was not worth playing because it's no longer competitive but now there's no point in even having the class as a choice.  I feel really bad for new players thinking this is viable because it's simply not true.  I rolled a Mechanist and discovered press 2 buttons to win and it's really killing my love for this game, maybe that's the point.  I love high skill ceiling classes.  In any game I always pick the hardest class to play well but this is just depressing.  Where's the data?  I in no way believe that this statement is remotely close to true.  Feels really bad.

[daninumbers.4036]

"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. "

I keep looking at stuff like this and wondering how it's seen as a good thing. Long ago it was the trait that let you stunbreak on legend swap, changed to also more fury (how was that any trade off but a huge nerf?). Maybe I've been playing herald wrong all this time, I don't know, but these changes broke the synergy or power herald with core traits as if they never took that elite spec in account. I got permafury available there, maybe some downtime while I switch legends to use up the energy in 10 seconds? but this is pretty much the same, 33% uptime every 10 seconds (same as legend cd) but now losing 100% uptime of 10% crit damage for 5 people.

I liked those unique trait effects, that increased stats 100% of the time while in combat not interfering with boons and giving each class an identity. With the right trait balance you could pick something as good instead or something just for yourself if you play solo. Now it's all reduced to boons overlapping each other. Everyone giving the same boons and on top of that after their caps were lowered to 30 second for most, such a waste when you already have support roles pumping them.

[Ashen.2907]

I now understand the reasoning better. Thank you for that. My disagreement with them has increased.

[vrauns.3215]

These changes are fine, and needed.

[vrauns.3215]

Also, this isn’t new, players like making a fuss about everything.

[Horus.8304]

To summarize:

Mechanist is now OP because of biased employees

Guardian still OP

Anet hates Warriors and Fractals.

[Moody Soul.5617]

I will be honest these “design notes” didn’t clarify anything, like I have a very strong bias for chronomancer and with the lack of clarification or any kind of change to any reasoning in the changes makes me worried. There was nothing in these design notes as well about why the random nerf to virtuosos f2 even if small still is worth explaining… Now I know on august 2nd there will be a preview or patch on to address the issue of chrono going from useful to garbage; However with the lack of clarification I am heavily skeptical any changes to chronomancer will yield a positive out come. Main reason why I think it’s not going to is from all my understanding of what you guys will do, is ignore wells and increase damage coefficients in pve, never addressing Mesmer lack of cleanse, chrono lack of defensive ability’s out side of shield aka where the distortion guys, lack of fury outside of dueling and mirages singular dodge being a completely unfun change punishing the player for playing a class they like rather than nerfing ambushes in pvp…. And don’t get me started with how clunky virt is please clean it up a bit and make it more fluid…..

 

I am sorry for those who had to read my rant I really just am a biased Mesmer main 

Sincerely 

Moody Soul

[xblankk.4207]

4 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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.

 

I originally appreciated the direction of Shadow Arts, but this makes me feel a bit worse, honestly.

 

You added exactly what I wanted most in thief support (ally condi cleanse), but cleansing only damaging conditions on ally stealthing just doesnt make enough sense. There's only 2 barely reliable ways to do this in combat - shadow refuge and blinding powder... honestly, because of the changes, only blinding powder.

 

Shadow refuge - what is the point of this ability anymore anyway? We're not wanting to stack stealth anymore. It's way too much of a niche ability to be one of the only options for a support build to clear conditions off allies.

 

What irritates me about the quoted text and the actual changes (attempting to make thief support more viable?) is that the changes don't make support thief a viable option against a guardian who can just stand their and scream continuously cleansing ALL condis on allies, in a range over 2x the size, almost passively, using a rune... put the condi cleanse on wells and it would be much better while still being more active and engaging gameplay than the golden-blue child.

 

The additional support in Shadow Arts on ally stealthing just doesn't cut it, there are not enough options for this to make sense, especially on a spec that gets -3 init.

 

Interesting combat, good balance, and gameplay is failing and I'm just fishing now...

 

I appreciate you Grouch and love GW2, but kitten, these explanations and changes don't seem to line up with the overall goals, the idea of a viable support thief, or apparently any of the other class changes.

[Trigg.9402]

@Josh Davis.7865

 

"We have learnt from this experience, we won't ever just drop updates on a Friday ever again"

Drops design balance notes on Friday 

"Sorry, not ideal I know but better than nothing right, right??"

 

And everyone came to bat for you, believing you wouldn't drop it Friday, LMFAO 

Thanks Anet, not only did you have to take 2 weeks AFTER you already dropped the patch to make up sorry excuses to explain your "balance design notes" but the notes don't explain squat. 

 

You want to make all classes more viable, why the bloody hell are some classes dead and some camp 1,1,1,1,1,1 and do 30k?

 

Its good to know you're directing this game straight into the trash, Josh, good job. Keep letting your unqualified and arrogant devs make personal changes to their favorite classes while nerfing other classes to death, while you hide behind the typical PR BS speech "we value the community's voice and feedback".

 

Where in this patch or the notes were there any changes because of community feedback?

 

You don't listen to community feedback and you never have. Friends and guilds have quit, I hope more do after this. 

 

[Bookah pls.9352]

2 hours ago, Excludee.3850 said:

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

When they say meta defining, they don't mean participation numbers.

They mean that this spec could possibly compete with the main and alt spec of the balance dev, which means in future that balance dev might have to learn how to play catalyst instead of spending all their time on their firebrand.

Which ofcourse is bad news for a firebrand player who camps axe.

 

So naturally it had to changed to avoid this.

[Khenzy.9348]

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.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Khenzy.9348

[Scorcher.6428]

Long Thief PvE criticism of Shadow Arts Changes+Explanation 

As nice as the extra might on thrill of the crime is and the ally fury on unrelenting strikes is, I can't get around the non-sensical changes to Thief's Shadow Arts.
Stealth is a huge part of what makes thief feel like thief. I understand it is oppressive and unfun to go up against in PvP/WvW. So on that front, the rework is positive! However, nuking stealth access from SA in PvE makes no sense, especially with the new traits.
 

4 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

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 on it's own IS a good direction to go with stealth in any game mode and like I said this current iteration, I think, works well for player vs player gameplay- just not in PvE.
 

If you take away stealth access these changes MEAN NOTHING! Now, in PvE you need to take long cooldown utilities to go stealth (and only WvW/PvP got compensated with reduced deception skill cooldowns?) or take specific weapon sets with big initiative costs further reducing the versatility of thief. This won't make a support thief any more functional/viable.
Yes there is the gm trait that restores initiative but if you want to support an ally, you would want to take the protection gm trait.
 

One change I just can't wrap my head around is removing Deception CD reduction from SA in PvE with 0 compensation to the respective skill cooldowns. Unless you take those long cd utilities or blast a smoke field, you can't even utilise the ally supporting component of the new traits.
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.
 

If Anet wanted to, they could add some stealth back to SA in PvE only or at the very least the deception cooldown reduction trait (or just lower the deception skill cooldowns in general like they did for other game modes). There seems to be no problem making big split game mode changes for other things.
Most recent change that comes to mind is the change to the healing mantra on Firebrand granting aegis once again in PvP/WvW only. Yeah I get it, that's guardian and I'm trying to talk about this thief class that almost no one seems to like. (sorry for the sarcasm but I'm passionate about this class and now once again reminded about how little thought thief is given...)

In conclusion

Like most people that I have seen speak out about the changes/explanation for their most loved classes, I'm just so disappointed that my favourite class seems to have so little thought/care go into its balance, especially when it comes to PvE.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Scorcher.6428
formatting

[Bookah pls.9352]

9 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.

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.

 

@Josh Davis.7865 Can you see the disconnect here? This change does the opposite.

You want to lower the difference between solo crit chance and group crit chance, talking about 10% higher in group vs alone because of discipline and spotter? Well reaper is 25% crit chance lower solo just due to lack of fury, not to mention now a further 23% crit chance with this death perception nerf. Can you see how these numbers aligned? Death perception was our solo play fury buff.  DP's 33% was the 10% of spotter and disc + the 20% of fury, you've compensated for the removal of disc and spotter by keeping the 10% crit chance part of DP but bizarrely removed the fury crit chance part??

 

It's a monkey paw buff, here's the needed damage buff reaper could use to not bench less than boon support builds, but in return for that damage buff you lose 23% crit chance in the patch where we want to make it easier for players to be able to reach 100% crit chance.

Quality of life improvement - completely reshuffle your gear stats and runes to try and accommodate a 23% crit chance nerf all in the name of letting players continue to not care about being over crit cap at the times when they actually want to be crit capped.  

 

You want a real quality of life improvement for reaper in respect to this balance patch designs intent?  Revert this 23% crit chance nerf and make our chills grant fury to self via either the Shivers of Dread or Cold Shoulder reaper trait. Or hell, keep it true to the rest of the comments about giving fury to allies and make this do the same.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Bookah pls.9352
Shivers of Dread would probably be better than Cold Shoulder.

[Sansar.1302]

You are so out of touch with what ppl want from balance, many of us want less booons not more, and this where rly not a balance update, if it where you would have done something with willbender and harbinger. 

 

[Downstate.4697]

I am not a pve player, but creating this meta that relies on certain boons really limits the design space professions can exist in.

You guys are working backwards by making boons accessable everywhere. You should be looking at core design and limiting boon share across the board.

Also might needs to have its max cap lowered. It was always powerful but far too accessable with 100% uptime. This is why celestial builds in wvw are op.

[Carnifex.3275]

5 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!)

Amplified Wrath nerf was really uncalled for. Maybe instead of nerfing core traits that cascaded into cWB and other specs.. focus on nerfing Firebrand only. Not only we lost sun spirit, banners and such.. but we also lost 5% more. And while for Firebrand it's alright, it can focus more on support specs like qFB/HFB.. for cWB it was quite a major loss. As a DPS only spec now it's very very mediocre, barely any reason to play cWB in PvE. 

And signets.. well.. That trait is competing with Amp Wrath and Righteous Instincts. And now it will never be taken since it lost the signet share. Nerfing Amp Wrath to make people use signets? I'm sorry but quite a terrible change that leaked into and damaged other specs. Will be interesting to see the population of Willbender players in PvE after this change. No one will take it in endgame PvE cuz its very mediocre and + it's very dependant on being at melee range and activating F1 off cooldown. Not worth the risk.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Dave.6819

[firedragon.8953]

2 hours ago, Pyrial.2917 said:

Fundamentally I don't understand why you have such a hard time communicating to your player base.

Probably because they themselves have no idea what they are doing or why they are doing it. 

Pretty disappointing "explanation" over all. Seems like a big 'o nothin' burger, but...meh...whatever.

[eirewolf.2041]

4 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.

Oh, good. I was worried that there would be actual substance written here. Let's see what we've got in this latest halfway out the door on a Friday post. I'm going to avoid rehashing the things that have now been said twice without any sort of logic or reasoning to back them up, and instead focus on some key points that you and your balance team have mentioned.

 

Quote

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.

Allow me to clue your crack balance team in on something - in no world does adding alacrity to a DPS tempest make it playable in endgame content. DPS tempest isn't played not because of its boon situation, but because it's a DPS build that does garbage-tier damage. Staff mirage and condi renegade are both easier to play and produce much higher damage numbers than a tempest ever will in its current state. Fixing DPS tempest requires buffing or reworking core weapons (scepter and staff in particular) to compete with the options that other DPS specs currently enjoy. I'd have a lot easier time forgiving this chronic issue if you guys had allowed heal tempest to access alacrity without giving up an important trait, but that might mean it encroaching on 2kFB dev's fun.

 

Quote

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.

Surely you, Grouch, think this is ridiculous, right? This particular catalyst build can be played fully optimally by maybe a handful of people. It isn't affecting any raid group other than the speed clear guilds, and even then only if they have players who can execute that difficult rotation. Additionally, did you guys forget that you can just stack a couple full DPS staff mirages or condi RRs in a subgroup to cover alacrity while still doing solid damage? This isn't a new boon support problem that was supposedly created here, 2kFB just doesn't like anything that threatens his main or second main spec (or you guys just hate ele, which we all knew anyway).

 

Stop with this endless trend of proving to us that you only balance based on spreadsheets, benchmarks, and the whims of an unqualified dev, and actually play the kitten game. I promise you that you'll figure out why we're mad about the state of the game's balance.

 

Quote

(we actually have to be reminded that mechanist got buffed and guardian as a whole really wasn't touched in any meaningful way regarding raids)

 

lol

 

Quote

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%.

 

Honestly, I don't care that this is supposed to be a small buff to damage; it feels absolutely horrible to play and doesn't even elevate reaper into raid viability outside of the 3 bosses it was already decent against. Having to slot thief runes and hoping that the flanking bonus doesn't bug out on me isn't enjoyable. Losing my most reliable breakbar skill (on both reaper and scourge, because paralyzation sigil no longer works) isn't fun either. Reaper was already squishy in raids without much benefit as a tradeoff, and these changes exacerbate that issue even further because it's no longer optimal to spend a lot of time in shroud to actually utilize the second health bar it provides. 

 

Quote

(ranger changes)

 

I'll steer clear of commenting on druid simply because I don't play it much, but as someone who is learning power soulbeast it's puzzling to see even more uniqueness removed from the game with the changes to One Wolf Pack. The tight burst window playstyle isn't really something that other power specs offer, and while that does create sort of a barrier to entry for new players I think it was a mistake to remove it. Players who can execute their burst on a spec like that should be rewarded more, not less.

 

Quote

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.

 

Alright, so it's not a fever dream and you guys actually are clueless when it comes to the warrior class. Strange, I don't see the promised explanation for the crit trait in Arms...

In summary, what was given to us today was about what I expected: a massive word salad that doesn't logically explain, justify, or even address most of the issues with this latest round of balance decisions. It honestly reads like what the initial notes should've been to begin with rather than a proper "here's why we're doing XYZ" like we were originally told would be happening. I really can't think of a better way to tell your players that you don't care about what they think or take them seriously in the first place. 

[Ukon Cairns.9160]

First thanks for actually talking out some of the thought process here, but a couple of things are really puzzling.

Like, how can you decide that core Revenant needs to lose access to alacrity (by way of ventari) in order to give quickness to herald, but then in the same patch give alacrity to core Ranger and quickness to core Warrior. Yall painting yourselves into a corner where either you have to undo these changes in the future or you never give yourselves the options of giving Ranger quick and Warrior alac.

And i get needing to knock catalyst down a peg if Roul and the Snow Crowseses are abusing them that hard, but i aint stowing weapons to auto attack faster, ya hurting me as much if not more than the top dogs. Bring the top down when ya gotta but pick the floor up a bit too to compensate. 

Also please consider how many sources of a boon like alac or quickness a class has access to and its ease of use. Feels silly when you look at  Mechanist which can provide full alacrity with auto attacks, but also has 2 mech skills and a signet to press to give it breathing room to press other buttons. Now compare that to quickness on Herald, which is only on popping your facets, so you are double tapping every utility on cooldown regardless of their other effects. Or Alacrity on Tempest which only comes from completing a long channeled skill, which comes with long cooldowns. Or most appalling compared to quickness on Catalyst, which is only on a single skill, whose cooldown is occasionally hidden, and uses a resource that needs to be built up and is shared with other skills. Im not saying they all need to be overtuned like Mechanist, we just gotta meet in the middle somewhere, gives these builds the option of at least 1 more button to press. put alac on A Tempest shout, quickness on A Herald block trait, quickness from A Catalyst combo finisher, something anything.   

Ending on more positive notes, harriers Herald does play better than it looks. It looked awful, and still feels a little wasteful, like im ignoring 80% of the class,  but i am really enjoying that 20% im playing in. Feels pretty simple and good enough to get the job done. And ive been trying to force Bolt to the Heart on diviners alac Tempest, but now that i see you were designing with Fresh Air in mind i will give that a fair try and see how that works for me. 

keep up the communication!

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

As I suspected, the design notes elucidated nothing that couldn't have been reasonably inferred from the changes themselves.  

[Amorimm.6732]

Your balance design philosophy as a company is fundamentally wrong. End of discussion.

[stormemperor.3745]

How do you justify guardian radiance getting 50% crit chance all time from radiance line in pvp and wvw, additionally self fury generation for 70% crit?

All the while reaper crit chance boosted from 33% to 10%? Fury generation is also locked behind curses.

Do you even know this game?

And designer note is  "This change allows you to consistently select your gear"

I don' t want to consistently select my gear, I want 50% crit chance death perception. 

Which one of your employee decided that it was a good idea to make this game harder for new players who doesn't know anything about stats?

Edited July 9, 2022 by stormemperor.3745