Design Notes for June 28 Professions Update

[stormemperor.3745]

Hello, dedicated balance team. I have some question for you but before that.

You said you don't want class specific unique buffs. Lets go with that

I see that Aegis and Resolution pretty much special to a profession that shall not be named only. Some other specs may or may not have access to these unique boons but regardless, certaion profession is the only profession that can reliably sustain these boons. That reminds me there is another special boon called resistance and it is also very easy for this profession to get it.

 

So these unique boons... they are very hard to get in some professions and some not even possible at all. 

As a results you are forced to play certain professions to provide these boons and you are forced to be in meta squad for these boons.

Are these boons game changer?

providing aegis which can block hit?

providing resolution that gives 33% condition damage reduction?

or resistance that nulls non-damaging conditions?

Probably they aren't game changer at all and no one really wants them in pvp and wvw. I am sure no one is forced to play certain professions for these boons.

oh yeah, sooo

core necromancer, reaper, scourge,

core elementalist, tempest, weaver, catalyst,

core thief, daredevil, deadeye

core ranger, druid, soulbeast

core engineer, scrapper, holosmith

actually some of these can give aegis, resolution or resistance but they aren't reliable enough to sustain.

 

So more than half of the professions  cannot grant aegis, resolution and resistance to squad. You are forced to play certain profession that shall not me named.

 

That reminds me not long certain professions, for example warrior, engineer, revenant and the one that won't be named lost their "unique" buffs.

 

So my questions is 

What do you plan to do with aegis, resolution and resistance boons that are tied to certain profession?

 

I heard that many people complain because certain professions lost their "unique" presence in raids, fractals and strikes.

Since there is only 1 profession that grant the above mentioned boons, "specific" and "unique" to that profession. I heard that people are specifically asking for that profession always.

 

Doesn't this disturb the diversity you wanted to achieve?

 

Edited July 9, 2022 by stormemperor.3745

[Astralporing.1957]

10 minutes ago, stormemperor.3745 said:

Doesn't this disturb the diversity you wanted to achieve?

Here is an answer. Yes, it does, very much. All the attempts to supposedly increase diversity so far caused it only to go even more downhill than before.

[Voraxen.2035]

Last new spvp content was in 2019.

[Saer.7240]

Design choices like this are what kills games. 

U guys need to stop playing favorites. Firebrand and mechanist are nearly, if not over, half of the representation in pve modes right now. 

And yet for some reason, u guys are singling out catalyst as the "meta-defining" profession and needing emergency changes. 

In the words of red-shirt guy from diablo immortal announcement: "is this some kind of out of season april fool's joke?"

It now begs the question of if it's even worth hoping for meaningful balance changes at this point or if those who have no interest in playing either mechanist or firebrand should stop playing. 

Please tell us (and *show* us) that these are old design philosophies and that u'll be changing it going forward.

It is 100% completely acceptable to have some specializations be more difficult to play than others and to reward those harder to play specializations with more damage. Not everything needs to be babied up, and I say this as a casual player. Making easy to play specs do equal or more damage than more complex specs makes those who play those specs question why they should even put in the effort. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Saer.7240

[Jski.6180]

Odd i though the point of mages having low hp / def is the point of balancing for them to do "20%" more dmg then other classes.

[Cretos.3271]

so it's just the patch notes with a few extra tidbits... this does nothing for anyone

[ages.1934]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Here is an answer. Yes, it does, very much. All the attempts to supposedly increase diversity so far caused it only to go even more downhill than before.

 

One bright side for elementalists is they're no longer the least played pve class anymore!

 

Of course that has more to do with the complete collapse of berserkers/warriors than any measurable surge in their own popularity.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

23 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.

Hi Josh,

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply and provide these notes.  I look forward to further communication going forward!

 

Quick question for you, though:

Have you thought at all about how you plan to engage the community for feedback about balance changes going forward?

 

When I reflect on how this patch went over, I see numerous areas where disaster could have been averted had there been an open discussion of planned balance changes well before their implementation.  Imagine, for instance, how things could have been different if devs pinned a post in the Warrior forums entitled: "We're planning to rework banners to provide boon support. What do you want to see?"  This could have created a, well, forum for open discussion between players and devs.  I assure you that the current situation with warrior banners could have been avoided had this been the case.

 

Please consider partnering with your players to make GW2 the best it  can be!

 

Best wishes,

CTS

 

[Anthony.8056]

How exactly are you trying to make this game accessible for new players when some of the decisions you are making counter that. The classes are imbalanced and new players will eventually find out. You are getting ready to launch this game on steam and all it takes is negative reviews about bad balance is in this game to turn people off. I know some people don't care about that but for certain modes like pvp or end game content it can make people want to avoid this game.

[Caitmonster.9036]

Seeing all the numbers and stats I feel a bit guilty for playing a mechanist, even though I play it just 'cause I enjoy it (casual pve class fantasy, of course). Scrapper was fun until Anet decided to kitten their barrier gen for some reason. Same with reaper and its damage rdx in shroud. Not sure why they had to nerf the 'easy' nature of those builds when things like firebrand remain completely untouched and overpowered.

The changes to healing tempest and alacrity on lucid singularity pretty much destroy all auramancer healer builds, which is what I typically used to play. Feels pretty bad, honestly.

As for druids and the spirit changes, it still requires a druid to bring at least 3 spirits to pretty much 100% upkeep alac. 2 spirits is not enough even with full BD. So if the goal was to allow more utility variety in druid kits, this fell kinda short. Not to mention that until it's fixed, I can't do ranged mechanics any longer in certain raids (lookin at you, flak kite) unless I want that alac to drop off, as boons and the actives pulse around my character, not the team. Also, why the heck did GOTL get hamstrung so badly? It wasn't necessary. With all the might being flung around already I'm not sure why you had to take most of druid's might gen away.

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

Welp the thief one raised my blood pressure.  Stealth is a major part of our survivability. And you basically said... Lets limit the access thief as to stealth, to force them to fight. Then give them tools for stealth that they can barely access now for their survival.

 

Against crap... That out performs thief on every level. Then we gotta be stuck with this bs for another three months. HOPING TO GOD you finally do something about EVERYTHING thief players have been screaming about.

How about returning init regen back to half a second? So we can actually use our skills in drawn out fights? How about improving acrobatics so there's a reason to take it beyond sword damage buff? How about finally addressing our dependency on trickery. Or getting rid of that REDICULOUS backstab cool down. Instead. We get several builds crippled heavily because the mechanic we depend on is frustrating to other players, when the nerfs and changes increasingly made the dang profession more frustrating to play forcing us into that playstyle in the first place.

 

Sure it might seem unreasonable for me to be infuriated. But I had to put up with this bs since HoTs! The stupid profession only got throne a bone maybe once or twice since 2012, while all the changes were to "Encourage a different behavior" by constantly applying nerfs rather than bringing those other tools up.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Chausie.9201]

I can't believe I just read them say they buffed reaper as opposed to what it was , a nerf. My reaper is no longer a desired class in raids, but thanks for the quality of life I guess, now I can just use my shroud as a second HP bar

[tetmikem.5608]

10 hours ago, Saer.7240 said:

 

It is 100% completely acceptable to have some specializations be more difficult to play than others and to reward those harder to play specializations with more damage. Not everything needs to be babied up, and I say this as a casual player. Making easy to play specs do equal or more damage than more complex specs makes those who play those specs question why they should even put in the effort. 

 10000 x THIS.  There is so much talk about raising the skill floor by the Devs, but for god's sake, do not lower the ceiling please!   A significant player base WANTS a challenge.  They want to min/max their DPS. They want the satisfaction of mastering a difficult spec to top the DPS meter. The do NOT want to play their assess off pianoing a difficult spec only to be beaten on DPS by someone pressing 111111111 and the occasional 2. 

[Dadnir.5038]

7 hours ago, Chausie.9201 said:

I can't believe I just read them say they buffed reaper as opposed to what it was , a nerf. My reaper is no longer a desired class in raids, but thanks for the quality of life I guess, now I can just use my shroud as a second HP bar

Are you talking about WvW?

Because reaper have never been "desirable" in PvE raids. A spec bringing only damage in PvE raid need to dish out mind blowing amount of damage to be "desirable" and the reaper never shot past 36k dps so...

[Cait Sith.4650]

Nothing to add to what's already been said since this was posted, just one small remark: why didn't it get pinned like the other posts about the balance patch?

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Are you talking about WvW?

Because reaper have never been "desirable" in PvE raids. A spec bringing only damage in PvE raid need to dish out mind blowing amount of damage to be "desirable" and the reaper never shot past 36k dps so...

Well, it's now even less desirable than before.

[chedder.6302]

can we talk about how irrelevant support chrono is. it was nerfed a long time ago because if you did a proper skill rotation whilst also not screwing up boss mechanics whilst also being the tank the boons were too strong. now engi/rev alls they have to do is press 1 button for perma uptime on alacrity (or auto attack and 1 button). guardian has been for the longest time been broken. now for some unknown balancing reason chrono gets even less access to the whole purpose behind the class some of your other classes can bring most the support the chrono did with more survivability and less buttons to press. ive been mostly out of gw2 anyways and honestly having 7 classes that all feel more and more the same and 2 classes which honestly are pretty op but brain dead to play probably out. maybe next skill rework will bring class flavor back to the mix and ill see you then.

[Dadnir.5038]

18 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Well, it's now even less desirable than before.

A spec can't have everything... Reaper is the coolest spec of the game, so not being "desirable" in high end PvE is a small price to pay for that. Scourge and Harbinger are still desirable enough there anyway.

[Karagee.6830]

2 hours ago, Cait Sith.4650 said:

Nothing to add to what's already been said since this was posted, just one small remark: why didn't it get pinned like the other posts about the balance patch?

Better to hide this and sweep it under the carpet before more people compare this to the balance notes to check how much copy and paste has been done

[chronometria.3708]

Power reaper and all the power specs need buffs - its statements like that i am wanting to see arenanet make, not these "5 percent here and there" changes that achieve nothing. Just look at warrior as a class - the statement we need there is "this class no longer functions and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up".

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Thinking death perception was a slight buff when power reaper lost around 5k dps shows how incompetent the balanace team is with classes they do not play. This come down to not understanding that most of reapers damage came from dropping pulsing aoes outside of shoud, when going into shroud as fast as possible to get maximum pulses with all procs (100% crit, 20% damage with soul barbs and cold shoulder, and 300 ferocity). This is why the rotation was not crit caped outside of shroud, so the highest damage in done in shroud.  This is a less extreme but same logic as ranger stacking OWP and sick'em to maximize the burst. 

I have no problem with the devs talking with people who actually play the game and know how do basic things like weapon swap, but they actually need to listen to them on how a class works and how they maximize damage. The death perception change is a clear example of people having no clue especially calling it a buff when it clearly a nerf. This is my vote of no confidence toward the balance team. 

[fatihso.7258]

@Josh Davis.7865 I like the rifle changes, it made me play engineer more and didn't stop there, now ı am exploring scrapper and core engineer as well to find more ways to utilize the new rifle while learning more about the profession. It's very nice and chill way to do my instanced dailies and open world stuff. 

 

These kind of reworks should be expanded to other weapons where they are not touched for a long time. Especially core weapons of all professions so everyone from each expansion can enjoy these changes, not only the people who plays EoD specs only. 

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

I am extremely dissapointed. Specifically in the shadowarts rework.

I suffer in PvE and am considering deleting my now useless deadeye due to Complaints in Competitive. This makes no sense. Why does a PvE player now have to struggle solo in PvE due to complaints in mainly WvW? Explain that to me, please. 

And why on earth is the Guardian so holy?
Also why on earth can a 1 key spam on Mechanist still leave other classes struggling in open world meta's to even get a single hit in?

I was at Modhir the other day in Harathi. The pre events were always hard, but we were seeing a vast mayority of rifle mechanist, killing everything before any caster class could even get near the enemy. Such selfish gameplay is now promoted.

The only sensible option is a rollback and back to the drawing board, because your phylosophy and the actual changes are 2 entirely different things.

 

[Karagee.6830]

1 minute ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

I am extremely dissapointed. Specifically in the shadowarts rework.

I suffer in PvE and am considering deleting my now useless deadeye due to Complaints in Competitive. This makes no sense. Why does a PvE player now have to struggle solo in PvE due to complaints in mainly WvW? Explain that to me, please. 

And why on earth is the Guardian so holy?
Also why on earth can a 1 key spam on Mechanist still leave other classes struggling in open world meta's to even get a single hit in?

I was at Modhir the other day in Harathi. The pre events were always hard, but we were seeing a vast mayority of rifle mechanist, killing everything before any caster class could even get near the enemy. Such selfish gameplay is now promoted.

The only sensible option is a rollback and back to the drawing board, because your phylosophy and the actual changes are 2 entirely different things.

 

Yes let's not forget that engi rifle is also not a single target weapon on top of everything else

[ToeJammin.7893]

" 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." 
"Catalyst has recently begun to be meta-defining in raids" 
"Now, they'll teleport immediately and, with Nature's Vengeance, Alacrity is instantly applied to nearby allies around your location." 
 

Edited July 10, 2022 by ToeJammin.7893