August 2 Balance Update Preview

[JTGuevara.9018]

So, first off...an ok start. Banners are now usable and I may actually take them on a utility bar and not feel like a total jack-you-know-what. But that's it. This is the MINIMUM of what warrior needs. You all have sharted the bed with warrior for years, never mind banners. Plus, y'all broke them in the first place anyway!

 

[Jimbru.6014]

Every class should have a dev assigned to play it and represent it in balance discussion, and they should be required to actually play the game for a properly representative amount of time. Unlike certain devs I could name who have openly admitted they DON'T play the game they're responsible for, and only play one or two classes if they do.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

The solution is one:

 

FACET BANNERS WITH PULSING DEFENSIVE BOONS AND FLIPOVER SUPPORT EFFECTS

 

In contrast to the Herald's focus on more offensive boons and offensive flipover skills. Then you slap quickness on Banner 'facets' in a similar role to Rev's for different purposes whilst creating 2 unique quickness roles without having them compete. 

 

[Chaos.9270]

On 7/28/2022 at 1:36 PM, TheSeraphim.7413 said:

Because mechanist and firebrand aren't good balance. You shouldn't have that much utility for free even on dps if game designers have any idea what they are doing. Balancing the game with them as the standard is brain dead.

You don't have many util skills with mech left. 
If you take the Snowcrows PowerDPS Mech, you have one skill free (thats the port skill) and even that one you should keep for a stunbreak / give mech boons. And firebrand should have some more Util Skills, otherwise some Raids would be way harder to keep up Aegis, Stability, CC (100 CM Fractal), etc. where those Util Skills are NOT there at other classes, because they are not balanced very well. Anet should make it so that if you want to have between 35-41.6k DPS, you don't have much Utility Skills and need a good rotation, under that you should have the most open for stuff. 

[Voyant.1327]

On 8/1/2022 at 5:32 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

Whats funny about ranger and mecha is that ranger is supposed to be the "pet" class , got completed eclipsed by mech , dont know if it's funny or cringe , ... would go for the cringe i guess  🙃.

 

It's certainly not helping the way a large group of players see balance right now,
as much as they're upfront and honest with "missing the mark" it's not gonna make a difference until the problem is fixed.

Right now it just feels like the balance team is just spinning a wheel and picking things.
Doesn't give a sense of working towards a philosophy beyond "You Should Play Firebrand or Mechanist"
And there has been NOTHING happening to deter that, no "we're gonna make sure it's fairly balanced" or even a remark to address the major concern that it feels like favorites are being played & there's no relief in sight. Nerf Elementalist, Warriors, Mesmers, Rangers, Necro.... and the patch before this one coming out pretty sure Mechanist got a buff while countless "Please NERF Mechanist" threads were well into their pages.

Apologies are cool, but so is an outline of philosophy. We're getting patch notes and all those are great things, but it's still not effectively communicating something to ease the fears of the base. Certainly nothing to give confidence in the design philosophy moving forward.

[Sylvi.8372]

2 hours ago, Voyant.1327 said:

It's certainly not helping the way a large group of players see balance right now,
as much as they're upfront and honest with "missing the mark" it's not gonna make a difference until the problem is fixed.

Right now it just feels like the balance team is just spinning a wheel and picking things.
Doesn't give a sense of working towards a philosophy beyond "You Should Play Firebrand or Mechanist"
And there has been NOTHING happening to deter that, no "we're gonna make sure it's fairly balanced" or even a remark to address the major concern that it feels like favorites are being played & there's no relief in sight. Nerf Elementalist, Warriors, Mesmers, Rangers, Necro.... and the patch before this one coming out pretty sure Mechanist got a buff while countless "Please NERF Mechanist" threads were well into their pages.

Apologies are cool, but so is an outline of philosophy. We're getting patch notes and all those are great things, but it's still not effectively communicating something to ease the fears of the base. Certainly nothing to give confidence in the design philosophy moving forward.

 

I feel you on the frustration when the concerns don't feel addressed. At the same time, we don't really know how the dev process works and how long things take. For all we know it takes 3 to 6 months (maybe longer?) for a current idea to come into fruition.

There's office politics, backlogs, ideating, drafting, programming, getting buy-in, 3D modelling, systems/math, backend stuff, QA, translation to all the languages GW2 serves, etc. All this in a complex game system with many dependencies.

(Whoever the team members that are in charge of Warrior right now are probably pulling overtime.)

I've never been to a game studio, but I can imagine they can't magically make the result we want as soon we want it. It'll take time. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Chrysline.2317

[standardFoe.2983]

27 minutes ago, Chrysline.2317 said:

I've never been to a game studio, but I can imagine they can't magically make the result we want as soon we want it. It'll take time. 

 

 

I can only speak for myself. It's not that game development takes time (seems like a given), it is the avoidance of responsibility by the balance team, however many there are. I know there is a comment about how they will balance differently in the future, but as an eight-year player, that's not good enough. Because that is the problem with communication from Anet about GW2 it is always 'in the future'. It's always 'we intend to do better' and then they release some nothingburger tidbit and the players who are still optimistic, eat it up. While the rest wonder if the effort of committing to an MMO is worth it, since the devs don't seem committed to actually producing work that more than a small number of players are interested in.

[ThunderX.6591]

In the last 3 Patch, from 28/06 to now, Mecha was only nerfed.

In the 28/06 patch the robot LOST the entire explosion trait that had access before for a single AARocket skill who could now only tick with the ranged robot setup...... at the same time, various condi skill duration were reduced. (but they changed rifle, ok, but was a change, not a buff to existing skill).

With the 01/07 hot fix, rifle 1 was nerfed, all 3 type of robot trait get their autoattack skill and 1 skill nerfed...... (we passed from near 25k dps to around 23k dps 11111 rifle)

And we arrive at today, patch 02/08, where we have a nerf to the AARocket skill for the robot (tick every 6 seconds) and a change to tick for the engi (only missile proyectile now), and a bug fix to the rifle...... all in all, we passed from around 23k dps to around 21k dps 11111 rifle........... test done full buffed, against the Golem with full condis on (so even extra dps for the Mecha)

I see only nerfs to Mecha in the lastest patches, now i need to wait Snowcrow test to see if Mecha can reach at least 35k, but i don't think so with the -2k with the last patch. (all data tested with same configuration for less possible errors)

[Shadowmoon.7986]

2 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

In the last 3 Patch, from 28/06 to now, Mecha was only nerfed.

In the 28/06 patch the robot LOST the entire explosion trait that had access before for a single AARocket skill who could now only tick with the ranged robot setup...... at the same time, various condi skill duration were reduced. (but they changed rifle, ok, but was a change, not a buff to existing skill).

With the 01/07 hot fix, rifle 1 was nerfed, all 3 type of robot trait get their autoattack skill and 1 skill nerfed...... (we passed from near 25k dps to around 23k dps 11111 rifle)

And we arrive at today, patch 02/08, where we have a nerf to the AARocket skill for the robot (tick every 6 seconds) and a change to tick for the engi (only missile proyectile now), and a bug fix to the rifle...... all in all, we passed from around 23k dps to around 21k dps 11111 rifle........... test done full buffed, against the Golem with full condis on (so even extra dps for the Mecha)

I see only nerfs to Mecha in the lastest patches, now i need to wait Snowcrow test to see if Mecha can reach at least 35k, but i don't think so with the -2k with the last patch. (all data tested with same configuration for less possible errors)

Good, 21k auto is still over powered. Compare that to all other classes (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/wb6725/auto_attack_benchmarks_part_1/ ). Btw did you the test with all mech skills on auto cast? This might push the benchmark higher while keeping it an afk class. 

Edit: afk benchmark is 28k (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/118994-rifle-mech-is-now-28k-dps-with-0-input-from-the-player/?tab=comments#comment-1722571). Making this a huge buff. This is almost the optimal damage of power reaper atm, with 0 skill presses.  Anets balance team is bonk.

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Shadowmoon.7986

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

4 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Good, 21k auto is still over powered. Compare that to all other classes (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/wb6725/auto_attack_benchmarks_part_1/ ). Btw did you the test with all mech skills on auto cast? This might push the benchmark higher while keeping it an afk class. 

Edit: afk benchmark is 28k (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/118994-rifle-mech-is-now-28k-dps-with-0-input-from-the-player/?tab=comments#comment-1722571). Making this a huge buff. This is almost the optimal damage of power reaper atm, with 0 skill presses.  Anets balance team is bonk.

 

Mostly I'm glad to see someone else is doing the auto attack tests aside from me.  It's a big weight off of my shoulders, as I wasn't sure if I should bother doing them with Anet promising drastic changes in the near future.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

5 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Good, 21k auto is still over powered. Compare that to all other classes (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/wb6725/auto_attack_benchmarks_part_1/ ). Btw did you the test with all mech skills on auto cast? This might push the benchmark higher while keeping it an afk class. 

Edit: afk benchmark is 28k (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/118994-rifle-mech-is-now-28k-dps-with-0-input-from-the-player/?tab=comments#comment-1722571). Making this a huge buff. This is almost the optimal damage of power reaper atm, with 0 skill presses.  Anets balance team is bonk.

 

Has anyone done some benchmarks for other classes with auto attacking? I'm very curious about results.

[Karagee.6830]

7 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

In the last 3 Patch, from 28/06 to now, Mecha was only nerfed.

In the 28/06 patch the robot LOST the entire explosion trait that had access before for a single AARocket skill who could now only tick with the ranged robot setup...... at the same time, various condi skill duration were reduced. (but they changed rifle, ok, but was a change, not a buff to existing skill).

With the 01/07 hot fix, rifle 1 was nerfed, all 3 type of robot trait get their autoattack skill and 1 skill nerfed...... (we passed from near 25k dps to around 23k dps 11111 rifle)

And we arrive at today, patch 02/08, where we have a nerf to the AARocket skill for the robot (tick every 6 seconds) and a change to tick for the engi (only missile proyectile now), and a bug fix to the rifle...... all in all, we passed from around 23k dps to around 21k dps 11111 rifle........... test done full buffed, against the Golem with full condis on (so even extra dps for the Mecha)

I see only nerfs to Mecha in the lastest patches, now i need to wait Snowcrow test to see if Mecha can reach at least 35k, but i don't think so with the -2k with the last patch. (all data tested with same configuration for less possible errors)

Still not enough, 1111 builds should do less than 20k (plenty to kill any content bar some CMs) and Mech still has way too much utility.

NERF NERF NERF Mech and FB.

[Mikael Ekvall.6039]

I know they did wrong with banners and are trying to fix that. Good. I hope they do the same with Wells. Even If they screw them up even more at least that would be proof that they havent forgotten about their sorry state. 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Mikael Ekvall.6039

[ThunderX.6591]

Dear Karagee, you need to see the forest instead of a branch before your eyes.

You do 21k dps using the skill "MODIFIED AMMUNITION" that use all the condis on the Golem, without considering that on a normal champ fight, you will never have all the condis you get on the golem, but less, so, your dps get down too. (and 21k is the ideal dps against an immovable target who don't react)

Second point, your big dps is given from the AARocket "Orbital strike" attack, unfortunatelly, now is slow to activate and need more time, plus, if the boss move, you miss easy the skill (cast time and more).

Third, you need full boons, so you need to be near the group for receive them, not the best for a range class who bet a lot of his utility on be range and running around.

Virtuoso is better on every points (in raid is the dps more choosen atm, Mecha is used, if all good, for Alac, so no rifle, sorry and low dps from the changed gear needed)

I post facts and testing, and i don't bother with some pet autoattack change done for the ranger for skill that need to be casted on determinated timing to be usefull against a boss (the skill give CC, boons and more, i don't think you are in a good state spamming them when you don't need them (and set them on cooldown), don't know, but this is my impression)

[Voyant.1327]

15 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

In the last 3 Patch, from 28/06 to now, Mecha was only nerfed.

was referring to the trait that was improved due to it working incorrectly (a defacto buff) Believe it was the mid-July patch. 

But you can still see the difference in the way its treated, look at the latest patch and they have in depth answers and reasonings behind the changes. They make changes because they understand the class. Then you look at Mesmer or Warrior and it's like they're just "lets try this!" And then never fix what they broke initially. 

The thing is Mechanist & Firebrand simply have options the rest of us do not. Its not just about pure DPS. Its about classes being well rounded and given the fair amount of treatment from the dev team. Mesmer Virt can bring DPS and Healing. Even switching to Chrono Alacrity/Quickness is simply out of the question because you're just a wet noodle. The class that used to provide Alacrity now is virtually non existent. Similar to Warrior Bannerslaves being non-existent..... Who do people bring now instead of those two classes.

Firebrand or Mechanist. 

This is the reason, you say forest for the trees and each time they cut down one tree the path leads back to the Firebrand or Mechanist camp. 

[Karagee.6830]

4 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

Dear Karagee, you need to see the forest instead of a branch before your eyes.

You do 21k dps using the skill "MODIFIED AMMUNITION" that use all the condis on the Golem, without considering that on a normal champ fight, you will never have all the condis you get on the golem, but less, so, your dps get down too. (and 21k is the ideal dps against an immovable target who don't react)

Second point, your big dps is given from the AARocket "Orbital strike" attack, unfortunatelly, now is slow to activate and need more time, plus, if the boss move, you miss easy the skill (cast time and more).

Third, you need full boons, so you need to be near the group for receive them, not the best for a range class who bet a lot of his utility on be range and running around.

Virtuoso is better on every points (in raid is the dps more choosen atm, Mecha is used, if all good, for Alac, so no rifle, sorry and low dps from the changed gear needed)

I post facts and testing, and i don't bother with some pet autoattack change done for the ranger for skill that need to be casted on determinated timing to be usefull against a boss (the skill give CC, boons and more, i don't think you are in a good state spamming them when you don't need them (and set them on cooldown), don't know, but this is my impression)

Frankly I don't care. Any single person who can't play the game will use autoattack Mech builds. Mech has 24.2% spec representation in raids and since you won't take more than 2 HAM per group, you can do the math yourself. Virtuoso has 11% class representation.

Nobody is debating there are better dps options than Mech, I happily concede there are many. However, in the end nobody cares that more difficult classes do more dps and perform better than braindead superlow APM mech with plenty of utility. As long as the options are close enough, a large portion of players will take the easier way, especially if it also has more utility. And note that these are not generally scrubs that have never set foot in a raid or strike, these are people with kills in the content.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[ThunderX.6591]

Don't you think that is exactly what the DEVS want for the game before the Steam launch?

Getting players from that place happy (they are full casual there, the bar for changing game if is "problematic" (game is too hard, difficult to get in end game party and so on) is set mildly low considering thousands of games you can choose on Steam.

For sure there is a plan, or the debut on Steam could literally destroy the game............. and i want to avoid that ending. (Expecially after 10 years)

[the krytan assassin.9235]

38 minutes ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

Don't you think that is exactly what the DEVS want for the game before the Steam launch?

Well maybe it is what the devs think the game needs, but i can guarantee that every steamplayer picking ele is gonna have a bad time getting constantly killed and having kitten dps while seeing engi, guard and necro breeze through the game. 

[JTGuevara.9018]

So...I've tested out the new banner changes and I have to say...y'all pulled it off. It's nice to have more game play options than just the primary melee.

Still, it's just a start. Warrior still has outdated weapons, skills and specialization lines that simply don't compete in this recent environment. And then there is the overall environment! Yes, it's good that warrior has boon support now, however that brings more questions: what is even the point of classes anymore these days? What is warrior's role? Do roles actually exist? Can we really say that this combat philosophy that seems to be a homogenized idea of "everybody does everything" really work? Because to me, and I'm sure many others, it's not only inconsistent, but confusing as you-know-what. The overall game philosophy seems to change so much that you yourselves can barely keep up, never mind us players!

It's like...we warriors(and the other 8 professions) have an assumption of what our class should be like (class fantasy assumptions or at the very least the profession description), but maybe you all disagree. I don't know. Unlike gw1, gw2 was never consistent or clear in its combat theme and what it wanted to achieve. It never had a consistent system or framework to rally around, with the exception of tying skills to the weapon and everybody having a personal healing skill. There's all this talk about "play styles not roles", but it does not make sense to me. What do y'all mean by that?

And then there are the balance updates, which clearly seem to me to be: "Throw something at the wall and hope it sticks..."

Edited August 3, 2022 by JTGuevara.9018
add

[Tails.9372]

7 hours ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Any single person who can't play the game will use autoattack Mech builds.

Good, that just means that the top 10-20% of the playerbase wouldn't have to do 80-90% of the work in PuGs anymore and that content outside of organized groups could finally be finished in a somewhat timely manner. If that's how it's going to be then every profession should get a "for the masses" build like that.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Karagee.6830]

16 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

Don't you think that is exactly what the DEVS want for the game before the Steam launch?

Getting players from that place happy (they are full casual there, the bar for changing game if is "problematic" (game is too hard, difficult to get in end game party and so on) is set mildly low considering thousands of games you can choose on Steam.

For sure there is a plan, or the debut on Steam could literally destroy the game............. and i want to avoid that ending. (Expecially after 10 years)

Yeah the plan is having classes that are staples in every MMO like warrior and mage/elementalist be unusuable while weird classes like the 'engineer' with a large green robot are everywhere.

Great plan. Exceptional even.

Steam will pick up casuals not hardcore raiders coming from other MMOs. Casuals pick classes based on theme and personal preference and typically invest in a single character. So what do you think will happen after several months when the people playing ele, warrior, ranger, thief etc. realise they may need to reroll, start from zero and play a class someone else tells them to, if they want access to more challenging content?

Imbalance and gross imbalance like we are currently seeing (in fact this is the worst it's ever been as the concentration is similar to HoT release, but you now have 27 elite specs compared to 9 back then) is just really bad for new players.

It's simply negligence and incompetence on the dev/balance team's part. You can't say we want people to be accepted in groups with the specs they like and then make most of those specs either bad or garbage. People won't be accepted just because you say and hope so. It's up to Anet to make Mech+FB drop from 4-5 spots in your average raid party through balance changes, words are cheap and useless in this regard. Boosting 25 other specs is also not feasible, at least not in the short term. So just nerf support Mech and FB in intelligent ways to bring them in line with everything else (i.e. force the trade-offs every other spec has).

Edited August 4, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Naxos.2503]

Regarding Warrior Banners, do we get Banner bundle skills back when held ?

If not : ...why not ? It's better than an empty bar for 1 through 5.

Edit : I guess that answers that, banners can no longer be picked up. 

Sigh... So. Yes they are more efficient, they're also just more simple as well. I'm sorry if that's odd to anyone, am I the only one who likes a Little bit of complexity in skill usage ?

Edited August 4, 2022 by Naxos.2503

[Syvaris Laskaris.5247]

19 minutes ago, Naxos.2503 said:

Regarding Warrior Banners, do we get Banner bundle skills back when held ?

If not : ...why not ? It's better than an empty bar for 1 through 5.

Edit : I guess that answers that, banners can no longer be picked up. 

Sigh... So. Yes they are more efficient, they're also just more simple as well. I'm sorry if that's odd to anyone, am I the only one who likes a Little bit of complexity in skill usage ?

You will have your Wells and be happy, why would you want a unique mechanic when you can just be another boon bot that has to compete with FB?

[ThunderX.6591]

If you talk about "standard" class, in literally any games out in the wild, Warrior is in the top 3 best dps........ in that spot, here, we have Bladesworn......... how good is isn't important, the important part is that a "warrior" type of class is in the top 3 spot. (the fact that the "normal warrior" is literally at the low end of the dps ranking is considered "collateral damage", totally normal, same as a Tempest healer that is the TOP of all healer spec is literally never used in high end game contents).

What can we do? Nothing until we have peole who ask random nerf to classes who are " literally ok" instead of asking for buffs to the rest of the "not so ok" classes we have in the game.......... expecially after a patch (28/06) that with what changed in the game, literally take flat 4k loss dps to all classes in the game.

Understand that you need to ask BUFFS for the "not so good classes" if you want them to be better, nerfs never improve something (the word literally mean "nerf as reduce it").

 

[Fueki.4753]

11 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

the important part is that a "warrior" type of class is in the top 3 spot.

Depending on who you ask, Junksworn is not a Warrior type, but more of an Engineer type that just happened to be bolted onto Warrior, because the actual Engineer already got Mechanist.

Other than the colour scheme, literally nothing about Junksworn screams Warrior to me.

11 hours ago, ThunderX.6591 said:

 "collateral damage"

And this is objectively untrue. Warrior been nerfed again and again on purpose. None of it was collateral damage.

They actively went out of their ways to nerf and negatively rework abilities. They purposely deworked Berserker after PoF released.

Thinking that any of it was collateral damage is equivalent to looking at it with Jupiter-sized rose-tinted glasses.

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Fueki.4753