August 2 Balance Update Preview

[Kuma.1503]

Anet is starting to spread aegis and stability to more classes which is good. 

How much quickness are we talking on double standards though?

If you pull another herald/scrapper and make it too short, Warriors will end up needing to spam their stab/aegis at the wrong time just to maintain quickness, which means it will still not be able to compete with FB as a quickness source. 

 

[scopydss.1732]

well considering how you pretty much nerfed everything but buffed engi, i doubt you have a clue how to balance stuff, now mostly when i join squads its full on engi players, just like there are no options to play anything besides that, you could be more considerate about it and look into it, but who cares, better smack ele or warrior to ground to be unplayable and every1 making fun of you bc you wanna play or are playing these classes

[Kherae.2109]

@Rubi Bayer.8493 I sincerely hope there's more changes than these, because...well...tell you guys what: go look at the wiki pages for resolution and protection, and filter it to warrior only. Notice something? Zero skills granting it, self or allies. Warrior cannot grant them to allies at all. These are important boons. Also, where's the trait reshuffle so that shout-heal-boon warrior can exist? Where's the cooldown removal from soldier's focus? SF is a static 10s cd that is not affected by alacrity. It's a nightmare for warriors to play around.

[NotTooFoolish.7412]

I feel like chrono is slowly crawling back into meta.

[Nuunes.5046]

[Removed]

Edited July 29, 2022 by Nuunes.5046

[Bookah pls.9352]

11 minutes ago, Chaos.9270 said:

Why nerfing 2 classes, instead of bringing 7 to their level, so all are equal good balanced instead of equal bad balanced? Like do you actually want all 9 classes to be like Elementalist? xD 

Do you genuinely believe that power creeping everyone else to the stupid op levels of firebrand and mechanist is healthy for this game?

 

I certainly don't.

[delaydackel.3219]

5 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

How much quickness are we talking on double standards though?

 

THATS the real question which will define viability.

[Kherae.2109]

12 minutes ago, Skyroar.2974 said:

I understand why the change was made, but I find it weird how obscure it is, how arbitrary it feels like to your casual player who may not understand the reasoning, and I totally missed when they've talked about it. Have a source/link?

EDIT: Besides, for most PvE content, core sword #3 is somewhat of a bland, filler skill, while most damage is put into the evade skill; if Anet were to put virtuoso's more interesting #3 in the core weapon, they would not only make the weapon more interesting (it would have 3 useful skills instead of 2 and a half), but also have room to spread its damage application more evenly, instead of having this uber overpowered #2 to make up for a very crappy #3.

I see no good argument why a trash skill that desperately needs a overhaul in PvE has to coexist with, instead of being completely replaced by, its better, more functional version currently gated behind a single spec.

except it is not strictly 'better', it functions differently. non-virt spawns a clone to attack the target, and can choose when to swap to it and immobilize the target, and the cooldown continues to tick down while the swap is active. Virt loses that bit of niche usage in exchange for a return teleport. If anything, I would like to see the skill range on non-virt's sword 3 increased somewhat

[Xora.2581]

For chrono, why are the new crit dmg trait (IA) and the crit chance trait (DT, which used to give the same 10% modifier but got nerfed) mutually exclusive?

[Brimstar.9036]

32 minutes ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Thats it? 2 out of 9 professions get something fixed? Ok, warriors needed that. But what about ele? Still "meta defining"? What about mechanist/FB nerfs to get them in line with other specs?

They've already given you this information (which next balance patch won't be until fall). This was a hot fix out of their release cadence and it was mainly to focus on the things that were in dire need of changes. 

[anduriell.6280]

I think aside from this post, smaller ones with the specific changes to that profession should be posted in each profession subforum to gather the specific feedback. 
 

i personally don’t have any specific feedback about this new banner  changes except that this looks better than original one. 

[TheRaven.3462]

imho the chrono changes are kinda meh, yes it will buff support chrono a bit but it doesn't solve the problem that chrono lost crit cap as the 5% increase went to virtuoso only and the chronomancer trait which competes with Improved Alacrity is Danger Time, which improves crit chance, so you will either have to change build again to crit cap not get the 10% multiplier on you crit damage.
Hopefully there are some undocumented changes which can make chronomancer enjoyable again.

 

[GuriGashi.5617]

Would love to see PvP balancing as well

[vrauns.3215]

If i were anet, i wouldn't even fix anything, community is ungrateful to any change.

[Rising Blade.9206]

  

Quote

We've gone back to the drawing board to be bolder with changes, add more powerful utility, and make banners easier to use

you call this lazily written pencil written note up, bold? still so insistent on keeping the inferior version of the HoT banner bundle pickup skill?

[Geoff Fey.1035]

Okay, kudos, points, and handshakes for these changes to the banners. I'm curious what else might be in the pipeline with working on the banners.

To address the pickup/drop of them, is the team looking into the purpose of being able to pickup/drop them at this time? Mechanically it has never been enjoyable and with the reduction in CD and the focus being on a big "initial hit" followed by pulses afterwards (effectively Traps or Wells), there's just a lot of disincentivizing to move around the banners. Edit: Missed the part of them no longer being able to be picked up and only lasting 15s. Effectively traps/wells now.

Unknown until we see the full notes if the boons are sufficient to make a banner support warrior viable compared to the other alternatives, but this is a good step in the right direction.

Personal note: different fields (Smoke on tactics, Fire on Discipline, etc) or a blast finisher on pickup would would incentivize positioning regarding banners and having Warriors interact with them; is there the potential for these being looked into? Having an easily accessible fire field outside of Torch would be very convenient for Berserkers, although this runs the risk of horning in too much on Catalsyst.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Geoff Fey.1035

[zealex.9410]

Anything on danger time? The criteria for chrono to have the crit chance is very niche and hurts the spec needlessly, also chrono still lacks the 5% crit because you only gave it to virtuoso, pls move it to dueling so everyone has access to it.

Another thing i would like to hear more about is the alacrity chrono playstyle, rn it requires you to have multiple well and to use them on cd, completely disregarding what their actual effects are, which are tbf, very underwhelming. 

[Ombras.2853]

28 minutes ago, ErikViking.2754 said:

Nice, more Power Virtuoso Buffs, that was really needed, without those buffs maybe people would get the idea they should try harvest temple CM without atleast 4 Virtuosos. This way you may even play 5 or 6 virtuosos. Truly a weak class that needed those changes xD 

If you played the class, even remotely, you’d know that while cVirtuoso is in a good position, PVirtuoso is much, much worse in almost every scenario. Hopefully now PVirtuoso will be better than cVirtuoso where condi is supposed to be bad, at least.

[Elrey.5472]

A cool update for warrior indeed, but I am still missing fury on warhorn 4 in fire for Tempest. It was removed last year for no reason and it would undoubtly help a lot to fix some of the issues of the class.

[gren.7160]

okay dudes, we're balancing the war.
Again, it turned out not playable. wait for the next patch

why can't you just do the distribution of quick for 1-2 seconds more. this will also make the war with banners playable again.

[itspomf.9523]

Really heartening to see the team own up to the poor work done with regard to warrior banners.  They were a long, long step backward, and addressing that disparity in a relatively short time-frame is very welcome.  Thank you.

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

FYI: we’ve also added an additional balance update to our release schedule on August 23, focused on buffing a larger set of specializations. We’ll have more information on what that build includes in the coming weeks. Thank you for your continued patience and support as we address your feedback from the June 28 professions update.

Hopefully we can get a preview by mid-August of what these changes might entail.  I'd love to see thief core weapon sets and traits finally get a bit of much-needed love after years of neglect (or rather, nerfs).

[Lottie.5370]

48 minutes ago, Inglorious.7146 said:

I expected nothing for the Chrono changes and I'm still disapointed, good job I guess

 

 

Do you realise how huge buffing the core weapons is tho? Just look what it did for soulbeast.

 

The extra 10% crit dmg modifier is big too.

[Exciton.8942]

So now both danger time and improved alacrity are damage traits that compete each other in the same column? Chrono is really a mess and I hope they put in some effort to properly rework it.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Rubi Bayer.8493, as always thank you and to the devs for the work you all do.

The banner changes seem to be very interesting. I like that the effects are heavily frontloaded. I like the mixture of effects. I feel a few things should be noted:

Banner of Defense not being an AoE stunbreak seems like a missed opportunity.
Banner of Strength and Battle Standard would be best with 3 stacks of might.
Banner of Strength and Discipline should have meaningful damage, even in competitive play.
Banner of Discipline I hope is more than 1 bleed stack, it would be a very missed opportunity otherwise.
The quickness on summon should at least be 3s if not more. With the frontloaded effects we'll want to use the banners for those effects as well, not just maintaining quickness, so if the duration is too low then it creates a conundrum of whether to use the banner as needed or off CD for the quickness. It would be best if the quickness on summon is on the higher end.

Thanks again.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

As long as banners remain same in functionality (drop and stand there) they will never see play outside of instanced PvE. Not that anet cares about that.

 

Anyone in game who can let me know how they work? Or forget it, ill go to the warr sub.