August 2 balance update preview

[Levetty.1279]

August 2 Balance Update Preview - Professions - Guild Wars 2 Forums

 

Quote

 

Mesmer

Similar to recent tuning on Ranger weapons, the following are a small set of changes focused on improving damage capability of chronomancer builds in PvE. Improvements to greatsword and sword, as well as a significant damage increase added to the chronomancer's 'Improved Alacrity' trait will increase the performance of both damage and boon support chronomancer builds.

Greatsword

• Spatial Surge: (PvE only) Increased minimum damage multiplier from 0.69 to 0.8. Increased maximum damage multiplier from 1.005 to 1.1.
• Mind Stab: (PvE only) Increased damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.8.
• Phantasmal Berserker: (PvE only) Increased damage multiplier of initial strike from 0.4 to 1.2.

Sword:

• Mind Slash: (PvE only) Increased damage multiplier from 0.75 to 0.8.
• Mind Gash: (PvE only) Increased damage multiplier from 0.75 to 0.8.

Chronomancer Traits:

• Improved Alacrity: In addition to its previous effects, this trait now also increases your critical-strike damage by 10% when you have alacrity. This is a multiplier to total damage dealt, not additive with critical strike damage from Ferocity.

 

 

It's a buff I guess? But still doesn't really help us compete with FB/Mech and not only is the crit chance trait still bad but it competes with the crit damage trait which seems weird.

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Levetty.1279

[Salt Mode.3780]

meanwhile sPvP and WvW ☠️💀

 

[Justine.6351]

Maybe now I can get through the rest of EoD. Guess gs and sword op in wvw?

[josh.3847]

16 minutes ago, Justine.6351 said:

Maybe now I can get through the rest of EoD. Guess gs and sword op in wvw?

Wasn’t the weapon changes restricted to PVE?

Edited July 27, 2022 by josh.3847

[Justine.6351]

21 minutes ago, josh.3847 said:

Wasn’t the weapon changes restricted to PVE?

That was my point.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

Garbage. 

[Tseison.4659]

The changes are whatever since it's PvE. The Improved Alacrity is a nice addition since we'll likely have 100% uptime for alac when doing raids, fractals, strikes and other group open world PvE content. Solo its hard to justify since the alac on shatters is only a measly 1sec and then the other source of alac is from traiting Stretched Time and carrying Shield, but again, no point in really using those when solo so... 🤷‍♂️But anyways, not really going to complain but they should've redirected that focus back on the Wells as mentioned a million times, making them mobile (except for GW) and I'm sorry but I'd rather have Well of Action and Well of Senility reverted back to their original effect.

These "small set of changes" could've been sent in an email or even be a part of the earlier patches we get on Tuesdays 🤷‍♂️

Edited July 27, 2022 by Tseison.4659

[Mikael Ekvall.6039]

Wait what... no changes to wells?

And no boosting the class identity at all?

 

[Xaylin.1860]

The weapon damage boosts for PvE were expected considering they specifically mentioned Ranger as reference. Now, the buff to IA is odd and totally not what I got from "improving damage on Chronomancer". It either won't matter for damage if numbers turn out to be bad or directly compete with Danger Time which is a very weird decision to make to begin with. 

Regardless, people need to relax for their own good. The last "big" patch was a very mixed bag but they were transparent that the next batch of changes will be minor. 

[mungozen.2379]

Well they said Mesmer and buff in the same sentence and they delivered exactly that. Too bad these changes are limper then an over cooked noodle even in PvE where they were directed. 
 

10/10 Anet missed the mark, well done. 

[SugarJohnson.4596]

1 hour ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

The weapon damage boosts for PvE were expected considering they specifically mentioned Ranger as reference. Now, the buff to IA is odd and totally not what I got from "improving damage on Chronomancer". It either won't matter for damage if numbers turn out to be bad or directly compete with Danger Time which is a very weird decision to make to begin with. 

Regardless, people need to relax for their own good. The last "big" patch was a very mixed bag but they were transparent that the next batch of changes will be minor. 

Again only PvE changes. Nothing has changed for the PvP and WvW community. This is not transparency. That’s lying. 

 

Incompetent company, seriously. From mods to devs to workers to managers. Whole company is rotten. 

[phokus.8934]

I'll never turn on buffs for pve but where are the wvw/pvp changes?  These changes also feel half done.

[Zenith.7301]

They're placebo changes. Power chrono uses greatsword only situationally, and the buffs to mainhand sword were pathetic.

 

The alacrity trait competes with danger time on top.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

GS buffs? NICE! 

PvE only. Oh...... 😢

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I do wonder who's bright idea it was to make the 10% crit damage buff mutually exclusive with Danger Time's 15% crit damage buff.  Running solo both of these are basically going to do nothing, since chrono has to go out of its way and remove DPS utilities/traits with others to inflict slow and alacrity.  In group content it is composition dependent, but basically if you have a combination of two from any of condi renegade, condi spectter, and/or condi mechanist, then the enemy will have permanent slow on them.  

[Xaylin.1860]

6 hours ago, SugarJohnson.4596 said:

Again only PvE changes. Nothing has changed for the PvP and WvW community. This is not transparency. That’s lying. 

Nope. It is exactly what they have announced for this specific set of changes. They have mentioned Banners and damage on Chrono, referring to namely Ranger as example, which got mostly PvE number changes. 

This is what Josh said:

Quote

August 2

As we mentioned earlier this week, we’ve added a follow-up balance update to our schedule on August 2. For that release, we'll be looking at addressing warrior banners and chronomancer’s relatively low damage output through chronomancer-specific traits and increasing the damage on core weapons (like the treatment ranger is getting today). Once we’ve released today’s hotfix we’ll move onto planning the details of this update.

I'm not saying they are doing enough balancewise and they will really have to redeem themselves with the next big patch and the time after. But they have been pretty transparent after the most recent drama. 

[Yoci.2481]

PvP and WvW community.

[godfat.2604]

I did get the impression that it would be PvE only, but they never explicitly mentioned that from what I can recall. The only indication was “like the treatment ranger is getting” and I can’t recall but got the impression that it’s for buffing quickness or alacrity Chronomancer’s damage output (they were probably nodding when they watched the golem benchmark for that), and that’s surely for PvE because Chrono doesn’t work that way in competitive modes.

And the most important indication was probably that when they never mentioned which mode, that’s PvE by default, basing on the experience over the years… and of course that won’t be clear for players not watching how they talked over the years, or players don’t exactly care about PvE.

They might have improved about transparency a bit, but it’s still far from being good, and we can tell that from their significant bias that PvE is the default when not mentioned, over and over, not all modes if not mentioned. Actually, back then when they resisted so much for skills splitting, they had made tons of PvE changes also applied in competitive modes, which caused a lot of disasters. Perhaps it’s also an improvement over that after all. Still so much rooms for improvement from the very bottom.

[Uete.3805]

11 hours ago, Tseison.4659 said:

 🤷‍♂️But anyways, not really going to complain but they should've redirected that focus back on the Wells as mentioned a million times, making them mobile (except for GW) and I'm sorry but I'd rather have Well of Action and Well of Senility reverted back to their original effect🤷‍♂️

 

10 hours ago, Mikael Ekvall.6039 said:

Wait what... no changes to wells?

And no boosting the class identity at all?

 

Although they mentioned the changes would be focused on weapon's power coefficients (as they have done), I think it's important to point out the new wells aren't working too well with the spec's identity as Mikael says.

I would prefer if they went back to providing quickness and alacrity, respectively, as Tseisom suggests in order to line up with Chrono's identity as a boon provider and for unstructured or solo PvE play (in other words allow them to provide 100% quickness or alac *only* when taking the grandmaster traits that facilitate that playstyle but never both).

I don't think it's too problematic if an alac provider gives some quickness or the other way around, but it's quite thematic for chrono and can help filling small gaps in other boon providers for inexperienced groups. Regardless of that, for structured PvE the most optimal build for quick or alac DPS would rarely bring the other boon if that meant lowering their personal DPS since there are better options in the Chrono kit.

In any case, the new Wells aren't useful for Chrono (Superspeed doesn't care for boon duration and Senility is a worse Well of Corruption or Null field). A better quickless and alacless option would be if Action cared about boon duration and Senility about Condi damage, for instance: Action could generate might every pulse and stability at the end and Senility could give Bleeding and Freezing every pulse and Confusion at the end (Keep in mind I'm no balance expert). The condi option would open up gameplay with the Staff and the Chaos trait line as well (for both condi and boon duration).

TLDR: Bring back the original quick and alac-providing wells in a future updates or at least make them more thematic with the chrono identity or synergetic with Chaos traitline.

[Tseison.4659]

8 minutes ago, Uete.3805 said:

I would prefer if they went back to providing quickness and alacrity, respectively, as Tseison suggests in order to line up with Chrono's identity as a boon provider and for unstructured or solo PvE play (in other words allow them to provide 100% quickness or alac *only* when taking the grandmaster traits that facilitate that playstyle but never both).

I don't think it's too problematic if an alac provider gives some quickness or the other way around, but it's quite thematic for chrono and can help filling small gaps in other boon providers for inexperienced groups.

100% this. When Chrono was announced and for the good amount of time we had playing with it, we were always known for having alac and always wanted in raids. But as per usual, when things are going well for us, it’s like all of our stuff/uniqueness gets shared amongst every other profession which then makes ours and other professions not worth taking because Anets most prized professions NEED to be giving out quickness and alac better than us because you know, all of a sudden Chrono = every other profession but Chrono. 
 

I’d be super okay with your idea because yes atleast at the end of the day we can provide both boons, but if we want to have 100% uptime we have to trait for either or. 
 

Giving Well of Action Super Speed isn’t thematic. Giving Well of Senility boon removal, isn’t thematic. They removed the good we had for them just to be put on traits and that just shows that they don’t know what they’re doing and want to cripple us even more, calling it a “buff”.  So what’s Chrono suppose to be now and be known for when every other profession is doing what we did way better? 🙄

[Yoci.2481]

Super Speed on the final tick of a well must be the stupidest design decision in the history of gaming. Not just video gaming but all of gaming, including that weird board game the ancient Babylonians used to play. Super Speed is for mobility and standing inside a well for three seconds is exactly the opposite of mobility. "Hey guys, we need to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible now, so stand inside this well and wait for the final tick! What do you say? That's a net mobility loss and you would be faster if you just started slowly trotting across the map right now? Well this is my ability and you are going to use it whether you like it or not!"

[DanAlcedo.3281]

2 hours ago, Yoci.2481 said:

Super Speed on the final tick of a well must be the stupidest design decision in the history of gaming. Not just video gaming but all of gaming, including that weird board game the ancient Babylonians used to play. Super Speed is for mobility and standing inside a well for three seconds is exactly the opposite of mobility. "Hey guys, we need to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible now, so stand inside this well and wait for the final tick! What do you say? That's a net mobility loss and you would be faster if you just started slowly trotting across the map right now? Well this is my ability and you are going to use it whether you like it or not!"

You are a Chronomancer. Use your power over time to predict the location of the person you want to speed up, so you can place the well accordingly 3 seconds before. 

Duh. 

[psi.9304]

Please continue to buff all our weapons they all need it.

Why do we have to battle between to traits that are not in the same line making us less effective???

OMG fix wells....... they need to be bigger and better.....

[Waffles.5632]

I guess it's okay because these are all buffs, but they're buffing the wrong things imo. It's bittersweet.

Also PvE only, which like many have already said, does nothing to address pvp/wvw balance. Until next patch I suppose. 😒

Edited July 28, 2022 by Waffles.5632

[anbujackson.9564]

The chrono identity is still a hot mess in PvE and I am very salty about it, not gonna lie.

The first thing I thought after I read through was: Wait why put that on IA after it was removed from DT which is in the same line? You still need a crit chance compensation. Because you need so much BD without shield, you cant crit cap. Put a 5-10% on a minor trait on chrono.

The well rework and the nerf/buff to shield 5 physically hurt me. Please just revert this and let us do both quickness and alac with shield having no target cap again. You can even punish me with -10% outgoing damage for it. I dont care. As long as I can play support inspi chrono again, I will take almost any downside. (Revert SoI to 5men btw and 10men traited, no one played it anymore anyway)