August 23 Balance Update Preview

[Jgc XD.5940]

Move Lucid Singularity so we could give alacrity and heal or deal damage and not make this stupid choice we have right now (dmg trait or heal trait or alac trait)

[Griifen.2473]

12 hours ago, illuminosity.8537 said:

 

I love that sword weaver is getting buffed, but I feel a bit iffy about it being on autos. The skill rotation already has a lot of things to pay attention to, and the more you buff autos, the more complexity you add by having to monitor auto chains, and the more it hurts players who don't do so. I think it'd make the spec a lot more friendly to newer & less skilled players to reduce auto attack damage and increase the damage on active skills like the dual skill attacks, which is naturally what a person will be looking at and paying attention to while attunement dancing.

 

 

It's great to see tempest getting some more defensive tools in their kit, but I find the placements a little odd. Eye of the Storm is a skill you want to use *after* people have been CCed, so it's a little odd to see it now having reasons to use it both before and after. I'd suggest a different way of making Eye of the Storm more of a consideration to bring, such as having it provide fury, or lean into its defensive role a little differently by having it daze nearby enemies when used (ie, enemy CCs you, use you eye of the storm to recover and have a short period of daze and superspeed to help you escape or turn the tables).

 

I see the thinking behind aegis on aftershock, but I think it's actually counter productive. If someone hits you with a ranged attack, won't we now block it instead or reflecting it? It seems a bit odd. I would suggest putting stab on aftershock, making it the skill you use when you anticipate incoming ranged damage or CC. I would then put aegis on to Flash Freeze to enhance its protective effects.

Ah finally someone described the problem clearly! The lack of synergy of those changes just throws the whole aspect of shouting to counter attacks or mechanics just feels off. I can't imagine any new player looking at these and making heads or tails of which skill to use or even when to use it.

[Surelia.2651]

I have played a mesmer main since beta.  Have never bothered to participate in forums here for reasons I won't get into, but feeling compelled to do so at this point to ask what on earth is the logic behind nerfing Mirage here as you clearly have?  There was categorically nothing in our play that warranted this change.  I mean I am very glad my eles are finally seeing some proper love, for once... but this feels like you are now kicking Mirage into the dustbin of nonsensical nerfs you people always dream up for reasons unknown. 

[Invidia.9074]

Since I am seeing multiple underperforming weapon buffs, I'd like to point to:

- mesmer scepter - needs either a slight autoattack speed increase or condi damage increase on it because it honestly feels like a wet noodle now.
- mesmer trident - the projectile bounce on Siren's Call (trident autoattack) is more annoying than not and makes the trident just an underpowered underwater staff. Instead of the bounce, we could have more bleed stacks on the attack or change it to confusion/torment. Damage numbers are also pretty low.
- mesmer spear - underwater melee combat is difficult enough in its current state and the autoattack on the spear feels clunky to use and aim at most enemies (you almost need to stand in their hitboxes to actually be sure you're hitting). Spear would benefit from a total rework of the autoattack chain (bigger range, animations changed to reflect this). Skill 4 (Slipstream) in its current form also is mostly useless now due to lack of enticing underwater content (after all those years I still hope it's coming, though). Making the skill effect a spherical area, like feedback, would at least make it much easier to use and see for allies.

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

What is your philosophy toward balance and game design?  Right now the philosophy seems to be increase more damage, add more buffs, add more.   The mechanist was just buffed beyond belief, but now the philosophy is buff everyone else.

 

There needs to be an actual philosophy, and overarching goal or direction for the game and classes.  Even if I play a class and it gets "nerfed" , I am not necessarily upset but at least I should know why and what philosophy you are going for.  For example, in PvE and raids, there should be some direction for DPS in raids, for SUPPORT in raids etc.

 

This is going to become a bigly issue in PvP/WvW when you start (if you start) adjusting items for them.  The balance philosophy in PvP/WvW is going to require more than just buff everyone and everything.  For example, we want thieves to be this in PvP/WvW, we want them to have this which is balanced out by other classes, we want them to have this ability which is countered by this ability etc.  

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What is your mechanism for absorbing feedback?  I realize you don't know everything or can be everywhere.  But if changes are made in a vacuum without understanding from the community like a test server or anything or even understanding the people who play these classes and know them very well, that is feedback that can help you drive the game in the right direction.  Wasn't there a person, on reddit, who provided all this detailed feedback to you and nothing was taken from it?  If people are talking to the wind, they are not going to stick around.

[Bazsi.2734]

The goal of making every spec have a somewhat viable power/condi DPS build is good. The removal of unique buffs hurt power builds a lot, +5% crit as compensation was laughable. So in general the coefficient increases are something I can get behind.
However:

On 8/11/2022 at 4:59 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Guild Wars 2 is designed to encourage social gameplay–you should be stronger playing together than alone. With that in mind, we took another look at how boons are given out.

The intent is good, but with the implementation you keep going wrong. Please go back to the old combo system having more significance, instead of passively pulsing out the boons. Right now playing togheter just means standing close to each other. No coordination, no communication is needed.
Sure we can have some of it, but a team stacking and spamming autoattacks shouldn't be as effective as another team coordinating and executing cross-profession combos. And literally every PvE patch pushes the game further and further away from us needing to cooperate/communicate. Why bother with an MMO when we are just "playing alone togheter"?

I needed a guild in 2012 just so I can beat dungeons reliably. Nowadays I can complete my legendary armory ALL ON MY OWN. 

[Zyreva.1078]

13 hours ago, Khenzy.9348 said:

How can a proximity/point blank AoE buff (boon) meta dictate class roles and the way this game is played so much? It's all about everyone staying together in a tight spot at all times for maximun 100% uptime on buffs or else if you don't recieve buffs, your damage and survivability plumets. The mechanics of most of the skills are relegated or in the background depending on the boons it gives you. When you're expecting 100% boon uptime they become maintenance and therefore non-interactive, they become part of a static rotation (Why do boons even exist in the first place at that point?).

When every class does everything, eventually, those with the most game changing utility (portal) or ease of play with big numbers (mecha rifle) shine the most so if you're striving for equal representation you're going to have to dumb everything down and/or start spreading all that utility between all classes. When every class does everything, roles don't really matter anymore, classes start devouring eachother, flavour, class fantasy and uniqueness goes out of the way as well (Have you seen the movement creep of this expansion?).  How the kitten are people happy with this direction?

This needs more attention, because it is 100% true.

At this point i'm glad WvW isn't getting touched, because at least it's not getting worse this way.

Edited August 13, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Pooh.6897]

As a necro that prefers staff in PvE, i am completely shaking and crying right now. Could it be, after all these years, that staff FINALLY receives buffs in PvE? I’ve never had a heart attack before, but i imagine it to feel like this. I am without words. Some skills have been buffed by a factor of 11, this is absolutely insane. I can finally rock my nevermore without feeling guilty.

[Raizel.8175]

Oof.

It's really lazy to balance by changing some damage coefficients. That generally won't solve any underlying problems.

• Engineer: I don't get why cDPS Mechanist gets nerfed. Sure, it's a low effort build with good damage. It does have its downsides though. Why isn't Rifle Mechanist being adressed? Kitten, it even gets a flat buff of 5% more damage. Do we really want to powercreep the game even further? Rifle Mechanist is the problem - not the damage most other builds can do. Well, at least I'm happy about buffs for Scrapper and Holo.
• Guardian: Why buff damage on a support-weapon like Staff? I'm glad about Hammer- and GS-buffs, but why not properly buff LB so DH has a decent ranged option? Balancing is whack as usual.
• Mesmer: Why nerf Mirage? Mirage hasn't been a problem at all and was in a decent spot. Especially Axe Mirage isn't all that easy to play an actual encounters. Why nerf a perfectly fine build?
• Necro: Why buff Staff? Staff is meaningless in PvE apart from stacking participation. If you want to have another use for Staff, you need to fundamentally redesign staff-skills. Why buff the power-coefficient of offhand Dagger? That's basically a cDPS weapon. I guess buffing Focus is okay, but why are there no buffs to Axe? It just feels like too little - especially since other classes are also getting buffs. At this point, you can probably simply camp GS and go into/exit shroud every 10s. Boring.
• Ranger: Why nerf Iboga instead of buffing other pets? Iboga wasn't really broken to begin with. Requiring CA to have access to Stability apart from a free utility slot is also a sucker punch to Druid - especially since other Support/Heals builds don't have these limitations. How come we're still ignoring Untamed?
• Can't really talk a lot about the other classes, but it also seems that ArenaNet doesn't understand the problem there. Elementalist probably receiving the most useful changes out of these?

All in all, ArenaNets way of balancing is really lazy and more often than not doesn't address the underlying main issues. Some changes are downright useless. The balancing team really should be forced to play their own game - in all game modes. Seriously... Buffing Rifle Mechanist again is ridiculous.

[Sparky.3672]

Dang! Damned if you do, damned if you don't! Guys I understand the critiques but ANET seems to be listening! And let's be honest, we have NO IDEA how much time, and manpower it takes to make these changes. If you make one change to a trait, it may get the desired effect on an overpowered combination of stats, weapons, runes and sigils, but for the other 98% of possible combinations of build, it could completely make it unusable. They can't do everything at once. I'm sure the engi nerfs are coming. They finally nerfed FB, they are listening. Give some praise here, and be respectful with the critiques. Imagine you had a chance to say this stuff to their faces, and not just typing behind a screen. ANET thanks for the updates. 

[eldrevo.1746]

First, thanks for relaying what issues you're targeting with the next patch well in advance! And while I think that overall direction is great and some of the changes are really good, I feel like the exact changes mentioned will not be quite enough.

 

Buffing core weapons and underperforming specs (especially power) is very welcome, but I am not sure that giving too many buffs to ranged weapons is a good call. With GW2's mobile combat, if ranged and melee specs deal comparable DPS, we will see melees vanish from meta just because ranged damage is a powerful advantage in actual fights (just see how Scourge or Virtuoso or Rifle Mech were able to take over everything else). I'm not a fan of lowering the damage of ranged specs (how it was done in early WoW), but I think other, better solutions will require more design job instead of just numbers tuning (e.g. in later WoW the balance between melee and ranged went into utility field: melee were more mobile, had better CC/interrupts, etc.)

 

That said, I'd love to see some utility balance between the specs. Nerfing Mech and Firebrand while buffing other supports is a great beginning, but utility is so much more than providing boons. It includes range, mobility, defenses / tankiness, revive power, CC, stealth, projectile reflect, the list goes on… (I think even complexity can fit in here, that's why everyone memes Rifle Mech so hard after all) Some specs feel completely overloaded while others provide nothing more than just DPS which makes them an outlier by default even if the DPS is top tier (see Weaver popularity), and this is twice as important for any Hybrid / Support role. So it would be lovely if something of the list above could be redistributed between different specs and professions somewhere in the future (that's more of a design issue than balance issue, but it still needs to be done for better profession balance).

 

Talking boons, the changes to Mech, Firebrand, Tempest and Druid are good, but I don't feel they will help other Alac DPS specs to take a place in meta. As someone who plays boon/DPS hybrid in raids/strikes a lot, I'd love to bring my Alac Untamed or Specter, but their Might generation is not buffed this patch and I'm not certain they'd provide more might than Mechanist even post nerf.  Same goes for Quickness/DPS Scrapper, Herald, Harbinger, Warrior… Adding more Might sharing to some DPS specs is of course helping, but I still feel it's not enough. I do love the design idea of DPS specs providing Might for the group instead of dedicated Support specs  but that means every DPS spec should have some Might sharing traits. What of Core Guard / Dragonhunter / Willbender traits and skills that generate self-Might, for example? Why not buffing them to share at least 5-10 Might with allies? If every core profession has an accessible way to share 5 Might then each 5-man group would have full Might uptime which fits into your 'encourage social gameplay' value perfectly, right?

 

P.S. A little nitpicky, but I don't like the nerf to Firebrand's Might generation applied to the Staff. It's a Core Healer weapon so the nerf affects all Support Guardian builds, while DPS Quickbrands mostly rely on Mantra of Potence instead. I'd suggest to nerf said Mantra. Also, Might share on Guardian's Greatsword autoattack is a bit of a meme to me. Not pressing buttons to provide boons is a bit counter-intuitive. Why not buffing traits like Zealous Scepter, Righteous Instincts or Inspired Virtue to share Might instead?

 

P. P. S. Regarding the True Shot issue -- I personally don't mind it rooting the character in place in PvE. It's a nice tradeoff and even something unique in the world of mostly mobile combat. What I would mind is more impact for Longbow skills in general and maybe a little mobility to compensate the self-root on 2 and 5 skills (a little burst of Swiftness or Superspeed after completing the cast? a little teleport somewhere else in the kit?). Just a 5 cents from a fellow DH main 🙂

[Griifen.2473]

Support tempest is going to be such a chad now! Holy crap. 
I don't like the idea of a single shout having a blast, proc, reflect, and now aegis on top of it. Apart from removing uptime because it's tied to a single skill, it makes the skill irreplaceable. I'd really hope that they put it somewhere else so that we can diversify utility skills. It also doesn't make sense to prevent me from reflecting ranged damage with aegis... the whole point of the skill was to counteract mechanics with a unique tool, except now my aura is going to be useless for a whole attack which could have been the whole point to start with.
Adding stability to a stun break is really confusing. Do I use Eye of the Storm before the cc takes place, or after it? I can't see where any player will be able to decide how to play around mechanics with this.
I wonder if the changes to condi staff are going to be good enough. I doubt it, but here's hoping. 
When can we expect power weaver to return? There are so many ranged options in the game (and ways to counter ranged damage) that power staff could really use love again. Also, since you are so clearly seperating PvE and competitive modes, why not remove the reduced damage from meteor on fire staff in PvE? There's no good reason to keep it in PvE...
I really hope that catalyst doesn't see a dps increase because it won't go well for the ele class overall. That or catalyst will get nefed yet again which would also suck.  

Condi thief being more viable solo is fantastic, love to see it.
I'm worried about specter being too good now, so I hope the nerfs it got compensate the buffs core thief got.  

Condi berserker is now going to be soo good, wow I'm excited to see the new numbers there. 
I really don't think the small changes to spellbreaker daggers will be enough since it never used daggers anyways - classic Anet move here folks. It's competing with dual axes which are super strong, so if it is an improvement it's going to be so small over dual axes that it won't actually make spellbreaker viable. But, fingers crossed that it does actually turn out to be enough. 
The changes to power greatsword look good, maybe we will see it come back to power berserker and make it viable. I still don't like the gs gameplay style of being stuck in one place for gs2 while gs3 is just so clunky it never feels like it actually is worth using outer than running away from someone.

The approach they took with mesmer was smart, buffing some parts while nerfing others.
Chrono still still won't perform super well because of the nature of wells, just like how quickness banners on warrior doesn't perform well even with the recent changes. 
It was also very strange to see them completely forget about scepter for mesmers...

Necro got some nice staff buffs. I wonder if it got GiGA power buffed enough to take it over axe/warhorn, but I really doubt it. I think it was more for general open world pve than instanced content. 
I still think they could add a little more to reaper buffs since its shroud being depleted with damage is the biggest factor holding to back. Either they need to allow for players to be healed through reaper shroud or give the shroud more damage mitigation so that it's not an aspect of the class that completely disappears within seconds of getting damaged.
Scourge was untouched which is weird.  

Holy kittening kitten dragon Hunter buffs were so needed! Thank goodness 
And omg firebrand nerfs (not a lot, just a itsy-tiny bit) but daym it feels good to see that monster get knocked down a level. 
Weird that they didn't touch willbender cause it really sucks kitten to play with its current cooldowns not synchronizing.    

I don't know if the buffs to scrapper and holo are enough. Sure the buffs are welcome as all hell cause they really needed them, but kitten those numbers were so small though... Did Anet think those numbers would really compete with teleporting, insane sustain, fully ranged mech? Haha no I don't think so. But maybe it'll offer just a tiny bit of variety. I hope they do more for them though.  

Ranger pets getting buffs, holy crap that's so good! It's a pitty that its only to a small subset of pets and not all pets - which is really weird. I hope they extend this to more pets. 
Putting stability in CA is weird as kitten, since CA skill 5 already gave stability... We will have to see how it feels to play with

[Antina.5973]

Changes to Guardian's staff are an absolute joke. No one uses this weapon for damage, and you're nerfing the one skill you really want that weapon for (S4, Empower)? I guess everything that's not HAM has to be super hard to play?!

[Zsoak.5409]

16 hours ago, Double Tap said:

Quick clarification:

Previously, we included a change to the Dragonhunter skill "True Shot" that would allow you to move at 50% speed while channeling. The True Shot movement change won't be releasing on August 23rd - the release note was included here erroneously and has since been removed.

We've been experimenting with the change to help improve longbow usability in PvE content, but the change could have some negative implications to PvP and WvW, where the skill's current telegraph is very important for counterplay. We're going to keep thinking about how to address the problem and may revisit it down the road.

Apologies for any confusion!

Okay so you're considering to add this on a Guardian RANGED weapon.

Warriors have been asking for this (being able to move at a slower speed while channeling) for literal YEARS on a MELEE weapon skill which is far more harder to fully land, Hundred Blades.

And all we got was another self-root (Dragon Trigger).

What about these skills? Any change planned at least?

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Zsoak.5409

[black orca.1583]

Your entire post is exactly what I said:

18 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

Well good thing you aren't actually in charge of the balancing if you take one cherry-picked aspect and apply it to a whole spec over a heap of different content.

1. it is cherry picked to fractals because they made this update for pve........... fractals and specifically made reference to fractals. yes it also affects minimally open world, but who cares what build you play when you do stuff in dwc? Also, it is a "cherry picked" perspective because they literally put (pve only) in everything. I did not say they should change anything for wvw or pvp.

 

20 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

You actually wanna nerf stuff into the ground because they have great burst in one gamemode, completely ignoring how alot of classes can actually do what you described? Try keeping your mentioned gameplay up in modes like raids and see how you do... There even when played perfectly cFB isn't really worth taking when considering what other options you have, while good players mainly play it in fractals for AotJ prestacking.

2. Nerf stuff into the ground to make it fair and balanced. I did not ignore that a lot of classes do what I described what?... I literally said nerf all classes that allow you to auto attack 30k+dps. You are right it is not worth it to take cfb into raids...whats your point?..... thats the point of "Balance patch". I do not know how you would balance cfb in specific to also be good at raids, but why not just play another class like you said that is better at one thing over other classes? Also, without Aotj prestacking I could still auto 40k dps lol... the burst at 6s goes down from like 80k to like 50k.... sustain is still auto attack after for 40k average dps for the next 10s.

25 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

The insane amount of damage modifiers in the form of regular break bars, potions and titles isn't there by accident, that mode was literally designed for you to blast stuff like crazy and that's what actually makes it fun at least for me, making your figures not even that good there.

3. Yeah it WAS like that. it is not now. that is the point of my post. The breakbars were literally nerfed over the last 2 years, the offensive infinite potion gives VITALITY instead of precision now. What?...... it was fun to just blast things, but unless you have a group of 4 other insanely god tier players literally discretized level, that does not exist. And I do not want them to balance around dT level players it should be balanced around the 98%. My argument is simply if 98% of players want to only auto attack, they should do less dps in fractals than people that actual learn how to play the game properly and play classes well and do optimizations. And the fact of the matter is that there are many builds right now that do higher dps auto attacking than actually try harding and optimizing builds like warrior.

30 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

Also pulling out random statements like "Warrior: in pug groups have 25k average, in high end groups cant hit more than 35k" don't help either. I've seen DPS players in fractal PUGs pull 2k DPS, does that make the underlying build bad? Hell no! I also highly doubt that "high end groups cant hit more than 35k". I'm fairly inexperienced on warrior but I bet you I could blast that number easily on Berserker.

4.Yes... I am aware you have never really played warrior... I wasnt going to get into it on my original post. I have played 4,600 hours of warrior. I am a warrior main. 4,200 of those hours was on 1 character. The other 400 hours is on my warrior I only use in WvW. I literally optimized my build and rotation specific for fractals with the help of someone in dT. It is not a random statement. In pug groups on any given fight it is really really hard to hit higher than 25k average dps or even in phase 1 for warrior if it goes longer than 25 seconds (but cfb can do 45k sustain for 30s+ auto attacking). In my high end fractal static that was probably 2 tiers below dT level but 50x better than pug level, it is nearly impossible to hit higher than 35-40k. Our average skorvald p1 was about 6.5s on good days and 8s on bad days. On good days 6.5s OLD BS when it was good, I was hitting about 50-55k. On bad days that is 8s+ id be lucky to do more than 45k. Current berserker does about 25% less damage now than before, maybe more. 35k is the high end now for a no healer static that isnt dT level.

42 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

Generalising warrior also doesn't make much sense considering Bladesword currently pulls 40k+ sustain with INSANE burst, which would only get heavily upscaled in fractals.

5. I generalized warrior because I did not want to have to get into the nitty gritty of why. Also, you are proving my point on why we need nerfs. People say insane things like "Bladesworn currently pulls 40k+ sustain with INSANE burst, which would only get heavily upscaled in fractals." That statement clearly shows how you do not understand my point. Yes bladesworn currently pulls lots of damage. NO IT IS NOT BURST. Bladesworn? The class that you stand still for 4 seconds and press 1 button then wait 4s then press another button? doing 40k dps?.... again, not only should that not exist, it is not even considered burst. Burst is damage that you do considerably higher for a short duration then sustain lower. Next, no it does not get upscaled in fractals whatsoever. Go and look up a dT video. The only class ever used in dT videos for war is power berserker. The reason bladesworn is not used is because of the lack of damage. Yes, it sustains decently, put it in comparison to berserker in a fight for 30s, and bladesworn objectively does more dps.......................(pressing 1 button every 4 seconds kitten....) but if you compare it to berserker in a boss fight that phases in 3.5s for the BEST case scenario in a dT group. That is where bladesworn should win. But it doesnt. Berserker beats bladesworn in 3.5s phases, and in a more likely scenario you are in a static and phase 6-7s, it is even worse cause bladesworn still doesnt even get off 2 swings lol. In 6-7s phases bladesworn gets destroyed. If the phase is 8s-12s they are about even, after 15-20s berserker falls off and bladesworn is better. Hence why trying to claim any comparison between raids and fractals is complete and utter nonsense to begin with.

54 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

I don't get this notion of making everything basically do exactly the same stuff, why not have some builds that are great at burst and others at sustain?

6. I literally was saying to do this. My problem is not that somethings have higher burst than others. The skill level for playing bladesworn is a 1/5, and you do 40k sustain. The skill level for play power mech is a 1/5, and you do 30k literally only pressing auto attack. That is not fair or balanced when a berserker has to be literally a god tier player and average dps is less than 30k. Yes, burst is higher, but you can not say to me with a straight face, someone that has never care about learning a class or reading what the traits do, or never utilities for more cc or dps, should only have to press "1" and match a pro berserker's dps in fractals.

1 hour ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

The current meta actually puts soulbeast insanely high with it having higher burst AND higher sustained DPS. Also, nerfing stability hard on HFB with the current direction of giving other builds good stability access will do nothing else but completely kill it

7. Yes slb burst is insanely high. that is why it is taken when the phase is 3.5s. However, as we already established, Anet should not balance around dT level players, they should balance around the 98%. Lets take dT level player and put that person in a pug and see what happens. They do the burst for the 3.5s they trained for. realized half of their burst wasnt in exposed because pugs dont cc till 6s into the fight. Are you aware after the slb burst is over, they auto attack on sword till the boss phases? look at their dps when that happens, they go from 90k dps (which only happens if they axe 5 into exposed) to about 15-20k dps auto attacking. Then it doesnt even phase at 8s, a pug skorvald p1 can take up to 15s sometimes 20s in really bad groups. That slb then has to swap to short bow, do another lb5 and lb2, their average dps at the end is less than 30k I can guarantee it. OR that same person can auto attack on cfb and do the 6s burst where it doesnt matter if the bar breaks or not then auto attack for the last 14s and at the end of a 20s phase I - ME Personally, NOT a CFB main, hit 48k at the end of 20s p1 skorvald.

 

8.Nerfing stab on HFB will at least make it viable to take druid or ele. the only reason druids and eles get kicked out of 98% of pug groups is because they dont have stability. Again, HB is the biggest hard carry in the game. you do not even need an hb to clear the content. but we dont balance around the good players, we balance around the 98% that want to auto attack, and not dodge. Stability shouldnt be on firebrand period. 98% of pugs dont even play the game, they dont watch for mechanics because they dont have to. They dont have to dodge because hb gives permanent stability. They dont have to special action on arkk because hb will tome 3-3 or use wall of reflect+ give stability on top of that so they dont even need to worry about the shock wave after. The devs made the content to be difficult. There should never be anyone that screams stability and rage quits. We are catering every build in the game to people that dont even know they are supposed to jump the shockwave on the islands of skorvald.

 

1 hour ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

In general nerfing stuff into the ground is ALWAYS a bad idea, you only put the crown on someone else's head instead of leveling the battlefield, which to me seems like a very egoistic approach.

9. huh?............what?............ I dont know what to say to that. Okay firstly, in any game in the history of games, anything that is so insanely broken that clearly requires no skill+puts you at a clear obscene advantage over others in multiple ways unanimously everyone has always agreed to nerf it. I literally gave the other option if you dont do that. if you want to "level the battlefield" you can either raise all the other builds to auto attack 75k burst, 45k sustain (which hopefully we all agree is insane) or you nerf that builds that are broken.  You are not putting the crown on someone elses head. I did not say the balancing would be done when we do this. I said in my post that there were many more problems but these specific ones are the actual reasons why people are quitting the game. That is not egotistical. I literally said to balance more. If you have to nerf everything and start all over, that is literally better than the insane amount of players that say "oh cms are easy I auto attack on mech and do 30k, hahahahaha I beat the DH" Again, bragging when they dont even know how bad at the game they are because they never had to do a single mechanic because of HB, they dont know what a rotation is, they don't even know the names of the freaking titles when no one in your group dies. They just say dwd. literally tons and tons of players dont even know that Leaves no Hero Behind is a title for 99cm.

 

Again, I have nothing against people wanting to auto attack and turn their brain off. if you want to play that build, fine. make it 18k dps. Better than a support renegade, worse than any pdps that actually cares. Nerf cfb to cap out 28k-30k SUSTAIN. The burst is literally 70k, and sustains 40k auto attacking. OR the alternative which will never happen because thats the whole point of playing CFB, make it actually have a real rotation. make all skills do slightly less damage, put the skills on a slightly faster Cd, and then for you to sustain 40k you need to do a real proper rotation by pressing your skills in a specific order. Where condi damage people actually have to cc the break bar and care about mechanics. And these are only the problems with 1 specific build CFB, not including any of the variants or any other class. There are many classes that have this problem.

[black orca.1583]

1 hour ago, Yer.8096 said:

You represented myself. All I want is play with "gamesyle" I want and see everyone doing the same and feeling useful. At the same time, we need to focus more game mechanics, not "play" in AFK mode and have same damage ammount an "active" player.

I completely and whole heartily agree. that is exactly what I was saying. lets actually play the game not be afk and literally just press 1 doing the same "dps quality" whatever as an active player that memorizes all the mechanics and takes different utilities for every fight. it isnt fair, and that auto attack afk mode in "end game hardcore content" is what anet has been pushing this last year intentional or not.

Edited August 13, 2022 by black orca.1583

[Argonil.6970]

No reason to nerf Mirage, that was totally uncalled for. You keep gutting them all the time! At this rate I might as well throw my Astralaria in the trash because now it won't be worth playing in PvE and we only have 1 dodge in PvP. The Mirage is now the most gutted spec overall, there's no place where it works the way it should. Some people like to have a "main" character and I'm one of those people, getting a Legendary weapon took me a lot of time and effort which now feels wasted. I might just stop playing until the patch where you stop hating Mirage.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

why are a lot of these changes pve only for the love of god cmon.

[Haohi.8193]

I would love to see longbow warrior get some animation speed buffs too.

nothing as crazy as engi rifle but i would love to have Longbow auto attack to be a little bit faster

[SloRules.3560]

Love the Firebrand elite nerf and think that druid and tempest stability buffs can also be introduced into WvW without much issue.

This makes tempest a competitor (if it's 5 stacks) to scrapper (more might vs stealth potential of scrapper???) in rough terms i think.

Druid probably needs more work for viability in group environment, but still, unless it's used in roaming extensivly and i think it's not, it can be rolled into wvw.

[devastoscz.9851]

17 hours ago, Vova.2640 said:

Firebrand

• Mantra of Liberation: Ammunition reduced from 3 to 2 in PvE and WvW. Recharge increased from 25 seconds to 45 seconds.
  
  
  Dont nerf this in wvw !!!!!
  You are going only make pirateship meta even worse......
  
  buff other specs to give stab then consider nerfing this. Until then all nerfs to FB in wvw will make the gamemode worse.

WvW balance patch please. Firebrand nerf is welcome, but we need other sources of stability for comp variety.

That said, I welcome this nerf. It will allow smaller groups to finally chunk off larger groups through CC and concentrated damage. This single change can potentially shift the meta away from FB/Scrapper + glass cannons. Now you need to be tankier to survive getting caught. Actual risk/reward, imagine that.

Edited August 13, 2022 by devastoscz.9851

[mov.1246]

In terms of rework core weapons, please consider to rework engineer pistols. btw thank you for the rifle rework, i love it

[Ragnarox.9601]

Nice changes, but elementalist need this kind of love in pvp and wvw. Especially tempests. Tempest could use some kind of quickness or aegis on overloads, shout heal need some kind of aura, light or frost, rebound could use some kind of quickness cause its 75sec cd and its not even good elite. 

 

 

[Lazze.9870]

On 8/11/2022 at 4:59 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Glyph of Equality (Celestial Avatar): Range increased from 300 to 360 in all game modes. Now applies 5 seconds of stability to allies in PvE only.

Radius increase of glyphs and the addition of stab to Equality should NOT be PvE only. 

This is the kind of changes druid needs to be a relevant support outside of pve, along with a reduced avatar cooldown in pvp.

[Rising Blade.9206]

Quote

Shouts

• "Eye of the Storm!": (PvE only) Cooldown reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds. Now also applies 1 stack of stability to allies for 5 seconds.
• "Aftershock!": (PvE only) Cooldown reduced from 35 seconds to 30 seconds. Now also applies aegis to allies for 5 seconds.

somehow this looks like someone just cobbled in boons to the shouts and wrote it off as a job well done, doesn't seem to have any reasoning aside it from "just give tempest advance and stand your ground that stunbreaks".

On 8/11/2022 at 10:59 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Crisis Zone: (PvE only) Stability duration reduced from 15 seconds to 6 seconds.

just get rid of aegis and stability from this skill already, it's disgustingly overloaded since it already acts as a stunbreak especially when mech has barrier generation.