August 23 Balance Update Preview

[EvilDragonfiend.6430]

Please fix "Symbol of Punishment" symbol tick bug, It's been reported long ago, and It's not still fixed.

The skill doesn't proc the first tick of symbol, and instead it procs spiritual punch, and the first symbol tick is not the actual symbol tick.

You're balancing the game with a skill that doesn't correctly work to make damage, seriously. I am NOT reporting this wrong. PLEASE FIX Symbol of Punishment.

Edited August 13, 2022 by EvilDragonfiend.6430

[Chausie.9201]

So let me get this straight, you nerf MoL in all game modes, WvW being the only place where is still a useful skill, because let's face it I don't think any fb brings MoL into pve after the quickness nerfs and considering how many sources of stab firebrand has to cover pve. But you don't give any other source of stab for WvW because the rest of the changes are PvE only okay. This change should not be applied to WvW at all, you can't just nerf random things here and there and expect it to work, you're just hurting the game mode. FB has such a huge amount of stability that you'd have to completely break classes to bring them to firebrand level, at least in WvW.

 

For PvE again, is virtually a non existent nerf because you don't need MoL in pve so fb is still king in things like fractals. Honestly how exactly is 1 stack of stability every 30 seconds was it? Supposed to compete with firebrand in PvE? Come on now. I was so excited to read you were finally realizing that boons aren't just alacrity and quickness only to be disappointed again, I'm sorry I love the damage buffs on Ely, but the way tempest applies alac is just bad and has been explained by everyone already yet nothing was changed, and now you again implement a poor way of giving stability and aegis to tempest, making even harder to pick aura share, which is so much fun, or alac.

 

I know you guys are trying and I'm hyped to see things are changing but some things make no sense on what the logic behind it was, why buff guardian staff's damage? That's a waste of time and very confusing change. I'm scared that the philosophy of balancing is not very clear right now, and I hope it ends up in a more clear path even if we're not all 100% happy with it

[TheThief.8475]

Thief's core weapons"buffs" (especially sword) are so bad compared to a lot of weapons that got massively buffed.

Currently there are no great builds for OW fractals or raids, where thief use swords, so why is this buff so minute? There is no risk to make builds op so buff the sword well please.

Also backstab has the same damage coefficient (3) as skills that have big aoe and hit 5 targets, while not reqauiring you to stand behind the target? Backstab was meant to be the biggest signle hit damage skill while now is just a mediocre unconvenient skill 😕

end of feedback-----------

start of random ideas for changes on sword dagger thief-----------

I want to share a idea to make sword more interesting to use at least in open world with possible endgame viable builds. 

S/D dual skill rewards you for dodgind attacks. :

• Flanking strike:
  • evade & cast time : 1/2sec -> 1/4sec
• Lacernous strike:
  • boon strip:  2 boons -> 0 boons
  • number of targets hit: 1 -> 3
  • bonus damage: + 20% damage when the target has no boons -> +100% damage (or more) when you successfully dodge an attack with Flanking strike.

Damage boost has to be a very high to justify interrupting your aa chain or "rotation" , dodge an attack within 1/4 sec with flanking strike, and still get some value out of the skill.

This change can be PvE only but I think that it would be cool also for PvP (with soem numbers tweaks), promoting less spammy and more calculate gameplay.

Edited August 13, 2022 by TheThief.8475

[Tigerkralle.1435]

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

Druid

 

• 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

 

I am glad that Druids will in the future be able to give stability, but only being able to use it in Celestial Avatar is very weak, like as a support the group relies on you to provide the stability when it is needed and building up the Celestial Avatar energy is not so easy and can't be done at will and immediately. Changing from Non-Celestial Avatar to Celestial Avatar has a casting time.... And you and your teammates were already knocked back to the other end of the map....

And overall i am sad that all those nice and shiny changes only apply to PvE.

As a player who really enjoys WvW for group content the balance right now for groups don't include Druids as support because all those skills are too static and not fast enough.

Would love a patch in the future with a focus on WvW as of now the meta for WvW has not changed at all for a very long time.

[Broner.8170]

"Firebrand and healing Mechanist are currently dominating group compositions" so we have to make Firebrand 'play it or u're trolling again'.

Mechanist got most of its barrier output nerfed to almost half, tempest and druid got no significant buff and firebrand nerf was no nerf at all.

What makes me more upset is they pretending that they don't know what they're doing, i can't believ that after all this years the devs don't understand what is 'boon uptime'. Just go and say it "we want to make firebrand the only healer viable to the meta again"

[Xhariel.3219]

:3

Edited August 16, 2022 by Xhariel.3219

[Gotejjeken.1267]

12 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Who the heck was using Iboga in competitive, I play Untamed in both WvW and Gold rank and I never saw anyone run Iboga.

In competitive what makes a pet good is CC or utilities. I mean in WvW with all the hate pets get something like the Electric Wyvern was amazing when you needed to quickly CC part of Zerg (You stick them on follow incase i get that comment)

 

Iboga has a pull that's very useful if you learn to use it.  So...it has good CC?

It also had great utilities if you were running condi yourself due to the damage scaling from its own cover condis + yours.  So you'd get the benefit of consuming bite and also get access to covers in the form of confusion / torment.  

[AnClar.1304]

Kind of liking the Tempest changes. I've run ele/tempest/weaver main since beta, as the different elite specs have been introduced because I like the class. Have watched and endured many ele nerfs over the years, and still managed to come up with playable PvE builds. Still there's been a perception, and somewhat of a reality that ele has taken more than its fair share of hits with the nerf bat. The class has always had low survivability and required a lot of creativity to stay alive. The class is harder to play well, IMO, but that's part of the fun of it to me. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to these changes.

[Firebeard.1746]

Nerfing mirage does nothing to improve build diversity, and as it stands warlock wasn't a great skill anyway: Staff is a condi weapon it doesn't do condi damage. So not sure why this "buff" was needed for leveling, or even how this buff is equivalent to what's being taken away. 

If people were still playing mirage, it's only because they hadn't taken the time to make other viable builds to replace them. And miralac was seeing almost 0 usage when I was occaisionally raiding. And that's literally the only reason I've been playing mirage is 1) mesmer is my fav class, 2) hadn't taken the time to figure out condi virtuoso yet. 

Just when I think you guys are getting your act together (helping ele) you do something that makes me realize you have no clue what you're doing. 

What is mirage's niche now? Why would people play it other than they don't have the gear put together for something else?

Also, you're just decreasing PoF sales with this nerf. Making the mesmer elite spec less useful is 1 additional reason to not buy it for long time returning players or newer players. 

[Orabusu.6085]

First thing first, I like the direction of fixing core things like weaponskills that is a problem that makes it intresting when there are more viable weapons to chose from like how you did before with staff mirage and rifle mechanist where I found build that I like to play. Some of this changes is hard to get a feel about if they are enough for things to work or not which we need tryout to know. 

 

To the things that would like from you after reading the prepatch is this.

 

Ele, can't say anything for I don't play this profession.

 

Guardian, I think longbow needs more love for it to be viable then the change want to make. Nice to see hammer getting buff and hope the numbers is enough. What happened with off-hand sword for willbender? Is there no love for power or alac willbender?

 

Engineer, love the work you have done with power rifle mechanic and I hope that your goals is to make all future changes to surpass PRM with the balancing changes. Making AAR to be viable without minimum range is the change that what was needed for that trait to work. Many thanks for the change for my favorite elite spec. Now to the bad stuff. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fragmentation_Shot that is engineer pistol 1 is broken how it is now if we look at the wikinotes "Contrary to the description, the skill has an activation time of 0.8275s https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/6/6e/Activation.png, which results in approximately 1.2086 attacks per second.". Please fix this so pistol can be used as a mainhand weapon for engineers!. Reducing medkit and elixirgun is problematic because it nerfs support scrapper more the mechanist. Reduction of barrier generation is one thing that is good but I am afraid that it's a to much reduction and I hope the change is gonna get the change that was given scourge barrier generation made earlier this year where they got more barrier from stat but lower start barrier.

 

Mesmer. Reason to the nerf of axe and staff ambush skills feels wrong when the need like many said skill to execute right.

 

Necromancer. Love the change on staff and it looks like you want us to play GS/Staff reaper with that change. About reaper and the missing changes there are to powerbuilds. Where are the buff to axe? Reaper use GS/axe+warhorn but axe is weak and no buff is given in this patch? The pitiful buffs made to reaper is not enough for it to be a viable dps proffesion in endgame content where there are spec with closer top 38k~40k dps. Reaper is also selfish dps that don't give any buffs just give self buff of might, fury and quickness that you could make so it could give that buffs to the rest of the party it would make it a support with its dps it have now and it will work well. What I want to see here is better numbers on the dmg and buff at axe. Shouts is bad where Wells can do more dmg in the same time and be fields for finishers. Talk about dmgmodifiers and fields let's look at https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Executioner%27s_Scythe. At best it's having a 3.2 dmgmodifier which feels bad for so slow attack and needs an buff.

If we just leave reaper for a while and see the other possible spec for powerbuild is power harbinger which is a oddball where there is a real disconnect of the traits and skills which don't work. So please focus reaper to power and support and harbinger to condi and support then I think you can make your one power and one condi viable build per proffesion.

 

Ranger, no comment because don't play ranger.

 

Revenant. Like that hammer gets buffed but I am sceptic to the small dmg buff. Problem is hammer 2 that has the same problem that AAR at engineer had but you fixed it so I think you can do it here so it works in the first 200 yards. I hope that hammer gets enough love to be used in the future. 

 

Theif. Biggest problemen I have with theif beside venom and specter changes that other have talked about already is there is no love for pistol/pistol theifs beside headshot(pistol 4) gets a buff. P/P is a fun combination and love how it works animation wise and with gen3 pistols projectil and muzzle effect the animation is to nice then what you actually get. There is a trait that even makes pistol dmg worse and the p/P combo is not good enough for endgame content which make p/p builds lacking where you want to play for the cool factor but a subpar set-up stops you. Please buff p/p so we can have our gunslinger!

 

Warrior. Don't play so don't know but happened that rifle gets love for I love the skillkit  so you can play a commando with unloading your rifle then reload with rifle but again and go unloading again.

 

The thing that I mostly think you have to check is the aftercast effect from auto attacks that make the tooltip begin not representive with how it actually works, see the example with the broken engineer auto attack that really need fixing.

 

[Bealis.6023]

36 minutes ago, Tigerkralle.1435 said:

I am glad that Druids will in the future be able to give stability, but only being able to use it in Celestial Avatar is very weak, like as a support the group relies on you to provide the stability when it is needed and building up the Celestial Avatar energy is not so easy and can't be done at will and immediately. Changing from Non-Celestial Avatar to Celestial Avatar has a casting time.... And you and your teammates were already knocked back to the other end of the map....

Yes. My suggestion would be to have a Druid trait that triggers Stability when using a Glyph in not Celestial Avatar form. It would give a Druid more agency in that area.

It could potentially seem as a stability powerhouse, but technically you would still need to sacrifice skill slots + maybe effective application of the glyph's other effects in order to go "full stabilty", it terms of maintaining it effectively for the party as a focus.

[Agrios.1957]

20 hours ago, Parpage.9867 said:

So are we really going to keep the power Mechanist press 1 go afk and deal almost 30k? Please don't.

Yes and thank you.

In the game since beta I managed to kill Slothasor for the first time ever with a pug. 

 

Without emboldened mode. So why not buffing the damage floor - for all profs ?

[Reig.8173]

The warrior and the thief Specter needs to bring protection to allies.

It doesnt care if they can heal or bring barrier, if they dont bring protection at least as healers they need someone that bring protection and that makes a bad composition.

Of the 9 professions just these 2 dont bring protection.

Please put some protection to allies on them. 

 

Ty

[Xhariel.3219]

can we all just agree that the reaper is a frkn selifsh spec with like low dmg ? where is the sense ? just cant stand it anymore that they are to scared to touch this Elite spec then rework it or something ... power reaper kitten Condi reaper kitten...Reaper ? kitten.

but the 1 button 30k dps with grp buffs are totaly fine in her eyes ? Kitten trolls ngl they have totaly no clue what they do as developers or balancing team...i wish i could listen to what they thinking when they talk about "make specs equal in dmg (and then do a pity buff of 0,1 and  a HUGE change to kitten abilitys who remain still kitten after the changes... )but well maybe the average reaper will do then 26k dps ...not 25k anymore huge increase they reached they goal totaly...*sarcasm enters the room* i mean they could start with SCALING on god kitten MINIONS ATLEAST ON THE ANUS ULTIMATE FLESHGOLEM if they truley want to BALANCE something "reduces ai help infight" mechs laughing in a corner meanwhile when the turret does 99% dmg .... trolls cant even listen to what they self "planed" 

 

ngl get some new balancers the "balancing team" dosnt know how to balance

 

ngl they could get power reaper a 50% dmg buff that would let them do atleast 37k DPS(when the avarage does 25k)...and that EVEN without Group support and still a selfish class...atleast thats what my brain worked out(maybe thats 2 high but still more realistic than THAT:) ...but the brain of balance-team 0.1 more sclaing....thats 100% enough to keep up with top tier..

Power Bladesworn doing meanwhile 250k Crits and 45k dps with 55k dps peaks. and can buff meanwhile the complete grp but i guess we reaper can be happy with our 0.1 more scaling the dmg goes up from 20k crit to maybe 22k! worst balancing i saw in like 20 years of gaming ngl

slap me if you want but im looking 4 a new mmo now thats way to much to handle....i love to play 1 char and not swap to whats actually op or meta same goes 4 the spec...(not everyone loves your new fancy elite specs anet! ) maybe i lost that fight long ago where i choseed:well ...reaper could be cool with strong minions and rising undead and stuff....well could i travel back in time and see that anet dosnt even care about reapers and spits reaperplayer in the face  i would just play another class not the op 1 but atleast 1 with good power build and meele...that FINALY does some DECENT Dmg...

"Our goal is for every profession to have viable power- and condition-based damage builds.

Tell that the 25k POWER reaper (every other spec with power wouldnt make any sense...) that got your "goal" of 0,1+ scaling  that YOU see as "Viable"... that shows allread you dosnt even know what your specs can reach on Dps. cause if you knew allready that most ppl do like 25k full equipt and well played (not perfekt) that 0.1 increas isnt like changeing something 

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Xhariel.3219

[MikSki.9481]

Not bad changes, but 2 outliers:

1 - reaper damage still too low

2 - warrior axe untouched. Both power berserker and spellbreaker use axes. Its especially prominent in cc intensive fights that berserker brings maces, which means no greatsword. With no buff to axes, or even maces, power berserker and spellbreaker will be sad in endgame pve. Greatsword changes however, very nice. Just buff axes and maybe maces and we are happy warrior mains again.

[SiEO.8430]

Great overall changes for multiple classes! 

 

I'm wondering though how it states buffs for power berserker and not much has changed considering the current meta is axe/axe? 

 

Might be tempted to try running Greatsword for lots of cleave damage but would be nice to see a buff to axe skills to bring such melee class up to par damagewise as other classes. 

[Lazze.9870]

3 hours ago, Camniel.7238 said:

I do believe this is the wrong choice in how to provide this boon to Ranger.

It's a perfectly fine change if you put your head out the pve bubble for a second.

Granted ofc, Anet is too far inside that bubble themselves to realise this would have been great for PvP/WvW druid.

As for other stab sources on ranger: Spirited Arrival trait. Remove the fury which ranger has an abundance of and add a short single stack of stab. Again, would also be great in pvp/wvw.

Edited August 13, 2022 by Lazze.9870

[OneHalf.1432]

What I can say about this?
As a software developer to software developers: guys, STOP doing massive balance changes !!! Each big change you make only gets things worse.
Pls, concentrate on small PRECISE balance tuning, especially in www and pvp, where people struggle to have some balanced game, and fix bugs.
Some bugs take a year to fix and you create more new bugs/balance issues than fixing old ones. Yes, fixing bugs is not so fanny as creating new stuff, but it's your work!

[Gehenna.3625]

What I see, and this is purely my impression, is a game development team that has put themselves into a corner. By adding more and more complexity and possibly by changing staff over time, it seems to me that you've lost control over your own combat system and the professions/elite specs therein.

For example, the choice to make 9 more elite specs instead of adding a new class must be hell on your team. I think that adding a new elite spec to an existing class is far more work than a lot of people might think it is, because it has to be balanced against the regular specs as well as the other elite specs every time.

And yes I know adding new professions also is not a simple thing, but for me it seems a lot easier to add 1-2 new classes than 9 elite specs that have to be balanced against more and more things.

All in all I think that you're just adding new stuff and complexity to existing classes every expansion without being able to control that complexity. You're no longer experts at your own game. Again, that's what it looks like to me. 

Also by not adding more elite specs to existing classes (which you likely do to keep things fresh) with EoD, you could've focused on further balancing and perhaps even overhauling the existing professions and their elite specs. Instead you added more elite specs making the goal of class balance even more impossible to do.

I have no idea whether I'm right or not...but that's what it looks like to me. That's the impression I get. I also get the impression that some players here have a far better understanding of GW2 than you do. 

Perhaps it's time to start thinking of a complete overhaul of the professions and their (elite) specs. I say start thinking because I don't want that to be a rush job. There should be a proper strategy behind it. You tell us now why you change certain things, which is good but it's on a micro level and I don't see any macro thinking going on there. Am I wrong?

I dunno.

TL;DR: I don't get the impression that Anet can control the complexity of their combat system and the professions/specs therein. And they have themselves to thank for that as well. 

 

[Bunny.9834]

2 hours ago, TheThief.8475 said:

Thief's core weapons"buffs" (especially sword) are so bad compared to a lot of weapons that got massively buffed.

Currently there are no great builds for OW fractals or raids, where thief use swords, so why is this buff so minute? There is no risk to make builds op so buff the sword well please.

Also backstab has the same damage coefficient (3) as skills that have big aoe and hit 5 targets, while not reqauiring you to stand behind the target? Backstab was meant to be the biggest signle hit damage skill while now is just a mediocre unconvenient skill 😕

end of feedback-----------

start of random ideas for changes on sword dagger thief-----------

I want to share a idea to make sword more interesting to use at least in open world with possible endgame viable builds. 

S/D dual skill rewards you for dodgind attacks. :

• Flanking strike:
  • evade & cast time : 1/2sec -> 1/4sec
• Lacernous strike:
  • boon strip:  2 boons -> 0 boons
  • number of targets hit: 1 -> 3
  • bonus damage: + 20% damage when the target has no boons -> +100% damage (or more) when you successfully dodge an attack with Flanking strike.

Damage boost has to be a very high to justify interrupting your aa chain or "rotation" , dodge an attack within 1/4 sec with flanking strike, and still get some value out of the skill.

This change can be PvE only but I think that it would be cool also for PvP (with soem numbers tweaks), promoting less spammy and more calculate gameplay.

This buff is so lame. I don’t get why they are so stingy with giving DPS buff to thief in PvE. 

They can start by reducing the cast time of sword AA to 1/4. And kitten increase the damage multiplier to 1.0. 

Acrobatics should generate some kind of self quickness. 

Give Daredevil superspeed and add damage multiplier while you’re under it. 

BTW, DE and DD still dont really have a defined role. 

[Karagee.6830]

So because of incompetence the way this works is:

a) let's boost all basic weapon skills instead of looking at why some traits are broken (both too good and too bad)

b) let's do it for pve only so if we mess up we can always nerf after a couple of months, while the other game modes wait for years 

c) we have no balance philosophy and no plan or goal, we are just boosting coefficients here and there and hope for the best

 

If boons are such a problem because they affect group composition too much, here's a novelty idea for you: remove all or part of the boons (i.e. make them personal buffs) or enable them by default for all. Here you go, we sorted the mess you created and still refuse to address properly 6 months into the expansion for you.

[Karagee.6830]

1 hour ago, MikSki.9481 said:

Not bad changes, but 2 outliers:

1 - reaper damage still too low

2 - warrior axe untouched. Both power berserker and spellbreaker use axes. Its especially prominent in cc intensive fights that berserker brings maces, which means no greatsword. With no buff to axes, or even maces, power berserker and spellbreaker will be sad in endgame pve. Greatsword changes however, very nice. Just buff axes and maybe maces and we are happy warrior mains again.

Or, you know, tune the cc skills so that they don't do single digit damage in other game modes. Just saying.

It's pretty clear to me that only quickness condi berserker in pve is going to be viable and pretty much nothing else.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

The "Might is now applied to up to 5 allied targets within a range of 360" on Rip, Keen Strike and Magebane Tether are actually very intriguing. They seem to be leaning heavily into "might does everything" for Warrior which is perfectly fine. Tinkering with Traits to focus heavily on Might interaction would be great (% damage reduction based on Might stacks in the Defensive traitline?), but for now I'm looking forward to playing around with these and see how they shape up.

Many of the coefficient changes look very good . I'm glad they didn't touch Axe as it's currently the baseline where everything else should be brought up to--that's not to say Axe is perfect as-is but at the very least it's the best weapon 99.9% of Warriors have in PvE. The Hammer bump delighted me, as I really want it to be on-par with Greatsword.

These kind of coefficient changes are the kind of things that really help shake things up. Hopefully going forward they keep doing these kinds of tweaks here and there. Looking forward to October!

[SoloMona.7345]

Dang! Respect to Rubi for writing this up, this took me two days just to read through, CRAZY wall of text. I Look forward to a lot of these changes, as a specter support main/wannabe I may have liked to see more of those boons given to me as well. But I am very happy with the boosts across the board. Will def play some Damage Specter

[Mell.4873]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Iboga has a pull that's very useful if you learn to use it.  So...it has good CC?

It also had great utilities if you were running condi yourself due to the damage scaling from its own cover condis + yours.  So you'd get the benefit of consuming bite and also get access to covers in the form of confusion / torment.  

Saying that I did see some people use Iboga in PvP but they where from silver pushed up into gold so I guess it's more an afk pet in PvP.  While electric wyvern takes alot more skill to use.