Patch Note Update: August 23

[Mell.4873]

8 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Hi all,

The June 28 update highlighted that our approach to balancing professions and combat in Guild Wars 2 has not been fully aligned with the needs and expectations of our community. As we communicated in several posts over the last month and a half, we’re using this an opportunity to take a hard look at our internal processes and revise the Guild Wars 2 balance philosophy. We also added some new leaders into the team to help facilitate that effort. That work is still ongoing, and we look forward to sharing our updated balance philosophy with you as soon as we can.

As we’ve been reading through your feedback on the August 23 preview, it became clear to us that one aspect of the previous balance approach was especially problematic. Specifically, making balance adjustments to PvE builds based on their potential under unrealistic, ideal conditions – conditions that are unlikely to be met unless you’re testing against a golem, or the player is extremely skilled. While these builds can definitely be an issue in a skilled player’s hands, often times the changes have an outsized impact to unrelated builds and average players. With that in mind, we’ll be reverting the changes to mirage in the August 23 update.

This change in approach raises questions about previous changes that were made with a build’s ‘potential’ in mind, rather than the realistic output. We’ll be evaluating those prior changes on a case-by-case basis in future releases. This isn’t to say that we won’t address overperforming builds in the future, but we will focus more on builds that are dominating the meta, rather than builds that could theoretically dominate.

For reference, these are the mirage changes that are being removed from the August 23 update:

Axe:

·         Lingering Thoughts: (PvE only) Torment duration reduced from 4s to 3s.

·         Imaginary Axes: (PvE only) Torment duration reduced from 4s to 3s.

Staff:

·         Chaos Vortex (Staff Ambush) (PvE only) Might stack count reduced from 8 to 5, Might duration reduced from 15s to 10s. Torment, Bleeding, and Confusion duration reduced from 8s to 7s.

Thanks,

Josh

Edited August 19, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

Ha ha Well all out complaining was not for nothing.

[Endaris.1452]

Yeah, kind of crazy!

I don't think taking back the staff ambush change was fully necessary, adjusting numbers a bit would've done the job but going back on the uncalled-for axe changes is definitely what everyone wanted.

[Stavros.8249]

6 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

Yeah, kind of crazy!

I don't think taking back the staff ambush change was fully necessary, adjusting numbers a bit would've done the job but going back on the uncalled-for axe changes is definitely what everyone wanted.

Staff  doesn't  need nerfs. It's at 28k dps and gives 2 boons. I would say it need a couple more boons to get.