October 4 Balance Patch Wishes

[Karagee.6830]

Yo, prevent steam newbies from coming into wvw ill prepared gear wise. Gandara is the only closed server and suddenly we have the highest kdr in EU by some margin  in T1 of all places.

I've lost count of people without warclaw engaging me and getting killed in like 4 seconds. You even get people dismounting you who are clearly new (from their tag, like xxx invader) and play truly op builds so, so badly or with the wrong gear.

Fix at least the gear issue and if you need to go the pvp way, maybe with an exotic level amulet (and you can still use ascended/legendary if you wish) please do.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[The Boz.2038]

Meaningful core necro and reaper buffs. Deep elementalist reworks, including flat out erasing some utility types and thinking up others. Removal of energy from catalyst.

[Wolfshade.9251]

- Nerf Mechanist to the ground without touching other engineer specs which actually require effort to pull decent numbers.

- Double might stacks on Thief's Thrill of the Crime trait (10 might stacks per steal). Or give might generation to Sword 2. Should be enough to make heal specter a viable alternative to HAM.

- Make stability from Specter's Mind Shock party-wide. Druid and Tempest got their 5 man stability/aegis, heal-Specter needs some too.

- For goodness sake give some love to Vindicator. The removal of alacrity from ventari ruined the heal build and the nerf to pDPS after removal of banners ruined the pdps build.

- Either nerf cdps Scourge or buff cdps Harbinger. Right now going glass cannon for a tiny bit more damage doesn't seem like a fair tradeoff (hence more scourges than harbingers in groups).

[Jski.6180]

I would also like to see an standardization of conversation and corruption to where you can no longer get the strongest boons / condis though these means there by freeing up the traits and skills to be more active (no cd on conversion trait for eng IF the boons are not the powerful boons).

I am not sure what condis should not be part of the corruption table other then fear and root (they already removed root) but the boon table for conversation should not have stab quickness and alacrity (maybe not resistances). I think having these powerful effects tide to an strip and clear effect just makes them way too powerful. To balance these effect out by longer cd or cd you cant control just feels bad so i say make the added effect of the clear / strip weaker.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Jski.6180

[prototypedragon.1406]

Give core warriors more health and armor to compensate for loss of knowledge from forgetting how to damage useing blunt melee weapons in world versus world.

[Kydar Schattendolch.6879]

Regarding Harbinger. 

Because harbinger shroud does not protect life points like it does for core and reaper, I would love to see some traits e.g. Parasitic Contagnion working during shroud comparable to scourge.

[Sugar Min.5834]

On 9/9/2022 at 9:54 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

According to what they said at the time, the entire traits were supposed to be placeholders. The 300s ICD was a boonsmite to remove them from competitive but they were intended to be replaced with traits that better aligned with the competitive gameplay philosophy.

It's been years now. Coming up with and implementing those replacements should be a priority.

Yes, they said those are just placeholders at that time. But after years and many patches and many reminders to them to change those, yet still nothing has been done, not even a reply to date until 8 hours ago. Doesn't that tell you these so called placeholders are not really placeholders? 🤔

Edited September 11, 2022 by MintyMin.2718

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, MintyMin.2718 said:

Yes, they said those are just placeholders at that time. But after years and many patches and many reminders to them to change those, yet still nothing has been done, not even a reply to date. Doesn't that tell you these so called placeholders are not really placeholders? 🤔

I was going to make a "this aged well" comment, and then I looked at the timestamp, and realised that your post actually came after ArenaNet announced that they were finally going to rework those traits.

Maybe next time check recent news before you try to deliver a semantic gotcha?

[Karagee.6830]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I was going to make a "this aged well" comment, and then I looked at the timestamp, and realised that your post actually came after ArenaNet announced that they were finally going to rework those traits.

Maybe next time check recent news before you try to deliver a semantic gotcha?

Hold your horses, friend. They haven't touched ANY of those cds just yet and a simple promise doesn't necessarily mean they will nor does it tell you how they are going to do it (read: there is always the option that a change might be for the worse or simply be a lateral one that deliver nothing substantial). Same for cc skills doing no damage.

[draxynnic.3719]

20 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Hold your horses, friend. They haven't touched ANY of those cds just yet and a simple promise doesn't necessarily mean they will nor does it tell you how they are going to do it (read: there is always the option that a change might be for the worse or simply be a lateral one that deliver nothing substantial). Same for cc skills doing no damage.

Sure, if you want to go full doomer, they might somehow manage to make them even worse or the changes might be pushed back indefinitely, but the fact that they're being brought up again essentially renews the statements made years ago that they weren't intended to be left like that permanently. Unless you're going to go full conspiracy theory and claim that they're just saying they're going to do something with no intent to ever do so.

At the very least, MintyMin's claim that there was "not even a reply to date" was wrong at the time that post was made, since at that time a reply had been posted about eight hours before. And we're supposed to "learn more" sometime next week, so we'll see how well the semantic points-scoring has aged then.

[Karagee.6830]

2 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

 but the fact that they're being brought up again essentially renews the statements made years ago that they weren't intended to be left like that permanently.

Thanks for making my point for me.

Also your childish insistence that the person in question must have seen the other post that came shortly before is frankly bizarre to say the least.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[draxynnic.3719]

6 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Thanks for making my point for me.

Also your childish insistence that the person in question must have seen the other post that came shortly before is frankly bizarre to say the least.

I'd really hope they wouldn't have made a post like that if they did, in fact, when I saw it, I assumed that they'd posted BEFORE the news post that is pinned to the top of the forum. But hey, if you're going to try to score cheap semantic points, at least make sure you're up to date before you post, or you might find yourself looking foolish. And if the post hadn't been dripping with a "gotcha" tone, I'd have simply pointed out that there had been a recent statement and left it there, and probably wouldn't even have thought to check the timestamps.

If you seriously want to double down with that... I guess we'll see in a week, or maybe a month. But a bit of advice? If the company has issued a statement in the last 24 hours that they plan to address a problem in the next patch, backing the person who claimed that maybe the company no longer recognised it as a problem in the first place is probably not the hill you want to die on. Even if the problem is one that had been left untouched for an extended period beforehand. Doubly so if, say, the team formerly in charge had recently been subject to a large public backlash that pushed the company to restructure the team and make sure to make visible progress on such pain points, including issues that have been left unaddressed for far too long, before the lack of confidence in the game's balance starts to critically undermine the work of the rest of the company.

[Karagee.6830]

49 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'd really hope they wouldn't have made a post like that if they did, in fact, when I saw it, I assumed that they'd posted BEFORE the news post that is pinned to the top of the forum. But hey, if you're going to try to score cheap semantic points, at least make sure you're up to date before you post, or you might find yourself looking foolish. And if the post hadn't been dripping with a "gotcha" tone, I'd have simply pointed out that there had been a recent statement and left it there, and probably wouldn't even have thought to check the timestamps.

If you seriously want to double down with that... I guess we'll see in a week, or maybe a month. But a bit of advice? If the company has issued a statement in the last 24 hours that they plan to address a problem in the next patch, backing the person who claimed that maybe the company no longer recognised it as a problem in the first place is probably not the hill you want to die on. Even if the problem is one that had been left untouched for an extended period beforehand. Doubly so if, say, the team formerly in charge had recently been subject to a large public backlash that pushed the company to restructure the team and make sure to make visible progress on such pain points, including issues that have been left unaddressed for far too long, before the lack of confidence in the game's balance starts to critically undermine the work of the rest of the company.

I can't read 20 lines of whining. I wouldn't do it even for someone I respected. I just know, like everyone else, they have said they would address this for years and they haven't done it for years. Saying one more time is more words not actions. The rest is fluff. And the only one trying to score cheap semantic points here is you trying to quibble about time stamps lol as if that is relevant to anything. People don't need to read every topic on the forums and, as you yourself confirmed, he was completely right to bring up 300 cd traits.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[draxynnic.3719]

16 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

I can't read 20 lines of whining. I wouldn't do even for someone I respected. I just know, like everyone else, they have said they would address this for years and they haven't done it for years. Saying one more time is more words not actions. The rest is fluff. And the only one trying to score cheap semantic points here is you trying to quibble about time stamps lol as if that is relevant to anything. People don't need to read every topic on the forums and, as you yourself confirmed, he was completely right to bring up 300 cd traits.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're just looking to pick a fight here.

We'll see what happens when the preview comes and, later, the update itself. But I'm pretty confident I won't be the one with egg on my face when it comes.

Note that I don't necessarily expect that they'll all be addressed in one patch, but just one is confirmation that it is not current policy to leave the traits that were deliberately nerfed out of competitive modes (because they were viewed as being unhealthy for the game) as they are currently are permanently. They absolutely are placeholders, which were boonsmited out because they wanted them out of competitive modes right there and then and didn't have time to come up with suitable replacements, and apparently didn't get around to it until now. 

Except, perhaps, for Shallow Grave, since Consume Shadows is a double-edged sword and Second Opinion is so lacklustre that stopping someone from being downed once or maybe twice in a conquest map probably is worthwhile by comparison.

[Sugar Min.5834]

On 9/10/2022 at 6:19 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

I was going to make a "this aged well" comment, and then I looked at the timestamp, and realised that your post actually came after ArenaNet announced that they were finally going to rework those traits.

Maybe next time check recent news before you try to deliver a semantic gotcha?

Well, when I said for years they did nothing or reply to fixing the placeholder, am I not right the first part? But for some reasons you chose to focus on flaming me for not reading the whole forum before I commented with the second part. My intention got twisted. Kinda reminds me of the the topic created a while back to help players linked their game to Steam account and that poor TC was called a liar 🤷‍♀️

Ok, I have edited my original post and  hope you feel better now. Keep up with the good work 👍

Edited September 11, 2022 by MintyMin.2718

[Jojo.6590]

Mesmer input:

Core traits on Mesmer as a whole are a mess and will need a massive look into/rework, I whish you luck with this!

Change phantasms so that they can NOT be targeted and killed. Make it what it simply is, a delayed burst with a fancy animation/affect. Outside of PVE and even in some PVE areas phantasms die too fast to complete their affect/attack. On top of this several of these skills are still very buggy and won't complete their attack too. 

This change would reduce a massive amount of visual clutter that many people complain about when fighting Mesmers as they won't have to worry about tab targeting through a set of clones and another set of phantasms. This would also then help promote the use of phantasms in large scale play such as zergs and would allow for better balancing of these skills and Mesmer as a whole.

Virtuoso Input:

Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework, make it a port of some kind like skill 3 on p/d thief (a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill would be great and would pair well with the block/evade traits) and/or make it unlockable/reflectable so we have something around this. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP environments as it is only effective if the target is stationary. This is the highest damaging weapon skill on dagger and its unable to hit much of anything. For those unaware, the storm itself does not do damage it is the 3 projectiles that are shot off of it that apply damage hence why it only hits a handful of raid bosses.

The utilities could use a full rework, the heal is horrendous,  Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords have too long of a cast time on top of a long animation wind up. RS should be on par with Meteor Shower, Meteor is a weapon skill with a much larger radius, higher target cap, and  much higher damage and damage coefficient. Sword of Decimation would actually replace weapon skill 3 on the dagger very well as this class wants to kite and greatly lacks the tools to do it on its weapon kit.

Shatters need a faster cast time as currently it suffers from two cast times. The fist is the actual cast time while the second is the delay due to the long animation. Skills f3 and F4 are very lack luster due to not having as much of a difference/impact when using them with 3 or more blades.

The elite is also awful.  Make it a V/cone attack. This way the counter for it is closing the gap with the Mesmer rather then side stepping out of it. In its current state it does not force a dodge, block, or invulnerability and just like weapon skill 3 is only effective on stationary targets.

I'd start here and then after see where it the specialization falls before messing with the traits. As its hard to say what exactly to do with the traits until the issues with the weapon and utilities are fixed.

Overall balance input:

Stab either needs to reduced in the amount of access classes have to it or it needs to be changed like Aegis. Where applying more stab only increases the duration of of the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and competitive game modes (PVP/WVW).

WVW:

A red flag for balance needs to be classes running builds in full celestial gear (It was removed from PVP for a reason). Currently a handful of classes can run full Celestial gear and both damage as if they're full berserkers/assassins gear while sustaining as if they are in full Minstrels gear. These classes traits, boon access and generation, and both damage and healing/support coefficients need to be looked at. 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Jojo.6590
Grammar

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, MintyMin.2718 said:

Well, when I said for years they did nothing or reply to fixing the placeholder, am I not right the first part? But for some reasons you chose to focus on flaming me for not reading the whole forum before I commented with the second part. My intention got twisted. Kinda reminds me of the the topic created a while back to help players linked their game to Steam account and that poor TC was called a liar 🤷‍♀️

Ok, I have edited my original post and  hope you feel better now. Keep up with the good work 👍

It wasn't that you were in error that I was responding to. It was the whole "haha, the fact that they haven't done anything about it in two and a half years even though they said that it wasn't intended to be permanent demonstrates that your claim that it isn't intended to be permanent seems to be wrong! How could you possibly have missed the evidence staring you in the face?" tone. It was unfortunate timing on your part that this happened to happen shortly after an announcement that indicates the contrary (and said announcement is pinned to the top of this subforum, it wasn't exactly something that was hidden away).

Either way, it probably is worthwhile at least making a cursory effort to make sure you're up to date on information before you make posts with that sort of tone. It might avoid this sort of response in the future.

Now, if it wasn't for that unfortunate timing, I'd probably have responded with something along the lines of how the people that implement changes as significant as reworking entire traits were probably busy with End of Dragons stuff, leaving the balance team severely understaffed (and, as it turned out, the staff remaining were perhaps just a little bit biased, and the professions affected by 300s traits weren't those that the remaining balancers played so they didn't care). So there are actually reasons for the delay beyond "we decided to just leave these traits as they are permanently". Not exactly good reasons - there's a reason there was a backlash leading to ArenaNet having to reconfigure how they do balancing in the future - but reasons nonetheless.

Either way, the announced intent to change them in the next patch indicates that they absolutely are placeholders after all.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Nerf mechanist.  Buff weaver sword so that both power and condi specs perform better than dagger, scepter, and staff.

[Raizel.8175]

Necromancer. Core Necromancer traitlines need some sort of redesign. pDPS Reaper is a pretty scuffed build and still too weak to be competitive. Reaper Shroud currently is kinda meh~ and Axe is too weak to be a decent ranged option. Reaper still needs more love. cDPS Harbinger could also use somewhat of a buff. Most people went back to playing Scourge since Scourge doesn't have a rotation which really punishes you for screwing up. If you screw up on Harbinger though (especially with its resources), your DPS will nosedive.

Ranger. I'd still like to see the nerfs to OWP reverted and Axe nerfed in return. DPS buffs are a fundamental aspect of Rangers core design - that also applies to cDPS Ranger builds (it's actually one of the main reasons why cDPS Untamed works to begin with). Just camping Axe/Axe is actually the most reasonable thing to do nowadays because - well... - you can hardly screw up your rotation that way.

Engineer. pDPS Rifle Mechanist needs a nerf. It currently dominates PvE with no effort whatsoever. pDPS Holosmith could also need some love. pDPS Holosmith should - on average - perform better than pDPS Rifle Mechanist. However, it currently does not.

[Zunki.3916]

On 9/9/2022 at 1:13 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

Meaningful core necro and reaper buffs. Deep elementalist reworks, including flat out erasing some utility types and thinking up others. Removal of energy from catalyst.

Yeah right? Energy on catalyst and somehow also the F5 are both totally unneeded mechanics. Put the field on the attunement like tempest and remove energy (a CD does it).
Having the F5 is jsut to make it different from tempest, is so dumb bad design and almost prevents me from playing the spec properly, I really hate it.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Zunki.3916

[Esufer.8762]

A bit more love for GS on Vindicator, and finding a happy middle ground for the heal skills in spvp.

Fixing weakening shroud in the curses traitline on necromancer (I do not see this happening)

Edited September 13, 2022 by Esufer.8762
words are hard

[SilentCarnage.2764]

Personally I have two wishes.

1. Give some flavor to Mesmer's F skills. They feel so similar no matter what espec your on.

2. Give condi Warrior some love. Either needs faster application of condi or higher duration. 

[prototypedragon.1406]

Increased auto attack speed on Hammer core Warrior to match mechanists Rifle speed in World versus World. That or boost the damage for the slow auto attack and grant warrior immunity to weakness upon completing the auto chain. Same with boosting mace auto attack speed but the damage could be boosted a little and turn confusion damage into a condition that is determined by power of the character that applies it to their enemy in stead of condition duration and condi damage. All cc weapon skills now apply confusion on hit even if target has stability.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

On 9/13/2022 at 11:25 AM, SilentCarnage.2764 said:

Personally I have two wishes.

2. Give condi Warrior some love. Either needs faster application of condi or higher duration. 

Condi warrior needs more cover condis as well as better access to either confusion (we used to have it) or torment.

I think Torment could be tacked on to an Arms trait and be: torment a foe (5s) when you inflict bleed on them.

Confusion could be added back in to Merciless Hammer the way it was, but also added to Unsuspecting Foe so that when you hit a CC'd target they take a confusion stack for 4s.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

6 hours ago, prototypedragon.1406 said:

Increased auto attack speed on Hammer core Warrior to match mechanists Rifle speed in World versus World. That or boost the damage for the slow auto attack and grant warrior immunity to weakness upon completing the auto chain. Same with boosting mace auto attack speed but the damage could be boosted a little and turn confusion damage into a condition that is determined by power of the character that applies it to their enemy in stead of condition duration and condi damage. All cc weapon skills now apply confusion on hit even if target has stability.

Grant resistance in an AoE on Hammer 3 for 1.5s. Think that's OP, well I know a class that has AoE protection on it's AA chain for hammer...