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Quick Update on the Skills and Balance Team


Josh Davis.7865

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@Gorem.8104 well to defend cmc here a bit. He just had a plan back then just how to made the game mode less power creep. But he never finished it complete. He allready said that they will drop a big huge balance patch and follow it with small patches to balance it out. He also said they want to bring some ccs dmg back. But well he never comes to it. Corona and the New expansion made it impossible to follow things back then. Then they might also get the plan to made a balance team finaly again but not him as leader so again no follow up to the febr 2020 patch. Maybe after him been now leader we might finaly see those changes inconing xd!

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But he did that by touching power coefficients only, without touching escape frames, healing, boons fart, condis, corrupts, and stuns [forgetting to adjust necro F1 and lich form that took 6 months to fix].
Dunno what he meant by fixing powercreep, but he succeeded in giving more time for people to spam their CD.

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5 hours ago, Pati.2438 said:

@Gorem.8104 well to defend cmc here a bit. He just had a plan back then just how to made the game mode less power creep. But he never finished it complete. He allready said that they will drop a big huge balance patch and follow it with small patches to balance it out. He also said they want to bring some ccs dmg back. But well he never comes to it. Corona and the New expansion made it impossible to follow things back then. Then they might also get the plan to made a balance team finaly again but not him as leader so again no follow up to the febr 2020 patch. Maybe after him been now leader we might finaly see those changes inconing xd!

ah, good to hear in that case, fingers crossed! 

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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 be 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. 

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If after the next balance patches for weapon types that may still not do damage for most of their skills in competitive (World versus World Primarily) modes for those that made a mistake in choosing those as their favorite weapon after making those specific weapon types into Legendaries to help with build creations. Would those individuals be allowed free Legendary weapon exchange tokens for the Legendary armory or material returns for the legendaries in question? That way if a weapon shall be useless the player doesn't feel responsible for it's uselessness due to them liking a weapon type for their chosen class and the investment they put into it especially those that handcraft and farm the materials themselves? Also just curious do any of the devs play any form of Warrior even just core?

Edited by prototypedragon.1406
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Confused emojis I get but imagine new players putting time into to craft Ascended or Legendary weapons for the cornerstone game mode World versus World and finding out the weapons they enjoy using no longer deal damage and as a result causes those that are interested in end game competitive content to quit the game upon realizing they wasted their time creating weapons that the lowest tier equipment of any other weapons would still do 800 more power damage then that ascended Hammer or mace they spent 100 gold on without knowing that they shouldn't waste the gold. Warriors case and point or should the class be renamed to porriors due to what they invest gets no return??? 🤣😂😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂

Edited by prototypedragon.1406
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@Josh Davis.7865  When  the balance team nerfed the  sustain globally, they also did it affecting the life steal, and they did it globally in damage and healing, that killed it too much from my point of view, they should have splitted the damage done and the healing in the formula, and/or only nerfed the sustain but not the damage.  Negatively affecting several professions, like the revenant and the necromancer.

That, for example, killed completely the "Blood Magic" trait line.  It's underwhelming to use it today even if you want take it from a support point of view that doesn't work anyways.  And the Banshee's Wail didn't change it. Blood Magic trait line needs a rework or, at least,  buff the steal damage and review the traits.

Also Necromancer's Warhorn need some extra changes to really make it appealling.  Or by reducing cooldowns or even better, add to Locust Swarm some initial ranged burst when its sound hit foes, maybe using the same cone area that Wail of Doom.  Or my idea of "Chasers" for the warhorn by adding a secondary skill after been casted to command your Locust Swarm and send it against your foes.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited by Zoser.7245
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Anyways, i'm ready to watch the funny moments of the live stream, like how hard will he laugh next friday if asked again about the original "One dodge Mirage"?  🤣

 Perhaps, they should include some running gels in addition to water bottles for the livestream. 💡🤓

As i doubt that they want to rework the Mirage... Maybe, on November 29th, they'll make the "One dodge feature"  a core base for all mesmers with some bizarre trait or traits... Problem solved!!!  😆😅😁

🕝 Tic tac, tic tac...

Edited by Zoser.7245
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Friendly reminder Cal, a patch preview of just changing numbers doesn't mean much if we have no reason or direction.  Why are they being changed?  What is your goal for the class?  What is your goal for the game mode?  What is your thought?  Why is it being done?  Changing numbers without a direction, a clear fundamental philosophy just brings us back to the beginning.  The philosophy dictates the number changes, the coefficient changes, not the other way around.  A thought can be changed, a philosophy can be changed from feedback.  The community and balance team being on the same page when it comes to philosophy means people will no longer be surprised or upset by any number changes in the future because we know the direction and minor adjustments can be made to the numbers and some major adjustments can be made to the philosophy over time.  We don't expect one person to know everything about the game or every class or nuance, but you have a dedicated fanbase that is willing to provide that feedback if the balance team is willing to listen and read it.

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On 9/10/2022 at 12:09 AM, Carnifex.3275 said:

What? So we're stuck with this balance state in pve until November-December? This is rough.. 😔

What's wrong with the pve balance so much was just given to you. So many cooldowns have been reduced it's insane. With ele you can now have 100% uptime with shocking aura. It's a 8 sec cd. That cray cray to me. Imagine that in pvp, many lol would insue.

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10 minutes ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

What's wrong with the pve balance so much was just given to you. So many cooldowns have been reduced it's insane. With ele you can now have 100% uptime with shocking aura. It's a 8 sec cd. That cray cray to me. Imagine that in pvp, many lol would insue.

 

That's.. such an odd thing to point out regarding balance. Sure, feels nice to spam shocking aura. Doesn't really change anything for eles in high-end PvE content. Doesn't change that Mech and FB still dominate the meta. I think the PvE balance patch wasn't bad, some neat things, nudges in the right direction - yet nothing that really changed the current state of the meta.

 

Not saying that PvP or WvW balance should be neglected, all game modes should be getting their balance patches.

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Here's a few things I would like for the future updated balance philosophy post to address:

- Skill floor & ceiling; complexity budget. What are Anet's (updated) goals/vision on this?

- Splitting skill functionality between different modes, and even within the same mode (ex. Virtuoso's sword #3). Previously, Anet wanted to avoid functionality splits in GW2 as much as possible, due to how it lead to complexity creep in GW1. Seems like Anet is a lot more willing to do it now (looking at you, Hammer Catalyst), or even splitting within the same mode and not even documenting in-game some of those changes (Virtuoso's sword #3 changes). Is the new team planning to do further functionality splits? Or was it merely experimental?

- Core profession overhauls. Something like the one Mesmer has gotten: is this still a goal, or does Anet want to go for more gradual/smaller-scale reworks only?

- Somewhat related, but does Anet still want for every core profession to have at least one viable/meta build, or have they given up on this idea?

Edited by Skyroar.2974
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6 hours ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

What's wrong with the pve balance so much was just given to you. So many cooldowns have been reduced it's insane. With ele you can now have 100% uptime with shocking aura. It's a 8 sec cd. That cray cray to me. Imagine that in pvp, many lol would insue.

Shocking aura is useful in pvp, less so in pve where the changes were made. 

I think there have been some good changes for ele aside from sword weaver and hammer catalyst rip 🙏 

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On 9/11/2022 at 8:10 AM, Gorem.8104 said:

Honestly one thing that would help against win trading would be it having more people playing the mode like it used to, win trading is so easy because no one pvp's anymore due to patches such as that pvp balance patch which killed off whoever was left playing it. Hearing that he was behind the pvp killing patch.... well, hopefully he's learnt since then. 
If they did put a stop to the current win trading, then pvp would be so incredibly dead matches would take forever to start unfortunately. 

Part of the problem with Feb2020 was that it was supposed to be followed up with another large patch and some smaller patches to correct things, but COVID and layoffs pushed that to the far back burner. I have hope that this Oct patch will finish that work and correct the imbalances that it caused.

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My warrior change wishlist:

  • Hundred Blades gets a 2s cast time
  • Body Blow's bleed stack changed to 0.6 coefficient strike damage, can crit
  • Burst of Aggression refreshes when hitting with a Primal Burst
  • Adrenal Health and Cleansing Ire activate on Burst use instead of hit
  • Cast time delays and aftercasts on hammer removed/shortened
  • F2 to exit Berserk Mode
  • Dispelling Force buffed to rip 2 boons per CC
  • More Resistance and Resolution built into Defense
  • More cover Condis built into Arms
  • Unsuspecting Foe causes CC'd foes to be inflicted with confusion when struck while CC'd
  • Duel Wielding changed to have 20% CD reduction on offhand weapons.
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