(PvE) Seriously anet, go away with that shroud nerf -_-

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

Lets be honest here, Consume Shadows is busted with the current Shadow Force ratios in PvE and it was giving the aforementioned issues in PvP, normalizing the shadow force ratio is not a bad way to fix both things.

 

The Viper DPS will be exactly that, DPS, while the Ritualist high vitality DPS variant will sacrifice some damage (its 2k in golem but in real fights its not as pronounced) to give good barrier/heals with it.

[Valisha.8650]

38 minutes ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

Lets be honest here, Consume Shadows is busted with the current Shadow Force ratios in PvE and it was giving the aforementioned issues in PvP, normalizing the shadow force ratio is not a bad way to fix both things.

 

The Viper DPS will be exactly that, DPS, while the Ritualist high vitality DPS variant will sacrifice some damage (its 2k in golem but in real fights its not as pronounced) to give good barrier/heals with it.

Of course it should be nerfed, but not THAT much. Equalizing it with necro, who doesn't share the force with anyone and boasts a 33% damage protection is beyond dumb.

[Eleandra.4859]

In addition to what Valisha said, the nerf equalizes the Necromancer class that has a base health of 19,212 hp at level 80 and the Thief class that only has 11,645 hp.

 

So to make this very clear:

1. Necromancer:

Starts at 19,212 hp base health. 19,212 * .69 = 13,256 hp shroud health.

Has 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 13,256 * 1.33 = 17,630 effective hp

 

Ritualist health pool: 28,782

28,782 * .69 * 1.33 = 26,413 (please be aware that the wiki page for death shroud claims a 50% damage reduction for PvP and WvW - I did not take this into account because it would only exacerbate the situation even further).

 

 

2. Specter starts at 11,645 base health. 11,645 * .69 = 8,035 hp shroud health.

Current shadow shroud on base health: 11,645 * 1.5 = 17,468

NEW shadow shroud after Oct 4: 11,645 * .69 = 8.035,05

 

Ritualist Specter health pool: 21,215

Current shadow shroud on Ritualist: 21,215 * 1.5 = 31,823

NEW shadow shroud on Ritualist: 21,515 * .69 = 14,845

 

Total effective life pool of Necromancer and Specter would then be:

Base Necro:   19,212 + 17,630 = 36,842

Base Specter: 11,645 + 17,468 = 29.113

NEW base Specter: 11,645 + 8,035 = 19.680

 

Ritualist Necro:   28,782 + 26,413 = 55,195

Ritualist Specter: 21,215 + 31,823 = 53,038

NEW Ritualist Specter: 21,215 + 14,845 = 36,060

 

If we take a close look at the effective health pools for both professions, the greater scaling of shadow shroud only compensates for the smaller health pool and the lack of damage reduction in shroud.

 

What really surprises me is that after all the catastrophic decision making CMC and his team showed during the beta:

1. Creating a single target support class with ally targeting in a game that had and has (nearly) zero support for this.
2. Creating a shroud experience that many felt was not engaging and purely used for the benefit of converting shroud to heal.
3. Doubling down on that design, making it even worse and less engaging by introducing a 5 second penalty for leaving shroud and calling it a day.

They now justify a nerf that massive by simply stating "the same as Necromancer shroud"...

This bears the question if either CMC operates at a similar skill level as the previous balancing team or if the new team is simply as lazy as the old one.

 

So how do I have to understand this justification? Incompetence, lazyness? Is the reason for such a big nerf perhaps more complex? Is there a reason to leave Specter with a shroud health pool that most classes can wipe within 1 to 2 seconds even in pvp?

Please let me be clear here: All the good pvp players seem to agree that Specter needs a shave in pvp and I am in no position to argue against it but the absolute laziness or lack of respect in the implementation in combination with pushing this pile of kitten through even for pve makes me furious.

 

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Eleandra.4859

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

2 hours ago, Eleandra.4859 said:

...

 

 

 

Those numbers tell a great picture, but calling people lazy or incompetent or any sort of namecalling just kills any productive conversation or outreach you could have with the devs, it doesnt help anyone

[Eleandra.4859]

Hi LyraOrpheo,
I see the point you are making. I concur that you are most likely right.

P. S.: To correct my self: I do not fully agree with you. Calling someone's inadequate work out is not name calling as far as I am concerned. I will however re-read my post above and see if I may have been commenting on the person and not the person's work and will rectify it if I find this to be true.

 

If you look at the impact of player feedback on the balance decision taken during the lifetime of this game, you will find that there is exactly no relation between player feedback and implemented changes.

 

I am not only speaking about EoD but the whole existence of this game.

 

I therefore conclude that feedback generally has no impact on the balancing decisions of GW2.

Following that we can conclude that nothing I write will have impact on the balance team's decision.

 

I have to admit I am quite frustrated, though.

 

I do not respect CMC and his team in their professional function. If it were my decision I would have started looking into the mixed feedback about elite spec design, the extremely in-homogeneous elite spec distribution at the latest after the reveal of the elite specs for EoD.
In my opinion the EoD (and to a large extend PoF) elite spec designs are terribly executed and way below the potential that even those flawed concepts could have achieved.

Do not get me wrong, I do not believe CMC, his team or anyone at ArenNet are bad people, I also do not think that they are generally incompetent and I definitely do not want to attack anyone personally.

 

My feedback is simply meant as a feedback on what I perceive as the elite spec and class balance teams' professional performance.

It may be harsh, it may be frowned upon, but I strongly believe that sugarcoating and "everyone is a winner" mentality should stay out of professional business. If I believe someone kitten the carpet, I will call it that.

 

If I am proven wrong though, I am not above apologizing.

 

I understand that you will most likely disagree with me on how to conduct this feedback and I accept that. I have mulled over this post in my head  since I read about the content of the preview.

I am not the center of this game but I have invested a lot of love, time and passion into this game, same as anyone at Anet. I main my Thief since the base game, I have not found the same level of access to any other class in this game, I have 3 thiefs. I am very casual but I have achieved a full set of legendary armor and multiple legendary weapons and trinkets. I have done this because I thoroughly enjoyed this game (sometimes more some times less). Many bad changes have been made not only to the thief but to many classes.

If I am not allowed to say something that might be a bit hurtful to those people who are off-handedly implementing changes that will hurt me , then we have no parity in this dialogue.

 

The change might even be justified but the off handed way and the lazy justification ("We put it the factor to .69 because that is what the Necro has - this implies that they see a comparability which obviously is not there) I cannot accept. And exactly because it is clear the CMC and his team are not bad people I try to make sense of this situation in the way I did in my post above.

 

In the end I decided to post it in the harsh tone you commented on because I believe this needs to be said.

Kind regards

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Eleandra.4859

[draxynnic.3719]

It's uncommon, but there have been recent cases of changes being cancelled due to feedback. The mirage nerfs were not only removed from the last patch as a result of feedback, for instance, but it also resulted in a recanting of the 'balancing builds based on their performance in ideal circumstances' policy.

[DeceiverX.8361]

So literally the expected outcome for everyone who's been playing this class for a long time?...

Are y'all new around here or what?

[Valisha.8650]

On 9/22/2022 at 11:46 PM, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

 

Those numbers tell a great picture, but calling people lazy or incompetent or any sort of namecalling just kills any productive conversation or outreach you could have with the devs, it doesnt help anyone

If a doctor botched my surgery, I would call him incompetent.

If a dev botched a class I enjoy, I am also calling him incompetent.

Incompetence is not an insult. Tis simply means someone is not doing a job they were assigned to on a satisfying level.

[Vidit.7108]

Not going to make this a topic about the people on the balance team but i wouldn't get my hopes up, given what we know about the shadow arts change. In the past, they didn't always care if an espec was underrepresented in PvE, especially if it's doing what they want in PvP. Maybe if usage numbers drop they will get back to it but i really doubt there is something big coming for us in November for PvE. 

I think the biggest source of frustration is that even if you trust that they have been following a consistent balance philosophy this whole time, it is hard to see that with how Specter matches up with other alacrity supports. Some issues: Ally Siphon potentially harms your boon upkeep, anemic protection upkeep from blasting smoke fields of all things, No Aegis, special utility options are limited by 3 wells for alacrity. You can easily slot boon rip but it's for one target only. Some elite specs get to pile on the might with their wide range of skills and traits, we can't. That wasn't the fault of a particular update but a lack of foresight at the time of making Specter and well before then with the SA rework. It requires a lot of work to fix all this, but a year on we're barely getting any changes made to thief each update.

Our one advantage over the other alacs is consume shadows, and that's with a caveat. On paper you can full heal the party/sub-group, in practice you might need to get in and out of shroud to reapply alacrity to the group rather than camp it to provide the best healing at the best time. So really, what it reliably has done for the Alac-Specter is dish out full barrier to the party, at a roughly consistent frequency. Hard to time barrier is not a huge advantage and it becomes harder to do with the update. So without the spare barrier we're really unequal to other alacrity supporters.

We still pair poorly with most quickness providers, you might say "well we still pair really well with Firebrand" but healbrand competes with three good alac healers now and there are several more good quickness-dps supporters. You might say the dps is still solid, but with less shroud hp it will be harder to fit in more shroud attacks while you wait for initiative to regenerate. That was always a potential problem, but with less shroud hp you are going to notice it a lot more in every Specter build.

I'm not trying to say they're doing anything wrong behind the scenes with this shroud change, a nerf to consume shadows probably was needed. What I am saying here is that there are a lot of compounding issues, that make this update in particular turn a merely good dps support into an "I guess it's still viable" one or "only in an experienced static" one. This probably kills off the heal build though hardly anyone used it.  There is nothing on the horizon that tells us they have a plan to improve some or any of it's issues, so i think it is fair if that gets interpreted as neglect in context with everything else. If there was a big blog post that told us what they are doing with thief and where they want Specter to be, and it was clear they were and had been following that, I would feel differently.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Vidit.7108

[Dr Meta.3158]

On 9/22/2022 at 3:24 PM, Eleandra.4859 said:

In addition to what Valisha said, the nerf equalizes the Necromancer class that has a base health of 19,212 hp at level 80 and the Thief class that only has 11,645 hp.

 

So to make this very clear:

1. Necromancer:

Starts at 19,212 hp base health. 19,212 * .69 = 13,256 hp shroud health.

Has 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 13,256 * 1.33 = 17,630 effective hp

 

Ritualist health pool: 28,782

28,782 * .69 * 1.33 = 26,413 (please be aware that the wiki page for death shroud claims a 50% damage reduction for PvP and WvW - I did not take this into account because it would only exacerbate the situation even further).

 

 

2. Specter starts at 11,645 base health. 11,645 * .69 = 8,035 hp shroud health.

Current shadow shroud on base health: 11,645 * 1.5 = 17,468

NEW shadow shroud after Oct 4: 11,645 * .69 = 8.035,05

 

Ritualist Specter health pool: 21,215

Current shadow shroud on Ritualist: 21,215 * 1.5 = 31,823

NEW shadow shroud on Ritualist: 21,515 * .69 = 14,845

 

Total effective life pool of Necromancer and Specter would then be:

Base Necro:   19,212 + 17,630 = 36,842

Base Specter: 11,645 + 17,468 = 29.113

NEW base Specter: 11,645 + 8,035 = 19.680

 

Ritualist Necro:   28,782 + 26,413 = 55,195

Ritualist Specter: 21,215 + 31,823 = 53,038

NEW Ritualist Specter: 21,215 + 14,845 = 36,060

 

If we take a close look at the effective health pools for both professions, the greater scaling of shadow shroud only compensates for the smaller health pool and the lack of damage reduction in shroud.

 

What really surprises me is that after all the catastrophic decision making CMC and his team showed during the beta:

1. Creating a single target support class with ally targeting in a game that had and has (nearly) zero support for this.
2. Creating a shroud experience that many felt was not engaging and purely used for the benefit of converting shroud to heal.
3. Doubling down on that design, making it even worse and less engaging by introducing a 5 second penalty for leaving shroud and calling it a day.

They now justify a nerf that massive by simply stating "the same as Necromancer shroud"...

This bears the question if either CMC operates at a similar skill level as the previous balancing team or if the new team is simply as lazy as the old one.

 

So how do I have to understand this justification? Incompetence, lazyness? Is the reason for such a big nerf perhaps more complex? Is there a reason to leave Specter with a shroud health pool that most classes can wipe within 1 to 2 seconds even in pvp?

Please let me be clear here: All the good pvp players seem to agree that Specter needs a shave in pvp and I am in no position to argue against it but the absolute laziness or lack of respect in the implementation in combination with pushing this pile of kitten through even for pve makes me furious.

 

 

There's a lot more to consider than shroud health when ascertaining class survivability. Thief has tremendously greater mobility and evasiveness even without shroud and necromancer's lack of these options are stated specifically because they have shroud.  Right after release, Specter has boasted the greatest ease in dealing with anything from pve to pvp with minimal effort required by combining the best of thief with the best of necromancer.. Just how mechanist took the best of engineer and ranger and combined them to be better and easier than either of them individually and also wrecked havoc on balance across game modes like the specter. Overall specter like a few other elite specializations across expansions were a huge mistake even as a thought experiment but here we are. The players will suffer the imbalance before the nerfs and the players that grew accustomed to the playstyle will suffer after the nerfs.

[itspomf.9523]

On 9/22/2022 at 3:24 PM, Eleandra.4859 said:

If we take a close look at the effective health pools for both professions, the greater scaling of shadow shroud only compensates for the smaller health pool and the lack of damage reduction in shroud.

 

What really surprises me is that after all the catastrophic decision making CMC and his team showed during the beta:

1. Creating a single target support class with ally targeting in a game that had and has (nearly) zero support for this.
2. Creating a shroud experience that many felt was not engaging and purely used for the benefit of converting shroud to heal.
3. Doubling down on that design, making it even worse and less engaging by introducing a 5 second penalty for leaving shroud and calling it a day.

They now justify a nerf that massive by simply stating "the same as Necromancer shroud"...

This bears the question if either CMC operates at a similar skill level as the previous balancing team or if the new team is simply as lazy as the old one.

Holy kitten, THANK YOU.

[itspomf.9523]

7 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

 That wasn't the fault of a particular update but a lack of foresight at the time of making Specter and well before then with the SA rework. It requires a lot of work to fix all this, but a year on we're barely getting any changes made thief each update.

[...]

I'm not trying to say they're doing anything wrong behind the scenes with this shroud change, a nerf to consume shadows probably was needed.

Not to double post, but yeah, "this" as the romans used to say.  You nailed it, my dude.

You'd think the balance team would have the basic root-cause-analysis skills to point to the trait line and say "hey, Consume Shadows is creating a really unhealthy manner of gameplay, let's tweak it" rather than taking a sledgehammer to the major defensive capability of the entire specialization "because reasons."

But that's just it:  nigh every single change to thief for the last number of years hasn't been carefully targeted adjustments to over- (or under-) performing traits, it's been carving the thing up like a heckin' moa at a charr barbecue, and this is the latest example of that kind of overzealous mentality.

Edited September 25, 2022 by itspomf.9523

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

There's a lot more to consider than shroud health when ascertaining class survivability. Thief has tremendously greater mobility and evasiveness even without shroud and necromancer's lack of these options are stated specifically because they have shroud.  Right after release, Specter has boasted the greatest ease in dealing with anything from pve to pvp with minimal effort required by combining the best of thief with the best of necromancer.. Just how mechanist took the best of engineer and ranger and combined them to be better and easier than either of them individually and also wrecked havoc on balance across game modes like the specter. Overall specter like a few other elite specializations across expansions were a huge mistake even as a thought experiment but here we are. The players will suffer the imbalance before the nerfs and the players that grew accustomed to the playstyle will suffer after the nerfs.

I get the feeling you're being ideological here rather than really caring about the balance of spectre now that it exists, but...

Sure, thieves have more mobility and evasiveness, but there are also options that necromancers have that spectres don't, such as that incredibly annoying chain-fear move they can pull. More specifically, let's compare the shroud mechanics. Thief has lower base health, so if the shrouds are at the same multiplier, spectre is going to be worse off just from that. Necromancer also has damage reduction while in shroud and, in my experience, necromancer can recover life force much faster than spectre can recover shadow force. So spectre having the same multiplier means that spectre shroud is much weaker in practice. It could probably be at a 1:1 multiplier and still be significantly weaker.

[Eleandra.4859]

11 hours ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

There's a lot more to consider than shroud health when ascertaining class survivability. Thief has tremendously greater mobility and evasiveness even without shroud and necromancer's lack of these options are stated specifically because they have shroud.  Right after release, Specter has boasted the greatest ease in dealing with anything from pve to pvp with minimal effort required by combining the best of thief with the best of necromancer.. Just how mechanist took the best of engineer and ranger and combined them to be better and easier than either of them individually and also wrecked havoc on balance across game modes like the specter. Overall specter like a few other elite specializations across expansions were a huge mistake even as a thought experiment but here we are. The players will suffer the imbalance before the nerfs and the players that grew accustomed to the playstyle will suffer after the nerfs.

 

What you say touches on one of the points I am trying to make:

 

Necro and Thief are different classes with different options. If the new balance team had given a believable justification for such a major nerf OR, as Vidit points out, a meaningful projection that could explain this quite destructive move. I would probably not be happy but could at least try to follow a logic.

 

What CMC said during the stream however was a worthless, oversimplified and not applicable justification.

He could have stated that they reduce shroud scaling to .69 because it was Friday and it would be as valid as what he pointed out.

 

That is what I tried to say in my first post.

 

Perhaps CMC and his team actually DO have a good reason for choosing that specific number, but the fact that a different class with vastly different mechanics and options shares that scaling factor is in and on itself NOT a valid reason and that is what I believe to have proven in my post.

 

Therefore either the balance team DID take the "lazy way out", looked at the Necro scaling factor and simply copy-pasted it over to Specter or they have done a deep analysis and had very good reason to come to the conclusion that .69 is the correct scaling factor.

In the first case I would allege that my verdict, that their behavior is lazy, incompetent and shows an utter lack of respect for their player base stands.

In the second case their internal processes, skill-level and reasoning may be sound but their communication was no less lazy, incompetent and disrespectful.

 

The last part of my first post (that was a bit ranty, I concede) then pointed out that CMC + team do not have the best track record of improving not optimal situations and/or having really strong decision making processes to begin with. Making scenario 1 unfortunately more likely.

[EDIT]: Independently of the balance team performance discussion as you, Dr Meta, are talking about the class performance. Even with all you said, I see no justification to extend the shroud nerf to pve. Looking at class distribution, which is the best metric I could find, Specter is not in danger of being over-represented (https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity).

The rise of mechanist since the beginning of EoD lends so much more credibility to that statistic because it shows that the power of a class has a strong impact on the amount of players using it.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Eleandra.4859

[Dr Meta.3158]

On 9/25/2022 at 6:37 AM, Eleandra.4859 said:

 

What you say touches on one of the points I am trying to make:

 

Necro and Thief are different classes with different options. If the new balance team had given a believable justification for such a major nerf OR, as Vidit points out, a meaningful projection that could explain this quite destructive move. I would probably not be happy but could at least try to follow a logic.

 

What CMC said during the stream however was a worthless, oversimplified and not applicable justification.

He could have stated that they reduce shroud scaling to .69 because it was Friday and it would be as valid as what he pointed out.

 

That is what I tried to say in my first post.

 

Perhaps CMC and his team actually DO have a good reason for choosing that specific number, but the fact that a different class with vastly different mechanics and options shares that scaling factor is in and on itself NOT a valid reason and that is what I believe to have proven in my post.

 

Therefore either the balance team DID take the "lazy way out", looked at the Necro scaling factor and simply copy-pasted it over to Specter or they have done a deep analysis and had very good reason to come to the conclusion that .69 is the correct scaling factor.

In the first case I would allege that my verdict, that their behavior is lazy, incompetent and shows an utter lack of respect for their player base stands.

In the second case their internal processes, skill-level and reasoning may be sound but their communication was no less lazy, incompetent and disrespectful.

 

The last part of my first post (that was a bit ranty, I concede) then pointed out that CMC + team do not have the best track record of improving not optimal situations and/or having really strong decision making processes to begin with. Making scenario 1 unfortunately more likely.

[EDIT]: Independently of the balance team performance discussion as you, Dr Meta, are talking about the class performance. Even with all you said, I see no justification to extend the shroud nerf to pve. Looking at class distribution, which is the best metric I could find, Specter is not in danger of being over-represented (https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity).

The rise of mechanist since the beginning of EoD lends so much more credibility to that statistic because it shows that the power of a class has a strong impact on the amount of players using it.

I'm referring to pvp specifically in that specter, especially the condition variant, is quite ridiculous in its level of spammable, easily applied damage, strong soft CCs (especially slow to reduce counterplay), teleport spam, high sustain and shroud with the lifebar bug still ongoing. Making a highly mobile, high damage, highly controlling, and very tanky class that definitely needed to be brought in line as it was essentially necromancer without the exploitable weakness of having highly telegraphed,, slow attacks and mobility 

 

I do agree with you that making the scaling the same is arbitrary and indicative of no internal testing as I honestly think no changes really have internal interesting at all. I also agree that extending the nerf to pve is pretty pointless. Hell they even separated the damage reduction between necromancer shrouds between pvp and wvw which was also unnecessary considering the justification for reducing the survivability of necromancer in pve (which isn't that great to begin with mind you outside of body blocking minion builds) was to be able to increase their damage output... which they then lowered as well.

But really, what do you expect. This is nothing new and is within expectations with past behavior.

[Eleandra.4859]

On 9/27/2022 at 3:10 PM, Dr Meta.3158 said:

I'm referring to pvp specifically in that specter, especially the condition variant, is quite ridiculous in its level of spammable, easily applied damage, strong soft CCs (especially slow to reduce counterplay), teleport spam, high sustain and shroud with the lifebar bug still ongoing. Making a highly mobile, high damage, highly controlling, and very tanky class that definitely needed to be brought in line as it was essentially necromancer without the exploitable weakness of having highly telegraphed,, slow attacks and mobility 

 

I do agree with you that making the scaling the same is arbitrary and indicative of no internal testing as I honestly think no changes really have internal interesting at all. I also agree that extending the nerf to pve is pretty pointless. Hell they even separated the damage reduction between necromancer shrouds between pvp and wvw which was also unnecessary considering the justification for reducing the survivability of necromancer in pve (which isn't that great to begin with mind you outside of body blocking minion builds) was to be able to increase their damage output... which they then lowered as well.

But really, what do you expect. This is nothing new and is within expectations with past behavior.

 

I am actually not sure that reducing the life pool to such an extend is warranted even in pvp but that is for more competent players to answer. I kind of remember that Sindrener in one of his streams said that he would be in favor of capping the shadow shroud pool at 20k or something like that.

 

Coming back to the question what I expect:

I was hoping and I am still hoping that CMC and his team change how things are done in the balancing process. They have already taken back some changes to scrapper posted in the preview for October 4th.

 

If they do not adapt the changes to Specter I hope that doubletap follows up internally, going back to CMC and his team to ask for a more palatable explanation of this change.

 

The reason I wrote in this thread was to provide a factual base on which to make my argument. And I still think my argument stands strong. The logical next step I would hope for is for someone with insight into the internal decision making can either

1. push for a modification to the previewed change or
2. provide us with a more factual rationale explaining the quantitative part of CMC's statement (e.g. why .69, why not 1.0 or capping the pool, why extend this to PVE in a patch that was explicitly stated to be focusing on pvp and with little need).

As it stands now I have no basis to understand this change.

 

I believe it is very important to reach the players on an emotional basis in a game where many have put years of passion into a character. The character in an MMO is, at least for me, the central focal point. If you destroy the characters identity or fun, as a company you destroy customer engagement. There must be made an effort to get an emotional buy in of the players if destructive changes are made.

 

Apart from objectively bad balancing decisions, this was the biggest problem in Arenanets communication in the past, I believe.

Factually they are in control of every part of this process. This can leave the players with a feeling of loss of control, of being judged by uncaring gods.

This creates an extremely adverse reaction in players in correlation with how much they care for their character I believe.

It would be great if Arenanet could soften the blow by making the effort to help us understand why those changes are made and why they these numbers are selected (qualitative reasoning AND quantitative reasoning) or, even better, if they would rethink this change and put more effort in finding a less destructive solution

[Dr Meta.3158]

2 hours ago, Eleandra.4859 said:

 

I am actually not sure that reducing the life pool to such an extend is warranted even in pvp but that is for more competent players to answer. I kind of remember that Sindrener in one of his streams said that he would be in favor of capping the shadow shroud pool at 20k or something like that.

 

Coming back to the question what I expect:

I was hoping and I am still hoping that CMC and his team change how things are done in the balancing process. They have already taken back some changes to scrapper posted in the preview for October 4th.

 

If they do not adapt the changes to Specter I hope that doubletap follows up internally, going back to CMC and his team to ask for a more palatable explanation of this change.

 

The reason I wrote in this thread was to provide a factual base on which to make my argument. And I still think my argument stands strong. The logical next step I would hope for is for someone with insight into the internal decision making can either

1. push for a modification to the previewed change or
2. provide us with a more factual rationale explaining the quantitative part of CMC's statement (e.g. why .69, why not 1.0 or capping the pool, why extend this to PVE in a patch that was explicitly stated to be focusing on pvp and with little need).

As it stands now I have no basis to understand this change.

 

I believe it is very important to reach the players on an emotional basis in a game where many have put years of passion into a character. The character in an MMO is, at least for me, the central focal point. If you destroy the characters identity or fun, as a company you destroy customer engagement. There must be made an effort to get an emotional buy in of the players if destructive changes are made.

 

Apart from objectively bad balancing decisions, this was the biggest problem in Arenanets communication in the past, I believe.

Factually they are in control of every part of this process. This can leave the players with a feeling of loss of control, of being judged by uncaring gods.

This creates an extremely adverse reaction in players in correlation with how much they care for their character I believe.

It would be great if Arenanet could soften the blow by making the effort to help us understand why those changes are made and why they these numbers are selected (qualitative reasoning AND quantitative reasoning) or, even better, if they would rethink this change and put more effort in finding a less destructive solution

I don't think they know what they're doing overall which is... usual. Hell any job I've been to be it teachers, scientists or engineers. They all ultimately barely know what they're doing but for job security, have to convince others that they do even though underneath, everyone knows. Its why imposter syndrome is so common.

 

Thing is, some people can and will learn by actually putting in the effort to really understand what they're doing, but why go through that effort? You're not going to get paid more for it. You won't really make the general playerbase here happier. Most of the players don't understand what they're talking about either. They don't have the understanding of class mechanics or the skill to execute them. People on this forum even compare similar skills/traits(like shroud) one to one as if the differences inherent to each version isn't dependent on everything else surrounding the skill/trait on each class. 

So I get it. Do the bare minimum, put up some garbage, make a garbage reasoning for it, collect that paycheck and go home. The players aren't going anywhere anyway.

[Bern.9613]

On 9/22/2022 at 10:27 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

It's uncommon, but there have been recent cases of changes being cancelled due to feedback. The mirage nerfs were not only removed from the last patch as a result of feedback, for instance, but it also resulted in a recanting of the 'balancing builds based on their performance in ideal circumstances' policy.

People in ANet play mirage/mesmer/other classes not thief. Players in ANet can't play against a thief so they "rework" and/or "balance" it to death. So, working as intended.

[draxynnic.3719]

8 hours ago, Bern.9613 said:

People in ANet play mirage/mesmer/other classes not thief. Players in ANet can't play against a thief so they "rework" and/or "balance" it to death. So, working as intended.

I got Conquer the Creator off a dev playing spectre (while also playing spectre myself). Now, I have no idea whether the dev in question was anywhere near the balance team, but still.

Ultimately, we've seen that feedback CAN work. It just did with scrapper. Better to at least try than throw your hands in the air and give up. Especially now when the company has particular incentive to pay attention.

[JaxLeo.7912]

On 9/22/2022 at 2:24 PM, Eleandra.4859 said:

In addition to what Valisha said, the nerf equalizes the Necromancer class that has a base health of 19,212 hp at level 80 and the Thief class that only has 11,645 hp.

 

So to make this very clear:

1. Necromancer:

Starts at 19,212 hp base health. 19,212 * .69 = 13,256 hp shroud health.

Has 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 13,256 * 1.33 = 17,630 effective hp

 

Ritualist health pool: 28,782

28,782 * .69 * 1.33 = 26,413 (please be aware that the wiki page for death shroud claims a 50% damage reduction for PvP and WvW - I did not take this into account because it would only exacerbate the situation even further).

 

 

2. Specter starts at 11,645 base health. 11,645 * .69 = 8,035 hp shroud health.

Current shadow shroud on base health: 11,645 * 1.5 = 17,468

NEW shadow shroud after Oct 4: 11,645 * .69 = 8.035,05

 

Ritualist Specter health pool: 21,215

Current shadow shroud on Ritualist: 21,215 * 1.5 = 31,823

NEW shadow shroud on Ritualist: 21,515 * .69 = 14,845

 

Total effective life pool of Necromancer and Specter would then be:

Base Necro:   19,212 + 17,630 = 36,842

Base Specter: 11,645 + 17,468 = 29.113

NEW base Specter: 11,645 + 8,035 = 19.680

 

Ritualist Necro:   28,782 + 26,413 = 55,195

Ritualist Specter: 21,215 + 31,823 = 53,038

NEW Ritualist Specter: 21,215 + 14,845 = 36,060

 

If we take a close look at the effective health pools for both professions, the greater scaling of shadow shroud only compensates for the smaller health pool and the lack of damage reduction in shroud.

 

What really surprises me is that after all the catastrophic decision making CMC and his team showed during the beta:

1. Creating a single target support class with ally targeting in a game that had and has (nearly) zero support for this.
2. Creating a shroud experience that many felt was not engaging and purely used for the benefit of converting shroud to heal.
3. Doubling down on that design, making it even worse and less engaging by introducing a 5 second penalty for leaving shroud and calling it a day.

They now justify a nerf that massive by simply stating "the same as Necromancer shroud"...

This bears the question if either CMC operates at a similar skill level as the previous balancing team or if the new team is simply as lazy as the old one.

 

So how do I have to understand this justification? Incompetence, lazyness? Is the reason for such a big nerf perhaps more complex? Is there a reason to leave Specter with a shroud health pool that most classes can wipe within 1 to 2 seconds even in pvp?

Please let me be clear here: All the good pvp players seem to agree that Specter needs a shave in pvp and I am in no position to argue against it but the absolute laziness or lack of respect in the implementation in combination with pushing this pile of kitten through even for pve makes me furious.

 

 

to add to your numbers, Dark Sentry is another trait that is getting nerfed as a chain effect of the shroud nerf, thus reducing the damage of Specters in PvE hitting both alacrity specter and DPS specter, since the shadow shroud pool is reduced by 54% using consume shadows only heals for 4017.5 on DPS specter and 7422.5 on ritualist specter, more often than not in the end game PvE environments your party/squad will receive a lot of damage, since they will not be at their top they will get healed, but they won't get barrier, thus Dark sentry won't get triggered, making that trait an unreliable option for DPS

[Vismooth.4128]

3 hours ago, JaxLeo.7912 said:

to add to your numbers, Dark Sentry is another trait that is getting nerfed as a chain effect of the shroud nerf, thus reducing the damage of Specters in PvE hitting both alacrity specter and DPS specter, since the shadow shroud pool is reduced by 54% using consume shadows only heals for 4017.5 on DPS specter and 7422.5 on ritualist specter, more often than not in the end game PvE environments your party/squad will receive a lot of damage, since they will not be at their top they will get healed, but they won't get barrier, thus Dark sentry won't get triggered, making that trait an unreliable option for DPS

Jolly. Maybe when specter playrate numbers in meaningful content drops to or below the rate of reaper, that'll make them scratch their heads a little.

[Mortiferu.5816]

PvP and PvE should have different Shroud scaling there isnt such a thing as being to durable in PvE in my opinion atleast. I cant speak PvP since i cant play it so i dont comment on it 

[itspomf.9523]

Chiming in again, since this popped up while looking into whether other feedback has been added to the patch that's to drop in two days (at time of writing).

Still agree with the prevailing opinion that the Specter nerf is heavy-handed and very much against the spirit of the specialization as being a more durable, support-oriented Thief (who forgoes stealing and easy stealth for a tanky shroud).  I sincerely hope this reaches the balance team even on a partial basis (like using a 1.0 or even 0.85 coefficient in PvP/WvW-only), as objectively the only thing the change currently does is eliminates that very defense which Thief has to trade for:  by forsaking an iconic ability for a slower build-up of a long defense, via shroud.

Why?  Precisely because Thieves only have dodge, blind, shadowstep, and stealth as their core defenses (block on spear sadly doesn't count, due to the limitations of aquatic weapons).  Shroud was a way to really wade into (and out of) a fight, and now that's going to be even worse than going in with no Vitality -- in fact, it's 31% worse off than doing so! -- and that's just bad.

Anyway, while I'm here on my little digital soapbox (is there soap in Tyria?), I also hope the proposed changes to Hard to Catch and Instant Reflexes get reconsidered.  Converting Hard to Catch to give endurance on shadowstep is rather paltry (and a bit too transparently oriented toward Specter, since sword, shortbow, and the Shadowstep skill are too slow, expensive, and/or clumsy to make efficient use of it), and while the latter rework isn't bad, the restriction to Elite skill usage gives us anywhere from a 40 to 120 second "cooldown" on the trait.  I know both are at 300 seconds in competitive, but surely we can do better than gutting the one and giving the other self-triggered speed-up.

[Bern.9613]

On 9/29/2022 at 9:56 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

I got Conquer the Creator off a dev playing spectre (while also playing spectre myself). Now, I have no idea whether the dev in question was anywhere near the balance team, but still.

Ultimately, we've seen that feedback CAN work. It just did with scrapper. Better to at least try than throw your hands in the air and give up. Especially now when the company has particular incentive to pay attention.

I got mine many years ago by stream sniping 2 of them going back to their zerg. I was s/d, d/p at the time and they were warriors.

[Vidit.7108]

Now that the nerf is actually here, I'm surprised it plays worse than i thought it would. It highlighted shortcomings I didn't think that much about before the nerf.