November 29 Balance Update Preview

[Vahlen.9508]

Absolutely pathetic decisions with the Reaper. How embarrassing is it that you cannot get this spec right.

 

It's the most selfish DPS spec in the game with damage that is laughable in most competitive content.

Additionally, stop wasting time hyping these joke of balance patches up. You just end up disappointing everyone who pays attention to them. This patch was the equivalent of showing up to grandma's house on Thanksgiving expecting the full course dinner and instead getting served leftover Burger King.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Vahlen.9508

[Carnifex.3275]

https://clips.twitch.tv/LuckyBombasticGazelleTwitchRaid-liNTmvcDALHYcPGz

The exact same reaction i had. Pretty much thief patch in a nutshell right here. Supposed to be a big patch 🤣

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

22 hours ago, VaegaVic.6394 said:

RIP my Deadeye. 

The range reduction was totally unnecessary. 

It's a sniper rifle!

 

We now need dual wielding assault rifles!

Seems like the „Commando“ wasnt an april fools joke at all

[ArmoredSarge.9384]

Alright, after thinking it over. Since we're making Deadeye a joke beyond compare now, I'll take a stab shot at silly balance changes also.

 

1. 3000 range. Same range as a ballista in WvW. Just all the range. Snipers have extreme range and the story mode Deadeye has even more range than that. Perfectly balanced as all things should be.

 

2. Everything pierces. Every single DE skill that fires a projectile will pierce. Snipers execute priority targets and the biggest problem Deadeyes face right now is when random enemies screw up your rotation when they get in the way.

 

3. Buffs granted by allies next to your marked target are applied to you also. Simple QoL so we can power trip our sniper fantasies from across the map better.

 

I invite all other Deadeye players (if any are still left) to pitch in and help "balance" things out.

Edited November 12, 2022 by ArmoredSarge.9384

[Raizel.8175]

This seems to be more of a clownfiesta rather than a well thought out balance patch.

Elementalist

I don't understand why Alacrity application hasn't been reworked. Currently, Tempest is a trash-tier Alacrity provider since Overloads channel for too long and can be easily interrupted. I also don't understand why Water Trident shouldn't heal anymore. I'm not much of an Elementalist-player myself since the whole profession rather belongs into trash-tier, but can't you at least bring at least Alacrity- and or -Heal-Tempst more in line with its alternatives? In my humble opinion, Support- and Heal-builds should be easy as fu** to play since their mere concept is pretty much alien to the games core gameplay. Besides that, the necessary gear for Support- and Heal-builds should also be easily acquirable.

Engineer

• The description for the "new" Rifle Burst is confusing. Is that meant to be a single-target buff and a multi-target nerf? Because it reads like less projectiles will pierce but grenades will deal more damage. Does this even matter though outside of very distant enemies? Rifle Burst Grenade is still an AoE skill after all.
• I do like the buffs to Holosmith. It's a fun build to play and needed a bit more love from the community. I don't know if these changes may make Holosmith "too" powerful though. Holosmith wasn't necessarily in a bad spot after all.
• Please don't add the changes to Mechanical Genius. The bot AI is horrible and the bot gets stuck on whatever frequently making the bot basically useless. The idea behind these changes isn't bad, but they don't take clunky AI and bot behaviour into account.

Guardian

• I do like the buffs to True Shot to make Longbow more viable on Dragonhunter. The Greatsword/Longbow (or Sword/Focus) rotation is currently rather fluid though meaning a CD increase could make that rotation more clunky and annoying to play. Dragonhunter is on the lower DPS spectrum anyway, so I don't see a reason why there shouldn't be a flat buff. That's all the more true since you're also buffing Sword which could push Longbow out of viability.
• I really don't like the Firebrand changes though. Yes, Firebrand was especially strong. I do agree with other people though that other builds simply aren't as well thought out and have to sacrifice too much in order to work as Support build. The changes to the Grandmaster traits also don't make sense. Firebrand was an easy to play and - outside of its other support-tools - perfectly balanced build. Binding the Justice passive to Quickfire is pointless and will be a huge nerf to Firebrands overall DPS potential. I don't understand why these changes have to be that extensive from the get-go. Why can't we start small in order to not break Firebrand? I do believe that a shared or preferably rather linked CD (linked as in: if you enter a tome, all other tomes go into their respective CD) for all tomes would have done the thing since you then have to decide between DPS, Healing or Functionality. Too many fundamental changes at once more likely than not will spell disaster. I also don't like the changes to tome-per-skill-costs. This will force you to take Archivist of Whispers above all other traits. How is this supposed to work anyway? Is it influenced by Alacrity? You also have to consider that you're basically gutting the Specialization-defining gameplay-feature that way. I really don't think that that's a good idea.

Mesmer

• I don't understand why "Staxe" Mirage needs to be nerfed. You have to understand that Mirage in general is rather situational due to how Confusion works. Rather than nerfing the build itself, you may want to change how Confusion - and by extension Torment - works in PvE. Maybe it's for the best to simply standardize/equalize how these conditions work in PvE. That would prevent damage spikes in certain encounters and would enable you to use these conditions more freely in future game design.
• I do appreciate the buffs to Chronomancer. You may (or may not) want to increase the well-radius though to increase useability.

Necromancer

• The increased Soul Barb duration could be nice to have to Harbinger, but will be more or less useless for Reaper since Reaper bleeds to much life force due to how Reaper Shroud works and due to the nerfs to Reaper's Shroud. Either rework a trait to make Reaper Shroud work like Harbinger Shroud as a DPS option or increase overall life force generation or buff Reaper's Shroud again.
• Increasing the damage of Death's Charge and Executioner's Scythe won't help much since you rather want to avoid using these skills in order to maintain a decent amount of life force. Your main DPS skills in Shroud are the auto-attack-chain and Soul Spiral anyway. The other skills are predominantly used for their functionality.
• I do like the idea of Chilling Strike reducing the CD of Gravedigger as this makes the auto attack chain more rewarding. In that sense, I'd increase the overall damage of Gravedigger in exchange for the below 50% gimmick though. That gimmick was always one of the reasons why Reaper had such a bad reputation after all.
• What has not been adressed are the massive lack of precision on Reaper - using Thief runes and thus needing to flank on a Melee bruiser is ridiculous - and Reapers 2nd weapon set. There need to be some buffs and/or redesign of core pDPS weapons like Axe, Focus and/or Warhorn.

Ranger

Nothing to say here. Would like to have some buffs to Greatsword though since I've always enjoyed Greatsword more than Longbow.

Revenant

• Please make "Vindicators can no longer dodge while immobilized." PvP/WvW only since in instanced PvE, this will spell disaster - especially in fractals.
• Otherwise, the changes seem to be fine. I'd like to have some improvements on Alacrity generation on Renegade though.

Thief

Deadeye looks like a Meme now. Can't really discuss about Thief though since I rarely play Thief. Thief really lacks identity and viability in PvE though and needs some major redesigns and/or buffs.

Warrior

Warrior seems fine although I don't understand why you'd change Outrage. The skills was perfectly fine.

[Crit.5123]

More directionless balance. Does anyone on the dev team actually know why people take certain specs into encounters?

I don't play FB but i really enjoy scrapper, it gets pushed aside most of the time due to its lack of stab and aegis.

Take Bulwalk Gyro, 99% of the time you take that for its toolbelt skill, the acual gyro is usless. Add 3 stacks of stab and 1 stack of aegis to Bulwalk (and remove its curent stuff) and you now have a elite spec that can compete with FB for both a quickness role and healing role. Would it be as good, probably not, but it would at least be a very viable choice and help stop FB dominating group comps so much.

[Saniyah.1984]

Quote

Chapter 1: Unflinching Charge: This skill now grants protection instead of stability..

 this is dumb. We dont needed more protection superspeed would be more interesting

Edited November 12, 2022 by Saniyah.1984

[Seneca.6319]

Please do not make Alacrity dependent on clones on Staff Mirage. That's just bonkers. Out of all the things that you could rework on Mesmer you choose to mess with the one thing that actually works well. If anything make it such that the clones do not provide alacrity but instead increase the range around the mesmer to 600. Right now it's 360, a joke comparing to other specs.

Alac Chrono is still not a competitive build comparing to other specs that give alacrity. And now you want to completely mess up the Staff Alac Mirage. What is wrong with you ANet? Who makes these decisions? Do you even think about them ?

Just leave Mirage as it is right now, we're good with that. Damage is decent and the spec has a place in raid groups. If you nerf it it's going to end up like Reaper... God rest the soul of the poor Reaper, a entirely dead spec that has no place anywhere in the game.

 

I'm seriously considering quitting this game if more of these nerfs masked as "balance patches" keep appearing. 

[Potato Slayer.3107]

Deadeye will now have to low crawl that extra 300 range. Animation pending.

[Nihil.9817]

could u add the stacks from the second charge for corrupt boon to the new 1 charge, including the ones from master of corruption, preferably so harb doesn't get to sit out of shroud on pistol wh and not swap a weapon and spend a transfer skill or use a cleansing sigil, its important to give the skill enough on its on but at a cost so its not overbearing and gets to be used for free without any trade off, the whole master of corruption trait would be useful in that sense so harb doesn't sit on corrupt boon and have path of corruption, having both would be a nightmare but incentivizing a tradeoff that you use a skill to transfer those condi's would be beneficial as it currently stands i see harb's sitting on pistol wh staff with corrupt boon and that obnoxious res signet, their rupt throughput is insane enough with path of corruption and I personally hate harb and think it should be gutted, I can see this being a problem but if there's some way for the necro to want to take master of corruption on harb it wont be but the elixir heal skill is too good over consume condition and the elixir of ambition is a better plague lands and it gives you boons and deals and removes blight, I don't really care about corrupt boon i think its still kitten in this iteration just slightly less, your sitting on a utility that's going to be popped then in a fight only hope you rupt someone's boons and you probably don't take master of corruption because the rupt through put in conjunction with path of corruption will be higher than just taking moc, not to sound an alarm that path of corruption needs a nerf but thats probably what harb is going to take.

 

the signet skill getting buffed is cringe I can see harb's using it more than anyone else because of their longer condi's, core taking it is legit trolling 🙂 you take someone out of a fight for 10 seconds essentially but the 20 seconds isn't what makes the utility bad its the fact that when you take signet of spite you are more inclined to take the other bad signets, including the signet of locus that signet is so close to being good its not even funny, if it didn't heal and was a stun break it would be good but its not its either you take signet of spite or signet of locus or completely kitten yourself and take signet of vamp because signets of suffering is so god awful but you want the reduced recharge, as it stands signets are awkward they don't make sense to take, the increased healing and the boon rip through put doesn't compete with having another stunbreak or taking well of corruption or corrupt boon or literally anything else.

 

i hope you revert corruptors fervor because its not degen on core the up time for core is non existent you have it for like 5 seconds and then it goes back down until you get it within the next 10 seconds or you swap weapons and spam your abilities, its disgusting on harb and I wish harb would be gutted instead, core traits shouldn't have to be nerfed because an elite spec isn't behaving, the least degen trait on dm in conjunction with putrid defense was fun to use because it warranted you to take poison utilities and finish your scepter auto chain and take poison sigils, making plague lands something you wouldn't want to stand in even more, making chill blains something to be completely terrified of, you take dm and you take 3 2 3 thats it or if your harb 322 because it doesn't matter bc your harb and your condi throughput is insane and you don't even need putrid defense.

 

also dagger main hand is dogshit. no one will read this, wheres the sylvary artwork im posting this to reddit, heck yes i love science, im deboonking this o7, whens the next living world season, i love the story, omg another gemstore skin 😮 SOY!!!!

[Vahlen.9508]

The update is coming just in time for WoW's new xpac. Going to give a lot of people solid reasons to set this game down until the Dev team pulls their heads out of their backsides.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I'm surprised they finally dared to touch their golden child. Though I do not think they will leave the FB tomes stuff as it is written in this post. The backlash of the FB fanbase will be rough.

I welcome the approach of reducing stability-spam. This will definitely add some spice to the combat system and make some encounters more exciting again. DPS may drop a little, but not in a drastic way. 

Rest looks acceptable to me. There is definitely room for some new builds and maybe even some minor changes for the meta. Looking forward to this one and the follow-up patches. 

[EvilZombie.6801]

Dev should at least buff engineer pistol to 0.5 casting as they should since lanuch thats 10 years already instead the pistol casting is still 0.9 everyone been telling them but they chose to do things a different way ... maybe wildstar fate is a good reminder to them 

[Radiancee.6537]

Some of these changes feel completely unnecessary or random. I don't get it why ArenaNet just can't release a solid balance patch for once. The whole community is giving so much detailed, constructive and useful feedback and then ArenaNet just ignores it. 

It is especially hard for newer players getting into the endgame because they usually want to start with a main class and nobody knows if ArenaNet just completely breaks it in a few months or not. 

Why are you taking away the Trident Heal? Why are you nerfing the Deadeye like this? Why are you nerfing the Mech in such a weird way while there are so many other options? Why do you want to change the Firebrand? Why aren't you concentrating on underpowered classes like the Reaper? The Reaper buff is a joke, for example. What about Thiefs in general? Why aren't you just buffing Tempest Heal more? Or the Druid? Instead of doing weird experiments with the Firebrand again? Why aren't you touching the Renegade Support Roles? Why are you changing Mirage for actually no reason at all? Especially the Staxe Mirage is a great, unique setup for some encounters. Why are you even touching the Chaos Vortex?

We could keep on but it just feels like they don't know their own content again. I thought this would be the main PvE Balance patch but well. This is a disappointment. At least Holo is coming back I guess.

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Radiancee.6537

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 11/11/2022 at 7:51 PM, Double Tap said:

Death's Judgement: This skill now pierces foes not targeted by Deadeye's Mark. Damage dealt to unmarked enemies is reduced. Players can now move while using this skill. Reduced range from 1,500 to 1,200.

Please reconsider the judgments range nerf. If only Death Judgments keeps it's range it becomes a real snipe ability finishing off targets that walk out of range. The visual tell and self root should balance it nicely when the rest of the kit is on 1,200 range. The worst it could be abused is spawning stealth and 1 malice judgments on 1500 range, which seems manageable for the person on the receiving end.

Keeping the one big sniper shot on long range, while nerfing the range of Rifle seems the perfect opportunity to give the class a sniper feel without being oppressive. Also Death's Judgment doesn't profit from the kneel change. So cutting the range to confirm with uniform range on the weapon set seems counterproductive.

[Elessaria.9142]

1 hour ago, Seneca.6319 said:

Please do not make Alacrity dependent on clones on Staff Mirage. That's just bonkers. Out of all the things that you could rework on Mesmer you choose to mess with the one thing that actually works well. If anything make it such that the clones do not provide alacrity but instead increase the range around the mesmer to 600. Right now it's 360, a joke comparing to other specs.

Alac Chrono is still not a competitive build comparing to other specs that give alacrity. And now you want to completely mess up the Staff Alac Mirage. What is wrong with you ANet? Who makes these decisions? Do you even think about them ?

Just leave Mirage as it is right now, we're good with that. Damage is decent and the spec has a place in raid groups. If you nerf it it's going to end up like Reaper... God rest the soul of the poor Reaper, a entirely dead spec that has no place anywhere in the game.

 

I'm seriously considering quitting this game if more of these nerfs masked as "balance patches" keep appearing. 

 

If you play Staff/Staff Mirage these changes will have zero impact on you except for the fact you can run no boon duration gear at all and still give 100% encounter uptime...

[RasSativa.5109]

The deadeye nerf will make pylonkite (the only instanced pve match were deadeye shines) harder to pull of. Reducing the playable area by roughly 25%. Making kiting north pylon harder to pull of on Deadeye.

 

But they want to make riffle more appealing in PVE...

I would say keep range on kneeling but change dps or the kneeling itself.

 

U will destroy the identity of deadeye.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

Overall I am excited to try the changes out. I like the fact that rifle deadeye is being looked at! Maybe I will play it some more and not think of it as a RP class for instanced PvE.

I am not a fan of the range nerfs though. I think that (1) if a user stays still in kneel stance for X amount of seconds after not waddling that the original range should apply and (2) that kneel stance should enter with the original range until they waddle around.

I also really really like the guardian change. I feel like it will allow guardian to be more reactive on some fights. You won't need to worry about a long cooldown for tomes so they will be used MORE instead of for emergencies only leading to more interesting gameplay. I am mostly thinking about tome 2 and 3 here.

Edited November 12, 2022 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[Malus.2184]

2 hours ago, Vahlen.9508 said:

Absolutely pathetic decisions with the Reaper. How embarrassing is it that you cannot get this spec right.

 

It's the most selfish DPS spec in the game with damage that is laughable in most competitive content.

Additionally, stop wasting time hyping these joke of balance patches up. You just end up disappointing everyone who pays attention to them. This patch was the equivalent of showing up to grandma's house on Thanksgiving expecting the full course dinner and instead getting served leftover Burger King.

If you want Reaper to be good then you have to advocate for nerfsto Reaper Shroud. Balance is a zero sum game and Shroud itself is incredibly strong. Too strong as it means that everything else has to be weaker.

A good place to start would be to reduce  the damage absorbed by 50% instead of 100% and then improve everything else.

[Rafocale.5270]

I really wish you guys would backtrack on the change to water trident, deadeye's range nerf, and the mech aoe nerf, they all just seem poorly thought out.

[theCypher.9406]

Not gonna lie...

I really like that patch and since i play quite a lot of builds and like flexibility, this one addresses a lot of things i would've liked to see earlier (including my beloved holosmith).

Tyvm. Well done imo.

Greetings
TheCypher

Edited November 12, 2022 by theCypher.9406

[Creativity.3816]

vindicator dodge animation makes me cringe

[Ferox Cerberus.6104]

As a former necro I'm very disappointed reading these notes.

 

Reaper (and necro more generally) needed a complete rework to compete with other meta builds. Instead, it seems like the dev took some random skills/traits and buffed them without logic.

 

What's the point of increasing soul barb duration? The life force will never be enough to improve reaper DPS. Nightfall CD reduction? Pointless if it's not aligned with the CD of Grasping Darkness. No significant core trait rework.

 

These changes will never give to Reaper a place among meta builds. I hope they change somenthing, since I'm not the only one disappointed.

[notebene.3190]

Would not be sad if "Elementalist Staff 1 - Fire" worked (from a damage/speed perspective) the same way "Engineer Rifle 1" works. 😬

Carry on. 😊

[nthmetal.9652]

There is a BIG danger in the change for Firebrand. We do NOT have a reliable source for stab in WvW other than Firebrand and as long as this is the case, we need FB, otherwise the game ends up in being wild pingpong.

Where is the big danger?

Quote

• The page mechanic for firebrand tomes has been reworked. Pages are now shared across all tomes and refill at a set interval instead of when summoning a tome.

We do not know:

• how many pages does a FB have after the change
• how fast do the pages refill?

we do know the cost for the skills, and some of them are at the same time very essential and costly. So depending on the regeneration of pages we might face a lack of stab.

There are several ways of how to deal with that:

• make the regeneration of pages fast enough
• give FB more than 5 pages - maybe 8?
• reduce CC overall in WvW
• give another profession reliable access to stability-share (warrior maybe?) - and note: One skill which shares one or two stacks of stability will not suffice. We will need a RELIABLE source of stab
• Or - and this is a different way - establish a "STUNBREAK META".  For this to work we'd not only group stunbreaks or good access to stunbreaks. Good access to stunbreaks is groundworks, but doesn't help as you get CC'd right away again. To deal with that you ADDITIONALLY read a GRACE PERIOD after a stunbreak, which makes you immune to CC. I don't know how big the grace period should be, but this is IMO the ONLY other way, other than stab, to get around stab. During the grace period you cannot be CC'd again, making the invest of a stunbreak worthwhile.

At the moment I see a big danger, but nothing that can't be dealt with. 🙂