November 29 Balance Update Preview

[Razor.9305]

Very impressed with your update to Herald facet cooldowns, it improves quality of life so much! These changes probably make Herald way too strong in PvE, but better reduce the coefficients instead of the cooldowns.

Ideally, we'd go back to 10 seconds on Elemental Blast as it was before, but I can live with this. Here's to hoping you stealth-fix Core Value as well 😉

I do miss some attention on Renegade, playing it as a boon support still requires over 80% boon duration and that's neither fun nor easy to gear for most players. This could pretty much be improved with increasing Righteous Rebel's effectiveness.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Razor.9305

[Chyro.1462]

Tempest improvements where?

[VictorLeal.4102]

I honestly expected more from the reaper... sad

[Demon Puppet.6873]

I would really like to see the Corrupt Boon change also done in WvW. It would help the skill be useful in a lot more situations 

Also I would REALLY like to see Epidemic either fixed to work on Downstate enemies and Resist no longer block it OR it be reworked in how it functions entirely  

[KitLongridge.8346]

My favourite part of the balance patch was seeing some QoL buffs to alac tempest.  Making it pulse instead of backloafing it into a 4 second interruptible cast.  Oh wait.  Nevermind....... guess it wasn't just the whole community asking for it........

[cat.8975]

Dang, was hoping for a slight cd reduction on Rushing Justice (PvE), but the rest of these WB buffs are great.

Edited November 11, 2022 by cat.8975

[Whiskers.7346]

This is in response to comments made by Cal about Fervent Force.

 

While the Untamed changes are nice, I really hope you'll come to understand that Fervent Force is what makes Untamed fun. That grandmaster turns what would be a fairly boring class in PvE into one of the most exciting and responsive classes in the game to play.

 

While Fervent Force on paper might seem overtuned, in practice, it really isn't. The problem with Untamed isn't Fervent Force pushing other builds out. The other grandmasters are just, on their face, very bad. If you want an easier build for Untamed to exist, then yes, buff Ferocious Symbiosis more (probably a lot more). But please do not ruin one of the most unique playstyles in the game just because you feel like you should.

The Fervent Force build should be allowed to exist. The meta isn't being skewed by Fervent Force, and there aren't people clamoring to play Untamed because of it. It's powerful, yes. But just because it's very powerful doesn't mean that it HAS to be nerfed.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Whiskers.7346

[Tyrian.7420]

So with the changes to water trident into a self heal rather than a group heal. You took away one of the few healing options that actually worked with the warhorn.

Is there any buffs on the support side for tempest with the dagger?
 

[Dahkeus.8243]

Great stream today.  Just wanted to give some feedback on a blind spot within Revenant (pun totally intended):

 

Rev still struggles for a support role in PvE, even though it has a ton of great tools that should make it strong.  However, the Vindicator healing/support doesn't give either quickness or alacrity, so it doesn't have enough role compression to be viable.  At the same time, heal herald and renegade still need some love to be able to utilize their tools. 

 

Nerfing firebrand inherently evens the field a bit, but rev support builds still have very limited access to providing stability without sacrificing an entire legend and they have no barrier or aegis, so they don't have any damage prevention.

 

I'd love to see the support aspects of Rev utilized in PvE, but it still needs a bit more to get there.  Hope to see this addressed in future patches.  Thanks for reading.

[Zsoak.5409]

6 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Could you please explain this:

• Enchantment Collapse: Increased internal cooldown from 0.99 to 1.04 in WvW only.

Still poring over it but I noticed this in the stream too.

(reserved post)

WoD boon removal is on 1 sec ICD, this just makes Enchantment Collapse trigger on every 2nd tick, instead of every thick. Basically making WoD more dead than it already is

Edited November 11, 2022 by Zsoak.5409

[Arilozen.2756]

It feels like the nerf to Deadeye's range seems.. pointless? Deadeye is already one of the least played specs. Longbow rangers outranging the 'sniper' class is a little comical. The other changes to thief are fine, but I'd say leave the range in check.

[soul.9651]

7 minutes ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

*Sad reaper noises*

They just buffed it......... 

[HotDelirium.7984]

The staff mirage change is a bit much. I'm glad the boons are still centered on character because staff clones are sometimes far away however shattering is a cornerstone for mesmers so this reduces build diversity a bit and relying on flimsy clones that disappear moment to moment will make certain battles scale poorly.

[Mike.7983]

feels like todays live stream was pick a nerf out of the hat, and the dps buffs are so low it wont change the meta, if your class is trash it remains trash

 

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

Oh yay... thief changes. I knew to expect nothing good from balance updates. I learned to expect the worse. So I can finally be pleasantly surprised after 10yrs of repeated shafting.  It's been a constant frustration for thief.

But this is disappointment beyond all friggin comprehension. Still once again, you ignore some very outstanding problems with thief that we would like you to fix first. Which is initiative costs, over dependency on trickery, and our initiative regeneration. Our ability to compete with other professions who have FAR more tools to work with. And what we get?! Deadeye practically becoming even more useless with an RP walk speed, AND reduced range. No one thought this through, i can see that. Because it is legit faster for the deadeye to just stand up. Move, and hunker down. Than to RP walk to not only get closer... but to cover for the FRIGGEN 300 range loss.

PVE changes that are nice... but doesn't fix anything else wrong with the other gamemodes thief has to struggle through.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

Thanks u for the patch. Some things to be desired but I think u guys are doing a great job so far. Lots of good things have already happened relative the patches earlier in the year... god bless... mmorpg balancing with these many skills is probably really tough. Have to balance for wvw roaming and zerging, pvp, and pve... Thats a lot... Good luck. 

 

[soulknight.9620]

Anet is this for real? You buff a weapon on ele that is currently doing the most damage (hi scepter) and not buffing a melee clunky-fested poking stick that is sword? Like really? This is beyond even for me. Every ele on the forum was screaming 24/7 that sword is underperforming by a lot atm. Literary everyone. 

[TripleDutch.3467]

Dear anet,

 

Seeing these scepter changes I am starting to question if pve heal tempest was taken into account as having fire scepter 2 follow the boss makes it much more difficult to use it for blasting might. This is quite the problem as fire overload (the main might source) still has a radius of 180 making it very likely people wont be getting might from it. Scepter was the fix for this problem, but now that fix seems to be getting removed. I hope you reconcider and take heal tempest's might into account and maybe give fire overload a 360 radius to counteract this nerf.

Kind regards,
Dán
The raid tempest guy

[Whiskers.7346]

On Deadeye, the changes are baffling to say the least.

I'm not exactly certain how I'm supposed to get enough Malice to actually use Death's Judgement if the other rifle skills aren't piercing too. All of rifle needs to pierce for the class to work, not just Death's Judgement.

[Mike.7983]

Just now, HotDelirium.7984 said:

The staff mirage change is a bit much. I'm glad the boons are still centered on character because staff clones are sometimes far away however shattering is a cornerstone for mesmers so this reduces build diversity a bit and relying on flimsy clones that disappear moment to moment will make certain battles scale poorly.

Ya really why did they kill the boons on mirage staff, it isnt nearly as op as a dps.  Hoping the clones + self keeps 8 might still otherwise impossible to hit 25 self sustained.

[BlackBakery.6153]

First: THANK YOU FOR THE PREVIEW STREAMS & Opportunity to provide feedback. It means a ton. ❤️

 

1st: Thank you for the [Bloody Roar] Fix!

 

2nd, Please This: "While kneeling, players can now move at a 75% reduced speed." But in Dragon Trigger Stance.

 

3rd : [Daring Dragon] Is still bugged since the Oct. 8th Patch & makes you consume more flow than previously. (This can be most easily seen if you build 100 flow & try to spam as many Dragon Slashes as you can.) -- You could previously get 10+ especially with more flow generation spec'd, But can currently only get 7-8. And ALSO the cool down still reverts to 0 and makes Dragon Trigger available again if you organically run out of flow like this. Making it *more bugged* than previously. :(

 

Thank you! 😄

[QuinQuin.9136]

So there will still be no key boon for HealVindicator?

 

I'll wait until the next update then.

[Infusion.7149]

2 minutes ago, Zsoak.5409 said:

WoD boon removal is on 1 sec ICD, this just makes Enchantment Collapse trigger on every 2nd tick, instead of every thick. Basically making WoD more dead than it already is

This still doesn't make sense. Enchantment Collapse is non-damaging and the post is saying cooldown not coefficient.
Enchantment Collapse - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

Is what you're implying the post was supposed to read "Winds of Disenchantment" and damage coefficient?

[Jojo.6590]

 

New input:

Virtuoso still struggles massively in wvw/pvp especially the dagger weapon. 

Change/add to deadly blades:

After a successful critical hit your next shatter (ALL 5 BLADES) is unblockable and cant be reflected. Once the shatter is used this affect then has goes on cooldown with a CD of 10-15 sec.

Rest of my thoughts sadly still apply to Virtuoso.

 

Repeating: 

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:

We desperately need a way to counter projectile denial skills as these skills completely shut this specialization down.

Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP 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. Making it into a port of some kind would be great. An example would be skill 3 on p/d thief (shadow strike/repeater) or a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill. This would be great as it would pair well with the block/evade traits.

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 Shower 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 and utilities.

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. As others have mentioned removing the cast time OR removing the requirement to face the target would be a good fix to this. 

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 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.

 

Mirage:

The issue here is once again distortion and signet of illusions as well as a handful of runes, sigils, and food that increase endurance regeneration.  

Infinite Horizon needs to be made baseline so that the ambush skills can be balanced more appropriately. The ambush skills keep getting nerfed because of this trait. This forces players to pick up this trait due to the lack of damage from the ambush skills with out it. 

An idea for Mirage would be to change distortion to a shatter that consumes clones and for each clone consumed gain x amount of endurance back. This works really well given IH is made baseline in that you'll now need to chose between destroying your clones for survivability causing you to lose damage or keep them risking losing the fight but gain more damage protentional through IH.

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 the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and in competitive game modes (PVP/WVW).

Mobility needs to be toned down massively. Both Memser and Thief have been nerfed a plethora of times due to their mobility. Now we have other classes that have more mobility (and range in some cases) than Mesmer while others are on par with Thief while also having stealth and high/er damage and range too.

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 using 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 November 11, 2022 by Jojo.6590
Formating

[WindsOfRebellion.3457]

Range reduction on Deadeye was unnecessary. It doesn't make a lot of sense to for it to be 1200 when Ranger longbow can hit 1500