November 29 Balance Update Preview

[Josiah.2967]

Please give Reaper and Chrono their crit back. Please give the crit back to the remaining power builds like you did Virtuoso.

[Avatara.1042]

15 hours ago, DtenCfour.3567 said:

A bow is good at 50yrds... a rifle 300+ yrds.  I don't think Anet shoots either weapon haha

 

How far does a magically enhanced void-based bow fire in reality?

[SehferViega.8725]

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

Thief

Deadeye

• Kneel: Increased initiative cost from 1 to 2. While kneeling, players can now move at a 75% reduced speed. Kneel is no longer canceled when you become disabled.
• Skirmisher's Shot: Reduced range from 1,500 to 1,200.
• Three Round Burst: Reduced range from 1,500 to 1,200.
• 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.

 

 

1)  Skirmisher's Shot: Skirmisher's Shot range is 1,200 right now, do you mean Spotter's Shot instead?

 

2) Kneel: I don't like this change, because you could now do not call it "kneel". Will players be able to move while using all Kneel skills now? Or only DJ?

 

3) Death's Judgement: "Damage dealt to unmarked enemies is reduced". What do you mean? Right now damage to unmarked enemies is "reduced" (due to Malice "Malice enhances the Deadeye's stealth attacks against their marked target." and Iron Sight), do you want to reduce it more? Would that affect base skill damage? That would be an unmotivated nerf.

Edited November 19, 2022 by SehferViega.8725

[Markus.6415]

14 hours ago, Drag You Down.2615 said:

That's me!!!!! TBH, I never thought I will have to play DPS one day, because supports cannot do anything meaningful in current patch. (Maybe a boon machine?) Everyone's either alive or dead (especially in strike mission or raid that kind of pve), no space for healing and shielding. Everyone only cares about boons that can provide more damage, and defense is totally a joke.

 

All you need to do is just using all your skills as quick as possible, throw them on enemy's face. Healing? No one cares, kill all the enemy is the best defense. And THAT IS SUPER BORING!!!

 

Plz, let the others show their value, not only offensive boons, but some defensive boons like protection, regeneration, resolution, and many great non-damaging conditions, and healing, shielding, and other utilities. It looks pretty much like a killing fest for now.

Eh... you always want to have 1 healer in a group or 2 healers in strikes or raids that do all the defensive boons like protection, regeneration, resulotion, barrier and shielding and other utilities? The thing is that the healers normally cover all the boons except quick or alac and maybe fury.

[Lord Warfin.1209]

3 hours ago, SehferViega.8725 said:

3) Death's Judgement: "Damage dealt to unmarked enemies is reduced". What do you mean? Right now damage to unmarked enemies is "reduced" (due to Malice "Malice enhances the Deadeye's stealth attacks against their marked target." and Iron Sight), do you want to reduce it more? Would that affect base skill damage? That would be an unmotivated nerf.

As I understand it, right now Death's Judgement only damages one single target, and if a random mob happens to step in the way of the shot then it either takes the hit or just blocks it from hitting the intended target.  With the change this attack will pierce through multiple targets until it hits the mark, doing reduced damage to the targets it goes through on the way to doing full damage to the actual target.  This is nice, but it's more of a bug fix than an actual buff.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Lord Warfin.1209

[Tipsy.5802]

Some feedback for spellbreaker in Pve;

Noticed that adrenaline does not regenerate while attacking a blocking mob, I think it should increase adrenaline ,no matter if the mob that you are hitting is blocking or not.

Maybe fullcounter needs a few alterations in pve as well;allowing players to use again in shorter timeframe if adrenaline is still there &  if fullcounter counters nothing.
I often find myself walking in hostile aoe on purpose just to trigger it too.Maybe fullcounter needs an extra effect if used but not hit during the time when active,like a daze or blind in melee range if nothing countered
Or perhaps the duration counter is active on activation needs to be increased for pve.

Natural healing; I think the "lose boons & conditions" should be multiple ticks ,2 or 3 every heal.(or at least the losing conditions should be multiple ticks ,otherwise the 1 time heal vs the cooldown period isn't really justified imo;cause conditions can be reapplied in a sec , & the amount the one time heal heals vs the amount of damage condition can do after reapplied is not in proportion considering the long cooldown of natural healing)
The heal can stay 1 heal ,or healing for an extra small amount while hitting a target.(if healing for small amount extra while hitting target it could perhaps justify the longer cooldown,but even then conditions are easily reapplied & nulify the benefit of this skill almost immediately for the skill in its current form) Should mention that i haven't unlocked all the traits yet;including the one where the offhand dagger attacks would heal based on crit. But an observation purely of the specilization-specific heal on its own. Also that trait https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sun_and_Moon_Style is almost mandatory if it makes up for the longer cooldown of the specialization specific heal. Perhaps diversity & build choice demands another solution.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Tipsy.5802

[JTGuevara.9018]

So...where's that "balance philosophy" at?

[Drag You Down.2615]

8 hours ago, Markus.6415 said:

except quick or alac

but if you don't have quick or alac in your build, you are done as a healer. They are REQUIRED for most groups, especially alac. So Druid must have spirits, Tempest must have LS, and Mech is much more needed and welcomed than Scrapper because Mech has alac, but Scrapper only has quick.

 

If you dont have defensive boons or have less healing and shielding, people will just say "fine, just grab your alac and quick."

 

So I tried Harbinger healer, with very inconsistent healing, but mostly doing DPS and offensive boons, and it is welcomed......

Edited November 20, 2022 by Drag You Down.2615

[Ashford.8540]

Just a suggestion ANet, but have you considered instead of balancing around boons you....gutted boons instead? Imagine boons not stacking for example. Then you could allocate specific boons to support classes and just....let pure DPS be a thing in groups. I know kinda nuts and out there.

[Wonderly.1324]

My concern with the guardian changes is with the usability and visibility of the activated virtue effects. With other guardian specializations it always made sense because the virtues did one thing when activated, and worked similarily to signets. With firebrand it was always cumbersome because the active effects of virtues are tied to accessing your tome skills, which means you don't have the flexibility of using the book skills independently from the activated effects. But at least it was transparent in that you would know exactly when your active effect/tomes would become available, because of the cooldown counter.
 

Now that there will no longer be any cooldowns to entering tomes, but there obviously still will be a cooldown on the activated virtue effects, I can see this being handled one of two ways:
1) The activated virtue effect remains coupled to accessing tome skills but retains an invisible internal cooldown
2) The activated virtue effect is completely uncoupled from accessing tome skills and retains a cooldown just like any of the tome skills. So for example, pressing F3 once will show all your tome of courage skills and the activated effect of tome of courage and their respective cooldowns- from there you can use any of the tome skills or press F3 again to trigger the active effect of courage

IMO the second option would be far better implementation, as the first one makes the active effect cumbersome to use to the point where it becomes almost meaningless, like something that just passively happens every once in a while. Of course there's a third even worse implmentation that I hardly dare speak of- "firebrand needs more tradoff, remove active effects from virtues completely" which would result in a riot. So I guess my point is, I really hope Anet will go with option 2, to completely separate triggering the active effect of virtues from accessing the tome skills.

[Elan.6159]

@Cal Cohen.2358

 

Dear Cal, 

 

Apologies for the direct ping - I would imagine 30 pages of feedback can be overwhelming for you and your team; however, I wanted to give some feedback specifically about healbrand. 

 

In general, I am curious how the shared pages will work out as a mechanic - I think that could be really fun to work with. However, the increased page cost and the cooldowns concern me, not as much for CFB or qFB, but more so for healbrand since healbrand (unlike the others) does not rely on a prescriptive rotation per se. Yes, it has openers to maximize boons/healing potential, but overall it is a spec that requires you to support your team in real time through flexibility (and knowledge of skills), be constantly cognizant of your teams boons/hp, and to understand the fights intimately for pressure points on the group- meaning HB (unlike the others) needs immediate, continued access to specific tomes in certain situations that is not possible (or extremely difficult) with the current page cost/cooldown of skills. The way your changes stand now would force hb to begin to adapt to a prescriptive rotation, demand the ability to keep multiple skill cooldowns (that you can't see) in mind on top of everything else you need to do for your team (as opposed to seeing the cooldowns of the tomes themselves), and to not be able to give the boon suite needed that your team needs. 

 

Again, that's not to say I don't like the shared page resource idea. But as someone who leads a group weekly in raids, strikes, fractals and other content, I can tell you now that HAM will be the preferred healer and boon giver because it will simply be more reliable. I would highly recommend that you take a group into t4 fractals or CM's with healbrand and try it out (not on god mode). Since the release of this patch preview I have been keeping track of page usage in endgame content, and I can say that HB will suffer from this, and likely just make mech dominant. (CFB and qFB I'm reserving judgement on). 

 

Finally, I would like to point out that FB in general, although its skills can be seen as OP, are often shared with the group - it is not a selfish e-spec like Willbender. Also, it has the unfortunate privilege of being one of the few standing PoF e-specs not nerfed to Narnia over the years, so by simple comparison alone it can seem overwhelmingly OP, because, well, it still works. I can understand people who play other specs that have been nerfed when they hunger for FB nerfs, but if you have your legs cut off, its easier to criticize others for just having a hand cut off. If you want tradeoffs for FB I'd recommend going back to the initial inception of the spec where you had to charge mantra's for example and really think about the sacrifice of the last charge, lest you get a massive cooldown. That mechanic was actually fun and challenging (also the flavor animations and voice elements).

 

Overall, the new change with shared pages could work, but currently I think it would break some build/playstyles that are integral to group/endgame content (I dont think it will impact open world pve as much though). I would just ask that you try to stay true to the class/spec (and do the same for the other classes/specs that have expressed concern in this thread) and dont try to reinvent things that aren't broken, or continue down the path of homogenization. 

 

Thanks for your time.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Elan.6159

[Stand The Wall.6987]

pls consider making the firebrand tome 1 skill not cost any pages and balance them around that. they are auto attacks after all.

[Lazze.9870]

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

Rounding out the ranger updates are some improvements to druid's healing in WvW. We've seen more druids being played since the October update, but we think it could still use a slight bump to solidify its place as a viable support pick.

Cool. Some druid feedback:

If you want druid to be a more "viable option" for support in PvP as well, you need to lower the PvP specific avatar cooldown. 10s like it is in PvE/WvW is arguably too low, but 15s which it was pre-PoF seems like a good middle ground. 

As for any additional buffs to support druid builds down the line, I think they mainly should be done through tweaking Nature Magic. Some examples would be: have Evasive Purity cleanse allies around you, give Invigorating Bond a radius increase and the power to healing power modifier from Instinctive Reaction, which leaves room for a IR rework into something more interesting. Windborne Notes should arguably heal anyone you give regen to, not just yourself. 

The feeling you get when building a druid in competetive modes is that your two core traitlines could almost be a combination of anything, which on on side is cool, but none of them pushes a support build to the next level, like how Tempest gets massive cleansing potential from picking fire when tempest and water traits already provide a lot for a support build (but they could still easily pick earth, arcane or even air for other options). Druid is a bit lopsided in that regard. You pick Beastmastery for regen on shouts and sturdier pets, you pick Nature Magic for some regen and heals, Skirmishing for reduced cooldown on Healing Spring + Quickdraw. It feels more like you're picking the least worse option, and I think that's always gonna be the case for a support druid given how core ranger is, but it wouldn't hurt to even it out a little bit and give core ranger some ally friendly options anyway. Nature Magic itself doesn't see much play outside of enabling spirits in PvE atm, so it's definetely worthy of some love.

-----

Also, a minor nuisance which might or might not be worth mentioning: when you changed spotter into providing fury instead of a flat precision boost to allies, you gave the professions back crit chance through their personal traits. What I can't really fathom is that, while warrior gets a flat crit chance increase to a trait across all three gamemodes, the class that actually provided the buff and thus lost a game mode universal way to buff its own precision outside of fury, ranger, only gets it back via a trait that is split between PvE and PvP/WvW. So, my suggestion is simply this: because warrior is allowed to have additional effects with their Empower Allies trait, why not undo the Vicious Quarry PvE only buff and instead make Spotter grant ranger personal precision on top of providing fury? It's a minor thing, but it just seems like a no-brainer to me as you're already allowing these former stat boost traits to have a secondary function.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Lazze.9870

[Soilder.3607]

1 hour ago, Lazze.9870 said:

Nature Magic. Some examples would be: have Evasive Purity cleanse allies around you, give Invigorating Bond a radius increase and the power to healing power modifier from Instinctive Reaction, which leaves room for a IR rework into something more interesting. Windborne Notes should arguably heal anyone you give regen to, not just yourself. 

The feeling you get when building a druid in competetive modes is that your two core traitlines could almost be a combination of anything, which on on side is cool, but none of them pushes a support build to the next level, like how Tempest gets massive cleansing potential from picking fire when tempest and water traits already provide a lot for a support build (but they could still easily pick earth, arcane or even air for other options). Druid is a bit lopsided in that regard. You pick Beastmastery for regen on shouts and sturdier pets, you pick Nature Magic for some regen and heals, Skirmishing for reduced cooldown on Healing Spring + Quickdraw. It feels more like you're picking the least worse option, and I think that's always gonna be the case for a support druid given how core ranger is, but it wouldn't hurt to even it out a little bit and give core ranger some ally friendly options anyway. Nature Magic itself doesn't see much play outside of enabling spirits in PvE atm, so it's definetely worthy of some love.

Yea, Nature Magic is a great candidate for a supportive rework. Most of what it does (atleast in terms of PvP/WvW) is unsubstantial, and for a supportive traitline quite a bit of it is selfish (Evasive Purity, as you mentioned, affecting only the Ranger, Protective Ward giving self prot only etc etc).

 

Obviously in PvE the traitline is carried through Nature's Vengeance, but the other grandmaster traits are not nearly as build defining. Invigorating Bond would be a pretty good candidate for a rework to give it some synergy with Druid. Right now it's just a flavorless heal. 

[KriegNier.3842]

The Reaper changes are a Shame!!

[Argonil.6970]

On 11/13/2022 at 8:38 PM, Freedoms.2635 said:

after watching and listening to the broad cast and Muk / teapot this really only forces you to play staff/ staff for alac uptime while losing some dps as you can no longer sustain the alac uptime playing Staff / axe +.  it is a nerf but not as bad as i once thought. because this means all your staff clones will no longer pulse there boons but instead you get there pulse so 1 second plus 3 clones is 4 seconds of up time plus the 8 stacks of might. this was entended to make you choose damage or boon support but not both.  

Sustaining alac uptime playing staff / axe doesn't seem feasible anyway? At the very least you'll need full concentration gear and to sit on staff for longer than what's optimal for DPS. But it completely misses the point because the change will prevent you from applying alac on the move. You can't keep alac up while running through a fractal so the spec is almost useless for fractals. Refer to my original post.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Argonil.6970

[intomatar.4539]

Good afternoon/evening everyone. Once the Battle Scarred were weakened (Life Siphon Healing). In PvE, this did not affect much and ensured better survival. Why not bring it back or even improve this skill. And in pvp leave it as it is now.

And I would like more ability to adjust damage from conditions and flexible traits for Renegade line.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Into.2380

[AkaviriTatsuya.5248]

Uuuhh, Renegade Utility skills need to be remade since the only useful skills are "Darkrazor's Daring (Defiance Break)" and "Icerazor's Ire"...

[Awn.1327]

Hi,

 

I like the direction those changes are going. Good first step.

 

Small-ish idea for catalyst: energy for the jade sphere could regenerate slowly outside of combat (maybe up to 10 energy or so max). That way, you could apply the most important boons right away when combat starts and also react a little better when  something/someone gets you in combat from range.

 

Would be nice if you could consider this.

 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

oh yeah.... i almost forgot:

 

engineer grenades still need red ground indicators for counterplay (or trails like the arrow trail animations.)  grenades are for all practical purposes invisible to targets (especially in WvW zerg vs Zerg combat) and practically unavoidable as a result. it's like rifle Deadeyes without the big red mark when f1'd, or like Longbow Sick 'em rangers without arrow trails.

[Will.9785]

Death's Judgement piercing is a big nothing-burger.  In order for piercing to work, the marked target has to be behind other enemies... but if the marked target is behind other enemies you can't hit them with your other skills, which means you don't build malice.  It's like the balance team thought "oh, piercing would be cool" so they added it but they didn't think it through.  Everything should pierce.

And bring back Ricochet for P/P thief.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Will.9785

[raubvogel.5071]

If you add this, to honor active gaming:

Quote

Mechanical Genius: Combat attribute bonuses to the mech are now reduced by 50% if the engineer is more than a range of 360 away from the mech for a certain amount of time.

Then please punish players for AFK-Farming as well. Add something like, if player is not moving and is not using skill #1 for a period of time, player and players pet don't deal damage!

And please add Mechanical Genius to the other pet professions as well, to make it fair. Revenant -> Ghosts, Mesmer -> Illusions, Elementalist -> Elementals, Engineer -> Turrets, Necromancer -> Minions, etc.

Edited November 22, 2022 by raubvogel.5071

[Wally.4125]

Quote

Mechanical Genius: Combat attribute bonuses to the mech are now reduced by 50% if the engineer is more than a range of 360 away from the mech for a certain amount of time.

Such a nerf that feels more like a huge slap in the face of the engineer players. Rifle range is 1265, Shortbow range is 1050, Pistol range is 1080 etc.

 

This "update" is forcing mechanists to start playing with a melee weapon. I hate when games do such "updates". I returned back to the game after a long pause just to try mechanist with a rifle and now i see this..

Increase the range from 360 !!!

[Nash.2681]

6 hours ago, Wally.4125 said:

Such a nerf that feels more like a huge slap in the face of the engineer players. Rifle range is 1265, Shortbow range is 1050, Pistol range is 1080 etc.

 

This "update" is forcing mechanists to start playing with a melee weapon. I hate when games do such "updates". I returned back to the game after a long pause just to try mechanist with a rifle and now i see this..

Increase the range from 360 !!!

You're aware that you should stay close to the mech, not neccesarily close to the enemy? And look at it this way: you now get motivation to pay a bit more attention to the game = less time to eat junk food or candy while the game plays itself = good for your health. 🙂

Edited November 22, 2022 by Nash.2681
typo

[epoc.7941]

Are the rifle range changes for deadeye pve only I know y’all mentioned the changes being for pve earlier but I just want to make sure.