November 29 Balance Update Preview

[Gesbo.6420]

17 minutes ago, Mike.7983 said:

• Chaos Vortex: Clones using this skill will now grant the same boons in an area of effect around the mesmer instead of around the clones themselves. Reduced alacrity duration from 2.5 seconds to 1 second. Reduced might stacks from 8 to 2.

This is a hard nerf right?

 

Not nesceserily numberwise but I think it will be a little dificult positioning your clones around your party 😕 Good luck running this efficiently in Sunqua Peak.

[Shade.8971]

1. Keen Observer and Twin Fangs needs threshold drop like rev got. This is just fair and necessary and honestly the MOST important thing needed

2. Deadeye range nerf is not necessary, you're better off adjusting the movement speed (in PVP ONLY)

3. Rifle getting more pierce is pointless if rifle 3, the main malice builder, doesn't get it, again split this

4. Why reduce damage on the unmarked targets? Rifle cleave too strong? Really?

5. 33% damage reduction is a good start for shroud, but I guess we'll have to wait for the CS fix. The entire first set of traits on specter just need help

6. I don't expect D/D DE being kept at this bench with these changes. Thief damage is fine, fix QoL

Edited November 11, 2022 by Shade.8971

[enkeny.6937]

2 hours ago, Double Tap said:

Wild Swing: This skill now grants barrier when striking an enemy.

2 hours ago, Double Tap said:

Savage Shock Wave: The first strike of this skill now applies weakness instead of immobilize. The second strike of this skill now applies immobilize instead of weakness. This skill now grants protection to the user. Reduced casting time from 1 second to 0.75 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 18 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Can we grants similar effects to our pets to? I mean the barrier and protection. Hammer is missing skills that affect pets.

[Travis the Terrible.4739]

Nerfing enchantment collapse is such a silly thing to do, yet another nerf to bubble. Just merge loss aversion with enchantment collapse, replace loss aversion with something like the trait for dragon hunter traps that makes meditations recharge 20% faster and applies vulnerability to foes hit with it or something.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Travis the Terrible.4739

[Jojo.6590]

4 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

So are Chrono Alac and Quick builds working as intended?  Are these builds meant to be not viable in any game mode?  With exception to WvW where we only need 1 or 2 per zerg......

I'm pretty disappointed that these builds appear to be forgotten after you pulled all the utility out of them and gave it to other professions who are now the defacto boon providers. 

 

Is it true you hate Mesmers?  Asking for a friend......

You beat me to it.

[Nemmm.9120]

As an Engineer enjoyer, the changes to Holo are very much appreciated, but I am not quite certain that they're that big a deal to make Holo that much more competitive. But i will have to wait and see for how they work out. I'd like to say that Holo's main issue, for me at least, has always been its relative squishyness. While the 100% heat changes will help in these regards ... they don't really fix the core problem. But I also realize how well a holo does is a combination of experience and practice, so it might not be quite as bad as the first impression. It could be also be worse, though!

 

I am massively disappointed by Scrapper changes. While it is a fun specc to play (solo and as a commander in PvE), I would have hoped for an increase in quickness buff duration in PvE, to make it so I am not "forced" to use the gyros on cooldown to make sure my Quickness uptime is stable.  Since, you know, the DPS is already sort of meh, and aside from Quickness, Scrapper is a far cry from what it used to be.

 

The changes to Mechanical genius must be a bad joke. There's other, far better ways, to make the public realise how middling mechanist is outside specific circumstances. The main issue here is how easy to use mechanist is. This change will not stop the average player from playing how they used to. And it will, thusly, probably achieve nothing but annoy players that actually care for their engineer. So congrats on that, I suppose.

 

The changes to warrior have me curious.

 

I also laughed quite a lot about the FB changes. The entire elite spec has been in the way of the balancing, you dance around it every time. I'm half expecting these changes to turn into a big buff and make FB even less balanced.

[Mike.7983]

1 minute ago, Gesbo.6420 said:

Not nesceserily numberwise but I think it will be a little dificult positioning your clones around your party 😕 Good luck running this efficiently in Sunqua Peak.

It says the clones will trigger the buff around the mesmer, as long as all 3 clones out should make no diff, the clones not pulsing might the center of the mesmer should be.

[OlolWarDrood.7954]

 

Quote

Firebrands will now need to more carefully decide how they spend their pages, whether they want to focus on damage, support, or a mix of both.

-> The person who wrote this never played FB of his life 100% 🐒

FB was never incredibly fun to play in WvW, you are making this even worse. The class is literally 10 times weaker and I wonder what fun is left. 💀

In WvW, we go from a FB who can play lots of spells in different tomes to a FB who will just do:
- Use his 4 in f3 every 20 secs
- Use his 5 in f3 every 25 secs

Exceptional gameplay incoming...

Edited November 11, 2022 by OlolWarDrood.7954

[HotDelirium.7984]

11 minutes ago, Mike.7983 said:

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.

well as written its a bit high risk high reward moment to moment. With all clones out you still get 8 sec of might and now 4 sec of alac instead of 2.5 so thats a buff BUT they gota be out and shattering will be a no no. It's gona be inconsistant on smaller enemies too since clones shatter after its dead.

[Doggie.3184]

7 minutes ago, VaegaVic.6394 said:

RIP my Deadeye. 

The range reduction was totally unnecessary. 

It's a sniper rifle!

Clearly primitive longbow technology is far more effective than our modern sniper rifles.

[i hatechosingnames.2015]

Sword of Justice: Increased power coefficient per strike from 0.72 to 0.8 in PvE only.

 

Bridgette is going to be even more of a delight to meet in Caudecus's Manor...

[Bookah pls.9352]

10 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

They just buffed it......... 

Adding a single point of damage to an ability is also a buff, doesn't mean it's impactful, worthwhile or useful.

These were not the buffs reaper needed or wanted.

[Mike.7983]

Just now, HotDelirium.7984 said:

well as written its a bit high risk high reward moment to moment. With all clones out you still get 8 sec of might and now 4 sec of alac instead of 2.5 so thats a buff BUT they gota be out and shattering will be a no no. It's gona be inconsistant on smaller enemies too since clones shatter after its dead.

Yeah for trash fights it will suck, but staff mirage is horrid for trash, for longer fights should be a overall buff on the alac.

[Tessolor.7825]

Alright, about DE changes, mostly, as I deeply care about my little thief...
Why we get pierce on Death's Judgement and not on Three Round burst as well is puzzling - yes it is essential to reset malice loops, but you don't get no malice without TRB critting in the first place. Damage of TRB is not the issue cause you won't get bonuses from mark on the targets you will pierce, so pretty minor thing. Second is... Why 1500 range on Mark and 1200 on the skills? Could argue realism, but that is not the case tbh... Then, we had a lot of passives on other classes change for easier life in terms of crit and we (thiefs) still have to rely to keep 90% of hp to get 15% crit through Keen Observer ? Not to mention other painful stuff that is coming from Critical Strikes traitline (Twin Strikes)

[Elazul.6495]

I was expecting a bigger Reaper buff, but something is better than nothing. Honestly, I feel like I choose the wrong class and it's a bit depressing being told constantly how bad my classes dps is and we're only good for Open World... which everyone is anyways.

[zakkles.4158]

PVE elementalist:

 

❌ staff buffs

❌ sword buffs

❌ core util buffs

❌ conjure rework

❌ summons persist after mounting

❌ pulse alac on overload

 

✔️ scepter 3 heal removed

[anbujackson.9564]

Thanks for the stream.

Not gonna lie I was very excited about the holo buffs... until I realized its mostly for sword. PBM rifle cant compete anymore.

Support chrono is still pretty ouch, in any form really.

[soul.9651]

9 minutes ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

Adding a single point of damage to an ability is also a buff, doesn't mean it's impactful, worthwhile or useful.

These were not the buffs reaper needed or wanted.

Done all maths yourself? Plus they said there will be more changes if needed they wanna see how it goes. People should be finally thanking anet that they also start explaining every single change they make, seen any balance patch streams from the old balance team? Ofc no because old balance team didnt even care about games balance, and now we at least are moving towards right direction.

Edited November 11, 2022 by soul.9651

[Sigwarades.1240]

This is a nice start but I was hoping for more damage buffs to Chronomancer, Reaper, Dragon Hunter and Willbender, fixing the Vindicator dodge bug, some changes to how utilities are, some traits (Torch 4 on Guardian) and how boon applications are done with some specs but it's something at least.  But overall it wasn't bad.

[Solstice.5790]

So I do get the shared page system on tomes for Firebrand, to add in tradeoffs for using the versatility the class has.

And the increased page cost is... to simply make every aspect of Firebrand worse? It is definitely making the current rotation for tome burst impossible, so the "over-performing" elite spec will do even less damage.

 

"Firebrand is over-performing, it can do too many things".

If that's the main design guideline without looking at how well and under what circumstances... No use talking about it anymore I guess.

 

Also, you forgot (Support)Specter.

[Venport.3925]

Deadeye range nerf was 100% unnecessary

Also if we have to keep the slow move speed the walking animation should be crawling for higher quality rp

Hoping to see you guys address acro/trickery/other thief traitlines in the future, overall very underwhelming patch for thieves

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

Thanks for this guys; the transparency is much appreciated!!

 

Regarding Warrior Changes:

 

Not gonna lie, I'm a little disappointed.  Berserker still sucks in competitive modes, there's a pile of bad weapons and utilities, Arms needs a rework...the list goes on.  I'm going to chalk it up to ANet having limited bandwidth and needing to focus on other classes after Warrior got a good look in the 10/4 patch.  But still...Ouch.

 

What concerns me the most, though, is the state of Bladesworn in competitive modes.  You said in the livestream preceding the 10/4 patch that "it is not our intent to delete Bladesworn from the meta," and, "[if it does get deleted from the meta], we will buff it."  Well, it's been deleted from competitive modes.  Turns out that asking a spec to stand still for 2.5s in the middle of a warzone without a readily available source of stability is...debilitating.  

 

If nothing else, please put a stack or 2 of stability on Triggerguard, and reduce CD to 40s.  That way, BS has at least a little access to stability to perform its main mechanic.

 

Thank you!!

Edited November 12, 2022 by CalmTheStorm.2364

[Lily.1935]

2 hours ago, Double Tap said:

Necromancer

Power reaper is another damage build that we've sought to improve in PvE, bringing up some of its less potent skills in Reaper Shroud and giving it a bit more consistent pressure while out of shroud.

On the competitive side, we've adjusted a few less used utility skills. Corrupt Boon is a skill that saw significant reductions after it gained a second ammunition and hasn't seen a ton of play since then. We've removed the extra charge in PvP and bumped up the number of corrupts to make the skill a more potent threat.

Core

• Corrupt Boon (PvP only): Reduced ammunition from 2 to 1. Increased number of boons converted into conditions from 2 to 5. Increased cooldown from 24 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Spectral Armor (PvP and WvW): Reduced duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Signet of Spite: Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Signet of the Locust (PvP and WvW): Increased healing per target struck from 500 to 800. Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
• Soul Barbs: Increased duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only.

Reaper

• Chilling Nova: Reduced cooldown from 8 seconds to 3 seconds in PvE only.
• Nightfall: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only.
• Dusk Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.2 in PvE only.
• Chilling Scythe: This skill now reduces the recharge of Gravedigger when striking an enemy.
• Death's Charge (PvE only): Increased power coefficient of initial strikes from 0.125 to 0.25. Fixed an issue that prevented the damage of the initial strikes from being listed on this skill's tooltip.
• Executioner's Scythe (PvE only): Increased power coefficient against targets at or above 50% health to 3.0. Increased power coefficient against targets below 50% health to 4.0. Increased power coefficient against targets below 25% to 5.0.

Necromancer is my area of expertise so allow me to critique this quite a bit since there is a lot that just isn't here. And some unseen consequences of this change.

The reaper changes we see here are nice but in total this might be a 1k damage increase. So about 3.5% damage increase. It might be higher, like a 2 or 3k damage increase but that highly depends on how long the rotation can sustain itself in shroud. The problems with reaper aren't its shroud damage. its shroud damage is actually quite good. Very respectable. The problems we see is out of shroud which these will not adjust for.

Its hard to predict exactly how much this will change because the reason we drop out of shroud at 10 seconds is because of Soul barbs. 15 seconds might mean we're in shroud longer but that comes with complications. Reaper's life force is pretty fragile as it is now and even bit of additional time in shroud could mean a depleted life force pool which might mean that the 5 extra seconds isn't worth it in the long run. IF that's the case the damage increase is not anywhere near enough to make this a competitive DPS. It just has too many weaknesses inherent to its design. Although reaper has fantastic CC, so does holosmith, scrapper and mechanist and they don't share nearly as many weaknesses. So Reaper needs to be enticing as a heavy CC DPS to compete and these changes likely wont do it.

So, The real issue isn't with reaper. Reaper has good damage modifiers and their skills have good coefficience. The problem is with core necromancer traits which vastly under preform. When we look at reaper's most important damage modifiers, Close to death, Reaper's Onslaught and Death Perception what do all of these have in common? They do nothing for 50% of the fight. IF your change makes it so the reaper can sustain itself in shroud that means those traits do nothing for 40%(except for close to death) of the fight which is a good increase, but that's only IF the soul barb change is able to carry the DPS that the reaper will have to drop in order to sustain that additional duration in shroud.

The issue we run into here is that reaper's DPS isn't substantially better in shroud than other DPS specs. Its only comparable to other DPS classes. it doesn't exceed them. This still means that during that 40% of the time out of shroud your DPS is still below every other DPS. Sure you spend most of the time matching other DPS but then you have weak points in your rotation where you're blow. This doesn't help reaper as much as you might think. Which is a real shame.

The other issue with this is Reaper isn't the only Power build on necromancer that suffers this issue. its also Harbinger. Harbinger has traits which are weaker when compared to reaper, but that doesn't mean that power harbinger can be ignored. Buffing weapons only goes so far and doesn't address the issues both of these builds have.

So how can we solve this? The answer is spite. If you're looking for the weak link in Necromancer's DPS that weakness is in spite. Spite has no Minor traits which modify damage unless you're downed and the damage modifying traits are mostly comparable to other classes, primarily revenant or Engineer which both have far more and far superior damage modifiers.

The thing is, if You replaced Spite with Devastation from revenant Reaper's DPS would be increased more than these changes. If you replaced spite with explosions from engineer, even without the ability to trigger explosions reaper's DPS would be increased. Just to give some perspective on just how bad Spite is. People often talk about how terrible Death magic is, and it is. But Spite is pretty close to as bad.

You want to fix reaper? look at core. Look at spite.

Added note onto this since I'm a Necro fangirl. Make Minions a viable build In PvE. I don't need it to be nearly as strong as where power DPS reaper or Condi scourge both should be, 30k would be fine. But you should be looking at fan favorite builds that aren't even on the radar of viability for raiders as well. So look at reworking/buffing turrets and minions for PvE.

[Levetty.1279]

I know you aren't doing it this patch but I want to comment on something you said on stream about Untamed.

I understand why you want to nerf Fervent Force but doing that without a complete rework to Untamed will kill the spec.  Untamed isn't an elite spec it is just Fervent Force, the rest of the kit just isn't that great and not particularly fun or interesting to play. You can't fix that with just number tweaks.

 

 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

So basically for ele:

 

small buff for scepter in pvp, probably still not viable

heal tempest got nerfed pretty hard in PvE (again!), removal of water trident heal is MASSIVE.

heal temp for wvw got a decent boost on elemental bastion

no changes for power staff/power sword weaver

Cata got buffed, but mostly for the elite. empowered empowerment still requires 10 stacks and no longer is affected by aurashare. 

Quick cata probably is somewhat viable for cata pros

 

still: 

no changes on alac gain on tempest

no change in empowered empowerment

no damage increase in Pdps builds

and basically almost all the crap the ele community has been asking about has been completely ignored

Cata energy mechanic is still fcked

 

But hey, we got our evasive arcana fixed so i guess evrything is suddenly all right again lol

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235