February 14 Balance Update Preview

[Einar.1482]

I think the change to master of manipulation is a poor idea. Master of Manipulation is the only trait that allows for increased personal mobility on mesmer aside from running leaps on mirage. With the removal of Superspeed any kind of small scale or individual play especially in WvW large landscape with all the hyper mobility of thieves, rangers, & will benders... its going to be impossible to compete with that without this... you've already capped the amount of superspeed a player can have simultaneously at 10 seconds.. i dont understand why you need to remove the superspeed from manipulation skills and take away the reduced icds from the trait to give superspeed elsewhere... both can exist... not many small scale players are going to run glamours bc those are primarily dedicated for supports. I think its a bad change and I would recommend not doing so... dont remove the only mobility available to mesmer.

[Omg Im Target.3095]

Lol at the power weaver buffs. It's already in a decent state and now they increase the damage by like what 20% or even more? Ridiculous.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Omg Im Target.3095

[sigmundf.7523]

None of Guardian changes for power archetype are nearly enough to compete with most of power builds out there. Whirling Wrath, Main-Hand Sword 3 and Off-hand sword skills need more damage buff, since most of Power DH / WB damage come mostly from whirling wrath and zealot defense. Expecting more from guardian buffs, turns out to be a disappointment.

Edited February 3, 2023 by sigmundf.7523

[tails.4701]

After watching the recent balance preview stream for the February 14 patch Roy and Cal talked about a 0.5 second cooldown for Firebrand tomes. I would like to recommend the same be applied to hammer on catalyst. The initial hammer 3 skills when Grande Finale is off cooldown is VERY annoying and losing the buffs from having the hammer 3 skills not active is, in my opinion, a big playability issue right now.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Surelia.2651]

So nothing Mirage specific.  edit: removing the rest since apparently it did not compute 😆

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Surelia.2651

[Tulki.1458]

Are there any plans to rework engineer turrets yet? ~8 years with no changes whatsoever to these skills, and yet we've seen many reworks to other skill categories (some having been reworked multiple times). Core engineer has one less utility skill type than other professions, yet an entire category is fundamentally worthless.

There are many reworks in this patch, but it's crazy to me that turrets are still ignored.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Tulki.1458

[Aalter.2950]

On 2/3/2023 at 9:40 PM, SleepyBat.9034 said:

Nice work guys! Here are a few engineer changes that are needed.

The bug on Mechanized Deployment (and Kinetic Battery) for Mechanist in PvP are a HUGE deal imo, they prevent it from being a viable trait line. It's possible if those were fixed it would be better than Inventions as a defensive spec because of the Mech skill uptime, vigor/endurance regen, and more consistent condi cleanse.

This has been bothering me for a long time, so I'm glad someone else is speaking up about it too! 😄

*Also* - I'm really excited about a lot of these changes! However, I don't think Catalyst was nerfed enough in this patch (for PvP), considering the EU MAT grand finals were swept by a team of 5 Catalysts... I really hope their burst in Air and defense in Earth will be addressed, because these changes didn't really touch those things.

And as a  Thief main I'd really like to see a rework of Trickery so that it is viable to replace it with other trait lines without being extremely suboptimal on all builds across all content. See:

Thanks! ❤️

Edited February 9, 2023 by Aalter.2950
More feedback

[CarlPaul.1479]

Please get a revenant main on the balance team , we re being neglected .

Also cal be my valentine uwu .

[Tharan.9085]

10 minutes ago, Omg Im Target.3095 said:

Lol at the power weaver buffs. It's already in a decent state and now they increase the damage by like what 20% or even more? They truly have no clue when it comes to PvE.

Man you are bad at math

[Mourningstar.7309]

I'm super glad to see necro mainhand dagger acknowledged, but is there any chance the aftercast can be updated to match the change made to thief dagger years ago?  The delay between AA chains feels super awkward.

[bakagames.2738]

Pretty sure there was a buff to Orders from Above (alacrity now 2s, instead 1.5s) showed on stream but it is not in these patch notes… Any clarification?

[Sensations.9507]

I am sad to see no improvements to condition Holosmith.  One of the hardest rotations in the game for years.  Up there in difficulty with Catalyst/Untamed/old school weaver.  Since Holosmith is a profession that provides no alac/quickness I believe it should be rewarded with high damage.  This hasn't been the case for years now as condi Mechanist has a simple rotation... While ALSO bringing alacrity and higher damage.  Condi Holosmith is the only real old school core engineer playstyle that uses 3-4 kits.  Please increase the damage or give it quickness.  Holosmith both condition AND power should do more damage than the other engi specs as that's ALL it does.  It currently does less damage than every condi/power build engineer has.

 

I have several positive comments on great changes for other classes and particularly love the Scrapper buffs that I hope to comment on in another post.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Sensations.9507

[Lyn.7902]

We are goin in a good direction in terms of thief but... Please more buffs and less stupid jumpy jumps on power DD, Vindi feels so good to play and power DD is still pepega, needs FULLY empty endurance to do little dmg it does compared to the rest. And I dont accept "mag bomb" and stupid "ectoplasm" as excuses for the low dmg... just remove those in the encounters and properly fix staff DD so it feels good to play and not this.. sad excuse of a spec. More options to play instead of changing anything = huge dps loss etc. It needs serious look at, it does not feel good to play for a while now.
 

Then some power willbender dmg boosts and we are good there, happy for the core wep buffs.

 

I am happy with reaper changes too just please please, FIX THE DISAPPEARING SHROUD SCYTHE WHEN stowing wep or getting knocked down, wep stow will always reproduce this bug so please look into it finally, its been reported for years now. Thankies ^.^

[RogueBalony.4357]

so when is anet gonna start playing the game

[Javonovich.5280]

PLEASE give Mirage its second dodge back in competitive modes. Or at least tell us that you’re thinking about ways to make this work. What are you afraid of? Automated tourneys have been running all cata teams. There is no way mirage becomes even THAT strong.

[LordHT.8297]

where is the flame jet change?

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Idc much, but does Willbender rly need to have no drawbacks to spamming virtues?

Are you enabling them to use Rushing Justice and jump with a Crushing Courage on top of enemies and do even more damage than they already do? 

With GS and Sword buffs too, while having no nerfs from Core?

Roaming will be even more fun!

Warrior so boring.... Why decrease Sundering Leap coeff in WvW, when it's only used by like me and maybe 2 more warriors in EU?

Aegis? That's bad. How about 2 stab stacks and aegis? You know, since the leap with the huge animation is easy to see comign anyway.

Glad that you heard about entry/exit zerk mode trait triggers in my posts and of others' , but we will see. 

For the rest idk, don't care yet, maybe Cele renegade will be more obnoxious now than Vindicators ig.

[mirage.8046]

If you wanna actually improve chronomancer? Make their wells mobile combo fields. Put stretched time's alacrity functionality into 'all's well that ends well.' even if that means chrono will be able to give both alacrity and quickness. 😂

[subgenius.7649]

wvw theives outplay everything, how do we fix this? we make them better at everything!

[Pooh.6897]

well i'm very happy to see some necro MH dagger changes. I'm very curious to see how these will play out, although i'm a bit scared that it'll be too little.

i'm also happy that mace gets some changes, but honestly i think warrior needs much more than what it got here. MH mace is not really in a good spot at all. I also don't understand the nerfs to spellbreaker at all. it's a massive nerf on breaching strike which imo is not justified. I barely see any warriors in the game as it is, no need to massively nerf breaching strike into the ground because it's 'slightly more dominant than you'd like'.

[Poobah.6254]

While you're looking at moving traited things to baseline a huge QoL would be to put Piercing on Ranger Longbow, it's so painful to use without it and no PvE build uses Marksmanship because the traitline terrible for dps (also maybe something to look at longer term).

[Suyheuti.1732]

Power weaver is currently good position but it will shine after these changes. Thank you. 

[Onoxsys.7615]

The elementalist changes trying to address catalyst and scepter, have completely missed the mark and here's why:

The problem with Scepter after the changes has been the damage output from the 1 skill. The constant burn it applies in tandem with the high base damage and quick recast time makes it very easy to stack up 10+ burn for free doing an incredibly high amount of damage (especially when cele in wvw for example). Dragon's tooth (outside of the visual bug causing the tooth portion to be invisible) is very easy to dodge and nerfing the damage on it was less important than addressing the 1 skill. The main thing that should be addressed with Dragon's Tooth isn't the already low damage. Tooth shouldn't apply burn until the skill lands.

These changes seem like the goal of Elementalist balance is to have everyone playing condi ele using fire 1 auto and the new cantrips because it's going to outdps, and outlive every other Ele build after these changes. 

Edited February 4, 2023 by Onoxsys.7615

[GuriGashi.5617]

Good changes, I would suggest to add that second F2 charge back to Willbender in PvP, because it really struggles with its sustain right now and because the second F2 wasn‘t the problematic part on Willbender. Other than that - very big balance patch!

Edited February 4, 2023 by GuriGashi.5617

[Nico.9361]

It's an interesting direction tbh. Very happy with the revenant getting some love in PvP. We're already in a good spot in PvE, some PvP revs are always nice 🥰