So, you nerfed untangle and sharpening stone in PVE for no reason.

[enkeny.6937]

1 minute ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Your argument boils down to "I don't care if the skills become overpowered in the hands of people who know what they are doing, I want these skills to be strong for the people who have no idea about build crafting".

we will just get a patch after 1-2 weeks later:
Sharpening stone: reduce count from 10 to 8 ....

[Mell.4873]

On 2/7/2023 at 4:23 AM, Levetty.1279 said:

Then why did they nerf it?

It's that or they nerf the skills damage because we start seeing 40K+ builds for Soulbeast.

2 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

we will just get a patch after 1-2 weeks later:
Sharpening stone: reduce count from 10 to 8 ....

Well, if you want your cooldown reduction this would be what happens.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

This whole PvE argument is silly, who runs Sharping stones for Open World?  I can see some argument for Entangles since there are less options.

For Open World above all else you want stun breaks, and you really don't need damage. All the stun breaks got a buff, and you don't need condition cleanse. So, we have a situation where now you can slot Poison Master because it has better value in PvE rather than before where you were forced to pick Wilderness Knowledge.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Your argument boils down to "I don't care if the skills become overpowered in the hands of people who know what they are doing, I want these skills to be strong for the people who have no idea about build crafting".

 

Wait, isn't that why Mechanist exists? 😃

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

we will just get a patch after 1-2 weeks later:
Sharpening stone: reduce count from 10 to 8 ....

 

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

Well, if you want your cooldown reduction this would be what happens.

 

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

This whole PvE argument is silly, who runs Sharping stones for Open World?  I can see some argument for Entangles since there are less options.

 

What even is this line of reasoning? 

Why would you nerf charge count on a skill no one uses? Further, why would you agree with nerfing charge count then immediately give reasoning why the skill can be ignored because no one uses it? 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Kodama.6453]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Wait, isn't that why Mechanist exists? 😃

Not quite, build crafting is actually the only thing mechanist requires and checks. 😉

If you have a correct mechanist build, it plays itself and you don't really need to do much. If you suck at build crafting and create a "wrong" build, it's terrible.

I can tell. Some weeks ago I had a "power dps mechanist" in a strike squad who was dealing 5k dps. And it was just because they sucked at build crafting and brew something themselves using rifle turret and rocket turret. xD

Edited February 7, 2023 by Kodama.6453

[enkeny.6937]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

What even is this line of reasoning? 

Why would you nerf charge count on a skill no one uses? Further, why would you agree with nerfing charge count then immediately give reasoning why the skill can be ignored because no one uses it? 

Well, for my part:
I said, this skill is used in condition meta builds without wilderness knowledge. So giving the skill cd reduction will cause condi builds over performing. Anet will try to solve this problem, but the problem was 'we' want the cd reduction, so they will reduce either charge count or bleed duration. (lowering dps has 2 method: increase the time or reduce damage. 'we' are saying, don't increase the time, so the only option is pure damage reduction.)

Seeing the big picture: soulbeast (condi/hybrid) get buffed already, no nerf. If they buff sharpening stone (entangle will still weaker then one wolf pack I think) they will nerf it again. we are ok not buffing a skill to prevent bigger nerf later.
For people, who don't want to see the big picture, they can say we just said: "it doesn't matter that they nerfed a skill for no reason because It doesn't effect me in my tiny part of the game" 

Ok, we have new people for balancing, but old players still remembers, why we were happy every time we heard 'no changes for rangers'.... (like now with fervent force)
 

[Levetty.1279]

7 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Your argument boils down to "I don't care if the skills become overpowered in the hands of people who know what they are doing, I want these skills to be strong for the people who have no idea about build crafting".

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you are not this bad at reading, so please stop trolling.

[Mell.4873]

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

 

 

What even is this line of reasoning? 

Why would you nerf charge count on a skill no one uses? Further, why would you agree with nerfing charge count then immediately give reasoning why the skill can be ignored because no one uses it? 

Who said no one uses it, we have more game modes than Open World? 

Look if the benchmarks go up they will nerf something. This change basicly makes it so nothing gets nerfed. The only game mode anyone can come up with that is affected is Open World where extra DPS will not mater. 

@enkeny.6937 Perfect breakdown, I can also agree that it is hard for new players to understand how Arena Net balance based of benchmarks.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

@enkeny.6937 Perfect breakdown, I can also agree that it is hard for new players to understand how Arena Net balance based of benchmarks.

 

Anet has literally said they want to stop balancing around benchmarks, which is one reason Fervent Force still exists.  

 

5 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

Well, for my part:
I said, this skill is used in condition meta builds without wilderness knowledge. So giving the skill cd reduction will cause condi builds over performing. Anet will try to solve this problem, but the problem was 'we' want the cd reduction, so they will reduce either charge count or bleed duration.

 

This is the problem with their 'everything' approach to balancing.  The skills are perfectly balanced now that you have to take a trait to get the CD, they are unbalancing their own game by baselining the CD reduction. 

This balancing is all over the place, because we start talking about reducing charge count on sharpening stone so it can keep its CD reduction and to keep condi soulbeast out of the meta when they're buffing primal cry to place it squarely in the meta.  

The change to Dolyak Stance in sPvP pretty much sums up the entire philosophy:

 Dolyak Stance: Reduced duration from 6 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only. Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.

The uptime of this skill is identical (10%); they are literally balancing for the sake of it and accomplishing nothing.  

Edited February 8, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Mell.4873]

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

This is the problem with their 'everything' approach to balancing.  The skills are perfectly balanced now that you have to take a trait to get the CD, they are unbalancing their own game by baselining the CD reduction. 

This balancing is all over the place, because we start talking about reducing charge count on sharpening stone so it can keep its CD reduction and to keep condi soulbeast out of the meta when they're buffing primal cry to place it squarely in the meta.  

The change to Dolyak Stance in sPvP pretty much sums up the entire philosophy:

 Dolyak Stance: Reduced duration from 6 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only. Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.

The uptime of this skill is identical (10%); they are literally balancing for the sake of it and accomplishing nothing.  

I have to agree, I'm not too sure thy they changed Wilderness Knowledge. If anything, get rid of the Weapon skill cooldown reduction traits especially ones that are shared with the underwater Weapons.

For a while now, I have wanted the Axe trait to be changed.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I have to agree, I'm not too sure thy they changed Wilderness Knowledge. If anything, get rid of the Weapon skill cooldown reduction traits especially ones that are shared with the underwater Weapons.

For a while now, I have wanted the Axe trait to be changed.

 

Or at least standardize them; for instance, on greatsword move the CD reduction on #5 to Two Handed Training.

From my point of view at least, tying the CDs to traits forces you to take those traits.  If you baseline the CDs, we get the problem we have now in that some builds were balanced and now may be overperforming, and some builds are needlessly nerfed (i.e., aforementioned builds taking sharpening stone in competitive if CD reduction is not baselined).  

What annoys me more is they need to enhance the condi removal capabilities of nature magic to compete with wilderness knowledge rather than half-rework wilderness knowledge and empathic bond. 

They could have done something like add barrier to you/pet when you use an F2 on Empathic and added the 2 condi cleanse from you/pet onto Evasive Purity / shortened that ICD to like 3-5s (as if you blow back-to-back dodges, you'll probably die no matter if you cleansed back-to-back or not).  

Edited February 8, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Kodama.6453]

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

The uptime of this skill is identical (10%); they are literally balancing for the sake of it and accomplishing nothing.  

Sorry, but this is a bit short sighted. They do accomplish something.

Remember that dolyak stance is a stunbreak? The uptime of the stance effect might be the same, but you get to use the stunbreak portion of the skill more frequently, which is a net buff to the skill.

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Anet has literally said they want to stop balancing around benchmarks, which is one reason Fervent Force still exists.  

Afaik, Anet still plans to bring FF down once they have improved untamed in general? Also Anet might have said that they are not balancing around benchmarks directly, but they will still balance around what's actually performing well or badly in the game based on their own data.

And sharpening stone definitely is one of these skills which are already performing really well, even without the cooldown reduction. They didn't just forget to reduce it's cooldown, they are not doing it because the skill is already performing well and would simply start overperforming if they did that, hence why people tell you that if they would reduce it's cooldown, then it would come with a nerf to it's condition application to make sure the skill stays in line.

[Zaret.1450]

On 2/5/2023 at 11:14 PM, Peter.3901 said:

Fine, now again, give me a actual reason for the nerf as "no one" use the skill and stop acting like a bot.

Ok so the people are saying, meta builds, wich are the most optimized, easiest to find, most seen builds in the difficult/organized content, dont use that trait, meaning, if you used that specific trait you were either only playing open world, or you were using a build that was less powerfull than what you could use, for open world a nerf isnt that huge, and if your buikd was bad to begin with then go use the build that didnt get nerfed.

All of this is said because the opener specified pve, and the difficult content there are raids/fractals/strikes, and the meta builds are made for that content, so if "no one" uses that trait in meta builds, wich again are the most used and the best.... maybe the one criing about a nerf in their tiny little world is you.

As for pvp and wvw, well wvw did get entangle changes right? so wich build do you say this nerfs? your exclusive self made build? sorry man things happen.

[Swagger.1459]

On 2/4/2023 at 6:27 AM, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

The change has no impact on any good PvE build, because poison master is the better trait anyway and the cd reduction wasn't taken.

Well, to be fair, there is more to the game than just pve. 

 

Regarding poison... are you advocating for the devs to nerf poison now? 🙂

 

Regardless, people will still take WS for the 2 cleanses, especially in comp modes.... so ultimately the devs just wasted time and nerfed a couple underperforming skills (since, of course, poison is better anyway).  

[Swagger.1459]

On 2/5/2023 at 10:07 AM, enkeny.6937 said:

Poison: (0.06 * Condition Damage) + 33.5 damage per stack per second at level 80.
bleeding: (0.06 * Condition Damage) + 22 damage per stack per second at level 80.
Poison do more damage (without traits.)

PvE builds:
untamed: meta condi build don't use WS, and cd reduction is not needed 😉 
druid: condition druid is NOT for dps slot. druid will do more damage with condi then power, but it is still low.
option 1: it is a support+damage, then most likely you will use a different elite  (or maybe you have to time it), sharpening stone will do a difference 
option 2: you are a dps druid. Please wake up and switch to another elite specialisation. (or even core, it still do more damage)
Druid usually use WS when tanking, not for condi, for defense. Basicaly it is not for meta builds
Core: full bleeding build use sharpening stone, entangle, wilderness knowledge. this build will be get nerfed. but it is not a good build. switch the rune: from krait to afflicted, use your Viper's Nest and/or poison volley with poison master. 

Soulbeast: So we are finally speaking about a normal condition base dps builds here (no, untamed is not normal...)
hybrid build: don't use WS, no change
condi build: Literally a poison build, using rune of thorns. Getting poison to Primal Cry it will use poison master more likely.
full bleeding build: Seriously, why don't you use Vulture Stance, Viper's Nest, dagger or shortbow #2 skill or if you use this skills, poison master +25% damage is more, than 20% cd reduction on sharpening stone and entangle (and in some boss, entangle not works really well)

All in all, at PvE not reducing the 2 most used survive skills is not a big deal.
But I am not against buffing this skill in PvE too.  It will increase dps for some build, but it is not that significant.
(in the upper list, most build won't be still meta, or just 'effective' )

Why you trying to get poison nerfed? I mean, if bleeding wasn't better than poison in the first place, you just put a big target on poison now... Then you'll have both bleed and poison nerfed, and we won't feel bad if you are mad about it. 

 

 

 

[Mell.4873]

5 hours ago, Swagger.1459 said:

Well, to be fair, there is more to the game than just pve. 

 

Regarding poison... are you advocating for the devs to nerf poison now? 🙂

 

Regardless, people will still take WS for the 2 cleanses, especially in comp modes.... so ultimately the devs just wasted time and nerfed a couple underperforming skills (since, of course, poison is better anyway).  

Well, if you mean PvP only Sharpening Stone got nerfed. Probably most universally not used Utility.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

Here is the nail in coffin,

Ranger - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds

No one uses Wilderness Knowledge with ether of the two Utilities on Metabattle. All Open World builds don't even recommend Wilderness Survival, so I don't know what to say....

Edited February 9, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

20 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Sorry, but this is a bit short sighted. They do accomplish something.

Remember that dolyak stance is a stunbreak? The uptime of the stance effect might be the same, but you get to use the stunbreak portion of the skill more frequently, which is a net buff to the skill.

Which is an interesting point, as I think it's actually counter-intuitive to the intended direction?

It seems they wanted to nerf the effectiveness of Dolyak stance slightly, but ended up buffing it via stunbreak frequency through reducing duration because they kept uptime the same...

It's actually a headache making sense of half of this.  

Edited February 9, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Kodama.6453]

49 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Which is an interesting point, as I think it's actually counter-intuitive to the intended direction?

It seems they wanted to nerf the effectiveness of Dolyak stance slightly, but ended up buffing it via stunbreak frequency through reducing duration because they kept uptime the same...

It's actually a headache making sense of half of this.  

I don't get why you think this was intended to be a nerf?

He talks in the stream that the change is specifically made to make side node soulbeast builds and boon soulbeast builds in PvP more appealing. He mentions that this is intended as a buff to make the skill more useful for builds, while the shave of the stance duration is there to ensure that the dolly doesn't end up overbuffed.

So everything exactly as they noted to be their intention: supposed to be a slight buff to the skill.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Kodama.6453

[Gotejjeken.1267]

47 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I don't get why you think this was intended to be a nerf?

He talks in the stream that the change is specifically made to make side node soulbeast builds and boon soulbeast builds in PvP more appealing. He mentions that this is intended as a buff to make the skill more useful for builds, while the shave of the stance duration is there to ensure that the dolly doesn't end up overbuffed.

So everything exactly as they noted to be their intention: supposed to be a slight buff to the skill.

 

Sort of, but in practice still makes no sense to me. 

I wouldn't consider pure stunbreak functionality to be a buff to sidenoding when you usually slot another stunbreak.  A buff to the skill would be increasing either the uptime of it by either increasing duration slightly or reducing CD slightly.  As the active portion is what would help boonbeast sidenode, not the stunbreak portion.  

So, it's still a wash to me, as you get 2 seconds less of actual useful duration for a stunbreak on 20s less CD.  I personally am not popping Dolyak Stance for the stunbreak (that's what lighting reflexes or protect me is for), but for the active--and since the uptime is the same but with reduced active duration, it's a slight nerf to me.

Anyway, don't really want to derail the topic any further since it isn't really about either sPvP or Dolyak...

[enkeny.6937]

9 hours ago, Swagger.1459 said:

Well, to be fair, there is more to the game than just pve. 

Topic title says: it is a PvE discussion. Yes, there is more to the game than just pve, but now they are off-topic.

9 hours ago, Swagger.1459 said:

Why you trying to get poison nerfed? I mean, if bleeding wasn't better than poison in the first place, you just put a big target on poison now... Then you'll have both bleed and poison nerfed, and we won't feel bad if you are mad about it. 

The numbers was an answer for "That's a massive amount of bleed loss compared to a trait that essentially does nothing, because poison damage is bad to begin with." 

I didn't try to apply poison need nerf. For that purpose damage per stack per second is not enough, you need duration, apply intensity, etc...

[enkeny.6937]

On 2/8/2023 at 5:42 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Anet has literally said they want to stop balancing around benchmarks, which is one reason Fervent Force still exists.

I remember differently. If you have a source, it would be helpful for exact wording. What I remember is: they don't want balancing just based on the top dps benchmarks, that are playable only for few people. Fervent force builds are this category. 
Fervent force exist because they realised, at the moment there are not really any other options for pve untamed. Ferocious Symbiosis got buffed for this reason, I think there is no result yet or no idea what would be a good change for FF. 

Ffrom Game updates 2022-11-29:
"Fervent Force is a trait that we're likely to bring down in a future update, but we want to improve other options for untamed before doing so."

[Levetty.1279]

Doesn't the "it doesn't matter because I don't use it in my meta slave PvE builds" counter the reason they claim to be removing CD traits in the first place "to make it easier to balance"?

 

Well now they have found themselves in a position they could have easily avoided where they are pointlessly nerfing a skill that isn't used but can't buff it because it will add a bit of DPS to a top end build? Doesn't sound like its making the balancing easier.

[Mic.1897]

On 2/7/2023 at 1:13 PM, Mell.4873 said:

 

 

For Open World above all else you want stun breaks, and you really don't need damage. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are you talking about lol

Edited February 9, 2023 by Mic.1897