May 2 Balance Update Preview

[ZEUStiger.3590]

Berserker changes are still not enough.

The change to Smash Brawler barely moves the needle: sure, we'll be able to use Scholar runes instead of Thief runes now, but even with 15% bonus crit chance we'll still need to use several pieces of Assassin's gear to reach 100%. The extra Power and Ferocity stats we get from this exchange increases damage by roughly 5.5%, but - oh hey! - Scholar runes only give +5% power damage instead of +10% of Thief's, plus with the switch away from Last Blaze that's another ~400 dps loss in condi damage (good riddance tho), and so basically this just results in shuffling of equipment for no gained value, aside from not having to worry about flanking anymore. Woohoo...

Increased duration of berserker mode from swapping to Smash Brawler will probably affect the benchmark positively, but then the loss of crit chance outside of it is going to affect it negatively, and I don't want to try to calculate by how much, especially because dropping below 100% crit chance will create annoying RNG. Benchmarkers are going to have a fantastic time /s.

Decapitate and Arc Divider changes are more substantial. Applied to SC's benchmark together with the stat changes, the first bumps the benchmark by +2113 dps, the second - by +1467 dps. But then switching away from Last Blaze reduces the dps by -416. That's a total change of +3164 dps, moving the benchmark from 35620 to 38368 (again, before the effect on berserk mode duration is taken into account). Is that good enough? Well, let's see!

38368 is still lower then Power Bladesworn's 40364 and Power Spellbreaker's 40351. By almost 2000! There's gotta be a reason why berserker is kept below the other two specs, right? There's gotta be SOMETHING to justify choosing this spec over the other two, right???

• Can berserker pull enemies? No, not a single warrior spec can.
• Can berserker push enemies? No, you inexplicably removed that in the October patch, neutering what little utility berserker could offer even further. Without it, it's pushing capabilities are exactly as spellbreaker's and bladesworn's.
• Can berserker create portals for their group? No.
• Can berserker shadowstep long distances? No.
• Can berserker reflect projectiles? No.
• Can berserker block projectiles? No (and no, we're not going to talk about sword F1, it cannot be seriously compared to AoE projectile hate of other classes), but spellbreaker and bladesworn can.
• Can berserker be ranged dps? No, rifle is still kitten, and longbow requires melee range to be effective.
• Can berserker deal burst damage? No, its dps graph is as flat as a pancake.
• Can berserker boon strip? No, but spellbreaker can.
• Can berserker CC easily? Yes, but so does spellbreaker, and arguably even better.
• Can berserker provide aegis or stability? Yes, and so do spellbreaker and bladesworn, exactly as much. Can it be provided on-demand by the quickness support build? Nope, gotta spam those banners every time they come off cooldown.
• Can berserker provide quickness? Yes, and so do spellbreaker and bladesworn. And they can do it even better, because slotting banners doesn't hurt them nowhere near as much as does the lack of Rage utilities hurt berserker.
• Can berserker provide alacrity? No, and it never will.

Wow, so many reasons to play berserker over other dps specs, and even over other warrior specs! I can count precisely 0! 0 is a lot! /s

What did Berserker's "balance budget" go into??? Why can spellbreaker and bladesworn have 40.3k benchmarks despite offering more benefits than berserker, but condi berserker is at 37.2k, and power berserker will be at 38.3k? Why have you spent 10 months bumping it one tiny step at a time, while spellbreaker could get buffed through the roof in a single patch?

Give me ONE good reason why berserker should have lower dps than spellbreaker and bladesworn.

But oh wait, even those 38.3k are unrealistic, because you know what? To reach them one must engage in the exploit of aftercast animation cancelling through weapon stow. Something that developers are on record for saying that it wasn't intended, and yet they continue to turn a blind eye to it and avoid patching it. And currently it disproportionately hurts the two power specs that are already underperforming: power berserker and power dragonhunter. Power berserker currently loses an additional ~1.5k by not engaging in weapon stowing, taking it down from 35.7k to ~34.2k. This issue remains unaddressed by this patch, and it will continue to plague berserker and dragonhunter and create a false impression of their performance. Something that spellbreaker and bladesworn don't suffer from.

It has been 10 months since you killed this spec. Berserker's playrate has steadily been declining despite your "attempts" to "buff" it, and I have no reason to think that this patch is going to significantly affect the situation. It is currently the least played spec among all GW2 elite specs, despite on-paper offering double as many playstyles - power and condi - than most other specs can. 1.15% -> 1.11% -> 0.87% -> 0.67% -> 0.51%. Let's watch the next number get even lower.

You can do better than this. You should do better than this.

P.S. And now that you've as well as announced that you're not releasing any new elite specs anymore - this is it for warriors. This is all we're getting. 3 melee DPS specs, and you can't even balance one of the right. Oh yeah, and quickness generation, so tremendously useful that hardly anybody is playing it, because other classes can offer the same and more while outputting better damage or offering more utility and support at little-to-no opportunity cost. No healing elite spec, and no healing prospects in general, due to the godawful design of Tactics traitline, the lack of support-oriented weapons, and the conceptual clash of Shouts and Banners utilities. No alacrity elite spec, because you thought it would be a great idea to add quickness to the core toolkit of the class, locking it out of ever being able to provide alacrity. The future is positively thrilling! /s

EDIT almost a month later:  Stop reading and reacting to this. By now it's clear that my predictions about numbers missed the mark, even though I did preface them with a caution that not every change was accounted for. Although the parts about weapon stowing, the lack of utility, and the general one-dimensionness of warrior especs are still valid, and, hopefully, will someday be addressed, without disproportionately impacting what was achieved in this patch.

Edited May 16, 2023 by ZEUStiger.3590
Why are you still here?

[JormagSorbet.8079]

15 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The nerf to Arc Divider in WvW is a poor choice. Don't do that.

 

I would imagine zerker players are flattered consistently by the tight grasp Cal keeps on their damage despite the number of things that a player needs to fail to account for to get hit by it at all. 

 

12 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

When they do not specify a mode, it is almost 100% of the time for all modes.

This is going to be a nice change.

 

Why anyone would take this over Savage Instinct eludes me, but, if you say so. 

 

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Stone Heart: Critical-hit immunity is now granted for a period of time when entering and exiting Earth Attunement, instead of always while attuned to earth.

 

• The effects of channeling tempest's overload skills now occur more quickly if the elementalist also has quickness.
•  
• Gadgeteer: Fixed an issue that prevented the overcharged version of Rocket Boots from having its cooldown reduced when the skill is used underwater.
•  
• Unrelenting Criticism: Increased trigger chance from 33% to 100%.
•  
• Portent of Freedom: Increased stability duration from 1 second to 2.5 seconds in PvP only.
•  
• Phantasmal Duelist: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 18 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Magic Bullet: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• The Prestige: Increased the number of conditions removed from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW.
• Phantasmal Mage: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.

 

good. 

 

Quote

Thief is in a good spot [Tune up to signets of Power]

 

So-So.

 

Patch is alright.  Some of the things that had dropped off the map have some wiggle room now. I would keep an eye on ranger for further tuning in the future. The Stone Heart change was very prudent and will reduce the amount of time people can stall without actively avoiding damage.  Thief still needs some work, but I'm sure they're aware~ 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 minute ago, ZEUStiger.3590 said:

Berserker changes are still not enough.

The change to Smash Brawler barely moves the needle: sure, we'll be able to use Scholar runes instead of Thief runes now, but even with 15% bonus crit chance we'll still need to use several pieces of Assassin's gear to reach 100%. The extra Power and Ferocity stats we get from this exchange increases damage by roughly 5.5%, but - oh hey! - Scholar runes only give +5% power damage instead of +10% of Thief's, plus with the switch away from Last Blaze that's another ~400 dps loss in condi damage (good riddance tho), and so basically this just results in shuffling of equipment for no gained value, aside from not having to worry about flanking anymore. Woohoo...

Increased duration of berserker mode from swapping to Smash Brawler will probably affect the benchmark positively, but then the loss of crit chance outside of it is going to affect it negatively, and I don't want to try to calculate by how much, especially because dropping below 100% crit chance will create annoying RNG. Benchmarkers are going to have a fantastic time /s.

Decapitate and Arc Divider changes are more substantial. Applied to SC's benchmark together with the stat changes, the first bumps the benchmark by +2113 dps, the second - by +1467 dps. But then Last Blaze reduces the dps by -416. That's a total change of +3164 dps, moving the benchmark from 35620 to 38368 (again, before the effect on berserk mode duration is taken into account). Is that good enough? Well, let's see!

38368 is still lower then Power Bladesworn's 40364 and Power Spellbreaker's 40351. By almost 2000! There's gotta be a reason why berserker is kept below the other two specs, right? There's gotta be SOMETHING to justify choosing this spec over the other two, right???

- Can berserker pull enemies? No, not a single warrior spec can.
- Can berserker push enemies? No, you inexplicably removed that in the October patch, neutering what little utility berserker could offer even further. Without it, it's pushing capabilities are exactly as spellbreaker's and bladesworn's.
- Can berserker create portals for their group? No.
- Can berserker shadowstep long distances? No.
- Can berserker reflect projectiles? No.
- Can berserker block projectiles? No (and no, we're not going to talk about sword F1, it cannot be seriously compared to AoE projectile hate of other classes), but spellbreaker and bladesworn can.
- Can berserker be ranged dps? No, rifle is still kitten, and longbow requires melee range to be effective.
- Can berserker boon strip? No, but spellbreaker can.
- Can berserker CC easily? Yes, but so does spellbreaker, and arguably even better.
- Can berserker provide aegis or stability? Yes, and so do spellbreaker and bladesworn, exactly as much. Can it be provided on-demand by the quickness support build? Nope, gotta spam those banners every time they come off cooldown.
- Can berserker provide quickness? Yes, and so do spellbreaker and bladesworn. And they can do it even better, because slotting banners doesn't hurt them nowhere near as much as does the lack of Rage utilities hurt berserker.
- Can berserker provide alacrity? No, and it never will.

Wow, so many reasons to play berserker over other dps specs, and even over other warrior specs! I can count precisely 0! 0 is a lot! /s

What did Berserker's "balance budget" go into??? Why can spellbreaker and bladesworn have 40.3k benchmarks despite offering more benefits than berserker, but condi berserker is at 37.2k, and power berserker will be at 38.3k? Why have you spent 10 months bumping it one tiny step at a time, while spellbreaker could get buffed through the roof in a single patch?

But oh wait, even those 38.3k are unrealistic, because you know what? To reach them one must engage in the exploit of aftercast animation cancelling through weapon stow. Something that developers are on record for saying that it wasn't intended, and yet they continue to turn a eye to it and avoid patching it. And currently it disproportionately hurts the two power specs that are already underperforming: power berserker and power dragonhunter. Power berserker currently loses an additional ~1.5k by not engaging in weapon stowing, taking it down from 35.7k to ~34.2k. This issue remains unaddressed by this patch, and it will continue to plague berserker and dragonhunter and create a false impression of their performance. Something that spellbreaker and bladesworn don't suffer from.

It has been 10 months since you killed this spec. Berserker's playrate has steadily been declining despite your "attempts" to "buff" it, and I have no reason to think that this patch is going to significantly affect the situation. It is currently the least played spec among all GW2 elite specs, despite on-paper offering double as many playstyles - power and condi - than most other specs can. 1.15% -> 1.11% -> 0.87% -> 0.67% -> 0.51%. Let's watch the next number get even lower.

You can do better than this. You should do better than this.

Pinnacle of Strength will give an extra 5%, with Precision Infusions you can go full Power everywhere else, and be crit capped with Fury.

[Seraphis Zurvan.6839]

6 minutes ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

The alac Mirage, however, is a completely viable complaint. This has been an established means of getting Alacrity that has been unique to Mirage for many years, required a strict style of play that already nerfed the Mirage's damage output to perform. there's no reason to nerf the amount of alac coming out of Mirage.

It never needed additional boon duration to maintain uptime. The fact it needs some actual ritualist pieces now is a good thing.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

5 minutes ago, Seraphis Zurvan.6839 said:

You've been living under a rock for saying this lmao. They aren't dead, they're more in-line of what they should be.

I'm pretty sure a mirage taking a few Ritualist pieces for once instead of straight Viper's is going to be ok. CFB does not need to be doing around 37.2k DPS on a relatively simple rotation, and Untamed is going to be just fine.

mirage uptime on alac is gonna be hard to pull off even when running full ritualist gear. staff/axe is 0 possibility now. CFB (the non quick version) is gonna drop to like ~38k or something (i think) that's extremely weak for a melee build that focuses on condi's with powerbuilds easily stacking 40k+ atm.

willbender alac was already very hard to pull off in its current setting. now to require the same amount of uptime you need ~75% extra boondura. 100% impossible on power due to also needing alot of extra precision. Condi is probably gonna need over 100% boon dura on alac to even upkeep alac due to less amount of hits.

untamed power and condi rotation are gonna slow down by like 30% with this nerf. it's already incredibly hard to pull off, no one is playing it except for a couple of absolute gods mainly on speedclear runs. after nerf no1 is going to play those builds if they're benching like 36-40k dps. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 minute ago, JormagSorbet.8079 said:

 

I would imagine zerker players are flattered consistently by the tight grasp Cal keeps on their damage despite the number of things that a player needs to fail to account for to get hit by it at all. 

 

I know right? I could understand if it were gunflame, but Arc Divider?

1 minute ago, JormagSorbet.8079 said:

Why anyone would take this over Savage Instinct eludes me, but, if you say so. 

 

SI is good, I love it. But this would be a buff even when not in Berserk Mode, so that is great for when you have to play outside of it. This opens the door for some more stat flexibility.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

3 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Pinnacle of Strength will give an extra 5%, with Precision Infusions you can go full Power everywhere else, and be crit capped with Fury.

Pinnacle of Strength already gives an extra 5%, nothing is going to change about it in this patch.

Infusions for cappable stats should never be a requirement for any build to work, they are prohibitively expensive for any new player. Going this way is going to murder the playrate of the already dead spec even further.

Edited April 21, 2023 by ZEUStiger.3590

[Khlori.6209]

1 hour ago, Nomad.4301 said:

I guess specter doesn't count as a "Thief" then.

 

It doesn't, it's just budget necro in disguise, everything "Thief" was thrown out of the window in this spec.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Khlori.6209

[Stx.4857]

I like the buffs to condi Holosmith, I’m tired of mechanist being the only viable Condi elite.  
 

Why no buffs to thermal release valve?  Do you guys think it’s in a good spot?  As far as I can tell there is never a reason to run thermal over enhanced capacity unit, that Gm is just too good the way it interacts with sword skills and holo skills.  

[NoggDog.5486]

Just now, Seraphis Zurvan.6839 said:

It never needed additional boon duration to maintain uptime. The fact it needs some actual ritualist pieces now is a good thing.

I'm not contesting that, to do full alac in Vipers you had to near-exclusively press dodge->ambush->swap weapon on a loop, and Ritualist was the only way to have other buttons in the rotation. That's no way to play any class in this game, and now you can't even do that without Ritualist. 

[Jzaku.9765]

Berserker's Smash Brawler 15% Crit Chance buff is extremely unhealthy for the spec. You should already know this because:

Reaper has experienced the exact same issue for YEARS with the trait [Death Perception] and it was a constant pain point for that spec until Anet finally caved and fixed it on 28th June 2022.

It creates a situation where it's possible for your Berserker to lose Berserk, and not be crit capped because you designed your stat spread around having this 15% crit chance. 

It makes it so that the gap between "Permanently Raging Berserker with 5x rage skills" and "Berserker that wants to slot some utility" has now widened into a GULF. You are now forced to slot your entire right-side bar of Rage skills you spam off-cooldown for the Rage extension effect, ignoring their actual skill functionality.  This is a Topic I've started a discussion about here. 

 

PLEASE copy the functionality of the 2022 REWORKED [Death Perception] and grant the crit chance outside of Berserk as well.

[Stx.4857]

Another balance patch, and another refusal to balance warrior specs.  
 

spellbreaker and bladesworn both deal more damage than berserker, and have better utility in the form of tons of crowd control (SB) and boons (BS), and both these specs also have better survival than berserker.  
 

what is the point of berserker?  You would assume based on the name and theme that it would deal more damage…. But it deals less.  

[ElderNewt.5840]

49 minutes ago, stormemperor.3745 said:

Can you ducking add fury to power reaper for once?

IT IS THE ONLY BUILD IN ENTIRE GAME THAT CANNOT PROVIDE ITS OWN FURY.

Every other build shits out fury like crazy, even condition reaper.

Thanks,

It has a trait for that. Why does it need fury

[Subli.8217]

Thank you for the necro buffs, I'm gonna go cry now. I waited 84 years

[ZEUStiger.3590]

3 minutes ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

Berserker's Smash Brawler 15% Crit Chance buff is extremely unhealthy for the spec. You should already know this because:

Reaper has experienced the exact same issue for YEARS with the trait [Death Perception] and it was a constant pain point for that spec until Anet finally caved and fixed it on 28th June 2022.

It creates a situation where it's possible for your Berserker to lose Berserk, and not be crit capped because you designed your stat spread around having this 15% crit chance. 

It makes it so that the gap between "Permanently Raging Berserker with 5x rage skills" and "Berserker that wants to slot some utility" has now widened into a GULF. You are now forced to slot your entire right-side bar of Rage skills you spam off-cooldown for the Rage extension effect, ignoring their actual skill functionality.  This is a Topic I've started a discussion about here. 

 

PLEASE copy the functionality of the 2022 REWORKED [Death Perception] and grant the crit chance outside of Berserk as well.

Haha, no, thank you, I don't want to be bullied into carrying banners around again, because I have no better utilities to slot beside them, except this time it's for quickness instead of imbalanced unique buffs. You may not have noticed, but warrior's utilities are useless for dps.

Being forced to engage with your espec mechanic is a good thing. Learning to upkeep it and to drop out of it at an opportune time is a skillful aspect of playing berserker.

[Skyroar.2974]

32 minutes ago, Bristingr.5034 said:

You ruined Earth attunement Eles and punished Mesmers from giving decent alacrity. Terrible update.

It's possible that Weaver is going to get a significant buff from the new Stone Heart.

By nerfing it to a duration-based effect, but also compensating that by having it apply when exiting earth attunement, Weaver will be able to proc it quite often, if not even permanently maintain it, depending on the duration Anet decides to give to its effect. It's also unclear at this point if Weaver will be able to proc it on double-attuning too. If so, that would be even stronger.

A condi Weaver that's always swapping between earth and one of the remaining three attunements is going to be immune or nearly immune to criticals.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Skyroar.2974

[MedievalThings.5417]

And daredevil still has 3 dodges for absolutely no reason at all.

[Gibson.4036]

3 minutes ago, Ubi.4136 said:

And daredevil still has 3 dodges for absolutely no reason at all.

Theme?

[Seraphis Zurvan.6839]

5 minutes ago, Ubi.4136 said:

And daredevil still has 3 dodges for absolutely no reason at all.

DPS. It sort of needs it. Dodging is sort of their class mechanic.

[Jzaku.9765]

7 minutes ago, ZEUStiger.3590 said:

Haha, no, thank you, I don't want to be bullied into carrying banners around again, because I have no better utilities to slot beside them, except this time it's for quickness instead of imbalanced unique buffs. You may not have noticed, but warrior's utilities are useless for dps.

Being forced to engage with your espec mechanic is a good thing. Learning to upkeep it and to drop out of it at an opportune time is a skillful aspect of playing berserker.

Neither Banners nor quickness were mentioned a single time in my post. Nor were DPS utility skills, for that matter.

Say you want to improve your struggling team's success rate by doing any of the following:

1. Alleviate condi cleanse issues on Slothazor by taking Shake it Off
2. Provide team Stability on Samarog with Tactics Banner
3. Take more CC with Bull's Rush

Except oops now you can't because it's mandatory for you to permanently upkeep Berserker so you are faced with:

1. Accepting that you will periodically be at 85% Crit Chance because you decided to not be a stereotypical "hi dps"
2. End up gearing for 100% crit chance without taking this trait into account making this buff entirely useless
3. Just ignore what utility you can personally provide to the team in the interest of maintaining your DPS numbers

Incidentally, points 1 and 2 have been debated to the moon and back amongst the Necro community regarding Death Perception for years. Until, as stated, anet conceded and actually made the trait functional. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

23 minutes ago, ZEUStiger.3590 said:

Pinnacle of Strength already gives an extra 5%, nothing is going to change about it in this patch.

Infusions for cappable stats should never be a requirement for any build to work, they are prohibitively expensive for any new player. Going this way is going to murder the playrate of the already dead spec even further.

WvW infusions aren't expensive.

[Lily.1935]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Necromancer

Power-based reaper is another damage build that we looked at for this update, and we've brought up the damage of a lot of its key skills to make it a more competitive pick.

We've also increased the rate at which harbinger shroud accumulates blight in PvE to slightly reduce the reliance on elixirs for blight generation, and potentially introduce more flexibility in utility skill choice.

Core

• Rending Claws: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.2 in PvE only.
• Unholy Feast: Increased power coefficient from 0.88 to 2.0 in PvE only. Increased threshold for second strike from 25% to 50% in PvE only.
• Unholy Burst: Increased power coefficient from 0.88 to 1.0 in PvE only.
• Soul Grasp: Increased power coefficient from 0.2 to 2.0 in PvE only. Increased base healing from 440 to 1,003 in PvE only.
• Spinal Shivers: Increased power coefficients from 2.0/2.375/2.75/3.125 to 2.5/3.0/3.5/4.0 in PvE only.
• Wail of Doom: Reduced cooldown from 24 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Locust Swarm: Increased life-siphon healing from 37 to 55 in PvP and WvW.

Reaper

• Shouts' damage bonus for melee range increased from 50% to 100% in PvE only.
• "Chilled to the Bone!": Reduced cooldown from 36 seconds to 30 seconds in PvE only.
• Gravedigger: Increased power coefficient from 3.0 to 3.6 in PvE only.
• Nightfall: Increased power coefficient from 1.05 to 1.15 in PvE only.
• Soul Spiral: Increased power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.7 in PvE only.
• Life Rend: Increased power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.4 in PvE only.
• Life Slash: Increased power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.6 in PvE only.
• Life Reap: Increased power coefficient from 1.7 to 1.8 in PvE only.
• Infusing Terror: Increased damage reduction percentage from 20% to 66% in PvE only.
• Deathly Chill: Adjusted bleeding from 2 stacks for 8 seconds to 4 stacks for 4 seconds in PvE only.

Harbinger

• Harbinger Shroud: Increased blight stacks per second from 1 to 2 in PvE only.
• Voracious Arc: Reduced blight threshold from 10 to 5.
• Elixir of Ambition: Increased stacks of each condition from 1 to 3 In PvE only. Reduced cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds in PvE only.

Bug Fixes

• Twisted Medicine: Clarified in the trait tooltip that this trait hits 4 additional targets instead of 5.
• Death Spiral: Fixed an issue that prevented this skill from creating Combo Finisher: Whirl the correct number of times.

So this is quite frustrating to me, I feel like I'm a broken clock. Every single balance patch is basically small changes that slowly over years eventually lead to a sub optimal solution that technically works but is unsatisfying. We saw that with Scourge who only has one viable build in PvE and reaper who's getting there with one viable build in PvE, but maybe they'll get 2. And harbinger still is a mess of design. I hate to be so negative about the harbinger but since its release I've posted like 3 Essays expressing frustration with its overall design. Which I'll link to the latest one here.

Harbinger

This is a round about way of solving one of a dozen complaints with the harbinger and doesn't get at the root of its issue. This removes one elixir from their bar for sure, however the problem is that no one wants to run elixirs. We should WANT to run them but not HAVE to run them. Which is the opposite of the case. Maybe now I can take Spectral grasp, but other than that nothing is going to change. We still have the clumsy design of tossing elixirs at our feet even though we have toss range of 900. We still have uninteresting utility skills which do very little for us and provide very little utility to our allies and we still have the counter intitive design of wanting to stack blight to remove it but the traits want us to keep as much blight as possible without removing it.

The Elixir of Ambition change is nice. I'm not sure how viable it is right now because Vile Vails still isn't viable at all. because we still can't take it because we have to take Septic or Wicked corruption. Which, I'll say are both badly designed traits. fuse them with a  Minor traits and replace them with something else.

Axe
This is an Axe vs Staff situation now is no matter how much you buff one or the other one of these weapons will go unused. What they provide is almost the same. Axe needs more than buffs. It needs its auto attack animation fixed, or completely changed because I don't want to use axe because it looks like I'm paddling the air. I despise the axe animation on female characters and its the biggest deterrent from wanting to touch it. FIX THE ANIMATION! Its been half a decade! I've mentioned this like almost every balance patch. FIX THE AXE ANIMATION!

Focus

Focus is still bad. You can't critical hit with soul grasp which means its damage is never going to be worth while in a rotation. And I mentioned this before, in order for spinal shivers to be viable in PvE at minimum the damage needs to be almost double what it was. not 50% stronger. No serious build will use focus, its just a awful weapon for PvE. Its much too slow for its activation and the damage isn't nearly high enough.

Warhorn

I actually like these changes. The cooldown reduction is really nice but I wish the healing it gave out was much better. As it stands now, its not all that good. If this is supposed to be a support weapon its not doing a great job at that. But then again, Warhorn is one of the most used off hand weapons for necromancer. So I can't complain too much. I do wish it gave out boons to allies though. Like Swiftness and Regen at least.

Reaper

This will probably put them into Recommended territory for Raids. I think they'll be good enough. Not a great build but that 66% damage reduction is huge for reaper's shroud.

The other side of this with Deathly chill is really nice. Makes the burst much better. Condi reaper has an issue with buildup time for sure but their overall damage was good. So hopefully this helps them finally to at least become a viable build. I don't think they'll be a meta pick though which is fine. We'll see though it might not be enough.

Spite/Death Magic

Noticing something sorely lacking in this update. Both of these specializations are sorely under powered. I think a lot of the damage you're giving to reaper honestly should just be put into spite. A fragility trait would go a long way in solving many of these issues and help to uplift power harbinger. Which has flatlined. Spite needs some major TLC and focusing on buffing skills over spite is the wrong direction in my opinion. You should really clean house with the traits before doing that because we're going to see further problems down the line with future elite specs, harbinger, core necromancer or other weapons or utility skills you might want to add.

Death magic has many of the same issues. it lacks identity beyond defense and minions having a trait for power and a trait for poison but doesn't focus on anything else. The minion traits need to be compressed and the minion skills need to be worked on in tandem with it. Death magic also had passive toughness which is a bad thing for raiding and the toughness should be a part a active trait, not something you gain passively just because your in death magic.

Conculsion

I want to know what Arena net's future plans for the necromancer are because we're not in a good spot when compared to other professions. We're Passable but there's a lot of major design flaws with it. A lot of bad skills which give players a false understanding of the game and the fact that a Minion Master build isn't even close to viable in PvE is a disservice to the players drawn to the necromancer in the first place because that's what people expect to be doing when they first boot up the game. And its one of the worst feelings to have to tell new players that a dedicated minion master build isn't viable.

So I ask respectfully for a roadmap for where you want the necromancer to be in the next year or so. Because I don't want to speculate on this sort of thing.

[allshallperish.4620]

2 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Photon Blasting Modul

• Grace of the Land: Fixed an issue that prevented might from being applied to downed players.

GAME CHANGER

[Sincarion.1034]

58 minutes ago, Seraphis Zurvan.6839 said:

Then you aren't playing it correctly. Staff/Staff Mirage does not need any boon duration to upkeep 100% Alacrity. In-fact, it goes well beyond 100% uptime.

 

This nerf changes little but may require some ritualists pieces. That's it. It was to mainly target Staff/Axe Mirage, which could also do over 100% Alac uptime and do very heavy DPS.

Brother people are mad at these changes because Anet can't understand that nerfs will awalys make people uinhappy, why nerf fb that was OP for so long when you can elevate other classes to the same level, I tell you why, that requires game knowledge and it's way harder than some numbers nerfs like they do here, mirage is relevant on what 2-3 bosses, so yeah let's nerfs that, chrono CC too big, oh yeah nerfs that too, like anyone plays chrono, these changes are unfun, I was hoping new balancing team would break the nerfing spree but I was wrong, nothing will really change I have very little hope for June update.

 

I think I speak for a lot of people in the game where If next patch is bad I will quit, game's been unfun for some time now, they can't keep promising they cannot provide.

[Sagedurk.7358]

Depending on how hard this will hit Alac Willbender's damage, it might go back to not being played at all.

It should either hit like a truck, or have actual support!

Give us more versatility than just applying alac. 

 

I keep on seeing fixes, particularly for Firebrand, but we're well after a year from EoD release and Willbender STILL has design flaws.

Don't want Alac Willbender to be overtuned in damage? Then start by fixing the design flaws of the whole elite spec, and maybe it'll be able to actually be a support instead of a DPS that happens to provide Alac

 

Off hand sword is still not used, and Power has become less reactive in terms of virtues due to Courage now being part of your DPS rotation. Last time I checked, Courage is a defensive virtue, but it's used offensively because of the recent changes to the Virtues traitline.

 

But oh well, my last outcry to fix the design was completely ignored, and it's probably going to be ignored again. So I have one question, what's the actual plan for Willbender? I have mained this since EoD release and still don't understand what direction you want to go with the elite spec