May 2 Balance Update Preview

[zealex.9410]

3 hours ago, Burial.1958 said:

 

Okei. I do not know how Anet thinks that Thief is in a good spot.

Because its for 2 specs?

[MMOAdventures.1643]

21 hours ago, Mike.7983 said:

Very sore changes and I feel that the balance team has no clue what they are doing anymore, why nerfing revenant so badly, dragon hunter change is a joke, reaper got what dragonhunter needs.  Alac mirage is so dead without all ritualist gear for boons now.

This is exactly what's in my mind now. It seems like I don't see any balancing at all but just pure nerf to some professions while overpowering others. Sad! 😞

[EphemeralWallaby.7643]

Please don't modify stone heart in that way.  This hurts builds structured around few attunements or infrequent attunement swapping which incorporate earth.  Personally, I don't like to play my elementalist builds with the kind of attunement swapping of fresh air builds... it's too much for me.  The drawback to staying in one or few attunements already exists: it's the lack of using the other options available from different attunements and dealing with more CDs.  And, I feel that more traits being modified to activate on attunement swap creates less incentive for build diversity from low/single attunement builds.

 

~EpWa

[misterman.1530]

2 hours ago, VictorLeal.4102 said:

Reaper had low DPS, Life Force generation issue, weak Shouts skills that were useless, very bad elite, weird traits. And with each patch they are fixing these aspects. 

That's what I mean. I solo'd the personal story with a Reaper and didn't feel weak. So, was it raid-related issues?

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, VictorLeal.4102 said:

Reaper had low DPS, Life Force generation issue, weak Shouts skills that were useless, very bad elite, weird traits. And with each patch they are fixing these aspects. 

The current benchmark of the reaper is fine (35k dps). In fact this benchmark is what should be the golden standard (if anything other professions/specs should be brought down to reaper level of damage, not the opposite). This patch and the previous one merely inflat numbers that don't need to be inflated.

Reaper does not have life force generation issue, it's the top dps builds recommended that does. That's purely a player issue if you lack LF generation.

Shouts aren't weak, they just serve no purpose in PvE. They are designed for competitive modes, not for end game PvE. They are designed for fighting against up to 5 foes, not to fight a single foe. Increasing their damage will just make them barely compete against Wells while carrying a load a useless fluff.

The traits aren't weird. The issue is just that 2 traits (soul eater and Reaper's onslaught) are simply overpowered and nobody is willing to let go of them.

 

This patch solve 0 issue for the reaper, it just flat out powercreep the single build that's been used since they changed reaper's onslaught to provide quickness instead of increasing the base attack speed while in shroud. 6 years that they do the same thing. If they want to make reaper popular in PvE raids it's not by increasing it's damage output that they will achieve this result as the damage output is already more than good enough.

 

[Vavume.8065]

23 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Thief

Signets of Power is a trait that we reworked in the last balance update that didn't quite hit the mark. We want to be cautious with repeatable initiative sources like this, but we feel like there's still room to tune it up.

 

Stop wasting your and our time.

[SleepyBat.9034]

So.... Where's the Harbinger nerfs for wvw?? Anyone? Also renegade has been over buffed in wvw and needs some solid nerfs.

Edited April 22, 2023 by SleepyBat.9034

[Steven.9165]

Quite a few good changes - as expected from CmC 🥰

(especially Reaper needed it badly...)

Nonetheless please think about tuning back on the burning nerfs for firebrand.

Were changes necessary? Yes of course they were, but these are too much in my opinion

Celestial Firebrand build will suffer extremely from this and while adjustments are necessary it feels quite a bit too much

Please think about it - thx :)

[DarkCobalt.2849]

9 hours ago, RetributionZero.1347 said:

This is actually a really interesting idea. Would allow possibly other weapons (Hey, does anyone remember Scepter exists?) to have some use other than just Staff/Staff, and also allows for easier tuning to keep the Alac build in check. Finally, it creates more interesting gameplay than just “Spam dodge and make sure you have 3 clones up with your signet build”.

 

Another interesting point of note is that all these builds that are “overperforming”, not once did anyone mention condiVirtuoso’s DPS output with 4 signets. Just a point of note here. 

To clear something up: 2 of condi Virt's signets are active uses, with Ether and Illusions both being a skill reset of some form and end up having higher APM than if you took other utilities. 

[DarkCobalt.2849]

37 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

The current benchmark of the reaper is fine (35k dps). 

This is far from fine. It's ~5k behind other power benchmarks while being (almost) entirely melee, requiring that they take no significant damage during Shroud to get the full rotation done, and that the boss doesn't step out of the 2 wells that they use in their rotation. This is overall more restrictive compared to other melee builds while providing significantly less DPS. 

[Azazel.9183]

Power Daredevil damage needs to be buffed in PvE. It is unfair for it to be viable only in a few Raids and Strikes because of the stolen skills. In 90% of PvE content you can't steal detonate plasma or magnetic bomb. I would prefer to have the stolen skills nerfed and the overall damage increased if a compromise needs to be made. Increasing the damage of Bound or staff 2 would be a good idea since that will leave Condi DD as is. 

[DarkCobalt.2849]

7 hours ago, Nightara.1804 said:

kitten. You only reduce the Precision and Power by running full Ritu. Staff/Staff has 2k power DPS on the benchmark, so it is absolutely impossible for this change to have any greater effect than -2k DPS (And that's assuming the power DPS will be nerfed to LITERALLY ZERO, which is far from true). Yes, you will lose a few stacks of Bleeding due to Sharper Images, but I highly doubt those are anywhere near relevant for Staff/Staff considering its low attack speed.

The benchmark has a crit chance of ~45%, going full Ritu would reduce that to 30%, that's like one stack of Bleeding (Uptime, not total) you lose. Not. Even. Remotely. Relevant.

For Staff/Axe? Yes. For Staff/Staff? Nope. Absolutely. Not.

The numbers you're listing don't seem correct because bleeding is a much bigger part of Mirage's damage from that illusion crit trait Sharper Images and is way more than the "few" stacks you've claimed. If we take a look at the benchmark DPS log's breakdown: https://dps.report/4Hsr-20221203-161154_golem you can see that Torment does 42% of the overall damage at 12829 DPS and Bleeding does 33% of the overall damage at 9720 DPS. The staff skills on Mirage have very few applications of bleeding, meaning that a majority of that is coming from the crit trait. I'm also not sure where you're getting the 45% crit chance for the benchmark, because in the log I linked the crit chance is 58%. If we halve the crit rate of Mirage from taking Ritualists over Viper's and dropping to 30%, we will be losing roughly ~5k DPS in bleeding. That's far more than the ~2k loss you're proposing. 

Edited April 22, 2023 by DarkCobalt.2849

[coro.3176]

On 4/21/2023 at 9:39 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Engineer

The focus for engineer in this update is improving the effectiveness of condition-based holosmith builds. We've also brought down a couple of overtuned damage sources in WvW, namely Photonic Blasting Module and Grenade Barrage.

 Core

• Incendiary Ammo: Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only.
• Grenade Barrage: Reduced power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.4 in WvW only.

Holosmith

• Corona Burst: This skill now inflicts 2 stacks of burning for 5 seconds when striking an enemy in PvE only.
• Photon Blitz: Increased burning duration from 1 second to 3 seconds in PvE only.
• Photon Blasting Module: Increased burning from 5 stacks for 4 seconds to 7 stacks for 6 seconds in PvE only. Reduced power coefficient from 5.0 to 3.5 in WvW only.

 

Is there some reason why these condi buffs couldn't make it into PvP or WvW?

It's not as if there's any danger of condi engi being overpowered. There are approximately zero condi engis in any competitive game modes right now.

[Furball.1236]

What I like:

You're reducing the boon output from alac mirage, instead of reducing the DPS of condi mirage in general, to solve the alac uptime vs. DPS issue you attempt to address.

 

What I dislike:

Nerfing condi FB and condi ren trying to buff power DH and power ren. The balancing should be done compare to all the professions. It does not make sense to nerf one build to kind of force the players to play another from the same profession.

Also, if the goal is to reduced the DPS of quick condi FB and alac condi ren, the adjustment should be done to their boon output, not dps traits/skills that affect their pure dps variant. I don't see these DPS variants are overperforming compared to other DPS builds. Instead, FB is less fun to play and ren is weaker than before. They can receive some love instead.

 

What I'm concerned about:

Ever since alac was added to the staff ambush, the alac uptime from alac mirage has always been one of the worst between all the dps alc builds in the game. I haven't seen alac mirage played in fractals, and I've only seen them played in only a couple of 10-man contents, such as SH, TL, and very rarely Cairn. When I do see them in my squads, there are 1-2 alac mirages per subsquad. However, the alac is below 70% most of the time. Mirage is a class the player need to watch its clone animations, cast bars, and combo fields closely to play better.

I've seen countless staff mirages saying calling themselves and the build OP while they do such poor alac output and pretty bad DPS. I guess they just look at Snowcrow and think they know what to do, do it, and claim they're OP without checking their performance with numbers.

Please note the gears and builds written in websites such as Snowcrow's is for a very organized group which does not require the player to do as much actions not included in their "rotations," such as ressing and extra movements. If not done already, please balance the builds based on the real situations as you can find in the gameplay or in log reservoir such as GW2Wingman, instead of purely based on Snowcrow's website or the golem benchmarks.

According to wiki, "Alacrity and Might are applied near the mesmer only, not near clones." I assume the change is to reduce the alac provided by the player to half unlike the update preview says. Does the upcoming change mean the new mirage with 100% BD outputs the same alac as the current mirage with 0% BD? If so, practically all the mirages out there, except maybe few people in extremely organized statics, are not capable of reliably producing 100% alac uptime by themselves to their sub. I really hope you're not forcing squads to have 2 mirages per sub to maintain good alac uptime. Mirages are already not played much in most encounters, and we won't find 2 mirages per sub anywhere other than TL.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Furball.1236
Highlighted some lines.

[Relco.2708]

1. First of all staff/axe can't provide 100%alac without conc. gear (link the logs if I'm wrong) even with endurance regen food. (More dodges more alac) You sacrifice all your dodges for boons, not talking about having to have vigor and regen uptime for full DPS potential.
2. No-one in the general player base plays staff/axe as alac providers even if they did and  staxe did 100% alac it still does less DPS than qfb or qherald (which btw use conc. Gear)  and is harder to pull off. Gotta have staff clones up 100% time every small mistake takes alac uptime from you.
3. It's not the only class that can do ~50% alac for free, tempest can do over 50% in full DPS gear more as condi have acces to sand squal in rotation. So where the point ? xD
4. It feels the same way like before when axe/axe was about to be nerfed because couple godlike players can overperform with it.
5. Fix axe/axe movement instead since the build is unusable on bosses with platform you can fall of or where you need to keep tight stack(Boneskiner etc)(make it like ele dagger 3 to stop when hit target) or look at scepter for mesmers. Buffs to scepter would solve this problem as on bosses with platform you could use scepter as pistol or torch got 1200range. Just by adding bleeding( rn scepter has only conf and torment) to scepter AA and ambush skills scepter would be viable for ranged condi DPS builds also would help core condi mesmers(if anyone play that)
6. Why staff can have might alac torment confusion and bleeding when it's practically support weapon and scepter have only torment not even a lot stacks and confusion ? (Not talking about the bleeding from crits which on condi you won't get alot)
7. My point is don't destroy builds rather make new or improve old ones.If you wanna target staff/axe alac only make it that youll get the bonus concentration from traits only when wielding staff as it won't hurt other builds this way.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Relco.2708

[Josiah.2967]

Congrats Anet! This buff will bring me in the game. I love Reaper. I felt like I was having to play classes I didn't enjoy in Raids. I left the game as a result! I will be returning. Finally, I can play the class I like competitively.

[RenneBright.2473]

44 minutes ago, DarkCobalt.2849 said:

This is far from fine. It's ~5k behind other power benchmarks while being (almost) entirely melee, requiring that they take no significant damage during Shroud to get the full rotation done, and that the boss doesn't step out of the 2 wells that they use in their rotation. This is overall more restrictive compared to other melee builds while providing significantly less DPS. 

Gl trying to do an unrealistic 40k on Qadim, assuming you don't get downed beforehand by a shockwave or badly positioning yourself that is.

In all seriousness, you don't need to have 40k DPS at every boss to have a decent timer/smooth FC.

For Sama CM, I'd care more about whether or not you got enough CCs in your comp or how well you can pull him around (without AFKing in place), rather than whether or not you can reach 40k. I doubt you'll ever reach 40k though that way, and given that you can't "damage" him during the CCs xP.
There is "Golem benchmarks" (0 attacks, 0 mechanics) and there is an actual boss that isn't one. Not every boss is a MO.

I think you still don't understand that not reaching 40k in all bosses isn't the end of the world, and it doesn't prevent you to have a decent full clear... I don't get why you're so obsessed by that number tbh.

[Batalix.2873]

14 minutes ago, Furball.1236 said:

What I like:

You're reducing the boon output from alac mirage, instead of reducing the DPS of condi mirage in general, to solve the alac uptime vs. DPS issue you attempt to address.

 

What I dislike:

Nerfing condi FB and condi ren trying to buff power DH and power ren. The balancing should be done compare to all the professions. It does not make sense to nerf one build to kind of force the players to play another from the same profession.

Also, if the goal is to reduced the DPS of quick condi FB and alac condi ren, the adjustment should be done to their boon output, not dps traits/skills that affect their pure dps variant. I don't see these DPS variants are overperforming compared to other DPS builds. Instead, FB is less fun to play and ren is weaker than before. They can receive some love instead.

 

What I'm concerned about:

Ever since alac was added to the staff ambush, the alac uptime from alac mirage has always been one of the worst between all the dps alc builds in the game. I haven't seen alac mirage played in fractals, and I've only seen them played in only a couple of 10-man contents, such as SH, TL, and very rarely Cairn. When I do see them in my squads, there are 1-2 alac mirages per subsquad. However, the alac is below 70% most of the time. Mirage is a class the player need to watch its clone animations, cast bars, and combo fields closely to play better.

I've seen countless staff mirages saying calling themselves and the build OP while they do such poor alac output and pretty bad DPS. I guess they just look at Snowcrow and think they know what to do, do it, and claim they're OP without checking their performance with numbers.

Please note the gears and builds written in websites such as Snowcrow's is for a very organized group which does not require the player to do as much actions not included in their "rotations," such as ressing and extra movements. If not done already, please balance the builds based on the real situations as you can find in the gameplay or in log reservoir such as GW2Wingman, instead of purely based on Snowcrow's website or the golem benchmarks.

According to wiki, "Alacrity and Might are applied near the mesmer only, not near clones." I assume the change is to reduce the alac provided by the player to half unlike the update preview says. Does the upcoming change mean the new mirage with 100% BD outputs the same alac as the current mirage with 0% BD? If so, practically all the mirages out there, except maybe few people in extremely organized statics, are not capable of reliably producing 100% alac uptime by themselves to their sub. I really hope you're not forcing squads to have 2 mirages per sub to maintain good alac uptime. Mirages are already not played much in most encounters, and we won't find 2 mirages per sub anywhere other than TL.

 

Agree with the general rundown of alac mirage, it's surprisingly difficult to maintain uptime compared to Ranger or Tempest. Mirage is by design a high maintenance/skill class, because whether you are doing DPS or alac you are subject to supervising three clones that move at their own pace. Whereas Spirits or Overloads are fairly reliably attached to on-press cooldowns (yes you still need to heal the Spirits or swap attunements, but overall that is much more within the player's control).

 

Disagree regarding boons vs. DPS. There are 27 especs, and Druid and Herald have niches just like everyone else. DPS should not be bolstered as this sacred, untouchable thing, particularly in the cases of heavy, heavy support specs like FB, Scourge, and Mech that do plenty of other things exceptionally well. We have more than enough especs to selectively push down a small number of especs' DPS to increase role diversity and viability across the board.

 

Put another way, I don't want to play a game where every class sits at around 30-35k benchmark with varying degrees of boon support impotency. Let some classes not care about deeps and be boon or heal beasts. And especially, especially for Firebrand, a class that reads books, chants mantras, and uses an axe like a runecarver or crook more than an actual weapon. The class oozes non-martial, cerebral solutions to problems, it can stand on so many other strengths than just another generic condi DPS class.

[misterman.1530]

1 hour ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

So.... Where's the Harbinger nerfs for wvw?? Anyone? Also renegade has been over buffed in wvw and needs some solid nerfs.

Why do Harbs need nerfing. I get killed as often as I win. If you are having consistent problems against Harbs, then you might want to look at your build.

[itspomf.9523]

On 4/21/2023 at 12:39 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Thief is generally in a good spot, and we didn't see any major outliers that needed to be addressed with this update.

[Citation needed]

Edited April 22, 2023 by itspomf.9523

[Sagedurk.7358]

12 hours ago, DarkCobalt.2849 said:

 

I'm really at a loss for words regarding why they felt the need to outright kill the Willbender build. Isn't it a good thing that we get diversity in class:role selection? We got a whiff of alacrity on Guardian for 1 patch and it's immediately being nuked from orbit in the next. Why even bother giving Willbender an alacrity trait to begin with then? Window dressing I suppose? Checking off the checkboxes for vaguely coherent class design? Well back to Mechanist I guess.

Guess they just wanted to give us the illusion of Willbender having any support in the first place.

Over a year has passed and we are still bound to Battle Presence + Phoenix Protocol to even give alac AT ALL.

We need 2 GM traits and also need to hit something to provide alac! Not to mention the lack of other utility we have

 

But I suppose they don't want Guardian to have a support outside of Firebrand..

Anet, fix support Willbender; or seriously remove Phoenix Protocol, Holy Reckoning, and Conceited Curate from PvE and give us more usable traits.

 

I saw someone else suggest this, but you can increase the gap between DPS and Alac Willbender by decreasing the damage of Lethal Tempo, and compensating it on Tyrant's Momentum.

[SleepyBat.9034]

4 minutes ago, misterman.1530 said:

Why do Harbs need nerfing. I get killed as often as I win. If you are having consistent problems against Harbs, then you might want to look at your build.

If you honestly think that then you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. Do you even play wvw? Harbinger easily has the most broken build in the game right now.

[Relco.2708]

I play staff/staff mirage in fractals but you are to do 100% alac only on bosses as other mobs die to quick

[Furball.1236]

9 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

 

Agree with the general rundown of alac mirage, it's surprisingly difficult to maintain uptime compared to Ranger or Tempest. Mirage is by design a high maintenance/skill class, because whether you are doing DPS or alac you are subject to supervising three clones that move at their own pace. Whereas Spirits or Overloads are fairly reliably attached to on-press cooldowns (yes you still need to heal the Spirits or swap attunements, but overall that is much more within the player's control).

 

Disagree regarding boons vs. DPS. There are 27 especs, and Druid and Herald have niches just like everyone else. DPS should not be bolstered as this sacred, untouchable thing, particularly in the cases of heavy, heavy support specs like FB, Scourge, and Mech that do plenty of other things exceptionally well. We have more than enough especs to selectively push down a small number of especs' DPS to increase role diversity and viability across the board.

 

Put another way, I don't want to play a game where every class sits at around 30-35k benchmark with varying degrees of boon support impotency. Let some classes not care about deeps and be boon or heal beasts. And especially, especially for Firebrand, a class that reads books, chants mantras, and uses an axe like a runecarver or crook more than an actual weapon. The class oozes non-martial, cerebral solutions to problems, it can stand on so many other strengths than just another generic condi DPS class.

I like the aspect of the build diversity. I think ANet is pushing that more in the last year or so, and I really love the changes.

I play each of my classes because I like the character, skill animations, and mechanics. One of the things that keep me playing GW2 is that there is no profession that's meant to be support, tank, or pure dps as the holy trinity. I would dispise the idea if I'm forced to give up one class or elite specs.

[Demonas.1083]

2 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

So.... Where's the Harbinger nerfs for wvw?? Anyone? Also renegade has been over buffed in wvw and needs some solid nerfs.

Specify renegade wvw over buffs . If you mean the celestial shortbow salvation build being "overbuffed " it's cele issue not a renegade issue and sure that build  maybe somewhat hard to play against. Other that that the gvg/guild/zerg builds condi/power/heal variants and the power roaming ones are fine, not "overbuffed".

Edited April 22, 2023 by Demonas.1083