May 2 Balance Update Preview

[Spiral.3724]

WvW player here, warrior main.
The disparity between PvE and WvW for Arc Divider is a bit much, don't you think? 
Warriors in PvE will be all like, RAWR I'M AMAZING, and then come over to try WvW and be like, huhhhh???
I understand that there needs to be differences between game modes but maybe don't make the gap so large.
 

[Xenesis.6389]

Look at the amount of times they've messed with chaos vortex...

https://i.imgur.com/sbRHllc.jpg

Yet they can't be bothered to fix their one dodge screw up after 3 years...

/slowclap

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

PvP Bladesworn enjoyer here:

bladesworn is gonna be so toxic. I already have overpowered sustain running tactics/defense, and they are buffing shout heal AND unshakeable mountain AND war horn? I will never die.

 

 

Bladesworn needed love, no doubt about it. But this is not the way to go about it. The PvP forum will erupt about this overnight once this goes live, mark my words.

 

 

The pistol changes are good, as is the change to dragonspike mine. Might actually see play now.

 

 

The TR buff is nice in principle, but that will only worsen the OP healing problem because now I can get an extra charge of combat stimulant (not to mention an extra round for all my ammo skills, which I can spam to gain now even more barrier thanks to UM) that much faster. I repeat, I will never die.

 

 

What they should have done was buff Blooming fire into an actually usable skill (reduce cast to 1/2s, increase radius of explosions, apply vulnerability), put stab on trigger guard and reduce CD to 45s, and give a 3rd charge of cyclone trigger. That provides a bit better offense and a little bit more active defense without bloating the heal and barrier spam. The planned changes fix none of bladesworn's problems but instead try to prop it up with OP healing. We're heading straight back to BS being an unkillable bunker like it was before it was nerfed in October.

[JormagSorbet.8079]

@Cal Cohen.2358.

 

Good change on the mesmer pistol cds. Good change on stone heart. Good change on Unrelenting Criticism. 

You should listen to the increasingly-frustrated berserker-oriented warrior mains, especially @ZEUStiger.3590, on  Page 3.

Consider very carefully what kind of game you are asking power berserker to play, and what they have to account for to play that game successfully. They have far less mitigation to work with than every other class in the game. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2023 by JormagSorbet.8079

[LordHT.8297]

Lol, they are nerfing Arc divider on WvW and not touching vindicator 

[kurosy.1384]

Anet please can you show some love to pve Chronomancers? Like, improving its support performance? Making the whole class a bit more worthy? I have main chrono friends with existential crisis and the percentage of chrono encounters in pve instanced content is lower than 10% :C

[Sagedurk.7358]

35 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

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. 

Guess my pipedream of Heal Willbender getting better is gone if that's the amount of boon duration Willbender is going to need..

Not to mention the design flaws regarding traits hasn't changed at all since the release

[HeliosMagi.9867]

Berserker's PvE buffs are a step in the right direction, but I'll echo Jzaku's opinion that the 15% crit chance should be permanent instead of only in Berserk, so as to not have annoying RNG in Adrenaline generation between Berserks, especially for people running the Quickness version that has to use Banners instead of Rages.

 

Other than that, I would also like for Decapitate to have a small amount of cleave, like maybe 3 targets in a small cone in front of you, just so it's not useless in encounters that have a lot of adds, such as the Siren's Reef Fractal or Keep Construct when you need to kill the ghosts on top of the boss.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

4 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

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. 

I will start giving a kitten about improving my struggling team's success rate AFTER arenanet starts giving a kitten about making berserker have competitive damage. How about instead of making berserk mode feel less useful (by lowering the disparity between being in and out of berserk mode, as you're asking) they make the damage IN berserker mode high enough for me to not worry about losing some of it to help my team with other utilities? Because right now berserker starts already at a disadvantage compared to spellbreaker and bladesworn, and has to perform extra hard to match them. That's why you're worried about your bar full of Rage skills - because you need to squeeze every ounce out of your build to even be able to compete with other specs playing leisurely.

Edited April 21, 2023 by ZEUStiger.3590

[ZEUStiger.3590]

14 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

WvW infusions aren't expensive.

There are people who don't play WvW. You shouldn't be required to play WvW to make a PvE build. Breaking news, more at 11.

[Glott.7239]

Hm, some of the points are really confusing me. Personally i have yet to encounter these illusive "overperforming alacrity willbenders and Condition-based alacrity renegades" most of what is see when it comes to alacrity is mechanists and the odd tempest now an than.

 

For Revenant quickness herold seems way more out of whack they anything i've seen from renegades at the moment.

 

It's nice to finally see some reaper buffs even if some are the meme worthy axe buffs. For the focus buffs i would still prefer a functionality flip on Spinal Shivers to deal more damage when no boons are remove rathe than the other way around and that game wide if possible.

 

The Buff the Elixir of Ambition looks nice but if my math works out right the cooldown reduction has the potential to enabele "harbinger only" partys with full boons and i'm not sure thats what you want to see.

 

For Engi. Do we really need condi holo? I'd much rather see some buffs to quickness scrapper. Improving its flexibility with utility skills and giving it some accsess to fury.

 

I'm also a bit on the fence about the mirage nerfs. Staff mirage is a very situational build and i have not seen that many around lately. While it is certainly very good is some cases, it's just mediocre in others and this nerf might bring it down to just "always bad". Chrono on the other hand could use some love for its support builds especially the alac one.

[Purr.9360]

ANET, please.

Why are you trying to force us to play bladesworn in WvW...

I can't believe war is still getting nerfed in 2023. Just give war a trait that does damage on CC so at least spellbreaker will be fun again.

Pls get someone who plays war in wvw who doesn't play as a punching bag. Please see the deep pit of dispair we are in. Think of the Batman - Bane movie. Wars are in that pit that Bane was raised in. Except we were not born in the dark.

 

[Mike.7983]

Switching alac mirage to 99% ritualist only gives about 45% boon duration.  Not sure if its able to have 100% uptime now with May 2 nerf.

[Dragonzephir.6197]

2 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Arc Divider: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.705 to 0.6 in WvW only.

Just pain, why ? 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Dragonzephir.6197

[Purr.9360]

Everytime you buff ranger in wvw.

You support my toxic traits of becoming a thief main

 

[Dahkeus.8243]

The elementalist changes here are far from significant enough to address the performance of Catalysts in small group/roaming scenarios.  Fresh Air is far from the only problem with this over-performing because even without the Air traitline, a celestial scepter catalyst can quickly stack 25 might and 10-20 stacks of burning on a target with most of that coming from the auto attack. 

I would suggest at the very least reducing the burn stacks on scepter or at least slowing the cast time.  The power damage could even be increased to offset this to some degree if needed.

[Snow.4017]

Alacrity from Mirage should be a trait that competes with mirrored axes.

[zealex.9410]

51 minutes ago, Sublimatio.6981 said:

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

Holy gigachad reaper. Enjoy it till june when it gets nerfed.

[Voraxen.2035]

Please revert the spvp Shadow Meld restrictions from last patch or at least make it do more. It seriously embarrassing how little you guys work on thief. We need a lot of work and all we're getting is a buff to signets of power? 

Edited April 22, 2023 by Voraxen.2035

[Raykkaiz.6173]

First you took the fun out of Firebrand, now you're taking away the numbers

Edited April 21, 2023 by Raykkaiz.6173

[Aelin.9317]

Cata still has a bug with grand finale that needs fixed 🙂 It would be nice if that was looked at

[Nightara.1804]

Please fix Mesmer Mantras. They feel extremely pointless and punishing now, especially for Power builds (Which are lacking any viable alternative to Mantra of Pain). Give us a third charge, reduce the precast time to not make us be stuck in a goddamn 2.5 second cast because we pressed a button half a second too early, give Mesmer Mantras the same treatment as Firebrand ones, idc. Just DO SOMETHING please.

Please make Infinite Horizon baseline already. It's not only the ONLY viable option for any Mirage build in PvE, but since the last patch you're outright FORCING people to run it for Alac Mirage. That GM trait is bascially a dead slot bc there is simply no alternative to Infinite Horizon.

[PseudoOAlias.4279]

--- Thank you for the notes! But: ---

a) Bladesworn still has no stability or reliable stunbreaks. The lack of any stab at all is a bigger issue. Maybe just 1 stack back on [Flow Stabilizer] would help.

and

b) This fixes none of Bladesworn's gameplay/design problems.

(possible solutions given below)

*Primarily that it's Buggy & Jank to play. And that [Tactical Reload] is already too powerful that it's supplanting the class's mechanic of Dragon Trigger.

 

Solutions:

1. > Please make F2 Toggle Dragon Trigger on & off like [Kneel] < instead of moving to cancel DT. The current version is buggy and too easy to cancel accidentally when you're trying to turn your camera which you need to do to aim your Dragon Triggers AT ALL, and that's also relying on you being able to toggle on & off action camera.

Bugs & Gameplay Jank:

There's more, but Bls plays like garbage in Competitive Primarily because half of both Bladesworn and Warrior skills wiff 70% of the time. DT 2 - Boost fails all the time even on flat ground and DT 3 - Reach fails whenever it has to scale over terrain & the target is lower than whatever it scaled. Not to mention that [Savage Leap] and [Rush] both never connect, and are still bafflingly 1 target.

[Tactical Reload]:

2. Already too strong. To the point where the existence of this button is becoming around which Bladesworn is being balanced instead of the actual class mechanic of Dragon Trigger. (Similar to [Fast Hands] with any other version of Warrior.) -- If [Tactical Reload] is so mandatory as to be able to play this class is should be nerfed not buffed & made baseline (moved to an F3 button or something with a reduced 90s cd.) And then Bladesworn given a new elite skill. And then balance and adjusting other pieces of the kit can be done from there.

3. Artillery Slash's cast time is the issue not the ammo cooldown rate. Please make it 1/2s at least so you can interrupt people res-ing allies, let alone actual skills.

 

I know no one cares at this point, but Bladesworn has a LOT of jank that is holding it back. Along with a class identity crisis problem of [Tactical Reload]. It's these bugs & jank that are the problem not the numbers. And buffing the [Tactical Reload] band-aid that it has will just make it op again, it will not fix these problems or make the class that has to build a resource to sit in one sport to build another resource to use a skill that has a huge chance of bugging out and failing any more fun imo.

PLEASE Keep this in mind when doing your next, larger update. 😄

--- 

P.S. [Signet of Stamina] Still has a cast time and animation, even though one isn't listed. It also doesn't queue stacks of the trait [Signet of Ferocity] correctly when queued with [Dolyak Signet] and either of the other 2 signets that have cast times. >> If you could sneak in a fix to either list a cast time for [Signet of Stamina] or remove the cast time & uncancelable animation entirely that'd be amazing. ty ❤️

Edited April 21, 2023 by PseudoOAlias.4279
formatting

[Bristingr.5034]

1 hour ago, Skyroar.2974 said:

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.

I almost never play Weaver though. My main enjoyment is support Tempest, which utilizes Earth and Water.

[Zyphor.3480]

H-hi... Do you have anything left for Scrappers?