Delay May nerfs?

[Kuya.6495]

Would it be out of the question to suggest Anet delay the nerfs to FB and WB until they they have decided on how to compensate? I know it's not impossible since anet did delay the mirage and scrapper nerfs due to overwhelmingly negative feedback.

 

It doesn't seem fair that alac willbender, a spec that is already hard to use and very niche, will get its dps reduced without at least being compensated by allowing it to maintain 25 stacks of might like other alac dps builds. 

 

It would also be nice if dps condibrand weren't being punished because quickbrand overperforms on the benchmarks. Shouldn't the solution to quickbrand just be to force it to take non dps traits to be able to maintain boon uptime? Right now quickbrand takes the same last two traits as dps firebrand because nothing in the last two trees really provides a good enough increase to boon uptime. Perhaps nerfing baseline quickness on fb so that it can't maintain permanent quickness without taking all non dps traits would be fair. (And the nerf to quickness uptime should be servere enough that you can't work around it by taking two quickbrands with dps traits).

 

Can we get a pause on those nerfs until they come along with more positive alternatives?

Edited April 25, 2023 by Kuya.6495

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Nerfs don't entitle compensation.  The point of a nerf is to reduce the overall effectiveness of the spec, so giving compensatory buffs wouldn't make any sense.  

[draxynnic.3719]

I'm personally okay with cdps firebrand taking a dip. The build was competitive at a benchmark DPS of around 37k, due to the combination of utility, cleave, and ease of use. It doesn't need to be (checks) 42k. The compensation would be DH and WB being brought up so that they're worth using.

The alacbender nerfs are a bit weirder. Alacbender was already a bit of a meme to most players from what I've been seeing, so this looks like another case of balancing to the top end that's effectively beating a dead horse as far as the majority of the player base is concerned.

 

[Kuya.6495]

52 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'm personally okay with cdps firebrand taking a dip. The build was competitive at a benchmark DPS of around 37k, due to the combination of utility, cleave, and ease of use. It doesn't need to be (checks) 42k. The compensation would be DH and WB being brought up so that they're worth using.

The alacbender nerfs are a bit weirder. Alacbender was already a bit of a meme to most players from what I've been seeing, so this looks like another case of balancing to the top end that's effectively beating a dead horse as far as the majority of the player base is concerned.

 

I'm also ok with dps nerfs to quick and condibrand as long as it comes with buffs to condi willbender. 

 

It doesn't make sense to me that the selfish condi guardian spec (c willbender) does less dps than the spec with all the support baked in.  

 

I thought they wanted dh to be the power spec, wb the condi dps and fb the support but that's not how it worked out. In fact, If they want to keep wb as top dps on strike damage and perhaps condi damage in the future, they might as well put alac on dh instead because alac never made any sense on willbender to begin with. At least DH actually has some support capabilities (aoe heal on f2 and cone block on f3).

Edited April 25, 2023 by Kuya.6495

[draxynnic.3719]

3 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

I'm also ok with dps nerfs to quick and condibrand as long as it comes with buffs to condi willbender. 

 

It doesn't make sense to me that the selfish condi guardian spec (c willbender) does less dps than the spec with all the support baked in.  

 

I thought they wanted dh to be the power spec, wb the condi dps and fb the support but that's not how it worked out. In fact, If they want to keep wb as top dps on strike damage and perhaps condi damage in the future, they might as well put alac on dh instead because alac never made any sense on willbender to begin with. At least DH actually has some support capabilities (aoe heal on f2 and cone block on f3).

Yeah, alac on willbender was pretty much intended to be a self-only buff that people realised could have an interesting interaction with the Virtues GM trait - and ArenaNet chose to embrace that. Which makes the nerf even more questionable, since it also hurts every solo WB build that used it.

[The Boz.2038]

10 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

Would it be out of the question to suggest Anet delay the nerfs to FB and WB

Yes.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

On 4/25/2023 at 1:21 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'm personally okay with cdps firebrand taking a dip. The build was competitive at a benchmark DPS of around 37k, due to the combination of utility, cleave, and ease of use. It doesn't need to be (checks) 42k. The compensation would be DH and WB being brought up so that they're worth using.

The alacbender nerfs are a bit weirder. Alacbender was already a bit of a meme to most players from what I've been seeing, so this looks like another case of balancing to the top end that's effectively beating a dead horse as far as the majority of the player base is concerned.

 

The problem is that only axe/torch was getting anywhere close to those numbers, but this nerf targets all load outs, even underperforming but somewhat viable options like scepter and sword. Axe will probably still be okay thanks to condi procs on the weapon skills, and the buff to the axe (only!) trait. But anything else is gonna die. This only hurts build diversity. 

A much better option would have been to nerf the axe auto chain to bring it more in line instead. Not kill everything else except axe, which weren't even part of the problem in the first place. 

 

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

The problem is that only axe/torch was getting anywhere close to those numbers, but this nerf targets all load outs, even underperforming but somewhat viable options like scepter and sword. Axe will probably still be okay thanks to condi procs on the weapon skills, and the buff to the axe (only!) trait. But anything else is gonna die. This only hurts build diversity. 

A much better option would have been to nerf the axe auto chain to bring it more in line instead. Not kill everything else except axe, which weren't even part of the problem in the first place. 

 

 

That's a fair take - my observation related to the general goal more than the specific implementation. Slapping down the Justice procs is an inelegant way of doing it for a number of reasons.