June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Houligan.4759]

Necro changes are harsh. It takes away everything that makes the class unique and makes it a worse generic version of other professions.

[aspirine.6852]

tldr. Are they going to nerf willbender or not. Sick of these macro using shits.

[BenaSPACE.6028]

After looking over ranger for a bit (it's a class I'm not as familiar with) I feel like you've missed an opportunity to put quickness on it, rather than on untamed, giving it better access to its ability to support allies.

Proposed changes:

Live Fast: Now grants all of its boons in an AoE around the ranger when activated.

Essence of Speed: Effect applies to anyone the ranger gives quickness. This is now affected by Moa Stance.

Bear Stance: Heals at 50% of its power to allies when Leader of the Pack is traited.

Griffon Stance: applies 3 seconds of quickness to the user (and to nearby allies at 50% duration with leader of the pack) when used, in addition to its previous effects.

Edited June 22, 2023 by BenaSPACE.6028

[BenaSPACE.6028]

Also, please, in the future, when creating these previews, be sure to open threads for changes to each classes' respective forums to make people's responses more readily quantifiable. 

I feel like this would be helpful for making players feel more heard as well, and certainly will make gaging player responses easier. 

[Fangy.2396]

Oh jeez.. Quickness scrapper recently became my favorite spec in the whole game after not touching engi for years, The changes sound like they would just make the quickscrapper build more janky and less fun. Really hope that change doesn't go through 

[Gendalfs.7521]

22 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Did you even see not a few pages ago in this very thread a video posted showing the J Mech soloing champions while the player stood behind a rock?

Can you replicate it? Go do it yourself. Then post a video. Because my mech dies in 5 secs if not called back. If you can't post video, just try it without posting anything and give us you opinion.

Edited June 22, 2023 by Gendalfs.7521

[Drag You Down.2615]

4 hours ago, BadLuck.8456 said:

Second, I disagree on Rez Scourge. I personally thought it was too powerful and suffered from its success. It had a niche but it wasn't one that most of the game seemed to want (in my subjective experience.) I see the previewed changes as an attempt to take away some niche power and give back some more widely applicable power. They didn't even outright remove it so I think there's room there to discuss balancing by numbers (rezz% probably) if the nerf is too heavy handed. Heal alac scourge will still run Blood and continue to take Ritual of Life and Transfusion. They will continue to pull bodies (I am against the QoL nerf to pulling only on the first pulse) and aoe revive them. The biggest offender in the preview is the shade duration nerf because it's so counter to scourge's core design (most easily seen in the minor traits). I understand and agree they need scourge to not provide 10 man alacrity but they need to achieve that a different way.

Yes, not a lot of people complaining about revive percentage thing, but the shade duration. 

From my experience as a heal Scourge, I can say that less than 10sec of shade duration will ruin all the spec mechanics. They just become so inconsistent and inconvenient. I can accept if that is 12 or 15 secs, but 8 secs? I will recommend them to delete Scourge. 

Besides, Scourge is one of the most useful specs in wvw previously... I'm not sure there will be more scourge after the change. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Drag You Down.2615

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

13 hours ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

I'm sure it's just as easy for a firebrand to do its job at range, do push, lasting immob, aoe immob, 25 might, have mobility and give vigor as it is for a druid. No it's not, you're deluded thinking other healers don't have niches. Firebrand either can't do those things to a sufficient extent or sacrifices much more to be able to do it. Stop thinking the grass is greener on the firebrand side, it's not.

Also, every mechanic that can be skipped through aegis and stab in raids, druid has sufficient access to those to skip it. More aegis is merely a convenient thing for predictable and avoidable bit hits and more stab is useful in fractals on some bosses, but only if the group doesn't CC and burst fast enough.

Describing what a class does, doesn't really mean it has a niche build, you are just stating things. By this technique every class has a niche build for everything. If the grass isnt greener why does Anet net keep nerfing firebrand? It keep getting nerfed and is still the best for most situations. You are kinding yourself if you think all healers are equal.

But the fact of the matter is, there are classes, hfb being the main one, that are just so much better because of this "niche" build (which by the way isn't niche at all, its good everywhere no matter what) that they are requested specifically. Same with HAM.

 

[NoggDog.5486]

14 hours ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

I'm sure it's just as easy for a firebrand to do its job at range, do push, lasting immob, aoe immob, 25 might, have mobility and give vigor as it is for a druid. No it's not, you're deluded thinking other healers don't have niches. Firebrand either can't do those things to a sufficient extent or sacrifices much more to be able to do it. Stop thinking the grass is greener on the firebrand side, it's not.

Also, every mechanic that can be skipped through aegis and stab in raids, druid has sufficient access to those to skip it. More aegis is merely a convenient thing for predictable and avoidable bit hits and more stab is useful in fractals on some bosses, but only if the group doesn't CC and burst fast enough.

As a former druid heal, I can assure you, the grass is most certainly greener.

3 points on this can be completely negated by simply swapping your mainhand weapon on your off-set and use of Shield:

1) Pushing. This can be done with Shield 5 and F1 tome skill 3 by pulling them further after the shield push. A healing druid sacrifices far more to provide this by completely invalidating their off-weapon, limiting them to only be useful in Astral after you use the knockback on longbow, when mechanists can simply do it without even swapping gear and are far more common in modern comps.

2) single target immob. Scepter can provide 5 seconds if the Firebrand needs to be the one using immob, and you don't need more than 5 seconds in a majority of cases where that happens. Frankly, this should be on the DPS and boonDPS anyways.

3) 25 might. Okay, first, it's about to become much more difficult to provide 25 might with the change to Grace of the Land from might to alacrity. Second, why are you even bringing this up anymore? It hasn't been important for one person to provide 25 might since they rebalanced might distribution, DPS basically dump might all over the party as part of their rotations now, making it so one person in a group setup putting out 25 might is simply not needed. To humor you, though, Firebrand can consistently get 19 stacks with their main rotation, and with scepter you hit cap with an extra 7 with the only drawback being it doesn't have sword's nor axe's fury to cover downtime from Feel My Wrath (also, funny note, axe's fury is target cap of 3 according to the tooltip, but its applied to all 5 party members), or mace's regen padding and block/aegis, which better suits their job as a healer. these days, parties also get dunked in might/fury by the DPS/boonDPS anyways since they spread out the might application to come from more sources.

While these next two aren't attached to weapons, they're still worth mentioning.

4) Vigor. One of the best skills from F2, the 3, provides vigor. It's not on pet swap like Druid's, but it's there, on a skill you should use as a healer anyways as your main source of regeneration.

5) Druid vs. Firebrand Aegis/Stability. You only get Aegis from a pet, where the skill is applied in an area, and this is important here, around the pet and not the druid, with an effective 19.75-second cooldown and a half-second cast time that acts on the pet's power queue system. On top of that, if Vigor is really a concern for you, the tiger might not even be the active pet when swap is on cooldown. While it is nice to have it available, having Aegis on a pet makes it in no way reliable enough to cover mechanics when it can be: A) late because the pet was doing something else first, B) completely useless simply due to bad pet pathing AI putting it out of range and you forgot to hit recall pet, and C) Not even possible because of a completely different cooldown with pet swapping. Moving to Stability, Glyph of the Stars is a terrible skill to put Stability on, given it can only do one of two things: a big revive or a single stack of 3-second stability, on every cast on what is essentially a 36-second cooldown. The other source, Astral 5, is going to become far less accessible when you need it with the alacrity changes, more on that next.

At this point, Druid has been aged out of the meta and needs a serious overhaul, not these aimless changes. It lost mainstream appeal starting in EoD, and the nail in the coffin last year when they took away spirit buffs and banners. Now, there are only precious few niches that aren't covered by others that are nearly a guarantee in every modern squad, static or pug. Meanwhile, Firebrand still has veritable loads of unique tools to bring to the table, even after its changes in February. Sure, Druids have Entangle to hold Gorseval's spirits, but other classes are making that strategy invalid by swapping a utility or simply existing, like power Mechanist or scrapper with net turret. You bring up movement, but for roles Druid used to be prized for with its staff 3, other classes can now do better. A druid cannot beat a Mechanist kiting Sabetha's flak and greens when Mech can use Shift Signet to completely ignore the flame wall and get to where they need to go to throw the special action key, and you don't even need a Druid to do the skip in Twisted Castle anymore. Druid's largest advantage over Firebrand has always been its insane burst healing, but now they're tying alacrity to it so it's now going to have the chance to be on cooldown when it's needed. That makes druid's largest advantage unreliable, as Mukluk has been describing it, "Sorry, I can't do insane support or glyph revives right now, I just gave everyone alacrity and CA is on cooldown." This begs the question, why would you take a healing Druid after this patch when almost every single shoe it used to fit can now be filled by a Mechanist with more reliability and less sacrifice?

Back to Firebrand, however, Firebrand can apply everything except Alacrity that Druid can and more, both readily and reliably. Firebrand has good burst healing, access to almost every boon, with the exception of alacrity, which are all either permanent or reliably accessed, far more freedom to swap weapons between sword, axe, mace, and scepter which all can fill all sorts of situational roles, stun break from tome f3's 4, which you can both swap to and use while stunned, and tons of cleanse with its insane access to combo field light and the f2 tome and utilities. There is simply no other class that can bring everything to bear like Firebrand can. Its largest weakness is its lack of movement, only having Swiftness on their staff's symbol and, once again, their F2 tome's 3rd skill. Generally speaking, movement isn't even an issue in fractals and raids, as for the most part you're standing still, and when fast movement is required it is provided to you like in Shattered Observatory, W7's Sabir, or W4's Cairn, otherwise normal run speed is enough. Their movement is only really an issue in WvW, where they can simply take Merciful Intervention to stick with or escape to their group if they fall behind or are caught out.

It's unfortunate, but Druid versus Firebrand isn't even close to a competition currently, and it will be even less of one after this update forces people to burn Astral form as often as possible for alacrity, not to mention they still haven't revealed how the spirits rework is actually going to function so we still don't know if they're keeping permanent protection uptime. As I said, I used to heal mainly as a druid and loved it, but it's now simply nowhere near as good as Firebrand or Mechanist, and without a serious redesign, even after this update, it never will be.

Edited June 22, 2023 by NoggDog.5486

[Gendalfs.7521]

Firebrand is OP since it can give stability

12 minutes ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

As I said, I used to heal mainly as a druid and loved it, but it's now simply nowhere near as good as Firebrand or Mechanist, and without a serious redesign, even after this update, it never will be

[Batalix.2873]

4 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Firebrand is OP since it can give stability

I think it wouldn't hurt for the game to introduce another boon or two (and another condi or two). I think the devs are struggling to find new permutations that don't step on the toes of comparable builds or outright obviate them.

I think the introduction of dragon jade magic and void magic were a great opportunity to do it, too.

More on EoD Specs and WvW

Also, random aside, but Willbender would be way cooler if it left behind light-walls instead of flames. Giving EoD specs more weapons/mechs centered around movement/denial of allies/enemies would do a better job of breaking up WvW blobs too--which I understand WvW meta stagnancy to be one of the major targets of these patches. Imagine what multiple WBs could do to put up a maze of walls and force blobs apart. THAT feels like a speedy Guardian police force to me. Not Edgelord McBurnytoes.

Give Virt a taunt/charm skill. Give Catalyst some sort of area denial trait on its jade sphere. Imo whatever problems Scourge has with its large boon corruption and area control options has in WvW, do *more* of that instead of removing it.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[wraith.7243]

On 6/8/2023 at 5:12 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

 

 Engineer

 

Scrapper

• Kinetic Accelerators: This trait has been reworked. Apply boons to nearby allies when you successfully combo with a blast or leap finisher. Your function gyro is now a blast finisher.

 

 

 

Why?!  Who asked for this ??  I've never once heard anyone ask for a change in how scrapper applies quickness.  I don't know why of all things in game, the balance team seems dead set on changing the way gyros/quickness application works.  its completely fine the way it is.  There are other specs and classes that really need attention, this just feels like change for the sake of it and I think people are going to hate it. 

 

Most of the time, the balance team seems to have the right idea, I don't know why someone on the teams feels this is an issue though.  its super weird and I've never talked to anyone who feels differently. 

Why not adjust Willbender alac application?  That's something that actually needs attention. 

[Drag You Down.2615]

8 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

It's unfortunate, but Druid versus Firebrand isn't even close to a competition currently, and it will be even less of one after this update forces people to burn Astral form as often as possible for alacrity, not to mention they still haven't revealed how the spirits rework is actually going to function so we still don't know if they're keeping permanent protection uptime. As I said, I used to heal mainly as a druid and loved it, but it's now simply nowhere near as good as Firebrand or Mechanist, and without a serious redesign, even after this update, it never will be.

I remember after the rework, spirits can provide some niche boons like resistance, resolution, aegis, and looks very reliable, so it should be better. The current spirits are... very pitiful. At the same time, might will still be there, even alacrity will replace it in Grace of the Land.

I have to say Druid change is my favorite change in this patch. It was very dull for a long time. That kind neutralized my discomfort caused by Scrapper and Scourge change.

[Drag You Down.2615]

2 hours ago, wraith.7243 said:

Why?!  Who asked for this ??  I've never once heard anyone ask for a change in how scrapper applies quickness.  I don't know why of all things in game, the balance team seems dead set on changing the way gyros/quickness application works.  its completely fine the way it is.  There are other specs and classes that really need attention, this just feels like change for the sake of it and I think people are going to hate it. 

No one ever asked, they just don't want you to spam the skills. I mean, I get this idea, but only having blast and leap is very hateful and limited. I don't think people will like it either.

I would recommend the quickness to be applied every time when any combo is triggered, not only blast or leap. The base time can be shorter, like only 2 secs. At least, people can have more things to choose rather than staying on hammer forever, and physical projectiles can also trigger will make the things much easier.

[philvaneyck.1932]

• Blood Reaction: Increased the base precision-to-ferocity conversion to 10%. This trait now converts 10% of power to condition damage. These bonuses are still doubled in berserk mode.

 

This is really useless for warrior, if you play condi, because you can't take the torch skill anymore. Why not combine???? two condi skills, but you only can chose one wow.

[Katary.7096]

1 hour ago, philvaneyck.1932 said:

• Blood Reaction: Increased the base precision-to-ferocity conversion to 10%. This trait now converts 10% of power to condition damage. These bonuses are still doubled in berserk mode.

 

This is really useless for warrior, if you play condi, because you can't take the torch skill anymore. Why not combine???? two condi skills, but you only can chose one wow.

That is going to be the new condition damage trait in the berserker master tier. "Heat the Soul" will generate quickness instead of boosting condition damage (in PvE at least). It is not useless at all. Do you really not read all the changes before you post comments?

[KinngRynn.1209]

Since I'm late to this topic and I'm certain everyone else has already voiced, in detail, the very same issues I have with this patch, I'll just say that uuuhhhh, I don't really like much of any of these changes to be quite honest. My major issues are with Alac Specter, seemingly? being killed? It's unclear to me from the notes alone. And the butchering of condi corrupt necro. I prefer Mesmer and Necro having a distinct difference between them. Necros don't Boonstrip, they Corrupt, that's just a really fun to use part of their class flavor. I despise when games remove unique flavor from their classes. I really do have to mention that I hate the change of the alacrity wells for Specter a second time. I sincerely hope most of this is revised, with how much the community dislikes the looks of these notes overall.

I'm honestly entirely disappointed by the approach to Alac & Quickness balancing. Honestly? They really ought to be shelved for now. I think it's too difficult to balance around the over reliance on the two boons, rather than just change them to something players cannot control. I think the team should seriously consider the suggestions in the, "let's discuss quickness and alacrity thread."

I, personally, would prefer that Alac & Quick got turned into two different sets of healer armor runes, and alac OR qck dps armor runes, or, were turned into strike & raid specific boons. I quite like the, "reward" idea from the aforementioned thread. Earning Alac&Qck for breaking a defiance bar could make for a very satisfyingly earned burn phase.

I think the only thing I like from these notes is the cooldown reduction from specific traits getting baked into profession's abilities instead.

I want unique, focused, fun to play Elite specs, and I don't feel like that's the direction these changes are moving towards.

Edited June 23, 2023 by KinngRynn.1209

[Batalix.2873]

9 hours ago, Drag You Down.2615 said:

I remember after the rework, spirits can provide some niche boons like resistance, resolution, aegis, and looks very reliable, so it should be better. The current spirits are... very pitiful. At the same time, might will still be there, even alacrity will replace it in Grace of the Land.

I have to say Druid change is my favorite change in this patch. It was very dull for a long time. That kind neutralized my discomfort caused by Scrapper and Scourge change.

I think the Druid change is generally okay, even though (a) Ancient Seed shouldn't be removed and (b) it really wants a source of alacrity outside of CA.

I'm glad Spirits have been changed but imo they still need more. Turning every ability type into wells is really diluting flavor. Spirits used to be able to move. I think that should be brought back so they have more identity.

[Hauwlyn.8051]

17 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

Describing what a class does, doesn't really mean it has a niche build, you are just stating things. By this technique every class has a niche build for everything.

I said it had a niche, not that the build itself was a niche, you're just putting those 2 words together to muddy the waters and if you think druid immob doesn't qualify, you clearly need to play other classes more. Druid is already in a great spot as it is and it's about to get above the pack if alac has any margin and allows you to time your CA as you need it.

17 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

If the grass isnt greener why does Anet net keep nerfing firebrand? It keep getting nerfed and is still the best for most situations.

Clearly this whole thread is a tribute to the great job they're doing balancing this game. Most out of place argument of authority i've ever seen.

 

18 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

But the fact of the matter is, there are classes, hfb being the main one, that are just so much better because of this "niche" build (which by the way isn't niche at all, its good everywhere no matter what) that they are requested specifically. Same with HAM.

HFB may be requested specifically because they want a quick heal since they already have alac dps and they think it's the only good one, and they wouldn't be wrong. Herald doesn't have the baseline aegis at all, and sacrifices too much for any stab at all, and the rest of the quick heals are dysfunctional. Not saying it's never requested specifically for what it can exclusively do, but you're generalizing here. Pretty sure you're cherry picking about the HAMs being requested specifically, so if you want to cherry pick that much, I still see people request druid to do gorseval, samarog and SH push.
Kinda tells us the PUG Meta isn't always right or rational, and that's especially obvious when they seem to mimic speedrun strats without questionning anything.
Have you considered that maybe if your druid can't seem to do the impressive things a lot of people tell you they can do and you think HFBs are so great is because you're not getting the most out of your class? Your complaint about the aegis being centered on a pet despite the 600 radius kinda betrays your ignorance. Also, those HAMs that get requested have plenty of things happening around their own pet, same as yours, except some of their stuff is 360 radius instead, which makes quite the difference. Turns out managing your pet position on a pet class is important.

[Hauwlyn.8051]

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

As a former druid heal, I can assure you, the grass is most certainly greener.

3 points on this can be completely negated by simply swapping your mainhand weapon on your off-set and use of Shield:

1) Pushing. This can be done with Shield 5 and F1 tome skill 3 by pulling them further after the shield push. A healing druid sacrifices far more to provide this by completely invalidating their off-weapon, limiting them to only be useful in Astral after you use the knockback on longbow, when mechanists can simply do it without even swapping gear and are far more common in modern comps.

Absolutely can't compare the druid method to the firebrand one. Let's compare the situation where it's most relevant, SH push.
To start, Glyph then pointblank at 400 range is like 600-700 total push. Firebrand has to go into the tome, aim and cast, and it's a longer cast than pointblank, also considering the nature of the skill you have to give yourself some margin in aiming it, so it's less practical AND it ends up pushing far less, around 500 effectively. There's a reason back in chrono tank times druid was the favored pusher, and while it's silly that it still is in the current meta, that's a testament to how noone compared back then. I completely agree with doing it on a power mechanist, though you do lose the possibility to have your second push pierce other targets.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

2) single target immob. Scepter can provide 5 seconds if the Firebrand needs to be the one using immob, and you don't need more than 5 seconds in a majority of cases where that happens. Frankly, this should be on the DPS and boonDPS anyways.

In low dps squads, I guarantee you there's plenty of cases where more than 5s is gonna be a great tool. And that's not addressing AoE Immob, which we technically have 2s of if we want. Yay.
As for that being relegated to dps or boon dps job, if you actually needed more stab and aegis, why not rely on your quick for it then? Same argument. Taking as much work as a healer so the rest of the team can focus on damage is the whole basis of group comps. Obviously we're never completely there and others have to do mechanics too, but just because they have some to deal with doesn't mean we should get complacent and give them more.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

 

3) 25 might. Okay, first, it's about to become much more difficult to provide 25 might with the change to Grace of the Land from might to alacrity.

Wouldn't be as bad as firebrands have it right now, and it's about to get worse for us too, if this patch goes through. Meanwhile, mechanist has it insanely easy still.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

Second, why are you even bringing this up anymore? It hasn't been important for one person to provide 25 might since they rebalanced might distribution, DPS basically dump might all over the party as part of their rotations now, making it so one person in a group setup putting out 25 might is simply not needed.

Actual DPS builds providing looping might, or enough random might sources that the whole thing ends up looping? Very few. Plenty of comps where you're gonna have none of that. a ton of fury uptime is free, that's just not true for might.

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

To humor you, though, Firebrand can consistently get 19 stacks with their main rotation, and with scepter you hit cap with an extra 7

You either have Empower's stacks looping because you're spending extra time in staff to cast it twice, or you have some scepter trying to loop the tiniest bit(not all 7)if you weapon swap absolutely off cooldown without anything delaying it. That's the best way to tell anyone that you look at how much might you peak at rather than how much you actually sustain. The other way being you probably think that this main rotation is just mantra of potence + empower ignoring only 1 cast of the potence actually loops. That or you took my own number from the other thread where I put empowering might at 5 baseline while willfully ignoring the sacrifice of honorable staff. Either ignorant or disingenuous in both cases.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

with the only drawback being it doesn't have sword's nor axe's fury to cover downtime from Feel My Wrath (also, funny note, axe's fury is target cap of 3 according to the tooltip, but its applied to all 5 party members), or mace's regen padding and block/aegis, which better suits their job as a healer.

so, if we're merely "covering downtime" from FMW and merely "padding regen" with mace, does that mean we always assume mantra of lore and FMW? kitten, we're already at just 1 slot skill left of margin to adapt to the fight, now that we're arguing the extra stab and aegis are needed, since other healers apparently MUST have those, we can't fit both Advance and Stand your ground in there! What a shame!
You're downplaying just how much extra work,cast time, slots and/or pages it takes for firebrand to keep uptime even on those seemingly basic boons that mecha, and to a lesser extent druid have such an easy time keeping up.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

ain source of regeneration.

5) Druid vs. Firebrand Aegis/Stability. You only get Aegis from a pet, where the skill is applied in an area, and this is important here, around the pet and not the druid, with an effective 19.75-second cooldown and a half-second cast time that acts on the pet's power queue system. On top of that, if Vigor is really a concern for you, the tiger might not even be the active pet when swap is on cooldown. While it is nice to have it available, having Aegis on a pet makes it in no way reliable enough to cover mechanics when it can be: A) late because the pet was doing something else first,

If we're talking MUST HAVE AEGIS mechanics, they're all telegraphed why in advance and you are anticipating them. If we're talking snap reactive ones, yeah I agree you can't use it for that, and I don't think that should be added to the druid's kit, plain and simple.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

, B) completely useless simply due to bad pet pathing AI putting it out of range and you forgot to hit recall pet,

600 radius and you admit that's a bad play, sounds like it's not the class design's fault.

 

18 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

C) Not even possible because of a completely different cooldown with pet swapping.

Just like any skill you might lose access to because of weapon swapping, so nothing new to any class here.

I have more to address but i'm running out of time, still you're arguing on a lot of bad faith here. I'll be back later to address those

[Burnfall.9573]

Heart Led Leadership - Guild Wars 2 Hope 

I come to a final conclusion that, Anet need a Heart Leadership for Guild Wars 2. At the moment, the current Leadership is allowing Favoritism and Bias to certain Professions to Guarantee and Secure their success; no matter what...and to Guarantees and Scapegoating Profession being Weakening  and Blamed for Toxicity. 

Favoritism/Tyrannical 

It is no more a secret or hidden that, there are certain Anet Development team; Insinuating, Practicing, Conducting and Promoting ; Favoritism for Thief Profession and Elementalist Profession.

Allowing these two these Professions, to Secure and Guarantee; years of engaging in Unfair Anti-Competitive Monopolistic Advantages, in Guild Wars 2 gaming environment. 

Allowing these two Professions, to be major players in the increase and the Induce of Toxicity to its player base experience and unto the environment.

Allowing these two Professions, to repeatedly and continually  receive and benefit, Unlimited Priveldge and Special Attention and Treatment.

Scapegoat

It is no more a secret or hidden that, there are certain Anet Development team; Insinuating, Practicing, Conducting and Promoting; Scapegoating Target Practices to..at the Necromancer Profession.

Blaming Necromancer Profession for the Toxic environment condition in the game. Burdening years and years of unreasonable nerfs with excessive unquestionable; give and take practices.

No matter.. what sense of belonging and a state of being good enough..is given to Necromancer Profession; it only lasts for a moment. It is swiftly taken away by Anet.

Any sense of Hero, Being Highly Capable, Overachieving, Caregiving, Rescuing, Reszzing..never lasts for Necromancer Profession.

Rise and Fall - Shortcoming, is the Role Anet has given to Necromancer Profession. 

Whenever Necromancer Profession would make any attempt to defend itself; it is met with Toxic Shame and Toxic Poor Treatment by The Community including in game players and with "Elite Players".

In groups, party members; being forcibly Blamed, Bullied with Toxic Abuse - 'of not being good enough', 'it is your fault that we died', 'either switich, re-roll or be kicked out', "You Made Us Die On Purpose", "Sorry, buddy, you're being kicked out to the curb', "you Suck!!"

I remember the early years where Necromancer Profession; begging Anet for Attention, Connection; to not feel Rejected, to be treated with Care, Love, Thoughtfulness and With Fair Treatment. 

 

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Anet-s-love

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/So-ArenaNet-when-do-you-guys-going-to-give-some-Necro-love

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/A-challenge-for-the-devs-Educate-us

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Shortcomings-of-the-Necromancer

 

“Success is about building hearts, not resumes.”

"A heart-led leader serves others. They epitomize servant leadership. They are humble. They are genuine and sincere. They are transparent and vulnerable. They measure success not just on spreadsheets but on the amount of impact they (and their organizations) have on others. They believe love and results are two sides of the same coin."

 

Why do heart-led leaders produce better results?

"For years we looked at servant leadership as a worthy leadership style that is beneficial to organizational culture but not necessarily tied to bottom-line results. Heart-Led Leaders are obsessed with achieving bottom-line results. But they also believe that love and results are two sides of the same coin. They believe that if they love what they do and who they do it for, it is hard not to produce extraordinary results."

“Success is about building hearts, not resumes.”

https://www.skipprichard.com/how-leading-from-the-heart-will-change-your-organization/

 

"Great leadership usually starts with a willing heart, a positive attitude, and a desire to make a difference."-

Until, there is Leadership leading from the heart, who advocates and leads against; Toxicity - Unfair Competition, Bias, Favoritism, Unequal Treatment, Toxicity, Bully, and Profession Identity/Role Theft, Abuse and practicing; Unfair Competition Methods and Elements...

No Amount Of  "Balance"  Will Make A Difference

 

 

 

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[luigrein.8514]

14 hours ago, wraith.7243 said:

Why?!  Who asked for this ??  I've never once heard anyone ask for a change in how scrapper applies quickness.  I don't know why of all things in game, the balance team seems dead set on changing the way gyros/quickness application works.  its completely fine the way it is.  There are other specs and classes that really need attention, this just feels like change for the sake of it and I think people are going to hate it. 

 

Most of the time, the balance team seems to have the right idea, I don't know why someone on the teams feels this is an issue though.  its super weird and I've never talked to anyone who feels differently. 

Why not adjust Willbender alac application?  That's something that actually needs attention. 

Admittedly most of the change requests I remember off hand about that weren't necessarily specificly about scrapper, but more the broad issue of '[spec] must use its utilities on CD to provide [boon] regardless of wether the utilities have core functions that are applicable.' For scrapper specifically, shredder gyro on CD no one cares, you want to do that anyway. But blast gyro (breakbar), heal gyro (healing), bypass coating (stunbreak), function gyro (revive) and to a lesser extent since they are less commonly used, purge gyro (cleanse) and bulwark gyro (barrier and potential accidental self nuke) all have useful effects that you may want to save for a situation that calls for them rather than using on CD for quickness.  How many gyros you take and how much boon duration you gear for can affect how many of those you can hold as needed, but you're pretty much always going to be using something inefficiently in the name of quickness.

If all specs had to do similar things for their quick/alac it wouldn't be an issue but when some specs get boons and utility and some get boons or utility it's going to be a point of contention.

[NoggDog.5486]

23 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

Absolutely can't compare the druid method to the firebrand one. Let's compare the situation where it's most relevant, SH push.
To start, Glyph then pointblank at 400 range is like 600-700 total push. Firebrand has to go into the tome, aim and cast, and it's a longer cast than pointblank, also considering the nature of the skill you have to give yourself some margin in aiming it, so it's less practical AND it ends up pushing far less, around 500 effectively. There's a reason back in chrono tank times druid was the favored pusher, and while it's silly that it still is in the current meta, that's a testament to how noone compared back then. I completely agree with doing it on a power mechanist, though you do lose the possibility to have your second push pierce other targets.

Back in chrono tank times, no one could push like Druid, SH wasn't released yet, and the only thing you had to push was orbs on VG/KC/Xera and the south bomb in Auric Basin. With SH, though, you're right that druid is the ideal choice for distance and the piercing is nice. Thing is, though, it's not the only role for the job, and Firebrand can do the job, especially if the inactive tank knows what they're doing since that's who the TD follows.

48 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

In low dps squads, I guarantee you there's plenty of cases where more than 5s is gonna be a great tool. And that's not addressing AoE Immob, which we technically have 2s of if we want. Yay.
As for that being relegated to dps or boon dps job, if you actually needed more stab and aegis, why not rely on your quick for it then? Same argument. Taking as much work as a healer so the rest of the team can focus on damage is the whole basis of group comps. Obviously we're never completely there and others have to do mechanics too, but just because they have some to deal with doesn't mean we should get complacent and give them more.

Problem with healers taking on as much work as possible for Druid specifically, Druid used to be more free to be off group. Now, doing the things Druid used to do with ease away from the group can't be done nearly as well because you need to be on group for alacrity application, especially with this patch's changes, if the tooltip from the Twitch preview was anything to go by, they're going to have one second of alacrity per tick without concentration. That's abysmal, and will be forcing people to burn CA off cooldown and stay on group spamming abilities burn all their druid juice. At least the spirit alacrity could be done at a decent range in comparison.

1 hour ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

Wouldn't be as bad as firebrands have it right now, and it's about to get worse for us too, if this patch goes through. Meanwhile, mechanist has it insanely easy still.

Truth.

1 hour ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

Actual DPS builds providing looping might, or enough random might sources that the whole thing ends up looping? Very few. Plenty of comps where you're gonna have none of that. a ton of fury uptime is free, that's just not true for might.

You either have Empower's stacks looping because you're spending extra time in staff to cast it twice, or you have some scepter trying to loop the tiniest bit(not all 7)if you weapon swap absolutely off cooldown without anything delaying it. That's the best way to tell anyone that you look at how much might you peak at rather than how much you actually sustain. The other way being you probably think that this main rotation is just mantra of potence + empower ignoring only 1 cast of the potence actually loops. That or you took my own number from the other thread where I put empowering might at 5 baseline while willfully ignoring the sacrifice of honorable staff. Either ignorant or disingenuous in both cases.

Covering the final sentence first here, I have no idea who you are at all, nor do I care, and I'm here now to have a discussion. I took that number from in-game at the training golem with alacrity using just my skills and mantra of potence, not taking into account Empowering Might. Besides these patch notes, which I am paying attention to to see if these two sentences from CMC at the top of the original post have any truth to them: "As always, the goal of previewing these changes is to gather your feedback before the live release. We'll be following the conversation and making further adjustments as needed." So far, I've been disappointed, but other than that, I haven't put much time into these forums at all, with now 12 posts in almost 11 years playing the game, five of which are now on this thread. Your comment caught my attention and I had time to kill, so I wrote.

I'll also remind you that I opened and closed my post saying that I used to heal mainly with druid, and I'm speaking from my experience playing Firebrand after that. Yes, it's one sided, because again, it's not even a competition at this point, Firebrands have far better coverage and usage in group play. You used to see groups looking for Druid specifically in LFG, now you never do. Meanwhile, HQB is still searched for on many of them and is currently considered to be the best tanking spec as well.

Moving on, actual DPS builds having looping might, a few examples, almost all Scourge and Harbinger raiding setups take Blood is Power. Engineer has an absolute ton of might generation and is extremely common nowadays, Mechanists pop tons out for the group on rifle 2 and the mech, Scrappers and use combo field flame and blasts, which will be enforced with the new quick application method, and elementalists can do the same, with an emphasis on power quick Catalyst, whose spheres will provide plenty of might between the combo field + blasts and pulsing might. That's a few examples, and while many classes have traits to generate group might, there's quite a few that are in spots that they're the best option of their selection for a raid build.

1 hour ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

so, if we're merely "covering downtime" from FMW and merely "padding regen" with mace, does that mean we always assume mantra of lore and FMW? kitten, we're already at just 1 slot skill left of margin to adapt to the fight, now that we're arguing the extra stab and aegis are needed, since other healers apparently MUST have those, we can't fit both Advance and Stand your ground in there! What a shame!
You're downplaying just how much extra work,cast time, slots and/or pages it takes for firebrand to keep uptime even on those seemingly basic boons that mecha, and to a lesser extent druid have such an easy time keeping up.

I'm talking 100% fury uptime between FMW and the axe/sword symbols. When I say padding regen, I'm talking F2 tome's third skill, which I placed an excess of emphasis on in my original post, not Mantra of Lore. You can definitely equip both SYG and Advance and have 100% regen uptime even without mace by going to your F2 tome to cast your 3 and going back, but what I mean by regen padding is that you're more free to use other things with your tome charges more often. These are all skills you should be using as part of a rotation anyways. Mechanist has it far too easy here still though, definitely agree.

1 hour ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

If we're talking MUST HAVE AEGIS mechanics, they're all telegraphed why in advance and you are anticipating them. If we're talking snap reactive ones, yeah I agree you can't use it for that, and I don't think that should be added to the druid's kit, plain and simple.

 

600 radius and you admit that's a bad play, sounds like it's not the class design's fault.

Even on the telegraphed ones, if the pet is already attacking via its auto cast cycle, it will wait to cast until after it is finished with the first one. Sometimes, it'll even simply not cast it afterwards. My entire issue with Aegis on Druid is that it didn't have it nor did it need it for so long, and they when they did decide to add it, it was to the most unreliable skill slot on the kit.

Also, you cannot tell me you've never been playing Ranger or Mech and just looked off in the distance to see your pet far away from you for no apparent reason. That's been a thing since core, the pathfinding and targeting of the pet AI is exceedingly dumb at times, and in raids it's especially common on fights with many adds, to the point people tell you to stow pets on Keep Construct because they can randomly start pushing the core if one of your attacks hit it. 600 range is nothing when it's off being dumb. Out of habit, I recall my pet before I cast it every time, but I've seen a Deimos CM I was handkiting for fail because a druid's white tiger was on a Pride. That is why I brought up pathing and targeting, and the entire reason I consider the skill unreliable, no matter how useful Aegis is.

2 hours ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

I have more to address but i'm running out of time, still you're arguing on a lot of bad faith here. I'll be back later to address those

If your intent here is to prove something to me rather than to anyone skimming through, don't bother. I'm not coming back to this thread until there's either news on the patch or on Monday in hopes that ANet actually posts something that proves they're actually listening to the community feedback saying this is a terrible idea, and by then I'll probably forget about this.

[Talan.1608]

21 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

Druid's largest advantage over Firebrand has always been its insane burst healing, but now they're tying alacrity to it so it's now going to have the chance to be on cooldown when it's needed. That makes druid's largest advantage unreliable, as Mukluk has been describing it, "Sorry, I can't do insane support or glyph revives right now, I just gave everyone alacrity and CA is on cooldown." 

I think this is truly the largest issue for supports - in order to upkeep quickness and alacrity, which are basically mandatory and essential akin to to wearing gear, supports are forced to basically use their utility/heals on cooldown, instead of using their utility or heals when it is the appropriate time (which sometimes is on cooldown, but other times maybe you don't need to use those abilities, like Tempest overloads, Scrapper gyros, or now Druid CA. Ultimately, what it comes down to is that alacrity and quickness change the game so much, that not being able to upkeep them is akin to playing down a player, and because of this I personally think the boons either need to be nerfed and their application made significantly easier, or make it not possible to upkeep 100% uptime on them, while limiting the skills that can apply alacrity so that people aren't forced into this game of "use all your abilities even if it doesn't make sense to do so because you need to upkeep alacrity!!".

 

21 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

Back to Firebrand, however, Firebrand can apply everything except Alacrity that Druid can and more, both readily and reliably. Firebrand has good burst healing, access to almost every boon, with the exception of alacrity, which are all either permanent or reliably accessed, far more freedom to swap weapons between sword, axe, mace, and scepter which all can fill all sorts of situational roles, stun break from tome f3's 4, which you can both swap to and use while stunned, and tons of cleanse with its insane access to combo field light and the f2 tome and utilities. There is simply no other class that can bring everything to bear like Firebrand can.

I 100% agree, Firebrand provides way too much utility for what it does. And while it doesn't provide alacrity, it does provide quickness, which compliment each other perfectly, is the number one provider of stab in the game by far, while also having good sustain. Heck, in WvW, Firebrand is basically it's own role in and of itself - no other class (except maybe necro), and certainly no elite spec is so firmly useful in every situation that it's a meta pick in basically all content (except maybe sPVP where they are looking to buff them anyways). And to top it all of, while necro is getting nerfed in it's unique self-defining WvW role, Firebrand is getting cemented in its own self-defined role by the nerfing of boon stripping and the cooldown reductions on most stab granting abilities. 

[nucklepuckk.1805]

On 6/21/2023 at 9:53 AM, DirtyDan.4759 said:

Warhorn 5 is 6 might, frost spirit is 9 with a long ramp up time. Still missing 10 might.

Literally every class in the game maintains about 10 might. The idea that one person has to maintain 25 solo is an idea trapped in 2015. Get with the times.