June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Citronnelle.5416]

While I'm glad Scourge is getting alacrity (which is only fair and long overdue, since pretty much every other profession bar maybe Warrior now has some sort of access to quickness or alacrity party application), it's concerning that it comes at the price of a massive nerf to Necromancer's boon conversion capabilities.

If we're gonna go the way of killing the flavours of professions, why not also nerf the Guardian's ability to give out aegis and Ranger's ability to immobilize?

In competitive gamemodes, boon conversion is what makes it even possible for Necromancer to somehow compete with and counter the other professions that can easily give buff themselves up with multiple boons and/or easily negate incoming attacks. It is one of the reasons why Scourge is even allowed in WvW zergs. Necromancer lacks evades and blocks and has no invulnerability or stealth so it's a sitting duck in PvP most of the time anyway.

By the way, Signet of Undeath as a revival skill sacrifices a significant portion of the caster's health upon use whilst similar skills on other professions such as Signet of Mercy or Glyph of Renewal have literally NO downside. That doesn't seem fair.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Citronnelle.5416
Clarification

[Eqlipse.5214]

What? Nothing for, say, weaver staff? Piledriver is absolute garbage. Hits like wet tissue paper, and has a long cast time that requires you stand still throughout. 

[VulcanPyroman.8571]

I am glad I didnt pick up a full ritualist set for my staff-staff mirage yet. With this new massive kick in the shins, it truly is hopeless. So, it is just virtuoso or storage character right now 😭

[Degs.5148]

Hi!  I don't really post here.  I've got a few thousand hours on scourge, and the appeal it has for me stems from three very specific things: boon corruption, shade placement for multiple targets, and condi transfer mechanics.

You just gutted two of them.  Hmm.

[ohno.2561]

I know there have been people talking about get rid of alac and quick in years. I felt unsure about it, but this patch finally convinced me they are right. 

Reason 1: Yet another spec's dps/playstyle/class identity got gutted in exchange for a mediocre boon support build that spams to get the job done.

Reason 2: If the balancing philosophy allows removal on all CD reducing traits at once and bake most of them into the skill CD, it should allow the same kind of change to skill CD and casting time to replace the alac and quick.

Besides, most builds don't need that many boons for fully performance. Might stacking and fury upkeep is so easy now there are no longer big deals. This change can also potentially fix the stacking fiesta.

Though I doubt this would ever happen. Because for some reason the balancing is making boons easier and easier to apply while constantly nerfing boon strip and corruptions (to what end?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by ohno.2561
typo

[Archmage Talaftia.9853]

hope next balance update brings tweaks to conjures and staff dps , they have been left alone in dust for so long .

[LordEscanor.8390]

Quote

• 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.

This rework is going to make Scrapper a complete nightmare to play in raids to keep Quickness uptime and decent dps. Not to mention that Hammer 3 can cause you to jump to your death if miss input.. Please reconsider that, right now Scrapper quickness is quite good as already is.

[Maria Murtor.7253]

Sacrificing the identity of a class or a build to force a new mechanic into said class or build is not the right way. I'm okay with minor sacrifices. But if you take away a core mechanic (like Untamed Fervent Force or the sustain power of the Heal Scourge ), it is not worth the sacrifice. 

Also: Don't fix what's not broken. What's the reason behind changing quickness on Revenant and keep nerfing Heal Specter? Hasn't this healing profession suffered enough? 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Maria Murtor.7253

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Just for the record, having two separate sets of patch notes between a livestream and the forums is more than a little suspect.  

Forums should have the complete notes THEN the livestream explaining the rationale behind them.  

As to the outside it may appear as if devs are just making and showing off rogue changes on the livestream that have yet to be fully cleared for patch notes on the forums.  Or that the changes are cleared but the aim is to hide some of them in a VoD to avoid discussion for those who only read the forums.  

It is also not hyperbole, but across the board I feel this patch may be magnitudes worse than the February 2020 one.  

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

am i reading this right? you completely removed alacrity from support spectre?? why would you do that???

Edited June 10, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Coldtart.4785]

Stop wasting time trying to balance quickness and alacrity and remove them from the game.

[Pooh.6897]

So now desert empowerment is replacing feed from corruption, does that mean that feed from corruption is now master tier?

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I'll add my voice to the crowd of those saying that I don't want professions to lose their uniqueness and end up essentially different versions of the same thing. If every profession and elite specialization is a swiss army knife which can do everything then why do you need 9 professions and 27 elite specializations? The answer is that you don't, and the game will feel poorer for it.

[connor.2180]

Yet another balance update that completely ignores the concerns of WvW players. More nerfs to boon strips. More easy infinite boon spam. No changes to celestial attributes. It is clear that nobody from the balance team has been anywhere near the WvW forums.

[Steven.9165]

In regards to Healscourge...

Yeah it was very broken to an extent that it could break some encounters. But truth be told with the power creep we got over the years you could say that to any encounter now with many builds...

It shined with inexperienced groups and delivered not much for high experience squads

It strength was revival power and barrier application. That Healscourge was very good at!

With your changes it has quite weak revival power with lower barrier application for...a bit of alacrity? A bit of regen, fury and...one proc of aegis is not enough - additionally it has nealy no other functionalities. Until now it needed no boon uptime - now it needs it...for just a few boon? You destroy support scourge with this change and it will totally loose its identity and also use. 

Scourge does not provide boons and has not much active healing - the healing is passive from strong barrier application (which is perfectly fine to scale to healing power btw!)

Please be aware that players that spected into heal scourge cannot do much besides barrier and revival - with a bit of alacrity and less of all else nobody will take it anymore!

Therefore please....revert the changes to heal Scourge totally. There are more than enough alac providers in the game. With necro not having the option is fine. 

You cannot make support scourge viable like this. You will just destroy the current build without giving back anything which is worth running. 

 

The other changes are fine...besides two points:

Just a bit more polish for tempest would have been nice....tempest is quite underperforming at the moment...

And to remove mirage dodge while cc'ed may be easier to balance for you, but it in fact just forces players to proc a stunbreak beforehand. While hard to balance it was part of the identity of mirage. Same as Healscourge...dont try to make a mush of all classes where everything feels the same - and force it on classes that have another identity. Just leave it with one dodge how it was...better than this change. 

The change to mech skills could be extremely crippling...the current implementation with stat reduction is not good but at least better than this pile of ....

Really hope you will listen to me!! Thx!.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Steven.9165
Additional info

[megamino.1430]

What happened to me? Do my logo need alac? I dunno where's that coming from 😄

On the other side of the joke, well I cannot say pretty much because I do DPS Scourge, but I think with this massive changes Anet really needs a balance patch testing server and invite some veteran players to try and get feedback before applying this changes.

That is the only thing I can say, Anet cannot just giving some thoughts and ideas and suddenly implementing it like it was a toy. Players also cannot complaint too much if they already see what the changes truly means and if it was good or balanced enough for the rest of the mode. That's it

Edited June 10, 2023 by megamino.1430

[Luthi.3061]

Some pretty cool changes and two changes that i find to be horrible.

 

On 6/8/2023 at 11:12 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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 would you do that? Scrapper feels so cool and inflow right now. Combofields are messy, you have to stop you flow, you have to possibly even drop gyros that are part of the class-identity to bring some blastable towers. I dont like the idea, even if you allrdy have 3 blast-finishers and a leap-finisher when playing blast-gyro, throw-mine and hammer.

 

In the patchnotes missing is the nerf of sand-shade uptime. You should not do that. It kills class-identity again to a point where you cant upkeep 3 shades on dps-scourge and its just another spammy alacrity-spec. WoW did that back in the days - it wasnt a good decision. I dont even know if healscourge needs to have alacrity (i play it at some difficult encounters with alac-dps and quickness-dps in my subgroup which feels cool). But if so, dont kill dps scourge on the run.


Most of the other changes look promising, i cant say anything about those Warrior-Changes tho'. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Luthi.3061

[Nimajeb.6843]

Is this an out of season april fools joke? Support and dps scourge is basically dead with these changes. Please review it again and give us some decent changes and not gut the entire class. These class defying nerfs are misguided

[senftube.6081]

And yo ArenaNet. Why no changes to Cele in WvW? 😔 

[Vampiremax.8350]

The homogenizing of giving everyone viable quick and alac application is getting a bit out of hand. Scourge is a viable support, sure not on all fights and in every group, but the revival rate is scourges unique way to become viable.

I like that Anet is trying to make everything viable and playable, but I feel like they're forgetting to keep everything unique and fresh. 

However, the changes to quick for herald feel much more in line with what Herald is supposed to be. Really excited to try this out! 

[MiTxGamer.1976]

I usually don't comment on forum due to previous experiences of people being more toxic here then in PvP/WvW. However I do have a few things I'd like to rattle off here as a new ish player only 614 Days in with 2100 hrs in game. 

My opinion on scrapper changes: As someone who plays Quick DSP Scrapper often in raids and fractals I often find it hard to keep the up time and have zero choice but to run all gyros. I think it would be best to buff the quickness on the gyro that way we can have the uptime  with fewer gyros thus allowing us to run other useful utilities.  

My opinion on Tempest: I'm not sure why all other classes that play heals have instance access to there skill set yet tempest has a 10 second  cooldown. It basically makes the class useless at heal's. 

Before I mention my other feedback. I wish there was a better way to provide feedback to the ANET dev team and not have player ideas buried on the forum or have other people shoot your ideas down. I also think major changes to classes or content should be polled to the players who have paid for the ability to experience the full game. 

Other feedback I think should be looked at and or addressed in future: I also think it's crazy that different classes have different max base HP like why does a Engi only get  base 15922 HP vs say a warrior base at HP at 20121 I feel like all classes should be equal base HP then its up to our gear to determine the rest of the stats.

Don't even get me started on the down state mechanics, you go down as a engi you have zero chance to get yourself up and the jade bot can't be used in content where it would be most practical. It has a 5 min cooldown so if you used it in a fractal or raid i can't see it breaking the game any less then it would during a world boss etc.  Other issue with engi and down state is you spam 1 now if your a mouse clicker and you get resed you instantly send your mech away as the 1 skill is right where the send mech away button is. 

Next id like to address Necro and minions. can you please for the love of all that is holy give the necro the power to control the minions like you can with mech or ranger. considering minion/pet control (hero's) was a core feature of  GW1 its surprising this class has been missed.  

I had mentioned this before as a new player and someone that has an average play time of 3.5hrs a day and with so much content I could work on I struggle to gather spirit shards. I have multiple toons with excessive hero points and nothing I can do with them. I think it could be handy to have a vendor that lets you trade unused hero points for shards or some other useful items. You could have it reverse so you could buy them back should a new elite spec ever drop. As most veteran plays have thousands of them and have nothing they can do with them. I feel like you could do more with the shards currency. In before oh that breaks the game as you new players can just buy hero points you can do this already with the notary vendor in WvW. 

I know there's so much to do in this game and being its already 10 years old it is a concern that I might not get everything done. I feel like some time gates need to be lifted or daily crafting limits increased. eg the skyscale 2hr limit between steps I can understand the time gate when POF was fresh but that was years ago now.  Or like the Kaiser snake skin collection requires 3-4 SAB events to collect as a new player who started in October 2021 it has me worried will we see SAB in 2028. 

I love the game it's great fun great community in game. Can be a little salty on forum but each to their own. Anyhow that's my 10c worth. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by MiTxGamer.1976
Spelling error

[RasSativa.5109]

The scourge changes look worse the longer i look at them. Put the dessert empowerment back to his normal trait but sloth in the alac. Change it to 5 man since there should not be a 10 man skill anymore. Also why arent the sand shade nerfs not in the notes? scourge will be destroyed

 

Quickness deadeye looks fun but it should habe been integrated on the amount of malice you use.

Banners gives no quick so why would you ever run a banner?

i also don't the nerfs on the dps on staff mirage. You just don't like a alac mirage that does decent ish dps?

 

[prototypedragon.1406]

At this point as a warrior vet I would just be content being able to swing a sword without it locking me in place  whether it be a one handed sword or a greatsword. At least it seems we are getting one of those. Rip berserker warrior GS  in wvw. And spelltickler  and best of luck sillysworn.

[Divity.3049]

RIP QScrapper? Why would you do that? its perfect how it is right now.

[RyuDragnier.9476]

I'm really hoping you're moving that alac elsewhere on Specter, else you've completely destroyed the support spec for it. We're not taken for any other boon, we don't supply them consistently enough. Assuming you've moved it to Shroud, but if so then you needed to tell us in these notes, and you're likely going to need to buff Shroud a bit (possibly through a trait) so it isn't broken as easily.