June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Revendrox.6391]

Necro: This skill now removes boons instead of converting them into conditions.

Lots of core skills now weak... its not useless, but not far from that.

[Revendrox.6391]

1 hour ago, Citronnelle.5416 said:

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.

YES, i hate that, now the axe skill is useless

[reapex.8546]

I was hoping for Staff Alacrity Tempest to be more viable. However, I noticed alacrity on Heal Tempest isn't mentioned.  Right now with 100% boon duration, maintaining permanent alacrity on a heal tempest is challenging.  You have to use your overloads on cooldown rather than saving them for particular moments when you feel its needed. 

It's basically the current Quickness Herald but in Alacrity form. 

[Plavski.4092]

Any chance of adding quickness or alac to heal vindicator to give it some viability in instanced PvE? Maybe on the dodge. Thanks!

[Igure.2063]

For me its so clear that ppl that made this changes doesnt play the WvW content.. seriously.

Points that make it clear:

1- Nefing Boonrip classes when the meta is boonball mostly.
2- Buffing guardian boongiving skills without even noticing, making boonball even stronger.
3- Indirectly making roaming a hell buffing harbingers even more and nerfing their natural counter that was celestial virtuoso.
4-Making coward changes on specter that in the end are not even close to whats needed for the class to be a viable support in WvW, like cleanse OR Stab aoe skills(as much cleanse as tempest or druid, as much stab as the ONLY aoe Stab Giver that is FB right now).
5- Killing DPS scourge transmuting it into a aoe cleanser barrier giver.. seriously.. u could just DELETE Sand Savant, nobody uses that, to place your need major trait that give alac and let the dps ppl play with Feed on Corruption, even with a internal cooldown or something.
6- Killing Vindicator Healer that is one of the worst WvW cleansers in term of numbers in comparison with Tempest and Druid, Tree Song nerf TOTALY out of reality, and if u nerf the healdodge even more, just remove it, its better, becouse its already weak.. even with energy and stamina sigils.
7- Berserker signature skill being reduced to a joke, rip Arc Divider.
8- Someone forgot that UNTAMED exist? oh yeah.. give this class the talent it deserve, boonstrip, cc, maybe aoe damange, anything but just do it.
9- Stop trying making ppl play bladesworn, as it is now its annoying and nerfing other warrior classes wont help.
10- Deadeye and daredevil just wat? Unrealistic..
11- Scrapper gonna dry out of superspeed... one day.. just keep nerfing..

In resume, buffing whats not needed, nerfing whats not necessary and making changes that would kill or make unviable classes that everyone loves..

Anet, realize, you have a SERIOUS problem in WvW, today you CANT make a group without a firebrand becouse NO OTHER class gives stab as him, you need to solve that, you said u would share the boons, but we commanders know what happen in reality, specter was a point of hope, maybe reworking the wells, the traits, giving up that nonsense idea of one target suport and making it a realistic aoe boongiver, it doesnt have to be him, druid, tempest, vindicator, any other.. 

Love you all. 


 

[Cat With A Gat.4539]

While the changes to DD generally are welcome, I feel they don't really hit at the root of DD's issues.  Staff DD's "rotation" involves depleting all of your stamina to maximize your buff from Havoc Specialist and animation locking yourself from spamming Staff 2.  For a spec whose theme is supposed to be an agile bruiser, the actual gameplay of it often feels very immobile and clunky.  If I want a highly mobile DPS build, I just play willbender instead these days.  DD is my most played spec by far and I want to love it, but it needs some love from anet too.

Boosted damage on bound is definitely a good start, but DD will need more before it's actually in a good spot.  Some points to consider (from a PvE perspective):

• Make staff 2 not animation lock you.  This could mean letting it be canceled by dodging, not forcing movement, or at least just allowing the player to "steer" during the animation would help greatly.  QoL boost to Staff 2 is the best thing you could do for staff daredevil right now.
• Make Staff 3 and 4 not useless.  Staff 3 exists purely as a immob clear and an evade that costs 1 single initiative less than the infinitely superior Staff 5.  Staff 4 has some utility in small open world encounters, but otherwise is only useful for tagging mobs while doing minimal dmg.  Keeping the identity of Staff 4 as a longer range utility option would be fine.  Staff 3 just needs to be thrown in the trash and replaced.
• Small buff to damage on pistol/pistol.  The skills and utility from them are nice, but pistols are used strictly for CC and when I'm forced to range (and maybe the smoke field if I'm feeling frisky).  Having them not be as punishing to use would be nice.
• Revisiting certain traits and trait lines.  Reworking havoc specialist to not encourage using up all of your stamina would be nice.  Some core thief traitlines could use some work too.
• Please help thief sword.

 

For the other specs, it's tough to say much about the specter changes without seeing more about how it'd actually play.  Specter definitely could use a rework, but I'm not sure if this approach is the right one or not.  Those scrapper quickness changes sound genuinely bad.  Maybe being forced to take all those gyros is suboptimal, but I'll take that over hammer 3 over combo fields for boon uptime.  Not a fan of the Firebrand mantra cooldown nerf either.  Virtuoso F5 not blocking anymore is fair I suppose, but you need to give people a reason to still actually use that skill ever.  I'm pretty wary of the scourge changes and would have liked to see rifle warrior improved a bit more.  Nerfing boon removal sounds pretty bad for WvW.  I'm eager to try out the new druid as it sounds like it frees the class from the clunkiness of spirits that was holding it back.

 

Overall feeling mixed about this preview.  Some stuff that's nice to see, but missing some things I'd like to have seen and there's some baffling choices being made as well.  Needs more time in the oven I think.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Cat With A Gat.4539

[mov.1246]

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.

Please dont do this... quick scrapper feels good in the state right now. Using superspeed to gain quickness is a very good theme in scrapper gameplay. This change will make kinetic accelerators useless in pvp and wvw, because in this scenarios you have by far more superspeed than successful finishers.

What is even the point of gyroscopic acceleration then in pve if the superspeed isnt tied to quickness?

Anet, you mentioned to reduce the spammy nature of dps support builds, but instead spamming gyros, you spam finishers to maintain quickness. Most likely a quick scrapper will be locked into throw mine, grenade kit, blast gyro and healing turret. And beeing again forced to hold every finisher on cooldown to maintain quickness.

My idea would be: let kinetic accelerators as it is, and give scrapper more superspeed application, but reduce the duration.

More superspeed application = more quickess, less superspeed duration = no perma superspeed

As example: gyroscopic acceleration now gives you 5s superspeed when using a gyro. Why dont change it to 2,5s at start of the cast and 2,5s at the end of the cast? This would result in twice the time of quickness, but the same time of superspeed. That would open more room for a more flexible build without spamming gyros on cooldown.

[wasss.1208]

Lets start with the good:

The stream was a blast to watch. CMC and Roy are an enterntaining duo.
I'm curious to see how Druid and Untamed plays out. I'm excited for the changes, it feels like, at the moment, that they will mix up/add a new playstyle to both. Really can't wait to terrorize my team with condi druid.

Now the bad:

The Quickness Scrapper change sounds bad at the moment. We cannot see the number attached to the reworked trait, but if we assume it remains the same, then we are back to square one, with a greatly diminished fun factor for the build. Before, we had to fill our bar with Superspeed/Gyros. All of these skills are quick to cast, have no animationlock, and usually follow you, so you can enjoy their benefit for a while.

With the change: we are forced to cast Hammer 3, which is a long animationlock, and it is unaffected by quickness. This skill honestly feels bad to use in PvE, and in my oppinion, should have reworked to have 2 ammo, with a short leap and evade frame. This will also lock the build into Hammer, because it is the only Scrapper weapon, with 2 finishers. This might not be a problem in 99% of the times, but there are places, where reflects shouldn't be spammed, like Matthias, and Cairn. Using Hammer to its full potential on these places actively griefs your own team.
Function Gyro becomes a blast finisher, meaning, that we are supposed to spam it off cooldown, to have out Quickness uptime up. So we cannot hold on for this skill, to use it for ressing, which was its original design. And even if we hold on to it, and manage to ress more than 1 people, we are punished with an increased cooldown, so our Quickness uptime will go down.
Depending on the numbers, if these two skills aren't enough to max out Quickness reasonably, we will probably have to slot in Healing Turret, and/or a blast utility. Now, I like Healing Turret, it was a blast to play in the past, but when it comes to the "gotta go fast" Scrapper playstyle, that I enjoy at the moment, if feels like a downgrade. It has a longer cast time, it needs an extra buttonpress, and it gives less Superspeed.
If Healing Turret isn't enough, we also have to slot in an utility skill. At this point, we are back to square one, where we have to spam 4 skills on cooldown, not for their actual effect, but just to give Quickness. This will both go against what the patch wanted to achieve, and leads to a less enjoyable build.
Some people already brought up Flamethrower, and its second skill, which honestly, would feel bad to slot in to a power based build, and having to swap in, 2, swap out, every ~5 seconds, and even if it alone could keep up 100% Quickness, it won't feel fun.

So, in my oppinion, building on Blast and Leap finishers will ruin the playstyle, takes away what was enjoyable about the build to begin with. My solution to this would be either give more of these finishers to Engineer, which would lead to balance problems in the long run, in competitive modes, or add Whirl finisher into the mix, with a reduced duration, so Shredder Gyro, and Electro Whirl, two pretty natural skill to the build at the moment, gets into play.

Disclaimer: This whole rant only applies, if the Quickness from this trait is low. If you can get away with just Hammer 3, and Function gyro, with ~30-40% boon duration, then the playstyle should mostly remain the same.

tl;dr: ranger yay, scrapper nay

[Jijimuge.4675]

I may be missing something but -

• Desert Empowerment: This trait has been moved to the grandmaster tier, replacing Feed from Corruption. The barrier from this trait will now only apply around the shade and will affect 5 targets. This trait now also grants alacrity to allies when you grant them barrier.

What now replaces the top master trait slot?

Feed from Corruption, I have to assume, but the way the note is phrased is odd as, if it were a simple swap I'd have imagined they'd have said "has been swapped with"

[Fang.1407]

9 hours ago, Otter.3841 said:

Moving Herald Quickness to Elevated Compassion is a terrible idea. If the goal was to move boon support off utility skills, this doesn't do that at all. And it makes Draconic Echo worthless. Additionally, the Upkeep cost of 6+ to get boons including Quickness is terrible. Forcing Quick Heralds into giving a little healing in exchange for forcing us to use our energy should not be a thing. Anyone who just wants to be a Quick DPS Herald gets screwed over by this. Flicking facets on and off for Quickness is WAY more practical and doesn't harm anything. Revert these changes please and leave Herald alone. It's in a great place right now and doesn't need any of this deconstructive attention.

Yeah, this change was just terribly done. While you would be keeping up a few facets anyway, unless the duration on the quickness is actually decent this is going to mess up anyone not using Herald for healing. Instead of putting it on maintaining a bunch of facets, why not just put it on the F2 facet like Renegade? Renegade can just press F4 and bam! Alacrity! Do the same for Herald quickness.

[Gyo Del Nord.3082]

As a Healing Scourge, I hope the necro changes will not go through: don't need alacrity, not by disrupting the class uniqueness...better to keep the reviving power: removing it in exchange for alacrity will probably kill the spec in favor of others professions

[Nairolf.7024]

This balance patch will do more harm than good... Many poor choices... Don't do it and stop "balancing" untill you add a new class/specialisation/skill... So we can enjoy the game without having our build getting destroyed every 2 months with your brand new "genius" idea from the last time you went high.

[Furball.1236]

Reducing the duration of scourge sand shades from 20 s to 8 s, which was mentioned during the live stream, is ridiculous.

I usually don't feel too bad when a couple of class get unfair nerfs because I play all the elite specs in the game, but this kind of changes that destroys the class disappoint me about the game.

Have you considered the impact on the DPS scourge AT ALL?

 

Another thing to add is that not every class has to provide boons. Don't take away the class identities for that. I don't want my scourge to be another heal alacrity role that can be replaced by any other alac. (Not that it has serious impact, but also why taking away boon corruption from Necro while that's its class identity?)

Don't assume everyone enjoys playing as the boon provider role.

I appreciate that if you're trying to allow us to have more build diversity with these changes. But in reality, you're doing the opposite. The nerfing to the core scourge and blood magic will make the DPS scourge and heal scourge so much worse, and force us to play the boon support versions of these builds.  Even if you can give scourge good boon support options (which seems very unlikely from these changes), the lack of playstyle choices itself makes this elite spec or even the profession as a whole much less appealing.

If this is a part of the changes you added because "there is not much room for new changes anymore" as you explained in the previous post about the upcoming new elite specs, just don't make any changes at all.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Furball.1236

[Fang.1407]

42 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

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.

I'm assuming that it went into the shroud trait as well, otherwise yes, it's going to make Specter unwanted. It's very strange that they didn't show us what boons these things are going to be giving and just said "boons" for multiple things in this preview.

[Bookah pls.9352]

Are you guys trying to out do last years june patch or something? 

This is awful.

[fenrir.1346]

Alacrity on Scourge is cool and all, but that in trade for the identity as a necro not so much.

[Lexer.8096]

Please don't give alacrity to Scourge keep Heal Scourge in the game we don't need more alacrity sources look at how Chrono gives Alac from wells and no one is playing it this is the same just from Shades its not fun please don't do this!

Druid is now unplayable as a healer!

Edited June 10, 2023 by Lexer.8096

[Malus.2184]

The "X Skill now applies Boons around when using Y" Can we get told what Boons they explicitly give instead of having to guess?

Also, for Mechanist specifically Mechanical Genius, instead of what it does now or what you plan to change it to, which has the potential to be horrible since it would ONLY apply to Mechanists using the Jade Blaster Trait since the other two automatically makes the mech go into melee which bypasses range and the horrible AI that makes it go to Mars even when you order it to do a ranged primary attack. Change it so it gives the Boon-copying from Shift Signet instead. Shift Signet is already significantly overloaded when it comes to base utility and is due to the Boon copying necessary for any build, meaning that Mechanists effectively only have two Utility skills.

[Fang.1407]

11 hours ago, Lucinellia.9247 said:

Please stop trying to make ally targeted healing happen with Specter. It is bad, not enjoyable and nothing in the game supports it, be that UX, UI or encounters.

Decoupling Alacrity from Wells sounds good for Specter, but there doesn't seem to be much thought here if it is while in Shroud. How are we supposed to provide Alacrity at the start of an encounter?

I've been maining Specter since it came out and the allied targeting has been wonderful, actually. I've had little to no problems with it since EoD released and with how Specter currently works I can effectively heal my own subgroup and the other subgroup at the same time using scepter/pistol. It has been much easier for me to heal the entire squad on Specter than any other healer in the game. As to how you provide alacrity at the start of a fight: have you used siphon before...? Just use it really quickly when the fight starts.

Edit: And if you don't have a target, use some wells or other shadowsteps to gain shadow force if you have the traversing dusk trait.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Fang.1407

[SevlisBavles.3059]

4 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

The ability to dodge while CC'd has no business being included in competitive modes.  Ever.  I'm surprised they thought it was a good idea in the first place and that it took them this long to do anything about it.  Nobody was happy with the one-dodge-mirage solution, but they obviously had no idea what to do with this broken mechanic.

How much Stability does a Mirage have?

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

"In addition to moving alacrity off of wells, we wanted to improve specter's ability to play a support role in larger group situations."

This is a contradiction if I ever saw one. Removing alacrity does not improve the specter's ability to play a support role in any group situaitons.

[Paroxzyme.6053]

The Necromancer changes look awful across the board TBH. Boon corruption is a defining feature of the Necromancer class and you're just going to take it away? Scourge support has been gutted in place of alacrity (which no one will use as there are far superior options available), blood magic functionality nerfs, dagger 2 Life Siphon being a channelled skill meant that it was still useful even when blinded or attacking a target with aegis and Signets of Suffering is a trait that I use on almost every build, the buffs to signets in shroud and the cooldown reduction function in shroud is something that I make frequent use of. Necromancer is my main class and I have been playing since the game was in beta; these proposed changes will make Necromancer feel like a shell of its former self which will make me reconsider if I want to continue playing necromancer and by extension, the game.

[Galak.7604]

For the scourge change. I recommend that alacrity be put on the trait that make it so you have one big sand shade while sand shade can remain as a 20 second duration. This would not causes the overstacking of alacrity and buff an under utilize trait.

[Phiso.1286]

Ok i normally dont write here for any balance changes, but the nerfs on heal scourge abilities is just outwritght ridiculous.

Healscourge is already a very niche build only really needed on one ore two encounters but nice to have if a group struggles. Now it will be just useless in generell. I get that anet says the revive power is to strong but again its not really played a lot and it still takes some skill to  really effective. The reduction in revive power is not really a reduction its just a removal...

Every kittening skill got nerfed. This is not acceptable, i really enjoyed playing Hsc when needed in a clutch situation, now this will just not be possible. Oh yeah great i will now be able to give alacrity, this is a joke, a kittening joke.

No one needs those changes, there are already viable alac options out there and i rather have a working niche hsc build than be able to able to give alacrity.

I really really hope those changes dont go through the way they are right now...

[Decinomicon.4619]

On 6/8/2023 at 4:12 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Tuning up some underutilized weapons and solidifying their roles within their professions.

What about rev hammer? That has been horrible for years. Guardian Scepter? Mesmer Scepter? I never see a warrior use mace.