June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Gendalfs.7521]

2 minutes ago, VulcanPyroman.8571 said:

Changing things that don't need changing and replacing one type of spamming by another.

Scrapper blasting fields

[ElmerFudd.5928]

Issue is you really can not tell the Range on the Skill bar, it is so small as it is, as heal Mech is my primary for Fractals, and area of the game with alot of movement, I see this becoming more of an issue that it is now.

Mechanist

• Mechanical Genius: This trait has been reworked. Instead of the mech incurring a stat-reduction penalty, command skills now take longer to recharge if activated while the mech is farther than a range of 360 away from the engineer.

 

[entityNULL.4750]

Thief changes feedback.

Core changes seem really fun and cool.

I liked the idea of stolen skills being really strong, but i understand reason for changing them. RIP boon daredevil.

My favourite mechanic in specter was the ability to revive players from far using steal with "shadestep", i hope that the ability will remain, or will be moved to different trait, not removed from game completly. I also would preffer that "shallow grave" would instead happend to "hungering darkness" and swapped places. ability to save player from dying by entering shroud seems much cooler than removing condi.

[ElmerFudd.5928]

Necromancer

You are destroying one of the most unique game styles in the entire game, not to mention in all other games I have ever played, it is like we are being forced to play either a condi or power version instead of a unique version, game play and style, with all the changes in will be crazy just to maintain a balance of the class, you are creating more work for yourself, if it is not broke, don't fix it! It never ends well.

 I have been playing for since GW1 and you will notice this is only my 3rd post in forums, that tells you how strong I feel about it.

Edited June 10, 2023 by ElmerFudd.5928
add on

[Marxx.5021]

I was hoping for a Scourge buff in sPvP. Seems it gets nerfed even more instead. Condi reaper was to much of necro gameplay in PvP already?  Must be a new record of nerfs in a single patch for any class. Just buffs for that braindead harbinger you want to force players into. Guess there is no point in suggesting anything when looking what classes received how much of a rework and others just get their identity ripped away. 

[Steven.9165]

Please remember 2 things ...

People dont want to play soulless classes - dont take the identity away just for the sake of alac or quickness

To gut scourge just to forcefully squeeze in alac is not worth it

Nobody will take a subpar healer with alac without any identity because thats what you will achieve by changing scourge

Dps scourge is dead with this and heal scourge too

Back to the drawing board or just leave it as it is

Nobody will play it like this ...it will become a corpse like alac willbender with the difference that willbender at least has a dps option - scourge will NOT!

IF you have to force alac on the class leave it as it is & add it to regen and limit it there on 5 players (regen and alac)

Finished...dont do anything else and everyone will be happy. You can finetune it later...

[Pelda.1896]

Did u forgot to list this or its not gonna chnage?
 

Quote

• Inscription: This trait no longer reduces the cooldown of glyph skills, and it now always grants resistance in addition to its previous effects. (Elementalist air master trait)

So as most other traits that do reduce recharge of the specific skills have been sort of removed and then those skill got cd reduction, there are not any glyphs cd reductions listed. (not that i would want it rly. glyphs on ele are okish now, just want to know if its not listed or its not gonna change)

Aslo look into scepter on mesmer ❤️

[Magnus.9046]

 Scourge.

I just went through all the current posts and "liked" all those that disagree with your changes. 

You want to mutilate a unique class. To make it more like the rest. And not comparable to them either. No one is going to see it as a competitive support.

As someone who teaches new players how to do fractals. I won't be able to do that anymore. Doesn't matter if I have alacrity or aegis they will all die and there will be little I can do if more than one goes down at a time. 

These changes are Unnecessary. This is a unique class. That's okay. As it is now, it's really fun. At the moment just keeping everyone alive feels like enough support. I was in a raid as a healing scourge and they asked me to stop. It was a training group and it made things too easy. That's late game. That is proper support. Other people can do the alacrity I don't mind. 

... please... Leave the scourge alone.

This is the first time I have ever commented here for updates. The account is 6 years old. I have been playing necro since day one. My main is still the first character I ever made. It's been a great experience.

Thank you for the good game. Please don't make it a little worse for us who actually enjoy this. 

If you take the time to read this then thank you for your time. At least think about it. 
I really hope you don't do this. 

Either way have a nice day.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Magnus.9046

[Atomnium.1532]

This patch is the worst I've ever seen, and we've seen some stinkers. Every single implementation is a mistake. The desire to make quickness painful to acquire as herald, scrapper, deadeye etc is legit incomprehensible . You've seen a lot of new player feedback, from preach and others who encounter the game, have they said 'What we'd like is that quickness and alac should really be hard to get and on very niche role and specs, so that players are forced to play convoluted builds that no one want to play' ? Is that madness, stupidity, ubris, lack of resources, rush ? 

The scourge you just decided to delete from the game and promised to fix it in a later patch. It was mentionned that some pieces might be missing for some specs that are getting a new role.
That's not how you do a patch, you don't break the legs of the favorite character of a player and then promise him that he'll get arms in several months.

The game has legit been going in the right direction, and I'm guessing this is the end of the road for that trajectory.

Do not release this patch. You'll anger a lot of players and delete the good will you've been building since EoD.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Atomnium.1532

[Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365]

How about you make Kinetic Accels. grant super speed to allies when you use a finisher

[soul.9651]

I can understand people beeing upset about dps scourge beeing nerfed, and anet probably gonna adjust those numbers if needed. But do people seriously think beeing a ressing bot as a heal scourge is the identity of the spec....? Beeing able to ignore mechanics shouldnt be considered as a spec "identity"

[itsbadcompany.7893]

I really think anet should rethink this and make some new adjustments to some of the purposed updates but seriously tho,Why nerf more boonrips in wvw,can they not see right now the boon ball meta NEEDs the strips and corrupts? Surely if they still think that they need more boonrips fixes then might as well do something with the boons we currently have. Put a lower cap on it or something, have the boon duration even lower just for wvw or just go scorched earth and just dont have boons altogether.

But yeah I really want to know what they are smoking when they think of this... 🤯

[felincyriac.5981]

4 hours ago, Jijimuge.4675 said:

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"

it was confirmed on tpot's stream that they removed/reworked feed from corruption. It no longer gives you boons, instead it gives barrier on an icd from corrupts. 

They couldn't even be bothered to give up to date notes...

[Jokuc.3478]

idk man, I'm not a big fan of the scourge reworks. Why do you feel like every class needs to have access to every boon? I don't think we need this, let classes be unique. A Necromancer raises the dead, it has the power to resurrect. Now scourge is getting parts of its identity and gameplay style taken away from it just because you want to give it alacrity. 

I don't like the nerfs to mirage's damage and the confusion change in PvE, really not digging it.

Most other changes seem fine and I think the scrapper quickness with combos sounds more interesting but it could potentially get the same problem where you need to fill your bar with combo fields/finishers, but maybe it'll be fine.

I'm slightly concerned that the changes to druid and specifically heal firebrand will make them a bit too strong. We've been getting a lot of power creep lately. I do think the druid changes are good and will make the class more enjoyable, just a bit worried that it will completely overshadow other supports.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Jokuc.3478

[Parasite.5389]

On 6/8/2023 at 10:12 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Specter

• Shallow Grave: This trait has been reworked. It now causes Siphon to transfer conditions to a targeted enemy or remove conditions from the specter and their targeted ally.

so this trait will no longer provides a safety net effect, and is just ANOTHER condi cleanse trait in the same spec? (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hungering_Darkness)

[connor.2180]

7 minutes ago, itsbadcompany.7893 said:

Why nerf more boonrips in wvw,can they not see right now the boon ball meta NEEDs the strips and corrupts?

Because whether we like it or not, the balance team are tunnel visioning on the 50vs50 aspect of world vs world, and neglecting all other aspects. Anet wants 50vs50 clashes that last for a long time, but neglect to consider that these kind of fights only happen for 2 hours a day or slightly more on weekends. Prime time lasts 2 hours a day. Servers span multiple time zones. Different teams have different level of activity. Right now at off peak a boonball of only 20-25 players is nigh on impossible to stop with pugs. Gutting boonstrip even further is only going to increase the disparity between organised groups and pug defenders and make it even harder to stop them. 

Join the boonball or suffer. anet are on a warpath to make the gamemode as easy, spammy and unengaging as possible. 

 

[Jokuc.3478]

16 hours ago, NoggDog.5486 said:

Why put the alac on Desert Empowerment and reduce the shroud lifespan to 8 seconds with the justification of a target cap, and not simply  put alac on Sand Savant? Sand Savant already had a target cap of 5 and is an underused trait... I don't understand this.

This is actually a good idea and now that you say it, this is definitely how they should have implemented it instead if they absolutely must give alac to scrouge.

[Lyonard.4708]

ok, but why the colossal nerf to arc divider? it was basically the only reason to equip the Greatsword on the power Berserker... now that it was finally getting some play over the Bladesworn, it will be basically cast to the oblivion once again... i hate this change. Clearly some devs hate power berserker, and wants him to do only condition damage... otherwise i really don't know what to think.

And I suppose the Heal Scourge, which already has the lowest healing output, will be forgotten, just in exchange for a little alacrity... this class was good at carrying pepoles mainly thanks to it's reviving abilities... 

i get the idea of trying new stuff, and keeping the gameplay fresh, but at the cost of diversity... i'm not a fan of that.

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

Wow, I'm actually impressed with the level of Necro hate in this update from Anet.  So Guardian still gets to convert conditions into boons but necro loses the ability to convert boons into conditions?  I'm sure what ever Necro hurt you in WvW or PvP should be proud they could bring about this change.  Gonna be fun seeing the increase in thieves of all flavors and warriors in WvW playing with the tweaks to their various builds.  Lord knows I'll probably load up in a few of mine just to abuse some of these changes.  

Sadly, one of my necros is now going to become completely useless because her whole thing was stripping/converting boons to put pressure on a fraction of the billion boons that everyone gets spit out on them in WvW.

[eldrevo.1746]

To all critique of scourge changes and removing the identity of specs...

I agree some of the changes look weird, but I see the scourge will still have strong barriers, good rez power and pretty unique mass downstate pull. If these things are at least noticeably stronger than some other specs, I'd say we are still fine in terms of diversity.

The balance team has to walk a fine line here, and I don't think it hurts to try bold new things instead of claiming something unplayable on first sight and immediately colling for a full revert.

[Nithril.6978]

Overall balance, really nice, many great boon builds on the go. There is something I don't like as well:

• Weighty Terms: This trait no longer reduces the mantra charge-recovery times. Increased pages granted from 1 to 2. Quickbrand has already got hit very hard with last patch, now removing cooldown reduction will hit it even harder, more boon duration needed, less damage. Don't do this change please.
• Not sure if druid will be able to keep up might anymore? It will need to dip into celestial avatar for alacrity, which decreases interaction with Glyph of stars for example. Good thing is that utility skills can be changed to anything, would like to see boons provided by spirits.
• I think scourge doesn't need that drastic changes, I think that barrier "heals" and revival are defining features for scourge. Shade uptime reduced too much, I don't fancy these changes at all.

[Morningrise.5472]

Please abandon course. This is not the way to go.
Please go back to the drawing board. 
At this point you're abandoning the very idea of specialisations. For the sake of homogeneity. It goes against the core of the game, which is classes and specialisations being separate, unique and different from each other. Not every class needs to be in the meta, they all have their roles to fulfil, every specialisation should have things that they are uniquely the best at. This is an exercise of shoving a square peg into a round hole. This is one of the few strong features that this game has that sets it apart. 

[illhyria.7461]

 

Quote

 

Vindicator

• Tree Song: Reduced number of conditions removed from 5 to 3 in WvW only.

 

 

I don't understand this one. Yes, the healing was astronomically high but Heal Vindi cleanses have been super super low. Druids, Heal Scrappers and Tempests waaaay outperform Heal Vindi when it comes to cleanses; the only reason anyone would choose Heal Vindi over the other classes is because the healing was so ridiculously high that it made up for it. I understand gutting the healing but gutting the cleanses on top of it all - why choose Heal Vindi at all at that point?

[Crey.5263]

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

Chronomancer

• Stretched Time: This trait has been reworked. Flow of Time affects nearby allies. Grant alacrity to nearby allies when you summon a phantasm.
• Seize the Moment: This trait no longer causes Tides of Time to grant quickness and instead grants quickness to nearby allies when you summon a phantasm

Now if only Anet would revert the Mantra changes there could actually be a viable support build on Mesmer... especially with those massive nerfs to Mirage...

[Luvok.5697]

This seems a lot like, "we're having trouble making Necro viable, so we'll make them alacrity bots." In the process some unique viable builds and talents are destroyed. Many of us are not raiding etc. and this really wipes out a lot of unique utility and power for the sake of being a buff bot. I'm having WoW flashbacks of constantly getting classes balanced around end-game encounters while the bulk of the playerbase sees their core identities destroyed.