June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Tulki.1458]

I hope the Mechanical Genius change to a cooldown penalty still has the buff as a grace period. Pet pathfinding and movement are too unpredictable to take into account without a grace period buff.

[Lucinellia.9247]

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?

[Giovanni.7051]

2 questions - Will the Facets of Nature buffs work in WvW & PvP or just PvE.

Can we please get a visual representation for when Untamed Unleashed comes off cool down? Currently I sort of have to wing it, and that's not great.

[CasualWanderer.5824]

• Bladeturn Requiem: This skill no longer blocks incoming attacks.

So if it doesnt block attacks now, could someone please explain what's the point of this skill anymore? It's garbage for pve dps since it takes cast time and is only marginally better than auto attacking (for condi), for power it's only used defensively. So what's the plan for this? Why remove block? You could have removed it in pvp only, but now it's not going to be used anywhere at all.

[Nightrise.8937]

so y'all wanted to introduce tempest dps buffs and make dps tempest more viable and then proceed to introduce ONE thing for tempest and that's on tempestuous aria to give a dmg buff when giving auras instead of on unstable conduit the trait who's entire purpose is to give auras. and now we have to take tempestuous aria instead of harmonious conduit which is already tedious because no stab = no overload.
also why no staff dps buffs?? air staff skills is still VERY bad. why is meteor shower still very bad?
why no overload dmg buffs the thing that would actually go VERY far in helping tempest dps?? air overload target cap should be pushed to 5 why is it 3, increase the dmg on air overload and fire overload and increase radius on fire overload why is it the size of a penny. 
why continuously leave dps tempest in the dust while simultaneously buffing every other spec that is vastly outperforming tempest by a huge margin?
why are you able to change unstable bladestorm for virtuoso to not be a hitbox reliant skill but not able to do the same for lightning orb?
why are you able to move traits around for scourge but not able to do the same for tempest?
why are so many specs allowed to do 40k dps now but tempest isnt allowed to do that anymore? (not to mention tempest wouldnt even be doing that since its hitbox reliant despite y'all claims to wanting to make things not so hitbox reliant anymore)
this cant be all that's coming for tempest because this is a joke and y'all got alot of work to do.

[SiEO.8430]

Good patch!

[TheDetective.8172]

Is the bug to Spectacular Sphere's AoE indicator going to be fixed? It currently does NOT indicate the actual 360 radius.

[VBENGR.3406]

Manifest Sand Shade: Reduce shade duration from 20 to 8 in PvE only. 

This terrible decision was mentioned in the stream but is not listed in the forum post. 

This is going to KILL dps Scourge which is already in the bottom tier of dps in PvE content. You're trying to preemptively fix a problem that you are creating by not correctly addressing the issue of Alacrity application. Instead of this terrible change, the adjustment should just be to make scourge's boon and barrier application only effect 5 targets.

Just make the maximum target cap 5. Alacrity problem solved without ruining the other variation of the class.

No other class can still affect 10 people, Scourge does not need to be able to. Just make it 5man. 

[LichOverlord.6329]

1 minute ago, SevlisBavles.3059 said:

Mirage needed a buff in PvP. This is effectively a gigantic nerf. Better to have only one dodge than this.

Yeah, I love mirage and it's my main for both pvp and pve - as much as I would love to have a second dodge like I do in pve, removing one of the entire unique aspects of the dodge is just silly. Mirages bend the rules and the whole point of the class is the thing you think you just snared was actually "an illusion all along"

I get that mesmers can be annoying to fight in pvp, but that's sort of their whole idea - they're mesmers. The team needs to revert this change ASAP.

[Ghostilocks.5312]

The Chrono changes have likely killed heal chrono significantly. It was already a niche build that relies on teammates (herald) for prot coverage and scepter for clone generation healing. Moving quickness and alac to phantasm summoning would probably require phantasms in all utility slots to generate the boons that were super easy to keep up with scepter. All heal chrono needed to be a great spec was reliable regen and prot and instead it gets deleted. Nice. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Ghostilocks.5312

[SevlisBavles.3059]

Mirage was in a terrible state in PvP and you've made it worse to the point where there's no more point playing it.

Weaver was completely overshadowed by Catalyst in PvP and you've given shadow buffs to Catalyst and absolutely nothing to Weaver.

Core Necro was useless in PvP and Condi Reaper is out of control and you've made Core Necro far, far, FAR worse and haven't even remotely touched Reaper.

I've changed my mind. I don't want a balance patch anymore. Please leave the meta as it is now before you damage it even more. Better to have it in a terrible state than a truly unplayable state.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

you really missed an opportunity here with Tempest.... the adept trait that grants vigor when attuning to water is a waste in Tempest... and should be a DPS trait instead.  EDIT: or better yet... a boon removal trait when using overloads... ;-)

Edited June 9, 2023 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[TheDetective.8172]

Adding my voice to those that diasgree with Heal Scrapper and DPS Scourge changes. Please rethink these ideas.

[Ariurotl.3718]

For the life of me I can't understand why there's now a war on skill type cost reduction traits. A lot of the time that leaves those traits undesirable to take and homogenizes all skills.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

on another note... WvW Boonball zergs just got major buffed with the easier boon builds and the nerfing of boon removal range

[Malsheem.1794]

Im not really sure what you want Scourge do to now. Youre giving it Alacrity (which btw, nobody wanted) and by doing so, you deleted both DPS Scourge AND Heal scourge. 

 

[LordHT.8297]

RIP Arc Divider

[Dragonzephir.6197]

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

Shadestep: This trait has been reworked. It now spreads the beneficial effects of your shadow shroud skills to allies around your tethered target, and it additionally grants boons to yourself and those allies when you use a shadow shroud skill.

Nooo, this skill was so fun to use on heal alac specter and probably what could have made heal specter compete with heal druid/mechanist/firebrand. At least keep siphon reviving allies when targeting them or put the siphon revives in Traversing dusk trait please

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

Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1. Reduced the casting time from 1.86 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Reduced total power coefficient from 5.1 to 2.5 in PvE and from 2.112 to 1.82 in PvP.

This kills all the fun of Arc Divider, it will just be a orange Arcing slice now, instead remove the horrible aftercast pls.

Overall i can't wait to try these new boon builds.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Dragonzephir.6197

[Kuzan.6059]

Create an Elite whose sole purpose is to deal a huge amount of DMG with one attack. There is a unique Play style and feeling to it. 

Let's take DMG away from that attack but u can now support your Team with alacrity xDD WTF am I reading. That makes absolute zero sense. 

Feels like they don't even play their own game. 

Also, the Confusion changes just take away a huge Skill level. U need to have great Game knowledge to Confu burst at the right time while adjusting your Rotation to do so. Weird changes all around. Feels like they just butcher a lot of specs for the sake of Alac and Quick. They balance the game around 2 Boons entirely now or what? Even tho, the Boonsystem get never explained properly to new players or casual/open World gamers. Also, the boons appearance is nothing special and just fit in with the others, but yet the balance revolves around those 2 boons. Pretty toxic way to balance the game, no? 

[The Cashew Cab.8491]

The Manifest Sand Shade changes aren't mentioned here. Sand Sage uptime is effectively impossible now that they're reducing Sand Shade uptime from 20 seconds to 8 seconds.

 

As someone who mains DPS Scourge, this feels like a humongous slap in the face. If you're worried about Alacrity application, just limit it to you and the four other people in your sub instead of crippling DPS Scourge to unplayability. You made the right decision by not kneecapping Deadeye's range from 1500 to 1200 in Kneel state when enough people called out what a bad decision it was. I'm really hoping you all do the same here with Sand Shade uptime.

[Hylden.7468]

For scrapper - nothing basically changes. You still need to take number of certain skills and use them on cool down to give quickness. It's just skills that change - instead of heal gyro take turret, instead of blast gyro take... thumper turret... Etc.

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

Was kind of hoping for Heal Alac Renegade to be fixed.

Ideally for All for One, to provide different boons for each of the skills, make it so we can actually provide the squad with more than just alac and healing.

[Alitair.3691]

Just now, Hylden.7468 said:

For scrapper - nothing basically changes. You still need to take number of certain skills and use them on cool down to give quickness. It's just skills that change - instead of heal gyro take turret, instead of blast gyro take... thumper turret... Etc.

But I liked my gyros!

[CptnChumps.1932]

The scourge changes are interesting. I love the addition of Alac but at the same time the trade off of nerfing dps scourge really hurts. It already didn't top the charts in DPS but now I don't know where it will land. I'm hoping we get a re-work on how some the traits function so that the entire spec isnt nerfed just to add alac. Nerfing the ability to provide 10 person buffs is obviously going to be in line with other specs was coming so that im not as upset about. 

The biggest thing I see is the duration of sand shades. Cutting the duration to 8 seconds makes is INCREDIBLY spammy and now impossible to keep up 3 shades. 

Possible changes:

- Aligning the duration with PVP durations

- Changing Sand Sage to either give the full bonus baseline or just give scourge itself as a baseline and re-working that trait to something else. 

I'm still optimistic that this is moving a support scourge into more gamemodes other than being strictly for helping training/struggling groups and boneskinner. Right now it sits in a limbo too much versatility and doesn't add anything other than less dps a little bit of might and now full alac. Guess we will have to see how the changes shake out but there has to be a way to add alac to the class without nuking the rest of the spec. I'm left with feeling that Scourge might need a full rework to acclimate the new direction. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by CptnChumps.1932

[Skyroar.2974]

Quote

Signet of Earth: The passive effect no longer grants toughness and instead reduces incoming strike damage. Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE and from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.

You asked for feedback on this skill in the stream. As a PvE user, I'd say the lack of an AoE effect hurts it a lot in OW, even though it's not as relevant against instanced bosses. As you're reworking this signet, you should consider making it AoE just like Signet of Fire.
 

Quote

Arcane Prowess: This trait now grants fury instead of might in PvP and WvW.

Energized Elements: This trait now grants might instead of fury in PvP and WvW.

Why not just swap the effects, and keep the skills unsplitted, instead of this confusing approach? Have AP apply fury everywhere. Have EE apply might everywhere. Simple. Is might in arcane and fury in catalyst really that important in PvE? I don't see it. Catalysts can already generate a lot of fury without it, while core Ele is kind of stuck with Air traits for that purpose.

Quote

Well of Action: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only. Increased pulse power coefficient from 0.7 to 1.5 in PvE only. The final pulse of this skill now grants alacrity instead of superspeed.

Wait, this skill used to apply Quickness before the Superspeed change, and it's the one boon that makes the most sense, because Quickness is the reverse of the Slow effect. Well of Senility was the one that added Alacrity, because it was the reverse of Chill. If you goal is to put alac back to a well, why not put it where it was originally meant to be, in Well of Senility, instead of here? Feels so random.

Quote

Chaos Vortex: Reduced clone bleeding and torment duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds.

In all modes, or did you forget to mention it's pvp/wvw only? I'm up to the idea that staff alac should not be anywhere as close to condi Axe mirage when it comes to damage, though, but Anet only mentioned ambush nerfs within the context of competitive modes, so...

Edited June 9, 2023 by Skyroar.2974