June 27 Balance Update Preview

[LichOverlord.6329]

4 hours ago, GlennAngel.5360 said:

We see MMOs all time remove class diversity and fantasy for the sake of homogenization. Heal Scourge had a beautiful niche not touched upon in any other game. That's what makes GW2 so amazing and refreshing, designs like this. A necromancer able to bring back their allies from the downstate easily is too good of a mechanic for it to be gutted just so Scourge can have another form of a cooldown reduction that every class can now provide. Let the specs be unique even if its not overly popular. Let specs keep their fantasy in a genre of games where every class is being reduced to their damage numbers and pick rates. Please rethink this tuning and "balance nerfs" for an added featured that wasn't asked for or expected.

THIS. THIS. SO MUCH THIS.

Class fantasy is the most important thing in a class-focused RPG, no matter what anyone else says. Gutting class fantasy for the sake of giving everyone alac/quick isn't "balance" - it's actually worsening a systematic problem with the game with a perceived "fix"

If the issue is that quickness and alacrity are too vital that all classes now have to have access to them in spades, then the issue isn't with the class toolkit - it's with the boon itself. These changes only further the absolute dependance on key boons to be "viable" in competitive pvp and pve content, which is an overall issue deeply rooted in the game.

Take it from me, a sylvari player - don't plant flowers over the weeds to make the problem more palatable. Rip the weeds out from the roots and address the issue head-on.

This team made a dedication to continue GW2 for years, and so now is the time to exorcise these issues for the sake of the game's longevity - not for a short-sighted status-quo that will simply need to be completely rebalanced again next year.

[Plushie Knight.4209]

1 minute ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

Take it from me, a sylvari player - don't plant flowers over the weeds to make the problem more palatable.

Quote

"All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed." -Ventari

Jokes aside, I do agree on the note that class fantasy is an important thing to build into. It's nice to expand access to the key boons, and give more builds than can supply them, but it's important also to make sure they feel fitting for the fantasy of the classes that get them, and that they don't trade off other things that are key.

I like a lot of the new changes- Berserkers going so hard that they make their allies faster? Wicked. Cool as heck.

[LichOverlord.6329]

Just now, Plushie Knight.4209 said:

"All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed." -Ventari

Violets, I knew I should have paid more attention when Aife was going over the tenants! 🤣

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

39 minutes ago, RowenMK.2819 said:

I hate this patch, what in the world is this killing the necro on this way its horrible the trade of taking everything what makes necro a good class away just for a alac build that no one in the ask for it its terrible.

The scrapper change its the worst even wrost scrapper already spam gyros to make quickness anyway whats the point of taken out and change it for combo finishers that make the quick completely inconsistent in a lot of situation, i already can imagine my self flying away from a boss because the s**t a*s hammer 3 leap.

i like the specter alac change but that means u cannot revive people with your siphon???? what in the hell its that, reviving people with siphon its the coolest thing on the class and they're killing it, what is this nightmare what a horrible patch.

note that they didn't say shadow shroud skills will give alacrity to allies, and there's no mention of it in their post beyond removing it from the wells.  spectre is likely dead in the water.

[Plushie Knight.4209]

8 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

note that they didn't say shadow shroud skills will give alacrity to allies, and there's no mention of it in their post beyond removing it from the wells.  spectre is likely dead in the water.

Quote

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.

"grants boons to yourself and allies" is the language they've been using this patch when something applies quickness or alacrity in PvE but others in PvP/WvW, right? I would be surprised if that *didn't* give alacrity in PvE.

[dieselsandwich.7820]

I got a lot of concerns about Scourge and to a lesser extent Necro losing class identity here. Boon corruption and big revive energy were the main reasons I liked playing support necro as Scourge (these were mostly irrelevant to my power Reaper build but that one is pure dps).

It felt unique and interesting. You brought something new to the table and more than made up for not providing as many boons as other builds. Barriers getting reduced also hurts. It was something unique about the elite spec, using barrier more than healing. It was still useful to everyone around you, you just would use it more proactively than direct healing. 

I would always switch to support Scourge for group situations but it seems like that won't be much fun anymore. At least my ele is eating well tonight.

[Dualumina.1760]

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

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

Please stop trying to kill staff mirage 

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

Null Field and Temporal Curtain range reductions are completely unnecessary and ridiculous. Revert. 
 

Spellbreaker should get Quick, not Berserker. This makes no sense. Revert. 
 

Herald quickness changes are braindead and make the class boring while simultaneously reducing flexibility, which is the opposite of what you intended. Revert 

Banish Enchantment CD increase is a lazy way to balance revenant. Energy should have been increased (like in PvP) or Target Cap should have been reduced instead 

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[Eddie.9143]

1 hour ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

On the off-chance that you're somehow not joking, I feel like I should remind you that the original identity of the Mirage is as a melee-focused class.

Yes, even though staff/staff is somehow meta (which is stupid imo and needs to be addressed), having a core mechanic risk taking you out of melee range goes against the class identity.

Give it a modifier that either makes the teleport 450 back or to opponent. 

[ShatteredStars.6548]

4 hours ago, Xainou.1502 said:

I've mained necro for a couple of years now, but if these changes go through I honestly don't see myself playing scourge.

You claim your goal is to reduce spamminess in builds and stupid gameplay. Yet you want to give shades a duration of 8 seconds in favour of alac?? This is exactly what I've hated about druid so far. Stationary boon providing objects that I have to spam. And with scourge they're even tied to a ressource (life force) on top.
This is stupid for a boondps. And even worse for the dps scourge. It's already not a great condi dps but this is gonna hurt it badly and make it ridiculously repetitive to play.

 

Sorry, 8 second shades are a kitten idea.

People wanted alac.

[ShatteredStars.6548]

6 hours ago, Radiancee.6537 said:

I really hope this won't go live. So many problems with some changes, even partly unnecessary. Especially when I look at the Scourge or the Scrapper. Nobody really asked for Alac for the Scourge. Now you give the Scourge Alac, which is actually fine, but at the same time take something away.

 

I really hope for you, ANet, that you won't ignore this feedback like last year. We all know what happened.

Scourge nerfs should have been done years ago.

[Trigg.9402]

How many times do we have to bare witness to your own incompetency in balancing your own game. 

You make statements like "we have been keeping an eye on the Mech complaints about how its difficult to play around the Mech" - AND THEN go and put an even more punishing change so that we CONTINUE to play around the Mech???? Do you even listen to the feedback?? We do not want to play around our pets!! Any class that has a secondary AI should never be forced to play around that AI, that has always been the issue. If you truly heard our feedback and wanted to make it easier, you should make the radius light up when we are out of range so that we know to go back in??? Like it does now?? Put some visual indicator around the mech or the player?? And you know, not a massive cooldown that is going to TOTALLY tell the player to get back in range, AFTER THE FACT???

How about scourage? Did we really need to kill heal scourage to get a alac scourage??? You couldn't keep heal scourage as is, in addition to adding alac scourage? Seems child-like decision-making, "We will give you x but you will have to give me y" simply because having 2 viable builds on one class is just too much, LMFAO what the f??

Specter no longer applies alac from wells? Well shoot, what will wells be used for now then? 

Warrior? 3 > 1 arc divider... LOL, yall gota be trolling at this point. 

Overall, sounds like you want players to play very specific builds thus build diversity is fundamentally dieing. Its been dieing since last year's June balance patch, and its clear that this is the route you're headed. No more crafting your own build when Anet makes only one trait line viable, killing all other options. 

Oh and yeah, dropping patches on Friday so you don't have to face the music, LOL. We know you don't listen to feedback anyways because if you did, you wouldn't be dropping such atrocious changes. 

Can't wait to see what the "summer expansion" holds, LOL.

 

[kingnelu.1642]

rip scourge mains.

If you don't want your profession deleted, immediately stop spending any money on the game 

 

[miiroto.3672]

From PvP perspective,

these changes are great, it nerf outliers like Condi Reaper or Chaos Chrono a little, making it less dominant.

But there are no Condi Berserker nerfs, this build is over the top strong, the best duelist which cant lose duel to anything.

Aswell one weird change is: 

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

Bladeturn Requiem: This skill no longer blocks incoming attacks.

This change makes virutoso less crazy on the blocks side yes, but the skill now lost all of its identity, and is worthless to use, only vallue it brings is proccing the unblockable trait.

 

As for new build possibilities, Mirage and Scourge might wiggle its way to meta now again, LR ele might be good again with some great dagger offhand changes.

As for Firebrand, these changes will still not be enough to make it viable support, in fact the shouts and sanctuary cooldown reductions will make Core Guardian support even stronger than before.

[Vegeta.2563]

As a necro main.. I don't want alacrity.   If you have to make this many adjustments just for necro to have alacrity.. get it the f off necro.

Also shade duration from 20 seconds to 8 seconds?  Well that's one sure way to completely kill the class.

"Scourge has always been intended to be a viable support option, but the lack of quickness or alacrity has held it back in endgame content outside of specific cases."

Now it's going to be held back even more when you nerf its revival skills (Ritual of Life 7% to 2%, transfusion only triggers once and down from 2% to 1% revive).  A Necromancer by default is someone that revives the dead.  Let's not forget about that lore.  It has always been like this in any game. 

The whole point in playing support scourge was so that you could transfuse people to your location and revive them with well of blood.  Now that is completely useless, and they aren't getting anything to actually help people stay alive besides pumping out alacrity and a tiny bit of barrier (which is also nerfed).  Do you guys even plays your game?

[Coldmail.9672]

Why  delete greatsword on berserker? It's so fun to use.

If one dev doesn't like boon removal on scourge in wvw zerg fights why do all other necro builds have to suffer?

You will never be able to replace the utilities wurm, walk and darkness well from necro in competitive they re just too vital for survival.

So vile vials just makes elexirs cause a little vulnerability now?.....

Why remove superspeed from well of action? just make the duration shorter? my super speed mesmer in open world is completely deleted now.

 

[Zhaeli.5416]

3 hours ago, illhyria.7461 said:

 

 

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?

This. ^  Among many other "off" decisions in this patch. 

From WvW perspective, Heal Vindi was allowed to be in the comp because although it's cleanses were fairly offset below Heal Tempest and Druid, it was compensated with both Heals and Barrier. 

So to "balance" HVindi with Temp and Druid, the decision is to decrease it's heals (fair) and decrease it's cleanses? It's just mind boggling to anyone who has closely watched WvW cleanse and heal logs over this last year.   

I generally do not like to criticize, but it's the inexplicably haphazard choices that are way overshadowing the good trying to be accomplished in this patch. 

[Acheron.1580]

I really wish we would just do away with Alac and quickness instead of gutting and compromising class identities just to shoehorn it in. Begging for Scourge to have alacrity because they weren't desirably without it now leads to it being a shadow of what it was, while also gutting all of the necromancers who didn't want or plan for it. I'm all for bring the player not the class; the way to do that is understand how you've build the entire game around 2 buffs which is so unhealthy for group composition that it forced out niche healers like heal scourge, which created forced utility spam and stifles reactive and creative solutions to fight mechanics. And guess what, none of these changes address the cause of the problems, but try to mitigate the symptoms.

Quick Harb pulses quick by being in shroud, which is great for them because they are designed to want to be there on a rather steady rotation. Compare that to druid and CA, where you can have situations where everyone is full heath, it's not quite up to a heavy damage part of a fight you know is coming up, but you are forced to use what should be a strong reactive healing mode just to keep buff uptime. Mechanist Crisis Zone - Stab and Aegis on a cooldown that should be carefully considered but nah, spam that button for the alacrity. Quick Herald changes seem like it opens up opportunities for dps (being able to provide quickness with shiro for example) but cripples creative play for healing.

In general it feels like the dps side of boons are mostly considered to flow seamlessly into dps rotation (some exceptions like revenant alac, new condi druid, dps alac mech which still requires barrier traits), but becomes a weird forced cooldown mechanic for healers. Even if they aren't on utility skills, they still force cooldown use that should be smart plays rather than just to keep the buff running.

I know it will never happen but the healthiest thing this game could do is remove alac, rework all the cooldowns to reflect it (doesn't even have to be by 25% which would be super lazy) which would also make balance easier to do by tweaking cooldowns like you already do for pvp and wvw. Quickness could be a self buff on specific abilities for interesting play choices for dps, or just removed and animation times adjusted (again not even necessarily by the same amount quickness gives).

Delay the patch and consider the game without these 2 buffs, and how much richer you can make the classes without them.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Acheron.1580

[Vegeta.2563]

Just to add on to Scourge getting alacrity..

WHO EVEN ASKED FOR THIS???

Edited June 10, 2023 by Vegeta.2563

[WindsOfRebellion.3457]

I'm actually really thrilled about the change to serpent siphon, I'm not thrilled about the shade duration being decreased from 20 seconds to 8 second, I thought the goal of changing how specs gave boons (in this case alac) was to make them LESS spammy. I understand why it's being nerfed but by 60%? That's MASSIVE. Could is be changed from 20s to 12s instead? That's way there's still a trade off that isn't quite as harsh and not as spammy. Also not super hyped about the changes to transfusion - Heal Scourge is SUCH a niche build that can be super fun to play, it's also great for group content where people are trying to learn mechanics. I can understand a BIT of a nerf but the proposed changes go a bit too far and causes a loss to its uniqueness.

Edited June 16, 2023 by WindsOfRebellion.3457
Grammar and further explanation of my point

[BenaSPACE.6028]

I'm gonna break my response to this up into several posts (One for each class), for the sake of readability.

I'll begin with the most urgent one to address, Necromancer.

The good:

• Well of blood providing regeneration is great! Keep this, it's worth its weight in gold.
• The Serpent Siphon is a good change, I feel.
• Life from death giving the general healing bonus is a nice sentiment, though honestly the dampest of squibs when Vampiric Aura just offers bonus damage to the squad as a general rule. This may be better places on Transfusion, or one of the minor traits.
• Giving Alac to Scourge in general is a good idea, I feel, as it is the only thing keeping it out of parties as a healing option, but... (more on this later)
• I think making sandstorm shroud pulse barrier is a good idea.
• I find the fact that they're giving scourge only two master traits hilarious. (This is mostly a joke, but it reads like feed from corruption isn't being swapped with Desert Empowerment)

The bad:

• Nerfs to Necro's rezzing power is a big, fat no, no matter what specialization. Necro's ability to do actual necromancy is what makes it a necromancer. DO NOT reduce the revival bonus from ritual of life. That is it's only purpose in fact.
• Similarly, it's unnecessary to have transfusion nerfed, or for it to only do its effect on startup. Giving it a small grace period to gather up the downed is actually something it should keep, as it makes doing healnecro's job significantly easier.
• Boon corruption into boon strip is overcompensating. If you insist on removing the corruption aspect, at the very least place a standardized condition there instead. Poison, torment or even just bleeding is good enough.
• Signets of suffering's new effect feels kind of tacked on. They could give life force on activation or keep their passives on cooldown or something like that, but necro isn't starved for boon strip.
• Sand Flare's barrier projection shouldn't be lesser for allies, as it's unnecessary.
• The desert empowerment change is absolutely unnecessary when Sand Savant is doing pretty much nothing at higher level play. Sand Savant's only current purpose is to be training wheels for new Scourges, a feature that most other elite specializations do not have or really need.
  • Proposed change: In addition to its other effects: When you provide barrier from your sand shade by any means, you also provide alacrity.

Please take careful consideration, as class identity is very important to making the classes stand out from one another.

Edited June 10, 2023 by BenaSPACE.6028

[Skyroar.2974]

Anet,

Why not just combine Bladesong Distortion and Bladeturn Requiem into a single skill at this point?

First, Bladeturn Requiem was meant to replace Distortion as the defensive f4 skill, with the added flavor that it also dealt damage. But, for some reason, you thought that skill should block instead of applying distortion. Then, you changed ideas and decided to add distortion to virtuoso... but you did so not by overhauling their existing F4, but by moving it to F5 and slapping the core F4 Shatter in its place, having both a distort and a block co-exist in the F skills. Now, you're regretting that they co-exist, so you're removing the block out of F5...

So... why just not combine those together?

F4 - Bladeturn Requiem: Instant-cast, adds 0.75s distortion per blade consumed, deals melee damage.

Simple.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Skyroar.2974

[BenaSPACE.6028]

For engineer, 

Scrapper:

The Kinetic Accelerators is more or less the same problem but flavored differently, but an easy fix, I think. Instead, keep its current effects, and have blast and leap finishers provide an AoE superspeed of about 3 seconds. This will offer a lot more flexibility on how scrapper provides its quickness.

Mechanist:

Mechanical Genius has been a point of balance for a while now, as an attempt to keep mechanists from overtaking everything. I think the cooldown increase isn't the way to go. It's far too punishing, and needlessly difficult to maintain.

900 is a feasible radius, I think, without needing to handhold your mech to keep it from going on a doomslayer rampage on its own, if you plan to implement this change.

[Awn.1327]

So when you removed the CD reduction from elementalist's "Conjurer" trait last round, you did not reduce the cooldown of any conjured weapons as you are doing for pretty much all the skills now where you removed the CD reduction trait. 180 seconds for fiery greatsword is not really fun to play around, especially in WvW. Could you please consider reducing those cooldowns per default as well?

[BenaSPACE.6028]

Elementalist:
Most of the changes I think are pretty good for this class.

I'm especially a fan of the signet changes.

The spectacular sphere thing is overall better for the game, I think, though I'll miss using fresh air as a point of maintaining quickness. There's a few more things ele needs rounded out, I feel, like summoned weapons and their respective trait.

 

In retrospect, I think that's basically all I have to say about this patch. The Warrior or Ranger changes are... Interesting to say the least, but I don't really have much of an opinion on them.

Edited June 10, 2023 by BenaSPACE.6028