June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Achillies.2860]

On another note the sword changes to Ranger are nice but I am not too sure why you seem to care about Ranger sword so much.  I personally considered Greatsword, Axe and Longbow to be more power-orientated weapons for Ranger yet you seem to neglect them time and again. 

I am also sad at the fact that the cooldown reduction that used to be on Trappers Expertise will not be baked into the traps themselves when this patch goes live. Although the traps already have a low cooldown I would have appreciated some love for Frost Trap specifically in World vs World. You also didn't include "Guard!" in the reduced cooldown change which is a shame cause not many players were really using that skill, "Guard!" to begin with.

On to Druid. Again I feel the same way as I did with the nerf to the duration for Scourge Shades. We are now being forced to mindlessly spam our Avatar form to provide optimal uptime on Alacrity. I would have Grace of the Land still give Alacrity but also bring back the thing where glyphs plant a seed when activated and make this planted seed, when activated, provide alacrity. I cannot remember what that Druid trait was called but that was an interesting mechanic. This would not force Druid support players to spam their Avatar Skills for alacrity uptime and open more options and ways to provide alacrity whilst keeping the Avatar skills for extra alacrity but also emergency heals for the group or squad when needed. This would also make the Druid glyph skills see more play in PvE.

Lingering Light, although a nice change, will not see play in pve. In group-orientated content, the healer usually comes with boons to support the team as well. Perhaps in pvp it will see play but this would compete with Grace of the land in PvE. I would instead have the new Lingering Light affect trait baked into a minor trait on druid instead, albeit at a weaker form, so that if you do not include alacrity application on glyphs this would allow Druid players to more quickly have access to Avatar mode to spam the skills for alacrity.  And keep the old Lingering Light as is. 

 

[latlat.4516]

29 minutes ago, Demaria.3057 said:

nobody asked for alac scourge.

you are wrong sir, sadly. Scourge players asked for alac on scourge, and they got it. Maybe next time players will finally understand that all their dreams should not be reality.

 

30 minutes ago, Demaria.3057 said:

Some class unique boons like alac or quickness should be exclusive to some classes and not all. this threatens the identify and uniqueness of ALL classes and specs. 

Makes me think you actually did not follow last year's "balance philosophy". To sum up, the exclusiveness of those two boons specifically created problems with squad building, and jailed people to play classes they did not want to play, and countless friends of mine quit the game during the PoF era because of this specifically. Giving classes access to group-enabler boons is not a problem for "identity" as long as this boon is integrated in the gameplay of the spec you give it to.

 

There's really a problem with the way some players see the concept of "class identity". The class identity has two components in this game : theme and class mecanic. The rest is not hardlined into it, can be touched upon, and boons are not class mecanics, they are a standarized system for player-coop interactions. 

[Lenmar.1970]

I have almost never posted but this time, I feel I have to...

As other scourges, I want to say that I am appalled by these changes and I don't care about alacrity.

I also feel that Anet still wants to nerf staff mirage ; until when ?

Moreover, mechanical genius is a stupid and pointless idea. You can change it as much as you want : stats, cooldown, whatever you may try, it remains à bad game mechanic...

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

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

Removing additional skill-type-specific recharge-reduction traits and rolling the reduction into baseline skills where it makes sense to do so. The goal of these changes is to give players more flexibility in trait selection.

That is not completely correct. The traits cause you a lot of problems, because if you adjust CD right now, you punish those who do not use the trait more than the ones who use them. If you remove those, you can start balancing skills with their CDs properly.

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

To make them more reliable in endgame PvE content, all effects that benefit when the player strikes from the flank or from behind now always apply their benefits when striking defiant foes.

In those situations the DPS are usually standing behind the target anyway o.O

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

Confusion damage has been adjusted as follows in PvE only:

• Damage over time: Increased the base damage from 11 to 18.25. Increased condition damage scaling from 0.03 to 0.05.
• Damage on skill activation: Reduced base damage from 49.5 to 16.34. Reduced condition damage scaling from 0.0975 to 0.0325.

When you have touched Torment a few months ago, we told you that you are about to create two almost identical conditions. This change goes into the same direction. :S

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

Spectacular Sphere: This trait now grants quickness when deploying your jade sphere in any attunement, in addition to the boons currently granted. Quickness duration reduced from 5 seconds to 2 seconds.

Spheres have 15 seconds CD, 12 with Alacrity. That means you need around 4 seconds Quickness duration to maintain permanent Quickness for the group. That is either done by Sphere Specialist or with boon duration gear. We are back at trade-offs again? My main problem is that you enforce rotating through all attunements with this. If you leave the quickness duration at 4 seconds baseline, people would be more flexible with their gear/trait-choices and their rotations.

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

Speed of Synergy: Reduced ally superspeed from 3 seconds to 2 seconds in WvW only. Reduced personal superspeed from 7 seconds to 4 seconds in WvW only.

tl&dr; Superspeed on Scrapper has to go? This is one of those 'one step forward, two steps backward' changes we used to love so much about your balancing for the past 10 years. Superspeed was a very weird decision to begin with, but back then it sounded like the perfect placebo for a real buff. Who could have thought that this joke of a buff is actually useful in competitive? If you want to remove it, just do it. It is not the Superspeed that makes Engineers tough to fight. You will realize that soon enough.

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.

Internal cooldown, how long? Or limit the combos per field?

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

With quickness being removed from banners, we wanted to introduce both a quickness and an alacrity build to warrior elite specializations and have done so for berserker and bladesworn, respectively.

I've seen that one coming from a mile away. The problem with this change is once again: What is the purpose of the banners?

You are currently replacing useful boons with Resolution and Resistance in order to balance the distribution of powerful boons. That may look amazing for now. But we had the same situation a couple of years ago, where you gave a few classes Superspeed instead of giving them a 'useful' boon. We know how it ended. Those boons may look weak to you now and acceptable to spread them widely. But as with Superspeed, you will reach a point where you are going to curse these decisions.

Anyway, we will get it working somehow. As usual. I just hope your coffee machine works when this patch goes live ^^. 
 

[Adibas.6982]

(this is only about PvE)

I mainly stopped playing Mirage in group content over half a year ago because it could not meaningfully compete with new alac meta. The last couple of patches only use I found for Mirage was Twin Largos and some longer fights in solo/open world.

This patch patches useful Mirage out of existence:

It has a normal dodge now but you still have to use it to deal damage. So its kind of like a core mesmer with stipulations.

Realistically Mirage is only Axe or Staff. Since Mirage can't be Power its not great for killing small enemies. Axe makes you jump uncontrollably so Axe is not great for killing big enemies. That leaves Staff for killing big enemies and boon support but Staff Mirage is what's getting nerfed 3 patches in a row.

Then what is Mirage good for now? Killing medium size enemies solo?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Adibas.6982

[Achillies.2860]

Finally the Herald changes, if they remain as they are will kill dps quickness Herald. The old Draconic Echo is what made quickness dps herald work and was a fun build. Please leave the old Draconic Echo trait as it is. But I would also suggest keeping the new Elevated Compassion for the patch release so it offers Herald players clear choices when choosing quickness support or quickness dps. 

If you decide to go ahead with the new Draconic Echo then perhaps provide us with a quickness dps Vindicator build because at the moment I don't really see why Vindicator exists other than a raw dps class with no real useful group boon application. I would add quickness to the trait Angsiyan's Trust and also Imperial Impact. Adding quickness to Angsiyan's Trust would alleviate Vindicator players from spamming dodges constantly to keep up quickness uptime. 

Im sorry it feels like a poor change to me for Herald players, especially if this 'additional bonus' from Draconic Echo(which you do not state what this bonus is in your upcoming patch notes) is not worth it and rewarding of a trait to pick.

[Achillies.2860]

Lastly the warrior change of Arc Divider is bad, please do not go through with that change.

Heat the Soul and Daring Dragon changes again I feel go against what you wanted to try and avoid, the spam skill playstyle to get boons. Berserkers would be forced to take Rage Skills to try and upkeep Berserk mode for as long as they can to SPAM Primal Burst Skills for quickness! Bladesworns would need to spam Dragon Trigger to give constant alacrity! Yet you consider Heralds spamming facets for quickness to be bad gameplay design?

Plus Berserkers and Bladesworns would need an active target to hit to provide these boons, so they cannot provide these boons at the start of a raid or strike boss fight for example!  As a suggestion for Berserker quickness application, I would have Last Blaze to grant quickness when using a Rage Skill, have Smash Brawler provide aoe quickness when you critically hit a foe with perhaps a 1 or 2 second internal cooldown on quickness application, or have Bloody Roar provide aoe quickness when entering and leaving berserk mode. While keeping the new Heat the Soul. This would help alleviate spamming Primal Bursts for optimal quickness uptime and provide a bit more choice in how to provide that boon on the Berserker specialization.

Could also make Heat the Soul trait still have some play with the torch weapon by providing quickness when using torch skills. A one-time application of quickness on the skill Blaze Breaker and pulsing quickness from using the skill Flames of War.

For alacrity Bladesworns I would move the alacrity application to Immortal Dragon because no one really uses that trait anyway and keep Daring Dragon trait as it currently is before this patch. Please!

I would like to make you guys aware of Mukluks video on this balance patch preview because I feel he sums up very well what the community as a whole feels about this patch and the changes you guys are thinking of implementing. 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Achillies.2860

[TyrantPuppy.1893]

I can't deal with this:

+ [Daring Dragon] getting nuked from space when alac should clearly be on [Immortal Dragon] & DD is the ONLY play style changing trait on Bladesworn. (If you think it's bad you're wrong or have just never thought about trait interactions for more than 5 seconds.)

+ Heal Scourge also getting sacrificed on the alter of " it can't be balanced" when they could just make the space trait ALSO reduce your res power. So it'd be an option, not a forced tradeoff.

+ Ranger getting buffed out the kitten. (Not that I mind exactly.) But compared to Res Scourge that already healed like butt RS is just gonna be a sh*ttier Druid with all the res power it will have on "Search And Rescue!" + Allies' Aid + Glyph of the Stars.

 

ANet I don't everything to play the same or want things to be bad just so my class can be good. But it straight-up seems like that's what this patch is. If you have to delay it, DO IT. Get it out right, not fast. Or yeah, "Theory crafters will be very busy." In your upcoming expansion is right because they'll all be playing other games with actual variety and theory crafting.

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by TyrantPuppy.1893

[Malus.2184]

Another thing about the Scrapper changes is that it makes it really tough to precast Quickness without suffering a performance loss. It also makes a Tool Belt Skill essentially useless since Oil Slick is a forced companion to Blast Gyro. Without this change it does something, with this change it does nothing.

I would suggest changing the Quickness effect from being something given by Blast and Leap finishers to being given whenever you use a Tool Belt Skill. Engineers use their Tool Belt constantly anyway and if it was this way then it would have no effect on the utility skills which could then be used for actual utility. With it being just a blanket Tool Belt activation people could have whatever Utility Skills they felt were needed for the fight without it affecting their Quickness uptime or the utility the Engineer brings as they could slot their Utility Skills according to what was best for the content.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Malus.2184

[Leonardin.1953]

The changes to scourge shades are just crippling. By reducing the shade duration by 12s, you make dps scrouge, which was already bottom of the list, even worse and extremly tiresome to play. Please look at the alac application from a different angle and dont nerf dps scourge like that for the sake of alacrity.

[Elayne.4875]

Nerfing Heal/Ress Scourge so much feels quite bad. It was one of the most unique support playstyles. Making it another alac-supp makes it just mix in with the rest, there are already many options for it.

[Myror.7521]

@GoldSilva.8950 of course you know the Builds i use when i Play Bladesworn are this ones:

PvP Variants:

Strength Tactics Warhorn or Pistol Offhand:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKgAcqlJwuYJMMWJOeTtxSA-zZIPjGVAZKBc8A

Defence Tactics Warhorn or Pistol Offhand:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKgAcqllyuYtMMmLeOTtxUA-zZIPjGVAZKBc8AA

For Warhorn you only sweap weapons. Tho also there are some other runes that could be used for example soldier Rune.

 

Open World Variants:

Defensive One:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKgAcqllyuYtMVmLOaPnxNA-zxIY7ohvMCMBKtAUZAqA-e

(this is the Immortal Dragon one and by far the best Open World Boss solo build when it comes to warr thx to all the heal it gaining and Immortal Dragon means an Instant full life heal though it ^^)

CC-Offensive One:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKgAcqllyWZtMVmLOaPnxVA-zxIY7ohvMCMBqoAUZAqA-e

This does not use Immortal Dragon cause it goes for CC instead however you will die rly and I mean rly quick if you not know boss mechanics and stuff 

And for instanced it would be Just Meta-Bladesworn:

https://snowcrows.com/builds/warrior/bladesworn/power-bladesworn

 

Tho Im wondering how you make that by me called useless traitline Work!? Would you mind let me see that build? xd

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Myror.7521

[Thrax.4680]

And what would be the difference between Arc Divider and Arcing Slice after the patch?

Why would you force players to use bladesworn for a viable PvE power warrior build, while not everyone may have EoD? 

Maybe bladesworn isn't everyone cup of tea... you're basically killing playstile diversity for the sake of... i don't know what.

 

And Scourge mains... I'm sorry...

[Dreams.3128]

On 6/9/2023 at 5:46 PM, LichOverlord.6329 said:

I get that they're frustrating to play against, but this is not the way to do it. How would you feel if they removed your daredevil dash traits and instead you just dodge normally like everyone else - wouldn't you feel like your class's unique identity is tarnished?

Going after a core feature of a spec that's been the way it is for years across all game modes just for the sake of one is silly, and I'd rather see them add limiters to the dodge in pvp than remove key aspects.

Problem is, Mirage was toxic BECAUSE of this trait and Anet pulled the sad move of hitting EVERYTHING but that specific trait for years. They didn't need to gut it, but rework it to something healthier while keeping their identity? Yes. That was desperately needed speaking specifically in PvP terms. They went about it as badly as when they were trying to balance Holosmith and Weaver at one point. Mirage deserves a PROPER rework and not a flat out nerf

[Myror.7521]

@Thrax.4680 the difference between Arcing slice and Arc Divider would be:

1. Arc Divider will Deal high dmg even against enemys above 50% while Arcing Slice does Not.

2. Arc Divider might get its old Animation Back means it will be still an big AoE Skill instead of a pretty small one

3. As said it might get its old Animation Back so it will be a big fat orange AoE Animation ^^

 

Also tho saying its now unplayable in PvE is a Bit harsh it still will do somewhat good dmg  not while Camping on it for more than 5 Seconds tho. 

Besides that there are also pretty Solid Condi Berserker and Spellbraker build for solo Open world Play so in no term Bladesworn will be the only good one. 

Also instanced gameplay (raids/Fracs/Dungeons/Strikes) will be no different only just in term of a shorter Greatsword Rotation. But the DPS will stay the same as it acutually is.

For real the rework of Arc Divider is not as big of a bad Deal as peops in Forum might think. But to be fair overall its still just a Nerf.

[Dreams.3128]

Also for my own post:

Anet please explain to me WHY are you NERFING boon corruption. Please, just tell me why because you are LITERALLY going to allow boon gen builds (both solo and zerg builds) run RAMPANT without it. I just need to know WHY it is considered a healthy change. It is not fun, not engaging, or competitive. It is downright BORING.

[Esper.3721]

Mechanist is already annoying to play because you have to babysit the mech and it sometimes just doesn't go where you need it to be. Now it's even more punishing because your cooldowns are increased if you aren't directly on top of it (360 range is a joke).

Druid doesn't have to spam spirits for alac but instead now has to spam their celestial power on cooldown. This is the same problem but arguably worse because you cannot decide when to use celestial for big heals. The complete removal of the movement trait without explanation is also just baffling.

Scourge gets alac (nobody asked for that) but loses everything else the spec was used for. No quick revives and no boon corruption are just the tip of the nerf-iceberg. And it's not just about losing powerful abilities. A necromancer class that actually brings back people from the dead in real gameplay is such a cool flavor that no other fantasy game does that well. Now it's gone. And for what? Generic terrible alac support no one wants.

Instead of giving every spec quickness/alac through stupid changes and terrible reworks, just remove those boons from the game. Trying to balance the game around it has been terrible.

Oh and one last thing: Folding the 20% cooldown reduction traits into baseline is a good change. But trying to sneak in utility nerfs by leaving out specific skills (e.g. traps) is either incompetence or devs thinking the playerbase is too stupid to notice. I don't know which is worse.

I'm not even sure it's worth replying at this point. The devs seem completely out of touch with how and why some specs are played. I took a break from the game and just reading these ideas doesn't make me wanna come back at all.

[graishak.5406]

i still have problems with specter.
in wvw, your shroud will still melt to passive damage. would like something to offset low random damage, like some barrier self generation while in shroud, or just damage reduction at least. i dont mind getting kicked out by a spike, but arrow cart fire should not make shroud that hard to use.

damage is just condi, which is unusable in wvw. would like to see condi damage traits converted to all damage traits, since a condi/support based spec may not merit a whole line of power traits. also, like the idea of rot wallow, but since condi wont work in wvw, i would like some decent life leech scaling with power on it.
Quick ideas for traits like that: all damage increased vs movement impaired foes. gain shadow force and remove a stack of stab when you impair a foes movement(master tier). or a general shroud trait like Soul barbs from necro. i always thought the torment trait was too specific since it only applies to the scepter.

its support being gated behind projectiles(scepter and shroud 1) hurts in wvw. hoped for scepter 2 being made a ground target, because either way, 2 and 3 will compete with one another, and if they fill the same role, you will always press one of them over the other, plus maybe it could be used for cleave damage.

lack of unique support, i liked the ranged res in pve, but that seems to be removed. cant that be moved into the adept slot? that was a really fun trait to use.

shroud skills largely dont feel impactful still, esp skill 5 which feels like a placeholder skill.

i dont think wells will be used very much now without any alac on them.

shared shroud support around the tether was a good choice, maintains the idea of the spec.

nerfing boonrip in wvw is fine, but not nerfing boons/minstrel support at the same time does not seem right.

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

Ranger traps Vs Guardian Traps:

Why reduce the CD on most of the Guardian traps (which are more powerful than Ranger traps) and not reduce the CD on ranger traps across sPVP and WvW?

Trap builds for Ranger will become harder, follow your action with healing spring and reduce the CD on the other traps.

CA changes:

There are players out there who roam with Druid and so the loss of ancient seeds is going to impact their builds. The damage trade-off for the new CA additions does not seem fair. It seems Druid is also losing its stability in CA 5 (the notes are unclear), who is going to say still for 2.5 seconds just to get might in close fighting? Make CA 5 (all pulses) be able to be used without the standing still. 

Other comments:

You said this was "power Druid", but clearly it is a nerfed condi damage Druid. 

A missed opportunity to buff staff with condi or power. 

[GeraldBC.4927]

11 hours ago, conclusory.4693 said:

Let me add my voice against the Scourge changes.

Please do NOT make these changes as is.

Heal Scourge was already the worst of the viable healers, but it was good at preventing damage via barrier (which is being nerfed) and good at reviving allies (which is also being nerfed).

If the goal is to make scourge a viable support build, the healing should have been increased a lot more than just regen on the healing well.  No other heal pulsing was increased.

There are traits that are affected by the number of sand shades that are up at one time. Both the master minor trait (Sand Sage, +75 expertise and concentration per shade) and the grandmaster minor trait (Blood as Sand, 5% damage reduction per shade).  The duration change of 20s to 8s means you can only have 1 shade and therefore get no benefits. Since targets can only be affected by one shade, that means there is no reason to have more than one shade at a time, so these minor traits essentially have no meaning and might as well be baseline.  Condition Scourge needed to maintain 3 Sand Shades for the increase in Expertise.  This change results in effectively a -150 Expertise for Condi DPS builds.  Alacrity Scourge would not benefit from more than a +75 Concentration increase.  This also will result in players needing to keep a sharp eye on the cooldown for the Manifest Sand Shade and even having it as an ammo skill is less useful.

I am confused why the Alacrity was not added to the already existing support trait Sand Savant.  This is what heal scourge users picked.  This will result in Heal Scourges NOT being able to provide Alacrity.  And, if they do, the support they provide is going to be so much worse, as they will have to use the mini shades instead of the large one.

To me, the implications are that you intend for there to be 3 builds for Scourge: Condi Scourge (nerfed), Boon Scourge (with a difficult AoE for targeting allies) and Heal Scourge (with SEVERELY nerfed barrier and revive abilities in exchange for regen on the healing well).

Please consider alternative changes.

It's even worse than that. 

Healscourges can already give regen via Staff 2, so the regen on the well does exactly jack kitten. 

And just in case some employee or anet defender wants to think "ugh, it's so much easier to criticise than to come up with a solution yourself, he couldn't do this better either" keep reading because you're actually going to get some constructive criticism.

 

First off, let's get a few misconceptions out of the way.

"Giving the healscourge actual healing (as opposed to just barriers) AND alacrity on top of the barriers he has would be op."

Not true, seeing as heal alacrity mechanist and heal alacrity specter both have all these things at once and are considered just fine by both you and the playerbase regardless. I can see slightly nerfing the barrier amounts as a maybe, but not by NEARLY as much as you plan to, and only if the scourge gains something beside alacrity, like additional healing. 

"If we improve something on the scourge, it has to come at a tradeoff."

This is only the case if you're dealing with a spec that is already on top of the meta and recommended by top guilds all around. I can see this argument used to justify 'tradeoffs' (aka nerfs) on a mirage or a mechanist. To the scourge, this simply doesn't apply. You could unilaterally buff the scourge as a spec and it wouldn't overshadow other specs, because those other specs are already stronger as is. There is zero justification for this "there needs to be a tradeoff" nonsense. You could give the scourge everything suggested below and even more, with zero nerfs, and it still wouldn't be as good as the heal mechanist. 

 

Now for the actual suggestions on how to solve the issues at hand.

 

Question: How do we turn the healscourge into an actual healer with actual healing on top of barriers?

Answer: By simply giving him tangible amounts of healing.

-drastically increase the healing power coefficient on vampiric presence

-make life siphon not just heal yourself but up to 10 allies around you

-slightly reduce the strength of scourge's barriers (but NOT EVEN CLOSE to as much as you currently plan to) and in exchange, add some healing to every barrier application

 

Question: How do we reconcile the viable-for-endgame alacrity heal scourge we want to create with the transfusion-stacked-revival-rescue scourge that people know and love?

Answer:  By separating them from each other and making them mutually exclusive.

-rename transfusion into 'cauterizing sand', move it into the scourge tree and replace "Feed from Corruption" with it.

-grant an additional effect to 'Sand Savant' which causes every application of barrier to also apply alacrity like with the mechanist, but at a drastically higher base duration than for the mechanist because you apply barrier much less frequently

-optional: make 'Necrotic Bite' (dagger 1 third attack) add a small amount of barrier to yourself and nearby allies like the mechanist's mace 1

That way the player has to choose whether he wants to be an oldschool revive healscourge or an alacrity healscourge. The only problem here is that the alacrity healscourge loses a lot of valuable healing because he can't run transfusion, but this is easily solved by giving him additional healing elsewhere. 

 

In general, a lot of these problems and solutions would probably be way more obvious to the balance team, if they simply tried out and actively played multiple different specs with the same role and compared it for themselves. If you actually played a healscourge, you'll learn to really appreciate being able to constantly heal with no cooldown or cost like with the mechanist's medkit 1/2 / mace 1. Scourges don't get that luxury. Neither do revenants by the way. 

Edited June 11, 2023 by GeraldBC.4927

[GeraldBC.4927]

Side note, when I say 'drastically increase the healing power coefficient on vampiric presence', I don't mean increase it by like 25%, I mean multiply it tenfold, put it in the same ballpark as the renegade elite skill (while you're at it, buff that one too).

[Joxer.6024]

4 hours ago, Achillies.2860 said:

because at the moment I don't really see why Vindicator exists other than a raw dps class with no real useful group boon application.

why would this be a bad thing? In many of the posts around here people are saying get rid of boons, and yet right here you say that a "pure' dps is bad? Whats wrong with a class being built,spec'd, made to play as the PLAYER chooses? Not everyone has to have support.

[GamerToad.9248]

About warrior arc divider changes and it being a "Buff"

 

Spoiler: it isn't 

[Malus.2184]

1 hour ago, Esper.3721 said:

Mechanist is already annoying to play because you have to babysit the mech and it sometimes just doesn't go where you need it to be. Now it's even more punishing because your cooldowns are increased if you aren't directly on top of it (360 range is a joke).

Simple solution, just never use Jade Blaster >-< Solves all issues with AI and range instantly. How come ANet keeps getting this wrong.

[Draco.3257]

A few things:

On 6/9/2023 at 4:12 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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

Then what is the point of this skill anymore ? Isn't one of Virt's identity is that they are good duelist? If they really are having too many block in competitive then at least leave the block in PvE where it doesn't hurt anyone.

_The Nerco change:

One of Nerco identity is that they can corrupt boon, other people can remove boon too but Nerco are the only one who can corrupt it. Don't take that away.

HealScourge is fine as an unique build that only work in niche situation. After there changes then it have nothing left, it revive potential gone, it heal is weak, boon is less than other option and all for some alac. Just don't.

_ Druid:

Having dps option is cool but on the healing side, you are bringing druid right back to where they was before the release of EoD. Having to waste CA to give out boon, isn't that kinda go again the idea of  "not required to use a skill type on cooldown to give out boon".