June 27 Balance Update Preview

[Asra.8746]

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• 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.

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Thief

In addition to moving alacrity off of wells, we wanted to improve specter's ability to play a support role in larger group situations. Ally-targeted scepter skills will now grant their effects in an area around the target, and Shadestep has been reworked to allow Shadow Shroud skills to affect multiple allies around the tethered target. We're also introducing a quickness build for deadeye. Fire for Effect will cause every stolen skill to become Steal Time, which now grants quickness in an area. We've also bumped up daredevil's staff damage while reducing the damage of the more powerful stolen skills to make the build more consistent.

 

Core

• Improvisation: This trait now reduces the cooldowns of all utility skills by a certain percentage when you steal, instead of recharging a random skill.
• Endless Stamina: This trait has been reworked and renamed Fluid Strikes. It now grants the thief a damage bonus for a period of time after using a movement skill or completing a shadowstep.
• Pain Response: This trait has been reworked. It now removes a damaging condition from the thief when completing a dodge roll.
• Guarded Initiation: This trait has been reworked. It now grants the thief resistance when using a movement skill, with a 5-second internal cooldown.
• Swindler's Equilibrium: This trait now recharges Steal by 1 second per trigger, with a 1-second cooldown.
• Assassin's Reward: Increased base healing per initiative spent from 102 to 151.
• Upper Hand: Reduced internal cooldown from 5 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Daredevil

• Bound: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 3.5 in PvE only.
• Staff Strike: Increased power coefficient from 0.75 to 1.0 in PvE only.
• Staff Bash: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.2 in PvE only.
• Brawler's Tenacity: This skill no longer reduces the cooldown of physical skills.
• Channeled Vigor: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 24 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Bandit's Defense: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 16 seconds in PvE and from 30 seconds to 24 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Fist Flurry: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 16 seconds.
• Impairing Daggers: Reduced cooldown from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Impact Strike: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
• Detonate Plasma: This skill now deals damage to nearby enemies and no longer grants quickness.
• Throw Magnetic Bomb: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 0.7.
• Throw Unstable Reagent: Increased power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.0.
• Throw Cursed Artifact: Reduced power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.4. Reduced bleeding, torment, and confusion stacks from 5 to 3.
• Time in a Bottle: Reduced duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

Deadeye

• Stolen Skills: Stolen skills now grant their beneficial effects in a radius around the caster. Reduced casting time by approximately 25%.
• Steal Time: Increased quickness duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds in PvE only.
• Steal Resistance: Increased resistance duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds in PvE only.
• Malicious Intent: Increased malice gain from 1 to 2 in PvE only.
• Fire for Effect: This trait no longer requires a target to grant boons to allies. Additionally, equipping this trait guarantees that the stolen skill will be Steal Time, regardless of the target's profession.
• Shadow Flare: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only. This skill now only damages once when used instead of pulsing.
• Shadow Swap: This skill now causes an additional strike to occur at your original location when used.
• One in the Chamber: This trait now also increases the damage of stolen skills, in addition to its previous effects.
• Binding Shadow: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE and from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW. This skill now immobilizes marked targets instead of knocking them down.

Specter

• Ally-targeted scepter skills now also grant a lesser effect to additional allies in a radius around the target.
• Second Opinion: This trait now grants condition damage instead of healing power when equipped and while wielding a scepter.
• 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.
• Traversing Dusk: This trait no longer grants alacrity to allies when using a well skill.
• 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.

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Asra.8746

[Flobings.7251]

So for Specter you took alac off of wells & did what with it? Got rid of it entirely?

[Flobings.7251]

24 minutes ago, Asra.8746 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.

Ok, nvm. Seems that "beneficial effects" includes alac.

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

Well, I voiced my opinion against Fire for Effect, not because it itself is a bad trait, but because Deadeye right now has problems tied to it: we have a hard blocker with props like the Octovine where mark gives you the No Valid Path to Target your whole profession is basically invalidated, plus a soft blocker with Stealth issues, where you will still be able to use your stolen skills to give quickness, but being perma revealed by the likes of Slothazor and everywhere else fixate is a thing, or occasional reveals by Mai Trin or some places where you randomly get revealed, or your own allies blasting some fields so your value drops dramatically since your DPS relies on stealth attacks. I do appreciate Shadow Flare's pulse changing to a one time thing.

So that's a lot of content where this patch won't shine or even be used at all, for Deadeye.

I think if all of that is fixed then Quickness Deadeye in this form is worth being excited about.

As for Specter, I'm on board with everything, though still hoping initiative gets normalized as it stands Specter is a Scepter only profession, Second Opinion double down on this. Still hope one day for dagger/dagger or pistol/x or shortbow being viable options. And renaming Wells to Spectral! lol

Edited June 9, 2023 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Already made a thread on this...

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

27 minutes ago, LyraOrpheo.8450 said:

Well, I voiced my opinion against Fire for Effect, not because it itself is a bad trait, but because Deadeye right now has problems tied to it: we have a hard blocker with props like the Octovine where mark gives you the No Valid Path to Target your whole profession is basically invalidated, plus a soft blocker with Stealth issues, where you will still be able to use your stolen skills to give quickness, but being perma revealed by the likes of Slothazor and everywhere else fixate is a thing, or occasional reveals by Mai Trin or some places where you randomly get revealed, or your own allies blasting some fields so your value drops dramatically since your DPS relies on stealth attacks. I do appreciate Shadow Flare's pulse changing to a one time thing.

So that's a lot of content where this patch won't shine or even be used at all, for Deadeye.

I think if all of that is fixed then Quickness Deadeye in this form is worth being excited about.

As for Specter, I'm on board with everything, though still hoping initiative gets normalized as it stands Specter is a Scepter only profession, Second Opinion double down on this. Still hope one day for dagger/dagger or pistol/x or shortbow being viable options. And renaming Wells to Spectral! lol

Head on over and copy this reply. I see a big huge issue with inability to make this trait work in broken areas of wvw

[Tails.9372]

Stolen skills having "approximately 25%" reduced casting time is a nice QoL improvement and the only change I care about. M7 is too crucial for my build (for the ini reg alone) to bother with anything else and if I just want some quickness to mow down trash mobs in OW then BQoBK suffices.

Also, the increased malice gain from Malicious Intent doesn't do anything substencial if you have 100% crit as you still have to use 2/3 skills to max out your malice regardless.

Furthermore, them saying that they didn't want players to spam skills off CD for trait related utility has a bit of a sarcastic undertone given that their Signets of Power rework was essentially just that.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Tails.9372

[Infusion.7149]

Will specter even output alacrity anymore? It is stated that alacrity is removed, without any mention of it being added elsewhere. Maybe I am missing something.

Maybe alacrity is one of the "additional boons" on Shadestep? If that is true then it makes Specter much more shroud reliant for boons which is a bad thing.

[Venport.3925]

1 minute ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Will specter even output alacrity anymore? It is stated that alacrity is removed, without any mention of it being added elsewhere. Maybe I am missing something.

Maybe alacrity is one of the "additional boons" on Shadestep? If that is true then it makes Specter much more shroud reliant for boons which is a bad thing.

Its pretty clear they didn't really do a clarity check for the wording on this post, but yeah I think based on what they're saying shroud will be the alacrity source, which shouldn't be a problem, most of your shroud skills come off cooldown frequently and specter tends to go in/out of shroud already a lot so I don't see it getting in the way

If anything this means CAS can take things like thousand needles/more venoms instead of spamming wells

though I could see the heal well and boon well possibly still being good enough to stick

There's a typo in there that sounds like they're buffing the other grandmaster trait noone takes, but i don't think its enough to matter for much

beyond that I think its a pretty positive update for thief, I still hope to see a more in depth acro rework to make that traitline better

[FrancisN.9276]

In summary:

- Acrobatic got tiny buffs that do not bring it anywhere close to being worth taking over other traitlines.

- Staff Daredevil gets damage buff in only Staff 1, and some CD reductions, which are a good start. I hope to see the next patch saying "But it did not quite have the impact we wanted".

-  Quickness Deadeye gets a mixed-case-scenario for a "buff": Malicious Intent buff is useless; Fire For Effect being tied to quickness is not optimal but if taken with One In The Chamber change + Improvisation change + Sleight of Hand, we can have full uptime quickness but completely wipe our DPS potential. Hmm...

Edited June 10, 2023 by FrancisN.9276
Correction

[Sigma.2461]

In general, I like most of the changes.

It's nice if you don't have to flank all the time and this will help less experienced players a lot.
I don't see an issue with the changes to the core traits and hope they'll make Acrobatics more viable. Removing that 'gambling' side effect from Improvisation will help for a more consistent play style.

We have some minor buffs for Daredevil and we'll see how much they'll affect it's dps.
I'm a bit confused why the stolen skills are listed as daredevil changes, since they are core skills 😅, but nevermind that.

The changes to the stolen skills are mostly bad in my opinion and here is why:

• In general: The skills listed can only be stolen from a couple of npcs and in some cases they are picked randomly from a pool of possible skills (e. g. Time in a Bottle can randomly be stolen from Minister Li). So, in many encounters it is not possible to plan for the skills or they are simply not needed. And all the skills can only be used by Core Thieves and Daredevils. For a consistent gameplay it would be better to have a smaller pool of usefull skills you can steal instead of having a large pool of skills that are not really worth using most of the time.
• Detonate Plasma: This skill can only be used by Core Thieves and Daredevils, but not by Specter or Deadeye. So, you can't interfere with the newly added quick variant of Deadeye or the alac variant of Specter. This will only reduce the support abilities for boon Thieves/Daredevils. Keeping the quickness here would allow for more variety of thieves and even if it is only in a handful of encounters where it is possible to play them as support. In my eyes, there is no reason why the quickness should be removed. Yes, you do damage instead, but I'd prefer the quickness to allow a boon Thief/Daredevil variation.
• Throw Magnetic Bomb: This is a huge damage loss for a couple of encounters, where Daredevil could shine. This change will not impact the majority of thieves, but will lead to a decrease of Daredevils in raids due to the damage loss. If you really want to reduce the damage, I'd recommend to tune down the damage by a little bit and and not cutting the coefficient in half. If necessary it can be adjust later on again in combination to a dps buff in other skills/traits. 
• Throw Unstable Reagent: This skill is only relevant in strikes and for me it never felt like an important skill, so a small buff is fine
• Throw Cursed Artifact: Again only relevant for strikes and small changes are fine here.
• Time in a Bottle: This nerf is weird to me. This skill can only be stolen in 1 story mission and 3 strike missions if I'm not mistaken. In strikes, alac and quickness is usually covered, so there is no need for the skill to begin with. The only explanation I have for this nerf is that someone thought this could mess with the changes to quickness Deadeye and alac Specter, but both don't have access to this skill. I can't imagine that the skill was to strong in that one EOD story mission.

I really like the changes to Deadeye and I'm excited to try the quick build. Especially changing Shadow Flare to not pulse anymore is a really nice change.

And now to the Specter changes:

• Second Opinion: Nice change
• Shallow Grave: The current version felt unreliable to me, so I'm ok with a rework, but it feels like the change will be a a more aggressive version of Hungering Darkness.
• Traversing Dusk: Moving the alac from wells to shroud skills is fine (though it would have been nice to see how alac will be distributed among the shroud skills. It would be nice, if you could share this information as well next time. Now we only know that alac will be removed from wells)
• Shadestep: I really like the current version of it and I hope you can still revive downed allies after the rework. This was the most fun for me when playing a heal Specter variant. It is really hard to judge the rework of this trait, when we only know it'll add more boons to your shroud skills and beneficial effects will be shared, but we don't know what boons we are talking about (I guess alac and probably the standard boons like regen and might). It would really help to give us a few more details here, when you want proper feedback. Currently the beneficial effects would be Might via Haunt Shot, Barrier via Dawn's Repose, Stability via Mind Shock. If only alac will be added to the mix I think you'll see even less support Specter

[Celeste.9135]

6 hours ago, Sigma.2461 said:

Shadestep: I really like the current version of it and I hope you can still revive downed allies after the rework. This was the most fun for me when playing a heal Specter variant. 

I feel the need to echo this Shadestep revive was the REASON I enjoyed playing Heal Specter, please do not remove this ability.

[SlayerXX.7138]

Changes seem fine. Actually excited to get an acrobatic trait line. Disappointed about Core weapons getting Powercrept in PvE again. Buffs are welcome. A lot seems dependent on the numbers.

7 hours ago, Sigma.2461 said:

I'm a bit confused why the stolen skills are listed as daredevil changes, since they are core skills 😅, but nevermind that.

I mind that. So I will answer. The modern balance approach is adjusting Meta builds, not balancing the game. As far as the balance team is concerned stolen skills are Daredevil skill:).

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138