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The June 27th Balance Patch achieved precisely the opposite effect.


DarkCobalt.2849

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From the balance preview, we were told that one of the goals was to

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Improving the feeling of moment-to-moment gameplay for many boon support builds. We want these builds to have more flexibility in their utility skill choice and not be required to activate a particular utility type on cooldown to provide quickness or alacrity.

Based on current testing that I've done with several of the boon builds using as close to best-in-slot equipment as I can get (no infusions, some unoptimal stats on accessories), I've found that for many of the classes, the patch has done the exact opposite. I'll go through each one and list out the concerns, including a brief before/after summary for those unfamiliar with how the spec plays, and focusing mainly on what the initial intended effect and expectation of the patch was and how the actual results go against it.

Herald

Before the patch, Herald could rely on the Draconic Echo trait to easily provide Quickness by using all of their facets on cooldown. Now, that has been moved to the reworked trait Elevated Compassion where using 6 Upkeep points pulses Quickness for 3 seconds. 

  • Power Quickness Herald (PQHerald) now is forced into a rotation to maintain 6 Upkeep points at all times in order to maintain Quickness, with very little room for deviation. While this build is less affected than others, it now means PQHerald does not have the liberty to use their Jalis roads as they need to maintain the 6 Upkeep drain to keep quickness. This results in less flexibility than before.
  • Heal Herald (Healrald) is similarly forced into a rotation of maintaining a 6 Upkeep points for Quickness. While this is less of a problem in Glint, it is a very problematic issue in Ventari. Ventari is our dedicated healing stance, and we are now required to channel its formerly situational bubble skill to maintain Quickness. Additionally, as we are forced to rotate legends due to the upkeep drain, we have less choice in saving Ventari for when the healing is actually needed. Moreover, the upkeep drain prevents us from comfortably using heals when we actually need them (more on this later in other healers, this is a recurring theme). Again, overall less flexibility than before. (EDIT: Arguably, it's possible to dedicate channeling 6 Upkeep on Glint for Quickness and overcap it with enough boon duration and then use non-channeled healing skills in Ventari, but the same issue remains of being forced into swapping Legends.)
  • An addendum to Herald's aforementioned Quickness concerns is now the tightness of other boons. Before, Draconic Echo allowed Healrald to pulse the Facet boons after consumption, which meant essentially near-permanent Facet uptime even in the other Legend. However, now that we are taking Elevated Compassion (and Draconic Echo being reworked), this is no longer the case. PQHerald has seen a significant reduction in its boon output and Healrald has as well to a lesser extent, leading to problems of boon uptime being more stringent in the party as a whole. This rework leads to overall less flexibility in team composition when paired with certain Alacrity classes (see below), where not all boons may experience comfortable uptime. 

Druid

Before this patch, Druid could reliably give Alacrity via using its Spirit activations. At most, only 2 Spirits were needed to maintain 100% Alacrity uptime with a little bit of wiggle room, you could feasibly take 3 Spirits if one felt the need to, or take other utilities. The June 27th patch changed the class's Alacrity to instead come from Grace of the Land, where Alacrity now comes from Celestial Avatar (CA).

  • This is perhaps the biggest offender of the aforementioned "exact opposite of intended effect". Why is Alacrity forced onto CA, our main source of emergency healing? Aside from the Alacrity duration having razor thin margins, CA itself has a 10-second cooldown and a resource bar as well. While it originally was boring and supposedly inflexible to always have 2 Spirits for Alacrity, we are now forced to enter CA off cooldown, completely stripping Druid of its biggest healing functions as we must use them to maintain Alacrity. It's pretty obvious here that the changes result in far less flexibility than before.
  • On the more nuanced side, Druid lost a significant amount of its non-Alacrity boon uptime, the main offender being Protection. Before, Stone Spirit allowed for very easy uptime of Protection. With the recent rework of Spirits, we are still required to take Stone Spirit, but the Protection uptime is now much less accessible on Druid. We are now required to take the Invigorating Bond trait and use Pet cooldowns off cooldown to provide as much Protection uptime as possible. While the Pets weren't the greatest source of utility, now it has become mandatory to use a Pet that has a short enough cooldown (<20s) to activate the trait off cooldown, thus removing our access to potentially useful Pet utilities that may be on a longer cooldown (e.g. Wyvern for CC which is a 30s cooldown). 

Scourge

Before this patch, Alacrity Scourge didn't exist. Now it does. But moreover, Heal Scourge used to provide a huge amount of Barrier that could protect the party throughout many of the encounters' hardest-hitting mechanics. After the patch, the Barrier output appears to have been reduced but can now provide Alacrity through the reworked trait Desert Empowerment.

  • Similar to Druid, our Alacrity is tied to our main source of healing/mitigation. Instead of saving large Barriers for when we need them, we are now forced to use Barriers continuously off cooldown to maintain Alacrity. Additionally, we even need to take utility skills that provide Barrier in order to maintain full uptime on Alacrity, even with maximum boon duration. Scourge struggles immensely right now because of its inability to choose when it wants to use its Barriers, resulting in almost no adaptability to any fight situation
  • The Alacrity duration is also far too short at only 1 second base duration. This means Scourge has become one of the highest APM (action-per-minute) healers in the game, as it must use all Barriers off cooldown to maintain its Alacrity. Quality-of-life isn't great to say the least.
  • As the Alacrity uptime is so tight and demands such strict playstyle and build requirements, Condition Alacrity Scourge is simply not an option, which is a crying shame as the DPS functions of Scourge also got significantly nerfed in the process of trying to deny a full-squad Alacrity playstyle (where you place shades around the arena and provide Alacrity to all Squad members). This is less of an indictment of Alac Scourge itself but rather an indictment of the design philosophy in general, where the spec has lost all other potentially viable playstyles in favor of trying to make a very doctored and restrictive Heal Alacrity build exist in a supposedly balanced PvE.

Conclusion

I'll keep updating this post as I test more classes, but these are the main ones that I've tried so far in Raids and Strikes. Overall speaking, the patch appears to have done the precise opposite effect of what its initial intent was, with the above classes experiencing less flexibility and poorer quality-of-life in moment-to-moment gameplay. Anet, please consider revisiting these changes, or revert them entirely.

Edited by DarkCobalt.2849
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