June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

[zealex.9410]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358I am sorry, but your response shows that you either haven't read the feedback or didn't understand it.

The issues with Druid are not number based, but gameplay based. If alac remains tied to CA, it will need to overcap by really massive amount so CA can be used for its real purpose - healing - instead of having to sacrifice its primary fuinction for upkeeping boons.

Scourge adjustments are also just a band-aid that leaves the main problem unaddressed until you fix shade duration. If you have issues with number of shades, just roll big shade into default and ignore multiple shades possibility, because in reality it doesn't exist anymore - but the duration needs to be fixed anyway. Spamming shades every 8 seconds makes for really inane gameplay and without it scourge may be overcapping massively on alac while doing 50k dps and giving out massive barriers, but it will still be extremely unfun to play.

Mirage changes you made also seem to point to the very glaring issue with this patch - you seem to think only about alac upkeep, while ignoring absolutely everything else.

Also, what about Mechanical Genius and Arc Divider?

Please, go back and read all the feedback (from both preview and actual patch) again, and then come back with something better. Because this isn't it.

Didnt druid dip into ca to provide might tho?

[Peacekid.1463]

the change for greatsword on the warrior berserker was the worst ive ever seen so sori...the fun and purpose of the 3 spin got wasted

[Allegra.9380]

>>> I am sorry, but your response shows that you either haven't read the feedback or didn't understand it.

>>> The issues with Druid...

 

Absolutely the same for Herald.

They are simply not suited to the profession at all.

The current state of some classes cannot be recreated from scratch and presented as a conscious design. Imagine a brand new MMO with class designs like our Druid or Herald.

Instead, we are in a state of transition from point A, where we had no idea how and why everything was working, to point B, where our goals are clear but there is no clear vision of the end state. 

We ask for our leg to be healed - they give us a crutch. We ask again - they give us another one, but now with whistles, bells and secret asura technology. This is not what we are asking for!

Sorry, I'm more on the emotional side than the constructive side at the moment... but first they force you to use unnecessary things at inappropriate times, and now the proposed solution *drum roll* is to be able to turn such things off (yes; turn on to turn off) or to be able to do nothing for extended periods of time.

We want to use skills and *boom* - get the effects. What's the problem?

By the way, we are now discussing how to fix just the powerq build. Are the rest of the builds done and feels ok? How are those who wear Harrier and already have 100 BD doing?

Thanks for moment-to-moment! Since I don't believe in a good outcome, so I'm going to play Renegade. I really hope you have no plans to improve my overall experience there.

P.S.
THIS:

5 hours ago, Diruuo.6314 said:

I firmly believe the design issues introduced with the Patch are so fundamental and problematic, that the only reasonable option is to revert the changes, and get back to the drawing board. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Allegra.9380

[Vee.6052]

while it's nice to see you guys are trying to make changes, this still doesn't fix the core issue brought about by shoving alacrity onto scourge or how it's applied. healers currently are forced to sacrifice any reactivity they have with shades to spam them off cool down to barely eke out just enough alacrity at 100% boon duration while many other classes can press a single button or not have to think about it.

it's the same issue with celestial avatar mode on druid: shoving alacrity onto it kills any chances you have at saving it for when it's actually needed. it feels terrible and severely hampers the capacity for healers to provide emergency bursts of healing when needed.

alacrity never needed to be on scourge. the quick res potential and boon corrupts fit the theme of the class. if your goal was to reduce the current boon rip spam in WVW then it utterly failed on that front, too, because the other half of the equation is still untouched, which is the actual boon spamming.

i used to adore heal scourge. i haven't touched scourge since this patch went live. it's destroyed all of the things i once enjoyed about the class and reduced it to another generic boon support.

also, how boons are applied now feels much, much worse in general. my celestial catalyst is suffering. my quickness scrapper feels awkward to use. the entire flow of these classes has been messed with in a way that just isn't enjoyable at all.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Vee.6052

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

the changes to Boon Corruption have made zerg fights incredible long and boring. Traits like Spiteful Spirit didn't even get a compensation and feel useless now (and with not viable alternative).

[Levetty.1279]

39 minutes ago, shaz.8572 said:

I propose a druid change that will allow the class trait to still function with a fundamental change

Most of the complaints with HOW druid applies alac are with having to burn celestial avatar. 

Considering that we already have an example class, scrapper applying quickness on blast or leap finishers, this would be a PRIME solution to implement. 

Currently the class requires you to spam celestial avatar, with the proposed change to the trait Grace the land, it will move the player to be required to use blast or leap finishers. 

Considering that the class has a blast finisher in celestial avatar and in staff.  

Several leaps in sword and great sword and dagger, along with another blast with warhorn, 

Spirits blast finish already so this would technically work these those changes. 

These are items the people generally already used in the class kit. 

This change would allow the trait to be synergize with group play already, and give people their decision making back. 

tweaks to how much would possible have to be made, but this change would drastically reduce the already frantic high apm mash mode that people hate in its current implementation. 

Can any one think of a negative to trying this method of applying alac that would be worse that the current implementation? 

Consider all the other good feeling classes, warrior, revenant, guardian. These classes apply the boons by just play the class mechanics, in most cases while retaining the flexibility of choice. 

Tying the mechanic to an action that always is required is always a result that causes bad feelings, example mirage alac, forcing you to use the staff ambush for the most part. Old herald requiring button mashing to provide boons, and now druid that forces the interaction by always having to be in celestial avatar mode. 

I hope that we can at least try this trait interaction and see what happens. 

 

I feel like tying it to Regen application would be better and allow Druid to play with all those sources of Regen it has.

[Jski.6180]

That was a very fast follow up.

[SaffronCity.3402]

SCOURGE: The buffs are nice BUT and it's a BIG BUT, without the shades being put back to 20secs this is for nothing and the real issue has not truly been solved. PERIODT  OH and the identity needs to be restored. Corruption of boons must be reverted; stripping is not good enough (this is a dps loss)!

MIRAGE: Staff mirage's chaos vortex damage needs to be put back to what it was before the patch. Moreover, as much as alacrity and quickness seem to be difficult to balance, confusion seems to be a thorn in your sides as well and the damage needs to be put back onto the staff. (Not sure if the trait that says "improved ambushes" addresses this or not). If the issue is with the staff/axe combo then you need to create a trait that separates the two. THIS is possible because you did it with Guardian's Renewed Justice trait and how it affects the players when they are a DH or FB. Make it work differently if the player is wielding an axe so that the self alacrity with the staff/axe build is kept in check. The inability to solve this shouldn't come at the expense of staff/staff mirages who seemingly are constantly being nerfed dps and boon application wise. 

DRUID: We need to be honest with ourselves here....In 2015 this class was designed to be a healer and now all of a sudden it's a dps juggernaut. I think we need to focus on druid's true purpose. IMO the alacrity and spririt dynamic should just be reverted BUT make spirits immune to damage and unable to vanish when the druid is X feet away from them. The fact that we needed to heal our boon machines was more work than other healing classes had to do. Either that or turn them into signets or something we can just click and not have to worry about keeping them alive or being too far away from them (aka disappearance in the Deepstone fractal after teleporting). Currently, tying the alacrity to celestial avatar is just not fun because you're wasting all your healing bursts to give alacrity and then you have diminished healing to pump out when your group needs it. In addition, the reliance upon pet switching for might is just undesirable...

FIREBRAND: This is a request that is from a previous patch. I would love to see the mantras reverted. Having to wait and recharge them after using the last charge is so clunky and painful to be honest. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by SaffronCity.3402

[Pie.2167]

Thanks for addressing the community feedback and providing more info!  Very much appreciated.

Disappointed that there was no mention of any tweaks to core Mesmer, specifically Temporal Curtain range, Virtuosos Bladeturn Requiem, and Chronomancers lack of group, non-combat alacrity in WvW.

While many like the concept of Escape Artist, phantasms spawning with distortion feels like that should just be how phantasms work without needing a trait.

[Tie Me.2637]

Why have you destroyed the Power Alac Untamed.  It was fun to play and able to provide decent dps as alac.  Once again ranger hit and other than druid is unwanted in most raid settings... So disappointing

[Drag You Down.2615]

@Cal Cohen.2358

Also, one more thing. 

Similar to Druid now, Tempest is bad in pve as Alac heal. Not because of the base alac duration, but how it is applied. 

As healers we have to stay in water att for most of the time and water overload is normally saved for healing. LS is forcing us to waste our overload for boon. And worse, only with over 90% boon duration, we are allowed to stay in water, otherwise we may be forced to change attunement and use another overload to cover the boon. At that moment, the only thing we can do is pray to God to not get wiped because we CANNOT HEAL!!!!

My idea is giving alac to Aura applications. For example:

When you apply an Aura to your ally, you also grant 4 seconds of alacrity. 

Simple and not very overpowering and compatible with the spec itself. I know there's a trait let you povide vigor and regeneration, just replace them with alac and rework Lucid Singularity.

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

So now that 99% of people who played quick dps scrapper have just geared up their quick dps harbinger, can you go back read the comments that the changes were a horrible idea revert it and come up with something new tied in with hammer and possible barrier. 

PS no one wants to use function gyro in their rotation.

[Drag You Down.2615]

2 minutes ago, Drag You Down.2615 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358

Also, one more thing. 

Similar to Druid now, Tempest is bad in pve as Alac heal. Not because of the base alac duration, but how it is applied. 

As healers we have to stay in water att for most of the time and water overload is normally saved for healing. LS is forcing us to waste our overload for boon. And worse, only with over 90% boon duration, we are allowed to stay in water, otherwise we may be forced to change attunement and use another overload to cover the boon. At that moment, the only thing we can do is pray to God to not get wiped because we CANNOT HEAL!!!!

My idea is giving alac to Aura applications. For example:

When you apply an Aura to your ally, you also grant 4 seconds of alacrity. 

Simple and not very overpowering and compatible with the spec itself. I know there's a trait let you povide vigor and regeneration, just replace them with alac and rework Lucid Singularity.

Also, by making such arrangements, the healing trait and boon trait will not conflict anymore. 

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

2 minutes ago, Drag You Down.2615 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358

Also, one more thing. 

Similar to Druid now, Tempest is bad in pve as Alac heal. Not because of the base alac duration, but how it is applied. 

As healers we have to stay in water att for most of the time and water overload is normally saved for healing. LS is forcing us to waste our overload for boon. And worse, only with over 90% boon duration, we are allowed to stay in water, otherwise we may be forced to change attunement and use another overload to cover the boon. At that moment, the only thing we can do is pray to God to not get wiped because we CANNOT HEAL!!!!

My idea is giving alac to Aura applications. For example:

When you apply an Aura to your ally, you also grant 4 seconds of alacrity. 

Simple and not very overpowering and compatible with the spec itself. I know there's a trait let you povide vigor and regeneration, just replace them with alac and rework Lucid Singularity.

Yep this was also what I have been saying since tempest got alac don't worry though we shall continue to talk to the brick wall about our issue's. 

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

6 hours ago, Du B.2593 said:

You can make all the changes you want to scourge but until you fix that shade duration it's a dead spec in the eyes of many, myself included.  I don't even play scourge anymore, but as a necro main I found myself with the urge to play pistol condi scourge with the beta event today.  Sounded like fun until I started to set it up and remembered, "Oh yeah this class has been gutted, RIP" then I went to play pistol/torch condi reaper instead.  Nobody wants to play a game of endless shade casting, by the time you set up your shades and lay down 2 or 3 attacks it's already time to spam shades again, get that nonsense out. EDIT: It was pointed out to me that you no longer need to have the 3 shades up for your bonuses so this is less egregious than I had thought.  But the point still stands, I don't want to have to cast shades like I'm using my special action in Cairn CM. Bump that duration up some, one of my guild mates suggested that a 12-16 duration would have been more appropriate.

wE wAnT tO gEt AwAy FrOm SpAmMiNg SkIlLs!!!

[Sirius.4510]

A good step, but there are a couple other issues with druid:

• Another staple boon we're expected to provide is protection. It's still possible to provide this but between that and might, it feels like most of the utility slots are already spoken for, which raises the question of exactly what flexibility we gained from the deprecation of spirits? In general, I think boon lengths from spirits are roundly too short. They usually ran 100% uptime before; is it really so bad if they still do?
• 1 second may not be enough to make alac dps builds viable. I guess we'll see.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Sirius.4510

[DeceiverX.8361]

At this point I don't understand why we don't just increase casting speed by 50% and reduce cooldowns by 25% globally.

This is just such a convoluted tangled mess of spaghetti as an excuse to justify power creep it'd be a lot easier to just own up to it and then remove quick/alac if we're being totally honest.

It's not making the gameplay more fun, and makes these patches extremely poorly-received every time one of their favorite builds is axed in the name of yellow icons.

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

6 hours ago, Captain.6892 said:

  Hide contents

 

Bring back old scrapper and Remove Mechanical Genius, please !

100% agree mech runs off and boom big cooldown like I didn't ask it too run over there for no reason there is no enemy why is it off group?

Also agree qdps scrapper is horrible I've just switched to qdps harbinger.

[Raim.6123]

You guys seem scared to make it easy to have uptime on Alacrity/Quickness. Theres a reason people loved Mechanist. Generation of these powerful boons need to be more automated rotationally. Heck, you 'could' just make it so the Ranger's pet just pulses alacrity for Druid. You could just make it so Scourge and Specter just pulse a large amount (like Harbinger) in their forms. Either make these boons easy to maintain or just remove them and consider them a mistake as a whole.

[Geronmy.3298]

1 hour ago, zealex.9410 said:

Mirage is not getting both 2 dodges and a stunbreak on dodge, the fact that it even had a stunbreak on dodge was problematic to begin with.

What are you talking about? Mirage never had a stunbreak on dodge, you just could dodge while cc'd.

And the class was designed that way, taking it back without any trade-off just breaks the game. Right now you don't even get the visuals on the screen when you get Mirage cloak.

And a lot of people, me included, are totally ok to reverting the changes to dodge on PvE. kitten sucks now.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Geronmy.3298

[XECOR.2814]

Using 1 shade will be enough to get the required condition and boon duration after these changes.
We wont be required to keep all 3 shades at the same time to gain bonuses.
I personally think that these are very acceptable changes and have been thought out well for their own idea about the spec.
If you buy into that idea that then the changes seem good. But many people don't have the same idea about scg unfortunately.

I still think the change "moving alacrity to Sand Savant gm trait and taking 5 target cap across all game modes instead of current implementation" people in the community suggested can be good and needs to be considered.
Why? Because after the rework of passive trait that grants bonuses for each shade, what use there is to take Sand Savant?

The idea about the gm trait Sand Savant was that 1 shade will act as 3 and thus giving full trait bonuses. Since the passive trait has been reworked to give all bonuses in 1 shade then this gm loses all its value aside from it being bigger aoe which has its tradeoff by having increased F1 Manifest Sand Shade cooldown.

Again, if they want to keep Heal Scg build and Alac Scg build separate in differnt grandmasters (this is what it looks like to me), they do need to add something to Sand Savant gm. Personally i would add the extra effect of green heal numbers on f skills activation and remove the cd increase on f1 and call it a day. This would clearly separate heal scg and alac scg builds.

Edited June 30, 2023 by XECOR.2814

[DeceiverX.8361]

6 minutes ago, Geronmy.3298 said:

What are you talking about? Mirage never had a stunbreak on dodge, you just could dodge while cc'd.

And the class was designed that way, taking it back without any trade-off just breaks the game. Right now you don't even get the visuals on the screen when you get Mirage cloak.

And a lot of people, me included, are totally ok to reverting the changes to dodge on PvE. kitten sucks now.

It used to, for about two and a half years with EM:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elusive_Mind/history

Dodge during stun also kind of defeats the purpose of stunning someone to deal a follow-up attack when the person can just ignore the being stunned part and evade the follow-up attack and then let the stun time out.

I can't for the life of me understand why people think this isn't overpowered.

Mesmer needs some love but this is not how to do it.  This is like the people who doubled-down on thief needing more stealth camping on Deadeye when it needed the opposite and with some small tweaks for non-stealth builds, and ended up fantastic.

Fix what's broken instead of covering up symptoms.

[Jski.6180]

I am realty shocked that some how ppl where able to comply test the update in less then 2 days 1 of thoughts days where some what bugged.

[coro.3176]

Please make the mechanist pet instantly teleport when you press the "return" pet command. It would make the whole Mechanical Genius penalty way easier to manage. It would solve terrain pathing issues too.

[BenaSPACE.6028]

I feel like most of these changes are good, and even scourge looks like it's gonna be a bit better, but I feel that druid is still in a bad place. It still has the same problem of needing to use its big class feature to keep up alacrity-- One that it shouldn't be using off of cooldown, because it rigidly locks druid into a place it needn't be.

I still standby a fix I posted earlier that made Celestial Avatar work more like how Harbinger offers its quickness-- Just pulsing casually, with a few extra things that up boon time-- While also being able to come in and out of its respective mode shift regardless of the resource it has (and even offering a slight boost to help it do its job as a boon production).