June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

[AlchemistRai.7596]

a bit of a cross post from another topic, but i need to put this here too.

Heal scourge was my favorite spec in the game because of the way it aproched encounters, the reactive gameplay with trying to midigate as much damage as you could was really enjoyable and felt like a EMT instead of the same generic MMO healer. The reason people went to Heal scourge was for something that was niche and the changes have done nothing for the class identity that people want to play. We don't want to play a barrier healer with spamming a tinny tower to keep up a boon that we didn't want.

If you want to fix what you broke with heal scourge I see a couple things you could do:

give us alac on sand savant instead/ blend the alac trait into sand savant. everyone liked the size of sand savant not the fact it activated the minor trait passive and the changes you proposed miss the reason why heal scourges where taking it. It's for giving barrier in a larger area with less worry because we wanted to watch to see if somone was going down and it is clear you are worried about DPS scourge getting too strong, so limit them to one shade if they want to give alac instead of making sand savant a useless grand master trait.

return some reviving power. I know scourge had a meme of "scourge hard carry" and you wanted to nerf it's revive power but the amount you removed is WAY WAY too much, i mean people where asking for you to juse not give us alacrity instead of taking away the amount of reviving power you did, and if you are worried about WvW kill denial then just keep scourges revive power how it is right now for WvW and buff it only for PvE. I know the revival power shouldn't be at like90% or whatever but druid now has better revival power then the necromancer does, and that's kind of all we had.

Return the signet trait to what it was.

If you do these three things i can almost garentee that people will be MUCH more happy with how scourge is. The problem was never that you nerfed it or that alac isn't nice, it's that you took away the one thing we LIKED doing for some generic boon.

If people who liked scourge wanted to be a pure boon healer they would play another spec, we want the revive gameplay, it's fun and fits the theme of the class. All the changes on the 27th did was remove the way people wanted to play the class and replace it with a sub par barrier healer. Give us some reviving power back and put the alac on sand savant and we will be happy.

[Bomboed.5697]

You need to hire a game designer for each class. Because it is wrong when some classes receive tons of changes, while other classes problems are ignored for years.

It is wrong when you create new abilities for Warrior and Ele just to make E-spec weapons to work with all specs, while refusing to make Holosmith heat to work with all weapons and to make Holo's Sword to work outside of heat mechanic.

It is also wrong when you refuse to fix Engineer's pistols bugs for YEARS!

And you keep nerfing any fun part of Engineer. You destroyed Scrapper. You destroyed Mechanist. You just make the class unfun to play.

You have ignored so many problems of Engineer for so long so now this class requires a huge rework itself. Pistols are broken and weak. Turrets are unplayable. Half of utility skills are useless. Kits are nerfed into oblivion.

Engineer's design is outdated and broken, but you keep ignoring it.

As an Engineer main, I refuse to buy new Expansion until you start doing your job and fix problems instead of creating new ones.

[Drake Damnation.7914]

16 hours ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Sandstorm Shroud: This skill now grants 1.5 seconds of protection to nearby allies each pulse, and 3 seconds of protection to nearby allies on detonation. 

This is not in the game, not even in the Sandstorm shroud description, doesn't work, doesn't give protection at all.

[Rather large bird.3108]

3 minutes ago, Drake Damnation.7914 said:

This is not in the game, not even in the Sandstorm shroud description, doesn't work, doesn't give protection at all.

None of this is in the game - this is what will happen in July,

[Jgc XD.5940]

Once again im asking to to remove energy from catalyst, this type of resource is pointless and it keeps power and quick build out of its full potential, if it breaks pvp/wvw or even dps in pve just nerf some numbers but get rid of energy. Another thing is to change how alacrity is given as tempest, if you want to keep lucid singularity how it is right now atleast add 1 or 2 sec of alac to trait invigorating torrents so people can choose how they want to play, healers can choose if they want to give alac on overloads or auras(finally able to play elemental bastion) or both and boon dps can choose to give alac on overloads or auras and choose right dps trait either transcendent tempest or tempestouos aria. Those alac/quick traits should be more accesable and not bound only to 1 thing on specific classes, hfb can give quick from 3-4 diffrent sources, same with mech, number of ways it can grant bariers makes it the best alac support it is right now. By giving other classes alac/quick on only 1 trait or granting it only in specific weird way kills fun and usability of a class so please rethink some of the changes and add more good working mechanics into the classes.

[Lctl.6198]

Anet - you're getting a LOT of proper, civil and thought out feedback way ahead of time AGAIN.

Are you going to ignore it - AGAIN ? 
Twice in a row, for such a short time would be craaaazzyyyyyyy - right? ...right??.

 

Urgh. When you have a Patch so universally HATED like this one, maybe it's time to swallow your own Ego's and revert it until you can come back with something that makes sense ? 

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

There were customers/players out there who did enjoy roaming Druid, and your changes have made roaming Druid much worse, the little we did have, you have stripped away. 

Druid is not Cata, we don't have endless ways to burst people, we had a core mechanic, ancient seeds, which was the beating heart of roaming Druid, as it worked well with the little we did have. What you gave in return simply does not compare. 

Support Druid has also taken a massive hit. Now its either convulted builds, or builds that could cause repetative strain injury, I again refer you to the Mukluk Druid support video where he lays out the issues. 

It would be nice if you at-least responded to the general push back against this entire patch.

Change things back, and go back to the drawing board, there is still time to fix this. 

[Zahark.7610]

Sometimes I feel like the balance team are not really playing the game or playing "properly" to do a balance update. What are those changes on Druid? Dude, CA is our emergency buttom for healing, we cannot burn the entire thing just to apply alacrity while other specs can do it safely, seriously. What will happen when we are in need of big heal? the entire party will die because the druid just wasted his emergency button for alacrity. It's the same thing with the pets. We need the utility of the pet and having to pet swap for keeping might up is a bad thing. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Zahark.7610

[Powerfat.7294]

12 hours ago, Radina.6057 said:

You want to use F1 as often as possible anyway to trigger Dhuumfire. How often we use Manifest Shade did not change one bit between the patches.

The lost cleave is a low price to pay for 20 second cd Aegis and a soon to be overall good dps output. 

Scourge is going to be in a great spot and it is even going to be easier to upkeep Sand Sage, since we only ever have to have one Shade alive.

The only negative about those Necro changes is that we have to wait 3 weeks for them to go live. They are amazing.

I never complained about casting shades, I am complaining about how many we can upkeep. Half the fun of dps scourge was having a shade army. Not having access to that is a huge nerf to your ability to cleave and overall playability. I don't care if we get 50k dps, that doesn't bring back the fun.

[Drake Damnation.7914]

Scourge has to spam Shades to keep up Maximum 2, not 3, and that's maximum, because this Shade duration is only enough for it to maintain 1 permanently, and 2 is a hard spam, but 3 is a rarity (when the rotation aligns), and that makes dps Scourge deal subpar damage overall.  (even with alacrity)

Because summoning shades has a casting time and the duration is dog feces, so it makes condi scourge a maximum 2 shade spamming maniac who deals less damage than it should.

I really enjoyed playing Condi Scourge, and every class, but after this balance patch you changed so much core traits of every profession that I no longer enjoy playing even... and this is one of my favourite game of all time.

Sad that you try to cover up this mess you created with the new expansion, great blizzard tactics... You asked for feedback, you got a lot of it and then you just straight up ignored every one of them so you can implement changes probably noone or 1% asked for and then dropped the expansion details... Whoo, amazing, really, I'm excited too, but I probably won't buy it because I no longer enjoy any class, because you obliterated the gameplay aspect that made playing those classes fun - and that aspect is: Being unique.

If you are going in this direction with development, you will create a game with 1 class with a lot of different names and colours, the boon class, and the LFG gonna look like "blue, pink and green booner needed we already have red and yellow".
You created a game where every class is a blast to play and now you are taking away everything that makes them separate.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. You are alienating you core player base that gives you money.

If you make changes that makes classes fun again, then you can count on me buying every expansion you make, because I really love this game, the story, the gameplay, the voice acting (because i hate reading and I have a hard time with my eyesight) so VA is extremely appreciated, the art direction, the art of the game, conceptcs, themes, everything.

I hope you'll see that you made a mistake with these big and unnecessary changes.

[SaffronCity.3402]

9 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

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.

In all honesty this might be the best solution. Every problem seems to always relate to quickness and alacrity application/upkeep. On the condition side, confusion has been changed so many times and it just proves that for years it has been too difficult to balance; I think it should just be removed and converted into torment at this point. It’s just that every balance patch so many people do not get excited, but rather are filled with dread because it’s a game of Russian roulette, whose build is going to get demolished because of these two boons? The seemingly eternal issue with alacrity and quickness cannot be solved and so I’m in favor of this at this point. 

[Shade.1234]

I wish you guys would revert the changes to the trait Signets of Suffering. The old trait was so much better.

[Ferox Cerberus.6104]

You said that your philosophy for this patch was to not spamming skills to provide boons; well, now, for the specs I play:

• Herald
  Before I had to spam consume skills, now I have to spam legend swap and draw all my energy (that is intended to be used for my gameplay) just to provide boons
• Scrapper
  Before I had to spam gyros, now i have to spam combo; this is even a worse way to spamming to provide boons
• Scourge
  This is a pain for me as a necro main, I'm very sad for how you ruined the concept of this spec. Buff concentration is not a way to address the last patch issues. Just adjust the shade duration so I dont have to constantly spam them to keep just one shade. What's the point on rework the trait to add concentration when you have a visual 3-shades counter that will never keep three shades up?
  Also, to provide alac i have to spam and waste all my barrier skills, including the healing skill. I recently come up with an alac scourge build and I tried it in raids, at some points I needed some utillity skills (cc, stab) and I realized that I can't:
      - Serpent Siphon: can't remove it, I need to spam it to provide alac (and wasting an on demand aegis source)
      - BiP: ofc can't remove it, unless i want to do 7k dps
      - Signet of Undeath: can't remove it, my main LF source
  This is not a good design, you litterally destroyed a spec.

As someone already stated here, you are making more complex the boon role by tie boon application to something that doesn't have a visual recharge time in 1 or 2 places only. For example, if you wanted to give scourge alacrity, it would have been enough just to give alac to one skill only (for example the shroud one) and on shade manifest (with enough duration to maintain three of them). In this way you wont break the game, since boon duration is needed to extend that alacrity, and you keep the spec philosophy intact.

I don't play Willbender, but Mirage has the same problem regarding alacrity application on transition phases or when it can't strike an enemy. Why don't you address this too?

Hope these words reach the balance team among all these comments.

[Player.2475]

Two things:

For DPS Druid:

Please integrate Astral Force generation for Druid's offensive traits at the very least, and tweaks to the condis it grants. You do not get enough Astral Force to enter Celestial Avatar every time it's off cooldown. You still have to wait 5-7 extra seconds, making the +10% damage trait for 5 seconds pretty meaningless, since you only have 20% uptime on it.

Right now it performs worse than the Soulbeast equivalent. Using the same traits, same skills, it gets less critical hit, less critical damage, and access to less condis/damage. The benchmark damage ends up being almost 25% lower. 
As it is now, most people just proc Celestial Avatar for a quick bleed + poison and then leave it instantly just to trigger the +10% damage buff. People don't even bother using Natural convergence or two instances of Seed of Life, because the 1k condi damage for a few seconds is easily overshadowed by using any other weapon skill. Poison damage is almost completely worthless in terms of numbers; but at least Soulbeast makes good use of it thanks to its life leech trait.

For Alac Druid:

Alac on druid is still not worth it. You're just spamming all your important skills mindlessly and leaving your team without heals when they most need them.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Player.2475

[pionanotech.2145]

I love your work and the new expansion looks more than just awesome, thank you for that! 

But may I please just request one thing, please bring back the signet trait line for necro...  I am an awfully bad player (or "gamer" how some folks call us) and get overwhelmed pretty fast (*insert list of brain errors*) and with the signet trait line I was able to focus on what happened in front of me and did not hat to worry about any rotation etc... 

I know, I know, I know, I heard it already a thousand times: "skill issue" and maybe that's correct, but till now I could really dig into this game with my low skill level. 

I most of the time play Open World contend, due to being too bad (and too anxious) for WvW and PvP. I am not even frequent in the instance group stuff etc. I played GW2 to explore, collect and enjoy the world and soloing-ability of the game with the right build and gear. In the current situation I have a hard time to do so as said and trying to not stress out at every little bit bigger encounter, which made necro from my  "I can do this class" to "holy heck what do I do what do I do... oh I am dead... again" ( now I know how ele mains must have felt...) 

And I heard from other peeps the same issue, but that they are not just stressed out like I am, but that they have other, physical conditions. Signet reaper was one of the few classes the could play due to the low input requirement. GW2 was known to be friendly for all types of player, all skill levels and all types of "play-able-style" (one handed,  controller adaptable with the steam update, etc.) 

But not did necro got a huge punch with the scourge alac "update" that you fix again with the follow up patch, but you killed the beloved signet reaper LI class wich was viable for Open World and according to some peeps from discord even instance content proof, not the best or most "engaging" class, but good enough that everyone could have their fair share of fun and challenge without having to use all buttons. 

Sorry for the long rant, usually I am to anxious to write stuff like that but the frustration of dying again and again and again drives me slowly nuts.... Maybe I need a break

 

[SaffronCity.3402]

8 hours ago, inoke.3546 said:

Anet, have you thought about doing the occasional beta slot for upcoming balance patches to make sure you don't over buff or nerf a class or ability too much? It might let you catch things like the Spellbreaker and Rev bugs with the last patch if you let the community play with it even for a day. You wouldn't even have to include all the changes, just perhaps "Play Alac scourge on this weekend" before bringing on that change into the actual gameplay.

Just a thought.

I second this 100%. If our reactions weeks in advance to upcoming patches via words on a forum aren’t enough maybe having betas for drastic profession changes is very much a necessity. I also firmly believe that you really need to hire people that are dedicated to properly balancing one, maybe two, professions tops, a specialist if you will. This should happen ASAP because you’ve complicated your lives now with giving core classes access to elite spec weapons and in addition, a new weapon entirely. Frankly, you couldn’t balance what you have now and you’re about to complicate the balance even more! There is a huge lack of faith in the current balance team and we do feel that our feedback is falling on deaf ears. I also do not think a lot (maybe any) of the balance team actually play this game because some changes make zero sense or commit the stupid mistake of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” I also do not know why you don’t seek really insightful expertise with balancing from community members like mukluk or teapot who have a vast and rich understanding of the game and would be a huge asset to you and would serve as great liaisons.    

Edited June 30, 2023 by SaffronCity.3402

[Powerfat.7294]

Regarding mech, can you just drop the whole punishing the player if the mech isn't close to you. It was never a real problem. The current implementation of it is an actual problem.

Power mech also deserves buffs, there are specs doing almost 10k dps more than it that are also completely ranged and easier to play.

You actually made a functional fun pet class, stop trying to undo that.

[Essence Snow.3194]

Pretty surprised not to see Ele adjustments mentioned. They are steamrolling atm.

[Mike.7983]

At this point damage control is through the roof, @Cal Cohen.2358 admit you made a mistake, roll this change back and try again using "small" adjustments, sorry but this is very unprofessional how you have totally killed the game on a balance patch.  Was no reason to go this extreme for no reason or explanation as to why.  If you read player feedback we are trying to be civil and to help provide positive feedback on really good ideas to make game great again.  But if you keep choosing to ignore us the next expansion will fall flat on sales and it will look bad when staff have to be reassigned.

Rip Staff Alac Mirage June 27 2023 

Rip Power Quick Herald and Heal Herald  

Rip Scourge 

Add many more to list.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Mike.7983

[Kymsaliah.3687]

13 hours ago, Radina.6057 said:

You want to use F1 as often as possible anyway to trigger Dhuumfire. How often we use Manifest Shade did not change one bit between the patches.

The lost cleave is a low price to pay for 20 second cd Aegis and a soon to be overall good dps output. 

Scourge is going to be in a great spot and it is even going to be easier to upkeep Sand Sage, since we only ever have to have one Shade alive.

The only negative about those Necro changes is that we have to wait 3 weeks for them to go live. They are amazing.

I second this opinion. Necro changes feel really good.  We get:

- working minor traits again. This change alone makes dps scourge have bossdps as high as before the patch and provides alac    variants with 10% boon duration on average to ease their boon upkeep

- permanent protection on healalac provided you heavily spec into concentration(harrier gear with 15% boon duration on rune and rebuffed Sand Sage is sufficient). This combines nicely with buffed scalings for our barrier application for massively increased party survivability.

- more alac which frees up for example Sand Flare to use as a strong defensive cooldown for healalac and makes boonuptime much easier on dpsalac.

- Demonic Lore, Fel Beacon and Sadistic Searing buffs to make dps scourge have competitive dps to compensate for lost cleave possibilities.

 

Shade duration at 8 seconds still hurts, because it reduces scourge cleave potential, but after these changes it doesn't force more shade spam than pre june 27  patch! I see this brought up frequently. Dps scourge had to cast 3 shades every 20 seconds ( thats one shade every ~ 7 seconds) to keep your condition duration up. After these changes we will have to cast 1 shade every 8 seconds to keep your passives up.

The only thing we lost here was the ability to cleave 3 spots that are 900- 1800 inches apart indefinetly. This insane cleave ability is now only useable at limited time windows, which is not noticeable on most encounters and a well deserved nerf on those encounters, where you could abuse shade placement.

I still would love to have Desert Empowerment and Sand Savant merged. It would feel very natural (Desert Empowerment gives alac in a 300 inch radius, which is exactly the same as Sand Savants) and would help hitting all party members with your barriers more consistently.

 

 

I can't speak much for other classes, but i can't wait for these necro changes.

 

 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Kymsaliah.3687

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Bomboed.5697 said:

You need to hire a game designer for each class. Because it is wrong when some classes receive tons of changes, while other classes problems are ignored for years.

It is wrong when you create new abilities for Warrior and Ele just to make E-spec weapons to work with all specs, while refusing to make Holosmith heat to work with all weapons and to make Holo's Sword to work outside of heat mechanic.

It is also wrong when you refuse to fix Engineer's pistols bugs for YEARS!

And you keep nerfing any fun part of Engineer. You destroyed Scrapper. You destroyed Mechanist. You just make the class unfun to play.

You have ignored so many problems of Engineer for so long so now this class requires a huge rework itself. Pistols are broken and weak. Turrets are unplayable. Half of utility skills are useless. Kits are nerfed into oblivion.

Engineer's design is outdated and broken, but you keep ignoring it.

As an Engineer main, I refuse to buy new Expansion until you start doing your job and fix problems instead of creating new ones.

Core engineer also got a big dose of the nerfbat since it is heavily reliant on alchemy with no other unique mechanics (what, you're gonna use turrets?) and they "forgot" to lower the cooldowns of the elixirs to baseline after deleting HGH cd.

[VulcanPyroman.8571]

I am not really happy with this, we basically have to wait a few weeks to get a band-aid which doesn't actually fixes the issues, but only stops the massive bleeding. Most of the feedback was given already just after the initial patch note and nothing was done with it, and seemingly not even tested internally otherwise these obvious issues would have been seen. And now we probably have to wait a few months for actual unF-ing this patch, because you are going to be busy with the expansion release and the coming balance issues coming from that. This should just never have gone live, and we need big changes and right now.

Edited June 30, 2023 by VulcanPyroman.8571
typo

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

You also need to check the maths on how much alacrity is provided by CA when not at 100% boon duration.

You added the option for condition DPS druid, which is great, but if I want to play Alac DPS druid (which I don't think is unreasonable) the alacrity provided by CA needs to be enough to get me from one CA activation to the next, with only Ritualist gear boon duration. I don't believe this increase to 1s base is enough.

Also you need to look into how the alacrity is provided. Right now it is granted to allies affected by the skills. This is a mistake, as I have to spam skill 1 non-stop to get enough alacrity. But the radius of this skill is tiny, and people don't always stack perfectly on top of each other. I suggest the application be changed to "whenever you activate a CA skill, grant alacrity to 5 allies within X radius (360 preferably)". This would be the quick fix to the problem.

However the the bigger issue is the waste of CA that is needed to provide alacrity. Either remove alacrity from CA skills and give it to something else (unsure what exactly as the situation you've created is horrific to balance) or get rid of the cooldown and CA energy threshold requirement to activate CA. This would allow a druid to spam a few less important skills in CA to provide alac, then if we drop out of CA and then something bad happens and we need the healing or res power of CA, we can quickly go back into CA. It allows for a better spread of that 15 sec duration to allows us to use it when needed, not just wate it.

[Lctl.6198]

12 minutes ago, VulcanPyroman.8571 said:

I am not really happy with this, we basically have to wait a few weeks to get a band-aid which doesn't actually fixes the issues, but only stops the massive bleeding. Most of the feedback was given already just after the initial patch note and nothing was done with it, and seemingly not even tested internally otherwise these obvious issues would have been seen. And now we probably have to wait a few months for actual unF-ing this patch, because you are going to be busy with the expansion release and the coming balance issues coming from that. This should just never have gone live, and we need big changes and right now.

This needs more visibility.

 

It's not OK to provide 3 weeks of feedback, be ignored, and now wait 3 weeks more for something that won't fix the issue, and seems like a (as you said) band-aid - hoping people will have calmed down by then, so they don't have to do anything else

 

 

[BlueRaVeN.9135]

the balance team really needs to get their kitten together. Quit listening to your own numbers, reports and "vision" you have for balancing and actually listen to the players that play the game. Like really tempestuous aria as a tempest buff, nobody uses that trait, and why use it over harmonious conduit when you can use transcendent tempest for damage buffs. Its obvious that changes aren't being tested or how about fixing the mist form bug where you still can get pulled when its supposed to be impervious. Mesmer is still on life support in competetive modes, I am pretty happy when i come across mesmers cuz its an easy win. 

A ton of players said changes to scourge were bad did you people listen hell no, so you had to backtrack and halfway do what the kittening players recommended, and now everybody is pissed and people are uninstalling because of your incompetence. Get a kittening clue, and quit doing what the powers that be think is better and listen to players. We are the ones that play the game to enjoy, i mean its customer service 101, economics 101 if there is a demand, then supply it damnit, within reason, and your customer base will be happy. It's really easy and simple. Don't be like "we have a vision for the balance to be this to make the game enjoyable", despite being 90% contrary to what ppl want. Quit letting the upper management that don't play the game dictate the direction of the balance and do what your customers kittening want. 

It's really hilarious in a way that even though much thought has been put in but oftimes the balance team is squirreling away after something completely irrelevant, and why is that its because of upper management thinking their opinions matter more than the peasants in the balance team trenches trying to do a good job making suggestions only for them to get overruled by incompetent jackasses that have no idea what they are doing making arbitrary decisions.

 

Get your kitten together before more people leave, unless of course you don't want millions of dollars of revenue from an alive thriving active game and player base.