June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

[Sylvi.8372]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:35 AM, The Cashew Cab.8491 said:

You're still keeping the Shade duration at 8 seconds? Are you actually serious right now?

 

Do you have any idea just how BAD Scourge feels to play with this change? It's absolutely miserable. It's gone from being my main to absolute torture to play to the point I can't even bear to touch it anymore.

 

You can't fix the bad play feel of the spec just by bringing the numbers up a bit, the Shade duration is a core facet of the spec and you've completely killed it.

 

The 8 second Shade duration makes Scourge feel WAY too spammy and annoying. Please, I am BEGGING you to consider how these decisions affect the playability of certain specs. Please get someone who ACTUALLY plays Scourge on your balance team.

 

Just. Tie. Alacrity. To Sand Savant. Limit Alacrity pulses to the Shade and the Shade ONLY.

 

Don't tie Alacrity generation to Barrier, just make it to where every pulse of a Shade skill generates Alacrity when traited into Sand Savant. Keep Shade duration at 20 seconds.

 

It is literally that easy. Please.

For real. Shade duration is why I'll give up Scourge for several months minimum. It sucks to play.

I'll probably just skip on learning any new GW2 builds until a month or three after the expansion drops.

 

The meta's shaken up so much, that I'd rather focus on real life

than deal with these things that feel bad.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Chrysline.2317

[Malus.2184]

The change will also make QHerald for Open-World immortal since when with Dragon Legend invoked and the Facets of Darkness and Chaos running slightly askew from each other then with Celestial gear it's 500 healing every second for just existing. And on top of that, you also get Protection and Fury for no effort.

I agree that this will be needed for Heal Herald and for Quick Herald it'll make them utterly busted in the Open-World.

 

Edited July 1, 2023 by Malus.2184

[Autumnborne.5708]

21 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

This has been the case for years, bud.  Scourge F2-5 all pulse from the Scourge as well as shades.

That may be, but now when using F1 for barrier, the barrier is only applied at the shade's location, and I think it has to do with coupling barrier application with alacrity and the 5-target cap...

[Kozumi.5816]

On 6/29/2023 at 4:20 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Druid is in a similar situation to scourge in that we were overly conservative with its alacrity, so it is also getting an increase to its base duration.

Why do you keep doing this? Boons should be 1000% uptime in pve , people only play builds that have 1000% uptime and not ones that BARELY hit 100%. No one wants even 1 second of downtime on boons, ever.

You just refuse to learn I guess?

 

  

On 6/29/2023 at 4:20 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

This is partially due to the base alacrity duration being long enough to require minimal investment into concentration

Why do you word this as a bad thing? No boon share build should have to invest into this stat. They should just have trait DPS trade offs, like catalyst.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Kozumi.5816

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

14 hours ago, mmww.4570 said:

please revert the changes to scrapper. i really hate the new way of generating quickness and has totally killed the spec for me

You surely aren't talking about the amazing animation locking suicide skill that is hammer 3 surely not....I mean at the least they could make whirl finishes or all finishes trigger the quickness proc.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 hour ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Why do you word this as a bad thing? No boon share build should have to invest into this stat. They should just have trait DPS trade offs, like catalyst.

If people can upkeep boons 100% uptime with no investment into boon duration, why would boon duration even exist as a stat?

No, it's actually a good thing that boon support builds have to spec into concentration in order to maintain full coverage.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Raven.1793]

1 hour ago, Ukasumananganos.4035 said:

You surely aren't talking about the amazing animation locking suicide skill that is hammer 3 surely not....I mean at the least they could make whirl finishes or all finishes trigger the quickness proc.

Hammer 3 used to be an asset, it's now a liability. A well-timed Rocket Charge let us dps through damage, stack extra CC, or even helps out with some emergency healing. That's all gone now because we now have to use it off CD on rotation to maintain quickness. Letting whirl finishers trigger the proc or mace 2 leap doesn't help because the problem is not quickness uptime. The problem is that reactive gameplay is fun and rotation-based gameplay is tedious work.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Transfusion needs its priority fixed after this latest patch.  It won't pull downed players if there are people missing health within range, making it useless as a revival tool.  Really, it should be reverted, but if you refuse to do that, at least make it prioritize downed players over upright ones.

[DarkCobalt.2849]

Quote

• Septic Corruption: Reduced the condition damage increase from 0.5% to 0.25% in PvE only.

Can you please revert this Harbinger nerf? The class was doing a very high amount of damage, but it's supposed to as it's designed to be a glass cannon build that reduces its own HP in exchange for damage with Blight. Now, the class isn't doing much better than the other tankier options out there that have significantly better survivability, so what even is the point of making it so risky with Blight in the first place? If you're going to nerf the upsides to Blight to the point where it's almost just flavor text, you may as well just remove the downsides to it as well at this point. 

There can also be an argument that this build is overperforming with the Condi Quickness variant, we don't know if that's the case or not because you don't tell us. If this is the case, then we have exactly the same problem as we did with the Condi Firebrand nerf. You should have applied the nerf to the Quickness trait on Harbinger instead where Blight was 50% less effective, so you only nerf one of the variations instead of both. Instead, this is once again a shotgun nerf to all Harbinger playstyles.

Please revert this change and revisit this.

[Loke.1429]

Stealth nerfed spectacular sphere in pvp and wvw. Is this an oversight or sneaky patch notes? Also buff ele staff skills in wvw, surprised they werent touched after years of continuous biased pve-based nerfs in wvw. Also no elite signet or similar, or powerup elite skills feels bad man. Staff autos are also painfully slow

Edited July 1, 2023 by Loke.1429

[Loke.1429]

Also Mesmer "Signet of Humility" should get a 3-5second cast time in wvw

[DeceiverX.8361]

22 hours ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

As a support I want to dedicate my focus to more interesting aspects of the gameplay. Using stab and aegis effectively, healing players, CCing enemies. I don’t want to be putting a lot of my attention on using my abilities strictly to maintain boon uptime.

Ah see there's your problem; you want to actually play in action combat and engage with the content that the core game was built on, rather than "play" some glorified idle game where the point is to skip as many mechanics as possible and where big numbers go brrr.

[Kozumi.5816]

9 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

why would boon duration even exist as a sta

Why does toughness exist?

Why does VIT exist?

Why do 95% of the gear stat combinations, runes, sigils, and trait choices exist?

Illusion of choice/traps.

  

9 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

No, it's actually a good thing that boon support builds have to spec into concentration in order to maintain full coverage.

Except that the only played ones don't, and that's why they're played.

Why do people keep refusing to understand this, 2 years later?

Either boons are 100% uptime effortlessly at all times with no additional button presses/a single button while requiring little to zero concentration gear, or the spec isn't played.

There are zero exceptions to this rule.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Kozumi.5816

[LordCanti.7124]

What about fixing Bladeturn Requiem so it functionally does something again? 😞

[Batalix.2873]

1 hour ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Why does toughness exist?

Why does VIT exist?

Why do 95% of the gear stat combinations, runes, sigils, and trait choices exist?

Illusion of choice/traps.

  

Except that the only played ones don't, and that's why they're played.

Why do people keep refusing to understand this, 2 years later?

Either boons are 100% uptime effortlessly at all times with no additional button presses or a single button while requiring little to zero concentration gear, or the spec isn't played.

There are zero exceptions to this rule.

As long as at least one option like that exists, I agree that is the reality.

If the devs had done the right thing they would have made substantial tradeoffs to FB long ago (either less damage or less on-demand boons), never tried to make the EoD specs follow suit, and never made Mech take things even further.

We could have had a meta where concentration meant something and support builds actually had to trade off damage and engage with their own gameplay loops, but we are long past that because the devs are too proud and the players too insistent that what they call "chill" or "elegant" builds weren't actually a game-warping problem.

[TheJmandude.1548]

If you're going to remove the cooldown reduction from traits, great; it frees up a lot of potential builds! What makes zero sense is when you neglect to reduce the cooldown of one or two abilities in that ability family. If you're going to do this, reduce the cooldown for ALL of the applicable abilities.

Edited July 2, 2023 by TheJmandude.1548

[Yerlock.4678]

On 6/29/2023 at 3:20 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Hi everyone, 

As always, thank you for all the feedback you’ve shared over the past few weeks. We’ve been keeping a close eye on the discussion and it’s clear that some of the changes in Tuesday’s update didn’t land as we’d intended. Today I’ll be sharing our current plan for the next update on July 18, much of which is intended to address the most pressing issues that have been raised. 

Leading up to that release we’ll be watching your feedback to this post, this week’s beta test, and the June 27 update, and may make additional changes as needed. 

 

Thanks, 

Cal “cmc” Cohen 

Skills and Balance Lead 

Scourge 

Alacrity scourge is a build that we were pretty cautious with during development; we were concerned about the potential power level that could result from giving the existing heal scourge build easy access to alacrity, and to mitigate this we reduced the strength of some of its key defensive support skills. Now that the release has been live for a few days, we agree that the changes were too heavy handed, and we’ll be pulling back the reductions to Sand Cascade’s barrier as well as the barrier component of Desert Empowerment. We’ll also be giving scourge a reliable source of group protection through Sandstorm Shroud, and increasing the base alacrity duration to make it a bit easier to maintain. 

Damage scourge builds were negatively impacted by some of the changes made for alacrity scourge, and the July 18 release will include some larger adjustments to bring them back up.  

Sand Cascade: Increased base barrier from 996 to 1188 in PvE only. Increased barrier attribute scaling from 1.25 to 2 in PvE only. 

• Desert Empowerment: Increased alacrity duration from 1 second to 1.5 seconds in PvE only. Increased base barrier from 385 to 572 in PvE only. Increased barrier attribute scaling from 0.75 to 1.0 in PvE only. 
• 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. 
• Fell Beacon: This trait no longer reduces the cooldown of torch skills, and now also increases the damage of burning you inflict by 10%. 
• Harrowing Wave: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 16 seconds in PvE only. Increased the life force per target from 3% to 5% in PvE only. 
• Oppressive Collapse: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only. Increased might radius from 240 to 360. Might application per condition is now capped at 7 condtions in PvE only. 
• Sadistic Searing: This trait has been reworked, and causes Nefarious Favor to burn nearby enemy targets (2 stacks, 5 seconds in PvE, 1 stack, 4 seconds in PvP/WvW).  
• Demonic Lore: Increased torment damage bonus from 25% to 33% in PvE only.  
• Sand Sage: This trait has been reworked. Gain expertise and concentration while you have an active sand shade (225 in PvE, 150 in PvP/WvW). 
• Blood as Sand: This trait has been reworked. Reduce all incoming damage while you have an active sand shade (15% in PvE, 7% in PvP/WvW). 
   

Druid 

Druid is in a similar situation to scourge in that we were overly conservative with its alacrity, so it is also getting an increase to its base duration. We’ve also seen feedback regarding druid’s might generation, and we’re bumping up both the stacks and duration on Spirited Arrival to address this.

• Grace of the Land: Increased alacrity duration from 0.75 seconds to 1 second in PvE only. 
• Spirited Arrival: Increased might stacks from 3 to 6 in PvE only. Increased might duration from 9 seconds to 12 seconds in PvE only. 
   

Untamed 

Quickness untamed has a few issues that we’re tackling in the July 18 release. The first being a usability improvement for Let Loose’s ambush-reset component: triggering the ambush reset while in the unleashed state will now immediately grant access to the ambush skill instead of requiring a transition out of and back into the unleashed state. We’re also making a slight increase to the quickness duration to make it easier to maintain.

• Let Loose: Increased quickness duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds in PvE only. This trait will now immediately grant access to unleashed ambush skills when swapping weapons while in the unleashed state. 
   

Herald 

The new implementation for quickness herald is another case that we’re looking to improve. The current timing around its quickness application can be clunky and hard to track due to the 3 second pulse interval. To address this, we’ll be rebalancing the duration around a 1 second pulse interval to make it a bit more responsive. We’ve also seen concerns around the reduction in boon uptimes due to the loss of extra facet pulses from Draconic Echo, and are giving additional sources of concentration to help mitigate this. Our hope is that these changes will improve the overall gameplay feel of quickness herald, but if we’re still seeing issues with the general implementation after the July 18 update, we will evaluate whether a larger rework is needed. 

• Elevated Compassion: Reduced quickness pulse interval from 3 seconds to 1 second. Reduced quickness duration from 3 seconds to 1.25 seconds. This trait now converts 13% of the herald’s power into concentration in addition to its other effects. 
• Reinforced Potency: Increased concentration from 120 to 240 in PvE only. 
• Shared Empowerment: Increased might duration from 8 seconds to 12 seconds in PvE only.
   

Deadeye 

Quickness deadeye is significantly overperforming where it should be damage-wise. This was partially due to a bug that caused Malicious Intent to be active when not equipped, but looking beyond that fix it’s clear that additional reductions will be needed. We’re still discussing exactly what changes will be made, but they will be finalized in time for the July release and will likely include a reduction to One in the Chamber’s damage bonus. 

 

Specter 

Alacrity specter is another build that is overperforming in terms of damage. This is partially due to the base alacrity duration being long enough to require minimal investment into concentration, but also due to the lack of a significant damage tradeoff in the grandmaster trait slot. We’ll be tuning up Strength of Shadows while bringing down some of specter’s other damage sources to bring the alacrity build more in line without negatively affecting the damage builds. 

Lastly, we’re increasing the protection duration of Shadow Sap to ensure that healing-focused specter builds have a reliable source of group protection. 

• Shadestep: Reduced alacrity duration from 2 seconds to 1.25 seconds in PvE only. 
• Strength of Shadows: This trait no longer reduces incoming damage and no longer increases the duration of torment inflicted by Rot Wallow Venom, but instead increases torment damage by 25% in addition to converting vitality to expertise. 
• Larcenous Torment: This trait no longer increases torment damage, and instead steals health from an enemy when you apply torment to them. 
• Shadow Sap: Increased protection duration from 2.5 seconds to 4 seconds in PvE only. 
   

Alacrity Willbender 

A big pain point with alacrity willbender is its inability to provide alacrity during phase transitions or other times where it can’t strike an enemy. We’re hoping to mitigate this by updating Phoenix Protocol to grant some alacrity on the activation of resolve, which can also be shared via Battle Presence. We’ve also cleaned up some aftercasts and made general improvements to animations for a few key damage skills with the goal of making the overall gameplay feel a bit more fluid. 

• Phoenix Protocol: this trait now grants alacrity to the willbender when activating Flowing Resolve (5 seconds in PvE, 3 seconds in PvP/WvW), which can be shared to allies with Battle Presence. Reduced the alacrity duration when resolve triggers from 1.5 seconds to 1 second in PvE only.  
• Restorative Virtues: This trait now grants vigor instead of alacrity. 
• Symbol of Resolution: This skill can now be interrupted by other skills.  
• Ray of Judgment: Reduced aftercast  
• Binding Blade: This skill will now use a different animation with less aftercast. 
   

Alacrity Mirage 

Last up is a rework to how mirage grants alacrity. We want there to be a better distinction between alacrity and non-alacrity builds, which is something that can be a bit blurry at times due to Chaos Vortex granting alacrity with no investment. This alacrity is being rolled into a rework of Mirage Mantle that improves all ambush skills in various ways, which can be seen in the patch note below. 

• Mirage Mantle: This trait has been reworked. Ambush skills are improved. 
• Axes of Symmetry: Also inflicts cripple 
• Mirage Thrust: Removes a boon from struck foes 
• Ether Barrage:  Grants quickness to self (1.5 seconds)  
• Split Surge: Deals increased damage (25% in PvE, 10 in PvP/WvW) 
• Chaos Vortex: AoE Alacrity (2.5 seconds for the player, 0.5 seconds for clones) 
• Ambush Assault: Grants might to self 
• Wave of Panic : Also inflicts torment 

Catalyst is wrecking in pvp and needs another nerf

[Flapjackson.1596]

3 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Ah see there's your problem; you want to actually play in action combat and engage with the content that the core game was built on, rather than "play" some glorified idle game where the point is to skip as many mechanics as possible and where big numbers go brrr.

Indeed. I accept that everyone, myself included, are accustomed to the feeling of perma boons. Our strategies and class balance all depend on them. I don’t need the game to be downscaled to a state without boons. I just want us to stop beating around the bush and accept that a state of play that is basically constant uptime should be the new default and not in the hands of players. Let me focus on more interesting matters.

[DeceiverX.8361]

1 minute ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

Indeed. I accept that everyone, myself included, are accustomed to the feeling of perma boons. Our strategies and class balance all depend on them. I don’t need the game to be downscaled to a state without boons. I just want us to stop beating around the bush and accept that a state of play that is basically constant uptime should be the new default and not in the hands of players. Let me focus on more interesting matters.

These aren't really that much different from each other, though.

The healthier play pattern is to not have boons, but nobody in the world wants to ever lose raw power even if the encounters are tweaked because "muh numbers."

Which is in my opinion a bad excuse.  Stating "We're used to this" may as well be an admission that nothing should ever be justified in receiving a rework or improvement for the overarching health of the game.

Like for all intents and purposes, all this nonsense might as well be playing with client-side addons multiplying all numbers displayed by 10.  If the encounters are changed to match the downscale, it stops mattering entirely, and if all we do is see numbers creep for the sake of numbers creep, the premise is self-defeating and that's an option client-side.

[Vex.2375]

@Cal Cohen.2358 I hate to @ the Dev, but man, I loved the old necro signet skills and really liked staff mirage as dps. And you just deleted both as viable options. You probably believe that's not important, but to many people it is and I just wanna add my voice to the chant. Please give us back the old necro signet skills and trait and please, don't make staff mirage ONLY viable for alacrity support. You're killing me here!

[SpottyBoyo.6754]

A change of base alacrity given by Grace of the Land on druid is a step in the right direction, I feel like to have a comfortable alac generation 1,25 base duration would be pretty much perfect. It would allow support players with 100% boon duration increase to quickly generate enough alacrity to be able to save CA for potential healing/cc. Alternatively if duration is too dangerous for balance reason, something like CA 2/3 (the ones that have longer cooldowns/don't generate as much) granting more alacrity per cast, since currently it's not optimal to cast your biggest healing spell (being celestial avatar 3) just because the cast time to alacrity ration is not good. I think also to prevent potential wrist stress injury, changing CA 1 to a less - spammable version similar to how CA 2 was changed (like a 1 second cooldown on CA1 or sth) and with that the change to base alacrtiy duration would not be as powerful. 

As of right not, trying to upkeep alacrity buff feels like a chore and while a 33% increase on the duration would make it better, I feel like it just might not be enough. It would be perfect if the amount you generate does not require you to do anything special during gameplay, similar to how some other classes simply apply it by doing what they were already doing. (I do get that's how it was meant to be with druid just with current duration it's just like playing a healer with a bonus dps rotation you have to do just for alacrity). Aditionally, unlike any other boon generating class, whether you can generate enough alacrity until your next CA activation depends a lot on your quickness uptime, having more base duration would remove that dependance.

Also for just QoL stuff, would it be possible to add a lil buff-bar cooldown to invigorating bond and protective ward (something akin to Clarion bond, where it just shows up when the skill is ready) would make it easier to see when you can swap pet/use their ability to trigger the effect. 
 

Edited July 2, 2023 by SpottyBoyo.6754

[FellFalls.3750]

Just wanted to say bring back old [Daring Dragon] with or without alacrity, here.

Plenty of people smarter than me have suggested better methods for providing Bladesworn alacrity in this thread already.

But this was literally the most unique & fun WvW build I've ever found & I've been looking, but legit nothing else plays even remotely rocked. It was DOPE, completely unique, and deserves a second chance.

[xellink.7568]

8 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Why does toughness exist?

Why does VIT exist?

Why do 95% of the gear stat combinations, runes, sigils, and trait choices exist?

Illusion of choice/traps.

This is ignorant. You must be one of those renegade/scholar's vipers/berserker dumbasses. 

Why does toughness exist, to control fights. some bosses do toughness tanking. some bosses require reduction of strike damage.

Why does vit exist, some traits work with vit, eg. consume shadows. its like asking why does a ranger take con instead of strength in D&D. Thats why spectres can gear in full ritualist, because the power coefficients are weak on scepter.

What about Carrion or Sinister? Why does Sinister/Carrion Willbender do speedruns on red guardian better than full vipers Firebrand?

Why does dragonhunter go dragon's stats?

Why do some mainstream builds use assassin's, dragons's, thorns, torment, krait, balthazar, golemancer, eagles, scavenging, firebrand, monk, etc, on top of the usual renegade, scholars, nightmare runes

There are only 100 runes in the game and I already listed 14 off my head without looking deep into the others. There are even less sigils and the ones listed above are non-exhaustive and this is not even including the ones used in WvW. So 95% is a kitten number.

9 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Except that the only played ones don't, and that's why they're played.

Why do people keep refusing to understand this, 2 years later?

Either boons are 100% uptime effortlessly at all times with no additional button presses/a single button while requiring little to zero concentration gear, or the spec isn't played.

There are zero exceptions to this rule.

Thats not true. I will list two examples but there are many others. 

8 Condi Reapers with self quick and 2 alac providers will produce more DPS than any standard firebrigade combo due to overlapping ice fields. 

A multi thief raid group does not need to rely on alac due to weapons using initiative and not cooldowns. 

Contributing to success in a raid goes beyond just providing 100% alac and 100% 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

i kinda hafta second ( thousandth?) the motion to increase Scourge Shade duration. 8 second shades is just the opposite of minions (at least minions last until they are killed). 8 seconds for a shade is just mind numbingly "spam shade on cooldown." what good is a "stop making people spam chrono wells on cooldown for alacrity" philosophy if you're going to make us spam OTHER skills on cooldown instead?

honestly? i think you need to pull your head out of the sand and get consistent.

[DeWolfe.2174]

Balance has become really poor in WvW. It needs far more attention.

Boons are too powerful.
Firebrand Scourge Zerg Meta for 9 years.

Then straight insanity like getting hit with a 15k Arc Divider from a Warrior that's standing out in Narnia. It's a great sword with a wider radius than almost all AOE, Traps, Wells, Gyro's, etc.