June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

[spiderman.8723]

10 hours ago, gmmg.9210 said:

Catalyst is wrecking in pvp and needs another nerf

Seems to be that way in WvW as well, tons of them like baby rabbits.

- Another thing I have noticed is how some necro can cleave my FB with 3600armor with 20k damage with Axe 3.  <-- needs to be adjusted.

- Again, the scrapper healer is now gone, let's get them back in the game please.

Edited July 2, 2023 by spiderman.8723

[Hellion.2360]

On 6/29/2023 at 11:20 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

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. 

 

why must we wait and suffer from your dev team's incompetence until July 18?

why do we need to experience the game with butchered classes until July 18?

[Abyss.5986]

Quickness deadeye should still be top dps for the boon supports. Yea its to strong now but you bring no defensive boons, have no hp, need to be over 90% hp for crits (wich can tank your damage) are full melee and are  single target. If its just 35k like the rest it wont get played.

 

Let thief shine in pve for once...

[SaffronCity.3402]

4 hours ago, Hellion.2360 said:

why must we wait and suffer from your dev team's incompetence until July 18?

why do we need to experience the game with butchered classes until July 18?

AMEN! The responsible thing would have been to have not even gone through with the balance patch. The day of the patch they said they were going to definitely tweak dps scourge, alac mirage, and alac willbender on 7/18. To me that basically means that while you may have listened (giving the benefit of the doubt) to our feedback weeks prior to the patch, you still decided to give us a half-assed patch to say the least. Why would you release it knowing kitten well there were popular builds that still needed fixing and essentially admitting you knew that? I don’t play every profession so I could be mistaken, but overall it seems that the patch’s negatives largely outnumber the positives (if any exist at all). Releasing expansion info the day of the patch makes anet look even guiltier because they used the expansion, hoping to divert players from the abysmal present game state. The whole thing makes them look incompetent because I do not understand how weeks of opinions, suggestions, criticisms, concerns, doubts, etc from the player base made them think it was best not to speak on any of it leading up to 6/27, release it with no serious feedback taken into consideration, and flat out say 7/18 they will fix things, essentially confessing that the patch was incomplete and we are supposed to wait and pray that 7/18 rectifies the issues from 6/27. It just all seems foolish when it could’ve been avoided if they had taken the community’s thoughts into consideration about drastic changes, made adjustments, and postponed it if necessary. Or, as I’ve said, don’t release it at all! The backlash from the players didn’t come out of nowhere; it was there since the day of the proposed changes, not the day the patch went live. 

Edited July 2, 2023 by SaffronCity.3402

[Batalix.2873]

1 hour ago, SaffronCity.3402 said:

AMEN! The responsible thing would have been to have not even gone through with the balance patch. The day of the patch they said they were going to definitely tweak dps scourge, alac mirage, and alac willbender on 7/18. To me that basically means that while you may have listened (giving the benefit of the doubt) to our feedback weeks prior to the patch, you still decided to give us a half-assed patch to say the least. Why would you release it knowing kitten well there were popular builds that still needed fixing and essentially admitting you knew that? I don’t play every profession so I could be mistaken, but overall it seems that the patch’s negatives largely outnumber the positives (if any exist at all). Releasing expansion info the day of the patch makes anet look even guiltier because they used the expansion, hoping to divert players from the abysmal present game state. The whole thing makes them look incompetent because I do not understand how weeks of opinions, suggestions, criticisms, concerns, doubts, etc from the player base made them think it was best not to speak on any of it leading up to 6/27, release it with no serious feedback taken into consideration, and flat out say 7/18 they will fix things, essentially confessing that the patch was incomplete and we are supposed to wait and pray that 7/18 rectifies the issues from 6/27. It just all seems foolish when it could’ve been avoided if they had taken the community’s thoughts into consideration about drastic changes, made adjustments, and postponed it if necessary. Or, as I’ve said, don’t release it at all! The backlash from the players didn’t come out of nowhere; it was there since the day of the proposed changes, not the day the patch went live. 

The thing players need to realize is this was always going to happen. The balance changes were always paving the way for this dumb, dumb weaponsmaster thing.

We were giving commentary on the state of the game as it existed then, as we were aware of it. Our comments were literally made in ignorance. We did not have the context SotO gives to the past few balance patches, and thus a lot of our criticisms were some combination of (1) futility trying to change things already needed for SotO, or (2) totally irrelevant to the state the of the game the devs apparently want to see after SotO and beyond.

That said, I particularly do not agree with almost any of SotO's proposed changes. But I have to acknowledge that a lot of what I said is now clearly useless in the face of a much larger tide of change that they were waiting to unleash.

 

[KratosAngel.7289]

Some good changes that go the right way, but some issues are still not adressed.
Quick Scrapper is one of them.

 

 I really overall dislike the changes

On the plus side :

• no need to bring/use all gyros on CD --> more flexibility on utility skills
• more dps/optimised
• that's it !

On the negative side :

• basically binds to hammer while rifle was a very good option and will probably lock out of future shortbow as well
• unable to prestack a lot of quick before a phase or before a split phase
• unable to build a long time of quick --> there will be gaps in quickess when people split (way more han before)
• having to spam hammer 3 can bring you to danger, or even death (Xera, KO CM, Sabetha)
• it feels absolutely dumb to spam throw mine off CD just for quickness while it's super valuable for CC or boon rip
• more spammy/tight to upkeep quick, therefore disruptive and not fun gameplay
• forced to use hammer 3 off CD while it could be used at key moments (catching up to target, damage while evading ...)

 

So to sum it up, we got a bit of freedom on utility and more DPS, but at the expense of being bound to hammer, unable to prestack quick and be even more spammy on some moves you want to use at key moments (hammer 3, throw mine ...)

[Croissant.2671]

On 6/29/2023 at 10:20 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

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. 
• Imaginary Axes (fix'd): 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 

Alright, but now we getting back all the stuff that was taken from us because we could give free alacrity? Yeah? Surely that must be the case.

P.S. Axe 2 already cripples, I don't know what the use of cripple would be on Axe ambush.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Croissant.2671

[Kozumi.5816]

10 hours ago, xellink.7568 said:

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

Let me know how your soldiers geared characters are benchmarking.

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Kozumi.5816

[Gaeb.2837]

Updated July 9th;

Scourge: Condi looks good, except:

• Increase shade duration to 12s. 8s is way too short/forces a spammy rotation/gives no room for error or reacting to mechanics, you lose 15% expertise/boon dur when it drops. Give us a buffer - wouldn't complain about 15s duration and 10s charge.

Alac still needs work/review. Preamble: Numbers/notes PVE, 'new' patch:  

• Sandstorm Shroud is 3.5 seconds (4 pulses of Barrier) on 20s cd. Also will now grant protection.
• Alacrity is 1.5s base per Barrier application
• Other barrier sources include Shade (8s cd), Sand Cascade (8.5s cd), Sand Flare (25s cd), Serpent Siphon (20s cd), and Sand Swell (35s cd) 
• Full Harrier is 64% boon duration, full Ritualist is 42% boon duration
• Any active shade will be 15% boon duration

  Observations / Recommendation (aka: You forgot about DPS-Alac): 

  1. Honestly the more I look at the numbers, the less bad the updated version is. The current iteration requires you to SPAM skills to maintain alac, whereas after the update it can mostly be managed via shade+shroud (note: Shade will probably miss part of group regularly if centered on boss, which impacts Alac-DPS uptime) on cooldown and then fillers at 100% boondur. That being said... relies heavily on boon duration which pigeon-holes builds into Harrier/healing. The way it's currently designed, if we give up concentration for better damage or healing we have to spam more abilities to compensate. Ergo...
  2. Give Sandstorm Shroud a 5th pulse (15s alac at 100% boondur) or even a 6th to match Renegade. Scourge alac doesn't need to be as braindead as Renegade Alac (80% boon dur + 1 button on cooldown), but it would be nice to able to have some flexibility in gearing/focus like Renegade has. We will ~spam shade and sandstorm shroud just to keep boon dur & biggest alac source, can you make that big alac source big enough that we have some flexibility in the rest of the build/playstyle (eg: can we build a DPS-Alac not just a Heal-Alac)? To be clear, if it were to match Renegade's alac (80% boondur), Sandstorm Shroud would be giving 6 pulses (1.5 * 1.8 * 6 = 16.2s of Alac). 
  3. Tie Protection to the Nourishing Ashes trait. Don't give DPS-Alac perma-prot for free.
  4. Give back some of the revive power (and fix the teleport bugs). Having the corpse teleport only work on activation is fine (pulsing required no skill), but picking people up has been a defining necro-trait for a while now and we should still be the best at it. Also, the corpse vacuum is (probably always has been) bugged, which is made much more clear with the single-shot use. A compromise to avoid untangling spaghetti might be to add an additional vacuum on the final pulse. 
  5. Is Barrier from Shades the design problem? Then take it away. If the core problem/worry you have is buffs off shades (eg: giving barrier/alac to more than 5 targets) ... stop giving barrier from shades. Shades are plenty loaded for the scourge toolkit (+15% conc/boon duration and placeable dps/fear/boonrip platform) and don't give much barrier anyway. Remove barrier from the shade, make barrier from F5 & F3 (Sand Cascade, Barrier, 8.5s cd) ONLY come from the Scourge (which frankly is an easier way to play anyway) and hit 5 targets,  and shorten the Sand Cascade cooldown a bit (6s?) or make it double-pulse to make up for the lost barrier/alac from shades. That would make shades purely a dps/fear/boonrip platform (that must be kept up for boon/conc dur) while alac/barrier would come from the Scourge (except the two targetable utilities, but they're not problem children). This would concentrate barrier/alac application and make alac scourge more intuitive to play as the buffing scourge ("I need to be in the middle of the group" / "shades are a dps function, but I need to keep one up").

Edited July 9, 2023 by Gaeb.2837

[JPUlisses.8756]

Scourge gives alacrity and barrier.

What weaver does better than scourge in raids?

Ante needs to pay attention and not give everything to a single class and nothing to other.

[xellink.7568]

6 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Let me know how your soldiers geared characters are benchmarking.

 

A trait being less inferior in 99% of builds is different than 95% of traits being completely useless which was the issue with the earlier inaccurate statement being made. That being said, there is a place for soldier's.

Although overshadowed by new more defensive traits or even celestials that scales on heals, it can still be the top choice in specific builds, such as necromancer and guardian where the further investment in precision is not necessary.

How much DPS would you say is enough? 20k? How much survivability is enough? That depends on the content. The question is, can your berserkers necro/guardian solo content and take down legendaries and is that the type of content you like to do and challenge yourself. Sure it can, but it will be so much easier with a reaper mixing soldier's in.

I would honestly prefer to speak to veterans in the subject rather than a 'know it all' berserkers player but sure, chime in your counter arguments and your numbers if you wish. I doubt it will be useful.

[Autumnborne.5708]

Necromancer: please undo the change to Signets of Suffering so that it applies signets' effects in shroud again, instead of this boon removal useless trait...

[Malus.2184]

I've found a serious bug on Herald. Using an Upkeep Facet from Legendary Facet costs no Energy which makes it really difficult to get anything out of the Charged Mists trait from the QHerald's rotation.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Malus.2184

[Lctl.6198]

13 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

The thing players need to realize is this was always going to happen. The balance changes were always paving the way for this dumb, dumb weaponsmaster thing.

We were giving commentary on the state of the game as it existed then, as we were aware of it. Our comments were literally made in ignorance. We did not have the context SotO gives to the past few balance patches, and thus a lot of our criticisms were some combination of (1) futility trying to change things already needed for SotO, or (2) totally irrelevant to the state the of the game the devs apparently want to see after SotO and beyond.

That said, I particularly do not agree with almost any of SotO's proposed changes. But I have to acknowledge that a lot of what I said is now clearly useless in the face of a much larger tide of change that they were waiting to unleash.

 

Almost nothing they've added with "weaponmaster" makes it any better for the specc's that got fooked hard ( Druid / Scourge ).
The core issues they introduced are still there, and the follow up shows the cracks even further.

This was all a gigantic fumble, and they refuse to swallow their pride and revert it back.

The true test of weaponmaster, would be without any changes - so that we could compare the previous build, with then the build with the changes+weaponmaster

Instead, we are left with broken classes, and Anet pushing further changes to fit the playstyle they think is good - instead of the playstyle people actually consider fun 

 

And the more we move ahead, the more they know people will be quiet about it, and they will get away with it.
Closer to the release, people will have accepted the loss and just hype themselves for the expansion - thats why everything was released/announced at the same time.

This was all kitten, and they designed it to make sure the ones with complaints would be silenced after a while, and make it sound like universal W's all over

[Zephire.8049]

6 minutes ago, Lctl.6198 said:

Almost nothing they've added with "weaponmaster" makes it any better for the specc's that got fooked hard ( Druid / Scourge ).
The core issues they introduced are still there, and the follow up shows the cracks even further.

This was all a gigantic fumble, and they refuse to swallow their pride and revert it back.

The true test of weaponmaster, would be without any changes - so that we could compare the previous build, with then the build with the changes+weaponmaster

Instead, we are left with broken classes, and Anet pushing further changes to fit the playstyle they think is good - instead of the playstyle people actually consider fun 

 

And the more we move ahead, the more they know people will be quiet about it, and they will get away with it.
Closer to the release, people will have accepted the loss and just hype themselves for the expansion - thats why everything was released/announced at the same time.

This was all kitten, and they designed it to make sure the ones with complaints would be silenced after a while, and make it sound like universal W's all over

That or a weapon from the expansion will be a bandaid for the "balance" which just pigeonholes people into using a specific weapon. Either way, it's not good design and means the earliest some specs may be unbroken is the 18th, others August 22nd. Assuming anything is fixed at all and means some specs will have been dead in the water for nearly 2 months.

There's always going to be weapons that are the best choice, but they shouldn't be used to cover for bad skill/trait design and it should be possible to pick different weapons even if it means doing less damage.

And it's such bad design to balance around something players won't have access to for months, period.

[Lctl.6198]

34 minutes ago, Zephire.8049 said:

That or a weapon from the expansion will be a bandaid for the "balance" which just pigeonholes people into using a specific weapon. Either way, it's not good design and means the earliest some specs may be unbroken is the 18th, others August 22nd. Assuming anything is fixed at all and means some specs will have been dead in the water for nearly 2 months.

There's always going to be weapons that are the best choice, but they shouldn't be used to cover for bad skill/trait design and it should be possible to pick different weapons even if it means doing less damage.

And it's such bad design to balance around something players won't have access to for months, period.

Exactly.

 

I mentioned this in another post, but nerfing speccs, only to implement new systems to cover the nerfs you did, is just horrendous design

It's like those companies breaking stuff, only to sell you the fix.

"Want your Scourge back? buy the latest expansion!"
"Did you used to enjoy Druid? Guess what! You can have it back with the purchase of the newest expansion!!!"


I'm tired of this. Their plan is working, because I really am tired of constantly being in the forums, voicing my concerns and dissatisfaction, only to be ignored.

They will win in the end, because for everyone like me who refuses to even login into the game anymore, there will be 100 that will be playing as if nothing is wrong. So I know I am insignificant.  

[AshkyLicious.4729]

@Cal Cohen.2358

Since you guys rolled out this patch, Mirage has encountered a number of bugs that needs to get fixed:

1. Our Mirage dodge reverts to normal dodge which prevents us from doing ambushes or getting Mirage Cloak on us. In order to fix this bug we need to either switch the Mirage espec to something else and then switch back to Mirage again, or we need to log out and log in again. This works temporarely, til the bug happens again. I hope you guys are prioritizing this since this is game breaking for every Mirage mainer right now. You haven't even aknowledged this bug yet, which is concerning.

2. The Mirage graphic effect on our skill bar isn't there anymore. This is both a cool effect but it gives us feedback (in form of a animation) whenever we get Mirage Cloak on us, which is very useful to many of us. I don't know if you guys only copy pasted a normal dodge on Mirage? Please do things properly before implementing big changes like this patch.

 

Mirage is awfully weak now after this update. You should revert Mirages dodge in PvE since there's no reason at all for us to be this nerfed in PvE. You should consider letting us dodge while we are immob in every mode, since our dodge doesnt move us out of AoEs, like a normal dodge. Plus as many has said before, Mirage doesn't have the ability to just easily cleanse itself like other classes.

The confusion changes made things way harsher for us, so there's no justification for you to nerf Staff ambush the way you did! Please revert this.

You should buff Mirage up in every aspect that you nerfed it historically before and after 1 dodge happened. There's no justification left to keep the old nerfs, after you nerfed Mirage big time with this patch.

Stop with the bias for once and fix what you did wrong, cuz this is destroying many Mirage mainers experience in this game.

Edited July 5, 2023 by AshkyLicious.4729

[GamerToad.9248]

They forgor warrior 💀.

(bruh i better change main)

[GuriGashi.5617]

Willbender Physical Skills need to be reworked as most of them don’t see any play in any gamemode. Whirling Light should be the flip-over skill of Heel Crack, Heavens Palm should recharge Crashing Courage (F3) if successfully landed while having increased cooldown and add a new Physical Skill that would replace Whirling Light, if it would turn into a flip-over skill of Heel Crack - could really be anything that requires little animations or coding like a 2s block.

These 3 changes would instantly make Willbender Physical Skills see play in all gamemodes and would make Willbender feel like what it was supposed to be - a DPS with USEFUL crowd-control that “bends an enemy’s will”.

[Acron.3712]

On 6/29/2023 at 10:20 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

 

• 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. 

Glad to see these QoL changes happening!

Now on the topic of aftercast: Please restore the 3-spin version of Arc divider and the damage (at least mostly). The only problem this skill had was aftercast. Last patch severly damaged the enjoyment a lot of berserker-players got from playing a class that we care about and would like to have fun playing again. 

It's bad enough that Berserker has a bit less/equal dps than Spellbreaker and Bladesworn while providing less/no utility in the form of boonstrip and cc AND having less sustain.

So please, let us enjoy our warrior/Berkserker fantasy at least in PvE. Right now i feel like I'm slapping my enemies with a  pool noodle.

 

Cheers

Edit: The fact that there is no mention of warrior here, despite the uproar being very substantial and visible is pretty concerning btw.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Acron.3712

[VictorLeal.4102]

ArenaNet you need to understand that not every class needs to do everything, you are killing the proposed design for them. If the person wants another role, create a new character or you do a expansion with multi-class on the same character like FFXIV (kinda impossible since you guys are still in this stupid system of selling  gemstore items that people already have but for another character)

Stop forcing all classes to do everything you are destroying them.

Edited July 3, 2023 by VictorLeal.4102

[Ryndor.2081]

Missing the old signets of suffering for open world shenanigans. Please bring it back.
Even if it only allows the passive effect of signets without the improvements in shroud. 

Or just allow us to use all utilities in shroud…

[JTGuevara.9018]

But seriously...THANK you Anet for addressing all classes in this update!

[Loke.1429]

On 7/2/2023 at 12:34 AM, Loke.1429 said:

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

Some poor shmuck spammed very many of my previous posts with negative emote after this.

So I guess this suggestion must be amazing! 🤣😂😅

I was happy to see that my fair suggestion unintentionally trigged a moa-troll, since it would nerf toxic gameplay. The reaction made my day.

 

... On a serious note, maybe it could be 3-600range with 1,5s cooldown, instead of suggestion quoted.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Loke.1429

[prototypedragon.1406]

Maybe one day we can get a way to ectoize  legendary weapons that don't  do anything worthwhile since the weapons themselves were nerfed into oblivion, especially for warrior since mace is  a forgotten weapon that forces you to only go condi berserker with it to be viable at all and does not allow you to become anywhere near viable in competitive combat. That  is long forgotten  almost on the side scope of dungeons. Sure our 3 skill got barrier but how good is it really when the other weapon skills maces use are kitten poor idk honestly everyone should just forsake the golden 100 year egg expansion they are trying to sell as as they use it to divert our attention from shoddy balancing. As a warrior I'm okay at this point if the devs dig their own hole I'm tired of it.