June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

[Zephire.8049]

The joys of unclear post mergers where semantics was the go-to initial response and it derails the post it was merged into...

That aside, the lack of communication is very much a big deal. If you're going to drastically change/nerf classes at least be willing to explain why you did those things instead of doing them then asking for money and never addressing the elephant in the room. I can't speak for others but the changes for the June 27th patch are secondary for me, I want to know the thought process behind them in the first place and then saying nothing about them during the feedback period or after pushing it to live except this one post because that is far more indicative of the company culture and view than the patch.

Was it personal? Was it to make "easy" classes arbitrarily hard? Was it in preparation for SotO down the line? Was it not knowing how specs work? Was it thinking PR isn't your job or that the company would handle PR for you? There's so many questions that haven't been acknowledged let alone answered on top of ignoring some very, very simple suggestions and/or tweaks on how to make certain specs not horrible to use post-patch.

[Xanadrine.4352]

This is so true all 3 of my classes ruined 

 

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Xanadrine.4352

[Lacidrutt.3678]

Can you guys fix mirage deception skills, most of them have long cooldowns with little beneficial actions. Sand through glass is a joke, you barely leap back anywhere and why can’t illusionary ambush also be a stun break. Or what is even the point of using mirage advance shadow step. Most of these barely do even half of what other trait lines gives. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Lacidrutt.3678

[SolarDragon.7063]

Was the change to Mechanist barrier on Mace intended?
Currently it's on the Mace 2 rather than the AA change, which severely reduces the overall barrier generation of the spec, making the Burst change negligible since they have much less sustained barrier.

[graishak.5406]

looking forward to play with the new life leech torment trait.

the new SoS gm trait looks like a really boring pve trait, just condi, not power and doesnt change gameplay at all.

Shallow Grave doesnt give meaningful cleanse, which specter still lacks.

lack of cleave, RWV does not scale well with numbers(maybe it can be changed so that one stack applies to a whole strike?)

would like some actual effects on ally siphon now that the res is gone. ideally added to all the steal traits that wouldnt give anything for it. Stealthing the ally, stunbreaking, gaining shadow force, maybe downed teleport if res is too much, or even just a few stacks of venom. the ally targeting part seems bland now, and i never use it anymore.

[Talan.1608]

I was kind of hoping to see a correction of the Scrapper changes, particularly the range nerf to Med Blaster since the visual still seems to go all the way out to 600 meters, as well as the changes to Quickness and correspondingly our function gyro. 

 

The Med Blaster nerf in particular is difficult for me, because the graphic extends forth past the actual effective range. I'm not against the nerf per se if it was needed for balance reasons (though Engineer never topped the healing meters since it was absolutely nerfed before), but the graphic is the real problem. I know it looks more realistic, but I'd much rather the graphic of the blaster stop right at the range limit without any "afterspray" extending past forth that range cutoff. If you must have some kind of afterspray, please incorporate it only within the range of the ability itself. If you are unable to correct the graphic to accurately.

 

Regarding the changes to Quickness: Applying quickness on a combo sounds good, but in practice it is overly cumbersome. You cannot rely on allies putting down wells when you need them, as they will put them down when they need them. Due to this, you have to make sure to slot abilities to provide both the combos and fields you need. This is partially alleviated by the Function Gyro change, but all that means is now Function Gyro has to be spammed on cooldown for Quickness application. Combined, these changes just mean you're slotting different abilities to use specifically for Quickness. Please, remove the blast finisher from Function Gyro, allow whirl and projectile finishers to proc quickness, maybe with some kind of limiter like "every 4 seconds your next combo finisher applies quickness for X duration" balanced to make Boon Duration still needed. 

I'd love love love love for Engineers to have an easy quickness application, like Firebrand has. Engineer is already known as a class where you are basically playing a piano. Reducing our APM isn't a bad thing!!

 

Thank you for your consideration! 🙂

[Myror.7521]

@DeWolfe.2174 nah old Arc Divider was 480 radius around yourself and hits for something Like 15-20k (depends what build you Play). Still you need to at least use something around 3 utility skills If you want it to do 2x 15k unblockable arc divider plus U need to stay in the enemy zerk If you want its full Benefit ^^

[RacoonStylePlay.1852]

Ok so even with all the comments under the first patch notes preview you still don't understand core problems with the changes...

Scourge:

-Manifest Sand Shade + Alacrity generation

With the reduction of the duration from this skill you basically killed scourge DPS builds. Your main goal was to apply boons by NOT spamming skills off cooldown and grant players more access to utility skills but still managed to make lots of builds worse. Spamming Sand Shades is really annoying as well as spamming your „Shrout“ skills to grant alacrity.

Solution:

Manifest Sand Shade needs a higher duration and instead of spamming your barrier shrout skills you could make it such as Sand Shade itself generates all alacrity needed with enough duration so you don’t have to spam it off cooldown and increase the duration of Sand Shade to12-15 seconds.

Druid:

-Alacrity from Avatar

As already mentioned in the June 27 Balance Preview being forced to go into Avatar whenever it’s off cooldown breaks heal alac Druid. You remove all the utility from Avatar Glyphs so that Druid can’t use them when they are needed because the Avatar still has 7 seconds of cooldown as well as not being able to do the big heals when they are needed. You also have to spam the 1 key so hard in order to being able to bridge the time between leaving Avatar and being able to reenter it and still have enough alac uptime on the group.

Solution 1:

You keep Grace of the Land how it is in the patch notes or make it an interval pulse like Herald so you are not forced to spam skills and add the following:

Avatar cooldown is reduced to 1-2 seconds and you can enter the Avatar with any amount of Avatar Energy left (you are not tied to the Avatar Energy being completely filled). That makes it so you can use all your Avatar Glyphs whenever it is needed and also don’t make condi DPS builds overpowered because it is in the alac grandmaster trait.

Or

Solution 2:

Make Lingering Light be usable with Grace of the Land. That would also make Druid able to use its Glyphs when they are needed and due to it being a pure healing trait doesn‘t make condi DPS or condi alac DPS builds overpowered.

Thief: Deadeye and Spectre

I understand that both builds are overperforming right now and it is ok to bring them in line with other DPS support builds. Please don’t overshoot in the other direction now and make them useless. Both are very fun to play and I hope you get them just in the right spot they need to be in.

Alacrity Willbender: Chronomancer problem

As you say „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.“ There is actually a pretty similar problem with Chronomancer’s quickness and alacrity generation. I don’t have a clear solution for this one but maybe it is possible to put the quickness and alacrity traits back to the shatter skills and increase the boon duration for the shatter skill itself and give a lesser bonus duration to the „per clone bonus“.

Mirage:

„Last up is a rework to how mirage grants alacrity.“ This doesn’t change the fact that Mirage is pretty much useless right now in PvE. You are unable to use your ambush attack which generates alacrity when you need to. There are way too many fights in endgame content which prevents you from even doing your job right now. Even DPS Mirage is unplayable.

Solution: Revert the changes to dodging to what it was before the June 27 Update in PvE.

Scrapper:

Thanks for not mentioning another currently badly designed class in the patch notes. I‘ll do it for you then. Quick DPS Scrapper currently needs to spam blast finisher and leap finisher off cooldown to be able to provide enough quickness for the group. That‘s exactly like what Gyros were before but even worse to play. Hammer 3 is the worst designed skill for this purpose and it is the most needed due to it being a 2x leap finisher. You jump towards your target 3 times (by the way why is it a 2x leap finisher again when you do 3 leaps?) which causes lots of problems in endgame content.

You jump out of your combo fields so you get 1 application of quickness instead of 2 and need to get back into the combo field for the rest of the finisher.

You jump towards your target and get caught in a mechanic that either kills you or your team.

You are animation locked for about 4-5 seconds and can’t do anything if there is an emergency.
Also you need to spam your Function Gyro off cooldown for quickness uptime. That forces you to not be able to save it for reviving teammates when needed.

Even heal quick Scrapper doesn’t feel good to play. This build got max boon duration so it is easier to apply enough quickness but you still don’t have any utility. In order to provide quickness you have to take Blast Gyro and Throw Mine and you have to waste Throw Mine for the blast finisher off cooldwon. You also have to waste your Function Gyro in order to keep up quickness.

Solution for Hammer 3:

Change Hammer 3 into a controlled skill with 3 AoE splash attacks with 240 range. Make it 3 leap finishers because you are leaping 3 times anyway and you can freely control where you go while you‘re doing the attacks similar to axe 5 from Warrior. That would still animation lock you for 4-5 seconds but at least you are able to control what you are doing, giving enough freedom to not hurt the player or the group for supporting.

Solution for quickness:

Either change the quickness generation to be applied with toolbelt skills too so like combo finisher + toolbelt skills or add more finisher options for example whirle finisher or all combo finisher. That would make the quickness uptime way more reliable and easier to access and you have enough uptime to swap things from the utility slots. Also there are not enough opportunities for giving quickness underwater with the conecpt of combo fields and only using blastfinisher and leapfinisher.

Mechanist:

When are we finally able to provide alac underwater as Mechanist?

Solution:

You can either make the mech a submarine with all its abilities like on land, or you can keep the Mech Support: Depth Charges and give the mechanist the mech abilities as toolbelt skills and give the player itself the passives from the mech that generates barrier and might in intervalls and all that stuff. That way the player partly becomes the mech and all problems are instantly solved. The player can also use the mech abilities like the mech itself. For example channeling the Barrier Burst etc.

[Burnfall.9573]

June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

Two of the highest Hitbox Benchmark Professions after "balance" patch

 

-Thief Profession-Deadeye--47k-

 

-Elementalist Profession--53k 

 

The Community already know the norm practice of Favoritism, Bias and Guild Wars 2 Toxic Culture

 -The Community no longer surprised by Anet Philosophy, Mission, Culture and Vision for Guild Wars 2-

 

Anet, What You Tolerate Won't Change...It Will Always Continue......Endlessly

Edited July 6, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[Adonaj.7932]

 

1 hour ago, Burnfall.9573 said:

June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

Two of the highest Hitbox Benchmark Professions after "balance" patch

 

-Thief Profession-Deadeye--47k-

 

-Elementalist Profession--53k 

 

The Community already know the norm practice of Favoritism, Bias and Guild Wars 2 Toxic Culture

 -The Community no longer surprised by Anet Philosophy, Mission, Culture and Vision for Guild Wars 2-

 

Anet, What You Tolerate Won't Change...It Will Always Continue......Endlessly

i mean you have no idea what are you even talking about. sorry to say it. sword/warhorn cata is beta test combo and not june 27 balance patch results. cata cant even use these weapons, its new expansion feature. And also wh will be nerfed 100% because its strongest weapon in the game for ele. Are you even playing the game tho?

Edited July 6, 2023 by Adonaj.7932

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

This game really needs testing servers and an upgraded feedback system.  This kind of yo-yo patch cadence is not good.  We seem to go from "meh" patches to "what are you thinking?" patches over the span of an entire year. If they opened up testing servers and allowed people in, either through volunteering or if space is limited some kind of lottery.  You could get actual in game feedback from people.  If money is an issue let us know and we can set up a GoFundMe, so you could start one.   

But even more so, they still need to expand upon their design philosophy video from almost a year ago.  I don't think people necessarily have issues with changes (adjustments etc.), but their logic for the changes seemed to be based on some kind of excel spreadsheet and not on actual design philosophy.  Finally, the communication is very lackluster.  You released a balance preview, got over 50+ pages of feedback/1000 responses, drop the patch with not a single sentence of acknowledgement and then 2 days later put out this statement.  Who thought that was a good idea?  

Edited July 6, 2023 by MuscleBobBuffPants.1406

[Herr der Ringe.3251]

I know alac duration for aDPS specter should be nerfed, but I've been having a lot of fun kiting on Dhuum with aHeal specter.

I'd love to see some alac added back to wells or something to let Heal specter continue doing roles like Dhuum or HT CM kite safely, without letting aDPS provide alac without boon duration.

[Crowface.3287]

Please let me know if I have this correct regarding Alacrity:

Bladesworn and Mechanist:

• Alac Bladesworn can wear 0% boon duration/concentration gear, and upkeep Alacrity for a party of 5 players in a 600 radius without breaking a sweat.
• To provide Alacrity on my Alac DPS Mechanist, I literally press one button from time to time, and only have 60% boon duration. Barely even think about it.

Druid:

• Heal Alac Druid must wear 100% boon duration/concentration gear, has to constantly transform into and out of Celestial Avatar form, use a strict rotation to upkeep Alac, and its boon radius is only 240.
• Don't forget that once the Druid has used CA form, they must recharge it, and there are situations where that won't happen quickly. If the group has barrier/aegis/block, or if they're dodging, stepping out of danger zones, using Full Counter, or just not taking a lot of damage (no raid boss damage pulse aura), a Druid is going to struggle to recharge CA form quickly.
• One of the most effective ways to recharge CA form is to deliberately put yourself in harm's way and take more damage. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I've been standing in damage zones/tanking damage I never would have in the past, so I can generate more healing and get back into CA Form.

Anet, can you seriously call this balanced?

You can do better, you have done better in the past, we want you to do better. Please do better and address this.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Crowface.3287

[Echostorm.9143]

2 hours ago, Crowface.3287 said:

Please let me know if I have this correct regarding Alacrity:

Bladesworn and Mechanist:

• Alac Bladesworn can wear 0% boon duration/concentration gear, and upkeep Alacrity for a party of 5 players in a 600 radius without breaking a sweat.
• To provide Alacrity on my Alac DPS Mechanist, I literally press one button from time to time, and only have 60% boon duration. Barely even think about it.

Druid:

• Heal Alac Druid must wear 100% boon duration/concentration gear, has to constantly transform into and out of Celestial Avatar form, use a strict rotation to upkeep Alac, and its boon radius is only 240.
• Don't forget that once the Druid has used CA form, they must recharge it, and there are situations where that won't happen quickly. If the group has barrier/aegis/block, or if they're dodging, stepping out of danger zones, using Full Counter, or just not taking a lot of damage (no raid boss damage pulse aura), a Druid is going to struggle to recharge CA form quickly.
• One of the most effective ways to recharge CA form is to deliberately put yourself in harm's way and take more damage. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I've been standing in damage zones/tanking damage I never would have in the past, so I can generate more healing and get back into CA Form.

Anet, can you seriously call this balanced?

You can do better, you have done better in the past, we want you to do better. Please do better and address this.

Let's hope they don't take that as an invitation to make Alac generation a horrible convoluted rotation for everyone instead of simplifying it.   I'm all for long duration or permanent buffs like other games have.  Take buffing out of combat so we can focus on the fight and mechanics, not mindless rotations.

[Batalix.2873]

15 hours ago, SolarDragon.7063 said:

Was the change to Mechanist barrier on Mace intended?
Currently it's on the Mace 2 rather than the AA change, which severely reduces the overall barrier generation of the spec, making the Burst change negligible since they have much less sustained barrier.

Scourge will remain supreme. Sand gets everywhere.

(Not good for kitten anything else, but who cares about damage or utility when you are IMMORTAL).

Edited July 6, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Requiem.9648]

Well that will be very cool in PVE if all boons giver can have same standard of range AoE. Totaly agree and all have possiblity to pre-buffing or remove the pre-buffing from all of them to make sure they all follow same standard especialy for fractal or open world.

 

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

@Cal Cohen.2358

Druid/ranger proposed changes for PvP

1 Give water spirit condi cleanse

2 give all spirits combo fields when taking Nature's Vengeance 

3 please give staff an ability to empower your pets next attack, like Maul or Winters Bite. I recommend ability 2 or 3. 

4 Rez spirit is miles behind Glyph of the Stars. Please rework or buff. 

5 Buff Windborn Notes. This trait is extremely underpowered. There's absolutely no reason to take this over Evasive Purity or Spirited Arrival on support builds. I suppose the rejuvination duration is fine, but 1 tick heal when granting rejuv is completely negligible. It should heal for 500-700 on rejuv application. 

 

[yel.8095]

For Scrappers, please bring back the quickness in gyro's. this update is the worst update imo since i play this game.

[Burnfall.9573]

 

[Dedossauro.6594]

* Heal Alac Druid fixed *

Live Vicariously: When you heal an ally, you are also healed.
change to this:
Live Vicariously: When you heal, you grant alacrity in a area around you.

PS: You can make the alacrity duration minimal, so condi druid won't be able to benefit too much from it, just a litle bit.

\o

Edited July 7, 2023 by Dedossauro.6594

[Crowface.3287]

19 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

Let's hope they don't take that as an invitation to make Alac generation a horrible convoluted rotation for everyone instead of simplifying it.   I'm all for long duration or permanent buffs like other games have.  Take buffing out of combat so we can focus on the fight and mechanics, not mindless rotations.

I'm 100% with you. Simplifying boon application is the best solution.

As Mukluk said recently, "In WoW, you just buffed before the fight" - I understand GW2 has a different MMO identity, but long duration/permanent buffs are not a negative thing.  The alternative - what we're doing now - does not feel good and is not fun.

I agree that long duration boons would give us more focus on the fight and mechanics, and that's where GW2 shines. Let us enjoy the awesome combat system to the fullest, and not feel like a human boon generator.

With long duration boons, they'd need to tune things for WvW/PvP I imagine, but that will always be the case, no matter which route they take. I'm primarily concerned about the PvE experience.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Crowface.3287

[SergalKing.6714]

I feel like no matter what you do to scourge wont make if fun to play again until you fix how crazy low the up time is for sand shade it needs to last longer I already have enough buttons to press I dont want to be playing cookie clicker with my F1 key to keep up sand shade with its low uptime and is the pure definition of Anti - Fun

[Thron Stal.9367]

On 7/6/2023 at 1:56 PM, graishak.5406 said:

looking forward to play with the new life leech torment trait.

the new SoS gm trait looks like a really boring pve trait, just condi, not power and doesnt change gameplay at all.

Shallow Grave doesnt give meaningful cleanse, which specter still lacks.

lack of cleave, RWV does not scale well with numbers(maybe it can be changed so that one stack applies to a whole strike?)

would like some actual effects on ally siphon now that the res is gone. ideally added to all the steal traits that wouldnt give anything for it. Stealthing the ally, stunbreaking, gaining shadow force, maybe downed teleport if res is too much, or even just a few stacks of venom. the ally targeting part seems bland now, and i never use it anymore.

It seems many changes they incorporated include how they play vice everyone else, and with a screw everyone else attitude. IMHO

It is to late, they didn't listen and even incorporated an entire EXPANSION to these changes we all hate to the doom of this game.  They do NOT care. 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Spiderman.5468

[Thron Stal.9367]

5 hours ago, Burnfall.9573 said:

 

Half our 50 person squad was filled with Mes earlier, it seems everyone wants to be a MAG cloud now. 

[Thron Stal.9367]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:58 AM, Captain.6892 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Bring back old scrapper and Remove Mechanical Genius, please !

YES, bring back pre build all together.  Like on release when you sold it to us!