June 27 Balance Follow-Ups

[eldrevo.1746]

50 minutes ago, 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. 

HOLY KITTEN AINTNOWAY

OUR PRAYERS ARE FINALLY ANSWERED BRETHREN

And overall a nice round of fixes there! Especially excited about Willbender and Untamed, there is hope it'll stop being so clunky to play.

A little hope for druid too, though it's sad Heal Druid is sort of bullied out of Alacrity option by having to spam Celestial Avatar only to keep Alacrity instead of using it for healing (for which the third grandmaster trait also buffs CA immensely). Maybe it'll be better to change the Alacrity application to "Give Alacrity when you give Might / Protection (or some other boon that might require some investment)"? Or make it something pet-related to engage with the Ranger's profession mechanic without attaching it to CA?

[Vall.6435]

Please revert Arc Divider back to its previous iteration. The only problem it ever had was its long aftercast. Nobody wanted this change.

[Raykkaiz.6173]

57 minutes ago, 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. 

Thank you, you are a good man.

[Adotiln Urthadar.1823]

Spirited Arrival is a weird place to put more might as it competes with Windborne Notes. Seems like it would be simpler to just double the might on CA skills or something.

Also disappointing to see no warrior changes, seeing that quickness berserker is clunky, low damage and has no utility. Plus the arc divider change killing off greatsword makes it super boring.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

19 minutes ago, NovaanVerdiano.6174 said:

Or maybe they simply see no real need to buff Axes of Symmetry, but since it is an ambush skill affected by the trait they need to give it something?

Axes of Symmetry isn't an ambush skill. It's axe 3.

[Kastorex.6483]

Can the balance of Power (and to a lesser extent Condi) Mechanist be reconsidered, both as damage and alacrity builds? The class is much weaker than most specializations in the game all for the sins of the jade bot. If LI performance is the concern, disabling the autocasting on the mech abilities is a way to limit its power in that regard, or shifting some damage to traits reliant on player input.

The other issue is the Mechanical Genius leash - it's simply not a fun or interactive way of ensuring the mech isn't doing too much legwork. The June 27 patch removing the grace period once more is just a cherry on top, but the concept of a (potentially ranged) pet class being punished from being away from the pet makes for unsatisfying gameplay, particularly due to the reckless pathing the mech so enjoys. The mechanic makes me feel like at best a babysitter, and a pet myself at worst of times when it comes to maintaining the buff. The tracker being a tiny icon among a dozen or so buffs doesn't help the situation.

Haven't we suffered enough?

[GetFoxxed.9478]

Mirage is still shafted with dodge nerf.

[ZenDrake.8316]

30 minutes ago, ZEUStiger.3590 said:

Oh really? Is that only a pain point of alacrity willbender? Man, how unfortunate for them! I guess quickness chrono, alacrity chrono, alacrity mirage (all 3 require an attackable target to summon phantasms and for clones to not despawn), quickness berserker (requires an attackable target to hit with burst), quickness deadeye (requires an attackable target to steal from) are all doing just swell then.

Quickness is usually irrelevant in phase changes, Alacrity on the other hand is still beneficial because cooldowns keep ticking faster.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

On 6/30/2023 at 12:20 AM, ZenDrake.8316 said:

Quickness is usually irrelevant in phase changes, Alacrity on the other hand is still beneficial because cooldowns keep ticking faster.

Nearly all boons are irrelevant outside of combat bar swiftness. And yet fractal prestacking exists, and everyone insists on doing it. And so, any class that isn't able to grant boons outside of combat will have no chance of penetrating the fractal meta.

Edited July 1, 2023 by ZEUStiger.3590
precasting -> prestacking, for more clarity

[ReshiKyo.9038]

Hey Cal,
I appreciate you taking another look at Scourge, however, I have to reiterate what others said already: While its nice to have Scourge back on track balancewise, the class lost a lot of fun to play as, because of the duration on the shades. It became a very spammy, almost carpal tunnel-producing-class and its sad to see that it became this. I, and probably most in this threat and game, would appreciate you bumping up the duration of Shades again while moving the Alacrity given to another trait.
Thanks

[mirage.8046]

might I suggest one final change to mirage ambushes for the upcoming mirage mantle trait? for alac mirage to exist underwater, throw alacrity into the trident's ambush when this trait is used. 

also, reducing shade durations from 20s to 8s doesn't help ANY kind of scourge build. please reconsider reverting that nerf so scourge doesn't have to spam shades and still not upkeep all 3 shades. sand savant should have alacrity upon giving barrier, instead of desert empowerment tbh. in this way, you can give alacrity to 5 people anyway with only 1 large shade and through barriers. 

[ZenDrake.8316]

Just now, ZEUStiger.3590 said:

Nearly all boons are irrelevant outside of combat bar swiftness. And yet fractal precasting exists, and everyone insists on doing it. And so, any class that isn't able to grant boons outside of combat will have no chance of penetrating the fractal meta.

You misunderstand the point. We are not talking about out of combat, we are talking about phase transitions WITHIN a fight. Like a phase where the boss is not attackable and you have to do some mechanic or something like this.

[Evoxx.2143]

Just put alac on big shade or revert all the other changes inculding alac, idc which. 8s shade gameplay has to be a joke. Only Ele gets nice changes yepyep

[Lily.1935]

I understand the desire for these changes, and yeah this will seriously help the DPS scourges damage, by a lot! However, play feel is something that should be considered. If you're intent on keeping the low shade count to balance Desert shroud You should increase the Cooldown of the shade skills and increase their duration to keep our hands from having to constantly spam manifest. Of course that would mean upping the barrier to compensate, but this is how it used to be when scourge was released and the number of shades active at a time was similar to how it is now.

I'll still play it of course, but the duration is rough feeling.

[RagingRube.2540]

I think the main painpoint for playing healspecter at the moment is the way your boons from scepter have halved duration. It's extremely finicky and unfun to play. Half the barrier, sure, but the boons just make it annoying.

Also choosing stats is a headache, and the third trait line is such a bad choice. Deadly arts for some extra damage? Or Shadow arts for a pitiful barrier and the healing on shadowstep - literally none of the other traits are useful/useable on Specter

[Phage.9203]

Druid is still going to be lacking after the July patch if that is all you change.

What about not needing to be at 100% Celestial Avatar before going into it?
Make it closer to how Harbinger Shroud works.

Reduce the hoops we need to jump through to start a fight off with the boons we need.

[Soilder.3607]

48 minutes ago, Mauti.3520 said:

Thank you so much for the improvements to Let Loose! This will already go a long way.

I also would like to add that the build still has the issue of Ambush Cooldown only starting when an Ambush is finished or canceled, which either is a direct cooldown increase for ambushes (in particular for hammer that spins ~2 seconds which roughly translates into a ~11 seconds cooldown) OR requires constant animation canceling (and missing out on damage on top of being unfun) to keep the cooldown on actual 9 seconds.

This is not unique to ambush skills but is inherent to all skills and abilities in Guild Wars 2. Their cooldowns do not begin until the entire animation has finished or has been canceled.

 

A really good example of this is the Elementalist skill Lava Font. The actual casting time of the skill is near instant, something like 1/8th of a second and it has no aftercast so you can immediately follow it up with another skill. However, the animation itself extends for something like an extra two seconds after the skill has finished casting, so if a player uses Lava Font and doesnt follow it up with another skill, a weapon stow or a dodge the cooldown is artificially extended by nearly two seconds.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Soilder.3607

[Wizicist.2470]

1 hour ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

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.

It's nice to see that you're looking at and addressing some of the pain points for the classes. Are you considering a similar change for Catalyst? It suffers from almost exactly the same problem as alac Willbender.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

Just now, ZenDrake.8316 said:

You misunderstand the point. We are not talking about out of combat, we are talking about phase transitions WITHIN a fight. Like a phase where the boss is not attackable and you have to do some mechanic or something like this.

And I'm telling you about another design "painpoint" that stems from the same root cause - the necessity to have a target. Either eliminate precasting as a concept (my preferred option), or any build whose boon generation revolves around interacting with an enemy will be discriminated against in one of the core endgame PvE gamemodes.

[Poobah.6254]

1 hour ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

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.

I feel like this is a bit of a band-aid thatwill shore up some of the uptimes but doesn't really address the fundamental issues with Druid as it stands in the post June 27 world.

It feels very strange that you identified that people don't like being forced to press a button on cooldown in order to generate their required boons but then have created a situation where we need to press even more buttons on cooldown to generate those boons, including the same ones as before in the spirits just they do less than than they used to.

The big problem was always that when you have a button that has a purpose you want to save that button for the appropriate moment to use it effectively - and ideally you want choice in which buttons you have access to via making meaningful decisions in your build - and when you tie an essential boon to its activation we're then forced to use it disregarding and regardless of what its original purpose was. Putting more boons on Spirited Arrival is... fine... but the knock on effect of that is that we're gonna be swapping pets on cooldown which means that if we can't really have 2 different pets with different purposes any more - for instance a CC based pet and one with a different utility. This is already kinda not viable any more anyway since most of the ways that people are figuring out to upkeep the same boons as we used to get from our spirits involves triggering Invigorating Bond, and thus requires a) tracking an invisible internal cooldown and b) spamming pet skills again regardless of their original purpose. You can see why this is frustrating and leaves druids feeling like they've been dealt a bad hand I hope.

Edit to add: And silly me, of course Spirited Arrival competes with Windborne Notes which... I dunno maybe we don't need for our regeneration uptime which leaves us with two situations either we did need Windborne Notes and now our regeneration uptime is bad or we don't need it in which case it's now a completely dead trait which is also bad.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Poobah.6254

[Noro.2879]

Thank you for the transparency! Now about arc divider....

[Lollipopsaurus.6021]

I really think the way you're going about Mirage Alacrity is a very different approach. If your general view is to try to give more classes access to Alacrity or Quickness or whatever boon, this is just making it harder to achieve that goal. You should be making Alacrity easier to achieve, not harder here. Adding DIFFERENT effects to other weapons isn't the right approach. I see the attempts to help Willbender and other classes apply Alacrity in more situations, and these notes are taking opportunities away from Mirage.

1 hour ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Chaos Vortex granting alacrity with no investment.

Using staff IS the investment. Being forced to properly manage clones as a resource IS the investment. Playing Mirage, a class that forces itself out of position simply to use abilities because you're forced to teleport around IS the investment.

 

My recommendation would be to remove all of these additional effects, and provide Alacrity for all weapons during Mirage Cloak, using the same additional time for each clone you have up. This removes Mirage's dependence on Staff (which will increase build diversity), and and allows the "instant alacrity" button that other classes already have.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Lollipopsaurus.6021

[Myror.7521]

Please conside to at least buff the new Arc Divider to 3.0 Power scaling cause how it actually is its too bad to use ^^

[Jokuc.3478]

I feel like a big complaint people had with Druid was that you had to spam kitten in celestial avatar to keep up boons when they prefer to use those skills reactively to heal people. It goes against what you were saying at the start about moving away from spamming important skills off cd. What's the point of having strong heal skills if you need to waste it for boons

[Echostorm.9143]

35 minutes ago, ReganDryke.4023 said:

So you're not going to address Druids and other specs being forced to use traditionally situational ability on cd to spam alacrity and forcing them to spam like hell and waste cds to upkeep alac/quickness?

This ain't it.

Just revert it all.

Nothing in the post shows that he read or understood the complaints.  This is just lip service.