07/18/2023—July 18 Balance Changes

[Za Shaloc.3908]

1 hour ago, Flobings.7251 said:

Not great, damage is (expectedly) not affected by might & with my 2 gear sets:

1010 power = 108 damage

2968 power = 114 damage

 

Seems there is no ICD. Every torment application on the scepter auto-attack was triggering it.

That's about what I expected it to be. I can't remember the exact values on Tormenting Runes before the 6pc got reworked to what it is now, but I think it had around the same amount. Feels nice in the right scenarios.

[Bakural Killer.1694]

the funniest thing is that they buffed Necro

[Mewone.3247]

Wanted to nerf qDE even though single target dps was all that the spec had going for it and killed all DE variants in an instant. Absolutely amazing work, I guess there is a reason nobody plays thief and especially DE in PvE, because anet busy buffing Virtuoso, a spec so omnipresent in the current cm strikes that its far beyond the good old power Mechanist days.

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

53 minutes ago, itspomf.9523 said:

Because despite promising us they were not going to use the golem as a basis for balancing, CMC and others, being raid-centric in their balance mentality, immediately presume 100% boon uptime of all boons ... ergo using the golem as a benchmark anyway.

It's quite hilarious -- or would be, if it weren't so pathetic.

They havent done reactionary golem nerfs in a while, if anything the criticism has been that balance feels like a trickle down from PvP/WvW, they basically decided to pass the same existing damage coefficients that OiTC, Premed and Iron Sight already had in PvP, instead of all the possible choices they had to differentiate DPS DE from qDE, it seems that not even tweaking quickness duration to necessitate Diviner gear was on the table.

Edited July 18, 2023 by LyraOrpheo.8450

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

On June they just said "we're stilll trying to figure out a fix for Deadeye outperforming" and basically just re-released the first album reusing the same existing PvP/WvW values, I wish there had been a preview of it so we could at least get a say about it instead of this just dropping on us

[instealth.6732]

7 hours ago, TheThief.8475 said:

About to unistall

I can't bother playing waiting next year until they understand how to balance class based on how much utility/ cleave/ ranged dps they have.

I don't see any of those being taken into consideration in this patch, I can't believe they are so clueless

I'm honestly thinking of doing the same thing. Invigorating precision made playing daredevil fun for me for how many years, took a few months off, came back and invigorating precision has become a joke. I gave DE a try, can't seem to enjoy it. After the june 27th patch, gave it another chance, I'm finally having fun again. Now this. I'm not really vocal when it comes to game updates like this, but after playing the game for more than a decade maining thief,  maybe it's time to move on to other games. This game is not scratching the rogue/ninja itch anymore.         

  

[FrancisN.9276]

First, they killed off Daredevil by nerfing Invigorating Precision, which was nowhere near OP, resulting in an extra-squishy class with few defensive options and bunch of forced movement skills that lock it in vulnerable animations. Then, they killed off Deadeye, a class with mediocre single target damage and plagued with a whole lot of "no line of sight", "no valid path to target" bugs that they are too negligent to fix. I thought they were nerfing every professions to address power creep, but reading the patch notes for other professions proved me wrong - they further buffed two other OP classes that always place top/second on every party I joined while making better QoL changes for others. Why? I am absolutely perplexed.

[Eugenides.1274]

Overall the nerfs feel way too heavy handed and don't entirely make sense.

qDE is overperforming so the solution is nerfing all DE damage?
Why not adjust the quickness duration on Steal Time (or link the quickness to Fire for Effect specifically and adjust it) so qDE actually has to invest in concentration which will result in lower DPS?

A nerf to One in the Chamber's damage % is understandable. The 300% damage increase was kind of insane but immediately dropping to 10% is not the way to go.

[DeceiverX.8361]

Y'all new around here?

This is classic ANet patch style where they haphazardly buff something and it becomes OP, but they double down and nerf all the symptoms instead of the cause rather than just walking the buffs back.

[Asra.8746]

I was trying to recall another time when they did a sweeping nonsensical change like the dps DE nerf by triple downing on it...and I was reminded of this (PvP). They doubled down on that nerf and effectively killed the weaponset in 1 swift patch - which hasn't been reverted or addressed to date (it's been over a year). 🤡

There's a lot more examples of that, but that one came to my mind as I was just having a conversation with someone about the nerfs today.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Asra.8746

[emtea.6931]

kinda feels like the deadeye nerf was workshopped in a meeting.. 

balance lead: "ok you four, I want each of you to give me 1 idea on how to tone down deadeye."
dev 1: "we could nerf one in the chamber?"
dev 2: "or how about we tone down premeditation?"
dev 3: "what about reducing iron sight?"
dev 4: "shadow flare/swap could be reduced... " 
balance lead: "great, love it all, do all those things will you.. next on the agenda, give me some ideas on how to buff quick herald!" 

except this implies that there was 5 people thinking about balance..

[bq pd.2148]

if deadeye is not supposed to deal more golem dps then other builds with cleave, we might just need some more cleave. for example:

• replace the damage per boon on premeditation with the current guarantee to get steal time that has been put into Fire For effect
• replace payback with a new trait:
  Exploding Rounds: your rifle, pistol and harpoon skills will now deal damage in a small area upon impact, cannot hit the same target twice per shot (to account for piercing) + the damage per boon from premeditation or another reason for a modifier.

this way there is a damage modifier that you will pick as DPS but not as qDE and thus make it easier to get a difference in their DPS.

a QoL change that i would like to see is change Hidden Killer to give 3 unblockable hits instead of crit chance, maybe 4 in pve. so one has an option to play around excessive projectile denial at a decent dps/sustain cost.

[Katary.7096]

Sooo, they are fine with qDE needing no/ low boon duration, as long as the damage output isn't too high. But when it comes to aSP the build has to have boon duration. And that isn't even exclusive to Thief: qHerald - fine without boon duration, meanwhile aRen needs concentration, qBerserker doesn't work without boon duration, but aBSW functions without any bonus. How do the devs make these decisions in the first place?

[nopoet.2960]

There is nothing int he note about scepter but it seems faster after the patch.  Anyone else notice this or am I hallucinating?

[Ekko.9854]

10 hours ago, emtea.6931 said:

kinda feels like the deadeye nerf was workshopped in a meeting.. 

balance lead: "ok you four, I want each of you to give me 1 idea on how to tone down deadeye."
dev 1: "we could nerf one in the chamber?"
dev 2: "or how about we tone down premeditation?"
dev 3: "what about reducing iron sight?"
dev 4: "shadow flare/swap could be reduced... " 
balance lead: "great, love it all, do all those things will you.. next on the agenda, give me some ideas on how to buff quick herald!" 

except this implies that there was 5 people thinking about balance..

Yeah was thinking the same. Their ideas of buffing and nerfing things is basically, less numbers, more numbers, less numbers, more numbers. Instead of looking at traits and separating boon supports from dps builds etc. it feels like they open snowcrows, tune down numbers of top performing classes on golem and increase numbers on worst performing classes. Or just take the ideas of top performing classes and force it on the others. 

Like I don't get why they nerfed DE in the first place, have they let 1 person actually play it in content because I was pulling nearly 40k on a golem but in actual raids and strikes I never even came close to that and I always outperformed it with my harbinger due to range advantage I guess 😛. And I actually really enjoyed playing thief for once ... 

[Antrix.4512]

Guys, I'm really sorry! I'll try to explain everything now. Well... you see, it happened so that I took a break from my Revenant and started playing Mirage (it was my main farm build), and then it got nerfed. Then I switched to Thief (which was quite fun), and ultimately, we have this latest patch. But don't worry! I've already switched my Mesmer into Virtuoso build and also started playing as an Engineer, so expect their nerfs soon 🤣 

P.S. I don't want to go back to playing Revenant, I don't want anything to happen to him.

P.P.S Taking orders for class nerfs. Price negotiable 😊

Edited July 19, 2023 by Antrix.4512

[Tails.9372]

On 7/18/2023 at 7:37 PM, Strutter.2719 said:

Another example of them stating their intentions (dealing with quickness deadeye having too much damage) and then the actual changes they make not reflecting that at all. 

What are you talking about? This was communicated very clearly well in advance:

Quote

it’s clear that additional reductions will be needed

They already said previously that DE is "on their list for a long time" and someone has to be very naive to interpret the above statement as anything other than
 "we want to nerf this back down and some other stuff as well", that the whole thing was just a pretext for more nerfs in general should have been obvious.

[Carnifex.3275]

Quickness DE was an issue yes - it needed nerfs.

But what the hell were they thinking about nerfing DPS DE so much? Makes no sense.. 

[emtea.6931]

2 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

They already said previously that DE is "on their list for a long time" and someone has to be very naive to interpret the above statement as anything other than
 "we want to nerf this back down and some other stuff as well", that the whole thing was just a pretext for more nerfs in general should have been obvious.

well to me, I think the issue is one of golem dps not matching real fight dps, at least in the form of the d/d be quick or be killed build. it was good single point damage vs defiant bosses, but very limited cleave and as soon as the boss moved you stopped doing damage, compared to something like virtuoso that just keeps going..  so with those limitations in mind, deadeye needs to make big numbers on the golem... in real fights I was seeing around 8 to 12k less damage than on the golem, depending on the fight.

the other issue is around expectations - I think everyone expected that quickness deadeye would get toned down but dps deadeye would be relatively ok.

the thing I just don't get at all is - why are some boon dps builds forced to use concentration to provide 100% uptime and other builds not? it seems like the obvious choice for a balance lever is to use the concentration stat/boon duration, not sure why they aren't going in this direction

[Strutter.2719]

On 7/19/2023 at 8:05 PM, Tails.9372 said:

What are you talking about? This was communicated very clearly well in advance:

 

As was fairly clearly stated, they stated their intention after the June patch and said that QUICKNESS deadeye was overperforming in terms of damage. Then, they applied nerfs which nerf the damage of both quickness deadeye and DPS deadeye. So, to my original point, they stated their intentions and then did something else. If I came up to you in a bar and asked to take the empty stool next to you, then at the last minute also ripped the one you were sitting on out from under you, did I communicate that clearly well in advance?

[Tails.9372]

4 hours ago, Strutter.2719 said:

If I came up to you in a bar and asked to take the empty stool next to you, then at the last minute also ripped the one you were sitting on out from under you, did I communicate that clearly well in advance?

That's a rather flawed analogy as I already included the original dev quote in my previous post. A better analogy would be:

Person A is sitting on a small table which is missing a chair on one side, then person B comes along and puts 2 chairs on the empty side. After a while person B returns and says "sorry it looks like I put one too many chairs on the table so I'm going to remove one of the ones I bought but I will also take some additional one's as well".

Edited July 20, 2023 by Tails.9372

[Strutter.2719]

6 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

That's a rather flawed analogy as I already included the original dev quote in my previous post. A better analogy would be:

Person A is sitting on a small table which is missing a chair on one side, then person B comes along and puts 2 chairs on the empty side. After a while person B returns and says "sorry it looks like I put one too many chairs on the table so I'm going to remove one of the ones I bought but I will also take some additional one's as well".

I know you used quote marks, but that's not the same as quoting them. Here it is in full stating very clearly that they were aiming to adjust quickness deadeye. Hope it helps.

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. 

[Tails.9372]

10 minutes ago, Strutter.2719 said:

I know you used quote marks, but that's not the same as quoting them. Here it is in full stating very clearly that they were aiming to adjust quickness deadeye. Hope it helps.

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. 

And as you can see they clearly stated that they wanted to make some additional "reductions" (plural) beyond just fixing the overperforming trait in question so it should be to no ones surprise that they ended up nerfing more than just the one thing they specifically named.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Tails.9372

[Terian.8359]

Specter now 1st dps on golem? Oo

[Strutter.2719]

34 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

And as you can see they clearly stated that they wanted to make some additional "reductions" (plural) beyond just fixing the overperforming trait in question so it should be to no ones surprise that they ended up nerfing more than just the one thing they specifically named.

Yes, except again you're missing the point that quickness deadeye was overperforming. DPS deadeye was not and therefore shouldn't be nerfed and they didn't even say it needed to be nerfed. Nevermind, clearly we're not going to agree even on what they clearly wrote so let's just call it there.