Amateur balancing, you should be ashamed ANET

[Bladestrom.6425]

3 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

That's simply untrue...current scepter is anything but unplayable..dunno you but killing people with the auto-attack is nothing short of broken and claiming otherwise is truly something

you do realise it wasn't just sceptre that was changed don't you?  try playing a pvp build that has low/no power then you will understand what was needlessly broken (and not cata)

btw recent nerfs that were arguably only partially needed for CATA and damaged many many other non meta builds:

• signets cooldowns are significant higher than they were originally before the hacking started.  Written in Stone is now a major nerf.
• Shatterstone: Increased cooldown from 3 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Water Trident: Reduced power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW. Reduced the bonus damage from 50% to 33% in WvW only.
• Hurl: Reduced power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.26 in WvW and PvP.
• Churning Earth: Reduced power coefficient from 1.75 to 1.5 in WvW and PvP. Reduced bleeding from 8 stacks to 4 stacks in WvW and PvP.
• Burning Speed and earthen Rush hack, now its an awful skill that has tyou floating (?!) in the air
• Sceptre does 0 condy damage, which means if you dont stack power it does 86?!! dmg (interestingly cata auto does 1k condy dmg every half second)
• Dragon Tooth hacked, now does 2219 condy every 61/2 seconds if it lands.e.  

Edited July 30, 2023 by vesica tempestas.1563

[Bladestrom.6425]

edit duplicate.

Edited July 30, 2023 by vesica tempestas.1563

[Arheundel.6451]

3 hours ago, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

you do realise it wasn't just sceptre that was changed don't you?  try playing a pvp build that has low/no power then you will understand what was needlessly broken (and not cata)

btw recent nerfs that were arguably only partially needed for CATA and damaged many many other non meta builds:

• signets cooldowns are significant higher than they were originally before the hacking started.  Written in Stone is now a major nerf.
• Shatterstone: Increased cooldown from 3 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Water Trident: Reduced power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW. Reduced the bonus damage from 50% to 33% in WvW only.
• Hurl: Reduced power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.26 in WvW and PvP.
• Churning Earth: Reduced power coefficient from 1.75 to 1.5 in WvW and PvP. Reduced bleeding from 8 stacks to 4 stacks in WvW and PvP.
• Burning Speed and earthen Rush hack, now its an awful skill that has tyou floating (?!) in the air
• Sceptre does 0 condy damage, which means if you dont stack power it does 86?!! dmg (interestingly cata auto does 1k condy dmg every half second)
• Dragon Tooth hacked, now does 2219 condy every 61/2 seconds if it lands.e.  

1. Till some months ago...people would laugh at you for running a full signet ele. For years and years, people would regard signet build as fringe gameplay, for T5 wvw or something...now you can create powerful aura builds, competitive and feared....an excellent job from CMC
2. Years ago, ele players were getting memed for shatterstone and even the devs at the time used to meme ele players with shatterstone "buffs"...then CMC came along and people rush to dodge ..the same skill they were laughing at
3. A skill gone from pepega PvE status to utility level heal plus some dmg....amazing design change
4. Linked to a skill now giving barrier and resistance...but you complain about some dmg nerf
5. Turned from meme suicide skill to leap pressure skill...lol.... an extraordinary change, again from CMC
6. Before you had to pray or use about face/LF combo to hit moving targets..or even dash off a cliff...now you hit targets like a charm....200% efficiency buff
7. 0 Condi dmg? You still stack burning pressure with scepter...just now you actually have to play rather than pepega people to death
8. The skill still tracks the target forcing a dodge, still applying aoe burning and dmg...and you want more

In the end elementalist has never been in a better place than now since 2012, with everything viable and competitive like never seen before. Some time ago, I used to log out due to frustration, been brought to a point where I was close to deleting elementalist completely despite the 12k hrs spent on it. Never been happier to play an elementalist in GW2...more than this and I'd have to go back to GW1 to get even more fun out of the concept class. This game was released in 2012..and for the first time ever, I see people taking a double take when they see an ele....rather than rushing in expecting an easy kill, especially necros...don't see them lot laughing that much anymore as scepter is here and resistance access to skew their chill spam

Since 2014 when Jon Peters left....the elementalist was reduced to horse manure status due to main balance devs actively hating the class(that Solar guy saying:"complexity should not equal results") then CMC came along and the ele renaissance started.

Try to keep in mind where ele was not too long ago:

Be forever grateful for what CMC has done to the class! You would not be here nitpicking on some dmg nerfs for scepter...you wouldn't even be playing scepter anywhere if not for CMC

[Bladestrom.6425]

 'Till some months ago...people would laugh at you for running a full signet ele' is exactly what im referring to, i happily played a signet build that took me to top of gold 3 for well over a year until it got destroyed recently.  People who 'laugh' at others because they play meta are oblivious to diversity, they just want the next top build, and this CMC character (or whoever messed this up)  Clearly is too tunnel visioned on metas.

To be clear, we got 2  last -minute desperate patches that were clearly knee jerk reactions to the original patch/  This original patch did not intend to target sceptre or existing non meta builds in the first place and instead buffed the hell out of an already overperforming cata. That's not skill, that's crude hacking as a result of  poor impact analysis.

Edit, for those struggling to see the problem, look at the rabid amulet. This amulet was viable as an interesting base for many non meta ranged condy builds where the emphasis is on player skill to mitigate incoming condy damage (12k HP).  Now as a result of dragon tooth and signet and sceptre auto attack and other nerfs on top   every single condy build based on this amulet bar CATA has been ruined because both sustain AND burst dmg was wrecked.  The hacking also smacks of tunnel vision on builds with 1k power come to think of it..

Edited July 31, 2023 by vesica tempestas.1563

[Batalix.2873]

On 7/25/2023 at 11:31 AM, Helgaley.3619 said:

I agree. It also ends up sucking the fun out of the less popular builds and makes it to where you are essentially punished for not playing the popular build that arguably isn't popular because it's fun, but because it's the only viable build left. I'm at the point where, as a result of their profession balance and design decisions, the professions feel so unsatisfying to play that I haven't played for weeks now. 

I would like to experience the content that is currently in the game and learn about the lore in the first mini expac, but if the vehicles through which I experience that content are just fundamentally not fun or satisfying to play, then I am just not going to play the game at all. 

I feel like a broken record about this, but what I really don't get is why they are so bad at profession balance and design, especially since the EOD specializations were revealed. I get that they probably don't have the time and resources to make the big redesigns a lot of players may be hoping for, but is it really that hard to just tweak the numbers on underutilized weapons to make them more viable or remove smaller mechanics that add nothing fun or satisfying to a profession? And yes, I'm looking at you catalyst sphere energy mechanic. 

The answer is quite simple, really. Most of the team that was behind HoT/PoF especs left ANet one way or another, and had even at one point stated that the game was in a fairly complete state and would just continue with Living World stuff like IBS.

The EoD specs were not planned, not designed by the same people, and as far as the signs indicate, weren't all that intended to be up to the same degree of depth and polish as the other especs. They were rushed by a shoestring, benchwarming team that was told they had to release an expansion on short notice. And consequently they have very thin, unidimensional, and incoherent identities, cobbled together from bits of the previous especs and then tuned up to 110% on damage and utility so players and management are less likely to notice how bad they are.

And now all of these balance patches have been conducted in that same environment, by largely the same people, who are naturally more defensive/attached regarding their own creations over whatever came before that they didn't actually work on. Instead of putting in the effort to revise and rerelease the EoD especs with actual kitten concepts and meaningful tradeoffs, they have instead been tearing down literally every other aspect of the game to their level.

Ultimately, I don't think the current dev team knows HOW to create new systems (or has the budget/resources to do it). I think they are just panickedly rearranging or cannibalizing old systems to give the appearance of adding new things.

[Bladestrom.6425]

7 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

The answer is quite simple, really. Most of the team that was behind HoT/PoF especs left ANet one way or another, and had even at one point stated that the game was in a fairly complete state and would just continue with Living World stuff like IBS.

The EoD specs were not planned, not designed by the same people, and as far as the signs indicate, weren't all that intended to be up to the same degree of depth and polish as the other especs. They were rushed by a shoestring, benchwarming team that was told they had to release an expansion on short notice. And consequently they have very thin, unidimensional, and incoherent identities, cobbled together from bits of the previous especs and then tuned up to 110% on damage and utility so players and management are less likely to notice how bad they are.

And now all of these balance patches have been conducted in that same environment, by largely the same people, who are naturally more defensive/attached regarding their own creations over whatever came before that they didn't actually work on. Instead of putting in the effort to revise and rerelease the EoD especs with actual kitten concepts and meaningful tradeoffs, they have instead been tearing down literally every other aspect of the game to their level.

Ultimately, I don't think the current dev team knows HOW to create new systems (or has the budget/resources to do it). I think they are just panickedly rearranging or cannibalizing old systems to give the appearance of adding new things.

It boils down to poor Impact analysis and critical thinking.  For example if they wanted to buff written in stone all they had to do was to increase the cooldown reduction, job done.  What actually happened is someone with poor design skills never considered the impact of adding auras to CATA.  They then doubled  down on the failure by failing to undo the aura element which was at the heart of the issue.  Cleary it is done by someone who is overly fixated on cata which you can see by the failure to realise that out-with cata the benefit from the combo blasts do not compensate for the butchering of sceptre which is demonstrated when looking at builds that used Rabid.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

It boils down to poor Impact analysis and critical thinking.  For example if they wanted to buff written in stone all they had to do was to increase the cooldown reduction, job done.  What actually happened is someone with poor design skills never considered the impact of adding auras to CATA.  They then doubled  down on the failure by failing to undo the aura element which was at the heart of the issue.  Cleary it is done by someone who is overly fixated on cata which you can see by the failure to realise that out-with cata the benefit from the combo blasts do not compensate for the butchering of sceptre which is demonstrated when looking at builds that used Rabid.

Here’s the thing. Cata wasn’t really an issue…it’s the fact that other builds in the game suck and can’t compete against something that sucks less like Elementalist past few months.

Written in Stone is actually a more or less well designed trait (could have been better but still not bad). It gave the class build options and technically that is the point of the game : build options.

but you see many builds on other classes were nerfed into obscurity and uselessness in the past to the point where most classes have no real build options…just crappy overnerfed traitlines and skills and so when something comes along that does have choices and ability to have impact on the gamestate then of course it’s gonna appear “OP.”

The problem is the act of nerfing things in the game. Most builds typically suck…not that catalyst was strong. In the space of possible builds a counter will (and should) exist to to compete with it. But what happens when deleting the space of builds? You inadvertently delete counters and that’s how you get more outlier OP builds. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Edited August 3, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Bladestrom.6425]

3 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Here’s the thing. Cata wasn’t really an issue…it’s the fact that other builds in the game suck and can’t compete against something that sucks less like Elementalist past few months.

Written in Stone is actually a more or less well designed trait (could have been better but still not bad). It gave the class build options and technically that is the point of the game : build options.

but you see many builds on other classes were nerfed into obscurity and uselessness in the past to the point where most classes have no real build options…just crappy overnerfed traitlines and skills and so when something comes along that does have choices and ability to have impact on the gamestate then of course it’s gonna appear “OP.”

The problem is the act of nerfing things in the game. Most builds typically suck…not that catalyst was strong. In the space of possible builds a counter will (and should) exist to to compete with it. But what happens when deleting the space of builds? You inadvertently delete counters and that’s how you get more outlier OP builds. It’s a vicious cycle. 

I agree with this, Cata was strong but ok until they bust it with the excessive auras with the recent big patch.

Changes to sensitive systems in software development can be de-risked via high quality impact analysis and critical thinking, and small but frequent incremental changes.  If a particular build is weak, isolate something that has a positive impact on just that build and tweak it a bit, wait a bit to get some live feedback then apply the next small change. If you are really smart you could extract the operators and operands so you can make runtime changes without a large recompile and build/release.