January 30 Balance Update Preview

[Gorizont.4521]

Someday I will go into the game and see that Ele has been completely removed. Anet why do you hate Ele so much? Condi Hammer goes to the landfill to the staff...
And I'll switch back to Mesmer and Necromancer and deal damage with my eyes closed.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

14 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

You say this like the change isn't listed- 5 might for 10 seconds per ambush from Let Loose. 10 might per loop.

 

People aren't going to use it if it's less optimal. I certainly wouldn't- I'd much rather just keep my damage up and not give any might, since healers generally are going to be the ones providing might for your subgroup, boon DPS might is just a bonus in most cases. However, player perception of a boon build (and in some compositions, it's actual effectiveness) is based around the boons it can provide on it's own. 10 might isn't a whole lot, but it's certainly welcome on power quickness untamed, and condition quick untamed will also benefit (despite already providing might from sun spirit, as the damage of sun spirit is more than acceptable for condition builds).

 

In addition, the fringe Heal Untamed player base appreciates it as well. Looking at the build, you choose between better healing output (staff/staff) or better boon output (staff/axe/wh). With this change, you can provide more might without sacrificing the potential need for more healing (as you're a healer, and will be expected to provide the bulk of the boons a squad needs). The build (in my opinion) already isn't that great, but some people like it and helping enable playstyles without destroying other ones should be pretty welcome.

My point is that prior to the 5 might per ambush, you act as if slotting in sun spirit was not an option for power quickness untamed because it doesn't add to the damage rotation. Even though slotting in might can be worth it compared to a few 1000 dps, and is worth it to 100% cover a boon if the sub group doesn't fully cover the boon. 

You make my point by downplaying the might you get from sun spirit compared to the damage increase you get from something else. Which, by the way, you can slot in other sources of might like warhorn and jungle stalker (but it's not considered optimal boo hoo 😞 ). 

This isn't to say that getting the 5 might per ambush isn't a big deal in how power quickness untamed can give might.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

yay, nerfs!

[AshkyLicious.4729]

Snowcrows has made a review based on this balance preview notes, incase anybody is interested in reading:

https://snowcrows.com/news/january-balance-update-preview?fbclid=IwAR2yZkUqrwlk75yT5GSwwEVdEpxH2iqjPaTKCLTSvkjltIOPL1hYumj-Phc

Even they find the nerfs to Mirage "Ugly". Many people are complaining both on the main forums, reddit and now snowcrows aswell. These nerfs really damages the game for us Mirage mainers.

This balance team is clearly doing wrong here and Mirage rarely gets any kind of reconsideration when it comes to the nerfs it's about to get.

What does it take for Anet to realize that the Mirage class and it's playerbase is getting more or less constantly bullied on from the balance team? They need to put a stop to the constant bias that the balance team forces us players to endure. 

Edited January 18 by AshkyLicious.4729

[Voyant.1327]

Is the goal just to grief Mesmer only players into quitting the game? 

Every single balance update is reinventing the wheel to be less then what you were before in trade to be more generic. 

And its always shortsighted! Lets give Mesmer a bunch of boons and nerf their main function. Oh no now they're too powerful so lets nerf their main function again! 

I've been taking a break since LAST patch cycle bc I hated how the Mesmer changes felt & was hoping the balance team would understand that the most important thing to balance around is FUN.

This just sucks. No one enjoys grief especially not by the dev team. We get you don't understand and hate mesmers.

Why is this being allowed to continue? This is a point a boss should step in and say "hey why are we being so hard on a chunk of our player base all the time? What can we do so its a rewarding experience instead of beating them down every chance we get."

[wolfyrik.2017]

3 hours ago, AshkyLicious.4729 said:

Snowcrows has made a review based on this balance preview notes, incase anybody is interested in reading this:

https://snowcrows.com/news/january-balance-update-preview?fbclid=IwAR2yZkUqrwlk75yT5GSwwEVdEpxH2iqjPaTKCLTSvkjltIOPL1hYumj-Phc

Even they find the nerfs to Mirage "Ugly". Many people are complaining both on the main forums, reddit and now snowcrows aswell. These nerfs just damage the game big time for us Mirage mainers.

This balance team is clearly doing wrong here and Mirage very rarely gets any kind of reconsideration when it comes to nerfs. What does it take for Anet to realize that the Mirage class and it's playerbase is getting more or less constantly bullied on from the balance team, and that this needs to stop?

The snowcrows discussion also points out that one of the changes is the exact same as was shelved last august, for being based on dodgy data. How did we end up back at this point? Balance patches for the sake of it looking like they are doing something? I'd rather have no balance patch than a poorly reasoned one.

[Gendalfs.7521]

Reminds me of one class that play with green pet.

Class is OP lets nerf it, nobody says anything keeps playing class.

OMG there is one encounter where this class is too good, let nerf it, some complain but keep playing.

Guys why are so many still playing this class. ok lets nerf it and introduce some kitten mechanics. Almost everyone complains but keeps playing.

So why are we playing this class? Almost everything is nerfed, some weapons are bad.

Because its fun...

[Gendalfs.7521]

3 minutes ago, wolfyrik.2017 said:

The snowcrows discussion also points out that one of the changes is the exact same as was shelved last august, for being based on dodgy data. How did we end up back at this point? Balance patches for the sake of it looking like they are doing something? I'd rather have no balance patch than a poorly reasoned one.

One way of selling you ''content''.

[Juan.6124]

On 1/12/2024 at 6:56 PM, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

That bias against mesmer showing off again.

Not mesmer in general, otherwise Virtuoso would be receiving its much deserved nerfs. It's mirage they don't like.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

1 hour ago, DirtyDan.4759 said:

Not mesmer in general, otherwise Virtuoso would be receiving its much deserved nerfs. It's mirage they don't like.

And chrono.

Regarding virt they'll get there too.

[Angesombre.4630]

I think we can talk in general here, okay, it's mostly the Mirage. 
But if you look closely, at some point a lot of classes or specializations went through this or are still going through it. Revenant, engineer, warrior.... They've all been affected to a greater or lesser extent, but they've all undergone changes that have transformed everything and broken game mechanics. 
It's tiring for the player too, who just wants to enjoy the game and make the most of it, especially in PvE, where you're not necessarily going to complain about the 1k difference between 2 professions. The player also needs to be able to enjoy his character.

[lykan.4192]

I was all set to return to GW2, pick up SotO. Then I see this 'balance' and it doesn't give me any confidence in thinking the folks at ANet know what they're doing.

It's a difficult task to manage in a game that is built on horizontal progression, power-creep is going to undermine the difficulty of older content. I question if they don't have the capacity to engage with content their selling in a meaningful way. Are they talking to their community? It just looks like the team peeked at some numbers, pared them down, called it a day. Which I kind of don't believe they did their own homework/internal testing on.

This patch is a stark reminder that ANet has regularly run classes into one another, stripped out things that made classes unique that gave nuance reason to play one or two builds in certain situations. And still make decisions hostile toward build-diversity. C'mon, your other arm is trying to sell me additional character and build-loadout slots. 

[Gendalfs.7521]

1 hour ago, lykan.4192 said:

I was all set to return to GW2, pick up SotO

You should pick soto, theres so many new content. Mostly combat launch for Skyscale and weapon mastery (which they shoot themselves in the leg because that was one of the tool to balance things).

1 hour ago, lykan.4192 said:

I question if they don't have the capacity to engage with content their selling in a meaningful way

I guess so. 

 

1 hour ago, lykan.4192 said:

Are they talking to their community?

No

 

1 hour ago, lykan.4192 said:

It just looks like the team peeked at some numbers, pared them down, called it a day. Which I kind of don't believe they did their own homework/internal testing on.

I think its capacity.

 

1 hour ago, lykan.4192 said:

This patch is a stark reminder that ANet has regularly run classes into one another, stripped out things that made classes unique that gave nuance reason to play one or two builds in certain situations.

Exactly what happened to confusion nerf. It was nerfed because of SOME bosses but you know also engie mace was nerfed therefore. Was mirage OP?No. Was engie mace OP? Not even close. Now its almost useless.

Theres people who knows whats going on. Im not the one of them. I have not a single clue whats going on in Anet.

Edited January 18 by Gendalfs.7521

[SeTect.5918]

8 hours ago, DirtyDan.4759 said:

Not mesmer in general, otherwise Virtuoso would be receiving its much deserved nerfs. It's mirage they don't like.

hmm i dont know.
If you are talking about PvE, why would virtuoso deserve nerfs?

Yes, virtuoso is easy to play and has a lot of burst with around 42.5k dps.
But same thing applies to lots of builds like Power dragonhunter, Power reaper and some other builds.

Just because virtuoso is so much stronger than mirage, it doesnt mean virtuoso needs nerfs.
Its mirage that is weak, not virtuoso that is overpowered. All play virtuoso instead of mirage because mirage has probably the worst ramp up time out of all snowcrows builds because it needs like 20 seconds to get to 41k dps (with 46k benchmark) and virtuoso needs 10 seconds to get to 40k dps with 42k benchmark.

Mirage is expected (by snowcrows) to be at 40k-41k on a golem now. So if mirage needs 20 seconds to get to 40k dps with a 46k+ benchmark, imagine how long it needs to reach 40k with a 40-41k benchmark. It will probably need 25-30 seconds to reach that number.
-> This means it will be completely useless on every single phase-boss ingame because it will have even less burst than before. And it didnt even have any burst.

The balancing team once again only looked at the number and saw 46k+ and decided to nerf without thinking twice about it. They didnt look how long it needs to actually reach the 46k.
Therefore they didnt think about buffing its burst maybe, which would actually give mirage some playerbase because it would solve almost all mirage issues in group content.

But again. Mirage is trash, but just because mirage is trash now, it doesnt mean virtuoso needs to be nerfed into being trash too.
Virtuoso deals 42.5k dps, which is pretty fine. But if you nerf it by 2-3k it will probably have the same playerbase as mirage.
And we all know if the balancing team has 1 build in sight that they want to nerf, they wont just nerf it by 1k dps. They always go all in with the nerfs.

Edited January 18 by SeTect.5918

[Xion.5694]

On 1/12/2024 at 12:26 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Escape Artist: Reduced the distortion duration from 5 seconds to 1.5 seconds in WvW only

I wish phantasm would be able to do something, before they insta die. 

Where are willbender's WvW nerfs? 

 

 

[Gendalfs.7521]

This is Anet response to some secret discord

CMC you are the lead. Can you choose some nummbers between 1 and 100?

Edited January 18 by Gendalfs.7521

[Voyant.1327]

6 hours ago, DirtyDan.4759 said:

Not mesmer in general, otherwise Virtuoso would be receiving its much deserved nerfs. It's mirage they don't like.

These Mirage Nerfs for example, Nerf every single Mesmer that uses the Chaos Traitline.
100 Expertise Points means you're going to have to take them from somewhere else, which means less Condition Damage, etc.

This has been an ongoing problem for virtually any off builds of Mesmer.
Prime example just last patch Chaos and Inspiration were changed from Self Benefit to Group Benefit, losing out on DPS/Self-Support to give things to the "Support" Mesmer.

Players who utilized Chaos for other reasons, now have gone through several nerf changes non-stop... With no meaningful gain...
It's disproportionate as well, because it's always "we need to bring in Mirage (or Virt/Chrono) so we're doing X" they'll lose a few K dps and simultaneously while this is happening another spec will be breaking the DPS limit.

Edited January 18 by Voyant.1327

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

6 hours ago, Angesombre.4630 said:

I think we can talk in general here, okay, it's mostly the Mirage. 
 

It's not.
Power chrono is going to be deleted in wvw, support chrono will take a huge blow too.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

4 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

hmm i dont know.
If you are talking about PvE, why would virtuoso deserve nerfs?

Yes, virtuoso is easy to play and has a lot of burst with around 42.5k dps.
But same thing applies to lots of builds like Power dragonhunter, Power reaper and some other builds.

Just because virtuoso is so much stronger than mirage, it doesnt mean virtuoso needs nerfs.
Its mirage that is weak, not virtuoso that is overpowered. All play virtuoso instead of mirage because mirage has probably the worst ramp up time out of all snowcrows builds because it needs like 20 seconds to get to 41k dps (with 46k benchmark) and virtuoso needs 10 seconds to get to 40k dps with 42k benchmark.

Mirage is expected (by snowcrows) to be at 40k-41k on a golem now. So if mirage needs 20 seconds to get to 40k dps with a 46k+ benchmark, imagine how long it needs to reach 40k with a 40-41k benchmark. It will probably need 25-30 seconds to reach that number.
-> This means it will be completely useless on every single phase-boss ingame because it will have even less burst than before. And it didnt even have any burst.

The balancing team once again only looked at the number and saw 46k+ and decided to nerf without thinking twice about it. They didnt look how long it needs to actually reach the 46k.
Therefore they didnt think about buffing its burst maybe, which would actually give mirage some playerbase because it would solve almost all mirage issues in group content.

But again. Mirage is trash, but just because mirage is trash now, it doesnt mean virtuoso needs to be nerfed into being trash too.
Virtuoso deals 42.5k dps, which is pretty fine. But if you nerf it by 2-3k it will probably have the same playerbase as mirage.
And we all know if the balancing team has 1 build in sight that they want to nerf, they wont just nerf it by 1k dps. They always go all in with the nerfs.

Who cares?

Mirage is there to provide alacrity, while virtuoso is there to solely provide damage.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

10 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Who cares?

Mirage is there to provide alacrity, while virtuoso is there to solely provide damage.

Maybe he likes the virt playstyle better than mirage but wants to do more than just DPS? Or vice versa? 🤷

[SeTect.5918]

9 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Who cares?

Mirage is there to provide alacrity, while virtuoso is there to solely provide damage.

Uh. I do and probably everyone who enjoys to play mirage. 

For your Information, alac mirage is already far worse than alac chrono and will still get an immense nerf. 

They recently gave druid, scrapper and herald the ability to have pure dps builds so mirage shouldnt be downgraded to pure support either. 

3 minutes ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Maybe he likes the virt playstyle better than mirage but wants to do more than just DPS? Or vice versa? 🤷

Nono. I m fine with virtuoso only dealing damage. But i dont want to have the dps of a quick/alac-dps on a pure dps build. Thats why i m heavily against virtuoso damage nerfs in pve. They nerfed mirages 46.6k golem dps by ~6k. Imagine if they take their hands on a virtuoso that does 42.5k

And about mirage i want it to have a proper dps build that doesn't need 25+ seconds to reach 40k dps on a golem. 

[BumboJumbo.1308]

27 minutes ago, SeTect.5918 said:

alac mirage is already far worse than alac chrono and will still get an immense nerf. 

In what way is alac mirage worse then alac chrono?

29 minutes ago, SeTect.5918 said:

They recently gave druid, scrapper and herald the ability to have pure dps builds so mirage shouldnt be downgraded to pure support either.

Doesn't mirage already have a pure dps build?

[SeTect.5918]

6 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

In what way is alac mirage worse then alac chrono?

Doesn't mirage already have a pure dps build?

Alac mirage has far less burst while dealing the same dps (on golem). Hence why alac mirage isnt on the snowcrows benchmark Board while alac chrono is. Additionally alac mirage will receive a very big nerf next patch.

Yes it has a dps build. But you said mirage is there to give alac and i basically meant that no e spec should be downgraded to support only. Even less so since they recently gave multiple e-specs, that only did support before, dps builds. 

It seems like they want every e spec to do 2 things properly. 

Like mirage can condi and support, even tho condi poorly after patch.

Virtuoso does power (poorly) and condi.

Chrono does power and support. 

Same for almost or even every other e spec.

And imo they shouldn't be going away from that way. Even tho they should be buffing these aspects that are underperforming (like condi mirage after next patch if all nerfs go through or power Virtuoso).

[Geronmy.3298]

15 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

In what way is alac mirage worse then alac chrono?

Doesn't mirage already have a pure dps build?

In everything. No burst with an abysmal ramp up time. Less boon access overall and completely limited to running double staff.

 

And the pure dps build does worse damage on real encounters than chrono or virtuoso.

[GenerationX.9178]

Great to see some changes. I think condition and power damage needs to all get toned down. Condition Spam is annoying to deal with and Power one shot isn't fun to deal with. I always get kick out people crying about nerfs because class is there main. If you knew your class well you would acknowledge what is over powered about your class. Most the nerfs always apply because someone is abusing it course if your the abuser you will never notice it unless you knew game. Good example is permeant invulbunrablitly on virutoso. There is lot skill interaction people do not notice unless you play it a while. Here are something things we should really question. 

Unlockable CC's good example is I am blocking my team mate triggers full counter on warrior close to me I get punished why? Getting pulled out of an evade frame/ block shocking aura or pulls. Boons the amount boons in this game are wild. Celestial is not broke its the combination of power damage with condition damage and boons. Getting hit with conditions now days is like playing power builds they dont really damage over time they just stack 20 confusion and you die casting a condition cleanse skill.