Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?

[Gotejjeken.1267]

10 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

No actually.

This doesn't actually answer anything.  How is cele not a 'wheelchair meta'? You can mix and match your 30 toons for 30 hours, and I can come in on cele and blow up any one of them...how is this good balance?

7 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

In PvE you can ignore more than half of the skills and traits. They have no use for anything. Not even in theory.

What part of PvE? As endgame PvE (instanced content) you aren't ignoring any traits other than the ones that are useless in all modes anyway.  Things are seperated into qDPS, aDPS, pDPS, cDPS, Support...etc.  You actually have to find uses for traits and skills in order to complete content.

In WvW? If roaming, ignore everything, slap on cele and copy/paste metabattle build.  Or if you are zerging, just ignore everything--slap on minstrel or whatever for your role, and press '1'.  They nerf strips so heavily there is no counterplay anymore, it's all kiting and blob size.  

7 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

PvP is a dumbed down WvW mode, sold as "more organized and more balanced", which is a joke. All it is, is more frustration because there are a lot less options to avoid running into or overcome the latest overpowered nonsense..

I don't understand this either.  Go to the sPvP forums and look--you'll see complaint topics about classes, but its always about actual skills and traits.  Rarely do you get complaining about relics, but the rest of it is pure balance complaints.  There is an actual reason they removed cele from PvP.  

I do wonder how much of this pushback is because of the legendary grind? As amulet system would remove a big part of that (the stat swapping) and leave only the visuals.  It seems that because of the time investment, most don't want that to change.  But my question is, what's the point when you only need cele for 90% of the mode? 

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

This doesn't actually answer anything.  How is cele not a 'wheelchair meta'? You can mix and match your 30 toons for 30 hours, and I can come in on cele and blow up any one of them...how is this good balance?

So you are using Cele on pure Power builds? Pure Condi builds? Pure Tank Builds, Pure Heal builds? Why are you wasting stats? Why aren't you being more efficient in your gear choices?

 

[CafPow.1542]

29 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

So you are using Cele on pure Power builds? Pure Condi builds? Pure Tank Builds, Pure Heal builds? Why are you wasting stats? Why aren't you being more efficient in your gear choices?

 

Yeah and you pwn hard with it.

hahaha.

but seriously why got this thread, that is about willys derailed into a „reeeee nerf cele“ bullcrap-bingo?

[TheGrimm.5624]

Just now, CafPow.1542 said:

Yeah and you pwn hard with it.

hahaha.

but seriously why got this thread, that is about willys derailed into a „reeeee nerf cele“ bullcrap-bingo?

lol. Common forum threads. Nerf class X. Nerf gear set Y. And those bleed over into well gear set X is good on class Y so nerf it everywhere, which isn't the case. We are barely a decade into the back and fourths of nerf power due to power gear sets, nerf condi due to condi gear sets, nerf tanks  due to tank stats, nerf healing due to healing gear sets that matched up to healing builds. No to removing all gear stats and we all just have two rocks and a stick already. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

11 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

So you are using Cele on pure Power builds? Pure Condi builds? Pure Tank Builds, Pure Heal builds? Why are you wasting stats? Why aren't you being more efficient in your gear choices?

 

Because you don't need to? It's the most efficient mix and match gear set possible, considering you do need both defense/offense to survive if you aren't in the middle of a blob.  

Also, all those 'pure X builds' you mention fit into an amulet system btw.  

11 hours ago, CafPow.1542 said:

but seriously why got this thread, that is about willys derailed into a „reeeee nerf cele“ bullcrap-bingo?

Hmm...I wonder:

On 2/11/2024 at 7:34 AM, Valamano.4963 said:

Willbenders (Power/cele) are overperforming extremely.

[Kuya.6495]

Every time complaints keep being brought up about willbender it's generally:

1. Complaints about its mobility 

2. Complaints about its damage

3. Complaints about its sustain (in terms of damage reduction and healing, not via its mobility)

What's annoying about the Complaints is that all 3 are almost always brought up at the same time as if the willbenders with the highest spike damage (marauders) are the same ones with the massive sustain (celestial), so I think it's fair game to bring up celestial stats as a problem in willbender seeing as how it's a problem in so many other annoying builds too. And as a marauder willbender user, yes, celestial willbender is obnoxious to fight. Does more damage than it should for so little damage investment and it's carried by the damage modifiers from its traits coupled with celestial.

Edited February 18 by Kuya.6495

[CafPow.1542]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Hmm...I wonder:

Yeah why? It’s about willys especially.

and honestly… the power one is the dangerous one.

Edited February 18 by CafPow.1542

[Gotejjeken.1267]

5 hours ago, CafPow.1542 said:

Yeah why?

The post above yours answers your question

7 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

And as a marauder willbender user, yes, celestial willbender is obnoxious to fight. Does more damage than it should for so little damage investment and it's carried by the damage modifiers from its traits coupled with celestial.

I have no real horse in the power vs. full cele WB race, other than from my perspective it fits into the same mold in that it is problematic as WvW is 50% PvE with the stats, traits, consumables, etc.

Basically, I see it opposite to Grimm in that WvW is the training ground for sPvP, not the other way around.  Most don't last long in sPvP as broken mechanics like food and cele carry keep them in WvW and feeling competitive enough ganking noobs and getting rewards.  

It's also not as if they entirely ignore everything--they cherry pick.  As in, look at mesmer--while it may be overperforming, they just nuke it with little real explanation. 

They will not touch harbinger or willbender though, with equally little explanation as to why.  They just buff those because they like to--like 'we'll try out heaven's palm having evades and instant KO because, reasons' type thing.  

[CafPow.1542]

Okay we get it. Cele bad.

back to topic then.

[Sleepwalker.1398]

12 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

Every time complaints keep being brought up about willbender it's generally:

1. Complaints about its mobility 

2. Complaints about its damage

3. Complaints about its sustain (in terms of damage reduction and healing, not via its mobility)

Ok then, why don't they try that kitten on a core guardian?

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 2/17/2024 at 2:12 PM, KrHome.1920 said:

The amulet system would not dramatically change WvW. And that's the point. It would not matter. But it would remove the only true endgame mode that WvW is from the game. WvW ist the only game mode where every single game mechanic has its use. 

In PvE you can ignore more than half of the skills and traits. They have no use for anything. Not even in theory.

PvP is a dumbed down WvW mode, sold as "more organized and more balanced", which is a joke. All it is, is more frustration because there are a lot less options to avoid running into or overcome the latest overpowered nonsense.

Side Note: WvW has its own issues. The biggest one is player balance. Every week I am facing baruch bay I ask myself, why I still play this game. These matchups are the definition of stupidity. Alliances only job is to fix things like these. We will see.

Pretty much this.

Why would anyone want WvW, a real game mode that many people actually play, take after  a bot infested wintraded mess that players don't play despite the large gold rewards associated with it and has a scene that wouldn't even fill a single map?

  I mean nobody cares about who's on top. Heck, being on top has negative prestige for the longest time. And for the most part, nobody outside of WvW or PvP cares about who's on top either, so the relative competiveness of the game mode is a wash-- not that wvw was meant to be espaghts anyways. So the claims that the pvp system is better for WvW is completely unfounded.

Not to mention it would invalidate the efforts of getting wvw legendary gear in WvW.  Most WvWers that got legendary armor did not get it so they can pick random dumb stats in pve. Are we going to be compensated for this? Not to mention they're like releasing legendary relics next week.

I mean yea it's a dead game mode sometimes, but taking after a deader game mode doesn't help.

[And they effectively did try with the 2020 nerfs in an effort to scale things down. The past few years have been spent homogenizing traits.  How did that turn out?]

Edited February 19 by ArchonWing.9480

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

7 hours ago, Sleepwalker.1398 said:

Ok then, why don't they try that kitten on a core guardian?

I have no idea, but I have my suspicions for the reason.

[XECOR.2814]

People who think the problem in this case is cele stats are delusional.

Everyone who can actually see things how it is and is kinda skilled at the game to understand whats powerful or not can see clearly the problem with willy is that the:

Power damage spike is too high for the amount of mobility + stability+ aegis+resistance+prot uptimes. 

The keep engaging again and again, do their full burst in under 3secs which can melt 2 healthbar + some more while having 6-8boons and still have plenty of resources to get out using mobility, block and invuln.

Not to mention their engages have multiple blind spams, immob, chill and cc if they want. This makes counter pressure in that 3sec extremely difficult. 

Now think about all this but you in cloud situation and you are in middle of anything and a willbender randomly jumps on you. In any scenario thats not 1v1 your fate is most likely sealed. 

Now think about team settings, or a cata spamming dogshit on you and aoe spewing things while willbender is doing its things.

But its fine since the gamemode is dying because of these things anyway and now nobody cares to even complain so it doesnt get much wind anyway.

[Burnfall.9573]

56 minutes ago, XECOR.2814 said:

People who think the problem in this case is cele stats are delusional.

Everyone who can actually see things how it is and is kinda skilled at the game to understand whats powerful or not can see clearly the problem with willy is that the:

Power damage spike is too high for the amount of mobility + stability+ aegis+resistance+prot uptimes. 

The keep engaging again and again, do their full burst in under 3secs which can melt 2 healthbar + some more while having 6-8boons and still have plenty of resources to get out using mobility, block and invuln.

Not to mention their engages have multiple blind spams, immob, chill and cc if they want. This makes counter pressure in that 3sec extremely difficult. 

Now think about all this but you in cloud situation and you are in middle of anything and a willbender randomly jumps on you. In any scenario thats not 1v1 your fate is most likely sealed. 

Now think about team settings, or a cata spamming dogshit on you and aoe spewing things while willbender is doing its things.

But its fine since the gamemode is dying because of these things anyway and now nobody cares to even complain so it doesnt get much wind anyway.

 

There's been countless of threads and posts agreeing with you including myself. It is not fine that WvW is dying but in the end, who has the Power and Control to make anything happend? It is Anet and they are going against our wishes to prevent WvW from dying.

Before last balance patch, WvW Community made it very clear that we want everything to decrease including Power Creep, What did Anet do as always...they played with numbers instead of addressing the root cause in prventing the problems from resurfing again including removing the problems at heart.

You should already know that Anet hates WvW to the teeth and will keep doing everythign they can, to keep killing it over and over again

It is Pure Hatred at its core!!

It is obvious that there are clear suspisions that someone up there is Punishing WvW Community for whatever reasons that we do not know of. 

Maybe had a bad experience in playing WvW and is taking it against us.

 

Edited February 19 by Burnfall.9573

[Kuya.6495]

11 hours ago, Sleepwalker.1398 said:

Ok then, why don't they try that kitten on a core guardian?

Why would you do cele core guard over cele willbender when willbender is an upgrade to old medi judge's intervention+whirling wrath core guard in every way? The frustrating part of the old core guard days and is even true with dragonhunters now is that once you spend your skills on your opening salvo, you are pretty much a sitting duck sans renewed focus. This is why you also always focus the guard in spvp.

Now with willbender though, a guardian isn't doomed the moment they didn't kill their target on the opening strike because you're no longer reliant on meditations to carry the build (you also tended to use your meditations for your attack so the very thing you needed for sustain would be used up seconds into the fight). Not to mention guardian ability to stick to targets has always been garbage until willbender. 

Anyway I already mentioned why cele works well with willbender. Willbender has great synergy with radiance traitline (up to 40% crit chance+pulsing might) allowing you to do well even with a non glass build.

Edited February 19 by Kuya.6495

[Kuya.6495]

1 hour ago, XECOR.2814 said:

People who think the problem in this case is cele stats are delusional.

Everyone who can actually see things how it is and is kinda skilled at the game to understand whats powerful or not can see clearly the problem with willy is that the:

Power damage spike is too high for the amount of mobility + stability+ aegis+resistance+prot uptimes. 

The keep engaging again and again, do their full burst in under 3secs which can melt 2 healthbar + some more while having 6-8boons and still have plenty of resources to get out using mobility, block and invuln.

Not to mention their engages have multiple blind spams, immob, chill and cc if they want. This makes counter pressure in that 3sec extremely difficult. 

Now think about all this but you in cloud situation and you are in middle of anything and a willbender randomly jumps on you. In any scenario thats not 1v1 your fate is most likely sealed. 

Now think about team settings, or a cata spamming dogshit on you and aoe spewing things while willbender is doing its things.

But its fine since the gamemode is dying because of these things anyway and now nobody cares to even complain so it doesnt get much wind anyway.

The high stability, aegis, resistance and prot uptime is literally a product of celestial stats.

[ArchonWing.9480]

3 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

Why would you do cele core guard over cele willbender when willbender is an upgrade to old medi judge's intervention+whirling wrath core guard in every way? The frustrating part of the old core guard days and is even true with dragonhunters now is that once you spend your skills on your opening salvo, you are pretty much a sitting duck sans renewed focus. This is why you also always focus the guard in spvp.

Now with willbender though, a guardian isn't doomed the moment they didn't kill their target on the opening strike because you're no longer reliant on meditations to carry the build (you also tended to use your meditations for your attack so the very thing you needed for sustain would be used up seconds into the fight). Not to mention guardian ability to stick to targets has always been garbage until willbender. 

Anyway I already mentioned why cele works well with willbender. Willbender has great synergy with radiance traitline (up to 40% crit chance+pulsing might) allowing you to do well even with a non glass build.

I mean there is some truth to this like core guard being terrible because all it offers is weak virtues and access to another damage tree, but some of this also contributes to balance issues.

The difference between WB and other guard specs, is that outside of greatsword and offhand sword, Guardian has no free movement skills-- they require targets. So other guard specs can pursue enemies but they have a harder time disengaging except when there's random animals or enemy players in a different direction. This is an inherent trade off of the class. Warriors for example easily stick to their enemies but their bursts are very telegraphed while guardians don't really suffer from much animation locks aside from the horrible sword 3 (but that's being fixed).

I think that unlocking offhand sword/longbow for all specs was pretty helpful, but not everyone wants to buy the expansion.

The other reason why guardians weapons have trouble sticking is most of them are buggy and do not track  well . However, instead of fixing that, they just increase the numbers without addressing the problem. Like it's been like 10+ years of sword 3 being utter crap. But the damage isn't going to be rebalanced around that; at least not until people complain.

Core Virtues being weak due to being left behind the power creep also leads to problems because the Virtues tree was designed to interact with core skills. Absolute Resolve is one of the strongest guardian traits because it removes 3 condis on f2, while core/dh sees it every 25s, and fb 42, WB sees it 16 seconds and the thing has 2 charges,.

I mean 16s is pretty fair given WB has no healing passive and requires hitting the enemy to heal but the 2nd charge's interaction with the trait is pretty nuts, allowing very high burst condi clear which can also be used in conjunction with running away. F2 also inherently removes soft cc.

Meanwhile you also have F3 overlapping roles because WBs can trait to give resistance which further increases the difficulty to lock them down, and also it's on a 25s cooldown compared to the (36?) for others while typically being able to trait for breakstuns and then all the other stuff it gives, and it's a massively overloaded skill too.

====

Now this is not solely a problem with Willbender. A lot of elite specs have questionable interactions with core trees.  You can look at mechanist and see "wow, they didn't even try". Or just dive in the water with any EoD spec.

 

Of course, Anet in all their genius just hits the core tree in most cases and that just destroys non-meta builds and other specs  (but especially core ones) and pats themselves on the back. It's only recently that they've actively decided to change how specific specs interact with a trait, like scourge tranfuse, and also gutting the hillarious way WB was broken with shattered aegis.... by making it useless.

For some reason this deserves buffs.  Changing sword 3 (not wb specific) makes sense because it's a terribly designed skill in the first pl;ace. Buffing WB utilities may also make sense because most of them suck.

But buffing a trait that already makes an overloaded f3 even more annoying is nonsensical. Giving them a finishing skill? Who asked for that? lol.

 

Meanwhile Anet destroys niche builds by essentially deleting Glacial Heart; a trait very few people used. They also hit the valor tree by killing the protection spam trait which might have been stupid on WB but that just ruins the fun for everyone. This only pushes people towards WB, and specifically meta ones. If you replace a few words, you also get the entirety of how the thief class is balanced.

To me I think the greater problem of the balance team seems to be the intent to railroad everyone on a few builds so it's easier to balance. (Ah, just like pvp!). Except it seems like they have an excuse to do less since their general idea is to balance by deleting.

I mean, even guardian mains cannot see the logic behind some guardian changes. They flat out told us that changing radiant fire would make us less dependent on torch for the skill.... while making it impossible to use without torch.

This is also why I reject pvp style balance in WvW. Reducing the amount of things they need to  balance won't make them balance more. It just allows them to do even less. I think they need to be expected to do their job and tackle the entire game.

Edited February 19 by ArchonWing.9480

[Nugatory.8920]

A charitable interpretation of why the balance team aren't addressing Willbender could be that they're finding it hard to think of solutions that make the spec more reasonable without hurting all other Guardian specs. Or that they are unwilling to nerf the mobility because mobility was the unique factor in mind when designing the spec.

However, the combination of damage, mitigation and disengage ability Willbender has make it obnoxious to fight it in WvW, where it is far too easy for Willbenders to hit and run.

In my opinion this stems from the bloaded nature of Willbender's virtues and their interaction with Renewed Focus, the difficulty in balancing them comes from not wanting to inadvertently nerf other Guardian specs by nerfing traits or the elite.

I can appreciate what the balance team are trying to do with Heaven' Palm, trying to make a competitive alternative to Renewed Focus. However, outside of a handful of good Willbenders who can manage fine without refreshing their virtues, none of the vast majority of Willbenders will take Heaven's Palm because refreshing their virtues is a get out of jail free card that provides way too much value.

The most obvious way to balance Willbender, without hurting other Guardian specs, is to address Willbender virtues. Here is what I would do:

Flowing Resolve reduced to one charge. I could never understand why this was a pvp exclusive change.

Crashing Courage should have the damage reduced to a negligible amount. This way it could still be used to clear blind on yourself and aegis on the enemy but it would no longer do meaningful damage. It should be defensive in nature.

Rushing Justice should require a target. They could even increase the distance travelled slightly. This way it would still give Willbenders mobility through a gap close, but it wouldn't be abused as part of the evade and mobility string Willbenders currently use to escape.

[Korendil.5934]

You're forgetting how squishy WB is when they are caught. They flop hard. If you remove a charge from Flowing Resolve, you can't nerf the damage because then how else can it trade? Potentially Relic of Speed is causing issues which makes them able to escape more effectively, so a nerf to that will in turn nerf their survivability.

But if that's the case, why are Thief able to roam and escape with impunity - and that's considered fine by the community - but if WB escapes, it's considered sacrilege?

Edited February 20 by Korendil.5934

[Nugatory.8920]

8 minutes ago, Korendil.5934 said:

You're forgetting how squishy WB is when they are caught. They flop hard. If you remove a charge from Flowing Resolve, you can't nerf the damage because then how else can it trade. Potentially Relic of Speed is causing issues which makes them able to escape better, so a nerf to that will nerf their survivability.

But if that's the case, why are Thief able to roam and escape with impunity - and that's considered fine by the community - but if WB escapes, it's considered sacrilege?

If Thieves were as tanky, and could produce as high a PBAOE burst as Willbender, we would never hear the end of it on the forums.

And rightfully so.

The balance adjustments I suggested above would still leave Willbender in good shape.

[ZTeamG.4603]

In the balance change preview, willbender's elite (the rarely used Heaven's Palm) is getting some significant buffs like evade frames and the Glacial Heart trait is getting a rework to heal on chill application. I think the Heaven's Palm buffs are fine since it's competing against the powerful option of 3s invuln+virtue recharge. But... 

What's the over under on them forgetting to add an internal cooldown to Glacial Heart, and suddenly Willbender gets a full heal on every 20s cooldown elite usage with Relic of the Ice?

[Ferus.3165]

3 minutes ago, ZTeamG.4603 said:

In the balance change preview, willbender's elite (the rarely used Heaven's Palm) is getting some significant buffs like evade frames and the Glacial Heart trait is getting a rework to heal on chill application. I think the Heaven's Palm buffs are fine since it's competing against the powerful option of 3s invuln+virtue recharge. But... 

What's the over under on them forgetting to add an internal cooldown to Glacial Heart, and suddenly Willbender gets a full heal on every 20s cooldown elite usage with Relic of the Ice?

do we know the numbers yet? for the heal on chill? also ice relic has 30 sec icd. And it's bugged too atm so ice relic will be fixed at some point.

[Nugatory.8920]

1 hour ago, ZTeamG.4603 said:

In the balance change preview, willbender's elite (the rarely used Heaven's Palm) is getting some significant buffs like evade frames and the Glacial Heart trait is getting a rework to heal on chill application. I think the Heaven's Palm buffs are fine since it's competing against the powerful option of 3s invuln+virtue recharge. But... 

What's the over under on them forgetting to add an internal cooldown to Glacial Heart, and suddenly Willbender gets a full heal on every 20s cooldown elite usage with Relic of the Ice?

Possible. I mean it's going to have to be broken good for Willbenders to swap Absolute Resolve for Glacial Heart, and Renewed Focus for Heaven's Palm.

[ArchonWing.9480]

4 hours ago, Korendil.5934 said:

You're forgetting how squishy WB is when they are caught. They flop hard. If you remove a charge from Flowing Resolve, you can't nerf the damage because then how else can it trade? Potentially Relic of Speed is causing issues which makes them able to escape more effectively, so a nerf to that will in turn nerf their survivability.

But if that's the case, why are Thief able to roam and escape with impunity - and that's considered fine by the community - but if WB escapes, it's considered sacrilege?

Willbender is not inherently squishy. That's a choice by the player. And there's nothing wrong with taking speed relic.  Bringing thief into this is not a good argument either; it's not like people like those either.

Any class can build squishy and get rekt. These very forums often have 15k hp no stunbreak thieves  cry about being deleted when they're not careful and nobody has any sympathy for them for good reason.

And if someone gets locked down on a WB because they don't take additional stunbreaks on the one class known for stab, then that's on them. And a lot of WBs only take 1 for whatever reason and that would be considered monumentally stupid if done on another class.

 

I don't necessarily think f2 needs the charge removed. There are other ways to approach it, like reducing the evade frames on it, or absolute resolution clears 2 condis on wb.

Also, what is the difference between a WB getting caught, and any other guard getting caught without cd? They don't have ~120 health/second and a block every 40 seconds? That is unlikely to save them either.

 

Edited February 20 by ArchonWing.9480

[Kuya.6495]

31 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Willbender is not inherently squishy. That's a choice by the player. And there's nothing wrong with taking speed relic.  Bringing thief into this is not a good argument either; it's not like people like those either.

Any class can build squishy and get rekt. These very forums often have 15k hp no stunbreak thieves  cry about being deleted when they're not careful and nobody has any sympathy for them for good reason.

And if someone gets locked down on a WB because they don't take additional stunbreaks on the one class known for stab, then that's on them. And a lot of WBs only take 1 for whatever reason and that would be considered monumentally stupid if done on another class.

 

I don't necessarily think f2 needs the charge removed. There are other ways to approach it, like reducing the evade frames on it, or absolute resolution clears 2 condis on wb.

Also, what is the difference between a WB getting caught, and any other guard getting caught without cd? They don't have ~120 health/second and a block every 40 seconds? That is unlikely to save them either.

 

Willbenders have few stunbreaks because:

1. One of your stunbreaks, judge's intervention, is used in your opener.

2. If you took virtues traitline (indomitable courage), you get another stunbreak on crashing courage, but Willbenders tend to use that to go on the offensive (stab+aegis when you attack enough times protects you from any counterattacks that aren't unblockables or boon rips).

3. The last stunbreak you have left and is usually saved for stunbreaks, is contemplation of purity which you have to choose whether to use up to clear conditions when you have 5+ conditions on you and only 1 or 0 charges of f2 or use it as a stunbreak. 

Most willbenders will not take a third/fourth stunbreak, such as stand your ground, and instead take whirling wrath to guarantee they have enough dps to get the kill, because ultimately willbenders need to get a kill quickly before they're forced to use renewed focus and basically announce to their opponent that they are on their last legs.

Edited February 20 by Kuya.6495