Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Are Coming Soon! We've Made Updates Based on Your Feedback.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Our design team has been hard at work on expanded weapon proficiencies since the beta event back in November. Combat Designer Taylor Brooks has an overview of your feedback from that event and the changes we're making to the weapons here.

For more details and a preview of the March balance update, watch our Twitch livestream this Friday, February 16, at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8)!

[TheDetective.8172]

Is it possible to make the visual indicator for bullets on Elementalist appear on the UI anywhere **but** the buff bar?

That location is already so incredibly crowded. I feel like Ele would benefit from some sort of Mesmer clone/Deadeye Malice UI indicator so you can tell at a quicker glance which bullets you do or don’t have.

 

 

- Day 1,000 of the Catalyst Jade Sphere AoE attack indicator being the wrong size when taking the radius increase trait. 

[Slartibartfast.5416]

7 minutes ago, TheDetective.8172 said:

Is it possible to make the visual indicator for bullets on Elementalist appear on the UI anywhere **but** the buff bar?

That location is already so incredibly crowded. I feel like Ele would benefit from some sort of Mesmer clone/Deadeye Malice UI indicator so you can tell at a quicker glance which bullets you do or don’t have.

 

Agreed... The aged UI is definitely holding people back at this point.  We're getting to the point where we might need a WoW style bossmod or something like that.

Edited February 14 by Slartibartfast.5416

[LichOverlord.6329]

As a Mesmer, I'm pleased with the changes you've made

The rifle did indeed feel somewhat clunky with some of its casting time, so having it be more snappy is a welcome sight

The best change has to be two charges on the sniper skill, though. The rifle had somewhat poor cloke generation and it's damage was too low - even for a support weapon - so you made a much-needed change and hit two birds with one stone on that front!

As always, I love the transparency, and it's great knowing that you all are taking in our feedback and bringing it on board. Love you guys, this was a great update! 

[Kanaima.2546]

Quote

Sometimes ally targeting is not a good match for a skill, and this is one of those cases.

"Sometimes."

Meanwhile me as a Specter wrestling with action cam toggle and take personal target keybinds or the squad UI to pick friendly targets out of a crowd without it selecting an enemy several inches away from the crosshair.

Legitimately happy for Warrior mains though. Sorry Revenants. 

Edited February 14 by Kanaima.2546

[Slartibartfast.5416]

10 minutes ago, Kanaima.2546 said:

"Sometimes."

Meanwhile me as a Specter wrestling with action cam toggle and take personal target keybinds or the squad UI to pick friendly targets out of a crowd without it selecting an enemy several inches away from the crosshair.

Legitimately happy for Warrior mains though. Sorry Revenants. 

Until they fix the aged UI, yeah.. they should probably leave allied targeting out of the game.  It's just a total mess in PvE.

[Teknomancer.4895]

Quote

Lastly, we realize that the portal functionality of Singularity Shot can be harder to utilize in non-organized play. We added a flash effect when the portal is opened to catch other players’ attention and hopefully alert them to take it!

Adding "a flash effect" to already over-saturated combat visual effects will not fix the complaints about how clunky the skill is in the first place. The word "hopefully" in this release update doesn't inspire much confidence.

Plus, the most popular suggestion for Phantasmal Sharpshooter was a second phantasm like Phantasmal Warlock , not a second ammo charge.

Looks like the Mesmer rifle still misses the mark.

[Geronmy.3298]

This might sound salty, but i say it with my best intentions.

Thanks to SoTO Untamed go access to a new build thanks to Staff. Build that you are improving buffing the new mace ambush. Untamed, the quickness dps or just dps spec became a healer because it got access to new weapons you are also supporting. And i am glad for Untamed players for getting new toys to play with.

Why on the six grace are you so against Mirage being a healer at all? Are we destined to be a pathetic alac dps and a janky and unreliable condi dps for the rest of the game's life? Rifle has obviously been designed for 1 spec in mind and that one is Chrono. It will not be hard at all to just add alacrity to the rifle's ambush and some other boons like some prot and might (To be the counterpart of staff).

You have shown support to new support builds born from the weaponmaster specialization but constantly try to leave Mirage out of it.

[Padrion.7382]

It seems they thought very hard about what weapon would be the least fitting for any given class and then took that one. But better than no weapon I guess. Still waiting for entirely new weapon classes. How about crossbows, polearms, flails, some asura sci-fi stuff?

[TexZero.7910]

Hey while we're here fixing projectiles and their wonky interaction Warrior says hello.
Please fix Flaming Flurry, it's only been a way nastier offender of random projectile says no for longer than axe has even been a pipe dream.

[Sunshine.5014]

2 cents for Ele:

• Please have a dedicate UI for the bullet. Please DO NOT add another buff bar icon for the love of the Six!
• Please consider having the same cooldown for both Pistol #2 and Pistol #3 in all attunement. Pistol is advertised as "decide whether you want more offense or more defense". If there is a cooldown mismatch, it's rarely a choice anymore. You would always want to use the low cooldown one first so that it's available for another use before you switch attunement.

[Mattsta.8694]

I feel like Ele pistols would benefit from being simplified into 'Using skill 2 or 3 upgrades the other skill until use or attunement change.' and then just use the skill flip to show that it is the upgraded version.

Also, "we felt ally targeting could improve [skill]" said no player ever.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

The Warrior changes are very welcome, thank you.

Would it be possible to get an update if Bullet Catcher will be changed so auto-attack doesn't interrupt it?

[LichOverlord.6329]

26 minutes ago, Mattsta.8694 said:

I feel like Ele pistols would benefit from being simplified into 'Using skill 2 or 3 upgrades the other skill until use or attunement change.' and then just use the skill flip to show that it is the upgraded version.

Ele players already had to get their degrees in quantum mathematics at the college of synergetics to play weaver, why put all that effort to waste? 

[Vidit.7108]

"Sometimes ally targeting is not a good match for a skill, and this is one of those cases."
It has never been a good match for most of the skills it has been introduced in. I've seen more Chrono Healers in PvE the last month than Specter Healers ever. And this includes the times I went out of my way to play with a Specter Healer. Please remove it from both Rev and Thief Scepter.

[Cameirus.8407]

nice to see a response, but...

shortbow for engi still sucks. No one wants MORE ground targetted aoe...we have grenades, mortar and even bombs are like that in stacked group content. just stop it already.

and, mesmer...no mention at all of how useless rifle mirage ambush is with it lower range attack which will miss and clones will miss with most of the time.

 

oh, and anet, here is a tip, ally targetting DOES NOT BELONG in this game. its awful, the interface and mechanics just dont support it.

Edited February 14 by Cameirus.8407

[Bish.8627]

Might be just me so aplogies if so. But the language with rev scepter, all the changes are what I mostly found not effective with it, but the one thing not clear is if the change to auto attack means rev can now deliver barrier without hitting an enemy?

[frazazel.7501]

This feedback is entirely from a PvE perspective.

I appreciate the considerations for Heal Untamed with ranger maces. I'm still concerned about Nature's Strength, though. I'm concerned that it will increase damage and healing numbers too high if it's too easy to use, and that it will be a non-feature if it's too hard to use. I would prefer it if Nature's Strength gave less increased damage/healing (or maybe none at all), while keeping the interesting mace cooldown refresh.

As it is now, I foresee mace being used in a dps build to stack Nature's Strength, then weapon swap into a higher-damage weapon set, hit Sic Em and all the big burst skills, adding onto your biggest burst. This doesn't feel like the playstyle that's been advertised with ranger maces.

I'd very much prefer it if Nature's Strength didn't increase damage. Give it boon duration instead, or maybe make the bonus damage only apply to your mace skills? Then the cooldown until you can get stacks again should be at most 10s, so that it's always ready to stack again when you swap back to this weapon.

Reducing Nature's Strength stacks from 6 to 5 will mean that a player running dual maces will be able to run through their skillbar once, hit 5 stacks, refresh all their mace skills, and then hit each skill a second time, without any time spent on the autoattack. That sounds like a big change in how the weapon will feel, and maybe that's the intended reward for running dual maces?

I'm also concerned about using only 1 mace at a time. In particular, OH mace without MH mace is probably still going to feel bad. You won't be able to hit 5 stacks until you rotate through your high-cooldown skills twice (probably with weapon swaps in between), and it's unclear if it will be possible to maintain your stacks until those skills come back off cooldown again.

[Alik.9651]

Quote

Unfortunately, axe projectiles were a lot of things—”consistent” was not one of them. They had a bad habit of following terrain in weird ways, often completely missing your target. We’ll be updating the logic of all axe missiles to work more similarly to normal projectiles as well as increasing their velocity.

What a fix for Revanant's shortbow waiting for 9 years ...

[Mythos.6923]

I was hoping they would add a movement placing skill on engi shortbow or at least superspeed to keep up with everyone but I do not think they will do this. Still holding out hope though.

[Ashen.2907]

The most common comment about Engineer shortbow that I saw was that the class doesn't need another ground targeted explosions kit. 

[Panda.1967]

Ya’ll have missed the biggest problems with both Elementalist Pistol and Thief Axe… Both of these weapons need to be made into offhands. Their current designs are terrible as mainhand weapons but are perfect as offhand weapons.

 

also… the upkeep skill on Revenant Scepter could have worked, the problem was the absurdly high -3 cost. It was mentioned multiple times before, during, and after the beta that the only way it can be remotely functional as an upkeep weapon skill is if the cost is -1 or -2 at most. Removing the upkeep and making it a duration skill may be good though… we’ll see when we get to play with it again.

Edited February 16 by Panda.1967

[Astralporing.1957]

On 2/14/2024 at 10:26 PM, Cameirus.8407 said:

oh, and anet, here is a tip, ally targetting DOES NOT BELONG in this game. its awful, the interface and mechanics just dont support it.

The saddest part is that they should know that. After all, interface and mechanics not supporting it is completely intentional.

From the very beginning they wanted players to "target" support effects via careful character positioning, not by using targetted skills. As a result not only they did not have any such skills originally, but they also made the original party UI intentionally not very informative (to put it extremely mildly), and dropped the GW1 idea of targetting individual players by clicking on their name on the party list. Now, with the advent of healer role in HoT they brought back HP bars to squad UI, but most of the other in-built design parts meant to prevent player-targetted support from happening (or at least make it as annoying and convoluted as possible) are still there.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The saddest part is that they should know that. After all, interface and mechanics not supporting it is completely intentional.

From the very beginning they wanted players to "target" support effects via careful character positioning, not by using targetted skills. As a result not only they did not have any such skills originally, but they also made the original party UI intentionally not very informative (to put it extremely mildly), and dropped the GW1 idea of targetting individual players by clicking on their name on the party list. Now, with the advent of healer role in HoT they brought back HP bars to squad UI,

I like how "now" means "last 8-9 years" and consists of vastly more time than the game existed without it.

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

but most of the other in-built design parts meant to prevent player-targetted support from happening (or at least make it as annoying and convoluted as possible) are still there.

What do you mean by that?

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

I like how "now" means "last 8-9 years" and consists of vastly more time than the game existed without it.

That was "now" used as an emphasis, not to describe time. Although i can see how it can be read otherwise. It might also be due to english not being my primary language, i might have messed something up.

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

What do you mean by that?

I mentioned part of it already. The key points would be:

* no skills that are meant to target specific players

* group member list not showing boons or hp bars

* inability to select players by clicking on their name on the group/squad list

* no option to make/use shortcuts to directly select specific party/squad members or reliably "cycle" through party/squad list.

All 4 things were completely intentional decisions on Anet's part, and the reason was that they wanted to kill even a sligthest possibility of specialized healers of the GW1 Monk style from emerging (even if they themselves did not intend to create them, they knew some players at least might try to create builds for such purpose)

Point 2 does not apply to squads, and point 1 went away at some point (primarily with Specter), but the last two points remain mostly unchanged as artifacts of a design that was meant to actively prevent "ally targetting" from being useable. Sure, you can use personal targetting for that (which was introduced a year after EoD, primarily to ducttape Specter targetting issues), but that's still extremely clunky and does not solve most of the issues.

.