March 19 Balance Update Preview

[mitri.3842]

44 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

I don't like you right now but I'll go ahead and admit that you're right about that. I didn't really consider them transformation abilities BUT if we're just going to call a "Transformation" literally "Any skill that changes my skills", then I suppose so. So...how about I get more specific, because Holoforge, Gunblade, Tool kits, and Elementalist weapons do replace your weapons BUT they don't remove your utility skills. Technically necro shroud is actually very good. It's far and above the asura and norn racial skills. I actually don't know how the celestial form works because I haven't even tried it in years but I think it's in line with the necro shroud.

That being said though, I'm insulted by your insinuation that the racial skills are just "Flavor" That's a kitten arguement and you're a bad person for using it. If the skills under perform then they should be fixed. Of course, there's not a shortage of those skills in the game right now but that doesn't excuse the fact that if that were the only reason they aren't used then that is a massive failing on Anets part and it's a slap in the face to us as players. Here's skills, no you can't use them without being a literal liability to everyone around you. That's unacceptable at any time and a worse answer than "We just haven't gotten to it" or "We just don't want to".

all shroud like bar swaps are coded in game as transformations, as in they overwrite other transformations be it some food items or tonics etc.

what i heard (no clue if any dev ever said that) is that anet does not want specific race being a requiremnt on lfg as a part of meta party comp, ever. With is sensible enough and hey, im not the one who decided that the solution for that is racial skills being useless/generally underwhelming so don’t say that ya are insulted by me and im a “bad person” (huh?), its just an observation on how they’ve been balanced for the past decade. Any time they would become useful in niche speedrun strats (sylvari block skill) or some one shot builds in wvw (norn bear transform) or synergized too well with some builds (confusion on technobabble) they would get nerfed soon after.  Just check wiki for update history, they are either untouched since base game or nerfed, while seemingly every single skill in game had some sorta buff or a rework.

 

 

[Polar.8634]

Since imperial impact no longer prolongs boons, endurance regen nerf in retribution will be reverted, right? Both minor traits.

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

On 2/16/2024 at 4:20 PM, Jake.7526 said:

NECRO FX TOO BIG ON SWORDS

I SAY THE FX ARE NOT BIG ENOUGH

[Zenith.7301]

While you work on making necromancer swords not hot trash, consider making mainhand dagger+warhorn for necro their secondary support boon healer weaponset alongside changes to staff and Scourge traits to be able to build a boon healer.

Necromancer already has a saturation of melee power weapons with greatsword and swords anyways, so transition the dagger to a support weapon to round out support necromancer's kit. Giving necro staff a support slant also allows the mainhand axe to shift into the dedicated ranged power DPS weapon once you decide to allow it to be a good weapon instead of garbage just because it has a tracking attack (which split pve/pvp balancing would fix).

Edited March 15 by Zenith.7301

[Tofu.1865]

On 2/17/2024 at 5:47 AM, Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365 said:

Hpw about you give the dmg back on Engi SB pulses

True, they gotta make it a Condi weapon too prolly focus more on Confusion dmg, there's really no good reason to use Shortbow right now for Engi

They also gotta give some utility or QoL to Bomb Kit, probably give Concussion Bomb a defiance break, Stun and make it a blast finisher,  And i dont see the reason why not because there's alot of specs that has loaded skills while having easier rotations than Condi Mech and Holo that uses 2-3 kit with 0 utility and lower DPS than other easier specs.

Edited March 16 by Tofu.1865

[Marxx.5021]

What a joke preview. I wonder for what these game designers are getting paid for considering how bad they are at their job.

[Tofu.1865]

Noticed that everyone is hotile towards Mechanists in both PvE and sPvP
If you use Mechanist on PvP they will ask you to change to Holo or Scrapper
In PvE like fracs they prefer DPS that has Utility (that's scrapper again)

Here are my suggested changes or addition to the patch notes above.
*Bomb Kit's Concusion Bomb - add defiance break dmg
*Recall Mech - (PvE) becomes a blast finisher and deals fire damage around the mech while recalling it, Increase Minimum Recharge to 10sec instead of 5
                          (PvP) when mech gets destroyed an explosion will occur and knockback everyone around
*Invention's Bunker Down mines will be affected by Tools' Gadgeteer

and lastly the very annoying Mechanical Genius which i dont understand since Ranger's Juvenile Pets are stronger than Mech's Golem while being able to swap pets incase when one is dying
*Mechanical Genius - Recharge Penalty down to 15% and increase the Distance threshold to 720 in PvE and 400 in PvP

This changes promotes manually controlling the Golem in PvE while providing abit of a utility for his team, and in PvP we all know how easy to kill the Golem especially after the signet nerfs rendering the mechanist useless for a long time when Overclock is in CD

And please put some Legendary weapon visual effects on Mech Commands like on Engi toolbelt skills ~_~

Edited March 17 by Tofu.1865

[SentriX.3209]

Heaven's palm should leave a fire field...I mean you slap the ground so hard that it ignites everything around, peak role play.

Also I feel like Torch 5 should apply a lil bit of burning on every tick or rework it completely into a new useful skill...yes make it a fire lasso to whip people with and immobilize or daze.

Edited March 17 by SentriX.3209

[Ashantara.8731]

Am I the only one who is super annoyed by having so-called "balance" patches every few weeks/months? I'd rather see them stick with something than constantly adjusting this and that and screwing up gameplay for some. And seriously, put those resources into better content instead.

[Marxx.5021]

There are no balance patches. Only breaking specs - fixing them - breaking them again. And this goes on for quite a while without progressing to something better.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

18 minutes ago, Marxx.5021 said:

There are no balance patches. Only breaking specs - fixing them - breaking them again. And this goes on for quite a while without progressing to something better.

You're not....entirely wrong. But that is kinda how balancing is supposed to work. Back in GW1 at least the team that did the balancing did a great job. It was simple: Watch the meta builds, and watch what doesn't get used. When something is overperforming, dial it back. When something is underperforming and not being used at all, dial it up. So you're not wrong. They do literally break the meta builds....or at least they're supposed to.

The problem right now is that they seem to have no rhyme or reason to what they do. The changes they're making could be just as accurately divined as throwing darts at a board.

[mirage.8046]

for pvp and wvw, it seems like anet will end up with 5 elite specs that grant alacrity and 5 others with quickness. 
those alacrity builds being:
renegade
chronomancer
bladesworn
willbender
mechanist

the quickness builds:
harbinger
catalyst
firebrand
chronomancer
deadeye
by extension for thief, using endless night (scepter + pistol skill #3)

if you haven't noticed, ranger tomorrow will be completely cut out from the list because druid will no longer grant alacrity in wvw and pvp. I'm not sure whether Anet has intended this, but the choices will be slim. unfortunately, deadeye and harbinger don't even come close to the utility firebrand and chronomancer have, so you can't even think about replacing them in squads. notice how guardian and mesmer sit at the same tables with two elite specs! 

yet again anet misses the bat because the real problem is the boon uptime in zergs. nerf concentration and duration of applied boons, and there wouldn't be perma boons anywhere. alacrity and quickness are not just the only "unhealthy" things either. 

Edited March 19 by mirage.8046

[Tofu.1865]

On 3/17/2024 at 9:24 AM, Tofu.1865 said:

Noticed that everyone is hotile towards Mechanists in both PvE and sPvP
If you use Mechanist on PvP they will ask you to change to Holo or Scrapper
In PvE like fracs they prefer DPS that has Utility (that's scrapper again)

Here are my suggested changes or addition to the patch notes above.
*Bomb Kit's Concusion Bomb - add defiance break dmg
*Recall Mech - (PvE) becomes a blast finisher and deals fire damage around the mech while recalling it, Increase Minimum Recharge to 10sec instead of 5
                          (PvP) when mech gets destroyed an explosion will occur and knockback everyone around
*Invention's Bunker Down mines will be affected by Tools' Gadgeteer

and lastly the very annoying Mechanical Genius which i dont understand since Ranger's Juvenile Pets are stronger than Mech's Golem while being able to swap pets incase when one is dying
*Mechanical Genius - Recharge Penalty down to 15% and increase the Distance threshold to 720 in PvE and 400 in PvP

This changes promotes manually controlling the Golem in PvE while providing abit of a utility for his team, and in PvP we all know how easy to kill the Golem especially after the signet nerfs rendering the mechanist useless for a long time when Overclock is in CD

And please put some Legendary weapon visual effects on Mech Commands like on Engi toolbelt skills ~_~

Orbital Command Strike should deal Confusion dmg and stun also since Aim Assisted Trait got 0 synergy with condi Engis
u can lower the strike dmg of it.

[HotDelirium.7984]

I think VILE VIALS adding protecting is a bit silly. The elite elixer can already do that and I had thought Harbinger sacrifices life for offence but there's just so many support skills so this role is kind of confusing.

I think it'd be neat of Vile Vials took one boon from 1 ally and maybe added to your damage. Gives this a new element of sucking the life literally out of your ally's as well as yourself.

[HotDelirium.7984]

On 3/17/2024 at 12:57 PM, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

You're not....entirely wrong. But that is kinda how balancing is supposed to work. Back in GW1 at least the team that did the balancing did a great job. It was simple: Watch the meta builds, and watch what doesn't get used. When something is overperforming, dial it back. When something is underperforming and not being used at all, dial it up. So you're not wrong. They do literally break the meta builds....or at least they're supposed to.

The problem right now is that they seem to have no rhyme or reason to what they do. The changes they're making could be just as accurately divined as throwing darts at a board.

ALL dps specs wearing dps or condi armor should ALL do the same dps. If a spec doesn't find out WHERE the bottle neck is and fix it. The end. Why does that take 10 years? 

Also, remove 3/4 of the prefixes that nobody EVER uses.

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

On 3/17/2024 at 5:19 AM, SentriX.3209 said:

Heaven's palm should leave a fire field...I mean you slap the ground so hard that it ignites everything around, peak role play.

Also I feel like Torch 5 should apply a lil bit of burning on every tick or rework it completely into a new useful skill...yes make it a fire lasso to whip people with and immobilize or daze.

Yes to HP into fire field, NO to changing the Torch 5 complete change. That’ll ruin my fire-breathing dragon RP!  Yes to burn on every tick though 😬

[ShadowKatt.6740]

5 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

ALL dps specs wearing dps or condi armor should ALL do the same dps. If a spec doesn't find out WHERE the bottle neck is and fix it. The end. Why does that take 10 years? 

Also, remove 3/4 of the prefixes that nobody EVER uses.

I'll do you one better: Remove ALL the prefixes. Remember that whole deal about gear doesn't matter? Started with GW1, carried over into GW2? Yeah, turns out that with the system they made your gear absolutely matters and this is evident BECAUSE everyone only uses three gear sets: Power, Condition Damage, or Healing Power. If you're not using one of those, then what are you even doing? So we went from Gear doesn't matter to Gear absolutely matters and because of that now all the other gear doesn't matter. And if we made a few adjustments to the attributes we could eliminate those as well. Armor should give you....Armor, and that's it. I'll go ahead and applaude them for their efforts, it's a really good system, but unfortunately just because of how players are people are going to figure out what is the one best way to do it and then that's it. Nothing else matters. So until that changes, it's going to be Gear Wars 2.

[WingSwipe.3084]

On 2/26/2024 at 1:54 PM, WingSwipe.3084 said:

For the love of Grenth do not let this buff to willbenders go through.

Willbender already have a dominant position in the pvp meta and giving them more tools is going to disincentive playing anything else.

Guardian in general already has more tools in its belt then the engineers have in every kit combined and playing against it is getting old really fast for everyone else who isn’t playing Guardian.

Giving Willbenders these tools will make them even worse side node monsters then Bladesworns at the highest point of their brokenness. You are essentially giving Willbenders a free banner execute on a 20 sec cooldown.

This is going to scare more of the already dwindling pvp population away from the game mode entirely.

I strongly urge to reconsider this and lay your focus on other professions that need the attention and updates. Guardians and Rangers are in a really good seat already, please give the other professions that kind of love and QOL updates, thank you.

Yep, first match of pvp im getting instantly executed by Heavenly palm after getting 5 cc moves blocked with teammates standing inside a 350 radius of me.

I... think a break from the game is in order for now.

[DylanLucas.6058]

Just a genuine question, how many times a year are we gonna get our builds screwed up ? Because it's starting to get a bit annoying that you got your character the way you like it, and then they "balance" the stuff again......

[XenesisII.1540]

On 3/17/2024 at 3:57 PM, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

You're not....entirely wrong. But that is kinda how balancing is supposed to work.

They should be making changes to fix outlier problems that are overperforming, or buff some weaker stuff that's not used much, if at all, to make them viable choices. This would usually involve changing numbers in most cases, damage, healing, cooldown, cast times, etc.

Not make drastic mechanical changes, or out right deleting/replacing traits, practically every balance pass that breaks builds entirely, this is usually reserve for expansion changes when there's potentially new classes or mechanics come into play, but this would usually be a period of 2 years for most games.

[Panda.1967]

On 2/16/2024 at 12:34 PM, Butterfly Kingdom.8349 said:

Bunker Down: This trait now triggers when disabling an enemy instead of when critically striking. The mine now spawns at the enemy's location instead of near the player. Reduced the internal cooldown from 4 seconds to 1 second. Increased the mine power coefficient from 0.77 to 0.95. The bandage now cleanses a condition, and its base healing has been increased from 502 to 598.

About time the mine spawn location was fixed… but changing it from on critical to on disable is an absolutely MASSIVE nerf… you just utterly gutted its use against anything that has a breakbar or is just flatout CC immune… good job Anet, you simultaneously finally listened to the engineer player community and proceeded to nerf yet anpther engineer staple onto oblivion under the guise of improving it…

[Iustitian.9176]

Feedback:
Guardian
Pistol and Sword skills: 
Good changes for PvE. But there should be a debuff for Peacekeeper (Pistol skill 2) for all game modes too. It has too much strong and short duration burning and rules as easy damage skill.

"Feel My Wrath!": 
Superspeed was not necessary. 

Mesmer
Sword of Decimation:
It's still no good damage option for Mesmers. Phantasmal Disenchanter and Rain of Swords are doing much more damage. Sword of Decimation should do daze for 2 seconds and do 20 % more damage to get a place in builds.
 

Ranger
Carnivore:
Over 3000 Life Siphon with a minimal power scale every 1/4 seconds for me and my pet... there must be a bug in the power scaling. But it's definitly a powerful option. 
 

Revenant
Hammer Bolt and Drop the Hammer: 
Very good improvements to the casting time. The recharge of Coalescence of Ruin feels very useless because the skill already have a very low recharge time (4 seconds). 

Blossoming Aura and Otherworldly Bond: 
It would be useful to link the skill to yourself to get the boons/barriers around yourself and when playing solo. 

Legendary Renegade summons: 
Very good improvements. Darkrazor's Daring got a big cc nerf, but Razorclaw's Rage got a big buff. 

Band Together (new renegade mechanic for instant and enhanced Legendary Renegade skills): 
It would be better to manage if the Band Together buff would be active while Soulcleave's Summit is active instead of after every summon. 

 

Detected bugs: 
Elementalist
Arcane Wave: 
In the description is the recharge information missing if the trait Arcane Lightning is not equipped. 

Guardian
Glacial Heart: 
In the description is "Number of Allied Targets: 5". But in no other part is a note about healing allied members.

Repose: 
In the description is "Number of Targets: 5" and a radius value. But the skill isn't a attack anymore. 

Roiling Light and Quick Retribution: 
Range is still 300 instead of 450 what it should be after the update. 
 

Revenant
Band Together (new renegade mechanic for instant and enhanced Legendary Renegade skills):
There is no buff shown that let you know about it

Breakrazor's Daring:
No value of pulses or duration in the description

Soulcleave's Summit: 
Skill ends after 25 seconds instead of when energy falls to zero
 

Thief
Deadly Aim: 
The trait has a cooldown what makes no sense.
 

Warrior
Wild Blow: 
In the description is no note about unblockable and there is still the note that the skill knocks down instead of dazing the enemy.

Many skill tooltips still can't be completly read ingame because all the chain skill descriptions are bigger than the hight of the most screens. 

Edited March 20 by Iustitian.9176

[Varis.5467]

Hey @Cal Cohen.2358 good try nerfing chrono again. Just know we will still beat you on it even if you played your yet-again-buffed willbender and evasion stomp. 

[lvis.3824]

Coming from a Thief main since launch >>

I'm having a hard time understanding why the balance changes always seem to target the Thief class negatively without addressing the core issues. Since the game's launch, we've been locked into using the Trickery Trait line, and this issue has yet to be acknowledged or addressed. It's as if no developer has spent even an hour playing as a Thief; otherwise, they would immediately recognize the problem.

Skills that consume more than half of your initiative leave you idle, waiting to use your next skill. This is while Rangers enjoy the luxury of recharging all their abilities or receiving multiple charges. It seems like button mashing in every other profession wasn't deemed sufficient. Moreover, the recent updates grant every single boon in the game through mere attacks, while also automatically applying every condition. A 2-second chill on auto-attack for Necromancers? No issue there. Yet, Thief skills now require even more initiative, leaving me utterly speechless.

I had intended to support the game further by purchasing the Black Lion Patron Pack, but I've decided against it. While it might not make a significant difference, it's the least I can do as a dissatisfied customer.

 

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

On 2/16/2024 at 12:34 PM, Butterfly Kingdom.8349 said:

Harbinger

• Wicked Corruption: Increased the damage modifier per blight stack from 0.5% to 1% in PvE only. Increased the critical-strike damage modifier from 10% to 12.5% in PvE only.

can you change this to increase the damage modifier per blight stack from 1% to 1.5% and the critical-strike damage modifier from 12.5% to 15%?

as of now, Harbinger is slightly behind Reaper in DPS (both with full Berserker gear and GS) so with this small change, maybe it can catch up. However, Harbinger still has the problem of losing 37.5% of its health, so just matching the Reaper’s DPS won't be enough to compensate such punishment.

maybe change Blood Magic (Life Stealing) or Death Magic (Death's Carapace) traits to work better with Blight so they're worth taking?