March 19 Balance Update Preview

[Phyxrgon.7305]

Where in the hell is the boon culling/removal of excess boon generation if you're going to mindlessly nerf boon rip?

[Carnifex.3275]

Ok let me get this straight. You nerfed quickness deadeye in 2023 (which was completely needed, it was overperforming), but by doing that u accidentally killed power dps deadeye with premeditation and iron sight nerfs (10% nerf). Now - you are reviving quickness deadeye but still leaving power dps deadeye as is? 

Kinda funny no? The goal was to nerf qDE. Now they goal is to revive qDE. But somehow pDE was and will be the one in the end who actually paid the price. 🤣 

Edited February 17 by Carnifex.3275

[Triptaminas.4789]

After long night sleep i would like to retract my rage posts. 

 

Im really proud u guys grew a pair and pulled the plug on alac, it was long overdue, i tend to believe it was not easy thing to do

 

For my chrono nothing really changes asides slightly less stab (if unstripped it used to provided 90% uptime so yes, overpowered as kitten and not needed in such quantity) and less healing, yet my chrono was rivaling and surpassing druids pretty often according to healaddon data which is also kinda overkill considering the rest of package... chaos aura uptime now can be kept at smtg like ~95% uptime i never seen other chrono to pull that off but for me personally it wont really change that much as its not really need to be present 95% of combat time.

I got angry because build diversity... u cornering people to guardians again, so many play guardian in wvw not because it is fun to play, but because it is effective and braindead, when u ask for firebrands everyone try to weasle out of this because it is a jail, boring, mindbreaking jail, chrono is complex class, with continuum split and (redacted) combo im able to produce x4 access to grandmaster trait proc, that is not easy thing to pull off, it required lot of screen-time on class that wasnt meta but was fun to play, people actually got interested in class, it was nice thing to see. 

Imma arcdps log nerd, so i well aware how little buttons avg players click, they wont be playing chronos, its simply way too complex, it be considered kitten support that be placed in subgroups with soulbeasts and untamed's, strip chrono will completely disappear, not that null field was that powerful... (i personally didnt used it at all for strip chronos while doing the x2 of strips other chronos was doing, consistently, but null a tool people and whoever own those metabuild websites rely on, which is far from most efficient yet its most obvious choice) but because it was easy to execute and relatively effective with no skill cap requirement, and that is what actually create build diversity in this game, the ease of access.  

Please hear me out, absolutely nobody wants to play the firebrand support, nobody, u cant find a single wvw person that enjoys playing firebrand, and they never will unless complete redesign of class, whoever claims its fun to play is a troll and must be ignored. 

Btw improved alac post last update is negative trait with quickness grandmaster because of "flow of time" nerf, and without outside alac provision (which u now cut) the cd's will be rekting all blob chronos. 

Please stop smoking meth and lay off from guardian buffing once in a while, as we getting back to same boring support meta and cementing chinese gvg war of attrition even more. 

Who thought nerfing strips to the degree its nerfed now is a good idea? how the skill que's and infra doing? very healthy right? lol, lmao even, whoever push the boonball meta so far should be laid off for financial sabotage and malicious behavior because it not only ruining the balance but stressing the infra to degree we have 15s skill que's and alzhaimer mode during resets. Dude/dudete clearly doesnt know a thing about connection in between players during multiplayer game and what data is send in between, current course causes issues from every angle i see, and i cant think of reason on how this is beneficial for game mode and game as a whole, maybe im just stupid tho.

 

P.s Do you (balance team) have guardian logo tattoos on your shoulders? I can pay for them if u dont, seriously contact me and i send 10k for each one of you to get those tattoos on livestream, i send before the deed if u publicly accept it. 

Edited February 17 by Triptaminas.4789

[Rym.1469]

Halo,

Could the Stab mantra for Mesmer get an allied-only nerf to stab duration mayhaps? So it still has 5s for mesmer themselves. Not a fan of killing it off fro all mesmer builds because of Boon Chrono abuse.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Engineer

- Automated Medical Response: After the shield changes, this was overdue. The old trait was not very useful to begin with. Regeneration on heal-toolbelt sounds good in theory. But the usefulness depends on the boonduration and the cooldown of the trait. Even if you mess it up, a lot of people probably are going to switch from Overshield.
- Mecha Legs: I am 95 % certain who gave you that idea. Not a very good one. Not the first time. What are your plans with the other classes passive speed enhancements?
- Bunker Down: Turret Engineer gets a buff. lol
- Mechanical Genius: Does this change apply to all game-modes? You may have to split the recharge penalty for each game-mode in the long term. 

Guardian

- "Feel My Wrath!": This looks disturbing. I guess Guardian will get more sources of Superspeed in the near future.
- Redemption & Glacial Heart: Yep. Guardian is about to become the next Scrapper. 

This is very disturbing. You will not allow both classes to have the same abilities. So you are going to remove them from Scrapper in favor of your beloved Guardian. I'm not surprised, we have reached the peak with Scrapper a few weeks ago and I am constantly waiting for the massive nerf-hammer (pun intended) to end our perfect run. The problem for me is, that you always used a nuke to balance us, when we became 'too strong'. It always ended in the total destruction of the spec. Rendering us weaker than common NPCs. Do you really want to go that path again?

[Awn.1327]

Please take a long look at the current state of the WvW fight meta. The current best setup is 3 to 4 supports and 1-2 dps in every subgroup. This is incredibly boring and static - to the point that fights are just 2 groups standing mostly still on top of each other and pressing some buttons until one group dies. The meta is the way it is because the burst damage from the 1-2 dps builds is so high that it still can bring players to downstate in a single hit (or sub-second timeframe). Because of these outliers - mostly holosmith overheat and berserker arc divider, but I bet there are a few others left with silly coefficients, medium range and multiple targets - groups want to be extremely tanky and can get away with very few damage dealers.

One way to get out of this situation, as I see it, would be to nerf down these few extreme skills which will force groups to bring more damage dealers if they want to get any kills at all.

What you did (or will do) with this patch, instead, is to nerf the support (slightly) which will prompt groups to bring even more support players.

Edited February 17 by Awn.1327

[Triptaminas.4789]

12 minutes ago, Awn.1327 said:

Please take a long look at the current state of the WvW fight meta. The current best setup is 3 to 4 supports and 1-2 dps in every subgroup. This is incredibly boring and static - to the point that fights are just 2 groups standing mostly still on top of each other and pressing some buttons until one group dies. The meta is the way it is because the burst damage from the 1-2 dps builds is so high that it still can bring players to downstate in a single hit (or sub-second timeframe). Because of these outliers - mostly holosmith overheat and berserker arc divider, but I bet there are a few others left with silly coefficients, medium range and multiple targets - groups want to be extremely tanky and can get away with very few damage dealers.

One way to get out of this situation, as I see it, would be to nerf down these few extreme skills which will force groups to bring more damage dealers if they want to get any kills at all.

 

https://imgur.com/a/Dn12jKa  Clearly this is oke right? Just measly damage, better nerf boon strips, well of corruption is too strong should be 1pulse in wvw only with 100s cd else its simply overkill. 

[armormaniac.2957]

Bunker down changes are neat except for needing to disable to proc it. I would like the buffs to it but keep it to critical strike procs instead of CC.

[Urud.4925]

Engineer: It seems the engineer became the new warrior (with its banners), a class that you are trying to figure out where to put (kind of like the thief always has been). The change to Mechanical genius is welcomed, now I can play adps also as kiter against Sabetha in a pug squad for example, it's less punishing. Glue shot on the other hand... this skill had a cooldown of 30 seconds once, then lowered to 25, then to 20, then to 12, and now back to 20. It feels like you are trying to get it right by randomly changing it. This is mainly a CC skill, useful in PvE against Samarog or Gorseval. 12 seconds was a too short CD for 3s of immobilize, I agree, but I'd lower it from 20s to 18s, reducing the damage as compensation.

Guardian: I don't play it much, so my opinion means nothing, but an instant finisher on a 20s CD seems quite strong in PvP. Maybe not that useful in WvW, but in sPvP, as duelist, the new Heaven's Palm seems quite OP.

Revenant: Another profession that I don't play much, so I leave it to players who play it more, for detailed feedback. I usually use it as alac healer in PvE, and being able to cast my AoE from far was nice. Now this seems it won't be possible. On the one hand it makes the utility skills faster to cast, on the other hand we have to press it twice to have the additional buff. For someone who doesn't play it as main profession, this seems annoying. Some of the new utilities have 3-4 stages to remember: too many for filthy casuals 😄

Thief: As main thief, I like the change to the critical skill tree. The dps on the dummy won't increase, but it's less punishing to play in real PvE scenarios, like the change to mechanical genius (I doubt I will see more non-specter thieves in group contents though). I liked less the 10% buff on pistol/pistol thieves, that it's already the dumbest spec to play and Unload already received a big buff last time. Making a spec less punishing to play is a thing, boosting 1-button specs is a different thing.

[connor.2180]

Wvw Scourge nerfs too harsh, the cooldowns OR alac removal would have been appropriate. Both is overkill. Alongside the nerfs to mesmer we find boonstrips being pushed further and further away from the meta. Nothing will stop the boonballs. 

Also Relic of the Ice needs addressing in WvW, the coefficient is clearly bugged and does ridiculous damage. 

[Lion.6590]

19 hours ago, Butterfly Kingdom.8349 said:

Relic of Fireworks: Fixed an issue that could prevent some projectile skills from triggering this relic's effect.

Relic of the Thief still has issues with certain weapon skills and won't trigger correctly, the ones I am aware of are:
For Revenant they are: Phantom's Onslaught and Imperial Guard into True Strike.
For Ranger it is: Swoop, Counterattack into Counterattack Kick, Overbearing Smash follow-up strike in both normal and unleashed modes and all Unleashed Ambush attacks although those can be debatable whether they should or not proc the relic, they are still a weapon skill attack that can only be used on a 9 second cooldown window so technically they do cover the requisites for the relic activation.

[disForm.2837]

Ok Anet, if you don't know what to do with Scourge is fine, just don't call it "balance". 

Scourge was already phased out from competitive WvW groups after the massive F4 nerf, but in March will be completely deleted from the game mode. 

[hook.8479]

After killing the Firebrand, now you continue to destroy the scourge.
You can promote the abusive CC and boon generator without bring back viable/balanced ways to handle it. (strip/break)
In the same time, you can't even fix or let free some cheated trait or spell that cause unwanted SideEffect or unbalanced behavior (40K damage burst, heal burst, insta strip ... ).

Well, we have turn from skills levels to spamming war(hardware difference & server ping difference).
Don't forget where we are 🤮

Will it be possible to skip our brain in the future ?

[leet.2519]

I dont think guardian and elementalist need those buffs. 

[SleepyBat.9034]

16 hours ago, Rauderi.8706 said:

Um, Mechanist? Not an engi main or anything, but this is an odd choice.

Wouldn't it just proc on the Mech F1 attack?

[trixantea.2795]

Quote

• Signets of Suffering: This trait now also causes signet skills to steal life from enemies they strike.

Wouldn't be better just to make signets passive effect work in shroud like before?

Edited February 17 by trixantea.2795

[SleepyBat.9034]

14 hours ago, TyrantPuppy.1893 said:

Why is [Glacial Heart] going to trigger on Chill??? Does Guardian have chill on it's kit LITERALLY ANYWHERE?? Flow Stabilizer still gives Fury not Stability. Don't make the excuse of "it's in the name."

Hammer two gets an AoE chill when you take that trait. Also, some relics/traits apply chill too.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

*Sniffs*

Hm.. what is that familiar smell?
Ah yes, of course, more ele buffs, seems we can't have a patch without them..
As if Catas and Tempests weren't disgusting enough in spvp..

Edited February 17 by ZeftheWicked.3076

[Morvar.9864]

I challenge devs to actually play other but their own favorite classes till the next balance batch. Dead specializations don't really get fix in this current way.

[Codename T.2847]

1 hour ago, GenerationX.9178 said:

I dont think guardian and elementalist need those buffs. 

I mean, sword elementalist needs to take any help it can get xD I agree tho, the water trident buff is not that necessary since there is already *just* enough damage on scepter IMO

Edit: also, that elemental bastion buff in WvW is disgusting

Edited February 17 by Codename T.2847

[Rupurdoo.8056]

I'm too ignorant on the intricacies of the other classes to commentate, however as someone who's recently invested in being a Revenant main my thoughts are:

• I appreciate the push to have the Renegade Stance reworked to be viable in the context of PvP / WvW. These potential updates read as good news, however I... have no idea if these changes are what the spec needs or not. This sentiment is in no way facetious, but sincere, as I've never dared to play Renegade in a competitive environment. One look at the skills and I knew it'd be too awkward and clunky to survive. What I can say though is that: the Revenant has thee fewest utility skills overall and the least customization for healing & elite skill options among all the classes, so it cannot afford an error in stance selection or even single stance option to be of low quality when compared to it's peers.

(Off topic, but on the note of stance improvement, what I believe is craved more than anything is more stance options so every build isn't pigeonholed into the singular stance their build would have to have to function; I.E. Mallyx for condi, Ventari for healer, and I'm saying that even as someone who enjoys these stances)

• I do not appreciate the nerfs to Vindicator and Ventari. This stance and specialization combination is one of the better support options in WvW for Revenant. It's difficult enough to micromanage your energy, your tablet, and the position of everyone around you, so the last thing Ventari needs is to be made less viable. Meanwhile, for Vindicator, dodge rolling is a quintessential part of it's traitline-- so removing the boons to allies from Imperial Impact not only hurts the build, but also removes what makes it a unique playstyle. In my experience Dodge Rolling on allies was interesting because it's so contrary to how Dodge Rolls are typically used, and made you gauge whether or not to be greedy to boon up your allies for a skirmish or reserve your Dodge Rolls to escape/survive. If a nerf is warranted for Imperial Impact, perhaps make the boons to allies have lesser duration than boons to self.

[GeraldBC.4927]

You're actually looking into making power harbinger viable? Yes, great, perfect. I was wondering what the idea with that whole trait line was, it's not like anyone uses it for anything right now. If the strike damage trait lines get some major buffs, along with a proper ranged power weapon, necro might finally have a power quickness option. Maybe even a pure power option with a ranged shroud. 

Edited February 17 by GeraldBC.4927

[ShatteredStars.6548]

1 hour ago, GenerationX.9178 said:

I dont think guardian and elementalist need those buffs. 

they have the info internally, we don't.

[Katary.7096]

19 hours ago, Butterfly Kingdom.8349 said:

Renegade

 

• Legendary Renegade summons are no longer targetable.
• Soulcleave's Summit: Reduced the casting time from 1 second to 0.5 seconds. Reduced the energy cost from 10 to 5. Reduced the energy upkeep cost from 6 to 5. In addition to its current effects, Lieutenant Ofela Soulcleave will now strike nearby enemies and heal nearby allies whenever another warband member is summoned.
• Breakrazor's Bastion, Darkrazor's Daring, Razorclaw's Rage, and Icerazor's Ire have been reworked. These skills will now grant an initial effect when summoned, then they perform a new skill. Activating these skills also triggers Band Together.
• Band Together: Your next Legendary Renegade skill activates instantly and is enhanced. Activating a Legendary Renegade skill in this way does not trigger Band Together again.
• New skill behavior is as follows:
  • Breakrazor's Bastion: Grants resolution to nearby allies when summoned, then performs a skill that heals nearby allies with three small pulses and one large pulse. The final pulse grants resolution to nearby allies and additionally grants barrier to nearby allies when enhanced.
  • Darkrazor's Daring: Grants protection to nearby allies when summoned, then performs a skill that dazes nearby enemies. This skill also grants resistance to nearby allies when enhanced.
  • Razorclaw's Rage: Enhances nearby allies' attacks with bleeding when summoned, then performs an attack that inflicts bleeding on enemies in the area. This attack also inflicts torment when enhanced.
  • Icerazor's Ire: Inflicts vulnerability on nearby enemies when summoned, then performs an attack that throws three projectiles at nearby enemies, inflicting torment, vulnerability, and immobilize. These projectiles also inflict chilled when this skill is enhanced.

First things first: I think I will like the new behavior of the Renegade stance skills and the "Band Together" effect, but I am going to need to play it before I can say anything with certainty. While I can see the potential for this new system in which players will want to "burn" a relatively low value skill to boost a more important one, it maybe a bit much to incentivize players to activate the elite skill first as well.

Breakrazor's Bastion: The base version of the new skill seems to be a decent downgrade from what is currently in the game. And the enhanced version is only slightly better. As of right now Breakrazor's Bastion has a large initial heal followed by weaker healing pulses as well as a unique effect which reduces incoming condition damage by 50%. I am sure resolution is intended to replace the unique effect as both of them do basically the same thing but resoultion being a boon is integrated better into Guild Wars 2's buff and debuff systems. That being said, I urge you to consider leaving Breakrazor's Bastion with a large initial heal instead of putting it at the very end of the skill's effect.

Darkrazor's Daring: I assume this will no longer be the nemesis of breakbars in PvE? That is probably going to hurt support-oriented Renegade builds quite a bit. The initial cast granting protection is notably unimpressive in the face of "All for One" existing. Perhaps this skill's base version could grant a different boon instead? Maybe stability?

Razorclaw's Rage: Currently you want to drop this ability on top of your allies, after the update goes live you will want drop this on top of your allies and enemies. That sounds a lot more restrictive as both friends and foes need to be right next to each other. And I say that as someone who appreciates the fact that this skill will now deliver an actual hit to enemies. Perhaps the bleeding enhancing effect could be centered on the Renegade player while the damaging attack is centered on the warband member?

Icerazor's Ire: Where to start with this one? Can you set the order of the 3 projectiles to have the vulnerability one fire first, so that the remaining 2 get to benefit from the damage bonus? Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about the elephant in the room: The synergy this enhanced skill has with "Abyssal Chill" and large hitboxes. If I understand this ability's behavior correctly it fires 3 projectiles at every enemy in range, up to a maximum of 5 targets, which translates to a maximum of 15 total projectiles. The enhanced version inflicts chill on every hit and if the skill is placed inside the hitbox of a large foe all projectiles will hit that one target. Meaning that given the right circumstances Renegades could trigger the effect of "Abyssal Chill" 15 times on a single enemy, inflicting 15 stacks of torment for 6 seconds at 0% condition duration. Are you sure you want to make this possible?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

• Empathic Bond: This trait has moved to the master tier, replacing Shared Anguish. This trait now cleanses conditions when swapping pets instead of when using a Beast skill.
• Carnivore: This trait has been added to the grandmaster tier slot previously held by Empathic Bond. Steal health from enemies when you or your pet disable them.

This change will greatly harm several Ranger builds. Non Druid Rangers do not get access to Stability outside of "Strength of the Pack!" - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W), Dolyak Stance - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W), Forest's Fortification - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W). These are also extremely short lived Stability durations. The ability to play pet swaps with Shared Anguish to get a single stack of Stability to counter-offense in competitive modes against high levels of CC like from Spellbreaker or Holo or while playing into Shock Aura Share, is the one thing remaining that allows Ranger builds to remain viable. If you remove that Stability from Shared Anguish, Ranger will become entirely dysfunctional amongst a roster of classes/builds who are pumping more and more and more Stability & CC in recent patching.

Everything else keeps getting buffed with Stability sources. Stop nerfing Rangers, especially in areas that you KNOW is going to cripple them detrimentally.

The problem was listed as against Druid, not Ranger, Soulbeast or Untamed. Get your patching right and stop making changes that target already suboptimal classes/builds.

Edited February 18 by Trevor Boyer.6524