Whoa balance update march 19

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Also agreed. At the very least I've always thought it was strange that Air's never had some sort of skill to blow boons off the target; like, that kitten is right there, but naturally Warriors got the GW2 version of Winds of Disenchantment for some reason.

Probably because the GW1 namesake was a dervish skill. The name's a bit of a misnomer anyway - the visual is a bubble rather than a wind effect. Feels like they used the name for historical significance, but the only connection is that the both remove buffs.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

11 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The nerfs weren't recent by any stretch of the imagination, but air overload damage has been reduced by... let me switch to calculater mode... a little more than 30% since it was introduced (first the reduced by 10%, then they nerfed again by 7%, and then they reduced the number of hits from 17 to 14). Combined with power creep to the rest of the game, that's how it dropped to 'strong autoattack' territory. It used to be pretty strong in its own right.

its difficult to say because without access to sword, overload air still wouldve been considered strong in comparison to the rest of its available toolkit. now you can even run hammer and increase its dmg by ~25% (10% from 2h wep strength, 15% from flame wheel) and maybe turn it back into a decent skill worth spamming

temps added dmg traits also partially fail to buff the overloads themselves, which is a bit of a strange design choice

11 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Regarding people not regarding something as LI if it has any bar-switching at all... well, that's a definition, I guess? Build sites do tend to list two-attunement weaver as LI, though, and I'm inclined to agree - it is a relatively simple build to run, and not just by piano profession standards. Other professions do mostly have their own complexities, after all.

bar-switching makes the assumption that the player knows when they should be switching... which assumes that they remember their rotation and are actually following it. at that point, the player already has enough mental capacity to play regular non-LI builds, albeit slowly and or slightly modified (e.g. no weave self). what makes non-changing skillbars very LI in my books is the fact that removes the rotation altogether and uses a priority list instead

a simple rotation is still a rotation the player needs to keep track of. theres no telling where they might lose track of which part of rotation that they are in, or accidentally skip over several key skills that causes their dps to plummet because they are unable to access it anymore

[draxynnic.3719]

My impression was that LI was more of a thing for people with physical challenges operating a high-APM build.

Even so, I do find two-attunement weaver pretty simple mentally too. Use the skills you have. Switch when they're on cooldown and/or when swapping is available (such builds often get a lot of mileage out of on-swap traits). Repeat. There are some skills you want to prioritise, and some you want to use in a particular order, but it's not a big deal if you miss them.

Personally, I find cvirt to be a faster-paced build with a greater reliance on getting the rotation right (mess up the phantasm-signet interaction and you lose a lot), and that's generally considered to still be one of the easier builds to run. Let alone some of the burst builds that look easy at first glance, but then you realise that their performance comes from stacking as many damage buffs as possible and then following up with as many high-damage skills as you can land within that window (guardian and ranger both do this a lot, just off the top of my head, and then there's the whole thing with berserker..). And that's without getting into profession-specific complications like trying to trigger Charged Mists when swapping out of Kalla. Two attunement weaver feels positively relaxed by comparison.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

4 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

My impression was that LI was more of a thing for people with physical challenges operating a high-APM build.

im pretty sure a significant amount of LI-seeking players are not as concerned about apm as they are about being able to focus on the encounter over having to manage playing their own character. the apm/unique button presses/etc metric is more of a self-imposed handicap for exp players creating LI builds, but it does not mean that it achieves this goal

its not really for us exp players who are capable of playing more complex rotations to determine if two attunement weaver is LI or not. im just saying most players would probably prefer something "more LI"

Edited February 20 by Noodle Ant.1605

[cheese.4739]

I made a longer comment on the oveview post in which I strongly disagreed with the proposed changes to Arcane Wave but, having thought on it, they've grown on me a little.

I'm still a bit bothered about the range/radius reductions and forced moment for that skill, since it feels like another buff to close-range Ele weapons and significantly reduces its utility for me as a Staff user, and I'd still personally prefer it to apply Revealed to a daze - but having the skill do meaningful damage would be a nice upgrade. Right now I primarily cast it for the Elemental Surge conditions and/or combo finisher, with the damage it does only being occasionally relevant.

This all still goes out the window if the skill gains a cast time or interrupts other skills though. And making it a leap finisher instead of a blast (implied by the wording of the notes) would make it much more selfish - not a huge deal but making it less useful for anyone running support builds.

Edited February 20 by cheese.4739

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

20 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

im pretty sure a significant amount of LI-seeking players are not as concerned about apm as they are about being able to focus on the encounter over having to manage playing their own character. the apm/unique button presses/etc metric is more of a self-imposed handicap for exp players creating LI builds, but it does not mean that it achieves this goal

its not really for us exp players who are capable of playing more complex rotations to determine if two attunement weaver is LI or not. im just saying most players would probably prefer something "more LI"

Partly it is both.  I started doing research on it for an argument, but I found it quite useful to know which professions were both forgiving of mistakes and would output a lot of damage with just a few skills.  LI builds are important to me, because a bad case of fibromyalgia has made my old carpal tunnel injury effectively permanent, and my tremors keep getting worse with age. 

 Figuring out LI builds isn't exactly magic.  Just take into consideration how fast buttons need to be pressed, how many different buttons need to be pressed, how much readjustment is needed to use a build (player positioning and ground-targeting), and how much simple defense/durability a build has. Some standouts include the Auto-attack Rev, which just turns on Impossible Odds/Vengeful hammers and auto attacks, Bomb Kit Mechanist, and the Axe Signet Bladesworn.  Frequently, I have to play the game with only one hand, because resting my hands on the keyboard aggravates my wrists.  Basically, consider each build as if you've just had a dose of epinephrin, wacked yourself on the hand with a rubber mallet, and can only play the game with a 3 button mouse.

 

[Loke.1429]

Arcane wave change is garbage tier meleebrain. They just make everything ele shorter and shorter range because of the dev preference. See you next year

[Narra.8921]

Seeing the new update regarding the Elemental Surge trait in Arcane, kind of a bummer we can't inflict conditions anymore. 

[zeyeti.8347]

It's ele what did you think ? have you all forgotten this class is méta even with less than 2% of players using it in pve.

the objectiv here is again focused on pvp , i don't get what a blind is usefull in pve and a teleport/daze , they could have slapped that on flash , they seem to don't like ppl slacking in one attunement , forcing ppl to switch to at least 2 attunement to do somewhat decent damage or maybe they even didn't know there was a twist with arcane power and elemental surge, when i look at the description the new "elementals surge" :

• Arcane Brilliance: Grants protection to the user.
• Arcane Wave: Immobilizes enemies that it strikes.
• Arcane Shield: Grants stability to the user when the shield expires.
• Arcane Power: Grants additional critical-strike stacks to the user.
• Arcane Blast: Blinds enemies that it strikes

 

Nothing for the group, selfless trait in arcane who is supposed to be more group oriented with sharing boons , reviving allies etc ... , again it's made for pvp, which ele is doing fine in , but in pve ... hell all ele rework upddates are putrid tier , but heh we got +5% healing and 360 range for wash the pain away ... well the pain is not washed ...

just split pve/pvp/wvw completely , ppl don't care giving blind to a foe in pve ...

[Jski.6180]

21 hours ago, Loke.1429 said:

Arcane wave change is garbage tier meleebrain. They just make everything ele shorter and shorter range because of the dev preference. See you next year

If there is no cast time on the leap you can play with the aoe size for the short movement combo with long cast time skill to just get out of effects. If there is an cast time its worthless.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

On 2/21/2024 at 8:18 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Partly it is both.  I started doing research on it for an argument, but I found it quite useful to know which professions were both forgiving of mistakes and would output a lot of damage with just a few skills.  LI builds are important to me, because a bad case of fibromyalgia has made my old carpal tunnel injury effectively permanent, and my tremors keep getting worse with age. 

 Figuring out LI builds isn't exactly magic.  Just take into consideration how fast buttons need to be pressed, how many different buttons need to be pressed, how much readjustment is needed to use a build (player positioning and ground-targeting), and how much simple defense/durability a build has. Some standouts include the Auto-attack Rev, which just turns on Impossible Odds/Vengeful hammers and auto attacks, Bomb Kit Mechanist, and the Axe Signet Bladesworn.  Frequently, I have to play the game with only one hand, because resting my hands on the keyboard aggravates my wrists.  Basically, consider each build as if you've just had a dose of epinephrin, wacked yourself on the hand with a rubber mallet, and can only play the game with a 3 button mouse.

 

 

+1take heart !
That's why I don't play classes involving too much Dodges /space bar, F5 or just dashs/leaps/positionning. I'm "old" gamer with a not really ergonomic keyboard for gaming and hand fatigue; keybinding and e-spec have sarted to be quite laborious last years.

[Szatko.8132]

On 2/17/2024 at 2:41 PM, Ram.5981 said:

Overall the changes look pretty nice for ele. I'm confused about the change on Lucid Singularity to provide might instead of alac. Tempest can already easily provide 25 stacks of might, so this seems like might overload. why not make it provide stab or something more usefull to help reduce the need for FB's in every group?

Do you think the devs would ever want to replace Firebrand? That's the only build that is overperforming and yet buffed every patch 😂

[draxynnic.3719]

18 hours ago, Szatko.8132 said:

Do you think the devs would ever want to replace Firebrand? That's the only build that is overperforming and yet buffed every patch 😂

In which mode? Last I heard it's still food-tier in sPvP like it has been for years, and with herald and now heal chrono in the mix it ain't at the top in PvE either. So many people just refuse to accept that something that was strong in the past has been genuinely brought down until the horse is not only dead but its corpse is starting to break apart from the continued beating.