Ranger Mace Changes (PvE)

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

Hello!

I just want to first come up front and say I fully understand where the balance team was coming from with the balance changes for Maces in PvE yesterday. Power Soulbeast and Untamed were very much so overperforming with dual maces due to Force of Nature's damage bonus.

However, a build that was not super OP with maces (compared to the target build to try and match for this "category", Power Quickness Herald) was Power Quickness Untamed. With PQU getting access to a little bit of vigor, regeneration, and a solid amount of protection, it really felt like there was something you could justify taking over herald in high end content as a power Quickness provider. This isn't to say Untamed is in a bad spot, more of that Herald should have competition and for a moment PQU filled that niche. Ideally Herald gets it's boon output nerfed, but that's probably not happening any time soon...

Now that maces have been nerfed, there currently is a 3k loss from pre-patch mace setups and a 2k loss from sword/axe for PQU- putting PQU right above Power quickness herald when trying to match it's (passive and easy, VS Untamed's more active rotation) boon output, which I don't think is the best spot for it. For Untamed to take some of it's utility outside of boon output to help compete with herald, it needs to drop Jungle Stalker (lessening your might output, which herald covers really well) or orange tiger/iboga (lessening your damage, which drops you to herald damage levels), and that's not counting replacing a utility skill used for damage for a utility skills with an effect.

I think the Force of Nature changes for the damage modifier should be reverted- however, the Force of Nature damage modifier should only come into play when you have Bountiful Hunter selected, the first Minor trait in the Nature Magic traitline. Also, move Mace off of Ambidexterity in Wilderness Survival if it's going to also compete with the strike modifier trait for competitive modes. Condi builds could already be built to be more survivable than strike builds, maces do not need to be on Wilderness Survival.

This basically locks off the 25% damage modifier from FoN to PQU (in terms of relatively competent builds), as Power Soulbeast does not want to give up Skirmishing or Beastmastery (Skirmishing is completely non-negotiable due to crit chance improvements with the traitline and Beastmastery provides too much in the way of raw stat improvements to want to drop that traitline either), and Power Untamed would prefer to keep Marksmanship for the raw damage modifiers from Farsighted and Remorseless as well as keep Skirmishing for the same reasons as Power Soulbeast does.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Also, move Mace off of Ambidexterity in Wilderness Survival if it's going to also compete with the strike modifier trait for competitive modes.

It's actually dumb because someone over there decided that WS needs to go from condi line to power line and just makes the same mistakes of everything competes with everything.

They do it utterly randomly too, like staff can't have a CD reduction trait anymore and hammer never had one, but GS has always had the most useful one, and mace gets tacked on to Ambidexterity because it's 1H.    But the rest of the bonuses for ambidexterity are condi to work with dagger and torch--so it's...not great.

It may be far past time for them to look into additional traitlines instead of reworking existing ones and randomly killing builds based on dev FoM.  

[Beddo.1907]

The fact that Mace is in Ambidexterity and not Strider's Strength, is so kitten funny.

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

14 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Now that maces have been nerfed, there currently is a 3k loss from pre-patch mace setups and a 2k loss from sword/axe for PQU- putting PQU right above Power quickness herald when trying to match it's (passive and easy, VS Untamed's more active rotation) boon output, which I don't think is the best spot for it. For Untamed to take some of it's utility outside of boon output to help compete with herald, it needs to drop Jungle Stalker (lessening your might output, which herald covers really well) or orange tiger/iboga (lessening your damage, which drops you to herald damage levels), and that's not counting replacing a utility skill used for damage for a utility skills with an effect.

Remember the original Untamed nerf after it was allowed to actually be interesting for a while, losing Fervent Force. For that matter, look at one of the most consistently overperforming and easiest to play builds in the game: condi virt. Anet has consistently made the choice that skill =/= power, at least beyond the skill floor of an hour or so of practice. More and more higher skill level builds are getting shelved in favor of lower skill level ones.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

7 hours ago, Aaron Forestman.4758 said:

Remember the original Untamed nerf after it was allowed to actually be interesting for a while, losing Fervent Force. For that matter, look at one of the most consistently overperforming and easiest to play builds in the game: condi virt. Anet has consistently made the choice that skill =/= power, at least beyond the skill floor of an hour or so of practice. More and more higher skill level builds are getting shelved in favor of lower skill level ones.

Maces got nerfed because across all variants of power DPS builds (mostly due to Force of Nature), they were a damage increase. I'd also argue that mace was easier to do well with when compared to other options.

Nerfing maces was very much so justified. Power Soulbeast and Untamed both had unnecessary and likely unintended DPS increases from taking mace/mace, mostly due to Force of Nature. I just think this was a case of Anet taking a sledgehammer to something that could have better used a chisel. Power Quickness Untamed wasn't particularly OP damage wise with maces, the boon output was a nice buff to the build putting it more on par with herald which has recently been all but untouchable on the quickness build, and it was also quite fun to use, especially with the ambush, even if it didn't truly need the buff. I just think it'd be nice to have PQU reach that level again, if Herald isn't going to get nerfed any time soon.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

On 3/21/2024 at 1:15 PM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

It's actually dumb because someone over there decided that WS needs to go from condi line to power line and just makes the same mistakes of everything competes with everything.

They do it utterly randomly too, like staff can't have a CD reduction trait anymore and hammer never had one, but GS has always had the most useful one, and mace gets tacked on to Ambidexterity because it's 1H.    But the rest of the bonuses for ambidexterity are condi to work with dagger and torch--so it's...not great.

It may be far past time for them to look into additional traitlines instead of reworking existing ones and randomly killing builds based on dev FoM.  

The new traits in wilderness survival are actually really good since it all fits in to the idea of defense, and theme wise it makes sense.

It works so well that it perfectly compliments the traits in nature magic, and the weapon kits of hammer and mace/mace.

This build is very good and holds up in zerg v zerg fights.

[Mell.4873]

22 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

The fact that Mace is in Ambidexterity and not Strider's Strength, is so kitten funny.

I can kind of see the point since Ranger in general has alot of Conditions damaged baked into traits or utilities. 

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

15 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Nerfing maces was very much so justified. Power Soulbeast and Untamed both had unnecessary and likely unintended DPS increases from taking mace/mace, mostly due to Force of Nature

If maces gave unintended DPS increases to ranger's power DPS builds, how were maces intended? Definitely not to be used as the sole weapon set for a build, that's practically never the case. This feels more like a lack of any math or testing being done.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I just don't understand why they put modifiers on weapons skills combo/gimmick ; this is obvious it would unbalance DPS and utility of each skills with the combinaton of all. But at least they nerf the modifier rather than skills, which is the good way.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

On 3/22/2024 at 10:10 AM, Aaron Forestman.4758 said:

If maces gave unintended DPS increases to ranger's power DPS builds, how were maces intended? Definitely not to be used as the sole weapon set for a build, that's practically never the case. This feels more like a lack of any math or testing being done.

Maces weren't the sole weapon set for the builds, yet taking them was still always an increase over not- Power Soulbeast hit 46k DPS (up from 43k) using mace/mace axe/axe before maces got nerfed, Power Untamed hit 44k (up from 42k) using hammer mace/mace. Both of these builds made it justifiable to nerf mace, as they were already in the upper echelons of DPS builds, especially Power Soulbeast, which is generally considered the best power build in the game (high burst and strong sustain).

Mainhand was intended to be support, and offhand was an offensive option with defensive utility as well (mainly the barrier and stability on mace 4).

Nerfing offhand itself was unjustified imo, since FoN was already getting nerfed and it would be perfectly fine as an offensive tool in PvE, but overall I think a change to what applies the damage modifier from FoN would be justifiable in buffing the build that doesn't get too OP with the old values, Power Quickness Untamed.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

2 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

I just don't understand why they put modifiers on weapons skills combo/gimmick ; this is obvious it would unbalance DPS and utility of each skills with the combinaton of all. But at least they nerf the modifier rather than skills, which is the good way.

They nerfed the output of the skills too. Mace 2 and mace 5 got damage nerfs in the March 19th patch.

[Lazze.9870]

On 3/21/2024 at 3:15 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

It's actually dumb because someone over there decided that WS needs to go from condi line to power line and just makes the same mistakes of everything competes with everything.

They do it utterly randomly too, like staff can't have a CD reduction trait anymore and hammer never had one, but GS has always had the most useful one, and mace gets tacked on to Ambidexterity because it's 1H.    But the rest of the bonuses for ambidexterity are condi to work with dagger and torch--so it's...not great.

It may be far past time for them to look into additional traitlines instead of reworking existing ones and randomly killing builds based on dev FoM.  

First of all, the trait line hasn't gone from condi to power. It has gone from being underwhelming on power builds and good for condis to pretty being decent at both. The biggest mistake they did with the new WS changes was adding an ICD to the Carnivore trait. It makes zero sense that disabling 5 people with a well timed Thump only gives you life steal from one enemy (reducing the affect per target per skill is a better solutiuon). The trait doesn't have any meaningful impact at the moment, and I can think of a dozen better ideas for a power/sustain GM trait in WS.

Mace being affected by Ambidexterity is irrelevant. It gives you 125 extra condi power while also wielding a mace, it doesn't affect the cooldowns like it does with dagger and torch. So there is no "competition" with the strike damage trait because there aren't really any builds where you'd absolutely want both (with the exception of wanting reduced incoming strike damage on a condi build, but that's no different from wanting more condi stats vs having an extra source of stab with the old traits - offensive or defensive).

You can make the argument that it is weird that they tacked mace to Ambi (which is it, even though I get why they did it), and that it would fit better with the sword or the GS trait mechanically (so would the hammer for the latter), but it doesn't create any "competition" at all. It's just there, and arguably better than having no direct trait interaction at all.

As for the maces, they didn't need to touch the damage. Nerfing the modifiers from going big was enough. But eh, it didn't affect anything outside of PvE, so I don't really care.

Edited March 27 by Lazze.9870

[Gotejjeken.1267]

5 hours ago, Lazze.9870 said:

First of all, the trait line hasn't gone from condi to power. It has gone from being underwhelming on power builds and good for condis to pretty being decent at both. The biggest mistake they did with the new WS changes was adding an ICD to the Carnivore trait. It makes zero sense that disabling 5 people with a well timed Thump only gives you life steal from one enemy (reducing the affect per target per skill is a better solutiuon). The trait doesn't have any meaningful impact at the moment, and I can think of a dozen better ideas for a power/sustain GM trait in WS.

<other stuff>

Let's just agree to disagree lol.

I'll just leave it at:

Taste for Danger, Ambidexterity, Refined Toxins, and Poison Master were condi, no power--so 'underwhelming at power' means you didn't take it for power.  It was a line only taken by condi builds, now it will be taken by select power builds (i.e. bunkers) because they randomly decided to add power traits in there.  

For my money, Carnivore is insanely powerful in sPvP atm / smallscale roaming in WvW.  There's no difference between 100 HP x 5 from Thump giving you 500HP or 500 HP x 1 enemy giving you 500 HP.  Your suggestion is either a nerf, because if they did like 100, 80, 60, 40, 20 or something it's much lower or probably overtuned if you are getting near 1000HP for 5 target skills (say like 500, 200, 100, 50, 50) as we already have enough in the way of immortal bunker atm.