June 25 Balance Update Preview

[Raythar.8092]

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Spider Venom: Increased the maximum number of charges of spider venom allies can gain from 6 to 25. Allies cannot have more than 6 stacks of spider venom from the same source at any one time.

This should be cap of 30 since the default application of the spider venom utility skill is 6. I'm assuming you balanced the rest of the venoms around the idea of 5 thieves playing together. (6x5=30)

You don't have basilisk venom listed in the changes and I hope that's an "oops we forgot to write it in the notes, but it's actually coming" since basilisk venom is one of the most used venoms in the game. If it's not because you're worried about PvP balance, just split PvP and make it so it either doesn't stack, or the maximum stack in PvP is lower like 2 or 3.

 

Quote

Shadow Refuge: Reduced the cooldown from 60 seconds to 35 seconds in PvE only.

A welcome change, but over half of the game's population still doesn't seem to understand how this skill works (it applies revealed if you leave the AoE effect before it ends). Please also either get rid of the part of the skill applying revealed when you leave the circle, or rename it to "Revealers Ring" because you're more likely to reveal your teammates with it then stealth them. Other more powerful skills that have similar effects (looking at you stealth gyro) don't have this ridiculous limitation.

 

Quote

Shadow Sap: Increased the splash effectiveness of boon duration to allies from 50% to 75% in PvE only.

• There are ZERO reasons why the splash effectiveness should be anything less than 100% in PvE (I would argue for PvP too but that's a whole other can of worms). No other class has to deal with this reduced effectiveness mechanic and it is far easier for them to hit more allies with their effects.
• There are ZERO reasons why the radius size on the splash effectiveness should be as small as it currently is. Ally targeting is inherently worse than ground targeting for hitting all allies since you have no control over where your allies stand, nor where they decide to move to. If you gave us the tools to make allied targeting easier then there could actually be an argument for keeping them small like they currently are, but until then just increase the radius size to compensate.
• There are ZERO reasons why the above two points shouldn't apply to EVERY ally targeted ability for thief/specter, especially the tether effects from shadow shroud since you cannot switch tether targets quickly. Ally targeted healing and boon application is already clunky enough since we don't have the necessary tools to do the same job as other healers without expending 3 times as much work. Having worse effectiveness and smaller AoEs on top of that is just a giant slap in the face.

Edited May 25 by Raythar.8092

[Raythar.8092]

Duplicate post, please delete this one.

Edited May 25 by Raythar.8092
Duplicate post

[Gendalfs.7521]

29 minutes ago, Ruufio.1496 said:

I don't even play mesmer. What in the KITTEN is that change to moa? 6s down to 2s? Someone mentioned that there is some commander who is pathetically friends with the balance devs. Legit question, does anyone know who this commander is? This feels exactly like the problems in SPvP where there is a "clique" of people that ruin the experience for everyone else and you don't get to participate unless you're part of their secret discord. Who are these people ruining WvW?

Thats called echo chammber and is a problem for GW2. Anet expand your info gathering ring to more people.

[BenaSPACE.6028]

45 minutes ago, Frenade.6745 said:

Now to make elementalist daggers playable again.
Please bring back the old "Burning Speed" and "Earthen Rush" functionalities, to let us dash through enemies again! Bring back the dagger mobility! ❤️

This is still possible, though a little more technical. If you deselect your targets, you will pass through them. I use tab to quickly reselect them after.

[latlat.4516]

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Only longbow could go beyond the range treshold anywa

• harpoon
• warhorn
• staff
• dagger oh
• torch
• axe oh

those can trigger the trait at max range. Sure, not as easy as long bow, but they can. 

And that also means they are blocking any future interaction with other weapons they could add in the future.

 

My concern is not really about "mandating PBS in rotation" ( the trait is barely usable in instanced pve content as is, anyway) or whatnot, it's about tightly coupling a trait with a specific skill. 

[Shifty.9703]

Here is my initial response and feedback (classes I play regularly only): PVE feedback only, primarily group PVE.

• Elementalist: These changes seem to be moving in the right direction. I expect these changes to help make more Ele builds viable, even if many of these changes are not enough to make the skill/trait desirable. I expect increased build diversity. Great changes! I would love to see some mechanics changes in addition to the cooldown changes to less-used skills/traits like weapon summons!
• Engineer: Additional fury and condi cleanse seems fine. Nice to see some buffs to unused skills. I am confused as to why damage is being moved from holo to grenades. Grenades have been almost mandatory on almost every power eng build for a long time now and are still used in almost every power build so I am not sure why they need to be buffed. Currently, you can use grenades for a slight dps increase or take something else for a slight dps loss and a simplification of the rotation which feels really nice. Good DPS without grenades and an easier rotation or a bit more DPS, some additional range options, and a more complex rotation, this felt like a good choice to have. With these changes, grenades feel mandatory. Here is hoping there will be viable builds that dont take multiple kits and that not all power builds will be forced to take grenades to be viable. A utility skill should not be mandatory for all power builds. It concerns me that Holo may now not take any Holo utilities but instead just stack kits.
• Mesmer: While Power Virt is slightly underperforming and could use some buffs there are much greater issues with Mesmer that need fixing at a much higher level of urgency in my opinion. PVirt is good but underperforms on dps, but the following needs revisions much more desperately! Pmirage is not viable in any PVE... Cmirage is not viable in more than 50% of PVE. I miss playing Mirage, it is such a unique and fun playstyle but I feel like I am punished for playing it. Chrono and Virt desperately need to feel like they have accomplished something different than the other. They both do DPS in almost the same way so whichever is performing better will always be taken. They both use phantasms and clones as generators and then spend them on shatters/blade-songs that are functionally identical and have almost the same utility. F1 spends for power dps, F2 spends for condi dps, F3 is an interrupt, F4 is a distort, and F5 is our one difference in that chrono has time warp, but realistically both F5's get used infrequently. Continuum split is great but often skipped to reduce complexity, if used improperly will kill you! (I like this) while Virt F5 is an additional block with a bit of DPS which is nice but not really needed in the Mes kit so it is often unused. This means the main difference is the trait lines which also don't change playstyle much beyond Chrono having access to alac/quick from the grandmaster. Would love to have more separation between Chrono and Virt beyond a few rarely used skills and some visuals (psychic blades vs clones). When clones used to contribute to DPS they felt different, now they feel the same as psychic blades except for being unable to stock them ahead of time. I am not sure what the best fix would be but I feel significant changes are needed to Mirage as well as either Virt or Chrono to make them feel valuable and more diverse.

Please let me know if any of this is unclear, I am more than happy to explain my perspective in further detail if it would be helpful! Thanks for your work!

[SleepyBat.9034]

2 hours ago, PusiYawer.6508 said:

(ele signets are pretty underwhelming)

...

[xXxNikiGoesWildxXx.3678]

Ranger's healing spring needs more nerf in pvp...too short cd, condi cleanse spam. Mace skills are stunning very long and more than warrior hammer build...it is just not fun in pvp....they throw all cc then reset then throw again, some nerf in cc duration have to exist(PvP). Untamed pet damage is just too much with quickness/might/fury...ranger does nothing while pet constantly keep harassing while being unkillable/tanky. I suggest to nerf pet health or to reduce its speed...having AI grinding your hp without counter is bad design in pvp. 

Warrior defense traitline is just sustaining warrior too much in PvP...it is always at full hp, why class with highest hp and toughness is having access to resolution/protection boon and passive uncounterable constant healing? It can strip your offensive boons and it can deny you to do anything with interupts/cc..... why making warrior so tanky in pvp? 

Revenant vindicator is doing too much damage with hammer and greatsword in pvp, while being untouchable because of dodge/evade/block spams, why is it that way? Where is balance?

Mirage is in more overpowered state than it was few years ago in pvp. How we gonna balance dagger ambush skill in pvp? What we gonna do about vigor uptime(evasion relic, dueling traits etc). What we gonna do with greatsword split surge aoe burst spam? What we gonna do with staff slow dodgable projectiles that never hits? 

 

[Magolith.9412]

23 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Signet of Humility: This skill now requires a target. This skill can no longer be retargeted. This skill now displays an effect above its target's head. Reduced the duration from 6 seconds to 2 seconds in WvW only.

How about a global per-player ICD instead of making another elite useless for everybody other than zerg trolls.

[Angel.5491]

Hi! First and foremost, Thank you for the balance update, there is plenty on the table here that needed to be addressed eventually! 

You could add more Power Mirage buffs to the table
I personally would like to see ''Weakening Charge'' not being animation locked

Thanks once again and See you next balance patch! ^^

[Sindust.7059]

On 5/24/2024 at 8:23 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

With the recent introduction of pistol as a ranged condition damage weapon, we wanted to solidify scepter as more of a power damage weapon in PvE

I hope this doesn't mean that the condi application on the scepter will be nerfed or power-crept into irrelevance, because that would kill the LI condi tempest, since pistol rotation is too complicated for an LI build. And it's literally the only ele build that I enjoy playing.

[Kyon.4810]

Upcoming balalalalance patch so cringe imho.

Nothing balanced to wvw mode.

Nothing balanced to pvp mode.

For some reason mostly PVE mode got modified and makes no sense because you could play really anything in PVE (even absolutely without any equipement) and still run open world PVE events or whatever does PVE players runs, why does it takes so much attention from balance group?

Maybe this game needs to be renamed to "NPC-Wars"? Or "Mob-Wars"? Or "Pixel-Wars"?

[Milotnuis.8341]

Would it be too much to ask for guardian gs2 not require a player to stand in the hitbox for optimal damage in pve?

[Rabid.9138]

If we can't play with mace in soulbeast, why did you release that weapon? The first nerf you made was very heavy. Please stop bringing nerfs based on the numbers in the benchmark. Of course we want mace buff. ty

[Yaky.2857]

On 5/24/2024 at 3:23 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Renegade

• Vindication: This trait no longer grants might when gaining Kalla's Fervor and instead causes the user to heal for a percentage of their outgoing damage for each stack of Kalla's Fervor.

 

hm... ok, thats probably gonna force ppl stop using cele renegade, but thats gonna RIP the dmg from the trait and give more sustain, does renegade dont already got too much sunstain?... so its gonna be a HealCondi renegate for WvW. Thats it. 

0 passive might, only one mid source of might with another trait (lasting Legacy). Its a great HealNegate, Dont kill and dont die.

 

Thats beeing said... if the inttention is to nerf celestial sets for some specs, take a look on harbinger... oh, wait, u guys did and its beeing  buffed to get even more sustain and keep full celestial, thats no fear tho.

 

[XECOR.2814]

On 5/24/2024 at 11:53 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Necromancer

 

Sword didn't quite land where we wanted in WvW, so this update includes some improvements to its damage to make it a more viable option. We've also improved some defensive tools for harbinger to give them some better survivability options and tuned up a number of defensive utility skills in PvE.

• Feast of Corruption: Increased the number of boons corrupted from 1 to 2 in PvP only. Increased the cooldown from 10 seconds to 12 seconds in PvP only.
• Satiate: Increased the power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.9 in WvW only.
• Path of Gluttony: This skill now corrupts a boon on targets it strikes.
• Gorge: Reduced the number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1 in PvE and PvP.
• Gormandize: Increased the power coefficient from 0.6 to 1.0 in WvW only.

Enervation_Blade and Enervation_Echo (Auto Chain #1 and #2) 
Both these sword auto chain attacks needs to have higher coefficient in WvW or more base damage.
Maybe 403(1.1) to 477(1.3).
They are so low in strike damage in practicality that they create 0 pressure on enemy thus pigeonholing Main Hand Sword into a mobility tool only.

Deathly_Enervation (Final Auto Chain)
This needs to take its PvE values in WvW and PvP too.
The numbers are so noodle either way that skill splitting to even lower values just makes it have no impact.
So 477(1.3) to 513(1.4).

Ravenous_Wave (Sword#2 Initial)
This skill too needs to have a better damage skill as this is the only ranged non projectile + a reliable damage skill.
This skill make or breaks the MH Sword as ranged weapon.
Maybe this skill can be buffed a tad bit so it takes similar value to PvP ones.
That is 367(1.0) to 440(1.2).

Satiate (Sword#2 Flip Over)
This skill literally 300 or so damage and maybe 400 on crit, im not even kidding, its insanely low in WvW its actually unreal.
Not to mention it never crits for some reason like its cursed or something nad also gives Line of Sight error because people move.
In similar manner to changes before this skill needs to take values from its PvP version.
220(0.6) to 440(1.2)
This skill needs to do something else imo instead of damage.
Maybe sacrifice health to gain fury/regen or something, or any kind of utility value rather than just more tickle dps.

These changes will make the swords feel much better to play.
But who am i kidding, devs will not see/consider this.

Edited May 25 by XECOR.2814

[Kuma.1503]

On 5/24/2024 at 2:50 PM, Rosey.1608 said:

Still no scrapper-quickness fix and nerfing holo with the dumbest justification, "we're not trying to nerf it, we're trying to shift damage budget to grenades" - why?  just why. 

So they can justify nerfing Scrapper/Mecha later when the nade buffs improve their benchmark. 

[Tofu.1865]

2 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

So they can justify nerfing Scrapper/Mecha later when the nade buffs improve their benchmark. 

Watch them Nerf Scrapper and Power Mech while Condi Mechanists catching the stray bullet/nerfs 🤣

 

Stop nerfing Holosmith then accidentally making Condi Mechanists useless on PvP kitten.

[Vidit.7108]

On 5/24/2024 at 11:23 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Guardian

We've also reduced page costs for support firebrand builds in PvE to give them more flexibility, and we added some sources of resolution to the valor specialization to make it more usable for damage-dealing builds that rely on Righteous Instincts.

Firebrand

• Epilogue: Ashes of the Just: Increased the might stacks from 5 to 8 and increased the duration from 8 seconds to 10 seconds in PvE only.
• Chapter 4: Shining River: Reduced the page cost from 2 to 1 in PvE only. Increased the healing coefficient per pulse from 0.23 to 0.35 in PvE only.
• Chapter 2: Daring Challenge: Increased the taunt duration from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvE only.
• Chapter 3: Valiant Bulwark: Reduced the page cost from 2 to 1 in PvE only.
• Chapter 4: Stalwart Stand: Reduced the page cost from 2 to 1 in PvE only.
• Loremaster: Reduced the page generation interval from 6 seconds to 5 seconds in PvE only.

I've decided to give some guardian feedback even though I have serious doubts that any feedback is really being listened to.
I've played specifically heal firebrand for thousands of hours and am one of the people who jumped ship to other healers this year. The changes to shining river are really good and I do feel that they give the heal budget a better edge against the newer heal builds in terms of strength and frequency of heals.
The other page changes and changes to loremaster are mostly going to be irrelevant. Sure in the edge cases that's going to make a difference in your resource (pages) management but instances where reflects and resistance are relied on don't usually hurt the heal department. This is because Heal Firebrand already isn't relying on tome 2 to do most of it's healing, recent changes to f2 3 have made it good to use more often but constantly trying to slam tome 2 for constant heals is just not the playstyle of firebrand for the last 6 years. It's a nice change, a good one even, just not overall very significant in the bigger picture. 
Epilogue having more might is just adding to the confused situation going on with all of the healers where after EoD you made them less responsible for 25 might only to spend the last year and a half or so reverting that as hard as you can. So sure whatever, i guess it's an option.

None of these changes are going to bring anyone back to heal firebrand however, the healing wasn't in a bad place just lagging behind what other healers were now capable of. You talked on stream about keeping it competitive but right now the biggest existential issue for firebrand is that the meta has moved away from extremely narrow boon ranges. I'm not saying the cone shape needs to leave, but I am saying the radius of those cone boons needs to be improved. 180 and even 240 are disappearing. When Heal firebrand was the only game in town players stressed tight stacking to get quickness. No one wants to do that anymore and most new players aren't aware that firebrand has these cone restrictions because it's not how the rest of the game works. It was already a difficult task before to keep people in boon range but that's gotten a lot worse over the years and now that heal quickness has actual real competition it's a difficult thing to expect from other players and a unnecessary skill to require for a healer. As more builds have gotten boon radi increased and better healing it's pushed firebrand into increasingly niche appeal.
(it's not been helped that there is a non-trivial number of players that just refuse to allow someone else's character to stand behind them, or even near them sometimes, in combat and will move to the side or behind you when you try to position better to give them quickness)

[CelestialCat.6240]

Where is the nerf to Willbender in PvP and WvW?

Willbenders are to over powered as they are as they have access to numerous movement skills (Rushing Justice, Flowing Resolve, Advancing Strike, Judge's Intervention, Leap of Faith, and Crashing Courage) of which can do a lot of damage, have short cooldowns, and even dump burns on foes for even more damage, they have a powerful spike attack centered around Whirling Light for a spike of damage and more burn condition stacks, and they are often tanky and can heal alot of damage quickly, not to mention the good amount of condi cleanse.

This is why builds like the Radiant Swordbender Roamer build, are easy to use, have a perfect 5 star rating as anyone can easily take on multiple foes, chase down anyone trying to run while dumping burns on those runners, and can easily run away themselves if they get in a bit of trouble.

I recommend the damage and burns on the mobility skills are cut by at least half, the cooldown on mobility skills is at the very least doubled, and whirling light's damage cut by at least 1/3rd and the cooldown tripled, so that it isn't the core skill of any Willbender build.

I like diverse builds not a oh their a spike build because of X is broken on that build and they have that class symbol.

[Raiz.2478]

Not sure why we need to nerf pve Holosmith just to buff grenades. Might as well go back to playing a braindead mechanist build with an easier rotation if that's the case

[FalsePromises.6398]

I like what's going on here, for the most part. Of course, the usual random guardian buffs aside (I swear those happen every patch), I really like seeing buffs to power tempest, heal tempest, power virtuoso, and power renegade. Excluding heal tempest, they're not forefront builds for their specs, and are notably specs that have way more infrastructure for other styles, so seeing them get some attention is an endearing show of good will. HUGE thumbs up to giving actual fury to heal tempest and giving a real distinguishing feature damage-wise to Infinite Forge, been waiting on those for AGES!

The necromancer changes feel a little... hesitant, though. I had a lot of hope that we finally had a guy on the team who wasn't afraid of working with necromancer after those huge reaper QoL buffs, but it feels like he's run out of steam. I appreciate the effort being put towards power harbinger, but I don't think a temporary damage reduction window is gonna make it feel any less glassy in PvE: what it needs is either a power-specific health siphon effect or a vigor theme. It felt weird that harbinger was portrayed as this mobile, semi-martial style necromancer that abandoned shroud health and reduced their own max health, but had no vigor, endurance, or evade mechanics to compensate their core design's lack thereof (an intentional design, since necromancer was supposed to rely on shroud health and debilitation). 

[Firebeard.1746]

I think that there needs to be some kind of shake-up in the combat system. Rotations are more or less priority queues with few builds having what I could consider a satisfying "core rotation" (only weaver and mirage have one imo, and in weaver's case it can feel like a hindrance if the element you're attuned to doesn't have what you need in the moment). It's also problematic that so many things require breakbars now, but there's no standardization on availability of CC. I've been dabbling more in WoW lately and I'll just say pressing buttons feels more satisfying there, but the in-game systems outside of combat in GW2 are better. This became really obvious to me when i did a bunch of instanced PVE with nothing else in between. It felt more exhausting than fun when i was done. 

I guess fresh air tempest KIND OF has a core rotation, but it's really twitch and doesn't feel satisfying and is easy to screw up. 

Edited May 26 by Firebeard.1746

[fatnorn.3065]

Thank you for the balance updates.

As a former heal tempest main, I appreciate the improvements we receive (especially considering the fact that a good quality heal tempest player knows to NOT camp water all the time).

Now, let's talk about the hardest healer to play in the game: Heal Gosh Darn Specter.

We'll talk about the goods first.

THANK YOU, for the significantly reduced cooldown of Shadow Refuge. So now, we have a choice to juggle between that skill and Blinding Powder, depending on the situation.

THANK YOU for the lower cooldowns of Well of Silence too.

Let me be clear that IT IS PERFECTLY FINE about Heal Specters being ally targeting. Why? Because many other healers in the game are already AoE targeting/Point blank based. Why turn Specter into another cookie-cutter healer? Besides, not all of the heal skills are ally targeting anyway if you consider the wells and how Shadestep works. I beg you to not change that factor about Heal Specter because it is its own special identity that differentiates itself from other healers.

And to the people complaining about the clunkyness of ally targeting: LEARN TO UTILIZE THE 'SET PERSONAL TARGET' KEYBINDS, AND JUST PRACTICE. Cant commit to that? Don't play heal specter.

___________________________________________

Now, let's discuss about the poor side of heal specter.

1. So...you CAN improve the splash effectiveness of the scepter skills this entire time? Why stop at Shadow Sap? What about Measured Shot/Endless Night? What about Shadowsquall? Those skills provide boons too. Since you guys at the balance department are already on track, might as well carry on with the rest of the changes. Don't stop halfway.

2. I do agree with the others on the fact that the effectiveness penalty of the scepter's splash effects are uncalled for. BUT...if that highlights the identity of a heal specter, probably due to the fact that it's initially a single target healing profession, then fine. Penalty it is. But now that we know it's mechanically possible for you guys to reduce the splash penalty to 75% effectiveness from 50% on Shadow Sap's boon output, I beg you to do the same with not just the rest of the scepter skills' boon output, but also its barrier and healing output. You still have the penalty factor, but at least it's not too unnecessarily punishing!

3. RADIUS. RADIUS. RADIUS. Shadestep can have 360 radius. Why can't the scepter skills have the same radius around the targeted ally? Please standardize this because not all PvE encounters allows us to stack all the time (looking at you, Silent Surf).

And finally,

4. The beneficiary effects of Shadestep only occurs around the tethered ally. Problem is, we are not in control of how our tethered ally positions themselves. And unlike the scepter skills where we can switch targets in a heartbeat, our Siphon skill has a cooldown, preventing us from instantly switching allies to tether to. So, my request to rectify this situation is to make the beneficiary effects of Shadestep and Shadow Shroud skills to occur around our tethered ally AND OURSELVES. 

Please put my suggestions into consideration. We're not asking much. In fact, these are literally the bare minimum you could do to bring Heal Specter in line with other support classes.

Edited May 26 by fatnorn.3065

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 5/24/2024 at 2:23 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Mesmer

• Signet of Humility: This skill now requires a target. This skill can no longer be retargeted. This skill now displays an effect above its target's head. Reduced the duration from 6 seconds to 2 seconds in WvW only.

This is an excessive nerf. Would start with the tell first and then reevaluate.  I say this as a plyer that get hits by this versus a Mez that runs it regular. If you want to balance, up the Moa skills not remove it as a tool to handle toons that are boon heavy or tags. If a tag can't handle a Moa hit, that's on the tag for not having peeps ready to take over. A Havoc, Warband or Zerg should know what they are doing without hand holding and be ready to move on if the tag is disabled. This is over kill. Test the first changes so more awareness and les pre-cast then re-eval the others.