Wintersday Balance Update: Feedback Thread

[Maugetarr.6823]

@Turk.5460 said:

@Maugetarr.6823 said:The initiative changes to Death's Retreat on Thief's rifle could have been made game wide instead of splitting it. It would be the same distance per point of initiative as shortbow 5, however it wouldn't have the same ability to aim it and use it for z-axis shadow steps, making it pretty balanced versus shortbow. I'm going to suggest putting a short blind (3 seconds) on it at the beginning of the cast too, since it doesn't have any evade frames. I know this was a balance patch out of the normal rotation so I won't throw a whole slew of change suggestions at you, but I think the above change could help nudge the rifle in the correct direction in PvP.

I agree that the initiative change to Death's Retreat should have been in all modes.

Your suggestion to add a blind due to lack of evade frames is confusing. You are comparing DR to IA, IA does not offer evade frames either, nor does it have a poison, nor does it clear a condition. Adding a blind to DR would over-stack the skill.

Well, my original suggestion for the skill back in a thief thread was to replace 1 of the stacks of poison on the skill with a stack of blind instead, but they just doubled the duration while eliminating 1, so that's out. I know IA doesn't offer evade frames, but SB has a set of evade frames on it allowing for some flexibility in combat. The problem I see with rifle is that it promotes sitting back and not even using the standing skills in a closer fight. The windup is long enough that even if you use DR reactively, you can still get hit before the shadowstep happens. IA offers the ability to choose how to reposition yourself whereas DR simply shadowsteps you directly away from your target. So my idea comes from the fact that you have much less control over the effectiveness of DR, so if used reactively, it should prevent 1 hit from a character in melee range while not affecting someone using a skill from range.

Overall, I think rifle has good damage, but lacks utility that would help it in a pvp setting outside of surprising someone. I didn't want to go into a huge list of possible changes they could make in a general feedback thread, but this one suggestion I think would help rifle significantly with a minor change.

[Lonecap.4105]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

Ty for responding to our concerns. Mine is what you did to the Strength traits for Warrior. In particular Stick and Move. You really hurt this spec in WvW as Might isn't viable for WvW (it gets stripped, not enough time for building). Even though it seemed like you were trying to make MMR more viable, you also went and nerfed the trait to 2 endurance per Might stack. This is HORRIBLE. IT'S HORRIBLE. So IF you can manage to get TWENTY FIVE GREATSWORD SWINGS off, then grats, you get a dodge for free. 250 power at 25 might stacks is not only weak in WvW, it's just worthless. It's like... it's like you got NO trait. So atm Strength is simply missing a trait for WvW. This was balanced with only PvE in mind evidently. Can you please talk to the team about having stick and move as the PvP/WvW version of the trait? Because this made me want to quit the game.

[Khenzy.9348]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

1- Confusion on Mesmer has 4s base duration. I don't know what your definition of falling off quickly means because 4s in PvP is an eternity. And said duration can even be extended farther. If you are going to leave confusion stacks as it is, go the other way around, lower their duration.

2- They can spam significant Confusion stacks back to back to back, that's not burst, that's constant steady damage, if they chose to do so. Which can be just as strong as several stacks at once.

3- Don't tell me with a straight face having 20 stacks of confusion on you from a single player is balanced in any way shape or form (I've seen higher than that actually). The damage may not come immediately, but they also apply several cover conditions, there's also the other team mates' conditions; this makes condi cleanse very unreliable and difficult, so many times you just die by confusion ticks, sometimes even using the very same skills that are supposed to cleanse that confusion.

4- They have the damage, a lot of CC, mobility, survivability and map control with portal. Something's gotta give.

[JayAction.9056]

Rev is still broken useless in PvP and WvW besides the one build it has that is still out performed by a good 15+ different specs.

[Zsoak.5409]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

Because I will totally notice the confusion stacks in the midst of the clutter of other 8+ different conditions on my UI and all the additional visual clutter on my screen.

[Nightmare.1234]

as a core Mesmer main, I was pretty shocked to not see my build affected in the slightest and I even received another buff to arcane thievery (giving me a strong cover condi and strong boon to allow me summon faster) i guess it ok that at least one class left with the condi burst and scourge the ramp up multi condi class. to early say if this changed anything but the games i have played now have more mirages in them and dragon hunters than before and sometimes no scourges at all.

i would give this balance pass a 7/10. positive direction but has not made a massive impact just shifted to different meta stacked classes

[Egorum.9506]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

5s without expertise is not a short duration, that's a death sentence in pvp

[Kirin.7306]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

way too much for no effort.

[Miles Smiles.8951]

I still think that the problem of conditions was not their "burstiness", but instant application with no cast times and tells: instant boon convert and fear from scourge shades (when scourge can dodge and corrupt you at the same time with no tell) and mirage confusion bomb from stealth.

[nicknamenick.2437]

Might makes right: 25 might is 1 dodge....Really? 1 dodge gain for 25 might? Sounds bad..

Ok 5 endurane per might was too high.. ( 2,5 dodge for 25 might) why not lowering it first too 3 per might? Thats 1,5 dodge for 25 might..

[Altosk.8492]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

Either it's all burst or none of it is. None of this well they are a special case crap because it's starting to look like condition damage isn't something that you guys can handle well in any terms of balance so maybe you guys should just push pure condition into a more hybrid style.

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

This update does NOTHING to actually try and sort condition builds out. They havent been nerfed in zergs or groups, they have been nerfed in solo or small group. They STILL have constant, never ending application Vs limited/terrible condition removal. Calling THIS a "balance" patch (even a minor one) is laughable. There is no balance done here to tone down condition builds, why you decided to buff several i have no idea...

Constant, never ending application IS the problem. I would be fine with burst IF it had a cool down, a down time. In This game? No. Its just more and more and more applied. This patch did NOTHING to sort condition builds out, you did however mange to nerf MINOR condi builds that rarely got played anyway (ele, engineer, rev) you somehow managed to also nerf ele direct damage!? WHY!?

[jcbroe.4329]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048

Unlisted change to Druid: might granted by Grace of the Land is now only base of 6 seconds, it was 8 seconds.

Please say this wasn't an intended change; it's a double nerf with the stack reduction.

[Milan.9035]

Wasn't confusion changed to be same damage as bleeding when not using a skill?

[Karl McLain.5604]

@jcbroe.4329 said:@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048

Unlisted change to Druid: might granted by Grace of the Land is now only base of 6 seconds, it was 8 seconds.

Please say this wasn't an intended change; it's a double nerf with the stack reduction.

It is indeed not intended and we'll be looking to fix this bug.

[Morwath.9817]

While I think patch overall is pretty good, but there are things I dislike:

• Mirage wasn't touched.
• Elementalist was rather nerfed than buffed, as Fury was better than ~5 Might stacks.
• Firebrand F2 #4 shouldn't be buffed without shaving heals somewhere else, as it becomes even more superior compared to Tempest or Tablet Revenant.

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

While I can understand that you want to keep confusion as soft crowd control, which allows victim to choose between action leading to punishment or waiting confusion to end, I would like to point out that since 2015 condition changes, confusion is still dealing damage, even if a player choose to do nothing. What is more Mirage can apply confusion constantly or in huge burst, due to many sources of given condition, e.g.:

• Jaunt.
• Any interrupt (Ineptitude).
• Any Shatter skill (Illusionary Retribution).

[OriOri.8724]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

Ok, I can understand that reasoning, and I enjoy having conditions that are supposed to be used differently (ie short but bursty for confusion, long and steady DoT for other ones). However, you both gave an extra stack AND longer duration to the confusion from imaginary axes. That's a straight up buff that was out of line with what @Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 told us to expect coming with this update.

Honestly this feels like you guys wanted to buff up Mirage's damage (good imo, since it brings no group utility at all, it needs higher damage than it had prior to this patch), but either you didn't know how to buff axe ambush without going back to the 40K+ DPS nonsense, or didn't have enough time to implement a proper fix to it.

I really can't agree with this buff to the confusion application on axe ambush, even though Mirage needed higher DPS in that build.

[Rym.1469]

@"Karl McLain.5604" said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

Burning was meant to be the "burst" condition as well, wasn't it? Unless philosophy here has changed.

Not that I'm against spreading burning damage more evenly.

[zealex.9410]

If confusion is suppose to be burst why not then change it to its old functionality pre-hot?

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

@Karl McLain.5604 said:The primary design for confusion is 'burst'; it's expected to deliver a lot of stacks at once for low duration, punishing skill usage for a short while and then falling off quickly. Due to this difference in nature, we chose to leave it alone in this patch.

Condi Mirage is out of control. This update has done NOTHING to fix them, you instead made them stronger. They were ALREADY the strongest 1 vs 1 class in the game for conditions, now they are even worse. I get that 1 Vs 1 isnt the be all and end all, good thing they come with plenty of AoE conditions and everything as well. Constant, non stop condition spamming at times getting hit by 3 or 4 different conditions inside 1 second. This. Is. Not. Balanced. Gameplay.

If you want Confusion to be their condition, like Burning and bleeding is kinda like Eles only, except no where near as good as Confusion or Torment will ever be. Maybe you should tone down the constant never ending condition application!?

[Hooglese.4860]

This not only missed the biggest problem(s) in PvP, but exacerbated them. The problems being FB + Scourge, and my personal gripe: Renegade sucking. It seems more like a push in the exact opposite direction. I will admit, I haven't tried out the balance patch yet and I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm very wrong. Regardless, here's feedback.

• Scourges main source of damage, Manifest Sand Shade, didn't get touched. On top of that Dhuumfire was fixed, so it will apply even more burning! Woo! On top of that, it's barrier has been buffed so it lasts longer too. That leads me to believe Scourge got a buff. The only thing that might happen is people won't bring torch as often. Weird that necro, being the cause of the condi meta, was the one least effected by the changes.
• Firebrands can heal allies and themselves to a ridiculous extent. As a response it was, again, buffed. Fantastic.
• Renegade now does less damage, and it already was worse than core.
• Mirage still needs a nerf.

On the bright side, I do like the net condi and nerf and I'm really happy about this:

Portal Exeunt: This skill now performs a range check before activating to prevent unusable portals from being created.

[Prophet.1584]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 @Karl McLain.5604 Thanks for the ranger buffs to GS and Sword. LB range restrictions should be removed and it should be flat damage, leave the range buffs for traits that effect LB instead. Mainhand dagger and axe also need buffs as a power weapons, especially if the focus will be to normalize damage between power and condition builds.

[Chorazin.4107]

I cant recall the last time I seen a condi ele, the occasional burn engineer, but most everyone I think moved to FB that wants to do burning. Certainly dont see burn/condi engineers everywhere.

Yet one of the biggest offenders in Condi chrono/mirage goes through with a minor nerf to scepter auto attack? And quite a decent buff to some other things? I guess I should be happy as I play mesmer occasionally.

Surely the balance team does more than just looking at numbers and adhere to some over arching philosophy that died 2 expansions ago about Confusion is meant to be large stacks short duration. I mean this was a great philosophy when the only confusion you could apply was cry of frustration on a 30 second timer, or a very telegraphed and avoidable confusing images that was 50% slower than it's current implementation with one less tick.

Not continuum split(so roll ur face across those shatter skills), cry of frustration + illusionary retribution + confusing images + mind wrack + diversion ~ reset continuum split, (insert clone generation here, mirror images, phase retreat whatever), another cry of frustration, another mind wrack, or whatever the Mirage equivalent is of this sort of condi spam.

And lets not forget the 33% duration from master of misdirection to all confusion applied. And any increase from any Expertise you might be running. This becomes stupid face pretty fast in WvW.

[FtoPScrub.5476]

Condi mirage ATM has no counter in 1v1s. It's gotten to the point where a certain 1v1 tourney straight up banned them. I don't quite understand the reasoning behind making them stronger? The heal mantra + adventure runes + double energy give them ridiculous evade uptime and they're able to deliver a ridiculously high amount of burst and sustained damage through conditions. Evade uptime needs to be culled and their conditions need to be toned down. I can understand how you might want confusion to be a burst Condi but why not change their burning or torment application? Why is the strongest 1v1 build the exception when an irrelevant build like burn guard is nerfed? I usually understand why anet balances things even if i dont agree with them, but this was absolutely ridiculous. For the next 2 months we're going to have to deal with S+ tier mirages...

Can we at least get an explanation for this? I'm not trying to be rude, but it honestly feels like there's a disconnect between what pvp players define as balanced and what devs do.

[Falan.1839]

Very few of these makes any sense in SPvP. Firebrand was already by far the strongest support that was mandatory for every comp and got buffed, making its rez ability, which was already very strong with Sanctuary, even mightier due to the buff on Merciful Intervention. Condi Burst was supposed to be nerfed, yet mirage as one of the main culprits got buffed. Ele and Rev, which were barely viable, got nerfs (mostly insignifcant ones). The slight nerfs on Scourge are probably the only good points. Most of the changes are insignicant, some even harmful, very few will actually have a significant impact on the meta. This represents a huge missed chance.

The right idea would choice would have been to break up the scourge/FB lock (by nerfing Fb support and reducing the amount of pressure scourge can do on a single node), slightly toning down Mirage Burst and Engi Dodge Dps, maybe slightly reducing Druid and SB sustain, while buffing Rev and Ele (more Condi Cleanse and stability for Rev, significantly more dmg on Sword while toning down the Weaver Dps Traits a bit and possibly easier access to an "Oh Shit Button" for Ele, such as a passive Mist Form).

Instead we get nerfs on specs like Condi Rev or Condi Engi, which no one ever uses beyond Silver League. Somehow it looks that the balance team doesn't even know the current Spvp meta and mostly reacts to vague QQ threads from four months ago about too much condi burst.