October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Titan.7853]

It's the next day, I just logged in, and I still can't shake my upset about getting rid of teleport Transfusion on Necro.

If we were all physically at ANet in person, I would lead a riot to reverse it.  How long has it been in game for, nearly a decade?  Am I really supposed to believe it's broken?  It's one thing to nerf stats, and I accept that and move on, maybe grumbling a bit.  It's another thing to kitten the soul of the game.

If there's ever one time to admit a mistake and change course, this is it.

[GeraldBC.4927]

6 minutes ago, Titan.7853 said:

If there's ever one time to admit a mistake and change course, this is it.

Western studios (almost) never admit to mistakes. It's only started to become a thing very recently. For Anet, it started to become a thing a little after post-EoD when they announced SotO. I am pretty convinced that throughout the 2010s there must have been some kind of PR company explicitly telling studios "Never ever admit to a mistake, always double down, if there's criticism, insult the critics and downplay the severity, never ever change course on even the slightest past decision, even if it was made by someone else, EVEN if you yourself don't agree with it." It would explain so much. 

Edited Saturday at 07:56 PM by GeraldBC.4927

[Titan.7853]

On an entirely lesser level of upset, because it's just technical, I still feel like splitting the behavior of equipment between PvE and WvW is a massive mistake.  Implementing such a system should never be allowed, because it will be tempting to make more changes in future beyond Celestial gear.

Now I have to have separate equipment tabs for WvW and PvE, because things behave differently depending on where I go?  No.  Not a good idea.  It's bad enough that skills behave differently there.  Equipment was always stable and should remain so.

[Mike.7983]

Really would like Cal to make a vid or post  explaining why transfusion was removed after 8+ years? Why Celestial is dead, why willbender/thief will start decapping people in WvW rendering that mode abandoned by all casuals.  I mean if your goal is to kill the game slowly congrats your already on that path.  Balance team needs to revert some of these before it goes live.  Already have a few scourge mains who are trying to find a reason to keep playing then you toss this at them to force them to quit. Start using more wvw/pve skill splits no reason pve has to suffer to try to balance wvw out.  As for the whole transfusion topic it's purpose from what I have seen on casual strikes is to help newer people get into organized content without dieing instantly like boneskinner.  Soon as new casuals die fast they quit and lose motivation.

[Titan.7853]

22 minutes ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

Western studios (almost) never admit to mistakes. It's only started to become a thing very recently. For Anet, it started to become a thing a little after post-EoD when they announced SotO. I am pretty convinced that throughout the 2010s there must have been some kind of PR company explicitly telling studios "Never ever admit to a mistake, always double down, if there's criticism, insult the critics and downplay the severity, never ever change course on even the slightest past decision, even if it was made by someone else, EVEN if you yourself don't agree with it." It would explain so much. 

In a way I can't say I blame them, because once you let the mob or crowd bully you into a change, then you open yourself up on every subsequent change to endless harassments as developers.  It would be a bit like chumming the waters.  Although, I do agree that it's taken too far.

Sometimes, like everything else in life, there are exceptions.  Sometimes people get things wrong, and to totally ignore the overwhelming feelings of your community is also just plain wrong.  I think this is one of those times, as it deeply affects people, way beyond mere stats.  On this one issue, they could say "we've heard you and we are removing that change for now, and will reconsider in future."  Then pretend it never happened.

Simple as that.

Edited Saturday at 08:17 PM by Titan.7853

[Daby.7238]

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

Google "wiki gw2 search and rescue" and read through the result. 

• 5 targets
• 40 seconds without alacrity

If being able to do this is too powerful and needs to be removed, why does "search and rescue" exist? 

Instantly commands your pet to teleport to a nearby fallen ally, then teleport itself and the downed ally back to your location, and then begin reviving them and grant regeneration to allies. Since it teleports the ally to you, it is very useful to pull them out of danger, including Finishers.

Regenration is 5-man, it pulls only one target 🤨

[Ferril.8109]

Can we please get support per game mode? Trying to balance the 3 modes together isn't working out and you're amputating some of the most important parts of elite specs after 10+ years with no feedback other than complaints from 1 mode. There needs to be way more communication from balance devs. Roy and Cal don't seem to understand certain classes and favor others highly. It's every balance patch. This isn't good for anyone..

[Kulvar.1239]

52 minutes ago, Svalinn.7480 said:

If you're getting insta gibbed by power roamers that tells me that you heavily rely on Cele to face tank stuff. Just learn to dodge/block/reflect. Power v Power is great fun when you aren't just running in smashing your face on the keyboard.

I want you to try playing with 1000ms-countryside-ping, along with the eyesight and the reflexes of my grandma (or anyone with some handicap).
Then come tell me it's people's fault they need to rely on celestial to avoid dying for not dodging quickly enough.

Edited Saturday at 08:18 PM by Kulvar.1239

[Kulvar.1239]

2 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

That's not even close to useful. Similar issue as Longbow 5, where the damage is spread out in multiple hits and amounts to nothing. What we need are heavy ranged hits, with AoE, not spread out ticks and projectiles.

So you want a range weapon that ignores range weapon counterplay?

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

6 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

A minor quibble:  "quick scrapper" is not a class. It's an e-spec build, but the class itself is Engineer.

/nitpick

It's absolutely hysterical that I get a warning for calling this garbage out, because it further cement the idea that the folks over at Anet are reading this, but doesn't give a rat kitten about it.

Whole company a joke, lmao.

[ViruS.4372]

Regarding Transfusion on Scourge, not being able to teleport allies anymore.

Honestly, it was certainly too powerful in some game modes, but instead of completely destroying it, why not modify how it works? This trait was what made Scourge...Scourge.

Instead of teleporting all the 5 players, make it teleport only 2 or double the cooldown time. If it was too powerful, you balance it, you do not remove it.

This is heading the same way Druid did, you stuffed alacrity on CA instead of Spirits, removing the ability to heal on demand, it got butchered so bad overtime as a support class that now we have a healing class playing mostly DPS -.- really...a class named Druid playing DPS, go figure. 

 

Edited Saturday at 08:30 PM by ViruS.4372

[Hikaru.6704]

37 minutes ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

We do. Just to name one case, there's probably a lot more, lot of the traits that exist entirely to provide group alacrity have had their alacrity removed for WvW. Notably from scourge for instance. I think Druid was included as well. 

Now this was the EXACT change I was going to propose if we go by Arenanet's reasoning. The reasoning behind removing transfusion teleport in PVE was that it trivializes certain bossfights, right? Well you know which other skill trivializes certain bossfights? Mesmer Portal. Imagine if we applied the same logic and removed mesmer portal from the game. Can't use it to outrange in Cerus CM anymore, can't use it to trivialize Qadim1 anymore, can't use it to trivialize W3 escort anymore. In fact why stop there?

You know which other skill has been trivializing a lot of bossfights? Feedback. The huge reflect dome where you can just plant it and every 'reflect this projectile' mechanic is automatically solved. You don't have to angle yourself and some finnicky reflect wall, you can just plant it there and it solves every problem automatically. Imagine if that was just gone, no more cheesing Mathias with feedback, no more cheesing Arkk obs with feedback, no more cheesing Sabir, no more cheesing Mai/Scarlet. It's just gone from the game. If lack of good reflects becomes an issue, you'll have to drop the mesmer in favor of a firebrand. Once we're done gutting the mesmer, the firebrand is next. 

You know which other skill has been trivializing things in fractal CMs? Sanctuary. HFBs that are good enough can straight up solo their sorrow AND help out with the other sorrow like it's nothing, because of how much of a cc powerhouse they are. You know what causes this? Sanctuary. It trivializes several fights so let's just remove it. 

I so much agree with you, what you said is so much true !

And honestly, it's more fun learning how mechanics work so you can use your classes to pass through them easily or not.

Transfusion, is and never was too broken, they did what what necessary, nerf it when it became a heal too so it would be balance. Honestly, i don't even see the point in balancing more than it was, at least in Pve. in other mode, i can understand, but remove it completly after a decade, well destroying a class/spe again.... so sad and unecessary.

We want to play for fun like i said earlier and we love our character and capacity, so change everything everytime and completly can be heartbroken.

I'm lucky, I know how to do mechanics, and i can die a few times to learn, and i don't care of change classes and don't play another for a while. But some only plays 1 character/1class/even 1spe so yeah it is a problem.

[Kulvar.1239]

1 hour ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Unless the combat starts from stealth/range without warning. Defensive stats let you survive the surprise burst and then counter. 

Also some players like to face tank. It's a popular playatyle in many, many games for a good reason.  Also very helpful for older players like me who don't have fast reaction times anymore. It let's more players play the game mode.

That's why I think ANet should enable jade bot core HP bonus in WvW, with a NPC selling cores for WvW currencies.

[Kulvar.1239]

10 hours ago, MuscleBobBuffPants.1406 said:

ArenaNet needs to implement a better system of gathering and integrating feedback. There should be a more organized system other than 50+ pages of posts with no developer involvement. How do they even organize or integrate the feedback? They should have feedback sections for more widespread philosophy as well as more nuanced ways of providing specific feedback on specific abilities. This would allow them to integrate this feedback from a bottom up approach. But yeah we need to address the overall philosophy of their balance decisions not just the nuanced ability changes. The celestial change for example is a big one, why was it done? How does it connect with their overall goals? Is their philosophy a good one? Is there direction/goal a good one? Their feedback system is not very organized or clear.

You mean a everything-in-a-single-topic where people shout their ideas in a void nobody will ever read nor reply on these ideas is not the best solution for handling feedback and suggestions? /s

[Cley Creston.6529]

I know several people have addressed this already but just to point out how much this bothers me: 
I welcome the majority of changes, but as someone who has been playing support for years and now found healscourge being quite exciting I simply do not understand the changes to transfusion. I thorougly confuses me.
I understand attempts to balance issues but I dont see how there is any balancing issue here: Removing the teleport part of Transfusion cuts further into the class identity, makes it feel less unique,takes away a unique trait that distinguishes it compared to others without adding any boons such as stability or swiftness which it cannot provide on demand unlike some others such as guardian which are able to provide every single boon at the tip of the fingers without even going into specializations. 
Transfusion teleport was in fact the one ability that tipped the scale for me when I was trying to decide between scrapper and scourge in terms of a heal support but if given the choice if I can revive from afar as scrapper or teleport my mates to me and revive them myself, I picked scourge in particular because it gave me the option to get them out of extremely sticky situations and puddles. And its not like this is some easy thing to pull off, ive had enough situations where I accidentally pulled them in downed state from one aoe to another which killed them in the end. 
Now its pretty much...well no different than any class except for with less boon upkeep options. Might make me switch back to scrapper again even though I really hate the combo field spam at the cost of on demand boons. 

EDIT: Just to add another thought: If the argument is "it trivializes certain encounters" boy oh boy, if we go down that road we can list a whole number of skills, traits and in fact almost entire specs that trivialize a number of content. Mesmer Portals trivialize the need to finish Jump Puzzles by yourself. The on-demand stability and aegis spam by HFBs and Chronos trivialize a lot of dodging. It just makes no sense to me. Because if thats the road we wanna go down we might aswell address we might aswell equalize every role and end up at a spot where every single heal support or boon dps provides exactly the same boons, types of support and on demand skills. No more differences, no more balancing issues. 

Edited Saturday at 08:47 PM by Cley Creston.6529

[Beddo.1907]

22 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

So you want a range weapon that ignores range weapon counterplay?

More or less. Ground targeted AoE, without projectile, so we can do anything while zerg is outside melee. Preferably with boon removal.

[Shade.8037]

18 minutes ago, Cley Creston.6529 said:

I know several people have addressed this already but just to point out how much this bothers me: 
I welcome the majority of changes, but as someone who has been playing support for years and now found healscourge being quite exciting I simply do not understand the changes to transfusion. I thorougly confuses me.
I understand attempts to balance issues but I dont see how there is any balancing issue here: Removing the teleport part of Transfusion cuts further into the class identity, makes it feel less unique,takes away a unique trait that distinguishes it compared to others without adding any boons such as stability or swiftness which it cannot provide on demand unlike some others such as guardian which are able to provide every single boon at the tip of the fingers without even going into specializations. 
Transfusion teleport was in fact the one ability that tipped the scale for me when I was trying to decide between scrapper and scourge in terms of a heal support but if given the choice if I can revive from afar as scrapper or teleport my mates to me and revive them myself, I picked scourge in particular because it gave me the option to get them out of extremely sticky situations and puddles. And its not like this is some easy thing to pull off, ive had enough situations where I accidentally pulled them in downed state from one aoe to another which killed them in the end. 
Now its pretty much...well no different than any class except for with less boon upkeep options. Might make me switch back to scrapper again even though I really hate the combo field spam at the cost of on demand boons. 

EDIT: Just to add another thought: If the argument is "it trivializes certain encounters" boy oh boy, if we go down that road we can list a whole number of skills, traits and in fact almost entire specs that trivialize a number of content. Mesmer Portals trivialize the need to finish Jump Puzzles by yourself. The on-demand stability and aegis spam by HFBs and Chronos trivialize a lot of dodging. It just makes no sense to me. Because if thats the road we wanna go down we might aswell address we might aswell equalize every role and end up at a spot where every single heal support or boon dps provides exactly the same boons, types of support and on demand skills. No more differences, no more balancing issues. 

This exactly. Honestly even nerfing it it some way is fine, I have no issue with necro not being best healer, wasn't when I got into it (Post original nerf) Isn't really now, that's fine. But stop making everything feel the same, necromancer playing with downstate IS THE HEALER IDENTIY, this change just makes the whole spec feel pointless to play. I don't want to place a bad disc priest from wow, I want to play a freaking necromancer that scrapes his friends off the ground and hurls them at the enemy.

[daw.4923]

4 hours ago, Zily.3152 said:

Im not a fan whenever GW2 removes class identities. In the near future, the class choices will no longer be, necro, guardian, etc. Instead, it will be more: what color skills would you like your alacrity/quickness in? And to me, that is boring. Having unique classes is what made GW2 great, not the current route they are going down. Instead of stripping uniqueness from classes, why not do some meaningful changes instead?

you mean like giving every class qdps,adps and qheal,aheal? throw everyone some stab,aegis,superspeed?

ye that train passed  in 2021.

[daw.4923]

2 hours ago, Mousetrap.8726 said:

The transfusion teleport is currently all support scourge feels like it even has above other supports. It lags behind in every other metric. Taking it away and not reassessing the spec's value leaves me feeling like I shouldn't even try playing it in favor of other supports.

hscg is probably best healer in the game even without transfusion. i have no clue what game you playing.

you have perma 10k barrier,perma condi cleanse,portal, etc etc..... why do you think 99.9% groups running 100cm are looking for hscg?  I think that most players crying here have no even clue how powerful hscg rly is.

[Udaya.7936]

11 hours ago, Alkaid.2098 said:

But why in PVE ONLY is the heal on it weaker? It should be weaker in vs modes no? like I am not saying it should have more than they are giving it in pve, but why ONLY in pve is the output weaker? that is what I don't understand.  like I would think it'd be weaker in vs modes, than in pve, say you hit 5 players with something like soul spiral and hit like 20-25k~ on each of them that's like 4k hp back on a marauder stat necro that has 27k hp, not counting any other damaging skills like wells which you can pre cast before entering shroud like the elite shout into the fear on shroud three that makes them sitting ducks. to me it is odd to let it be higher in wvw/pvp over pve. In pve you can basically survive solo against champs and legendary mobs by playing raid reaper with dagger, focus greatsword and a couple very minor trait changes. I just don't understand why they are letting this exist in vs modes.

Good point; I thought you meant it the other way around. I don't play competitive modes enough to know how good Reaper is there, so I can only comment on the PvE aspect. Though it seems like the shroud healing should either be reduced or not exist for all game modes based on what you've said (which I can agree with).

[Shade.8037]

8 minutes ago, daw.4923 said:

hscg is probably best healer in the game even without transfusion. i have no clue what game you playing.

you have perma 10k barrier,perma condi cleanse,portal, etc etc..... why do you think 99.9% groups running 100cm are looking for hscg?  I think that most players crying here have no even clue how powerful hscg rly is.

Oh, yeah, because stab and protection uptime don't matter at all for healers. /s

The ability to save downstate is the only benefit to bringing a scourge, without that bring literally any other class and don't let them get downed to begin with. We UTTERLY lack the basics of being a healer, and made up for that with niche rez protentional, now just play an actually good healer. We can be replaced by a freakin dps specter.

[Hikaru.6704]

21 minutes ago, daw.4923 said:

hscg is probably best healer in the game even without transfusion. i have no clue what game you playing.

you have perma 10k barrier,perma condi cleanse,portal, etc etc..... why do you think 99.9% groups running 100cm are looking for hscg?  I think that most players crying here have no even clue how powerful hscg rly is.

Well we don't know which one you play either then sorry. O_o

Or maybe you don't play other healers ? I play all of them, and where hscg is better on some fight like 100 cm for his portal that comes back fast enough, the barrier is in fact because your heal is lower than other classes... but yeah you're tanking over taking and be healed fast enough, in contrary of other heal, but barrier enginner does have too ^^.

As for the boon, you give less than most of healers, and we don't talk about the fact that transfusion isn't a 100% skill, sometimes you can't use it or you kill with it.

On other fights i wouldn't recommend this one, exemple, chrono is better on strikes but hfb is too sometimes, like KO CM. fractals 97-98-99 -->> Hfb needed by elitist they don't want hscrg, and don't talk about raid, chrono, hfb, tempest yeah hscrg they don't want ^^

HTCM example now : Chrono, engineer or tempest, the hscrg is the last one i would take if we're talking about now. And the one i never saw used before in groups too now that i think about it.

Have a lot of example but honestly, the hscrg and transfusion are mostly use to present the game to other begginners players that want to discover content other than open world. Period

Tranfusion : you use it to share the game and because it's fun, and that is what a scourge is.

Edited Saturday at 09:29 PM by Hikaru.6704

[Gendalfs.7521]

Some of devs woke up from a bad dream in the middle of night and decided, lets remove teleport from scourge. Logic of story? None as many balance decisions recently.

[LuRkEr.9462]

1 hour ago, ViruS.4372 said:

Regarding Transfusion on Scourge, not being able to teleport allies anymore.

Honestly, it was certainly too powerful in some game modes, but instead of completely destroying it, why not modify how it works? This trait was what made Scourge...Scourge.

Instead of teleporting all the 5 players, make it teleport only 2 or double the cooldown time. If it was too powerful, you balance it, you do not remove it.

This is heading the same way Druid did, you stuffed alacrity on CA instead of Spirits, removing the ability to heal on demand, it got butchered so bad overtime as a support class that now we have a healing class playing mostly DPS -.- really...a class named Druid playing DPS, go figure. 

 

I agree with this. There isn't much reason to bring a heal scourge over other healers now with its unique identity gone. Barrier is ok, but scourge healing is mediocre overall among the healers aand other healers have barrier to a lesser degree they can save for specific damage windows. Scourge boon access is lesser, stab and aegis specifically are fairly limited (basically no stab and 1 aegis application.)

Scourge teleport is useful on a certain fight but past that I'll probably switch to another healer for most things. 

[Vidit.7108]

On 9/13/2024 at 12:34 PM, Joie.6084 said:

Shadow Sap: This skill is now ground targeted and will fire a projectile at the target location. When the missile lands, it will strike enemies and grant barrier, might, and protection to allies. The strike no longer inflicts weakness on enemies.

I've decided to give thief feedback because this change at least appears to be half listening to previous feedback, which is a big improvement from never listening. First, it's good that ally targeting has been removed from a weapon skill that was this important. Where this change falls short is in introducing another form of targeting other than in an area around the player. Skills like well of bounty already have major issues with getting players to stand in them and while other classes have similar powerful healing abilities as ground target skills they don't have the rest of their kit attached to ally targeting skills. It's now much more intensely having to manage both of these things, neither of which are simple usage. Now it's doubled the number of opportunities to misclick an ally by requiring two boon skills to ground target. Even with that I can't deny that it's better this way, but this is still far from ideal. I'm waiting to see what the boon duration and barrier amounts carried over are to tell how much better the skill is but Heal Specter is still only receiving one helpful change.
Heal Specter in particular is still plagued by it's alacrity being attached to an ally it has to account for before entering shroud. The fact that it's alacrity comes from consuming a resource and must be correctly placed with very little room for error doesn't change. You might say every class needs to correctly place it's boons but they all get to decide where the boons go while Specter is still left crossing their fingers for alacrity. Additionally, much of the spec's raw healing is in some way still tied to ally targeting, as well as much of it's might. I'd say the Shadow Refuge healing boost helps but that skill has far too many drawbacks to weigh against ever using it no matter how good the healing is. 
Edit: I wanted to add that this still isn't really getting into the myriad of other usability issues. Presumably the player can now get barrier from it's own shadow sap without other allies around and this is a big help since it mostly can't help itself without an ally around. It's still behind the curve of what other healers can do for just themselves and also since other healers have had healing buffs, Specter really hasn't had any recent changes to it's raw healing output.

On 9/13/2024 at 12:34 PM, Joie.6084 said:

• Helmet Breaker: This skill can no longer be used multiple times in a row. Increased the power coefficient from 0.6 to 1.1 in PvP and WvW only. Reduced the initiative cost from 3 to 2 in PvP and WvW.
• Weakening Charge: This skill is now named Weakening Whirl. This skill no longer moves the player.

While the movement of weakening charge is the bane of my existence I didn't want it completely removed in exchange for nothing. There was a lot of value in Weakening Charge that made it define staff daredevil since heart of thorns was released. For one it allowed the player to reset their position relative to the boss after using a daredevil dodge. Vault is a poor choice for doing this for many reasons but for most of all because it doesn't track the enemy.
~I would have greatly preferred that weakening charge not move the player unless an enemy was targeted.~
This would have solved new and experienced player issues with the skill without hurting it's complexity nearly as much. It will also lose it's synergy with fluid strikes which pulled acrobatics closer to relevancy (and acrobatics needs all the help it can get). As it stands it's been turned into melee unload which isn't very interesting, and probably going to lead to player complaints in the future. Balance changes to staff and daredevil have made Weakening Charge less and less useful in daredevil's damage budget so now that it is simpler too  that leaves it feeling pretty lame.
With this change staff identity is more or less entirely gone. It's becoming unrecognizable now that debilitating arc can't be spammed to emergency leave an enemy, staff auto attack can't be timed to reflect projectiles, dust strike can't be used as a minor range skill and finally weakening charge doesn't move the player. The most interesting thing about helmet strike was getting to spam it in Pve, also gone. The only OG skill left is Vault and I don't doubt you'll find a way to erase it eventually too. 

On 9/13/2024 at 12:34 PM, Joie.6084 said:

• Cluster Bomb: Increased the power coefficient from 1.45 to 2.25 in PvE only.
• Even the Odds: Increased the vulnerability stacks from 5 to 10.
• Sundering Shade: Increased the vulnerability stacks from 5 to 10.
• Hidden Killer: Increased the duration from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.

The Cluster bomb change feels like you didn't know what to do about shortbow so you improved one number to see what would happen. In fairness I don't know really what you should do about shortbow either.
The trait changes are necessary adjustments toward bringing those debuffs more in line with what other classes can do. The traits still aren't good. 
Hidden Killer is i guess slightly better than before but still useless in PvE. I don't know what an extra two seconds will let it do other than maybe miss with a stealth attack and try a second time.

Edited Saturday at 09:56 PM by Vidit.7108