October 8 Balance Update Preview

[nthmetal.9652]

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

Elementalist

The June balance update included a few tune-ups to the elementalist's dagger skills in competitive modes with the goal of making them more viable picks. These changes didn't quite have the impact that we were hoping for, so we've made additional improvements to the dagger skills for this update.

The problem with making ele viable isn't really the cooldowns or impact of specific attunements as they are. The problem is rather, to fulfill a specific role, you need to switch between attunements, and thus lose access to what your "primary" attunement does. And for that switch, the cost is too high. Or the other way around: To stay in your primary attunement, you are lacking stuff.

What does a dagger actually do when in water? It heals and cleanses, and provides frost aura and regeneration. And that simply is not enough. So you need to dip out. Dip into fire to provide some might. Dip into earth for some more protection (though only dip into it to blast a fire field typically and MAYBE provide an immob when I see the chance). Dip into air to provide some fury. At least on air there is some lightning aura for transmutes. But in all that time my healing and cleansing is severely kitten, because I am not in water attunement.

I do like that attunement switch, but I also think that is what will be holding back Ele from becoming meta in many zergs / guilds. It faces, and likely always will face the issue of providing not ENOUGH of its primary stuff to really justify switching out.

I also think at least in WvW the change to rebound isn't really strong enough. Switching out Fury for Stability is a nice step, but with the cooldown on rebound, it won't be nearly enough. Now, if the stability would at least be pulsing while rebound was active ....
Generally rebound, for an elite skill, is simply pretty weak (like most of the ele Elite skills, maybe with the exception of Catalyst and its ability to refresh other skills), especially considering its cooldown. Its primay function to protect against a deadly hit in WvW is mostly worthless, as you are not subject to one big hit, but a gazillion of small and big hits. Which makes rebound mostly interesting because of its ability to provide yet another aura to transmute. I think it needs way more work to make it a good elite skill.

[Tammuz.7361]

Necromancer: Transfusion and Extirpate changes.  Stripping away a classes core mechanics is really kinda sad:

Transfusion is one of the key reasons that scourge (which does significantly less healing and less overall access to key boons like stability etc) is played in PvE.  Additionally it has a very high skill ceiling and requirement for it to shine.  Nerfing it is uncalled for.

Likewise Extirpate was a core spear mechanic which sets it apart and makes it unique compared to say great sword (another 2h power mele weapon).  Not sure why this needs to be removed?  Was it over performing in pvp or wvw?

[SleepyBat.9034]

5 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

It's a lot more fun than getting into a drawn-out brawl against them that'll end with you dying slowly from a thousand cuts because then at least you can respawn immediately and go again. Fought 2 v 1 against a Cele Thief as they used constant Stealth and Teleports. When we had an opportunity to hit them they took too little damage to scare them off due to the defensive stats of Celestial while also having decent offensive stats. Took over ten minutes for both of us to die. It was a colossal waste of time and I can guarantee you that it was unfun.

That's a thief issue.

[Malus.2184]

3 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

That's a thief issue.

Yers, that's the point. Multiple issues can exist at the same time. Celestial can be OP in WvW and Thief can be overpowered in WvW.

Edited Sunday at 04:13 PM by Malus.2184

[Gaiawolf.8261]

5 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

"...AnD cAn SeE sOmE cOuNtErPlAy." If they're halfway decent, then the counterplay consists of prolonging your death in the hopes that someone who can help you comes along. So exciting /s

The reality is that against a Cele you're going to run out of defences while their cooldown allows them to recycle offensive tools. The time you have to inflict damage on them is vastly reduced due to the Concentration. To use a hyperbolic example, if they can apply Protection to themselves that lasts two seconds and has a four-second cooldown then with 100% Concentration they can hypothetically have 100% uptime on Protection. This makes any healing practically 33% more effective against Strike damage since the damage of that is reduced by 33%. They also get +Healing from it while also getting good defence in the form of Toughness and Vitality.

That's only THREE of the stats Cele provides.

That's called risk vs reward. If you choose a glass cannon build with low defense, you best hope you can burst your target down since you put all your eggs in one basket. Defensive, well-rounded gear, like celestial gear is a good counter to that playstyle and provides a more well-rounded playstyle. Yes, of course a well-rounded build going to be best in most situations, that's the point of generalist vs specialist strategies. It doesn't mean it will always be best, and it's not an instant win option. You still have to outplay your opponent. I already posted that I'm not opposed to nerfing celestial gear to bring it in line with others if dev data shows it's truly overtuned, just with deleting 2 of its fundamental tools and making it work differently between PVE and WVW. Reducing numbers is fine from one mode to another, deleting them or changing functionality is not.

[nthmetal.9652]

Stealth will always be an issue, as not everyone can even defend against it. So many specs don't even ahve the option to build against it.  Thus thief will always be strong.

[Kulvar.1239]

8 hours ago, Phyb.6704 said:

Celestial

The expertise and and concen gives about 42% bonus to times with all as celestial...
The problem is more so that full celestial gives THE SAME exp and concen as full ritualist which gives far less total stat but the SAME total for exp and concen. 
It does not need to be removed... it needed to be REDUCED to be balanced with other stat sets.
Celestial should not give the same exp and concen as ritualist.
Ritualist is 4 stats and celestial is 9. 

Why not just balance the stat totals.

That would be much better. And make it the same in PvE so we don't split the gear between PvE and WvW.

Normalize runes so they no longer give ???/5%/???/10%/???/10% boon or condition duration,
but ???/35/???/65/???/125 concentration or expertise, that's 10% less boon or condition duration.

Lower the 639 to each attribute of celestial to be between 500 and 550 to each attribute (exact value left to ANet).
3-stats total is 3300 and 4-stats total is 3600, so celestial going from 5751 to between 4000 and 4950 total seems fine.

Edited Sunday at 01:55 PM by Kulvar.1239

[Gaiawolf.8261]

8 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

That would be much better. And make it the same in PvE so we don't split the gear between PvE and WvW.

Normalize runes so they no longer give ???/5%/???/10%/???/10% boon or condition duration,
but ???/35/???/65/???/125 concentration or expertise, that's 10% less boon or condition duration.

Lower the 639 to each attribute of celestial to be between 500 and 550 to each attribute (exact value left to ANet).
It would bring the total to 4500. 3-stats total is 3300 and 4-stats total is 3600, so celestial going from 5751 to between 4000 and 4950 total seems fine.

This is the way.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

16 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

That would be much better. And make it the same in PvE so we don't split the gear between PvE and WvW.

Normalize runes so they no longer give ???/5%/???/10%/???/10% boon or condition duration,
but ???/35/???/65/???/125 concentration or expertise, that's 10% less boon or condition duration.

Lower the 639 to each attribute of celestial to be between 500 and 550 to each attribute (exact value left to ANet).
It would bring the total to 4500. 3-stats total is 3300 and 4-stats total is 3600, so celestial going from 5751 to between 4000 and 4950 total seems fine.

maybe in conjunction with buffing the 3-stat (say by 30%) and 4-stat (say by 15%) combos by a bit, too... especially for the power stat combos.

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

16 hours 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 playstyle 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 lets more players play the game mode.

I've always felt that the issue with Cele isn't necessarily with the stat set itself, but it highlights some of the game's problems with balance.
In competitive modes, the problem with Cele is not just its ability to let people face tank. Rather, certain builds can also deal a hefty amount of damage with it, and therein lies the bigger issue as this means that these builds have very few counters, if any. This is partly due to some classes having high sustain and high damage output to begin with, which Cele just bolsters even further. Add in the fact that condition damage (which a lot of these Cele builds tend to use) gets incredible results while having access to defensive stats - so in the case of WvW, a power or non-Cele build can easily get nuked by something that also counters their damage. IMO, the existence of these Cele builds have encouraged even more one-shot thieves or similar things that people don't want either.

So to me, it's a balance issue. Not just a stat issue. Even though Cele has needed some fine-tuning for awhile, especially in certain game modes, it doesn't solve the bulk of the issue that they might be trying to solve. Certain builds will still overperform, just in different ways. There's high chance that bunker builds will continue to exist, except now with higher condition damage. I don't see this change providing a much needed middle ground here, unless they tackle the unbalanced nature the game is in right now.

[Zily.3152]

16 hours ago, daw.4923 said:

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

ye that train passed  in 2021.

It goes much farther back than that. Necro isn't the first class to lose their uniqueness and necro has already lost one identity. Now it's about to lose its other one. 

[Zily.3152]

There's a different route they could have taken instead of deleting the yoink in transfusion.

 

They could have gave a 1-2min debuf that prevents yanking. They could give you the revive orb debuf for the same amount of time. They could give a debuf that prevents being yanked the rest of combat. They could reduce the radius to like 240-360 range to add more risk/ reward play style. There are other options than just deleting.

Removing a unique feature to a class is lazy balancing. 

 

The route they're going, I wouldn't be surprised if they lose a large number of players when there's truly no more unique classes and the player base goes find a game that does have unique classes

[Gaiawolf.8261]

10 minutes ago, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

So to me, it's a balance issue. Not just a stat issue. Even though Cele has needed some fine-tuning for awhile, especially in certain game modes, it doesn't solve the bulk of the issue that they might be trying to solve. Certain builds will still overperform, just in different ways. There's high chance that bunker builds will continue to exist, except now with higher condition damage. I don't see this change providing a much needed middle ground here, unless they tackle the unbalanced nature the game is in right now.

That's really it. Nerfing gear is just a band aid fix on top of a band aid. It's a lazy nerf to bring down some overperforming builds, instead of addressing why these builds are over-tuned with certain gear in the first place. Another case of the dev team smacking something with a hammer instead of making a real effort for precision nerfs to overperforming builds. Sure, nerfing celestial gear will bring down the over-tuned builds using it, but it comes with a lot of collateral damage to builds that are just fine.

Edited Sunday at 01:50 PM by Gaiawolf.8261

[Karmiel.1065]

Depuffing celestial in WVW is great but removing the alliances would even be greater.  Losing more and more friends in WVW, I spent years with to this nasty alliance thing.  Not happy about this at all.  

[Kulvar.1239]

3 minutes ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

maybe in conjunction with buffing the 3-stat (say by 30%) and 4-stat (say by 15%) combos by a bit, too... especially for the power stat combos.

Absolutely not! It would destroy any pretense of balance. Remember that some attribute synergize with each other. So berserker/viper is stronger than it seems even with a smaller sum.

If I look up my power build, I end up with full boons at 3764 power, 100% critical chance, and 238.67% critical damage. It's equivalent to having 8984 power.
Would I be in full celestial, which gives me 1386 less power + precision + ferocity, I would end up with 3010 power, 83.86% critical chance, and 217.27% critical damage. It's equivalent to having 5970 power. That's 3014 less equivalent power.

If you want to have the same sum for all gear combinations, you need to remove all synergy or mirror mechanics so there's no particular benefit to anything over something else.
It would mean that condition damage ticks can critical hit, toughness also reduces incoming condition damage, cleanses only remove non-damaging conditions, expertise only increase non-damaging condition duration, concentration do not increase regeneration duration because it's booster by healing power.

An other issue is that by increasing 3-stats by 30% would further promote full berzerker one-shot build that would devolve into absolute kitten show with new players leaving in droves WvW and WvW dying a slow death, similar to how sPvP died. Even enabling jade bot core health bonus in WvW wouldn't prevent that.
You would also find a whole lot of players in full minstrel/nomad gear to avoid dying and turning WvW into a worse slog fest with tightly packed unkillable boonballs with no fighting power causing endless stalemates. And if those are also removed from WvW, then WvW will die like sPvP, see above.

[Allori.7149]

Ty for buffing scrapper uwu

[Kurenai.6317]

Hi, been playing necro for the last decade and a bit, and am just wondering. What in Hell's name is the justification for the removal of one of our only unique advantages in the support category? And what are you giving us back for the cut?
As I see it the removal of transfusions pull and the addition of a relic that does the same on elite use, that will likely see little play as the relic slot is quite contested in any end game build, seems nonsensical. If this is done at the very least tweak the numbers of Transfusion's heal to downed players since we now have to either be on them to trigger a well, or waste a heal skill to begin ressing them at range. As the changes stand this is just a gutting of necro's only real heal spec, for marginal returns, the buffs being quaint at best and do not benefit heal scourge in PvE. Not to mention that the most numerical buffs are to base necro shrourd and a ranged power weapon for reaper. Which while appreciated, seems like a misdirection and padding to say you gave us something. 
I would honestly like a more in-deph reasoning on why this ludicrous change is in the works. Cause as it stands it looks like you did it to justify the existence of a relic that might benefits some heal specs, except for necro, if it is even used in the first place. At the end of the day, I'm just deeply disappointment in another removal of an identifying characteristic of my main class for the last decade with no real explanation as to why. And that's not even getting into the change of the spear 5 de-buff to something as pointless as weakness, witch AGAIN, no real explanation. 
So, Please, give us a modicum respect and explain to us WHY you are, once again, taking necromancers tools away?

[Titan.7853]

I once met a newbie in Eternal Battlegrounds who had on green armor.  Not even exotics.  He was asking me how to survive.  The first time I went into WvW, my impression was that all I did was walk and die for hours.  It drug on forever like that, excited to reach combat, then dead.  That is if I even arrived at the action alive.  It wasn't until I had a full set of Celestial gear that I felt less edgy about dying all the time, and could actually relax and enjoy it.  Concentration is key for stretching out your self-boon generation, to be able to do damage.  Get those might stacks up fast, because your Power and Precision are already low!  Expertise comes in really handy for hybrid damage.  The extra Vitality, Toughness and Healing are essential - but you need to be able to do damage too. 

Even with Celestial gear, you can die so fast in WvW.  So fast.  It's gangland.  I didn't dip my toe in WvW until I had about 800 games of PvP under my belt, so I was already familiar with competitive gameplay by then.  Most new players are not.

Now take away Celestial as a viable option for damage, and boon generation, and it's going to be even worse for new players.  Way worse.  They are not going to be able to do much damage, if they want any survivability.  Veterans are going to harvest them even easier.  That's boring.  Walking long distances after spawn only to die sucks.  Feeling useless or dying fast isn't fun.  Celestial was already a compromise in terms of damage, but it at least took the edge off while still doing acceptable damage.  Marauders isn't going to cut it for survivability either, not until they've learned the ropes in WvW.

So yeah, I am sure that the WvW mains will be happy that Celestial in it's present form is gone.  They can play with each other forever like that as the population shrinks, because newbies and casual players aren't going to have as much fun, or even survive long enough to enjoy the game mode and stick around.  Then WvW mains will cry hard about how it's a dying game mode, who knows, maybe even as much as they do about Celestial gear.

TLDR:

Why not balance skills for specs that are overperforming in Celestial gear in WvW, instead of removing key stats that make Celestial viable?  Isn't that why skills are already separate across game modes?  Why are we doing that with equipment now too?

Edited Sunday at 03:52 PM by Titan.7853

[DESdrifter.7485]

I think it's time to put gw2 down again and play something else, changing how transfusion works, man, it feels like the banner changes all over again, classes loose their identify and just feel the same nowadays... 

[Itachi Ankoku.4380]

On 9/13/2024 at 2:56 PM, Herrscher.2986 said:

As someone who just recently fell in love with Heal Alacrity Scourge in PvE, I feel furious about the changes to Transfusion and I demand that they are reconsidered.

Right? I'm just getting back into things and finally went something besides DPS. Got full ascended. Heal Scourge is now my main for pve content. It's not the best in healing, the barriers are nice, etc. but it has a good offset because of transfusion being able to really come in clutch. Take that unique thing away and compare it to other healing/support classes... my question is what would be the point of a Scourge then? What do they uniquely bring to the table that makes them worth considering? IMO that was tranfusion. Without that pull, there's better support and healing classes.

Not trying to say the only thing Scourge does good is transfusion - but it was a pretty big positive.

Edited Sunday at 03:28 PM by Itachi Ankoku.4380

[reddie.5861]

didnt read a single comment, but i didnt see a single nerf for willbender in this patch.
how we suppose to take it serious? 😄

they could lower the dmg and or increase the cooldown on skills.
theres no way a class should be able to kitten all boons have invul and so much blocks can dish out this much dmg without a downside.

in general the dmg in WvW is way to high, and boon uptime aswell..
important boons should just be capped to 2 or 3 seconds max.
stab 2 seconds alac 2 seconds quickness 3 seconds.

might etc can be 1min but not these insane kitten boons making a huge different.
they still make a huge different but they do if u use them correct, nowadays every1 runs around with 100 boons on them having insane up time.

[Jski.6180]

36 minutes ago, reddie.5861 said:

didnt read a single comment, but i didnt see a single nerf for willbender in this patch.
how we suppose to take it serious? 😄

they could lower the dmg and or increase the cooldown on skills.
theres no way a class should be able to kitten all boons have invul and so much blocks can dish out this much dmg without a downside.

in general the dmg in WvW is way to high, and boon uptime aswell..
important boons should just be capped to 2 or 3 seconds max.
stab 2 seconds alac 2 seconds quickness 3 seconds.

might etc can be 1min but not these insane kitten boons making a huge different.
they still make a huge different but they do if u use them correct, nowadays every1 runs around with 100 boons on them having insane up time.

Willbill getting an buff lol.

[intomatar.4539]

When should we expect an update to the vindicator? Update the usability of CC skills and reduce the cost of jade winds.

Also make it so that it does not jump often, because it is a bit annoying.

[Malus.2184]

3 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

That's called risk vs reward. If you choose a glass cannon build with low defense, you best hope you can burst your target down since you put all your eggs in one basket. Defensive, well-rounded gear, like celestial gear is a good counter to that playstyle and provides a more well-rounded playstyle. Yes, of course a well-rounded build going to be best in most situations, that's the point of generalist vs specialist strategies. It doesn't mean it will always be best, and it's not an instant win option. You still have to outplay your opponent. I already posted that I'm not opposed to nerfing celestial gear to bring it in line with others if dev data shows it's truly overtuned, just with deleting 2 of its fundamental tools and making it work differently between PVE and WVW. Reducing numbers is fine from one mode to another, deleting them or changing functionality is not.

What is the reward when you can never win against an equally skilled opponent in Cele gear if they have a build that takes advantage of all the stats? What if you play something that's unable to benefit from all the stats? Right now my Roamer is Strike damage. Marauder is my jam, is that a "class cannon" prefix? Guess the added Vitality is now and reduced offensive stats somehow makes me a glass cannon.

This is a load of BS all to justify that Cele "is actually balanced and fair." What a joke. Cele is as fair and balanced under the right circumstances as Fox News.

[Riba.3271]

1 hour ago, Titan.7853 said:

 

Even with Celestial gear, you can die so fast in WvW.  So fast. 

This doesn't change celestial tankiness against burst since all they are doing is taking away boon duration and condition duration. This means boon duration only gives you value after boons would regularly run out. Almost all sources of stability last ~5 seconds and protection 3+ seconds, meaning your tankiness for those 3 seconds is unchanged.

Celestial will be as tanky against burst damage as before and will still serve its purpose for surviving short duration.

Edited Sunday at 04:27 PM by Riba.3271