October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Ventusxt.8574]

56 minutes ago, ShatteredStars.6548 said:

It's just a video game.

If it's just a videogame, then removing the GoB requirement from legs or allowing us to get one each season through wizards vault would'nt matter too much eh? 😉

[Power Eternal.7209]

52 minutes ago, OliOliOxenFree.7814 said:

Here's what I would do to fully compensate this change:

• Give Scourge the ability to provide AoE Stability (I'll be happy with 1 stack, but the more, the merrier)
• Give Necromancer some sort of support weapon (tie more boons and healing to this so we can actually can use other utility skills for, you know, utility)
• Increase the amount of healing it does in its healing skills or give it more healing skills than it already has

These are the bare minimum that I think would definitely soften the blow for Heal Scourge enjoyers like myself. Please consider them.

Signed,

Every Heal Scourge Player

100% agreed. I would kill two birds with one stone and add aoe stab and aoe swiftness and at least some barrier or healing to staff. Then the offset can still be for CC. Imagine autoattack healing a bit, staff 2 giving like 2k barrier or so on top of the regen, staff 3 gives swiftness along with putting chill on enemies still, and staff 4 can be 1 stab. Then to go along with this Staff 5 already applies fear, now add +200 extra defiance bar damage cc on it and we have a winner.

[borisslav.9026]

Anet are you trying to kill scourge?! 

[Cernoch.8524]

7 minutes ago, borisslav.9026 said:

Anet are you trying to kill scourge?! 

It is necromancer, they can not kill it!

That is what you get as a necro for trying to revive people 😁

Edited Friday at 11:28 PM by Cernoch.8524

[Sofie.8659]

2 hours ago, daw.4923 said:

well ele is downed meme char so any random change will be better than what he currently have..

there are also like 12 heal tempest players and 2 using rebound.

As a heal Tempest main I feel called out. 😄 And yes, i use Rebound, and yes - i'll take that Stab.. any crumbs i get i eat from the table.. while silently being jealous to the other class mains who been eating well for years. It is what it is. ^^

tbh i am happy playing Tempest heal, i have mental condition of some kind for sure.

[Fawn Huntress.4385]

❤️ *TRANSFUSION* is a CORE skill that exists since game launch and it works perfectly with CORE build necro shroud.  It has nothing to do with scourges, regardless of some publicly posted scourge builds that make use of it.  Transfusion should remain as-is and available for PvE and only be changed for PvP and WvW since no one has a problem with it in open world PVE content.  There are already skills that act differently in PvP/WvW versus PVE.

[reapex.8546]

Quote

"Transfusion: This trait no longer teleports downed allies to the user."

This is one the most key components to PvE heal scourge.  With its removal there will be less reason to take Heal Scourge.
If you need to remove the Alacrity component, because it feels too powerful that's fine, in my opinion.  Heal Scourge was doing fine before it was given Alacrity.

[hedix.1986]

Rip scourge. I enjoyed it, it's a sad day.

1 hour ago, Caitmonster.9036 said:

It was also a very useful spec for training / teaching runs, because if Little Jimmy who's learning an encounter for the first time falls over after getting stuck in a bad spot, you can at least have yanked him out of the no-no zone and scraped him off the floor once or twice so he could keep learning instead of just being a decoration until the next pull. Yes, it was a carry spec, but people had fun with it and enjoyed carrying people.

The people talking about Scourge's identity are spot on. The pull was already nerfed once, now it's just being straight up deleted. Some people get a dopamine hit from benchmarking 50k on a golem. Some of us weirdos get a dopamine hit when we see fountains of green numbers or all the little blue down symbols go away within a few seconds because of a well timed Transfusion.

This.

[Andron.4382]

3 hours ago, ManoLito.4576 said:

What you really need is Fury generation, since the healer scrapper can maintain power without problem, so you wouldn't be depending on the Midnight King's relic.

I second this. Might is easy to maintain with Blast Gyro, Might isn't the job of QDPS (though I have this idea that healer should provide defensive boons and support should provide offensive boons, but that's not how the meta is and probably never will be). However, what Scrapper lacks the most is consistent Fury which only comes from Relic of the Midnight King, the only alternative is Rifle Turret with Experimental Turrets, which can't compete with Relic of the Midnight King, which frankly, could be renamed Relic of the Scrapper because I think it's quite thematic for the class. 

An additional way of providing Fury would also be a buff to Shortbow, not enough to make it compete with Mace/Shield in PvE, but not having to run Relic of the Midnight King would make it slightly more viable.

[SleepyBat.9034]

So,  when are they dropping the willbender and thief nerfs? No point returning otherwise.

[jozze.9532]

12 minutes ago, reapex.8546 said:

This is one the most key components to PvE heal scourge.  With its removal there will be less reason to take Heal Scourge.
If you need to remove the Alacrity component, because it feels too powerful that's fine, in my opinion.  Heal Scourge was doing fine before it was given Alacrity.

You don't take heal scourge for the transfusion pull.

You take it for the ungodly amount of barrier it gives.

If you remove alacrity from it, THAT would kill heal scourge, because in the current meta every healer either provides quickness or alacrity. No boon heals are pretty much dead in endgame PvE.

What you could instead argue for is that they change transfusion by adding a longer ICD to the teleport or decrease the targets or decrease the range. That is a more reasonable stance, but nerfing transfusion on scourge should have already happened years ago. And even without it scourge will still be an OP shield healer.

[Tofu.1865]

Yep, still no fix for Engi Spear 2 (conduit surge) or bomb kit buff.

[reapex.8546]

Just now, jozze.9532 said:

You don't take heal scourge for the transfusion pull.

You take it for the ungodly amount of barrier it gives.

If you remove alacrity from it, THAT would kill heal scourge, because in the current meta every healer either provides quickness or alacrity. No boon heals are pretty much dead in endgame PvE.

What you could instead argue for is that they change transfusion by adding a longer ICD to the teleport or decrease the targets or decrease the range. That is a more reasonable stance, but nerfing transfusion on scourge should have already happened years ago. And even without it scourge will still be an OP shield healer.

Heal Scourge was being used before Alacrity was added to it.  People weren't taking Heal Scourge to Boneskinner for Alacrity.  It was taken for barrier and pulls. 

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

4 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

Extirpate: This skill no longer inflicts Extirpation and instead inflicts weakness.

For kitten sake dude, You actually had something unique and interesting, and you kitten it over for a weakness debuff necromancer already had plenty of.

This homogenizing you guys are doing is garbage. kitten this boonball meta

Edited Saturday at 12:05 AM by Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

4 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

Weaver

• Elemental Refreshment: This trait no longer applies barrier to allies. Increased the barrier from 523 to 1,003 in PvE only.
• Bolstered Elements: This trait now triggers Lesser Stone Resonance when you use an elite skill instead of at a health threshold. Reduced the internal cooldown from 70 seconds to 30 seconds. Increased the protection duration from 2.5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Woven Stride: Reduced the internal cooldown from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

 

Wow. Definetly broken OP in october ? (No)

 

• Elemental Refreshment would still be >>>260<<< barrier in wvw/pvp ? Because it's lame, and now you won't even give this poor barrier to allies ? kitten ...
• Bolstered Elements : Weaveself 75sec CD, Tornado 60sec, FGS 180sec ... and glyph (completly useless for weaver, particularly in WvW) How ICD reduced to 30seconds is an improvement actually ?
  Protection 2.5 to 3sec, yeah well okai I guess it compensates the loss of concentration on Celestial, but previous barriers were so much better than protection.
• Woven Stride: The only good change to weaver.
  A +33% swiftness effectiveness would probably be reasonable too; I mean we can't swap melee/range and relic of speed exists, it would be nice to have a movement speed increase to compete with all those shadow-step spamming classes or range weapons.

Otherwise please consider giving some boons to weaver (same for daredevil) : quickness or fury/might. Better barriers too please.
Elementalist is just a meme, it almost doesn't exist in MAT nor wvw roaming (outside celestial (dead soon)).

[Coaster.4651]

I'm going to ignore the elephants in the room (Necro spear/rez) and be thankful for the increased flexibility for Quickness Catalyst, no longer having to double up spheres.

In general it would be nice to also have an option to give quickness outside of combat (for at least Catalyst and Berserker that currently lack the option), but I get that QoL isn't necessarily the purpose of a balance patch.

[SmoovRihx.2789]

Transfusion change : utter garbage.

Cele change in wvw: non thief roamers, you're out of luck.

[Wolfhound.4381]

4 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

• Extirpate: This skill no longer inflicts Extirpation and instead inflicts weakness.

There goes the only reason to use Necro spear in WvW. It was a big help with preventing the reapplication of boons. That and the cele nerf is a big blow to scourges in WvW.

[Barraind.7324]

1 hour ago, reapex.8546 said:

Heal Scourge was doing fine before it was given Alacrity.

...

Heal Scourge was being used before Alacrity was added to it. 

Heal Scourge without alacrity isnt playable in the current PvE game. 

We arent in the DivRen days of 10man alacrity letting you run a 0boon scourge or chrono tank plus 2 other healers. 

The days of your healer not bringing quick or alac is long gone, dead, buried, dug up, killed again, set on fire and shot into the sun. 

 

Edited Saturday at 12:37 AM by Barraind.7324

[Daraku.2106]

The Transfusion nerf is too big.  They should give back stab or keep a nerfed teleport.  If they don't do either PvE HS will be garbage for the foreseeable future.

I have some ideas on how to fix it but:

TL;DR: Transfusion should pulse healing and increase incoming and outgoing healing by 25% for 6 seconds instead of its current effects and Signet of Undeath should have a CD of 30 seconds, teleport downed players to you instead of resurrecting 1 but should also deplete all your life force along with its current health cost.

Currently, the cooldown on scourge shroud 4 is too short, it works well with core shroud 4 and desert shroud 4 but is clunky with reaper and harb, and the cost is too low for how good it is (on core/scourge).

If transfusion increases healing by 25% it would be used as a choice between selfish and selfless healing depending on if you leave shroud on core/reaper, team burst healing as scourge and selfish healing when you lose blight stacks as harb.  The signet of Undeath rework would still allow it to be used to save players who down in aoes but it would have 2x the cd and lock you out of F skills for a while in exchange for how strong it is.  In WvW the vacuum would still be strong but it would lock you out of your condi cleanse skills since you would have no life force and leave you open to burst.  If you think my version of Signet of Undeath is broken remember that warrior banner has a cd of 90 seconds, full rezes instead of a teleport, gives boons, finishes enemies, and has a 4x dmg multiplier.

[Toraseishin.1932]

On 9/13/2024 at 3:34 PM, Joie.6084 said:

Thief

 First, Weakening Charge will no longer have a movement component, meaning that players are free to move during its casting time.

• Weakening Charge: This skill is now named Weakening Whirl. This skill no longer moves the player.

This has been a major frustration at times for staff thief, so I am glad this is being addressed.
HOWEVER, as frustrating as the forced movement was/is (specifically due to it often moving you away from, or through the target if the target is also moving), Weakening Charge also served as a consistent and necessary gap closer as part of the rotation. Without the gap-closing function of the skill, our only reliable means of sticking to the target will be Steal....which has a 17-25 second cooldown...
This could very well kill the flow of staff combat, as we will be stuck manually positioning ourselves with every skill - which would feel absolutely terrible.

Suggested change: With the removal of forward movement, please consider adding a short-range shadowstep to the target before executing the whirl animation. This way Weakening Whirl would maintain its gap-closing function (which again, is crucial for melee combat). And similar to Steal, Weakening Whirl would therefore not have any movement unless there is a target selected within the range threshold.

(Edit)
Expanding/explaining further:

 

Edited Saturday at 08:20 PM by Toraseishin.1932
typo

[Anerth.8743]

Bruh, leave Transfusion as it is in PvE - it makes scourge viable in par with other healer specs.

[Bris.7984]

This is so fun when all the playerbase is crying(Warrior forum section cry everytime a patch is released)!Now you all can see/feel/judge this "balance" patch kitten teamwork they do from some years now.Warrior was always the Big Cow they milked everytime!They take jokes on you all Buffing and Nerfing things around without knowledge about how things work!Our money are good for them, but our enjoyment not!Now you see!Just sad!😶‍🌫️

 

[chorleyjon.1253]

Thats my beloved Heal Scourge practically deleted from the game. Thanks but not thanks Ahole ( i Mean Anet)

[numanmania.2419]

Anet..... YOU HATE WARRIORS!!!!!!. Sad days.......