October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Svviety.8051]

I like warrior changes. I can see the attempt to make the rifle "PEW ... PEW" weapon instead of "pew pew pew pew" weapon but probably it won't be enough to compete as a ranged power option. Mace buff is also nice.

For the scrapper I would opt to add fury instead of might to kinetic accelerators to give more flexibility in terms of relic choice.

And thank you for transfusion nerf. I very much enjoy reading outraged comments.

[Malus.2184]

8 hours ago, Cacarias.8571 said:

What an embarrassing and toxic take. I do a lot of raid trainings for new players, and I almost always play scourge because pulling downed players out of poisons on Sloth/Matty, spicy tiles on VG, jelly on Xera, etc can both save the pull and ease the learning curve. All of us here started out as inexperienced and bad players. We've all gone down from Boneskinner puddles and had a scourge save us. Are you going to tell me that you've never had a scourge pull you out of poison? Did that keep YOU in a state of learned helplessness? Get over yourself.

Then you have a self-selection bias. You think that your experience is the median experience of everyone. The raid scene is small, what you get is the people who are inclined to learn from any mistake they make. This is far from the average experience.

[Zombie.9645]

#save_scourge
IMO short-sighted changes to transfusion that remove uniqness of scoruge and make proffession bland. I would love to see other way to tweak / inline it's power than just removing mechanic.

[Svalinn.7480]

2 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

Berserker because thieves destroy them from stealth.
Marauder/Ritualist/Plaguedoctor/Trailblazer/Minstrel because "too much health points".
Ritualist/Plaguedoctor/Minstrel because "too much boons".

You'll only be allowed to play with gear that let them kill you. (which won't happen because bad players always lose to good players)

All of the examples you have given have trade off's in order to gain those strengths. Most Roamers issue with Cele was that it was too good at literally everything, resulting in some incredibly strong builds on some classes (notably classes that require very little effort and provide large amounts of boons such as Harbinger/Willbender).

No stat combination should provide strong condi pressure, substantial power damage (made even stronger by near permanant high might), very high boon uptime, huge self sustain, and the ability to face tank most bursts.

I for one can't wait to play against some original builds that use the huge variety of stat combinations we have at our disposal rather than the classic "Slap some Cele on it" copy pastes that we have seen for the past few years.

Edited Saturday at 06:50 AM by Svalinn.7480

[NoggDog.5486]

All ele changes are HUGE wins, especially the Catalyst changes. You've successfully made Quickness Catalyst far more accessible, and I love this.

You've buffed a lot of things here, and there will be many builds changed with this, but in my opinion, even with all of these buffs, this balance patch is going to be terrible, because of 2 things.

Celestial nerf is just going to make it useless to everything but Elementalist... Again. It's a sad regression. While it's neat you now have the tech to do stats separately on a per game mode basis now, this ain't it, and will only dumpster yet another stat set. I propose that instead of removing Concentration and Expertise, reduce the overall stat allocation by 20%. Celestial has long had far more points across the board than any other stat set, just bring that down.

Necro nerfs... This needs to go back to the drawing board.

1) Removing Extirpation... Why? I thought this was supposed to be the unique thing about Necro Spear?

2) Removing the teleport from Transfusion... Wasn't Scourge's revive potential nerfed into the ground within the last two years? Transfusion used to pulse on use and teleport at most 5 people at a time for a few seconds. You changed that to once, and on top of that, you nerfed the overall revive potential of Necro's Well of Blood into the ground. You wanted to make Necro have a support spec, but just as it was back when Transfusion was nerfed the first time, you haven't considered that Scourge doesn't bring as much to the table as other classes without Transfusion in its current form, as it is lacking in things like group swiftness and reliable Stability. You're only going to kill the spec you went out of your way to make possible and create more work for yourself later to bring it back up to par, just as you did the first time you nerfed Transfusion... So, why?

 

Edited Saturday at 06:58 AM by NoggDog.5486

[Chester.4516]

Transfusion: This trait no longer teleports downed allies to the user. This trait no longer increases the cooldown of Garish Pillar in WvW.

Please do not carry through with this change into PvE. If you want to move this to competitive game modes, especially WvW, I can totally agree as stacking necros with Transfusion in zergs is powerful even with the CD increase. This change in PvE absolutely kills what makes Heal Scourge a unique healer who has powerful revive tools. It gives it a unique place in the PUG meta as a safety net for players learning new instanced content where they have not learned proper positioning (Cairn, Soulless Horror, Qadim Peerless etc). A change to the keystone of Scourge is a blow to the confidence of players to new instanced content and will further push people out of the LFG and into private discords, further gatekeeping instanced content.

While I'm sure the balance team has thought about the following, please consider them again: a nerf to the teleport range of Transfusion or remove the revival pulse to weaken its revival strength.

Please do not take away what makes Heal Scourge so fun to use, what makes Heal Scourge so reassuring to PUGs and players new to content, what gives Heal Scourge consideration over other healers.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 hour ago, Maria Murtor.7253 said:

What about Well of Power? A bit awkward. But it's there.

Self-only, and not pulsing.  It basically only covers the cast time.

Edited Saturday at 07:05 AM by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[kronosxviii.2810]

Necromancers not having the key boons Stability & Swiftness as a countermeasure to situations that would lead to the death of your teammates, was a large part of the purpose of transfusion, imo.  Without transfusion to cover that weakness, we're now entirely dependent on other professions like guardians paying attention and running 'Stand Your Ground' within your subgroup. This is awful. Though understandable in the context of skipping mechanics.

What's ironic is that the "master of death" theme of necromancers has been and is being nerfed patch by patch. The classes uniqueness is being gutted. :/

 

Edited Saturday at 07:11 AM by kronosxviii.2810

[Skie.8904]

Putting power creep aside:

1. Love the Helmet Breaker Change.
2. Since you're touching Warrior Rifle, let's be serious and talk about Explosive Shell. This is the main skill that currently brings Rifle down. It's supposed to be your one multi target big hit, but it's more than unreliable. Highly limited by its cone shape and angle. As if the enemies are standing neatly in line for you. It should be a proper radios explosion like almost any other skill of that sort.

[CrazyM.1852]

Have mixed feelings about Thief changes,

Staff change to 2 skill will be useful in group content and big bosses to help you dodge machenics, but in every other scenario not so much. For example if you use it for some reason in PvP, it helps stick to moving targets and if you play solo in PvE, Weakening charge procs Guarded Initiation and Fluid Strikes in Acro traitline (if you use Acro for some survivebility). And Staff in general in Pve needs a buff to dmg to be able to compete with other dps options in endgame content.

Hope one day Daredavil and Specter get some love for Pve, as Deadeye outperformes them in most builds atm. As Daredevil need a bit of a boost and Specter traitline needs a straitup rework.

Also, was hoping for some quality of life and bug fixes for Thief Spear, and maybe some number adjustments.

[PetitQuark.9214]

Could you consider buffing the dual sword build for the Guardian? I really can't stand the spear, and improving the dual swords would bring more diversity and viability to different playstyles.

[Barnahizi.2593]

stop ruining "Celestial" make the numbers low but why remove ???

[Barnahizi.2593]

those Willbender changes tho.. im so excited to play the game 🙂

[Barnahizi.2593]

not even a Necro player but that Transfusion changes are brutal 

Edited Saturday at 08:20 AM by Barnahizi.2593
bug

[Bludreign.8967]

Nerfing the "Transfusion" and "Necr's Spear".....Arena is acting more like an H.O.A committee board!

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Wow, I am completely shocked that Cele is being changed in WvW. I was a big enjoyer of it on a couple builds, but at the end of the day I think it was a mistake to ever buff it so hard for WvW, so I fully support this change. All it took was for it to take over the zerg meta for a few months. Theorycrafting different hybrid builds will finally gain a bit of its charm back again now that celestial won't majorly eclipse so many other options. With that said, I echo what others have said and would love to see more stat combo options become available. 

I am beyond stoked about the Weakening Charge change for Thief staff. The forced movement on that skill really felt horrible, especially against moving enemies. 

Very much looking forward to seeing how Shadow Sap plays. My hopes for it are that it: 1. is unblockable (or not qualified as a projectile) 2. is castable from behind and 3. has competitive enough values that aren't totally diluted by the fact that it gives barrier/might/prot all together. I am a huge support Specter player in WvW and personally think one of the biggest issues it has is the nonstop facing requirements from spamming Sc/P 3. Having a reliable button you can cast on top of allies behind you while you are having to move away from them, or when they are all up in your hitbox causing your skills to fail, would be really huge. So please let the numbers be competitive! I am not an allied targeting hater like many others, but it is undeniable that it is a very unoptimized and clunky mechanic, so to have skill 2 break away from that is huge. Also allows you to give yourself some support when solo.

Please make some more changes to help make support Specter competitive in WvW. It's truly not horribly far away from being a highly competitive pick. Just needs some solid targeted changes that will help push it in that direction. 

Edited Saturday at 07:45 AM by Za Shaloc.3908

[NaramSin.2693]

12 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

Hi, everyone,

Welcome to the preview for the October 8 balance update! We're only a few weeks past the release of Janthir Wilds, so this update will be a bit smaller as we continue to watch and evaluate the impact of the new spears and relics. As always, the goal of previewing these changes is to gather your feedback before the live release. We'll be following the conversation and making further adjustments as needed.

Thanks,

Cal "cmc" Cohen

Skills and Balance Lead

Would it be possible to kindly balance the classes according to their role in competitive play (WvW and PvP) and not nerf stats and traits randomly until something works? Thanks.

[Xarog.3172]

12 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

 We'll be keeping an eye on how the tech performs and whether it needs any final touches, but, assuming everything goes well, it's something that we may use going forward to tune other attribute combinations in WvW specifically.

• Celestial equipment will no longer grant concentration or expertise while in a WvW map.
• Revealed: Increased the duration in WvW to match PvP.

 

Setting aside my distaste at the idea of the celestial gear nerfs, this is a terrible idea in general.

The whole point about WvW was that it was supposed to be a style of PvP where you use your ordinary PvE gear. But if you now have to get different gear for WvW because all the stats diverge, well who the hell is gonna bother to gear up for WvW anyway? People with full legendaries, that's who.

I think this would massively discourage casual participation in WvW.

 

 

[Mae.1729]

Ouch,...... you should compensate the transfusion. It's a grandmaster traint after all. Maybe a bigger % -Review or something like that? Like it used to be?  At least in PvE?

You guys know, that you ONLY punishing the noobs by nerfing that?

Yes, I know... I am one of these people who drags the noobs through engame contet in the hope that they get to actually see the encounters to learn one or the other mechanics.

... ye.... I usually used to swap scourge if we have new'ish people so they actually learn something.


TL;Dr: I personally hate the transfusion nerf because I hate people kicking noobs and would instead prefer to teach them one or the other thing like i usually do. This makes them a dead weigh for most parties. 😞 Yes, transfusiuon is way too powerful, but it was used mostly in pugs groups to get them into the harder content. All of the exp groups were using other healers  anyway. You are literally mostly targetting weaker pugs, especially on NA. 😞

[sylva.4971]

Please don’t take away transfusion, it’s a core ability of a Heal Scourge. This skill is unique, fun to play and it can still go wrong btw when you accidentally pull people in a puddle. 

Suggestion: Disconnect Transfusion from the Healing Spring. So yes, you can still pull players to you but mass ress will be gone. The guardian has a mass ress so that might be fun to combine then. Or people just need to work together to ress downed players.

Hope this change will not go through anywayz. It’s already tedious to run around throwing sand shades on the floor every few seconds instead of one big shade to give alacrity, stability is lacking, healing output is low but thanks to barrier compensated and so on. I would really miss the fun of using transfusion.

Edited Saturday at 07:53 AM by sylva.4971

[Midnytblu.2415]

Nerfing Transfusion and the Necro's Spear....Just in time for "The Mad King" festival. 😡

[Lazze.9870]

12 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

Ranger is currently in a good spot in all game modes

Ranger has never truly had a build that can compete for damage roles in large scale WvW. It is better at it now then ever, but you have a bunch of outliers from other classes that always puts ranger at the second or third tier.

Support druid also fell a little bit off due to buffs and changes to other specs, but that's because certain other specs do too much, and not an issue with druid.

I mean, at this point you might as well say outright that top tier builds for in zergs, GvGs etc are reserved for 5-6 of your classes, varying a bit from meta to meta.

In the same patch you're buffing ele spear in wvw which is clearly an aim to make it more relevant as a damage dealer in the same context I'm talking about. That's fine, and you should do that, but don't claim that a different class is in a good spot in all modes when you're so blatantly biased towards certain classes in WvW (aka guardian, necro, revenant and engineer, with sprinkles of warrior and mesmer).

On a different note, thanks for finally hitting celestial stats and that awful transfusion teleport.

Edited Saturday at 08:14 AM by Lazze.9870

[Gazrul.3086]

Can you please do something about thief spear in WvW/PvP? After the stealth nerf this weapon is borderline useless in competitive modes. 

[felincyriac.5981]

Necro spear changes:

• Isolate: Reduced the cooldown from 18 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP only.
• Extirpate: This skill no longer inflicts Extirpation and instead inflicts weakness.

 

I love how they don't even bother saying why extirpate no longer.. extirpates? 1 second cast time for weakness. Cool cool. 

 

Isolate, yh a cd reduction is not going to help you land this skill any more consistently, which is the main problem with spear. And it doesn't make much sense coz of the cd reset mechanic.

Harb

• Blight: Reduced the health percentage decrease from 1.5% to 1% in PvP only.

 

Why not have this just be baseline in all game modes? Harb 'trade-offs' still don't make much sense tbh. No shroud and an hp debuff on top of that.

[Radiancee.6537]

12 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

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

Please. Just. Don't.

I don't main Heal Scourge but taking away this core identity trait is just wrong.