October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Arkeign.1037]

Nerfing the Necro's Transfusion and Spear and then you guys play the victim when ppl air out their grievance.

[HotDelirium.7984]

LEAVE Extirpation in PVE as is at least if you MUST change it for pvp/wvw.

[Thalies.7609]

The daredevil's "Weakening charge" is already works perfectly with *Fluid strikes* passive in Acrobatics traitline, the movement is locked to the target, why need to fix what is not broken? The only situation where is akward it's on phase changes when you can dive into the abyss when the target disappears, but it learns players to watch the HP percentage and not to spam  the 2 skill thoughlessly.

Edited Saturday at 12:58 PM by Thalies.7609

[Seotov.2709]

No reason to be  nerfing the "Transfusion" and "Necr's Spear"!    🖕🤬🖕🤬🖕🤬

[Lazze.9870]

1 hour ago, Arkeign.1037 said:

Nerfing the Necro's Transfusion and Spear and then you guys play the victim when ppl air out their grievance.

Transfusion teleport is one of the most obnoxious things to exist in WvW for a while and not something necro needed to stay relevant in that game mode.

And it isn't needed in any other game modes either.

Edit: how is this confusing to people? Seriously? It's a handicap for groups that can't stay tight or move right. Or is this just PvE players being salty?

Edited Saturday at 09:34 AM by Lazze.9870

[Dragonmoon.9203]

If the thing about transfusion goes through I'm never gonna help or do training runs against since it is one of the few things that actually makes training runs doable. (If this goes through why would anyone ever pick heel scourge again since the revive potential it's not that great since the last time it got changed and it has no stability and nearly no utility)

On another note if celestial stats are gonna change can warrior or and necromancer at least get something so we can make bills where we don't need to rely on other people in WvW (  especially for solo warrior for even though I don't play it I'm starting to feel bad for them for  every time I fight or see one one-on-one they just get slapped)

Btw

1 "Crimson Tide" still don't give the correct amount of life force  2

2"Voracious Arc" still don't give you evade frames for the full animation (it's really bad at the beginning and the end of the animation)

3 a couple of changes to necromancer Spear in competitive modes so it can actually do what that was talked about when it was announced (especially since mesma spear does nearly the same but better in every game mode)

Edited Saturday at 08:27 AM by Dragonmoon.9203

[Jijimuge.4675]

Re the necro changes, I would have liked to have seen some kind of explanation for the change to Extirpate.  Removing something that's just been implemented, yet not giving a reason seems off to me.  It was one of the "headline" things for the necro spear too...

At least with the change to Transfusion, there was a reason given.

[Asum.4960]

15 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

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

Balancing a game doesn't mean to remove everything that is unique and fun, until the game is a generic, boring slop that no one wants to play. 

Just because you can't be bothered to come up with limitations and workarounds for mechanics like Epidemic and Transfusion, you are perpetually patching the fun out of this game. For whom is this? 

Now this is going from literally being the fundamental and Iconic Aspect of Support Necromancer to once again just yet another button we brainlessly mash off-cooldown, just like everything else. No more special mechanic, no more play-making potential, no in the moment decision making, nothing. 

 

What even is Blood Magic anymore? Just more passive boring Traits without any impact on gameplay, thematically as bankrupt as everything else on Necro at this point. 

Curses lost it's GW1 unique hexes for the generic Condition system in GW2, which it does nothing special with -  Epidemic having been the one unique and once iconic thing Necro could do with Conditions, until it was essentially soft removed from the game with nerfs. E: I guess Boon Corruption could be counted as thematic and mechanical staple here too - which  unsurprisingly is another thing that's being systematically removed from the class in favour of generic removal, which in turn is being added everywhere else.

Death Magic you've publically admitted as team to hate minion gameplay and actively never wanting them to be viable - not that this wasn't already obvious. 

Soul Reaping lost it's shreds of identity long ago with the loss of Shroud manipulating traits like Shroud CD reduction and Shroud drain reduction being removed.

Spite was barely rooted in the Necromancer theme to begin with, but lost everything unique like Signet's of Suffering also, while still being plagued by worthless 2012 balance Minor Traits. 

And now Blood Magic get's to join, with all of it's revival power utterly nerfed or removed, with the final interesting, genuinely gameplay altering, Trait left being hammered away. 

Congrats team, you did it!

Edited Saturday at 11:13 AM by Asum.4960

[CelestialCat.6240]

I would of like to see some Willbender nerfs in WvW as most WvW Willbenders are OP due to a over powered wiki build centered around the the high mobility of the class to teleport to and keep on foes while bursting a very heavy hitting "Whirling Light" spike that will obliterate your health almost instantly. If you can tank that first burst you'll then have to worry about the 6s burning on top of the 16s burning from Judge's Intervention as well as them constantly gap closing on you with any of the many other mobility skills options such as "Symbol of Blades", "Advancing Strike", "Rushing Justice", "Flowing Resolve", "Crashing Courage".

Mix in fact that they often take the Radiance line to gain "Radiant Power" for a high to 100% crit rate on top of the condi cleanses they often equip, high heals, along with having a seemingly tankiness build having due to blocks, and invunrabilies, they're able to jump into a group, down a person or even kill them and them jump back out to safety.

I personally would love to see the core attack of the build "Whirling Light"'s damage reduced and cool downs on mobility skills increased.

Edited Saturday at 08:24 AM by CelestialCat.6240

[willow.8209]

24 minutes ago, Lazze.9870 said:

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.

agree, thanks for bringing this up

[Paradox.1380]

Chiming in to add my voice to the Scourge Crew. I dissent to the transfusion change. The Transfusion Change  will removes yet another unique gameplay style. Please reconsider this. Nerf the range, make the ICD longer anything but totally nuking it all together. C'mon y'all. Just because something is strong doesn't make it game breaking.

[Napster.8290]

12 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

The first use of this will be to remove both concentration and expertise from equipment with Celestial attributes in WvW only, to bring it back in line with other attributes.

Great Patch so far, the best since ages right after the best since ages xpac! Keep it up guys, back on the right tracks again!

Guild Wars was always about boons even in core times, but they were meant as short duration buffs and timing were key. Player skill and knowledge were rewarded. So, good change. While you are streamlining boon duration you may should consinder runes too, for example Rune of the Fireworks and the others. Give them 35, 65, 125 concentration of the respective tier and not flat amounts in %. 35 concentration are more like 2,5%, so these runes are not even either with other stats. Just as a hint o/

And the boon vomit overall is still too kitten high, but thats a whole other story 😄 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

The proposed balance changes are unfortunately very minimal once again (especially almost nothing for PvE this time). The PvE meta has become very stale atm except for a couple new spear builds and definitely needs something to refresh up again. It doesnt have to be perfectly balanced, but at least give us something. 

All damage for instanced PvE could definitely use some downtuning right now. Raids w1-4 feels like doing some ibs strikes rn, and some previously no-heal fractal skipas have now become basically standard throughout fractals. Its therefore kinda sad to see that most of the changes are actually buffs again... 

Transfusion was basically the main reason to take hscrge in PvE, so by removing it youre going to lose all of its strength and identity. 

For ele:

As an ele main im kinda sad about the changes for weaver and cata. Weaver really deserved some love, now all it got was a removal of the aoe barrier from elemental refreshment that was implemented in 2022 cause god forbid if you provide even a single bit of support to your group. Plz either give Weaver more damage or more support, theres already nobody playing the class anyways...

Bolstering elements is now linked with your elite still on a 30 sec cd, but literally every self respecting Weaver is running weave self which has a 90 sec cd. So the change basically makes no sense at all

Lastly woven stride icd has been reduced to 3s icd, but it already was 3s icd in PvE to begin with (and never used) so basically no changes to a trait thats completely useless in PvE. 

 

Catalyst's invigorating air is also basically the same piece of garbage it was before. Compared to EoTS its like 10s less cd and 100% extra endurance regen at the cost of not being party wide and no swiftness or stability, so its pretty much completely useless for PvE...

Its nice to see qcata getting some love at least, but the changes feel kinda lazy. The traits were already able to provide perma quick without the extra duration and now everyone is basically overcapped on 156% uptime. On top of that the time to accumulate your energy has been increased from ~37.5% of the time to 100% of the time. So theres basically no challenge anymore at all and no room for minmaxing for good cata players. Meanwhile normal cata is still 100% the same, so you're like telling to us that energy is a problem for cata and then proceed to only fix it for half of the builds. Either stand behind your class mechanics or delete them entirely. 

The extra might on sphere is just overkill. Its not really needed at all since it already provides ~13-20 stacks of might to the group. Now with the extra boonduration its gonna be 20+ stacks of might which is imo completely unnecessary.

The main problem with balancing all qdps especs currently is that they cannot compete with Herald. Herald desperately needs a nerf/rework for the dwarf legend utilities/vent bubble or dmge/boonuptime since its currently results in every other boondps being irrelevant. (And if you dont want to nerf Herald, then give access to other extra unique utilities on other qdps especs, like giving back resistance on earth sphere). 

Lastly please just rework staunch auras and give it aoe stabi for PvE... Its a big dps loss to take the traits already, so the least it could do is provide a way for  decent group stabi on dps cata. 

 

[Spyritdragon.6048]

12 hours ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

Guardian is the most busted class in the game along with Necro. I highly doubt they'd nerf their golden child, but they're not blind either to buff Guardians further (hopefully).

If anything, I'm surprised they buffed so many things instead of nerfs. Some classes / specs badly need nerfs atm, powercreeping everything is not the solution.

This for me, 100%. I'm really glad to see this much effort put into balancing, but with more builds comes yet again more options for powercreep, and buffing everything is not the solution. If this game was really built on a foundation of horizontal progression keeping past content fun and relevant, there's some things that are badly in need of nerfs, much more than the rest needs buffs. Powercreep over the years has just been so strong, and we're just continuing to see more and more of it.

[babak.3654]

Quote

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

I don't like this change. If Transfusion is problematic in WvW, as mentioned, you can split it by mode. If it is still problematic in general then look at cooldowns or effectiveness. Transfusion was one of the things that made Heal Scourge unique and desired in some content, yet I don't see any changes here that would really compensate Scourge for the loss. I haven't really played scourge since you made it so spammy to play but I'm still sad about this. It looks like the present functionality has been around since at least 2015 so one does wonder why the teleport suddenly needed to be outright removed.

We are gradually losing a lot of the unique features of professions, and while that may well make balancing easier it makes for a less diverse and interesting game overall.

Quote

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

And this is just plain bizarre. You added this with Janthir Wilds, it was an advertised feature of the necro spear - which is already underwhelming - and now it's just gone. I would have really appreciated a paragraph on the thinking on this and why the addition of Extirpation to the game was apparently so misjudged.

[Nyx Arcana.2430]

13 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

Transfusion has been a longtime pain point in WvW, but it has also been an exceptionally powerful tool for scourge in all game modes. Its ability to easily revive allies who are downed while out of position is something that we've been keeping an eye on for a while, and we see it as being too powerful. We still like Transfusion's ability to help revive allies, but we're removing the teleportation component to make it less of a guarantee.

Please reconsider removing the Transfusion teleport. 

[Mae.1729]

1 hour ago, Chester.4516 said:

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.

^ (this is the point)
Healscourge already had lost a lot if their revieve capacity it used have. So IF you decide to remove the powerful teleport at least compensate it with something. An actaual access to to stability and swiftness would be the right step.

But again... I do not see the transfusion as issue for PVE. For PVE/WvW that's totally legit. But in PvE we use that to get the very nooby players to complet the harder content. Yes, I'm one of those who enjoys to carry noobies in the hope they learn something. I love showing them that what they have been afraid of is not as bad as they thought it is.

If you still think it's too powerful for the noobies... alright.... at least give us access too stabiltity and swiftness instead. 😅

[Khalni.3864]

Still no love for power mirage in PvE. Sadge.
Gonna need to look for alternatives it seems.

[Radiancee.6537]

47 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

Balancing a game doesn't mean to remove everything that is unique and fun, until the game is a generic, boring slop that no one wants to play. 

Word.

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

You are essentially removing the only reason to play heal scourge from the game transfusion is already horrible after the last change the tp is the only redeeming factor.

Scourges boon application isn't the greatest the stability is horrible and there is no dedicated healing weapon.

I was actually expecting the patch to include 'we reworked staff to be a viable support option's not actually we don't want heal scourge to exist 

I do understand in wvw it is broken but for pve it is a fun interactive way to play which makes training group and people with lower skill levels interact with content with stress allowing comfortable growth in performance overtime.

I have liked the content being put out and the previous patches but this honestly doesn't make a lot of sense for me and there will be a tonne of negative feedback if this goes through.

[Ukasumananganos.4035]

You are essentially removing the only reason to play heal scourge from the game transfusion is already horrible after the last change the tp is the only redeeming factor.

Scourges boon application isn't the greatest the stability is horrible and there is no dedicated healing weapon.

I was actually expecting the patch to include 'we reworked staff to be a viable support option's not actually we don't want heal scourge to exist 

I do understand in wvw it is broken but for pve it is a fun interactive way to play which makes training group and people with lower skill levels interact with content with stress allowing comfortable growth in performance overtime.

I have liked the content being put out and the previous patches but this honestly doesn't make a lot of sense for me and there will be a tonne of negative feedback if this goes through.

[Hopper.7490]

Transfusion - I agree with everyone else, you should reconsider trying to take all fun and class identity out of your game.

[Mae.1729]

5 minutes ago, Ukasumananganos.4035 said:

You are essentially removing the only reason to play heal scourge from the game transfusion is already horrible after the last change the tp is the only redeeming factor.

Yes.  Even if you include he barrier there are FAR BETTER healers in PVE. Transfusion IS the reason you pick a healscourge to carry weak people. IF you don't have that you go for an actually better healer in the game. Which would be druid. Removing transfusion basically almost kills scourge in PvE.

[chl.3027]

Still no nerfs to willbender?? What a joke.

[Lazze.9870]

1 hour ago, Asum.4960 said:

while still being plagued by worthless 2012 balance Minor Traits. 

 

Necromancer isn't falling apart just because they're taking away the obnoxious transfusion teleport. Class identity? Transfusion? For real?

It has nothing to do with identity. You just want that easy downstate port gameplay to remain.

And if you think Spite minors are bad, look at the minors in Marksmanship. There isn't a single other traitline in the game that has three completely dead traits unless you run a specific grandmaster trait. THAT is worthless 2012 balance.

Edit: whatever, you can't make a sane argument about it without the PvE players flipping you off because they're taking away the easy mode part of healscourge. This game doesn't split functionality between game modes. They split numbers and boon application etc, but not functionality. They're never going to split it where transfusion teleports in one game mode while not in a different one. That's just how the game is.

And the fact is that transfusion remaining in WvW is worse for that gamemode than it is for pve to lose it.

Those are facts. Like it or not, it doesn't matter.

Edited Saturday at 09:52 AM by Lazze.9870