October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Bane.4103]

Axe was a favorite weapon of mine for thief but after a 26% nerf to the one skill that made it fun to use I'll have to move away from it. 
Why nerf Cele? Were players having too much fun with the builds? 

Fk Anet, nerfing the fun out of WvW for 14 years and counting.

[Scarlet.8964]

19 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

Necromancer

 

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. We've also tuned up the damage on axe in PvE and made some improvements to the core death shroud in all game modes. Reaper and harbinger both get some defensive updates that are primarily focused on slightly improving their survivability in PvP.

• Extirpate: This skill no longer inflicts Extirpation and instead inflicts weakness.
• Transfusion: This trait no longer teleports downed allies to the user. This trait no longer increases the cooldown of Garish Pillar in WvW.

Holy Molly, not even a month has passeed and you decide to remove unique gimmick of necro spear. Additionaly nerfing to the ground transfusion. Holy Jesus, it's first time in my life when i see that ressing people in mmo it's ABIG PROBLEM, especially in large scale battles. Holy crap even old Lineage 2 have a bunch of  mass ressurecting skills and it's never been a problem.
 

Edited Saturday at 03:12 PM by Scarlet.8964

[Bane.4103]

19 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.

I hear you on that. Willbender has been over powered for months and what do they do? Come back with more buffs...

[Luki Hofi.9058]

release it nooooooow, pls

[Nocturne.6810]

19 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.

You are treating dandruff with decapitation. Don't need to balance healscourge if there is no healscourge, I guess.

 

[Kulvar.1239]

2 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Give Ranger a ranged dps weapon that works in zergs and we are golden.

You mean longbow?

[Blackelk.3784]

19 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

Translation: Several of the OP roaming builds I play will be severely affected by this and I now have to do more than just show up.

I've played some of them too and they were utterly, stupidly overpowered. I've been on the receiving end of them too and they were just as stupidly overpowered there.

That you find yourself getting ganked by Thieves has more to do with them needing hard limits on their abilities and more health to compensate. Like, teleporting prevents the use of Stealth for X seconds, Stealth prevents the use of teleporting while the Stealth effect lasts, and after going into Stealth there's a hard limit applied to the Thief before another Stealth effect can be used again no matter how the Stealth is or was applied. No more pressing one button on Dagger 2 for instant skill. No more Stealth+Infiltrator's escape, waiting for Revealed to reset and then coming back under Dagger 2 to shank their target. With more Health they'll also no longer blow up instantly in zergs. Reduced the supreme overpoweredness in roaming for reduced inviability in zergs.

The Celestial WvW builds are still overpowered though and need to be reigned in a lot and they would still be viable.

Na its about taking straight fun builds out of the meta and forcing bland cookie cutter BS...no one cares about roaming balance rofl

[Taygus.4571]

18 hours ago, jozze.9532 said:

You can still use signet of undeath to instant rez downed players even in dangerous aoe just not rescue half the squad anymore.

Transfusion teleport was always a broken trait. I really liked playing it but it would always be overpowering. The biggest use of a heal scourge (the massive amount of barrier application) is still there. It will see play without the teleport, eventhough it will be less fun.

Signet of undeath is too slow and costs a kitten ton of HP.. 9 times out of 10, its fast to run there and rez the persom with a cpuple of other peoplenfrom squad and it doesn't near kill me in the process.

Also there isn't any free slots that make this a signet a better choice of other skills.

[Serious Me.3189]

20 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

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

While I agree this trait is pretty powerful, especially in WvW and PvP, I still think this is the wrong way to go about fixing it. The trait in its current form is something that basically helps define the profession and makes it unique. It's the only profession that can do something like this and it helps cement it as a staple because of it. Heck I haven't even heard of another MMO with a class that can do something like this. While I do think you should probably nerf this trait (such as by reducing the number of people it teleports (split this number via gamemode), giving it an internal cooldown, making it so people can't be teleported more than once every X number of seconds, ect.) I absolutely do NOT think completely removing the teleport effect is good for profession diversity and identity. If you do then you also need to give Necromancer something else completely unique to help make it feel different. If not then you risk turning every profession into "the same, but with a slightly different flavor" by starting with Necromancer, which I don't think anyone wants.

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

What the heck is with that nerf to thiefs axe? 33% to 7%?!

We get a weapon with fantastic cleave, and then you suddenly axe the burst damage on someone eith setup? Why? If people got hit by it, they deserved to get hit by it. There's plenty of tells and ways to avoid it.

[Malus.2184]

15 hours ago, Blackelk.3784 said:

Na its about taking straight fun builds out of the meta and forcing bland cookie cutter BS...no one cares about roaming balance rofl

Cele vs Cele is unfun

Being killed by Cele is unfun

Killing people as Cele is also unfun.

What fun builds? If you think that stomping people is fun then you have issues.

Edited Sunday at 07:29 AM by Malus.2184

[kingnelu.1642]

rip scourge

[Beddo.1907]

53 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

You mean longbow?

Longbow doesn't work in zerg. Projectiles don't exist and 5 needs you to stop moving and even then the damage spread kills it.

[Mithral.8516]

21 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

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

This is genuinely kitten heartbreaking. Scourge is so fun for supporting allies, this would make it a LOT less exciting and fun. A lot of good stuff in the rest of this preview, but man, I can't get over how disappointing this feels.

[Shifty.9703]

Where is the fix for pve power mirage? Where are the condi mirage bug fixes? Please...

[Zily.3152]

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?

[GeraldBC.4927]

Now that I've had some time to think about it, a few points.

First off

Quote

Man I hate that scourge can teleport people who got downed in a dead zone, the fact that he has that invalidates my heal build by comparison!

Said no non-necro healer ever. Seriously, who was actually complaining about transfusion teleport in pve? Nobody. Everyone either didn't care that this existed or was happy that it did. Removing it is a unilateral negative.

 

Then, on spears. When I played necro spear I was disappointed because it's basically just a worse greatsword. That soul shard mechanic looks interesting superficially and I'm sure it's great to be able to heal yourself back up with one cone in pvp, but because it's life siphon damage there isn't much of a point in playing around it in pve. So let me get the history of necro spear straight.

Quote

Okay so for necros, your spear skills are a little on the weaker side, but you get to make up for it by having this cool new unique effect where you prevent future boons from happening.

Also now that the spear has been out for a few months we're taking the unique effect away too, so now it's just a dead-on-arrival weapon that nobody has any reason to use.

Wow, great. Thanks. I don't see why this was necessary but okay. Maybe the department in question was out of ideas at the time. I personally think making it a power weapon was the wrong approach from the start. Necro already has a perfectly good melee power weapon and also a good alternative for pvp purposes as well. What necro doesn't have is a condi melee weapon, preferably designed to be used for condi reaper. Something that you're swinging around in melee range and it's for condi builds. Or alternatively, some kind of support weapon to bring alongside dagger-torch instead of the staff. A weapon that can heal people, condi cleanse, maybe even give a boon something like that. 

[Seotov.2709]

8 hours ago, Lazze.9870 said:

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?

Tell me without telling me that you don't play the game   🙄

[WhiteGlint.4897]

Can we have the same treatment for Rev's scepter as the one thief is getting?

[Anthony.8056]

I propose they change the Necromancer spear to a condition weapon to compensate for the removal of a unique feature that gave the spear its identity. It should have been a condition weapon anyway. Don't just slap on a boring condition like weakness to replace a selling feature to a weapon. I feel like removing unique gameplay elements from classes is lazy and isn't really balance just a quick easy fix.

[Shade.8037]

Gonna throw my voice in for the first time ever on these forums.

I don't mean to sound entitled or petulant, but if the transfusion nerf goes through I'll stop healing with scourge, period. 

I have basicly no stab, annoying regen, no heal weapon and a lackluster heal output when not counting barrier. As someone with every specc at 80 I use my necromancer for 2 reasons.
1 because the class fantasy of scraping people off the floor and throwing them back into the fight as a necromancer is the ONLY spec that actually feels like a necromancer at this point.
2 To compensate when a friend or guild of mine just honestly isn't that great but we  want to pull them through things without it getting too rough.

Being downed constantly already feels bad, people will want to learn to get better scourge is just a safety net. If this goes live I have absolutely NO reason not to go chrono every time I need to heal on paper. And personally, if you remove necromancers ability to play around with downed people, the primary NECRO sort of thing out of all three classes, then I simply have no reason to ever play the spec again, even if it is buffed and made 'good' it will just be another healer, that is clunkier than most, with no identity.

This change is probably the first thing I have ever gotten genuinely upset about in gw2 changes, I normally never care that much and just change my approach, but gutting the FEEL of necromancer is just about the perfect thing to never make me touch the class again.

[daw.4923]

Amount of ppl crying for keeping MASS RESS with TELEPORT to HEALER in the game is insane 🤣

you guys realize that ANY OTHER HEALER CAN RESS ONE PERSON EVERY 90 SEC WITHOUT TELEPORTING HIM ANYWHERE RIGHT? why should necro be able to ress 5 ppl every 30 sec and as bonus teleport them to him???

where is any balance in that? if you have 5 ppl which FAILED MECHANIC and got downed they deserve to die, what you trying to defend is utterly broken skill which is unmatched by any healer. you already have TOP barrier uptime, INSANE condi cleanse, PORTAL, BOONSTRIP, 30k HP and you smh need AOE RESS WITH TELEPORT 😊

I would recommend all hscg players to swap to heal tempest for a week so you can see what other healers have to offer.

Edited Saturday at 05:05 PM by daw.4923

[fuzzyp.6295]

I really hate that the post finally bringing balance to the overpoweredness of Cele in WvW is over shadowed by the massive nuke you took to Necro. I don't even play Necro and I can tell this patch is a bit of a mess. Yeesh...

[Aamu.3952]

Can we get a quick/alac boon dps Soulbeast? Attach the boon to a *merged* ability of an underused versatile pet. Won't bleed onto other ranger support builds then. DPS will drop >4k. The merged attribute bonus of a verstatile pet (concentration) is self-synergetic with a boon build, a long-forgotten and underused pet will see a lot of play, the amount of development time/resources required are extremely low, and there's an entire line in Soulbeast dedicated to boon-age 🙂 Seems to all come together nicely, and even packages a self DPS nerf

[Ryuk.2986]

Man, what?!?! I never use the forums, complain or anything about changes but i swear to god... When i saw TRANSFUSION nerf i was in shock. This is the whole reason i main Scourge, this is why i do raids/strikes/fracs training with newbies. If this change pass, i'll just stop playing. I recently brought my girlfriend to the game, she is loving doing trainings and i just told her how disappointed i am with this and i've never been so upset with a change/balance patch before.

 

Seriously, don't kill scourge for the love of god. Anet once justified not doing new raids because it was a niche content. Not a lot of people were interested in new raids, they said. This is not true. Most people are, but they're just too afraid of trying harder content and being called out, fail, etc... I have been trying to change this mentality making this so called "scasry" end game content a breeze for newcomers. I'm glad the support meta has evolved and now we have a lot of possibilities. The thing is, this skill is the essence of scourge, that's why this profession is known to be the bad team carry. It lacks other stuff like stab uptime and a lot of utilities like guardian or mesmer. If you remove this, we'll have nothing to be proud of this profession, it'll be just a lame rework..

 

Guys, i beg you, please upvote this and let them know your own thoughts about this change. I know it's not just me who is truly upset. Thanks!

Edited Saturday at 05:19 PM by Ryuk.2986