October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Atoclone.4810]

Just now, Poobah.6254 said:

 Saving people from death is something heal scourge player love and live for.

Which tbh is not very necromancer like, unless you're rezzing them as zombies

[Echostorm.9143]

12 minutes ago, Chyro.1462 said:

Not a fan of the transfusion change in PvE. It's like the main identity of heal scourge, the reason it's even played.

Please consider some compromise that weakens the effect without completely removing its 'rescue downed players from a bad situation' identity. Rather just pull to safety without the revive-healing. Or reduce the amount of players it can safe at once (maybe 1 or 2 at most). Or reduce the range a bit so it requires more skill to estimate the range for saving someone.

Anything that doesn't completely remove its identity as a 'dead-rescue' healer.

No, like you said this is a huge part of our identity in PVE, leave it alone. They already nerfed it in the past.  I don't care what they do in WvW but pulling bodies out of hazards is a big part of the spec in raids, strikes and fractals, not to mention OW. 

@Cal Cohen.2358 Please clarify if you are only ruining this skill in WvW or for all  game modes

[JMDhouse.7162]

I really need that Transfusion change to be adjusted to ignore PvE, there are many players who play Heal Scourge specifically because they know other people will probably fail at Boneskinner and other bosses like Matthias, this is where transfusion can save runs and groups instead of being stuck for several hours. This being removed entirely is way too harsh on these players.

[Coldtart.4785]

Don't just remove concentration and expertise from cele, remove it from everything.

[Relzyn.3415]

Where are the PVE damage nerfs? Does the skills team think the current balance of DPS professions is okay? 
And what happened to this? 

Quote

This is an idea similar to purity of purpose, but applied to builds or professions. As we touched on when discussing identity, we want every profession to have distinct strengths and weaknesses. Professions should have things that they excel at, things that they are less effective at than other professions, and some things that they simply cannot do. If one profession does everything and has no holes, there's no reason for players to play anything else. -

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by Relzyn.3415
additional detail

[Joswi.2635]

42 minutes ago, Joie.6084 said:

Sphere Specialist: Increased the boon duration increase from 100% to 150% in PvE only. This trait now also allows the catalyst to gain energy while a jade sphere is deployed.

This is exactly a change I was hoping for! Helps out quick cata and shouldn't affect pure dps

[Mewtu.9720]

Reconsider the transfusion change please. I'd imagine this skill can be painful in WvW or PvP situations but deactivating it in PvE destroys so many nice interactions healers can have. Its what makes Heal Scourge special and most importantly fun. So many new players who are unfamiliar with content can be introduced to it with a healscourge to save them from certain death. That's not something we should take away from the game

[Phoenix.5047]

Warrior rifle definitely needs more work than that.
Giving it the Engi rifle auto treatment would be a start!
Also, unshackling Killshot with a higher damage coeff if we're thinking wishfully.

[ShatteredStars.6548]

34 minutes ago, Eclipsiste.3251 said:

I guess catering to whiners who kept crying about cele is supposed to make us forget the fact that willies need to be tuned down... I wonder which devs play willy to make you keep such an unbalanced class like this

Why you angry

[Beesh.8923]

Why are we buffing spellbreaker? its literally been dominating pvp for what feels like more than a year and its tiring
nerf that spec into the ground PLEASE

[tails.4701]

the celestial change in wvw is a welcome change, now do something about perma stealth and everyone can have a good time.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Didn't get smacked by additional warrior nerfs, which is a W I'll take. 

Hoping at some point cmc gets that vision for power zerker so we don't keep losing weapon viability because spellbreakers 1v4 using bugged versatile power. Nod to tactics and burst precision okay.

Edited Friday at 08:28 PM by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Malus.2184]

11 minutes ago, Blackelk.3784 said:

So making celestial useless again? but JUST for WvW? Either take it off all around or don't this split at a whim isnt balance its just once again a big FU to WvW players 

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.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Baseline warrior pull ability when? Rework throw bolas to be a flip over skill on hit.

[Relzyn.3415]

33 minutes ago, skirtsan.6372 said:

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

The ability to teleport players who are in a potentially hazardous zone via Transfusion was really, REALLY useful in instanced PvE and boss encounters. If it passes through then allied healers wouldn't have much chance reviving fallen squadmates. Signed, healer.

I think its not the end of the world to remove. I'd argue it is too strong. However, without it scourge needs buffs in other areas as a support. 

[Boh.4568]

When you nerf a grandmaster trait you need to compensate with something good, if you want people to invest in the whole trait line.

But nooo

[Malus.2184]

7 minutes ago, Mewtu.9720 said:

Reconsider the transfusion change please. I'd imagine this skill can be painful in WvW or PvP situations but deactivating it in PvE destroys so many nice interactions healers can have. Its what makes Heal Scourge special and most importantly fun. So many new players who are unfamiliar with content can be introduced to it with a healscourge to save them from certain death. That's not something we should take away from the game

Here's the thing. They'll never learn if their bacon is saved. They'll just go "Oh, a Scourge can save me." Transfusion has the same issue as Stability. It makes people able to ignore mechanics and never learn how to deal with them.

It's beyond naive to think that people will ever learn anything from success, which getting saved from a mistake is.

[Nimon.7840]

Quote

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

first we got swords, that were bad in any game mode, and now an already meme build. spear necro in pvp modes gets deleted? so necro once again got only a niche weapon for pve this time? when will we get a weapon, that is actually usable in multiple gamemodes?
- pistol: mainly pve (because projectiles are bad in pvp modes)
- spear: only pve after this patch
- sword mainhand: wvw
- sword offhand: probably the only weapon that can be played in multiple gamemodes
- dagger mainhand: pve on healscourge 
- dagger offhand: pve
- focus: pvp modes
- axe: pvp modes
- staff: mainly pvp modes, niche situations in pve
- torch: mainly pve (and on condi builds in pvp modes)
- scepter: mainley pvp modes (just inferior to pistol in pve)
- greatsword: mainly pve, and wvw zergs
- warhorn: mainly pve, and wvw zergs

where is our support weapon? it doesnt matter what weapon(combination) you pick. you at most have one support skill on both weapon set.
 

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• Rending Claws: Increased the damage coefficient per hit from 0.6 to 0.7 in PvE only.
• Ghastly Claws: Increased the power coefficient per hit from 0.5 to 0.575 in PvE only.
• Unholy Feast: Increased the power coefficient from 2.0 to 2.5 in PvE only.
• Unholy Burst: Increased the power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.5 in PvE only.

i guess it's nice that axe now gets buffed in pve. but to be honest. that doesn't really do much. at this point we are just juggeling around, what second weapon set power necro plays in pve in addition to the set greatsword.
 

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• Consume Conditions: Reduced the cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
• Signet of the Locust: Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP only.
• Plague Signet: Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.

whatever, i don't think this will do much.
 

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• ife Transfer: Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds. Increased the bleeding duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Tainted Shackles: Reduced the cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
• Overflowing Thirst: Increased the life force per strike from 1% to 1.5%.

buffs to core necro? probably nice change to make new players stronger.
 

Quote

Reaper

• Soul Eater: The healing from this trait can now heal the player while they are using Reaper Shroud. Healing while in shroud has reduced effectiveness in PvE.
• Blighter's Boon: Increased the base healing from 103 to 133.

sorry but why don't you want to understand, that as long as deathly chill and reapers onslaught are in the same tier as blighter's boon, nobody will ever play that trait? - unless you buff it to the moon. also you almost have to play the spite traitline, to get value out of blighters boon. 
 

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

i absolutely understand where this is coming from (and i said it for to years now, that this ability has to go), but it's also basically the only reason, that made support scourge better in some situations than any other healer.
it's extremely hard to balance. but i believe, that because transfusion existed, scourge wasn't allowed to get more/ better boons. And just taking away such a core and deeply rooted mechanic without giving compensation doesnt feel right. Its just deleting scourges identity with nothing in return.
there will be no good reason, to play scourge over something like healmech, or healdruid. both got way better stability and overall boon access. while druid still has a single target downstate pull and a range multitarget rezz.
i dont think it will kill scourge completely, since the healing stays the same. but still a very big hit to the kit.
this will make scourge just an inferior build compared to chrono or druid. The only thing scourge will then excell at will be barrier, but to be honst, barrier isn't as important anymore as it used to be. many of the "deal more dmg above a certain health threshhold" got removed. which barrier was good at keeping up. the way scourge can apply stability is extremely bad. the overall boon coverage is bad. the range of boons is bad. and most boons are tied to utility skills, which makes it very hard to bring actual utility skills like poison cloud or spectral grasp.

I can only hope this prepares the path for finally a rework to scourge ind the next patch, or lets say, rework to necro overall (with reworks to weapons and other utility skills, and traits) to actually allow support harbinger as well. 

But why can't you do the rework and removal in the same patch. It feels like necro always needs to wait and only very slowly gets buffed to the point where it's playable. So we just need to wait another 5 years to get our healing spec back. And that's a big problem. Since for the following reasons:

- we don't have a power alac build, only condi and even that is on the lower end of condi alacs and doesn't give many boons and only in a small radius

- we got condi and power quickness harbinger that are worse than herald and firebrand in every aspect (dmg wise, boon variety and boon range wise). So while we could play quickness, why would anyone ever take a harbinger with them as a quickness source, if they can get a firebrand or herald.

other than that:

Quote

• Celestial equipment will no longer grant concentration or expertise while in a WvW map.

very nice. finally.
but i don't understand how some classes are still allowed to give alacrtiy in wvw to allies, with very high uptimes. the reason why alac got removed from scourge, tempest, druid was: "it destroys the balancing of certain skills". so how come, chrono, mech, willbender are still allowed to give alac to allies?
and no nerfs to willbender dmg or mobility/survivabilty in wvw is kinda ridicoulus as well

Edited Sunday at 08:03 AM by Nimon.7840

[Lion.6590]

Are you guys seriously not doing anything about willbender in pvp and wvw? This spec damage is absurd at the moment and on top of that it can vomit boons on itself which makes super hard to counter it. Have seen willbenders walking around with multiple boons and 10+ stacks of stability, how come you guys don't see a problem in that? Even builds that are able to boon strip/corrupt struggle with it and the ones who don't have those can't do absolutely anything against them, nerf those stability stacks or do something stability internal cooldown.

[Echostorm.9143]

2 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

Here's the thing. They'll never learn if their bacon is saved. They'll just go "Oh, a Scourge can save me." Transfusion has the same issue as Stability. It makes people able to ignore mechanics and never learn how to deal with them.

It's beyond naive to think that people will ever learn anything from success, which getting saved from a mistake is.

Most of us are not here to carefully cultivate the skills of other gamers, we're here to have fun and it is fun to save your party when they get downed in a giant aoe.  It's a huge rush for everyone.  Taking this away is crazy

[Violetawa.1046]

1 hour ago, Joie.6084 said:

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

You're deleting the single most fun skill in the whole game.

[ShatteredStars.6548]

43 minutes ago, skirtsan.6372 said:

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

The ability to teleport players who are in a potentially hazardous zone via Transfusion was really, REALLY useful in instanced PvE and boss encounters. If it passes through then allied healers wouldn't have much chance reviving fallen squadmates. Signed, healer.

it says for wvw.

[Debesyla.7102]

1 hour ago, Joie.6084 said:

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

1) Give necros something fun and unique;

2) Remove it a month after.

10/10 expansion for necros.

[Herrscher.2986]

1 minute ago, ShatteredStars.6548 said:

it says for wvw.

"This trait no longer increases the cooldown of Garish Pillar in WvW." is the only part that's specific to WvW. The Transfusion nerf affects all gamemodes.

[ShatteredStars.6548]

Just now, Herrscher.2986 said:

"This trait no longer increases the cooldown of Garish Pillar in WvW." is the only part that's specific to WvW. The Transfusion nerf affects all gamemodes.

says wvw on the last line, they should have put it there.