October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Shade.8037]

9 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

You are the one denying that something has occurred when it actually has. The exact definition of the term gaslighting derived from the movie of the same name.

Wanna quote some cause I can go through this thread and pull a BUNCH of gatekeepy 'git gud' stuff gloating about us no long getting kills we 'deserve'...Somehow doubt you'd care after I go through the effort though and anyone reading your posts can just as easily look back at the general attitude of those defending the change and see, yeah it is pretty spite driven.

[LilBiM.3581]

21 hours ago, willow.8209 said:

@H K.4057

 So you're ok with being about to counter DOT with cleanse, but not ok with being able to counter burst dmg with toughness.

@LilBiM.3581 

You need to have more than 1 healing skill to make healing useful for sustain, which not all builds have. So yes, your suggestion would seem to be to nerf sustain in many cases. Also, same as above PLUS burst can have vitality and DOT can't. 

Noted.

No, they can have it. Just not with everything else that they need. Like I said, mix it up. Balance that bad boy. DoT requires one less stat, let them work for it. No free lunch. The builds that don't have more than one heal can probably get regen, or have plenty of access to Aegis, blocks, invulns, then you have your distortion, clones, dodge rolls, weapon skills that grant evades, etc. These people are not defenseless and innocent children walking the streets. I don't mind DoTS.

Your heals are going to be stronger with healing power, mix in a few Dire pieces and you can get HIGH condition damage and some toughness and vitality to make you tanky. For those builds that need the precision they get that too. I am not saying you shouldn't exist, by all means you should have fun playing your condition builds, don't pretend that the only option available to you is to stand there like a garden gnome and face tank everything being thrown out at you.

Add those to your notes.

[Morde.3158]

Quote

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

What is this about? So the dev team is going to change it without an explanation? It feels like we just got the spear and its already hard to fit into my build then you just up and change it that's DIABOLICAL lol!

[Ghost.6498]

I understand the balance issue with scourge. But this is a short sighted change. Transfusion is not only used by scourges. Is it very strong on scourge, yes. The solution is thus to change how Scourge specifically interacts with transfusion instead of the other way around. 

 

Else next you'd blame might for the ridiculous dmg numbers on some dps classes...

 

I have a reaper healer friend, who has regen and transfusion. They are the late healer! This patch would destroy that build diversity in PVE/OW. This transfusion change and everyone going on as if it's a scourge only thing is so restricted in meta thinking, it's preposterous. It's in the blood magic trait line, not the scourge trait line. Both player and anet need to have a hard look at their bias when making choices please. We don't need this senseless bickering.

Edited yesterday at 06:47 AM by Ghost.6498

[Daraku.2106]

Some people are saying not to worry about the transfusion change because they'll give necro better stab application or rework transfusion at another date.  This is extremely unlikely.  I know this because on June 27, 2023 they changed the Overflowing Thirst trait from increasing movement speed and reducing dagger cooldowns while above a health threshold to generating 1% life force when you hit a foe using dagger skills.  If you play a lot of necro in all game modes you'll know that mainhand dagger actually generates way too much life force and offhand 5 should be buffed but probably not through life force generation (I think it should apply more bleed stacks and 1-3 seconds of chill depending on the game mode).  I figured this was temporary and they were just trying to get rid of the weapon cooldown traits but it's been over a year and they haven't touched it yet. 

[Xehanort.7936]

Kinda sad that Cele got nerfed for no good reason. All the time i used celestial builds where just because i could use the same gear in WvW and in PVE. Didn't look overpowered but guess im just gonna Trailblazer back and now annoy people that wanna kill me.

[willow.8209]

 

12 hours ago, H K.4057 said:

Where did I say that? Why are you even mentioning toughness?

first off, thanks for mentioning healing, that made me take another look at my build. I recently dragged out a character who hasn't been to WvW in a while and was wearing cheap TP gears and replaced it with something that wasn't celestial, assuming celestial won't have expertise in wvw anymore soon. And now i want to change it again alr, to include healing, lol. Will have to wait some time... tho I have another plan for a gear mix to try when I'm ready.  I'm so impatient for legendary so I can try out everything lol. 

secondly, I might have gotten you mixed up another player because you replied to this exchange:

On 9/16/2024 at 5:02 AM, LilBiM.3581 said:

While we are nuking Cele can we also Nuke Trailblazers too? Can we make it Toughness -> Precision, Vitality -> Healing Power.

 

Thanks.

If I understand these -> correctly, they want to change:
condi, toughness, vitality, expertise
to
condi, precision, healing, expertise (which might be a reasonable option to add, but not to replace another attribute combination)

I replied with a smart-alec comment comparing this to a nerf on power sustain and they replied:

On 9/16/2024 at 5:23 AM, LilBiM.3581 said:

You don't know how broken that setup is. Trailblazers is Marauders with Toughness added as also as a main stat. Let's nuke it, that is part of what the next toxic transition will be in WvW from Celestial..

yea no, as I explained (in the next quote), Viper (4 stats) is the dmg-only equivalent to Berzerker (3 stats).  In order to be equivalent to Marauder, Trailblazer would need precision and/or power (depending on traits/ weapons/ etc), so 5 stats overall. A rough equivalent to Trailblazer in a power version would lack precision too. 

I continued:

On 9/16/2024 at 5:34 AM, willow.8209 said:

disagree for two reasons:

1. Power is burst damage: you might sometimes overwhelm and defeat your opponent before ever needing sustain. 
Condi on the other hand is damage over time: no matter how much damage you can do you will always need sustain. 

2. power has two clear damage augment stats: precision and ferocity  
condi needs expertise and sometimes also precision and/or power in order to reach full potential. one clear and two additional unclear augment stats. So for many builds, trailblazer is giving up damage utility to have so much sustain.
While marauder has somewhat reduced damage stats compared with berzerker (to make room for sustain), it doesn't lose any potentially-needed damage stats altogether.

My thoughts on Celestial are in many other posts: TL'DR This particular suggested change to celestial is a terrible move that won't fix anything, but will cause significant issues for disabled players in wvw, condi players in wvw, and players that want to try out several things without needing a new gear/template for everything they try. While additionally being unnecessarily confusing and complex (which again causes issues for disabled players). 

what you did say was a reply to that convo, and was:

On 9/16/2024 at 9:27 AM, H K.4057 said:

<something about fighting back that seemed irrelevant to me>
<discounting whether expertise is important>
<something about specific builds having crits from traits, which seems irrelevant to a discussion about gear available to all builds >

Edit: The impact of this cele nerf is being overstated here. Losing condi duration does not really matter. Losing boon duration doesn't mean cele builds won't have access to boons, only that they will have around 42% less uptime. The average player fighting cele won't even notice this because they are not able to take advantage of the gaps in boon uptime. Some cele builds don't even need the extra boon duration.

Burst damage is meant to be overwhelming even when people are fighting back, and to particularly overwhelm players with less burst (you can do more damage faster). Damage over time is meant to withstand burst damage and win by endurance (you can keep up the pressure). You do have to press buttons in either type of damage and try to out-maneuver the other. 

Expertise was not contested in this conversation. However, is always recommended on the build sites for condi builds. I'm not a great build crafter myself I'm just learning. But I usually assume if all the build sites use almost only gears that have expertise, there's probably a good reason. Other build crafters say expertise is needed or unneeded depending on, if I understand it, whether the specific conditions utilized by a particular build are already long duration or not. But you missed my overall point (probably in a different convo) that condi has fewer gearing choices, and my other point that some existing gear has to work for all traitlines. Choices shouldn't be reduced without adding something else.

The min-maxer build are always going to find a way to do whatever is the best performance that traits support. Taking away choices from people who don't min-max is a counterproductive response to that. The only reason celestial is used in meta builds is 1) as a booster build for beginners or 2) because there are not other condi choices that would perform better and still fill a specific role. You can tell that whatever overpoerformance issue might exist, it is not caused by Celestial gear because in the 2) situation, it's only condi builds. Not power builds who have more gear choices anyway.

On boons, the main min-max build that would use celestial for the concentration is dps + boon, which is a role in WvW.

But my main concerns on celestial are much more varied than these, and particularly included players with disabilities, aging players, and players who haven't tried all the content yet or want to bring the same gear set to WvW and PvE. These aren't really the people who are min-maxing for speedrunning or being "extra" in competitive modes. In other worlds, probably not contributing to whatever it is that's being "fixed". (spoiler, this is not a direct nor specific fix for any problem I can identify). It also includes builds that need to be able to do all the things (such as Ele builds).

I would not complain about a nerf to overall stats of celestial (and I even suggested a possible solution for this), but without adding a number of other gear choices, I can't support removing attributes altogether. 

What gear is available isn't different depending on what traits you have. Another poster pointed out that traits are supposed to balance to gear, because the gear can be static and then you have something to balance to, and I think this is a good way of seeing the issue. 

Edited yesterday at 03:20 AM by willow.8209

[willow.8209]

Here's that post:

On 9/15/2024 at 12:02 PM, Titan.7853 said:

It's a cascade of bad decisions with this "balance" patch.

First, they should have balanced specs that overperform with Celestial gear by adjusting their skills in WvW game mode.  They didn't, they blamed the gear.

Second, since they blamed the gear, they should have simply balanced that gear by lowering all stats a bit.  They didn't, they decided to remove key stats in a nerf making the stat useless in WvW.

Third, since they nerfed the gear in WvW, but didn't want to do so in PvE, they embarked on a new system that allows them to do so in future with other equipment.  This violates the principle that equipment behaves the same everywhere, which was a pillar that you could trust and invest in.  Now, they are ruining that.  It's a massive mistake.

Here's another though experiment:

Visualize chaos.  In your mind right now, imagine chaos as random particles in three dimensions, all bouncing off each other.  Noting makes sense, because no particle is relative to another.  All you have to do to introduce order is reach out and hold onto one particle.  Make it stable.  Now everything moves in relation to it.  Congratulations, you've introduced stability and order into a chaotic system.

The stability and order that we had was our equipment system.  The equipment system was stable between PvE and WvW.  All things could be balanced against that.  Even PvP has it's own unique and stable equipment system.  That stable system was the sun that always rose the next day.  It was gravity.  It was an unbreakable law of the game.  Classes behaved differently, specs behaved differently, and even traits and skills behaved differently in different game modes.  They could all, however, be balanced against stable equipment stats.

Because equipment stats never changed, you could trust in them.  You could invest in equipment, and know that it would behave the same everywhere.  Isn't that one of the primary economic engines of the game?  

They are about to throw that all away, over Celestial stats in WvW?  Just think about that.

 

[Zyreva.1078]

3 hours ago, willow.8209 said:

I would not complain about a nerf to overall stats of celestial (and I even suggested a possible solution for this), but without adding a number of other gear choices, I can't support removing attributes altogether.

On 9/15/2024 at 9:02 PM, Titan.7853 said:

Second, since they blamed the gear, they should have simply balanced that gear by lowering all stats a bit.  They didn't, they decided to remove key stats in a nerf making the stat useless in WvW.

The reason for removing conc and exp is hat they want to revert cele to its original state- a state where it was actually balanced. Far from useless, but also not as overpowered as in the past few years. By keeping all stats and adjusting values instead, they would be taking a far greater risk of either not nerfing it enough or nerfing it too much. So why take that risk instead of simply reverting changes that shouldn't have happened to begin with?

Like i already said in another topic - cele changes are simply a fix to a mistake they made 3 years ago. Took way too long, but better late than never.

Edited yesterday at 05:43 AM by Zyreva.1078

[Suyheuti.1732]

I get it why concentration will be removed but I couldn’t get it why expertise is taking the bullet in this scenario?

[Malus.2184]

11 hours ago, Barraind.7324 said:

They have the worst boon coverage of any support (that actually sees play) in the game. 

 

You literally play the spec for Transfuse + Sand Swell, and you have to babysit it with a Herald. 

Absurdum ad reductio then every healer needs to be "babysat" by others. It's almost like the problem itself is the Boon system rather than anything else.

 

There's also a high chance that it's just dishonesty and wanting to retain an OP ability as the post where I reminded you that I offered an alternative where it retains the ability it has now, becomes a Utility Skill and Transfuses the Life Force that the Necro has to the ones teleported. It's currently sitting in only negative reactions.

I feel that the "identity" claim is s honest as "Heritage not hate."

[BigBang.9125]

Hello, I suggest a small quality of life improvement. Please consider increasing the PvE Swiftness time of most skills that gives it.

Swiftness never killed anyone, and 3/4 sec of Swiftness with 15 sec cooldown  is not enough to run around in PvE.

[Malus.2184]

11 hours ago, Hikaru.6704 said:

Really ? Trying to justify your wrong utilisation of words, meaning you don't try to understand us, probably because you don't understand what we're talking about in the first place isn't worth it you know ?

I was talking about identity, not tradition that you want it or not, and that your definition is or is not. Thank you.

So stop there please it's not helpful.

No, transfusion didn't, 1st beacuse not all groups use it on this strike, and Bonneskinner isn't GW2 entirely. Try remember that players that are against this removal play all the game in every modes and every classes contrary of what you were saying about Necros main earlier, and you didn't even comment on. xD Ignoring half and only focusing on your way of thinking doesn't change the facts.

If it is an abomiantion why did it exist for a decade in the game exactly ? 😂 

Well i'll answer. Because it's not an abomination and never was.

It's just something we could do and that compare to other games doesn't permit to do all bosses entirely, contrary of you're way thinking i know, but it's not. Do compare with other MMOs before saying that. It is a help specially to learn but not an answer to everything.

Change your words honestly, you again, hate things when we just want to play the game for fun, you discarde everyone, me specially for now, but I don't care.

We just want to keep the game we love in the way we can have fun. And we want some things that don't change because we define them as identity if we want to. That's our thoughts, our love for the game, you have no rights to talk the way you do sorry. It doesn't please you well i don't mind but stop i beg of you, you're not helpful at all. Try being constructive for once.

And yes i love Necro, as well as mesmer, as well as gardian, in fact, I love the game ! And we used transfusion on Necro since i began playing the game ! And it wasn't a healer at the time ! It is for me their identity, that you want it or not !

Thank you.

I'll just post the definition of "Tradition" from Miriam-Webster here. None of the definitions used are "things we create," in fact, all of them relate to things that were already created. You spend a lot of time on how I should never put my own definition of a word into an argument. Listen to your own advice, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tradition.

The argument people are using is a mix of definition number 4 and 3 where they have convinced themselves that the only way a HealScourge can remain HealScourge is if it has an ability that trivialises a certain kind of difficulty.

[Abzu.5618]

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

Necromancer

• 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.

Harbinger

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

I am mainly a Necromancer player with over 7000 hours with the class, first time posting in the forums after seeing these changes to the class, of course my views will be a bit biased since that is my main point of view, so apologies if other players may disagree with my points.

Please take more time and feedbacks to think about your balance changes, not just for Necro but for all classes in general, the changes to Extirpate, Transfusion and in a lesser manner even Blight is showing that you lack creativity in dealing with buffs and nerfs.
We could agree that Transfusion's teleporting is powerful, however removing it's "uniqueness" is an easy way to destroy class identity, although necro isn't the only class than can interact with downed allies.

The changes to Extirpate has also been overshadowed by all the opinions on Transfusion, however, this too is a sign of lazy redesign as the Boon removal effect is the identity of the Spear weapon, you've also adressed the fact that it being a stackable effect eases balance decisions, so why not exploit that fact instead of simply removing the effect entirely ?

The changes to Blight also somewhat highlights another issue, in that yes this is a buff and is supposed to be a positive to players, however you're effectively lessening the impact that Blight has overall, both positively and negatively, that is also another subtle way of removing class identity : by making the unique aspects and mechanics less relevant.

Other examples of this homogenization/identity removal could include the removal of Boon Corrupts, Condition Conversion, changing the way Signets work, Warriors' old banners, Unique buffs that are not replaceable by boons, Spirits, Gyros, and many more instances which I am not familiar with or do not recall. They were made for balance's sake yes, they may have been positive yes, but they removed distinct gameplay features and made the game more bland as a whole.

All of the points above serve to highlight that although balance is important, you should still have a main focus on class identity and flavors of playstyle, because Guild Wars 2 is first and foremost a video game, games are meant to be fun and unique, it is essential to the health of the game that you think deeper about changing and removing the unique aspects that bring players to your game.

This has been very disappoiting, you keep removing unique gameplay aspects, most of the balance choices you have made during these past years have been lazy, you've been taking the easy way out again and again.
Be more creative, you've already made so many options to choose from in order to balance your gameplay in the form of runes, relics, unused utility skills, unused traits, even other stats such as range for example, and much more, please make use of them !

Once again, please think deeper about your changes and get more feedback from your community.
And not just from the forums and the reddit if possible, do keep in mind that the ones voicing their opinions are still but a small part of your playerbase.

Thank you.

Edited 21 hours ago by Abzu.5618
Added more examples.

[Shade.8037]

7 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

Absurdum ad reductio then every healer needs to be "babysat" by others. It's almost like the problem itself is the Boon system rather than anything else.

 

There's also a high chance that it's just dishonesty and wanting to retain an OP ability as the post where I reminded you that I offered an alternative where it retains the ability it has now, becomes a Utility Skill and Transfuses the Life Force that the Necro has to the ones teleported. It's currently sitting in only negative reactions.

I feel that the "identity" claim is s honest as "Heritage not hate."

WTF, you said necro's had great boon coverage, which is OBJECTIVELY wrong, and that guy pointed it out. In response you basically called everyone who doesn't agree with you on this subject a liar, and draw an allegory between us and hateful racist dog whistles out of no where? I dunno why you hate transfusion this much but the way you are arguing for it is frankly just off putting.

Edited 20 hours ago by Shade.8037

[Hikaru.6704]

16 minutes ago, Shade.8037 said:

WTF, you said necro's had great boon coverage, which is OBJECTIVELY wrong, and that guy pointed it out. In response you basically called everyone who doesn't agree with you on this subject a liar, and draw an allegory between us an hateful racist dog whistles out of no where? I dunno why you hate transfusion this much but the way you are arguing for it is frankly just off putting.

Yeah don't try talking to him he put his hating way of thinking everywhere, and for nothing and understand only himself, nothing constructive since yesterday. Just hate, so why is he even here, because he enjoys it. I'll ignore him now. He also only answer to a part of something he can argue on never all of it because he can't. And focuses on words we don't care and didn't use in the first place. xD

[Hikaru.6704]

10 hours ago, Ghost.6498 said:

I have a reaper healer friend, who has regen and transfusion. They are the late healer! This patch would destroy that build diversity in PVE/OW. This transfusion change and everyone going on as if it's a scourge only thing is so restricted in meta thinking, it's preposterous. It's in the blood magic trait line, not the scourge trait line. Both player and anet need to have a hard look at their bias when making choices please. We don't need this senseless bickering.

Sorry but stop there, a lot of people are talking about Necro in general not just scourge, but it is and always be a good way to talk about transfusion so everyone can understand what we're talking about.

Because it is in the game and always was, the scourges that mainly use it, even before heal. Of course it's a trait of Necro we don't disagree with you on that and a lot of people didn't say otherwise. We're mainly discussing about why it's not a good changes for the game and the class in itself too.

But having exemple with reaper healer is a great addition, no problem there ! +1

[willow.8209]

4 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

The reason for removing conc and exp is hat they want to revert cele to its original state- a state where it was actually balanced. Far from useless, but also not as overpowered as in the past few years. By keeping all stats and adjusting values instead, they would be taking a far greater risk of either not nerfing it enough or nerfing it too much. So why take that risk instead of simply reverting changes that shouldn't have happened to begin with?

Like i already said in another topic - cele changes are simply a fix to a mistake they made 3 years ago. Took way too long, but better late than never.

they would not be hinting about using the stat change per game mode tool again, if that were the goal since no other stats have changed ever, to my knowledge. Not being sure how much to change a trait or whatever has usually let to trying, then if needed trying again. This is not any more risky than any other balance change. However, changing the gears which perform vastly different on different builds, and causing gear, which can be a major investment, to stop being stable when it (nearly) always was before--to me that's the risky move.

Also, in the original state, neither expertise nor concentration (nor I think alacrity and probably others) existed at all in the game. So in the sense of "got every possible stat so you can at least somewhat do every possible thing" has not changed, just the number of stats that comprise "every possible" has changed. 

I agree that the time to change the intensity of the stats was when they added the other two stats to the gear, whenever that was (not 3 years). But many many things have changed since then so a previous state is not automatically balanced now, even if it was before, which seems iffy. 

So we disagree, you're kindly explaining your thoughts and I just have a different view. 

[Codename T.2847]

On 9/16/2024 at 4:25 PM, Harbinger Of Ducks.9183 said:

I've been playing this game for about 5 years now and I have seen plenty of awful patch notes over all that time. I don't tend to get bothered by any of them and even when I do it has never been so much that I get genuinely pissed off and heartbroken or love the game any less for it in a way that will persist. Until now. I think that this might actually be the worst balance patch I have ever seen hit this game if this goes through and this is the first time I have even bothered to comment on the forums. I have thousands of hours in the game and my most played classes are warrior and necro by far, 2000+ in necro and 500+ in warrior. I already wasn't planning to play necro anymore before janthir wilds launched but then I saw the spear and the new relic of atrocity and saw the potential for a new fun and interesting build in pvp modes and non instanced group pve content that was completely unique and gave me a new way to play the game that no other class in the game could give me: a full melee lifesteal bruiser class with unnecessary ranged weapon swap options that were around as good for different reasons. And when I tried it it actually worked very well, I was routinely getting top damage, healing, and kill stats in pvp really easily majority of my games and i didnt get around to playing it in wvw yet or  unlocking it in pve yet but im sure it would have been no less fun, viable, or useful. But the boon block is just as important as the life steal 2 skill to making it work. This was never going to be the best build in the first place but it was viable and I have seen the most build viability on Janthir Wild's launch than I ever have in 5 years of playing this game on top of getting genuinely interesting and potentially fun new relic options, the only glaring problem I was seeing was some notable big overperformers. But now Necro is practically a deleted class. You have more or less only one way to play power and condi reaper which is the only necro spec you can still count on seeing a lot of. besides probably core now since some people don't have elite specs. Scourge will mostly be as unplayed as scrapper, spectre, and bladesworn after this patch in all likelihood. And harbinger was already a boring glass cannon that everything else has also been doing better than it including damage for a long while, SOTO at least spiced it up a little by making power harb viable and some people do genuinely enjoy harb so it'll still get played.....outside of wvw since its just bad there without the power celestial stats give it including the stats this patch is going to remove. But there are two more elephants in the room here.......

Lets start with the obvious elephant to anyone whether they play the class or not: willbender has desperately needed a nerf in pvp and wvw for ages now but not only is that conspicuously absent they also have the new necro weapon that makes them just slightly less oppressive by combating their boons and that was a key feature we were told to expect for the new expansion just as conspicuously have the mechanic that makes it anything more than a greatsword downgrade removed with no explanation. I don't think its a stretch to say that those two things are connected especially when we get no explanation for such a huge change but we get one for transfusion. Boon balls are a known balance issue that players routinely complain about and don't like. One ironically brought about in the first place by removal of boon strip and boon corruption.....from mainly scourge who is now being mercilessly ended this patch.

The other elephant in the room is warrior. Spell breaker has gotten so disgustingly oppressive in pvp since the spears came out between its in-class survivability, its survivability from staff, and its damage from spear......but here's the thing: those weapons were only so horribly overpowered when used on spellbreaker together. Spellbreaker has been very obnoxius and very meta for a very long time but always in a state that was acceptable even though I personally felt as someone who plays a lot of warrior that a spec built around counters and bunkering was always deeply unhealthy for the game and it should've been totally reworked ages ago or simply kept useless and irrelevant like it used to be (definitely my biggest hot take here lmao). But now that its glaringly overpowered and they have to do something about it they nerf the last 2 expansion weapons making them a lot weaker and a lot less satisfying to use for the other 2 specs instead of nerfing the actual big problem. Healzerker already had to sacrifice utility skills just to get enough adrenaline to use its burst skill, bladesworn was already lacking in utility as a support because of its inability to weapon swap to a normal weapon for nothing but some higher base damage which only really mattered much in pvp (where until recently I actually played healsworn a lot and it was pretty strong due to that and being a very rare and significant source of pvp alacrity), both of those specs were and are sorely lacking in boon support and were given the vague promise of "being kept an eye on and looking at reworking underused traits to strengthen should they continue to underperform". Well....guess what? It already was weaker than nearly every other healer and was only really played sometimes anyways because the design of the weapon was nailed so hard that it offered something that felt extremely fun and unique from every other option and that worked well enough with banners to make them feel satisfying as a support option despite their previous terrible rework. Yet instead of reworking underused traits to strengthen heal warrior as was suggested would probably happen we instead get big staff nerfs?!?! To avoid addressing the actual problem of spellbreaker?!?! And then a patch later as the cherry on top we get some very significant survivability focused utility skill buffs in Dolyak Signet and To the Limit that are just going to make the spellbreaker problem that healwarrior practically died for even worse and a whole lot of nothingburger for the rest of the warrior changes?!?! Make this make sense.....

There is a very clear and strong bias in the balance team and there's not even an attempt to hide it anymore. If this patch goes through like this then it is going to near singlehandedly wreck the best start to an expansion we have possibly ever had and more than likely substantially negatively impact overall reception to it.

This is supposed to be the first balance patch of a new expansion following SOTO which had very strongly mixed reception and made a lot of very poorly received design decisions or implementations. And you already had a widely publicized investor meeting that went so badly someone there had to announce starting to work on a Guild Wars 3 in a last ditch desperate effort. ArenaNet quite literally might not be able to afford a balance patch this disastrously bad right now, even if most people have already bought the expansion by now that doesn't mean that people will forget something like this or that you won't lose any players over this. (I wont be one of them, im just going to swap classes and seriously question over the next year for the first time if i even want to buy the next expansion and also quit buying gems but people absolutely will quit over this). This expansion started off so good that I doubt many people even expected or cared about much besides some key nerfs in this first balance patch yet you somehow STILL managed to completely bomb this.....

I very seriously and very strongly urge you to walk this whole patch back then don't come back until you have a much better balance patch that actually seriously does something meaningful for this game that is not negative.

Well said, I agree. 

[Hikaru.6704]

On 9/16/2024 at 4:25 PM, Harbinger Of Ducks.9183 said:

There is a very clear and strong bias in the balance team and there's not even an attempt to hide it anymore. If this patch goes through like this then it is going to near singlehandedly wreck the best start to an expansion we have possibly ever had and more than likely substantially negatively impact overall reception to it.

I read, but i will remember that part because, well said.

[LilBiM.3581]

9 hours ago, willow.8209 said:

 

first off, thanks for mentioning healing, that made me take another look at my build. I recently dragged out a character who hasn't been to WvW in a while and was wearing cheap TP gears and replaced it with something that wasn't celestial, assuming celestial won't have expertise in wvw anymore soon. And now i want to change it again alr, to include healing, lol. Will have to wait some time... tho I have another plan for a gear mix to try when I'm ready.  I'm so impatient for legendary so I can try out everything lol. 

secondly, I might have gotten you mixed up another player because you replied to this exchange:

If I understand these -> correctly, they want to change:
condi, toughness, vitality, expertise
to
condi, precision, healing, expertise (which might be a reasonable option to add, but not to replace another attribute combination)

I replied with a smart-alec comment comparing this to a nerf on power sustain and they replied:

yea no, as I explained (in the next quote), Viper (4 stats) is the dmg-only equivalent to Berzerker (3 stats).  In order to be equivalent to Marauder, Trailblazer would need precision and/or power (depending on traits/ weapons/ etc), so 5 stats overall. A rough equivalent to Trailblazer in a power version would lack precision too. 

I continued:

what you did say was a reply to that convo, and was:

Burst damage is meant to be overwhelming even when people are fighting back, and to particularly overwhelm players with less burst (you can do more damage faster). Damage over time is meant to withstand burst damage and win by endurance (you can keep up the pressure). You do have to press buttons in either type of damage and try to out-maneuver the other. 

Expertise was not contested in this conversation. However, is always recommended on the build sites for condi builds. I'm not a great build crafter myself I'm just learning. But I usually assume if all the build sites use almost only gears that have expertise, there's probably a good reason. Other build crafters say expertise is needed or unneeded depending on, if I understand it, whether the specific conditions utilized by a particular build are already long duration or not. But you missed my overall point (probably in a different convo) that condi has fewer gearing choices, and my other point that some existing gear has to work for all traitlines. Choices shouldn't be reduced without adding something else.

The min-maxer build are always going to find a way to do whatever is the best performance that traits support. Taking away choices from people who don't min-max is a counterproductive response to that. The only reason celestial is used in meta builds is 1) as a booster build for beginners or 2) because there are not other condi choices that would perform better and still fill a specific role. You can tell that whatever overpoerformance issue might exist, it is not caused by Celestial gear because in the 2) situation, it's only condi builds. Not power builds who have more gear choices anyway.

On boons, the main min-max build that would use celestial for the concentration is dps + boon, which is a role in WvW.

But my main concerns on celestial are much more varied than these, and particularly included players with disabilities, aging players, and players who haven't tried all the content yet or want to bring the same gear set to WvW and PvE. These aren't really the people who are min-maxing for speedrunning or being "extra" in competitive modes. In other worlds, probably not contributing to whatever it is that's being "fixed". (spoiler, this is not a direct nor specific fix for any problem I can identify). It also includes builds that need to be able to do all the things (such as Ele builds).

I would not complain about a nerf to overall stats of celestial (and I even suggested a possible solution for this), but without adding a number of other gear choices, I can't support removing attributes altogether. 

What gear is available isn't different depending on what traits you have. Another poster pointed out that traits are supposed to balance to gear, because the gear can be static and then you have something to balance to, and I think this is a good way of seeing the issue. 

Power does not have sustain. What are you on about? Also I don't think that you understood my comparison with Trailblazers vs a 5 stat Marauder gear with Toughness. The main challenge that players seem to have is conflating the need to have 3400 armor with survivability/sustain. There are other things you can do to avoid damage in game and my premise is that no one stat combination (in a "competitive mode", PvE it really doesn't matter, let the people have fun) should allow you to have your cake ( same options as everyone else ) and eat it too ( +dmg, +absurd toughness and hp ).

Being able to be around for long enough to let your dots tick, believe it or not, is also a balance that Power builds have to play as well too but with direct damage.

[Kyon.4810]

Finally arena net makes some changes that makes sense!

God bless you for making transfusion like it was before from start of game. Finally arena net starts taking care about core specs and it is great!

Only 1 minor change should be made for gw2 in future is removing Power stats from gears and equipement, because it is just to OP, just replace power stats to healing power for every gear/stats set and this game will be way much more funnier, like it was before!

Thanks for good upcoming changes to the game, Arena net team!

[daw.4923]

On 9/14/2024 at 11:19 PM, Shade.8037 said:

Oh, yeah, because stab and protection uptime don't matter at all for healers. /s

The ability to save downstate is the only benefit to bringing a scourge, without that bring literally any other class and don't let them get downed to begin with. We UTTERLY lack the basics of being a healer, and made up for that with niche rez protentional, now just play an actually good healer. We can be replaced by a freakin dps specter.

yes stability and prot uptime have no impact on HEALER, you could start crying about no superspeed,stealth, etc.

what you are saying is that you wanna BEST HEALER AND SUPPORT in the game with all benefits and 0 downsides. that not balance tho.

[daw.4923]

I hope that you gonna address  SPEAR on DH which currently outperforms BOW aka signature PURE DPS WEAPON WITHOUT ANY UTILITY which is smh worse that UTILITY weapon with  2 dashes, aoe resistance and aoe condi cleanse.

It seems like some out of season April joke and should be fixed in next balance patch.

[Shade.8037]

8 minutes ago, daw.4923 said:

yes stability and prot uptime have no impact on HEALER,

...I, I don't even.... that... Wow I have nothing polite or constructive to say to that, so I shall just...move on, and allow that to speak for itself.