October 8 Balance Update Preview

[Herrscher.2986]

Just now, ShatteredStars.6548 said:

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

If the Transfusion nerf was WvW specific, they would've said it as such, but the sentence doesn't say that. Thus it's to be assumed to be part of every gamemode. 

[torbal.3614]

Quote

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

Good ridance! No more excuses to pospone learning how to dodge Boneskinner. Also you should have added some stab to the spec.

[ShatteredStars.6548]

Just now, Herrscher.2986 said:

If the Transfusion nerf was WvW specific, they would've said it as such, but the sentence doesn't say that. Thus it's to be assumed to be part of every gamemode. 

also only says its powerful in every game mode, is it gone in all modes or what.

Edited Friday at 08:42 PM by ShatteredStars.6548

[Sovngarde.7502]

47 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.

Well, maybe now your squad will stop standing where they shouldn’t.

[Hachimaro.6234]

1 hour 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.

Oh, I guess it's time to switch to heal chrono. Without transfusion's main utility, there's literally no point in taking heal scourge over it.

[Yerlock.4678]

2 QoL requests, not even technically buffs:

-Rifle Warrior needs more QoL in the same way yall gave it to spear. Doesn’t need better damage just the Qol still feels jank. This is abysmal feeling and is causing hardly anyone still to play rifle in pvp.

-“To The Limit” getting love is great, but please do something about the after cast, it’s annoying especially in competitive.

 

As a bonus: 

Berzerker’s spear primal burst is hitting like a wet noodle in pvp, idk if that’s intended

Edited Friday at 08:54 PM by Yerlock.4678

[ShatteredStars.6548]

bad wording, at least separate the two lines kitten.

[Farwind.8016]

With all the direct endurance gain being added, can we get a rework of Takedown Round in the tools traitline to apply it's 10% strike damage bonus for a certain amount of time after a dodge rather than while endurance is not full? Doing so would fix the following problems:

1. Difficulty forming groups in end-game content. You need vigor (Excessive Energy) and no one in the squad giving straight endurance (Takedown Round) to play builds using tools. The number of supports which give vigor without giving endurance is...ever-shrinking.

2. Potions in Fractals give increased endurance regeneration, which nerfs builds using tools compared to other builds in fractals.

3. Frustration in open world metas, because it's hard to know when someone else in the meta will bless you with a 10% damage nerf.

[ShatteredStars.6548]

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.

• Isolate: Reduced the cooldown from 18 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP only.
• Extirpate: This skill no longer inflicts Extirpation and instead inflicts weakness.
• 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.
• 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.
• Dark Pursuit: This skill no longer increases the cooldown of Dark Path.
• Life 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%.
• Unholy Martyr: Increased the life force per condition removed from 3% to 7% in PvP only.
• Transfusion: This trait no longer teleports downed allies to the user In all game modes.
• This trait no longer increases the cooldown of Garish Pillar in WvW.

there fixed it for ya

Edited Friday at 08:47 PM by ShatteredStars.6548

[Alkaid.2098]

So when it comes to necro, you give it the ability to heal in shroud Via soul reaper , but the effectiveness is only weaker in pve??? why is that?

and the teleport on transfusion, I understand removing it from wvw/pvp but why pve??? I could understand a nerf to how many people it pulls, especially in vs modes but why in pve? I think removing the pull is kinda bad, it is already kinda funky to get it to pull properly and if you pull to the wrong place you can get punished hard for it.
 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

47 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

ARE THESE???? GOOD??? WARRIOR CHANGES?????

WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!

Just don't look too hard at the rifle section.

[Ventusxt.8574]

Come on Cal, make the transfusion nerf WvW only, or lower the amount of ppl to pull in pve

[Malus.2184]

11 minutes ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

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

Incorrect, it's a huge rush for you, it's a rush for the people saved at the moment, and it'll be a huge defeat for them when they do the content and there's no Scourge to save them from their mistakes. It also sucks for their teammates who due to this will struggle or possibly even wipe. Conversely, if they know what to do you'll never get to use Transfuse.

This means that Transfuse as it is now is either so good that people will never have to learn how to play, or utterly useless at all times. There's no in-between and any skill that only exists in extremes is a pretty bad skill. You only get benefits from it if people are bad. This ability keeps people in a state of learned helplessness. Remove it.

It's similar to how Decima is forcing people to learn to play. My biggest remaining times on Of Mists and Monsters had been when people realised that never inspecting the floor brings a higher damage yield.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

28 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

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.

Look at the Burst Precision changes. They want you to run Meme 1-Shots on your power berserker.

[Skyztamer.4950]

1 hour ago, Joie.6084 said:

• Sun and Moon Style: This trait now heals for a percentage of all strike damage instead of only critical hit damage.

This trait currently has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. If that were either removed or reduced to 1 second than I'd think this change would be more worthwhile. As it looks now, we'd get less value out of this change than its current iteration.

Quote

• 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 change should address the much needed fix that quickness catalyst has been needing for quickness uptime.

[Celeste.9135]

Absolutely against removing the Transfusion pull in PVE. This is one of the most fun support abilities in the game, this is THE core identity of healing Necromancer. This has been an iconic part of GW2 for years. I'm not even going to argue for buffing heal Scourge to help offload the oncoming struggle to justify running it compared to Druid and Chrono in the alac heal role. Just don't do it.

[Rosey.1608]

1 hour 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.

 

If it's a problem in WvW primarily (which.  that's how it is), why are we nuking it in PvE too?????????? Literally why.  Stop killing mechanics in all game modes if they're only a problem in one.  This is what makes scourge unique compared to druid and warrior, which also have big AoE rezzes. 

 

1 hour ago, Joie.6084 said:

Engineer

Quickness-based scrapper is another boon-providing support build that we felt could use a bit more might generation, so we've added it to the trigger on Kinetic Accelerators. Flamethrower also gets a big upgrade with Smoke Vent becoming a stun break, which gives the kit a much-needed defensive tool.

Scrapper

• Kinetic Accelerators: This trait now applies might in addition to quickness in PvE only.

 

Still missing the point of what makes quick scrapper awful to play right now.  Remember when you pointlessly changed the mechanics and ruined it?  These band-aid fixes aren't helping.  Just make the quickness less of a pain to grant for scrapper.

[daw.4923]

I'm just gonna say that ELE and GUARD are only classes without BOONSTRIP for decade.

Rebound: This skill now grants stability instead of fury. mew wow stab on skill with 75 sec cd mew wow.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 minute ago, Skyztamer.4950 said:

This trait currently has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. If that were either removed or reduced to 1 second than I'd think this change would be more worthwhile. As it looks now, we'd get less value out of this change than its current iteration.

 

From the wiki: 

• The recharge skill fact is a leftover from the 11th of May game update and doesn't serve any purpose.

The CD is leftover from when it granted quickness on the MH dagger on interrupt.

[Bleikopf.2491]

Just now, daw.4923 said:

Rebound: This skill now grants stability instead of fury. mew wow stab on skill with 75 sec cd mew wow.

TBH I'd rather take Stab on 75s cd than Fury on 75s cd.
At least Stab keeps with the theme of avoiding a big hit.

[Bish.8627]

Guardian, Heel Crack and Hold the Line dont need ammo, they need something useful. Same with staff, endurance? We ooze endurance, give fury! Hold the line protection and regen for 20 second cooldown? Give it stability or a stun break or something, heel crack is literally a CC bar skill, which the elite is far better at, would rather have rolling light as a stunbreak and THEN a daze. Give heel crack quickness or mobility or something, even a spike damage? Even as ammo its still not getting anywhere near a toolbar.

Still begging for a power quickness dragonhunter that doesnt so guardian can compete with herald and not compete with condi firebrand only. Quickness on trap hit or something I dunno. Maybe I want too much.

[daw.4923]

1 minute ago, Celeste.9135 said:

Absolutely against removing the Transfusion pull in PVE. This is one of the most fun support abilities in the game, this is THE core identity of healing Necromancer. This has been an iconic part of GW2 for years. I'm not even going to argue for buffing heal Scourge to help offload the oncoming struggle to justify running it compared to Druid and Chrono in the alac heal role. Just don't do it.

I bet its quite fun to provide 10k barrier every 10 sec and if even after that someone dies you can still teleport him under you and insta ress him. much fun much balanced, 12k hp ele with 0 barrier and 1250 heals on blast would like word with you.

[Ventusxt.8574]

Look, i don't care if you disable Transfusion in WvW, if that's what driving this change, kill it there and leave PvE out of it, that's why you have separate gamemodes and that's the only reason to use the healscourge build

[Barraind.7324]

1 hour 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.

 

Uh, whatnow?

 

To not be hyperbolic: this is not a big change TO the Scourge, but it is a big change for everyone else. 

 

Right now, Transfusion is a core part of heal scourge identity, and the reason you bring that spec to certain fights (like Cerus LCM).  Scourge as it is currently is a giant toolkit of mish-mashed stuff, currently that stuff is:  Sand Swell, Transfusion, Good Barrier, good condi cleanse, passable CC. middling healing, and terrible boon generation. 

Removing one of those things it does well starts making it non-viable for higher-end content.  If I cant rescue teammates, why am I playing that spec?  Its objectively a FAR worse pick for a healer than Chrono if you want ports.  Its objectively a FAR worse pick for a healer than druid if you dont want ports.  Its strength comes in being the swiss army knife of keeping people alive, through relocation (while dead or alive) and barrier. 

 

Scourge, in terms of doing the things that make other healers healers, will stay exactly where it is.   It is in a particularly mediocre place in those terms, though.  Its a spec that avoided getting obsoleted by the newest versions of Chrono and Druid by doing what those specs can not (and thats barely true in the case of Heal Chrono).  If it stops being able to do that, it has no place in the game currently. 

 

Losing the pull on transfusion is akin to losing the ability to place portals in combat in the current era.   It is the big reason to play scourge on fights you play scourge.  If transfusion is changed from doing the only thing of note Transfusion does, it (either Heal scourge as a whole or the trait Transfusion) needs to do something else, and that something else needs to be significant. 

Edited Friday at 09:01 PM by Barraind.7324

[daw.4923]

5 minutes ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

TBH I'd rather take Stab on 75s cd than Fury on 75s cd.
At least Stab keeps with the theme of avoiding a big hit.

well ele is downed meme char so any random change will be better than what he currently have..

there are also like 12 heal tempest players and 2 using rebound.

Edited Friday at 09:05 PM by daw.4923