October 8 balance update : insane changes for dagger/dagger

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

2 hours ago, Joie.6084 said:

General

The Celestial attribute combination has been exceptionally powerful in WvW since the addition of concentration and expertise, and it's something that we've been monitoring for some time. With this update, we're introducing the tech to adjust equipment's attribute distribution and the amount of attributes it provides on a per game–mode basis. 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. We'll be keeping an eye on how the tech performs and whether it needs any final touches, but, assuming everything goes well, it's something that we may use going forward to tune other attribute combinations in WvW specifically.

• Celestial equipment will no longer grant concentration or expertise while in a WvW map.
• Revealed: Increased the duration in WvW to match PvP.

Elementalist

The June balance update included a few tune-ups to the elementalist's dagger skills in competitive modes with the goal of making them more viable picks. These changes didn't quite have the impact that we were hoping for, so we've made additional improvements to the dagger skills for this update. We've also bumped up the damage on a handful of spear skills in WvW and made a few smaller improvements for support-focused tempest and quickness-based catalyst builds.

• Burning Speed: Reduced the cooldown from 15 seconds to 12 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Convergence: Increased the power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.35 in PvP and WvW.
• Updraft: Reduced the cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Ring of Earth: Increased the secondary-strike power coefficient from 1.1 to 1.25 in PvP and WvW.
• Churning Earth: Increased the power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.6 in PvP and WvW.
• Frozen Burst: Reduced the cooldown from 15 seconds to 12 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Cleansing Wave: Reduced the cooldown from 25 to 20 in PvP and WvW. Increased the base healing to 2,222 in all game modes.
• Blazing Barrage: Increased the power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.05 in WvW only.
• Meteor: Increased the power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.35 in WvW only.
• Fissure: Increased the power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.15 in WvW only.
• Haboob: Increased the power coefficient from1.33 to 1.5 in WvW only.

Tempest

• "Wash the Pain Away!": This skill now removes a condition from allies on every pulse.
• Rebound: This skill now grants stability instead of fury.

Weaver

• Elemental Refreshment: This trait no longer applies barrier to allies. Increased the barrier from 523 to 1,003 in PvE only.
• Bolstered Elements: This trait now triggers Lesser Stone Resonance when you use an elite skill instead of at a health threshold. Reduced the internal cooldown from 70 seconds to 30 seconds. Increased the protection duration from 2.5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Woven Stride: Reduced the internal cooldown from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

Catalyst

• Invigorating Air: This skill now also grants 25 endurance when used.
• Spectacular Sphere: Increased the quickness duration from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds in PvE only. Increased the might stacks from 5 to 8 in PvE only.
• 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.

Huge buff for daggers. Happy about it because they're my favorite weapons for elementalist, and it's already strong in WvW and PvP for all e-specs

Weaver : useless changes as always, no real fix. No boon, Barriers even more useless than current state, Bolstered Elements: still garbage. Woven stride is nice I guess, +33% swiftness effectiveness would be great too please.
Plus I love the way they will "reduce" icd on Bolstered Elements "Wow, big improvement" but all usable elite skills in pvp/wvw have longer CD than 60 anyway. Once again, totally random changes to make headlines for weaver.

Huge nerf of celestial. Concentration and expertise were both really important for elementalist, at least to me. I don't know, would have prefered they nerf the total by 10~15% rather than deleting expertise/concentration.

Edited September 13 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[RaveOnYou.2819]

dagger is only meaningfull with celestial, you cant survive with ele as full power in melee range. and celestial is dead these changes are going to the trash even without coming lol.

Edited September 13 by RaveOnYou.2819

[Bleikopf.2491]

Frozen Burst and Cleansing Wave CD reduction might be interesting for D/D Tempest.

Frozen Burst allows for more Frost Auras, and Cleansing Wave is down to ~16s CD with water traitline.

The power coefficients will only be interesting for a small subset of players.

[Velkix.6825]

Devs really need some shuffle...

The balance team has biases on classes, and can not face the real issues.

Nerfing cele would not be a solution for boon balls. They need to change some core mechanics or many traits of all classes. We still have various power boon balls and perm stealth, they just push wvw to another toxic end.

No nerf of harb and willbenders. I do know some devs mainly played harb, willbender and rev. (they played cringly badly. Imaging rage afk in PVP)

I don't think their changes on ele ever make sense. They don't play ele anyway, but I have to complain cata's change.

The main issue of cata's quickness consistency is the lack of generation out of battle. Cata could not recharge energy during the invulnerable phase of boss and hardly get enough through trash mobs. A skilled cata would not have energy issues while fighting a bot, but we all know that's not practical for many reasons. The change can cover the boss with a short invulnerable phase, but it would still not make cata useable in some specific scenarios. Making boon duration long enough and rechargeable during sphere is a lazy solution for me.

Edited September 14 by Velkix.6825

[Jski.6180]

Ya d/d will be fun for sure though i still dont think you ever going to have an real d/d dmg build in the wvw environment ele just too much of an glass caion. The dream of d/d dmg weaver one day.

(I also think cele still going to be the best boon duration / condi duration means nothing for ele.)

Bit of an side note i think anet forgot ele can use an staff at this point lol.

[Ragnarox.9601]

Thats why they are buffing daggers for 2,3 patches in a row..i knew theres a catch, so they are killing celestial...nice one anet.

 

 

[Suyheuti.1732]

1 hour ago, Velkix.6825 said:

Devs really need some shuffle...

The balance team has biases on classes, and can not face the real issues.

Nerfing cele would not be a solution for boon balls. They need to change some core mechanics or many traits of all classes. We still have various power boon balls and perm stealth, they just push wvw to another toxic end.

No nerf of harb and willbenders. I do know some devs mainly played harb, willbender and rev. (they played cringly badly. Imaging rage afk in PVP)

I don't think their changes on ele ever make sense. They don't play ele anyway, but I have to complain cata's change.

The main issue of cata's quickness consistency is the lack of generation out of battle. Cata could not recharge energy during the invulnerable phase of boss and hardly get enough through trash mobs. A skilled cata would not have energy issues while fighting a bot, but we all know that's not practical for many reasons. The change can cover the boss with a short invulnerable phase, but it would still not make cata useable in some specific scenarios. Making boon duration long enough and rechargeable during sphere is a lazy solution for me.

I totally agree with you. But in the current situation it is unplayable. With the change, at least, they saved the day. 
The thing I dislike is it will effect only support catalysts. I would like it to change energy generation for all builds. At least increase energy generation per hit would be nice.

I hope they update the cata utilities much more supportive. Now, when Soothing Water, Invigorating Air and Fortified Earth are used inside their sphere, you get CD reduction which is not useful. Anet can upgrade when these utilities used inside their spheres, they give you more stronger effects instead of CD reduction. 
For example: Soothing Water may give Resistance. 
Invigorating Air: Duration increased 3 more secs like Rethless Fire. 
Fortified Earth:  Reflect projectiles maybe. 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

6 hours ago, Jski.6180 said:

Ya d/d will be fun for sure though i still dont think you ever going to have an real d/d dmg build in the wvw environment ele just too much of an glass caion. The dream of d/d dmg weaver one day.

(I also think cele still going to be the best boon duration / condi duration means nothing for ele.)

Bit of an side note i think anet forgot ele can use an staff at this point lol.

Without 30~40% BD and CD you can forget fury loop, or stacking stab with cata, same with stacks might particularly without Fire if you're using Arcane/sigils/combo.
Superior elemnts uptime, piercing shard, burning, immob, chill...
You devalue the importance of those stats to deal damage on "long" terms even for power builds

Elem already had low duration on everything because "OMG 20 weapon skills, better dilute everything compared to others" and because of nerfs due to ... celestial. And now  Celestial will be gone.

[Jski.6180]

6 minutes ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Without 30~40% BD and CD you can forget fury loop, or stacking stab with cata, same with stacks might particularly without Fire if you're using Arcane/sigils/combo.
Superior elemnts uptime, piercing shard, burning, immob, chill...
You devalue the importance of those stats to deal damage on "long" terms even for power builds

Elem already had low duration on everything because "OMG 20 weapon skills, better dilute everything compared to others" and because of nerfs due to ... celestial. And now  Celestial will be gone.

You could just blast fire fields. But ya the base duration for the boons on ele is going to need to be relooked at as well as condi duration a "rip" this big will be an issues for balancing after then game has been balanced arond a gear set. The thing is ele is less effected by the cele changes then say an alactiry or quickness class (Cata was not perma quickness even with duration of cele.)

[Bleikopf.2491]

If I had a wishlist I wouldn't think much about D/D tbh. 

Focus is still somewhat outdated. Freezing Gust is still 2012.

Some ICDs could be shaved in the traits, but I haven't crunched the numbers what would be balanced. With Cele Conc/Exp gone some buffs and condis from traits won't hold as long anymore. 

Weaver.. I don't know what they want to do with this e-spec tbh? 

As for Dagger itself, I don't think I have ever landed a Fire Grab, but that is probably a skill issue on my end. 

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

Great, so instead of perm stealth, willbender mobility or ridiculous cleaving abilites and boon balls we nerf the answer on that, meaning people picking up celestial stats?

And then we buff... a weapon which has no meaning without celestial armor which is being doom-nerfed by this update?

[willow.8209]

21 minutes ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

And then we buff... a weapon which has no meaning without celestial armor which is being doom-nerfed by this update?

i wonder if anyone is looking at the big picture

[Bleikopf.2491]

I'm positive that Celestial will still see use on Ele. It was used on Ele before Conc and Expertise. If we find that we cannot hold on the boons long enough for modern GW2, we'll just mix in some other prefixes or change runes.

[Atoclone.4810]

58 minutes ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

I'm positive that Celestial will still see use on Ele. It was used on Ele before Conc and Expertise. If we find that we cannot hold on the boons long enough for modern GW2, we'll just mix in some other prefixes or change runes.

Cele will still be used by this ele.

It might not be good but I am very lazy

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm wondering why they're nerfing weaver.  Though it is my favorite spec, it is also the least played Ele spec because it has neither the highest damage, nor the most boon support.

Making Elemental Refreshment no longer an AoE removes one of the only sources of group support that Weaver has.  It was put there to compete with other professions (scourge in particular) who would ambiently stack barrier alongside of other boons and healing for their allies.  Granted, 500 barrier every few seconds wasn't a lot, but it definitely helped with stuff like ambient conditions and pulsing damage auras from raid bosses.  Doubling this trait but making it selfish isn't going to change anything, because competent weavers already aren't dying, and 500 more barrier isn't going to keep an incompetent weaver alive.  Instead of giving 2600 barrier spread across 5 allies, it now gives 1000 barrier to itself only, and that is what this change does.

Likewise, the Bolstered Elements change makes it useless.  Having it trigger at half health was good, because that meant you were taking a beating and needed more barrier to save yourself.  The cooldown change is meaningless, because all of the good elite skills have cooldowns in the 70+ second range anyway.  The trait effectively doesn't exist if you're using FGS like I was.  Instead of proccing automatically you need to use a skill to activate it, which means you can be chain-stunned into oblivion far more easily.  Being tied to an elite means that you'll be getting barrier randomly when the elite is needed, and not really when the barrier is needed.  The minor boost to protection time is still less than what we lose with the Celestial nerf.

The Woven Stride change is good for PvP/WvW, which is about the only good change it has.  I've been using it in combination with Cleansing Water to double up on the condition cleansing, and this change will make it that much easier to remove all of those pesky conditions. 

Of course, this does nothing for PVE, which leaves us with several many nerfs with no discernable reason.  I mean, seriously, I'd like to know exactly what metric, what statistics Anet has that tells them that they should make Elemental Refreshment selfish and Bolstered Elements inconvenient.  What tests are being done in their personal severs that leads them to conclude that this was the right thing to do for weaver?  Do the current devs have a grudge against a weaver for some inexplicable reason?  The changes for Catalyst and Tempest were straight up buffs in their own niche, as Catalyst can now run full boon support with no boon duration and Tempest received much better group support for WvW. 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

47 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The Woven Stride change is good for PvP/WvW, which is about the only good change it has.  I've been using it in combination with Cleansing Water to double up on the condition cleansing, and this change will make it that much easier to remove all of those pesky conditions. 

You can try relic of rivers too, it's like the old runes of evasion : cleanse on every dodges + some alacrity which is nice too.

[Papaj.9035]

On 9/13/2024 at 8:53 PM, Velkix.6825 said:

Devs really need some shuffle...
The balance team has biases on classes, and can not face the real issues.
.......
No nerf of harb and willbenders. I do know some devs mainly played harb, willbender and rev. (they played cringly badly. Imaging rage afk in PVP)
I don't think their changes on ele ever make sense. They don't play ele anyway, but I have to complain cata's change.
...

I feel this has got to be 100% true. When I came back after 10 years away from the game I couldn't comprehend how Ele went from what I remember in 2012/2013 with Evasive Arcana, Soldier's gear Staff running Water/Arcane/Earth traitlines (or Celestial Tempest/Arcane/Water when that released) to what it is now. I remember being unkillable by anything less than a 3v1 and could condition cleanse without issue - so you can probably blame Dev hate on people like me for that. That first time coming back to the dumb things Willbenders, Necro elite classes, and Rifle + S/D Deadeyes can do absolutely floored me. Couldn't out-heal or out-cleanse anything even specced and glyphed/relic'd for it. Not to mention staff was always a weak damage weapon outside of Meteor Shower.

Ele had a much higher skill ceiling than every other class back then (pretty sure its still the highest now too) - it always felt like I was working 2x as hard to achieve 10% less (like any Mage spec in Rift had to do compared to any 111->2, 111->3 melee class in the game) but it was still not a league behind anything else, just required more effort on the player. Now its not even worth it to outskill someone...cause they just stealth/disengage at light speed 3000+ range away and wait until they're back off CDs cause they got outplayed by one dodge roll/immunity skill at the right time.

Edited September 16 by Papaj.9035

[Ragnarox.9601]

They should at least buff boon duration on our skills then, this is ridiculous, first they gave us 3x kitten weapons in a row then killing only viable stat combo for elementalist. At least give us your honest opinion that no dev is playing this class so we could invest in something else and stop with this nonsense with every new weapon new type of gameplay which does not synergize with core ele. 

 

Dont make mistake with your next weapons in plan for ele: sword offhand, shield offhand, and axe/axe. Make all skills do dmg and more escape options and auras.

 

/end of rant.

Edited September 17 by Ragnarox.9601