PvP/WvW Skill Split Release

[Urejt.5648]

As a rifle thief, i like sd/dp nerf. However i don't like shawdow shot dmg being increased by +36% and that there are no deadeye changes.

Shawdow shot will be way too imba with the +36% buff. It will probably deal more dmg than backstab.

Recently anet changed mark so malice stacks stay on target longer than mark recharges. It was interesting experiment, however it made all deadeye's grandmaster traits useless:

• passive grand master trait boons for max malice stacks) never triggers twice in fight that can last 3 min
• Also healing for max malice stacks gm trait never triggers twice in fight
• second gm trait - quickness on mark is also very poor value. It must be rethinked!

[Lunalight.8120]

While i agree that Mesmer's burst is overtuned, i also have to note how the majority of people complaining about it have clearly never bothered playing it and are just mad because they got "one shot" "out of nowhere" with "no counterplay", simply because they have no idea what is even hitting them. Which is just plain wrong and the fault of each respective player themselves. Even if Anet were to tone down the numbers, you'd still get killed in the blink of an eye, just like before. Heck, even if Anet would tone it down so much that you'd actually need to pull off 2 bursts to kill someone, you'd still fight a pointless fight and you'd still complain.

[sile.1604]

The reason I got back to this game is because of druid and firebrand, both full support classes, cause you know some of us enjoy this type of gameplay. Now, instead of making other classes viable for full support style, you keep nerfing the only class that was good at it?

[Tomahawk.7361]

Regardless of what you decide anet, you should really stop trying to balance new elites by nerfing or over-adjusting core traits, core traits that many older and consistently balanced classes have used for years. It further widens the gaps between HoT and PoF builds, let alone core builds which, save a few exceptions, are completely dead. If you wish to promote proper diversity and play equality to all the builds that are out there from previous expansions and content, then you should focus more on balancing primarily from new elite skills/utilities/traits. My close friend no longer plays anymore because your nerfs to warrior core to balance spellbreaker killed off rifle warrior.

PS - please revisit condi mirage, this roaming class is completely and utterly unpunishable, I can mash my buttons on it aimlessly and win most 1v1 battles

[mixxed.5862]

I like the changes overall. They certainly hit in all the right places.But they don't address the most important problem in WvW.

I doubt that these changes will make a difference in WvW. They won't change the meta and we're in desperate need of a change. Here's why:One of your main goals in this update is build diversity. Build diversity in WvW doesn't only depend on the balance of builds itself but also on the current meta game. For example the ranged focus of zergs we see currently pushes all melee focused builds out of the game (except for spellbreaker somewhat). Even more importantly: The pirate ship isn't very fun for anyone.

So it is important to also look into ways to reduce the effectiveness of the profession that dictates the play style in large scale right now: SCOURGEIn an optimal zerg setup you currently bring 2+ Scourges per party, because stacking them is so powerful. Scourge offers everything you need in WvW:

• Good damage in condi, power or hybrid setups with bursts of conditions which easily hit for 3k dps per scourge, reapplied every few seconds.
• Easily enough boon corrupts to deal with its one counter: Resistance. Especially so when stacking enough scourges.
• Very sturdy build (especially in dire / trailblazer) and outstanding support (in celestial). Even more so when stacked.
• A huge amount of soft CC: Cripple, cripple, cripple and immobilize from corrupting resistance !!!
• Range of 900. A radius of 300 !!!
• This is the most insane of all: In close range shade skills hit up to !!! 10 targets !!!In fact I'd say the main reason why you currently push in zerg fights is to profit from the increased target limit of your Scourges.

In my opinion the target limit of 10 is what simply is too much. It destroys all hope of boarding the pirateship. You'll just get blown up when you come too close.

tldr: Scourge is the biggest balancing problem in WvW. It is still incredibly overpowered and will continue to be so even with these changes. You will need to take a look at what makes it this dominant and meta defining in WvW large scale fights specifically.

My suggestion: Remove the number of targets increase on Sand Savant. At 3 per shade it will still hit up to 6 targets in close range. It'd be a fair change.

Edit: Just thought of something. Maybe you could reduce the number of targets of only the offensive effects and not the target limit on the support part of shade skills. And then while at it reduce the shade radius with Sand Savant to 240.

[Marxx.5021]

I like the direction of introducing more competitive game mode skill splits.

Please use that skill split approach for more small PvP/WvW skill changes when they occur outside of the regular big balancing patch cycle in future.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@mixxed.5862 said:I like the changes overall. They certainly hit in all the right places but the most important one.

I doubt that these changes will make a difference in WvW. They won't change the meta and we're in desperate need of a change. Here's why:One of your main goals in this update is build diversity. Build diversity in WvW doesn't only depend on the balance of builds itself but also on the current meta game. For example the ranged focus of zergs we see currently pushes all melee focused builds out of the game (except for spellbreaker somewhat). Even more importantly: The pirate ship isn't very fun for anyone.

So it is important to also look into ways to reduce the effectiveness of the profession that dictates the play style in large scale right now: SCOURGE

• In an optimal zerg setup you currently bring 2+ Scourges per party, because stacking them is so powerful. Scourge offers everything you need in WvW:
• Good damage in condi, power or hybrid setups with bursts of conditions which easily hit for 3k dps per scourge every few seconds.
• Easily enough boon corrupts to deal with its one counter: Resistance. Especially so when stacking enough scourges.
• Very sturdy build (especially with dire / trailblazer) and outstanding support (in celestial). Even more so when stacked.
• A huge amount of soft CC: Cripple, cripple, cripple and immobilize from corrupting resistance !!!
• Range of 1200. A radius of 300 !!!
• This is the most insane of all: In close range shade skills hit up to !!! 10 targets !!!In fact I'd say the main reason why you currently push in zerg fights is to profit from the increased target limit of your Scourges.

In my opinion the target limit of 10 is what simply is too much. It destroys all hope of boarding the pirateship. You'll just get blown up when you come too close.

tldr: Scourge is the biggest balancing problem in WvW. It is still incredibly overpowered and will continue to be so even with these changes. You will need to take a look at what makes it this dominant and meta defining in WvW large scale fights specifically.

My suggestion: Remove the number of targets increase on Sand Savant. At 3 per shade it will still hit up to 6 targets in close range. It'd be a fair change.

Better idea: remove the radius increase on Sand Savant so the shades cover far less of the battlefield. Also means the shades don't completely cover a capture point in PvP.

Even if it still allowed the Scourge to hit 5 targets/shade, good luck actually getting 5 targets in a 180 radius.

[Ragnarox.9601]

oh no Mesmer nerfs and NEW huge Ele buffs, so Devs are starting to play Eles and mesmers again and nerf everything else? And pls nerf more guardian and firebrand so I can finally switch and abuse eles and mesmers.

Funny thing...you can buff spirit weapons 100x times and no one will ever use it.

You better buff hammer and his AA, mace,scepter projectile speed, than this "never will be used" skills.

[Torq.4926]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

Warrior

Some impactful splits, several of these changes should probably be made game-wide (frenzy, battle standard, rampage, and shake it off) since they affect skills that haven't been meta anywhere for a while. In fact this might be a good time to finally standardize mending as a physical skill with base 20 second cooldown

Revenant

Less significant changes here, though the hammer 2 nerfs are probably noticeable for large scale wvw fights. I guess rev's issues warrant some sort of redesign that would lay outside the scope of this proposed patch. The change to soothing stone seems good, perhaps cleansing channel could also be updated to clear 2 conditions instead of 1?

Guardian

I doubt it's necessary to continue nerfing firebrand at this point. The updates to signet of resolve and spirit weapons could also be made game wide.

Thief

D/p changes seem good in theory, pushing thief away from spamming autoattack and giving it a reason to use the 2 and 3 skills again. I don't think the nerf to roll for initiative was necessarily warranted, but maybe we'll see more s/d thieves running infiltrator's signet now.

Ranger

The druid nerfs were probably needed given all the other changes in this patch, but is it ever going to be able to fulfill a supportive role as originally designed? Signet of stone update is interesting, I think the new version might actually be stronger in some cases. The axe changes could be universalized also.

Engineer

Major nerfs to meta holosmith, I think the minesweeper/vent exhaust split might finally kill off the explosives build as far as pvp is concerned. Not sure that I like the change to crystal configuration: eclipse, maybe it would've been better to make it 1 stack of stability for 5 seconds in pvp/wvw without the hit requirement.

Elementalist

Minor changes on ele, glyph of renewal really needs to not have a 3+ second cast time if it's ever going to be viable. Maybe now shatterstone will actually deal damage on the rare occasion that it actually hits anything. Tornado split game wide etc

Mesmer

Very narrow mesmer changes, but they are pretty reasonable ones as far as I can tell. Maybe some of the phantasms could be split as well, a defensive one like phantasmal avenger probably shouldn't be critting upwards of 6k

Necromancer

More scourge nerfs? As with firebrand I think the first half of these splits are overkill. Buffs to wells seem interesting, well of blood/spectral grasp changes could be universalized.

[rank eleven monk.9502]

Very interesting. Lot of heavy nerfs there, but seems to be consistent among most classes.

One note though, as a (mainly) mesmer player it seems like mesmer is not getting enough attention compared to other meta builds (read: all meta builds are heavy nerfed while mesmer is only getting very slight nerfs). Right now it feels that will create some unbalance - but it really depends on the buffs to other builds

Elusive Mind nerf is problematic though

[mixxed.5862]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@mixxed.5862 said:I like the changes overall. They certainly hit in all the right places.But they don't address the most important problem in WvW.

I doubt that these changes will make a difference in WvW. They won't change the meta and we're in desperate need of a change. Here's why:One of your main goals in this update is build diversity. Build diversity in WvW doesn't only depend on the balance of builds itself but also on the current meta game. For example the ranged focus of zergs we see currently pushes all melee focused builds out of the game (except for spellbreaker somewhat). Even more importantly: The pirate ship isn't very fun for anyone.

So it is important to also look into ways to reduce the effectiveness of the profession that dictates the play style in large scale right now: SCOURGEIn an optimal zerg setup you currently bring 2+ Scourges per party, because stacking them is so powerful. Scourge offers everything you need in WvW:

• Good damage in condi, power or hybrid setups with bursts of conditions which easily hit for 3k dps per scourge every few seconds.
• Easily enough boon corrupts to deal with its one counter: Resistance. Especially so when stacking enough scourges.
• Very sturdy build (especially in dire / trailblazer) and outstanding support (in celestial). Even more so when stacked.
• A huge amount of soft CC: Cripple, cripple, cripple and immobilize from corrupting resistance !!!
• Range of 900. A radius of 300 !!!
• This is the most insane of all: In close range shade skills hit up to !!! 10 targets !!!In fact I'd say the main reason why you currently push in zerg fights is to profit from the increased target limit of your Scourges.

In my opinion the target limit of 10 is what simply is too much. It destroys all hope of boarding the pirateship. You'll just get blown up when you come too close.

tldr:

Scourge is the biggest balancing problem in WvW. It is still incredibly overpowered and will continue to be so even with these changes. You will need to take a look at what makes it this dominant and meta defining in WvW large scale fights specifically.

My suggestion:

Remove the number of targets increase on Sand Savant.

At 3 per shade it will still hit up to 6 targets in close range. It'd be a fair change.

Better idea: remove the radius increase on Sand Savant so the shades cover far less of the battlefield. Also means the shades don't completely cover a capture point in PvP.

Even if it still allowed the Scourge to hit 5 targets/shade, good luck actually getting 5 targets in a 180 radius.

Can't argue with that. The big radius is very annoying indeed.

But I still think it's more important that the number of targets goes down. If they did that they fixed the WvW specific issue with the spec and can go from there.

[miriforst.1290]

Resistance into imob is fine.

What you should be complaining about is the frequency of corrupts themselves or the kits going along with it.

The solution to having your boons stripped into condis should not be using a boon to ignore the condis. Fighting fire with fire is a bad idea when it comes to increasing variety and if you base your survival on a boon then when going up against something specializing in corrupting that it should fall flat on its face. Resistance already shuts down non strip condi builds utterly, its should not be the be all end all condi build soloution. On the other hand a build specializing in removing/corrupting boons into condis should not be dealing the same amount of damage as the non corrupt builds, and should have to rely to a great extent on corruptions to get anything done. Problem right now is that corrupts have been sprinkled on some kits like afterthought candy, instead of like the good old prenerf corrupt boon where a single impact skill could corrupt all your boon in one blow without any further bells and whistles.

I think having some kind of symmetry of powerful boon-> powerful condi, and remember vice versa, is good. It also means that condi conversion builds can turn immobilization into something stronger than 3 sec of swiftness.

[Pvt Frosty.6973]

All you can really do with these proposed changes is look at them relative to other classes changes. And the final effect of all the changes combined might have very different results than we might be able to gauge right now, so its hard to tell when something gets nerfed too hard or too little.

As a ranger main Ill focus on the ranger part of these proposed changesFirst off, I agree with most of the nerfs to passives across the board.What I disagree with is the nerf to Celestial Avatar Cooldown and the might generation. Those I just really don't understand what you intend to go for. Shout warrior might already get buffs big enough to warrant serious consideration, with those nerfs druid will fall off HARD.

Another gripe I have is that most professions get pretty substantial buffs, only ranger gets left untouched apart from inconsequential mh axe changes. As others have said on the ranger forum, the design of mainhand axe is just not one for pvp, so it would need to be doing op damage for it to become useable in pvp. Why not fix the issues people have been having wth soulbeast instead? mainhand dagger is SO lackluster, stances and stancesharing have so much potential but are just left being kinda meh.

[Miles Smiles.8951]

Now this is some great work! Good take on passives and the surging really needed to go, even though removing it hits revenant the most. Let's just hope now mesmer is not really done with yet.

[Huskyboy.1053]

I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I'll cover 2 things:

1. The thief changes are good. S/D thief has entered the meta, I'm playing it myself, and it's got the annoying evade spam of D/D condi thief but with much quicker kills and excessive shadowsteps. Limiting their access to initiative and putting passives on long cooldowns is exactly the way to go. It's a cool build and doesn't need to be nerfed more than what you've mentioned, but I think everything you're doing there is warranted. I would reconsider the autoattack nerfs though.
2. Condi rev. Let's talk about Embrace the Darkness. Condi rev was the first build I ever played in sPvP, but I have abandoned it because of its lack of viability and inferiority to necro. The changes to Banish Enchantment and Pain Absorption are overdue, PA's energy cost has been too high from the beginning. I know "it shares resistance!!" sounds OP but come on, that can be immediately stripped or corrupted since resistance is prioritized. The skill isn't that strong when you realize how easily and quickly resistance is countered in this meta. S/D or scourge alone will wipe that boon in 2 seconds or less.

What I think designers are missing is that in sPvP, condi rev is not a melee spec, it's a melee/midrange spec. Reasons why:

• It lacks stance-like abilities to mitigate different types of damage. PA is close to Berserker Stance but the resistance is shorter, and PA has a casting time.
• Rev has less health than warrior.
• It does not have a mobile block, which allows safe kiting when under pressure.
• It does not have a healing signet or Adrenal Health to passively pulse significant healing. Warrior can have both of those active at the same time btw.
• My melee enemies (ex. Demolisher Spellbreaker) can apply damage much quicker than the elite can.
• Since Rev doesn't have superspeed in Mallyx, frankly it's difficult to stay in melee even if you're chasing someone.*I have to stay in melee range for at least 5 seconds to do significant damage, all the while having my energy drained (leaving it unlikely that I can use PA if I get CCed or condibombed)

ETD just does not fit the condi Mallyx playstyle. This skill isn't worth using for anything other than a cheap Demonic Defiance proc. An extra 5% boost to my stats means nothing to me because I literally can't use it in games without getting wrecked by the other team. Using ETD screams "I have no energy or common sense, focus me!" whereas my melee opponents should be thinking "Hey, let's wait this out." That's what we all do when we see Ghastly Breach, we wait it out, we don't outright ignore it because it's so weak. That's the reality of ETD currently.

How you can fix it:

• Make it instacast. This also allows us to use it defensively.
• Cause it to strip a boon every second from nearby enemies, and replace the boon with a 2s single stack of burn. This CANNOT just be more torment or chill, condi rev already does 90% of its damage from high torment stacks. Literally a 1-condition clear and my "burst" is gone. It takes far too long to build significant stacks.
• Radius should stay 240, don't want this to be oversized like Sand Savant shades.
• Should not be unblockable, if someone wants to wait out this skill while my energy drains then that should be a choice they can make.
• Only give stat boost to toughness and vitality.
• Pulse superspeed (only to user not to allies).
• Increase degen to -8. -9 or -10 will yet again result in this skill not being used, that much degen prohibits even cheap weapon skill use.
• Give it a 10 second cooldown. That will force us to actually think hard about when to use it.

Gaining a high-risk high-payout boonstrip is exactly what condi Mallyx needs. The Banish Enchantment buff is nice but the 2s confusion stacks are easily waited out.

[Kehno.5764]

resistance -> immob gotta go.

[ILoveMonotony.1479]

I'm loving what I'm reading here. Please keep up your good work! You might just make me a fanboy again.

I'm especially happy with the Holosmith changes. I do not like at all what you have done to the Engineer since the June 23rd 2015 patch. Forcing melee specialisations (Scrapper then Holosmith) on what used to be a medium range profession took my enjoyment out of the profession and mostly the game. Even if this is not enough to bring my cherished Kit play back to PvP it goes in the right direction. Keep it up!

[Narkotyk Dump.4071]

Hum, i try to explain my point of view.

I just play engineer since the begining, and now with this, you will kill engi.In PvP i'm ok with most of the point, Engineer is very strong, but in WvW, nerf damage like this... It's very hard.In WvW, Engi is here for damage and crontrol.If you nerf damage, Holo become useless. I'm fear that nerf damage can't allow me to kill some war/scourge/weaver (tanky + heal/Tank/heal).So in place of FP in open WvW i'm just useless because i cant instant kill something and in WvW Roaming i can't duel...And, if you're a good player you can easy dodge holosmith's dps in WvW (not really quick animation)So ok for nerf damage, good option because it nerf some insta kill. But give engi some dps like reduce CD or something (i don't know what I just try something).The place in Guild Raid in WvW of the holosmith is FP, some 1 or 2 guys able to kill 1 or 2 guys... Why just nerf this classe all the time (like scrapper in HoT).Just some kid say OP sh**... And if you nerf like this Holosmith i will just can't roam with that.

Obviously, for other classe, what i can say it's just you're going to kill supporting with more and more conditions build with lot of tankyness and dps.So broken meta. If you nerf damage, we are going to a Tanky meta again... So boring ( my point of vew).And why nerf some good things but up some thing useless like spirit weapon on guard? Seriously just do a big recast of this, beacouse it's just useless with more power or less CD it's the same, useless.

So sorry for my bad english (OMG TRASH FRENCH SPEAKER) and have a good game.

[beatthedown.2651]

I still don't get why passives are only bad for pvp. Splitting these changes between WvW and PvP seems a bit too much and will make future changes even more complicated.

[steki.1478]

Warrior sustain really needs to get toned down. For a class with highest armor and health, it has too much mobility, sustain and damage. Why not just change its passive heals so their base value is lower, but increase the healing power contribution?

Currently they dont sacrifice gear stats at all, but still have among highest sustain and defensive capabilities. And even if they go somewhat tankier, getting 25 might is stupidly easy.

And speaking of 25 might, classes like warr, rev and engi, for example (there are probably others as well), shouldnt be able to get free might for just being in combat and/or pressing one button. Similar passive traits should get changed to improve active combat. There's no point of nerfing damage on skills if classes are maxed on might all the time.

[Vegeta.2563]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

Thief

Skills

• Dagger Autoattack chain: Reduced the power coefficients from 0.8, 0.85, 1.1 to 0.6, 0.65, 1.1 (-15% overall) in PvP and WvW
• Sword Autoattack chain: Reduced the power coefficients from 0.8, 0.8, 1.3 to 0.6, 0.6, 1.3 (-14% overall) in PvP and WvW

Thief risk-reward ratio is going to be so out of wack if these changes go in. I hope the survivability aspect part of this is being looked into. The idea behind thief with autoattack chains is to apply pressure during fights, not hit with a wet noodle and pray you do enough damage to make a dent. Making Hide In Shadows a bit higher heal is a good start, but made me wonder.. Is 15% from Invigorating Precision even enough now that the Auto Attack is getting a damage nerf?

[Vegeta.2563]

@Vagrant.7206 said:

• Thief - lol heartseeker buffs? Guess D/P thief will be meta yet again.

Pretty big hit on AA chain though, which is good for pressuring certain classes in fights.

[Nightmare.1234]

still think passive proccing traits that don't trigger through use of either a heal, dodge or elite (something in your control) need to just be removed and replaced with something new. but other than that these changes wont effect my build anyway so nerf away anet

[snh.7091]

Are you serious about increasing the CD of CA for Druid??? Have you completely lost your mind?! How are we supposed to defend against all that condi now.

Signet has a CD of 50s. Sure, there's runes that can convert one 5 condis on elite, the other 2, both with high CD. CA was our only reliable defence for condi cleanse and you destroyed it.

Stop pushing so much for Soulbeast with traits for Survival to use for condi cleanse, OK? Not all of us like Soulbeast or want to play it, thanks.

No more money into this game from me.

[Naeleen.7601]

Does the PvP/WvW skill split mean that you will be on the safe side to actually buff underperforming/unpopular classes in PvE without fear? Because certain classes have been hit so hard in PvE, simply because they excel spectacularly in WvW and/or PvP. It would also be a great idea if, in the patch notes, you split the changes for each class into PvP/WvW/PvE categories, to prevent confusion and allow players to find the changes for the game mode they are mostly interested in without having to read ALL the wall of text. This will also eliminate the need to type "in PvP only", "in WvW only" and "in PvE only" next to almost every change; it just feels redundant this way.