PvP/WvW Skill Split Release

[zoopop.5630]

RIP holo, Moving toward maining mesmer now.

[Katalan.7930]

First I want to tell that this is a great thing about reducing the influence of passive traits, because it is just AUTOMATIC gameplay so doesn't requiert any skill. But, is that a great idea to increase the passive traits time ? Instead of increase the cooldown on passive skills, I want to suggest you to make it an ''active skill''. Then the player will ''control'' the gameplay instead of counting on a random skil proc. Then the skill will be needed in the player's gameplay.

Theif:''-Shadow Shot: Increased the initiative cost from 4 to 5 in PvP and WvW. Increased Increased the power coefficient from 1.325 to 1.8 (+36%) in PvP and WvW''This is very good to increased the initiative cost because this is an insane skill: teleport + big damage + blind!! When you compare with other skills 3 on thief there is more initiative cost for less capacity.''-Cloak and Dagger: Reduced the initiative cost from 6 to 5 in PvP and WvW''In PVP or WvW casting clock and dagger requiert a big skills because the slow action and the mobility of the enemy. So you just lost 6 initiave for nothing, this is just so frustrated. So reducing the initiative cost is a great idea but I would like to even make this skill unblockable for being more interesting skill, then players would like to play it easier.''-Pulmonary Impact: Reduced the power coefficient from 2.8 to 2.0 (-29%) in PvP and WvW''Very good thing, because this is unblockable skill with big damage.''-Panic Strike: Increased the cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW. The WvW version of this trait will now use the PvP immobilize duration of 1.5 seconds''Increase the CD is that the only option ? Why not to completely delete the passive and make it an active skill ? exemple: immobilize the ennemy above threshold poison (5 stacks) with 10sec cooldown.''-Instant Reflexes: Increased the cooldown from 40 seconds to 90 seconds in PvP only''Increase the CD is that the only option ? Why not to completely delete the passive and make it an active skill ? Because now, thieves who run this traits never pay attention it is activate, so they dodge even they already have a free dodge. So maybe try to make is a ''active'' skill can become a new gameplay.

Elementalist''-Stone Resonance: Increased the base Barrier granted per pulse from 972 to 1069 in PvP and WvW''This is good because the elementalist has so low barrier comparing to other classes, but I would also add a reduce on the cooldown. Also I would like to add more barrier on other eleementalist skill because it's actually too low.

[stone cold.8609]

I'm just happy that ANet is finally going to split the game modes when balancing. Does this mean that you will undo the countless previous nerfs to PvE because of WvW and PvP complaints?

A couple of things that I don't understand about the proposed changes:

Why nerf the warrior dagger AA? It is already weak and actually needs a buff. Now that the Spellbreaker spec is being nerfed, will you revert the pre PoF nerfs to Berserker Primal Bursts?

Why is the Holosmith being nerfed that hard? It only brings burst and if you take that away, it really doesn't have a role anymore. The other engineer specs were under performing compared to other professions prior to Holosmith and were rarely used. I might have missed it, but what engineer spec is being buffed as an alternative to the Holosmith (which will likely go the way of the Scrapper after the countless nerfs it received)?

[Ten.2617]

About Passive Skills, all them should focus on increase effect/power/range/radius or decrease CD of active skills.Traits like "Defi Pain" or "Aim Assistent Rocket" could just be removed and replaced by another ones.

[Legatus.3608]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

• The prevalence of passives is a common competitive player complaint. (PvP only)

Who complains about passives? The only complaints I see from pvpers is balance and matchmaking (IE, frequency of lopsided matches and not being able to use the class they want in pvp). I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about passives.

[Kasdwer.3721]

@Legatus.3608 said:

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

• The prevalence of passives is a common competitive player complaint. (PvP only)

Who complains about passives? The only complaints I see from pvpers is balance and matchmaking (IE, frequency of lopsided matches and not being able to use the class they want in pvp). I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about passives.

seems like you never actually talked with a top player before, everyone complained about it since the beginning because they promote bad plays and make mistakes less punishing, everyone who complains about the passiv nerfs are the kind of people who were depending on it (bad players)

[LinhZeri.6412]

Anet not sure if you read this but take a look at passive damage (such as auto attacking) doing such high damage numbers and move it to the other weapon set skills to produce larger damage numbers, however, with counter play of visually explicit animations. That would solve nearly 75% of the issues with damage. This is only for pvp/wvw of course but just think if you cut down normal auto attack damage and promote skilled play by properly managing your skills (hence how mana/energy) works in other games a lot would be solved. Heck even check the stuff you drastically changed in June 2015 build which changed the game how it is with increases stats in items and removing trait stats which essentially increased this issue dramatically. Ill tell you the game before Jun 2015 and July 2015 drastically changed that month and its rippling effects ever since.(With this passive auto damage... you can easily test this for a month by simply just cutting the damage down by half. This way you can do your sample and see how people react to it. If it goes back just revert. This is how balance should be made instead of huge updates over every other year which this latest update feels like. Also im glad you finally moving on from that waiting until leagues end to balance... that was the most outrageous idea I have ever saw as it just made the game very boring and upset many people.

-Passive Damage from actually autoattack. - You shouldn't be doing such high damage simply by not doing anything but an auto attack. some people maybe disagree but imho its too much of a high sustained damage for sitting and watching a game do the work for you.

-Mesmer Traits: Confounding suggestions should be removed completely ive been against this trait from existed for so many years and It should be removed and remade. Stealth suggestion below would put Mesmer in line along with Thief.

=Stealth suggestion which would fix this mechanic: Make it so you see the target with the blurred outline like you see on the players own screen for everyone to see (possibly a bit harder by increasing the invisibility aspect or maybe make that a trait to be even more invisible if you wish to make a line dedicated to stealthing. This way you can do the stealth while also being harder to see. Also while in stealth you cannot be targeted but easily tracked since you can slightly see them but hard. This promotes a playstyle of actually sneaking up on targets rather than simply doing whatever and unseen. If this style of stealth is made you can even make it not moving will make you 100% invisible which promotes a unique style of cloaking sniper for deadeye and other classes to get the jump they desired (however your rooted In place as a downside) This is an idea ive always thought would be really interesting

-Warrior/Ranger: Defy Pain,Endure Pain, and Signet of Stone should give a barrier added to them and removing the invulnerability to just power damage. This way they serve their purpose while having their downside of being depleted. Simple fix to those skills.

-Stances should replace each other when used a skills. Enter a stance it it gives the desired effect. You should not be able to use 3 stances at the same time.

Anet im grateful you guys are finally looking at lot of the problems the pvp/wvw and Im proud to be playing your games gw and gw2 for the past decade and a passionate player doing pvx ever since (but mostly wvw/pvp)

[Atmaweapon.7345]

About that Minesweeper and Vent Exhaust nerf... Is anything going to be done about other dodge roll attacks or is this just unfairly picking on Engineer?

WarriorMinor Adept : Reckless Dodger1.5 Damage scalingUnblockableGrants Might

DaredevilMajor Grandmaster : Bounding Dodger1.33 Damage scaling (PvP)Grants +10% Damage for 4 seconds

EngineerMinor Adept/Major Grandmaster : Evasive Keg/Minesweeper1.25/3.00(2.01 proposed) Damage scalingdelayed blast/persistent mines

HolosmithMajor Grandmaster : Vent Exhaust1.1 (.75 proposed) Damage scalingBurn (6s)Lose 15% Heat

So we see here that Minesweeper replaces Evasive Keg for a + 1.8 total damage increase. The proposed changes would turn Minesweeper into a + .76 increase which is pathethic for a Grandmaster trait. Vent Exhaust would also do less than a Minor Adept trait.

I mean just take a look at Evasive Keg and Reckless Dodger on a 1:1 comparison and tell us how that's supposed to be fair. Keep in Mind that Reckless Dodge was repeatedly buffed, getting constant treatment to be relevant. Now LOOK at:

Elixir C / Contemplation of PurityElixir R / Signet of Agility

And tell us how Engineer isn't being massively gimped in comparison to other professions? It seems like the only time Engineer Utilities aren't penalized by its toolbelt is on its Elite Skills which were only added in HoT.

So we have Engineer Utilities being penalized for the toolbelt profession mechanic, Engineer weapon skills being halved for access to kits, Engineer traits being left in the dust or made into garbage because of trait stacking, and Holo being smashed for pushing out other Engineer builds because it trades a toolbelt for a decent kit/weaponswap.

[samanosuke asakura.6240]

Ranger

Skills

• Celestial Avatar: Increased the cooldown from 15 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW

roaming wise i am glad with these changes. all though i actually hoped that you guys would nerf the stealth instead of increasing the cd

WvW

Traits

• Shared Anguish: Increased the cooldown from 60 seconds to 90 seconds in PvP onlyIs this a joke its a weak trait people take this because the other traits are not an option in a powerbuild and its not that great at all.its a pre breakstun on 60sec cd while some skills and traits on other professions have a smaller cd.60cd was already too much both in pvp and wvw the effect isn't that powerful.

• Rugged Growth: Reduced the healing power coefficient from 0.245 to 0.1225 (-50%) in PvP and WvW

nice way to nerf core ranger and soulbeast susstain. can't you just split skills/trait from druid and core/soulbeast.if you have druid specialization equipped this trait will behave differently is what i mean. have you considered this as a solution?you are basically already doing it with soulbeast so the tech is there. no?

What about lighting reflex this skill got split in pvp with shorter cd while the cd on wvw is40 sec (my info might not be up to date)

[smiley.4739]

So, I'll talk about this from a WvW perspective.

There are 4 things that need adjustment:Scourge/FB: Pretty much every fight has a ton of firebrand and even more scourge. Both need serious reductions in effectiveness.
Winds of Disenchantment: Yes it is an elite, but it shouldn't be by far the strongest elite in WvW.Resistance to immob: It just isn't fun.

We need to see more of pretty much every other class with the exception of thief. That class is strong enough and shouldn't get any additional buffs without a nerf to Shortbow 5.

Rev: The hammer 2 nerf will drop them completely from the meta. I'm fine if it gets nerfed, but other things need serious buffs to make this class viable.Engineer: Outside of small roamers, who really wants an engineer in their group? The nerfs to holosmith are significant and will pretty much neuter the spec. Engineer needs buffs, not nerfs.Mesmer: It seems like mesmers are balanced AFTER all of the other classes. Not sure why.Druid: I'd like to see a buff to their healing potential. Right now, no one really wants any ranger in their group.Ele: I don't ever play it so no comment.

[dDuff.3860]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:snip...

While I like steps taking into right direction, I'd like to ask about few things that were being talked but not implemented.

ThiefFirst of all, competitive team promised about PistolWhip ability split, like S/d #3 was split into two skills years ago. Is there anything planned to this?Another question is about P/d weaponset. Do you guys have any plans on bringing it to competitive level? The weaponset Is cool itself, but need some attention on mechanics, tied to it. For example, shadow strike skill Is so hard to hit compared to other classes' skill and its effect is so relatively cheap, no one ever thinking of using P/d seriously, while it can really shine on competitive level.

[Phobos.9736]

maybe delete arrowcards also might be a big change and server gonna aprove with skill whos listed on this post :)

[Anaseth.5763]

This is not a well done balancing, look at thief, wayyyyyyyy to big of a change in some of the traits, 40 to 90 seconds?? why not just tie a cinder block around them. Look at your revenant changes, do you really want to increase cooldowns for a barely played class in pvp to 90 seconds, ninety....seconds.... for a trait. think that over , its a bit severe to say the least. with the ranger "Rejuvenating Tides: Reduced the base healing per pulse from 650 to 550 (-15%) in PvP and WvW" why, of all the things wrong, this dosent do anything, the changes to necro are wayyyyyy under where they should be, necro is way over the top as it is, proposed changes dont go far enough in cutting back in relation what youre doing to every other class.

[Ghanto.9784]

I didn't look at everything yet, but from what I did see it looks like the vast majority of the ability changes are equally for WvW AND PvP both. So where's the split? ;)

[C Cspace Cowboy.5903]

So first you nerf sword weavers main water heal. Now you're nerfing their passive defense skills.

Loud and clear you don't want anything but heal bots in pvp.

"Balance"

[Ghanto.9784]

@arnitheking.8427 said:overall, since a lot of these changes are nerfs, there will be a lot of salty people thinking their class was gutted. But in the end, ALL passive sustain and cheese stuff is nerfed so personally I think those changes are really good (mostly)

Yeah, what's not to love? We can all kill each other a lot faster and spend a lot more time running back to fights in wvw. Love it! :)

[Arheundel.6451]

Can you please add pet swap to soulbeast mode?

[EnigmaHyena.8576]

Please make it no longer possible for mesmer to one shot a character at full health (excepting squishier builds) from stealth. If you're playing a class that's meant to be tanky you should not be insta killed from an opponent you cannot see.

EDIT: I would also like to add that the Celestial Avatar cooldown increase does not feel like the right way to go. Nerfing the two traits that makes Celestial Avatar so overpowered in SPvP seems like a better choice. Druid was meant to be a healing spec - keep it that but restrict its access to say, stealth.

EDIT 2: After reading many of these posts, I can safely say the best choice would be to also skill split between WvW and SPvP. In a side note, it would be interesting to see 10 player teams or duels come to sPvP. Duels don't even have to be a mode - maybe its a thing in the arena. 10 person matches could have four points instead of 3 to also help solve the issue of rotation variety.

[Labby.5840]

Here's my take on some of the Ranger changes as primarily a WvW Druid. Currently Druid is very strong in roaming and small scale fights due to its self sustain, but its effectiveness quickly falls off as fights get larger as it lacks much of the defensive utility other supports can provide.

Celestial Avatar

Celestial Avatar: Increased the cooldown from 15 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvWRejuvenating Tides: Reduced the base healing per pulse from 650 to 550 (-15%) in PvP and WvWSeed of Life: Increased the cooldown from 1 second to 3 seconds in PvP and WvW

The simple cooldown increase on entering Celestial Avatar is a very heavy handed way to reduce Druid self-sustain, which is the main issue you appear to be trying to address. Especially considering that there's already another mechanic in place that could reduce the access of Celestial Avatar when solo, while making it more available as a support tool for larger fights, the Astral Force charge mechanic. Ever since passive heals were changed to contribute to Astral Force charge, charging up has hardly been a limiting factor in Celestial Avatar's use, especially with the previous increase in cooldown to 15s. I'm not suggesting reverting that change, as without it staff auto-attack is the only reliable way to charge. Instead, significantly reducing the amount of Astral Force gained per heal and per attack would be a better way to address the issue than another cooldown increase. The rate at which Astral Force charges scales up with number of nearby allies there are to heal. A large reduction in the rate at which Astral Force charges will leave solo or small group druids with less access to Celestial Avatar skills, while druids in larger groups will charge much faster and be able to use their heals more often. Astral Force should be the main limiting factor on Celestial Avatar use, not the cooldown.

As for the changes to Celestial Avatar skills themselves, Rejuvenating Tides and Seed of Life, the only difference from the proposed changes I'd like to see is Seed of Life reverted to its original 2 condition clears along with the cooldown increase.

Staff

Solar Beam: Reduced the power coefficient per strike from 0.3 to 0.25 (-17%) in PvP and WvW

Attacking or being attacked with Solar Beam is boring. It's a skill with very little counter play. For that reason I don't mind the change above. However, that change alone won't really make any difference in how Druids use staff. There's simply nothing else to do. Ancestral Grace, Vine Surge, and Sublime Conversion are all situational utility skills, and are all pretty good as is. However, Astral Wisp is pretty much the equivalent of Solar Beam but with poor delivery. I'd like to see this skill reworked to offer something distinct from the auto-attack to make it worth using and to make staff a more interactive weapon.

My suggestion for Astral Wisp would be to significantly increase its damage on hit, and give it some additional utility by having the wisp apply a short blind to the enemy hit, and enemies it passes through while circling. It may also be worth testing a small reduction in cooldown and cast time. As a slow moving single projectile, Astral Wisp offers much more counter play potential than the constantly ticking damage of Solar Beam. It's easy to evade, and can be blocked or reflected as well.

Along with this change, the grandmaster trait lingering light could be reworked as well. Currently Lingering Light is very passive, applying blind almost randomly on enemies hit by any attack from someone healed by a Druid using the trait. The only tell for it is to watch for it on an enemy's buff bar, which isn't really possible against multiple foes. Changing Lingering Light to function like the beta weekend version of itself, where it would self cast an Astral Wisp when healing an ally would work pretty well with the proposed changes to Astral Wisp above. Lingering Light would then keep a similar effect, healing allies and blinding enemies, but with a much more visible tell, and counter play to avoid being blinded by staying out of melee range while it's active.

Glyphs for Defensive Utility

While this is completely unrelated to the original changes proposed in this thread, the biggest thing stopping Druid from being an effective support in larger fights is that it is very lacking in terms of defensive support tools other than healing. I'd like to propose a few changes to the Celestial Avatar versions of some of Glyph of Alignment and Glyph of Equality to provide some access to that kind of utility.

Currently the Celestial Avatar versions of these Glyphs are lacking. Alignment provides an AoE heal, and some condition clear, both of which are already available from the base Celestial Avatar skills. Equality provides some condition clear, and an AoE stunbreak, however the shout "Protect Me!" provides a larger radius AoE stunbreak, protection, and applies taunt on the same cooldown.

For Glyph of Alignment, I'd like to propose replacing the heal component with defensive boons applied in an area, such as Protection, Regeneration, and possibly Resistance. For Glyph of Equality, the condition clear component could be replaced with a short AoE stability in addition to the stunbreak. Both of these fit the theme of each skill, and provide Druid with some of the much needed defensive utility to make it more viable in the support role in WvW.

[Cryformercy.3056]

My personal thoughts on the changes are more or less positive, because nerf in general is a good idea. Too much of everything is going on so it's a start. Another thing that more frequently adding patches will shake up everything, shake up the meta and add a new possibilities and that's would be great imo.Speaking PvP wise - nerf to druid is great. Maybe not on everything - healing, damage and survivability. I were kinda worried that bunker who can easily kite 3 ppl do so much damage - maybe then trim pets damage, but leave druids own. Or then less survivability but with same healing. But anyways druid now in PvP is really annoying, so yes we need some changes.Engi - I don't know if nerfing it so much will be quite the balance. It depends on others classes, but somehow I have feeling it's gonna be quite useless. Nerf in general yes, but not so much.Ele - oh yes poor ele. Well not much comments on ele in general, I guess because nobody plays it, especially after last patch. You are saying that you have noticed that it is underperforming a bit in current meta, but what is this a bit? Sword weaver is suffering a lot not a bit. About the upcoming changes - I don't how to feel, like they don't do nothing, some buff to scepter, some buff to random dagger skills. And even more I would say nerf to already underperforming profession. Tempest doesn't exist anymore, sword weaver fall out from good tier aswell, only what left is FA. Which is not so much of a use due to its - way too much risk- gameplay. So maybe time to do something about it. Maybe in general ele needs some rework on traits, maybe it should be updated. Something like mesmer recently had. Like I was wondering about this trait - Burning Fire - Use cleansing fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. Nobody is use it now, and you want it to put on 90 sec cooldown, so nobody keep not using it ? It's just waste of space. Maybe it should be reworked? Like what is 3 Condi on you - in meta where you getting Condi bombed every 10 seconds. 3 Condis on 90 sec cooldown ? Oh yes it's do some damage with 240 range. Sorry but this is just so old, need something new, something that's useful. Not just put skill on longer cooldown because everyone is having longer cooldown.Well however I hope that with all others profession nerfs, ele will see some daylight. If not it's again gonna be sad. Because you don't love weaver and are afraid making him op so much that you better make him unusable in general. And there are alot of same thing that mentioned before about issues of the sword - slow attacks, hard to land attacks, low damage. No need to buff all together, but maybe just a little bit of one side to see how it goes. Give ele some love pls.

[Anaseth.5763]

The power mesmer is out of control, by a large margain, there is simply too much that takes skill out of the equation, you dont have enough evade/disengage to deal with the constant shatter spam, phantasm/clone attacke, berzerker can one shot most classes if they hold them till player uses his evades and blocks, its too much, too fast . WHen i see the power mesmer, it literally sucks the fun out of a match, theres nothing enjoyable about trying to outplay the other guy, cause they simply out spam you to death.

[Alcazaro.7618]

with this changes chrono and thief will remain in god tier, you force people into chrono which is even more brainless gameplay through chronophantasma illusion spam. Mirage has some nice duell builds at least, but i guess with the internal cd on Elusive Mind which was absolutly necessary for stunbreaks, you give them a hard time vs condi bursts. the celestial avatar change is super hard for druid, i think you should remember how many mechanics are depended to that 1 button (stunbreak, stealth, condiclear, support access, which obv. you've designed in this way) druid is already super boring to play and most people stopped it, if you nerf the sustain let them participate at the game at least and give them some dps xD. spellbreaker is already really useless in higher tier did you realize didnt you?? scourge bad desgined condi robot is only viable with support ;) Firebrand support is only viable with scourge ;) gl fixing that ... In my opinion this changes will do nothing, the main problem is and will be, that you took no love in the elite spec development of pof classes (out of pvp perspective), the animation clusterfck is crucial and the mechanics of nearly every single elite spec are super bad desgined when it comes to some higher tier of pvp ( and i guess even low tier pvp suffering to that). currently you've learned that you need to listen to youre comunity and take feedback out of a forum(after how many years???), which people like helseth or other old esport players (back in the days when gw2 had a little competitive scene) told you exactly that multiple times. but now the most higher skilled players with deep game knowledge stopped the game or just dont care anymore, the result is a class balance around low tier player feedback which is the same as giving a job with high requirements to someone with almost no qualifications. we all know gw2 is a cash cow, do it better in youre next game.

[whoknocks.4935]

Before completing nerfing into the ground holosmith think about one single thing.

Holosmith is ONLY a power dps spec, dot.

It is bad as support because it has zero support, and it is super bad at conditions because it doesn't have any conditions in the traitline.

You nerf the output damage? Guess what, the class becomes powercreeped by any other profession (see thieves and mesmers especially, which have btw more viable builds in pvp and wvw always).

So please I hope before nerfing things you realize what the profession will become if you completely destroy his damage.

They all say the damage is ridicolous, so how can druids and firebrands still manage to hold holo damage in 1vs1 at ease?

In sPvP the damage is far from being oneshot or broken, the mesmer one is way more powerful, and in wvw holosmith are only solo roamers or small group once which doesn't bother anyone at all.

[Legiion.7385]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

Guardian

Skills

• Tome of Resolve – Epilogue: Eternal Oasis: Reduced the bonus heal effectiveness from 33% to 20% in PvP and WvW
• Tome of Resolve – Chapter 2: Radiant Recovery: Reduced the healing power coefficient per condition cleansed from 0.77 to 0.5 (-35%) in PvP and WvW
• Tome of Resolve – Chapter 1: Desert Bloom: Reduced the healing power coefficient from 0.96 to 0.8 (-17%) in PvP and WvW
• Signet of Resolve: Reduced the cooldown from 35 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW
• Leap of Faith: Increased the power coefficient from 1.1 to 1.25 (+14%) in PvP and WvW
• Signet of Mercy: Reduced the cooldown from 150 seconds to 90 seconds in PvP and WvW
• Sword of Justice: Reduced the ammo recharge time from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW
• Bow of Truth: Reduced the ammo recharge time from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW
• Hammer of Wisdom: Reduced the ammo recharge time from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW
• Feel my Wrath: Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 35 seconds in PvP and WvW

Traits

• Virtuous Solace: Increased the cooldown from 75 seconds to 90 seconds in PvP only
• Hunter's Determination: Increased the cooldown from 75 seconds to 90 seconds in PvP only
• Zealous Blade: Increased the bonus damage from 5% to 10% in PvP and WvW

I like the changes... But spirit weapons changes are just bad... These changes will change nothing...F2 changes are OK but if they remove the magi amulet then the Support guard will be death...But OK, lets remove the only amu that has 1200 healing power... What's next?

[Patrick.2987]

Changes seem pretty nice and a step in the right direction definitely. Thief and mesmer tho would not only remain too strong but even get stronger compared to the other nerfed professions. Portal should have always been an elite with more cd, the mechanic is just way too much for a simple utility. Evades should lose cap in my opinion since it acts like an invuln and should prevent evadechains or at least make ppl use their brain when to evade.