PvP/WvW Skill Split Release

[Steven.6425]

these changes are welcome for thief but thief will continue to be useless until you remove the disgusting cooldown on stealth auto attacks. There is absolutely no need for this. Backstab and other stealth autos are nowhere near good enough to justify this! Maybe thief will not be complete garbage and will feel fluid again when you revert this disgusting class breaking nerf from a long time ago. The class just not feel fluid to play anymore. This is why you only see SD / condi thieves nowadays.

As far as warrior, dagger auto did not need a nerf. Featherfoot does not either.. maybe 35 seconds but 40? You are literally telling everyone that the skill is useless now.

[Arcaedus.7290]

Absolutely LOVE the direction of this patch! I'd wager that with your handful of exception meta builds that will emerge after this patch, you can breath a small sigh of relief when it comes to balancing over or undertuned skills and traits for a while.

Two requests:

1. Passive trait nerfs be applied in WvW also, not only applied in pvp. I know you like to balance mainly around zerg v. zerg but in a small scale fight (such as between two groups of roamers) those passives make a huge difference.

2. Maybe it's beyond the scope of this patch, but consider a pass on the underperforming weapons/traits for each class. There seems to be some attempt at that here with a utility skill here and there which is great.

[Angeels.3269]

Good changes overall.

That said, you guys need to look at mesmer, specifically the self sustain it has access to in addition to the damage it does. Currently it is disproportionate with classes as is, and this will be particularly the case after these changes go live. Places to look at would be the rate at which stab can be applied through shatters when using the Chaos traitline (2-3s icd perhaps) as well as the mesmer's access to clone generation.

[OriOri.8724]

I think that this list looks pretty good, addresses a lot of the pain points that I think have developed since HoT.

That said, some of these passives keep getting nerfed, over and over, to the point of being pretty useless for the CD they have. Don't get me wrong, I actually love that, I hate seeing people get carried by passives, I hate being carried by passives. But when will the skills team just admit that such passives are not healthy for the game period? I really want to see most, if not all, of the passive traits that are in this list be eventually removed from the game entirely

[Sereath.1428]

A step in the right direction. Good job ANET :+1:

[Vermillion.4061]

@Roxanne.6140 said:

@Tresura.5209 said:Desert Shroud: Increased the cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Kill the only possibility to play power scourge in WvW. Find another way to nerf condi.

This change nerfs condi as well. What the kitten are you all talking about? This change nerfs scourge as a class itself because both damage and survivability are taking a huge kitten to the kitten.

Sure it also nerfs condi but it nerfs other builds harder.

(POWER SCOURGE 1 Minute fight) If you do 500k damage about 200k of that damage is from desert shroud alone. I find anet should address scourge in another way instead of nerfing the diversity of scourge.

[Clownmug.8357]

It's good that instant combo attacks are finally being acknowledged as a problem, but which changes are actually addressing them?

[SWI.4127]

@MightyMaxwell.3468 said:I don't know whether the balancing team plays this game, but nerf every class and leave Mesmer/mirage in it's current state? Are u guys delusional or just mental?To break it down: Shatter Mes has to shatter to do dmg - counter: dodge the burst. BUT mes will have the same burst in 3s max again. and this 3-4 times atleast if not in an infinite loop. The dmg of 1 full hit burst is enough to 1 shot a full trailblazer scourge.This is already broken, BUT the mes has invis, evades, good selfsustain, 4 blinks (1 blink + 3 times elite). Ohh and don't forget the STUNBREAK on his dodge. Use dodge food and GG

So, I really don't know what I shall say. Maybe consider a change of carreers or just don't try to balance idk

Yeah Mes is insane. I'm already at the point where I just ignore them because they are un-hittable.

[Turk.5460]

@Jaberse.8726 said:that being said sword dagger thief is probably one of the highest skill specs in the game to make use of effectively at this point

This is just plain wrong. I almost exclusively play Thief and even I can admit that Sword/Dagger Thief, while not being super easy to play, is absolutely not even in the top 10 of specs requiring high of skill to be effective with.

[animalmother.5940]

Nothing but nerf after nerf to WvW necro. But that's not even the worst as I suppose necro can use some nerfs, the problem is what these nerfs are: longer cooldowns everywhere.

That's just lazy balancing. It's all about making necro as slow as possible by adding insane cooldowns to everything so not only it becomes weaker, but the gameplay also goes to shit.

I don't mind nerfing necro if everyone agrees they're too poweful, but just adding more and more cooldowns instead of fixing damage numbers and modifiers is lazy and completely ruins the gameplay.

After this goes live Scourge will be nothing but a braindead class where you autoattack for the majority of the time while your skills are on ridiculously long cooldowns.

At least try to work on improving other weaker specs and builds instead of simply nerfing everything that works, because I guarantee that after this goes live, Reaper will still be 100% crap tier in WvW.

[boomy.5091]

ok im not sure if youve played guild wars 2 but power is most a problem but its not power its CONDITION power that is the problem. why dear god WHY am i punished for using something that is in place to help me... why is boon conversion in place? why would you have EVERY thought that was a good idea? yes power used to be meta power is not meta anymore condi is there are no two ways about it. it is meta. now then increasing power to diversify build is a very good idea. but you have not addressed the meta if you want diversify CONDI MUST BE ADDRESSED. i can see what your goal is why your attempting this but fix problems where there are problems but if you "fix" to much things that are not broken you break them.

[eoz.1834]

is warrior buffs aimed for shout warriors return to the scene? Any intention to move "Powerful Synergy" to Discipline so shout warriors can take both "Powerful Synergy" and "Vigorous Shouts"?

Edit: Any intention to increase treshold and amount of condition removed of "Shrug it off" in wvw?

[Riba.3271]

I like this patch. I am a WvW player that mostly goes around in large zergs.Engi: I am sad to see you nerfed the 2 of the more powerful traits in WvW and the holoform. it kinda makes my new cleanse-superspeed-dps blobsmith worse but it will still be in meta because it has some unique strengths that people have been overlooking. Eclipse got pretty much gutted but i was using zephyr anyways that is pretty good for roaming too so I dont mind. Buffing the mortar kit makes clearing acs faster which is good in this bunker siege meta.Mesmer and ele: Not much changes, its ok, its cool, they will still be strong part of WvW. Not sure why you made Gale Song unusable in PvP, 90 second autostunbreak??? Buffing illusion of life which is one of the best group skills for WvW is pretty interesting. Mesmer will be awesome.Druid and thief: Seems like druid CA got the treatment it deserved, it was uninteractive. I like to fight dagger thief when roaming so i welcome the changes. Neither will be viable in large scale fights which is ok.Warrior: So dagger got nerfed and sword buffed... Its good, I was already wondering if sword was better than dagger due to burst on 3 skill and better leap but it will be pretty clear now. I doubt shouts will be viable spellbreaker.Rev: this is good. Lot of revenants were abusing hammer damage to be useful in blob fights and now that hammer rev overall damage got nerfed like 10%, now they actually have to go ahead and use their dwarf and mallyx skills. Buffing dwarf and mallyx seems reasonable, Dwarf was already the best one to have, mallyx definitely needed some buffs.Guardian: Yea, healing ratio nerfs, thats ok, little worried about the resolve autoattack nerf but guess we might go back to cele builds soon since lot of other supports are coming back to meta with scourge getting gutted.Necromancer: Hmm, yes I can understand why you nerfed the desert shroud because you didnt want to nerf the scourges cleanse potential for allies. This will push power necros into playing reaper which I dont mind. Dagger buffs were necessary. Signet of locust will be pretty good now, instant full health, definitely viable option.

[Sereath.1428]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

High Level Goals

Reduce influence of passive traits. (PvP not WvW)

• Passive skills make the game less skillful.
• The prevalence of passives is a common competitive player complaint. (PvP only)

Yeah this is weird, I also play WvW and I really think that these sPvP nerfs should also be applied in WvW. Unless you don't want for WvW to be taken competitively? That would be terrible to think to be honest.

[Nebilim.5127]

Reduce effectiveness of offensive instant cast skills/traitsInstant cast spells don't give players an opportunity to respond. While we don't want to remove combos utilizing instant cast abilities, we wanted to reduce the impact they have.

So...why mesmer wasn't touched with this?

[Sharen Graves.1276]

1) With out seeing the big picture for rev and these are the only changes. No one will want them any more. CoR is all we got left.2) Necro dagger needs help3) revert or change the Resistance -> Immob

[Tinnel.4369]

Nice to see dagger Weaver getting some help, but we'll see if it's enough.

Shameless plug for F5 Unravel and condition removal stance to replace it!!

[Sodeni.6041]

I really like that you try to remove unfun elements of the game (passive gameplay, passive effects having a too great impact) but I really want you to rebalance and adjust heavy burst builds (fresh air scepter weaver, power shatter mesmer, d/p or p/p thief, etc.)- These builds are so unfun to fight against because you barely have any time to react and those builds instantly kill you in pvp without having a real fight.

[JayAction.9056]

REVENANT

Renegade and Kalla could use way more buffs than what is already proposed. Shortbow damage is still way too low, extremely. Renegade still also completely lacks sustain. So this spec needs to honestly have more damage than other specs by a fair margin rather than the lowest or the sustain needs to be increased tremendously and the damage still needs to be increased on shortbow.

Hammer is not a lethal weapon. Outside of zerging it really has no use amongst anyone that is good at your game so you are kind of pandering to the lower skill crowd with this change. I rarely even use hammer in zergs as it is already.

Condi rev is also extremely underperforming in pvp right now. It can't even compete with power rev. Mace #2 field is too small and damage ramp up too low compared to other condi specs. Mallyx is also ironically extremely weak to condis coming from the more potent condi specs (condi thief, scourge). Condi rev is also extremely weak to power damage due to having 0 tools to deal with it that are beneficial to a condi spec.

[Kovu.7560]

@Threather.9354 said:Druid: Seems like druid CA got the treatment it deserved, it was uninteractive. [Druid] will not be viable in large scale fights which is ok.How is that remotely okay? Group support is entirely why Druid exists.

~ Kovu

[Shaman.2034]

I want to re-emphasize the importance of reducing the amount of unnecessary skill splits. I feel that all of the proposed buffs affect skills and traits that are underperforming in PvE, and they would not come to change the PvE meta with these buffs. Therefore they should not be split between gamemodes. This reduces the amount of potential player confusion and build differences from one gamemode to the next, while still accomplishing the same goals in PvP and WvW.

[Swordfish.8512]

Heyo,

I'm going to give my initial impression on this patch for how I see it effecting the current Metagame. For context, everything I'm about to write is purely for a Zerg versus Zerg perspective in WvW. I'll break down in to class by class with some suggestions on what could be toned back and taken further in regards to these changes specifically as well as some additions I believe could be a strong choice for diversifying gameplay.

Changes I think are fantastic I won't touch, and I think overall this is actually a great step in the right direction.

Warrior

Good change in general imo, great direction to move in for diversity.

• Break Enchantments Damage nerf is appropriate for its utility, however the boonrip should NOT be buffed. Winds of Disenchantment removes 100 boons every 90 seconds. With proposed changes, Break Enchantments will be able to remove 90 boons every 90 seconds. This is exceptionally high, and significantly easier to land consistantly than WoD. Keep the damage nerf, don't buff the boonrip.
• Battle Standard This is not quite enough to bring back the Banner WvW zergs. Other classes can revive more consistently and effectively, with the current meta of multiple Transfusions revive allies faster than the cast time on Battle Standard. 90 Seconds cooldown would be great here imo.
• Sword AutoAttacks I love this direction of introducing another weapon to the kit, but the buff will not viably do so for WvW purposes. To bring it to comparable damage for the trade off you get (comparing to GS mobility, Hammer CC, Axe Burst damage, Mace CC) 0.9, 0.9, 1.4 are more viable numbers for a strictly WvW purpose.

Revenant

Another solid change, if anything could be taken even further. Not a lot to say here.

• Ventari Stance This is an area that could see a small bit of love. A functionality change (which I know is not covered by the scope of this patch) would be the Scourge treatment, where skills activate around yourself AND the tablet, only effecting the same person once per cast. But outside of that, on a pure numbers game, increase healing co-efficient on Purifying Essence from 0.2 to 0.35.

Guardian

Good changes to some outlying powerful skills. Guardian nerfs should always bear in mind that people do still NEED AoE stability, so taking it too far can really hurt the game mode's health without buffing stability from other sources.

• Signet of Courage Reduce time between pulses by 5 seconds. Increase healing co-efficent from 0.5 to 0.7 on the passive heal.
• Zealous Blade Good change to the damage, increase healing base to 42 so Greatsword doesn't 1shot the player using it against Retaliation.

Thief

Generally not a lot changed to effect their position in the metagame- or lack thereof.

• Invigorating Precision Increase healing to 20% of outgoing critical damage.

Ranger

Druid was gutted, without a lot of reason in the WvW meta. Already falling behind as a healer thanks to low AoE cleanse, it will now sit in a state where any other heal role will be better than the one specialization DESIGNED as a healer. Damage buffs are great for Soulbeast builds however.

• Seed of Life Increase conditions cleansed from 1 to 2 to compensate for the cooldown (still a nerf, goes from 6 cleanses per 6 seconds to 4 every 6 seconds etc).
• Signet of Stone Increase duration to 4s on a 40s Cooldown
• Celestial Avatar Do not increase cooldown in WvW.

Engineer

Holosmith took huge hits despite vastly under-performing in zerg scenarios. In order to do decent damage, Holosmith had to fully invest traits and utilities, with extremely minimal defensive options, and this split hits both.

• Light Strike Do not change in WvW
• Holo Leap Do not change in WvW
• Holographic Shockwave Do not change in WvW
• Spectrum Shield Keep the 4s duration, do not increase the cooldown to 40s.

Elementalist

Not quite enough to push them into the metagame outside of staff weaver, but definitely a great step in the right direction.

• Primordial Stance Increase radius to 240

Necromancer

The Scourge elite spec needs to be hit, but I strongly disagree with the cooldown hits. Its the Staff Elementalist problem all over again, taking away from the fun of the class when a numbers game would be better suited.

• Desert Shroud Reduce base damage to 710 (current 840) Reduce power scaling to 2.75 (currently 3.15), reduce barrier base to 4,555 (current 5016), reduce torment to 4s in WvW and PvP per pulse. Similar if not better impact than the CD nerf, but keeps the class fun and with a high APM that is indicative on Scourge. It is also the only skill to proc 'Activate on Shroud usage' traits and 'Death Perception' so nerfing cooldown SEVERELY reduces the effectiveness of some of the necros most interesting traits.

Thats all from me for now, thanks for your time reading my novella :)

P.S. Resistance to immob is extremely obnoxious- stab to fear is punishing enough, please and ty.

[Meurto.8520]

I would agree warrior is pretty strong, but it seems like a lot of abilities are getting hit pretty hard. Probably a bit more than needed. I was actually expecting a few more holo skills to see damage reductions, but it is a good start. I am hoping someone forgot to copy+paste the rest of the mesmer notes as I was expecting a number of.... adjustments? ;)

[Riba.3271]

@Kovu.7560 said:

@Threather.9354 said:

Druid

: Seems like druid CA got the treatment it deserved, it was uninteractive. [Druid] will not be viable in large scale fights which is ok.How is that remotely okay? Group support is entirely

why

Druid exists.

~ Kovu

It wasnt viable before either. Ventari rev, melee tempest, melee rev, firebrand, boonshare chrono etc were all just outperforming it outright. No reliable CC, no unique support, not enough group cleanse or boonshare...

[arnitheking.8427]

@JayAction.9056 said:REVENANT

Renegade and Kalla could use way more buffs than what is already proposed. Shortbow damage is still way too low, extremely. Renegade still also completely lacks sustain. So this spec needs to honestly have more damage than other specs by a fair margin rather than the lowest or the sustain needs to be increased tremendously and the damage still needs to be increased on shortbow.

Hammer is not a lethal weapon. Outside of zerging it really has no use amongst anyone that is good at your game so you are kind of pandering to the lower skill crowd with this change. I rarely even use hammer in zergs as it is already.

Condi rev is also extremely underperforming in pvp right now. It can't even compete with power rev. Mace #2 field is too small and damage ramp up too low compared to other condi specs. Mallyx is also ironically extremely weak to condis coming from the more potent condi specs (condi thief, scourge). Condi rev is also extremely weak to power damage due to having 0 tools to deal with it that are beneficial to a condi spec.

I fully agree with what you said in the first paragraph, additionally I think the summons need to work like wells in wvw already (now they jsut get destroyed instantly), but CoR nerf was long overdue and youll still easily get top dps alongside some weavers in open fights, and honestly the nerf isnt even that crazyAnd I fully agree with the entire third paragraph again

EDIT: also shortbow is still clunky af