WvW/PvP Skill Split v2.0 today?

[MedievalThings.5417]

@Turk.5460 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

For clarification, PvP only changes include WvW?

Nope! Druid and Holosmith nerfs are not going to WvW for now.

Sure hope you keep the Ranger Signet of Stone active duration nerf in WvW. 6s of immunity to direct damage is ridiculous.

You're complaining about signet of stone when your signature says you roam on warrior too...L O L.

[Rufo.3716]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

How can you properly evaluate the changes without a test server? We all know how well all the previous changes worked out. You know maybe letting your players test the changes for you and provide feedback would prevent poor balance patches.

[Shadowcat.2680]

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Turk.5460 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

For clarification, PvP only changes include WvW?

Nope! Druid and Holosmith nerfs are not going to WvW for now.

Sure hope you keep the Ranger Signet of Stone active duration nerf in WvW. 6s of immunity to direct damage is ridiculous.

oMG..you play the most easy mode class in the game...where actually the game plays you...90% of warrior is passive gameplay : "might makes me right" for example...2migth for 4 on 5s weaponswap...then a dozen more way to get might...then there is whole defense line..hahahahahaha....dude..warrior is like passivior that should be its real name

[witcher.3197]

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

When their auto attack baseline damage is 3 times higher as usual you don't have to playtest on live for 6 months to realize something is off.

[Kovu.7560]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

For clarification, PvP only changes include WvW?

Nope! Druid and Holosmith nerfs are not going to WvW for now.

Sure hope you keep the Ranger Signet of Stone active duration nerf in WvW. 6s of immunity to direct damage is ridiculous.

oMG..you play the most easy mode class in the game...where actually the game plays you...90% of warrior is passive gameplay : "might makes me right" for example...2migth for 4 on 5s weaponswap...then a dozen more way to get might...then there is whole defense line..hahahahahaha....dude..warrior is like

passivior

that should be its real name

He main's thief. That entire response of profession name calling was unnecessary. Worse yet, a dev was caught in the chain of quotes so they're probably going to read it.Also, Signet of Stone is a ranger ability, not warrior.

~ Kovu

[Recursivision.2367]

I'd have to agree, even as an engi main, that the holo nerfs (at least to some degree) should be carried over to wvw. In small groups / roaming it's just as strong or stronger than in pvp, with incoming nerfs to other professsions. In larger fights, there's no reason to take them regardless -- they bring nothing unique. If you want to make them viable on a larger scale, they'd need to bring something else that fills a unique role which is where I think effort should be focused.

I think some of the recent changes have been good in that regard for WvW, giving engineers strong condi conversion options. However, it's still only somewhat competitive with both firebrand and scourge in that regard, both which have a handful of aspect which are still too strong to do without (barrier, boons, healing, corrupts, strong 10 target cap damage, etc.)

The only idea I really have in regard to a simple number change is an increased radius and / or stab stacks on elixir b. This would have a fairly small impact on other scales of fighting as well.

The only other quick thought I have would be making the new Recovery Matrix (barrier on heal) an AoE effect, but that's a change that would have larger ramifications.

[Axl.8924]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

Ben, You really need to iterate to your balance team that not everyone's opinion here really matters. Some of the changes you are not going to implement in certain environments are going to leave a few things really broken in terms of being overpowered. It is not the fault of your game, or your changes to the game made, that is ruining the wvw/pvp scene.

it's the players. It's their lack of skill. Take some information into consideration, but do not take all.

An example, but more for the pvp side, are all these people talking about the .5 seconds cast time for the shade skills. I pray to any god willing to listen and grant me my wish that you

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT

revert these changes. Because it will end up, again, being insta spam of 5 stacks of many condis each, an instant fear with no tells, which can then be followed up with more cc and more fear before you can even do anything to counter it.

People hate to see their classes nerfed, especially when they've been overpowered and dominated the scene for so long

. But what they don't realize is that some changes are absolutely necessary, if a chance for other players to counterplay is desperately needed.Keep this in mind, Ben, and to the balance team:

You can't please everyone. So stop trying to.

If radius is reduced necros would all expect all the otehr stuff to be un nerfed, otherwise it would be gutted.People are crying about the radius, well if the radius was smaller,wouldn't that mean it would no longer take up the whole points of interest, and thus be balanced?

There has to be a way.A lot of necromancers would be extra angry if they got nerfed on top of a nerf and radius was reduced and all stuff was kept.You might not care because you probably don't play necro, and hate them, but those who play necro want to have fun.

[Felipe.1807]

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

I dont know, a Holosmith was able to out damage my Zeal/Radiance Valk Guard, he didnt even bothered to evade or move out of Greatsword Symbol and Whirling Wrath, I was forced to dodge or else he would put me down...the passive invul did trigger, but still this shows how Holo damage is over the top, needs a huge nerf, that or remove all the mobility from it...something needs to go.

[Shadowcat.2680]

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

When their auto attack baseline damage is 3 times higher as usual you don't have to playtest on live for 6 months to realize something is off.

The baseline damage for the three strikes of the autoattack in photon forge is 391, 391, and 626 (x2). I don't know what you're comparing those damages to, but that's not three times higher than the autoattack chains of other professions. It does trend higher and has a higher coefficient, particularly the third hit with its double strike, but it's a bit flawed to outright compare the photon forge autoattack to the AA of weapons on other professions as 1) the holo only has access to the autoattack in the forge, 2) the autoattack does nothing but damage and has zero utility, and 3) the autoattack generates heat regardless of whether or not the holo hits with it.

The autoattack does need some tuning. The range is the biggest offender in my experience. 240 is excessive considering that 130-150 is more commonly the melee range of weapons. I dueled a guildie for a couple of hours last week with me on holosmith and him on sword weaver and won most of the fights because the 240 range of the autoattack kept me out of reach of sword on weaver.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

When their auto attack baseline damage is 3 times higher as usual you don't have to playtest on live for 6 months to realize something is off.

The baseline damage for the three strikes of the autoattack in photon forge is 391, 391, and 626 (x2). I don't know what you're comparing those damages to, but that's not three times higher than the autoattack chains of other professions. It does trend higher and has a higher coefficient, particularly the third hit with its double strike, but it's a bit flawed to outright compare the photon forge autoattack to the AA of weapons on other professions as 1) the holo only has access to the autoattack in the forge, 2) the autoattack does nothing but damage and has zero utility, and 3) the autoattack generates heat regardless of whether or not the holo hits with it.

The autoattack does need some tuning. The range is the biggest offender in my experience. 240 is excessive considering that 130-150 is more commonly the melee range of weapons. I dueled a guildie for a couple of hours last week with me on holosmith and him on sword weaver and won most of the fights because the 240 range of the autoattack kept me out of reach of sword on weaver.

When calculating damage, there is no such thing as "base damage" - "base damage" is just what damage will be with base character stats without gear, which every character has a default value of 1000 power.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

All of the damage comes from a measure of power, coefficient, and misc modifiers divided by armor. With massive coefficients comes massive damage. Holo's skills nearly do at minimum what a thief will get with a front-facing backstab, meanwhile still having access to stealth for animation hiding, permanent protection, stacks of stability, capped might, two damage immunity effects, good mobility, large AA radius, and massive AoE CC.

Meanwhile everything else is getting nerfed pretty hard. The changes are absolutely warranted.

[zealex.9410]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

For clarification, PvP only changes include WvW?

Nope! Druid and Holosmith nerfs are not going to WvW for now.

Sure hope you keep the Ranger Signet of Stone active duration nerf in WvW. 6s of immunity to direct damage is ridiculous.

That one is still on the list. It's more of a side-grade than a nerf.

Have you gius thought about changing the passive trait in the entirety of the game? So u can comfortably rework them to be more interactive.

[psyt.9415]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

For clarification, PvP only changes include WvW?

Nope! Druid and Holosmith nerfs are not going to WvW for now.

I hope you revert the rugged regrowth change I seen on the list not sure if its still in the cards because that affects Core and Soulbeast as well.Never heard anyone complain about Core and Soulbeast.

[Sobe.1547]

I find is funny how people say scourages are overpowered yet you look at spvp top 100 and you see far less necros than any class....

why? because you can all focus a necro and down him within LITERALLY 7 seconds. you can't do that any other class and scourages get hard countered vs heavy melee comps that can just sit on you all day and never get off you making you near useless unless your team comp is designed for peels and support. Another counter to scourages are all the thief's... P/P and just destroy you far range with so much mobility that you can never get out of combat and away from them ( escape ) and you can't kill a thief because we are literally the slowest class in game

if anything I believe scourages deserve a mobility buff greatly while in combat and nerf that mesmer one shot to something a bit more reasonable as it is pretty hard to dodge if you're in a big fight at mid.

druid 6s entangle is straight insane especially with deadeye thief because you cant roll a one shot and no CC breaker allows you to escape it unless you destroy it so in my opinion that entangle should take damage from all sources like necros ground AOE spells and be able to use one of my trinkets ( as they call it in wow, not sure what to call it on here but the spell that gets you out of CC) to get out of the druids cc

[psyt.9415]

@Sobe.1547 said:I find is funny how people say scourages are overpowered yet you look at spvp top 100 and you see far less necros than any class....

why? because you can all focus a necro and down him within LITERALLY 7 seconds. you can't do that any other class and scourages get hard countered vs heavy melee comps that can just sit on you all day and never get off you making you near useless unless your team comp is designed for peels and support. Another counter to scourages are all the thief's... P/P and just destroy you far range with so much mobility that you can never get out of combat and away from them ( escape ) and you can't kill a thief because we are literally the slowest class in game

Wait so if a whole team focuses someone the only class that goes down would be scourge? Yea okay. Anyone being focused will drop quick.The fact they are such a ridiculous threat compared to everyone else that the whole team has to dog pile them is evidence enough they need a change. For me it would be a radius nerf and removal of resistance from the conversion table then at least there is counter play for melee. I would leave everything else alone and see how it plays out with those two changes, but then everyone is getting their dps. nerfed so you have to account for that to.

[Shadowcat.2680]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

When their auto attack baseline damage is 3 times higher as usual you don't have to playtest on live for 6 months to realize something is off.

The baseline damage for the three strikes of the autoattack in photon forge is 391, 391, and 626 (x2). I don't know what you're comparing those damages to, but that's not three times higher than the autoattack chains of other professions. It does trend higher and has a higher coefficient, particularly the third hit with its double strike, but it's a bit flawed to outright compare the photon forge autoattack to the AA of weapons on other professions as 1) the holo only has access to the autoattack in the forge, 2) the autoattack does nothing but damage and has zero utility, and 3) the autoattack generates heat regardless of whether or not the holo hits with it.

The autoattack does need some tuning. The range is the biggest offender in my experience. 240 is excessive considering that 130-150 is more commonly the melee range of weapons. I dueled a guildie for a couple of hours last week with me on holosmith and him on sword weaver and won most of the fights because the 240 range of the autoattack kept me out of reach of sword on weaver.

When calculating damage, there is no such thing as "base damage" - "base damage" is just what damage will be with base character stats without gear, which every character has a default value of 1000 power.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

All of the damage comes from a measure of power, coefficient, and misc modifiers divided by armor. With massive coefficients comes massive damage. Holo's skills nearly do at minimum what a thief will get with a front-facing backstab, meanwhile still having access to stealth for animation hiding, permanent protection, stacks of stability, capped might, two damage immunity effects, good mobility, large AA radius, and massive AoE CC.

Meanwhile everything else is getting nerfed pretty hard. The changes are absolutely warranted.

I don't have any experience with dagger main hand on thief, so I don't know how well a comparison to holo's damage does or does not hold up.

As to the rest: holosmith has pretty lackluster access to protection (which makes Anticorrosion Plating problematic). Holosmith only has permanent protection while inside Hard Light Arena for the 8 or 12 secs (depending on heat level when activated) it's up and it has a 45 sec cooldown. An enemy staying inside the Arena to continue the fight makes as much sense as staying in a guardian's Hollowed Ground. Outside of Hard Light Arena, which wasn't popular until Anticorrosion Plating was introduced because of the obvious tell on the toolbelt's pull, holosmith doesn't have much in the way of protection application, certainly not 100% uptime with either Protection Injection or Over Shield.

The stability on Corona Burst trait could use some adjusting, possibly a lowering of the base duration or adjustment to how the stacks are generated, both up front versus one per pulse for example, but changing it to require hitting a target is a flawed design as it puts the holosmith's access to stability (its only source of stability) entirely in the hands of the enemy. Holosmith already has flashy tells that require stealth to truly hide, so this change would make dodging Corona Burst all that's required to deny a holo its stability.

The stealth is a long stealth. A Shockwave or a Light Beam is almost always going to be the move done from stealth as those are the two animations needing hiding the most. It takes running both Alchemy and Tools (no longer as viable as it once was after Alchemy nerfs) to maximize stealth uptime, but even then the stealth has a long cooldown and is the holosmith's only stealth short of them getting a smoke field from the randomized effects of a thrown Elixir U.

The immunities are immunities where the holo cannot do anything other than stomp or rez. The traited version is often a double edged sword as it'll kill the engi if it procs from heavy condi damage, condis that continue to tick as the engi is shrunk down and unable to do anything to cleanse them itself.

Good mobility on holosmith requires traited rocket boots as they're really not worth taking without Gadgeteer. As to AOE CC, I wouldn't mind seeing Shockwave's radius lowered to 360 to match other large AOEs in the game. The 600 radius is excessive and unnecessary on a profession that has to fight close anyway.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

Ben, You really need to iterate to your balance team that not everyone's opinion here really matters. Some of the changes you are not going to implement in certain environments are going to leave a few things really broken in terms of being overpowered. It is not the fault of your game, or your changes to the game made, that is ruining the wvw/pvp scene.

it's the players. It's their lack of skill. Take some information into consideration, but do not take all.

An example, but more for the pvp side, are all these people talking about the .5 seconds cast time for the shade skills. I pray to any god willing to listen and grant me my wish that you

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT

revert these changes. Because it will end up, again, being insta spam of 5 stacks of many condis each, an instant fear with no tells, which can then be followed up with more cc and more fear before you can even do anything to counter it.

People hate to see their classes nerfed, especially when they've been overpowered and dominated the scene for so long

. But what they don't realize is that some changes are absolutely necessary, if a chance for other players to counterplay is desperately needed.Keep this in mind, Ben, and to the balance team:

You can't please everyone. So stop trying to.

Absolutely this. This comment right here should even be stickied if it was possible.

If anet is going to listen to community feedback they need to be very careful who they listen to. Anything said by someone who is either unranked or lower than gold II at the very least should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not saying lower than average skilled players should be flat out ignored, but just be aware that they may not really know what they want.

The truth is that most things broken in sPvP are going to be just as if not more broken in WvW. Holosmith popping corona for CCE and then free bursting without having to worry about being interrupted due to on demand stab with 6s CD is going to destroy people in exactly the same way. The only reason you see primary WvW players complain has less to do with the differences between the formats than WvW zergers care to admit, and more to do with the dramatically lower average player skill in WvW than what you see in sPvP.

[psyt.9415]

I mean its pretty hard to get behind most of the changes because they seem to nerf a ton of core class traits. Like if Druid etc. is the problem nerf that tree then. I don't see any increase in diversity of play by nerfing all sustain across all Ranger specs.

[Shadowcat.2680]

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

Ben, You really need to iterate to your balance team that not everyone's opinion here really matters. Some of the changes you are not going to implement in certain environments are going to leave a few things really broken in terms of being overpowered. It is not the fault of your game, or your changes to the game made, that is ruining the wvw/pvp scene.

it's the players. It's their lack of skill. Take some information into consideration, but do not take all.

An example, but more for the pvp side, are all these people talking about the .5 seconds cast time for the shade skills. I pray to any god willing to listen and grant me my wish that you

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT

revert these changes. Because it will end up, again, being insta spam of 5 stacks of many condis each, an instant fear with no tells, which can then be followed up with more cc and more fear before you can even do anything to counter it.

People hate to see their classes nerfed, especially when they've been overpowered and dominated the scene for so long

. But what they don't realize is that some changes are absolutely necessary, if a chance for other players to counterplay is desperately needed.Keep this in mind, Ben, and to the balance team:

You can't please everyone. So stop trying to.

Absolutely this. This comment right here should even be stickied if it was possible.

If anet is going to listen to community feedback they need to be very careful who they listen to. Anything said by someone who is either unranked or lower than gold II at the very least should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not saying lower than average skilled players should be flat out ignored, but just be aware that they may not really know what they want.

The truth is that most things broken in sPvP are going to be just as if not more broken in WvW. Holosmith popping corona for CCE and then free bursting without having to worry about being interrupted due to on demand stab with 6s CD is going to destroy people in exactly the same way. The only reason you see primary WvW players complain has less to do with the differences between the formats than WvW zergers care to admit, and more to do with the dramatically lower average player skill in WvW than what you see in sPvP.

Absolutely wrong. These splits affect both WvW and PvP. Anet should not choose to ignore the WvW playerbase in favor of what's said by platinum, titanium, or dilithium (whatever you guys use as rankings) players for splits for WvW, a mode where those rankings have zero meaning.

Anet should take all feedback with a grain of salt. All. And then playtest things themselves to see what's accurate and what's not.

[Darkened.4076]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

For clarification, PvP only changes include WvW?

Nope! Druid and Holosmith nerfs are not going to WvW for now.

Sure hope you keep the Ranger Signet of Stone active duration nerf in WvW. 6s of immunity to direct damage is ridiculous.

That one is still on the list. It's more of a side-grade than a nerf.

'Sure hope you keep the Ranger Signet of Stone active duration nerf in WvW. 6s of immunity to direct damage is ridiculous.''That one is still on the list. It's more of a side-grade than a nerf.'@Ben Phongluangtham.1065Am I reading this post wrong? The first sentence suggests that the current builds 6 seconds is the nerf, but then the second sentence goes onto mention that the same 6 seconds needs nerfing in WVW?

If the second is the case:I can understand why the 6s in SPVP might be an issue [to a certain degree - but I would be hard pressed to see that], but how is that a legit comment or assessment for WVW? and how have you come to this conclusion?

If you go purely front-line, the signet is almost always a must take utility [even in this horrid scourge condition pirate ship meta]. So as someone who actually plays ranger, I don't agree with a nerf to the current 6 seconds duration [as it can be countered by condition builds anyway]. Your lucky to get into a squad in WVW as a ranger/druid/soulbeast as it is. Whether you go pure melee, hybrid or pure ranged, it really isn't warranted. I am massively shocked however, that considering the dominance of firebrand and scourges in WVW, that those classes are not up for consideration - or did I miss that?

[Arheundel.6451]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

So basically no balance patch for wvw....sounds great

[Khenzy.9348]

I understand Druid nerfs not affecting WvW, they aren't that strong at all there.

Holosmith damage is pretty busted and OP in WvW though. /shrug.

-Revert Shadow Shot (and Heartseeker) damage buff.

-Still waiting for those Power Mesmer nerfs.

[Vagrant.7206]

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

It was butchered the day before launch. A full 20% damage reduction. Since then they've been slowly chipping away at core engineer too (because core engi need to be worse), hampering its survivability. The proposed nerfs go even farther to chip away at damage and survivability again. If you think that's not butchering, then you've never seen a steak.

Protip: Holos aren't actually as powerful as you seem to think they are. In the current meta, they're at an acceptable level. With everyone's favorite class taking a hit, naturally holo should too, but not as excessive as some of the nerfs they proposed (particularly the stability one). One of the best ways to nerf holo to reduce its overall burst potential is to increase its heat generation (both passive and active). This would reduce overall damage output without making holo weak and would increase the skill necessary to stay alive without self destructing.

@Felipe.1807 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Holo nerfs are so warranted for WvW though.

Seriously you can't even get near one of these things if played well without just being autokilled unless you have allies.

Bro.

Engi barely exists in WvW. You want to eliminate it entirely?

I think you mean it barely exists in blobs. It's extremely common otherwise.

Currently, holo is commonly seen as the best 1v1 and small-group classes in the game right now. People are complaining a lot about mesmers right now, but honestly, the available counters to mirage are higher than to that of holosmith. It's relative strength in WvW is actually better than sPvP; build tweaks which work better in WvW/are not conducive to sPvP, and stat/food tweaks which can close some of its areas of weakness. It out-trades literally everything in the game if played reasonably well.

Holosmith needs a little toning down with its damage but not to the extent proposed by the splits thread. The initial thread had holosmith as getting its damage nerfed more than any other profession, suggesting holosmith is the hardest hitting profession in WvW and that's simply not the case. A good mesmer or thief will burst you down quicker than a good holosmith.

I'd be interested in knowing what build tweaks work better in WvW as I haven't been able to make heads or tails of holosmith builds since they split engi's sustain between Alchemy and Inventions.

Holosmith needs to be butchered, not "toned down a little". Even before release it was painfully obvious to everyone just by watching the dev stream and reading the wiki that the base damage on photon forge skills is too high.

You're not going to get a clear picture of how a profession plays by reading the wiki or watching streams. They'll give you some idea but nothing compares to playing or playing against the profession. Especially playing the profession yourself. Holosmiths are decently simple to counter on a number of professions once you know all their flashy tells.

I dont know, a Holosmith was able to out damage my Zeal/Radiance Valk Guard, he didnt even bothered to evade or move out of Greatsword Symbol and Whirling Wrath, I was forced to dodge or else he would put me down...the passive invul did trigger, but still this shows how Holo damage is over the top, needs a huge nerf, that or remove all the mobility from it...something needs to go.

If you didn't die (barely), and his elixir S procced... sounds like you guys were doing a pretty close amount of damage to each other. Since holo has the potential to self destruct, no ability to teleport, no block, and relatively low disengage, sounds about like a fair fight to me.

Also, mobility, really? The only real mobility holo has comes from traited rocket boots, which A) is core and B ) Not that effective a disengage.

[Klypto.1703]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

Ben, You really need to iterate to your balance team that not everyone's opinion here really matters. Some of the changes you are not going to implement in certain environments are going to leave a few things really broken in terms of being overpowered. It is not the fault of your game, or your changes to the game made, that is ruining the wvw/pvp scene.

it's the players. It's their lack of skill. Take some information into consideration, but do not take all.

An example, but more for the pvp side, are all these people talking about the .5 seconds cast time for the shade skills. I pray to any god willing to listen and grant me my wish that you

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT

revert these changes. Because it will end up, again, being insta spam of 5 stacks of many condis each, an instant fear with no tells, which can then be followed up with more cc and more fear before you can even do anything to counter it.

People hate to see their classes nerfed, especially when they've been overpowered and dominated the scene for so long

. But what they don't realize is that some changes are absolutely necessary, if a chance for other players to counterplay is desperately needed.Keep this in mind, Ben, and to the balance team:

You can't please everyone. So stop trying to.

No doubt like necro/scourge the answer isn't nerfing them because if you look at the bad players and their lack of skill you'll notice what happens is they just use more of them to compensate. However some classes are incredibly weak when it comes to rev and being condi loaded up and boon corrupt on the resistance. Instead of nerfing the necros they should do an overhaul of how revs deal with conditions so its not always mallyx resist to try to jump to. Imho though I think the cleansing aspect isn't what the rev needs to be different I think it needs some mechanics changes where conditions have a positive result for having them on you which is what originally it looks like anet tried to do with the corruption trait line but it was just too weak to ever be used as an example the one that heals you for 128 if you have a condition on you. So my take on it is better counterplay rather than nerfing what people like to play even if it is as broken as necros are as a class you don't want to see them get broken down to the point that they are no longer usable but better create a balance.

A few ideas I had like ventari for example creating modes for tablet one for it to be always on you when you are moving or switch to manual control if needed. As well make it where cc skills used on you with the tablet up granting stability and mass loading of conditions increasing the energy regeneration rate. So on that each trait line/legend can benefit from this since conditions technically never get cleansed because they always just keep coming back on you until you die very slowly but putting an advantage when players try to condi load revs you might see a decline on just stacking one class but in actuality doing something for counter play for all classes that just get dominated by condi spam so that some kind of balance can be achieved.

[DeadlySynz.3471]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@saerni.2584 said:As per above title,

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 has mentioned a plan to receive feedback and post an updated list of changes for consideration.

Is this still the plan or is that likely next week?

We're still working on some additions. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but still planning on revising the list on the forums next week.

Quick preview:Druid nerfs are changing to PvP only.Holosmith nerfs are changing to PvP only.In progress: Evaluating Thief changes.In progress: Evaluating Mesmer changes.

Additionally, we've decided not to unsplit anything for this release. After some internal conversation, we decided to keep this release more focused. However, for next balance release, we'll be evaluating our splits to see which should be made game-wide.

Ben, You really need to iterate to your balance team that not everyone's opinion here really matters. Some of the changes you are not going to implement in certain environments are going to leave a few things really broken in terms of being overpowered. It is not the fault of your game, or your changes to the game made, that is ruining the wvw/pvp scene.

it's the players. It's their lack of skill. Take some information into consideration, but do not take all.

An example, but more for the pvp side, are all these people talking about the .5 seconds cast time for the shade skills. I pray to any god willing to listen and grant me my wish that you

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT

revert these changes. Because it will end up, again, being insta spam of 5 stacks of many condis each, an instant fear with no tells, which can then be followed up with more cc and more fear before you can even do anything to counter it.

People hate to see their classes nerfed, especially when they've been overpowered and dominated the scene for so long

. But what they don't realize is that some changes are absolutely necessary, if a chance for other players to counterplay is desperately needed.Keep this in mind, Ben, and to the balance team:

You can't please everyone. So stop trying to.

Ironically that .5s cast delay is doing more harm than good, and it's working in the scourges favor. More often than not, it seems to temporarily freeze or lag a player before instantly dumping all the conditions on them. If I get near someone now and shade bomb while spamming the skills, it downs anyone in the shade, including other tanky scourges themselves. Not due to my attacks alone, but due to the enemy temporarily lagging. Prior to this .5s cast delay, it didn't do this. More scourge players are figuring this out now, hence the vitriol still flying their way.

On one hand, I don't like it because it feels like it's lagging, but on the other hand, it's basically ensuring players death for those who are caught in it.

"Because it will end up, again, being insta spam of 5 stacks of many condis each, an instant fear with no tells, which can then be followed up with more cc and more fear before you can even do anything to counter it."

Case and point, this is an example of the misinformation being directed Anet's way and reinforces your point that not everyone's opinion matters, because they shouldn't take into consideration statements like these when they are completely false. Earlier today I encountered another scourge running toward SMC, I let them dump their shade on me and spam the skills (I lagged as expected), but the end result was a whopping 4 conditions that did little to no good. I cleared them, and kept running to SMC.

So what you're experiencing isn't coming from 1 Scourge, it's coming from either multiple scourge, or a scourge and other condition classes dumping their payload on you. So why exactly call for nerfs when a class can dump a whopping 4 conditions on you then is looking at 2 8 second cool downs?, a 12, and a 16s cool down? More so, why would anyone bother to even stand in a shade for 16s allowing the scourge to re-bomb them?

This has nothing to do with Scourge being overpowered, they are anything but. Even as a scourge player, one of the easiest classes to kill is other scourge players because I understand exactly what their weaknesses are (and there are many). It comes down to player's lack of skill and their unwillingness to jump on other classes (or at least form proper groups) to deal with them.