Upcoming Balance Notes

Druitt.7629 · March 1, 2019

This seems like a pretty ideal patch overall. I see quite a few things that players requested in their profession forums that made it into the patch. So kudos ANet.

The downside is that they really need to do an incremental-ish balance patch like this every month. Make smaller changes, but often, and when well-thought-out and modest suggestions are made in profession forums, give them very serious consideration.

Not saying they didn't ignore some long-running issues, not saying they didn't tone something down that was arguably not over-the-top, not saying that they fixed everything and now it's good. Quite the opposite: a lot needs to be done. BUT the point is they definitely made good and requested changes without rocking the boat too much and if they could do this every month, in six or 8 months they'd have an amazingly-polished product.

Overall, I'm very happy with the patch. Though if it's 3 months until the next one, that will pretty much have wasted the good will and the opportunity. Hopefully, the recent, painful shake-up will refocus efforts so smaller, more frequent patches will guide the professions to a long-term goal.

RAZOR.7246 · March 1, 2019

@Druitt.7629Overall, I'm very happy with the patch. Though if it's 3 months until the next one, that will pretty much have wasted the good will and the opportunity. Hopefully, the recent, painful shake-up will refocus efforts so smaller, more frequent patches will guide the professions to a long-term goal.

The problem is that these types of changes have been made in the past and taken months before any fix is made. It's becoming a common theme to nerf something into oblivion and then wait months before it becomes viable again. The was a poll done a while back where the majority response was that people want to play their main class but switch occasionally for certain things. With these kinds of changes you're looking at players being forced off classes that they want to play for certain content.

This is not the only issue. Changes such as the warrior banner nerf are being done without any viable alternatives being provided to players. It is an integral part of the current meta as banners affect even gear compositions for certain classes. This kind of change is in line with previous nerfs to chronos and druids which appear to be done without any regard for how they'll affect the meta and the fact that it has even taken this long for them to be nerfed to the point of no viability is indicative of a rudderless ship just sailing with the wind. This is not the first time that such a major change has been done that ultimately just nerfs everything and quite frankly reduces the enjoyability of the game for players.

Sure people have been calling for banners to be altered in some way because they've been too important in the meta for too long. But these changes just leave it as just as important a part of the meta as it previously was but with a reduced effectiveness. The main problem is that it takes too long for certain classes to be buffed to the point where they replace the existing meta while concurrently the current approach is to just nerf everything until something else becomes moderately viable. Ultimately what we get is a diminished game experience for months on end.

To replace the effectiveness of banners something could have been done with guardian or chrono signets for example where signet sharing could become the new replacements for banners and EA while at the same time buffing warrior DPS in accordance to what they've said they've wanted to do. These patch notes in it's current state are just poor and are just going to annoy a lot of people. I can only speculate that those in charge of balancing don't play this game as frequently as some of us do because these changes are unaccepted from certain perspectives and they keep happening.

ReaverKane.7598 · March 1, 2019

1) Good job in breaking Dragonhunter and core guardian!2) Get a test server already! Paper notes don't work.

snh.7091 · March 1, 2019

Not sure what was wrong with Chrono btw. Someone enlighten me please? I never found them difficult to fight. Mirage, on the other hand, is hands down broken to the core and that infinite clone spam + condi application definitely needs to go.

Apokriphos.7042 · March 1, 2019

@Obtena.7952 said:
@Nimon.7840 said:
@Obtena.7952 said:
@Crinn.7864 said:
@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:
Necromancer
We'll be pushing some of its damage higher through skill updates in PvE, but will be mostly leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes._

So what you just told me is that necromancer is balanced based on popularity rather than effectiveness.

Explains a lot about the class.

More appropriately ... it's balanced on theme

While every other class isn't? Seems fair.

Seems that EVERY class to me is balanced primarily on theme .. that's why none of them are inline with a common performance target. At least not yet ... maybe in 4-6 more years.

So you believe Anet doesnt care about comparative performance between the classes in modes such as PvP, WvW and Raids, they only care about the % of each class representated in each mode.

Two things: This concept invalidates the idea of balance in PvP, and says that we as players should only keep following the flavor of the month to win most often.It also says the balance developers have chosen to continue to chase their own tail, since they lack a common performance target for each class. This means they waste time, resources, and money to constantly rebalance against player interest, which will be as constantly changing as fashion trends do.

It's not difficult to see why this method doesnt bode well for GW2.

Loosmaster.8263 · March 1, 2019