Balance Changes Upcoming

Skyroar.2974 · April 20, 2019

Hello, Irenio.Here's my feedback on Anet's guardian's changes.

Hammer Chain Skills: Adjusted attack animations and damage to get a smoother attack sequence. The full attack chain is slightly faster with less damage, resulting in a small increase in overall damage per second.Zealot's Flame: This skill now displays an effect when it pulses to show the effective radius.Zealot's Fire: This skill now uses the ammunition system. The Radiant Fire trait now adds 1 cast to the skill if it triggers while Zealot's Flame is active.

All interesting QoL changes. Zealot's skills especially annoyed me a bit before, so I'm glad they're going to feel nicer to play with.

Faithful Strike: Lowered the full casting time by 0.3 seconds. Increased damage by 10%. Lowered healing slightly.Symbol of Faith: Increased damage by 30%.Zealot's Defense: Damage has been increased by 50% in PvE only. Fixed a bug that caused some visual effects to display on the player when enemies were hit.

I enjoy buffs as anyone else, but I fear about the constant powercreeping that is being injected into this game. Besides that, I think one of the most interesting niches about mace is that it's a damage+healing weapon (very Paladin-esque), but I feel the healing theme is underwhelming. Symbol's regen was never that great in a damage build. And now I see the final AA skill to get its healing nerfed. It seems like its losing its niche. I wouldn't personally want for Mace to be a generic "boom! lots of damage!" weapon and nothing else. We already have Greatsword for that.

Protector's Strike: This skill now uses full-body animation for the finishing strike, even while the player is moving. The recovery animation is now shortened if an attack is not blocked. If this skill does not block an attack, it fully charges Virtue of Justice.

Besides the QoL changes, I have two things to say about this. First: Why would such a skill charge VoJ? That seems so random. I honestly don't understand the intent behind this change. Second: design bloat (as you mentioned for Mesmer's traits).

The cool thing about Protector's Strike, is that it feels like a very visceral, visually-striking version of aegis+retaliation flavor, except without relying on tiny boon icons. You have this big ass shield that explodes as a retaliation to your opponent's aggression. Thing is, this thematic fantasy is not perfectly executed. The block is very underwhelming because it only procs once, so any tiny, accidental, ambient AoE damage tick will blow it up, meaning that the guardian ends up not protecting anyone at all. This can be easily solved by having the block duration last for the entirety of its damaging animation. The "attack" portion of this skill would still activate on the first hit blocked, just as it does now, but the guardian would keep blocking stuff until the attacking animation fully ends. That, to me, is all this skill needs to be useful. But instead, Anet has been throwing additional stuff into it over the years. First, you added aegis and protection, an awkward change because those tiny, nearly hidden boons are defensively stronger than the main core mechanic. Now, you're adding a... VoJ reset? Why? How does that improves on this skill's thematic fantasy?

Instead of fixing the core problem and achieving a simple-but-functional skill, you're leaving the main mechanic flawed while bloating it with boons and now VoJ resets, and who knows what else you're going to bloat with in the future. This new version of the skill is complicated, unelegant and messy. It's hard for a user to read this skill's description and understand what exactly are they meant to do with it. Should they fail this skill on purpose? Is this skill meant to be balanced around aegis-enhancing traits and useless outside of them? Is this skill meant to be a counterattack (as it was originally designed to be)?

It's a mediocre counterattack effect. You could have turned it into a better counterattack effect. Instead, you're adding a bunch of unrelated stuff to it, bloating it with effects over the time, while leaving the core problem unfixed.

It's interesting to note that Anet's skill reworks have been spot-on when it comes to balancing effectiveness with simplicity in design, but their skills _buffs _have been (historically, since GW1) about bloating them with additional effects over and over. Just last patch, to give an example, elementalist's shout buffs have been nothing but "let us cram even more stuff into them", leading to awkward situations where the fire shout offers additional might while its core mechanic (fire aura) remains as mediocre as ever, or their elite defensive shout offering an offensive boon (fury) or their conditional anti-projectile shout - which already doubled as an anti-movement skill - now tripling as a general anti-direct damage effect. Very messy.

Are the people working on skills reworks different than those working on skill buffs? My wish is that Anet finds a way to buff skills by actually fixing what is underwhelming in them, instead of covering it up with additional effects. That's how the game ended up being so spammy over the years.

Back to Protector's Strike, its main appeal is that you're protecting your party members with this big ass shield, and then punishing your enemies for being aggressive. That's it. It's that simple. It also has clear counterplay visuals and clear moments of skill expression (especially timing it up). All Protector's Strike needs to be - and that is very simple - is to be good at what it was meant to be. Not at spamming random boons. Not at resetting virtues. It's a defend + counterattack skill that should be good at defending and counterattacking. Everything else is bloat.

Right-Hand Strength: This trait no longer gives a flat critical-hit chance. Instead it gives an additional 80 precision, plus an additional 80 power while wielding a one-handed weapon.

It's a good change, but I will have to warn you about design bloat again. This trait will now do 3 (!!!) different things at once. It reduces the cooldown of sword skills AND gives 80 power while wielding one-handed weapons AND gives 80 precision. It makes it look a bit messy, because it's trying to do too many different things at the same time. If this is meant to be a sword-trait, I'd rather it just have 2 effects at most (sword-enhancing, and something broader). If it is meant to be a one-handed weapon trait, I'd rather the sword cdr reduction be moved to another trait, or else it should affect all one-handed weapon CDR.

Stalkingwolf.6035 · April 20, 2019

can Firebrands now please keep there mantras activated when changing a map?!Thats the most annoying thing

and i dont know if

Spirit Weapons: These skills are now all ground-targeted while the player is on land.fixes the problem that the spirit weapons can not attack a lot of stuff - for example octovine - if not. fix it.

and overall tome usage. if we switch a tome, use a skill and leave the tomb, the tome should not go to full cooldown. making use tomes often like a bad choice.tomes should go to full CD when all pages are used. let us switch in and out until all pages are used.

Nimon.7840 · April 20, 2019

@LucianDK.8615 said:
@Zenith.7301 said:
@LucianDK.8615 said:
@Zenith.7301 said:
@Elrond.9486 said:
@Zenith.7301 said:Glad to see more PvP centric garbage changes dictating the direction of balance in this game.
It wasn't enough that power herald and reaper are about 30%+ behind the top power DPS specs in PvE, but you needed to divert your attention to revamping power warrior and daredevil, two of the meta specs. Obviously for PvP reasons, since we've established you only do inane token changes for PvE.
Then the poorly thought out nerfs to druid keep rolling in. It's not enough that renegade+firebrand completely outclass druid/chrono in PvE in healing, damage output, and boon provision, but you've felt it necessary to make the druid spec more like the healing elementalist specs (a pure healer with decreasing offensive utility) which is precisely what leaves healing elementalist specs irrelevant to begin with compared to support specs which boost the offensive performances of a group.
It's too bad the structural changes going on at Anet didn't happen to class development, because you alone are to blame for the dwindling raid and instanced PvE scene given your atrocious balance gimmicks which don't address the NUMERICAL DISPARITIES that are so vast across specs and which you refuse to bridge for some reason, instead choosing to implement strange changes to niche traits as if they were some solution.
Take the revenant changes. How in hell does 25 more energy help a power revenant compensate for their abysmal numbers? They already swap legends on cooldown and at best it's 3 seconds of extra impossible odds, which does absolutely nothing. POWER REVENANT ISSUES ARE ITS ABYSMAL SKILL NUMBERS, FIX THEM. Making the core spec have some worthless 5 unblockable attacks in PvE in shiro will change nothing; a 30% buff across the board to its skills in PvE only WILL. Same goes for reaper.
But who am I kidding, it's always this PvP/WVW first, PvE later garbage design for the past 5+ years. No wonder people have flocked away from the game when you show them what formats truly capture the attention of your developers.

Is this satire? If this is a PvP centered balance patch, it is one of the most misdirected patches ever, this does absolute nothing about any of the obvious problems in PvP balance.

Let's see, scepter nerfs on mesmer (because they were so good in PvE, NOT), ventari buffs (because it was struggling in PvE clearly, yes this is sarcasm), daredevil steal change for no reason whatsoever alongside those "offsets", a berzerker warrior revamp that wasn't even needed because condi zerker was a functional meta build in PvE.

No significant PvE buff for power herald or reaper, because those specs get cried about in PvP. More druid nerfs, because the babies in WvW are complaining about druid roamers alongside soulbeasts. And a couple more mirage and chrono nerfs just for further pandering to the pvp crowd, as if raids needed any more daredevil/weaver stacking with the only competitive condi build besides mirage, renegade, nerfed in an earlier patch to make sure no condi spec competes with the top power specs because god forbid condi specs be good, since the pvp/wvw crybabies will flood the forums with their tears about losing duels or eating an epidemic.

Soul eater gives +10% damage universally, how isnt that a significant buff?

Because it competes with Decimate Defenses, compare decimate defenses to right-hand strength trait for guardians. It's a considerable loss to crit rate in exchange for a modifier, so you don't truly gain a 10% buff. And power reaper needed significantly more than a 10% buff, especially after the changes to soul reaping.

I am well aware it competes, but there is more crit sources in the game. And reapers tends to overcap on them. Solo and smaller groups would likely favor DD still.

Reaper only overcaps in pve really hard. But if you calculate with full zerker armor, you will be at 84% critchance with spotter and banner of warrior

So there's 16% missing, but 10% dmg doesn't make up for that I think.

If you compare the stats you loose 246 power and 5% critdmg to reach 66%critchance. And you gain 10% overall dmg... Not that good.

Also as I mentioned in necro forum:The change to locust swarm is good for PvP modes, for pve it's not, cause life siphon can't crit

LucianDK.8615 · April 20, 2019

@Nimon.7840 said:
@LucianDK.8615 said:
@Zenith.7301 said:
@LucianDK.8615 said:
@Zenith.7301 said:
@Elrond.9486 said:
@Zenith.7301 said:Glad to see more PvP centric garbage changes dictating the direction of balance in this game.
It wasn't enough that power herald and reaper are about 30%+ behind the top power DPS specs in PvE, but you needed to divert your attention to revamping power warrior and daredevil, two of the meta specs. Obviously for PvP reasons, since we've established you only do inane token changes for PvE.
Then the poorly thought out nerfs to druid keep rolling in. It's not enough that renegade+firebrand completely outclass druid/chrono in PvE in healing, damage output, and boon provision, but you've felt it necessary to make the druid spec more like the healing elementalist specs (a pure healer with decreasing offensive utility) which is precisely what leaves healing elementalist specs irrelevant to begin with compared to support specs which boost the offensive performances of a group.
It's too bad the structural changes going on at Anet didn't happen to class development, because you alone are to blame for the dwindling raid and instanced PvE scene given your atrocious balance gimmicks which don't address the NUMERICAL DISPARITIES that are so vast across specs and which you refuse to bridge for some reason, instead choosing to implement strange changes to niche traits as if they were some solution.
Take the revenant changes. How in hell does 25 more energy help a power revenant compensate for their abysmal numbers? They already swap legends on cooldown and at best it's 3 seconds of extra impossible odds, which does absolutely nothing. POWER REVENANT ISSUES ARE ITS ABYSMAL SKILL NUMBERS, FIX THEM. Making the core spec have some worthless 5 unblockable attacks in PvE in shiro will change nothing; a 30% buff across the board to its skills in PvE only WILL. Same goes for reaper.
But who am I kidding, it's always this PvP/WVW first, PvE later garbage design for the past 5+ years. No wonder people have flocked away from the game when you show them what formats truly capture the attention of your developers.