Potential Future Balance Changes

[dragonmaster.5286]

First off, thanks for letting the players give some insights and opinions about future balance chances, its our shared goal to make the game a more balanced environment for both new and old players.

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Guardian

• Sanctuary: Increase number of enemies that can be knocked back by this skill from 10 to 20 before it expires.
• Tome of Resolve, Chapter 2 - Radiant Recovery: The existing split from PvP of cleansing 2 conditions is brought to WvW as well. This ability would continue to cleanse 3 conditions in PvE.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 2 - Daring Challenge: This skill grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 5 - Unbroken Lines: This skill no longer grants aegis or retaliation.

Sanctuary: In all game modes this skill isn't widely used as you might have probably known, although in pve it might be used as a long casting cc if you place it on a boss or mob with a break bar. With the "Master of Concentrations" trait it does a few more knockbacks adding up to the cc. The main downsides start in WvW and PvP. The skill is stationary and easy to evade after you spot it, its great for blocking enemy projectiles but reflecting is always better. This change will help a bit making the skill more useful in a zerg vs zerg scenario where it will stay for longer before expiring. It's a welcome change but it wont convince a lot of ppl to run it if they havent before. What I think should be done would be reduction of the duration of the skill, nerfing the cc output in pve which is huge if the boss wont move and at the same time making it more flexible to use with a lower cooldown. It would add a bit of gameplay by increasing the amount situations in a fight where it could be used for smart and short actions like pushing the enemy away or ressing someone more often.

Daring Challenge: This skill is interesting cause it doesn't share the aegis to any nearby allies as opposed to any boon sharing skills in the third tome. As the name suggests we player taunt the enemy to attack us, the aegis is there to block the attack of the taunted person. Problem is the skill is on a low cooldown making the player be able to use it to block most of enemy attacks if timed properly. I agree the aegis should be replaced by retaliation but it would also mean a nerf towards it and would make it in most ways useless. What I suggest on top of the change would be also making the taunt aoe "mantra like" (higher range when facing the opponent) to have an easier time hitting the enemies as the skill should be used in the 1st place.

Unbroken Lines: I must disagree with removing aegis from the skill. We all can agree firebrand might be sometimes too tanky or the boon output might be too high but the skill is on a 12 sec long cooldown. It's just single aegis and it probably wont change how tanky the class is but it will for sure remove a lot of fun ways and gameplay changing aspects it delivers, at least in pve. A well timed aegis for the team might sometimes prevent a wipe or a member of the team dying. The skill wont be probably used twice while holding the tome so lets face it: it would be used once a minute or saved for a risky situation. It's also the only skill in f3 book that actually shares aegis to allies. Earlier in the past aegis was part of the tome autoattack skill "Unflinching Charge" and I do agree it was too strong. Firebrand should have at least have 1 aegis in its support book and im pretty sure it wouldn't make it too overpowered. If the skill does really need a nerf I would suggest either halving the aegis duration or decreasing the toughness gained to 200 in pve and 150 in wvw. Even splitting the Aegis duration in WvW and PvE gamemodes would be enough if the skill doesn't need a nerf in pve. In all the skill provides a gameplay aspect and removing aegis would make the skill be pretty useless/boring in pve.

[Noe.8032]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:

• Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.

As one of the apparent few Scrapper mains left in PvP this change is so ignorant it legitimately angers me. Because this isn't a WvW specific change it's a general change. You're exclusively making this class less interesting while simultaneously contradicting its own design all to give it an asinine reveal it used to have.

As a bunker and support class Chemical Field actually allows Scrappers to help reduce enemy healing and hinder enemy downs which benefits the entire team indirectly which is the point of support. It also is a combo field which is the mechanic Scrapper is supposed to be built around is using combo fields. The developers are saying they want to take away one of the few synergies the Scrapper's gimmick actually has with combo fields, also taking away their team support via lessening enemy heals; and replace it with an extremely situational reveal that has no combo field synergy and used to be something the Scrapper had anyways before they arbitrarily took it away and replaced it with the currently near useless gutted version of the Function Gyro which barely functions in actual practice if you bothered testing it even at all.

Also detection pulse is basically worthless in PVE where at least poison and weakness combo fields were actually useful for something.

Taking away one of the support abilities a support class has, and taking away one of the mechanical gimmicks a mechanical gimmick class has; to replace it with a situational reveal that barely benefits anyone as the main classes that currently even use stealth are Deadeye and stealthbomb Holosmith. At least in PvP, which will be affected by this as there is no WvW exclusive disclaimer on this change it's going to be a universal change.

I've never been one to resent developers over stuff like this but seeing them make such a blatantly ignorant and fundamentally contradictory design suggestion to a class they've already extremely damaged by refusing to properly balance its many useless traits and the worthless Whirl and Function gyro; on the only class I genuinely like playing just feels personally insulting. I genuinely do not believe they play their own game. Because if they played their own game they would know their new version of Function gyro is literally unusable in most scenarios yet they shipped it anyway. And they would know this specific new change absurdly contradicts two separate roles the Scrapper has; support and combo synergy, in favour of an ability that is only useful against specific classes in competitive modes.

After the awful failed hype reveal I was still kind of on board hoping to see what changes would still be made to the class balancing. I was hoping Scrapper would maybe get some buffs even if the developers don't understand how to balance the class, maybe at least it would get some little buffs. Instead I see this which is them straight up making a design choice that is literally contradicting the nature of the class in favour of basically nothing. Unbelievable, enough for me to type up this pointless rant which is generally something I don't do but I legitimately feel so insulted to see developers being so incompetent and incompetent in a way that actually damages my gameplay.

Because if this goes through instead of having a weakness and anti-heal combo field I'm gon'na have a useless detection pulse I'll use maybe once every twenty matches all because whoever is balancing PvP literally isn't playing the game. Function gyro is useless now and if you tested it even once you'd of obviously seen that but you didn't and now it's useless while also replacing what used to be the elite toolbelt skill. So now it's time to take away another one of the Scrapper's abilities and replace it with something useless; again.

Absolute incompetence, if this goes live there's a good chance I will just stop playing if the developers are straight up going to devolve my main class to be less interesting and more shallow to play as while also being even less useful then it already is in PvP. This is technically such a small change yet it brings such colossal insight into how little the developers understand their own game. There's no point in humoring this game anymore if the developers so obviously don't know what they're doing.

[Obtena.7952]

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:Greetings fellow Tyrians,

...Sincerely,GW2 Systems Team

No offense, but at this point, you people should know better how to communicate this ... you should be presenting higher level ideas about why you want to make these changes to go along with these nitty gritty skill change details. I wished everyone in this thread was responding with a "WTH do you want to do THIS" ... because it's exactly what they should be doing. These details are completely useless if we don't know the motivation behind why they are being made.

For example I would prefer to see a "We want to tone down the passive defensive of Scourge in WvW because we observe SOMETHING and the way we are thinking about doing that is to reduce barriers from Sand Cascade and Sand Flare". I'm not saying to open the debate with players for whether this is the correct direction or not ... but you need to provide context to us IF you want our GOOD feedback for these kinds of ideas. No, I wouldn't want my barriers reduced in WVW for Scourge, but because I don't know your motivation for doing it, I can't give you ANY MORE feedback than this. Your presentation is lacking and that means everyone's feedback is trivial.

[Deaths Sensei.5317]

please, for the love of god, don't touch engineer, its in such a good place right now. If you nerf it down it has no place in wvw anymore and will just not be used again.

[Clownmug.8357]

Oh, there's a little focus on smallscale WvW stuff this time around, like improved reveal skills and that random change to Long Range Shot, I guess that's nice. Maybe take a look at Holosmith and how that over-performs in smallscale too? It's got a lot of everything in one package: lots of damage, lots of cc, lots of healing, high mobility, stealth, invulnerability, etc. Take a look at those cooldowns especially, you know, like 2s Holo-leap... Don't know why that's a thing, but for some reason a comparatively weak skill like Call to Anguish exists with its 35 energy + 5s cooldown. That seems a little biased to me.

[Mr Pin.6728]

The change to longbow ranger wouldn't open up new options to the class, it would simply remove the class from play. Ranger, despite its burst already has 0 impact on group play in wvw. It has no other alternative builds to play with the exception being maybe boon beast but that would exclude any core builds. Druid is a joke at this point. So why remove the class? Its not a game changer, doesn't provide substantive group or zerg support and reflects, blocks invulns and other projectile hate skills are already rampant to the extreme. That change reeks of weak kneed capitulation to whiners who still feel that rangers should be free bags.

[b k.1648]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Mesmer

• Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.
• Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
• Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
• Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.
• Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

I run a Power Block / CI burst mesmer in small group combat (<5 people) most often, so that would affect me directly. CI does need to be changed because it's a bit abusive as it stands, but I'm not entirely sure that reducing a cooldown on one of my weapons would actually accomplish anything useful, and might encourage me to drop the Chaos line entirely. It sounds amazing in PvE, where I can land AoE interrupts more reliably, but in WvW... maybe if it also grants a defensive boon such as vigor/aegis/regen?

I would like to see it remain possible to run an effective CC / counterplay-based build, but perhaps with some clearer trade-offs to prevent being able to run high power/condi DPS on the same character. For Mantra of Distraction, in particular, it can be useful to be able to interrupt a player you're not facing as a defensive action. Is there some scope for adding the ability to target behind you to a defensive trait, such as Restorative Mantras in the Inspiration line?

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:

Guardian

• Tome of Courage, Chapter 2 - Daring Challenge: This skill grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 5 - Unbroken Lines: This skill no longer grants aegis or retaliation

The entire point of Virtue of Courage is Aegis so I’m confused to see it removed entirely from the Tome version. It should be left on Chapter 5 at the very least given the longer cooldown and more impactful nature of the Chapter 5 type skills. Also given the long cooldown of Tome of Courage itself there should be some sort of great benefit to it. Protection and some increased toughness on chapter 5 I don’t think are enough.

With the removal of Aegis entirely from Tome of Courage there would be considerably less reason to use the Tome at all, especially in PvE or PVP as well, and I don’t think FB needs nerfs in either of those game modes. I know this thread is mostly WvW focused, but these changes will have unintended negative impacts upon FB in other game modes, which is never good. (Just look at what happened to Revenant for a year after the WvW focused facet of Nature change years ago).

Revenant

• Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.

I think this is a fine change for WvW, but even with the higher damage numbers in PvP and PvE it will certainly have a negative effect on the weapon in those modes. Which btw its presence in those modes is pretty much non-existent entirely; it has VERY low dps in PvE and also, with the huge amount of Might nerfs in PvP for Revenant, does low damage as well. I want to play Hammer Revenant more as I’ve loved it since HoT Beta, but with all the changes Rev has received over the past several years (nerfs) this weapon keeps being left behind entirely and just vastly underperforming outside of WvW zergs. With these changes I will probably not play Hammer Rev again, unless in a Zerg scenario, which is too bad because I did play it in PVP since HoT release. Please take this into consideration and help balance this weapon better in other modes as well.

[monkcrabswamp.9315]

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:Elementalist, The forgotten class of Gw2

Shhhh, we don't need any more nerfs.

[DoritoGod.5817]

Chrom main here.Firebrand changes would encourage spamming auto attacks and building prot then leaving asap. Maybe toss one resistance field before leaving. Removing the aegis actually removes all the tactical purpose of the kit and would encourage just spamming as many skills as possible and getting out asap since there's no point to stick in it. So yea I disapprove.

[cobbah.3102]

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:Greetings fellow Tyrians,

We've been thinking about implementing the following changes and wanted to share them with you to hear your thoughts and feedback. We’re aiming to bring into line some of the more dominant builds and compositions of the current WvW meta so that new options can be brought to the table, so the bulk of the changes shared here are WvW-centric. This is not the full list of changes that are being considered for the next balance update.

This is not a call for general profession feedback. Here are a few questions to think about while looking over the potential changes:

• Would your gameplay change as a result?
• Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?
• Are you looking forward to these potential changes?
• What are your concerns with this set of changes?
• What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?

With those types of questions in mind here's some of what we're looking at.

Engineer

• Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.
• Purge Gyro: Reduce the number of cleansing pulses from 5 to 3 in WvW.
• Sneak Gyro: Increase the cooldown of this ability from 45 to 75 seconds in WvW.

Guardian

• Sanctuary: Increase number of enemies that can be knocked back by this skill from 10 to 20 before it expires.
• Tome of Resolve, Chapter 2 - Radiant Recovery: The existing split from PvP of cleansing 2 conditions is brought to WvW as well. This ability would continue to cleanse 3 conditions in PvE.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 2 - Daring Challenge: This skill grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 5 - Unbroken Lines: This skill no longer grants aegis or retaliation.

Mesmer

• Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.
• Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
• Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
• Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.
• Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

Necromancer

• Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
• Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
• Sand Cascade: Reduce the barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP.
• Sand Flare: Reduced the barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW.

Ranger

• Long Range Shot: Reduce the damage range of this skill from 0.7-0.9 to 0.65-0.75 in WvW only.

Revenant

• Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.
• Gaze of Darkness: This skill would reveal stealthed enemies up to 600 range away in addition to striking enemies within its 360 radius.

Warrior

• Charge: This skill would only removes movement impairing conditions and then increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% in addition to its previous effects. Increase swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill becomes a blast finisher.
• Call to Arms: Removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. Grants barrier in addition to vigor.
• Sight Beyond Sight: Increase the radius of this ability to reveal hidden enemies up to 600 range away.
• Quick Breathing: Thinking of kicking re-working it a bit to pair with the warhorn skill changes so they feel more cohesive. Continues to increase number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon instead of reducing the cooldown (Fury for Charge and Resistance for Call to Arms). Grant +120 Concentration.

We look forward to seeing your thoughts and feedback!

Sincerely,GW2 Systems Team

Maybe it is just an oversight here but cannot see anything about "Thief/Deadeye" deletion and getting rid of "perma stealth" or stealth fix at all ,that is my only bugbear in the game STEALTH needs to be remedied or more reveals for the classes that have minimal reveal. Being an Old player and I mean age old not just the 7 Years in the game the stealth mechanic is the one thing I have an issue with. Not a L2P issue I am just a point and click player do not have the luxury of nimble fingers or what not.

[niconori.7235]

Strongly disagree with ranger change. Rangers are useless in wvw group play already and with all the abundant amount of reflects in the game you barely hit anything with your attacks and there's also LOS so how does it need a nerf? Rangers need the auto attacks to generate downs or finish the downs and it's only doable if they are out of position. Even if downed, they have a good chance to get ressed up by the rest of the group if there is decent team play.

In melee range, a ranger is totally useless. Every class demolishes a ranger easily in melee range, and that's fair to me, because a ranger is supposed to fight from range. AND YET, you still want to nerf the only thing a ranger is capable of? This is just ridiculous. There are so many tools to get close to a ranger, stealth, blinks, leaps, pulls.. so so many, it's a L2P issue really, and smarter players know this and always focus the rangers first.

Every class is borderline OP and has things only they are capable of. Necros with their boons corrupt, Guardians with their irreplaceable role in wvw as frontline, thieves with their exceptional gank ability and still able to get away with evades and stealths. Mesmers and engs are similar to thieves but can also be useful in group play. Warriors and revs have multiple roles as well. And what does a ranger have? Yup, you guessed it. Range. That's it. So I strongly disagree with that change.

In fact, rangers need a change for Marksmanship minor traits. They are all useless after the first few seconds in combat. I hope Anet introduces a way to reapply them in combat, or just give them an overhaul on the whole spec like moving current traits into minor and introducing new ones.

[Blackarps.1974]

@DoritoGod.5817 said:Chrom main here.Firebrand changes would encourage spamming auto attacks and building prot then leaving asap. Maybe toss one resistance field before leaving. Removing the aegis actually removes all the tactical purpose of the kit and would encourage just spamming as many skills as possible and getting out asap since there's no point to stick in it. So yea I disapprove.

I agree mostly. FB definitely needs to be toned down but Anet needs to keep in mind that FB is 100% about the tomes as support. Being able to go through them almost like engineer kits should be how it flows (not instant cast times or cooldowns between kits but how you rotate through them given the situation at hand). If the skills are going to be weakened, the cooldowns of the tomes themselves should be as well. This will prevent people from just popping their F3 then one skill and dropping out of F3.

[draxynnic.3719]

With regard to the questions asked:

My biggest concern is that removing all of the aegis from Tome of Courage pretty much kills all synergy between the Firebrand and aegis traits (which core guardian has a lot of). This is where a bit of information regarding the motivation for the changes would come in handy - if this is the intended result, than I'd mourn the loss of build potential and work with what's left. If it's not intended, though, it might result in an unintended over-nerf, and it might be better to come up with an alternate method of paring it down.

[Heck.4231]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Greetings fellow Tyrians,

We've been thinking about implementing the following changes and wanted to share them with you to hear your thoughts and feedback. We’re aiming to bring into line some of the more dominant builds and compositions of the current WvW meta so that new options can be brought to the table, so the bulk of the changes shared here are WvW-centric. This is not the full list of changes that are being considered for the next balance update.

This is not a call for general profession feedback. Here are a few questions to think about while looking over the potential changes:

• Would your gameplay change as a result?
• Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?
• Are you looking forward to these potential changes?
• What are your concerns with this set of changes?
• What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?

With those types of questions in mind here's some of what we're looking at.

Engineer

• Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.
• Purge Gyro: Reduce the number of cleansing pulses from 5 to 3 in WvW.
• Sneak Gyro: Increase the cooldown of this ability from 45 to 75 seconds in WvW.

Having Detection Pulse added back will be a great boon in group play against organized groups in WvW, Chemcial Field really served no purpose in fights besides poisoning your enemy which would be cleansed immediately anyways.

Purge Gyro itself really isn't the problem, and changing it wouldn't really stop people from using it. The real issues is Anti-Toxin runes and Purity of Purpose Grand Master Trait in Alchemy. The combination of these two will make any cleansing skill usable even if it was just one condition removed. Instead of looking into nerfing this gyro looking at the Rune and Purity of Purpose work together would be better.

Having a longer cooldown on Sneak Gyro will only make it more exhausting to push and will make the Pirate Ship meta in wvw more prevalent. Pirate Shiping is pretty much one of the more annoying fighting styles in WvW at least in my opinion, and the lack of aggression in pushing your enemies make fighting take longer and feel stale. It will cause Rev, and Necros to still stay at the top in the Meta because of how strong they are at 900-1200 range against cluster of people.

Guardian

• Sanctuary: Increase number of enemies that can be knocked back by this skill from 10 to 20 before it expires.
• Tome of Resolve, Chapter 2 - Radiant Recovery: The existing split from PvP of cleansing 2 conditions is brought to WvW as well. This ability would continue to cleanse 3 conditions in PvE.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 2 - Daring Challenge: This skill grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.
• Tome of Courage, Chapter 5 - Unbroken Lines: This skill no longer grants aegis or retaliation.

Sanctuary changes are fine, but will probably not be used by Firebrands in the current meta. The support kit is too strong to replace anything on your skill bar. For group play its not great but for small man fights theirs potential.

Nerfing Radiant Recovery seems extreme but probably necessary. Removing 3 conditions is sort of overkill but on a 4 second cooldown and in fights your using more than just this skill from your tome, so at most you use it 2-3 times while its active. Having people remove less condis can potentially bring back condi builds in organized group fights but with Anti-Toxin Rune and Purity of purpose from scrapper it unlikely.

This nerf to Daring Challenge will just make people not even use the skill. Your better off spamming 1 for the stab than granting yourself retaliation in group fights.

Unbroken Lines nerf Is ok but, I think granting just yourself the Aegis would be good. People will still use this skill for the toughness + protection boon spread but its not as valuable as Tome of Courage #1 & #4.

Mesmer

• Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.
• Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
• Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
• Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.
• Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

Mesmer has been in such a rough patch this year since all the nerfs. Support Chrono was literally the only class you could play in groups and be useful. The death of Boon Spread from Signet of Inspiration to the death of Chornomancer with its requirements of needing clones to active shatters make it hard to play at all. You are relegated into a Pull and Veil spot where you can literally be naked as long as you run Focus and Veil and be as effective as if your fully geared.

The nerf to Illusion of Life seems pointless. Its usefulness even at 75 seconds wasn't that great and half the time if your group is decent enough people won't go down.

Power Break/Lock Line of Sight I can understand, but this hurts roaming mirage a lot. Its really only used in power mirage builds and it's a high risk class to play. Making you face your target will make playing it so much more harder, and a good chance that it will kill roaming burst mirage.

Choas Storm changes aren't great. The randomness of it made this skill more useful than not. Having the option to choose when you stun may look great at first, but that chaos itself in having more potential random stuns works well for mesmer and how it actually plays. It will further push mesmer out in a bad way in group play.

CI changes seem interesting, but messes with any type of interrupt build in WvW. Using this skill on the enemy backline with focus pulls or staff interrupts made mesmer have some decent utility but this change will make mesmer suffer slightly when it comes to enemy control.

Necromancer

• Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
• Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
• Sand Cascade: Reduce the barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP.
• Sand Flare: Reduced the barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW.

Feast of Corruption/Devouring Darkness I half understand and half don't. The damage being reduced I 100% agree with since it's main purpose isn't to deal damage as a power spec since so many power specs use Curses for the trait that gives you Devouring Darkness in groups. Curses should mostly be for the condi/hybrid condi builds and its purpose shouldn't be dealing extreme flat damage. Since wvw is plauged hard by boons and boon spread, nerfing it to 2 will make it more frustrating in organized group fights. Would necros still use it? Most likely since it still a decent skill but fights will be more annoying and unlike Axe 3 which can be used as an AoE with no targeting, Feast/Devouring you need to target your enemy, it can be blocked, it suffers from Line of Sight and can be used at further distances and fail.

Sand Cascade nerf doesn't seem relevant. Granting barrier to your group is helpful, but scales harder with healing. A power or cele builds will only give you enough barrier to absorb 1-2 hits regardless so a 33% nerf will still make it 1-2 hits anyways.

Sand Flare nerf is also irrelvant since 90% of necros wouldn't run this in groups. The only type of necro that would run this is Support Necros but noone even plays that in organized comps. You will see no change to gameplay at all.

Ranger

• Long Range Shot: Reduce the damage range of this skill from 0.7-0.9 to 0.65-0.75 in WvW only.

Great Change for roaming classes fighting against Rangers, but no change to group play.

Revenant

• Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.
• Gaze of Darkness: This skill would reveal stealthed enemies up to 600 range away in addition to striking enemies within its 360 radius.

I'm ok with CoR change, giving it static damage will make it easier to fight against since you could get hit by ridiculous numbers as a DPS in the back lines. This will allow more squishy DPS classes such as Ele to survive more on pushes instead of being 1 shot from CoR thats ramped up.

Love the Gaze change, this will be excellent for roaming and group play since it will allow you to tackle thieves solo and group pushes when your organized group.

Warrior

• Charge: This skill would only removes movement impairing conditions and then increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% in addition to its previous effects. Increase swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill becomes a blast finisher.
• Call to Arms: Removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. Grants barrier in addition to vigor.
• Sight Beyond Sight: Increase the radius of this ability to reveal hidden enemies up to 600 range away.
• Quick Breathing: Thinking of kicking re-working it a bit to pair with the warhorn skill changes so they feel more cohesive. Continues to increase number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon instead of reducing the cooldown (Fury for Charge and Resistance for Call to Arms). Grant +120 Concentration.

Like the changes to Charge. Just better overall.

Call to Arms changes makes this even better when you can remove damaging conditions and grant barrier + boons to yourself and allies.

Quick Breathing Changes are great. You don't see much sword/warhorn warriors much anymore. With these changes you could being back its usefulness in group play and create more of a semi aggressive group warrior that can do damage and back up support.

[Ultima.5318]

Agree with most everything besides mesmer, stop nerfing it already... it is already borderline useless in wvw now with the shatter changes

[Terrier.8732]

Thanks for the opportunity to comment Anet, and for giving WvW some individual focus in this area. It's great that the skills are split when necessary between PVE, PvP and WvW modes.I'd like to share my objections to the way thief operates in WvW. Recently I've been 1 shotted enough times (from stealth) that its getting pretty annoying. Checked combat logs to find that it truly is one-shotted.. 23-27K+ dmg.. in one shot, from stealthed thief, and then finished from stealth. This kind of abuse of the build really destroys the fun for many people. There is no counter, no way to respond, you don't even see it coming. Running around with 5 or 6 other people in a keep that has been successfully defended looking for a stealthed thief for 10+ minutes, laying reveal traps etc.. is not only annoying, it takes away from other activities. I mean, you know.. if you don't find and kill that guy, he's just going to solo the Lord and flip the keep anyway. Now they use the portals as well to evade, adn I've seen a few hacks into keeps using this too. Those have been reported appropriately by others. It's stupidly OP. No idea whether these guys are using macros on top or what, but it's really killing the gameplay for many people to have this kind of nonsense unaddressed. In PVE modes, I can see the mechanics here would be super useful. In competitive modes.. it's just a killer for morale. It's disappointing not to see this addressed in your proposed changes and I hope that it will not be overlooked.

[Conncept.7638]

My Little (Unpopular) Opinion

You should have stuck with the original balance plan around WvW, that it's warfare, not arena combat, IE, it's not supposed to be fair. You should be taking every advantage you can get; more numbers, cheap tactics, spam, stacking mechanics, and basically breaking the game in every way but hacking.

Classes have never approached being balanced in WvW and they are never going to. The WvW team should have spent the last seven years focusing on fine tuning core gameplay to encourage strategy and tactics, and expanding the gamemode to include more varied areas and objectives.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Aisling.5901 said:

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:

• Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.

As one of the apparent few Scrapper mains left in PvP this change is so ignorant it legitimately angers me. Because this isn't a WvW specific change it's a general change. You're exclusively making this class less interesting while simultaneously contradicting its own design all to give it an asinine reveal it used to have.

As a bunker and support class Chemical Field actually allows Scrappers to help reduce enemy healing and hinder enemy downs which benefits the entire team indirectly which is the point of support. It also is a combo field which is the mechanic Scrapper is supposed to be built around is using combo fields. The developers are saying they want to take away one of the few synergies the Scrapper's gimmick actually has with combo fields, also taking away their team support via lessening enemy heals; and replace it with an extremely situational reveal that has no combo field synergy and used to be something the Scrapper had anyways before they arbitrarily took it away and replaced it with the currently near useless gutted version of the Function Gyro which barely functions in actual practice if you bothered testing it even at all.

Also detection pulse is basically worthless in PVE where at least poison and weakness combo fields were actually useful for something.

Thinking on this...

What if the Detection Pulse was on function gyro instead of replacing one of the other skills?

It was something that concerned me that it was replacing a poison field that was useful in all game modes with a detect that's probably only useful against other players. Detection Pulse was historically a scrapper F5 - putting it on the new scrapper F5 would be a more elegant means of reinstating it without removing an existing option.

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

Revenant

• Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.

I think this is a fine change for WvW, but even with the higher damage numbers in PvP and PvE it will certainly have a negative effect on the weapon in those modes. Which btw its presence in those modes is pretty much non-existent entirely; it has VERY low dps in PvE and also, with the huge amount of Might nerfs in PvP for Revenant, does low damage as well. I want to play Hammer Revenant more as I’ve loved it since HoT Beta, but with all the changes Rev has received over the past several years (nerfs) this weapon keeps being left behind entirely and just vastly underperforming outside of WvW zergs. With these changes I will probably not play Hammer Rev again, unless in a Zerg scenario, which is too bad because I did play it in PVP since HoT release. Please take this into consideration and help balance this weapon better in other modes as well.

It might actually be a buff in sPvP, and maybe even PvE as well. The odds of getting a maximum-range hit in the often fairly cramped sPvP maps is pretty darn low, so increasing the close-range damage of CoR would probably be a buff in sPvP.

Not that rev hammer gets used in sPvP more than once in a blue moon anyway, but if anything this change might actually help it.

[SLOTH.5231]

+1 Make the changes! Rangers stop crying you are one of the best bursting classes in WvW and you get free bags all the time so shut up.

[anduriell.6280]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:This is not a call for general profession feedback. Here are a few questions to think about while looking over the potential changes:

• Would your gameplay change as a result?
• Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?
• Are you looking forward to these potential changes?
• What are your concerns with this set of changes?
• What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?

With those types of questions in mind here's some of what we're looking at.We look forward to seeing your thoughts and feedback!

Sincerely,GW2 Systems Team

Hi @SystemsTeam.I main ranger and scourge in WvW so i'll be straight with my answers from my point of view.Would your gameplay change as a result?The changes aren't tackling the actual issues with the balance in WvW, so no it won't change.Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?It will make no changes. Those aren' the potential issues.Are you looking forward to these potential changes?Not really.What are your concerns with this set of changes?Meta classes are still untouched in their mechanics which make them so broken. Unused classes will be still unused. The nerfs will polarize even more the scene towards the the meta trinity (FB/Scourge/Herald) making the game to feel even more monotonous and boring.

What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?Nothing really. The only expected change will be:

high mobility classes will be more forgiving as the ranger won't be able to finish off when a mesmer/thief/ele make a mistake. Now they'll be able to yolo anybody and troll them forever with continuous dissengage teleporting around.The almost non existenting roaming scene in wvw will suffer for this. It will be no fun to move around the map if not in a zerg with one of the trinity build.

You explicity pointed out you are not asking for feedback other than this, so i won't give any.

Good luck.

[Ceistebi.4023]

Engineer is pretty okay where it is atm, the only reason it was buffed so much earlier (and then nerfed for some reason) is because scourge has consistently been slapped on the wrist instead of being nerfed like it needs to be. The proposed scourge changes are a good start, but when you then also nerf engineer to cleanse fewer condis you essentially cancel out the scourge changes. I'm tired of the condi vomit-->cleanse-->vomit-->resist/cleanse--> vomit that happens in every fight because scourges just corrupt, vomit, and spam barrier. I wish my weaver could push out that much indirect damage and support all at once. As for the other changes, idk cause I don't play those classes in wvw.

[niconori.7235]

"high mobility classes will be more forgiving as the ranger won't be able to finish off when a mesmer/thief/ele make a mistake. Now they'll be able to yolo anybody and troll them forever with continuous dissengage teleporting around.The almost non existenting roaming scene in wvw will suffer for this. It will be no fun to move around the map if not in a zerg with one of the trinity build. "

^ This!

[DuckDuckBOOM.4097]

Overall the changes look promising. The new CI has me really exited to play mesmer again but I have major balance concerns.

1) Would CI work similarly to improvisation (recharge 1 random skill 2-5 regardless of whether or not it is actually on CD?) or would it only attempt to recharge skills already on CD.1b) If I unequipped my main hand weapon (or offhand). Will it only recharge skill 4/5 (or 2/3)?2) Would there be an ICD on it?3) Do successful AoE interrupts proc it multiple times?4) Would a skill be able to recharge itself with CI procs? Staff 5, GS5, shield 5, torch 5 and pistol 5 come to mind. Pistol 5 cannot. I "know" this because duelist discipline doesn't let pistol 5 recharge itself: skill interrupts before it technically goes on CD. I suspect GS5 and the new staff 5 would be similar. Torch 5 should be able to recharge itself potentially 2-10 times with chronophantasma and aoe. Unlike every other skill here, it's a phantasm which makes it less problematic in WvW but I still see a potential "toxic" build interaction for PvP with CP, CS and SotE. Shield 5 would be able to recharge itself: it starts the CD before the CC happens.

Would it change the way I play? Yes. I would try to make a full dire rune of perplexity chrono on day 1 of that patch. Run off-hand shield (and maybe no sword/scepter) full on captain america shield tossing. Dueling/Chaos/Chrono. Spam that shield 5 for interrupts and blind, slow, confusion procs and shield 4 blocks with a very low CD.Would it actually be good? Really depends on how you answer those questions.

[Kamina.6108]

Please, don't try to balance WvW if you don't really know how. None of these changes have the potential to change the meta for the better, these are just some nerfs that'll make playing the classes feel less rewarding. The Guardian/Firebrand for example has always been, and even after these changes will still be the pillar of each group, since we need a reliable source of stability. Provide an alternative, give another class a rework, look at skills that have been worthless for a long time and change these for the better. Don't rather randomly nerf classes. Listen to experienced WvW players, please.