Potential Future Balance Changes - WvW

[apharma.3741]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

• Nerfing only Scourge will result in boons and cleanses being too strong

This is a real concern and definitely something we thought about when deciding on which changes to make for this update. What it really comes down to is the question of how long we want to chase our own tails right now. If we nerf Scourge, then maybe we need to nerf boons and cleanses, then maybe we need to nerf conditions and corrupts, and on and on we go. Now this is one of the goals of the future patch, but that is going to take longer than the time we have for this balance cycle.

The alternative here is to just make no changes until the future update is ready, but we don’t think this is the right thing to do. We know Scourge is a problem, so we’re going to make an adjustment in the short-term. If it does end up that Scourge was keeping things in check and those things start to overperform, we do have opportunity to make slight adjustments out of the normal balance cadence, but ideally we want to spend as much time as possible working on the patch where we are trying to address everything at once.

• Why not do the proposed PvP splits in WvW as well, for the sake of roamers?

The PvP changes are targeted specifically at builds that are overperforming in PvP. Looking specifically at roaming, we don’t see anything as too egregious. Certainly everything is extremely powerful, but that is the longer-term thing we’re trying to address. For now we’re trying to balance things around the existing power level while we look ahead to addressing the issue that is the existing power level. If we brought the PvP changes to WvW right now, we would probably need to do additional changes to a bunch of roaming builds. Similar to the Scourge changes this is something that we thought about, but we want to put more time into the future update instead. These changes make sense for both competitive modes in the long-term, but now may not be the right time to make them in WvW. We’ll talk about this a bit more internally, but the main concern right now would be pushing these things out of viability instead of bringing them back in line.

That's fine, thanks for addressing the small scale aspect of WvW where 1-10 v 1-10 does happen and is a complete mess. I hope users can see big picture here and look forward to the big power level restructuring.

One thing I'm wondering about is how this will translate and affect PvE? I'm guessing there will be a large power disparity between competitive and PvE modes at some point that maybe looked at when you've got a handle on competitive modes but that's very long term.

[Vegeta.2563]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

• Nerfing only Scourge will result in boons and cleanses being too strong

This is a real concern and definitely something we thought about when deciding on which changes to make for this update. What it really comes down to is the question of how long we want to chase our own tails right now. If we nerf Scourge, then maybe we need to nerf boons and cleanses, then maybe we need to nerf conditions and corrupts, and on and on we go. Now this is one of the goals of the future patch, but that is going to take longer than the time we have for this balance cycle.

The alternative here is to just make no changes until the future update is ready, but we don’t think this is the right thing to do. We know Scourge is a problem, so we’re going to make an adjustment in the short-term. If it does end up that Scourge was keeping things in check and those things start to overperform, we do have opportunity to make slight adjustments out of the normal balance cadence, but ideally we want to spend as much time as possible working on the patch where we are trying to address everything at once.

One of my concerns was that with Devouring Darkness corruption being reduced from 2 to 1. That would also affect the Torment you could apply. Being that it only applied when corrupting a boon.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

hey cal, maybe something to consider long term when balancing condition damage. perhaps it would be better to give every class just 1 or 2 damage condis that they can burst with, along with 1 or 2 debilitating condis they can survive with. the biggest issue when it comes to condi damage vs cleanses balance are the amount of cover condis. naturally if there are too many cover condis in the game then cleanses should be buffed to keep up. that's a fine short term solution but it only leads to more bloat.

lastly, and I know I've already mentioned it before (but all this feedback, man!) please take a look at the condi + boon conversion tables. they are quite out of whack.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Nerfing necro's boon corrupt ability is like trying to put out fire with gasoline. It'll only add to real problem which is boon overspam, by having only profession that can keep it in check in zerg setting removed from meta or at least crippled.

The real issue here is that boons and corrupts are not designed for zerg pvp situations. New mechanics should be introduced, before messing with necro's boon corrupt potential. Because if you do you'll either have everyone in wvw running with maxed boons, and hardly any counter to it, or conversly you'll see necros overtaking wvw in order to copensate deficiencies in boon removal/corrupt on a necro with increasing overally number of necros in a group.

[Kiroshima.8497]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

• Nerfing only Scourge will result in boons and cleanses being too strong

This is a real concern and definitely something we thought about when deciding on which changes to make for this update. What it really comes down to is the question of how long we want to chase our own tails right now. If we nerf Scourge, then maybe we need to nerf boons and cleanses, then maybe we need to nerf conditions and corrupts, and on and on we go. Now this is one of the goals of the future patch, but that is going to take longer than the time we have for this balance cycle.

The alternative here is to just make no changes until the future update is ready, but we don’t think this is the right thing to do. We know Scourge is a problem, so we’re going to make an adjustment in the short-term. If it does end up that Scourge was keeping things in check and those things start to overperform, we do have opportunity to make slight adjustments out of the normal balance cadence, but ideally we want to spend as much time as possible working on the patch where we are trying to address everything at once.

• Why not do the proposed PvP splits in WvW as well, for the sake of roamers?

The PvP changes are targeted specifically at builds that are overperforming in PvP. Looking specifically at roaming, we don’t see anything as too egregious. Certainly everything is extremely powerful, but that is the longer-term thing we’re trying to address. For now we’re trying to balance things around the existing power level while we look ahead to addressing the issue that is the existing power level. If we brought the PvP changes to WvW right now, we would probably need to do additional changes to a bunch of roaming builds. Similar to the Scourge changes this is something that we thought about, but we want to put more time into the future update instead. These changes make sense for both competitive modes in the long-term, but now may not be the right time to make them in WvW. We’ll talk about this a bit more internally, but the main concern right now would be pushing these things out of viability instead of bringing them back in line.

Understandable problem that originates from HoT design choices of more everything from players.

Personally, I would like to see more combo finisher effectiveness come back while nerfing the effectiveness of player skills. Then make it more rewarding to combo on other player fields than your own (since it is more difficult to set up).

Blasts should be the core of boons and sustain for WvW as the strict positioning of fields lets engagements have an ebb and flow. You buff on start, clash, then pull away for sustain. Or maybe the commander thinks he can go for a kill by pushing the enemy stack instead of going for his own.

This also brings value to multiple classes for bringing different fields to the table. Ele brings multiple fields covering the new Earth Field (protection), as well as classics like Lightning/Fire/Water/Ice. Necromancer Dark Fields will be great for aoe resistance against other condi comps. Mesmers running Null Field or Feedback (or chrono wells) can help contribute to team alacrity. Guardians keep your offensive pressure with Light Field regeneration. Thieves help counter aggression with retal (from poison) or stealth (from smoke). Rangers and Engineers bring a variety of fields to the table, and you can adjust based on your need. Revenant... well they have dark fields too I guess? Warrior is the workhouse class rocking Warhorn for double blasts on a weapon, as well as Hammer for Earthshaker so you can blast aggressively.

PROPOSED ADJUSTEMENTS

Tone down boon application and duration of all player skills. A lot. Potency and Duration greatly nerfed.(For Example, Empower reduced to 2 might per pulse from 4, 10 second duration from 12)

Boons from combo fields stack infinitely, ignoring any and all stack limits. This includes might. AOE combo finisher table adjusted. Stat potency on own combo fields reduced by 33%, stat potency on other player fields increased by 33%.

Fields would be adjusted to no longer grant their current effects except for Water and Smoke, instead granting boons.

(New) Earth Field: AOE Protection, 3 seconds.Lightning Field: AOE Swiftness, 6 seconds.Ethereal Field: AOE Alacrity, 3 seconds.Ice Field: AOE Stability, 1 stack, 10 seconds.Fire Field: AOE Might, 2 stacks. 15 seconds.Light Field: AOE regeneration. 6 seconds.Water Field: AOE Healing. HP ratio increased.Poison Field: AOE Retaliation. 3 seconds.Smoke Field: AOE Stealth. 3 seconds.Dark Field: AOE Resistance, 3 seconds.

As a side effect of the removal of AOE Auras, all auras from Leap finishers have their duration extended to 6 seconds, and the Powerful Auras trait on Elementalist is buffed to a 6 second duration and 900 radius for ease of use.

[Coldtart.4785]

Maybe once all the scourges get over being nerfed they'll swap back to reaper and realise they should've done that over a year ago.

[DeadlySynz.3471]

@Cal Cohen.2358

Thanks for looking into things. The easiest test for you (or those you're working with) to see what's over performing, get into a party on whichever servers you guys are on, turn off the grid view and go into battle. Watch the boon application vs the condition application. Watch how fast boons are applied and how long they stay on for. Watch how often boons vanish in place of conditions, and watch how many conditions are applied and how long they stay on for.

The answer is pretty clear on what's over performing and whats dominating (and which class is causing the domination problem). With regards to making changes, Anet traditionally makes a change (which most people never agree with but that's beside the point), then leaves the change active for months without addressing it, even if it's bugged, over-powered or under-powered (Rev Hammer right now is a good example of this, and how long will it remain bugged before fixed). If Anet makes a change and it isn't working out (players will be able to tell you within a day or 2), Anet needs to jump on it within a day or 2 to address it. For example, if the proposed scourge changes go through, and the general feed is it made things worse (which is what likely will happen), Anet needs to jump on that and revert it within a day or 2. Better yet if the pendulum swings in the opposite direction and boon application takes a significant hit to see what the impact is. If it's better one way or the other, keep it; if it heavily disrupts it in either direction for the bad, revert things back to normal until another option is found.

[Nimon.7840]

@"Cal Cohen.3527"What do you intend to give back for scourge?

The proposed changes will approximately half scourges dmg output but the class doesn't get anything back?

Not even support options?

Also: what do you intend to do with the insane amount of boon spam?Does this get addressed with the same patch?

If not this might lead to different things:

1. Zergs would need even more scourges to deal with those boons
2. People might play reaper instead and then next qq is about reaper being too strong because it corrupts boons and has a (almost useless) op second health bar.
3. People will spam strong dmg classes like burnguards, revs and eles, which is also extremely antifun to play against if stacked.

Scourge may be one problem, but it's not the main problem in wvw.The problem lies much deeper.

• player mentality
• ability to stack classes
• design decisions in the past

To name a few.

Let me give one example:Guard.Guard has been a staple in wvw since I joined the game 4 years ago (minimum of 1 guard per group, some time ago you even looked for 2 guards per group, that was, before firebrand got introduced).Now it's also supper strong in endgame pve, both fractals and raids (I'd say it's overpowered compared to other classes, cause there's 6 different builds that are either meta or super good: condi firebrand, condi quickness firebrand, power quickness firebrand, heal (quickness) firebrand, Dragonhunter, healtank (quickness) firebrand. And maybe I even forgot core guard)And guard also was meta in spvp when I last played (well quite some time, but from some different pages I still see 2 very good guard builds for pvp)

While necro isn't really wanted in endgame pve. Nor is it super good in spvp right now from what I did read so far. And you are looking to make scourge feel and play super bad in the Only gamemode, where people aren't like "bah, a necro. Now we have to carry that player" or "let's not take that necro with us, it doesn't offer anything to the group, that other classes can't do better"

See. We talking about fundamental problems here. And I feel sorry for you, that you have to take care of the competitive balance. And I guess you're not able to address these fundamental problems

[Bunter.3795]

From what I've read so far the concerns are that scourge can corrupt too many boons which leads to a heavy condition bomb especially in zerg v zerg fights. The proposed change reducing the number of corrupts leaves too many boons in play and may or may not drastically change the meta.

Why not make the change so that the number of boons removed is the same but reduce the condition bomb. What I mean is, for example, the skill devouring darkness where it's proposed to reduce the corrupts from 2 to 1. Why not have it still remove 2 boons but only corrupt one of them. The condition bomb will be lessened but the boon spam/removal will stay in the same ratio as it is now. You can test it then to see how things go before completely negating the boon removal allowing the possibility of more boon removal without corrupts. (I'm not sure on the ratios desired for boon application/removal as I normally play a roaming class.)

I'm not sure about the programming aspect of this and whether the extra calculation will cause lag or not but it's a suggestion that from what I read it answers both sides of the discussion, lessens the corrupt ability but still removes the boons which is a concern of many people.

[Voltekka.2375]

@God.2708 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@God.2708 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:It is saddening to see people being so ignorant about wvw blobscourge. That only shows that they dont play that class, they play it horrible wrong, or they dont know how to counter it. I mean, there is a comment here about people switching to gm trait "demonic lore" after the incoming nerfs. A trait that gives burn on torment every 3s on a single target. Amazing trait with powerstats. Synergizes well. Yeah.

People cry about scourge condi dmg, which is pretty much nonexistent cause blobscourges run powerstats. Cleanses are out of this world, mass cleanses. Boonconversion is where most condies come from, but people choose to ignore this, as well. There is a reason the meta has shifted from full trailblazer to power. If you still run full trailblazer in blobs, well...

Scourge needs support to survive. Otherwise, it is pure trash. Dies to a single rapidfire, a CoR plus 2 auto attacks. Barrier? It is used to sustain firebrands on pushes, so they can outsustain the enemy for scourges to be able to corrupt en masse, and for dps classes to deliver their spike. "but powerscourge has huge dmg!". No, it doesnt. A shroudspike is what, 1-2 times hit for 1.5-2.5k? (if you stay in that big Red pulsing AoE for more, farming flax may be ideal for you instead of wvw). "but so many scourges do much more dmg!" Welcome to the game, where stacking classes - any classes--with glass cannon stats can do mass damage. Support Firebrand can sustain a family of 8 alone. Spellbreaker is stronger than a german panzer and can solo push into enemy blobs. Scrapper has decent solo sustain. Revs as well. No other class needs support as much as scourge does, to be able to do what it is supposed to do. People call scourge a sitting duck for a reason.

And this comes down to the actual role of the scourge. Boonrips and booncorrupts. The more targets the merrier, the more boons removed the better. The number of targets nerf was justified, 10 targets is a tad too much. But nerfing the boonremoval even more, that shows (in my opinion, anyway) that people are ignorant. Stand your ground was buffed and affects 10 targets. Boon output is absurd. Firebrands, scrappers, healeles, revs dish out more boons than ever. Scourge has seen nerfs with unending corruption being changed to harbringer shroud (that noone uses, ever), devouring darkness was already nerfed (will get nerfed harder), a whole trait line (curses) that goes well with condi builds was taken only cause of corrupts. Maybe builds will change to spite soulreap again, who knows. Condi isnt coming back anyway, hasnt been even remotely reliable for a long time.

Anyway, in conclusion, in my opinion they should just have nerfed big shade target number. Boon spam should be looked into first. The elephant (it is more like a prehistoric mammoth, actually) in the room is firebrand. Thanks for your time, reading my rant.

I disagree. Anyone who thinks support is the issue in WvW doesn't understand how large scale fights work.Edit: Or what the community wants from large scale fights.

I am well aware that dps classes dictate the meta to a large degree. That doesnt mean that some aspects of the support classes arent broken, however.

Support, as a whole, is in a much healthier state than DPS. If we talk about sustain without bringing up stability it is in the best condition its been in since the advent of HoT and the 'triad' (Tank, DPS, Healer) attempted to get introduced to the game. Firebrand Tempest Scrapper, and to a lesser extent Spellbreaker all have unique additions in the role. Druid and Revenant are remarkably close to seeing use, really just needing small mechanical adjustments.

As a whole, I would disagree with anything about supports being 'broken' at the current juncture beyond stability being very mandatory and still very one class locked. Anti-toxin locked conditions out of the meta but that has been removed (and then bug fixed) and wasn't necessarily a single class issue (though scrapper obviously utilized better than most other classes).

Scourges aren't enabled by supports. Supports are enabled by scourges. A common theme in PvE raids is that melee builds deal much more damage than ranged builds. If you wanted to overcome the enemies boons and supports the obvious go to then, would be maximum damage and pressure. AKA Melee. Why does no one do this? Because scourges make it impossible by being very strong at range and absolutely devastating at melee. A shade spike isn't 1-2 hits for 1.5k-2.5k. A proper power scourge lands f1 with f2-f5 and hits for close to 10k instantly on 10 targets (soon to be 5). Its clear why this would be a problem for melee classes when combined with their ability to boon strip when the most important thing that allows melee to work at all is stability.

Now I see it echoed frequently that if supports were way weaker then scourges wouldn't work. This is technically true but it disregards the end point. We want a WvW where people benefit from grouping up and working together. The end state of supports getting nerfed is lots of solo roamers (typically soulbeasts or dead eyes) endlessly picking apart a zerg, till commanders get sick of it and cease to tag up, and WvW dies.

Boons self balance. I don't mind if everyone runs around with 12 boons up all the time. You will still kill people by dropping 10 players worth of damage in the same spot. The game mode will not survive corruptions and damage increasing (or support decreasing). Commanders will get sick of single players having a drastic and devastating effect on their unit and they'll just pack up and quit.

Nah. This is half true. If boons were a non issue, chrono wouldnt have been nerfed to oblivion. It would still be played. It isnt, not anymore.Scourge and spellbreaker were created with this exact role, to... Remove boons. Was it Anet's intention to counter permaprot+stab+regen+might+fury+every boon by increasing damage across the board along with boonremoval? Maybe. Did scourge overperform in boonremoval? Probably yes, thats why unending corruption isnt a thing anymore, thats why shroud skills had their cds doubled, thats why devouring darkness is getting nerfed more (i wouldnt be suprised if they nerf "path to corruption", as well). Rev and weaver still do absurd amounts of damage when compared to scourges from a distance. If a shade spike is (like you claim) 10k/target from a single scourge , weaver and rev is much, much more. "But this is what i am saying! Too much damage makes boons mandatory!" Well, then, remove boonremoval altogether.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

For group PvP it's probably a good idea to not balance anything else until scourge is addressed. The whole meta of zergs is AoE spam anyways.

[desu.2514]

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@God.2708 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@God.2708 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:It is saddening to see people being so ignorant about wvw blobscourge. That only shows that they dont play that class, they play it horrible wrong, or they dont know how to counter it. I mean, there is a comment here about people switching to gm trait "demonic lore" after the incoming nerfs. A trait that gives burn on torment every 3s on a single target. Amazing trait with powerstats. Synergizes well. Yeah.

People cry about scourge condi dmg, which is pretty much nonexistent cause blobscourges run powerstats. Cleanses are out of this world, mass cleanses. Boonconversion is where most condies come from, but people choose to ignore this, as well. There is a reason the meta has shifted from full trailblazer to power. If you still run full trailblazer in blobs, well...

Scourge needs support to survive. Otherwise, it is pure trash. Dies to a single rapidfire, a CoR plus 2 auto attacks. Barrier? It is used to sustain firebrands on pushes, so they can outsustain the enemy for scourges to be able to corrupt en masse, and for dps classes to deliver their spike. "but powerscourge has huge dmg!". No, it doesnt. A shroudspike is what, 1-2 times hit for 1.5-2.5k? (if you stay in that big Red pulsing AoE for more, farming flax may be ideal for you instead of wvw). "but so many scourges do much more dmg!" Welcome to the game, where stacking classes - any classes--with glass cannon stats can do mass damage. Support Firebrand can sustain a family of 8 alone. Spellbreaker is stronger than a german panzer and can solo push into enemy blobs. Scrapper has decent solo sustain. Revs as well. No other class needs support as much as scourge does, to be able to do what it is supposed to do. People call scourge a sitting duck for a reason.

And this comes down to the actual role of the scourge. Boonrips and booncorrupts. The more targets the merrier, the more boons removed the better. The number of targets nerf was justified, 10 targets is a tad too much. But nerfing the boonremoval even more, that shows (in my opinion, anyway) that people are ignorant. Stand your ground was buffed and affects 10 targets. Boon output is absurd. Firebrands, scrappers, healeles, revs dish out more boons than ever. Scourge has seen nerfs with unending corruption being changed to harbringer shroud (that noone uses, ever), devouring darkness was already nerfed (will get nerfed harder), a whole trait line (curses) that goes well with condi builds was taken only cause of corrupts. Maybe builds will change to spite soulreap again, who knows. Condi isnt coming back anyway, hasnt been even remotely reliable for a long time.

Anyway, in conclusion, in my opinion they should just have nerfed big shade target number. Boon spam should be looked into first. The elephant (it is more like a prehistoric mammoth, actually) in the room is firebrand. Thanks for your time, reading my rant.

I disagree. Anyone who thinks support is the issue in WvW doesn't understand how large scale fights work.Edit: Or what the community wants from large scale fights.

I am well aware that dps classes dictate the meta to a large degree. That doesnt mean that some aspects of the support classes arent broken, however.

Support, as a whole, is in a much healthier state than DPS. If we talk about sustain without bringing up stability it is in the best condition its been in since the advent of HoT and the 'triad' (Tank, DPS, Healer) attempted to get introduced to the game. Firebrand Tempest Scrapper, and to a lesser extent Spellbreaker all have unique additions in the role. Druid and Revenant are remarkably close to seeing use, really just needing small mechanical adjustments.

As a whole, I would disagree with anything about supports being 'broken' at the current juncture beyond stability being very mandatory and still very one class locked. Anti-toxin locked conditions out of the meta but that has been removed (and then bug fixed) and wasn't necessarily a single class issue (though scrapper obviously utilized better than most other classes).

Scourges aren't enabled by supports. Supports are enabled by scourges. A common theme in PvE raids is that melee builds deal much more damage than ranged builds. If you wanted to overcome the enemies boons and supports the obvious go to then, would be maximum damage and pressure. AKA Melee. Why does no one do this? Because scourges make it impossible by being very strong at range and absolutely devastating at melee. A shade spike isn't 1-2 hits for 1.5k-2.5k. A proper power scourge lands f1 with f2-f5 and hits for close to 10k instantly on 10 targets (soon to be 5). Its clear why this would be a problem for melee classes when combined with their ability to boon strip when the most important thing that allows melee to work at all is stability.

Now I see it echoed frequently that if supports were way weaker then scourges wouldn't work. This is technically true but it disregards the end point. We want a WvW where people benefit from grouping up and working together. The end state of supports getting nerfed is lots of solo roamers (typically soulbeasts or dead eyes) endlessly picking apart a zerg, till commanders get sick of it and cease to tag up, and WvW dies.

Boons self balance. I don't mind if everyone runs around with 12 boons up all the time. You will still kill people by dropping 10 players worth of damage in the same spot. The game mode will not survive corruptions and damage increasing (or support decreasing). Commanders will get sick of single players having a drastic and devastating effect on their unit and they'll just pack up and quit.

Nah. This is half true. If boons were a non issue, chrono wouldnt have been nerfed to oblivion. It would still be played. It isnt, not anymore.Scourge and spellbreaker were created with this exact role, to... Remove boons. Was it Anet's intention to counter permaprot+stab+regen+might+fury+every boon by increasing damage across the board along with boonremoval? Maybe. Did scourge overperform in boonremoval? Probably yes, thats why unending corruption isnt a thing anymore, thats why shroud skills had their cds doubled, thats why devouring darkness is getting nerfed more (i wouldnt be suprised if they nerf "path to corruption", as well). Rev and weaver still do absurd amounts of damage when compared to scourges from a distance. If a shade spike is (like you claim) 10k/target from a single scourge , weaver and rev is much, much more. "But this is what i am saying! Too much damage makes boons mandatory!" Well, then, remove boonremoval altogether.

i mained chrono, it was an issue, we could easily give most the zerg over a minute to 5 minutes+ of every single boon. that was pretty OP xD having everyboon now for much shorter duration isnt half as bad.

[bluberblasen.9684]

you will lose all people when you do not kill / delete / remove / rework:Stealth + evade + teleporting

I think you do not realize that all your large scale balance is useless when there is NO more players in this game because of your too late small scale balance.Without small scale players ( roamers ) there are ZERO zerg players. Because 80% of Zerg players are roamers when there is no " lamp" on. And all roamers do not like playing " hide and seek " ... apart from thief players.

Just rework thief ( core , dd, and dead eye ) you cant ignore them when they tickle you. You cant kill them because of evade, evade, evade, evade, teleport, teleport. stealth, stealth, teleport, evade............This is the worst game mechanic i ever saw.

Thank You for reading :)

[Kanines.2145]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Looking specifically at roaming, we don’t see anything as too egregious.

So you are telling the fact that nearly 70% of roamers are thieves with basically no risk-high reward gameplay is okay to you?That's sick there is absolutely no point to play any other class actually.

imho as veteran roamer these are main issues with some overperforming builds in smallscale roaming that make it tedious and unfun to play right now:

1. Endless disengage potential. Both low cooldown-high mobility skills and too easy access to stealth that has no counterplay (other than Herald practically).
2. Too high invulnerability/immunity/dodge frames uptime. There is no point to invest in any defensive stats since you can go full power while still being able to mitiage most damage. This creates next issue.
3. Too high single attack damage. Extremely low Time To Kill makes builds that have less access to invulnerability/dodge/disengage underperforming. They are simply too risky to be effective.

and some personal suggestions to resolve them that seems relatively easy to implement:

1. Make the mobility skills and teleports to have higher cooldown time when they don't hit the enemy and/or just decrease their range. Hardcap stealth uptime e.g make it possible to be in stealth only for 3 seconds every 30s interval.
2. It's actually partly resolved in sPvP balance version by nerfing some skills and traits like e.g. Endure Pain, Stoneform etc. Moreover: remove endurance regen food, remove sigil of energy.
3. It should be reviewed if this issue still exist after resolving the first two. Possibly just decrease some numbers in few outperforming skills.

There is also another lack of balance in smallscale group gameplay that some cheesy guys are abusing for a long time by having half of the team (like 3/6) playing Minstrel supports. This automatically cancels the chance for the victory of other similarly numerous groups that do not have at least 2 the same supports. But that's mainly due to Minstrel stats being too effective especially on Firebrand (probably that's why there is no such stats in sPvP).

[Dawdler.8521]

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:For group PvP it's probably a good idea to not balance anything else until scourge is addressed. The whole meta of zergs is AoE spam anyways.The meta is always going to be AoE.

Amyway, the weirdest thing with these arguments is... I think the last major patch fixed the scourge.

Yes really. No longer is there walking balls of red carpet death you cant even get close to. Is there AoE? Sure, alot of it. But I think the change to melee or range made all the difference in the world, whereas the 10 man cap is... unnoticable. Zerging is just so much better now than it was before.

But maybe I am wierd.

[miguelsil.6324]

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

• Nerfing only Scourge will result in boons and cleanses being too strong

This is a real concern and definitely something we thought about when deciding on which changes to make for this update. What it really comes down to is the question of how long we want to chase our own tails right now. If we nerf Scourge, then maybe we need to nerf boons and cleanses, then maybe we need to nerf conditions and corrupts, and on and on we go. Now this is one of the goals of the future patch, but that is going to take longer than the time we have for this balance cycle.

The alternative here is to just make no changes until the future update is ready, but we don’t think this is the right thing to do. We know Scourge is a problem, so we’re going to make an adjustment in the short-term. If it does end up that Scourge was keeping things in check and those things start to overperform, we do have opportunity to make slight adjustments out of the normal balance cadence, but ideally we want to spend as much time as possible working on the patch where we are trying to address everything at once.

• Why not do the proposed PvP splits in WvW as well, for the sake of roamers?

The PvP changes are targeted specifically at builds that are overperforming in PvP. Looking specifically at roaming, we don’t see anything as too egregious. Certainly everything is extremely powerful, but that is the longer-term thing we’re trying to address. For now we’re trying to balance things around the existing power level while we look ahead to addressing the issue that is the existing power level. If we brought the PvP changes to WvW right now, we would probably need to do additional changes to a bunch of roaming builds. Similar to the Scourge changes this is something that we thought about, but we want to put more time into the future update instead. These changes make sense for both competitive modes in the long-term, but now may not be the right time to make them in WvW. We’ll talk about this a bit more internally, but the main concern right now would be pushing these things out of viability instead of bringing them back in line.

Dear Cal, regarding roaming you need to have a look at the classes / builds that can safely one shot and then run away successfully with stealth / teleports /constant evades due to class mechanic / invulns while dealling damage (sounds like 2 specific classses i know) that being said a full zerker warrior having more survival than a full bunker class need to be addressed also, either make it so that the healling escalates from stats ( healling power ) or nerf the stances ( TWO invuln stances... ) to be like 50% damaged reduction instead, warrior should be able to do that much damage in full zerk but never have that crazy survival tools at all.

thief/mesmer/boonsbeast/warrior and holo are better at one shots and dealling with outnumbered fights to run away and these builds need to be addressed.

Even core guardian can one shot people but not have the survival or GTFO tools if it fails its a free bag.

before someone says im defending my main class check the video below.

[Swagger.1459]

@Coldtart.4785 said:Maybe once all the scourges get over being nerfed they'll swap back to reaper and realise they should've done that over a year ago.

Not to throw this thread off topic, but the proposed changes won’t have any impact on the state of wvw or scourge. Maybe when the big changes come we will see differences and improvements to gameplay and professions, but now it’s just a couple number adjustments.

[Mikali.9651]

Might boon is the problem since the Dawn of this game, which allowed for even faster instanced content clearing, ele celestial builds back in days, melee trains in WvW, and just overall working in conjunction with any dmg increase we got as the game progressed. It is the big source of dmg increase, even for one player, but when combined with many more, it is just so much stronger and allows for insane powercreep. It is also combined with vulnerability conditions that are easily applied in stacks these days. I wish might boon and vulnerability see a drastic change in how they work, how they are applied, and how strong they are.

The stability boon is also a problem. I do not think that CC should be as ignored as it is. I do not think that it is a good idea to allow zergs to always be on top of each other and not allow anyone to get caught in CC unless they themselves make a big mistake which is actually almost impossible these days. Stability is too spammable and lasts for too long.While having stacks of stability as a mechanic is alright, I actually would rather change it as the 100% immunity for that duration. No more stacks, but much shorter duration, for example, just 2 seconds. That way you need to time your stability, like back in days.Would that be bad for melee? Yes probably, but that is why there are numerous ways to gain personal stability. I just do not want stability to be AoE applied and spammable as it is currently.

Also, to hell with weakness condition, it is too strong condition and always was, but making it stack in duration is just dumb - it should have never been like that. GW2 has a big problem - since the early days - in allowing all players to count - every condition and every boon needs to be put into a damage table so we do not make someone feel bad because their boon or condition didn't count - that is why conditions were overhauled in the first place. While it is good to make people feel good about themselves, it is counterproductive for the healthy status of the game because it just allows for powercreep.

Also, cleaving in this game is insane. Can we reduce everything to be applied to the max. 5 players? Why is there a need to affect 10 players with 1 skill? I can understand if it happened for raids to allow for more variety in group compositions, but it has no place in WvW. I would also change the way boons are applied - they are applied only to those who are in the same party - not in a squad group - but in a party. I would srsly like to see more motivation for people to really care about what they are doing than just mindlessly spam just because everyone is rewarded anyway.

I do not say that my proposed changes are of good quality, but I truly believe that some fundamental mechanics in this game are just broken in their current versions, so for those who know how to, do better changes.

[Juan.6124]

cmc, you're the savior of WvW and PvP. We need someone like you for raids and fractals. I already thank you so much for your work.

[wisebear.9176]

@Cal Cohen.2358I strongly disagree about nothing being 'too egregious' in the WvW roaming scene: there's a pretty obvious reason why one ends up facing always the same bunch of professions/builds while roaming, which could as easily end up winning a fight while playing terribly but can just as easily disengage when they're about to die.

This has nothing to do with said professions being fun to play and all to do with them outperforming even in the hands of mediocre players and being completely unmanageable in the hands of skilled players.

If you believe said profession need to be addressed in spvp, where stats are normalized, how can you possibly think they're fine in WvW where they have access to even more imbalanced food/sigil/gear choices?

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671

[fuzzyp.6295]

Thank you for communicating these thoughts with us. As a roamer who literally only roams when playing GW2, I get that bringing sPvP build changes might be something to take your time with. But it NEEDS to be addressed sooner or later. There are builds out there that are ridiculous overpowered due to the fact that WvW stats are not standardized. I have about 3k toughness and can still take almost 2k hits from rapid spam moves like unload or rapid shot. I've been crit for 18k before, mind you as an Ele I only have 17k hp. I dont think these builds are busted persay since theyve traded all their survivability for DPS. But The issues in small scale sPvP are often times multiplied in WvW. Please dont forget about us roamers. Until then, I'll be watching very carefully to see how things play out. Thanks again.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

• Nerfing only Scourge will result in boons and cleanses being too strong

This is a real concern and definitely something we thought about when deciding on which changes to make for this update. What it really comes down to is the question of how long we want to chase our own tails right now. If we nerf Scourge, then maybe we need to nerf boons and cleanses, then maybe we need to nerf conditions and corrupts, and on and on we go. Now this is one of the goals of the future patch, but that is going to take longer than the time we have for this balance cycle.

The alternative here is to just make no changes until the future update is ready, but we don’t think this is the right thing to do. We know Scourge is a problem, so we’re going to make an adjustment in the short-term. If it does end up that Scourge was keeping things in check and those things start to overperform, we do have opportunity to make slight adjustments out of the normal balance cadence, but ideally we want to spend as much time as possible working on the patch where we are trying to address everything at once.

• Why not do the proposed PvP splits in WvW as well, for the sake of roamers?

The PvP changes are targeted specifically at builds that are overperforming in PvP. Looking specifically at roaming, we don’t see anything as too egregious. Certainly everything is extremely powerful, but that is the longer-term thing we’re trying to address. For now we’re trying to balance things around the existing power level while we look ahead to addressing the issue that is the existing power level. If we brought the PvP changes to WvW right now, we would probably need to do additional changes to a bunch of roaming builds. Similar to the Scourge changes this is something that we thought about, but we want to put more time into the future update instead. These changes make sense for both competitive modes in the long-term, but now may not be the right time to make them in WvW. We’ll talk about this a bit more internally, but the main concern right now would be pushing these things out of viability instead of bringing them back in line.

As some one who fully tends to criticize Anet balance, this time I fully agree with that, but as I stated above scourge is a game design problem, it was adding a aoe spam class to a game already saturated with aoe spam wich makes it quite broken when stacked, and we all know how that ends on wvw due how wvw works, it’s big server timezone vs empty time zone of other server this just aggravates the issue of the scourge design and all the aoe stacked.

Imo scourge is somewhat balanced if we ignore how game and other classes work.The best way to balance scourge would be redesign the class wich would address the issue what makes the class overperform in some situations that are quite common to happen.

Not every thing needs to end on aoe damage result skill, and it’s 5 F keys that could be transformed into just on F key with chain skills... since it’s 5 keys that are an aoe, the real problem of a scourge it’s how was designed.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@Coldtart.4785 said:Maybe once all the scourges get over being nerfed they'll swap back to reaper and realise they should've done that over a year ago.

yeah lol. way better burst and spike boon removal.

[Agrippa.1693]

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

• Nerfing only Scourge will result in boons and cleanses being too strong

This is a real concern and definitely something we thought about when deciding on which changes to make for this update. What it really comes down to is the question of how long we want to chase our own tails right now.

It's interesting that you say this, cause (like I tried to explain earlier) Boons and Boon-Hate does not have a vice-versa positive-negative relation. It does one way ... the way that you guys are approaching it right now, which indeed will only result in "chasing tails". But the other way around it's actually a negative-negative relation!!!Let me try to explain with examples:

• When you nerf Boon-Hate (which is pretty much what Scourge is ALL about), Boon application will by its design (stacking and/or duration increase) grow even more powerful (-/+). It's never a waste to take even more boons with you, you wil cover more people in the squad, longer duration times, higher stacks (definitely useful with Stability), etc.
• The other way around: when you nerf boons (either by nerfing application and/or power of the boons themselves), it will result in lesser need of removing them (-/-). Even worse, you are even punished by using boon corruption/strips on targets that doesn't have anything! It's a waste of slot/trait/etc., whereas that's never the case with boon application, which will always result in at least duration increase.

It strikes me, that you'd rather choose the so called chasing tails strategy compared to a reducing power overall strategy. Which was the initial goal, right?