So the balance changes have been finalized...

[Axelwarrior.9084]

...And the only thing that has changed from the first draft is those two lines:

Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only.Heat Therapy: Reduced base healing per stack by 25% from 65 to 49 in PvP only.

So I'm curious, were most of the changes left untouched because the community seemed to support them? Or is it that community feedback didn't end up contributing much at all, despite everyone's effort?Personally, I despise this approach of nerfing around the problem - and the devs seem to be aware that they're doing it. Nerfing traits and skills that impact multiple builds and not just the problematic one just leads to more balance issues. I get that the current phase is just patching up and laying the groundwork for bigger balance updates (in which case, I don't get why bunker firebrand got buffed instead of nerfed, but okay). I just hope that this will not be a common strategy in the future, like what the old balance team seemed to default to.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@Axelwarrior.9084 said:...And the only thing that has changed from the first draft is those two lines:

Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only.Heat Therapy: Reduced base healing per stack by 25% from 65 to 49 in PvP only.

So I'm curious, were most of the changes left untouched because the community seemed to support them? Or is it that community feedback didn't end up contributing much at all, despite everyone's effort?Personally, I despise this approach of nerfing around the problem - and the devs seem to be aware that they're doing it. Nerfing traits and skills that impact multiple builds and not just the problematic one just leads to more balance issues. I get that the current phase is just patching up and laying the groundwork for bigger balance updates (in which case, I don't get why bunker firebrand got buffed instead of nerfed, but okay). I just hope that this will not be a common strategy in the future, like what the old balance team seemed to default to.

Because what we just got was just a hotfix patch to address some of the outlying strangeness across some of the classes.

It says it right in the update notes, at the top, that this is just a small thing, the big balance patch is still coming.

12/03/2019—Skills and Balance UpdateProfession SkillsWith a larger competitive-focused update on the horizon, this update is on the smaller side but still contains several notable systemic changes. Falling damage traits are being removed in order to free up design space and reduce the complexity of adept-tier traits. Revival traits are also seeing the removal of the 10% revival speed passive effect that we've been slowly phasing out over the last several updates. In exchange, skills that directly revive allies are seeing enhancements. Besides these changes, we are also making some small touch-ups to various skills and traits related to previous updates that we felt didn't quite hit everything. We have also had the opportunity to add a couple quality-of-life updates to better improve the readability of player attributes affected by traits, and we're now granting elementalists and engineers the ability to swap weapons while out of combat. Lastly, the format for some types of value updates is changing—instead of listing the percentage difference, we'll be telling you what the coefficients before and after a change will be. We hope this will helps improve readability significantly.

As for the nerfing approach, the whole of the game needs a good sweep with damage/healing nerfs across the board, to base damage/healing coefficients and such, if they are intending to keep the current accessibility to boons in the game. Functionality changes would also be welcome but I'd rather see the power creep handled, but we'll see how that goes.

[TheArtOfMouts.7468]

Where the link ?

[Liza.2758]

what really blizzard is some ppl kinda take the meta builds as the only build that classes can play.

the current meta warrior has 1 condi clear ofc u r gonna get rekted by condi buildand what if u just learn to switch things up , tech some stuffs in or go full condi clears the condi builds don't do much dmg.

i hope the Dev consider some of these.

[Raiden The Beast.3016]

Buff T E E F ?

[Axelwarrior.9084]

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@"Axelwarrior.9084" said:...And the only thing that has changed from the first draft is those two lines:

Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only.Heat Therapy: Reduced base healing per stack by 25% from 65 to 49 in PvP only.

So I'm curious, were most of the changes left untouched because the community seemed to support them? Or is it that community feedback didn't end up contributing much at all, despite everyone's effort?Personally, I despise this approach of nerfing around the problem - and the devs seem to be aware that they're doing it. Nerfing traits and skills that impact multiple builds and not just the problematic one just leads to more balance issues. I get that the current phase is just patching up and laying the groundwork for bigger balance updates (in which case, I don't get why bunker firebrand got buffed instead of nerfed, but okay). I just hope that this will not be a common strategy in the future, like what the old balance team seemed to default to.

Because what we just got was just a hotfix patch to address some of the outlying strangeness across some of the classes.

It says it

right

in the update notes, at the top, that this is just a small thing, the big balance patch is still coming.

12/03/2019—Skills and Balance UpdateProfession SkillsWith a larger competitive-focused update on the horizon, this update is on the smaller side but still contains several notable systemic changes. Falling damage traits are being removed in order to free up design space and reduce the complexity of adept-tier traits. Revival traits are also seeing the removal of the 10% revival speed passive effect that we've been slowly phasing out over the last several updates. In exchange, skills that directly revive allies are seeing enhancements. Besides these changes, we are also making some small touch-ups to various skills and traits related to previous updates that we felt didn't quite hit everything. We have also had the opportunity to add a couple quality-of-life updates to better improve the readability of player attributes affected by traits, and we're now granting elementalists and engineers the ability to swap weapons while out of combat. Lastly, the format for some types of value updates is changing—instead of listing the percentage difference, we'll be telling you what the coefficients before and after a change will be. We hope this will helps improve readability significantly.

As for the nerfing approach, the whole of the game needs a good sweep with damage/healing nerfs across the board, to base damage/healing coefficients and such, if they are intending to keep the current accessibility to boons in the game. Functionality changes would also be welcome but I'd rather see the power creep handled, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm confused as to what your "because..." tangent is supposed to be an answer to. I'd already acknowledged the fact that this is a small update in my own post, so did you just skim past that part, or what?

And, again, if you'd read more carefully, I don't have a problem with nerfing - I have a problem with nerfing the wrong things. ANet keeps nerfing meta builds' secondary components, rather than the cornerstone of each build (aka what makes that specific build the best). That has the result of nerfing all builds that would use those components, which is not good for class diversity. For example, when you nerf Mesmer Staff repeatedly, it's not just going to nerf the problematic CI Mirage - it sets back all possible Mesmer builds that use a Staff. And it's annoying, because the cornerstone of that build is clearly Infinite Horizon, now that Chaotic Interruption has been nerfed. So why not just address that, instead of nerfing all Staff builds?Once more, I am aware this is a preliminary pass, so there's still he possibility that they'll go over everything properly in the big update. So the reason I'm starting this discussion is to raise awareness and voice my concerns for this problem, just in case.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@Axelwarrior.9084 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@Axelwarrior.9084 said:...And the only thing that has changed from the first draft is those two lines:

Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only.Heat Therapy: Reduced base healing per stack by 25% from 65 to 49 in PvP only.

So I'm curious, were most of the changes left untouched because the community seemed to support them? Or is it that community feedback didn't end up contributing much at all, despite everyone's effort?Personally, I despise this approach of nerfing around the problem - and the devs seem to be aware that they're doing it. Nerfing traits and skills that impact multiple builds and not just the problematic one just leads to more balance issues. I get that the current phase is just patching up and laying the groundwork for bigger balance updates (in which case, I don't get why bunker firebrand got buffed instead of nerfed, but okay). I just hope that this will not be a common strategy in the future, like what the old balance team seemed to default to.

Because what we just got was just a hotfix patch to address some of the outlying strangeness across some of the classes.

It says it

right

in the update notes, at the top, that this is just a small thing, the big balance patch is still coming.

12/03/2019—Skills and Balance UpdateProfession SkillsWith a larger competitive-focused update on the horizon, this update is on the smaller side but still contains several notable systemic changes. Falling damage traits are being removed in order to free up design space and reduce the complexity of adept-tier traits. Revival traits are also seeing the removal of the 10% revival speed passive effect that we've been slowly phasing out over the last several updates. In exchange, skills that directly revive allies are seeing enhancements. Besides these changes, we are also making some small touch-ups to various skills and traits related to previous updates that we felt didn't quite hit everything. We have also had the opportunity to add a couple quality-of-life updates to better improve the readability of player attributes affected by traits, and we're now granting elementalists and engineers the ability to swap weapons while out of combat. Lastly, the format for some types of value updates is changing—instead of listing the percentage difference, we'll be telling you what the coefficients before and after a change will be. We hope this will helps improve readability significantly.

As for the nerfing approach, the whole of the game needs a good sweep with damage/healing nerfs across the board, to base damage/healing coefficients and such, if they are intending to keep the current accessibility to boons in the game. Functionality changes would also be welcome but I'd rather see the power creep handled, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm confused as to what your "because..." tangent is supposed to be an answer to. I'd already acknowledged the fact that this is a small update in my own post, so did you just skim past that part, or what?

And, again, if you'd read more carefully, I don't have a problem with nerfing - I have a problem with nerfing the wrong things. ANet keeps nerfing meta builds' secondary components, rather than the cornerstone of each build (aka what makes that specific build the best). That has the result of nerfing all builds that would use those components, which is not good for class diversity. For example, when you nerf Mesmer Staff repeatedly, it's not just going to nerf the problematic CI Mirage - it sets back all possible Mesmer builds that use a Staff. And it's annoying, because the cornerstone of that build is clearly Infinite Horizon, now that Chaotic Interruption has been nerfed. So why not just address that, instead of nerfing all Staff builds?Once more, I am aware this is a preliminary pass, so there's still he possibility that they'll go over everything properly in the big update. So the reason I'm starting this discussion is to raise awareness and voice my concerns for this problem, just in case.

Ah then I misunderstood the context of the post. My bad.

Though yeah, we'll see what the larger update includes, but we probably won't see that until January or at least February. However even then I believe that this balancing process they are going to undertake will be a much more prolonged endeavor, something a single large balance patch won't address entirely all in one go.