Big Update News!

[KeyOrion.9506]

I'm not seeing much in the way of "WvW responsiveness". The one thing is, this wasn't an interview. This wasn't a "This is what we're going to do, and everything is going to work out. And this is what you should expect in the coming weeks and/or months." I've listened to people being interviewed while playing games...and it's almost like trying to juggle three things at once. Unfortunately if your not a juggler, your not even going to juggle two items...which is...concentrate on playing the game that's in front of you, and answer any questions.... then gain the person doing the interview wasn't asking any relevant questions towards what was going to happen. Both the interviewer and interviewee found it completely IMPOSSIBLE to hold an interview while playing the game. Now I've seen some players able to do this, and some unable to do this. Both showed they had a hard time to nearly impossible time to hold a conversation while playing. This Twitch stream really didn't show much in the way of what we do almost on a daily basis. If your going to do an interview...put the keyboard down....and do an interview. The conversation could have lasted probably no more than 15 or 20 minutes and gotten everything out of the way for a twitch interview.

Now this is the GIST of what I heard near the LAST portion of the twitch stream. Some things on fixit's, patches, and rework on skills, depend on the skills themselves and what Arenanet want's to see not only in Viable builds, but what their able to do with those skills for those builds. On one hand they're are trying to find a balance of making things "Challenging" between players, and what they do not want to see is them promoting...or in some cases demoting...some skills in order to keep a balance going. What they don't want to do is create a build for specific classes that just completely break the game experience. They don't want to create something that's going to completely overpower the mechanics where one opponent is going to become Godmode with nothing able to deal with it. Hell just reading this bottom paragraph takes less then couple minutes if that. Took them 1-1/2 HOURS before even coming to that conclusion at the end of the twitch stream.

We get it. Balance is good. Unbalance is bad. Some skills will get buffs. Some skills will get nerfs. Your problem isn't the skills from what I've seen. Your problem is with your boons and 100% up time. Unless those boons are stripped by a VERY SELECT # of CLASSES WITH VERY SPECIFIC BUILDS...those boons will never get ripped from an opponent. Otherwise it's perma-speed, perma-invuln's, perma-health regen.....<----Do you get what i'm telling you? Any BOON that has a 100% up time is an Unbalanced portion of the game. There should be NO reason boons should have 100% up time OUT OF COMBAT...ever. To me, that wasn't bad programming, that was bad decision making. Own up to the decision to have 100% up time on boons out of combat, and fix it. Or just nerf it into the ground. Either way I would be happy if boons were just NOT part of WvW in any fashion, because I currently believe that's what's causing some severe unbalanced combat.

[Justine.6351]

@"DeadlySynz.3471" said:"Skills that do too many things at once [..] definitely problematic".

So pretty much every Guardian skill. In particular they better be looking at nuking Eternal Oasis down to the level of the new Devouring Darkness, aka, cleansing 1 boon on 5 allies, as opposed to cleansing 5 boons on 5 allies. That is the very first change they need to make above and beyond all else.

Nah man he prob talking skills like,

Surge of the mistsPistol whipProbably something chronomancer rofl

[Kontrolle.3514]

Support Builds are NOT the problem of GW2, the lack of proper healing builds made this game so boring in WvW and is the reason we dont have any decent fights.GvG in GW1 took 30+ mins and involved tactics, same for the fights in DAoC. GW2 is just an damage spam fiesta, instakilling and bombing anything.

Bring counterplay aginst supportbuilds and dont just nerf them. Make people call spikes, interrupts,cc in order to disable enemy supporters. Long fights are exciting not instakill 20 sec engages like GW2 has.... Guilds already use like 2 Healspecs per group and people still die in in Bubblebombs in 1-3 seconds.

And delete the mount please.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Kontrolle.3514 said:Support Builds are NOT the problem of GW2, the lack of proper healing builds made this game so boring in WvW and is the reason we dont have any decent fights.GvG in GW1 took 30+ mins and involved tactics, same for the fights in DAoC. GW2 is just an damage spam fiesta, instakilling and bombing anything.

Bring counterplay aginst supportbuilds and dont just nerf them. Make people call spikes, interrupts,cc in order to disable enemy supporters. Long fights are exciting not instakill 20 sec engages like GW2 has.... Guilds already use like 2 Healspecs per group and people still die in in Bubblebombs in 1-3 seconds.

And delete the mount please.

People that play this game arent that good.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Hmm... If they are making the damage on ALL hard CC's negligible (btw that's the BAD band aid approach), perhaps they should add some other utility to the hard CC skills? Like some extra Condi removal, a small duration boon, a small heal, or extra damage on the next attack if you CC someone? Just making all hard CC's damage negligible will put such skills/weapons into the trash heap unless they do something else to justify using them.

I think it would push players even MORE to higher DPS builds, even with them trying to bring damage down.

[Lala.8752]

cmc seems to be a good dev(just see last patch, it is small but every nerf are good and logic)the problem is, that he want to do seems like so long to do because every thing have to be nerf(every thing has to much damage and too much heal)

[Sovereign.1093]

lets test it out first. =) speculation is fine but its not real

[ILoveMonotony.1479]

Damn you. Now I'm all excited. If this is only half true, I just might play GW2 avidly again. Very much looking forward to this. <3

[Teratus.2859]

Much of what they said could in theory be done via new upgrades.. resist CC, resist interrupts etc rather than just reducing damage or healing..Hell they could even introduce WvW masteries to do it too.

What's going to be skill split too?.. are they finally going to split all skills for PvP and WvW or are many of these changes going to end up screwing with PvE as well.. and if so you're going to get a lot of people demanding they get split or for them to be removed entirely.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@Jaruselka.5943 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I hope they nerf auto attacksjust cuz

I hope they nerf nerfing nerfs.

i'd nerf that for a dollar

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

@"Svarty.8019" said:(517584747)News regarding the Big Update.

On the livestream 5th Dec 2019, Dev Cal talked a bit about the upcoming Big Update...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/517584747

At 29 minutes, Cal talks about the Big Balance patch that's coming.

"Damage numbers will definitely come down, that is a a guarantee [..] there will definitely be healing reductions as well". He justifies a big patch with lots of messy problems very well.

At 1 hour 11mins Cal talks about CAST TIMES. "We can't have instant cast CC, we can't have instant cast large damage".

"increasing cast time on CCs is something we're very much looking at".

"Skills that do too many things at once [..] definitely problematic".

"In terms of CC in general one of the things we're looking at, the thing we just did with Rampage this patch for PvP where all of the CC -all the hard CCs now just do a trivial amount of damage - and I think that's a really interesting direction for the entire game moving forward and it's something that we want to try for the Big Update is making ALL hard CCs have a trivial amount of damage, cuz then it creates a more interesting decision of like, 'do I want to face tank it and then stunbreak, or do I want to dodge it, avoid the CC?', as opposed to like, 'This skill's just going to destroy me if I don't dodge it'. "

I really hope they look at years past history “balances” with a fine tooth comb with considering all of this damage reduction. We had a full out defense meta and it was horrendous. I seriously hope they aren’t going back to that direction.

[Sobx.1758]

@miguelsil.6324 said:

@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@miguelsil.6324 said:necromancers [...]the class with lowest stability in the game

lmao, that's just false.

Number of ways to get stab, class wise alone (including elites):Necro: 6Guardians: 9Rangers: 7Revenant: 3Warrior: 8Engineer: 8Thief: 2Elementalist: 8Mesmer: 4

So yes...that is just false

So I apologize I meant useful and confortable.

That's highly subjective and by that exact same logic you can claim any class has the "lowest amount of X", because you don't like the source of whatever you'd be talking about at that moment. Seems like a weak excuse to cover up a blatant lie.

---

@Teratus.2859 said:Much of what they said could in theory be done via new upgrades.. resist CC, resist interrupts etc rather than just reducing damage or healing..Hell they could even introduce WvW masteries to do it too.

I disagree, introducing resists gives potentially longer windows of invulnerability (to cc/interupts/etc), which further reduces reactive gameplay and rewards boon(/resists) spamming/stacking.Even moreso if they'd want to hide it behind a mastery system. Mounts already impact newcommers to some extent, I don't think WvW needs more gatekeeping.

What's going to be skill split too?.. are they finally going to split all skills for PvP and WvW or are many of these changes going to end up screwing with PvE as well.. and if so you're going to get a lot of people demanding they get split or for them to be removed entirely.

Nobody will answer your question (unless anet's willing to hop in on that), we'll need to wait and see I guess. I think there's no reason to implement that to PvE for sure, so it's probably just a question whether or not it'll be split from PvP.

---

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

@"Svarty.8019" said:(517584747)News regarding the Big Update.

On the livestream 5th Dec 2019, Dev Cal talked a bit about the upcoming Big Update...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/517584747

At 29 minutes, Cal talks about the Big Balance patch that's coming.

"Damage numbers will definitely come down, that is a a guarantee [..] there will definitely be healing reductions as well". He justifies a big patch with lots of messy problems very well.

At 1 hour 11mins Cal talks about CAST TIMES. "We can't have instant cast CC, we can't have instant cast large damage".

"increasing cast time on CCs is something we're very much looking at".

"Skills that do too many things at once [..] definitely problematic".

"In terms of CC in general one of the things we're looking at, the thing we just did with Rampage this patch for PvP where all of the CC -all the hard CCs now just do a trivial amount of damage - and I think that's a really interesting direction for the entire game moving forward and it's something that we want to try for the Big Update is making ALL hard CCs have a trivial amount of damage, cuz then it creates a more interesting decision of like, 'do I want to face tank it and then stunbreak, or do I want to dodge it, avoid the CC?', as opposed to like, 'This skill's just going to destroy me if I don't dodge it'. "

I really hope they look at years past history “balances” with a fine tooth comb with considering all of this damage reduction. We had a full out defense meta and it was horrendous. I seriously hope they aren’t going back to that direction.

Yup, slightly longer fights are k; noodle fights are not.

[Infusion.7149]

Could just start by cutting all power/toughness/vitality bonuses from keeps/towers/camps in half , while keeping an eye on food/utility effects with percentages rather than flat bonuses (for example Bountiful Maintenance Oil is multiplicative with the base healing rather than just the scaling portion , every food using Cultivated Peppercorn has 10% damage reduction , as well as 40% endurance regen food and +5% outgoing damage from seaweed salad type foods). That would make bloodlust from ruins more meaningful.

[shadowpass.4236]

CMC played PvP back in the day so he has experience being on the receiving end of balance. Good for him. The balance team sounds like they're on the right track.

[yoyza.5963]

talking about skills that do too much, that stupid deadeye skill, insta cast, knockdown and immob with 15 stacks of vunerability. just why lol

[Edu.6984]

I hope this class balance gets implemented soon. Thinking in gearing another alt for roaming, but don't wanna waste ascended gear and runes just to see the build get destroyed 1 week later with a big class balance

[RedShark.9548]

@Mil.3562 said:OP, you meant big nerf news? All i read is nerf cc, nerf dps, nerf this, weaken that, and now they even see a need to nerf healings.

OP please change the topic title to ' Big Nerf News ' which is much more appropriate. Don't dissappoint players who thought ANet has finally awakened.

Lol, ofc healing needs to be toned down if dmg etc is being toned down. Otherwise you wouldnt be able to kill anymore.

I dont get how ppl cant understand that healing right now is absurd, but so is dmg.If you dont instanuke someone, he will be healed back in a second.Dying instantly with small reaction times is very frustrating for many ppl.Healer get frustrated, when they cant heal ppl, because said ppl die in a second from 100 to 0 hp.

When the time to kill gets lowered, there is actually place for healbuilds that dont pump out heals every second, but for builds that use active burstheals, to actuqlly heal low hp targets.

This makes for alot more skillful gameplay. Not just random spamming.Whats so hard to understand about this? Powercreep is way out of controll, and the only way to get it back in line is to tone down everything and not buff everything more and more, thazs how we have gotten here in the first place

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@RedShark.9548 said:

@Mil.3562 said:OP, you meant big nerf news? All i read is nerf cc, nerf dps, nerf this, weaken that, and now they even see a need to nerf healings.

OP please change the topic title to ' Big Nerf News ' which is much more appropriate. Don't dissappoint players who thought ANet has finally awakened.

Lol, ofc healing needs to be toned down if dmg etc is being toned down. Otherwise you wouldnt be able to kill anymore.

I dont get how ppl cant understand that healing right now is absurd, but so is dmg.If you dont instanuke someone, he will be healed back in a second.Dying instantly with small reaction times is very frustrating for many ppl.Healer get frustrated, when they cant heal ppl, because said ppl die in a second from 100 to 0 hp.

When the time to kill gets lowered, there is actually place for healbuilds that dont pump out heals every second, but for builds that use active burstheals, to actuqlly heal low hp targets.

This makes for alot more skillful gameplay. Not just random spamming.Whats so hard to understand about this? Powercreep is way out of controll, and the only way to get it back in line is to tone down everything and not buff everything more and more, thazs how we have gotten here in the first place

This, so much. I don't get why people can't understand this either. It was also talked about in the main balance thread, where DPS and healing/boons were talked about needing to be brought down. I think people forget or didn't play back then, how much power creep has happened on both DPS and healing/boons, they are both out of control.

[snh.7091]

A semblance of hope? Maybe I'll reinstall if this turns out well.

[Strider Pj.2193]

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@RedShark.9548 said:

@Mil.3562 said:OP, you meant big nerf news? All i read is nerf cc, nerf dps, nerf this, weaken that, and now they even see a need to nerf healings.

OP please change the topic title to ' Big Nerf News ' which is much more appropriate. Don't dissappoint players who thought ANet has finally awakened.

Lol, ofc healing needs to be toned down if dmg etc is being toned down. Otherwise you wouldnt be able to kill anymore.

I dont get how ppl cant understand that healing right now is absurd, but so is dmg.If you dont instanuke someone, he will be healed back in a second.Dying instantly with small reaction times is very frustrating for many ppl.Healer get frustrated, when they cant heal ppl, because said ppl die in a second from 100 to 0 hp.

When the time to kill gets lowered, there is actually place for healbuilds that dont pump out heals every second, but for builds that use active burstheals, to actuqlly heal low hp targets.

This makes for alot more skillful gameplay. Not just random spamming.Whats so hard to understand about this? Powercreep is way out of controll, and the only way to get it back in line is to tone down everything and not buff everything more and more, thazs how we have gotten here in the first place

This, so much. I don't get why people can't understand this either. It was also talked about in the main balance thread, where DPS and healing/boons were talked about needing to be brought down. I think people forget or didn't play back then, how much power creep has happened on both DPS and healing/boons, they are both out of control.

It’s because too many people focus on the word ‘power’ in ‘Power Creep’ thinking it’s only about damage.

Scourge was specifically created to offset the boon meta, but then booms and healing were also buffed.

Usually you see a pendulum swing..

In this case, it was a two headed pendulum that didn’t move from the extremes...

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@RedShark.9548 said:

@"Mil.3562" said:OP, you meant big nerf news? All i read is nerf cc, nerf dps, nerf this, weaken that, and now they even see a need to nerf healings.

OP please change the topic title to ' Big Nerf News ' which is much more appropriate. Don't dissappoint players who thought ANet has finally awakened.

Lol, ofc healing needs to be toned down if dmg etc is being toned down. Otherwise you wouldnt be able to kill anymore.

I dont get how ppl cant understand that healing right now is absurd, but so is dmg.If you dont instanuke someone, he will be healed back in a second.Dying instantly with small reaction times is very frustrating for many ppl.Healer get frustrated, when they cant heal ppl, because said ppl die in a second from 100 to 0 hp.

When the time to kill gets lowered, there is actually place for healbuilds that dont pump out heals every second, but for builds that use active burstheals, to actuqlly heal low hp targets.

This makes for alot more skillful gameplay. Not just random spamming.Whats so hard to understand about this? Powercreep is way out of controll, and the only way to get it back in line is to tone down everything and not buff everything more and more, thazs how we have gotten here in the first place

This, so much. I don't get why people can't understand this either. It was also talked about in the main balance thread, where DPS and healing/boons were talked about needing to be brought down. I think people forget or didn't play back then, how much power creep has happened on both DPS and healing/boons, they are both out of control.

It’s because too many people focus on the word ‘power’ in ‘Power Creep’ thinking it’s only about damage.

Scourge was specifically created to offset the boon meta, but then booms and healing were also buffed.

Usually you see a pendulum swing..

In this case, it was a two headed pendulum that didn’t move from the extremes...In some ways it did, just perhaps not in the intended way.

Boons in and of themselves tend to cancel each other out to some degree. For whatever you gain in might (condi and power) and fury you lose in retaliation, protection and regeneration (as well as aegis and resistance). The thing that did cause a shift to the extreme was that stability is also a boon and when you factor that into how the classes that were given alot of additional rip also have alot of CC (as well as recieved, albeit small, helpings of additional damage sources ontop of the core sources that also wasn't factored into the decisions made when designing the elite specs), you have a recipe for issues. It did spark a major shift towards a total pirate ship dominance.

All of this was much less a recipe to deal with boons and more so a recipe of "dealing" with melee. That's what has kept melee out of play for so long and everything they have done to make melee more appealing will risk becomming major balance issues once the higher-level balance issue now is getting dealt with. If more of a balance settles in or we turn over to more of a melee meta soon again, the difference between Warriors and other melee options is going to be ridiculous.

This is not to say that boons shouldn't be dealt with, there are obvious issues with the boon spam. If not major balance issues so most likely major performance issues since there are alot of calculations made with so many boons and conditions going out, comming in, being flipped and removed over 100's of players at once in the amounts we see. However, the extreme lies over stability and not really any of the other boons that to a much higher degree cancel each other out, even if not perfectly.

[JTGuevara.9018]

I do admit, I like what I'm hearing, although I am skeptical as others. Powercreep in this game is a shit show. 1 hr, 13 min piqued my interest: "We have skills that do too many things at once....". Too many skills function mainly as "oh s---!" buttons. I'm sorry, but that just promotes not only bad gameplay, but a bad community. You just end up attracting players who want to run troll builds or those that just want stuff handed to them. Enough of this faceroll damage, high-boon spam!

[Sovereign.1093]

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:I do admit, I like what I'm hearing, although I am skeptical as others. Powercreep in this game is a kitten show. 1 hr, 13 min piqued my interest: "We have skills that do too many things at once....". Too many skills function mainly as "oh s---!" buttons. I'm sorry, but that just promotes not only bad gameplay, but a bad community. You just end up attracting players who want to run troll builds or those that just want stuff handed to them. Enough of this faceroll damage, high-boon spam!

hehe those are guardian skills >3<

[miguelsil.6324]

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:I do admit, I like what I'm hearing, although I am skeptical as others. Powercreep in this game is a kitten show. 1 hr, 13 min piqued my interest: "We have skills that do too many things at once....". Too many skills function mainly as "oh s---!" buttons. I'm sorry, but that just promotes not only bad gameplay, but a bad community. You just end up attracting players who want to run troll builds or those that just want stuff handed to them. Enough of this faceroll damage, high-boon spam!

hehe those are guardian skills >3<

Maybe the unblockables boon strips or the hard hitting CCs

[misterman.1530]

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:I do admit, I like what I'm hearing, although I am skeptical as others. Powercreep in this game is a kitten show. 1 hr, 13 min piqued my interest: "We have skills that do too many things at once....". Too many skills function mainly as "oh s---!" buttons. I'm sorry, but that just promotes not only bad gameplay, but a bad community. You just end up attracting players who want to run troll builds or those that just want stuff handed to them. Enough of this faceroll damage, high-boon spam!

hehe those are guardian skills >3<

Yeah, I laughed at that point too...but in my case the reaction was "Please, tell me the "oh sh**" button for necros."