Balance Patch Preview - WvW

[EmeraldNight.4307]

this patch won't save wvw because the problem with wvw is not class imbalance, but lack of new content and making old players leave/ new players refuse to join is. This game mode is still dying, Anet need to make some new content to attract new players instead of tweaking existed content to please the old players that already on the battle field. We already liked what we have now, that's why we are still here.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

vault not nerfed hard enough. its doing 15k on lights so less then 20% nerf isn't going to bring it in line, especially since it can be used twice. also you didn't even touch heart seeker lol the spammiest high damage skill there is. you need to remove the de dagger rifle one shots as well. that +100% damage is garbage and shouldn't be in competitive modes.

[Burnfall.9573]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:vault not nerfed hard enough. its doing 15k on lights so less then 20% nerf isn't going to bring it in line, especially since it can be used twice. also you didn't even touch heart seeker lol the spammiest high damage skill there is. you need to remove the de dagger rifle one shots as well. that +100% damage is garbage and shouldn't be in competitive modes.

+1

Once again; i and many others didn't fall for words because history shows that Anet continues to favor Thief Profession instead of healthy competition.

Refusing to address steallh and teleport didn't not surprise us and now more evidences to support it.

-Anet will continue to ignore our concerns until the community walks away,-

That is exactly what must happen so they can value us and show our worth as we walk away

[ArchonWing.9480]

Gameplay is trash; burn it all down and start over.

Though I understand most are gonna one push anyways so it'll be business as usual. Don't worry about it. ;)

[DeadlySynz.3471]

So we're going back to dire/trailerblazer meta. For those of you who think the power creep got addressed (even though there was no power creep as you failed to differentiate between being hit by 1 person vs up to 10), obviously were not around when HoT was launched. Dire/Trailerblazer was just as devastating then as it is now. The only way to get someone off using it (if they were considered the DPS) is to entice them onto something else.. you know it's what we called variety.

There is no variety coming; all people need to do is understand where the damage is going to have to come from and which classes has the most access to it, and that's what players who want to do damage will play. Then people need to understand where the defense, stability, healing and cleansing come from and which class has access to all of it, and that's what players will play who want to fill support. There is no room for anything else. You may find a warrior here and there but outside of that, not much else.

We'll still have a group of players who'll theory craft till the cows come home and think they came up with the perfect party composition, only to be obliterated by a condition bomb spam. Then those players will be back here on the forums complaining (which will be the same players who think these upcoming changes are good). I've seen a couple of players mention to just use sigil of cleansing... lol. 3 conditions removed on a 9 second cooldown, when in actuality in 9 seconds, a player is likely to be hit with 50+ conditions. This is the same type of mindset I've seen people mentioned the solution to siege not getting destroyed in towers is to just use hardened siege... smh.

[geist.4126]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@VALARMORGHULIS.9173 said:So if you really want the inside scoop on their educated guesses go watch Chaith, Naru, Sindrener, Angels, Vallun, Grimjack, and Shorts, and don't be surprised if Helseth logs in to do a review.Why would we ever want input from those guys, we're already getting all the detailed reviews on how the patch will exactly play by the pros on these forums.

This is the most underrated posts here and it's beautiful.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Im scared of daredevil after the patch.

Vault already hits so hard that it alone makes thief in zerg viable.

12k+ AoE against 3k armor.

It only got a small dmg nerf and thief even got a dmg boost over traits.

You could nerf its current dmg by 50% and it would still be a strong skill.

I dont want to see a world were the best option for aoe dmg is stacking staff thiefs.

[Zok.4956]

@"sneakytails.5629" said:Sounds like going forward they can make adjustments faster and on a more regular pace so they can respond to the meta.

"Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube" ("The message well I hear, my faith alone is weak") - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[lodjur.1284]

@DeadlySynz.3471 said:So we're going back to dire/trailerblazer meta. For those of you who think the power creep got addressed (even though there was no power creep as you failed to differentiate between being hit by 1 person vs up to 10), obviously were not around when HoT was launched. Dire/Trailerblazer was just as devastating then as it is now. The only way to get someone off using it (if they were considered the DPS) is to entice them onto something else.. you know it's what we called variety.

There was never any dire/tb meta, there has been a few popular dire/tb builds since HoT, there were very few fights back then when you took over 50% of your dmg from condis (discounting 1v1s)

Atm in most fights my dmg taken is roughly 10-25% retal5-10% burnAnother 5-10% is a combination of poison, bleed, torment and confusion

There is no variety coming; all people need to do is understand where the damage is going to have to come from and which classes has the most access to it, and that's what players who want to do damage will play. Then people need to understand where the defense, stability, healing and cleansing come from and which class has access to all of it, and that's what players will play who want to fill support. There is no room for anything else. You may find a warrior here and there but outside of that, not much else.

There's no variety now. These changes do so much to increase variet, smallscale might be more than linear burst+reset builds of various (but who all feel the same to fight) builds. As for zerging, how much variety can there really be to following a tag and pressing 1?

We'll still have a group of players who'll theory craft till the cows come home and think they came up with the perfect party composition, only to be obliterated by a condition bomb spam. Then those players will be back here on the forums complaining (which will be the same players who think these upcoming changes are good). I've seen a couple of players mention to just use sigil of cleansing... lol. 3 conditions removed on a 9 second cooldown, when in actuality in 9 seconds, a player is likely to be hit with 50+ conditions. This is the same type of mindset I've seen people mentioned the solution to siege not getting destroyed in towers is to just use hardened siege... smh.

Then they might have to deal with the reality that they're not as good as they think they are and that their perfect composition isn't so perfect. Sigil of cleansing is absurdly powerful and most (but not quite all) builds have access to a more more clears than that, fyi just cause you have a lot of clears doesn't mean you should be immune to condi dmg, just like 3.5k+ armor doesn't make you immune to power dmg.

If you get hit by 50+ condis in 9 sec you obviously need more clears than a sigil should be able to provide, so put some more in your build, get a support with good clears or get better at avoiding them

This patch overall seems amazing, mobility is going down, invulnerabilities are going down, burst is going down. All of the things that have enabled this toxic meta. WvW participation will go way up.

[b k.1648]

I suspect ele pets are intended more for PvE, but regardless there's evidently been quite a lot of thought put into the rebalance because ANet have never made changes like that just for a laugh and it took them a while to put together preliminary numbers on this one.

It's hard to get a sensible read on it based on forum responses unfortunately, because the loudest voices are always the ones who don't like whatever change is proposed, and anyone who enjoys big changes like this... well, let's just say they would have been rather bored by the pace of things in WvW by now. About as much as I can gather from it is that most of the arguments against it so far have been uninformed or outright asinine, with a few valid exceptions.

The goals seem sensible: slow down the one-shots, allow some counterplay, and make it much harder to just absorb all damage without thinking about it. It looks like they haven't got appropriate nerfs for condition damage or some of the high mobility/evade builds yet, but it does seem they're finally working out that power creep has made a mess of the competitive game modes and they're running out of time to salvage it.

I also note that the decision to do something about power creep seems to have occurred at a similar time - perhaps minus a few months - to the departure of some of the old guard who were once responsible for balance. I wonder whether there was any relationship there.

[SehferViega.8725]

@lodjur.1284 said:

There's no variety now. These changes do so much to increase variet.

Transform entire specializations into something useless by killing all their traits, increase some cooldown to an ammount of time (5 minutes) that makes the skill/trait useless, kill some spec like Reaper. And you call this increase variety?

As for zerging, how much variety can there really be to following a tag and pressing 1?

Kill the damage of half of the skills, now they really need to only press 1-2 keys following a tag.

This patch overall seems amazing, mobility is going down, invulnerabilities are going down, burst is going down. All of the things that have enabled this toxic meta. WvW participation will go way up.

Yeah.. now noob player will be able to safely farm their Gift of Battle and Karma without being oneshotted and every noob will try finally WvW!!

[appelflap.8310]

so mirage get's 1 dodge, daredevil still has 3 dodges?no nerfs to shadow arts? no nerf to perma stealth? (i thought you guys wanted more counterplay) no nerf to thief's stolen items? detonate plasma will still be overpowered?no nerfs to food and nourishment in wvw? no nerfs to sigils in wvw? (sigil of draining, cleansing,....)Anet, do you guys even play gw2?

[Dennis.7856]

The patch overall seems amazing tbh. I'm so glad that you finally start reducing power creep in this game!!! <3 There are a few things to i want to point out.

1st of all the never ending issue with Spellbreaker.

Have you ever thought about scaling Greatsword F1 "Arcing Slice" damage with Adrenalin level? Its the only damage weapon from warrior that doesnt scale with adrenalin for whatever reason. Doesnt really make sense that you only get more fury while Power scalings stay the same. So maybe you should just change this Arcing slice mechanic first instead of tuning it down in general.

2nd Issue: Spellbreaker Elite: Bubble

Im more than glad you finally nerf bubble again but the main issue with bubble isnt even the targetcap but the fact that it follows the warrior. With this nerf you wont change all too much. The only thing you do is giving smaller groups even a harder time at contesting bigger groups. Bigger groups with 10+ Spellbreaker will still holdW while spamming bubbles and you still wont be able to do anything against it.

3rd (and this will be the biggest issue after patch (with current balance notes)): 4 Stat Equipment

4 stat equipment has always been op. But with the lower amount of cleanses and heals, trailblaizer, minstrel and marauder will be the only viable stats. Everything else will just underperform even harder than it already does due to the fact that you just have more free stats overall if you decide to go 4 stat instead of 3 stat.I would suggest to lower the 2 main stats of 4 stat equipment so you kinda get a trade off when going for 4 stats combos. Example would be:Nomad vs Minstrel:Full set of Minstrel (without runes or infusions) gives 1172 toughness, 1172 healing power, 633 vitality, and 633 concentration. = 3610 statsFull set of Nomad (without runes or infusions) gives 1382 toughness, 960 healing power and 960 vitality. = 3302 statsThere is no reason to give 4 stat combos more stats than 3 stat combos. I would personally love if you reduced both main stats of 4 stat gear down to a point that 4stat gear and 3 stat gear gives the same amount of stats overall. It would maybe help balancing it a bit at least.

4th traits that still seem to be a bit overtuned

Wont go too deep into detail about this. Just in general there are still a lot of traits like for exampleGuardian --> Honor --> Grandmaster Trait "Force of Will" that give you a lot of improvements such as 300 bonus vitality + heal scaling 1% per 100 vitality which is good but a bit overtuned for my taste. There are a lot of these traits tho. Also Reaper --> Grandmaster trait --> "Reaper's Onslaught" gives you free perma quickness + 300 ferocity + cd reduction if you hit "Life Reap". Its just too many free bonuses without giving you any disadvantage. So ofc other Grandmaster traits will always look bad next to those traits. I would personally do it like you already did with some other traits as well. Give something to suit a classes role for example "Force of Will" = healer trait obv since it gives you very goof heal scaling or "Reaper's Onslaught" as a dps trait and take something else from them away for example toughness or power or whatever.Best example pretty much is Berserker --> minor trait --> "Fatal Frenzy"You get 300 power and 300 condi damage when entering berserker mode so its obv a dps trait but at the same time you take away 300 toughness to make him more vulnerable for incoming dmg. Thats a much better concept of how traits should work instead of just giving free stats or enhancements without taking anything away in exchange.
Not sure whether others think about this the same way like I do. Would love to see more opinions on that tbh.Thanks for reading this! cheers \o

[LAX.9032]

Dont you dare to bring THAT balance-patch upon us! I swear by whatever-you-want, you are going to ruin the rest what is left from WvW. Simply just dont do it! Drop that crappy balance-patch and make a good one, like nerfing Condis and bring back the old stability-system - be good developers, not evil ones! thank you very much!

Again: DONT DO IT!!!

[Klypto.1703]

@Clownmug.8357 said:There was some condition nerfs, but it doesn't look like enough. It's probably not going to be fun fighting people in full dire/trailblazer gear that only have 1 second less duration on a random skill while almost all your power based skills are weaker.

Yep the game mode going back to staring, trolling, and condi spamming. All the game play that had zero counter play to it is being changed back to this for the reason of counter play which is the most rhetorical thing to come from anet in a long time. Also to prepare for this you also are required to sell your car for gas money.

[Eval.2371]

Wow. These changes are something the game has needed for a long long time. (since 6 months after HoT release).

One thing I disagree with a little bit is the damage coefficient baseline as not all skills are equal in terms of animation and hit box.

Take warrior axe auto attack chain: its whole chain is about 2 seconds (1/4s, instant, 1 1/2s) including downtime between animations. If its balanced with a weapon like dagger which has a .75 total attack chain time (1/4, 1/4, 1/4) and both sets of skills have the same overall total coefficient then this promotes the use of low skill high reward skills use over high risk high reward style of skills. This is just an example within a class... never mind across classes.

I get this is most likely to reduce TTK, but in many cases above some of the skills that have been reduced above will need either a bit more compensation in either application/power coefficients or significant hit box and cast time improvements. I really iteration addresses the issue above.

[xXxNikiGoesWildxXx.3678]

Arenanet, good question is....why is all of this SO needed?Like you are changing whole game for what????? What is the reason of this?Cool, you wanna destroy all dmg and bring more CC with again no dmg, but why.... do you understand consequences you are going to make?You are leaving hp pools,armors, cleanses to be as they are while you are destroying dmg and healing. You will create meta of slow killing a player, you gonna use all your spells for nothing.So you nerfed all of those but add combo points or something that will increase the pressure over time.It will be really pointless to play the game without going for condition dmg..... bringing up power dmg pressure will be meh.Reason why power is good is because of instant crits that forces you to react fast or you die fast.

**You just needed to set exponential gradually increase for crit chance and crit dmg as fight lasts longer.

LIke: you start with 1% crit chance and for every second of combat it rises up..so 100 seconds( 1 min 30 sec) of fight is 100% crit chanceThat way you avoid one shot burts.That is the same way how conditions should work, lower stacks...longer duration, at start you do low dps and how time goes dps increases gradually. **

I would ask you to reconsider this suggestion and balance you are doing.I think nerfing all power will not just result into "no one-shot bursts" but also you will have not enough dmg to kill anything without help of other players which is terrible.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

Couple of things missing, given these are the WvW changes:

• Warclaw: on one of the streams I think it was mentioned you were looking at changes. Nothing about that in the post above.
• Siege: if you're nerfing player damage, boons and healing, how is that in comparison to siege. Will siege damage to players remain the same? Will damage to siege from players remain the same?
• Golems: see question above re: Siege
• Enemy NPCs: see question above re: Siege and Golems (thinking specifically about Camps esp with mercenaries.)
• Downed state: it's already very difficult to out DPS/race an enemy in downed state getting revived. How will you address this in a mode where damage is being toned down?

[Senqu.8054]

Please ANet, dont remove the second Dodge from Mirage. Mirage is the only reason i Play gw2 from time to time. Since you killed chrono there was Not very much left for me but if you really make this change bouth elite specs from mesmer gain a penalty if taken. I feel like This is totally wrong. Why should i get punished for just playing a class i bought with my money. I cant See this anywhere Else. no other class gets facepunshed like mesmer. Its like you want to make the gameplay as much unconfortable as possible so People will finally quit This Game. I have more than 3000h playtime and i played it with 2 Dodges and now its to op for Mesmer. In my opinion, in special this change, shows how good your understanding about This Game is. You have to remove your own mechanics from your Game what a joke.

Right now while reading this patch notes im ashamed that i have ever recommendet this Game to my friends and i feel like i have to refund them because they bought it. i cant find the words for my anger but if you bring this change i will quit and Never come back.

[Erze.7253]

A-net and krewe: While change is the lifeblood of every game, some of the changes you're making have raised a few eyebrows. Perhaps even many.

So I suggest reviewing all your planned changes, and perhaps making MORE. Some of those changes (maybe all of the changes) will radically alter the original intent of the class. Changing Guardian so it no longer does Guardian things may not be optimal.

It seems to me that every change should1) increase the enjoyability of that class and others, and2) equalize the effectiveness of that class with others, which will3) optimize the enjoyability of the game mode.No set of changes should give any one class an overall advantage over the others.

I get that changes must be tried to see how they work. And your 4-6 week change cycle makes sense to me. Maybe I'm leery of such huge change sets, and distrust them.

[Dawdler.8521]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@"DeadlySynz.3471" said:Barely anybody want to go back to the warrior/guardian meta of old.The funny thing is that we may have passed a point where this is starting to become true.However, those "barely anybody" are still the people who are in guilds and do command. For large-scale purposes, their oppinion is valuable and the people who join their pickup squads, well, their oppinions on the matter has virtually no value at all. If a commander leaves a squad he will be missed by 49 other people. If an anonymous self-entitled backliner leaves the squad he will be missed by no one. That is the cold hard truth.... And if 49 players leave due to shoddy balancing, thats the better option than 1 guy leaving because he cant play without shoddy balancing?

Its not a cold hard truth when its not really what WvW is about. Commanders are always missed true... But they also always leave because they're just people and many are exactly as self-entitled as that anonymous backliner.

[Kallist.5917]

I feel like you need to revisit the Rifle Coefficient on the Thief. I had a huge breakdown of the damage numbers and all the bonuses available to us, but lets just say your nerfing it twice. Once in the coefficient, and once in the "our rotation only gives us 13 might with these changes", while also requiring us to be immobile and expend all or our power in that one hit. Either it needs a mechanic tweak, killing the pre-cast beam would be fair, or it needs to be raised higher that 1.11.We're looking at a 2.5K hit before bonuses and crit now. That's just not going to cut it for the time investment that attack requires.

[lodjur.1284]

@SehferViega.8725 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

There's no variety now. These changes do so much to increase variet.

Transform entire specializations into something useless by killing all their traits, increase some cooldown to an ammount of time (5 minutes) that makes the skill/trait useless, kill some spec like Reaper. And you call this increase variety?

You mean increase the cooldown of the passive invulnerabilities that allow people to survive even if they're afk?

Some specializations will be more viable than now too

As for zerging, how much variety can there really be to following a tag and pressing 1?

Kill the damage of half of the skills, now they really need to only press 1-2 keys following a tag.

Just like before, nothing changes for zergs, at all

This patch overall seems amazing, mobility is going down, invulnerabilities are going down, burst is going down. All of the things that have enabled this toxic meta. WvW participation will go way up.

Yeah.. now noob player will be able to safely farm their Gift of Battle and Karma without being oneshotted and every noob will try finally WvW!!

Now noobs can't easily burst people already in a 3v1 and then just run away if someone looks their way.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@apharma.3741 said:

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@"DeadlySynz.3471" said:Barely anybody want to go back to the warrior/guardian meta of old.The funny thing is that we may have passed a point where this is starting to become true.However, those "barely anybody" are still the people who are in guilds and do command. For large-scale purposes, their oppinion is valuable and the people who join their pickup squads, well, their oppinions on the matter has virtually no value at all. If a commander leaves a squad he will be missed by 49 other people. If an anonymous self-entitled backliner leaves the squad he will be missed by no one. That is the cold hard truth.

The comparison you make at the end is very biased though, flip it and consider "If the high damage backliner leaves a squad he will be missed by 49 other people. If an anonymous self-entitled commander leaves the squad he will be missed by no one. That is the cold hard truth."

I've seen open tags literally crumble in minutes because 3 guys left who were doing the bulk of the work at the right time, they often don't appear on the logs because getting 10 downs and moving on to down others gives less dps. The 2 FBs that carry the rest of the group get no recognition for stunbreaking those 5-10 guys who would have rallied the enemy losing a rally war, the healers who hand back to make sure the slow aren't culled too quickly.

Interesting, those are certainly fair arguments to make. The word you are looking for isn't necessarily biased though and rather generalized. It's hard to make a short comment like that without keeping things very general. The key word if we are looking at the attributes on the examples is anonymity rather than entitlement. It would perhaps have been better to omitt that word but even I have to be allowed to be passionate at times. Yet, anonymity is important.

You can, for example, make a case for a commander that is as anonymous as a backliner and you can certainly make a case for a backliner that has as much traction as a commander. However, when you make those examples (and like Slo already pointed out) you'll realize that those are exceptions to a norm and not really something a general comment will dip down into discussing. So I could have defined the examples by limiting it to commanders with traction and noteriety but that is somewhat implied even if there certainly are people out there who can throw up a tag and still be anonymous. In a general sense I just don't really count them as commanders. The same goes for singular players who do things for their squads (sometimes without praise or attention): The norm is that they are not anonymous by virtue of what they are doing. The norm is for two FB in a group low on FB to garner attention (and if they are somewhat anonymous while the group depend on them that tends to garner negative attention rather than anything else). There may also be backliners who creates and secures downs but it's the same there, they rarely are anonymous or stay anonymous for long by virtue of what they are doing. It is far more normative that if they are successful in that way, they are doing it as a concerted effort and they are members of a guild and/or group that is social, organized and communicative.

To end this on a return back to topic: Players who are effective in that way are also rarely players who depends on commanders or the meta to enjoy what they do. It is not like their role is in any way diminished just because more of a squad engages in melee. After all, that is one of the main arguments as to why commanders, guilds and experienced players prefer melee meta. It is inclusive of more builds and classes because range still has a much larger role in a melee meta than melee do in a ranged meta.

[Arctisavange.7261]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@"DeadlySynz.3471" said:Barely anybody want to go back to the warrior/guardian meta of old.The funny thing is that we may have passed a point where this is starting to become true.However, those "barely anybody" are still the people who are in guilds and do command. For large-scale purposes, their oppinion is valuable and the people who join their pickup squads, well, their oppinions on the matter has virtually no value at all. If a commander leaves a squad he will be missed by 49 other people. If an anonymous self-entitled backliner leaves the squad he will be missed by no one. That is the cold hard truth.... And if 49 players leave due to shoddy balancing, thats the better option than 1 guy leaving because he cant play without shoddy balancing?

Its not a cold hard truth when its not really what WvW is about. Commanders are always missed true... But they also always leave because they're just people and many are exactly as self-entitled as that anonymous backliner.

At the same time there are also commanders who flat out leave cause they can not put up the meta composition which results on them getting wiped many many times. There is always the skill aspect that kicks in but putting up a squad composition that fits into the meta standards is also a key element in commanding and blobbing.

The gameplay is also one of the most deciding factors that keeps people playing and ive seen many guilds and friends leave this game over the years cause of horrible balance patches which flat out makes the gameplay unbearably boring and/or broken.

People hate pirateship to the fullest and full condi meta isnt fun, at all. It should be common sense for anet dev team to push the meta into balance where ranged and melee gameplay are both viable in blobbing aspects, with melee gameplay being more rewarding cause for very obvious reasons that doesnt need explaining.The devs are making good changes with power creep nerf amongst with stopping skill spamming and at the same time they nerf other aspects that completely removes any melee gameplay, makes pirateship the most viable route and doesnt put condition on the same level as power.

But as always they dont take notice of players feedback and there is no hotfix after balance patch to the avoidable problems we see at front. So more then likely will have to wait for another 3 months minimum (if lucky) for anet to fix their circus that the player base warned (wanted to avoid) them off many times in this forums.