Upcoming Balance Notes

[RisenHowl.2419]

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:Wow, these are garbage changes. Scourge is in a good spot right now, why on earth would you make them so dominant that they push out every other dps class again? Back to pirate shipping only for wvw =/

And no nerfs to pulsing immobilize on ranger? wut? do you guys play your game?

Rangers don't have a lot of utility. Just accept them as immob specialists, and move on.

druid immob healers heal as much as firebrands and immobeasts can do as much damage as scourge, they have plenty of utility. There's no reason for them to have the ability to lock down any group with less than 20 people. It makes for really unhealthy play when you get ran over by nothing but immob inside a chain of bubbles.

But why else would you take an Immobeast? This and the Ancient Seed druid is just a niche build that barely anyone uses.

?? they're both pretty widely used right now lol. current meta is stack bubbles, stack immob, use dragon banners to roll over every group that isn't doing the same thing

[SloRules.3560]

This is complete kitten. Somehow i had hope after cmc got on team, but nope... Always lies.

[Metzie.3012]

Shade Skills: These have been changed back to triggering at both the necromancer's location and their shade locations with each use.

To read this is a disappointment, the actual state (current) is completely acceptable and there is no need to change this (again).One step forward (which took a long time), and now two steps back again! At this point there is nothing really more to add than - sad!

[Jeran.6850]

For wvw, i dont even want to talk about the eles changes (my main class)...but did you, Arenanet, actually gave core necro quickness access? And reaper outside shroud, also? and no matter if core, reaper, or scourge,more boon conversion, too?While everyone in this times of heavy cc (literally every class tries to have as much as possible), the stability boon is the most important boon now, more than ever.and scourges get back their original shades working near and far (sorry, im losing words to describe), being the only class that on a laughable low cd can effect 20 people, by for example, boon corruptung stabitity, to then gain quickness?this is truly insane, scourge will completely dominate large-scale wvw again, alongside Firebrand.its an insane strong buff for core necro in small-scale (where it already is completely braindead easy to play, and very hard to kill), and even reaper will get more impact, in every aspect of wvw, as if reaper needs any buff in roaming or smallscale, where it was already quite strong (with the correct build).

The necro changes alone makes every other class changes irrelevant for wvw. back to pof release, but worse.

I apologize if i phrase something wrong. im german, quite old, and really dissapointed with this "balance" in regard of wvw.5sec quickness on fearing someone? cd 3 seconds??? pure madness.

[Janke.1358]

"Deadly Archetype (Soulbeast): Reduced the condition damage increase gained while merged with this Deadly archetype pets by 25% (200 to 150 at level 80) in PvE only.Ferocious Archetype (Soulbeast): Reduced power increase gained while merged with Ferocious archetype pets by 25% (200 to 150 at level 80) in PvE only."Why? Really? No ranger players on the balance team?

[Lazze.9870]

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:Wow, these are garbage changes. Scourge is in a good spot right now, why on earth would you make them so dominant that they push out every other dps class again? Back to pirate shipping only for wvw =/

And no nerfs to pulsing immobilize on ranger? wut? do you guys play your game?

Rangers don't have a lot of utility. Just accept them as immob specialists, and move on.

druid immob healers heal as much as firebrands and immobeasts can do as much damage as scourge, they have plenty of utility. There's no reason for them to have the ability to lock down any group with less than 20 people. It makes for really unhealthy play when you get ran over by nothing but immob inside a chain of bubbles.

Plenty of utility? Seriously? You think removing immob is gonna leave druid/soulbeast with plenty of utility to warrant them a squad spot in wvw? No, not at all. The healing from druid is already scetchy as is because of its heal burst nature, the clunkiness of CA skill 1 and the medicore staff. FB is mostly about boon support anyways, medkit scrappers outheals both.

The corrupt scourge brings is way more important than the immob, and their damage will jump back up with the changes in this patch, surpassing what a soulbeast, which has most of its damage tied to melee abilities, can do.

The best wvw guild groups don't stack immob rangers. They usually run one druid/soulbeast, if any at all. Reworking the two major root skills (entangle and the signet, and maybe the ancient seeds trait) will leave rangers unwanted in any squad. Unless they start doing meaningful reworks to make support druid perform at a similar level as tempest and scrappers. Say, if druid healed as much as tempest and scrappers, they would still have inferior cleansing to the other two, while scrapper and tempest brings auras, superspeed, condi-to-boon conversion, stealth etc. Druid brings no such additional worthwhile utility except the immob at the moment (and the druid pet is borderline completely useless in large fights). Soulbeast without its immob doesn't really bring anything other classes can't do better, mainly herald.

And dragon banners should just be removed.

[inblank.9348]

Given the chrono changes should I just stop playing mesmer? It seems each patch they say that mesmer is doing too well/too bad and they intend to fix it by breaking it more. Shatter is doing damage, let's remove it...Distortion is a mesmer mechanic (I believe the only mesmer only mechanic since everyones is a mesmer now with quickness and alacrity being baked into others) and they take it from chrono. First the things that defined the profession (control of time, illusions, confusion, being an overall good support focused on tying up rotations) is being slowly taken away by others, I'm looking at you alacren and quickbrand... I love the profession and was most of the reason I started to play GW2, no other MMORPG has a concept like that, and by each patch it becomes less and less viable to play in other gamemodes by chain nerfs patch after patch, being "replaceable" by other classes that are better at what a mesmer should be the best at...I can't understand the reasoning behind all this.

I know this sounds like whining and just being a nuissance, but TBH, there's no fun in joining a group for daily fractals and people asking if you can change for an alacren or quickbrand so the clear goes faster (this on T2...). I understand the mindset of doing quick clears, but the state of the profession is starting to make me not want to play with other people anymore.

[Virdo.1540]

Facet of Chaos: Reduced protection duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds in PvP and WvW.

so we have to hear the loud sound from allies getting protection every 2 seconds?

wow, this will be annoying...

[Fueki.4753]

Could you remove Trapper runes from PvP already?

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

where is the much needed rev an engi dmg nerf in wvw?

[Mac.7249]

Summary; badass patch Anet Folks, no complaints here other than "is Mesmer still a thing? aren't they going to replace it with Ritualist?;TLDR;

Hi, Necromancer since 2005 here.Appreciate the solid attempts to bring diversity back to the class. I've been Spite, and Soul Reaping power build since gw2 released. Have tried many times to my detriment on different patches to develop a viable vampiric build (life transfer was the bomb). The signet heal patch was probably my biggest disappointment at the time with ever increasing disappointments to follow. Since reaper, and soon after scourge I have been in a state of contentment. having experienced the slew of emotions from seeing more powerful classes receive buffs, and reworks all to seemingly kill necros faster. So many of the nerfs reached an already broken, and battered veteran of the class. I for one support allowing shade skills to trigger in both locations - you haven't played scourge much, or you would know it's extremely easy to get locked down 1v1.forget about WvW outnumbered.Until the patch hits, stay classy, and try to treat each other with at least a modicum of respect.

With Love

-inb4 Vampire Core Necro flood

[CroTiger.7819]

I don t know if its real but seeing no nerfs to condi rev and power granade holo is next level ignorance. Condi rev should not be able to almost perma resistance which makes any healthy condi build pointless while still be good versus power y and do good condi dmg too with high amount of cc combined. I see you still can t see druid is outdated proffesion and it brings nothing to table but yes lets keep it like that for eternity and rework explosives traitline instead and make some nice dmg buffs on already strong spec. As druid player i want imob get changed for 1 sec or reworked aswell as CA for quol of the game. You buff lunar impact which was best skill already and seed of life which was fine when u made it 2 condi remove and rest of skills are still uselles outdated non existance. Now i wonder why u give more imob to staff 4 when druid is imob spammer already and almost have no other alternative to kick that toxic design and actually be good healer. Staff and druid is still so outdated that makes me want to quit this game since your buffs are so lazy and bring nothing new and exciting to table for druid. To all the ppl thinking holowsmith tradeoff is fine please donate on twitch for them to buy glasses. If you are really wanting to do trade off philosophy than remove all holowsmith tool belt skills instead f1 for heal and you gonna have balanced spec without grenade barrage and good defense for no real trade off and it would actually not hurt core and even make it more attractive to choose. Condi revenant still immune to condi dmg ? Please tell me that condis are op just because of this brainless build and that condis are problem and not this op design builds ? Imagine being immune to power dmg for 80% of time like crev is to condi dmg and tell me its balanced build again. Gratz to chronomancer which now can be played without feeling dead all day long thats only good thing i see here everything else is lazy and delusional aproach changing things whcih was fine and balanced, leaving things which are bad or even nerfing them further and securing or buffing things which are already broken and op. It is good balance for delusional ppl im sure.

[ASP.8093]

@inblank.9348 said:Given the chrono changes should I just stop playing mesmer?

Switch to thief, rev, or maybe ele, depending on what it is exactly you liked about the mesmer, imo.

[RisenHowl.2419]

@Lazze.9870 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:Wow, these are garbage changes. Scourge is in a good spot right now, why on earth would you make them so dominant that they push out every other dps class again? Back to pirate shipping only for wvw =/

And no nerfs to pulsing immobilize on ranger? wut? do you guys play your game?

Rangers don't have a lot of utility. Just accept them as immob specialists, and move on.

druid immob healers heal as much as firebrands and immobeasts can do as much damage as scourge, they have plenty of utility. There's no reason for them to have the ability to lock down any group with less than 20 people. It makes for really unhealthy play when you get ran over by nothing but immob inside a chain of bubbles.

Plenty of utility? Seriously? You think removing immob is gonna leave druid/soulbeast with plenty of utility to warrant them a spot in wvw? No, not at all. The healing from druid is already scetchy as is because of its heal burst nature, the clunkiness of CA skill 1 and the medicore staff. FB is mostly about boon support anyways, medkit scrappers outheals both.

The corrupt scourge brings is way more important than the immob, and their damage will jump back up with the changes in this patch, surpassing what a soulbeast, which has most of its damage tied to melee abilities, can do.

No serious groups stack immob rangers. They usually run one druid/soulbeast. Reworking the two major root skills (entangle and the signet, and maybe the ancient seeds trait) will leave rangers unwanted in any squad.

Unless

they start doing meaningful reworks to make support druid viable.

A large group with lots of spellbreaker bubbles will mow down a smaller group anyways, with or without the immob.

And dragon banners should just be removed.

yes, plenty of utility. I'm not in favor of them removing immob entirely, but 4s durations+ or pulsing with cover conditions are oppressive af alone much more so together. CA's clunky but 2/3/4 and the flipover glyphs are very strong for healing through a push. There's nothing clunky at all about dolyak or bear stance, they work like a charm.

and no, immob>corrupt. that's why every build that can fit it in brings it. you immob and follow up with a scourge bomb because it creates pulsing conditions that cover the immob, allowing you to run over any class that doesn't bring skills that remove immob in particular. immob in a bomb is GG.

No serious groups stacked immob 2 months ago, they're rampant now though. we couldn't even get close to the blob on ebg last night, they had multiple soulbeasts running banner+sic em. Durations need to be cut in half, give them the ele treatment. The pulsing immobs i'm not even sure will be an issue anymore come to think of it, scourges will destroy the roots passively again.

I wasn't talking about getting ran over by a queue when you have 20 people. i'm talking about having 3 bubbles and 2 immob rangers with 25 people allowing you to one push any group that isn't double your size. And 100% agree, dragon banners should be removed.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

Well, as a Reaper I am neither happy nor disappointed. Now as someone who played WvW (notice the past tense) I am disgusted. I cannot begin to say how disappointed I am by seeing this change to scourge in WvW. This stupid, lazy meta has been in place for far too long and it cripples virtually all melee play and is 100% reinforcement of this horrible zerg mentality that has plagued WvW for almost 2 plus years. I had held out great hope this team would be able to crush this meta and return value to something other than scourge / spellbreaker / healer blob style of fighting but clearly it is the same lazy balancing they intend to pursue.

No changes to all the idiotic stealth modes, perma stealth thief, because we all love wasting an hour combing our keeps for this trash build. Too much of the same for me and no light at the end of this tunnel.

[Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365]

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Longshot.1237 said:they need to finally give ele and eng active combat weapon swap, I think it would be fair after all these years.

I imagine weapon swap will be coming to Ele and Engi with the new elite spec

I dont want a wep swap on engi. I want a charrcar...

[Lazze.9870]

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Lazze.9870 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:Wow, these are garbage changes. Scourge is in a good spot right now, why on earth would you make them so dominant that they push out every other dps class again? Back to pirate shipping only for wvw =/

And no nerfs to pulsing immobilize on ranger? wut? do you guys play your game?

Rangers don't have a lot of utility. Just accept them as immob specialists, and move on.

druid immob healers heal as much as firebrands and immobeasts can do as much damage as scourge, they have plenty of utility. There's no reason for them to have the ability to lock down any group with less than 20 people. It makes for really unhealthy play when you get ran over by nothing but immob inside a chain of bubbles.

Plenty of utility? Seriously? You think removing immob is gonna leave druid/soulbeast with plenty of utility to warrant them a spot in wvw? No, not at all. The healing from druid is already scetchy as is because of its heal burst nature, the clunkiness of CA skill 1 and the medicore staff. FB is mostly about boon support anyways, medkit scrappers outheals both.

The corrupt scourge brings is way more important than the immob, and their damage will jump back up with the changes in this patch, surpassing what a soulbeast, which has most of its damage tied to melee abilities, can do.

No serious groups stack immob rangers. They usually run one druid/soulbeast. Reworking the two major root skills (entangle and the signet, and maybe the ancient seeds trait) will leave rangers unwanted in any squad.

Unless

they start doing meaningful reworks to make support druid viable.

A large group with lots of spellbreaker bubbles will mow down a smaller group anyways, with or without the immob.

And dragon banners should just be removed.

yes, plenty of utility. I'm not in favor of them removing immob entirely, but 4s durations+ or pulsing with cover conditions are oppressive af alone much more so together. CA's clunky but 2/3/4 and the flipover glyphs are very strong for healing through a push. There's nothing clunky at all about dolyak or bear stance, they work like a charm.

and no, immob>corrupt. that's why every build that can fit it in brings it. you immob and follow up with a scourge bomb because it creates pulsing conditions that cover the immob, allowing you to run over any class that doesn't bring skills that remove immob in particular. immob in a bomb is GG.

No serious groups stacked immob 2 months ago, they're rampant now though. we couldn't even get close to the blob on ebg last night, they had multiple soulbeasts running banner+sic em. Durations need to be cut in half, give them the ele treatment. The pulsing immobs i'm not even sure will be an issue anymore come to think of it, scourges will destroy the roots passively again.

I wasn't talking about getting ran over by a queue when you have 20 people. i'm talking about having 3 bubbles and 2 immob rangers with 25 people allowing you to one push any group that isn't double your size. And 100% agree, dragon banners should be removed.

I'm not saying that Dolyak Stance and Bear Stance are clunky, nothing about immob soulbeast is clunky. I was literally talking about the clunkiness of druid CA1 hampering the healing potential and its mediocre staff. Dude, take the time to read and understand what you're being told.

No, they don't have plenty of utility. If you think druid and soulbeast in its current state with weaker immob bring "plenty of utility", enough to warrant a squad spot instead of scrapper/tempest (druid) or herald (soulbeast), you seriously lack understanding of ranger as a class. Ignore the immob, and those three classes bring A LOT MORE utility than what any druid or soulbeast can bring. There is no argument about that, it's a fact.

And no, the best guild groups don't stack immob rangers. They usually bring one. And as for dragon banners, I already said they should be removed. Punishing ranger for the existence of dragon banners is ridiculous.

[Adzekul.3104]

Why do so many of these changes undo all the awesome work done by CMC and others for the mega balance patch a few months ago, and ignore the needed changes that should be following it up? How can the balance team justify making so many changes for the the tiny raiding community that undo the changes done to impact the competitive game modes?

[reddie.5861]

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@reddie.5861 said:wow what happend to thief completely left out? :(

Did you actually read the first paragraph of just skip to your class?

With this update, we're looking to improve condition builds in PvE while reducing more egregious condition builds in PvP and WvW.

as if condi on thief was problem, instead of actually giving thief something back.

[aaron.7850]

Scourges are already a problem in wvw, and they get major buffs to their broken damage.

Why Arenanet?

[CutesySylveon.8290]

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:Wow, these are garbage changes. Scourge is in a good spot right now, why on earth would you make them so dominant that they push out every other dps class again? Back to pirate shipping only for wvw =/

And no nerfs to pulsing immobilize on ranger? wut? do you guys play your game?

Rangers don't have a lot of utility. Just accept them as immob specialists, and move on.

druid immob healers heal as much as firebrands and immobeasts can do as much damage as scourge, they have plenty of utility. There's no reason for them to have the ability to lock down any group with less than 20 people. It makes for really unhealthy play when you get ran over by nothing but immob inside a chain of bubbles.

But why else would you take an Immobeast? This and the Ancient Seed druid is just a niche build that barely anyone uses.

Barely anyone you see, maybe. I see these things everywhere and it's a nightmare if there's more than one on you at a time or if you aren't a super anti condi spec like transfer condi rev. Doesn't help that if they get in trouble they can stealth and superspeed away with trapper runes.

[nthmetal.9652]

So we are buffing necros, nerfing FBs, which will maybe work for PvP - but in WvW it will emphasize the difference in size even more. I am not sure I understand the goal ...

[LINKAZZATORE.8135]

FREECMC

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/hk362e/this_patch_is_a_massive_regression_for_wvw/

This is probably the worst patch you've ever made

[CutesySylveon.8290]

@Lazze.9870 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:Wow, these are garbage changes. Scourge is in a good spot right now, why on earth would you make them so dominant that they push out every other dps class again? Back to pirate shipping only for wvw =/

And no nerfs to pulsing immobilize on ranger? wut? do you guys play your game?

Rangers don't have a lot of utility. Just accept them as immob specialists, and move on.

druid immob healers heal as much as firebrands and immobeasts can do as much damage as scourge, they have plenty of utility. There's no reason for them to have the ability to lock down any group with less than 20 people. It makes for really unhealthy play when you get ran over by nothing but immob inside a chain of bubbles.

Plenty of utility? Seriously? You think removing immob is gonna leave druid/soulbeast with plenty of utility to warrant them a squad spot in wvw? No, not at all. The healing from druid is already scetchy as is because of its heal burst nature, the clunkiness of CA skill 1 and the medicore staff. FB is mostly about boon support anyways, medkit scrappers outheals both.

The corrupt scourge brings is way more important than the immob, and their damage will jump back up with the changes in this patch, surpassing what a soulbeast, which has most of its damage tied to melee abilities, can do.

The best wvw guild groups don't stack immob rangers. They usually run one druid/soulbeast, if any at all. Reworking the two major root skills (entangle and the signet, and maybe the ancient seeds trait) will leave rangers unwanted in any squad.

Unless

they start doing meaningful reworks to make support druid perform at a similar level as tempest and scrappers. Say, if druid healed as much as tempest and scrappers, they would still have inferior cleansing to the other two, while scrapper and tempest brings auras, superspeed, condi-to-boon conversion, stealth etc. Druid brings no such additional worthwhile utility except the immob at the moment (and the druid pet is borderline completely useless in large fights). Soulbeast without its immob doesn't really bring anything other classes can't do better, mainly herald.

And dragon banners should just be removed.

When are you people going to realize that ranger as a class isn't meant to be in a zerg? Stop trying to argue rangers in squads aren't viable when they're not even supposed to be and aren't even the worst in squads, that honor goes to thief.

Ranger is one of the strongest roaming classes with possibly the best ranged weapon and extremely high +1 potential, not to mention plenty of ways to escape a fight they don't want. Not every class can be a zerg fighter and you've just got to accept that.

[Metzie.3012]

@"LINKAZZATORE.8135" said:

FREECMC

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/hk362e/this_patch_is_a_massive_regression_for_wvw/

This is probably the worst patch you've ever made

If someone even approximately believes that he is mainly "alone" responsible for it, then most people are wrong. The mentioned "developer" is (with all probability) just another puppet of the system and the company ANet ;)