New Balance Patch

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

@reddie.5861 said:

@"lodjur.1284" said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

what changed? we are just slowly moving back to good old PoF release skills..

o hai we remove necro pulsing all over the placeo hai we just added it back because why not?

then lets not mention (i hope im wrong) necro's if traited correct can turn all healing into barrier if their HP is at max.so kitten me in all this fb/warrior/tempest w/e heal spam a necro going to become a raidboss..amazing.. necro is probably the last thing that should recieve any buffs in WvW lol

basically

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/668003445

from 27:00 roy just said it all and enjoy the laughs (just click on twitch logo and it works right lower corner)

I'm kinda sad I've missed his stream now. The only good thing from this was stream reaction to balance changes.

Dear A-net, it's not 1st April, so I would ask you kindly to stop messing around with playerbase with kitten powercreep. These changes are stupid to say the least.Don't release them, bring CMC back and let him balance the game, atleast he is capable of using eyes to see the obvious problems within the game...

[Supreme.3164]

@TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

@reddie.5861 said:

@"lodjur.1284" said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

what changed? we are just slowly moving back to good old PoF release skills..

o hai we remove necro pulsing all over the placeo hai we just added it back because why not?

then lets not mention (i hope im wrong) necro's if traited correct can turn all healing into barrier if their HP is at max.so kitten me in all this fb/warrior/tempest w/e heal spam a necro going to become a raidboss..amazing.. necro is probably the last thing that should recieve any buffs in WvW lol

basically

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/668003445

from 27:00 roy just said it all and enjoy the laughs (just click on twitch logo and it works right lower corner)

I'm kinda sad I've missed his stream now. The only good thing from this was stream reaction to balance changes.

Dear A-net, it's not 1st April, so I would ask you kindly to stop messing around with playerbase with kitten powercreep. These changes are stupid to say the least.Don't release them, bring CMC back and let him balance the game, atleast he is capable of using eyes to see the obvious problems within the game...

Really @CMC is the one behind these changes! Just go and watch the dev stream from yesterday

[Widmo.3186]

@lodjur.1284 said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

Amazing what, either stupid, random or unneeded changes that no1 asked for.I hope OP used sarcasm, because what they did in this patch was barely touching the main issue.

[lodjur.1284]

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

are you high?

I wish.

they declared a new 4-6 week balance cadence, did nothing for 6 months, then pushed out this steaming kitten of a balance patch. Melee classes are completely obsolete again because of the scourge buffs, they aren't addressing herald damage and in fact made jalis even better, and no immob nerfs for rangers- they even buffed druid's immob duration.

It's been like 4 1/2 months since late february. But you're right that it's been a bit slow.

Melee being obsolete sounds like some zerg stuff idc about tbh. I play melee and didnt back when scourge had old shades, not really a problem. Scourge does no dmg anyway.

Do you mean power or condi herald dmg? I assume Power because you mentioned Jalis.

Also Jalis didn't exactly get buffed, it got some very annoying bugs fixed, the mid-air stuff that is. Then it also got the f2 fixed to work with the trait, I guess, but that's fairly minor stuff.

Lack of immob nerf for ranger is awful, correct. The buff to druid condi immob feels strange as well.

Mostly I am happy about.

Revenant mid-air fix. Renegade Shortbow getting another skill.

Scourge getting it's shade back. Even if it still does 0 dmg.

Chrono getting to have real shatters again.

The small supportbrand nerf (not enough and in the wrong place but it's something)

But overall I like the current state of the game even if it has it's issues (like ranger and supportbrand). So I am mostly happy the game isn't reverting to the awful state that it was pre-february. Meaning minor improvements is more than good enough for me.

sorry for the exaggeration, 4.5 months not 6. You didn't play melee back when scourges had their personal shade because almost no one played melee then. This is how strong of an effect self based shades were, they nullified an entire game mechanic. Bringing them back reverts the wvw meta back to what it was pre-february, a pirate ship where you can't melee push until a group is almost wiped.

I actually did. But I don't zerg and in smallscale (ie enemy groupsize of like 5-15, personal groupsize of 3-5) melee definitively isn't held back by scourge and scourge would essentially count as a melee build (or at least close ranged).

It's not oppressive in small scale, it's very oppressive when you have 10+ of them all in one place. As soon as they hit f2-5 each is putting out 5-6k burst, or 50k+, with an additional 1.5-2k pulsing damage from f5 every second afterwards. The people in melee range get flattened for being near the enemy zerg, the people at the shades' location get flattened the same way. A coordinated bomb can one shot small groups. And since the damage comes in small packets, with corrupts and CC tied in, you can't aegis your way through for a successful melee push.

So like hammer rev out anything else with decent ranged AoE.

Sounds rather like they need something to make encourage not stacking in the fields...

Both condi and power herald use jalis, it's only oppressive on power. There's no reason a 900 unit long pulsing stability field should have a 1.5 power coefficient- that's the same amount of damage rev hammer 2 does.

Condi herald generally doesnt use jalis,, Condi herald is generally Dragon+Demon.

Condi renegade does run Demon+Dwarf generally tho (though they're extremely rare).

I haven't had any issues with getting nuked by Inspiring Reinforcement, I have barely seen it on my dmg taken in ARC, but I honestly couldn't care less if it got 0.01 power scaling like CC skills do. I knew that it had very high power scaling, it just literally wasn't even on my mind when you mentioned jalis due to the fact that I have just never taken any real amount of dmg from it.

You don't fight in zergs, which is where it's most popular =/

I mean it's not like we never see a hammer Rev with jalis, they barely do any dmg compared to the actually problematic classes and 900 range means they're usually close enough to gapclose and kill. So it just hasn't shown up anywhere high up on the dmg taken list (even if one sorts by max value).

Just hope the Stab/CD/Energy Cost/Weakness remains the same.

I'd be down with reducing the cost to 20 energy and dropping the damage by half, right now though this utility does far too much

Sure. I play with jalis and this would be a (very minor) buff.

and idk what you're talking about with scourges, they still do great damage. I'm not even running a power setup or well of suffering

Meh, As I said I don't really zerg.

You do play notably better than the rest of that zerg, but I very much doubt that "you should" be outdpsing everyone in a zerg setting as condi scourge. That better players do more dmg than worse ones is kinda expected tho. I am very certain that you (or me for that matter) could get top dmg in that zerg with almost anything that has any sort of dmg.

Either way, from my point of view it's a good thing as scourge will continue to be bad where I play anyway and could use some love.

It will always be extremely strong in zergs tho, whether they change the shade or nah, delete AoE caps completely from all (ie all classes) offensive skills and it would probably be much less of an issue

scourge is in a good spot for the first time since pof dropped. it's not great for 5v5 where you can get jumped easily, but it's alright in 1v1s and very strong in zergs. The issue is both the number of targets and the effect of stacking them. In anything over 30v30, melee isn't an option at all solely because of how effective it is to stack scourges and bomb when the enemy squad pushes.

It's terrible outside of zergs. Damage scourge really is a joke, both power and condi.

It will always be amazing in zergs. Turns out an environment all about stacking inside of enemy AoEs is good for a class with tons of double duty AoE effects, especially when those effects happen to be mostly boon removal.

Doesn't mean scourge should be left beyond gutted for groupsizes below 15.

@Widmo.3186 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

Amazing what, either stupid, random or unneeded changes that no1 asked for.I hope OP used sarcasm, because what they did in this patch was barely touching the main issue.

Current patch is good, new patch is a set of small but noticeable improvements to a bunch of areas (and a low number of changes that are real headscratchers, but nothing too terrible)

[Dawdler.8521]

@lodjur.1284 said:Doesn't mean scourge should be left beyond gutted for groupsizes below 15.Why not? Lots of builds are left beyond gutted for groupsizes above 15. Why cant scourges accept they should go reaper or core, like other normal classes change to their elites when going zerging?

Or is that what people want, omnibuilds with no weaknesses, just everyone go scourge?

[Aeolus.3615]

More scourge aoe spam! Gw2 is one of the worst pvp game.. for some reason...

All badies now will play and stack scourges!

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:Doesn't mean scourge should be left beyond gutted for groupsizes below 15.Why not? Lots of builds are left beyond gutted for groupsizes above 15. Why cant scourges accept they should go reaper or core, like other normal classes change to their elites when going zerging?

Or is that what people want, omnibuilds with no weaknesses, just everyone go scourge?

Sadly thats also what dev's want, scourge was always a awfull design, since game was already saturated with aoe.

gona staert requesting for ventari tablet needs high heals and for 10 players to balance with all the aoe spam fiesta.

[lodjur.1284]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"lodjur.1284" said:Doesn't mean scourge should be left beyond gutted for groupsizes below 15.Why not? Lots of builds are left beyond gutted for groupsizes above 15. Why cant scourges accept they should go reaper or core, like other normal classes change to their elites when going zerging?

Well I am all for fixing up those builds to work in larger groupsizes, but with (offensive) AoE caps existing that's impossible and won't ever happen.

Or is that what people want, omnibuilds with no weaknesses, just everyone go scourge?

It will still be bad in smallscale though, due to no damage.

Also being bad in a certain groupsize (or gamemode is hardly a weakness of a build.)

Also and this I will get criticized for.

Zerging balance matters less and balance should be focused on groupsizes of about 10ish (still twice as big as any group I've ever been in so not exactly centered around me). For these groupsizes and a bit bigger and smaller, this is a positive change.

The goal of balance changes should be creating a healthy meta (opinions on what this is vary greatly) and create an environment where what one does in combat has the potential to change the outcome (ie player agency, or more commonly, that it matters of one "gits gud")

Zergs will just always stay the same due to their nature.

Since I started playing (slightly before HoT launch), zergs have been exactly the same.

They're still all about stacking tightly to avoid damage and trying to manage to synchronize high impact skills and lagging it the rest of the map.

When there's so much lag and 40+ other players around you, your actions don't matter, rendering balance unimportant. You're never gonna have fights where it's like "of but if they hadn't buffed/nerfed X we would have won".

Balance has changed drastically since I started yet the zerg meta is the same old, stack really tight and try to bomb that it was when I started, what effects fly around changed a bit but not all that much.

Meanwhile smaller scale has had extremely different metas and seen entire types of builds added/removed and periods of time where the game felt miserable (most of last year) and periods where it felt great (ever since February patch for example), clearly it's an area where balance matters more.

[Aeolus.3615]

@lodjur.1284The current changes to necro will make players want to be more carried its stacking, with is the class that is being most overstacked in WVW, thats its not creating healthy gameplay.

I fear ANet completelly killed anything outside range aoe combat.

2-3 scourges per squad, 2 power and one for big barriers, large groups m8 get 3 power scourges per squad...

its idiotic game converted in stacking 2-3 classes at best dur that class performance when overstacked, its not healthy gameplay.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@"lodjur.1284" for such an old player it kinda hurts that u lack the basics even. 20 man guildgroups can still push double (and if spread out even triple) their numbers on good impacts. the format is designed about bigscale, you cannot really expect smallscale "balancing" to have any effect. and this is what Anet does the whole time.

lag is sometimes bad, but by far not always. it kinda is randomly better or worse tho. by far worst lag spikes cause: 3 big groups of different colors or stealth pushing. u need stealth, otherwise just numbers decide often, but stealth causes so insanely heavy lags for me way too often, if defending against it. that has not tons to do with group size, even a thief engaging cause sometimes crazy lag spikes.

smallscale main classes should get nerfed more (thief, ranger, warrior mobility, and hard-cc cooldowns), but surely, stuff like scrouge should not get their former nerfs reverted, that's a unquestionable odd idea of Anet.

also, in a "healthy meta" is rather one that only gets touched minimalistically, without the option to win everything within a single action. Anet seemed to have broken that always again, with random buff/nerfs on different stuff. funny ideas of cc's stripped of damage, while everybody anyways didn't use them for that in the first instance.

hard CC cooldowns, CC spam stacks, immobilize, frostslowdown, daze... these all extremly common in CC-bombs, but did however get way lesser nerfs than just damage got nerfed by Anet..

the current bombs are not too hard to avoid, unless you get CC'd or pulled into them. smart idea to nerf stability with last big "Balance" btw.

@Aeolus.3615 the only thing that kills melee+ish combat is the often worse lag in melee pushing of zergs. besides, necro is semi-close combat. and how many range classes matter even? revenant and scrouge. clap clap

[Aeolus.3615]

@kamikharzeeh.8016

Yeah but when the game cant handle this much aoe and Anet adds more....Game was already overloaded with aoe spam even before scourges, Anet will kill the game with this dumb update on necros.

The game is already laggin hard with the current gameplay and they are making it worse even in smaller scale, its the combination of lag and "perma" range aoe spam capability on group that fucks up the gameplay,

[lodjur.1284]

@kamikharzeeh.8016 said:@"lodjur.1284" for such an old player it kinda hurts that u lack the basics even. 20 man guildgroups can still push double (and if spread out even triple) their numbers on good impacts. the format is designed about bigscale, you cannot really expect smallscale "balancing" to have any effect. and this is what Anet does the whole time.

That doesn't really mean that each individual player has an impact or that balance changes should impact such a situation. Turns out 20 stacked chickens can beat 40 headless chickens, who could have guessed...

lag is sometimes bad, but by far not always. it kinda is randomly better or worse tho. by far worst lag spikes cause: 3 big groups of different colors or stealth pushing. u need stealth, otherwise just numbers decide often, but stealth causes so insanely heavy lags for me way too often, if defending against it. that has not tons to do with group size, even a thief engaging cause sometimes crazy lag spikes.

That is strange, I almost exclusively have terrible lag when zergs are in the vicinity and terrible delay of zergs are fighting.

Stealth seems to have nothing to do with the issue, as much as I hate stealth.

smallscale main classes should get nerfed more (thief, ranger, warrior mobility, and hard-cc cooldowns), but surely, stuff like scrouge should not get their former nerfs reverted, that's a unquestionable odd idea of Anet.

But all of those are still absurd (or strong but not absurd on the case of warrior) and could use some tweaks.

also, in a "healthy meta" is rather one that only gets touched minimalistically, without the option to win everything within a single action. Anet seemed to have broken that always again, with random buff/nerfs on different stuff. funny ideas of cc's stripped of damage, while everybody anyways didn't use them for that in the first instance.

Dmg removal from CC was good.

hard CC cooldowns, CC spam stacks, immobilize, frostslowdown, daze... these all extremly common in CC-bombs, but did however get way lesser nerfs than just damage got nerfed by Anet..

Dmg removal from CC was good.

the current bombs are not too hard to avoid, unless you get CC'd or pulled into them. smart idea to nerf stability with last big "Balance" btw.

Not sure what you're on about.

@Aeolus.3615 the only thing that kills melee+ish combat is the often worse lag in melee pushing of zergs. besides, necro is semi-close combat. and how many range classes matter even? revenant and scrouge. clap clap

[Aeolus.3615]

Correction:@lodjur.1284, scourge can be played at range combat, now will be range, semi-close and at melee range as well.With current changes will be more easy to play it at range tho.

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

Not sure what's going on here...I dont see any patch notes anywhere. Help?

[lodjur.1284]

@"SlitheSlivier.1908" said:Not sure what's going on here...I dont see any patch notes anywhere. Help?

Upcoming patch notes, if you go to the "professions" section of the forum you'll find em

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

@lodjur.1284 said:

@"SlitheSlivier.1908" said:Not sure what's going on here...I dont see any patch notes anywhere. Help?

Upcoming patch notes, if you go to the "professions" section of the forum you'll find em

thanks!

[Moradorin.6217]

@lodjur.1284 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

are you high?

I wish.

they declared a new 4-6 week balance cadence, did nothing for 6 months, then pushed out this steaming kitten of a balance patch. Melee classes are completely obsolete again because of the scourge buffs, they aren't addressing herald damage and in fact made jalis even better, and no immob nerfs for rangers- they even buffed druid's immob duration.

It's been like 4 1/2 months since late february. But you're right that it's been a bit slow.

Melee being obsolete sounds like some zerg stuff idc about tbh. I play melee and didnt back when scourge had old shades, not really a problem. Scourge does no dmg anyway.

Do you mean power or condi herald dmg? I assume Power because you mentioned Jalis.

Also Jalis didn't exactly get buffed, it got some very annoying bugs fixed, the mid-air stuff that is. Then it also got the f2 fixed to work with the trait, I guess, but that's fairly minor stuff.

Lack of immob nerf for ranger is awful, correct. The buff to druid condi immob feels strange as well.

Mostly I am happy about.

Revenant mid-air fix. Renegade Shortbow getting another skill.

Scourge getting it's shade back. Even if it still does 0 dmg.

Chrono getting to have real shatters again.

The small supportbrand nerf (not enough and in the wrong place but it's something)

But overall I like the current state of the game even if it has it's issues (like ranger and supportbrand). So I am mostly happy the game isn't reverting to the awful state that it was pre-february. Meaning minor improvements is more than good enough for me.

4.5 months = 18 weeks and you are comparing that to 4-6 and saying "a bit slow" I wish my boss was that forgiving! lul

The game stat is pathetic. THey didnt actually do a single thing to continue the idea of tradeoffs or to adjust core classes (like core mes) against elites or vice verse. This was supposed to part of the "new cadence". Personally, I think the chrono change just demonstrates Anet makes bad mistakes and rather that admit they were wrong they will wait a year then reverse a change that was obviously flawed ... a year ago.... What about Mirages' other dodge? ALso for soulbeast why not look at the actual cause of the higher damage which is merge bonus + extra kit like worldly impact which can never become "balanced" against core becuase 1 pet that is revived on merge ISNT a draw back its an improvement and simplification to always have the same pet with the same pet kit when merged or un-merged. Anet doesnt seem to understand its own game.

[Voltekka.2375]

The only amazing thing is the return of pirateship meta. So sad. Such a huge step back

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

I don't get how Rapid Shot isn't getting a damage/CD nerf, esp since it tracks enemies. Take out most of the health of mesmers, thieves, eles, etc.Imo, that's the biggest problem with rangers.

[Faenar.8036]

Cannot resist the urge of surge ?

[lodjur.1284]

@Moradorin.6217 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:Notes are out and it's looking pretty amazing, another good balance patch following the february one.

are you high?

I wish.

they declared a new 4-6 week balance cadence, did nothing for 6 months, then pushed out this steaming kitten of a balance patch. Melee classes are completely obsolete again because of the scourge buffs, they aren't addressing herald damage and in fact made jalis even better, and no immob nerfs for rangers- they even buffed druid's immob duration.

It's been like 4 1/2 months since late february. But you're right that it's been a bit slow.

Melee being obsolete sounds like some zerg stuff idc about tbh. I play melee and didnt back when scourge had old shades, not really a problem. Scourge does no dmg anyway.

Do you mean power or condi herald dmg? I assume Power because you mentioned Jalis.

Also Jalis didn't exactly get buffed, it got some very annoying bugs fixed, the mid-air stuff that is. Then it also got the f2 fixed to work with the trait, I guess, but that's fairly minor stuff.

Lack of immob nerf for ranger is awful, correct. The buff to druid condi immob feels strange as well.

Mostly I am happy about.

Revenant mid-air fix. Renegade Shortbow getting another skill.

Scourge getting it's shade back. Even if it still does 0 dmg.

Chrono getting to have real shatters again.

The small supportbrand nerf (not enough and in the wrong place but it's something)

But overall I like the current state of the game even if it has it's issues (like ranger and supportbrand). So I am mostly happy the game isn't reverting to the awful state that it was pre-february. Meaning minor improvements is more than good enough for me.

4.5 months = 18 weeks and you are comparing that to 4-6 and saying "a bit slow" I wish my boss was that forgiving! lul

Times moves fast when the game is in a good state I guess, honestly february balance still feels fresh to me and i have been playing a ton since.

The game stat is pathetic. THey didnt actually do a single thing to continue the idea of tradeoffs or to adjust core classes (like core mes) against elites or vice verse. This was supposed to part of the "new cadence". Personally, I think the chrono change just demonstrates Anet makes bad mistakes and rather that admit they were wrong they will wait a year then reverse a change that was obviously flawed ... a year ago.... What about Mirages' other dodge? ALso for soulbeast why not look at the actual cause of the higher damage which is merge bonus + extra kit like worldly impact which can never become "balanced" against core becuase 1 pet that is revived on merge ISNT a draw back its an improvement and simplification to always have the same pet with the same pet kit when merged or un-merged. Anet doesnt seem to understand its own game.

They could do some stuff better ye, I am just happy it isn't like last year.

[RisenHowl.2419]

@lodjur.1284 said:

How applicable do you think your experience is to the majority of wvw players? You said the biggest groups you've played in are 5 people but you want to comment on fights of 30+/50+?

[Infusion.7149]

@YTKafka.4681 said:

@"Infusion.7149" said:If they're going to revert scourge sand shades , it probably should only cleave 3 people.

It does only cleave 3 people. The problem isn't in the shades it's in Sand Savant (i.e. Big Shades)

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/skills?ids=44946,42297&lang=en"Number of Targets" = 5

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Manifest_Sand_Shade

[lodjur.1284]

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

How applicable do you think your experience is to the majority of wvw players? You said the biggest groups you've played in are 5 people but you want to comment on fights of 30+/50+?

Are you saying I am wrong about the lack of meaningful personal contribution, because that's simple math?

Am I wrong about the terrible delay/delay caused by zergs, because I can easily notice that even when avoiding them.

Am I wrong about the fact that AoE caps are a 80%+ passive damage reduction mechanic? Because once again simple math.

Also I am simply offering my perspective. Whether it's applicable to a majority is kinda hard to say, never claimed to speak for one.

But players who aren't in massive blobs a majority of the time are definitively a significant amount. Then again I obviously don't speak for anyone but myself.

[hobotnicax.7918]

Anet have lost the plot... they want to kill their game it seems.

[senki.1046]

please don't add the necro changes into wvw live servers. it would be a huge mistake, anet