Follow Up to May 11 Balance Preview

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Fire Attunement.9835

My first comment was done quickly and voiced my main concern. I SHOULD have included in the beginning of it my thanks to you and the Systems Team for the response to the feedback thus far. It is really important for this to happen, and I am super happy that you all are discussing our feed back the way you are.

I've voiced some concerns with the May 11th patch over in the Warrior forums, but I'll post them directly here.
 

Edits for completeness due to lack of morning caffeine.

 

The changes to Resistance and Retaliation->Resolution means that Warrior condition management is going to get rough real quick. You absolutely need to address this. We have one source of Resolution on Core and have little agency over its availability. We also have one source of Resolution on Spellbreaker, on a utility skill that rarely sees play due to how important it is for us to have CC and stunbreaks on our bar. Our Resistance access is again locked behind one weapon skill on core, and one trait on Spellbreaker. Warrior has strong burst cleansing potential, but with how quickly some classes put out conditions having boons like Resistance and Resolution are very important in competitive play.

 

Edit: Our other sources of Resistance are a nerfed heal skill with pitiful healing, and Berserker's Stance. These were important because the old Resistance at least let us get some breathing room from damaging conditions and non damaging conditions and have a window where we can actually function in competitive play. With the Resistance changes we'll need some of those skills to either grant Resolution as well, or grant Resolution instead.

 

The notes profess wanting to increase Spellbreaker's damage, but then you nerf the stats to Attacker's Insight to make room for the extra precision in the competitive game modes. Make it 50 per attribute, per stack in all game modes. This is not something that should be split, especially given that you have to actively acquire stacks of Attacker's Insight and isn't something that passively happens.

Make the 10% damage bonus on the new Sun and Moon Style apply regardless of if the foe has boons. In the competitive game modes you've nerfed boon strips, and this bonus will see very little uptime at all with what you have proposed. It is essentially a buff in name only. Spellbreaker needs more DPS in competitive play. It's fine for you to decide that it has to be with Daggers, but trust me the new version of the trait you all have proposed won't accomplish giving Spellbreaker more DPS in competitive play.

Also. PLEASE address the 300s CDs in Defense (not just Defense, but the other traits in other classes as well that got this treatment). They were billed as place holders until something could be made to replace them, but it has been over a year now and having these traits lay dead has created a dead traitline in competitive play.

 

Here are some suggestions that I had. Defense is the Warrior's selfish sustain traitline, so I reworked a few of the traits to better reflect the nature of the new boons while keeping in theme with the traits' purposes.

 

Defy Pain: This skill now grants protection and resolution for 4s when struck. 15s CD.  Resolution you gain has increased effectiveness (40% condition damage reduction). Nothing says Defy Pain like taking less of it. No stunbreak, no 100% damage immunity. So less powerful than the 300s CD version, but more useful overall.

 

Last Stand: This skill now grants vigor and resistance for 5 seconds when activating a stance. Stances last 20% longer. Same deal here. No stunbreaks, which was a toxic part of the 300s CD version. No Lesser Balanced Stance, so no crit immunity which was another reason why it got the 300s CD. The boons gained on activating a stance fit the theme of someone taking a last stand. More dodging, while ignoring non-damaging conditions for a short while.

 

Hardened Armor: When you block an attack or are critically struck gain resolution for 8s. Resolution grants 10% damage reduction.15s CD. It felt prudent with the change to the boon to revisit the duration.

 

Dogged March: Gain regeneration for 5s when inflicted with a movement impairing condition. Durations of such conditions are reduced by 66%. 10s CD. Being snared and kitted is one of the Warrior's main issues. This was to give it a better means to mitigate that within an underutilized traitline.

 

Thick Skin: While above 75% health you take 5% reduced strike damage and 5% reduced condition damage. Again, which how things are changing boon wise and looking at Defense on the whole it felt prudent to update this trait as well. Minor change though and not too important.

If I had to rate the above in order of what I'd like to see first it would be Defy Pain, Last Stand, Dogged March, Hardened Armor, and then Thick Skin.  But addressing the 300s CDs that have languished across several classes is important as the length of time we've all waited for them to be 'fixed' is becoming egregious.

 

Again, thanks for the hard work and for listening to and discussing our feedback!

Edited May 6, 2021 by Lan Deathrider.5910

[FelsPinguin.5902]

30 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

PLEASE address the 300s CDs

As a thief player I am hoping for the same. The acrobatics traitline contains the traits Instant Reflexes and Hard to Catch. Both traits have a Cooldown of 300 seconds in WvW and PvP wich makes them nearly unuseable.

Edited May 6, 2021 by FelsPinguin.5902

[MikSki.9481]

Hopefully this actually gets read and maybe someone will agree with me. Warrior got caught in a nerf because Anet wanted to reduce burst in DPS classes and create a gap between BS and DPS Warrior. DPS warrior is already a sustain DPS, not a burst so with less precision and ferocity it's going to be even worse. BS on the other hand is going to get hurt even more because not only his sustain goes down, but also the only burst he had which was from Peak Performance (which was mainly used in fractals due to short burst windows). After those changes people might run fractals without BS and just take another DPS class. Anet's concern was that BS is a support but has nearly the same DPS as DPS berserker - here's a solution. Buff DPS warrior along with Spellbreaker! As someone already mentioned, move banners to tactics and make Fast Hands a warrior specific mechanic, not a trait. If you want people to use other trait lines, give us Fast Hands! And make BERSERKER actually go berserk! It's in the name! BURST!

[NIKJOLDBHORN.7315]

Dear Staff, can we do also a real balance for WvW since every patch is made for PvE first and then it only reflects also WvW? For example all of the condition buff we had because of pve reflected really bad WvW and so on . Can we focus for once on WvW? It seems we only care about PvE.

[Horus.9685]

14 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Ashes of the Just: Now may only activate and consume a stack with an interval of once per second.

That might lead to scenarios tho where stacks are lost when multiple fbs are in the same subgroup though 😕

[InsaneQR.7412]

Ok tbh i would be happy if lesser Call of the wild would atleast interrupt like a very short daze this would also keep it similar to the OG skill.

 

It would help druid builds and marksmanship could be a better option for duelling builds.

 

In general some love for druids would be much appreciated. If not on may 11th then atleast in the upcoming balance patches.

[Hell Nirvana.9045]

Soulcleaver's Summit with its 1 second interval is not a worthy elite to dedicate energy upkeep to. Making it half a second, or cutting down the health gain by 20-33% would still keep the skill useful.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Hell Nirvana.9045

[ZOF.1986]

Still killing holo /cry

[Hagion.1086]

Thanks for the update!

But I'm still waiting for the guardian Hammer rework...

[RuneMF.9342]

12 hours ago, Loboling.5293 said:

These things almost always work on an ICD per player. They get the buff, and they can only apply the fire damage once per second. No stacks are wasted. 

 

12 hours ago, Destroyer Bravo.5391 said:

 

I believe the ICD of a stack of ashes is for the person doing the hitting, so basically it will take 3 seconds to deliver the burns from ashes instead of 3 hits which can occur in however much time it takes a power class to mash its buttons, a skill to hit 8 times, etc.

If that is the case though I don't think the nerfs are enough, I kind of came to the same conclusion myself since it seems to obvious of a mistake to not be like that (icd pr person) But if it is pr person based you can technically still prebuff 10 stacks on each player which is still absolutely insane for fotm, especially when they are still going trough with the 100% condi damage exposed buff. Sure you might not bring more than 2 FB maybe 3FB but what are you exactly changing then? Right now a lot of groups run 2-3 FB and then Revs or SB. 

[Cougre.6543]

29 minutes ago, Hell Nirvana.9045 said:

Soulcleaver's Summit

Or they could reduce its energy consumption, but that seems like the lame way to handle it.

[Shlexd.6071]

Please do something for the condi engi , the condi took a stray bullet with the power holo nerf, and it's not a very strong condi class right now and hasn't been for a while, but extremely complicated to play.

[slave to the grind.5028]

I don't see condi necro on this list. What about our damage in pvp/wvw?

[CroTiger.7819]

Change on Warhorn makes perfect sense since ranger rly lacks cc on offhand not including axe 4 which is kinda hard to bring value most of the time. What you did to lesser clarrion bond is not good because you took big part of ranger utility which already struggles compared to other classes. Solution would be to give lesser clarion bond 1/4 daze just for interupts since it will atleast open up some utility and better relation to the traits or split it from the original skill and keep it same. If those changes are not implemented im afraid you will burden ranger even more when we talk about pvp. Also how long we need to wait for some druid redisign which is rly needed. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by CroTiger.7819

[Euclid.2517]

1 hour ago, Shlexd.6071 said:

Please do something for the condi engi , the condi took a stray bullet with the power holo nerf, and it's not a very strong condi class right now and hasn't been for a while, but extremely complicated to play.

I agree. This class needs some buff since other condi spec got buffed; but it wasn't that bad. Pro people can hits very great number on fights where confusion ticks a lot.

[Destroyer Bravo.5391]

1 hour ago, RuneMF.9342 said:

 

If that is the case though I don't think the nerfs are enough, I kind of came to the same conclusion myself since it seems to obvious of a mistake to not be like that (icd pr person) But if it is pr person based you can technically still prebuff 10 stacks on each player which is still absolutely insane for fotm, especially when they are still going trough with the 100% condi damage exposed buff. Sure you might not bring more than 2 FB maybe 3FB but what are you exactly changing then? Right now a lot of groups run 2-3 FB and then Revs or SB. 

The change is not a nerf to damage, it's a nerf to its burst. It makes it behave like a condi class, and yes you can still stack 3 of them without creating situations where ashes stacks die.

[Kuma.1503]

One of the best ways to give engi group quickness would've been to restore quickness to Toss elixir U and apply the 5 secs of quickness from Kinetic battery to 5-10 targets around the engineer. A few other underutilized traits in tools could also be reworked to support this playstyle.  Not only would this give more diversity to the class, but it would avoid overbuffing Scrapper in WvW which is the only place where it overperforms (it's the only place it's viable at all but i digress). Scrapper needs Inventions in order to access its cleansing synergy

 

2 secs upon applying superspeed is too timid of an approach for Scrapper to compete firebrand in PvE. It deals less damage since it requires more boon duration, gives fewer boons, and can't apply aegis or stability as frequently. It needs more if it's going to be a competitive choice in PvE group content. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Kuma.1503

[RuneMF.9342]

46 minutes ago, Destroyer Bravo.5391 said:

The change is not a nerf to damage, it's a nerf to its burst. It makes it behave like a condi class, and yes you can still stack 3 of them without creating situations where ashes stacks die.

Without getting in to a big argument I don't really see what you are trying to say with that, yes it is a nerf to the burst. & What they are trying to do is reducing the burst yes but it is nerfing something that is not really utilized at all anyway, except MO where you can run full guard and all prestack ashes and swap to DH and you just got 1 FB with massive opener at no cost at all.

But what I was talking about in my original comment was the fact that 5 of the stacks potentially won't do anything because of a 1 sec icd. Unless it is a 1 sec icd per person, which in that case doesn't really solve anything really.

If it is 1 sec icd per person sure you wont see MO 150k opener, but many groups will have 8-10 stack opener from prestack which will work with this iteration of a 1 sec icd pr person. For example check this great pov from Tantor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD8VoHkWYQ&t=0s  8 Stacks prebuffed resulting in a 89k peak opener on a NON exposed boss.

Again I like this change but if it is option A, the ICD of ashes is on the guard itself, then a lot of the stacks will get wasted on every single cast which just feels wrong to not be able to proc the full ability because of ICD application limits. Or option B, there is a icd on each person in which case it doesn't really do much since the best groups run 2 max 3 fb's anyway and allows for absolutely disgusting burst damage even with this nerf.

 

[Tulki.1458]

45 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

One of the best ways to give engi group quickness would've been to restore quickness to Toss elixir U and apply the 5 secs of quickness from Kinetic battery to 5-10 targets around the engineer. A few other underutilized traits in tools could also be reworked to support this playstyle.  Not only would this give more diversity to the class, but it would avoid overbuffing Scrapper in WvW which is the only place where it overperforms (it's the only place it's viable at all but i digress). Scrapper needs Inventions in order to access its cleansing synergy

 

2 secs upon applying superspeed is too timid of an approach for Scrapper to compete firebrand in PvE. It deals less damage since it requires more boon duration, gives fewer boons, and can't apply aegis or stability as frequently. It needs more if it's going to be a competitive choice in PvE group content. 

 

This Kinetic Battery change is one of the best suggestions I've heard.

It would allow a DPS build to take on quickness support through tool belt skills, but they have to slot tools over either explosives or firearms so it's a damage tradeoff.

 

And then on top of that, it opens up the possibility for core engineer to run a pure healer support build (alchemy+inventions+tools). Right now it's not really viable, but if they're able to provide quickness through their tool belt, it might be. That would be an entirely new playstyle in pve.

[Xeon.5768]

3 hours ago, RuneMF.9342 said:

Without getting in to a big argument I don't really see what you are trying to say with that, yes it is a nerf to the burst. & What they are trying to do is reducing the burst yes but it is nerfing something that is not really utilized at all anyway, except MO where you can run full guard and all prestack ashes and swap to DH and you just got 1 FB with massive opener at no cost at all.

But what I was talking about in my original comment was the fact that 5 of the stacks potentially won't do anything because of a 1 sec icd. Unless it is a 1 sec icd per person, which in that case doesn't really solve anything really.

If it is 1 sec icd per person sure you wont see MO 150k opener, but many groups will have 8-10 stack opener from prestack which will work with this iteration of a 1 sec icd pr person. For example check this great pov from Tantor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD8VoHkWYQ&t=0s  8 Stacks prebuffed resulting in a 89k peak opener on a NON exposed boss.

Again I like this change but if it is option A, the ICD of ashes is on the guard itself, then a lot of the stacks will get wasted on every single cast which just feels wrong to not be able to proc the full ability because of ICD application limits. Or option B, there is a icd on each person in which case it doesn't really do much since the best groups run 2 max 3 fb's anyway and allows for absolutely disgusting burst damage even with this nerf.

 

You raised a good point. I have to agree on what some other players mentioning about guardian being the real love son of Anet, because the changes I see in the upcoming May 11th patch does a light touch on Dragonhunter while nerfing other pwr dps classes much harder. Dragonhunter is one of the strongest class ever in any high-end groups, achieving top 1 dps in many situations (

 

The decision of increasing exposed state condi dmg bonus from 50% to 100% is even making the condi Firebrand class even more overpowered.

 

Quoting my original post "At the current patch, with a little effortless precast of Ashes of the Just (like 4 stacks pre-fight) at the mistlock, a single cFB (with no other FBs) can easily burst up to 90k on bosses like skorv in CM99 for example. This class is particularly favored in pugs, and can beat any other pwr classes in DPS, when the CC bar is slowly broken (which is mostly the case in daily pugs). In general T4 fractals, this class is even more overpowered on almost all the mini or main bosses (especially when there are a lot of adds to refresh tome 1), where the sustained burning dmg is just insane that no other pwr classes can catch up with it! "

 

This follow-up note regarding the rework of Ashes of the Just is still considered minimal to me, as compared to the 50% exposed state bonus increase from 50% to 100%. As a result, it is likely to encourage a new homogeneous comp (4 FBs + ren) inside the fractals, making its DPS opener easily hit 120-160k on many bosses, with a little precasting effort at the mistlock.

 

Tbh all of the pwr classes can only get good opener with some serious working on precast of skills before entering combat, and plus the good organization of the group (i.e. static) about when to activate the boss or to take the portal. A little attempt of condi firebrand leading to high dps just does not make sense to me in terms of the efforts one should make to achieve the same standard as other pwr classes do.

 

The above might sound salty about guardian class, but as a player who has played all the meta and off-meta classes recommended on Discretize EU, I just feel I should step up to have some sayings here.  I believe not only myself but many other players enjoy the process of learning and mastering classes ultimately for different encounters. Making a braindead class having high DPS burst just does not encourage anyone to keep trying and improving. 

 

Condition firebrand has been overpowered for years ever since the fractals were released. The release of CM100 just encourages much more players to get onto it, making a new homogeneous comp, such as 5 FBs in CM100 light phase (

).

I expect this may happen in the future, if you do not take this class seriously @Fire Attunement.9835

Edited May 6, 2021 by Xeon.5768

[necromaniac.7629]

20 hours ago, saerni.2584 said:

 

Can the Systems Team also comment on Preparedness and Deadly Ambush for Thief?

 

The phrasing of the changes seemed to suggest removing the 3 Initiative on Preparedness and also somewhat implied that Deadly Ambush would apply both confusion as well as the bleed effects.

 

The expectation of several players, including myself, was that removing the Initiative would be a fairly significant nerf to Thief playability (and would have been mentioned explicitly) and also the belief that Deadly Ambush was replacing Bewildering Ambush (but the word "also" was used for Deadly Ambush and notably not for Preparedness). 

 

Thanks!

All I know is Deadly Ambush will not do confusion anymore, the previous name of the skill says it all; bewildering, which means confusing...now named deadly ambush and does bleeding ,so yeah. Not sure as everyone else whether  Preparedness is still gonna give initiative, if I was to try to truly analyze the wording and and trait itself, I THINK it will only give expertise now.

[Jijimuge.4675]

6 minutes ago, necromaniac.7629 said:

All I know is Deadly Ambush will not do confusion anymore, the previous name of the skill says it all; bewildering, which means confusing...now named deadly ambush and does bleeding ,so yeah. Not sure as everyone else whether  Preparedness is still gonna give initiative, if I was to try to truly analyze the wording and and trait itself, I THINK it will only give expertise now.

Preparedness will still give initiative.

 

 

[necromaniac.7629]

1 minute ago, Jijimuge.4675 said:

Preparedness will still give initiative.

 

 

ok thanks, didn't see that part

[Cynstriss.5063]

Ranger has become useless.  I feel like I am playing with foam Nerf darts.

[Omg Im Target.3095]

Made me laugh that you see nothing wrong with the power weaver nerf. A role that is first a glas cannon, second brings no utilities to the group and third clunky to play. It hasn't been meta for a while EVEN IN PRO PLAY.