Guild Wars 2

Any signet ability that is only valuable for it’s passive is broken and needs to be fixed. The biggest culprit here is obviously healing signet, but all the movement speed signets belong here too. Signet passives should be small bonuses that make you consider whether you really want to use the active or not, making them so good that you never even consider using the active is a huge mistake.

this is the PvE/WvW berserker same traits as PvP

obviously much more damage based on itemization

This build is not an instant-win, but it is a pure damage build.

It cannot survive long in battles, cannot take many hits, and is certain to die.

But, it does do enough damage in a 1v1 scenario to actually have a chance to win an encounter with most classes. Something the PvP mist character cannot do with this same build. The damage is just too low.

In order to maintain a max damage build that is viable in PvE/WvW, it needs to have scaling in critical damage between 58%-108%. 58% being totally not-viable.

Its just that simple. So, when doing your scaling, please keep this in mind.

Karl McLain.5604:

With necromancer, we’re changing the way that Dhuumfire is activated – allowing players the opportunity to react. This will also allow the necromancer to carefully plan their burning application.

• Dhuumfire: This trait has been changed so that it will make Life Blast inflict 3 seconds of burning with a 10 second recharge.

Problems:

• Using dhuumfire means DS on cooldown, a huge price to pay unless other skills are used too but all of them have longer cooldown.
• Dhuumfire shines with condition build, life blast does not.

Ideas:

• Increase burning duration and cooldown (better synergy with other DS skills cooldown).
• Associate dhuumfire with doom (better synergy with condition builds).

I guess i should post the traits. GL with balance, I hope you get it right. It really makes and breaks parts of the game

IE the aoe nerf in wvw which makes larger zergs simply always win.

The elementalist changes are appreciated, but the interesting thing is that these are changes that were made to spells that are already fairly popular. Why not buff skills that are hardly used in PvE, like most of the focus spells and glyphs?

I’d also go as far to say that the Ele is a bad example of balancing damage and durability. The inherent squishiness doesn’t seem to be justified.

A little disappointed that there was nothing listed for Thief. Backstab builds are deadly. They do a ton of burst damage from stealth, as shown in the attached picture. I’m using 3/6 Knights and some soldier accessories, and it was still a one-shot combo to my character.

The problem isn’t so much the damage, but the risk-reward. There is nothing inherently wrong with the CnD-> Backstab combo (IMO). Although CnD immediately puts the thief into stealth, I probably could have dodged before the backstab if I was more alert or saw the thief before steal (I didn’t). But what would that accomplish? Backstab uses no initiative, it has no cooldown, and a missed Backstab does not remove the thief from stealth. Even if I were to dodge the Backstab, another one is coming without penalty and there’s nothing I can do.

I feel like that should change to promote skillful counter-play. Dodging a Backstab should remove the thief from stealth and give them the revealed debuff. Thoughts?

For the ranger:

- I think the change for the Spirit of Nature is fair because it gave just too much for an elite skill. It’s the final nerf spirit rangers needed in my opinion.

- For traps, I think the Viper’s Nest combo field is nice but alot of players would use it more if it would hit 5 targets instead of 3. When you run traps you also don’t have much access to swiftness unless you take either the rune of speed, signet of the hunt (I much prefer having a third trap or signet of renewal) or the warhorn with you (even there I don’t think warhorn is good enough for trappers). Trapper rangers have the potential to be great home point defenders and even far pushers (if only we had the easy access to swiftness engi has). It just needs a few changes and it would be in a good spot in tpvp.

For warrior:

- Healing Signet: In my opinion, I don’t think you need to buff the active of the warrior at all, just reduce the passive heal abit more and it would be fine. Thing is, if the active of the healing signet is too good then it’s going to be overpowered as the cooldown of the heal is pretty low so you have to be very careful with that you want to buff in the active.

- Pin Down: I think it’s a nerf that was needed as you had to be a lucky dude to be able to dodge out of that skill.

Ok I think it’s time to say thank you to the devs sharing this preview with us. Thats great and should be done more often.
However the changes are rather minimal compared to the hopes the most players had.
Would be nice if you could point out that the devs are actually working on more issues than are displayed in this preview to prevent confusion.

Please allow me to be the first to say…. THANK YOU ANET.

People were sceptical about the list of changes mentioned in Ready-UP, and even though you said there would be a post detailing all the changes so we could comment and provide our feedback, that was not enough for them.

This list of rune, sigil, and upcoming balance changes is a welcome addition to the information provided in the stream, and we are so glad the extensive, nearly unmentionably long list of balance changes was posted here in full.

Great information and I feel so much better that the concerns and feedback that has been provided over the past 2 months has been incorporated into this list of changes.

Still no Fortifying Bond changes to replace Vigor for Stability…. Come on!

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

Elementalist:
Our changes for the elementalist focus on increasing sustain while maintaining the delicate balance between damage and durability. We achieved this by adding more defensive effects to a few main-hand weapon sets.

• Signet of Restoration: Removed the split on this skill so that the signet passive heal amount will be increased in PvP to match the current PvE amount.
• Armor of Earth: Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.
• Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.
• Burning Speed: This ability now evades attacks.
• Frozen Burst: This ability is now a blast finisher.

I have no idea what you are talking about when you say ‘maintaining the delicate balance between damage and durability.’ There is absolutely no balance…elementalists are forced to trait all defensive because you failed to ‘maintain’ this.

Dojo.1867:

Hello Karl,

instead of finetuning skills for engi kits like the toolkit which is essentially at a strong spot and even box of nails had its moments I would like to see you focuss on certain underused utility skills that are not kits like:

• Personal Battering Ram (aka bad flamethrower)
• Utility Goggles (aka bad med kit)
• Elixir C (aka worst condition removal of engi despite being mainly that)

For example I would like to see:

• Personal Battering Ram removing conditions in some way so that it opens up competitive gadget builds
• Utility Goggles getting a better toolbelt, longer Fury duration or a tad more immunity
• Elixir C getting cooldown cut by half but only converting 2 conditions

All of your “aka” references make absolutely no sense. Sorry, but it is true, and I had to get that out of the way

I cannot say I agree with your idea for PBR. Personally, I feel we need to at least make an attempt to make changes that thematically make sense. Actually I feel the skills is great. The recast isn’t bad. it and the tool belt skill is solid damage. It works great with Static Discharge.

The goggles on the other hand appear to me as a good way to add your gadget condition removal. Just take the Tool belt skill and change it to Gas Mask. Give it a lower cool down then Elixir C, yet do not have it convert the conditions, only cleanse them.

Asking for Elixir C cool down to be cut in half doesn’t see reasonable. Possibly cut it down by 25%.

maciora.9542:

3 Ideas:

• Improving dmg from flamethrower maybe by 15% additionally? (as it is weak now)
• Elixir X should have tornado only and increased time to 20s
• Healing elixir grants protection not randomly.

This 3 small changes would make eng a little bit more interesting to play, as it is NOT IN GOOD spot right now ( I dont know where this idea came from).

No, they do not need to increase damage to the Flamethrower. They need to increase the damage to Flame Jet. The rest of the skills are okay. It is simply the Extremely weak Flame Jet auto attack with its long cast time that is the problem

Elixir X does not need to to become strictly either of those skills. It does need the RnG removed. RnG is horrible enough in skills, but much worse so on an elite. Personally I prefer to see it as an altogether new buff, unique to the engineer.

Perhaps change Elixir X to — Drink a stimulating elixir gaining stability, fury, and might for 20s.

As for Elixir H, I agree with you on that one.

Escadin.9482:

• Mortar.
  Name one part of it that does work as intented. There has been a lot of constructive feed back, so where are we on this matter?

[Pve]

• Scaling with ascended gear or any stats at all is not very common among our utility and elite skills. What is your opinion on the hobo sacks issue? Some people even claim to recognize toilet paper attached to them…

Both of these have been pointed out so regularly and extensively, that it truely baffles me that we are still spinning are wheels on this one.

I love that the reverted Signet of Restoration will still heal for less than the 8% nerfed Healing Signet’s passive even if you invest 30 in earth for Written in Stone and spam the heal on cooldown every time it’s up. God this game is a complete kittening joke.

BrunoBRS.5178:

• Mesmer: correct me if i’m wrong, but doesn’t overwriting a clone count as it “dying” for clone death builds? that still doesn’t sound right. the nerf was a bit extreme, but ignoring the problem isn’t a solution.
  Suggestion: instead of outright killing the trait, an alternative that would be that clones overwritten by skills and traits don’t count as “dying”. they shatter, but don’t trigger the clone death traits. that way the trait’s defensive option is still there, and clone death builds have to play by, you know, actually making people kill their clones, instead of doing the job themselves.

The problem is, it would kill the build in PvE. And yes, there are some of us that use a clone death build in PvE, to great effect I might add.

The only solution is to split PvP and PvE traits. Not to balance the game based on what meta is dominant in PvP each month.

I feel like Healing Breeze would be a lot more viable if it was an AoE heal instead of a Cone. Hitting your party with a cone when they’re probably zipping all over the place to dodge is kinda useless.

Escadin.9482:

Karl McLain.5604:

Engineer:
We feel that the engineer is in a decent place right now, but we did take this opportunity to scale down a few outlier skills in terms of potency. Net Turret’s immobilize duration has been lowered to reduce the amount of lockdown after a Supply Crate drop, and Poison Grenade’s poison duration has been lowered to account for poison field stacking.

[sPvP]

• Engineer is indeed in a good position here and A.E.D can really need a reduced cast time, I doubt it will be enough though small steps are usually a good choice.

[PvX]

• Turrets.
  After a series of nerfs and changes to turrets (even if aimed at supply drop), will there be any bugfixes for them? It’s hard to tell what will/has become of the net turret or any other turret since you never see them in action for very valid reasons.

• Mortar.
  Name one part of it that does work as intented. There has been a lot of constructive feed back, so where are we on this matter?

[Pve]

• Scaling with ascended gear or any stats at all is not very common among our utility and elite skills. What is your opinion on the hobo sacks issue? Some people even claim to recognize toilet paper attached to them…

I understand this goes down to the core mechanic of engineering but could you at least give us a clue where you want to go from here?

I really have to second this for more visibility. The original post states that engineers are in a good place, but how are they in a good place when all of the turrets are bugged, and all of the turret traits are bugged? Why is Mortar an acceptable elite skill? What actions are being taken to fix the turret and turret trait bugs that have been around since beta? Why were turrets ignored in the patch that boosted summon health by 71% in PvE zones? Attempting to balance something that’s broken feels like a very backwards approach to addressing the engineer.

In addition, why is it that engineers cannot have ascended weapon power on kits? Engineers have only one weapon slot to make up for the fact that they have kits, yet a kit engineer does not benefit from the +5% weapon damage of ascended weapons. They used to have it when ascended weapons came out but that was hotfixed back. What is the reasoning for this? What is your plan to address this issue?

The elementalist changes are very underwhelming. Why does ride the lightning still have an insanely long cd? 40 seconds is just too much. Please considering reducing the cd some or at least make the spell more reliable to hit because right now rtl is straight garbage yo

Can we talk about runes? It’s probably the most opaque bit of the balance pass.

Are you scaling runes up to the level of lyssa (like with sigil changes) or toning outperforming rune sets down?

My personal view on runes is that they should be more like lyssa; people fight a player and think “oh, he’s running X!” As oppose to generic power/condition runes etc, which quickly gets old.

Plus I’m slightly fearful of a certain classes condition coverage without being able to run lyssa, but I trust you guyz.. It may be OP, but so is some of the stuff it deals with.

One suggestion could be to have several types of runes, each with a condi clear on elite, but offering different combinations of boons (a bit like the shouts work on guards apart from SyS)

Please do not nerf Vigor anymore! Vigor continues to get decreased in every class (and yes, I play EVERY class) but dodge dependent content is continuously added.

Also, can you please make it to where Thieves, specifically, cannot finish you while in stealth? Finishing someone should count as an attack, pulling them out of stealth. Also, taking damage should pull a thief out of stealth. If neither of these are an option, then give Rangers or Engineers an ability that allows them to detect creatures/players in stealth?

And why does it matter if people use all 6 of one rune? I thought this game was supposed to allow us to “Play the way we want?” If I want to have 2 each of 3 different runes, it shouldn’t matter to anyone but me.

There has to be more changes than what was listed, right? I mean, this list feels incredibly underwhelming compared to the December 10th preview notes. There doesn’t seem be any moderate changes to address issues that have been raised by other players or issues that have been brought back time and time again.

Dreamwolf.7423:

Please do not nerf Vigor anymore! Vigor continues to get decreased in every class (and yes, I play EVERY class) but dodge dependent content is continuously added.

Also, can you please make it to where Thieves, specifically, cannot finish you while in stealth? Finishing someone should count as an attack, pulling them out of stealth. Also, taking damage should pull a thief out of stealth. If neither of these are an option, then give Rangers or Engineers an ability that allows them to detect creatures/players in stealth?

And why does it matter if people use all 6 of one rune? I thought this game was supposed to allow us to “Play the way we want?” If I want to have 2 each of 3 different runes, it shouldn’t matter to anyone but me.

Vigor wasn’t decreased for the Necromancer, it’s still as inexistent as always.

Would love to see some viable competetive (tPvP) condition / poison builds for thiefs..

P/D Poison builds are a lot of fun, but don’t feel comparable to other meta builds.. Well maybe it’s just me and wrong build

Can’t wait to see official patch notes and changes to runes/sigils.

Tree.3916:

Karl McLain.5604:

Sigils:

• All sigils now have independent cooldowns, meaning you can use two on-swap sigils, or an on-swap and an on-crit sigil at the same time. You will not, however, be able to use two sigils of the same name at the same time. On-kill sigils that provide attributes, such as Sigil of Corruption, will not be able to be used simultaneously with other attribute modifying on-kill sigils.

Clarification Please
So does this mean if I have 2 sigils of bloodlust I will NOT get 2 stacks of bloodlust for 1 kill?

He means you cannot stack Bloodlust and Corruption. Just like right now

Personally I think the issue with Healing Signet for Warrior is that a Warrior doesn’t need to do anything to keep the healing flowing, unlike nearly every other similar signet (Thief’s/Ele’s signet heal require attacking for example, Mesmer’s needs clone uptime, etc). I think the base heal could be cut down to what it was pre-buff, and allow access to the current heal rate with some strings attached.

You could make it so that needs to be up close to a target to get the full heal, or make the passive heal boost itself on-interrupt/blocks for a few seconds, or make it affected by having more/less adrenaline. Then make activating the signet give a guaranteed passive heal for a few seconds as a counterweight for situations where it might be difficult to meet the passive requirements.

About the sigils…shouldn’t two handed weapons be nerfed to rebalance them with the additional sigil?
That’s what was done when they were implemented for kits, after all.

I would like to know if Sigils that have ‘on crit % apply effect’ of two different types can be used together.

As for the thief, do people really use the with off hand empty it gets overwritten when you slot anything in the off hand slot when you use the main and secondary weapon slot. It would be nice if with off hand empty would get a skill for the 4th and 5th slot on the skill bar instead of a blank spots

Hello Josh,

There are some questions for Necromancer and Mesmer in these threads:

Necro: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Necromancer-Feature-Patch-Preview-Questions/first#post3567178
Mesmer: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Mesmer-Feature-Patch-Preview-Questions/first#post3567232

I intend this to be a constructive comment.

Where is the rest of it?

Seriously. You have a newly launched balance subforum as well as 8 dedicated class subforums with laundry lists of suggestions, constructive discussions of balance issues, and extensive lists of bugs and other longstanding issues. How is this short list of minor patches even remotely acceptable? ANet I feel that you are not doing enough to address the concerns over balance expressed by your population.

As an aside to this. I understand that ANet is very concerned about power creep. One of the consequences of this is that ANet uses a “nerf first” approach to balance, hammering down the nail that sticks out to even out the balance of various classes. In general we very rarely see a set of buffs where nerfs would do.

Sadly, one of the main outcomes of that approach is that every balance patch I want to play a little less. Something is taken away almost every patch (a build, a gear set, a rune set, whatever). This is a destructive approach to patching with the hopes that players will make somethings out of the shattered remains. In the long term this isn’t good for the health of the game. You need to generate excitement for patches, not dread.

This list of patches is extremely underwhelming given the quantity and depth of the issues that need to be addressed for every class. Please stop addressing the low hanging fruit and start tackling the major issues with classes (i.e., dumbfounding trait lines, useless traits, deeply flawed class mechanics, poor weapon sets).

By the time this patch comes out you will have had almost a full quarter to address balance issues and this is just simply not enough.

SIGILS:

Independent cooldowns makes Warrior 15 point Discipline Minor Trait “Fast Hands” EXTREMELY POWERFUL

FAST HANDS = 5 second weapon swap cooldown

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands

Basically this means warriors get double the sigil proc rate of any other profession.

Example: Warrior Equips Sigil of Energy + Sigil of Battle, and Sigil of Intelligence + Sigil of Leeching

Warriors:
0s: Energy+Battle proc
5s: Intelligence+Leech proc
10s: Energy+Battle proc
15s: Intelligence+Leech proc
20s: Energy+Battle proc

All other classes:
0s: Energy+Battle proc
10s: Intelligence+Leech proc
20s: Energy+Battle proc

Are you going to address this before it goes live?

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

Necromancer: …

As other good Necromancers pointed out you’re balancing the whole Necromancer around Dhuumfire.

• This new balance makes Dhuumfire more skill dependant (this is a good way), but at the same time you’re focussing all our cartridges on Death Shroud (this isn’t the good way).
  The point is simple. Give more accessibility to Death Shroud (for example to Condition specs) if you want to go down this path, anyway there’s yet the 10 seconds cooldown on DS punishing the Necro for a bad use of it.. *1
  (This is to avoid situations in which with 0% Life Force half of our skills and capabilities would be locked out)

• Elseway check the Lopez thread.

• Another point, you’re nerfing Minion Master basing on the “feedback” you got on the forums. Is the problem MM is too much passive? Reduce Minion’s actual DPS (not their addictional utility with Vampiric Master) and promote active play by increasing the effects and the damage on their active skills, Combo Finishers.. their cooldowns are fairly long, so…

*1 And don’t forget the vital bug that locks our utilities (and healing too) for 1+ second when getting out of DS..

I would like to see healing signet merged with the new defiant stance. No offense, but no one uses the new warrior heal today. It’d be a good active ability that would require player skill to be used properly.

Thank you

To the guys wanting for more:

Most of these notes are simply a summary of what was discussed in the previous Ready Up stream, with a few tweaks based on feedback. This list of changes does not encompass all changes that will occur in the next feature build.

But I have to wonder, why post this summary? Summaries of the stream is already readily available, and I suspect most of this has been discussed in their appropriate boards.
I have a slightly on-topic question though. Will 2 of the same on-kill-increase-stack sigils (like bloodlust+bloodlust) still award 2 charges on kill?

Mesmer Nerf:

I know this is part of a global adjustment, but it is, without question, a nerf to Mesmers.

1) This is a double-edged sword, as it nerfs Mesmer survivability and damage output.
2) Mesmers are not meta-viable now.
3) Mesmers currently get eaten alive by thieves in tPvP and need all that dodging just to not die to thieves.

Given thieves hard counter Mesmers today, with all the vigor that Mesmers have at their disposal (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3-jm3mCHI&t=6m10s for Helseth, one of the best Mesmers playing today, getting trained 100%-0>0% by Sizer), I think this change is not good unless it is counter-balanced by some kind of survivability buffs for Mesmers.

Karl McLain.5604:

Runes:

• Rune sets will receive a general balance pass to bring them in line with each other. This will increase the amount of viable rune options.

The English language called and suggested the word you might be looking for every time “viable” gets thrown around incorrectly in these parts is “competitive”.

Viable – as in ‘alive’ – is a standard pretty much achieved if loading up a particular set of traits/gear/what-have-you doesn’t cause the game to crash.

Nearly all builds are viable – only a handful are competitive.

Are you working on something in the back end for Elementalist focus fire attunement.
Unfortunately while the focus is strong for the most part the fire attunement is widely accepted as abhorrent. I do believe a classes weapon set as their core should be their strongest base aspects above utilities which are extensions and traits which are for specializations.

Their is an absence of D/D and P/P to this date in PvP have you reconsidered the direction of these sets?

Please reconsider the base health of professions. The difference in armor (heavy,medium,light) is almost enough to balance their profession’s ability.
We need it to be like this:
High tier(18k hp) Warrior, Necromancer
Medium tier(16k hp) Ranger,Engineer,Mesmer,Elementalist,Guardian
Low tier(14k hp) Thief
The hp warrior and necromancer doesn’t really need a nerf because the problem is the other have way too low base hp.
Elementalist and Guardian need a buff from low tier hp to medium because yes elementalist have 20 abilities and guardians has access to blocks but if you had it all on cooldown, you’re dead
The only profession we can consider on low tier hp is thief because they have high access to stealth but 12k hp is too low making us melt so fast vs stun/disable and condition builds so we it to buff it to like 14k

Nike.2631:

Karl McLain.5604:

Runes:

• Rune sets will receive a general balance pass to bring them in line with each other. This will increase the amount of viable rune options.

The English language called and suggested the word you might be looking for every time “viable” gets thrown around incorrectly in these parts is “competitive”.

Viable – as in ‘alive’ – is a standard pretty much achieved if loading up a particular set of traits/gear/what-have-you doesn’t cause the game to crash.

Nearly all builds are viable – only a handful are competitive.

Guild wars 2 called it is reminding you that PvE exist and competitive is not what I would describe it as. I doubt they are only focusing on PvP.

I know that this won’t be everything, but was still expecting the changes to be about 10 times bigger.

Since I will forget to mention some (most) of my thoughts about possible balance adjustments I’ll put the disclaimer upfront. I’ll start with some comments on the previewed elementalist changes and will then go over to some more general stuff which I think could help in levelling things out.

In my opinion the Ele can be used as a baseline for balance: All weapon sets have nice trade offs between damage, control and support. The damage scaling is okay and one is able to build skill rotations which boost certain playstyles / builds (strategies, combos, skill synergies, rotations, burst setup, etc). Our burst requires a setup in most cases (neither do I like fresh air burst builds nor do I think that burning speed into lightning flash should be left in the game because it counters what I like about the elementalist) which can be countered, but if the burst lands it can hurt quite a bit. We are able to boost our sustain with defensive boons (protection, vigor and regeneration) while raising our direct and condition damage with might stacks and having a high fury uptime. We can be great team players with all the boon distribution, combo and skill effects. Our gameplay requires attention and commitment (except for some gimmick builds which have no sustain whatsoever). That said…

Karl McLain.5604:

• Signet of Restoration
• Armor of Earth
• Water Trident

All 3 seem fair to me. The stability is nice, but I don’t see this as a must-have.
I also like the addition of an active trigger to Cleansing Water on scepter, which will improve S/D sustain a little, and boosts S/F ability to counterplay condition builds even more.

Karl McLain.5604:

• Burning Speed

BS already is very strong. I don’t see how the evade effect would help us in any way, but it would make one of our spike skills or burst setups overpowered, thus probably subject to hard nerfs in the future. Please refrain from adding an evasion frame to this skill. It hits hard, it has utility, so let it be interruptable without the need for wards or shocking auras. Please just fix the teleport-glitch on this skill, which allows abusive gameplay.

Karl McLain.5604:

• Frozen Burst

In my opinion this addition sounds nice because it broadens possible skill rotations on both D/D and D/F.

We have great sustain and good damage, but what bothers me is the vulnerability to both soft and hard CC. A long-duration immobilize (1.5+ seconds) enables our opponents to put heavy pressure on us while we cannot counterplay in some way (cannot turn, cannot hit what is behind uns, etc), this is especially true against condition builds, which will melt us if played properly.

There are some suggestions and thoughts floating through my head which could improve conditions and the control aspects of fights in GW2:

Immobilize breaks on hit OR Immobilize has a chance of 50% to break on hit
Immobilize is a very strong CC condition which allows for setting up bursts. It should not guarantee to land complex burst rotations but only help in setting them up. It would also mitigate the current problems with immobilize stacking. We’d still be able to disable a foe for some time to close the gap or to create one, but it would reduce the face roll gameplay which some builds currently are.

Confusion damage is raised significantly, but all stacks vanish once the confusion damage is applied
Confusion is an indirect CC condition in that it allows a player to decide if he wants to trade damage for damage. There is no need to punish a player more than once if confusion damage would be raised, and it would make fights against certain mesmer and engineer builds much more fun and engaging than it currently is. There is a certain attitude that confusion would counter skill spam. That is only partly true, in that it currently locks out most builds from an active fight. If confusion damage would be applied only once (while getting higher damage ofc) it would be a much better counter to mindless skill spam but still allow for active play.

Condition burst triggered on-crit should go
I understand with bleed stacks on critical hits; they boost overall damage output just like direct damage crits would. On mesmers with clones and illusions or any other build with pets or minions it gets kinda stupid, but that’s another case. What I don’t like are triggers for burning on crit. It seems rather stupid to me to put burst capabilities on random procs without tells. A good way to adjust such traits was presented by you guys by binding it to DS#1. Engineers don’t need IP because they already have access to burning on certain weapon and kit skills. If they want to set their opponents on fire, they can use those.

I also had some thoughts on hard crowd control and such stuff, but it’s getting late and I feel inapt to write them down right now.

Thedenofsin.7340:

SIGILS:

Independent cooldowns makes Warrior 15 point Discipline Minor Trait “Fast Hands” EXTREMELY POWERFUL

FAST HANDS = 5 second weapon swap cooldown

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands

Basically this means warriors get double the sigil proc rate of any other profession.

Are you going to address this before it goes live?

the on swap sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s so it means that if you swap weapons if you have sigil of battle and sigil of energy, you gain 50 endurance and might then after 5 seconds when you swap weapons again, you won’t get anything until you swap again after the next 5 seconds because the cooldown fast hands give will not change the fact that your sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s

sorry for bad explanation but i hope you’ll get it

Mesmer Focus #5: Phantasmal Warden – is he fixed??

Necro: Dhuumfire was confusing in the first place, adding a condition at the end of the power tree, Now it will require to be in Death shroud as well and on a slowly moving projectile? Maybe if life blast piercing shots also applies burning to all mobs hit.

Warrior: Don’t really like any of the warrior’s heals, the Signet was just the ‘least bad’ of the bunch. Outside of a purely defensive build, (which no one runs outside of bunker pvp) the proposed rebalancing of it seems unwarranted.

With the sigil changes, eles and engies will only have access to two sigils but all other classes will have access to four. Is anything being done to address this such as lower internal cooldowns on sigils?

Is anything being done to improve the viability of condition damage in pve?

Very disappointed with engineer changes. Nothing about kits scaling with ascended. Damage of some kits is extremely lacklustre, especially flamethrower.

Would like to see turrets fixed. Damage scaling with stats, reducing cooldowns, less susceptible to aoe.

Would like to see a more accessible condition removal. Fumigate removes conditions on caster as well would be nice.

Mobility is a problem too, kit swapping with speedy kits is cumbersome and power shoes requires investing too many trait points. Would like to see rocket boots give a passive speed boost.

EARL.8312:

Thedenofsin.7340:

SIGILS:

Independent cooldowns makes Warrior 15 point Discipline Minor Trait “Fast Hands” EXTREMELY POWERFUL

FAST HANDS = 5 second weapon swap cooldown

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands

Basically this means warriors get double the sigil proc rate of any other profession.

Are you going to address this before it goes live?

the on swap sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s so it means that if you swap weapons if you have sigil of battle and sigil of energy, you gain 50 endurance and might then after 5 seconds when you swap weapons again, you won’t get anything until you swap again after the next 5 seconds because the cooldown fast hands give will not change the fact that your sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s

sorry for bad explanation but i hope you’ll get it

But if you have energy+battle and fire+air, then:
0: energy+battle
5: fire+air
10: energy+battle
15: fire+air

I’ll augment the post with an example.

Thedenofsin.7340:

EARL.8312:

Thedenofsin.7340:

SIGILS:

Independent cooldowns makes Warrior 15 point Discipline Minor Trait “Fast Hands” EXTREMELY POWERFUL

FAST HANDS = 5 second weapon swap cooldown

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands

Basically this means warriors get double the sigil proc rate of any other profession.

Are you going to address this before it goes live?

the on swap sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s so it means that if you swap weapons if you have sigil of battle and sigil of energy, you gain 50 endurance and might then after 5 seconds when you swap weapons again, you won’t get anything until you swap again after the next 5 seconds because the cooldown fast hands give will not change the fact that your sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s

sorry for bad explanation but i hope you’ll get it

But if you have energy+battle and fire+air, then:
0: energy+battle
5: fire+air
10: energy+battle
15: fire+air

I’ll augment the post with an example.

Unless your a war with a 5 sec swap (or somewhere around there not too entirely sure)

imo if classes can swap up to that rate then maybe on swap sigils should be reduced to around 5-6 second icd. Classes with 2 weapon choices would be able to swap between more sigils but eles/engies would be able to swap just as often. And balance those sigils by that icd.

I forgot to complain about mortar. It requires the engineer to be stationary. It doss mediocre damage and is utterly outperformed by the grenade. What is the justification for an engineer “elite” ability to be so utterly ineffective? Fix it or replace with something completely different. An elite kit would be interesting.

I play sPvP and WvW a lot, and this is my opinion about what I think is overpowered today, and most of the overpower is because of targeting problems:

- Mesmers has too many ways to make clones, some players just base the build on that and kill others by just spamming clones, dodging for even more clones, no need to have real skill versus bad or slow (targeting) players. Targeting is a nightmare in this cases and you could lose a fight versus people less experienced that you, I hate that because is unfair; Retargeting a player every 2 seconds seriously compromise the fight. It’s important to note the mesmer can also stealth a lot, if clones spam is not enough.

- Thieves can enter stealth too many times and keep on stealth for too long time, plus they could return from stealth full healed and without conditions, if you add the +1 sec lag on WvW, this make stealth clearly overpowered. Some players base the build completely on that, just to use a “lammer way” and annoy people that can’t do anything about, and if they can, the thief just escape, if the thief is good enough there is absolutely no way kill it in WvW. Targeting could be obviously a big problem in this situations, because you need to retarget every single time the thief reappears on the screen, and could be a lot of times in a long fight, and if thief think he is going to lose, escape, this is even worst if you are in the middle of WvW chaos. If there are two or more thieves coordinating stealth, there is nothing to do but die, even being really good, because they can revive others on stealth, 100% overpowered. At the other hand, I think thieves are ok on sPvP because stealth is not so effective there, and stealth is the only overpower the thief has, everything but that is ok.

- Engineers are in my opinion ridiculously overpowered, this is very easy to confirm by going to sPvP and playing some matches. 99% of engineers use the same build that consist in annoying other players with ridiculous amount of turrets, immobilize, conditions (grenades), launch, plus an amazing spammable healing. They don’t even use the dodge functionally of the game. Tip: if you see a player not using dodging, this for me is a clear proof of a new player that still don’t use it, or someone with so overpowered build that don’t need it to win.

- The other professions (classes) I think they are ok. Maybe the Necromancer applies too many conditions, but that is acceptable.

- The only I think is underpowered is maybe the Elementalist, there is no way an elementalist can win me in sPvP or WvW, it’s a sure win for me. But they for sure are overpowered in healing, if they make a build based on that. Rangers are also a sure win, unless they are very good and/or use the spirits build, that in my opinion is a lammer build.

I just feel like you guys have ran out of ideas on how to fix the problems that are right in everyone’s face. Overall damage reduction of 10% is nice and all but it doesn’t solve the condition problems, get the food in line with the other foods out there and end this madness already. And for the love of god, give warriors some semblance of balance, either bring 7 classes on par with them or drop the 1 class that rules us all on par with the other 7.

This farce has gone long enough and now you tell us that what we’ve been waiting for 3 months is THIS. Well I’m sorry but if it took you 3 months to come up with this much, how long will it take you to actually put the game back on tracks? And NO a vague “more to come” doesn’t cut it. Is there more or are you just trowing dirt in the face to minimize the angry customer outbreak?

It’s not like people haven’t provided you with millions upon millions of ideas on how to fix those issues, some of those ideas are far better than you guys have came up with for a year and a half, it’s mind blowing indecisiveness that holds this game up. It feels like after so many trials and errors you guys just lost the cojones to try harder.

/rant off

My 2 copper.

Necromancer
The Dhuumfire change is going to sway many Necros from actually using it, for one you’re lowering the duration to 3 secs instead of the 4 base it is now. Another issue is that you’re putting it on Life Blast, a very slow moving projectile which anyone can dodge, and which requires the condi Necro to get in the enemy’s face to be effective.

In short, the added requirements far outweigh the “benefits” you’ve labeled. It requires player to enter DS, which would require Lifeforce (good luck with that in PvP unless using Staff or the Lifeforce granting Signet!), is on a slow moving projectile, and the utility disabling bug with DS means that by the time you exit DS and are able to cast Epidemic the Burning will either be gone or close to it.

Elementalist
Armour of Earth going down to 75 secs is good, but it’s still far too high for being a self-target Stability/Protection and stunbreak. Look at Guardian’s Stand Your Ground, this is a Shout which grants Retal/Stability to the GROUP, and also stunbreaks for the user, this is a 30 sec CD skill. Then there’s Balanced Stance on Warriors, granting Stability/Swiftness, as well as stunbreak, and is 40 secs of CD. I get that you’re trying to “shave” the skills, but please admit that you went overboard on several aspects of the Ele, the high CD on things like Glyph of Storms, Arcane Shield, Armour of Earth, and EVERYTHING in their 4 and 5 slots (like Ride the Lightning, still a silly nerf that has not been implemented on anything like Ranger’s Swoop, or Warrior’s Rush, so either actually implement it on similar skills (Note: This is a Very Bad Idea) or revert the RtL nerf) that easily could be brought down by a lot.