Guild Wars 2

I’m a Necromancer main, and i’m trying to make some analytical and objective views as a necromancer (some subjective views may be spilled out though) :
If Dhuumfire is going to be “changed” (not sure whether i should consider the changes a buff or nerf), you may as well reduce the duration to 2 or 2.5 or keep it at 3 sec but remove the ICD. That would mean around 700-1000 additional damage for every life blast for non-condi builds (which would be quite balanced, not far compared to close to death for DS builds since dhuumfire works from 100% to 0%. For comparison, life blast could potentially hit for like 10k which means CtD would increase life blast damage roughly 1k [+20% when under 50% = roughly10% full time]), and around 1400-2000 for +1600 condition damage builds (talking about full exotic pve set such as rabid, dire, etc), decent enough for condition builds to make use of DS life blast and stays in DS not only for one life blast cast, but actually bombing the target with life blasts, unlike the current situation where life blast isn’t favorable to condition builds. DS and almost all of its skills SHOULD BE favorable to all builds, it’s our PROFESSION MECHANIC after all, and all necros should be able to use DS to it’s fullest, not going to DS, use skill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; go out of DS. Conditionmancers should be motivated to make use of DS and stay in DS while also having the choice to save life force for emergency life bar, kind of “using life force for more damage or for more defense”. BOOM. DS will be very flexible as our profession mechanic, and all necros around the world would be happier.

Of course, any numbers i gave you were rough estimates and maybe needs to be scaled – that’s your job there but the main idea is, just remove the ridiculous ICD. Try to compare Dhuumfire with Close to Death, like how much will the overall damage be increased in percentage, and you’ll get the idea why most necromancers hate Dhuumfire, only using it because there are no other viable trait when you go 30/30/x/x/x and using condition gears (if only CtD also applies to conditions, i’d bet they’ll take CtD instead). Scared of it being OP for condition builds? well here’s the downside: Dhuumfire is a Grandmaster trait, which means that taking Dhuumfire will lock many other combinations. Consider that when balancing this trait

Karl McLain.5604:

Thief:
Much like the engineer, we wanted to take this opportunity to tone-down excessive poison stacking through poison fields.

• Choking Gas: Reduced the poison per pulse from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

Will Thief be seeing any updates/adjustments to the Dec 10th acro changes? As was stated at the time, the Dec 10th acro changes were intended to increase thief survivability for those who took Acrobatics – those changes unfortunately did not live up to their intention.

The net difference of the Assassin’s reward changes were 1 additional HP healed per init spent for every 100 healing power you have – that is a mathematically insignificant change, I can’t see how anyone would define it as a buff.

Hard to Catch is far too reliant on RNG to be used by a serious player, because the skill can’t be counted on – it can move you off a point, into an AoE, or away from your target, all at the whim of another player. The fact that this still occurs even when the thief has Stability helps cement it as a trait that is more harmful than helpful.

Will these 2 issues be resolved in the patch?

5% wont affect the damage much because minion already do so low of a damage per second that 5% of 1000 (flesh golem) is just the same as nerfing it by 50 damage or like 10 damage (bone minion) What kind of miracle do you people expect to happen in Spvp with that kind of change.

Worse yet you are BUFFING us toward running cleric and settler gear for minion master wich is exactly what everyone wants nerfed. They want the death of the minion tank and buffing the heal per second (already 100) with healing power scaling will only make me heal twice as more then before but eh i guess a buff is a buff even if unecesary, prety much all spell wich cause healing should scale with healing power.

If you want to kill the minion tanking while keeping minion usefull as a damage source you need to put stat scaling on minion the same way as you do the phantasm mesmer so to force necro who actualy want to deal some form of damage to run something else then a full cleric gear.

Concerning the critical damage change, I think ANET encourages the player to try whatever builds he/she feel comfortable playing with.

With the critical damage change it affects greatly the Celestial stat set. Is there any plans on providing the players with stats realocation just like what was proposed when the magic find patch was released? With that big of a change on Celestial I will not feel comfortable playing with it.

Ascended armor, Celestial armor set, was very expensive to craft and I would be pretty sad if I had to craft another complete set.

TL;DR Will players be able to chose another stat for armor pieces with critical damage?

Well, seems like the playerbase is not satisfied at all, and with reason.

The patch notes presented here would be excelent for a monthly balancing patch, because they slowly improve the current state of the meta. However, for that very same reason, those patch notes are terribly underwhelming for a patch that will take 3-4 months to come, and especially one that might bring so much stuff, that it comes at the risk of changing the entire meta and invalidating the upcoming, few proposed changes.

Someone already said it before, and I’ve already agreed to it in another thread: any tweaks to pvp’s metagame, like the ones posted in this thread, should come as fast as possible, instead of being tied to a big feature patch. There’s nothing to lose here. Nothing. The entire feature patch would not be any less exciting if 7-10 small skill tweaks to improve the pvp meta came any sooner. Anet only has to win by bringing the proposed metagame tweaks as fast as possible and putting spvp at a better state as soon as possible, instead of artificially delaying them for the sake of a big feature patch that will probably overshadow those very same tweaks.

Implementing them sooner will also allow Anet to analyze the metagame sooner. So if most of those changes end up doing little or nothing to the meta, Anet will be able to react accordingly and push for more tweaks in the big, feature patch.

I really think the skill tweaks proposed should come in the next patch next week.

Finally, I want to make a proposal to improve the elementalist’s Ride the Lightning. I’ve already made a post defending a revert or a buff to cleansing water grandmaster trait, and now its time for this skill.

Ride the Lightning: Global 25 second cooldown.

It’s that simple. This version will still be weaker than the previous 20 CD, 1500 range version, so it won’t be a revert. A 25 CD, 1200 range version seems a fine middle ground for this skill to stay at. I don’t have to explain why the current version is not working, I hope: every elementalist player has probably already explained to you time and time again.

Just this small change, and the elementalist’s ability to escape a fight would be improved. Thieves can do it. Warriors can do it. Mesmers can do it. RTL won’t even be any better than what the other professions can do. And I’m not even asking for it to be better. But, at the very least, it would be an improvement to its current state. Please!

EDIT: Also, as we are at it, I find a bit annoying when you implement new effects that sound very exciting, like One with Air’s superspeed trait, put them at a very low duration in order to prevent them from being OP, and then, when those changes are out and they prove to be underwhelming, you take forever to make even the slightest number buffing.

I would like to see One with Air’s duration increase from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds next patch. No one uses it now, so is the risk of making it too strong there? Who knows, maybe even if you buff it to 2 seconds, it’ll remain useless? Maybe not? But the faster you do it, the faster you’ll know it, and the faster you’ll get an opportunity to further push it up again, and again, until you find the right number for it to stay at.

At the current state, it feels like “hey, this looks cool! Let’s implement it!”, and then you completely forget that it exists. At least, that’s how it feels to me.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Truly, if this is your idea of balance, my recommendation is to not bother with any additional balance changes to the game and spend that time doing something else.

What would you do? 25%?
How do you know that’d be balanced?

I mean, every time they change something, legions of players complain that the nerf is too serious. Here they are listening, now we’re angry again?

ele shoudlnt actualy feel this bad about the new balance patch because now they get to be able to gain both the vampirism on swap and the 3 stack of might on swap XD (changing atunement is the same as swapping)

Enginer will now be able to proc twice as many bleeding from their grenade while also gaining might (yay) or get a sigil of blood/corruption if they so choose

warrior will just be plenty OP like usual by giving themself sigil of bloodlust on their alt weapon and procing might on crit while also using stuff like life steal on crit on something (what do i know they get to have 2 sigil on a two handed weapon now i cant imagine every nightmarish combo theil be able to bash down with the hammer spec in pvp)

poor…very poor list of change…

Nerfing Healing Signet 8% without changing the active is just not enough. Unless the active becomes interesting nerfing the passive enough to satisfy people will essentially remove it from the game.

Something like increasing the base heal on the Active from 3,275 to 5,240(base heal of mending) then granting 5s of Retaliation or 5s of Protection. (one or the other not a random chance of either)

Retaliation and Protection are both a pain to keep up on Warriors so it would be a good incentive to use the active. Something like that would make the skill interesting and keep people from never using the Active.

So… Mesmers get less vigor, yet thief and ranger can still evade spam?

“But thieves need doges to survive!!!” >> and glass mesmers don’t? and in the current state of the game still have less?

Plus Ranger still has little risk even without the doges so lol they get to keep it too?

well that’s juuust peachy.

Elementalist: The changes seem only for dagger builds.. what about staff?

I understand staff is a support weapon mainly. Given that ele’s can not weapon swap I think some improvements could be made for staff ele’s.

The sustain damage is really only fire and mainly aoe. Maybe some change’s to staff in perhaps lighting for more direct sustained damage? Also about sustained damage are the devs meaning sustained damage vs burst or living long enough to do damage and not having to be on the defensive so much allowing more dps to be done? If its the later the new changes do not help staff ele’s.

Staff’s lack of mobility. Dagger has 2 different gape closers and that in effect gives them 2 different escape abilities. Staff has 1 and its a reverse direction making it less effective in escaping while trying to get away. Given other class’s gap closing abilities on there weapons a staff ele can pretty much be run down by any class. The lack of mobility pretty much forces staff to run all three talents as defensive. I know you can take fire sword for some mobility but again that’s another talent for defensive use and is on a long cool down.

CC and defense. Ele’s in general have the lowest health lowest armor and as staff low mobility. Our CC is short and on long cool downs. So unless our base numbers in health and armor are increased the only other way to help is mobility or increased CC. Even if I land every CC I have on another player most of the time they will run me down as staff. Thiefs/warriors/rangers/dagger ele’s heck pretty much every class has quick weapon skills to gap close. Making my only defense being other players or running to a keep in WvW. Other players know this. Staff ele’s are targeted very quickly do to there in ability to escape. Maybe a change in lightings gust to add push back + knock down or lighting staff windborne speed to add a straight-line movement burst to its other effects?

As other have pointed out that ele’s issues is low health/low armor forces either all defensive talent skills or going full out dps knowing your going to die. Neither is a good solution. I feel staff is pretty much forced to go all defensive given it very low mobility/low armor/low health and low direct damage. Don’t get me wrong fire staff has great aoe damage. That’s not very helpful in small scale fights forcing me to zerg or die.

I have Necro/Ranger/Engineer and Guardian at 80 and thief and warrior in there 40’s and playing as my ele vs the other class’s I feel so handicapped in WvW do to lack of mobility and inability to fight one on one. The only other class I play that seems to be less mobile is my necro though my necro is much much more resilient.

Not sure how others feel about staff as ele’s but these are just a few concerns I have and I am no way suggesting all these changes but a couple of them may be nice to have.

robocafaz.9017:

Arkantos.7460:

I feel warriors will also get permavade like thiefs if they can get every 5 secs +50% endurance refilled …..

It’s a bit ambiguous, but Sigil types will have independent cooldowns, not individual Sigils. So two of the same on-swap Sigils will still have an 8 second ICD on them.

Otherwise we’re gonna see a whole new kind of double Fire Sigil spike meta.

Oh but thats where your wrong… this Double fire sigil spike meta WILL exist… in the form of lightning and fire sigil spiking lol.

Can we also suggest changes to elementalist’s signet of restoration’s active, or is Anet only interested in revamping the active effect of Warrior’s healing signet? It’s cool that SoR’s passive effect is being reverted, but it would be even cooler if the active was slightly better.

Players would want to use SoR’s active to escape or survive from a sudden burst. Give it a few evade frames, or superspeed/ haste, on activation. Doesn’t needs to be something big, and sacrificing the passive effect is always a big sacrifice, but at least it would be worth something.

Or maybe have the effect be party-wide? Sacrificing self sustain for party support? Sounds cool. Although honestly, that could very well work for a signet of water’s revamp instead.

The problem with ele’s heals at the moment, is that they are more often times than not, stuck to Ether Renewal. Of course, if Cleansing Water’s trait was reverted…

Revert cleansing water, ty

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

…

Although I was hoping for new information which was not presented in the Ready Up: Thanks again for sharing such information in advance.

Elementalist

The changes appear to be okay, although I have to admit that I am not a very experienced Elementalist player. However, I still feel that the biggest issue lies within the dependance on the Water and Arcana traitlines when it comes to survivability.

I liked the change to Burning Fire in the previous change a lot because it offers alternatives. I feel that every trait line should have at least some defensive traits to open up builds which do not require either high Water or Arcana. For example, Air could get a trait which makes Elementalists less affected by CC.

Engineer

Not that exciting. I would like to see improvements to Gagdets (e.g. traits and condition removal) in combination with changes to base weapon skills to open up less kit dependend builds. I’d also like to see less mandatory traits for kits. Grenades should be viable without Grenadier. So should be Flamethrower and Elixir Gun without Juggernaut and Deadly Mixtures.

A total different topic are Turrets (pets). They won’t become viable as long as they are so weak against area damage which is very prominent in WvW and PvE. This actually is the case for all pets. I proposed a mechanic several times which had been used in DAoC.

• Limit the max. damage dealt to pets by area effects to x% of their max. health
• x could be set seperately for the distinct pet types (e.g. Turrets, Clones, Spirits)
• This would apply to: gtae and pbae, not targeted area effects or cleaves.
• The damage reduction could be disabled in PvP to prevent a petting zoo

Guardian

The change to Vigor was expected and I am fine with it. However, please reconsider the cast time on Lithany of Wrath. Heals without cast time are indeed bad. However, LoW requires you to be in combat to actually be effective. This should be enough of a draw back to get rid of the cast time.

Mesmer

Again, the Vigor change was expected. I am glad that the DE change was revoked. However, I also would like a clarification why it was proposed in the first place.

• Was it because of on death traits or because of clone generation?
• What are on death traits supposed to provide?

I can understand a possible change to on death traits if your design decision is to not let them be triggered actively. However, please consider keeping the status quo untill you can provide alternatives for condition builds (e.g. Scepter changes). While one certain build (mainly in WvW roaming) successfully abuses those traits they are in no way too powerful. If you want to tone down this build, please focus on the real issues.

While Mesmers are not in a bad place they still need a lot of work because some traits are not placed where they are supposed to be or just don’t do what they are supposed to do which applies to Mantras, Signets and Glamours. Please have a look at the threads which were created back in December where many suggestions were made. Here are some specific examples.

Placement Issue
Harmonious Mantras

• Should not be in Domination but in Duelling or Inspiration
• Could be replaced by a Signet GM

Effectiveness Issue
Protective Mantras

• Toughness does not provide a sufficient defense when recasting
• Could reflect projectiles while channeling to reduce interrupts
• Could provide Distortion for 1s to reduce interrupts

Design Issue
Mantra Mastery

• Doesn’t fit the design of Mantras at all
• Could reduce the cast time
• Could grant x% chance to not use a readied charge when using the skill

Synergy Issue
Signets

• Traits are okay but only when used in an all-Signet build
• Signets lack synergies which would be needed for an all-Signet build

All-over-the-place and Effectiveness Issue
Glamours

• Mesmers lack area effects since Glamours/Confusion was overnerfed
• Traits are spread across too many trait lines
• Some traits are too weak (e.g. Temporal Enchanter)
• Some traits are crippled by their mechanics (e.g. Confusing Enchantments)

Please have a look at the suggestions made after the December patch.

Necromancer

I appretiate the change to Dhuumfire. However, it should not be placed in this traitline and at that level where it currently is. I also feel that Necromancers need a better defense against CC. Not necessarily in form of Stability but maybe something like the Runes of Hoelbrak offer.

Ranger

Not that exciting. I would be more interested if Trap traits got a re-work and if the traits are finally moved into the traitline where they should have been in the first place.

What does the change on Keen Edge exactly mean? Will it be influenced by the cooldown reduction? If yes, this would certainly be a nice change.

However, then don’t make this the only trait where this is the case. This should be a design decision and conclusively apply to every other trait which proccs a specific utility (e.g. Hidden Flask, Desperate Decoy, Burning Fire etc.). Otherwise people will be understandibly mad.

Thief

Meh. I don’t mind. Hoping for more to come.

Warrior

I am not sure if 8% is enough but I appretiate that HS finally is recognized as an issue. I personally still favour the approach of making a bigger portion of the heal based on healing power. This way people could keep a high HPS but for the price of investing in healing power.

KarlusDavius.1024:

Active: Heals 30% of your health over 3 seconds, grants protection for 7 seconds.

To give you the benefit of a doubt I’ll assume you are not trolling. But your suggestion is heavily overpowered. Even at base health and untraited this would equal 900 HPS (18000/20) which is more than 100% stronger than the current passive heal. You would also be able to get +50% Protection up time. Not going to happen.

ProtoXcution.5769:

My suggestion here, is that you take some of the underpowered/useless skills, and create some defensive mechanisms out of them. By this, I mean most signets and glyphs.

I partly agree on this one. I really like the Air and the Earth Signet. Water and Fire on the other hand are just aweful. The Chill is rather redundant when having the choice of getting an Immobilize. Elementalists also don’t need even more burn. Two ideas I had:

Signe of Water
Active
Create a Waterfield for 3s which also provides 1s Regeneration per pulse.
While there already are enough Waterfields or sources of Regeneration all of them are either tied to the water attunment itself or the traitline. The Signet would offer recovery outside of those and probably open up some trait choices.

Signet of Fire
Active
Gain 5 stacks of Might for 5s and cause Weakness to nearby foes for 5s (240 Radius).
A short damage boost and another way to mitigate damage. It would also provide another cover-up condition for hybrid/condition Elementalists.

Daishi.6027:

So… Mesmers get less vigor, yet thief and ranger can still evade spam?

“But thieves need doges to survive!!!” >> and glass mesmers don’t? and in the current state of the game still have less?

Plus Ranger still has little risk even without the doges so lol they get to keep it too?

well that’s juuust peachy.

I do not understand their reasoning for this either…..

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

Ranger:
We’re going to be fixing a bug with Spirit of Nature that caused it to have an incorrect healing power value. We’re also looking at adding combo fields to existing abilities to allow for more play through different combo finishers.

• Spirit of Nature: Reduced the healing per second while summoned from 480 to 320.
• Viper’s Nest: This ability is now a poison combo field.
• (Added) Keen Edge: This trait is now classified as a Survival Skill.

What about Spike Trap? Any ideas of the possible fields it can apply?
Light? Etheral?

Could you also look into why Compassion training does not work (at all) with the pets. I know it has been reported several times, however seeing as these changes aren’t going to be applied for 2 months, you should have time to look into that bug.

Necro- Dhumfire on DS #1 is bad and certainly not worth 30 trait points. It is a massive damage nerf and does not synergize with condition play at all. Stop trying to throw everything into DS, until we get some actual sustain DS is our only option and having all our eggs in one basket is just terrible. Are you going to remove the last changes you made that nerfed other skills in order to compensate for dhumfire?

The necro trait lines are still an absolute mess. Take Spite where Dhumfire resides, the only things in that line that really helps a condition necro is the 30% condition duration and dhumfire. Now with dhumfire being destroyed there is absolutely no traits in that traitline that I want on my condition necro, but I’m forced into it if I want 30% condition duration. The same can be said about all the other trait lines too, redo the trait lines.

Thief- They needed a lot more than a poison field nerf. How about survivability outside stealth? Or group utility? Just so many things that need rebalanced/changed from traps, venoms, stealth. What about fixing the huge stealth up time with leap finisher + smoke field? There was an easy fix posted somewhere, just swap dagger #3 with dagger #2. Or you could make it give a buff that gives you a 50% chance to evade a hit or heck just give a 2s distortion.

Warrior- Still not enough. All healing skills should be balanced around a certain HP/s. Currently healing signet is well above others even after this nerf. Combined with adrenal health and a bunch of other passive effects that warriors get you don’t seem to be living up to your own balancing standards. You’re balancing the necro’s dhumfire for more counter play yet there is almost no counterplay to much of what makes warriors so strong.

Mesmer- Reverting the DE change is fine, but you offer no fix to the problem you yourselves acknowledged. With dual sigils now in 2hand weapons and the cooldown changes you’re going to bet DE will be more abused with Energy sigils than ever before. I am fine with lots of clones but when combined with on death effects and stealth it is too much. Again considering counter play this doesn’t make much sense. The easy counter is kill the clones but the on death effects make that very penalizing. If the mesmer depends on clones dying then the counter would be don’t kill them but DE takes that away since they can kill their own clones. The only other option is just kill the mesmer but Stealth+PU, blink, and a bunch of other abilities make that quite hard. Something needed changed and if you’re not going to nerf DE then something else needs put up instead.

Anet is trying to give reason for thieve not to use perma stealth. However i feel vigor should be restricted to the acrobatic tree and got no actual place in the trickery tree. Thief that want to dodge should spec acrobatic in the first place not trickery.

Tyops.5894:

In the long term this isn’t good for the health of the game. You need to generate excitement for patches, not dread.

God knows I dread every single balance patch; knowing that one or all of the specs that you play are having their viability/effectiveness nerfed isn’t particularly encouraging.

Regarding MM changes:
I haven’t read anything about people wanting the MM necromancy builds to be toned down; when you consider the shoddy AI of minions and their lack of survivability, I don’t think it’s possible that MM specs could ever be OP in their current state.

Regarding Dhuumfire:
That you’d even try to fob the nerf off as allowing necromancers to “carefully plan” their condition application is beyond me. If you’re going to go ahead with the changes (which I presume is what will happen because between now and the last update, it doesn’t seem like there’s been any consideration given to alternative suggestions or any sort of response to them), at least move Dhuumfire out of the Grandmaster tier; it will not be worth 30 points into Spite.

All of this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; ANet in the end decided not to go ahead with the Deceptive Evasion change and have shown they’ll listen to the Mesmer community if it screams loud enough. I’m not saying revert the nerfs but it doesn’t feel like ANet is responding to the feedback given on some of these proposed changes in either the Profession Balance or respective class sub forums. What about the rest of us?

I have a necromancer main with abit over 1200 hours played on him and these changes don’t excite me one bit. I really feel you guys should reconsider what you’ll be doing to dhuumfire as almost every necromancer that has posted on here seems to be disagreeing with the changes you’ll be implementing. I have really nothing else further to say as it’s already been said, just listen up.

Reesha.7901:

Daishi.6027:

So… Mesmers get less vigor, yet thief and ranger can still evade spam?

“But thieves need doges to survive!!!” >> and glass mesmers don’t? and in the current state of the game still have less?

Plus Ranger still has little risk even without the doges so lol they get to keep it too?

well that’s juuust peachy.

I do not understand their reasoning for this either…..

Ranger vigor was nerfed 2 patches ago… Mesmer and Guardians are the few classes left to not have these traits normalized.

I think what there dancing around about and not telling us is that there about to open up all weapons to all classes. I wish I could say I am excited for this but I like that I can tell what class a person is by mostly looking at what weapons they are carrying. Also I like to quest for skills and slapping a new weapon on that gives new skills doesnt fit that model. Which leads back to the great quote, “I expect nothing and yet I am still let down”

They actualy are quite good in pvp but are terrible in PVE. MM dont need to be toned down it actualy need to be buffed up damage wise but while keeping the class balanced. I keep saying it… please damage scale pet already as the tooltip pretend to.

As for dumbfire… well i never even cared to run a condition necro to begin with so it doesnt apply to me but i still think merging it with death shroud is a poor idea.

Karl McLain.5604:

Necromancer:
One of our goals with the past few balance updates has been to add counterplay to various skills that lacked telegraphs. 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. We’ve also adjusted some values for Minion Master builds based on player feedback.

• Putrid Explosion: This ability is no longer unblockable.
• Training of the Master: Reduced the damage increase to minions from 30% to 25%.
• Dhuumfire: This trait has been changed so that it will make Life Blast inflict 3 seconds of burning with a 10 second recharge.
• Vampiric Master: Reduced the effectiveness of this trait by 10%. The healing portion of this trait will now scale with the necromancer’s healing power stat.

Once again. These changes revolve around PvP only. The Minion Master build was never OP in PvE, and now it’s taking a hit again?

When will ANY of these balance changes actually focus on making PvE better?

Carighan.6758:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Truly, if this is your idea of balance, my recommendation is to not bother with any additional balance changes to the game and spend that time doing something else.

What would you do? 25%?
How do you know that’d be balanced?

I mean, every time they change something, legions of players complain that the nerf is too serious. Here they are listening, now we’re angry again?

How would I do it? I’d change the signet so that it’s a passive heal for every adrenaline-gaining attack that does damage. Then I’d normalize it to effectively the 400 hp/s (i.e. 392 * average_cast_time) you have today. That would do 4 things:

1. Burst attacks would not heal. That means a 3 second stun won’t passively heal the warrior for 1200hp while his opponent is stuck. For the sake of completeness, adrenaline-gaining attacks would still heal even if your adrenaline bar was full.

1. Introduce counter-play – blinds/dodges/misses and LoS suddenly will limit how much a warrior could heal.

1. Make fight/flight decision meaningful and tactical. Running away means you are not healing, so that decision needs to be made well before you are sitting at 5% health (which is what warriors basically do now)

1. Make big multi-hit attacks very exciting as they can swing the outcome of a fight. (e.g. 100 blades could heal for several thousand hp!)

theres a way to nerf the pvp build without messing up the minion master to the point the whole specialisation becomes pointless. Just make it so minion damage scale with power crit damage and precision the same as phantasm do. No realy do it and reduce the base damage by 50% or so to make it ok.

result is

1. Minion bunker in pvp deals absurdly less damage (no more godlike MM necro bunk)

2. Minion Master glass cannon (pure dps minion) or hybrid stat (spldier) build is born wich result in a new viable dps build in pve wich is NOT overpowered and actualy provide support to team via multi target meat wall!

3. Everyone is happy because glass cannon are easy to slay and Bunker no longuer kills people with relative ease. + minion master becomes a Viable pve DPS spec for all critical damage and physical damage based necromancer hurray

No more hate on the spec save for the fact that since it runs minion people will deem it as ‘’easy to play’’. Thing is its not about how easy a build is to play but how its strenght versus weakness plays out in the pve/pvp balance. An easy build is not necesarely an overpowered build and so is the case for a hard build not necesarely behing a non overpowered build, go look at the enginers whos build is this complex for nothing verus what the warrior runs for the same effectiveness level. Its not about the fact pet zoo are easy to run its about the fact they either need to be weakened to be on equal level with everyone or powered up to also make them on par with everyone depending on the situation.

While some of you might want to nerf Minion master out of spite for the fact you believe the lack of actual play is shameful and means the build should be weak, this is no actual excuse for nerfing a build to the ground.

Skill cap does not equal Build viability neither should a build that is harder necesarely be more rewarding. If you want to run a build with a higher skill cap its fine because you get tons of utility wich less skill capped spec dont, however dont ask for a nerf to easy builds just because they are easy to play else warrior and guardian shouldve been nerfed to the ground since day 1

Can we call ferocity, impact or something else to avoid confusion with ferocity that is already two things in game.

Edit: I think the ele changes are awesome, IMO don’t do anything more just yet if at all. The past “improvements” did nothing for the class but if these new proposed changes work as said they will indeed add sustain to the class. Ele is a tough class to play but if you build them right and play them right they do just fine even now. Their dagger mobility is beyond anything else and their scepter dagger burst is good too. I’m sorry you can’t run around in wvw or pvp with full zerks and a staff nuking everyone to death but imo it shouldn’t be that way anyway.

So here’s my thoughts on Dhuumfire from a condition necro’s perspective.

It’s good that it’s going to be a predictable skill, used when we need it, not at random.

However the barriers to using it are now a bit too high. Most traits have one or two barriers for use. Barriers for example are: you have to crit, the trait has to be off cooldown, you have to be using a certain weapon, you have to use some other sort of condition like immobilizing, or you have to be in a certain form. The majority of traits have a single barrier for use. The more powerful ones have two barriers.

With the proposed changes, Dhuumfire will have 4 barriers for use:

1. Dhuumfire will need to be off cooldown
2. Your Death Shroud will need to be off cooldown
3. You’ll need to have some life force
4. You’ll need to be in Death Shroud and hit someone using the default attack

All these things will need to happen in order for you to inflict a 3 second burning.

Now we’ll look at a trait that is almost exactly the same as Dhuumfire pre-balance, engineer’s Incendiary Powder:

1. Incendiary Powder needs to be off cooldown
2. You need to crit someone

With only two barriers, you’ll create a longer burning and it’s only master tier.

Compared to that, the Necro’s grandmaster tier trait seems pretty poor. It’s more of an adept tier trait. Now, am I saying you need to make it an adept to compensate? Not necessarily, you just need to give it a better trade-off to keep it in the grandmaster. Higher barrier grandmaster traits should be pretty powerful. Instead of a 3 second burn, make it a 6 second burn. Or instead of a 10 second cooldown, make it a 5 second cooldown. Or instead of single target, make it an AOE burning.

The impact of Healing Power on most healing skills seems rather weak. I see very few builds that use Healing Power, which suggests it likely needs an overhaul. The suggested change to the warrior’s Healing Signet highlights this issue. With no points in Healing Power, the current version of Healing Signet is a good skill. But adding points into Healing Power doesn’t really seem to improve it very much. Meanwhile, the active ability of this skill is relatively weak, and it mostly seems to be used as a last ditch burst heal.

It seems like the fundamental problem is that Healing Power should have a bigger impact on various healing skills, especially their active abilities. In the case of Healing Signet, if Healing Power could significantly increase its active heal benefit, players with points in Healing Power would probably be more inclined to use its active benefit more often.

Necro changes.

Dhummfire, this needs to be more like. Life blasts now cause burning 2 secs no icd. This makes it more appealing to take life bolts peirce. Life bolt can already easly be dodged and you know when its coming it has the easiest tell in the game (we turn into a shadow).
as is the new one is not worth a 30 point investment.

MM Nerf, I see why MM siphon is getting nerfed but really the only place MM was annoying was spvp. Any other part of the game aoe just kills the pets. Siphons I’m general need a looking at. The damage does not scale well enough to justify losing crit damage and the heal doesn’t scale well enough to lose out on toughness. Between Zealots and life siphon I thought we may get the attrition part of this class but after crafting a full set and testing it I found I was wrong.

Mesmer changes.

I understand nerfing on death/pu builds due to the cheese factor. Its not really the mesmers fault thou. It was one way to fit the meta as it stands. Its currently to passive a play style for a class that shouldn’t be played that way. Honestly its more of a problem that our mindwrack doesn’t hit harder (you want skills that hit hard to have tells this is a big one) and the Nerf to confusion that make people go this route. The harder specs (interupt, shatter, confusion) do not see a greater return for harder play(this can be said about alot of classes look at the rise of Condi bunker)

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes
Warrior:
Our changes for warrior focus on providing telegraphs to stronger skills and to reduce the passive benefit gained from Healing Signet.

• Healing Signet: Reduced the passive heal by 8%.
  • We’re looking for ways to incentivize using Healing Signet’s active without increasing overall sustain. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Eight Percent? Is this a typo?

Can you explain why you feel it is balanced for a class in heavy armor to have so much sustain? The Mesmer Equivalent (Signet of the Ether) heals for 30% less at the best case for the Mesmer, requires skill to manage and is open to counter play. The healing on Mesmer is less effective given the lower armor level as well.

Factoring in EHP Healing Signet is more than twice as effective as the nearest competitor.

Atherakhia.4086:

Reesha.7901:

Daishi.6027:

So… Mesmers get less vigor, yet thief and ranger can still evade spam?

“But thieves need doges to survive!!!” >> and glass mesmers don’t? and in the current state of the game still have less?

Plus Ranger still has little risk even without the doges so lol they get to keep it too?

well that’s juuust peachy.

I do not understand their reasoning for this either…..

Ranger vigor was nerfed 2 patches ago… Mesmer and Guardians are the few classes left to not have these traits normalized.

Yes, but the problems with Mesmers is that Vigor reduction also reduces damage output.

Atherakhia.4086:

Ranger vigor was nerfed 2 patches ago… Mesmer and Guardians are the few classes left to not have these traits normalized.

While this is correct, the difference for the shatter Mesmers is, that the vigor translates into both offense and defense.

Below is how I see things and yes, I do fear the worst from this change.

Dodging provides the Shatter Mesmer with clones and those are used offensively against other classes (shatter). The clones are also used as a defense against other classes (absorbs damage).

The heal used by shatter (Ether Feast), scales depending on how many illusions are active.

A shatter Mesmer has a trait that increase damage depending on how many illusions are active. Obviously, the shatter itself also does damage depending on the amount of illusions.

Once upon a time, Mesmer’s could run Mirror Images (produce 2 clones), and gain access to a double shatter combo. Today, those utility slots are used for survival and the one of the few remaining reasons to bring a Mesmer: The portal.

Therefore, the shatter Mesmer rely on their “on dodge clone” for damage and for survival. Most of the Mesmers defense is active.

Even without the extra damage and with utilities meant for survival, shatter Mesmers are still struggling. It is the only semi viable team tournament spec available and it is very unforgiving to play.

Both the ranger and the thief have more evades after their normalization compared to the Mesmer before normalization. Both the Ranger and the Thief are a part of the meta whereas the Mesmer is not.
The Thief in particular is a hard counter to the shatter Mesmer partially because of the evades.

Overall, the vigor nerf will tone down not just the amount of actual dodges. It will tone down the defense and offense of the shatter Mesmer as well.

Considering that the shatter Mesmer is far from “a must have in tpvp”, I do not see how this change, without any compensation, is warranted.

Now obviously, the perfect class combination matters the most for the good teams. Those that most of us are not a part of. Anything is viable in solo queue.

It still saddens me to see Sensotix playing thief because how Mesmer feels in the meta and to see Supcutie on his ranger.

I like to watch the skilled Mesmer players. They inspire me, I learn from them.
There are not many left.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Atherakhia.4086:

Reesha.7901:

Daishi.6027:

So… Mesmers get less vigor, yet thief and ranger can still evade spam?

“But thieves need doges to survive!!!” >> and glass mesmers don’t? and in the current state of the game still have less?

Plus Ranger still has little risk even without the doges so lol they get to keep it too?

well that’s juuust peachy.

I do not understand their reasoning for this either…..

Ranger vigor was nerfed 2 patches ago… Mesmer and Guardians are the few classes left to not have these traits normalized.

Yes, but the problems with Mesmers is that Vigor reduction also reduces damage output.

I’m not trying to argue one way or the other… I’m merely commenting that the reason Rangers aren’t being nerfed in this patch is because they already had their vigor nerfed 2 patches ago and that Mesmers and Guardians are getting the same treatment.

Whether it’s a warranted change is up to someone who actually plays a Mesmer to decide.

[edit…] Reesha, I don’t play a Mesmer. I was merely commenting to the original complaint of ‘why nerf Mesmers while Rangers vigor is overpowered’. My response: Ranger vigor already got this same exact nerf 2 months ago.

As I said above, it’s up to someone who plays the class to decide if it was warranted or not. I don’t play a Mesmer and can’t comment on how hard the class will be impacted.

Volrath.1473:

JS. “Allot of good things are coming for the Thief” on the last “ready up” stream.

… he didn’t say wen…

I recall JP stating that good things were coming for the Ranger too. That was 1.5 years ago and we’re still waiting…

Usagi.4835:

All of this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; ANet in the end decided not to go ahead with the Deceptive Evasion change and have shown they’ll listen to the Mesmer community if it screams loud enough. I’m not saying revert the nerfs but it doesn’t feel like ANet is responding to the feedback given on some of these proposed changes in either the Profession Balance or respective class sub forums. What about the rest of us?

While I understand your point of view since your main appears to be a Necromancer, I can’t agree with all of it. First, listening to feedback comes with a lot of work and time investment. Second, some (great) suggestions made by the player base (of every class) might not be implementable because of a certain time table the devs have to stick to or might even be impossible to implement on a programming level. Third, the devs also can’t write a comment on every suggestion made. This doesn’t mean they are not listening. Allegations made between players of different classes (“A is favoured over B because of X.”) just creates a lot of dissatisfaction within the community and probably also among the devs. It also does not provide any constructive feedback.

That being said, they did not listen to Mesmers because they screamed loudest. They reverted the suggested change because players voiced viable and fact based concerns about the change. It didn’t solve the issue the devs wanted to adress (actively triggering on death traits) and also would have caused new problems (clone generation, positioning). Furthermore, although those traits are used in a very powerful roaming build they are not the reason for it being that strong. That is why it was reverted.

While I agree that the Dhuumfire change is not a good solution, it does adress an important balance issue (too much mindless condition damage) without harming other areas of the class. Of course, in the long run it should be moved to a different trait line/level.

Ghlitch.8932:

With the proposed changes, Dhuumfire will have 4 barriers for use:

1. Dhuumfire will need to be off cooldown
2. Your Death Shroud will need to be off cooldown
3. You’ll need to have some life force
4. You’ll need to be in Death Shroud and hit someone using the default attack

All these things will need to happen in order for you to inflict a 3 second burning.

Now we’ll look at a trait that is almost exactly the same as Dhuumfire pre-balance, engineer’s Incendiary Powder:

1. Incendiary Powder needs to be off cooldown
2. You need to crit someone

With only two barriers, you’ll create a longer burning and it’s only master tier.

I do agree that Dhuumfire should be moved to a different tree and maybe be lowered a level. However, you might keep this in mind: Engineers already have a good access to burning. Since it only stacks in duration this means that Incendiary Powder is a lot less powerful than it is on the Necromancer who gains a whole new strong damaging condition. Therefore, there can’t be any balance based on this comparison. The cooldowns (1 and 2) won’t be an issue since they are the same (untraited). Life Force will be. But I guess that this is the intention of the devs.

Reesha.7901:

…

Shatter Mesmers are indeed in not such a great place right now. But this is the case for every Mesmer build besides Blackwater (Roaming) and Phantasm/Reflect (PvE). However, Shatter Mesmers actually have a very easy work around if they really need the additional Vigor. Just go 10/20/0/10/30 instead of 20/20/0/0/30 and pick Vigorous Revelation.

I do not see Vigor/Endurance as the main issue of Shatter Mesmers. It is the condition meta. And again, this applies to all Mesmers.

Also, here is an old post of mine regarding Retaliation; which is in dire need of a complete change in my opinion. And seeing that you guys are grasping at barren treelimbs because apparently all the ‘low hanging fruit’ is gone; it is time to use the ladder and reach for the higher fruit before the entire harvest is spoiled.

From my perspective Retaliation as listed is fine, but only if it actually worked as it is listed.

Reflect incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration.

At present time it does not reflect incoming damage at all. Instead it basically counterattacks with damage disproportionate to the damage that was being dealt:
198.45 + (0.075 * Power)

As such, I feel that this formula should be removed and Retaliation changed to something more akin to Retribution from the original Guild Wars.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Retribution

This would change Retaliation to simply deal a portion of the actual incoming damage back to its source.

EXAMPLE:
Retaliation – Reflect 25% of incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration

• 10 little hits of 200 damage each (2000 total) would deal 25% (10×50=500) damage back to its source.
• 1 big hit of 2000 damage would deal 25% (1×500=500) damage back to its source.

With such a change the effects of reflected damage are equal across the board and do not punish players that have attacks with multiple small hits compared to players that have attacks with single big hits.

Warrior HS sugestion:

Let it work with adrenaline and give a bonus when activate the signet.

0 adrenaline 250 hps
1 adrenaline 300 hps
2 adrenaline 350 hps
3 adrenaline 400 hps

What this does:
Someone who is always using burst skills will have less healing (you do damage you have less sustain). This also work the other way, If someone is attaking the warrior, he is refiling the warrior adrenaline (assuming he is using cleansing ire) and gives sustain to the warrior when he needs the sustain.

Now the active part: The heal could stay the same if the active is good enough. My sugestions:

1) Halve the cooldown of the stances. (This means if a warrior use a stance and want that stance as soon as possible he will use the signet right away, leaving him without the passive efect of HS for about 16/20 seconds.)

2) Recharge of physical skills.

3) Recharge of banners (This would be very usefful when using Battle Standard (only one banner of each kind can give the bonus)).

4) Recharge all shouts (will make the warrior to make a choice if he want the passive healing or he want the heal+clean condition from shouts)

5) Recharge of weapons skills (with this if the warrior choose to make damage, he will loose sustain.

6) Recharge of the elite skill. (More usefull with Battle Standard)

7) Active part: Increase the casting time: While casting the signet, make it to reflect the damage to the source. The heal remains the same. (This will make the warrior to choose to activate the signet if he can predict a burst from one enemy player. The enemy player can see the animation and choose not to attack.

Necro minions
Why won’t you nerf necro minion’s danage/health pool but make them scale with necro’s stats just like vampiric master? Also, minions are pretty useles in pve/www now (except for leveling), since they die easily to aoe, and most strong enemies have aoe melee attack. Make them take less aoe damage while in pve/www enviroment (most other mmos have 90% reduction to aoe damage for pets/minions)
Dhuumfire
This change is really bad. You want ppl to manage their burns instead of just getting a free burning effect, but what you gonna achieve is necros either completly ignoring this trait, or just using ds on cd(since its on 10 sec cd you dont even have to manage dhuumfire cd), shoot 1 life blast, get out of ds to continue applying other condis. Its the same mindless free burning but you take away ds utility, since it has to be used on cd for a single life blast, and DS is useless as damage source for condi necros, while power necros won’t even go for dhuumfire.)
And please, make all classes viable, not only War/Ele/Guard and maybe Mes. I mean, just open lfg and you will understand my despair as engi/necro

Xaylin.1860:

I do agree that Dhuumfire should be moved to a different tree and maybe be lowered a level. However, you might keep this in mind: Engineers already have a good access to burning. Since it only stacks in duration this means that Incendiary Powder is a lot less powerful than it is on the Necromancer who gains a whole new strong damaging condition. Therefore, there can’t be any balance based on this comparison. The cooldowns (1 and 2) won’t be an issue since they are the same (untraited). Life Force will be. But I guess that this is the intention of the devs.

Untraited engineers have access to 4 different damaging conditions (Bleed, Burn, Confuse, Poison) and these just with weapon skills. Untraited necromancers have access to 3 damaging conditions (Bleed, Poison, Torment) if you count death shroud as a weapon skill.

By default, engineers can do more damage than necromancers with conditions.

Dhuumfire gives us access to a fourth damage type just to bring us back on par with an untraited engineer. Terror gives us access to a fifth damage condition, but one that can only be scarcely applied.

Xaylin.1860:

I partly agree on this one. I really like the Air and the Earth Signet. Water and Fire on the other hand are just aweful. The Chill is rather redundant when having the choice of getting an Immobilize. Elementalists also don’t need even more burn. Two ideas I had:

Signet of Water
Active
Create a Waterfield for 3s which also provides 1s Regeneration per pulse.
While there already are enough Waterfields or sources of Regeneration all of them are either tied to the water attunment itself or the traitline. The Signet would offer recovery outside of those and probably open up some trait choices.

Signet of Fire
Active
Gain 5 stacks of Might for 5s and cause Weakness to nearby foes for 5s (240 Radius).
A short damage boost and another way to mitigate damage. It would also provide another cover-up condition for hybrid/condition Elementalists.

Signet of water needs a change to make it reflect more on the healing aspect of water. Like active effect 10s regen or 3s waterfield. Otherwise the signet should be rename to Signet of Ice and change the passive to something like applies vulnerability to attackers.

Signet of Fire is fine, it does half of my total burn damage with the condition build I use for spvp. Also, I do not have to stay in fire for me to burn someone. It is a set-up for burst damage with the 25fire trait too.

Xaylin.1860:

Shatter Mesmers are indeed in not such a great place right now. But this is the case for every Mesmer build besides Blackwater (Roaming) and Phantasm/Reflect (PvE). However, Shatter Mesmers actually have a very easy work around if they really need the additional Vigor. Just go 10/20/0/10/30 instead of 20/20/0/0/30 and pick Vigorous Revelation.

Maybe it is just me, but I do feel the 20 in domination is extremely important because of shattered concentration. The last thing I need is my entire 3 clone F1 shatter damage reduced by protection, or being unable to strip my enemy of other useful boons.
I don’t want yet another reason to NOT bring a mesmer over a thief.

Well…
Those are some good changes to thief…
Instead of getting a massive nerf bat almost every patch, this one is a little one.
I’m also going to guess that the more good things, means you will only be nerfing one thief skill in this patch as a opposed to several.
Good changes! Me Gusta.

(Though, we could say… that… it’s a 40% nerf to choking gas, which is more MASSIVE than a 33% buff we once got….)

lazycalm.5186:

Is that all you got for THIEF? Poisons are useless atm anyway..

MESMERS – They will still be overpowered. A profession like this, with clone spamming abilities that distract the opposite player, should NOT be overpowered.

ENGINEERS – They are fine… the class which in my opinion requires the most skill to play and gets equally rewarded.

I love the PvP Engie main calling the Mesmer OP.

If this change for Dhuumfire goes through (and history says it will, regardless of how much it’s stated to be a bad idea,) then the trait should be moved down to Master tier. Remove Spiteful Marks (widely regarded to be a useless trait, due to the very low direct damage of any Mark skill) entirely to make room, move Dhuumfire to Master, then create something suitable for the Grandmaster slot. Ideally, the new Grandmaster trait should have some benefit to condition builds (both damage and control).

Question for Anet: Are these all changes, or are you going to reveal more on the update itself and this is just a preview? I hear you say in the video that you have more content and can’t talk about yet so.

Is it such a good idea to nerf both damage output (the crit changes) and the ability to dodge (the vigor changes) at the same time?

Wouldn’t it have made more sense to tweak/change one and then look to alter the other once you have a better idea as to what those changes bring about?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter and the two are less related to one another than I assumed.

Thanks for letting us weigh in, devs, and for recognizing that Elementalists need a lot of help to become viable again. The proposed changes are good, but not good enough on their own.

Our biggest issue is that in order to have anywhere near acceptable survivability, we have to trait significantly into Water and/or Arcana, in the process sacrificing damage. Our only “inherent” survivability mechanics are our Water Attunement skill heals, which a) need at least 15 in Water to even be useful and b) have been nerfed time and again.

I don’t know how to best improve our baseline survivability; I’ll leave that to more experienced players. But what I do have to suggest are some skill tweaks to help us out:

Please consider upping the effectiveness of our auto-attacks
*Scepter: Flamestrike, Stone Shards and especially Ice Shards are all TERRIBLE! It takes too long to stack conditions with the former two attacks; please either speed up activation, up damage or increase condition duration. Ice Shards can be easily dodged; please increase projectile speed. Arc Lightning is only good because it’s paired with Lightning Strike.
*Staff: Make Water Blast a self-heal regardless of where the splash happens. Make Chain Lightning do more damage on its initial hit rather than splitting the damage equally between bounces.

Please revisit the Focus!
*Fire Attunement skills on the Focus are GARBAGE. Fire Shield in particular is on a 40 second cooldown (!) and is no serious deterrent to attackers. Flamewall similarly is easily avoided and does not punish foes trying to cross it enough. Maybe consider adding boon-ripping to it and upping its CD to compensate.
*Water Attunement. Freezing Gust: A 3-second Chill on a 25-second cooldown, even if it’s ranged, is not good enough for a #4 skill. Maybe let it strip a boon or two as well? Or at least increase the Chill duration.

Miscellaneous Weapon Skill improvement suggestions:
*Staff: Please improve projectile speed and/or width for Gust and Shockwave! Currently these skills almost never hit due to how slowly/narrowly they travel.
*Staff: Please consider allowing Lava Font to do damage immediately upon being cast (a la Necromancer Wells), and splitting its damage to do more damage on its initial ticks.
*Offhand Dagger: Ride the Lightning! Please don’t punish us for using this as a gap closer. Change it so that it additionally does NOT incur the CD penalty if the target blocks, evades or stealths while RtL is moving towards it.

Please give us a reason to use Glyphs!
*Glyph of Storms has too long of a cooldown. Its AoEs can easily be avoided, and are lackluster outside of Water and Earth.
*Glyph of Elemental Power: Its status as a stun breaker is counterintuitive
*Glyph of Lesser Elementals/Glyph of Elementals: Please consider allowing the Elementals’ special skills to be controllable by the Elementalist, or at least predictable (for example, the Elemental will cast its special skill immediately after being summoned.)

Please consider further lowering baseline Utility skills cooldowns
*Mist Form is more of a hindrance than a help in SPvP due to locking us out of our skill. Please consider lowering its CD to 60-70 seconds.
*Arcane Shield could use lowering to 60 seconds.
*Armor of Earth could go to 60 seconds; its boons don’t last long enough to warrant 70 seconds.

Thanks guys.