Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

I’ve seen quite a few posts mention the lack of bug fix mentions and I wanted to let you guys know that for the most part they’ve simply been excluded from the balance preview.

This (I think) is what much of the community needed to see and needs to continue seeing in the future. Continually witnessing patches intended to improve your skill set instead prove detrimental to their overall functionality is not only disheartening, but infuriating; more so when nothing about these issues are addressed for more than 6 months at a time or even a year in some cases. We understand that it is easier to reach for the “low hanging fruit” as it was called, but neglecting to pick the ones at the top just serves to let them rot until they finally fall off the branch and someone slips on it.

It does not set a good precedent when we are left to assume that these scenarios are seemingly forgotten in an effort to push the living story content. Many of these issues have been bearing down on the community for so long that it has left many of us bitter, volatile and faithless when this could have been avoided by either making a better effort to correct such mistakes or inform the player base that they are still in the works. Communication is one of the keys to success and there has been an evident lack thereof for quite some time now.

I would like to commend and thank you for taking the time to investigate/respond to those issues.

First of all the upcoming buffs for eles are a joke. They won’t change anything.

A short explanation why:

Let’s compare D/D eles right now/after the patch to the ones after release. They’re a good example of ele balancing. Here are the important nerfs and buffs since release:

• RTL
  15 sec CD -> 20 sec CD -> 40 sec CD + 1550 range -> 1200 range
  3 nerfs (1 nerf = bug fix).

• Signet of Restoration
  healing reduced by 18% (HS only 8% + active buff?) -> nerf removed
  0 nerf

• Lightning Flash
  stun break -> no stun break + no damage -> some damage + 45 sec CD -> 40 sec CD
  ~0 nerf (the buffs are nothing compared to the nerf imo but I want to be fair here)

• Mist Form
  only locks skills 1-5 -> also locks heal, utility, and elite skills
  1 nerf

• Zephyr’s Boon
  Shocking Aura aura bug fix -> only 5 sec boons instead of 10 sec
  1 nerf (= bug fix)

• Bountiful Power
  2% damage -> 1% damage
  1 nerf

• Cleansing Water
  0 sec ICD -> 5 sec ICD
  1 nerf

• Evasive Arcana
  4 blast finishers -> 1 blast finisher + Cleansing Wave reduced by 50%
  2 nerfs

• Armor of Earth
  90 sec CD -> 75 sec CD
  1 buff

• Burning Speed
  no evade -> evade
  1 buff

• Frozen Burst
  no blast finisher -> blast finisher
  1 buff (~0,5 of the EA nerf)

In total 9 nerfs (7 if you exclude the bug fixes) and 3 buffs.

The evade on Burning Speed is nice, the blast finisher on Frozen Burst makes up for 1 Evasive Arcana blast finisher (only ~0,5 nerf). The CD reduction for Armor of Earth is ok but the CD is still pretty high.

To sum it up:

9 nerfs since release and 3 (actually 2,5) buffs. It’s hilarious that some people think eles could be viable again after the patch. They’re weaker compared to release and since then other professions were buffed which makes the balance gap even bigger. Unless there’re some huge buffs in the future nothing will change.

I think we need to include in this patch a fix for ride the lightning, as the cool down increase was agreeably a mistake (use the line I’m giving you anet!) and we need cleansing water to have its ICD removed. Its not even on the tooltip. How misleading is that? So that too obviously is a mistake. Let’s fix that while we’re at it!

There. Two corrected mistakes, and I’ll be happy with my WvW and SPvP ele.

I thought you said that there was more changes coming for the ele, not just the five you listed. Is the list incomplete or will that be it?

In regards to D/D cantrip bunker eles that you want to make viable, I’m not sure if it will work. With the condition heavy meta and Cleansing Water not being a reliable source, I doubt that D/D cantrip bunker eles will return. Four of the five buffs seem to appeal to a previous 0/10/0/30/30 build.

The runes and sigils changes sound appealing. The ele improvements will not do much for build diversity, I believe.

Elementalist

• 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.
  Feedback: Good change, but won’t make signet builds viable as they severely lack sustain in general. Perhaps usable on D/D bunker builds, but doubt it will outshine Ether Renewal.
• Armor of Earth: Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.
  Feedback: Very good to see something that will benefit all manner of catnip builds, yet the CD still feels long for a 6 sec stability/protection stunbreak utility.
• Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.
  Feedback: The regeneration is a nice addition, but will likely make a revert of Cleansing Water in the future even more unlikely, so I am torn on this.
• Burning Speed: This ability now evades attacks.
  Feedback: Cool. What else is there to say?
  *Frozen Burst: This ability is now a blast finisher.
  Feedback: Again, cool!

What was I hoping for?:

• Signets: A good look at signet utilities and how they can interact with traits to make them viable in PvP.
• Glyphs: An overhaul of Glyph of Elemental Power to make it defensive, as it currently is counter-intuitive. Stunbreak on a skill you wish to activate before combat, yet still only triggers randomly is not appealing in the slightest.
• Arcana: It is mandatory in PvP, which hinders build diversity enormously.
• Focus: The focus need more attention than any other weapon. Fire #4, 5, Water #4, and Air #5 CD.
• Build Diversity: Something to accomplish this via traits. You are trying to fix this with changes to runes/sigils and new amulets I think, so we’ll see what happens.

let’s be honest guys, there are some classes that deserves a particular attention in this balance patch. Above all I would say Elementalist and Ranger: stop nerfing them and give them possibilities for different builds because, by now, these are two very limited classes. Warrior needs some more nerfs I think, the Healing Signet one is not enough (only 8% nerf?): it’s not fair at all that a specifc build of one class can fulfill every single role (talking about PvP): the HamBow build has CC, AOE damage (both direct and condition), great susteinability, insane amount of remove conditions etc etc… finally I find very unfair the “automated response” trait from the alchemy trait line of the engineer: let’s be honest, warrior’s “berserker stance” is already OP in my opinion, a complete immunity to conditions with no cooldown or duration is absolutely unmanageable for some opponents with condition builds. The options are two: do some serious nerf to skills and traits clearly too strong or give weaker classes the traits and skills needed to deal with OP builds.

Take the risk to do something really significant in terms of changes! a later patch can always correct the mistakes!!!

I see the possibilities, this game has the potential to be THE mmorpg, I just would like to see more pointed and brave changes from the team of Anet. Many risky decisions have already been made: creating a gamestilye that rewards players when cooperating, eliminating the classic “one class can fulfill only one role” in order to create an insane number of possibilities etc etc. I really don’t know if I explained myself correctly (I’m not english as many of you must have noticed). Am I the only one who thinks like this?

Dave Pare.2069:

let’s be honest guys, there are some classes that deserves a particular attention in this balance patch. Above all I would say Elementalist and Ranger: stop nerfing them and give them possibilities for different builds because, by now, these are two very limited classes. Warrior needs some more nerfs I think, the Healing Signet one is not enough (only 8% nerf?): it’s not fair at all that a specifc build of one class can fulfill every single role (talking about PvP): the HamBow build has CC, AOE damage (both direct and condition), great susteinability, insane amount of remove conditions etc etc… finally I find very unfair the “automated response” trait from the alchemy trait line of the engineer: let’s be honest, warrior’s “berserker stance” is already OP in my opinion, a complete immunity to conditions with no cooldown or duration is absolutely unmanageable for some opponents with condition builds. The options are two: do some serious nerf to skills and traits clearly too strong or give weaker classes the traits and skills needed to deal with OP builds.

If you want to be really fair, engineer needs that particular attention, too. You mention exactly one trait that is overpowered (in PvP), but in general the engineer is not in a good place at all, despite some people’s insistence that it is. So yeah, let Anet please take an extra care of the bottom 4 professions, i.e. Ranger, Elementalist, Necromancer and Engineer.

So, based on the changed made on Necromancers, do you consider them to be fairly well balanced in PvE?

As aways, no changes to Guardians. At least make the Mace #1 (last hit) and #2 faster. I wanna to use mace on my guardian, but every time I try, I always go back to my sword. This is too low.

It is concerning that requests for change from the player community for Eles have all been more or less aligned along the same basic axes (innate lack of defence, reliance on water/arcane, weakness of signets, glyphs, conjures, focus skills) for more than a year now but have not been addressed in any meaningful way.

scerevisiae.1972:

It is concerning that requests for change from the player community for Eles have all been more or less aligned along the same basic axes (innate lack of defence, reliance on water/arcane, weakness of signets, glyphs, conjures, focus skills) for more than a year now but have not been addressed in any meaningful way.

They haven’t addressed anything that is worthless or very weak. I think they’ll never fix those things. I guess that almost all classes suffers from this problem.

Elementalist

STAFF…

Fireball: +10% damage
Frozen ground: Chilled 3sec (basic)
Lightning surge: Cast time 1 seconds
Eruption: Cast time 1 seconds

SCEPTER…

Dragon’s tooht: Can be used without target
Shatterstone: Esplodes after 1,5 seconds
Lightning: Daze 1/4 seconds
Hurl: Immobilize 1 seconds

FOCUS…

Flamewall: Cast time 1/2
Comet: Cast time 1/2
Gale: CD 45 seconds

UTILITY…

Glyph of renewal: CD 150 seconds
Singet of fire: Cast time 1/2 seconds
Signet of water: Cast time 1/2 seconds

TRAIT…

Conjured: Additional charges 15
Burning precision: CD 1 seconds
One with air: Totally useless. To be redone

Most of the changes concerns the cast time so as to allow the elementalist more speed checks = more chances of survival. There would be other reasons but i can’t get translate everything from google translator … sorry.

More thoughts on Elementalist:

- give us a reason for 30 in Fire magic line, the two current Grand Master traits are garbage unfortunately :/ No Grand master traits that force you to stay in one attunement plz, thats now how this class was designed to be played. Honestly the entire Fire tree needs a total revamp IMO.

-Buff all signets, lets see a reason to use signet builds, this means you should probably fix Fire Shields to actually provide might and burning on every hit we take since elementalist can get a trait to activate a fire shield for every signet used.

Signet of Water: Make this cure conditions more often

Signer of Earth: Make this provide more toughness

Signet of Fire: Improve the crit rate enhancement passive and also change the active to provide something more useful.

-I think the conjure weapons should be revamped to give us a new set of skills in each attunement, so for example the fiery greatsword could be turned into an elemental sword that gave new fire, wind, earth, air skills for a different kind of playstyle.

-remove the water 15 trait and make our current weapon heals stronger to compensate.

-Make glyph of elemental power work with lingering elements, so for example: I’m in fire attunement, I swap to water, I hit the opponent and now it has the chance to apply burning and chill instead of just burning.

Glyph of Storms: Make this a single target cast that applies the storm on an enemy, make the ability have to be aimed and not just point and click.

Glyph of lesser elementals: Make this ability summon a pet based on current attunement that focuses on supporting the elementalist and less about dmg.

Glyph of elemental harmony: Allow the boons you get with this heal to work with lingering elements and increase the duration of the protection boon on this skill.

Arcane Power: Instead of giving 100% crits on the next 5 attacks, make this ability have a chance to proc a direct damage spell when you crit your enemy.

Critical Damage
You always refer to Berserkers losing 10% dmg, but you disregard the fact, that hybrid characters will be affected far more by the change. here’s the reason why:

You said you’ll normalise the amount of Critical dmg on jewlery. In other words tune it down to match the amount the secondary stat gives,

Full Berserker has the Critdmg from his Armor+the now tuned down from Jewlery. Resulting in the total tuned down dmg of -10%.

Hybrids with Soldier Armor and Berserker Jewlery will lose a lot of critical dmg from the tuned down jewlery while not compensating this with the Armor in any way. This will result in a lot more than the 10%.

Solution:
Give us a 1 time equipment respec option to make your chars viable again. It will kill all fun in the game if we crafted Ascendet gear for nothing.

PVE

saturday i played FRACTAL 50 with 3 guardians and a warrior using a full zerk mesmer.

Facetanking everything legendary archdviner, mossman etc…..

LordByron.8369:

PVE

saturday i played FRACTAL 50 with 3 guardians and a warrior using a full zerk mesmer.

Facetanking everything legendary archdviner, mossman etc…..

Now you know the truth.

Even if anet makes zerker harder to play, people will get more guardians. The more guardians you have, the easier the content becomes.

Galsia.4102:

Karl McLain.5604:

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.

Healing Signet Active: Cures Poison then quadruples healing effectiveness for the next 5 seconds.

Healing Signet’s base after nerf, 361, would quadruple to 1,444 for each second for the next five seconds, ending up with a 7,220 heal.

Potency, length of time, CD is open to scrutiny.

Lol. Seriously?

Even after the 8% nerf, which is hardly a nerf at all, HS will still be the best heal hands-down. Your idea for the active is just ridiculous… just buff it to the skies again.

For comparison: Ether Feast, the heal on Mesmer, heals for 7870, IF I have three illusions out. So you want:

1) Near comparably burst healing, without any prerequisites such as a Mesmer has
2) Massive sustain healing, which Ether Feast won’t give at all
3) Have a poison cure thrown into the mix.

What else would you like with that, GOD mode?

Can we have a balance patch where people see the necromancer as a class that people want to play, and not as a balance problem for the other classes?

Because I’d really like to play my necromancer. But my favorite class has slowly become more and more neutered, and less fun to play since release. Unbalances in PVE are enlarged by the complete pvp focus of the majority of the changes for the necromancer. So while in pvp it seems like the necromancer is slowly moving towards being more balanced, in PVE it seems exactly the opposite. The necromancer in PVE seems to be moving from inefficient, to down right bad.

Marsares.2053:

… What else would you like with that, GOD mode?

He plays a warrior ….

I made my own tread because I didn’t see this one. Check it out for my suggestion about the mesmer torch trait.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Suggestion-Cleansing-Conflagration-redesign

Can you pls tell us what you think about rangers? i’d like to know if we can just delete it or we could expect some changes…

I can see you fixed a little the longbow… very useful in pvp, everyday i play with a longbow.. it’s the best agains thief and warrior! (lol)

You have 10 pages of suggestion made by… who?
you said it took hours to read this 10 pages. then did you notices there’s only answer about Warrior, Elementalist and Necro?!
1 people per server play Ranger seriously and it’s not even that good! You can count Engineer players on your fingers.

SO, CAN YOU TELL US IF YOU THINK THAT RANGER IS “OK” THE WAY IT IS NOW, OR WE COULD EXPECT SOMETHING NEW?
just to know if we have to delete it now or wait for something new

vanensang.1389:

ArenaNet … no offense but please don’t smoke too much pot at work because this is unbelievably … well … man this is not enough. It won’t change anything. Your PvP balancing team should actually start playing some PvP.

they do pvp…but only with warriors.
anyway,nerf smoke pot and buff ele.

Insanity.5174:

vanensang.1389:

ArenaNet … no offense but please don’t smoke too much pot at work because this is unbelievably … well … man this is not enough. It won’t change anything. Your PvP balancing team should actually start playing some PvP.

they do pvp…but only with warriors.
anyway,nerf smoke pot and buff ele.

They don’t actually play the game competitively. they just log in to take some videos and create the upcoming patch preview.

They fear real fixes… or real work… can’t decide.. or maybe both

Malcastus.6240:

What was I hoping for?:

• Signets: A good look at signet utilities and how they can interact with traits to make them viable in PvP.
• Glyphs: An overhaul of Glyph of Elemental Power to make it defensive, as it currently is counter-intuitive. Stunbreak on a skill you wish to activate before combat, yet still only triggers randomly is not appealing in the slightest.
• Arcana: It is mandatory in PvP, which hinders build diversity enormously.
• Focus: The focus need more attention than any other weapon. Fire #4, 5, Water #4, and Air #5 CD.
• Build Diversity: Something to accomplish this via traits. You are trying to fix this with changes to runes/sigils and new amulets I think, so we’ll see what happens.

Signets – I have to agree, i find them rather lackluster. In most cases the Passive WAY outshines the Active making you rarely want to use the Active – Unless you take Written In Stone of course.

Glyphs – I agree again. I find Harmony pretty solid. The others need work.

Elemental Power is a very confusing skill, something that you want up before combat starts – yet for some reason has a Stun Breaker attached to it when its on offensive skill. I would like to see the Stun Breaker removed and the chance to proc increased to 50% – Maybe tie it to Crit hits so 50% chance on Crit hit to proc, Maybe add 1second cool down?

Storms – Find it rather lackluster, doesnt seem to really offer anything that would make it worthwhile outside of VERY unique situations. No idea what to do with this one.

Lesser Elementals – As if the Elite wasn’t weak enough, who would really want to use this? I say remove and replace with something USEFUL.

Renewal – Cast time is WAY too long, Cool down is insanely long as well.

Arcana: Totally agree with this, the fact is that it is needed to reduce the cool down on our class mechanic which simply shouldn’t be. It should have a 10second cool down and have Arcana reduce that to 7-8seconds should people still want to go for it.

Focus: Don’t use it, cant comment.

Build diversity: I think the biggest problem is that we start off with such a BIG disadvantage that we have to build, trait and gear to just counter that starting disadvantage that even when done we are at a disadvantage to everyone else that has built and traited. This disadvantage? The Health and Armor. I personally think it needs to be looked at, i could understand it when we were near godmode at the start but we have gotten nerfed, nerfed and more nerfed since then and havent gotten anything as compensation…

Increasing our Health pool would allow us to spent traits stats elsewhere and to not have to build defensive thanks to our starting weakness.

Before making changes I believe one must ask why people prefer Berserker gears?

The most beautiful thing that guild wars bought in is that there is no explicit tanks in this game or rather no one should be a Meat bag or tank and use Dodge effectively to avoid lethal attacks.

With that being said, people want to make money as fast as possible meaning they want to Damage things as fast as possible and tag as many mobs as possible.

The only status that effectively maximizes this Berserker!
1) Condition damage takes time to do the damage
2) Status such as Vitality and toughness become a bit obsolete if you know how well to dodge and keep your self mobile. And to certain extent healing as well falls under this category

Perhaps if we can shift the focus from Mass killing and how much damage is caused, to the mechanics of play things then it would benefit more and give room for diversity.

For example, in dungeons, rather rewarding the player because his party killed the final boss, rewarding the group for each challenge they have over come in the appropriate manner cumulative at the end final boss would encourage more healthy game play and could partially stop people from skipping or abusing the system.

Dave Pare.2069:

let’s be honest guys, there are some classes that deserves a particular attention in this balance patch. Above all I would say Elementalist and Ranger: stop nerfing them and give them possibilities for different builds because, by now, these are two very limited classes.

Thank you! but… remember all new sigils and amulets will massively impact our rangers and I personally think Rangers are going to be one the main beneficiaries as Anet seem to be focusing on strengthening support builds and we (rangers) have an abundance of potential support builds that only lack a new ammy :-) Here’s to high hopes!

Dhuumfire change is the worst change ever.

I’m afraid to ask this but… wasn’t there going to be a thief s/p change? Something to do with spiting pistol whip into 2 separate abilities?

Also looking forward to some spvp updates… really needing some of those to keep me interested in the game.

I think it is really great you listened to the community on reverting the proposed Deceptive Evasion change.

If only you had been this open to player feedback “pre-pax” and listened to all the necromancers begging you not to implement dhuumfire, you might not be scrambling for a way to justify it in game while we sweep up the pieces that were our “build diversity”.

Great concepts, poor execution, depressing timeframe. #GW2balance2015

Zoid.2568:

Dhuumfire change is the worst change ever.

Correction: Second worst change.
The worst change was adding Dhuumfire in the first place, and then nerfing dozens of condition skills/traits because of it.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Lesser Elementals – As if the Elite wasn’t weak enough, who would really want to use this? I say remove and replace with something USEFUL.

They’re actually quite useful if you know how to use them properly.

Josh Davis.6015:

I just finished spending a few hours catching up on these responses. There’s a lot of good feedback here…and some…not so much!

I’ve seen quite a few posts mention the lack of bug fix mentions and I wanted to let you guys know that for the most part they’ve simply been excluded from the balance preview. Our designers have been and will continue to work on profession bugs all the way until this build is locked up and ready to ship.

I’ll touch base with the guys on Monday when we get back into the office and see if we’re able to provide any updates.

Thanks again, everyone.

Above all else, please address the Illusionary Warden doing nothing bug that was exposed when they were made to run into range of a target. This bug makes the skill periodically do absolutely nothing and is crippling to Mesmer builds utilizing a focus offhand. It absolutely must be of the highest priority.

Thanks for the update otherwise.

My comments are based on (s/t)PVP, therefore considerations from PvE/WvW may lead to different conclusions.

1. Changes to Guardian: indeed very few changes. There are many suggestions and remarks in the Guardian Forum. What comes to my mind is the relative uselessness of Condition Builds. This however would require a major overhaul, such as review of the Radiance trait line. E.g. why precision with condition dmg when there are no “on crit” conditions? Swap Condition Damage with the Crit Damage in the trait lines, introduce a chance to chill on crit as 25 trait in radiance, making glacial heart obsolete (could be replaced with the +10% dmg on targets with conditions). Also, unless you play full bunker or triple med monks focus, sustain is just too low (especially comparing with e.g. warrior healing signet and adrenal health). Buffing Virtue of Resolve to the level it has with Absolute Resolution would be one possibility.

3. Necromancers: the toning down of Minions is a step into the right direction, perhaps not radical enough. In order to reduce the clutter-effect, one could think about having a cap on the number of minions (like mesmers have only 3 illusions). Or else reduce their health (at least in PvP). On the other hand, all non-Minionmancer specs are currently very subpar. Death Shroud needs some urgent improvements, first of all the many reported bugs fixed, such as health reduced while in DS, skill lag after leaving DS or be defeated without downed. Changing Dhuumfire to burn on Lifeblast looks like a nice addition, but actually the damage output in DS is not an issue (in fact, with proper traits it can be formidable), it is rather the total lack of defense and easy avoidability of DS attacks. Increase the travel speed of the Lifeblast projectile by at least 20%, add some way to gain at least one of the following possibilities while in DS: stability (other than via the grandmaster trait), condition cleanse, regenerate health or stunbreak (maybe via a second set of utility skills while in DS), add possibility to stomp and rez while in DS. Improve efficiency of Life siphon by direct attacks and reduce it by minions (already planned with changes to Vamipiric Master).

4. Warriors: The changes to Healing Signet show good will, but are too small. I would suggest reduction of base heal by 15% and scaling with healing power in a way that at around 700 Healing power (i.e. when you trait/equip for it) you have similar heal like today without Healing power. Also, in order to tone down the Hambow overpoweredness a bit more, make small adjustments (~5%) to the damage of Fierce Blow and Arcing Arrow. Regarding the potential perma-lockdown caused by Hammer (knockdown, knockback and stun on a very low cd) I would not advocate further nerf of hammer as it is intended as a control weapon, but rather think about a general diminishing return mechanic for disabling attacks (e.g. for each knockdown, daze, stun etc., gain a 5 sec stacking boon which at 3 or5 stacks converts into 10s stability or something like that).

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Zoid.2568:

Dhuumfire change is the worst change ever.

Correction: Second worst change.
The worst change was adding Dhuumfire in the first place, and then nerfing dozens of condition skills/traits because of it.

Don’t forget the amount of times Dhuumfire has been nerfed itself. So They Dhuumfire which then gets nerfed i think this one will be the 4th nerf and they have had nerfs to other conditions and skills. It is like they are trying as much as they can to kill off Conditionmancer…

Jabuticaba.7458:

3. Necromancers: the toning down of Minions is a step into the right direction, perhaps not radical enough. In order to reduce the clutter-effect, one could think about having a cap on the number of minions (like mesmers have only 3 illusions).

A cap on minions? You mean on top of the cap of having to use a skill slot for each minion already? Are you serious?

• Bone Fiend (ranged minion)
• Bone Minion x2 (exploding minions)
• Blood Fiend (takes up heal slot)
• Shadow Fiend (causes blind)
• Flesh Wurm (stationary, provides teleport)
• Flesh Golem (takes up elite slot)
• Jagged Horror (only spawn due to reanimator trait or Mark of Horror)

So at the most you’ll have 6 minions with you (two bone minions, flesh golem, blood fiend, and 2 others), with maybe a silly little Jagged Horror that dies almost instantly. You don’t think that’s enough of a hard cap already?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So at the most you’ll have 6 minions with you (two bone minions, flesh golem, blood fiend, and 2 others), with maybe a silly little Jagged Horror that dies almost instantly. You don’t think that’s enough of a hard cap already?

From cluttering perspective, yes I think 6 is too much, especially if – what frequently occurs due to recent Minionmancer popularity – you find yourself pitched against 3 of them fighting for a cap – that is some 20 toons running around that small circle, not even counting the jagged horrors.

Of course in case of capping the number of minions, each individual one would need to get a buff (perhaps even desirable from PvE or WvW perspective: instead of having 6 that die instantly in AoE, have 3 that can sustain and put out same dmg/effects as the 6).
But anyhow, this is hypothetical and will not likely come.
And actually I am more concerned with the issues of DS that need some improvements to make other builds more viable.

An idea to change Dancing Dagger for thieves to try to bring D/D up to some of the other specs:

*Remove the bounce altogether
*Increase the projectile speed
*Keep the damage the same
*On hit they get a black border debuff similar to warrior impale
*On hit, you get a 10 second rollover skill called augury of death
*On activation of said rollover skill you shadowstep to and cripple your target for 3 seconds

Impale: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impale_
Original Augury of Death: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Augury_of_Death

Jabuticaba.7458:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So at the most you’ll have 6 minions with you (two bone minions, flesh golem, blood fiend, and 2 others), with maybe a silly little Jagged Horror that dies almost instantly. You don’t think that’s enough of a hard cap already?

From cluttering perspective, yes I think 6 is too much, especially if – what frequently occurs due to recent Minionmancer popularity – you find yourself pitched against 3 of them fighting for a cap – that is some 20 toons running around that small circle, not even counting the jagged horrors.

Of course in case of capping the number of minions, each individual one would need to get a buff (perhaps even desirable from PvE or WvW perspective: instead of having 6 that die instantly in AoE, have 3 that can sustain and put out same dmg/effects as the 6).
But anyhow, this is hypothetical and will not likely come.
And actually I am more concerned with the issues of DS that need some improvements to make other builds more viable.

If they to actualy limit the availlable number of minion they at least need to double their damage and to allow power scaling. Mesmer have power scaling and a cap, if we are to have a cap we should get the same benefits.

Guardian wishes
- Speed
+25 speed buff either via trait or signet. I would change Signet of wrath due to the fact that guardian will never ever do so much condition damage that the sign will be worth it.

- Trait: Kinled Zeal
I would change it to +10 damage. Guardians are not meant to be good on conditions even with a sigil of earth. Its up to you to make it useful.

- Trait: Zaelous Blade
Remove the damage and change add heal to all blade type things sowrd, gs, spear

- Trait: Powerful Blades
Since Greatsword is a blade aswell… my wish is: add it. so it will be sword, gs, spear

- Trait: Righthand strenght
Change from 15% crit sword to +10% crit for all weapons

- Weaons: Spear
Make the AA hitting 3 targets or add a bounce.

- Weaons: Scepter
- Add a bounce 3 target to the AA

- Weaons: Mace
- Improve attack speed on the AA. Chain #3 is pretty… annoying.

- Weaons: Hammer
- Improve attack speed on the AA. Chain #3 is pretty… annoying.

PVE perspective. Sure those numbers are not the best values but they should just give an idea what i would change.

I don’t know if this is constructive or not, but, in general, after a year and a half, I would like the ability to do something new, not doing something old less effectively. I think we could use a little power creep back to November 2012.

Unless the runes and sigil changes are revolutionary, I’m a little surprised at how little is being done.

Also, it would be helpful if you could post the mythical build that’s going to be nerfed by 20%.

Because of it’s this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR3ZjkOJvZPuPMxBEzjhAIKiLDAkJ0HmDA-jUBBYfCyZmFRjt4qIas6aYKXER1A-w
not counting fury etc… then, I think, you’d be nerfing crit damage from 94% to about 60% (36% reduction).
But if you assume a 99% crit rate, then, I think, you’re nerfing crit damage from 94% to 70% (25% reduction).

And really isn’t it better to tell us now instead of listening to the screams later. I think most people are grossly underestimating the effect this will have.

Just to further explain.

If we say that damage is equal to pwc*(1+crit chance*crit damage), then for a build with 144 crit damage (94%+50%) and a 51% crit change) damage is

pwc(1+.51*1.44) = 1.73pwc

to nerf is by 10% the new damage is .9*1.73pwc = 1.56pwc

so we know that 1.56 = (1+chance*damage) therefore
.56 = chance * damage
chance remains .51 so damage = .56/.51 = 1.1,
substract the .5 base and the new crit damage is .6

(which comes to about 15 pts ferocity for each crit %)

In brief: just saying some unspecified build will see a reduction of about 10% does’t really tell us anything.

I am very happy with the changes to sigils and looking forward to what is going to happen to runes.

I am, however, very unhappy with even more nerfs to the necromancer. If you feel it is too strong in PvP, couldn’t you please separate those nerfs between PvP and PvE? Conditionmancers (and necromancers in general) are already very unpopular in PvE. Further nerfing our damage potential seems a tad…ludicrous.
First balancing several traits around a seemingly too strong Dhuumfire, then nerfing it into uselessness (conditionmancers hardly ever use Deathshroud for damage, really) can’t really be what you intended to do. If you are unhappy with Dhuumfire, couldn’t you at least move it to something conditionmancers actually use, or move it into the Curses traitline? A Spite GM that works only with a very slow moving DS attack isn’t worth the name.

Galsia.4102:

Karl McLain.5604:

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.

Healing Signet Active: Cures Poison then quadruples healing effectiveness for the next 5 seconds.

Healing Signet’s base after nerf, 361, would quadruple to 1,444 for each second for the next five seconds, ending up with a 7,220 heal.

Potency, length of time, CD is open to scrutiny.

I suggested something similar in terms of a healing power boost on activation. But in retrospect, this would be useless since the passive benefit of all signets are cancelled during the cooldown for the active.

That seems like kind of a dumb and unintuitive mechanic which is not at all obvious from the tooltips, and maybe is worth rethinking entirely. But, if signets continue to work as they do, nothing involving healing is going to really ever be useful as an active component of a signet which has passive healing as its primary function.

It would have to be something that is a valid tradeoff for healing, like granting vigor, or giving a buff to vitality or toughness for increased buffer while healing is shut off, or something else similar, so you’re basically changing mitigation “modes.”

Or . . . they could just rebalance all the signets around letting the passive attributes work all the time and not shutting them off when the active is triggered, which is probably how most people (wrongly) assume that they work.

Elementalist

Lowest base hp
Lowest base toughness
Lowest base power

That’s all.

Elementalist is a kitten right now

i like the idea of elementalist behing cats (run a charr female elementalist) however ele needs better damage as a rule. God sake we the lowest HP spellcaster in the game so how come we dont have the best damage of the lot? Our heals cant even justify this.

Jabuticaba.7458:

From cluttering perspective, yes I think 6 is too much, especially if – what frequently occurs due to recent Minionmancer popularity – you find yourself pitched against 3 of them fighting for a cap – that is some 20 toons running around that small circle, not even counting the jagged horrors.

Of course in case of capping the number of minions, each individual one would need to get a buff (perhaps even desirable from PvE or WvW perspective: instead of having 6 that die instantly in AoE, have 3 that can sustain and put out same dmg/effects as the 6).
But anyhow, this is hypothetical and will not likely come.
And actually I am more concerned with the issues of DS that need some improvements to make other builds more viable.

Why don’t you ask for them to fix targeting instead?

Where is the combo field for spike trap? :c

LordCanti.7124:

Where is the combo field for spike trap? :c

Whine, whine, whine, that’s all you Rangers do. Next thing you know you’ll be asking for a working class mechanic, or viable AoE, or decent active condition removal, or non crappy ranged options, or valuable group support abilities.

Well it was stated before that all traps where going to have combo fields :|