Guild Wars 2

These sort of small balance changes are the sort of thing I want to see going forward. If these come with every major patch instead of every six months then the meta can hopefully gradually change rather than being thrown into chaos. That being said I hope there’s some fix for gap closers they just hadn’t mentioned.

P.S Look even i can be positive when I see something I like.

Good for you to be possitive, but im not sold on the idea yet.

Its not just enough to do balance changes more then once every 6months. It also has to be more.
By the time that patch hits, early November, itll already be 2 months after the last “balance” patch. And how many changes do we actually see? Elementalist 1, Engineer 3, Thief 1, Guardian 2, Mesmer 1, Necro 2, Warrior 2, Ranger 1-2ish.

We get patches more often but overall less changes are actually being made. The positive is that big outliers can be adressed a bit sooner. But at a rate like this its going to take longer for bigger shifts to take place.

I dunno, the balance is overall pretty good in the game, at least in PvP. All professions are showing up at the high levels of play right now.

There are still things that need to be addressed, such as Necromancers in PvE, and bringing bad skills/traits up to par (which is what this patch is focused on, it seems), but that sort of thing is what frequent, small patches are great for.

This November balance patch shows basically nothing. They didn’t nerf cele ammy and autofear necro. They buffed random stuff. Only good thing is nerf to bearbow ranger.

I like the idea as well. Hopefully it will promote them to make smaller adjustments and changes and limit them a little more from making larger, sweeping movements in how things work.

Elitist.8701:

This November balance patch shows basically nothing. They didn’t nerf cele ammy and autofear necro. They buffed random stuff. Only good thing is nerf to bearbow ranger.

I understand the annoyance and agree. However, I can’t in good conscience repeatedly say “I want more frequent but smaller patches” and then yell at they when they start doing it. Small steps, it might be too late but MMOs are long lived and this one has the least problems atm. I don’t have to pay a sub, and hackers are generally not a huge problem like other games cough Archeage cough.

Rune/Sigil/Ammy changes are more important than class balance though atm and I would like to see it addressed.

They probably wanted to keep the show as positive as possible, so only the minor adjustments are being shown, I am sure there will be nerfs, both intentional and unintentional to many of the profession.

Elitist.8701:

This November balance patch shows basically nothing. They didn’t nerf cele ammy and autofear necro. They buffed random stuff. Only good thing is nerf to bearbow ranger.

Celestial Amulet is fine – it’s the might stacking and easy condi spam which is the problem with those builds.

Necro fear procs are a problem and need fixed, but they may be waiting until after ToG finals for that.

Exedore.6320:

Elitist.8701:

This November balance patch shows basically nothing. They didn’t nerf cele ammy and autofear necro. They buffed random stuff. Only good thing is nerf to bearbow ranger.

Celestial Amulet is fine – it’s the might stacking and easy condi spam which is the problem with those builds.

Necro fear procs are a problem and need fixed, but they may be waiting until after ToG finals for that.

How is a fear proc not any different then any other passive proc?
Just wondering because this trait, runeset and build has been ingame forever.

They really need to split PvE and PvP and cone to accept that they are very different game modes. Until they do this, you never reach a state were everything is useful in every game mode because what’s useful and what’s powerful are just so different between them.

Exedore.6320:

Elitist.8701:

This November balance patch shows basically nothing. They didn’t nerf cele ammy and autofear necro. They buffed random stuff. Only good thing is nerf to bearbow ranger.

Celestial Amulet is fine – it’s the might stacking and easy condi spam which is the problem with those builds.

Necro fear procs are a problem and need fixed, but they may be waiting until after ToG finals for that.

Explain to us how condition damage is “spammed” any more or less then direct damage. Because that appears to be what your implying,

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

How is a fear proc not any different then any other passive proc?
Just wondering because this trait, runeset and build has been ingame forever.

It is different than some other passive procs because it’s so powerful and its offensive nature. Having a longer cooldown doesn’t offset its power. The fear proc on Nightmare runes has been a problem for the last two years. The current necro condi build shows how broken it is, which draws more attention. Reaper’s Protection was bound to be one as well as soon as it started being used.

And I’m not saying that these are the only passive procs which need addressed. Incendiary Powder needs toned down as well.

When you have passive procs, you have to very careful about their strength. In general, they should:

• Be Predictable or dependable by yourself and an opponent i.e. occurs at 50% health, when CC’ed, etc. and not just once a minute.
• Have reasonable damage compared to the effort and time required to cause it and the possible counter-play.
• Not change the course of a battle.

coglin.1867:

Exedore.6320:

Celestial Amulet is fine – it’s the might stacking and easy condi spam which is the problem with those builds.

Explain to us how condition damage is “spammed” any more or less then direct damage. Because that appears to be what your implying,

Poor choice of words. I meant excessive condition application, mostly from procs or on attacks which seem to be designed as power attacks with some condition component. Incendiary Powder is the biggest offender, but you also see D/D eles and warriors applying lots of burning while using many defensive traits.

Outside of the passive fear procs, I don’t mind condition damage necromancers at all.

Xae Isareth.1364:

They really need to split PvE and PvP and cone to accept that they are very different game modes. Until they do this, you never reach a state were everything is useful in every game mode because what’s useful and what’s powerful are just so different between them.

I actually agree with the devs that doing so isn’t necessarily the best idea. More splits means more ways to break something. It would be better in the long run to fix the mechanics and design of PvE. For example, instead of almost every boss being “avoid the red spot or die” have some that do consistent small damage so having someone heal is actually needed. Designing content so that you can’t just bring the same builds to every encounter might actually get me interested in PvE again.

Elitist.8701:

Only good thing is nerf to bearbow ranger.

They didn’t change ranger at all. They just added an animation to a skill you don’t wanna evade anyways.

Also, who uses a bear? Seriously.. lol

BurrTheKing.8571:

Xae Isareth.1364:

They really need to split PvE and PvP and cone to accept that they are very different game modes. Until they do this, you never reach a state were everything is useful in every game mode because what’s useful and what’s powerful are just so different between them.

I actually agree with the devs that doing so isn’t necessarily the best idea. More splits means more ways to break something. It would be better in the long run to fix the mechanics and design of PvE. For example, instead of almost every boss being “avoid the red spot or die” have some that do consistent small damage so having someone heal is actually needed. Designing content so that you can’t just bring the same builds to every encounter might actually get me interested in PvE again.

The problem is that it’s too late. If this was alpha then that would be ok, since you’d expect a lot of major changes.

But we’re in live, if they do what you suggested it would either take years and years of small updates or them pretty much remaking every encounter from scratch. The firts option would be pointless as the game would have spent most of its lifecycle by the time it’s finished, and the second just isn’t viable.

Besides that, it was a design decision to make PvE like that. If you look at the NPC guards in WvW, they do just that. They use player skills, hits softer than normal high-end PvE mobs but attacks fast. If they wanted PvE to be like that they would’ve just put mobs like those into PvE.

So in summary, PvE and PvP are very different by design. So it just makes no sense to balance them under the same umbrella because they’re almost 2 different games.