Guild Wars 2

So I have been upset with the way anet has handeled the last few balance patches… So i decided to make my own and see what you guys think if you want to add or remove anything within my post. I also understand this is mostly a wide range of nerfs on most of the classes but in my eyes it’s the best way to go about it. This patch is also directed at PvE/WvW.

Firstly, runes that apply conditions not specified to classes or are generally overpowered, e.g perplexity, balthazar, strength, hoelbrak, tormenting will all lose the 6th rune buff that enables +20% of the boon or condition duration.

Secondly, Classes;

Warrior: Endure pain now only negates 75% of damage, Cleansing Ire now has a 9s ICD, Berserker stance now only reduces condition duration by 75%, Healing signet will be reduced by 5%

Elementalist: Healing effectiveness on all healing skills is reduced by 5%, Elementalist elemental elite is now changed to “insert fancy name here”, this elite is a signet which gives +10% boon duration passive and doubles all current boon durations when activated (does not double stacks of boons) for example if an elementalist has 3 seconds of regen and 5 seconds of protection it will be doubled to 6 seconds of regen and 10 seconds of protection. This elite has a 60s cd and a 2s cast time.

Thief: Revealed buff now lass 4 seconds instead of 3 (also applies to other classes but directed at thief), sword auto attack damage is increased by 5%, Bewildering Ambush now applies 3 stacks of confusion instead of 5, the condition chill now reduces initiative recharge rate by 66% (I think that’s what it usually is)

Mesmer: PU trait now changes revealed time from 4 seconds to 2 seconds, previous trait effects have been discarded

Ranger: Longbow max damage has been reduced by 5%, barrage damage has now been increased by 30%. Ability to stow pet, increase damage by 20% if pet is stowed.

Engineer: Synaptic Overload (Gain quickness when you knock back or launch a foe) trait has had its effects now changed to “Retaliation damage is reduced by 75%” (to enable the use of grenades within zerg fights)

Necromancer: Lich elite auto attacks damage has been reduced by 7%

Guardian: Signet of Mercy has its passive chagned +25% movement speed and active steals 2 boons from target 50s cd, Signet of Judgment’s active effect now gives 10s of retaliation to allies and 7s of weakness to nearby foes instead or 3s of retaliation and 5s of weakness

+40% Condition duration food and -40% condition duration food in wvw taken out completely and all variations of the food as well.

Most of these balances have been to accommodate roaming and zerg fighting within WvW to make classes more useful in some areas. Also other changes could be made to ranger, necromancer, mesmer and engineer however i have not looked into it as much. Feedback would be great guys!

As a necromancer, I completely disagree. First of all, it’s about time they actually made Lich Form’s first skill an auto attack. It should be set to auto attack by default. But it does not deal too much damage. It deals exactly enough damage to be useful. If you’re still getting hit by it, then you are really bad at dodging those really slow projectiles. And if you find yourself immobilized, then maybe you need to properly time your escapes or stun breaks.

No one should be dying from Lich Form as it is right now, unless you are simply standing still all the time. Also, they should fix the ai of the minions so they aren’t running away all the time!

As a ranger i completely disagree with these changes as they are in stark contrast to the design philosophy of rangers, not to mention also in stark contrast to what the ranger needs.

Yeah, those ranger suggestions are also weird. You want the ability to stow a pet, and when the pet is stowed rangers deal more damage? So why would rangers ever use a pet then?

And what about those engineer changes? They dont need buffs.

Sorry but you have no idea how to balance classes.. 95% of those changes you listed are bad and will destroy balance even further.

Sneaky Turban.6823:

Mesmer: PU trait now changes revealed time from 4 seconds to 2 seconds, previous trait effects have been discarded

While I understand you’re raging here more than anything else, can you explain how you’d see a Mesmer take this trait?

We don’t have that much access to stealth, actually. Torch 4, Decoy, Mass Invis, Veil and we can only use that twice if we hog it (and it’s 2s base), exposing us to the same problem as Shadow Refuge, people know where to find us.

So… for this little amount of stealth, of which makes one in 10 or so gets me revealed, I should take a trait halving the revealed time? Like… once every 3 minutes or so I’ll be revealed 2s less.

Do keep in mind, there’s other traits to pick with those points.

Firstly, as for Lich I have no problem with it personally but from the amount of rage I have heard on the forums it can be an easy win in any duel or small team fight if people don’t bring reflects or generally have enough vigor to keep dodging and I know you can strafe side to side and dodge it that way from range but not many people have the brain capacity to do so.

As for the ranger I’m no expert on it and I’m not going to sit here and tell you you’re wrong but from the people I’ve talked to they want the ability to be useful in zergs, which is where these ideas have popped up from and for the stow pet solution has come from people complaining about their pet dying in dungeons or in zergs and then being completely useless.

For the engineer it’s not really a buff but the idea behind it is they can sit in zergs and spam grenades now, if anything they are getting a nerf from the balthazar rune losing 20% burning duration.

Lastly the mesmer, this was a hard trait to come up with and I tried to stick to having a stealth themed trait, which I do realise mesmers rarely get revealed. Although I had the mindset of making mesmers get revealed more frequently such as when a phantasm deals damage the mesmer gets revealed. However this would be too frequent and just wouldn’t work so I am in need of help finding a new trait but I feel the PU trait needs to go or at least be taken down to either you get one of 3 boons OR 1s more stealth duration considering they can do damage while in stealth.

^Except that’s what PU did before if I recall correctly and NO mesmers took it.

Most of these changes just seem to be stuff that newer players cry about in Hotjoin, I just don’t see even ArenaNet nerfing that for no reason.

*Edit due to forgetting a word >.<

goldenwing.9654:

^Except that’s what PU did before if I recall correctly and NO mesmers took it.

Most of these changes just seem to be stuff that newer players cry about in Hotjoin, I just don’t see even ArenaNet nerfing that for no reason.

Prismatic Understanding (PU) Cloaking skills last longer, and you gain a random boon when you are cloaked (aegis, protection, regeneration for 3s).

As for the cry in hotjoin, I’m going to take it that you’re a PvP player considering you said no mesmers run PU, and for PvP I agree it is stupid to run a trait which gives you more stealth just as no thieves run Shadow Arts in PvP. However in WvW it’s a large problem, almost every mesmer roaming build consists of PU.

Lastly, I know Anet won’t use these patch notes I have made even if they were the best thing in the world, hell I’ve nerfed warriors to the ground in this and nerfed almost every other thing imaginable, not many people should like to see their class nerfed. The idea is that Anet might see one of these points in my post whether it be taking condition food out of WvW or reducing condition/boon durations on runes or the warrior signet being reduced just a little bit more or making it have an interesting active effect is what I’m aiming to achieve even though it probably won’t happen.

Sneaky Turban.6823:

However this would be too frequent and just wouldn’t work so I am in need of help finding a new trait but I feel the PU trait needs to go or at least be taken down to either you get one of 3 boons OR 1s more stealth duration considering they can do damage while in stealth.

Old PU:

1. Stealth lasts 1s longer.
2. Gain a random boon every 3s.

This trait was taken by no one. There was an older one with just the 1s extra stealth btw, but we don’t speak about that. And I’m serious, the trait was untaken.
The one change they did was change the boon-cadence to 1s. That’s it. And now it’s overpowered. Apparently – I don’t see the point, I stopped taking it because it adds so little in anything but 1v1 roaming, and if you do that you really got bigger issues than whether PU is balanced or not, like that you cannot actually win any fight because 3-5 players will always steamroll you.

Anyhow, so compromise-wise, one could try a 1,5s or 2s cadence. Or 3s but give 2-3 buffs each time and widen the pool.

Sneaky Turban.6823:

Firstly, as for Lich I have no problem with it personally but from the amount of rage I have heard on the forums it can be an easy win in any duel or small team fight if people don’t bring reflects or generally have enough vigor to keep dodging and I know you can strafe side to side and dodge it that way from range but not many people have the brain capacity to do so.

As for the ranger I’m no expert on it and I’m not going to sit here and tell you you’re wrong but from the people I’ve talked to they want the ability to be useful in zergs, which is where these ideas have popped up from and for the stow pet solution has come from people complaining about their pet dying in dungeons or in zergs and then being completely useless.

For the engineer it’s not really a buff but the idea behind it is they can sit in zergs and spam grenades now, if anything they are getting a nerf from the balthazar rune losing 20% burning duration.

Lastly the mesmer, this was a hard trait to come up with and I tried to stick to having a stealth themed trait, which I do realise mesmers rarely get revealed. Although I had the mindset of making mesmers get revealed more frequently such as when a phantasm deals damage the mesmer gets revealed. However this would be too frequent and just wouldn’t work so I am in need of help finding a new trait but I feel the PU trait needs to go or at least be taken down to either you get one of 3 boons OR 1s more stealth duration considering they can do damage while in stealth.

Most rangers you meet always do the same thing. They grab a longbow, put on some zerker atmor and call forth a bear. Then they run around, get wrecked and cries on the forums, pretending to be doing things correctly and being super skilled.
Simple fact is, ive posted a simple zerg surfing build some 20 times in the wvw section and ranger section, and noone uses it because it doesnt have a bow.

The ranger pets needs a buff, a lot of polishing and adjustments to cooldowns. The class was designed to use pets, therefor removing the pet is not an option and not going to fix anything. If you wanna zerg surf with a bow, there is warrior and thief.

The warrior nerf sounds reasonable but everything else is bad. BAD.

I do agree with removing +/- condi duration food though, it would be “fair” and I could actually avoid fattening up my necromancer with koi cake after koi cake when she decides to go terrormancer.

Prysin.8542:

Most rangers you meet always do the same thing. They grab a longbow, put on some zerker atmor and call forth a bear. Then they run around, get wrecked and cries on the forums, pretending to be doing things correctly and being super skilled.
Simple fact is, ive posted a simple zerg surfing build some 20 times in the wvw section and ranger section, and noone uses it because it doesnt have a bow.

The ranger pets needs a buff, a lot of polishing and adjustments to cooldowns. The class was designed to use pets, therefor removing the pet is not an option and not going to fix anything. If you wanna zerg surf with a bow, there is warrior and thief.

I heard about that zerg build, axe/dagger sword/torch if I recall corectly, has a lot of sustain and can even run in the melee train, but with the lack of aoe as soon as you compare it to a warrior or guardian it’s useless again, the only aoe rangers have is really traps and/or mud in that build, which really needs to be changed. As for the water field, it’s great but as soon as you compare it to an ele you have the same problem once again.

This really kinda sucks for rangers, and you can’t really increase the aoe on either of the bows because it “breaks the design philosophy”. I really do agree that pets need a buff but the matter is just how could they buff pets well enough to let a ranger run around mindlessly in a zerg? The pet would have to be super tanky and do something spectactular in terms of aoe or support and then would this be OP in smaller scale fights? Ranger seriously needs to be looked at.

If you take one type of food out you take all types of food out.
Just like no one needs the condition food,. You dont need the food that adds 100+ power either.

Less bias that way also

Sneaky Turban.6823:

1. Thief: Revealed buff now lass 4 seconds instead of 3 (also applies to other classes but directed at thief)
2. sword auto attack damage is increased by 5%,
3. Bewildering Ambush now applies 3 stacks of confusion instead of 5
4. the condition chill now reduces initiative recharge rate by 66% (I think that’s what it usually is)

1. Thief would need a huge overhaul if stealth was touched. That 1 second is a matter of life and death in many situations for a stealth spamming thief, it also would desynch the rotation in PvE and lower dps. During those weeks they actually put it to 4s, the only remaining viable stealth builds were P/D and D/P.
2. Sword auto-attack damage is strong as it is, and increasing it would only make it more powerful where it already is powerful, while it still would be meaningless where it is meaningless. Thieves would still get roflstomped by zergs or groups if they try to go auto-cleave inside it.
3. I see no reason to tone this one down, and it would give thieves less reason to not pick sleight of hand.
4. Thieves have to be treated seperately compared to other classes when it comes to chill. First off they aren’t able to swap weaponsets, kits or attunements in order to gain 5 fresh cooldowns, secondly initiative governs the use of every weaponskill.
From my experience, chill is already a hard counter to thieves not having access to Withdraw the moment they get chilled.

edit: removed a lot of text from the chill part, due to a miscalculation I made while being tired.

Ghostwolf.9863:

1. Thief would need a huge overhaul if stealth was touched. That 1 second is a matter of life and death in many situations for a stealth spamming thief, it also would desynch the rotation in PvE and lower dps. During those weeks they actually put it to 4s, the only remaining viable stealth builds were P/D and D/P.
2. Sword auto-attack damage is strong as it is, and increasing it would only make it more powerful where it already is powerful, while it still would be meaningless where it is meaningless. Thieves would still get roflstomped by zergs or groups if they try to go auto-cleave inside it.
3. I see no reason to tone this one down, and it would give thieves less reason to not pick sleight of hand.
4. Thieves have to be treated seperately compared to other classes when it comes to chill. First off they aren’t able to swap weaponsets, kits or attunements in order to gain 5 fresh cooldowns, secondly initiative governs the use of every weaponskill.
From my experience, chill is already a hard counter to thieves not having access to Withdraw the moment they get chilled.

The reason behind most of the thief changes is to get more condi and Shadow arts thieves to run trickery, reason being stealth is abused in this game especially when it comes to d/p and also dagger offhand using cloak and dagger on ambients.

1. As for the 4s reveal it seems the best way to tone down the use of stealth, having that 1s extra out of stealth can be very dangerous and is proven in PvP.
2. Again sword attack damage increase is just to bait people into changing to trickery builds which have a much higher skill cap than SA.
3. This trait could be reasonable if it were not for perplexity, giving thieves 10 stacks of confusion is just stupid especially if they are running p/p headshot spam, although I did try to nerf perplexity a bit giving it -20% confusion duration.
4. You bring up a very good point, thieves aren’t able to swap weapons and have a new fresh set of cd’s, but I still believe initiative needs to be damaged by chill even if it were to be something such as 33% instead of the normal 66%.

If anything, revealed should be reverted to 3sec in pvp. That old nerf is outdated and was Done in the last Minute of releasing the Patch. All it does now is killing d/d and making p/d only mediocre.
It used to be a nerf to instagib d/d builts which now Dont exist anymore because of nerfed cnd, assasins sig and mug.
And for warriors, nerfing them to the ground (as you said) is Not the way to go. I Dont Like warriors, find them boring and to rewarding but your suggestions really destroy evry Single warrior built.

Sneaky Turban.6823:

Prysin.8542:

Most rangers you meet always do the same thing. They grab a longbow, put on some zerker atmor and call forth a bear. Then they run around, get wrecked and cries on the forums, pretending to be doing things correctly and being super skilled.
Simple fact is, ive posted a simple zerg surfing build some 20 times in the wvw section and ranger section, and noone uses it because it doesnt have a bow.

The ranger pets needs a buff, a lot of polishing and adjustments to cooldowns. The class was designed to use pets, therefor removing the pet is not an option and not going to fix anything. If you wanna zerg surf with a bow, there is warrior and thief.

I heard about that zerg build, axe/dagger sword/torch if I recall corectly, has a lot of sustain and can even run in the melee train, but with the lack of aoe as soon as you compare it to a warrior or guardian it’s useless again, the only aoe rangers have is really traps and/or mud in that build, which really needs to be changed. As for the water field, it’s great but as soon as you compare it to an ele you have the same problem once again.

This really kinda sucks for rangers, and you can’t really increase the aoe on either of the bows because it “breaks the design philosophy”. I really do agree that pets need a buff but the matter is just how could they buff pets well enough to let a ranger run around mindlessly in a zerg? The pet would have to be super tanky and do something spectactular in terms of aoe or support and then would this be OP in smaller scale fights? Ranger seriously needs to be looked at.

Sorry mate, but you have such a lack of basic undrrstanding of rangers that you should not even try to talk about it anymore. That last comment of yours is so fundamentally wrong on so many aspects. First being that axe dagger + sword torch is a roaming build. It is utterly useless in a zerg as your only dps will be torch 5 and axe aa. Both of which is bad compared to gs or even lb.

As for pets i have said the same thing 100 times by now . Make them scale in toughness and vitality equally to the number of enemy players around. They use that system already on living story bosses, so they wont need to code as much as normally.

Ehem…..warrior…….yeah…… last time I checked balance was getting classes as close to the same strength as possible…..uhm…..ranger…. you are buffing zerk ranger…. lol….. warrior vs ranger = splat 90% of the time…. yes….. I’m really confused right now, and heal signet? Yes, I don’t like heal signet, as do 66% of the players I meet in gw2…. So come at me die-hard warrior players and keyboard warriors

Prysin.8542:

Sorry mate, but you have such a lack of basic undrrstanding of rangers that you should not even try to talk about it anymore. That last comment of yours is so fundamentally wrong on so many aspects. First being that axe dagger + sword torch is a roaming build. It is utterly useless in a zerg as your only dps will be torch 5 and axe aa. Both of which is bad compared to gs or even lb.

As for pets i have said the same thing 100 times by now . Make them scale in toughness and vitality equally to the number of enemy players around. They use that system already on living story bosses, so they wont need to code as much as normally.

Ok then, let me point the obvious again, the ranger zerg builds that have been theorycrafted are usually a bad version of a warrior, ele and guardian all put together, whether you are trying to run the “roaming” condi build in zergs or the power varient.

As far as the build you are talking about I’m quite sure its the Gs/Axe+warhorn build so I’m going to break it down.
- Warhorn is literally a really bad version of the warriors warhorn, the blast is on a massive cooldown and the only benefit you really get with the ranger warhorn is the fury which you already get from FGJ.
- Gs is terribad damage especially when you have to run something tanky such as PvT/Clerics/Celestial etc.. and where has the aoe gone?
- “call forth a bear” is exactly what you do in this build and even with the bear and ranger shouts with trooper runes you still don’t have as much condi removal as a guardian!

Sneaky Turban.6823:

Ghostwolf.9863:

1. Thief would need a huge overhaul if stealth was touched. That 1 second is a matter of life and death in many situations for a stealth spamming thief, it also would desynch the rotation in PvE and lower dps. During those weeks they actually put it to 4s, the only remaining viable stealth builds were P/D and D/P.
2. Sword auto-attack damage is strong as it is, and increasing it would only make it more powerful where it already is powerful, while it still would be meaningless where it is meaningless. Thieves would still get roflstomped by zergs or groups if they try to go auto-cleave inside it.
3. I see no reason to tone this one down, and it would give thieves less reason to not pick sleight of hand.
4. Thieves have to be treated seperately compared to other classes when it comes to chill. First off they aren’t able to swap weaponsets, kits or attunements in order to gain 5 fresh cooldowns, secondly initiative governs the use of every weaponskill.
From my experience, chill is already a hard counter to thieves not having access to Withdraw the moment they get chilled.

The reason behind most of the thief changes is to get more condi and Shadow arts thieves to run trickery, reason being stealth is abused in this game especially when it comes to d/p and also dagger offhand using cloak and dagger on ambients.

1. As for the 4s reveal it seems the best way to tone down the use of stealth, having that 1s extra out of stealth can be very dangerous and is proven in PvP.
2. Again sword attack damage increase is just to bait people into changing to trickery builds which have a much higher skill cap than SA.
3. This trait could be reasonable if it were not for perplexity, giving thieves 10 stacks of confusion is just stupid especially if they are running p/p headshot spam, although I did try to nerf perplexity a bit giving it -20% confusion duration.
4. You bring up a very good point, thieves aren’t able to swap weapons and have a new fresh set of cd’s, but I still believe initiative needs to be damaged by chill even if it were to be something such as 33% instead of the normal 66%.

Whoah that’s very selfish of you.
First of all you are not to decide what trait line should be enforced just because you think it’s better. Second stealth and SA are no where broken as they are the only form of defense outside of people who don’t to evade and use Acrobatics. If you don’t like it because you don’t use it your claim is not valid.
Counters to stealth:
-block
-blind and blind fields
-dodging CnD
-all control(range,melee,condition..)
-Warrior
-zerg
-tanks
Third have you played the old condi thief 0/0/6/2/2? They used to rely on bleed spam and might stacking from dodge and stealth it was very passive nerfing the confusion is wrong as it forces the thief to be more aggressive.
Initiative is fine as it is making the class more reliant on advanced skill is wrong and simply represent your disappointment when seeing a noob one. Thief is the favorite glass canon don’t know who started that popularity…
People stop panicking against stealth.

No. That chilled idea is horrible. That 66% reduction essentially triples universal cooldown.

You are asking for a hardcounter to the whole profession. Look at your skills, multiply your skill CDs by 3. Now think about how badly that sucks.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Whoah that’s very selfish of you.
First of all you are not to decide what trait line should be enforced just because you think it’s better. Second stealth and SA are no where broken as they are the only form of defense outside of people who don’t to evade and use Acrobatics. If you don’t like it because you don’t use it your claim is not valid.
Counters to stealth:
-block
-blind and blind fields
-dodging CnD
-all control(range,melee,condition..)
-Warrior
-zerg
-tanks
Third have you played the old condi thief 0/0/6/2/2? They used to rely on bleed spam and might stacking from dodge and stealth it was very passive nerfing the confusion is wrong as it forces the thief to be more aggressive.
Initiative is fine as it is making the class more reliant on advanced skill is wrong and simply represent your disappointment when seeing a noob one. Thief is the favorite glass canon don’t know who started that popularity…
People stop panicking against stealth.

I agree I am quite selfish and you do bring up a point that it is not my decision as to who runs SA and who doesn’t. However these counters to stealth you have listed (dat warrior) is not quite what I mean when I say stealth is abused in this game and has almost no counter… I should have clarified that I was talking about the fact that there is no counter to stop a thief from entering stealth, especially d/p which makes me cringe. I believe that using heart seeker through black powder needs to be taken down to only half the stealth given or destroyed completely, at least this way there will be no perma stealthing.

As for the condi thief yes I have played it and like I said before Bewildering ambush is ok on its own but as soon as you add that and perplexity you have a big problem but for some reason Anet still wants to keep perplexity around which makes me very sad.

Zacchary.6183:

No. That chilled idea is horrible. That 66% reduction essentially triples universal cooldown.

Yeah, their math was off. It should take 66% longer to generate Initiative. If the speed of generation was 66% lower, it’s be 200%.

haven’t read all of it, just wanted to make two statements on these:

Elementalist: Healing effectiveness on all healing skills is reduced by 5%

this would propably, once again, drive eles to the brink of extinction. Anet made this mistake once, they better not make it a second time.

Sneaky Turban.6823:

Elementalist elemental elite is now changed to “insert fancy name here”, this elite is a signet which gives +10% boon duration passive and doubles all current boon durations when activated (does not double stacks of boons) for example if an elementalist has 3 seconds of regen and 5 seconds of protection it will be doubled to 6 seconds of regen and 10 seconds of protection. This elite has a 60s cd and a 2s cast time.

While I like the idea of the sigil itself, the 2s cast time is way too long. While casting it you’re losing boons or at least duration of your boons.
Let’s say you have 3s stability – you would get additional 3 if it’s instant cast.
But with 2s cast-time you have only 1s left which will give you 2s stability after the cast – less than before the cast. Activate ability would therfore be useless for short-duration boons which are usually more important. Furthermore while the downtime of the signet I think you’ll get way more out of the +10% boon-duration for boons like might or regen/vigor than out of the +50% from the active.
Since it’s a niche-elite (not all ele-builds make use of many boons) I’d increase the duration to propably 15% and active could be for example a transfer(copy) of boons to allys (not full duration though).

Gorni.1764:

haven’t read all of it, just wanted to make two statements on these:
Let’s say you have 3s stability – you would get additional 3 if it’s instant cast.
But with 2s cast-time you have only 1s left which will give you 2s stability after the cast – less than before the cast. Activate ability would therfore be useless for short-duration boons which are usually more important. Furthermore while the downtime of the signet I think you’ll get way more out of the +10% boon-duration for boons like might or regen/vigor than out of the +50% from the active.
Since it’s a niche-elite (not all ele-builds make use of many boons) I’d increase the duration to propably 15% and active could be for example a transfer(copy) of boons to allys (not full duration though).

You bring up a great point with the 2s cast time, I figured that because it could be OP, if I gave it a large cast time it could then be interrupted. However, I did forget about the boons melting away while you are casting. As for the active/passive effects I really tried to limit the boon durations/increases considering I know how much Anet hates giving us boons with the runes nerf. The main point was to give eles a viable elite that wasn’t the elemental

If this trait were to be implemented I would definitely have to give it over to you or someone else who knows more about it than I do :\