Guild Wars 2

“•Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.
As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.”

This nerf just feels like a lazy way out. Not all Quickness-granting skills are balanced. Frenzy, Haste, Quickening Zephyr are all pretty balanced because of the vulnerability drawbacks they have. Passive Quickness skills like “Critical Haste” or “Sigil of Rage” are already kind of lackluster due to lenghthy internal cooldown.
When you make the Quickness mechanic only half as fast as before, it doesn’t justify those skills drawbacks anymore. It destroys the skill in its very nature.

For PvP: Should never balance something because certain players “can’t react on time”, because most good players could deal with it.

For PvE: What contents are you referring to that is ‘trivialized’ due to Quickness (not read as Time Warp). CoF Path 1? A 4s duration skill on a 60s cool down, even if people utilized the full 4s for that 2x DPS, should not “trivialize” anything that isn’t already “trivial”. In most cases of challenging encounters, very rarely is a player able to use the entire 4s of their skill to DPS.

I think Time Warp was the only thing that “may” be the only skill that make Quickness look overpowered. It provides “AOE” quickness with no drawbacks. Cooldown is irrelevant as bosses are usually spaced 4 minutes apart.

Note that: When 1 player uses Frenzy/Haste/QZ, that’s only double damage for 4 seconds for that 1 player. Time Warp is 10 seconds of double damage for ALL players, effectively doubling total damage output as a party. That can take down half a trivial boss’s HP (Sear Effigy for example in CoF1) within first 10 seconds of the fight! I’ve seen players, over time, crumble to Searing Effigy’s pressure because they never learned how to dodge its simple telegraphed attacks, because they think “Oh the fight is so short I already did my job DPSing in Time Warp doesn’t matter now its almost over”

The culprit is not Quickness, it’s Time Warp…

I know it’s probably too much to ask to change specific encounters to make it harder for players to just abuse Time Warp(sure did a great job in that area for some of the Fractal Bosses though ^^) , but please reconsider with this flat 50% nerf with nothing to compensate (1s extra of swinging 50% faster is not even worth that 1s extra of drawback).

My suggestion here is to make Quickness come in 25% or 50% stacks. Then adjust individual Skills, Traits, and Sigil accordingly to grant different # of stacks. If that’s too much work, just revert the change and simply nerf Time Warp.

As a mesmer, I approve. Time warp was OP. But they went about it in a lazy fix.

I would have liked to see a duration reduction ALONG with a cooldown reduction. 210 seconds is too long imo. I would like to see maybe a 6 sec duration with 120-150 second cooldown.

Leave the 10-second duration, cut the cooldown to 160 seconds (about 75%). That’s my opinion, anyway. Still cuts the effectiveness of the ability by 25% (in a long fight). For quick encounters the effectiveness would still be cut by 50%.

Mesmer still is Overpowered, but my poor ranger….now its just kittensauce.

Dante.1508:

Mesmer still is Overpowered, but my poor ranger….now its just kittensauce.

Yeah. Pet swap / QZ was one of Ranger’s core mechanic to keep the profession in the picture when it comes to DPS.

The more you think about it, the more thoughtless this nerf appears to be. This has to be an April Fools joke, it just has to be…if not, I’m really worried for the future of GW2 when it comes to balancing.

You think that’s bad, take a look at what it means for warrior in competitive play.

Sil.4560:

You think that’s bad, take a look at what it means for warrior in competitive play.

Well apparently, according to them, a big reason for the nerf is because bad players can’t dodge a frenzy 100b on time…so this was actually their intention. Terrible decision, but clearly intended.

But their argument for PvE side of the nerf just felt like something they made up…trivialize challenging battles, i wish they would elaborate, with examples, etc.

At least the rest of your group/zerg should make up for the 50% haste reduction. At least they are not balancing for solo play.

Rangers really got hit hard by this patch, because great majority of their slot skills are very situational. Quickening Zephyr was used not the least for lack of better options. The other skills I have on my Ranger are signets for the passive benefits they provide.

Personally I think they should just set up ‘sectors’ for nerfs like this, so they only hit one aspect. For example, I personally felt that this nerf should have only hit the sPvP ‘sector’ alone, and if they DID want it to hit dungeons, than make it so that in dungeons Time Warp is either not accessible (not smart IMO), or reduce the duration of Time Warp to 5 or 6 seconds. You guys did this before in GW1 from what I’ve heard, so why not do this sort of thing here?

They could maybe add a weakness to time wrap, like every other quickness skill has.

The best weakness I can think of for it is to actually lower the defense of everybody in it. You get the boost in damage, but it makes up for it for the loss of defense.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Personally I think they should just set up ‘sectors’ for nerfs like this, so they only hit one aspect. For example, I personally felt that this nerf should have only hit the sPvP ‘sector’ alone, and if they DID want it to hit dungeons, than make it so that in dungeons Time Warp is either not accessible (not smart IMO), or reduce the duration of Time Warp to 5 or 6 seconds. You guys did this before in GW1 from what I’ve heard, so why not do this sort of thing here?

Ugh, that sounds like the worst thing ever. Who wants to keep track of any number of different “versions” of their skills, depending on where they are and what they’re doing? It’s bad enough that SPvP flat-out disables certain skills.

Based on the description of the nerf in the patch notes, they wanted to change Quickness in both PvP and PvE. It’s better that they keep skills functioning the same way in all cases. I understand that any given skill can drastically change in viability depending on the situation (open-world PvE, dungeons, SPvP, WvW, etc.) but it’s their job to find a clever way to balance their skills in the best way over all — not our job to memorize 6 different versions of each skill and what they do on different maps.

Fyrebrand.4859:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Personally I think they should just set up ‘sectors’ for nerfs like this, so they only hit one aspect. For example, I personally felt that this nerf should have only hit the sPvP ‘sector’ alone, and if they DID want it to hit dungeons, than make it so that in dungeons Time Warp is either not accessible (not smart IMO), or reduce the duration of Time Warp to 5 or 6 seconds. You guys did this before in GW1 from what I’ve heard, so why not do this sort of thing here?

Ugh, that sounds like the worst thing ever. Who wants to keep track of any number of different “versions” of their skills, depending on where they are and what they’re doing? It’s bad enough that SPvP flat-out disables certain skills.

Based on the description of the nerf in the patch notes, they wanted to change Quickness in both PvP and PvE. It’s better that they keep skills functioning the same way in all cases. I understand that any given skill can drastically change in viability depending on the situation (open-world PvE, dungeons, SPvP, WvW, etc.) but it’s their job to find a clever way to balance their skills in the best way over all — not our job to memorize 6 different versions of each skill and what they do on different maps.

It’s not our “job” to memorize 2 different versions of each skill, it’s something you’d want to know if you want to play that aspect of the game. You can ignore it and stay clueless about what it does, it just helps if you do try and actually learn the rules. When you play cards, do you think it a ‘job’ to learn a new variation of the game?

In an ideal scenario, yes, it’d be best to keep the skills the same for all aspects of the game without ruining balance. But that is difficult to do.

RyuDragnier.9476:

The best weakness I can think of for it is to actually lower the defense of everybody in it. You get the boost in damage, but it makes up for it for the loss of defense.

- That would lead to grief problem where some players would rather not have their team’s Mesmer use time warp. Duration reduction seems far more appropriate here. 10 seconds is a long time and the ultimate status comes from affecting party members, unlike every other instance of Quickness. Thieves got small buff with Haste not bringing endurance below zero (sensible change!) but this could easily be rebalanced by increasing other penalties of Haste.

I think it’s a bad reason to nerf quickness because some players can’t react to the damage spikes it gives on time. I think situational awareness is vital in PVP, as I’m sure you’re all aware.

I have never seen a problem with quickness. I would say Time Warp was a little OP in PVE, and if they were set on nerfing quickness, which they obviously were, then they should have nerfed the duration of it, specific to skills such as TW, and not the effect as a whole.

Double speed was awesome and fun, 50% just seems lackluster now.

Bastar.8012:

I think it’s a bad reason to nerf quickness because some players can’t react to the damage spikes it gives on time. I think situational awareness is vital in PVP, as I’m sure you’re all aware.

I have never seen a problem with quickness. I would say Time Warp was a little OP in PVE, and if they were set on nerfing quickness, which they obviously were, then they should have nerfed the duration of it, specific to skills such as TW, and not the effect as a whole.

Double speed was awesome and fun, 50% just seems lackluster now.

“Double speed was awesome and fun.” So true. I don’t feel that adrenaline rush anymore when I hit Frenzy on my warrior in tough situations (i.e. Ascalon Fractal mobs), I’d try to Frenzy burst in there as long as I can and try to get out alive, sometimes I succeed, sometimes I get too greedy and die. That risk/reward feel was thrilling nonetheless.
That feeling is pretty much lost forever. Frenzy isn’t even on my utility bar anymore. Rather use boring banners, at least they don’t fail.

Orpheus.7284:

Sil.4560:

You think that’s bad, take a look at what it means for warrior in competitive play.

Well apparently, according to them, a big reason for the nerf is because bad players can’t dodge a frenzy 100b on time…so this was actually their intention. Terrible decision, but clearly intended.

But their argument for PvE side of the nerf just felt like something they made up…trivialize challenging battles, i wish they would elaborate, with examples, etc.

Soooooo easy to dodge 100b burst. Just put on a stun break…

Ranger’s got nothing in this patch, they just got what should of been added to begin with. HoM pets having lower vitality? what? and pets should of shared AR to begin with. Lick wounds should of worked to begin with but atleast it is working now so hurray! Drake chomp healing enemies is just weird. Maul still isn’t a blast finisher. And pets still take all the aoe damage they can soak up.

Small changes for every profession for balance, is a great idea. In fact, I believe it is the best idea. But once a month small changes? Too little imo. For the sake of pvp, there needs to be atleast bi-weekly profession patches to better tune them. Even if they change things by a tiny fraction atleast it would be happening more often. won’t be perfect, never can be perfect, but atleast something would be getting done to put everyone in line with one another and maybe open some viable builds that were otherwise frowned upon in pvp.

Increasing attack speed in GW1 was capped to 33% and that was a sweet spot for a DPS increase.

I suggest lowering the speed of Quickness to 33%, significantly buffing the duration it lasts for, perhaps increasing the cooldown and reducing the penalties of using it.

Examples:

Haste:
Gain Quickness. Stop endurance from regenerating.
Quickness: 10s (skills and actions are 33% faster).
Breaks stun

Frenzy:
Frenzy to gain Quickness. Take 15% more damage for the duration.
Quickness: 10s (skills and actions are 33% faster)
Breaks stun

Quickening Zephyr can remain the same, just buffed up to 10s, perhaps limiting regeneration but not other heals.

Time Warp:
Create an area that warps time, granting you and your allies Quickness.
Quickness (1s)
Duration: 15s
Combo Field: Ethereal
Range: 1200

Other related traits/items that grant Quickness should be similarly buffed, also.

Leave Time Warp’s cooldown and duration as it is (and Quickness as it was). Make Time Warp a channeling spell that the Mesmer will have to maintain in order to make it work. Make it something like Necro’s Plague, an aura around the mesmer. I know this would disable the mesmer, so he wouldn’t be able to cast anything else during time warp and that is his blessing, his sacrifice for his party members (I would love to have a more support-like class).

And make something different, that would affect only the mesmer (like Warrior’s Frenzy) for when he is playing solo.

I also agree that Quickness should be available in stacks. Each stack is, for instance, 25% haste and this boon can stack up to 4 times (a total of 100% haste as it was before). Maybe Time Warp could give you 3 stacks (75%) leaving the other 25% up to your class, so Warriors would have to trigger Frenzy (no matter how many stacks Frenzy gives, it can only be up to 4) to reach 100%, for example, and suffer the drawbacks of that skill as well.

I think this would be fair enough, given that we can’t boost Quickness through gear on this game. I would love to have small burts of Quickness with shorter cooldoowns (90sec is too kitten much for a Grandmaster trait), like a 25% haste on Warrior’s Trait Last Chance.

Last Chance
Gain one stack of quickness for 3 seconds when you strike a foe with less than 25% health (20-second cooldown).

Even if such noobs can’t dodge quickness isn’t that the point of that buff, to strike the opponent for a short period of time to get the more hits in faster than the enemy can react. If everyone can react to the it then what’s the point of being faster?

One thing you should note is that a lot of thieves would stealth+basilisk venom+haste+stealth kill players (in what seems like a second) which is harder to react to, although not impossible.

Instead of halfing the quickness speed.Rather put a “take 25% more dmg while quickness is active”,for all classes and on All quickness related skills,or sigils.

Auesis.7301:

Increasing attack speed in GW1 was capped to 33% and that was a sweet spot for a DPS increase.

You cannot compare it with ias in gw1 because there you had +1000 combinations per profession here you have 5? not counting utilities with a ridiculously long cooldown. Agree this was a lazy fix at least they could decrease cooldown by like 50% to compensate.

@WonderfulCT – Combos like that may at best need skill-specific tweaks, not a generic 50% nerf to Quickness. (Besides, stun break)

@Auesis – Can not compare to GW1. Totally different game. Quickness in GW2 (at its original state, not this 50% thing) was supposed to be a short burst, and it’s up to the players to find the best opportunities to use them.

@Caedmon – That makes Warrior skill Frenzy even more risky to use in conjunction to its 50% reduced armor. Drawbacks are already there for most of the skills it’s related to, Time Warp is just an anomoly.

Question for PVE players out there…what are some of these “challenging content” that the patch notes were talking about that were made trivial due to Quickness? I’ve ran every dungeon path (multiple times) and currently at L20+ FoTM and what from what I’ve seen, most bosses are already trivial to begin with, and the better designed bosses does not become “trivial” just because I hit Frenzy button on my Warrior or Haste on my thief…I’ve been thinking about this since the patch hit and I’m almost certain now that it’s just a filler excuse for nerfing quickness in PvE as well because they can’t be bothered to segregate PVE/PVP mechanics.

@Orpheus,except Frenzy offc.