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Posted by: Gaile Gray

Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

A message from the Skills Team:

Greetings, Tyrians!

We are here today to talk about some of the build-thematic changes that will be coming with the next balance iteration. Depending on your chosen profession and your role in combat, these changes may require some stat-swapping on your gear. We feel that giving a bit of a “heads-up” is appropriate.

One of the most notable changes being made is to the healing values of the Druid as a primary healer. Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly. The reasoning for these changes is that while we are excited about the Druid being an incredibly strong healer, we would also like to see that role as one of many choices in your attribute build.

Similarly, there will be changes in boon duration and boon application for a few professions. For the Revenant, we’ll be looking at reducing Naturalistic Resonance’s base boon duration. For Mesmer, we’re looking at making Signet of Inspiration’s boon sharing functionality a bit more controlled, giving each shared boon a fixed duration. To help compensate for these general reductions, we’ll be increasing both damage and a few different baseline boon durations.

As this update rolls out we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of these changes, along with the remainder of the balance updates, and will make additional adjustments and tweaks as necessary. Thanks very much for your time!

-The Skills Team

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

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Posted by: Pedroso.4603

Pedroso.4603

As always, balance focused on pve and not pvp.

gg.

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Posted by: Lascax.2163

Lascax.2163

As always? Remember Alacrity? Or the Well of Precognition?

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Posted by: InsaneQR.7412

InsaneQR.7412

As always, balance focused on pve and not pvp.

gg.

Recently they started splitting again maybe they do it here aswell.

Pale Raiders united.
9 Sylvari, 9 unique Builds.

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

Didn’t they already do this for PvP Druid? Was PvE Druid not affected?

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: Bovan.9481

Bovan.9481

Where are the Engineer changes and buffs?

Bovan Ironwrench – Bovan Sundermist
Immortal Kingdom [KING]

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Posted by: Niksuli.9751

Niksuli.9751

So you’ll delete revenant from raiding just because of WvW and make PvE meta smaller, good job.

guildless and toxic

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Posted by: cranos.5913

cranos.5913

Boon changes lead to a mirror comp. 2 warr, 2 druid, 2 chrono leaving only 4 spots for the DPS group. Look at it in whatever way you want, you pushed 1 spot out with this change. You’re killing diversity again as ele will take complete advantage of the extra alacrity to become top dog once more.

The druid changes make 0 sense. Druids had 3 viable builds and depending on how much you push this nerf you’ll end up with a single build now.

Congratulations, you’re once again ruining PvE balance for a totally different game mode.

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Posted by: InsaneQR.7412

InsaneQR.7412

Where are the Engineer changes and buffs?

Good question, engi was left out a lot lately.

Btw, when is the new balance patch coming time wise? 1 Week/ 2?

Pale Raiders united.
9 Sylvari, 9 unique Builds.

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Posted by: nsleep.7839

nsleep.7839

RIP Revenant in PvE. Mesmers are… I’ll wait and see, but I don’t believe this will be good.

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Posted by: KaKaShiT.3019

KaKaShiT.3019

no ele change hype, my inner child is dying in a fast pace…

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Posted by: juniterio.1245

juniterio.1245

If Signet of Inspiration will be changed to share a fixed <14 seconds per boon I’m quitting the game LUL

This change is being done only to make SoI more balanced in WvW. It’s pointless to change it in PvE / PvP. If you don’t split the balance for skill skill, people will be super upset. Don’t do this.

(edited by juniterio.1245)

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Posted by: Aryan Arlande.6184

Aryan Arlande.6184

Ah, Nerfageddon, one more time

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Posted by: Lalainnia.3598

Lalainnia.3598

Looks good on paper will have to wait and see. In the meantime need to get the raincoat ready for all the tears to follow.

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Posted by: Kahera.4561

Kahera.4561

RIP revenant in raids.

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Posted by: Rym.1469

Rym.1469

Just make Quickness no longer a boon, but an effect.

That’s it. Done with balancing it forever.

[rude]Antagonistka – Revenant, EU.
[SALT]Natchniony – Necromancer, EU.
Streams: http://www.twitch.tv/rym144

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Posted by: Gele.2048

Gele.2048

why are you killing the good builds for raids what is wrong with you people . DO you have no shame !!! killing the joy out of the game terrible terrible patch that will come this is why iv stop playing WOW now the same kitten here

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Posted by: AnariiUK.7409

AnariiUK.7409

Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly.

Wonder what the justification for this was? Druid’s in PvP generally run healing power so will likely be unaffected or even buffed. This will only really hurt the two interesting raid druid builds (Berserker and Viper) forcing players towards boring, uninvolved healing power sets. The healing on the two offensive sets was already extremely low, requiring much more awareness on the part of the player / group in order to be usable.

For the Revenant, we’ll be looking at reducing Naturalistic Resonance’s base boon duration.

I could understand this for PvP gametypes (WvW in particular) but I feel this will really hurt the revenants already weak position within a raid group. I really hope they will be getting some buffs to go alongside this.

For Mesmer, we’re looking at making Signet of Inspiration’s boon sharing functionality a bit more controlled, giving each shared boon a fixed duration.

This is going to have very large implications on the entire raid squad set-up. The nerfs to SoI and facet of nature are looking really bad for revenant mainly, boon duration isn’t going to look so great with capped SoI shares.

Overall I get the feeling these nerfs are PvP/WvW targeted, for PvE you’re basically killing off the 2 fun druid builds and potentially removing an entire class from raid squads, can’t say I’m too optimistic.

(edited by AnariiUK.7409)

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Posted by: Severance.9156

Severance.9156

This is not a good change for PvE. A raid composition is spectacular with the chronomancer and Herald boon sharing for bosses. Please limit these changes to only WvW/pvp as you will completely remove heralds from being viable in a PvE setting.

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Posted by: InsaneQR.7412

InsaneQR.7412

So you’ll delete revenant from raiding just because of WvW and make PvE meta smaller, good job.

In PvE is momentarily the issue that Revs are Boonbots with no intensive use of utility skills because BOOOOONs.
They should change the elite specc mechanic in away it effects all legends in some way and not just cutting the boon duration because the only thing glint can do is to strong >>

Pale Raiders united.
9 Sylvari, 9 unique Builds.

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Posted by: OlliX.1705

OlliX.1705

As it stands now every class has at least one viable build in raids. If we’re going to be forced to run mirror comp in order to cover the whole party for quickness, revenant won’t be needed in raids and classes that don’t benefit much from alacrity will be pushed out by other classes that benefit more from it. I fear that this patch may kill the great build diversity we currently enjoy.

[qT] Necro main.

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Posted by: Dahkeus.8243

Dahkeus.8243

Glad to hear of balance changes finally coming, but will thieves get changed so that maximizing DPS isn’t based around auto-attacking while wiggling around like a 5 year old that needs to pee?

(Please say that you’re nerfing the hell out of Seaweed Salad)

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Posted by: Gerroh.3812

Gerroh.3812

So you’ll delete revenant from raiding just because of WvW and make PvE meta smaller, good job.

What I don’t get about posts like this is you go and say it’s a bad decision, but don’t thoroughly explain why, or suggest an alternative, or even open up ideas for how to adapt to this. It’s the most useless post you can possibly make, and it’s made every single time there’s a balance update in any game.

Please don’t be that guy.

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Posted by: Muusic.2967

Muusic.2967

As always, balance focused on (Nerfing) pve and not pvp.

gg.

Fixed!

Be who you are and say what you feel for those who mind dont matter and those who matter dont mind
~Dr. Seuss

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Posted by: windwarrior.2690

windwarrior.2690

Thank you Gaile for the heads up, however, from the raiding community I think any change to Signet of Inspiration (SoI) can be very bad especially with the nerf to naturalistic resonance.

What we are concerned about is the diversity of raid composition, lets say that a single mesmer no longer can maintain quickness on 10 people. Then the revenant will lose its spot to another (commander’s) chrono and a maybe still we wont have permanent quickness.

The problem with quickness however is that its asymmetrical to classes, we did the math and a class that mostly autoattacks is hit harder then a class with an intricate rotation. So, if the uptime of quickness goes down compared to the current meta, thief and guardian will lose their spots to elementalists.

In this hypothetical composition of 2 chrono’s, classes that are affected more by alacrity will be favored over classes that don’t. This once again means that elementalists will get favored over thiefs/guardian.

Overall, what I am really afraid of is the diversity in the raid meta. To be honest, the diversity is pretty good as of now, most classes have a spot or are ‘near’-meta.

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Posted by: Eldar.5146

Eldar.5146

Gj skills team…..

qT

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Posted by: TheRandomGuy.7246

TheRandomGuy.7246

Rip build diversity, rip revenant, rip everything but mirror comp. Noice.

Attachments:

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Posted by: sureiamdead.1087

sureiamdead.1087

Nerf the Signet of Inspiration in WvW, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t touch it in PvE. You will destroy several builds, teamcomps and overall classes (Revenants, Guardians and Thiefs) with this change alone. This is not a good change and you’re forcing the players, especially the Raid community, to play the same comp and classes. Currently every class has it’s place in PvE, even the NECROS and RANGERS which were considered for a long time Trash-tier. Don’t mess this up now.

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Posted by: cranos.5913

cranos.5913

So you’ll delete revenant from raiding just because of WvW and make PvE meta smaller, good job.

In PvE is momentarily the issue that Revs are Boonbots with no intensive use of utility skills because BOOOOONs.
They should change the elite specc mechanic in away it effects all legends in some way and not just cutting the boon duration because the only thing glint can do is to strong >>

Regardless of that there will even be less spots for a rev on a team it’s now a dps class, making it compete with the other 6 classes for one of the 4 spots. As it is very much a power class it’s gonna have to compete with the likes of perma alacrity tempests and daredevils, gl getting a spot.

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Posted by: Wondrouswall.7169

Wondrouswall.7169

Just make a separate balance split for WvW already. You are further killing diversity and affecting multiple game modes with your “balance” updates.

PET PRECISION & DPS TESTS -OUTDATED-
Will update once Path of Fire releases.

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Posted by: Dorian.8542

Dorian.8542

As always, balance focused on pve and not pvp.

gg.

One word. Theif.
For real though, remember when they made D/P the only viable pvp build by slaughtering p/p for pve because it was deemed “too OP for pvp”?

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Posted by: Jhoul.6923

Jhoul.6923

This is an unnecessary post, it does not give data on what is going to change, so i cant start on changing my gear if required.

Anyhow, more build diversity will be more welcome.

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Posted by: smithkt.8062

smithkt.8062

It is pretty obvious from the feedback so far that the underlying problem here is the fact that skill balance is not unique to a specific game mode. Until these are split, you will never be able make all three modes work well.

I know this is a non trivial task, but I think it should be on the short list of improvements for the long term health of all modes.

There was a dev post some time back suggesting it was something Anet would consider. I think it is time to acknowledge this change is long overdue.

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

As it stands now every class has at least one viable build in raids. If we’re going to be forced to run mirror comp in order to cover the whole party for quickness, revenant won’t be needed in raids and classes that don’t benefit much from alacrity will be pushed out by other classes that benefit more from it. I fear that this patch may kill the great build diversity we currently enjoy.

Yeah, the proposed changes are devastating to PvE build and class diversity and awful for the health of the game.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!

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Posted by: Metavox.1094

Metavox.1094

Just make Quickness no longer a boon, but an effect.

That’s it. Done with balancing it forever.

It used to be an effect, but got changed into a boon.

[Att]
[Aura]

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Posted by: Dorian.8542

Dorian.8542

It is pretty obvious from the feedback so far that the underlying problem here is the fact that skill balance is not unique to a specific game mode. Until these are split, you will never be able make all three modes work well.

I know this is a non trivial task, but I think it should be on the short list of improvements for the long term health of all modes.

There was a dev post some time back suggesting it was something Anet would consider. I think it is time to acknowledge this change is long overdue.

So much this^

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Posted by: Walhalla.5473

Walhalla.5473

Wow that are some crappy Changes if they are hitting PVE as well. With this you would kill Build Variety in Raids, forcing a 2 Mesmer Comp, while the Rev is pushed out of the Composition and if good Quickness Uptime isn’t possible with even 2 Chronos than Classes who benefit from Quickness will suffer, causing Eles getting favored over other Classes So future Raid Comps will look more like. 2 Chronos, 2 Warris, 2 Druids and 4 Eles ( or well 2 Eles and two Necros cause of Condi Damage ) and nothing else. Dat Class variety.

My Suggestion. Split the WvW and PvP Balance from the PvE Balance and then you can proper balance PvE with Fractals and Raids in Mind. ( And Open World isn’t suffering anything because Open World is just YOLO ). And as an added Bonus, WvW and PvP could also be proper balanced, without affecting PvE or PvE affecting PvP.

Right now every Balance Patch has the Risk of completely gutting PvE Balance just to get Things in PvP and WvW balanced.

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Posted by: GoldenTruth.2853

GoldenTruth.2853

This furthers the idea that Anet is very passionate about a game they have no idea how to play. If this balance change isn’t for WvW only, your balance team needs to actually consult with heavily experienced players who understand the effects of what balance aimed at 1 game mode has on another game mode.

Even with JUST the Inspiration nerf you are essentially making revenants obsolete in raids (this is further exacerbated by nerfing naturalistic resonance as well). This makes a mirror comp the only real choice for raids and will push out revenant, thief, guard, and power warrior (due to having 2 mesmers for alacrity and quickness). Raid compositions will basically all be:

2x Mesmer, 2x Condi PS Warrior, 2x Druid, 2x Ele, 2x Ele or 2xNecro (depending on fight).

Alara Vesmir – Guardian
Tyr Sylvison – Warrior
Illyiah – Revenant

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Posted by: roamzero.9486

roamzero.9486

I really hope they’ve looked at Warrior’s ability to stack perma-resistance. That kittens broken.

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Posted by: sluringshhh.7403

sluringshhh.7403

Druid needed it, but oh my god whos bright idea was it to literally remove an entire class from pve useless in fractals, and well ill just bring a gaurd and autokick revs in my pugs for raids. That signet of inspiration nerf i gaurantee just dug chronomancer a giant grave not only can revs no longer assist mesmers in boon sharing, but mesmers themselves can easily be replaced with gaurds. Goodbye fun pve meta. Hello gaurdian hammer spam afk meta. This is a step in the wrong direction and reality is already enraging me i finally got my rev geared for raiding and wasted 100+ gold down the goddang drain.

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Posted by: Ayrilana.1396

Ayrilana.1396

People don’t have to rely on quickness as a crutch.

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Posted by: Triggered.1850

Triggered.1850

Weow, pve scrubs can’t handle change while rest of game suffers? Don’t rely solely on one build

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Posted by: Lahmia.2193

Lahmia.2193

inb4 Epidemic gets the same nerf as Signet of Inspiration (Fixed condi durations).

Surrender and serve me in life, or die and slave for me in death.

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Posted by: Zoid.2568

Zoid.2568

Wow. ArenaNet just killed Revenant and made it kittenty in PvE. Good job… not.

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Posted by: Dzjudz.9142

Dzjudz.9142

If you want Druids to use healing power, could you add an offensive stat combo for condition power Druids that has healing power?

Currently the only options are:
- Shaman (Major Vitality, Minor Condition Damage & Healing Power): defensive stat combo, vitality isn’t very useful, only offensive part is minor condi dmg.
- Settler (Major Toughness, Minor Condition Damage & Healing Power): because of major toughness very bad for messing with tanking in raids. Only one minor offensive stat again.
- Apothecary (Major Healing Power, Minor Condition Damage & Toughness): still toughness to mess with tanking in raids, and only minor offensive stat.

So no option comparable to for example Zealot (Major Power, Minor Precision & Healing Power) that power builds can use.

Example of something that could be used:

Major Condition Damage & Power, Minor Expertise & Healing Power (similar to Viper)

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Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

Looking forward to having to warrior’s support line remaining void of boon duration increases. And sustaining those 30-second banner gaps. FGPS 100%.

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

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Posted by: Absurdo.8309

Absurdo.8309

I’m not sure what gear I should change without numbers.

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Posted by: Jaberse.8726

Jaberse.8726

this is going to NUKE raid composition diversity.

these nerfs, if they go through are basically going to FORCE people to run a mirror comp of

Subgroup1: Commanders Chrono – druid – PS – dps – dps
Subgroup2: Commanders Chrono – druid – PS – dps – dps

-or-
Subgroup1: Chrono (with some boon duration gear) – druid – PS – Rev – dps
Subgroup2: Chrono (with some boon duration gear) – druid – PS – Rev – dps

this is cancer, this demolishes the flexibility and diversity of the current raid meta. if you want to nerf boons for WvW you guys should split it form the other PVE metagame like you guys did for PvP. otherwise youre going to ruin the diversity of raids in favor of catering to the zerg meta in WvW. and frankly these changes wont change anything at all in WvW zerging

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Posted by: Ayrilana.1396

Ayrilana.1396

Raid have been done without chrono. In fact, I seem to remember guilds doing them with everyone as a single class. While the change may or may not affect the optimal composition, all classes will still be viable.

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

And here I thought the most notable changes would be to the less than stellar cc and stealth mechanics in wvw and spvp… Oh well, there is always 2017 right?

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.