Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers

Just because Jon didn’t include any changes regarding your profession in the above post doesn’t mean we’re done making changes.

Please continue to leave feedback – we’re still listening. We’ll keep you updated as things come up.

Thanks!

Can we please get some input on why the balances focus entirely on PvP? I’ve outlined the reasoning already, but it has yet to be acknowledged. It’d just be nice to have something along the lines of “Yes, we know what we’re doing is going to have a negative impact on PvE.” Or something.

The proposed Necro changes (I’m supposing you meant Necro instead of Engi above) are fixed to have dramatic impact on the Necro Powermancer, and as such, to destroy build variety in PvE.

Head-Scratching Changes:

• The nerf to Weakening Shroud destroys the Powermancer’s only benefit to a party.
• Withering Precision remains a joke.
• The traits for Powermancers are scattered across the Blood and Curses lines, when they should be concentrated in the Spite line.
• Reanimator remains a joke.
• Vital Persistence doesn’t really impact DS builds, as few can afford to pick it up.

Good Changes:

• Banshee’s Wail CD redux.

“After all this time, where are they?” Changes:

• Spite 25 is silly.
• Signets don’t carry over into DS.
• Cleave?
• … This list could (and has) go on forever.

Long story short: PvE is gonna take a hit. Again. Why?

With how Anet is currently changing thieves, I have little to no motivation to keep playing. If they decide to “tone” down certain ability, they should at least offer other option and change things up to allow us to discover new builds. but with the upcoming patch i can see none of that and it is making me really sad.

Putting aquamancer’s alacrity into master tier was already a harsh hit to the water trait line but moving soothing disruption into master tier is destroying builds. The grandmaster trait cleansing water just became a whole lot less worthy of its tier. The sad part is that cleansing water, a grandmaster trait, is slightly less useful than the adept trait cleansing wave to begin with. Please at least rework cleansing water.

I’ll try to explain…

Cleansing water requires regeneration with a 5 second cd (as far as I remember from the past nerf). This means that to remove a condition from yourself and players when entering water attunement, just as cleansing wave would, you need to have elemental attunement ,which will now become a master tier arcana trait, equipped. There is use of staff skill 5 for this which grants two group removals with the trait but that’s ONE weapon out of all of your total land weapons that provide yourself or your group members with any regeneration. Cleansing wave requires no additional traits to become useful and will ALWAYS remove conditions from your group as well unlike cleansing water if you’re using regeneration on yourself only.

Anyway… if I use use regeneration on a group of people, does cleansing water even effect all members that get regeneration or is it only one? A slightly worrying thought.

Best thing for rangers would be adding utility by merging quite a number of traits together as well as making the passive effects of signets go to allies.

If you want build diversity, we need a lot of merging of traits in our power and precision lines.

@ Jon/Josh you ask for feedback, but I hardly see it taking serious..

WARRIOR
•Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

The nerf for combustive shot is to reduce its adrenaline gain from it.. that’s why you nerf it, but many have bring up some good idea’s to keep the same F1 skill but instead make it a non-adrenaline gain skill.. now you nerf it on 3 ways.
1: less adrenaline (fine)
2: less damage
3: more time between pulses (3sec) that’s allot!

Yes the damage per pulse is the same, yes the 15% is because you removed 1 pulse.
Its the increase of seconds between the pulses.. if you make a 10min between the pulses the F1 skill will still do the same damage, but it only takes you 40min..
So its more than just 15% in a real fight.

But what I mostly don’t get is that you nerf it only on its raw damage.. its a hybrid weapon. now you supporting 1 way and make it less hybrid.. you could also increase the raw damage per pulse ofc, but that’s not gonna happen I guess..
soon every warrior will run condition builds.. because your forcing us that way, its the easy way also.. (less stats needed.. just condition damage + vit/toughness)

IMO guardians need to have some hammer effective traits or atleast some change to the weapon itself its nice wep and all but the damage are not that high as others …
i think we should have some hammer traits added for honor or valor trait lines as zeal got GS damage increases and stuff same for hammer about 10-20% dmg increase trait could be pretty nice .
or atleast some kind of a buff trait i think the trait will fit more in Valor as it already has hammer trait chill effect but its 30sec CD so its pretty lame to use it

Please don’t leave the Symbol of Swiftness change for Guardian as-is, it will be a sizable nerf in sPvP. I won’t realistically be able to give myself more than 4s of Swiftness on the move, which is going to hurt Guardian rotation speed quite a bit and pigeon-hole them even more than they already are as an immobile rock that sits on mid all game. :\

My suggestion: Have it also give an extra 4s of Swiftness upon cast if the target does not already have Swiftness.

Still waiting to see what you do to necro’s. Full response for all classes in the future would be nice. I realize that is probably a lot of work but it’s better to include all than exclude some even if it takes more time.

Phenn.5167:

Yup. I’ve asked for Dev interaction on this blatant refusal to consider the impact on PvE of these PvP-centric balances on three separate occasions in this thread, and they have heretofore been ignored.

I understand the desire to keep things roughly similar across gametypes, but the reality is PvE is vastly different to both PvP and WvW. I have yet to see a single “balance” patch directed at PvE. The only possible exception was the recent increase in “minion” HP in PvE. But that’s such a token nod to the broken reality of minions of all kinds in PvE that it’s almost insulting.

But all that being said, the PvE-focused community has had to “make it work” with every balance patch thus far, and we will continue to do so. It’d just be nice to not have to scramble and re-work everything anytime a PvP-centric balance hits.

There’s a reason for that. It’s that they can just adjust mobs instead of the skills. GS is OP because mobs die to fast to HB? Make them move out of it. DPS is overrated? Make mobs less vulnerable to straight damage, via self-healing etc., and thus raise the value of control.

PvE “balance” is not the solution. If anything, it would cement the broken mob AI issues this game has. Not to mention it’s a Sisyphean task.

I actually wonder why warrior keep getting nerfs to damage? Guardians actually outdps us yet they getting another buff while warrior getting his dps cut down.

Combustive Shot actually getting overnerf, its doesnt worth casting it on lv1/2 anymore, yet theres another nerf to damage without any compensate. Fine nerf it, but bring back 360 radius to lv 1/2

The same goes to hammer, want to nerf Eartshaker and Staggering blow bc they has aoe control? Fine, but buff 1, 2, 3 for compensate. Also whats the point nerfing hammer damage on cc skills while merciless hammer trait actually wants us to cc as much as possible for extra +25% dmg, seems counter productive.

As for Mace while i do understand why u want to increase casttime to make it counterable, im not sure why other classes can have just as equal if not stronger abilities insta cast? Just really take a look at bursting engineer rifle. Cc’s out of nowhere that dealing load of damage, right now outdpsing hammer from range. But i guess thats okay, we are warriors so we have to use obvious animations for everyone else, rest can keep it skills close to no nothing. Also as i said earlier 0 compensate for nerf to skull crack, mace is actually a slow, chain takes too long, pommel bash has no damage, counterblow doesnt stop ranged attacks like riposte does, and its slow to the point that anyone can just move out of its range before it even activate.

Another thing is whats the point nerfing burst mastery? Its affecting all builds that utilize it, not just hammer/bow.

Just to inform why warrior community been using hammer+longbow set:

Thats because they are the olny 2 viable weapons we have for pvp, rest is either broken or simply overnerfed like axe AA or clunky hundren blades that won’t hit anyone without cc. Rethink what you want warrior to be, as in current state we need cc to kill anything. Also:

“We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both”

Howered its fine to condition builds to have massive damage, tankiness and control in one build right? Lets face it, everything condition build needs is condition damage leaving them a room for 2 defensive stats. Power builds cannot affort that.

Im sure my post will be ignored, but fine.

Jamais vu.5284:

Phenn.5167:

Yup. I’ve asked for Dev interaction on this blatant refusal to consider the impact on PvE of these PvP-centric balances on three separate occasions in this thread, and they have heretofore been ignored.

I understand the desire to keep things roughly similar across gametypes, but the reality is PvE is vastly different to both PvP and WvW. I have yet to see a single “balance” patch directed at PvE. The only possible exception was the recent increase in “minion” HP in PvE. But that’s such a token nod to the broken reality of minions of all kinds in PvE that it’s almost insulting.

But all that being said, the PvE-focused community has had to “make it work” with every balance patch thus far, and we will continue to do so. It’d just be nice to not have to scramble and re-work everything anytime a PvP-centric balance hits.

There’s a reason for that. It’s that they can just adjust mobs instead of the skills. GS is OP because mobs die to fast to HB? Make them move out of it. DPS is overrated? Make mobs less vulnerable to straight damage, via self-healing etc., and thus raise the value of control.

PvE “balance” is not the solution. If anything, it would cement the broken mob AI issues this game has. Not to mention it’s a Sisyphean task.

I’d be fine if, IF something was actually done. But it isn’t. So the already-broken PvE (as you say) is made more of a joke by balance patches that nerf effective PvE builds that have managed to thrive in the “broken” PvE system. That’s my biggest issue.

And sure, balance in this game in general is a Sisyphean task. But is it too much to ask that some consideration be given to a balance’s effect on PvE? I think not.

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

THIEF

• Vigorous Recovery: Vigor duration will be 5 seconds instead of 4.
• Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR

• Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.

Thanks,

Jon

Good to see progress is being made. There has be a lot of versatility added to classes. And I know I am tired of saying this but where is the versatility for thief? There have been the across the boards attribute transitions for example %tough -> precision. Looking at thief you’ve buffed initiative base gain, and slashed trait initiative gain, and reduced mobility.

Don’t really see any versatility improvements for thief, you know, compared to balance of other class traits.

And engineer Transmute change, I applaud, it needs a longer ICD like 30s. If it was just removes a condition, then fine 15s… It converts a condition to a boon. So Transmute needs a longer ICD.

Man why haven’t you been taking this approach to changes since the beginning? To think you managed to put up with the endless QQ, rage and ‘gg anet i quit’, and actually hear the sensible things that are being said. I applaud you.

I’d love to be able to take both soothing disruption and cleansing wave though. As it stands you’re kind of forced to go up the arcana line once again. Really hurts aura sharing+tempest defense build, which was looking like a ton of fun (but i suppose maybe a bit too powerful).

Scoobaniec.9561:

I actually wonder why warrior keep getting nerfs to damage? Guardians actually outdps us yet they getting another buff while warrior getting his dps cut down.

…

+1 Scoobaniec

Allot of nerfs on warriors best weapons, but zero compensation.

Scoobaniec.9561:

“We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both”

Howered its fine to condition builds to have massive damage, tankiness and control in one build right? Lets face it, everything condition build needs is condition damage leaving them a room for 2 defensive stats. Power builds cannot affort that.

Im sure my post will be ignored, but fine.

^this.. power/crit builds get punished every time, yet condition builds keeps strong or even stronger.

I am going to repost this here from the guardian forums since there seems to not be any response in there. I am including quotes that have context to my thoughts on guardian design atm.

JonPeters.5630:

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

Supreme Justice and Kindled Zeal
I’m not sure this will be enough, but I do not want these traits to be overpowered as I feel they are fairly passive. That being said, I think they are good simple traits and with 12 traits per line it is absolutely fine to have some passive simple to understand traits. Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease

Power guardian vs Condition guardian
I think Dec 10th will see the emergence of the power guardian, but I think that the condition based guardian still has a ways to go. Ultimately this is because it is hard to cover the burning and frankly you need a good reliable second or even third condition that guardians simply do not have right now. I think for those professions lacking that 3rd damage condition we are looking at supplementing them via runes and sigils rather than skills/traits right now but that won’t be something we attempt until the build that follows the Dec 10th build.
I think that is everything for guardian and hopefully you enjoyed a few half spoiler/half teases.

All that aside, we still are one of the least mobile professions, we still have literally no soft CC to keep anyone near us, we still are extremely weak against conditions, unless we spec hard into condition removal, which limits our builds very badly. None of these current "buff"s are going to fix any of that. Kindled zeal will still be useless A) because we have one condition, and because to put the points that far into zeal, makes us lose way too much in the line of defenses, which we need BADLY, primarily because of our low health pool and poor mobility. The fact that you intend to use sigils/runes as a band aid for this when NO other class HAS to is rather disappointing. Why must we give up both our sigil and runes just to make a condition build? Honestly, if we even had multiple conditions, I still doubt kindled zeal would be worth it, as nothing else in the zeal line does anything for conditions. it is completely power based, and you could easily put into more defensive lines and pick up more condition damage in gear and be better of.

However, I really think the core issues need to be fixed before any of that is even thought of. We NEED some type of soft CC, that we can at least semi-frequently apply to keep people near us. We are one of the slowest classes with very lack luster ranged capabilities, yet compared to a warrior, who is very mobile, and also has ranged capabilities, they DESTROY in a comparison to the amount of CC they have in addition to that. I still suggest a glacial heart revamp to effect every weapon with a shorter duration and CD, or even apply chill on symbol pulse or application would be a start. (though 1h sword would still be SOL in terms of staying on someone with a symbol trait)

We need some type of revamp on our condition removal skills/traits. We have ALOT of condition removal at our hands, that is obvious, the issue is being able to keep up with the massive amount of reapplication, and also the requirement of our utility skills for mobility and support. I believe that we need to move some condition removal into our damage trees, just to make them able to be used without completely tanking our chances at living.

I know you say that we shouldn’t be allowed to do as much damage because of our basic defenses, but at the end of the day, those basic defenses are not even doing it anymore without specing heavily into buffs for them. Yes we are a heavy class, but toughness is starting to become overrated when a thief can backstab for 7k+ on 3.2k armor. Our passive healing through resolve is now pathetic as without any buffs, it wont even cover a single bleed stack, compared to a warrior who gets 300/s right off the bat due to signet, but also gets the highest health pool in the game. Yes we get the most access to aegis, but in pvp game modes, that aegis can easily be wasted on some minor tick from an AoE attack. Due to how stagnant guardians have become in regards to balance, we can no longer look into specing for damage outside of trying for a gimmicky burst build, and are stuck in the same 3 trait lines that we have been for the last several months.

JonPeters.5630:

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

* jaw drops, swoons and faints *

And now, I am going to be playing my Engineer, a lot! This is so awesome!

(Similar regard to Guardian and Mesmer would be very greatly appreciated. )

So… ATM is renewing stamina staying at adept? Or is that still being discussed?

They already compensate some things for other classes..

Zero compensation for warriors.

nicknamenick.2437:

They already compensate some thing for other classes..

Zero compensation for warriors.

For the dozenth time, Im calling for a tweak in greatsword warrior damage in PVE.

JonPeters.5630:

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

Two things I wanted to comment on:

First, when trying to enhance damage guardians, there are alternatives to simply upping the damage numbers—for example, by allowing Guardians better access to soft CC (in the form of Cripple or Chill, as has been mentioned before).

This would have the dual purpose of ensuring that Guardians won’t be as strong offensively using the metric of potential DPS, and it would enhance what we already have by allowing us to stay on top of the target and fight in melee range for longer, (somewhat) alleviating the need for extra mobility (which we as Guardians lack). In fact, there could be an alternative trait in a lesser-used trait line (such as Zeal) so that symbols pulse for cripple or chill on the first pulse (or more, depending on balancing needs).

Secondly, I am curious why there exists the emphasis on sword dps (the extra +5% damage on swords from Radiance X: Powerful Blades) and not a similar increase in the greatsword trait (Zeal VII: Zealous Blade) when the current PvE dungeon meta (and to some extent general PvE) already emphasizes sword use with focus for blinding potential.

If improving direct damage options for Guardian is the goal, would it be worth considering giving extra damage to more of the offensive weapons such as the greatsword (and potentially other weapons) as well, so that players have a choice other than sword for direct damage builds? (I understand that the 25hp/hit healing from Zealous Blade is meant to give an extra bonus for the Guardian Greatsword in lieu of damage, but even the 2% scaling with Healing Power for some sustain seems far weaker than the proposed +10% damage from Powerful Blades.)

What I’m asking is: could Zeal VII: Zealous Blade gain some extra damage to improve it in a similar fashion to the +10% damage on sword?

I strongly dissagree with that invisibility change in the thief , almost nobody does that.
Who would stay invisible just to recharge some skills or gain innitiative its just counterproductive
Man its unfair for all of the players that use invi in p e

My advise: you should make this a pvp change only
Pleaaase

Other than that great patch!
Good work guys

Oh and also, fix the adrenaline smack in the great sword de
Its just useless

cesmode.4257:

nicknamenick.2437:

They already compensate some thing for other classes..

Zero compensation for warriors.

For the dozenth time, Im calling for a tweak in greatsword warrior damage in PVE.

Im fine with that as long gs won’t need cc anymore to land it attacks. If u think everyone enjoys 3,5sec braindead selfroot skill ur wrong.

nicknamenick.2437:

Scoobaniec.9561:

I actually wonder why warrior keep getting nerfs to damage? Guardians actually outdps us yet they getting another buff while warrior getting his dps cut down.

…

+1 Scoobaniec

Allot of nerfs on warriors best weapons, but zero compensation.

This actually made me bust out laughing…literally. You have obviously never played a guardian before in your life if you think we can ever out dps a warrior. Right now we are known as the tanky small damage class. Warriors have some of the best damage in the game, and also are extremely tanky and have great cc to boot. There is a reason you guys are getting nerfed. You are OP plain and simple. Anyone can play a warrior and kick some tail. Other classes aren’t like that. They actually take skill and thought to deal damage AND survive.

We (The Guardians) need some love in the way of CC (cripple,chill,) and more love for our hammer wep GS got already nice good traits to buff it but hammer doesn’t only cihll trait that are 30sec CD pretty useless plz give us more options to trait ourself and be tanky and be able to push up good dmg give us nice DMG increase trait for hammer in valor as it has already the chill one so we can choose from some same as in zeal for GS …
make our builds more viable to choose Dmg and survivability in same time or just buff our hammer as it is not compared to other classes DMG .
auto attack slow and lesss then any 2h melle wep in game only symbol makes it abit stronger nothing more make our 5th spell (ward) to do some dmg when ppl inside of it or something (just give us love to the hammer wep we are guardians hammer main characters and maces in the game ) even with immobolize and 5th spell target can run away realy fast maybe also abit more distance to MB(mighty blow) can help abit but still wont make it work thanks

eleshazar.6902:

nicknamenick.2437:

Scoobaniec.9561:

I actually wonder why warrior keep getting nerfs to damage? Guardians actually outdps us yet they getting another buff while warrior getting his dps cut down.

…

+1 Scoobaniec

Allot of nerfs on warriors best weapons, but zero compensation.

This actually made me bust out laughing…literally. You have obviously never played a guardian before in your life if you think we can ever out dps a warrior. Right now we are known as the tanky small damage class. Warriors have some of the best damage in the game, and also are extremely tanky and have great cc to boot. There is a reason you guys are getting nerfed. You are OP plain and simple. Anyone can play a warrior and kick some tail. Other classes aren’t like that. They actually take skill and thought to deal damage AND survive.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Asking-a-question-that-was-proposed

You obviously don’t know ur own class sir. And yea, u made me laugh.

Suxen.8574:

We are thinking Anet has no clear ideas.

The Thief must hit hard and avoid being hit. This is his role.
That is the definition of the Profession. What are you thinking Anet?

Go here and read it:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/thief/

Thief
Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.

Yes Yes Yes!!! This is what i’ve been screaming since the first time i ever heard about thief being OP. The thief is based off the model of the ASSASSIN from GW1. An ASSASSIN that strikes from the shadows quickly and spontaneously and leaves it’s victims lying in a pile while disappearing back into the night. Granted some abusive mechanics have come up with certain thief traits, saying they’re OP because they killed you is just silly. They are not support. They are lone wolves designed for NOTHING more than killin VERY fast. They don’t need to be turned into some DPS garbage. Their weapon sets are all designed for bursting and suprprise and that is what a thief excells at along with being very hard to track/hit. My ultimate point is all these sillies that get ganked roaming in WvW/PvP by thieves and then go QQ to anet about how thieves are to powerful is ludicrous. Yes they’re supposed to be very powerful in a 1v1, that’s were they’re meant to excell hince the low hp/defense for zerg fighting or overall support tactics of the class. The bottom line is, if you get ganked ROAMING around in WvW by a thief, you probably deserve it.

JonPeters.5630:

Also just because good changes were suggested doesn’t mean we can safely make them in time for this build, but they will see the light of day in future releases as well.

If some of the suggestions are being considered but can’t make this release, can you at least let us know what ones they are?

JonPeters.5630:

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.

All good choices, I can support these.

• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.

Not sure what you’re trying to do here, I was under the impression that these traits were only used in cantrip builds and I don’t see what swapping them would accomplish.

• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

Given that most of the time, we already have regeneration, I doubt anyone will pick this trait. If you want to see it used, change it to a flat heal so regen builds can benefit from it. Otherwise, it just won’t do anything meaningful.

Cleansing Wave will still become a a master trait.

Again, I am strongly against this. It’ll force me to spec more into water, not less, because I need this trait. If you really want to nerf cleansing wave, make it target the elementalist only and keep it adept.

Diamond Skin makes ele invulnerable to conditiosn while at 90% health.

This will make people spec into water more just so they can keep their health up.

This is useless for staff eles because it forces them into condition damage, which staff eles cannot properly use. Please consider altering Eruption to pulse instead of dealing delayed damage, so Earth will become a viable choice staff eles too.

So are you guys still intent on destroying the Thief sword mobility play style that you yourselves beautifully created in this game?

Seems like it. There should not be a cast time on shadow return from sword #2.

Vi Au.8341:

With how Anet is currently changing thieves, I have little to no motivation to keep playing. If they decide to “tone” down certain ability, they should at least offer other option and change things up to allow us to discover new builds. but with the upcoming patch i can see none of that and it is making me really sad.

As a thief, I’d say you don’t really understand the changes. There are some good buffs in these notes. Keep up the good work, Jon!

JonPeters.5630:

Dekk.3459:

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

THIEF

• Vigorous Recovery: Vigor duration will be 5 seconds instead of 4.
• Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR

• Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.

Thanks,

Jon

Good to see progress is being made. There has be a lot of versatility added to classes. And I know I am tired of saying this but where is the versatility for thief? There have been the across the boards attribute transitions for example %tough -> precision. Looking at thief you’ve buffed initiative base gain, and slashed trait initiative gain, and reduced mobility.

Don’t really see any versatility improvements for thief, you know, compared to balance of other class traits.

And engineer Transmute change, I applaud, it needs a longer ICD like 30s. If it was just removes a condition, then fine 15s… It converts a condition to a boon. So Transmute needs a longer ICD.

Versatility for thief. We are giving every single thief build 33% more initiative to work with. We have said this a number of times, but clearly it needs to be said again. If any other profession was getting a patch note that said: Decreased cooldown of all weapon skills by 25%, that would be considered a huge buff. The way initiative works is obfuscating how powerful this change it, but please consider the value of this change when weighing thief changes in this patch.

Right, I understand it will improve generally. The problem is with thief it is all weapons, not weapon skills. The weapon CD traits for other classes is not being effect, thats 5 or 10 skills.

The versatility of other class changes comes from their traits, more regen, condi removal, retaliation, etc. Thief is not getting any love for its survivability… that is the versatility I’m trying to relate. Add another boon steal, condition removal, change trap master to instant w/ cd reduction… some option other than weapons focus, please.

Elementalist is getting an attunement revamp and trait buffs. Mesmer is getting their illusion CD for 15traits… So maybe initiative will be balancing. But not the overall class versatility.

And thank you for sorting through all these posts.

JonPeters.5630:

The design for soothing wave is that it won’t trigger the ICD unless it actually removes a condition.

That is nice, but I still feel that the 10s cooldown makes the trait’s combo with the grandmaster trait underwhelming. Like I’ve said, if a player decides to combine both, and supposing that said player won’t have any other source for regeneration, the grandmaster trait will offer very underwhelming results.

Let me put it in a different way:

The grandmaster trait with soothing disruption is a good combo. With elemental attunement, it’s also a good combo (pretty much a second cleansing wave). With glyph of healing cast on water, it’s also nice. With Healing Rain, it’s also nice.

However, the grandmaster trait comboed with the new soothing wave is going to be underwhelming. And the reason for this is very simple: the player has no control over when he wants to activate it. It’s randomly triggered by the opponent (’s critical hit), and is then automatically put in a 10 second cooldown.

So if an elementalist player has no conditions on themselves, gets hit by a critical attack, triggers the 3s regen, and only gets any condition applied on themselves a little bit after that, the grandmaster trait will only activate 10 seconds after the first critical hit, because of the cooldown on soothing wave is 10 seconds, making the synergy between both traits very underwhelming.

I think half the cooldown for half the regeneration would improve the synergy between both traits, because the grandmaster cleansing water trait would then trigger two times more often, and thus it would be worth the grandmaster investment.

I hope I’ve made myself clear, and wasn’t too confusing.

TL:DR: With soothing wave and cleansing water, and with no other sources of renegeration, cleansing water has effectively 10s of cooldown because it’s crippled by soothing wave’s cooldown.

For Engineer, I would really like if you guys could look into bombs, it seems a bit lackluster that the ranged grenades do more direct damage.

Also the Bombing-Autoattack-Animation seems to have a unusually long aftercast (around 30% of the actual cast time), what seems to be the true problem for the low DPS.
While looking into it, please compare it to the aftercast underwater that is almost nonexistant.

Oh and while I am at it, is there still no chance that the Kits Base Damage (for PvE that is) will be buffed to Ascended level? I know there has been a response that “that’s the prize Engineer pays for the versatility”, but it was already rock bottom PvE-wise.

So it’s more like a “passive-nerf”.

JonPeters.5630:

Versatility for thief. We are giving every single thief build 33% more initiative to work with. We have said this a number of times, but clearly it needs to be said again. If any other profession was getting a patch note that said: Decreased cooldown of all weapon skills by 25%, that would be considered a huge buff. The way initiative works is obfuscating how powerful this change it, but please consider the value of this change when weighing thief changes in this patch.

Evidently you’re not reading the thief forums. Maybe if we say it where EVERYONE can read it, you’ll catch it.

*33% more initiative is not the same as a cooldown change to all skills. *

33% more initiative means that one skill can be used sooner because they’re all drawing from the same pool.

The average of every non-autoattack skill requires an average of 4.2 initiative.

The base regen is .75 initiative per second, means a single skill can be used every 5.6 seconds.
The new regen is 1 initiative per second, means a single skill can be used 4.2 seconds.

This is entirely different than lowering the cooldown on separate 4 skills, multiplied across a possible 2 weapon sets.

I hope you can fix your thinking before you make an unintentional but huge mistake.

inb4 Thief Sword 2 nerf on last day of thread being open.

Josh Davis.6015:

we’re still listening

I thought trolling wasn’t allowed !

JonPeters.5630:

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

Can you take a look at Temporal Curtain (focus 4). It currently has similar behavior to the Symbol of Swiftness Guardian staff 3 attack in that it gives a massive amount of swiftness if you have not, and little (or rather, nothing) if you already have the boon.

Since you are changing SoS to grant a constant 4s of swiftness per tic, can TC get an update to something similar as well? I can’t count how often I’ve lost out on a huge mobility boon because I had 0.5s left on the last one.

Howdy!

I wanted to write a quick post and speak up about what may be a less-represented (but no less valid) facet of the player-base…

• I have one of each profession at level 80.
• I play open world PvE only.
• Movement speed is the single-most important function for how I like to play (romping about and exploring the world of Tyria).
• Lack of passive movement speed (specifically 25%) on Guardian, Engineer, and Mesmer has been frustrating and a deterrent to me playing those classes as much as I desire.
• For me, movement speed is about quality of life for all my characters.
• For me, movement speed it isn’t about combat in PvE or WvW or PvP.
• Power Shoes being changed to out of combat is awesome—I am going to be playing my Engineer so much more because of this change.
• Increasing passive movement speed (25%) for Guardians and Mesmers (via signet or trait) would be a tremendous QoL improvement for those two classes, and I beseech you to please consider this.

Imperatora.7654:

JonPeters.5630:

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

Can you take a look at Temporal Curtain (focus 4). It currently has similar behavior to the Symbol of Swiftness Guardian staff 3 attack in that it gives a massive amount of swiftness if you have not, and little (or rather, nothing) if you already have the boon.

Since you are changing SoS to grant a constant 4s of swiftness per tic, can TC get an update to something similar as well? I can’t count how often I’ve lost out on a huge mobility boon because I had 0.5s left on the last one.

i think this might be their counter to HUGE zergs running around the map invisible with just a few mesmers in the party but idk but that can be done in other ways though too but maintain swiftness on the entire group is a priority to do so. also most guardians on this thread think this Symbol change is rediculous and i agree as staff is so crucial for getting from point a to b with the guard and is taken at a HUGE disadvantage of damage JUST mainly for this single skill. Asking a guardian to stand still for 4 secs in order to get maximum advantage from this skill just seems counterintuitive to what this skill does in the first place but eh. i’d like to see it something more like: gives 10 secs of swiftness. 50% effective if you already have swiftness. i think this would still give an incentive for guards to stand on the symbol for a bit while getting supplies etc but would still maintain overall movement in the field w/o feeling so kitten as the proposed change will force most guardians (the FRONTLINE) to carrry ‘retreat’ OR stay at the back of the pack and arrive late to most battles crippling their effectiveness

Kincaidia.3192:

JonPeters.5630:

Versatility for thief. We are giving every single thief build 33% more initiative to work with. We have said this a number of times, but clearly it needs to be said again. If any other profession was getting a patch note that said: Decreased cooldown of all weapon skills by 25%, that would be considered a huge buff. The way initiative works is obfuscating how powerful this change it, but please consider the value of this change when weighing thief changes in this patch.

Evidently you’re not reading the thief forums. Maybe if we say it where EVERYONE can read it, you’ll catch it.

*33% more initiative is not the same as a cooldown change to all skills. *

33% more initiative means that one skill can be used sooner because they’re all drawing from the same pool.

The average of every non-autoattack skill requires an average of 4.2 initiative.

The base regen is .75 initiative per second, means a single skill can be used every 5.6 seconds.
The new regen is 1 initiative per second, means a single skill can be used 4.2 seconds.

This is entirely different than lowering the cooldown on separate 4 skills, multiplied across a possible 2 weapon sets.

I hope you can fix your thinking before you make an unintentional but huge mistake.

I see where you’re coming from, but it also feels like you’re trying to discount what he said instead of trying to figure out what he meant. The idea is that you have access to all of your abilities more frequently. It isn’t exactly like his analogy, but the spirit of the idea is that reducing the cooldown of all weapon skills by 25% means you have your full array of weapons 25% faster. With increased base initiative gain, all Thieves will have access to their full array of weapon skills X% faster.

Granted, I don’t play Thief. I’m not commenting on exactly how the change will affect Thief gameplay, because I don’t know. What I do know is that the forums go out of their way to dissect anything the devs say in some manner that makes it look like they don’t know what they’re talking about. It maybe wasn’t the best analogy, but I don’t think it was entirely inappropriate given the mechanics.

To me, it seems like one of those things you’ll have to experience to really get a feel for. The math often loses the essence of the gameplay.

Ranger: short-term and long-term changes.

• Opening Strike + Alpha Strike: Merge, Adept tier minor
• Precise Strike: Master tier minor
• Remorseless: Grandmaster tier minor
• Eagle Eye: include Shortbow
• Predator’s Instinct: make Cripple duration and recharge time shorter as intended, 20 sec recharge perhaps. +10% pet damage against crippled targets.
• Piercing Arrows + Quick Draw: Merge, Marksmanship Master tier major
• Oakheart Salve: include Torment as a trigger, 7 sec Regeneration, so it has better synergy with Nature’s Bounty.
• Bark Skin: How about -33% dmg under 50% health?
• Fortifying Bond: remove vigor sharing and add stability instead
• Speed Training + Commanding Voice: Merge, Adept tier minor, -20% cd reduction
• Rending Attacks, Stability Training, Intimidation Training: remove pet family restrictions
• Natural Healing: should be affected by Healing Power. Add trait fact regarding the player healing to the description.

Ill repost part of something Ive posted on mesmer forum if most devs dont go there.

First of all:

Food boons on WvW and mesmers:
Most people know the right mesmer is the one with food boon, and that make no sense at all because that way any damage dealer thief can just hide and wait we show up. Wasnt mesmer supposed to confund their enemys? So please, Would be great to hide all food boons OR better, show that same boons on illusions.

Mantras on spvp and WvW:
Hide from our enemys what mantras we have up and how many of them, its really unfair to have my enemys knowing how many mantras of resolve I have up or not, its not a boon, its a utility skill!
They will know what Im using and they will know what kind of utility I have so they will know how to proceed on the battle giving them a unfair advantage way before the battle begins.

-Mobility

The problem:
Mesmer are too slow, mobility wise I mean. We need to make a special build just to keep our speed boons on, none of our weapon skill let us go foward, like warrior, rangers, thieves or guardians for example. The only way to get speed (if we are not using focus) is from a random boon.
That issue make almost impossible to most mesmer builds, chase ANY enemy running from battle. Sometimes we get killed because they run away and come back after restore full HP and we have lot of high cooldowns going on.
I know we have compound celerity, but that just works if we got clones, and we cant clone without a target…

The solution:
Anything too keep our speed boon up thats not just a random chance. A passive speed movement signet would be good.

-Focus

The problem:
The focus itself is usefull but not for everyone.
Temporal curtain
give you a speed boon, cripple on enemy IF he pass by and pull up to five enemys, but we had a “cooldown” added that we cant even pull people right after cast, it can reflect IF you have warden feedback on traits… I dont think its good enough for a weapon skill. We cant even stack up speed!
Phantasmal Warden
Well he dont move… Some people use them as a safe spot to stay, some try them as damage dealer (wich he is great with enough precision). I wouldnt say that skill have a problem, I just think we could get something that make it works for different builds

The solution:
Temporal Curtain
Warden feedback should be OFF traits and be part of the focus skill itself. Give warden feedback on temporal curtain would save us trait points and make focus acceptable for lot of build, even as a support on dungeons and wvw.
Phantasmal Warden
Maybe a trait to choose if he moves or not would be great.

With the lack of response regarding Warrior changes and related player questions and lack of time of commentary (Warrior forum justification posting last and given a much smaller window to respond to), can it be assumed that Warrior changes are happening regardless of player input on the forum?

This thread closes soon and only one clarification has been made for Warriors.

Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

Tbh, i don’t get where you’d want to go with this change….current Soothing Wave (regen on mist form, Bow, signet of water plus vuln and chill) might be underused, but i’ve yet to understand the usefulness of “on taking critical hits” traits, even in a pvp enviroment… and 3 sec regen on 10 sec ICD isn’t really going to help much.
Sure, it will be a nice counter to “conditions on crit” traits if you pick up Cleansing Wave (enemy crit on you -> proc condition apply -> Soothing Wave procs -> apply regen -> condition removed) but i’d still suggest you to explore something different or don’t change it.

Waiting to see the other 4 prof “feedback on feedback”.