Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Dekk.3459:

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.

I don’t think that any thief doubts that the init natural regen increase is a very nice buff but what i think that what Dekk.3459 ment was about the trait changes and the versatility of combat, not the number of times thieves can spam this or that ability due to having virtually more initiative.

For example, competitive thieves only have 1 single weapon set, the other slot is reserved for the Shortbow, without it there is no mobility and versatility.

Thieves are not allowed to leave home without it. Very rarely you find a thief that does not carry a Shortbow but that thief is probably clueless or simply playing for himself and not for the team, he is hunting and killing random ppl in hotjoins not caring about caping nor wining.

Versatility as in team support besides Shadow refuge reses.
Versatility as in having a decent condi remover without having to use Lyssa Runes.

I remember a few month back you guys say something about merging some traits together and add a few new traits…

Giving Thieves a bit more init regen is good for us no doubt about it, but it adds very little versatility (or I miss to see it).

Also get ready for the tears in the forum about HS spamers, I might be wrong but after buffing init, the next step will be nerfing the dps…

Artaz.3819:

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.

Good. Grief.

The thread is closing at the end of the week. They’ve stated to continue to post thoughts as they are still listening. Even if changes don’t make it in this upcoming patch, good ideas have been noted for future patches.

I swear some people on these forums try their hardest to be as bitter as possible. Someone’s class had to be last. Why couldn’t it be yours, which is also mine? And why would they take every suggestion the forum makes? You think WE know better? Potentially 2% of this forum would have a truly worthy suggestion that takes the entire game into account. A few percent more will share good feelings from their perspective that should be taken into account, but not necessarily followed to the letter. Many others are throwing peanut shells for the sole reason that their build is disrupted, regardless of whether their build was bad for the health of the game.

Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.

This is some bad joke or what ?
Can you explain me why you want remove solid trait for bunker builds from adept tier ? are we again forced to play dps ele ? unbelievable

Rangers " Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows." this is to honor that and also help the class in general. "

Longbow

Long Range Shot
Now it has a chain with second attack giving cripple(3s), and a super fast third double shot (each hit 70% dmg of a normal hit), along with faster projectiles and lower cooldown between shots.

Rapid Fire
Lower cast time(2 1/2sec max), now grants stability during the cast, more condensed hits, 5 instead of 10, higher total damage (each hit atleast higher than max ranged auto attack) and higher cooldown, to like 45seconds untraited, it needs to feels like a powerfull bursty skill, not a “I’m bored of my auto attack, let’s use 2”.

Hunter’s Shot
Now pierce targets blocking and gives you 1sec quickness in addition to it’s current effects.

Point Blank Shot
This one should have like twice it’s current damage, faster projectile, a higher cooldown (25 sec) and 1 or 1 1/2 sec cast time instead of instant, in adition to the knockback. You could combo hunter’s shot/point blank/rapidfire efficiently.

Barrage
2 1/2 sec immobilize on first hit (the same duration as the cast, as this skill is supposed to keep people from reaching you, not the opposite like it is now), lower cooldown (20, 25sec).

Pets

When in combat, pets should have higher speed than players, even without any trait put in it vs a player with swiftness. Often I find myself hitting someone with a full rotation before my pet even reached them.
So my suggestion is to change the untraited pet speed up to 40/50% more than what it is now and give another functionality to the Agility Training 30% speed trait : When you enter in combat your pet gains super speed, (100% speed, lasts until hits the target). Sick Them would have this super speed added to it’s effects too, so you could catch faster a player that uses a movement skill during combat.

Increase overall range of melee pets attacks by atleast 100-170 so they could hit targets from 230-300 range (like birds auto attack Slash).

Improve reliability of pet skills, leaps and everything in general seems too easily avoidable.

Bears
Increase their overall damage considerably. Reduce Arctodus, Murrelow, Polar Bear and Black Bear f2 cast time to 3/4 sec down from 1 1/2. Increase the number of conditions removed from Brown Bear f2 to 3.

Cats
Reduce Jungle Stalker f2 to 1 1/2 sec cast time down from 3 sec.
Reduce Snow Leopard and Lynx f2 cast time to 3/4 sec down from 1 1/2sec.

Birds
Remove the Quickening Screech swiftness from birds and change it to fury (10s), reduce it’s cast time to 1/4 sec down from 3/4 sec (reason for this is they often start this animation instead of attacking your target as you expect and get left behind you if you leep at your target or just keep moving) .

Devourers
They need faster projectiles, and better active skills, just like underwater, Whiptail Devourer f2 should stun (1s), Lashtail Devourer f2 should have half (2s down from 4s) it’s cast time, and no bleeding.

Spiders
Also faster projectiles, much higher damage and lower duration for the immobilize on Entangling Web something like 1 1/2 sec down from 3 sec.

Moas
They need higher toughness and better range, specially for Frenzied Attack as they often miss this skill.

Drakes
Tail Swipe could use an aoe knockback, just like the npc ones do. Also lower cast times for their f2 abilities (3/4 sec down from 1 1/2 sec for the melee ones (burning, chill and confusion) and 1sec for ranged ones).

Dogs
Need higher damage overall.

Pigs
Their f2 Forage should apply the random booms automatically to you.

Beastmastery Traits
Move Loud Whistle to adept and Nature’s Wrath to master traits.
Rework the Instinctual Bond quickness on downed adept beastmaster trait, move it to grandmaster and change functionality to: Boons applied to your pet also affect you, then you will have might on third sword skill 1 auto attack, might from Companion’s Might, swiftness from 3 longbow, bleeds on next 3 attacks from shortbow 4, fury from harpoon gun 3, and Active effects from signets without traiting into Marksmanship.

Change the effect of Intimidation Traning from Cripple to Torment.

Utilities
Lightning Reflexes Now removes immobilize.
Signet of the Wild now instant cast.
Signet of Renewal Cd reduced to 30 sec, range from pet increased to 2000, so it doesn’t fail to activate it’s effects.
Protect Me Your pets gains an aura and run at your side, instead of just stopping.

I would truly like to see a change to the elementalist attunement skills cool down traits. Firstly they affect a much lesser relative portion of our total skills (we have more skills but they were balanced in this fashion) when compared to other classes and secondly they lack the additional bonuses that all other class cool down traits have. Surely we need some form of attunement based bonus as an addition to these traits?

One quick note regarding thieves,
1) You say that you want to buff survivability of acrobatics, but the proposed buffs are to two talents that no thieves in their right mind would take, while simultaneously nerfing vigor gain. It seems to me like this is a straight up nerf to acrobatics survivability and makes the tree even LESS desirable, which I dont think is the intended effect. To be clear, assassins reward is far too high in the tree with far too little gain even with the buff, and hard to catch is terrible because you cant control it at all, like you can the sword 2 ability.

I kinda have more of a question than true feedback, but I was wondering how Anet sees the staff of the mesmer. It has its place in PvP, but in PvE at this moment it is lacking a bit and it’s kinda hard to provide feedback as I don’t know what direction Ant wants it to go? A support weapon? A condition weapon? At this moment, I feel it’s a bit of everything and nothing. I’d really like to be able to use it in a supportive build with lots of boons, there’s some real potential there but the short duration of the buffs the staff gives pretty much make that impossible. But I’m one of the very few it seems, as most people have even forgotten about the staff in PvE. Lots more people are talking about some changes to a single daze trait than about a real weapon we have, as i tried to spark some discussion in the mesmer forum and it was answered by 1 person; only one. I just feel a bit sad about it really.

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

as for thief, i think the vigor is probably needed so thanks, id like to see 6 seconds on the heal, but we ll see how it goes.

I understand you dont want to give thief a stun breaker on ini use, but i dont think htc will fill that gap well, compounded by the fact theif has virtually no stability, i think thief does need access to an additional stun breaker more outside of their utility

my proposal

hard to catch becomes:

all shadow step skills break stuns 30 second recast.

this gives essentially the same usability as previous htc, but under user control, for that extra control, thief must use ini/cooldown but i think its a fine price. Only downside is that pistol pistol has no shadowstep, however it does have steal

Tman.6349:

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.

So the thing is…
People don’t want to be dropped in 3 seconds, regardless of what it means for the person that’s killing them (or the over-all/global context). They want to fight, and feel like the fight is fair.

You brought up GW1 assassins, remember BoA/Shadow Prison assassin? Here’s a video of an average BoA assassin day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKAiodYdUbQ
The nice part about that video, is that it’s not a montage, meaning it shows what happens to the assassin AFTER they killed their target or failed to do so. You can kind of see that it’s sort of iffy when you will take down a target if you don’t use proper judgment. You can see that really, if he killed 1 person it was good, if he made it out live it was just amazing (then proceeded to run around waiting for CDs). Some planning/judgment does need to take place to decide who to jump and who not to jump.
Despite all this, people cried that the build was OP, and it was eventually nerf-ed (rendering it completely useless).
Assassin type builds will NEVER exist, where their sole purpose is to drop one guy and gtfo or be killed.
And so, when Dec. 10th does go through, and a thief build manages to 1v1 people, and it becomes a build of choice for 1v1/roaming/scouting, people will complain once more, calling it OP/broken/abusive.

Also, some additional thoughts on cleansing water for future balances. Maybe it could be a geyser trigger at a threshold of 30% health with a 15 second cd? That would certainly be a useful support trait and definitely fits in line with other grandmaster traits.

Sorry about all the requests. I just don’t want to see one of the two builds I can truly enjoy on my ele become useless.

Necromancers:

I’ve played necromancer as a main for almost the whole game, and I find the statement in the December 10th patch notes to be slightly odd. Specifically the one about relying on death shroud and life siphoning to survive.

The problem we have right now with that is that with the most recent round of life force buffs, we’re really strong in small fights where we can survive long enough to get multiple attacks off, because it allows us to “heal” a lot of life force over time.

The moment you are dealing with 3 or 4 people though, we have very few tools to deal with that. Spectral Armor is an option, but it has less than 1/10th uptime and the protection can be stripped. Not only that, but it’s main mitigation comes from combining it with death shroud, meaning that you cant heal while it’s up, or use weapon or other utility skills to further aid in survival. All in all, it makes for a remarkably squishy scholar in confrontations that are are greater than 4-5 people.

As we taper off some of the damage options necro has (and I fully agree with the bleed updates expressed in the patch), I’d like to see some survivability increases coming not from increases our effective healing through siphon and death shroud, but from increasing our mitigation abilities while in DS. This scales well to many sources of incoming damage, while still not being overwhelmingly powerful when in small fights. It might also be nice (and I know Anet has mentioned they were looking into it) if we could receive heals in DS. As it stands, we lose a lot of support from guards, and our own regen and life siphons even, because we cant heal in DS. No other class has two mechanics (shroud and siphon) that so actively work against each other.

To be clear, I’m not asking for “always on” mitigation traits, I’d like some more interesting trait choices with death shroud to allow us this survivability. Something along the lines of “Gain X toughness while in death shroud, lose X power and condition damage”; or “Reduce Condition duration by 20% while in death shroud”. There are a lot of sub-par traits in death magic that could be bent to this purpose (think unholy armor or shrouded removal).

I’d also like to see some condensing of minion traits. In order to make minions really effective, you have to slot a lot of traits. We have extra damage, extra life, lower cooldown, poison explosions, boon removal, and life leech. I’m sure some of these traits are causing the developers issues with balancing minions (“If we increase their health, look what that trait does to their HP! We cant do that with that trait there!”, similar to how you mentioned you have to balance around the 15p crit strikes thief trait), and you simply have to take too many of them to make minions effective. I’d like to see some of them go the way of the dodo or just be merged in with the minions base functionality to make room for more interesting death shroud traits. As minions stand right now, there is no reason to take them without any traits, and the traits are too much of an investment to make unless you’ll go for many of them; making minions an “all or none” proposition; not very interesting for build choices.

Scoobaniec.9561:

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.

PVE buddy. Talking about PVE here. Mobs wont run away from you if you are being rooted and casting 100b.

cesmode.4257:

Scoobaniec.9561:

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.

PVE buddy. Talking about PVE here. Mobs wont run away from you if you are being rooted and casting 100b.

Yep, it is braindead in pve. And useless in pvp.

Can rangers use pets to finish downed players? F1 could be used for attack/finish.

Why not make Hard to Catch a 33% reduction in Cripple, Immobilize, and Chill, with the ability to gain Swiftness or Vigor when Crippled/Immobilized/Chilled on an internal cooldown?

cesmode.4257:

@JonPeters:

Any word as to why Greatsword warriors were left untouched? In PVE, they are handsdown the most powerful class in terms of damage. I very rarely see anything but a greatsword warrior.

I was hoping that there would be some changes to encourage people to consider other classes, builds, weapon loadouts for speedruns. I don’t see that happening since nothing has changed for this class that would bring them down to the level of the rest of the classe.s

Comments?

I for one don’t want the GS to be nerfed, I love big numbers and hate hitting on a super inflated mob for an extensive amount of time. If GS ever gets nerfed, all those GS warrior will find the next best DPS setup and everyone will be running that instead. There won’t be any more diversity. I agree that the warrior reign on PvE is supreme, but it’s PvE, having one class stronger than the other doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the gameplay experience.

Artaz.3819:

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.

I get the same feeling. There response was pretty much a copy paste from the OP. No where in there did I get the impression that our concerns were going to be taken in consideration. I just hope that this isn’t just a knee jerk reaction to all the QQ made by baddies even though that is what it looks like.

Julie Yann.5379:

I agree that the warrior reign on PvE is supreme, but it’s PvE, having one class stronger than the other doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the gameplay experience.

Play the most underrated and unloved power classes in the game in PvE and then say that. As it pertains to PvE the Power Necro has gone ignored for months upon months (6/25 being, perhaps, the only accidental exception). As such, try finding a high-quality dungeon running guild/group that lets you play a Powermancer. Or how ’bout getting kicked from Fractal groups when they see your Necro icon pop up.

Having the Warrior as the end-all-be-all of DPSers in PvE absolutely does have a detrimental effect on PvE gameplay. Given the sorry state of PvE combat (use all the deeps!), any class that can’t measure up to Warrior DPS is ignored.

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Dekk.3459:

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.

I don’t think that any thief doubts that the init natural regen increase is a very nice buff but what i think that what Dekk.3459 ment was about the trait changes and the versatility of combat, not the number of times thieves can spam this or that ability due to having virtually more initiative.

For example, competitive thieves only have 1 single weapon set, the other slot is reserved for the Shortbow, without it there is no mobility and versatility.

Thieves are not allowed to leave home without it. Very rarely you find a thief that does not carry a Shortbow but that thief is probably clueless or simply playing for himself and not for the team, he is hunting and killing random ppl in hotjoins not caring about caping nor wining.

Versatility as in team support besides Shadow refuge reses.
Versatility as in having a decent condi remover without having to use Lyssa Runes.

I remember a few month back you guys say something about merging some traits together and add a few new traits…

Giving Thieves a bit more init regen is good for us no doubt about it, but it adds very little versatility (or I miss to see it).

Also get ready for the tears in the forum about HS spamers, I might be wrong but after buffing init, the next step will be nerfing the dps…

Exactly some people would be just fine not playing a stealthing thief. Problem is there is a very limited amount of smoothly functioning traits and utilities. And after the originally proposed changes other classes have many more build options, where thief feels like its getting more cornered.

Critical Strikes trait line is used primarily for damage, not opportunistic strike. Nerf CS XI and XII and you will kill the class.

If the meta is being pushed to more survivability, then give the thief some freakin survivability. Take away mobility > then give some stunbreakers, condi removal/transfer, boon stripping, stability, protection… survivability. For example, Practiced Tolerance 7% why not 10% like Warrior and Necro traits for power gain? Its not like thief has an outrageous vitality scaling factor.

JonPeters.5630:

Mesmer:
The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things. 1) Bringing up some of the mesmer support traits and condition removal traits. 2) Reduce dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s celerity are what we feel accomplish the second one. Before this change mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points in there to get the Illusion cooldown which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the Mantra traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra mastery to adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.

• Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%.
• Dueling VI – Protected Mantras. Moved to Master Tier. Increase Toughness from 400 to 600.
• Dueling VII – Mantra Mastery. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Chaos 25 – Chaotic Transference. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Chaos I – Chaotic Revival. Reduced cooldown from 35s to 10s.
• Chaos VII – Mirror of Anguish. Reduced cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Inspiration IV – Mender’s Purity. Now removes 2 conditions.
• Inspiration XI – Shattered Conditions. Increased radius from 240 to 600.
• Illusions VI – Illusionary Invigoration. Recharge reduced from 90s to 60s. Moved to Master Tier.
• Illusions VIII – Dazzling Galmours. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Illusions 15 – Shattered Strength – Moved to Grandmaster tier.
• Illusions 25 – Illusionist’s Celerity – Moved to Master tier.

nice changes. But it will be great to add Domination 25 damage bonus increase from 5% to 10%. Mesmer just don’t have enougth damage bonus if you compare it to the other professions.

How come we arn’t getting any answers or feedback on PVE/PVP skill+trait separation?

Several people mentioned it, and You Devs have posted after thier posts while just ignoring it. You could at least give us a general blanket term saying thanks but no thanks so we know where this is heading and not hoping a miracle would happen.

Lastly, why not follow the idea of your first guildwars with a HEAVY pvp centered game and a PVE side that did so well? Instead of just throwing everything into the same pot and calling it done…

Soad.7290:

How come we arn’t getting any answers or feedback on PVE/PVP skill+trait separation?

Several people mentioned it, and You Devs have posted after thier posts while just ignoring it. You could at least give us a general blanket term saying thanks but no thanks so we know where this is heading and not hoping a miracle would happen.

Lastly, why not follow the idea of your first guildwars with a HEAVY pvp centered game and a PVE side that did so well? Instead of just throwing everything into the same pot and calling it done…

Seconded, thirded, etc. I’m fairly surprised the balance effects on PvE have yet to be addressed by any dev.

Phenn.5167:

Julie Yann.5379:

I agree that the warrior reign on PvE is supreme, but it’s PvE, having one class stronger than the other doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the gameplay experience.

Play the most underrated and unloved power classes in the game in PvE and then say that. As it pertains to PvE the Power Necro has gone ignored for months upon months (6/25 being, perhaps, the only accidental exception). As such, try finding a high-quality dungeon running guild/group that lets you play a Powermancer. Or how ’bout getting kicked from Fractal groups when they see your Necro icon pop up.

Having the Warrior as the end-all-be-all of DPSers in PvE absolutely does have a detrimental effect on PvE gameplay. Given the sorry state of PvE combat (use all the deeps!), any class that can’t measure up to Warrior DPS is ignored.

That is more of a community problem caused by elistist than it is a balance problem. I welcome necros in my dungeon runs but will usually limit it to only 1 in the party cause of the way conditions are limited. The are plenty of people who don’t care what class or build you play and that is the way it should be. Just don’t party up with speedrunners.

pretty disappointed in ranger changes. like the idea (make marksmanship line more appealing, but the changes dont do that, not even close). Beastmasters bond is still poor effect (only 3 stacks and short duration might), situational, unreliable and on a very long cooldown. Predator – just a situational cripple on a long cooldown. Neither traits are taken now, neither will be taken after the patch. If you spec in marksmenship you do it for quality traits like spotter, piercing arrows, +10% dmg etc. Biggest problem of this line is incredibly weak minor traits, 3 traits for very very short vulnerability, once per combat. 1 hit at start and after that you get absolutly nothing out of them for the entire fight. By far the weakest trait line in the game, especially amongst power lines.
That also has the effect that you spec in this tree only if you must have a certain major, you waste 1-3 minor traits (and it really is a absolute waste in 99% of the cases) to pick up something, it has to be game-changing trait (like piercing arrows, spotter or +10%dmg), nobody will waste a minor trait to pick up something like beastmasters bond.

This is what needs rework. Either rework it (make it have a cooldown or something and trigger periodicly) or just move the entire line into major traits and have something like beastmasters bond (sucks to spec for this trait but would be great if you picked it up as bonus while going for some major), keen edge and steady focus as minor traits. Now that would make this line more appealing.

I know that rework of 3 minor traits in marksman line is way outside the scope of this discussion, but its something to consider for the future. Maybe couple months (a year, maybe for expansion) down the road, there are enough time and resources to rework these 3 traits. That would really really help the ranger class.

Spirit traits reshuffle is a decent change but comes with 33% reduction in dmg they do. Mighty swap change is ok.

Other trait changes suffer the same problem, too weak before the change, too weak after the change. Ranger pretty much has to take emphatic in pvp so bark skin will see no significant play. Greatsword is a very weak weapon (least damaging melee weapon in the game?), it needs to do dmg on auto attack to be worth it outside of occasional swap for block and mobility so the trait doesnt really do much (and rangers have good uptime on fury anyway), at least make it give some might or up to +10%.

So to sum it up: lots of changes but not really anything that will be used by players. No new builds, no new viable trait options, no changes to weapons, nothing new for pets. And i think spirits where overnerfed, last patch took care of OP talk, another 33% reduction in offensive output was not really needed.

Other classes im ok with. Some of those changes are something that will make it into actual gameplay. Not a lot of nerfs (warrior hammers where deserved). Diamond skin is crazy strong though (best trait for pvp in the game, by far), especially on the ele with lots of regen/healing. Dont think its good to have such a hard counter for condition builds, its a guaranteed win against all condition specs and its pretty awesome even against power specs (you are still imune to criples, chills, immobs etc.), its crazy strong in www. heck im a die-hard min/maxer in pve but i would be taking this even in LH dps bulids. sacrifice a bit of dmg just for the comfort of condition immunity.
But ok, shake up the meta for now, conditions have been dominant for a while. Its a rock (pun intended) hard counter to condition classes. You run a condi spec, you loose to ele without a chance to even put up a fight. We will see less condi specs in pvp. Bring some power specs into the mix and get some feedback on what they need. Then by next balance patch in feb/mar, you can rework it to something less overpowered along with power specs update.

Dekk.3459:

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.

Again: it converts an incoming condition, not a pre-existant one. It does nothing to the ones already applied on the engineer. This is actually a nerf in disguise, and few people realize this due of the wording of the trait.
Before it was an 8% defense against any incoming condition. We had no control, but at least it could have worked anytime. Now it a single incoming condition every 15s…and we still have no control upon it. It will stop just the spare bleeding now and then.

I would like to see improvements to Rangers to make them more viable in wvw Zergs. They are and have been considered useless (in zergs) since launch and I’m saying this as a 600 rank Ranger wvwer with 2500 hours on SOR. Spirits get blown up instantly even when traited, as do pets except for maybe drakes and bears who survive a few seconds longer (even with Protection from Guard.) Traps are terrible. Full cleric Shout Regen specs are very meh. And worst of all Rangers are terrible at aoe Damage. Here are some suggestions to make them for viable in zergs:

Bonfire(Torch 5) Make it hit 5 instead of 3 and increase base damage + increase Power scaling

Whirling Defense(Axe 5) Make it hit 5 instead of 3, damage increase

Hunter’s Call (Warhorn 4) Make it hit 5 around the target in a 180 aoe instead of just single target. (5 people would get the current single target effect.) Make it not require LOS like Dragontooth so it could be used to hit siege. Damage increase

Maul (GS2) Make it Hit 5 instead of 3 and make it a Blast Finisher.

Pet Recharge on death should be reduced.

All traps should hit 5 and the base damage and Power scaling should be exponentially increased.

Make Shortbow and Longbow attacks hit 3 max untraited.

F2 skills are currently very unreliable. Pressing F2 should immediately make the pet stop moving and execute the skill instead of sometimes walking a bit, doing nothing, and executing the skill maybe a few seconds later.

Josh Davis.6015:

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers/Necromancers

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!

Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.
I realize that you guys are trying to improve this skill, but while this change buffs the Zerg, it’s a nerf to Guardian themselves. If I’m using it as part of the Zerg then great! It stacks and the Zerg gets more Swiftness longer. If I’m using it for myself I’m either trying to chase a fleeing target to get the kill or flee an incoming Zerg. In either event I certainly don’t want to sit around in my circle waiting for the buff to stack. Which means that for the Guardian you’re about to nerf the duration of this by 50%. So please don’t keep insisting that this change is a buff to Guardians.

Guardian’s highest damage output comes from melee weapons and the problem, at least in WvW, is that our low mobility makes it extremely difficult to keep the target in range long enough to do significant damage to them.

Please read the thread in the Guardian forum where we’ve been discussing these upcoming changes: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-December-Patch-Preview/

Julie Yann.5379:

I agree that the warrior reign on PvP is supreme, but it’s PvP, having one class stronger than the other doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the gameplay experience.

“Fixed” to help my point: I’ve never understood why that argument apparently only applies to PvE but not to PvP. Objectively, the effects of an overpowered class are the same in PvE and PvP: that class will get more usage than other classes.

The effects on the game play experience are same: You have the choice whether you play your favourite class even at the risk of gimping your group or you adapt and play the current favour of the month class as well. In PvE/WvW the second option has a time gate for levelling/gearing that class attached to it, whereas in PvP you can switch freely.

The “PvE balance is unneeded” argument just boils down to “my gamemode is better” which is an opinion, not a fact.

That said, I really like to read arguments why balancing resolves only around PvP from devs.

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection @ master: A fair choice to move up, might need a future buff, but something had to be there.

• Windborne Dagger: Excellent. Useful in some PvE builds or for being too lazy to swap/upkeep swiftness

• Soothing Disruption @ master + Cantrip Mastery @ Adept
  Excellent! Can now get more reasonable CD’s w/o going too deep in water. I might take Cantrip mastery just to use Lightning Flash and (occasionally) mistform more often. Probably not, but this feels like a fair placement to be viable w/o going 3x cantrip. Soothing Disruption is fine if you are heavy cantrip, in which case you want both anyway.

• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits. 10s recharge.
  This is awesome, especially if you want to build a little tankier or cleanse with cleansing water.

Concern: A 0/0/30/20/20 build + Diamond Skin. Those rabid-wearing condi-spammers stand no chance w/ the crits they proc (and this could even be with a bit of damage using a zerk/valk amulet). Please make sure this isn’t OP as I don’t want to be re-nerfed (more of a Diamond Skin problem than this trait though).

Excellent changes. You might have to remove/tweak renewing stamina in the future, which is fine if you do the same for mesmer/guardians. I would consider moving it to air/fire to be honest, and putting something else pretty useful here.

pmnt.4067:

Julie Yann.5379:

I agree that the warrior reign on PvP is supreme, but it’s PvP, having one class stronger than the other doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the gameplay experience.

“Fixed” to help my point: I’ve never understood why that argument apparently only applies to PvE but not to PvP. Objectively, the effects of an overpowered class are the same in PvE and PvP: that class will get more usage than other classes.

The effects on the game play experience are same: You have the choice whether you play your favourite class even at the risk of gimping your group or you adapt and play the current favour of the month class as well. In PvE/WvW the second option has a time gate for levelling/gearing that class attached to it, whereas in PvP you can switch freely.

The “PvE balance is unneeded” argument just boils down to “my gamemode is better” which is an opinion, not a fact.

That said, I really like to read arguments why balancing resolves only around PvP from devs.

In PvP you are not fighting some brainless AI, your are fighting other players and balance is way more crucial. As a company, if I were to alot some limit resources to fix a balance issue, PvP would be it.

Zero Day.2594:

They want to fight, and feel like the fight is fair.

90% of the time in WvW this is simply not true. This is what happens in most 1v1 situations:

A) The aggressor tries to go in for an easy kill, when the opponent proves too much to handle the aggressor just uses whatever utilities to gtfo (stealth, mobility, etc).

B) In a matchup that might be a fair fight, the defender won’t fight unless they are near a sentry, keep portal, or until they bring a buddy to 2v1 the other party.

Most of the time players run in packs that outnumber-gank other players anyway, or mindlessly zerg. WvW is anything but fair fighting.

Manuhell.2759:

Dekk.3459:

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.

Again: it converts an incoming condition, not a pre-existant one. It does nothing to the ones already applied on the engineer. This is actually a nerf in disguise, and few people realize this due of the wording of the trait.
Before it was an 8% defense against any incoming condition. We had no control, but at least it could have worked anytime. Now it a single incoming condition every 15s…and we still have no control upon it. It will stop just the spare bleeding now and then.

Ahh like the 30point trait… gotcha.

JonPeters.5630:

One more update again.

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

ENGINEER
Increased the range of Blunderbuss from 400 to 500. (700 when traited)

So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, no comment on the impact of the non-altered changes on PvE? We PvE Power Necros will just have to live? Anything? Bueller?

Overall
I am glad to see that there are changes being made to how thieves are stacking stealth and how our base initiative regeneration has been increased to help offset the removal of the amount of initiative regeneration from trait lines.

Regarding S/X Mobility
I understand that I shouldn’t be able to port using skill #2 infiltrator’s return (shadow return) if I am stunned since it is not a stun breaker. However, if there is going to be a cast time added on, there should be a balance put in place on initial infiltrator’s strike (IS). I suggest increasing the immobilize duration on IS so that a thief who has not been stunned is not affected as greatly by this change. Before a thief was essentially given an “oh crap” button when they tried to jump into a fight and were immediately stunned. Now, a thief who does the same thing and is not stunned is being punished. I think this will help offset the cast time. In saying that, I don’t think there should be a cast time at all; just make it so the skill can’t be used if stunned.

I saw a comment made on this thread, or another, about teleport stomping with IR/IS using skill #2 as a justification for making this change. I have never been able to do this with s/x equipped. This is only possible using the utility skill Shadowstep/Shadowreturn.

Critical Strikes – Opportunist
Honestly, I never even noticed this minor trait before. While the increase to a 50% chance is nice, I think an increase to kitten cooldown may be a bit much if someone has invested a full 30 points into the CS trait line. Maybe reduce it to a 3s cooldown if a full 30 is invested into Critical Strikes, or possible keep it at 1s, but no more than 3 initiative can be restored every 9 seconds.

Thank you for allowing feedback from the community regarding these upcoming changes.

Guys, guys, guys, you really, REALLY need to rethink this. You comment that you want thieves to be able to get into the fray and stay there, but you then showcase changes that scream “We want you to hit-and-run, and do not one thing else.” C’mon guys, let’s be transparent: Either state that you want the Thief to be hit-and-run only, or repeal or rethink these changes you are planning.

I’ve run the few numbers, and for my build, factoring in the opportunist nerf and base initiative regeneration buff, the much maligned and rarely used Pistol/Pistol (by the by, what’s with all the hate on non-magical weapons, ANET?) is pretty much going to lose 68% of it’s effectiveness. 68%! And I don’t even use stealth!

Please, ANET, I beg of you to either stop the plan of destroying my main, or simply nerf every other class by more then half of their effectiveness. These proposed changes would simply gut my ability to play and enjoy Guild Wars 2, to the point where I am posting in these forums for the second time since I got this game, which highlights he desperate these changes make me feel.

can you show us the numbers you ran to get tho the 68% loss of effectiveness?! I’m curious

Dahkeus.8243:

I thought the falling traits were pretty worthless at first…

…then I started doing jumping puzzles.

Jumping puzzle training wheels. At some point you won’t need it anymore. Once you know the solutions to many of the puzzles a large portion of the challenge goes away.

Jon, Re: Ranger

As a full berserker traits (30/30/5/0/5) and berzerker ascended gear using Greatsword on PVE (On WvW, I use PVT gear instead), the Dec 10th changes will just gonna heavily nerf on my build as a whole.

Problems:

1. Natural Vigor nerf
As full zerk build, the DPS is abysmal compared to other zerk builds (no burst and low DPS). The only thing why I still use the build is due to its high survivability which I strongly feel makes up for the lack of DPS. In short, the survivability of the build will make the Ranger as paper close to zerk Thief/Warrior without upping its DPS.

2. Moving free-dodges on Greatsword auto-attack chain to Swoop
As mentioned in #1, the passive free-dodges on auto-attack gives Ranger high survivability which really makes up for its abysmal melee DPS. This skill is useful and FUN on WvW zergs (I use PVT gear on this aspect). This is really a problem due to the following:
a) The free dodges complements Rangers’ lack of stability and stun breaks.
b) Moving it to Swoop will make the free dodges on demand BUT on a slower cool down and slow casting animation.
c) The new free finisher on GS auto-attack won’t help the build in WvW as using fields on non-moving opponents is non-existent in wvw. You always go mobile while spamming auto-attack chain. The free dodges help the Ranger chance against Crowd Control attacks. And the new finisher won’t trigger as real players don’t stay at fields.

Summary:
PVE
- Survivability of melee GS build = nerfed
- DPS of PVE zerk melee GS build = still low and untouched

WvW
- Survivability of melee GS build = nerfed
- DPS of PVE zerk melee GS build = still low and untouched
- Free GS finisher on fields = real players don’t stay on fields

Disclaimer: I don’t wanna change my playstyle. The condition and Spirit build are already popular enough and I don’t want to jump on that bandwagon. The melee zerk GS build isn’t popular enough due to low DPS but this is the playstyle I like and having fun and want to stick with.

Just wondering if JP could give any insight into why necro blood traits weren’t addressed at all? I know as a guy who has over 1k hours on my necro main I have played condi builds and power builds but have never touched anything in the blood line. At least in the sense I was trying to make a siphon type build. Most of our community see it as the worst trait line by far. And even your own guys have said its just bad. Although the other lines aren’t perfect by far they are in way better shape than blood. Im still kind of befuddled that the last patch made all these tweaks to siphons, scaling ect and it was all seemingly to make then function the exact same way as they did before the patch. I fully get shaving us in certain areas. I actually (like many other in our community) am fine with lower damage. We don’t want to be the emo version of ele’s. But we need sustain and we really don’t get why that is being ignored.

JonPeters

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

Did you even read the thread on the Necro forum for our feedback?

Ranger traits look improved thanks. I’m really excited about enlargement, and the spirits moving trait going down to master is incredible. Since I see some skills being brought up can we work on (or acknowledge) “Guard’s” cast time?

Also Reppin hit the nail on the head with:
“F2 skills are currently very unreliable. Pressing F2 should immediately make the pet stop moving and execute the skill instead of sometimes walking a bit, doing nothing, and executing the skill maybe a few seconds later.”

That would be a perfect solution for AOE pet abilities, offensive or defensive.

Any update on what you guys have discussed about the Scepter for Mesmer?

Have you guys discussed new changes to Signets or Mantras?

looks really good!

I urge people to stick with reasonable suggestions. If you think your build should kill an Ele 100% of the time, then you are wrong. We are not playing rock, paper, scissors. Every class, specced properly and by some common situation, should be able to repeat a win versus any other class. Fix your thinking before trying to fix a balance decision.

@ ChyrosNX.1834

If u want great dps as melee ranger, u should use sword but not GS. Ranger zerker build as sword is a great dps(as good as theif but maybe not as good as worri) but hard to control build (with cat-pet). Which mean the issue of dps of power build ranger is not the problem.

The problem of power ranger is the only way to survive as melee is base on evade . Nerf vigor is really hurt on this .

In range ,ranger (with pets)still the most dps class in range distance (long term dps but not burst dps, ranger is leak of burst dps). But dungeon is not friendly to ranger since lots of boss have bug to stack, or reflect the project weapon. And, pet still dead dead dead in dungeon.

JonPeters.5630:

One more update again.

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

Why?

@ A-net

pay 5 point on trait to dodge per 6.66 s as ranger → nerf

pay 5 point on trait to dodge per 5s as mesmer/guard → fine (as vigor build)

Why?

Regarding the vigor change..

From your Guild Wars 2 Professions page, description on Thieves
“Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style…”

From patch notes
“We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves”
Is there any other kind of thief? We rely on evasion in order to not get stomped after a few hits. If the intention was truly to nerf the “high evasion thieves,” why not adjust it to to “Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s while wielding weapon X.” Hit the build you are aiming for, instead of spreading your collateral to the whole profession.

JonPeters.5630:

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

Is this in addition to it’s previous effect or in replace of it’s old effect? I’d be more likely to use it if it had both. With just that effect, I’m not sure what to make of it.

Speaking as a Guardian who mostly plays PvE, I feel cautiously positive about the Symbol of Swiftness change:

• I like the fact that the effect doesn’t depend on whether I have swiftness from another source, for both practical and principled reasons.
• This makes it more attractive to use in combat, when I’m more likely to benefit from several pulses.
• I also use Writ of Exaltation, so if I time things right I can get two pulses from the same symbol even when running at top speed; thus, the out-of-combat effectiveness should be close to the current version for my build.

I’d like to see a similar principle applied to Temporal Curtain, but I think the only reasonable way to do that involves limiting the effect to once per curtain per player, which I imagine may be difficult for technical reasons.

The Searing Flames change also caught my notice because I recently considered and rejected that trait on the grounds that the cooldown looked too long, so I’m glad you’re reducing it.