Guild Wars 2

I wanted to add the requested Mimic suggestion here.

Mimic

30s CD
Breaks stun
Grants 4s Stability
4 second channel, reflects all ranged, blocks all melee. Counts the total number of hits, or blocks, and multiplies that times X (to a maximum of Y) for a single target ranged dps attack Echo effect post channel.

We lack stability options. Manipulations are ripe for having one. Also this Mimic is a zerg friendly option, while also being useful solo. Also, whatever Mimic is, as a stand alone utility, or in a Manipulation focused build, it has to be on par with Decoy. I think that’s got to be the standard for Mesmer utilities. Is it good enough to replace a stun breaking, 4 second (with PU) stealth, that generates a clone (who tends to waste enemy cd’s), and grants protection/regeneration/aegis (again with PU)?

If you make Mimic as above so that it’s an assured, reliable utility that grants a sorely lacking feature for mesmers, that can be used well in both solo and zerg gameplay, has that fun mesmer x factor (Echo), and is better than the all powerful stealth option, then you’re on to a winner. The current Mimic has great features, it just needs its problems cleaned up.

Talking about the warrior:

I think the “nerf” to hammer and cc dmg is understandable. Although, I feel like as a warrior (in PvE) there are already way too many builds that im better off not using my burst skill. Therefore reducing the damage of burst mastery seems a bit much. I feel like a better option for burst mastery is to leave it as it is and just reduce the damage on the specific cc skills that you want to reduce the damage. For example instead of reducing earthshaker by 20% go 23%. This way it targets the skills that are powerful now and doesn’t hurt the ones that aren’t.

just my 2 cents =)

nicknamenick.2437:

They already compensate some things for other classes..

Zero compensation for warriors.

I don’t see thief compensation, aside from lowering what we are forced to use.

Anywho, warrior is pretty strong atm, not just in pve. They have been getting buffs and changes and new traits so that they can be what they’re supposed to be, brutes. However at the same time it was overlooked how once not so popular builds became incredibly overused, and it wasn’t really diversity as much as saying “use this build, it works!” Balance should be making more viable builds not replacing the old ones with something WAY stronger.

Icarus.3689:

@ 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?

not only mesmers but also guardians and elementalists also have permanent vigor for 5 and 20 trait points respectively. don’t worry though it’s not that bad engineers need to spend 20 trait points to get 5 seconds of vigor every 10 seconds.

I used to dungeon a lot earlier(before cof farming and those 4 beserker warrior+mesmer times). i occasionally dugeon run now as “most” grps wont run without a warrior or gaurd in the grp (making most runs the same old runs with no change in style of runs as a team).

ALL classes- trait effects should supplement and not complement the stat boost they gives and hence reduce min-maxing. Example- power and precision stat trait lines give lesser dmg buff/skill effects.

Elementalists:
1) maybe more love in the earth trait.
2) i am unsure but i dont think there is a nice condition build for eles out there yet Oo.

Mesmers-
2) Shatter builds need player micromanagement-hence- there shud be one support and dps build for shatter builds(best is to change how f1-f4 effects change with trait lines).non shatter builds- shud have lesser support or dps (than shatter builds) since they will need lesser micromangement and more “faceroll” gameplay.

Thieves-
3) less cloaking. if they are allowed to keep thier near constant cloak give them a debuff. Example.. if cloaked more than 5-6 secs they automatically get weakness(50% fumble) and another condition. so that some players who want that long cloak playstyle will have to deal with the conditions that auto proc after long cloaks.
or
Long claoking? – more than 4-5 secs of cloaking.. all conditions put on the target get erased and makes target immune to that individual thieves conditions for 1-2 secs. thieves would then maybe cloak 3-4 secs for battle style.. or longer to escape with thier lives/res teamplayer.

4) give them a less squishy+ less evasive+medium dps + medium support build possibility. Thieves can tank with evasiveness. so tanky thieves are alrdy posisble.. but “effective” semi-support thieves arnt currently viable.

Warriors-
5) players tend to go more dps and “tunnel vision”. Greater tendency among warrior players to except support while they do the work(aka dps). Reduce dps buffing trait effects from trait lines that add to power and precision stats to reduce min-maxing. it is not conducive to gw2’s tactical style of gameplay and is currently producing cookie cutter build requirements by a section of the community (which was not the original intent when traits were introduced by you guys in beta 2 or beta3).

Gaurdians-(maybe baised here.. )

6 months after release… every party now wants a gaurdian. aegis, reflection and passive regens -led to other classes tending to less support or semi support build.. cos hey! a gaurd in party can make up for the lack of team supporting each other while killing mobs.

6) do not buff aegis, reflection and passive regens easily early in trait lines to make players gain buffed regens, aegis early on.

7)plz try to encourage garudains to move during combat more thru changes in trait lines if possible. this maybe more complex and not possible in current feedback. but more mobile utility and weapon skills needed than the current ones which are once more affected by trait lines.

8)1 or 2 semi support builds. With thier current aegis, passive regen and reflections- full support trait builds would make them extremly supportive- making all other trait changes among other classes pointless. when a gaurd can be super supportive there is no need for most of the community to semi support most often- which has led to cookie cutter dpsy builds amongst others. (biased)… i ask for a serious overhaul of gaurdian playstyle especially in the way they support so other classes pick up some support traits too to help the team while all work at killing a mob.

Thank you for asking us for our feedback. sorry for the wall of text.

I implore you, please wait and do not change Soothing Wave in the same patch as the attunement recharge. The change to the recharge system will make condition traits in general much more attractive for elementalists, and because of it’s synergy with so many skills this is already one of the best we have, it will very likely see play if it remains as it is.

At the very least try testing some builds with the existing trait under the new system before deciding to replace it.

I have a quick question regarding the thief initiative change, as it seems to be held onto.

Is the goal to reduce the spamming of skills, or is it to get us away from being dependent on initiative based traits?

From the builds I fiddle with, I usually spend a lot of initiative from just using the skills, not even spamming them. What I have atm are various methods to regain quick initiative if I need. Whether it be swapping to sb and porting out of a Ring of warding, using BPS + HS to recover quickly, headshot to interrupt a heal skill, whatever it may be. If I NEED a quick burst of initiative I can get it. This change seems to direct thieves into holding onto initiative more, and idk if that ALONE is good.

I play thief and warrior quite a lot, and I know of quite a few traits that benefit a warrior for holding onto their adrenaline, both offensive and defensive. Thief has only offensive and the utility of most weapon sets far outweighs the minor traits giving us slightly more dps which btw are expensive to even obtain (25 points). I have no problem with spamming skills, and even thought HS spamming is easy to avoid I think it is rather kitten. On the other hand I see no use in holding onto 50% of my initiative because I’m afraid to spend it and dig myself into a hole I can’t escape.

Necro suggestion :

Please buff staff usability till the addition new weapons. Aoe support to your team(mostly in wvw) is why most of us play necro.
Staff #5 needs longer fear for example.(fear damage can be reduced but we need longer cc) Staff #4 doesn’t help our allies anymore. Staff #2 is mediocre but gets nerfed constantly because other classes get better and better condition removal abilities with every patch. It gets removed before giving even 25% damage in wvw. Our 240 radius trait has been moved to master tier which is a major nerf to the staff. Please make our main role(aoe) viable again. Don’t think for pvp or pve, make seperate changes for wvw please.

Another suggestion for staff is you can add a trait to convert staff’s condition based damage to power-based direct damage. So we can have offensive aoes with power builds too.(except well of suffering) Current staff direct damages are too low to use a staff as powermancer. Nowhere near ele’s meteor shower or lava font. Another option for this is adding a new two-handed and 2x one handed weapons with direct damage based ranged aoe skills. This would both remove dependence of necro to conditions, and amount of condition load of wvw areas and bosses. We really need direct-damage solution for necro aoes.

Umut.5471:

Necro suggestion :

Please buff staff usability till the addition new weapons. Aoe support to your team(mostly in wvw) is why most of us play necro.
Staff #5 needs longer fear for example.(fear damage can be reduced but we need longer cc) Staff #4 doesn’t help our allies anymore. Staff #2 is mediocre but gets nerfed constantly because other classes get better and better condition removal abilities with every patch. It gets removed before giving even 25% damage in wvw. Our 240 radius trait has been moved to master tier which is a major nerf to the staff. Please make our main role(aoe) viable again. Don’t think for pvp or pve, make seperate changes for wvw please.

To be fair, its an aoe bleed/regen and comes back rather quick. I agree that #4 isn’t all that good simply because it’s hard to know if its helping when zergs collide. Its kinda just something you throw in the mess and hope it sorts itself out, which I never really liked. With a fear field I can stop a stomp, with the chill I can slow the backline, with #2 I can dps and see the numbers regen. Idk… maybe its just because I’m still building my necro knowledge up.

As for boosting its DD, I hear many of my guildies pull off impressive numbers with a power necro using staff. These are people who main necro in wvw, so call it blind trust but I’ve seen their ability to play necro. Also staff is quite a support weapon, only reason ele meteor shower does a ton is because ele can’t weapon swap. Fire is their dps on staff, but it’s also EASILY interrupted, and lava front is easily avoided.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I wanted to add the requested Mimic suggestion here.

Mimic

30s CD
Breaks stun
Grants 4s Stability
4 second channel, reflects all ranged, blocks all melee. Counts the total number of hits, or blocks, and multiplies that times X (to a maximum of Y) for a single target ranged dps attack Echo effect post channel.

Personally I think they should completely rework the utility into something new: 90s cooldown, you literally become whatever your target is for 10s (stats, traits, everything except HP). Naturally, you wouldnt be able to transform into bosses/champs/etc, but to preserve the pve utility you can turn yourself into a friendly player.

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.

Look, I’m really trying my hardest here not to post something inflammatory, but what you just said was so incredibly silly and non-sequitur that I don’t even know how to approach this response respectfully. Initiative does not in any way shape or form compare to cooldowns. Thief skills are intentionally balanced on being able to use them consistently and repeatedly, if you were to change other classes weapon abilities to use initiative instead, the game would be so horribly broken. So trying to make a comparison to increasing passive initiative regen to being equal to reducing cooldowns makes no sense.

Also do you and the other devs really not realize that a majority of thieves main source of survivability comes from traits that you are nerfing into the ground. A reduction of 40-50% of all of our sources of vigor is huge to weapon sets that don’t have access to stealth, both in pve and pvp. Any pistol/pistol thief who relies on near permanent vigor uptime from withdraw with vigor on heal is now going to be drastically less survivable. Any sword/pistol thief that relies on keeping pressure on targets through pistol whip and survivability from black powder, and used traits like Opportunist, Signet Use, and Quick Recovery is now going to have less initiative than before, because the nerfs to those traits outweigh the buffs to passive init regen. And if that wasn’t enough, now with a cast time on sword #2, thieves lost one of their main sources of not getting stun locked in pvp.

About the only spec that isn’t going to feel the effects of the majority of these nerfs are dagger/dagger and pistol/dagger builds that don’t play vigor on heal or bountiful theft, which is one hell of a pigeon holed spec for both weapon sets. The outcome of this patch will put thieves at an even worse place than they already are in spvp, make them less survivable and decrease dps of many specs in pve, and make the WvW specs even more pigeon holed then they already were.

Good to see that you folks are revising the changes and keeping us updated. But please, update the original post. It is becoming quite inconvenient to scroll through all these pages to try to piece together the relevant information.

Since I’m not sure if the devs did read this in the ranger forum I’ll post it in here too.

I think that the evade on the Ranger GS autoattack is quite important. As it is now it means around 33% less damage taken. If we lose this the greatsword ranger will be alot squishier as he is now. This is especially true in zerg fights in WvW where the evade is one of the reasons why a ranger can participate in the melee train. If you take this away he will be quite alot weaker in melee zerg fights. And in the overall perception the ranger is already one of the most useless classes in zerg fights and has to fight to find his role and to be accepted.
Removing the dodge would be a rather large nerf especially since in zerg fights there is often lag which means that you can mainly use your autoattack and the evade helped alot.
Having the evade on swoop sounds of course interesting since it could not be interrupted any more. You could also actively use it as an evade in melee range by just swooping at your target which is directly in front of you – but in zerg fights this won’t work since you can’t always target an enemy directly in front of you in the middle of a zerg clash and the swoop CD is alot higher than the autoattack CD for the evade.
Also when fighting for example warriors or thieves in melee range the evade helps alot by mitigating quite some damage and since power rangers need buffs rather than nerfs this change might hit us hard.

Please keep this in mind when you decide about a change to the greatsword. A great and welcome change to the GS would be if you increased the range on GS 5 so that you can also hit a moving target. Otherwise the GS is a quite nice weapon as it is. I think if the damage of GS1 was increased by 10% without removing the evade and if you made the knockdown on GS 4 melee block faster the GS would be fine.

I am very pleased with the engineer changes, but I would like to suggest a change also. Adding kit refinement to activate only in combat, this will allow people in wvw to use their swiftness without burning through the kit refinement when it wasn’t needed. I’ve tried to use it in wvw, but it’s too much of a burden to control that cooldown while trying to catchup/keep up with the group

roamzero.9486:

Ross Biddle.2367:

I wanted to add the requested Mimic suggestion here.

Mimic

30s CD
Breaks stun
Grants 4s Stability
4 second channel, reflects all ranged, blocks all melee. Counts the total number of hits, or blocks, and multiplies that times X (to a maximum of Y) for a single target ranged dps attack Echo effect post channel.

Personally I think they should completely rework the utility into something new: 90s cooldown, you literally become whatever your target is for 10s (stats, traits, everything except HP). Naturally, you wouldnt be able to transform into bosses/champs/etc, but to preserve the pve utility you can turn yourself into a friendly player.

Why would a Mesmer, with traits and skills all surrounding clone generation with which to utilize for damage, conditions, cc, invuln, speed, the works, want to change into a warrior, necro, or ranger? You’d lose all synergy, playstyle, and survivability. If you’d like to test it, make a norn mesmer, pretend you’re targeting a warrior, and transform into one of the beast forms.

CrazyCanuck.4265:

Also do you and the other devs really not realize that a majority of thieves main source of survivability comes from traits that you are nerfing into the ground. A reduction of 40-50% of all of our sources of vigor is huge to weapon sets that don’t have access to stealth, both in pve and pvp. Any pistol/pistol thief who relies on near permanent vigor uptime from withdraw with vigor on heal is now going to be drastically less survivable. Any sword/pistol thief that relies on keeping pressure on targets through pistol whip and survivability from black powder, and used traits like Opportunist, Signet Use, and Quick Recovery is now going to have less initiative than before, because the nerfs to those traits outweigh the buffs to passive init regen. And if that wasn’t enough, now with a cast time on sword #2, thieves lost one of their main sources of not getting stun locked in pvp.

If you paid attention to any other class you would notice nearly every class is receiving nerfs to vigor, and no class will be able to maintain permanent vigor anymore. It’s overpowered across the entire game, dodge was never meant to reach the point where you could use it every 5-6 seconds for the entire length of a fight. And if any class has the least right to complain about the vigor nerfs, it’s thieves, you have more evasion on your weapons and utilities than any other class, and your already-too-spammable weapon evasions are about to receive a 1/3rd buff. You are the only ones apparently receiving anything at all to compensate for these vigor nerfs, be happy, but most of all stop whining.

I think the thief have very low condition remove in the acrobatic traitline, especially underwater, and the “fastest class” could need a little more speed, without to have to use his inis or signets.

So my suggestion for this or one of the next patches is:

Fleet Shadow:

• Remove the Stealth requirement
• Move to master tier

Fleet of Foot:

• New effect: Remove one condition [not only cripple and weakness] from you everytime you dodge. ICD 5 secs
• Move to adept tier

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.

Welcome in the world of thieves

D best.3547:

Icarus.3689:

@ 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?

Not only mesmers but also guardians and elementalists also have permanent vigor for 5 and 20 trait points respectively. don’t worry though it’s not that bad engineers need to spend 20 trait points to get 5 seconds of vigor every 10 seconds.

Do any of those classes require massive clone generation to fuel all their class mechanics? Mesmers generally need clones, and for those mesmers who need a lot of clones then vigor = clone on dodge = class working. Maybe vigor on crit needs to be 15, 15 becomes 25, and 25 then 5, but Mesmers need vigor in their current mechanic. Of course 5 or 15, its all the same as clone on dodge is 20. Vigor isnt about dodging so much as clone generation, so its a package 20 point investment, and its a class crutch currently.

if you call it “balance” patch,compensate S/D thieves with this huge loss.

Conncept.7638:

CrazyCanuck.4265:

Also do you and the other devs really not realize that a majority of thieves main source of survivability comes from traits that you are nerfing into the ground. A reduction of 40-50% of all of our sources of vigor is huge to weapon sets that don’t have access to stealth, both in pve and pvp. Any pistol/pistol thief who relies on near permanent vigor uptime from withdraw with vigor on heal is now going to be drastically less survivable. Any sword/pistol thief that relies on keeping pressure on targets through pistol whip and survivability from black powder, and used traits like Opportunist, Signet Use, and Quick Recovery is now going to have less initiative than before, because the nerfs to those traits outweigh the buffs to passive init regen. And if that wasn’t enough, now with a cast time on sword #2, thieves lost one of their main sources of not getting stun locked in pvp.

If you paid attention to any other class you would notice nearly every class is receiving nerfs to vigor, and no class will be able to maintain permanent vigor anymore. It’s overpowered across the entire game, dodge was never meant to reach the point where you could use it every 5-6 seconds for the entire length of a fight. And if any class has the least right to complain about the vigor nerfs, it’s thieves, you have more evasion on your weapons and utilities than any other class, and your already-too-spammable weapon evasions are about to receive a 1/3rd buff. You are the only ones apparently receiving anything at all to compensate for these vigor nerfs, be happy, stop whining.

I’m not even going to bother responding to the rest of your post. Mesmers and guardians both have access to permanent vigor as a 5 point minor trait. They have had this access since the beginning of the game and this isn’t getting touched, because if it did it would drastically reduce their survivability. Learn anything about other classes before you try calling someone else out on not knowing about other classes. Also, thief is fairly unique on how its main source of survivability comes from evasion, especially on weapon sets that dont have access to stealth, which happens to be 3 of the 7. Thief is the only class in the game that does not have access to aegis, protection, or blocks/invulns.

CrazyCanuck.4265:

Thief is the only class in the game that does not have access to aegis, protection, or blocks/invulns.

I would gladly trade my meager protection uptime and all of Deathshroud to have half your stealth.

I main an engineer, have 1360 hours on him, and these changes are just bad. They nerf nearly every viable engineer build in PvE. No more perma-vigor, no more incinerary powder access for pistol builds. The only build I’m seeing a minor buff to is flamethrower with modified ammunition change.

I’m also not understanding this change to blunderbuss. Rifle is a seriously confused weapon for an engineer. None of its kit meshes together. You have a CC net, a close-range AoE, a blowback that also locks you down, and a displacement.

Extending blunderbuss range makes no sense to me. The only range its actually useful in is melee due to how the damage falls off, and at max range its barely better than just auto attacking.

Engineers need a solid damage-focused weapon. Honestly its a bit overkill how much access we get to knockbacks and immobilizes, but we have little ways of dealing damage in skirmish ranges outside of grenades. Hell, the scope trait shows how disconnected the balance team is from reality. All but the auto attack rifle skills are useless with scope, and the only skill you can you scope with is grenades. But forcing yourself at range to take advantage of this trait leads to a damage loss due to grenades missing.

I don’t understand why people are excited for the power shoe change. Engineers already have several ways for perma-swiftness. The biggest 2 are Elixir B+Medkit stimulant and Kit Swapping. Both of which don’t require you to spec into a horrible trait line.

And inventions is a horrible trait line. Theres 2 foci of this line: turrets and damage reduction. Damage reduction traits are nice in theory, but overall engineer design requires you to give up too much to obtain them. The reliability of alchemy tree simply beats it in this regard. Turrets are still a complete mess; the grandmaster trait for turrets adds less DPS than the 5 point minor trait in firearms. Its absolutely pathetic and I just don’t understand it. Compare it to Physical Training for Warriors. Both Physical spells for a warrior and turrets don’t scale with power, yet Physical training is a master’s trait that buffs the damage by 100% while the grandmaster turret trait is 15%. I know its a bit apples to oranges, but the overall damage of 15% on turrets is just way too low.

There are a lot of issues of the engineer I could get into, but I feel these issues will not be solved until theres a reliable source of damage outside of kits. Until then, our builds will always require us to invest heavily into kit-specific traitlines, limiting build diversity.

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

I d really change this. This is extremely weak and we have too many regen sources if we specced into water.

Disappointing to see that after all of the feedback, ranger gets put on the back burner (yet again).

I mean, there’s understandably more time that gets put into balancing the game out then just a “snap of the fingers,” but the ranger class has been sitting in a very stale and stagnant state for quite a while.

Seeing that the main suggestion every single top ranger has made since last December hasn’t even been followed up on (the fact that Empathic Bond being the only source of viable condition removal is very limiting to build versatility) is just depressing.

It’s very disappointing that the state of the class is basically going to revolve around building for Empathic Bond and then using Spirits to some degree for PvP until next year.

Just overall very unsatisfied with the class I originally chose as my main back in the betas, and the lack of seemingly meaningless progress that has been made thus far.

Well dev team, thanks for, well, it isn’t nothing, it’s just nothing truly meaningful to push the class towards even a semblance of what it would be like to be a finished class.

Send me an email when the Guild Wars 2 beta period is over. I can’t wait to play the finished product.

Balefire.7592:

CrazyCanuck.4265:

Thief is the only class in the game that does not have access to aegis, protection, or blocks/invulns.

I would gladly trade my meager protection uptime and all of Deathshroud to have half your stealth.

I would gladly trade my stealth utilities when I’m running weapon sets like p/p or s/p for getting 3x more toughness and 2x more vitality and 20s of stability from plauge form.

Sina.9208:

1. No mention of ranger sword auto rooting still
Maybe a new skirmishing trait that changes the sword auto’s functionality, causes a loss of leaps & a minor dps boost like 5%, this would fix this weapon for pve & wouldn’t affect the pvp functionality at all.

2. It would be fantastic if the pet received a little dmg boost to compensate for ascended weapons/trinkets. (4-10%)

- About ranger sword auto, if adding a new trait for this is not possible, maybe doing a pve/pvp split (only for this skill) would be a good way to fix it.

- How to make space for the new trait to fix sword auto: move quick draw to marksmanship & fuse it with eagle eye. (this in itself would be a great quality of life change for bow rangers as well)

(name ideas for the new trait: Steady Sword, Exceptional Balance, Careful Swings..)

@Necromancer:

• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

I’d like to resubmit the suggestion to reduce both conditions of this skill by 50% instead of increasing the cooldown. (= 1xbleed, 3sec weakness)

Increasing the icd contradicts what you’re trying to achieve:

JonPeters.5630:

We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements.

…we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud.

When Weakening Shroud is off cooldown the DPS will be exactly the same as it allows for the same bleeding damage and the same duration of weakness as a cover condition.
On the other hand, sustain in Death Shroud will be heavily reduced because damage mitigation by applying weakness to melee attackers will only work every 2nd or 3rd time you enter DS.

In regards to your statement that weakness uptime with this is too high for an adept trait:
It’s not about uptime, but chosing the right moment for damage mitigation. Every necro would gladly have the weakness duration reduced if it meant that the cooldown could stay the same.

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.

It would have been considered a huge buff if there were not other ways to get initiative, ways that you are nerfing.
Even if you consider the opposite it is a huge nerf for builds as p/p.

best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

Hey anet
Happy with the thoughts and reasoning behind the mesmer balances, keep it up!
On another note any news on the scepter auto yet? What are you all leaning towards as a mechanic? Support/interrupt or more power/condition based?

JonPeters.5630:

Ranger:
For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere. We also brought up some Marksmanship and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
• Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
• Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s
• Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
• Nature Magic I – Circle of Life. Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.
• Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
• Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
• Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.
• Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.
• Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
• Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

Hey Jon,

first of all i want to thank you for the opportunity to help you balance the clases of the game we all love.

my topic, as a full time ranger player of course is the ranger. i want to adress traits that are lacking power and are not viable:

Marksmanship:

Opening Strike – add: cannot be blocked
Alpha Training – good as it is
Precise Strike – add: +50% crit dmg <- that will make Remorseless more viable

Skirmishing:

Honed Axes – Add a cool down reduction or a 4th bounce to ricochet. Axe is way to weak as it is now.

Wilderness Survival:

Shared Anquish – the cooldown is way to high. it does proc a single time in a fight and disables 40% of your damage for 2sec + the way the pet has to run back to its target. I would suggest to add stability for 2-3 sec on a 45 – 60 sec cooldown.

Nature Macig:

good as it is

Beastmastery:

Instinctual Bond – “when you are downed” traits are all absolute crap (sry) going down is not an option. instead you need something that prevents going down like: when you reach 20% life, your pets next attack will knock its target down. recharge 30 sec.

Master’s Bond – good as it is. the problem with this trait is that it does reset when you go swimming. change it for something like: 5% of your toughness and 3% of your vitality is transfered as power, precision, toughness and vitality to your pet. with 1800 toughness and 1400 vitality that makes permanent 132 stat points ( now it has 250 at max )

one more thing: axe mh has by far the weakest auto attack of all classes / weapons. in spvp most of the fights are vs 1 enemy. 2/3 of the weapons power is wasted there. why dont you add something like, when the weapon cant bounce to a second and/or third enemy, it bounces back to you and grants a random boon for 2 sec. or simply double the dmg again a single enemy.

i hope i could point out some things that are lacking. the ideas you allready came up with are great and i like them.

cya on the battlefield.

Icarus.3689:

@ 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?

Because Mesmer/guard must actually be in combat and land critical hits to get Vigor. Ranger’s Natural Vigor is an additional permanent dodge boost.

@green plum

Vigor is importance in combat but not out of combat

if we focus on balance it is meanless in ooc.

Changes to Reaper’s Protection and Deadly Strength are good but it still means you have to wade through the constricting Death Magic minor traits (reanimator and protection of the horde) which are useless unless you’re using a minion build. Not to mention a lot of the traits aren’t even worth spending points for.

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 the Guardians SoS is still going to be changed? Even after so many people proved that this change is illogical and there is actualy no reason to change (nerf) it?
You did not even said a single valid reason why it needs nerf :-)

There doesn’t seem to be much love for the engineer right now. It’s like we’re forced to use grenades because of the amount of support, damage, cc ect it has. However I still feel that engineers need the love that necros and ravers got with spirits and minions.

Engineers turrets are terrible.

-turret traits need looking at again and re-vamp. Possible put power wrench into adept also so were not investing 20 just for turret heal?

- turrets do not scale with gear or weapon. It would be nice to see some scaling to gear like power for raw damage, condition for conditions obviously, toughness for better survival and vitality for more health?

- turrets positioning in line of sight is slow. I mean in pvp classes with high mobility moving around all over the place means turrets take even longer to adjust to have line of sight of the target. Make the adjustment time lower?

- currently it’s hard to spec into a turret build and using a toolkit to keep them alive but so being able to do damage with your mainland weapon. Because of course if you’re spending points on turrets and last trait line(can’t remember off the top of my head) you can’t invest much into power or precision trait. Meaning your turrets do little damage and so does your weapon set. ( also I wouldn’t recommend using a wrench in melee for dungeons ect…your just asking for kick in the groin.)

Hope they really look into turrets more either for the 10th December or in near future.

@Arenanet:

It is really difficult to discuss some changes, because I think you have a different view on how the classes should look like, what their stength and weaknesses are etc.
Can you give us just a shot note on every class, how they should look like, what are their strength and weaknesses and in which “role” you see them.

Lets take a warrior as an example, he has high hp, high armor, high HP/s, damage and condition immunity, and still high damage. In early month he had only direct damage immunity and compared with his high armor/health, I would call him anti direct damage class, with condition damage as his weakness, but in the last patches his weak spot was reduced over and over again, making him the class we have now.

The guardian on the other hand, has low health and high armor, condi cleanse and good healing skills. Making him vulnerable burst damage. But constant damage is no problem, because of his healing capabilities.

In my opinion classes should be able to compensate their weakness by a small amount, but with a huge investment into grandmaster traits.

Plyte.8130:

I main an engineer, have 1360 hours on him, and these changes are just bad. They nerf nearly every viable engineer build in PvE. No more perma-vigor, no more incinerary powder access for pistol builds. The only build I’m seeing a minor buff to is flamethrower with modified ammunition change.

There are a lot of issues of the engineer I could get into, but I feel these issues will not be solved until theres a reliable source of damage outside of kits. Until then, our builds will always require us to invest heavily into kit-specific traitlines, limiting build diversity.

This, the point investment is too high just to make one specific kit our main damage one. Grenadier for example is a must have if you want to use grenade, A flamethrower or elixir gun build has to invest heavily in Firearms.

We are the elementalists of science, we use every kit/attunement we have at our disposal to keep our damage and support running so why doesn’t our trait line look like that of an elementalist? They can build around Fire/Earth/Water/Air but end up taking a bit of each for all the sweet damage increases and they don’t have to invest heavily into one line to make a specific attunement worth using.

Right now as engineer, I can’t play grenade without grenadier so in the end I’m stuck with grenades and two unbuffed kits that I use only for one of two skills because I can’t invest points in them. I’m not investing much points in damage increases like the Ele but instead in must-have traits for one specific kit.

My suggestion is give the untraited grenade kit 3 grenades and change grenadier to just 25% more range then move it to Master, that way Grenade kit becomes viable in any build and you can actually build for something else without worrying about having no ranged option, then make Flamethrower or Bombs our main damage kits so there’s more risk/reward playing these than grenades.

We can’t be the jack of all trades if your kit defining traits are at the very end of our traitlines.

And rework that kitten kit refinement trait, it’s completely useless as it is now when it should be the Elemental Attunement of the Engineer.

About the nerf on Vigor, I wouldn’t care as long as you also nerf permanent Vigor on the other classes because Vigor on Crit is a lot easier to achieve than Vigor on kit swap (which already requires to invest 20 points), I actually have to swap my kits when I want Vigor unlike the no-brainer constant Vigor on Crit.

Please make it so the Diamond Skin also works against retallation. Otherwise only 1 aoe and you will drop down 90% in WvW.

you are further breaking DD ele by making arcane V and VI both master tier.

good to see the persecution of dd ele’s remain.

Jon… I do hope you take notice of whats being said here about ele’s arcana and water trait line. Just echoing the many other players, moving elemental attunement and renewing stamina both to master is a huge mistake! those two are pretty core in DD builds and If you think its going to stop people from going into 30 arcana 20 water, well there is even more of a reason to now….

Move one back to adept, and bring cleansing wave back to adept also, that’ll encourage build diversification due to have more points left over to customise our builds. Over than that, great job with the rest if the changes, love em

whyme.3281:

@Arenanet:

It is really difficult to discuss some changes, because I think you have a different view on how the classes should look like, what their stength and weaknesses are etc.
Can you give us just a shot note on every class, how they should look like, what are their strength and weaknesses and in which “role” you see them.

Lets take a warrior as an example, he has high hp, high armor, high HP/s, damage and condition immunity, and still high damage. In early month he had only direct damage immunity and compared with his high armor/health, I would call him anti direct damage class, with condition damage as his weakness, but in the last patches his weak spot was reduced over and over again, making him the class we have now.

The guardian on the other hand, has low health and high armor, condi cleanse and good healing skills. Making him vulnerable burst damage. But constant damage is no problem, because of his healing capabilities.

In my opinion classes should be able to compensate their weakness by a small amount, but with a huge investment into grandmaster traits.

I’ve been asking this for months. I still haven’t a clue what ANet wants the Ranger class to do in this game. It has poor damage, poor ae, poor burst, poor condition coverage, poor condition spread, poor utility, and a pet that doesn’t work. It doesn’t excell at anything and yet no changes are made to improve any of this. We simply get numbers shuffled around and the class defficiencies conntinue to go ignored.

I’ve spent months trying to make a case for power based Rangers and given the comments in this thread I’m clearly misinformed on what a power class needs because I don’t understand how so little can change in a year when ANet acknowledges that power Rangers have problems.

I would love to see what ANet wants each class to do so that way I can stop trying to push forward ideas to resolve the burst and AE problems if it’s intended for the class to not have these things.

+ preview/rationale = A+
- changes are mostly PvP / WvW

+ Thought many, many tweaks heading in right direction
- Vigor for all classes should be left alone for PvE

Thief:
+ thanks for nerfing perma-stealth IoS!
- don’t nerf Vigor – it defines the class

Ele:
+ Making Arcane 30 less mandatory = A
- Don’t move Cleansing Wave out of Adept!

Necro:
+ thanks for toning down their multi-condition vomiting

Guardian:
+ Good try on making a little more offense possible, but you missed
- only 1 CD (fire), so CD builds and buffing CD aren’t gonna do too much
- Why nerf Symbol of Swiftness? They aren’t all that mobile already

Warrior:
+ Making Skull Crack more able to be anticipated = good for skilled opps, but the mace MH was barely useful due to low dps and melee-range only; SC was it’s redeeming feature. If nerfing SC, give something to compensate – more dps, a cripple, a little more range on the newly easy to spot SC, or something – otherwise, dead weapon choice.
- PLEASE rework Tactics minor traits – all 3 revolve around reviving?! Weakest bunch of minor traits in the game. ANYTHING would be better.
+ thx for ignoring critics of Healing Signet – proof of balance? Look at the many Warrior builds – including mine – that don’t even run it (prefer Mending for condition removal)
- I know Hammer will get hammered, but I think ya overdid it. Consider nerfing Unsuspecting Foe to +25% instead of the huge damage decreases. Hammer already does only 2/3 damage of other weapons.

green plum.7514:

Icarus.3689:

@ 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?

Because Mesmer/guard must actually be in combat and land critical hits to get Vigor. Ranger’s Natural Vigor is an additional permanent dodge boost.

And yet Natural Vigor is only half as powerful as Vigor and those classes can maintain perma vigor in combat, where it’s needed. Your point is pretty moot.

I’m sorry if this has been brought up before, (32 pages, wauw).

In regards to the Ranger, could the shortbow get some love? The longbow has been buffed to now surpass the shortbow in almost every way. I still love the shortbow for being the “quick on the feet” bow with it’s fast attacks and utility skills. What made me feel bad about it was not the longbow buffs, but the huge range nerf the shortbow took. You put it from 1200 range to 900 range. That is a lot. 25% of the range, gone.
Now, I don’t neccesarily disagree with this. It’s dumb that the shortbow reached as far as the longbow, given that the longbow was not on strong. But this changed. On medium and far range, the longbow now yields a better DPS than the shortbow. That does not make sense to me. It seems that there is nothing left on the shortbow, and I don’t ever see a fellow ranger with a shortbow anymore. The longbow both have better range and more damage. Could the shortbow get some sort of remedy, or maybe a bit of its original range back? 1000 or 1100 range? Or alternatively nerf the longbow, if that fits better.

Mesmer:

Azathoth.2098:

selan.8354:

idk about the lots of roles. yes in spvp u got shatterer and phantasm builds, but mantra is not really viable due to the speed. u simply dont have thetime to recharge a mantra.
interrupt shutdown is very limited and i have never seen a signet mesmer ever…..

now yes in pve and spvp some of these builds work quite well i agree, but in wvw not at all.

shatterer barely works as the clones die before they actuall shatter, phantasms maybe get 1 attack off, but most of the time the heavy aoe in a zerg kills phantasms without them being able to deal dmg.
mantra…. i sometime use it for stability, but if i do so, i will give up most of my tagging tools. so far my only way to deal dmg are utilities.

wvw mesmers are lacking group dps. i would like to have a build again that deals enough dmg like glamour, that doesent require clones or phantasms.

i only play wvw and only vs zerg. if im on yaks escort duty then yes i could use my spvp build, but if there is a 40man zerg at the keep and the commander decides to push out, all a mesmer does is putting a veil down infront of the gate and then noeone need us anymore. and no i hate playing support builds. in none of the games ive played i ever played a healer or support, so thats not an option at all.

our roles have been taken away in wvw when confusion and immortal mesmer got nerfed to the round.

i would like to move away from the 1v1 stuff. no class in the game should have 1v1 skills only. especially a light armor should have access to viable aoe. and i think the problem is ai. our class sould be less depending on how any clones are alive and phantasms being the main source of our dps…..
AI is terrible in wvw.

I 100% agree with you!

.
.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Hi Jon,

A little clarity on the issues with the scepter auto attack:

1) It’s too slow. The third part of the chain is slower than the other stages. The projectile is slow. The chain doesn’t progress until it the projectile hits. It’s just too slow.
2) The clones are useless. They do nothing but stand there and use a useless attack.
3) By using the auto attack, said clones then overwrite actually useful clones (staff/sword) and worse, phantasms. This means, in a phantasm or staff condi build using the auto attack can often reduce your sustained dps.

I 100% agree with you!

This is one of the reasons I do not use the Scepter.

.
.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I’ll use Chaos Armor for example, it’s an almost Mesmer-exclusive aura that has the potential to be a fantastic control/support ability and yet it’s (the Ethereal + Leap/Blast Combo) always been relatively lackluster…. and then it got nerfed. The bright colors and pulsing orb are great for impressing noobs, but the truth is that Chaos Armor doesn’t offer any kind of safety or damage mitigation on cast; it only offers the chance of getting protection after taking a hit or two. (And even then the odds are stacked against you. Regeneration and to a lesser extent Swiftness offer VERY little possible damage mitigation. 1 stack of confusion is pointless, …

I 100% agree with you!

Mesmer:

Azathoth.2098:

Skills:

• Chaos-Armor:
  Chaos-Armor grants you swiftness.
  As long as Chaos Armor lasts, 50% of the incoming damage is reflected back to the attacker.
  In addition to that, every second you regain 5% of your total health.
  As long as Chaos Armor lasts near enemies will be pushed back.

• Mimic:
  3 Chaos-Orbs appear and clockwise rotate around the Mesmer for up to 5 seconds.
  When hit, each Orb will absorb the incomming damage, and reflecting it back to the attacker.
  Each Orb can reflects back the damage only once, and will be destroyed afterwards.
  As long as at least 1 Orb is active, the Mesmer receives Regeneration.

• Confusing Images -> Chained-Junction:
  A Chaos-Chain links the Mesmer to an opponent for 6 seconds. During this time the opponent suffers x damage per second.
  In addition to that the opponent‘s speed is reduced by 60%, and the Mesmers speed is improved by 30%.
  Every enemy touching the Chaos-Chain also receives damage and gets their speed reduced by 60% for 3 seconds.
  Chained-Junction can not be removed.

I also would love to see some skills like this:

• Teleportation:
  Manipulation
  Teleports you in the direction you are moving (range 900).
  When standing still you teleport backwards.
  Also removes all crowed controll effects.

• Mass-Sleep:
  Manipulation
  Nearby Enemies fall into deep-sleep for 5 seconds.
  The effect also breakes after the enemy suffers damage, equal to 7,5% of his maximum health.

• Chaos-Orb:
  Manipulation
  Summon a Choas-Orb, that shoots up to 10 Chaos-Beams onto enemies within a range of 900. There can be up to 3 Chaos-Orbs at the same time.
  Lasts up to 12 seconds.

• Chaos-Shackle:
  Manipulation
  Applies Chaos-Shackle for 10 seconds.
  Causes movement to deal damage to the affected enemy and to all nearby enemies.This effect can be triggered up to 4 times. Chaos-Shackle can not be removed.

• Chaos-Touch:
  Manipulation
  Applies Chaos-Touch for 10 seconds to an enemy, suffering x damage over 10 seconds.
  Furthermore, Choas-Flashes, like the ones from a Tesla inductor, jump onto opponents within a range of 450, causing damage as well.
  Chaos-Touch can not be removed.

Traits:

• Phantasmal Healing:
  When using GS for example, you will not receive Regeneration, as your Phantasms mostly are to far away from you. So why not change it to this:
  You and your allies are healed by x% of the damage done by your Phantasms.
  Critical hits of your Phantasms grants you and your allies Regeneration for 5 seconds.
  Range 1200

For more Skill-suggestions check out:

Azathoth.2098:

Some very basic ideas for Card-Skills:
This could be weapon-skills; but also utilty-skills.
After these are just some basic ideas I left out the Illusions.
This is just to illustrate some different skills, based on Cards, Card-Techniques and Card-Flourishes!

Have you guys given any thought to redesigning mantras?…

I figured mantras could have no cast. Instead, they passively gain charges up to a max of 2 (or 3 when traited). The player could use the skill as normal and whenever the skill doesn’t have max charges it would automatically begin it’s cooldown to gain a charge and continuously do this until it reaches max charges again. There isn’t anything in the game that works like this currently so mantras functionality would remain unique while also becoming globally useful as well as fun.

Sorry to ask this, but how about you buff warriors off hand sword skills? I didn’t read all 32 pages to be honest and I’m sorry if this was brought up already, but I really really love having two swords equipped on my warrior and I’m playing him as condition damage with rabid gear and right now I got the feeling that skill 4 is really bad and 5th skill is ok-ish in fact sword off hand skills are in my eyes terrible compared to shield/mace/axe. About the trait’s it’s ok I’m gonna adept to it I guess. So yeah any thoughts about changing some weapon skills like those specially those I meantioned above?

JonPeters.5630:

One more update again.

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

Jon, is that the only thing that you are not changing on the Necro? Thanks for not changing this semi-useful signet.

Why does the Necro get such ups and downs…what a roller coaster ride this class is…and not in a fun way.

We have had Withering Precision from day one and over a year later you guys want to nerf it? That makes no sense. This is one of the only abilities that the Necro has that even remotely resembles attrition… DS is a joke when you are getting focused by three or more people…watch that LF drain from your bar before you can blink twice.

What about changing the bleed stacks to poison? That would be a nice variation to all the bleed stacks that the Necro can dish out. Assuming of course that you guys are h3ll bent on making a change to this ability.

Increasing the CD on this is not the answer to helping the necro feel like an attrition class.

should nerf healing signet on warrior instead, its way too OP.