Guild Wars 2

Reanimator. The lower cooldown won’t make it much more desirable.

It has no synergy with the Death 15, since the minion doesn’t last long, and if you have no other minions Death 15 is also a waste for non-minion specs.

If Death 15 gave 2-3 sec of protection when a minion skill is used or when Reanimator triggers that would be a much better synergy.

Also it would be fun to get the GW1 minion horde back to some extent, if a master trait worked like this (so it is something that needs to be specced into): remove the ICD of Reanimator but only 3 jagged minions can be active at a time.

Overall, I’m liking these changes, particularly the Thief initiative and Warrior hammer alterations. There are a few things I don’t agree with, though.

Warrior
Healing Signet needs to be toned down, plain and simple. Make it scale better with healing power and decrease the base heal. That way it will reward investment without giving completely cheese sustainability for free with no investment.

Necro
Don’t nerf skills that are not the issue. Dhuumfire and Terror are what make the Necromancer too much. Hitting the staff will just further push people to spec into those types of builds and discourage those that don’t run them.

Ele
I understand the changes to Thief vigor up-time due to the high amounts of built-in mobility S/D Thieves already have access to, but this whole “blanket vigor nerf” thing is unnecessary. Certain classes rely more on evasion than others. The Ele doesn’t have a plethora of teleports and stealth options to fall back on, or the inherently higher health/armor and weapon evades like the Ranger. Leave Renewing Stamina where it is.

Anyone who mainly play Elementalist please help.Please give Anet a good reason to not move both Water I and Water V to master tier,just one of them is enough.I’m sorry. English is not my Native Language. :’-(

Great changes!

Though 1 thing I would hope to see changed is:
Mesmer
‘’ Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%. ’’

I’d love to see this trait totally different, which is:
‘’ Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. This trait has a new effect. Makes Mantra of Distraction area of effect with a radius of 300 around the selected target. Dazes up to 5 targets. ’’

The reason I would think this is good, is because mesmer is lacking WvW builds, especially on bigger scale such as raids up to 30man.
Even though mesmer got a lot support, they’re still mainly chosen to be veilbots. While as I would love to see mesmer becoming a much more useful class. Giving the ability to ‘’aoe interrupt’’, will help this concept a lot.

ImProVocateur.5189:

Gorani.7205:

… Although this looks like a buff on paper, it changes nothing for 95% of all Elementalists …

I do not know whether we agree or disagree. It looks like an “ataboy” that reads like a complaint. If old builds are preserved, while new build options emerge, then that is good right? People who go deep in Arcana and love it are scantly affected, I agree.

I am very vocal about Ele issues, and, though I do not agree that Ele has been in a good place since launch, thereby being denied buffs; rather, nerfed, I do congratulate the devs for recognizing one major obstacle to refreshing balance after the many changes. Is it too soon to say I love you guys? Maybe that is too much. I don’t know. I was recently infracted for supposedly having slighted devs. I am not sure what that was about. Maybe sarcasm or something. Anyways, you are working to reestablish trust with the Ele community. Bravo! You have a long way to go.

Respect is earned, not given. They need to not destroy builds just to make new ones viable.

They’re going against what they stated they’re trying to accomplish for the ele by trying to get us out of arcana and water. Keeping arcana and water as they are currently, and then doing every other proposed change to the other trait lines would be a step in the right direction. That would then give us the option to still have some condi cleanse every 13-10 seconds while being able to get out of going so deep I to water and arcana. Letting us use maybe a TD 10/30/20/10/0 or 10/30/20/0/10 or 0/30/30/10/0 or 20/30/10/10/0 for another viable d/d build would be a pretty fun option to try out.

As it sits with what they’re proposing. To keep our boons/dodges(survivability), and condi mitigation… We’re now actually forced to go x/x/x/30/30 just to get both of the now master traits we could before picked up 1 or both with 10-20 in arcana and water. It’s completely backwards.

JonPeters.5630:

• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.

From what it looks like, IR wont work while under hard-cc. And the cast time makes it impossible using it as a dodge against hard CC and attacks with 1/2s and below cast time. I suggest adding cast time to IS instead, creating a time gap which would let the opponent close the gap created by IR, and do exactly as you wish and at the same time not destroying IS>IR. The idea would be to reduce range of IS to 500, make it drop circle, charge for 1/4s or 1/2s and tele-strike, and can be done while moving.

• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

The reductions are too huge here, otherwise, I’d rather see them at 6s and 12s. Simply because 4s or 8s without Feline Grace is really low. And 75% AoE vigor uptime is one of the best supports a thief can bring, and in pvp random dodges often prevents it already.

Thieves already have many anti builds, pistol offhand shatter mesmers, power/condition necromancers, condition engineers, trap rangers and more. Even with my close to 1600 hours played on thief, average to skilled players on these can be hopeless to beat. And I feel the nerfs written above will make it even easier for them along with many others to take me out. I want balance and yet have the means to outplay my opponents.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
• Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
• Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
• Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

• The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
• Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

Seems ok.

• Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.

This change is fine, but I suggest to remove charges from conjured weapons and instead of that give them a shorter duration – like 40/45s (60s on elite) and leave the recharg at 60s. Or even give them a 30s duration, and a 10s boost from this trait. That would be more natural and more useful imo.

• Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

I don’t think that anyone is using this. Fix the healing power and make the support builds more useful at first. I think that precision can play a significant role in ‘healing’ builds. For example you can make a ‘critical heal’ based on critical chance, so the ‘healers’ won’t be able to heal and take little dmg in the same time, because they would be forced to balance their build between toughness and precision.

• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

This one is interesting. I want to see it in action. But what about the Agony? It also won’t be applied?

• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.

Is there a real need to move this? I’m not using it, but also don’t think that it would be abused after update.

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

And these are the changes that I would not like to see. Arcane V and VI – I use both and please don’t make me to decide between supporting team with V or making my character live longer with VI. I know that I can gain Vigor from Water III and cantrips, but it’s not the same – short duration, longer cooldown, and takes all my utility slots to have some Vigor…

Arcane VII – Won’t make me cry less about Arcane VI, because it’s only 50% faster endurance regen, and I’m not always using a scepter. Adept Tier is fine tho.

Arcane VIII – no need to move it to Adept Tier, but it’s fine if you do this.

Arcane IX – really? Don’t move it here. Just make it more useful. Eles have almost perma Swiftness and can run 25% faster with Signet of Air. So I really doubt that anyone is using this trait. For instance you can redesign it to give us Quickness on crit when wielding both daggers. Like 10% chance, 3s duration, 40s cooldown or something like that.
Sorry for my English and mistakes I made, hope it’s readable.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

• The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
• Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

If you’re going to reduce the effectiveness of Arcane, would you not give people a reason to CHOOSE going into arcane? Without offering any bonuses this is a direct nerf for those who CHOOSE to go arcane because it fits their build purpose.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to just lower the cooldown by 5 seconds globally and then keep this new formulae for reduction?

oDe Da Beast.7596:

Cmon.. why everyone crying about healing signet?? if they remove warrior healing signet warrior doesnt have anything after that. and plz anet dont listen most of these pve guys its really annoying. u should ask top pvp player and their opinion too !

• It is too strong. HS is one of the best heals of all classes and cant be interrupted, because it is passive.
• People only want to lower the base hp/s and increase healing power scaling, so with lets say arround 800-1k healing power HS has the same hp/s than it has now with 700-800 healing power. With more it gets even stronger.

Its just the simple fact, that a warrior has to sacrifice nothing to get this heal, he doesnt need healingpower, he doesnt need traits….. risk/reward is not given at all.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.

This has to be the most pointless waste of a trait to even dare to use, now while it may have been very lucky to usefully cleanse 3 condis that perhaps wasn’t a 1-2 second cripple, burn and 1% vulnerability for 5 seconds…it isn’t worth sacrificing a trait that’s actually going to be more reliable, the original trait was useless in it self as anything that has increased condi power/duration as an ele is a complete and total waste, think anet…think.

JonPeters.5630:

• Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.

No real complaints, it’s somewhat useful for PvE only, there’s rarely ever a point where you will sit in pvp and actually use conjured weapons, never mind even using the whole 15 charges without the trait, in PvE it’s main use is using the fire axe to stack might and the hammer for 1 spamming a bosses face off.

JonPeters.5630:

• Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.

As I said with the first quote…why with the increased duration? what is this going to accomplish? ele’s don’t do condi damage worth stating for, so what’s 25% duration going to do?, the old trait for this actually made it worth stating in for, now it’s just killed it and made it a 100% pointless trait if we actually go ahead with this.

JonPeters.5630:

• Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.

So my guess is the idea was to make us spend more in fire for some reason to get the old effect of Fire III and perhaps add more points in fire for no reason other than more damage with more damage…logic, please let us build our characters the way that WE…the players, want.

JonPeters.5630:

• Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

Sure, why not, makes it a lil more viable, though I’ve never really bothered to use it my self.

JonPeters.5630:

• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.

Another skill I’ve never bothered to use due to total randomness on it being used, suppose this actually makes it a viable trait to add in at the very least.

JonPeters.5630:

• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).

No complaints really.

JonPeters.5630:

• Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.

Again with the condi damage/duration stuff, no point Anet, no point, please reconsider bothering with anything like this with an ele, there is no viable build in any competetive play that involves condi damage with an ele, and again, why would there be? other classes can do it better if it’s required.

JonPeters.5630:

• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

Well, kitten , a useful trait out of something that is currently 100% useless!

JonPeters.5630:

• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.

Not to sure on the point of it, it can be neither here or there at times, more often then not you would be stating more into water than 10 anyway if you was going for this skill as a solo choice apart from some very choice builds.

JonPeters.5630:

• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

Not to sure on the point of this either, it just makes adapt in water full of almost useless traits in WvW terms for the most part.

(continued)

JonPeters.5630:

• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.

Having that as a master trait was pointless and generally fightning trying to use falling damage offensively is quite a rare thing to be made generally useful, I still don’t see a reason to use this my self in WvW, whilst the falling damage reduction is nice to have, it’s not worth sacrificing an actual combat worthy trait, and I don’t count the skill depending on what attunement when falling damage occurs to make this trait worth getting, if anything, it should just be replaced with something like Arcane 25 for example.

JonPeters.5630:

• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.

This skill is still useless so why even bother putting it here? all I’m seeing atm is all the traits that are actually required for some builds just getting thrown into masters and the useless skills that rarely anyone took are being put into adept tier, why? what’s the reasoning behind this? this won’t make anyone with even half a brain take this horrible trait still.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.

Master tier? do people actually use this? if there’s one thing I’ll never get, it’s playing the game and planning to go on low health at any given point, I can only really see bad players ever taking this.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.

Can’t complain, though for a forced skill like this to be made useful as a trait, I’d like to think a 60 second cooldown would be more appropriate at the very least.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.

I can see the reason, though I still don’t see a real purpose behind it apart from once again…Anet trying to make people play how they want, with the attunement swapping business, this trait is pretty much also a staple of any ele build and Anet is prepared to just screw that over in 1 move? I really hope not…

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

So as well as Arcane attunement, this is being thrown into master? is Anets idea of “balancing” an ele to just basically nerf the hell out of them or what? it was bad enough before when ride the lightning got hit hard with the nerf bat, yet warriors with sword and greatsword can disengage just as good as eles with RTL could, now this trait is almost a requirement of something like a D/D ele which obviously eles have a very low health pool and defense rating, they need the vigor to actually survive, on top of having Elemental attunement trait, now it’s either pick one or the other…you can’t be serious Anet, do you even play your own game?

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.

Useless skill going here again and not even being changed up, I’m seeing a pattern.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.

An almost required skill for staff eles, I can see why they put this here with the “staff eles need to be better with the support”, so can’t complain with this.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

Another one of those skills where it’s somewhat useful to have, but there’s always better traits to have that’s actually going to be much more useful, and the fact that it only works in combat is quite a fail in it self.

JonPeters.5630:

_The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line…./snip

These changes overall don’t help, most things here are a giant nerf bat to almost every ele build/weapon set here, I really hope most of these don’t make it into the patch…

Lavadiel.6231:

In pvp/wvw builds I tried to go as low as possible in water and arcana, In most of the builds I pick only 10 in both – for watter 5 and arcane 6 traits. After the patch it will be 20 watter and 20 arcana

This pretty much sums things up for me as well. The traits are needed, not optional. Making them harder to get doesn’t make people forget about them all of a sudden.

It will be nice if Warriors can dual wield a greatsword + sword

got to love those balance updates, “finish move” on theif and a good balance to warrior to make sure no1 play hammer build again ^^ , no idea what to play now my favorite builds / classes are balanced to death.

I strongly disagree with vigor changes.
“We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.”
So you remove 50% of vigor from classes that depends on dodge as their defensive mechanic, for some (thief) it is only viable defensive mechanic, but yet you keep almost 100% vigor uptime on two most defensive classes (Warrior and Guardian). Traited warhorn gives up to 13s vigor with 16s CD. And guardian has 5 trait in Honor with 5s of vigor on crit with 5s CD.
Are you trolling us or you have really no clue about what you are doing? Ranger and Engi has some protection and regeneration available so they will be hit hard but still playable (perhaps not as tanks/offtanks) but thief? You keep him nerfing but his survivibility sucked already.
Where is yours “We want every class be able to fullfill each role” so where is tanking thief? or support thief? And don’t bring venomshare it is so bad. You sacrifice 2 traitlines but you lack all defensive capabilities.

Crash.9186:

JonPeters.5630:

• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.

Having that as a master trait was pointless and generally fightning trying to use falling damage offensively is quite a rare thing to be made generally useful, I still don’t see a reason to use this my self in WvW, whilst the falling damage reduction is nice to have, it’s not worth sacrificing an actual combat worthy trait, and I don’t count the skill depending on what attunement when falling damage occurs to make this trait worth getting, if anything, it should just be replaced with something like Arcane 25 for example.

JonPeters.5630:

• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.

This skill is still useless so why even bother putting it here? all I’m seeing atm is all the traits that are actually required for some builds just getting thrown into masters and the useless skills that rarely anyone took are being put into adept tier, why? what’s the reasoning behind this? this won’t make anyone with even half a brain take this horrible trait still.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.

Master tier? do people actually use this? if there’s one thing I’ll never get, it’s playing the game and planning to go on low health at any given point, I can only really see bad players ever taking this.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.

Can’t complain, though for a forced skill like this to be made useful as a trait, I’d like to think a 60 second cooldown would be more appropriate at the very least.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.

I can see the reason, though I still don’t see a real purpose behind it apart from once again…Anet trying to make people play how they want, with the attunement swapping business, this trait is pretty much also a staple of any ele build and Anet is prepared to just screw that over in 1 move? I really hope not…

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

So as well as Arcane attunement, this is being thrown into master? is Anets idea of “balancing” an ele to just basically nerf the hell out of them or what? it was bad enough before when ride the lightning got hit hard with the nerf bat, yet warriors with sword and greatsword can disengage just as good as eles with RTL could, now this trait is almost a requirement of something like a D/D ele which obviously eles have a very low health pool and defense rating, they need the vigor to actually survive, on top of having Elemental attunement trait, now it’s either pick one or the other…you can’t be serious Anet, do you even play your own game?

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.

Useless skill going here again and not even being changed up, I’m seeing a pattern.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.

An almost required skill for staff eles, I can see why they put this here with the “staff eles need to be better with the support”, so can’t complain with this.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

Another one of those skills where it’s somewhat useful to have, but there’s always better traits to have that’s actually going to be much more useful, and the fact that it only works in combat is quite a fail in it self.

JonPeters.5630:

_The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line…./snip

These changes overall don’t help, most things here are a giant nerf bat to almost every ele build/weapon set here, I really hope most of these don’t make it into the patch…

Couldn’t have said it better brotha! The changes would make us rely on water and arcana even more so.

Change cleansing fire trait to be like cleansing wave, but keep the passive of cleansing fire on activation with "x amount " of conditions on you, and change the cd to say,10 seconds. That would free up a lot of points in the water line for those looking for reliable/semi reliable condition mitigation who want to go with a more offensive build.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:…and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water and Arcane by only splashing in 10 points….

• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

You moved the extremely powerful traits to master tier, leaving situational traits in adept tier. I don’t understand how you can say that i can put only 10 points in Arcane or Water. Now i’m forced to put 20 points in to arcana for Elemental Attunement. This is a nerf to ele. And you are forcing a lot of build to put 30 points in to arcana for Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina.
And the only trait that i want in water is Cleansing Wave, that you moved at master.
The only build that have some buff is the Staff one.

I totally agree with the reduction of vigor given by traits. Actually vigor comes mostly from traits. But i don’t understand why you touch some professions while other not. Mesmer Guardian Warrior, and Ele still have their traits that give vigor untouched.

You are making small change for each patch, but if you don’t put a boost on change that you are doing you will take ages to make a lot of build viable for every profession.

I’m curious to see the plans for every professions. What gameplay should they have? How do they make Damage, Control, Support? How can they survive in combat? Which are their weaknesses?
I ask this because you said that warrior should need help from others with condition, thief should not have boons itself but he has to steal to enemies…

Do you guys check the reddit post for this topic as well? I think there is some good discussion there that you should not ignore. Please scroll down to the discussion of the class changes.

Reddit Link

A few thoughts on PvE ele…

I don’t quite understand the point of reworking attunement CD to decrease necessity of spending points into arcane, but then moving fantastic traits up to increase necessity of spending points into arcane… It feels like two contradictory things in the same patch.

Secondly I’ve always felt extremely squshy with scepter/focus and I felt elemental attunement was a must for the protection. And together with cleansing wave It felt like I could be very supportive to my allies without sacrificing too much of the damage. So this feels really harsh to me.

overall i like all the changes from what ive read that is, and thx ffor the early look into the notes!! 2 changes that i question:

engi: Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier. —> so i have to choose between short fuse and this on a grenade kit? all the adept thiers are crap accept for forceful explosives, this limits options for bomb/nade engi. (vigor nerf is fine i guess sinds engi’s are OP in spvp (sarcasm), why does it take an engi 2 traits to get 5 secs vigor every 10 secs and an ele 1 with a 5 sec cd?? thats not balance imo)

thief: Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1. —> really a 100% reduction in effectiveness, this will never be played like that. increasing the CD to maybe 15secs is more fair to the thiefs imo.
well have to wait and see i guess

Make warrior healing signet scale with healing power to gain the full effect .

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Here are some examples of specs I’ve been messing around with:
0/30/10/30/0 (Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, Shared Auras with Cantrips and Dagger/Dagger)
0/0/30/10/30 (Diamond Skin bunker build)
0/30/30/0/10 (Tempest Defense, Diamond Skin, Double Arcane with recharge burst spec)
20/20/0/10/20 (Dps staff build based around sustain from Burning Fire)
0/10/0/30/30 (Generic D/D Arcane build)
0/20/0/20/30 (Generic S/D Burst build)
0/30/0/20/20 (Fresh air build)
Many more..

We thank everyone for their feedback. We are keeping a VERY CLOSE eye on this thread and we will constantly be chatting internally until this release drops for potential things to change.

You gave 7 examples of what you’ve been testing, not counting the unmentioned “many more”. Only 2 builds using less than 10 or less points in Arcana, 5 of which 20 or more. While you may be picking out different traits in each of the lines than what might be considered the “norm”, when i see 20 or 30 in water and or Arcana, i bet you are picking the same traits that everyone always picks. Which means we will still need to spend 40-60 traits buying the same traits we always buy to be “viable”, just like we do now. Just found it funny is all.

I dont need to give the same critque on the purposed changes as others already have, like Treborlavok.3504 did a coupl eposts up. You’ve purposed a couple good Ele trait changes…. 90% of it is so, so bad.

Since i wwon’t critque the traits, these are the things that i think should be added into the patch….

1) Immobilize and blindness should be downgraded to “normal” conditions. With the recent change to immobilize (which stacks in time), it seems everything in WvW and PvE has got people stuck forever in a “stun lock”. Warriors are pretty much the only ones who dont seem to have a problem. Note to Devs when adding new Living story content: Adding mobs that do constant stuns, knockdowns, pulls, immobilizes, etc, isnt challenging or fun. Its super annoying and makes us want to rush through it, finish it, and never revisit it again.

2) The recharge on Ride the Lightning needs to be un-nerfed and changed back to a flat 20 seconds. The old “cantrip bunker” ele’s have been nerfed to be normal on par builds. There are no other skills in the game that i can think of that punishes the player for missing their target or for using it to gain distance and travel. If not change it back to 20 second recharge, why not change all “gap closing” skills just like R.T.L. ? Double their respective recharge times and it they hit with using them, it gets halved. If that sounds stupid, then why is RTL 40 second recharge on a miss? As an example, a warrior with Sword Leap can travel 900 every 8 seconds if he doesnt target something. Thats covers an 1800 range in 16 seconds where an un-nerfed RTL only goes 1200 (yes, the old RTL went 1500 but that was a bug and was fixed, just comparing recharge). Add in the warriors weapon switch to greatsword for another 1200 range dash that recharges in 20 seconds. Seeing as RTL is the Ele’s only gap closer, please revert it.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:
…

• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

Wow. I hope you realize how big that nerf is.

why u guys buffing guardians again they are already to tanky now more dmge i dont know what u guys think but there are to much of this classes in wvw

Would like to see engineer mortar given an overall, it is terrible for an elite skill. Increase range/damage or some novel effects not completely outclassed by grenades. Would like to see toss elixir u become a reflect not an rng skill.

When can we expect condition cap to be addressed? Seems like engineer and necros would be much more viable in pve if their conditions weren’t being overwritten.

Since incendiary powder is being moved up a tier how about bring down napalm specialist? It is pretty underwhelming for a grandmaster trait.

Turrets need some work, the damage dealing turrets are too fragile and don’t do enough damage to be viable. Heal turret and net turret are both decent.

Would like to see healing signet being toned down and forceful greatsword being split into two traits or giving other classes similar dual benefit to traits that reduce cooldowns on skills. The ease that warriors obtain might seems unbalanced.

Just here to say i like the changes but i think one trait that should be added to elementalists in the aracana line is a trait for the focus. one possible idea is to increase the duration of all its abilities by 25%. As currently all the other weapons have traits in that line: blasting staff for the staff, the increased endurance regen on the scepter, and the speed increase on the dagger. Just an idea, and of course it doesn’t need to be what i suggested.

this is so bad…. time to go back to world of warcraft i think…..

Also, there’s another extremely confusing factor here.

Vigor Uptime and Inconsistency

You say you hate classes having access to permanent Vigor, and you’ve decided to go and nerf Engineer and Thief uptime by a substantial amount. Less painful for Engineers, almost flat-out killing Thief completely. But then, these traits still exist:

Critical Infusion: Gain vigor when delivering a critical hit. (5s) 5s cooldown.
Vigorous Precision: Gain vigor when delivering a critical hit. (5s) 5s cooldown.
Renewing Stamina: Gain vigor when you deliver a critical hit. (5s) 5s cooldown.

The elementalist one I can understand (as it’s a Major), but the other two? Cracking down on Vigor uptime and you’re allowing a heavy armor class with tons of defenses and an incredibly versatile class with stealths, invulnerabilities and many other defensive niches maintain permanent Vigor in a power-based build? AS MINOR TRAITS?! Why? If you had any sense of consistency, the first two should at least have 10s cooldowns.

JonPeters.5630:

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

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• 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.

Really excited for the positive changes to damage Guardian builds. I really wish you would add some combo finishers to the 1-hander Guardian weapons. For instance, a small chance for projectile finishers for Scepter 1 and definitely on Torch 4. I like the change to Radiance V, but I think 10 seconds is still too long considering that the trait can proc when your opponent doesn’t have a boon on them currently. Would it be possible to add a conditional check in there or drop the ICD a bit more?

Also, please please please work on the pathing for Torch 4. Such a good skill, but it has some of the worst pathing.

• Fire II – Burning Fire: Not that bad, but going into Fire is still useless in PvP due to lack of survivability from water/arcana and overall bad traits for pvp. You should lower the CD to about 30s and move it to adept tier – this would make it worth spending 10P in fire. Still I like that you’re trying to add defensive traits to fire and air (I’m suggesting this since about 9 months to make GC more viable).
• Fire III – Ember’s Might: Burning is bad in PvE and eles don’t use conditions in PvP anyways. Useless change.
• Fire VIII – Conjurer: From a PvP-Perspective Conjures are still useless. It seems that you don’t get what’s the real reason why people never use conjures. Especially this trait is most useless for PvP – even if you use conjures you’ll just pick them up, use one or two spells and then drop them -> you don’t need extra charges. In PvE this tier-change is useless since you go 25/30 in Fire anyways when using LH-Build.
• Burning Rage 25: Good for PvE, but like said nobody will spec into fire in PvP.
• Air V – Soothing Winds: Hmmm, OK. Still wouldn’t take it. Doesn’t offer much in comparison to other traits. This trait would only be usefull when I’m full GC – and if I run full GC a little healing-power won’t make me survive longer.
• Air XI – Tempest Defense: Still not viable. The procc is random, often you get it when you don’t need it at all (fears for example). Overall Shocking Aura is only usefull for countering 100B-warriors and thieves anyways. The damage-gain is crap since the stun from shocking aura doesn’t last long enough to land a hard hitting spell (since they have too long animations) and you’re disabled too when it proccs. Seems like you haven’t really thought that through. The aura can also easily be avoided due to obvious animation and other CCs that work with the trait have too long CD to make this trait worth picking. It’s still ridiculously weak compared to warriors counterpart.
• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh: Good change, thanks. You’ll have to fix lingering elements though to make this really usefull.
• Earth VII – Strength of Stone: Conditions are bad on Elementalist. Therefore a bad trait, regardless in which tier it is.
• Earth XI – Diamond Skin: QQs from condition-based classes have already begun. Nice trait for bunkering. And I love the fact that we’re maybe no longer free-kills for condition-classes and viable bunkers again. Still earth is a useless traitline for offensive speccs because like said, conditions (and signets) are bad on ele. I also think that this trait sounds better than it really is … 10% HP are gone in no time and after reaching 90% HP this (grandmaster!)-trait is 100% useless.
• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity: Not worth picking, especially because of much stronger alternatives. Overall CD-reduciton-traits are bad on eles (in PvP). Due to constant attunement-switching we’ll never be in the right attunenemt in time to make use of the few seconds which the CD is lower.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave: Major nerf but at least both GC and Bunkers have one viable option left (III and VI).
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement: Useless in PvP, also never used it in WvW. At least it’s in Adept tier now to match simliar spells from other classes.
• Water X – Soothing Wave: Bad trait. Nobody uses Signet of water (have never seen it yet, not even noobs use it). Mist-Form is unviable too since the nerf and frost-bow is .. well a conjure. You should also consider the high CDs of the spells it works with. 75s Mistform, 60s Frostbow and 30s of Signet. This trait is useless, regardless of what tier it is in. Compare it to Elemental Attunement – this can basically give you regen every 10 seconds.

[continued in post 2]

• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution: Random-Proccs are bad, especially on elementalist that has a spammy nature and not much access to burst-spells which would be worth using with that trait/utility.
• Arcane IV – Final Shielding: Good one for GC-builds, especially now that VI and V are gone … But I think that the CD is too high compared to what it does, so I think even GCs won’t pick it.
• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement: Major nerf to both bunkers and GC. Don’t know if you really have thought this one through. It’s THE one trait that keeps eles alive. For sure it’s strong but it’s 100% necessary for all ele-builds -> therefore at least 20P in Arcana are now still mandatory and your 3s CD reduction on Attunements won’t change anything.
• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina: People already mentioned that other classes get this for only 5P. Together with Arcane V moved to master-tier this is a huge nerf. At least leave V in Adept.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter / Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff / Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger: Nice changes … but not really nice when I think of V and VI being moved to master-tier.
• attunement-CD reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds: Very nice but this only compensates the effect of only 10P in arcana now. (16/1,2=13,3s with 10P Arcana). Due to your tier-changes 20P Arcana will still be necessary and like people mentioned Evasive Arcana is too essential for our survival to not pick it.

Summary of what I think you will achieve with those changes (on eles):

• Ele-Bunkers with 30P in Earth (something like 0-0-30-20-20) + QQ from Engis and Necros
• classic D/D bunker might totally vanish … anyways it will be hard for you to find anything else you can nerf on this build so maybe we can now play without fear of further nerfs.
• No other new builds will arise because of following reasons:
  • Fire has no viable traits and we loose too much defense when we spec into it
  • 20P in Water are still necessary for healing ripple and Healing-Power+Vit
  • 20P in Arcana are now absolutely necessary because of traits moved to master-tier
  • 30P air will only be invested for Fresh Air with scepter

You’re not adressing the core problem of eles: Low defense due to worst base-stats and no defensive class-mechanism like stealth, clones, etc and no real niche where we excell and can focus our builds onto. You kept nerfing our defensive tools like boons and mobility and keep nerfing it to such a degree that also GC-builds become worse and worse. Eles will still see no play in tournaments.

I posted this 6 months ago:

Summed up i think Eles are just adapting to the facts given. There are many factors that push us into that kind of playstyle:

• Fire, Air and Earth-Traits are weak compared to Water and Arcana and compared to other classes -> Water/Arcana-Build
• Conjures, Glyphs and Signets are weak compared to Cantrips and compared to other classes -> Cantrips are the only solid option (maybe except Arcane-Spells)
• Staff is weak compared to S/D and D/D, same goes for Focus
• lowest base-HP and base-toughness -> forces players to compensate through defensive spec
• high CD on attunenment-switch -> to use the full potential of all our attunenments 30P in Arcana are necessary (other classes can keep their 10 weapon-skills on CD without having to spend talent-points)
• low synergy on other builds and traits (except cantrips) -> builds all revolve around cantrips
• too many traits that only buff one attunenment -> makes them unappealing since our playstyle involves heavy rotation through attunenments (would like to see more traits that improve specific weapon-sets, like it’s the case with most other classes)
• (Elites are crap, I would totally trade my elite-slot for a fourth “normal” utility-slot)
• 1-spells too weak -> makes Arcana-tree more interesting since low CD on attunenment-switch is important to keep the other spells on CD
• no possibility to adapt to situations where defense is needed because of the lack of weapon-switch (that offers defensive skills or the possiblity to kite at range) -> defensive spec (30P Water, cantrips) is necessary to compensate for this
• unreliable spells (dragons tooth, fire-grab, shatter-stone, …) [ -> the lack of reliable burst (and also single-target-DMG)] makes GC-Builds less attractive -> makes Bunker-Builds more attractive

To get rid of all those bunker-eles you must not nerf water/arcana and cantrips … you have to change the other factors that make us specc into them. Fix these points and there will be other specs.

as you can see you’ve done exactly what I wanted not to happen (nerf defense) and didn’t really adress most of the other points – eles still play defensive speccs or not at all.

Doggie.3184:

Why am I not allowed to survive stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc as a Thief ? :o

Because every class needs a weakness. Necros are just as puzzled they have such a terrible glaring hole in their ability to escape/pursue.

You’ve identified your class’ hole. It’s not going away.

I would love to see the granates off the engineer have an autoattack
only reason im not playing them is the lack off it

XxSaudiDragonxX.3072:

It will be nice if Warriors can dual wield a greatsword + sword

Good Idea, if Thiefs can use the Shortbow + sword together or better dual wield a shortbow + a shortbow

Tyops.5894:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Sepreh.5924:

Hey Jon, just wanted to echo everyone who has already said thank you for the preview and for explaining the reasoning behind some of the changes. Is much appreciated by many of us and a great step towards collaboration

No prob, that’s why we wrote those out for you guys.

We’ll try to do more of that going forward!

Seriously out of all the posts in this thread, this is the one you respond to?

Nothing wrong with that.
1. Show good manner to say for a “thank you” a “you are wolcome”. Act of courtesy, should be common to everyone.
2. All other posts need to be reviewed and the time for that review.
3. At last, you know the Devs are reading this Topic.

“This patch’s goal for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth, Air and Fire lines, while taking away some of the need to go into the Arcane line.”

???!!!! Let me see (sry for my english I’m french !)
- Increasing what ? Many of us use 10 to 30 in Arcane. Not only for speed attunment swith but also and maybe mostly for traits !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! vigor on crit, boon for swith and so one. Now, we must choose between speed attunment switch and traits ? OMG, we were so overpowered ? Really ? Having perma vigor with air fresh build is such an insane advantage for ele ? I just remember you that we are in paper……
-Ok now I have around 10 more points in traits to spend, you really think that I’ll have such an enormous advantage ? It will increase power of water, air, fire , earth line ? It’s a joke. We don’t do much dps and 10 points won’t change anything, we have weak armor and 10 points won’t change anything, and I can go on like that for a while.
- I know that our class is a mix of all the others, we must manage everyhting, running all the time, pressing 1 millions times buttons in 1s but plz don’t make ele even more useless. Give us a role, some specificity, some exellent spells, a real place in the game. We are exellent nowhere and not good in many aspect. Why can’t you find a real place for ele ? Having 20 spells that do not do very good things will never better than 5 good ones. Ele could be heal support, high speed to balance weak armor, king of alterations (that make huge damage of course !), king of damaging aoe with staff………so many possibilities and still nothing decisive.

There you go ANET.You completely destroy 3 weapon sets for warrior in one go and 4 or 5 builds of wich only one was broken OP and you still have people crying.They have no ideea about game mechanics whatsoever but the devs /bow and obey .

Concern of my post: Place of the mesmer in WvW (taking part on large scale battle)

Dear Jon,
I belong to a golden league server in europe (a top one where fights are usully at 40 vs 40).
I will try to present with the discussion I had with all the payers I encounered the concerns of my profession in WvW large scale fights (no roaming discussion here) in regards with the incoming change

A) Context
Several nerfs hit us in the past with two major ones
- Confusion 50% damage nerf & blinding debuflement
- Blurred fenzy becoming an evade rather an invulnerability => taking retal damage on a high risk move (jumping in the zerg / putting the burst and trying to escape until next cooldown) is now suicide against good guilds and puts the shatter bomber mesmer out of really viable option

In top of that we have to add that phatasms cannot survive long enough to become an efficient weapon in big encounters.

As a result, this leads mesmers to feel that their major added value in large scale fight are now only
- Veil: here mesmer remain unique
- Null field: here mesmer feel weaker than necromancer to remove buff

Other mesmer unique abilities are not considered as major added value in large scale fight
- Portal : are now only used for golems transport
- Time warp is good but on very long cool down and on a fixed position while most of fights with current meta are very mobile (warriors – guardians trains)
- Relections: mesmer keep having a good role on this part but it remains very contextual and not a strong strategy against current meta (pain warriors -guardian trains)

It is not a single day where I do not hear that now mesmers are veil bots.
And we all agree that being a veil bot is not fun.

B) My expectations I don’t see in next patch
What I am expecting for next balance patch is to see something that will make mesmer again usefull and asked in large scale fights.
And to be honest I don’t see it.
I saw some love on mantras in last patch:
1) Aoe condi cleansing is a good point
2) Aoe stability is also something really interesting. With the stun break, it makes it really usefull for ourselves. However
-the radius (too low)
-the short duration (2s) without stunbreak for allies make it close to useless for team support
We feel also that mantras cannot really be efficient in large teamfights with such long time of channeling and the never ending interrupts we have to face.

C) Your position
Well in the end, I still feel lost and would like to get your views on mesmer role in WvW.
-do you feel happy with the current mesmer situation ?
If yes
-why a guild (40 players) should take more than one or two mesmer for veil ?

If no what are your plans
-will we see again efficient glamour mesmers in future (by increasing the number of stack of confusion provided on glamour traits)
-will we see shatter bomber mesmer => are you still happy with blured fenzy nerf ?
-will we see efficient aoe range for mesmers ?
-will mantras become more viable and in which way ?

Thanks in advance
<Desesperate mesmer>

if u wanna balance the ele just need to give us more vitality nothing else… if u will confirm this change u will destroy this class on pve… our stenght is like paper, i have also a war and guard, and i feel ele to weak, war and guard is better, with those modify ele will drop down at the end of list of classes…

Guardian:

Kindled Zeal, needs a redesign to make 30 points in Zeal desirable. +50% to spirit weapons doesn’t scale with the guardian’s power. Right-Hand Strength is a better damage increasing trait than any of the GM traits in Zeal. One suggestion is that burning uses the guardian’s power stat instead of their condi dmg. It’s a good way to get around the problem of guardian’s only having one condition, and stacking condi dmg being useless to them.

Mesmer:

Protected Mantras, is poorly designed: the mesmer does nothing while channelling a mantra and this trait is so they don’t get beat up too badly while channelling in combat? Some kind of defensive aura that affect the mesmer and allies in a small radius would be better utility, maybe have different effects depending on the mantra being charged, this would make mantras more fun to play.

Confounding Suggestions, still won’t take it since most mesmer dazes are 1s (except pistol), even adding this new trait and runes of the mesmer and sigil of paralyzation that ends up being 1.5 -1.75s it might work nicely with Diversion and Imbued Diversion, on second thoughts that might make a mesmer shutdown build viable.

Thief:
Assassin’s Reward should be a trait to improve a thief’s sustain when they stay in a fight. If as the notes suggest Assassin’s Reward is going from 0.035 to 0.05, I think more is needed, especially for thieves without much healing power, e.g boost the base healing as well since it is going up to the GM tier.

As a warrior I would suggest to reduce damage from hammer auto-attack Considering it has higher dps then a FULL hundred blades on greatsword, the hammer is a really big cookie cutter and often leads to the death of the Greatsword.

Some nice changes for sure, but there are still some issues on certain sets/etc that seem to continually go unnoticed. There seems to be too much of an emphasis on traits and not enough on skills in general.

Warrior Longbow – The aftercast on Dual Shot is far too long for the skill’s damage. This was corrected on the Ranger’s Long Range Shot a few patches ago but left alone on the Warrior. This makes it difficult to use in a generalized sense and pigeonholes it into only very specialized roles.

Thief Pistol – The damage was lacking (and still kind of is) so the Pistol Mastery trait was buffed a while back, but that was a bad fix. First, 10% damage period is too much for a trait, and second, the buff only works on direct damage so it benefited Unload more than Vital Shot, when it was the opposite that was needed.

Vital Shot has the same problem as Dual Shot- its aftercast seems to be too long for its damage specs. This is particularly a problem with the Thief because of the Initiative mechanic. It creates a gameplay issue where the most effective way to play P/P is constant Unload spamming, which means you have very bad mobility and stay starved of Initiative, getting little to no use of the utility you have. Vital Shot should be a better source of DPS and Unload should receive a slight update to let it be more utilitarian. This has badly needed fixing for a long time.

Elementalist Staff – Air has always felt very weak and is completely overshadowed by Fire. The Chain Lightning doesn’t really feel right as an auto (it should be a high damage single target), and Lightning Surge has too long of a cast time for the damage it deals.

I’m sure there are plenty of other things I have less expertise on, but the above should warrant another look.

On the topic of making people branch out in their Elementalist builds, with less absolute reliance on Arcane, I have two suggestions~

General: It would be nice to see more synergy between the elemental trait lines. Give me obvious, tangible reasons to build 30 Fire & 30 Earth or 30 Air and 30 Earth. Make elemental “pairing” sing. There’s only 6 possible pairs among the 4 elements, go through and deliberately make sure each pair offers something (probably by way of their 25 point minor trait) that has specific utility and application if you have 25+ points in another of the 4 elements. Give us an incentive to break away from the tyranny of Arcane rather than increasing the opportunity cost of Arcane in the hopes that we’ll maybe give up on the cornerstone choices in that line.

Specific: Dump all-aspect recharge% from Arcane entirely. Rather than neutering it down from 60% to 30% for a whole line’s worth of investment, keep the current recharge times and ADD “+50% recharge% for that element only” to each of the 15 point minor traits for each elemental line in addition to their current effects. Do you want fast recharge for Fire attunement? THEN SPEND POINTS INTO FIRE! Splashing 10 is not a commitment. Splashing 15? Cool, you get fast recharge for that Attunement. 15 points is also a low enough number that you could see a “fast-swapping master” built on 15/15/15/15/0 with 10 points left over to mix it up.

But what to replace the class specific boost of arcane with? Make it a stat buff that varies with your attunement! Make it “double down” on the attributes already associated with that element as seen in their trait lines. A fully fire-traited elementalist in Fire Attunement with 30 points in Arcane should get a huge bump to Power and Condition Duration (the Fire line bonus). When he shifts attunement to Earth, that Power and Condition Duration bonus morphs into a Toughness and Condition Damage bonus (The Earth trait-line attributes). Make points into Arcane something that reinforces the flavor and playstyle of your other choices, rather than diluting them.

Less “I want to be a hydromancer, and arcane lets me get away with occasionally swapping through other attunements…”

More “I want to by a hydromancer and arcane lets me stack even more vitality and healing power while in water Attunment, making me a BETTER hydromancer!” With it built-in that being a 15+ point hydromancer means you can get back to that attunement quickly after rotating out to answer some specific need.

JonPeters.5630:

Engineer:

• Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
  ok
• Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%
  very good, tbh. No it’s really more usefull trait. thanks

• Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.
  ok

• Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.
  ok
• Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
  good
• Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. * Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.
  GOOD
• Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.
  BESTkittenupdate!!! Thank u very much for this one, cause before healing power was almost uselless with this trait and took too much, now engis can become good healing battery
• Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
  good
• Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
  thanks for that, good change, now we at least will be able to see it actually
• Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
  it’s ok, little nerf that i don’t mind of
• Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds.
  not the best choice i think…grandmaster trait with so low effect..

1 more suggestion from me.

Increase please healing power scale of trait from
Alchemy IX – Backpack Regenerator, from 5% to 20-25%, it’s a little buff but it will make this trait more usefull. Cause almost any class got some good passive healing accept us. And this little buff will make backpack regen actually not bad passive healling, quit balanced.

One of my mains is an elementalist, mostly support, boon stacking, healing build.
The upcoming changes will destroy this concept, I’m going to keep it short:

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

This is the worst from all, even having 30 points in water
I wont be able to use: Cleansing Wave, Aquamancer’s Alacrity, and Powerful Aura.
Forced to use some filler trait for adept tire which become useless.

Buffing attunment recharge is not going to help anything. Since skills itself wont recharge faster. Having an attunement ready with all the skills on cooldown isn’t going to help any build.

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.

This change going to push eles even deeper in arcana, and again adept tires are just filler
with mostly useless effects.

Please reconsider this changes, its going to kill support builds:
Even tho going 30 pts into water wont let use the full potentiality of the trait lines. Pushing arcana harder buy forcing to invest at least 20 points, yet leave adept level useless.

To be honest, I’m kinda disappointed that swords for guardians are still being completely ignored. Their damage is so minuscule that even a guardian scepter (a ranged weapon) completely out-dps’s it. What’s worse is they don’t even give you any control or utility that’s worth the trade for lower damage output.

I really like some of these changes, but there is something I would like to be, at least, considered in future “skill changes”. Its about engineers Turret skills and mostly its all about the trait that allows you to “throw” turrets.

I have been playing turret blast build (and its insanely strong with rifle, not even saying how extremely fun and rare to see this build is) and I would like to add to “constructive critique” myself. When you use ground-targeting turret skill, the turret skill after being deployed is very hard to time to use. Many times the actual skill you can use after your turret is deployed req. to wait for a full rotation of turret “auto” skill. Thats very… frustrating. Mainly during bigger fights when you are throwing multiple turrets around and need their actuall skill to be executed when you need it to make the skill impactful. Yes, this can be learnd – but it takes a lot of time and practice and even then you misfire turret skills a lot.

It could work differently. In example: when you deploy your turret, pressing its new “on ground” skill will force the turret to actually execute the skill. Yes, I understand that some turrets req. a target to be executed – those I say work all-right. But turrets like Healing Turret or perhaps Thumper Turret seems pointless to req. a target (or its auto-animation to run out…)

I believe that changing this would make turret builds a lot more fancy, adding another potential line for engis to play with. I play with it currently and its mindblowing combat experience.

Thats all, thanks.

~Arty

TL;DR turrets skills you can activate while the turret is on the ground are now bound to either (pointless: Thumper) to enemy in range or finishing a full animation rotation (like Healing Turret). Changing this to be “force execute on skill use” would make turret builds a lot more fancy and balanced.

Butnaked.9287:

Brutalistik.6473:

JonPeters.5630:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Jon I understand this was most likely the reason hammer getting this treatment even though it’s not finalize.

However don’t nerf Earthshaker damage nor Staggering Blow due to the unsuspecting foe bonuses. This will affect builds that isn’t primarily focus in burst damage forcing them to choose another weapon that can fulfill average damage. Losing a CC weapon is one thing, but using a CC weapon doing horrendous damage on it’s burst skill and number # 5 attack on a non zerker build is absurd. This will lead into more frustration in pvp overall on that warrior player and I’m sure we all don’t want that.

I suggest unsuspecting foe is move into the grandmaster tier to those that wishes to be pure burst builds. They will be dangerous but they’ll also be taken down quickly once their endure pain or block duration is gone. They’ll most likely play a build like build 0/30/10/0/30 or 0/30/20/0/20 for some defense though it won’t support them as much.

So please Jon reconsider this thought just not for me, but for all non burst warrior build players. We too have a say in this.

the nerfs are overkill. UF/BM changes will get rid of that meta hammer build while leaving the other builds(ie the hammer support builds) intact.

It will affect all warriors that doesn’t use that meta hammer build. I know that for a fact. The damage reduction is not needed for the 2 hammer skills. Just move the UF tier skill to grandmaster. It’s traits what makes a player’s build powerful.

Here’s how I’m concerned these changes will affect me personally:

Engi: This is my main for PvE and WvW. I can understand the perma-vigor change. TBH, since we can now only have half uptime of vigor, I’ll probably just go 30 into Tools for Adrenal Implant now. And thanks for the Elixer-Infused Bombs change—makes investing in HP more valuable.

Guardian: Finally, Powerful Blades is brought in line with other weapon-based traits. Thank you. And the buff to Supreme Justice is a buff to my PvP build!!

Thief: I put 25 into Acrobatics for Assassin’s Reward for survivability while also getting the damage bonus from GM minor. As a PvE s/p thief, the change to sword #2 will hurt. I don’t use thief in PvP so I can’t speak to why you’re making these changes. I just hope you consider how you’re affecting PvE players when you make significant changes like this.

Ele: Thank you for making Arcane less of a requirement to trait into for the purpose of attunement cd. No thanks for now making me invest 30 in Arcane if I want Elemental Attunement AND Renewing Stamina.

I just want to stress that I hope you consider how changes affect PvE players when you make balances based on PvP.

Necro point of view

1st thing a would like to say the nerfing staff is not the best idea , atm the biegest problem is buring that makes huge amount of dmg .

I like almoust every change except one:
-Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

So basicly u nerf one of our best defensive traits , thats means that our sustain will drop , this trait is fine as it is , the only thing that makes necro able to fight and survive is weaknes , withouyt that necro would be only free kill class , this trait dont effect team fight much , but when some thief,war,ele jump on you u can use it to lower his dps so u will be able to survive some udner presure.

“We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.”

U want to maintain our sustain but at the same time u nerf our defensive trait , lets be honest DS can absorb some amount of dmg but when u are focused by 2-3 dps class even DS wont help you .

Siphoning health realy?? U think 40hp more when we hit something will help us ? And ofc to have that we need to go into blood magic line witch is pretty much usless atm.

Ok next thing :
-Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
-Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
-Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
-Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. -Increase Power from 90 to 120.

So basicly u want to make power necro viable?? Power necro will be never good enough in competetive team , why???
As a mele dps class u need to be able to sutain in the midle of the fight , necro is the only class that dont have any blocks , he cant spam evades , low access to stability/escape skills. Ofc we have DS but even that wont help to much. So basicly with the amoumt of dmg/AOE in game power necro have weak chance to be vaible. Necros mobility is super low so he cant fight on the point cause he have to kite due to lack of sustain in mobility.

Ok and last thing , u want to lower our condi spam what is great idea and i fully agree with that , it will makes necros to watch what/ehen they are casting to be effective. What do u think about changing Reanimator trait ( even after buff this trait is usless ) to " gain 1-2% life force after swaping wepons " or smt simillar .