Guild Wars 2

I’m cool with nerfing or buffing classes in a balancing patch, but I have to ask: why on earth did guardians get buffed?

I love that my guard got handed an extra 5% sword dmg free (free because there are no competing traits in that tier) but the dmg seemed great already so why did it get bumped up? Its not like parties were struggling on whether to bring a guard along in a dungeon, lol.

Also, I love that you dropped perma vigor from ranger, thief and engi but not from guard, hee hee.

Necro on the other hand, forget it. It’s already a joke in PvE. Now you’re just whipping an undead horse.

Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. 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.

You want necros to be focused on sustaining themselves but don’t give them the tools to do it. Siphoning health is an absolute joke and the changes made last patch were an absolute waste of your time for putting them in and our time for having to read them and figure out you accomplished absolutely nothing. Deathshroud is good for some extra health but its pretty much a once time use, it honestly doesn’t provide much sustain. What makes things worse is that while in DS we can’t heal or gain any siphoned life. So our sustain is limited to entirely to whatever our DS is at the start of the fight+our life pool, basically not much sustain at all. Increase our siphons to a decent amount and allow us to heal while in DS. Until then we aren’t getting anything in return for our complete lack of mobility, especially when you compare it to warriors who get just about everything with no tradeoffs. As for slowing down opponents, the only reason to slow down an opponent is because you can’t beat them. If you can’t beat the opponent and have no mobility, that means death. The tradeoff of 4s-10s of slowing an enemy down and dieing doesn’t sound like a fair trade when the alternative is not slowing them down and living to fight again.

Mark of Blood- why on earth would you nerf staff and a 33% nerf at that. A condition build already loses tons of damage on the auto-attack that’s slower than molasses and Putrid Mark. Unless they get Terror the reaper’s mark is incredibly poor damage. That leaves Chillblains which is 20s cooldown and only a 6s poison, which lack damage. So the only real source of damage on the staff for condition builds is Mark of blood, which you just nerfed by 33%, it doesn’t make sense at all unless you’re trying to nerf our overall condition damage brought to you by a certain grandmaster trait. Which of course makes the change all the more nonsensical.

Reanimator- For the love of all that is holy just remove this trait. It was never good and it will never be good for most builds. It might be good for minion build so make it a trait you can choose. Literally any other trait can take it’s place and be better. Necro’s told you they hated it when the game released, even when you said it was working right and we had to prove it wasn’t. It doesn’t help in a 1v1 because you don’t get it until you win, doesn’t help much when it is up due to poor AI that plagues all pets, and dies quickly. Unless you plan on removing the health decay and improving AI these things will be sup-par to pretty much any trait we have.

On the whole, STOP being anti-condition. Conditions already do less damage than DD, can be completely removed, and can still be dodged. I see people complaining about condition spam but do they not see the converse of that? Direct damage is spammed all the time and besides Dodge or protection can’t have 90% of their damage negated. If you start putting in “immune to conditions” traits/abilities then you need to make sure you put those in for direct damage as well. Give necromancer the opposing trait to the new Ele’s, Immune to direct damage while above 90% health.

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%.

You were informed IN BETA about initiative traits being far too important. They need completely removed otherwise you will never be able to balance the skills. You’re either going to balance the skills based on base regen, which means they will be OP with more regen or you will balance them with traits in mind making the traits a must have or you’re underpowered. Even now that they are nerfed they will still be used because they are a straight increase to thief dps.

Bring back thief’s 1200 ranged clusterbomb. Every class should have access to a 1200 range attack for WvW and the thief being as squishy as they are can’t fight on the front lines due to a lack of max range attack.

I don’t mind the changes but I think they need to remember they introduced ascended gear when they nerf builds to irrelevance. I think once anet introduces ascended armor they will need to give us a way to trade out the stats in gear when they decide to break a build as getting a new build will no longer be trivial.

[quote=3139555;Raven.9603

Warriors: The problem with Skullcrack was the low cooldown that allows it to set up for burst over and over and over, and not the damage Skullcrack was actually doing.

[/quote]

I disagree. The real problem IS the animation. Overall the mace does terrible dmg on its own.

But now if anet sees a problem with the animation being hard to read are they gonna actually do something about asura?

With this landslide of Thief changes, I’m surprised to see that Last Refuge is still untouched. It’s an extremely problematic trait that gets you killed most of the time. If you intend to punish stealthless builds by gimping the majority of their only forms of survival the least you could do is fix this horrible Shadow Arts trait that makes me hate the entire trait line.

My wvw sword build personally revolves around steal and uses 30 trickery and there’s really no room for acrobatics or shadow arts unless I want to have no damage output whatsoever. With less ini and less vigor I’m getting less survival with nothing to replace it with. I’m not even sure 30 trickery will be possible after the change. There’s also no way to combat conditions outside of Shadow Arts.

I’d really enjoy being able to focus on a steal and shadowstep only build and this would make it much harder to do. Unless the devs can offer advice on a solution this patch would offer, if any devs have ever tried playing this way.

Ranger main-hand damage conditions

Off-hand dagger & torch are great to apply damage conditions. Main-hand options feel extremely power oriented and unviable for a condi spec. Seems a shame when the GW1 ranger was such a no-nonsense condition class.

• Consider a 1s poison on the first swing of the sword auto.

• Consider a 1s bleed on the axe auto.

Ranger main-hand torch

This is a more radical option, but main-hand torch environment weapons with 2 skills already exist.

• Consider similar skills to the environment weapon for skills 1 & 2. Add a suitable damage condition to the auto, i.e. a 20% chance for 1s of burning.

• Bring back Choking Gas in some form for skill 3. I suggest a pbaoe poison field with a 1s daze on creation, making it somewhat related to Chaos Storm.

• All resources necessary are already in-game. Dual-wield torches. Bring it.

I main a thief, and I do agree that thief should be brought down a notch, however…
From what I judge from those changes, Thief is on its way to become hilariously vulnerable to all kinds of conditions. I miss the time before the condition damage/cleanse meta, when these changes could have been made without any fuss.

mini.6018:

hooma.9642:

mini.6018:

Skull crack is a 130 range ability *130 range * .Do you guys know how hard it will be to land that on a moving target with the cast time being doubled? It’s also a single target skill.Something needs to be given in return here or no one ever in their right mind would use mace main hand.Used to be a good counter to thieves for skilled players but now you are turning it into useless again.Better make the stun 2 sec again imo it would be much much much less of a nerf.

You guys say you want more build variety yet you come up with changes like these that instantly kill 3 or 4 builds and 2 weapon choices.Instead you make rifle/gs kind of viable for pve .I’m speechless.

lol.. +1/4 seconds kills a build? 3 secs stun/daze isnt enough reward?

now it requires some skill. ever tried landing final trust?

You must have no ideea what you are talking about.It has 130 range.Basicly it means if you are crippled the target will just walk away out of it’s range while you are casting it.

Don’t give me the final thrust example because it’s really bad..The sword has a leap and immobilizes,cripples and can also be paired with shield for a stun.Seriously you cannot even compare the 2. Mace has nothing of that to help you land it.

To use your example of the sword…how about Mace/Shield….

JonPeters.5630:

Ranger:
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.

• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
  .

Let’s see… Primal Reflexes grants vigour when you’re critically hit: meaning, quite obviously, you need to take a hard hit to the face to be able to dodge more? But if you’ve taken a crit already, another will soon follow if you’re low on endurance.
Then we have Beastmastery X, that grants vigour when a pet is activated. It’s not half-bad, but has a radius of 600 units.
Survival IV, vigorous renewal, only activates on an initial healing effect: that is, it doesn’t activate on the pulses of Healing Spring or Troll’s Ungeant.

Total vigour time: 15 seconds. That’s a lot of vigour… but very defensive in nature and you have to be close to your opponent, which rules out the ranged options.

All of these require you to actively pick them, sacrificing useful or perhaps better traits simply for survivability. The 50% endurance regen from the 5 pointer was amazing for freeing up points and creating a strong character that, while not as insanely dodgey as the troll-specc thieves, could still hold its own. So how about instead you address all this vigour (does anyone ever take Primal Reflexes btw?) instead? We have enough trouble outside of bunker builds to survive anyway, seeing as we got crap condi removal, too much reliance on the pet (kill it already!) and very few defensive weapon skills.

TL:DR: ANet:

Routa.4136:

I main a thief, and I do agree that thief should be brought down a notch, however…
From what I judge from those changes, Thief is on its way to become hilariously vulnerable to all kinds of conditions. I miss the time before the condition damage/cleanse meta, when these changes could have been made without any fuss.

Thief needs changes to condi clearing as well as stuin breaking. Sword #2 no longer stun break, so I see nothing wrong with it. Even from a warrior or ranger stand point, it needs no attention. It’s simply to displace the dps momentarily. Stability does the same thing and thief has NO stability. I’m not suggesting adding it, but work around it. Simply removing class mechanics is no way to balance. You need justification and not simply because you are a dev. What do we get in return out of stun/movement impairment? What do we get out of no survivability? What do we get out of no buffs? We aren’t WoW, we are GW2. BALANCE, don’t make it easy mode in pvp.

I don’t understand the change on Skull Crack.
I see what you are trying to do but it can’t works.
If you want make this skill dodgeable you are doing it wrong because with 1/2s isn’t enought: 0.3s human reflex + 0.1s latency + 0.25s dodge skill= 0.65s. And this is the case you are waiting for that effect.
So if you want that player can manage that skill why don’t you make 3/4s or 1s cast time?
If it was for me i would just reduce the duration of the stun back to 2s (1s/1.5s/2s). If that isn’t good compared to earthshaker i would take down it to 1.33s (0.66s/1.0s/1.33s).

transtemporal.2158:

I’m cool with nerfing or buffing classes in a balancing patch, but I have to ask: why on earth did guardians get buffed?

I love that my guard got handed an extra 5% sword dmg free (free because there are no competing traits in that tier) but the dmg seemed great already so why did it get bumped up? Its not like parties were struggling on whether to bring a guard along in a dungeon, lol.

Also, I love that you dropped perma vigor from ranger, thief and engi but not from guard, hee hee.

Necro on the other hand, forget it. It’s already a joke in PvE. Now you’re just whipping an undead horse.

My opinion is that they wanted increase guard dmg in PVP but they forget a little for PVE here. I play sword guad in PVE and also think that there is no need for DMG buff.
But it would be counterproductive to complain on buff of my character so if they want to do it then OK :-D I just want to be honest and say what i think about it.
But maybe i am wrong and they really think guard need dmg buff for pve :-)
What worries me is staff change. I said why in this threat already .I hope they will reconsider it. Maybe they mean it as buff but actualy it is big nerf for everyone who use staff for faster traveling. And that is probably majority of staff users (i said probably, so i can be wrong. It is just my experience) Guardian already has low mobility, with that change he would have nothing to sustain good mobility. Waiting for full swiftness duration is counterproductive as complaining on buffs :-D

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

…

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier

…

[emphasis added]

Yes! Yes! This is perfect! You took the words out of my mouth! I would have absolutely no grievances with the coming Elementalist changes if this is what happens! Redesigning bad traits to be good instead of shifting them around in a manner that hinders access to the good traits is what needs to be done!

I’m happy that you are toning down vigor and endurance regeneration. This would make this game less random. But i have a some question:
1) Why you don’t make an ICD of 10s to invigorating speed?
2) Why you don’t touch Critical Infusion, Vigorous Precision, Renewing Stamina, Vigourous Focus?
3) Why you don’t touch Sigil of Energy?

I don’t see any change to rune and sigil. Are you planning to change Rune of Lyssa to put more build diversity?

Gilburt.9146:

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

…

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier

…

[emphasis added]

Yes! Yes! This is perfect! You took the words out of my mouth! I would have absolutely no grievances with the coming Elementalist changes if this is what happens! Redesigning bad traits to be good instead of shifting them around in a manner that hinders access to the good traits is what needs to be done!

Don’t limit this thought process to Elementalists. All classes have worthless traits.

Two of my posts:

Warrior

JonathanSharp.7094:

We just posted this:

Keep in mind that we can still change/tweak some of these things, so please don’t freak out. We’d love to hear your feedback! We’re currently playing with these changes and already making some small tweaks as we speak.

Now that you are moving traits around.

About Warrior:
I always wanted to play a 3 physical utility skill Warrior with Stomp, Bulls Charge and Kick. Why don’t you move Physical Training to the Adept line so I can match this trait with Distracting Strikes? Both traits make an awesome sinergy, so I’d would love to be able to take one of the grandmaster traits from the Strengh line along side these two (I’d definetly take Berserker’s Power for ultrastrong Physical utility skills!).

Physical training in the Adept line would also match all the other utility skill improvement traits in the other Adept Warrior lines.

I’d move Short Temper to the Master Line and in addition to its current effect: Your first attack cannot be blocked (30s CD).

What do you think?

Guardian

By the changes, they seem to want full DPS Guardians to play something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlUgqCnGSOEf4ESmiC8AtUIQHU1j45e8QA-TsAg0CtIATBmDMDYSwsgNsYVyuAA

Precast SoW>JI>WW… etc. Instakill, stability/blind stomp and get out.

I honestly don’t like this approach, I expected a heavy armor apparently selfsustainable holy (and shiny!) Warrior with few hard CCs but being one who withstands a battle for a while and wittles you down with fierce but powerful strikes with more slower paced and tactical manouvers; not this insta damage spike getin-getout squishy DPSer, it feels like a thief with no stealth and heavy armor (wtf?). I just don’t like how that feels on a Guardian.

That support GS/Staff build running around is far from a DPS build.

Why did Warriors became all I wanted in a Guardian?

PS: Kindled Zeal is still going to be absolute kitten btw. (lel ~+230 condi. dmg.).

I’m a defense warrior through and through, in full Cleric’s/Giver’s armor. (And I’ve been focused on defense even when we had no sustain and everyone was telling me to reroll guardian so I’m not FotM either.) And seriously my Earthshaker is hitting for 850. I think that’s really weak right now. If it drops to 650 it might just kill the hammer for me.

Is there a reason that there’s no base damage component to the attack skills in this game? I mean, isn’t that how heals work? If the damage modifiers looked like [Base] + [Power] * [Coefficient] instead of just [Power], it would be really easy to keep the damage of power stackers in check while ensuring reasonable base damage to players that are focusing on other stats.

Regarding Engineer, there are quite a lot of people complaining about the IP and perm. vigor nerf. But personally, I really welcome the new changes you guys bring, the new Transmute and Armor Mods are really something I can get excited about.

However, I do think you guys can make some small changes to some of the skills & traits listed below:

Engineer SUGGESTION:
(for PvE/PvP/WvW)

Weapon Skills:

• Blunderbuss – 100 range for increased effect is way too short, even for a shotgun, 180~200 range seems much more like it

Utility Skills:

• Regenerating Mist – 1s of Water Field is way too short, extremely hard to combo (whether with teammate or just user itself); counting the 1/4s cast time, user essentially only has 3/4s to react for the combo, resulting mission-near-impossible. 2s excluding the cast time seems much more appropriated
• Mine Field – Random placement of scattered mine makes it confusing even for the user, some sort of patterned placement should be implemented (ex. user spot is the center point, mines placed in a circle around user)
• All turrets excluding Rifle/Healing Turret - compared to other summon allies in the game, turrets should have larger health pool (by default, not by trait improvement) to compensate the fact that they must and can only remain stationary

Traits:

• Accelerant-Packed Turrets – 120 radius is way too small for this trait to be effective, 180 radius like the Mine would seem to be more appropriated
• Deployable Turrets – good trait that allow turret to be placed on hard to reach spot, but at the same time, this also caused longer CD recharge since the user has no way to retrieve it as well. Purposing a 10%~20% CD reduction effect to be added to this skill when turret is exploded

Re-posting from the elementalist forums.

If Renewing Stamina stays at adept tier, D/D aura (without aura-sharing) elementalists can potentially become slightly stronger than what they are now, because of the buff to tempest defense. It won’t work in PvE, though, because of the lame Defiance mechanic, but fresh air D/D is already fine there.

The problem with the new tempest defense and aura sharing, is that taking both and elemental shielding from earth comes at the cost of renewing stamina. Elemental Attunement is a much, much stronger trait than elemental shielding even in an aura build. For that reason, I can argue that an aura-sharing build today is stronger than an aura-sharing build after the 10 dec patch with the new tempest defense and the master tier elemental attunement. And considering that aura-share eles aren’t exactly top-tier today…

This is important for Anet to consider. Spending 20 points for elemental attunement is a better deal to apply protection to the party than 30 in water and 10 in earth with auras. This, however, would mean sacrificing the new tempest defense, which in turn would mean that aura-share eles wouldn’t get any buff from this patch. Else, an elementalist is probably just better ignoring 30 water and going for a more 1v1 dueling aura build and offering party support with the arcana traitline.

The key here to fix all that is elemental shielding. For an “optimized” aura-sharing build, elementalists won’t be able to ever get Renewing Stamina (30 air, 10 earth, 30 water). This will put them at a situation close to staff eles: good support at the cost of very poor survival. For that reason, I really think Elemental Shielding should be buffed in duration from 3s protection to 5s. :P I’ve already offered several arguments in favor of this buff, so that’s one more.

username.4932:

Disapointing to see Anet asking feedback and doing the exact opposite of the community feedback, they are just spitting in our face.

How the hell do you think gardian community asked for more DPS (everyone asks supports and heal buff) ?

How the hell can’t you read the reports everywhere about healing power stuff being useless and people willing to use it for something really useful ?

What’s the point asking user feedback if you don’t read it ?

This.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9JjnaW3rE

like my friend said, Warriors, better guardians than guardians.

Hane.8695:

Brutalistik.6473:

Hane.8695:

a t s e.9614:

Guys stop QQing , the hammer is still fairly strong with a DPS build . Stop being a little rabbit and running with soldier gear . Learn to use a burst set for god sake .

He is right you just have to run 0/20/30/0/20 not 10/10/20/0/30 and zergers will still work with that you don’t NEED soldiers.

and some of us may not won’t to spec towards that. Keep that in mind..who suffers the most out of it? Not every warrior wants to be burst builds, but also they don’t want to be nerf because of those players who abused it.

I know this and I was just offering an alternative build for after the up date, and it isn’t abuse if it isn’t a bug or hack, it’s use of resources the mez fall trait bug was abuse there is no bug here. And what suffering? If its so bad that they made a small build to change something they didn’t see that you stated don’t affect you why do you care at all. I think you’re just looking for someone to yell at and prove your better then.

I use a hammer weapon, but not this meta build they speak of. That’s why I’m defending the hammer nerf. I’m not looking for someone to yell at and neither would I lead to that assumption. It’ll make me look unprofessional.

Okay i was told that this was the place to lay down my thoughts on classes.
First off i would like to say that i really appreciate Arenanet’s balancing effort. This is a mayor part of gameplay and they do this so good.
Now for my personal experience. I main a Necromancer Called Dark Nemesis. I play Necromancer because i am really attracted to death magic and blood type magic. Whilst playing my Necromancer i found that the Necromancer has a lot of built varieties. I’ve played The Minionmancer. The Glasscannon Necromancer, The Tanky Fearer, but by far my favorite is the Conditionmancer. I love the Damage over time component and it makes for some pretty fun battles. Enemies running away with a few hundred HP left and then still dying to those last 2 ticks of bleed stacks. The only problem i’ve run into with my Necromancer builds is that, from what i experienced and interpreted, Arenanet wants the deathshroud to be the Necromancer’s defence. The idea behind this is fine and i would have done the same. Except for the fact that the deathshroud is too weak to be used in such a way. More often than not am i forced to spec more into damage and kill my opponents before they can kill me because i have no way to get out of the fight once it starts. Necromancers have a movement speed signet, which in combat means almost nothing in my opinion. The trait to run 10% faster for the daggers in my hands are also not worth it because you can get better traits like the healing on well pulse. As for utility skills. you have you signets to help out your team increase your power or help you move little bit faster. i personally dont use any of them except for the passive power signet in my Glasscannon build. Further more we have a stunbreaker with some protection. some life force pool regen skills with swiftness. A pull and chill. Then we have our wells and the minions and some condition skills. ( btw Epedemic and Blood is Power are a must have). What i personally miss in there, if i look at classes like engineer, mesmer, thief, warrior, guardian. They all have some form of gap closer and movement speed increasing skills. Necromancers can only close gaps offensively. So when i’m running away from an ambush in WvW i am relying on swiftness which can be countered by boon removal, chill and cripple. When my enemies most likely will have gap closers and their own swiftness. Now i have heard people saying that i should use my Plague form, The elite skill, to gain stability so they cannot CC me and then cripple them. But if we look at the radius of plague form, we can see that if they are in range for me to cripple them. Then the enemy will also be in range to remove my stability and CC me down. So the way Necromancer stands now is an All-in class. Now i do not say this is bad and you should feel bad, not at all. It is rather great that we have so much offensive AoE capability. The only problem is that if your target(s) run/blink/shadowstep/spin/dash/rush etc. etc. away you will not be able to get back after them, while the other way around you using fears,stability,swiftness,chills and protection. They can easily chase after me and kill me. This is the only problem i am having with necromancer. Now i have been having some ideas on how to fix this and from my perspective there are a few options. These options fit the lore/stereo type abilities for a necromancer. A blood/darkness pool. You set up a pool beneath you, you sink into it and pop up at another location. Just like a Thief’’s shadowstep but then with a cool darkness/blood animation. A change to the Necrotic grasp pull thingy so that it will pull you to its max range if not hit a target ( could do the same for the deathshroud #2 skill). Final Idea, A blink like skill/Dash skill. The necromancer sends out a small swarm of death at a rather fast distance and this can apply bleeds/poison and can be used to either be teleported/pulled towards or dash along with the swarm when you first send it out.

So Arenanet i hope you read this. These are my thoughts on the necromancer. I will never stop playing this class whatever you decide to do with it because it is so epic, just like this game. All i can say is thank you for continuously putting in new things and fixes to make this game even better.
Kind Regards.
-Dark Nemesís

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier.

I’m much happier with these changes than the original ones for these traits. Moving up elemental attunement to master sounds completely fair and due to leaving renewing stamina in the adept tier this change won’t disrupt any of the current D/D and S/D defensive set ups. Leaving Cleansing wave in place and redesigning soothing wave sounds great as well because D/D and S/D really need both that condition removal and Cantrip Mastery. I look forward to seeing what the new soothing wave does.

The idea of Cantrip Mastery being in the adept tier is intriguing as Cantrips are very widely used for their utility and the survivability they grant the player (not to mention their superiority over the alternative utility skills) which is what currently makes it feel absolutely necessary to go 20 into water.

Until they increase the base health of else they will need 20 in water,plus if they move elemental attunement to master 20 in arcane will still be highly desirable.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Don’t limit this thought process to Elementalists. All classes have worthless traits.

Agreed.

Anet please consider leaving weakening shroud to a pvp only change. Necros are not a very desired class to party with in pve and nerfing weakening shroud for the sake of pvp is not helping!

morrolan.9608:

Until they increase the base health of else they will need 20 in water,plus if they move elemental attunement to master 20 in arcane will still be highly desirable.

I’m sure Anet wants arcana to remain a highly desirable traitline, jsut so that they also want other traitlines to be highly desirable as well.

The change to attunement base cooldowns was absolutely needed, but otherwise, arcana should remain a really strong line, and other lines should be brought to be on par.

JonPeters.5630:

I’m back!

Ok I had some time to talk through some of the engineer discussion. Overall Engineer is in a difficult place because they have a ton of good adept traits, not a lot of good master traits, and again a good # of grandmasters so you end up spreading points fairly diversly to get all the good adept traits but lose out on a lot of power by failing to get as many grandmaster traits. Here is what I see a lot of talk about:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

Firearms
We still feel this line is lackluster and in the future some merging and redesigning will take place, but we took the lowest hanging fruit for now. We talked about this line more than any other trait line, but at the end of the day the work and testing required got out of scope for this release. The other spot this line could get a quick pick-me-up is by making at least 2 or 3 of the adept traits in this line good choices.

Invogorating Speed
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.

Master tier traits
Some good suggestions on builds that might open up if we improve some of the master tier traits would be good to see. Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Keep the discussion going and let’s see if we can find some room in those traits to bring those trait lines some more into play.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the engineer sub-forum
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/December-10th-Balance-update/page/2#post3139496

Hey that’s great! Thank you.

I hope you find a similar amount of time to discuss the changes to thief, one of which in particular seems like it will kill one of the 2 PvP viable weapon sets out of 6 (since SB is basically a requirement for second set).

On regard to the engineer vigor “nerf”.
Boost up the now very onedimensional Elixir R.
For example, you could have give it a buff to the engineer, like the one of Kit Refinement, which triggers when endurance hits 50% and buffs Vigor for 5s, or Elixir R gives Vigor on use.
Anyway, this Elixir needs an overhaul, especially the cd, which is way overboard for its effect.

The mobility of the engineer is also my concern, as many things the class can do is targeted via circles, even attacking with the most dpskit, the grenades, which limits the capability in reacting to the situaion a lot, as moving the mouse for the camera or more engaging fights is nearly only possible, when one is in rifle/gun-mode, which doesn’t bring the damage needed to survive.
The loosing of vigor will hurt that aspect even more so.
Giving the greadekit number 1 an autoattack like underwater would give alot off free room to movement.

Having not the burst, nor the sustained damage, loosing (more) mobility will hurt even more.
Needing some good alternatives to bump up damage AND suvivabilty is important.

Additionally:
The most thing that bugs me, is that classes like Ele, Mesmer, Ranger and Engi have lost their distinct features, besides the pet, Flaming Greatsword, TimeWarp or, err Healingturret ?

I know exactly, why i want to bring a Warri, a Guard, a Mesmer (soleily for TW), Ele(depends on context and then only for Frostbow/FGS) or maybe (as a substitute for Warri or to skip via stealth) a Thief.
What would i want an Engi for( or a Ranger, or a Necro) ? Damagewise those classes are only interesting in a zerker-burst-wise played fashion, to bring raw dps.
There is no distinction, like maybe, bringin a Engi, to buff up dmg and conditions for others, to bring a Necro for huge condiremovel/-control, having a Ranger to bring cc in form of offtankpets/kiteabilty or whatever.

Why not a turret, which emits chronomagicalparticles, to give a TW-fashioned partybuff, why not giving steamcreature-pets, wiht different uses, like ranged-dps, tank, suiciedbomber and teambuff, where is my boons-for-everyone-button, which i can provide with more versatility by runing my gear to get even more profit out of it ?

I want. Pls gim’me.

Also, this game is awesome and so good in many ways.
Pls don’t ruin it or let i go to waste.

In the ele buff Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%. This upsets me. Can someone explain to me how one is to get an ele under 90% without help? (when you are full condition) I think it is a bad buff because anyone that is full condition obviously has terrible physical damage and thus has no way of getting the elementalist under 90%. This is honestly the most broken thing I have ever seen, and I feel that Arena net hasn’t thought twice about this buff.

first of all I heard, that some rangers were saying, that this is the first time a patch is good for them.
But I remember in a time, there each second pvp player were a ranger, because beastmaster didn’t need skill, and backlinedefender with trapper was the easiest thing in the world.

with the new 33%initiative regen and the destroying of the s/d builds probably each third player gonna be a d/d hs spamer thief(the bad spamer aren’t the problem, but those thiefs, who are good in d/d and now are able to spam each skill-.-).

some people are complaining about hammer-warrior, because they think there is to much dmg, cc and regeneration,
but lets look at the regen of the sigil:
400 in the most cases, while the active use 3000 is for nothing, because the time u cast it you already got more dmg, so you use it most times just passive(except 1vs1 before stomping). Once your life got low, they stay low
if the warrior now is inflicted by poison on him his reg gets down→ no survivabilty in XvsX

bow dmg:
it’s to high i must admit that, it’s very useful in teamfights,
so it’S ok to be nerfed

Hammer-burst:
without bow there is only the hammer for teamfight, since greatsword is useless.
this one can be made useless by stability, even for a zerker hammer warrior, it’s impossible to take a full life zerker thief with all skills down(most times it comes to 2/5)

Another thing to throw at you devs.

Please start a BETA-SERVER for testing such things out, so u can get REAL feedback, not just assumptions made from people, juggling mindgames of what or not might work for them.

Set up a seperate Server, with the usual overflowsystem, and let people aply feedback similar like in beta.

This would also prevent those bugs, always being shipped with the patches, and would avoid things like the latest mouse-keybinding-bug going live.

With that, real balancing could happen, as people could see, what works or not before it ruins the gamingexperience and the game looses playerbase.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

Then why is it that warriors get an easy 3 condi clear every 7 seconds in a master tree warhorn trait that converts a condition to a boon in a master tree (affects allies as well), yet guards have to go into a GM tree to get a condi to boon conversion and it only does 1!? Just curious….

Question: Why are the class-mechanic changes the Elementalist (and Engineer) so desperately need found to be so out of the question?

We do not have build diversity for two reasons.

One, with every single one of our abilities behind not one but two cooldowns we cannot be sure we’ll have them when we need without out as heavy an investment in cooldown reduction as possible, available only in the arcane tree.

Second, even with attunement recharge placed in other trees we invariably end up with abilities we have neither the appropriate stats nor any traits for, ensuring dead spots no matter how we build our bar. And as our abilities are balanced around their conjuctional use with 15 others rather than 10 or even 5 they are worth significantly less than any other set of weapon skills without traits and abilities.

We need per-attunement recharge reduction and for our traits to apply to a broader set of skills than a single attunement provides.

These changes which have been previewed are going to make the ele stronger, but they are not going to cause more build diversity. If anything we are going to see another surge of one or two Ele builds, possibly OP enough to be followed by another wave of sweeping nerfs, leaving us right back where we started.

I play primarily Ele, have a Thief and Ranger but I don’t really pay attention to them, so I’m not gonna bother with them…
Please keep Diamond Skin, while it seems like a lot of people are saying it’s going to be OP against condition damage builds, I don’t see how it can really hurt that much. Yes if you run 100% condition damage then you just won’t do any damage, but very few builds can run entirely 100% condition damage.
My greatest fear as an ele who focuses primarily on condition damage will be running in to another ele, specced just like me! However even we will have the option to swap into lightning and pound each other down to 90%. I don’t know much about other classes, but I know warriors have plenty of non-condition burst, Necro’s have shadow form (or whatever the class skill is called), Guardians have heavy hitting skills, thieves have backstab, Mesmers have shatters, and I don’t know that ranger’s have much in the way of condition damage (I could be mistaken, and sorry for leaving engi’s I know absolutely nothing about them) so while it could force someone to adapt their playstyle for part of the fight, isn’t that the same thing we do everytime we fight a Mesmer? Instead of just pick and shoot, we have to pick the right thing to shoot.

Dasenthal.6520:

I play primarily Ele, have a Thief and Ranger but I don’t really pay attention to them, so I’m not gonna bother with them…
Please keep Diamond Skin, while it seems like a lot of people are saying it’s going to be OP against condition damage builds, I don’t see how it can really hurt that much. Yes if you run 100% condition damage then you just won’t do any damage, but very few builds can run entirely 100% condition damage.
My greatest fear as an ele who focuses primarily on condition damage will be running in to another ele, specced just like me! However even we will have the option to swap into lightning and pound each other down to 90%. I don’t know much about other classes, but I know warriors have plenty of non-condition burst, Necro’s have shadow form (or whatever the class skill is called), Guardians have heavy hitting skills, thieves have backstab, Mesmers have shatters, and I don’t know that ranger’s have much in the way of condition damage (I could be mistaken, and sorry for leaving engi’s I know absolutely nothing about them) so while it could force someone to adapt their playstyle for part of the fight, isn’t that the same thing we do everytime we fight a Mesmer? Instead of just pick and shoot, we have to pick the right thing to shoot.

Let me spell this out to you. if you are a full condition thief trying to kill this elementalist how do you expect to kill them with your d/d 3 spam build? you cant. Simply because you have absolutely 0 physical dmg. condition immunity is going to make every condition heavy build completely broken against this trait

If you change Symbol of Swiftness like that it will become signficantly less effective for giving us swiftness while on the move. When you are fleeing from a zerg for example. This will only further increase the absolute need for “Retreat” and/or Traveler runes.

I would suggest keeping the 8 second initial burst, while also keeping the 4 second subsequent bursts intanct. Just decrease the number of bursts by 1. Reducing the duration of this symbol will also have the added benefit of making it less likely for a random mob to wander into it, locking you into combat speed.

Or, if you want to force us to use “Retreat”, reduce the cooldown for that skill by 20 seconds at least.

As engi main thank you for clarifying that incendiary powder is a needed NERF. Let me say that explaining Nerfs is an important part of this. I cannot help but agree when it was explained.

What turrets need desperately is a recharge reduction. Accelerant packed turrets would be perfect for that as it could be the choice between building long lasting turrets or turrets you want to detonate. As turrets stand now they are still bugged in many ways (read the wiki and reddit) and are undesirable in the lAte game. Lack of
Recharge reduction is why.

Darnisu.3042:

Dasenthal.6520:

I play primarily Ele, have a Thief and Ranger but I don’t really pay attention to them, so I’m not gonna bother with them…
Please keep Diamond Skin, while it seems like a lot of people are saying it’s going to be OP against condition damage builds, I don’t see how it can really hurt that much. Yes if you run 100% condition damage then you just won’t do any damage, but very few builds can run entirely 100% condition damage.
My greatest fear as an ele who focuses primarily on condition damage will be running in to another ele, specced just like me! However even we will have the option to swap into lightning and pound each other down to 90%. I don’t know much about other classes, but I know warriors have plenty of non-condition burst, Necro’s have shadow form (or whatever the class skill is called), Guardians have heavy hitting skills, thieves have backstab, Mesmers have shatters, and I don’t know that ranger’s have much in the way of condition damage (I could be mistaken, and sorry for leaving engi’s I know absolutely nothing about them) so while it could force someone to adapt their playstyle for part of the fight, isn’t that the same thing we do everytime we fight a Mesmer? Instead of just pick and shoot, we have to pick the right thing to shoot.

Let me spell this out to you. if you are a full condition thief trying to kill this elementalist how do you expect to kill them with your d/d 3 spam build? you cant. Simply because you have absolutely 0 physical dmg. condition immunity is going to make every condition heavy build completely broken against this trait

Not to mention that in terms of spvp you only have a limited choice of amulets, and the amulets more focused on condition damage tend to have either power or precision, not both. In addition to that elementalists have quite a few ways of staying topped off in fights so staying +90% against a condi build wouldn’t be too hard of a feat to accomplish.

There’s two threads on the ranger forums about the 1h sword. I would really like to hear why a change to the auto-attack on this weapon hasn’t been considered or if it has, what it may be. I know you have a lot on your plate, ANet, but it would really mean a lot to the rangers and the want-to-return-to-rangers if you could speak briefly on this.

Minokinz.3564:

Darnisu.3042:

Dasenthal.6520:

I play primarily Ele, have a Thief and Ranger but I don’t really pay attention to them, so I’m not gonna bother with them…
Please keep Diamond Skin, while it seems like a lot of people are saying it’s going to be OP against condition damage builds, I don’t see how it can really hurt that much. Yes if you run 100% condition damage then you just won’t do any damage, but very few builds can run entirely 100% condition damage.
My greatest fear as an ele who focuses primarily on condition damage will be running in to another ele, specced just like me! However even we will have the option to swap into lightning and pound each other down to 90%. I don’t know much about other classes, but I know warriors have plenty of non-condition burst, Necro’s have shadow form (or whatever the class skill is called), Guardians have heavy hitting skills, thieves have backstab, Mesmers have shatters, and I don’t know that ranger’s have much in the way of condition damage (I could be mistaken, and sorry for leaving engi’s I know absolutely nothing about them) so while it could force someone to adapt their playstyle for part of the fight, isn’t that the same thing we do everytime we fight a Mesmer? Instead of just pick and shoot, we have to pick the right thing to shoot.

Let me spell this out to you. if you are a full condition thief trying to kill this elementalist how do you expect to kill them with your d/d 3 spam build? you cant. Simply because you have absolutely 0 physical dmg. condition immunity is going to make every condition heavy build completely broken against this trait

Not to mention that in terms of spvp you only have a limited choice of amulets, and the amulets more focused on condition damage tend to have either power or precision, not both. In addition to that elementalists have quite a few ways of staying topped off in fights so staying +90% against a condi build wouldn’t be too hard of a feat to accomplish.

You, Madame understand how this is going to end. <3

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:

• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.

I feel this is going to be a huge factor. 1s to 5s is a huge gap. I see where you are going with initiative changes but I would say 5s is too long of a wait for that initiative return. Many thieves may not know it but this is where they can regain a ton of initiative if they keep s/b going when not in melee combat.

Please consider changing this to 2-3 seconds!

JonPeters.5630:

General
These are the proposed balance changes for the Dec. 10th build. These changes are not final and are subject to change. We are posting them early so the community can discuss them with us. We wanted to be more transparent with the community about these changes to help expose problems that riskier changes might create.

Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

First Jon i’d like you to know that I have played GW since the first days of GW1 and very much understand the long line of progression, meta shifts, meachanics, and the style of supportive gameplay that you’re looking for with the GW2 system and balances. I have 8 geared 80s and feel i can provide some constructive ideas for how to epen up some build opportuinities and keep them in line with the direction you’re wanting to move while keeping balance in both pvp and pve builds. People who are familiar with GW should know that balances and changes in meta inspire creativity and move the community in a good direction so I will give my insights into the professions in the following posts. Thank you for your consideration.

Kind of curious as to what happened to a post on the thief forum requesting for a live stream of a dev playing a thief (the way a thief is meant to be played).

Mendax.9506:

Some elementalist changes feedback:
The reduced CD on Attunement swap is good, but moving Elemental Attunement to Master tier will make the Arcana the most desirable line again, because EA is one of the best elementalist traits and 90% of eles want to have this trait in any build. Why so? Becacuse it’s the most reliable source of boons for elementalist. Moreover this trait also buffs surrounding allies – it’s really strong and as I said earlier no ele will let it go. This trait got similarities with Mesmer’s trait Deceptive Evasion – they both enchance core mechanics of their classes, making them very strong in EVERY build.
I would suggest reworking this trait completely, and changing #5 or #10 traits in Fire/Air/Earth/Water lines to give respective boons on Attunement swap.

I’m okay with other changes.

If anet don’t change their idea for switching Elemental Attunement to Master tier. I’d tell them to expect more ele player base lose. They want to try and promote ele builds to not need to go that far into arcana, but that little change sets back their idea to even do so. Virtually dead locking every build to have 20 into arcana.

JonPeters.5630:

Gilburt.9146:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Don’t limit this thought process to Elementalists. All classes have worthless traits.

Agreed.

Seconded. I know its terrible for me to admit this but I’d rather do that then pretend. You all are smart you know there are bad traits. This hurts build diversity and is just bad for new players who wont understand the mistakes they are making. It is high on the balance priority list. Just remember that we have limited time and so will make what we think are the most impactful changes first.

Jon

Honest question. How is Confounding Suggestions a “most impactful change?”

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Damaskinos.1263:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

• How is the change to symbol of Swiftness any good? So many classes move much faster then Guardians. If you want to nerf this, give us an Adept trait, that gives us flat 25% movement spead, like Warriors have it.

In many cases the symbol of swiftness change is actually a buff and not a nerf. Currently it will only apply the initial large portion of swiftness if the target does not currently have any swiftness on them. If they have swiftness on them or after that first pulse it will then add 1 second of swiftness per pulse. This is very awkward and clunky.

The change makes the spell apply a consistent 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse without the strange hidden mechanic. Basically. if you already have swiftness on the people which you using the symbol on or if you take the time to stand in the spell for the full duration then it will just be a buff. =)

Any chance of getting a similar treatment for Mesmer focus 4? Temporal Curtain currently gives a LOT of swiftness if you have none (same as symbol) and zero if you have any swiftness at all.

More than once I’ve ran through a curtain and had less than one or two seconds of swiftness and gotten nothing for it.

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

I feel like, at the very least, Diamond Skin should give some sort of visual cue to avoid being detrimental to the builds other condi classes run. Similar to how when a warrior pops Endure Pain, you can see it on their buff bar. This allows classes to respond (i.e: don’t dump your entire burst on a warr who is just going to negate all the damage). Without this small change, Diamond Skin would forever be unpredictable and basically considered OP by the community at large.

I’m loving most of the Ele changes though. I’m also very thankful you guys at Anet are sharing this with the community. Good luck with the fine-tuning!