Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

Every week I prepare a forum report for management.
I’d like to ask for some help with this week’s report, because the January 26th build was huge.

So could you share (or re-share) your top reactions to the build in this thread?

Thanks so much to those of you who choose to post!

The fractal changes are awesome!

Side Note:
I don’t know if it was suppose to have been fix or not but no employee has commented on player’s guild hall music issues. Guilds worked hard for that upgrade and it has been having issues since November. If this is a complicated problem, it would be nice to know. If any developer can give a nod, letting us know they’re aware of the issue it would be great. We were hoping the Winter 2016 patch, would address the problem.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Guild-Hall-Music-The-Caverns-Barren-Heights/first#post5953099

Gliding in Tyria is great, it is a lot of fun. The new shatterer fight is so much nicer, so are the support and squad changes. All the quality of life changes recently have also been amazing.

Getting feedback in posts like this is very much appreciated, it shows that you are listening, and are very much open to feedback. I really hope you do threads like this in the profession forums before the next balance change.

The balance changes are not nearly enough if they are going to happen only once every quarter now. They need to be more extensive. Personally I think the professions need an overhaul with how strong most of the elite specs are. Before HoT was released it was said they would be more inline with the core classes.

As a warrior main, please look at traits. Some of the problems warrior has seem like they could be solved, or at least lessened by moving some of the traits around so the trait lines are more cohesive. There is plenty of feedback on the warrior forums, but it feels like none of it is getting read.

BlackBeard.2873:

New patch destroyed any chance at a viable build for eles. There are not amulets that give a good combination of stats. The direction that balancing is done on eles makes it readily apparent that the people doing balance have no clue how the class functions.

A few notes:
1. With such low base vitality and toughness, ele has very little inherent survivability, and must rely on skills and traits to survive.
2. A DPS ele doesn’t work in pvp, as the defensive skills (hard mitigation like blocks, invulns, stealth, evades) are very few and on a long CD (ele utility skill CDs are insane). Also, scepter – the “burst” weapon is still pathetic (too many slow skills, laughable autoattacks).
3. Eles can only play bruisers, by stacking prot. and frequently healing. Since a high-sustain bruiser can’t be built without +vit, +tough, AND +healing power…eles are being forced toward a more dps-ish bruiser. However, there are no amulets that provide a stat mix that works well for that role.
4. We have been down this road where the class is garbage due to this EXACT mix of circumstances a little over a year ago. Nothing substantial has changed since that time…yet there is an expectation for different results?!?!

A combination of these problems, on top of the terrible implementation of eles elite spec (not engaging too play, terrible balance of risk v. reward, just more of the same of what the class does) demonstrates a severe inability to understand key problems and think about solutions that give players options that are fun to use and interesting when used by opponents. The approach of “massive changes every 3 months” just doesn’t work. Small, more frequent changes is FAR superior.

+1

Signed

Can not express better, I hope Ele’s irrelevancy will not be 1 year like the last time.

You don’t want bruiser, fine Ok, at least make S/X FA viable for something. So when it hit something it does not tickle but induce fear, if the motto is ‘kill not to be killed’ and not ‘try to survive to have a chance to kill’.

Build template saving? This is important for raid, pve or different armor sets!

New cathegory for raid in lfg tool?! Its annoying to search a map in hot or silver wastes and everywhere are guys looking for raid…

Dynamic times in new maps, when meta bar is full then meta starts… People dislike the time feature when they only have 2 hours per day they ll never play the new maps..

Bugfixes for adventures..

Why are there no key bags for all the keys??? Shifting them to other characters is not good

And as a necro player: why does every class get an aditional F-function like warrior f2 and mesmer f5 but necro cant keep dead sroud on f2 and reaper on f1 while using reaper elite spec..

Remove or increase in rage timer from raid bosses and pls NO lvl 78 reward in an “endcontent” which is only doable with ascended gear… Why dont you do something in like a infusion for raidbosses which are only dropping from boss before? Like a demon infusion for gorseval and a fireinfusion for sabetha. Something as a reward for trying and where you can get better if you do raids..

Probably not even gonna see half the feedback you’re getting anyway, but whatever – here goes.

PvP-wise the removal of amulets was text-book-band-aid, nothing ’’fix’’ about it. so something isnt working? lets remove whatever it is completely instead of changing what makes it so kitten broken in the first place, personally it carries a stentch of developer-whos-hands-are-tied, but that might just be me.

PvE wise, well let me start by saying that – i know condi warrior was too strong, but now it’s useless. why?, because where other condi classes bring a variety of support and utility, the condi warrior was all about damage, and only damage. Sure they could bring some banners, but be honest here, how many groups skipped on a PS warrior ?, id say a very small percentage. and they usually carry them. nonetheless, thats it for the warriors utility, a banner or two. so all it had was taken away by, probably the lousiest change to an mmo, since NCwest started banning people who crossed into so-called safe zones in Aion, all the while koreans and japanese servers were having the time of their lives fighting everywhere.

to clarify, the 0.5 cd is rediculous. being able to hit one enemy with two fields, was somethingthat required at least a tiny amount of thought and positioning, something that very few thingsi n this game does in general (too casually so if you ask me). so you slap a 0.5 ICD on the skill? well hurray for that, now the only thing scorched earth doesnt have in common with the normalfire field, is its shape…. and did you get the memo yet that the 0.5 ICD is GLOBAL, and not character capped?, yea – thats right. if you have 2 people throwing them down, only 1 of the fields will hit every 0.5 seconds…. so for this skill, the cooldown traits for berserk skills – are now 100% useless. i know you did this to change the way people gunk entire armies in wvw through Coalesence of ruin spam, but cmon… arrent you guys suposed to test this kinda stuff? if this is truly intended, then you dropped the ball like never before.

as for the other changes,
Necro got alittle too much boon conversion.
Ele changes were overall good, all those who say Diamond skin is now useless, are partially right, but you cannot defend a skill like diamond skin on a class that has such ease of access to protection, and healing, because you simply cannot get it on them, not to mention they directly hardcounter an entire array of builds.
Mesmer probably got the biggest hits, through a whole array of changes to both directly – and indirectly nerf their usefulness, while i agree that mesmers were HILLARIOUSLY broken in PvP, to the point where 1 change would never be enough, the massive nerfs in pve – were not warranted. at least not all of them, personally i think the alacrity nerf was warranted, and ok with me. boon sharing through group-swapping is also something i wont miss, as its a gimmick, and noones gonna really miss it. however the change to precognition, was to me off-base. not because it removed options to skip/ignore certain mechanics, that could’ve been fixed in other ways, but because aegis has nothing to do with a kitten mesmer in the first place… it’s got no soul now, and doesnt fit the mesmer theme what-so ever.

anyways thats about all ive been able to check up on so far, so theres more than likely alot more that i havent personally tested or checked yet, but those things i cannot comment on, so this is it for now.

As a solo pvp player who plays mostly mesmer…bad update.

You hit mesmer with a hammer instead of tuning them down.

Gues it will take 6-12 months before i can fight an evenly skilled thief/rev/dh/ele/engi/ranger or necro and win it.

If you wanna keep fireball as small as now, do us a favor and mold it into pheonix and add screech. Even if it will be miniature at least its something, but don’t exxagerate and and don’t make it butterfly ;x

Diamond Skin – give massive resistance to cooldown increase from chill.
Chill have two effect cooldown increase and movement decrease. So movement decrease can work normaly.

To clarify by massive I meant 100%. 100% of one from two effects that chill provides.

Second option is: when above 99% hp prevents application of any condition. When fall below 10% hp its remove all conditions. 180s for that second part.

That would mean enemy can’t very start with condi, decrease 1% of our hp its available even with clunky aa. To finish ele every 180s enemy will need to reapply condtions or deal dmg to that remaining. But it would be every 180s so whenever its off or on its still have counter in both cases.

Significant game changing tweak to scepter would be rework for Rock Barrier:
Create Rock Barrier around target, that kd whenever its try to pass. Its single target and on target use. Radious 180. To make enemy fear to move. Range 1100, becouse its essential. To land scepter skills you need literally ask enemy to stop moving. It can have second use: Hurl – dismantle barrier making shockwave that knocback enemies in 300 radious. Enemies in center of barrier are unaffected. The purpose of that Hurl is to further separate our target. Its what I call balance, major, S modification when you says that you’re going repair scepter.

I loooove all the general changes and features, these were AWESOME. However, the skill balance was not quite right. These are my main critique points:

Alacrity
This nerf was meant to reduce the insane buffing potential of the chronomancer, which was fair enough. However, their personal strength also went WAY down, while it was already pretty weak. I understand you don’t want the nerf to be fixable with more chronos, so let’s do this: keep alacrity at 33%, but slightly buff all application durations, causing one chrono to keep up the nerfed alacrity more easily without allowing chrono stacking. Rework Improved Alacrity to increase alacrity effectiveness from 33% to 66% (or 50% or so) on the chrono instead of increasing alacrity duration.

Amulet removal
This change was meant to end the bunker meta we have right now. The bunker meta was caused by elite specs designed to be able to greatly support an entire raid party. Of course, this broke PvP, because the pressure is way lower there. The removal of the tanky amulets was a substitute for the real solution: splitting skills between PvE and PvP. Now I know this could be confusing for new players, but let’s face it: it’s not that hard to understand (looking back at GW1, I never had any problems with it). The strategy of removing amulets that go well with certain builds is not the way of balancing these builds! The criteria between PvE and PvP are vastly different. They can never both be balanced without skill splitting!

Underused skills and traits
We have seen some good changes to ranger shouts this patch that may make them pretty useful. Great job on that one! However, we need way more of this kind of balancing. There is so much obsolete stuff. Let’s take the elementalist as an example. The scepter, signet utilities, arcane utilities (except for Arcane Wave), and two of the four conjures are very close to being 100% useless. Giving the scepter a huge buff in sustained pressure (not burst!), speed and reliability is needed before it will be any good. Things like a 10% damage buff on Flamestrike will not help, we need more than that. Reduce recharges! Make skills faster! Add more conditions and control! Stuff like that! For Arcane utilities, vastly reducing recharges may be all they need. For signets, make their actives strong, interesting spells like summoning a huge flame jet below your foe or a ring of ice spikes that strikes multiple times while fanning out. Right now, signets are just weaker versions of shouts.

Again, the features were more than great. You just need to work on the skill balance some more.

I was so excited for Heart of Thorns, but now I miss the game before the expansion. This balance ruined my favourite class totally – The mesmer. It’s the one I played for more than 2 years. Before the expansion I was ok, at least in pvp. After the Hot came out I was finally fine in pve as well. I felt finally viable and wanted. Now I’m useless everywhere and nobody wants to play with me. It’s not fair that you nerfed one aspect of the Chronomancer without buffing the other. I love you my sweet Anet, but I can’t bring to play my beloved class anymore. It’s only good for jumping puzzles and afking now. The game is pure chaos. This balance destroyed my favourite class, the visual aspects of the game got destroyed as well. I’d switch to elementalist if he would actually cast fireballs instead of nothing, because that thing is barely visible. Scepter changes didn’t change anything for the ele. Shatterstone looks ugly and fake, cause the sound is delayed and the animation itself is simply just speeded up, which looks bad. I thought you are more creative and competent my sweet Anet and not amateurs.

Swagger.1459:

Two thumbs down on the profession changes.

Traits across all professions are “messy”, too compacted and placement does not make sense at times.

Movement skill disparities need to be squashed. All professions should have access to similar amounts of movement skills. This should be equal across professions. (I would love to see a gw2 version of “power pools” to remove profession movement disparities, and other gaps too)

Druid needs a rework (among other core ranger things like complete sword rework, shortbow bleeding restrictions removed, main hand axe speed needs to be increases and off hand axe 5 needs mobility, dagger is just a complete waste, greatsword damage is awful).

Your players healing other players mechanics and abilities need a MAJOR overhaul period. Playing healer should be fun. It should be smooth. Healing should be able to counter the major incoming damage that players are faced with in certain areas of the game.

Tanking should not be based generically by toughness.

Totally agree especially in case of ranger and roles.

Problems with ranger now: traits are compeeding with echother or just not worth picking sometimes.
Sword autoattack is lackluster make it a normal chain but watch that it can hold its gapclosing abbilities.
Axe aftercast should be reduced. Sword and axe shouldnt be hybrid weapons, make one of them condition and the other pure dmg.
Sb need a buff and improvement in nearly every SB skill, dmg increase included. Greatsword has poor dmg in comparison to other greatswords across the professions. Longbow needs more active gameplay and the AA is useless in closer aproximity to your target.

Spirits are just bad in comparison to other group support because of there life span or there stationarity. The internal CD is lackluster and would be better if it would be just a raw percentage. The trait of the spirits should not be a boon bumbing thing it would give more flexability if the spirits presents just give stat bonusses like Condi dmg, Condi duration, power, toughness, healing power and boon duration.
Sharpening stone needs improvement.

Signet need way smaller CD and better effects.
Traits and abbilities should not kill your pet (pet takes your dmg, pet gets your condis etc) pet should get improved: like pet takes your condis and get resistance, pet takes your cc and gets a breakbar etc.
Pet skills: give the ranger the abbility to activate the race specific and the pet specific skill of the pet→ E.g Salamander Drake : Tailswipe and Fire Breath
Instead of commanding your pet towards you cammand it to a place with ground target. Give a BM trait the abbility to let your pet resurecct people on “f” press command like the function gyro.

Druid: Give the staff better condi applications instead of pure dmg. Change the #2 skill of it to a cc skill and improve the #4.
Change CAF so you can better acces it when you need it and give it a dmg application of some sort. improve the druid trait to go together with your pet and with other ranger traits

The balance patch was great for necros and thieves, and bad for balance.

Thank you, Anet. The gift that keeps on giving.

Honestly I don’t understand what analysis the balance team does before nerfing Mesmer into the ground. You have a solid history of giving us a buff, waiting for players complaining it’s OP, and then slamming us back into being completely unusable.

The fact is you spent however long developing an elite specialisation with theme and mechanics built around gaining/stealing time but instead of considering innovative solutions to the issues arising from alacrity and WoP you basically decided to completely gut Mesmer and remove us from both PvP and PvE.

I’m sorry to post such a disheartened comment – gliding in Tyria and Shatterer are awesome btw – but you really have a history of neglecting Mesmer balance which is highlighted by the fact we received nothing but nerfs this balance patch. No, I didn’t forget about the condi buffs you tossed in to pretend you actually worked on Mesmer…these are beyond pathetic.

Further, what happened to the ‘amazing changes’ to Scepter that would ‘reinvent the functionality’ of the weapon? I’m paraphrasing of course but you made this big song-and-dance about the changes and all it ended up being was minor – again useless – changes to the auto-attack?

Every balance seems so rushed and unproductive, do you even know what you want Mesmer to be?

If we’re supposed to be a utility profession then stop nerfing our utility and how about actually sorting out the issues with some of the others e.g. Mirror Images (stupid cooldown), Arcane Thievery (stupid cooldown), Phantasmal Defender (absolute junk), Well of Precognition (figure out something that doesn’t throw this in the trash), iMage (still junk – change it).

You can’t powercreep every other profession then leave us hitting like wet noodles without bringing anything to the table (we really need a damage buff compared to the other elites).

Change Scepter. Simple. Follow through with what you said, recognise the weapon needs a serious overhaul and do it.

Please look at our specialisation trait lines. We have some utterly terrible traits in them which have no synergy at all. We have little to no build diversity because of it…some of the worst offenders: Evasive Mirror (it’s really bad), Sharper Images (change the bleed to something more universal across builds), Malicious Sorcery (not an elite imo), Mental Defense (come on now…why would anyone want a junk iDef after block/evade it’s utter garbage and you know it). There’s surely more I can’t think of right now.

I only wish Mesmer was Colin’s favourite profession, doubt we’d see so many problems. I’m not suggesting any bias of course but Engineer has such good synergy between trait lines and really has a lot of fun and interesting options to play with whereas we have to take a Sword main hand…there’s literally no other option. In PvE/PvP we use around 50% of our weapons, ever. A similar percentage is probably true of our trait lines and utilities. There’s just too much junk and what is usable isn’t strong enough, so there’s no option not to take it because we’re already sub-par.

You mentioned since HoT release, your development is shifting from breadth to depth. I really hope this might include a serious in depth look at the profession because as of right now it’s taken so many hits I wouldn’t be surprised if most Mesmer mains re-rolled.

I LOVE the glider thing, and the launch pads (although gliding in home instances would be nice).

I really like the new Shatterer and I’m glad they didn’t make it “harder”, just “more engaging.”

I really wish that they’d tweaked Dragon Ball a bit before re-releasing it, there are some serious design flaws that ruin an otherwise very fun mode.

The balance changes haven’t really impacted me much. The Feline Grace change was a real insult though, because it’s still nowhere near where it used to be, and Acrobatics is still left in a mess of a state after the pre-Daredevil nerfs.

I’m still waiting for Season 3 to start though, given that HoT had zero epilogue.

I was hoping for (warrior) longbow cooldowns. Shoutcooldowns. Signet of rage cooldowns. And the 20hp extra and bonus % on adrenaline health didnt put us back to the meta sins other professions can still outsustain warrior.

Mordrem Breacher fight in Auric Basin needs to be fixed.
The Healers respawn too quickly. By the time you take all 3 groups down the respawn instantly all over again. You cannot kill it because it fully regens each time. We spent 30 trying to kill it and eventually we all gave up.

Gliding everywhere.

Best. Thing. Ever.

Dodging shouldn’t have a meter. If enemies require multiple repeat dodges, then you need to be able to dodge more. You should make the meter increase more rapidly, or just shorten the cooldown. I personally would like it if you make dodging to be more like 3 or 4 times. Think about the enemies who roll around alot. You basically can’t do anything after the first two dodges get used. You just stand there and take damage, which is dumb.

Dear Development and Balance teams,

I only main a Mesmer and mostly play World vs World, I feel the very heavy negative adjustments dealt our class have rendered the Mesmer class in the World vs World game type all but redundant.

I feel I will be spending significantly less time in game, as a result I won’t spend any more money in game.

For your consideration.

Johnny and Veles.

Hi I have nothing to say about the current patch but for the future would it be possible to have a health percentage showing in health bars so we know when to use abilities like gravedigger at the best time? Anyway thanks for continuing working on this game that I have so much fun with!

I am not going to comment to every aspect of the patch, but on things that i have noticed sofar by playing on patch day and after.

• Warrior : Where is the sustainability that been promised ? 20HP/Sec and changing the “Berserker-Stance” from “preventing conditions from being applied to you” to " grants resistance for 3 seconds every 3 seconds" , doesnt making the warrior sustainable. Why the 2sec reduction CD on random weapon skills ? The only thing accomplished by that change, is to give a feeling of “fluently” usage of some weapon skills.

• Mesmer : Although i do not main a mesmer i think the “Alarcity” reduction from 66% to 33% hurted the chronomancer. I maybe wrong though, but that is the feeling i got after the patch with mesmer.

• WvW : Overall nice start. Positive changes sofar.

• Necromancer : That “Boon-Corruption”. The overall feeling is that it went from a pretty solid class to a very powerful class.

• Thief : I do not see the reason for the Autoattack buff. Anyway Thiefs now can spamm autoattack and 1-2shoot anyone(depending the class). In my opinion that change was the wrong approach to the Thief problem areas.

I will add more the more i play.

Regards

Seed

This will probably be drowned out but there’s only one thing I’m curious about after the update:

What’s in store for Stronghold in the future?

New mist champions are great and all, but the mode needs attention.

Please NERF thieves. They are undefeatable in wvw right now. They do too much damage and evade every attack you throw out. It really kills the experience when everyone and their family plays thief and roams, and you can’t do anything to beat them other than playing thief.

I haven’t read every comment in this thread so apologies if this has already been said.

I stopped doing anything in GW2 a month ago when I couldn’t tolerate the boredom any longer, I was a long term supporter since Factions was released. I now just log in for the daily chest and to farm my home instance. I monitor the forums in the hope of seeing it lit up by some recent update fixing major concerns, or a chunk of new and exciting content being released. Maybe the remaining £30 worth of HoT content from the £50 I paid you?

I can see from the comments I’ve read this update gave none of the above and appears to be just more fluff with gliding thrown in to distract from that (this could also sum up HoT). Oh well, keep trying as I (unlike my friends) haven’t removed GW2 from my pc yet. Looks like my hopes are dashed though for another three months. If you want to find me I’ll be in B&S buying NCoin with the money I used to give you every month.

Haven’t check pve content so I’ll just share my thoughts on the balance.

Frankly it is extremely underwhelming in scope for a balance patch that is meant to shake up things for 3 months.
(God I miss GW1 balances that made more builds viable, and got me excited to play and try new things)

While some changes were good, some were small/incomplete. Examples:
– Mesmer scepter: needed more love to be useful (like the good changes for Necro Scepter, it has a clear purpose and it has become useful)
– Thief auto attacks got buffed, instead of distributing the buffs to autos and weapon skills (it has made the weapons less engaging)
– Thief acrobatis: this trait line lost its power to make way for Daredevil, but since then it has lots its identity.
Since dodging is the Daredevil thing, one thing useful would be to give bonuses when dodging (e.g. healing, might, quickness, unblockable attacks, riposting attacks, etc).

Other changes were very bad on the whole (some “needed” nerf when acompanied by buffs, but those weren’t implemented):
– Mesmer alacrity: the entire specialization was tuned for 66% (and the profession needed something like that to become useful enough. Sustained dps was/is still extremely lacking).
I’m game for lowering the alies alacrity, but the Mesmer loses to much without gaining anything.
One way to go would be adjust the whole profession (not the Chronomancer) to account for the 33% alacrity loss (thus making it less dependent on Chronomancer and making it more viable).
An alternative would be to have 66% alacrity on the Mesmer, and 33% on the allies (still makes it very dependent on Chronomancer).
– Revenant sword: auto attacks were nerfed (justified in my opinion), but other weapon skills didn’t compensate enough for this loss.

These kind of changes make a profession clearly worse than before the patch, because they reduce viability of builds.
And if these get permanent, it will take ages to have them looked at again.

My 2 cents

Hello,
Cool post if opinions are truly taken into account
I will only cover areas I’m in touch with.

1) Squad changes : very good changes, very useful and handy
2) Gliding in Tyria : awesome as expected
3) Fractal changes : thx for the bug fix world full and QoL change to change the difficulty in the lobby, appreciated

4) Balance (the biggest part)

- Ele : I feel those changes are fine, I really like the change to diamond skin, it was just shaved a bit to still be useful but no too strong

- Engineer : very little changes so it won’t affect much but CD on stealth gyro is appreciated, 20 sec was way too low, especially with other defensive CDs, lots of dodges, and that the gyro is pretty tough.

- Guardian : good changes, not too big nerf since it was not even meta, it’s still usable and the biggest gripe (test of faith unblockable daze) is gone.
Buff to anti condis is good since we’re likely gonna have a heavy condi meta

- Mesmer : I like the change to feedback.
However, I think mesmer was nerfed way too much. WoP had already been nerfed and with the removal of many bunker amulets/runes/sigils (nerf energy sigil), I think it was already good enough to move bunker mesmer out of being too strong but meh, why not.
However, the change to alacrity is way too much in addition to all that had been nerfed already. The biggest gripe being that as a lot of ppl said, chrono trait line heavily relies on alacrity and so if it’s nerfed like that without any buff in traits to compensate, chrono will probably be kicked out of meta.
Also, it could have been split PvE/PvP.
Other idea would be to add a “personal effect on alacrity improved to 66%”

- Necromancer : well, Necro was already very strong in the meta, with only buffs and more boons removal, I expect necro to be a must have.

- Ranger : I like the buffs very much, opening for more diversity in viable builds. I hope the changes will be enough since druids got both insane CC uptime and big damage from pet or condis.

- Revenant : A very good change to Facet of Light since it was OP the way it was, good move. Not nerfed too much, perfect. Good for Coalescence of Ruin too.
Precision strike now also viable in monotarget is good too.
Unrelenting Assault got nerfed hard but it was deserved since the move was so powerful, I like how it was changed.
However, I don’t really understand the need to nerf Sword AA since it was not OP : who could kill players only spamming AA without defensive CDs or CCs ? The problem was Sword #3 followed by AA pressure.
Now that Sword #3 is nerfef, I dont think Sword AA needed that nerf, unnecessary to me.

Thief : I don’t play it a lot but just seeing the numbers in the buff scare me. While buffs had always been like 5-12% buff max, Thief gets 30-50% buffs which is frightening, especially after nerfing Rev AA to buff Thief AA even more.
Good idea for venom basilisk but it will now just outshine all other elites, killing diversity

Warrior : very good changes overall, let’s wait to see how it goes. I especially like the changes to berserker.

Amulets : very good changes but I fear Mercenary and Paladin’s Amulet will make all others amulet look pale and dull …

I’m just going to talk about the Warrior class. I’ve been relegated to PvE for the first League season and I feel like the class is too irrelevant for the next one as well.

The buffs to our healing skills were all decent, some of them are almost usable over Healing Signet for the first time ever. Everything else was inconsequential, except for the QoL Headbutt range buff. Defiant Stance is bad and easily played around, it can either heal you for a million or 0 (in Spvp, its mostly 0).

Physical Skills: They’re all terrible. Throw Bolas was used in like the first beta weekend. Bull’s Charge can see some play but with 3 utility slots and Balanced Stance/Endure Pain usually taking 2, it’s a hard ask. It’s also one of the most telegraphed spells in the game for very little reward.

Signets: Our signet passive effects are mostly fine. Signet of Might’s Active is a waste of space. Signet of Stamina’s cast animation should be removed, you just die if this gets interrupted as our only condition removal (Berserker Stance got Smiter’s Boon’d).

Shouts: “For Great Justice” is our only decent shout. “Shake it Off” removing ONE condition is an effort in futility. No one feels good with “On My Mark” on their bar, but at least the range is neat. The cooldown on “Fear Me,” for that effect, is hilarious.

Stances: Frenzy got Smiter’s Boon’d after how decent/gimmicky it was at launch. Berserker Stance just recently received the Smiter’s Boon treatment.

Rage Skills: Wild Blow feels great; nearly impossible to land in the incoming thief-heavy meta, but rewarding. Shattering Blow – who cares about anything this skill does? The bleed is negligible and so is the reflect. The adrenaline increase on successfully landed Sundering Leaps is sweet, but the range is lame. Outrage is only for Headbutt/Rousing Resilience cheese.

Weapons: Most of these are a mess. Axe feels good, but Execute/Decapitate are horrible. Why should a melee/very telegraphed/resource dependent skill hit for NOTHING? They have to be feared for Axe to be viable. Axe offhand is just terrible and boring. No utility, not a ton of damage, no nuance. Sword is confused as a condi weapon with Final Thrust – I feel like it should be a 200/300 range leap. Longbow has always felt good, but no one fears it like in Hambow’s hay day. Arcing Arrow used to hit pretty hard. Scorched Earth does nothing in PvP. On warhorn, it wouldn’t hurt to make Call to Arms a blast, but that still wouldn’t make it usable. Mace mainhand feels great, but Adrenaline Rush giving 3 adren is adorable. Skull Grinder is AMAZING, but if you miss then you’re doing nothing until you get another one. Rupturing Smash on hammer is embarrassing.

I just want to be able to play my class without people giving up before the game starts or asking me to change. We’re disgraceful compared to top classes right now.

Haven’t check pve content so I’ll just share my thoughts on the balance.

Frankly it is extremely underwhelming in scope for a balance patch that is meant to shake up things for 3 months.
(God I miss GW1 balances that made more builds viable, and got me excited to play and try new things)

While some changes were good, some were small/incomplete. Examples:
– Mesmer scepter: needed more love to be useful (like the good changes for Necro Scepter, it has a clear purpose and it has become useful)
– Thief auto attacks got buffed, instead of distributing the buffs to autos and weapon skills (it has made the weapons less engaging)
– Thief acrobatis: this trait line lost its power to make way for Daredevil, but since then it has lots its identity.
Since dodging is the Daredevil thing, one thing useful would be to give bonuses when dodging (e.g. healing, might, quickness, unblockable attacks, riposting attacks, etc).

Other changes were very bad on the whole (some “needed” nerf when acompanied by buffs, but those weren’t implemented):
– Mesmer alacrity: the entire specialization was tuned for 66% (and the profession needed something like that to become useful enough. Sustained dps was/is still extremely lacking).
I’m game for lowering the alies alacrity, but the Mesmer loses to much without gaining anything.
One way to go would be adjust the whole profession (not the Chronomancer) to account for the 33% alacrity loss (thus making it less dependent on Chronomancer and making it more viable).
An alternative would be to have 66% alacrity on the Mesmer, and 33% on the allies (still makes it very dependent on Chronomancer).
– Revenant sword: auto attacks were nerfed (justified in my opinion), but other weapon skills didn’t compensate enough for this loss.

These kind of changes make a profession clearly worse than before the patch, because they reduce viability of builds.
And if these get permanent, it will take ages to have them looked at again.

My 2 cents

The Trading Post should allow more items to be sold without giving a constant error. The threshold for the number of items sold per unit of time is way too low. Not sure if this is a server limitation, but if it isn’t it shouldn’t be that low.

Hello,
Cool post if opinions are truly taken into account
I will only cover areas I’m in touch with.

1) Squad changes : very good changes, very useful and handy
2) Gliding in Tyria : awesome as expected
3) Fractal changes : thx for the bug fix world full and QoL change to change the difficulty in the lobby, appreciated

4) Balance (the biggest part)

- Ele : I feel those changes are fine, I really like the change to diamond skin, it was just shaved a bit to still be useful but no too strong

- Engineer : very little changes so it won’t affect much but CD on stealth gyro is appreciated, 20 sec was way too low, especially with other defensive CDs, lots of dodges, and that the gyro is pretty tough.

- Guardian : good changes, not too big nerf since it was not even meta, it’s still usable and the biggest gripe (test of faith unblockable daze) is gone.
Buff to anti condis is good since we’re likely gonna have a heavy condi meta

- Mesmer : I like the change to feedback.
However, I think mesmer was nerfed way too much. WoP had already been nerfed and with the removal of many bunker amulets/runes/sigils (nerf energy sigil), I think it was already good enough to move bunker mesmer out of being too strong but meh, why not.
However, the change to alacrity is way too much in addition to all that had been nerfed already. The biggest gripe being that as a lot of ppl said, chrono trait line heavily relies on alacrity and so if it’s nerfed like that without any buff in traits to compensate, chrono will probably be kicked out of meta.
Also, it could have been split PvE/PvP.
Other idea would be to add a “personal effect on alacrity improved to 66%”

- Necromancer : well, Necro was already very strong in the meta, with only buffs and more boons removal, I expect necro to be a must have.

- Ranger : I like the buffs very much, opening for more diversity in viable builds. I hope the changes will be enough since druids got both insane CC uptime and big damage from pet or condis.

- Revenant : A very good change to Facet of Light since it was OP the way it was, good move. Not nerfed too much, perfect. Good for Coalescence of Ruin too.
Precision strike now also viable in monotarget is good too.
Unrelenting Assault got nerfed hard but it was deserved since the move was so powerful, I like how it was changed.
However, I don’t really understand the need to nerf Sword AA since it was not OP : who could kill players only spamming AA without defensive CDs or CCs ? The problem was Sword #3 followed by AA pressure.
Now that Sword #3 is nerfef, I dont think Sword AA needed that nerf, unnecessary to me.

Thief : I don’t play it a lot but just seeing the numbers in the buff scare me. While buffs had always been like 5-12% buff max, Thief gets 30-50% buffs which is frightening, especially after nerfing Rev AA to buff Thief AA even more.
Good idea for venom basilisk but it will now just outshine all other elites, killing diversity

Warrior : very good changes overall, let’s wait to see how it goes. I especially like the changes to berserker.

Amulets : very good changes but I fear Mercenary and Paladin’s Amulet will make all others amulet look pale and dull …

I main Reaper and u buffed it with tons of Corruption, imho way to much. Another lazy balance change when u buff the Scepter and Condi Necro the things we didnt need a buff to.

Power Necro needed abuff and Weapons like Axe,GS and Focus are the ones not used and u buff Condi + Scepter ? really lazy and bad.

Like the Alacrity nerf to Mesmer, when u just could have nerfed the “shareing” u nerfed a entire class into oblivion also so incredibly lazy and bad. Look to other games for balnce cause u atm cant handle balance between PvE – PvP -WvW

U need to really buff things that arent being used not buff them and tbh u just funnel classes into areas where ppl are forced to play your way. Fine bunker Meta was boring but a Meta where u kill certain classes and then still ask ppl to play them isnt working.

Tnx

not like u listen and care

- Necromancer : well, Necro was already very strong in the meta

lol, wasnt even part of it but will be now

I main a revenantm so not very happy about the patch… thx for destroying my facet of light and my AA…. -20% second hit is insane nerf… c’mon reverse this kitten .

All i find in the arena are thieves and freacking necros, i’ts impossible to fight them.

Guardian underwhelming weapons, utilities and traits still not addressed even though the balance patch said it would address all these things.

Mace auto chain 3 is slow and doesn’t cleave, the heal is pretty pitiful and scales poorly for healing power.

Sword auto chain 3 has projectiles which carry only the negatives of reflection or destruction by other abilities, no benefits like combo finishers.

Sword – Zealot’s Defense still poor damage with the rooting and damage at range / vs moving targets

Hammer – auto chain 3 still woefully slow, ruins PvE with the combo field on auto, needs to speed up and move the Symbol to Mighty Blow.

Torch – Cleansing Flame is awful, it needs to also cleanse the Guardian of conditions.

Utilities – Signets still a very poor choice and all but never used.

Spirit Weapons – Were the iconic Guardian utility, never used, a total joke compared to Engineer drones. Poor damage, slow attack speeds or beneficial effects, slow movement, low HP.

Traits – Wrathful Spirit is awful and pointless, Zealous Scepter is still poor as the least accurate weapon is meant to proc it, Blinding Jeopardy is too niche, Expeditious Spirit (see Spirit weapons being terrible).

Healer’s Retribution brings more horrible situation Retaliation, Retribution is terrible situational 10% dmg, Perfect Inscriptions wow 20% bonus on top of poor active effect utilities and their passives! Radiant Retaliation – Haha!

Stalwart Defender – why more toughness to compete with group 150 toughness!
Just merge this and Strength in Numbers together, move Glacial Heart to Valor and create some Hammer builds with Valor and Virtues! Retributive Armour is bad, pure stats don’t compare with healing, make it a different healing option somehow to open up builds.
- Regeneration procs, healing on criticals, something to move away from Shout heals and Meditation heals.

Honor – Empowering Might is low duration group Might and pointless next to Revenants and other professions ability to grant group Might.
Remove the ICD, make it self only 8s of Might.

Virtues – With Glacial Heart now moved you can add a new trait for Virtue of Courage.
Gain 25% movement speed while Virtue of Courage is on passive.
Or activating Virtue of Courage grants 20 seconds of Swiftness.
Or enemies that remove your Aegis are Chilled for 5 seconds.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

ThaKrulll.4150:

Khyan.7039:

ThaKrulll.4150:

Ancestral Grace: This ability is no longer able to be used in midair.

This is the worst change you have ever done to the game. Why?… Just why did you have to destroy everything?

Because bug exploits in WvW using this trick wasn’t game breaking?

I don’t ever play WvW so I don’t know how this could be game breaking. In what way can you use it to exploit?

Using GS 3 followed by staff 3, you could cover an insane amount of distance in the air and actually get into quite a few different structures without having to break down anything.

I don’t see why they had to break one really funny ability in PvE for that. Just add some invisible walls. Or I don’t know… Maybe make PvE, PvP and WvW separate from each other.

Mesmer:
Can’t you nerf sharing of alacrity=nerf all’s well that ends well
Acctuly even better let it add f6 button to detirment wheter you want wells to be offensive or defensive, becouse duality just doesnt work in wvw. Gravity well(purely offensive) and old precognition(purely defensive) were only ones worthy to acctuly use.
Maby consider bringing back mass confusion on glamours or wells, since condies looks like the way to go on many classes now.
Glamour resistance stacking is now nerfed, so using 2 mesmers for perma resistance is not viable anymore. (not that it was masively used)
Shield >> all other offhands, exept torch for certain roles.
Ty for feedback changes

Warrior and Revenant:

Rev Coalescence of Ruin and Warrior Scorched Earth now only register one character’s damage regardless of how many Revenants and Warriors are using their respective skills on a target. Whichever executive or developer decided this was a good idea, please rethink that.

But if your end goal is to have Phalanx Strength was the only pigeonhole you wanted Warriors to fit into in PVE, well, you’ve sure as hell got that. I guess I fail to understand the logic behind giving Warriors a viable alternative that did enough damage to warrant people spending thousands of gold to craft gear for what used to be a niche build, letting it sit for three months, and then nerfing the unholy crap out of it.

I’m not kittening about the well-deserved nerf to our 30k burns — that was ridiculous and never should’ve happened — but to give us an alternative to PS that had enough damage and utility to be welcomed into group content, and then raze it to the ground? Really?

Same thing with Revenant and Mesmer. This isn’t balance. This is orchestrating mass rerolls to inflate your retention rate.

You can’t control the balance in the game by injecting more damage to professions that are not on par with the overall DPS dished out by the others. This will only increase the power creep that has been in the game since June 2015 (awful patch, mind you), and which was further emphasized by the HoT launch.

In April 2014 you introduced the playerbase to Ferocity, which was to reduce the overall damage in the game when you deemed it was getting out of hand. I didn’t agree with the change back then, but it was a lot better than what we currently have. What the game is currently stuck on is the spiral of power creep: buffs, with the nerfs being either nominal, or linked to damage indirectly at best (like alacrity).

In PvE, just buffing damage will sort of work. The raidbosses won’t write angry messages on the forums about imbalance, but when you pit the power creeps against one another in PvP or WvW, the problems become much more prominent. The game was perfectly functional before the June 2015 specialization patch. It can be once more. So stop it.

Balance-

Ele Scepter- Needs (a lot) more.

Mesmer Scepter- still needs some tweaking. Even just adding some torment application to the turnover skill on Number 2 so that its capable of pressuring from range would go a really long way.

Mesmer overall- I agree with almost all of your nerfs. It was necessary for the health of the game…

BUT

Mesmer is going to keep flip flopping between OP and UP until you address the way their profession mechanics interact with each other. Phantasms provide a lot of Mesmer’s sustain, but shatters require you to blow them up… which means shatters need to be powerful enough to justify losing your sustained DPS. This is exactly the reason you guys changed the way “Berserker’s Power” worked on warrior; Warriors would sit on their adrenaline for the damage modifier instead of using their Burst skills. Its counter intuitive. Since you balance across all three game modes, you’ve set yourself up to fail by giving yourselves a broken foundation to build off of.

Some very simple trait adjustments you can make in the meantime-

-Move the Signet trait to the dueling line- They are the closest thing mesmers have to a ‘condi utility’. Swapping positions with Fencer’s Finesse would be a perfect solution that would improve both Power and Condi options for Mesmer builds.

-Swap Master Fencer with Phantasmal Fury-Both condi and Power benefit from fury for their Phantasms. Power builds can choose MF in adept, and condi builds can go for Duelist discipline.

-Change Master of Misdirection from Confusion Duration to Confusion damage- Makes condi Mesmer in PvP more bursty, and improves confusions effects in PvE where most condi builds run 100% condition duration (or near to) making the trait a complete waste.

I feel misled: Maybe I read it wrong but I was under the impression that these balance patches would attempt to be total fixes for everything that is known to need work.

Not that they would only deal with a subset of known problems, and completely ignore all the others… folks thus ignored then having to wait for another three months minimum for a fix. [PvE P/P Thief here, for my sins, so there literally wasn’t a single thing in this patch that made any difference to me at all….]

I’d hope that in the future, either the statement is revised to be more accurate, or balance is given a larger budget – commensurate with how much money GW2 makes compared to some other MMOs, struggling to survive but with better balance – with all balance problems being addressed.

Swagger.1459:

To reiterate what I posted before. This patch shows us yet again how little attention goes toward profession and combat development.

Our characters… those professions we name… and play for thousands of hours… and pour lots of $ into, and the combat experiences in all game modes, are the #1 most important aspects of this game.

GW2 is an amazing AAA game in many ways. It also has some amazing combat elements, like life freedom of movement and a real “smoothness” to gameplay, but has CCC professions.

I was hoping that this year would be the year y’all start scrapping “things” and rebuilding professions, but this first patch shows that it’s just the same old status quo spread sheet number crunching with regard to professions and combat.

I’m not being rude, just being direct with this so I hope y’all can accept it… Profession development “departments”/projects/“to do” and wish lists are underfunded, and the patch notes clearly show how out of touch and disconnected things are. I know y’all play, but please take your eyes off spread sheets and take the red pill to pull yourselves out of numbers matrix ok?

Y’all want roles? Fix professions.

Y’all want spvp and esports to be good? Fix professions.

Y’all want to push the envelope with harder and more challenging content? Fix professions.

Y’all want to have the most kick kitten wvw experience for players? Fix professions.

Y’all want players making more and more characters and dropping thousands of $ to outfit these characters? Fix professions.

Want long term retention and high monthly concurrent numbers? Fix professions.

Want more referrals and great exposure in the gaming world for being known to have the best professions and best combat experience? Fix professions.

Professions 2.0. It’s time. Players deserve that investment, and that will all translate to more money in the coffers… Take the team and make it happen. Fix professions.

I second this.
Best post so far.

Gaile, for a report, pass on to higher management that you guys should finally stick some proper development time into WvW because this is getting ridiculous.

Also CoR still does 10k damage hits even after the nerf.

Swagger.1459:

To reiterate what I posted before. This patch shows us yet again how little attention goes toward profession and combat development.

Our characters… those professions we name… and play for thousands of hours… and pour lots of $ into, and the combat experiences in all game modes, are the #1 most important aspects of this game.

GW2 is an amazing AAA game in many ways. It also has some amazing combat elements, like freedom of movement and a real “smoothness” to gameplay, but has CCC professions.

I was hoping that this year would be the year y’all start scrapping “things” and rebuilding professions, but this first patch shows that it’s just the same old status quo spread sheet number crunching with regard to professions and combat.

I’m not being rude, just being direct with this so I hope y’all can accept it… Profession development “departments”/projects/“to do” and wish lists are underfunded, and the patch notes clearly show how out of touch and disconnected things are. I know y’all play, but please take your eyes off spread sheets and take the red pill to pull yourselves out of the numbers matrix ok?

Y’all want roles? Fix professions.

Y’all want spvp and esports to be good? Fix professions.

Y’all want to push the envelope with harder and more challenging content? Fix professions.

Y’all want to have the most kick kitten wvw experience for players? Fix professions.

Y’all want players making more and more characters and dropping thousands of $ to outfit these characters? Fix professions.

Want long term retention and high monthly concurrent numbers? Fix professions.

Want more referrals and great exposure in the gaming world for being known to have the best professions and best combat experience? Fix professions.

Professions 2.0. It’s time. Players deserve that investment, and that will all translate to more money in the coffers… Take the team and make it happen. Fix professions.

Is that matrix or metrics? Yup, this is a QFT post if there ever was one – good work!

Whitenedorse.3065:

Please NERF thieves. They are undefeatable in wvw right now. They do too much damage and evade every attack you throw out. It really kills the experience when everyone and their family plays thief and roams, and you can’t do anything to beat them other than playing thief.

Thieves undefeatable…no. They just aren’t free xp anymore.

Anet accomplished their mission by making us dangerous again. Thank you anet.

Sword still not being on par with dagger or staff is my biggest issue.

Thanks for asking for feedback!

Overall, the patch brought some interesting things. The new Shatterer is nice, gliding in Tyria as well. I can’t say that much about Fractals and WvW but overall the coverage is appretiated. I also like the removal of too tanky amulets from PvP because too bunkery gameplay in this mode was just no fun for anyone.

Where the patch falls extremly short is the class balance part. We have been advertised quarterly balance patches. If this was to meant one, well, it just didn’t do it for me. I also feel that many other players feel that way. Overall, the changes were to little. Personally, I was hoping for something more like this. There is no point in quarterly changes if they don’t really change much. Fine tuning should be done inbetween. The last large rework was done before HoT and we really need a refresh at this point in time. At least that is what I was expecting from said quarterly patches.

Looking at specific changes, many weren’t tested and implemented properly, some are misguided or at least questionable, and quite few of them just don’t matter for the current meta – meaning, they neither shake it nor affect it – and to make it worse: they don’t really improve build diversity which we currently lack on almost all classes. It is good to improve underperforming skills and traits. But the change needs to actually matter. Hello, Stalwart Defender.

To give some examples:

Alacrity

A nerf was needed. I’m not sure if the 50% was the right thing to do. From a PvP perspective, the change to Quickness and Slow regarding downed players could have been enough to bring Chronobunkers back in line. Regarding PvE, other changes would have been more reasonable (e.g. limiting access, decreasing the duration – because having a high uptime of a hardly recognizable buff is just unrewarding). Additionally, I want to question if it is good for build diversity to have such a unique boon mainly be accessible through one utility group. Ultimatively, this change will leave Mesmers in a very bad spot – yet again.

Mesmer Scepter

The change to the AA is nice but doesn’t adress the issue of the chain not progressing unless the other attacks hit. This makes the buff to either AA and to the trait so underwhelming I don’t even really consider this a buff at the end of the day.

Feedback

It’s now ground targeted. Great. However, Mesmers now are left with yet another useless skill underwater. In general, even though underwater combat isn’t as important anymore, this shouldn’t be the case. For neither class. By the way, why don’t do Wells work underwater? More importantly, it shows the lack of diligence when it comes to the implementation of the recent changes. Another example is Smite Boon. How could such a simple change not be implemented properly? It makes the patch look very rushed and as much as I love the game and respect you guys at ANet, it’s just unprofessional. Especially since this happened across all classes.

Necromancers

I actually enjoy the changes on Necromancers although they might feel slightly out of places from the perspective of other classes because they didn’t get that much attention. I think that it is the right way to improve on unique characteristics of each class. But it needs to be done for all classes. Not just one. And it’s not like there couldn’t have been done more for the vanilla Necromancer.

Ranger Shouts

I really enjoy the rework. Again, this is one of the better things about the patch. However, it yet again raises the question if all factors have been considered. The Search and Rescue trait didn’t change. It’s still fine. But it feels like an oversight. Additionally, we get Regeneration from Search and Rescue. Why? Resounding Timbre already does that. Either Search and Rescue could use different benefit our Resounding Timbre should have been reworked as well. Maybe this was just an oversight as well. Maybe it was on purpose. But then it was just plain lazy.

I hope this didn’t come off too negative. I’m just very displeased with class balance overall. The only patch I really enjoyed to this respective was when the trait system was reworked. Other than that, balance is just too slow. It is too careful in the wrong situations. And to harsh in others.

11,178 Gun Flame on 2100 toughness. There was no “balance patch”.

Hey there o/

As a main Chrono I was really disappointed with the nerf to Alacrity. Or to be precise, the way it was nerfed.

I remember that on the initial reveal of the elite spec, Alacrity was announced as a very powerful effect, that is available only to the Chronomancer and that can only be shared in a very limited way with other classes. After the first beta weekend this original design was completly thrown out of the window and the Chronomancer was suddenly able to provide Alacrity to other players en masse (mostly because of the trait “All’s well that Ends well” (AWEW). This made the Chronomancer-Support too strong (at least in PvP and PvE, the modes I play) and as a result we now see a 100% nerf to the efficiency of Alacrity.

Whilst I agree with a need to nerf Alacrity in some way, I would prefer a different approach to it and my suggestion would be, that Alacrity gets changed to it’s initial design idea – a very powerful effect, that can only be shared in a very limited way with other players. By that I mean, leave Alacritys effect on 66% CD reduction but rework/remove AWEW, so that Alacrity can’t be shared en masse with your party/raid. This way Chronomancer by itself is strong and Alacrity is rewarding for himself, but his party support is not overpowered. Thanks for reading.

As a player that mainly plays ranger, i was extremely disappointed. I had some hope that “taking a look at bad/obsolete traits” would mean fixing the useless traits for the zerker ranger. Maybe sometime in the future the Sword/Axe ranger will get some love. All we really want is for the auto to not lock you down and maybe a rework for Sword skill 2&3.

Still waiting on gyro buffs, buffing med kit to actually be viable, balancing turrets so that they don’t get cleaved down immediately.

Thieves everywhere are rejoicing that they no longer have to deal with celestial engineers in PvP.

Routa.4136:

You can’t control the balance in the game by injecting more damage to professions that are not on par with the overall DPS dished out by the others. This will only increase the power creep that has been in the game since June 2015 (awful patch, mind you), and which was further emphasized by the HoT launch.

Agreed, and actually a serious problem IMO, especially in the context of being a MMORPG.

A game with a heavy emphasis on social aspects and socialization, and hence requiring me or encouraging me to talk to others. This means that on average I’ll prefer combat giving me time to consider and rethink instead of killing everything and everyone by who had initiative at the start of the fight.

Will we ever see some of the removed bl skins? Some of us weren’t playing when a lot were available for less than 10 tickets lol. Feels like we’ve seen dragon’s jade brought back countless times but haven’t ever seen many of the others once.