Guild Wars 2

Sounds good. Transparency is always useful. Fixing targeting should be the main priority of course.

warrior, necro, and spirit ranger not getting nerfed :o

Dristig.9678:

I’m on Blackgate. I know all about fighting zergs. I would hope they could come up with something like WoW did and give them increased resistance to AoE not just buff their HP way up like they have been doing.

Even something like deprioritizing summons in the AoE 5 count would be better than just buffing HP so high that no player can kill a Ranger Elite summon.

I don’t have the answer I just hope they can be more creative than a 70% hp buff.

I recall a forum posting by ex-dungeon dev Robert Hrouda that discussed how they considered the AoE resistance then realized, through testing, that it would make the ranger class far too powerful, at least in dungeon PvE.

I’m guessing it’s just the first in a line of changes for the pet. I don’t think it’s the only change we’ll be seeing for them ever. Just the first.

apt.9184:

warrior, necro, and spirit ranger not getting nerfed :o

Please. Stop calling for endless nerfs. Yes, that ranger build may be prevalent in PvP. But it is not as OP in other areas. And the recent changes to spirits does create much counter-play. Please learn the counter mechanics rather than just call for nerfs.

Thanks.

Zypher.7609:

Turrets are viable, now to come up with a toolkit +2 turret build. Thanks for the heads up!

I built one a while ago. Try this;
0/20/30/0/20
Rifled Barrels/Coated Bullets
Metal Plating/Autotool Installation/Rifled Turret Barrels
Deployable Turrets/Power Wrench

Medikit/Rifle Turret/Rocket Turret/Toolkit/Supply Drop

Throw your turrets somewhere inaccessible if possible, or just generally out of the way. They’ll plink at people for solid damage, especially well with the overcharges, and be very difficult to access. Then all you need to do is focus on keeping yourself alive while your turrets chew on your enemy.

Dristig.9678:

Lumping WvW in with PvE is really scary for this change. Summons that can handle PvE levels of damage in smaller scale WvW are going to be very overpowered. If for instance you buff summons to be able to stand in AoE in PvE and that strength is brought to WvW how are you supposed to kill them out in the field?

My MM necro is now immortal. 30k HP Flesh Golem incoming!~

I think this is really scary too. I can already take a camp+bad player, now it’ll be even easier with it taking a million hours for them to knock down my minions- which are now draining even more life for me with improved draining traits.

Couple of quick things Sharp.
Stuff sounds good at a surface level to an extent but a couple of thoughts.

With the idea of Sick’em denying stealth and this idea possibly extending to other skills will you be adding more non-stealth traits or replacing stealth traits for non-stealth traits in the SA line in the future? As you know that line is quite dense as far as stealth related traits go. Off the top of my head while this may not see Tpvp play a Ranger can ensure his shortbow 1 spam on a thief by pressing Sick-em to make sure Last Refuge does not go off in one situation. In another situation he outright stops a D/P thief from his 5-2 combo to deny backstab/escape. That’s somewhat strong given that Stealth is the most solid counter to range spam on a thief given Smokescreen I’d say isn’t as efficient in pvp as you probably hope it would be. This sounds like interesting play but do you perhaps want to decrease the significance of stealth for thieves going forward?

Think you can make sneak in a quick increase of velocity to Dancing Dagger even if it’s miniscule between now and tuesday?

It is of course appreciated that you summarized why you were going with the changes you are.

My body is ready for 4 conjure Meta.

docMed.7692:

First off, awesome that you guys are being so transparent. Although some people will still ream/attack you guys for “pending” changes, I think the larger part of the community will greatly appreciate it.

Most of these changes are pretty awesome and I’m looking forward to reading over how you exactly implement them. Here are my thoughts on some of the areas that could use some addressing:

---

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

Cool to see some more options here. One concern I have with fast cast though is that while I’m ok with not previewing my cast, certain abilities like blink and shortbow #5 are tough to figure out your exact range. It comes down to; I want to blink as fast as possible because often it is an ability used in a dire situation, but I also need to ensure that I can identify the appropriate range. Games like League of Legends implement a system where if you cast abilities outside of their max range, the ability will still go off and act as if the user selected the max range for this ability. Can this same concept to skills like blink be applied and added as an option? It’s quite frustrating to die because I wasn’t able to quickly guess the max range needed on a blink or shortbow #5 and only met with an invalid response in red text.

I’m super happy to hear a change in targeting. Nothing is more frustrating than running up to a champion only to target a non-attacking stack of weapons!!!

One person posted in another thread the idea of having a trait changing NPC at the start of dungeons along with the armor repair. That would be really, really awesome.

While fury on guardian is welcome, I don’t feel this is the answer to some of the problems offensive guardians had.

PvE there wasn’t much issue as you could reliably dodge when needed versus bosses.

PvP it was an issue of survivability due to low hp and low healing while having offensive stats and damage set up (can’t lock a target down and hard to chase reliably)

For defensive guardian’s there wasn’t too much of an issue, you just sit there and take it, but more damage while being defensive would have been nice.

Would be nice if we see tooltips when sigils/runes activate also just as traits do.

Sarrs.4831:

Dristig.9678:

Lumping WvW in with PvE is really scary for this change. Summons that can handle PvE levels of damage in smaller scale WvW are going to be very overpowered. If for instance you buff summons to be able to stand in AoE in PvE and that strength is brought to WvW how are you supposed to kill them out in the field?

My MM necro is now immortal. 30k HP Flesh Golem incoming!~

I think this is really scary too. I can already take a camp+bad player, now it’ll be even easier with it taking a million hours for them to knock down my minions- which are now draining even more life for me with improved draining traits.

Yeah that’s the sort of thing I’m afraid of. Rangers and Necros and Mesmers can just solo all your camps if they buff summons to the point of surviving Arrow cart spam.

I also don’t understand why they don’t base hp and power off of the players gear. You shouldn’t be wearing Zerker gear and get tanky pets. You want tanky pets? Get tanky gear.

Dristig.9678:

Yeah that’s the sort of thing I’m afraid of. Rangers and Necros and Mesmers can just solo all your camps if they buff summons to the point of surviving Arrow cart spam.

I also don’t understand why they don’t base hp and power off of the players gear. You shouldn’t be wearing Zerker gear and get tanky pets. You want tanky pets? Get tanky gear.

That’s a kinda short-sighted way of looking at it. Forcing both you and your pet to act similiar stat-wise regardless reduces options. The thing is that if the player is glassy then you take them down and take out both the ranger and their pet. But if the pet is forced to be glassy, then all power-based rangers will have nigh-useless pets around any sort of spammable AoE. And that would invalidate many, many builds.

Rangers want more non-bunker options. But forcing bunker stats for survivable pets only continues the endless pushing of rangers into bunkers.

How I read this; buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs buffs.

I personally think most things need to be tuned down in this game, not experience a power creep. Are you just going to keep buffing everything ad infinitum?

“Bringing skills in line” with others can go both ways, you know.

Guardian
We increased the power of many support skills which weren’t seeing much play. We reworked Purging Flames: it now removes three conditions from allies in an area effect around the guardian on cast while still burning enemies (enemies that enter or exit the flames are still burned). Once the skill has been cast, it then reduces condition duration for allies who remain in the consecration’s area. It’s hawt. Literally. All meditation utility skills are now instant, and monks focus now grants fury on meditation use.

Lol, really? Guardian is already overpowered, no need to give him more supportive kitten. And especially not more conditionhate.

We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.

I dont know, isnt the boonstripping the mainpurpose of the skill? Couldnt you tone down something else like the damage or the evasion-time?

Nec
The Blood line underwent some tweaks, as it’s something that Necromancer players often feel is a lacking trait line. Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, Vampiric Master have all seen improvements.

Now i’m curious. Increased base-leech? An actual scaling? Or this sad excuse of a scaling that Vampiric already got?

Everything else looks good tho, cant wait to try Pistol-Thief again.

Anyway, this information about waht youre currently working on and what we can expect in the next weeks is much appreciated, thanks!

JonathanSharp.7094:

Warrior
We’re looking to improve shouts so that support via shouts is more viable. This means moving Lung Capacity to Tier 1 so that you can take it along with Shrug it Off and Vigorous Shouts. The Warrior is in a pretty decent place overall right now, and sees play in many types of content, as well as in PvP/WvW.

Just make healing signet an on hit skill, like thief’s signet of malice

Hey Jon, thanks for the post, it was great! I can’t wait for most of those QoL changes. But only on October 15th? Was the balance patch delayed again? :P I don’t enjoy the current pvp meta very much, and I’ve been waiting for the patch to get back to pvp.

Now, here’s my feedback/ suggestions based on what’s coming. I’m an elementalist, so most of my ideas revolve around it.

Skills that apply “Revealed”

I enjoy the idea of pets catching stealthed characters by scent. What about a mesmer’s illusion that can apply revealed? Maybe torch’s, or one of the utility’s phantasms. Or maybe just a mesmer’s denial trait.

What about stealthed characters getting a “semi-revealed” visual effect while standing on enemy’s water fields? This would open up space for a water trait that would do that. Likewise, Ranger’s Muddy Terrain could do the same.

More emphasis on support builds

I love this.

Elementalists could have a water trait that increases the radius of all water healing skills from 240-ish (generally) to 360-ish, and increases the amount of healing done to allies by 20%. But traits like this should sacrifice some self-defense (like the traditional healer role) so that an opponent can make the strategical decision between killing the most dangerous guy (glass cannon burst or something), or an equally-squishy support guy. For this reason, the cantrip trait that gives boons could be moved to master tier, maybe even fused with the other cantrip trait, and this one by at master tier as well. This way, eles would have to choose between more ally healing or more self-defense.

This also opens up a great opportunity to make Signet of Water a great skill: rework its active effect so that it can be a ground-targetted/ PBAoE healing skill! Probably with the same power as water trident. It would also create an interesting decision between long-term condition protection and short-term survival. (The passive effect should still be stronger, though. Have it activate every 8s, or change it to decrease duration by X%).

Frost Bow’s Frost Fan could heal/ add regeneration to allies as it passes through them, so that healing builds don’t rely solely on auto-attacking when (if) using a frost bow. For a weapon that offers healing power, it should have more than a single healing skill. Frost Fan is also the only other skill that doesn’t looks downright deadly, and it would give an interesting choice between standing close to an enemy for a full stack of chill, or to an ally for a full stack of regen.

More so than that, the water trait that affects water utility skills could add an healing/ regen effect to frost bow when it is cast, much like how the fire conjure weapons have a burning trait in the fireline. Something like “when you cast frost bow, heals allies around that area”.

Improve Elementalist’s staff

I would like to see a damage effect at the start of burning retreat, maybe both in this weapon and in conjure flame axe. Like a reversed burning speed. This would punish any glass cannon that would attempt to kill a staff ele in 3 seconds. I don’t think a staff ele should be effective at killing someone 1v1, because it’s a support weapon. But I think it should punish those who try to kill us. I think it’s fair, considering how frail staff eles are. It would make the opponents think twice.

Also, it would be interesting to see changes done to blasting staff, so that it is not as required as it is now. Maybe increase the base radius for some of its key skills (lava font, eruption), and change the blasting staff effect entirely to something else. This would be interesting, because it would nerf that weapon in wvw, where it is stronger, giving you more space to buff it through other means.

Could shockwave affect any opponent inbetween you and your target, or would it be too strong?

@Sharp

Why so many buffs? There has been a massive power creep in the game over the last few patches which is evident in the paper/rock/scissors style of play that has resulted.

What is your vision for Ele? What do you want the ele to do?

Ok then give them more traits that buff pet HP. Wear your Zerker gear and spend the traits to get tanky pets. My only real point is that it should be a trade-off. Some cost for pets that can solo supply camps seems reasonable. Straight buffs to everyone’s pets regardless of build/Stats seems pretty broken.

Now I still think they need more protection from AoE especially in PvE but if that buff is straight HP that apply to all pets in all parts of WvW it will be an awful change.

Dristig.9678:

Yeah that’s the sort of thing I’m afraid of. Rangers and Necros and Mesmers can just solo all your camps if they buff summons to the point of surviving Arrow cart spam.

I also don’t understand why they don’t base hp and power off of the players gear. You shouldn’t be wearing Zerker gear and get tanky pets. You want tanky pets? Get tanky gear.

Honestly, I like that minions don’t have the same stats as their masters. It gives them more of a niche for a player that might not otherwise use them.

I’d like it if they scaled to some extent with gear level, though. An MM in blues has just as powerful minions as an MM in ascended+exotic.

shoud I even mention kicking offline party members in www? coz they/we are asking this since… day one and a year+ of pve crap past since. Or the comunity give up? :p

This is seriously amazing, thanks for posting this and communicating, one step further to being like Riot.

That said.

“Elementalist : We also increased the healing on Water Blast.”

While this is nice and all, it’s still useless with 90 radius, I would actually prefer NOT getting a heal boost and instead boosting the radius to 240 at the very least so you don’t have to literally be hugging the mob to get healed, even 240 would be really small. I would personally want 360 radius.

Also I hoped Lava Font would get the same treatment as Geyser for the very same reasons, it’s hard to aim and hit things with because it’s so small and is way too reliant on a trait to make it decent, Necro marks finally got some love in this department.

Finally :

“Thief
Venomous Aura was very difficult to use, as the radius was fairly tight. We’ve now increased that radius a bit, so that it’s easier to share venoms with allies without huddling closely together.”

This same logic needs to be applied to other buffs such as Ele Staff Air aoe swiftness, the radius is also currently 240 and should at the very least be 360, for the exact same reasons. (Along with other aoe buffs with insanely small radii.)

That is all I really needed to input, thanks so much for this thread again.

I’ll plug my Ele staff suggestions thread anyway even though you probably wouldn’t have time to skim it anyway. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/What-I-d-Change-Staff-and-Arcana/first#post2830288

since we will get a “support patch”, can we expect then a future “offensive patch”?
taking a quick look in the Elementalist forum you may notice that people are tired of being stuck into support roles.

Hey Jon glad you guys are doing some more for mantras however as long as initial cast times last forever and a day they won’t be very viable in high end PvP. Its a rock and a hard place with these skill types but a near 3s cast time is pretty much gauranteeing a free kill if the mesmer ever has to recharge in the middle of a fight. Is there any thought to reducing the initial cast time or adding a trait that reduces the cast time or eliminates it (harmonious mantras+this)

Grevender.9235:

since we will get a “support patch”, can we expect then a future “offensive patch”?
taking a quick look in the Elementalist forum you may notice that people are tired of being stuck into support roles.

i dont think you are aware of what an elementalist can do

most dps in pve, just saying.

Jon, thank you for the great post.

I was hoping for a preview of upcoming features, however. More than what was mentioned in the SOTG. A range of release and what may be coming sooner than other features?

“We’re also looking to make conditions scale better in PvE/WvW leveling so that they’re more viable at different junctures in the level scale.”

Yes please.

October 15th? Is there anything coming in the 2 patches before this?

Glad to see you confirmed Empower Allies getting switched for Lung Capacity from the leaked notes.

All of these updates looks fantastic so far! I’m so excited that tooltips (should) now have accurate information. I suggested that months ago, glad it’s finally coming.

That said, this is still my primary concern:

Vol.5241:

“-Are you still looking at a way to have conditions stack past 25? AFAIK the last response indicated that this is a technical hurdle and fixing it would be difficult since it is a network issue
-Are there any plans to have conditions work on mobs that are considered structures? (i.e. teq, kitten, golem)

Conditions are so fun, but they’re really weak in any group bigger than 5.

About the Engie turrets. I’m not real impressed with the change. Turrets are still one-shot all the time, even by aoe’s. They grab aggro like crazy, so are absolutely useless.

As far as targeting what I am targeting, no thank you. Give me a toggle to not do that. I often drop turrets (when I think they will last) and then dodge/roll/run somewhere else, so I can target specifics while the turrets do damage for me like another player. This will absolutely obliterate my need for any kind of turret. The net turret, for example. If I have that out, I want it stopping things close to me, not what I am shooting.

All in all, a bad job again, IMO.

The Blood Magic improvements are very welcome, however I feel the largest siphon buff should probably come to Life Siphon (Dagger #2) – these other effects are passive, however channeling Life Siphon has a distinct opportunity cost. The damage is no where near dagger autoattack and the healing provided is a drop in the bucket. It would make a great deal of sense to either buff the damage so it is no longer such opportunity cost, or buff the healing so it is a meaningful amount healed.

Otherwise these notes looks great!

“… and monks focus now grants fury on meditation use.”

I didn’t know monks were known for being angry.

edit: unless we’re suddenly going into dragonball z here.

THIS is how it should be done. Finally they’re letting us know.

Mr. Sharp, is The change to give Guardian’s Fury a typo? With typo I mean Monk’s Focus giving fury, is it supposed to be “Focused Mind” trait or is it really Monk’s Focus?

Please, for the love of kittens, change Ranger sword auto (#1) so you are NOT glued into the combat animation. The one glaring issue with using Sword Ranger in PvP/WvW.

It’s nifty useful in PvE where you can faceroll stay on target since the animation locks you into constantly closing on the target, but this isn’t a reason to leave it as broken as it is.

Thorg.6809:

Conditions are so fun, but they’re really weak in any group bigger than 5.

Maybe the change with the popup numbers will also indicate some backend changes. I’m not sure but I guess we can hope, eh?

I think, that slot skills of warrior are pretty lame at this moment. You talking about making skills more “cool”, but, personally, warriors’ skills are most boring between all classes.

My thoughts about warrior:
Physical skills have too long cooldown for their minor usefulness, narrowly focused, dealing funny damage. I didnt see any warrior using them. Shouts leads to facerolling gameplay (and this is even from my point as user Vigorous Shouts build), which is not very exciting. Sigils are boring. Standards are nice, but they are far ahead of fun Ele/Guardian/Engee/Thief skills. I think physical skills must be reworked or they need buffs a lot.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Class balance:
(…)

Elementalist
We’re working on the staff in an effort to make it a stronger support weapon, and we also improved the conjure weapons so that they’re stronger for support. You’ll see improvements to all 4 of the conjure weapons to make them stronger and better for support.

We also increased the healing on Water Blast, the radius on Geyser and we reworked
Unsteady Ground to make it function more like line of warding.

(…)

I love You. Staff Elementalist is my style, no other.
If You so happen to make Staff Elementalist of any use at sPvP I will marry you.

Cheers.

Some awesome stuff here, but please don’t forget about focus on Elementalist. Only half the skills on it are useful right now. It really needs to be reworked heavily! There’s a good topic about it in the Elementalist sub-forum.

I also really hope Ele staff can be more viable in the future. It’s way too slow right now and is pretty much only good for providing combo fields and some CC (in WvW zergs). D/D, S/D, and S/F are all more viable than staff even in PvE, but especially so in WvW/sPvP.

I won’t comment on anything but mesmer cuz its not the classes i play but i can assure you that no one will bother with Mantra of Concentration even after patch. Who in their right mind will waste an utility slot for 2sec of stability x 2? Increase stability duration to a minimum of 5sec for this thing to be worth running and even then it’ll be very situational.

Thief:

Venomous Aura — This is a much needed change. All AOE buffs need to have a reasonable area, it would be nice if they could be standardized.

Larcenous Strike — If you reduce the boon steal from 2 to 1, this skill is going to need something. Maybe you could move the Initiative cost back down from 2 to 1, or reduce the cast time to improve its DPS. Otherwise you could just go back to the original Flanking Strike design while retaining the improved pathing and have a better skill.

Pistols — Can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.

Nuka Cola.8520:

I won’t comment on anything but mesmer cuz its not the classes i play but i can assure you that no one will bother with Mantra of Concentration even after patch. Who in their right mind will waste an utility slot for 2sec of stability x 2? Increase stability duration to a minimum of 5sec for this thing to be worth running and even then it’ll be very situational.

That’s two stun breakers too. It’s not bad really and the fine grained 2s of stability could be used as counterplay to block CC you see coming.

Thanks for the update to the typo. We were all pretty sure that is what you meant, but helps to clear things up.

I am still not sold on if offensive guardian’s were missing fury and that is what is going to make them better. I was under the impression that we gave up too much to go offensive based on the low HP pool, and lack of healing/defensive stats while going offensive.

A change to enhance sustainability while being offensive I think would have been a more welcome change, but I think we will just have to wait and see how this change pans out.

Giving high crit damage and higher crit chance in one trait line is nice though.

“Overall we’re looking to provide more builds for all classes, across all game types (PvE, PvP and WvW)”

If that’s what you want (im one of them as well), why don’t you give us free allocation of traits? At least let us chose minor traits, that would help significantly.

In light of recent shenanigans – thank you for keeping the dialog going.

Carlin Sanders.3587:

“… and monks focus now grants fury on meditation use.”

I didn’t know monks were known for being angry.

edit: unless we’re suddenly going into dragonball z here.

They are not, that is why they have to meditate to release their anger. :P

stof.9341:

Nuka Cola.8520:

I won’t comment on anything but mesmer cuz its not the classes i play but i can assure you that no one will bother with Mantra of Concentration even after patch. Who in their right mind will waste an utility slot for 2sec of stability x 2? Increase stability duration to a minimum of 5sec for this thing to be worth running and even then it’ll be very situational.

That’s two stun breakers too. It’s not bad really and the fine grained 2s of stability could be used as counterplay to block CC you see coming.

yes 2 but would you take this instead of Decoy or Blink for example? I wouldn’t, NEVER.