Guild Wars 2

0 love for eles huh?

• What was the thought process behind giving Alacrity to ventari? From my understanding its the clunky mechanic of the tablet that is keeping ventari from being a viable legend, and alacrity won’t change that. It feels like putting burn cream on frostbite. You tried to help but will it actually do anything?

• Why did AT on mesmers only get a CD reduction in PvP? It doesn’t see any use in PvE so what harm would it be to also reduce its CD in PvE as well?

• The additional effects on phantasm summons for mesmer are interesting (still have to test them myself to see how effective they are), but why didn’t iBerserker or iWarden get the same love?

I totally understand the Meteorshower nerv.

But why the Air-Overload?
D/W ele was at one level with thief and condi ranger. (and maybe engi if he is really good)
Now there are better classes in the only thing eles can do in raids.

Ok, you can heal. But then we would need an uniqe group buff or something like this. Otherwise Druids are better.

Make Eles great again!

As a Revenant main, I’d just like to thank you for the patch. From the perspective of someone who doesn’t use Ventari, there are indeed very few changes. However, and I think I speak on behalf of all Revenants when I say this – Thanks for not making things any worse. I, along with my brothers and sisters, eagerly await the next balance patch, wherein you actually take a look at our class. Cheers and in jest

Why buff trapper Thief without adding a physical damage modifier to prevent stealth spam whilst applying conditions? (WvW specifically)

Why no Engineer shield buff? The offhand pistol buff makes it even harder to justify using shield.

Ranger spike trap and lightning reflexes changes would be great in WvW, not just PvP.

Thank you for addressing the Ranger pets, so far so good with them, I haven’t had a chance to test them all out yet but it feels promising. Kudos on that!

Can you think about adding a damaging condition to either Ranger Sword or mainhand Axe? I’d like to do a little bit of damage whilst waiting on my cooldowns (WvW) [Edit: in addition to this, could the same be done for Guardian?]

Almost all of the classes have some skills or traits that are generally unused or underused (assuming you may have records of which skills are used most? Maybe not though) can we have a balance patch specifically for them? (Stuff like: Ranger spirits, making them mobile again. Consolodating Ranger pet traits into the Beastmastery line instead of having them in multiple traitlines. etc)

Thanks for taking the time to review feedback actively here, it’s much appreciated. My apologies for jumping straight into it there.

I would like to know about the thieve changes. The changes to signet of agility seems like a nerf to the overall mobility in PvP, not the survivability. Is this intended? If yes, why?

Did they tweak epidemic? I’m leaving for work so I didn’t get to read it over too well.

Eles need some love for conjured weapons!

Make them like kits that you can switch in and out of, then things like the axe and shield might one day have a place in some builds.

psizone.8437:

Why buff trapper Thief without adding a physical damage modifier to prevent stealth spam whilst applying conditions? (WvW specifically)

I’ll second this. That build is just purely for trolling, it shouldn’t be in the game.

I’m just glad Power GS Reaper got some love, I have no idea how it will translate to Raids but I’m sure I’ll be able to get into some PUGs if push comes to shove.

I think power guardian is in a really good spot right now. Are there any future plans to buff condi guardian a little bit aswell? Maybe a change to the spirit weapons could help it a lot.

“Specializing in chronomancy grants mesmers access, through traits and skills, to a new effect called alacrity. " Chronomancers. “Chronomancy is the only specialization allowed access to this powerful effect.” Chronomancers. So why do revs have alacrity now?

I would like to know where you see s/f eles?, it is poor in pvp and wvw because you have to sacrifice stats for toughness and/or heal, so you have low sustained dmg on top of which the headline spells dragon tooth and phoenix are both low dmg because of the above and easily avoided. I love s/f because i like the ranged style of elementalist play but it aint in a good place and has not been for a very very long time.

OriOri.8724:

• What was the thought process behind giving Alacrity to ventari? From my understanding its the clunky mechanic of the tablet that is keeping ventari from being a viable legend, and alacrity won’t change that. It feels like putting burn cream on frostbite. You tried to help but will it actually do anything?

This. That tablet is the biggest pain to use. The whole idea behind a click and place healing totem is just ridiculous. Ventari, in its current state, is garbage for any game mode. Please just rebuild the entire legend! Giving it Alacrity is pointless!

You need to split wvw and pve for balance. We need a serious balance for wvw, you can´t do that with pve in mind.

Why did you you all decide to buff ghost thieves two main sources of damage?
They don’t even need to deal damage with their weapons, they only need these two skills for damage.

• Needle Trap: The poison inflicted by this skill has been increased from 1 stack to 3 stacks.
• Caltrops: The duration of bleeding inflicted by this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Ghost-Thief-Gameplay-Tier-1/first

Are there any plans to make more impactful nerfs to all professions in pvp? There were a lot of buffs to underperforming kits this patch which is nice, but I think what most pvp players want to see is nerfs to all of the elite specs that have been dominating the meta since HoT launch.

How come you arent trying to make more skills viable? I main a guardian/dragonhunter and i’ve used the same skills more or less since launch almost.
When i saw “Improvements to underused base skills have been the general focus for the guardian in this patch” i though “aww yeah here comes spirit guard!” but nope, it was pretty much the same as usual.

The changes wasent really bad or anything i just want more viable skills

So from a Guardian perspective I am more or less indifferent to this patch. I have no issue with the nerfs, specifically the Justice nerf…I think that was a solid change.

I like that the devs see that GS needs work…but I feel that they missed the mark a bit. It is the mechanics of GS that needs addressing more than the damage.

My main concern is the fact that Spirit Weapons went completely untouched. One of my favorite things about Guardian when I began playing back in beta was my Spirit Weapon build. Spirit Weapons seem to be relegated to the realm of “just for fun” rather than having any remotely competitive applications. I would really love to see Spirit Weapons and other neglected skills get some love rather than just tweaking what is already being used ad nauseum.

I also would love to see some changes that allow condi guardians to be more viable in PvE DPS roles. I love playing burn guard in PvP but in PvE it just lacks output and really just feels a bit stale.

In the post, you guys say that tempest brings a lot of utility to the in large group content which is raids basically which is entirely not true they bring no boons and no class specific buffs either, maybe rebound but that is a very niche thing. They have such little health so giving them damage balances out and only good Elementalist players are able to pull those numbers give it to the average player and they might not even get to half. So my question is why nerf damage then? Also what utility did you guys think they gave?

With Necro..How come Lifesteal wasn’t buffed in terms of damage so they could have some hope to be raid meta, because right now we’re kinda outside what anyone looks for in general terms for raiding. Maybe lifeforce could be used in a way to buff team or something? Like ferocity is tied to lifeforce from this balance patch.

Why is necro dps still 30 – 40% lower without providing meaningful or unique support to group members and why is so much power of the necro locked behind boon corrupts?

>We’re also looking to reduce the elementalist’s damage in high-level content, as this profession’s damage and utility mix currently crowds out other potential high-damage dealers.

Elementalist is the only class that has no survivability (other than the 2 dodges) and brings 0 utility to the team, especially with the Fresh Air Staff build that was very common until now. The only thing that they would bring is damage, and it required skill to stay alive as an Elementalist.

What is the place of an Elementalist now, after the patch from your prescriptive?

I have to question why engineer’s are being balanced around a gimmick trait like Static Discharge to give them more physical damage. This trait is probably the single greatest balancing flaw in their toolset given that you cannot reasonably buff the cool-downs of their skills due to how that directly interactions with SD.

Additionally, when are elixir’s, gadgets, and gyro’s going to be viable choices over kits ?

When can we expect to see the next balance patch?

Was the seraph stat swapping fixed for warhorn? didnt see anything in the notes.

I dislike the nerf to sharpened edges. It discourages high risk-high reward gameplay. I made a full thread about it on the Druid forum.

How much further do you guys plan to up the target cap on skills? I know you are cautious about adding more, but can we see things like spotter see 10 man cap?

hello!

Lately raid setup was always
- 2 condi Ps
- 2 druids
- 2 chronos
- 4 tempests/condi ranger (sometime with dh or necro for utilities)

which set up can we use now to get the same results as top dmg?
- what about a power necro? is it comparable to a tempest?

Robert Gee.9246:

OriOri.8724:

• The additional effects on phantasm summons for mesmer are interesting (still have to test them myself to see how effective they are), but why didn’t iBerserker or iWarden get the same love?

We’d actually planned for more phantasm changes in this update including iWarden, but we weren’t satisfied with how some of them turned out. When developing these new phantasm skills it was important for us to add functionality that had meaningful combat effects without deviating too much from the purpose of the phantasm or the weapon. We’d like to do more of these in the future but we are being careful not to power creep them so much that we have to weaken the phantasm to counterbalance it.

Good to hear that you guys are trying to do this right. I’m excited to see what we do eventually get for iWarden, as its one of my favorite phantasms.

And thanks for the answers to my other 2 questions as well

Can u tell us why the zeal trait line on guardian wasnt looked at for ages? Currently its complete garbage for pvp as it doesnt offer enough for the utility and defense people loose from not picking the virtues traitline.

Also pls give us something that isnt a mini Llama to buy from the league vendor (currently sitting on about 400 useless league tickets)

The guardian balancing felt like they lacked any kind of vision as to where the class should go in terms of potential builds and jsut band aiding based on forum complains (though I like that greatsword got alteast started to get looked at, though it still isnt worth taking at all for pvp)

Here a few points about the guardian:

Zeal trait line

The traitline is currently in an odd place, as most of its traits are without purpose or reason to pick in most gamemodes. The main problem is that the traits in this traitline don’t seem to have an “identity” to which they belong nor impactful innergies with other traitlines or most weapons the class can use.

Based on the focus on symbols and the shattered aegis grandmaster trait the only thing that makes sense for an “identity” for this traitline is a melee oriented dps playstyle which in order for people to even consider the traitline it needs to give offensive potential for the defensiv and/or utility they give it up in return. Th following suggestions are there to push

Adept Traits:

• Wrathful Spirit: should be replaced by a new trait called Vigourous Spirits

• Vigourous Spirits: Spirit weapons have increased vitality(+50% HP) and get 10s of protection upon being summoned

• Zealous Scepter: Now also increases the projectile speed from scepter #1 by 33%(maybe 50%)

Master Traits:

• Binding Jeopardy: Include Knockback, Launch and Knockdown as triggers in additons to the current ones for this trait

• Kindled Zeal: Now grants Might(1 Stack with 5 seconds base duration) when hitting a burning enemy while wielding a melee weapon.

Grandmaster Traits:

• Expeditious Spirits: remove the burning on spirits weapon attack + add improvements to command skills:

• Hammer of Wisdom(Command): now hits up to 3 targets in a 180 radius around the target of the Commandskill

• Sword of Justice (Command): Now removes up to 2 boons from enemies struck

• Bow of Truth (Command): Now reveals and applies weakness in the target area

• Shield of the Avenger (Command): Now also applies blind(3s duration) to enemies and 2 stacks of stability(5s duration)

• Shattered Aegis: Now also removes 1 boon from all enemies that are hit by the damaging portion of this trait

Right now this trait fails connect on enemies alot as it is countered by block,evade,invuln,blurr,distortion,(not sure about blind) and ranged attack from beyond 240 range. Given this its dmg feels incredibly lackluster (for a grandmaster trait) as when picking the Zeal trait the player is giving up alot of survivability they would normally have when picking virtues over zeal. Giving it an additional effect that can be used to counter act the fairly massive amount of boons with good postioning and trait choices would help guard to have a reason to pick this trait again. (if wanted/needed I can provide numerous scenarios of how this change coudl/would play out in practical use)

Dragonhunter trait line:

Currently the master trait “Bulwark” seems really weak compared to the 2 alternatives.

Bulwark:

• Now additionaly removes the cast time from “Shield of Courage”

This would allow people to activate “Shield of Courage” while stuned (similar to how u can currently activat focus #5 on guardian while stunned currently) without removing counter- or skilled play as the shiled can’t be repositioned while stunned/knockdowned etc. This change would opeln up some build diversity as the virutes traitline becomes slightly less mandatory as a result (discussed this change with oither top guardian players in EU for about an hours till we agreed that this would have no negative impact on the games balance but rather help diversity)

1) Can you please give a factual and mathematics based reason for the 7% air overload nerf? It feels like you picked a random number to nerf Ele.

2) Why not simply buff the underloved weapons/skills/traits in order to give classes more viable builds rather than handing out relatively random nerfs and buffs?

For PvE: Even after today’s buffs, necromancer still does 30 percent to 40 percent less DPS than other DPS classes (such as elementalist, thief, guardian, and engineer), based on golem and real-world testing, with no significant utility to make up for the gap. As a result, the class is almost never taken in high-end raid fights — with very rare exceptions for one or two fights where Plague Signet or Epidemic might be valuable, but even then other DPS are usually preferred for optimized groups. Are there future changes planned for necromancer, given this discrepancy?

Part 2 of my post cause it got too long:

Utility Skills

• Test of Faith: Is no longer unblockable

Its a small change but could already stop the trap from being so massivly unfun to play against for people as they now could use block abilites or aegis to position themselves differently across the border of the trap without wasting a valuable dodge helping multiple classes that currently struggle vs this trap like mesmer for example.

• Spirit Weapons: their Cooldown now starts the moment the weapons summoned

• Sword of Justice: Cooldown increased to 45 seconds

Duration reduced to 25 seconds

• Hammer of Wisdom: Cooldown increased to 50 seconds

*Test of Faith: increased cooldown to 36 seconds and reduce both inital and secondary dmg by about 15-25%

Now 30s Cooldown with trait resulting in a lower proctection uptime. The lower uptime of the trap in general reduces its spammability which is a problem in lower tiers. Right now the trap still does to much dmg for the effort of the player using it promoting and rewarding CC a little too much.

Weapon Skills

At the moment the guardian Greatsword has numerous issues which mostly come from design choices around beta of the core game and the power creep/reworks other weapons ahve had after the launch of heart of thorns. My goal for these changes is to get the greatsword back to a state where it uesable again without being OP

• Greatsword #2: remove the projectiles from this skill. The projectiles hurt the guardian more than they help in alot of situations (be it through reflects, beign converted into enemy heals through the druid staff #5 or retaliation.)

• Greatsword #3: remove the blind on impact at the end of the leap and in return give the ability a dodge frame during the jump. One of the main reasons the greatsword is currently so lackluster is that it leaves the guardian completly exposed which in the current state of the game is like asking to be killed while not providing anywhere close to enough pressure to justify the lack of defense. There a small evade frame on this weapon could help alot without causing imbalance (currently almost every melee weapon has some kind of defensiv weapon skill). The blind of the ability currently almost never gets applied as it is incredibly easy to interrupt.

• Greatsword #5: Have the over time damage portion after connecting the projectiles be calculated with the power and not with the condition damage stat of the user. Greatsword on guardian is a pure physical damage weapon and is and will never be properly utilized in a condition build, so for more streamlined and straight forward damage calculations (as the only people that even know it calculates based of condition damage read about it in the wiki)

If any of the devs want me to elaborate on any point pls let me know.

just out of curiosity, what was the reasoning behind adding the line-of-sight requirement to Vault? I’d been using it for out-of-combat travel for a while now, but after the latest patch, I get the “no-line-of-sight” thing a lot. it kinda feels like the pathing errors on shortbow, which I was kinda hoping to avoid…

Alacrity has no significant synergy to offer revenant itself, since all of the cooldowns are fairly short and is gated to a second degree by energy cost.

Bringing a revenant for Healing / Alacrity at the moment seems completely pointless as Druid brings healing + Spirits, Empowerment and GotL
Chrono brings Alacrity + Quickness

Due to both niches being filled there’s no room in the composition for a ventari revenant to be brought to a raid group.

If ventari rev offered party damage modifiers that are comparable to Druid then maybe it would be worth running them.

Are there plans to up target caps on buffs in general. I feel this, along with proper balance, is a big part of opening up some flexibility in raids where right now we need two of the same class to distribute things like might and quickness.

As a ranger and wvw player thank you for the pet changes. They seem to be a good beginning to increasing the synergy between the ranger and the pet by providing more reliable performance against moving opponents. So that’s good, although I would be pleased to see their survivability addressed in wvw at some point. Confused as to why spike trap and lightning reflexes didn’t carry over to all game modes, the changes don’t look all that dangerous or broken. Confused as to the lackluster attention paid to wvw skill balance in general. Buffing ghost thieves. That’s… an odd choice. As to the rest everything that was over tuned in world vs world will now just kill you faster. That’s bad. Although I guess once most of the guild group rage quits and you get the man mode buff you won’t be giving up any points. That’s… good. I guess.

On an ending positive note. I think some of the changes are really going in the right direction, while others my be going in the right direction for certain game modes. With a bit of work and consideration for the remaining game modes (World vs World) I think things could really start cooking.

Kerivek.5740:

So from a Guardian perspective I am more or less indifferent to this patch. I have no issue with the nerfs, specifically the Justice nerf…I think that was a solid change.

I like that the devs see that GS needs work…but I feel that they missed the mark a bit. It is the mechanics of GS that needs addressing more than the damage.

My main concern is the fact that Spirit Weapons went completely untouched. One of my favorite things about Guardian when I began playing back in beta was my Spirit Weapon build. Spirit Weapons seem to be relegated to the realm of “just for fun” rather than having any remotely competitive applications. I would really love to see Spirit Weapons and other neglected skills get some love rather than just tweaking what is already being used ad nauseum.

I also would love to see some changes that allow condi guardians to be more viable in PvE DPS roles. I love playing burn guard in PvP but in PvE it just lacks output and really just feels a bit stale.

Around HoT release I felt condi guard was more viable than power guard but I think it also has to do with what content you’re currently doing. When they made it so that condi was the only way to damage stuff (large portions of HoT content and silverwastes) it sure was the better way to go.

But yes for the most part I agree this update wasn’t what they advertised in the by-line, it was, well… Just A Change.

I would say, having mained a Guard since release myself I don’t think anything about GS was underused.

Maybe they mean only in terms of weapon skills and not utility?

Nonetheless, Spirit Weapons are completely non-viable if you are doing content that requires you to be effective and mobile. I also don’t really get what changes listed count as “counterplay” aside from Deflecting Shot being made more reliable.

Edit: I would further add about Guardian weapons, that I feel that there aren’t really any underused base skills. As a Guardian, you pick your weapon based upon what you expect to be doing and you use the skills associated with it. So yes, if a weapon is underused it’s the mechanics that need to be addressed, not adjusting numbers on the skills.

Edit^2: Also the light field change is pretty huge for a Guardian and I have mixed feelings on how that will play out. There was a set of changes (I think in that big patch prior to HoT) that allowed the Guardian to capitalize on the copious amount of Retaliation, which I think was in large part due to how much they generate from all their fields. I’d have to review what that involved but I have some concerns for the viability of that build after this update.

What’s the general idea you’re following when balancing necro? Power and condi seperately, if possible.

This set of balance changes for necro was definitely better than the last few, however it feels like you’re highly afraid of tweaking numbers too high to the point where they would actually be broken. Do you generally consider reworking skills when working on the balance patch or is this something you’d only do in a “last ditch effort”, when the skill just can’t be put in a good place? Because this is something I’ve always been wondering with condi necro, their damage is on the lower side because their skills tend to be instant-hits, delivering their full effect in a single tick. Did you ever consider turning those skills into AoEs instead (Scepter 2, Dagger 5 come to mind for example, even Dagger 4) and why did you decide against it?

The ele nerf was highly unjustified. Ele has a hard time enough surviving high level content so now we have to suffer with a damage nerf too? I do appreciate the glyph of harmony buff. Thats the only upside about all of this.

- I believe the treatment you gave to GoTL and banners to be a really positive change: are you planning on giving the same treatment to other unique proffesion buffs?

- Alacrity on revenant is a change I don’t quite understand, would you mind elaborating on what was the thought process behind it?

- Do you beta test all these changes extensively?, if you do, can you share part of the evaluation and tweaking process with us?

When are you going to stop ignoring devourers? Two updates to pets and they are still in the worst position.