Guild Wars 2

The new ventari is awesome tho!

This patch and many in the past are mostly cooldown reduction without much functionality changes. But it feels like in many cases, the mechanics itself is the problem and there is no cooldown or damage modifier which can make the skills balanced.

For example, as a mesmer main, I think the whole phantasm mechanics is nearly impossible to balance and I feel a rework, while obviously difficult because a wide range of skills and traits are related, is necessary (see my signature). To a large extent (and it is true of many classes) the elite specialization became so mandatory because they attempted to fix the core issues (ex. chronophantasma for chronomancer), but one cannot have each new specialization fix the same problems over and over, they need to be fixed directly at the core level.

On a smaller scale, weapons like off-hand sword or focus just do not bring much interesting utilities in most game modes and could easily be reworked to get them a purpose (again see my signature).

So the question is simple : are there any plan for some more broad reworks of weapons or even class mechanics before adding new layers of complexity with the new elite specialization? Something of the type of the large trait reworks before HoT or on a smaller scale, case by case.

So im not sure on alot of things with this patch, but I think i can live with/ get used to it. All except one. Wvw. red circles AoE even if its freindly. NO. If its a test for lag then its a bad bad choice. no idea where is safe and where is not. Been doging these circles for years and now we wont have to doge them, maybe.
The engi trait for the condi buff in “pinpoint distribution”is called " Increased Precsision". Now correct me if I’m wrong but it offers confusion based on the acctuall stat precsision.
In all I’m glad for changes but this isn’t a full “skill balance”. there is wayyyy too many skills, traits and weapons that just don’t even come close to “balanced” as they just bad. Like the most used things got update yes, but the rest have dust gathering.
Lets just look at engi for eg, as im on it currently.
Alchlemy. Last line, do i choose HGH (making elixers op and stack might and added cd) or do i go Stimulant supplier (10 sec cd for a tiny heal and 6 sec fury). like why would i chose that ever, if i needed healing pack id go for Inventions bunker down and HGH. basically it gives out more healing, an added mine,1 sec CD and more up time of fury with elixer b.
This is like a class i just happen to be on at this moment looking at one choice. If i can pm this skill balance team i can give so much more feedback not just on this class but i think if i do it on here id get banned for spamming.
Oh and i love the launch pad in desert Borderlands, i can almost play it now.
PS. i know you dont want to like do massive changes but there is alot of potential work here that us player base would happily help point in the right direction.

Right now the popular choices that I am reading on map chat for Raids is to bring 4 condi rangers, 2 mesmers, 2 ps and 2 druids. It’s not the best team for sure but it points out something quite stupid: The best profession to run for healer and the best class to run for DPS in the game right now is the same profession.

If nerfing the tempest a bit was just so we don’t have only tempests as DPS professions, the same treatment should be done against the condi ranger, because 6 out of 10 spots in a raid is likely to be that. Rangers already had their secured spot as druids, I don’t get to understand why their damage is so high against other professions that can only go to a raid as DPS dealers (thief)

I suspect that most of the changes done at balancing try to address stuff broken months ago, and that’s why it usually fails. 3 months ago there were tempests everywhere at raids, but now the tempests where slowly being replaced by condi rangers to the point that it’s rare to see a raid without one or 2 condi rangers, however the nerf to tempest still came up to address something that it’s not happening anymore.

Small off-topic suggestion: I think Anet should join random LFG raids with DPS meters on to see the real damage of the average population on certain professions to address better the way the meta uses them. And then manage to create a perfect balance where choosing one profession or another is actually relevant to the group and not everyone would go for the “best” one.

For me, balance means that if 2 professions (X and Y) would do 50 of damage with perfect rotations, X would bring to the party something that Y cannot, and the other way around. But right now I don’t think the game is balanced because we got X doing 34 and Y doing 41 while X bringing barely any utility and Y bringing some.

I’m rather dissatisfied with the change to Vault. Besides it being bugged with Quickness and finishing mid-air 90% of the time, causing a slow drop afterward and actually resulting in a dps loss, the new arc of travel feels, to me, very unnatural and less satisfying than its previous iteration, which I think is due to the vault animation before this patch giving a better sense of anticipation.

I also have a question regarding thief staff. How does the balance team feel about the thief’s “optimal” damage rotation involving the use of a shortened Weakening Charge accomplished by leaving enemies untargeted and aiming the camera above your character?

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

From a general game perspective, specializations are places where a profession may gain access to features from a different profession.

So, Alacrity is now a Revenant feature and the Chrono gets access to it?

Elrey.5472:

Small off-topic suggestion: I think Anet should join random LFG raids with DPS meters on to see the real damage of the average population on certain professions to address better the way the meta uses them. And then manage to create a perfect balance where choosing one profession or another is actually relevant to the group and not everyone would go for the “best” one.

Unfortunately this would require them to play the game outside of their internal testing bubble

Gray.9041:

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…

I was going to ask this as well, not because vault is something I used much out of combat but because the “no valid path” issue has been a bane for a while.

I did go test Vault on the Peach Tree pillars. It jumped me across the gaps just fine. So it really is los rather than valid path (the peach tree itself acted as a block; I did not try around skinnier obstacles). A quick test at a high stone wall at the Lake Doric entry showed that it would not let me get up high, however, even though I got my target center just at the stone’s edge to stay in los I did not arc anywhere near that high.

Mostly I’m curious what the interplay is between fixing performance and adding an los requirement.

I know this isn’t necessarily a question regarding the intent of balancing the skills, but it still has implications on the state of the metagame so I think this is an appropriate place for it.

With the changes to Vault now being affected by Quickness, changes to the skill were made for it to function properly. However, in its current state, it is clunky, can only hit up to half of max range, and, most importantly, has a very noticeable aftercast delay when affected by Quickness. Is this intended? As it stands, Vault is better than pre-patch, but it still falls behind Weakening Charge in terms of optimal DPS rotations for Daredevil.

What was the reasoning behind again nerfing adrenal health? I felt warrior was in a very balanced spot in sPvP. After playing a few games and doing some duels I feel warrior sustain is a bit lackluster again. I hope you reconsider this nerf as I fear warriors will once again become unviable.

Although some of this helps, and the changes to “counter” skills was nice, Power shatter mesmer still needs some love, it has needed it since the alacrity nerfs.

In PvP it still requires much more effort, with longer down times, as well as longer ramp up times that are easily countered by majority of the game when compared to other burst specs like thief, or DH which can burst virtually instantly with no ramp time, and in some cases does not even require LoS. Power Shatter also still pales in comparison to the frequency of damage compared to warrior, and in some cases (and possibly more now) Ele.

All while still being locked to insp line to not instantly die to conditions, and spend it’s resources defensively actively means it cannot make a strong offensive option especially compared to it’s condi counterpart.

In PvE power mes still has the lowest DPS. (among somewhat viable builds)

Also why didn’t Focus, offhand sword, and greatsword get a phantasm cast change that boosts it’s functionality? GS I can kind of get but it would have greatly benefited from like “no LoS requirement” or “reveals nearby stealth”, Sword and focus should definitely be made to keep up the pressure though.

While I appreciate some nerfs to Thief dodge spam despite being a Thief main myself and Necro GS buffs, the changes to Revenant are kind of bizarre and honestly, a bit useless.

Now don’t get me wrong the buff to Vengeful Hammers is nice but the fact that they turn off when they touch a wall or sometimes just an uneven surface, makes them rather unreliable. Someone suggested you change the skill to a pulsing AOE and keep the animation of the hammers so people know when they’re on and honestly, that seems like it would fix that bug entirely.

As for Alacrity on Ventari, I don’t know it just seems weird. It seems like an attempt to make healing/boonbot Revenant a thing in Raids but I highly doubt that looks attractive enough to your average raid group to justify reworking the comp just to slot a boonbot Revenant.

Not to mention the main issue with Ventari is that it feels really clunky to play. Someone else in the Rev forums brought up the idea of the tablet following you around like a spirit weapon. I kind of like this idea. You can then make each of the Ventari skills ground targeted so you don’t have to first move the tablet then cast the skill. You can just get the immediate effect that you want at the location you want. Then if you don’t cast a skill with the tablet after 3-4 seconds or so, it begins to follow you again. Obviously, using the projectile reflect skill on the tablet would root it unless you manually move it with one of the other ground target skills. Idk, this to me would be a much better improvement to the tablet and make it flow with combat a bit better than moving it first and then casting the skill you want from it.

To be honest I am very upset, but I am trying to calm down. You did not do anything for revenants. These ‘buffs’ are just a joke as you can see in the revenant forum. Let’s take it 1by1:

*Searing Fissure, Temporal rift – to be honest it should be fixed like 12 months ago, but I appreciate that a lot. In fact it is a useless buff, because revenant has only 1 condi weapon and anyway the condi build is not good at all. Low dps in PvE and bad condi preasure in PvP.

*Centaur stance – minor buffs, because alacrity stacker rev wont appear in pve. He would lose so much dps and he wont be better then druid as a healer either. Just 1 mesmer can provide like 80% of time alacrity. Anyways almost every weapon skill looks like an assasin’s one so why do you want to create a healer from assasin/tank? Also we cant camp a legend so this change wont change anything, because we can not become a healer ever.

*Dwarf Stance – PvP buffs are pointless, because this stance will never be a pvp one. Why? Because we have so many energy hungry spells like Taunt and The road + huge animation time on Elite and Heal. Pve – Vengeful Hammers buff is quite nice, but still this skill is bugged so I am not happy at all either. At least its a little bit better then nothing.

*Unyielding Anguish – I dont have much to say about that, because a condi based stance gets a buff on worthless spell(still too expensive) and the buff is a flat damage so its like +250 dmg on that spell. So this one I count like a joke too.

*Burst of Strength – This buff is nice, but it affects only WvW and PvE so it could be like 50%, but even the 25% is fine.

What did we expect? Some of these changes(not all and these are just examples):

*bug fixes- I mean the weaponspells

*condi cleanse (swapping stance – 1 condi clear and staff 4 – 2 condis clear is not really enough in this ‘meta’ at all)

*Fix energy cost in non-herald stances or rework them, because they are just not good at all.

*Remove energy cost on weapon skills, because they already have cooldown so its just a double punishment

*Give us another power/condi weapon

*More damage on staff AA and rework staff 2, because now we use staff just because we dont have any other option

*Let us swap legends faster for a more dynamic gameplay. Something like 5s would be cool.

*Maybe add a F3 support spell or condi clease or something else

Thank you for your attention and I want to apologize for my poor english level.

In the previous balance patch the P/D skill 3 (Shadow Strike) was split and the stacks of Torment increased in sPvP only. Many of the previously split skills were merged in this patch. Was it an intentional decision to not merge Shadow Strike for balance reasons or was it that more testing was required?

Also, can you comment on the previous change adding in a cool down on Stealth Attacks? This was never explained, and one question that is more pressing than the “why” is whether or not the team is satisfied with the cooldown and open to making changes to this in the future.

Elrey.5472:

Right now the popular choices that I am reading on map chat for Raids is to bring 4 condi rangers, 2 mesmers, 2 ps and 2 druids. It’s not the best team for sure but it points out something quite stupid: The best profession to run for healer and the best class to run for DPS in the game right now is the same profession.

that needs to be addressed…

I feel like Anet doesn’t know what to do with thief, the change endurance feels unjustified, nerfing our mobility and survival.

While pretty much all other classes got buffed on pvp.

I feel like the change to channeled vigor as unnecessary on pvp, thief was weak on season 5 and now it’s even weaker, we can’t 1v1 any class properly, our only role is to decap and +1 fights, if we throw ourselves at mid it’s just a AoE spam show where we are melted, thief life is hard against blocks, invunerability, bunkers, I urge anet to look on thief statistics like http://imgur.com/A3xhLFx for exemple and reconsider the thief balance changes, we’re the WORST 1v1 class, we’re the WEAKEST class, we cant take damage.

Only good players has change at winning on pvp, a normal thief will just drag teams down. Please, look at the statistics and reconsider some good changes on thief.

Hey,

Some questions focused on Necromancer.

1) How do you feel about the necro GS after the buffs, where do you see it being used?
2) Is focus in a good spot right now? What about dagger?
3) Some Spectral skills received some attention in this patch; do you think they’re competitive now with skills like Wells or Corruption skills?

This suggestion has been posted many times on the engi forums and other places but never commented or slightly implemented. Hopefully it will get attention here.

Please swap Engineer Pistol #3 with #4 (OH Pistol).
With the changes to blowtorch and glue shot this is even more needed.
pistol MH should be the condi weapon, pistil OH the soft CC weapon, shield the defense hard CC weapon…

So please consider:
– Swap blowtorch to MH Pistol #3.
– Swap static shot to OH Pistol #4, slightly increase the confusion stack.
– Add torment to OH Pistol #5.
– Reduce shield CD by 20%.

With this, Pistol MH is the condition weapon;
Pistol OH is the condition, soft CC AoE option; and
Shield is the defensive/ hard CC option.
PURITY OF PURPOSE!

This would make P/S builds viable on many game-modes while keeping the P/P max condi dps builds intact.

I am advocating for my main class here, so there is bias, but I think necro needs more tuning for high end pve content. Currently it has a position where it’s all but undesirable for raids because everything it can do, another class can do better, while bringing more to the table.

The buffs to both power and condi necro are appreciated and definitely a step in the right direction, but currently the utility that necro provides and its inherent high health pool are not large enough advantages to make it a serious consideration especially with DPS and Utility being the major priorities in raids.

However, in wvw, necros seem to be a staple, which makes balancing tricky. If, say, shroud is an main issue preventing more offensive or utility oriented buffs, would there be a way to skill split it or similar?

@Karl sounds fair to me, but wouldn’t warrior banners fall under “low participation constant aoe buff”?

It seems that this balance patch is focused rather directly on raid meta, not on skills and traits which are underpowered thus unpopular.
As engineer it’s sad to see turrets, gadgets and some of gyros in so bad shape for so long. Gadgets and turrets don’t exist in any game mode.
Are there any plans of buffing unused skills rather than 5% slight changes to only meta skills/traits ?

As for damage buff for Shredder Gyro. 50% increase to zero is still zero. This skill clearly resembles damaging necromancer wells, so why it doesn’t scale from our power and critical stats ? Without it it still will be unused in any game mode, even with drastic damage buffs. Same goes for Blast Gyro Tag and turrets.

Same goes for every class. 1-2 utility skill types in each class are underpowered or even useless in some cases, and in 4 years of GW2 they haven’t been touched by devs.

First of all, thank you guys for being here answering our questions, we really appreciate that ^^

Now the questions!

1. Are you planning on giving Death Shroud some love? It’s been useless since the release of Heart of Thorns because Reaper Shroud is a direct upgrade of it.
2. How do you feel about Necromancer needing a babysitter support in PvP? I think that maybe is time to reduce Shroud defenses in order to give us some more scaling defenses like invulnerability or blocks.
3. Concerning Spectral Grasp and Well of Darkness, almost every necromancer I know still feel that these are extremely useless, no matter how much their CD is. Have you considered giving them more effects, especially Well of Darkness?

Thank you again for reaching us and for the awesome work that you guys do. I am a videogame developer myself as well and I know how hard balancing is, so hang in there guys!

Why was the Mending change only in spvp? It’s arguably the worst heal on Warrior right now and the recharge reduction would help it quite a lot. Classifying it as a Physical would also make it sort of like Mirror (traited) with Warriors being traited for Physical skills.

Edit: The only other thing that bothers me patch wise is Time Warp still being at 180 seconds to recharge, I think with Wells, it’s sort of made redundant to have with how long it takes to recharge. 80-90 seconds would probably see it getting more use.

Since HOT kicked in, elementalist place in pvp has been of a healer with any other build being subpar (in different degrees and, more recently, significantly weaker options). Do you feel that the balance changes are significant to add build diversity for an elementalist in pvp – I.e. Have more than one build with similar strength level or is it just another subpar option that will have a bit better result than previously (if at all)?

If no, why weren’t more changes made and what, if anything, are you considering?

If yes, what new role do you expect elementalist will have with the changes?

Do you believe elementalists elite skills are on par with skills from other professions? I for one feel that the “elite skills” have no elite aspect on them and ele would be significantly stronger if able to slot a regular skill in the elite slot.

If you do not, what, if anything, are you considering on changing and why were no changes made?

Do you feel conjure weapon skills are in an adequate spot? If not, why wasn’t it touched and what, if anything are you considering about them?

A grip I have with elementalist is the lack of option on traits. Generally there is one trait that is substantially better while other are just filler traits that aren’t real options for example, water trait line has little to no variation across all builds, Tempest trait line as well etc.

Do you believe the balance between traits is adequate? If not, are you considering any changes and why weren’t any changes made?

Paarthurnax.8931:

I feel like Anet doesn’t know what to do with thief, the change endurance feels unjustified, nerfing our mobility and survival.

While pretty much all other classes got buffed on pvp.

I feel like the change to channeled vigor as unnecessary on pvp, thief was weak on season 5 and now it’s even weaker, we can’t 1v1 any class properly, our only role is to decap and +1 fights, if we throw ourselves at mid it’s just a AoE spam show where we are melted, thief life is hard against blocks, invunerability, bunkers, I urge anet to look on thief statistics like http://imgur.com/A3xhLFx for exemple and reconsider the thief balance changes, we’re the WORST 1v1 class, we’re the WEAKEST class, we cant take damage.

Only good players has change at winning on pvp, a normal thief will just drag teams down. Please, look at the statistics and reconsider some good changes on thief.

The one thing I would say, and this is coming from someone who has both a thief and an ele, is I would rather thief pvp than ele. Even according to the chart, the 1v1 win rate is basically the same. Except thief has mobility to cap points and it has stealth. If you walk right into a 1v1, you will probably lose. The chart is right. Thief should stealth, backstab, burst, and if the target isn’t dead or near death, run away and try again. You’ll never out sustain 1v1 but at least thief has some upsides. Ele is in such a crap spot in pvp it’s ridiculous.

I understand that alacrity was too powerful of a buff to keep it for chrono alone and feel like it could also take some pressure of mesmers in future raids and give them the opportunitiy to play other builds, when there are other classes who can also use it. I think the alacrity on ventari is actually a really good improvement to the overall moveset of revenant (and Ventari). But the one thing that kind of bugs me: Ventari is core rev, while chronomancer is an elite. So in other words, revs will always have access to alacrity for themself and partymembers, no matter what elite they play, while mesmers have to be chrono to access it. Are you planning on giving alacrity to core mes/other mes elite’s aswell? Or are you maybe even trying to make alacrity a thing that every class will be able to use at some point? If so, you should maybe think about reworking the animation for it, as the violet flame thingy could look really out of place on some classes (maybe a unique flame for every class or idk).

When you balance for PvE how much do you take into consideration what current compositions look like for content like fractals and raids? Do you try to balance in a way that more classes become optimal for that content or do you aim for general viability?

Robert Gee.9246:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

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?

We generally try to avoid reworking skills in a vacuum. If we feel a skill is slightly out of line, small tweaks to things like damage, recharge or cast time can usually be enough. We’re more likely to do skill reworks when doing major updates to a given skill category such as some of the changes to mesmer phantasms this time around, but for one-off skills we try to avoid it if we can since it can come across as random and affect players who like using the skill as is. That’s not to say we wouldn’t do it, but it would have to be a fairly extreme case.

Ah, that’s interesting to know. Seems like a very sensible choice to me, too. Thanks for your time!

Bit off topic but I would appreciate if we could see increased projectile speed on eningeers mortar kit

I love the nightfall change rly nice!
Condi engie buffs for pve seems like a good decision too

Hey, some Ele related questions.
Why do u “just” buff off hand dagger skills with CD reduce. off Hand dagger is useless in PvP and PvE. In PvE cause WH deals more Dmg. PvP 0 sustain, u need the invul of Focus, cause there are no traits / amulets giving enough sustain + enough burst to sustain as D/D or F/D in an offensive build (no heal kitten…) So when will we get enough sustain as Burst ele (or more burst to kill our foes before they can burst us ). Maybe buff the signets heal per skill use?

Scepter: could still use some stronger/faster casted auto attacks, maybe bit faster dragons tooth after cast (maybe bit more dmg on phoenix and or tooth for the burst) Rly think the main problem is, so FA isn’t rly viable in high ranked PvP, that overall dmg is to low. We have good burst, for targets like thiefs, if we get a good hit, but we don’t have enough burst/sustain to fight a necro (with shroud etc). FA ele is all about get ur “one shot” or die, u cant sustain long fights. Sure we get more dmg if we play Tempest, but i dont see any value on tempest for a FA build cause aura heal is to low on offensive builds, thats y i stick to arcane instead. (+ if we want to cast overloads, we need the stability which would kill our condi remove)

Well and finally, where is my click to kill skill?

(Sorry for bad english, not native)

I will talk only about mesmer as it’s my main :

- About arcane thuevery, null field, feedback, signet of midnight, phantasmal defender up :
we can see the direction about up thoses skills to promote uses.
But you can add a 10 sec cd on signet, it will not change anything on many gamemode because the skill itsefl is good but :
- on PvP, signet of illusion is a must have, same for portal, and I doubt than even with a low Signet of Midnight cd, it will replace blink. (and traiting signet = decap.)
- on WvW, many damage come from range and out-numbered, so even with traits signets have low uses.
- on PvE, I doubt a pve player want to active the signet if they take it because they just need the passive.
- on duel, it had his uses and don’t need up. (anyway we don’t care much about duelling.)
Same can be said about arcane thievery, null field, feedback, phantasmal defender.
They had their uses before update and I feel thoses 4 up weren’t necessary as they were good in the uses they had and they don’t gain new uses after update.

About time warp changement : nice to somes points but every ulti, particulary thoses with long cd suffer from F5 chrono who reduce their cd to 90 (76) sec and it will ever be an issue as it create a gap beetween chrono and basic.

Portal Exeunt, well of action and chaos armor changes were comodity change, ok.

Illusionary Counter and Illusionary counter changes are really nice as in many situations it was really risky to block and can possibly add more diversity.

About phantasms changes :
it’s nice to have effect on phantasm’s casts but apart for the phantasmal mage, they have little to no impact.

I have 1 question from this update :
- why 0 traits ajustments ? (as it’s much traits than spells who define builds.)

I also have two questions for the future :
- mantra don’t have any synergy with chrono, and actually from what I see, aren’t very used, do you plan something about ?
- will it be possible to give back a day the synergy with centaure’s runes and mantra of recovery (proc on cast) ?

Is there any change u guys are gonna take a look and change the over dmg calculation for guardian greatsword #5 (Binding BLade)?

Right now on a “meta”-build with marauders amulet adn laynx runes given its current damage formular it does:
(0.2 * Condition Damage) + 160 resulting in less than 200 dmg per tick (which is almost nothing)

In WvW, necromancer still feels like the one everybody jumps on because he can’t do anything to prevent dying.

Are Arenanet unwilling/unable to totally rework abilities or just in number tweaking mode?

Does it take the resources of an expansion budget to totally rework an ability?

Great changes for the reaper. The cooldowns were an issue, and they got addressed. GS got more utility rather than just more damage or mobility, which is great. Onslaught made to be a force to be reckoned with. Overall, great job.

Major bummer on seeing the stealth attack cooldown on the thief remain as-is. Given the passives and excessive number of defenses in the game, as well as backstab among other stealth attacks just not being mathematically worthwhile, it’s pretty much killed OH dagger for the thief entirely.

Are there any plans to give the thief’s OH dagger the rework it desperately needs to make it better while giving it a bit more than gimmicks? Currently aside from PvE DPS 11111111111511111111111151111111111 and using the extremely unhealthy and un-fun 3spam condi evade build, there is absolutely nothing beneficial about playing with an OH dagger as opposed to a pistol.

With many “class-unique” buffs being increased from 5 to 10 target cap, are there any chances of Guardian’s Battle Presence virtue GM or possibly Signet of Courage’s passive receiving the same treatment?

SoC may not fit the philosophy since it technically isn’t a buff like banners or GotL, but Battle Presence seems to fit perfectly as it performs poorly since it was moved from honor and altered to no longer continue applying the passive while on cooldown. It can’t currently compete with Indomitable Courage on support builds except in environments totally devoid of CC, and the gap was further expanded with the reductions of both Virtue of Courage and Resolve’s cooldowns. With a shorter Resolve cooldown the active becomes a more valuable choice, and BP is secondarily devalued.

Again about guardian, but more applicable to other classes, is there an ongoing plan to deal with severely underperforming or plainly out-of-place traits?

There’s a lot of stuff that feels like it was forgotten after the overhaul years ago. E.G. Retributive Armor. I know it wasn’t changed in this patch, but the lack of change could use comment of itself. RA is a Valor GM that offers negligible survivability and competes with the two strongest GM traits for guardian survival in pvp game modes. It seems to originate from when valor gave toughness and ferocity, but it is the only trait besides Smiter’s Boon in the line that’s offensive. All the survivability sacrificed by not choosing one of the other GMs in the line means it would be a better decision to pick another trait line (radiance, zeal, virtues, or dragonhunter) for more damage.

Overall impressions, not a massive amount of game changing stuff other than ranger pet AI improvements, great sword reaper getting some love and the cap increases to some skills. still thinking the team skirting around the Overturned elite spec issues once again to not cause an outrage to people who brought expansions just for the power creep.
really like the added summon ability’s on Mesmer hope they all get little something over time.
looking forward to seeing if the engi flamerthrower any good now it more condi focused.
also very happy base guard virtues now in pve.

still disappointed rev mayllx trait line not had something done yet since the getting more powerful when having more conditions on you got changed. cant you put a stacking buff that increases condi duration and condi power when you get hit by a condi with a 1 second internal .

Eeyore.5146:

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!

In WoW, the monk class had a click-and-place statue for both tanking and healing, and was played quite effectively. I appreciate that this is challenging to use while you are unfamiliar with it, but it has certainly proved effective in other games.

I’ve seen multiple posts regarding Necro DPS deficit, lack of utility, and questions regarding Blood.

Will these be addressed because I’ve seen multiple responses for other classes so far but nothing regarding Necro?

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

We would really like to do some in-depth passes on underused utility types across most professions. We did not have time to do that for this update, sadly.

Is there any way that you guys can get the time to do so? Make Mike a coffee every morning for a week maybe?

I understand that you guys have a tonne of other stuff to work on but I worry that if you don’t have time to fix the underused stuff before the next Elite Specs release, they’ll be further pushed back and become harder to balance in the grand scheme of things.

Has any consideration been given to wvw? There are some systemic balance issues that these updates make no effort to address.

Warrior (and to a lesser extent druid) has builds that make them essentially immortal while still doing damage. I’ve probably had a couple dozen experiences with warriors while roaming where it will be 3 or 4 vs. the warrior and the warrior does not die. It is unkillable using high damage gear. It doesn’t matter if it’s power or condition based damage.

Is the balance team aware of issues like these?

Well… this is awkward.
I play Tempest D/W and besides of Air Overload getting 7% weaker my whole build is untouched (wash the pain away, feel the burn, signet of fire, glyph of storms, elite glyph or fgs)

Engineer got pretty interesting stuff, I admit.
But, why are gadgets, turrets and med kit forgotten AGAIN?
Also, why you encourage people to play invisible condi thief by buffing it? There’s no fun with fighting against them. It’s the exact opposite.

Played for an hour or so tonight.

Main is a PvE ranger who is almost always solo. I can’t see any significant difference at all so far. Was there supposed to be?

Why the 7% Air Overload damage nerf and .5 second nerf to Meteor shower that not only lowers its damages but further destroys the flow of Fire rotation (continuing what the lava font nerf did)? Elementalists in PVE have virtually ZERO survivability, no damage mitigation to speak of beyond the 2 dodge rolls everyone has, very low HPs, garbage healing, No real group utility etc..

What we DO is damage. If you continue to nerf that what is the point of the class? We don’t really do anything else.

What is the rationale in continuing to nerf Elementalist damage capabilities while not giving us anything in return?