Guild Wars 2

Extreme.8350:

@mallyx nobody can apply 500 stacks of conditions even on jungle wurm boss it didnt go over 120 with +40 players but it died in 10 seconds anyway

Correct in that but yeah the point is that not even the tenth value of the cap (150 stacks) has to reached in order to obliterate everything in 20 secs

Guardians burning everything alive in matter of seconds
Necros in Lich form hitting for 7000+

Yeah balance…. returned 2 weeks ago with idea of buying HoT…. well not so convinced after this balance incompetence fiasco

Also – if your idea of changing skills/traits interface was “lets remove smooth working interface and make this complicated and hard to understand” then grats – you succeeded!

JonPeters.5630:

Cheshire.8761:

Are you going to address how you forced characters to train into builds using their hero points without their consent? :o

Why not. Basically there were two options, both with a large number of edge cases.

1) We wipe your stuff and let you respec as you see fit. Because so much had changed this was our initial plan. Here are problems it ran into.

• People return from a long hiatus and don’t remember what they were running
• People log in and the first thing they have to do before they can play is learn both the new unlocking system and the new build system.

2) We look at what you had equipped and unlock the necessary skills and traits to re-equip you. Here were some discussions points around that:

• We might give you stuff you don’t want
• at least this won’t matter for lvl 80s if we make all the unlocks possible by just reaching lvl 80.

There is a third option which I’m sure you will bring up.
3) let players choose
Here are some reasons we did not go with that:

• Its twice the work
• Its actually more than twice the work because it would have required temporarily saving both options until you choose which is more complex technical work.
• People who were unlikely to understand or want to explore the new system were going to be potentially more confused by the choice.

At the end of the day we wanted to ship this build so we had to decide. Based on instinct we erred on the side of helping people we thought would be more overwhelmed by the opposite choice, and I would make that choice again because it has less edge cases, impacts more expert users, and leans towards over unlocking for free to benefit most of the edge cases anyway.

Hope this info helps you understand our process a bit more.

Thanks,

Jon

So when we logged in a lvl 80 for the first time after the patch we are presented with a premade build kinda based on what we had set up on the old system.. ok that’s logical although maybe not 100% accurate but in most cases fairly close.
How then were the number of Hero points each lvl 80 has at that point clcualted. I mean for example pretty much all my 11 lvl 80 had every skill/trait unlocked. This was done using the SP system and the levelling up process.. what was left over was any surplus that I had continually worked to build up and utilise where needed..
The Hero points I am now presented with.. lets say 315ish on my Necro that had an excess of 1000+ SP’s at it disposal, everything possible unlocked (including antitoxin that cost players… but that’s another argument) I now have a third of excess left and then I gotta go spend 1/2 to 2/3’s of them to fully unlock everything again for have the same flexibility in my build choices that I had already done.. possibly twice over considering previous changes a year or so ago.

So where is this free unlocking thing you speak of???

Sure I got a nice total of Spirit Shards even though I am not convinced I got as many in comparision to total of all my toons surplus SP’s+ bank.. but I can live with that even though the vendor prices haven’t altered.

PLEASE MAKE A SPLIT OF PVE/PVP if you’re going to nerf conditions…..don’t nerf conditions back into irrelevance for pvp whining.

Also, don’t take engineer being OP as a representative of what other classes can do with conditions. Engineers have always been the true masters of conditions, not necromancers.

Malystryx.4172:

Double checked the wiki and yes, direct dmg is mitigated by armor, condition damage is not.

Theres your fix anet, mitigate it.

That will only cause a huge deal more problems. What is needed is innate resistance to x condition damage on PvE bosses and nerfs to burning damage and application. In PvP you have a kittenton of condi clears to get rid of it. Mobs however do not have that. Also I THINK stacks in PvP are still limited to 25, at least I haven’t see it go over that once. Cannot speak for WvW though.

TL;DR Your fix would be the equivalent of giving everyone a kittenton of stuns as ways to “mitigate” power-type damage. Power is gated by armor, Condi by cleanses. If you would make armor affect condis you’d need to also remove 80% of condi clears from the game.

Shiki.7148:

Also I THINK stacks in PvP are still limited to 25, at least I haven’t see it go over that once. Cannot speak for WvW though.

No condi cap in WvW.

Shiki.7148:

Malystryx.4172:

Double checked the wiki and yes, direct dmg is mitigated by armor, condition damage is not.

Theres your fix anet, mitigate it.

That will only cause a huge deal more problems. What is needed is innate resistance to x condition damage on PvE bosses and nerfs to burning damage and application. In PvP you have a kittenton of condi clears to get rid of it. Mobs however do not have that. Also I THINK stacks in PvP are still limited to 25, at least I haven’t see it go over that once. Cannot speak for WvW though.

TL;DR Your fix would be the equivalent of giving everyone a kittenton of stuns as ways to “mitigate” power-type damage. Power is gated by armor, Condi by cleanses. If you would make armor affect condis you’d need to also remove 80% of condi clears from the game.

Some classes do have a kitten ton of stuns. And blinds, and aegis, and evades…It’s a lot harder to avoid condition damage because a lot of the skills are either AOE or ground targeted.

Condition damage is dealing way too much damage currently. Burning especially needs the nerf bat. 10k burn ticks is not cool.

Kagamiku.9731:

Shiki.7148:

Malystryx.4172:

Double checked the wiki and yes, direct dmg is mitigated by armor, condition damage is not.

Theres your fix anet, mitigate it.

That will only cause a huge deal more problems. What is needed is innate resistance to x condition damage on PvE bosses and nerfs to burning damage and application. In PvP you have a kittenton of condi clears to get rid of it. Mobs however do not have that. Also I THINK stacks in PvP are still limited to 25, at least I haven’t see it go over that once. Cannot speak for WvW though.

TL;DR Your fix would be the equivalent of giving everyone a kittenton of stuns as ways to “mitigate” power-type damage. Power is gated by armor, Condi by cleanses. If you would make armor affect condis you’d need to also remove 80% of condi clears from the game.

Some classes do have a kitten ton of stuns. And blinds, and aegis, and evades…It’s a lot harder to avoid condition damage because a lot of the skills are either AOE or ground targeted.

Condition damage is dealing way too much damage currently. Burning especially needs the nerf bat. 10k burn ticks is not cool.

Yes, but it needs damage reduction and less frequent/strong application by eg. an Engi or Guard. Eles application is fine. As for bleed, Necromancer actually needs a BUFF in form of applying more stacks at once. Engi gets 12 stacks on one skill while Necro gets a maximum of 4 i believe. Maybe even less. Necro “condi builds” are mostly “transfer everything back cause everyone has way better condi application” + corrupting boons. And in PvE that doesn’t work for lack of tons of boons on mobs and lack of mobs that apply a lot of conditions.

Kagamiku.9731:

Condition damage is dealing way too much damage currently. Burning especially needs the nerf bat. 10k burn ticks is not cool.

I partially agree. Condition as a whole do too much damage, but the way to adjust this is not to tone down how effective a single condition is (with the exception of Burning, that one is clearly over the top). Instead they have to take a closer look at how certain professions apply conditions and change that.

My condition necro e.g. hasn’t been buffed at all. The only time he does a ton of damage is when he transfers an Engis conditions. That hurts like hell, but the necro’s bleeds on their own still don’t hurt that much.

What Arena Net should do now is to look at skills that do both direct and condition damage and heavily scale down their direct damage component. They also should take a look at professions that can apply 25+ of a single condition within just a couple of seconds and change that to something more reasonable.

As for world bosses the solution is easy: simply double or triple their HP.

Casual PVE Guardian here. Mostly just doing Dungeons/Low Fractals while trying out gear and builds. Was previously doing 500 damage burn ticks against most normal monsters while stacking duration, which doesn’t help at all if I die regardless of tank stats, because they’ve never been balanced to do enough damage mitigation to be useful. Sudden spike up to ~3k Burn if I bust my autos/fire teleport/purging flames. While the spike might be a bit intense, and I specify that this is ONLY IN REGARDS TO CASUAL PVE, burn damage felt nearly USELESS before even if I built specifically to do as much of it as possible and ignore all else. Which is not how you should ever build any character. I’m extremely happy that I can actually do damage with THE ONLY DAMAGING CONDITION I HAVE ESSENTIALLY. My damage has always felt ridiculously subpar compared to EVERYONE ELSE IVE PLAYED WITH. If you need to nerf it a bit to bring things to an equilibrium, I can certainly see some wiggle room, but the new setup is a million times better than it was previously. My build actually feels playable now, as opposed to just being carried by everyone else I meet that’s running the usual straight damage build AKA zerks/assassins. I feel like it’d be a much better improvement to just make the tank stats have a stronger effect on gameplay so that they would be actual viable choices for direct damage users, so they can stop complaining about how glass they are while doing 10-20x the dps I have. Rolling is nice, but there’s no point putting tank/heal stats in the game if they’re going to be unusable. Other than Jade Maw or gimmicky fights where the WHOLE POINT is that they should one-shot you, if you’re building tanky, NOTHING ELSE SHOULD. If someone in givers can’t tank someone in zerkers, your tank stats mean absolutely nothing.
PS: Great job responding to all of this in such a clear manner while dealing with all of the ridiculous feedback from biased sources that are just surprised burning is actually killing things AT ALL now. Feel free to tone it down a bit if the numbers actually DO prove that it’s stronger than intended.
(Have always heard the complaints about necro though, really hope they don’t get nerfed into the ground, I have always wanted to try one.)
Also, World Boss kill times are not in any way a good way to tell whether conditions were buffed too hard or not. The whole point is that they didn’t work properly AT ALL before, so now they have a starting point to figure out where the numbers need to be, now that the ridiculous 25 cap was removed. And Vuln actually applies to conditions now, like it should have in the first place. Do you have any idea how many traits exist that are useless to condi builds because they only apply to direct damage? I’ll give you a hint. 90% of the ones that the meta builds tell you are pretty much required. I’m glad my profession just got like triple the amount of variability that it had previously. Anyone who thinks this limited their choices is just freaking out about things that are OBVIOUSLY going to be fixed soon.

Can you please keep in mind what classes can and cannot do while balancing this back out?

I main a thief. And we do not have condi clear readily available. The current burning meta (or condis in general) make us neglectable in anything but a quick kill and run. Which is precisely what people hate about thieves in general.

What we have for condition clearing is:
1. Shadows Embrace, now either bugged or nerfed not to remove conditions the first second. So you have to wait 4 seconds. With current burns, that means you are dead.
2. Hide in Shadows, you shouldnt have to use your 30s cooldown heal to clear burning. But its our only reliable way.
3. Tricksters, use a trick to remove 1 condi. You need to slot tricks, which isn’t handy in most situations. And you need to spec into a traitline for it.

So my request would be. Slightly lower burning. But if conditions are supposed to be even half as strong as they are right now. Then all classes need access to active condition clearing on a lower cooldown.

At least thief (and mesmers) are completely screwed on this part in the current build.

No, if you nerf fire you are making condi guardian useless again since the only thing they got is fire……. you need to make toughness useful against conditions or find some way for mitigation builds/stats have an actual use, not everyone has easy access to constant cleanse and some classes got such low HP pool that they die at any single burst.

XxSmokedatganjaxX.2948:

No, if you nerf fire you are making condi guardian useless again since the only thing they got is fire……. you need to make toughness useful against conditions or find some way for mitigation builds/stats have an actual use, not everyone has easy access to constant cleanse and some classes got such low HP pool that they die at any single burst.

Sorry but if a condition does more than 4 times the damage of another condition in a shorter time frame, that condition needs to be nerfed. If the Guard takes too much of a hit they can – and should – simply increase the amounbt of stacks/amount of skills that apply burning on guardian. Its a 2-step-process. At least it should be.

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s be clear, this version of condition stacking and condi builds being viable in all games modes is a large part of our goal. We just want to make sure we don’t create imbalances that actually make the game less fun. Don’t expect huge balance swings, but rather our balance goal has always been to make more small adjustments.

Since you’re re-balancing conditions, is there any talk about doing something with burning to make it at least a little unique? Right now it’s exactly like bleed, except harder-hitting. There’s no tactical difference.

I liked the idea one other poster had on a different thread—make burning deal more damage to stationary targets, like torment with the formulas flipped. That gives burning a niche, and you can probably just copy-paste the torment code and move some numbers around.

Abnaxis.4593:

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s be clear, this version of condition stacking and condi builds being viable in all games modes is a large part of our goal. We just want to make sure we don’t create imbalances that actually make the game less fun. Don’t expect huge balance swings, but rather our balance goal has always been to make more small adjustments.

Since you’re re-balancing conditions, is there any talk about doing something with burning to make it at least a little unique? Right now it’s exactly like bleed, except harder-hitting. There’s no tactical difference.

I liked the idea one other poster had on a different thread—make burning deal more damage to stationary targets, like torment with the formulas flipped. That gives burning a niche, and you can probably just copy-paste the torment code and move some numbers around.

except in pvp standards, no one would stand still, thus making burning quite utterly useless.

sweatycool.9624:

Abnaxis.4593:

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s be clear, this version of condition stacking and condi builds being viable in all games modes is a large part of our goal. We just want to make sure we don’t create imbalances that actually make the game less fun. Don’t expect huge balance swings, but rather our balance goal has always been to make more small adjustments.

Since you’re re-balancing conditions, is there any talk about doing something with burning to make it at least a little unique? Right now it’s exactly like bleed, except harder-hitting. There’s no tactical difference.

I liked the idea one other poster had on a different thread—make burning deal more damage to stationary targets, like torment with the formulas flipped. That gives burning a niche, and you can probably just copy-paste the torment code and move some numbers around.

except in pvp standards, no one would stand still, thus, making burning quite utterly useless.

Or you could make a combo and root your enemy in a fire field (I actually need to do this on my X/F condi ele anyway).

what if bleeding did a fixed percentage of the total health pool per second, like .1% per stack to pcs, less to bosses? that would mean it’d hit harder vs. tanks and softer vs. glassy builds, where straight burning would be better

Abnaxis.4593:

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s be clear, this version of condition stacking and condi builds being viable in all games modes is a large part of our goal. We just want to make sure we don’t create imbalances that actually make the game less fun. Don’t expect huge balance swings, but rather our balance goal has always been to make more small adjustments.

Since you’re re-balancing conditions, is there any talk about doing something with burning to make it at least a little unique? Right now it’s exactly like bleed, except harder-hitting. There’s no tactical difference.

I liked the idea one other poster had on a different thread—make burning deal more damage to stationary targets, like torment with the formulas flipped. That gives burning a niche, and you can probably just copy-paste the torment code and move some numbers around.

Oh god anything but that. Burning is literally Condition Guardian’s only damage. Why would you think making it a niche skill would make any sense? It’s our bread and butter. If it doesn’t work under normal conditions, then the ENTIRE BUILD doesn’t work under normal conditions.

Before i say anything, i want to say AMAZING WORK on ART, traits, and new boons + effects art look simply stunning! Great work, really nicely done!

HONEST OPINION ABOUT MY MAIN CLASS

My current thoughts on my ranger:
- fury opening strike builds still looks week, opening strike seems to be week in numbers.
- beast mastery still not worth taking not because skills/traits are to weak, because pet is not reacting, AI is simply not in spot. And even with +30% move speed for pets, they are to slow. Taunt on F2 range feels not on spot, because the 300 range is to small area to taunt, one simple dodge gets enemy out of range.

- Quick Draw trait: 66% skill reduction, best trait ever that you’ve made in 3 years, finally ranger have something unique and fun in the game that can define a good play style. I really love the idea, and numbers are just right, not to strong not to weak! I think with this trait rangers will get back in meta for being useful once again, power condition or regeneration range wise!

- Brutish seal, amazingly done, love it, finally signets are not punishing rangers for taking 2 signets. Ty really good on spot trait that makes game play fun again!

- Spirits in general, don’t feel on spot, casting time of self secrifice(3 sec) is WAY to long, should be a 3/4 or at maximum 1 sec time to be useful, every body is dodging it because animation is obvious and it takes way to long. Sun spirits feels on spot at self destruction it takes 1 sec to sacrifice, rest take 3 sec, which is way to long. Arming time of spirits is 1 second, so basically Placement 1 sec + arming 1 sec + 3 sec delay on interval, you waste 5 seconds before you have any benefit of spirits. Also placing time should be 3/4 you risk way to much placing something like this. Also calling spirits should be fast in general.

- Natural Vengeance trait: still not worth taking it, 1 sec boon for 3sec refreash seems weak and not worth taking it even if i would love to take it so much, simply because spirits don’t get tanky enough for pvp or wvw or pve open world bosses, boons are removed to fast, 3/4 auto attacks don’t even recognize the boons because Time_to_lounch_auto_attack + Time_of_traveling_arrow = boon is stripped before hit, has no use.

- Spike trap, way to big cooldown, i honestly think 45 sec(36sec with trait) is not justified even with 1 sec knockdown, even frost trap became more viable.

- Throwable traps, with recent changes, trapper without throwable traps is not working any more. Ranger is becoming simply to weak if he runs 2 or more traps. Trap cooldowns got huge nerf, not needed cripple is to weak, now that leaps are not effected by it and game play is simply to weak now that you cannot engage with traps any more. Another trap problem is, that 0.5 arming time feels less natural then throwing a trap. Positioning trap now feels clunky, they give enemy just right amount of time to dodge it when they chase you, they also have no offensive use, and when people chase you, they simply walk around the spot where they see you arming it, also still not viable in pvp, why? If you run 2-3 traps you punish yourself, because you have nothing to protect yourself and other thing is enemy knows that after 2nd time coming to contest, they burn 1 small condi clear, and all your trap camping is gone. WvW, r.i.p. trapper, has no use at all, traps have to big cooldown now by average (now 12,16,24,36) (before 12 16 20 24), and without being able to engage with traps you are left in bad spot, lets not even mention that once you get in combat you can’t get out, because you can’t hide and your traps have no meaning of cripple now since leaps don’t have any effect on enemy while leaping. Conclusion? Without ground targeting traps are definitely out of meta and out of decent builds. Even with slight trap buff on condition, still feels underpowered compared to other available conditions in the game.

2 solutions:
a) throwable traps are getting option (Hidden bards could get additional thing, throwable traps + old trait info 20% bleed dmg)
b) So 2nd option would be, let us detonate traps on our own, this would bring fire fields in game and more mechanics.

WB might die too quickly, but let’s face it…they take no skill or effort to complete anyway.
Most of the time I’m alt tabbed during those fights and I still get gold medals.

If a guardian managed to put 8k ticks of burn on you…you deserved to die, and should have been downscaled to lvl 1 so you can start the game all over again.

But still, burn might be a bit strong…who knows, it’s all new for this game. People were used to stacking tougness and protection(which now helps against condi dmg, if you didnt know) and run around like headless morons. Now they’re like, OMG you have to cleanse the condis or you actually die? Really? Tough life.

My 2 cents on the AI builds on log in.

I only looked at my six level 80s. Every single pre-done build on every one was Comically bad. Trait lines I had not used in years like Zeal on my guard were fully bought. If the decision had not been made to allow a level 80 to be guaranteed enough points to fully unlock, this release would have been something unprecedented as far as player rage is concerned.

Jon, to take the decision as to where these precious new Hero points are spent totally and irrevocably out of the player’s hands, the player who OWNS the alt, with regard to sub level 80s in this arbitrary and ill-executed manner, well that could NEVER be acceptable. Or more simply, What Were You Thinking?

As it is, the ONLY possible response is a one time hero point reset. I suggest a free item, similar to the old instant trait point reset item, mailed to every sub 80 alt on every account. This solves the button problem, and hopefully has an attached text that makes clear that this is a SINGLE USE item.

please don’t squander the great goodwill you have generated by quickly acknowledging the more pressing problem of gross imbalances by failing to also deal with the character build hijacking issue too.

I think one reason why things got a bit unbalanced is the nerf to boon duration, which affects alot of builds that traited into lines that gave boon duration prior to the change because it doesnt get compensated with buffed stats on gear as bd is nearly non existant on gear, unless you run giver gear.

Especially in pvp this is a problem (as no giver amulet exists) and you cant use nourishments to buff your bd.

In WvW its also a problem, I lost 30% Boon Duration and if I wanted to get it from other sources (Runes, Nourishments), it would greatly alter my build.

30% less uptime in protection, retaliation, stab and other defensice boons, is no small nerf, i think.

Especially for people in ascended gear its a problem, as no ascended gear exists with boon duration.

A solution might be to introduce asc trinkets that give 10% boon duration, give any ascended gear 2% boon duration (28% for a full asc set) or introduce AR/WvW defensive infusions that give 3% BD each (24% for 8 defensive slots).

The infusions would propably be my first choice.

JonPeters.5630:

Just getting these out there so we know we are all in agreement:

1) Conditions seem a bit strong
2) World bosses are currently too easy
3) There are some bugged skills and traits
4) There are some overpowered builds

Jon

1) Conditions are fine as they are, you should look into classes that apply them. Maybe certain conditions are OP, burning maybe?
2) While I like how it is now, I do agree on this.
3) Hard to say what ones are bugged, but then again you probably already know.
4) I think this just has to do with the condition damage. I like my build I have now

Doomdesire.9365:

Bleeding feels…weaker than before? I hope it bleed gets some buffs, although I do agree burn is too strong atm.

I agree…. Previously when I have 1.2k condition damage as a necro, i’m doing the same as What I have… 1.5k condition damage now.. >.< (blood is power: 16k damage to 15.6k damage, after the 300 increased in condition damage)

Did the formula actually changed? or did i miss out a nerf for bleeding?

Oh.. (clarification): tested bleeding condition duration remained the same as before.

Oh well, I certainly hope i’m wrong.

4) Just rename this point to “Engis → nerf them”.

ZeroStrifeX.2183:

Did the formula actually changed? or did i miss out a nerf for bleeding?

There was a last second nerf for bleeding.

The pre patch notes state that by now the formula would be “2 + (0.30 * Level) + (0.075 * Condition Damage)” but instead it ended up being “2 + (0.25 * Level) + (0.06 * Condition Damage)”. Which means the break-even point is now somewhere above 2000 condition damage and not around 700 as “promised”.

So yes, unless you have BiS gear and focus completely on condition damage your bleeds are weaker now.

JonPeters.5630:

Cheshire.8761:

Are you going to address how you forced characters to train into builds using their hero points without their consent? :o

Why not. Basically there were two options, both with a large number of edge cases.

1) We wipe your stuff and let you respec as you see fit. Because so much had changed this was our initial plan. Here are problems it ran into.

• People return from a long hiatus and don’t remember what they were running
• People log in and the first thing they have to do before they can play is learn both the new unlocking system and the new build system.

2) We look at what you had equipped and unlock the necessary skills and traits to re-equip you. Here were some discussions points around that:

• We might give you stuff you don’t want
• at least this won’t matter for lvl 80s if we make all the unlocks possible by just reaching lvl 80.

There is a third option which I’m sure you will bring up.
3) let players choose
Here are some reasons we did not go with that:

• Its twice the work
• Its actually more than twice the work because it would have required temporarily saving both options until you choose which is more complex technical work.
• People who were unlikely to understand or want to explore the new system were going to be potentially more confused by the choice.

At the end of the day we wanted to ship this build so we had to decide. Based on instinct we erred on the side of helping people we thought would be more overwhelmed by the opposite choice, and I would make that choice again because it has less edge cases, impacts more expert users, and leans towards over unlocking for free to benefit most of the edge cases anyway.

Hope this info helps you understand our process a bit more.

Thanks,

Jon

I am playing this game for 3 years how many time I have to unlock same traits again and again. Don’t tell me this compressed skills are new skills.

JonPeters (you know – the farmer?):

I understand that this would be helpful but in the absence of a test server, which is our current situation, we will do as much as we can as fast as we can. We made some changes today and more will be coming as the week goes on. After that our intention is to make balance and bug fix changes to this stuff every couple of weeks leading up to the release of HoT.

Also, not everything is too strong, just all forms of damage.

Jon

I logged in specifically to say holy cow – you have done a bloody amazing job on releasing this build without a test server! I honestly cannot fathom how much effort you must have taken to ensure this was done as carefully as possible!

Well done!!

What I fear is that conditions are being nerfed because mobs are dying too fast now. I have the feeling the balance between conditions and direct damage is finally in a decent place now. The problem, I think, is not the strength of conditions relative to direct damage but the combined strength of conditions and direct damage relative to mob health and armor. Which makes sense if condi damage is buffed without mob health and armor being buffed.

Conditions are in a decent place, the new defiant system should take care of more of the world bosses exploding,

I think the bigger problem is that for nearly 3 years conditions have been so under uses compared to say the zerker meta’s that no one bothered to trait to remove them, or skills to combat them, and now its like WHOA im getting splatted,

The problem now is that, going on what happens in the past, I don’t think they will balance this out more, I think they will just hit it with the nerf bat and everyone will go back to full zerker builds.

JonPeters.5630:

Cheshire.8761:

Are you going to address how you forced characters to train into builds using their hero points without their consent? :o

Why not. Basically there were two options, both with a large number of edge cases.

1) We wipe your stuff and let you respec as you see fit. Because so much had changed this was our initial plan. Here are problems it ran into.

• People return from a long hiatus and don’t remember what they were running
• People log in and the first thing they have to do before they can play is learn both the new unlocking system and the new build system.

2) We look at what you had equipped and unlock the necessary skills and traits to re-equip you. Here were some discussions points around that:

• We might give you stuff you don’t want
• at least this won’t matter for lvl 80s if we make all the unlocks possible by just reaching lvl 80.

There is a third option which I’m sure you will bring up.
3) let players choose
Here are some reasons we did not go with that:

• Its twice the work
• Its actually more than twice the work because it would have required temporarily saving both options until you choose which is more complex technical work.
• People who were unlikely to understand or want to explore the new system were going to be potentially more confused by the choice.

At the end of the day we wanted to ship this build so we had to decide. Based on instinct we erred on the side of helping people we thought would be more overwhelmed by the opposite choice, and I would make that choice again because it has less edge cases, impacts more expert users, and leans towards over unlocking for free to benefit most of the edge cases anyway.

Hope this info helps you understand our process a bit more.

Thanks,

Jon

Here’s what your system left my lvl 23-26’s with:

rangers with only wilderness survival open.
guardians with only valor open.
thief with only shadow arts open(!!!!).

basically what you are saying is ‘tough luck, sorry we screwed your character, but we didn’t think you’d be intelligent enough to distribute your own points’.

Think again. next time try asking , oh, I don’t know, maybe a nine year old what option they would rather have- pretty sure they could understand that totally gimping low level players to the extent they are better off rerolling would NOT be their choice, but it is yours…

Next time, credit your players with a little more intelligence (and the ability to use google to find how the system works if they can’t figure it out in the first ten seconds) and just reset rather than screw them over.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain the thinking behind the decision, but the logic was deeply flawed by assuming your players were basically too thick to work it out themselves.

Not entirely unrelated, get a test server (no shortage of volunteers) and test these things out before you throw them over wall like slops on to the unsuspecting peasants below.

Was the AI ever changed to compensate for these changes? If not, there’s your problem.

Post patch:

-More fast paced and exiting combat
- Less celestials running in circles proccing geo/doom sigils
- Probably need to go clerics or soldiers if you want to bunker- not cele.

Possible suggestions for Anet:

Introduce tanky amulets since damage has gotten higher for example
v
Healingpower, toughness, vitality

My hero points seem to be bugged, I do not get any when I level up! Went from lvl 25 to lvl 28 with my ele and I got nothing. It sucks

My main is thief, and I hate high burst-or die thief builds. But with this patch there is literally nothing you can do. Trickster build is not too bad but ineffective, and with the richochet gone, pp builds will not be viable as they were ( numbers were already low). So there is nothing a thief can do if she wants to stay in wvw teams or spvp teams. If you slow down just for one second, a condi burst can literally kill you easily. Because you lack the necessary hp, condi cleanse and toughness. Only exceptional thing thieves have is the crooked archetypal idea of Anet about them.

Baldrick.8967:

JonPeters.5630:

Cheshire.8761:

Are you going to address how you forced characters to train into builds using their hero points without their consent? :o

Why not. Basically there were two options, both with a large number of edge cases.

1) We wipe your stuff and let you respec as you see fit. Because so much had changed this was our initial plan. Here are problems it ran into.

• People return from a long hiatus and don’t remember what they were running
• People log in and the first thing they have to do before they can play is learn both the new unlocking system and the new build system.

2) We look at what you had equipped and unlock the necessary skills and traits to re-equip you. Here were some discussions points around that:

• We might give you stuff you don’t want
• at least this won’t matter for lvl 80s if we make all the unlocks possible by just reaching lvl 80.

There is a third option which I’m sure you will bring up.
3) let players choose
Here are some reasons we did not go with that:

• Its twice the work
• Its actually more than twice the work because it would have required temporarily saving both options until you choose which is more complex technical work.
• People who were unlikely to understand or want to explore the new system were going to be potentially more confused by the choice.

At the end of the day we wanted to ship this build so we had to decide. Based on instinct we erred on the side of helping people we thought would be more overwhelmed by the opposite choice, and I would make that choice again because it has less edge cases, impacts more expert users, and leans towards over unlocking for free to benefit most of the edge cases anyway.

Hope this info helps you understand our process a bit more.

Thanks,

Jon

Here’s what your system left my lvl 23-26’s with:

rangers with only wilderness survival open.
guardians with only valor open.
thief with only shadow arts open(!!!!).

basically what you are saying is ‘tough luck, sorry we screwed your character, but we didn’t think you’d be intelligent enough to distribute your own points’.

Think again. next time try asking , oh, I don’t know, maybe a nine year old what option they would rather have- pretty sure they could understand that totally gimping low level players to the extent they are better off rerolling would NOT be their choice, but it is yours…

Next time, credit your players with a little more intelligence (and the ability to use google to find how the system works if they can’t figure it out in the first ten seconds) and just reset rather than screw them over.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain the thinking behind the decision, but the logic was deeply flawed by assuming your players were basically too thick to work it out themselves.

Not entirely unrelated, get a test server (no shortage of volunteers) and test these things out before you throw them over wall like slops on to the unsuspecting peasants below.

My level 21 Ele had Earth magic Compaired to what I had before the update it is wonderfull! Why complain like it is the worst thing ever? Level 20 is not much and it’s still better than it was before the expansion, be happy and keep on leveling and you will be able to advance in your specializations at level 80 your character will be maxed out, that also better than it was before the update.

Damage in general is kinda effing absurd right now. Condi, burst, its just glass cannon vs glass cannon.

It was only natural that overall dps would go up in this patch for conditions. That was the entire point of removing the condition cap. To put it plainly, IT WAS AN INTENDED CHANGE.

However, the effect is obviously more noticable in boss battles, where getting hundreds of stacks against one target is easier than it would be in smaller battles or during solo roaming, where getting over 25 stacks of any condition would be very difficult for any individual class. I also think the physical damage increase we got in this patch is just perpetuation that sentiment further. Bosses are dying faster, and it’s quite obvious why they would be.

Conditions as a whole should not be nerfed though, in my opinion. Instead, I think bosses, which are obviously being hit hardest by the damage increase, should have their health buffed instead to offset the overall damage increase we got. In fact, I’m surprised this wasn’t done already in-anticipation the obvious damage increase we were getting.

As for guardian burning, I think it’s good that they can actually go for condition damage and achieve reasonable results now, considering burning is their ONLY damage condition right now, and has to compete with classes that have multiple damage conditions that can now all stack (even poison). If they nerf burning, I’m afraid it might do little more than kill the only hope guardians have had to go for a pure condition build. I do understand that balance is needed, but I just hope ANet doesn’t go to the extreme and send us back to square one again (aka, zerker meta land).

You need to lower the damage gain from the Condition Damage stat.

We knew condition damage would get a huge boost with stacking.

But for Condition Damage to also see bigger numbers than before with 700+ (which is a low number especially when you only need to build with 1 damage stat for conditions) of course it was gonna be too strong. 1800 Condition Damage isn’t hard to get, even with Dire gear.

The fact that we can build Dire and get Condition damage as the only stat for damage necessary and take two full defensive stats is crazy.

Direct damage needs Power, Precision and Ferocity to see high damage before you even consider any defensive stats, you’re already 3:1 for stats.

JonPeters.5630:

Just getting these out there so we know we are all in agreement:

1) Conditions seem a bit strong
2) World bosses are currently too easy
3) There are some bugged skills and traits
4) There are some overpowered builds

We won’t fix it all at once but these are four large topics we are talking about. In the meantime keep the feedback and bug reports coming, and I guess farm up some world bosses. We are dedicating time towards these issues and are intending to resolve them as quickly as possible. As we have said before, the live environment differs too greatly from anything we can reliably simulate internally so big changes like today’s build will cause things to sometimes change at an alarming rateTM.

Thanks for your patience,

Jon

Considering you NERFED bleeding I don’t think it is a bit strong, I think it is a bit weak.

Burn is a LOT strong.

Due to sinister gear hybrid builds are super OP. Condition applying attacks should have little to no direct damage component.

Ezrael.6859:

But for Condition Damage to also see bigger numbers than before with 700+ (which is a low number especially when you only need to build with 1 damage stat for conditions) of course it was gonna be too strong. 1800 Condition Damage isn’t hard to get, even with Dire gear.

For Bleeding the break-even point isn’t 700 but ~2050 condition damage. That’s “slightly” harder to reach no matter what gear you are wearing.

Ezrael.6859:

You need to lower the damage gain from the Condition Damage stat.

We knew condition damage would get a huge boost with stacking.

But for Condition Damage to also see bigger numbers than before with 700+ (which is a low number especially when you only need to build with 1 damage stat for conditions) of course it was gonna be too strong. 1800 Condition Damage isn’t hard to get, even with Dire gear.

The fact that we can build Dire and get Condition damage as the only stat for damage necessary and take two full defensive stats is crazy.

Direct damage needs Power, Precision and Ferocity to see high damage before you even consider any defensive stats, you’re already 3:1 for stats.

You kinda forgot to mention that you can cleanse conditions, but you cant cleanse direct damage.

From condition necro point of view it’s only strong because the other classes applications are strong and we transfer. We don’t have time to deal with self inflicted conditions cough cough MoC or apply significant output and there is nothing left to nerf but warhorn….warhorn nerf=riot.

Dear Jon,

All you need to do is tweak condi dmg across the board downwards about 8% and you are good to go.
And buff the resistance of the World Bosses
Like for Example:
Make Teq
Immune totally to Poison. Teq spits poisons, why isn’t it Immune to poison?
Immune to bleeds when there are stacks of Hardened Scales
Make Teq use a tail attack when blinded.

Just to mention a few.

Shadow Behemoth
Immune to poison
Immune to siphon health type attacks.
Immune to bleeds as it is NOT a physical type creature.

Maw Shaman whatever it’s name is.
Immune to chill.
Immune to bleeds (add a Ice Scales stack for it)
Raise dmg output.
Tornado attack chills and freeze attackers

Fire Elemental
Immune to Burn (already there)
Immune to bleeds
Immune to Poison
Susceptible to chills and ice attacks.

Shatterer
Immune to bleeds
Immune to poison
Explosive Shards attack at random around the area.
Drop Shards and Shards pulsing damage in random area.

Modnir Ulgoth
Full HP after Pre-events and fights
Charging attack (just like the one in the Personal story for humans)
Summon minions Champs (NO LOOT)

Golem Mark II
Immune to bleeds
Immune to poison
(hey, it’s a machine, how can it be affected by bleed and poison)?
Immune to health siphon.
Armor degradation over time if melee attacks. Range attackers do not contribute to that.

Megadestoryer
Immune to burn (maintained)
Add a Burning Explosion stacks if people continue to burn it with burns.
Immune to poison
Susceptible to chills and freeze attacks.

Karka Queen
Armor Scales buff
Full hp second phase.
Immune to bleed during first phase.
Resistance to bleeds during second phase.
Immune to poison
Poison attacks increase by 100% to attackers

Claw of Jormag
Immune to chills
Immune to Freeze
More susceptible to burning
Frigid breath ticks longer by 2 to 3 seconds
Fear cannot be blocked or remove.
Fear at random and at reduced frequency. (you can’t have it cast fear 3 times in a roll, seen it before.)

Wizard guarding Arah
Tornado swing attack reflects ranged attacks
HP buff and Armor buff
Resistance to poison
Resistance to health siphon

VineWrath
South Lane – Beekeeper increase bees attacks more
Middle Lane – Thrasher adds tendrils attacks (but only if attackers are in line of sight), if you are behind it, it won’t be able to attack you).
North lane – Terragriff charge attacks BUFF. Gets stunned if hits the vine walls.

Great Jungle Wurm (Caledon Forest)
Immune to poison

Three Headed Legendary Jungle Wurm (Bloodtide Coast)
buff condi resistance. The fight is already hard as it is.

Just my suggestion.

conditions “seem” OP right now because most classes condition applying attacks also do insane direct damage.

Obviously burn is OP, no need to argue about that one, damage there needs to be halved.

However bleed was nerfed in this patch so I can’t imagine it is considered OP. Confusion, torment, and poison were only increased slightly so they aren’t a problem.

So why does it seem like condition specs are doing insane damage… well because sinister gear + conditions + direct damage is broken.

Condition specs should apply 100-200 direct damage with every condition applying attack. 99% of their damage should come solely from conditions. Currently classes like warrior, ele, guard, thief, engineer, ranger, and mesmer can apply huge direct damage while also stacking up big condition stacks.

If you want to look at how condition damage should be then look at necro. No one is dying to a necros scepter attack which does 200 dmg per hit, or a staff mark which does 500 damage on a crit.

Any attack that applies a condition should do little to no direct damage, i.e how every condition class in every other mmo on the planet functions.

You can’t balance a game where you can maximize both condition damage and direct damage in the same build, because then you can’t do either or, you have to do both and.

TLDR:
You can’t buff conditions and still let direct damage components of the attacks hit for 4k. Remove the direct damage component from condition central attacks.

Fastest ping wins.

From all I’ve read sounds like they’ve made it worse for us in Oceania with my 450ms ping. :-(
Really sucky design for an internet game.

On some classes/build wins who atacks first, is this the new insta condi game mode? You(players) are being forced to take condi build overall to melt anything that crosses your screen and doest matter the other person build(stats, he will loose if not atacking with conditions), melts who spams more condis.
Lords on wvw are being killed under 3-5 seconds by just 5-8 players with condis, now imagine the players, also guardian consecrations take longer time to cast, being forced to play one build is also awfull for a mmo.

Please! don’t nerf guardian and mesmer in (PVE) to hard. It’s really enjoyable to play, considering we do some decent damage now. Before, not so much. And geesh…Fire elemental and Jungle Wurm needed an HP boost 10 years ago. Buff it up!

For world bosses increase amount/time of/for Cliffhangers like defend lasers during teq etc.

SirDrygan.1823 above made good suggestions for them.

Aeolus.3615:

On some classes/build wins who atacks first, is this the new insta condi game mode? You(players) are being forced to take condi build overall to melt anything that crosses your screen and doest matter the other person build(stats, he will loose if not atacking with conditions), melts who spams more condis.
Lords on wvw are being killed under 3-5 seconds by just 5-8 players with condis, now imagine the players, also guardian consecrations take longer time to cast, being forced to play one build is also awfull for a mmo.

Other than burning can you explain to me how conditions are OP now? Bleed was nerfed, so if it wasn’t OP before the patch then it is fine now. Are you saying torment is doing too much damage? poison?

People keep saying that conditions are the cause of this crazy damage yet say nothing about:

1. 4 extra traits for everyone, usually including 1-2 +10% direct damage traits
2. Buff to zerker gear
3. stackable quickness (i’ve had up to 50s of quickness at teq….)
4. Boon spam everywhere (guards, rangers and thieves can stacks 20 MINUTES of fury)

Once again, burning needs a significant damage reduction, but I have not heard a single argument against the other conditions yet…