Guild Wars 2

This seems more like a PvE nerf than a PvP nerf for Mesmer. The block has counter play to it so I would have nerfed that last. Oh well. Thanks I suppose……

Osu.6307:

The problem with CoR was it was hitting more than 5 enemies? THAT was the problem? I guess I was too busy killing 2-3 backliners with 18K crits every 2 seconds to realize I hit more than 5 players occasionally.

This is actually a fix for that. After you hit 5 people, it stops. So, now it won’t ever reach those backliners in a zerg or even semi-large fight. I can see this change in WvW being rather big. Unfortunately it also makes the skill much less useful in PvE while it is at it.

what i get is that the balance team has started to address those issue community is qq about

hope the will be reasonable with it as many players are just qq without trying to learn the mechanism of the class or build.

bunker mesmer probably will get more nerf same as viper revenant which will become more weak to conditions (so maybe necro comeback…).
bunker mes less block time and probably wop becoming prevent cap

hope we see thief and warrior coming back ….

You guys forgot to nerf Rangers again. It’s tradition to nerf Rangers every balance patch. I am disappointed.

surprisingly spot on

“Coalescence of Ruin: This ability will no longer hit over the maximum number of targets (5). The cascade will additionally cease its progression if it hits the maximum number of targets.”

Can it be coded so that player characters are given priority to avoid clone and minion exploits from mesmers and necros? I don’t have a problem with this change but only player characters are deliberately targeted other than lords.

They had already planned on doing a general balance sweep of all classes at the end of jan, which I agree is too long a ways off, but nothing we can do about it they need that time to do it.

These are just quick fixes to tone down the 2 classes taking over the meta, be glad they did it rather than having to wait until end of jan for them to even address mesmers and revenants.

Good changes, these were outright game breaking

Agemnon.4608:

EpicTurtle.8571:

I don’t want to be rude, but the only one of these that makes sense to all modes of gameplay is Coalescence of Ruin. The rest of these are purely PvP warranted nerfs and are ill considered at best since only maybe 2 of those nerfs address a problem (Blur Communing and Demonic Defiance).

PvE balance isn’t important because AI has no sense of fair play and others on the map won’t hate you for rolling an underpowered spec whereas if you’re suboptimal in PvP it potentially hinders your team. PvP balance matters because some of us want to play thief but don’t want to bring the team down. If you overpower it they won’t hold over your head how your class mechanics are carrying you (even if you beat people with similar builds to yours when dueling on points) whereas PvP is player versus player and should therefore be given precedence in balancing. It may be fun steamrolling people with a one man army, but it isn’t fun or fair to have that guy steamroll you. In this game however you can queue that class and immediately have access to good runes, sigils, and traits so it’s much fairer than WoW where a just introduced death knight has its top gear and you’re still gearing.

Can we at least balance them separately then? I’m tired of getting screwed over in the vast majority of the game because a smaller section can’t think around something.

Thanks for iterating on balance a bit. It means a lot.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Our next major balance update will be released at the end of January, and after the new year we plan on sharing the high-level details of those changes, giving you an opportunity to provide feedback to our design team.

I am very excited to hear that the community has a chance to talk openly about up and coming changes.

Firelysm.4967
Arena net you guys became from serious game, a serious joke.

I can’t wait that there is another MMO on the market that will take away some of your player basis, so you can start working and caring more, it clearly looks that you guys give less effort in then you should, why still sold expansion for full 50€ for some over 100€..

I understand you guys need to test the classes with large testing(live public) player base.. But taking 3 months for collecting data to release first balance is absurd. 14 days into expansion is enough for post-mortem to receive data, and make a huge balance patch within 3-4 days That’s a must… waiting for 3 months is just over kill.. GG Shame… where is ArenaNet that once cared for their community.

I only play PvP now, because the WvW is ruined, and yes, this post is very good.. I hate now PvP to, and I’m ruby in 10 days. After you hit this tire, you go solo matchmaking, and end up with tier 2-3 team mates..?!
It is a huge problem to play with tier 2-3 players, they don’t even know what is a capture point, or why points are good for…
Huge bug problems:
Revenant: when he is down can attack you even when you are in aegis or some blocking techniques.
When he uses elite skill, there is a huge lag, and only then..that’s a kitten bug!

Fix the match making queue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (that is how I feel!

Gaile Gray.6029:

We began this cadence with the release of HoT in October which undoubtedly changed the way that the game is played across all game modes.

In all fairness the fact you thought this to be a good idea just shows how completely unexperienced Anet is when it comes to balancing. I mean seriously did nobody get the idea hey we add tons of new stuff and will only have 4 weeks worth of data without much time to balance it, this won’t work? Or was it just extreme overconfidence? I doubt if even the most experienced balancers could pull that off and lets face it those do not work at Anet.

Also starting competitive play on a serious level without having a half decent matchmaking? Not a good idea. 2 more dropped balls in my garden, and the layers are already stacked.

And no buffs to the core classes. Great balance!

Agemnon.4608:

“Coalescence of Ruin: This ability will no longer hit over the maximum number of targets (5). The cascade will additionally cease its progression if it hits the maximum number of targets.”

Can it be coded so that player characters are given priority to avoid clone and minion exploits from mesmers and necros? I don’t have a problem with this change but only player characters are deliberately targeted other than lords.

I don’t think that’s an exploit,
I’d rather my minions tank a hit then my face.

thief still garbage.

Sunshine.5014:

tyu.9470:

Are you doing these changes to PvP / WvW only or is PvE again getting randomly nerfed because balancing PvP is apperantly more important than PvE ? Rev nerf is unnecessary for PvE although i was expecting the mesmer nerf.

Balancing for PvP and WvW is definitely more important than in PvE. It is for the general health of the game. That’s a fact.

No it is not a fact. If they removed PvP from the game, the game would go strong still. If they removed PvE from the game game would shut down quite fast.

PvE supports the game and i dont expect PvE to get a priority however at least it shouldn’t be the less important aspect. Especially with raids in the game now.

adozu.6398:

surprisingly spot on

I was moderately impressed for this reason.

Willing to see if they keep hitting bullseyes like this.

Invictus.1503:

Osu.6307:

The problem with CoR was it was hitting more than 5 enemies? THAT was the problem? I guess I was too busy killing 2-3 backliners with 18K crits every 2 seconds to realize I hit more than 5 players occasionally.

This is actually a fix for that. After you hit 5 people, it stops. So, now it won’t ever reach those backliners in a zerg or even semi-large fight. I can see this change in WvW being rather big. Unfortunately it also makes the skill much less useful in PvE while it is at it.

Even in big zerg battles, I will only hit 2-3 enemies. CoR is not as wide as it looks, and enemy players don’t clump up THAT much. It is damage that makes CoR OP, not the number of hits.

They could have easily waited longer to patch this stuff, at least they fixed a few major things.

So minuscule update BUT we each get a gift with a legendary inside? Right?

Gaile, I’ll even take one of those annoying sounding pony bows like you have.

Btw, I was surprised you didn’t use it when we were fighting jormag side by side not too long ago… You went all fierce with the longbow that day and helped us defeat that mighty dragon and I’m sorry I never thanked you formally on the boards.

So thanks for all that and thanks for the new legendary gift too!

Happy Holidays!

I would have thought that the complete lack of berserkers in that pvp tournament would have resulted in at least some changes by now.

Warrior is junk, its elite is even more junk (they did actually have some warriors, but no berserkers).

I`m still staggered by how druids and rangers can be nerfed within a 24 hour period of something appearing and yet it takes an entire month to even make this slight adjustment to classes that are no only rampaging across game modes, but that are also making “esports” into a boredom fest that is only won with timeouts and not with kills.

The balance priorities here are beyond me – whole classes are non functional to the point where if you pick a warrior, or possibly thief in an spvp ranked game, people on the team will call you out for ruining their chances – and they are right. Why is that not addressed or acknowledged?

That’s the CoR fix?! lol Nevermind the fact it was dumping 15-20k crits on 2 sec cooldown annihilating 2-3 backliners in WvW… That fix is like putting fresh paint on a demolished building… In the meantime my war will continue to gather dust as I continue to demolish multiple people by spamming 2 lol (I honestly never noticed it hit more than 5 people… I was too busy insta-downing 3 at a time)

I thought it was mentioned that the Fractal patch would happen in Dec?

I sincerely hope this is not the entirety of the patch, PvP is in a terrible state. Mesmers are way over powered in bunker roles, Revs are just over powered, and Thieves and Warriors are left in the dust as they are so under tuned no one wants to play them.

BTW Anet, have you seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhYGyHhTRYk&feature=youtu.be

Pretty much sums up the terrible state you have left PvP in… If these things dont get before the end of Jan, say goodbye to your PvP community.

As a mesmer main…
The block wasn’t the issue.

Make WoP not contribute to capture points, and leave the block as is for now.

If Mesmer is still too strong after that, then look towards the block/gravity well.

“we began to notice trends that did not align with our design goals.”

The feedback would be more valuable if you let the community know first what the concept and design goals were for each profession. The community can certainly give feedback and idea’s, but potentially many of them may not fit with “Design goals.” which leads to time by both developers and players not being used effectively.

They need to extend the Blur nerf and make it no-capture as well.

The game needed adjustments since june – that’s half a year.
But in anets defense: the PvE aspect in this game is pretty comfortable – I have no real complaints on that.
And: I think PvE isn’t as big as you guys make it out to be – I only know one PvE player only, the rest is either into wvw or pvp (or both).

Trailblazer’s Insignia and Inscription need to be fixed! They can’t be placed in the Mystic Forge. Why is that problem being ignored, it should have been fixed ages ago!

Well, all you pve lovers complaining about balancing being done around wvw and pvp need to understand the distinction between the two. They’re not exactly the same just because they both involve players vs. players. If balancing is being done primarily around any one game mode, my money is on it being pvp, because of e-sports, not wvw; and balancing around small group – usually close-fighting mechanics – is not always conducive to large-scale fighting in wvw. In other words, as someone who primarily plays wvw, I’m just as concerned about the balancing perhaps being done primarily around pvp. But I’ll withhold judgement until I know for sure. Which is what some of you need to do: stop jumping to conclusions.

Ghanto.9784:

Well, all you pve lovers complaining about balancing being done around wvw and pvp need to understand the distinction between the two. They’re not exactly the same just because they both involve players vs. players. If balancing is being done primarily around any one game mode, my money is on it being pvp, because of e-sports, not wvw; and balancing around small group – usually close-fighting mechanics – is not always conducive to large-scale fighting in wvw. In other words, as someone who primarily plays wvw, I’m just as concerned about the balancing around pvp. But I’ll withhold judgement until I know for sure. Which is what some of you need to do: stop jumping to conclusions.

There needs to be two separate balancings, one for PvE and WvW, and the other for sPvP. The different abilities required in them is obvious. Let’s say that if something just stood there and took half a minute to kill without doing anything, that’s quite a lot of HP. Did I mention it’s just a trash “elite” mob? Therefore long duration stuns and knockdowns lasting 4 seconds are great against them. Meanwhile players don’t have that kind of health, not even soldier warriors, so stun duration needs toning down for sPvP compared to PvE. WvW is all about big zerg fights and to a lesser extent roaming. People do PvE stuff and obtain the best gear in PvE in order to have an advantage or level the playing field in WvW, so people buy the best infusions, look at the best gear choices for their role, and do what they can to give their server a bigger edge.

Jiggawattz.2697:

How is this going to balance the nearly spam-able team wide distortion and blur that are non removable, non corrupt-able, non counter-able invulnerabilities?

Doesn’t shocking aura interrupt things while blurred, still? And retal?

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the Balance Team:

Mesmer

• Echo of Memory: Block duration reduced from 2.25 to 1.5

So does that mean that the cast time will be reduced to 1.5 secs?

It’s a start but if you really intend to have an iterative process, balance tweaks on this scale need to occur at least biweekly. Pushing balance tweaks once every 6-8 weeks is not in any way iterative, it’s utter detachment from the issues affecting the meta.

Of course the pace will slow over the holiday, but the people in charge of balancing need to seriously reconsider their workflow priority chart if they’re planning on a 6 week cycle for balance patches. It simply won’t work.

EpicTurtle.8571:

Can we at least balance them separately then? I’m tired of getting screwed over in the vast majority of the game because a smaller section can’t think around something.

Think around something? You should watch today’s ESL to check how broken Demoniac Revenants and Chronobunkers are.

Besides, PvP got screwed up because of the PvE new defiant bar. The amount of CC breaking up the PvP is nowhere near balance.

Anyway, IMO Echo of Memory don’t need the nerf, but well of precog need to be changed to prevent capture point contribution at the very least.

Those are the only changes? You are not even addressing the real problem with mesmer.

at lest it is a update and fix better then not having it sigh

Are you gonna fix Pulsating Pestilence and Soothing Bastion for Revenant as well? 2 GM traits that don’t work…feelsbadman.

hey, dont forget to tell these kittens to take out the visual and noise reduction even more for all the classses especially for Eles. The visual reductions for Eles are still not reduced enough. Please do more so you can lose more players. Thanks Anet. U r the best developer i’ve seen in my life.

wtf. Is this all? What about the fractal changes and stuff??

Agemnon.4608:

Jekkt.6045:

grouch, prevent capture point holding when under the effects of “well of precognition” or you will not change much in the current meta.

while i agree with some of the revenant changes (although others could have been implemented in a better way) the changes will still not do much against what’s ruining the meta.

- scrappers too tanky on marauder

- druid pets hitting too hard

- warrior basically useless

- chronomancer on point too strong

As a druid I can attest to this. Otherwise the class seems fine.

As a ranger player i need to make a correction here for the sake of the class: smoke scale and bristleback hit a bit too hard (or more like they can hit reliably, which is something the other pets cannot do).

So do not nerf pets across the board just because thees 2 are a bit too strong. Just reduce smoke scales & bristlebacks damage coefficients.

Also i will leave this here because it is funny, not that it can really happen in an actual fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-DxXEgH3Gg

JUST FINALLY SPLIT PVP AND PVE!!!!!!!

we ALL want this … just PLEASE do it!

Xyonon.3987:

JUST FINALLY SPLIT PVP AND PVE!!!!!!!

we ALL want this … just PLEASE do it!

They won’t do this because it would confuse too many casual players to have skills doing different things in pvp and pve

That’s a VERY underwhelming list of changes for a balancing patch. I don’t expect an explanation but certainly there are a greater number of items needing a look after the release of 9 elite specs.

Revenant just hit me from the mists, I was at a camp, only alone, I cap it, I go to help my team mates, another cap point, at half way I get full condition attacks on me, how is that even possible?! The opponent condi rev was against my team mates at the cap point, and the distance was at least 2000 in gw2 terms.
Revenants are still full of bugs!

Errant Venture.9371:

Xyonon.3987:

JUST FINALLY SPLIT PVP AND PVE!!!!!!!

we ALL want this … just PLEASE do it!

They won’t do this because it would confuse too many casual players to have skills doing different things in pvp and pve

This game is confusing to any new player already unless someone’s holding your hand, so I don’t think it should matter.

I’m not criticizing the fact, by the way. The fact that it is so different is what made me like this game to begin with.

âs if this would change anything ….. mesmers are still are to important as bunkerz and connot be countered properly !!!

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the Balance Team:

As mentioned in our “Road Ahead for 2015” blog, our strategy for adjusting the meta-game in Guild Wars 2 after the release of Heart of Thorns focuses on releasing balance updates on a set cycle – each and every quarter. We began this cadence with the release of HoT in October which undoubtedly changed the way that the game is played across all game modes. In the weeks following the launch of HoT we made a number of tweaks to elite specializations as we began to notice trends that did not align with our design goals.

Today we stand about a month and a half since Heart of Thorns was released, and once again we feel it is necessary to make some adjustments for the overall health of the game. This week we will be making a few changes to address some emergent gameplay that has cropped up across multiple game modes:

General

• Runes of Durability: Fixed a bug that granted this rune set more boon duration than indicated.
• Temple of the Silent Storm: Players will no longer be able to interact with Meditations while under the effect of Blur.

Mesmer

• Echo of Memory: Block duration reduced from 2.25 to 1.5

Revenant

• Demonic Defiance: This trait now has a 5 second internal cooldown.
• Radiant Revival: This trait’s functionality has been altered to provide Infused Light for the revenant, instead of the downed target. This trait now grants the revenant 10% bonus revival speed.
• Coalescence of Ruin: This ability will no longer hit over the maximum number of targets (5). The cascade will additionally cease its progression if it hits the maximum number of targets.

As a note, not all of the changes listed above will be in the first build on December 15, but instead in a hotfix that will happen shortly afterwards.

Balance itself is an iterative process and our work will be ongoing. We’re taking a hard look at the ways players are experiencing content across the game (raids, fractals, open world, PvP, and WvW) and we’ll be making adjustments accordingly.

Our next major balance update will be released at the end of January, and after the new year we plan on sharing the high-level details of those changes, giving you an opportunity to provide feedback to our design team.

So, are we just going to ignore the fact that you, Arenanet, clearly stated, that there wont be any balance updates while there is an ongoing PvP Season? Why set rules, if you arent going to stick with it?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Our next major balance update will be released at the end of January, and after the new year we plan on sharing the high-level details of those changes, giving you an opportunity to provide feedback to our design team.

So they can ignore them and continue to make awful decisions?

What’s the purpose of this balance patch if not only to insult people who have been waiting for ANYTHING legitimate to happen? Why even bother with this tiny little adjustment when the massive problems with warriors, thieves, revenants, (insert every other class here) remain?

luzt.7692:

Are these all the balance changes for tomorrow?

Yeah, I was thinking that, too. But actually they said not all of those might be in.

I am… confused.

When they said “balance patch” I was expecting hundreds (not exaggerating!) changes. Not a handful. Or even a dozen or two. 100+.