Guild Wars 2

1) Nerf Cele amulet. I use it myself, love it, but acknowledge that it isn’t balanced. It’s [few] weaknesses are too easily compensated—there are virtually no drawbacks to using this. You can be jack of all trades, and master them too with barely any creativity. Stats could be toned down by some flat %, but perhaps contingent upon introducing new amulets (see point 4).

2) Nerf Rune of the pack. This is like having two runes in one: +175 power, +125 precision, plus the swiftness duration and the great on-hit procs. I love this rune, but too many power specs are funneled into using it (although its not obviously reflected in the meta). It’s nearly the top DPS rune, but with great team support and mobility as well. The on-hit proc CD should be increased, and/or the precision bonus needs to be reduced.

3) Nerf Sigil of air and sigil of fire. The random on-hit procs offer no counterplay. My suggestion is to reset the CD when an attack that would have crit misses (blind, block, glancing blow), or something to that effect.

4) Introduce new 4-stat amulets. We’re all being funneled into marauder and cele amulets, which does nothing to improve build diversity. The addition of a few new amulets in the June 23rd patch was great, but even more are needed! Introducing new amulets that trade stats for boon/condi duration would be a neat addition. You might argue: “Introducing more amulets will be complicated to newer players at first” to which I say: “Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience”. It really isn’t difficult, especially when metabattle is holding our hands every step of the way.

5) Make healing power scale better with secondary heals (i.e., heals that are not the “6 utility”) so that more amulets with healing power will be taken. Right now there isn’t much incentive to use any of these amulets. This is compounded by the fact that cele amulet can generally do it better.

Thanks for reading. Cheers.

I agree with all these things.

Adding new amulets with good 4/5 stat combinations would help ween a certain class (cough ele cough) off of celestial and in the process tone it down a bit.

Air and Fire sigils are just bad design. Rune of the Pack doesn’t need a huge nerf, since many classes still run might based runes or vampirism

Celestial is balanced. Celestial necromancer and celestial engineer are in a good place, but definitely not OP, and you see a lot of other runes being used lately: marauder, rabid, soldier, cleric, carrion, even rampager sometimes. Cele elementalist is OP alright, but it’s not because of the amulet.

You’re right about the rune and sigils. Your nerf suggestion for the sigils is excellent.

MOAR amulets, yeah! I was desperately looking for something with power-tougness-ferocity-precision stats, in vain. Alternatively, give us back the jewels!

Thanks for the responses, guys!

infantrydiv.1620:

..Rune of the Pack doesn’t need a huge nerf, since many classes still run might based runes or vampirism

Agreed that RotP doesn’t need a huge nerf; just a small CD increase or a precision reduction. That being said, I think we can both agree that the meta shouldn’t necessarily define whats nerfed and what’s not. If something is unbalanced, it should be fixed, meta or not.

Sorel.4870:

Celestial is balanced. Celestial necromancer and celestial engineer are in a good place, but definitely not OP, and you see a lot of other runes being used lately: marauder, rabid, soldier, cleric, carrion, even rampager sometimes. Cele elementalist is OP alright, but it’s not because of the amulet…

I agree with you that Cele necro and engi are in a good place, but lets just compare the cele amulet (560 to all stats) to a comparable amulet: we’ll use the new crusader amulet as an example.

Crusader amulet:
Power: 1050
Toughness: 1050
Ferocity: 560
Healing power: 560

Like the cele amulet, the crusader amulet offers 560 to both healing power and ferocity. It has more power, but its dps is actually lower than cele by ~9%+ (best case scenario using rune of the citadel/pack for fury) because it offers no precision. It also doesn’t boost your condi damage or vitality; ouch. And the tradeoff for that is only an extra 490 toughness. That’s only an additional ~9-13% damage reduction to power attacks relative to cele (much less than the initial ~20-23% damage reduction from taking cele due to the diminishing returns of increasing toughness). So, while cele amulet might be balanced for the specs you mentioned, there is no other “bruiser” amulet that can actually compete with it, and that’s the problem. I’m not arguing that all Cele classes (like necro and engi) are OP, just that cele isn’t balanced around the other amulets. A crusader necro/engi is just a poor-mans version of a cele necro/engi, and that really shouldn’t be the case.

Vampirism needs to just be made unusable in sPvP.
If you watch the high-end tournaments, it’s absolutely ridiculous how many different classes run that rune and how some of them ( mesmers, thieves ) basically become almost unkillable that way. Just lame…

A 4/5 stat ammy for necro would be even better than cele, because they don’t have that many ways to use healing power with the kitten y signet, even though they have the tools for everything else.

I’d say it’d be the same but without condi damage for cele engis since incendiary poweder was gutted and moved out of explosives.

1. Celestial amulet is fine
It was slightly nerfed in the trait re-work and wasn’t even the problem before then. The problem has always been the builds which use celestial amulet. They have easy access to burning and could offset the low power values with trait line stats (before the re-work) and might stacking.

2. Pack runes aren’t a big problem
I agree that Rune of the Pack is a little too good, but it’s not contributing to huge imbalances in PvP. There are many more issues which should be addressed first.

3. On-Proc sigils do need nerfed
When such a large amount of damage comes from attacks which can’t be predicted or avoided, it really kills the action-based gameplay. You can’t counterplay these sigils. It goes beyond Air+Fire though; Some swap sigils are pretty powerful and if you nerf Air+Fire, others like Blood will take their place.

4. Remove 4-stat amulets; Allow proper stat customization
Yes, we desperately need more stat customization. However, the 4-stat amulets contribute to power creep. It also subjects us to the glacial pace of patches and the whims of ANet as to what we get next. Players will continue to want different amulets and you’ll end up with a ton to scroll through. Instead, just divide the current 3-stat amulets into multiple items (e.g. amulet, ring, ring) and let players mix and match them like they do in PvE/WvW. It’s not too hard for new players to understand, and it won’t create additional balancing points. Both of those counter-claims are rubbish.

5. Healing Power scaling isn’t so simple
It’s not wise to just across the board increase healing power scaling. Doing targeted increases would be a better approach, especially for builds which can already utilize healing power to an extent. ANet erred on the side of caution with Healing Power. If it’s too good, then you could just heal-bot everything, and that’s not good for the game. Right now, some Healing Power is good for some builds, but too much and you’re giving up any damage output or survivability. That’s fine, but we need the greater granularity with stats.

1) no, cele amulet is balanced
2) no, pack runes is balanced
3) no, fire air runes are balanced

4) yes, more please
5) yes, more please

Exedore.6320:

1. Celestial amulet is fine
It was slightly nerfed in the trait re-work and wasn’t even the problem before then. The problem has always been the builds which use celestial amulet. They have easy access to burning and could offset the low power values with trait line stats (before the re-work) and might stacking.

I can’t find the thread now (can someone?), but some good Samaritan showed that post-patch, the stat disparity between cele and other amulets increased post-patch, to something around ~30%; i.e., cele was inadvertently buffed. Isn’t nerfing cele basically the same thing as nerfing the “builds that use cele” ? Its perhaps a simpler solution because it also gets at the broader problem of stat balance.

Exedore.6320:

2. Pack runes aren’t a big problem
I agree that Rune of the Pack is a little too good, but it’s not contributing to huge imbalances in PvP. There are many more issues which should be addressed first.

Agreed, but we’re doing a disservice to ourselves if we don’t bring up all of the problems; let ANet prioritize.

Exedore.6320:

3. On-Proc sigils do need nerfed
When such a large amount of damage comes from attacks which can’t be predicted or avoided, it really kills the action-based gameplay. You can’t counterplay these sigils. It goes beyond Air+Fire though; Some swap sigils are pretty powerful and if you nerf Air+Fire, others like Blood will take their place.

Blood is far less DPS/burst; so while I still frown at the on-crit proc, Blood replacing air/fire is a big improvement. On-swap sigils require user input/weapon management, and their relatively lower DPS (but good utility) means an on-swap sigil meta would be an improvement over air/fire.

Exedore.6320:

4. Remove 4-stat amulets; Allow proper stat customization
Yes, we desperately need more stat customization. However, the 4-stat amulets contribute to power creep. It also subjects us to the glacial pace of patches and the whims of ANet as to what we get next. Players will continue to want different amulets and you’ll end up with a ton to scroll through. Instead, just divide the current 3-stat amulets into multiple items (e.g. amulet, ring, ring) and let players mix and match them like they do in PvE/WvW. It’s not too hard for new players to understand, and it won’t create additional balancing points. Both of those counter-claims are rubbish.

Sounds good to me.

Exedore.6320:

5. Healing Power scaling isn’t so simple
It’s not wise to just across the board increase healing power scaling. Doing targeted increases would be a better approach, especially for builds which can already utilize healing power to an extent. ANet erred on the side of caution with Healing Power. If it’s too good, then you could just heal-bot everything, and that’s not good for the game. Right now, some Healing Power is good for some builds, but too much and you’re giving up any damage output or survivability. That’s fine, but we need the greater granularity with stats.

Sounds good to me.

Thanks for the responses!