Guild Wars 2

Im disappointed to not see any indications of changes to Ranger shortbow and Thief pistol.

Speaking of thief pistol, I really, really hope we don’t have to wait over a year for somekind of gunner elite specialization to make pistols viable on Thief.

Im also disappointed on their being no word on addressing all the boon spamming that’s infected the game.

AegisFLCL.7623:

What also strikes me as odd is that Beastmastery is where the GS traits are, and yet there are no secondary effects for your pets on your GS weapon skills.

Hilt bash grants your pet a moment of clarity, but other than that as you said no synergy. If they changed the gs trait to give your pet fury instead of you on crit it would make more sense. But that would be a nerf to remorseless which is an underwhelming trait as is.

foste.3098:

Ario.8964:

Pet damage is silly. A bunker druid should never be able to kill someone and the fact that with pets like smokescale and bristleback they are able to burst heavily is bad. Reduction of base heals (with scaling increase to benefit investment) and base pet damage should be a strong start to fixing this problem.

I have to point out that only the smoke scale and the bristlback do alot of dmg. This is largely due to the other pets having issues hitting moving targets, smoke scale can reliably burst with shadow assault and bristlback can reliably land auto attacks because it is a ranged attack with fast projectiles (unlike spiders).
All pets should be able to reliably hit like thees two, and then their damage balanced accordingly.

But yea no one can deny that bristilback’s damage is a bit over the top at the moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-DxXEgH3Gg

Also yes, to the base heal rebalance on druid life shroud. Reduce the heals on all of the astral skills but increase the scaling so that with x amount of healing power they become the same as they are now.

You cant strafe bristleback bc his projectiles homing target. The amount of damage bristle put out is just insane.

foste.3098:

AegisFLCL.7623:

What also strikes me as odd is that Beastmastery is where the GS traits are, and yet there are no secondary effects for your pets on your GS weapon skills.

Hilt bash grants your pet a moment of clarity, but other than that as you said no synergy. If they changed the gs trait to give your pet fury instead of you on crit it would make more sense. But that would be a nerf to remorseless which is an underwhelming trait as is.

You have to trait for that though, the point was more that other weapon sets have direct secondary effects in their tooltip, yet are some of the weaker/less used weapon sets off the top of my head.

That and we need full control of pet abilities, engies and mesmers get 5 f1 skills, what’s so hard about enabling manual control over other pet skills! (I can dream at least)

also what baffles me is that there is no word on revealed spam from engi and rev…. another horrible mechanic stays untouched

Cynz.9437:

also what baffles me is that there is no word on revealed spam from engi and rev…. another horrible mechanic stays untouched

Considering how mesmer can stack a stealth rez with alacrity it has its place. Make thief less reliant on stealth. If mesmer or scrapper had no stealth access they’d still be meta.

Oh yeah give necs more healing possibilities( leeching bolts heal through shroud) and make them have a higher shroudpool…
I’m very deceived u didn’t adress the ridicolous tankyness of reapers in the current state. That’s one of the main concerns about reapers I have.

Is any of this going to fix the horrible matchmaking? I really enjoy sitting in a queue for 7-8 mins in amber (just started playing with the mess that is ranked yesterday) to get paired against premades and full teams of people above my division.

How do you pair a full team of emeralds against a full team of ambers?

I have never seen such a mess in any form of organized play I have ever participated in. I don’t know if you had people in place for this sort of thing in the past.. but I strongly suggest you hire someone who has years of industry experience handling this sort of thing.

Mistakes happen but it isn’t like ranked/competitive gaming is a new thing.

I’m concerned about some of these.
My honest suggestion, is that you guys really need to separate skills for PvP, WvW, and PvE.

Alacrity stacking is good for PvE (You mean I can actually play mesmer in high level fractals? Hallelujah!), but not really effective as it currently stands in WvW. And is a bit too strong in PvP.

If you would split the skills across the different game modes, you would reach a more balanced experience across the entire game, rather than trying to chase your own tail balancing all 3 at the same time.

I imagine it would also create less arguing between PvP, PvE, and WvW balancing teams. They could be more independent from one another.

Thoughts overall:

Quickness/slowness res change: Yes!!! Great move. Much needed.
General thoughts: Core specs need adjustment. Elite specs are mandatory right now and that isn’t good.

Ele: The class has too much self sustain. It needs to be toned down

Engineer: Damage level is fine. Survivability is probably ok once the bunker meta goes away.

Guardian: I’d like to see a buff to the old bunker guardian. I’d also like to see a change in trap timers. Timers should start on activation, not on when the trap is set. I’d also like to see some counterplay to the dragon’s maw trap.

Mesmer: Where to start? This class needs a huge nerf bat. The sustain is way too strong. The alacrity change is good.

Necro: This class does NOT need reaper shroud buffs. I am glad to see that you are buffing regular death shroud.

Ranger: Way too much self sustain. I’d like to see an even greater tie between healing power and various healing skills. Pets also need to be fixed so that they don’t insta kill someone.

Rev: Almost as bad as the mesmer. Shino quickness needs a nerf, and unrelenting assault needs a range limit. Right now there is no counterplay to it.

Thief: I like the auto attack buff as long as it is only on dagger and staff. Do not buff sword auto attacks. In addition, I’d remove the evade from staff 5. Essentially make thieves a killing machine that cannot stay in a fight for long.

Warrior: Beserker needs a complete overhaul. It is bad in all game modes. Warriors definitely needs some buffs, but no more passive invulnerabilities please!

Nice to see that some changes will be implemented.

Rune of Durability needs to be nerfed. Remove the +125 vitality or replace them with something else, for example. As it is the rune is just too strong.

The Bristleback needs to be scaled down. I personally can live with the Smokescale, but the Bristleback just does too much damage considering it’s still a rather tanky pet.

Something has to be done about the stun on the Dragonhunter traps. At the moment the traps are an extremetly skillless kind of play imho. The DH just jumps on a point, places the traps and watches something die. Even good players can fall to those things when they are unlucky.

The Scrapper sneak gyro is just too overpowered. It’s stealth is better than the stealth of the thief, who is supposed to be THE class for invisibility. The duration of 30 seconds is too much compared to the 20 seconds cooldown. At least swapp cd and uptime of the skill. Also a player should be revealed when walking out of the gyro’s invisibility.

StickerHappy.8052:

#in before people start complaining if diamond skin gets better, I can see people complaining about its pathetic state right now, what more if it gets buffed

It’ll be remove 1 or 2 boons on crit. 1 or 2s icd.

or something.

Aegis FLCL,
Thanks a ton for pointing that out, I’ll go add it in in a minute Meant to say as pet damage went down ranger’s would go up a bit but I never had that put in.

Edit: put it into my large post. If you notice anything else I missed or you want to argue should be put in pls let me know and I’ll add it.

oh boy, nerfing revenant after HOT release, classic move.

wow I just hope that these “balances” are being thought through for both pve and pvp.
Or they can separated out so that pve is balanced and fun.
Cause one nerf here and a buff there causes more stuff to need buffing or nerfing.

I do hope you add more stats for armor and weapons and hopefully not hide them behind needing to purchase them with obscure currencies.

I can’t wait to hear what the core scrapper mechanic will have added to it. Hopefully it does give an impact and is as fun as the others.

“Reworking” AKA nerfing don’t get your hopes high if it says reworking.

I am hoping they nix the acrobatic and do another balance pass on thief so I can play like a thief again(you know attack from the shadows and stuff) and not some circus freak.

How comes fixing Coalescence of Ruin broken damage not top on the priority list. Because of the terrain in WvW someone can hit you up to 3 times 10k damage or more pressing a single key once. It’s so frustrating it has been ruining WvW for months.

Posting another screenshot. 24k damage from a single button on a 2 second cooldown. Revenant are using the terrain angle to make the skill hit twice or more a single target.

This NEEDS to be fixed.

would like zealots and apothecary (maybe even with vit) stats in pvp, maybe a vitality variant of viper (like marauder is to berserker)

Josh Davis.6015:

I’ve thought through the implications of removing cele from PvP and what would happen to elementalist quite a bit, actually. It’s pretty risky .

LOL

I think elementalist would need a new 4 stat combo to be viable at roughly the same level (maybe something like 1050pow/1050condi/560vit/560healing).

Ooh nice, a good combination with Stone Heart

Thief notes:

Sword auto needs love compared with dagger and staff. I’d welcome faster auto attacks on both sword and pistol. Looking forward to whatever you have cooked up for Acro. Some other things could use addressing as well.

• General survivability on base thief needs a boost. Higher base HP, blind on CnD, and evade on P/P are some options.

• Some cooldowns are kind of high. Haste, Roll for Initiative, Smoke Screen in particular. Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, and Venoms could use a small reduction too.

• Dancing Dagger, Body Shot, and Short Bow 2, 3 and 4 need help.

• (Edit) Also, Preparedness baseline, Reveal normalized, and Destroy Shadow Trap should behave like Portal with no pathing check.

Thanks!

style.6173:

Thoughts overall:

Quickness/slowness res change: Yes!!! Great move. Much needed.
General thoughts: Core specs need adjustment. Elite specs are mandatory right now and that isn’t good.

Ele: The class has too much self sustain. It needs to be toned down

Engineer: Damage level is fine. Survivability is probably ok once the bunker meta goes away.

Guardian: I’d like to see a buff to the old bunker guardian. I’d also like to see a change in trap timers. Timers should start on activation, not on when the trap is set. I’d also like to see some counterplay to the dragon’s maw trap.

Mesmer: Where to start? This class needs a huge nerf bat. The sustain is way too strong. The alacrity change is good.

Necro: This class does NOT need reaper shroud buffs. I am glad to see that you are buffing regular death shroud.

Ranger: Way too much self sustain. I’d like to see an even greater tie between healing power and various healing skills. Pets also need to be fixed so that they don’t insta kill someone.

Rev: Almost as bad as the mesmer. Shino quickness needs a nerf, and unrelenting assault needs a range limit. Right now there is no counterplay to it.

Thief: I like the auto attack buff as long as it is only on dagger and staff. Do not buff sword auto attacks. In addition, I’d remove the evade from staff 5. Essentially make thieves a killing machine that cannot stay in a fight for long.

Warrior: Beserker needs a complete overhaul. It is bad in all game modes. Warriors definitely needs some buffs, but no more passive invulnerabilities please!

So Engineer’s Hammer is fine? Should I poll the numbers, cooldowns, target cap, versatility, and combo capabilities or do you wanna just backdown now?
For Guardian I’d like that daze to die in kitten. I’d take immobilize, blinds, a quarter bloody second daze… ANYTHING LESS THAN A FULL SECOND MINUS MESMER RUNES!
Mesmer is broke because “we see everyone took Illusionary Persona and that we had two Illusionary Fighter traits (+15% damage) so we get them base IP and illusions +15% damage”. Logic.
Necro- Agree. Much. Minus chill. 25% less damage or EXECUTE condition again, I loved that aspect so much.
Ranger- Again. We think alike. Sometimes.
Rev- Neither would fix the issue. UA can die if you multiple targets or stealth, or retal…or confusion…or weakness….or protection? The problem is Eye for an Eye and stablity on dodge and PERMA TOTC. Thats….smart? Fix it naow anet, naow naow naow.
Thief- So buff the two weapons with the best auto attacks, but ignore the two weapons with the worst? May I ask what you are having, and may I have some? Also, Vault’s issue isn’t the evade- its the stupid high damage. I’m a Thief main, and I just hate the spike- killing them back is easy peezy <3. Just a Pistol Whip the second they achieve lift off spells an instakill. Minus on Valks or Soldier, but then they hit like a noodle so its k.
Warrior- Berserker is a fine spec. The other lines need more versatility and singularity. By that I mean a line with defense needs multiple avenues of defense, same on damage. I found that Stance Dancing Stun Berker was just dandy. Oh and the Gunflame.

Forsaker.9213:

Well Anet logic. More power creep inc and thats all.

This is what they do whole time . " We gonna nerf this and this but buff that and that"

Why cant u simply nerf and leave it like it is.

Agreed.

“Rev- Neither would fix the issue. UA can die if you multiple targets or stealth, or retal…or confusion…or weakness….or protection? The problem is Eye for an Eye and stablity on dodge and PERMA TOTC. Thats….smart? Fix it naow anet, naow naow naow.”

I have no issue with fixing these but the OP rev damage feels fine within the context of this overly bunker meta. I agree with the auto nerf but should only effect lower armor characters. Give the attack some kind of armor/toughness penetration so it’s nearly as powerful against celestial builds as before but hits thieves and marauder builds in general less hard. Maybe make it a trait?

Ario.8964:

Big post inc:

Runes:
Removal-
Trapper (not sure why this was ever put into the game mode)
Mercy (with the idea of normalizing res this rune being removed would assist with that idea as it will no longer be a way to boost res speed)
That list was shorter than I thought it’d be… oh well, on to sigils

Sigils
Removal-
Geomancy (passive procs like that sway combat too much when combined with doom and/or leech)
Hydromancy (again passive proc damage for doing something not related to actually dealing damage is dumb and it is even worse when on chill reaper)

Nerfed-
Energy (just needs to have endurance restored be about 33% of endurance to stop every bunker from having mega evades but at the same time benefit those few builds that rely on pure dodging ability to survive)

Amulets:
Removed-
Celestial (replaced with multiple 4 stat bruiser type amulets that can still allow classes to achieve similar things to what they had before but not being all around amazing at everything) (p.s. nerfing might access and prot access will help with this)

Issues that need to be addressed relating to amulets:
Condi duration bases need to be lowered overall if viper is going to remain in pvp and with it people have condis that last an absurd amount of time. Even DOT builds should have to constantly be engaged in combat in order to win fights, not just able to stack 30 yrs of 10 stacks of condis and then leave and wait til the enemy dies.

Base damage and healing everywhere needs to be reduced and have scaling increase. If someone invests in a bunker build, why should they be able to do significant damage? If someone invests in pure dps, why should they be super hard to kill when they face tank you or be able to full heal themselves any time they want? I know you want to avoid the holy trinity style of play but there is too much base stuff that people don’t have to focus on investments in stats hence why cele ammy becomes a problem when applied to certain classes.

Boon access needs to be toned down for most classes. Nobody should ever be able to maintain perma 25 might and/or perma prot. That eliminates the need for investments and serves to only allow boon heavy classes into the meta. Boons should serve as small buffs used to turn the tide in a crucial moment or benefit a team in a fight when it’s most needed. Right now builds are being made around boons so you have bunkers getting 4k crits on other bruisers while being mega tanks as opposed to zerkers who get maybe 4.5k on the same targets. That is not a big enough margin between the dps focused players and bunkers.

Professions:
Elementalist-
DS being reworked is great but with tempest there is still the issue with ridiculous amounts of reflect uptime. Hardcounters are bad and the amount of reflects they have are near hard counters to ranged builds and then the heavy aoe they have makes them strong anti melee fighters. There needs to be counters but not this level of a counter. Small number tweaks to duration will go a long way to making this a wonderfully balanced class with skillful play required to be good. I’m not an ele main so I’m not comfortable going further into base mechanics on this class as I do not possess the exp necessary with this class to tell you those things. But I will say scepter needs better autos and I think we all agree on that.

Guard-
Trap interaction with ports needs to be addressed. Right now porting through one of their traps like dragon’s maw or test of faith will still proc the cc or damage from the trap. That eliminates the biggest possible counter to a class that already hardcounters the classes that focus on ports. Unblockable cc needs to be looked at too as that is just unhealthy design. What’s the point of blocking vs a guard or DH if their attacks can just go through your blocks? Outside of that a few buffs to base guard to make it a real choice between that and DH are in order but seeing as how I don’t main it I don’t feel I should speak on what that should be.

Thief-
Mostly in a good spot, I would prefer DD didn’t give damage on dodges as it eliminates dodging as a strictly defensive tactic but others would disagree. A few weapon buffs (not to autos or to d/p) would be nice to allow thief to have greater build diversity. For example I would like to see sword 2 return cure 2 condis and have a quicker cast. Also would like to see sword 3 cycle on blocks as the hit still connects it just has it’s damage mitigated. Also Double dagger needs some looking at without buffing d/p at the same time (otherwise it will continue to overshadow the set). Can’t speak a ton on traits as we don’t know what acro looks like yet but I will say preparedness out to be made baseline and mug should maybe be looked at as being baseline (right now our class mechanic requires too much traiting to be effective for us to use and it’s not healthy imo for that to be a thing). Revealed should be normalized across the game at 3 sec again for the sake of possible D/D builds emerging in pvp. Revealed needs to be looked at as other classes imo should be able to rip the thief out of stealth (being able to extend reveal like sic em and analyze I can see as a possible ok thing but taking them out of stealth is just not good as it shuts down half of what the class can do)

For the three classes above: Buff hp pools (at least to 15k like Mesmer) to allow them to have greater diversity in how they make their builds (I’d suggest normalizing hp pools across the game but maybe that’s just me)

Warrior:
Seems like you guys have the right idea, giving them the ability to sustain in combat better. I don’t have intimate knowledge of warrior so unfortunately there’s not much I can say here. This one I will leave to the professionals. (p.s. defiant stance needs to have the same functionality as infused light)

Mesmer:
Gravity well I think should be looked at. It is a large cc with pretty heavy damage and can be used twice. Seeing as how it is unique to the chronomancer I could argue nerfing the duration on it as every person who uses it will be able to channel it twice. Or you can keep the duration but remove the cc for every pulse except the last one and then MAYBE buff the damage so it can still be an influential skill but it doesn’t function as a “gg” button. Rest of it you seem to be handling pretty well with your post so I will leave it as is for now.

Necromancer:
Reduce base chill damage and take steps towards removing the large hitting passives on the class. If the nerfs to boon access go through then this class should be fine in terms of not having ridiculous damage. At the same time it does need a bit more utility in the form of heals not tied to shroud or AI.

Revenant-
Reducing the amount of base healing goes a long way. But they also need to not be able to pulse perma boons to their party. If the suggestions I put above for general balance go through rev should be fairly under control. (most of its issues are boon access and spammable condis that last for a long time). A reduction on confusion stacks from banish enchantment would be great. Maybe just from 3 to 2.

Ranger-
Pet damage is silly. A bunker druid should never be able to kill someone and the fact that with pets like smokescale and bristleback they are able to burst heavily is bad. Now all the pets ranger has should hit as reliably as those two, but the damage should not be that significant if it’s going to be hitting you as much as pets will with reliability increases. Reduction of base heals (with scaling increase to benefit investment) and base pet damage should be a strong start to fixing this problem. Now to avoid the class becoming trash tier they would need to be compensated by giving the weapons on ranger more synergy with trait options and some of the damage taken from pets would need to be given as base damage onto the actual ranger.

Engineer-
Hammer 3 could be changed from 3 leaps to 1 to help cut down on sustain for mara builds. Hammer 2 needs to be either a defensive or offensive skill, not both. Cutting down on might stacking overall will also help with the issues on this class. Reducing hammer base damage would be good, and changes to stealth gyro would be awesome (removing the reveal and giving it a cast time to avoid the whole instant stomp avoidance.)

General balance and QoL improvements:
I realize not all of this can be done right away but looking into the future it would be great to start working on these things-

Stealth needs to be unique to thief to allow for it to be balanced as a defensive tool for the class. Other effects can be given to other classes to balance losing the stealth on their skills (possibly even a parallel effect called invisibility or something to still keep the effect but have stealth be an actual tool for the thief to utilize and allow anet to balance easier without the hassle of having to worry about making mes or engi too strong)

Boon base durations need to be reduced if there are going to be stats and amulets giving boon duration as a benefit in order to help deal with the whole perma boon build thing going on now.

Passives (invulns, counter cc’s, etc.) need to be removed from the game. It does not promote healthy gameplay (as was seen with vamp runes pre nerf) and the counter cc’s punish players for timing bursts properly with cc which should never happen in any game that wants to build a pvp playerbase.

I’d love and support a split in balance for pvp and pve if the resources are acquired, if not then I’d like to see pvp be the balance focus as pve can still be completed with any build on any class so there’s not too much of an issue there outside of elitists who will never be pleased.

Class stacking (even in queues) needs to go. Balance issues are just exacerbated when you have the ability to use multiple of the same op build in a team. Yes queue times may be slightly longer for some but if it means more balanced and enjoyable matches I’m sure most would be okay with that.

We need to be able to queue from outside of Hotm, whether that means letting us pve or letting us duel/hotjoin is up to anet but pvp players need something else to do while they wait in queue (which could help balance out the long queue time that may come out of removing class stacking).

Over time it’d be pretty cool to see people instead of picking 1 amulet for use in pvp be able to pick choices for stats on armor, weps, and trinkets just to add some extra diversity and make more builds transferrable from wvw and pve to pvp. Also lessens the chance of “1 meta build to rule them all” type situations as customization options will be greater also preventing the issue you encounter with amulets where some combos are completely overshadowed by other options.

That’s my list atm, I will add in more if I think of it. Great start on balance changes from the post Josh, love them so far and can’t wait to see where this takes us in the future

Edit: oh I almost forgot, the amount off cc overall is too much. Maybe some skills need a functionality change to stop this perma cc nonsense we are seeing. It is not healthy for a game trying to be competitive in pvp for the amount of cc present right now to be there.

This is literally the best post I have ever read on this forum. Great job dude. Hope they listen to people like you.

Gonna copy-paste my proposed solution to help fix D/D thief. Not enough time for the patch by tuesday, but should be considered to help the set be more competitive. Dancing Dagger and Death Blossom are largely holding the set back by design, not implementation. Further buffs would just break the set and emphasize even spammer play than what is offered already on D/D 3spam.

Dagger Training Should apply poison to each auto attack at a 100% chance, and just the auto. Remove the bleed from Death Blossom, and put it on Dancing Dagger. Buff Dancing Dagger’s damage by 50% and remove the ability for it to hit the same target multiple times, and just have it hit the target and up to three nearby enemies.

Death Blossom should be reworked into a multi-hit evading lunge with better range than it has now, similar to Whirlwind Attack (Warrior GS3), at the cost of an additional initiative, giving the set more mobility and stickiness to compete with D/P and some evasion and disengage potential to keep it stylized in between S/D.

We can work on CnD (if needed) after these changes are absorbed, other balance decisions are made, and the community has a chance to work with them. As it stands, though, D/D will never be as good as D/P or even come close, and 3spam evasion condi bleeding is relatively boring and allows for little room for expansion.

Klypto.1703:

I am hoping they nix the acrobatic and do another balance pass on thief so I can play like a thief again(you know attack from the shadows and stuff) and not some circus freak.

Pretty much what I was saying before, when I chose the class I was promised an emphasis on stealth gameplay. Now they decided that’s not what they want thief to be anymore.

The class description itself actually states its defenses rise from evasion and nimble movements. Nothing about stealth.

I would like to see Acrobatics removed altogether, however, and replaced with a completely new trait line concept. Acrobatics and DD will never be able to be balanced because if they work well on their own, they’ll be overpowered in conjunction, but if they’re balanced for their use in conjunction, they’ll be individually weak.

DD was frankly a terrible design decision because of just how much overlap there is, not to mention the specialization is just straight power-creep on the entire rest of the class. Thief at the moment is in almost as bad of a spot through the sheer requirement of Tr/DD for a functional build because this combination is just objectively better than every other alternative by large margins.

It would be cool to see an amulet something like:

1050 condition damage
560 expertise
900 toughness
560 healing

It doesn’t have as many points as vipers, but I would definitely use it.

This official confirms that Guardians will be the worst profession in game when this patch goes live.

We will be worse then Thiefs or Warriors currently are.

Traps were the single thread holding this profession from falling into the abyss, i’m not saying they didn’t deserve changes, but with zero compensation to the rest of the Guardian this profession will be the most broken in GW2 history.

We are already useless in raids, we are already useless in high-end PvP, over half of our talents/traits/weapons/skills are either broken or useless, and now they wont to remove the only semi-optimal option Guardians have left with zero compensation elsewhere?!

Whats the point in playing this game when the devs clearly have no idea what they are doing.

In other words, rev nerfs with NO COMPENSATION.

Half legends will remain worthless

Hi Josh,

I don’t agree with flat damage increases to thief auto attacks, staff and dagger have great AA chains. But no doubt that sword and pistol could use some love in terms of damage and reducing clunkiness. Also might want to look at making 15 init baseline and maybe allowing bountiful theft and trickster to not have to compete with each other in Trickery. Also think pulmonary impact will be bit too strong after all these changes and making flanking strikes unblock able would make SD thief viable again.

Cheers

Hunter.4783:

In other words, rev nerfs with NO COMPENSATION.

Half legends will remain worthless

To be fair, the game has only been worse since Rev came on the scene. Coincidence?

Ross Biddle.2367:

Hunter.4783:

In other words, rev nerfs with NO COMPENSATION.

Half legends will remain worthless

To be fair, the game has only been worse since Rev came on the scene. Coincidence?

The game has only been worse since they started focusing on PvP :^)

“Revenant
Now that the revenant is out in the wild, we’ve been taking a hard look at it. The general goal for this profession is focused specialization through a variety of trait and legend choices. We’ll be continuing this in the future by assuring that each legend and core/elite specialization fulfills their respective roles. In this iteration, we’ll be looking to tone down the revenant’s sword damage in some areas and adjust the weapon’s abilities so that it’s less focused on autoattacking and better at singling out and attacking enemies. We’re also keeping a close eye on the revenant’s defensive capabilities.”

i really hope there’s more to the upcoming rev changes than just a sword auto attack nerf. i main a rev and very much prefer to play a power build and if this is all that happens then its just going to lower build diversity on rev by forcing everyone into the condi build (yes, both builds typically use sw/sh but the condi version doesn’t rely on it for dmg). The condi build is already favored over power which is why i find it odd Anet identified sword 1 as a target to focus on for the Rev.

Please don’t make me play condi Anet.
also while loosing quickness stomps/rez’s is a bit of a bummer as a Rev, this change was very much needed.

Malchior.5732:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Hunter.4783:

In other words, rev nerfs with NO COMPENSATION.

Half legends will remain worthless

To be fair, the game has only been worse since Rev came on the scene. Coincidence?

The game has only been worse since they started focusing on PvP :^)

I think that’s because they tried to make everyone have too many tools at once. The result was that, yeah, people felt that their classes were “complete” and everything was flashy, but everything ended up too good.

The devs have a difficult challenge here, and usually developers don’t act on it because they don’t want to feel like they’re “stripping classes down” (though in reality, they’re actually just taking classes back to their roots and identity) and that’s actually REMOVE a lot of stuff that they should have never had tons of. Everyone has about a million blinds now, and blocks and evades. Once everyone can do everything the next step is (which has already begun) is start adding every effect to skills that already have effects and piling it on (Picking on scrapper a bit here). Or in order to fill a unique role you have to be extreme to the point of silly gameplay (Daredevil evade time, the potency of Alacrity).

Simplicity is what makes games work. You can have tons of depth and still maintain simplicity and likewise you can have tons of complexity and very little depth.

I’d like to see them actually take classes back to their roots and pretty much globally reduce the power contribution of a lot of traits or make them more about changing play styles more-so than just adding tons of ridiculous passive benefits.

Sadly, this isn’t really a “balance patch” task, but I hope they take it to heart because the game needs less pseudo complexity (randomly firing components and passives) and more depth (thoughtful building, hard choices and sacrifices) that is more about actively playing the game and not ‘cheesing’ the mechanics in your favor.

(ps, note, I know DD isn’t considered OP, but they were a shining example of having to go to extremes to forge a niche in a world where everyone has a bit of everything.)

I don’t even need to read all the posts to say that ^this guy^ probably has one of the most true analyses in the entire thread. 100% agree with everything said. EVERYTHING needs nerfs, to get back to more deliberate game-play, where skills are used intelligently for specific reasons (he is going to heal…use that poison skill now) as opposed to everyone just using every skill they have nearly off-cooldown and relying on tons of passive procs.

There was once a dev who talked about “roles and holes,” but they have completely crapped all over that philosophy, to the harm of the overall game. Nobody should do everything great, and everyone should have some weakness or strategy that is more effective against them (like blinds are still very potent against warriors).

Warlord.9074:

“Reworking” AKA nerfing don’t get your hopes high if it says reworking.

It would be a blessing for the game if Anet ever carried out more than the most token of nerfs.

Look at their past pattern of behavior: all they do is power-creep (buff) everything, and that is why you have a boring/broken game now. It is not possible for them to buff their way into a fix anymore.

quickness/slow + rez/stomp
good change

Elementalist
you’re going to have to make some very smart but noticeable nerfs to their sustain to warrant any buffs to their offense. while i’m interested in seeing a Diamond Skin change, i also would like to see reductions to their protection access and changing Obsidian Flesh to be uncastable while CC’d (this is not something limited to elementalist though, NO WEAPON SKILLS SHOULD BE USABLE WHILE CC’D i.e. Shield of Wrath & Phase Retreat). also the only offensive buffs they should recieve should be with traitlines like Air as mentioned in the post, please do not buff any weapon skills or else there will be no reason to go into Air.

Engineer
“With that said, we’re still monitoring the defensive nature of the scrapper and may look to implement a reduction in survivability.”

please do the following:

• nerf Sneak Gyro; make the gyro considerably weaker a la Supply Crate, reduce the strength of it’s utilities considerably, or increase the CD by a large amount. either route you choose, PLEASE REMOVE THE ABILITY TO CAST THIS WHILE CC’D.
• nerf Hammer’s damage or utility/defense
• slightly nerf protection access (either Protection Injection or the Prot. on heal trait)
• slightly nerf Alchemy (namely Transmute; this will also somewhat address protection access as well)
• introduce more ways for engineers to handle conditions actively

boom, you have a balanced profession.

Guardian
traps seeing a nerf is good. however, the new virtues need addressing as well.

Ranger
this is what i’m most concerned about based on what i’ve read in the blog post. why was no mention of nerfs to this profession made? Bristleback is NOT ok. easy, cheap CC that lasts way too long is NOT ok. the amount of self-sustain druid has is NOT ok. i’m now genuinely concerned the second/third most overpowered profession in the game will fly under the balance team’s radar, if not get it’s absurd strength further bolstered by them.

lastly, my profession:

Thief
first of all, buffing Acrobatics at this point is nothing more than throwing a bone to f2p players. without any intention of reducing Thief’s dependency on Deadly Arts and Trickery, no amount of buffing to Acro will warrant replacing Daredevil without causing a hilarious amount of overlap and redundancies between the two. at the same time, buffing Acro to be on par with Deadly Arts/Trickery will make Daredevil and Acro synergize far too well, so you are more than likely wasting your time in this regard too. just replace Acro with a new traitline that gives us variety, not more of the same.

secondly, while P/x and Shortbow need considerable autoattack buffs, thief needs to see different weaponset buffs across the board from damage increases to utility increases. nothing too drastic, but buffs all the same.

as long as thief sees modest but meaningful buffs to both offense and sustain, we’ll be in a good place.

Ario.8964:

Big post inc:

take note of everything in this post as well anet.

ronpierce.2760:

Malchior.5732:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Hunter.4783:

In other words, rev nerfs with NO COMPENSATION.

Half legends will remain worthless

To be fair, the game has only been worse since Rev came on the scene. Coincidence?

The game has only been worse since they started focusing on PvP :^)

I think that’s because they tried to make everyone have too many tools at once. The result was that, yeah, people felt that their classes were “complete” and everything was flashy, but everything ended up too good.

The devs have a difficult challenge here, and usually developers don’t act on it because they don’t want to feel like they’re “stripping classes down” (though in reality, they’re actually just taking classes back to their roots and identity) and that’s actually REMOVE a lot of stuff that they should have never had tons of. Everyone has about a million blinds now, and blocks and evades. Once everyone can do everything the next step is (which has already begun) is start adding every effect to skills that already have effects and piling it on (Picking on scrapper a bit here). Or in order to fill a unique role you have to be extreme to the point of silly gameplay (Daredevil evade time, the potency of Alacrity).

Simplicity is what makes games work. You can have tons of depth and still maintain simplicity and likewise you can have tons of complexity and very little depth.

I’d like to see them actually take classes back to their roots and pretty much globally reduce the power contribution of a lot of traits or make them more about changing play styles more-so than just adding tons of ridiculous passive benefits.

Sadly, this isn’t really a “balance patch” task, but I hope they take it to heart because the game needs less pseudo complexity (randomly firing components and passives) and more depth (thoughtful building, hard choices and sacrifices) that is more about actively playing the game and not ‘cheesing’ the mechanics in your favor.

(ps, note, I know DD isn’t considered OP, but they were a shining example of having to go to extremes to forge a niche in a world where everyone has a bit of everything.)

One of the things I’ve always liked about mesmer, is that none of the trait lines were ever really garbage.
They all had their uses under different circumstances, and you were almost always trading out a useful trait line for another.

The problem there, is that our trait line was a “jack of all trades, sort-of master of 1”.
We had mobility & high burst damage for PvP & WvW (+ veil), and a reflect build for PvE.

Although, in mobility and burst damage area, thief had us beat.

Thief wasn’t an insta-win vs mesmer, but panic strike thief was really strong against mesmer.

And in PvE? Guard did what we did, but better.

WvW? They nerfed PU in response to everyone hating tanky condi-mesmer builds. At that point, smoke fields + blasts were more effective than veil. But mesmer still made a solid member of gank in 15v15.

Now, I hate to say it.
But the majority of what people are complaining about sustain wise for mesmer, are things we’ve always had.
Alacrity is a buff to what we had. And a necessary one in PvE (imo). We don’t do as much damage as other classes. Utility is kind of our thing in this area. Especially since there is a metric ton of enemies in which reflects do not work in this expansion. (THANKS ANET)
“But what about double time warp”, it’s good. I question if there will be a falloff point in higher level fractals though. You’re pretty much trying to run as much alacrity up time as possible at those points. Even to the point where you’ll sacrifice personal DPS and take shield over another off hand.

For PvP, frankly moa/timewarp can be a stronger pick than gravity well (I pretty much always take moa soloq now). TW helps with res’s and stomping, which are meta in this game mode atm. Moa generates a down better than GW (GW doesn’t work on bunkers with loads of blocks & stab), and if it’s a 2v2 you’re in, also guarantees the finish because you can do moa a second time.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how ANet should nerf mesmer. Moving the movement speed into a non-chrono traitline would be a start at making base mesmer stronger, and attacking the chronobunker line.
Alacrity nerf for pvp only would be good. You can get too much up time on it in PvP.

Nerfing gravity well is kind of a whatever move in my opinion.
In a meta filled with stab, blocks, evades, and blinds. I have more of a problem with hunter’s ward than I do with GW (Hunter’s ward is toxic in WvW).

I am excited about warrior’s sustain buffs. Whether or not certain traits are gonna be baseline (like fast hands for eg.) I do not know but hopefully they give something to us to not make us drop like a fly after the initial endure pain runs out. Rifle buffs are gonna be interesting since its probably the least used weapon in serious gameplay (Gunflame is a pure gimmick build).

As for DH, there are way too many counters to their trap style of play. If anything the following should be nerfed:
1) Rev (as a whole)
2) Ele, mes, druid, scrapper sustain when at the same time they deal massive amount of damage (scrapper especially). Bunker builds shouldn’t deal high damage.
3) Certain sigils/runes like Energy, durability.
4) Condition spamming of certain classes (necro especially). Chill is too powerful a condition to be available with 100% uptime. Not only it reduces CD by 66%, it deals sustain dmg overtime when traited.
5) Amount of CC spamming by almost by every elite spec except berserker and DD.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

As for DH, there are way too many counters to their trap style of play. If anything the following should be nerfed:
1) Rev (as a whole)

- Jalis/Ventari are complete trash (Jalis hammers are good only in PvE)
- Hammer 5 is trash (3 and 4 are kinda just okay)
- Hammer has 0 kiting potential
- Sword 2 is almost entirely useless in PvP
- Sword 4’s second stage and Sword 5 are trash
- Shiro heal can be reflected (and heals the opponent)
- Phase Traversal frequently fails and can be interrupted by a Mesmer now (resulting in 3x CDs on occasion…on a class with no escapes)
- Mallyx is a confused mess and completely relies on all 3 trait lines to function
- Core Revenant is pretty bad overall
- Huge terrain issues with Sword 3, Hammer 2, and Jalis hammers

Rev as a whole should be nerfed?
Nah, only specific things need to be shaved and a lot of things need to be fixed just for the class to function properly.

Malchior, Jalis hammers are AMAZING damage because vuln=lifesteal trait. The 2 second cc is brutal. The road is great for stomp security if needed. The heal is garbage and the elite is garbage. Ventari is garbage, but I hate support.
Hammer 5 is beautiful. No kiting, but if anyone ignores me or I see a root that hammer comes down and its gg for the receptee. I agree sword 2 sucks, and I don’t use offhand because Axe synergizes better.

Did not know shiro heal, that is why you have stability on dodge, Mallyx is great for dueling and support not sure why you think its bad. Terrain is an issue.

Rev is new, and l2p is a thing. That isn’t to say the whole thing is powerful, but also it isn’t garbage. A new profession means new methods. You can’t tell me you spent long looking for a build your own way before picking “meta” which changed frequently because the glass isn’t even a year old…. not even half I think?

I’m more than willing to give you builds that are deceptively potent

Serious Thought.5394:

Malchior, Jalis hammers are AMAZING damage because vuln=lifesteal trait. The 2 second cc is brutal. The road is great for stomp security if needed. The heal is garbage and the elite is garbage. Ventari is garbage, but I hate support.
Hammer 5 is beautiful. No kiting, but if anyone ignores me or I see a root that hammer comes down and its gg for the receptee. I agree sword 2 sucks, and I don’t use offhand because Axe synergizes better.

Did not know shiro heal, that is why you have stability on dodge, Mallyx is great for dueling and support not sure why you think its bad. Terrain is an issue.

Rev is new, and l2p is a thing. That isn’t to say the whole thing is powerful, but also it isn’t garbage. A new profession means new methods. You can’t tell me you spent long looking for a build your own way before picking “meta” which changed frequently because the glass isn’t even a year old…. not even half I think?

I’m more than willing to give you builds that are deceptively potent

I’ve been playing Revenant since BWE1.

The hammers CONSTANTLY break on anything. Projectile destruction, terrain, etc.
Jalis is difficult to use in fights due to not having a good, reliable Stun Break, bad Stability (I need Stability NOW, not like 2-3 seconds later), and broken skills.

Hammer 5 is garbage. As you said, if they ignore you. It’s bad.

So, I have Stab on dodge (which forces Retribution + Herald to really make use of it…) because Shiro heal can be reflected? That makes no sense. Oh, did I mention how Jalis’ heal cleanses conditions AFTER it heals, which means Poison can wreck you?

Then, Mallyx is a confused mess. You have traits (and skills) that encourage condition hoarding, but that was the very reason he was gutted in the first place: to not encourage that playstyle. Those skills and traits got nerfed because of it, Mallyx became a shell of his former self and is actually pretty bad if you don’t run Retribution/Herald/X. Oh, and Pulsating Pestilence is broken and only spreads a single stack of Torment instead of copying conditions.

Malchior.5732:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

As for DH, there are way too many counters to their trap style of play. If anything the following should be nerfed:
1) Rev (as a whole)

- Jalis/Ventari are complete trash (Jalis hammers are good only in PvE)
- Hammer 5 is trash (3 and 4 are kinda just okay)
- Hammer has 0 kiting potential
- Sword 2 is almost entirely useless in PvP
- Sword 4’s second stage and Sword 5 are trash
- Shiro heal can be reflected (and heals the opponent)
- Phase Traversal frequently fails and can be interrupted by a Mesmer now (resulting in 3x CDs on occasion…on a class with no escapes)
- Mallyx is a confused mess and completely relies on all 3 trait lines to function
- Core Revenant is pretty bad overall
- Huge terrain issues with Sword 3, Hammer 2, and Jalis hammers

Rev as a whole should be nerfed?
Nah, only specific things need to be shaved and a lot of things need to be fixed just for the class to function properly.

When I wrote as a whole, I meant the usual aspects like sustain/dmg of the legends I see everyday (Mallyx/Shiro and glint). Honestly, I haven’t seen a rev running Ventari in ranked so I won’t comment, but the sustain they have along with immunities (resistance uptime, tons of evades, blocks) while dealing massive damage is unbalanced. If you call certain hammer skills trash, what would you call warrior hammer skills? #5 skills are both similar except that rev can ground target and use it from a distance whereas warrior has to be in melee range. This is just an example.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Malchior.5732:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

As for DH, there are way too many counters to their trap style of play. If anything the following should be nerfed:
1) Rev (as a whole)

- Jalis/Ventari are complete trash (Jalis hammers are good only in PvE)
- Hammer 5 is trash (3 and 4 are kinda just okay)
- Hammer has 0 kiting potential
- Sword 2 is almost entirely useless in PvP
- Sword 4’s second stage and Sword 5 are trash
- Shiro heal can be reflected (and heals the opponent)
- Phase Traversal frequently fails and can be interrupted by a Mesmer now (resulting in 3x CDs on occasion…on a class with no escapes)
- Mallyx is a confused mess and completely relies on all 3 trait lines to function
- Core Revenant is pretty bad overall
- Huge terrain issues with Sword 3, Hammer 2, and Jalis hammers

Rev as a whole should be nerfed?
Nah, only specific things need to be shaved and a lot of things need to be fixed just for the class to function properly.

When I wrote as a whole, I meant the usual aspects like sustain/dmg of the legends I see everyday (Mallyx/Shiro and glint). Honestly, I haven’t seen a rev running Ventari in ranked so I won’t comment, but the sustain they have along with immunities (resistance uptime, tons of evades, blocks) while dealing massive damage is unbalanced. If you call certain hammer skills trash, what would you call warrior hammer skills? #5 skills are both similar except that rev can ground target and use it from a distance whereas warrior has to be in melee range. This is just an example.

That’s fine. I agree the sustain is too much, but “as a whole” means everything, not just sustain/damage.
Regardless, Warrior hammer is designed as a melee/control weapon (and it has the tools to do so) while Rev hammer is designed to be a ranged DPS weapon, yet has 0 kiting potential and relies almost entirely on CoR to be useful. Also, Rev’s Hammer 5 takes almost 2 seconds to do anything while Warrior hammer only takes 1 second and has a lot more CCs to fall back on.

I was typing and answering, should have been more coherent. You said you had trouble Traversing cuz mesmers. Did not know the bugs, but I play power. Power rev is easy. Chain, Hammer, Auto. Gg, I killed you again. Go bunker more plebs.

Malchior.5732:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Malchior.5732:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

As for DH, there are way too many counters to their trap style of play. If anything the following should be nerfed:
1) Rev (as a whole)

- Jalis/Ventari are complete trash (Jalis hammers are good only in PvE)
- Hammer 5 is trash (3 and 4 are kinda just okay)
- Hammer has 0 kiting potential
- Sword 2 is almost entirely useless in PvP
- Sword 4’s second stage and Sword 5 are trash
- Shiro heal can be reflected (and heals the opponent)
- Phase Traversal frequently fails and can be interrupted by a Mesmer now (resulting in 3x CDs on occasion…on a class with no escapes)
- Mallyx is a confused mess and completely relies on all 3 trait lines to function
- Core Revenant is pretty bad overall
- Huge terrain issues with Sword 3, Hammer 2, and Jalis hammers

Rev as a whole should be nerfed?
Nah, only specific things need to be shaved and a lot of things need to be fixed just for the class to function properly.

When I wrote as a whole, I meant the usual aspects like sustain/dmg of the legends I see everyday (Mallyx/Shiro and glint). Honestly, I haven’t seen a rev running Ventari in ranked so I won’t comment, but the sustain they have along with immunities (resistance uptime, tons of evades, blocks) while dealing massive damage is unbalanced. If you call certain hammer skills trash, what would you call warrior hammer skills? #5 skills are both similar except that rev can ground target and use it from a distance whereas warrior has to be in melee range. This is just an example.

That’s fine. I agree the sustain is too much, but “as a whole” means everything, not just sustain/damage.
Regardless, Warrior hammer is designed as a melee/control weapon (and it has the tools to do so) while Rev hammer is designed to be a ranged DPS weapon, yet has 0 kiting potential and relies almost entirely on CoR to be useful. Also, Rev’s Hammer 5 takes almost 2 seconds to do anything while Warrior hammer only takes 1 second and has a lot more CCs to fall back on.

You’re right, I had worded it incorrectly regarding the whole stuff thing. Its just that the three legends along with certain traits that needs major nerfs (95%+ of revs uses 2 of these 3 legends).

Speaking from a warr’s PoV, hammer rev is superior to ours. Being ranged in this meta already gives a huge difference in team fights (not to mention CoR). Warriors lack sustain to be in melee for too long whereas a DPS rev can survive better than a warrior. The bottomline is that melee damage should have higher power coefficient than ranged…CoR alone defies this.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Malchior.5732:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Malchior.5732:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

As for DH, there are way too many counters to their trap style of play. If anything the following should be nerfed:
1) Rev (as a whole)

- Jalis/Ventari are complete trash (Jalis hammers are good only in PvE)
- Hammer 5 is trash (3 and 4 are kinda just okay)
- Hammer has 0 kiting potential
- Sword 2 is almost entirely useless in PvP
- Sword 4’s second stage and Sword 5 are trash
- Shiro heal can be reflected (and heals the opponent)
- Phase Traversal frequently fails and can be interrupted by a Mesmer now (resulting in 3x CDs on occasion…on a class with no escapes)
- Mallyx is a confused mess and completely relies on all 3 trait lines to function
- Core Revenant is pretty bad overall
- Huge terrain issues with Sword 3, Hammer 2, and Jalis hammers

Rev as a whole should be nerfed?
Nah, only specific things need to be shaved and a lot of things need to be fixed just for the class to function properly.

When I wrote as a whole, I meant the usual aspects like sustain/dmg of the legends I see everyday (Mallyx/Shiro and glint). Honestly, I haven’t seen a rev running Ventari in ranked so I won’t comment, but the sustain they have along with immunities (resistance uptime, tons of evades, blocks) while dealing massive damage is unbalanced. If you call certain hammer skills trash, what would you call warrior hammer skills? #5 skills are both similar except that rev can ground target and use it from a distance whereas warrior has to be in melee range. This is just an example.

That’s fine. I agree the sustain is too much, but “as a whole” means everything, not just sustain/damage.
Regardless, Warrior hammer is designed as a melee/control weapon (and it has the tools to do so) while Rev hammer is designed to be a ranged DPS weapon, yet has 0 kiting potential and relies almost entirely on CoR to be useful. Also, Rev’s Hammer 5 takes almost 2 seconds to do anything while Warrior hammer only takes 1 second and has a lot more CCs to fall back on.

You’re right, I had worded it incorrectly regarding the whole stuff thing. Its just that the three legends along with certain traits that needs major nerfs (95%+ of revs uses 2 of these 3 legends).

Speaking from a warr’s PoV, hammer rev is superior to ours. Being ranged in this meta already gives a huge difference in team fights (not to mention CoR). Warriors lack sustain to be in melee for too long whereas a DPS rev can survive better than a warrior. The bottomline is that melee damage should have higher power coefficient than ranged…CoR alone defies this.

I would LOVE a CoR nerf if it meant 3-5 would get some love.
3 is nice, but, again, no kiting.
4 is kinda slow and only helps if you’re facing people, not when you’re trying to run away or kite in different directions.
5 is awful.
Hammer as a whole is worthless for Condi builds.

Warrior is undertuned right now, so of course it feels worse in comparison. Rev Shield gives a lot of sustain for no effort while Warriors are struggling.

Josh Davis.6015:

AegisFLCL.7623:

Snip.

I’ve thought through the implications of removing cele from PvP and what would happen to elementalist quite a bit, actually. It’s pretty risky. I think elementalist would need a new 4 stat combo to be viable at roughly the same level (maybe something like 1050pow/1050condi/560vit/560healing).

On a “high level” design view I could say that this is actually a desired effect. Please, start balancing in this direction, a lot of people would prefer this imo
One of the inherent “cancers” in my opinion that has manifested lately is no more clear roles for classes. You can spec very defensively and still do A LOT of damage. If you look at how this is done, it is mostly done with passives, invulnerables and boon stacking (might).
If you remove or nerf celestial amulet I think a lot of people would need to respec and go more offensive or defensive while losing survivability or damage respectively, which is actually a better design of player roles.

Necro getting BUFFED?! Is anyone even paying attention to matches where 90% of other people play? Where necro can easily 1v2+?

Especialy with minnions?!

COME ON ANET wtf, you will only make the toughness minnion build even more stronger with this, i have no words for you, seriously.. It’s allready next to unkillable..