Guild Wars 2

Overall, great stuff!
Mesmer:

• Looks like 10/20/0/25/15 will be the new dungeon phantasm build.
• Shattered Conditions change is great; it’s still a little tricky to proc it, but at least it’ll help the team more consistently when it does. I’d still like to see this work with Illusionary Persona.
• Agreed w/ Chaos Archangel about Confounding, a little more daze duration is kinda useless for a GM trait.
• Mirror of Anguish – 60s is still too high for anyone to take this; in team situations you have many CC sources incoming. Mirroring a single one isn’t so overpowered that it needs a whole minute cd, specially when it doesn’t even stop you from getting hit in the first place.

All the ele doom and gloom is misguided. You want to run 0/10/0/30/30 still you can, just need to make a tough choice in that master slot for water and arcane.

On the upside you still have some good choices in water like vital striking and soothing disruption (which can mitigate the need for renewing stamina btw) and a cool selection of former master-weapon-traits in arcane.

You guys are acting like these traits are being deleted. That is absurd – just pick the one you like more and have fun with your new diversity that you get from having to CHOOSE.

If a single trait setup is always the most optimal, you will never get to run anything else.

Also, stop claiming ALL your survival hinges on 5 seconds of protection or 1 condition being removed. You can live without one or two of these traits, and forcing choices will bring diveristy. Eles have many choices when it comes to obtaining prot, vigor, or condition removal.

/bow for the ele buffs, time will tell if it was a good decision or not. The only thing that is slightly annoying is a 1 month wait time. If you implemented these changes “now” couldn’t you better gauge if one class is op and hotfix it? (assuming this is easy on a programming side?). My particular frustration comes with, shouldn’t these changes be implemented say, in 1 week? and hotfix things that are blatantly OP? We shouldn’t have to wait 1 month* for a stale meta which never really changed by opening more defensive options for classes.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Rufy.6093:

LordByron.8369:

•Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
•Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Another nerf to D/D to the level of RTL 200% nerf.

GG if you want all players enjoyng D/D gameplay to quit at all cost you will be sure this time.

RTL was one of the most unfun nerf i ever seen in a game.
This is even worse…for PvE and WWW.

I hope you are happy of how much you destroyed those in the sake of your terrible PvP.

If this arrives in PvE i think i ll find the final reson to quit this great game ruined since day 1 patch after patch.

I already quit PvP…i quit WWW and now its time for pve.

Relax man, learn to adapt and try new things. They ain’t trying to ruin any class. They are balancing all over.

:)

It’s true. And again, none of this is final, we could pull things or adjust things still. Just trying to get a sense of what you guys feel with these changes, they’re not set in stone.

I ll try to be more diplomatic.

I like D/D ele….its one of the last things i find fun in this game

You are impacting GAMEPLAY.

Number MAY BE will be untouched….
Gameplay will be totally destroyed.

I don t find fun to see big numbers on screen.
I find fun to make combos, to evade stuff etc etc .

This change in arcana is totally destroying FUN <=
On the level of RTL nerf.

And this time D/D isn t a problem….

Tell me: would you play a totally unfun game?
i won t …..

Also may i question why all your patch just remove builds from the game?
IS it needed to remove D/D EA builds from the game?
Because the intent is clear….

Larynx.2453:

Reduce Healing Signet base heal by about 25% (from 390 to 300 hps, in line with 3 bar Healing Surge), while at the same time increase the healing power scaling so that @1000 healing power it’ll do equivalent to what it does today at 1000 healing power. This change will reduce the inherent healing of non-healing power builds, while not effecting bunkers who choose to take Clerics amulet.

Numbers need adjusting but this pretty much. Healing signet still needs to be addressed for serker builds.

s/d did need nerf, but nerf to other thief specs was kind of silly

don’t want to throw a tantrum here but i have a feeling we won’t be seeing thieves for a while now

Kavia.8249:

All the ele doom and gloom is misguided. You want to run 0/10/0/30/30 still you can, just need to make a tough choice in that master slot for water and arcane.

On the upside you still have some good choices in water like vital striking and soothing disruption (which can mitigate the need for renewing stamina btw) and a cool selection of former master-weapon-traits in arcane.

You guys are acting like these traits are being deleted. That is absurd – just pick the one you like more and have fun with your new diversity that you get from having to CHOOSE.

If a single trait setup is always the most optimal, you will never get to run anything else.

Also, stop claiming ALL your survival hinges on 2 seconds of protection or 1 condition being removed. You can live without one or two of these traits, and forcing choices will bring diveristy

Elemental Attunment provides at least 5 secs of protection.

You don’t even know how Ele mechanics work, and yet you make comments. I guess I also have the right to make comments on other classes.

Mesmer deserves no privilege on having Critical Infusion as Adept Minor.
Gain vigor when delivering a critical hit.<—This needs to be nerfed.

Either place it in Master, or extend the cooldown.

oh man plz give guardian something to compensate for this staff swiftness nerf

it maby is ok for spvp and there is some sense BUT in open world or wvw guardian will be most anoying class to play cause it will need ages to run back to your zerg/grp or farm orichalcum or whatever^^

give guardian a useless signet with nothing than +25% movement speed for open world – thx^^

JonathanSharp.7094:

Rufy.6093:

LordByron.8369:

•Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
•Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Another nerf to D/D to the level of RTL 200% nerf.

GG if you want all players enjoyng D/D gameplay to quit at all cost you will be sure this time.

RTL was one of the most unfun nerf i ever seen in a game.
This is even worse…for PvE and WWW.

I hope you are happy of how much you destroyed those in the sake of your terrible PvP.

If this arrives in PvE i think i ll find the final reson to quit this great game ruined since day 1 patch after patch.

I already quit PvP…i quit WWW and now its time for pve.

Relax man, learn to adapt and try new things. They ain’t trying to ruin any class. They are balancing all over.

:)

It’s true. And again, none of this is final, we could pull things or adjust things still. Just trying to get a sense of what you guys feel with these changes, they’re not set in stone.

Hey JSharp

As a Thief main,
Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.

If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to chip in some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need
Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.

Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

Kavia.8249:

All the ele doom and gloom is misguided. You want to run 0/10/0/30/30 still you can, just need to make a tough choice in that master slot for water and arcane.

On the upside you still have some good choices in water like vital striking and soothing disruption (which can mitigate the need for renewing stamina btw) and a cool selection of former master-weapon-traits in arcane.

You guys are acting like these traits are being deleted. That is absurd – just pick the one you like more and have fun with your new diversity that you get from having to CHOOSE.

If a single trait setup is always the most optimal, you will never get to run anything else.

Also, stop claiming ALL your survival hinges on 2 seconds of protection or 1 condition being removed. You can live without one or two of these traits, and forcing choices will bring diveristy

So…take an already maginally unviable and make it worse promotes diversity. Giving no good substitutes for a class that is already struggling when you nerf very key survivability traits but don’t give other options that address the key survivability concern is a good thing?

To put it into mesmer perspective, this would be like moving Vigorous precision to be a 20-point master trait b/c having to choose between that and Deceptive evasion would promote “build diversity.” The added traits don’t help a melee ele at all, and thus it amounts to just a straight-up nerf to any d/d build.

Look at it another way – what happens when you have a class that is balanced around having heavy access to their boons, who is already struggling to compete on so many levels, and then take away some of their most important boons?

What I would have liked to see;

ELEMENTALIST
Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you peform a blast finisher into a fire field. (CD 15s)

Tempest Defense – Activate Swirling winds when attuning to air; Recharge 30s

Diamond Skin – When attuned to Earth, performing successful blast finishers give you immunity to conditions for 3s every 30 seconds. (visual effect must be played to show immunity)

ENGINEER
Incendiary Powder; All explosives cause 1s of burning. or All blast finishers cause 1 second of burning. Left in adept tier.

Transmute; Convert a condition to a boon when you use an elixir. (Works even with Elixir gun’s Elixirs).

Armor Mods; Blast finishers into a light field also give you Aegis. Moved to Master tier.

RANGER
Moment of Clarity(Increasing the stun duration is just not going to work. Getting more creative than a numbers game is what this class needs); When you successfully perform a stun break, gain 3 stacks of might and 10 seconds of swiftness.

OR

When you successfully perform an Evade, gain 3 stacks of might and swiftness. cooldown; 30 seconds.

Or

Change the name to Moment of Opportunity; When you or your pet interrupt a foe, stun them for 1 second. Gain Signet of the Hunt.

Bark Skin; When you use a survival skill, you gain 5 seconds of protection.

Sun Spirit; When you successfully evade an attack, your next attack causes burning.

Storm Spirit; When you successfully crowd control a target. They are hit by Lightning strike.

Frost Spirit; Deal 10% more damage when targets are chilled.

Stone Spirit; When this spirit dies, it gives protection for every second it remained alive. 3s every 5s. Max 12 seconds.

WARRIOR
Spiked Armour; When you gain protection, you also gain Retaliation. (Encourages Rune of Earth combo or team up with a Guardian).

There are definitely some other traits I would like to see changed but, based on the incoming changes, this is what I would have liked to see instead.

I’m not tearing my hair out, so I guess that’s a pretty good sign.
Finally you’ve begun to adress some major issues like the Vigor-Inflation that has been going on. With that said, Guardians, Elementalists and Mesmers still have access to pretty much permanent vigor by spending 5-10 trait points. Please consider changing these as well.
Arcana rework is definitely needed, let’s hope this will do wonders.
Still a lot of changes that I wish to see, for instance color-coded marks with a 1/4 activation time, or maybe even manual triggers.
I’m really looking forward to the Shattered Aegis rework, please make sure it actually deals a decent amount of dmg, since the access to Aegis is actually quite limited.
Also good to see you adressing some of the random effects that are happening. I hope to see traits like “Burning on critical hits” and “Vigor on critical hits” gone at some point, but nevertheless this seems like a small step in the right direction.

i really apreciate an effort you put into elementalist its good to see you looked into our build diversity problem and overall dependence on arcane line, especially for staff eles im very curious how it goes when it will get live, wish it could be sooner, 5 weeks is quite a long time

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.

If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to chip in some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

You got your wish. You won’t be able to return while dazed or stunned since it now has a cast time. Combined with the vigor nerfs, s/x builds will have little defense abilities in this meta. I suspect they will die out because of this.

I just don’t even know where to begin with what you are doing and have done to eles. Clearly no one at anet plays this class. Please hire someone else to come up with balancing ideas for eles.

Bad changes for the warrior. Mace or hammer is not the problem. Pls take a look to the insane conditions. Thats is the real problem for the whole game.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Thanks for the feedback. We had the same discussion internally on that one. Back in alpha/beta, there were lockdown Mesmer builds that COULD keep someone down for 6-7 seconds…and it was brutal.

We’re afraid to go back to that, but as you can tell with these changes, we do want to augment the current Mesmer’s efficacy in regard to shutdown. It can just be scary if we go too high with it…..so we’ll think this one over some more.

Thing is that this was possible before the needed nerf to the Sigil of Paralyzation because the Daze of Counter Blade would have a 2s duration. Not so sure about the Mantra. However, I have never ever encounter any Mesmer in PvP running this combination for achieving such kind of chain dazes.

Of course, there might be different reasons for this. Maybe people just didn’t know how the Sigil was working at that point but I guess most people did because of CC Warriors. The other reason might have been that it is not as efficient as it might look like on paper. It can be very strong if the Mesmer actually is able to deal damage to the single target while it is dazed. But as Chaos said, they might just run away or be out of range. This will also only work against one single enemy. Furthermore, the Mesmer won’t be able to pull off this chain very frequently because of the cd of the Mantra and the long recast.

I do like many of the changes made. Confounding Suggestions not so much because 25% does nothing substantial to improve the 1s dazes a Mesmer has. Even when sacrificing runspeed by using Mesmer runes instead of Travelers or Centaurs plus Sigils of Paralyzation won’t add up to an additional second. I guess that is fine if ANet wants the dazes on Mesmers to act as interrupt rather than as CC. But it’s just not right when perceiving dazes as form of crowd control.

Other changes I am not so excited about:

• Protected Mantras: Really doesn’t help. Being interrupted while recasting is the issue. Not the defense. While auto-stability while recasting might be too powerful, what about projectile absorbtion (or even reflection) when recasting? The recast could still be interrupted (melee or non projectiles) but it will be a lot easier to recharge when keeping a distant.
• Mantra Mastery: Nice change at first glance but not that important for Mantras. Their cooldown already is rather low. The recasting is the issue. What if Mantra Mastery granted a % chance of maintaining a Mantra charge on use?

Other changes I would enjoy:

• Dazzling Glamours: Make it blind on cast plus when entering/exiting. Having a blind on cast is nice but considering the rather long cooldowns of Glamours it still will be a rather underwhelming trait.
• Confusing Enchantments: Make it pulse confusion while inside the Glamour with a target limit. Or make it apply several stacks of Torment when entering/exiting for actually punishing moving. As it is right now, the 1 stack of confusion only is good for tagging people in WvW.
• Phantasmal Mage: Not only is this phantasm lacking in uniqueness (Staff clones bounce, iDisenchanter bounces and can cure conditions) it also is on a very long cooldown. Please rework it. There are many ideas around on the Mesmer forum (klick here and here).
• Scepter: Although the latest cd reductions are nice Mesmers still lack a way to reasonably reapply conditions (auto attack). The Staff is great but rather defensive. Additionally, Confusion and Torment on the Scepter are very underwhelming in PvE. Please consider adding conditions (e.g. 1s burn) to the AA of the Scepter (preferably no Confusion nor Torment) even if the Scepter clones won’t be able to deal those conditions.

Thanks a lot for giving us a preview to upcomming patches! I really appretiate that. Keep up the good work.

I’m dissapointed you didn’t change anything about the healing-signet. We know warrior need defense in order to be a melee. However, Healing-Signet creates a very passive and cheesy play. It’s boring to see bad warriors are able to perform that well, just because they have an utility in their slot with such a high impact and which doesn’t require no skill in order to succeed.

You should really start to focus and reduce the passive play to bring up the fun-factor of this game. It is not fun to play against Minion-Mancers, CC-Warriors or Spirit-Rangers. All people hate these cheesy builds . . .

This overall seems like a very good patch.

I have one question/comment though: why is necromancer’s (my main) spite 15 healing power to begin with? It scales very poorly with anything except possibly well of blood, and if you’re into a niche blood build that takes the healing transfusion trait. Considering most Necros currently go into spite and do not use those skills and traits, it’s just a silly change for 200 healing power in a power spec, which does very little. Any other stat would be more beneficial.

And why not adjust spite 25 too? I’ve almost never noticed the might this trait gives. It’s at such a low threshold of health.

It’s a good thing that ANet seeks open feedback and communicates. Very much appreciated.

Regarding the changes I feel that shifting traits around won’t fix the core issues some professions have, like engineer kits or elementalist attunements.

And looking at WvW I feel it won’t change much. Warriors + guardians will remain the best choice, supported by staff elementalists. Mesmers for utility, necros for AoE conditions and engineer/ranger still being useless for the most part. What I mean by this is that in WvW you cannot win a fight without warriors/guardians. But without engineers or rangers? No one would notice.

So everyone will be dodging a whole lot less. Who benefits from that the most? Warriors.

And no addressing of the healing signet issue, yet again.

Is Anet just trying to save face or something by pretending their “warriors are in a good place” comment was not just a load of rubbish.

It’s really interesting to see the priorities Anet has. A nerf to engineers, dishonestly reported at some nonsense about encouraging build diversity, but and indirect buff to warriors. If they really wanted build diversity they’d not be happy with the fact 95% of warriors use healing signet.

Healing Signet.

The issue will still be Healing Signet providing far too much personal sustain.

Seriously, it requires that you do NOTHING in order to get the most healing possible in any fight.

It’s constantly ticking, so it starts healing as soon as you take damage, making it far more efficient and providing you with the maximum possible healing over the course of a match, a 1v1, a team battle, anything.

Compared to the rest of the heals that need to be timed based upon healing at the right time to get a full heal soon enough – not to waste any healing, not to waste it when hit by poison, not to get interrupted, to consider whether to continue pressuring your opponent with damage or step back to heal.

How does this dev team take balance seriously when they make the passive and skill-less abilities the most powerful.

No user input required? Let’s make it the most powerful! Passive Build Wars 2.

Ezrael.6859:

Healing Signet.

The issue will still be Healing Signet providing far too much personal sustain.

Seriously, it requires that you do NOTHING in order to get the most healing possible in any fight.

It’s constantly ticking, so it starts healing as soon as you take damage, making it far more efficient and providing you with the maximum possible healing over the course of a match, a 1v1, a team battle, anything.

Compared to the rest of the heals that need to be timed based upon healing at the right time to get a full heal soon enough – not to waste any healing, not to waste it when hit by poison, not to get interrupted, to consider whether to continue pressuring your opponent with damage or step back to heal.

How does this dev team take balance seriously when they make the passive and skill-less abilities the most powerful.

No user input required? Let’s make it the most powerful! Passive Build Wars 2.

Today i decided to troll people around and i went gc way gs+axe/shield in 30/10/0/0/30 setup. I did meet a cc war in 1v1 using soldier amulet and healing signet and bursted him down in 10sec. How exacly signet is op then?

Hammer build actually getting overnerf – UF moved to master, burst mastery reduced to 7%, 2 skills of hammer reduced by 20% dmg, and on top of that combu shot direct dmg will be enrfed too, and u keep asking for more nerfs. Might as well delete this class..

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to chip in some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need
Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.

Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

I agree with your philosophy about skill vs reward/punishment, but i’m afraid that with both the dec 10th and your suggestion thieves will really have no business in teamfights anymore. 4v4 & 5v5 are already a clusterduck, and with all the past SB nerfs thieves will just be too squishy and too underwhelming to bring anything to the table. I agree with your solution from a 1v1/2v2 perspective, but expecting to shadow return before getting hit by any form of cc before in a 4v4/5v5 is too much to ask. Having a norn or some petshop on my screen shouldn’t mean instant death.

Moreover i feel that a thieves vantage point should be mobility and being hard to catch, the s/d evade spam was silly, but thieves are immensely dependent on evading and mobility right now, which is great fun, but also a slippery slope. Even with your suggestion we’d just get wrecked on fear #2 etc.

My thoughts of Diamond skin:

1. People underestimate the base damage on their abilities while running condi specs and it’s good that this change is encouraging condi classes to pay attention to such things.

2. *People are overstating the difficulty in dropping an ele below 10% health. *

Eles are minimum vitality and armour class in the game. We’re talking about 1,400 – 1,600 health here. Even a fully stacked glass cannon condi spec can break through that. Yes it will be harder, but there is no harm in encouraging people to swap amulets and make decisions based on enemy comp.

It’s good thing we’re shaking up the dominant condi heavy meta

3. The trait wont cure conditions. Once the first 10% is dropped, anything you load on there is there to stay. So what if they just healed back to max? They still have bleed, poison, torment, whatever on them. That will sac them back down in no time at all.

4. There are big sacrafices being made on the part of the ele to run this trait, they dont get to have their cake and eat it too. Earth magic is a poor line for offensive eles, who are already much reliant on other tratlines to sustain themselves so we wont be seeing it run on them.

On this spec they cant easily trait far into water for vitality / healing power either because they’re already maxed out in earth. With the move of elemental attunement to master tier rather than adept, they will probably want at LEAST 20 arcane too, so their health will drop.

The condi cleanse on water swap is moving to master too, so simply running 0/0/30/10/30 is a poor choice.

In summation: It’s not a ‘hard counter’ to condi specs. The Elementalist still needs REAL condi cleanse on top of this trait or else they will be hit with condis when their health gets low the first time and they will keep the player below 10% even if they heal back up.

Because of the other trait changes it will be hard for an ele to find REAL condi cleanse while 30 earth, too.

And anyway: We shouldnt be defending the condi meta. Eles are nearly unviable for real play at the moment, don’t over-value the 10% health threshold.

This has the potential to make ele viable for something again AND open up a traitline that, since launch, has never been used in a serious way.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Ezrael.6859:

Healing Signet.

The issue will still be Healing Signet providing far too much personal sustain.

Seriously, it requires that you do NOTHING in order to get the most healing possible in any fight.

It’s constantly ticking, so it starts healing as soon as you take damage, making it far more efficient and providing you with the maximum possible healing over the course of a match, a 1v1, a team battle, anything.

Compared to the rest of the heals that need to be timed based upon healing at the right time to get a full heal soon enough – not to waste any healing, not to waste it when hit by poison, not to get interrupted, to consider whether to continue pressuring your opponent with damage or step back to heal.

How does this dev team take balance seriously when they make the passive and skill-less abilities the most powerful.

No user input required? Let’s make it the most powerful! Passive Build Wars 2.

Today i decided to troll people around and i went gc way gs+axe/shield in 30/10/0/0/30 setup. I did meet a cc war in 1v1 using soldier amulet and healing signet and bursted him down in 10sec. How exacly signet is op then?

Judging a skill or Class from one encounter doesn’t make you right.

Now, what I really wonder: how do they test? What are those ideas based on? Numbers on paper? Watching streams or internal replays of matches?

Wouldn’t it make sense to have a PTS and let players test the changes? I am quite sure there are plenty of very skilled players for each profession. And I bet those guys could provide more valuable feedback than the devs. No offense, but what we saw on the twitch streams wasn’t very reassuring ;-)

Having read through the changes, one thing is apparent; PvP will involve even more spamming than before.

Honestly, you’re balancing the wrong way around. Don’t reduce the cooldown of skills that are subpar, but rather increase the cooldown of skills that are too powerful. You’re constantly decreasing the cooldown of numerous skills, which, in hindsight, led to the spammy meta we have now. If you continue down that path, it will only get worse - in terms of randomly spamming skills that is.

I have faith in the balancing of gw2 again. There were some changes that might seen not like such a big deal but they come out HUGE in top tier meta.
Good preview, I am really looking forward to the patch.

Hope this patch isnt the same let down as the last “balance patch” which had a big announcement.

I guess nerfing the warrior is a good start, yea.

I hate patches like this. The whole player base knows what needs to be done, but Anet in their arrogance do a load of random other stuff and ignore the real issues.

It went like this with thief at launch. Months of people complaining and spoiled matches. Finally Anet nerfed them and it solved the problem. Same thing now with healing signet on warriors. Why do we have to live with this for months, just because Anet are too arrogant to take advice from the people actually playing the game.

Currently, warriors can play 100% aggressively without any worry for defence at all. There are no other classes who can do that. The rest of us have to either be aggressive and fragile or defensive and reduced killing capability. Warriors get the best of both.

If you’re going to do these:

You should also do these to level the survivability playing field:

Warrior:
Signet of Stamina – Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
Vigorous Focus – Moved to Master tier.
Sweet Revenge – Moved to Adept tier.

Engineers:
Alchemy I – Invigorating Speed. Moved to Master tier
Alchemy VI – Protection Injection. Moved to Master tier
Alchemy VII – Deadly Mixture. Moved to Adept tier
Alchemy VIII – Potent Elixirs. Moved to Adept tier

Guardian:
Honor VIII – Empowering Might. Moved to Honor 5.
Honor 5 – Vigorous Precision. Now replaces Honor VIII.

Mesmer:
Dueling VIII – Blurred Inscriptions. Moved to Adept tier as Dueling II.
Dueling II – Phantasmal Fury. Moved to Dueling 5.
Dueling 5 – Critical Infusion. Moved to Master tier as Dueling VIII.

I’m usually very optimistic, but there are some concerning things in this patch.

1. This may be more/larger changes than is healthy for a single patch.
2. The issue with warrior is how simple they are to play well. There’s almost no way to mess up on them, which creates big imbalance at the casual level. To change that, healing signet and cleansing ire need adjustment.
3. The longbow burst change looks like a massive buff (doubled burn). I don’t think it needed a massive buff.

tl;dr please be willing to reconsider some of the overbuffs that happened this year.

one the side note, I am really curious if there are changes to sigils and runes. Because at this moment there are a few that dominate everything (lyssa say hi to the folks back home).

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m usually very optimistic, but there are some concerning things in this patch.

1. This may be more/larger changes than is healthy for a single patch.
2. The issue with warrior is how simple they are to play well. There’s almost no way to mess up on them, which creates big imbalance at the casual level. To change that, healing signet and cleansing ire need adjustment.
3. The longbow burst change looks like a massive buff (doubled burn). I don’t think it needed a massive buff.

tl;dr please be willing to reconsider some of the overbuffs that happened this year.

Reread the pacth notes.

Bow f1 burning gets a 33% damage nerf since it will do the same damage but over 3 sec instead of 2.Will tick less .We don’t know if that will apply to abse damagetoo or it will be a 66% damage nerf to physical damage.3% less damage from burst mastery nerf.Hammer f1 damage nerfed by 20% if you pick crit on stun and a 40% nerf if you don’t becasue now they made it almost impossible to pick both.Not even a zerker hammer warrior would be viable if this goes live.Mace f1 nerfed by adding 50% more cast time._I’ts the slowest and lowest range weapon in tge ga,me anyone can stay at 140 range and dodge avoid all it’s damage since has no gap closers,cripple and now it’s only stun will never land.Actually they should make a special achievement for whoever will land skullcrack or no one ever will have a reason to equip mace.

zencow.3651:

Warrior:
Signet of Stamina – Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
Vigorous Focus – Moved to Master tier.

Signet of stamina is 33% atm, its provides extra dodge every 30sec.
Vigorous focus last 6sec olny and works olny when stance is used..

These balance changes to the elementalist is like trying to fix a roach problem with a nuclear weapon, it does more harm than good, while ignoring the actual roaches.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m usually very optimistic, but there are some concerning things in this patch.

Good for you. At this stage I don’t see why you would be, but good for you.

mini.6018:

Reread the pacth notes.

Bow f1 burning gets a 33% damage nerf since it will do the same damage but over 3 sec instead of 2.Will tick less .We don’t know if that will apply to abse damagetoo or it will be a 66% damage nerf to physical damage.3% less damage from burst mastery nerf.Hammer f1 damage nerfed by 20% if you pick crit on stun and a 40% nerf if you don’t becasue now they made it almost impossible to pick both.Not even a zerker hammer warrior would be viable if this goes live.Mace f1 nerfed by adding 50% more cast time._I’ts the slowest and lowest range weapon in tge ga,me anyone can stay at 140 range and dodge avoid all it’s damage since has no gap closers,cripple and now it’s only stun will never land.Actually they should make a special achievement for whoever will land skullcrack or no one ever will have a reason to equip mace.

Apologies, I did read the patch notes but didn’t realize that the current longbow burst is five ticks of burning and damage. So at full adrenaline, burning has only been buffed to 12 seconds instead of 10, and direct damage has been reduced from five ticks to four. So it’s not a significant change, but it’s also not the huge buff it appeared to me to be.

silvermember.8941:

These balance changes to the elementalist is like trying to fix a roach problem with a nuclear weapon, it does more harm than good, while ignoring the actual roaches.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m usually very optimistic, but there are some concerning things in this patch.

Good for you. At this stage I don’t see why you would be, but good for you.

I…don’t think I’ve ever been complimented for being less optimistic, but…thanks?

Scoobaniec.9561:

Signet of stamina is 33% atm, its provides extra dodge every 30sec.
Vigorous focus last 6sec olny and works olny when stance is used..

Nope. Signet of stamina is 50% endurance gain in every tooltip and physically ingame. One dodge bar without it takes 10 seconds to regenerate, with Signet of Stamina it takes 7.5 seconds.

I am sure this has been said 1000s of times before, and probably 100s in the other thread as well, but please fix the 25 point minor trait in the Necro Spite tree. It is arguably the worst and most useless minor trait in the game and yet it’s in the grandmaster tier!

The Game Slayer.7632:

never any nerfing… d/d…. It is just a fail-safe for a power-creep.

Opening up offensive trait trees with a few defensive mecahnics is going to change gameplay enourmously… Compared to earth/air/fire, since when did we ever have any offensive perks to choose in water/arcana?

d/d is in your face melee.
Moving the vigor trait along with another to 2nd tier hurts ele surivivability.
d/d needs it the most.

Power creep involves cutting back on top tier specs.
Ele d/d isn’t close to top tier atm.

Air is already viable and many eles go 15->30 into it, so it’s not like offense on a viable ele is unheard of, high dps is actually rather common with 10+ earth.

The only change to fire is that you can sacrifice a tier 2 trait for a bad cleanse.
Passive 40sCD cleansing is only ever usable in a spec with otherwise solid condi removal, so you don’t have to relly on it, but when it pops it helps out.
That is exactly the opposite of what the fire traitline needed.

At best it seems like something around 30/0/30/0/0 would make best use of it (need earth for stability to help ether renewal) with the 10 points somewheree… but it is so suboptimal it’s not even funny.

Sure, if you’re fighting a pure condi enemy, you will kitten on him.
If you are not… well…
Better luck next time.

It seems to be a good patch, but i don’t like trait/skill with long immunity and/or not ICD /(like diamond skin now or automated response).

Basically it’s a bad design.

Decided until I was less intoxicated to post here to avoid the ban.

These elementalist changes are a significant nerf. Your goal was to make elementalists less reliant on arcane/water, but you went about it completely wrong. Right now, an elementalist can run 10 arcane, 10-15 water, and get either elemental attunement or renewing stamina and cleansing wave while still leaving a lot of points for offensive lines. After the patch, it will require 20 arcane and water to have the same survivability, and still have less survivability than before.

Instead of making it viable to run low amounts of arcane and water, you are instead forcing elementalists to invest in them more heavily thanis currently necessary, or take a massive hit to survivability for very little gain from the other lines.

My current build is 15 air, 10 earth, 15 water, 30 arcane. This gives me very solid damage while maintaining a decent amount of survivability. Right now, I could drop arcane if I wanted and put more points elsewhere. After the patch, that will not be an option. Instead of being able to drop it, I will be forced to take 30 arcane because I can’t afford to lose another condi clear/heal. For water, either I invest in it more heavily, which I don’t want to do, or I drop it all together. Let’s say I forgo the heal and condi clear and move those 15 points somewhere else. I could put them into air for 0/30/10/0/30, a build which I’ve run before and found not to have enough survivability. I don’t see tempest defense being equal or better to heal+condi clear every 10s. The only other reasonable option would be to go 0/20/20/0/30. This would give me some stability. However, with any of these builds, I have absolutely zero protection except from armor of earth unless I change stone splinters to elemental shielding.

So from my current build, if I went 0/30/10/0/30, the tradeoff is:

+final shielding, -elemental attunement
-healing ripple and cleansing wave
+aeromancer’s alacrity and tempest defense
+elemental shielding, -stone splinters

If I went 0/20/20/0/30:
+final shielding, -elemental attunement
-healing ripple and cleansing wave
+aeromancer’s alacrity
+rock solid

Say I decided to completely forgo arcane and did something like 0/15/30/25/0:
-stone spinters, +elemental shielding, +rock solid, + diamond skin
+soothing disruption (I’d probably go back to triple cantrip for this, which I hate)
-elemental attunement, renewing stamina, evasive arcana

I could do 0/15/0/25/30:
-stone splinters
+soothing disruption
+final shielding, -elemental attunement

Looking at those builds, can you honestly say any of them are even on par with what is currently available? Not only are they not better, they are truly worse. After these changes, instead of my offensively geared balanced setup, I will be forced to either go full offensive with no survival at all, or full defense with very little offense. Not having any survivability is NOT an option for a D/D ele. Tempest defense does not in any way make up for what you lose to get it, and unless you are being babysat by a support, you will die without making any real impact on a fight. As for the full defensive setup, if I wanted to play that kitten, I woulda rolled a guardian.

If you go through with these changes, you will kill off what little viability offensive D/D has. You will not see a bunch of different builds. You will only see 30 water, 30 arcane builds which are weaker than they were before the patch.

NevirSayDie.6235:

mini.6018:

Reread the pacth notes.

Bow f1 burning gets a 33% damage nerf since it will do the same damage but over 3 sec instead of 2.Will tick less .We don’t know if that will apply to abse damagetoo or it will be a 66% damage nerf to physical damage.3% less damage from burst mastery nerf.Hammer f1 damage nerfed by 20% if you pick crit on stun and a 40% nerf if you don’t becasue now they made it almost impossible to pick both.Not even a zerker hammer warrior would be viable if this goes live.Mace f1 nerfed by adding 50% more cast time._I’ts the slowest and lowest range weapon in tge ga,me anyone can stay at 140 range and dodge avoid all it’s damage since has no gap closers,cripple and now it’s only stun will never land.Actually they should make a special achievement for whoever will land skullcrack or no one ever will have a reason to equip mace.

Apologies, I did read the patch notes but didn’t realize that the current longbow burst is five ticks of burning and damage. So at full adrenaline, burning has only been buffed to 12 seconds instead of 10, and direct damage has been reduced from five ticks to four. So it’s not a significant change, but it’s also not the huge buff it appeared to me to be.

silvermember.8941:

These balance changes to the elementalist is like trying to fix a roach problem with a nuclear weapon, it does more harm than good, while ignoring the actual roaches.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m usually very optimistic, but there are some concerning things in this patch.

Good for you. At this stage I don’t see why you would be, but good for you.

I…don’t think I’ve ever been complimented for being less optimistic, but…thanks?

there is a first time for everything or it could be more likely that my reading comprehension sucked and I missed the less optimistic part, but let’s assume It was the first.

For elementalists, d/d builds are going to suffer unfairly with those changes, so I hope that Anet carefully thinks of that.

I don’t mind the tier up for vigor and EA (in fact, I’ve been defending them for some time), but something should be done to compensate for d/d eles, which haven’t been very viable even with both traits equipped.

Buffing elemental shielding to give 5s of protection instead of 3s per aura, and switching arcana dagger trait’s effect with scepter trait’s effect so that daggers can get the higher endurance regeneration, are two possible solutions to help d/d eles without the risk of power-creeping other ele builds.

Avead.5760:

garethh.3518:

Yeup, the issue that it’s an ele.
Eles get a large portion of their surivivability from self healing, they won’t go under 90% very often in a 1v1 against most condi classes.

It’s one of the worst ‘fixes’ I have seen yet…
Entirely passive.
Mostly useless.
When it’s not useless it hard counters enemies, to the point where it’s not even a fight…
Again, a passive skill COMPLETELY SHUTS DOWN AN ENEMY.

Terrible.
Terrible.
Terrible.
Trait idea.
Just craps on gameplay.

I didn’t think it was this hard for people to fix a game.

It doesnt matter if they can refill their health above 90% at a faster rate than other classes.The reason is that for how faster ele can get back up with self healing at the same time that much faster you will be able to get him down the 90% mark again cause he has low hp.
In reality the time someone spends above 90% hp is determined by a lot of things and imo ele will spend a lot less time up there than what a warr or necro would with their huge hp pools
But other than that i completely i agree with you.Its bad gameplay and the trait will either be completely useless or a shut down for a few condi specialised builds in 1vs1..In the end i think it ll just be useless..

Honestly if ele comes back up it wont be cause the builds they open up are stronger or op than what there are available now.No vigor or on demand prot will show huge time and getting deep into arcane will create builds that are actually nerfed heavily compared to what we have now since at 30 arcana there was practically no buff to attunements cd
Just imo cause other classes see heavy nerfs and our “balance” will definately be disturbed

I mean we can argue all day about whether it will be good or not. But the bottom line is, good or not, it is just more lame cheese. Single traits which hard counter entire specs AND are passive? Really? Not great.

Avead.5760:

^ exactly..losing protection or vigor and evasive arcana sustain will not be a good trade off for just freeing up 20 points that you can dump in earth for a cheesy trait that might not work at all

Ele doesnt need buffing. If necro, s/d thief and spirit ranger get worse then ele will be good again. Nerfs not buffs. That is what they have to do. If you dont agree then fine. But anet finally agree with those, like me, who want nerfs and not just more buffs from clueless forum QQers

Lordrosicky.5813:

I mean we can argue all day about whether it will be good or not. But the bottom line is, good or not, it is just more lame cheese. Single traits which hard counter entire specs AND are passive? Really? Not great.

To be honest, the hard counter is only very temporary, and demands hard work from the ele player to keep the hp that high. For that reason, the new diamond skin is less of a hard counter and less passive than what it might seem at the first glance.

I’d say we should test it first before fully judging it. It’s hard to predict how cheesy it might or might not be at the moment, in my opinion, but something tells me it requires more active input than what you think.

Ele doesnt need buffing.

I agree with this. However, eles don’t need nerfing for their barely viable builds, neither, do they? And I’m not talking about their most popular instant-burst cheese, but just a typical d/d build. In the upcomming changes, eles are going to get some buffs in weak areas, which is cool, and they are going to get some nerfs to compensate for it, which is fair, but d/d builds seem to suffer a bit too much, considering they aren’t that strong nor cheesy. For that reason, I think Anet should consider compensating the indirect nerfs done to d/d by doing some slight buffs exclusive to those builds.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

I’m dissapointed you didn’t change anything about the healing-signet. We know warrior need defense in order to be a melee. However, Healing-Signet creates a very passive and cheesy play. It’s boring to see bad warriors are able to perform that well, just because they have an utility in their slot with such a high impact and which doesn’t require no skill in order to succeed.

You should really start to focus and reduce the passive play to bring up the fun-factor of this game. It is not fun to play against Minion-Mancers, CC-Warriors or Spirit-Rangers. All people hate these cheesy builds . . .

Presumably healing signet will be slightly nerfed prior to the 10th december patch

The attunement recharge changes are nice and sorely needed, but moving elemental attunement AND renewing stamina as well as aquamancer’s alacrity AND cleansing wave to master tier is a bit much. Basically all that’s left in the adept tiers for those trees are filler traits to get to the master tier, moving renewing stamina and cleansing wave to master only would probably be a better choice as it wouldn’t ruin builds that rely on both, but also not allow our most powerful defensive options to be gotten for only 10 points. Elemental attunement has simply too much utility for a majority of builds to go without, moving it to master will just make 20 points in arcana still a necessity for the majority of builds. Blasting staff at adept though, A+.