PoF elites are mostly balanced

PoF elites are mostly balanced

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Posted by: Kuya.6495

Kuya.6495

What needs to be nerfed are HoT elite specs.

Don’t get me wrong. There are a few things that need work. Firebrand mantras need work as far as range is concerned. Mirage ambush skills are mostly lackluster. There are numerous bugs to work out. But the design of PoF elites is meant to fill a niche and to have clear weaknesess. Firebrand has great team support but long cast times, spellbreaker has great team disruption but low damage, Scourge has high damage and some team support but no stability.

Meanwhile, HoT elite specs, since they were the first, Anet designed them with the expectation that they had to fill as many roles as possible which led them to being able too do too much at once. With a second set of elites coming soon, anet can afford to dial back the HoT versions and bake into them clear weaknesses (when they are lacking). For starters, if Firebrand is to be team support, then DH needs to have its team support reduced by taking away the ability to heal allies on f2 and block for them on f3. DH should be a solo bruiser/phys dps. Similarly, if Scourge is high damage condi and some team support, then Reaper needs to be a Physical damage based bruiser with selfish utility.

With that in mind, it’s good that the profession subforums are complaining alot because if they all whine that the new elites are underpowered, then that might mean we have actual balance this time.

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Posted by: Jekkt.6045

Jekkt.6045

i think the biggest offenders here are daredevil, chronomancer, dragon hunter and druid. the 4 of them are just straight upgrades in terms of survivability and damage compared to their core classes (some more, some less).

daredevil is extremely mobile, has damage, has decent condi cleanse. thief was “very” mobile too in the era of core specs but never on a daredevil level. condi cleanse was something thieves usually struggeled with too.
what is deadeye? a stationary ranged damage dealer with less mobility and survivability than daredevil.

chronomancer has good pressure, good survivability and cleanse. core shatter mesmer was basically pure glass with no condi cleanse at all, a high risk high reward (more or less) spec. chronomancer added so many things that mesmer “needed” and people seem to have forgotten how mesmer played pre chrono.
now that mirage doesn’t have the defensive capabilities of chrono people start whining when it’s actually supposed to be an offensive spec (wether it is offensive enough or not is a different question).

dragonhunter is in my opinion the worst designed elite spec by far. it’s cheesy and had to be nerfed multiple times just because of that, has good survivability and damage. just the healing trap alone is a big upgrade over the block heal, f2 heals like double and f3 is great too.
if we look at firebrand that is melee heavy, more complex and doesn’t have instant virtues with great survivability, it makes sense that people prefer dragonhunter.

druid on the other hand is thematically a great elite spec. ranger was unviable in pvp for a very long time because it had bad survivability, mediocre damage and added nothing for a team comp and wasn’t viable for side nodes either because spirit ranger was dead, and condi survival couldn’t beat ele warrior or engi. with druid ranger got very good survivability, mobility on staff, good 1v1 for side nodes, good teamfight support and damage from pets. even on marauder builds you benefit greatly by slotting the druid elite spec.
what does soulbeast offer? while it’s a nice idea it kinda tries to be what druid is, just without the support and survivability. i don’t see soulbeast as a teamfight spec and it is heavily outclassed by druid for defending/contesting side nodes, and yet druid can teamfight too.

the verdict is, HoT elite specs added too much. the devs stated they want elite specs to be tradeoffs. you lose something but gain other things. most HoT specs don’t do that and just “add but don’t remove” things. people are dissatisfied with PoF elite specs because they follow that principle. it’s not that PoF elite specs are bad or undertuned, it’s that HoT elite specs are overtuned in terms of a design standpoint by what they add.

i don’t think PoF elite specs should be buffed to HoT level (well, some do need buffs but it’s mostly QoL and small number changes). it might be an unpopular opinion but i think they should really revisit the design of HoT specs and change them accordingly.

Ex player of PeanutButterJellyTime, Heavenly Annoying and Visceral Gaming.

(edited by Jekkt.6045)

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Posted by: saerni.2584

saerni.2584

Let’s wait for PoF to judge how balanced everything is.

Northern Shiverpeaks (NSP)
Thief (Daredevil)
Commandant of Pistol-Dagger and Apex Predator

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Posted by: Kuya.6495

Kuya.6495

My HoT nerf wish list:

1. nerf dh f2 to only heal itself. nerf f3 to only block for the dh. nerf fragments of faith to only be useable by the dh (this might be a buff). make f1 active not pulse burn.

2. i think berserker nerf was sufficient in last patch.

3. change reaper grandmaster that bleeds on chill to something that applies phys damage on chill or something, or increase damage on chilled targets, idk.

4. make chrono shield 4 only block 1 hit and apply blur on allies. keep the phantasm. lower how much well of eternity heals the chrono, but raise how much it heals allies.

5. make tempest aura share plit into two components. one lower heal for the tempest, and keep the heal values for allies the same on aura share. remove damage increase on harmonious conduit. make it so eles loose self sustain and dps if they go tempest, but gain dps and self sustain if they go weaver.

6. not much you could nerf on herald. maybe restrict it more to defense boons and leave the offensive ones for renegade. you could change the fury on facet of darkness and might on facet of strength for defensive boons. What else is there to apply? Resistance? Other options are stability, vigor, pulsing aegis. Since giving stability, resistance and/or aegis on pulse might be over the top, making one of the facets vigor, and then choosing one of the other 3 OP boons might be a good balance to it.

7. I don’t particularly feel scrapper is known as a damaging spec in pvp. I dunno what else you could do with it besides lowering damaging coefficients on hammer, but why?

8. not sure what to do with druid. the problem is that it’s a supportive spec that allows it to survive while the pet does all the dps. maybe put some damage nerfs somewhere on staff so it’s practically useless to auto attack on someone except to heal, would probably cause all druids to go lb, which is at least easier to counter. make staff do 1 damage on auto or something, idk.

9. Seeing as how deadeye has higher damage capacity, probably damage nerfs are in order for daredevil. probably damage nerfs on pulmonary impact, perhaps an icd. basically make it so you go daredevil because it massively raises your self sustain but lowers your damage as opposed to deadeye with lower mobility and higher damage. Should probably keep the condi damage on deadeye and keep it as the condi spec since it probably has more flexibility with that than deadeye.

(edited by Kuya.6495)

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Posted by: Ithilwen.1529

Ithilwen.1529

I’d like to see HoT and PoF specs on par with core classes. That would make things work much more smoothly with balance.

I dare not suggest any reduction of Mesmer power though. Such changes have historically been very heavy handed. Mesmer has spent, literally, years at times being underpowered.

Mesmerising Girl

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Posted by: Aomine.5012

Aomine.5012

My HoT nerf wish list:

1. nerf dh f2 to only heal itself. nerf f3 to only block for the dh. nerf fragments of faith to only be useable by the dh (this might be a buff). make f1 active not pulse burn.

2. i think berserker nerf was sufficient in last patch.

3. change reaper grandmaster that bleeds on chill to something that applies phys damage on chill or something, or increase damage on chilled targets, idk.

4. make chrono shield 4 only block 1 hit and apply blur on allies. keep the phantasm. lower how much well of eternity heals the chrono, but raise how much it heals allies.

5. make tempest aura share plit into two components. one lower heal for the tempest, and keep the heal values for allies the same on aura share. remove damage increase on harmonious conduit. make it so eles loose self sustain and dps if they go tempest, but gain dps and self sustain if they go weaver.

6. not much you could nerf on herald. maybe restrict it more to defense boons and leave the offensive ones for renegade. you could change the fury on facet of darkness and might on facet of strength for defensive boons. What else is there to apply? Resistance? Other options are stability, vigor, pulsing aegis. Since giving stability, resistance and/or aegis on pulse might be over the top, making one of the facets vigor, and then choosing one of the other 3 OP boons might be a good balance to it.

7. I don’t particularly feel scrapper is known as a damaging spec in pvp. I dunno what else you could do with it besides lowering damaging coefficients on hammer, but why?

8. not sure what to do with druid. the problem is that it’s a supportive spec that allows it to survive while the pet does all the dps. maybe put some damage nerfs somewhere on staff so it’s practically useless to auto attack on someone except to heal, would probably cause all druids to go lb, which is at least easier to counter. make staff do 1 damage on auto or something, idk.

9. Seeing as how deadeye has higher damage capacity, probably damage nerfs are in order for daredevil. probably damage nerfs on pulmonary impact, perhaps an icd. basically make it so you go daredevil because it massively raises your self sustain but lowers your damage as opposed to deadeye with lower mobility and higher damage. Should probably keep the condi damage on deadeye and keep it as the condi spec since it probably has more flexibility with that than deadeye.

Druid damage has already be gutted to like half or more of what it could do previously because of the nerf in 2 HoT pets. Staff doesn’t do much damage to begin with so there’s no need to nerf the auto-attack anymore, considering Druid’s 2~5 literally have no damage whatsoever. It is always the pet that does the damage for Druid, and both of the most overused pets has been gutted to like 1/3 of their original damage, so what more do you want?

Herald doesn’t need a nerf. Mallyx and Shiro does, and Anet already did that.
The resistance up-time and infinite dodge from Shiro has all been patched quite awhile ago and now they’re balanced.

As for Chrono, I think they’re quite OP.. Their burst is insane, yet they still have decent survivability.

(edited by Aomine.5012)

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Posted by: Kuya.6495

Kuya.6495

My HoT nerf wish list:

1. nerf dh f2 to only heal itself. nerf f3 to only block for the dh. nerf fragments of faith to only be useable by the dh (this might be a buff). make f1 active not pulse burn.

2. i think berserker nerf was sufficient in last patch.

3. change reaper grandmaster that bleeds on chill to something that applies phys damage on chill or something, or increase damage on chilled targets, idk.

4. make chrono shield 4 only block 1 hit and apply blur on allies. keep the phantasm. lower how much well of eternity heals the chrono, but raise how much it heals allies.

5. make tempest aura share plit into two components. one lower heal for the tempest, and keep the heal values for allies the same on aura share. remove damage increase on harmonious conduit. make it so eles loose self sustain and dps if they go tempest, but gain dps and self sustain if they go weaver.

6. not much you could nerf on herald. maybe restrict it more to defense boons and leave the offensive ones for renegade. you could change the fury on facet of darkness and might on facet of strength for defensive boons. What else is there to apply? Resistance? Other options are stability, vigor, pulsing aegis. Since giving stability, resistance and/or aegis on pulse might be over the top, making one of the facets vigor, and then choosing one of the other 3 OP boons might be a good balance to it.

7. I don’t particularly feel scrapper is known as a damaging spec in pvp. I dunno what else you could do with it besides lowering damaging coefficients on hammer, but why?

8. not sure what to do with druid. the problem is that it’s a supportive spec that allows it to survive while the pet does all the dps. maybe put some damage nerfs somewhere on staff so it’s practically useless to auto attack on someone except to heal, would probably cause all druids to go lb, which is at least easier to counter. make staff do 1 damage on auto or something, idk.

9. Seeing as how deadeye has higher damage capacity, probably damage nerfs are in order for daredevil. probably damage nerfs on pulmonary impact, perhaps an icd. basically make it so you go daredevil because it massively raises your self sustain but lowers your damage as opposed to deadeye with lower mobility and higher damage. Should probably keep the condi damage on deadeye and keep it as the condi spec since it probably has more flexibility with that than deadeye.

Druid damage has already be gutted to like half or more of what it could do previously because of the nerf in 2 HoT pets. Staff doesn’t do much damage to begin with so there’s no need to nerf the auto-attack anymore, considering Druid’s 2~5 literally have no damage whatsoever. It is always the pet that does the damage for Druid, and both of the most overused pets has been gutted to like 1/3 of their original damage, so what more do you want?

Herald doesn’t need a nerf. Mallyx and Shiro does, and Anet already did that.
The resistance up-time and infinite dodge from Shiro has all been patched quite awhile ago and now they’re balanced.

You don’t need to get defensive.

If you think that druid’s damage has already been nerfed enough to balance it, then go ahead and make that argument, but try to use an argument beyond the “but they already nerfed it!”. The fact that a spec has already been nerfed does not mean it’s balanced right now. Your argument needs to be that druids can’t do both high quantities of damage to spike someone down while also having high sustain and you need to explain why that is true.

Now, the reason why i aimed for staff and not pet damage is because nerfing pet damage also nerfs core and soulbeast and i want to avoid touching anything that isn’t a HoT related skill or trait. Hopefully by lowering the already pitiful damage that staff does, the numbers go down enough so that even with pet damage a druid can’t be expected to take someone down with a defensive amulet with staff/sword/dagger. If, as you say, staff damage is negligible, than nerfing it further doesn’t really matter since i presume you believe the purpose of staff is not damage but to heal, so it shouldn’t matter to you.

Now my question to you is this: If i am offering to nerf something negligible on druid, staff damage, why would you complain about that when i am sparing pet damage and leaving it well enough alone?

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Posted by: Ragnarox.9601

Ragnarox.9601

Firebrand even loses to core guard. Its worst elite cast time spec. And those 90 sec haha. Laughable. Deadeye sees you locks you and you try to use f3 for reflect, 3/4 cast time another 3/4 for bubble but you already took 16k dmg. Its thr same for f2 heals and cleanses. Bad design for a melee spec. Melee and long cast times big cds are not going together, not even quickness will help that . Tomes should be like engie kits but with bigger cds on tome skills and usable as you like with no 90 sec cd lockouts.

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Posted by: Buran.3796

Buran.3796

Herald doesn’t need a nerf. Mallyx and Shiro does, and Anet already did that.
The resistance up-time and infinite dodge from Shiro has all been patched quite awhile ago and now they’re balanced.

You can just delete the Herald and that won’t make the players to use that pos called Renegade over core Revenant in PvP. As happens with most of the PoF specs, Renegade is mostly useless for competitive game modes.

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Posted by: syntohras.1064

syntohras.1064

They should nerv Condis. It kills the game and is unfun as kitten