Guild Wars 2

http://dulfy.net/2014/01/17/gw2-ready-up-skill-and-balance-developer-livestream-notes/ big thx to Dulfy

Main Topics

Runes and sigil rework
Critical damage changes
New stat combinations for PvP (amulets)
High-level overview of planned balance changes

Critical Damage

We are adding a new stat – ferocity (kinda like how precision works with critical hit chance). All gear/traits will be converted from critical damage to ferocity. Points in ferocity will increase your critical damage. It will have a new formula for the stat conversion, the formula will be slightly reduced.
Crit Damage – stat ratios compared to other stats are all over the place. You get way more crit dmg from your trinkets than from other pieces of gear so it is more efficient to stack crit dmg for them. By adding this new stat, we are able to normalize critical damage with other stats.
10% reduction in damage for maxed out full DPS builds.
Improve downscaling with crit dmg.
Ferocity will have secondary stat values (i.e. if an item have 90 power, 60 precision, it will have 60 ferocity).
Crit dmg and PvP is in a really good spot, it is much lower in PvP. We are aiming to not touch crit dmg in the PvP sets at all.
However, this will affect PvE and WvW.
This leaves it open to allow us to include Ferocity as a primary stat in the future.
Berserker will still be the highest DPS set in the game. Ascended Berserker stuff will still be BiS (Best in Slot) for DPS builds.
We want to make support roles more viable so they are not supporting other players by just killing things faster.

Sigil changes

Two sigil slots on 2handed weapons and a big balance pass on all sigils.
Previously, If your sigil had a cooldown, it was previously shared with all other sigil cooldowns. To remedy this, we are changing the functionality of it, so each sigil itself has its own cooldown (i.e. you can Sigil of Battle and Sigil of Energy together now but you can’t stack 2x Sigil of Battles together)
Sigils that give you stacking buffs will not stack together (i.e. Bloodlust + Corruption will not stack).
On-swap sigils will stack if they are different.
There are a bunch of changes to various sigils
Some proc sigils have turned on hit. We are not discussing which ones yet.
On crit sigils are changed to 100% chance.

Runes changes

Big pass on all runes, making them all consistent with each other. (i.e. What % something proc, What % health trigger etc). Every single rune set pretty much changed. If you want to speculate on the runes on the TP, it is recommended to buy all sets.
Superior Rune of the ranger – 6 pt bonus didn’t do anything. It will be changed.
We moved stat weights to later bonuses (i.e. 4, 5, 6) so people don’t use mix-match rune bonuses.
Example: Superior rune of strength changed to 1) +25 power, 2) 10% might duration, 3) 50 power, 4) 15% might duration and 25% chance when struck to gain might for 10s with 10s cooldown 5) 100 power, 6) 20% might duration, +5% damage under might.
Stat combos for PvP
PvE have a lot more stat combos and not all of them will make it to PvP. Submit your feedback on the forums on which stat combos you think should make to PvP.
Aim to extend build diversity and allow PvEers to run the same stat combos in PvP in a lot of the cases.
This is not just stat combos, this also apply to runes/sigils.
New stat combos will be unlockable in PvP soon and maybe with skill points (not in the next build). Most likely to appear in the feature build and will be account bound.
High level Balance Preview
These changes will be in the feature patch. They are not a comprehensive list and some of them may not make it.

“We moved stat weights to later bonuses (i.e. 4, 5, 6) so people don’t use mix-match rune bonuses.”

why they do this?

:(

Elementalist

Signet of Restoration will have same effect in PvP as it does in PvE (previously it was healing significantly less in PvP)
Armor of Earth – reduce recharge from 90s to 75s. It was a bit too long for stability/protection. We hit them maybe a bit too hard in previous patches
Scepter: Water Trident – adding 3s regen when it hits to 5 allies – Add more support for scepter. We wanted to add regen to weapon sets other than staff. Allow condition removal when traited (i.e. Cleansing Water trait)
Dagger: Burning Speed – you will be evading while you are executing Burning Speed. Now you can use it as an evade option (i.e if you see a 100 blades coming in from enemy warrior, you can use it to evade)
Dagger: Frozen Burst – now blast finisher, allow you to combo burning speed to gain some might/fury.

Engineer

There are a couple of outlier abiliies on engineer that are really strong.
Reduced immobilize duration on Net Turret by 1s.
Poison Grenade – right now if you stand on top of someone and throw all your grenades (i.e. shotgunning people), it will stack the poison fields, it will stack 60s of poison on you. We are reducing the amount of poison applied per tick from 5s to 3s.
Box of Nails/Box of Piranhas – cast time reduced from 1s to 0.75s
AED – reduced cast time from 1s to 0.75s.

Guardian

Litany of Wrath reduced cast time from 1s to 0.75s.
Vigorous Precision – vigor on crit have its cooldown increased from 5s to 10s.
Healing Breeze – rescaled – guardian receive 50% of the heal at start of the heal and then 10% per tick for 5 ticks on allies in a cone (guardian included). The ticks will now scale really well with healing power (end up to around 4500 HP for yourself and allies).

Mesmer

Critical Infusion – increased recharge from 5s to 10s. Too much dodging in this game and it is a 5 pt trait so we want you to find an alternative source for vigor. It couples too well with Deceptive Evasion.
Deceptive Evasion is problematic – we are making it so that it only make a clone when you don’t have full clones out already (If you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen)

Necromancer

Putrid Explosion – no longer unblockable. All the minions exploding and you can’t block it. The number of unblockable skills in the game need to be very small and very clear.
Training of the Master – damage bonus reduced from 30% to 25%.
Dhuumfire – we are changing it so it doesn’t throw out a lot of burning DPS. It doesn’t promote skillful gameplay. We want it so you can actively control the procs. Life blast/death shroud now apply the burning for 3s with 10s cd.
Vampiric Master – taking it back down to its intended state – reducing the sustain from it. (Basically slightly nerfing all current vampirism traits, buffing mastery).

Ranger

Spirit of Nature – right now it says it heals for 320 every 3 seconds but it actually heals for 480 every second due to a bug. We are aiming for 320 per second. It is still incredibly strong
Field type (combo fields) adding to all of the traps.
Empathic Bond – removing conditions from ranger even if the pet is dead – we are fixing that bug.
There are some amazing stuff coming for the ranger but we can’t talk too much about it yet (and also to other professions).
Mainhand sword issue – not being able to dodge. Looking to fix it, may not make it to the first balance patch.
Thief
Choking Gas – 5s of poison per pulse, no CD, absolute poison spamming too OP. Reduced to 3s of poison per pulse now.
Pistol Whip possibly split into two-part skill with separate initiative cost (stun and then slashes separated)

Warrior

Warrior Healing Signet too strong (passive too high) – we have reduced the passive by about 8% (about 30 HP/s reduction). Improving the active so you have a reason to use the active. We want situations where you want to use the active.
Pin Down (Longbow #5 – apply immobilize and bleed) – Adding a new warm up effect so other players can see when you are using this skill and dodge it. Going to 0.25s to 0.75s cast.