Guild Wars 2

I’d like to applaud the devs for fixing Dhuumfire. One of the smartest changes they’ve implemented in a while.

Now, let’s fix:

Sun Spirit

Although Spirit Ranger is no longer a defining force in the meta, random team wide burn procs will never be a good idea. Maintain the Sun Spirit active, remove the passive, and add to the active ability a 4-5 second burn which applies to ranger & teammates like a venom. This means that the Sun Spirit burn proc is now able to be dodged both by looking at the UI bar and by watching for the Sun Spirit active ability tell.

Incendiary Powder

Incendiary Powder has even less counterplay than Sun Spirit (you can’t kill it and it lasts over twice as long). I’m not sure what to suggest for Incendiary Powder, but it needs to be changed. The trait could be removed entirely in exchange for better condition removal for the engineer. It could also be changed to effect toolbelt skills in some way.

Combustive Shot

Combustive Shot is an ability that has so completely pidgeonholed warrior that no build without a longbow is currently viable. Combined with Cleansing Ire it equals both the most powerful condition removal in the game, and the biggest source of burn spam in the game. This ability should be changed to be single target, and create a smaller burning field only upon successful hit. This change would severely hurt warriors to begin with, but then melee weapons on warrior could be buffed, and warrior would experience a resurgence in build diversity.

D/D elementalist burn uptime

Compared to the other examples of burn spam listed above, Elementalists aren’t quit as obnoxious. However, with Celestial + Runes of Strength, the burning from D/D needs to be toned down slightly. Right now, Elementalists have slightly too much pressure while being able to spec completely defensively (00266), and a lot of that pressure comes from the burning in fire attunement.

The d/d ele problem is really a strength-rune problem. D/D has always had the potential for good burns, it just hurts so much more with 25 might stacks. Plus, you can position away or dodge the ele burning. It also all comes from fire attunement, so IF you don’t dodge it, you can cleanse it and be good until the next time he is in fire.

Combustive shot really does need to dodgeable in some way. It does way too much pressure, still regenerates itself mostly, condi clears, and gives fire field for more might (blasts) and fire aura (burn + might when hit, which warrior’s can take the damage).

BlackBeard.2873:

Combustive shot really does need to dodgeable in some way. It does way too much pressure, still regenerates itself mostly, condi clears, and gives fire field for more might (blasts) and fire aura (burn + might when hit, which warrior’s can take the damage).

Longbow, since the beginning of time, has always been a strong pressuring skill. It has always been a reliable fire field since alpha stages of the game, and everyone has always known about it. In fact, combustive shot used to have an even BIGGER AoE than now, and it used to inflict more damage than now.There was never a single complaint about this skill, however, until warriors ceased being pieces of wet toilet paper and can actually survive through focus fire.

As soon as players realized they couldn’t bully a warrior around anymore, and that they don’t die instantly, that’s when the complaints about longbow started rising up. And there really isn’t anything imbalanced about longbow. It’s just a reliable tool to deal with the current meta. Melee-only is too high risk and low/no reward in this meta.

zone.1073:

As soon as players realized they couldn’t bully a warrior around anymore, and that they don’t die instantly, that’s when the complaints about longbow started rising up. And there really isn’t anything imbalanced about longbow. It’s just a reliable tool to deal with the current meta. Melee-only is too high risk and low/no reward in this meta.

Ironically, primarily because of Hambows.

zone.1073:

Longbow, since the beginning of time, has always been a strong pressuring skill….
As soon as players realized they couldn’t bully a warrior around anymore, and that they don’t die instantly, that’s when the complaints about longbow started rising up.

That’s no argument as to whether a skill is balanced (Pistol Whip and Disabling Shot were unchanged since alpha and recently got nerfed, for example). Lots of things about warriors has changed since. I personally feel Combustive Shot is a little too over the top since it’s a single skill that does a lot for the warrior – condi clear, amazing counter pressure, might stack building, adrenaline generation etc. and needs to be looked at. All the rest of the stuff OP listed is not OP per say, but there’s little to no counterplay involved besides clearing your burns (which could be really RNG due to the way condition covers and cleanses work).
For the health of the game, whenever you lose a duel/team fight etc, you should be able to reflect on where you went wrong and be able to develop a solid game plan to counter that. Passive abilities (I hate using this word since the entire trait system is balanced on “passives”) leave little room for that and there’s a lot of RNG involved for its counter play. Nerfing Incendiary Powder would obviously take away a lot from engis, but it needs to be redesigned so its compensated in some other way, just like Dhuumfire.
An example: changing Incendiary Powder to "100% chance of applying x seconds of burn on weapon auto attack, ICD y seconds ". Whenever the skill is ready, an icon pops up on the tooltip of the Engi (sort of like Incendiary Ammo), which can be dodged. This way the engineer can save his auto attack when opponent is CC’d to land it 100% and the opponent can prepare for it accordingly, especially by counting the seconds when it’s back up etc.

The real imbalanced/broken issue here is not longbow – it’s hammer.

Longbow was originally designed to be a slow damaging, pressuring tool with no mobility or interrupts. Its effectiveness shows that it is fulfilling its original design goals.

However, hammer was originally designed to be a CC machine with very slow animations that locked the warrior in place. Every hammer skill used to self-stun the warrior, making for obvious animations that were easy to avoid. Over time, however, these animations were updated and sped up, and many hammer skills were changed so that they can be used on the move. Also, fundamentally the design of the hammer is flawed, because it outputs extremely high burst damage as well. No weapon should ever be both a high CC machine plus have extremely high damage.

Over time, the hammer has evolved into a mobile CC machine with high burst damage. This weapon goes against all standards for balance. The longbow is balanced.

You make a good point OP.

Burning is an incredibly powerful condition. It can deal thousands of damage in just a few seconds and is readily available to many builds. I needs a more obvious telegraph and must be easier to predict and avoid.

You can’t have a condition that can tick for 7000 damage be on some sort of passive procc.

Dee Jay.2460:

You make a good point OP.

Burning is an incredibly powerful condition. It can deal thousands of damage in just a few seconds and is readily available to many builds. I needs a more obvious telegraph and must be easier to predict and avoid.

You can’t have a condition that can tick for 7000 damage be on some sort of passive procc.

…is having fire + lightning sigils proc for a large intimidate burst fine?