Guild Wars 2

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Is this the full list of balance changes coming with the patch or is there more waiting for us?

Piercing Light: This trait no longer causes traps to daze enemies and will instead inflict the Slow condition on enemies for 1.5 seconds on the initial ‘trigger’ of a trap.

Also, since it doesn’t mention PvP only, is it safe to assume this change will hit PvE too?

Yes. Per OP “Note that all changes listed are global changes except for those that are designated as “PvP only.””

Hm, defiance bar impact though. This means 75 defiance bar damage per trap (1.5s of slow). This is down from 100 damage per (0.25s of daze).

As for the slight daze effect I found it very useful when dealing with large # mobs, but I’ve yet to play with lots of slow. Not sure how it would affect things for ranged enemy units. For example, the Mordrem Thrasher. It would spin and move to me, but hit a trap and it would stop moving. Will it now keep moving as normal speed, but attack slower? How exactly does slow affect enemy mobs?

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

I agree with this, but the healing turret cast time isn’t a big deal. It means you have to be aware of when you heal. It was kinda needed for counter play, pvp wise. As for rifle, yeah you didn’t need to nerf the initial cast. Like he said, the last part is what people are dodging.

It really hurt HT’s usage as anti-melee with the accelerant-packed turrets trait though, and core engi doesn’t have nearly the amount of stability scrapper does, which is why the nerf hit core way harder than scrapper. I agree that HT was definitely overperforming, but I would much rather have seen it nerfed in another way, through increased cd or lowered healing, lowered regen application, etc.

oEnvy.3064:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Revenant is in an interesting place in PvP. It’s undoubtedly one of the more difficult professions to play, but when mastered it is devastating on the battlefield. We’re going to bring some elements of the main power build down slightly,

• Surge of the Mists: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 50% in PvP only.
• Precision Strike: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

SLIGHTLY.

Yea. Initially, they were like " Okay team, we’ll do this properly ". Then they got carried away.

" 12 seconds? Nah mate, let’s round that to 15 "
" Surge of the Mists? What’s a nice round number to nerf it by? 100%? Nahh, we’ll tone it down to 50% , looks better on paper "

“Pain Absorption: This ability now breaks stun.”
You didnt place PvP only next to this. LOL.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Mesmer

Mesmer has been on our radar for a while now, but it’s a delicate situation. We’re going to keep the change list small for this update, focusing mostly on sustain, and reassess the situation mid-season.

• Echo of Memory: The cooldown of this ability has been increased from 30 to 35 seconds in PvP only.
• Restorative Illusions: The healing contribution of this trait has been increased by 285% in PvP only. The base healing modifiers for this trait have been adjusted as follows:
  • 0 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 62% in PvP only.
  • 1 Illusion shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 50% in PvP only.
  • 2 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 42% in PvP only.
  • 3 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 36% in PvP only.

Interesting changes to mesmer. I wonder if it would have been better (if even possible) to just make it so that clones/phantasms that are summoned with the traits Illusionary Reversion and chronophantasma aren’t counted for the purposes of the restorative illusions trait, instead of gutting the base heal. Because right now it feels like you are trying to push mesmer more towards a support role, again.

Also, excited to hear that you will re-kitten mid season. Does this mean that we will be getting a mid season balance patch??? Hopefully it does, that would be amazing!

One last thing, hopefully you can answer this. I understand why some skills are given longer CDs in PvP to balance them without nerfing them in PvE, but why are so many skills in this cycle being given shorter CDs in PvP only? I would imagine that if they are underperforming in PvP then they could surely also be buffed in PvE, no? I just don’t understand why when you buff a skill in PvP, the buff also isn’t applied to PvE. Seems pretty strange to me.

Awesome changes to necro, great job

oEnvy.3064:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Revenant is in an interesting place in PvP. It’s undoubtedly one of the more difficult professions to play, but when mastered it is devastating on the battlefield. We’re going to bring some elements of the main power build down slightly,

• Surge of the Mists: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 50% in PvP only.
• Precision Strike: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

SLIGHTLY.

Hahaha I’m kittening done.

Increasing the effectiveness of Restorative Illusions seems like a mistake to me considering how Mesmers are quite effective as it stands. I do hope there’s more to the Engie changes, I’m looking forward to reading the tuesday patch notes.

Dirame.8521:

Increasing the effectiveness of Restorative Illusions seems like a mistake to me considering how Mesmers are quite effective as it stands. I do hope there’s more to the Engie changes, I’m looking forward to reading the tuesday patch notes.

It’s a nerf if they don’t take healing power.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Dirame.8521:

Increasing the effectiveness of Restorative Illusions seems like a mistake to me considering how Mesmers are quite effective as it stands. I do hope there’s more to the Engie changes, I’m looking forward to reading the tuesday patch notes.

It’s a nerf if they don’t take healing power.

I see. It seems I misunderstood what the percentage modifiers meant.

Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%?

Please, explain to me why a ranged class like rifle engineer (who is insanely lacking in sustain and defense against HoT specs) would decide that its a good idea to rifle 5 into a fight? Engineer should have a flat dps buff on all the rifle skills. The current state of rifle forces the engineer player to go defensive utilities in order to be remotely viable.

Jump shot should be an evade frame, blunderbuss should give a blind, and overcharge should not knock the user of the skill back (With all the projectile hate, stab, and low cd stun breaks present in the game, all overcharge accomplishes is screwing (originally said the f word, but I guess this site is PG) over the person using it). Given some form of sustain besides elixir s and gear shield (recently nerfed for whatever reason), rifle engineer can focus on dps and other utilities. However, damage utilities on engineer simply do no damage besides acid bomb, pry bar, and grenade barrage (Grenades are useless though unless paired with the explosives trait line, which is an awful trait line if you want to have a decent build setup). Besides damage utilities that do no damage, engineer is loaded with the most useless and gimmick utilities in the game (Post nerf slick shoes, utility goggles, battering ram, med kit, any turret besides rifle (and rifle turret is only decent with static discharge, another damage trait that does no damage), and Elixir R).

In the end you have a weapon set built for damage that does not do comparable damage to other classes ranged weapons, and a spec that relies heavily on the two defensive utilities, elixir s and tool kit.

Or you can go a bunker amulet and be a potato rifle engi.

Oh and btw, healing turret (best engi healing skill atm) can be destroyed mid cast by something like warrior whirlwind or a vault? That’s fantastic.

A 50 and a 33% damage nerf to two of the skills that constitute most of the power revenant’s damage are just too much. If you want to remove the class from any kind of play just ban revs from queuing, do not pour salt into the wounds, kitten .

Junior.3928:

Awesome changes to necro, great job

Ha!

Thanks for Mally stun break – I would say condi rev is where it needs to be now. I don’t think these changes will make it meta, even with the power rev change, but from those who enjoy playing condi rev, meta or not, we thank you!

-Rev of Boa

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

“Pain Absorption: This ability now breaks stun.”
You didnt place PvP only next to this. LOL.

It needs to be global Mallyx needs that stunbreak not everything listed is PVP only!

Does anyone else get the idea Anet doesn’t understand classes have roles in pvp? They act like they want any class to be able to fulfill any role, but that’s ridiculous. Scepter dps ele, lol.

Also, 55% and 33% nerfs on Rev plus a survivability nerf? RIP power rev, you had four seasons.

dustydawg.3105:

Engi changes: Play hammer or gtfo

It will always be like that unless they buff core utilities and auto dps on rifle.

Thane.9421:

Does anyone else get the idea Anet doesn’t understand classes have roles in pvp? They act like they want any class to be able to fulfill any role, but that’s ridiculous. Scepter dps ele, lol.

Also, 55% and 33% nerfs on Rev plus a survivability nerf? RIP power rev, you had four seasons.

Class roles are a player invention NOT Arena net intention.

Thane.9421:

Does anyone else get the idea Anet doesn’t understand classes have roles in pvp? They act like they want any class to be able to fulfill any role, but that’s ridiculous. Scepter dps ele, lol.

Also, 55% and 33% nerfs on Rev plus a survivability nerf? RIP power rev, you had four seasons.

Its a great change for fresh air. No reason to be mad with that change.

Ranger still getting ignored?

I’m really hoping that this isn’t a full list of changes (sadly it probably is), because even while most of these are PvP only changes, anet seems to have forgotten there are more than 6 classes in the game…. it’s not really a very good balance patch if you don’t make any improvements/adjustments to every profession.

#makenecroviableagain
#whereistherangerlove

it looks like the notes got accidentally cutoff in the middle of Thief section.

i say this due to mention of buffing pistol mainhand in the commentary, and suddenly there’s no mention of HOW pistol mainhand is getting buffed…

not to mention there’s no mentions for warrior, ranger, and necro

Even though I think revenant should get some nerfs, this is just a bit too much…

Forgotten Legend.9281:

it looks like the notes got accidentally cutoff in the middle of Thief section.

i say this due to mention of buffing pistol mainhand in the commentary, and suddenly there’s no mention of HOW pistol mainhand is getting buffed…

not to mention there’s no mentions for warrior, ranger, and necro

I really hope this is true lol. It gives me some faint hope for my necro :P

i dont see the engi changes as doing a whole lot for core engi. still gonna be only hammer scrapper for power builds, and the problem with condi builds is that they dont have enough sustain to be a bruiser or enough mobility to be an assassin (when other things have teles)… which leaves them as little more than a cute trick that can potentially snowball off a surprise but strictly inferior to power scrapper.

Lord Drekar.4619:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

it looks like the notes got accidentally cutoff in the middle of Thief section.

i say this due to mention of buffing pistol mainhand in the commentary, and suddenly there’s no mention of HOW pistol mainhand is getting buffed…

not to mention there’s no mentions for warrior, ranger, and necro

I really hope this is true lol. It gives me some faint hope for my necro :P

At first I thought it was that, but if you do your alphabetical counting, they jumped over Ranger (which would come before Revenant) and Necro (after Mesmer). Then Warrior at the end.

It’s all guys…

thijsken.5031:

Even though I think revenant should get some nerfs, this is just a bit too much…

Rip rev boiz

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP Team:

Revenant

Revenant is in an interesting place in PvP. It’s undoubtedly one of the more difficult professions to play, but when mastered it is devastating on the battlefield. We’re going to bring some elements of the main power build down *****slightly*****.

• Surge of the Mists: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 50% in PvP only.
• Precision Strike: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

Balance team has an odd definition of slightly.

Class roles are not a player invention, they are just logic at work. There’s always going to be a build each class has that is more or less the best, and because different classes have different mechanics, certain classes will excel at certain roles. The only way to negate that would be to make all classes functionally the same.

Krispera.5087:

Lord Drekar.4619:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

it looks like the notes got accidentally cutoff in the middle of Thief section.

i say this due to mention of buffing pistol mainhand in the commentary, and suddenly there’s no mention of HOW pistol mainhand is getting buffed…

not to mention there’s no mentions for warrior, ranger, and necro

I really hope this is true lol. It gives me some faint hope for my necro :P

At first I thought it was that, but if you do your alphabetical counting, they jumped over Ranger (which would come before Revenant) and Necro (after Mesmer). Then Warrior at the end.

It’s all guys…

Aaaaand it’s gone. You are right. RIP my hopes and dreams

oh nice my GS power necro is viable again

thanks for the buffs anet, gj

I think these changes are not nearly enough, some are even outright useless. What are the devs in charge of balance doing all the time? If this would be a biweekly balance patch I might consider it reasonable, but it is all we will get for months, so I would expect at least 10 times the changes.

3 out of 9 classes get zero changes. Dozens of underused/useless weapon skill sets and utilities see no changes again. Sad.

Guess whomever is messing with the servers is a rev main.

One good thing about this patch is that it shows a net is listening to some of the community but still shows a disconnect !

Gaile Gray.6029:

• New PvP-only Rune: Rune of the Lynx: +175 power, +100 Condition Damage, +25% Movement Speed
  • We’re looking to add a viable damage-oriented movement speed rune to help professions with minimal access to in-combat movement speed or swiftness. This may impact match pacing, so we’re going to keep a close eye on it.

The wording on this makes me think that Rune of Lynx is Anet’s idea of solving current necro issues.

Paul.2054:

Poor Revs xD. May condi rev forever reign supreme.

After the October 18th patch condi Herald is unviable.

lol way to kill revs.

ProtoMarcus.7649:

• New PvP-only Rune: Rune of the Lynx: +175 power, +100 Condition Damage, +25% Movement Speed
• We’re looking to add a viable damage-oriented movement speed rune to help professions with minimal access to in-combat movement speed or swiftness. This may impact match pacing, so we’re going to keep a close eye on it.

Amazing.

Although I’d really suggest including a Power-Based movement rune and a Condi-Based movement rune while still keeping an eye on movement runesets (I do HEAVILY welcome more Movement Runesets for all gamemodes)

Suggestions:

Rune of the Tiger – Power-main Movement Bonus Runeset

• 175 Power, 100 Precision (or ferocity), +25% Movement speed

Rune of the Lynx – Condition-main Movement Bonus Runeset

• 175 Condition, 100 Expertise, +25% Movement speed

those 2 are the “one rune to rule them all” type.

Beside boon duration reliant builds there would be absolutely zero reason to consider any other of the hundred or so runes.

Just as example, a theorycrafting candidate for slow GS power necro is a swiftness on heal rune. The price for perma swiftness is 1 heal, 1 trait, probably the group of skills you picked the trait from, the rune itself has a non worth mentioning secondary effect + whatever effect or modifier youre missing from other runes.

Thats the fun in making builds

MrCameron.4863:

Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%?

Please, explain to me why a ranged class like rifle engineer (who is insanely lacking in sustain and defense against HoT specs) would decide that its a good idea to rifle 5 into a fight? Engineer should have a flat dps buff on all the rifle skills. The current state of rifle forces the engineer player to go defensive utilities in order to be remotely viable.

Jump shot should be an evade frame, blunderbuss should give a blind, and overcharge should not knock the user of the skill back (With all the projectile hate, stab, and low cd stun breaks present in the game, all overcharge accomplishes is kittening over the person using it). Given some form of sustain besides elixir s and gear shield (recently nerfed for whatever reason), rifle engineer can focus on dps and other utilities. However, damage utilities on engineer simply do no damage besides acid bomb, pry bar, and grenade barrage (Grenades are useless though unless paired with the explosives trait line, which is an awful trait line if you want to have a decent build setup). Besides damage utilities that do no damage, engineer is loaded with the most useless and gimmick utilities in the game (Post nerf slick shoes, utility goggles, battering ram, med kit, any turret besides rifle (and rifle turret is only decent with static discharge, another damage trait that does no damage), and Elixir R).

In the end you have a weapon set built for damage that does not do comparable damage to other classes ranged weapons, and a spec that relies heavily on the two defensive utilities, elixir s and tool kit.

Or you can go a bunker amulet and be a potato rifle engi.

Oh and btw, healing turret (best engi healing skill atm) can be destroyed mid cast by something like warrior whirlwind or a vault? That’s fantastic.

I would give you money if I could. This post is so insanely on point and true. The devs have to pay attention. #SayNoToPotato

Kastiel.1947:

Surge of the mists has been nerfed 3 times !!! And each time it’s by an atrocious number .. man you guys know how to ruin the mood

Make necro greatsword #2 ,
600 range
2s evade during duration
maybe some superspeed to chase easier in the evasive shadow form
add 10x pre dmg pulses so you cant blind/block the animation
let it steal 3x stacks of stabilty
add a condi clear on another GS skill
….
hmmm, i think id consider using such a sword, you think its OP ?

I am surprised the sword#2 got such a nerf but staff was epitome of stupid HOT design of big procs with no counterplay.

Revenants had VERY few things going from them. They’ve effectively been pushed out of the raiding scene. Now they’re being gutted in PVP.

Here’s an idea: How about changes that provide more viability for revenant builds across the board? How about making Ventari and Jalis worth running? How about fixing the current bugs to Sword? How about providing more than TWO out of our FIVE legends for underwater combat somehow? How about finishing the class before kicking it in the dirt? It’s already bad enough that the community only considers ONE possible build out of many to be remotely viable to run content (the one that’s getting nerfed. Again).

One stun-break and a slight reduction to a mace skill can hardly be considered to be a nice buff for condition builds btw.

Blackwood.9072:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Is this the full list of balance changes coming with the patch or is there more waiting for us?

Piercing Light: This trait no longer causes traps to daze enemies and will instead inflict the Slow condition on enemies for 1.5 seconds on the initial ‘trigger’ of a trap.

Also, since it doesn’t mention PvP only, is it safe to assume this change will hit PvE too?

Yes. Per OP “Note that all changes listed are global changes except for those that are designated as “PvP only.””

Hm, defiance bar impact though. This means 75 defiance bar damage per trap (1.5s of slow). This is down from 100 damage per (0.25s of daze).

As for the slight daze effect I found it very useful when dealing with large # mobs, but I’ve yet to play with lots of slow. Not sure how it would affect things for ranged enemy units. For example, the Mordrem Thrasher. It would spin and move to me, but hit a trap and it would stop moving. Will it now keep moving as normal speed, but attack slower? How exactly does slow affect enemy mobs?

Oh I did not see that, thanks for pointing it out.

I really hope ArenaNet notices how much negative feedback the changes on revenant are having and decides not to go that way.

By the way, it is a very good idea to launch the patch notes before you actually implement it so that the community can give some feedback on it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

the changes are limited to the following areas:

• Recharge
• Damage multipliers
• Healing multipliers
• Number of conditions/boons applied
• Duration of conditions/boons applied
• Skill cost (energy and initiative)

a) Thank you
b) Hope we can also expect easier modifiers now in PVE ?

c) NECRO SPECIFIC
How likely are skill revamps?
It is probably the most allround clunky class, things that get brought up daily:
-animation speed ups
-game engine reliability (ex. hovering non-homing bouncing projectile, yes that exists)
-self punishing mechanics and traits (all the stuff which doesnt work in shroud)

Again,
thank you for communication, im asking exactly bacause the desires are almost never simple number tweaks.

I’ll just comment on the elementalist changes as that is by far my main class.

All these changes could be rolled out globally instead of for PvP and ele will still not have a good power build. The changes to final shielding and arcane shield are long overdue and should be global.

Glyph of elemental harmony in my opinion just needed a cast time reduction to 3/4s of a second as it’s too easy to interrupt but is on par with other heals per cool down as currently. 20s cool down only for PvP seems a tad bizarre considering we heal as one and other heals can be reduced to much shorter times for the same bang for buck.

Arc lightning buff, for PvP only, makes very little sense as sceptre is a massively underperforming weapon for over 2 years now. The burst is largely predictable and sustained damage is poor with fairly strange cast times too. Why this couldn’t be global is beyond me but more importantly why we haven’t had a proper look at sceptre over the last 2 years is strange. The auto attacks are very poor, shatter stone is horrible and the weapon in general feels all over the place, sometimes it’s high burst but on very very long cool downs other times it wants to be condi and a lot of the time it’s attacks are as slow as staff. The one universal constant though is that it’s very low for sustained damage.

I’m just glad they are loosening the PvP devs up from the PvE side. . . I think that it a positive step towards balancing across all the gamemodes. Good idea.

thijsken.5031:

Even though I think revenant should get some nerfs, this is just a bit too much…

Maybe. They one of the few classes with a 100% tourny pick rate.

Necromancer

Added hot key to facilitate targeting. Anyone can press alt-n to target the nearest Necromancer.

Ranger

Removed Menders amulet to increase Druid build diversity. We also increased healing scaling while reducing base numbers. Healing will be more effective with over 1,400 healing power and significantly less below this.

Warrior

We felt that Warrior needs more passive defense so increased endure pain duration by 200%.

:)

How can they throw to the bottom of the well so quickly to rev? Seriously, you leave it without healing, without stability, without evading, without finishing or reviving quickly, without cleaning, without raids and now without damage …
I wonder if they actually tried the rev. I feel outraged as main rev, now it will be simply useless, thanks anet

The issue with revenant was not that it did too much damage, it was that the meta build was basically to go full damage traits and have the damage of a pve build with the utility of a pvp build. Thats just a flaw of the design, but to fix it they made it impossible to not go full damage build now. Doesn’t that make it more difficult to play in lower tier where its a hard class to play? I don’t really agree with their choices meeting their purposes.