Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the Skills Team:

Greetings, Tyrians!

We are here today to talk about some of the build-thematic changes that will be coming with the next balance iteration. Depending on your chosen profession and your role in combat, these changes may require some stat-swapping on your gear. We feel that giving a bit of a “heads-up” is appropriate.

One of the most notable changes being made is to the healing values of the Druid as a primary healer. Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly. The reasoning for these changes is that while we are excited about the Druid being an incredibly strong healer, we would also like to see that role as one of many choices in your attribute build.

Similarly, there will be changes in boon duration and boon application for a few professions. For the Revenant, we’ll be looking at reducing Naturalistic Resonance’s base boon duration. For Mesmer, we’re looking at making Signet of Inspiration’s boon sharing functionality a bit more controlled, giving each shared boon a fixed duration. To help compensate for these general reductions, we’ll be increasing both damage and a few different baseline boon durations.

As this update rolls out we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of these changes, along with the remainder of the balance updates, and will make additional adjustments and tweaks as necessary. Thanks very much for your time!

-The Skills Team

Enjoy zerglings

It will mainly hit guild groups. Public blobs rarely have any boon sharing mesmers (at least on the server I play on)

Even then I don’t think it’ll change much; run a few more mesmers and you have the same thing happening.

Boon access/performance is still the core of the problem.

DeceiverX.8361:

Even then I don’t think it’ll change much; run a few more mesmers and you have the same thing happening.

Boon access/performance is still the core of the problem.

Nah they will just skip the mesmers and increase the boon sources most likely. Remember it’s protection, resistance, stability and possibly fury that are the big game changers in the zergs. I can see concentration sigils on both weapon sets, boon duration food and some armour investment, 1-2 revs for resistance and fury spam, 2-3 guards for protection and stability spam. Let the melee train continue to choo choo choo.

One of the benefits of having better boon sourcing means when they’re corrupted they’re more easily reapplied.

I assume you mean Quickness and not Fury.

I imagine a similar trend, though. Changing SoI doesn’t really change much at all. It just kind of shows general lack of understanding of what’s going on in the game, since if access got nerfed, it’d hit the WvW blobs hard and still buff the mesmer in raiding by making SoI that much more impactful.

Granted, it’s not a total win for the mesmer since being a boon bot isn’t always a fun time for everyone, but it’s better than being nerfed and not actually really having an effect on WvW.

I don’t play boonshare much, but why is it okay for PvE to have 100% boon uptime but not for wvw. It’s a double standard the way I see it.

Aitadis.8269:

I don’t play boonshare much, but why is it okay for PvE to have 100% boon uptime but not for wvw. It’s a double standard the way I see it.

It’s making some people upset because it removes some professions from being in the optimal group setup. Unfortunately what they fail to realize is this is a fallacy.

The same people who are so interested in hardcore PvE are clueless when it comes to how metas and optimization against AI seems to work. The game will always be exclusive of certain combinations/builds just because the community deems it as non-optimal. And in reality, it’s not the game’s doing but the players. The entire point of hardcore PvE is optimizing groups regardless of the consequences to overcome some ridiculously exclusive content. True diversity is a lie in any PvE encounter, because forcefully “diverse” games are just forced optimizations.

It’s for the best really. Walking next to a Mesmer and having 30+ seconds of resistance and a couple of minutes of protection thrown onto you is kind of silly. The only alternative to this would be to increase boon strip in WvW, which would be unfair in cases where boon uptime isn’t ridiculous.

DeceiverX.8361:

Aitadis.8269:

I don’t play boonshare much, but why is it okay for PvE to have 100% boon uptime but not for wvw. It’s a double standard the way I see it.

It’s making some people upset because it removes some professions from being in the optimal group setup. Unfortunately what they fail to realize is this is a fallacy.

The same people who are so interested in hardcore PvE are clueless when it comes to how metas and optimization against AI seems to work. The game will always be exclusive of certain combinations/builds just because the community deems it as non-optimal. And in reality, it’s not the game’s doing but the players. The entire point of hardcore PvE is optimizing groups regardless of the consequences to overcome some ridiculously exclusive content. True diversity is a lie in any PvE encounter, because forcefully “diverse” games are just forced optimizations.

Its more the fact that boon share expands the gap in potential between a SEMI organized group and an unorganized group so far that its actually better for there server if the unorganized group runs away because the odds of them even getting one or two reliable kills in a zerg with perma prot/resistance/25stacksmight/fury/retal/quickness without being so completely and utterly dominated that they lose half there zerg is almost zero.

A boon share comp can go alot tankier and do alot more damage all at the same time.

The rotation for quickness is actually a bit interesting to try and do in hte middle of a zerg fight where your group is constantly moving around.

If SOI is rebalanced this makes it harder for the chrono to act as a permanent boon bot. (Once the duration was stacked beyond x point they could maintain it permanently).

Especially with boons it can’t generate itself.

This change would force MASSIVE regearing for a zerg to get the same level of boon uptime. In many cases forcing them to give up either damage or sustain (depending on the class/build sourcing the boon) in favor of boon duration. Where as before they could just leave it to the mesmer once the initial stack got going.

So while it may still be possible. It will require a larger commitment to the playstyle as well as a larger cost in stats in order to accomplish it. Leaving them overall weaker. Not to mention it being more complicated on an individual level to pull off. ESPECIALLY if rev aoe boon duration gets nerfed a little as well.

It really depends on how the additional base boon duration on certain skills they talk about really turns out. I am looking forward to seeing.

Boon share brakes the duration limit for a lot of boons that needs to be fixed.

DeceiverX.8361:

I assume you mean Quickness and not Fury.

I imagine a similar trend, though. Changing SoI doesn’t really change much at all. It just kind of shows general lack of understanding of what’s going on in the game, since if access got nerfed, it’d hit the WvW blobs hard and still buff the mesmer in raiding by making SoI that much more impactful.

Granted, it’s not a total win for the mesmer since being a boon bot isn’t always a fun time for everyone, but it’s better than being nerfed and not actually really having an effect on WvW.

I meant fury too, 20% crit chance is nothing to be sniffed at when the cost is so trivial for the rev. I assumed a front line group of no mesmers so would generate 0 quickness.

As you say changing SoI so it’s not sharing much means WvW groups will replace their mesmers with rev or guard for the extra boon generation as generation > sharing and stacking. The quickness hit will be felt on both sides so likely the AoE damage would be toned down to the point blobs don’t die outside of corrupt spikes.

I have 0 trust in ANets ability to balance the 2 game modes. I have 100% trust in them messing it up then changing it so it’s not that bad; first iteration though is usually bad.

I am happy that boon duration is addressed, as it is one of the things that were inbalanced with the Quickness, Resistance and Protection-stacking.
Especially Naturalistic Resonance was one of the skills that is hugely out of balance with the implementation of boon duration as an armor effect with “concentration”, because the 50% boon duration people get equals 750 skillpoints if you try to get the same amouth of boon duration through concentration. So 5 people get 750 skillpoints with 100% uptime through revenenant, while other classes usually have option to give 150 skillpoints in combat only (spotter, strength in numbers…).
The adaption of the mesmer with adding fixed duration also is a logical step in the right direction, just as the corrupt boon-options always add the condition with a fixed duration. To have corruption make the condition being the same duration as the boon was, would just have “escalated” the situation imho. Mesmers are still indispensable in zergs with Veil (as is still not limited to 5-10 people only like everything else), Portal and Alacrity for speeding up siege. No other class has access to those unique skills.

I am also happy about the other change with the druid. I am not sure if this will make the druid a more balanced opponent in 1:1 (atm most people agree that druids are overpowered in small scale), but it surely will make them less of a “toss” in zergs as soon as commanders realize their healing potential if some druids actually go the healing route.