Guild Wars 2

Please tell me they plan adding power scaling to necromancer pet, ranger pet and enginer turrets. those stuff a long overdue. And if not id realy like to know why they made the tooltip scale if they dont plan to add it someday because it would actualy make so much sense for pet users.

To be honest im dying to know what is the development team oppinion about pet zoo user and pet in general as builds in their game. A lot of people would likely want to know how the developement team think about the pet build right now.

Seem’s like all of these rebalance traits are pvp focused again? Are there going to be any pve trait rebalancing to make certain classes more appealing to pve groups (necros, engies and ranger sword autoattack fix?)

Ferocity v Celestial has the highest ratio of critical damage to other stats so is surely going to be far more badly damaged by having ferocity set to the same value as the other stats than beserker’s. Rather than accidentally abolishing all hybrid (ele/engi/necro etc) builds can a compensating increase be made to the celestial stats?!
Could calculate this by taking the ratio of crit/precision for celestial and dividing by the same for beserk, then apply that % to the base celestial values.

Boon Runes. Aura DD eles generally rely on 2 pairs of boon 15% duration runes + 30 arcane = 60%. And boon duration is rounded down. If we have just 45% we lose 1/7s =14% on all 5s boons, and 33% on the 2s fury Arcane trait as it would round down etc . DD ele would be unplayable without massive rebalancing, and the minor improvement in stability/protection uptime on one cantrip only compensates for that one skill. Really do need that 60%!

Runes for Mesmer.
Need a 25% speed one that fits with conditions. Maybe change last perplexity trait? Or add 25% to something else targeted at confusion mesmers?

Necro. Class definition. Can we take fire off Necro, give it something else good to replace the trait. Boost fire on engineer/elementalists Try to get to a point where WvW commanders are saying epidemic Necros party up with condition engineers please – condition stack overwriting permitting.

2 sigils on 2 handed weapons. Fair enough but, for example, Hammer warrior in WvW with 2 sigils! No doubt in hand, but there are obvious balancing issues to be addressed.

Ghlitch.8932:

Untraited engineers have access to 4 different damaging conditions (Bleed, Burn, Confuse, Poison) and these just with weapon skills. Untraited necromancers have access to 3 damaging conditions (Bleed, Poison, Torment) if you count death shroud as a weapon skill.

By default, engineers can do more damage than necromancers with conditions.

Dhuumfire gives us access to a fourth damage type just to bring us back on par with an untraited engineer. Terror gives us access to a fifth damage condition, but one that can only be scarcely applied.

It is not about the number of conditions. It is about the marginal utility the additional condition provides. Incendiary Powder adds a lot less damage to an Engineer than Dhuumfire does add to a Necromancer because the Engineer already got Burning from other sources. This means that Incendiary Powder is a lot weaker than Dhuumfire although they basically do the same. That is why you can’t balance Dhuumfire based on a comparison with Incendiary Powder (or probably Burning Precision).

The number of damaging conditions isn’t the only factor to determine how powerful a condition build of a class can be. Necromancers will still be very powerful in the condition department. Especially because of Fear although it might be scarcely applied. Because it buys you the time you need for your conditions to deal damage.

You now might argue that Engineers got knock downs/backs instead. True. But they will have to give up either damage (P/S instead of P/P) or a utility slot to get them while Necromancers always come with DS and most likely with a Staff.

Reesha.7901:

Maybe it is just me, but I do feel the 20 in domination is extremely important because of shattered concentration. The last thing I need is my entire 3 clone F1 shatter damage reduced by protection, or being unable to strip my enemy of other useful boons.

I don’t want yet another reason to NOT bring a mesmer over a thief.

That probably is a trade off you will have to make. While the Vigor change will affect Shatter Mesmers it is not the reason why they are not popular in PvP or PvE. You also might keep in mind that – when assuming the max. amount of Vigor uptime – you will only lose 3 clones per minute. If the fight only took 30s this would equal 1.5 clones. So in longer fight it will indeed add up and make a difference. In shorter fights it won’t.

kyubi.3620:

Please tell me they plan adding power scaling to necromancer pet, ranger pet and enginer turrets. those stuff a long overdue. And if not id realy like to know why they made the tooltip scale if they dont plan to add it someday because it would actualy make so much sense for pet users.

To be honest im dying to know what is the development team oppinion about pet zoo user and pet in general as builds in their game. A lot of people would likely want to know how the developement team think about the pet build right now.

Anet should nerf pet builds to the ground and I’ll be elated when it finally happens. As will the majority of the playerbase, especially pvp part.

BLeh you just hate anything that actualy get trought a AI. Minion masters and ranger did nothing to you in pve why hate them so much? I think MM should hold a place of choice in a dungeon party.

Its prety much the world reversed
GW1 MM:
PVE: (We absolutely need one else we gunna get eaten by the mobs!)
PVP: (ahahaha look at the noob he got no corpse so he cant raise any minion then he try spamming echo aura of the lich!)

GW 2 MM:
PVE: (god that guy deals no damage and only cure cond while buffing regen kick it)
PVP: (OMG we are getting swarmed by minion heeeeelp meeeeeeeeee ‘’strangled voice with sound of massacre in background’’)

Pet is a build in its own right and deserve an actual niche in the game. Why a build would be destroyed so that yours can trive on the benefits of its death? Im sure Anet aim to make pet build as viable as other builds. They just have trouble doing it right.

Elementalist.
Again the proof that you don’t want to hear a kitten about this class.

Thousands of topics about :
Revert the Ride The Lightning nerf.
Revert Cleansing water trait nerf.
Revert Cleansing wave trait nerf.
Revert Elemental Attunement trait nerf.
Buff Focus skills.
Buff Arcane shield,3 blocks every 75 seconds,wow.
Buff Glyphs.
Buff Signets.
Changing lingering elements trait because is useless.
Conjurer weapons like engi’s kits.
Buff Arcane Precision.grandmaster trait,wow.

You have NEVER talked about buffing any of this things,ty,really.

8% healing signet nerf,seriously?
how is possibile playing against a warrior that heals 1k every second.
how is possibile playing against a thief s/d that makes to you 3k-4k of autoattack,perma evades.
After 1 year of this stupid meta and after this “balance” notes i understand that there are no hopes for this game about pvp,do what you want with your broken game,i’m out like others already did it.

Insanity.5174:

Elementalist.
Again the proof that you don’t want to hear a kitten about this class.

Thousands of topics about :
Revert the Ride The Lightning nerf.
Revert Cleansing water trait nerf.
Revert Cleansing wave trait nerf.
Revert Elemental Attunement trait nerf.
Buff Focus skills.
Buff Arcane shield,3 blocks every 75 seconds,wow.
Buff Glyphs.
Buff Signets.
Changing lingering elements trait because is useless.
Conjurer weapons like engi’s kits.
Buff Arcane Precision.grandmaster trait,wow.

You have NEVER talked about buffing any of this things,ty,really.

8% healing signet nerf,seriously?
how is possibile playing against a warrior that heals 1k every second.
how is possibile playing against a thief s/d that makes to you 3k-4k of autoattack,perma evades.
After 1 year of this stupid meta and after this “balance” notes i understand that there are no hopes for this game about pvp,do what you want with your broken game,i’m out like others already did it.

Don’t forget about the other side of ele changes that are needed as well. There needs to be an AOE circle for meteor shower and it needs to do less damage.

I agree eles need buffs, but they also need the two changes above as well.

Im sorry but this patch is BS, Ele is once again taking two massive hits.

WE need the 2 piece set bonuses to be competitive, we need the Crit damage modifier to even do damage, stacking might alone is not enough, fights are already long and drawn out.

JUSTkitten devs, honestly =/ people post 1000’s of good idea’s you make up your own. why?

I’m currently using two weapons with identical sigils (Sigil of Malice). Is this update means that they will stop working together?

Ross Biddle.2367:

lazycalm.5186:

Is that all you got for THIEF? Poisons are useless atm anyway..

MESMERS – They will still be overpowered. A profession like this, with clone spamming abilities that distract the opposite player, should NOT be overpowered.

ENGINEERS – They are fine… the class which in my opinion requires the most skill to play and gets equally rewarded.

I love the PvP Engie main calling the Mesmer OP.

PvP engi main

wut?

style.6173:

Don’t forget about the other side of ele changes that are needed as well. There needs to be an AOE circle for meteor shower and it needs to do less damage.

I agree eles need buffs, but they also need the two changes above as well.

They can do what they want with aoe staff and staff damage.
I want only play my elementalist with S/D- S/F – D/D – D/F without being melted every kittening day against a spirit ranger,minion master,hambow,s/d thief and others kittenty builds.
these changes are so f** stupids and wtf,3 months for every balance patch.
what is a balance patch that doesn’t balance,simply,is a kittenty patch like always.

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes
Engineer:
We feel that the engineer is in a decent place right now, but we did take this opportunity to scale down a few outlier skills in terms of potency. Net Turret’s immobilize duration has been lowered to reduce the amount of lockdown after a Supply Crate drop, and Poison Grenade’s poison duration has been lowered to account for poison field stacking.

• Net Turret: Decreased the immobilize duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds on the basic attack.
• Poison Grenade: Reduced the poison duration per pulse from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Box of Nails: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.
• Box of Piranhas: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.
• A.E.D.: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.

Overall, most of these changes are not a big deal one way or the other. What is surprising is to see focus on toning down a class that is riddled with bugs and design philosophy dissonance.

• The most glaring bug to an entire line of skills for the class are Turrets. There have been dozens of threads in the Engi and Bug forum with countless lines of research and detail that has gone mostly unrecognized.

• Hobo Sacks continues to be a distraction from a design philosophy (horizontal and cosmetic progression) standpoint. The meta of more than half of the Living Story events has been a back item that most engi’s will never see. Between the shield covering it and then the hobosack, why even bother? And if you do leave it on, you have to deal with horrible clipping. In the engi forums there is an 11 page thread that has been going on for a year with the last red comment six months ago.

• Ascended and Legendary Weapons again attack the class on two fronts. Cosmetically, we never see them because we have our kits on, and more over we don’t get anything from the damage increase of these items. We are running level 30 fractals with people using high power weapons while our kits are locked into being scaled to exotic. What incentive to Engi’s have to pursue this high end game equipment when both the cosmetic and gameplay aspects are nullified by using skills the class was designed around. Again, there is a 7 page thread in the engi forums with a comment from Colin 9 months ago saying this was on your radar, but still hasn’t been addressed.

• Elite Skills for this class still really don’t feel elite compared to other classes (And I know they have their fair share of problems too). Moreover, since the one skill that every Engi, more or less, has to use because the others are not worth it is the one that both the developers and players see constantly feels too strong, the parts that go into it are weakened as you try to adjust that elite. So, not only are turrets frustrating because of bugs, they become even more worthless as stand alone deploys. If you really want to tone down Supply Drop, then make the turrets be different assets. Call them Supply Drop Rifle, Net, Healing, and Flame Turret so the independent versions can at least try to remain competitive for a place on the utility bar. Also, make Elixir X and Mortar more competitive or do away with them entirely. Especially Mortar. No one uses it and no other party member has ever said “OMG deploy the mortar for me” like they do, say, Ele conjured weapons. Which, while inconsistent (but recently somewhat improved) at least have a purpose or can even compete to be your primary weapon.

• Trait & skill synergy and diversity. I know this is a longer term thing and all classes need spit and polish, but many engis only consider 2 maybe 3 builds per game mode (PvE vs. sPvP vs. WvW) to be competitive. Turrets and gadgets are weird/broken or in the case of the later only have one standout option (rocket boots). Traits are either have really good synergy with weapons and skills, or are just completely ignored cause they don’t or cater to gadgets and turrets that many folks don’t want to touch. I am not saying all engi traits need an overhaul, but it is confusing to look at where some traits are and what they effect in relation to our reasonable assertion to how the class is “expected” to be played. By expected, I mean your design philosophy.

This is already way to TL;DR so I’ll stop here.

Moreover, I’ll reserve judgement until the full preview is released much closer to the patch for more specific commentary. Right now, what is shared and planed feels a bit too nebulous to try and get down into the weeds over.

The next patch is going to completely destroy ele.

After the current nerfs of elemental attuedment, i spent 100’s of gold changing my armor sets and runes. the only build i found to work focuses heavily on two main aspects your changing.

This is my build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmmbwR5wjEAkHwcCLjCiIK8QRROzA-jUDB4fgojAEGAkIgJPBJ7Zaslhht6KalXBRXDT5SIVFLymzFRrWKAzVGB-w

This works due to high up time on protection and fury when using Aura’s!(linked to other skills) Due to the protection uptime it makes Signet of restoration, steal hp on crit food and sigil work. (take less damage but gaining same hp.)

Conditions are countered fully by the 3 water line traits..

Mobility comes from using aura’s (linked to other skills) and fire greatsword elite when you need to bail.

Damage comes from the high buff duration, stacking up long lasting might from Fire aura (linked to other skills) But it is still lackluster, Thats where the 70% crit damage comes in, it make you damage if you manage to stack might! which is done by long complex rotations (compared to other classes)

This build all nits together to make ele slightly work, I say slightly cos if you played GW2 at all. You will know everyone runs Perma hide mesmers, sins and KD warriors. It still requires a huge amount of skills to fight against this easy to play builds.

i tested this build in the mists, it does not work, all the components are not their. You don’t get all three runes for the buff dur and you cannot mix and match stats.

kyubi.3620:

BLeh you just hate anything that actualy get trought a AI. Minion masters and ranger did nothing to you in pve why hate them so much? I think MM should hold a place of choice in a dungeon party.

Its prety much the world reversed
GW1 MM:
PVE: (We absolutely need one else we gunna get eaten by the mobs!)
PVP: (ahahaha look at the noob he got no corpse so he cant raise any minion then he try spamming echo aura of the lich!)

GW 2 MM:
PVE: (god that guy deals no damage and only cure cond while buffing regen kick it)
PVP: (OMG we are getting swarmed by minion heeeeelp meeeeeeeeee ‘’strangled voice with sound of massacre in background’’)

Pet is a build in its own right and deserve an actual niche in the game. Why a build would be destroyed so that yours can trive on the benefits of its death? Im sure Anet aim to make pet build as viable as other builds. They just have trouble doing it right.

Pet builds deserved to be used only by AI. AI controlled by AI, nothing else. Anet should murder those builds and never again make them viable. Game would become better, especially in pvp.

Necro vampiric master should be reduced by 15% to make other life stealing builds. Just as affective.
It would. Be nice if wars HS activate. Gave a buff. not aegis,
Idk protection. For a short petiod of time. But nothing. To strong so people stop complaining

Currently if we use two bloodlust sigils (one in main & offhand) we get 2 stacks of bloodlust / kill. Is this going to be unchanged?

Dagins.5163:

jportell.2197:

I play a stealth thief in PvP. Thieves should be used for purposes of ganking and back capping… In team fights they kill the person with the lowest health and then go back cap.

Thief stealth/mobility is bar none. Instead of trying to cap a node in stealth use your stealth to get there unnoticed.

To quickly decap a node without being unnoticed you don’t use stealth, but swiftness, shadowstep, infiltrator’s arrow/heartseeker or even shadow trap. Stealth in GW2 is used as a combat mechanism, not utility on F1 like in every other MMO. Besides, even if it worked as a toggle, in 90% cases there would be no need to use stealth to get to a node.

Being unable to cap nodes with stealth made all stealth based builds very weak in sPvP; talking about top level tournaments, not hotjoin or WvW, where losing a few seconds on a node in favour of enemy may costs your team a victory.

Oh stealth is still very good because you can run right past their home bunker if he rotates and they never notice. It’s not just getting to points quickly it’s avoiding off point fights

Sina.9208:

Currently if we use two bloodlust sigils (one in main & offhand) we get 2 stacks of bloodlust / kill. Is this going to be unchanged?

I’d imagine, but I wonder if ANet is going to finally follow through with their threat from eons ago where if you unequipt the weapon with the bloodlust rune you lose your stacks. this way players are no longer getting 25 stacks and never using weapon again.

Ulion.5476:

Xaylin.1860:

I partly agree on this one. I really like the Air and the Earth Signet. Water and Fire on the other hand are just aweful. The Chill is rather redundant when having the choice of getting an Immobilize. Elementalists also don’t need even more burn. Two ideas I had:

Signet of Water
Active
Create a Waterfield for 3s which also provides 1s Regeneration per pulse.
While there already are enough Waterfields or sources of Regeneration all of them are either tied to the water attunment itself or the traitline. The Signet would offer recovery outside of those and probably open up some trait choices.

Signet of Fire
Active
Gain 5 stacks of Might for 5s and cause Weakness to nearby foes for 5s (240 Radius).
A short damage boost and another way to mitigate damage. It would also provide another cover-up condition for hybrid/condition Elementalists.

Signet of water needs a change to make it reflect more on the healing aspect of water. Like active effect 10s regen or 3s waterfield. Otherwise the signet should be rename to Signet of Ice and change the passive to something like applies vulnerability to attackers.

A water field would get my vote unless they reverted cleansing water.

I hate the fact that the majority of our field types besides fire are limited to staff, while the majority of our blast finishers are limited to dagger/scepter, I’m not counting evasive arcana due to many no longer running it.

Thief:

So that’s it huh? What about our laundry list of

• unusable underwater skills
• plain out awful traits
• still too high reliance on critical strikes (new ferocity modifier will not change this for theives, but actually make this problem worse.)
• Extreme imbalance of condition removal options between shadow arts and acrobatics
• ever-dwindling build diversity
• complete lack of condition build support via traits
• venoms being pigeonholed in to a single lackluster support build
• traps still being completely useless

I’d encourage taking a hard look at everything on the thief table that isn’t either stealth or sneak attack related and going “does this hold up when compared with similar abilities, traits, or interactions which other classes are capable of?”

The answer in nearly every case is “no”

Thieves are already some of the best combo utilizers around. How about working that niche in to more skills and traits to increase thief viability while preserving the opportunistic philosophy the class is designed around?

What about taking the long list of horrid traits and fixing them up with “when you combo” and “when this field activates a combo” type effects? What if venoms and traps benefitted in unique ways from our own and other combo fields and finishers? What if we had traits in acrobatics that facilitated more non-typed condition cleansing? What if Deadly arts was less ADD and became worth building a template around?

The healing signet active could be a 3 second block with no heal. This would allow a warrior to use it effectively in an emergency but he would have to wait until the signet recharges to heal again through the passive.

Ride the Lightning
Cleansing Water grandmaster trait

The two current elementalist’s effects that most beg for either a revert or a partial-revert/ rebuff.

I don’t think Elemental Attunement should be reverted – it’s too strong for that. Do elementalists need it? Yes, but it’s their base survival that should be fixed instead.

But RTL and water’s grandmaster trait? They lost their charm with the last nerfs.

Xaylin.1860:

It is not about the number of conditions. It is about the marginal utility the additional condition provides. Incendiary Powder adds a lot less damage to an Engineer than Dhuumfire does add to a Necromancer because the Engineer already got Burning from other sources. This means that Incendiary Powder is a lot weaker than Dhuumfire although they basically do the same. That is why you can’t balance Dhuumfire based on a comparison with Incendiary Powder (or probably Burning Precision).

The number of damaging conditions isn’t the only factor to determine how powerful a condition build of a class can be. Necromancers will still be very powerful in the condition department. Especially because of Fear although it might be scarcely applied. Because it buys you the time you need for your conditions to deal damage.

You now might argue that Engineers got knock downs/backs instead. True. But they will have to give up either damage (P/S instead of P/P) or a utility slot to get them while Necromancers always come with DS and most likely with a Staff.

The fact of the matter is you’re focusing on it being about burning rather than it being about damage. No matter what type of damage it does, it’s still an extra 1,400 damage condition at a master trait level with a low barrier. Compared to a high barrier, grandmaster trait that will do only 900 damage.

Crowd control is not the issue. That it applies burning at all is not the issue. It stacks with all those other sources of burning the engineer has applied already, it’s still going to do that damage.

This is only about a trait dealing damage. As it is now, dhuumfire already does less damage than incendiary powder as it only lasts 3 seconds to powder’s 4. After the change, it will be doing the same lower damage, just less frequently. All this will do is cement engineer as the alpha condition damage dealer.

I would much rather Dhuumfire get replaced by a trait that instead of doing burning damage on crit, does torment damage on crit with a 2-3 second cooldown. That would give necros more of an identity of stacking conditions rather than trying to vie with engineers as a burst condition profession. Not to mention we’d be maxing out stacks of a condition very few others apply. And instead of necros being punished by not having all those escapes others have, high torment stacking would let us punish all those people running circles around us.

When I brows the change logs I always look forward to reading some big novel changes that I could make a new build around.

Necro Duumfire being connected to life blast, I like it a lot as Its now in my control when to apply burning. Previously it was out of my control when I wanted to apply burst conditions and that is bad when I know an enemy has not used up its condi removal yet.

Sigils and Runes rework is exciting to me since I know I will be forced to study up on the latest and greatest rune abilities. Looking at new possibilities using 2 sigils on 2-handed builds is great.

My personal suggestion is to allow pet based builds to exist in a skill based way.
I started playing guild wars about a year ago thrilled to know that almost every profession has the ability to summon different kinds of allies in some form or another. Every change log since then I have been waiting to hear that summon duration have been removed from guardian and Elementalist summons OR a trait has been added to do so. I LOVE micro managing pets but I would also LOVE to do it on a class other than Necromancer which does it best in my opinion.

I feel there is a uniqueness between the classes and pets that would make each classes summon build different.
Example: Guardian pets all add meaning full support abilities that are ready to active provided you keep them alive and are spatially aware of where they are when you active them.
Necromancer pets shadow fiend and bone fiend apply important CC abilities but again you need to be spatially aware of where they are.
Elementalist pets would have an activated ability which is the skill they already do independently. It would be up to the Elementalist to choose which ability they will need most like additional support(Water/Earth) or damage (aoe fire/ranged air).

The key problem that I run into with summon builds on Guardian and Elementalist is that they have a limited effective up time because of the limited duration. Not to mention Elementalist pets are just summon and forget since you have no control over their abilities (non skillful play).

Please please look into this in the future and if your serious about adding this kind of build please let me know so I know if my constant forum browsing is worth it or “All is Vain”

I would much rather Dhuumfire get replaced by a trait that instead of doing burning damage on crit, does torment damage on crit with a 2-3 second cooldown. That would give necros more of an identity of stacking conditions rather than trying to vie with engineers as a burst condition profession. Not to mention we’d be maxing out stacks of a condition very few others apply. And instead of necros being punished by not having all those escapes others have, high torment stacking would let us punish all those people running circles around us.

this sounds so good

And instead of necros being punished by not having all those escapes others have, high torment stacking would let us punish all those people running circles around us.

And this sounds even better when read by Morgan Freeman!

Elementalist:
These changes are quite nice, but the regen on trident is really the only significant change to sustain. Burning speed can already be used to get out of the way of many attacks, frozen burst can not be chained with a waterfield on dagger or focus and armor of Earth’s cd was too long anyway.
What I would like to see, which could really help ele’s to survive is a change to the focus skills, especially fire. Flamewall is ok, but hard to use; a quality of life update could fix that. Fire shield is absolutely useless. Absolutely. Useless. It’s important to have access to an aura with focus because of traits, but I think there should be defensive skill in Fire on the focus. So:
-Change fire shield no matter what, to make getting hit while using it actually worth it
-Flamewall QoL update plz (wider field, field shape, etc.)
-Add a good defensive effect (CC, condi removal or boons) to either of these two skills.

I would think Flamewall could be used as an area control ability to deter melee enemies from getting to you.
I would think fire shield could be used to deter melee or ranged enemies form attacking you, like stunning aura does. (and no, the 1 sec burning is not enough).

However, I can understand that you want to wait with such changes until after sigil and rune changes have gone through, as being able to use 2 on-swap sigils might be a major buff to eles.
However, on the same subject, I hope you creat a few viable runes focusing on general boon duration

The good news is we have something to look forward to at least.

These last few “balance” updates have completely missed the mark.

It’s ridiculous that Rangers are still the bottom of the barrel, that Guardians are still pigeon holed into 1 playstyle, that thieves still have perma stealth and very low Risk/Reward Ratios, that Ele’s still have issues since their initial big nerf last year… the list goes on and on.

I’m not sure how much more “Constructive Feedback” you want Anet… we’ve been giving it to you since Beta and you still haven’t gotten it right, in the eyes of the general population… er, I mean, your forum community, for which you continually ask for our feedback then tell us we’re the minority and our opinions don’t matter.

/shrug.

April.

Dragonic Elemental.2674:

However, I can understand that you want to wait with such changes until after sigil and rune changes have gone through, as being able to use 2 on-swap sigils might be a major buff to eles.

only to staff since its the only 2 handed ele weapon.

I really hoped that ele scepter auto attacks might see a damage increase since they are so weak that attunement swapping is the only way for scepter to sustain comparable damage to other classes.

Amins.3710:

The good news is we have something to look forward to at least.

These last few “balance” updates have completely missed the mark.

It’s ridiculous that Rangers are still the bottom of the barrel, that Guardians are still pigeon holed into 1 playstyle, that thieves still have perma stealth and very low Risk/Reward Ratios, that Ele’s still have issues since their initial big nerf last year… the list goes on and on.

I’m not sure how much more “Constructive Feedback” you want Anet… we’ve been giving it to you since Beta and you still haven’t gotten it right, in the eyes of the general population… er, I mean, your forum community, for which you continually ask for our feedback then tell us we’re the minority and our opinions don’t matter.

/shrug.

April.

I’m assuming this is said completely from the perspective of WvW? If so, what you say makes sense. If you are talking about PvE or PvP, you are mostly wrong.

Xaylin.1860:

Snip

Consider then that between the time the proposed changes came out and now, people have already made viable and fact-based arguments in a constructive manner.

Amongst that, there has been a resounding consensus against tying Dhuumfire to DS, including that DS is used both for offensive and defensive purposes so having to dip into DS just to apply burning doesn’t make it skillful play but rather gimps players. That doesn’t make it worth the 30 point investment.

It’s identical to Incendiary Powder which is a Master trait. Can you argue then that it should still, after being nerfed, be in the Grandmaster tier?

See the quote below by Ghlitch

Ghlitch.8932:

Untraited engineers have access to 4 different damaging conditions (Bleed, Burn, Confuse, Poison) and these just with weapon skills. Untraited necromancers have access to 3 damaging conditions (Bleed, Poison, Torment) if you count death shroud as a weapon skill.

By default, engineers can do more damage than necromancers with conditions.

Dhuumfire gives us access to a fourth damage type just to bring us back on par with an untraited engineer. Terror gives us access to a fifth damage condition, but one that can only be scarcely applied.

Though I’d rather argue that by default, engineers have the potential to do more damage with conditions, I agree about the possibility of a GM trait that applies Torment instead of Burning. It saddens me that thieves have two channels for applying torment to necromancers’ one. I thought Torment was supposed to be the special condition for necros.

In Conclusion
Nobody is ever 100% right but some of these are strong fact-based arguments. It’s not a case of bias or people being objective. ANet considered what the Mesmer community said about the DE change and backtracked because it was too heavy handed; what irks me is that they haven’t seemed to take that on board in this case.

Nothing has changed in all that time. That the preview for Necromancers is the same now as it was then is disappointing.

Xaylin.1860:

That probably is a trade off you will have to make. While the Vigor change will affect Shatter Mesmers it is not the reason why they are not popular in PvP or PvE. You also might keep in mind that – when assuming the max. amount of Vigor uptime – you will only lose 3 clones per minute. If the fight only took 30s this would equal 1.5 clones. So in longer fight it will indeed add up and make a difference. In shorter fights it won’t.

You might keep in mind, that I did not state anywhere that this is the reason Mesmers are not popular.

Do I still it is problematic that the vigor change is introduced without any positive changes to make the profession desired in teams again. Yes I do.

Do I think the vigor change benefits the game overall? Defenitly.
I actually think it is a step in the right direction. I just don’t think they should normalize vigor without looking at the effect it will have for each class.

I do not think they should normalize for a class that is one of the underdogs without attempting to help the Mesmer stepping out of that role. Especially since balance patches do not happen that often.

The ferocity decision is possibly the worst decision made by ANET to date. It is basically them saying that they added too much power creep to the game and now want to nerf it back to where it was. Bad idea.

You are trying to solve a PvE warrior zerker issue. No one ever says “Hey, I’m looking for 5 zerker mesmers to run COF”. Fix the warrior issue. Not the crit damage.

Karl McLain.5604:

Critical Damage:

• We’re adding a new stat to the game called ferocity which affects your critical damage multiplier, similarly to how precision affects critical chance.

Why are you creating a new stat called ferocity when you already have a critical damage stat called Prowess

Karl McLain.5604:

• All existing percentage critical damage stats on gear and items will be converted into the appropriate amount of ferocity, which will then factor into your critical damage multiplier.

Then I take it that Celestial Armor’s ferocity/prowless will not be capped at the same value as all the other stats?

PVE Push and Pull
Pushing and pulling can be very annoying in PVE. I understand that those control skills are good for ranger, mesmer, ele, guardian for protection or bringing foes together but it is also annoying and frustrating. Lets say you attack a foe and theres a ranger coming into this fight and firing that foe out of your melee range. So this may also something one should into and re-balanced. Pushing/pulling range should be lowered.

how is Vampiric Master: Reduced the effectiveness of this trait by 10%. The healing portion of this trait will now scale with the necromancer’s healing power stat.
helping necros out in attrition ? if anything it destroys any attrition a necro would have to begin with . and you said that this was based on player feedback , who ? people who play necro or people who play other classes ? cause i for one did not ask for this , i asked for vampiric master to be stronger . not be made weaker !

style.6173:

Insanity.5174:

Elementalist.
Again the proof that you don’t want to hear a kitten about this class.

Thousands of topics about :
Revert the Ride The Lightning nerf.
Revert Cleansing water trait nerf.
Revert Cleansing wave trait nerf.
Revert Elemental Attunement trait nerf.
Buff Focus skills.
Buff Arcane shield,3 blocks every 75 seconds,wow.
Buff Glyphs.
Buff Signets.
Changing lingering elements trait because is useless.
Conjurer weapons like engi’s kits.
Buff Arcane Precision.grandmaster trait,wow.

You have NEVER talked about buffing any of this things,ty,really.

8% healing signet nerf,seriously?
how is possibile playing against a warrior that heals 1k every second.
how is possibile playing against a thief s/d that makes to you 3k-4k of autoattack,perma evades.
After 1 year of this stupid meta and after this “balance” notes i understand that there are no hopes for this game about pvp,do what you want with your broken game,i’m out like others already did it.

Don’t forget about the other side of ele changes that are needed as well. There needs to be an AOE circle for meteor shower and it needs to do less damage.

I agree eles need buffs, but they also need the two changes above as well.

They are removing tornado+meteor shower, you can stop complaining about it now.

Ghlitch.8932:

The fact of the matter is you’re focusing on it being about burning rather than it being about damage. No matter what type of damage it does, it’s still an extra 1,400 damage condition at a master trait level with a low barrier. Compared to a high barrier, grandmaster trait that will do only 900 damage.

Apparently you still didn’t get my point. No, it is not extra 1400 damage for the Engineer. At least not all the time. Because Engineers already get burning through many other sources and probably already applied burning.

For example, when using Rocket Boots, you get a very long burn from your toolbelt skill. When additionally using a Flamethrower or Bombs you will have even more burns. Blowtorch (P/P) on its own already has close to 50% burn uptime with some additional duration. Your target might be dead or might have cleansed the condition untill the burn of Incendiary Powder kicks in. Therefore, Incendiary Powder is a lot less appealing for an Engineer than Dhuumfire is for a Necro because the damage probably never takes place. Of course, this is not the case for all Engineer builds. But for many.

Usagi.4835:

Consider then that between the time the proposed changes came out and now, people have already made viable and fact-based arguments in a constructive manner.

Amongst that, there has been a resounding consensus against tying Dhuumfire to DS, including that DS is used both for offensive and defensive purposes so having to dip into DS just to apply burning doesn’t make it skillful play but rather gimps players. That doesn’t make it worth the 30 point investment.

It’s identical to Incendiary Powder which is a Master trait. Can you argue then that it should still, after being nerfed, be in the Grandmaster tier?

Whatever the thought process might be which let to the decisions of the devs, it is quite obvious that they consider it too strong and probably game breaking the way it is right now. I don’t think it is a good change. I never said that. But it fixes the issue of way of the intense condition damage without affecting anything else (which is the case with DE). This might be the reason why there has not been a change. Not because the devs didn’t listen. I’m sure they did.

I believe that a reasonable change would require it being moved to a different trait line. However, this apparently is something the devs don’t enjoy doing. Otherwise they would have done it already (e.g. Rangers and Traps).

Wether it should be a GM or not, we will have to see. We do not know specifics and there might be other changes which have not been announced. It might have to be lowered a tier and I already said that. However, I disagree with this Dhuumfire and Incendiary Powder comparison. Those traits have a totally different value for the two classes.

lazycalm.5186:

Ross Biddle.2367:

lazycalm.5186:

Is that all you got for THIEF? Poisons are useless atm anyway..

MESMERS – They will still be overpowered. A profession like this, with clone spamming abilities that distract the opposite player, should NOT be overpowered.

ENGINEERS – They are fine… the class which in my opinion requires the most skill to play and gets equally rewarded.

I love the PvP Engie main calling the Mesmer OP.

PvP engi main

wut?

He’s saying that it was quite suspicious how you’re so against mesmers while calling Engi (which right now is very strong due to condition meta) the most skilled class.

However you’ve only been playing about a month or so, and it isn’t that surprising that you’re having trouble against mesmer. The class’ greatest strength is inexperienced opponents.

Devs, if those are the only balance changes that we will have waited 5 months for, balance is going to become really easy, really really fast.

I would really like to know (since we really haven’t heard about this since before beta):

What is Anet’s stance on PVE control.

Right now, you cannot create a PvE character that is a really meaningful controller the way you can make a DPS character. Little bits of 2 sec root here, some slowdown there. the occasional .5 sec stun. Useless on bosses. It’s all extremely piecemeal & extremely boring. I really don’t care about PvP & feel the entire game is balanced based on it.
I’ve been playing a Control Wizard on Neverwinter Online & it’s super fun & effective. Will we ever really have a true control build in GW2? right now It’s pretty much non-existant & when it is effective it’s tiny, incremental, not very fun, hitches you put into mob movement & occasional interrupt.

haviz.1340:

kyubi.3620:

BLeh you just hate anything that actualy get trought a AI. Minion masters and ranger did nothing to you in pve why hate them so much? I think MM should hold a place of choice in a dungeon party.

Its prety much the world reversed
GW1 MM:
PVE: (We absolutely need one else we gunna get eaten by the mobs!)
PVP: (ahahaha look at the noob he got no corpse so he cant raise any minion then he try spamming echo aura of the lich!)

GW 2 MM:
PVE: (god that guy deals no damage and only cure cond while buffing regen kick it)
PVP: (OMG we are getting swarmed by minion heeeeelp meeeeeeeeee ‘’strangled voice with sound of massacre in background’’)

Pet is a build in its own right and deserve an actual niche in the game. Why a build would be destroyed so that yours can trive on the benefits of its death? Im sure Anet aim to make pet build as viable as other builds. They just have trouble doing it right.

Pet builds deserved to be used only by AI. AI controlled by AI, nothing else. Anet should murder those builds and never again make them viable. Game would become better, especially in pvp.

What did you do against pet builds in Rift,Warhammer Online, DAOC, EQ, WoW, UO, ect ect?

Terravos.4059:

haviz.1340:

kyubi.3620:

BLeh you just hate anything that actualy get trought a AI. Minion masters and ranger did nothing to you in pve why hate them so much? I think MM should hold a place of choice in a dungeon party.

Its prety much the world reversed
GW1 MM:
PVE: (We absolutely need one else we gunna get eaten by the mobs!)
PVP: (ahahaha look at the noob he got no corpse so he cant raise any minion then he try spamming echo aura of the lich!)

GW 2 MM:
PVE: (god that guy deals no damage and only cure cond while buffing regen kick it)
PVP: (OMG we are getting swarmed by minion heeeeelp meeeeeeeeee ‘’strangled voice with sound of massacre in background’’)

Pet is a build in its own right and deserve an actual niche in the game. Why a build would be destroyed so that yours can trive on the benefits of its death? Im sure Anet aim to make pet build as viable as other builds. They just have trouble doing it right.

Pet builds deserved to be used only by AI. AI controlled by AI, nothing else. Anet should murder those builds and never again make them viable. Game would become better, especially in pvp.

What did you do against pet builds in Rift,Warhammer Online, DAOC, EQ, WoW, UO, ect ect?

whined on their forums, i’d bet.

looking forward to the rune/sigil revision, but there’d better be 5x more skill/trait improvements than is shown here.

waiting 4-5 months between balance patches for a handful of small changes to skill/trait balance (like the last one) is horribly timid/inadequate for a game that still has so many useless and misplaced traits/skills.

class balance is truly the weakest link in this game right now….no time to be timid.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

style.6173:

Insanity.5174:

Elementalist.
Again the proof that you don’t want to hear a kitten about this class.

Thousands of topics about :
Revert the Ride The Lightning nerf.
Revert Cleansing water trait nerf.
Revert Cleansing wave trait nerf.
Revert Elemental Attunement trait nerf.
Buff Focus skills.
Buff Arcane shield,3 blocks every 75 seconds,wow.
Buff Glyphs.
Buff Signets.
Changing lingering elements trait because is useless.
Conjurer weapons like engi’s kits.
Buff Arcane Precision.grandmaster trait,wow.

You have NEVER talked about buffing any of this things,ty,really.

8% healing signet nerf,seriously?
how is possibile playing against a warrior that heals 1k every second.
how is possibile playing against a thief s/d that makes to you 3k-4k of autoattack,perma evades.
After 1 year of this stupid meta and after this “balance” notes i understand that there are no hopes for this game about pvp,do what you want with your broken game,i’m out like others already did it.

Don’t forget about the other side of ele changes that are needed as well. There needs to be an AOE circle for meteor shower and it needs to do less damage.

I agree eles need buffs, but they also need the two changes above as well.

They are removing tornado+meteor shower, you can stop complaining about it now.

You see that where?

and that still doesn’t resolve the no circle issue. Anyway, this skill is fine in WvW and PvE, but needs a nerf in conquest. It takes zero still to sit far away and launch meteor shower against someone who is defending a point.

The stunning lack of changes here after months and months of constructive feedback is pretty amazing. For Elementalist feedback, you should look at the posts by oZii.2864 scattered all over the Elementalist forums. I think this is far too little, far too late.

Like Amins said in the thread earlier:

/shrug

April.

Disappointing in terms of profession balance.

Engineers and Rangers need major buffs in terms of their power builds. Rangers are outright horrible for power with clunky weapons and useless utility skills. Engineers have some decent power builds but all suffer from extremely low damage (ex. turrets, flamethrower) or bugs (ex. static discharge).

Thieves… I don’t know what the goal with thieves are but they’re too single target focused in my opinion. Same can be with rangers but rangers are much worse at it.

Elementalists are not as bad as people are making them out. The changes coming to them are welcome though.

Guardians are whatever. They need plenty of help in the condi department but I’m not expecting anything done with that for a while.

Mesmers and Necros are in the best place of all the professions. Both very viable for power and condition builds, and both balanced well in each for the most part. Mesmers could use more damage on main hand sword and their stealth skills could be toned down. For necros, I’m not sure how I feel about the dhuumfire change but if it does go through, the cast time on Life Blast should be lowered.

Warriors are overpowered. Insane stability, blocking, regen, mobility, invulnerability, damage, immobilize, stuns, all on top of their very high base stats. Not to mention their amazing for support and also very, very good as a condi class. I’d say one of the best. I’d like to see how much the pin down nerf will effect them.

well u just made the warior ussles ty arena net i wount be playing your game anymore cuz its the only class that got kitten utility for skills and its braind dead class the only thing that worked was war=war u go into fight u need to have sustain and dmg cuz war got low epic low mobility or it have great mobility whit greatsword but its epic ussles in PVP the rest of the weapon skill=broken ,u nerfed hammer u nerfed healing u nerfed bow u nerfed mace pls tell me what build i can play and i can acctualy kill mesmer ,ele,thief i got no chanse to even GET close !!!!this is terrible nerfing even crit AHAHah well i got evry class in this game and im playing them all havy war is my main but u just made that class epic bad EPIC bad

In response to Warrior Healing Signet:
I think Healing Signet should have class specific mechanics in it like the Mesmer’s Signet of Ether or the Necromancer’s Signet of Vampirism. Their base heals are strong on their own, however their passives are good in their own situations causing you to choose between when to use the active or passive. I recommend something like this: Healing Signet’s base active heal will be raised 3800 and will now passively heal you based on the amount of adrenaline you have. At max adrenaline it will heal for 400 a tick. The lower the adrenaline, the lower the passive heal. This will encourage warriors to asess the situation and decide whether or not its worth losing the strong passive heal. With a change like this it also prevent certain builds from spamming their burst abilities or risk losing their sustain. In addition to this change, warriors “Adrenal Health” minor trait from 15 in defense should be changed to granting Regen while in combat. Something like 2000 health over 6 sec with the trait having a 3 sec CD. The regen will be able to stack on itself for longer duration. By having the 3 sec CD on the trait, it will promote skillful play in the sense that if the warriors regen has been taken down and his burst has been used, he is no longer receiving heals which leaves him open for attacks (or bursts). It will also encourage counter play through skillful boon removal IE: no more boon removal spams

DISCLAIMER
The numbers I used are purely for the sake of example. If any of my suggestions were to be used or taken into consideration, please be aware that they will change at the devs discretion.