Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/preview-of-upcoming-balance-changes/

So ele is getting nerfed pretty hard in the upcoming changes, the D/D specs will suffer the most but it’s a well needed change imo. Might is getting an overall nerf, on top of that so is Sigil of Battle. Though its good to see some well needed Scepter buffs.
Opinions?

Ele didn’t need a nerf. I don’t see where the changes for D/D were necessary. I don’t play D/D & I still don’t think the nerf was necessary- They need to explain better why it was necessary. They seem to want more D/F, Staff & scepter/X, it’s like you wanna play a spec for fun or because you like it- anet nerfs it bc they don’t want you to play it.

DD cele needed a nerf in PvP.

Might nerf was necessary as well to get rid of the easy power stacking dps of tanky classes (hambow / cele ele / engi / etc)

Stow wep spam was obviously a necessary fix.

tl;dr: Balance patches based off PvP mostly, they look at the PvP cele meta.

Seems like D/D will get a much needed nerf while scepter is getting buffed, and exploits are being fixed. Seems like an overall win with sensible changes.

This is more of a way to deal with ppl using an exploration then a nerf if too many eles use this then it was going to get fixed and the main way to fix it IS to punish just getting the first attk of LW out. So thank should be aimed at ppl who used macro for LW and yes they should feel responsible.

Chasind.3128:

Ele didn’t need a nerf. I don’t see where the changes for D/D were necessary. I don’t play D/D & I still don’t think the nerf was necessary- They need to explain better why it was necessary. They seem to want more D/F, Staff & scepter/X, it’s like you wanna play a spec for fun or because you like it- anet nerfs it bc they don’t want you to play it.

Because of 2 reason.

1) D/D cele elementalist was on the top of the sPvP list like the cele Engineer. With the might nerf, there are both tune down a bit to make them more equal to other profession.
2) The Lightning whip exploit needed to be fix. An exploit that double the healing shouldn’t exist in the game.

As someone else pointed out, LW got a buff…

1.15s cast to .95s cast (~17% reduction) with a 10% reduction in damage.

Just thought it was worth pointing out. No more exploit but a higher DPS potential.

Jerus.4350:

As someone else pointed out, LW got a buff…

1.15s cast to .95s cast (~17% reduction) with a 10% reduction in damage.

Just thought it was worth pointing out. No more exploit but a higher DPS potential.

Is that for both hits or just the one (seeing how the full cast of LW is 2 hits)?

It’s nice that D/D pvp eles means that staff eles get nerfed bigtime. If anything, eles should now get some extra hp to compensate.

All risk and heaven forbid they get any reward…

But Killshot warrior will 1-shot you almost twice faster… yay!

I’m really concerned about the lw nerf for pve, I see why they did it for pvp. Are you sure it’s a buff? I don’t want to be forced into staff

Azure.8670:

I’m really concerned about the lw nerf for pve, I see why they did it for pvp. Are you sure it’s a buff? I don’t want to be forced into staff

Why did you have to make another thread? But anyway. It buff your speed attack by 17% and nerf your dmg by 10%. Make your own conclusion.

I doubt there’ll be changes based on feedback so let’s get working on new builds. My sPvP ele’s gonna lose about 4 stacks of might from the Sigil of Battle nerf (140 power) and another 30 from the remaining stacks…that’s 170 power. Any idea how I can compensate that? I mean, it’s not like I’m winning many duels with my staff ele as it is…so any advice would be appreciated.

Mistress of Trade.8746:

I doubt there’ll be changes based on feedback so let’s get working on new builds. My sPvP ele’s gonna lose about 4 stacks of might from the Sigil of Battle nerf (140 power) and another 30 from the remaining stacks…that’s 170 power. Any idea how I can compensate that? I mean, it’s not like I’m winning many duels with my staff ele as it is…so any advice would be appreciated.

So aim for fury over might and build for perma fury in mind. The other side will have less might too and there no build in the game atm that dose not run might in one way or another.

The balance changes seem fairly reasonable, even reserved, and the nerf to Battle and Might will hit many specs and classes, not just ele. From some of the previous threads discussing a shave to ele dps, the reduction to Burning uptime from Drake’s Breath was easily the best recommendation, and I’m glad to see they went that route.

As for Lightning Whip, like others have pointed out, the net gain appears to be in ele’s favor. Although I never really saw the stow weapon exploit actively used, a fix to that is a welcome change.

Jerus.4350:

As someone else pointed out, LW got a buff…

1.15s cast to .95s cast (~17% reduction) with a 10% reduction in damage.

Just thought it was worth pointing out. No more exploit but a higher DPS potential.

Yep this is exactly what I understood from reading the preview patch, but I am always a bit suspicious…

Will this make the sigil of forces better to use then battle?
Heck even Superior Sigil of Strength may be better to use now.

So basically the elementalist got nerfed and the thief and warrior got major buffs (mesmer too)

Or to be more precise:
current ele meta will get nerfed
current thief meta will get buffed

I already have 90% of my deaths be because of OP thieves and now this…
Goodbye pvp. Don’t think I’ll bring my ele to see you anytime soon.

^ typical

Did you Even read the thief “buffs”?
Noone plays with These utilities

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

So basically the elementalist got nerfed and the thief and warrior got major buffs (mesmer too)

Or to be more precise:
current ele meta will get nerfed
current thief meta will get buffed

I already have 90% of my deaths be because of OP thieves and now this…
Goodbye pvp. Don’t think I’ll bring my ele to see you anytime soon.

Dude. There will be a nerf to LW abuse and drake’s breath. Drake’s breath needed it, and so did LW. Will this change anything regarding how efficient the ele is? Nope.

I like the changes. Might stacking obviously needed to be a bit less effective, and that includes might stacking with sigil of battle. Drakes breath was a bit strong especially when you get that extra burn duration.

I just wish there would have been more buffs or at least changes to the other weapon sets. If only just for something new.

Most changes I felt were fair, execpt the drake’s breath nerf seems too hard. 33% nerf to burn duration is huge, given you can only apply it in one attunement and don’t have that many cover conditions compared to other classes. Ele can’t stack bleed high so burning is our main source of condition damage. 2.5s per tick would be much more fair.

D/D did not need a nerf. Once again devs nerf eles while leaving the true op classes alone.

I fully believe these adjustments are well deserved and help with build diversity for our eles

Engi wasn’t nerfed hard enough. Only took a hit from the nerf to might and everything else was left unchanged.

/sadface.

Kagamiku.9731:

Engi wasn’t nerfed hard enough. Only took a hit from the nerf to might and everything else was left unchanged.

/sadface.

Shrapnel Grenade: Bleed duration on this skill has been reduced from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.

Feel free to continue complaining if you want, just pointing out that they did get that nerfed.

Dev note:

We’ve been able to clean up Lightning Whip a bit, preventing it from being exploited while rewarding elementalists for completing the attack.

Dev confirmed stowing Lightning Whip for extra healing is an exploit.

Jerus.4350:

Kagamiku.9731:

Engi wasn’t nerfed hard enough. Only took a hit from the nerf to might and everything else was left unchanged.

/sadface.

Shrapnel Grenade: Bleed duration on this skill has been reduced from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.

Feel free to continue complaining if you want, just pointing out that they did get that nerfed.

Too insignificant to even consider.

pffff typically some brainkittened anet in action over here, celestial overpowered? then lets nerf a complete class instead of focussing on nerfing celestial. The OP thing about celestial is only happening in PvP so a very easy solution would be to reduce the amount of extra stats you get from celestial (atm 37% more) celestial is no problem for PvE or WvW.
With the current update elementalist, which heavily depends on blast finishers and might stacking in general, gets an unjustified major disadvantage in comparrison to other classes. having ~18 stacks of might including battle sigil will already result in a drop of 4×30+18x5=210 power, that’s almost 10% of your total damage!??? while for instance the necro (the other rangebomb wvw class) doesn’t have nearly as much might uptime. and therefore doesn’t suffer as much as the elementalist, however the necro already was considered to be the stronger casterclass since the latest elementalist nerfs (in wvw), let alone the fact that they have 8k more basehealth.

yes i understand that some people found it very annoying that the d/d ele was able to deal alot of damage while wearing celestial armor however completely destroying a weaponcombination because you refuse to listen and agree that celestial armor has to much stats in PvP. Drakes breath is a nice skill in pvp when running with cele armor however in PvE and WvW it’s not a great skill anyways the burning duration is pretty long, however the skill also has quite a long casting time and can easily be reduced in cooldown/removed etc.

Last but not least i can understand anet that they didn’t want players to get double hp of the LW, however the class has already been balanced out for that. If you want to nerf the LW healing, then atleast compensate it by increasing the amount of hp gain by signet of restoration. For example, comparing healing signet with signet of restoration you can see that healing signet is superior in every single aspect.

Anet WHY do you nerf might, a boon which brought gw2 to a whole new lvl by extra buffing up, mightstacking etc, why do you tend to totally destroy the remainings of the what ones upon the time was called an elementalist. do you want a ranger 2.0? and at last, why do you always tend to make high base hp/armor and easy to play classes have higher dps then harder to play low base hp/armor classes. Please start using your mind and start focusing at the bottomline of the problem (cele stats OP in pvp) instead of mindlessly attacking innocent gamers who bought all kinds of gear and runes/sigils to just completely make these items worthless. and play along time to master their own builds only to see anet totally destroy the chances of actually competing with the rest

oh btw anet if you really want to go on with this embarrassing update, can you atleast send me 1000g+ of cash to compensate me for making my armors and runes totally a piece of crap??

the krytan assassin.9235:

pffff typically some brainkittened anet in action over here, celestial overpowered? then lets nerf a complete class instead of focussing on nerfing celestial. The OP thing about celestial is only happening in PvP so a very easy solution would be to reduce the amount of extra stats you get from celestial (atm 37% more) celestial is no problem for PvE or WvW.
With the current update elementalist, which heavily depends on blast finishers and might stacking in general, gets an unjustified major disadvantage in comparrison to other classes. having ~18 stacks of might including battle sigil will already result in a drop of 4×30+18x5=210 power, that’s almost 10% of your total damage!??? while for instance the necro (the other rangebomb wvw class) doesn’t have nearly as much might uptime. and therefore doesn’t suffer as much as the elementalist, however the necro already was considered to be the stronger casterclass since the latest elementalist nerfs (in wvw), let alone the fact that they have 8k more basehealth.

yes i understand that some people found it very annoying that the d/d ele was able to deal alot of damage while wearing celestial armor however completely destroying a weaponcombination because you refuse to listen and agree that celestial armor has to much stats in PvP. Drakes breath is a nice skill in pvp when running with cele armor however in PvE and WvW it’s not a great skill anyways the burning duration is pretty long, however the skill also has quite a long casting time and can easily be reduced in cooldown/removed etc.

Last but not least i can understand anet that they didn’t want players to get double hp of the LW, however the class has already been balanced out for that. If you want to nerf the LW healing, then atleast compensate it by increasing the amount of hp gain by signet of restoration. For example, comparing healing signet with signet of restoration you can see that healing signet is superior in every single aspect.

Anet WHY do you nerf might, a boon which brought gw2 to a whole new lvl by extra buffing up, mightstacking etc, why do you tend to totally destroy the remainings of the what ones upon the time was called an elementalist. do you want a ranger 2.0? and at last, why do you always tend to make high base hp/armor and easy to play classes have higher dps then harder to play low base hp/armor classes. Please start using your mind and start focusing at the bottomline of the problem (cele stats OP in pve) instead of mindlessly attacking innocent gamers who bought all kinds of gear and runes/sigils to just completely make these items worthless. and play along time to master their own builds only to see anet totally destroy the chances of actually competing with the rest

oh btw anet if you really want to go on with this embarrassing update, can you atleast send me 1000g+ of cash to compensate me for making my armors and runes totally a piece of crap??

I agree every word…

I main ele, but I agree that the might boon change was ok. In pve it makes dungeons a bit harder (still braindead easy but now people can stack less power) and wvw bombs weaker. In spvp that also means classes like mesmer are doing less dmg in their burst, becuase 9stacks of might from mirror blade, engis, warriors, all across the board less dmg output.

But I think the sigil of battle nerf was too strong.

LW exploit fix is great.

Also their are buffing some underused skills.

xDudisx.5914:

I main ele, but I agree that the might boon change was ok. In pve it makes dungeons a bit harder (still braindead easy but now people can stack less power) and wvw bombs weaker. In spvp that also means classes like mesmer are doing less dmg in their burst, becuase 9stacks of might from mirror blade, engis, warriors, all across the board less dmg output.

But I think the sigil of battle nerf was too strong.

LW exploit fix is great.

Also their are buffing some underused skills.

Might reduction is not gonna make dungeons harder in any way, the only difference is gonna be that the fight takes instead of 10 seconds now 11 seconds. It’s true the community begs for hard content and for me being an old hardcore pve’er i also totally understand them, to provide harder content they should however make more interesting combat styles, higher boss dmge+hp and so on, but Anet refuses to do so because they’re afraid of 8 year olds not able to play the endgame anymore and therefore they’ll never do it.
In terms of PvP i can’t say that much, i hated PvP from day 1 because of the lack of stats and antipvp builds such as bunkers just to maintain a point.
For WvW i can say that most of the players would love to have a damage buff instead. We like to play a fast game, deadly when not paying attention. As far as i know every single betaplayer i met still thinks back of the good old days be4 ferocity and tornado nerfs. Also further decreasing dmge would make it even harder to kill omniblobs @ WvW

Also as mentioned in my earlier post anet has balanced the game around the current skills and sigils etc. Making big nerfs such as LW double heal fix and battle sigil nerf can only be done if Elementalist used to be OP. In the current situation elementalist aint OP and therefore you can only fix these “bugs” by providing alternatives/compensation.

me gusta scepter buffs
although I never noticed a lack of accuracy on the focus comet skill

These changes should be pvp ONLY. Totally unnecessary nerfs for wvw where condi bunkers are already dominant. These nerfs just further widen the gap between power builds and OP condi bunkers that can already burst as hard as zerker specs without any of the risk and without the need of might.

Anet doesn’t seem to understand the risk vs reward concept. This is just going to kill ele for anything competitive unless you use an easy mode signet condi build and just sit in earth spamming 1. And where’s the fun in that? Anet seems to want to remove anything that takes any sort of effort to use and reward mindless no-skill gameplay. Everyone become a condi bunker, that’s basically what this patch is saying.

They REALLY need to fire the current balance team because they clearly have no clue what they’re doing. All the stuff they changed was only a problem in spvp so why not confine these idiotic changes to spvp only since that was the source of all the whining to begin with?

See, this is why i was always against the reward tracks in spvp to begin with. All the pvers go in there to get loot now and get destroyed by things they don’t understand, then whine and ask for nerfs on things that don’t need to be nerfed.

More and more, Anet is beginning to remind me of Blizzard. And not in a good way. I’m sure some of you remember Jay Wilson and how badly he screwed up D3 with all his asinine changes that he never thought through and refused to listen to the community and was ruinning Blizzards reputation before they wised up and fired his kitten . Yeah, that’s pretty much Anet’s current balance team. A bunch of Jay Wilsons.

D/D did not need a nerf. Once again devs nerf eles while leaving the true op classes alone.

Engi wasn’t nerfed hard enough. Only took a hit from the nerf to might and everything else was left unchanged.

/sadface.

These changes should be pvp ONLY. Totally unnecessary nerfs for wvw where condi bunkers are already dominant. These nerfs just further widen the gap between power builds and OP condi bunkers that can already burst as hard as zerker specs without any of the risk and without the need of might.

QFT

Seeing the ridicoulus balance work done in this game, I will now feel even less shame (or no shame at all) playing my broken perplexity/condition signet ele which is both, easier to play and 2x stronger than d/d cele ele in wvw. If arenanet WANTS me to play cheesy, that’s what I’ll do. They make the game, they make the rules.

Oh, and I just wanted to point out that a 17% reduction of casting time of lightning whip means 20,75% of damage increase since the attack rate has increased by this value. So overall we get +10% dmg for d/f builds which is nice for pve.

Nice changes,thou might stacking could need a bit more nerfing.Maybe let it buff just one dmg stat not condie and power and decrease the might duration overall.

And something should be done with our shield,kitten ,any1 tryed to use it in WvW/PvP.Its pretty terrible conjure.

^The last thing that was needed was a nerf to might. Its hard enough already to burst down a condi bunker, that can not only outdamage you, but also out tank you if you’re using a power build. Condi builds never relied on might anyway to be op, power builds did. this is an indirect buff to already op condi bunkers.

the krytan assassin.9235:

xDudisx.5914:

I main ele, but I agree that the might boon change was ok. In pve it makes dungeons a bit harder (still braindead easy but now people can stack less power) and wvw bombs weaker. In spvp that also means classes like mesmer are doing less dmg in their burst, becuase 9stacks of might from mirror blade, engis, warriors, all across the board less dmg output.

But I think the sigil of battle nerf was too strong.

LW exploit fix is great.

Also their are buffing some underused skills.

Might reduction is not gonna make dungeons harder in any way, the only difference is gonna be that the fight takes instead of 10 seconds now 11 seconds. It’s true the community begs for hard content and for me being an old hardcore pve’er i also totally understand them, to provide harder content they should however make more interesting combat styles, higher boss dmge+hp and so on, but Anet refuses to do so because they’re afraid of 8 year olds not able to play the endgame anymore and therefore they’ll never do it.
In terms of PvP i can’t say that much, i hated PvP from day 1 because of the lack of stats and antipvp builds such as bunkers just to maintain a point.
For WvW i can say that most of the players would love to have a damage buff instead. We like to play a fast game, deadly when not paying attention. As far as i know every single betaplayer i met still thinks back of the good old days be4 ferocity and tornado nerfs. Also further decreasing dmge would make it even harder to kill omniblobs @ WvW

Also as mentioned in my earlier post anet has balanced the game around the current skills and sigils etc. Making big nerfs such as LW double heal fix and battle sigil nerf can only be done if Elementalist used to be OP. In the current situation elementalist aint OP and therefore you can only fix these “bugs” by providing alternatives/compensation.

Well going from 10 seconds to 11 seconds would be making the fights 10% longer = harder.

Something taking longer doesn’t make it harder. It just makes it more boring, which leads to people looking for ways to skip and exploit things to reduce the amount of time they spend doing boring content. So no, this wont make dungeons harder. They need to improve enemy AI and stop nerfing all the fun stuff and making it more boring than it already is.

Nikkinella.8254:

Something taking longer doesn’t make it harder. It just makes it more boring, which leads to people looking for ways to skip and exploit things to reduce the amount of time they spend doing boring content. So no, this wont make dungeons harder. They need to improve enemy AI and stop nerfing all the fun stuff and making it more boring than it already is.

+1 wasn’t enough, I had to quote it.

Nikkinella.8254:

Something taking longer doesn’t make it harder. It just makes it more boring, which leads to people looking for ways to skip and exploit things to reduce the amount of time they spend doing boring content. So no, this wont make dungeons harder. They need to improve enemy AI and stop nerfing all the fun stuff and making it more boring than it already is.

By that logic they could just give you the gold to avoid people trying to exploit. People that are not stacking perma 25 stacks of might will hardly see any difference. If it takes longer, yes it becomes harder. Because it gives more time for the boss to kill you. Of course only 125 less power make a big difference but is one nice step in the right direction. Also they buffed some stuff like confusion.

In spvp everyone running celestial is as bad as everyone running zerker in pve. Anet has been taking a steps in the right direction in the last updates.

Look at all the new content:

-some bosses that you cant crit
-some bosses in SW that have very high armor
-10% dmg with critical dmg→ferocity change
-new stat combinations
-and now less dmg for might stack
-etc

People can still kill bosses solo and in very short time. This shows how braindead easy the bosses still are. Reducing overall dps output or making bosses have more armor is always good.

Let’s talk about the argument stating that longer fights mean harder fights because you are exposed to danger for more time therefore you are more likely to fail.

Technically it is true.

But let’s look at this from a decision making perspective. After all this is what gaming is all about: making the right decision in the right moment.

If fights takes longer but the fight does not change, you are more likely to fail overall, but instant by instant the difficulty remains the same. You are only repeating the challenge that arose instants ago. This is why it feels like fake difficulty. It is like increasing stats of mobs etc, it is very superficial.

The underlying difficulty, in contrast, comes from how different the outcome of a good decision is compared to the outcome of a bad decision at any given moment. Increasing the length of fights does not change the value of instantaneous decision making. The only thing that increases the underlying difficulty of a fight is enemy design, gambits, etc.

Look at successful games, all of them focus on a healthy mix of both difficulty sources. But in GW2 we get an increasing proportion of superficial difficulty. This is why our complaints are strongly grounded.

^exactly. In some older MMOs, bosses would enrage when they got low on health and their attack patterns would completely change. Monster Hunter does something similar to that as well. That’s actual difficulty, not the fake difficulty we have in this game by them making classes weaker and buffing the stats of monsters that all are just boring giant hp sponges with no interesting mechanics. They could always try something like that. That would be actual difficulty, not fake difficulty from just making a an already easy fight boring by making it longer. You make it longer, you don’t make it harder. It only seems harder because it takes so kitten long, you get tired, fingers cramp up, etc. That’s a horrible way to design a game.

^I guess a lot of you guys are still at Stage 2 on the 5 stages of grief.

In any case, Arenanet over the past year hired a contractor who specializes in A.I design to work on what we now know to be on an expac. The point being fake difficulty or argument might be moot point.

In any case nerfing might had to be done, obviously the elementalist should have received some buff but don’t make it seem like the game revolves around the ele.

Nikkinella.8254:

^exactly. In some older MMOs, bosses would enrage when they got low on health and their attack patterns would completely change. Monster Hunter does something similar to that as well. That’s actual difficulty, not the fake difficulty we have in this game by them making classes weaker and buffing the stats of monsters that all are just boring giant hp sponges with no interesting mechanics. They could always try something like that. That would be actual difficulty, not fake difficulty from just making a an already easy fight boring by making it longer. You make it longer, you don’t make it harder. It only seems harder because it takes so kitten long, you get tired, fingers cramp up, etc. That’s a horrible way to design a game.

It is not like it is taking 30min to kill a boss or so. It takes a few seconds longer.

Nikkinella.8254:

^The last thing that was needed was a nerf to might. Its hard enough already to burst down a condi bunker, that can not only outdamage you, but also out tank you if you’re using a power build. Condi builds never relied on might anyway to be op, power builds did. this is an indirect buff to already op condi bunkers.

Actually,i see it quite opposite.Might stacking allows tankie builds to dish solid DPS

Xillllix.3485:

But Killshot warrior will 1-shot you almost twice faster… yay!

who actually plays this?

Michael.9517:

Xillllix.3485:

But Killshot warrior will 1-shot you almost twice faster… yay!

who actually plays this?

The point is that they are buffing stuff that no one uses to see if they get more usage.

I only have one question, if you nerf a glass cannon, what do you have left? Just the glass?

lol I’m just jking, bunker spec here I come, 1 button spam for the win!!!!! Well until I get bored and go do something else that is…

Rahmakii.3962:

I only have one question, if you nerf a glass cannon, what do you have left? Just the glass?

lol I’m just jking, bunker spec here I come, 1 button spam for the win!!!!! Well until I get bored and go do something else that is…

Zerker specs dont really have enough time to stack a lot of might on ele anyways. Check out gnomez vids on youtube. He runes a high dps d/d ele and doesn’t even bother stacking might. It is better to keep applying pressure to enemies.