Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133104

Bringing up Engineer:

Engineer:
We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity. We also wanted to take out some of the random effects for some of the class’s traits. The biggest change here is allowing Modified Ammunition to work with any skills so that an engineer, regardless of build, can look at putting 30 points into firearms. By increasing the swiftness duration on Speedy Kits, we hope to allow Swiftness to be maintained more reasonably without having to constantly be swapping between Kits. This change will also bring down the total up time for Vigor due to its interaction with Invigorating Speed. We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.
•Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
•Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%
•Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.
•Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.
•Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
•Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. * Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.
•Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.
•Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
•Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
•Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
•Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds

Very interesting stuff there.

•Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.

•Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Thats one way to promote build diversity I guess. Nerfing almost all of our specs… At least its not just our perma vigor being nerfed though.

I can accept incendiary powder going up since its so good. But it ruins my non HGH might stacking spec I just farmed these runes of the noble for!!

Still not convinced about modified ammunition.

welp no more permanent vigor. i’m sad

Well, it’ll be nice to have an extra 10 Trait points to throw around, as a full set of Turret traits now only costs 50 of 70 points.

If only they bloody worked.

Shigh, now boon stealing will be even more powerful since the duration of swiftness is increased…

As for modifed ammo: meaning that I’ll be dealing more damage with granade as well?!?

With the buff to Modified Ammunition and the nerf to Speedy Kits 25+/30 will properly become the new meta.

These changes seem kind of underwhelming from a PvP standpoint, minus the Vigor nerf which is pretty significant.

I’m just not seeing Modified Ammunition making Firearms worth a 30 point dump. Even from a PvE DPS perspective it doesn’t seem worthwhile.

Vajra.3914:

As for modifed ammo: meaning that I’ll be dealing more damage with granade as well?!?

Seems like it, although that means you’ll need to go 30 into explosives and 30 into firearms to get that, unless you’re crazy and don’t take grenadier.

These are some pretty significant nerfs.

Inc Powder is now Master tier. Meaning it competes with Enh. Performance, Short fuse and explosive powder. So you can pick your Burn, but then you wont get 3xmight on heal or 20% cd reduction on bombs+grenades.
That alone is a pretty heavy nerf, it also leaves Adept tier pretty light on usefull traits if youre not running bombkit.

The nerf to Speedy Kits, because it is kitten well a nerf, also hurts a lot. We lose out on perma-vigor which was really a big deal to help stay alive. Guess ill just drop those 10 points and put em elsewhere.
The 10sec cd/10sec duration is a minor convenience at this point for people who by now swap every 5sec anyway as its hardwired into all of us by now. However, losing that Swiftness to a corrupt/steal is going to hurt a lot more till the next one is available.

And at the same time, none of the real issues have even been touched. The massive bloat on Turret traits, the utter lack of Gadget traits and so on.
Its funny how they talk about maintaining the engineer core-role, even tough they never even defined what that is. And they want to increase build diversity, but from the looks of things this is going to decrease build diversity.

Maderas.9741:

These changes seem kind of underwhelming from a PvP standpoint, minus the Vigor nerf which is pretty significant.

I’m just not seeing Modified Ammunition making Firearms worth a 30 point dump. Even from a PvE DPS perspective it doesn’t seem worthwhile.

I’ve often used it in a 10/30/0/30/0 p/p HGH build with a mix of carrion and rabid gear. Since carrion gear provides some decent power, the bonus gained by modified ammunition is more powerful, which can allow me to put out some consistently strong condition damage as well as direct damage.

I think it might have a place in a ft/eg specialized build, though no one will have played around with it before since it never gave bonuses to those weapons.

Terrahero.9358:

Inc Powder is now Master tier.

I am a bit interested to see what will happen as result of this. I am not actually surprised it is moved to the master tier because it was arguably one of the bests traits in the entire explosives line that could be acquired by 10-dipping.

For instance, 3 out of the 5 specs I consistently run put 10 into explosives for incendiary powder. One is my SD burst build, which won’t really be affected by this since other options are easily available. Another is my ft/eg healing-support build, which will take a nice DPS hit but isn’t the crux of it. It will really hurt my p/p roamer spec though, which ran 10/30/0/30/0 and really benefited from that extra burning on crit.

As far as competing with traits like short fuse, one could always take shrapnel instead. I believe there was some calculations presented at one point which showed that shrapnel is actually better than incendiary powder provided most attacking is done with grenades and the fight lasts longer than 15-20 seconds. So I am not sure it will strongly affect grenade users.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Terrahero.9358:

Inc Powder is now Master tier.

I am a bit interested to see what will happen as result of this. I am not actually surprised it is moved to the master tier because it was arguably one of the bests traits in the entire explosives line that could be acquired by 10-dipping.

For instance, 3 out of the 5 specs I consistently run put 10 into explosives for incendiary powder. One is my SD burst build, which won’t really be affected by this since other options are easily available. Another is my ft/eg healing-support build, which will take a nice DPS hit but isn’t the crux of it. It will really hurt my p/p roamer spec though, which ran 10/30/0/30/0 and really benefited from that extra burning on crit.

As far as competing with traits like short fuse, one could always take shrapnel instead. I believe there was some calculations presented at one point which showed that shrapnel is actually better than incendiary powder provided most attacking is done with grenades and the fight lasts longer than 15-20 seconds. So I am not sure it will strongly affect grenade users.

The issue is that it really screws non-grenade condition users, which is a popular build in PvP. I’m not sure what I’m going to spec now, because the fact that Incendiary Powder is competing with Enhance Performance costs me a lot of my damage potential.

Disappointing. I wish our power builds were more impressive.

Terrahero.9358:

These are some pretty significant nerfs.

Inc Powder is now Master tier. Meaning it competes with Enh. Performance, Short fuse and explosive powder. So you can pick your Burn, but then you wont get 3xmight on heal or 20% cd reduction on bombs+grenades.
That alone is a pretty heavy nerf, it also leaves Adept tier pretty light on usefull traits if youre not running bombkit.

The nerf to Speedy Kits, because it is kitten well a nerf, also hurts a lot. We lose out on perma-vigor which was really a big deal to help stay alive. Guess ill just drop those 10 points and put em elsewhere.
The 10sec cd/10sec duration is a minor convenience at this point for people who by now swap every 5sec anyway as its hardwired into all of us by now. However, losing that Swiftness to a corrupt/steal is going to hurt a lot more till the next one is available.

And at the same time, none of the real issues have even been touched. The massive bloat on Turret traits, the utter lack of Gadget traits and so on.
Its funny how they talk about maintaining the engineer core-role, even tough they never even defined what that is. And they want to increase build diversity, but from the looks of things this is going to decrease build diversity.

I agree. They should have moved something better into the adept line… would have softened the blow a bit. Not sure what to take in that spot now that will be much of any use

Maderas.9741:

I’m just not seeing Modified Ammunition making Firearms worth a 30 point dump. Even from a PvE DPS perspective it doesn’t seem worthwhile.

For minmaxers Firearms might offer the highest amount of damage (5% from Target the Maimed, ~5% crit chance from Target the Weak and >4% from Modified Ammunition); Tools only offers 10% from Enduring Damage, and I’m not sure if the shorter recharge for Tool Belt skills is enough to compensate the higher base damage of Firearms.
For noobs like me Firearms would offer the highest amount of Vigor uptime because Speedy Kits will only enable to to keep up Vigor ~55% of the time.

Sobat.8650:

Still not convinced about modified ammunition.

Better start getting convinced because **** just got real.

Honestly, I’m tempted to just say screw it and go for a full SD/grenadier build with Zerker in WvW now. It seems like we’re being increasingly forced to choose between having damage or utility, and if I’m going to sacrifice survivability traits for a condition/HGH build (by having to go even deeper into Explosives) I might as well switch to power and burst people down.

•Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds. <<<<<<This. me likey.

That incendiary change is beyond brutal. Kills Pistol/HGH build. =/

I guess I can’t be slippery like an eel anymore in my sd build. boo

At least we still have Infused Precision for perma Vigor.

Being tunneled into using infused precision to sub speedy kits instead of a standard SD firearms trait does not sound like much build diversity to me.

Not saying it’s supposed to satisfy their claim, but we still have permanent Vigor. In many cases Infused Precision is actually the better trait.

Remember all of this is still subject to change, its what they are planing. I personally don’t use explosives V. But I am no looking at a bomber build again due to the potential buff to elixir bombs. That has been needed for a while

do we have a buildr with this next change?
can someone link it

Try to run without permanent vigor for awhile. I opted out of that trait just to try a build awhile ago and you really don’t need it. If you’re timing the dodges to avoid the most important incoming attacks you should be fine.

Obviously the more you can dodge the better, but even with perma vigor you’re very likely not dodging to the fullest potential of 1 dodge every 5 seconds. I think most people would be surprised how little they actually gain out of perma vigor if they tried to play awhile without it. I know I was.

As for the rest of the changes I’m not sure how I feel. Incendiary Powder quickly loses effectiveness in AOE situations, but it was undoubtedly the best trait to grab in non nade/bomb builds that wanted some points put into the power line. With these changes there’s really nothing that can benefit any build as effectively as Incendiary Powder can. I will probably go for the turret knockback as I often use Healing Turret.

The other trait changes I think are positive though, Modified Ammo especially. Autotool Installation is finally useful, but turrets themselves STILL need work. I hope this balance patch turns out to be more than just fiddling with traits for us. If they want to increase the use of skills that aren’t often used, I don’t know why nothing was mentioned about turrets at all. It’s not like they don’t know how frustrated we are with them.

Thinking more about that change to Armor Mods… that is pretty darn cool, because Guardians get an automatic Aegis every 40s, and can trait it down to 30s. Theirs has a lot of added goodies, I get that, but still it’s cool we can get Aegis passively twice as often. With this trait (a Grandmaster, sure) we can get an Aegis every 15s while in combat and being hit of course. That’s pretty darn cool I think, and could add a bit of survive ability to builds that go deep in Tools considering they’re usually glassy.

I fail to see the point of modified ammo since the only kits that could effectively use a that kind of damage increase are bombs and greandes, which also require 20 to 30 traits in explosive to be “viable”.
Do we have to use 60 trait points to even notice this change? that’s just… stupid.
Move it to adept tier, or just revert the change because except for a few FT lovers that will love this change it just makes no sense in both pve and pvp.

Iddiozzia.3489:

I fail to see the point of modified ammo since the only kits that could effectively use a that kind of damage increase are bombs and greandes

Keep in mind that the damage increase is not dependent on solely your conditions that you inflict on targets.

Also, I don’t get these posts. 25 Firearms is superior to 25 Tools the moment you dodge roll. And now putting another 5 points into the tree makes it better all the time. Yet people are still finding reason to complain.

Okay.

There are 12 conditions in this game. 2% each really stacks up a lot. Using Box of Nails alone will result in a 4% increase in your bomb damage. That’s incredible, and really diversifies how our kits can combo with each other.

Or you guys can sit there and devalue it. I guess that’s your call.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Not saying it’s supposed to satisfy their claim, but we still have permanent Vigor. In many cases Infused Precision is actually the better trait.

Infused Precision is only better if you have not a single kit equipped.
Speedy Kits gives you Swiftness also out of combat (very good in open PvE), you can be certain to have Swiftness and Vigor permanently (Infused Precision has only a 50% chance on crit to grant Swiftness, with few points in Alchemy you almost certainly have short down times), and it gives you Vigor exactly when you need it (swap kits during a dodge roll, then you hardly lose an auto attack).

Given it a night to respite Speedy Kits might still be better after the nerf; OOC Swiftness is just so good in open PvE, and it opens up Armor Mods, which will be buffed, and Adrenal Implant, which will be stronger because Speedy Kits will be weaker.
If Modified Ammunition wouldn’t get such a massive buff 30 points in Tools would properly still be better.

The change to IP will hurt. Not sure if what I’ll roll now, might go 30 points into firearms or back to 20 in inventions.
What bothers me most is losing those 10% condition duration from explosives. Two options here, givers weapon or the new toxic consumables.

Transmute change is nice tho.

•Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.

Can someone do the math?
Will this now be useful in combination with healing stats?

Edit:

I’ve rewritten my Text with more Insight, minus the Rant on Page #2:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/December-10th-Balance-update/page/2#post3138971

I’m still not finished as it ’s much to much to write into one Text.

•Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
This is huge nerf.

Imo this notes are FAKE because there is nothing about improoving Mortar. Every patch improoved Mortar since now.

PVE wise: the amount of damage modificators we will be able to get… sounds pretty epic to me. The tradeoff is gonna be swiftness occ or permavigor. I think there are enough runes and sigils to overcome this.
To me, we are goning to get our dps buffed. I hope that is not Anet way to fix kits not getting buffed with ascendedbweapons tho.

So what “amount of damage modificators we will be able to get” are you seeing?

2% per Condition, situation based if you’re investing 30 Points into Firearms?

That has been there for eternity and is still only usefull for a Rifle/SD-Build due to the high Powerscaling of Rifle, faulty SD-Targetsystem and you not able to invest any Points in the Explosive Traitline for other Kits like Grenade or Bombkit as it ’s a Grand Master Trait.

So that ’s either up to 300 Power and Explosive Modifiers missing or up to 30% Flat Critdamage, Toolkit-Recharge and a 10% Flat Damage-Modifier from 25 in Tools missing.

So what Damage INCREASE are you seeing here? Not to forget Condition Builds have to invest now 20 Points in Explosives to get the Burning from Incendiary Powder.

Modified ammunition may actually be amazing for static discharge builds now I can see a pretty nice damage boost with it.

As for the Bomb buff I have been able to get it to heal for about 300 per bomb with the 50% increase thats what like 450? Do elixer infused bombs benefit from hgh at all ?

@ Imaginary.6241 your points would be valid except for the fact everything you mentioned about warriors and thieves is receiving a nerf so ye……invalid, read ALL the patch notes.

Also why are you guys upset the only tings they have done to us that you can think of negative is force us to stop relying on Speedy Kits for vigor. It was a major crutch and i am glad they changed it, also do not forget this is a blanket nerf to all classes with endurance restoration ability’s so the playing field remains equal. (oh wait we can still perma vigor with infused precision and we all know that firearm builds are gonna be a hella popular come this patch.) The one true nerf we got was moving incendiary powder to master but even that is reasonable considering the power of the ability, just be grateful its not going GM. Despite all of this the Buffs to firearms and our defensive ability’s is looking sweet. Transmute for example is now a basicaly better version of Purity for a MINOR. purity; cures one condition every 10 secs. Transmute; converts one condition into a boon every 15 secs. I dont know about you but this trait wasnt even on the radar before this patch and for a minor this is pretty epic.

I am not going to name names, but I see two posters here who complained and moaned about having to swap in and out of kits every 5 seconds and practically demanding they extend its duration now complaining about it.

I feel some of you are bringing up good points, but some post here are irrational over reactions.

I do like the new elixir-infused bombs base heal going up to 217 though. That will bring the ol’ cleric build up to 355. With backpack regenerator at 185, we will be able to maintain a 540 heal tic on ourselves. Add in the 10s of regeneration from Healing mist, and the 10s of heal tic from super elixir, and we will be doing nice AoE heals

I am curious as to what trait will be moving into the explosives adept tier with incendiary powder moving.

Exlixir Infused Bombs currently scale with HP * 0.1 so a 50% increase might either mean 0.15 or what I guess they ment a 0.1 increase so that it ’s now scaling with 0.2

Elixir Infused Bombs – Before: 0.1*HP
Elixir Infused Bombs – After: 0.15-0.2*HP

coglin.1867:

I am not going to name names, but I see two posters here who complained and moaned about having to swap in and out of kits every 5 seconds and practically demanding they extend its duration now complaining about it.

I feel some of you are bringing up good points, but some post here are irrational over reactions.

I do like the new elixir-infused bombs base heal going up to 217 though. That will bring the ol’ cleric build up to 355. With backpack regenerator at 185, we will be able to maintain a 540 heal tic on ourselves. Add in the 10s of regeneration from Healing mist, and the 10s of heal tic from super elixir, and we will be doing nice AoE heals

I am curious as to what trait will be moving into the explosives adept tier with incendiary powder moving.

accelerant packed turret’s.

Also i agree with you totally this is a good patch for us. The majority of engineers are just but hurt because the perma vigor combo is now via firearms and the crutch that was speedy kits has basically been taken away (thank god). Every engie and there grandmother had this trait because of perma vigor. Now the only people who will take it are people who want perma swiftness via kits in there build. (even then 30% boon duration with elixer b and drop stimulant has the same outcome.)

Singer.8740:

@ Imaginary.6241 your points would be valid except for the fact everything you mentioned about warriors and thieves is receiving a nerf so ye……invalid, read ALL the patch notes.

Also why are you guys upset the only tings they have done to us that you can think of negative is force us to stop relying on Speedy Kits for vigor. It was a major crutch and i am glad they changed it, also do not forget this is a blanket nerf to all classes with endurance restoration ability’s so the playing field remains equal. (oh wait we can still perma vigor with infused precision and we all know that firearm builds are gonna be a hella popular come this patch.) The one true nerf we got was moving incendiary powder to master but even that is reasonable considering the power of the ability, just be grateful its not going GM. Despite all of this the Buffs to firearms and our defensive ability’s is looking sweet. Transmute for example is now a basicaly better version of Purity for a MINOR. purity; cures one condition every 10 secs. Transmute; converts one condition into a boon every 15 secs. I dont know about you but this trait wasnt even on the radar before this patch and for a minor this is pretty epic.

Yes, I read them, just didn’t edit my introduction out (see my statement about that @ Edit in my first post) .

Their basic statement about the Warrior is still the same. Thiefs will get HIGHER inviative regeneration (and I can only see changes to Traits in that post concerning Thiefs) and most of their abnormal spaming escape, gap closer abilities comes from weapon abilities and utilites. So bascially they ‘ll recieve a buff on that part as if that wasn’t over the top already. But maybe they’re at least a bit more vulernable to conditions now in sPvP. Thought, I’m not much of a Thief Player so maybe I did read that wrong and it ’s a more clever solution hindering them from spamming inviative?

Also Warrior only gets a nerf for their Earthshaker-Damage and redability and it doesn’t change the other facts I posted above. In addition to that I didn’t ment for them to provide a solution / change warriors or thiefs but complained about the changes to Engineer concerning Vigor as it ’s one of our few abilities to migrate Damage especially when going pure Glass (which for example Thief and Warrior are fine without that Boon as their active weapon utilities allow them for a easy Escape).

Vigor only increases the Indurance Regeneration by 100% and not magically fills the Bar out or provides an additional Escape like the above classes have. Thought you are right about getting Vigor from Firearms.

imaginary.6241:

So what “amount of damage modificators we will be able to get” are you seeing?

2% per Condition, situation based if you’re investing 30 Points into Firearms?

That has been there for eternity and is still only usefull for a Rifle/SD-Build due to the high Powerscaling of Rifle, faulty SD-Targetsystem and you not able to invest any Points in the Explosive Traitline for other Kits like Grenade or Bombkit as it ’s a Grand Master Trait.

So that ’s either up to 300 Power and Explosive Modifiers missing or up to 30% Flat Critdamage, Toolkit-Recharge and a 10% Flat Damage-Modifier from 25 in Tools missing.

So what Damage INCREASE are you seeing here? Not to forget Condition Builds have to invest now 20 Points in Explosives to get the Burning from Incendiary Powder.

First sorry for my English.
What I meant (remember, PVE wise so with a grenadier build in mind) is that you really don’t have any reasons to go in tools. Enduring damage is pretty situational, and scope means that you need to fight at range, also not good. If changes are true, now we have reasons to go deep into firearms. That means traits that we were not using before like “target the weak”, “target the maimed” and now “modf ammunition”. Also as damage modifiers are multiplicative probably I will take “explosive powder” instead of “short fuse”. If you add now a sigil of force, sigil of strenght and scholar runes…

30/30/0/x/x are gonig to be the new dungeon meta. You still will get permavigor if you like (maybe in here runes of traveler will be the best option), or permaswiftness occ. But maybe your are right and if I do proper numbers all of this is not a buff DPS wise.

well glad for bombermen. Rifle engis on other hand still absolutely nothing. Speedy kit change sounds like a nerf but we will see. crit on burn was kick in the balls. Seriously Anet you only think of one build when u modify this class?

So are we back in nade spamming with 30/30 0 0 10 modified ammo and grenadier?

Tools master trait Armor mods is just so bad joke. Worst buff of the game aegis with so big cooldown! Any single hit trigger aegis away even rangers first auto attack that doesnt even scratch.

Well as I said, going 30/30/x/x/x makes you miss out on 20-30% Flat Critdamage from Tools, 10% Flat-Increase from 25 Tools, 20-30% decreased Toolbelt-Recharge

Maybe switching out the Bonus Critdamage from Tools to Firearms (and vice versa) would be better for more Build diversity if they’re going to make us going more into Firearms. Not sure about that …

I agree that Anet does horrible job when trying to increase build diversity. And Not agree with some of your claims on tools tho.

Well, that change to Armor mods isn’t so bad if you’re f. e. up against a Backstab-Thief or HB-Warrior that jumps in the Fight. Just wonder if it ’s per Player and not globally. As that would make it somewhat Meh in Fights unless for roaming in WvW.

@ Imaginary
THIEF
what you said:
“Thiefs will get HIGHER inviative regeneration from Traits (and I can only see changes to Traits in that post concerning Thiefs)”
what the patch says;
-Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
-Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
-Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.

please explain how this is " HIGHER inviative regeneration from Traits" they get a slight in built increase and all the traits have been nerfed to the ground. (the signet too)

what you said;
" and most of their abnormal spaming escape, gap closer abilities comes from weapon abilities and utilites. So bascially they ‘ll recieve a buff on that part as if that wasn’t over the top already."
what the patch says;
-Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
(this meens shadow return has a 1/2 cast time. NERFHAMMER!)
-Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
(D/P and other perma stealth tricks. NERFHAMMER)
-Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
-Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
(NERFHAMMER, NERFHAMMER, NERF, HAMMER.)

WARRIOR
what you said;
“Also Warrior only gets a nerf for their Earthshaker-Damage and redability and it doesn’t change the other facts I posted above.”
what the patch says;
-Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
-Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
-Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
-Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
-Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

how is this only a nerf to the burst ability may i ask?

lastly regarding vigor i am indeed right. Now you can go even more offensive and still get perma vigor by moving ten points from tools to firearms.

It looks like your looking at a different set of patch notes from the rest of us.

This is never about build diversity as anet puts it. It’s always about build shifting as opposed to diversity. I’ve figured out that anet’s endgame is shifting builds around every few months so we have to re-farm all our gear and farm/make all new ascended crap to go with it. Reading these notes, makes me want to try some sort of dps build instead of conditions, but I’m not re-farming all my gear. If the builds that worked before don’t work after this next patch, I just won’t play anymore. I’m sick of having to re-gear 4 characters every 2 months. Thankfully, looking at the notes, my engy only gets the vigor nerf. I run nade/bombs/x in a 30/0/0/30/10 build with dire/rabid. I stopped taking burn on crit awhile back due to the fact that it’s single target and I have other access to burning with bombs/rocket boots (plus I have a low crit chance anyway). Instead I take the 15% to cause bleeds on explosions since there’s no icd, and I’m not required to crit. Hopefully my build won’t be phased much by these notes.

Okay that was what I didn’t expect / read into at first sight which is why I asked you about that. As I said I’m not playing those two classes often so I have both to less knowdlege about them and less insight especially when having them not at hand / caring about right now. Thought I never requested a nerf for them and only used them as a introduction about AreaNets way of balancing things (even if they’re going to nerf/tone them down a little bit now).

Thought your claim about going more offensive and still get Perma Vigor isn’t right it ’s still the same as before. Especially for the Build I expect you ment (Rifle SD 20-30 in Firearms, 30 In Tools). At least the Perma-Vigor.

My Main complain is that it ‘s going against Build diversity especialy with Kits like Grenade or Bomb also in Terms of Damage as it forces you to invest at least 10 Points in Firearms for Tradeoff of 100 Power, 10% Critdamage and additional Boosts / Effects you’re missing out depending on your Build (for example 30/0/0/10/30 Bomber).