Guild Wars 2

apharma.3741:

Generally ok.

…

PU kinda saw it coming after so many whiners, guess I have to run traveler until chron comes out.

Any plans to increase the base stealth on veil? 2s is terrible and when it is at 4s with PU everyone is loving it. Buffing it to 3s base would be really nice during that patch and retain its use in WvW.

Yep. Pretty much saw the PU nerf coming too.

I strongly suspect that Thieves were the biggest complainers about our stealth.

I guess they see us as natural competitors, since we are both stealthing classess. Also, we have been fodder for them in the past.

I do hope the perma stealth, trapper thief gets a fair nerf as well.

It is everything PU is and more (damage, stealth and mobility).

I do agree about Veil. It does need an adjustment if PU is adjusted.

Also, I would add a call to buff Blurred Frenzy. It is too vulnerable to AoE now.

Perhaps allow us to move or bring back the invuln. It is only 2 1/2 s.

2.5% …

/flipstable

Well, considering the last patch balance took over 6 hours I suspect these are just the major highlights of the profession balance (teef is dyeing), otherwise there may still be more changes which may come out on Tuesday! \o/

Robert Gee.9246:

tobascodagama.2961:

Silverkey.2078:

Do they mean the focus now stacks swiftness?

Not quite. I think they mean that it’ll always set your Swiftness to exactly 12s?

It means that Temporal Curtain will always apply it’s full swiftness duration (12s) the first time you pass through it. Previously if you had swiftness from another source it would not apply. There are a few other details but I’ll leave those until Tuesday.

When running in wvw sometimes I would use the curtain, but 5 other allies pass through it first. Does it save a stack for me, now?

Nice QoL changes and PU needed a reduction – good balancing

Ceeps.3185:

When running in wvw sometimes I would use the curtain, but 5 other allies pass through it first. Does it save a stack for me, now?

Temporal curtain isn’t (and never was) capped to 5 persons.

All sounds good to me I’m very happy about the temporal curtain change and sword.

The mesmer changes were all very good. I am very surprised confounding suggestions didnt get a nerf though. Also, I dont really get the 2.5% on chaotic dampening (Why not 3%?) but whatever.

I have fingers crossed for a buff to Cry of Frustration, or at least something that justifies its cooldown compared to mind wrack…

apharma.3741:

Temporal curtain I’m liking.

PU kinda saw it coming after so many whiners, guess I have to run traveler until chron comes out.

Any plans to increase the base stealth on veil? 2s is terrible and when it is at 4s with PU everyone is loving it. Buffing it to 3s base would be really nice during that patch and retain its use in WvW.

Any chance they will make so that veil can add stealth even if you’re already stealthed like temporal curtain does with swiftness? If this is the case, the lack of duration will be highly compensated!

On a separate note, I am extremely excited that the ranger pet taunt will finally be evadable/blockable.

Good riddance to that nonsense too.

Prismatic Understanding – 50% now.

To me the problem with high stealth up time is due to the pledge trait (stealth cd reduction of the Prestige skill and not the 100% PU). I think the wrong thing got nerfed.

Mesmer Sword 10% damage buff

Wasn’t clear if this was just applying to AA chain or all main hand sword skills. If it is just AA then it slightly better than nothing. Mes just aren’t built for face tanking at melee distance, so doing so should have better reward for the higher risk (should be min 30%, or/and make the AA chain execute faster).

Temporal Curtain will now always apply its full swiftness duration of 12s the first time you pass through it

Welcomed, and long overdue. Now it means curtain will stack on top of swiftness, rather than only having swiftness stack on top of curtain swiftness. So yes it is fully stackable now.

All looks pretty good. I don’t mind the “baby step” boosts.

Robert, what about that fix to Duelist’s Discipline? I remember you saying you already fixed it and that it was slated to go live in an upcoming balance patch soon. It’s sorely needed IMO.

Same goes for Torch! Come on! The Prestige got a huge nerf due to the new Burn stacking mechanics, it should definitely have been given 2-3 stacks of Burning just to make it as strong as it was before the condie damage updates. The same goes for the Torch Phantasm, going from 4x Confusion for 4 secs (?) to 1 silly stack of Burning for 5s is a gigantic nerf to what already was the worst Phantasm. Please at least increase it to 2 stacks Burn maybe for only 3 seconds.

Secondly, I find it a bit strange to boost Sword AA, and leave Scepter -and Condie builds in general- even further behind. I saw little wrong with the Sword AA, certainly not as compared to Scepter AA! I like the change, don’t get me wrong, but our really poorly performing MH is still Scepter! (I saw that the Daredevil was getting their Dagger projectile speed increased in BWE3, and I really wondered why is this never considered for all the terrible projectiles we have to live with and suffer through? Both Scepter and Staff need their projectile velocity increased by at least 33%. IMO that would probably also help with the reliability issues, making it harder to avoid being hit solely by moving. Leave staff Clone attacks as is.)

Along with the 50% gutting of MtD, these indirect/inadvertent (I hope) Torch nerfs have left Condie Mesmer Builds in pretty poor shape at the moment! (Confusion simply still is not a great/reliable Condition, and our primary source of burst Confusion comes from the F2 which has a very short duration. The CD on F2 is still far too big for what you get in return, and it should be a much more significant AE burst shatter for Condition builds. In fact now that non-condie builds get far less “incidental” condition damage out of F2, I think it’s high time to boost the condition application of CoF a bit.)

Last but not least, I would like to see a bit of an overhaul on amulets in sPvP. The Marauder amulet is the clear winner, far more so than Zerker before it IMO, and the math is pretty easy to see why. I also feel that once again the options for Condition builds are pretty poor, nothing rivaling what Marauder does for Power builds IMO.

Keep up the good work!

Windwalker.7421:

Robert, what about that fix to Duelist’s Discipline? I remember you saying you already fixed it and that it was slated to go live in an upcoming balance patch soon. It’s sorely needed IMO.

At the moment, I’m just assuming that they left most of their bugfixes out of the livestream, just for lack of time. They were really rushing through their segment.

Secondly, I find it a bit strange to boost Sword AA, and leave Scepter & Condie builds in general behind even further. I saw little wrong with the Sword AA, certainly not as compared to Scepter AA!

With raids forcing mandatory non-DPS slots into group compositions, everybody else is under bigger pressure to perform at maximum capacity. (And, let’s face it, Mesmer is sure as kitten not gonna be a Healer or Tank.) The sword buff still doesn’t bring us totally in line with everybody else, but it was necessary to keep us from falling completely out of the PvE meta.

Making Scepter a viable PvE weapon was probably outside the scope of this balance patch. Even the Sword buff was a holding-pattern change more than anything else.

tobascodagama.2961:

Windwalker.7421:

Robert, what about that fix to Duelist’s Discipline? I remember you saying you already fixed it and that it was slated to go live in an upcoming balance patch soon. It’s sorely needed IMO.

At the moment, I’m just assuming that they left most of their bugfixes out of the livestream, just for lack of time. They were really rushing through their segment.

Secondly, I find it a bit strange to boost Sword AA, and leave Scepter & Condie builds in general behind even further. I saw little wrong with the Sword AA, certainly not as compared to Scepter AA!

With raids forcing mandatory non-DPS slots into group compositions, everybody else is under bigger pressure to perform at maximum capacity. (And, let’s face it, Mesmer is sure as kitten not gonna be a Healer or Tank.) The sword buff still doesn’t bring us totally in line with everybody else, but it was necessary to keep us from falling completely out of the PvE meta.

Making Scepter a viable PvE weapon was probably outside the scope of this balance patch. Even the Sword buff was a holding-pattern change more than anything else.

I dunno, from the video I saw of Pyros chronometer build it looks like being able to bring 35s of group alacrity and quickness will be a thing for raids. It essentially increases the effectiveness of all other roles in the party whether they be support, dps, healing, whatever.

I mean imagine guards being able to spam aegis (more than now) and everyone having their heal go from 30s CD to about 20s. Imagine the Druid with cool downs all being reduced on their support. I really think the new role for mesmer will be essentially a buffer that turns a party of 4 into almost a party of 6 where 2 else’s feel like 3, a Revenant can replace the PS warrior and a guard can keep the party through much reduced cool downs while doing decent damage.

The sword buffs are not even enough to put is in competing grounds with the middle tier sword dps classes, guardian and thief.

The top tier class, revenant, has a sword auto that just blows mesmer out of the water. You might as well tickle with a feather in terms of sustained DPS.

10% is nowhere near enough to fix mesmer sustained damage to make it competitive.

And I don’t understand why people are treating it as a winner takes all game. Scepter should not be competing with sword for buffs. All our weapons’ terrible autoatacks should be gaining meaningful damage increases.

But I believe the fluff 10% comes from a fear of pvp mesmer damage, as usual.

Until the day they finally split skill balancing between PvE/PvP.

Zenith.7301:

The sword buffs are not even enough to put is in competing grounds with the middle tier sword dps classes, guardian and thief.

The top tier class, revenant, has a sword auto that just blows mesmer out of the water. You might as well tickle with a feather in terms of sustained DPS.

10% is nowhere near enough to fix mesmer sustained damage to make it competitive.

And I don’t understand why people are treating it as a winner takes all game. Scepter should not be competing with sword for buffs. All our weapons’ terrible autoatacks should be gaining meaningful damage increases.

But I believe the fluff 10% comes from a fear of pvp mesmer damage, as usual.

Until the day they finally split skill balancing between PvE/PvP.

Getting a buff and yet people are not happy.

Just tell Robert to remove the 10% buff. Problem Solved.

StickerHappy.8052:

Zenith.7301:

The sword buffs are not even enough to put is in competing grounds with the middle tier sword dps classes, guardian and thief.

The top tier class, revenant, has a sword auto that just blows mesmer out of the water. You might as well tickle with a feather in terms of sustained DPS.

10% is nowhere near enough to fix mesmer sustained damage to make it competitive.

And I don’t understand why people are treating it as a winner takes all game. Scepter should not be competing with sword for buffs. All our weapons’ terrible autoatacks should be gaining meaningful damage increases.

But I believe the fluff 10% comes from a fear of pvp mesmer damage, as usual.

Until the day they finally split skill balancing between PvE/PvP.

Getting a buff and yet people are not happy.

Just tell Robert to remove the 10% buff. Problem Solved.

Buffs are done for a reason, not just because. To get a skill to a certain level of performance.

It’s like saying Rangers should ask Irenio to just remove the buff to Most Dangerous Game. Guess what, the buff to MDG still won’t make it not a bad trait, people won’t use it.

And this buff will not fix mesmer DPS issue. Is it nice to see they’re listening to the fact our weapons are not having enough damage? Sure.

What I don’t look forward to is the 6 month wait in between base class balance patches to be told “well, we gave your sword a 10% damage buff already, so be happy for the next half year even though it doesn’t fix your DPS”.

Who knows, though. Maybe they’ll actually fix illusions not dying to aoe spam anymore and we’ll be able to achieve that magical 3 x phantasm 100% uptime our autoattacks are based around. My money’s not on it, but I’ll have to hope for it.

StickerHappy.8052:

Getting a buff and yet people are not happy.

Just tell Robert to remove the 10% buff. Problem Solved.

Imagine a whole village is starving to death, then one day you give them one loaf of bread. Is that a good thing? Yes. Is that good thing enough? Not even close. That’s what the sword buff feels like. It’s welcome for sure but it’s simply not enough to really change anything.

apharma.3741:

I dunno, from the video I saw of Pyros chronometer build it looks like being able to bring 35s of group alacrity and quickness will be a thing for raids. It essentially increases the effectiveness of all other roles in the party whether they be support, dps, healing, whatever.

That assumes a 5-man composition of 3x Ele, 1x Chrono, 1x Herald. Will the numbers still hold if we have to trade one Ele for a Druid or if the Revenant needs to stay in Jalis for tanking? Maybe Glint/Jalis for the Rev and then one of the Eles uses an Earth build or something.

But the essential idea is that Pyro proved his build fits into the current DPS-based dungeon meta. Mandatory non-DPS slots throws a monkey wrench in it, because our group DPS contribution scales down the more non-DPS roles we need in a group.

Yes, Alacrity helps healing output, but here we run into one of the classic Trinity balance problems: If content is beatable without a Chrono supporting your Healer, then the Chrono’s support is wasted. For the first months of a new raid, Healers might need the support. But once everyone has the patterns down, Chronos will be dead weight from a healing perspective.

This is why I hate the stupid Trinity. Trying to keep it in balance creates a completely rigid ecosystem of class interactions.

The staleness of GW2’s dungeon meta has so much more do to with a failure to iterate on content designs and knock down performance outliers than the lack of a Trinity.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Menaka.5092:

I would be fine with 2.5% if it worked even on chaos armor you get from other people’s blasts…

It doesn’t?

I didn’t test it after the last patch, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t when they introduced it

Menaka.5092:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Menaka.5092:

I would be fine with 2.5% if it worked even on chaos armor you get from other people’s blasts…

It doesn’t?

I didn’t test it after the last patch, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t when they introduced it

It does and always has.

tobascodagama.2961:

Yes, Alacrity helps healing output, but here we run into one of the classic Trinity balance problems: If content is beatable without a Chrono supporting your Healer, then the Chrono’s support is wasted. For the first months of a new raid, Healers might need the support. But once everyone has the patterns down, Chronos will be dead weight from a healing perspective.

Well, this isn’t quite accurate for a couple reasons. If we’re talking content that requires healers/soft trinity…that means raids. Raids means a 10 person group. However, most stuff has a 5 target limit. Now, you could simply take a 5 man team, double it, and get a raid comp, but that probably won’t be the most efficient way to play. You probably won’t need 2 dedicated healers, just one, and you might not need 2 tanky people, etc, etc.

What will most likely end up happening is that there will be at least a core group of 4-5 people dedicated purely to dps, while the other 5 people are split between supplemental dps and other random stuff. Since this core group of dps will always exist, the chrono support build will always have a place to pump that support. Add in the fact that you can support healing equally as well as you can dps with the exact same rotation and you have a pretty solid spot.

Great patch, really really great patch! I only hope they give us some power / condition love for the scepter and staff, those lack extremly in PvE. And maybe a supportive trait for GS? Not to get the dmg outrage again in PvP…

Vieux P.1238:

Portal – Timer showing how long you have to drop Exeunt: That’s great, But…would be even better if they added the icon turning red as well when where out of range. But it’s a good start.

or Exeunt doesn’t drop if we’re out of range and with the mensage “Out of Range”

Good god I can’t wait until that pet taunt becomes evadeable.

And people complain about condi mesmer being cheese…

Curunen.8729:

Good god I can’t wait until that pet taunt becomes evadeable.

And people complain about condi mesmer being cheese…

i hardly see condi mesmer these days in tpvp . i wonder why….

Really looking forward to the patch!

My fantasy wish list:
* Baseline AoE damage reduction to all pet classes, including clones/phantasms.
* 3rd hit of scepter automatically creates a clone next to you on completion and not on projectile hit.
* Reword of Master-tier Inspiration traits to add a non weapon-locked, non-selfish trait (Restorative illusions removes 1 condi for allies as well? Or make it an AoE Heal?)
* CD removal for Healing Prism, now heals for a percentage.
* Add Blur and Mirror to Inspiring Distortion.

messiah.1908:

Curunen.8729:

Good god I can’t wait until that pet taunt becomes evadeable.

And people complain about condi mesmer being cheese…

i hardly see condi mesmer these days in tpvp . i wonder why….

And they still complain when they see one/fight against one…

This was just posted in the Ranger forum by Irenio-

“Hey all.
I just returned from San Francisco and am going to crash hard from the busy weekend at Twitch Con very soon, but first I wanted to clarify something:
During the skill balance stream on Friday we weren’t able to go into depth or even talk about the reasons and expected results for changes we did reach due to time constraints[sub]1[/sub]. Because the June 23rd patch was mentioned during the stream many people seem to expect a patch of that size and magnitude.
This coming patch is NOT that big.
Tuesday’s patch will have those changes we discussed in the livestream, some bugfixes, and more, but it is a step in the right direction. It is not the end-all.
There shall be more.”

It doesn’t look like we should expect much more than what was discussed in the stream.