Guild Wars 2

Illusion of Drowning: Changed skill from a multi-hit to a single-hit, increasing damage to compensate.

http://dulfy.net/2014/01/29/gw2-feature-build-skill-and-balance-changes-preview/

This skill bugs since release, hitting already just once instead of multiple times. The damage is therefore extremly low, unlike the number showed in the tooltip. So by “changing” this, will it be like 6 times stronger? Would be a nice buff / fix.

…yay I guess?

so all the mesmers get this patch is 1 nerf and 1 fix…and probably they will break something again.
please anet we need some changes. would be nice to get something back for wvw raid mesmer

Well the mesmer seems to be the highest dps underwater, isn’t he?

Spear 2 feels like “CHOO CHOO MTAFKA”
Spear 3 hits hard aswell.
Spear 5 the only and best pull underwater
Trident 2 is awesome too damage wise and blind
Trident 5 so will be awesome too against bosses, even damage wise
And our basics are extremly strong too

I … yes I’m gonna say it … love underwater combat <3

Well, I almost always open with trident #5 in underwater combat (followed by 4, dodge, 2), so will be nice to deal a decent opening spike in this case.

anet<- i think you hate mesmer..you dont fix skills and you nerf

I think they should have lead off with the message that they put much later in the thread.

They have many changes besides the items listed in the post. I think they felt the need to make the post because not everyone watched the twitch stream, and they wanted to show that they did listen (e.g. they reversed their change on Deceptive Evasion)

It would be nice to see the total final list of changes, but I’m sure it’s hard to know which ones will make it until they get through testing.

@eldenbri.1059
Are you sure they are not going to change Deceptive Evasion? It’s going to remain the same as it is now? Where did you read this at if you dont mind sharing…

I still don’t get why they aren’t reverting the underwater combat model to the early beta versions where you had to get to the surface to heal up at all?

I mean yeah, it’d require a rebalance of HotW, sure. Maybe HotW was why it was changed?
But on a PvP level and as a general “feeling” of underwater combat, the idea that the deeper you dive, the greater the loot down there but you run a horrible risk with it is … interesting, to say the least.

Bonus points:

1. The low damage on ~all skills finally makes sense again. That was the reason underwater damage was/is so low, after all.
2. Engineer downed skill to send yourself upwards makes an awful amount of sense.
3. Elementalist Air skill to make the enemy float balances it’s own CC.
4. Sink skills could finally get nerfed, as their true power returns (maybe this was the reason for the original change?)
5. Underwater combat feels very dangerous in PvP, and following an enemy deeper would be a real choice between playing it safe versus a potential easy kill.

@OGChad.9670

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview/first#post3568078

Mesmer:
We’re continuing to lower the amount of vigor available to all professions, especially from sources with low trait point investments. Based on your feedback, we decided to revert our proposed change to Deceptive Evasion.

And now people are ofc complaining that there’s so few changes.
You know, after everyone yelled down all the changes, now we’re angry that they listened and are just going to change a handful of things…

Carighan.6758:

And now people are ofc complaining that there’s so few changes.
You know, after everyone yelled down all the changes, now we’re angry that they listened and are just going to change a handful of things…

we are not asking for unnecessary nerfs, we need changes in terms of gamemodes. the spvp mesmer does well for example, but in wvw the mes is very weak in large encounters. the mesmer needs a make over in wvw. and yes i wouldnt mind some 1v1 dueling nerfs in exchange for that.
we were not yelling about changes, we were defending our class from an unnecessary nerf that would have hurt everything but the meta builds.
what about buffs? when was there a big buff for mes after the mass nerfing of confusion, glam, immortal mes build, tw, phantasms, los, clone health etc. in wvw the mes is just a veilbot and i’ve been waiting for almost a year now for a change so our LIGHT armor class gets AOE and not AI!

It’s not an unnecessary nerf at all if you look at DE separately. It’s way too required.
Now imagine I set two devs down. One is to look into a way to nerf DE, the other into enhancing base clone generation. Assume the first one finishes first. Would you patch the change? I would, but it’s a very unpopular thing.

Carighan.6758:

It’s not an unnecessary nerf at all if you look at DE separately. It’s way too required.
Now imagine I set two devs down. One is to look into a way to nerf DE, the other into enhancing base clone generation. Assume the first one finishes first. Would you patch the change? I would, but it’s a very unpopular thing.

I wouldn’t, because that would be stupid. You don’t make balance changes like that piecemeal, you do it at once so that you fix the problem, not make it worse.

Carighan.6758:

It’s not an unnecessary nerf at all if you look at DE separately. It’s way too required.
Now imagine I set two devs down. One is to look into a way to nerf DE, the other into enhancing base clone generation. Assume the first one finishes first. Would you patch the change? I would, but it’s a very unpopular thing.

well i wouldnt, because people have brought up really good points why de should not be changed like that, but honestly im starting to wish for every clone and every skill to get nerfed into the ground so anet finally steps up and gives us viable aoe in wvw raids. they deny that there is a problem. sry but i play wvw raids only. i roam once in a while, but most of the time i run with a zergbusting guild around. i didnt use de for a very long time as glamours still worked.
its not de we are too much depending on, its all the clones we have to depend on and all the ai. i mean necros can at least choose to use minions or wells and condi or power. we got almost nothing left.
all the wvw builds atm are roaming builds. there are no real raid builds, they are all based on how lucky u are if your ai stays alive or makes it to the enemy for a shatter.

like i said many times before, make mes a medium class or fix all the bugs and give us as a LIGHT armor class viable non ai based aoe. and NO, mantras are not gonna change anything unless u rework them and turn them into hexes.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I wouldn’t, because that would be stupid. You don’t make balance changes like that piecemeal, you do it at once so that you fix the problem, not make it worse.

Mind you, never done dev work on a MMO yet, and especially not on the larger ones I’ve played (Everquest, DAoC, WoW, now GW2). But in other dev situations the general rule of thumb was to get stuff out early and often.
The reason was two-fold. For one, any change requiring a change to scripting gets extra exposure to potential bugs. If these are all patched in one big change, the bug-squashing is insanely difficult. If they are added one by one, it’s trivial to know which change caused the problem.
The other was that code merging can be difficult if you had features sit around for a while. Hence most changes were merged as they were completed, and then out with them.

Ofc, I have to wonder why class/balance changes are so slow in the first place.
They have 350 people total, that’s a lot. Even if I assume 4 teams of 25 each for the LS, and ~100 artists and sound people, that leaves a lot of people. Sure, all the back office work, but you’d figure there’s still 30-50 devs+programmers left to do general game changes.

And I can understand changes coming one at a time, even if it makes balance worse. Like I said, it makes sense when you’re working on the code. But what I don’t get is why it’s so slow. These things should roll in with every bi-weekly patch, constantly. Always 1-3 traits and abilities changing.