Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/November-4th-Smokescale-Changes/first#post5719204

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The Smokescale Smoke Assault skill had its cooldown reduced from 24s to 20s and the number of attacks from 7 to 5.

I feel sorry for Ranger. HoT put them in a semi-respectable position, to a degree where I stopped considering them as a joke profession for a few days, then Anet used their Unrelenting Nerf skill, and just wrecked the profession again.

If Anet comes anywhere near my sword, ill be the one nerfing them. UA is the only respectable skill on sword. UA is good, because all the brownie points got put into that one skill during development. The only other things sword has is a boring, generic AA, and a 2 that does no damage, and fires out a projectile that never hits. If I had any other reason to use the other skills on sword, I wouldn’t be too upset about the draconian proposition of them tampering with my #3.

EDIT: I just sat with a calculator for a few minutes. If the nerf to our UA is the same as Smokescales, its a damage nerf of 14% because you hit dish out slightly less UA hits per second. I guess thats not too terrible. I honestly expected it to be a 20%+ nerf.

Yeah I much prefer staff to sword in 85% of builds when I can help it, it’s just that UA stacks might and is very useful utility and the fact that I can take shield or axe with it that makes me feel forced into it.

Reducing strikes means lower amount of evade frames. Smokescale got hit by 0.5sec. You can pretty much dodge it once to avoid all it damage now. It looks like a solution to these 1v1 crybabies and their “lack of counterplay” (which is bs as many players already adapted and doing fine). Howered damage loss would be a bit too much. At this point i hope it will actually track stealth opponents as well if it has to be nerfed.

Burtnik.5218:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/November-4th-Smokescale-Changes/first#post5719204

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The Smokescale Smoke Assault skill had its cooldown reduced from 24s to 20s and the number of attacks from 7 to 5.

Thank goodness I don’t play Ranger except for dailies; this would make me re-roll.

I wish theyd just hurry up and nerf the pants off rev so we can stop wasting our time and all go back to playing ele’s in spvp.

Synosius.9876:

I wish theyd just hurry up and nerf the pants off rev so we can stop wasting our time and all go back to playing ele’s in spvp.

Totally wanna play a boring tempest auramancer build, it’s even worse than d/d ele.

I thing every dev in every single game, should stop nerfing the stronger classes, and start buffing the weak ones. Whats the point of playing a game if all classes feel weaker than what they were on launch. That is the main problem with balancing in all this games

pola.5832:

I thing every dev in every single game, should stop nerfing the stronger classes, and start buffing the weak ones. Whats the point of playing a game if all classes feel weaker than what they were on launch. That is the main problem with balancing in all this games

That’s called powercreep.

Laraley.7695:

Synosius.9876:

I wish theyd just hurry up and nerf the pants off rev so we can stop wasting our time and all go back to playing ele’s in spvp.

Totally wanna play a boring tempest auramancer build, it’s even worse than d/d ele.

I fought a tempest in Sh today, all he did was overload air and run in circles spamming lighting whip, it was super effective.

Laraley.7695:

pola.5832:

I thing every dev in every single game, should stop nerfing the stronger classes, and start buffing the weak ones. Whats the point of playing a game if all classes feel weaker than what they were on launch. That is the main problem with balancing in all this games

That’s called powercreep.

According to wiki Powercreep means adding new content that feels stronger than older content, what i mean is for example, i will list the stronger classes in spvp and the weak links according to all forum QQ threads and threads in general:
OP/STRONG PROF:
Rev/Herald
Necro/Reaper
Guardian/Dragon Hunter
Players of this guys ^ DONT want nerfs, or at least they are not crying in forums to get their favorite class nerfed.

WEAK/UP PROF (according to most of the forum community)
Thiefs (base thief, since DD actually feels kinda balanced)
Tempest ele
People that play this guys ^ they want their class to get buffs or at least a little bit of love from the devs.

What if me, as a part of the balance team and analyzing the situation, i could just buff the weak links a little, see how they do, and see if they QQ in forums stop (i hope it will, some day). Instead of nerfing the other 3 classes mentioned First, if i do this, then i will just create more QQ Threads on rev/guard/necro forums, and stop the QQ on thief/ele forums but only for a while.

NOTE: This is just an example to explain my point, and devs in most games, keep doing the exact same opposite to what i stated above (at least on the 3 main games i play)

Just FYI unrelenting assault is a MINOR dps boost from autoattacking…only good thing is just the evade/follow…since we already had a 20% CD increase in BWE3 i do not see any more nerfs incoming.

Gaaroth.2567:

Just FYI unrelenting assault is a MINOR dps boost from autoattacking…only good thing is just the evade/follow…since we already had a 20% CD increase in BWE3 i do not see any more nerfs incoming.

Just bc it was nerfed once doesnt mean they cant nerf it again. Some stuff was released as fine and then got nerfed for basically no reason 4 days after release – glint heal, pt, shield 5.

People doesnt know but at some point precision strike was nerfed on launch – they nerfed damage by 34% for 150 range increase. The damage buff it had in bwe1 was taken away for literally no reason.

As far as I know, smokescales hadn’t been previously nerfed, and independently of the revenants UA, it was a little too strong. During the BWE testing I saw it performing pretty big spikes on its own without having the tell of previous big spikes from pets – coupled with being able to drop fields that made itself invulnerable, it was doing a bit too much considering that the weight of the ranger+pet combination is still supposed to mostly come from the ranger.

In some ways, changing it so the smokefield is the F2 skill while the UA-like attack is the one it performs on its own may actually be the bigger nerf, since it makes it harder to coordinate with a spike from the ranger.

Don’t make comparisons from class to class, I would say. The skills are balanced within different “ecosystems” in part, I mean it was an incredibly powerful pet skill if you also add the ranger next to it. While I acknowledge Rangers hasn’t always had it easy it was a potential outlier for sure… particularly when the pet also has that smoke field skill. Really stacked with goodies.

As for UA, if they change it i would say it would be good to give it a rule that for example on a single target it could only hit 5 unique times (or whatever) instead of the full number of hits. In a multitarget setting there’s nothing to suggest it’s too good, but there could be a case for a single target one burstwise.

Seems i was right. UA butchered

I’m not getting the nerf talk on UA. They dropped 2 attacks from the 7 while buffing the remaining 5 by 5% each (dulfy has 10% ?).

Hexalot.8194:

I’m not getting the nerf talk on UA. They dropped 2 attacks from the 7 while buffing the remaining 5 by 5% each (dulfy has 10% ?).

Evade duration nerfed from 2 sec to 1.5sec, 2 might stack less, 20% damage nerf, ability to trigger kitten Shiro heal dropped from 4 daggers to 3.

And yet not changed to single target.

I forgot to mention that after this goes into live, smokescale ua will hit 2x harder than our own ua. 927 base damage per strike on smokescale compared to our 596 per strike depending on used rune. It feels good to be weaker than some freaking pet.

What if there’s no real nerf in light of all those bunker amulets being removed? Yes it’s a technical nerf but maybe not one practically?

Agemnon.4608:

What if there’s no real nerf in light of all those bunker amulets being removed? Yes it’s a technical nerf but maybe not one practically?

What? You still have to deal with tanky people and you’re only including sPvP.

Agemnon.4608:

What if there’s no real nerf in light of all those bunker amulets being removed? Yes it’s a technical nerf but maybe not one practically?

You will always have bunkers in pvp. We also still have pve and most important;

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword

Compare rev and thief auto. Keep in mind that thief gets 30% damage boost so in fact they will higher damage from auto like current sword rev when the patch hit. Pair that with the insane burst/mobility thief has unlike rev and you can imagine where it goes.

Let me get it straight then. You nerf one class bc auto damage too strong, yet you buff other class on even higher level? Yep, nothing wrong with that, totally.

And while i could deal with the damage switch from auto..ua gets nerfed too, and the damage is moved to trash precision strike that will miss anyone witha single press of a/d..seems legit

But the damage currently feels balanced because of how overtuned chrono, tempest, and scrapper’s defenses are (much of that is from passives but especially from the current meta’s tanky amulets and durability runes) and once those are adjusted properly the current rev damage will feel OP.

The real gamebreaking skill is jade winds, I’ve personally lost count of how many times I’ve turned the tide on a node, snowball node progress, or escape because of it and since the autoattack is so good you aren’t really giving up DPS to let it charge enough. Glint’s elite is great for node control and pushing off rezzers or downed players who teleport to a node. Then you have staff 5, which makes druid 1v1’s trivial by blocking the bristleback attack or staff 5 which is a linear knockback/interrupt for those committed to rezzing. Staff 2 is admittedly unwieldy though but a decent interrupt if you can manage to intercept people running around while they’re casting.

So even with reasonable damage levels revenant is still quite strong with its control and escape utilities.

Agemnon.4608:

But the damage currently feels balanced because of how overtuned chrono, tempest, and scrapper’s defenses are (much of that is from passives but especially from the current meta’s tanky amulets and durability runes) and once those are adjusted properly the current rev damage will feel OP.

The real gamebreaking skill is jade winds, I’ve personally lost count of how many times I’ve turned the tide on a node, snowball node progress, or escape because of it and since the autoattack is so good you aren’t really giving up DPS to let it charge enough. Glint’s elite is great for node control and pushing off rezzers or downed players who teleport to a node. Then you have staff 5, which makes druid 1v1’s trivial by blocking the bristleback attack or staff 5 which is a linear knockback/interrupt for those committed to rezzing. Staff 2 is admittedly unwieldy though but a decent interrupt if you can manage to intercept people running around while they’re casting.

So even with reasonable damage levels revenant is still quite strong with its control and escape utilities.

Uhh, Thief will have better mobility, better escapes, more instant attacks (good luck dodging those Steal-chained attacks), and will have better damage than us as well.

Revenant damage was high, but we also had a good amount of weaknesses which will be showing even more now and you really think Jade Winds is that bad? JW is pretty good, but it’s also EXTREMELY recognizable and costly. You don’t lose DPS (technically you do, but I wont be getting into PvE because obviously that gets completely ignored by a lot of people here), but you do risk getting caught without Energy, which is deadly.

Glint’s Elite is also really hard to use in an actual fight; it’s mostly there for downed players or for trying to cause a bit of chaos (and lag).
Staff is good, but its damage is nothing to write home about, aside from a perfectly lined up Staff 5 (which is also the best Control skill we have; Staff 2 is pretty unwieldy).

Agemnon.4608:

slip

You probably missed my comprasion but do you understand that thief sword auto damage will do more damage than rev sword in current state? If bunker meta is gone, why buff thief damage to such ridiculous level? They already have insane insta burst, now followed by insane autoattack. Good luck with that. Berk/marauder builds will be pushed away and forced to run bunker (also rev) once again due thief.

We all know mesmer will be deleted from the game once again, bunker wont mean much anymore for them, shatter will be a freekill to thief.

And the most fun fact is unlike us power revenants, s/d daredevil has amazing condition cleanse due to the trait which removed contion on evade and condition removal on sword 2. Sword also comes with boon steal so yep, i dont see a reason to even try run a glass rev over thief, even less so given the fact that thief doesnt need target to use his mobility skills.

td;dr

Power rev is gone, condi rev will be eated by necros alive. Balance achieved