Guild Wars 2

I can dig these changes.

Buffs to my tanky healing power thief

I dont like half of the thief changes but luckily i stopped playing him in september. Warrior hammer changes were probably needed. Wish Rangers got even more changes but the ones they got are cool

Ele changes, need to be changed. :S

My thoughts:

Ele: Nice changes to promote more traitlines, with the only real nerf being you cant take both vigor and ele attune for X/d

Engineer: IP and vigor nerf

Guardian: No vigor nerf? Guardian OP

Mesmer: More utility/trait utilty buffs, which are nice but not needed. Mesmer needs more AoE options in wvw, and better base weapon skills, not better utilites (they are currently only brought for their utility skills)

Thief: Nice changes, but I would rather have more ways to prevent stealth/teleports in the first place

Most classes: not much change, overall WvW meta remains the same (gars and wars top tier, sprinkle in other classes, except ranger, for their niche)

JonathanSharp.7094:

We just posted this:

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

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Why? Anet has a long history of doing what was initially proposed, regardless of comments/suggestions from the player base.

Fade.7658:

JonathanSharp.7094:

We just posted this:

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

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Why? Anet has a long history of doing what was initially proposed, regardless of comments/suggestions from the player base.

Why do you keep posting on about it if you know this to be the case?

Thief: shortbow needs 1200 range.

Jor.2741:

Thief: shortbow needs 1200 range.

And Longbow warrior1400 range then ; like engineer nades because IRL i never found anyone able to throw a nade farer that an arrow… Then replace the range longbow warrior trait with something new and useful : like 20% stance cooldown reduction.
Also replace the master trait warrior that is actually giving retaliation buff for few seconds for a new master trait 25% chance to cast 6 seconds of Protection when being hit with internal cooldown of 24sec.

Titan.3472:

Jor.2741:

Thief: shortbow needs 1200 range.

And Longbow warrior1400 range then ; like engineer nades because IRL i never found anyone able to throw a nade farer that an arrow… Then replace the range longbow warrior trait with something new and useful : like 20% stance cooldown reduction.
Also replace the master trait warrior that is actually giving retaliation buff for few seconds for a new master trait 25% chance to cast 6 seconds of Protection when being hit with internal cooldown of 24sec.

Thieves are the only class without a 1200 range attack on a weapon, so don’t cry about warrior LB.

warriorjrd.8695:

Titan.3472:

Jor.2741:

Thief: shortbow needs 1200 range.

And Longbow warrior1400 range then ; like engineer nades because IRL i never found anyone able to throw a nade farer that an arrow… Then replace the range longbow warrior trait with something new and useful : like 20% stance cooldown reduction.
Also replace the master trait warrior that is actually giving retaliation buff for few seconds for a new master trait 25% chance to cast 6 seconds of Protection when being hit with internal cooldown of 24sec.

Thieves are the only class without a 1200 range attack on a weapon, so don’t cry about warrior LB.

I don’t cry I said it should be set up at 1200 with no need of a trait this is dumb. And could use a new and more useful trait instead.

Thieves don’t need 1200 range, sorry. that’s not our role. I love these changes. the scrubs who relied on perma stealth will be purged. good.

I think mesmer didn’t get tweaked in the right way. As it stands, especially in roaming wvw – condition phantasm builds based around prismatic understanding are incredibly potent. I would have liked to see a nerf to clone spam (maybe an ICD on deceptive evasion), a nerf on the duration of protection PU can give to the mesmer and some sort of change to the mechanics of phantasms. As it stands when fighting these tanky very stealth heavy builds you are inundated with clones and phantasms that leave you with two choices: die from on clone death conditions and the mesmer – or chase the mesmer and die from phantasm/clone on hit conditions. It’s alright in my opinion for mesmers to be able to deceive and stealth about, but where I wanted to see a change was to their ability to create clutter and something that forces mesmers to be smarter with their phantasms (maybe a cooldown system similar to ranger spirits). Right now I feel like fighting them is kind of kitten ed if you do kitten ed if you don’t in the sense that if you kill the clones/phantasms you suffer, if you don’t – well you suffer too.

Titan.3472:

And Longbow warrior1400 range then ; like engineer nades because IRL i never found anyone able to throw a nade farer that an arrow…

Never found anyone IRL that can turn invisible or shoot fireballs either.

Mif.3471:

Titan.3472:

And Longbow warrior1400 range then ; like engineer nades because IRL i never found anyone able to throw a nade farer that an arrow…

Never found anyone IRL that can turn invisible or shoot fireballs either.

You need to get out more…..

honestly. this changes absolutely nothing for the wvw mesmer at all. we are still veilbots. the mesmer needs access to viable aoe wich we had with glamour builds, but after that one got nerfed to the ground, we are stuck with phantasms and clones which is ai and ai is terrible in a zerg. please move us away from the whole duelist thing. its not working as a light armor.

in spvp, yes…roaming yes,but not in a zerg.

Oprah.1347:

I think mesmer didn’t get tweaked in the right way. As it stands, especially in roaming wvw – condition phantasm builds based around prismatic understanding are incredibly potent. I would have liked to see a nerf to clone spam (maybe an ICD on deceptive evasion), a nerf on the duration of protection PU can give to the mesmer and some sort of change to the mechanics of phantasms. As it stands when fighting these tanky very stealth heavy builds you are inundated with clones and phantasms that leave you with two choices: die from on clone death conditions and the mesmer – or chase the mesmer and die from phantasm/clone on hit conditions. It’s alright in my opinion for mesmers to be able to deceive and stealth about, but where I wanted to see a change was to their ability to create clutter and something that forces mesmers to be smarter with their phantasms (maybe a cooldown system similar to ranger spirits). Right now I feel like fighting them is kind of kitten ed if you do kitten ed if you don’t in the sense that if you kill the clones/phantasms you suffer, if you don’t – well you suffer too.

i main a mesmer and roaming and 1v1 is the only place we are good at. in a zerg however we lack a lot. the pu mesmer is not really good in zergs as clones aand phantasms die wayyyy to quick in a zerg.

enlargement is good, furry on gs attack is not bad with ranger. but its still not worth it to play in wvw with a ranger.

There is nothing wrong with Mesmers… my guy dominates in WvW compared to other classes i play.

Engineer gets nerfed. Because its so good and outperforming other professions that its the most played profession.
Oh wait, its the least played profession, based on arenanets own metric.

Buffs to warriors ofcourse. Go figure…

I’m not even surprised.

Avigrus.2871:

There is nothing wrong with Mesmers… my guy dominates in WvW compared to other classes i play.

I guess you should be glad that the update brings no change to the mesmer meta…

The only thing wrong with Mesmer is the poor movement speed out of combat, which forces us to stick with an otherwise mediocre weapon or use mediocre and expensive runes.

Won’t change much. Warriors + guardians frontline, staff ele for fields, necro for AoE conditions, mesmer for utility, ranger/engineer still useless. Ah, maybe things are changing for thiefs. But probably not for the better.

Bring back 1,200 range cluster bomb for WvW / PvE please…

Looks like a lot of solid changes and reasoning for them. I have to add the mandatory comment though about gear and how it affects WvW players and skill updates. It takes sPvP players a few seconds to change their amulet, sigil and runes, while a WvW player that has to make gear changes because their build was nerfed, or they want to try a new build with the buffs has to spend countless hours and a pile of gold.

Speaking from a WvW warriors perspective:
The nerfs to staggering blow and earthshaker seem unwarranted and hamfisted. .
I’d prefer it much much more if hammers scaling with damage stats, mostly crit and crit damage, was looked at since thats whats proving to be overpowered in small scale battles and sPvP instead of nerfing the base damage which also affects warriors in pvt or knights gear.
Warriors are a major contributor of damage in zergs and I fear it may become even harder to actually to actually pin down opponents and burst them than it is now, leading to battles that last far longer than they should which is a nerf to organized raids who can abuse opponents slow reactions, bursting down a large number of people to win even when outnumbered heavily. Getting grinded to dust by superior numbers because you simply cant kill enough people in your burst is extremely frustrating and I hope it doesnt become more common

Something I’d like to see: reducing bonus crit chance from unsuspecting foe, changing merciless hammer so instead of dealing bonus damage to disabled enemies it grants fury when you stun someone. Fury is useless for the hambow build since they already use signet of rage before bursting enemies but tank warriors usually use battle standard (to rally allies, not for the buffs)
Also this patch doesnt adress warriors insane sustain which comes from a combination of healing sig, stunlocks, dodge rolls, kiting potential, and condi removal from cleansing ire. In fact after the patch I can just go 0/20/20/0/30 and I only lose some damage on my hammer combo, I can still skill opponents into the ground by just outlasting them it just takes 2 stuncombos to kill people instead of roflstomping them in 1 combo
The change to spiked armor is good, its going to benefit warriors when theyre not running with an optimized party that can feed them retaliation
Armored attack, great fortitude and reckless dodge buffs benefit tank warriors but I doubt its enough to make up for the heavy nerfs to base abilities

No one in WvW bothered about the nerf to symbol of swiftness?

That’s the guardian staff 3 skill, that generally gives other players swiftness.

It currently gives 8 secs of swiftness, they are nerfing it to 4 secs.

Its probably one of the most used skills in WvW, also how can 8 secs of swiftness be overpowered and need a nerf?

The mind boggles…

They are changing in so that it gives 4 seconds per pulse. It pulses 3 times I think so that’s 12 seconds of swiftness if you stay on it. But most importantly it will always give 4 seconds of swiftness when you run over it instead of the 1 second you get now if you already have swiftness. Its kinda a buff and a nerf.

The changes look great especially from a balancing standpoint.

On the next patch can you please do something about changing the Mesmer’s Greatsword Mind stab #3 to something more useful pretty please!!

Tibstrike.2974:

They are changing in so that it gives 4 seconds per pulse. It pulses 3 times I think so that’s 12 seconds of swiftness if you stay on it. But most importantly it will always give 4 seconds of swiftness when you run over it instead of the 1 second you get now if you already have swiftness. Its kinda a buff and a nerf.

Its true what you say but the way it works in practice is everyone runs through it and gets 1 pulse, used to be 8 secs will now be 4 secs. Given that you are using it to get form A to B as fast as possible, stopping for a 2nd pulse is just not viable.

If Anet think swiftness is OP why are all other character classes swiftness skills not being nerfed. It makes no sense making it Guardians only.

So you ruined hammer. You probably give me some other ascended weapon for free?

As far the necro changes:
Removing 2 bleeds make no real change in open field combat in wvw out of the amount of cleansing.
The changes on the power gain on blood and death is a boost to healing builds,but still to heal people you need to be within the danger zone of 900 at least.
For a class that has no blocks or invuls or even cc reduction,it makes no real difference because 900 range means you will get hit by multiple static fields and if you survive those the enemy hammer warriors will finish you off.
Either give us range or give us cc reduction or at least let us heal through deathshroud.

Sanduskel.1850:

Thieves don’t need 1200 range, sorry. that’s not our role. I love these changes. the scrubs who relied on perma stealth will be purged. good.

All of your messages are the same. Stop complaining about getting pwned. It isn’t productive and makes you look bitter. Seriously, just practice and then you won’t need so many alts.

AnarchyMike.2597:

Speaking from a WvW warriors perspective:
The nerfs to staggering blow and earthshaker seem unwarranted and hamfisted. .
I’d prefer it much much more if hammers scaling with damage stats, mostly crit and crit damage, was looked at since thats whats proving to be overpowered in small scale battles and sPvP instead of nerfing the base damage which also affects warriors in pvt or knights gear.

ANET is nerfing the wrong thing. These nerfs are not needed. The problem with warriors is the healing signet. That needs a lower base heal and a higher tie to healing power.

style.6173:

Sanduskel.1850:

Thieves don’t need 1200 range, sorry. that’s not our role. I love these changes. the scrubs who relied on perma stealth will be purged. good.

All of your messages are the same. Stop complaining about getting pwned. It isn’t productive and makes you look bitter. Seriously, just practice and then you won’t need so many alts.

You seem upset. I am not complaining. I support these changes! Scrub specs ruined this class, and I will be glad to see them gone.

Whats your “goal” for necros? Lately this classes is just nerfed a little, than buffed a little, than some minor nerfs again. Back and forth but never significant/useful changes. Considering these balance updates under the wvw aspect i would say most of the traits are not used in wvw anyway. But at the moment im just glad that the significant nerfs have stopped And i love the new fastcast option.
Some things i would like to see for the necro: more options to gain stability, better staff auto-attack, better way to leap/escape, gain speed from a mark, remove death V(reanimator), …

Still think mesmers illusion of life should be changed ot illusion of pain and cuase a perma rez as opposed to vengence

I don’t mind the changes but i think anet needs to remember they introduced ascended gear and swapping builds just isn’t as easy anymore. once they add ascended armor they really need to think about how to allow us to switch stats on our ascended gear when they break a build.

Well they don’t break just build they break whole weapon. I wouldn’t care if some silly fotm build get nerf, but when weapon get nerf every build is ruined.

I main warrior since…well…forever. People who know me don’t even know I have other classes at 80. Anyway, after this brief introduction, I am telling you the warrior nerfs aren’t too bad. They are deserved and I like the way Anet is thinking. I see potential of some builds rising enourmously and others being nerfed (needed). Just learn to adjust. Warrior will still be strong, real real strong after this patch. I really would like to see the healing signet only thick 1 time/3s, HPS should stay the same. And rush (greatsword ‘5’) should be reduced to 900 range.

People finally need to make sacrifises building a warrior, making choices. Just as with the thiefs, this will seperate the scrub warrior from the good ones. I do still see 2 warrior builds, way to OP after this patch. Hope they’ll get some nerfs aswel.

I agree that the mesmer needs a bit more love tho.

Melandru runes, food and dogged march need nerf. It’s frigging stupid than you can’t cc warrior at all. But no you nerf hammer damage.

Junkpile.7439:

Melandru runes, food and dogged march need nerf. It’s frigging stupid than you can’t cc warrior at all. But no you nerf hammer damage.

Boohoo, they nerfed the damage on 2 abilities and they even gave a pretty good reason why. They don’t want you to be able to heavily CC people and deal tons of damage. Now you got to choose, go for CC or damage. The hammer is still a really strong CC weapon, it just lost a bit of it’s godlike damage. Now you actually got to use a brain to burst someone down.

PS.: CC immunity can basicly be done by an ele and engineer aswel. And using this, you give up on group support. Warriors in top guilds don’t run melandru. The rune does what it is supposed to do.

MiLkZz.4789:

Junkpile.7439:

Melandru runes, food and dogged march need nerf. It’s frigging stupid than you can’t cc warrior at all. But no you nerf hammer damage.

Boohoo, they nerfed the damage on 2 abilities and they even gave a pretty good reason why. They don’t want you to be able to heavily CC people and deal tons of damage. Now you got to choose, go for CC or damage. The hammer is still a really strong CC weapon, it just lost a bit of it’s godlike damage. Now you actually got to use a brain to burst someone down.

PS.: CC immunity can basicly be done by an ele and engineer aswel. And using this, you give up on group support. Warriors in top guilds don’t run melandru. The rune does what it is supposed to do.

But CC without damage is useless in 1v1 and even small groups. Sure you can stun and cripple lots, but if you can’t keep the pressure on with damage you will just be an annoying easy kill. Forcing people into making a trait choice to either get more damage or survivability via moving UF to master should be enough to bring the hammer in check without nerfing the weapons damage effectively killing all non-meta hammer builds.

Necromancer:

I feel like whole balancing about necromancer is done only staff and scepter builds in mind and specifically thinking about terror/condi builds.

I look at the changes and I only see Mark of evasion trait indirectly nerfed and signet of spite which both were useful for NON staff and NON condi focused builds. I would hope you will think also melee focused hybrid/direct damage builds when making these changes.

Also necromancer will even more suffer from being focused with enfeebling blood nurfage. Especially NON staff/condition builds will suffer and suffer.

I would like to see dagger/axe builds see some improvement in general, especially when it comes to damage avoidance, instead of being hit by nerfs which are directed to terrorcondimancers which have it more than well atm.

Guardian:

I am actually really interested to see how it works, changes seem pretty nice to be honest. However I fear that guardians might actually become even too strong at some point if other classes were ever balanced to sane levels. I really do like my guardian how it is now, I don’t like it to be too strong and especially I do not want my guardian to have only one trait line which would be support with staff.

That brings to my mind that guardian staff auto attack needs nerf and shooting through walls should have been fixed last year.

Mesmer:

I really think mesmer is strongest class in game at the moment and has been from launch. I really do hope giving more supportive traits doesn’t let them be insane damagemobiles with also healing and condition removal. They also have strongest defence as in target breaking in 1v1. They shouldn’t be too easy to play.

gidorah.4960:

I don’t mind the changes but i think anet needs to remember they introduced ascended gear and swapping builds just isn’t as easy anymore. once they add ascended armor they really need to think about how to allow us to switch stats on our ascended gear when they break a build.

You bring out good point with ascended gear.

I have my 5 gear sets for my main character. I don’t even have ONE full ascended trinket set and 0 ascended weapons this far.

It makes me sad since in WvW ascended stats do matter, alot.

Now that they introduced this ascended stuff it takes very long time to get even one gear set for one character so it becomes just a gold farming race to be honest if you want to stay at least nearly competitive.

In my opinion problem there is too high cost and time gating.

Cake.4920:

My thoughts:
Thief: Nice changes, but I would rather have more ways to prevent stealth/teleports in the first place

Oh, so we can be completely useless?

jalmari.3906:

gidorah.4960:

I don’t mind the changes but i think anet needs to remember they introduced ascended gear and swapping builds just isn’t as easy anymore. once they add ascended armor they really need to think about how to allow us to switch stats on our ascended gear when they break a build.

You bring out good point with ascended gear.

I have my 5 gear sets for my main character. I don’t even have ONE full ascended trinket set and 0 ascended weapons this far.

It makes me sad since in WvW ascended stats do matter, alot.

Now that they introduced this ascended stuff it takes very long time to get even one gear set for one character so it becomes just a gold farming race to be honest if you want to stay at least nearly competitive.

In my opinion problem there is too high cost and time gating.

right they break a build or nerf a weapon so that it is useless for my exotic stuff its no big deal I have the gold to buy a whole new set no problem. I might have preffered to spend the gold on something else but Its well within the reach of most people. If they do it to a build after they introduce ascended armor it will be what a month or 2 to fully gear up a new build? It’s a problem they really need to address.

Elrond.9486:

Cake.4920:

My thoughts:
Thief: Nice changes, but I would rather have more ways to prevent stealth/teleports in the first place

Oh, so we can be completely useless?

lmfao

gidorah.4960:

jalmari.3906:

gidorah.4960:

I don’t mind the changes but i think anet needs to remember they introduced ascended gear and swapping builds just isn’t as easy anymore. once they add ascended armor they really need to think about how to allow us to switch stats on our ascended gear when they break a build.

You bring out good point with ascended gear.

I have my 5 gear sets for my main character. I don’t even have ONE full ascended trinket set and 0 ascended weapons this far.

It makes me sad since in WvW ascended stats do matter, alot.

Now that they introduced this ascended stuff it takes very long time to get even one gear set for one character so it becomes just a gold farming race to be honest if you want to stay at least nearly competitive.

In my opinion problem there is too high cost and time gating.

right they break a build or nerf a weapon so that it is useless for my exotic stuff its no big deal I have the gold to buy a whole new set no problem. I might have preffered to spend the gold on something else but Its well within the reach of most people. If they do it to a build after they introduce ascended armor it will be what a month or 2 to fully gear up a new build? It’s a problem they really need to address.

Completely agree.

I am unclear and do not understand fully the guardian swiftness changes. Currently, when I run on my guard, with all the boon duration, and various bonusses I have 10-11 secs of swiftness on a 15 sec recast timer on my staff #3, for a rough total of 70% swiftness uptime when out of combat and staff #3 is available.

This is of course complicated by the fact that it gets messed up when I run through other guards swiftness symbols or an ele puts a short duration swiftness on me or something like that.

So I have a simple question, will my total swiftness uptime be improved or made worse ?

In case it is made worse I have another question, why are you making it worse on a profession (class) which is already the 2nd worse (mesmers are worst) in the game on this critical aspect ? I do not understand the logic here.