Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Showing Posts For Paul.2054:
Banning the only halfway decent players because you get bullied into doing it by opportunistic people faking outrage in order to further kill off their scene because all they care about is their own ego.
What are you basing these bans on? TOS being broken? In that case I advice you ban half of NA, including the people that probably endlessly whined to you about doing this.
IMO it’s none of anyones business other than anet of what people does w their ingame tourn winnings. The only way I could find a ban justified from your end is if someone actually changed the outcome of a match by cheating. Nothing like that happened.
But yeah, I’m sure jeff convincing you of banning the team that always beats him is all done in the ‘’fairness of competition’’ and not you getting bullied by whispers and not having the nuts to take a stance.
I think you should just respect who ppl choose to ban from their tournaments for their own reasons. Don’t forget the ppl you banned from participating in your own tournament who you must admit would have been competitive in some sort of aspect but were not allowed to compete for essentially being shady as hell.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Sigil of Agility change definitely allows for more interesting use compared to how it was really allows for that style of the quick whirling wrath/100b/etc skills to get off effectively.
I still don’t really feel like interrupt sigil are very balanced in general since they have no CD at all and the fact that you can interrupt auto attacks to make use of the effects while some classes have the ability to interrupt multiple times. Sure these aren’t sigil of draining type effects but you probly just add these to Mesmer or mace warrior and they will just steal all your boons NP. Not to mention there are things like deflecting shot or tides of time which can just interrupt entire teams and give those classes huge stacks of boons for single skill uses. If you don’t at least put a couple second ICD on these you’re begging for trouble.
Also still really think you’re making a mistake not buffing battle even a little bit you’ve added plenty of options that are probably more useful than it now and giving it like a couple seconds base would go a long way. I also felt the 33% energy sigil was a good idea not sure why you backed out on that. When not a single offensive class uses the 25% energy sigil you know it’s probly in a bad place. Plus it gets closer to the non PvP version that way.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
4. Escape was changed from only cleansing immobilize because it felt weak, but perhaps it could do something like only cleanse cripple/chill?
I think the current effect is for the best right now or at least the Immobilize portion I feel is more important than the other part. One of the big issues you will face as a side point character that receives some sort of gank is the actual escape and most of the time clearing the Immobs/Chills/Cripples and dealing with interrupts are actually the more important part to living rather than stuns or pure damage output. For something like a druid or engi this sigil fits that playstyle really well but other classes like mesmer and warrior will not make much use of it. Even for engi this sigil probly can’t be used because you will waste it at random times since you can’t put it on a secondary set to save it. For other characters it could see use just from the prevalence of Entangle/Ancient Seeds/Roots and the difficulty that the classes have dealing with it (Mainly necro and ranger ironically).
We will take more looks at the numbers. It could be that 20% is fine with a new set of available sigils.
For the numbers on the sigils 20% is probably ok but I wouldn’t go any lower. People still don’t super prioritize condi duration even now where you will see a warrior choose Rabid over Wanderer’s despite the massive theoretical DPS gain simply because condis will be removed before their full duration or the duration isn’t even necessary to kill people. The main thing to watch out for with these sigils is the possible unintended buffs you get with the addition of torment and confusion sigils. While cover condis and burst/cover condi weapon swap sigils are nice mesmers and condi revs have never been balanced around the fact that confusion and torment could last 20-25% longer and those condis are commonly counterplayed by timing them out.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Personally I don’t have an issue with Sigil of Revelation other than the fact that it confuses the roles of classes that had this utility. If you want this utility now you don’t need a Sneak Gyro engi or Glint rev. While those abilities are easier and better than the sigil it still feels weird to open it to other classes through a sigil which everyone can use instead of by simply adding more reveals to the game. There are other options even that aren’t even used in the meta that could be improved or switched around. Lock On, Analyze, Sic Em, etc could all use adjustments if you want more reveal.
Also an interesting idea for Sigil of Separation might be to a lower and higher end depending on distance such as 3% if 300 5% if 500 7% if 1000. It’s not very balanced compared to the others but it’s just an example. Being outside of common auto attack ranges would be the best way.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
I’m all aboard on these changes, so far, but I still really do not think that the immob-cleanse sigil or the reveal sigil should exist. The immob-cleanse one seems, like, just kinda dumb, and the reveal one seems very niche but incredibly frustrating to get hit by. I don’t think it’ll actually be that useful on an 18 second CD regardless. I don’t know.
It lines up perfectly so you can use it on 1 weapon but not both. So if you’re like a druid you would probly use this and energy on sword/dagger cuz you don’t swap to it often.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
(yea, EVERY build, Paul, not just the ones you don’t like)
Idk why you think I suggested only the builds I don’t like I literally suggested only the builds I do like xD. It would be pretty sad if I was a biased person when I play almost every class in this game except for Thief. I accept small nerfs to things like adrenal healing, shatter heals, blighters boon, writ of persistence and revenant heals but where do you get more sustain nerfs outside of those? You go to the bunkers that have been nerfed countless numbers of times for their tankiness or sustain who never get changes reverted as they nerf the actual core issues of those classes and never get buffs in other ways to compensate those nerfs or channel their strengths elsewhere. What else do you nerf? Regen? Blood and leeching sigils were already removed as well in this system.
The clear direction anet will take is nerf bunkers and more specifically engi and druid will get nerfed as they struggle even more with the light field update, signet of the wild nerfs, gyro nerfs etc. which have pushed them in this direction for so long. While they will get nothing in return AGAIN and they lose all their damage from sigils. All that has happened for so long is remove all the damage from bunkers rather than their tankiness and now they’ll remove the tankiness too.
Really I just can’t wait to see anet nerf necro heals as they try to deal with power necro sustain and unintentionally nerf the kitten out of condi necro who can’t sustain themselves at all xD. I fully expect something like this to happen to some class.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Wow who knew that keeping all the damaging condition sigils was a bad idea when you remove all the options from power classes xD. This overall change fits the direction much better than before without totally compromising only certain builds, now every build is equally compromised!
You should probly still add a 7 or 10% Condi Duration Sigil of Malice just as a much more generalized option for builds that don’t rely on single condis while not overshadowing 25% bonuses. It gives the ability to increase utility based condis and damage based condis which makes it more attractive in a PvP environment for utility purposes. But I understand if you don’t want to do that as well really as the utility purpose might not be your intent.
I still think the basic Sigil of Nullification is too weak unless you add a priority system which I also don’t think is even a good idea though. I still believe this sigil is more trouble than it will ever be worth. It’s also one of those sigils where it’s fairly possible that you remove retal from a mesmer clone or a pet boon rather than your intended target and you lose a sigils effectiveness for 10 seconds as a result.
The changes to Energy and Escape are nice improvements and I still believe that Hydromancy is viable as it only had a single synergy with damage on reapers but cripple is a lot more manageable than chill overall at the end of the day. I also like that Strength and Frailty can now ramp much better than before.
Still wish battle was better than it is. Even if it was just a base 7 seconds of might it would go a long way for boon duration.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Why is it that these sigils should be allowed up to 8%, when the other ones are capped at 5%? That’s the opposite of balance. This is creating sigils that are unquestionably better than alternatives, which is something that the balance team should strive to avoid
Let me put it to you this way, because it is a lot more fair in PvP than a 5% damage modifier as your only option.
Lets say we take a semi-realistic scenario like you kill someone in 9 seconds using only a Force Sigil if we take a basic HP pool of something like 18-21k that means it took about 9 seconds to deal something around 23-26k damage if they used their heal and you are using a Force sigil. In that 9 seconds without any extra healing a Force sigil gave you a maximum of 1300 less damage you had to deal to the target not counting condis, buff damage or any damage which isn’t effected by Force if after 9 secconds you simply 1 shot their entire health bar. Right now a Sigil of Air provides anywhere from 800-1500~ damage depending on class, vuln and might stacks on a 3 second cooldown. If you want to remove free damage and you remove sigils like that it’s fine because a Sigil of Air can contribute upwards of 3 times the damage or more in a PvP scenario realistically.
But here’s the thing about Force sigil right. What if you can’t reliably do 26k damage every 9 seconds? What if you can’t even consistently HIT your target every 9 seconds because of reasons?(block, evade, invlun, line of sight, you or they have to run). You start losing a lot of damage in those scenarios because you aren’t even applying any damage to actually enhance. A realistic PvP scenario means you can only deal damage to your opponent occasionally, such as maybe every 3 seconds?, where a Sigil of Air can provide its maximum value without even requiring you to hit for 3 seconds and on top of that it doesn’t require you to actually do a certain amount of damage to get the same damage increase. This is why Sigil of Force is already not used because even in the absolute best case scenarios it’s not that much damage.
The proposed new sigils for most classes would not even be 5% damage at all times meaning they will be even less useful than a Force sigil is now. The sad thing is it’s not even that the Sigils don’t increase your damage enough. It’s that the condi sigils still increase your damage by a lot and the utility sigils don’t fit the playstyle of a lot of builds. If you just completely removed sigils or made them purely not increase your damage in any way outside of synergy then it would be fine. Instead we have kitten like a condi class being able to pump out a 560 dmg Bleed every 3 seconds not even counting condition duration or might stacks. Like why is this even fair when you gut all the other options we had.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
(edited by Paul.2054)
You should consider yourself lucky that you have any on hit sigils left, considering they were almost removed entirely. And just because that is a part of thief’s design (hint, it actually isn’t. Otherwise they wouldn’t have a second weapon set) doesn’t mean its good design. I do think the team is trying to nudge people away from camping a single weapon set.
You don’t have to agree with what anet proposes just because they say this is how it will be. These changes changes hurt Thief and Druid quite a bit as they tend to stick to one weapon because that is simply the best way to play. Changing sigils does not change that playstyle it only makes that style of play weaker and only because they chose to do this.
Mostly I think they did that as an oversight because there’s no realistic scenario in which you expect a Thief to use multiple weapon sets effectively and thus you are limited to the use of a mediocre flat damage bonus sigil even though you steal boons and don’t apply many condis or on hit sigils that don’t really do anything useful for thief. Druid can perform adequately enough with a Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Agility but they’re going to lose astral generation and for those uncomfortable with Sigil of Agility they gave no viable useful alternative that a Druid would prefer to use on their staff. Overall the on hit and passive bonus sigils are way too few and far too weak for certain playstyles to effectively have any realistic choice other than something that just doesn’t work.
Druid needs useful on hit options for staff because passive bonuses will never be useful since enhancing staff DPS does nothiung. Thief needs useful one set sigils for D/P or Staff(On Hit or Passive). If they just left a nerfed on hit version of blood it would have been ok for druid but thief needs something that just isn’t available right now. Thief simply can’t make use of either of the passive sigils because they can’t alone meet those requirements because they don’t apply enough condis and actually remove boons for the damage bonus on the other one. None of the other sigils that function with Druid or Thief actually provide anything meaningful.
The main thing is I think they believe Sigil of Frailty is way more useful than it is despite the ramp up time being huge, the fact that you can remove the condi and the fact that the condi can be nullified with resistance. There is similar ramp up time with Sigil of Strength which isn’t a big deal for Druid but is a much bigger deal for Thief who can’t get boon duration and simply doesn’t have the ability to ramp up like that over time based on playstyle. Other than that as I said the passive bonus sigils are extremely weak considering their high end values are the same as Force and Force already was not seen as a viable sigil for PvP because of damage downtime.
Until they address these issues or add alternatives a few classes will run around holding sigils that will realistically provide very small benefits while other classes ESPECIALLY CONDI have all of their strong sigils left mostly intact like Earth/Geomancy/Doom and they got buffs for sigils like Earth, Strength and Frailty where slow attacking builds and non crit builds like Carrion could literally never use. The worst part is every condi build that has expertise just makes such better use of all these condition applying sigils that it’s just sad they gave no real alternative to power classes that will never realistically have outgoing condi duration.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
(edited by Paul.2054)
au contraire,
with how much power creep gw2 has nerfs are what it needs
Yeah because what this game needs is the 50th nerf to druid/engi/ele. /s
Just can’t wait until I’m further pushed into full bunker mode on my druid as even more damage and sustainability is removed from the class. Magi Amulet party anyone?
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Everyone took force back when you could only take one proc sigil, so there’s probably some variation of a flat damage sigil that would compete for a slot in the new system.
Yeah and now you forcibly pigeonhole everyone into taking it because you removed any alternative. People didn’t want to take Force they just had to because it made the most sense. Now you do the same exact thing with a worse sigil only because no one wants to take anything else you provided. It isn’t a good sigil just because you removed everything else that was good.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Why would you nerf Sigil of Battle’s might duration that much that sigil is already terrible with 20 seconds of might. Sure you might get to the same max stacks faster but that wasn’t even the problem that sigil had in the first place…
Why do you even try to make nullification work you probably just made it worse unless it strips in a priority list of stab/resistance/prot. This sigil has to be broken in order for it to be good and if you didn’t give it a priority list of stab it will be useless. I’m not gonna take a 1 in 5 chance on a ranger to remove stab for my surge of the mists.
Sigil of Lethargy
Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat slows your target (2 Seconds).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)
You are giving most condi classes the ability to apply a realistic scenario 33% or more uptime on slow where they never even had access to slow in the first place. Why would you ever do this to the game. xddd
Also I don’t know if you even payed attention to what I said about passive sigils but the fact that you drop Force for those when force was useless already and those can only possibly match it is actually hilarious. Even with the removal of Air/Fire/Blood/Leeching it is very likely that classes will never take these because they’re so laughably weak.
Also why would you remove Renewal and Transference? You provided no effective alternative and all you really did was nerf ele a bit and make something like bunker support guard even less viable since it now has even fewer healing ratios.
Honestly fairly disappointed by these changes it will add in like only a handful of meaningful changes most of which is simply from the removal of sigils or effects from the sigils despite this being an entire rework on sigils overall. My feeling when I look at all these sigils is how I don’t want any of these sigils and I just resign myself to the fact that people would have to take kittenty sigils simply because you actually removed every other useful alternative. The likelihood people stray out of the use of energy/strength/battle/lethargy if they aren’t a condi/support class is extremely low and like I said battle is a boring non useful sigil but all the alternatives are fairly low value.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Why would you nerf Sigil of Battle’s might duration that much that sigil is already terrible with 20 seconds of might. Sure you might get to the same max stacks faster but that wasn’t even the problem that sigil had in the first place…
Why do you even try to make nullification work you probably just made it worse unless it strips in a priority list of stab/resistance/prot. This sigil has to be broken in order for it to be good and if you didn’t give it a priority list of stab it will be useless. I’m not gonna take a 1 in 5 chance on a ranger to remove stab for my surge of the mists.
Sigil of Lethargy
Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat slows your target (2 Seconds).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)
You are giving most condi classes the ability to apply a realistic scenario 33% or more uptime on slow where they never even had access to slow in the first place. Why would you ever do this to the game. xddd
Also I don’t know if you even payed attention to what I said about passive sigils but the fact that you drop Force for those when force was useless already and those can only possibly match it is actually hilarious. Even with the removal of Air/Fire/Blood/Leeching it is very likely that classes will never take these because they’re so laughably weak.
Also why would you remove Renewal and Transference? You provided no effective alternative and all you really did was nerf ele a bit and make something like bunker support guard even less viable since it now has even fewer healing ratios.
Honestly fairly disappointed by these changes it will add in like only a handful of meaningful changes most of which is simply from the removal of sigils or effects from the sigils despite this being an entire rework on sigils overall. My feeling when I look at all these sigils is how I don’t want any of these sigils and I just resign myself to the fact that people would have to take kittenty sigils simply because you actually removed every other useful alternative. The likely hood people stray out of the use of energy/strength/battle/lethargy if they aren’t a condi/support class is extremely low and like I said battle is a boring non useful sigil but all the alternatives are fairly low.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Part 2/2
Passive bonus sigils are where the real problems come as almost all of these are actually useless in general as you would rather get an alternative effect where you can feel the use from a weapon swap/on hit/on crit sigil. My suggestion at this point is to scrap the entire idea of them entirely or move towards a different direction where you combine Passive bonus sigils with more active effects. For instance a Sigil of Agony could simply be a sigil which has a 100% on hit to get a stack of bleed for X seconds while also giving 20% bleeding duration. I feel this is probably the most intuitive overhaul you could do and this way you could make sigils much more generic as you can have sigils which increase your condis and make you apply more, increase your damage and make you apply more, etc and then you can get more utility based sigils in things like weapon swap. However this does cause issues with things such as a sigil of doom for instance would directly compete with a Sigil of Venom. Why would I use Doom as it is now if I changed Venom to have an on hit poison and poison duration, aside from the control? If you really culled a lot of older sigils for this direction specifically and perhaps removed cases like Doom you would have two straight forward categories for sigils with clear benefits to each build.
Also I agree just remove On Kill sigils they’re more of a trap.
For your benefit I created a spreadsheet with all sigils and my suggestions for them which you can find here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GlyL-5gJXowezxuqyBAIOobDvwos-X7BogPF5G3jV1Y/edit?usp=sharing
(Also generally I do not address things being overpowered as much because I feel this is more the decisions of the design team if something is overpowered. If you guys think it’s overpowered you’re probably right to be honest.)
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
(edited by Paul.2054)
I think when it comes to sigils you should either leave them relatively the same or go for a bigger overhaul altogether. If you leave the sigils the same and add in other game mode sigils especially the interrupt sigils and Sigil of Concentration you will start to see more attractive options than the current set but only because they’re really strong sigils that aren’t available currently. I think Sigil of Concentration and Sigil of Cleansing are most suited for straight additions to PvP and Sigil of Concentration would be a very useful addition overall to the general kitten nal of supports and boon dispensers who keep having damage removed anyways. Interrupt sigils would be highly unblanaced in their current state if implemented and would honestly need ICDs or huge nerfs.
Currently when it comes to PvP I personally don’t feel the RNG aspect of on crit sigils really effects gameplay negatively but does limit your choices as they are based on crit chance and attack speeds. Because of this you’ll see crit sigils be a lot worse for low crit chance builds even in situations where they would be the best if that was not the case(specifically looking at Carrion and Menders amulet builds) and for builds with slow attacking weapons or that don’t get to attack often. When it comes to on crit sigils specifically some of them clearly need some help in general because most of these are seen as DPS sigils but it is hard to reliably output damage with these sigils because you will have moments where you can’t frequently activate them or you may not be able to frequently activate them because of your build, Necro Scepter for instance attacks too slow to really make use of some like Sigil of Earth in PvP. Some on crit sigils that struggle in PvP would be things like Earth, Nullification, Rage and in some ways Generosity and Strength.
Chance on Hit sigils are generally great when they have an effective use for you which is usually limited to Ice and in some ways Water. Water generally speaking is kinda awkward to use as it requires positioning, on hit RNG and allies to effectively gain a lot of its potential and on top of all this you have to do it on CD in order to really get the most use out of it because that’s what it is balanced around. In most situations for a dagger ele who has to be in melee range Renewal is preferable because there is no RNG based on striking an enemy, you can comfortably control it anywhere and there is simply much more control over when it goes off generally speaking. I’d say for on hit sigils it really almost needs to be 100% and have an active effect show available on your bar for tracking when its ready to use.
From here on we start treading into the territory of very useful and very underpowered. All the on weapon swap sigils are useful aside from Sigil of Battle which honestly provides way too little might given the state of boons lately. The way it feels is that something like Sigil of Battle really needs to be buffed back to 3 or more might or perhaps changed into AoE might with possibly more stacks as well. Not many builds play in a way where Battle feels good and on top of that Battle just doesn’t feel good anyways. Sigil of Agility is kinda niche right now as well but it is pretty strong. I could see you buffing it to maybe 1.5 seconds of quickness but never more than that because of how it scales with Boon Duration.
Part 1/2
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
I had something very triggering(xD) happen to me today and I wanted to share with the general community a bug that has been in the game for a few months now(or more). This bug is what people I know like to refer to as the Confusion Bug, aptly named as it involved confusion doing ridiculous amounts of damage in specific circumstances.
I have two specific examples to show in picture form and one video to show what it is actually like when you’re playing.
From Today: http://i.imgur.com/N1AQCI3.jpg
From the World Championship Qualifier(August 6th): http://i.imgur.com/0c8JGOS.jpg
The video was muted by twitch(for the best because of my strong language). Watch carefully my HP going down specifically.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paulawl/v/108141670
Youtube Mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9acCIwpNzk
Now why does this occur? I have gone the extra mile to test my theory and found out that channeled auto attacks such as Druid Staff and Mesmer Greatsword seem to trigger confusion many times over when you attempt to auto attack with your back turned and moving to prevent your character from turning to the target. I have provided examples of my tests as well.
Druid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlmImJXIBmk&feature=youtu.be
Mesmer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ewv4pttNE&feature=youtu.be
Daddy ANet please.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
I have to agree with Kratos here guys. Even if you lose to us you’re likely losing less than we are. Our worst losses can be 40-50 points and we get less than 10 rating a game. It’s not easy for us if you face us sorry but that’s match making. If you guys beat us just think of how devastating that is too. It’s just how these types of systems work.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Starting at 0 would actually be worse overall than this current system. The problem with the placement system imo was that we just had no idea where people are starting after the soft reset occurred and how their matches are effecting their rating as they place. It just seems too random that players can get the same record but have wildly different rating by the end of placements without some kind of context of how it occurred. No one could have been sure where their rating was before the patch no matter how well you think you have done within the previous seasons because we had no way to know until now. Next season would be a more interesting study on it because we will have actual pre reset numbers to compare to after they place.
I’ve seen players and accounts that should be near the highest point when it comes to rating end up on the lower end of the spectrum with win rates as high as 7 or more wins while we get people like direx who got a placement rating that even pro players are struggling to reach after theirs.
I think best case scenario is there should have been an upper limit that players could hit that even like 8-2 records would hit and 7-3 records would be close to. A lower limit doesn’t make sense but an upper limit is actually fair because good players can always continue to climb while a lower limit doesn’t actually allow people to experience the “no limit on backwards progress” that the previous system didn’t show at all, which is really important to accurately show skill.
In this system I do have to say that some people are going to have to accept that you simply won’t place as high even after the entire season as you have in previous seasons because there is nothing that prevents you from losing what you gained any longer. Pip division and tiers in the past have allowed people to climb all the way up to ruby with very little worry of negative progress and allowed climbing into even higher divisions such as diamond and even legend by just playing enough until you win streaked up to that point. Now nothing stops your 10 game losing streak after you hit legend/plat/gold/silver from making your rating plummet out of that division range.
Overall I think these problems could be addressed next season by having rating visible during placements when people will accurately have an idea of where they belonged based on previous seasons and there should be some kind of win streak tool that allows climbing from lower ranks if there isn’t already one implemented. If you gradually gained more and more as you went on huge win streaks it would even itself out with the no backwards limit.
Also if any dev is interested in strange ladder examples I know me and java have at least one that ended up on the lower end of the spectrum we would like to show you. Players who ended up on the higher end like direx I figure are fairly visible already.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
My main concern is a lack of competition at the higher end of things right now. It feels like there are so many gaps of time in NA where you can just duo with two top players and never face anyone at the same level of play that competitive matches aren’t really happening and there are already a lot of people just sitting on their rating at the top. People can just pick and choose when to go in with a duo and just take that high percentage victory and you don’t have to risk a whole lot it feels.
I think this is a result of two things. One being that the community of top tier players aren’t really playing actively enough to support these kinds of matches on NA which is probably true. It’s kinda hard to blame the strong duos for going in and farming people if there just legitimately isn’t another competitive duo or set of players that matchmaking has available for them to face. The second thing could be that people are just dodging the strong duos or are simply just afraid to queue into them which I think is understandable. It feels like even duos are too powerful and that ranked should actually just be made into purely solo play. This way there is no way to guarantee any sort of advantageous team whatsoever and you’re left completely up to match making. This makes queueing while top players are around a little less intimidating especially if you don’t have a duo partner to play with or just want to play solo.
Even I have duod a lot this season and I feel like I’m sorta put into a position where I want to because it’s just much more of an advantage to me personally than before with the rating system. I’m punished very heavily for losing even a single match and now I’m at the point that it takes legitimately 5 or more wins to make up for a loss. I don’t want to be some kind of ranked tyrant that only queues with other top players but I feel like it is too much of an advantage not to. I might just stop doing it as a personal preference but I know there will be times where match making won’t be on my side because of other people duo queueing and I’ll pay for it.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
EDIT
It’s Core virtue changes… not DH Virtue changes. We read it wrong… DH Guard is going to be in a weird spot while Core Guard, well, idk what Anet is wanting from them.
Yeah I see now that these are core virtue changes and not DH changes which should make DH in an ok spot overall. I still believe that these trap changes won’t really amount to a whole lot and in some situations will even be better than the old daze since slow at that duration is basically better for most things aside from cleaving corpses and interrupting abilities, which you don’t even use it for a lot of the time. I wouldn’t be too worried about DH at all it still has all the rest of its tools and damage available I still think it will be one of the strongest classes in the meta especially with how easy it is.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
I’ll go over a short summary of thoughts on each of the new changes.
Deadshot Amulet: Seems like it will probably be a better amulet for Necro more than anything Wanderer’s with HP for shroud will be nice. This is a decent amulet for something condi that needs to crit and has low HP but I’m not entirely sure who’s looking to use it. Maybe a burn guard or thief. It gets weird because some of these builds still want Power but I think it might be suitable.
Rune of the Lynx: Finally a useful movespeed runeset. I hope this will shortly be added to WvW people will appreciate this a lot for some classes like Mesmer, Guardian and Necro when it comes to roaming.
Elementalist: More scepter buffs Arc Lightning increase is pretty high but in one sense it’s not necessarily where the burst damage comes from so it seems safe to buff. Promotes a disciplined playstyle of swapping out of air while channeling it with fresh air builds to maximize damage should be a nice change.
Arcane Shield changes are a great start I think 40 second may be too long still maybe 30-35 seconds with reduced damage would be more suitable since I think people desire abilities like this for defensive purposes and don’t consider how strong the damage can be.
Engineer: I thought this was good when I thought the initial damage of Jump Shot was buffed by 56% too xd. These changes won’t be enough to take rifle the auto needs to be stronger and cone based abilities not hitting on inclines need to be fixed otherwise even this Blunderbuss buff isn’t that great.
Guardian: I like the removal of daze it is not going to destroy Guardians and the Slow actually gives Necros more counterplay while it will still be something you won’t want to stand in. The buffs to virtues scare me as it makes Guardians stronger even though they are already strong and the daze nerf doesn’t seem like a significant nerf to me. Guardians retain a majority of power while other classes get nerfed and they get buffs.
The general improvements overall to help bunker builds is nice but everyone should be afraid of our DH overlords this patch with the general buffs to virtues. Symbol guards especially the Mender’s ones will be even stronger. I think staff needs Empower to be better or the symbol to have an additional effect otherwise it wont be able to shine since its damage is low and has to be used with no toughness now.
Mesmer: Solid survivability nerfs. 100-200 healing shaved off each of the levels of heals as long as you switch to Sage’s. Much bigger nerf if you have no healing power which hurts the viability of Power builds. Menders power shatter maybe good?
Revenant: Heavy nerfs to Staff and Sword 2. Would have liked to see a little love to Hammer to compensate. Debilitating Slam was a nice change that ability is really strong but was expensive for a weapon skill. Staff deserves what it got it’s a defensive weapon that was one of the best for offense as well. Sword 2 probably should have gotten greater counter play rather than a damage nerf but that’s ok.
Pain Absorption buff is nice but scary for WvW where Mallyx is everywhere. It was a necessary buff however as this kit really needed a stun break honestly as Rev in general lacked usable stun breaks outside of Glint and Shiro.
Thief: Infiltrator’s buff is a nice start 600 range was fairly short and with the removal of the port glitch it really needed help. Immob increase is something that scares me but you know the weapon is pretty weak right now so maybe it deserves it.
I don’t want condi thieves to be viable they’re really annoying to fight against it’s difficult to fight against them when they apply condis while evading or teleporting.
~~~~~Things that weren’t directly changed~~~~~
Warrior: Warrior needed some help that it didn’t get. They’re really pub stompy but have a rough time against Eles and their survivability nerf actually hurt them quite a bit. I would still like to see Eviscerate able to be effected by Quickness again and perhaps get leap range increased to what it was before when Super Speed/Swiftness/Quickness effected leaps.
Ranger: I appreciate the Revenant nerfs at least? Guardians are buffed again and soon Ranger will have a tough time killing even non experienced Guardians at this rate. As Druids and Revenants get weaker Guardians get stronger as they were probably the only 2 classes keeping them in check.
Ele/Necro: These classes overall benefited highly from the nerfs to Revenant and the trap change to DH. The new amulet is a good look for Necro. Necros may become big stars in the meta now that a lot of the Power classes will have to work harder to kill them.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Poor Revs xD. May condi rev forever reign supreme.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Hey guys hope we can get a bunch of people interested in this I’m excited to help give back to the community and maybe start something consistent and competitive for everyone to enjoy. Cya then.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
- Rejuvenation – Feels good. Pet needs separate heal portion. Trade off between normal and CA is good.
- Alignment – Feels good probably has the clearest play when to use one or the other. Easiest to make use of while also having useful effects.
- Equality – Strong normally for the CC but difficult to use in CA. Preemptive use of CA is the key to stun break allies. Seems pointless when stability is the better preemptive measure but that also means your’e still preemptively in CA in a point where a number of allies are being CC’d and presumably damaged. Promotes good play but not necessarily useful play in that sense.
- Tides – Has its uses but I did not particularly feel I had anywhere that really felt like I need to use this. An offensive effect like the pull being linked to CA is somewhat clunky as opposed to the opposite but it’s hard to switch them now.
- Empowerment – This thing is kinda bad it definitely needs something whether it’s a higher % or higher up time or more targets. While a 10% damage bonus isn’t bad the 6s duration is pretty weak even when used at specific moments, like an exposed monster from break bar. The problem is you’ll have to have this sub par utility for the rest of the fight even if you use it correctly to maximize it. 10 seconds, 15-20% for current duration, or 10 targets would make this much more attractive since it does nothing on its own. CA version especially feels really weird because is there really going to be a lot of others doing outgoing healing? Maybe it should be a personal buff for longer duration in CA?
Unity – Definitely has a lot of potential it just had no use during this weekend outside of PvP/WvW. In PvP/WvW this kitten is retal on crack because it can crit or of course can be used to heal more and that control is never a bad thing. The clear control over this ability is good and its the first low CD elite I felt is actually really impactful but not in an overbearing way that the CD is too short.
- Quick Draw(Skirmishing) – Didn’t seem to be working with staff. Wasn’t even consuming the buff
- Druidic Clarity – Has its uses the other traits aren’t so crazy that you could never take this in a raid.
- Cultivated Synergy – Feels kinda weak honestly because the cooldown of healing abilities is really long even if you double up it really isn’t anything special. It is nice sustain in PvP where every little bit tends to help I guess.
- Primal Echoes – Interesting weapon CDR trait nothing good or bad to say about it. If it had to not be a daze I think weakness would be really nice.
- Celestial Shadow – Feels kinda counter intuitive in sPvP I found myself coming out of CA a lot once we’ve won a fight and then allies can’t cap. Feels better in WvW. I don’t think this fits great in PvE with the role of a healer and the fact that you have to drop healing form to use it. Super Speed and Stealth are pre emptive buffs while coming out of CA would usually not be done at the same moment. If this was reversed it would be so good.
- Verdant Etching – Solid ability type CDR trait.
- Natural Stride – Why not increase reduction in CA or guarantee move speed or increase it to super speed? Potential for this to be a more useful trait.
- Grace of the :and – I need somewhere to use this I don’t even think this is better than alternatives for PvP unless you know some crazy condis are coming.
- Lingering Light – The clear increased healing trait and feels pretty nice. Makes sense when comparing to healers in wow with AoEs like Healing Rain, Mushroom, etc.
- Ancient Seeds – Feels buggy I used this a lot in PvP could never get the roots to work when I wanted. I would just pop equality and auto and they wouldn’t get rooted and I’m just like ?
- 1-3 – Solid and make sense. Check the scaling if you care but I feel the scaling is mostly irrelevant but don’t let people fall into the trap of thinking they don’t need Healing Power because it doesn’t scale well on the staff.
- 4 – 2 second immobilize please. 1 second feels less useful and in PvP and WvW 1 second becomes irrelevant because of the prevalence of condi duration reduction.
- 5 – I wish the bolts were intelligent and just traveled to allies in range. Field info and clear lines of field needed.
- 1 – This should heal more than 2. If the healing isn’t needed immediately 2 is always the better cast if there’s even the possibility of condis and you have the time to let it go off. You would also never use this over 3/4 for emergency healing anyways because they heal the same amount or more. Yes 3 has clear trade offs as you lose the daze but there’s no trade offs for 4 even if you can’t heal quite as much as full 1 spam and the heal on 3 is just way more than 1 and way easier to hit. If this had a larger area it would be much easier to use but I think it just needs like 300 more healing or maybe regen or something. Regen would be nice as a healing class that outputs very little regen would really benefit from that, the alternative regen applications are all mediocre like traited shouts, traited warhorn or Healing Spring.
- 2 – Solid clear trade offs with the delay good healing for the utility. 1 needs a buff not 2 needs a nerf
- 3 – Blast is bugged. I wish you could use this to blast 4 somehow.
- 4 – Awesome mass healing spell of people around you. Really solid for coordinating healing. While coordination and positioning are important the water field make up for it.
- 5 – I wish I could move. Also this needs some bleeds, poisons or burns. It’s already an offensive skill in a healing form so I don’t think it would hurt. Otherwise solid. If this was intended to be big dmg even in healing gear it needs a buff probably but otherwise it gives you the opportunity to deal damage and has great utility.
- Bristleback – Feels mediocre for dmg, scaling is off, unnecessarily tanky you probably can’t even heal him because he has so much hp. If tanking with a pet was a thing the way this works now is fine.
- Smokescale – Wish smokebomb worked on allies but the smoke field alone is some nice utility never had on ranger before. Damage is sick on the one big ability.
- Fire Wyvern – Clear uses. Honestly it sucks that a knockback cc is on an uncontrollable skill though. I wish the field started earlier instead of after finishing the huge channel.
- Electric Wyvern – F2 feels weak or working incorrectly I feel like there’s no reason to use this over the Fire Wyvern.
- Tiger – so much better than fury moa but this is how the fury moa should have been in the first place. this is a great utility to give rangers it allows alternatives to fury for groups which has been so incredibly dominated by eles.
General thoughts… Celestial avatar needs to build from condition damage. In fact CA needs to build better from damage in general perhaps build from pet damage even. In PvE CA builds really fast when you get the ability to get off auto attacks through people in staff. If there was an alternative way to build CA staff might see reduced use if it is competitive.
In general PvE you feel useless and it is really hard to tag mobs. I wish there was an alternative to this or an easier way to have a secondary set and build. Right now having to have 2 entire sets is rough to say the least especially if you want them both to be ascended.
The one strange thing is that in good situations you instantly build up CA to full. This feels weird but understandable at the same time. Most of the healing is in CA after all but IDK… It doesn’t feel like you have to think about CA at all in PvE you just instantly build it back to full and all the CDs are really short.
Overall healing feels good. Staff feels kinda weak but as CA fuel it works great. Condi damage needs to build CA in some way. Buff CA 1 slightly. Glyph of Empowerment has potential to be really solid but it’s just off by some numbers. Small tweaks here and there. Overall pretty good spot in all modes already.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
Fresh off the beta here to provide some feedback.
Masteries seemed somewhat unclear. I believe I understand them now but didn’t at first as I unlocked the mushroom mastery and was confused as to why I couldn’t use the jumping mushrooms despite putting a point in it. If I understand it correctly now you have to level up through the entire bar in order to unlock the skill to use the jumping mushrooms but there I never got to use the mushrooms myself because I didn’t finish the bar, a friend was able to use the mushrooms however.
The tendril torching adventure was straight forward and simple I didn’t get to experience any different level of rewards if silver was to give different reward from bronze but a single bag of gear seemed somewhat unrewarding for bronze even though it was pretty easy to get. I couldn’t figure out a way to restart during the adventure and I think I remember being told that you are able to do that during a stream preview?
As I’m sure other people said the wyvern is relatively simple I enjoyed the fact that bleeds and other conditions were stacking over 25. I participated in the fight on a revenant and engineer and felt like the amount of break bar removal from taunt and the hammer KD seemed really high compared to the CCs I used on engineer, overcharged shot, crate and flamethrower knockback. The fight made me feel like I shouldn’t go into melee range because of the fire and the winds seemed easily countered by stability while at the same time not having any other CCs to worry about so it seems very straightforward even if you choose not to move out of the zone you’re relatively safe if you have stability.
The revenant with hammer felt slow and fairly weak even though its a weapon with really only one utility skill. I mostly just felt like I couldn’t do any real solid damage with jalis + hammer at the very least. The cascading attack on hammer #2 seems a little unreasonable to hit the third area for the most damage I feel like it would make sense if the 3rd area encompassed maybe more than 1/3 of the skills area so you don’t have to stand at almost max range to get the max damage.
My biggest complaint about revenant was the lack of stun breaks with knowledge that these are the only utilities we can use. To have to use your elite on jalis to stun break is a pretty large hit to your energy and from what I noticed there was only one trait that gave stun breaks, on legend stance swap, which I assume will be maybe a little too necessary for PvP and WvW. The fact that mallyx and probably other stances will have no stun breaks at all is really quite a change I don’t think every stance should have one but I certainly hope there’s at least a medium energy cost one outside of the legendary stance swap trait in one of the stances.
I felt a little weird about banish enchantment as it seems like it will mostly be used for the confusion more than the fact that it removes boons. I also felt like vengeful hammers seemed somewhat weak even though it had a relatively large upkeep but with celestial it’s hard to tell with a purely power scaling ability.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
2) is incorrect. Underwater/land skill swapping is not affected by cooldowns, and even if your Plague is on 180 upon surfacing, your flesh golem will be castable (assuming it has been 60 seconds since it died, aka since you submerged; if not, you’ll have to wait the rest of those 60 seconds). I almost always pop Plague upon surfacing, just for the lulz of wasting an elite, and my golem is perfectly usable when the form expires. I do loathe being locked to one elite, but underwater being boring is something every class experiences.
It seems you are correct which is weird because it works the way I described for every other profession, perhaps for this exact reason. I must have always assumed that the timer on my flesh golem was the same as plague but really hadn’t spent a lot of time underwater and overlooked the actual recharge.
This is definitely part of the reason underwater is so weak but if we were to talk about underwater in general fixing plague blast/life blast cast time would help immensely since it is god awful underwater where every other professions animations tend to speed up underwater, like the minion cast animation is sped up.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]
So if anyone played Necro on the last BWE Flesh Golem was a usable elite underwater and the golem along with all other minions would stay alive during the transition from land to underwater. However this was removed and it is extremely troublesome for a few reasons.
1) There is the bug where even at the surface of water the flesh golem gets unsommened.
2) It promotes the idea of never using your elite underwater during shorter expeditions in the water due to the fact that the longer recharge of Plague will cause the Flesh Golem to also take a longer time to recharge meaning you cannot summon it again until the cooldown is up again.
3) It forces upon you Plague which is a completely condition related skill compared to flesh golem which is independent of conditions, or at least the use of condition damage, causing builds that revolve more power and precision to suffer.(such as an axe/dagger build or death shroud build)
And I’m sure there are other things people could think of. It only makes sense to give this as an option for underwater especially since it WAS usable underwater before with animations and proper y axis movement.
This is pretty much the icing on the cake for me that made me just forget necro as someone who played it a lot during the beta. It’s silly and ruins a lot of builds and play so please fix this.
Paul xD – Team P Z[PZ]