Guild Wars 2

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

Don’t forget the context of that uptime. To get it, we have to use DS on cooldown, which restricts our defense by a massive amount. Trading our ability to absorb bursts in exchange for weakness uptime that benefits the whole group actually sounds fairly fair. Since it’s only an adept level trait though, 2s would still be apropriate imo. It still lets us use DS to mitigate spikes, which is what it’s needed for. In reality, very few people will use the skill for it’s uptime. They’re going to hold their DS cooldown until it’s needed.

Similar complain about staff. The argument that MOB is one of the best abilities in the game relies on the assumption of a situation that almost never happens. To get the numbers you mentioned, you need to hit 5 enemys and 5 allies simulatneously, and the conditions need to stay for their full duration and not get pushed off. Having all of these things at the same time is so unlikely that it can be discounted completely. In actual use, MOB is a mediocre ability made strong only by it’s short cooldown and the lack of any other DPS options on that weapon. If you really want to go through with nerfing this, take a look at adjusting the autoattack damage or upping the damage of the other marks to compensate.

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

Arkantos.7460:

JonPeters.5630:

Cyhann.2609:

JonPeters.5630:

UPDATE

No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

Nooo, I was so happy to have Trickster at Adept ;_;. Why not changing it with Merciful Ambush or Instictual Response while buffing these traits? They are quite weak after all.

Yeah those are the kinds of ideas, but we don’t want to move flanking and don’t have time to buff something else right now. I will save these suggestions for when we do get to this.

Jon

posted my earlier comment while you make your note official-
It was a great idea maybe you have Long Reach/Uncatchable/merciful Ambush/Instinctual Response für switching,
oh plz it would be so more useful in Adept
‘hope’

It will get there, just hang on because we want to get it right so after Dec 10…

jsduke.6537:

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

You can be hit a bunch of times… while <25% HP.

I can’t speak for other Necros, but if I get hit “a bunch of times” while <25%, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of Might I get because I just died.

Like I said, it works while in DS.

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

Bhawb.7408:

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

But that build would have to be:

30/10/0/0/20 (+10) … in WvW … with duration food … and double duration weapons … and duration crystals …

I think you meant 30/20/0/0/20 which is generally accepted as one of the best condition builds, which is what you run this with, and also not including food, but only including condition duration runes. With food it actually goes to.

54% uptime @ 2s
82% uptime @ 3s

Jon

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

Cyhann.2609:

JonPeters.5630:

UPDATE

No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

Nooo, I was so happy to have Trickster at Adept ;_;. Why not changing it with Merciful Ambush or Instictual Response while buffing these traits? They are quite weak after all.

Yeah those are the kinds of ideas, but we don’t want to move flanking and don’t have time to buff something else right now. I will save these suggestions for when we do get to this.

Jon

Stx.4857:

JonPeters.5630:

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

And you feel 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.. while being in execute range is as useful as say +10% damage while target has a condition.. or even 2% to 8% damage increase based on how many conditions the target has? Or the newly improved Death GM minor.. 10% of toughness as bonus power(which for me will be 300 power.. nice!).

Is that the intended use for this trait? To actually want to remain at 25% HP and then perform a full deathshroud rotation while being hit to maybe add the burst from 8-10 extra might stacks? The power of this trait is so low, that the minor trait which adds might when casting Lifeblast probably doubles or triples its damage value.

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

Bhawb.7408:

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

UPDATE

No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

Shogun.7401:

“all thief specs got massive buffs”. Yea, I guess a level 1 thief is now 25% stronger with any weapon.
Sword auto hits 3 targets. Pistol whip hits 3 targets 7 times plus initial strike.
Pistol shot with auto ricochet hits up to four targets. Unload with ricochet hits up to 15 targets.
Considering 100% crit rate on pistol whip/unload is not a problem at all, wan’t me to point out the loss?
Before (unload):
Base regen: 0.75/second
Average opportunist regen: (5(ricochets per unload average) plus 8 hits over)x4 = 52 crits in 7 seconds. 7.42 crits per second. 1-(1-0.3)^7.42 = 93% chance to get 1 initiative EVERY second.
Total regen: 0.75 plus 0.93*1= 1.68 initiative/second (average).
After (unload):
Base regen: 1/second
Opportunist: 0.2/second
Total regen: 1.2/second.
Summary: 30% nerf to P/P, the weakest thief spec.

Good point I hope jon will take a look at the math .

This is incorrect simply because Opportunist already had an ICD. Also a minor trait that gives even 1/2 of what you think it gave is not going to let us balance init regen for any non Opportunist specs.

AN UPDATE
Weakening Shroud. This trait now does a smaller version of Enfeebling Blood when entering Death Shroud. Bleeding (1 stack only; 6 seconds [10s with full condition duration spec]). Weakness (2s [3s with full condition duration spec]). No ICD.

Obviously this is a very big change so please discuss, and keep your discussion constructive, so that we can actually talk through the merits/downsides.

Jon

Ok some more incoming updates

THIEF

• No longer swapping Flanking Strikes and Trickster because we felt it was taking away more build diversity than it was creating. We will revisit what to do with Trickster in the future.

NECROMANCER

• Weakening Shroud. This trait now does a smaller version of Enfeebling Blood when entering Death Shroud. Bleeding (1 stack only; 6 seconds [10s with full condition duration spec]). Weakness (2s [3s with full condition duration spec]). No ICD.

Necro one in particular I would love some discussion on I’ll go post in the sub forums for each of these professions to allow some discussion on pros/cons.

Thanks,

Jon

By the way I am currently in process of making some replies and discussion in the specific sub-forums where we are currently thinking about things so feel free to jump over there and join in. Also about to update the original post.

Seetoo.9316:

JonPeters.5630:

Pavel.8531:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now.Jon

Suggestion – move it to major instead of flanking strikes, but increase the radius by 40.

And I am thrilled about the PW change… When do you estimate can tell us how will it look like? Because it was quite decent before the 15th of October patch (1s rounded stun meant you could hit with half of the flurry before the stun ran out in wvw). And it always was a great skill for PvE.

Noted. That is likely what we would have done. I would like to hear the opposing view of players who run this trait with only 10 points in trickery…

Jon

I happen to use uncatchable in adept in a p/p build with ricochet in master.

The build is currently 0 20 0 30 20 quad pistols (for quick pockets and quick recovery -> unload spam) 15 crit strikes was pretty mandatory so I took combo crit chance as well.

This was meant to be one of the boys up in the front lines where surviving relied a lot on signet of malice + ricochet and feline grace. You can’t “win” every encounter. There will always be oh crap moments where you have to run. Right now uncatchable is the only way my 4p build gets to run away. Cripple for the runners and body shot for the leapers/teletubies.

If you bring uncatchable up to master, then it competes with ricochet and ricochet > uncatchable. Ricochet + signet of malice turn unload into a significant heal skill (which is what lets me stay in the front lines)

Now it was suggested that ricochet could be moved to arms (swap with improvisation). I could get behind that since 3/5 p skills benefit from condition duration. Then unload could benefit from the power.

Thanks for the feedback Seetoo. If we did bring it up to master we would certainly buff it making it master worthy.

Kal Spiro.9745:

JonPeters.5630:

Kal Spiro.9745:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Due to poor programming concepts pets have to actually contact the server and effectively ask for permission to run their F2 ability if any animations are involved in the ability. They then have to wait for the server to respond before they actually pull off the maneuver.

Being ignorant about how an online game must function does not make for good laymans terms. If we did not validate skill use on the server players could hack their clients to use skills without cooldown. I don’t think a lot of players would enjoy that.

That’s true, but the way your describing it doesn’t make any sense either. F2 should be an automatic block. It doesn’t matter what the pet is doing or trying to do. It should not need to reference some list, or work it’s way through a decision tree. As soon as the system sees F2 it should wipe the out whatever the pet was about to do, or what it planned to do next and immediately interpose it with the F2 command.

Just like when I’m in the middle of any action that isn’t a leap and I hit dodge. The system doesn’t have to figure out if I should finish doing what I was doing, or what animations to do, it stops everything and throws me in the proper direction running the dodge animation.

That’s how Pets should work. This also “should” not effect anything else because only Ranger pets even have an F2 to interpose it. It’s not like a Scale is suddenly going to have an F2 go off and interrupt its regen vomit, there is no F2 to go off.

Maybe it would be a tough change to throw this in now, but that’s why I said poor programming, this is something that should have been done as soon as F2 for Pets became a thing. The fact that it has never been addressed in any way is a poor programming decision.

Right but we are not going to get into the nitty gritty of server programming and how a giant online game needs to send packets back and forth to a multitude of clients and how it needs to handle dropped packets, and how it needs to handle different kinds of server hops, and how it needs to prioritize what it send/receive when the client bandwidth is overloaded. Let’s please leave any technical discussions out of this. This is a design discussion on potential ranger changes and I think if you look at the overall performance/uptime/etc of our server structure with or without some actual expertise you would have a hard time arguing that Guild Wars 2 is not one of the most technically sound massive online games to date.

OGDeadHead.8326:

JonPeters.5630:

No because in order for the creatures to attack they are going to use animations. For example I’m not going to spit fire breath out of a drake without it using its fire spitting animation.

Add quickness to F2.

Quickness is not the problem. The problem is the server delay which would also have to wait for in order to get quickness applied.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Ah, Zen
I think he means Swoop would receive the invulnerability effect of an evasion for the duration of the existing animation, not that it would help you evade something by automatically moving you backward. Less like Lightning Reflexes, more like Mesmer Distortion.

Correct!

rfdarko.4639:

A number of times there have been balence discussion on the pvp forums which pertain to changes that effect both pvp and pve. When a pve point is brought up – such as an argument for a split – we are told to go back to the class subforum. With that in mind, I think this is the appropriate place to get dev feedback on the pve side of things.

How do the devs feel these changes will improve or weaken the state of necros in pve? (Read: dungeons and fractals, not open world). Would you consider splitting the weakening shroud change for pve as spoj suggested? What can we look forward to in future changes that will improve our ability to deal with massive spike damage and provide greater team utility?

Sure. I think all of these following changes are more or equally useful in PvE than PvP. with the last two being very PvE focused.

• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.

• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.

• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Scarran.9845:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

The difference would be that we would be adding a new 15 point minor as well that you would be getting for free that would have similar power to these. If we took any two major traits that had synergy and merged them they would be overpowered. No difference here.

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Kal Spiro.9745:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Due to poor programming concepts pets have to actually contact the server and effectively ask for permission to run their F2 ability if any animations are involved in the ability. They then have to wait for the server to respond before they actually pull off the maneuver.

Being ignorant about how an online game must function does not make for good laymans terms. If we did not validate skill use on the server players could hack their clients to use skills without cooldown. I don’t think a lot of players would enjoy that.

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

cafard.8953:

Not convinced by evade on Swoop. First, at what cost would it come? Increased cooldown? I’d rather keep swoop as is.

Then, the times when Swoop fails me in a defensive context, it’s not because it didn’t evade, it’s because it didn’t get me far enough because of a cripple or immobilize. In those cases, evade wouldn’t help. Sure, 1s of no damage, but after that, i’m still in the same spot of fiery death.

If you want to improve the defensive side of swoop, make it break cripple/immobilize (or convert them into swiftness, haha), or apply 1-3s of stability.

It would come at no cost to Swoop, it would come at the cost of updating the chain. Also the added benefit that you aren’t taking into account as this skill could now be part of your rotation and used when you see a big attack incoming to avoid it.

awe extender.1908:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Does this mean that we could, once for all, get rid of the delayed F2 / unresponsive F2 by NOT having a pet animation?

I don’t mind having a pet without a F2 animation as long as it can be instant! Please drop the animations and make it like underwater :-))

No because in order for the creatures to attack they are going to use animations. For example I’m not going to spit fire breath out of a drake without it using its fire spitting animation.

Holland.9351:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Why do you want to change the Greatsword?
Does the evade have to go and you need to come up with an acceptable solution for it?

I don’t have to change it. I am hoping to improve it with changes without making it overpowered. I think right now one of the major problems, despite being good is that the evade on the chain is very hit or miss and feels very RNG when using it or fighting against it. I would rather put more of the skill of when to evade under player control to give this weapon more agency.

PopeUrban.2578:

So I run D/D “zergbunker” Trickery specced thief as such:

20/0/0/20/30

This is not a crit spec, it’s not a FOTM spec, and it is a spec that revolves around steal moreso than most. It was enabled by some great updates to Trickery and is being fundamentally made less fun by the proposed trait updates.

Now, The reason why I run it is that the ~20s stealth makes improvisation actually useful, and lotus poison is a nice condition cover from the auto for basically free.

With 20 in acro I’m using assassin’s reward as backup for the composite overall healing from mug and signet of malice. It’s a fun build that’s a hybrid of evasion and self healing, requiring an active defense and a really aggressive playstyle not possible on other thief builds.

I think this merits saying as if the focus is build diversity, I run a pretty uncommon build, which is being kinda gutted of utilities in favor of (In my Opinion) much less interesting bigger damage and healing numbers.

These changes are doing the following to my build:

Increasing overall healing, but only IF I drop either improvisation (and lotus poison) or lead attacks/sleight of hand.

THE problem is, these two traits are only really in the build in order to support one another. Is there any chance we can move/adjust improvisation (which is highly underused/undervalued, and thus should be a candidate for a buff in this patch) to allow it?

TBH it would make more sense as a master trait in trickery anyway, and richochet would make more sense in deadly arts.

How about swapping the position of ricochet and improvisation, moving a pistol DPS trait to the DPS line and a steal focused trait to the steal line? I’d be able to keep the utilities in place, but still have to give up 10 points in deadly, thus losing lotus poison and bountiful theft, which seems like a fair trade for fluid strikes and the ability to run hard to catch and assassin’s reward.

This would also benefit P/P and venomshare builds.

P/P would be able to run lighter on trickery and get more utility out of deadly arts, making the p/p without venom share overall a better spec due to the 5 extra optional points in critical trikes or a defensive line, which synergize much better with p/p. In addition they’d have an overall better base of optional initiative traits to fuel themselves, and P/P builds would just be overall tighter with less “chaff” trait points to get to the good stuff.

This would also have a potential slight benefit on venomshare builds, allowing them the option of running improv and the other venom traits for possible proc recharges.

This is great feedback. One thing I will tell you is that now your build has 33% more initiative than it used to. This will gain you back that lost survivability and then some IMO.

Jon

ensoriki.5789:

JonPeters.5630:

We are thinking about making it into two skills that both cost initiative so we can balance the while thing more easily. For example this would let us increase the stun duration.

What no. Not my Pistol Whip.
Why can’t your team just handle skills as they are?
There is not much different in PW’s core from Hundred Blades, Zealots defense, and Blurred Frenzy but you need to split it in two? What?
Sure sometimes reworks need to be done but I dont think this is the case at all.

Whole thing with Initiative was a global resource to use skills as you need them. The More you split skills the more silly it becomes for the initiative system as I feel for it. If its the case you might as well give the Thief CD’s instead of ini if this is going to be a frequent addition.

Maybe I’ve misread you guys , how do you want S/P to play as a weapon set as it seems to differ from how I feel about it. I thought “Hit & run strong damage that doesn’t get blown up while doing that damage”, and brings significant disruption relative to S/D which is a more defensive kit that weakens (boon steal, cripple, vulnerability) a target while having some of the disable of S/P (tactical strike).
You want to make it just a heavy CC kit?

This would just be a buff to pistol whip, with the one caveat that you wouldn’t be able to animation cancel and chain stun.

It would let you do things like use part one, then do some attacks then immobilize target, then use the flurry when they are immobilized. It just opens up skill choice on that weapon.

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Daendur.2357:

JonPeters.5630:

Yeah once I saw that one was missing I went and checked them all. We are good to go there now!

And what about “Combo Critical Chance” ? does it work correctly ?
Is 5% enough for a Master trait that affects only 1 of 5 skills and doesn’t affect Shortbow (probably the most common weapon) at all ?

Glad you asked. Once I saw the first one didn’t work I went and checked the second one. That one was only missing on S/P and has also been fixed!

Ahh dual skills and 2H weapons….

…

heh

…

Much harder problem obviously.

Also we are leaving it at 5% chance for now because this one is very hard to test!

JonPeters.5630:

Ghostpilot.6237:

Hello Jon, I noticed the change to Blunderbuss and had a couple of questions (well, a dozen really but my other posts were huge so I’ll keep this brief).

• Will the damage / range component on Blunderbuss be adjusted or removed? The change to how Rifled Barrels interacts with it won’t impact it much if one has to get within 100 units of an enemy to get full damage anyway. Any chance of the minimum range being changed to 400 or in that neighborhood. Just seems odd to have to get inside of melee range to get full damage out of a ranged attack. In its current state the risk outweighs the payoff.

• Despite listing Rifled Barrels indicating a 200 unit boost to range, it only improves the range of 1 & 2 by 200, while 3-5 are only increased by 100. The way it interacts with Rifles causes Rifled Barrels to be of questionable use as the short range of the 3-5 skills virtually negates the increased range the trait provides.

Thanks again!

Yes we are moving the damage range thresholds. Here are the new ones.

w/o trait: < 200, <300, <400, <500
w/trait <250, <400, <550, <700

by the way the trait version used to use the basic version thresholds which was really awful. :P

Ill look at that 100 range boost on 3-5 also.

Thanks for the nice constructive actionable feedback!!!!

Jon

by the way just bumped overcharge shot to 400,600. I might just bumped baseline again as 400 range is kindof worthless.

Jump shot is a different story. This would be really hard to change for the following reason. The animation of jump shot is X seconds long. The maximum move speed of a character in our game is Y. It is already moving you at max speed. If I want you to be able to move further during a jumpshot I would have to slow down the animation, thus indirectly nerfing the skill. I’m happy to lower the range of the baseline from 700 to 600 for consistency, but I suspect that would make you a sad engineer. :P

Ghostpilot.6237:

Hello Jon, I noticed the change to Blunderbuss and had a couple of questions (well, a dozen really but my other posts were huge so I’ll keep this brief).

• Will the damage / range component on Blunderbuss be adjusted or removed? The change to how Rifled Barrels interacts with it won’t impact it much if one has to get within 100 units of an enemy to get full damage anyway. Any chance of the minimum range being changed to 400 or in that neighborhood. Just seems odd to have to get inside of melee range to get full damage out of a ranged attack. In its current state the risk outweighs the payoff.

• Despite listing Rifled Barrels indicating a 200 unit boost to range, it only improves the range of 1 & 2 by 200, while 3-5 are only increased by 100. The way it interacts with Rifles causes Rifled Barrels to be of questionable use as the short range of the 3-5 skills virtually negates the increased range the trait provides.

Thanks again!

Yes we are moving the damage range thresholds. Here are the new ones.

w/o trait: < 200, <300, <400, <500
w/trait <250, <400, <550, <700

by the way the trait version used to use the basic version thresholds which was really awful. :P

Ill look at that 100 range boost on 3-5 also.

Thanks for the nice constructive actionable feedback!!!!

Jon

meikodesign.6471:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Weakness, Might, Protection or Retalation instead of Vigor?
I thought you wanted to limit the Vigor spam.

We do want to but we also want this to be a weapon with some evasion capability on it, otherwise we would not have made the auto-attack on it evade in the first place.

Khisanth.2948:

JonPeters.5630:

Khisanth.2948:

JonPeters.5630:

Sorry for the typos, this is from my phone on the bus. Not for dec 10, because it takes time to do, but we are intending to make pistol whip into 2 skills(similar to flanking strike) so we can split initiative costs and balance canceling to chain stun. This is on the docket for the next patch.

Jon

That would probably fix the the Combined Training bug as well…

Actually I fixed that bug yesterday when looking at how hard splitting would be and finding the script lacking the combined training check!

Shadow Strike is missing the check as well. For the second strike which would be Shadow Strike 2 according to the combat log.

Yeah once I saw that one was missing I went and checked them all. We are good to go there now!

Pavel.8531:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now.Jon

Suggestion – move it to major instead of flanking strikes, but increase the radius by 40.

And I am thrilled about the PW change… When do you estimate can tell us how will it look like? Because it was quite decent before the 15th of October patch (1s rounded stun meant you could hit with half of the flurry before the stun ran out in wvw). And it always was a great skill for PvE.

Noted. That is likely what we would have done. I would like to hear the opposing view of players who run this trait with only 10 points in trickery…

Jon

We are thinking about making it into two skills that both cost initiative so we can balance the while thing more easily. For example this would let us increase the stun duration.

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Khisanth.2948:

JonPeters.5630:

Sorry for the typos, this is from my phone on the bus. Not for dec 10, because it takes time to do, but we are intending to make pistol whip into 2 skills(similar to flanking strike) so we can split initiative costs and balance canceling to chain stun. This is on the docket for the next patch.

Jon

That would probably fix the the Combined Training bug as well…

Actually I fixed that bug yesterday when looking at how hard splitting would be and finding the script lacking the combined training check!

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

Too much typing for the bus, I’ll try and discuss more when I’m in.

Jon

P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.

Sorry for the typos, this is from my phone on the bus. Not for dec 10, because it takes time to do, but we are intending to make pistol whip into 2 skills(similar to flanking strike) so we can split initiative costs and balance canceling to chain stun. This is on the docket for the next patch.

Jon

KratosAngel.7289:

Hey, thanks sooo much for finally the communication we’ve been asking for, that’s a great move !
I was holding judgement, waiting to correctly have in mind everything and think about it but I saw the thread was going to close pretty soon.
So my question is : since there are soooo many posts here and it’s impossible to follow while being casual on the forums, can we post our thoughts in the respective professions threads as well ?
I know it’s possible but I mean : will it be taken into account in the same way as posting here ? Or will it be regarded as useless ?

Yes we are reading the sub-forums as well.

One more update again.

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

ENGINEER
Increased the range of Blunderbuss from 400 to 500. (700 when traited)

Dekk.3459:

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

THIEF

• Vigorous Recovery: Vigor duration will be 5 seconds instead of 4.
• Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR

• Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.

Thanks,

Jon

Good to see progress is being made. There has be a lot of versatility added to classes. And I know I am tired of saying this but where is the versatility for thief? There have been the across the boards attribute transitions for example %tough -> precision. Looking at thief you’ve buffed initiative base gain, and slashed trait initiative gain, and reduced mobility.

Don’t really see any versatility improvements for thief, you know, compared to balance of other class traits.

And engineer Transmute change, I applaud, it needs a longer ICD like 30s. If it was just removes a condition, then fine 15s… It converts a condition to a boon. So Transmute needs a longer ICD.

Versatility for thief. We are giving every single thief build 33% more initiative to work with. We have said this a number of times, but clearly it needs to be said again. If any other profession was getting a patch note that said: Decreased cooldown of all weapon skills by 25%, that would be considered a huge buff. The way initiative works is obfuscating how powerful this change it, but please consider the value of this change when weighing thief changes in this patch.