There was a different leak that came before that one, one that didn’t include any pictures at all.
It made a lot of speculations about E5, all of which were wrong, made some guesses about E6 and how the current events will play out, and then made some guesses about the next expac.
But it did correctly state that seaweed salad would be nerfed, and it got a few other things correct as well, so I don’t know if it was lucky guesses or what.
Also about your comment, while I agree with you it doesn’t mean much. There are plenty of other bad mechanics that haven’t been removed from the game, and condi food wasn’t touched despite being stronger than seaweed salad was (and for less effort on the player’s part)
You realize skill splitting is exactly what we’ve been asking for for ages? Previously they tried to balance across every mode and it’s just not realistic. Yes splitting means you need to know the differences between modes, bit that’s a small price to pay for better balance.
Except it isn’t. A lot of the skills that they have split have later been rejoined. its almost as if they use PvP to test the effects of something and then randomly apply it to other game modes.
This shows they aren’t thinking in terms of true skill splitting.
It does not keep additional stacks from being applied, it merely stops them from affecting you.
I don’t blame you for thinking that.
Also remember that I didn’t start playing until HoT dropped. I didn’t experience the round of class nerfs that came before HoT, so I’m not quite as jaded as some of you are. But, considering that they moved to an expansion based model, and considering how poorly received the insane powercreep was with HoT, I’d be surprised if Anet did the same thing again.
Will the next round of elite specs be more powerful? In all likelihood, yes. Will they be as broken as HoT specs were at launch? I highly doubt it. Which means the resulting nerfs shouldn’t be nearly as harsh as they were with these first elite specs.
Plus, remember that Anet took a lot more time to design these next elite specs. They won’t be half-baked ideas (I honestly believe that to be one of the reason they were so broken at release. To help cover up that their designs weren’t completely finished).
I would not be opposed to increasing the ICD on the daze applied by ICD, but I’d rather it just become another effect entirely. Daze is a really strong effect, even before you factor in any synergy with on interrupt traits. Yet CG hands it out pretty easily, especially when you factor in the enhanced poison application that thief got with this same patch.
Someone else suggested increasing the ini cost of CG, I don’t agree that that would be the best way to move forward though.
My laptop can’t handle taking a video of GW2. But since you are so adamant that it procs only once every 2 ticks, then you post a video of it only proccing every 2 ticks.
Because you clearly haven’t even tested the skill.
I did try it, clearly you are the one who didn’t. It dazed the golem on every pulse from that combo field. And I’m not the first one to come in this thread and correct you on this.
Stop spreading lies, you clearly don’t even understand how the skill works.
Lol at the “compensation” via “buffs” to MW and CoF
The problem I see with the update is that there was only one instance where WvW was specifically mentioned.
Necromancer
Our biggest focus in this iteration for necromancers was that of Epidemic, in that its impact is too instant in most PvP scenarios, as well as its heavy toll on our servers.It seems to me that if the sudden condition transfer from one skill taxes the server, what happens in WvW when one zerg hits another zerg and every skill adds a condition?
A three way fight in SMC caused lag in WvW years ago, before epidemic was meta.
Should the WvW version of skills have less conditions to improve WvW server performance?
The same is said about boons.
I’ve been saying this for a while because it was commented on by ANet programmers years ago, but server lag is pretty much entirely caused by effect and ability spamming (especially passive boons and condis) in ZvZ scenarios.
When we see cuts to mass condi application, mass boon application, and extended passives (which often apply these), the server lag issues will be mostly fixed.
Yet again, the problems lie in profession design.
Yes absolutely, for both conditions and boons. First of all, the spam makes for completely mindless play. It takes a lot of fun and skill out, since these are just kitten out by professions now.
Secondly, it would go a very long way towards reducing lag, especially in WvW zerg fights. Less condi and boon spam means less things to check each tick. While the actual impact is yet to be seen, it will directly reduce server load, which will reduce lag.
Thirdly, the spam needs to be reduced because its bad balance plain and simple. A lot of skills are doing too many things at once. Skull grinder was a great example of this, it dealt decent power damage, applied 4 conditions at once (and 4 stacks of the damaging ones to boot), dazed for 1 second, and was a finisher. And all of that on a 3 second CD when traited. That was way too much from one skill. (Personally I still think it does too many things, daze, power damage and 4 conditions all applied at once is still a lot more things than most skills in the game do, but its in a much better spot than it was pre-patch). Skills should be doing 1 or 2 things, and then can be traited to doing 3, maybe 4 things (though this should require an entire traitline dedicated to it. Should never, ever be baseline or require just a single major trait).
Hmm someone should read patch notes, Choking Gas has an ICD….. 2 to be precise one on the poison pulse and one on the daze..
Choking Gas: Increased damage by 200%. This skill now briefly dazes foes with 5 or more stacks of poison every pulse. The same foe cannot be dazed more than once every second.
Yes and it only applies the Daze on CG poison pulse….. Poison pulses every second, Daze can only affect one target per second, two ICDs on the skill.
Let’s see how that plays out: get hit for initial poison pulse if you have 5 stacks of Poison at that time get dazed, ICD happens on daze Second Poison Pulse no Daze, ICD is over Third pulse Daze(if opponent is bad enough to still be in the field…) CG only last 4 seconds, At max per CG its 2 Dazes on each target.
LMFAO this is completely wrong. If the enemy has enough stacks of poison, CG will daze them 4 times.
Actually we need more nerfs for elite specs. They were stupidly overtuned when HoT went live.
Yes, we do.
Talk about overreacting to an extremely minor nerf.
People are upset because this was a stupid nerf to it honestly. If Anet agreed that it needed to be nerfed (and its obvious they did), then it should have had its range and/or damage reduced, not have its cast time increased.
Well there have been a few leaks that have mentioned a major profession overhaul will hit before the next expansion. That leak correctly predicted seaweed salad getting nerfed, but it also got all of its predictions about LWS3E5 wrong, so who’s to say if there is any legitimacy to it at all?
The cleanses haven’t been changed at all, its 1 cleanse per shatter, not per illusion.
I just got this error for the first time as well. I opted to repair the client, so will update when that finishes.
It says its trying to “Repairing data archive…”
The solution to power creep is not to continue introducing more, but to bring it down in line. Nerfing power creeped nonsense is the proper way to deal with it, so I’m happy this patch was mainly nerfs.
I don’t want it to be useless, I want warriors (and all classes for that matter) to have to actually choose between having high sustain or having high damage. No build should have high amounts of both, but having primal burst skills count as T3 adrenaline skills (among various other things in the berserker line) allows Warrior to skip that choice and have both high damage and high personal sustain.
That’s just plain bad balance. No class should be able to have a build like that.
Honestly at the rate we get balance patches, the balance team might still be balancing for that meta…..
I know why it was used, but that doesn’t change anything. It is still a weapon that was already used 100% of the time on thieves. Dev time would have been better spent making SB5 on thieves not so mandatory for them somehow (preferably by adding some of that mobility to other weapon sets somehow). As it stands though, that was a straight up buff to every thief, since every single one will still be running SB all the time
I think their time would have been better spent removing shortbow 5 from the game entirely. Then figure out wtf they want shortbow to be, a condi or a power weapon and roll with that. Right now it’s some weird hybrid that doesn’t really do any of it well but makes up for it all with an insane gtfo button.
I can get behind this as well.
That could have problems actually. In PvP, if you join a teamfight and then take the upper hand, you could be using iberserker 3 or 4 times in the span of a few seconds due to enemy players being killed.
In open world PvE, phantasm skills would almost never be on cooldown at all under this approach.
In raids/soloing champions/world bosses, this wouldn’t do anything for our sustained damage taking a hit when we shatter, since that wouldn’t kill the target but we would still be without our phantasms.
Alternatively, phantasm damage could be lowered by 10-15%, phantasm summoning weapon skills could have their cooldowns cut by 10%, and they could have their damage upped considerably. This would still mean that a lot of our damage would come from phantasms, but with stronger weapons skill damage coming from us directly and on shorter CDs, we would still be able to keep up fairly good sustained damage by ourselves.
I know why it was used, but that doesn’t change anything. It is still a weapon that was already used 100% of the time on thieves. Dev time would have been better spent making SB5 on thieves not so mandatory for them somehow (preferably by adding some of that mobility to other weapon sets somehow). As it stands though, that was a straight up buff to every thief, since every single one will still be running SB all the time
Direct copy and paste “Phantasmal Swordsman: This skill now performs a sword strike in front of the player when summoning the phantasm. If the sword strike hits you and all Swordsmen currently summoned, (<comma=Pause) gain 8 might for 10 seconds.”
I honestly still think you’re reading it wrong, unless you’ve tested to show yourself and all swordsman gain might (although adding the might to swordsman might be a way to show that might was applied during the instance for better readability/usability idk)
Idk why people are talking about that comma, it’s just comma gore from our esteemed dev team. It doesn’t change the meaning, it’s just poor english…
I focused on it initially because it could changed the meaning of the sentence, and I was unable to login myself to test what actually happened. Now that its confirmed though there is no more reason to focus on commas.
I mean, obviously. Raids (high end PvE), WvW (which seems to be forgotten), and PvP are the only parts of the game where balance is such a big issue. It makes sense that most if not all balance changes would be directed at these parts of the game
It is still lower, but like Cynz said, at least you still have the option if you want to use it. Based off of the discussion when these changes were being proposed, there are a good amount of people who wouldn’t have actually read the list of sigils in PvP, and wouldn’t have known that there were still ones that allowed you to apply cover conditions via weapon swap.
I agree that increasing the cast time of arc divider was a hamfisted approach to nerfing it. All it needed was its range reduced, the cast time was fine on it.
So they are trying to reduce stalemating fights but also slow down the pace of the game.
Warrior is directly reflecting this concept in their changes.
The biggest worry is still a generous tilt in the appeal of condi builds, but I think it’s best at this point to wait out the changes and see how we adapt.
Poorly though in my opinion. 10% nerf to passive healing from signet is pretty big superficially, but they are still healing for about 475 health every second if they keep T3 adrenal health up, and that is still absolutely trivial to do since primal burst skills still count as T3 adrenaline skills.
a perfect example of someone who wont be happy until they nerf warrior into the ground.
Oh please. Warrior is in a much better state now than it was pre patch and you know it. The amount of personal sustain that it had was beyond broken for how much offensive pressure it could put out.
Maybe they should have made overcharge function on an automatic interval…
Ok so I like the flavor that overcharging turrets has, but wouldn’t it just be better to remove overcharging completely and buff the actual turrets themselves?
5k crits on a 6 sec CD and you think its underpowered? Do you just want it to be a OHKO skill, unblockable, unevadeable?
Not only that but if DH was only good for one skill … that’s a bigger problem as well. People should really stop and think about complaining about losing their ‘I WIN’ buttons.
To be honest they nerfed F2, F3, Test of Faith and Renewd Focus along with True Shot, so basically neutered the Dragon Hunter PvP build hitting it like a truck; the hit seems more like a pick up in WvW because some of those nerfs didn’t happen there but as someone said that part of the game is currently dominated by classes more evasive than Guardians that are specifically built to not lose.
I don’t longer use this class and I’m aware that longbow isn’t used in PvE, but you must recognize that a THIRD nerf of True Shot in a row can hurt some feelings between the comunity of competitive DH players.
Also, the buffs were funny. Risitas level of funny ^^ .
As a mesmer main, I completely understand what its like to see a skill nerfed patch after patch. But that doesn’t meant that true shot is now a trash skill. People in this thread are over-reacting like crazy. The skill is still strong for its cooldown.
As for F2. Its healing needed a nerf badly. Pre-patch it was healing for about 2.3 times what virtue of resolve healed for. Which means that either virtue of resolve was ridiculously underpowered, or wings of resolve was ridiculously overpowered for being a secondary heal (on top of also cleansing 2 conditions and immob, and allowing for movement). Hell, it still heals for almost 2 times as much as virtue of resolve does, it still heals for too much in my opinion, but at least its healing was finally toned down.
Yea our autos really are pathetic.
Yea, I’m very happy about the change to pulsing stab skills. Overall the best part of the balance patch really.
It’s the beginning of nerfs to prepare everyone to shift to Mirage and buy the next expansion.
I’m expecting Chrono to get some gutting sadly. :/
I’d agree with you if every class was nerfed this patch. But they weren’t. Overperforming things were nerfed (IR, thief evade spam, warrior sustain uptime etc…), but a lot of things were still buffed across several classes. I honestly think ANet is just trying to normalize the capabilities of every class, and just missed the mark a bit on mesmer.
I don’t think this patch means there is 0 chance of CP going baseline. Remember that in this patch they directly targeted our ability to spam illusions for shatters. CP becoming baseline and then removing IR completely would still be a nerf to our ability to spam shatters over what we can currently do, and it would also free up 2 traits in the chronomancer line to give it a stronger theme (hopefully 1 that enhances phantasms and another one that enhances either slow or quickness. Something like When you slow an enemy, share 1sec quickness in 240 unit radius around you, 10sec ICD)
What I think is this is putting mesmer in a better position to move damage off phantasms and instead onto the attacks themselves. In this regard the boomerang attack I do like and would like if it did more damage at the cost of zerker doing less or non.
As far as the other phantasms are concerned I’ll pay closer attention and play with them on a golem or something where I can actually see what’s going on.
I think this is the actual goal of these changes. And I 100% applaud that goal of the balance team, but I think it could have been implemented better.
I haven’t been able to login today and test these new attacks, but they aren’t what I would have done. Still its better than nothing? Maybe?
Of course I would do something like that.
Yea, thief will still shut down power mesmer hard. They got their evade spam nerfed again in PvP, but put in decent buffs to thief’s ability to apply poison and to a weapon every thief is already always running (seriously, that’s a really strange weapon to buff on thief. I get that they wanted it to be used for more than mobility, but at the same time, its already so kitten good that every single build runs it, so why not do something else instead of buffing it).
Bright side is that potent poison now might compete with improvisation, which means thieves might only be able to use consume plasma once per steal.
There’s still
- Doom
- Exposure
- Stagnation
Substantially less condi burst than before from sigils, but its still possible to apply 2 cover conditions trivially via sigils if you wanted to.
So they mistyped it?
It was just too much spam, I agree with nerfing it
5k crits on a 6 sec CD and you think its underpowered? Do you just want it to be a OHKO skill, unblockable, unevadeable?
@Xyonon – You missed the comma in that sentence.
If the sword strike hits you and all Swordsmen currently summoned*_,_* gain 8 might for 10 seconds.
The comma changes what the sentence means. I haven’t been able to test it yet, so either they mistyped, or they are giving the might to us if this new attack hits all swordsmans already summoned.
So balance team just want us to be stupid heal bot I agree with condi nerf but why on earth you nerf power build, honestly I wish you balance the balance team too much Mesmer love and less for the rest
Mesmer changes weren’t even that good. It had a justified nerf to IR (though personally I’d rather do away with that trait entirely), and some other crap in it honestly. 15% damage boost on CoF sounds high, but remember that itscoefficient is 0.33 pre patch, its not like its damage boost will even be noticed. The changes to phantasms are superficial changes, won’t change anything.
So they are trying to reduce stalemating fights but also slow down the pace of the game.
Warrior is directly reflecting this concept in their changes.
The biggest worry is still a generous tilt in the appeal of condi builds, but I think it’s best at this point to wait out the changes and see how we adapt.
Poorly though in my opinion. 10% nerf to passive healing from signet is pretty big superficially, but they are still healing for about 475 health every second if they keep T3 adrenal health up, and that is still absolutely trivial to do since primal burst skills still count as T3 adrenaline skills.
Yea I saw that. I’m happy that illusion spam is being nerfed, but overall I’d be happier if CP went baseline and IR was removed entirely. It would help out core mesmer and future elites in phantasm retention, as well as go even further to reduce illusion and shatter spam from chronomancer.
You gain the 8 might, not the swordsman from what I understand. But to do so, you have to hit every summoned swordsman with that blow.
I’m with levetty, I’ll hop in and try it, but this isn’t what mesmer needed.
Changes that were good:
- MoF
- Mental Anguish. PvE only for now, but it will help out power based builds a lot
- MW and CoF. Small enough increases to not be broken in competitive game modes, but still its something
- IR. Illusion spam from this trait was too much and this was a good change that was justified. But I’d rather Anet look at my other suggestion (I know I made it too late, but still), and make chronophantasma baseline while removing IR entirely. Would do a LOT more to reduce illusion spam.
Changes that were neutral:
- Everything else. New attacks on the phantasms are great and all, but at the same time they don’t seem to have much pressure. Warden is probably the best one there, because it synergizes with the warden itself, but none of the rest synergize all that well.
- WoP. Technically a buff, I guess? But its still not that great of a skill since its just 1 aegis per pulse. It really should be updated to give 10-15 endurance per pulse istead of just giving 30 endurance at the end, aegis on the first 2 pulses, and blur on the last pulse.
- CS. Well I’d much rather Anet take a look over at this post instead (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-elite-skills-redesign/first). Redesign our elites and then just make it so that CS doesn’t affect them.
- ToT, makes sense for PvP, doesn’t make sense for PvE at all.
- BD. Don’t get me wrong, its a nice change, but its not going to change anything. 2 more might stacks? 3 extra seconds of vigor? 5 extra seconds of fury?
Overall I’m happy we weren’t really nerfed, but this didn’t change anything in my opinion. Maybe these tiny changes might shake up the meta for mesmers when taken together with the changes to other classes? I doubt it though.
Why would it be difficult to bring it back if it was already implemented at some point in the game?
I actually think the WM clerics are overdone and need nerfing. They aren’t hard to kill, just extremely annoying. Its not fun to just be forced to wait around for 3 seconds if my unblockable attacks are on CD and I’m fighting a cleric. That doesn’t make for an interesting encounter, nor does it make for a challenging encounter. It just makes for an annoying one that I purposefully avoid from thereon out
I agree with Warcry. It will either be around Christmas (holiday releases can be fairly popular, would be a great way to boost income despite having a lower price than HoT did), or early 2018.
@Xstein – Yes, its MtD and Illusionary Retribution that encourage shatter spamming for damage, and yes they probably should be updated to at the very least not affect Distortion since that’s a defensive skills. But the fact remains that they weren’t a problem before HoT, because we didn’t have chronophantasma and IR to spam illusions like crazy. MtD and Illusionary Retribution are so kitten powerful right now because chronophantasma and IR allow you to keep spawning illusions near endlessly, meaning that every shatter you do will be applying multiple stacks of confusion and torment, instead of just the first shatter doing so, and then subsequent shatters not having any illusions to apply more stacks.
Even though CP and IR aren’t the reason why we are encouraged to shatter spam, they are definitely the problem with shatter spam right now, especially for condi chrono. I really do think that this proposed change would be a small buff to power mesmers (allowing them to shatter without losing their phantasms), overall mostly neutral to shatter builds since active clone generation traits in core mesmer traitlines would be left alone, and would nerf condi chrono by reducing its ability to spam stacks of confusion and torment. But the nerf wouldn’t be enough to destroy the build.
I do think this would be a substantially stronger design for the class as a whole to have CP be moved baseline and to get rid of IR from the chronomancer line.
I still don’t see how it would make the game better.
It would require a LOT of developer resources devoted to something that already only a small amount of players want. It adds no endgame content. It adds no new classes. It adds no new weapon/armor skins.
From a roleplay perspective, it adds nothing that a simple endless tonic couldn’t add. Nothing.
It just adds nothing to the game.