Guild Wars 2

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

You have a fragile iDuelist that can be cleave out by most attacks and have 33% chance on crit (which normally is 50%) to proc only 1 bleed for 5s.

DD is a 33% chance on hit.

For kitten’s sake, people, if you’re going to complain about the trait get your kittening facts right.

Phantasmal Warlock is one of our better phantasms, it doesn’t need to be messed with.

To be fair, the tooltip really should update as well.

If only we had a trait that spawned one so I wouldn’t have to burn a utility slot on it.

EDIT: The real question is, does pDisenchanter with pFury give more Bleed stacks now than iDuelist with dDiscipline, assuming pHaste on both?

I think some of the problem is that it’s actually a little difficult to tell when you’re taking condition damage just due to the UI presentation of condi ticks. Or maybe that’s just me?

Still, that’s a UI problem and not a class balance problem.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

You forgot.. It’s also a stream of projectiles. Which means.. Bodyblocked, absorbed, blocked, reflected..

… Or my favorite, the humble dodge that negates 90% of the attack.

Pfft, who dodges in this game?

RIP Spurnshadow’s forum sig.

The really baffling part of this is that Mesmers have almost no access to cover conditions, so condi Mesmers are super easy to handle with even a single source of cleanse.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Yes, but that’s completely irrelevant to the comparison.

Fury, the buff, applies exactly 20% crit chance every single time, regardless of your own precision.
The only time this changes is when your personal crit chance from precision is already over 80% (hence why I mentioned Rampagers hybrids, rabid doesn’t get anywhere close to the limit), because crit chance caps at 100%.

So, unless you are completely decked out in precision gear, your Duelist will always get exactly a 20% increase in bleed chance from Phantasmal Fury via Sharper Images.

Yup. Understanding what you’re comparing is super important. Some folks should try that out.

Fay.2357:

8-9 stacks of bleed from an attack that hits 8 times? 3x bleed stacks per hit, what?

I think he’s factoring both Sharper Images and DD to get the 8-9 Bleed stacks. But, yeah, if that’s his assumption then he should be up front about it.

You can lock someone down by interrupting them. Like if we had a trait that increased the cooldown on a skill that got interrupted, maybe call it something rhyming with “Mower Mock”.

kolompi.1287:

I like how Anet is handling this. First people were asking for a PU nerf so they nerfed mirror blade and “fixed” mantras. Then people still kept asking for a PU nerf (how odd) and now they are nerfing PU. That being said, this change is good at least.

Which, if you look back at the discussion threads from just after June 23, is exactly what most of us were predicting would happen.

(The nerf to Harmonious Mantras was NEVER justified, though, and I’m still pretty kitten ed sore about that one.)

Eh, hardly the biggest necro we’ve had, not even this week.

I typically use Rampager in PvP condi shatter. Yeah, it’s glassier, but condi Mesmer still does a ton of Power damage that we can’t afford to give up. And, as Curunen said, crit is super important to maintain Bleed pressure via Sharper Images.

Yeah, the rotation to optimise blasting Fire fields is not necessarily the same as the one to optimise DPS output. I don’t have enough Ele or Warrior experience to say, but I suspect that PS Warriors are a thing precisely because they end up sacrificing less DPS than Eles would for the same Might generation.

Mesmer DPS is already crap, so if anybody is going to sacrifice personal damage for group offensive support, it should be us.

Ariete.6509:

- To move around, if i get swiftness from signet of inspiration, Temporal Curtain simply misses and doesn’t stack swiftness – My work around so far is to only lay TC with no swiftness up.

This is a known issue from back in the original GW2 beta. There should finally be a fix next week, though.

- Many times Mimic just doesn’t work, but this has to be l2p since when it doesn’t work the utility meant to be cast twice goes on its full cd, but mimic goes to a 5sec cooldown, so i may be missing something ( i know about the portal thing where mimic has to be used in the exit portal not the entre part).

Mimic has a channel time before you can use it. Sounds like you’re hitting the second utility in the middle of that channel, which cancels it and puts it on a short cooldown.

- one veil after another (when mimic does work) don’t expand stealth duration like mass invisibility does, my work around is wait to be revealed and only then cast again.

This is related to the Temporal Curtain thing, actually.

Daze still permits movement.

It’s been modified for BWE3 with essentially a .25s ICD on gaining stacks, specifically to break the interaction with Spatial Surge.

Even without that, it wasn’t a noticeable factor in BWE1 or BWE2. In theory, permaslow is super powerful, but in practice it doesn’t matter that much compared to the more direct forms of lockdown we have access to, nor is it as much of a game changer as Chronophantasma.

The “nerf pu” crowd were never paying attention in the first place. Scrubs are gonna scrub, and they only ever learn enough about a game’s meta to kitten on whatever they think killed them last.

StickerHappy.8052:

Lets not be word for word here.

If we replace all your words with different ones, then I guess you have a point.

apharma.3741:

I dunno, from the video I saw of Pyros chronometer build it looks like being able to bring 35s of group alacrity and quickness will be a thing for raids. It essentially increases the effectiveness of all other roles in the party whether they be support, dps, healing, whatever.

That assumes a 5-man composition of 3x Ele, 1x Chrono, 1x Herald. Will the numbers still hold if we have to trade one Ele for a Druid or if the Revenant needs to stay in Jalis for tanking? Maybe Glint/Jalis for the Rev and then one of the Eles uses an Earth build or something.

But the essential idea is that Pyro proved his build fits into the current DPS-based dungeon meta. Mandatory non-DPS slots throws a monkey wrench in it, because our group DPS contribution scales down the more non-DPS roles we need in a group.

Yes, Alacrity helps healing output, but here we run into one of the classic Trinity balance problems: If content is beatable without a Chrono supporting your Healer, then the Chrono’s support is wasted. For the first months of a new raid, Healers might need the support. But once everyone has the patterns down, Chronos will be dead weight from a healing perspective.

This is why I hate the stupid Trinity. Trying to keep it in balance creates a completely rigid ecosystem of class interactions.

The staleness of GW2’s dungeon meta has so much more do to with a failure to iterate on content designs and knock down performance outliers than the lack of a Trinity.

Windwalker.7421:

Robert, what about that fix to Duelist’s Discipline? I remember you saying you already fixed it and that it was slated to go live in an upcoming balance patch soon. It’s sorely needed IMO.

At the moment, I’m just assuming that they left most of their bugfixes out of the livestream, just for lack of time. They were really rushing through their segment.

Secondly, I find it a bit strange to boost Sword AA, and leave Scepter & Condie builds in general behind even further. I saw little wrong with the Sword AA, certainly not as compared to Scepter AA!

With raids forcing mandatory non-DPS slots into group compositions, everybody else is under bigger pressure to perform at maximum capacity. (And, let’s face it, Mesmer is sure as kitten not gonna be a Healer or Tank.) The sword buff still doesn’t bring us totally in line with everybody else, but it was necessary to keep us from falling completely out of the PvE meta.

Making Scepter a viable PvE weapon was probably outside the scope of this balance patch. Even the Sword buff was a holding-pattern change more than anything else.

Noss.4105:

I might be naive, but I believe The Pledge will be fixed in the patch.

I have to think it will, too. Seems little point in doing a balance patch with so many balance-affecting bugs still outstanding.

Mesmer scepter may not have been as bad off as Necro scepter, but I wouldn’t say it’s “fine”. The really big issue with it is that its AA chain is clunky and slow, especially at long range, and it also overwrites Phantasms.

Fay.2357:

Just to note, the glamour trait is less than useless with veil. It only applies superspeed and resistance to allies currently within the radius of the glamour when it gets created. Obviously, nobody is ever in the radius of veil when it gets created…so it’s absolute garbage.

Actually, Temporal Enchanter appears to apply its effect within a 240(?) radius around the center of the glamour. Easy enough to test yourself, just take the trait and drop Veil nearby but not on top of you. You’ll get the Superspeed and Resistance but not the Stealth.

Still kind of a worthless trait, though.

rabidsmiles.5926:

Just wanted to point out that the guys who were doing the stream kept wasting time…there should be more to the patch notes come Tuesday. We’ll see then I guess, super frustrating to be promised balance patch stuff and get story time from goofing off A-Net employees. We just want to know what’s going on…not hear jokes!

This is one of the reasons I hate livestreams for delivering information.

Hey, Thieves need something to do in the current PvE meta.

Drazerg.8956:

Does anyone have a link to the balance changes?

Dulfy, naturally: http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/

(Still a WIP, they only have changes up through Necro posted so far.)

Ithamir.5928:

If I remember correctly, Anet has said that they want to balance more often but each balance would be smaller. Have they “reiterated” that philosophy or am I going senile?

Don’t think they’ve reiterated it in words, but they’re doing a balance patch now only ~3 months after the last one. YMMV if that counts for “smaller but more often”.

Thanks for the clarification!

Rikit Runk.5170:

has someone done the math if chronomancer can still get 100% stealth uptime?

It was dicey before, you’ll definitely need two Mesmers to pull it off now. Especially if the balance patch also fixes The Prestige.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

and no change or rebalance for the scepter?

They didn’t give a complete list of changes, they were rushing through to name a couple for every profession. It’s possible there were some Scepter changes we didn’t hear about.

…although given their perennial neglect of that weapon, I doubt it.

Though they did actually say they were buffing Scepter for Eles and Necros.

Doggie.3184:

Potent Poison buff. My brain broke when they nerfed it in first place by such a large amount. ;o Strange that they were rushed on time.. wasn’t that the point of the stream? What else was talked about that I must of missed?

They were screwing around and bantering a lot in the early part of the stream, which ate into their time.

Should be patch notes available on Tuesday. I guess the patch is hitting then as well?

No, they said it’s being reduced from 100% to 50%.

Are you kitten kittening me? That’s not an overnerf at all, it’s an entirely appropriate balance change.

The only people who needed the full 40s of Stealth we could get from old PU were WvW Roamers, and kitten ‘em. How many times do we need to explain that the game simply doesn’t allow for roaming as a balanceable playstyle?

Pistol – Damage buffs 20%+
Potent Poison – Buff to poison damage increase, but I didn’t hear the numbers.
Vigorous Recovery – 7s Vigor
Expeditions Dodger – 4s Swiftness

And then they moved on to Warrior.

They’re covering Ranger right now, I believe Thief is next. But they’re rushing through a lot of stuff due to time.

Levetty.1279:

I don’t understand what they were saying about Focus.

Yeah, they’re much too rushed. They needed more time for this. Hopefully, we’ll get a written changelog somewhere before the balance patch actually hits.

Silverkey.2078:

Do they mean the focus now stacks swiftness?

Not quite. I think they mean that it’ll always set your Swiftness to exactly 12s?

Chaotic Dampening – 2.5% CDR per tick
Portal – Timer showing how long you have to drop Exeunt
PU – 50% Stealth duration instead of 100%
Sword – 10% damage buff on AA chain
(cut some other sword stuff due to time?)
Focus – Temporal Curtain gives 12s Swiftness

Seems pretty nice. Nothing major, except hopefully the FotM PU players will kitten off and stop giving us a bad name. +50% Stealth duration is still plenty for good players to work with.

Of non-Mesmer note, “Feel My Wrath!” is getting its CD increased to kitten .

Live as of posting: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Haven’t heard any Mesmer-specific changes. Dunno if they covered us before I tuned back into the stream, but I would have expected somebody else to post a thread before me if they had.

I’ll update this with the Dulfy summary when there is one.

I’m personally annoyed by the Druid not because it’s stepping on any of the Mesmer’s toes but because I hate what it implies about HoT content.

I did the old 2x Tank, 2x Healer, 8x DPS thing for a couple of years in LOTRO (which had 12-man raids), and I’m just over it. It’s not any less stale than GW2’s Zerker meta. If anything, it’s more stale just for being so similar to literally every other PvE-focused MMO on the market.

Yawn.

Puck.9612:

What time will they be talking about the balance updates?

It’s near the end of today’s schedule. No exact time listed.

The new pets are awesome. Pretty cool that Rangers are getting new toys even if they don’t spec into Druid.

All y’all are making me feel old. Didn’t any of you used to watch SNL? Or reruns of SNL when Comedy Central used to show nothing but those and Inner Space?

Coming up next! Tune in now: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

EDIT: Never mind, there’s some kind of gameshow that wasn’t on the other schedule. Druid stuff is 2:20 PM EDT.

Eh, all of the elite specs are still under development, some more than others. I wouldn’t read too much into that.

I think the biggest chance for unseating Berzerker in sustained damage is actually Rampager. I seem to recall somebody doing non-definitive back-of-envelope numbers that put it pretty close to our Zerk DPS thanks to the condition reworks.

All the calculations refer to the pre-6/23 trait system.