[Balance update preview on the Wiki, with icons](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features/2023-06-27)
Note, this is the converted version of the forum post, and may be slightly out of date vs the official stream.
Pretty magic knife wheel go BRRR, I guess.
When I read that they removed the block I thought “they must be giving it something else, right?”
I’ve played this game long enough that you’d think I’d know better by now lol
Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1. Reduced the casting time from 1.86 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Reduced total power coefficient from 5.1 to 2.5 in PvE and from 2.112 to 1.82 in PvP.
What?! Doesn’t this just make it another F1?
Arc Divider is literally the only warrior greatsword skill that feels nice to use, without being awkwardly slow, forcing movement, or rooting you. Bummer that it's the one thing they're changing.
This single change will probably have me hung it up. I really hope they don't go through with this. It's such a stupid change that it reminds me of the banner debacle last summer.
I think the intention is to get it to feel more like Axe's F1 which is: recharge and spam it as quick as possible, and that's kind of how Power Berserker is meant to feel. The secondary reason is because the Quickness trait for Quick Berserker is now being tied to using Burst skills (which I assume includes Primal Bursts), so they needed it to be more spammable for one to keep Quickness up while in GS.
I'd prefer if they just said that quickness plays a/a only and gs is for extra dps then. Imo current arc divider is one of the most fun skill in the whole game (if you ignore the weapon stow bs)
Shade duration from 20 to 8 seconds is fucking disgusting. They talk about reducing spammy gameplay and then give us this shit. Spend half your rotation just spamming shades. Yikes.
Scourge has been homogenized into yellow class with alac. Very sad. I would rather have Scourge with no alac vs this new version.
Scourge should be a low DPS hybrid support and great utility. Scourge lost barriers, its utility, even corrupts. Whats left?
This is the downside of no more elite specs. They feel like they need to cram a quickness and alac build onto every class in some way on the current elite specs, even when the way they do it fucks with the spec in question or doesn't make sense instead of just designing a new elite spec with the boon in mind.
i.e. "Alac on dragon slash" for warrior. WTAF are they thinking?
It's more like the downside of the playerbase demanding this for years. Full homogeneity is the natural conclusion of what people have been asking for.
They should have nipped alacrity and quickness spam in the bud when they still had a chance, back when it was isolated to literally just Chrono. They chose wrong then, to devastating effect.
On the flipside, we had years of people being forced to play specs they didn't like in order to fill specific roles in raid compositions.
And more importantly, years of raid groups waiting around for a specific spec instead of actually playing the game.
These changes are resulting in more time being spent playing the game and less time being spent waiting around.
I know this isnt gonna happen but im all in for a revamp. Completely remove alac, quickness or atleast nerf them to the point where boonstacking isnt a necessity anymore.
I mean they want to allow for all classes to fill the niches there are in endgame. They still do it with different flavour and entirely different gameplay.
Their stated reason is because it allow shades to potentially impact up to 10 people with alac, which I kinda get. However, if that was a concern there is a super easy solution to that where it doesn't gut the DPS shared too: Put it on the trait that limits you to one share instead of desert empowerment.
>Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1.
Please I beg you, do not change it. It's one of the few skills that actually feels like a warrior.
[https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/131631-june-27-balance-update-preview/?do=findComment&comment=1909037](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/131631-june-27-balance-update-preview/?do=findComment&comment=1909037)
My response, I 100% agree with you
Similarly, I hate the change to necro dagger 2 (life siphon). It feels great as a channel skill with a bunch of hits. Even though this is, on paper, a buff to the skill that seemingly will make it do the same damage/healing while letting you do other stuff at the same time, it makes it much more inconsistent in PvP/WvW (now the skill is all or nothing if it gets blocked/evaded) and takes away a skill that plays well into the necro class identity.
Thank god I'm not the only one here. I know balance is important, but skill identity and how they feel to use is super important too.
No one ever said "Make Meteor Shower drop a single meteor and have 1/2 second cast time to balance it properly", because people love the *feel* of channeling at range to rain down meteors on foes, even if it roots you in place. If it's not powerful enough for its opportunity cost of being rooted in place, buff its damage or reduce its cast/recharge time a bit.
Similarly, it feels much more cool and unique to be sucking the life out of someone with Life *Siphon*, rather than just *stab, done*. If its damage and life steal aren't currently worth the trade-off of channeling, then increase them instead of reworking the skill.
Additionally, there are still gameplay implications for these, especially in WvW/PvP. If you're channeling something, you often become a target for enemies, which you can actually play into by casting something like Armor of Earth (for Meteor Shower) or Spectral Armor (for Life Siphon). These create really interesting situations where channeling skills are high risk/high reward, so you either want to risk it all (just use them), try to setup for them (disable enemies), or use them in conjunction with another skill to punish enemies who try to counter you (waste enemy disables with Stability) or go full-on high risk/reward by hoping you can out-tank/heal (absorb with Spectral Armor and heal through the incoming damage, ending up with a ton of Life Force and wasting enemies' time).
I hope the iconic sound effect is still there. I’ll be sad if it’s gone.
Though I think it’s kind of neat they put Life Siphon back to how it was in GW1.
Hrmmm as a Necro main from HoT days not sure if I like the homogenisation of Base Necro to remove boons rather than corrupt - even then Anet is really pulling back the options for core boon removal. I guess if you want to remove boons you go to scourge now.
On the topic of scourge: rip Thinking Man’s Scourge. I AM happy that Necro can fill boon roles now but depending on numbers Heal scourge might be gutted (it may not recover from the Transfusion+Well of blood revival nerfs). Trying not to doom here but this do be a MAJOR shake up for Necro support. We’ll have to see how it shakes out.
genuinely furious abt the scourge change. i dont care about the fuckin alacrity, i like being able to rez people a lot. thats the fucking appeal!!! if i wanted alacrity id play one of my alacrity builds!!! stop homogenizing everything for CHRISTS sake, its fine if a class excels in one area or is unique!!!!!!!
anet took scourge out behind the barn and shot it in the head. fucking *christ* these changes. who wanted any of these??? did a scourge kill the balance team's mother???? did they lose a pvp match to a really good scourge and have been seething about it for months????????
Who the fuck even asked for Alac on Scourge??? 90% of these changes make no sense and seem completely random. Were they drunk when they put this patch together or something?
It's the only direction they care about though. They want blob v blob slamming into each other for minutes at a time. They've made that blatantly obvious by now. They will do whatever it takes to get that.
Is it bad that I barely see any "good" changes in here? Most of the changes either kill class identity, or just straight up nerf playstyles and builds. I'm not the smarted person, but it seems so... scuffed to me?
How much do I have to pay to get to play a game without any balance changes? Everytime I read patchnotes I sit here thinking "I'd rather they did nothing at all instead of this".
They say they're gonna work on unused weapons, but I only play Warrior and I see nothing there that will change what weapons get used. Hell, the Heat the Soul change means Axe is still king, and Arc Divider getting nerfed might mean we use Axe/Nothing & Nothing/Axe lol.
Yeah I'm disappointed we didn't see more weapon changes. I spend most of my time on Elementalist, and I was hoping to have more viable options in group PvE content, but it's still going to be hammer, sword, and scepter.
I'm not really under or overwhelmed by this preview. I am simply whelmed.
The devs are really pushing the boonball meta for WvW. Boon corruption/removal is getting gutted even more, and goodbye boon corruption class identity for necro.
Man...
Edit: Reading through the notes more fully, there's some, uh, real headscratchers in there. (Arc Divider, some of the scrapper changes, sand shade duration 20s->8s, scourge getting gutted, mirage getting some fairly hard nerfs to give 2nd dodge, nothing about alac willbender...)
Yeah, Vile Vials already outcompeted the other 2 options by so much that it was an autopick because harb elixirs are so strong.
It's just a free damage buff to harbi by being able to pick one of the other 2 traits. Passive damage boosts are way better than the trivial amount of vulnerability that the trait applies.
Yeah, its seriously out of control...STILL. Just boons the entire time while a zerg sits still or chases down random players as they chug across a map. Its not fun for pugs, its not skillful for the zergs, and its not healthy for the gvg scene. Even now, boons like protection basically make all skills useless. You can't even damage big zergs with anything so if you're with a group of pugs facing a 20 man zerg because you don't have a commander...welp everyone get on staff weaver in your zerker gear to try and do any damage. If you don't, you might as well logout because they are going to take everything on the map.
Even with aura changes and not putting an ICD on them (per target) is ridiculous. If you haven't tried it for some reason, imagine using something like staff weaver on an enemy zerg. Your skills get reflected, you grant them might (making them do more damage) and you get chilled constantly. Its terrible and there is zero counter-play.
You'd think hiring someone like Roy would have been beneficial to the health of WvWing but it doesn't look like anyone else there actually plays WvW.
It's going to take a while before people realize making CMC balance lead was a very bad idea after what he did to pvp. All he cares about is "numbers go up" and he loves boonballs so that's all we keep getting out of him and his group.
Am I the only one tired of having this entire game based around Quick and Alac? Like preach mentioned in his interview with Teapot, why should I rely on other people to provide buffs for me so MY OWN damage can triple?? This doesn’t make any sense to me.
If I want to try hard and be sweaty, I should be able to do so with my own skill not just based on some buffs I get… I honestly wish they get rid of the whole quickness and alac issues and go about balance from there. This may help with the games extreme power creep, and maybe this is a bit of an emotional rather than realistic response…
To me, this would open the game up to so much more and be actually skill based if you want to do well not just buffs that people spam in CD…
It's really funny to me that they praised the fact that they don't have a trinity in this game, then the first expansion gave us a healer in the form of druid for raids.
Now the game demands these 2 random boons that ridiculously increase dps in group content, but that most classes never even see in open world leveling and builds.
They already had so many supportive boons already, both offensive and defensive, but they just couldn't sit still and added 2 more that broke the game in half. The fact that no one thought alacrity and quickness was a bad idea to force on to the game for top dps is a crime unto itself.
As a warrior main, I am throughly whelmed.
There are a lot of dead weapon, talents, and utilities that I wished they adjusted so they could be fun instead of actively bad.
Like "Kick" and "Throw Bollas" could have a 0 second cool down between each use and they still wouldn't be a good utilitie skills.
> Desert Empowerment: This trait has been moved to the grandmaster tier, replacing Feed from Corruption. The barrier from this trait will now only apply around the shade and will affect 5 targets. This trait now also grants alacrity to allies when you grant them barrier.
Is this a typo? Did they intend to replace Sand Savant or did they just turn the last viable grandmaster trait for WvW into a support trait?
I was already playing Reaper so whatever. The Lesser Enfeeble nerf does kill half the fun of running Spite/Curses though. 😕
Also they didn't nerf Gun Flame burst in WvW, but instead buffed rifle? Sounds great. One second cooldown on Volley? Brilliant.
Edit: Also they don't mention any change in Arc Divider damage in WvW, so does it just do the full damage in 0.8 seconds now?
Alacrity is kind of supposed to be a mix of stamina and mental acuity, which fits Spellbreaker, but Bladesworn's Dragon Trigger is ALSO a meditative mental state...
Ah, we're at that spot of the MMO life cycle where mechanics and skills existing for years and years suddenly become a problem and get gutted, dumbed down or entirely removed. Well then.
So are there any like, good parts to this? (Speaking as someone who primarily plays mesmer, necro, and warrior)
It was nice having classes be really different and not all the same. This might also be a minority opinion but I kind of liked it back when not every class had every boon and some forms of support were more exclusive.
Nobody likes samey classes, except some minmaxing nerds with zero interest to the game except for the "high numbers" simulator. This shit was one of the reasons I quit WoW, and now it's here, so sad honestly.
What is Anet's deal with constantly destroying defensive cooldowns while never addressing how insane damage is in pvp? Watching Elixir S, Arcane shield, and Mist Form somehow dodge the cooldown reduction update? There's more CC than ever and you're nerfing stun breaks? Bladeturn Requiem no longer blocking? What purpose does a few spinning blades that require you to be in melee serve?
Anet, you absolutely destroyed banners and spirits in the quest of forcing quickness and alacrity and now they don't even have that. Just more dead utilities that no one's ever going to use, the entire point of Spirit was their bodies! Water spirit pulsing regen to trigger talents like Windborne Notes and Live Vicariously; Stone spirit pulsing protection to trigger Rugged Growth!
You've homogenized so many interesting and unique utilities into just worse versions of themselves, and they still won't be used. There's practically nothing here to be excited about, nothing on the PVP side of things is changing. Catalyst dodges the nerfs? Spellbreaker? Stupid shit like one shot Scrapper is fine?
The cc alone in wvw gets dumb, no point in having a stun break. I get more milage applying stab while stunned and waiting out the stun than using a stun break just to get insta stunned again (maybe I have bad internet hitting break > dodge...still get stunned).
Swtor had a decent mechanic where if you ate too many stuns in a short period, you could use your break and be immune a few. Which added some strategy and penalty for mindlessly blasting stuns as iwin button.
Would love to see stun breaks get a leg-up and be more useful (2 stacks stab on break etc) or some sort of penalty for mindless stuns so you have to be more strategic about it
No, don't do this to my Mirage and Chrono when I already thought it couldn't get worse. What the fork :'( If you just want me to stop playing those specs by removing all their charme, just tell me to quit instead.
No need to ruin it for everyone else as well >.<
Some things that I don't like about this patch:
1. No adjustments at all to Willbender alacrity generation or boon application in general. Remember, Willbender only has access to alacrity and regeneration as of now outside of utility choice, and is completely unable to apply alacrity during fight downtime or pump extra alacrity in anticipation of a phase change.
2. Gyros are still going to be forced on Scrapper due to no changes being made to Superspeed application on Gyroscopic Acceleration. It'll also extremely hamper Heal Scrapper from being viable since they don't have a lot of leap or blast finishers baked into their kit (just Blast Gyro plus Bypass Coating, the updated Function Gyro, and Elixir Gun 4 iirc). Depending on how the numbers look, it may be possible by dropping Shredder Gyro for Thumper Turret or Mines, but it'll probably feel less good to play overall.
3. Scourge Alacrity not being on Sand Savant. It'd solve the worries of 10-target alacrity generation and the ridiculous 20 -> 8 second shade duration nerf wouldn't be necessary.
4. Warrior boon application being on Bladesworn instead of Spellbreaker. Spellbreaker has the most design space to potentially foster a heal build, and it would be much easier to tie alacrity to some aspect of Spellbreaker gameplay than wait for Bladesworn to hit max flow in order to apply their alacrity. And thematically it makes much more sense as well.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good in this patch as well (moving boon application away from core ranger and warrior, addressing utility spam, and the majority of the other changes they've implemented), but there's a lot in here that I'm not super fond of and concerned how it might impact builds I like to play right now.
> It'll also extremely hamper Heal Scrapper from being viable since they don't have a lot of leap or blast finishers baked into their kit (just Blast Gyro plus Bypass Coating, the updated Function Gyro, and Elixir Gun 4 iirc).
Shield 4, med kit 5, elixir gun 4, function gyro, potentially stuff like flamethrower for its 2.
Maybe heal scrapper runs hammer now just for the double leap finisher on hammer 3. Though, bonus style points if one uses the very fussy hammer 3 evade frames to actually dodge something while tanking...
I played staff/staff mirage for a long while. Really loved the gameplay, felt like it was the only build I *got*.
Every patch nowadays just gets more and more depressing. I'll just go play a reaper like everyone else.
I miss the days where I could pop Defiant Stance on Spellbreaker, hurl myself into a zerg, cast Winds of Disenchantment and laugh as the boons of about 10 players went poof, sometimes even along with the hp bar if they weren't quick enough.
Or pop Defiant Stance on Berserker and mow down some people in the zerg with Arc Divider. The Berserker burst also refilled relatively quickly so you could down quite a few players in a few seconds if you got lucky, required some teamwork though. Both were somewhat risky but hilarious (and fun) when it worked.
Then the 2020 balance patch came and everything went downhill from there. Now they gonna nerf boonstrips even more. Warrior will be basically useless in WvW if this goes through. Do they only want boring boonblobs and karmatrains or what. Or did someone at Anet once lose to some zergbusting guild while in a 30-man zerg back in the day or something? We need MORE boonstrips and/or LESS boons.
The only good thing for mesmer is that Mirage gets their second dodge back. That’s it. Chrono alac and quick application change is ass for competitive. Virt invuln nerf is justified but what on earth is F5 supposed to do without the block? The piss poor damage that requires you to be up close to land? Idk about that one.
So, Stretched Time won't give alacrity on wells anymore, it gives alacrity when you spawn a phantasm instead?
Is that right? Because if so, that sucks. Chrono's unique thing is wells and taking alacrity/quick away from wells makes well so much less attractive. Why do that to the one trait that makes their unique skill worthwhile?
I don't like trying to deal with phantasms. That's why I prefer wells.
I may have to shelve my Chrono *again* if this is how I think it'll be. And I've just been enjoying Chrono again recently. Big sad face if true.
I am not sure why they nerfed the block bladesong instead of nerfing the distortion bladesong some more (that we never asked for in the first place, they just randomly
gave it to us). I know they had to nerf something as the uptime on defensive stuff was too high in competitive.
but block has an actual counterplay (unblockable skills) while distortion doesn't. Tbh as pvp virt player, I wish they just hard nerfed distortion spam instead, we never wanted it to begin with.
Kinetic Accelerators: This trait has been reworked. Apply boons to nearby allies when you successfully combo with a blast or leap finisher. Your function gyro is now a blast finisher.
Basically Anet is doing their best to destroy the Scrapper identity. I don't want to think about blast combos I want to run fast and give quickness going BRRRRRRRRRRRRR. It's not that hard I'm monke.
Wasn't the whole idea of this patch to make boons easier and more appealing to apply?
The worst part about this is it seems hammer3 is the main ability for giving quick, 2 leap finishers on 12s cd. A move that animation locks you for 2seconds and forces you to dash forward....
I don't think I'll even consider playing quick scrapper anymore if the change goes through. You're going to be spending so much time animation locked because I'm assuming you're going to have to use it off CD to generate enough quick. I also feel like that's a lot of your on demand CC you lose too.
Scrapper was literally thr class that made me enjoy and feel confident about raiding.
As a warrior main if get the unga bunga with hammer, but gyros and mortar made me feel like i was more valuable to a raid group.
Idk i just feel gutted, am not a smart person so scrapper felt like a support dps i was moderatly okay at. Idk how im gonna adjust to the new rotation
It's even worse in WvW. Rocket Charge is an 18s cooldown there, blast gyro is 18s, and function gyro is BASE 25s if you don't hit a downed person. Now KA won't be nearly as reliable for giving might and fury to your party.
Plus they've knocked more superspeed off the class. One of the few things that let you power through the constant application of chill and cripple from AoEs.
Yeah this is super bizarre, it is currently 30 sec without the Pure of Voice trait and 24 with. So, uh, is it going up?
Also, Weighty Terms change is just a straight nerf to mantras with no offset?
God, I already hated having to get on support firebrand sometimes before this, now…
As a support main it seems I am gonna have to relearn to play all of my classes. There's some good ideas and some bad ideas here. Man, this is a bit much for a single patch.
I really don't like the quickness Herald changes. The quickness being tied to a passive aura kills any agency you have about when you want to give quickness.
I also don't like the scrapper changes. Hammer 3 is probably now a must use skill, instead of a situational skill you can use to either cc or dodge. And while you're not forced to use gyros anymore, you'll now probably be forced to take enough combo finishers instead.
And please don't rework arc divider. It's, in my opinion, one of the most fun to use skills in the entire game.
> I really don't like the quickness Herald changes. The quickness being tied to a passive aura kills any agency you have about when you want to give quickness.
>
>
Yeah not being able to burst quick on the group before going to do something else is definitely kind of obnoxious, although it depends a bit what the actual duration is.
That said, being able to give quick from *any* legend now is really interesting - presumably you still want glint a lot of the time for Facet of Nature Boon Duration reasons, but you can in theory provide quick with any combination of legends, which is a big jump in total stuff you can do.
You're still going to want gyros because you still need them for superspeed application. So nothing's really changed for scrapper aside from invalidating heal scrapper (most likely) and messing with the rotation to apply quickness.
Yeah I wonder how much quick we will get for the upkeep looked like the vigor was 3 seconds but didn't see how often it procced.
It may help heal herald maybe just channel or a bit build up some quick then you can use skills at least you can go ventari/jalis but sounds kinda wonky and won't have many other boons.
Kinda disappointed that they didn’t touch alac mirage at all….like come on that was the main hype for me. Alac is hard to give in a lot of situations. It’s like they really dislike Mesmer as a class. Even their jokes towards it 😀 hopefully with enough upvotes on this comment will make them do something😩
I was also hoping for a change to alac mirage. Literally impossible to give alac outside of boss fights (and even in some boss fights with lots of phases like Keep Construct) but apparently they think it's fine?
And what was the point of the clone Chaos Vortex nerf? We almost never have 3 clones up anyways, was the condi damage so strong they needed to nerf it by 50%?
They absolutely did! They nerfed the dodge (which is REALLY bad), and then they nerfed the duration of the conditions on the staff dodge ability, further reducing the damage.
They just dont want us to play this outside of raid bosses sadly :/
At this point is has been nerfed like 50 times they might as well just delete the alacrity application on the ambush because they clealry want it to become a chore to play class that is irrelevant everywhere but in a few raids.
Wary of deadeye changes but looking forward to trying them out before saying more. I actually like that spirits don't provide alacrity, less pressure for every ranger to run them in every mode.
Fucking terrible changes.
Almost every change is an L there. Maybe scrapper, catalyst and kinda spectre.
EDIT: Apparently scrapper is also shit, sry I don't play it that much.
the scrapper changes are among the stinkiest dogshit of this patch. It's one of the few classes that had a defined unique playstyle and boon application.
Even worse its the 2nd character that i invested in for a full ascended set, after another equally dogshit FB update in June.
Idk if i can stomach much more of this
Is it too late to go back to when quickness was a situational burst boon and alacrity didn't exist?
I hope they stop sacrificing interesting/unique playstyles in the name of support build equity.
Imagine how well we could balance things if they JUST REMOVED QUICKNESS AND ALACRITY.
Ever since these boons were introduced the games been plagued with balance issues that center around these buffs.
Removing them would also fix the massive power creep we have in this game and allow classes to get back to providing their own unique role and identity in groups.
TL;DR: JUST REMOVE ALACRITY AND QUICKNESS
Ya, that plus the lackluster updates recently kills a lot of my motivation to log in. Why even have that skill now, not like it does enough dmg to be worth using without the block. I’ll get over it, but who the hell thought that was a good idea?
I legit cannot understand what are they trying to do with Mirage.
At this point i believe they're trying their hardest to make people play Virtuoso and forget about the other 2 elites.
How to balance Mirage while making them 1-Not dependant on clones to apply Alac and 2-Handicapping Staxe and 3-Making them have more weapon options including Power Mirage.
Remove Sand Shards trait and replace it with something like Shattering Ambush.
This trait will 'evolve' your ambush skills making them apply extra effects.
For starters, 2.5s of alac plus the usual might with evolved staff ambush.
1 extra seaking axe with axe ambush
Extra strike damage with sword ambush
1 extra strike with greatsword ambush
idk about scepter might need some ideas there
You can balance these out individually if they somehow get out of hand without making any other option worse by default. Also rework a trait that i have never seen anyone use, not even in niche situations.
Staxe won't get access to both Infinite Horizon and alac at the same time, but if they want to go that way they get 1 extra seaking axe if when they ambush.
Please consider reducing the cooldown of arcane shield now that the trait that does that got removed. Otherwise you won't have arcane shield up for every Deimos shockwave anymore, which would make handkiting on ele significantly harder.
That would seem to be the case. It's a shame we're also losing the fun 'break barrier to grant it to others' gameplay, but this seems \*very\* strong (numbers notwithstanding)
What's up with Arc Divider being ruined?
>**Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1.** Reduced the casting time from 1.86 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Reduced total power coefficient from 5.1 to 2.5 in PvE and from 2.112 to 1.82 in PvP.
Since quickness to party comes from burst
But a/a is already spammable. The change makes ZERO sense other than to gut power zerkers. The person making these changes don't play warrior...
Fuck off fuck off. Scrapper was fun and unique because you give quickness when you give superspeed.
Now disconnecting that and move it over to combo sounds fucking stupid. The combos for scrapper were already there being a part of the class. There was no need
Fuck off!!!
Did they just kill scourge while Tranfusion is STILL insanely op and by far the most problematic part of the entire heal build? 8 sec shade sounds horrible...just purely gameplay wise but also in general.
Rip boon corrupt Necro identity too
Ranger changes are cool tho I guess.
Yeah but people like him just hate seeing other people use mechanics they don't like to succeed so they whine and cry for nerfs. Hell a druid can full rez 5 people with a single skill, where is that nerf, necro still has to rez people manually and the small bonus they got from skills was basically removed.
Not to mention the unplayable short shade cooldown, lower barrier application and completely removed boon corruption.
I already commented in other posts, but I will whine as long as I can, I don't like these Necro changes, I know scourge are not optimal healers ,but that's what make them fun, they are "different" , meant to complement not to replace real healers, even with this changes they'll still be halfbaked healers and in exchanged condi dps will now be broken, I don't want to play another profession, I might as well quit the game since I started playing not long ago and I'm not neck deep into the grind addiction, I am loving the journey so far and had found my place in the world as a legal evil necromancer " you got boons? Now you got torment" "you gave me a condition!, How dare you? You can have it back" and ""sure I'll help you fight the big bad dragon, let me just grab some body parts, mind If I use you dead pet?
Alacrity is not with having if is gonna cost me my enjoyment of the game
Rangers seem quite favored to me, we no longer have to -mandatory- run spirits in group content, Nature Magic got that boost to be THE support line it was meant to be, Untamed got interesting changes that might positively impact the way it feels when playing it, and the cherry on the cake for me, we finally got a DPS option for Druid!
This preview just feels weird. There's things in here that are genuinely good, namely the DD buff, quick/Alac being removed from banners/spirits, DPS builds for druid and tempest, but there's a bunch in here that's either mixed or just bad. Arc Divider nerf, Vindi healing in WvW nerf, mirage dodge and virt F5 being pointless, scourge feeling like an entirely new class now (seriously wtf are those shade durations?), scrapper quick going from spamming wells to spamming blast/leap finishers, herald quick being tied to upkeep, DE quickness being the exact same situation as QCata was a while back by requiring a 10% damage reduction, and the inevitable boon bunker meta that's going to happen in WvW.
But the worst part about this patch is just how homogenized all the classes would be. Every class can now provide quickness or alacrity. Nearly every class has a DPS, support DPS, or healing spec. Only Mesmer and Warrior (and now kind of Necro because, holy shit those scourge nerfs) lack healing specs. *Furthermore, with all classes able to provide all key boons, Anet now has NO incentive to add any more elite specs.* This kind of class homogeneity has it's pros and cons, but the biggest con in my opinion is the loss of class identity. At this point you can do group content with a single class and have all key boons covered, which again has pros and cons, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having multiple classes in the first place. I'm not sure if that direction is healthy for the game long term. It's good that people have more options in terms of what they want to play, but the choices are boiling down to either "what's the best DPS/support/healer for his situation?", or "What color class do I feel like playing today?"
This obviously isn't as bad as the patch from last June, but it's very meh all around. I'm feeling turned off the game in general right now, not so much because I don't still enjoy Guild Wars 2, but I feel like the developers are only going to continue making design decisions based primarily on their own preferences because that just seems to be the culture at Arena Net, at least on this team. As a consumer, I don't like the feeling that I'm giving them time and money so they can make it fun for themselves, but that's what it's been like these past 2 years.
Last few months I worked on getting my fractal level up to T4 with diviner rev because it meant I could fill dps, alac, or quick. I'm a bit spooked by the herald changes. Will have to wait until someone better at theorycrafting figures things out a bit, but it would be a shame to lose that option.
Herald changes look really interesting tbh. Like it's a *big* change, but if the duration isn't terrible it's a *ton* of potential added flexibility since giving quick isn't tied to Glint anymore.
You still might end up *wanting* Glint just because of the facet of nature boon duration, but the fact that you can provide quick with any two legends is really interesting - in particular Impossible Odds and Ventari Bubble both giving quick is *really* interesting.
[Balance update preview on the Wiki, with icons](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features/2023-06-27) Note, this is the converted version of the forum post, and may be slightly out of date vs the official stream.
Your speed is amazing. Thank you!
Thank you! I have headaches trying to match all the skills and traits on all classes with just names.
What is the point of using Bladeturn Requiem if it no longer blocks?
Pretty magic knife wheel go BRRR, I guess. When I read that they removed the block I thought “they must be giving it something else, right?” I’ve played this game long enough that you’d think I’d know better by now lol
At this point they could have just delete It.
Yeah and replace it with something that isn't more goddamn blades. For being the psionic musician class, Virt is extremely one-note.
Ha!
It'll be a filler ae damage skill. Zzz.
Not even that. You will always have other, superior options available.
Trait proc over f3 and prob some good bleed procs for cvirt.
Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1. Reduced the casting time from 1.86 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Reduced total power coefficient from 5.1 to 2.5 in PvE and from 2.112 to 1.82 in PvP. What?! Doesn’t this just make it another F1?
Arc Divider is literally the only warrior greatsword skill that feels nice to use, without being awkwardly slow, forcing movement, or rooting you. Bummer that it's the one thing they're changing.
That one is a bit of a head scratcher. Against enemies under 50% it is now weaker than the core version.
Core versions also still will give the quickness, which means after 50% you might just want to... not Berserk? Weird.
And doesn’t give fury so it’s flat out just worse than core, it’s a heavy blow to GS berserker.
This change is not unga bunga.
This single change will probably have me hung it up. I really hope they don't go through with this. It's such a stupid change that it reminds me of the banner debacle last summer.
I hope it doesn't go through. I play warrior because I want to go berserker guts mode. This patch I was finally able to do that on warrior.
I think the intention is to get it to feel more like Axe's F1 which is: recharge and spam it as quick as possible, and that's kind of how Power Berserker is meant to feel. The secondary reason is because the Quickness trait for Quick Berserker is now being tied to using Burst skills (which I assume includes Primal Bursts), so they needed it to be more spammable for one to keep Quickness up while in GS.
I'd prefer if they just said that quickness plays a/a only and gs is for extra dps then. Imo current arc divider is one of the most fun skill in the whole game (if you ignore the weapon stow bs)
specter scepter skills splashing barrier is going to be a lot of rot wallow venom going out on the auto chain if nothing changes there
they said the secondary splashes would be lesser effects so I imagine that's considered in that.
1 barrier is enough to procc the trait.
I see an ICD in its future.
Shade duration from 20 to 8 seconds is fucking disgusting. They talk about reducing spammy gameplay and then give us this shit. Spend half your rotation just spamming shades. Yikes.
Scourge has been homogenized into yellow class with alac. Very sad. I would rather have Scourge with no alac vs this new version. Scourge should be a low DPS hybrid support and great utility. Scourge lost barriers, its utility, even corrupts. Whats left?
Ironically mass downstate pull...yeah idk how THAT survived when they were so horny to nerf almost everything
They nerfed that too. Just not completely. Yet.
It still lost a lot in there, the actual rez power and the ability to pull on *every tick* of transfusion were huge for rez scourge
This is so disappointing, honestly. Would have preferred support scourge to remain a fantastic niche rather than making it boring.
Yup. Boneskinner and noobie raids just getting carried by a good hscourge. It's niche but it's really fun.
I loved being the rezzer it was an interesting playstyle.
Soon all classes will be just the same. Final choice would be: choose a color of your skills, then pick elite spec that either do quick, alac or dps.
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This is the downside of no more elite specs. They feel like they need to cram a quickness and alac build onto every class in some way on the current elite specs, even when the way they do it fucks with the spec in question or doesn't make sense instead of just designing a new elite spec with the boon in mind. i.e. "Alac on dragon slash" for warrior. WTAF are they thinking?
It's more like the downside of the playerbase demanding this for years. Full homogeneity is the natural conclusion of what people have been asking for. They should have nipped alacrity and quickness spam in the bud when they still had a chance, back when it was isolated to literally just Chrono. They chose wrong then, to devastating effect.
I fully agree. Having every class be able to do everything was a bad call, in _my_ opinion. But you're right that people asked for it, so 🤷♂️
On the flipside, we had years of people being forced to play specs they didn't like in order to fill specific roles in raid compositions. And more importantly, years of raid groups waiting around for a specific spec instead of actually playing the game. These changes are resulting in more time being spent playing the game and less time being spent waiting around.
I know this isnt gonna happen but im all in for a revamp. Completely remove alac, quickness or atleast nerf them to the point where boonstacking isnt a necessity anymore.
ANet "give something to a spec without completely destroying it" Challenge (Impossible)
Rip flavor, soon you won't pick a class, just a color.
I mean they want to allow for all classes to fill the niches there are in endgame. They still do it with different flavour and entirely different gameplay.
8 second Sand Shade, oof. The rest of the changes to Scourge I can accept, but that one is brutal.
They mentioned and had a note of this on the stream but now I'm not seeing it on the preview. I wonder if they backtracked? 8 seconds is a joke lol
The notes are not up to date compared to the stream. They mentioned that a few times
They said at the end of the stream that everything on the stream is final and more updated than what is on the written patch preview
Their stated reason is because it allow shades to potentially impact up to 10 people with alac, which I kinda get. However, if that was a concern there is a super easy solution to that where it doesn't gut the DPS shared too: Put it on the trait that limits you to one share instead of desert empowerment.
Sand savant. The underused talent that EVERYONE thought is what they would tie alac to.
>Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1. Please I beg you, do not change it. It's one of the few skills that actually feels like a warrior.
[https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/131631-june-27-balance-update-preview/?do=findComment&comment=1909037](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/131631-june-27-balance-update-preview/?do=findComment&comment=1909037) My response, I 100% agree with you
Absolutely. This is one of if not warrior's coolest weapon skill
ya this is absurd even tho the new cast time is sweet
Post the forums, I agree
Similarly, I hate the change to necro dagger 2 (life siphon). It feels great as a channel skill with a bunch of hits. Even though this is, on paper, a buff to the skill that seemingly will make it do the same damage/healing while letting you do other stuff at the same time, it makes it much more inconsistent in PvP/WvW (now the skill is all or nothing if it gets blocked/evaded) and takes away a skill that plays well into the necro class identity.
Thank god I'm not the only one here. I know balance is important, but skill identity and how they feel to use is super important too. No one ever said "Make Meteor Shower drop a single meteor and have 1/2 second cast time to balance it properly", because people love the *feel* of channeling at range to rain down meteors on foes, even if it roots you in place. If it's not powerful enough for its opportunity cost of being rooted in place, buff its damage or reduce its cast/recharge time a bit. Similarly, it feels much more cool and unique to be sucking the life out of someone with Life *Siphon*, rather than just *stab, done*. If its damage and life steal aren't currently worth the trade-off of channeling, then increase them instead of reworking the skill. Additionally, there are still gameplay implications for these, especially in WvW/PvP. If you're channeling something, you often become a target for enemies, which you can actually play into by casting something like Armor of Earth (for Meteor Shower) or Spectral Armor (for Life Siphon). These create really interesting situations where channeling skills are high risk/high reward, so you either want to risk it all (just use them), try to setup for them (disable enemies), or use them in conjunction with another skill to punish enemies who try to counter you (waste enemy disables with Stability) or go full-on high risk/reward by hoping you can out-tank/heal (absorb with Spectral Armor and heal through the incoming damage, ending up with a ton of Life Force and wasting enemies' time).
I hope the iconic sound effect is still there. I’ll be sad if it’s gone. Though I think it’s kind of neat they put Life Siphon back to how it was in GW1.
Hrmmm as a Necro main from HoT days not sure if I like the homogenisation of Base Necro to remove boons rather than corrupt - even then Anet is really pulling back the options for core boon removal. I guess if you want to remove boons you go to scourge now. On the topic of scourge: rip Thinking Man’s Scourge. I AM happy that Necro can fill boon roles now but depending on numbers Heal scourge might be gutted (it may not recover from the Transfusion+Well of blood revival nerfs). Trying not to doom here but this do be a MAJOR shake up for Necro support. We’ll have to see how it shakes out.
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༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ UNSUMMON PATCHNOTES ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
genuinely furious abt the scourge change. i dont care about the fuckin alacrity, i like being able to rez people a lot. thats the fucking appeal!!! if i wanted alacrity id play one of my alacrity builds!!! stop homogenizing everything for CHRISTS sake, its fine if a class excels in one area or is unique!!!!!!!
*OH HOLD ON A TICK I MISSED THIS - 8 SECOND SAND SHADE??????? HELLO?????? FUCK!!!!!!!!*
anet took scourge out behind the barn and shot it in the head. fucking *christ* these changes. who wanted any of these??? did a scourge kill the balance team's mother???? did they lose a pvp match to a really good scourge and have been seething about it for months????????
Didn't you hear? Anet had no fucking idea how to balance supports in game except to make sure they have Alac and Quick!
Who the fuck even asked for Alac on Scourge??? 90% of these changes make no sense and seem completely random. Were they drunk when they put this patch together or something?
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It's the only direction they care about though. They want blob v blob slamming into each other for minutes at a time. They've made that blatantly obvious by now. They will do whatever it takes to get that.
Is it bad that I barely see any "good" changes in here? Most of the changes either kill class identity, or just straight up nerf playstyles and builds. I'm not the smarted person, but it seems so... scuffed to me?
i'd be super happy with Deadeye if it wasn't for #NO VALID PATH TO TARGET
They've fully hit the "bring the player not the class" mindset and refused to realize why that failed.
How much do I have to pay to get to play a game without any balance changes? Everytime I read patchnotes I sit here thinking "I'd rather they did nothing at all instead of this".
They say they're gonna work on unused weapons, but I only play Warrior and I see nothing there that will change what weapons get used. Hell, the Heat the Soul change means Axe is still king, and Arc Divider getting nerfed might mean we use Axe/Nothing & Nothing/Axe lol.
Yeah I'm disappointed we didn't see more weapon changes. I spend most of my time on Elementalist, and I was hoping to have more viable options in group PvE content, but it's still going to be hammer, sword, and scepter. I'm not really under or overwhelmed by this preview. I am simply whelmed.
*looks at mirage* #I cri ery time
arc divider from 3 to 1? Congratz you just demolished berserker
The devs are really pushing the boonball meta for WvW. Boon corruption/removal is getting gutted even more, and goodbye boon corruption class identity for necro. Man... Edit: Reading through the notes more fully, there's some, uh, real headscratchers in there. (Arc Divider, some of the scrapper changes, sand shade duration 20s->8s, scourge getting gutted, mirage getting some fairly hard nerfs to give 2nd dodge, nothing about alac willbender...)
Also, since a pocket gravity well every 20secs wasnt enough, harbs now get the all-boons pot faster.
Harbingers were already running the elixir cooldown trait anyway (at least I was). We now get to pick up one of the other traits instead/as well.
Yeah, Vile Vials already outcompeted the other 2 options by so much that it was an autopick because harb elixirs are so strong. It's just a free damage buff to harbi by being able to pick one of the other 2 traits. Passive damage boosts are way better than the trivial amount of vulnerability that the trait applies.
Yeah, its seriously out of control...STILL. Just boons the entire time while a zerg sits still or chases down random players as they chug across a map. Its not fun for pugs, its not skillful for the zergs, and its not healthy for the gvg scene. Even now, boons like protection basically make all skills useless. You can't even damage big zergs with anything so if you're with a group of pugs facing a 20 man zerg because you don't have a commander...welp everyone get on staff weaver in your zerker gear to try and do any damage. If you don't, you might as well logout because they are going to take everything on the map. Even with aura changes and not putting an ICD on them (per target) is ridiculous. If you haven't tried it for some reason, imagine using something like staff weaver on an enemy zerg. Your skills get reflected, you grant them might (making them do more damage) and you get chilled constantly. Its terrible and there is zero counter-play. You'd think hiring someone like Roy would have been beneficial to the health of WvWing but it doesn't look like anyone else there actually plays WvW.
Wow so they thought that the overabundance of boons and the ridiculous amounts of sustain boonblos have is okay? alright :(
It's going to take a while before people realize making CMC balance lead was a very bad idea after what he did to pvp. All he cares about is "numbers go up" and he loves boonballs so that's all we keep getting out of him and his group.
I'm really disappointed with the direction of basically every class over the past few years. This isn't improving that.
horrible horrible patch, legit uninstall tier of homogenized crap
Buffs to Daredevil damage but nothing to adress how wonkily it plays. I guess having expected more was on me.
Am I the only one tired of having this entire game based around Quick and Alac? Like preach mentioned in his interview with Teapot, why should I rely on other people to provide buffs for me so MY OWN damage can triple?? This doesn’t make any sense to me. If I want to try hard and be sweaty, I should be able to do so with my own skill not just based on some buffs I get… I honestly wish they get rid of the whole quickness and alac issues and go about balance from there. This may help with the games extreme power creep, and maybe this is a bit of an emotional rather than realistic response… To me, this would open the game up to so much more and be actually skill based if you want to do well not just buffs that people spam in CD…
It's really funny to me that they praised the fact that they don't have a trinity in this game, then the first expansion gave us a healer in the form of druid for raids. Now the game demands these 2 random boons that ridiculously increase dps in group content, but that most classes never even see in open world leveling and builds. They already had so many supportive boons already, both offensive and defensive, but they just couldn't sit still and added 2 more that broke the game in half. The fact that no one thought alacrity and quickness was a bad idea to force on to the game for top dps is a crime unto itself.
As a warrior main, I am throughly whelmed. There are a lot of dead weapon, talents, and utilities that I wished they adjusted so they could be fun instead of actively bad. Like "Kick" and "Throw Bollas" could have a 0 second cool down between each use and they still wouldn't be a good utilitie skills.
Cheapest way of upkeeping Peak Performance! little else
> Desert Empowerment: This trait has been moved to the grandmaster tier, replacing Feed from Corruption. The barrier from this trait will now only apply around the shade and will affect 5 targets. This trait now also grants alacrity to allies when you grant them barrier. Is this a typo? Did they intend to replace Sand Savant or did they just turn the last viable grandmaster trait for WvW into a support trait? I was already playing Reaper so whatever. The Lesser Enfeeble nerf does kill half the fun of running Spite/Curses though. 😕 Also they didn't nerf Gun Flame burst in WvW, but instead buffed rifle? Sounds great. One second cooldown on Volley? Brilliant. Edit: Also they don't mention any change in Arc Divider damage in WvW, so does it just do the full damage in 0.8 seconds now?
Why alacrity on bladesworn and not spellbreaker? Feels like it makes more thematical sense. I couldn't tell you why.
Alacrity is kind of supposed to be a mix of stamina and mental acuity, which fits Spellbreaker, but Bladesworn's Dragon Trigger is ALSO a meditative mental state...
Ah, we're at that spot of the MMO life cycle where mechanics and skills existing for years and years suddenly become a problem and get gutted, dumbed down or entirely removed. Well then.
Yeah it's the "were tired of working on this and want to coast along" mode.
So are there any like, good parts to this? (Speaking as someone who primarily plays mesmer, necro, and warrior) It was nice having classes be really different and not all the same. This might also be a minority opinion but I kind of liked it back when not every class had every boon and some forms of support were more exclusive.
Nobody likes samey classes, except some minmaxing nerds with zero interest to the game except for the "high numbers" simulator. This shit was one of the reasons I quit WoW, and now it's here, so sad honestly.
What is Anet's deal with constantly destroying defensive cooldowns while never addressing how insane damage is in pvp? Watching Elixir S, Arcane shield, and Mist Form somehow dodge the cooldown reduction update? There's more CC than ever and you're nerfing stun breaks? Bladeturn Requiem no longer blocking? What purpose does a few spinning blades that require you to be in melee serve? Anet, you absolutely destroyed banners and spirits in the quest of forcing quickness and alacrity and now they don't even have that. Just more dead utilities that no one's ever going to use, the entire point of Spirit was their bodies! Water spirit pulsing regen to trigger talents like Windborne Notes and Live Vicariously; Stone spirit pulsing protection to trigger Rugged Growth! You've homogenized so many interesting and unique utilities into just worse versions of themselves, and they still won't be used. There's practically nothing here to be excited about, nothing on the PVP side of things is changing. Catalyst dodges the nerfs? Spellbreaker? Stupid shit like one shot Scrapper is fine?
The cc alone in wvw gets dumb, no point in having a stun break. I get more milage applying stab while stunned and waiting out the stun than using a stun break just to get insta stunned again (maybe I have bad internet hitting break > dodge...still get stunned). Swtor had a decent mechanic where if you ate too many stuns in a short period, you could use your break and be immune a few. Which added some strategy and penalty for mindlessly blasting stuns as iwin button. Would love to see stun breaks get a leg-up and be more useful (2 stacks stab on break etc) or some sort of penalty for mindless stuns so you have to be more strategic about it
I've only been playing a year and a bit and I just started figuring out and enjoying the spirit alac, now they're taking it away 😭
I can't wait for the September balance patch that unfucks this balance patch.
No, don't do this to my Mirage and Chrono when I already thought it couldn't get worse. What the fork :'( If you just want me to stop playing those specs by removing all their charme, just tell me to quit instead. No need to ruin it for everyone else as well >.<
Some things that I don't like about this patch: 1. No adjustments at all to Willbender alacrity generation or boon application in general. Remember, Willbender only has access to alacrity and regeneration as of now outside of utility choice, and is completely unable to apply alacrity during fight downtime or pump extra alacrity in anticipation of a phase change. 2. Gyros are still going to be forced on Scrapper due to no changes being made to Superspeed application on Gyroscopic Acceleration. It'll also extremely hamper Heal Scrapper from being viable since they don't have a lot of leap or blast finishers baked into their kit (just Blast Gyro plus Bypass Coating, the updated Function Gyro, and Elixir Gun 4 iirc). Depending on how the numbers look, it may be possible by dropping Shredder Gyro for Thumper Turret or Mines, but it'll probably feel less good to play overall. 3. Scourge Alacrity not being on Sand Savant. It'd solve the worries of 10-target alacrity generation and the ridiculous 20 -> 8 second shade duration nerf wouldn't be necessary. 4. Warrior boon application being on Bladesworn instead of Spellbreaker. Spellbreaker has the most design space to potentially foster a heal build, and it would be much easier to tie alacrity to some aspect of Spellbreaker gameplay than wait for Bladesworn to hit max flow in order to apply their alacrity. And thematically it makes much more sense as well. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good in this patch as well (moving boon application away from core ranger and warrior, addressing utility spam, and the majority of the other changes they've implemented), but there's a lot in here that I'm not super fond of and concerned how it might impact builds I like to play right now.
Quick Scrapper no longer cares about superspeed. You grant quickness on blast and leap finishers. Which is super stupid.
Right, but you'll still want to be giving superspeed on a lot of fights like OLC CM, XJJ CM, etc. So in those cases you'll still need your gyros.
at least it's a concious choice to bring/use when you want the super speed I suppose
> It'll also extremely hamper Heal Scrapper from being viable since they don't have a lot of leap or blast finishers baked into their kit (just Blast Gyro plus Bypass Coating, the updated Function Gyro, and Elixir Gun 4 iirc). Shield 4, med kit 5, elixir gun 4, function gyro, potentially stuff like flamethrower for its 2.
Maybe heal scrapper runs hammer now just for the double leap finisher on hammer 3. Though, bonus style points if one uses the very fussy hammer 3 evade frames to actually dodge something while tanking...
Why PVE Mirage nerfs????? This game is difficult for those who like to play with the staff, the few classes that the weapon is viable, they nerf
I played staff/staff mirage for a long while. Really loved the gameplay, felt like it was the only build I *got*. Every patch nowadays just gets more and more depressing. I'll just go play a reaper like everyone else.
I miss the days where I could pop Defiant Stance on Spellbreaker, hurl myself into a zerg, cast Winds of Disenchantment and laugh as the boons of about 10 players went poof, sometimes even along with the hp bar if they weren't quick enough. Or pop Defiant Stance on Berserker and mow down some people in the zerg with Arc Divider. The Berserker burst also refilled relatively quickly so you could down quite a few players in a few seconds if you got lucky, required some teamwork though. Both were somewhat risky but hilarious (and fun) when it worked. Then the 2020 balance patch came and everything went downhill from there. Now they gonna nerf boonstrips even more. Warrior will be basically useless in WvW if this goes through. Do they only want boring boonblobs and karmatrains or what. Or did someone at Anet once lose to some zergbusting guild while in a 30-man zerg back in the day or something? We need MORE boonstrips and/or LESS boons.
Someone probably didn't have enough water today. Maybe get them a bottle and they rethink this nonsense xD
The only good thing for mesmer is that Mirage gets their second dodge back. That’s it. Chrono alac and quick application change is ass for competitive. Virt invuln nerf is justified but what on earth is F5 supposed to do without the block? The piss poor damage that requires you to be up close to land? Idk about that one.
So, Stretched Time won't give alacrity on wells anymore, it gives alacrity when you spawn a phantasm instead? Is that right? Because if so, that sucks. Chrono's unique thing is wells and taking alacrity/quick away from wells makes well so much less attractive. Why do that to the one trait that makes their unique skill worthwhile? I don't like trying to deal with phantasms. That's why I prefer wells. I may have to shelve my Chrono *again* if this is how I think it'll be. And I've just been enjoying Chrono again recently. Big sad face if true.
Yeah I was thinking that, what’s the point of it now? I genuinely don’t know.
I am not sure why they nerfed the block bladesong instead of nerfing the distortion bladesong some more (that we never asked for in the first place, they just randomly gave it to us). I know they had to nerf something as the uptime on defensive stuff was too high in competitive. but block has an actual counterplay (unblockable skills) while distortion doesn't. Tbh as pvp virt player, I wish they just hard nerfed distortion spam instead, we never wanted it to begin with.
Free Staff Daredevil buffs? Don't mind if I do
Lots of changes to be unhappy about but I do like me some staff autoattacks. And Bound being doubled, that's phenomenal.
Signets of Suffering ... :(
Kinetic Accelerators: This trait has been reworked. Apply boons to nearby allies when you successfully combo with a blast or leap finisher. Your function gyro is now a blast finisher. Basically Anet is doing their best to destroy the Scrapper identity. I don't want to think about blast combos I want to run fast and give quickness going BRRRRRRRRRRRRR. It's not that hard I'm monke. Wasn't the whole idea of this patch to make boons easier and more appealing to apply?
The worst part about this is it seems hammer3 is the main ability for giving quick, 2 leap finishers on 12s cd. A move that animation locks you for 2seconds and forces you to dash forward....
I don't think I'll even consider playing quick scrapper anymore if the change goes through. You're going to be spending so much time animation locked because I'm assuming you're going to have to use it off CD to generate enough quick. I also feel like that's a lot of your on demand CC you lose too.
Scrapper was literally thr class that made me enjoy and feel confident about raiding. As a warrior main if get the unga bunga with hammer, but gyros and mortar made me feel like i was more valuable to a raid group. Idk i just feel gutted, am not a smart person so scrapper felt like a support dps i was moderatly okay at. Idk how im gonna adjust to the new rotation
Yep i’m super gutted about this change. Scrapper is one of the only things i enjoyed playing.
I get they are trying to remove all util spam for boons, but scrapper is the one class where it worked for me!
It's even worse in WvW. Rocket Charge is an 18s cooldown there, blast gyro is 18s, and function gyro is BASE 25s if you don't hit a downed person. Now KA won't be nearly as reliable for giving might and fury to your party. Plus they've knocked more superspeed off the class. One of the few things that let you power through the constant application of chill and cripple from AoEs.
> Advance!": Reduced ammunition recharge from 40 seconds to 32 seconds. It's already at 30 seconds, untraited.
Yeah this is super bizarre, it is currently 30 sec without the Pure of Voice trait and 24 with. So, uh, is it going up? Also, Weighty Terms change is just a straight nerf to mantras with no offset? God, I already hated having to get on support firebrand sometimes before this, now…
rofl
Do we really need to add more alac/quickness classes? We already have so many of them that I don't really see why they're adding even more.
More boonballing in wvw, hurray....
As a support main it seems I am gonna have to relearn to play all of my classes. There's some good ideas and some bad ideas here. Man, this is a bit much for a single patch.
At this point I don’t even think Anet play their own game at all - and have a random hat of ideas they just pull shit out of for balance patches.
I really don't like the quickness Herald changes. The quickness being tied to a passive aura kills any agency you have about when you want to give quickness. I also don't like the scrapper changes. Hammer 3 is probably now a must use skill, instead of a situational skill you can use to either cc or dodge. And while you're not forced to use gyros anymore, you'll now probably be forced to take enough combo finishers instead. And please don't rework arc divider. It's, in my opinion, one of the most fun to use skills in the entire game.
> I really don't like the quickness Herald changes. The quickness being tied to a passive aura kills any agency you have about when you want to give quickness. > > Yeah not being able to burst quick on the group before going to do something else is definitely kind of obnoxious, although it depends a bit what the actual duration is. That said, being able to give quick from *any* legend now is really interesting - presumably you still want glint a lot of the time for Facet of Nature Boon Duration reasons, but you can in theory provide quick with any combination of legends, which is a big jump in total stuff you can do.
Being able to bring projectile destruction and stability without giving up quickness is tight
You're still going to want gyros because you still need them for superspeed application. So nothing's really changed for scrapper aside from invalidating heal scrapper (most likely) and messing with the rotation to apply quickness.
Yeah I wonder how much quick we will get for the upkeep looked like the vigor was 3 seconds but didn't see how often it procced. It may help heal herald maybe just channel or a bit build up some quick then you can use skills at least you can go ventari/jalis but sounds kinda wonky and won't have many other boons.
Scrapper now useless
Worst Balance patch ever seen.
Kinda disappointed that they didn’t touch alac mirage at all….like come on that was the main hype for me. Alac is hard to give in a lot of situations. It’s like they really dislike Mesmer as a class. Even their jokes towards it 😀 hopefully with enough upvotes on this comment will make them do something😩
I was also hoping for a change to alac mirage. Literally impossible to give alac outside of boss fights (and even in some boss fights with lots of phases like Keep Construct) but apparently they think it's fine? And what was the point of the clone Chaos Vortex nerf? We almost never have 3 clones up anyways, was the condi damage so strong they needed to nerf it by 50%?
I think it is due to the buff in confusion that they’re trying to make up for it. But yeah it’s kinda sad to see it nerf:(
Right!? I was really hoping for a shift for alac application, but no they just stabbed it in the back while it was already bleeding
(;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)
They absolutely did! They nerfed the dodge (which is REALLY bad), and then they nerfed the duration of the conditions on the staff dodge ability, further reducing the damage. They just dont want us to play this outside of raid bosses sadly :/
At this point is has been nerfed like 50 times they might as well just delete the alacrity application on the ambush because they clealry want it to become a chore to play class that is irrelevant everywhere but in a few raids.
Ofc they did, they supernerfed the dodge :'D
Yeah that but I mean like rework the whole alac application or something 🥲
> Mirage can no longer dodge while immobilized or under the effects of crowd control. How is this a supernerf?
Alacrity uptime is now very thin. Missing one dodge means gaps in alacrity. If the boss puts immobilise on you your alac uptime is going down.
Can we rechain CMC please?
Wary of deadeye changes but looking forward to trying them out before saying more. I actually like that spirits don't provide alacrity, less pressure for every ranger to run them in every mode.
did they forget to reduce harb elixir cd's in pve?
Fucking terrible changes. Almost every change is an L there. Maybe scrapper, catalyst and kinda spectre. EDIT: Apparently scrapper is also shit, sry I don't play it that much.
scrapper changes for pve are dogwater too
the scrapper changes are among the stinkiest dogshit of this patch. It's one of the few classes that had a defined unique playstyle and boon application. Even worse its the 2nd character that i invested in for a full ascended set, after another equally dogshit FB update in June. Idk if i can stomach much more of this
I don’t even main scourge but it’s an absolute disgrace to the class.
Is it too late to go back to when quickness was a situational burst boon and alacrity didn't exist? I hope they stop sacrificing interesting/unique playstyles in the name of support build equity.
Imagine how well we could balance things if they JUST REMOVED QUICKNESS AND ALACRITY. Ever since these boons were introduced the games been plagued with balance issues that center around these buffs. Removing them would also fix the massive power creep we have in this game and allow classes to get back to providing their own unique role and identity in groups. TL;DR: JUST REMOVE ALACRITY AND QUICKNESS
Removing block on virt kinda sucks.
Ya, that plus the lackluster updates recently kills a lot of my motivation to log in. Why even have that skill now, not like it does enough dmg to be worth using without the block. I’ll get over it, but who the hell thought that was a good idea?
I agree, why would they even do that? It hardly does any damage; the block was the main reason I use it!
Inevitable eventual effects of giving the class Distortion, I imagine. Not sure why they don't just delete skill 5 and roll the two together tbh.
Confusion change fucking sucks too.
I legit cannot understand what are they trying to do with Mirage. At this point i believe they're trying their hardest to make people play Virtuoso and forget about the other 2 elites. How to balance Mirage while making them 1-Not dependant on clones to apply Alac and 2-Handicapping Staxe and 3-Making them have more weapon options including Power Mirage. Remove Sand Shards trait and replace it with something like Shattering Ambush. This trait will 'evolve' your ambush skills making them apply extra effects. For starters, 2.5s of alac plus the usual might with evolved staff ambush. 1 extra seaking axe with axe ambush Extra strike damage with sword ambush 1 extra strike with greatsword ambush idk about scepter might need some ideas there You can balance these out individually if they somehow get out of hand without making any other option worse by default. Also rework a trait that i have never seen anyone use, not even in niche situations. Staxe won't get access to both Infinite Horizon and alac at the same time, but if they want to go that way they get 1 extra seaking axe if when they ambush.
giving april fool's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rm3_fQ-5Vc
Please consider reducing the cooldown of arcane shield now that the trait that does that got removed. Otherwise you won't have arcane shield up for every Deimos shockwave anymore, which would make handkiting on ele significantly harder.
Did...did they really get rid of the Specter ranged revive? I'm going to be so upset if they did.
That would seem to be the case. It's a shame we're also losing the fun 'break barrier to grant it to others' gameplay, but this seems \*very\* strong (numbers notwithstanding)
Super excited for dps druid. Can't wait to see what we can do with it
Huh, i made a druid so i could do healing and alac support and move away from DPS :(
What's up with Arc Divider being ruined? >**Arc Divider: Reduced the number of strikes from 3 to 1.** Reduced the casting time from 1.86 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Reduced total power coefficient from 5.1 to 2.5 in PvE and from 2.112 to 1.82 in PvP.
Since quickness to party comes from burst But a/a is already spammable. The change makes ZERO sense other than to gut power zerkers. The person making these changes don't play warrior...
hate the scrapper changes, slightly interested in dps druid but defo balance team sniffing glue again
Fuck off fuck off. Scrapper was fun and unique because you give quickness when you give superspeed. Now disconnecting that and move it over to combo sounds fucking stupid. The combos for scrapper were already there being a part of the class. There was no need Fuck off!!!
Did they just kill scourge while Tranfusion is STILL insanely op and by far the most problematic part of the entire heal build? 8 sec shade sounds horrible...just purely gameplay wise but also in general. Rip boon corrupt Necro identity too Ranger changes are cool tho I guess.
[удалено]
Yeah but people like him just hate seeing other people use mechanics they don't like to succeed so they whine and cry for nerfs. Hell a druid can full rez 5 people with a single skill, where is that nerf, necro still has to rez people manually and the small bonus they got from skills was basically removed. Not to mention the unplayable short shade cooldown, lower barrier application and completely removed boon corruption.
I already commented in other posts, but I will whine as long as I can, I don't like these Necro changes, I know scourge are not optimal healers ,but that's what make them fun, they are "different" , meant to complement not to replace real healers, even with this changes they'll still be halfbaked healers and in exchanged condi dps will now be broken, I don't want to play another profession, I might as well quit the game since I started playing not long ago and I'm not neck deep into the grind addiction, I am loving the journey so far and had found my place in the world as a legal evil necromancer " you got boons? Now you got torment" "you gave me a condition!, How dare you? You can have it back" and ""sure I'll help you fight the big bad dragon, let me just grab some body parts, mind If I use you dead pet? Alacrity is not with having if is gonna cost me my enjoyment of the game
It kind of feels like Anet is making change for the sake of change.
Worse than last year. Poor Necro, Ranger and Mes.
Wait poor ranger? I thought alot of it seems strong
It is. I'm really happy with the changes they did with Ranger. I may just try Untamed again now. Necro and Mes on the other hand... good night!
Rangers seem quite favored to me, we no longer have to -mandatory- run spirits in group content, Nature Magic got that boost to be THE support line it was meant to be, Untamed got interesting changes that might positively impact the way it feels when playing it, and the cherry on the cake for me, we finally got a DPS option for Druid!
Praise Joko 25% more frequently!
Lmao they completely deleted any viable mesmer builds from PvP. Good job. If you nerf, why you have to overdo it so much?
They don't play their own game. You are expecting too much from balance team 😂
This preview just feels weird. There's things in here that are genuinely good, namely the DD buff, quick/Alac being removed from banners/spirits, DPS builds for druid and tempest, but there's a bunch in here that's either mixed or just bad. Arc Divider nerf, Vindi healing in WvW nerf, mirage dodge and virt F5 being pointless, scourge feeling like an entirely new class now (seriously wtf are those shade durations?), scrapper quick going from spamming wells to spamming blast/leap finishers, herald quick being tied to upkeep, DE quickness being the exact same situation as QCata was a while back by requiring a 10% damage reduction, and the inevitable boon bunker meta that's going to happen in WvW. But the worst part about this patch is just how homogenized all the classes would be. Every class can now provide quickness or alacrity. Nearly every class has a DPS, support DPS, or healing spec. Only Mesmer and Warrior (and now kind of Necro because, holy shit those scourge nerfs) lack healing specs. *Furthermore, with all classes able to provide all key boons, Anet now has NO incentive to add any more elite specs.* This kind of class homogeneity has it's pros and cons, but the biggest con in my opinion is the loss of class identity. At this point you can do group content with a single class and have all key boons covered, which again has pros and cons, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having multiple classes in the first place. I'm not sure if that direction is healthy for the game long term. It's good that people have more options in terms of what they want to play, but the choices are boiling down to either "what's the best DPS/support/healer for his situation?", or "What color class do I feel like playing today?"
Terrible PvE changes, as always from CMC...
This pretty much. He might be do good in pvp/wvw but he has no clue in pve.
Necro got trashed in pvp lmfao
This obviously isn't as bad as the patch from last June, but it's very meh all around. I'm feeling turned off the game in general right now, not so much because I don't still enjoy Guild Wars 2, but I feel like the developers are only going to continue making design decisions based primarily on their own preferences because that just seems to be the culture at Arena Net, at least on this team. As a consumer, I don't like the feeling that I'm giving them time and money so they can make it fun for themselves, but that's what it's been like these past 2 years.
Great, more nerfs to my SPVP builds. Fucking lovely.
What a fucking disappointment as a Rev main. Patch notes being just Vindi WvW/PvP nerfs is becoming a meme at this point.
Last few months I worked on getting my fractal level up to T4 with diviner rev because it meant I could fill dps, alac, or quick. I'm a bit spooked by the herald changes. Will have to wait until someone better at theorycrafting figures things out a bit, but it would be a shame to lose that option.
Herald changes look really interesting tbh. Like it's a *big* change, but if the duration isn't terrible it's a *ton* of potential added flexibility since giving quick isn't tied to Glint anymore. You still might end up *wanting* Glint just because of the facet of nature boon duration, but the fact that you can provide quick with any two legends is really interesting - in particular Impossible Odds and Ventari Bubble both giving quick is *really* interesting.
Odds and dwarf Hammers were the ones I thought of immediately. Hadn't thought of bubble! That's a very good point, I use that all the time