Dec. 10th Balance Preview

#1 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:12 p.m.

General
These are the proposed balance changes for the Dec. 10th build. These changes are not final and are subject to change. We are posting them early so the community can discuss them with us. We wanted to be more transparent with the community about these changes to help expose problems that riskier changes might create.

Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

#2 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:14 p.m.

Elementalist:
This patch’s goal for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth, Air and Fire lines, while taking away some of the need to go into the Arcane line. This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements so that elementalists aren’t forced to go as deep into Arcane in order to get the old attunement cooldown %’s. In doing so, we decided put some of the most powerful Adept tier traits in Water magic and Arcane to the Master tier to avoid power creep that would have occurred by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water and Arcane by only splashing in 10 points.

• Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
• Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
• Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
• Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
• Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
• Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier. Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.

• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VI – Arcane Resurrection. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier. This trait will now function outside of combat.

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

• The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
• Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

Engineer:
We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity. We also wanted to take out some of the random effects for some of the class’s traits. The biggest change here is allowing Modified Ammunition to work with any skills so that an engineer, regardless of build, can look at putting 30 points into firearms. By increasing the swiftness duration on Speedy Kits, we hope to allow Swiftness to be maintained more reasonably without having to constantly be swapping between Kits. This change will also bring down the total up time for Vigor due to its interaction with Invigorating Speed. We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.

• Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
• Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%
• Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.
• Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.
• Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. * Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.
• Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.
• Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
• Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
• Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds.

#3 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:15 p.m.

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Mesmer:
The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things. 1) Bringing up some of the mesmer support traits and condition removal traits. 2) Reduce dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s celerity are what we feel accomplish the second one. Before this change mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points in there to get the Illusion cooldown which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the Mantra traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra mastery to adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.

• Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%.
• Dueling VI – Protected Mantras. Moved to Master Tier. Increase Toughness from 400 to 600.
• Dueling VII – Mantra Mastery. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Chaos 25 – Chaotic Transference. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Chaos I – Chaotic Revival. Reduced cooldown from 35s to 10s.
• Chaos VII – Mirror of Anguish. Reduced cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Inspiration IV – Mender’s Purity. Now removes 2 conditions.
• Inspiration XI – Shattered Conditions. Increased radius from 240 to 600.
• Illusions VI – Illusionary Invigoration. Recharge reduced from 90s to 60s. Moved to Master Tier.
• Illusions VIII – Dazzling Galmours. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Illusions 15 – Shattered Strength – Moved to Grandmaster tier.
• Illusions 25 – Illusionist’s Celerity – Moved to Master tier.

#4 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:15 p.m.

Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.
• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Ranger:
For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere. We also brought up some Marksmanship and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
• Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
• Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s
• Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
• Nature Magic I – Circle of Life. Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.
• Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
• Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
• Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.
• Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.
• Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
• Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

#5 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:16 p.m.

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. The change to Infusion of Shadow is meant to stop players from gaining initiative by applying stealth while already in stealth. This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth. We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok, but re-using the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game, especially when gaining large amounts of initiative.

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

Warrior:
The overall goal here is to reduce the damage for the very high control warriors. This means reducing some dependency on going 30 points into discipline for Burst Mastery, making warriors spend 20 points in Arms to get the benefit of Unsuspecting Foe. We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both. We also increased the readability of Skull Crack, which will allow opposing players to more easily react to it. Combustive Shot on longbow also saw some rework. It will scale better with adrenaline levels, and still provide strong burning per adrenaline level, but the raw damage was toned down slightly.

• Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%
• Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.
• Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
• Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.
• Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.
• Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
• Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.
• Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

#25 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:46 p.m.

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

#36 - Nov. 1, 2013, 4:58 p.m.

a t s e.9614:

Healing signet needs NO NERF , don’t listen to the whiner . Warrior has no sustain outside of high regen . Those hammer dmg nodes nerf are perfect . But im dissapointed about thief changes honestly , S\D is the only viable build anet

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds, so don’t jump so early to those conclusions!

#56 - Nov. 1, 2013, 5:08 p.m.

Phoenix.5047:

I can understand why you’d move Unsuspecting Foe around, but does the direct damage on hammer really need to be nerfed? It already hits like a soggy weenie, and about as slowly to boot. Add in other class’ damage mitigation and hammer doesn’t seem to do much anymore.

We’ve tested what we assume will be the new meta hambow build (dropped burst mastery to keep unsuspecting) and it still does a ton of damage. You’ll need to drop defense to maintain that previous level of offense, ie dropping Melandru runes or Lyssa runes in favor of Ogre or something similar.

#75 - Nov. 1, 2013, 5:15 p.m.

Thanks for all the feedback all. Please keep your ideas constructive (as many of you are!).

As we said, we can still make tweaks to these changes, and nothing is in stone. We have time to adapt to your feedback, so please try to be civil, constructive, and terse (walls of text are hard to read)!

:)

#185 - Nov. 1, 2013, 6:15 p.m.

Sepreh.5924:

Hey Jon, just wanted to echo everyone who has already said thank you for the preview and for explaining the reasoning behind some of the changes. Is much appreciated by many of us and a great step towards collaboration

No prob, that’s why we wrote those out for you guys.

We’ll try to do more of that going forward!

#257 - Nov. 1, 2013, 6:53 p.m.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The change to arcana is lovely, and it’ll open up a lot of new possibilities, but I worry about some issues that might cripple those possibilities. Here’s a few comments:

3.1. Elementalists rely too much on Elemental Attunement or Renewing Stamina to survive. Although it might be worth trying the scepter’s higher endurance trait now that it is at adept, I think the earth traitline should have a… worthy substitute for elemental attunement’s protection. Maybe it could have a stun breaker trait? Rock Solid could get it, but I fear it could make it too strong. Maybe as a grandmaster trait, and moving Written in Stone down a tier.

The changes we’ve done to Ele are actually going to drastically increase the amount of build diversity. The arcane recharge change really does add the flow the Elementalist needed when not spending points in Arcane. This will now allow players to stray away from spending points in the Arcane line. Ele’s will now experience faster attunement swapping as well because they will be down to 1.5s globals when they have zero points spent in Arcane and 1.2s globals with 30 points.

This makes:
13 second recharge on 0 points Arcane
12 second recharge with 10 points Arcane
11 second recharge with 20 points Arcane
10 second recharge with 30 points Arcane

Dagger ele’s will now have new specs through Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, and Shared Auras much more appealing, as well as being able to go up the Fire and Earth trees.

Scepter ele’s will be able to play some forms of condition builds, burst builds with more sustain, and even bunker builds.

Staff ele’s will now be able to get blasting staff from tier one and now be capable of going for a trait such as Diamond Skin, or even Fresh air or high up in the Fire line.

Here are some examples of specs I’ve been messing around with:
0/30/10/30/0 (Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, Shared Auras with Cantrips and Dagger/Dagger)
0/0/30/10/30 (Diamond Skin bunker build)
0/30/30/0/10 (Tempest Defense, Diamond Skin, Double Arcane with recharge burst spec)
20/20/0/10/20 (Dps staff build based around sustain from Burning Fire)
0/10/0/30/30 (Generic D/D Arcane build)
0/20/0/20/30 (Generic S/D Burst build)
0/30/0/20/20 (Fresh air build)
Many more..

We thank everyone for their feedback. We are keeping a VERY CLOSE eye on this thread and we will constantly be chatting internally until this release drops for potential things to change.

#265 - Nov. 1, 2013, 7 p.m.

Berullos.6928:

The mark of blood change is another 33% nerf to our damage with staff. Just like it was a nerf with scepter. I don’t understand their reasoning for these nerfs. Its like they want to kill the builds that dont utilize fear or dhuumfire for condi damage. And because of these nerfs that dont favor builds who dont run those traits, it actually emphasizes and supports going for those traits in order to remain viable.

Things they could’ve done to fix it. Fix fear damage scaling. Or make dhuumfire proc poison or torment. And lower torment stacks. And if you nerf the damage with weakening shroud procs or mark of blood at least give us sustain like all necros want.

Currently the sustain is still bad as we require being near things in order to gain life force. IE: I need to hit you with marks or my attacks in order to gain life force. A smart player can already just engage disengage until you run out of life force and then kill you as you cant build the life force without somthing to hit.

People still get away from necros plenty easy if you wanted us to be hard to get away from. And siphons don’t work in shroud which is a major downside. Healing still doesnt work while in shroud either. And scaling for siphons is a joke.

The strongest builds currently are still going to be dhuumfire even after the nerf and fearmancers. And builds that don’t use those are basically nerfed harder than those specific builds.

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of times, when running standard Necro condie builds, the bleeds actually do a large portion of your damage if they are allowed to stack on a target. Burning is nice, and Torment can be decent, and of course Poison brings down opposing heals. But the Bleeds are where a large amount of the sustained damage comes from.

We want to bring down that raw dmg but still allow the Necro the ability to “shut down” targets. Notice we’re not bringing down Chills much, or Vulns, or Blinds. We don’t mind the Necro shutting targets down, we just don’t want them also doing a ton of condition damage on top if it.

For Dhumfire and Terror: we have plans on reworks for those down the road, but they won’t make it in for this patch. We have plans for those, but they’re a little further down the “balance” road.

Thanks for the feedback!

#335 - Nov. 1, 2013, 7:50 p.m.

Damaskinos.1263:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

• How is the change to symbol of Swiftness any good? So many classes move much faster then Guardians. If you want to nerf this, give us an Adept trait, that gives us flat 25% movement spead, like Warriors have it.

In many cases the symbol of swiftness change is actually a buff and not a nerf. Currently it will only apply the initial large portion of swiftness if the target does not currently have any swiftness on them. If they have swiftness on them or after that first pulse it will then add 1 second of swiftness per pulse. This is very awkward and clunky.

The change makes the spell apply a consistent 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse without the strange hidden mechanic. Basically. if you already have swiftness on the people which you using the symbol on or if you take the time to stand in the spell for the full duration then it will just be a buff. =)

#382 - Nov. 1, 2013, 8:31 p.m.

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

#487 - Nov. 1, 2013, 10:54 p.m.

Almost 500 replies already so obviously you will excuse us for not addressing them all. Also keep in mind it’s now the weekend. I’ll try and get on for enough time sometime this weekend to address the bigger points of discussion but until then please keep the responses as civil as they have generally been thus far. We appreciate all of your assign for this stuff and are working hard to make the right decisions. I can say that many of the concerns brought up were at the heart of discussions when making these changes already so we are aware of a lot of the implications. This is an aggressive list of changes but we wanted to share them so that we could confirm what the highest risk changes were and try to discuss some reasoning. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate or understand the nuances of all of that reasoning, but I do have faith that you will be passionate about it so try and remember to look at all sides of the issues. It is called balance after all.

Thanks all and keep them coming. I can promise I will read every post in this thread. Have a great weekend.

Jon

#804 - Nov. 2, 2013, 12:09 p.m.

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist. Not ignoring other professions, I just have time for one right now.

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Arcane Abatement
This is moving to adept tier because all of the fall damage traits are in that tier and in our opinion it doesn’t feel good to have to spend 20 points in a line for this kind of trait. Alacrity was the first choice to swap with it here because of the reasons stated above.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

I hope this helps to steer the discussion for the elementalist changes here. I’ll post this on the elementalist sub-forum as well. Hoping to get to each profession one at a time.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the elementalist sub-forum discussion
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/page/3#post3138306

#805 - Nov. 2, 2013, 12:10 p.m.

haviz.1340:

Every minor 15 trait for elementalist triggers upon attunement change. Maybe it’s time to make elemental attunement similar, moving it to 15 arcana.

It’s not like lingering elements trait works correctly.

A bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov 26th.

#817 - Nov. 2, 2013, 12:25 p.m.

Elric.6971:

JonPeters.5630:

Almost 500 replies already so obviously you will excuse us for not addressing them all. Also keep in mind it’s now the weekend. I’ll try and get on for enough time sometime this weekend to address the bigger points of discussion but until then please keep the responses as civil as they have generally been thus far. We appreciate all of your assign for this stuff and are working hard to make the right decisions. I can say that many of the concerns brought up were at the heart of discussions when making these changes already so we are aware of a lot of the implications. This is an aggressive list of changes but we wanted to share them so that we could confirm what the highest risk changes were and try to discuss some reasoning. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate or understand the nuances of all of that reasoning, but I do have faith that you will be passionate about it so try and remember to look at all sides of the issues. It is called balance after all.

Thanks all and keep them coming. I can promise I will read every post in this thread. Have a great weekend.

Jon

So in otherwords there’s nothing we can say to sway any of these changes? May I then ask why even bother posting these notes so early? Wouldn’t it have been easier on the development team to just post this the day of the patch and then wave it off with “what’s done is done”?

It honestly feels like arenanet will not accept or hear any actual concerns and critiques and only listen to praises.

Not at all. I think some compelling arguments have already been made on the elementalists traits that we are considering. Read my post a few above yours. Same will come for other professions, just need time. I’m off for a few hours now.

Jon

#906 - Nov. 2, 2013, 5:18 p.m.

I’m back!

Ok I had some time to talk through some of the engineer discussion. Overall Engineer is in a difficult place because they have a ton of good adept traits, not a lot of good master traits, and again a good # of grandmasters so you end up spreading points fairly diversly to get all the good adept traits but lose out on a lot of power by failing to get as many grandmaster traits. Here is what I see a lot of talk about:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

Firearms
We still feel this line is lackluster and in the future some merging and redesigning will take place, but we took the lowest hanging fruit for now. We talked about this line more than any other trait line, but at the end of the day the work and testing required got out of scope for this release. The other spot this line could get a quick pick-me-up is by making at least 2 or 3 of the adept traits in this line good choices.

Invogorating Speed
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.

Master tier traits
Some good suggestions on builds that might open up if we improve some of the master tier traits would be good to see. Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Keep the discussion going and let’s see if we can find some room in those traits to bring those trait lines some more into play.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the engineer sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/engineer/December-10th-Balance-update/page/2#post3139496

#944 - Nov. 2, 2013, 7:34 p.m.

Gilburt.9146:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Don’t limit this thought process to Elementalists. All classes have worthless traits.

Agreed.

Seconded. I know its terrible for me to admit this but I’d rather do that then pretend. You all are smart you know there are bad traits. This hurts build diversity and is just bad for new players who wont understand the mistakes they are making. It is high on the balance priority list. Just remember that we have limited time and so will make what we think are the most impactful changes first.

Jon

#952 - Nov. 2, 2013, 7:50 p.m.

Heinel.6548:

JonPeters.5630:

Gilburt.9146:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Don’t limit this thought process to Elementalists. All classes have worthless traits.

Agreed.

Seconded. I know its terrible for me to admit this but I’d rather do that then pretend. You all are smart you know there are bad traits. This hurts build diversity and is just bad for new players who wont understand the mistakes they are making. It is high on the balance priority list. Just remember that we have limited time and so will make what we think are the most impactful changes first.

Jon

Honest question. How is Confounding Suggestions a “most impactful change?”

It’s not and I should have been more clear. Out focus is on 2 types of changes.

1) High impact.
2) Very low hanging fruit.

Better?

Jon

#953 - Nov. 2, 2013, 7:53 p.m.

Imperatora.7654:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Damaskinos.1263:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

• How is the change to symbol of Swiftness any good? So many classes move much faster then Guardians. If you want to nerf this, give us an Adept trait, that gives us flat 25% movement spead, like Warriors have it.

In many cases the symbol of swiftness change is actually a buff and not a nerf. Currently it will only apply the initial large portion of swiftness if the target does not currently have any swiftness on them. If they have swiftness on them or after that first pulse it will then add 1 second of swiftness per pulse. This is very awkward and clunky.

The change makes the spell apply a consistent 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse without the strange hidden mechanic. Basically. if you already have swiftness on the people which you using the symbol on or if you take the time to stand in the spell for the full duration then it will just be a buff. =)

Any chance of getting a similar treatment for Mesmer focus 4? Temporal Curtain currently gives a LOT of swiftness if you have none (same as symbol) and zero if you have any swiftness at all.

More than once I’ve ran through a curtain and had less than one or two seconds of swiftness and gotten nothing for it.

We talked about how to make this work on Temporal Curtain, but its a more complex problem that we haven’t solved yet.

#954 - Nov. 2, 2013, 7:54 p.m.

Xentari.5604:

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

I feel like, at the very least, Diamond Skin should give some sort of visual cue to avoid being detrimental to the builds other condi classes run. Similar to how when a warrior pops Endure Pain, you can see it on their buff bar. This allows classes to respond (i.e: don’t dump your entire burst on a warr who is just going to negate all the damage). Without this small change, Diamond Skin would forever be unpredictable and basically considered OP by the community at large.

I’m loving most of the Ele changes though. I’m also very thankful you guys at Anet are sharing this with the community. Good luck with the fine-tuning!

Great suggestion, I will look into that but can’t promise anything. We have talked about displaying buffs for all Grandmaster traits as a starting point but that has met with some resistance because its a lot of pressure on the UI.

#955 - Nov. 2, 2013, 7:55 p.m.

Hello Guardians,

So I wanted to talk about the bigger discussion topics for the Dec changes for you as well.

Shattered Aegis
As soon as I get in on Monday, I’ll post the damage #s on this and the power scaling. I think a meaning ful discussion about this change is going to require that. One danger here is that big WvW zergs using this could be really powerful, but I will say that the numbers are decent.

Supreme Justice and Kindled Zeal
I feel like there is a build here, but TBH I haven’t gotten it to work in our internal testing yet. This is as good a place as any to talk about stat conversion traits.

Currently they do not convert 100% of a stat because certain stat bonuses such as those from signets do not get converted. For that reason we are being conservative but normalizing all of our conversions to the follow #s for now.
Minor: 5%,7%, and 10% respectively for adept, master and grandmaster.
Major: 7%,10%, and 13% respectively for adept, master, and grandmaster.

I’m not sure this will be enough, but I do not want these traits to be overpowered as I feel they are fairly passive. That being said, I think they are good simple traits and with 12 traits per line it is absolutely fine to have some passive simple to understand traits.

Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Power guardian vs Condition guardian
I think Dec 10th will see the emergence of the power guardian, but I think that the condition based guardian still has a ways to go. Ultimately this is because it is hard to cover the burning and frankly you need a good reliable second or even third condition that guardians simply do not have right now. I think for those professions lacking that 3rd damage condition we are looking at supplementing them via runes and sigils rather than skills/traits right now but that won’t be something we attempt until the build that follows the Dec 10th build.

I think that is everything for guardian and hopefully you enjoyed a few half spoiler/half teases.

Thanks,

Jon

Link the the guardian sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-December-Patch-Preview/page/2#post3140287

#963 - Nov. 2, 2013, 8:28 p.m.

I think the mesmer discussion has been pretty positive overall and productive but I wanted to bring up some points that I am seeing and some new ones as well.

Scepter
Scepter is still missing something but we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play and are trying to move away from builds that focus so much on the “1” skill. I feel like that scepter should be the tricksy defender that can stop enemies from attacking and defend allies, but maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working.

Confounding Suggestions
We were hoping this change would improve this. I’m mostly seeing people saying they liked the old one. That will certainly be a topic of discussion early next week so I would love to hear some opinions either way in case there is a split.

Mimic
Last thought. This skill is for almost all intents and purposes just not working, but is causing some broken behavior with certain bosses. I would like to replace it with a complete redesign and am open to discussion on that as well.

Overall I think this a good small step for a profession that has a lot of roles it can fill fairly uniquely. I think this might give us 3 strong mesmer build archetypes.

1) Shatter
2) Phantasm
3) Mantra

I think right behind those are the interrupt shutdown mesmer and the signet mesmer, so future suggestions towards those are appreciated as well.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to mesmer sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-December-balance-updates/page/2#post3140253

#966 - Nov. 2, 2013, 8:35 p.m.

Starfall.6813:

JonPeters.5630:

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Jon,

I like a lot of where you’re going with the Guardian here, but I am a little concerned about the Symbol of Swiftness change. Not as a matter of balance but just as a quality of life issue. 4 seconds of swiftness on a 15 second cooldown is pretty much useless as a means of traveling for a solo Guardian, and the symbol is one of the better ways for Guardians to get around. Having to stop and stand in the symbol to get the full ticks of swiftness while traveling long distance is just going to be counter productive and annoying. And I don’t like the idea that this skill is being balanced around the zerg rather than solo players who probably are only running one source of swiftness to begin with.

Math wise you can now sit in the symbol for 3 seconds with boon duration and end up with 9 seconds of swiftness which is more than you would have had before. I do still think it may need to be 5 seconds to account for the fact that you only get it every second so by the time you get the second one you have lost 1s of the first one.

Jon

#1064 - Nov. 3, 2013, 7:44 a.m.

Jacks.5367:

Well.. Since there’s gonna be a rework to Elementalist to access to windborne dagger. Can this be buffed that it work in and out-of combat?

I added this idea to my list of stuff to discuss Monday as I think it would be a fine buff to this trait.

#1076 - Nov. 3, 2013, 8:53 a.m.

Some internal thoughts on the necro

Mark of Blood
At 3 stacks of bleeding and a good amount of condition damage (without even taking into account condition or bleed duration modifiers) this skill was dealing well over 2000 damage, and could be used every 6 seconds. It is a 1200 range attack that can hit 5 targets, and on top of that can place regeneration on 5 allies that can heal each of those allies for up over 1000 health every 5 seconds, and can basically maintain 100% regeneration uptime. The only drawback is also somewhat of a benefit which is that it requires an enemy to trigger it, which also allows you to precast it and then basically almost double it up as it gets triggered. This is one of the most versatile and powerful skills in the game. A huge amount of the condition damage from necromancers comes from their bleeds and while they are removable in theory, the ease with which necromancers can apply conditions makes it is virtually impossible to ever get to the bleeding at the bottom of the stack.

Weakening Shroud
This trait as it currently stands on live is a borderline grandmaster trait. It is near 100% AoE weakness uptime for a small investment. The new version is still probably worthy of master tier with almost 50% AoE weakness uptime. This line has a lot of powerful traits, but suffers from having only 1 choice at grandmaster tier.

Terror
I can’t tell you how long we debated moving this trait to grandmaster tier last time around, and this time again. The problem is a huge % of Necromancer builds are hinged on this trait. There is a gaping hole at grandmaster here with Withering Precision (barely worthy of adept tier in our opinion), however we were really hesitant to either move terror and didn’t have a good alternative for redesigning Withering Precision

Curses
This line just has a lot of good traits.
Toxic Landing – would be good if the effect was good and we will look into making that better.
Hemophilia – Just a good trait considering how much necromancer damage comes from bleeding.
Chilling Darkness – So good it should probably be master tier.
Weakening Shroud – see above
Reaper’s Precision – another good choice for high life force necros which gets overshadowed in this stacked line.
Focused Rituals – Really strong adept trait.
Banshee’s Wail – Already pretty good and got a buff this time around.
Terror – see above
Spectral Attunement – Another good trait for spectral necros.
Master of Corruption – A great trait for corruption necros. Epidemic/Corrupt.

I feel like Spectral Attunement and Master of Corruption could be adept tier, but they would be really strong there and we would have to move 2 traits up to accommodate them. If we did that the first candidates are Chilling Darkness and Weakening Shroud (closer the old version). This is totally worth a discussion, but at the end of the day all master tier traits in this line are overshadowed by Terror which is the real problem.

Dhuumfire
We know there are problems here, but again this condition helps those conditionmancers get over the top and is really what brought them into play in a lot of parts of the game. I think the real problems with this trait are:
1) Having to put 30 points into the power line as a condition necro.
2) Requiring crit on a 30 point trait in a line that does nothing to improve crit chance.

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

All of this back and forth could upset a lot of balance, but if this moved down to master tier Terror would almost certainly be moving up to grandmaster to accommodate. At least then condition necromancers would be 20/30/x/x/x, which just makes so much more sense. The biggest thing holding that back is the lack of a replacement grandmaster in Spite. We aren’t huge fans of weapon or utility type specific traits at this tier otherwise an improved Axe Training might have a shot. This is the crux of the damage necromancer problem right now, and we will talk about it more next week so any discussion on it here will aid us in those talks.

Death Magic
On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good. The Death line on the other hand is too focused on minions. From Reanimator, which we have heard over and over feels bad as a minor trait, to the fact that 1/3 of the remaining traits are minion traits, to finally the fact that both grandmaster traits are minion traits.

This line receives a lot of discussion as well, but any proposal we talk about always ends up with more work than we have time to build, much less test.

I hope this helps direct discussion a bit,

Jon

Link to necro sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/necromancer/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Necromancer/page/3#post3143043

#1256 - Nov. 4, 2013, 9:45 a.m.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So I’m taking most of these with a grain of salt. Ele (staff) is my main, we’ll see how some of it works out. Essentially I’m reserving judgement on a lot of it (still need to digest much of what I’ve read) until I can play with it.

However, this one bothers me a little:
Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.

Shadow step and shadow return are something both my husband and I utilize a lot when playing thief in pve. We like having the ease of mobility, and don’t mind sacrificing the initiative to be able to pop in and out of battle. (We’re squishy, it makes sense). I think the additional 1/4 cast time to get out of dodge could very easily mean life or death for our chars, which I don’t particularly like. I don’t see why this one is being changed. If it’s an issue in pvp, then separate the skill versions please.

To be clear, this is not impacting the utility skill, just the sword #2 toggle. The reason is because of risk vs reward. This is a very rewarding skill with currently little risk associated.

Phew made it to page 26. I’ll be at work in about 20 minutes at whih point I’ll address some of the bigger Ranger, Thief, and Warrior discussions.

Let me reiterate 2 thing before I do that.

1) This is not a token exercise. I spent all weekend reading this stuff so that we could gather the feedback, compile it, and take actions where necessary.

2) please reread the OP. It talks a lot about how to give feedback, and if you follow it you help yourselves by helping us.

Jon

#1267 - Nov. 4, 2013, 10:20 a.m.

silentk.3586:

For mesmer’s, if illusionary Invigoration recharge is being reduced from 90s to 60s and is moved to the master tier. Are you going to reduce the recharge on Signet of Illusions also?

I think the thing to do is make this trait actually fire off signet of illusions thus giving it some synergy with other traits.

#1275 - Nov. 4, 2013, 10:55 a.m.

Some ranger discussion.

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice
I think the biggest change of moving spirits unbound is it allows you to take this trait along with Nature’s Voice. Internally we have done some testing where you bring stone spirit, guard, and then still have a open third utility slot to make some truly good support ranger builds. Spirits have always had that feel and I think this brings that to the forefront.

Power Rangers
No pun intended. As many have said these guys are in an interesting position. In some ways they can be very strong, but everytime I play my ranger this way it feel like it comes up a little bit short. I think this is because they are lacking a few things as either additional tools for greatsword or as utilities. Signets are the somewhat obvious utility choice but their effect is too varied to run a strong full signet build here. Conversely all traits associated with signets tend to increase in power the more you bring. What signets need is a good trait that synergizes with bringing a single signet, like Nature’s Voice does for shouts. This would let you bring maybe one or two signets and suppliment them with something else. One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to ranger sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/ranger/December-10th-Ranger-changes/page/5#post3149107

#1283 - Nov. 4, 2013, 11:28 a.m.

Here is a summary of what I have seen discussed on the thief changes and some more clarity into what our initial thoughts were and where we stand currently.

Initiative changes
We believe this is one of the most controversial but important changes this patch. The important thing to understand is that we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change. The default rate of initiative regeneration was simply to low and was causing players to either take traits to suppliment it, or to have their effectiveness suffer. This is something that has to change. What these changes intend to do is to increase the power of every single thief build that is not running these traits, and to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits. I know its easy to theorycraft what is going to happen here and there is a lot of danger in that. It is hard to get a sense of this change without playing it, and believe me if I could I would let everyone test a change of this magnitude and gather some more empirical and data driven feedback, but currently our resources are limited, but we still believe that this is a change whose time has come. We will monitor it very carefully when we do release it to make sure it is working as intended.

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

Infusion of Shadow
For basic use this trait’s functionality is not going to change. By many players it was being used to grant some initiative when going into stealth. However there were some abusive builds that were using this to maintain very long stealth uptime without having to use their utility skills. The problem with this is that it lets them recharge those skills while in stealth, which takes away the risk associated with using them. We are ok with thieves blowing their cooldowns to have longer stealth, and we are ok with theives bouncing in and out of stealth, but we were not ok with thieves maintaining long duration stealth through abusing a single trait.

Flanking Strikes
I agree that this move may be overkill on the thief. We are currently discussing undoing it. The main motivation was that we really wanted to move Trickster to adept tier to encourge use of those utilities, and the most obvious candidate to move up was Flanking Strikes. This isn’t how we should be making that decision, so we will discuss this and get back to you.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
I’ve seen a lot of talk about this as well, and discussing this already this morning the current vigor is a bit too high, but we may have overdone the reduction. I was thinking about going back to 5s or 6s on Vigorous Recovery, and going back to 10s or 12s on Bountiful Theft.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to thief sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/first#post3149311

#1299 - Nov. 4, 2013, 12:42 p.m.

Here are my comments on what we have seen discussed so far with the warrior changes.

Unsuspecting Foe
I’ve seen some concerns about moving this to master tier. This comes down to the core philosophy that drove the warrior changes for this build. Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage. This trait is a way for them to circumvent that and is therefore build defining. In many ways it exemplifies what a grandmaster trait is all about, however we felt that moving it all the way to grandmaster was overkill, but that placing it at the master tier allowed warriors to still run this with other traits, but have to make some sacrifices to do so.

Thrill of the Kill
I’ve heard some concerns about this being permanent max adrenaline in WvW zerg fights. We understand that, but given the fact that this trait competes with Warrior’s Sprint, Vigorous Focus, Signet Mastery, and Inspiring Shouts, we feel like players that take Thirll of the Kill we be giving up a sufficient amount of effectiveness to counter this. There are so many other reliable ways to gain adrenaline as is that I can’t imagine this tipping the scales as much as one of the other adept traits in this line.

Hammer
We are taking damage away from the hammer skills that do CC, because we don’t think it is ok for skills to do both of these things. I see a lot of comparison with Greatsword damage, but the Greatsword has no interrupts and a single cripple on the Bladetrail. We left the skills that do not do hard control alone such as Fierce Blow and Hammer Shock, as we are ok with those skills hitting hard because they do not actually disable. We also left Backbreaker alone because it has a long cast time and a long cooldown. The standard hammer build is still going to be very strong after this change, but it will open up options for mace to make a comeback as the control weapon.

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

Mace
I highly suggest being patient with this change. I understand this skill did not need an increased cast time in PvE, but this change just makes this skill feel a lot more impactful, and a change of 200 milliseconds of cast increase is not going to impact its use against creatures, but will greatly make this skill more counterable in PvP and WvW. Some discussion here revolved around defiant, which is causing a lot of control builds to be neutered in PvE. We agree and we will start making strides towards solving that in the future.

Sorry I got to you guys last, I truly did just go through these in alphabetical order.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to warrior sub-forum
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/warrior/December-10th-Warrior-Changes/first#post3149139

#1302 - Nov. 4, 2013, 12:48 p.m.

Phew,

Ok, I made it through all of my notes on the 8 professions. Today will be a busy day here on the balance team talking through those notes and continuing to comb through this and other threads. I am certain there will be some adjustments that come out of today and as we compile those we will get back to you (in this thread) to update what has come from our discussions.

Thanks so much for all of your time and effort providing us with this feedback.

Jon

#1371 - Nov. 4, 2013, 7:35 p.m.

Ok all it’s been a long 3 days of reading. We talked for a few hours today about this stuff and I won’t summarize it until tomorrow morning but at least wanted kill a few minutes on the bus here to keep you up to date. We felt like this was a good useful exercise and will continue to do it for future patches if we can. Thanks to everyone who contributed and continues to positively contribute to the discussion. Due to the time it takes to finish up, fully test and push these changes forward I am going to lock this thread at the end of the week. Keeping it open past then is disingenuous as far as what we would reasonably be able to accomplish.

Thanks all and I’ll be back with some concrete stuff tomorrow,

Jon

#1437 - Nov. 5, 2013, 1:04 p.m.

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

ELEMENTALIST

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

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

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

THIEF

• Vigorous Recovery will come down to kitten Vigor instead of 4s.
• Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR

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

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

Thanks,

Jon

#1449 - Nov. 5, 2013, 1:32 p.m.

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers

Just because Jon didn’t include any changes regarding your profession in the above post doesn’t mean we’re done making changes.

Please continue to leave feedback – we’re still listening. We’ll keep you updated as things come up.

Thanks!

#1455 - Nov. 5, 2013, 1:50 p.m.

alanis.6094:

Should the @Necromancers take this and Jon’s post as a “deal with it”?

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

I’m sure you accidently forgot to include Necromancers, but its a bit funny and telling that they are who was left.

That was my mistake! Necromancer was definitely supposed to be included.

Good thing I have a few thousand people spot-checking me.

#1481 - Nov. 5, 2013, 3:13 p.m.

DiogoSilva.7089:

JonPeters.5630:

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.

Yay! But it is not clear if Soothing Wave and Cleansing Wave will remain at their respective tiers, or if they’ll be swapped.

• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits. 10s recharge.

Interesting design, but it has some issues.

I assume this will be adept tier, right? Seems about right in power-level.

I misread at first and thought it would spec on our own critical hits, and that this trait would synergize well with air magic’s Soothing Winds. Apparently, that’s not what happens.

What I question about this redesign, is its synergy with the grandmaster Cleansing Water. If a player wishes to combine both for condition removal, which seems to be a very intuitive combo, the results aren’t going to be satisfying due to how unreliable it is. For example, what if I don’t have any condition on me once it triggers? Will it trigger and waste cleansing water’s cooldown? And even if it doesn’t, after getting critically hit, I would have to wait 10s until this combo could potentially do anything. It feels that both traits would combine poorly with each other, which is misleading, as their effects imply otherwise.

Perhaps a possible solution would be to reduce soothing wave’s cooldown to 5s, so that when combined with cleansing water, the combo is powerful enough to justify investing on a grandmaster trait just for it. The regen duration would need to be lower, of course, to 2s maybe. Would that make it too strong, considering it would make the trait individually stronger than what you have in mind?

Also, can the AI in pve critically hit? I honestly don’t know this, but I hope they can.

The design for soothing wave is that it won’t trigger the ICD unless it actually removes a condition.

#1482 - Nov. 5, 2013, 3:14 p.m.

lupercaleb.6041:

JonPeters.5630:

• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

will you keep the mist/vapor form functionality on it in addition to this? i like that part of the current trait

JonPeters.5630:

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

can we assume that the daze duration will increase the stun from this trait as well?

The daze duration will not help the stun. Just all dazes.

#1484 - Nov. 5, 2013, 3:16 p.m.

Josh Davis.6015:

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers/Necromancers

Just because Jon didn’t include any changes regarding your profession in the above post doesn’t mean we’re done making changes.

Please continue to leave feedback – we’re still listening. We’ll keep you updated as things come up.

Thanks!

Also just because good changes were suggested doesn’t mean we can safely make them in time for this build, but they will see the light of day in future releases as well.

#1487 - Nov. 5, 2013, 3:20 p.m.

Dekk.3459:

JonPeters.5630:

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

ELEMENTALIST

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

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

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

THIEF

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

WARRIOR

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

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

Thanks,

Jon

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

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

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

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

#1534 - Nov. 5, 2013, 6:41 p.m.

One more update again.

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

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

#1614 - Nov. 6, 2013, 9:08 a.m.

KratosAngel.7289:

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

Yes we are reading the sub-forums as well.

#1620 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:20 a.m.

Ghostpilot.6237:

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

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

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

Thanks again!

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

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

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

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

Thanks for the nice constructive actionable feedback!!!!

Jon

#1621 - Nov. 6, 2013, 10:23 a.m.

JonPeters.5630:

Ghostpilot.6237:

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

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

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

Thanks again!

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

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

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

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

Thanks for the nice constructive actionable feedback!!!!

Jon

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

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

#1629 - Nov. 6, 2013, 11:38 a.m.

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