Xyonon.3987

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Oh boy the two **bump**s above me are weirdos...

The **bump** above me is a lie.

> @"Wolfb.7025" said:

> Excuse me, which skills gets cancelled?

>

> I basically one trick holo since two years and I was aware that non toolbelt skills gets interrumped when entering photon forge in the middle of the cast, and it has been always like this.

Yes non toolbelt skills were always interrupted since Holo's release, but a few patches ago they changed it so any skill can be cast into forge which felt amazing and everyone seemed super happy about it. It was great using things like sword 3 and enter forge mid cast. Unfortunately they reverted this last patch which is the reason of this post.

A few patches ago, we recieved a big QoL change regarding the Holo forge. Originally, entering the forge cancelled all skills which made the ability feel rather clunky and not "Engineer like" (kit-like). However this has been changed a few patches ago, which made playing with the Holo forge so much smoother. This also gave us more depth in playstyle to get Laser's Edge on an ability by channeling it into photon forge. It also made the forge feel more like a kit than a clunky mechanic - **I've only heared how amazing this change was from all the Engineers out there**.

And then we had a patch today, which reverted this amazing change and we're back to the old clunky version.

ANet, I hope this was an oversight and not intended - **please change it back back again, so we can experience the smooth, kit-like behaving holo forge**. It makes playing Holosmith much better!

Thank you! :)

> Rewinder: The cooldown per clone spent has been reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. The mesmer now counts as a clone for this reduction. Increased recharge from 25 seconds to 30 seconds.

Oof, increasing the cooldown from 10s to 18s seems a bit very harsh, considering this being the main damage tool of a Condi Chrono (Support and DPS). I suggest considering either going through with the 3s per clone reduction OR the 5s total cooldown increase. :S

> Speed of Synergy: This trait has been reworked. It will now grant superspeed for 5 seconds to allies in a radius of 240 around the engineer when using a healing skill. Using a healing tool-belt skill grants the engineer 7 seconds of superspeed.

Aww that one is really sad. It was way more fun having an interactive trait, doing something on blast/leap etc. instead of just "well if you press your heal skill you get something small". Granting Super Speed to allies was a useful niche for some Raid encounters. I'm gonna miss it. :<

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Hello everyone! Since this skill seems to have caused quite the discussion mostly based on **wrong information on the wiki** and in the past I've taken care of many Engineer related things there, I've updated the wiki page:

#The wiki page has been updated!

So please use the new information provided in the **"Notes"** section on the wiki for further discussion. Thank you.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toss_Elixir_R#Notes

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bumptastic!

This sounds great but there one thing I always really really wanted from my legendary armor + templates:

* Make it so we can use the **same legendary armor but with different skins** on each template!

Ofc we'd have to use Transmutation Charges but I struggle a lot with my Legendary Armor with Templates and Fashion Wars.

Thank you!

As a part of the (earlier mentioned in this thread) "high-end PvE community" I'm very happy about the update on FMW. I'm very grateful for both, your decision to adjust the patch notes according to the feedback you've got from us and the fact that you actually care about the speedrunning / best in slot comps for Raids. To me (and I'm sure I can speak for many raiders out there) this means a lot and it's a great feeling being noticed. So thank you for that! :)

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**About Dragonhunter and Feel My Wrath:**

Now, to share my thoughts to the topic: The goal (and this seems to be some sort of misconception for many ppl) is **not to nerf FMW**. The goal is it (and it's very important to keep this in mind!), **to prevent people from being forced to stack 3 Guardians over all other dps specs due to them providing Quickness**. Nerfing FMW is supposed to be **the solution** and **not the reason** here! In theory you could buff FMW to a point where you would only need one DH for Quickness, "solving" the stacking issue but ofc this would create a ton of new issues. So that's out of the question, but how to correctly adjust FMW to get the desired outcome?

With your changes to reduce the duration from 8s to 5s and the cooldown from approximately 36.5s to 28.5s (this includes the cast time under the effects of Quickness and Alacrity), you're reducing the uptime per FMW from ~22% to ~17.5%. This is normally paired with the smart usage of a Soulbeast's Moa stance to increase the uptime to ~36.5% respectively new ~29.1%. You will normally stack 3 DHs in one subgroup with the Soulbeast and a Renegade for best buff distribution. This means **atm you easily have above 100% uptime on Quickness, post patch you'll end up with about ~87.4%**. Does that mean you solved the issue? Not quite. What might happen here is, that you now simply **force the Chronomancer to compensate for the nerf**. So what is the change here? **"Reducing FMW's uptime from 100% to ~87.4% = Chrono loses a big chunk of dps, DH stacking still persists."** But this is mere speculation and might not be the case. Another solution of "not wanting to stack DHs" is, to make it less desirable to get rid of dedicated Quickness providers, thus buffing the dps of those, like you do with GS Chrono this patch. However this **only** works if at the same time the DH also **is not best in slot as a dps spec** while also providing Quickness (sceptical gaze towards the Virtue buff here).

All in all the change to FMW will have an uncertain outcome. It might be enough, but it might as well backfire and if that happens I'd be happy to not spend another half a year looking at squads in blue. So **please be quick to further adjust FWM if required**, before the next big balance patch. In my opinion the **by far best suggestion** I've read todate is from this guy:

> @"Commander Sealjan.5872" said:

> ...make it along the lines of:

>

> Cooldown(45s)

> Self-Quickness(8s)

> Allies-Quickness(4s)

> Target cap(5)

This is genius. Not only would this reduce Quickness sharing uptimes to a degree where stacking DHs becomes very unattractive, but also would it still keep FMW relevant for the Guardian himself (solo) and to potentially close a Quickness gap here and there in an encounter. So my vote goes to this one!

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**About dps Firebrand and dps Chronomancer:**

Now since we are on the topic of Quickness and Guardian stacking, without another wall'o'text here, I'd suggest to next** take a look at Firebrand stacking**. It essentially has the same issue, or rather, it's more efficient to stack 0% dedicated FB for Quickness instead of having 1 FB providing Quickness. The main issue here is to have a condi spec that bursts like a power one and has one of the highest condi dps numbers while also providing Quickness.

Also do not forget about Time Warp chaining by stacking dps Chronos, which quickly becomes toxic as well. It is very unfortunate to have a worse use of Time Warp as a support Chrono than a dps Chrono. Here you might simply reduce its duration and cd, so you have the same effect if used in and right after CS, for every CS (90s cd), as dps Chronos can't afford to do that. Maybe adjust the Quickness stack cap (atm 5) as well (new 9).

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**About Mesmer's Mirror Blade changes:**

And to finish this post off, I have a question / suggestion / concern about the new variant of Mirror Blades for Mesmer. You mentioned that each bounce will reduce the damage by 15%. **Please make sure that these 15% do not happen if it bounces to an ally**, as it would extremely quickly deal very tiny damage (rendering the traited 2 additional bounces rather useless).

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That will be all - Thank you for reading!

_- Xyonon (the engi sheet guy :3)_

**Something I need to add in terms of Guardian Balance is the desperately required nerf of Feel My Wrath in pve.** It grants 8 seconds of Quickness, which can be stacked because it is a 5 person buffing skill. So you put 3-4 Guardians in a group of 5 to provide those 5 people with Quickness. This essentially means you skip a support class that would provide that normally, and a support class of course deals way less damage than another dps class. Thus making the decision very easy to run a lot of Guardians for this specific elite skill. It got so out of hand now that outside of a few bosses, **all other raid bosses are now speedrun with only Guardian dps classes for this reason.**

**I strongly suggest to nerf Feel My Wrath in PvE as well**, as it makes best in slot comps stack Guardians instead of having a dedicated Quickness buffer, locking out other dps specs from taking that slot. Guardian (both DH and FB) are already on the strong side - dps wise - as they are. Giving DH another dmg modifier (Virtues) will be an overkill. FB is also already having over 40k burst, scratching the 37k on the final number on the golem. Even tho those numbers will go down depending on how much Quickness you're gonna provide, **a profession becomes problematic if it provides (partial) Quickness and high tier dps at the same time.** This is very unhealthy for the diversity / viablity of multiple dps specs in raids.

Aside from that (yes there are still many things that are not addressed here, but regarding the ones that are) it looks great tbh. :)

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Hm - seems like a small patch which is fine. But I would like to mention that **PvE Raids desperately need a balance patch** - Guardians (FB and DH) are technically DPS specs with the powerful ability to provide quickness without any drawbacks - it's mainly an issue for the higher levels of PvE Raids, however I still think the issue needs to be adressed, as it is way more efficient to stack "quickness providing dps specs" instead of a support - this prevents all other dps specs from having any chance of being part of record runs or speedruns in general. DPS Chronomancer has the same issue, as Time Warp stacking is also a thing, however it'll be hard to fix this without nerfing support Chrono in the ground.

A viable option would be to - instead of nerfing the Quickness of those DPS specs - to buff the support specs that apply Quickness to such a degree, that they are no longer "unwanted" / the group shouldn't have the desire to replace them. It would be really nice to finally see more than Guardians, Mesmers or Ecto Thiefs again.

Just my feedback. :)

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