Thoughts on Update

[Simonoly.4352]

Anet massively tunnel visioned on some super bizarre stuff for Mesmer this round of nerfs. The only issue for current Mesmer was the oppressive condi burst of axe+shatter and that wasn't touched at all - despite Anet claiming they wanted to make Mesmer less bursty.

 

The portal duration nerf is harsh and wasn't met with another change to make it play differently - simply nerfed to make it ineffective in many instances now which is simply bizarre. Removing a charge from Jaunt without reverting a previous nerf was a poor call on Anet's part - it's simply not an elite skill anymore (like Mass invis, Timewarp...).

 

Then they nerfed Power Block, so it truly is an inferior Pulmonary Impact now that it cannot crit - power interrupt Mesmer needs this trait to be strong otherwise the playstyle has zero flavour. Not really sure what Auspicious Anguish is meant for. Was Mirror of Anguish really that bad? Getting 1 second of a CC back in your face was the end times? On my Rev, if someone CCs me, they get a whole 3 seconds of taunt and I get me some protection which is arguably stronger. *shrug* Weird.

 

With Auspicious Anguish I'm not sure if I'm down with the concept of "by actively CCing a Mesmer, you give it the ability to become invulnerable again". Is that particularly good for the game? I don't think it probably is.

[apharma.3741]

#Elementalist

Currently elementalists are rarely seen in PvP and we wish to keep it that way so we have reduced the damage on their instant cast abilities that required offensive traits and then decided to buff sceptre again. We felt the shatterstone meme was getting old so we buffed a few other skills in meaningless ways in the hopes of generating new memes. Additionally we made some overloads 10 man and added extra effects to a few of them because the power creep train don't stop for no-one choo choo!

 

#Engineer

Engineers are currently very well represented across all areas of PvP and PvE and we are most pleased by the ridiculous damage the holosmith elite specialization has been doing and so we want scrapper to be able to do this also, so we buffed the damage on scrapper for purity of purpose. Elixir U we felt was in a good spot however when we were made aware of issues with animations syncing up under the effects of quickness we realised a change was needed so we changed the toss elixir to superspeed. Finally many people complained about the autocasting Elixir S so we gave another passive trait which doesn't make you invulnerable but can hopefully save your bacon non the less and slapped a lower internal cool down on it as we love to play counting games.

 

#Guardian

A major goal for guardian in this update was to make sure any trained monkey can play firebrand in a raid scenario. This involved reducing cooldowns so that you can spam spammily spam and still maintain quickness. We also made stand your ground affect 10 targets now because we didn't feel Firebrand was dominating the support role enough in WvW. Finally while we are a games company specialising in having fun we do sometimes have serious meetings where our bosses sit there, get out the nerf hammer and tell us to start swinging, sorry guardians we had to hit something so we hit the tome cool downs and then hit glacial heart in the hopes our bosses don't realise it's 50% critical chance from retaliation that makes the build do choo choo damage.

 

#Mesmer

In this update we were also told to swing the nerf hammer at a few problematic skills and traits. Unfortunately when we were swinging we missed a few times so you may see some inconsistent nerfs and buffs. We made sure Signet of Inspiration is more or less bad in most game modes and made sure that continuum split couldn't reset mimic now, unfortunately when we buffed mimic to mimic the cool down of the skill used we accidentally hit it with the nerf hammer so it gets the same cool down as the skill you used +40s. We are aware of how double casting creates multiplicative power and that continuum split also does this but we don't care, don't tell us how to do our job!

 

On a separate note, we've also reduced the power of mirages in PvP in order to lower their burst damage. We want mirages to excel in longer combat engagements, but their burst damage was just too high. So we reduced the raw damage of ONE skill by 30%.

 

#Necromancer

We didn't like spectral mastery and felt that vital persistence was a sure fire pick so we removed spectral mastery, made a few weird changes to hopefully make spectral skills better and then removed the shroud cool down reduction from vital persistence. We then added a damage buff trait for entering or exiting shroud as reapers don't quite instantly kill their targets anymore.

 

Another important change is we want minion master back but not sure how so we reduced the cool down on death nova so hopefully people can run around Gendarren Fields with hordes of minions again. We're keeping an eye on the number of minion masters we see and may keep buffing it till everyone can afk on nodes.

 

#Ranger

Right now ranger has been mandatory in all PvE for 3 years so we decided to reduce the durations of all the extra boons given passively by spirits but still kept it mandatory so everyone will have a worse time.

 

Additionally, soulbeasts are currently overperforming in competitive game modes, so we're lowering the power of some of the skills used in their builds. So we nerfed Moa Stance and a little weakness on Winter's Bite but felt bad so we buffed Dolyak Stance to make sure rangers never die.

 

#Revenant

Heralds are still not using our revamped facet of nature as much as we'd like so we buffed it on a few legends that are used in meta builds. Additionally since we removed the counter taunt from Eye for an Eye we decided to put some buffs into retribution in the hopes it will one day create a weakness spamming annoying build, watch this space soon!

 

#Thief

Deadeye was killing our guardians a bit too fast so we decided to make Death's Judgement blockable now. We decided that burst damage is only a problem on Deadeye so decided to nerf Lead Attacks to make sure all builds are affected. Finally we took all the traits that gave damage mods to specific weapons and split the damage so you get half the damage buff for wielding any other weapon as well, we don't want you guys to pick traits solely based on the build you use and need to make sure you can pick any random assortment of traits and weapons and still be effective!

 

#Warrior

Full Counter behaves differently in competitive game modes to PvE so we decided to further split the skill to make sure it's as inconsistent as possible. Lastly we don't like that people can pick random traits and weapons with no benefit so many warrior weapon traits now offer enhancements regardless of weapon while still providing additional bonuses when using specific weapons. We have to maintain the theme of warrior as a fight now think sometime later, maybe at the pub class.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

> @"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

> > @"whoknocks.4935" said:

> > I liked the removed elixir s passive on engi, now bad holos won't be hard carried by that as before at least, even tho the rest remained the same so...

> >

> > Full counter damage nerf was unnecessary, how many times it got nerfed already?

> > Next patch they will finally remove completely the damage.

> > SpB was balanced in my opinion.

> >

> > Soulbeast nerfs, but the new Dolyak stance it's stronger than before... maybe the longer cooldowns will open a more wide window for counterplay.

> >

> > Condi mirages nerfs, but if you see the notes actually power mirage was hit, and nothing about condis was even touched, apart that axes little insignificant changes.

> > Portal will probably be replaced maybe and i doubt condi mirage won't be meta anymore.

> >

> > Scrapper buffs seems weird, they removed the stab on demand from gyro usage trait, they buffed the dps, but holo is still superior as dps, so who knows, maybe someone will come out with an interesting build.

> >

> > Core guard seems received buffs to hammer, so it will be even more easy and brainless to play, but at least it's not too cancer.

> >

> > The other profession changes dunno.

>

> Core guard hammer changes were 100% a nerf.

 

Can the same dude that made the guardian "nerfs" do some on mesmer please, I would certainly appreciate some of these "nerfs".

[losingcontrol.1084]

> @"Solori.6025" said:

> I'm actually waiting on that one person to come in and say " Mesmer is Anets favorite class" even after all these nerfs.

 

You don't realize that now with a 3rd utility slot opened mirage will be the 1vs1 duelist god?

 

Before you couldn't run a 3rd utility because if the enemy team had a mesmer good at using portal you were screwed.

 

Now portal is gone, condi carrion mirage will be easily top 1vs1 duelist in pvp, even above soulbeast.

 

How can people be so blind and not seeing that?

 

Condi of mirage wasn't touched at all.

They nerfed 30% damage on axe3, but... physical damage haha funny right? Because axe is a power weapon right omegaLuL

[BadMed.3846]

Mirage us still heavily broken. Needs way more nerfs.

[Dahkeus.8243]

> @"Falan.1839" said:

> Most changes look sensible, but giving mes a second distortion on the already strong Chaos line is a no go. Idk why people get so mad up about Eli S (in which you can't do anything) while full immunities that enable you to keep fighting are seemingly okay. The only good thing about the new distortion trait is that it collides with the protection on Chaos armor, which is pretty crucial for the current Meta Mirage build.

>

> On first look I'd say compared to Soulbeast, Spellbreaker, and Holosmith, (Condi) Mirage got off easy (again), with slight nerfs to Jaunt and Portal. The might change on Staff 1 Ambush might actually be a buff and the AoE removal on the Chaos Ultimate is pretty much a non factor anyway, since Mirage is not a teamfighter. The axe nerfs are real, but some were actually running scepter even before and it didn't seem to reduce the strength of that build, so this might become a factor.

> The dps nerf on Full Counter looks excsessive, the one on tether is fine, nerfs on Boon Beast (+ plasma in general) and Engi, and FB, Rev (shackling wave), DE (Death's Judgement) mostly make sense. With core guard I can't really say how the changes impact it without it seing it in action, same for Nec.

>

> For the nerfed passive Eli S I'd like a viable alternative, since the other master traits on Alchemy are pretty meh.

 

Sooo....portal duration gets nerfed, mes have 1 less stun break charge on jaunt, and axes were nerfed, but you're upset that a reflection of CC was replaced with a 1 second distort on a 50 sec cd?

 

And you somehow find this comparable to the nerf of a 3 sec invulnerability nerf?

[EpicTurtle.8571]

> @"Dahkeus.8243" said:

> > @"Falan.1839" said:

> > Most changes look sensible, but giving mes a second distortion on the already strong Chaos line is a no go. Idk why people get so mad up about Eli S (in which you can't do anything) while full immunities that enable you to keep fighting are seemingly okay. The only good thing about the new distortion trait is that it collides with the protection on Chaos armor, which is pretty crucial for the current Meta Mirage build.

> >

> > On first look I'd say compared to Soulbeast, Spellbreaker, and Holosmith, (Condi) Mirage got off easy (again), with slight nerfs to Jaunt and Portal. The might change on Staff 1 Ambush might actually be a buff and the AoE removal on the Chaos Ultimate is pretty much a non factor anyway, since Mirage is not a teamfighter. The axe nerfs are real, but some were actually running scepter even before and it didn't seem to reduce the strength of that build, so this might become a factor.

> > The dps nerf on Full Counter looks excsessive, the one on tether is fine, nerfs on Boon Beast (+ plasma in general) and Engi, and FB, Rev (shackling wave), DE (Death's Judgement) mostly make sense. With core guard I can't really say how the changes impact it without it seing it in action, same for Nec.

> >

> > For the nerfed passive Eli S I'd like a viable alternative, since the other master traits on Alchemy are pretty meh.

>

> Sooo....portal duration gets nerfed, mes have 1 less stun break charge on jaunt, and axes were nerfed, but you're upset that a reflection of CC was replaced with a 1 second distort on a 50 sec cd?

>

> And you somehow find this comparable to the nerf of a 3 sec invulnerability nerf?

 

Jaunt doesn't stun break.

[Dahkeus.8243]

> @"EpicTurtle.8571" said:

> > @"Dahkeus.8243" said:

> > > @"Falan.1839" said:

> > > Most changes look sensible, but giving mes a second distortion on the already strong Chaos line is a no go. Idk why people get so mad up about Eli S (in which you can't do anything) while full immunities that enable you to keep fighting are seemingly okay. The only good thing about the new distortion trait is that it collides with the protection on Chaos armor, which is pretty crucial for the current Meta Mirage build.

> > >

> > > On first look I'd say compared to Soulbeast, Spellbreaker, and Holosmith, (Condi) Mirage got off easy (again), with slight nerfs to Jaunt and Portal. The might change on Staff 1 Ambush might actually be a buff and the AoE removal on the Chaos Ultimate is pretty much a non factor anyway, since Mirage is not a teamfighter. The axe nerfs are real, but some were actually running scepter even before and it didn't seem to reduce the strength of that build, so this might become a factor.

> > > The dps nerf on Full Counter looks excsessive, the one on tether is fine, nerfs on Boon Beast (+ plasma in general) and Engi, and FB, Rev (shackling wave), DE (Death's Judgement) mostly make sense. With core guard I can't really say how the changes impact it without it seing it in action, same for Nec.

> > >

> > > For the nerfed passive Eli S I'd like a viable alternative, since the other master traits on Alchemy are pretty meh.

> >

> > Sooo....portal duration gets nerfed, mes have 1 less stun break charge on jaunt, and axes were nerfed, but you're upset that a reflection of CC was replaced with a 1 second distort on a 50 sec cd?

> >

> > And you somehow find this comparable to the nerf of a 3 sec invulnerability nerf?

>

> Jaunt doesn't stun break.

Stun escape*