February Balance Update Preview - Jan 24th Guild Wars 2 News

[@drdoctor9146]

For those who want just the patch notes, here are the timestamps for each class: General - 1:31:34 Elementalist - 1:32:45 Engineer - 1:35:23 Blue Class (Guardian) - 1:37:30 Mesmer - 1:38:21 Necromancer - 1:39:27 Ranger - 1:40:01 Revenant - 1:42:23 Thief - 1:43:55 Warrior - 1:44:42 Upcoming Relics - 1:48:55 Ending - 1:52:27

[@SuperShadowGuard]

Wow, Mukluk made a movie!

[@repapeti98]

This video is longer than my weekly playtime.

[@NotTooFoolish]

I just skip to the notes reading without the stream.

[@RecklessFables]

I'm in this post and I don't like it

[@orikalin]

ngl, mesmer holding a knife and being like "I cast GUN" is on brand for mesmer.

[@siperog]

"Five minutes. Could you NOT nerf Elementalists FOR FIVE MINUTES!?"

[@activegrass9435]

"only weaver should do this amount of dmg" -All 8 remaining weaver would agree to this

[@Lotos_Element]

Balances/changes of this size should be done 4times in a year or do bigger 1 time but it looks like they realy have like 5 people mainteining game with lack of changes for so many useless traits, skills on so many classes.

[@izgico6860]

next update reduce the skirt length from 15 to 10 in pvp mode only, increase the infused glowing intensity from 3 to 5.

[@njorun1829]

"I see Teapot has been giving Ray (Roy) some fashion advice" My thoughts exactly 😂

[@RobGale]

1:24:20 Relic of the Mukluk: Summon an angry Muk to counter dismissive comments from Devs

[@kylequest]

I've never been a fan of Roy. His GvG fixation has diminished WvW greatly. What we need is a new WvW and Balance team.

[@KingKalus]

Roy isn't a balance dev.

[@CowcaineHA]

@@kylequest imagine posting that on a forums you could be ban for that XD

[@kylequest]

@ "and" was used. Also, he likely has a lot of influence.

[@kylequest]

@ lol yeah, the censorship on the forums is terrible.

[@skuko1980]

relic of the goat would summon Michael Jordan, obviously.

[@andyccc6194]

That nerf to ele, why not just delete it from game?

[@BackwardsCombatable]

Never been as disappointed with the reasoning for changes as I have with this one. Seems like the only motivation they have to nerf something is because they don’t want anything to be popular, a strategy that results in every class feeling homogenous.

[@ultrasrifat1495]

Yeah

[@CowcaineHA]

@@BackwardsCombatable instead of making everyone of them popular lets make non of them popular

[@Mannetasi]

To be fair, the nerfs to Herald, Willbender and Virtouso kinda makes sense. But my beef with every other balance patch is that they nerf something for being popular, sometimes to far( Mirage :( ) instead of looking at other classes and why people aren't using them over Herald.

[@nielsjensen4185]

The reason we are in this situation we are in now is because things have been buffed úp to be on par with the good stuff rather than the good stuff being nerfed down to the level of everything else. This is the cause of the extreme power creep. Nerfing things that are too good. while it feels bad, it is by far the best move for game balance and longevity.

[@BackwardsCombatable]

@ Power creep is fun. Feeling stronger is fun. Leave that exhausting balance garbage for the pvp players, we just want to have fun in pve.

[@samohanka]

I haven't played guild wars 2 in quite a bit now, but I will "watch" this entire video at reduced speed to give you the support! ❤️

[@joshuaherring9674]

When you have to play a Piano Just to play a class for some damage, it’s damage should be WAY higher. Piano player = high damage as reward

[@themutedflag]

Good reaction video. They addressed some good things this balance such as removal of alacrity in WVW. Still, the ultimate problem in PVE rn is the disparity between DPS and DPS who can bring utility to the fight.

[@bunjay8226]

i get why power chrono/virt are getting nerfed but it really is disappointing to wait so many months for something exciting for your class and all you get is a mirage spear buff that no one plays

[@iridradiant]

It's probably because no one plays it that it needs a buff so people actually will start playing it.

[@SheenaMalfoy]

@@iridradiant Mirage was never built to be a power spec. Why the *kitten* is Anet shoving Power Mirage down our throats? Why can't they just make Staff good again and let Mirage be the condi built it was literally built to be?

[@ihatemondays2595]

@@SheenaMalfoy cause they hate mirage and I think they understand people wouldn't wanna play it when virt exists---they probably regret making mirage atp

[@nielsjensen4185]

The Barrier change is so good. Add all Quickness to the removal of Alacrity in WvW, Also, remove Alacrity from Elixir of Ambition in WvW as well!

[@sapherion]

Love muk has thevideo running in double speed and I let this video run in double speed. 😅

[@MuklukYoutube]

We am speed

[@ijamie17]

So many warrior skill changes, how will the warriors keep up with this?

[@hjvdb6829]

O thank goodness i can make my Golumancer again

[@Anonymous121212]

Dusted off PvE Spear Catalyst, then this happens 😅

[@RobGale]

I tried to watch the stream watchthrough but fell asleep during Ranger. Now I'm in the future!

[@turtleman56x]

With that summon thing tanking raid bosses, in GW1 the uwsc uses a summon to tank/glitch Dhuum to kill him faster

[@cantrip7]

Happy to see a Blurred Frenzy buff cuz I have 1. a long ways to go til SotO and 2. an intense jealousy of nearby Mesmers getting all that free ranged damage. Might bring me closer to saying, "Yay I'm in sword!" vs. "Ew, I want my greatsword back!!"

[@mormegil231]

They do not want to remove boon but they do not want the uptime to be 100%. Tat would probably be a good change in every game mode but in PvE it is i guess impossible to do without disrupting things a lot.

[@omegaweltall2001]

As a Mesmer guy, this is gonna hurt. 20% dos loss for Virt and power Chrono is a bit steep, imo.

[@Reddotzebra]

1:00:00 I wanted to see "WvW support nerfs" here, but oh, I forgot. All the other specs they went after have barrier generation and alacrity. Surely this isn't going to cause all the FotM players to rush to the perennial FotM support or anything...

[@whyisthisathingnow...]

Some ok changes, some weird changes, but nothing that will shake things up much. Nothing for weaver or sword on ele and still not making cata energy while sphere is out as baseline. Idk if warriors are too happy either but guess they are used to it :/

[@jonathans9427]

That forbidden f-word… “fun.” Can’t have that :P

[@nesef]

relic of thorns sounds like something to be used by a (boon-)dps tank, if the numbers are right it could be better than akeem/fractal

[@CyberDoedel]

Thank you for making this video, fellow human. I, too, like Gen 3 bacon (I'm sorry Mrs. Luk).

[@CowcaineHA]

seriously they have no good ways to nerf herald or what? yeah sure you want to nerf boon herald but the one suffer is dps herald who got caught in the crossfire for no reason

[@luca7675]

I dont think herald was ever really meant to be a dps spec.

[@YasaiTsume]

It's pretty clear they don't want BoonDPS herald to be a thing anymore. Which is why Rene has been receiving so much buffs. They want people to ADPS Rene and only only Support on Herald for PvE.

[@cattysplat]

This must mean a lot to the tiny proportion of the playerbase that make up PvP & WvW.

[@Eldar7431]

Understand the minionmancer dreams of Muk, but don't think relic summons should be stronger than Ranger pet / Engi mech, so if you want more function from pets the pet classes should get it better/first. Also don't think WvW needs more models in a fight...

[@Asmitha90]

OK we got rid of alac but what did thoes clases get in exchange coz i didnt get that ?...

[@Jacksontruman92]

I think it just gives self might now instead, for wvw instances

[@SheenaMalfoy]

The boonball meta in WvW was too much. There isn't any give back, because everyone is getting toned down (more or less) evenly, and boons/survivability/damage are all going down (more or less) evenly, for the health of the gamemode.

[@Asmitha90]

@ Ye but this hited insanly hard for rev viablity in zerg comps(also inspired reinforcements nerf). There will always be a boonball in zergs theres no geting around it...

[@SheenaMalfoy]

@@Asmitha90 why must there always be a boon all meta? Who says that can't be changed? Isn't changes like this exactly meant to reduce access to skills, and therefore the boons/barrier they provide? We can't fix the permaboon meta without taking things away, and that's exactly what this patch is going to do.

[@Asmitha90]

@@SheenaMalfoy Removing boons and not giving anything in exchange will just end up in more strict meta with les viable clases. if they woud remove boons all together clases like firebrand and chrono will be still requierd because of insane amount of utylity they provide. So removing boons is not the way here insted they shoud focus on providing usfule utilities to other clases...

[@Xeniltur]

Concerning Illusion of Life : Muk you're talking about PvE, Anet is talking about WvW. In PvE ofc, a full rez from druid/ele/necro is better, but in WvW : Illusion of Life is 3 people at 1200 range and those 3 people can't be finished off by enemies to rally their downstates and if those 3 people kill someone, they get rallied (in a zerg v zerg fight, it's a matter of "when" not "if"). So the only skill it really compares with is the elite signet from druid which pulses rez instead of instantly rez (in a zerg v zerg, pusle rez is bad because the downed are likely in the melee taking aoe damage / cleave).

[@nielsjensen4185]

Winds of Disenchantment is only good because Boons are WAY too good. If Boons did less then Boonstrip in general would be less powerful.

[@ToukaGontier]

Hoping they still have the leap finisher on Conduit Surge (engi spear 2) as it seems they removed the leap part of it to try fix that cancelling itself bug. Without the leap finisher condi quick scrapper is deleted, so I hope even though they made it just a dash, they kept the finisher :v I don't think they can really nerf the spear much to as its a good weapon on condi holosmith, and it will open up a condi quick scrapper build if the finisher stays. The condi mech build seems to be the "mechanist" thats the issue. It can reach those benchmark numbers using dual pistols (not just the spear). I'm guessing the only way to nerf that build is if mechanist has traits thats are making it better? (I dont play mech so unsure how it works)

[@dylanwarwick4429]

The leap on spear 2 isn't required for the build though it makes it able to build up the buffer to 30s.

[@christopherc5776]

by a poised foe ( not the poison)

[@nellone]

who are they talking at? 100 players? 200?

[@Jmvars]

I'm an Ele off-hand dagger enjoyer in PvE so this is excite!

[@ploik21]

Happy for you... 😞

[@Nik-GW2]

These wvw changes are so good finaly.... sadly noone will notice cause the whole gvg scene is dead already and noone scrims anymore

[@dasbroisku]

The thief nerfs are bad imho. The stealth and mobility is all the class has in wvw. What is the role of a thief in wvw now?

[@Jmvars]

Reaper increased AoE I love to see it

[@IndigoKnight49]

I am hoping the ranger pve spear will be worth it now. I was so excited for it before, and it's been so disappointing thus far.

[@Mozes_Kriebel]

As a Ranger main I mostly disagree. I like Ranger spear, only in pve and wvw the damage I found slightly underwhelming, so I like these changes

[@blackalphadragon96]

When is mirage gonna be playable again?!?! 😢They just left them for pvp only

[@shakeweller]

If they're nerfed the Ele specs fo a 42k benchmark, how come Harbinger, Willbender and Holosmith have the right to stay at 45/46k? How is that fair? Ele wasnt exactly easy to play especially Cata

[@uniquename111]

Wow KZbin AI is on it again. I had the link pasted to Roys rage about Necros wells. It is now removed. If you still want to see it you have to write "Roy on the new necro changes roy Guild Wars 2 Top Clip by comprissent" in to the search box. The link will just be removed by the AI if i add it again.

[@uniquename111]

Also yes the boonballs in WvW need to be nerfed. This was not enough by far but i guess a start. Fact is that people abusing boons and bubbles and cc to a point where two blobs can stand still on top of eachother and noone takes damage because of the boons and bubbles. The bubbles also stop people from outside to pull people out from the blob, and also due to the insane nerf of boonrip a while back you can not touch a blob that stands still. And due to Worldrestruction not working wvw loossing players to a point where it is rare to find blobs on all sides even on primetime. This means that defense is not working at all due to the insane defense nerfs they done and if we are 20 people on a border with a 50+ blob inside of a keep, you can not do much about that but watch them take it because the enemy boonball is tanking down in lordsroom with all boons, litterally nonstop bubbles and then they pull people in, whilist the 20 people can not pull something out of the bubbles. This was a start and one bubble got some small nerf but it need like serveral more nerfs to get WvW back to playable and fun again.

[@screemingnott]

GOLEMANCEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[@ByteSizedBlisss]

the lack of updates is why I barely play the game anymore. other games get such updates every month

[@Moinsen15]

Which ones?

[@Cross_111]

Hmm...they will essentially delete apdps temp with this change... Its like 34k while we still have qdps builds that nuke with 42k?!! (Quick deadeye) And they take weaver as the top dps in ele as the "highest dmg dealer" (which is 42,7k for the power version) and say tempest must be below that, but DONT nerf builds like willbender with their 45-46k (power & condi) or deadeye with its 44-45k or even condi mech (which is dead easy to play) with its 44k? Honestly? If all builds should be around 42-43k I am fine with that But dont leave builds with absurd numbers for months over months and change some now while not touching the others again for another 3 months... This is really annoying. Be fair to all builds...

[@eerolz8758]

You will play alac heal and quick dps and you will like it 😡 .. yeah, feels like they just don't want any alac dps to be valid

[@Cross_111]

@eerolz8758 they give qdps herald also the bat so i would not be so sure on that ^^ But truth be told power creep is massive right now So i am fine with nerfs But nerfs to all builds pls...

[@eerolz8758]

@@Cross_111 Yeah, I'm mostly joking. I do agree, they need to hit the powercreep hard. It's hard to do since people will not like them doing less dps but it'll be better in the long term.

[@Cross_111]

@@eerolz8758 yep, people dont like it ^^ But truth be told if they make 42-43 the right numbers thats also ok... Then they only need to adapt some builds instead of all of them But then they must do ALL builds 😆

[@RorronoaZZZoro]

nice rap song at min 3

[@icata12345]

man scourge only eats nerfs in wvw, okay nerf the barrier but give something else atleast

[@leonardobertagnolli712]

The lack of nerf to stealth is screaming lmao.

[@naskorar]

Do your best to speak a bit slower coz noone except you understand ;)

[@AZ-xf6gv]

Anet love for ele made me quit for the time being...

[@Reddotzebra]

Gotta get that time to kill DOWN in WvW.

[@Sand663]

Well let's see if I can finally use ranger spear in pve lol

[@tomblack2222]

power mirage inc

[@WallyWalic]

Bring back rifle engi!!!!!

[@Exirock]

I dont understand any of the patch but was told spellbreak saw minimal changes and they want to turn him into more support kinda dps, hopefully they dont kill the class i invested the most and main cause dont want to redo everything, but i was kinda expecting more buffs n nerfs, this felt like a rushed patch, there is so much to buff n nerf and its being delayed more months, i dont understand what is the deal leaving the game in a hazard without fix issues,

[@PhoenixGale1524]

"if they find relevance at all they probably wont last long" the same ethos used to balance ele

[@user-ze9ej5ng9h]

These guys are such an insult. So unprofessional, so sarcastic coming out with the most pithy, arbitrary little changes eons apart. I would almost rather just no updates.

[@notrlvnt]

Is it just me that feels like these guys from the stream are just a bunch of immature kids? The way they are approaching this stream, to how they are providing information, etc. feels really unprofessional.

[@dieselsandwich42]

Ah yes the 6 ele elements: fire, water, earth, air, downstate, and nerf

[@jaosobno6493]

Imagine if someone at Anet actually knows how Thief works and they make an balance patch that actually does something meaningful, besides nerfing one WvW or PvP build at a time because low skill players are complaining that they are getting killed, and trying to make a support healer Thief build that is never going to work, because every other class in the game can do it much better and easier and maybe 10 players are going to play in specific situations. I love this game and like playing Thief and there are a lot of build i want to play, but they just dont work at any lvl. For example, you cant play any version of a PvP or WvW build without Trickery traitline, not saying that traitline is to strong, just the opposite. Another example, would love to play power Specter in PvE, but it just doest work, would love for the Specter traitline have something like Mechainst traitlike, one side is for power, one for condi and one for support, that way it is now, its has maybe some good traits and the rest are just not usable. Another example, there is no dps build, besides one Deadeye build, that can compete with other dps classes. There is no good Daredevil dps build (maybe power staff, that existed in the game and was not changes since the first expansion, 10 years ago, witch still does about 5-7k less dps that than other classes), not not even mentioning Specter as a dps option, power or condi. There is not one weapon added for the class after PoF that is meta at any game-mode, and at any time it was since it was released, it was quickly nerfed to the point it is not usable. The builds that they are nerfing for WvW use the weapons that where in the game since the release of the game, and they are being nerfed because people that know how to play them have been playing them for 12 years, and will still kill the low skill players that are complaining if you nerf the builds.

[@ozirus3344]

Things like making the warhorn water orb stay on you instead of move forward is really bland. Keep the identity of warhorn skills moving forward but give use proper REWARDS for jumping through the hoop of using it correctly. Theyre just dumbing things down when they should be rewarding higher skill play.

[@SheenaMalfoy]

How is the change bland? They pushed Warhorn to be more support focused, they added a reliable healing blast (without needing a mainhand, I might add), Superspeed, and Resistance to the kit, while keeping the skills more or less exactly the same. There is zero flavour lost in this patch (regarding Warhorn, at least). Only a damage nerf and a support buff. Water Globe will now actually heal instead of going off into the abyss. Isn't that a good thing?

[@QueryState]

If pchrono damage falls again I’ll simply quit the game and spend my money elsewhere. It’s that simple.

[@the_metamancer]

Literally me rn Virt is draging chrono down with it ;_;

[@YasaiTsume]

I play Core Power Rev and I never upload videos or make a fuss about it because of these clowns. Sword/Sword Hammer was really strong and fun before they nerfed it anyway thanks to Vindicator.

[@danteyoda]

Nerfwars 2 and i finally get a weak Golem again..

[@linkimpark1]

how can you call it nerfwars after classes got powercrept so hard in the last years?

[@babarota]

Damn genuinely hate this patch. Will bender is a fun class that should be the standard for balance changes. Seeing increased cooldowns and reduced damage acrossed the board along with reducing the ammunition to 1 on f2 might just make me quit the game. First Cele now this. The destruction of alacrity was a shock in itself. Balancing shouldn't be about reworking a class but rather small tweaks instead. These updates get more and more frustrating every time.

[@jamesmmu]

You played an op class and now you're upset it's more inline with others

[@CowcaineHA]

its deserved nerf for willbender

[@Mannetasi]

Might be a hot take here but its deserved, Willbender is very op in WvW...

[@WILDRIFTXGAMING]

cry

[@slimakovamamam]

i say it as simple as i can , and i think people will agree with me . GFYSelf ... u playing more broken char , then any type of rogue / druid i ever see and still crying ? Start using your mouse and keyboard at same time to play normal spec . Max deserve balanc for your class , next remove asura and it will be perfect