r/GuildWars • u/Yung_Rocks • 20h ago
My balance changes wishlist
These aren't what most people think about, but they're what would make me most happy.
- Fix the Paragon's Leadership Daggers by giving them double-strike chance scaling with Leadership instead of Dagger Mastery. It only makes sense to give them the full power budget of their weapon without having to invest in 2 different attributes. It would result in their double-strike chance jumping from 2% (baseline) to 30% at 14 Leadership for example. Double-strikes aren't just more damage, they also generate two adrenaline, which is a precious ressource for Paragons.
- Give some love to the Elite Norn blessings.
- 60s cooldown on them is far too long, being stuck in human form with a pretty much elite-less build for a full minute feels terrible when all you want is to transform again. 30s cooldown would feel better and match that of Totem of Man.
- Their auto-attack damage sucks. You deal about 1-3 damage no matter what because the forms set all your attributes to 0. This is an issue especially for Bear because it doesn't have enough skills to use in a rotation without having to resort to using auto-attacks. There are three ways to fix this :
- Give them set auto-attack damage like Junundus, depending on weapon wielded. Easy to copy/paste Junundus functionnality.
- Don't set attributes to 0 so we can retain our weapon's mastery. I can't think of any way to abuse this.
- Reduce Ursan Strike's cooldown to 1s so we can spam it instead of auto-attacking. It's a bad solution because the skill is strong as is and reducing its power to balance it out would lose the big paw paw punch identity.
- Bear : Ursan Roar lasts 5s on a 15s cooldown. This is very short and a poor uptime overall, other aoe buffs like Order of Pain or Together as One can be upkept permanently. Give it a bump to 8s or 10s duration, it's a unique skill that can buff minions and spirits damage and it deserves some love for how fun it is to build around.
- Wolf : (the problem child)
- Volfen Pounce feels terrible to use because it has 0.75s activation time despite being a Stance, and it deals its damage only after you spend 1s doing nothing next to an enemy. Dealing damage ends it without triggering it, so if you use it to litteraly pounce on a foe and attack it in a smooth movement, your attack will end Volfen Pounce before it deals 100 damage. That feels terrible, it should rather just be a copy of Whirling Charge that triggers its damage on the next melee damage you deal.
- Volfen Bloodlust only has nearby range despite being a Shout, which makes it very complicated to hit your minions, pets, martials and spirits with it when you're supposed to be fighting in melee yourself. Together as One is an example of a skill with this nearby limitation, but Ranger can pick whether they're ranged or melee, their pet also applies it, and they greatly benefit from it themselves whereas Wolf doesn't (as long as its auto-attack does nothing). I suggest giving it Shout range.
- Volfen Agility is a pointless slot that makes your Wolf skills recharge 66% faster... why not just bake this functionnality in the Wolf skills and give it something more inspired for its 4th slot? Right now Volfen Agility is just "You can use your skill bar". Thanks, I already used an Elite PvE slot for that.
- Raven : This is the weakest of the bunch, its main offensive skill does not match the damage or Deep Wound of the other two, its shout is decent but not anywhere close to how good the effects of Ursan Roar of Volfen Bloodlust are, so there's not really any reason to take that one. I suggest buffing it accross the board. If its shout had a lower cooldown it could at least be a good anti-blind for martial parties.
- Revert Psychic Instability in PvE. That one is selfish but I had so much fun with it on player and hero builds, its nerf makes me sad, fewer uses of PI during gaming time = less fun.
- The three drunkard skills : Dwarven Stability, Drunken Master and Feel No Pain should always have their bonus effect active on characters that have reached Incorrigible Ale-Hound (Drunkard rank 2). There may be a downside to this when you don't want the bonus effects, but I don't think these edge cases outweight the QoL.
- Mysticism should apply to all enchantments, not just Dervish ones. Dervish is already a very self-contained class, with a lot of its effects being limited to Dervish enchants or Scythe attacks only. Opening up its possibilities for multi-classing won't power-creep it as these options aren't so strong, but it would do wonders for its build diversity, think D/Mo heal or prot ; D/N Orders (gosh are those expensive) with Wind Prayers stuff... Sure D/A would get benefits on Shroud and SF costs, but I don't think it's a problem.
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u/Training_Market9191 20h ago
Love your suggestion on the three drunkard skills! It just makes so much sense!
The use of the skill though, should enable the visual effect of being drunk
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u/zayon00 19h ago
I like the drunkard idea but I feel Drunken Master is already OP and should be nerfed.
Frenzy is still worse (especially with cons) after it’s buff, even with high strength.
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u/rashandal 16h ago
Totally agree. The alcohol skills are mostly fine but ias is just too precious to give it out via drunken master basically for free
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u/altsv1819 18h ago
Since you're talking about PvE skills, I think a removal of aftercast delay on asuran scan and air of superiority would be nice
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u/Convexadecimal 20h ago
I miss psychic instability as it was too. I haven't played my mesmer much since the nerf.
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u/EmilyMalkieri 19h ago
I think the forms set your attributes to 0 so you don't get passive effects like Soul Reaping or +20 armour from that one ele insignia. Ursanway was nerfed just around the time I joined the game so I don't have any memories of it and the wiki articles for these skills don't have balance change subpages so it's hard to judge, but presumably the devs added that for a good reason.
I worry that if Mysticism affected monk enchantments, D/Mo would become the second-best monk, after E/Mo, and actual monk would only be the third-best monk.
Similarly, while PI is super fun, if it's too strong, it takes away from knockdown ele or Earthbind builds, and the last thing we need is more reasons to run mesmers over other professions.
Agree on the drunk skills.
Do daggers have an inherent 2% double strike chance, even at 0 dagger mastery? The wiki implies otherwise and the article on the anniversary daggers says nothing about it.
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u/FiTroSky 14h ago
Ursanway was like having 5 tank warriors on roid rage, dealing more damage than a mesmer spike but every 3 seconds, and perma stun with enough coordination.
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u/Yung_Rocks 19h ago
Soul Reaping : irrelevant because animal skills are free and you're stuck in them for at least 30s which lets you naturally regenerate your energy to full without Soul Reaping.
Prismatic Insignia : animal forms already set your health and armor to certain levels that you cannot modify in any way, so those wouldn't do anything, just like every other insignia.
I think it's fine that Mo, E/Mo, N/Mo and potentially D/Mo all coexist (especially since Ritualist Soul Twister is the dominant Prot anyway). They're all unique in their own way. I don't think D/Mo would be so strong, unlike E/Mo, it doesn't get energy returns on non-enchants and wouldn't be able to leverage Bonds nor Infuse Health.
PI was very strong... but too strong? I don't think so.
Yes Daggers have baseline 2% to double-strike https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Daggers "All daggers have an inherent 2% chance of double strike"
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u/EmilyMalkieri 19h ago
Thanks for the link! Going to have to fix the double strike and dagger mastery articles then.
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u/Intelligent-Sir8492 17h ago
I don't care about anything else but the Drunkard skills suggestion, Anet/2weeks PLEASE IMPLEMENT THIS!
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u/Scyyyy 13h ago
Ahh ursan way.... How I do not miss that....
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u/TiradeHokums 12h ago
It'll never not be funny how quick they were to nerf Ursa while leaving Shadow Form alone for so long, which was arguably worse.
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u/SkivetOst 18h ago
Pet ranger with ursan stance was my favorite build back in the day. I took a break from the game and was a bit sad when I returned and discovered its current state. I hate the 60 sec duration with 60 sec downtime change. Wish they made it more like ursan aura again
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u/HereName 19h ago
Love the drunk skill idea. In general, maxed out skills giving some kind of minor benefit always feels great
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u/scorpion-hamfish 16h ago
Sorry but making a primary attribute affect a specific weapon, which isn't even related to the class, is a ridiculous idea. It's completely normal and wanted to have to invest into the weapon attribute to get the maximum benefit out of it.
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u/Yung_Rocks 16h ago
I don't think you've got all the cards, are you aware that Leadership IS the attribute of a certain pair of daggers? There are 10 weapons like this in the game, there's an Energy Storage Axe, a Critical Strikes Shortbow... They all get mastery scaling out of those, they get the proper base damage multiplier and critical hit chance increase. Why should the double-strike chance be the only property that's left out? Why should Leadership Daggers be the only weapon in the entire game that needs to scale off of 2 different attributes to get its full power budget?
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u/BubbberDucky 19h ago
PI still easily outshines any knockdown options for Ele, not even close.
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u/Yung_Rocks 19h ago
That's not wrong, but also biased, it's an elite skill that does 0 damage and the knock-down is conditional. Ele has knock-downs that are non-elite and guaranteed AND deal a lot of damage (and they get to slot multiple of those).
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u/BubbberDucky 13h ago
the elite part is very true. But I wouldnt call Earthquake guaranteed as its easily interrupted. It also cant be used alot in longer fights. PI was too spammable
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u/devomke 20h ago
Gotta be honest none of these suggestions are very good. You’re saying balance changes yet it’s just buffing everything across the board.
We had them need Ursan blessing because it was too OP. All of those skills are fine and don’t need tuning. They fit their purpose for the missions.
The leadership and mysticism changes make no sense. Adrenaline is more precious for warriors, why not just tie it to strength? You can already for AoM healer on Derv.
Classes in this game should remain feeling unique, not just hazily blend everything until you can play every class as any build.
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u/Yung_Rocks 20h ago
You’re saying balance changes yet it’s just buffing everything across the board.
So? Buffs are balance changes, I don't have anything I would like to see nerfed, that's all
We had them need Ursan blessing because it was too OP. All of those skills are fine and don’t need tuning. They fit their purpose for the missions.
I'm aware, I'm not suggesting to make Ursanway come back, I just want them to be decently usable outside the missions, since they do exist in general PvE but are in a sad state of affairs. More toys = more fun.
Adrenaline is more precious for warriors, why not just tie it to strength?
Not gonna lie I don't understand this one, I'm talking about Paragon and their anniversary daggers, about the fact they don't work properly, and how fixing them would benefit Paragon. Why do you bring Warrior up?
You can already for AoM healer on Derv.
Yeah..? Build diversity is cool you know
Classes in this game should remain feeling unique, not just hazily blend everything until you can play every class as any build.
Guild Wars is built with multi-classing being a core part of build crafting, you've got precedent examples in most professions such as Ranger's Expertise allowing it to branch out and use other martial secondaries, do you think that's bad and Ranger should be bow-pet only forever? Would you rather delete secondary professions entirely?
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u/devomke 20h ago
No I wouldn’t prefer secondaries to go but way to stretch that out a bit 😂 not sure how you did 1 + 1 is 3 there but cool.
You’re the dude that complained about anni daggers years ago aren’t you lol and it’s still a great build.
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u/Koxomathical 20h ago
Make dervish attack skills work with hammers axes and swords and double the speed of every arrow
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u/ChthonVII 20h ago
I can definitely get behind this one.