Game Update Notes: September 26
Game Update Notes: September 26
09/26/2023—September 26 Release Notes World Polish Reduced the amount of healing twisted mender enemies applied to their allies. It is now a flat value rather than a percentage of the target's maximum health. Fixed an issue that could cause a mismatch between the Priority Strike rotation and rela...
They are actually nerfing skills/traits depending on the elite specialization in use. What a terrible "solution". They already did more or less the same for Harbinger instead of just adding a cooldown (of 3 seconds).
Dhuumfire: Reduced burning duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds when the scourge elite specialization is equipped in PvE only.
And Scourge gets nerfed hard again (Harbinger only slightly). After it was nerfed to the ground in June, then brought back again, then buffed even more (with the expansion), ... and this current nerf will most likely be followed up by a significant buff again. This is getting silly.
Those changes range from 30% to over 60%. WTF!
It's PvE. It's not competitive. Let people have some fun. And when you really feel the need to adjust something, don't use a Sledgehammer.
Tbf scourge needed a sledgehammer and the rest of the balance changes are indeed more of a small tweak than drastic nerfs.
Also, the argument "it's pve let people have some fun" is very shortsighted. Yeah, it's pve, but most boss fights have become ridiculously easy and our potential max dps is just completely out of control. Something has to be done for the sake of actual enjoyment, content longevity, ingame economy and all manner of other factors besides "some people like a power fantasy". We've had our fun for a month and it was more than enough, time to reign it back in.
Something has to be done for the sake of actual enjoyment, content longevity, ...
Whose?
- How many Scourge players are affected by this Sledgehammer Balancing? Right, all of them.
- How many Scourge players were able to pull 49K DPS and "trivialize" end game content? Right, a teeny-tiny fraction.
- How many Scourge players were able to (comfortably) beat said end game content and are now struggling again (to find a group)? I don't know.
While I wasn't playing Scourge myself since June (I'm wating until the Yo-Yo settles), I actually liked that an OP spec enabled players to access/beat content that was (or appeared to be) out of reach for them. Well, that's over now.
Also, PvE isn't equal to end game content. For the majority of players PvE means Open World and Story content where condition builds are notoriously slow compared to power builds. Those players probably had a lot of fun (and not a "power fantasy") until this nerf and are now wondering, why it suddenly takes so much longer (again) to kill stuff.
Drastic changes are never good. Neither drastic buffs nor drastic nerfs. Especially for the more casual majority of players who might not even read the patch notes.
I think they're headed in the right direction with the conditional balancing on some traits. It's hard with all the traitlines, specializations and weapon confounding combinations to consider, give the guys some slack. Scourge was out of control last patch, so I'm not surprised it got hit hard. Better nerf hard then buff slightly than nerf too little
They could have just added a 3s internal cooldown to Dhuumfire instead of changing the duration from 3s to 1s on Harbinger and (now) 2s on Scourge. The PvE/PvP/WvW split of skills is bad enough (though probably needed), but look how messy a complete description of the Dhuumfire trait/skill now looks. Such a violation of my beloved KISS principle.
Addition: Dhuumfire duration on Harbinger is still 3s in WvW and PvP (but only 1s in PvE). Am I expected to understand this?
Let people have some fun.
Anet says "no, fuck you"