cat.8975

The reworks to give more classes access to support quickness and/or alacrity builds has been perfectly in line with "bring the player, not the class". While there are usually some outlier DPS builds, they've done a decent job of tightening up the numbers over the last 5 years or so. They just need to lower the builds that have high ranged DPS uptime so they stop overperforming so much in real fights. It's fine if they have fights where they shine, but it gets dumb when there are maybe 1-3 builds absolutely dominating every other build in most non-golem encounters.

If Prime Light Beam on holo is allowed to have at least a 1.0 coef, why can't we get the same for Jurisdiction? The blanket nerf to give all CC skills 0.01 coefficients in WvW/PvP was such a terrible decision...

They didn't even bother 😌

Guard axe 3 has the same problem and it has been driving me nuts since 2017. Would be nice if they could address these.

Haven't we been delaying strike CMs specifically so they could be polished and in a balanced & playable state on release? How was this missed?

This change allows condi builds to use a second weapon set that doesn't have a torch on it without worrying about missing out on the proc throws. After the change, you'll have 2 fireballs to throw with every torch 4 cast. With a cooldown of 9.6s (with alacrity), this means you'll be able to use the skill twice every time you're on torch (if you're swapping weapons off cd) for a total of 4 throws. May have the unintended side effect of cwb builds continuing to camp torch thanks to the cdr from Restorative Virtues, but we'll have to see how off-hand pistol holds up against it.

I think it's more of an issue with the game not doing a good job of handling cone aoes. The way they work isn't exactly intuitive.

The point is that the nerf hit qfb more than any other build, and all of the dps builds are still doing 41-42k dps so there is no problem here.

I believe this nerf was primarily done to knock cqb down a little bit, as full ritualist's comes with a ton of vit.

I like the flavor of the shaped AoE, but it could definitely use a radius+range increase.

It's fine to use the support weapons as long as you have enough boon duration to sustain 100% alac. They're lower hits/s but they're not 0 hits/s, so you can still make them work just fine. The condi build also has a ton of variety in what weapons you can play it with (as long as you have at least one weapon set with a torch). Willbender is arguably in the best state it has ever been in since EoD release, with power, condi, power alac, and heal alac all being viable build options. I've even had good results with full cele on a sort of hybrid heal/dps/boon build. Having a healer do 10-20k dps instead of 2-5k dps can be a hell of an improvement to overall party performance.

Willbender is in a great spot right now. I don't think it needs any of the big changes people are still asking for.

If they "fixed" it, it would make the skill even more frustrating to use. The optimal play would be to press the button, wait as long as possible, and then throw it just before it expires. Awful awful awful terrible gameplay.

We've been complaining about this trait for at least 5+ years at this point in various PvE discords (and other places). It makes condi guard incredibly annoying to play when you're trying to squeeze out every last bit of damage and heavily discourages the use of two-handed weapons or other off-hand swaps. The main points of frustration are: It's time sensitive. When it procs, you are required to cast the skill within the next few seconds or lose a huge chunk of damage. This sucks if you don't have a torch out due to using another weapon set, tomes, bundles, etc. It's random. It only procs on critical hits, and you will never run 100% crit chance in an optimal condi build. It heavily punishes mistakes. If you fail to cast your base torch 4 before the trait procs, you will end up with the two casts being out of sync, and it's very difficult (or impossible) to sync them back up. Due to the janky casting mechanics in this game, having them out of sync costs you more time and thus more dps. Willbender suffers from this problem but in reverse. It has a trait that reduces weapon skill cooldowns, but not this trait cooldown, so you will never have the two in sync. I'd love if they could somehow give t4 the Skyscale fireball treatment. A "combined ammo" skill where you could have the base skill work normally (only ever recharging to 1 ammo) and the trait procs adding a bonus throw every now and then (so you could have up to two throws at any given point). Remove the crit reliance while we're at it, too (just have it proc whenever the cooldown is up). Would also be nice if the skill wasn't a flipover. The flipover effect here is pointless and creates the illusion of choice (it's always best to throw it, as you keep the "passive" pbaoe burn regardless of what you do).

Take more boon duration (honestly, just push for 100%), and use every charge of the quickness mantra as quickly as possible. You also don't need the quickness traits if you take FMW, allowing you to take the +2 pages on final mantra charge trait and the axe trait for another source of CC to proc Stoic Demeanor.