Guild Wars 2 is preparing its next big balance patch for March 19th, and the team has released details and the notes for community feedback ahead of the update.
Most of the updates on the way are looking to make certain builds or skills more viable, though some intend to be tweaks to bring something to the right level.
Elementalists get arcane skill updates, with Arcane Wave getting a change to make it more distinct from Arcane Blast. The Elemental Surge trait has been renamed Arcane Lightning, and gets a rework to offer better bonuses to individual Arcane skills instead of letting them all inflict conditions.
Some classes get very focused changes. Engineer power-based holosmith builds get some love to help them be more competitive in PVE. The class also gets some trait reworks and improvements to the rifle in PvP. Guardian and Warrior changes focus on improving some of the less-used traits and skills and boosting them for viability. Thief gets a boost to quickness deadeye, which was nerfed a little too well previously. Revenant gets a reworked legendary renegade stance to help it be more viable in PvP. In PvE, it has worked well, so the team is looking for a balanced approach. Goals are to reduce the visual clutter and increase counter play options.
Other classes get some nerfs and tuning. Necromancer support scourge is still a bit overpowered, so they’re looking to increased cooldowns. Condition-based druid Ranger is also getting some nerfs due to being a PvP overperformer. This time, they are adjusting some of the defensive options to make them easier to defeat.
The full list of individual changes is here in the notes, and these come separate from the upcoming new Weapon Proficiencies that will arrive sometime soon, when the next Secrets of the Obscure expansion update goes live.
