Well, it looks like ArenaNet simply ignored all negative feedback and destroyed my Scourge (Main on my Secondary Account) by reducing the duration of Sand Shades (Scourge signature ability) from 20s to 8s. WTF!

Well, my Power Reaper (Main on my Primary Account) runs the Signets of Suffering trait. Or should I say "used to run"? This got completely gutted, too.

Feels bad, man! Guess, it's time to take a break from the game until at least 1 month after launch of the expansion to dodge most of the newly introduced bugs.

[–] hydrospanner@vlemmy.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Feels super bad, but if you still want to play, the upside spin is that you can frame it to yourself as the patch letting you out of the "Necro Jail" you created for yourself and try lots of wildly different options now.

I mean I totally get the disinterest too, but basically that's what happened for me when they ground Chrono into dust after years of being the only real source for alac and quick.

[–] necropola@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah, I have 2 Accounts with Characters of all 9 Professions at max level. I'm not in a Necro Jail, but those 2 Necromancers are actually my Mains. A Scourge on my Secondary Account and a Power Reaper on my Primary Account.

The easiest solution to this current Necro Disaster is to play both as Celestial Harbinger. It's their alternate Spec/Build already anyway. Or I could play any of my other Characters/Professions which are less affected by the Slaughtering.

On the other hand I could just refuse to play this Pseudo-Content and not adjust the builds of 18 characters to some Flavor of the Month Balance. There has to be at least one more balance patch before SotO anyway to account for Weaponsmaster.

And maybe someday ArenaNet acknowledges the real issue here:

Boons, especially Alacrity and Quickness, are way too powerful.
Making them permanently available and hence mandatory to have (in Group Content) was a terrible idea.
Allowing more Professions to provide those Boons permanently does not solve the issue and is bad, because it reduces diversity and profession/class identity. Professions providing unique benefits to a group would not be a problem at all, if those benefits weren't so incredibly strong.
Nerfing Boon Corruption and signature abilities like Sand Shades was only needed, because of this every professions needs to be able to permanently provide either Quickness or Alcacrity or both philosophy, i. e. since ArenaNet has decided to not add more Elite Specializations, they (think they) have to butcher existing/working builds in order to achieve this goal.

I found this disccusion on MightyTeapot's channel about Boons and their effect on the performance gap between medicore and top players pretty good. I suggest to watch/listen (from 28:53) until around the 1 hour mark where Teapot tells the story about a friend infiltrating the squad of a streamer to fix the sub-groups for providing enough boon coverage to beat the Dragon's End Meta.

Update: I see ArenatNet is already backpedaling quite a bit, though Sand Shades appear to be still down to 8s even after the balance follow-up patch in July. I'll have some popcorn 🍿 and wait it out ...