Hi Everyone,

We’ve done some work on the next balance update and wanted to share some of the potential changes for discussion and feedback. As a reminder, this update is intended to be smaller but more targeted to address major issues within the game mode as we work toward some major changes in a future update. This is also not the full list of changes for the update, just the ones targeted at WvW.

The goal of this update on the competitive side is not to nerf everything that deserves a nerf, but to bring overperforming builds back in line. There are aspects of every meta build (and even some non-meta builds) that could reasonably be nerfed, but since we’re already looking ahead to a major shakeup we’re more focused on balancing around the current power level for now.

In particular we’re looking at:

Scourge

We’ve identified scourge as the major pain point in WvW right now, and more specifically Sand Savant’s big shade affecting 10 targets. This has pushed scourge far above other options in terms of damage, while also adding to its strong corrupts and solid barrier application. There are other aspects of scourge that we’re looking into for the future update, but in the short-term we feel that reducing their target cap back down to 5 is a significant change and we want to see how the meta adjusts before making any additional changes to shades. We do still have concerns about their corrupt potential, so we’re also making a slight adjustment to Devouring Darkness.

Sand Savant: This trait no longer increases the target cap of shade skills in WvW only

Devouring Darkness (from Lingering Curse): Reduced the number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1 in WvW only

Remember that these changes are not locked down and we still have time to iterate. We look forward to your thoughts and feedback.

-The Systems Team