January Balance Update Preview

has become a popular Relic due to many healers being able to utilize its heavy healing output. In the upcoming patch, the scaling of this heal has been reduced from 0.8 to 0.5. As the base amount stays the same, this will likely not cause any change to the builds already utilizing the Relic.

has been a decent alternative where you'd want a bit of Barrier for proactive mitigation. This will be changed to healing by default, with any excess healing from the Relic being converted to Barrier. Effectively making it optimal regardless of the health of your allies, and solidifies the Relic as a solid choice on any healing build.

has not been on the radar for the most part, but will now grant Might and Fury as well. Given the long Cooldown it would need to be a heavy hitter to compete with the likes of , which has become a popular choice for builds that need to supplement their boon coverage.

is the most exciting of the Relic updates. This change simply removes the cooldown, meaning you can maintain the buff easier when activating Stance skills.
Weaver is the only specialization likely to benefit from this Relic with Stance Cooldowns on the lower side, and looks to be a good competitor to .

Stop Hammer Time

Hammer as a Condition weapon on Elementalist recently made its way up the rankings, placing both Tempest and Weaver at the 45k mark. In the upcoming patch, some of the stronger Hammer skills have been significantly Nerfed to limit these builds.

• 's Burning duration is reduced by 50%.
• 's Burning duration is reduced by 66%.
• 's Bleeding duration is reduced by 40%.

While these changes certainly bring the builds back in line, each projected to end up at 41k and 40k respectively, this will instead lead to picking up the Warhorn yet again.
While Tempest performs similarly with both weapon choices, Condition Weaver's previous benchmark done by Ryan will be the best in slot after the January 30th patch, clocking in at 42.4k. This practically means that a new weapon playstyle will now be relegated to the category of well-performing, but not quite the best, and Elementalist returns to using Warhorn for nearly every build.

So Long, New Friend

Carrion Devourer quickly became a new-found companion after the Pet overhaul last year and has been the favorite for all Untamed builds. In this update, its passive attacks will be reduced in damage and has a substantially increased cooldown.
We expect a drastic reduction in Devourer populations with this update. Learn more about devourer habitats here.

Condition Quickness Untamed is another build being hit by this patch, being able to perform quite well at the cost of having little group support.
This is addressed by reducing the total Bleeding stacks on from 6 to 4. Being a weapon that is relatively weak in Condition Damage compared to other options, it is possible we won't see Axe at all for the build after this patch.
Short Bow is a strong weapon that is generally avoided on Untamed due to its slow Ambush skill, ever fewer options seem available to a build that saw very little play to begin with.

To compensate, Might is added to to raise its supportive capability. We're going to wait patiently to see how the nerf of both weapon and pet affects the build overall.

Lingering Afterthoughts

Mirage is another specialization that has been seeing higher numbers in benchmark scenarios.
It is now being cut down drastically, despite having less than 1% playrate according to user-reported metrics.

Historically known for its high skill ceiling and reliance on bursting Confusion, Mirage has in the past half year become a slow-ramping Condition build that hardly brings anything to the table - especially compared to its sister-specialization Virtuoso.
By being reliant on Regeneration to gain additional stats from , and with the November patch also needing to manage Chaos Aura, it was increasingly unclear what the studio had in mind for the specialization.

This is what's is in store for the desert nomads in the upcoming patch:

• Both and are being subjected to significant Nerfs.
• The Condition Duration of both Axe's and clone attacks are being reduced.
• If that wasn't enough, the number of Whirl Finishers from are being cut in half, a combo typically used with the of Staff.

This is expected to shave off almost 14% of our current build's damage output, down to 40k DPS. With the Buffs to Illusions that also arrived in November, it would seem players should now be discouraged from using the Chaos Trait Line altogether, despite having gained damage functionality so recently.

Illusions Mirage is a build not typically seen since the rework of Staff and Chaos Trait Line back in 2021.
While not being hit nearly as hard by these changes, it is considered to have the most difficult playstyle of any build.

The exact same change to was cancelled in the August balance patch - in which the studio admitted the adjustments were based on unrealistic conditions, like benchmarks. Based on the unofficial player data we can get our hands on, it isn't obvious that this is an outlier across the board. And with a dedicated balance patch on the horizon, we're not sure why they are throwing everything at the wall, rather than taking the opportunity to iterate over the next couple months.