Guild Wars 2

I do realise this is a Theme park MMO not a Sandbox meaning devs run the show and we players have little to no say in the matter.
Recently you had the tPvP tournament. Why don’t you consult with the “pro” players about balance changes? They’re better players than you are at your own game, they’ve wasted more time than you had on their classes, they know the mechanics and tricks better. Yet you don’t care.
Honestly i was excited about the upcoming patch……….untill it came and left me and many others with a strange mix of feelings. Most of which being “wtf and why”
S/D thieves are now not viable. waste 4 initiative on a blockable skill that does no damage and can be blocked, leaped away from, blinded, evaded, invlulnerability-ed so you can get to the 1 skill that is unblockable and all of the mentioned still applies. Pure genius, Anet. In team fights i’m more useful if i just spam cluster bomb/poison.
If you would have nerfed LS damage and made it 3-4 initiative while the FS 1-2 initiative (a total of 5 initiative for both) it could have mitigated it better, additionally the fire/air sigils could use some adressing.
As a warrior i did agree that adrenaline should get wasted if you use the skill, but it deplets too fast out of combat. Arcing Strike the GS burst is still not good at all, no one will waste their precious adrenaline now on that. ever.
Hambow is still viable and currently the only some-what useful build. Celestial war got hit hard with this.
As a mesmer shatterer i got little improvements, the additional bounce is nice, but why play a glassy shatterer when you can play a mindless condition mesmer which never uses any of the shatters aside from Distortion. Scepter aside from the added coditions is still clunky and slow. The weapon itself needs a fix. As Helseth adressed in one of hes streams and i agree.
As a ranger no problem, actually fun to play pvp, can still kill them with my thief p/d but not with s/d because it’s broken. Although Signet of agility is now a must have because without the extra evades there is little time to react against the Rapid fire.
As a Guardian…….Meditiations all the way. Spirit wapons? hahaha, sure, good joke. Can destroy thieves now and really useful in any scenario, just need to time meditations correctly.
can’t add anything about the other classes due to lack of experience.

After all the ranting from countless players many of whom are devoted PvPers will devs listen? not me of course i’m not naive, but the pro players that play their game and have won tournaments? nah. maybe in another alternate universe.
By ignoring the opinion of others and only adressing bugs/utterly broken stuff, you’re making it worse for everyone.
You can’t listen to everyone, but at least listen to those who have proven themselves in combat that they know their class.

At this point, i am pretty sure the balance is based on statistics (class/build popularity etc.) not actual risk/reward ratios or just common sense how we understand it. So, asking top players is actually pointless seeing how Anet balancing politics are completely different apprently.

The only thing we as players can do is stop playing weak classes/builds and play broken OP classes to manipulate those statistics.

That is purely my opinion though based on all patches for past year.

I am not even quite sure why this forum section exists even, given how many actually good suggestions and how many concerns were posted here and how none of that got ever adressed. This forum section is probably same as mothership “Skyhammer” thread that gets completely ignored but serves as trash can for all skyhammer posts.

Cynz.9437:

At this point, i am pretty sure the balance is based on statistics from China (class/build popularity etc.)
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fixed it for ya!

well gota see how long it took them to nerf VOR in Guild wars 1 or to buff beastmaster builds. Talk about sins and wa/mo or just the derv outright ridiculus 16 regen 4 enchant build that was nigh immortal. We can also talk about the original ritualist healer that was so hard to hit it trolled a monk effectiveness wise, about soldier defence wich gave warrior permanantly 75% dodge rate when shouting defend yourself for high defence or about paragon healers or even about the fact a healing dervish could spam signet of earth at will due to winning more mana from removing enchant then casting them (effectively turning into an endless healing unstoppable dynamo with a 75% dodge rate on call that also can be used on removal to cause spam damage). effectively healing a good 150 hp per cast witheout spending a single mana point and continuing healing even at 0 mana effectively laughing their BLEEP off from mesmer mana burn. Broken builds is the everlasting story of MMO games and not even world of warcraft is spared that kind of mishaps. From ice mages who have been OP since day one to Retrdin (paladin who choose retribution builds) and Emo priest (shadow priest with so much dots you die in 3 second) prety much any MMO nowaday fellow the standards of popular versus unpopular. They care little what player thinks of their class. If a class is underplayed they buff it massively then it becomes OP for a time and they buff another the next 3 month and here goes the endless rotation for who reign supreme in the pvp scene.