Ok, I’m going to preface this with most of you will probably laugh or even this is evidence the change is good. But honestly I think you’re considering doing a lower version of the Star Wars Galaxies dreaded Combat Patch here, so let me explain the issues.
You have three types of gamers, casual gamers, twitch gamers and number crunchers. The first two won’t be effected, you’ll gain a tiny bit of love, maybe, from the first group but honestly you’re not going to break them away from the next Flappy Bird. You’re kneecapping number crunchers though.
Ferocity – an unknown fact that is now suddenly well known is that there currently is a viable chance based build for EVERY class to use excessive crit damage. This means while twitch gamers can most effectively plan out skill chains could find decent opposition in people that can tweak their numbers better or plan out teamwork numbers better. Now Celestial is worthless(there is almost always a dump stat for each class, the excessive crit damage which is luck based made up for it), balancing the best crit damage on accessories over armor isn’t important. The numbers are ‘easier’ but what does that really help? My casual friend told me, “I wish they just kept % that is easier to understand”.
And you’ll have to make all the crit damage gear changeable which will confuse some people when Appleseller’s Lucky Cog is set to Knights stats or whatnot. Though I guess you can just magically transform it the one they want(or make it a ticket for one and give them any infusion back that was in it)
Removal of Hybrids – I’ve poked around with A LOT of builds, found some viable ones I’ve never seen anyone use. And now thanks to this, no one will. Why? Because no one will be able to take the losses required to make a hybrid since they’ll be more severe. But yay for you, easier for you to balance then to actually let crazy people get to that max 100% condition duration or maybe just buff their Poison with 2 different Runes(And yes I know 100% is still obtainable via food/tool but you lose a lot for that too). Or maybe a bit from specific stats rather then a 5th and 6th divinity.
While I don’t personally mind the change to Traits from 30 to 6, there might be crazy people that are will to give up two abilities for 20 of different stats. Worse now your going to see further trait changing on the fly in WvW. It’s bad enough that most commanders I’ve worked with have considered me just utilities skills they can get if they shout at a mic as a Mesmer(especially since you keep nerfing what little fighting capabilities we have, ferocity will nerf our ability to have spike, confusion nerfs killed our attrition, despite it being more spike then attrition, really we need more Torment and maybe a short Poison). I ALREADY have mastered and put a lot of time into Utility/Elite/Major Trait/Gear Changing on the fly to manage different enounters and now I can totally redo my traits at anytime? Can I juggle bottles of plague while I’m at it? Now true, I love having the options and it’s fun being able to have such an exact counter to certain situations, but then there is little use for more then one of me and I don’t get to relax sometimes and let someone take over the juggling while I just enjoy a good fight.
Thirdly 2 sigils on Two-handed, I hope you realize your going to have to do a rebalanced on all those right? Most of them are quite overpowered and the ONLY ‘balancing’ fact was you could have a second sigil with one handeds. So your going to nerf the power that twitch gamers love to abuse and create more a conundrum for number crunchers to wade through, since we don’t mind ‘weaker’ weapons if they fit our tactic. Though while your there why don’t you have Giver’s Two Handeds give 20% duration(and make an ascended version). (As if I hadn’t spent enough time on http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ as is, sigh)
Summery TL:DR – So going through this every group is going to be hurt and little help will actually be made. Casuals will hate Ferocity(one step more they have to think about to get a stat, if precision wasn’t already bad enough, they’ll probably avoid crit play all together unless they just wanna see big numbers), Twitch will hate nerfing to power weapons and power stats(unless you’re going to ignore and just have power creep) and Number Crunchers will hate everything(especially since a lot of things they’ve built will be outmodded).
-Willy Wonka(Gene Wilder)