Guild Wars 2

Yeah, Eviscerate in particular does feel incredibly underpowered now, and I can’t help but think that yet again, it was a knee-jerk fix rather than letting it play out and seeing how players adapted to it.
There’s a lot of this, where ArenaNet seem to react in an over-the-top panic to certain community complaints, and yet brush others under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. Nothing ArenaNet does appears to be in moderation; currently it’s all extremes.

Eviscerate, along with Brawn and Doom sigil, is one of the few (yet happened) knee-jerk nerfs Anet did.
Happened back in BWEs since Warriors were using Bull+HB then switch into sigil intelligence/doom and Evis.
By today’s standards it’s obviously an easy build to counter, but back then Anet got terribly afraid of that gimmick that they did some bad nerfs.

They nerfed Doom sigil making it useless (nobody uses it), Brawn was also made completely worthless, and Eviscerate range was nerfed in a way that it’s actually an impairment to your movement rather than a gap closer when against a moving target.

The other bad nerf was Dancing Dagger; since they couldn’t fix the bug that increased damage when bouncing a lot, they halved its damage and no Thief ever used it again.
Making something too good into something useless nobody use is objectively an overnerf.

Those were panic decisions not well-thought changes, and even though they avoid commenting on this we all know how it went.
I don’t hold it up to them because they were still in their initial phase with GW2 etc. But I believe that 5 months later they should be honest and realize they made a mistake back then, and think of a better solution for those bad changes.

It seems though that they are making no effort to improve a huge part if not the biggest part of the game which is skills, mechanics, and traits. It’s not just things that were nerfed. It’s also things like ‘Downed State’ which while they are a good idea, they feel incomplete, clunky, or downright un-fun.

Some things were changed late in the development, like the Necromancer’s ‘Death Shroud.’ Death Shroud and their Soul Reaping tree were bugged pretty badly for a while. In fact when you go into death shroud it is still 4 skills and the same bar layout, like the downed state that it originally was.

The PvE community feels it
The PvP community feels it

I think the skills and abilities really need a closer look and better polish. It seems like Anet has basically brushed their hands together, said “DONE!”, and moved the entirety of their attention else where as if everything is perfect.

to me its more about “interesting content that fully utilize the gameplay” rather than the gameplay itself.

gw2 isnt “exciting” as it was with the levelling up experience.

world events? boring
dailies? boring
guild mission? boring or not accessible enough

this game is badly in need of something to spice it up, and i think pvp/wvw upgrades is the best route for them to go on.
mixing pve and pvp (like wvw) but in instanced huge map or dungeon with specific goals. creating some kind of open pvp world (with factions) feel.
but also put some beasties in there and what not.

like a huge instanced dungeon with 3 × 5man party in it, that all all have specific goals an that other parties can hinder.
like a 3 party pve with pvp dungeons.

ideas like that

gw2 need IDEAS.

Can’t say that I feel Eviscerate is underpowered. Still doing big dmg, I would use it even if it wasn’t a gap closer at all. Apart from that, I agree with everything said in this thread.

What I find is strange is that they haven’t backed off the nerfs. I heard a podcast where the developers stated that they nerfed spirit rangers to the point that no one uses them. But I haven’t noticed a significant effort to walk back and make that build viable again.

Mungrul.9358:

Yeah, Eviscerate in particular does feel incredibly underpowered now, and I can’t help but think that yet again, it was a knee-jerk fix rather than letting it play out and seeing how players adapted to it.
There’s a lot of this, where ArenaNet seem to react in an over-the-top panic to certain community complaints, and yet brush others under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. Nothing ArenaNet does appears to be in moderation; currently it’s all extremes.

I really dislike statements like this because it lacks anything concrete to go on, it is just a feeling. Yet I have to agree 100% with it. It’s this underlying feeling that never goes away that the major issues that should be worked on are left aside for quick reaction fixes to complaints. Those reaction fixes are bad because they are knee-jerk fixes and not thought out.

Remember in beta when people were complaining about Greatsword rangers? heh.

i remember when there was no tiers for traits. now that was fun. but when people started to use same builds it was easier for anet to put them in tiers then to make a list of 12 equally good traits… for me it was at beginning only a list of traits nothing else. i never even thought about them as one better than other. there was a room to build different builds and to actually make your character the way you wanted. anet should have gone the harder way of balancing instead of insta nerfing. now we have same situation where people use same build, but this time without any room to actually try something else. trait synergy is nonexistent atm.