Hi, I am warrior and this is my feedback thread that will very likely fade away in few days.
This thread is about PvP/WvW and has nothing to do with PvE.
The whole thing started with stats change on 23.6.2015:
Attribute Point Changes
- Attribute points on equipment have been increased by approximately 30%.
+ change from when everyone is able to pick three full trait lines
At that time, everyone was crying about mesmers dealing too much damage with shatter combo wombo… whatever, (almost) everyone was dealing too high damage. Combat was more dynamic, yes, but at the cost of healthy (and skilled) gameplay.
Next change happened actually earlier on 16.3.2015:
- Stability: This boon has been changed from a duration stack type to an intensity stack type. Crowd-control effects will remove one instance of stability apiece each time they are applied. Each ability and trait has been adjusted to apply a certain number of stacks.
This was a bad change, not at that time, but because later this change resulted into something much worse. The problem is exactly what is happening now. Classes + with their elite specialisations were given too much (crowd control skills, evades, …) + short CD stunbreaks to deal with this stability change AND cc spam (even though it was more half a year later, but whatever). In the past, stuns and hard cc was warrior’s speciality mostly. Now, almost any class can spam it and warrior is not even in the first three spots.
Spammable skills and high damage increase broke the whole intelligent gameplay and made combat less skill depended.
I am not saying it did not exist before, but it is obviously much worse now.
Between those changes you nerfed the only supportive warrior’s bunker build with high sustain – shoutbow. Warrior had none since that. With HoT release when on 1.12.2015 – PvP Legendary Journey — The Ascension – started, it was obvious which elite specialisations were broken = most used. No need to name them.
I will briefly mention nerfing warrior’s mobility that was given to druid, because it was overpowered in hands of warrior. Adrenaline change was good but only partially. Adrenaline loss on burst skill miss was good, the decay part when out of combat made whole warrior mechanic clumsy and abusable from opponent’s side. Also some very important warrior skills are still being affected by chill and cripple (Eviscerate, Shield Bash, Headbutt – not sure if there are also other skills). This only shows, how developers do not know/care about BASIC things in warrior class. There are too much things to mention, but that is not point of this thread.
I tried to remain optimistic about the last balance patch, but it is no longer possible. Developers did very simple (lazy) changes, not looking at all on major warrior issues AND issues with other classes too. Removing few amulets in PvP will not solve it.
Also, changes in WvW, mechanic and new borderlands:
New WvW mechanic released with HoT practically destroyed WvW, especially small roaming groups/solo roaming. It does not matter anymore. The newest change (objective upgrades based on number of dolyaks – 26.1.2016) will not revert the mistake you did. New desert borderlands are beautiful in terms of design, but they are inferior to the original ones. They are too vertical and complex. Original borderlands were just fine (with the original WvW mechanic).
Both gamemodes – PvE and PvP/WvW should be balanced separately AND developers should take player’s feedback more seriously. Not only when making new elite specialisations… oh wait…