Guild Wars 2

The profession updates were underwhelming. Small adjustments scattered about with a few major ones such as Ranger Shouts and to an extent, Warrior Rifle. Plenty of weaker traits, utilities, and other aspects were left alone and are now weaker than ever.

Much of the old weapons and skills are not being updated to match what came with the new ones presented in the elite specializations of Heart of Thorns. The state of the game posted about focusing on more depth and not breadth, and all the balance update did was go after more low-hanging fruit, which has been done since launch.

Update the old and make it new. All that new tech that keeps being mentioned over-and-over on the live streams doesn’t seem to be used on updating the past to making the professions worthwhile as a whole.

You can now remove the traps out of the guardians skills. It’s simply useless. 1/2s of daze … seriously !!

What are you trying to do with the guardian? Do you have a goal in mind at least? As stated in one previous post, the guardian excels in nothing. It’s an average class that is becoming less and less fun to play.

If the problem with the traps was in PvP do the balancing only in there.

Hi Gaile,
I love the new shatterer, the launching pads, gliding and changing fractal level inside of the instance.

Bug I found: LFG tool doesn’t work well. There is some bug which prevents the advert coming up on the list. It happened in fractals. Plus annoying clicking on buying fractal keys and confirming it.

What I think devs should work on:
PvE balance is now needed. There must be a distinction between pve and PvP skill power.
Raids are something where every profession should be a nice addition to the party, but guardian is not that case, he is just a “meh” profession for now. His low damage, weaker party buff, and lack of some special functionality (like mesmer’s party wide alacrity and distortion) makes him unviable there.
Furthermore, my newly crafted tanking gear is collecting dust. I would like raid devs to think about how unfriendly their design is to main-only players. Let’s assume somebody will take me to the party out of pity and let me tank VG: we kill it (yaaaay!) and then they ask me to switch to some full dps profession…that is reality, and the worst part of it is that it seems to be by design.

I don’t know about other professions because I play only guardian since 2012, but I do honestly know that guardian in raid needs a huge buff in functionality (not just DPS). And it would be nice to have it not only in new wings, but also in the first one: so basically if we are supposed to tank VG we need to get something extra for the party, and if Gorseval and Sabetha are not in need of tank, we need to have a pure single target DPS build that is as good as warrior/revenant. But, do it only in PVE. PVE traps now lost their important functionality, as half a second of daze doesn’t help much with mobs.

I only WvW so I can only comment on the changes effect on that game mode.

Enhanced Squad UI
Very good changes for the most part. There is the issue with the icons not getting cleared on stealth or death, but that’s already been identified by yourselves.

Gliding in Central Tyria
Don’t care… would be nice to be able to glide in WvW but I don’t care that much.

Lunar New Year
Can’t use fireworks in WvW?! that sucks…

Eldvin Monastery Brew of the Month Club
Cool I guess but pretty much an exact copy of the World of Warcraft thing.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
World Polish
Doesn’t effect me.
General
Don’t know if the healing allies in WvW helps tag enemies, but it feels like it does. Which I love as I main ele
The show all usable objects check box is amazing for showing loot bags. Now we just need auto loot.
Fractals
never done one (apart from getting boosted to try and get ascended loot)
Boss Resets
meh
Raids
meh
Items
The Oni Blade looks very cool.
Profession Skills
General
Reviving and stomping not being effected by Quickness and Slow is great!
Quickness and Slow not effecting defensive abilities is bad… Already the emphasis is too heavily on damage and not mitigation. This needs to stop. Fights don’t need to be over in 5s.

Elementalist
Diamond Skin: I don’t use the earth line, but this is a very weak skill now. in WvW you won’t be able to remove anywere near enough condis to warrant taking this skill.
Churning Earth: Big buff, the damage was great when combined with lightning flash, now the cast is short enough that we don’t need the LF to ensure a hit.
Auras: needed nerf and as someone who dislikes auras I’m fine with it.
Fresh Air: Good change but still not enough to warrant taking over Lightning rod or bolt to the heart.

Guardian
Smite condition: good change but not enough. too many condis in the game.
Sanctuary: Great change, but not enough to replace stand your ground, purging flames, wall of reflection or Test of Faith.
Dragonhunter
Wings of Resolve: Amazing change to have it no longer effected by movement effects. means we can use it as an escape as well as an engage much easier.
Traps: needed nerf and not too far either. gg.

Mesmer/Chrono
Far too big a change in one go.
You gutted the class and didn’t account for the overall effect.
The feedback change is good though.

Necro
Are you INSANE?!?!?!
Corrupt boon on 10s CD (with traits)
Basically in WvW we cannot cleanse the condis and reapply boons fast enough. Necro just needs to spam on the zerg and deal insane condi damage. The poison is not a major issue as 1,200 range means they can stand with the eles and revs for healing.

The other boon -> condi changes are uber powerful in sPvP but not as big a deal in WvW zerg play.
In general Necro got a stupid large buff when they were already pretty solid.

Revenant
CoR: needed nerf but not big enough. It still hits like a freight train.
The .5s thing is nonsense though. I’d understand if just affected one rev, but affecting other revs means that a bad build rev will hit first for piddly damage and stop the zerker rev CoR from hitting… that’s bad design (even if I’m glad it nerfs stacking revs)
Facet of Light: Good change. it was too much of an oh kitten skill. now it requires more skill.

Structured Player vs. Player
I don’t play sPvP
PvP Equipment
See above

WvW
Automatic Upgrade Update
Amazing, but the numbers are wrong. It takes far too long to upgrade towers, keeps and camps. SM is about right though.
Should be scaled based on objective value and number of Doly routes imho.
PPK
Amazing, but 1 point is not quite enough. 2-3 would be better imho. If the population in WvW was at it’s peak (before the stab changes last year) then 1 point would be enough. But the new borderlands and population drop means fights are rarer and smaller. 1 point is not enough.

Reduced Rally Cap
Really enjoying this change. fights seem to last longer and one team doesn’t just steam roller now. Plus people are ressing far more than just focussing on killing downed enemies. Feels much much better.

Combat revive
Good change, though it would be nice if banner (and the like) worked on dead dead. The CDs are long enough that it wouldn’t affect the outcome of a fight much, but would help with the long cast times and the speed people go from downed to dead.

General
Cata costs reduction is good, but I still think Guild Cata should be cheaper still.
Not needing badges for superior siege is great!
animated capture effect.. I though already existed but maybe it was only in EoTM before?
Announcement on captures… I wish i could just turn them off completely…
Fixing of bugs with wall is obviously good.

Desert BL
Honestly, whilst the changes are good.. the BL is still horrible. I would love the old BLs to return.
The Oasis event changes are fine, but there still seems to be lag (but not as much)

EB
floating raptor gone?! NOOOO

Guild Claiming
Banner changes are good. not seen as much of them since the patch (though the fact that upgrading a capture to T2-3 takes forever might effect that…)
Airship Defence: Still too short a CD for something which makes SM unapealling to attack for 3 minutes… It should be 3m and a 30m CD imho.

Banners
All the nerfs are good. maybe not enough but we will see when they start apearing on the battlefield again (see above for reason).

Guilds
I don’t care about the decoration stuff….

World Boses
Meh…

Tequatl and gliding were both home runs. The balance updates made sense – even if they were a little painful to some.

Still, I would rate this update as disappointing – and that is coming from someone that LOVES this game. When I think about a quarterly update to GW2, I think about things like the Tower of Nightmares, the Flame and Frost upgrades, Silverwastes/DryTop and the Assault on LA. Those felt like labors of love – the excitement level from developers, the breadth of content, the pure joy that came through in the story. Most importantly, they were things that brought the community together (a fresh approach compared to other MMOs – the thing that really set GW2 apart). In comparison, this patch doesn’t live up to expectations or to what should be Anet standards. It is just not very meaty.

In short, there is little new to do in this patch until the hour/minute of Tequatl rolls around – when we get the few minutes of an actually interesting fight. There is no story advancement, no updates to systems that have gone years without being touched content-wise (notably missions and fractals).

My biggest concern, however, comes from what you say is “coming soon.” We see no excitement or developer involvement for anything with one exception – raids. Unfortunately, by your own admission, that is something designed for only a small percentage of the player base.

It makes me worry that you are dedicating resources to a single element to the detriment of everything else.

The direction of the game really feels random and possibly even off course. You say you plan to focus on building on core elements, but (again with the exception of raids) you dont really define what those elements/foundations are. We get a lackluster patch (compared to what you’ve given us in the past in the same time frame) that makes me worry about where you plan to take the game.

What I like:

New shatterer is better than old one, not too easy and not too hard.
Glide in Tyria, no more deaths because I forget where I am playing.

What I do not like:

Many achievements of shatterer but you can´t get any mastery point with them. However, you can get 3 or 4 mastery points with triple trouble. Your should get at least 1 mastery point for the meta achievement of shatterer.

We should be able to use 2 different keys for jumping and gliding. Sometimes I want to jump and I don´t want the glider, but now it opens. It wasn´t so important when in Tyria I coudn´t glide, so I had this problem only in HOT but know it appears in all the jumping puzzles of the game and it is more important than ever.

Fractals are still as good as dead.

Raids are toxic.

Revenant is dead.

Elementalist is dead.

Many other classes not worth playing.

Pvp still not separated from pve.

Shatterer is a visual mess after all those skill visual effect nerfs in the name of clutter. If you’re gonna mess up this bad atleast make it an toggle option instead of removing it at one place and adding it to another :/

Gliding through 3 year old content is fun for a few minutes but not worthy of being called a big update.

Ad infinitum still not available, and will probably have an absurd collection.

Current HoT legendaries have an ridiculously high goldsink and the part on how to get your precursor into the legendary is unclear in the game.

Teamspeak is not a part of Gw2 and shouldn’t be forced upon you when joining guilds/events or raids.

There’s a serious lack of real content.

New classes, races, faces, hair, customisation would not hurt the game in one bit, I would throw my wallet at the screen just to make some more pretty charrs!

More interaction would calm the community, show us what you’re working on, explain to us why you do a thing, teach us why certain things are done a certain way, show us you still love Gw2 and not just the money it makes you.

Tldr: the update is disappointing, they all feel like downgrades.

Even pre-thief buff Ranger was the worst power dps class in the game. With thief getting massive buffs i feel like Ranger deserves a buff too, at the moment only the condi damage ranger is somewhat decent but still years behind necros or warriors. Ranger has been pushed off as a pure healing class which pretty sure you devs do not want to happen. Ranger deserves an autoattack buff, on weapons like Greatsword, Shortbow, Longbow, Sword even as its not a competitive power weapon now. Pretty sure you;’re okay with ranged weapons having good damage now with DH and Revannt longbow and hammer having very competitive DPS. Yet the “by default” ranged class is stuck behind with a 3k dps weapon. I mean, Skills on Longbow or GS are fine but their auto attacks are absolutely atrocious. Just a 20% buff ( still 20% less than thief) would make wonders for these wapons in order to see more use of them. Please consider buffing ranger autoattacks since they are really lacking and there are people that want to play ranger as a dps class and not a sole healbot.

The guardian “balance” update feels severely underwhelming and…for the lack of a better word, extremely lazy:

Zealous Scepter: Increased the might gain from this trait from 1 stack for 10 seconds to 2 stacks for 10 seconds when justice is triggered.

Wrathful Spirit: Increased the retaliation gain from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.

those are the type of changes that make up pretty much the majority of the first balance update guardians have had since HoT launched.

Gliding in core Tyria is great.

Still not fun playing against condi revs in sPvP.

Off the top of my head:
•I was confused to not see major changes to ele scepter because those changes were hyped before the launch of the patch | changes to focus were a nice surprise and made an already good weapon better | warhorn was not touched, those skills have needed work since the launch of HoT (bring back boon strip on fire 5, take another look at air 5 and rework it being my personal wants) | change to fresh air cool and to lightning rod appreciated
•Thief autoattacks are hilariously OP, hate being on the receiving end but dishing out the attacks makes thief’s learning curve significantly less due to the ability to spam autos. Still fun though
•So mesmer is not top dog in PvP and WvW roaming. Finally feel I can play mes again without being accused of playing an OP class. I will admit, the chrono cutbacks in alacrity ruin the trait line, seems like there was a disconnect in how the changes would affect alacrity tied to the skills (not enough alacrity given in general it seems)
•Gliding in central Tyria hype matches the patch, everything and more, cool stuff

Hope this helps :x

From a Wvw only Player

-cor nerf was a joke The dmg is still totally broken. Reduce dmg massive and let it work other way round so near hits are stronge it´s totally broken to deal such amount of dmg on that range with such a low risk
- stability need a buff best would be revert to old system but than you must admit that you make a msitake so will never happen :-(
-Reduce the power creep since 2 years every major balacne patch increase the overall dmg it´s way to much dmg in the game it´s no fun in large scale that 3 aoe often are enough to isntant kill you. turn down the overalldmg by 30% at least, maybe bit more on bl side
-condis are way to strong in small/midscale scale
-give us back alpine bl new bl are simply terrible
-latest upgrade tweaks make the new system better but old system just without the gold cost still was better

General consensus of the mesmers in the Mesmer section and in-game are that the Alacrity nerf/fix is a HUGE change. It was quite a bit overpowered for their party members, but the entire Elite spec was mostly focused around Alacrity, which got slashed.

People generally feel that if it could stay 66% on mesmers themselves while giving out 33% to party members, that would be a good compromise.
Another way might be to reduce Cooldowns on some of the wells, as it’s difficult to even keep on yourself most of the time now. Otherwise perhaps increase the Alacrity duration from shatter?
*Overall if we could get some communication on what Arenanet wants Mesmers to be, that’d be great. Their current personal DPS output is around half of any other class, with a lot more micromanaging required.

The scepter autoattack was a nice change but still won’t see much use in end-game content.

Well of Precog won’t see much use now, as Aegis on demand (Ex. guardians) is much better than Aegis pulses.

In Fractals, there’s a new Mossman-cheese spot.

The new Shatterer fight is pretty fun and flying in Tyria is amazing!

Was there a reason for the boon targetting change in raids, by chance?

WvW is still dying, even if you put updates like PPK on it which should have stayed there over a year ago already. These updates didn’t help the drowning ship at all

Here’s some quick notes of my feedback:

• Warriors still need more sustain
• Mesmers need a bit more buff somehow…
• New shatterer fight is great!
• Loving Tyria gliding!
• Thief changes really help them be competitive in PvE!
• Guardians still need help in PvE. Maybe PvP too.

Really love gliding in Central Tyria (no more pointless deaths for missteps!).

Love the Shatterer rework. If you guys could do this for all the bosses (especially the easy ones that die in 5 seconds) except Triple Trouble and Teq, it would be great. Brings something fresh and new to the game. I felt so much excitement while doing the Shatterer… (even though I don’t know how people can die so much… and I’m just standing still taking literally no damage?). And I’ve never felt excitement while doing Shatterer… as before it was just like a dummy for target practice :/.

I’m just speaking from a player’s point of view, I have no idea how much it costs to rework something, so I probably sound unreasonable.

Alacrity: Was nerved too hard imo. Give the Improved Alacritytrait +100% effectiveness of Alacrity so that the chrono himself again has the former 66% faster recharge rate. Nerving the group support of Alacrity was necessary.

The Chronowell (evasion one): From OP to useless in PvE and optional in PvP.

too much boon corrupt on necro. I am all pro boon corrupt. But necro shouldn’t be able to strip all boons without much effort.

Thiefs looking pretty solid BUT it feels like most of the damage is loaded into the autoattack. Either other skills need utility or more damage

Ranger some nice changes. I would maybe consider not running the obvious choices now in certain niche ideas. Maybe try fixing the actual problem next time? e.g. Longbow does way less damage than Dragonhunters longbow, Greatsword (from the skill concept my all time fav out off all weapons/classes) autoattack damage is awfull. Sword autoattack chain is still gimmicky as hell. You cannot actually intent that players have to deactivate auto attack and press 1 just so that this weapon doesn’t kill the user?

Warrior feels better but I currently did not play enough warrior after the patch to actually say sth. about that.

I like the WvW changes but they do not solve the WvW problem.

€ Dragonhunter/traps still feel stupid in PvP. Ranger traps aren’t so annoying but some for them: The cooldown just only start if the trap is trigger!!! Just do it exactly like Ranger ghosts. While the trap is active it can be triggert manually to start the cooldown. That’s a simple fix for the “cannot go near the point with the dragon hunter because he has his traps twice which will most likely kill me”-problem

I love that we’re getting predictable balance patches. Quarterly sounds perfect.

However, I disliked several of the changes that create “invisible” rules that aren’t explained by the game or require digging around in the wiki or self-testing to understand.

i.e:
“Scorched Earth: Enemies are now able to be struck by this skill only once every 0.5 seconds.”
– Does this mean per player? Per Scorched Earth cast? Per enemy (from all SE sources?)
– This isn’t listed in the skill description and isn’t found on any other skill or mechanic.

“When each player in a raid enters combat, their boon prioritization will be locked in based on the composition of the subgroup they are currently in. That prioritization will not change until the player has left combat, even if their subgroup composition changes while they are in combat.”
– Why not just lock subgroups while in combat? Another invisible change.

Also, the change to ‘Blood Reckoning’ was a surprise and unwanted. It was a skill that was great when used at the right moment but left you with no healing in-between. Other heal skills were buffed but this one is complete trash now. The only use it would have had (double-casting Scorched Earth) was removed by other changes.

‘Well of Precognition’ now fails thematically and in practice. It’s worthless. Could have been given a longer cooldown or shorter duration (or both) but now it has essentially been removed.

I wish we had EXPLANATIONS for each change. Like what League of Legends does for every balance update.

Additionally, balancing classes towards a middle-ground will make Raids more difficult as teams were often using the top-tier classes and builds for their pre-26th attempts. This concerns me if the difficulty isn’t re-evaluated later.

UI:
Great QoL. I love the additional commander targeting option!
The option to show all usable items name is actually one of the best parts of the game. Thank you so much for this.

Gliding in Central Tyria:
Love ALL of it. Seriously, thank you again. It would be awesome if we could use the layline to glide to a secret location in dry top (in the cavern), but that’s pretty much just a random idea that came to me while I was excessively exploring Tyria.

Lunar New Year:
This event.. Is not one of the best events that you came up with.
Considering that most rewards come out of playing dragon ball, it would be nice if you would put more effort into it.
Right now, the blue team will always be handicapped if the teams are still filling up (red team fills first). The jumping pad at the spawn is.. bad, hitting the ceiling all the time, lagging and not jumping correctly, ect. Losing time because of a poorly set jump pad is.. bad. Some kind of reward should be given to players, even if they lose the match. Otherwise, players tend to leave and when you go and try to find a new match, you end up in a 400red/50blue game; Of course, you end up in the blue team.

Eldvin Monastery Brew of the Month Club :
Well… Gold sink. literally. 10g +12 months, and you get 3ap, a backpiece that looks like a crafting backpack and a piece of guild furniture, which once again, isn’t that special. The whole club feels lacking content/reason to exist.

Class balancing:
As many already mentioned, the patch felt a bit random.
- Considering that thieves can now auto attack the raid boss for 20k damage by pretty much spamming 1, while you nerfed the burnserkers to such extend that they are not viable in raids anymore, makes no sense.
- Dragonhunter is supposed to be the dps alteration of the support/tanky class. They weren’t. It was easy to counter them (either by sending a minion/pet/clone to trigger their trap, or pulling them away from the obvious trap location). In sPvP their skills and trap trait were strong, cause it cced the enemy for too long and created a super short burst of damage, but in PvE that cc break was the only reason why dragonhunters were welcome. Now they lack damage and other classes are better supports than them. They are pretty much useless. Just increase the duration of the trap and lower it’s damage a bit. This way it will be easy for other players to run away from the damage source, and at the same time, it would make the trap a valid damage source in PvE, that could in fact, make the dragon hunter closer to what it was supposed to be. No dragon will ever be hunted by such a weak elite specialization.

- Mesmers.. yea, some nerfing was in order, but you should check their other traits and their current functionality, as the nerf they got affected not only alacrity but other traits related to that skill as well. They are playable, but lost way too much efficiency because of that nerf.

TL:DR; You should put more work into the balance, and if possible, you should split PvE, WvW and sPvP skills and balance them individualy because nerfing something for making a better balance in sPvP will definitely cause inbalance in other modes.

In short, this patch was a complete mess, but the addition of gliding has managed to successfully give the illusion that the patch wasn’t just simply there to gut certain classes.

Revenants received NOTHING but nerfs. Forget trying to actually bring up the other legends, you just simply gutted the sword and hammer into oblivion. Precision Strike still prioritizes objects over enemies, even when the enemy is closer than the object.

Oh and Unrelenting Assault? You removed so much damage and duration from it that its only role now is to simply function as a non-reliable evade that warps you into the nearby wall 60% of the time.

Coalescence of Ruin. I don’t have to say much more here. Just watch this.

What a fantastic zero-effort way to pander to the lowest possible skilled players who fail to use the dodge mechanic which you constantly hail as one of the most unique features of the game. I’m in utter disbelief at the change. The scariest part is that whoever was in charge of balancing the Revenant genuinely thought god forbid two friends with the same class work together in a game where we promote cooperative efforts.

The nerfing of the shield’s 5 healing scaling likewise dealt a huge blow towards survivability, especially since literally no other legend received more defensive capabilities.

Oh on the autoattack?

I know you just swapped the Thief and Rev autoattack numbers but literally who was in charge of THIS. Not even Revs could pull this off before your “balance” patch.

As for other classes, I can’t exactly speak about those changes, but I really wonder what made you think gutting the Mesmer was a good idea. Similarily, Guardians once again are neglected beyond belief. Decreased cooldowns on Signets!? I bid my 4-year old Guardian a tearful farewell because I knew it was the redheaded stepchild of your professions, but not even Guardians deserve such willful neglect on such a scale.

Great job on mesmers, but can smokescales be similarly balanced so that instead of becoming invulnerable they pulse 3 seconds of aegis like the new and improved Well of Precognition? If players cannot be trusted with such power it doesn’t seem wise to leave it in the hands of some AI. Thanks.

Pretty much the only sad thing, from a PvE perspective, is what happened to Well of Precognition. From a really good situational well to ash trash. Rest in peace, you will be sorely missed.

Also removing the Array of keys from fractals to buy in bulk? Who the hell thought of removing that since you have to confirm to buy it?

Overall it’s a step in the right direction especially as far as thief and mesmer go but a slight lowering of energy required and lower cast times on Ventari tablet skills would have been good to allow for more responsive tablet use.

My biggest gripe about this patch was the collateral damage of Ride The Lightning. This ability was my character’s trademark, and I even hard art done of it being used.

https://d.facdn.net/art/dagos/1436332397/1436332397.dagos_atori.png

I understand why the druid abilities were nerfed, but I do not believe that the elementalist could perform the same sort of breaks with their current kit. The only other leap they had that could remotely be done in air was the Summon Lightning hammer leap ability.

For those that don’t know, Ride the lightning and a few of the Druid travel spells were changed so they could not be used in air, even after simply jumping. If anyone was like me with Ride the lightning, they would use it to make all sorts of fancy air based tricks, jumping off building and rideing down to friends.. and with HoT expansion, glideing then using it mid flight.

But now, we can’t even jump and use it.. making it a near ground hugging ability, unable to even clear gaps with it.

Overall, I like most of the changes I saw this patch. Someone really needs to comment on this, though: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/42yt29/coalescience_of_ruin_how_does_the_nerf_actually/

Preliminary testing is showing that the “can’t trigger more than every .5 seconds” limit to Coalescence of Ruin and Scorched Earth is being shared between players.

I think most people will agree that those skills needed to be toned down and tweaked so that we were playing the game and not manipulating the hitbox mechanics, but this change is anti-cooperation and counter intuitive if it was intentional. It’s crippling for people who use these skills in exactly the same way that the old 25 stack condition cap was crippling for condition damage players.

So please, if it’s a bugged implementation, we could use a comment about that and notes about a fix. If it was intended, please pass on that this goes way beyond the scope of toning down the skills’ strength for individual players.

Please put the buying of fractal keys in bulk back in. To remove this because people “accidentally” buy too many is really not a good excuse. There is even a nag box that pops up that someone has to click Yes I Want To Buy These before it will buy.

We had some great battles these last couple of days. Thank you for your hard work on WvW!

Gunnar’s needed PPK!

Essentially of the things that were exciting about chronomancer leading up to the HoT release have been made lackluster.

From Oct. 23 to Jan. 26 , chronomancer made up for the {low DPS, high cooldown} coupling that had been standard fare for mesmer for about two years running.

As it stands,

• if we had Alacrity-66, mesmer would provide both utility and DPS-boost comparable to other classes (which is unfair)
• but with Alacrity-33, mesmer can provide neither utility nor DPS-boost in line with other classes.

If you are committed to abandoning the vision of chronomancer as originally advertised, then the whole class needs rebalancing. Otherwise there are only a few rational build options when playing mesmer, and overall the class has been relegated back to niche uses. It is certainly back to being my last choice for any play mode at this point.

I’ll get straight to my point.

Ranger

• The changes to Shouts were amazing. I have to say I’m grateful for it seems that you guyz actually listened to what the community suggested. And for that I want to thank you.
  … Sad as it is, I have to go on with the feedback.
• With all due respect. You really have the nerve to test how much the Ranger Community can handle. We were hit with yet another stealth-nerf. Yes, I’m talking about Moment of Clarity. This is not the 1st and definitely not the last trick that this company hopes that people will let slip by. If I’m mistaken – then none of developers gives a single snip about this class. And that’s even worse. A mistake can be made to leave it out of notes. But every single patch? And only the nerfs and fixes of beneficial bugs? Yea, that’s a part of your business card.

• Every time a beneficial bug the Ranger gets (regardless how insignificant) – it gets top priority to be fixed. You guyz took your time to ignore something you already broke once (Healing Spring) and instead of fixing it you decided to throw a half-baked nerf-fix without fixing any negative bugs about it. You ended up breaking the ability whole.

Shouts were done on short notice. Nobody even checked anything of what’s been done.
Shouts are bugged, No one checked their synergy with traits, No one checked their former mechanics that got transferred onto new ones (protect me cap prevention), No one even tested the fix about healing spring, None of developers have any idea what’s wrong with traits that no one uses (honed axes) even though it’s repeated in circles …
And list could go on.

This patch proves that company doesn’t care about the Ranger class.
It can be seen that an attempt is there but literally none of developers cares about this particular class. Nothing of elementary problems we are stuck with (pets being left out of buffs as a 6th party target even as a core part of our DPS?) is ever addressed and every attempt to prove us wrong only shows how no one takes it seriously.

I found most of the updates on the 26th to be great, I’ll be looking at the Revenant specifically however.

What I like is that the damage from the sword auto-attack was removed, so pressing 1 all day for the best dps is no longer an issue which is great, that should have never been the case, what I do not like is that this damage wasn’t really moved anywhere else, Sword 3 is a little too buggy for it to be reliable in most terrain (The word obstructed irritates me to all ends in this game), and the fact that the projectile would home in on enemies I can’t even see behind me is frustrating. I just feel like the Revenant’s damage could be somewhere close to top tier, just not have all the damage come from one skill, I want energy management to be a real thing with the Revenant as it was on all classes in the original Guild Wars. As it currently stands, we still activate facets and auto-attack and press 2 occasionally, energy management isn’t a concern to most Revenant players at the moment.

To address the somewhat unreliability of sword 2, I would suggest to make it work like the Druids Staff 2, where the projectile follows across the floor until it reaches its target, and won’t stop unless there is literally a wall in front of it. Also either make sword 2’s detection radius be a cone in-front of it, or lower the overall radius, at the moment, even using sword 5 to “isolate” the enemy doesn’t move them far back enough.
This suggestion shouldn’t be considered an absolute, but I feel like the projectiles should work like how brutal blade used to work, where it would throw out a projectile, and then come back in.

During the balance preview, I was hoping the notes would go a little beyond what was shown, but basically what we were shown in a supposed preview was basically the entire thing. The fact that Legends like Ventari and Jalis haven’t been touched or reworked was concerning as I felt like they had essentially been forgotten. At the moment, Shiro is a better DPS AND Defensive option than Jalis is, and Jalis is used as a dps boost which just isn’t right in my opinion. Ventari isn’t used at all unfortunately, which sucks because he’s my favorite legend to use.

Overall, it was a pretty nice patch, the squad Markers are awesome, Shatterer is an amazing fight and gliding in core tyria is top notch!

I hope for a Jalis and Ventari update next balance patch!

Positive feedback:
The addition of gliding alters how we intereact with the game in a huge way. much appreciated. Commander tag symbols are awsome for organizing raids.

Negative feedback:
I love balance effort but as a fan I always wonder how my favorite class is going to get improved by balance. When class balance is being performed I expected more buffs to under used skills even if its a small one. This way each class can have some sugar with our salt.

I have a lot of criticism but most of it is likely biased(I’m not afraid to admit that) so I will keep this short and as objective as possible. Keep in mind that my negative is in regards to PvE, primarily. One positive and one negative… Edit: I’ve added a request.

Positive: All of the quality-of-life changes were amazing! This includes the addition to the squad UI(do more with squad UI). I’m especially referring to the ability to toggle actionable item nameplates, as well. I also consider this to be QoL, but gliding in Tyria was an AMAZING decision! Not only does this improve quality in core(Tyria) game-play, but provides in-game advertising to free-to-play players. They’ll see that, want to buy HoT, and get access to gliding. With more purchases of HoT, that’s more income for ArenaNet, and more support for content development. Win-win for everyone, in my opinion.

Negative: The complete lack of changes to the Revenant. Yes, the damage on the sword was fixed so it was slightly more balanced to other skills and toned down a bit. This was necessary. But that only affected one play-style. What about the other legends and weapons? Ventari wasn’t touched and needs to be brought on par with the other classes that can heal. Jalis wasn’t touched and needs to be brought on par with the other classes that can tank(based on their respective themes, I’m assuming this was their intended purpose). Mallyx needs changes to make it more effective in PvE so it’s condition output can compete with classes like Engineers and Necromancers. None of these problems were addressed.

Request: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE split the spec/skill system between PvE and PvP. Trying to balance the two modes together does nothing but hurt both of them. If PvE gets improved a lot of things go wrong in PvP. Same goes when things are the other way around. Also, if a class is suffering in one game mode and fine in the other, that class is never going to get adjusted enough to make a difference with the way things currently are. PLEASE split the spec/skill system. PLEASE!!!!!!!

Thanks so much for this opportunity to provide feedback so directly! I really hope my feedback was helpful and thank you for all the hard work you guys do at ArenaNet. Most of the players I know that are critical of the game and it’s ongoing development are only that way because we truly love this game and enjoy the wonderful creation you’ve brought to the industry.

P.S. – being able to glide in Tyria has allowed me to perceive this already beautiful world through a whole new lens of awesome… THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rev hammer 2 laziest nerf ever. Everyone agrees that Rev does too much damage. Making it so 3 revs hitting the same target at the same time only allows 1 Rev to do damage is either a bug anet should have caught or a terrible, terrible design decision. 1 person should not be able to prevent teammates from doing damage. Nerf the base damage and fix the double hit mechanic.

WvW upgrade times are broken, anet can’t do math so they either make it too fast or too slow.

WvW dead game mode and is probably past the point of resurrection because anet obviously doesn’t care about it, has no idea what they are doing, or simply wants the game mode to die because #esports and outfit cash from pve whales. Chase those spectators, people really want to watch whatever 3-4 classes/builds are meta at the time before anet ham-handedly tries to balance pve/wvw/pvp at the same time.

Here is a hint. Nobody cares about too much damage in PVE. 1v1s, 2v2s, 5v5s in PVP are different than 30v30 in WVW. You have split builds in PVE/WVW/PVP, put in different balancing per game mode. I am sorry but you will have to put development time into separate balancing if you want the competitive game modes to be balanced.

WVW top priority, hahaha. I am sure the vast majority of primary wvw players would prefer if you reverted to old bls, old stab and never touched the game mode again. Your WVW team is completely disconnected from what the (admittedly difficult to please) WVW player base wants.

Blood Reckoning on the Warrior received too big of a Nerf in PvE. In higher end content I may run defiant stance more to get the full heal from just standing and taking hits. Blood Reckoning was the one utility skill that really sold me on the berserker line, other then just pure DPS increases.

On the Thief balance updates. Although it’s generally great that you buffed the Auto-Attacks, the changes haven’t brought anything interesting to the table. I feel that it has completely trivialized any concept of initiative management. Pre 1/26 patch, I believe the more correct move, would have been to make Trickery (at least the non-selectable traits) baseline. This would have added more depth (on several fronts) , and damage back to the class again.

Honestly I expected a major overhaul and rebalancing across all classes, instead we got nerfs to half the classes while Necro/Thief received major buffs.

From the preview 2 weeks earlier, you guys made it sound like the announced skill changes were only a tip of the iceberg and rest were going to be surprise. However there were only a few additional changes per class that weren’t announced in the blog post or stream.

Overall I felt that no new content was added.
INB4: but new shatterer or beer club….
I define “new” as content comprising of new assets not rehashed old assets.

The Shatterer fight was a great welcomed addition even though my expectations were misplaced prepatch. I was expecting something like Triple Trouble or Tequatl but I’m satisfied with what we got.

I can’t comment on PvP because it’s still boring. Capturing territories isn’t exactly my type of game. In previous games I gravitated towards Deathmatches. Also from GW1, Fort Aspenwood was one of my favorite activities. Stronghold seems to be very similar but somehow still isn’t as fun.

Sadly I have been out of WvW for a long time now. I would like to get back into it, but my server has stopped caring.

As for PvE I wish you guys would hurry with all the content we were supposed to get with HoT. I still don’t know if I should go for the new legendaries. I’m losing interest day by day, only logging in for daily and Tequatl.

Randulf.7614:

I like the size of it and that it captures so many aspects of the game, world bosses, squads, new QoL options, balances, wvw fixes, gliding etc

My main concern was how small balance was compared to the early previews. For example ele sceptre was mentioned as a key change, yet remained almost untouched – basically the early communication of intent did not always match what had actually changed.

Overall it felt positive though

Agreed. I don’t know how many more patches it will take to make ele scepter actually usable. And there are still overall way too many unused utility skills. Overall the patch is a step in the right direction but there are still issues with some professions.

Thief

• Staff autos are a bit too strong
• Sword autos need a small boost
• Consider moving some dagger auto damage to CnD and Backstab
• Impairing Daggers don’t finish combos as they should
• Several utility cooldowns are too high

Revenant

• Sword autos were slightly overnerfed

Other

• I’d love an update on replayable Season 1 content

• Gliding in central Tyria is fantastic!

• Most of the changes in this update were really cool and exciting; keep up the good work!

I was happy by some of the fractals changes (listing fractal dailies inside, less LFG restrictions) and unswayed by others (Mossman, object duplicating, Molten Boss skipping). But overall it was decent just because of the change to allowing fractal level changes within the lobby. A change that’s been needed for so long and is so important can easily outweigh any other disappointments I had with this patch for fractals.

The Ranger skills changes were disappointing and continue a trend of feeling like the team still doesn’t know what they want the Ranger to be.

Hidden Barbs is still a poor choice for almost all rangers due to it’s slot placement with Spotter. Choosing between what’s likely a 5% damage increase for themselves versus a 7% crit chance increase for the whole party is still an easy decision in favor of Spotter. It wasn’t a low bleed damage increase from Hidden Barbs that made me not take it before, and it isn’t the reason now. Barring an insane increase (on the verge of +50-60% increase in bleed damage, taking Spotter is still an easy decision for nearly any group.

Almost all of rest of the changes suffer from being completely lackluster in how they change build diversity or playstyle. They either focus on incrementally small % damage increases, or situational poor skill designs.

A great example of this is “Protect Me”. a 4s protection on 30s cooldown taking up a utility slot. It adds little to nothing even in a PvP setting. Search and Rescue…again taking a utility slot for a poor scenario: having to ressurect an ally. Resources as important as utility slots shouldn’t be taken up by something I might never (or at least rarely) ever use. They’re something I take because I expect to want/need to use it nearly every fight. It’s far too situational. Honed Axes…the weapon’s main utility at the moment is condition damage and minor self might buffing. It is NOT in need of ferocity gain. I don’t ever find myself with an axe in main hand wishing I had ferocity. If there were no other opportunity costs involved in the choice, I’d take extra ferocity…but that’s not the case.

The only change that seems to be good is the one to “Guard”. There’s real choices that have to be made in taking that skill (pet diversity), but has diverse enough impact (affects allies, not just yourself) to fit many situations during play and even includes small bonuses (might gain). And yet still, this is a skill that seems like it needs the benefit of other buffed traits (or even skills) to be fully utilized.

I often wonder what it is the Ranger is supposed to do, and the answer isn’t any clearer after this patch.

i feel more and more forced into using elite specs because the balance team seems to have chosen to balance around them instead of balancing around core specs, and core specs just arent gonna be able to keep up with elites and are getting forgotten.

but the facelifts (gliding, shatterer, QoL, wvw, pvp amulets, fractal bugs) are all going in the right direction imo, and most, if not all, of the non class balance changes are excellent.

My 2 cents:
I love the 4 stat amulets in pvp.
Gliding is so gratifying in Tyria.
The new Shatterer fight is much more dynamic.

Was disappointed that Ventari legend was not given some love for Revenent. There are also some traits in Jalis and Mallyx that I would have liked to see updated. I like the direction away from the 11111 dps combo.

Feel Guardian traits could have use some love and didn’t get any. Reducing cooldowns on signets I’m guessing is supposed to encourage play, but I would have rather seen something done with spirit weapons. I feel Guardian is really missing out on competitive build diversity in pvp.

To sum up: Changes to pvp were great. Guardian and Revenant traits could have been updated imo. However, I am biased as these are my two main classes. That and Ranger who thanks you for the shout redesign.

First: thanks for the added high ping with this update, my game was far to stable I needed some frustration

Second: Grats on the revenant nerf… This class needed to be nerfed anyways, how dare a heavy class actually get to act like a heavy class, silly me thinking a tank should get decent damage when in reality cloth classes deserve to do the most damage and have the best ability to avoid damage, stupid tank thinking he could actually do his job.

so the main class that needed fixing “Druid” got zero adjustments.

I know no one at anet will ever admit that they only mean for 3 classes to actually be great and keep the rest around in order to generate more revenue thru the gem store.

Great business sense and overall anet is in the game to make money so this fits.

How about you offer class fixes thru the gem store? I can see it now
“for 4000 gems: Druid abilities fixed” or how about we just buy temporary fixes? I can think of tons of way to keep the greed going strong

The roll on Brutal Shot is terrible. It makes the skill unusable in some situations. Jumping to prevent the roll feels like a gimmicky workaround. A improvement should be giving it broader usage not reduce the number of places where you can use it.

Switching to longbow for now and hopefully no such silliness end up there.

I like most of the changes except for the balance changes which IMHO are poor. The extent of boon corruption on necros is over the top and sets the class up for a fall next balance path. The nerfs to mesmers and elementalists should have been balanced by buffs to other abilities within the classes. The nerfs, especially for mesmer, have been made to abilities which have a ripple effect on other abilities which have not been changed, in short a holistic approach to the balance changes should have been adopted to ensure the classes are still viable in the competitive modes of the game but wasn’t.

Diamond Skin. I’m someone who does not play Elementalist, but I was stuck in a 1v1 Conquest battle against a Diamond Skin Ele while playing a Rabid Ranger with very high single-target condition damage and a condition damage pet with maximum attributes and I could not do anything to the Ele. Therefore, I’m very glad Diamond Skin has been changed. It was not fair to be stuck playing a condi damage build against this and not being able to do any sustainable damage or cause any control effects. I think this change is a good nerf.

“Supporting your allies will now contribute toward earning rewards for killing enemies and damaging event bosses.” Sounds great.

““Finish Them” Finishers: The stomping effect will no longer be time-scaled through effects like quickness and slow.
Reviving: Reviving characters will no longer be affected by time-scaled effects like quickness and slow.
Quickness and slow will no longer affect most defensive abilities. Abilities that are offensive and defensive simultaneously (such as Blurred Frenzy or Pistol Whip) will still be affected by time scaling for the time being.”

I think I understand why these changes were made, but this definitely makes finishing downed characters or reviving them more difficult, especially in a group battle. It also makes quickness and slow abilities less useful. The latter part about not affecting “most defensive abilities” sounds vague—I’d like the change to be clarified in detail.

Engineer

“Automated Medical Response: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 90 seconds to 120 seconds.”

It sounds like, among other possibilities, this is to nerf A.E.D. I don’t play Inventions Engineer often in PvP, but I recall using A.E.D. twice quickly in succession…don’t know if it was abused and that’s why.

Guardian

Glad the Dragonhunter traps have been nerfed in damage, duration, and effect frequency. Before this, I had one game where, playing as a non-Druid Cleric Ranger with 1400 healing, I still died in one Dragonhunter’s traps within about 5 seconds. They were too strong.

Ranger

My main profession since I started the game about two years ago. Like the buffs to Hidden Barbs, which I had not been using in favor of Spotter for my Rabid builds. Now it may be worth using. The changes to Ranger Shouts sound like they’ll become more useful now. Love the buff to Strider’s Defense, hope to use it now in some builds. Good changes overall.

Shatterer

Sounds like it will be more fun now and more involving.

Ancestral Grace: This ability is no longer able to be used in midair.

This is the worst change you have ever done to the game. Why?… Just why did you have to destroy everything?

I guess I’ll try tossing my feedback in and see if anything comes of it.

I play revenant, it’s a lot of fun, my favourite weapon is the hammer. I used to really enjoy being able to hit 15 targets with a 2 second cooldown using Coalescence of Ruin in PvE. Obviously in WvW that’s completely broken, so it had to be nerfed – now it can only hit 5 targets. Then the cooldown got increased, and it could no longer hit the same target twice.

So we’ve gone from this:

2 second cooldown
5 targets per hit (15 total)
Can double-hit

to this:

4 second cooldown
5 targets hit (total)
Cannot double hit

The cooldown increase really hits the flow of the hammer, as it used to be possible to use Coalescence of Ruin followed by two autoattacks, by which time Ruin would be off cooldown. Now I can get off 3 and a half autoattacks, and I have to stare at my satisfying big damage 2 skill knowing I can’t push it until this piddling autoattack hits.

The weapon as a whole was substantially less fun in PvE once I could no longer chunk large groups of enemies, but the increased cooldown to 4 seconds makes the whole thing feel clunky. If the problem is WvW or PvP, just change it for those game modes. Heck, increase the cost to 10 energy, the entire point of a revenant is this energy resource bar, you should be making full use of it.

Playing against other players needs different numbers, but please let me have my fun in PvE.

Can we un-nerf legendary effects like that of the Juggernaut? It used to make you MADE OF METAL so nice and chrome, but now it looks like some kind of transluscent film got slapped over my dyes. It’s terrible.

I’m happy to see that the team is accepting feedback!

I thought that the patch was on the whole positive. The Core Tyria gliding has to be my favourite new addition. I was hoping for that to be implemented since the very start, but never believed it would actually be implemented due to the work involved. I’m tremendously glad I was wrong.

I haven’t tried the new Shatterer, the Lunar event, etc, yet, but my main points of criticism are for the Chronomancer changes.

Most of what I’m saying has already been said. The alacrity nerf feels really significant and hurts the class a lot more than it should, in my opinion. The whole spec revolved around alacrity and a nerf to it meant a nerf to Chronomancer’s personal DPS, phantasm uptime, quickness uptime, shatter frequency, elite skill frequency, etc… Yes, alacrity was a huge factor for party DPS and I agree that it should’ve been toned down, but I think that alacrity applied to the Chronomancer himself should remain at 66% effectiveness. That way, Chronomancer’s party DPS increase will be directly targeted for the nerf (which was the reason for the nerf in the first place) without hurting any other areas.

My suggestion to implement it would be to put it in Flow of Time as an additional effect on top of the “alacrity on shatter” effect. I feel it’s important to put it in a minor trait over a major one, because if it’s put in a major one (like Improved Alacrity) then it would probably just overshadow the other two major traits in the same tier. Either way, as long as Chronomancers get their 66% alacrity back in some form, I will be happy.

Well of Precognition changes depress me. The pulsing Aegis goes against the theme of the well and of the whole class, and Aegis is far too unreliable for the well to find any use anymore, especially with the relatively huge cooldown of 45 seconds. I’m curious as to why this change was necessary. I get why preventing capture point contribution was an important change, but I just don’t understand this Aegis change. The only reason I can think of for the change is to ensure that Well of Precognition doesn’t skip mechanics like Vale Guardian’s green circles.

If the well was changed back to blur AND prevented capture point contribution then that would fix things, no?

Anyway, that’s all my criticism. As a whole the patch was great, and most of the balance changes look sensible. I hope that the Chronomancer changes I mentioned will at least be considered.

Echoing the general consensus of the severe nerf to personal alacrity due to concerns in group content. Mesmer has a ton of issues in open world PvE and suffers from low DPS; the 66% alacrity helped smooth out the profession’s innate clunky behavior (illusions dying on enemy death especially).

For me, and many other Chronomancers, this nerf overshadowed everything else this patch had to offer. I’ve been playing GW2 since summer of 2012 and I’ve never felt so discouraged to log in.

not had a huge amount of time to get through everything, but the short list so far:

• Gliding in Central Tyria: 10/10.

• Various QoL changes: 10/10.

• New Shatterer: 9/10. (great overall, breakbar seems pretty tricky.)

• New Guild Hall Decorations: 10/10 (love these, just wish there were more)

• Thief Changes: 4/10 (I mean, nice to have more damage, but the acrobatics “rework” was massively underwhelming and it’s becoming harder to tell what the endgame for thief is? the damage buff suggests damage focused, and then acro seems sustain based (but not enough to actually work) plus, putting all the damage on AA means we don’t have to worry about not doing damage when out of initiative, but also means that we don’t need to use initiative, since AA seems to be some of the best dps we have. the fact that the preparedness trait isn’t baseline still massively reduces the number of viable thief builds – for 90% of them, trickery and daredevil are more or less mandatory. that’s not healthy – and none of the changes seem to address the widely accepted issues that thief has. on top of this, the actual numbers leave damage daggers as the clear winner – and damage daggers didn’t need a buff. condition daggers could use more than one decent skill, but the direct damage setup worked. this also makes sword somehow less useful than it used to be, further reducing the overall versatility og the class)