Guild Wars 2

Something I’ve been wondering, when it comes to the devs implementing balance changes, or new traits, or having skill/trait bugs fixed etc, I understand why these things take time. Such as bugs being hard to squash or figure out, new traits requiring coding/testing, balance changes being scrutinized heavily (with the lack of skill splitting), etc.

What I don’t understand (not completely) is why certain abilities/weapon skills/traits that aren’t bugged, but have been completely weak or unfinished since beta/release, despite all the discussions/feedback/suggestions players have posted on them, haven’t been fixed/touched or even mentioned by the devs.

Some examples :

Elementalist

- Focus. (Still has some very questionable skills that are pretty awful)

- Conjured weapons. (Still very gimmicky and unfinished, copy pasted abilities with inflated dmg to make them somewhat useful)

- Traits. (Still extreme reliance on Arcane for manageable cooldowns that shouldn’t be so long in the first place, along with too many single attunement specific traits.)

- Attunements. (The base cooldown is way too long. Having such long cooldowns makes it almost impossible to save and use important abilities at the right time, and encourages “spamming” which the game has too much of as is.)

- Cantrips. (Nerfed, but still forced to use 2-3 of them because of Ele survivability)

- Staff. (Getting love, that’s great but why the silence for the other things like Focus?)

Mesmer

- Sceptre. (Auto attack is still awful and doesn’t fit with the weapon at all)

- Greatsword Mind Stab (Was left in a crappy state for a very long time)

- Utility Phantasms. (Conflicts with shatters/clones/phantasms)

- Signets (Midnight/Illusion)

Engineers

- RNG. (Too much of it in traits and certain abilities)

Then of course there are the AI issues for all the classes, but that’s a bigger problem that would take a lot of time to fix, but for the simple things like say, buffing Mesmer’s Mind Stab so it’s no longer awful, or making the Ele focus skills better, or making Sceptre auto attack bearable.

I can’t imagine these would take much time at all to fix, yet they’ve been that way for over a year now. If they aren’t that easy to fix/change, or if it’s a matter of balance preventing them from being fixed how come there hasn’t been atleast an acknowledgement of their issues?

Also I know the devs are busy and have problems finding time to post, but just knowing Anet knows of the problem helps prevent people from posting cynical things like “Anet doesn’t care, Anet hates our class, Anet won’t ever fix it, Anet probably thinks it’s perfectly fine.” etc.

Should add RNG to Mesmer’ Chaos Storm as well. As for utility Phantasms, they should just have a separated from the weapon Phantasms. By that I mean keep the cap at 3 for clones/illusions/phantasms, but if you have 2 Duelists out and you summon Disenchanter or Guardian, and then switch to GS to summon IZerker, it should replace IDuelist before Guardian or Disenchanter. So you have the combat Phantasms replacing each other, and the utility Phantasms replacing each other as well. Kind of like the way Clones/Phantasms are split now.

Iplaytokill.1674:

Should add RNG to Mesmer’ Chaos Storm as well. As for utility Phantasms, they should just have a separated from the weapon Phantasms. By that I mean keep the cap at 3 for clones/illusions/phantasms, but if you have 2 Duelists out and you summon Disenchanter or Guardian, and then switch to GS to summon IZerker, it should replace IDuelist before Guardian or Disenchanter. So you have the combat Phantasms replacing each other, and the utility Phantasms replacing each other as well. Kind of like the way Clones/Phantasms are split now.

I’d prefer to just have the utility Phantasms seperated from the illusion pool.

But this isn’t a suggestion thread, things like that have been discussed to death in the class forums.

I’m asking why for example, Mind Stab can’t get a boost to it’s radius at the very least in patch, just to help it along, and same for all the other underwhelming abilities, unless there are plans to actually rework them in a bigger fashion and to avoid bandaid fixes, but there’s no word of that at all.

If we get lucky, we’ll get one of their copy/cutter replies like

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey guys,

We agree with you. This has been something that has been greatly discussed and is definitely on our radar. There isn’t a time frame set yet, but I just just wanted to let you know it is something we are looking to change for the future. Sorry I can’t give more details at this time.

Because that’s pretty much all they tell us whenever they do reply. It’s never anything consistent. Speaking of Mesmers, why hasn’t Phantasmal Haste been fixed?

Iplaytokill.1674:

If we get lucky, we’ll get one of their copy/cutter replies like

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey guys,

We agree with you. This has been something that has been greatly discussed and is definitely on our radar. There isn’t a time frame set yet, but I just just wanted to let you know it is something we are looking to change for the future. Sorry I can’t give more details at this time.

Because that’s pretty much all they tell us whenever they do reply. It’s never anything consistent. Speaking of Mesmers, why hasn’t Phantasmal Haste been fixed?

This is the type of cynical remark I was talking about lol.

And hey, just knowing that they’re aware and doing something is always better than nothing.

But if there is a reason why a very small buff for a weak skill can’t be done easily I’d like to know why. =/

They’ve been aware of so many bugged traits, bugged runes, underwhelming skills, underwhelming utilities, for so long, you lose hope after months and can’t help but be cynical of them. Especially when you go to PVE and see the tons of updates they get.

I’m not saying they’re bad at their job, or that they don’t care, I’m just saying look at the evidence and see for yourself bro. Not being cynical, it’s just the truth.

Iplaytokill.1674:

They’ve been aware of so many bugged traits, bugged runes, underwhelming skills, underwhelming utilities, for so long, you lose hope after months and can’t help but be cynical of them. Especially when you go to PVE and see the tons of updates they get.

I’m not saying they’re bad at their job, or that they don’t care, I’m just saying look at the evidence and see for yourself bro. Not being cynical, it’s just the truth.

This has nothing to do with pve vs pvp.

The problem I’m talking about affect all parts of the game.

So does PVP balance and skills. It’s been stated multiple times by ANet. They don’t want to split skills between PVE/PVP so they always think of PVE when balancing PVP. It’s really stupid because it means we’re at the mercy of pver’s and they are as well.

They don’t wanna overnerf Necro because it would affect pver’s. Perfect example.