Guild Wars 2

Hey, guys. It’s that time again! Now that we’ve had over a week to let the new patch settle, let’s put our constructive thoughts about it in a place where the developers can easily find out what the community liked, disliked, and thought was missing. We’re going to follow the same format as the last thread, since I thought that worked out really well. Please use the following headers for your comments:

The Good (what you liked about the patch)
The Bad (things about the patch you disliked)
The Missing (things you expected from the patch that weren’t there)

Let’s keep the negative rants and flaming out of this thread and keep to constructive criticism only, guys. Thanks! My own thoughts to follow in a future post. For examples of how this thread went previously, check out the one we did for October:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/October-15-Patch-Our-Constructive-Feedback

This is a PvE game. Devs don’t care about feedback from PvPers.

The Bad: nothing really changed from the patch preview aka our opinion really doesnt matter.

Ill make a more detailed post later

These are the exact kind of responses that should remain out of the thread; let’s keep the feedback constructive and detailed. For negativity, there’s a lot of other threads out there.

Geff.1930:

This is a PvE game. Devs don’t care about feedback from PvPers.

you are actually wrong. I’m pretty sure that most of the pvp feedback gets to pvp devs, they’re actually the dev team closest to its players. And while they have made some weird decisions that go against what players wanted, they also invest their time in alot of what is asked by us. I’m not talking about the quality of what comes out, just that they do listen, more than in any other game I’ve played (except indie games).

But anyway,

The good,

- No more perma-vigor engies (mesmer’s next I guess).
- The changes to confounding suggestions (mesmer trait) might be a good incentive to start using some shatter variations (A more shatter/control playstyle that could be really fun with a team).
-The S/D thief change was really good too, which now makes a confounding suggestions mesmer a good counter to s/d thieves.
-Skullcrack change was also pretty good, and the hammer damage was good too, but maybe unsuspecting foe moving up would have been enough.
-Less conditions flying around and I’ve been able to play alot more old school portal/IoL mesmer. Not sure if related to the patch but whatever.
-Some healing signets have cool concepts but are too weak as it is, like necro signet heal. The warrior stance heal is also great because, like endure pain, it seems like it takes the right timing to take advantage of it, but it will always be overshadowed by healing signet.

The bad,

-Diamond skin. It can be absolute broken in a certain scenario, and a few moments later completely worthless. Hard counter all over. Just a complete trash idea.
- The mesmer heal. While, in my opinion, it’s balanced in shatter specs and can lead to great plays or disaster depending on the players, also encourages phantasm specs and pu specs, and both of these (specially PU) are a complete joke.
- New ranger spirit. I don’t think i need to say anything more…

The missing,

-Warrior signet nerfed. They could even do it something similar to the mesmer signet. Decrease the HPS but give it a strong active effect, anything would be better than the way it is now.
-The mantra pre-cast time… NO ONE will use a full mantra support build while the pre cast for mantras 2 and a half seconds, it doesn’t make sense.
-More awkward traits reworked. Again, using the example of mantras. There’s a trait that makes mantras heal. Approx. 2k I believe. That sounds pretty good right? Mantras have 2 charges base, that means 4k heal per mantra right? WRONG! The heal is after the 2 and half second cast! It’s a 2k heal for a 2sec+ cast time ability. It’s completely self contradicting. You need the mantras charged as often as possible, why would you put a heal that encourages not charging them? And there’s a lot more awkward traits like this.
-Ele base hp is too low. Ele is still locked out of the game.
-D/D thief weapon set rework for skills #3 and #4. S/D thief rework for stealth skill.
-Nerfing torment. Invert the damage coefficients. More damage while stood still, instead of while moving.
-Skyhammer gone from solo queue!

The Good

Changes In PvP Rewards: My god, these changes have been AMAZING so far. I think I speak for a lot of PvPers when I say that finally having some attachment to the rest of the game and being well-rewarded for our time spent PvPing was a vitally-needed change in order for sPvP to succeed. I personally have seen a lot more people in HotM lately, and I think these reward changes have a lot to do with that. Great job here, and I expect some really cool additions in the future.

Keeping Ranks: When I first heard that ranks were going away, I was a bit surprised, since I knew there would be a lot of people upset by it. For so long, that little number was just about the only sort of reward to work towards in sPvP, and taking that away suddenly would be jarring to many people. Thankfully, a feedback thread went up, and the people concerned about it spoke up. Glad you guys listened to feedback, and in fact doubled down on it by increasing rank point rewards from Solo and Team Arena. I liked the little acting job on “Ready Up!”, well played indeed.

Thief Updates: I might get some backlash for this, but in my opinion and from the results of my team’s testing so far, the Thief changes seem to have gone pretty well considering the broad extent of the tweaks that occurred. Not only was the outlier spec adjusted in a necessary way, but the power level of other specs were raised appropriately. Time will tell for sure, but so far it seems that the changes here are going well.

Patch Preview Thread: For the first time, we were shown most of the patch notes from the upcoming patch well in advance, to get a good feeling of the community’s responses to the changes. This was a very good idea, and I’m glad that some changes were adjusted based on the player’s responses. I’d love to continue seeing this going forward!

QA: As far as I know, I don’t think there were any major hiccups related to this patch. Great job, QA!

The Bad

Attention to Balance Feedback: Relating to the patch preview thread, there were some changes made that the community by-and-large thought were negative. A big example is Diamond Skin — most PvPers dislike 100% immunity traits that have no cooldown (Automated Response is another example). Despite much feedback given in that thread and many other threads regarding the topic, the change ended up going through. Of course, it’s impossible to support every single opinion, especially when many of them contradict. In this and some other cases, though, it was pretty much a landslide of opposition, so it’s understandable when there is some disappointment after no adjustments were made.

New Heals: I love the concepts of the new heals, but they aren’t looking terribly useful for sPvP so far. I understand a lot of them may have been designed with WvW and PvE in mind, which is fine. Testing has shown that many of them are too unreliable or are missing something that the other heals have when it comes to sPvP.

Elementalist Updates: We’re only a little over a week after the patch, so it might be premature to give feedback here. So far, though, nobody seems to have been able to make Elementalist work in high level play (GF has been trying as well). The main problem seems to be their sustainability and ways to deal with conditions (Ether Renewal is too unreliable against Trickery Thief). A lot of their sustain and mobility was hit too hard in previous patches, and this last update did very little to restore those vital aspects that made Ele viable in the past. Also, D/D Ele is too similar to Warrior in role, but Warrior currently just does it better.

The Missing

Adjustments to Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature: Warrior and Ranger saw some adjustments to their best specs, but I was personally baffled that nothing was changed to the two skills in the game that I believe are far and away outliers in power level: Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature. These two skills far outstrip the healing and elite skills for other classes in PvP for high level play, especially in small-scale conflicts. I think most of the changes made in the last patch were more or less on the mark, but hopefully these two skills will see a little attention in the future.

Ready Button For Solo Arena: This is a highly requested feature, and it was a bit disappointing not to have yet. Having a popup to test if the user is AFK (if so, drop them from queue and requeue the others) when the queue pops would drastically reduce the amount of 4v5s seen in Solo Arena.

cymerdown.4103:

The Good

Changes In PvP Rewards: My god, these changes have been AMAZING so far. I think I speak for a lot of PvPers when I say that finally having some attachment to the rest of the game and being well-rewarded for our time spent PvPing was a vitally-needed change in order for sPvP to succeed. I personally have seen a lot more people in HotM lately, and I think these reward changes have a lot to do with that. Great job here, and I expect some really cool additions in the future.

Keeping Ranks: When I first heard that ranks were going away, I was a bit surprised, since I knew there would be a lot of people upset by it. For so long, that little number was just about the only sort of reward to work towards in sPvP, and taking that away suddenly would be jarring to many people. Thankfully, a feedback thread went up, and the people concerned about it spoke up. Glad you guys listened to feedback, and in fact doubled down on it by increasing rank point rewards from Solo and Team Arena. I liked the little acting job on “Ready Up!”, well played indeed.

Thief Updates: I might get some backlash for this, but in my opinion and from the results of my team’s testing so far, the Thief changes seem to have gone pretty well considering the broad extent of the tweaks that occurred. Not only was the outlier spec adjusted in a necessary way, but the power level of other specs were raised appropriately. Time will tell for sure, but so far it seems that the changes here are going well.

Patch Preview Thread: For the first time, we were shown most of the patch notes from the upcoming patch well in advance, to get a good feeling of the community’s responses to the changes. This was a very good idea, and I’m glad that some changes were adjusted based on the player’s responses. I’d love to continue seeing this going forward!

QA: As far as I know, I don’t think there were any major hiccups related to this patch. Great job, QA!

The Bad

Attention to Balance Feedback: Relating to the patch preview thread, there were some changes made that the community by-and-large thought were negative. A big example is Diamond Skin — most PvPers dislike 100% immunity traits that have no cooldown (Automated Response is another example). Despite much feedback given in that thread and many other threads regarding the topic, the change ended up going through. Of course, it’s impossible to support every single opinion, especially when many of them contradict. In this and some other cases, though, it was pretty much a landslide of opposition, so it’s understandable when there is some disappointment after no adjustments were made.

New Heals: I love the concepts of the new heals, but they aren’t looking terribly useful for sPvP so far. I understand a lot of them may have been designed with WvW and PvE in mind, which is fine. Testing has shown that many of them are too unreliable or are missing something that the other heals have when it comes to sPvP.

Elementalist Updates: We’re only a little over a week after the patch, so it might be premature to give feedback here. So far, though, nobody seems to have been able to make Elementalist work in high level play (GF has been trying as well). The main problem seems to be their sustainability and ways to deal with conditions (Ether Renewal is too unreliable against Trickery Thief). A lot of their sustain and mobility was hit too hard in previous patches, and this last update did very little to restore those vital aspects that made Ele viable in the past. Also, D/D Ele is too similar to Warrior in role, but Warrior currently just does it better.

The Missing

Adjustments to Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature: Warrior and Ranger saw some adjustments to their best specs, but I was personally baffled that nothing was changed to the two skills in the game that I believe are far and away outliers in power level: Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature. These two skills far outstrip the healing and elite skills for other classes in PvP for high level play, especially in small-scale conflicts. I think most of the changes made in the last patch were more or less on the mark, but hopefully these two skills will see a little attention in the future.

Ready Button For Solo Arena: This is a highly requested feature, and it was a bit disappointing not to have yet. Having a popup to test if the user is AFK (if so, drop them from queue and requeue the others) when the queue pops would drastically reduce the amount of 4v5s seen in Solo Arena.

Pretty much this

The missing.

- /resign function (tired of those 3vs5);
- build template.

ahuba.6430:

New ranger spirit. I don’t think i need to say anything more…

Yes, you need to say more. what is wrong about anet giving rangers a new spirit? O.o

The Good
Rewards: Gold (silver) for matches, the new (temporary) NPC with glory/gold based reward options. I’ve really enjoyed what they’ve done so far and am looking forward to the upcoming changes to rewards they talked about today.

Additionally, the increase in rank gain from Solo/Team Queue wins is nice. IMO, increasing the rank gained for loses (obviously shouldn’t be as high as a win) would be nice as well, but the current setup is great.

Seems these two things have increased the overall population of sPvP, i’ve noticed Solo Queue times have dropped nicely during the 8-12pm EST hours.

Initiative Gain & Pistol Whip: Really enjoying these two changes to thief, and I’m surprised at how little the adjustment to opportunist affected my play style.

Dishonor: I’ve noticed a difference, there are still 4v5s and quitters and work still to be done, but it seems like a step in the right direction to me.

The Bad:
Infiltrator’s Strike/Return: Thief Sword 2 changes. I might grudgingly admit to a need to change S2, but I don’t like the way it was done. A change in the initiative cost as a first step would’ve been preferred and the 1/4s cast time can be a lot longer with some aftercasts. Yuck.

Healing Signet: I fail to understand why this hasn’t been adjust. You could put it in the missing section, but I’ll stick it here as a bad for being a change they chose not to make.

Diamond Skin: I don’t understand.

The Missing:
Elementalists: They are missing. Where are they?

Retro-active Team/Solo Queue Rewards: I’d really like this to happen, so I’m declaring it missing. Based on the stated intent today of bringing the grind for the rank titles down coupled with the changes made to rank gain in Team/Solo queue already, it feels like the right thing to do. Also because I want it.

New Game Modes: some kind of nuanced death match. Please! I know there are new maps being worked on, but a bit more transparency around what you are planning with them and details on the new games modes you have in mind would be great!
————————————————————-

That’s all from me, I tried not to cover too much of what others have already said. Thanks for making the post.

Good: Rewards based on challenge. (Team-Arena gets finally better rewards than hotjoin)

Bad: Nearly all classes are overpowered. Too much damage compensated with too much sustain. Start lowering classes and get them back to a normal level we had around November 2012.

Missing: Balance discussion with top-players. At the Moment it seems like the balance-team doesn’t exactly know what’s wrong with balance and how to solve the issues.

Valentin.2073:

ahuba.6430:

New ranger spirit. I don’t think i need to say anything more…

Yes, you need to say more. what is wrong about anet giving rangers a new spirit? O.o

sorry ive just found this amazing door and i much prefer talking to it. just stay on topic

The Good
- Rewards
- New viable specs

The Bad
- Diamond Skin

The Missing
- proper 2v2 or 3v3 arena
- dueling function
- Skyhammer removal
- A simple ready/decline button for SoloQ

The Good
- Rewards – Finally some use for all the stashed glory. Thanks to giftbox money I was able to pay my way back to EU servers.
- Thief Sword #2 change. – Having instant ‘get me out of trouble’ panic button with no cooldown is terrible design, glad it’s gone.
- Defiant Stance – This one is more of WvW ‘good’ than PvP one, but still wanted to mention it. Well designed skill which can be either crazy powerful if used right (30k+ heal in 3 seconds) or completely wasted. I like that I have to actually pay attention how I use the heal, instead of completely forgetting keybind for it like with Healing Signet.
- Balance Preview – We’ve been asking for something like this pretty much since launch. I can’t express how much better knowing the changes 1-2 months ahead is than learning them after patching the client.

The Bad
- Balance Philosophy – During second half of 2013 we’ve seen meta shift towards low risk – high reward builds. Most of the top builds are WAY too powerful for how easy they are to play (skill floor nearly non-existent), in addition to being simply BORING to play. (I asked friends to send me to the nearest mental institution should I ever say that spamming 3 on S/D Thief or using Healing Signet on Warrior is fun.) Build’s power should be proportional to difficulty of playing it. Having 70% of gameplay consist of passives and RNG is NOT FUN.
- Signet of Ether – As the above. We need less passives, not more.

The Missing
- Healing Signet – I can’t believe it wasn’t nerfed yet. This is the biggest problem with Warriors and the reason I’ve dropped this class as my PvP main. Also Warrior in general. IMO it was much better a year ago, when it was the weakest class in PvP. When you actually needed skill to be somewhat effective with it and only couple of us were crazy enough to bring it into tournaments. Nowadays you can roll your face across the keyboard or let your cat walk on it and no one will notice any diffirence.
- Bringing the BanHammer to exploiters – I really hoped that with reward changes and ability to change glory into gold, Anet would punish people who exploited their way to high ranks and farmed ungodly amounts of glory using bugged Birthday Booster. One decisive action, temporary bans and removal of all exploited ranks/glory would make people think twice in the future. Current passive stance says ‘exploit all you want, we don’t care, ain’t no one got time for punishing you’ and only encourages using exploits while they last. And so PvP is full of r50’s whose only experience is hours upon hours of jumping off Skyhammer.
- Build Templates – Would be cool to finally have them.

ahuba.6430:

Valentin.2073:

ahuba.6430:

New ranger spirit. I don’t think i need to say anything more…

Yes, you need to say more. what is wrong about anet giving rangers a new spirit? O.o

sorry ive just found this amazing door and i much prefer talking to it. just stay on topic

keep it up… that will save us from more non-sense whining about warriors and rangers.

I’ll just touch on things I’ve come across on my toons.

Good
I feel like everything’s been covered and it was mostly good all around and I don’t want to reiterate any points. Little more build diversity, in a sense.

Bad
→ Engi aed heal is complete garbage and a heal that had potential but is entirely lackluster and makes the player want to get “killed”.
→ Mesmer heal signet… You’re really going to reward an already almost OP class(when played correctly) with a heal that ticks for over 1k every 3 secs!?!? A brain dead lab monkey can keep 3 clones up. It’s “rewards” like this that I find mind bottling. You reward a player for doing nothing. There is no risk vs reward it’s just an OP skill much like the war signet and combustible shot… Set and forget is the new meta apparently.
→ MM necro builds… Still blatantly OP.
→ total lack of build diversity for ele. You want to take us out of arcana and water and force us deeper into the lines for the traits you need to survive… What needs to happen is you need to put attunements on a global 9 sec cd, remove attunement cd from arcana and put in a celestial stat set type per trait… Rework the entire fire trait line… Remove and revert diamond skin to effect condition dmg like before and totally rework signets horrible passive/activates and glyphs as well and give those the option for a condition type build that’s actually viable… Remove the ungodly CDs on cantrips and remove the ICD from ea and revert rtl.

Missing
→ rifle auto attack for engi still sub par compared to ranger or even war lb/rifle. Either make the range shorter and double the dmg(since it’s basically a shotgun type weapon and not a rifle) or bump up the range and add in bleeds and or poison.
→ they say they do to want perma vigor yet guard and Mesmer still have it with only 5 points.

Treborlavok.3504:

Missing
-> rifle auto attack for engi still sub par compared to ranger or even war lb/rifle. Either make the range shorter and double the dmg(since it’s basically a shotgun type weapon and not a rifle) or bump up the range and add in bleeds and or poison.

I think static discharge zerker builds might become way too bursty like that…

Ranger:

The Good:

a) Spirit nerfs – Still a strong support build, but much closer to balance now.

b) Mighty Swap buff opened up new build variants.

c) Longbow damage equalization is still not enough, but a move in the right direction for Power.

The Bad:

a) Water Spirit – Too weak to challenge Healing Spring for group support & more screen clutter is the last thing we need.

b) Buffed Nature Traits – GS Training & Enlargement. Nice concepts, but they don’t synergize with their placement in the trees. GS is a power weapon with traits tied up in our condi & nature lines, while Enlargement requires 50 Trait points for completely selfish synergy.

The Missing:

Pet F2 Bug Fix ( F2 often goes on CD without activating when pet is in motion / immediately following petswap ).

faeral.7120:

Ranger:

The Missing:

Pet F2 Bug Fix ( F2 often goes on CD without activating when pet is in motion / immediately following petswap ).

moa and farnhound for example. All buff skills. Offensive ones like the one of owl’s or raven don’t fail like this.
Buffs seem to autointerrupt if u do it until about 5 seconds after swap.

Wintel.4873:

Treborlavok.3504:

Missing
-> rifle auto attack for engi still sub par compared to ranger or even war lb/rifle. Either make the range shorter and double the dmg(since it’s basically a shotgun type weapon and not a rifle) or bump up the range and add in bleeds and or poison.

I think static discharge zerker builds might become way too bursty like that…

Well as it sits with SD builds you basically go either offensive full burst or nothing. I’m talking about TB skills with the lowest recharge and longest ranges, conditions aside(vuln). Bumping up rifle dmg while also bringing down the range to 600 would put it in line with skills 3-4. Giving it that full “shotgun” type feel that it seems it’s trying to achieve. I run a SD build and I rarely use my auto attack skill aside from breaking aegis to start my bursts. Giving us the option to choose a more defensive SD build while being able to have longer TB skill CDs and keeping some sort of sustainable dps with our actual weapon would be nice. I’d love to be able to run a support based SD build but my dps would become deplorable outside of 700.

Just trying to come up with a way to make rifle 1 as effective as other classes 1 skills. Same goes for our pistol 1.

THE GOOD
New healing skills. The trait changes. Rewards.

THE BAD
Most new skills are unusable due to lacking trait support. Many traits are still utter kitten. More spirirt? Why? Only way I can see it not making the game worse is making it decent in fractals or something… This clutter and passive play, we don’t want it.

THE MISSING
Retrospectively rewarding rank points for solo/team arena.

ahuba.6430:

Geff.1930:

This is a PvE game. Devs don’t care about feedback from PvPers.

The bad,

- The mesmer heal. While, in my opinion, it’s balanced in shatter specs and can lead to great plays or disaster depending on the players, also encourages phantasm specs and pu specs, and both of these (specially PU) are a complete joke.

? Stop talking about things you don’t understand please. This heal is the epitome of what other classes got. It actually works well and synergizes VERY good. Stop hating please because you don’t like fighting PU specs. Nobody likes fighting bunkers

The Good:
Definitely the new rewards, the players of spvp needed this to happen to bring us closer to the rest of the game. Money rewards means that as a player base we all interact and that’s exactly what needs to happen for all area’s of the game to thrive and not to be secluded. Also the extra rank being gained from areanas is nice, it’s making the ranking up system much more enjoyable and quick.

The Bad:
Some of the heal skills lack of creativity. The mesmer heal for instance is almost a direct copy of ether feast but broken down into small chunks. I have played personally mesmer since launch and in my own opinion we needed a heal that was completely separate from anything we currently have in our skill set, the signet was a good idea just not what is does. Maybe look more into shatters…..

The Missing:
A solution to 4v5 in tourney’s. Hey, I would have settled for a ready button being mandatory for the time being. This was definitely missing and still needs implementation in some way immediately! Also removing skyhammer from solo arenas needs to happen. It’s a great playground and fun time but not for people looking to have a fair, equal and competitive match (it rewards someone with a basic push or pull, that’s not fair imo for solo arena). On a side not a dueling function is also clearly very popular and would be a fun thing to implement

I still don’t get why everyone is complaining about Diamond Skin. First there are no eles out there, second the trait is utterly useless 90% of the time and it’s in a traitline with useless condition-damage, hence no ele will ever put 30P in earth for it.

anyways, here is my list:
Good:

• General aproach to fix elementalist by boosting it’s defense and increasing build-diversity by making them less reliant on water and arcana
• Dishonor
• Reward-Changes, though our glory is still worthless if we have no gold
• communication with players, before the patch was released and more importantly actually balancing stuff based on feedback

Bad:

• Elementalist still not viable, patch-changes didn’t do much and your intention to lower the need for water and arcana backfired when you raised tiers of certain traits. Now many builds have to put even more points in water and arcana. As long as you don’t change other things like base-HP to lower the need for defensive traits and stats from water and arcana we’ll always have to invest points in those trait-lines.
• Even though you partly listened to community-feedback you actually didn’t implement a single idea from players and just reverted some balancing-changes that seemed too unfair. There are tons of good ideas out there and it seems you don’t even consider implementing them (maybe just like this thread )
• New heals are mostly useless for PvP. I don’t see them often and some are obviously underpowerd compared to existing heals (ele-heal for example never heals the same amount as the glyph does (it can potentially, but you’ll never hit 5 targets, especially with the small range and blocks, dodges, etc.)
• Diamond Skin – It’s a poorly designed trait. Totally overpowered if it actually worked (with lower threshhold or something), but as it is now it’s just useless. The general idea of complete immunities is something that you should never even consider in a pvp-environment. But as it is now, it’s just another weak grandmaster-trait.
• Actually no shift in the current meta: still petting-zoos, condi-spam and hammer/rifle-warriors everywhere. But at least we see more mesmers now.

Missing:

• No efforts to reduce the huge amount of spam in PvP. (Not only conditions, but also dodges and certain skills)
• changes that actually make elementalist viable (boost base-stats!)
• nothing that prevents 4v5 games, no option to report afkers or poeple that leave
• Skyhammer still in solo-Q. Why don’t you even respond to our feedback about the map. It’s ridiculously unbalanced in every aspect. Raid on capricorn is unbalanced too with the underwater-fights and therefore it’s not in solo-Q – so why is skyhammer still in the rotation?
• warrior healing-signet nerf: Like many said before passive traits are boring and often overpowered. I think the way the ele-signet works is perfectly balanced fore example. You actually have to make the heals procc by casting spells so you can’t just stand there and facetank incoming damage.
• no punishments for skyhammer-farmers
• condition-redesign; make them more consistent but less bursty
• still many classes/builds that have low risk/high reward and on the contrary many that have high risk/low reward

and I’d love to see feedback to this list I posted in another thread:

some general thoughts:

• tone down auto-attacks, maybe boost other spells but at the same time increase their CD -> would promote more intelligent use of spells instead of spamming everything you have (I think elementalist has the best balance in terms of weapon-spells) and well-timed dodges would be more important
• tone down overall damage and the power of #6 heals -> would slow down the fast pace of the game a bit
• increase effectiveness of weapon-spells that heal (better scaling with healing-power)-> would boost support-builds/classes and make them important for competetive play
• fine-tune base-stats of every class based on their current performance; balancing the game this way is simple but effective (instead of constantly creating overpowered traits that promote power-creep)
• restrict boons to certain classes -> so every class has a unique boon to share and class-diversity would gain importance in groups
• give strong defensive cooldowns (like invulnerability) higher CDs (in addition to above changes)

(actually the whole thread is full of good ideas, maybe you can check it out: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Arken-s-post-about-the-state-of-pvp/page/2#post3402841)

The Good (what I liked about the patch):

• Decent short term PvP reward changes.
• Small hammer warrior nerfs.
• Mesmers are back baby!
• lots of new pvpers; from pve and old ppl coming back.
• Some cool trait changes to shake up the meta a bit.
• Brainless s/d thief cheese build nerfs. -d/p now funner than ever as a result!
• New/improved rewards aimed specifically at ranked queues, rather than hotjoins and ranked (basically more rank points for playing in solo/team queue, more AP, gold cap, ect…).

The Bad (things about the patch I disliked):

• Skullcrack change on warrior is annoying. I wish signet would have just gotten nerfed rather than the fluidity of that playstyle.
• Torment is broken.
• Maybe it’s just me, but engi feels really strong now.
• I think ele changes didn’t do much for traditional s/d playstyle.

The Ugly

• Even the most dedicated players have moved on from the game by now. Without an expansion, it’s likely that gw2 will get completely phased out after the release of all these upcoming mmos; eq next, wildstar, eso, ect…

The Missing (things you expected from the patch that weren’t there):

• Ladder changes.
• Game modes (I don’t really care about either of these, but I thought they might ship with this patch, guess not).
• skyhammer glory farmer banns.
• Skyhammer removed from solo queue.
• SKyhammer removed from game.
• Skyhammer erased from existence.
• Time machine so we can go back and never let skyhammer make it out of the concept art stage.
  lol jk, it’s a fun map to play in hotjoins. But it has no business in ranked games. All in all I actually have enjoyed this patch quiet a bit. Especially since we now know that ranked ladders are getting axed soon. My RL friends rarely PvP’d before because the rewards were so irrelevant, but now we’ve just been chilling in the team queues together and we’re having a lot of fun.
  PS: a veto system for solo queue maps would be ideal.

Forgot more… Missing

Gadget traits for engis. Currently only speedy gadgets is what we can choose and that’s just a standard 20% cd.

Some more traits and a nice GM trait for gadgets would be nice. Maybe actually give engi some kind of condi mitigation.

Turrets also need to be either completely over hauled or scrapped. Only turret worth anything is healing turret. The only good turret is a dead turret for its blast finisher.

General:

The worst

• far too much AI spam and condition spam due to necros, spirit rangers and mesmers
• new mesmer signet is entirely broken
• warrior remains absolutly broken having far too much CC, dmg and sustain
• skill requirance for thieves is below zero as you can basically ignore your initiative now —> perma dodge even worse

I would seriously recommend you just to disable necro pets and spirits in PvP for like 1-2 days just to see how it works. These 2 days would be a lot more enjoyable than the past year actually. Beside that, reduce all condition durations.

Concerning elementalist:

The Good

• build diversity significantly increased due to reduced attunement recharge rate, all over better grandmaster traits etc.
• ranged arcane wave —> especially nice for staff and scepter builds
• new blast finisher with new healing skill (so less dependant on blast finisher with evasive arcana, yet the healing skill is too weak)
• Lingering Elements partially fixed, yet far too weak for being a 15 point minor trait

The Bad

• Cleansing Wave (Water X, curing one condition when attuning to water) is now a master trait —> massive nerf for every single elementalist build because you need healing and you need condition cleanse desperatly as there is no other possible defense. And for being a master trait, this one is utterly weak.
• Diamond Skin —> Far too weak in any teamfight or more than 1 vs 1 scenario, even in 1 vs 1 useless against people with brain. Pls change it towards being either immune to certain conditions when attuned to earth or reducing condition duration by something like 75% when attuned to earth.
• Arcane Brilliance —> Pointless in PvP because it doesn’t give you any condition cleanse.
• Elemental Attunement is now master tier for no reason. You can’t justify any further nerfs for the elementalist without giving him massive buffs.
• Elementalists now have several possible grand master traits to specc into, but they still need either 30 points in arcana or 20 points in water for the heal. It just doesn’t work without heals and condition cleanse. The elementalist has the lowest hp pool and armor, additionally his heals have pretty bad base stats because developers thought he had too many. Make healing ripple being a 5 point minor trait, like every other 15 point minor.
• Condition based builds don’t work on the elementalist.
• Several utilites like glyphs and conjures remain useless just due to their concept. Conjures don’t fit the design of the elementalist at all. Pls think about redesigning them completly.
• most adept traits are just pointless or don’t do anything at all, still I have to take them because I need the master or grandmaster traits. Poorly designed. For example, the new air trait that gives you superspeed for 1 1/2 seconds when attuning to air —> useless in PvE, PvP and WvW.

The missing

• reworks for focus —> Far too low dmg, far too low sustain and mobility. Entirely useless for bunker builds because earth 5 doesn’t allow you to cap points.
• reworks for staff —> Useless for PvP because you can’t kill anybody. Too many projectiles, too easy to dodge, too slow, too clunky. Especially air.
• buffs for scepter water 2 and earth 3
• reverted nerfs for RtL and signet of restoration (how can you justify the current warrior healing signet with having the elementalist’s signet nerfed for like 30% in pvp pls?)
• rework for fire minor 5 and 15
• reduced internal cooldowns on cleansing water

Summary
To be honest, as an elementalist I’m feeling even weaker now than before patch. It’s like I just can’t do anything at all anymore against condition and AI spam, not to mention warriors. S/D Fresh Air Burst build has been significantly nerfed due to cleansing wave on master tier. I’m neither having the sustain, nor the dmg, nor the CC or teamfight utility of other classes, not even closely. There is no reason for picking an elementalist than just for fun. Every single other class is just better in absolutly everything.

Peter Buch.8071:

General:
*Several utilites like glyphs and conjures remain useless just due to their concept. Conjures don’t fit the design of the elementalist at all. Pls think about redesigning them completly.

Oh please take a look at this, it just feels so strange to have utilities and an elite that replace your weapon skills when you already have to manage 20 skills across attunements.

Conjures at their current state will only ever fit if Elementalists have a very good incentive to stay in only one or two attunements but that takes away from the class’ design so it would be a very welcome change if conjures were redesigned instead.

The Good (pvp rewards, dishonor)

The Bad (A new spirit for Rangers, a solid proof that Anet doesnt give a kitten about what the community says…Not a single person asked for more spirits)

The Missing (wheres the balance?You mean the “i got everything” Warriors?Y right..Or the “i press 10 keys in 2 sec to do what a Spirit Ranger can do in just pressing 111111 and afking”?)

I don’t understand…

How can so many people complain that Diamond Skin is broken and elementalists are missing? If they’re missing, how do we know that Diamond Skin is bad? Is it because Diamond Skin has failed to yield an abundance of elementalists in PvP?

Josh Davis.6015:

Like I said on the thread you made for the previous update, this is an awesome way to present feedback – especially with the formatting.

I’ll make sure to keep this bookmarked and reference it in our first meetings next year. Thanks for keeping it constructive!

Who said in the previous patch constructive thread “Rangers need more spirits”?
Cause if noone said it it seems like you dont actually take in account what we say here..

Great replies so far, for the most part! I like a lot of these lists. Just a reminder, let’s keep the posts constructive, and keep in mind that sometimes things are designed or adjusted for parts of the game other than sPvP. The devs are doing their best, so let’s do ours to be thoughtful and rational with our feedback.

Bad :
Less and less room for thief in pro teams- no burst, no roam from s/d, no nothing

Guardians were horrified with the lack of interaction. Even when we said certain buffs weren’t even needed, they still happened. The guardian changes were a complete waste of developer time, none of them mattered. 13% power to condition damage conversion on a traitline nobody uses anyway? Great.

The good

first part of new reward system, vendor with glory + gold model, gold in hotjoin/soloqueue/tqueue. Pvp Road map in general is very good. Balance changes are moving in the right direction for some aspects but not for others.

The Bad

Balance in general is not very good, old strong classes (expecially warriors) are always better then classes out of meta (elementalist and mesmer) for tournaments queue. Healing signet needs to be reworked and fixed, is too strong now.

Adding trait like diamond skin is not the right way, utility/skill that gives a long invulnerability window is not a good design.

The missing.

A lot of things are in road map and are very good, i hope in new game modes (expecially 2vs2 and 3vs3 format) and PvP ladder + seasons.

An option to see enemy asura model in pvp/www like a human standard model.

Better animations on key skill (like fear on necro) and an icon for passive burning proc (from trait) like incendiary powder.

More options for custom arena and spectator mode (more info on screen).

From the perspective of thief

The good

• The initiative changes lay the groundwork for better design in the future. The initiative changes potentially opened up new spec options that aren’t so reliant on either hitting extremely hard for every init spent or regenerating initiative rapidly. Unfortunately, at the moment, those spec options aren’t viable for other reasons. Once thief’s issues are addressed, this change will have more value.
• Perma-stealth via D/P is dead. Finally.

The bad

• Sword #2 changes – adding a cast time didn’t just prevent escaping stuns/facilitating stomps with the expenditure of 5 initiative and an additional utility. It also completely gutted any skilled play options sword MH offered. I still disagree that sword #2 had to be changed, but even if it had to be done this is absolutely the worst way to implement the change. Having Sword #2 remain instant cast but be disabled when stunned/stomping would have achieved the same goal and not lowered the skill cap on the build to non-existant.
• Vigor changes – Anet designed a class that relies on 2 things for survival – stealth and evasion. Thieves do not have in class access to protection or stability (Daggerstorm’s stability is to ensure a 90s CD elite isn’t canceled by a .25s daze), has no immune skills or blocks, has poor condition removal, and has no traits that offer damage reduction. The one defensive boon they had decent access to was vigor. Vigor uptime was reduced with no survivability buffs to compensate
• Survivability buffs in acrobatics – Hard to catch is not a trait anyone wants to slot. Players expressed this opinion the second the change was announced, and it was pushed through anyway. Losing control of your placement at the control of another player has more in common with a CC effect than it does with a positive trait intended to increase survivability. The assassin’s reward changes are mathematically insignificant. Firstly, Healing power is not a stat many thieves have room for in their builds. Second, even if they did, the actual change worked out to 1 additional HP healed per init spent per 100 healing power – that is a mathematically insignificant amount of additional healing, it certainly didn’t warrant bumping AR up to GM tier, and can’t be called a buff.
• Skelk venom – There are very few positives this heal has in comparison to Withdraw and Hide in Shadows. It’s comparatively inferior in most situations, unless you’re running venom share. It shouldn’t take 4-5 traits and 60 points to make a heal worthwhile. It should be strong on its own (Like Withdraw or Hide in Shadows), with certain trait selections that strengthen it. This is mostly due to the issues with how venoms are designed, and the existence of venomous aura – but that is nothing new, players have known venomous aura is the reason venoms are so poorly designed in the first place for a long time now.

The Missing

• With the initiative changes, initiative based traits were understandably modified. It makes sense that the traits should now generate less initiative. What doesn’t make sense is that’s where Anet stopped. The traits should have had other positive effects added to them to keep them interesting, worth using, and help differentiate thief specs. Opportunist and Kleptomaniac are now bland, underwhelming traits – minor additional beneficial effects would have helped the traits keep their power level and ability to help define specs in place – instead, they’re just worse traits now. Quick recovery is complete garbage – a trait that used to help regenerate init 25% faster now helps init regenerate 10% faster, with no additional changes, which is very poor for a Master level trait. At least you can avoid slotting Quick recovery.
• Survivability buffs – With the Acrobatics changes useless for increasing survivability, thief received nothing but survivability nerfs in the patch with the vigor changes. On top of that, our new heal does nothing to address thief’s awful access to condition removal. Post 10th, Thief is a much less survivable class with almost no buffs in recompense.
• Dialogue – When the preview went up, many opinions were thrown about. While there was a small amount of discussion, it felt token and sparse. It would be nice if each class had a dedicated employee who plays and is familiar with the class to discuss/weigh opinions/explain choices to the playerbase. Even if this person has to be a volunteer from the playerbase themselves, I’m sure one can be found.

Thief Perspective.

The good

• S#2 no longer rewarding bad plays with free stunbreaks
• vigor nerf

The bad

• Large amount of depth and high level tactics lost (precast CnD>Inf Return, juking with venoms baiting out dodges for ex)
• 1-1.25sec including aftercasts is NOT enough time to react to an eviscerate, burning speed, etc.
• This skill is now completely useless and S/D is now dumbed down to only 2 skills (autoattack and flankingstrike)
• Thief is back to being pigeonholed into D/P again at competitive levels rather than the 50/50 balance it had pre-patch. (Well, I admit I used s/d about 75% of the matches in the PAX Quals but that was before the halving of the boonsteal)
• Initiative nerfs in-combat and buffed out of combat further promotes Thieves running from fights or resetting combat.
• The risk:reward from spamming 3 vs actually baiting and timing your opponent’s moves still not addressed.

The good:
-new skills
-PvP rewards
-improved communication with the players

The bad:
-Warrior sustain without real investment in gear or runes
-Stealth is still extremely boring to play against, even if balanced for PvP. In WvW its hillarious
-No PvP and PvE/WvW skill split

The ugly:
-Ranger traits
-Zoo builds
-Pet AI

RoyHarmon.5398:

I don’t understand…

How can so many people complain that Diamond Skin is broken and elementalists are missing? If they’re missing, how do we know that Diamond Skin is bad? Is it because Diamond Skin has failed to yield an abundance of elementalists in PvP?

Diamond skin is just a bad trait by design. Taking it on ele is bad because you have so little hp anywase, 1 auto attack will remove the buff. However, 1v1ing against it + signet heal as a necro can be annoying since they have such little direct damage and have a lot of trouble getting the ele below 90%.
Thing is; this trait makes you a sitting duck in any scenario aside from a 1v1 with a condi necro (using carion amulet over rabid, of course). And in that scenario it promotes the dreaded passive play that everyone hates in pvp.

The good:
– Initiative changes allow for a lot more flexibility with a lot of thief builds (I actually use Deathblossom with my D/D power build).
– Vigor nerf was justified.
– Hammer nerf to warriors pushed them in a better direction.
– Being able to earn gold from PvP is awesome. I actually feel like I’m not wasting time by PvPing when I’m also trying to get stuff in PvE.

The bad:
– Less viable builds for thieves.
– With the S/D nerf, the Acrobatics tree for thieves is even less viable than ever, despite efforts to make it more appealing.
– Many changes didn’t really make a difference to viable builds.
– Elementalists still seem to be in a bad spot.

The Ugly:
– Diamond skin doesn’t really fit in anywhere. It’s a niche trait that is OP against some opponents some of the time, but requires a heavy investment in a place where most wouldn’t put points in otherwise.
– Venom builds for thieves still aren’t really good for PvP. Unlike Spirit Rangers, you can’t just fill up all your utility slots with venoms and beast through the damage you take. There needs to be condi cleanse and/or stun breaks that are available to venom builds without requiring them to drop a venom.
– Hard to Catch is still not worth taking in any build under any situation. The trait is often more of a liability than a save. It would take a major redesign of the trait to make it worthwhile since any ability that randomly ports you somewhere is inherently problematic, even if it didn’t trigger when you have stability, lol.
– Pistol as a mainhand is still in a very bad spot, particularly with a pistol offhand.
– The new heals didn’t really open up many new possibilities for most classes. New elites could shake things up though. =)

The Good

-As mentioned above thousand times; thanks for the rewards changes.
-New skills, although underpowered and cost 25 skillpoint and costs25 skill points in PvP where everyone is supposed to be in equal footing?!
-Thieves got some nice buffs, been seeing them more lately, specially in ranked. Initiative buff does incredible things although most people dont really notice that much.
-Stealth got a minor hit, although not enough it is a good step towards getting there.

The Bad

-Elementalists in the same if not worse state than before; lots of traits moved to higher tier when they didnt need to! Thanks for moving Blasting staff but the rest changes were atrocious, sorry.
-Diamond skin: useless, completely useless, but then you face a rabid necro 1v1 and it is overpowered, completely overpowered. Overall it is just useless though, the amount of niche scenarios in which it could be slightly useful does not outweight the drawbacks, specially not considering it is a grandmaster trait. I think we can do better than that!
-Thieves and backstab, just abilities out of stealth and the lack of way to block/evade/blind them witout revealing them. Either the backstabs need toning down or blocking/evading/blining should apply reveal and make the skill miss, no way around this, sorry.

The Missing

-Elementalists need a serious boost to survivavility. Passive traits will not cut it, they need to have a survival tool specific to the class: Deathshroud/fear necros, clones/stealth/chaosstorm/chaosarmor/blinks/daze mesmer, blinds/block/heals/protection/moreheals guardian, evades/spirits/regen/protection ranger, stealth/teleports/blinds/blinds/stealth thieves, etc etc etc…. you get my point, eles what do they have? Heals were nerfed into absolutely nothing, every patch since the D/D deal, which if they were to be taken at their max potential to the current meta, they would probably even struggle. Then what? Cantrips on 75-90 secs CD, which is the equivalent to elites in other classes, a guardian can get protectio and stability teamwide on 26 seconds CD, we have something that lasts about the same, selfish, on 4 times the CD….. and no, the package does not justify it, a guardian does about the same if not as much damage as ele but a guardian can survive it all, yet it has the same hp as the ele….. same base hp, ever wonder that, even a glass canon guardian, which does aout the same damage? I think eles need to be taken to the draw board, decide what do you want attunemnts to be used as, what do you want ele’s inherent defense that does not involve putting up 4 elites worth of stuff. the only boon sharing thing we had got moved to 20 points. You need to give us something to work on, there is absolutely nothing an ele can do that anybody else cant do 4x better, without the fear of blowing in one rotation.

Urejt.5648:

Bad :Less and less room for thief in pro teams- no burst, no roam from s/d, no nothing

What?

The Good

New healing skills
Anet trying to open up more viable builds for every class
Pvp rewards
Soloq/Teamq reward increase

The Bad

Skyhammer still in soloq rotation
New healing skills feel a bit shortsighted
Power and Condition Guardian non existent.
Guardian changes didn’t really open up any new roles other than bunker.
More passive play
Condition spam still unaddressed.

Fortus.6175:

The Good

-Thieves got some nice buffs, been seeing them more lately, specially in ranked. Initiative buff does incredible things although most people dont really notice that much.

I’m curious, what buffs do you believe thief got in the patch? What ranked viable specs are you running which the Init change made possible/more powerful/more versatile?

The only real change I’ve seen is 10/30/0/30/0 doesn’t need (or want) to run quick recovery anymore because its a very lackluster master trait now.

Completely subjective, of course, mostly…

The Good
-PVP rewards. Finally I can level up a character completely in PVP and play WvW with it
-More viable build and the trait tiers seems a bit more sensible
-I don’t know how elementalist’s new healing skill working in high end PVP or FoTM, but it’s tons of fun using in other PVE content

The Bad
-PVP skill purchase. Although long time player might not mind and it’s really not that expensive, it could cost problem in the long run. With sufficient new skill released, new player or those who don’t play quite often will be in disadvantage. They might have limited choice, or worse, they don’t have any skill required for the builds viable in the current meta. They will be less effective until they finished grinding for it, isn’t that kind of against what Arena Net want to do with PVP?

The Missing
-Elementalist is still too weak (and I don’t think diamind skin is the solution)
-The path-finding for minion still need some improvement
-Mark of blood is still being put into full CD even you stop casting (?)

The Good

• new skills, finally
• my hammer warrior still works.
• my thief plays better overall

The Bad

• only 1 new skill per class. I think new elites would have had a greater impact, or a new skill per weapon with choosable weapon skills.
• warrior hammer is still a better DPS weapon than axe in practice, because applying damage with axe is way harder/hit-n-miss. would rather see Evi doing less ROFLDMG!!!11 but with much greater leap range.
• why did you buff phantasm builds? they really didn’t need buffs.
• I don’t think you know what you’re doing with Ele, the arcane and water changes completely contradicted your stated objectives. To me it’s patently clear the skill floor of the whole class needs to be raised, even if it means lowering the ceiling.
• diamond skin was a terrible trait. Numerous players warned you it would be and it is.
• The 20pt condition cleanse in fire shouldn’t have been a cantrip trait.

The missing

• Ele needs a defense mechanic that isn’t based around 20-30 water. eg: a caster-only version of Elemental Attunement could be made baseline, with healing ripple instead of soothing mist, and a trait added to restore the AOE version. then you could move a water field from staff to focus.
• Build diversity on Ele is really horrible. cantrips, water and arcane are good; fire, earth, air, focus, glyphs, signets, and conjures are all pretty terrible. condi specs aren’t viable. weapons are overly pidgeonholed into roles.

Bad : uber passive gameplay… pet or signet or trait (immun condition trait, signet heal warrior, spam illusions mesmer without shatter, spam necro minions, spam spirit ranger, etc….).
No fun, no skill, juste play semi afk with a bunker build with passive pet/signet/trait.

Pvp that ? no. Boring pvp.

The Good – Rewards in spvp are awesome A+
Perma stealth gone
You tried with some new heal skills

The Bad – AED is terrible. To long a cooldown to long a cast time and the f1 is awful.
Nothing done about the fact a warrior gets insane passive healing with
healing singet and adrenal heal.
Petting zoo builds in spvp. You actually made it worse making spirits even
easier to put into every ranger build.
MM Necros in spvp. Recently atleast 50% of solo and team q has been mm
necros. They get 2 health bars pets that hit like a truck and make it hard to
target the actual necro constant fear and a million conditions to spam.
New Mesmer heal they were already one of the strongest spvp classes and
now you gave them a passive heal singet comparable to warrior healing
singet that everybody has a vaild reason to be complaining about.

The good
Rewards I guess are good to get people into the mists – but does nothing to help pros.

The bad

Diamond skin – we told them it was a dumb idea. They didn’t listen.

Balance – They listen to bad players. So the devs (no good player is a dev) listen to bad players and we get bad balance. You should have to be CURRENTLY in the top 50-100 in either solo q or team q to post on a new “balance discussion” forum. And the devs should listen to people who have proved they are good at the game in either team or solo q.

No support for 2/3 man groups – So when I play and cba to premade but want to play with 1/2 other people we have long queues and then get total noobs on our team. Support 2 man groups. Most people only want to play with 1/2 other people most often. Surely a company like anet has stats which show this?

The missing

Balance – every class is still brokenly Op and the “nerfs” were so minor that 1 spamming spirit rangers are still lame and viable. And all auto attacks are too strong – largely because sun spirit gives aoe dhuumfire which = every auto attack causes burning.

I dont really play this game nemore though. And when I do its only to play with people I enjoy playing with. I dont take it seriously at all. As this game is a bad joke and is soooo going in the wrong direction mainly because they dont listen to good players. Devs should have more humility, other games they either do this or have devs who play the game at a high level. Anet has niether.