Guild Wars 2

Okay. I’m going to try to be pretty analytic in my post. I’ve been playing GW2 competitively for about four years. I was here through Season 1. I was here for after the specialization patch, when Shadow Arts Thief became a thing, and Thief was so unkillable that Bloodlust sigil was meta.

So, I am being very literal when I say: This is actually probably one of the worst balance patches I’ve ever seen.

Anet probably tried to normalize for power creep over the years, but only with certain classes, because (I guess) they have some sort of handy-dandy statistic spreadsheet that showed that Dragonhunter had a higher winrate than most classes? I don’t know. They seem to have nerfed some classes to a vague pre-HoT state, but left others exactly the same.

Inherently, I don’t think that nerfing a class that had a high winrate in pugs is a bad idea. At the same time, however, I think that you should really consider what you’re nerfing. Dragonhunter is obviously a pugstomping class; nobody will contest that. However, anyone that actually knew how the class worked realized that it’s honestly not that hard to play around. And even if it was overpowered…did it really deserve that violent of a gutting? I don’t know. Dragonhunter players are basically stuck to lower tiers, now. I don’t think it’s a viable class anywhere above mid-Gold, now.

At the same time, I think that the Thief changes are inherently awful and frustrating to play around. A short daze at over 5 stacks of poison, for Shortbow 4. That sounds fine. But now, consider the implications; Dragonhunter traps dazing were so annoying that it was changed to a slow, and they were on a 20s CD. SB4 is spammable, and, honestly, 5 stacks of poison isn’t hard to get. Especially on downed bodies or on points, and super especially if a Reaper exists in even a vague area around where you are, and super super super especially if you just use it two or three times. Thief can now counter-cleave a warrior cleaving on a down just by using Shortbow 4 a couple of times, if they’ve wasted Steal. Why.

Revenant is pretty absurd, now, because it hasn’t been actually nerfed that badly, this patch. It’s pretty god-tier, honestly, now. On the other hand, the changes to condition Revenant, simultaneously feel really good, but really bad. If only there was a second option for a weapon. Maybe a ranged condition weapon. That would be pretty good, I think.

The new sigils…I don’t know. They just feel kinda awful to use. In general, the top few classes feel more balanced, but, the game doesn’t feel fun, anymore. Your guys’ thoughts?

Patch is garbage and they need to revert it

Thanks for your input, Rar. That was really insightful.

I Agree with the stuff about DHs. Yes, they destroy idiots who don’t know how to manage them and give those who have a bad matchup against them a hard time, but I dont think they really need hard nerfs.

For Rangers, Strength of the Pack’s change has made the skill even worse than the previous nerf. I didnt even think it was possible. I can understand if they wanted to tone down the regen pulses since it generates lots of AF, but at least they could have compensated slightly by making damage dealing sources give more to fueling it.

>Revenant is god-tier
I really wish people would stop thinking that just because an extremely underused spec got some positive attention that suddenly a profession rises up the ranks.

Yes, Revenant can now deal quite a bit more torment and has reliable access to it with the Abyssal Chill trait (as well as some confusion/slow on OH Axe), but their weaknesses to CC remains in that stance. They can still be loaded up with Conditions if there’s not enough players to draw resistance uptime from nearby, too, and that’s not considering stripping/corruption of that boon.

Its an improvement, but its too soon to say that they’ll be significantly better than they were in the last season. With the sustain nerfs, they might have some chance, though.

I’ll hold my thoughts on the sigil changes, but its not something I’m fond of on the power side. I can understand why it was done to slow down power bursts while shaving sustain across the board, but it’ll take awhile to really settle in and see how it affects things

Euthymias.7984:

I Agree with the stuff about DHs. Yes, they destroy idiots who don’t know how to manage them and give those who have a bad matchup against them a hard time, but I dont think they really need hard nerfs.

For Rangers, Strength of the Pack’s change has made the skill even worse than the previous nerf. I didnt even think it was possible. I can understand if they wanted to tone down the regen pulses since it generates lots of AF, but at least they could have compensated slightly by making damage dealing sources give more to fueling it.

>Revenant is god-tier
I really wish people would stop thinking that just because an extremely underused spec got some positive attention that suddenly a profession rises up the ranks.

Yes, Revenant can now deal quite a bit more torment and has reliable access to it with the Abyssal Chill trait (as well as some confusion/slow on OH Axe), but their weaknesses to CC remains in that stance. They can still be loaded up with Conditions if there’s not enough players to draw resistance uptime from nearby, too, and that’s not considering stripping/corruption of that boon.

Its an improvement, but its too soon to say that they’ll be significantly better than they were in the last season. With the sustain nerfs, they might have some chance, though.

I’ll hold my thoughts on the sigil changes, but its not something I’m fond of on the power side. I can understand why it was done to slow down power bursts while shaving sustain across the board, but it’ll take awhile to really settle in and see how it affects things

Listen to what I said. I’ve been playing GW2 competitively for a hot minute, and I did quite a few scrims recently in prep of the new tournies. I didn’t get this just from reading patchnotes. It’s not an underused spec getting love. Power Rev got essentially no relevant changes, this patch; it’s the fact that everything else is significantly worse that makes it so much better. It now has about the vague +1 potential of a thief, on Warr and DH, because they’re so garbage.

Power Rev was never ‘bad’, it was just arguably outshone in some aspects by other classes that could operate in their slot. Now they’re honestly better in literally every way than the classes they were comparable to.

Actually, in hindsight, I didn’t specify that in the original post, what build I was talking about, though. I talked mostly about Condi Rev, now that i look it over. I can see how you thought I was talking about Condi rev over power. Actually legitimately 100% my bad, dude lmao

Ok, I’ll bite, I will talk only about the elementalist that I am more familiar it.

In my opinion, the balance patch is a terrible mixture of a nerf and an empty patch (like the last one was) to a class that only purpose has been “be a healbot or work 10x harder to be worse than other classes in a dps role”.

The changes, once again, do nothing to add build diversity to the class. Literally zero – or rather, negative. It nerfs base ele abilities due to problems caused by the Tempest and, thus, instead of fixing the elite spec, the devs opt to kick the already down other builds to try and fix the excess of Tempest durability (Elemental Shielding and Obsidian Flesh nerfs).

Do these changes make a whole world of difference? I don’t think they do because frankly other elementalists builds such as S/F FA builds is a theoretical build that works in low levels of play where the player significantly outclasses the other.

The changes to the sigils are also a kick in the nuts as well, they result in an overall nerf to might stacking (old D/D ele style), in addition to the already nerfed loss of evasion from sigil of energy.

At the end of the day, what to elementalist have? Nothing to change the class.

Some fair nerfs to Tempest durability (Wash the Pain Away, Gale Song);
A strange buff to a class that already has the worst elites in the game (Rebound);
Low blows to core ele due to brokeness of Tempest Obsidian Flesh and Elemental Shielding);
A nerfed skill that was seeing some use (glyph of elemental power); and
Minor changes that really don’t make that much difference at all (and seriously, One with Fire change should have been since HoT came out – and the community said it hundreds of time at that time).

The only thing that I have doubts at the effectiveness of the change is Arcane Power and if the “effects apply to allies” means that allies can have the added effect of Elemental Surge for added condi application in addition to added ferocity, but frankly I don’t care that much for that particular combo to test it.

This patch screams “If you want to play ele as anything besides a healbot you will need to buy the expansion so gimme me money!” and just turns me off of the game….

I don’t really mind DH and warrior being heavy nerfed as the meta has become a bit boring as we were seeing too many of them.

However, I don’t know if there is enough new interesting stuff introduced by the patch. Condition revenant can be interesting but I am not sure if it is good enough compared to necro or mesmer.

The old buidls of ele, engi and thief will remain top tier in both coordinated team and pugs.

There isn’t enough variance in what the available sigils do. Because of how conditional or unimpactful most of the sigils are, the most valuable “work horse” sigils are going to be the ones that remove boons, followed by the ones that remove condis (this will be more heavily dictated by the meta). The classes themselves weren’t changed in a way where the sigils would “feel” like important choices, so now putting sigils into your build feels like an exercise of picking the best worst option to use.

Meanwhile, if the goal was to remove random elements of gameplay, how come hidden health percentage conditional procs weren’t altered? Those are also random gameplay elements and carry much more gameplay weight and impact than most of the previous sigils did. So because of the lack of the uniform transition to a singular concept or design pattern, the overall gameplay hasn’t actually changed, there’s just 1 aspect of gameplay that is worse than it was prepatch.

Conditions are crazy. I’m not going to hyperbolically complain about them though. I’m just going to point out that when there is a continuous vocalization of how condition design are hurting the health of the state of PvP, that removing a large portion of what makes power builds competitive (sigil procs from critical hits. Power builds already have to build for multiple stats to actually deal damage, and were rewarded by being given the ability to attach even more benefits to the way they built because they gave up defense to have those stats) is just an indirect buff to condition builds.

It overall just seems like this balance patch was based on throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck (in this case the sticking isn’t effective balancing, it’s what the devs managed to complete in the long length of time provided compared to the small changes received comparatively). “Sustain reduction, random sigil removal (let’s keep on hit as a thing though), some damage reductions and buffs, and a few trait changes” is the whiteboard I imagine, with no clear design goal or balance baseline to direct and changes towards.

Sigh it’s going to be another rough PvP season ahead (also rip competitive for teams I guess? Still no solid news on proleague or automated tournaments, where’s the PR?)

aerodynamique.5267:

The new sigils…I don’t know. They just feel kinda awful to use. In general, the top few classes feel more balanced, but, the game doesn’t feel fun, anymore. Your guys’ thoughts?

This game hasn’t felt “fun” for a while. I’ve been running the same build on my engineer literally since Heart of Thorns launched, and it’s seen nothing but nerfs for two years. I don’t know what Irenio’s deal is, because we never asked for gyros in the first place and he absolutely refuses to let us use elixirs or gadgets in any real capacity—you know, the things that are actually fun to use.

Today they even felt the need to nerf Protection Injection, a trait which ostensibly just managed to, I guess, fly under the radar for five years before needing this change in May 2017. It’s almost comical at this point. What changed that warranted this nerf?

There’s just absolutely nothing inspirational in these patch notes. They just constantly tackle the low hanging fruit like Healing Signet without properly addressing the deep issues that elite specializations put into the game: there’s just very little build variety, and this patch only stifled things further for multiple professions. I didn’t play nearly any games in season six, and I don’t see why that’ll change for season seven. I don’t care how good or bad it is: I’m just tired of playing the same kittening build every kittening season, and it’s sad they continue to nerf our meta build without helping us create any actual alternatives.

Imagine how great this game would be if condition damage never existed

I’m having a blast with the new Ventari rev elite, you can now play pinball with players!

I’ll give my thoughts on Druid/Ranger

Neutral/Good changes
-Ancient seeds needed the nerf tbh
-Bonfire/Throw Torch nerfs are marginal in PvP, PvE on the other hand….
-Evasive Purity is the best change we got IMO.
-Honed Axes is usable now. Possibly viable.
-Light on your feet would be a godsend… if it worked.
-Refined toxins is almost usable…! But it’s fighting for a slot.
-Strider’s de(of)fense is a neat change on paper, however it’s purely for melee ranger an it’s got Spotter to compete with, mind you your team gets this as does your pet. I’d argue melee ranger would have preferred the projectile destruction, outright cutting a killshot or true shot and denying bow rangers CC can be a big deal, if situational.
-Troll Unguent is arguably our best heal, dropping Nature Magic for Wilderness may very well be our best bet for support in PvP.

The bad
-We heal as one/Resounding timbre seems like a stupid change, it’s impact is minor and the regen was a nice way to pad downtime. If you wanted to nerf AF gen nerf the contribution of regeneration.
-Lunar Impact should not have been nerfed at all. This was a core skill to heal allies and save lives.
-Smokescale should not have been nerfed at all it’s damage was actually in a good place. At least gives cats and birds tracking? We actually have no reliable pet DPS bar Bristleback now.
-SotP is the most offensive change. It’s the best support skill in the game now though, for the enemy team! Free stability for Thief to steal and enjoy 10s of godmode, proceed to be a free kill like a good little Ranger. It saves the lives of starving Necromancers by giving them a tasty treat, that big stack of stability can save their life! Lastly, Mesmers briefly consider boonstripping and toying with you like a DBZ villain but they remember your a Ranger and decide you wont be any fun, using Chronomancy they send you back to 2013 when Ranger was garbage and kill you there.

Overall, I’m willing to put money on Druid falling out of favor for Ele (AGAIN) or whatever new healer spec comes out. Without reliable stability, the overall healing nerf and lack of pet damage, Druid has no place on a competitive team. Sure, you can be great at 1v1s but good luck getting in over an Ele. Looks like those dirty mages win again. So that puts the score to like what 2-4 now? GG Eles.

As a warrior main – I don’t mind the changes to Berzerker’s skills (Arc DIvider and Headbutt), even though it screws up PvE something awful.

But why the hell did they have to go after shield bash? That skill has been fine and functional as it was for 4+ years (Though sometimes buggy with whether or not it cleared immob when traited)… just because some morons couldn’t realize that if a Warrior had a big, obvious chunk of metal and wood visible from miles away strapped to one arm and weren’t hiding behind it or flapping their other arm, they could expect a Shield Bash?

The nerfs to Skull Grinder (Reducing Mace domination) and Headbutt should have been enough to reduce the problems presented by Shield on top of Mace+Headbutt CC spam to being appropriate again. Now the shield feels like an oversized hammer, not an actual shield.

aerodynamique.5267:

Okay. I’m going to try to be pretty analytic in my post. I’ve been playing GW2 competitively for about four years. I was here through Season 1. I was here for after the specialization patch, when Shadow Arts Thief became a thing, and Thief was so unkillable that Bloodlust sigil was meta.

So, I am being very literal when I say: This is actually probably one of the worst balance patches I’ve ever seen.

Anet probably tried to normalize for power creep over the years, but only with certain classes, because (I guess) they have some sort of handy-dandy statistic spreadsheet that showed that Dragonhunter had a higher winrate than most classes? I don’t know. They seem to have nerfed some classes to a vague pre-HoT state, but left others exactly the same.

Inherently, I don’t think that nerfing a class that had a high winrate in pugs is a bad idea. At the same time, however, I think that you should really consider what you’re nerfing. Dragonhunter is obviously a pugstomping class; nobody will contest that. However, anyone that actually knew how the class worked realized that it’s honestly not that hard to play around. And even if it was overpowered…did it really deserve that violent of a gutting? I don’t know. Dragonhunter players are basically stuck to lower tiers, now. I don’t think it’s a viable class anywhere above mid-Gold, now.

At the same time, I think that the Thief changes are inherently awful and frustrating to play around. A short daze at over 5 stacks of poison, for Shortbow 4. That sounds fine. But now, consider the implications; Dragonhunter traps dazing were so annoying that it was changed to a slow, and they were on a 20s CD. SB4 is spammable, and, honestly, 5 stacks of poison isn’t hard to get. Especially on downed bodies or on points, and super especially if a Reaper exists in even a vague area around where you are, and super super super especially if you just use it two or three times. Thief can now counter-cleave a warrior cleaving on a down just by using Shortbow 4 a couple of times, if they’ve wasted Steal. Why.

Revenant is pretty absurd, now, because it hasn’t been actually nerfed that badly, this patch. It’s pretty god-tier, honestly, now. On the other hand, the changes to condition Revenant, simultaneously feel really good, but really bad. If only there was a second option for a weapon. Maybe a ranged condition weapon. That would be pretty good, I think.

The new sigils…I don’t know. They just feel kinda awful to use. In general, the top few classes feel more balanced, but, the game doesn’t feel fun, anymore. Your guys’ thoughts?

Your best course of action is to presume that they’re not even listening to your feedback. Trust me, it will make you feel better.

Countless

Phineas Poe.3018:

aerodynamique.5267:

The new sigils…I don’t know. They just feel kinda awful to use. In general, the top few classes feel more balanced, but, the game doesn’t feel fun, anymore. Your guys’ thoughts?

This game hasn’t felt “fun” for a while. I’ve been running the same build on my engineer literally since Heart of Thorns launched, and it’s seen nothing but nerfs for two years. I don’t know what Irenio’s deal is, because we never asked for gyros in the first place and he absolutely refuses to let us use elixirs or gadgets in any real capacity—you know, the things that are actually fun to use.

Today they even felt the need to nerf Protection Injection, a trait which ostensibly just managed to, I guess, fly under the radar for five years before needing this change in May 2017. It’s almost comical at this point. What changed that warranted this nerf?

There’s just absolutely nothing inspirational in these patch notes. They just constantly tackle the low hanging fruit like Healing Signet without properly addressing the deep issues that elite specializations put into the game: there’s just very little build variety, and this patch only stifled things further for multiple professions. I didn’t play nearly any games in season six, and I don’t see why that’ll change for season seven. I don’t care how good or bad it is: I’m just tired of playing the same kittening build every kittening season, and it’s sad they continue to nerf our meta build without helping us create any actual alternatives.

Same dude. I used to play scrapper/engi pretty heavily in PvP (like I was engi main when glory was still a thing…) but after 3 seasons of hammer and being a res bot or far troller I decided it was boring and moved to Necro/Ele/DH.

Idk what they’re doing, scrapper is already boring and most builds are bad on it so you’re left with either standard scrapper or base condi engi which is just cheesy and not really that great.

I guess without the guidance of pro league level Engis like Chaith ANet clearly has no idea how to balance anything in PvP for Engi. I’m not surprised to see them gut DH either, it wasn’t really OP but noobs that ran in and out of ToF were commonplace even in Gold so I guess ANet had to ‘balance’ DH around stupid tier play.

I played 600 games in S5. 20 in S6. Probably 0 in S7 this just isn’t fun anymore.

Condi game! That’s all!

Azel.4786:

It nerfs base ele abilities due to problems caused by the Tempest and, thus, instead of fixing the elite spec, the devs opt to kick the already down other builds to try and fix the excess of Tempest durability (Elemental Shielding and Obsidian Flesh nerfs).

They will never get balance right and will always hit other builds when trying to tone down whatever is meta/OP, because that is pretty much all that is possible with the base system of things like traits, weapons, how stats are available, etc.

On the surface the GW2 system of traits, picking any stat on any build, freely choosing weapons, etc looks like it should give lots of build variety, lots of opportunities for people to come up with new builds, but the reality is it doesn’t, because it is impossible to balance, it is too difficult to target the OP build and nerf it without hitting less strong builds.

This game would have much more genuine build variety (as in builds that at or near “viable” for a game mode), if each class simply had 3 separate trait trees like you get in some other games each aimed at a specific role e.g – support, damage, etc, they could even tie the availability of stats/weapons to a role if needed.

So sure some people would cry they have less choice with a system like that, but the reality is you would get more genuine choices, because Anet could balance things seperately so to take ele as an example they would actually be able to have a decent damage spec, because they would be able to target nerfs at the OP support spec separately.

But then this is Anet, and the Anet way of doing things is paper over the cracks rather than address the fundamental issues.

zinkz.7045:

Azel.4786:

It nerfs base ele abilities due to problems caused by the Tempest and, thus, instead of fixing the elite spec, the devs opt to kick the already down other builds to try and fix the excess of Tempest durability (Elemental Shielding and Obsidian Flesh nerfs).

They will never get balance right and will always hit other builds when trying to tone down whatever is meta/OP, because that is pretty much all that is possible with the base system of things like traits, weapons, how stats are available, etc.

On the surface the GW2 system of traits, picking any stat on any build, freely choosing weapons, etc looks like it should give lots of build variety, lots of opportunities for people to come up with new builds, but the reality is it doesn’t, because it is impossible to balance, it is too difficult to target the OP build and nerf it without hitting less strong builds.

This game would have much more genuine build variety (as in builds that at or near “viable” for a game mode), if each class simply had 3 separate trait trees like you get in some other games each aimed at a specific role e.g – support, damage, etc, they could even tie the availability of stats/weapons to a role if needed.

So sure some people would cry they have less choice with a system like that, but the reality is you would get more genuine choices, because Anet could balance things seperately so to take ele as an example they would actually be able to have a decent damage spec, because they would be able to target nerfs at the OP support spec separately.

But then this is Anet, and the Anet way of doing things is paper over the cracks rather than address the fundamental issues.

Just logged into the forum to upvote this. This is exactly the problem with gw2 they intended to buff power mes but in the end condi got even stronger. In addition, I also believe that one class should only be capable of doing one role. Therefore a one trait line system only focused on one role is the best solution to balance the game. But this is only wishful thinking anet would never revamp the system in such a way.

I wouldn’t say this was the worst patch. I think we have seen worse.

I welcome anything that reduces powercreep introduced with HoT, so it was a big plus from the patch, imo.
My critique is that when they try to make core more viable (which is really welcome), they usually go wrong way about it, imo. Just an example from thief (yeah yeah i main it): their idea behind sb and poison buffs was to give players more motivation to pick SA but in the same patch they gave reveal 2 spells that have basically no cast time. This is not how you motivate players to pick underused traitlines…. Some hipsters in wvw might make a build around sb/poison/sa but it hardly change what people run in pvp at any half decent level.

Sigil change also does bother me. I can see where they are coming from (less sigils, less effort to balance) but it is just another step to reduce variety. I think nobody can deny that build variety became basically non existent (outside of lol HJs) with june patch and HoT launch. The sigil change is just another step forcing us into same meta build. As dps i have no alternatives really as far as sigil choices go.

An observation: couple players made obvious troll posts on forums -> things from those posts actually got implemented.

What suggestions were those Cynz?

Going to discuss the DH changes as it’s my main and the class I have the most insight into.

Good: Hunter’s Determination, these traits are un-skillful and boring. I’d rather they get rid of all of them.

Test of Faith, this was an incredibly high damage skill that needed to be toned down. Will still see use in the “meta” meditrap build.

Meh: Renewed Focus, this has always been the must-go elite for Guardians in PvP. Much like Mass Invis for mesmers pre HoT. I guess I can see the nerf in CD since most classes had hits to their sustain. Its fair.

Wings of Resolve, it’s fine. As other classes had their healing toned down I can see this happening. I would love for the healing to be shaved even further and trade it for an evade frame.

Bad: True Shot, increasing the cooldown of an already bad skill is just laughable. Not only is it a 3/4 second cast time and about 1/2 travel time. Its also reflectable and hits about as hard as the third autoattack in Thief dagger aa chain. It’s our ONLY reliable source of damage on the longbow (outside of Deflecting Shot → Test of Faith combo).

Shield of Courage, a frontal 3 second block on a 60 second cooldown. Compare this to Mesmer shield 4 (1.5/3 second block) on a 30 second cooldown or Warrior shield 5 (3 second (all angle) block on a 25 second cooldown. I get that if you commit an entire traitline to it, you also make it a stunbreak(with a casttime) which gives Protection and Stability.

Spear of Judgement, did we really need more ways to kill Thieves?

Smite Condition, a 21% shave of damage on this? Just why?

Conclussion. I get that Dragonhunter is the bane of low-tier players. But you’re absolutly BUTCHERING a class that has seen ZERO successful competetive play since Heart of Thorns was released. They have not won a single tournament game. Ever. This is the only class that has NEVER won a single high-tier tournament game. EVER.

Also, these changes carrying over to WvW where the only DH’s that even use LB are us roamers is a joke. You nerfed an already garbage roaming class.

Abelisk.4527:

I’m having a blast with the new Ventari rev elite, you can now play pinball with players!

you could do it before . ppl ust dont try it. btw now even less as you lose your nrg….

thief gonna be top tier when sustain all around got nerfed a bit

d/p dont use much stealth so the reveal isnt going to really hurt them at all.

anet push to the right direction
on one hand dont change the meta to harshly. same meta builds will not changed. condi mesmer, ele support, dh, warrior , ranger engi etc…
on the other hand create more builds to play around. condi rev, support rev, condi ranger, condi necro to sum degree.

also push to group play with teef and necro poison field can be fun to watch them working together. thief alone need heavly invest to secure 5 poison stacks.

Speaking for guardian, yet another update that sucks, after being forced into playing the role of DH to be competitive. It has been consecutively nerfed (imo didn’t really need to this update, maybe just True Shot and also nerfing a condition removal?), it’s more unbalanced than before now.
I feel the game is very linear and your forced to playing certain builds, guess it’ll burn guardian now? A far cry from the gw1 days of making your own builds and being successful with them, it’s more like gw for dummies now.

Loop.8106:

Also, these changes carrying over to WvW where the only DH’s that even use LB are us roamers is a joke. You nerfed an already garbage roaming class.

Meanwhile in the aspects that account for what the vast majority of WvW players do – zergs/guild raids, for the entire duration of the game guardian has been the most broken OP irreplaceable class and with more guardians in WvW than mes, engi, ranger & thief put together.

messiah.1908:

Abelisk.4527:

I’m having a blast with the new Ventari rev elite, you can now play pinball with players!

you could do it before . ppl ust dont try it. btw now even less as you lose your nrg….

You can spam it if you’re off-point. When I mean pinball I mean CC every 3 seconds.

The problem is they are trying to normalized the game and the power creep they added in though nerfing the core classes more so then the power creep it self or the elite spec. I am talking mostly about ele but i think this has happen to some level on the other classes. But ele core has been nerfed over and over because of what tempest can do. Its like trying to fix your home being too tall by dig out your foundation. These nerfs are going to be there for the next eleit spec and are going to be more impact-full to the game then anet realizes because of this.

The thief trait ‘Pulmonary Impact’ needs a 5 second ICD… Or Headshot needs to cost 2 more initiative

Nerfs to Warriors and DH were 100% appropriate. Only good thing about the patch really.

The pacth was fine, it’s just they didn’t nerf some classes as much as they did with others.

So the classes that were barely making into meta got killed and the classes that were already good didn’t get nerf imo.

Like for example with guardian it would have enough to nerf a bit more traps or true shot but not their survival abilities.
Druid nerfs were totally wrong, like why? druid was already worse than engi at any role and you nerfed it more? wtf
I agree with some nerf to warriors but why make them slower? it was already easy to dodge whatever they throw.

I somehow agree with the sigils change, it feels good to have less passive procs but again power builds did benefit a lot from them, I’d have expected some kind of nerf to protection or toughness, because now the only power build viable is thief because of PI.

And thief, engi, mes will remain untouchable for the rest of the season once again.

lol at people that complain about dragon spammers

Sartharina.3542:

As a warrior main – I don’t mind the changes to Berzerker’s skills (Arc DIvider and Headbutt), even though it screws up PvE something awful.

But why the hell did they have to go after shield bash? That skill has been fine and functional as it was for 4+ years (Though sometimes buggy with whether or not it cleared immob when traited)… just because some morons couldn’t realize that if a Warrior had a big, obvious chunk of metal and wood visible from miles away strapped to one arm and weren’t hiding behind it or flapping their other arm, they could expect a Shield Bash?

The nerfs to Skull Grinder (Reducing Mace domination) and Headbutt should have been enough to reduce the problems presented by Shield on top of Mace+Headbutt CC spam to being appropriate again. Now the shield feels like an oversized hammer, not an actual shield.

It is indeed an unecessary nerf. Shield bash was already being dodged/interupted on many occasions prior to the change. Shield bash is a skill used by core warrior too….. not just those braindead berzerker build… I’m a bit sad they nerfed core warrior once again while their objective was to nerf berzerker.

Nerf that also apply to core warrior this patch also include healign signet (10% nerf), Defy pain/endure pain (the 2s change).

Buff that apply to core warrior : Recklness dodge dmg increase and the axe changes… so basically we got flat damage boost (wich we clearly did not ask for and we did not need) but our shield bash got nerfed along with our sustain (wich is a lot more important for core warrior).

Can core warrior be left alone for god kitten-in-g sake? How many core warrior do you even see in PvP nowadays? Answer is almost nada.

Edit : If they wanted to reduce the sustain of a berzerker… they should have looked into ‘’Dead of Alive’’ and nerf this trait wich only impact berzerker…. What is Anet even doing?

mrauls.6519:

The thief trait ‘Pulmonary Impact’ needs a 5 second ICD… Or Headshot needs to cost 2 more initiative

yeah let’s nerf core spec for no good reason!

Cynz.9437:

mrauls.6519:

The thief trait ‘Pulmonary Impact’ needs a 5 second ICD… Or Headshot needs to cost 2 more initiative

yeah let’s nerf core spec for no good reason!

Pulmonary impact is a Daredevil trait…

aerodynamique.5267:

Cynz.9437:

mrauls.6519:

The thief trait ‘Pulmonary Impact’ needs a 5 second ICD… Or Headshot needs to cost 2 more initiative

yeah let’s nerf core spec for no good reason!

Pulmonary impact is a Daredevil trait…

He was referring to the Headshot ini increase suggested as far as I can tell…. which is core Thief

aerodynamique.5267:

Cynz.9437:

mrauls.6519:

The thief trait ‘Pulmonary Impact’ needs a 5 second ICD… Or Headshot needs to cost 2 more initiative

yeah let’s nerf core spec for no good reason!

Pulmonary impact is a Daredevil trait…

did you even read what i quoted?

Just wanted to comment and say that of course anet deleted the thread that rarnark and Naru called them out on… cant be seen having the best pvp players say how bad your balance patch is.

The most annoying part for me:

“PVP Only”

When do they balance more in “WvW” ??
There are playerS vs playerS also you know?

To be fair Rarnark said it is bad, not “how” it is bad.

He was surprisingly petulant for a top player. Not as reasonable as say Sind.

slimike.1693:

Just wanted to comment and say that of course anet deleted the thread that rarnark and Naru called them out on… cant be seen having the best pvp players say how bad your balance patch is.

Wish I could have seen that thread but i’m sure it was nothing but Naru cursing Anet to oblivion because it’s the only language he knows how to use for the past couple of seasons.

Nop, I told Anet why their balance patch made absolutely zero sense and the only logical reasoning for a patch so random and stupid was simply to prep for the new elite specs during the expansion.

The game needs to be balanced around top tier gameplay, and not idiots that walked through test of faith one too many times and claimed “traps are not okay”. This patch is actually so atrocious, and aero was right when he said it was probably by far the worst patch ever.

The previous meta, anet had finally reached a spot where EVERY single class was meta, and any comp could work granted the players playing those classes were good. The old meta had 2 classes that were basically on the edge of not being meta, but if you were good u made it work. Those 2 classes were druid and DH. This patch hit those 2 classes the hardest, and the stronger classes barely got hit.

Sucks anet had to listen to all those monkeys spamming the pvp forum about how they walked through test of faith 4 times or how they fought a druid on the druids node forever and cried OP. Anet cut their meta in half, and their biggest mistake was listening to forum warriors that have 0 clue what the meta really is and ignoring the players that know exactly whats going on.

NotoriousNaru.1705:

The previous meta, anet had finally reached a spot where EVERY single class was meta,

And it was one of the worst metas we ever had.
When will people finally understand that only because every class is balanced it doens’t mean that the gameplay will be at its best?

Worst or best meta for you, is an opinion.
Having 9/9 viable classes is GOOD balance.
Having 6/9 viable classes is BAD balance.
I honestly don’t know how to break it down more than this to all you forum warriors.

NotoriousNaru.1705:

Nop, I told Anet why their balance patch made absolutely zero sense and the only logical reasoning for a patch so random and stupid was simply to prep for the new elite specs during the expansion.

The game needs to be balanced around top tier gameplay, and not idiots that walked through test of faith one too many times and claimed “traps are not okay”. This patch is actually so atrocious, and aero was right when he said it was probably by far the worst patch ever.

The previous meta, anet had finally reached a spot where EVERY single class was meta, and any comp could work granted the players playing those classes were good. The old meta had 2 classes that were basically on the edge of not being meta, but if you were good u made it work. Those 2 classes were druid and DH. This patch hit those 2 classes the hardest, and the stronger classes barely got hit.

Sucks anet had to listen to all those monkeys spamming the pvp forum about how they walked through test of faith 4 times or how they fought a druid on the druids node forever and cried OP. Anet cut their meta in half, and their biggest mistake was listening to forum warriors that have 0 clue what the meta really is and ignoring the players that know exactly whats going on.

Balanced maybe… but it was pretty boring. So much spam instead of what I used to play back in the days. GW2 prior to 2014 was a super fun pvp game where every dodge counted and where boon uptime was much lower (thus much more important).

PvP breathing out the last bit of it’s life the last 2 seasons with no changes but to builds since ages actually speaks for the meta itself. That’s not an opinion.

Killing off 3 classes is NOT okay. The fact that you people don’t see that is just sad, its literally like i’m talking to a wall. If Anet feels the meta is too stale and boring, they can shake it up in a manner that does not kill 1/3 of the classes in the game. That is poor balance.

I’m out, there’s no reasoning with people that just never understood the meta because they are too busy in bronze running full traps, or dps eles.

Edit: A good example of shaking up the meta would if it is too boring would be:
Nerf power rev, buff condi rev.
Nerf meditrapper, buff bunker guard.
Nerf 1v1 warrior, buff other stuff and make it a teamfighter or w/e.

This community should not accept them killing off 3 classes just like that because they felt like it, thats stupid. Maybe you like this patch because it wasn’t your class, but next time it might be.

NotoriousNaru.1705:

Killing off 3 classes is NOT okay. The fact that you people don’t see that is just sad, its literally like i’m talking to a wall. If Anet feels the meta is too stale and boring, they can shake it up in a manner that does not kill 1/3 of the classes in the game. That is poor balance.

I’m out, there’s no reasoning with people that just never understood the meta because they are too busy in bronze running full traps, or dps eles.

Edit: A good example of shaking up the meta would if it is too boring would be:
Nerf power rev, buff condi rev.
Nerf meditrapper, buff bunker guard.
Nerf 1v1 warrior, buff other stuff and make it a teamfighter or w/e.

This community should not accept them killing off 3 classes just like that because they felt like it, thats stupid. Maybe you like this patch because it wasn’t your class, but next time it might be.

I do agree that those nerfs were random and did not solve the issue. I simply won’t go as far as you and say that last season was nicely balanced.

GW2 balance took a hike when HoT came. WvW almost died out (at least roaming did) and now even PvP is dying (wich is sad since it was basically where I tried to find refuge after WvW roaming/dueling died).

Entenkommando.5208:

NotoriousNaru.1705:

The previous meta, anet had finally reached a spot where EVERY single class was meta,

And it was one of the worst metas we ever had.

Completely disagree… if your class couldn’t make it, it’s because YOU we’re at fault. Just because you don’t know how to dodge the pizzas on the ground doesn’t mean it was a bad meta.

This patch was bad because it demolished build diversity, at least for DH. Like some one once said, they don’t test these patches on a test server, they just roll them out and pray to Melandru.

Best build so far in 2 years… adapt or die. The game was stale and people claimed pvp was dying.. They change it up… now its worse? logic much? So many left the game over that very meta you claim was balanced and good LOL. Too funny. Man the population of this game got so bad defending that previous meta. It was all copy and paste builds and now you need to actually think? Thank god they trashed sigils all of you sheep using the same stuff isnt how a game should stay…. it was extremely stagnant.. Oh and yeah i been around since beta and mostly pvp and wvw. Only thing im a little upset over is Plague but I get over it since im not a cry baby.

Man what happened to actual skill instead of mindless previous meta. Yep it was mindless i actually didnt participate in previous season over how bad it is and was. All the people upset here got carried by builds.

(Oh and i play all classes well except ele which i know got hit sadly with no buffs to compensate for the other nerfs which were needed…. so dont think im some elitist to one)