Not getting into class by class balance (has been discussed to death already), but some game balance as a whole.
Passives, Actives, and Skill Type!
The power of skills should be determined by the type of skill it is.
Signets:
Signet passives should be at the bottom of this list, all signet passives should be very weak. Signet actives should be much stronger but slightly weaker than standard utilities that have no passive benefit.
Summons:
Summons should be fairly weak as well, though arguably stronger than signet passives as they must be summoned first. Summon Actives should destroy the item/creature and have a substantial effect, about on par with a signet active.
Instant Cast:
All instant cast skills that can be used without fear of interrupt should be stronger than signet and summons, but weaker to skills with cast times.
If the game followed these rules, you could still have some passive play, but it would always be inferior to riskier more active play when executed correctly.
Size and Readability!
I ‘think’ the devs are looking into some size scaling, what I would like is Asura who are always at max size, Norn and Char always at minimum size and humans and Sylvari right in the middle when in a match. The sizes might have to come up or down a little to make them a little closer, but still distinguishable. The other suggestion I have seen is a settings option to make all players appear human to your character. I like both of these, I’m not picky.
Minions and AI!
Summoned minions and spirits should scale in size to the caster. Spirits need to be a little more transparent and the color of each type a bit more pronounced. I would like all Mesmer clones to have a bit of shimmer to them as well, but I’m sure they disagree lol. AOE cap in PvP has no reason to exist, let AOE be the bane of AI spam.
Now a bit more Ranger specific:
Spirits should be non targets and immune to damage like old Guardian spirit weapons. The trade off would be 10% chance to gain effect vs 35% (25% traited vs 70%). Spirit of Nature revive reduced to 1 target. Spirits would be destroyed when commanded unless traited with Natures Vengance (reworked to: spirits are no longer destroyed when commanded)
This would make spirits less like minions and more like auras. No more projectile blocking, but less need to destroy them too. On a side note, pve and wvw rangers would probably love this.
Ranger Pets: Reduce ranger pet damage by 75% and give their utilities an instant cast skill that emanates from their position. Then Make rangers attacks scale in damage similar to the other classes.
Example: Greatsword 1: Ranger- 203(power coefficient- 0.55) Warrior- 259(0.7, but also has 1 stack vuln) Guardian- 296(0.8) Put ranger damage somewhere in with these.
Sorry to only class focus was on ranger (I rarely even play mine so its not a bias thing) and I understand that other classes need tweaks here and there but those can be done with the guidelines above. Ranger core mechanic just felt broken, and needs to be fixed somehow. This was my best stab at it.
Stats!
OK, this is a bit more ambitious than the rest but I would love to condense main stats to only 5. Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality and a combination of Condition Damage and Healing Power we will call ‘Magic’ for now. Being a combo stat, Magic will have 50% of the effectiveness of current Healing Power and Condition Damage. All critical attacks will cause +75% the damage of a normal attack. This is just a personal pipe-dream of mine, balancing offence and defense, and reducing heavy burst, bunking, and condi specific builds all at the same time. Gear would look like from offensive to defensive:
Power
Precision
Magic
Toughness
Vitality
And you could still have 1 main stat with 2 minor stats on gear. Celestial would have to be bumped a bit too.
Well, that’s all I got. I leave it now in the hands of my kind forum compatriots.