Guild Wars 2

The Good

- Tooltips are more informative now. Need another QA pass to weed out inaccuracies.
- Tab Targeting prioritizing players is good.

The Bad

- Immob stacking was yet another step to move the game in a less skilled direction. Prior to the change immobs had to be timed with coordination, now you can just spam your kitten mindlessly.

- AoE changes to staff ele and bomb engi. These changes would have been very good in a meta where everything is not silly OP. In the current meta, they are just another layer of AoE spamming in a game already dominated by no-skill AoE.

The Missing

First nerf all damage across the board on all classes. Then nerf evade and dodge uptime so that dodging revolves around dodging big hits, not just spamming dodge constantly. Then adjust healing down accordingly. After that, nerf or redesign mechanics that rely on AI and passive procs and relegate them to PvE only. Voila, a skill-based meta is born.

- PvP incentives & reward system
- Match making improvements
- Tournament infrastructure
- New PvP modes
- QoL stuff, like build templates

The Good

- Fixing the sigil of paralyzation so that it doesn’t round up

The Bad

- Fixing the sigil of paralyzation so that every single stun doesn’t round up

Nuklear nerfing every single stun in the game that used to round up to a point where they are now all weaker than they were before even while using the Sigil compared to the previous duration without it.

I’ve an almost even distribution of play between all the classes, so fair warning ahead of time that this will be quite a large post.

THE GOOD

• The new tooltip changes, damage floaters, and ground targeting option are all far more preferable (personally) to the previous options available and make for a worthy patch in themselves.
• Stunbreakers finally affecting knockbacks is a very welcome change, particularly as Skyhammer is so centered around knockbacks. I’m still in the muscle memory of hitting stunbreakers after I’ve hit the ground, but this is a very welcome change.
• Sigil of Paralyzation Fix — A great start to the Warriors who have recently shot far back up to the top.
• AoE Change — While this change received a fair amount of ire, I feel it’s healthy for the state of the game, as placing a short cooldown AoE attack on top of a group of players before was extremely strong in WvW, popping aegis and dealing damage to others as well. I feel many of the reactions saying the amount of damage it takes away from AoE specs were very much hyperbole.
• Many bug fixes, many of which (and this is important) did buff many classes (in small ways) or discouraged inappropriate play.

Elementalist

• Solid buffs to the staff all around— I’m not quite sure why the Elementalist forums are talking about it as not being a buff. Still not the ideal 1v1 weapon, but clearly not what the weapon was designed around.
• I adore the change to solid speed, as it adds more active play into traits. I’d like to see solid speed last 0.5-1 second longer to consider taking it as a trait. As it is, it creates about 190 units of distance during it’s duration in combat over 1.5 seconds, or about an autoattack’s worth, which I don’t really consider meaningful when the bolt to the heart trait is available (even with Fresh Air traited).
• Conjure changes were good. The skills themselves are fun to use, even in PvP— the next challenge should be finding a better way to access said skills. I personally am not a fan of how long it takes to access the skills (it sounds a little silly as the cast times are 1/4th of a second, yes, but that 1/4th can often be critical when I need access to a skill then and there on the spot to react to something).

Engineer

• Bomb kit’s AoE buffs were very strong, and make for a great quality of life improvement and incentive to take the kit during power builds due to bomb 1’s fantastic scaling and attack speed. Bomb kit’s 1 skill could use an AoE indicator.
• The removal of RNG from Engineer’s defensive “Throw Elixir S” is a godsend towards strategic playing (I can’t count the number of times I threw it down hoping for stealth and getting stability or vice-versa).
• The turret change is excellent as well (I haven’t tested this one personally as I’m not a fan of the build, but it seems like a great change), though I’ve been reading about many issues concerning turret AI when attacking with AoE attacks.

Guardian

• Good changes to consecrations all around. As it is, Stand Your Ground is such an excellent source of stability and utility (retaliation and stunbreak as well) that the buff to Hallowed Ground is likely to go unappreciated (the problem here is with SYG, not HG though). I do see many guardians contemplating taking Purging Flames now.
• Meditations finally becoming instant across the board is a great QoL change, as taking the trait which only affected Smite Condition before (as a 20 point trait, no less) made combat slightly clunky as a glass Guardian. I’m of the opinion that 4 seconds is a little underwhelming, but I understand that it’s due to the massive burst Guardian is capable of. I’d still like to see the duration increased by perhaps a second to allow for slightly more uptime.
• Healing Breeze saw a nice change, though I’ve a feeling the reason this isn’t taken much (by myself included) is both the long cooldown and immense channeling time. Scaling back both and lowering the healing numbers by the same amount may make it more enticing as a choice (particularly the channeling portion of the skill).

Mesmer

• I like the directions mantras are going as group support skills.
• I’ve never felt that Scepter 2 or 3 were weak skills, but a minor cooldown reduction on both is alright for an underused spec. I’d be careful in adding further buffs to this, as it’s quite strong offensively as is (with the ever-present ultimate peel, stealth).

Necromancer

• The life force bar change is another excellent quality of life change that finally allows the necromancer to know exactly how much life left the necromancer has available.
• The changes to the vampiric line were a nice buff to a rarely used trait tree. This brings us to a problem addressed later in “the bad”.

Ranger

• Vigorous renewal’s nerf addresses some of the large evasion Ranger had access to.
• Sic’ Em is a great step in the right direction in addressing counterplay to stealth, which I firmly believe is a disproportionately strong disengage to other options in the game in that there are firmly few counterplays to several stealth options. That being said, that it is instant and undodgeable also presents a lack of counterplay option for thieves or mesmers (or engineers) planning to go into stealth. Perhaps adding a very short duration casting animation (a point, perhaps) and allowing it to be dodged would be a fair compromise, with increasing the revealed duration by 1-2 seconds as the compromise.
• Buffs to supportive aspects of ranger’s pets is a great direction to take the pets. I firmly believe that pets should be utility-focused (choosing to apply/cleanse conditions, slows, and CC) rather than damage focused and allow that damage component to come from the ranger themselves (which they provide well). That being said, the activation of pets’ skills could use some improvement— I’m not fond of the large delay between pressing the pet skill and then waiting for the pet to move into attack range to trigger the next attack and then going through a lengthy animation to execute the desired effect.

Thief

• I like the venom changes, though even fully traited out, it is difficult to take a venom over another utility simply because of how limited the charges are on venoms. I would like to see venom charges increased (with effects decreased so that ultimately, landing all of the hits produces the same overall effect, but it would be more effective when completely traiting for them and less punishing if a single attack got evaded/blocked).
• As much as I loved playing S/D Thief, the larcenous strike change is a fair one, and I am seeing a return of boon-based builds after this nerf (and the strength of S/D is primarily in infiltrator’s strike regardless).
• Withdraw’s interaction with immobilize being fixed a very nice buff and bug fix.
• Basilisk venom behaving as other stuns is also a good way to even up CC across the game.

Warrior

• The rearrangement of the shout traits was a logical one and a great buff to the shout healing build. The numbers are nice too, but I’d be very careful about further buffing this spec. As it is, many builds may outright lack the damage to ever take down a healing/toughness spec warrior running this build, and the reason we aren’t seeing more is simply because of how strong the other option warriors currently have is.

THE BAD
General

• Many aspects of this game are still centered around passive play, which is both not fun to play and not fun to watch as an esport either. This applies to many parts of the game— the relative effectiveness of AI based builds (I personally don’t mind this one too much in the case of mesmers, though as stated earlier, I am not a fan of having Ranger’s pets be such a large component of their damage. I would prefer Ranger’s pets be a far more utility-based option, allowing them a larger swath of active boon application/removal, condition application/removal, and CC application in lieu of more direct damage), the ability of rapid condition reapplication upon simply hitting with anything else (burning on crit traits and sun spirit are the most notable offenders of this, with “Throw Torch” from Rangers being a great example of where I would prefer condition application be), and long boon durations on exceptionally strong boons like protection and stability (which make CC dependent classes have to wait for very long periods of time for their window to hit with CC, which may still be dodged).
• The arrow that indicates that a teammate is downed should differentiate (perhaps in color) between an ally that is in the downed state and an ally that has been killed. I feel like this should be a seemingly easy change that will both impact PvP and PvE in a very good way.
• Immobilization stacking is going to be a problem. This is, with fear, the most rewarding condition someone can land and is near equal in effectiveness to flat out harder forms of CC. Allowing it to stack instead of overwrite can allow for some extreme immobilize stacking— on top of personally not feeling that it is balanced, this is also not going to be fun on the receiving end of and is what I would consider toxic gameplay.

Elementalist

• Unlike many, I don’t feel like Elementalist is in a horrible place right now. One large issue is that the starting health pool disproportionately low for the slightly increased utility options that they have over other classes, particularly now that both their mobility and healing options were nerfed as well.
• Many complain of how many trait lines are useless— However, I feel that this is an extension on a larger issue— the almost mandatory investment into the arcana trait tree, and that is a big problem around Elementalists at the moment. It’s not for evasive arcana that everyone traits into arcana (though it is an excellent, excellent trait), but rather it is because of the massive difference in cooldown attunement between 0 and 30 points into the line. By reducing the base attunement cooldown (and adjusting the numbers so 30 points into arcana still ultimately reduces the reduced base cooldown to the same amount 30 arcana would at the moment), it would free up points in other builds that can be distributed into other trait lines.
• As mentioned before, the conjure skills themselves are excellent, but are difficult to take as gaining access to their effects involves a quick casting animation or the very lengthy and stationary picking-up animation. I definitely see why making them similar to Engineer’s kits would make them over-the-top instantly, as each weapon set offers a tool that is immensely strong for both disengage and burst— I would still prefer that the initial summoning of these conjures become instant and the animation removed. They already bring the con to the elementalist in that they lock out the other 20 skills that elementalists have access to while holding the weapons, and a con in themselves that they are charge-based.

Necromancer

• As mentioned earlier, I like the idea behind the vampiric tree. The problem is that life shroud, a core class mechanic, locks out every ability of the necromancer to heal themselves. As it is, I don’t entirely like life shroud as it is-- it is effectively a potential 66% additional HP, which is a huge amount to get through regardless of playing either tanky or glassy (which is why I like to run glass power necromancer, as it’s just so safe with life force up). I also don’t like that it locks out healing entirely— there were several times when, under pressure, I had to pop death shroud with mere seconds left on my healing skill. Now, stuck in death shroud, I have very few options. Since damage carries over from death shroud into the normal health bar, chances are high that the hit that knocks me out of death shroud will be enough to take out the remaining HP and down me, but the necromancer also can’t pop out of death shroud to use the healing skill, as the doing so would cause him to die during the healing animation. The entire time, I don’t feel as though I’ve made a large mistake in gameplay— rather, I feel punished by conflicting class and core gameplay mechanics. I propose severely reducing the amount of maximum health death shroud can have (perhaps as severely as 50%, this would have to be internally tested) while allowing healing through boons, healing skills, the vampiric trait line, and all others as well during death shroud to affect the primary health bar. Increasing the amount of life force skills generate so that they add the same health to the life force pool as they do currently is important as well, so that skills aren’t charging up half the amount of health they used to. This goes to serve several functions. For one, going into a fight with full life force is no longer the overwhelming advantage it currently is. It will no longer lock out an entire traitline while accessing it. It allows for Necromancers to not be forced into the dead-end scenarios mentioned above. It would be a nerf to the extremely strong death shroud autoattacks of a traited power necromancer.

Warrior

• I love playing warriors at the moment, but that is in large part because by how many of the skills function, warriors at the moment have immense safety windows to make big mistakes with lower consequences than other classes. When building glassy, you make a choice in survivability— you give up your ability to take hits or mend them, but your “survivability” in a sense is your offensive pressure— that your opponent is too busy staying alive to adequately return damage to you. At the moment, Warriors absolutely have great access to both when wielding a CC weapon kit with berserker accessories. The base heal on healing signet is high enough that when coupled with the naturally high health and armor, a berserker warrior takes a not insignificant amount of time to kill— berserker’s stance, balanced stance, dolyak signet, and last stand as a trait all serve to compound this issue as condition and control immunity all available in a glass cannon’s kit. Already an issue in itself, but with the high damage CC kit, players facing this build must watch out for the stuns as well (hammer animations are fine— they’re a good balance between risk in the obvious, obvious animations and the reward of good damage and CC. However, I would either lower the damage, the stun duration, or increase the cooldown [one of the three] to make up for how many they have access to— remember that CC serves both an offensive and defensive purpose— opponents can’t avoid subsequent attacks or inflict damage while CC’d). Also noteworthy is that mace’s adrenaline stun is a huge violator of this— it absolutely needs a more readable animation tied to it for being such a fight-defining (often fight-winning) skill.
• I am also of the shared opinion that healing signet is entirely too strong at the moment. I get that the initial idea was because poison would be a strong counter to it, as warriors previously did not have good access to condition removal. Cleansing Ire alone now is a fantastic removal tool, not to mention Berserker’s stance’s long duration (also an issue— a very long period of no-counterplay for certain builds). I’m not a fan of some of the numbers being slung around though— there’s no need to nuke this heal from orbit. I understand that in being passive, you no longer have a burst healing option and the the health has to slowly trickle back in, and that is a downside to passive healing. However, it must be recognized that there is a benefit in passive healing in that you don’t need to take time off to cast a healing skill! This allows a player to continue applying offensive pressure, and it also means that the healing cannot be interrupted (which is big)— this is a large reason of why so many elementalists ran the slightly weaker signet of restoration (though it’s been quite heavily nerfed at this point). The problem is that the numbers are absolutely monstrous on healing signet at the moment— 392 base per second is huge (Healing surge clocks in at 327 per second if you used it every time the instant it was off cooldown at maximum adrenaline, and the situation is similar with almost every other heal in the game). It’s fortunate that the healing power scaling is quite poor, or it would be even more out of control. That being said, I would low the base healing amount by around 30-50 and increase the healing power scaling by 0.05, so that at 1000 healing power, it heals for just a tiny bit more than it does right now (tentatively 0.10, but as I said before, I think this would make healing shout builds a big issue). As it is now though, in no small part because of this skill, Warrior is the only class in the game where I will willingly walk into 1v2/3 fights with the confidence that I can win it.

THE MISSING

• You’re well aware of the most popular demands the PvP community routinely asks for at this point. Personally, I would like to see more frequent balance notes, even if the changes aren’t very long. I would absolutely want to see more hot-fixes to build-defining bugs rather than waiting month(s) between balance patches for them to be applied.

Since these forums are programmed so brilliantly, my whole A4 size post just got thrown into trash thanks to a login timeout message of sorts. So to make it short (and much less elaborate):

The Good:
everything that made it in, except the bugs ofc

The Bad:
you could have done all of this before PAX and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. You’ve made us wait for cosmetics and QoL for 4 months. I am at a loss for words. I mean it seriously, this patch could have been here 3 months ago, in august. There is no excuse, NONE for this patch taking so long to prepare. Trait tooltip change must have been time consuming and annoying to finish, but come on… it’s not a 4 months worth of work.

The Missing:
The patch didn’t make the game more fun. A bit more balanced perhaps, but that’s not really what it needs right now. The builds that dominate the meta game are disgustingly boring to play and play against. The skill requirement has plummeted, the game is not fun to play anymore. This is not me getting burnt out of the game mode or anything of the sort, it’s the combat itself being dull right now. The cheese needs to go away, the skill needs to be invited (making a game casual friendly does not mean you need to make them able to compete at high level in a few days, it means preventing them from facing seasoned players in the first place). I have a change in mind that could be the inspiration for future changes to make this happen (it’s a mechanics change, not a direct nerf):

Healing Signet – the heal amount stays the same. Instead of permanent regen, after hitting an enemy the warrior would be given a buff for 3 seconds that restores their health like healing sig does now. The 3 second buff would not stack in any way, just renew the 3s duration each time the warrior hits an enemy.

What would this change do? Introduce possible counterplay, change the signet from completely passive play to semi-passive semi-active play (keeping the boon up). Also, PVE builds would be largely unaffected by the change and there would be a reason to use the sig actively now as well.

I’d be happy to provide more ideas if I see my feedback has some meaning. Feel free to contact me.

Some really great posts here. Totally agree with your thoughts on Warrior, Doctoris.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hey, nice post(s)! Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Thanks for the trait tooltips man, they are perfect!

I think it’s weak that nothing’s been done about Ele dependance on high arcane just to make the class bearable to play in PVP. This has been a core complaint on the Ele forums since the game has released, and is the #1 limiting factor restricting my enjoyment of the class vis a vis trying different builds.

Simply put, every Ele build is less effective (in PVP) than anything with 15+ water, 30 arcane because of (IMO) the fundamentally bad design of requiring frequent attunement switches but making the arcane line the only way of reducing attunement CDs.

More traits like Fresh Air are desperately required, and/or speccing an elemental line should reduce that attunements CD.

Also worth mentioning of all the classes I play, Ele has the highest proportion of garbage traits.

Good.

• New fast cast system.
• Trait information (Thank you karl).

Bad.

• Elementalist still subpar and not tournament ready.
• Elementalist have been nerfed since release.
• Seems the developers have no idea what to do with elementalist.
• Still OP classes.
• Elementalist, elementalist, elementalist.
• Conjures are not kits or don’t benefit the elementalist more than it handicaps them.

The good
-new tooltips and floaters
-methodical approach

The bad
-random ranger changes
-pet changes seem as if they were made to just fill up the patch notes

The ugly
-ranger pet AI , usability and responsiveness

The Good:

• Fast-cast with target is a godsend.
• New condition floaters rock!
• Sigil of Para fix was really needed.
• Trait tooltips are awesome.
• Mesmer mantras being AoE at least tries to add some value to unused skills.

The Bad:

• Immobilize needs to be stun-breakable too (like Fear) now that it stacks duration.
• Mesmer mantra AoE is too small – they’re just shouts with a gimmicky recharge mechanic and terrible range now.

The Ugly:

• Healing Signet still passive heals for way too much.
• [WvW] Perplexity runes are still broken as kitten.

The Good

• Stun break now breaks launches
• New condition floaters
• Traits now show a lot of information and are applied to skill tooltips
• Guardian consecration buffs
• Sigil of Paralyzation fix
• The possibility of more viable builds
• Stealth counter play is nice and needed, hopefully more classes get something similar.

The Bad

• Warrior’s insane regen still exists, wouldn’t be a problem if healing power had to be invested in to achieve the numbers
• Guardian’s area control feels weak and restricting. Symbols need to be made more powerful. Guardian’s area control needs to become mobile, ex. traits that turn symbols and consecrations into auras.
• New tab targetting feels no different than the old one
• Still plenty of useless traits
• No changes to transformation elites (weaken them and make them like engi toolkits!)
• Skill template feature from gw1 still missing! :<

Overall I think it was a positive patch from Anet. Before I felt Anets baby steps were bad for the game. But now I feel the small changes to classes are really effective. I just wish the changes came more frequently. When was the last balance patch? Four months ago?

The good:

-Tooltips are helpful and informative
-Condition floaters are better
-Sigil fixed (finally…)
-Buffs to underused traitlines/traits such as Blood Magic and Venom Share are definitely appreciated.

The Bad

-Nothing done about horrible rewards, match making, leaderboards
-Warriors had completely unneccessary buff to imobilize and hammer #4 which is inexcusable
-Pistol Whip nerfed accidentally
-This patch ultimately did not provide enough valuable changes for the 4 months we waited.