Guild Wars 2

This is round 2 for me, with a lot more knowledge of everything. For info I play necro, guard, mesmer, revenant some engie and some ranger. I will indicate what needs issues with a priority index. 1 for high, and game breaking, 2 for needs work , 3 for some work needed. 4 is a technical issue/bug.

Dragon Hunter

• Test of Faith(1). This skill is instant cast and unblockable with a pretty hard hit of 5-12k depending on if it crits or if you pass the barrier, and also grants protection. When traited it is an instant cast daze that is unblockable on a 24s cool down. This pretty much assures revives and cleaves will happen with all of the above. The damage on activation is also rediculous, since I find it barely matter if they hit by going through.
• Fragments of Faith(2) is too strong. It hits pretty hard for a defensive ability.
• Dragon’s Maw (4) . It isn’t animating at all. I was in a full party on TS and no one had it animating.
• True Shot (2). It hits a little too hard right now. Not too hard to be broken but harder then mighty blow, it’s melee equivalent and that’s silly.
• Symbol of Energy (3) is too hard to land on people, teammate or enemy.
• Hunter’s ward (3,4). This skill is kind of a super powerful skill if it lands, excluding the damage. Needs a slight tone down by # of people hit or by cooldown. It also doesn’t always animate.
• Piercing Light(3) It’s too strong as it stands. Reducing daze time would fix that.
• Heavy light(3) is again, too strong. Simply from the activation time + stability duration resulting in being cc proof more than half the time.

Warrior/Berserker

• In general (1-2). I don’t play warrior but it’s fairly obvious that there’s an issue with it. While rampage and shoutbow are still somewhat viable, there are other builds that do the same thing better (ie dragonhunter and druid respectively). There are also no berserker builds since it means no fast hands and that’s way too handy of a trait not to bring.

Revenant/Herald

• down state has slow and a knock back. That’s just too strong.
• Coalesence of Ruin (2) is too strong and costs no energy almost with a 2s cooldown.
• Sword auto attack(3) hits too hard. It just hits harder than any auto I’ve seen, including necro dagger.
• Unrelenting Assault (3 and 4). It hits friggen hard 1v1 but does little in team fights. The bug is that it can just stop casting and potentially lock your character when using a shield.
• Mallyx(3) is just not great.
• Jalis (3) doesn’t have a viable stun break for pvp. 50 energy is too much for that.
• Phase Traversal (3) can leave you dead in the water if it decides it doesn’t want to connect, since it pops the energy at the start of the cast.
• Glint(2) is just the best legend. It cost’s little energy even if played right. Even just blowing all your facets is fine cause the abilites are that strong.
• Corruption (2) is not a viable trait line with the exception of Demonic Defiance.
• Salvation (1) is not a viable trait line
• Ventari (2) the heal per energy and lack of stun break will mean this legend can’t be taken.
  I am open to seeing a ventari revenant for support, I’m not knocking that idea. But it’s just too weak.

Scrapper

• Rocket jump (3) The triple leap, while awesome in theory, is too powerful, especially with the number of lightning fields.
• Function gyro (4) doesn’t seem to work when slowed, so it doesn’t work on revs.
• In general I have few issues.

Theif/Daredevil

• Vault(3) hits for 10-15% too much.
• rest of the skill(3) hit too little.
• Theif in general (1) needs a work with the introduction of reveals and just general lack luster ability. See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-issues-3 for more indepth analysis.

Druid

• General (2) the idea of the class as a dedicated healer with plenty of condi removal potential is going to put this as a scale tipping class.
• Smokescale (2) are just doing too much damage.
• Bristlebacks (2) also do way too much damage.
• avatar skill 3 (3) does more daze (to potentially perma daze) than no daze. Don’t know how this happened.
• avatar skill 4 (3) is essentailly heal skill 2 for how much it heals.
• Staff skill 3 (3) provides a heal a kite and an evade on a 15s cooldown. It just does too much.
• Ancestral Wisp (?) I don’t see this skill ever being used by allied or enemy druids. There’s a reason for that but I don’t know what that is.
• The root trait (2) when interupt pretty much can be used to perma lock someone, especially when used with the 3rd avatar skill.
• glyphs (3) aren’t useful by the looks of it

Reaper

• Chill damage (3) hits too hard for how easy it is to apply and how cruel it already is.

Chronomancer

• Well of Precoginition (3) should not allow for point contribution.
• Deja vu (3, and yes, the alt) I really like this skill but I can’t deny it provides a lot of sustain + a clone. I’d like to see using this up the cooldown while lowering the cooldown of the base, which would make it require some skill to use rather than being a lower cooldown block skill.
• Continuum rift (4) when is killed doesn’t instantly warp mesmers back always but will occasionally wait its full time.

Tempest

• Overload Air, with air attune (3) means this has kitten cooldown. It can be interupted which can hurt but all in all its a pretty easy access to high damage.
• Warhorn (3) isn’t very useful, or no one has found a build for it. The numbers are fairly low.

Equipment

• there are still plenty of useless trait combos, like Rampage amulet.
• Trapper runes (2) are probably too strong for pvp since they give more stealth than a thief can give itself when cooldowns are low.

Yay, lets nurf Druid more without buffing core Ranger. Do you people realize that if Druid becomes weak, then Ranger itself is in worse state than Warrior/Thief?

Morwath.9817:

Yay, lets nurf Druid more without buffing core Ranger. Do you people realize that if Druid becomes weak, then Ranger itself is in worse state than Warrior/Thief?

I’m not suggesting druid become weak, I’m suggesting reducing it get made not as strong as its overtuned. There doesn’t seem to be one reason not to bring it. Core ranger right now is in a better position than those two since you can always bring a condi build.

Hooglese.4860:

Morwath.9817:

Yay, lets nurf Druid more without buffing core Ranger. Do you people realize that if Druid becomes weak, then Ranger itself is in worse state than Warrior/Thief?

I’m not suggesting druid become weak, I’m suggesting reducing it get made not as strong as its overtuned. There doesn’t seem to be one reason not to bring it. Core ranger right now is in a better position than those two since you can always bring a condi build.

Overtuned? Compared to who? Ele who brings AoE healing on demand, AoE Boons on demand and AoE cleanses on demand and other things?

Also about condi Rangers, please have mercy! They aren’t viable for so long (previous Spirit nerf? not last one), also I doubt they would be viable even heavily buffed with Reapers around with their free condi transfers.

This is a good list of balance changes. I would also like to see some underused old traits and skills buffed.

And there are some old pre-HoT traits, which are simply too strong e.g. forceful greatsword is already too good for a master level trait without the 10% unconditional dmg buff. Make it GM or remove the 10% bonus.

Warrior is in a problematic state now. Its sustain was nerfed many months ago and it simply cannot keep up with the damage and CC from new elite specs and buffed traits. At the same time Arenanet should be careful not to give warrior too much sustain as warrior is capable of some insane bursts. I would like to keep these high burst builds high risk and reward.

Warrior would need to have some of its nerfs partially undone e.g. increase shout base heal by 200. Warhorn #5 feels weak now and almost all warriors select shield instead of warhorn. Maybe allow traited warhorn #5 inflict chill or simply revert most of the warhorn changes?

Warrior needs a trait giving it “+20% boon duration” in some of it’s minor traits. A good candidate would be Inspiring Presence in Tactics line.

Adrenaline depletes way too quickly out of combat. Make it deplete 33% slower.

On the other hand the burst skills have too low cooldown. Increase the base cooldown 2 seconds. This is to promote skilled play, instead of spamming burst skills.

Making fast hands as base line would open up tons of warrior builds, but I feel it is simply too good for baseline. And I have spent 2nd highest amount of hours as warrior.

hell no, overnerf DH it’s not a solucion, and you didn’t touch sustein and the problem with endless fights.

CELESTIAL PVP IS BORING!!!!!

and you suggest DPS class nerf….no

Sorry about my english

I think the best solution is separating PvP and PvE more thoroughly, like switching ability power and duration. Like a 4 second knockdown in PvE can be 2.5 seconds in PvP or even adjust traitlines like reducing power by 20% in PvP only added to the minor adept traitline so that PvE won’t be compromised since balance doesn’t really matter in PvE since mordrem snipers can’t rage in chat over how “OP” you are or request class nerfs. In short AIs don’t care if you beat them whereas your team losing in PvP can be blamed on you picking a non-meta class.

nicknamenick.2437:

Looks like you hate GS/burst builds and just want Shoutbow build back..
Warrior needs help not nerfs, and nerfing that 1 trait for GS makes no sense AT ALL. also it doesnt matter if its master/GM or even adept.. you get full trailine anyways.

Of course it matters if it is GM or master level. GM level traits compete with other GM level traits!

Forceful greatsword trait is completely out of line with other master level weapon related traits. In fact I would argue it is better than axe mastery, which is in the same tree. I didn’t ask any other changes to GS now. So calm down, I am not asking to nerf it to ground, but just adjust this trait a bit. But when I go to spvp I see a lot of warriors using GS, when I go to pve, almost all I see is warriors using GS, when I go to WvWvW, I see tons of warriors use GS based roaming builds. So if one weapon dominates so much, this clearly ain’t a sign it is balanced well!

It seems you hate shoutbow a lot, but can you suggest any other viable warrior build, which has a lot of sustain? In my honest opinion warrior needs more viability to sustain builds. Warrior has potential for massive burst and it has access to tons of CC, so it certainly doesn’t need either of those. To my observation the shoutbow has completely fallen out of meta. I see much more GS/hammer warriors than shoutbow nowadays, not to mention DH guardians, herald/shiro revenants, reaper necromancers, druids, auramancer eles and scrappers. My suggestion to increase the base healing of shouts by 200 isn’t massive change. Warhorn really was nerfed a bit too much. And the adrenaline depleting speed affects all warrior builds.

I don’t think you have a very good understanding of the strengths/weaknesses of the classes. IMO, let Anet do their thing and chill.

Deniara Devious.3948:

nicknamenick.2437:

Looks like you hate GS/burst builds and just want Shoutbow build back..
Warrior needs help not nerfs, and nerfing that 1 trait for GS makes no sense AT ALL. also it doesnt matter if its master/GM or even adept.. you get full trailine anyways.

Of course it matters if it is GM or master level. GM level traits compete with other GM level traits!

Forceful greatsword trait is completely out of line with other master level weapon related traits. In fact I would argue it is better than axe mastery, which is in the same tree. I didn’t ask any other changes to GS now. So calm down, I am not asking to nerf it to ground, but just adjust this trait a bit. But when I go to spvp I see a lot of warriors using GS, when I go to pve, almost all I see is warriors using GS, when I go to WvWvW, I see tons of warriors use GS based roaming builds. So if one weapon dominates so much, this clearly ain’t a sign it is balanced well!

_.

Maybe they use GS based builds because all other options are trash ? Not because GS is so OP as you think ?

By relocating it you will Ruin PVE Phalanx build.

IN sPvP, and Roam, you will just kill core warriors bruiser build.

To achieve what ? Everyone running Shoutbow with increased healing on Shouts for 200 and pre nerfed Warhorn ? You are in another universe where Druid, and Ele will do everything war can and better with bonuses, especially ele, with Aura share and Prot uptime with crap tons of healing.

Arcade.8901:

Maybe they use GS based builds because all other options are trash ? Not because GS is so OP as you think ?

By relocating it you will Ruin PVE Phalanx build.

IN sPvP, and Roam, you will just kill core warriors bruiser build.

I was merely asking just adjust forceful greatsword trait and no other changes to GS. Keeping the thread at master level is the best choice. But in this thread we had another player commenting that it doesn’t matter if it is GM or master as you take the entire tree anycase. Of course it matters, just like you demonstrated.

I am still worried that warrior is now being pigeon holed into GS builds, GS/hammer probably being the most popular of them. When it something is “too good”, it limits all the other builds of the same profession. For example thief is still the best 1 profession in this game, mainly because of SB #5 and the great synergy D/P gives. In every game mode from pve to spvp and WvWvW roaming D/P + SB is by far the most popular thief build. We cannot buff thief without adjusting thief’s amazing ability to engage and disengage, or thief would be overpowered. Right now D/P + SB loses 1 vs 1 against most other meta builds, assuming roughly equal skill level. I don’t know daredevil builds that well, but they don’t seem to be that life threatening alone. There are no valid bunker builds for thief and buffing the utilities and traits would easily make D/P SB thief too strong, since they take shadow arts + shadow refuge, which are both defensive on the nature.

I know my suggested buffs to warrior of course wouldn’t bring it up to the level of dagger/focus celestial auramancer elementalist or druid ranger when it comes to healing and sustain. And dragonhunter guardian would still own warrior on 1 vs 1. DH guardian has simply too much DPS for the CC it brings. I would suggest serious nerfs to DH traps and LB #2, #4 and #5 damage. You have to think all the balance suggestions in the context of the original post in this thread and not merely as band aid fixes to one profession in the current meta.

It is also valid question to ask: why nobody on their right mind is using mace/warhorn or axe/warhorn? In my honest analysis warrior’s warhorn is weak at its current state, even when it is traited with quick breathing.

I am still standing with my original analysis. Warrior has potential for very good burst, but currently it lacks sustain even if you take all the defensive traits + utilities. And we cannot increase the sustain much without shaving off some of the burst potential or warrior will be overpowered like it was long time ago.

LegallyBinding.4937:

I don’t think you have a very good understanding of the strengths/weaknesses of the classes. IMO, let Anet do their thing and chill.

As you may have already seen, Anet doesn’t do their thing. They are nerfing Druid but Dragonhunter is still there? Why haven’t I seen any real thief/warrior buffs either? Oh yeah, because Anet doesn’t care much.