The last time I played gw2 mesmer had just been given torment on scepter, so I guess it has been about 15-16 months ago.
I decide to checkout a lot of the changes to gw2 to see how the game had progressed.
As such it has allowed me to see the game with fresh eyes from 2 different snap shots point of view.
The good;
I like the updates to arenas. Being able to choose ranked/unranked/hotjoin etc.
I liked how the grand master traits have been reworked.
I like how new weapons are being introduced across the board.
The Bad
Too much particle/animations/screen pollution. The visuals of the game would benefit from some editing. It felt like every possible animation designed ever had been included for the sake of it. It often makes combat hectic, ugly to view and masks subtle animations disabling players from making effective choices.
A lot of passives now. Even though I am familiar with the game, have 6 alts and approx 4000 matches before leaving, I couldn’t easily detect when passives were triggering. In some cases the passives weren’t mild..they were every condition currently active on everyone being dumped on me. It wasn’t until I loaded up my necro for some game play that I could see what was happening now. I found this throughout every match I played. I found engineers immune to stuns, but I couldn’t see why they were immune, ele’s resisting knockdown with no stability icon in their buff bars etc. I knew in the end passives were at work, but I couldn’t always see or know when they were going to trigger. The same issue applied to me as well. I had no UI micro screen letting me know when my passives were going to trigger.
Conditions builds are just to easily countered. The only professions where I truly had to manage conditions and found them highly effective against me was thief and ranger. A class example was playing warrior. I was geared for power and on paper I had only one condition removal with brawler recovery. I encountered a necro with scepter/dagger-staff. As soon as the bleeds stacked, I swapped weapon and they’re gone. When the torment set in my generosity sigil proc’ed. If I got immobilised I used movement skills to passively break it. I waited for signet of spite to be used and activated healing signet triggering immunity. When poison dropped, weapon swap again and its gone. Even though this is a fairly cherry picked example it does illustrate how manageable it all was for a large amount of professions. I think the game would benefit from splitting conditions into 2 groups. -Conditions and debuffs-. Much the same as gw1 had conditions and hexes. Conditions can be removed with condition removals but debuffs like chill, cripple etc can’t be. Bebuffs require some thing else to cleanse. As a game that sells its ‘trinity’ as damage, support and control..debuffs fill the category of control. In certain professions debuffs can also be used to apply DoT damage for windows of time, but currently generic condition stacking is not particularly challenging or difficult to currently deal with. The only condi builds that excelled were ones I was yet familiar with. Even then after a few matches I knew how they worked now, and in all all cases they used burning as the damage deliverer. Once i had that straightened out it really seemed like DoT builds feel dilute at the moment.
Corruption reads well of paper. In reality it is effective against some professions, but also feels like firing pea’s against a brick wall on others. On paper heavy boon removal and corruption reads like it should be a huge control/support feature. Looking at post match stats (I like that screen by the way) I could see I had removed an ungodly amount of boons with necro axe/shroud/corruption skills. However I was never able to down a engineer or ele that was running boon heavy builds. The corruption just didn’t effect enough of their stacks. In conjunction with the state of conditions the DoT damage was easily removed. I felt at best I was an annoyance to these players, but they knew as well as I did that I never threatened them. Against warrior etc that popped rage signet corruption felt right..I removed their buffs and took away some of their builds explosiveness for a small window..but next minute, there goes might..they have fury back up…I think you can see where I am going with this. Removal did what it says it did, but it never felt like I was controlling the situation, or “Keeping the man humble” so to speak.
zero to hero builds
I enjoyed, but was frustrated by professions with 20 skills at their disposal. For a long period engineer and ele were the whipping boy of PvP. This has dramatically changed. It was refreshing to see these 2 professions get some solid game play. When I was downed by them, I did recognised I got out played.The only factored that was totally unenjoyable was when I knew I had them out played and on 15% health and suddenly the rubber band effect kicks in. Their ability to go from a scratch of health left to full red bar in moments was just hard to fathom. The consistency of having no buff stacks to 90% of buffs in game stacked in major numbers was impressive and also disheartening. I sat out some matches and just watched players using them to get a handle of how they are being used. The more I watched, the more the issue presented itself. I liked how they were more than viable now, but I could see no real weakness in them either of them. I also noticed a lot of their usage never altered too much. I have never believed the hype that they require a higher skill cap. That to me is like saying a 20 bedroom home requires more skill than a 10 bedroom. Perhaps for the first few days you may need to remember where the stair case is in the dark. You may have to count doors when half asleep.. but by the end of the week you know what every room is and where to find it. They only require a longer immersion time to play unconsciously competently. Much like driving a car..over time you learn to change gear/hill start etc without even thinking about it now. I won’t give suggestions. I am sure there is players who have been dedicated to gw2 this whole time that understand what would work best. However after so much time away, these 2 stood out like sore thumbs as being so very much ahead of the pack. To put it in one sentence, my stat sheet said i received zero damage..however it also said I suffered 500,000K of sustain. I know that sentence is absurd, but I think people will recognise what it is I mean by it.
Stealth
In the current game build, I would look at how many professions have stealth and if they even still need it. In the beginning it was the bastion of thieves. Some others could make very limited use of it, but mostly as a defense mechanism. Currently 50% of professions can make use of it and they can use it offensively with reliable efficiency. The same as power creep is a consideration when making changes, now would be a good time to seriously look at stealth and how it is being used. Especially after beta weekend where a lot more teleports are being introduced. i wont give idea’s..but as a returning player stealth really felt out of whack. The players I saw use it the least were thieve’s. The players I saw use it the most offensively were mesmers. The player who trolled me the best was engineer. Now they are here, now they are gone..now I am a moa. That one really baffled me.
All in all I enjoyed coming back and playing over the last week in PvP. I feel the changes were overall good. The only negatives were the excessive burning builds. I thought it was ironic warrior was now one of the weaker professions and ele and engi have given a platform to shine on. (It was totally the opposite last time I played.) So some profession balance is still very much needed. I like seeing some of new professions in the beta and hope they pan out well for you. Stealth felt like it was being abused with no consequence. Condi builds need some love in both PvP and PvE..but all in all it felt fresh, it felt like some progression had been made.