(What a veteran pvp player sees when he reads these updates)
Profession Balance Goals for the Winter 2016 Update
In an effort to make Pro Leagues moderately more interesting we at Arenanet have decided bunker Mesmer, Druid, and Rev will all have their crazily overpowered revive and stomp capability screwed over by making it so Slow and Quickness do not effect reviving an ally or stomping an enemy. We also did this because slow makes the animations look incredibly broken, so reducing what it can effect is great!
Elementalist
Next on the chopping block is the revered Elementalist. This class has been pulling more healing/group boon generation/condi clear than anything that has preceded it in the entire history of this game (using only celestial amulet mine you). Just because we at Arenent think slow cancerous gameplay is funny, we understand there might be one or two people against it, We are taking Diamond skin, one of the most controversial skills and axing it like it should have been, bye eles, you’ve had a good run.
Engineer
Some gibberish about gyros and pve. Scrapper, having double S, massive condi reduction, tons of blocks, moving shadow field, ridiculous amounts of armor, might have been a little much on the tanky side. Since this is the case, we think axing it down like the eles is the best way to go, expect some minor changes that, in the end, will be meaningless and you will be just about as tanky as always.
Guardian
Say what? You walked into a bunch of traps and died again? Ya, Arenanet devs kept having that issue too, since crazy rupts, stupid high damage true shots, enormous damage from traps, is a bit too much for any noob that walks into them we’re going to nerf them into the ground. Also, there is no chance DH or Bunker guard will be viable in the next season because of the crazy low healthpool that will make the builds succumb to an agonizing death in what is definitely going to be a condi meta.
Mesmer
If you would rather be a God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals than actually get the title God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals then I would recommend playing bunker mesmer until we try and nerf it. Currently, it is the only way to solo queue your way to legendary and make terrible teams look decent in pro leagues. We even tried following YOUR suggestions by making well of precog an invuln, etc. but nothing seems to work. In fact, since this next meta won’t have tempests around to heal, druid and bunker guards can’t stand on point, we KNOW this will still be a thing, but we think it would be better if it took a more passive role, in fact, instead of reviving and stomping, we think it would be best if you just focused on survival. So, we will shave the defensive capabilities a bit, and Alacrity will get a very minor nerf (it’s a big thing in PVE remember?) it also won’t be a revive god anymore (because of the general nerf to quickness) but will still be the only thing available to tank point unless we actually buff Guard health (which we won’t).
Necromancer
We like where necromancer has been this season and have decided to try (but probably fail) to make lifestealing a thing by upping the lifesteal to just about every trait that has it and make it so lifesteal bolts work in Reaper Shroud (my be a good thing with spin to win on top of wells? Who knows). In essence, this will most likely be the next INCREDIBLY OP class because Tempest will no longer be a hard counter class to keep it in check, conditions will be ubiquitous and this class will only get better at giving them.
Ranger
We’ll be looking into all of those ranger’s traits that no self-respecting Ranger would touch with a barge pole and will fiddle with them in an attempt to make them slightly less pointless. In the first quarterly update, we’ll messing round with shouts but completely ignoring all of the crucial things that Rangers have been shouting out for for like Sword AA and short bow reworks. In the future, we’ll continue to scratch our heads regarding ways to make any pet that’s not Smokescale or Bristleback semi-viable. And those Druid hippies? They’re getting hit over the head with the nerf staff. – BROKENCAPS.4561
Revenant
Now that everyone has bought HOT to play the overpowered as kitten classes like Revenent we’ve decided to finally start nerfing it. The general goal of this class is to rip off as many skills and utilities from other classes as we can, we decided not to take the creative approach, but instead, to take the quick and easy approach of just mashing everything we had together into something that we had to make overpowered in order to sell this game. Since people have been getting a little upset at the power of sword 1 spam, we’re nerfing it, since the Defensive capability is actually insane, we will nerf it a little. We as Arenanet will neglect to mention the changes everyone asked for though, like nerf to UA, fixing the fact standard character models don’t apply, etc. (Oh and we’re also not going to touch on the fact that the slow/quickness nerf will destroy Rev’s downstate)
Thief
Guys, we get it. You’ve got no sustain. You’re at a disadvantage nearly every fight because while everyone else is healing/blocking/immune/dropping conditions, you’re just twiddling your thumbs. Half of your traitlines are worthless (including BOTH your defensive lines), and you’ve had a shortbow cemented into your second weaponset slot since the games inception; But there’s good news. We’re upping your melee AA damage! Isn’t that great? Oh, also, we’re going to finally put out the Dumpster fire we turned Acrobatics into half a year ago. Kind of. Maybe. You trust us, right? -evilapprentice.6379
Warrior
We’ve taken a look at the warrior’s abilities and decided to experiment, adjust a few things (nothing big and fancy like a rework to make the berserker class cool and viable, just a few number changes). We’re going to rework rifle because we at Areneant KNOW that every Warrior wishes they had a better reason to use rifle (LOL) and since we failed to come up with a way to make warriors kill revs/bunker mesmers we decided to shy away from making damage oriented changes and instead make changes to add tankyness and sustain, exactly what this game needs after the shenanigans going on in the current Pro-League games. All in all, warrior will still be kittened though, and they can cry all they want but we at Arenanet don’t give 2 kittens about these particular players.
In the end, whoever was planning on buying HOT at this point most likely has been forced into it already by the insanely OP elite specs/Revenent and Arenanet has grudgingly decided to do a few small nerfs here and there that will hopefully stop Pro-Leagues from being such an utter failure to watch or even be a part of. I have an idea, maybe make a Public Test Server and get some feedback on these upcoming changes, so we don’t have to blame the future terrible meta on just Arenanet .
One spam to rule them all!
Mains Power Necro for team Radioactive[dk]
(edited by Firebird.8324)