Guild Wars 2

I’ll never understand how you guys think you’re balancing PvP.

Because there are so few legitimate stat combos, it forces people into only one or two builds per class. This is due to the trait lines and the lackluster amount of stats gained from runes. This causes more casual pvpers like me to really avoid pvp. I end up doing it for a distraction, or for certain rewards. I can’t tweak my character at all to compensate for my playstyle. You guys got rid of what limeted build diversity there was when you consolidated the runes and amulets so we couldn’t mix and match.

I used Soldiers on many characters, as I just felt way too squishy. Some characters don’t need any precision, like my necro, who gets a ton from traits. What do I use now? Paladin’s? I DON’T WANT ANY PRECISION!

Give us more diversity or just get rid of everything and force us to play classes with one trait line. This is just ridiculous. There’s a reason why there are so many duelers in WvW and guild halls, because this system is so limiting.

Josh Davis.6015:

Amulet Changes:

We’ll be adding the following amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

That is four of the five amulets I use on Druid (you missed crusader). I am really concerned these changes will vastly reduce Druid’s viability. Sage’s amulet does however look interesting. Does anyone else feel like Ranger/Druid will suffer considerably?

Josh Davis.6015:

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Celestial

Rip viable ele’s

only me thinking that mercenary and sage amulets will just make any class that can spam condi on autoattacks/autoprocs/sigill just OP? (i.e any class that isnt warrior)

Did anyone read the comment i did about condi?
I feel like Reaper is actualy already a brain death class to play, with these amulets reaper and the incoming buffs on Reaper, i feel like we have found the next braindeath class meta dominating!

Spurnshadow.3678:

I’ll never understand how you guys think you’re balancing PvP.

Because there are so few legitimate stat combos, it forces people into only one or two builds per class. This is due to the trait lines and the lackluster amount of stats gained from runes. This causes more casual pvpers like me to really avoid pvp. I end up doing it for a distraction, or for certain rewards. I can’t tweak my character at all to compensate for my playstyle. You guys got rid of what limeted build diversity there was when you consolidated the runes and amulets so we couldn’t mix and match.

I used Soldiers on many characters, as I just felt way too squishy. Some characters don’t need any precision, like my necro, who gets a ton from traits. What do I use now? Paladin’s? I DON’T WANT ANY PRECISION!

Give us more diversity or just get rid of everything and force us to play classes with one trait line. This is just ridiculous. There’s a reason why there are so many duelers in WvW and guild halls, because this system is so limiting.

Try using Carrion, vipers or Mercenary’s for condition/hybrid builds or Crusader’s for power builds. They can be made to work and will likely work better comparatively with Celestial and soldiers gone.

Archon.6480:

Josh Davis.6015:

Amulet Changes:

We’ll be adding the following amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

That is four of the five amulets I use on Druid (you missed crusader). I am really concerned these changes will vastly reduce Druid’s viability. Sage’s amulet does however look interesting. Does anyone else feel like Ranger/Druid will suffer considerably?

It’s supposed to.

you also may as well delete carrion as it’s strictly inferior to mercenary’s

These changes are so awesome.

Will this mean a buff to celestial stats in other areas of the game after the repeated lowering of them universally which has made them not even remotely competitive in PvE?

Aidenwolf.5964:

Archon.6480:

Josh Davis.6015:

Amulet Changes:

We’ll be adding the following amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

That is four of the five amulets I use on Druid (you missed crusader). I am really concerned these changes will vastly reduce Druid’s viability. Sage’s amulet does however look interesting. Does anyone else feel like Ranger/Druid will suffer considerably?

It’s supposed to.

Yeah, there was no mentions for specific druid nerfs, removal of celestial and durarune is probably enough. Celestial was the strongest druid build and settler was such a troll amulet on druid, had some fun messing around with it.

What ppl were complaining about druid is pretty much solved with transition from celestial to mender, less damage and less durability, mender has more healing tho so druid will be pretty much group support as it was intended to be. Not really thrilled about it as a ranger player but with the new shouts support beastmastery druid might be interesting.

Will any of those new stat combos make it into PvE?

Im a pvper/wvw its pritty much all i did in gw2.I used to be on everyday 2 hours at least. 2 weeks after HOT i relized the fun was gone and havent been on since. The removal of cele makes me think there will be more job spacific classes and build veriety. Inmy eyes its about god danm time! Looking foward to the new changes.
Ps. Gota say that ESL has ruined pvp because of the inability to balance till its over.

Eh… I’ll go out on a limb and say they are doing this for the sake of the game modes, which currently overly favor bunker/support builds really heavily. They just decided that instead of reevaluating how the game modes work that it’d be easier to just remove the possibility of quasi invincibility altogether.

I agree with “Caedmon” the energy sigil is one of the most important sigils in pvp…
To make a sigil completly useless (which exists since people play pvp) will make the pvp very hard for some players who has played with this sigil for the last 2-3 years….
I rly dont understand this change…. and i promise a lot of ppl will just be dead all the time if they cant go for something bunker or a life saving dodge roll….
And then they will leave the pvp or the whole game cos the wvw makes also no fun atm but this is another story….
And about the amulet changes, not one of these new amulets has high dmg or provides sustain like the amu´s that they will remove…
I think this could end in a full zerker meta cos you cant bunker a high dps build and you also cant kill it (if you fight against a decent player) cos you have not enough dmg to make a hard counter and you have also not enough sustain to bunker a point till help arrives with these new amu´s…
I rly dont know and maybe im wrong but i think this new amu´s will be useless for the most classes and the only thing that changes is that ppl have to play full dmg and cant decide anymore what they want to play….
Dont understand me wrong im no friend of this new bunker meta but i think to remove the tanky amulets is the wrong way cos before the expansion comes out it was more or less fine in my opinion and i think tanky pvp amulets are there since release and we need them to make balanced teams and there was never a problem with them before the launch of the expansion…
They should work on the main problem and that is not tanky amulets in pvp its more the specializations and that some classes can bunker 2-3 ppl even with marauder or zerker amu….
Its just that scrapper,druid and revenant are still too strong cos the scrapper has too much heal even without any healing power, the druid also and the revenant is like necro,thief and guard in one class, heavy AoE condi pressure, fast ports (without a real cooldown), boon remove and cleanse for allies,
a lot of evades, blocks and stuns, he can do quickness stomp/rezz and can slow you when downed, then he can buff every boon to himself and to his allies…
i think i will stop here cos it will become to an endless post if i start with the other classes :P

And sry for my bad english i hope you can understand the most of that what i have written and pls let it go through your head…maybe im wrong with the amulets and it works in someway but i still think that will not solve the problem it will just offer other problems…

Greetz Sïllâs

I play a fairly fair “medic necro” and I’m really going to miss the Mercy runes. I focus on reviving and healing — my Tranfusion healing those around me for a max of 7,200 — and while it’s niche and would never be meta, I would really like Mercy to stick around for this character. That being said, I’m not sure what other trouble the rune is causing. Just another a case for keeping the rune, though, and I don’t feel like my medic necro really abuses anything.

I only have one rolling thing to say about Mercenary’s amulet..

What will Ele get to make up for the loss of Celestial Amulet?
They are kinda reliant on it atm.

Archon.6480:

Josh Davis.6015:

Amulet Changes:

We’ll be adding the following amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

That is four of the five amulets I use on Druid (you missed crusader). I am really concerned these changes will vastly reduce Druid’s viability. Sage’s amulet does however look interesting. Does anyone else feel like Ranger/Druid will suffer considerably?

A scientific study was done where people only saw a black dot in the middle of a square failing to see that the space was 99.5% white. People mostly notice negatives far more than positives and with the introduction of mender’s druid is receiving an indirect buff as you’re getting more of the stats that matter on druid.

So nearly a year ago Anet “balanced” SPVP by changing Stability to a stack duration that can be removed each time you’re hit with an ability that Stability normally negates, but you do this to the ENTIRE game, all game modes. Making WvW a nightmare for smaller groups I might add.

Yet, it’s been clear that you have the capability to change things for SPvP only, like the effects of a sigil(Energy for instance) solely for SPvP….

/boggled

Yashuoa.9527:

What will Ele get to make up for the loss of Celestial Amulet?
They are kinda reliant on it atm.

Cleric, Mender or Marauder with Fresh Air and scepter buffs

Giving in to mindless memes and deleting stats is a immensely poor move.

This hamfisted approach to balance will see me giving up on this game.

Inb4 the condi meta kicks in

Jokes aside- i can finally see build diversity, even though i think we should wait and see how things will go It is a huuuuge change, and i can’t wait to see what will happen when it’ll come out!! It sounds like there’ll be a very interesting meta, imo… at least one that will allow more builds/professions into it

My thoughts on the changes

1 – The changes to energy sigil wasn’t needed esp with the deletion of certain amulets. If anything a dodge roll is more important now than ever before, esp for Mesmer.

2 – It seems you guys have some sort of fetish of deleting stuff that you’re unable to balance. First minstrels, now Soldier’s, Settler’s, Celestial, & Sentinel’s. And it doesn’t even stop there you delete durability and mercy runes as well. You even go so far to remove partial functionality of quickness when it comes to res and stomp mechanics, essentially taking away arguably the two most important roles of said boon.

Obviously I’m sure you’ve had trouble attempting to fix the stomp bug when it comes to quickness, but this is downright lazy, and laughable at best. Overall I can see why you’re taking away certain amulets, but at face value this looks like a completely desperate move in attempt to fix things.

3 – Well of Precognition – You might as well just delete it already. At this point you would literally get more value by putting on signet of inspiration and pop chaos armor prior and share the rest of your boons while you’re at it and gain more value with a shorter cd. Wait what am I saying? Signet of inspiration isn’t a stun break, yeah just delete this skill.

4- Chaos Armor – Mind explaining how it was applying too much blind? The condition application is on a hidden 1 second icd, so that being said please explain how a ability that applies random conditions only applies too much blind? If you’re going by that logic then chaos armor applies too much confusion and cripple too. #hiremetobalancemesmer

5 – Malicious Sorcery – We shall to wait and see, however since you’re in the mood to buff condition weapons, then you should take another look at duelists discipline and mtd. I mean who knows, you could “buff” duelists back to 2 bleeds as it was intended and mtd back to 2 stacks as it was intended “I did enjoy playing this one for 3 hours before this one got nerfed”.

6 – In my opinion the alacrity changes were needed, however without seeing the changes myself it’s impossible to say if 33% is the sweet spot.

I only have 2 questions, What’s the eta on soloq? And what’s the eta on implementing a matchmaking system in which you had zero part in creating yourselves?

Your Friend

Countless

https://youtu.be/lsfhADiaP5E

Menders so gud I am so hype for a power shout regen druid.

I can understand celestial/settler get deleted, but why not deleting CLERIC?
Should we have pure bunker?

wow you mean now i can’t abuse dodge mechanic and spam evades and I’m losing my aids build that carries me. rage quit. I can’t play like that its too hard I need my crutch.

Also you mean they are deleting runes that we went for 3 years without having in the 1st place and we were fine but now i can’t function without them so im quiting.

Agemnon.4608:

Archon.6480:

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

That is four of the five amulets I use on Druid (you missed crusader). I am really concerned these changes will vastly reduce Druid’s viability. Sage’s amulet does however look interesting. Does anyone else feel like Ranger/Druid will suffer considerably?

A scientific study was done where people only saw a black dot in the middle of a square failing to see that the space was 99.5% white. People mostly notice negatives far more than positives and with the introduction of mender’s druid is receiving an indirect buff as you’re getting more of the stats that matter on druid.

That healing power won’t do crap without toughness. Mesmer, Revenant, thief, and DH will have fun showing off, on their steams, how fast they can 100-0 the brain dead Druid. That’s my prediction. That amulet will be useless for Druid.

Agemnon.4608:

Archon.6480:

Josh Davis.6015:

Amulet Changes:

We’ll be adding the following amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

That is four of the five amulets I use on Druid (you missed crusader). I am really concerned these changes will vastly reduce Druid’s viability. Sage’s amulet does however look interesting. Does anyone else feel like Ranger/Druid will suffer considerably?

A scientific study was done where people only saw a black dot in the middle of a square failing to see that the space was 99.5% white. People mostly notice negatives far more than positives and with the introduction of mender’s druid is receiving an indirect buff as you’re getting more of the stats that matter on druid.

By no means is mender a buff to current meta celestial druid. Sure it gives more healingpower but scalig on healing is not verry good. And as mender doen’t have any toughness, “effective healing” is lower. And when it comes to stats that matter, druid is able to utilize celestial stats extremely well. The meta druid has decent direct damage, some condi, good healing and toughnes, there is no stats in celestial that are useless to druid. Mender has more power and same precision, but without ferocity, it is not that good.

So mender is not a buff, it lowers druid’s sustain and changes playstyle. Mender probably fits Anets vison of the druid better. It remains to be seen how well the new shouts will work with a more support orientated mender druid.

Lordrosicky.5813:

HipposWild.7185:

They’re seriously removing cele? Is there any direction or is this all just firing from the hip with your eyes closed? There is no hope here

Statistics show many of these amulets dominate the meta for a long time now. When a few amulets are a large proportion of the meta for years they should be fixed. Statistics prove anet correct

An ele with no vitality healing power or toughness would get face rolled which is why this ammy exists in the first place.

Metabattle.com is not statistical research about which ammys are used anyway so we can realistically establish that these stats don’t show anything if they don’t exist to my knowledge.

If you’d like to talk real stats base warrior has 69% more starting health and takes 25% less direct damage than an ele…. Base damage factors in no way offset these factors or which is why the game has so much trouble being balanced. Ele needs some more health and toughness to not get one shot because warriors also need to be killable and healing signet is already insane.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

So instead of balancing PvP around a variety of stats.
Lets just remove the stats.

Seems legit, good job ANet.
10/10.

Reminds me of balancing water combat.
Nahh, lets just remove it from PvP.

totaly agree… but what else do you expect?

Why does every balance have to consist of completely destroying things, then making others incredibly strong EVERY time anet? I understand you guys have to keep the meta fun by reducing the effectiveness of overpowered specs, but this system just forces people to jump around. Can we please have a balance system that consistently chops off only a bit at a time without destroying a cool mechanic so much that it voids something entirely useless? Reduce overpowered specs, but slightly; and buff more things to add variety.

Your pretty much destroying most forms of support. Take into consideration just how much condi is going to be pumped out by everything now. It was bad before; look at condi rev and reaper. You guys actually increased the condi output from reapers with all the changes. Reapers will be even harder to kill with the new mercenary amulet as well.
The main support classes are irrelevant. Without a bunker amulet, mesmer won’t keep up. Without celestial amulet, eles will just get condi overloaded by reapers and die (even with the new diamond skin). Druid is the only one that might be able to survive, but its put in a weird spot without a full bunker amulet (because bristleback still does more damage than any of its weapons) and it will die to condi overload too. In addition to this, your destroying the support role that a lot of people like to play. Its certainly good that you toned down the bunker meta, but this doesn’t mean remove support entirely. It could turn into a giant fight between semi and full glass-cannon builds. Its probably more entertaining to watch, but not with conditions and certain power specs getting no reduction. Will watching a skill-less dragonhunter (lets be honest, 90% of people who play DH just faceroll) spamming trueshot on people for 8k because they have no healing be interesting? This takes classes that can revive too easily, to barely any reviving period.

Hopefully you guys reconsider some parts of the balance, but it was a good idea to push things away from a FULL bunker meta. Support needs a role too, but not the same as before. Reduce condi so the supports aren’t destroyed by it.

*Also, whats the need to nerf energy sigil after your desroying most survivability anyway? It makes support even less viable as they can apply vigor for allies.

Hm. As an elementalist, I’m only slightly terrified of these changes.

Assuming the diamond skin nerf isn’t too heavy handed, between the new amulets and the fact that it’s a sweeping change for everyone, I think we’ll be able to handle ourselves.

I think the newer ones not having ferocity is by design (and to encourage the use of the less newer 4stat ammys that do have ferocity).

Nothing extreme bursty and nothing extreme bunker. Fights will resolve faster. More play by play, less 5min fights VS bunker. It sounds great on paper.

Just hope to God that readily translates to reality.

HipposWild.7185:

Lordrosicky.5813:

HipposWild.7185:

They’re seriously removing cele? Is there any direction or is this all just firing from the hip with your eyes closed? There is no hope here

Statistics show many of these amulets dominate the meta for a long time now. When a few amulets are a large proportion of the meta for years they should be fixed. Statistics prove anet correct

An ele with no vitality healing power or toughness would get face rolled which is why this ammy exists in the first place.

Metabattle.com is not statistical research about which ammys are used anyway so we can realistically establish that these stats don’t show anything if they don’t exist to my knowledge.

If you’d like to talk real stats base warrior has 69% more starting health and takes 25% less direct damage than an ele…. Base damage factors in no way offset these factors or which is why the game has so much trouble being balanced. Ele needs some more health and toughness to not get one shot because warriors also need to be killable and healing signet is already insane.

lol no… Cele exists because it was a PVE thing, that came out with a living world patch. Not until a long time after was it added to PVP. It was a mistake to add it to PVP in the 1st place it was never intended to be there.

Man I just really hope Elementalists won’t go back to garbage with celestial removed (they were complete garbage for a year before celestial was buffed).

Can you make ammy like this?

1050 Condition damage
1050 Healing Power
560 vitality
560 Expertise

or

1200 healing
900 condi
900 expertise or vital

Explosives.1607:

Why does every balance have to consist of completely destroying things, then making others incredibly strong EVERY time anet? I understand you guys have to keep the meta fun by reducing the effectiveness of overpowered specs, but this system just forces people to jump around. Can we please have a balance system that consistently chops off only a bit at a time without destroying a cool mechanic so much that it voids something entirely useless? Reduce overpowered specs, but slightly; and buff more things to add variety.

Your pretty much destroying most forms of support. Take into consideration just how much condi is going to be pumped out by everything now. It was bad before; look at condi rev and reaper. You guys actually increased the condi output from reapers with all the changes. Reapers will be even harder to kill with the new mercenary amulet as well.
The main support classes are irrelevant. Without a bunker amulet, mesmer won’t keep up. Without celestial amulet, eles will just get condi overloaded by reapers and die (even with the new diamond skin). Druid is the only one that might be able to survive, but its put in a weird spot without a full bunker amulet (because bristleback still does more damage than any of its weapons) and it will die to condi overload too. In addition to this, your destroying the support role that a lot of people like to play. Its certainly good that you toned down the bunker meta, but this doesn’t mean remove support entirely. It could turn into a giant fight between semi and full glass-cannon builds. Its probably more entertaining to watch, but not with conditions and certain power specs getting no reduction. Will watching a skill-less dragonhunter (lets be honest, 90% of people who play DH just faceroll) spamming trueshot on people for 8k because they have no healing be interesting? This takes classes that can revive too easily, to barely any reviving period.

Hopefully you guys reconsider some parts of the balance, but it was a good idea to push things away from a FULL bunker meta. Support needs a role too, but not the same as before. Reduce condi so the supports aren’t destroyed by it.

*Also, whats the need to nerf energy sigil after your destroying most survivability anyway? It makes support even less viable as they can apply vigor for allies.

You have to remember that no one else will have access to the banned stats not just you so they can’t use celestial either.

Also it’s for the preseason they’ll make adjustments before the actual season starts.

Josh Davis.6015:

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

Oh MY fRIcKinG GOsH, wowowowowoowow. I love that these are going away – the tanky meta will be traded in for a squishier, bursty one. I will say that I’m very scared for Elementalists though. Celestial Amulet has always been the go-to amulet because of well it synergizes with everything ele related. Maybe the new meta will consist of ele’s using the newer amulets.

I highly recommend buffing Scepter damage, especially the auto attacks.

Josh Davis.6015:

Bradley.8520:

do i get my money back for buying the runes/amulets?

Any sigil/rune/amulet you purchased you’ll get refunded for. The new amulets we’re adding will be free since we’re removing a number of other core amulets.

Josh, is ANET taking the Amulet, Rune, Sigil rework into account as they buff/nerf the classes for the 26th patch? I among others are very concerned with how big of a buff condi classes are going to get as a result of the next big balance.

Anyone else concerned about Reapers (specially with future buffs) running Mercenary’s Amulet? I can’t be the only one.

Yashuoa.9527:

What will Ele get to make up for the loss of Celestial Amulet?
They are kinda reliant on it atm.

I really hope for some buffs to traits and weapons. Not particularly because of PvP, but since now they are very likely to be trash in PvP maybe they’ll give ele some buffs that’ll allow other things to be good in different modes.

Looking forward to PvE dagger Dagger/Dagger Focus/Scepter Dagger/Scepter focus and other such setups in WvW (staff is great in WvW, it is in a good place). As well as maybe a traitline buff or two.

Are these stat combinations going to be implemented throughout the rest of the game?

I greatly dislike the Sigil of Energy nerf. I’ve used this one for 3 years, in every single build, only because i enjoy playing a supportive role, healing my friends with Selfless Daring….

My name is Saiyan and I approve of these changes. 10/10

Tbh, I wanted Mercenary’s Amulet to have Precision instead of Toughness because I felt Carrion didn’t need extra sustains, IMO but that may be too powerful :P

Not every class will be able to run Mercenary efficiently though… Mesmers/Engineers/Thieves and Wars will be struggling in 5v5 skirmish fights against Shout War/Sig Necro/Power or Shout Guardians. Mock my words!

Mesmers, Revs, & Scrappers still wont have any issues surviving in the upcoming new meta… they can practically reset fights if they wanted to.

online.1278:

Can you make ammy like this?

1050 Condition damage
1050 Healing Power
560 vitality
560 Expertise

or

1200 healing
900 condi
900 expertise or vital

I’d love to see something like that
especially the second one. 1200 heal, 900 condi, 900 vit
that’s pretty much exactly what I was looking for when I went to make a condi ele build

This is one of the cheapest, most horribly thought out -lazy- fixes I’ve seen in a long time. So you allowed a league season directly after an expansion, without ever running a balance patch over it. Which in turn caused several random defensive builds to be put into play to negate your unbalanced damage coming from a select few classes. The majority of the active players jumped into your first season, only to find the game horribly broken (100% your fault). And now to fix that, your taking the nerf bat to everything defensive in order cover up your management’s gross incompetence with pushing content out too soon.

You (Anet) caused the way everyone played in the first season. And now your doing a cover up, to cater to all the bad players who blamed “EZ” class types, and realized how horribly unbalanced things were. You’re removing every viable defensive amulet in the game. You’re already nerfing the abilities, why are you nerfing the stats now too? “something we’ll tweak until we get PvP’s gameplay closer to our vision for it”
What is your “vision”? Everyone running around as a Trickster in zerker gear, instant-killing everyone and instant-dying? Your restricting gameplay like GW1 Costume brawl. (But at least GW1 had a Rock-Paper-Scissors style of strength and weaknesses)“Every class gets one set of skills to use that we deemed worthy”. That’s fine for the snowball arena, but for PvP as a whole you are grossly corrupting what you want rather than what the player decides. PvP should be skill based, therefore the closer you make things to neutral, the more the skill is shown. Forcing everyone to be offensive is NOT making things neutral, it’s you being lazy as crap.

Why can’t you make it more Rock-Paper-Scissors. If condition builds become the new “Meta”, how about giving ALL classes access to Resistance. Therefore you have a way to counter condition damage, but open yourself up to physical? There should be a counter for every build, a way to out do what becomes the meta based on skill. You’re approach however is along the lines of “Killing the patient to cure the disease”. The reason why people pick defensive builds in the first place is what needs to be addressed, not “We’re just gonna take stuff away until such a simple skeleton remains that we think is balance-ish”

Warlord.9074:

lol no… Cele exists because it was a PVE thing, that came out with a living world patch. Not until a long time after was it added to PVP. It was a mistake to add it to PVP in the 1st place it was never intended to be there.

Actually, this ancient guru post mentions the PvP Cele Amulet back in Jan ’13, while the Bazaar of the Four Winds brought Cele to PvE/WvW in Jul ’13. Though people considered Cele as a bad stat combo back then.

celestial pvp amulet has been around since I started playing (about a month after release), but it was trash

Kazel.9857:

This is one of the cheapest, most horribly thought out -lazy- fixes I’ve seen in a long ti…..

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Your “idk what’s going on” rant is so off base, it’s unreal.

They have to do an extensive test run before implementing a balance patch… that’s how balance patches gets implemented…. Throwing a PvP Season means Anet will see competitive players running optimal builds on the highest, competitive, TPvP level. What this means is, Anet have been seeing what’s optimal and what isn’t because… well.. it makes for a more efficient balance patch for Anet to implement.

Removing Cele amulet and replacing it with three entirely different amulets basically gave what people were already needing from Cele to begin with; only, it’s not as unbalanced because there’s finally a Give and Take relationship. GW2 has always been about Give and Take… it’s why we’ve had (used to have) each individual player on a given team run a unique amulet or build. That, in a nut shell, is Anet’s goal.