Guild Wars 2

I’m going to get this point out of the way, even though it’s an old fact.

Called it.

I’ll say it again.

Called it.

What I did get wrong was the fact it’s not that bad, at least, not as bad as I expected. The Safety Glass meta is annoying but not PvP breaking like Dhuumfire and Stun Bug was, I really thought it was going to be more poisonous than this.

Take a lesson from your lore ArenaNet, Meerak may have been just some random monk but hot kitten he got his facts right.

Now several months have past, the experimental phase has faded away and once again a new meta has formed.

• Is it better than the last meta? You bet it is!
• Is it a good meta? Kind of, still has problems.
• Is it a healthy meta? HAHAHAHAHA, no.

I already went into heavy detail on a starting point to improve combat design of Guild Wars 2. But that is not the point of this thread, the point of this thread is to understand what is a healthy meta.

A healthy meta is when some builds have their strengths and weaknesses, where it evens out to a equal playing field of avoiding the enemy strengths and abusing their weaknesses.

As it is obvious enough, again, WARRIORS have way to many strengths and can cover literally every weakness. Are they overpowered? When compared to other classes, yes. They offer to many strengths and not enough weaknesses to abuse.
So what is the answer? Remove some weakness coverage? Reduce some of their strengths? Both? It’s not black and white.

You can make it that black and white when it comes to nerfing and buffing but we are not dealing with one mathematically equation.

Lets look at Healing Signet, a lot of people complain about how good it is. Mathematically, it’s not good, ~8k healing over 20 seconds, many classes heal more than that (except necro) not to mention you cannot time your heal against the poison condition unlike other healing abilities, making it less skillful.

Here lies the problem with this unhealthy meta.

There are ways where skills are significantly better than it should be.

Hince, the safety glass meta. Abusing skills that negate damage to either wait on those cooldown timers or skills that tick. Reducing Healing Signet’s healing by 8% was just dumb, I can’t put it any other way, it still didn’t fix the issue, SHOCKER I KNOW. In reality to fix the Warrior ‘problem’ AGAIN, would be to change Endure Pain and Berserker Stance.

With Healing Signet able to safely tick more, both Stances bring their own strengths to themselves (as in damage immunity) and Healing Signet.

Simply to many strengths that build on each other. Mesmers, Necromancers and Rangers will forever be behind at this rate, forced into gimmicky zerker builds to stay viable. The problem isn’t the numbers dealt by these classes, the problem is other classes simply do to much.

At this rate ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2 will NEVER have a healthy meta in both PvE and PvP.

• In PvE conditions are worthless and world bosses are immune to critical hits because rule changing is fun?
• As for PvP, a couple classes have way to many strengths and little weaknesses while other classes fall behind.

You need to find a balance for PvP. In my Assigning Weapons to Roles thread would be a good start to giving fair weaknesses and strengths to all classes, truly rewarding skill based PvP.