Guild Wars 2

Earix.5684:

Sounds like a good WvW advice. Seriously, why are you talking about Legendary rank in a WvW thread?
I’m gonna quote you (from another thread): “problem with Druid it is not a support option it’s just a healbot that got nerfed enough to not to be able to do it’s job anymore..”
I’m confused, is it fine or did it get “nerfed enough to not be able to do its job anymore…”?
At least your troll post asking to lock elementalist in one attunement while in combat was fun. This one is not (wait was it a troll post?).

Sting much? You see spvp and pvp (i mean wvw) are mostly the same and when they nerfed druid healing Anet did it crossmodes, it does not matter if the reason was spvp.

What i said still stands: they nerfed druid healing and CD to combat the ridiculous healing and i agree with the solution, but i think they over did it with the healing nerf.

CD of 15 seconds its fine, it’s in the right spot, if i don’t time my avatar well i’m dead.
the nerf to the healing was too harsh however. i liked the idea of to need to use healing gear but having to go 1200 healing to get the same as before is just ridiculous.

With that amount of healing you don’t have any other meaningful stat to fight with, so the player goes even more bunkerish. Which at this point i find oposite what Anet pretended with the nerf.

You should get the same healing as before with around 500-600 so you can invest in some dps in exchange and make the play more dynamic.

The nerf in the staff, the healing and the combat capabilities in avatar (nerfs to lunar impact and seeds of life) i find them unnecessary that it could all had been solved with the 15 cd to avatar from the very beginning.

And yeah, healing to full health in your bunker build with 23k health pool and have some more to yourself and everyone that is close enough it’s well passed 25k healing. Just glyph of rejuvenation in avatar can heal up for 15k to everybody around you.

15 seconds is fine. I would like more from anet to focus in give us more build variety reworking the vanilla ranger traits and skills.

PS: And thanks to the nerf the obnoxious druid build with full stealth mode dissipated from the map, which is fantastic. So yeah, thanks anet for that. Now time to look into ghost thief because is ridiculous

By saying to this poor guy “switch class to go Legendary”, you were just being an a*s to him and moreover with a quite poor off-topic example.
I also can’t agree with your statement. sPvP is far different from WvW.

The main difference here is the format: sPvP is about small scale battle. WvW is about medium/large scale battle (at least 15+ players per side – I obviously won’t take Stonemist duelists into account when it comes to WvW balance).
You can’t balance it the same way. It’s not even played the same way.

You want the same kind of healing post-patch at only 500-600 healing power, sorry but no. You can’t be good both at healing and damaging. You will have to choose.
Having to grab healing gear in order to heal was the right decision from ANet. Their healing ratio tweak was a smart move and in my opinion you should have to grab at least 1200 healing to be successful at it.

Keep in mind that the Druid specialization is about healing. I’m sorry but a 15 sec CD can’t be applied to WvW. A 15 sec CD is way too much when it comes to large scale battles. A 15 sec CD is out-of-sync with current combat flow in WvW (large scale again). I GvG a lot so I had the opportunity to test it since the patch both at 10 sec (Guild Hall arena) and 15 sec CD (classic WvW maps) vs very good guilds. Like I wrote earlier 12 sec CD would be the max considering the current meta and WvW combat pace. I talked about it with a few other GvG druids and they agree that the 15 sec CD is too much. I have seen some of them contribute to this thread, they spoke for themselves. And keep in mind it’s even worse in zerg fights.
In fact, I feel like most people who disagree with it are mainly roamers / duelists who don’t want to see their “panic button” nerfed (DC/CS). At least be honest about it guys.

And please stop spreading false information.
15k heal with Glyph of Rejuvenation, what the kitten? oO
I should start posting some videos to show how much is healed at 1450 healing / 50% healing efficiency. My Glyph of Rejuvenation heals for 10k5ish on allies (with the full bonus and without any malus) on a 24 sec CD. It’s obviously way less on self. The truth is it takes quite some time to heal 23k hp, even more with the damage taken in-between due to the current WvW meta. Add to this the poor healing prioritization. It’s far from the big “25k heal on a 10 sec CD” you claim.

“Focus on build variety and vanilla ranger”? Something has to be done here too but this is not what this thread is about. I know from your previous threads that you were highly disappointed by ANet’s choice to give ranger a healing specialization. It’s obvious that you still don’t accept it. But please, keep in mind the players who use it as something more than a stun break / condi clean / stealth / superspeed.

Criticism aside, why do you think that when it ONLY comes to healing, a 15 CD could be fine but a higher requirement for healing stats on gear might not be?
I feel like it’s the other way around and we need less healing but more avatar uptime (while something has to be done about DC and CS for a perfect balance).

Again, 15 sec cd is not ok. Do what you want with DC and CS, I don’t care, but get rid of that long cd from the already gated elite form which, may I remind you, gives you a 15 sec cd in a best case scenario.
While you’re at it, improve CA#1 kitten .

maybe a 20% reduction on CA trait addition tied with something to allow for both options in the druid tree somewhere. otherwise i don’t see them reverting this at all, in fact, it most likely will be changed to something of 20 seconds WITH a 20% trait reduction because kids still cry about it. you will also most likely see the conditions removed on it from all to about 5-6, again, since people cry about it.

people seem to not realize also, the longer you are in CA , the more susceptible to condi you are, you have very little reliable condi removal outside of CA. its easy to poison someone while they’re in CA dwindling ALOT of the already nerfed healing even further, which is something i do quite a bit when fighting other druids. the longer you are in ca, you will just get pegged with condis then forced to clear with skills once you leave it.

If they keep Avatar CD at 15 sec, a 20% reduction to this CD available on a trait which make you drop either Druidic Clarity or Celestial Shadow to access it could actually be smart. Nice suggestion as they wouldn’t have to revert their previous change.
However anything above 15 sec before this potential reduction and the specialization is dead. It’s already agonizing at 15 sec in WvW.
The thing is, they would have to normalize the 15 seconds CD even to PvE. Not sure how it would be received by the PvE crowd.

And yes, I also see a nerf coming to Druidic Clarity and/or Celestial Shadow. We won’t be able to dodge this one. Too much whining even after the “nerf”.

Druid Clarity should be an easy fix. Rework it to remove one condition every second instead of all at once (been suggested before), or grant resistance while in CA and clear one condition every third second. Keep the stunbreak.

The alternative to bring a trait that reduces the cd, could be to add to the cd if you pick Celestial Shadow, if that trait really feels so strong. Or how about “while you are in stealth, you can’t gain any Astral Force” or perhaps a needs to be “While in stealth, CA cooldown is halted, and you can’t gain any AF”.

Both of these changes would reduce the spammable nature of these two traits, since if you implement the change to DC, you would want to stay in CA for longer to resist/clear more conditions (would be a buff and a nerf at the same time), and by halting the CA cd while stealthed would bring a natural 3 seconds added cd to the form if you choose to stay stealthed for the full duration.

In short, focus on bringing down the reasons to quickly just enter/leave CA, and bring more reasons to stay in the form and actually use the abilities provided.

Earix.5684:

If they keep Avatar CD at 15 sec, a 20% reduction to this CD available on a trait which make you drop either Druidic Clarity or Celestial Shadow to access it could actually be smart. Nice suggestion as they wouldn’t have to revert their previous change.
However anything above 15 sec before this potential reduction and the specialization is dead. It’s already agonizing at 15 sec in WvW.
The thing is, they would have to normalize the 15 seconds CD even to PvE. Not sure how it would be received by the PvE crowd.

And yes, I also see a nerf coming to Druidic Clarity and/or Celestial Shadow. We won’t be able to dodge this one. Too much whining even after the “nerf”.

Shouldn’t be, nor should you accept it if there is one. At this stage of the game and the Druid’s development lifecycle there is zero reason for not understanding how to manage a Druid fight. Zero.

If only it was as easy as “there shouldn’t be a nerf”. Most of the recent druid nerfs were l2p issues from sPvP and 1v1. But still, there were nerfs.
Should I accept a nerf to DC and/or CS? No. But I would accept it instead of a nerf to the whole class mechanic (which is what happened last patch and might happen again).

OGDeadHead.8326:

In short, focus on bringing down the reasons to quickly just enter/leave CA, and bring more reasons to stay in the form and actually use the abilities provided.

It can be done this way: 25 CD on Avatar (don’t scream yet!) AND start the CD as soon as you enter Avatar.
- Spend the whole 15 sec in Avatar, you have a 10 sec CD left
- Spend 10 sec in Avatar, you have a 15 sec CD left
- Spend 5 sec in Avatar, you have a 20 sec CD left
Even a 20 sec CD starting when you enter Avatar might actually work too. You would be gated by your resource generation most of the time anyway.

Of course, it would have to be WvW / sPvP only. It may affect PvE too much otherwise.

I know dumb idea, but at least it’s an idea ^^

Really?

I recently made druid and its op asf.

15 sec of celestial avatar doesnt even feel like its nerf gives me super speed + stealth so often i can kite and heal for days.

25 solo might stacks , massive regen and heal , good mobility , great kiting , great pet damage , easy access to stability , good amount of soft cc’s stealth and yet u expect more buffs on druid lol not even funny

@Crapgame, see lol ___î

MidoriMarch.8067:

<snip>

Gz, you just won the internetz

MidoriMarch.8067:

Really?

I recently made druid and its op asf.

15 sec of celestial avatar doesnt even feel like its nerf gives me super speed + stealth so often i can kite and heal for days.

25 solo might stacks , massive regen and heal , good mobility , great kiting , great pet damage , easy access to stability , good amount of soft cc’s stealth and yet u expect more buffs on druid lol not even funny

They want buffs because they don’t like being useless in zergs.

Personally I don’t see the problem with being meta in roaming and unwanted in zergs. Thieves, Warriors, Engineers, Mesmers and Rangers are all top tier in small scale/solo. Why that’s bad, I don’t know, at least Ranger/Druid isn’t useless in both large and small scale… Mesmer is probably the only one that can be relatively effective in zergs as well but it’s only real role is a Veilbot and boonsharing (which was recently nerfed).

Druid isn’t OP (anymore) but the cookie cutter Soldier/Zerk (or a similar variation such as Commanders/Marauders, etc.) – Beastmastery/Nature Magic Druid, is still extremely strong and easy to play. It might not do a great job healing in zergs like some people want to do but there are other classes for those roles. You can’t have everything but some of these folks seem to think it’s their god given right.

Unfortunately a lot of the regular posters here are so incredibly deluded that they won’t believe anything but “Ranger sucks and ANet hates us, waaaaaaaaaaaaah.”

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

It might not do a great job healing in zergs like some people want to do but there are other classes for those roles

Which is quite funny, or sad rather, since healing was more or less the sole purpose of the druid elite spec to begin with.

I don’t know about your server but on mine, I get instantly put in a melee group or the commander group on the rare occasions I’m following a PUG tag.
I guess the class might be useful, uh?

It’s not about wanting to be meta everywhere, it’s about not suffering from nerfs targeted at 1v1 heroes. The 15 sec CD was targeting them (DC/CS) however the medium/large scale druid are the one suffering from this change.

MidoriMarch.8067:

Really?

I recently made druid and its op asf.

15 sec of celestial avatar doesnt even feel like its nerf gives me super speed + stealth so often i can kite and heal for days.

25 solo might stacks , massive regen and heal , good mobility , great kiting , great pet damage , easy access to stability , good amount of soft cc’s stealth and yet u expect more buffs on druid lol not even funny

“I recently made druid and its op asf”

Duel?

MidoriMarch.8067:

Really?

I recently made druid and its op asf.

15 sec of celestial avatar doesnt even feel like its nerf gives me super speed + stealth so often i can kite and heal for days.

25 solo might stacks , massive regen and heal , good mobility , great kiting , great pet damage , easy access to stability , good amount of soft cc’s stealth and yet u expect more buffs on druid lol not even funny

Welcome to elite specs, glad to see you just purchased HoT or read about it. You should try making different elite specs though so you can understand this is nothing special.

….Or just troll somewhere else.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Druid Clarity should be an easy fix. Rework it to remove one condition every second instead of all at once (been suggested before), or grant resistance while in CA and clear one condition every third second. Keep the stunbreak.

This, though I’d prefer the straight condition removal tick (a nerf for bunker roaming but a buff in group fights) over resistance. Personally I feel resistance should apply to the pet upon activation of the Renewal Signet (which they also need to get rid of the range limitation on).

~ Kovu

Kovu.7560:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Druid Clarity should be an easy fix. Rework it to remove one condition every second instead of all at once (been suggested before), or grant resistance while in CA and clear one condition every third second. Keep the stunbreak.

This, though I’d prefer the straight condition removal tick (a nerf for bunker roaming but a buff in group fights) over resistance. Personally I feel resistance should apply to the pet upon activation of the Renewal Signet (which they also need to get rid of the range limitation on).

~ Kovu

This is not a good idea, for one major reason and that is because you can already hard counter CA by throwing conditions on top of them as they enter it right after the clear takes effect.

This would make it easier to stack even more conditions on them because they now have to stay completely in CA and I can just continually throw more conditions on you even faster than your auto clearing is taking place and basically it becomes 100% useless.

Smart players already hard counter CA this way as it’s very easy to do. This is the reason why even suggesting a nerf is pointless, because good teams already know how to hard counter in PvP and it doing this in PvE would serve no purpose which leaves your change only for zergs (which would make it less viable) and that would leave you with solo roaming and small fights, which again would essentially make it completely useless unless you’re fighting a full power class with no condition cover attached to their build.

If you want to solo roam in a game mode that is nearly dead, then the entire class mechanic shouldn’t be nerfed because it may excel there. That’s like asking for nerfs because you lost a duel.

This change would essentially make it literally no point to run condition clear on CA.

Let’s take a moment to discuss game design here.

People are calling Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow “too strong.” This is a metagame perception and opportunity cost evaluation that doesn’t take into consideration that if the metagame were different, these traits wouldn’t be strong.

Extreme example: suppose there were no conditions in the game to remove. Seems like Druidic clarity does a whole lot of nothing. Okay, now consider ANets original condition design philosophy, that conditions are applied gradually and build up. Well, Druidic Clarity would also be pretty balanced, since you would still eat a pretty consistent amount of damage, and bulk removal wouldn’t really mitigate all that much; you could probably afford to take other types of cleanses and pick a different trait.

But no. Because condi is now spiked onto targets, and the only way to survive in this metagame right now is to remove mass amounts of conditions, and the condition builds don’t exactly apply consistent damage anymore (barring scepter on necro), it creates this “oh, that’s so strong” perception, but really it’s only a symptom of a design paradigm shift.

In Druidic Clarity’s case; what you should actually be complaining about is the current state of condi application, and how it justifies the strong level of condition removal seen on every class worth using in the metagame (PvP specifically on this comment).

As far as Celestial Shadow goes; back in S1 PvP, it was largely considered a useless trait. CA2 also used to remove 2 conditions instead of just 1, which meant that Druids could actually afford to not have to use every resource available to them to mass remove condis (Signet of Renewal and Druidic clarity), and therefore people were running the glyphs trait and glyphs. Also, when chill was able to be traited to be a damaging effect, Natural Stride was seeing TONS of use. But with inhibiting conditions not being as threatening and the ability to maintain swiftness, Natural Strides use also died down.

Celestial Shadow is simply a case of “overused therefore overpowered,” but guaranteed if the competing traits were actually that; competitive, people would drop Celestial Shadow for other things. Not to mention it’s balanced around the concept you can’t hold a cap while stealthed in PvP.

Why do I mention PvP so often? It receives the most intrinsically detailed balance patches. Each gamemode; WvW, PvP, and PvE has a different balance. And in each game mode; per the objective of that mode, there is nothing “overpowered” about the Druid.

jcboe nailed it

Eleazar.9478:

jcboe nailed it

yep, jcboe has my +1.

jcbroe.4329:

Let’s take a moment to discuss game design here.

People are calling Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow “too strong.” This is a metagame perception and opportunity cost evaluation that doesn’t take into consideration that if the metagame were different, these traits wouldn’t be strong.

Extreme example: suppose there were no conditions in the game to remove. Seems like Druidic clarity does a whole lot of nothing. Okay, now consider ANets original condition design philosophy, that conditions are applied gradually and build up. Well, Druidic Clarity would also be pretty balanced, since you would still eat a pretty consistent amount of damage, and bulk removal wouldn’t really mitigate all that much; you could probably afford to take other types of cleanses and pick a different trait.

But no. Because condi is now spiked onto targets, and the only way to survive in this metagame right now is to remove mass amounts of conditions, and the condition builds don’t exactly apply consistent damage anymore (barring scepter on necro), it creates this “oh, that’s so strong” perception, but really it’s only a symptom of a design paradigm shift.

In Druidic Clarity’s case; what you should actually be complaining about is the current state of condi application, and how it justifies the strong level of condition removal seen on every class worth using in the metagame (PvP specifically on this comment).

As far as Celestial Shadow goes; back in S1 PvP, it was largely considered a useless trait. CA2 also used to remove 2 conditions instead of just 1, which meant that Druids could actually afford to not have to use every resource available to them to mass remove condis (Signet of Renewal and Druidic clarity), and therefore people were running the glyphs trait and glyphs. Also, when chill was able to be traited to be a damaging effect, Natural Stride was seeing TONS of use. But with inhibiting conditions not being as threatening and the ability to maintain swiftness, Natural Strides use also died down.

Celestial Shadow is simply a case of “overused therefore overpowered,” but guaranteed if the competing traits were actually that; competitive, people would drop Celestial Shadow for other things. Not to mention it’s balanced around the concept you can’t hold a cap while stealthed in PvP.

Why do I mention PvP so often? It receives the most intrinsically detailed balance patches. Each gamemode; WvW, PvP, and PvE has a different balance. And in each game mode; per the objective of that mode, there is nothing “overpowered” about the Druid.

+1 Pretty much this

@jcboe Thanks for this analysis which is pretty accurate and very well written. While there isn’t a single druid in this thread who wouldn’t agree with the fact that DC and CS aren’t overpowered, it’s still a great addition.

Perception is the key. While a nerf wasn’t justified, perception generated complains (read forum whines). Complains were perceived as feedback. Feedback led to balance decisions. Balance decisions led to a cooldown nerf. Now the problem is that the complains and balance decisions were mostly/only about 1v1 or really small scale battles (sPvP and “roaming”). However it has been applied to two game modes: sPvP and WvW.

sPvP and WvW are very different game modes. sPvP has a fixed team size and the maps are built to split this team on 3 locations so it’s mostly really small scale battle and even 1v1 on some cp. To be successful here, you have to be able to rely on your own class. To balance it successfully, you have to consider mainly 1v1 and small scale battles.
WvW is very different. It’s closer to an old school RvR game (DAoC, Warhammer Online) where you will naturally encounter medium and large size battles. You don’t have to rely on yourself for every aspect of the fight (stability, etc…), people have specific roles and it’s about group work. Traditionally in a RvR game, you balance the classes with group play in mind, you hardly ever pay attention to the 1v1 balance because it’s irrelevant (when most of your RvR population is playing medium to large scale battles, you prioritize synergies).
That’s the main reason why I dislike PvP comparisons when it comes to WvW

Now keep in mind that in this thread we are talking about the 15 sec CD on Avatar in WvW and how it affects druids who play as healers in medium / large scale battles (15+).
Druid specialization has been designed for healing, it’s a great addition to WvW as it fits a specific role. So far, it has been doing great in medium and large scale battles, it has even earned its spot in WvW squads because burst healing matters here and some guilds even demonstrated that it can be a great asset in GvG.

So what’s the problem? Well, to be able to heal as a druid, you rely on your specialization mechanic which used to be up to 15 sec healing (or less if cancelled early) then a 10 sec lockdown. The flow was pretty natural and fitted the pace of most WvW fights.
Now 5 extra seconds might not seem like a lot but in fact it is. You will spend less time healing and more time waiting for a cooldown. If you do the maths, it’s actually a huge nerf to the global healing output. In addition, thanks to the latest tweaks to healing ratios, if you want to be effective enough at healing, you will have less room for offensive stats. So that’s basically 5 extra seconds spent staring at a cooldown doing sub-damage.

And what’s the reason for it ? Small scale and 1v1 complains regarding two traits, perceived as balance issues, then addressed with a Band-Aid modification affecting the whole specialization mechanic even in WvW. Sorry but it’s not an acceptable solution.

I agree Earix, I run with a WvW guild as a Druid. I just don’t agree with the Celestial Avatar solution, not because it isn’t effective, but mostly just because it has a stale design to be spending so much time in CA just to be effective.

Staff improvements are my solution. Staff 2 is largely useless to use in most of the game that isn’t PvE, or just clumsy and clunky to the degree you regret pressing the button every time you do.

Granted, people don’t like “copy/paste” skills, but Guardian staff 2 would be SO much more desirable than our current iteration.

Really it’s just another design issue. If a class is designed in such a way that you’re only useful when only using a fraction of what it has to offer, then doubling down on that kills diversity and future development possiblity when the core of the class has been neglected for so long.

I want to see Staff Healing more reliable in WvW outside of 3 and 5.

• I’d LOVE to see staff 2 be a ground target that lets the wisp swirl/linger at its destination (possibly being a damaging area as well please). And Staff 4 could even heal for every condition it removes.

• CA2 should apply the heal immediately, and have the condi removal/blind be the prolonged effect (making traited glyphs actually usable on the move).

• Lingering Light needs a pass on it too to increase its healing. It having a local ICD and blind is good, but the healing is pathetic.

I think that these 3 changes would go a long way as far as improvements go.

Here’s the design picture regardless of the CA interval; ask “what is druid doing when CA isn’t available?” Either way, right now, the majority of the time CA isn’t available is spent building Astral Force with mostly meaningless small heals and then using CA again. And until we can do more than that, even with my proposed changes putting us in a better spot, it still won’t be enough for organized guild groups.

Staff for any situation is simply a joke, rangers use it simply to fill the AF, 1200 leap that got seriously nerfed (nerf the healing ok but why the cd also!!!), and notjing else.
The damage is a joke compared to any other weapon, and rangers weapons are the worst in game right now, and the healing is really a pathetic thing. 100 healing per attack… yeh…

Staff like many things with the ranger is simple minded, is designed to heal. So like many things needs to have a good desing and stop with the kitten about qqing in pvp, They will have to adpat, after all we have DH, Warriors and tempest that can hold point forever because you csn not damage them.

jcbroe are you J R O H too?

jcbroe.4329:

“….Roaming….”

Not a gamemode; classes are not designed, developed, or balanced with whatever your objective concept of roaming is.

Well to be fair, no aspect of WvW was really considered when they designed the game, and has barely been considered since, the combat and classes were designed nearly entirely around PvP, and for the first 3 years were balanced nearly entirely around PvP, and really even since HoT outside of PvP it is only really PvE raids that get real consideration when it comes to balance, WvW gets the odd bone thrown, that is all.

Which is why balance in large scale WvW has been a complete joke the entire game, just compare how engy, mes, ranger & thief have fared and been “represented” over 4 years to classes like guard, balance in WvW regardless of whether it is roaming, zergs, GvG, has always been a total joke and of virtually no concern to Anet, and one of the reasons the game mode is moribund.

Justine.6351:

jcbroe are you J R O H too?

Yup! That was my alt account you were up against that I made for a plethora of reasons (t1 server, queuing with friends in lower tiers, testing placement matches and initial MMR in the algorithm).

Guess I’m not all that sneaky when I use the same char names on my alt account lol.

zinkz.7045:

jcbroe.4329:

“….Roaming….”

Not a gamemode; classes are not designed, developed, or balanced with whatever your objective concept of roaming is.

Well to be fair, no aspect of WvW was really considered when they designed the game, and has barely been considered since, the combat and classes were designed nearly entirely around PvP, and for the first 3 years were balanced nearly entirely around PvP, and really even since HoT outside of PvP it is only really PvE raids that get real consideration when it comes to balance, WvW gets the odd bone thrown, that is all.

Which is why balance in large scale WvW has been a complete joke the entire game, just compare how engy, mes, ranger & thief have fared and been “represented” over 4 years to classes like guard, balance in WvW regardless of whether it is roaming, zergs, GvG, has always been a total joke and of virtually no concern to Anet, and one of the reasons the game mode is moribund.

True, but from a design aspect in terms of GW2 and it’s initial goal, WvW is endgame content in which the game is inherently imbalanced.

You can enter with any gear, and gear tiers are more powerful than the prior gear tier. And at any level. Matchups aren’t automatically even numbers, nor are are the maps forcing even populations. Food, guild auras, banners.

Everything about WvW screams that it was designed as a place for your endgame gear (and fashion wars) to matter in some sort of semi-competitive area in the game (as opposed to PvE where you don’t get to kill other players with your eternity and ghostly infusions) where you could join up and run around and kill things and show off to other servers and have fun.

It’s pretty obvious ANet had no idea on how the gamemode would be received by the community, or how the community would interpret the purpose of the game mode. GW2 brought in a lot of gamers from different MMO communities that don’t really understand the Guild Wars is representative of a historic lore event and not necessarily an in game concept, and to a lot of peoples perspectives, they saw WvW as an outlet for massive, highly organized guilds to try to turn it into a super competitive gamemode and have “guild wars.”

Which is great, really. But when the dev team didn’t interpret that as the gamemodes design philosophy and didn’t have the technology or the green light for continuing to develop the gamemode as interpreted by the community, it left us with what WvW is now; that limbo mode that is really just an offshoot of PvP and functions like a large scale PvP match that happens over the course of a week and doesn’t really have a bright future without a new design paradigm.

@jcbroe, yes making staff healing more effective would also be a great solution. Unfortunately, I don’t believe they will invest dev time on that kind of improvement while an expansion and some gem store items are currently the only thing left on the Table™

In my opinion, at the very beginning WvW was just another marketing decision from ANet: “let’s add some RvR maps to attract the players who have been waiting for a DAoC 2.0 since [insert date]”. The game, the mechanics, the classes, nothing here is properly designed for medium/large scale. I don’t think there is much design philosophy hidden behind WvW.