Guild Wars 2

I wish I hadn’t spend my ascended shards of glory on the skins

We don’t need special legendary armor.

1. No one will notice it because they’re using standard models
2. We don’t need even more particle effects cluttering PvP

Omcrazy.4756:

Premades have been rolling PuGs in pvp since MMOs had pvp.

And in how many of those games were the teams matched based on rating? Guessing next to none. And in that case, the pre-made groups doing PvP are generally going to be better players as well.

Voice comm is a significant advantage over pinging a mini map and frantically typing something in chat in the middle of the match which may or may not be seen in the middle of a fight.

But this assumes you or another member of the team know what to call out. Again, you’re trying to substitute better individual skill and knowledge as an aspect of a team.

Being able to build a balanced team knowing what everyone can play is another advantage (although less significant). But knowing what your teammates are capable of? Huge. Knowing who can win their 1v1s or who you can trust to decap and +1 mid instead of sit on far and camp it is a huge advantage. I don’t believe for a second you don’t recognize this.

Again, you’re assuming highly skilled players who can recognize this and adjust.

What’s funny is its almost completely guaranteed that the only reason you are so adamant about allowing 5-man teams is because you recognize the advantage and you want that advantage.

Nope, but thanks for adding another excuse to the list.

I want to see ranked be 1-5 players for the following reasons:

• I like to play with my friends (note the plural)
• Team-based gameplay (revives, focus fire, etc) is more fun
• Less toxicity.

Yes, I would very much like the re-poll

The backpack has been around since season1. I doubt ANet will remove it.

Ventari Rev is the new turret engi. Easy to play for how effective it is and it craps on people at lower skill levels who cant coordinate.

Hot Boy.7138:

Decay is necessary.

Not exactly. What is needed is a system which prevents people from sitting at the top of the leaderboard all season when they’re actually not playing. Decay is one way to do that.

However, the current decay system alone was terrible at that. That’s why ANet added the minimum games requirement. But even together, they’re more frustrating to general players and a minor inconvenience to the people they’re supposed to affect most.

Suggested changes:

• No decay once you hit the bottom of platinum. Decay is supposed to affect leaderboard only.
• Min games requirement lowered. Starting halfway through the season, or even in the last few weeks should be acceptable.
• The three-day system is removed in place of a decay bank system. Each game you play adds a game to the bank, up to a max (let’s say 14). Each day, your bank decays by some number of games (let’s say 2 so that it takes a week to drain it). If you have no games banked, you lose rating.

The issue isn’t really the amount, but the randomness.

If you’re a burst build and you depend on that burst, having it completely whiff destroys you.
On the other than, if you’re depending on it to survive and the fumble doesn’t trigger, you die anyway and are frustrated.

drcraig.9403:

Exedore.6320:

Behold the excuses…

Saying that a 5man solo is at a extreme disadvantage against a 5man team isn’t an excuse.

Nope. It’s an excuse.

Except for the very top tier of players who actually coordinate skill use and preemptively arrange res and cleave, there is fundamentally no different between a full team queue and group of solo players. Here’s the common list of excuses and counter-arguments:

• The team queue may plan their build roster, but the solo players have over a minute to coordinate swaps. If you want to be good at PvP, you need to be able to play a few roles.
• The team queue may have voice comm, but if they don’t use it to coordinate burst, res, or cleave, then it’s not really offering a significant advantage.
• The team queue may employ team tactics rather than “solo queue mentality”. But that’s the solo queue players’ fault for subconsciously avoiding teamwork. In a team-based game, team-based tactics should reflect increased rating.
• Team queue gives top players an easy way to get to the top. They’re on top now; nothing changed.
• Team queues can inflate the rating of lesser players. This is only true to an extent. Except for a group of top players, it’s difficult to be able to carry someone significantly worse, and the top players are penalized heavily on losses. If the elevated lesser player goes off on their own or with a less able group, they’ll drop quickly to their proper placement.

So ya, try some more. I’ll be happy to refute them.

Omcrazy.4756:

CrashTheGrey.1492:

ArenaNets multiple failures to properly balance and support PvP content has arrived at a much smaller pool of players to be matched with. Match quality has suffered because of this smaller pool of players and this does plenty to really bring out the toxicity.

ArenaNet’s power creeping, the ESL drop… Consistently this company has caused people to discount PvP as an absolute joke. It doesn’t stand up to other titles. In addition to simple toxicity, there is a giant sense of apathy.

I’ve seen this mentioned before. That GW2’s pvp doesn’t match up well against other similar games. I’ve played a lot of MMOs over the years What pvp is actually better? I’ve seen mention of some being better mechanically like maybe BDO (never played) but from what I’ve heard its extremely p2w so…

In comparison to other MMOs, it may be exaggerated. But comparing GW2 now to what it was before HoT is a valid criticism. HoT added a lot of skill-less power creep. It not only made certain specs dominant by far, but also many of them can be played by mashing a keyboard almost as well as by someone who knows what they’re doing.

Ya, I’ll take the bait…

First, this is for PvP. WvW has its own forum.

To your block issue:
- Base guardian has a heal skill which blocks all attacks for a short time.
- Base guardian has an elite skill which gives immunity for 3 seconds while channeled.
- The dragonhunter elite specialization has a shield which blocks all attacks from the front for a few seconds.

All of these have very obvious animations. Trying to spam skills into them is a losing proposition; just wait for them to end.

Ithilwen.1529:

No.. it’s not that people want to play together. It’s that people want to get together and exploit solos. The old team queue is gone and I hope it never comes back.

Behold the excuses…

ButterPeanut.9746:

This was voted upon by the community because the alternative was 5 queues steam rolling everyone else in solo/duo scenarios.

Wait, you mean the survey that said it would only be for one season as a trial? Voted on by the clueless community which was blaming teams as an excuse for being bad players?

I’d like to point out that the same people who complained about teams in ranked are now complaining about matchmaking, queue dodging, etc.

There are daily ATs for 5 man organized team play.

Lol, no. These happen once a night if you’re lucky (most people can only make a few because of the odd-ball times). And even if you can get a whole team together, you get 2, maybe 3 rounds.

The people who want solo queue will just find a new excuse when you take one away. Don’t bother appeasing those who can never be appeased. Let people who want to play together do so.

• Remove the CC-breaks in response to being CC’ed. All of them.
• Damage from elite specs needs toned down.
• Defenses of elite specs, both passive and active, need toned down.
• Revert some of the “arms race” changes to core.
• THEN re-work the amulet system getting rid of the power-creeped 4 stat amulets and introducing mix&match 3-stat items which allow for tankier builds for newer players.

Been like that since the map launched and has been pointed out numerous times since.

Seems to be only certain ISPs, but definitely looks like it’s on the NCSoft end. Been like this for almost 2 months now and it gets worse during primetime. Outside of that, I’m perfectly fine. And everyone with the issue has no problems with other games.

Any custom server can be open to the public.

Courtyard was such a massive fail: Both teams have a staring contest until one gets antsy and commits, then usually loses. Then spam AoE and the winner spawn camps the loser.

The fact that almost no one players it in custom, nor that other small team deathmatch map is pretty good evidence that the TDM fans are a niche crowd.

Could use some slightly bigger points in some areas, but that’s the only thing. Conquest is otherwise fine and doesn’t need these changes to the mode’s mechanics.

• Graveyard size points are too big. It’s too easy to hold via kiting.
• Points need to remain flat with room on the outsides so that you can actually knock people off. Foefire side points have obstructions and it’s super annoying.
• Definite NO to “team with more players starts to cap”. This change makes many builds and skills completely irrelevant. Decap specialist with knockbacks is now dead. Bunker is now dead since you can’t hold in an outnumbered fight.
• Map mechanics are mostly fine. Foefire lord is just limited in scope because it’s a desperation play only; if you’re in the lead, you give up too much by going for it. Treb on Khylo is the only super crappy one. The map re-design didn’t help, but the treb damage has been bad since HoT because power creep in builds meant treb damage is less meaningful.
• You can’t bring back tanky amulets unless you nerf HoT power creep. THAT is the reason they were removed. Even then, they shouldn’t be returned; the amulet system should be re-worked to allow more customization of stats.
• Skill splits should only be used sparingly for numbers tweaks without destroying the entirety of the skill (slight reduction in boon uptime or number of condi stacks). It’s a pain for developers to maintain and not fun for casual users when skills do something completely different between modes.

Lowering loss rewards wouldn’t change this behavior.

Realize that these people playing for rewards and “not trying” won’t change their behavior due to rewards changes; they’ll continue doing it because they’re already at the appropriate skill rating and already winning about half their games by “not trying”.

Meanwhile, you’ve slowed down the reward pace for everyone.

Unlikely.

Spirit Watch has a poor map design on top of a poor secondary mechanic.

42 hits. Each stack is a hit, so it’s unlikely it’s 42 seconds.

I’ve had over 100k burn damage before.

AT&T u-Verse here. Already reset it multiple times. Still have issues.

ANet made a silent decision that condi damage should compete directly with power as opposed to supplementing it. In order to make that work, they’ve been buffing conditions and adding more condition application to scads of abilities.

IMO, that was the wrong choice. Condition damage should have been a supplemental alternative to precision, not a primary damage form like power.

ANet’s decision has started an arms race in PvP where condition application grows in power and condition removal grows to counter it. You now need to take multiple forms of multi-condition removal/immunity in order to deal with the chance that you’ll run into a condition damage build. It also limits builds and freedom because because certain weapons becomes “power only” or “condition damage only”.

Been a problem for me for at least a month. About half the NA servers are perfectly fine while other NA servers spike from 200 to 2000 millisecond latency continuously and are effectively unplayable.

From what I’ve read, it only happens to certain people (ISP-based), but that’s really confusing because I’d expect the symptoms to be uniform across all ANet’s servers (64.25.33.x and 64.25.38.x) and they aren’t.

SharkBall.5829:

and also these bots are often better than some human players on teams.

There’s your problem.

Ithilwen.1529:

That’s pure revisionist history. I remember the change, team queue was the place no one wanted to be. It was merged into solo queue because team queue wait times were stretching into untenable levels.

You’re the one doing the revising. In that old system, solo queue was initially more poplar, but after a month or so, team queue had faster queue times and better game quality.

Actiondan.8146:

Or we can keep everyone happy as possible and provide both options?
Have a real solo queue and a team queue for people joining in 2, 3, or 5 person teams.

Funny thing is, this existed about 6months after the game launched for a year or so (my timeline may be slightly off). Most players shifted from solo queue to group (1-5) queue, even solo players. The group queue dynamics implicitly forced teamwork and coordination to happen and were less toxic. Meanwhile, solo queue grew increasingly argumentative with a lot of “solo queue heroes” who would just try to kill other players instead of playing to win a match. So ANet just removed solo queue.

I don’t know why we need to repeat the same exercise. Just to back to a single 1-5 player queue with matchmaking weighed toward pairing teams.

Master Ketsu.4569:

As has been stated numerous times, the people who desire 5 man are an extremely vocal minority. 5 man would benefit a microscopic group of players at the expense of legit everyone else.

The only way 5 man can ever be OK is if it was 100% impossible to be matched against anything other than other 5 mans. The moment 5 man is allowed to go up against solo queue is the moment matchmaking becomes completely broken.

LOL, No.

The people who want solo queue are a bunch of whiners who blame everyone and everything but themselves for losses.

By removing team queue, ranked has turned into a cesspool. Players have “solo queue mentality” where they run around trying to kill other players on their own and ignore teamwork and coordination and almost always try for a triple cap. And when they lose, one of those players yells at his/her teammates and blames them for the loss.

The “teams have an overwhelming advantage” line is just another fictitious excuse by the “blame everyone but myself” crowd. Unless you’re at the very top, most teams can’t coordinate past picking a decent roster of builds. And your split queue team has 1.5 minutes to communicate and swap team comp, making you on par with that team queue.

Emmrahil.1934:

You ask Anet to nerf one of weakest classes in pvp (DH) …. The fact that ppl cant counter a DH in low MMR games dont mean that DH needs a nerf…actually needs a big boost to be viable in 5v5 comps

You can’t balance solely for the very top. If something is too strong for a large amount of the playerbase, it needs adjusted. And if you don’t do those nerfs, it’s unlikely that DH will get buffs for more skilled players.

mistsim.2748:

exactly. pet swap in beastmode would open up a whole new can of worms. from a balancing perspective, it’s nonsensical to me.

Except the current implementation doesn’t work either. If the cooldown started when entering beastmode (exiting wouldn’t restart the cooldown), it wouldn’t be so bad.

I play mostly PvP and mostly play guardian and necromancer.

Firebrand
Needs a re-design. Mantras and axe favor melee combat; tomes favor backline support. Tomes have the same problem as the old elites: only worth it for 1 or 2 abilities and the rest is a waste.

Scourge
Punishment skills are stacked; remove some of the torment. Fix bug with multiple burns at once from Demonic Lore. Otherwise a pretty solid spec with some numbers tweaks.

Holosmith
Photon Forge #1 and #2 damage was too high, which made it feel extremely gimmicky.

Soulbeast
Has an identity crisis and doesn’t flow well. Beastmode almost felt like you entered it just to spam more cooldowns. Having to exit beastmode in order to swap pets and then wait out the beastmode cooldown detracted from the spec. Any reason why it can’t just be permanent beastmode with the pet swap available?

Deadeye
Pretty good theme, but their mobility made fighting them a pain.

The biggest problem with soulbeast is how you had to exit beastmode, swap pets, then wait on the beastmode cooldown to re-enter. I’m guessing they’re worried people would just spam pet abilities back-to-back after a swap.

OP’s general idea is correct, though the details could use refinement.

Dragonhunter was incrementally nerfed a ton of times because ANet did a massive over-buff just before HoT launched in order to cover for the crappy mechanics. DH is as the OP stated: relatively easy to play for how well it performs. At the same time, that simplicity is stopping it from being strong at very high skill levels.

Daredevil’s main problem is that it’s a straight-up buff to thief.

15min for a single DC when you DC maybe once a month seems pretty harsh.

Definitely seems like an AT&T issue. What’s weird is that it’s only to some of ANet’s servers; others don’t spike at all.

I did an ipconfig /flushdns and it seemed to have cleared up my issues. Need to play a little more first, though.

EDIT: Nope, didn’t work.

PoF elite specs are about where they need to be in terms of power. Scourge is overtuned and had bugs and holosmith photon forge damage was overtuned. The ones which didn’t last through Sunday were just bad mechanically or had too many bugs.

If anything, HoT elites specs need some nerfs. Now that they aren’t the new thing, I can see it being more likely to happen.

@Naix.8156

What’s hard to understand? Equip an a power amulet (+1050 or +1200 power), activate Photon Forge, and auto-attack (#1 chain) or use #2 on a test NPC (or player). Look at the numbers and compare them to what you get on a similar 0.5sec melee weapon (or scale it to a 0.75sec one). What weapon you have normally shouldn’t matter since Photon Forge is essentially a kit.

Scourge played - I actually tried three varieties: power, support, and condi.
Support fell flat. Barrier isn’t plentiful enough and doesn’t scale well enough. The playstyle would be similar to Ventari (used as support – not decap).
Power felt a little like an offensive guardian in that it could offer team support, but you were there for damage first.
Condi is totally overpowered, but not too hard to fix. First, the Demonic Lore trait is bugged and putting out one burn for each torment stack. Scepter#3 = instant death. Second, many of the punishment utility skills are too overloaded and could probably lose torment as a baseline.
Compared to repear, it’s weaker to burst, but a lot stronger vs sustained damage. It’s weak to range, but strong vs. melee.
Ghastly Breach (elite) is completely overpowered and needs a major nerf.

Holosmith played - Photon forge #1 and #2 deal far too much damage. Outside of that, seemed mediocre. Pretty easy to balance, but it may leave the spec empty.

Firebrand played - Needs a major re-work. It’s a bunch of things which don’t mesh well. Mantras are great for melee support and match with axe and other core guardian stuff. But you HAVE to take tomes, which don’t work at all in melee (too easy to interrupt); tomes have to be used from backline. But tome spells are mostly caster-centric at short ranges. Then you have the problem of tome abilities lacking any impact for their cast times and other limitations. Tomes have the same problem as the old elite tome abilities: maybe one good ability that you use and then close it. Firebrand needs to decide if it wants to be a backline heavy support or a melee combatant with light support.

Deadeye - Seems about right, but may not be top tier in PvP. Biggest problem I had fighting them was mobility in stealth allowing them to always hit hard from a completely different spot every few seconds.

Spellbreaker - Standard warrior + boon strip. Stances being near mandatory limits what you can do.

Weaver - Friend of mine who is an ele main played it. It’s viable in power burst, condi, and bunker roles. The concept is sound, but needs quite a bit of polish. Probably has one of the higher learning curves.

Mirage - Didn’t see many. The few I fought seemed like a weaker version of condi chronomancer.

Soul Beast played - This spec has an identity crisis. Right now you just merge with the pet, spam the longer cooldown abilities or the CCs and leave. It’s basically normal ranger plus a few cooldowns. I just did longbow/greatsword and it worked, but didn’t feel different from normal.

Renegade - It doesn’t matter how good or bad this elite spec is; it can’t replace Herald. The Revenant profession has a huge problem: Herald is Revenant. The other legends are too weak without it. Revenant needs a major re-work for Renegade to be viable.

Needs tweaks (nerf or buff) or bug fixes:
- Scourge
- Holosmith
- Deadeye
- Weaver

Needs some re-design:
- Firebrand
- Soulbest
- Renegade

Not sure:
- Spellbreaker
- Mirage

Having had time to play to play more:

Holosmith
The photon forge #1 and #2 damage is just too high. Using a power amulet, 1200-1500 (non-crit) damage auto-attacks at 0.5s cast just wreck anything. And since they’re auto-attacks, dodging isn’t a viable way to avoid the damage. #2 is a leap which does 2500-3000 (non-crit) on a 2sec CD which makes them harder to kite.
The might stacking at high heat is also a bit of a problem.
However, the rest of holosmith is fine, maybe even too weak.

Scourge
Scourge has over-the-top condition damage, mostly from two places:
1. Punishment skills are too stacked. They strip a boon, apply 2x torment, and cripple in addition to other effects. Trail of Anguish is particularly stacked and Ghastly Breach makes Plaguelands look like a joke.
2. Demonic Lore is either overpowered or bugged. It’s giving a stack of burning for each stack of torment. That adds a lot of hurt since scourge is loaded with torment, but if you get hit by scepter #3, you just melt.

So at least the specs aren’t broken to their core like HoT specs. Tweaking a few skills/traits will bring them in line while keeping them playable and interesting.

Firebrand feels like two opposing specs rolled into one:

1. close range axe + mantras vs.
2. tome support

It doesn’t work. The burning tactic with F1#1 only works against people who stand in it and don’t cleanse.

Problem #1
Firebrand, like Dragonhunter, is all over the board; they don’t work as a cohesive package. The ideas conflict with each other leading to two opposing specs in one.

1. It’s trying to be a condi build with only burning. Too easy to clear w/o cover conditions.
2. Mantras are short range and instant (after charging) – great for a melee build.
3. Tomes and tome abilities are cast time and if you’re in melee, will be constantly interrupted. They’re best used for backline where you can avoid the interruption. But half the abilities are short range.
4. Axe is short range, which goes against tomes.

If you didn’t have to take tomes, Firebrand would be a pretty good melee spec with a slant toward conditions. But tomes do not mix with axe or mantras.

ANet will probably just make a trait which gives stability on tome casts which will be effectively mandatory for PvP.

Problem #2
Tome abilities lack impact and synergy. Many are too slanted to one role and if you don’t spec for that role, you may as well not have that tome.

1. Tome of Justice is far too condi heavy. As a support, it’s basically a double-cast to use a CC. #2 is too short range to be useful for weakness. If you’re not condi or with a condi-user for #5 to be useful, there’s little point to this tome.
2. Tome of Resolve is just a pile of suck. At the rate conditions get stacked right now, you’ll be half-dead or interrupted before any of the condi clears happen. The #4 has just plain awful scaling – just use #3.
3. Tome of Courage has a lot of neat abilities. But the tome’s cooldown makes using pages on #1 silly. #2 is hampered heavily by range. #4 seems like it should be on Tome of Resolve. #5 is basically just double-hitting on what traited virtue of Courage does. So you’re basically either going to waste pages on useless stuff or just close the book after #4 and #5 and maybe #3.

The entire problem with the original tome elite abilities was that they had maybe one good ability, but otherwise got in the way. That problem hasn’t been fixed. Having pages in tomes is pointless since all they do is stop you from spamming #1.

If I was making a tome-based spec, I would make it work at range completely (everything has min 600 range or is ground target) and the spec would lose weapon swap (so kinda like engineer kits). That allows the tomes to take on a more meaningful role.

Levijeh.9643:

This is classic though, people QQ’ing the same or next day after something big is released (in this case new elites for testing). I already found counter for the OMG OP Holosmith and Scourge, but yeah people is too lazy for that, so they’ll be nerfed anyway.

Oh, and not just an specific build for killing them, it’s my regular build for ranked lulz.

You probably have a ranged boonstrip build for fighting holosmith. Ya, that wrecks most of them. But very few classes can do that.
I’ve only seen one person who was anywhere decent at scourge. Seemed strong 1v1, but probably lacking in groups as long as people avoid AoE.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not a huge Overwatch player, but how do you solo PvE with Mercy?

The comparison he was trying to make is that you’re not in the middle of the fight – you’re the backline.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Have you considered that it might be that people haven’t learned how to fight against the new specs yet? When you don’t know what skills do, how do you defend against them?

By that token, you assume people have learned to play as the new elite specs to the point where they’re effective. If they’re already doing well now with less than 24hrs played as that spec, something’s probably broken about those specs.

I haven’t gotten the impression of any of the Elite Specs being overpowered yet because for every one that kicks my butt, another is flailing around ineffectively.

Some are okay, some are super strong.

• Holosmith is pretty ridiculous because it can self-stack 25might easily allowing it to dish out crazy damage with defensive abilities on top of the heat mechanic being intended for periods of increased damage.
• Scourge when played well is very defensive and dishes out a lot of conditions. However, this spec at least has some learning curve.

The others I haven’t seen to be overly strong or just haven’t been played well. Firebrand support would be extremely strong if the game was slower paced.

I’ve had periods where I get a really choppy connection. Lots of half-second lag and occasional spikes of a few seconds.

Whenever I join a map, I do /ip and it seems that it’s only a certain set of servers where I lag. For example, 64.25.33.40 is fine for me, but 64.25.33.82 was horribly laggy tonight.

Ragnar.4257:

Are you sure its evade+damage you dislike, or is it actually just thief?

Thief can dodge/evade with damage repeatedly in succession. Most of the abilities you listed have cooldowns and the evade was added to make the movement portion of the skill reliable.

That constant evade + damage gets to the underlying problem: tactics (builds) which require disproportionately less skill to execute than to counter.

Zoltreez.6435:

Exedore.6320:

The changes were almost exclusively to address PvE. PvP only got a cursory look in this round of updates.

so then WHY they gutted Necros Shroud tell me ?

that effects PvP more then ANYTHING else…..

Side effect of changing stuff for PvE.
From reading complaints on Reddit and Necromancer forums, it looks like PvE utilized the old Speed of Shadows (lower cooldown on entering death shroud) and Vital Persistence (life force lasts longer so you need to generate less) for damage bursts in a rotation.

The changes were almost exclusively to address PvE. PvP only got a cursory look in this round of updates.

Thunderbird.4298:

I completely and utterly disagree with the mix&match… u will get things like bunker mesmer back or worse.

And your proposal to bring back soldier’s or cleric’s amulet won’t? What’s the difference between picking one soldier’s amulet item and 3 which add up to the same?

Oh and they can 100% make the specializations PvE-only. Also, think about all the players that got completely kittened because of the specializations? it killed off all build diversity.. changed every build, and class to something that was not in the original design for this game… do u wonder why popoulation is low? they made their game foreign to returning/loyal players.

This is just you being jaded. Some people like core, while others enjoy the playstyle of elite specializations. All your idea does is alienate the current group in favor of the old. You need to balance core with HoT elite so that both are viable. You’ll have the diversity you desire in doing so.

People left because HoT elites made the game brain-dead. They need nerfed across the board.

@ Thunderbird.4298

On your changes:

1. Equalize base health
2. Re-enable amulets
3. No elite specs in PvP

You’re going about it all the wrong way.

ANet will NEVER not allow elite specs in PvP. They’re a major selling point of expansions, and if players can’t play something they enjoy, it turns them off from that game mode. Inability to play what you play somewhere else has been a persistent problem with PvP since the game launched.
Elite specs have to be nerfed across the board. This includes in PvE, where top PvEers also know that elite specs are too strong compared to core; the unused elite specs are just not PvE-friendly. However, nerfing elite specs is a tangled web: many elite specs rely on over-buffed abilities and traits to distinguish themselves from core. Without that level of power, it doesn’t feel different enough. It may require creating core elite trait lines from current core lines and re-balancing the remainder to be less powerful.

Rolling back amulet restrictions isn’t the correct path either. Instead, we need to eliminate all 4-stat amulets and then allow mix & match of 3-stat combos across 3-4 items (not just an amulet) so that players can achieve a proper stat balance for their builds. With the nerf of elite specs and power creep from raw numbers of stats, the combos with multiple defense options can be restored.

Base health equalization isn’t something which is imperative to do if you do the other things. The base profession was designed with health pools in mind, so you’d have to re-balance a lot to raise or lower a few health numbers.