Guild Wars 2

I don´t want to see any guardian changes except for some bugfixes, I really like the place the guard is in right now and would prefer other classes being balanced around it as it is a well balanced class i believe.

on bugfixes there is the shield trait that is not giving you the promised toughness and allies reflecting your staff 2 back at you with reflect skills making you unable to detonate it and sometimes bugging out the skill.

I disagree with the concept of people always crying out to the devs for buffing of their favorite class, that is what the ele community has been doing and it has nearly broken the PvP

Lots of great stuff in the recent changes!

Longbows can now shoot behind you due to popular demand, thx for that

F1 to F3 now feel powerful and unique to the specialisation! gj on that

Many nice trait changes that now synergize well with the other guardian lines.

after no changes in the second BWE this has made me extremely happy and gives the guard a very nice new feel.

It might actually be abit too powerful with the LBow now, as i was doing 6 k crits on number 2 with a marauder amulet in PvP, that is a bit harsh for a 4s cd. However if u feel the need to nerf pls just tweak the damage numbers, as the traits feel really good now.

Although I am normally with all the flamers in the Forums let me say this:

Good Job and well done !!!

Among the Legends of the revenant in the past BWE we have seen 3 useful, fun and higly playable stances (Mallyx, Shiro, Glint) and 2 stances that feel weak and unfinished(Jalis, Ventari). With the changes announced for Mallyx the Demon Stance is threatened to join the weakish ones but this is already being discussed in many threads here so i will not add to it in this thread, instead i want to Focus on Jalis aka the Dwarf and drop some thoughts on what could be done so that he can feel as unique and exciting as Mallyx used to be and Glint and Shiro are.

Dwarf Stance

The Dwarf stance is aimed to give you a tanky feeling aiming for a kind of bruiser gameplay taking hits for allies throwing yourself into the line of fire and outsustaining the enemy by not taking as much damage as others would in the same position.
Many skills on the Dwarf are very well put into this context:

Soothing Stone is a very decent heal and with the added condi remove a good choice for a tanky feel

Vengeful Hammers have become an expensive but still useful upkeep skill that allows for aoe damage while increasing your own damage reduction

Rite of the Great Dwarf is basicly teamprotection “+1” with it´s 50% reduced damage and fits the legend well, however it still seems off that you can just launch or knockback Stone Statues easily and this skill would deserve to spread some aoe stability to allies as well (3 to 5 stacks for 5 seconds – same as stone duration) especially since the high casting time makes it hard to use this skill, the rewards should be greater

So despite these nice skills, why are so few people using this stance?

A Tanky kind of play is not really wanted anywhere in PvE so you will find the dwarf only in PvP or WvW and many might feel a lack of synergy with other legends as Shiro(assasin) or Mallyx(demon) require gear that does not go well with the dwarven tanky approach. Among the weapons the Hammer seems like a good fit for the dwarf but since it is a ranged weapon it is not quite as suitable for a tanky playstyle as it seems but the main reason why it is not used there is a lack of crowdcontrol

The CC is really the main point about why the dwarf feels wrong! A tank without crowd control can not protect his allies in a meaningful way and the dwarf offers very little in this regard. His only hard CC is the forced engagement which is single target, hard to hit in WvW and PvP and has a high energy cost, even with the announced reduction to 35 energy and apparently Roy is unhappy with it as well:

“A lot of you thought Forced Engagement was too high of a cost for a single target control skill, and I agree! But, I can’t allow you to use it back to back or else it creates bad chain controlling situations so there is an added recharge as well.” quoted from upcoming Revenant changes for BWE3

Otherwise the dwarven utilities offer no hard or soft CC so you are forced to work with FE and the limited weapons CC only.

What to do about it

Forced enegagment in it´s current form looks something like this:

Launch a chain at your target. When the chain connects with a foe, it slows and taunts them.

Damage: 184
Involuntarily attack foes. Taunt (2s): Involuntarily attack foes.
Skills and actions are slower. Slow (2s): Skills and actions are slower.
Range: 1,200

in this form seems it seems like a very expensive generic CC that will probably be stopped by a random blind, block or dodge in PvP/WvW anyway. To make it (and the dwarf) special you could make it look like this:

Launch a chain at your target. When the chain connects with a foe, periodically apply conditions

Duration 3-5s (Interval 1s)
Taunt(1s)
Self Taunt(1s)
Range 600
Energy 35-50
20-30s cooldown
Can be cancelled via “end engagement” which will also stunbreak you

or possibly set this up as an upkeep skill with self taunt and -10 Energy reg

This skill would be very strong without making you to powerful in any situations as you make yourself very vulnerable when using it relying on your tanky gear and utilities to keep u alive during this time. It would also much more accurately reflect a “forced engagement” with the aspect of taunting both players. Combine this with adding an immobilise or stun effect on Inspiring Reinforcements which would fit nicely with the animation of getting “stoneroaded” and the dwarf would have the CC you would expect of a tank. Making the dwarf highly viable as a supporter/tank on soldier or celestial gear by helping set up kills for your team and impeding your enemies

Looks like mostly sensible changes, especially a ventari buff was necessary, but I am unhappy with the mallyx changes the elite skill was great as it was, and will now be useless with – 8 energy regeneration just to pulse out torment every 3 seconds. (10% stat buff is unnoticable compared to the stat buff on tornado, plague or rampage)

I realise that displacement was a big issue but it would probably have been fine if you had simply made it so that it could be countered by stability. With removing the effect completly the viability of the darkness field on mallyx is destroyed, as it has a very high energy cost for a very weak well (compared to necromancer or chronomancer wells). I believe keeping the displacement and making it counterable would have been a better call to preserve the uniqueness of the class. If people get disoriented for a second that is rather good as that is kind of what you want when you apply CC.

Removing the self applied conditions does not really matter to the class as the skills would have given you the condi resistant boon (via trait) anyway and with the bonus for conditions on self gone they are insignificant. Still i think selfapllied conditions was rather nice mechanic especialy in combination with the elite skill in it´s previous form which needs to be restored or heavily altered in some other way as with the darkness field and the elite rendered useless (due to energy management issues) the entire Mallyx legend is endangered in it´s viability.

Another thing that i forgot to post last BWE is that it would be really nice if the sword 5 would teleport you back regardless of whether you hit somebody with it or not

Conclusion: good changes, except for mallyx legend (pls rework pls)

It would be sweet if we could get an AoE Ring for the “Facet of Elements” active skill, otherwise I am happy with the Revenant as it is, haven´t found any working build for Ventari yet though.

I like the idea of sustained skills alot and I was hoping Rite of the great Dwarf might become a sustained skill for these reasons:

1.a Stunbreaker that gets u stuck in a 1second + chanell isn´t really freeing u up from what ever you want to escape from, meaning if you are being focused you cannot use it to escape or mitigate the damage

2.If you want to use it to help your allies survive a burst of damage after one second it will already be too late.

I have never seen anyone use the skill in PvP because of the long cast time.

To help make the skill more viable you could reduce the cast time or make it an instant cast with the same energy cost

more intresting in my opinion would be to put it on par with shiros “impossible odds” skill and give it a -10 energy regeneration and add a cooldown (?20s?)to the skill so that it will not be spammed, maybe the cooldown will not even be necessary as i remember impossible odds messing up my energy management quite abit

hope to see some changes to Yalis Elite in the next BWE

good job on the Rev though, I like it

uhh skins… i hope they will be gemshoppable cause i can´t afford legendaries^^ make it like rox´s shortbow

I think in general the Dragonhunter traps should take some advice from the ranger traps, in so far as u should be able to throw them, they should be >INVISIBLE< for enemies (atm they have shiny effects while laying dormant so they are easy to avoid) and their cooldown should make them viable, referring to flame trap and spike trap with nice and short cooldowns

also +1 on shooting longbowskills behind you and range increase on F2

if you take the trap trait with bleeding on traps (piercing light) it also doesn´t show in the tooltip, adding cripple to piercing light seems sensible as well since people will just walk out of the traps otherwise and it would synergize well with zealots agression.

I like that virtues are getting a stronger active roll but with the massive cooldowns on them they seem weak, which they shouldn´t considering you sacrifice a minor trait for the transformation from your normal virtues, might be a good idea to remove the passives and cut the cooldowns in half, or make them stronger in another way, similar to what we have seen with the improvements to wings of resolve (which is currently the only virtue that feels strong enough) maybe making shield of courage more in the direction of endure pain or arcane shield since dragonhunter is supposed to be more selfish so why would he spread his shield out across and arc like that.

For some reason the DH Traitline also seems fairly disconnected from the others as it doesn´t benefit from burning, aegis or any other classic guardian things currently feels like (guardian + 1 traitline) instead of (dragonhunter). It needs more synergy with other traitlines / utility classes or weapons besides longbow

The Herald seems like a really fun and strong traitline, but as a PvP player I probably have a very diffrent view on that, as using the Facets has to be done actively just to stay alive.

Especially powerful is the Facett of Darkness with the revealed debuff for shadowrefugees + stunbreak, i don´t use it for passive on my current build but can probably be done to great effect with roiling mists trait (100% crit chance while under the effect of fury) on a soldier amulet

I am using the Elements mostly to get between points and in fight only for the active

Facet of strength feels pretty weakish to me right now mostly because of the long cast time to get rid of it which will most likely be intrerrupted and in turn mess up your energy management, for this one I´d recommend cutting the might duration in half and making it apply 2 stacks instead and making the Burst of strength activate 1/2 second or 1/4 second. That would make it far more viable for PvP whithout making it overpowered in PvE. (I hope, dunno much about PvE) without faster generation of might people will simply use the facet for it´s active effect neglecting the passive entirely (who would mess up energymanagement for 15 seconds before feeling any effects?)

Despite Facet of strength all the skills on dragon seem well balanced to me and get my seal of approval^^

I still feel the Rev is a bit squishy though and would be happy for healing skills to be on 25 second cd (It´s possible that it is just me being a noob though)

The guardian Elite seems to only be removing one condition despite both the Pure of Voice trait and the soldier rune in my setup, other shouts react normally

While I doubt that any devs are reading the forums or take much player feedback at all into consideration, you show a lack of understanding for the guardian. Guardian has 3 highly viable builds in the current meta with the burn guard, the meditation dps and the support build, if you struggle on the class maybe it is simply not your playstyle.
Move on to Elementalist or sth everyone can play that

Warrior is already pretty weak in the current meta, and the warriors are getting so desperate they start playing shoutbow again^^, you really wanna take away their 15s of viablility? Don´tbe cruel! Also Elementalist is already more powerful in his Base form then a warrior in rampage xD

Despite all the hate coming from Ele players here, the OP and some others have suggested a couple of sensible changes to the class. The Elementalist is far to strong for the amount of effort you have to put in to master it. What people want is not for anet to break it but to make it fit in with the rest of the classes, as it has been among the 3 strongest classes for over a year now.
Unfortunately once or twice a year when Anet does listen to all the moaning on the forums and blesses us with a blance patch, they overreact to peoples demands and break entire classes. Which starts the moaning anew. However i still doubt that the Anet PvP staff will start working on another balance patch before heart of thorns comes out as they seem so very busy with the stronghold gamemode. So be prepared to face another five month of Elementalist dominance in PvP and bring two of them in your own team and you should hold out long enough for Anet to make the class completely useless

I totally agree with the OP especially with the time between balance patches being a huge issue, even though i really like this game i had to stop playing it for 6 month because my favourit class became unplayable on a decent PvP level due to a balance patch and it took that long to fix it, the patch didn´t remove the issue of some classes being unplayable on a tournament level but my class is finally playable again.

However i already know some warriors quitting the game cause it has become useless since the rampage nerf. I believe that anet ignores the fact that for quite a few players this game is only PvP and by leaving classes broken for months on end they scare many people away who will not come back like I did.

The most frustrating thing is how easy balance patches can be made, each week take a look at the meta tune the numbers of the most powerful specs abit. but then I doubt ppl from anet are reading these forums anymore, too much trolling going on here and way to many posts + their PvP dev team is constantly busy with Stronghold or stuff and doesn´t take the time to adress the issues the community wants them to, I bet 95% of players would prefer monthly balance patches over stronghold coming out in time with HoT

+1 to the demand of free queuing

I very much agree with the OP and his reasoning and I believe that considering the ugly armour starting characters have the F2P players would surely invest gems to get better skins like it happens in MOBAs just make F2P Players not get loot and u will force them to the gemshop for skins → money.

On the issue of F2P MMORPGs I can think of “Starwars the Old Republic” which also gets it´s money from transfers via their ingame “Cartel Market” equivalent of “Blacklion” and subscribers with F"P having reduced privilages but access to wise parts of the game.

The answer to this would mean having very few pips and tiers per division but implementing the loss of pips and tiers even in the lower leagues this would make it easier to loose and gain rank points so that you would quickly stabilise in the division that u belong in with people who have on average the same skill level as you.

If (for reasons of bad luck) you drop out of your division you will then get easier fights in the lower division and be able to rise again quickly or you rise a division your fights will get harder and if you have not improved you will quickly be back down in your old division

With what we know of the system that anet has announced, if u hit a lucky streak u will ascend to a league that is too high for you and be stuck for the rest of the season playing against teams that are to strong and u will only loose, this will not be fun.

In order for you not to switch divisions every fight it would make sense to give players who have just risen or fallen a division 50% of the maximum pips/tiers allowing them to prove themselves in their new division before instantly dropping out again.

Because of the seasons no decay of Position/division needs to be implemented, if the seasons are short enough ( maybe 2 months or so ) as the ranks and divsions will be reset then.
This would seem like a decent enough system to me. Why would we need new automatic progression in the first 3 leagues every month, it seems to me the first 50 or so matches each season will simply be farming as philheat suspects, which is very discouraging

Tongku shows an amazing lack of understanding for this game and should have posted this (if at all) in the PvE Forums, if i were a mod here I´d say topic closed^^

When i read the post about the leagues i was very much disappointed that u couldn´t loose ranks or even leagues starting at the very lowest league. After all the league system is supposed to be a help in finding matchups for your own strength, how would it help the matchmaking process if everyone ended up in the highest league eventually and the weaker players would have to fight top teams again.

Additionally in my opinion PvP players and teams who put a lot of effort into getting good deserve a reward that is hard to get, what would be special for them, if every PvE player were to run around with the legendary league title, because he queued alot.

I agree however that the legendary equipment should be attainable for all, so it would make sense to make this part of a regular rewardtrack.
I say this despite the fact that PvP players are generally the poor guys who receive way less gold and loot for their time spend in the game, than people doing dungeons fractals or even WvW

As it has been stated before I will not adress the soloq/teamq and balancing questions here

Adopt a Dev for PvP would be awesome. Nice idea

Me and many players in my friendlist would appreciate more frequent balancing updates. I am sure that the new changes to the PvP system have required alot of work and time to create, but as far as I am concerned I believe that it is not sufficient to balance the game every 3-6 month.
I don´t mean to moan about the current meta with elementalist and engi being very strong.
What annoys me and many other people is that the fact that if one class has become (too) powerful or (too) weak, it will take almost half a year for this to be changed.

I have played Guildwars 1 that had a very active PvP community and I remember that there would be changes at least once a month and each of those changes had a real impact on the meta. Guildwars 1 proved that Anet is able to provide balancing on a very high level showing each class equal love

I find it undesirable that some classes will have to suffer serious disadvatages for several month before any balance patch puts them back into a postition in which they are actually viable. I remember Rangers being very much disrespected before the entagle update. Rangers have suffered flaming in almost every soloq match I have been in for being useless before the match even started.
At this point let me say I don´t play ranger, I don´t want you to buff ranger, I am just giving an example.

I believe that more balance updates will bring more diversity to the game and greatly reduce the amount of moaning about overpowered and unloved classes because Anet should be able to see “mistakes” in balancing faster and fix them.

There are many balancing issues that need to be adressed and they have been there for a while. some Examples:

incindiary powerder: a tier 2 trait that basicly does the same thing doomfire did before it was nerfed with doomfire being a tier 3 trait.

many ranger traits affecting pets still do not do anything. There is a trait that says it would lengthen pet condition duration by 50%, which would be really strong for wolf fear and spider immobilize. The Trait does not prolong anything.

poison fields from engineers and thieves hitting you through blocks while any other aoe fields don´t hit you, with mesmer getting a recent nerf that prevented unblockable condition application by shattering clones. ( i really like when stuff is consistent )

certain signets and runes need a rework with certain signets having gamechanging effects: without signet of battle and doom current metabuilds would not be anywhere near viable. — Do we want equipment to supplement a trait and skillsetup or do we want skills and traits to only synergize with certain types of equipment limiting the number of viable variations

I look forward to receiving all the hatred, the l2p comments and the spelling corrections, that I have seen other people get who posted about balancing.

kind regards
Ulf