Guild Wars 2

D/D ele here, feeling a lot of anger after the big April 15th update.

Some background: I play about 2-3 hours a day, more on the weekends. Mostly PVE and WvW. I like running dungeons. And I was using a build posted online by a guy named Xunleashed. It relied on the crit dam bonus from Celestial gear, and on boon duration (from the 2 monk/2 water/2 traveler rune combo) to keep up might and fury.

I’ve been working hard, for months, to gear myself up to the build Xunleashed posted. And now that build has now been devastated by the April 15 changes, especially the loss of boon duration runes. And here’s what I don’t understand: why was mixing and matching runes a problem?

And now I’m totally set back because my build got nerfed to high holy heaven because . . . well, because ANet decided it didn’t like people min/maxing runes. Ummm, why is that a problem that needed “fixing”? Why has months and months of work and gold and laurels been ruined for me?

As for where to go from here? The new runes that ele’s on the forums seem to be liking are Superior Runes of Strength. One night last week, one of these cost about 7 gold, 50 silver. I need 6 for a full set. That’s over 42 gold! And later the price for those Runes has gone up near 10 gold a piece.

42-60 gold is a lot of in-game money for me. And now that the World Boss Train has basically been neutered (because of World Boss timer schedule), and champ chests from dungeons reduced, two of my big money-making sources have either vanished or been reduced.

It’s hard not to feel like I’m being punished, but I don’t know what it is I did that deserved punishing.

And now I’m wary about putting in months more time and grinding and gold and gems to re-gear myself for a new trait . . . because once I get that in place, what’s to stop ANet from coming along and arbitrarily destroying that build too? I don’t understand WHY they think the “problems” (mixing and matching runes, a world boss train, critical damage) they’ve identified are problems. And it’s frustrating to have these changes handed down with no compensation for the builds they nerf. For example, I wish after a big update that you had the one-time option to re-select the stats on the Ascended gear you already have.

I really love this game, and have had a ton of fun playing. I want to keep playing. I love my character. I want to keep playing him. But he has felt broken after the April 15th patch and the months of hard work I put into him seem wasted. It’s hard not to feel angry and discouraged about that.