Guild Wars 2

Oareo.1604:

The 100 nades nerf was a perfect example of changes done right.

1. It was needed
2. They told us it was coming
3. They actually did it
4. The change is interesting (lots of new effects, rather than just scaling down the numbers)

I am a little sad that it’s gone, since we had one in our group… but not enough to post about it. I know they are never going to bring it back, and although it affects my overall team, I still think it’s a good change.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with the fact that 100nades is gone. You’re right, they told us they were eliminating it. I don’t like playing burst builds in general. I’ve never played 100nades.

But the fact that no one notices it was gone probably means this probably should not have been so high on the list of balance priorities. On the WvW forum, there is a thread about how maybe the LoS change to grenades will make engineers more useful in sieges, but nothing concerning 100nades. This is the only thread on the PvP forum about it. There isn’t even much talk on the engineer forum about it. We’re talking about a total removal of a build. This is the most serious nerf to any profession since the nerf to flamethrower in September. How many other builds have been completely removed from the game?

There were also some problems with the way the change was implemented—for example, engineers who didn’t like using elixirs used the same trait for a little bit of condition removal from other kits. Engineers who use multiple kits are largely changing their builds so that they won’t get the wrong effect by mistake and lock themselves out of a useful effect for 20 more seconds. So I wouldn’t expect to see many of those new, interesting effects, but I would expect to see more condi nades elixir engineers.

Better yet, have an option to choose which effects you could get. I’m not sure if the trait would be worth it for one single effect or not. But it certainly isn’t worth it for the single effect that you want but can’t get because you swapped to med kit for swiftness 15 seconds ago.

saiyr.3071:

Not that we get most of our badges from solo roamers, anyway o_O

Right right, I just meant in general escaping a larger force may be easier now.

saiyr.3071:

…at least you can see everyone now? :v

Definitely! I’m looking forward to that so much. I don’t mind dying or repair costs, but when I’m solo roaming and come across 20+ man group I like to run away rather than try to fight them. Up till now, they could always see me several seconds before I could see them. Much sadness.

This may make it harder for Mag to farm badges, though, since more people will successfully run away.

shimmerless.4560:

I think the reason confusion is strong/underrated is that everything counts as a skill cast in this game. Even autos (since there’s no such thing as a true autoattack anyway). Heck, bet you didn’t know that if an Ele dodges for the Evasive Arcana heal, that counts as a skill cast and they’ll take damage.

I know full well. I’m just glad engi’s on-dodge minor trait got fixed this patch—before it was absolutely useless and still triggered confusion damage. I’ve wished so many times I could disable a minor trait…

I wasn’t surprised that no one was sad it’s gone. I was a little surprised that no one was HAPPY it’s gone. I thought it was removed because other professions disliked playing against burst that high. Seems that no one even noticed it’s gone now.

I like the idea of control skills doing no damage. It fits better with the original vision of support/control/damage, since it makes it hard to do two at the same time.

Trouble is, there isn’t a support/control/damage trinity because everyone can do all of them. So zero damage control skills start to feel underpowered.

Torqky.3682:

Engi healer gonna be viable with the elixir gun in zerg?

Super elixir was actually unchanged, those notes were a misprint left over from a previous patch. Due to the kit refinement nerf, elixir gun healing was actually cut in half, so no, not viable. Elixir gun is still a decent weapon and healing bombs could be all right especially since bomb kit refinement got a buff.

I agree that condition removal was the biggest loss this patch. Everyone knew that 100nades would die, which we were all okay with because it was incredibly difficult and not as good as other glass cannons.

KR was a buff to bomb kit but a nerf to nades, flamethrower, and elixir gun. It was also a nerf to builds using more than one kit. Huge indirect nerf to any build without 20 in alchemy and at least one elixir, as there are no longer any decent condition removal options for those builds.

Turrets are now stronger but the issues that keep people away (no targeting, stunbreak/condi removal) are still there. No surprise—we’ve expected that turrets wouldn’t be viable for several more patches/buffs.

Some bugfixes.

Quickness nerf means that perhaps running without a stunbreak won’t be so difficult. That alone could open up our build options considerably.

Odd change to grenade line of sight. No one is sure what situations it is useful in, but it might be very helpful.

Multiple kit builds are still very possible, just don’t take KR. 4-kit builds are perhaps impossible now, but 3-kit/1 elixir might work.

I believe it was a bug fix of some sort. As in, previously the trait would not work if your opponent had a high enough condition duration bonus.

Guys, this has yet to be tested. I have serious doubts that engineers will be able to hit parts of a wall that other professions cannot. As I said, I think this was mostly so that engineers would be able to successfully throw grenades DOWN from walls without getting the “LoS” message.

There was a line in the patch notes that condition duration bugs for some gear pieces had been fixed. It didn’t specifically mention giver’s.

People have been wanting to use turrets for a long, long time. Can’t blame them for all trying them out in hotjoins now. It’ll probably last the next day or two.

To be fair, the patch shows how much the devs are focusing on the engineer profession, and that they really want to reach their vision for the class. I don’t think it reflects well on their understanding of how to actually successfully play an engineer, though.

Penguin.5197:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Agreed. I love the changes to our formerly useless KR effects (med kit and bomb kit) but the trait is still all about getting the strong effect and avoiding the weak effect. Only now that the 20s ICD is working correctly, it’s a big problem to “waste” kit refinement on a useless effect.

Lol yes, even though kits are supposed to allow to switch weapons more freely than with weapon swap, I find myself more restrained when I put on this trait now. I’m hoping that is not what the developers went for when making a trait for kits.

Yup. I saw in another thread a comment to the effect of “I would only take KR in a single-kit bomb build,” and I think that’s going to essentially be how it shakes out.

I haven’t had a chance to test this yet. I believe the biggest change will be that engineers should be able to throw over the lip/wall of keeps and towers when defending. I don’t think it will change siege placement. I mean, what zerg has an engineer in it?

Seriously though, I don’t think this changes the way grenades are thrown onto walls.

Mif.3471:

Rfreak.6591:

@Mif.3471

Check your own traits before posting please (that’s Speedy Kits effect)

It was sarcasm….

I found it hilarious, well played I see what you did there…

I think the changes are kind of cool but honestly the devs have backed themselves into the same situation they had before. The bomb refinement is the only one that really looks strong to me, so any multiple-kit user will just be trying to avoid other refinement effects to get the one he wants. Just like before, some effects are weak and some are strong.

Agreed. I love the changes to our formerly useless KR effects (med kit and bomb kit) but the trait is still all about getting the strong effect and avoiding the weak effect. Only now that the 20s ICD is working correctly, it’s a big problem to “waste” kit refinement on a useless effect.

Before, using multiple kits with KR was a good thing because you had multiple utility slots that gained a benefit from a single trait. I’m not so sure KR will be worth it with 2+ kit builds anymore.

Thief caltrops don’t deal any direct damage, so even though they continually re-apply bleeding they don’t bring the thief out of stealth.

This is a pretty big deal for bomb kit. The trick is going to be getting a build that uses bombs as its only kit. Perhaps bombs + elixirs will be as viable as nades + elixirs?

I may give it a try in my WvW build, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the useful effect while juggling swiftness swapping, grenades, and bombs. The root problem of KR—that some effects were really powerful and others were worthless—doesn’t appear to be going away.

Edit: and it will be awesome for setting up BoB. I’m used to having to time glue bomb really well—now, just lay BoB, switch to bomb kit, lay glue bomb. Done.

Pros: turret buffs, multiple bugfixes, cool new stuff for kit refinement
Cons: kit refinement is no longer poor man’s condi removal, turrets still can’t target, multiple kit builds punished by GCD

Looks like I have to find a new tournament build. Granted, I was probably the only engineer dumb enough to run all kits, but I liked it and the condition removal made me viable as a semi-bunker. Getting one effect every 20 seconds from only one of my four kits is not really going to be worth it.

Bomb kit refinement looks amazing.

Can’t really think of any way to get around needing 409.

Turret changes were better than I expected.

Using kit refinement plus speedy kits is going to be tricky. You can either keep up swiftness or have utility when you enter the fight. Interesting.

tl;dr: interesting changes and a lot of good stuff. Best builds will still revolve around kits and/or elixirs.

Phineas Poe.3018:

NevirSayDie.6235:

But the weak skill can’t be said to be a “replacement” for normal skills.

I think that would depend entirely on if you think that our kits are weak.

If you think they are, I’d like to know why. If you think they aren’t, then you simply have to make the conscious decision of whether or not to roll with three kits or have that extra gadget or two for escape. ArenaNet isn’t going to hold anybody’s hand.

And if you want to have three kits at your disposal while still having all those stunbreakers, maybe you should just re-roll an Elementalist because that might be more your speed.

Whoah whoah whoah, slow down. I was just commenting on toolbelt skills being “replacements” for utilities. If I didn’t think kits were great, I wouldn’t say that using three of them is the most fun you can have in GW2. So far as I know, I’m the only player who has used an all-kit engineer to even a medium level in tournaments.

Having a lot of options with no weapon swap cooldown is a replacement for the extra stunbreak/condition removal. Throw wrench is a good skill, but throw wrench by itself could never “replace” a utility or find a spot on any other profession’s utility bar. I was just commenting on a philosophy/wording issue, not a balance issue.

This IS a balance issue with turrets, because turrets aren’t as good in themselves as kits. The turret toolbelt skill is supposed to “make up” for the lost utility slot, but in reality, they don’t. Turrets don’t offer enough for people to seriously consider leaving either condition removal or a stunbreak out of their build just so they can have two turrets.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Not a single toolbelt ability is a stun break. None of them are actually worth a slot on a utility on its own.

^ This is really important. I don’t necessarily mind that the engineer is a complicated profession, or that our skills often come in strong/weak pairs. But the weak skill can’t be said to be a “replacement” for normal skills.

Edit: also, running all kits is the most fun you can have in this game.

I don’t have a problem with how strong it is at all. I guess I wouldn’t mind if it were harder to start for the winning team, although I haven’t really seen it as an issue. I think the problem is that people want to be able to lock up an entire map and leave three people there to scout, while the rest of the server goes and takes EB. So the breakout is good for the game when used by the losing team, since it encourages widespread skirmishes all over the place instead of just zerging up and map hopping to PvD. It makes it harder for the winning server to just leave and zerg somewhere else, and easier for the losing servers to play on the winning servers’ BL.

The popular ranger builds are almost undeniably as good or better than anything thieves have for tournaments right now, so we can stop with the OP/UP arguments. My point remains that Anet will be unable to help thief players for quite some time, due to the huge chunk of playerbase that hates thieves.

Example: in the next patch, engineers, eles, and mesmers could receive some slight nerfs. Imagine if at the same time thieves received fixes/buffs. People wouldn’t appreciate it. No, it’s best for Anet to remove culling from WvW, make stealth/revealed easier to understand, and THEN get to work with QoL issues for thieves.

The fact that people may have differing opinions does not mean that “best” is completely subjective and cannot be measured. There are things that are objective advantages/disadvantages to each profession, although of course playing the one you enjoy is better than rolling a new toon just to be better.

For example, my list would be something like:
1. Mesmers: They can do several important things that no one else can. They’re also good in havoc groups and solo.
2. Eles: dominant zerg vs zerg glass cannon or super mobile havoc squad support.
3. Thieves: because harrassment is useful, and they are the best at it.
4. Guardians: some disadvantages vs. eles but a couple of nice control skills and a lot of boon spam.
5. Warriors: great at the front of zergs, lacking in other situations.
6. Engineers: because they have good might stacking, nice variety in condition output and abilities that hit a lot of people.
7. Necros: Good AoE and conditions. Less condition variety than engineers but naturally more tanky.
8. Rangers: Some really powerful stuff (they’re great in tournaments) but they don’t seem as strong to me out in the open world. They do have amazing 1v1 builds.

So, I ranked them on my own opinion but also on specific areas in which they excel, and how important each of those areas is in WvW.

In general I expect that our direct damage and bunker builds will be nerfed and our condition damage builds will be unchanged/buffed. Kind of odd but I think that’s how things are gonna go for engineers for a while. All turrets except net and rocket will receive damage, health and/or condition buffs but not enough to make engineers consider using them. General turret stuff such as targeting, LoS, and overcharge delay will remain unchanged.

zaragoz.6351:

Lol this thread is a joke. You beat HGH condition engineers with your 1 condition clear vs their 6 on demand? Interesting… Interesting… do tell us more fantastical stories…..

I’ve beat HGH nades engies with some pretty weird builds before. I’m not saying turrets are even close to usable, but HGH nades doesn’t have much control and only one stunbreak on a 48 second cooldown. So, if you kite well and/or have good cc, they’re not hard to 1v1 no matter how much condition removal you have.

Acid Bomb does damage every second, so even if it is not bugged it would still probably reveal you on the second tic, unfortunately. Not sure if it could be changed to continue to do damage without breaking stealth.

I love lighthearted threads like this that poke fun at flaws without becoming qq-fests or dev-bashing threads.

Don’t forget to balance the powerful RNG effects with hidden cooldowns.

Turrets will be buffed the next several patches before people start using them. Congrats on making turrets work for you, though. Not many have.

Yep, bombs are great for PvE solo leveling and pretty good at PvP/WvW also. They’re not as effective at doing PvE in a group (i.e. dungeons) because your party will likely have burn up constantly anyway and the confusion won’t be enough to justify taking the entire kit. The autoattack hits great in power builds, though. In PvP situations it’s obviously difficult because from the start of the cast to the time the bomb actually explodes is almost two seconds, so it’s very difficult to make them work. But it is possible.

They work great with both. The “highest dps” is power/crit, of course, since you can get the crit damage multiplier up really high if you are a total glass cannon. In PvP/WvW, condition dps is often higher in realistic builds due to enemy armor and the desire to not be a total glass cannon.

Best as in fastest? Or easiest? Farming isn’t usually a competition. Engineers can farm at the same speed as any other profession, though, and faster than some. Grenades are good but the delay will sometimes leave you without any tags, plus it requires aiming/paying attention. Autoattacking with pistol is probably the best way since you don’t have to be looking at your computer screen and the mobs won’t die before the pistol shot reaches them.

I don’t think it will hit us too hard. Boon hate will probably require investments in traits, making the opponent weaker against non-boon heavy opponents. And engineers generally only have about 4 boons on them at a time, as opposed to eles or guardians. So theoretically, engineers should remain about in the middle: boon hate builds would be weaker in general but stronger vs. 6-8 boons, so they should be about the same against us. Hopefully.

It’s okay, the devs still don’t know about any of our good builds because none of them play engineer in PvP at any decent level, to my knowledge. So, they may be nerfed by mistake, but none of them will be intentionally targeted for nerfs.

They did mention wanting condition builds to get better, which was very surprising to me. So it seems to me that engineers stand to gain more than they lose this patch.

Kit refinement was a fun trait that really made you feel cool when playing a 3-4 kit engineer, but sadly we must now leave it behind. In a way, it’s good for the engineer profession to get a little easier to play. It was pretty tough for new players to feel competent, especially in PvP. Now that they are nerfing our difficult niche builds and buffing our easy builds, engineers will see more players.

They still have no idea what turrets do, though. It’s going to be a long, long, long time before they get up to an acceptable level.

This is why thieves should be glad that culling is being removed from WvW and that stealth is receiving a tiny nerf this patch. Anet literally cannot do anything good for thieves right now without losing thousands of players who still find them to be overpowered/have dumb mechanics. Even after this patch they will have to be careful.

Anet has lost enough playerbase to thieves, maybe too much to recover from as far as WvW and PvP are concerned. They have to be smart about any balance/QoL fixes for thief players.

FxyO.8243:

hit boxes are also horrible. half the engineers abilities are practically skillshots because of the 30 degree cone and cast times.

All of the engineer’s useful abilities are skillshots.

Alarox.4590:

Because you have no Pow/Pre/Tuf gear so you can choose to only go condition, burst, or bunker. That is literally the reason. I’ll explain below.

This is a big reason. Everyone complains about game mode, certain professions, etc, but the bottom line is that amulet choice limits builds. The “balanced” amulets don’t really work for any builds. Has anyone ever run a celestial amulet build? Of course not.

I’ve recently been trying some WvW and I’ve really enjoyed how flexible the stats are. (of course, finding a decent skirmish is pretty rare, but the point is the stats). I can work my gear stats to get equal parts power and precision up to about 3200 attack and 50% crit chance and 25% extra crit damage, and still have 2700 armor. In PvP, if I want ANY working combination of power and precision, I must have zero toughness.

This has been brought up dozens of times and every time it gets shot down by multiple people saying, “toughness/vit/healing would ruin the game, don’t allow any new stats!” No one in their right mind is suggesting an ultimate bunker combination. But some better balanced combinations would really help.

OP has a good point. In most games, support builds are squishy but important. It’s kind of weird to have your healing/tanking/rezzing/etc profession be very difficult to kill.

In other words, the good thing about the trinity was that there was a third option besides offense/defense.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the decision to remove the trinity made the game what it is. Asking for something else is like asking for a different game. But there are certain disadvantages to basically having only offensive or defensive builds, sometimes with a tanky dps thrown in for good measure. The vision of “support/control/damage” would have worked a lot better if all professions couldn’t do 2-3 of those at the same time.

Ostricheggs.3742:

But yea, it does kind of suck to be pigeonholed into a tree/build because of how superior it is to the rest of our stuff. Looking through the utilities I count 6 different utilities used by ALL of the TPvP viable builds for damage engis.

But it’s hard to complain I guess. I can’t think of anothre class with a larger variety of builds and styles than engi, power/bunker/condis, all have different specs and uses and playstyles. And HGH condi nade engis are BLATANTLY overpowered, ridiculously so, when played at the skill cap. Maybe it’s because I have almost 4k games on an engi, most of which are with nades, but it’s just kind of ridiculous. Although aiming nades can be rough, if you can do it right you’re gonna destroy things. Having an off day means you’re gonna get wrecked.

I’m not disagreeing. Sooner or later I’m just going to give in and roll HGH nades because it’s better.

I do think there are other ways to stack might besides HGH. If HGH were removed, we might still need to use those 6 runes and sigil of battle, but we would possibly take might on heal, a shield, and bomb kit to make up for the loss of elixir B and HGH. It would still work, it would just be a little harder and a little less effective.

I meant that might/boon stacking was “intended” because there are so many ways to do it. Granted, they’re not all effective—try taking juggernaut to a tournament—but they’re all there in our traits. Right now, there’s one best way to do it, but I think in general we were meant to ramp up offense with boons.

Zinwrath.2049:

Comparing turrets to mesmer phants, is like comparing necro minions to ranger pets. Its a bad comparison.

I understand. I was speaking from a balance perspective only. I suppose we could compare toolbelt skills to phantasms/shatters, so that we were comparing the “same” aspect of each profession.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about engineers. Turrets just aren’t one of them.

morrolan.9608:

Interesting, based on that they prefer skill lag to culling, but IMHO skill lag is a worse issue

Culling pretty much always benefits a larger, moving force, since your allies will have already rendered for you. The smaller, non-moving force will render on your screen long before you render on theirs.

So, skill lag might be more severe in some situations, but culling is more likely to cause frustration and/or uninstalling. That’s probably why they addressed culling first.

zastari.1730:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m not sure why Mag commanders are wishing that CD and SBI would play less well. Isn’t it more fun to play against a better opponent?

I’ve enjoyed playing against several SBI groups, and I wish they would keep coming back because they are solid. Unfortunately, there’s this trend where SBI has a ton of people on our BL and we’ve mostly abandoned it, I pop on my tag and get about 2/3 SBI’s numbers, wipe SBI once, wipe them with even numbers next time, and then continue wiping them with more and more players following me until Mazergma either has a queue following me around the map or SBI gives up.

Some of the confrontations have been extremely interesting. I enjoyed SBI’s pushes on Mag BL tonight, but it gets quite boring when SBI leaves and then sends “havoc squads” to flip camps and waypoint back to spawn as soon as they see an invader coming after them. SBI, much like CD, seem allergic to PvP.

That was exactly my point. I’m sorry if it’s getting boring for you guys, but you can’t ask the other servers to give up objectives just to set up glorious battles.

Most tiers like ours have WvW for three days, Friday through Sunday. That’s probably what would happen if SBI and CD stopped playing for score and started playing for glory. If SBI and CD played the way you want them to, the scores would get so lopsided that people would just stop.

HGH nades is probably our “best” build but there are other ways to stack might. Let’s face it, without any might we don’t hit very hard, and most of our skills are power/condi hybrids, so might is more important for us than for most other professions.

We also have great fury access. Maybe the best in the game? I think we were designed to need those boons to be useful. Kind of unfortunate because when other professions get them, their damage spikes—but we need them just to sustain damage.

CriSPeH.8512:

^ I have to agree that Sitting Duck is a very nice trait to have alongside Netshot and Net Turret.

I use Net Turret with my Gadget SD build and its the one time I’ve found PBR to be very usefull.
The idea being that you do a reverse rotation of the usual.
So PBR or Overcharged Shot then Net Turret as they are lying on the ground, this will ensure you land the Net and get the Vulnerability stacks and set you up for a Jump Shot.
Also Magnet pull then drop Net Turret works very well.

Right, I originally wanted a power build to set up the toolbelt net and net turret with rifle. I took protection on crit rather than sitting duck because I found myself having to enter some odd positions to get the net off in a useful way, and I was rarely able to land it early in a fight. When everything worked, I rarely had trouble doing enough dps to take down the target. I hadn’t thought of using it in a SD build because of the high recharge on net shot. Would you have to run without condition cleanses or stunbreakers then? I mostly chose grenades to cover the immobilize condition really well (each grenade skill lands 2-3 conditions), which has worked out great so far in the situations where turrets work.

Right now I’m re-gearing for p/p, nades, nets, and I’m thinking med kit and elixir S again. I’m excited, p/p is a strong weaponset by itself and landing that immobilize should still seal the deal. It will just be harder to land the nets without the rifle. I should be able to switch to bombkit or toolkit much easier for taking camps and 1v1ing pet professions, respectively. Net turret is already great for 1v1ing non-pet professions, it just failed badly in certain situations, so I think it will be great to be able to swap it out and still be just as effective. Wish tourneys gave loot so I would actually be able to re-gear after playing since launch…

Phoenix.3416:

I recently read that engineers are supposed to be an AOE Area denial class yet we don’t have any skills for that at all.

Turrets are immovable so realistically useless outside of PvE, they have a large cooldown which shouldn’t exist based off the stats they have.

The flamethrower has such a low range and damage for how close it has to be used that its not really area denial as a slight speed bump for any toughness based opponent in melee range

Grenades are great but have recently been nerfed and they don’t deny areas they simply do damage in a small area which isn’t the same thing

If we are supposed to be area denial then where is my skill to set fire a circle of land or spread oil to knock players over? All we can do is deal AOE damage into an area over and over, that’s not denial that’s an AOE attack.

Does anyone else feel like this?

Some of the original engineer skills were quite good at area denial, but were found to be too powerful and removed. For example, the mine kit was the predecessor of the bomb kit. You could prepare an area and then switch to another weapon, similar to necro marks. The flamethrower was conceived as a control kit, with both the pushback and backdraft, an area pull. The engineer was also originally conceived as a heavy armor profession from what I understand.

Now, the engineer still has a bit of its original area denial, but I don’t think it’s any better (maybe even not as good) as other professions at it. Bomb kit is decent for area denial—most players avoid BoB now rather than risk missing a dodge and eating the blowout, so that “denies” the area to melee professions. Smoke bomb used to pulse every second and have a much larger radius, which practically shut down dps in that area. Grenades can really shut down a rez attempt, i.e. controlling an area from range. And of course, rifle can control the space around an engineer against one melee opponent.

I think that melee shutdown like this turned out to be kind of not a big deal. Anet probably expected warriors or greatsword guardians to charge into teamfights button mashing, while other professions tried to counter them by using knockbacks, etc. In reality, most professions would rather kite you than close on you.

earendil.1290:

To those that killed Siegerazer inside our spawn camp -you know who you are and we have pics. Don’t do it again please or we will have to report the exploit. I can understand you are bored of the regular WvW stuff and looking for new things to do but this is in the same range as is abusing “geometry” to jump past a keep or tower wall. It’s also not respectful to your opponent (but that’s not a major issue) and it bugs him for a long time after (which is a major issue). You got your fun doing it once, but doing it again would be very annoying. Thx.

I was wondering why he was bugged. Weird. Also, what’s a queue?

The two lower servers are putting up a good fight by avoiding pointless confrontations that are doomed to failure. I suppose they could throw all 40 of their players at a keep that’s being actively defended, but that would just result in painful wipes. Better to switch maps quickly and take objectives, and then defend them against the zerg.

I’m not sure why Mag commanders are wishing that CD and SBI would play less well. Isn’t it more fun to play against a better opponent?

Agree, but it’s probably far too late to test/implement stuff like this. If health/armor was significantly more useful and healing was significantly less able to sustain through damage—and uptime of blocks/dodges/blinds/cc was lower—we could possibly be seeing a more interesting meta right now.