Guild Wars 2

I’ll keep it brief this time.

Gliding in Tyria was tastefully done. You kept the original world intact while allowing us to explore it in new ways!

Shatterer is a remarkable departure from the norm, showing long-term vision and actual player feedback. It’s the absolute perfect level of difficulty. Stunningly well done and I applaud that. If there are future revamps, they should all follow THIS example.

However:

The “balance” patch failed to meet any of the mission statements you posted.

Let’s just look at Revenant for a specific example.

You promised reshuffling/redistribution of damage from autoattacks to the other two skills and to make the other legends fit their role better. instead, you gutted sword because of the excessively vocal minority. You gutted shield because of PvP. Hammer is also gutted in a way with the laziest “fix” I’ve ever seen.

Here’s some changes which NEED to be considered.

1) Add back at least 15% of the scaling for Crystal Hybernation OR make it so that with each pulse of heals, it removes a condition for a grand total of 4 conditions at maximum duration. Shield was the only viable defensive option before the nerf and now you’ve gone too far. Either keep the core heal strong or if you actually want to change and develop your classes, THIS is THE weapon which could fix alot of the condition issues.

2) Actually redistribute the damage from the old sword auto to the rest of the sword skills. Rebuff Unrelenting Assault with each strike hitting for 8-10% more damage. You took out far too much damage from Unrelenting Asssault. The overall change to the skill made it do 25% less damage, as another poster found out. If you want to be true to your word and actually redistrbute power to the other skills, bump up each strike by 8-10% more damage. That way, it retains its strength while having a slight reduction in the evade frames.

3) Undo that bandaid “fix” for Coalescence of Ruin. Completely. Because every other class can sync their skills with a friend of same class. For the love of god, you pride yourself in coop-based gameplay. EVERY other profession can sync up their attacks to focus the same skill on a single target. Why not us? And by extension, why not Warriors?

4) Actually do something about Jalis and Ventari. Just look at the respective forums for some brilliant examples of how to change it. If I copy and pasted, my comment would be 2 pages long, so go and actually read the profession board. There’s alot of good stuff there.

5) Fix the bloody targeting priority for Precision Strike. If I’m standing next to any objects, the projectiles completely ignore the enemy I’m aiming at and goes right for that inanimate object.

There’s a ton more, but that’s all for now from me.

If it’s PvE, I guess we’re a fancy boonbot, but we’re basically swapped roles with Thief. We’ll get actively nerfed in every patch like Necros and Rangers before HoT and devs will seal the deal by saying “Revs are in a good place,” condemning us to the same abyss that Guardian has been languishing in since launch.

On the PvP side, isn’t Mallyx/Glint still a decent combo for conditions? I used that build a few times with success before, but after the “balance” patch, I’m not sure about anything anymore.

In short, this patch was a complete mess, but the addition of gliding has managed to successfully give the illusion that the patch wasn’t just simply there to gut certain classes.

Revenants received NOTHING but nerfs. Forget trying to actually bring up the other legends, you just simply gutted the sword and hammer into oblivion. Precision Strike still prioritizes objects over enemies, even when the enemy is closer than the object.

Oh and Unrelenting Assault? You removed so much damage and duration from it that its only role now is to simply function as a non-reliable evade that warps you into the nearby wall 60% of the time.

Coalescence of Ruin. I don’t have to say much more here. Just watch this.

What a fantastic zero-effort way to pander to the lowest possible skilled players who fail to use the dodge mechanic which you constantly hail as one of the most unique features of the game. I’m in utter disbelief at the change. The scariest part is that whoever was in charge of balancing the Revenant genuinely thought god forbid two friends with the same class work together in a game where we promote cooperative efforts.

The nerfing of the shield’s 5 healing scaling likewise dealt a huge blow towards survivability, especially since literally no other legend received more defensive capabilities.

Oh on the autoattack?

I know you just swapped the Thief and Rev autoattack numbers but literally who was in charge of THIS. Not even Revs could pull this off before your “balance” patch.

As for other classes, I can’t exactly speak about those changes, but I really wonder what made you think gutting the Mesmer was a good idea. Similarily, Guardians once again are neglected beyond belief. Decreased cooldowns on Signets!? I bid my 4-year old Guardian a tearful farewell because I knew it was the redheaded stepchild of your professions, but not even Guardians deserve such willful neglect on such a scale.

archmagus.7249:

Oh no! Now you have to use something besides your AA.

Oh sure, like the one where projectiles will fly off in all the wrong directions?

Or like the one where you have a 60% of the skill not actually working and a 30% chance to warp you into a wall?

Just go back to enjoying your Engineer before Anet realizes they forgot to give them their quarterly nerf.

Hunter.4783:

Jalis legend elite and all 3 other utilities need to be looked at:
- Hammers are bugged when being near walls
- the other 2 utilities are simply not worth spending energy.

This REALLY bugs me. Jalis is one of the more interesting legends that has potential to really make the core Revenant do well without Herald. Why hammers are still considered projectiles really boggles my mind. Can’t they just adopt the same tech as the DH traps, but have them circle the player instead of being stationary?

The stability field while interesting, is a blatant retexture of the Maces firefield ability, only it pulses a boon while also costing more. Let’s not even get started on how underwhelming that chain is.

I won’t go on about ways to fix it because these forums have listed so many great and diverse ways on how make Jalis better, but it’s sad that Anet is so bloody deaf to its remaining playerbase.

Azure.8670:

…but we havent heard a peep from him since launch really.

Or any of the other developers aside from some inane banter about some twitter post they made.

Let’s just face it, they already got their money from expansion sales. There’s no reason for any of them to stick around for us.

Welcome to Thief Wars 2. Don’t forget to buy those gems and watch our next new “daredevil” themed esports tourney on Twitch!

Spartacus.3192:

Classic example of lets make a new profession make it OP, get everyone to buy HOT and the nerf the crap out of it….oh well cant say we didnt see this coming a while back

Thing is, I would have expected them to leave the bait and switch out even longer, but seeing as how Anet can’t even handle proper balancing or actually engaging the community in open discussion, it’s not a surprise that they can’t bait more sales if they tried.

When I saw the “balance” section of the patch notes, I wasn’t even surprised or disappointed. It’s just their typical flamboyant disregard for their own players. The silence on the feedback and suggestions is absolutely deafening. If the people balancing the game seem to hate it so much, why are they even working for the game?

Revenant really brought a whole slew of abilities together and made for a pretty unique heavy. Now that the solid damage that the class had is now absolutely trashed, it’s just a buggy mess of skills that don’t perform unless very, VERY specific conditions are met.

But hey.

It’ll only take 4 more years before the next expansion and PR rounds bring the “balancers” back into this forum, right?

Arioso.8519:

I’m running a typical 66002 Grenadier trait set up and added some Rampager and sinister gear to my setup while mostly focusing on burning down husks with grenades and elixir gun. I can tear those things down fairly quick, though if you have glassy gear like mine you’ll want to watch your back for wolves since they can down you pretty quick if you get flanked.

So just running with Rampager/Sinister with the standard Grenadier set-up will do the trick? I kind of want to do something new than just simply powerbased builds in the SW, especially after I saw this engie duo team absolutely shred Slingers in seconds.

Tomes are a fantastic idea, but they were really poorly implemented because elites apparently can’t be ultimate skills which deal terrifying amounts of damage or utility on a long cooldown.

I dislike this change because it simply takes away such a fantastic idea and I’ve become wary when you promise us a “future” return of the mechanic (See: Smoking Crater that is LA, SAB, etc, etc). It’s a unique idea that I haven’t seen in any game and I’d love for it to stay with us instead of this halfhearted measure to turn us into warriors with blue flames.

Instead of removing features from the core game, why not just change your view of elites to being ultimate skills and revamping all the classes so that elites are just these fantastically powerful spells that you would truly only pull out in the most dire of circumstances? Don’t just take the easy way out and SAB one of the only unique skills that you gave Guardians.

I don’t care much for the name, but my god, it’s so obviously clear that they literally had no idea what they’re doing for Guardian. I bet you that all of the conditions that we’re supposed to get are just subpar variants of already existing skills. I guess we were in such a “good place” that they had to make a specialization that deficates on everything a Guardian is and should be. They didn’t even bother taking the best parts of the profession they copied. Fantastic work yet again.

On the bright side, at this rate, we might get a specialization worthy of our class in 6 years?

As the title suggests, we can’t view the shoulder scarf code anymore in chat. We could do it before the patch, but like most things, it doesn’t work anymore. It simply comes up as a blank.

For anyone who wants to test this out, try whispering yourself this code: [&AgEvCQEA]

God, I hate it when people justify this as a “bugfix” when it’s clearly a significant balance change. It’s like saying “oh the ship isn’t sinking, the sea level’s just risen 50 meters on each side.”

If this change really goes through (and it probably will), it’s really going to completely screw over Guardians. While Mesmers and Thieves have other options, they just further condemned Guards to being the absolute slowest class in the game. For over two years, not a single peep has been raised about this and now we get this resounding boot into oblivion out of nowhere? I guess this is what happens when all the balance team ever plays are signet warriors. I guess Guardians ever being useful is violating their game mode.

A feature patch that removes features. Huh. Way to innovate the industry yet again Anet.

Apologize by refunding all my costumes. This is just absolutely frustrating, but I guess I’ve already become accustomed to this. If TESO pushed Anet to push out this “features” patch, maybe Wildstar will force town clothing back into the game. I admit, it was nice having those outfits once upon a time, but I guess that’s come to an end. Farewell, awesome customizable outfits!

Oh, and with all this talk about “muh clipping is ruining muh gaem”, maybe you guys should look at the Charr. Are we going to be in danger of losing an entire race because of it? Last time I checked, their cultural still clips on them. I also agree with what others have said. This really sets a very poor precedent for the future, as costume outfits were basically the last leg for GW1. I really want to be wrong, but I just don’t know anymore.

The only vocal minority I see here is you, video. I think everyone here just wants exactly that. Wardrobe system without nuking the hell out of town clothing. I don’t see why you think it’s all or nothing and I don’t think anyone else here thinks it’s all or nothing either.

I think when it really comes down to it, when they say “Guardian is in a good place”, that’s pretty much them confirming that they don’t care about us. Like Nikaido, I’d rather them just remove spirit weapons at this point, it’s too painful to look at what could have been.

They say Rangers are like the beaten, redheaded stepchild. I’d say we’re the poor neglected child who just wants to know what it’s like to be loved.

shogei.8015:

Way to cherry pick. Scrolling back much further he did say “I think I speak for all players”. You win a point. How about addressing the meat of my argument?

It’s still true that the overwhelming majority prefer not to implement the new town clothes system. People who never, ever were interested in fighting in town clothes are now losing a big piece of functionality. People who wanted to fight in town clothes are not getting the full functionality that many were expecting.

The update harms more players than it helps. Holding off on this costs you nothing – you are no worse off than you ever were. Implementing it degrades the experience for a lot of people.

Agreed. Because this isn’t putting something in, this is flat out removing it and then offering next to nothing to the majority of us (as evidenced from this thread) whom really enjoyed a feature. I don’t think many of us here think the wardrobe system is a bad idea. Infact, I’m loving this and it’s probably one of the reasons I’m coming back to the game. Quite simply put, why not just release the wardrobe system WITHOUT taking away the town clothes system so they can revise it later?

Note, I said revise, not fix.

Why? Because fixing is what happens when something’s broken and if they do end up shoving this in, the system WILL be broken and there’s no denying this. But let’s face it, if they put this change through, it will never go back to the way it was before. The gem shop literally recieves an avalanche of new items every time and any hope at turning back the clock to restore the town clothes system will be inevitably lost within a months time. So instead of hamfisting a poorly thought out idea and then fixing it later, why not release the main feature while going back to the drawing board on town clothing? I think this thread alone is a testament to how much we still want the customization offered the current town clothes system.

Wait, so they’re removing town clothing because of clipping issues?

By that logic, shouldn’t they completely remove the Charr from the game?

I never really post either because Anet never seems to acknowledge us until new mmos start coming out and the playerbase starts tanking, but I’ll just chip in this. Why are you making a business of REMOVING features with updates? I had a town clothing set made just for this and to find out now that mixing and matching isn’t welcome where it was actively encouraged in its early days is both laughable and horrifying.

Please, PLEASE do NOT go through with this change. I know this plea falls on deaf ears but kittenmit, I’m not ready to give up my town look. If this is truly the end, RIP town clothes, you were a symbol of a better time.

Oh god, it hurts. Just the fact that the leaked notes show more competence around diversifying guardians than the official team did makes me sad. Oh well.

Oh god, it took them years, but if they pull this off, it looks like being a Green Lantern might be possible yet again. I’m loving the sound of the other changes too, though a part of me knows that somehow, Anet will manage to run this update into the ground and STILL nerf us with some unexpected change.

Still have faith though!

I have to voice my support of this. This dungeon was by far one of the most thoroughly entertaining dungeon I’ve played in such a long time. It’s fun because of the challenge it gives, switching things up while also adding in jump as a mechanic. I loved how we could jump all this time and I’m glad they finally added it in as part of boss fights.

Frankly, if they just put this team along with Josh Foreman and his SAB team with all future development, my faith in the dungeon development would be fully restored, especially after the AC debacle. Dungeons have always been a mixed bag, often showing signs of brilliance, such as all the Kudu fights, CoE (with the exception of the wolves and baby destroyers) and Lupicus, but suffering from truly awful design on most of the others. I thought after the revamp of AC, I should lose all hope of ever being able to enjoy any revamped dungeons in the future, but with these past two updates, I’m increasingly optimistic. Anet should just get the hard decision over with and install these two stellar teams in charge of the one area which has constantly displayed subpar quality for all fans of the PvE in the game.

Was there an official discussion about a Sigil of Energy nerf coming soon? Because quite frankly, alot of the changes made today make me very worried, especially since by the very nature of what they’re doing is providing classes with a very hard counter to what a guardian is all about. But given how much attention the way they’ve treated us for the past few months, I’ve grown to expect more and more of our unique skillset to be stolen away from us.

Do they even scale to our own traits and armor like the kits do now? At this point, these hamfisted “adjustments” just make me laugh. Still, watching my spirit weapon fade because a bandit looked in its general direction makes me cry just a little more every time.

Thanks for the tip Nokaru! Just want to join in on this, since CoE is by far my most favorite dungeon. Even before the patch, every time I died to the lasers, I would consistently take damage until I hit the waypoint button.

I really hope this gets placed higher on the designer’s list of bugfixes, because this is DEFINITELY content blocking. I just find it appalling that it will probably take a while for this to be fixed.

Trujillo Sammut.2307:

If arenanet actually cared about their players they would have a poll on this. But they’re too stubborn to realize 90% of their player base doesn’t want this but they’re going to force it down our throats.

Well, it appears if the vocal 10% keeps it up, they’ll believe that we’re the minority and that this move is really the smart one. I love how Whiteside says it’s not another tier of armor, despite the fact that they clearly ARE making another set which is clearly in its own category. What other evidence do we need other than how it makes exotics and legendaries completely separate?

Also, do they even see how this will deem every piece of content irrelevant? Now NOBODY will go to Orr or even try to do any dungeon that isn’t that new shore. Congrats Anet, you not only lied to us about the basic fundamentals of the game, but also killed off an entire CONTINENT and every last dungeon for the sake of a tiny island which isn’t even an expansion.

Well, I’m a patient man. I guess I’ll just wait until they learn from the LOTRO developers. Hopefully they won’t be bullheaded about this like other companies out there and start insulting on the fanbase through “game journalism” sites. Anet always seems to be more receptive about these things, but with the way they mauled their own manifesto, I just don’t know anymore.

Nope, I absolutely detest this. I came to GW2 BECAUSE there was no gear treadmill and I loved how there was an actual level playing field. As Angrec said, I’m also done with the game. I hope that very vocal minority before is happy with all that complaining about gear “progression” now resulted in what is a fundamental about-turn from their very manifesto.

Just wondering if anyone else knew what was going on with the server caps, as a group of friends and I were trying to join back up with our guild, but apparently nearly half the servers are apparently full now. I found it kind of odd, since exactly a week ago, a large number of servers would go into “Full”, but then during the odd times, it would be open. Now it seems most of them are now consistently full as of a couple days ago.

Admittedly, it’s kind of our fault because we waited for so long and never got things coordinated due to studies and such, but I gotta say, it’s depressing to really love playing the game, but then you realize you can’t join your guildies in the fields or be able to start up a dungeon group on your own because it’s neigh impossible to take back the gates of Orr with only 5 people. And that we can’t finish certain events because an escort quest just happens to go through an area where a few dozen bots are farming, which drastically increases the number and strength of the event monsters.

Anyhoo, just wondering if anyone noticed this or if there was an announcement I missed! Thanks everyone.

I was just putting together a new “combat” custom playlist since the other main songs has kinda ran its course for me and I was wondering, will the custom playlist override the music that plays in the personal story?

The music that plays in some quests are specially timed for certain events and I don’t want to miss out on it! I guess I could always remove the playlist every time I enter a story instance, but it seems like a bit of a bother. I guess it wouldn’t make a significant difference anyways, since it’s still more Jeremy Soule music, but I don’t want to miss when “Fear not this night” starts playing in a crucial moment!

GreyWraith.8394:

I have to agree with several other posters who have pointed out that Guardian synergy is closely tied to symbols, including our traits, damage, buffs, debuffs, heals, and survivability. Doubling the symbol CD is a big hit to all of the above.

Exactly. I don’t understand why they change the layout of the guardian skills “to promote more combos” but then make the ONLY field-starter on the Greatsword COMPLETELY unfeasible to put down?

Zsymon.8457:

It’s almost as if the team that created this beautiful game, got replaced by another team that is now systematically ruining the gameplay, build after build, profession after profession.

This a hundred fold. It’s sad because it’s true. The game can’t stop being any more beautiful and the challenges are alot of fun, but my god these classes (except warrior) have taken a colossal beating with a single update.

Yeah, I think I agree with everyone else here. I mean, GS was our 100% offensive weapon (without augmenting via traits) and now it’s completely gone down the tubes. Hell, I think the worst part about this change for me personally is that I used Symbol of Wrath + Whirl as a way of cleansing conditions. With this change, it’s just absolute hell. Why not just completely change the field the sword sets to might instead and keep the original cooldown time , if there’s such a bloody fuss over Retaliation?

And changing around the layout so that they could emphasize finishers are good? How DENSE do you have to be to not notice that Whirl/Leap were good in the first place. I’m sure everyone figured that out the MINUTE they unlocked that ability.

I think this is the first time that Anet has truly nerfed us in any regard. Before, they would make changes, but there was always an upside to anything they took away from us. The 5 second reduction on the leap just doesn’t make up for EVERYTHING we lost. This is a bloody disgrace.

Cripes, now I’m really confused. I just really hope we’ll get an official version of something close to this in the near future, because this whole holding-right-click while flailing on my keyboard is really taking a toll. Just for reference, what is Gaile’s response? I kind of missed out on it.

My god, this looks amazing, I would LOVE to see this, since I always like to use smart casting, but when I’m constantly holding down the right mouse button, I kinda have to guess where I’m aiming! Though I can see changing all the keybindings like in the vid to be useful, I’d be happy enough with all the current controls, but with an option to have the whole “targetting” thing while running.

Please look into this Arenanet, please!

Though I’m not 80 yet, I completely agree with you. As someone who’s aspiring to get some of that awesome dungeon armor, hearing about all these changes is really discouraging. One of the reasons I dove into GW2 was the promise of no grind. Though I know this can never be completely true, I always felt there was a good balance before, at least from what I heard.

I don’t completely understand the decreased Karma, since the vendor are sky-high at the end, but I can kind of live with that. Anti-farming I can see to a certain extent, but dungeon coins were also decreased? It’s not like the amounts required for a set were small to begin with! And then the issue of repair costs, it’s basically an absolute disincentive to do it. I like shiny armor, but by god, I have limits. If they gave the same amount of tokens, then maybe it’d be worth it, but with that reduced too, it really seems like they’re making a mess of things where there wasn’t one before!

I really hope they listen and see that this isn’t just complaining for the sake of complaining and see that these are genuine concerns here.