Next balance patch discussion

Season's over and very soon it will (hopefully) be the time for another balance patch again.Since i have barely played the minimum games required this season and only on one class , id like for other people as well to give their opinion on certain builds.Try to keep critique objective and constructive and reasonable.

So imo.....:

Weaver: So the most common/best two builds i have seen are Power FA and sage bruiser (?). The power variant seems fine imo and does insanely well against certain classes (like scourge cough) and is rather squishy. It's high risk high reward gameplay and should be kept this way imo. Ever since the "condi-update" i have seen less and less sage weavers, altho - to me, personally - seemed like the kind of gameplay the devs where pushing for. Sustain seems to be pretty good, but the pressure this build can inflict, is a tad too low. Buffing auto's and maybe increasing the combo-field durations would already do the trick. I haven't really touched weaver since the xpac so i might be completely wrong tho....so feel free to pitch in.

Scourge:The game is in the name here and scourges are a true pain to deal with. Their point pressure and melee denial are basically what makes this spec so frustrating to play against for most people. While ranged pressure seems to be rather good vs them, in bigger team-fights (especially when supported) it's incredibly hard to inflict meaningfull dmg onto them from range alone. Funnily enough, the shroud skills themselves (other than desert shroud) are NON-damaging skills. The true culprit here, is the "path of corruption" trait imo, which really, really needs an ICD put on it. Since this trait was made ages ago (with core necro's "dark path" in mind) it should have an ICD of 15 seconds as well. As far as other shroud skills are concerned, an increase of CD's also is up for debate.

Mirage:
Really evasive and hard to lock down, while at the same time being able to do insane condibombs with very little setup. The main issue with mirage condibombs (in comparison to scourge) is, that its not really pinnable to one trait, but rather multiple ones. For every illusion shattered the current meta spec does 1 confusion stack (2 in case of CoF) and 1 torment stack, there are 2 stacks from RoS, 3 from Jaunt, 2 from ineptitude etc. etc. ....its basically just accumulating small amounts of condies here and there to form that massive 20 stack confusion bomb. Maybe some ICDs on certain traits (like ~5 seconds on Blinding Dissipation/Ineptitude for instance) would already help with the condi bomb, altho most mirages try to "split" their bursts up anyway. Other than the condi bomb however, Elusive mind's stunbreak component really needs some readjusting. 1 condi removal per dodge seems reasonable, but the stunbreak on dodge most certainly needs an ICD imo.

Holosmith:Much more popular this season as people seem to really pick up on how underrated this spec initially was. Since I only really toyed around with Holo, there is not much i can say about it, other than that the minesweeper trait needs some reduced dmg....Doding through some1 and taking ~30-40% of their HP shouldn't be a thing. Other than that, it really seems fine to me....so maybe the devs should look into sword or condi specs more viable.

Thief:It really speaks volumes about the current meta, when you see people dropping D/P daredevil for the S/d core spec. The UC nerf made it so, that thieves cant really stick around fights much longer than maybe the initial spike + ~5 seconds before they are forced to leave the fight completely. Sword specs with their superior hit & run gameplay apparently have the edge in this aoe-flinging meta. Haven't really played thief in the past few months, so this really is the only observation I made.

Ranger:Druid remains as the supreme spec even in this season. Nothing wrong with the spec, it does what it's supposed to and it does it very well. Ranger balancing should really focus on soulbeast viability imo. Its kinda funny how Soulbeast was supposed to be a dmg spec but really is just a less tanky druid without much dmg gain. Beastmastery and Skirmishing traitline really need to be looked at in terms of traitsynergy with SB for it to be even considered over druid.

Guardian:FB prolly is the secret star of this season. If you think tempest was already a good support, meet the FB. It has insane boon spam, good healing and incredible ress speed. In all fairness, I think the healing is fine for a support spec, but the amount of defensive boons it can give, just makes FB disgusting to fight against. The epilogue skills on Tome of Courage and Tome of Resolve are especially powerful and imo could use either a numbers, duration or CD adjustment.

Revenant:Similar to thieves, revs also suffer more in this meta than most classes, as it is incredible hard for them to stay relevant in big fights even for a short amount of time. They are still good in smaller skirmishes and bring good damage (oh the hate i ll get for this). The main issue is really their sustain, or rather lack of it. Give the poor guys some reasonable condi cleanse already QQ.

Warrior:Not much to say here. Other than their passive sustain (which I have been nitpicking about for the longest time), I think warrior is in a decent state right now. Healing signet really needs to go tho imo. Either make it more streamlined by scaling with healing power (low base healing + good healing coefficient) or rework it all together, enforcing active healing.

As i have really spent more time on this, than I initially wanted to (easily seen by how much shorter each consecutive paragraph got), I just wanted to shortly point out again, that I am by no means an expert when it comes to each class, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. If you feel like I forgot something, or got something wrong all together feel free to let me know.Now, discuss.

@"BikeIsGone.8675" said:Scourge:Funnily enough, the shroud skills themselves (other than desert shroud) are NON-damaging skills. The true culprit here, is the "path of corruption" trait imo, which really, really needs an ICD put on it.You are forgetting that all F skills also trigger a shade auto which does deal damage and apply cripple and torment in addition to procing dhuumfireThief:It really speaks volumes about the current meta, when you see people dropping D/P daredevil for the S/d core spec. The UC nerf made it so, that thieves cant really stick around fights much longer than maybe the initial spike + ~5 seconds before they are forced to leave the fight completely. Sword specs with their superior hit & run gameplay apparently have the edge in this aoe-flinging meta. Haven't really played thief in the past few months, so this really is the only observation I made.S/d is run because it's better at breaking firebrand and things supported by firebrand than d/p is. The UC change has nothing to do with the switch to s/d.