Just a small note about the balance patch and stacking

Yes, chrono needed to be gutted in some way regarding the insane and easy boon spam.
But why is stacking suddenly encouraged again?
After all the years of stacking in dungeons and Anet slowly working to punish that, e.g. in fractals with social awkwardness, the game was in a pretty ok to good state regarding that issue.
Now it is back in its full glory. In order to get boons you have to stack near your chrono. Firebrand is even worse it is even more limited in the aoe it applies quickness.
Just why?

Hi, iam not a native englisch speaker, so please dont judge me for my bad englisch and if u find some mistakes ;) you can keep it.

I guess you mostly play fractals and not raids. Its true that the Chrono can spam boons very easily, but in raids you need the boons over a much longer time as in fractals and there are a lot more of mechanics and movement. With all this nerfs of the Chrono its very hard for not elite players to keep up the boon uptimes.

The last patch hit like a train and again they are on the never ending quest to change the Chrono until his death. I guess the dont know what they do or even play their own game. Since the nerfs began, the Chronos vanished over the time, nobody wants to play Chrono anymore. Why? Cause it sucks to equip and learn a new rota every 6 Weeks. I was wondering why there are no raging Chronos in the forums, i found nothing, maybe there concluded with the matter or just quit the Game.

I had the same thoughs in mind reading the patchnotes, Anet hates the stacking in dungeons and now we are forced to do so. Btw Anet, there are Bosses with movement and mechanics, no buffing at moving B)For real, the elite groups wont even realize the nerf, cause they stack all the time, but the normal players will notice this nerf very hard.I really hate it if they do game changing things, if you nerf the Chrono, you nerf the overall damage of the whole Raidgroup. Its almost ever a step back for my Raidgroups and make it harder to kill as many Raidbosses a week.

Anet has good intensions, but they go everytime the wrong way. If they want more classes in the raids, just make the bad classes better and dont nerf all others in the ground. For real, its no fun these days to play Guild Wars 2. Every 6 weeks a huge nerf at the Chrono, it looks like they dont even know where they gonna go with the Chrono.

I know that changes are necessary but how many patches they really need to do a good balancing? They dont know what they do oder they are just bad at it. I cant imaging that they need tons of patches to balancing the game. In mind that there are not really new things were added in the game to do a balancing every few weeks.

Anet dont understand that the players will always use the best damage classes in the game to do the highest damage to kill the Raidbosses asap. As long the different classes are not even in damage and in some cases in support, they wont let bad classes in the raid. The nerfs Anet is doing with the good classes forces the players even more to use the best classes for the job. A normal group dont have enough power to carry bad classes through the raid and the normal groups are these people you get your money from!But instead of looking at the 90% of normal players Anet still look at the elite players and use them as reference.

Its like, oh Guild xyz uses skill xyz to kill the Boss more easier. NERF IT!!!! Thats how it works, its sad, punish all because some of the elite does that. Iam still waiting for the Vale Guard Nerf, like "miss a green, all downstate" option. I mean all players going down even if they have full health. Overheal is not intended like the distortion in the old days and they nerfed it. My groups dont use the overheal, cause in many cases one ore more are going down and sometimes it ends in a wipe. We just doing the old fashioned way, it takes more time indeed, but its a safe kill.

The game should be make fun with friends, but this last year is a year of to much changing an raging about the changes were made. Just to talk about the nice and funny things in the Game most of the talking is now about the nerfs, raging about that and the fear about the next patch. A lot of them just quit the game, the stress was it not worth. Anet ignore that most of the players have a real life and they use their few hours a day to have a good time in GW2.

But with this changes within a so short time, they cant even learn and equip the ne stuff, if they are ready to go, the next patch is out or coming out soon and it starts from the beginning. Thats not the definition of fun and in long terms its a reason to quit.Im still play GW2 cause i organize 3 different raid groups and i really like the people and i wont let them down. But to be honest, every 6 weeks a hit in the face makes no fun at all, it takes a lot of time, stress and Gold and there will be a point players will say "f*ck you Anet" i quit" and i really hope Anet get the game on course again, i dont wanna quit.

Anet, just play some sessions with a normal pug group and not of them with 500 LI and you will understand what iam talking about.At last, please stop to explain your changes like "we had to, or there was a problem and so on. Every patchnotes are really well wrote down, but if you know the game and have in mind almost all the patchnotes, we are not stupid Anet! There are many cases Anet said there is a problem and we have to change something was in the game 3, 4 or 5 years and all was good, and now its bad, Anet wanna kidding us, right? It only shows us thats the explanation is a lie or the balance team does a really bad job over the last years.Just be honest and wrote down what you wanna do with the classes and so be it. Dont patch every few weeks game changing things, go back to the big updates every 3 months. Yesterday i get online, was happy about the wintersday and than i read the patchnotes. Hey Anet, a hit in the face is not a nice Wintersday/Christmas present.

But its not only the PvE Balancing Team, People who play PvP and WvW will understand what i mean, i just say "one shot" builds with no chance to even react. Well done balancing team, please play PvP and WvW for some hours and get killed again and again from "one shot" builds. In many cases the enemy players will Teabagging and throw blueprints on you and whispers "hey f*ckuing noob, i killed ya" or worse. Thank your for that! The "one shot" Builds are around for months and they do nothing. Just do your job, fix that please!

Be aware that there is no intension to personal attack one of the members of the balancing team or other people who working or worked at that stuff.Thats just my personal experience over more than 20k hours of playing Guild Wars 2 and since the release of PoF the experience getting bad, very bad. From playing 6-12h per day (iam early retirees) its now max 3h per day. On not raid days maybe 1h to achive the dailies on all my 3 accounts.

Please make Guild Wars 2 great again ;) and stop hitting your customers in the face every few weeks.

P.S.

Constructive criticism is good and helps the creators do they job better, so here some general Ideas. Anet want more classes in the Raids, here are some changes who would ensure that.

Druid:

• Let them heal up to10 players, so you can use one healer instead of two to get in a another support class like the support Renegade or Firebrand.
• Yes i know the elite plays with one healer and sometimes with zero healer. But most of us are not elite players.

Firebrand:

• Let them buff and heal up to 10 Players with a lot more aoe range, the firebrand could replace one chrono and with a support Renegade in the team would be a good combo for Alacrity and Quickness

Renegade:

• Let heal up to 10 Players, in some cases it would be allowed to play a Firebrand / Renegade combo at some bosses without a druid.
• make the ventari healskill bubble bigger, more transperent
• increase the passive heal and maybe remove the moving heal form the tablet for a 1s passiv heal (increased)
• If you play the Renegade over an hour, the mouse hand begin to hurt, it sucks to move the tablet all 3 seconds to get the "heal"

Chrono:

• enlarge the wells and rework them and the Chronomancer Rune to get a pointet area buffer who feels good to play

@"Holy Security.9724" said:Yes, chrono needed to be gutted in some way regarding the insane and easy boon spam.

But why is stacking suddenly encouraged again?

After all the years of stacking in dungeons and Anet slowly working to punish that, e.g. in fractals with social awkwardness, the game was in a pretty ok to good state regarding that issue.

Now it is back in its full glory. In order to get boons you have to stack near your chrono. Firebrand is even worse it is even more limited in the aoe it applies quickness.

Just why?

Dungeons, then fractals, and then raids, were created as an outlet for players who want player skill to matter more than it does in open PvE. Boons are force multipliers. Applying them to an entire team is part of what makes for skilled play. The other components are: gearing, rotation and execution of required mechanics.

So, here's a question for you. Which requires more team skill ...

• Boons only apply if other characters are close to the character supplying them?
• Boons apply as long as characters are within long range (1200 or 1500)?
• Boons apply as long as characters are in the area of the fight?

There have been a lot of complaints on these boards by players who wanted professions other than Chrono and Druid to play support roles in the instanced content meta. If "stacking" is being encouraged, as you say, it's because ANet is trying to fix the problem of a stagnant meta with regard to profession desirability in harder instanced content.

Thanks for schooling me what makes a skilled play.
Yes, stacking requires more skill yet Anet went long ways to get rid of it just to revert back. That progress is somewhat questionable and not efficient.
But right now you actually get punished by doing mechanics in raids 'cause you have to leave the stack.