Kanto.2485

Dudes, play a night as Scourge and one as FB/Scrapper and you'll see the difference in loot and WXP. As a suppport you get like 4 wxp per kill, as a dps you see 250 wxp kills. Maining support guard since core game in wvw, i'm barely rank 2000. Dps players with half my playtime are easily on diamond.

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It was trash until the buff, now it's borderline playable and look at the complaints

TL:DR: - The power coefficient of all relevant skills of non-EoD meta power specs has been nerfed by a random value between 10% and 20%

I would rather see an herald in my team comp than a WB, and i'd rather see a WB in the enemy team than an herald, which i belive says a lot. Seriously, the versatility and evade/block/dmg convert uptime on rev is something guards in general can only dream of. WB has higher damage, but clunky and telegraphed, and it has more cleanses because you are stuck eating up dmg most of the time since you don't have nearly as much block/evade uptime. Rev has sword 3, staff 3, staff 5 and infuse light to rotate between, guard has 2 seconds of invuln on 105 sec cd and that's it if you don't want to count aegis on f3, which is worse than on core guard since it now has a cast time.. I wish i mained rev in PvP and not this garbage over which i still play core guard.

sad

I don't know if this has been written before but i don't wanna read 7 pages of this so, Years of balance in PvP are a quite vivid proof of the fact that removing or nerfing stat combinations doesn't solve kitten, you can literally mix combinations and have the same results anyway in WvW, so please, let's not bring the "remove everything with toughness/vitality+healing power" here. Really, trust me, it won't bring any good. Heal/tank and support were always in the same role in wvw (mostly as guardian) with the sole exception of might which used to be granted by warriors in the core game, and is still now granted mostly by dps classes, mainly herald, not by supports. Guard empowers reach the first spike at most as you can't stop for 2s to channel midfight usually. If we want to split support/tank roles from boon supports i can get behind that, might be a good change as it might not be, honestly i don't see how to pull that off though, especially with the current balance effort. If we decide to do it though, let us please tweak profession skills and NOT stat combinations please.

Keeping a blob-oriented balance in mind: - Damaging conditions have been useless for a while and could use a small buff for all classes (maybe buff AoE skills that would not be used in roaming). - Support tempests and warrior got hit by the 10-target nerf and got nothing in return, there is still no reason not to pick a scrapper as 2nd support. - EoD classes all suck in wvw, Power Virtuoso in particular needs a buff to become viable when compared to power guard-dh/scourge/herald-vindicator (maybe buff its AoE non-projectile utilities and give it an off-hand weapon that can be good in gvg/blob situations).

Firebrand already has 100% resolution and protection uptime from other sources.

The brainless mechanics skipping this skill allowed in fractals wasn't good, in PvP it's ridicoulous but i was already playing receive the light since the mantra was already trash so don't care, but what about wvw? why must fb lose self sustain and party sustain there? This change completely forces you into the most passive playstyle possible with mace, receive the light and advance. Makes no sense at all.

The only reason stealth is so annoying to a lot of players is that some classes have no viable reveals. Improving access to reveals would've been a much better way to deal with the issue than increasing CDs and nerfing durations. Also support guard is far from overperforming, it's the other supports that have been butchered patch after patch, Tempests still have to slot every cantrip not to get melted by target focus and warrior is a sitting duck once its cds run out. It's because supports got nerfed so hard that we get to deal with immob druids, condi trappers, necros dispensing more condis than you can cleanse and such.

The changes were all in the right direction, however the class is still not viable in pvp and will reamin so as long as it does not get either evade frames on its movement skill or some good cleanses. The only reasonable access to cleanse (other than the must-take contemplation of purity) is taking the virtues trait to get 3x2 cleanses on your f2, which still isn't enough (it doesn't help that it's bugged as your elite skill does not refresh even a charge). Also sword 4 is still way too slow, something like a leap with a small evade frame followed by a quick attack with moderate dmg and maybe cripple would be much better, and mobility on f2 is still bad, it would be ok if the movement speed wasn't reduced or the range was higher. I woukd suggest changing the shadowstep trait to somethimg like "cleanse x conditions after using a movement skill", so that you actually have the incentive to chase down your targets and the ability to disengage from a fight.

It wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were better reveals in the game. Some classes/especs don't even have any, rev has to use its only stunbreak to reveal in a 360 radius. I belive better access to reveal would make the mechanic more interactive at least.

Instead of nerfing it they buff it so it becomes the new EoD PvP elite spec instead of that trash they're trying to sell out

Sad.

Oh but they are op, in PvE (with a couple notable exceptions). Devs just don't care about pvp.

I don't think the game should be balanced around gold 2 tbh. It's barely viable as it is. if focused it's one of the easiest classes to kill in nowadays's meta. Nerfing its survivability even further will just kill the build completely. I mained it since i started playing in 2015 (didn't have PoF while FB was strong either) and i just stopped playing it after the nerf to SYG+the aegis heal trait, let alone after the removal of mender. Now i'm playing power core just cause i refuse to play trapper dh. but it's not a competitve build by any means, and guard in pvp really doesn't deserve further nerfing (aside from trapper removal).

Core guard is free farm, you can interrupt everything from it and you kill it in 3 hits if it's dps. It also still doesn't have a single reveal, like fb. DH can kill you if you try to kill him on his traps, and it does have a reveal that is actually used, although it's target based, telegraphed and easily dodgeable, but you can walk away and the dh is never reaching you so... On the other hand if the thief sucks you can catch him with the shadowstep and kill him!

Doesn't need to be removed, however it is far too big in my opinion. Builds with low mobility are handicapped so heavy, i have 75% winrate this season and i have like 20% in capricorn since i play guard and i just have the gs leap and swiftness. I also don't like spending half the game walking from a point to the other alone or not being able to move at all knowing if i do somebody with more mobility will just decap. I'm sure more mobile classes will like it instead, but right now it is a bit too unbalanced in that regard in my opinion. Also, as somebody pointed out already, it's very easy to zone the enemy team out completely after a wipe, which is a fairly bad thing for this game's pvp.

Agreed, aside from trapper runes the game feels pretty fine right now. Support guards and eles are paper nowadays btw so if you have problems with reaper/core necro+supp, target the supp instead of wasting time on the 50khp+support of the necro.

Had the same Issue in the Cairn boss area, no addons and low graphic settings, on Nvidia. It was much more brownish and dark than usual.

I envy you if your opponents give you time to combo your own fields while playing dps. also Escape sigil is good but it does have a rather long cd for cleansing 3 condis that you may or may not have at a time you may or may not be able to control.

Condition damage is doing rather poorly with the exception of Weaver and maybe soulbeast nowadays, nondamaging conditions can be kind of overwhelming at times though. The nerfs on scourge might imporve the siutation a little bit, but there are still classes that are able to fill up your condi bar very quickly. For some classes this isn't a problem, but guards for example have a very hard time dealing with condis, the support one has to take literally the max number of cleanses it can possibly have and still struggles with them, engis too can have a hard time with them.. Mostly i would say movement conditions can in some situations make the game boring by preventing you from playing it for their duration, as you can come to lack cleanses, and chill is especially harmful, slowing cd recharge by 66%. Overall i'd say the main problem is that some classes/builds are severly hampered by having to invest into many cleanses, that could be looked into by adding cleanses to skills that actually do something other than cleanse for example. Having to grab two utility slots and a couple traits just to be able to play can feel annoying at times.

Honestly since the fix to shroud dmg reduction the last class that was able to mindlessly bunker is pretty much gone, if you can't kill a guard with avatar amulet you're the problem.. I agree that blind is annoying as it's kinda everywhere, but it's really just a couple traits/skills that need to be toned down. Regarding aegis, the only class that can kind of spam it is guard and at this point it's really all it does so...how about not? Also you can look at the enemy boons and pop aegis with something before using your high damage skills and such.

Well, i don't think Virtuoso will ever be as strong as mirage in pvp, it's not designed for pvp. It'd be like expecting willbender to be strong in wvw. I mean, at least in wvw and pve virtuos is and will be strong, guards got a class that's bad in the gamemode it was designed for XD So yeah, think of the mesmer mains that actually want a class to play in a WvW blob, this spec if for them and they deserve it.