Zedd.8239

Yeah, it's pretty sad. You can barely defend yourself now. I wouldn't expect to be unstoppable but it'd be nice if it'd take more than a few poorly timed stuns to disable us. I say poorly timed because the timing doesn't even have to be all that good. Everything takes so long to use that by the time the right tome is up and ready to use you've already been interrupted and lost most of your pages. Not a huge deal when each tome had its own pages. But now that has to happen to just one of your tomes and you're out of commission. It's stupid.

While I don't fully agree with everything you mention here, I agree with most of it. It'd absolutely be a step in the right direction to have pages recharge faster than they currently do. I think it's fair to make us choose which tomes we want to use. Making it so we can't fully unload all 3 tomes at once is reasonable. But the current implementation simply isn't reasonable. Not to mention it feels really clunky. Not being able to see tome skill cooldowns makes the recharge issue even worse. If you finally have enough pages to use a tome, activate it, and find out half of your skills are on cooldown, you lose access to the virtue's passive despite not actually using the tome. If you put it away without using it, it also goes on the full cooldown in addition to the virtue cooldown. There's also the issue of having your tome skills interrupted. If you use a tome skill and get interrupted, you lose those pages. That's always been an issue and is perfectly fair. But the consequences of that are significantly worse now that pages are shared. Now all you have to do to shut down a firebrand is interrupt a few of their big tome skills and they're out of options. And that's very easy to do because they all have lengthy cast times with big, obvious animations. I'm also aware that stability is a thing and make frequent use of it. But at the rate stuns and other CCs are thrown around in WvW/PvP, there's a very good chance you'll lose all stacks within seconds. To make that worse, they keep reducing sources of stability. But that's another whole discussion. When you combine all of these issues, using tomes feels more like a punishment than a class mechanic now, and that isn't a good place to be. I really think if they had slowly rolled out these changes and made tweaks along the way instead of just blowing everything up all at once, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. We went from overpowered in some situations to completely under-powered in far more situations. I play a support FB in pretty much every game mode and these changes have destroyed my enjoyment to the point where I'm simply avoiding playing it. Mission accomplished, ANet?

Yeah, tracking cooldowns is rough. I'm sure some might be able to keep a mental note of how long it takes for each skill to be back and track that throughout whatever they're doing. But that's something the game should be showing us. No idea what would work best for that. As you said, the engineer has had the same problem for as long as it's been around. But what it's doing now definitely isn't working and expanding it to other classes isn't the right direction to be heading in.

Conceptually, I don't think what they're going for is automatically bad. Although I still question the need for such a large overhaul when more minor tweaking could probably achieve what they're after. But the current implementation is awful and doesn't feel very well-thought out. All it does is nerf the firebrand into the ground without giving us anything in return for what we've lost. The inability to use more than a few tome skills in a single battle is ridiculous. Cooldowns are way too long. Why even bother to have tome skills at all at this point? I completely get wanting to make it a little harder to have flexibility as a firebrand. As a concept I think that's fair. I'm also fully in favor of forcing players to be smarter about whether they take offensive or defensive traits/skills. But the new changes don't achieve either of those things. They used a sledgehammer to fix something that needed a chisel. Surely there must be a way to keep the firebrand useful and fun to play while still keeping it in check and not nerfing it into the ground? Or is that asking for too much at this point?

While I'm glad aegis will be back on this skill for PvP and WvW (it was useless in those modes after the last change to it), not putting it back on the skill in PvE makes absolutely no sense to me. So many endgame encounters revolve around throwing as much stuff at players as possible. One extra source of aegis at extreme short range would hardly make things unbalanced. Having it in 2 out of 3 game modes is inconsistent. As far as the guardian signet changes go, meh. I don't really see what any of those changes will ultimately accomplish. Signet of Courage might be a nice thing to include in some situations if you're playing a healbrand build. Signet of Resolve might be good in PvP and WvW with all of the condi spam. But in raids, strikes, and fractals "Feel My Wrath!" is still likely going to be the elite skill of choice simply for the quickness and fury application unless you have another decent source of both of those things.

This lounge is gorgeous. I love the look of the island and the layout. Being able to travel to any region is also extremely useful. However, while I love the concept behind this lounge, the fishing vendors are identical to the ones you can find in Kaineng. I find that rather disappointing and not particularly useful. To obtain good lures (jade or amber) and to access all of the possible bait types, I still have to head to Cantha and then visit multiple maps. I completely understand not placing strike merchants in the lounge or other features that are unique to Arborstone. But limiting the fishing vendors the way they're currently limited doesn't make much sense to me. Adding the ability to buy all possible types of lures and bait would be a large improvement and would make this worthwhile. Right now, though, it lacks the convenience I was hoping for, and I find that disappointing. Armistice Bastion and Mistlock Sanctuary offer all of the WvW and fractal vendors, respectively, that those modes offer. I'd love to see the same thing with this one except with fishing and other Canthan related merchants. Having access to the world map like Mistlock Sanctuary currently does would also be a huge plus.

It isn't. The extra resolution and protection don't exactly do anything either since boons are corrupted/stripped instantly in WvW. Boon uptime is pointless. Perhaps some of the other skill changes/specs will help make up for that. But I'll believe it when I see it.

There's a big difference between weakening aspects of a spec and killing a spec. Aegis is critical to firebrand support builds. This change doesn't merely weaken those. It kills them because it severely reduces access to one of the main forms of damage mitigation. If the goal is to make it more difficult for firebrands to do DPS and support at the same time, a trait change could be made to make players choose between DPS and support. I'd prefer to see a shift that requires players to make a choice between doing DPS and performing a support role. I'm all for making changes to help make room for new elite specs. But this? It's overkill and fixes something that isn't broken. Extra protection and resolution to compensate for the change is a joke. Those are both already really easy to apply.

I've had moments where I've been tempted to do that. But I change my build all the time based on specific raid encounters or situations. So while there has been the occasional short term issue with them, I find them far too useful to get rid of. I usually keep the same 6 active builds set most of the time on each character. However, there aren't enough tabs to store all the builds I use. Otherwise, I'd be able to delete the ones I've stored and just keep 6 active ones.

Thankfully, I didn't have this issue the last time it occurred. But I also have a lot more build templates saved in my account build storage now. I know. I was addressing some of the other comments in the thread about ArcDPS. I was confirming this is unrelated.

I'm very glad this is being worked on. The game has been instantly crashing on all of my characters when clicking the Build tab. I'm also pretty sure this has absolutely nothing to do with ArcDPS. I do use that add-on for raids but I always delete it when there's a new game build. I only install it again when it's been updated for the latest build. So as of right now the game is crashing on me without ArcDPS installed. And just for the hell of it, I tried deleting everything related to ArcDPS. The game still crashes.

Edit: It looks like there's a display glitch with the current version of Epilogue: Unbroken Lines. Aegis is still applied when it's used but it doesn't show up in the skill description. That seems to match the proposed changes that ANet posted weeks ago and not the final changes that were implemented. Regardless, this completely changes everything I said below because the skill isn't really changing as much as it initially seemed. So if anyone looks at this skill and panics, it's functionally the same as before minus retaliation despite what the skill description says. I really don't see how the changes to support FB builds is "not really impacted much" outside of WvW. Aegis is a critical mechanic that provides timed damage mitigation and healing. Removing it from Epilogue: Unbroken Lines in all game modes doesn't eliminate a single aegis. It eliminates 5-8 possible aegis uses.

Because support FBs being used in raids, fractals, and WvW is a bad thing I guess.

Guardian: My comments are mostly about the proposed changes to the guardian since it's the class I play the most.

If legendary armor is something you want and don't want to raid, you can obtain it through PvP or WvW.So, basically, same as with raids, through content that a vast majority of players simply do not play. Of course, this is a problem if you don't like PvP or WvW. Still, it's a decent alternative if you aren't into raiding and just want the functionality of legendary armor.The proble is with the "decent" part. It is indeed an alternative, but for most players it's exactly as unappealing as the original method. So, while it is nice for WvW players, it doesn't really help with the issue for most of the PvE ones. I agree that there should be another way to obtain legendary armor in PvE. Fractals seem like a logical place to add it. It might even get more people into fractals. Perhaps take an approach similar how it's made in WvW and PvP? You'd combine various items that you've bought using the fractal currencies in the mystic forge to eventually upgrade ascended pieces to legendary. The exact number of items and their cost would need to be different than the other methods of obtaining them to fit the fractal rewards. They even already have a fractal ascended armor merchant. At the point I started creating legendary armor, I wasn't raiding and never thought I would (although my guild recently started this week). I'm not really a fan of the raid armor skins anyway. So I opted to go the next easiest route. I'm not saying the WvW or PvP routes are ideal for PvE players. But just speaking from experience, the WvW legendary armor is actually quite easy to get (assuming you don't go for the versions of the skins that require rank 1800 or something). It does take a while, though. To me, the convenience of legendary armor is simply way too valuable to not go for it at this stage even if WvW isn't my preferred game mode. I often change my build to match the content I'm playing and I got tired of storing an entire clothing department's worth of armor in my bank. XD

If legendary armor is something you want and don't want to raid, you can obtain it through PvP or WvW. The skins aren't as fancy but it's functionally exactly the same as the raid legendary armor. I've personally changed the appearance of my WvW legendary armor to something else since I care more about the stat changing and easy rune/infusion swapping. Of course, this is a problem if you don't like PvP or WvW. Still, it's a decent alternative if you aren't into raiding and just want the functionality of legendary armor. The downside is it takes a minimum of 21 weeks to make. But hey, you'll never have to craft armor for the character you make it for ever again. =)

I started this story step last night with some friends and I can confirm that this is still broken. The loyalists needed to advance the story wouldn't spawn. I just tried again this morning and it still isn't working. And I've been unable to load into a different copy of the map. How is this still not fixed? This is ridiculous.