CptAurellian.9537

This is the long overdue solution, since it is not just alac WB that suffers from those stupid aftercasts.

I do agree, but the underlying problem in GW2 is class design, not encounter design. Other MMOs also have encounters that favour certain classes over others, but I've never experienced it as strongly as in this game. Some classes are too adapted to certain niches (like condi mirage), while others simply do too much at the same time (like cFB).

Might is an issue, though not as bad as quickness and alacrity. Warriors are another one, since their banners and their massive CC at rather little opportunity cost make them an important cornerstone of any 5-man PvE as well. When I look at the buff/debuff system Wildstar had, or WoW 10 years ago (no idea what it looks like now), those were systems where most classes could offer something useful, but not overpowered, and where you hardly needed more than one of each class to cover relevant stuff. As long as boons constantly need to be reapplied (great for interactivity, bad for balance), there's unique stuff like banners and dps is the main function, I don't see a proper solution on the horizon.

Do not forget that chrono had much more in its package than quickness and alacrity. Almost all boons in the game, massive CC, group distortion on demand, respectable (not great) healing, best pull in the game and all the other utility with regard to reflect etc., that was an abomination. The devs were right to gut that, but in the end they went too far when they started making chrono gameplay as cancerous as it is now. The shatter changes were plain dumb and pointless and some other stuff also was unnecessary, since the immobile wells already were a substantial drawback. Imo, the problem is bigger than any individual class. Giving quickness and alacrity to other classes (or removing them altogether) may alleviate it, but won't get to the root of the problem. They'd have to redesign combat mechanics, the entire boon system and all classes from scratch to do that.

When you put it like it that it makes it look like the game is dying :( For quite a few people, that already happened quite a while ago. I'm still curious whether their obvious casual-only focus will pay off or whether the tendency from last quarter's numbers become the new normal.

So, they're finally fixing one entirely self-created issue. I'm almost impressed.

You forget that GW2 was intended to have challenging PvE content - explorable dungeons and other vanilla stuff just did not live up to the expectations. HoT finally rectified that issue. It's obvious that they have chosen yet another direction some time ago and we'll see how it turns out in the end, though I'm pretty much with Vinceman in not expecting Strikes to become a success story. With regard to the current strike, I played it once and wasn't impressed. Boring, still faceroll easy and, of course, two blues and a green or so. With no new interesting content in the foreseeable future, I'll just follow others in the raid crowd and quit. ANet apparently isn't interested in retaining players like me anymore.

Oh, the mode that has been dying since the game's release and currently is probably a lot more dead than raids/fractals? Sounds like a good idea. I have yet to see good and attractive MMO PvP, so I'll stick to shooters if I want to do PvP. With regard to the topic, I don't expect to see any informative dev response. Unless Tuesday brings something very unexpected, I'll probably just reduce my GW2 activity by a lot - there's no new fun content and the old one is becoming, well, old.

Unfortunately, that's probably correct. The best rework (apart from fixing all the bugs) would be giving people freedom to choose ANet's trash templates or the superior build templates option: ArcTemplates. But that probably won't happen because of gems.

Seraph is stuff for hybrid builds that still focus on dps. For a healbrand, both harrier and minstrel (or a mix thereof) are fine. Minstrel has the advantage that it makes some instability combinations less nasty (healer going down always sucks), but it'll also make you gain a whole lot of new friends in some fractals that have toughness-based aggro.

The "template" system is utter trash, as expected. Old system + Arc was lightyears ahead in every aspect.

The system is about as bad as I expected, i.e. very bad. Ridiculously overpriced, inflexible and it's not even templates, since any changes overwrites the previous setting. Also, no longer having a dedicated WvW build that's loaded automatically is highly annoying. Thumbs down, I want ArcTemplates back.

Heal renegade is something that feels pretty redundant due to its inherent limitations. While its healing throughput can be massive, it is probably the most inflexible healer (by far) when it comes to positioning and similar issues. To me, it feels that a group going with a heal renegade can probably go without a healer as well, just relying on soulcleave's summit from the dps alacrigade. Heal FB, on the other hand, gains quite a bit of stuff by going healer and is much more flexible than the renegade. That's why many people prefer healbrand.

A reasonable price? At most 800 gems for full template flexibility, i.e. unlimited access to trait/skill/gear (loaded from inventory) templates. But to be honest, that stuff should be free, since we already had it for free. They can monetise gear storage and loadouts however they want, I don't care and I don't want them. With the currently announced crap system, they'll not see a single gem from me.

Yes. More specifically, the developer of arc templates had said that when he got permission to add build templates it was on the express condition that he would disable his build templates once ArenaNet added their own, official build templates.We're one step farther now. changes build templates will be disabled starting oct 15 2019 https://www.deltaconnected.com/arcdps/ I'm even more pissed than before (and not at deltaconnected). Not only will we be getting trash templates two weeks from now, we'll have to go two weeks without any templates at all.

Sorry, you won't get another chrono.

I don't think ~150-250 €/$ instead of ~500 €/$ can be considered a "low price", especially when the functionality will still be worse than what's currently free (i.e. Arc). Where the heck are you buying gems from?From ANet's own shop, for this assumption. As @"Asum.4960" already stated, the benchmark is this:"For one character of each profession it would be 18 Account wide slots, 36 gear slots and 27 build slots."If each slot is valued at 200 gems (= 2.50 €), I get to a meagre 202.50 €. Paying that much for still massively reduced functionality is certainly a great deal.

I don't think ~150-250 €/$ instead of ~500 €/$ can be considered a "low price", especially when the functionality will still be worse than what's currently free (i.e. Arc).

Nah, three more weeks is actually a good thing. It gives them the opportunity to improve the feature and apply some changes, hopefully.I'm not optimistic that they'll change the system to something acceptable in the remaining time. So I'd prefer if the period till launch of the pseudo-templates was still longer, something like 10 years or so. Would permit us to use the superior templates we already have for longer.

And you'd probably break the game. Let's face it, many of GW2's underlying systems (here: stats, boons, traits) are a mess that's just a step away from total failure. Total stat freedom would instantly evaporate any pretence of balance.

Same here. They won't see a single gem from me for delivering something that's much worse than the status quo. In the end, there are enough things I can spend my time on if ANet isn't interested in players like me.

The current strike mission is pure trash. The fight is utterly boring and who on earth had the glorious idea to put a dumb JP there?