Deniara Devious.3948

Condi revenants have been broken already long time ago and should be fixed asap, but I would argue that firebrand guardian and certain thief builds are even more broken in WvWvW.

I am NOT going to join the club to argue about the numbers. The main issue is this: Is it fun to play against builds, which can constantly stealth and strike massive damage out of stealth? The answer is solid and clear NO from majority of players. Often even when you guess where the thief goes, you cannot kill him with spamming AoE, because he simply shadow steps far and resets the fight. To able to the reset the fight and soon come back again to attack from stealth is annoying and makes the roaming less fun for majority of players. Thus something should be done about it. Revealed should last same time in WvWvW as in spvp or maybe even be 1 second longer. I never understood why revealed was 1 second shorter time in WvWvW, where stealth is obviously much bigger advantage. Stealth should have a maximum duration of 6-15 seconds and after that comes forced reveal. A thing like permanent stealth simply should not exist in any competitive or semi-competitive game mode. Note: These changes should affect all professions. Mesmer or engineer etc. should not given long stealth either.

These changes should come to WvWvW as well, at least for guardian and revenant. Guardian is still overperforming in WvWvW (for 7+ years already) and the most popular profession. Condi revenant is a common spec at least here in EU and very powerful as such. Way too much condi spam considering the build has good mobility, CC etc. Too much in one package. I see the core necromancer as the least overpowered out of these three, because WvWvW maps are big with a lot of open spaces and it is often quite easy to use long range attacks and mobility to slowly pew down the necro. E.g. LB/GS ranger.

The current font is way too small, only 12px. General accessibility guidelines state that font for normal text should NEVER be smaller than the default size, which is 1em or 16px.

The problem with this "balance" patch is that it is basically just shaving the multipliers and adjusting some cooldowns. I am fine that powerful CC skills do almost zero damage. In general one skill should not do multiple powerful things at same time, unless it is coupled with a handicap or a very long cooldown. One of the biggest problems, at least in EU tier #1, is the awful lag in prime time. You cannot activate any skill without considerable multi second delay when a 3-way fight occurs. The key reasons for the lag are skills, which affect more than 5 targets or the abundant boons. All these require a lot of computations for the servers. I would advice to tone down all traits and skills to max 5 targets, except those which have a long cool down. I would use 60 seconds as a general rule of thumb here. E.g. mass invisibility (mesmer elite) is fine and not overpowered. Guardian (especially Firebrand) will still be the most popular class, because it can spew boons like no tomorrow, has great access to condition cleanse, stability etc. Guardian has been the WvWvW meta since release in Autumn 2012 and this balance patch won't change this. Most commanders will play guardian, period. Necromancers will continue to very popular, because they are the best class to corrupt and remove boons and do AoE burst. Almost every single warrior build is using greatsword (GS) and this has been the case for many years. This balance patch won't change this, since forceful greatsword is so amazing trait it simply outshines anything else warrior has and has great trait synergy. Shield will remain as the most popular offhand. If you want better balance between warrior weapons, something needs to be done. Either enhance the least used weapons e.g. longbow projectiles are super slow (make them faster) and return adrenaline gain to warhorn. Or alternatively tone down greatsword related traits. Core engineer has been the worst core spec, because the previous patches have "balanced" engineer by over nerfing the core, instead of properly toning down the elite specs. Holosmith should still either lose some damage or sustain (e.g. 4 s stability from Crystal Configuration: Eclipse). Explosives trait line is still an awful mess. Using healing skill is throwing grenade barrage with grenadier trait, which makes no sense. No using healing skill is install reveal and most of the time the damage is wasted. Grenadier should increase the range of the grenades to 1200 or 1500 range. Grenades are suicide anyways, when enemy zerg has near permanent retaliation. Permanent stealth should NOT exist in WvWvW. It allows to hide in keeps or stonemist castle forever. I would say to cap the stealth duration maximum to 8 - 15 seconds and after that becomes automatic reveal. Reveal should last same time (4 seconds) as in spvp, because stealth is inherently more powerful and useful in WvWvW than spvp. My prediction is that with these changes the most popular classes will remain popular. The zerg meta will drift more towards long range pirate ship and condition spam. Roaming is already very unbalanced, thanks to specs which can reset the fight whenever they want. One important aspect in doing the balance patch is consideration: will it be fun? Some specs e.g. huge damage from ranged and ability to stealth might be fun to play, but they are not fun to play against. Some players enjoy playing insta gibbed, but nobody likes to be one-shot. On the other hand if fights last too long time and nobody dies, I wouldn't consider it fun either.

In practice NO. Defenders have an advantage. Firebrands just offer too much for large groups to be completely left out. For example I leading defense of home bl T3 bay yesterday evening (EU tier 1). As a ranged commander and lacking a melee ball, I had to use different tactics. Enemy had a 30-50 player zerg, but it was quite easily snipe their rear (basically those who don't stay in the ball, usually soft targets like necros or eles). Once enemy loses enough players, they disengage, to avoid complete wipe. The T3 keep inner was never even close being breached and I would have of course used emergency waypoint before that to call in help. Firebrands offer a lot of reflects. I can imagine that backline sniping would be even easier without the enemy zerg having any firebrands.

Core engineer by far. In recent 2 months I have almost completely stopped playing engineer, despite having thousands of hours of experience and full legendary gear. I currently play core mesmer, which is many times better. The developers "balanced" engineer by gutting the core (the sheer number of nerfs over the years is just brain blasting e.g. losing 14 condi cleanses in just one balance patch, look at also the current state of explosives and firearms trait lines). Instead they should have toned down holosmith.

It is easy to see why. Core engineer sucks. Arenanet has repeatedly balanced overpowered engineer elite specs by toning down the core ( = wrong approach). Holosmith still needs adjustments down, but core engineer needs to be upgraded to the same level of other cores. I have spent thousands of hours as core engineer, but it simply is uphill battle vs elite specs and equally skilled opponents. In recent month I have almost solely played core mesmer. Despite my playing experience as mesmer is 1/40th of engineer, I can win 1 vs 1 or 1 vs 2, get easy disengage, be still useful of big group fights and so on. Core mesmer is loads better than core engineer. Core warrior is still one of the strongest core specs, thanks to greatsword and related traits, like forceful greatsword. If warrior's greatsword would be nerfed down the level of some other weapons, like longbow or rifle, core warrior would die. Now almost every warrior spec is abusing greatsword. Other strong core specs include guardian and thief.

Those engineer rifle nerfs make no sense. Hip shot nerf would be huge (no tracking --> strafe left and right to avoid rifle) and Arenanet specifically allowed engineers to shoot net backwards with rifle #2. Core engineer hasn't been overpowered in any game mode. Tone down damage of holo and versatility of scrapper if you want to tone down engineers. Stop nerfing the core, in fact some core aspects are still pitifully weak (e.g. condi engineer is not viable).

Those rifle nerfs make no sense. Core engineer hasn't been overpowered in any game mode and there hasn't been complaints about core only. Tone down damage of holo and versatility of scrapper if you want to tone down engineers. 6+ years of nerf to core engi and we are still in the situation that condition engineer is simply not viable. There is no meta build, which uses core only.

The proposed solution is probably good for big active guilds, but very bad for small guilds, since you must select just 1 guild for WvWvW. Most players are would be wise and keen to choose a relatively big guild, otherwise it might be that in the worst case the only friends they have on the server are the members of their small guild. I propose a change: Let each player choose multiple guilds, just like you can currently be member of up to 5 guilds. And this combined information (of up to 5 guilds) could be used to divide players to servers. Now the players could be an active member of several WvWvW guilds, including community guilds.