Ragnar.4257

Lol, what? Which EoD specs are pumping significantly more stab than their core/HoT/PoF predecessors? There's Catalyst and..... ???

To be honest, Druid doesn't need more healing, its healing is already pretty good. What its lacking compared to Guard/Tempest is damage-prevention (CC, Aegis, Protection, Stability) and reliable cleansing. And yeah, it'd be nice if Glyph of the Stars would actually be usuable. The effect is good, but a SEVEN SECOND channel is just insane.

Funny, because the people above you in this thread seemed to be implying that water-attunement should do the exact same DPS as all the others. You are in agreement with my position, that perhaps some buffs are needed, but that the idea of Water doing the exact same DPS as Fire is silly.

Guardian swaps into Staff/Tome to do healing, while doing less DPS. Engi swaps into Medkit to do healing, while doing less DPS. Druid swaps into Staff/CA to do healing, while doing less DPS. Why would Ele swapping into Water be any different? Why do you think the idea of swapping in/out of dps/healing 'modes' is bad design? Surely having everything do everything in a mediocre way is far less interesting than having some things be good at one thing and bad at another?

Many other classes have traits that are tied to a particular weapon, and don't do anything when that weapon isn't equipped. Attunments are the Ele equivalent of weapons, so, it somewhat makes sense that the same treatment gets applied. Only difference is that with other class' weapons traits, they might be inactive 50% of the time, but Ele attunement traits are down 75% of the time. Could maybe be solved by allowing the trait to 'linger' after leaving the attunement for, say, 5 seconds.

Every balance patch attracts complaints. That's unavoiadable. It's important to recognise that this time it's not just more of the same, it's different. I have never, in 10 years here since launch, seen the community so depressed and gloomy. So why is this patch in particular generating such despair? It's not the actual content itself of the patch, on paper its fairly inoffensive and mild. The problem is the message that this patch gives of what the direction is going to be for the game going forward for the foreseeable future. Over the last 2 years, first with Covid and then with the development of EoD, the community has been fairly understanding of the fact that balance patches and updates would be smaller and infrequent. Yes there's a whole host of issues that have gone unaddressed for 2+ years, but there was supposed to be light at the end of the tunnel. With EoD done, life mostly returning to normal after Covid, and by ANets own words (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-the-future-of-guild-wars-2/) through their communications in March/April/May, we were really hoping to see a fundamental gear-shift in the patches/updates. We were supposed to be moving away from the dark-days in the year up to EoD where all we saw was the occasional +2% damage to X and -3% healing to Y, and moving to actually getting stuff done with regards all the super-underperforming and under-used weapons/traits/specs/skills. And we were supposed to be seeing some serious attention paid to the classes/specs that have been non-meta for so long that people have forgotten they exist. To illustrate this, a problem the community were hoping to see addressed was NOT that Core-Guard is 2% more effective at support than Tempest in PvP. That was NOT the problem. The PROBLEM was that nobody has even considered playing Druid as a support in the last 7 years. The problem is that nobody (above Gold) has even considered equipping a staff on their Tempest in the last 7 years. Another easy case to see is the 300s traits that surely, surely, must be a top priority to fix. The fact that Meta-Build-A is 1% more effective than Meta-Build-B is not the problem. The problem is that Build-C has been grief-tier for the best part of a decade. What this patch signals in big flashing letters is; "No, we are not going to go and fix up Build-C. We're going to go back to business-as-usual as it was before EoD, and continue to just make minor tweaks to Meta-Build-A and Meta-Build-B, because those are what 90% of the playerbase are playing, to make it look like something is happening". This is what was communicated in the March 22 Studio Update: Profession Updates Balance and maintenance of Guild Wars 2‘s extensive combat system, including the latest elite specializations released with End of Dragons, is important for keeping gameplay engaging and varied across PvE, WvW, and PvP. Moving forward, we’ll be making professions and elite specialization updates a higher priority. Our plan includes quarterly profession updates, with smaller releases in between as we monitor and respond to how the meta in each game mode takes shape. In addition to the number tweaks that you’re used to seeing, the team will be revisiting some underpowered and underused weapon skills, traits, or utilities for each profession in each profession update to help expand your arsenal. We will continue to make game-mode-specific balance adjustments as needed. We’ll be releasing some PvP and WvW balance changes in the March 29 update, and our first major profession update will drop on June 28. This is what we'd all been hoping to see. The fact that Willbender is 2% more effective than Herald isn't the problem. The problem is that NEITHER spec has considered using a Hammer in years. And yet, this update, the only actual meaningful changes to underused weapons/specs/traits/utils appears to be the tweaks to Engi Rifle. And they don't even appear to be very extensive, just adjusting the range values. The previewed patch notes is very long, with lots of lines of writing, but 99% of it is all just fluff. It's all +2% damage here, -2% healing there. This isn't going to do anything to address all the severly under-used weapons/skills/traits, because most of them or not just numerically broken but mechanically broken. The community had been waiting to see if pain-points which they have been patiently waiting for years to be addressed, while they had patiently waited through the understandable disruptions of Covid and EoD, would finally now start to be picked up. And the message now appears to be that no, the game will continue to be balanced and updated in the exact same way as it was for the last 2+ years. That's why this particular patch is drawing such disappointment. Please, please, please, understand that it is not just a load of man-children being salty about Build-X being 1% more effective than Build-Y. This is the community discovering that what they thought was the light at the end of the tunnel, is just another tunnel.

Entirely agree. Boons should be short, powerful, buffs that you use strategically at the right moment. Not things that you just passively have up 100% of the time.

Tempest, the meta build, was nerfed, not buffed. Arguably Earth Shield did need trimming a bit, but I'd have liked to see some compensation for it elsewhere. Buffs to Staff don't count, when nobody uses Staff, and nobody will ever use Staff without fundamentally re-working some of its skills, number changes won't cut it.

Yeah, if this was a monthly patch to nudge the meta, it wouldn't be bad, but given that this is "the big" patch for 2022, an astonishingly little is meaningfully changing.

I mean, I don't even disagree that mobility in general seems to be getting out of control, to the detriment of the Conquest game-mode. Pretty much all the EoD specs have crept up in mobility, except I guess Cata and Virt. But I still refer you to my original question. If the tools that WB has in its toolkit, regardless of cooldowns or damage values, are such an issue, why was WB such garbage on release?

What you are saying is obvious common sense, which apparently other people in this thread aren't able to grasp. The reason you are struggling here is because you're assuming a baseline of common sense, which you should never do on these forums.

I AGREE IT IS THE NUMBERS Jesus Christ, how are you not getting this? I am pushing back on the people who are saying it is MECHANICALLY broken, of which there are examples you can read in this very thread. YOU are not complaining about mechanics, but other people are. Those are the people I'm speaking to.

Focus is not used in the meta build. The meta build infact has ZERO blocks. I don't know why you would complain about off-meta builds that nobody plays, or suggest that weapons nobody uses are what makes it OP. Infact I don't know on what basis you can even form any opinion of what is/isn't strong while not being aware of the meta. Its not just about experience. WB has been buffed SINCE release. I am comparing its state on release to its state now. Mechanically, nothing has changed on WB since release. Only numbers were buffed. This implies that it is not mechanically broken, as you suggest, but simply numerically broken.

No, it was a complaint about, and I quote: "Blinds + Blocks + Aegis + Teleports + 2 dodges". These are the same regardless of numbers. These are mechanics.

Have you read this thread? What I originally replied to was a statement that WB is mechanically broken, not numerically.

Fine, "mechanics", Captain Semantics. You know what I meant.

It was. That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of basically every top player/streamer at the time of EoD release. Here is first MAT 1 month after EoD release. Not a single WB in sight, people still taking Herald in that slot: I swear to god people have such goldfish memories. Can't remember what happened 3 months ago.

1. What blocks does WB have (on the meta build)? Since you list Aegis separately from Block..... what Block are you referring to? 2. WB had the exact same list of capabilities on EoD release, but on EoD release it was considered a joke spec which nobody wanted on their team and labelled "Feedbender". A month after release it got some numerical buffs and CD reductions, but none of its actual capabilities changed, and this moved it up to S-tier. So are you really sure that's it's WB's intrinsic capabilities which are an issue, or just the numeric values? And if you do think its the intrinsic capabilities, then please explain why it was so useless on EoD release.

Yeah, and Harbinger pulsing 3s quickness to its team is insanely broken. Nowhere else on any other build is "perma-team-quickness" an option in PvP, so I'd expect it to be removed from Harbinger, not added to Herald.

Permanent Quickness in PvE generally doesn't translate into PvP. Skills that give 5+ seconds in PvE end up giving 0.5s in PvP. I'd be very suprised if this gave more than 1s in PvP. And if it has more on release, you can guaruntee its an oversight that'll get patched. Team Quickness/Alacrity are a big deal in PvE, not PvP. Otherwise you'd see Chronos with Timewarp and FBs with Feel My Wrath all over the place, but, you don't.

Ummmm, I don't know how to put this...... Shiro-Herald has always had Quickness?

For a start, WB/Harb are not in the state where you MUST stack multiple of them in your team. Many high level teams are only playing 1 of them. EU MAT winners had 1 WB and 1 Harb. Neither did NA (although, USA were really just trolling). Infact I don't remember seeing *any* teams stacking multiple WBs. Having a Spectre, Vindicator/Mech, and a support of some kind, is pretty much universally preferred over stacking more WB/Harbs. The claim that the current optimal composition is 2x WB 2x Harb 1x Other is just objectively, empirically wrong. Second, do you not remember Renegade? Herald? There were definitely times where the meta was absolutely to have 2+ of those on a team. Double Holo comps were also pretty common through 2020/21. Those didn't get adjusted instantly did they? It took months before they were addressed. This wasn't even that long ago. It was only last year. I'm not arguing that WB/Harb don't need some tuning down, I'm just challenging this wild claim that this moment in GW2 history is some kind of exceptional event that has never happened before, and that the devs are somehow making an exception here that doesn't apply to other classes. This isn't the first time that people have figured out the meta quickly and had to wait 3+ months for ANet to adjust it, and it won't be the last.

You guys have really short memories. You really think that a build being meta for 2 months is some kind of exception, and not what happens literally every patch? 2 months is a really, really short time for something to be meta. Prot-Holo and Nadesmith weren't instantly nerfed, they hung around for way more than 3 months. Yes it was repeatedly nerfed each patch, but how frequent do you think those patches were? What golden era are you imagining where patches were happening every month? Likewise Renegade and Herald during their respective high-points dominated for way longer than just 2 months. Look further back and you had chrono and druid dominating for long periods, ham-bow, cele-ele, and I'm sure others that I've forgotten. WB and Harb have been meta for........ 6 weeks. And you're wailing and moaning like it's been years. If the meta is still the same 6 months from now, then you might have a point. Spectre and Vindicator are both also currently meta-picks, and have been for the same amount of time as WB/Harb.

Apparently the last 2 months.

I would say that, if anything, Guardian benefits more from a co-ordinated team than Tempest does, and Tempest is better in an un-coordinated Ranked setting. The difference between them is that Guardian (the core-support build) is a 100% healer that does 0 damage or pressure by itself. It is 100% dependent on its team to carry it, it can't generate kills, it can't cleave downs, it can't peel for itself. Whereas Tempest doess less pure-support but actually does a moderate amount of damage, obviously not crazy big burst damage, but between Lightning Overload, Burning Speed, Flame Overload and Tornado you can do a respectable amount of cleave damage, and also have better options for self-peeling with more CC and i-frames. You can actually make plays and force cooldowns from opponents with Tempest in a way that support-guard just can't, meaning you're able to 'carry' more to some extent. On the flip-side, guardian self-sustain from Altruistic Healing scales with the number of allies in close proximity, which means it benefits more from having a team closely compacted around it, which is more likely to happen in a co-ordinated team. Just, in general, playing support in ranked is a bad idea, since you're putting your fate in the hands of your team. Doesn't mattter how well you support, if your team can't generate kills then you're going to lose. Both Tempest and Guard suffer from this, but I'd argue that Tempest is slightly less-so.