Zoser.7245

In the final system, at least as it was announced, the change will be very big. With the servers, even if only part of the guilds plays, you have a big variety of them which each one having their own schedule. That let the servers cover a larger portion of the day. But, even with big servers, we can detect that they often have prime time too although with enough hours covered. So, even with servers with a lot of guilds, you will find empty maps some times. Now think in the Alliance... with a cap of 500 players that will probably be filled with one or two main guilds. How many hours do you believe they will cover a day with their commanders and players? And not all days. When you join a guild you do it with one that is compatible with your own schedule. People, normally, have lifes, studies, work, family, etc. The prime time window of an Alliance will be very narrow and that, together to the reduced number of guilds per Alliance will give those guilds the full power and behaviour of the battle. It doesn't matter if the algorithm try to match alliances with more or less the same prime time detected. As you can change it easily on purpose if for some reason you are not interested to play at the prime time of the others alliances. You have whole 24 hours to choose and they will probably not be able to cover more than 6-7 hours a day and probably not all days. So with alliances, it will so easy to choose a window without foes and farm everything. And that without taking into the account those guilds with clones in other alliances and also the typical guilds/servers today that play afterhours on purpose when needed. So, often, the behaviour of the battle/war will be in the hands of only 2-4 guilds. If you or your guild will enjoy or not how those foe/enemy guilds will choose to play your match or not to play is other history. Join karma trains with the alliances will be easier than ever. Don't be surprised to find a lot of matches with almost tied scores where an alliance never met the others on the maps. 🤣 For those that like the GvG mode, with the servers at least you can often find some guild of foes available between all the ones on the other server. But against alliances with only 2-3 guilds. Good luck, it will completely depend of them. So in one way or other, for the good and for the bad, you will feel the "GUILD POWER" with the alliances. 😨😅🙄 And i'm not sure how few guilds per alliance will fit with the sense of commynity, it sounds more that alliances will dilute/remove the big communities with the guild taking that role. Once of the nicest things of WvW is enjoy they battle with other allies and guilds, organize events with them in the battle maps, etc. With alliances you will also often join empty channels with no one or almost no one there to talk out of the main guild prime hours. We will see.

Alliances will be exploited anyways unless Arenanet design a dynamic system that can change the alliance on the fly when a large imbalance in the match scoring and/or in the hours played by each alliance is detected. Dedicated guilds that will not play the alliance they joined will make that one useless with a 500 players limit, more like a Gruyère cheese in terms of active population. If bandwagon exists, it's because the majority of players in this game prefer the easy going life and achievements. And that will not change with the alliances. "In theory" hardcore guilds should prefer even, tight and hard matches to enjoy the battle, the use of the strategy... etc. In practice, a lot of them if not the majority, love to stomp everything on their way. The typical karma train. Also the most dedicated ones knows each other and will always try to get allied together with the strongest alliance, meanwhile the game metrics can't determine if a player with 10000 WvW dedicated hours and a lot of kills is a skilled one or a player that has spent that time pressing the autoattack in zerg while chatting or enjoying the conversation at their discord channel and will die all the time if not carried. Or if a skilled player has created new alt accounts for choose between alliances without have to pay server transfers. So it's too easy for hardcore guilds to exploit it. I know some guilds that already have images/clones of themselves ready, with their players having alt accounts to join those cloned guilds. Then join different alliances with each clone and after few test hours decide which alliance is the one they prefer to play for the whole war in each match and leaving the others abandoned. How many guilds will follow that way is the question. That doesn't mean that a greater number of balanced matches will happen due to the cap limit to 500 players and more between casual alliances. It should work in that way. But matches against hardcore guilds exploiting will be a nightmare. Hopefully the population will be large enough to create enough balanced games/matches at the time and most guilds won't go to the trouble or effort of manipulating them. But if the population is low, it could end up as our PvP... and windtrading, really bad. I still have my doubts if losing the identity of the server will worth it, since many casual players could/would get lost with the alliances. But we will only watch it once the final system is released.

Sneak Gyro: Reduced stealth duration from 1.5 seconds to 1 second in WvW only. Reduced number of pulses from 6 to 3 in WvW only. This skill is no longer a smoke field in WvW only. This skill now plays a "visual indicator" to enemies on activation.

Oh! They made the Sneak Gyro even worse in the new mobile version than in the previously proposed static one. 🤣 Sneak Gyro: Reduced stealth duration from 1.5 seconds to 1 second in WvW only. Reduced number of pulses from 6 to 3 in WvW only. This skill is no longer a smoke field in WvW only. This skill now plays a "visual indicator" to enemies on activation. @Cal Cohen.2358 I guess that, from now, you will also add red circles below all players in stealth, right? Because the" visual inditator" to your enemies is a ground red circle for the AoE and if you only have a second per pulse with a red area showing everyone that you are there all the time while the skill last and no stealth stacked when it expires... Then you are located all the time in its center and for the whole duration of the stealth. You will be also located if you make the Sneak Gyro visible to your enemies. Are you going to give the same treatment to all the players in a near future while they are in stealth? That would be fair to the scrapers. With the same treatment being applied to all professions and specializations. If you rework them in the future, profit also to change their appareance for a more advanced and appealing one instead of an unstable, ugly and cheap toy. At least, if they are going to be as big as the static version. Well, I already had the idea to discard the new scrapper after the update for the role i wanted to. So nothing has changed for me. Scrapper dismissed. Straight to the scrapyard or to the garbage dump.

Two big ones if no more: Each profession has different skills. Even if you manage to achieve a good balance, it will never be equal or in the same level of all them. That is why some will be meta and other not. To avoid it as much as possible is always preferred re-design more that eternally changing numbers . Something done often in other games with a professional scene. Make your game not appealing and boring mechanically or with professions not enough good to have fun playing them. If you play something that give you the feeling of not be enough good or properly designed, about all in competitive where skills matter even more, then you leave and play something else, other game basically. So yes, there is a difference, and developers of a game should always find a way to attract more players to his game, no the opposite. That doesn't mean that nerfs are needed sometimes. The "balance" in a game often could require some nerfs. But that, also means that you did not enough good job balancing previously, because you are correcting past mistakes.

That option is aplied to all your skills. So, no thanks, unless in your build there are no other ranged ground target skills ok... But the moment you mix ground target skills that require be ranged to be optimal that other that not, you have a big problem to evalue and a conflict to resolve and choose what it's better but often you end sacrificing. The best option is have a competent developers in the game that know how to design their skills for the mechanics involved in them. Blast Gyro is a big example of a skill that never should be a ground target one in competitive. No one will be there 3 whole seconds unless he burned everything and even in that case, the skills itself is an a utility with no big impact. In PvP/WvW it will have no damage and only CC you after 3 seconds in a small static area. To me sounds like a joke one unles you it's mobile and you can follow your foe.

The defensive Gyros, as i explained above, will suc* with a ground target mechanic unless those skills are reworked. But also the Blast Gyro. I forgot about the Blast Gyro. If that sh*t with a delay of 3 seconds until its blast hits someone being a static area, it must be because it is an stupid AI. No one is going to be in its area like an idiot for 3 whole seconds. The current skills of the gyros are not designed to be ground target. Also, in competitive, with the remove of the cripple in the scourge skills, less soft cc, less cleanses and more stability available... it will be a lot easier to avoid the static areas. Which makes the proposed change even a bigger nerf. So, lets see what they finally do with them. They can't say that we did not gave them enough feedback to avoid a big mistake or, at least, advice/warn them that they need to rework those skills to be enough useful with the ground target mechanic or keep them as they are now and find an alternative way of balance them.

No. I watch the Sneak Gyro losing a lot potential for engage/gank and also lose let you move in stealth out of the danger area. With a static well you'll be flooded with AoE and killed despite the use of the Gyro as its stealth per pulse if very short and you will revealed in no time after leave the area. Bulwark Gyro will kill you if you cast it on your allies being out of its area of effect as you will no gain the barrier out of the area. Purge Gyro will make you lose time deciding between safe yourself or use it on your allies some times and some times taking bad decisions. Also have all gyros ground target is lose of vital time unless you have a good device with the keys binded to the skills and not needing to use the mouse to click the skill in normal mode and then place it on the target area. They have not published changes for Gyros skills, only the ground target mechanic for all them. If they don't rework some of them... or add some new trait or traits to improve them.... they will suc*s like they are now with the ground target mechanic added. In WvW mobility is fundamental. That is why they are doing this. Is a big nerf. And more now that they are removing cripple from Scourges, and favouring less cleanses with more stability uptime. So it will be a lot easier leave the areas of the static gyros. And encouraging players to try to find alernative professions/specializations with a better kit while moving. If you also add the lose of the quickness... even worse. Also a lot of your support traits affect a small area around you so at the end of the day you will allways want to be with your kitten glued to your allies for clean and heal them, share boons, etc. Which shows clearly that mobile gyros are ideal for the Scrapper and make them static is a big nerf. The single positive side that i can see is the use of the offensive ranged ones in PvE events.... without forget that you lose the quickness sharing, so, meh and that even the Blast Gyro only do damage and CC after 3 whose seconds. If that kitten hits someone is because it is a stupid AI. I only can be negative about this change unless they rework the skills of the gyros to work better with the ground target mechanic.

Shadow Refuge had and has a lot of synergies with a lot of traits related to the stealth mechanic and also gives 3 seconds of stealth per pulse for 5 pulses, so 15 seconds of stealth in total but the most important is that you get a lot more per pulse giving you more flexibility, you have 10s of stealth margin after 5 seconds, a lot more stacked stealth in less time than the Sneak Gyro to resolve the situation and Shadow Refuge also heals you: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Refuge Thief also has great skills and tools to combo and in-out of the Shadow Refuge in stealth when needed. Scrapper lacks those goodies and Sneak Gyro only provides 1,5s of stealth per pulse being an elite skill to a total of 9 seconds after 6 pulses which means that you ony stacks 0,5 seconds of stealth fo each second inside the skill area and after the whole 6 seconds inside the area you only have 3 seconds of margin in stealth. As you will be revealed really soon if you leave the area, it will always be flooded by enemy AoE, is not like a thief that has a lot of more resources to play around their Shadow Refuge without being revealed by the lack of stacked stealth. There is only a single trait for Gyros that gives 1,5s of superspeed and after the patch no more quickness from gyros related to the superspeed application and nothing impactful related to the Gyros less the superspeed. So the new ground target Sneak Gyro will be a crappy elite skill by itself after the change. The old "original" ground target Sneak Gyro had a lot more stealth provided in its initial design, when the Scrapper was released. Another funny gyro to watch after the patch will be the "Bulwark Gyro". Wells by definition only affect their area of effect... They have no published changes and reworks to the gyro skills, so as it works now, once you'll land it at range on your allies to help them... you will take part of their damage without the barrier that your well/gyro provides if you are inside its area of effect. Or in other words, unless they rework it, it will be often a suicide skill for you. ☠️ I have the feeling that they didn't put attention to the Scrapper changes more that nerf that sh*t. And no balancing team developer really cared of it and they followed the lazy way like before have the new "dedicated balance team". On the other hand, it looks like some new member of the balance team did a great job for the profession he plays in competitive... So it seems that nothing has changed in that sense. 😒

Scrapper is not Mechanist, you don't see Scrappers often in PvE and PvP. In WvW yes, but also Firebrands, Scourges...

Can't imagine the amount of nerfs/tradeoffs they will nail to the Mirage in exchange of bring back the second dodge... Infinite Horizont remove? Mirage Cloak extra tradeoff? "Evade" removed from Mirage Cloak? Convert Mirage Mirrors in in jelly beans you eat in exchange of one or two stacks of might? We will see it... someday... The day of the Mirage <- 💀

Anyways, i'm ready to watch the funny moments of the live stream, like how hard will he laugh next friday if asked again about the original "One dodge Mirage"? 🤣 Perhaps, they should include some running gels in addition to water bottles for the livestream. 💡🤓 As i doubt that they want to rework the Mirage... Maybe, on November 29th, they'll make the "One dodge feature" a core base for all mesmers with some bizarre trait or traits... Problem solved!!! 😆😅😁 🕝 Tic tac, tic tac...

@Josh Davis.7865 When the balance team nerfed the sustain globally, they also did it affecting the life steal, and they did it globally in damage and healing, that killed it too much from my point of view, they should have splitted the damage done and the healing in the formula, and/or only nerfed the sustain but not the damage. Negatively affecting several professions, like the revenant and the necromancer. That, for example, killed completely the "Blood Magic" trait line. It's underwhelming to use it today even if you want take it from a support point of view that doesn't work anyways. And the Banshee's Wail didn't change it. Blood Magic trait line needs a rework or, at least, buff the steal damage and review the traits. Also Necromancer's Warhorn need some extra changes to really make it appealling. Or by reducing cooldowns or even better, add to Locust Swarm some initial ranged burst when its sound hit foes, maybe using the same cone area that Wail of Doom. Or my idea of "Chasers" for the warhorn by adding a secondary skill after been casted to command your Locust Swarm and send it against your foes. Thanks for reading.

In the past, we already had a 4 trait lines system. It was removed to avoid what you want... Too powerful builds without trade-offs that do everything. And, at the end, as expected, only the builds that maximized everything was played. What, maybe, could push them to expand the trait system in some way would be the addition of new mechanics to the game. For example: By adding hexes to the game and their counters. Then, the traits for that new mechanics could be included by expanding the trait system. But they will do not want to increase the power creep so they'll probably do it by adding a new major to each tier for all the trait lines and that, will also let them space to include traits for untraited skill's type today, like the necromancers wells that was removed in the past, etc. You will have more options to customize your build but with the same amount of active traits.

The perfect bugfix for revamp the Axe nerf in the following balance patch 😁

Next week is the release of the game in the Steam platform. Do you believe that this balance patch with some buffs is a coincidence? Of course that they are reading the forums, they don't want bad PR for the next week. Anyways the change for the Mantra of Liberation for WvW and the Mirage's staff sounded too strange for me. Too much and without sense. I wonder how much of bait those "proposed" changes were, so now they can wave the flag of: We read you!!!! And the most fun is to watch how happy players are to watch that they'll do literally "nothing" in those cases, lol But ok, no nerfs too, so it should be good.... I guess. 😏

@Cal Cohen.2358 Smite also use a system that reduce the effectiveness of the hard CC up to 80% when chained and it's controlled by stacks of 20%. It's called Diminishing returns (or DR) and is a mechanic that makes hard crowd control effects less effective when used on a recently affected target. They also have the soft CC like us. "Any Hard CC will apply a stack of DR to the victim, while True Hard CC applies 2 stacks. Abilities that have two or more Hard CC effects attached to them will apply an equal amount of DR stacks. Each stack grants the target 20% Crowd Control Reduction for 15 seconds, and can be stacked up to 4 times (for a total of 80% CCR)." Smite also has something that i really like... They have items that you can equip in your build and reduce the crow control by a % in duration. We have runes that help to reduce the stun duration like the Melandru runes or a sigil to increase it. But in GW2 we don't have nothing to reduce the Hard CC globally like they have there and that affect all types of hard CC. We only have the stun breaks. However we have it for conditions, we have runes and traits that reduce the condition duration including the soft CC plus the ability to clean and/or transfer conditions, but against the hard CC globally nothing. It would be nice if GW2 developers add global cooldown reductions for the Hard CC to some runes and traits and not only for a single type like the stun or daze. Of course, you can add more than one item to increase the reduction in % as you are resignning other stats to get that advantage against the hard crow control like when you do against condition duration. Sometimes is good to take great ideas from others in a good will if the result worth the matter, obviously from the legal side. So the ideas for control better the hard CC from Smite and other games worth probably a consideration and find a similar system for GW2. My idea of create runes and traits that affect the duration of all types of hard CC should be great too. 😜 It helps to build against hard CC if you want to do that sacrifice by losing damage or other stats or rune effects, etc, for reduce it. And also make my "Chasers" for the necromancer warhorn a real thing and, if possible, some of the other ideas too: I hope that those ideas can help to improve the mitigation of the hard CC when chained/applied on the same players several times consecutively.

That is easy to answer. Is the new philosophy. If some profession has too long reflecs or too much, they'll nerf them a bit and then add new reflects to all the professions that still does not have access to them. We all have the right to do it! Love it. Uhmmmm, my necromancer does not have reflecs.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cal Cohen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Marching a triple ration of group stability with group stun break on some utility from my core necromancer. As a second course, two stacks of stability in one of my weapon skills or when traited and for dessert a ration of reflects, maybe in a trait for wells!!! Thank you very much! 🤗

He does not mention nerfs to the core Guardian, it is all about Mantra of Liberation and group and breakstun stability. WvW has been around long before the Firebrand arrived and there was nothing wrong with not having the Mantra of Liberation when the Firebrand didn't even exist. People get used to it and, if the game already requires little skill with the aids in the skills and the target system, less if you can spam group stability/breakstuns, group barriers, etc. People always get used to what is most comfortable and what requires the least effort and the least skill. It is understandable. In the past, they already had problems in WvW with the boon spam and, of course, the stability/cc balance. I hope they haven't forgotten that bad experience. However, it's good that, at least, they want to spread the access to those shinies and let players of other professions have fun spamming them too. Incredible that someone even thought there could be a pro scene in this game. Anyways.... Waiting for those extra AoE stability and group stun breaks for the rest of professions!!!!! Don't forget the Necromancer when adding them!!!!!

A those are a breeze of fresh health air changes before the the PvP ones. Sometimes, it is better to be ignored than be hitted with the balance hammer. You'll learn it sooner than later... again. Be ready for your next turn.

It's fun to watch that after the fail in the Necromancer's warhorn... You have ignored it completely in this update instead of profit it to improve the warhorn in someway to not be completely obliterated by the update of the other off-hand weapons in the following patch. If we look at the meta and optimal builds... the warhorn is ignored in fractals, open world, wvw, pvp... and only used actually in raid, but in builds that completely ignore it in their rotations as, if you use it , you lose dps. The warhorn in raid is a filler for the extra CC when needed and maybe a bit of life force generation that in reality is not needed. So the support update you did for the weapon seems a failed thing/atempt. Also the two - four builds that include it today... do it completely UNTRAITED. Which confirms that the weapon is only used as a filler. For improve the warhorn through traits you also need to invest in it too much to make it worth as a weapon and by choosing those traits you lose more than resign them and chose the alternatives available in the same tiers. So, watching the updates for the dagger and for the focus, that are nice ones. What will happen to the warhorn again? Place your bets... But, it seems that it will be thrown again the box of the forgotten/obsolete weapons. I still can't understand why every warhorn in this game must to be a support weapon yes or yes. It would have been better improve it in an offensive and more fun way instead of add that shared healing you added and only profitable if you can stay above your foes for a long time as it only works if you hit them in a small 180 radius despite the healing being applied in 360. On the other hand, the addition of the fear to Wail of Doom openned some alternatives to trait, but those doesn't seems to be used even today, maybe some could be reviewed and watch if can be improved a bit to make them more appealing against the alternatives in the same tier of traits. The Necromancer's warhorn cooldowns are also insane untraited. 30 seconds for each skill is too much. And will make it even less desirable after this update as the trait for improve them is in the blood magic trait line that you nerfed in damage and sustain in the update that nerfed the sustain globally. Like the torch from mesmers, another weapon with too high cooldowns for who knows what reason in PVE or even WvW where phantasms are useless. Some suggestions if you want to add some of them to the Necromancer's warhorn: Reduce the cooldown of its skills to 25 seconds. Or at least the cooldown of the Locust Swarm. Locust Swarm is a very slow in application, it need too much time to stay on the foes. I would like to add a way to let your locusts chase your foes on demand. So once you cast them, you gain a second skill that let you command them as you can command your minions. Sending your Locust Swarm against your foes if you command them, they must fly really fast. The remaining life/duration of your locust swarm will be the time that the new skill will be available for use it. The new skill to command your locust swarm could be named as "Chasers", for example. The skill could have a count of two, so you can use it twice. And once expired or used, Locust Swarm skill will be available again with its remaning cooldown. The range of the Chasers skill... between 900 - 1200 to be defined. Increase the active area of the Locust Swarm and Chasers if added to 240 at least. Finally study if some of the traits that interact with Wail of Doom and the fear applied can be improved to make them more appealing against their alternatives in the same tier. Thanks for reading.

Well, you can joke all you want. But we careful with what you wish... We are asking changes to the Arenanet developers!!!! Uhmmmmm, that could end with the Virtuoso reworked as a support, including a trait that allow you to stack two more powerful blades above your head and a quarter of second of regeneration or a third for each blade you stack. And the Virtuoso stacks them really fast... even too fast!!! The tank beast is upcoming/incoming... 😱 Although in the positive side... People will love to carry those two extra cool blades over their heads. 7 big blades!!! They could even make them flasing blades with super bright sparkles. 😍🤩😲

It still bugged, the part that should apply weakness on a critical hits doesn't work. And the worst is that even before this allaged bug it didn't worked 100% fine as it was a single target i remember, but if your attack that crits is an aoe, pierce or bounce, the critical hits from a single attack should trigger the weakens in all the foes hit. @Josh Davis.7865 I wonder why a trait that do not need updated... ends bugged. How you bug something that "theoretically" don't have changes? Like with the Marauder pirate ship in Istan, a bug that that does not allow boarding the ship and that smells done on purpose to force you to use the cannon mechanics........... But the great developer that did that change... forgot to lower the health of that ship, so now, sink the stupid ship takes too much time and is super boring to the point of people refusing to do it and quitting the last phases if you don't have a big squad or enough big. So the result of that "great idea" ends with more empty metas than before the BUG "update". If something is not working in the way the team or developer would like, at least, it should be changed to a satisfactory solution/alternative and not the lazy way we often have seen in the game. And i believe that changes should pass, at least, a final supervisor filter before be released... to prevent things like the above and bad decisions from being released. I'm still waiting for some changes in traits that has issues for the harbinger and i reported here: To make it work properly with the harbinger. At least, take note of them and transfer it to the balance/design team so we can hope some update in the next two upcoming updades. I really hope that the new teams that @Josh Davis.7865 announced and now are releasing updades to address this type of bad decessions and job done in the past, can also look at these issues and give us surprise for the following game updades. They read, because one of the bugs i reported, the "Implacable Foe" trait for the Harbinger, now works properly. But it took a lot of weeks/months to change "a single number" in the source code. Hopefully they'll be now more effecient solving this kind of things. At least for a while. 😅 We need to profit the noise and the wave before it ends again lol.

And are those top 100 different players? Because watching the population in tournaments... it could be 30 players and 60 alts even with the wintrading. 🙄

Before the anniversary they are going to update the game core, something related to the gameplay systems. It will come at the same time that the WvW beta, it seems. What changes are coming in that sense is the question... "We might still have a few surprises up our sleeve for the summer months!" The changes in the gameplay systems were not mentioned in the roadmap, but they are included in the image of the summer changes. 😜 Anyways don't expect a lot, maybe is only related to WvW, or not, we will see.