Acheron.1580

I would agree but I find their cooldowns overall feel about the same as other classes (there are some exceptions for sure). I find it's great if you want to unga bunga it, I loved my revenant for its rotation flow, but I find it more frustrating when you start adding in boss / fractal mechanics.

I'll start with base thief first addressing a couple simple issues, being pistols and signets of power. Signets of Power Signets of power feels very similar in the way it was handled to warrior banners. They knew they wanted/had to change it, had no ideas on how, and pumped out a placeholder that nobody would be happy with to give themselves a few months to figure it out. I'd argue it's the worst trait in the game at the moment. I don't think initiative gain is bad necessarily but here's my issues with it: The only real signet I can think of you want to activate regularly would be Assassin's Signet, and you probably want to already be at max initiative to burn everything while it's duration is up so the +1 initiative is probably wasted. Even if you were to fill your entire bar with signets and activate them all congrats, you get 1 extra attack at the cost of all the passive effects (and most activated effects are really situational). Maybe make it increase initiative regeneration rate for a period of time rather than flat initiative or reduce the initiative cost of your next attack within a couple seconds by 2 or have a portion of it's passive effect active which increases as the cooldown gets closer to being refreshed (difficult to implement with Infiltrator's signet). I don't really know why it wasn't left as it was with the cooldown reduction being stripped. Pistols Follow me on a journey so I can explain what I think happened to pistols and why they have always felt bad even though they are sort of fun to use. MH pistol has bleed on auto 1, on it's stealth attack 1, and without an offhand it's repeater attack 3. When you add a dagger offhand, you keep the repeater and add torment to 3 (albeit it's a little clunky now). When you add a second pistol, 3 becomes pure power with a lowered power coefficient. I think pistols were supposed to be condition damage, which when you factor in Deadly Aim makes it kind of an interesting trade off, you get to penetrate targets to apply more dots but at the cost of upfront strike damage. For some reason they made it so that adding a second pistol removed all condi, made the power coefficient worse than if you didn't have the second pistol (because you fire more bullets I guess) and increased the initiative cost by 2, with the caveat that hitting with all of it would refund the 2. TLDR: You lose condition damage, you lose power coefficient, you add bullets (longer cast time), and front load extra initiative cost. I assume the reason was pvp balance, but you effectively nerf yourself in every possible way using P/P. I think it should shoot 1/4 second faster (bringing it back to repeater speed) which you could do by removing a bullets or simply speeding up animation, increase the power coefficient and add bleed back when using Deadly Aim. Faster shoot time should provide easier use of returning initiative cost, provide better utility from dual attack effects Deadly Ambition, and the addition of bleed back as a trait would make the pistol (which just feels to me like it was supposed to be condition based on all it's other bleed effects) a more defined hybrid weapon, having the reduced strike damage be offset by the change in function. The long way around but now (also I'm not really in tune with specter as a pvp / wvw build so I had to make assumptions, please feel free to correct) Specter : Scepter Just weirdly clunky. No real logical reason for why shots can be bodied by mobs, particularly since design philosophy suggests heavy emphasis on single target. Not sure why it was designed to make it even harder when dealing with wvw, pvp, or pve fights that have more than 1 target, particularly since shots are slow and cumbersome. These just should not be intercept-able. 3rd scepter shot design wasn't well considered, since slight movement upsets the second shot combo-ing into the first, and is one of the few ranged attacks I've seen that can miss a target even when in range. Wells I understand the nerf to Well of Silence, particularly for pvp settings, but now it has confliction issue along with Well of Bounty I'll get to in a bit. Well of Tears is really out of place for the spec as a whole. I know that it needed to be unique from the other wells but strike damage doesn't really fit anywhere in Specter's identity. Maybe add rot wallow to up to 5 players who are in the well when it is spawned, or when it pulses? Have it give barrier to players in well of tears (effectively also giving rot wallow)? Give it blind which might sort of line up with its name? Boon Strip? There are lots of possibilities. Well of Sorrow is counterproductive. It adds all the conditions you can add as a thief (awesome), unless you've already added them (why?). I can sort of understand it from a quick AoE to apply dots concept, but then it loses effectiveness immediately. It was kind of a "any well will do" well for alac before the change to Well of Silence, where now I'd rather just have the cleanse. I don't understand why this well punishes you for doing the one thing you want it to do. Underwater Wells Wells should just shadowstep you to your target if in range, or to "yourself" if you have no target or they are not in range. If they have to be tied to alacrity let us have them underwater. Traits Second Opinion - Good in theory, terrible when in a choice against Consume Shadows. As a dps, never a reason to take this, as a support you lose a strong reliable AoE heal on a class that is already pretty single target focused. Shallow Grave - suffers from opportunity issues as well. The potential to save an ally is unlikely unless you are planning on them dying, provides less overall survivablity compared to consume shadows again. I assume it's supposed to be the PvP choice? I assume if you get burned down hard enough to enter shroud through this talent, then with the nerfs to shroud in pvp this really wont help. Amplified Syphoning - really boring. I can't imagine when you would ever take this. If you are dps there is no way you ever would, if you are support but aren't using wells, I suppose this is your only option for a bigger siphon barrier, but being only heals without the alacrity feels like a real waste. Id probably still just take Larcenous Torment in that case to build more shadow force while providing more damage. Maybe make siphon an AoE instead? (Main friendly target would get the tether, all close allies would receive barrier as well, obviously cooldown reduction only applies the once). Would give group boon strip options when paired with Bountiful Theft. I have a hard time believing anyone would take this over giving alac or doing more damage though. Panaku's Ambition - I understand the idea behind it, being that poisons you apply through Leeching Venoms with stealth gives some interesting synergy with this trait to make a more focused healer. But in general I feel this is underutilized, since you are probably better off using Shadow Savior instead. At best you can trigger this once every 40 seconds with blinding powder and once every 60 second with shadow refuge, not counting the Merciful Ambush. A whole grandmaster trait for an incredibly niche chance someone builds that way, which I assume people just pretend this doesn't exist (maybe I'm wrong). Hungering darkness - considering how badly the specter deals with conditions this is almost an appealing trait, but the fact it only works for 1 target at a time is really subpar. Maybe if siphoning during shroud swapped your tether target it might be usable. Most likely for pvp? Shadestep - I like this ability, I'd like it more if there were easier ways to apply extra barrier to yourself. The overall issue with Specter is opportunity costs as a result of how their Alacrity works. Effectively you need to be spamming your wells every time they are available to maintain it. This means there's no consideration for when to use Well of Bounty to provide Stab or Resistance, the basically become little bonuses to Alacrity. Well of Silence is even worse, since at first glance its EITHER an effective CC with condition cleanse, or a wasted CC with condition cleanse, but it doesn't matter either way because you just need to use it on cooldown and hope it aligns (with some wiggle room if you know for certain CC is upcoming). Want to factor in Shadow Arts for a more focused healing build? You now need to factor in how to add stealth, which is on A) long cooldowns and B) has to compete with utility space with your wells. You could arguably not bring any Alacrity but since it is such an ingrained important boon, that's just not really an option. The only solution I could offer here is tying Alacrity to your Shadow Shroud and freeing it from the wells by changing Traversing Dusk (the well component is still really appealing as a support even with that change, but it would free up the support wells to be actually supporty).

I know on the surface a selling point of revenant is that it sort-of has access to 2 heals, 6 utilities and 2 elites at any time. But honestly most builds will only use maybe 2 of those utilities and only 1 of those elites; in the long run it actually feels like you have fewer options despite having access to so many at a time. The other issue I have is that when trying to deal with specific mechanics as well as maintain a healthy rotation, the class feels like it needs to sacrifice something. As an example, if you are doing fractals and dealing with no pain no gain, sometimes waiting on the timer for the buffs to come up disrupts rotation, or you end up needing to change legends and have to wait to get back to mallyx which is frustrating. My proposition, which I feel both utilizes the resources on the revenant while still feeling balanced, is to be able to choose heal, utilities and elites like a normal class for each legend equipped. In order to keep it balanced with minimal impact on people not wanting to use said system would be to effect the energy costs of the skills, dependent on the legends that you have equipped. I'd propose +5 energy cost if you have the legend equipped but stowed, or +10 if the legend isn't even equipped. For drain skills you could apply the same idea at 1 higher drain, or 2 higher drain for unequipped. Example for standard skills: I'm using Inspiring Reinforcement while Jalis is the active Legend: 30 energy cost (normal cost). I'm using Inspiring Reinforcement on Ventari, Jalis is my second Legend equipped: 35 energy cost (+5). I'm using Inspiring Reinforcement on Shiro, and my second Legend is NOT Jalis: 40 energy cost (+10). Example for consuming skills: I'm using Vengeful Hammers while Jalis is the active Legend: -6 energy drain (normal cost). I'm using Vengeful Hammers on Ventari, Jalis is my second Legend equipped: -7 energy drain (-1 drain) I'm using Vengeful Hammers on Shiro, and my second Legend is NOT Jalis: -8 energy drain (-2 drain) Revenant was originally designed with the idea of low cooldowns but with an energy cost so that players had to choose how to allocate resources rather than cooldowns. Revenant as it is now just has both a resource cost and a hefty cooldown on most abilities, deviating from the original design concept. I feel like this would bring a lot more depth to the class, would make it significantly less rigid for mechanics while also bringing it back closer to the original concept of its unique resource allocation. It also doesn't force or punish players who aren't interested in changing it up, as those abilities and costs would remain the same. For Vindicator, I'd suggest being able to slot either Kurzick or Luxon, get rid of Alliance Tactics (it's just super clunky even now), and make anything that references it give it's effect when activating either a Kurzick or Luxon ability at half strength, and doubling the effect and renewing the buff if you use both within it's buff timer. You can add a cooldown if somehow it becomes too powerful.

Personally, I went from "If I put in some work I can maybe make a variant every month" to "I'll just play something else". The amount of grinding required for those legendary weapons and their variants were already but exaggerated, but jade runestones always felt the worst; until I found out about the JP chest I just assumed I wouldn't even finish the free precursor I got. Now that I'm looking at 1 a day I'm not going to delude myself into thinking I'll come close to finishing even one weapon's variants. It's not that I don't understand the change, but they could have done better, like offering more opportunities elsewhere to collect more in the same patch, specially with how bad the rewards are in the EoD maps. It's a really stagnant resource for something that would take almost 21,000 IF you wanted to build everything; for the less invested even 100 for a legendary and then 200 if they wanted a specific variant is now really expensive. Considering how long it would take to finish these collections off, I'm very curious what they could add to incentivize playing future expansions.

Maps equally impressive and annoying in stature, obnoxious mob density and difficult content which would have been a lot of fun if it wasn't a ghost town. Story could have cut Annka out and been roughly the same (Don't get me wrong, I liked her as a villain but her involvement was really forced), but if they had the story would have been reaaaaally short; as a result it felt like filler. Metas in every map felt long and tedious, and pointless due to lack of rewards. The new legendary weapons are grossly overcosted, feeling like a lot of bloat to distract hardcore players from noticing how empty the expansion was, while also making it feel pointless to pursue for casuals (I ended up going back and making gen 2 and 3 legendaries). Fishing wasn't relaxing, skiffs were just badly designed, and felt like they were desperately trying to force an idea that they were "party friendly" when fishing isn't exactly an exciting enough passtime to warrant getting groups together. While on that topic, most masteries were bland, the only thing I really enjoyed was the jade bots. It's the only content I didn't try to get all the achievements done in because everything about it just felt off to me. I don't think the expansion is beyond saving, I think it could be cleaned up here and there and be fun, but I probably won't buy the next expansion if they can't demonstrate the ability to do so. What would I change? Skiffs should just be indestructible at max rank, you cant even kill things while on it. Or just make the depth charges kill any veteran or lower mob instantly with no loot reward. The fishing stacks should last 1 min while off the skiff. Stop trying to make fishing parties a thing. Great for the people that are into it, but I never saw people sharing a skiff. Map metas should be scaled back a bit and rewards (particularly since you gutted jade runestone farming) should be amped up to make them time/reward competitive to the metas that get played daily. Some of the new elite specs have weird identity issues still, but class balancing is a can of worms that will never get properly addressed and here's not the place to try. Edit (cause my jimmies have been rustled): research notes. If they were designed to help stabilize the market, they failed expertly. Anyone who played could have told them straight up exactly what would happen: people would band together to find the absolutely cheapest option and everything else would be ignored. But it didn't stop there, they went through and eliminated festival drops and rewards (which frankly would have been a bad exchange because they typically sold for more than the cheapest garbage you can craft. If you modify your game for an unpopular system to make things people enjoy less enjoyable, then you are bad at your job. Your entire goal is entertainment, it's like nobody stopped and asked "but will this be fun?"

Kind of weird to rework well of silence when well of tears is completely useless and strike damage doesn't even remotely fit the class. Just sayin'. While on the topic of thief wells, maybe make them work under water too so we can do alac for that one stupid fractal.

There are a few raid bosses, open world fights, and in general mob mechanics that make flanking a nightmare or straight up impossible, and even knowing how far to the side or behind counts as flanking is a little unclear. Having talents and abilities that feel good to use only some of the time and are generally frustrating to use could be slightly mitigated (as well as open up new utility viable choices) if mobs / bosses that had a blind debuff counted as being flanked. It wouldn't remove the desire for proper flank skill level play, but would make it a lot more friendly overall and make bosses that are impossible to flank "flankable".

Let's start with Righteous Rebel, which increases the duration by 50%. If I don't have that selected, but have 100% boon duration, I can't even keep alacrity up. If I do have it selected, I still need about 80% boon duration if I want to keep it up. It's not interesting. I'd recommend making the 50% increased duration baseline, leave the bonus radius, and make it so that Order's from Above has either a discounted or removed energy cost, allowing for more interesting choices such as Citadel Bombardment or Heroic Command. I doubt the alacren dps would suddenly take over, and there's no way a dps would take that over Lasting Legacy, particularly since without boon duration you really don't provide enough Alac. Draconic Echo Facet interaction isn't a fun play style. You can get away with less boon duration here, but only if you spend your entire time spamming your Facets as soon as they are off cooldown. It's again not very interesting; it isn't engaging to play. Also, Facet cooldowns are crazy long, so you really need to hammer all of them. It would be more interesting if you pulsed quickness, with increased duration for each Facet active. It would mean Facet of nature would still give you some quickness when swapping legends, giving you time to utilize all of the revenant's legends before swapping back to Glint and refreshing the duration up. It would still work with the initial idea of Draconic Echo, where using a Facet would still have it technically active for that period of time, allowing the bonus duration to quickness to continue pulsing for a brief period after use.

This class has a serious identity crisis, and what feels like a bunch of placeholders that simply didn't get addressed before release. Ironically cannon, the luxon and kurzick sides of the spec really don't play well together for several reasons; firstly because it's a gearing nightmare unless you want to do full celestial, at which point you'll be average at all of it. Even if you wanted to swap between the 2 to try to do it all, you get no energy back, so it's extremely limited. On top of that, wanting to share a dodge mechanic you only get 1 charge of which energy meld I guess was almost sort of supposed to address, but again with it costing energy and you not regaining any, ehhhhhhh, Balance in Discord is such an underwhelming and out of place trait, it really feels like they didn't know what else to put there. Angsiyan's Trust is just worse than Song of Arboreum and has a tooltip that is confusing. Leviathan Strength and Forerunner of Death are basically variations on a theme, with one just being objectively worse (and yes, obviously you are taking both as a dps anyways, I just find it a little uninspired). I don't really see a place for Vassal's of the Empire, it's supposed to be this middle ground but is just worse than either one of the other options. Spear of Archemorus, the iconic relic of the hero, does the same damage at cost as Nomad's charge, provides no buff, hits a single target and takes a hell of a long time to fire off, with 4 times the cooldown. I guess because it's (super) ranged? I really don't get it. The traits should be split to top (Archemorus), bottom (Zu Heltzer), and then heavily lean into the idea of them both in the middle, kind of like Amnesty of Shing Jea. Throw some Precision > Concentration, Healing power > Ferocity in there. Split the 2 Heroes, remove F3, let energy regain on swap. Hopefully address all of the weird trait choices (as mentioned above). Currently the traits are separated into how do you want to get endurance back, and how do you want to change your dodge, which is fine for the top and bottom row, but that whole middle row trying to be unique and middle of the road just doesn't work for it. I'd make that middle trait line all about what happens when you bounce between the 2 Heroes. Maybe PBAoE damage/healing for each legendary ability used while in the respective specs, maybe something to help the disconnect between trying to share a dodge mechanic between the two (a buff to energy meld?). I really want to like the idea of this class, but it doesn't address even core designs of the Revenant, being energy manipulations / considerations, and legend swapping. The dodge mechanic has grown on me a bit, but it feels like another left over idea thrown into the pot.

Design philosophy: I wanted to find a niche area that the Revenant doesn't already cover, and basically it's combo fields. I also wanted to consider that It shouldn't feel too close to renegade "summons", nor too close to herald facets. Basically came up with an idea that sort of tied in a couple old ritualist ideas (not weapons or signets), and came up with urns that when dropped summon ghosts that the urn housed. - Players can hold 1 urn at a time, activating or swapping urns will cause the player to drop their current urn at their feet, releasing the ghost. Equipping an urn would have a cast time (maybe 3/4 seconds), dropping would be instant and doable while CCd. Players could hold 1 urn at a time, and it would only have an energy drain cost when you swap legends. Urns would not replace your weapon skills. When an urn is dropped, it creates a combo field dark. - Ghosts that are summons are autonomous, and would basically run around punching mobs. While a ghost is out, their Urn utility slot would become possess, an active that costs energy. Ghosts that are out drain the revenant's energy constantly at 2 pips per tick, the more out the stronger you become but for a shorter sustainable duration. Ghosts only dissipate back into their urns when the Revenant has run out of energy or swapped legends. Ghosts that are temporary (have a duration) would not have any particular interaction with other Ritualist skills (like possession), but wouldn't drain energy, and would still count towards any talent that is looking for a ghost. - Possession abilities would cost energy (5?), and when activated the ghost is no longer on the field (aka no more auto attacking from the ghost), but would still cause drain. Alternatively, could refund energy for every second it is possessing (rather than remove the energy drain, since it could cause issues with potentially building -11 energy drain). - New weapon would be a focus (like a memory tablet). While players are holding an urn, the focus skills gain an extra effect to reflect the ghost you are honoring. Talent selections: Most were designed with the core mechanics in mind being ghost quantity, Urn holding, focus interaction and supplementing core Revenant dps, healing, or condition capabilities. No specific numbers for things that may be difficulty to balance around (particularly between pve and pvp/wvw), other things would be easy to balance around by tweaking values (such as Anguished). Ghostly touch was added as an ability to have a source of CC (which I find on a Revenant kind of frustrating in general), the low chill duration would be because you could have a lot of ghosts at once stacking it up. For the last choice of talents, I wanted there to still be a benefit and maybe a desire to hold on to an Urn that would benefit your build. Master Togo: Gain access to focus weapons, and Urns. Troubled: Reduce focus cooldown by 20%. Your focus skills no longer cost energy, and instead restore 1 energy per active ghost. Miasma: Your possessions leave behind a combo field dark around the target for 3 seconds. Increase the effect of life steal effects you provide. Ghostly touch: Your ghosts' strikes apply 0.5 seconds of chill. Your focus 4 applies 1 second of daze. Take Form: Invoking a legend creates a ghostly version of that legend that performs an action before disappearing. - Shiro - sword 3, applies bleed on each hit - Jalis - shattering anvil strike: point blank AoE strike damage, removes protection from enemies. - Togo - Drop effect of your current urn, if not holding an urn or elite urn, summon an immobile ranged ghost that lasts for 7 seconds. - Ventari - AoE line attack stampede, starting behind the Revenant, and healing allies and damaging enemies it passes through. - Mallyx - Target AoE, dealing damage and torment to the initial target and chilling it and surrounding enemies. Ancestor's Rage: When you summon a ghost, heal yourself and provide 1 second of swiftness and quickness to your ghosts. Armor of unfeeling: Reduce damage received by 3% plus an additional 1% per active ghost, doubled for 3 seconds if disabled (45 second cooldown). Union: Gain 1% outgoing damage and 1% reduced incoming damage for each second you hold an urn, up to 10 stacks. Lose all stacks when you drop your urn. Spirit Light: Increase the effect of the Urn holding affects by 5% per active ghost (reduced for elite). Anguished: The hold effect of Mad was someone is always active (50% effectiveness). Your ghosts inflict torment per x strikes. Hateful: The hold effect of Unrelenting was someone is always active (50% effectiveness). Your ghosts gain a portion of your precision and ferocity. Generous: The hold effect of Merciful was someone is always active (50% effectiveness). Your ghosts restore life to targets around them per strike. Focus skills: Feast of Souls, Focus 4: 15 Second cooldown, 20 energy, 1 second AoE damage and healing pulse around yourself and each ghost (non stacking). Ghostmirror, Focus 5: 12 Second cooldown 10 energy, 2 second block. If you blocked an attack, reset the cooldown of all ghost attacks. Utility Skills: (I didn't even want to guess at how their original naming convention went for their urns, and so didn't want to attempt it) Utility 6: Hungry was someone. While holding: Steal life from targets, increased against targets that are weakened (0.5 second cooldown). While holding focus skill: Cripple and weaken your target (2 seconds). When dropped (active): Deal damage and cause weakness to all surrounding mobs, gain healing and 1 stack of might for each target effected. As a ghost (activate): Possess your target, causing the next 15 attacks against that target to steal life (.75 second cooldown per player). Ghost is gone during the duration. Utility 7: Mad was someone. While holding: Increase condition damage and expertise. While holding focus skill: Inflict 3 stacks of torment and confusion on your target. When dropped (active): Fear all surrounding mobs. As a ghost (activate): Possess your target, causing the target to suffer 1 stack of torment and confusion every second for the next 5 seconds. Ghost is gone during the duration Utility 8: Merciful was someone. While holding: Increase concentration and healing power. While holding focus skill: Heal and remove 1 condition from players around you. When dropped (active): Heal and apply regen and vigor to all surrounding players. As a ghost (activate): Possess a friendly target, healing them and removing 1 condition every second for 5 seconds. Ghost is gone during the duration. Utility 9: Unrelenting was someone. While holding: Gain power and ferocity. While holding focus skill: Grant yourself fury and might. When dropped (active): Deal AoE strike damage, break stuns and provide stability to surrounding players. As a ghost (activate): Possess yourself, breaking stuns, gaining 4 seconds stability and Resolution. Ghost is gone during the duration. Utility 10: Angry were someones. While holding: Increase the damage of your ghosts (modified by Spirit Light), reduce the cooldown of your ghost possessions by 20%. While in another legend: spawn 2 ghosts. While holding focus skill: Spawn an immobile ranged ghost that lasts 5 seconds. When dropped (active): Spawn 3 immobile ranged ghosts, each ghost has 1 energy pip drain. As a ghost (activate): Relocate your 3 ranged ghosts, dealing AoE damage where they are summoned and inflicting torment. While I don't really expect to ever see a ritualist in GW2, I'm still hopeful. They can have "new cantha" styled gear, which would still make the old ritualist gear from the BLTC "traditional".

Before anything else the dodge mechanic really needs to be addressed. It's really wonky to remove a core part of your survival and replace it with a core part of dps, it feels really bad to begin with. Also as a "jump" it should at least consider you being at the height of a normal jump during the animation, because terrain gets really wonky with it. Also why is it slower than a standard dodge roll? Why doesn't Energy Meld restore all of it so we can at least have a reactive oh no button? Everything about it just feels really clunky and like an afterthought.

Tried out quick herald and honestly it is terrible with 100% boon uptime. Your goal is to leave FoN up full time (no problem) but it is insanely picky about rotation, to the point where trying to swap legends to do damage and provide different buffs with FoN becomes a complete nightmare, even with full boon duration up I was constantly losing or almost losing quickness. And oh boy was my damage completely terrible (sorry party!). IMO, leave it on the same talent and have it pulse quickness as long as your energy regen is in the negatives. Makes choosing what to keep up and what to consume more interesting in the long run, makes the rotation not God awful, becomes less rigid which means I dont have to constantly stare are my cooldowns to make sure I don't miss one, so I can actually focus on mechanics. I'll give it a try again with a healing setup but I highly suspect the same issues are going to occur, it just wasn't designed with Revenant's core mechanic of swapping legends in mind at all.

If I was given 4 months to create a budget, with the intention of using that time to speak with our shareholders and customer base to determine needs, and then released a budget that didn't address any of those needs, following people finding an email that said that certain parts of the budget were designed around what I wanted personally, I'm pretty sure I would be fired immediately. This patch is wild. You were given areas to specifically deal with (Banners, spirits and class buffs that were outliers to what everyone else can apply), and then decided to do the bare minimum at the last minute to point at it and say "see, we did it." I don't even play warrior (my highest is 50s), but I was curious how bad the banners were now and holy hell, they should have just been removed entirely. Things that don't even make sense in a gaming standard (specifically like this), that I'm amazed anyone on the team working on this didn't speak up about: - 1 second buffs (both ranger and warrior). Seriously? Might as well not even be there. Oh but you can buff them by 50%, and then use concentration! Or, OR, hear me out, just play a class that does it better, easier. - changing banners from pick up to reduce cooldown into pickup to prevent you from doing anything while holding it so you can reposition it. Yikes, why? Was the 3 second quickness being able to be applied from a mildy shorter cooldown really a problem area here? Did anyone remember that it had changed away from that because of the problems it caused? But now it's back with even less. - speaking of quickness, any class that cannot, with full concentration or clever rotations, provide full uptime on alacrity and quickness are a complete waste of time. They won't be "supplementing" the classes that already can, because those classes don't need the help. Because they can already do it by themselves. See the problem here? The quickness add on to Herald and Warrior are pointless, other than to once again point at something and say "see, we did it." And you don't even have to buff them in compensation because now they bring one of the 2 most in demand buffs, right? Kind of. It isn't a communication problem, because I have a hard time imagining any reason anyone could defend any of these areas. Even just play testing them for 2 minutes they don't make sense.

Honestly with the new patch changes, most of the overall positive changes in it had nothing to do with what boons they provide, and everything else feels honestly quite terrible. So with that in mind, I can completely understand where OP is coming from. And where the absolute worst complaints are coming from always revolve around the same two: Quickness and Alacrity. When you have to balance each class by nerfing them to give them one of these 2 buffs (but how you adamantly have to have each class being able to provide them in one way or another), it says a lot about how negatively they impact the game. I Don't mind most of the other buffs because healers should have interesting buffs to provide since target healing isn't a thing. I don't mind dps builds have offensive buffs because it makes rotations more interesting than hit what's on cooldown. The biggest problem comes with what a massive impact quickness and alacrity have on the flow of the game, and it is horribly reflected in this upcoming patch. Honestly how much concentration would you run with those 2 buffs gone? How much more build diversity would exist if you didn't need to suck up 2 out of every 5 slots for these 2 buffs? Even if you give it to every class, there will be classes that just do it phenomenally better than others and so you go back to the bring the class not the player problem you were trying to avoid in the first place. You wanted people to have the ability to bring shared buffs so that people could work together to keep them up but that's not what happens now, or ever will because that is a gearing nightmare. If you want to make an impactful and positive effect on the game, it starts by reviewing how these 2 buffs affect every weapon and utility, balancing around how you want them to feel as a result and remove these 2 buffs from the game (they practically already do this with the differences between pvp and pve). Then you could make meaningful class balance at a very controlled and tuned level. If you can get rid of repair costs, and then repairing altogether because it didn't have a positive feel for the game, this should be your next big target.

I picked up heart of thorns when it went on sale, after not playing the game for years. By the time I was playing, I was missing all of LS2 and half of LS3. Ended up spending real money to pick both of them up. And here's the part where most people go "Well if I had to pay for it, other people should to." But it's such a garbage mentality. Being a veteran, and either getting it for free when it comes out, or buying it because you weren't around when it did, doesn't give you some bizarre authority to want everyone else to not be allowed to enjoy the same game. It's WoW all over again when they reduced the price of mounts from the base game and everyone had this "but if I had to suffer for it, everyone else should." Just because it's a part of the game now, doesn't make it a good thing. It was said that they would need to find a way to make up "lost revenue" if living seasons became free, but it already IS lost revenue because people won't buy expansions knowing that they don't get the entire story when they do. Which means they also don't play the game, so they don't spend money on either the expansions, or the stuff in the market that would also make them money. There is loads of stuff there that I see people flaunting constantly, so you can't say that it isn't making them money. I think they have an opportunity to pull in hesitant buyers if they were like "Preorder the new expansion, and all previous Living Season content comes with it". Still has a price tag if you don't log on during the event, makes every expansion a chance to catch up, but you still want to actively participate because otherwise you end up waiting until the next expansion to get all of the story, unless you are impatient and want to pay for it. Preorder incentives are a big deal; you get that impulse buy that might otherwise become an on sale purchase. Even on sale the people I show the game to mostly dismiss it because they hate the idea that story content that was free to the player base has a price tag. They won't support the game because of it. I agree with the original post (obviously), as this is a perfect time to get a large amount of publicity (and sales) by bringing in NEW players.

I know it's super early to bring this up but hopefully it will get consideration before expansion options are released. What I hate hearing from other people about this game is "It looks great but I don't want to have to pay extra for all the living season content". A new expansion would be a perfect time to have a New / Returning player edition, something like the Digital Deluxe, but instead of gems gives you all previous living season content. I get the irony of still paying more for an edition to get content you didn't want to pay for, but it provides a very direct, understandable bundle that would cheaper than getting the individual living season content, specially for new players who have 4 living seasons worth of content they need to collect.