VeriBeri.9528

Exactly my thoughts. Can we finally have a balance lead, that actually knows what "balance" means? We have tons of underperforming specs, and he keeps AdJuStInG the same few, based on stupid idea of snowcrows benchmarks, instead of actual usability in game. About time there was a PvE balance lead, that actually plays PvE, and understands how it works, instead of running everything over with a bulldozer, so the numbers look even. Also, leave mirage alone. No one plays it anyway, let the remaining 5 people have some fun at least.

My goodness, look how "friendly" you are, calling people tryhards in every post, just because they can play the game well, and you don't. I don't see how other people's skill is the reason to insult them, because you crawl through 10 year old content with zero knowledge, to later complain it takes too long. Quite a feat, to be both condescending, and ignorant at the same time. Part of me wishes you are trolling with the theory about game's difficulty, judged by amount of deaths per hour.

I might have been living under a rock, because I don't see that many people playing dps firebrands, for how overpowered it's supposed to be. Tbh, I think most players don't obsessively keep track of benchmarks, but might just be me. Only a fraction of encounters allow to pull that off, and then only a fraction of players are eager enough to waste hours, practicing the perfect rotation on golem. Game shouldn't be balanced around golem dps. Firebrand gets nerfed every single patch this past year, because qfb is too versatile. How about a simple trait "your skills now give quickness, but you deal 50% less dmg"? Wouldn't necessarily kill the entire spec, and would get the job done. About the 50% alac nerf to mirage, that is viable on maybe 2 bosses? I guess I also missed how overpowered it is, because a person on youtube did good dps on golem. Can't verify myself, because I don't remember the last time I saw anyone playing it, not to mention doing notable dps. Just like chrono. Can't wait for June patch, to maybe see the downfall of virtuoso, so mesmer can go back to being completely unplayable, and I can ditch this game for good. I honestly admire this "balance team" for consistently making changes no one asked for, while ignoring all the feedback. I especially dislike bringing all specs to the same level, killing their unique playstyles for the sake of easier nerfs, and forcing all specs to perform equally on all encounters. Current meta of 2 healers + 2 supports is boring af. This is the exact opposite of what GW2 was supposed to be, and I don't understand what brings people so much joy in nerfing everything to the point of no return. Community should expect improvements, not nerfs, because nerfs make people quit the game you care so much about. I guess that was my point.

Mesmer balance as usual: done by a person, who doesn't even play the class in PvE environment, and doesn't care that 2 out of 3 specs are pretty much dead. Chrono is bad in every single way, except raid tank. It's painful to play, it's not a good support, and as a dps, it doesn't even come close to any other power spec. Time Warp is one of the the worst skills in the game, with its ridiculous cooldown to boon ratio. Only quick chrono would ever use that crap, and you didn't even bother reducing its cooldown in PvE. Also, adding superspeed to a stationary ground effect, is just *chefs kiss*, now the spec is gonna pop off to the moon. Adding complexity to the gameplay, by making people decide if they wanna stand faster, or run away from boons. The way wells work, will never make chrono a good support anyway, because people DON'T STAND IN THEM. Make them mobile, or at least apply boons instantly, like specter wells. Let's not pretend chrono is ever going to be viable in PvE in the current state. Regarding mantra changes: no one is using mantras in PvE, because they are just bad, and now, no one is going to use them even harder. Add a cast time to a weak skill, and you get a waste of space, not worth equipping at all. Pretty sad to see, that the new balance team is mostly focusing on WvW and PvP, treating PvE like it's an inferior game mode, and acting like adjusting the dmg values by 0.1 is solving all the problems for underpowered specs.

Have you ever even played firebrand in endgame content like raids or fractal CMs? Barely matters, as in I'm using all tomes off cooldown all the time, to keep people alive and add a bit to the dps. If anything, nerfs usually happens because of PvP related issues, not the other way around.

This dev team literally took clones from mesmers by adding Virtuoso. I can only assume they want to bring everything to the skill and "fun" level of power mech. Worst expansion so far and worst "balance" I've seen.

As always, making every interesting spec as dull as possible. Firebrand had at least *some* complexity thanks to tomes, and now you want to take it away. Cfb is already niche, because who is going to choose a melee spec over 1200 range virtuoso, with better dps anyway? The only played spec lately was Qfb, thanks to the utility it brings, and now you wanna kill it too. I know you hate complexity, and rifle mech is perfectly balanced, as we clearly see, but nerfing every interesting class to the point of uselessness is not the way to make your game successful. I mostly enjoy playing Hfb, as it is the only healer that actually doesn't lack utility, and now you gotta ruin it too. I can't even imagine pages regenerating over time as a healer, "oops, can't reflect right now, because I healed someone 3 seconds ago" lol. Just give other classes more utility, instead of slowly taking everything away from firebrands. You already took away aegis on mantra (why only in Pve I wonder), now you're going to provide even more protection on tome 3 page 1 (that no one will ever use) instead of stability. Stop nerfing good specs, because you can't balance the worse ones. There is absolutely no reason to take away support options in PvE, as it was the only reason firebrands were chosen at all, and nerfing this spec to the ground won't make other lacking supports better. Playing Ham and Druid is an abysmal experience, never even tried Ele, as I'm not interested in learning 50 skill combinations. Hfb is the only pleasant support in this game, and that's why it's so popular. It's just not obnoxious to play. It's not overperforming, it's not underperforming. Glad you addressed power mech by doing absolutely nothing, except for a minor inconvenience by having to manually position the bot. The spec played by 80% of players, and doing more damage than anyone is fine, it's the firebrand and its tomes that is the problem with balance in the game.

Honestly, I can see that you answered to my post, but I don't think you paid attention while reading it, or just cut the parts that suit you. Can't see how are those answers relevant to anything I've said. My main point was to rebalance the whole pip thing, to make it faster, and for example add more skirmish tickets at the end of the week, if you actually played actively. So, more tickets for X amount of claimed/defended objectives, bigger objectives = more tickets. That would give players a reason to win, and have more strategic approach, not just run around with 50 people, flipping camps for participation. I don't see how would that hurt anyone, except those, who want to gatekeep others from getting legendary armor. More people having legendaries makes no difference to you, but can make all the difference to said people. Don't forget it's just a game, and not everyone has the luxury to get into organized full clear raid every week, so WvW being time flexible is the next best guess, as the legendary armor is the ONLY endgame reward this game has to offer. Just, committing average 15h a week for half a year to get it, is a bit much. You might call WvW endgame, but in reality it's as much endgame, as open world content - people run around in toughness gear, tag everything, get some loot bags, and that's it. The difference is, in open world you get rewards based on type of event - in WvW you get same rewards, whether you captured 10 castles and 20 keeps, or tagged 1 person and went afk for 8 minutes. If people enjoy it, cool, but to me it's a mindless grind, similar to Halloween Labyrinth, just with a useless time gated reward mechanic. You can't "just play" to get legendary armor in WvW, because even if you play ~1h a day, you won't get tickets for anything, except maybe ascended.

Came to this forum, to check if restructuring changes will affect skirmish tickets, but seeing this thread, I'm guessing it's not going to happen. Last year I decided to try and make WvW armor, got 2 legendary pieces and 1 ascended, before I got so burnt out, that I had to quit the game entirely for several months. I wanted to get back to it now, but I don't think I will, because I just counted, and still have 5k tickets (14 weeks of this part time job) to grind. This is beyond ridiculous, to expect a player to commit 13-18h a week to a single game mode, when the average person can game 2-3h a day. That means, they won't be able to do anything else, except grinding TIME for skirmish tickets. Meanwhile, full clear of raids takes 4-5 hours per week. Even if I enjoyed WvW that much, it's just not the way it should be. Time shouldn't be a factor for a pvp based reward, so why not make it scale with actual activities, or something that makes sense? People who mainly play WvW, will still sink hours into it, while others, interested mostly in legendary armor, won't have to. Before someone answers, that I should go get my armor in raids: yeah, I am, it's just a shame, that raids require a group of 10 people organized on a specific date and time, and that's why I wanted something less obliging, but looks like I'm never going to finish this one after all. The worst part of this thread, are people not wanting anything to change, because they've suffered already, or they enjoy playing the game mode, so it's no difference to them. That's just one point of view, but as clearly visible, there is plenty of people unhappy about it. Games are made to be rewarding and enjoyable, not to count minutes until freedom. Why not make things better, instead of gatekeeping? Legendary armor was added, when there were only 4 raid wings, now there is more, and strike missions, while WvW rewards are left untouched. I actually think that everyone, who spent their tickets on legendary armor, should be compensated. Refunding their tickets, to spend on new skins, or legendary WvW weapon should be better, than vain pride over wasted time. This is a really bad game design, and I don't understand defending it.

I am a returning player, back to GW2 after nearly 6 years, happily bought all the expansions, thinking how cool all the new content is, and how fun the new mesmer specs must be. Mesmer was my first character right at the launch, and it was my main ever since. So, after playing for about a month and catching up on all the content, I decided to check what's the current best build. First thing that caught my attention: there's almost no recent results, only old threads, sometimes updated to say it's been "slightly nerfed". Things that came up: "its like any other power build but with hard mode turned on, more effort same reward", "1) youre already pulling a weird by bringing mesmer to fracs2) power chrono and condi mirage are only ‘really good’ when your group is bad/pug". From the discretize site "The Power Chronomancer is the strongest (and only) build for Mesmer in fractals. (...) To succeed as a Power Chronomancer in higher-end groups you'll need to be able to adapt your rotation on the go and push the limits of your class, but even then you will probably be a hinderance for your group". So I'm basically stuck with one build, which is not very good at all? Needless to say, my initial excitement is completely gone. Seeing how the new elite spec is even worse than previous two, I don't know if I want to keep playing. Mesmer has been almost extinct in pve and wvw for few years now, and none of the devs actually feel like they are ruining the only unique class in their game? Why, because it's too complicated to balance, so just nerf it to the ground, so no one plays it anymore? What's the point of tryharding through sweat and tears, to play the squishy, underpowered class, with no passive damage increases, and no weapon variety, to barely catch up with everyone? Everything except sword is trash dps, so yeah, there are 2 new specs with 2 new weapons, too bad I have to sit on the same boring weapon, that I had to camp 7 years ago (but now with ruined Phantasmal Warden that never moves to the target!). This is just sad, and completely ruined the game experience for me, because I'm not going to switch classes, just to enjoy pve content without being a hinderance. I know there's salt in this post, but I come from times when the meta was 4 warriors and a mesmer, who provided nice burst, utility, cc, and support for everyone to sit back and spin to win. Now every single class has the same utility, more damage, cc, and better support. I don't see any nerfs being done to warrior though, still does 20k dps with two buttons. I came back, because I like playing mesmer, and the only thing I can now properly do, is to join champ train (although not nearly as efficiently as other classes). Seriously, what is the balance team thinking about all this? Are there plans to buff and rebalance anything, or they're just going to throw in the Virtuoso, and tell mesmers, that they get what they deserve?