Arewn.2368

It's a shame the game doesn't cater to the particular role or playstyle you most enjoy. I main tank whenever it is available in games, and that role is even more dead than support is in gw2. So I feel you there. A game can only cater to so many things though. Like I said, I already agree there's too many boons and that they should move away from 100% uptime. My suggestion was to entirely remove two of the boons. And of the many remaining boons, only 2 should be treated as 100% uptime/maintenance boons, with specific reasoning on why. All other boons would be used on an as-needed basis instead of maintained at all times. I didn't explicitly state it, but in my mind this would also revitalize the healer role. A party would have a 3x damage dealers, 1x boon support/buffer, and 1x true healer. And as they currently do, all roles would have the ability to bring and contribute utility such as reflect, portals, SS, etc

It's fine if it is not desireable to you. There's 6 dps slots in a group you can fill instead. Other people enjoy it though, so there is value having it in the game. While 100% uptime can make things superfluous, it can also have other functions. In this case it enables consistent value for a "buffer" role/playstyle. Might and fury are ideal candidates for this because they are universally valuable, but don't fundamentally modify gameplay or the pace of combat (as alacrity and quickness do). Furthermore they aren't needed as a "timed" buff. The concept of a burst window is already mechanically accounted for by Defiance and the exposed debuff. So might and fury do not need to be reserved for this function. Even if you did want another buff for this purpose, quickness or alacrity could be reintroduced to fulfill this function. On the other hand, they do need to be careful to ensure buffs such as protection, resistance, and superspeed cannot be maintained with 100% uptime. These should be utilized as a form of "group cooldown" that is applied with precise timing to deal with specific situations. Like you said, if something is expected to be "on" all the time, it can become superfluous. It just sets a new baseline and stops having value as a game mechanic.

The playstyle of consistently applying buffs is appreciable and should stay. But this can be achieved through might and fury. Alacrity and quickness becoming a part of the meta was a mistake, one that I don't think arena net even intended. They just rolled with what the player base was making. They should remove alacrity and quickness as boons entirely. Reintroduced them sparingly as short during, never shareable, unique buffs. This would of course need to be followed by an across the board update to skill speed and cooldowns of all skills. Alacrity and quickness, especially in combination, significantly modify the pace of combat. This is not the type of effect that should be maintained with 100% uptime. For experienced players whi become accustomed tonhaving them, the game feels sluggish and bad in situations where they arent maitained (e.g. solo play). For new players who spend the majority of their play time without these buffs, it causes an unnecessary steepening of the learning curve. They learn the game, get accustomed to the timings and muscle memory while leveling and doing the story or open world events. Then When they enter end-game group play the pacing changes and everything feels frantic and fast. This is actually one of the sources of the accessibility issue for content like raids/strikes. If they are expected to be maintained at 100% uptime then it's just a new baseline anyways. So get rid of them as boons and utilize them as personal short term effects. You don't need them to be shareable as a group cool down for burst windows. You already have the exposed mechanic. You don't need them as consistently applied buffs for a 'buffer' play-style. You already have might and fury. You don't need them to attain the desired pace of combat. You can just balance skills that way in the first place. Removing alacrity and quickness would also lower the far-too-large potential performance gap between experience and new players/groups. It also makes players less dependant on staying 'on stack', which would be nice. The current implementation of alacrity and quickness is an active detriment to the game's balance with no notable advantages.

Probably HoT. New age of content that brought with it the especs. The increased challenge was appreciated. The metas were fun. And I enjoy raiding. Vanilla had it's charm, but ultimately lacked things to do. There was no meaningful content to challenge, and I remember feeling like "well I could gear up and try to make a cool build, but what's the point when there's nothing to apply it against". PoF was solid too, though lacked good map metas. Mounts were great. Nice to get more elite specs to round out the system. Though maybe just less exciting because it wasn't as fundamental of a change as Hot. EoD has been good but I'm currently a bit jaded at it (pun intended). The seasons never really stood out to me as distinct eras. Which i guess makes sense since it is typically the expansion features that defined the era.

Nah guys I figured it out. This is really good design. The new Well of Action has a perfect use-case, it'll see tons of play. You can use it as the start signal for a foot race! 3...2...1... super speed. Someone cheats and leaves early? They miss out on the super speed. Truly perfect. Great design on this skill. Hats off to you Anet! In all seriousness, the final pulse mechanic is dysfunctional as implemented. If they really want to hang on to it, they should change Wells to be like Gyros (which are now Wells anyways) and stay centered on the Mesmer.

We don't need a lot of perspectives here. A lot of perspectives and myriad suggestions have been given for years. It's all there, ready for the devs consideration. And nothing to show for it. What we need for warrior is one perspective. Just one. One developer on the the design team with an actual vision on what warrior should do. Any vision. At this point I dont care what feedback they listen to. They just need one guy on the team with a vision for warrior, and that will accordingly make comprehensive, well implemented, sensible changes to the profession to achieve that vision. Anything is better then the whack-a-mole mess of 'who cares' development they have now.

Warriors were already struggling to keep up and heavily dependant on the unique banner buffs to remain desireable. They removed those buffs and put the compensation for that in an unused trait line, not only killing any desirability for warriors in group play, but also nerfing their already middling damage in the process. Removing unique banner buffs is a good idea. But they poorly executed it and completely shafted warriors in the process. The crit trait is just one element of that.

Many changes were out of touch. Some classes got outright shafted. And even leaving that aside the scope of the patch was smaller then expected. It took a very long time to happen, and yet the changes were relatively few and tended to be simplistic. Rather then the in-depth revamps that were expected. Throw on top of that some leaked dev convos.... and yeah. People are frustrated.

Well... at least we have that going for us. /s

I'm afraid to ask but... Do you get animation locked when you pick up a banner?

I understand the need to follow up a big controversy like this with a damage control post. And it's good to attempt to communicate with the community. But the lack of dev notes is not the problem. This is completely sidelining the actual discussion. We're not dumb. We don't need the developers to hold our hands and explain what the patch notes mean. Nor will notifying us of the intent behind the changes modify what those changes actually are. It's nice to hear about the developer's design intent with changes, but most games don't do this and it's a complete non-issue there. It's also a non-issue here. We don't need an explanation to understand what the patch notes mean. And your explanation of what your intent is with the changes doesn't fix the problems with them. No point delaying the patch. Release it, then follow up with something better. While woefully inadequate, it at least gets the ball rolling on some things. And then get someone to actually take the lead on class design and profession balance. You need a concrete vision of what balance and group dynamics look like in your game, and then shape it to achieve that vision. Stop being led by the nose by the player base and constantly playing this reactionary game of balance whack-a-mole. Why do we have something as nonsensical as a meta where you maintain 100% uptime on quickness and alacrity? Because it was thoughtlessly added to the game, changed into a boon, and allowed to be shared to the whole party. Players then did what players do. Optimized, and made groups comps that indefinitely maintain these buffs group-wide. Then instead having an actual vision for balance and shaping the game accordingly, you chased after what the player base cobbled together and ended up with this mess of a meta.

We've already lived through the alternative and it was worse. Classes had unique benefits. Groups required that benefit to function. So only that one class was played. Not just because it was optimal. But because it was literally the only option. In real practical terms, we have definitely seen more diversity in options since they started extending these "unique" capabilities to multiple specs. You also have to consider the fact that they are adding 9 new specs each xpac. So of course the available toolkits are going to have to be spread out to these new specs. They aren't going to add half a dozen new unique boons or stat increasing effects each xpac so that the new and old specs are "technically" still unique. That would be pretty absurd. Edit: I am in no way defending this patch by stating the above. It remains an incredible disappointment.

Banner changes are a joke. They just slapped some boons on them and called it a day. Can hardly even call this a rework. I also find it mind-boggling that they could create a quickness build for warrior and STILL not change the arms GM trait "Dual Wield".

Very luke-warm patch notes. Was expecting something far more extensive across all classes given the state of many weapons, skills, and traits across the game. Especially considering how incredibly long it took to release these changes.

This better be the biggest kitten balance patch they've ever released. There hasn't been a major profession balance patch in over a year. And that's with an expansion release that added 9 new specs (which is mind boggling). We're long over due, every profession has several areas that need addressing. Whether that be severely out dated weapon design, dysfunctional trait lines, or underwhelming profession mechanics.

I can only imagine that nerfing quickness to 33% would almost cetainly be accompanied by a blanket change to all abilities increasing their speed by 17%. As such the change would be neutral in terms of overall balance, but would shift some of the power away from the boon and into your baseline strength.

I don't think the potency of quickness is really the problem here. As other have pointed out, it's more or less in line with other boons. The bigger problem is the effect it has on gameplay. The pace of combat dramatically shifts based on whether or not you have the boon. The fact that your build plays so differently in or out of a situations where you are being provided 100% quickness isn't healthy for the game. You feel sluggish without it. And it increases the learning curve for new players.

I often get the impression that they design armor and weapons more so as "pieces of art" rather then as actual armour or weapons. It sometimes reminds me of the wierd things you'd see walking down a fashion runway, or displayed at an art gallery. Which is unfortunate. Im not questioning the quality of the pieces, because there's clearly talent behind the designs. But it caters to a very niche taste, and it's a taste that is so unrelated to the combat focused fantasy RPG that this is. Creative license is one thing, but this isn't an art exhibit.

Most things in GW2 will just passively accrue until you get them without much explicit effort. I felt the same way about the PvE legendary armour as you do about the WvW armour. I just showed up to raid each week with my static and did the map metas a few times a week. Now I have 2 sets complete and enough mats that I could finish the last set if I wanted to. I don't really use medium armor characters though so haven't bothered, plus I'm sitting on a trove of ascended gear at this point. I get where the OP is coming from though. If you're not taking the passive/over-time/just play-normally-til-you-get-it route, it's a mountain of a task.

Oops I mistakenly thought HoT and PoF were sold separately. In any case, they need to review and probably simplify how the games content is purchased. "But it's cheap!" doesn't really address the issue with the model. The simplest/most intuitive way would have been to package Expansions with Seasons. Keep in mind this needs to be thought of from a returning/new player perspective.

The payment model for the seasons has always been wierd. It's free if you login while it's current. But then if you're new and trying to get into the game you get hit by a pay wall. Not only having to buy the game and it's expansions, but also having to buy seasons that no one else had to pay for when they first came out. Like.. what? Just why. Season 2 should be free. Season 3 should come with HoT Season 4 should come with PoF You're just making it harder for people to get into the game. They're already paying for the expansions. And the game has the gem store as it's primary revenue stream. People in this thread sitting here acting like these things weren't free to begin with lol if anything it backwards, you should have to buy the seasons when they come out, and anet should be making them free as they age.

HoT: nice greenery PoF: where's the greenery EoD: too much green

Elite signets are kind of boring, and most classes dont have one anyways. So i feel like you coud remove that as a category altogether. Rage could be turned into a stance. Moa into a mantra (or 'reverse' phatasm?) Courage into a consecration Then that would just leave one more elite needed for each class. On the flip side, revenant should get a set of signet utility skills that are shared aross all legends.

I'd actually l love to see them revist the base professions next. Elevate them to elite spec status. Of course that would take some pretty big revamps, but i'd like to play just a warrior, or just a mesmer again.

Not sure that I agree that mesmer are all that powerful. Is mesmer magic useful? Certainly. Buy I don't think it's particularly above other magics just because it has some interesting use cases. The mesmer feats aren't that great when you dig into them either. Xera was roided up on bloodstone magic. Jenna and Anise collaborated to make a gig projection. Kasmeer in particular strikes me as one of the weaker members of DW. She's mostly a portal bot, doing many of the same things nameless npcs do.