Swagg.9236

I actually wish that all damage in this game scaled based on range to target; in all cases, it would be better if up-close damage hit a maximum value while long-range damage fell off toward a minimum value. At least that way, you would have the opportunity to apply long-range pressure, but burst would always need to occur within melee range; it incentivizes activity at risky ranges, which in turn drives interactions rather than encouraging off-screen sneak-attacks. Then again, teleports unfortunately exist and they already circumvent the risk of approaching or escaping a target, so even something like that might not be a good way to fix anything without considering a holistic redesign of how combat resolves.

If you ask me, it be WAY better if all the weapons shared the same, basic, low-impact auto-attack across all weapon types (i.e. every staff basically either had a single, generic melee attack or a Fireball-esque ranged attack). Auto-attacks are filler; they shouldn't consistently determine how combat resolves. If somebody found a way to stack up effects onto a single auto-attack instance for a huge hit, then that's a bit difference (since it involves investment and a bit of risk), but ultimately, there's no reason why this game even needs to have auto-attacks at all. You could easily just give every weapon a couple of good attacks with high cast-times, short-cooldowns and maybe some resource mechanic to balance them. Auto-attacks, as they are now, are far too oppressive to warrant their spammability; and honestly, if you neuter them, it's questionable why they would even exist at all that point. There's basically no middle ground. It'd be better if they just didn't exist (or at the very least, didn't take up a skill-bar slot). I wouldn't mind the rest of your hypothetical weapon bar, though.

"How about when when FB was nerfed and DH was buffed did all those symbolbrands stay in FB?" This line right here is your biggest fault. You say "stay in FB" as if the spec itself is what primarily governs player effectiveness in PvP; therefore you, by doing so, help make MY OWN ARGUMENT about how using an out-of-combat menu is the principle measuring stick of "player skill" within the active elements of GW2 PvP. If your game's combat paradigms are so brutally wrenched left and right by mere patch notes, how can you argue that this game really provides any space for player agency? What room is there for creativity if you yourself are going to so blatantly hold up patch notes as the reason why people abandoned an entire spec (or at the very least, a supposed major aspect of an entire spec)? And what does that say about the players themselves--the people who establish and propagate the GW2 PvP metagame? If they're so willing to just go along with the patch notes and shift into some other set of passive bonuses to achieve the same, prior goals, maybe they are afraid of change? Maybe they're satisfied with being told how to play by some faceless developer? Maybe they don't want to imagine what it would be like if they had the power to use aggression and creativity in order to surprise somebody with a different way to use the same skill that they had just used a brief moment ago? I was starting to write a novel to reply. If that other guy replies again, maybe I'll let him read it, but suffice to say, you don't need time to see what GW2 gameplay is at its core. Moreover, there is a fundamental issue with the "You have to play X for Y hours in order to truly understand/appreciate/have fun with Z" argument. You're going to lose players; and the ones you retain have probably already been there for a long time because they don't feel like moving on or exploring different frontiers. The people who have played GW2 for ages rely on a façade: the game's own esoteric obfuscation of combat with instant abilities and passive triggers that make it seem like combat is more than players following a rotation.

Had to step out for a week on work, but I wanted to continue this conversation a bit. I did have a chance to play the beta specs for a bit on Tuesday and shortly on Friday, and it was kind of just as I had assumed/feared on both a gameplay and a community response level. A few of the biggest glaring issues: - The builds I ended up formulating for "effective" use of the new specs generally never considered the new weapons. - The three new specs are extremely similar: crash into a target with a stream of skills hoping to down it before they get focused (which, honestly, could define the rest of GW2 PvP). They really bring no new mechanics or perspectives to the table; only a different color of the same flavor. - The seams are beginning to show and split amid conversation in the PvP lobby. As anecdotal as it is, I think it's interesting to note how a number of people are outright dismissing the specs; and, by the end of the week, ranked PvP had effectively voided itself of all new spec presence (with a number of cases in which players using the old builds telling people with beta specs to change class). It really demonstrates the one-dimensionality of GW2 as a PvP medium. There's no point to change anything or try anything new if it's not going to be just a clear, direct upgrade. - Made a healer build for the Willbender (which ended up being just the typical "healer" weapons and traits for regular guardian specs except with the Willbender line for extra movement). One of the hilarious aspects was that the Willbender adept traits are SO BAD for healing, that I legit just went into PvP foregoing those three options entirely, and the build still accomplished what I intended. Then, after explaining it to someone, I had somebody else tell me I was playing the game wrong despite achieving my goal. So, the above is all very anecdotal, but it seems to show Anet as willing to continue the trend that they've (perhaps justifiably) built for themselves. I want to say this as non-judgmentally as possible because I don't intend to insult anybody with a comment but rather just get across a point about the kind of game that GW2 has apparently always been (or at least the one which it has become): GW2 (especially its PvP) is a very low-energy, low-population scene because most people who play video games are too good for GW2 (and therefore, don't play it), and the people who keep playing consistently (i.e. they take GW2 seriously at its face value) are satisfied with (or fooled by) low-effort (yet artificially protracted) interactions masquerading as complex systems. Anet has built their altar to mediocrity, and it certainly has its cult; which is why I don't think anything will ever change: it's not just a matter of how the developer is pumping out the same product ad nauseum, but there's now also the playerbase dimension of this product line which actively encourages and consumes it. Beyond just the playerbase's mentality however, there's also the case of how most of the original dev staff has basically scrubbed their resumes of this game when they jumped ship (or were fired) early on in the game's lifespan (probably best push-pinned to around 2011-2013). After all, there's probably a good reason why it took Anet N I N E Y E A R S to bring GW2 up from D I R E C T X 9 (9) (NINE) to JUST DIRECTX11 (something not even slated until later this year apparently); most likely the case is that they have no staff left who can untangle the bird's nest of code without breaking things (evidenced in things like the Deadeye hitbox glitch when that class got introduced or the current instance of the weaver barrier bug). It's not only pathetic, but it also shows that nobody within the developer staff either knows how to overhaul the engine or is willing to put in the work to do so. That, more than anything else, really stagnates this game into the forumla that it has relied on since 2014.

No gameplay will change. Why is a random sprinkle of impotence any better than literally nothing? All of your buttons are still doing exactly the same thing as before; just some are doing less numbers. Nothing is changing.

And now every "good" build just plays like cele ele. Anet dev team always bringing what the GW2 playerbase demands: catering to the lowest common denominator.

Yes, I think the biggest hurdle isn't even actually implementing any sort of ideas anymore but rather whether or not anybody would support a change that would up-end the excessive simplicity of GW2 from beneath the playerbase that now ardently expects it. GW2, clearly even during its early developmental era, was certainly more on a path of flavor and style over substance. The Thief is still probably one of the biggest pieces of evidence: a class that doesn't fit in with any others in the game, operating on an entirely different combat paradigm compared to everything else; consistently either extremely overpowered or impotent depending on the state of the metagame; probably developed more as a showcase for a marketable gimmick (stealth) than with a purpose within a holistic array of roles (particularly because of how easily it is replaced by other classes/builds that basically just do what it does nowadays). This isn't to criticize Thief on its own respective design (initiative still allows for probably the most creativity in playstyles for the game), but it demonstrates how Anet probably just drafted up a bunch of professions willy-nilly and grab-bagged the final product rather than truly using any sort of foresight to craft an emergent system from disparate elements. The released product was fundamentally flawed. Even in its early stages, it was fraught with bloat (I'm sure people probably still remember the staff ele PvE DPS meta). Yet, at the same time, the fact that the early game's clear trend toward auto-attack metas in PvE (like, straight up, the Warrior DPS rotation was auto-attacking with axe mainhand) was kind of the point at which the game could have been saved from mediocrity. If you ask me, had anet leaned into movement, positioning and timing as the thing to build player skill in the game (more fights like the Molten Duo for instance) rather than buffing/nerfing already existing skills, we might have seen the opportunity for more emergent gameplay to form. However, the condition update and HoT effectively killed any sort of hope for that reality. If you ask me, GW2 is doomed to a claustrophobic skill ceiling for the rest of its lifespan. Nobody expects complexity, and in fact, they will aggressively argue against its implementation. You'll never see people band together and say something like "You know, what, yeah, just make a single, compressed weapon set out of Elementalist scepter/dagger MH/dagger OH/sword" (because not only could anybody do this, but it'd be a super fun weapon set with a lot of crazy abilities). Instead, the GW2 playerbase will argue to the death that Warrior mace OH deserves to exist despite it contributing absolutely nothing to any gameplay interactions; also that, instead of compressing and culling, [Tremor] should just deal 11k if it hits so that it can finally be "good" (or something silly along those lines). Edit: I also understand that I'm getting pretty vitriolic by this point, but it's just the way things get with this playerbase. I don't think the people who take this game seriously at any level truly grasp how little they understand about this game's design and fundamental problems when they constantly screech about "balance" this and "balance" that. This game is beyond balance. It needs to be FIXED, however, considering the sort of work that this game needs in order to develop a complex PvE/PvP paradigm, it'd almost certainly be easier to just make an entirely different game.

I've never seen anybody adopt this sort of mindset before with regards to GW2's holistic design philosophy (if one even really exists anymore), and I think it boils down to that key word: emergence. GW2 doesn't really feature any sort of emergent gameplay whatsoever; all of the potential is trapped within the sum of the game's parts. There are so many dead-end mechanics that either have no synergy with each other, or stash all of their synergy with other isolated, incongruent gimmicks like a single trait. Combat in GW2 constantly comes down to a simple numbers game--patch release to patch release--to determine the metagame's top dogs rather than somebody accidentally discovering some engine quirk or a handful of people just pushing an singular system element to an extreme that nobody thought viable. Incongruency is probably the biggest sin of GW2's design. It's the reason why the game has so much bloat, and it's the reason why elite specializations were probably the final nail in this game's coffin when it comes to innovative design and player-participation in emergent gameplay. Elite Specs DO NOT build off of any sort of universal skill floor. Everyone is so excited about new ones coming out, but the question should be: "How do my skills as a Guardian transfer into playing Willbender?" The answer is that they DO NOT in any form whatsoever. GW2's metagame (particularly in PvP) is a constant demonstration of the Galapagos Effect: everything is so incongruent with other elements of gameplay, that it's like every build is just trapped on its own little archipelago. This is why new Elite Spec drops tend to either be completely worthless or entirely overbearing on the current gameplay ecosystem. Due to the innate isolation of all gameplay elements in GW2, any new additions are going to compete with them in a binary "It's better or it's worse" paradigm. There is no natural development or emergent identity to come from any sort of interaction between new and old content. To sum up my thoughts of GW2 after playing it for so long, I've developed a few truths about this game: - It never needed more than 3 classes (and that's a shame because I enjoyed playing nearly all of them consistently in GW1). - It always needed drastically less skills per build; refocus roles by culling the homogenous versatility featured in every single "good" GW2 build (even removing the weapon swap is on the table for this if you ask me). - Traits were a mistake (they just cloud combat legibility with passive effects; makes combat an esoteric experience that has to be parsed by new players via JUST READING mountains of tool tips or third-party sites rather than just playing the game). - GW2 has always desperately needed a way for players to create or modify content (particularly for PvP). If this playerbase had access to a map editor and some assets, there probably would have been dozens of different decent maps by now, a good handful of fun meme maps, and potentially even some outright new modes which could have seen more success that 3-point conquest. - GW2 definitely needed to find a way to make WASD matter in combat; relying on movement scripts (often tied to attacks) was one of the fastest ways to kill emergent gameplay.

To be brief since I kind of wanted to read some of the new stuff in this thread, yes, less is more, but it can't be left out in a vacuum; "less is more" is true within the context of interacting systems present in GW2. GW2 doesn't feature a lot of unique or role-defining mechanics, therefore, each class has A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF OVERLAP when it comes to what any single one of them can contribute to a party. This is why we have such rabid competition and number crunching when it comes to questions like "What is the best DPS, Support, etc in raids": all the classes kind of do the same thing, so people get extra feisty about their preferences because they are mostly grounded in flavor rather than function or playstyle. It means that people's intentions, efforts and opinions are easily invalidated by cold, unfeeling calculations based entirely on patch note releases. There is no room for creativity or expression in GW2 because it's smothered by incongruent bloat. GW2 IS TOO SHALLOW to support 9 classes with 20-30 buttons per bar. Eighty percent of this game's skills all roughly do the same thing. There is no justifiable reason for this game to feature so many active (and especially passive) options. If anything, you would see an emergence of true roles, draw-backs and playstyles if you just culled the game down to 3 classes, each with a flexible skill bar of maybe 8-10 slots total. However, I refrained from throwing down that statement from the outset because I absolutely knew it would probably garner a knee-jerk reaction regarding the act of "removing/cutting content." A lot of the GW2 playerbase at this point has been conditioned to think in a certain way, and it's very difficult to break away from the habit of "more is better" after one has known nothing but life inside of a shiny, flavor-gilded sarcophagus entombed in a pyramid of bloat.

One basic QoL improvement that should have been something thought about during the game's launch followed by a bunch of half-hearted or worthless changes that don't really impact the gameplay of GW2 in any way; and before anybody cries about how a Scourge nerf is good (or bad), you have to recognize that adjusting numbers up and down is not going to change how the class actually plays: you will still be pressing the same buttons to do the same exact thing; the numbers will just be slightly different now. GW2 is ruled by patch notes rather than player innovation.

GW2 is currently so bloated and homogenous that its excess of skills is what prevents players from developing any sort of innate complexity in the base gameplay. If you remove all of the skills that are basically already copies of each other, you are opening GW2's windpipe to let it breathe for once. Putting risk back into the game is what would instantly develop a significant skill ceiling for PvP interactions. As it stands, GW2 PvP is super reactive, passive and operates on fixed, internal timers rather than on-the-fly intuition and creativity.

Flavor is not function. Flavor, therefore, should not govern function. Immersion is something that comes after the gameplay is actually good.

And if it didn't say "Damage: 3," it also wouldn't CC, wouldn't need to inflict conditions, and just leave a pulsing, linear AoE on the ground (and also probably have a 5s CD with 3 ammo count which recharges individually every 10s); and then that would be basically the main source of all outgoing damage on that player's bar. Yeah, sure. That actually works decently.

Unless anet is willing to entirely rip up their garbage systems (effectively admitting that they've designed a bland, shallow game), you aren't going to get anything but more of the same layered on top of this base layer of boring. For instance, everything that the Virtuoso does already exists in the game; just because anet decided to copy-paste already-existing skills onto a player weapon bar, change some values, and then add a lot of purple particle effects to it doesn't mean that you aren't straight-up getting recycled content marketed as "new features." Remember that the "taunt" mechanic existed in an asura starter zone as a kitten joke since 2012; but the devs sounded so proud when they were showing that off when spoiling the Revenant.

No, I think I agree with you, and I think we're touching on the same vein. The concept of a "fun or good game" is sort of embedded in a fine balance between how much a player feels like they have control over their avatar and how much their individual inputs return satisfaction. It's kind of like... the differences and compromises in player freedom between two ends of a spectrum that goes from INHUMAN APM on one end with GODLY READS AND MIXUPS / "HE JUST GOES IN AND FLICKS EVERYONE" on the opposite side. If I had to give examples, I'd say to pick your poison: Smash Bros. Melee / Gunz: The Duel or Dark Souls / Team Fortress 2. On one end, we have a blinding flurry of inputs for the sake of intense, one-with-the-player avatar movement; and although there is not a lot satisfaction to be found within individual inputs, because the volume of actions is so dense, it's possible to translate real-time thoughts into gameplay (the sacrifice is that people who play these games just get literal carpal tunnel syndrome). At the other end, we have games designed around a slower rhythm of action with the most consistent big rewards only coming from actions which are inherently risky via action impact generally only yielding high impact when within the range of an enemy attack. (the sacrifice in this game design is generally movement is clunkier or more restrictive in order to infuse risk, committal and logical follow-throughs for each action taken). If you were to ask me, GW2 had a legitimate chance at being something very similar to Dark Souls (I don't keep using this as a rabid fan of the series, but rather because I see distinct similarities between Soulsbourne games and GW1's baseline gameplay along with what might have been a logical progression of the franchise). In GW1, players were often locked in place during combat; the game was SUPER CLUNKY, but by forcing all players to remain stationary while taking actions, it made people consider the timing of certain skills (or influenced the design of skills altogether i.e. Bull's Strike, Melandru's Shot, etc), range footsies, and team coordination/positioning. If GW2 kept GW1's emphasis on stationary action, it would have also naturally created another modifier state for combat (i.e. "Skill does [bonus] if striking a target in motion/standing still."), but as it stands, people in GW2 just kind of run around in circles while spamming whatever they want and most skills that root players often provide passive damage-negation. Personally, I wish GW2 would have a stronger dichotomy between in-combat and out-of-combat movement: OOC movement would be fast and flashy with lots of easy-input movement that provided a lot of unique freedoms in height access, jump arcs, and mid-air movement; however IC movement would be a lot more restrictive and paced around heavy-hitting skills with legible wind-ups. The (maybe impossible) cherry on top would be a tie-in between the two like an engine overhaul which would allow a certain conservation of momentum which might boost certain skill damage based on current travel speed. Add in the ability to use most skills in mid-air, and you would have a super cool way to initiate most combat: boost speed with crazy movement chains/combos and then flow into a big-hitter skill that would get boosted damage because the user is moving at 200 sanics/second through the air. It would add to the skill ceiling without being entirely overpowered because the attack skill would still have a fair wind-up (but it would be a consistent tactic in PvE).

Not that I didn't read the rest of your post, but I think this is sort of the crux of everything, and it's a very good question. My answer for it would be something that allows a player to be creative about how they affect the field and negotiate hazards on the field; specifically with regards to GW2: high mobility with a lot of freedom in direction (i.e. mount movement) and single-hit, free-aim attacks on low cooldowns with legible wind-ups and no built-in damage-negation (i.e. lots of attacks like Mighty Blow, Savage Leap, Swoop (no evasion), Phase Smash (no evasion), Arcing Shot (if it had a 1s cast and a minimum range of 200 units), basically all of the Elementalist staff one-hit skills, etc). Basically, following a paradigm evident in games like Dark Souls: lots of hard-hitting attacks that players can technically spam, however taking actions will naturally put any player at a risk by committing them to a fixed cast animation and possible travel time. In this paradigm, counterattacks aren't instantaneous, zero-input garbage like Illusionary Counter but rather just timing an opportunistic attack during an opponent's actions or miscalculation; risk-calculation, reads and prediction become a big aspect of combat rather than just how much of one's build insulates the user from damage while firing off attacks. Add a lot of individual movement into this, and you have a strong foundation for baseline combat that can be further enhanced by unique effects and methods of control. The only real item left hanging with this sort of combat paradigm shift is the fact that GW2 combat terrain was designed like we're playing Diablo lmao. Combat in GW2, no matter how much you think verticality matters, really does play out almost like an isometric design. Just because teleports can blink people through terrain or the bottoms of bridges doesn't mean that the game truly allows freedom of movement (or that baseline movement matters that much); if anything, GW2's crippling dependence on scripted movement (leaps, slides, and especially teleports) only demonstrates how limited WASD's impact is on this game's combat. That said, if one were to redesign GW2 to be a fast, read-heavy game with a high freedom and creativity of movement, it'd almost need to entirely change how levels would be designed (particularly in PvP because they're so horribly flat and cramped in most cases). Also, I agree with your wishes to return to GW1. Complete freedom to make individual builds that amounted to trash or a monstrosity was what defined that game not only on a creative level but also on the scale of full teams of various sizes. In fact, that limited choice and strict design philosophy filled with various drawbacks and pitfalls was what made team coordination and build synergy so vital in that game. GW2 abandoned all of that to just make everyone run basically the same playstyle: mash buttons during fixed periods of low risk to the user.

Bro, you can play scepter ele with a steering wheel. It's somehow even less interactive than sword/X weaver, and that build is straight up just baby rotations.

This game could have easily gotten away with 4 skills on the weapon bar; and every weapon bar could have been actually good instead of just relegating 70% of the options to a burning trash pile. You could have given all weapons generic, slower, low-power autoattacks (incentivizes game design toward more high-impact, low-CD active skills and generating unique ways to provide damage support instead of falling back on automated spam to finish PvP encounters or carry DPS between burst intervals). With less weight on weapon choice as the means of "forging a playstyle" (which, in GW2, is akin to just pressing the buttons off cooldown), roles and playstyles could come from an expanded utility bar. It's easy to adjust damage values, and GW2 design isn't much more complicated than a numbers-game; so even if you removed a bunch of pure-damage skills from the game (or relocated some of them to the utility bar pool), it'd be easy to make up for the loss by adding appropriate impact to whatever skills were deemed valuable enough to stay by means of lower CDs, more damage, and stronger on-field effects. The main way to balance a refocus of impact into fewer, more focused skill sets would be to remove any sort of risk-insulation which saturates the current GW2 metagame: evasion or block periods that are tied to attacks or allow users to take free actions during their durations, protracted damage negation (i.e. Block attacks for X seconds), teleports tied to attacks, ranged attacks without projectiles or appropriate delays, and no attacks which flow from damage negation into instant, auto-targeted retaliation (i.e. Illusionary Counter, Riposte, etc). If you're going to attack, your attack is going to put you at risk; however, if it connects, it's going to definitely impact the overall game-state. This shifts the current GW2 metagame of stacking risk-insulation effects so one can just act with impunity during protracted periods of time toward one of legitimately reading opponents and timing strikes. On top of all of this, and in order to prevent certain weapons from just being consistently sub-optimal in certain regards, it'd be more than possible to make sure that each weapon set featured at least two of the few features that most players seek in a "good" GW2 weapon: CC/area control, mobility, support (healing, condition removal, damage negation) and/or a high-damage/big threat attack. Under this formula, it'd be possible to design weapon sets which not only establish distinct roles, but at least allow the weapon-swap mechanic to allow a player to cover certain sets' weaknesses (i.e. "equip a high damage set with no mobility but have a mobility skill on tap with the other weapon set"). The game would also benefit from mobility options being generally very powerful rather than hindered by long cooldowns; without being necessarily tied to game-ending attacks or free damage negation, mobility skills in GW2 could be free to be consistently super strong utility options and a potential source of combo generation (i.e. imagine multiple classes getting low-CD Ride the Lightning or Infiltrator Arrow variants with unique support gimmicks; or even more interesting movement mechanics entirely like those seen on the raptor, springer, jackal or griffin mounts). On top of this, it's more than possible to re-balance elite skills into effects which don't necessarily have to completely warp any active game-states with the press of a button (i.e. a comprehensive "elite skill" design paradigm that mimics the Mirage's [Jaunt]; it's not like the world is cripplingly dependent on "whenever you activate an elite skill" procs anyway) such that elites could be folded into the utility skill pool rather than remain as their own specific skill bar slot. In effect, if you wanted a GW2 weapon bar that is conducive to a PvP experience based on player intuition, creativity, reads and timing: Slot 1: [Generic, low-impact autoattack based on main-hand weapon; no combo effects allowed; no conditions allowed] Slot 2: [High-damage, low-CD, multi-ammo wind-up attack] - based on main-hand weapon Slot 3: Choose one: [Mobility / Support / Damage Negation / Lethal Damage] - Thief Dual Wield gimmick generates skills based on weapon set Slot 4: Choose one: [Mobility / Support / Damage Negation / Lethal Damage / Area Control / Hard, Free-Aim CC] - based on off-hand weapon Slot 5: [Healing Skill] Slots 6 - 10: [Utility Skills] More creativity for build-making in general, but more importantly, the way skills are used determine how the game resolves more so than the current metagame (which is far more about which builds show up to the field rather the potential finesse behind how any individual player necessarily operates one).

Bro, full-power dagger/warhorn tempest is so braindead. It's all I use lately since staff ele, despite actually requiring more than 12 brain cells to use, is just not cut out to compete with most of this game's garbage right now. There is almost no bad time to use Burning Speed into anything. You evade and force every sort of panic CD under the sun if you don't outright kill anything (since it's constantly critting for 5-7k).

Just because something isn't effortlessly free doesn't mean it's bad. It's not like GW2 isn't already incredibly straightforward to play; why nit-pick about the little leftover quirks? I understand that I'm not addressing your "point" directly; you don't even really have a point anyway--you're just complaining about a skill not being as fire-and-forget as basically every other skill that sees use in GW2. So what?

lmao, yeah RIP Edit: As a note, full-glass power staff ele is not exactly a complete loss in sPvP, but the problem is that it requires a lot more team support and coordination than any other mainstream meta build in GW2. If anything, staff ele's extremely high damage potential and area control properties often falling short outside of certain comp set-ups just shows how shallow GW2's PvP is fundamentally: the build, while certainly capable of yielding results on its own, sees ridiculously strong results particularly when favored by matchmaking RNG.

Wildstar Esper did it better. Their builder system was also WAY less jank than this one.

The issue with just throwing a bunch of free boon removal everywhere in response to the fact that boons have traditionally been out of control in GW2 is akin to taking melatonin to sleep (but you're also drinking 7 energy drinks a day and well into the night). How about you just cut out the garbage from your diet and then you don't need the medication to counter the results of your bad habit? Just reduce free boons.

Putting a fixed, 0.75s-long, damage negation period on a scripted movement that also deals a large AoE which can crit in the 5-6k range is what's really god awful about Burning Speed.

The elitism in GW2 spawned from the fact that the game is very shallow and homogenous at a fundamental level. The moment that the PvP community's delusion of "high level competition" was acknowledged with a couple of pity seasons in ESL, the few people who managed to scratch out a meager shred of renown from the experience clutched to it like Gollum to the One Ring. If you really set things level with reality, GW2 never had a PvP future going for it: it never provided any outlets for community contributions or customization, there was never any consistent development for new features or gamemodes, and the baseline game itself is just too darn simple. The worst attitudes in GW2 aren't necessarily out of spite or meanness; they're just the results of people trapped in the mirage of a "competitive, high-skill GW2 PvP experience," when in reality, there never was anything like that in the first place. It really is a case of "don't hate the player; hate the game." GW2 is too easy to play; the skill ceiling is super low, but unfortunately, accessing the base level of that skill floor is still difficult only because of how obtuse and esoteric everything about GW2 PvP is. GW2 is painfully easy to play, but to get to the point at which one can even play it at all, it's just this terrible drudgery of wading through skill text and passive effects until one realizes that the best build for any class is the same exact one: be passive; be reactive; stack up protracted damage/effect negation that can tick while you teleport to your target or attack with impunity. GW2 isn't hard to play, but it tries to pretend it is by making it awkward to read anything that's happening on the screen unless you dissect all of the passive/instant garbage ticking constantly during any given frame of combat. The people who have a bad attitude are desperate to hold up that façade, since it's the only thing keeping their egos intact.