Swagg.9236

Nothing in GW2 is "hard to hit." The most commonly used builds are only commonly used because they generally have a lot of built-in, passive mitigation against damage and effects. Everyone in GW2 constantly hits each other without any effort at all; it's just that many of these hits and effects are effortlessly negated, mostly just leading to frustration and passivity. If anything, people complaining about entire weapon sets being invalidated by shifting CC-inflicting attack skills down to a (0.1) or (0.01) damage modifier is the result of terrible fundamental design practices. Hard CC alone is a brutal effect: denying one or more players from actively participating in a game for a fixed period of time. Considering how easy it is to inflict hard CC in a baseline situation with no modifications (i.e. 1 skill vs a target), the former devs of GW2 (long-gone bodies from 2008-2014) decided that the best way to mitigate the ease of hitting opponents was more or less to make it so that a whole bunch of these hits just "didn't count." That was supposed to justify the fact that hard CC often came part and parcel with brutal amounts of damage and follow-up bursts. So, considering how this new direction for GW2's PvP combat is generally a lot healthier for combat exchanges than how it was designed from the outset, the best way forward, rather than complaining that arbitrary weapons are now entirely ruined because they have too much baked-in hard CC, it'd be best to just suggest dramatic changes to these sets in order to give them a different functionality other than "Haha, I'm pressing my buttons, and now [Player A] can't play the game."

Most ele staff skills can be evaded by stepping aside though. It's like fighting perma evade specs.Why you wont just ask instacasts alrdy? Poor staff has melee/small radius attacks that does close to no damage /sPlease don't advocate for stripping away one of the only PvP skill ceilings that this game has. Staff Ele is fun because it's satisfying to control an area and pressure people with good timing.

I feel like, rather than buffing staff blasts, it would be better, at this point, to just continue to nerf everybody else. GW2 is a rare case where nerfs are probably better than buffs after a certain point. Considering how low the cap threshold is on things like boons and in-battle stat bonuses (I mean, it's not hard for people to passively have a 60%+ crit chance with just armor), if anything, the responsibility of providing ceiling-cap buffs should fall to only a few classes rather than just letting every class passively tick up to max stats and boon stacks by just hitting with rotation skills. For anyone who played this game way back at launch, they might remember how Elementalist (although, I think the set-up rotation was scepter/focus with some free-aim tech and certain utilities), was the party-wide, pre-fight buffer in dungeons mainly because nobody else could bring everyone up to 20+ might stacks in a single rotation. Engineer could sometimes come close, but it still wasn't really a contest. As time went on, everyone just got passive might ticks, damage kept creeping up, and Ele generally fell to the wayside.

Considering how far the global damage benchmarks have fallen in PvP/WvW, I could agree. These changes were mostly conceived probably a year ago or something. However, I still want to buff the fire line to be a real hazard. At some point, just being able to evade for a hot second while attuned to Fire isn't enough for Staff Ele. The reason behind the Frozen Ground changes were mainly to give Staff Ele a reliable means of fighting the generic builds which just slap stability and hit-negation onto themselves while running around and swinging in a fight. With a 240 radius, short duration, 1s-delay on the chill pulses, and a decently high recharge period, these sorts of changes would probably not be too oppressive, but they would definitely allow Staff Ele to ground out a valuable niche for itself in team fights and even rotation duels. I can understand why someone might think it's "unneeded," though. The chill field is already super strong, and making it even more powerful in a very specific way might scare someone into thinking that it's overtuned. However, considering how easy it is for nearly every class to just walk through all hazards put down by Staff Ele, I felt that it really needed at least one turnabout skill. Admittedly, Shockwave also has this same sort of "remove defensive boons" attribute to it, so maybe making Frozen Ground into something that has a 2-ammo charge was a bit much. I guess, if anything, I could just take it back down a single-charge skill with just the one cooldown. I honestly hate the idea of an autoattack inflicting weakness because it just seems too effortless for the reward of netting some 50%, RNG damage negation. I figured that it would be better to have the conditional melee effect grant a party buff rather than an opponent debuff because, in PvP, an opponent could at least play around that by avoiding damage, while, in PvE, it would be a super valuable asset to a team which could only be accessed via a Staff Ele. The better question is WHY DO TRANSMUTES EXIST and WHY ARE THEY ALL SO BORING AND BAD? If nothing else, when you decide to add some skills into the game, you should probably at least attempt to make them somewhat unique to what so many classes already bring to the table. All of the transmutes, as they are now, are basically just trash-tier PBAoEs (the only one being remotely good is the static one, and that's only because it applies the un-fun effect of stunning nearby opponents with little warning). Instead of all of them being super bland or outright bad, they probably should be something more worthwhile; especially considering how, in order to use them, you technically have to sacrifice your current aura. In that light, considering how the other auras technically require you to take a hit in order for them to give out an effect, sacrificing the Magnetic Aura (the only one which gives you a powerful effect without needing to eat damage), is probably justified in having the best transmute. I thought about making Shockwave into something like a ranged AoE or a PBAoE with a circular radius, but again, it's sort of like the issue I have with Ice Spike (or, for heaven's sake, look at the tragedy that is Necromancer Staff): you can only have so many "draw circle on ground" skills before you get sick of trying to be creative with them. I felt that the Revenant, cascading hammer attack was both respectively fluid and functional enough to warrant a look as a re-work for Shockwave. Then it just came down to making the actual skill a lot better than its current, bland iteration. Thanks, bro.

tl;dr: this patch is probably the only chance it has to have a real role, but it would still need a lot of work, and it doesn't really need to be nerfed as much as the patch preview says it does. This is about giving staff ele a valued role in a team with possibly the only chance that it will ever get. The coming update seeks to nerf all damage across the board (which is fine for basically every class and build), but one spec in particular stands to lose far more than just damage. Thinking about how one plays most classes compared to the staff Elementalist, the former generally rely on map knowledge and line-of-sight gimmicks in order to engage quickly and force pressure onto an opponent (i.e. teleporting through walls/terrain, striking with instantaneous, no-projectile ranged attacks, exposing one's self to LoS while under the aegis of damage or effect negation) and mostly employ attacks that utilize GW2's massive melee hitboxes or the tab-target system in order to inflict damage within their prescribed ranges in a rather reliable manner. On the other hand, the Staff Elementalist build relies on mechanics which force out player tactics that are more limited than the generic playstyles featured by other builds: timing, area control, and CC in order to reliably damage targets; damage effects with 1-2s delays; and a skill which, while powerful, requires a profound amount of set-up compared to any other "big hit" ability in GW2. For instance, it's almost irresponsible to make a category of balance principles called "big hit skills" and put something like a 1s-activation melee attack right alongside [Meteor Shower] or, for heaven's sake, even [Lava Font], particularly when many melee attacks are supported by builds which employ teleports and damage negation in order to position properly for the attack. Effectively, most damage sources of Staff Elementalist, although cast from range, have built-in delays which are far more punishing than any other build that uses ranged or melee attack. This isn't exactly a bad thing at all--if anything, this is probably how the game ought to work in most cases--however, it does mean that the attack range employed by Staff Elementalist (1200 units at max) is often far more permeable beyond the point of real effectiveness. The combination of delayed attacks, AoEs with fixed locations, and projectiles on 0.75-1s activation times often leaves the Staff Elementalist no choice but to burn defensive abilities, movement abilities, and ward lines in order to simply achieve basic levels of threatening damage; or just to merely survive any other class pressing the attack. Moreover, in order to deal respectable damage, the Staff Elementalist generally has to layer multiple skills over a single target, which gives their DPS something unique among classes in GW2: a warm-up period (i.e. Lava Font doesn't follow anyone around, and by itself, it will never reliably kill anything). Again, this is not at all a bad thing, but it means that the effort going into Staff Elementalist damage often involves a lot more baseline effort and time investment than most other classes which often have their no-delay abilities passively aimed for them. To that end, I argue that nerfing Staff Elementalist damage to such a degree, even if it is in-line with an overall, holistic design philosophy, is probably not the best option right now. I'd agree with a mild damage trimming just to keep pace with the rest of the gameplay cadence, but just not to the degree which is discussed in the patch preview. So, instead, here's a list of suggestions in response to the patch preview. Many of these are things that I've already put forth as ideas before, but now they are just adjusted for the patch preview. Aside from damage changes, there are also a number of suggestions which mainly aim to transition certain skills from clunky or superfluous effects into more ergonomic abilities while adding some niche, anti-meta utility for PvP. Elementalist staff is one of the most balanced weapon sets in the entire game, and I don't really want to mess with that. That said, the PvE-centric nerfs to Lava Font and Meteor Shower were utter trash, and it's worth addressing that. FIRE WATER AIR EARTH DARK, NECESSARY EVIL FOR DPS STAFF BUILDS

PLEASE ENJOY HAVING TO TIME ABILITIES FOR ONCE.

Of course you can design it in 1 million different ways. Then this opens up a new question: Why? Because the current one is boring and nobody enjoys playing around mechanics that, when they function according to description, prevent people from playing the game. Considering how shallow GW2 is, that is a very, very good question.

GS5 shouldn't be a daze, it should create a distance between the mesmer and the foe so that it synergies with the autoattack.That's just designing by flavor rather than holistic principles. That said, there's plenty of ways to make Mesmer GS5 interesting without it forcing a knock-back on someone: [illusionary Wave] (5) And that's really just one example of how Mesmer GS5 could be re-worked into a flexible, "space-maker" skill without it being forced to be a hard CC. What does "team-fight presence" even really mean outside of "something that can sit on a point and stall for time with relative impunity" anyway? How are most team-fights not just a collection of twitchy 1v1s that orbit around some hump-on-a-rock roadblock sitting on a point just waiting to pop cooldowns in the presence of someone's burst? You even throw out "2v2 potential" as if you don't believe that a 2v2 isn't going to be a massive investment when it comes to team and map-wide resources. How does "zero teamfight presence" mean anything detrimental if the class or build in question can easily and consistently swing 1v1s or 2v2s in a game mode which is only scaled up to 5v5 fighting over 3 point-generating nodes??? If anything, being able to delete classes and force player rotations just by EXISTING in any given place at any given time, sounds like it's far beyond anything that "team-fight presence" brings to the table. Sounds more like "duelists" are the things that end up forcing rotations into team-fights rather than team-fights being something around which "duelists" are forced to play (by the way "duelist" is just a made-up word for "generic DPS boi seen in literally every other third-person, tab-target RPG" that GW2 players invented in order to cope with how this role-playing game has basically no real roles).

The only truly acceptable answer since baseline DoTs back then were never really enough to kill consistently, and the only reason why Terrormancer remotely worked was because it just used low-damage DoTs as a primer for a short-burst, conditional, high-damage DoT. There was a way to mess up Terrormancer, and it had to play around using a ward wall rather than conditions builds which just blow skills without thinking after selecting a target.

Revenant is a not a class; it's a shallow, nostalgia-bait advertisement for an old expansion pack. Considering how, on top of this, it's basically just "other Thief" when it comes to what its buttons do, it never deserved to exist from the start.

Low/no cooldowns with charge-ups, delays, and/or resources are always preferable to cooldowns alone. Relying so heavily on cooldowns never promotes "skillful" usage of skills; it only promotes reactive gameplay and generally devolves into position-camping, one-dimensional rhythm games rather than a dynamic movement of players on a field.

Considering the amount of damage nerfs, losing all of your HP should probably not be rewarded with a potential, massive damage boost that is arbitrarily based on which class you are playing.

GW2 needs to put some carrots super far off in the distance and lock you behind time-gates and removed content so that they can delude you into thinking that its worthwhile to grind for them.

Three too many. Imagine being ruffled about DoT applications not resulting in kills in a game that constantly overlaps a mountain of outgoing passive and active effects while aiming your attacks for you.

FA ele deserves nothing. It's an utterly un-fun "playstyle" to encounter, and an extremely one-dimensional one to play. It forces opponents to hug walls like Thief often forces players to stand in no-teleport spots just to maintain some semblance of "good positioning" against a class that can instantly negate timing and positioning with the press of a button. FA is certainly one of the biggests example of this game's burst lottery: hoping that your opponent doesn't have a slew of "haha, I take no damage" buttons, or +1'ing a guy from off-screen in order to score an easy kill.

This really is the worst bit of it. GW1 had a trinity system, but classes like Mesmer and Necromancer added an extra dimension of flexibility and adaptability which prevented combat from always being too predictable in larger-scale fights. GW1's combat cadence was mostly based on how certain skills would affect others and, in turn, how any given player would have to rely on teammates to compensate for respective build weaknesses. GW2 PvP is just 10 people running 2-3 builds, all running into each other while slapping their buttons; generally the more passive player comes out on top. Whereas GW1 was a game of values (i.e. they have less players than we do, but the dead players aren't things like their monk backline, casters and warriors, so there is still a sense of cautiousness when approaching them), GW2 is a game of raw numbers (we have more players than they do, that means we can just keep +1'ing to win since everyone is mostly just running the same build in essence); and this is on top of the fact that GW2 will never have completely sudden outlier teams explosively rise to stardom from nowhere like EoE bombing, IWAY teams, niche MM teams that clogged pathways for warriors, or SWAY (as arguably annoying as all of them were to fight; the team comps and playstyles were at least somewhat unique).

Why do ice creams have different flavors? Now you're just being silly.

These sorts of names comprise the most heavily overlapping "roles" of all time. It's sort of how I think that the GW2 playerbase adopted the word "bruiser" to make themselves feel as if there is some level of depth to this game's combat. Literally everyone in the game is a Team Fight player. That's how the conquest mode is engineered to work: everyone has to go and contest neutral points from the game's outset. A team-fight MUST occur, and therefore, everyone on the team has to figure out a way to contribute (obviously, some classes are better suited to go and float over to a home or far point; but ultimately, the majority of the team MUST go and be "team-fight"ers).Team Fight Support and Bunker might as well be the same thing considering how you don't send a bunker to solo-cap home at the start of a game, and rarely do you see a bunker attempt to rush far at a game's outset.+1er Decap Roamer is just literally anyone who walks into a favorable fight. Sure, some classes can spam teleports or movement skills to get to places faster than others, but EVERYONE HAS A MINIMAP. I'm a +1er on staff Elementalist. It only takes a single functioning eye and half of a brain. Same goes for decapping.Side node duelist is just a gimmick name for a +1er who found a better use of time harassing some poor guy on an isolated node while the other 8 players on the map fought elsewhere. Generally, considering how inefficient it is to camp a point all day in GW2 conquest, the fact that your team has a "dedicated side node duelist" probably means more than the other team lacks confidence in themselves more than GW2 has some deep combat system which warrants the designation of such a role."Bunker" might be the only unique role aside from "generic damage guy who watches the minimap" on that list, but even then most meta builds as of late have allowed people to tank even the hardest hits for a number of seconds. Everyone carried a block, or some evade skills, or some invuln, and some passive healing along with them into battle; some of these things even just came baked into many specs or classes. So long as your team was watching a map, it wouldn't be too terribly hard to stall long enough for reinforcements to arrive in order to contest any point.This PvP list of "roles" is basically just a Venn Diagram of 4 or 5 circles stacked more or less directly on top of each other. I get why you would break down a zerg into 3 parts based on positioning, but it's kind of a shame that those roles are mostly pre-determined by attack range rather than unique mechanics, buffs or debuffs. Take, for instance, how Guild Wars 1's 8v8 PvP scenarios also had a three-line orientation: Frontline, Linebacker, Backline. However, at least in that scenario, GW1 players in each line had specific armor classes, roles and expectations; moreover, these particular positions generally determined target values (i.e. Monks in the backline were almost always high priority for damage spikes and CC). WvW roles often get jumbled up since zergs will often group up and buff before taking passes at each other. Most importantly, since WvW has no real limit on party sizes, it's not like you can't have multiple instances of a high-value ability in one zerg. This sort of defeats the purpose of assigning values to particular targets: it turns the whole zerg into just a massive blob that has to be whittled down bit by bit. Sure, a zerg may have "positions" based on attack ranges and utility, but considering that it's just attack range and the fact that someone else might be playing the build that you also brought into the zerg, are these really true roles? What value does that role hold, if it can easily duplicated or replaced on the fly by basically anyone?Anyone can do anything that a "havoc squad" can do; but putting a moniker to a group like that just makes people feel better about blowing out the random stragglers on the map who cross their paths while they're catapulting a tower or capping a supply zone, I suppose. I understand that a group of people specifically dedicated to performing such actions behind enemy lines is generally going to be far more capable and effective than just a bunch of random people who maybe partied up for funsies, but this sort of role designation is mostly cheapened by the fact that they are entirely swatted by zergs, utterly destroy any random individual, and can only be checked by what one might consider another "havoc squad." It's a super one-dimensional sort of existence which equates to basically just "smaller zerg" rather than something that performs a unique role. It's not like zergs can't do anything that a havoc squad does anyway. Scaling that sort of thing down doesn't make the smaller version all that unique."Solo Roamers" are just Thieves, Long-Range Lads, or any build which can more or less be somewhat Thief-like (ideally through protracted damage negation and/or instantaneous movement paired with insta-kill damage potential facilitated by the fact that you can get PvE stats in WvW). PvE might possible be one of the few places in which team roles are most present, but ultimately that's only due to the fact that these things were shoehorned into the game in a hamfisted manner when HoT released. Ever play GW2 in 2012? Ever do Arah in 2012? Did you play anything other than Guardian (scepter), Warrior (axe/axe with axe/X) or Elementalist (staff)? You did? Enjoy NEVER getting a spot, bro. GW2 PvE, particularly at launch, had 3 classes in it. Three. That's it. PvP was about as bad too. Just because Anet decided to smash a healer spec into Ranger doesn't mean that that class deserves to exist at all. They could have given Druid to Guardian and named it anything else. It's just a flavor; it's not a unique mechanic or something that belongs only to a certain class. That's what I'm talking about: this game has so little unique mechanics attempting to spread themselves across 9 classes that players are constantly told which specs to bring if they want their class to be viable or optimal. Consider how Herald, after having its boon duration passive nerfed from 50% to 33% at one point, was almost entirely replaced by a RUNE SET. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ROLES in GW2? When a class can get replaced by a gear piece???

Yes, Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Mushrooms. So then, why are there more than 4 classes in Guild Wars 2?

Guild Wars 2 wish it had a depth of combat akin to bacon's depth of flavor.

Having respectively lost anywhere between 25-66% damage effectiveness in its handful of most popular skillbar choices, Mesmer is almost obliterated. Guardian, which has always been litttle more than "Blue Warrior with 1 teleport and a free block," has almost no purpose anymore as a damage option; and if it does, said purpose is entirely indistinguishable in playstyle or goal from any other damage option. When looking at the potential damage output, Ranger is basically falling in line with Mesmer, blurring the lines between the classes. Never before has Revenant just been "even edgier Thief (but worse?)," and by ripping their 3-4 most popular damage buttons from this plane of existence, the class is left utterly broken and mostly worthless outside of just being an annoyance to anyone attempting to cap a point (then again, they could all just go condi, but then they're literally just a Scourge with how they become a moving AoE bubble on fixed intervals; see how this works now?). And really, these are only a few of the mountain of comparisons to make. Now, to clarify, this is not a petition against the coming patch in general or even against any particular nerf, all this means is that Guild Wars 2 launched, in 2012, with three or four TOO MANY professions. This game, while featuring avatars which are satisfying to move, features very little, if nothing at all, when it comes to actual movement tech or juking. Beyond this, combat is entirely locked into cooldown-based decision-making rather than operating within a constant flux of aggression, mobility and defensive objectives. The game also features skill bars loaded up with, at the very least, 16 skills, often totaling far higher (sometimes up into the 30s), despite a massive number of them serving little purpose more than [DEAL X DAMAGE TO TARGET]. GW2 has a shallow gameplay cycle. It's so shallow, in fact, that this game was cursed to be dominated by patch notes the moment it released. This game has far too many classes for its own good, and this particular patch is perhaps the best proof of this. Anyone left playing this game is caught in a conflagration of shouts and complaints over how this class or that class has nothing left to contribute to PvP based entirely on notes which did nothing but change some numbers. If this game featured classes which had ANY sort of unique mechanics to them, ANY SORT of actual role to play within a team, then a global nerf to damage probably wouldn't create such a forum firestorm as you see now. You have to understand: ArenaNet, as a company, has lost nearly every (or possibly every) developer who actually worked on the nuts and bolts which support Guild Wars 2. This sort of titanic balance patch is truly the best that Anet can do for GW2, and it's not even something that will REMOTELY address the main problem with the game. In fact, reducing every class' damage on a global level will only HIGHLIGHT this game's biggest problem more than anything else: the professions of Guild Wars 2 have NO ROLES to play. In their attempt to "be the most innovating MMORPG," the original developers of GW2 stripped the flavor and unique roles from their franchise's flagship classes, and reintroduced everything as a homogenized slurry of "I do DPS." Over time, powercreep had become the unique role to play; the only role to play; and, naturally, not every class could play it all at once. By removing the powercreep, GW2 is once again barren and gray. Again, this patch is probably one of the better things that Anet could do for GW2 at this point; the underlying problem remains, however, that even if its the best thing that the staff could do, it doesn't, and it will never address the fundamental issue of how GW2 is just a game with a shallow gameplay cycle that buries nine, generic classes under a deep abyss of homogeneity. Seriously? Sigh just another biased anti thief post------- predictable and boring. U done whining now? Lolbig el em ay oh, my guy.

Again, it's not like I don't think that this particular patch isn't "good" for GW2 (it's probably the best thing that anyone could have done in Anet's place), it's just more of a "isn't is sad that this is really just the best that they can do?" sort of realization. A note about this is that I haven't really played GW2 in AGES, but somebody told me about this patch, and after reading through it (and calming down from the laughter), I realized how pathetic GW2 had really become: staffed with people who didn't work on its development who are forced to just change numbers around instead of addressing any fundamental issues for fear of possibly breaking the game in a way which they cannot fix.

Boxing has a lot more going for it than GW2 when it comes to movement mechanics and timing. Fighting games have a lot more going for them than GW2 when it comes to spacing, timing, and even muscle memory. Just in the same way that two Soldiers in Team Fortress 2 can play in the same server with the same load-out in the midst of a bunch of other people only for one to bottom-score while the other single-handedly dismantles the opposing team, a compression of options does not necessarily translate to "shallow" gameplay. For goodness' sake, Quake, for years, was seen as the epitome of FPS competitive gameplay when it came to 1v1s, and everyone who played that game had access to the exact same weapons and power-ups: it was just a mirror match every time, but playstyles still varied. There are multiple ways to play different fighting game characters as well.

Long Range Lad: Deals spike damage from the maximum possible distance in order to avoid fighting in melee for a prolonged period of time; often bursts from off-screen or from stealth.Melee Boi: Uses a number of passives, block/evade skills, or teleports in order to enter into melee range for a burst rotation. Having respectively lost anywhere between 25-66% damage effectiveness in its handful of most popular skillbar choices, Mesmer is almost obliterated. Guardian, which has always been litttle more than "Blue Warrior with 1 teleport and a free block," has almost no purpose anymore as a damage option; and if it does, said purpose is entirely indistinguishable in playstyle or goal from any other damage option. When looking at the potential damage output, Ranger is basically falling in line with Mesmer, blurring the lines between the classes. Never before has Revenant just been "even edgier Thief (but worse?)," and by ripping their 3-4 most popular damage buttons from this plane of existence, the class is left utterly broken and mostly worthless outside of just being an annoyance to anyone attempting to cap a point (then again, they could all just go condi, but then they're literally just a Scourge with how they become a moving AoE bubble on fixed intervals; see how this works now?). And really, these are only a few of the mountain of comparisons to make. Now, to clarify, this is not a petition against the coming patch in general or even against any particular nerf, all this means is that Guild Wars 2 launched, in 2012, with three or four TOO MANY professions. This game, while featuring avatars which are satisfying to move, features very little, if nothing at all, when it comes to actual movement tech or juking. Beyond this, combat is entirely locked into cooldown-based decision-making rather than operating within a constant flux of aggression, mobility and defensive objectives. The game also features skill bars loaded up with, at the very least, 16 skills, often totaling far higher (sometimes up into the 30s), despite a massive number of them serving little purpose more than [DEAL X DAMAGE TO TARGET]. GW2 has a shallow gameplay cycle. It's so shallow, in fact, that this game was cursed to be dominated by patch notes the moment it released. This game has far too many classes for its own good, and this particular patch is perhaps the best proof of this. Anyone left playing this game is caught in a conflagration of shouts and complaints over how this class or that class has nothing left to contribute to PvP based entirely on notes which did nothing but change some numbers. If this game featured classes which had ANY sort of unique mechanics to them, ANY SORT of actual role to play within a team, then a global nerf to damage probably wouldn't create such a forum firestorm as you see now. You have to understand: ArenaNet, as a company, has lost nearly every (or possibly every) developer who actually worked on the nuts and bolts which support Guild Wars 2. This sort of titanic balance patch is truly the best that Anet can do for GW2, and it's not even something that will REMOTELY address the main problem with the game. In fact, reducing every class' damage on a global level will only HIGHLIGHT this game's biggest problem more than anything else: the professions of Guild Wars 2 have NO ROLES to play. In their attempt to "be the most innovating MMORPG," the original developers of GW2 stripped the flavor and unique roles from their franchise's flagship classes, and reintroduced everything as a homogenized slurry of "I do DPS." Over time, powercreep had become the unique role to play; the only role to play; and, naturally, not every class could play it all at once. By removing the powercreep, GW2 is once again barren and gray. Again, this patch is probably one of the better things that Anet could do for GW2 at this point; the underlying problem remains, however, that even if its the best thing that the staff could do, it doesn't, and it will never address the fundamental issue of how GW2 is just a game with a shallow gameplay cycle that buries nine, generic classes under a deep abyss of homogeneity.

lmao, the guy with stab on his weapon bar and loads of baseline evades wants more evades so that he doesn't have to think about anything while dancing on a point and pulsing AoE damage.