cryorion.9532

It would be reasonable to release another set of elite specs in like 2-3 years from now if things go according to their plan. Nothing stops them from doing a bit bigger mini-expansion with elite specs when they are ready to do that and it's meaningful for the game. Right now, do we really need/want new elite specs or we would rather have properly balanced professions with all their current especs, including new builds and variations? In my opinion, having more options in already existing specializations, like greatsword tactics spellbreaker and defense hammer spellbreaker is good enough. If they continue making nice variations for each specialization like this, we could have plenty of builds to choose from and have fun with before new especs are released. On the other side, probably a bit naive to expect "Anet's awakening", it is very possible we are experiencing another It's a saga, not a season moment.

Warrior changes look so gooooooood. Looking forward to play some WvW again 🙂

I am so happy right now. So many good things are coming, FINALLY! 🙂

Spellbreaker buffs! Rejoice! It's not much and I doubt it will compete with overpoweredsworn, but still. It's nice to see finally something happening. 🙂 A bit sad 100 blades didn't get any improvement. On the other hand, Arcing Slice, Blade Trail and Rush buffs look juicy af.

First impression is pretty good. I wonder how it will turn out in game, hopefully banners won't feel clunky and annoying to use (if that 0.2 sec cast time reduction is enough).

Update 19.7.2022: This instability still applies Weakness when player's boon is removed. What a joke...

"It's a crit buff, Arms is the crit traitline." - That is why I wrote in my previous comment "if the change is meaningful for the profession and its builds or if words just match". That is pretty significant difference. For example, if you apply "Anet's reasoning" - why would Anet put defensive traits outside of Defense? Well, their reasoning was obviously not well thought as it created such backlash from community. The reasoning is simply flawed due to nature of Arms traitline not being very good for most power builds compared to alternative traitlines and that power builds are way more dependant on critical chance than condition builds - yet it is not worth using Arms for increasing critical chance for power builds in most cases because alternative traitlines are simply better (and you can increase crit with stats/runes/sigils/etc). As I pointed out in other comment, the 5% crit chance trait is a symptom rather than the issue. The issue is that Arms is simply old and neglected traitline that has not very good synergies with modern power builds. Btw, those confusion reactions are not from me, I don't use those for downvotes, that's lame.

Geeeez.... just because something makes sense at first glance to be somewhere doesn't mean it should be in there... this is pretty critical to know for a person who does game balance, to understand impact and usefulness of changes, if the change is meaningful for the profession and its builds or if words just match. Looking at the game from Anet's perspective would get us where, exactly? Look at the game balance in the past 2 years. Must be great to main blue and green professions. Sure that's great to look at from Anet's perspective. 🤡 Very important will be their post about profession ideology, what their intentions are with each profession/spec. At least people will know how realistic are their expectations and suggestions. Hopefully it won't be bunch of useless PR kitten.

Yeah, sure. That can work, too. Just like Strength got MMR for sustain even though it is offensive oriented traitline. Anet just needs to wake up and probably retrain their balance devs, it is clear their balancing is not as sophisticated as it should be.

I think it was just more "detailed" balance patch notes. Notes that they would normally release if they didn't decide to release simplified notes due to translations to other languages (that's what Anet said 🤷‍♂️). The 5% crit trait being in Arms is a symptom rather than the issue. The fundamental issue is that Arms is simply old and neglected traitline that wasn't adjusted at all for modern standards. It synergyzes better with condi builds and worse with power builds. Since condi builds don't require 100% crit chance, practically all critical increases in Arms are useless for power builds due to bad synergies. One would be better off using other traitline for power builds and fix critical hit chance with stats/runes/sigils/signets/etc. What needs to happen is either: a) power and critical hit increase traits from Arms (e.g. signet trait, 5% crit increase trait) should be moved to Discipline and Arms should be reworked into pure condi/hybrid traitline with much better synergies for condition builds and condition weapons b) Arms traitline should be reworked in a way that would provide distinct benefits for power, conditon or hybrid builds but it wouldn't be about critical chance at all (Arms shouldn't be picked to increase critical hit chance) - simply put, Arms traitline should focus more on enhancing weapons and their effects by adding more condition/hybrid synergies This is all way too simplified and obviously requires to go into more detail but the most important thing is that Arms needs rework... oh wow who would have guessed that. The fact Anet naturally picked Arms as place for 5% crit chance trait shows how incoherent Arms is relative to warrior profession and it simply doesn't work very good with power builds.

In PvP/WvW, rifle used to be great and enjoyable when it had really big damage on Kill Shot/Gunflame. Until February 2020 "balance" patch happened. I mean, proper damage nerf would be fine because you could literally one-shot people with Kill Shot/Gunflame, but Anet just blidnly nerfed it without understanding repercussions of such drastic damage nerf. Result? Rifle was completely killed in competetive modes. So much for "balance"... Nowadays, outside of Berserker, rifle is simply a bad weapon. Very non-rewarding. It was "reworked" almost year ago (probably by devs who made recent banner changes, that would explain the quality and usefulness of rifle) and it didn't make rifle a better weapon basically in any way. We got one new skill to spam, but overall all 1-5 rifle skills feel so bland and uninspired, it's insane. Now, rifle only works with Berserker solely because of Gunflame and high damage modifiers from Berserker traits. But even then, it's one trick pony that relies heavily on surprising your enemy. You also have to invest quite a lot in order to do some meaningful damage with it which means you will be very glassy with 0 sustain. If you want to use it in PvE, anything works in open world, but don't bother with rifle in more hardcore content unless you are Bladesworn 🙃

Look at what they did with engi rifle. To me, it looks like someone is buffing their favorite profession because they like it. Let's be real, was engi rifle really that bad to be prioritized over other more important balance issues in the game (that were not addressed at all)? I am afraid this is simply incompetence and lack of knowledge about profession and its interactions.

I am afraid that this, together with Firebrand, Mechanist and Scourge not being nerfed (and Mechanist even being buffed?!) shows A LOT. This was not a balance patch.

First thing I tried, how it looks like when you want to reposition a banner. What a bad joke. Shame on whoever made this lazy change. On the other hand, warrior is free... EDIT: That moment when I place banners in mistlock to see how much might/fury I can get from them and herald runs through, giving it all and more by just existing... I can't. Also imagine leaving banner cast time at 1 second... at this point just make them cast-able while you are performing other skills, geeeez. I would say it's time for a break from the game... BUT I HAVE BEEN ON A BREAK ALREADY 😡

I disagree with this. Losing unique effects is fine as long as Anet adds something more interactive and fun to banners. Like in that reddit thread about banner rework. We don't need banners to have unique effects, we just need them to be fun, engaging and competetive with other supports as utility skills. These unique effects did not provide any fun/engagement value, they just made warrior relevant in PvE for like 10 years.

All those "flavor" skills (intentionally bad or extremely niche skills) CMC was talking about in the past now make sense. Together with Spellbreaker being kitten in PvE. And rifle "rework". And 82908250 other things... 😞

Because Anet didn't want warrior to be heal/proper support until now. Warrior has always been more oriented towards offense and damage output compared to Guardian, who was oriented more towards Defense (but then wild Firebrand appeared and everything went down to kitten). Remember when CMC said (loosely speaking) that warrior shouldn't be healer and shouldn't provide boons like quickness? It was on their WvW weekly streams around the time of Feb 2020 patch. So now we got a dev who suddenly decided or was told to make warrior also provide quickness but without putting effort at improving healing capabilities. That will come probably later (eksde). Basically, Anet never really put effort into making warrior a proper healer, it was all just "coincidence" that the old traits allowed us to go "support" with healing capabilities (like for example cleric wvw spellbreaker or warhorn healing pvp warrior). It was never adjusted in PvE to be competetive with things like Druid or any other proper healer because Anet never wanted or cared if warrior fulfills such role. Now warrior is being shaped into proper support. But since it is incomplete (with lazy/incompetent approach), there is still a lot of work needed to be done. It is clear from trait interactions and warrior's utility kit that warrior is not ready yet to become proper healing support. How are shouts suppose to compete with e.g. Druid/Firebrand/Tempest's skills? All we need is a dev who doesn't like what we don't like and likes what we like 🙂

In a world where developers actually care, that would be already in game. But these developers simply don't care. It's pretty easy to see, just look at patch notes.

Well, that explains a lot. Biased devs with double standards. So much for transparency... 🤡

Any interesting parts about warrior to share? I am now even more disgusted, after brief look at some of those snippets. Geeez this is so weird...

bUt l0w Hp AnD sQuIshY

I don't know how Anet could think this patch is good idea, like normally you would want to make a good patch to bring warrior players back to the game or keep warrior players playing and enjoying the game... what we got instead is literally the opposite, who would want to play and enjoy the profession that got just stripped off its only unique thing about the whole profession while getting nothing meaningful and reasonable as compensation. All this while other overperforming professions/specs didn't get touched (or just very slightly). What a spit in the face... In PvE, just look at how condition builds aren't going to be impacted as much as power. And cherry on top, condi berserker has no chance to compete with overpowered condi kitten (like Firebrand, Virtuoso, Specter, etc) which can reach burst peaks so fast and so high that it now practically trivializes power builds. It shows what the "Anet's intent" is. Poor Guild Wars 2, it deserves better.

Well, I guess I wrongly assume that Anet intends to balance the game properly and fairly. If their intent is not to balance the game in a way that would make warrior profession fairly balanced on par with other professions, then there is no reason to bother providing meaningful and reasonable feedback/suggestions. I am sure people provided plenty of this feedback/suggestions on things that should be more interactive, things that are underperforming and it was either ignored or "it was not in Anet's vision". Not that it matters, the trust is completely gone at this point. Not that there was any in the last few years I suppose.

I think many people here know what is wrong with the profession and what needs to be done to improve it. Yes, some suggesstions are over the top, but some are 100% reasonable and meaningful. If Anet doesn't add those changes, does that mean people who suggested it are disconnected with Anet's vision? Or could it mean simply that Anet is incompetent and don't see what players see/don't bother reading feedback/suggesstions? We can't know for sure.

You can't know for sure if ANet did that because you wrote it here. It could be simply coincidence and ANet didn't read anything here. I am sure there are plenty of people who suggested something that made it into the game as a change regardless if it was coincidence or not. Since we don't know for sure, your argument is based on guessing.