Kalan.9705

I am seeing same bug today on returning to try some scourge. Full 90sec cool down, but no spell casted.

With the up to date client it is not possible to queue for any form of PvP matches since the 17th March update.

Stuck in 2v2 queue ranked.

Depends entirely if Arenanet are trying to track any metrics for the amount of money this feature has cost them? How many players have taken a break or reduced game time when they found such a naked milking scheme demotivating? I know no gems have been purchased in my household since build and equipment templates which was previously unheard of over such a period, especially including major holidays.

Is it crazy to think a company with it's own forum might use it? It seems to be. Not sure why. We only bring the torches and pitchforks out after three or four posts... But seriously, I just want some engagement from them. Im only here to bring out the pitch forks :( Lets be fair the balance team really do not have much of a clue. Look at the changes to Chrono, pretty much nuked the class into the ground in one patch. And it's not like it was outperforming Mirage, it had 1 glass cannon blow you up from stealth meme build. That can be executed just as efficiently with core mesmer. They nerfed boon share ages ago, so why the changes? I think at the end of the day balance is just not a priority for this game. Unless it is something game breaking, the devs load up the skill and animation, do some superficial bug testing to make sure it is working as intended then roll it out. And the balance is glacially slow in GW2, which I am kind of ok with given this is not a subscription game. You are paying a sub you expect constant updates and balancing. Devs are not cheap, so they probably have like 2 devs they flog to death while the rest of the team sit around and sip organic almond milk rain forest friendly latte's in the office. months ago, devs removed stealth reveal from gyro, creating a displeasing 3 month zerg meta where the zerg that had the shorter stealth duration first lost the fight.i straight up stopped playing gw2 at that point. the devs had no idea that they made a balance so bad that it screwed over a core part of the game mode. every wvw player knew it was a bad balance patch, every player knew it was bad balance patch because we as players actually played the game to know it was a bad balance patch. the fact that players knew, and devs that should of known better to not make that change is giant big red flag about the disconnect that devs have from understanding their own game mode. [at the time anyways] the devs definitely has dropped the ball multiple times, because they had no reason or rhyme when they implements a change, because they had no direction. in hopes that they have finally found a direction, an understanding the path they want to make a wvw a good game mode, maybe a simplistic balance patch with a direction is what they need so they can make the appropriate steps forward to create more room for a better game mode. Which is why I am holding out a sliver of hope that Cal will make a difference. What we have heard is that he actually plays the game with some fairly significant time in PvP. He is new to the balance team and I believe he came from the player base, though I could be wrong. Of course, it still remains to be seen and I would bet either in game or real life gold on in. Might be a couple of coppers in both though..A dev who's played a lot of PvP and then thinking somehow this will help him balance WvW could actually be worse than a dev who's played neither mode and is actually open to the realisation that they are completely different games with skill splits required.

UpsideShake up is good, even with short term chaos. No new elites, very little in way of new specs or new content has made GW2 get stale. Recent balance efforts have been profoundly unambitious (& frequently failed at meeting their stated aims). So a proper shake up is essential to get things moving again. Go BIG or go home. DownsideUnfortunately if they're still trying to do it without splitting most skills in PvP apart from most WvW skills - it's doomed to fail and annoy both sides, who have deeply incompatible needs. I just don't think this message has sunk in for Anet. Anet just can't get past their mental blockage that labelling PvP and WvW as competitive modes makes them are somehow similar, when right at their core basics:- gear, buffs, numbers on each side, even how many sides there are, WvW & PvP are essentially different games. Yes it is more work to properly split pvp and wvw - it is also more work to put all 4 wheels on to your car rather than just putting 3 wheels on, but sometimes half-arsing it is just no option at all.

It's taken 7 years to get Anet to properly admit that PvE needs different balance than PvP and WvW.Please don't take 7 more years to get Anet to properly admit that PvP has profoundly different mechanics to WvWWithout 3 different sets of balance objectives (teams) - balance is going to be bad.Trying to balance PvP & WvW without comprehensive skill splits between them is guaranteed to be deeply unsatisfying and counter productive. just consider reflect bubble on firebrand for one single skill example, look at: use, uptime, placement, coverage, total reflects with 1 FB on each side vs with 10 FBs on each side.

Worth quoting for value, I hope a dev does see this and it doesn't just get lost in some of the narrow arguments on the semantics. Incidentally it's perfectly possible to have not been using arc templates, and still dislike both the broken and narrow implementation of the new loadouts and their dreadful monetization that would cost hundreds of pounds across 20+ characters. Also, are Revenants working with templates yet?

My household has been with GW2 since Beta. We haven't really played anything else. We take breaks on gaming altogether occasionally, but we always come back. We haven't felt like the patches of the past year or so have offered much, not very engaging content, poor balance changes, not much in the way of new builds being opened up, just existing builds being hit - less variety is less interesting. In particular the extremely aggressive monetization of the very broken & underwhelming loadouts has had a negative effect on our enthusiasm for GW2. Both on the principle and the actual costs involved. It was just such naked greed. Normally several times a year when my wife or I finish a major project we will splash on some gems. This time we took that splash and bought several chromecast 4K's, Stadias, controllers etc, and most of their current games line up. I hope the devs have learned something from the reactions to loadouts, excessive monetizing, lack of new ways to play just avenues being closed off. Even if the devs don't want to say too much publicly. Also I hope they get on some interesting content, a new expansion, some neglected build styles becoming interesting to try out, splitting pvp, wvw and pve balance into 3 separate processes and so on. We'll check back in from time to time I'm sure. I hope the loadout system will be replaced by something functional or even something that improves gameplay. I hope Arenanet abandons the idea of making players pay to use menus/interface - it's just an all round insulting idea.

I went from 20+ Builds with Arc on multiple characters to only playing one class anymore with 3-4 builds, which I awkwardly have to juggle with the account wide slots, and constantly having to swap one of the gear loadout slots around, since I refuse to buy into this system at this price, especially per character. I also had 3 more legendary Armors from all gamemodes in the making, which I already didn't really need since I already have some for all my most played/build diverse characters, which are now just straight up worse and more annoying than Ascended Gear (of which I have 5 bank tabs full of stacks), so all my ingame goals are void too. So yea, went from enjoying many professions in all gamemodes with tons of variety to barely playing the game anymore, and when I do am generally annoyed and frustrated about the limitations and clunkyness compared to what the game was with Arc. Even the two horrible weeks after Arc Templates got killed with no "Template" system at all were slightly better than it is now with Anet's "templates" in place, especially for multi gamemode play. Good stuff. This system is abysmal. Mistakes can happen, but the complete inability to engage with customers when a major mis-step has been made is extremely problematic.Shutting off debate is likely as damaging or more so than the system design failure.

I'd play the storylines again if I could skip

Is the plan to try and bury negative comments? This thread is full of good suggestions from people who care about the game.

I've taken a while to reflect on the system & conclusion is this: As far as I am concerned they could turn the build & templates system off, (or give players the option), to revert to auto build swap between pve, wvw etc and simply sell more shared inventory slots and it would be vastly better.Templates & build system has reduced my interest in progressing on making legendaries, reduced the game goals that previous drew me to log in more often.I feel less attached to 'main' characters I cared more for, and should just have many alts that sit on their own ascended gear sets & builds.The rabid monetising of such a negative system has made me concerned that the people behind monetising this 'feature-set' are better suited to making trashy phone games to milk people's phone bills via their kids. Normally I'd make a minimum of what I'd consider a traditional monthly sub via gems, but this system has left me not wanting to buy other things.It's a bad system & needs a ground up replacement designed to be some sort of shared accountwide legendary & ascended equipment vault with with build+ gear loadout.A positive system could be monetised for increased capacity with no problems. In other fronts.There's a really positive step that A-net has faced up to the fact that balance has been going wrong for a while and has taken some action. Admitting there is a problem is often half the battle.At last we have the realisation that competitive modes don't play the same as PvE & you need people adept at competitive balance to be independently doing competitive balance. Hopefully someone will finally listen to the amazing new idea that competitive fights of up to 5 v 5 have fundamentally different mechanics compared to say 50 v 50 v 50. Reflects, blocks, boons, strips, cc, stability, sustain, combos, retribution, aoe target caps - everything scales totally differently in wvw compared to pvp. Making every class/spec bring value in PvP is fundamentally different from doing the same in WvW.So having a separate competitive balance team is a vital halfway step towards the beta suggestion of having a working system of 3 separate pve, pvp and wvw balance teams. Most else seems in a holding pattern for now:WvW content is essentially - another year has passed, but please bear with us another year to work on features heavily suggested during beta, 7 years ago or so, to address coverage & player pop.PvP content is in a rut, but there may be swiss & some interim eventy tourney stuff to stop off season killing pvp a bit more each time, etc at some point.New expansion/classes to restore interest seem far off at present though.There's some new story coming soon though so that's something at least, hopefully with a new stat set to give some interest beyond the play through.

Poorly thought out system goals & design, bad implementation of those, plus loads of bugs. Pricing of these unimpressive features feels like the sort of insult to playerbase that actually results in decrease to overall revenue when you factor in the harm to player satisfaction. No-one enjoys being taken for a mug and charging to make gameplay worse is pretty insulting. The previous pve & seperate wvw builds should have remained untouched.The new equipment+traits template vault feature should add, not remove.The new template vault, should have been implemented as an entirely new panel.Effectively an account-wide equipment only shared storage, with gear slots and traits alongside and saved together as a fully complete template.For this new template vault, all your account's characters can draw gear from the vault if they activate one of the new vault templates.All gear being used by template vault returns to template vault on a swap or logout. (so every character on account can still access)Good sorting tools for the high capacity equipment vault (by type, by stats, by character use etc)It could have been monetised with capacity increases, for gear volume and extra template slots above a high number of free ones.You need to go back to drawing board & design a feature set that adds QoL, and does not penalise players. Especially not while gouging them for ridiculous amounts of cash.

Completely gouging your playerbase for cash - all extra tabs unlocks should be ACCOUNTWIDE unlocks new character slots are far better value than this system swapping just a few pieces of gear now extremely annoying you have to slowly mouseover for stats not, it's there in a line in the inventory (most of my gear has same icons but different stats. e.g. trinkets etc so you place them in inventory spots to manage them) Too few tabs to be really valuable 10x more tabs needed (& unlocking another tab unlocks for every current & future character) Did I mention the feeling you are gouging your playerbase for cash, with junk/acounting/management features & skins, while providing very little new playable content, & truly awful balance patches that do the opposite of their stated objectives?