starlinvf.1358

And remember when druid was mandatory for having 2 unique buffs that stacked over might? I can understand this sentiment. However, this game struggles constantly between the conflicting design goals of, "Let's allow professions to bring something different and unique to the table." and, "Let's set up profession structures so that players can play whatever profession they want and still feel like important contributors." The fact is that what different professions bring to the table are just not the same, and a lot of those contributions are less desirable. Thats always been the crux of raids, isn't it? Trinity and Raids have one fixed structure that works on the assumption of it being the only permitted successful approach to the fight. That whole system is beyond repair once ChronoTank was discovered, since role compression beats the entire design premise at a fundamental level. The only option we have left is to go 40-man for future raids, so tasking for Sub-groups can be diversified enough to afford each having less demanding comps. Even then, I doubt it'll stop groups demanding specific comps.... but the larger pool gives better opportunities to mix and match, provided the Raids themselves either get more relaxed on certain roles, or actively mix up balance vectors between fights.

They died due to mysterious circumstances..... which is how the Mist Stranger outfit showed up.

One already exists. Cthulhu. Why settle for the lesser evil? ;) "I am Vorn the Unspeakable!! The skulls of those who defy me bleach in the sun of a Hundred worlds. (politely asks) And you are?"

She just Regular Kasmeer now......

As much as I'm all for accommodation...... there are limits to how far this can go before the whole design of the game has to be co-opted to further that goal. And I'm getting worn out having to point out that any change has to consider all use cases, not just the ones you yourself consider. And its been argued up and down, with so much better research backing it, that you really need to look into those; because just saying "something needs to be done", when there is a wealth of information and discussion about what can and should be done, feels like it adds nothing to the conversation. Which segues into a recommendation that you read up on TPV and FOV, and its impact on level design, and the drivers on motion sickness..... because you only mention things that have an effect, but don't convey the underlying causes nor why that makes a difference. Cuz if you did, you could had just cut to the chase. :p

You mean the last couple of weeks where a new Living story chapter just went live, and a huge chunk of the Casual PvE population (including organized PvE guilds) are pouring all their energy into the new map? This more then anything else is probably why no one is running it right now. Secondly, you have to be very cognizant of how the Mega server systems works. Because Organized events actively manipulate that to ensure enough people can get into the same map instance to run the event. This is why everyone very explicitly states to monitor LFG, and to show up 30 minutes prior to the event's kick off so the organizers can get everything organized. Just showing up and standing around an event area isn't enough, when its entirely possible (or even likely) that Commanders will seek out a fresh map in order to maximize the number of slots open for event participants. Teq, Anomaly, and the HOT event trains all do this regularly; so theres an assumption that the entire community understands this, or has at least encountered it at some point playing the game, by the time seeking out specific events is even something they'd think about.

Charr is statistically the least chosen race, and Female charr even rarer. I forget exactly, but I recall something saying the class pairing for Charr was Guard and Warrior at the top, and Thief being somewhere near the bottom. For Rev specifically, this was the best I could find in terms of surveys... https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=229862ACEE25D37!119&ithint=file%2cxlsx&authkey=!AE5ttnPazXmTewY Asura Revs came up as the most rare... and I kind of anecdotally agree. The Sylvari Rev numbers I think got inflated partially due to HOT's release, since Rev was added with that expansion, and there was a lot of talk about Sylvari having unique story aspects. Its precisely what motivated me to make my Rev sylvari since I was making a new character anyway, and didn't have one yet.

I agree with this 200% I love using the staff on in gw2 for all my characters, sadly on the ranger the staff is the most boring weapon of them all.The Spec as you said should also be reworked. I really hope Anet will rework the druid, but I am not sure if the community really wants that.For me druid is the most useless spec of them all (from all classes) as it caters to 1 group. Trust me.... the Community wants it badly. PvP might care the least, but Druid used to be a bunker that could hold itself. In Openworld and WvW, Druid enjoyed a short stint as a group healer, but it suffered greatly from one of Ranger's underlying design issues (which I'll get into below). Fractals and Raids only took them because of Grace of the Land and Glpyh of Empowerment, and only because it was unique buffs that could stack on top of other buffs. The strong burst healing was just a nice safety net, but something tempest could do better when spec'd properly AND without losing other strong utilities such as Ice Bow and Condition management. I often got the feeling the Druid and Spirit Vale were distinctly designed with each other, since the Druid's other skills seemed to have niche uses for each of those fights. However, where every other HOT Espec addressed major limitations of Core for each class, Druid did nothing to help address Ranger's biggest problem, and arguably doubled down on it. What I'm talking about is how its designed and balanced with a PvP mind set, and has a huge amount of contention in how its power balanced. Its a problem thats only overtly shared with Revanent, and stems from all the weapons, traits and skills having very distinct use cases, and intentionally do not scale strongly in their own right. I also got the impression that the Dev in charge of these wants to micromanage control of the meta builds, and you can actively see this in how the traits are laid out in a way that makes stacking obvious trait choices almost impossible in practice. Another thing I've noticed unique to Ranger and Rev is how how they're strongest outputs are only achieved by extremely complicated combos, paired with very specific traits, that have to be perfectly executed to succeed. Ranger in particular has (that I'm currently aware of) more "charge based" buffs then any other class, and has been slowly losing time based buffs whenever players find effective ways of using them. They're also a class that struggles to have its skills scale between PvP and WvW, and Ranger in particular has very frustrating methods of condition cleansing. Perhaps a better way of putting it is Both Rev and Ranger are forced into sustained (both damage and defense) playstyles, in a game that more greatly values Bursting. The path ways to bursting are there, but the obstacles to it feel very deliberate in how they are placed. This would probably not be much of an issue, if not for the fact that those strong builds not only have to go all-in, but require careful set up to take advantage of. This is why when successful, the results are stupidly overbearing..... but trying to deviate from it costs you your one reliable opportunity for victory. Waste any of your needed skills on anything else, and your success odds plummet, but also risk dying before you can get your combo off. I don't feel this struggle in most other classes, besides Core Necro, as most skills and traits have wide applicability, or utility choices do a good job of covering shortfalls in the rest of the build. Ranger's only saving grace happens to come from the strong baseline impact of its skills.... but that doesn't scale well into advanced buildcraft, or parts of the game where synergy gains are more important then the basic effect.

I forgot a fun quote. "You're much smarter now then you were when I met you later."

I was just about to say that. Which raises the question.... have we met this one after the other one?

I'm intrigued, please elaborate ;) Its been on my wish list ever since I found out the Hazmat suit was a thing. I've been floating 2 ideas for it..... One is based on a GW1 idea I had, in which I inadvertently predicted scrapper Gyros, that used to set of clock work drones and a clockwork golem as a platform to blend the Necro and Ranger minion mechanics. The other is basically Scruffy meets Titan Fall- Given how modern golems are all launched into combat (see Golem cannon in Straights of Devastation), and a lot of newer ones can accept pilots. The pilots utilities vary between personal defense, command type skills, and Area support skills (which also enhance the golem's ability). When piloted, those same skills gain additional trait bonuses. I could just never figure out the optimal control scheme for the Auto pilot, wheither to design around it be a disposable asset, and if it should work on the idea of multiple golem types, or have one golem that reconfigure itself on the fly.

Mesmers have the canon ability to bend time and even reality. "Naruto"....... you're thinking too small.

Everyone says that, but then no one would be happy when "it didn't do the thing I intended, even though its acting exactly like its supposed to". Sometimes you want it to do something, sometimes you don't..... and when the difference is you escaping or getting dismounted and falling to your death, people still blame the game for not reading their minds correctly. This is why something "simple" like a toggle eventually leads to contextual modifiers. Because its never as simple as turning it on or off.... theres this edge case where I'm out of flight juice, and the toggle is too far out of the way (because of the other 30 toggles you have), but I want it to do this specific thing, because I'm using flight based attack skills (coming soon) and have to time them, while also being chased by a rolling blizzard, and am flying toward an object where the collision mesh is different then visual mesh, and want to grab once, charge jump, then slide face the rest of the way up. .... Which is still wrong, because you were supposed to glide down to a spot at the bottom of the wall... but you being the player (and the player is always right), decided up and over was the solution, despite 5 previous failed attempts at. You don't think stuff like this happens all the time? At least a dozen personal stories have situations where a particular type of build works against the player, Griffon and Springer gets used (and goes nowhere) because players are just used to going "over" things to bypass them, and a LOT of fights and JPs where you "forgot to untoggle" your toggle sets you back to the beginning... and could had been avoided entirely if you simply made this other way your normal reaction. And people wonder why games have such complicated keybind menus now days. A few is fine. But games that continue longer then a year never stop at a few. Consider how many functions have been added to THIS game alone in the last 7 years. Especs and the Fbar, Special Action key, Mounts, Mount special actions, and Novelties, each with extra keys needed and half aren't even bound by default. And yet people still go on and on about wanting Consumable Hot bars, extra Hotbars, Inventory Hotbars, Mount hotbar, function hotkeys for toggles, and toggles for toggles so you don't accidentally toggle at the wrong time when reaching for another toggle.

Actually it is, you can get a sunspear AI controlled character to come assist you with a item you consume. Even the Ogre pet whistle lets any class summon a AI controlled pet. And those summons only have a hand full of skills to use, and only survive due to Minions having a 95% incoming damage reduction buff PRECISELY BECAUSE damage soaking is their only defense. Pet/Mob AI in this game doesn't handle the kind of complex decision making even passive tank and spank players need to utilize in order to survive. Any frustration players have with any PvE AI in this game has always been due to the coincidental timing of its skills firing off; and is entirely weighted on the effects of those skills, rather then the AI's "decision" to activate it. I had this well thought out response explaining everything that will go wrong with this idea........ but I can convey it in 3 simple words. Long Bow Ranger.That sound you're hearing is half the open world k-trains stabbing their monitors, while the other half is blissfully unaware of whats wrong. Spoiler alert... that other half is all long bow rangers.

I find the biggest issue is the whole market eroding around me. GW2 is suffering that same decay, but its still holding on to the laurels of game's overall structure and combat system. The growth isn't really happening, but the casual aspect the keep doubling down on is effectively making a game version of Netflix. ..... in short, its no longer Engaging, but has a reached state of passive zen that lets it eat up time and attention without much to think about. Occasionally something happens that generates a reaction on its novelty, but inevitably falls back into our same tired, familiar, comforting routines. Its entertainment junk food. And the only reason this game has a hard time being replaced, despite the animosity the players have against the devs over the years, is that this state of being is so stupidly normal, the various choice of games out there is like picking what theme and color you want for your smart phone. Innovation is reduced to a novelty, and everything want to be whatever is the dominant trend. Every time something truly interesting happens, every other game goes all-in trying to get piece of the money, and saturating the market to the point where we're sick of it, and right back where we started. WoW dominated the market for a long time on sheer the force of an older iteration of social networking, before "social networking" was a thing. Once that player base stagnated into boredom and mindless decay, social groups started to break down, and now the game struggles to stem the slow but steady bleed out. Other games offer nothing but a new coat of paint, yet all the same problems. The dystopia is real.... searching for meaning and value in a sea of overly commercialized, aggressively monetized, and all too easily forgotten titles; wearing the husks of nostalgia (for some, from a time they themselves have never lived), living a tortured, superficial existence. For every gem that is found among the ashes of our landscape.... for every ray of hope that gleams through soft grey of the foggy air..... born is the memory of what could be, before it too is consumed by whole. Always the same, yet forever different. The youth of this time have much still to discover, and far more to lose. But for me....... I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Blood Eagles warships on edge of the wilderzone frontiers. Warp beams glittering in the dark near the Gates of Auraxis. All those moments will be lost in time. But there are no more tears left to be shed. All I have left.... is the memory.

Which is something i don't care about.Get a different voice actor, then. Happens all the time. And in this case it can even be explained, trauma can change a person's voice That doesn't explain Rox. Like its reverse Trauma since shes really getting into the olmakhan life. "I woke up one day and now I sound like someone doing an impression of me". People don't appreciate how hard it is to back fill actors in an existing role, without it coming off as a total asspull. Its discriminatory as hell, but there is clear merit to a Disney Park hiring practice, where you have to look like the LAST GIRL that played that character you're auditioning for. So you can imagine its hard enough to find someone that remotely resembles a character.... but you also have to be fairly close in appearance to the person you're replacing, so the kids don't immediately realize whats happening. And kids are pretty sharp when it comes to things like this. Voice acting has a similar problem, but made a thousand times worse by the fact that the pool of talent is small to begin with..... and much of that talent has very distinct signatures that are not easy to replicate. Even up and comers have this line where they are mostly indistinct early in their careers, and eventually does or develop something that all their past and future works are compared to. A hand full are talented enough to reach Chameleon status (the equivalent of what Gary Oldman does in movies), but its insanely rare. This is much bigger problem then people realize. Both Rox and Glint's voice changes were immediately noticeable, and made worse by the fact that the current actors sound strained trying to be "close enough", while still trying to retain a natural sound. The writers have an easy out with Zojja, since "Golem Vessels" have basically been a thing since the game's launch, and the distortion can mask some of discrepancy. .... But its still hampered heavily by the fact that Felicia Day's voice has a very distinct pitch that bleeds through distortion, the same way Debbi's voice does with Taimi. They'd have to do something convoluted, like time shifted reverb or non-natural speech flow, to cover it up. Option B is a Text to speech approach with a completely different voice actor, but you lose Day's A-class arrogant snark. Frankly its often better to phase out characters then to replace the actors within a given continuity. And given the general audience's current obsession with Consistency, once the find something they like (or at least don't hate), trying to continue characters by swapping in new actors would have to have vastly superior results to have a real chance of acceptance. In long form stories, like the ones this game is now leaning on, casting is as important as good writing. And given Anet's history of inconsistently fulfilling both in their post launch story arcs, that crap shoot in overall quality has repeatedly been point of contention every release cycle. The Heightened frustration comes from the fact that we know they're capable of real gems in their story telling; but they're painfully scattered among plot holes, pacing issues, editing mistakes, misfires in viewer direction, and the general disconnect between Player and Commander. Case in point.... many people during the Balth fight in the POF finale, didn't realize Kralk was there for most of the battle. On the other hand, Joko's "save the world from you" speech was absolutely pitch perfect by having all the advantages of cut scene; and represents something we all wish would be the trending norm, rather then a one off out of left field. Doing something just for the sake of filling in, and not giving the attention and care needed to make it good, is arguably worse then letting it sit in limbo for eternity. Modern day audiences, gamers and movie goers alike, have a very delicate relationship with Expectations. And the similarities between the 2 groups reveals mountains of examples that garner both positive and negative responses. Trying to understand what drives these is what creates that conflict between the media's value as art, and the value as product. Taking that for granted, and assuming something better then nothing, is whats lead to many of the decisions that shaped pop culture into the volatile power keg it is today.

Gooooollllleeeeeeeeeeemmmmmmmem Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiideeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers!!!!

I dont think you can tank pve raids etc as warrior or revenant, im not rly into that, but ive never heard of them as being played as tanks. Which is weird since they are heavy armor and get outshined by a light armor class. I think thats what the op was trying to say. I dont get the last sentence tho. You're forgetting that armor type has absolutely no value outside of RP and visuals. Mesmer isn't a tank because no other class can avoid taking damage that well. It's a tank because you can do your original role (support) while tanking without losing absolutely anything. Other classes would need to change weapons and traits which will benefit only them, but mesmer doesn't need to. Im not rly forgetting it. Its just common sense that a heavy armored unit could negate more dmg than a dude in a clothrobe. Ofc common sense is not appliable in gw2, because of magic n shizz. But the op probably used his common sense.And i also think that mesmer has still the most tools to negate dmg, even if others would change gear. The ultimate irony here is that this "lack of common sense, cuz magic and shiz" basically exposes the illogical structure of classic "Tank and Spank" Trinity Comps. Evasion builds ARE the Ideal archetype for a Tank, based on the flawed logic of how raids are normally designed. Damage mitigation just reduces damage.... thus damage of enough magnitude and volume can easily overwhelm it, and has to be healed. This is the foundation the Hard trinity that everyone seems so fond of. Evasion is the penultimate defense, second only to "no hit box". It even outclasses most types of immunties, as there are a lot of "On-hit" mechanics that are still applicable, even if the strikes do no damage themselves. (Case in point, Ranger Stone Signet and Warrior defy pain still being vulnerable to Condition application). Evasion IS "Damage avoidance", and inherently means no damage is taken, no effects are applied, and thus does not tax the healer. Its also a flat mechanical effect, so no amount of numerical fiddling of damage values can possibly overwhelm it. Its also superior to blocks, as many games have other mechanics that bypass or interplay with blocks. Evasion is so damn powerful, some of the newer bosses in various game modes are given attacks that bypass Evasion. Mesmer's Shared Distortion trait was nerfed down to only giving aegis, because it was able to bypass 1-shot mechanics in a couple of HOT raids for a whole group. Sparcus in the Boss Blitz has lava walls that bypass all known defenses, always dealing a huge amount of damage if you physically pass through it. Having seen what they did to Continuum split, I wouldn't be surprised if future raids also have specific mechanics to directly shutdown Distortion/Evasion as an option. Ultimately the only reason Evasion is rarely useful in WoW-esque type games is how the combat, and by extension all the defense options, are governed by probability. The designers of those games manipulate that probability to do whatever they need/want it to do..... hence why RNG has become an increasingly overbearing and aggressive element of RPG-like games in the wake of MMOs. And evasion in boss fights can be controlled entirely on the Dev's side via probability and modifiers. But in action based games like GW2 and Tera, the mechanical nature of, and ability to actively control, all of our defenses make them reliable enough to counter any applicable threat or attack by way of player action. If you look the structure of a typical Raid boss, the tank role is an extremely dumbed down version of PvP. You have an enemy that fixates on one target, only attacks once every few seconds at most, and usually has its damage potential loaded almost entirely into a single strike. It also doesn't move of its own initiative, or does a simple "follow" of the tank (it can be done- but historically PvE players are almost incapable of cooping with a mobile target). It doesn't try to avoid attacks, and only really survives by a combination of a massive HP pool and secondary mechanics to control their vulnerability profile. A GW2 world boss is effectively what a Raid boss IS without those secondary mechanics and environmental hazards. The Boss tank is also a 1v1 engagement from the player perspective, letting them focus all their attention on timing defenses and managing resources. Thief could reasonably do this job as well, except its defenses operate in a way that aren't conductive to keeping a boss stationary (see note about mobile bosses above). Being a PvP Duelist class at its core, and heavily built around damage avoidance, Memser is incredibly well suited for this type of fight situation. But this only covers one of the reasons Chrono dominates that spot. Chrono takes this 2 steps further by having its Support skills not being in direct competition with what it uses to tank, and the support side of the build itself offers both Alacrity and Quickness in a single party slot; a Boon combination that doesn't exist in any other build to date. This gives Chrono a 3:1 Role Compression (Tank, Boon, and Area Control), where any other class could barely manage 2 at a trade off. It was arguably 4:1 at the start of HOT, since Signet of Inspiration could replicate (and maintain) a full set of boons once sparked from the party. It takes a minimum of 3 supports to do what Chrono Tank does in 1 slot. 2 Chronos can cover all major boons for a party, except the 25 might stacking. The next closest party comp just to get Quickness and Alacrity is 2 FBs and a Renegade, which is 3 slots for the foundation of the party comp. You still need a Might Stacker and Healer build, which is usually compressed into Druid since the Sun/Frost Spirit/Spotter buffs are unique to, and brought by a Ranger anyway. Splitting the Druid would means the Boon stacker is probably off-DPS, and a high possibility of needing 2 full healing builds instead of a supplemental one for the split group. While various party comps are POSSIBLE and viable, Druid and Twin Chrono allows you to build a party for ANY raid wing with only 3 Mandatory slots, leaves you 7 slots for DPS and/or fight specific builds, and is universally compatible with any hybrids needed to help party suvivabilty. A Party without Twin Chrono needs roughly 5 slots doing some kind of support job, and much more heavily distributed..... which means only certain build pairings are viable, on top of the fact that some of those builds aren't viable in certain fights. The circumstance that allowed Chrono to accomplish this, just lends further evidence to how convoluted and arbitrary conventional Raid boss design actually is in its quest to "be difficult". HP Soaking is an antiquated method. Where its prevalence was once a technical necessity, its decayed into an ever escalating game of numbers that players have become increasing efficient at overcoming. I dare say that if we ever get a Raid boss that knows how to fight like a PvP player, you'll quickly see the team comp morph into GvG strategies. And I welcome that day; as we'll finally see a PvE fight that takes proper advantage of the game's combat system.

That'd kill what makes hammer unique, and would need additional modifications to boot. Having the symbol on autoattack makes it useful in a lot of situations.>The problem with having the symbol on AA is that it encourages a lot of AA camping instead of utilizing more dynamic skill synergies, which makes skills 2-5 of the hammer fairly underutilized and an overall boring playstyle. @Lan Deathrider.5910 said: That'd kill what makes hammer unique, and would need additional modifications to boot. Having the symbol on autoattack makes it useful in a lot of situations.>The problem with having the symbol on AA is that it encourages a lot of AA camping instead of utilizing more dynamic skill synergies, which makes skills 2-5 of the hammer fairly underutilized and an overall boring playstyle. This. Put the symbol on Hammer 2, make it an 8s CD and last 4s, gives 2s of Protection per pulse. Make Hammer AA 3 immobilize foes struck for 1s, make it AoE. Make Hammer 3 Mighty Blow, CD increase to 8s, Reduce Recharge by 50% if it hits an immobilized foe. Make Banish teleport to targeted foe and knockdown for 3s. Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Increase base damage by 50%.Make Ring of Warping a ground targeted skill with 1200 range. Instead of keeping foes from crossing the line, make it pulse slow and Chill. Make it pulse damage as well (on the order of what a symbol would do).I would power balance the AA to have a single pulse symbol to benefit from traits, and make the whole use case more mobile. Hammer's main issues stem from it being a Point Brawling/Boss Tanking weapon, but nowhere does the game really allow for "tank and spank". Making the AA single pulse gets around that main problem, and then retune the other skills for a reverse lockdown fighting style. This retains aspects of its Point Defense purpose, but improves the area denial potential in WvW, and allows it to be mobile as a whole. 1: Change the cycles timing and damage loading of AA to 30/30/40, with the final hit being single pulse symbol with increased protection duration.2: Retain blast finisher, but slightly increase range3: Change it from a projectile to a 600 range Circle/Cone Cascade, 3 target. Inner Circle Immobiles, Cascade 1 cripples, Cascade 2 Blinds. This changes its purpose to a flexible setup for Banish. 4: Banish unchanged5: I"m not sure what, if anything, needs to be done with Ring of Warding. For a while I was debating if 3 should also have a Reflect feature like Air-Blast from Flamethrower. Completely underutilized feature.

"A little to the left aaaand...."

The most divergent? Revenant. Doesn't mean their effective, or interesting to play.... merely that they have the most mechanically diverse builds out of all the classes. Runner up is Ele. This class is a historical treasure box of unorthodox builds. And even despite the beating its taken by the balance team, each weapon combination and Espec plays to different types of strategies. The Meta might keep pushing Staff (because damage), but Sword Weaver and Scepter Tempests are completely different animals when seen in action. The reason Guardian comes up in everyone's list is due to Core Guard's premise being universally effective across all game modes. And unlike Necro, Thief, Warrior, Rev, and Ranger, its not purposefully crippled in some aspect to counter balance its archetype. In fact, it used to be staple in Raids.... and the only reason it got ousted is because every other class was forced (by Dev balance) to overspecialize for a best in slot role, and Guardian never really got that treatment. Funnier still, it took them trying to kill off Chrono to force more Renegade/Firebrand pairs, to bring them back into the meta. But for purposes of the thread... I would say that Ranger is has the most "practical" play style dichotomy. And most of that comes from Druid being the only non-Core support focused spec, thats completely incompatible with hybridization after the GM trait changes.

That doesn't make sense ... the fact that other people don't have massive lag issues would tend towards the lag problem NOT being Anet server. It may be a little of both. ANET admitted their load balancer was not right for their upgraded server...worked toward fixing that, but then noticed the issue persisted during reset. They haven't updated since then. Sure, but overall, it's alot more not Anet than it is. Not saying that Anet has no effect on this but it's certainly not the majority their issue because there are players where this isn't a problem for them. The fact is that there are lots of connections over the internet that impact how a player experiences the game, so singling out Anet because they develop the game as THE problem is nonsense.But you also can't discount that they're engineering level decisions have a major impact. Moving from their old servers to AWS, and then moving the hosting zone into Central US created a better average metric, but also exacerbated latency those on the edges of the region's coverage. Load Balancing is notorious for being a moving target, made all the worse by the fact Fast Competitive modes get very problematic with Asymmetric networks and network queuing. Slow response times are irritating, but variable response times can't be compensated for reasonably by players. Our Skill queuing system is the worst of both worlds when it comes action/reaction, since the combat system does reach order resolution in increments of fractions of a second. The division between client side and server side control for various skills is also a problem, because it actively changes the order of resolution. But more pertinent is the resource allocations, the "operations" throughput of the server, queuing methods, culling, target caps, target priorities, and the data structures that handle it all, have all proven to be ongoing challenges for them. Decisions and implementations in all of these areas have had significant impact to both overall and situation specific server performance. Like all skills having a 5 target cap and a 25 stack status cap in order to compensate for the server's inability to process 10s of thousands of operations per second, without the entire system imploding into a "slowed time" state because its not allowed to drop packets. When the servers got code improvements, they changed the way things capped, and for awhile could run a blob fight without insanely aggressive culling. But when they introduced the Warclaw, they also lowered the player count per wvw map to prevent misfires with how the game handles mounting/dismounting as a state change. Even then, the ordering of operations caused an opening for state changes to override and skip each over each other, resulting in the Invisible warclaw exploit. Latency may be latency, and thus unavoidable in cases. But how the game handles that disparity is something Anet has to consciously make choices about. And given Anet's history of cutting corners, actively denying facts (even being proven wrong in their own metrics by the community), and notorious for not following through with major undertakings, with little clarity as to why, its very hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. Credit where Credit is due over the years.... but the game, and the Engine itself, has multiple systemic issues that had been routinely ignored, and is only now being fixed out of necessity, or possibly desperation. And thats not even delving into class implementations and balance. Those decisions drive the technical requirements. There has been a number of skills that have straight up been broken, break things, and even torture the server on a technical level. Latency alone does not account for the majority of whats wrong with WvW performance. And in a lot of cases, raw latency is the least determining factor to whats being suffered. When POF launched, Scourge spam was not only causing queue floods, it even caused some skill activations to misfire entirely. I'm not talking "takes forever to work"... but straight up fails to register it being used before moving on to something else. I don't think I've ever seen that happen before.... even in the "invisible zerg because of culling" days prior to HOT.

Sure, I can understand and accept synergy, but lb/gs builds are already very effective and pretty common. Condi based builds need more help outside of pve, and so does the Shortbow. Even if the traits aren’t swapped, the daze and stun buff would be more useful in skirmishing for any type of shortbow builds. Unfortunately it still wouldn't make it viable. Buff shortbow up 3s daze/stun and it still wouldn't be viable because shortbow has no follow up for damage. You'd just swap weapons for more dmg... And gs doesn’t need it considering the potential damage output. But the daze and stun buff doesn’t need to be in the longbow line. Maybe not, but the damage buff on interrupt is definitely good with longbow, and the fact GS is easily paired with LB, makes the damage buff on interrupt pair very well with GS and so does the stun and daze duration for GS... In a way it's like because you're using longbow and invested in marskmanship, you should use GS too. Which is kind of cool from a synergy point for view. Because your have marksmanship traits essentially just for longbow with that other master trait that gives 5% to 10% more damage and lead the wind.... but you also have the option to run these trait lines of moment of Claire and remorseless that not only help longbow but also GS because you will have to go into melee range and thats cool... Now skirmishing does have some of the coolest traits in this game. Quickness on dodge. Quick draw is the coolest trait there is... yet there are to date no builds (for PvP) that can make use of skirmishing. Personally, I don't think moment of clarity should be move but instead, skirmishing should get some kind of trait for Condi clear on swiftness or quickness gain or something so that we can be freed from the shackles of wilderness survival, hopefully grab the Shortbow trait too. And then maybe we can actually have a skirmishing shortbow build, or at least, hope for skirmishing. Point is this, and I’m not trying to be rude in any way, a trait function that buffs stun and daze doesn’t belong, or make sense, in a trait line devoted to a weapon devoid of any stun or daze period. Shortbow builds are far behind in any wvw or pvp play, unlike the common, and highly effective, lb/gs “me too” builds you see. Lb and gs aren’t underperforming weapons compared to some others, and those others need some extra help where they can get it. I would make the argument that the Trait needs to be EXPANDED, rather then moved. The lynch pin of your argument rests on "Marksman is the Long bow trait", which can be quickly dismantled by simply renaming the entire trait line to something like "Huntsman" or "Expertise". Both of those names fit all the contained traits more thematically, and gets past the fact that only 2 out of 9 traits even imply a relationship with the longbow. Plus the Stun part of the trait was an after thought if you look at the history. More importantly, Shortbow as a concept needs a serious rethink, since Ranger doesn't even technically have a Condi weapon other then Torch, since all the others are Hybrids. Come to think of it, all the Med classes are kind of built this way, since they get a comparatively large amount of condi generation traits that are independent from their weapons. Moment of Clarity's Stun component should be expanded to include increasing the effectiveness of Control Effects (which opens up greater synergy with all the interrupts that Trigger it in the first place), Redesign all the Skirmishing GM traits to better play off of the Hybrid weapons, move shortbow mastery to a master tier, and roll Sharpened Edges or Hidden Barbs effects into the Minor traits (which is what most of the other classes do with Passive bleeds). I would also put serious effort into expanding how Quick Draw's effect is utilized, since its only really effective for certain builds to enhance rotations..... IE its weak for Opportunity plays, and offers little for follow ups.

Theres way more wrong with the daggers then that. The majority of it is rooted in the Dev's perception that the Dagger is just a static DPS weapon for Raid builds. Its auto attack is slow, its chain sequence is longer and back loaded, 2 skill is just extra bleed stacks and potentially a DPS loss over the auto chain, 3 skill is ridiculously situational due to the Dagger's small strike arc, the historically inconsistent range of leap skills, its tendency to fire on the far side of small hit boxes, and its slow wind up speed; all of which contribute to making the conditional "on strike" quickness unreliable as a source in mobile fights. The weapon has zero utility in mobile fights (which includes fighting most champs), and is further highlighting the problem with Ranger's layout, and its highly scattered and overly narrow, function specific skills.

Oh.... I almost forgot. Search "HarmonQuest" on Vimeo. Its a series run by Dan Harmon (the Rick and Morty guy), playing a session of DnD with is comedian friends, in front of a studio audience, and animated the session into a show series. Its definitely worth watching, as it imparts a HUGE amount of context on DMing players who may or may not know anything about DnD.