Whilyam.9356

I'm glad to see that there are tangible changes being made to the team in response to the June patch. I think the delay speaks to the damage that was done in that patch, that CMC cannot just "hit the ground running" and fully support the idea of the team taking its time and clearly making and laying out a balance philosophy. Even if I disagree with CMC's balance philosophy, he will have a huge amount of my respect simply for having a philosophy, clearly laying it out, and sticking to it.

This was not the response that should have gone out. I feel so incredibly tired. No amount of explanation will justify this patch. It will only illuminate where the team went wrong. And ultimately it will waste your time.

I don't normally post to the forums, but I just have to give my feedback. The exposed change is an absolutely horrible change that will make the combat feel boring. You all JUST made a tutorial for new players to break bars and now you're making the effect largely meaningless? You were doing so well. What's the point in being skilled/prepared enough to bring CC and break the boss' bar if the reward is "10% damage". That's a minor trait choice, not a debuff. Do better.

I do not have many hours in WvW, but this is what I have generally gathered: Firebrand and Scourge are still major outliers in terms of support and damage in large groups, respectively. Scourge was actually made stronger post-patch due to increased targets on shades. The ideal meta, IMO, is one where those outliers are toned down and classes used less often like elementalists, mesmers, and rangers found a more stable place in all aspects of WvW. Currently an ideal group consists mostly of scourges and firebrands to back them up. Other classes are largely seen as a liability. While all classes, for the most part, have a build that has a role in WvW, most classes really only have one role that they play. For example, Rangers are almost always Soulbeasts and almost always roamers. There's no reasonably spot for, say, a Druid healer in a large group. The problem with saying anything on balance is that a LOT of it is predicated on the current best practice of getting as many people as possible and swarming opponents. Power in GW2 scales incredibly with numbers. In big group fights, everything dies instantly. But you all can't balance based on that because then 1v1s on the roads will literally never reach a conclusion unless one of the people keels over IRL from sitting at the computer for too long. So my ideal world might not be best implemented until we see what fallout comes from the updates to rewards that disincentivizes grouping into huge groups.