DoomNexus.5324

I will buy it somewhere at a discount, not gonna pre-order. The bonus is probably as bad as in EoD (the fire serpent weapons all look meh for example, even the skiff isn't really that nice compared to some shop skins shortly added after release). Metas and everything else important will most likely be reworked several times anyway and I'm not really interested in the story, so I'm in no rush. Idk, GW2's storytelling has really dropped off after the core campaign imo. I don't really like having everything voice acted and animated either if I'm honest.. That's just so much production value that could've gone into making actually playable content..

As many other have said already: S/S Power Rev - and maybe Daredevil (thief). Rev can be frustrating to pick up since the energy system is unique and needs its own dedication for micro-management but you will get the hang of it. Next to thief (my main) I like Herald the best. Once you can properly work with the energy it is extremely rewarding. Do note tho that ele isn't that squishy tbh. Changing armor class is not nearly as impactful as your actual build, if this is a concern for you. Necro or Weaver/Cata can be significantly more tanky than any of the heavy armor professions.

As an ele you need to constantly switch between elements to be effective. If you are just sitting on fire or earth you won't get done much. The elite spec "Weaver" takes this to the extreme as you have to weave through all the elements (to benefit most from its utility skills and traits) but this applies to all ele specs to some degree. And try different weapons, maybe look up some builds for open world on metabattle and see what you like best. -> If your fire skills are on cooldown swap to another element, if that is on cooldown but your fire skills are still not all reset (you need to know cooldowns) you should switch to a third element and so on. D/D refers to the weapons Dagger/Dagger. I'm not quite sure what 10, 2, 5, 7 would refer to tho. My guess would be that if it is 3 digits (or 3 sets of 3 digit numbers) then it refers to the major traits. So 3,1,3 for example would be the third adept, first master and third grandmaster trait of that specialization (Arcane for example). You should really use the traits (talents) tho, you can't mess anything up anyway as you can unlock everything and change them around as much as you like without resetting or anything. This is also part of the builds you'll find on sites like metabattle. I'd suggest just roll with whatever they write for now and maybe get used to the gameplay before trying to theorycraft your own builds. But just use them, you'll be much weaker if you don't and there's no risk in picking something. Guild Wars 2 is very forgiving as you can't make a wrong choice that will permanently affect your character (maybe just waste gold on sigils/runes/equip with a stat combo you won't need in a new build but that's it). "Core" in this context btw refers to just not using elite specs. So only specializations that were available in the "core" game. Using Weaver or Tempest would therefore not be a core build. Berzerker stats make you a glass cannon so I wouldn't recommend taking it for now tbh. Celestial is very good on ele and with Zerker you may struggle with sustain and die quickly. Yea, HoT is a weird expansion in several aspects. They intentionally made mobs way harder than in the base game and fortunately ditched the idea in PoF again. Mobs there are just way tankier and deal a ton of damage. The masteries for gliding and stuff are also intentional so you will continuously be unlocking more and more "secrets" and content in areas you already know the more you progress. I personally don't think that's an issue (backtracking is a core part of a few genres, Metroidvania for example) but you are welcome to disagree. In any case, it's the way the expansion has been designed so I guess just roll with it for that part of the game. Maybe ele and mesmer are also just not the right classes for you. I personally don't really like the playstyle of both. As for caster I vastly prefer necro and if you like just ranged/hybrid classes in general maybe check out ranger, engineer or the Dragonhunter elite spec from Guardian, the Renegade elite spec from Revenant or Deadeye elite spec from Thief - I like pistol/pistol on thief a lot (which is available in a core build but synergizes a lot better with Deadeye traits and its Steal-replacement). The next expansion in August will also remove the elite spec requirement for added weapons, so you will be able to play with longbow on any guardian spec or with shortbow on any rev spec afterwards. It's beneficial to have at least 1 level 80 character of each class imo anyway so just test around and see what you like most. Some tips on leveling up quickly: Crafting and world exploration is a good way to gain XP relatively quickly without a lot of grind and unlocks character progression that's useful for your entire account (having every crafting job at max level - maybe except for Scribe - is extremely useful). Crafting costs a lot of gold tho, if you have to buy everything, but gathering also brings XP and cuts down crafting costs, so maybe just farming mats and crafting can be a good way to add a bit of variety to your game play. If you aren't opposed to competitive game modes I'd definitely recommend playing WvW for a while. For me it's one of the most enjoyable game modes atm as you can either roam on your own or just join a zerg if one's running around somewhere. It gives a decent amount of loot and gold over time and WvW skirmish tickets can come in quite handy for endgame goals too. Additionally, you'll progress through the reward track which also gives foliages that let you level up instantly. Same applies to sPvP btw and doesn't require any gear or being a certain level as you get treated like Lv 80 with (almost) everything unlocked and standardized (Stronghold is more fun than Conquest imo).

I think starting with 1200 rating and being pushed towards that rating in a new season (due to the "soft reset") is a detriment for players on both ends of the "skill spectrum". Players who are just starting out/are yet unexperienced or players who are just "not that good" are often forced to compete against sometimes even top players when population is low. Continuously getting stomped until you get down to your actual skill group can be extremely frustrating, especially if you don't know how things work yet and this is the very first experience you get. You may not even know that it will get better and assume this is the norm, as it is actually quite counter-intuitive imo as most games will place you at the bottom and let you play your way up. On the other hand, if you are a top player and get teamed up with someone who just starts out it is basically a free-win for the enemy team most of the time, which also sucks hard for those players. For this reason I suggest lowering the rating you start out/get soft reset towards, for example 900. This is the low end for silver elo. Volatility* is already crazy high during the first few matches and good enough players will easily be able to climb to their appropriate skill group relatively quickly anyway. Also, very good players are likely already placed pretty high so even with a soft reset they won't be pulled down to 900 and won't compete with beginners at all. I usually don't suggest anything anymore as Anet won't invest anything in PvP anyway but this seems like such an easy adjustment that I could see a realistic chance of being executed. Should take an intern like 10 minutes to locate the configuration/code and change "1200" to "900". Unless this is also hardcoded in 10 different places of spaghetti code and somehow the day and night cycle or boss drop rate is also coupled with the number, which might be the case idk. Just wanted to put it out there. * I think volatility could also use a slight adjustment. A lower starting value with a bit less decay would imo be better. Sometimes I gain or lose nearly 100 rating in the first match alone (can be seen via the API, even tho it's hidden in the pvp window). I think it would be more effective if the rating change starts out at like +-50 but the volatility takes longer to drop of completely.

I would actually not hate on this idea as much if ranked would just start out in bronze. Forcing everyone to start with a rating of 1200 (and pushing them towards that in a new season) just kills gold elo imo. There's already a ton of volatility in the first ~20 matches, why that rating rebalance? I might be wrong but I think it's also quite demotivating for a new/casual player when you are consistently below the initial rating. Not necessarily important enough to make them stop playing but it doesn't feel particularly rewarding either. I don't really know why Anet doesn't change this tbh. People who are good enough will easily get to gold during their placement matches or couple of game afterwards anyway and people who really struggle shouldn't have to start out in gold. It is super frustrating for your team mates because you are pulling everyone down and give a free win to the enemy team and it is also super frustrating getting completely stomped until your mmr has been pushed down enough to get to your actual skill group. Since plat matches are also filled with a few gold players most of the time (as there aren't that many plats playing at all times) it's not uncommon to have top100 players grouped with complete beginners if they have won their 1st or first 2 placement matches. I know, completely different topic but I think it is a crucial part of why I don't like just creating incentives in this current state.. If this was fixed and people needed to play bottom up instead of just being thrown into the middle of the pile I would appreciate efforts to bring more people into the game mode more. Then they'd also have a far better chance of judging the game mode imo. Being on respawn timer and running back to a node for 60% of the match simply is not enjoyable and I'm not surprised nobody sticks to it. -> This also fuels toxicity btw..

Just more modes, even if just added to the AT rotation or as unranked. 2v2, 3v3 already exist and 10vs10 was also in the game at some point. Or just add TDM on conquest maps. Would probably be rather easy to implement those things in Custom Arenas and Anet could finally make some money on PvP stuff again (people hosting their own lobbies with custom rules). Also.. Anet doesn't give a kitten about the population anyway so why not just give us all the possibilities? Worst case would be that the other modes die but at least nobody can blame Anet anymore then (apart from maybe too little too late). I'd guess the average case would be that every mode will be somewhat populated and overall increase the population again. Ranked is not dead just because Stronghold has a queue either so I don't see any viable counter-arguments (although I will probably get bashed with the same old 2-3 points that have always been made in the last 8 years to give Anet excuses..) Maybe give unranked a bit more reward most of the PvP rewards are gated behind ranked (apart from the reward track).

The ship has sailed, sPvP is dead, move on.

The PvP community was quite big and thriving just a couple years ago, the population isn't the actual issue. It's the perpetual neglect and bad balance changes from Anet that sours the mood and forces people out of the game mode (and often the entire game). Adding incentives for random people, who aren't even interested in the game mode to begin with, won't help sPvP either, quite the opposite probably. The barrier to entry is already incredibly low, anybody who wants to check it out can already do so. But forcing "uncompetitive" people into a competitive team-based game mode because of loot will just increase toxicity and/or only add to the numbness of players. Mixing casual players and tryhards doesn't work, I've seen that very recently again when trying to play another game with a couple of friends... 2 of us tried to actually win, 2 just wanted to play the game however they wanted.. let's just say we don't play the game together anymore, it just doesn't work.. Everyone "giving it a fair chance" can't give it a 'fair' chance anyway. Not in the current state of the game mode. Again.. the dwindling population is not helping but it's not the cause, it's a symptom. Throwing a pile of wood in a fire will also temporarily push the flames down but it doesn't help extinguish it.

This is a followup to my other thread: Since you all seem to HATE the idea, how would you change sieges in WvW if you could? Or do you think the current system is perfect and should stay exactly as it is now? Some comments actually gave valid criticism and alternatives to achieving a similar goal, which some of them I honestly even prefer over my suggestion. But a lot of comments were just bashing the whole idea of being more resourceful or saying "increase the damage of siege again" or "make them cost nothing" etc.. Which to me begs the question, why even have walls and sieges etc in WvW if most of you apparently want to faceroll through the map anyway? Do you actually even like a "siege focused" game mode or would you prefer a battleground-style mode where you just clash and maybe fight over some open objectives? It would be interesting if you can also provide some reasoning for changes you suggest, like what's the intended effect of this change.

It's funny and sad because everybody immediately assumes that I would make this suggestion without any changes to anything else, which I very (but apparently not so..) clearly stated should not be the case. Who said you'd have to run for more supplies? This change could every obviously only makes sense if the initial cost would stay the same. Siege weapons should require less to build and the rest of the supply should be sufficient for ammo to break down a wall/gate and then some to not immediately run out if there's one or two dudes repping with 20 supply. It would however, make repairing in general much more effective again and Anet should also obviously revert the previous change which removed participation from repping. I think it only makes sense that if someone wastes the entire stock within a tower or keep you are not required to also put in a bit more effort as attacker. Since PvP is practially unplayable now I probably spend 95% of my time in GW2 roaming in WvW, I'm a guildless thief so no zerg play for me..

This statement was meant to cover everything supply related. It would make absolutely no sense implementing this change without also adjusting supply cap, siege supply costs, etc obviously - as many have pointed out. This change should of course be reverted then as its main motivation was (apparently) to avoid "wasting supply". If attackers are supply constrained too, any supply spent by defenders will automatically be more effective again. That's actually a pretty good alternative. Especially when combined with some of the other ideas like salvaging and claiming ownership of sieges.

Probably a very unpopular opinion (I'm expecting a lot of "Confused"-reactions, don't disappoint me) but I think it would be more balanced and make much more sense if siege weapons (maybe with the exception of golems) would require additional supply for ammo/uses. I'm sure this idea has come up in the past but my search for related keywords is drowned with posts of this topic: Defend Achievements - Difficult Progression by current design and change This could best be implemented with a charge system for example, so if you are operating a catapult you have to spend 1 supply to add 5 or 10 shots or whatever (it should also be possible to load the weapon for someone else). Obviously it should not be too restrictive but enough to prevent attackers from being able to endlessly spam damage to walls until a bigger enemy zerg arrives and crushes them. It would require zergs (on both sides) to either be more strategic with their use of resources and/or secure a steady stream of supplies to a keep/sm. And it would also make repairing walls much more effective again (something discussed in the topic linked above), as the attacker then have a somewhat fixed damage output for a certain period of time. Supply spawns etc then needs to be adjusted obviously, as a lot more supply is being used but I'm sure this can be figured out. It could potentially get a bit more difficult for attackers, but maybe not. Since, on the other hand, defenders would also be required to think more about whether to repair walls/gates or using arrow carts, cannons, etc. In general, both sides would need to be more thoughtful about their resources, which I think makes for more interesting gameplay.

I HATE this argument. Imo it has never been true but people keep using it to defend/rationalize Anet's neglect for PvP. Or do you think Anet needs to immediately shut down Stronghold because "pvp population is too small and Stronghold splits the Q"? Or Unranked in general.. At the time of writing this (not prime time) I have a 1m 40s queue timer on Stronghold-only. Do you think this is the reason why conquest has been on a decline for years? If anything, other modes would capture their own main player base, increasing the overall pvp population of which conquest would also benefit.

I don't really like 2v2 season tbh. 3v3 is a bit better but like already stated here: It only allows for two types of builds and it only favors exactly one team composition (role wise, not spec/build wise). However, I would still very much appreciate if 2v2 and 3v3 (as well as other modes) became either permanent queues or at the very least additions to the daily AT list (like we had during that special tournament event week). We just need more variety in terms of modes. I've been saying this for years now but Anet finally needs to acknowledge that conquest isn't everyone's cup of tea and the argument of low population doesn't hold up when you consider this. Also I have never heard anyone complain about Stronghold splitting the queue, yet Stronghold is still going strong in terms of queue times. Match quality does vary ofc (as usual in Unranked) but almost every match is at least enjoyable. At least in my mind it's way better to lose like 20-30% or so to another pvp mode and profit of a player influx in the pvp community in the long term than lose 80% because everything gets stale and other games provide more. Because even tho I like conquest better, I still like to hop into 2v2/3v3 or Stronghold from time to time.

I don't think this is correct tbh. PvP was never really focused on e-sport and they definitely didn't follow through on any such idea, hence why it failed (I would still very much appreciate if an esport scene could be established tho, but this is nothing that can be forced by the devs). But in general, there's no development going on at all, there's nothing in the minds of Anet for attracting any kind of players to PvP or anything.. unfortunately. While the EoD announcement events were pretty disappointing for the WvW community they are least got mentioned lol. Not a single word on PvP, not even "yea, we know you still exist and still care" (like for WvW). Absolutely nothing. Current PvP just doesn't offer the return of investment for Anet/NCSoft so it has basically been on maintenance since.. Swiss and Djinn was introduced? so for a couple of years. Even tho I don't think that it needs to be like this tbh, there are opportunities for Anet to both encourage forming and growing a proper pvp community (aka "money potential") AND also monetize it without being p2w or take away from any competitive aspect. But that's a completely different topic. Yes, that's important in my opinion. And apparently a lot of people share parts of this opinion as we already had 1 season without anything special as a reward (just a few big pvp potions) and well... the feedback wasn't great and now we have new titles, so there's that. I personally would definitely be disincentivized to play pvp if there's literally nothing to work towards. I mean I don't play for any rewards (although I do appreciate the league rewards) and I would still play PvP but there would definitely be something missing. I think it's important to have something that's unique to this particular game mode you can work towards and actually see your improvements. Take me as an example, last season I managed to get back into and finally stay in the top250 until the season has ended, next season I want to stay in top100, maybe I can get up to top25 in the one afterwards, who knows? Like.. I've been in the top100 a number of times over the years already but always failed to maintain a spot anywhere in the leaderboard because I've always managed to completely kitten up my rating right at the end of a season. However, in my mind being in the top100 for a couple days/weeks is worth almost nothing because I can't show any proof ingame. There has been a thread about merging unranked and ranked into 1 queue recently and I expressed why I think this would be a bad idea. In short: Unranked is good for testing new builds or classes without worrying about rating. Ranked is good for competitiveness, because well.. as you may have noticed from my comment so far I do value things like rating, leaderboard and unique, specific rewards for reaching certain goals associated with it. And I think the devs don't care at all, neither about balancing nor making pvp enjoyable or anything else. PvP just doesn't get any funds, period. There's no change not because they think it's perfect and that it's the best for players but rather because they only have 1 or 2 guys working on it - if there's nothing more important around the corner, which has been the case probably since they started IBS.

1) Yes, you need Eye of the North as well. This is the location of the Hall of Monuments after all. 2) I don't know about Marionette public at EU morning but... you will find some people, yes. It's not completely dead yet, especially GvG is still going pretty strong from what I can tell. But there aren't masses of other players around either. Probably best to try and join an active guild / alliance. However, this shouldn't be too much of an issue anyway since GW1 has always been very solo friendly. You can always take henchmen or (later) heroes with you. For heroes you can even use your own custom builds, gear and runes. They will obviously not be as good as real people but since GW1's controls etc are much simpler than GW2's it's not too far off. Sometimes it's even better to have heroes for certain roles as the AI can micro resources way more efficiently or keep track of team mate's mana etc. Theorycrafting team builds was definitely one of the coolest things for me. 3) You can get the "God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals" title (GWAMM) and everything in the Hall of Monuments but I don't think you get any more goodies from GW1 carried over. But it's a really good game, especially if you are into theory crafting, a completionist or interested in PvP. 4) Well, what I said in 2 and 3. It's a really good game but/because it is completely different from GW2. There has been a lot more focus on PvP content, way more challenging PvE content and pretty much everything (in pve) is solo-able due to superb build variety and AI companions. As long as you aren't playing Dervish* you usually have a ton of options in terms of build variety because you can pick a second class (and change it at any time). So you can mix and match any two classes you wish and each and every class on its own is already super complex with dozens and dozens of skills. That's also where EoD's Untamed originated btw, it's based on a Ranger/Warrior build using a hammer (weapons in general are class-less btw so you can use whatever you want, however Assassin or Dervish skills for example often require daggers or a scythe respectively). After I've hopefully secured my place in the leaderboard for this season in GW2, I'll probably continue getting the GWAMM title. And if I have that one I might also go the extra mile and completely fill my HoM as the main thing I'm missing are the titles. I can only recommend GW1 as its very own game tbh. It is way more old school tho so you have to like that. Like.. You can't jump for example, every skill you cast roots you in place, etc. If you can look past those old controls you can probably have a really good time. Both Filling HoM and getting GWAMM are veeery time consuming tho, especially if you are just starting out. Like.. several hundred hours or so. So if you are just looking to get the GW2 goodies I don't really think it's worth the time investment but eh.. that's just my opinion. If you want to approach any of those two things I'd suggest just experiencing the game for what it is, play the campaigns, have your own smaller goals you want to achieve, etc. Almost everything will help you with the titles/HoM but after you've completed the campaigns, explored the map, unlocked a lot of skills, accumulated money, etc it will not take as long anymore and doesn't feel as much of a chore anymore. It's also a VEERY wiki-heavy game. So if you want to be efficient you do have to like having 10 wiki pages open on your second monitor or constantly switch back and forth. Like mission walkthroughs for the bonus objectives, where you can capture/buy skills from, etc. Which I personally do like, but a lot of people have huge issues with that. *Dervish is an extremely good class and very self sufficient and that's also kind of a bad thing. Because why would you scrap basically the strongest melee playstyle to use other classes that don't synergize too well with it anyway. There are some exceptions of course, warrior and assassin can offer some useful skills and ranger is always an interesting option because of the pet. But anything related to casting or ranged is just not that great or rather would be way more effective with a different primary class (due to their primary attribute effect and energy management). With the new Anniversary skill the Dervish can better utilize other classes as a secondary choice but the skill isn't very straight forward to get.

True. But I still think it's better to have it in the game in general. Just to have that option. Even if it's not used or dies but not being able to queue with friends outside ATs and Unranked is just stupid imo. The former being time gated and the latter being an even bigger clownfiesta due to not considering skill rating at all and virtually no rewards. I always like to point to Stronghold in these discussions. It has arguably failed as a game mode yet it is way more enjoyable and sometimes more populated than ranked conquest.. It's good and healthy for the game to have variety. And I think I have never seen anybody complaining Stronghold splitting the queue. I'd also much rather get demolished alongside some mates in discord than with total strangers I have no connection with and everybody starts flaming each other. I think your entire point against full team Q could be said about (m)ATs too btw.

I voted no because I think this shouldn't be a game mode but should be customizible for Custom Arenas. I think CAs in general should offer a much bigger variety of customization so the community can run their own interesting tournaments and stuff. For example be able to ban specific elite specs (or by extension entire expansions) or even certain traits. Could theoretically be done to extreme extents where CA owners could pick specific patches for the spec balances or maybe even edit coefficients of skills/traits for this custom arena/server themselves. This would at least create a bit of an incentive to form communities in sPvP again and if a CA is popular it may even serve as balance suggestions for Anet which is actually play-tested. There just needs to be more reason for competitive-minded/-interested people to stay invested in sPvP. But I think it's too risky for Anet to fundamentally change something regarding (un)ranked arenas/queues/matchmaking without "proof" that it may work or artificially lowering the population per queue even more. So I think CA would be a great place to offer this, maybe add a trust-system for the servers to enable/improve rewards so it can't be abused by just creating a weird CA and doing dodgy kitten. If this gets popular I think this would also be a great place to add monetization so sPvP creates income that justifies active support for Anet.

Support Guardian Build (PvP) - Hardstuck Power Shatter Build (PvP) - Hardstuck Core Necromancer Build (PvP) - Hardstuck Core Ranger Build (PvP) - Hardstuck I've tried running condi pistol thief (without offhand) and worked also pretty well too. Those are just some builds I found links to on hardstuck. A lot of streamers on twitch link a couple builds (I can't promise everybody offers a core build tho), metabattle, etc also have some. Or just talk to some people in pvp if you can't come up with a good one. Just because it's not linked somewhere doesn't mean you can't perform well with it either. A couple years ago I've been playing a p/p deadeye build people considered to be unviable. It was nowhere near considered meta or good, not even viable. In fact, people - who had no idea - thought it was so bad that it sometimes happened that one mate flat out threw the game once they noticed my build (even if we were already clearly in the lead and could've easily won). I was in the top100 during that season btw. It really comes down to understanding conquest in general as well as your own role, your team mate's roles, game knowledge in general and of course your mechanical skill.

Since you can't buy anything that gives you an advantage that scales with how much you pay, I wouldn't consider GW2 p2w at all. You buy the expansion and that's that. No additional fees, no RNG, no scaling, no advantage over anyone else. If anything I'd call it "pay 2 keep up" or something, because you still have to be good at the game, there's no inherent advantage of having access to Willbender if you have no skill yourself. But I don't even consider it as such as I don't really think you need the latest expansion and its e-specs. (condi) specter is arguably the meta build for thief atm, yet I'm still solo-queueing as d/p daredevil and I'm in plat atm. I was sometimes even queueing as core condi thief and won every of those matches. Sure Willbender and Harbinger are oppressive rn- and need to be toned down, like Scourge+FB back then, and I hope the summer balance patch corrects this without destroying something else - but you could also still play support core guard and be viable for example. My point is it isn't mandatory to have the latest expansion and perform very well. And while I've had some matches with like 4 Harbingers and 2 Willbenders (I even had one yesterday where someone even swapped to harbinger so the enemy team had 3 Harbingers, a Willbender and a Core Guard), a lot of matches have been fairly "normal" with a wider variety of specs. I also had matches where we had a way better comp - on paper - (with Vindicator, Harbinger and Willbender) and we still lost to a "less-EoD-spec-heavy" comp. GW2 - for me - has hands down the perfect combat system for a small-scale PvP RPG. That's why I'm still playing it (from time to time). I didn't really have any loss, if I had fun I played, if I didn't have fun I played something else or nothing at all. That being said I'm really not a fan of the balance atm and I hate how slow Anet is in fixing depressingly obvious issues such as Harbinger and Willbender. But other than that I don't think your statements reflect the actual state of the game. It's horrible due to a few outlier builds, extremely low population and all those issues that stem from Anet showing basically no love to PvP. But calling it p2w is a huge stretch imho.

I've voted 'No' because I think ranked queue is important but I wouldn't agree with "keep things as they are" either. If I could change something regarding unranked/ranked I'd actually just enable pip progression for unranked and allow full team queue for ranked (as a separate queue) again, that's it. So if someone just wants to get the league rewards they can do it in unranked and not bother ranked teams. I wouldn't merge them into either one because I think ranked is important to at least somewhat balance the teams in terms of skill rating and unranked is important for just testing builds/classes imho.

Honestly, just make PvP good before GW2 gets launched on steam. THEN is the time to milk it. I also wouldn't try to incentivize non-competitive players to engage in sPvP. Imho it is sufficient if it's worth the time in terms of gold, no need for new unique/exclusive stuff. I'm sure I'm not the only one with plenty of guild mates who sent a sigh of relief in guild chat at some point because they could finally abandon pvp because they got what they wanted. If pvp was actually enjoyable again with a reason to form pvp guilds (like full team queue for example) etc then someone at Anet could probably easily find a way to monetize this. Just a quick thought off the top of my head may be through an extension of custom arena configurations or something. Make it possible to exclude certain e-specs, do tournaments where any amount of people could spectate etc. But without a reason to form any kind of community within pvp I don't think it will ever be possible to make it successful, so any amount of money would be wasted if those core issues aren't resolved first.

I also think that balance would be essentially a non-issue if we had more variety with different objectives which also favor different team compositions and roles. I think overall GW2's balance has never been horrible apart from a few outlier builds like back during the scourge+fb plague, when sic'em ranger was broken af or when perma daze mirage was a thing. But without any content diversity where each spec can at least find a niche, balancing becomes a pressing issue, which it really shouldn't be imho. More game modes would also bring a lot more data points for Anet to play around with, like if harbinger and willbender would continue to dominate every single game mode it is hard to dispute that those particular e-specs just need a few nerfs. I actually really like Stronghold, would be nice to get some improvements and maybe a new (bigger?) map. A 10v10 mode, a full team queue for ranked, 2v2/3v3 during regular seasons, a PvEvP mode, .... There are so many possibilities. Heck, just re-make Fort Aspenwood and/or Jade Quary from GW1, there's literally no need to come up with new stuff, just copy-paste what's already out there and I would be fine. Even kittening FF14 has more pvp modes than gw2 and pvp in general currently gets a rework there. And we all know the focus is definitely not on pvp there. Guild Wars 1 and ESO also have more pvp content than gw2 and it's a shame.

Play what you like. This should also not be constrained to class imho, if you perform well with a build you like, just play it. In ~2018 I've been playing a build that was considered so unviable that people sometimes flat out refused to play and threw the match once they noticed. No joke. I've started playing it in silver 2 and played my way up to plat 2, aaaalmost plat 3. At some point I was even in the top100 - with a build that was really not considered even viable, let alone meta. Unfortunately I fell off before season ended so I couldn't get those titles but I still have some screenshots, lol. So yea, just play what you like and don't get triggered by flamers. If someone thinks they need to throw the game just block them and move on. If you respond to someone flaming during the match you've already lost.

Interesting but kinda irrelevant imho. All of them are full pre-teams and most/all of them have voice com and a ton of experience in playing together. Elementalist for example - according to you, I didn't verify - tied for the lowest win rate, yet ele was on both teams in the grand EU vs NA final, so what is the take away here now? For me it's clear that individual player skill and team coordination and composition heavily outweigh class choice, I mean.. R55 and Team USA would've probably stomped most other teams on EU and NA respectively, even if they'd played off-meta compositions/builds.