All right, this seems like a radical amount of change, and that is an exciting concept. Things can only grow from there, correct? Well there are a few things I think need to be considered for certain classes; a major one being evasion up time. Many classes such as Soulbeast, Thief in general, and Mirage, to name a few, already gain a lot of their bloated sustain from evasion, among other things. As a Thief main, it's obvious to anyone at this point Thief gets a lot of its sustain from underhanded methods. Stealth, evasion, and just general movement.Sword / Pistol Thief is prevalent right now, and the main reason it does well is its oppressive ability to lock down an opponent whilst shutting down counter play with evasion. In a world where everything hits less hard, evasion based classes will thrive too much, and that's important to consider going forward.Daredevil's general evasion up-time will need observed. And from looking at the Thief changes, I can already foresee a potential rise in the Staff meta. Vault and Bound already sound overpowered in this new collective. I also see that the majority of skills have been nerfed on co-efficient by about 50%, generally. Vault is to be nerfed around 30%, and considering its exceptionally high base damage, it will still hit hard, while providing evasion in a build that already spams weakness output.The meta is simply RIFE with weakness right now, in fact. And it harshly affects damage output; that's another thing to consider, if everything hits less hard.Also, the condition damage nerfs seem little compared to the power. The burning nerfs are good, as burning has been over-tuned for a long time, despite its previous nerfs.I would still say other conditions could stand to receive a nerf. Perhaps a reconsideration of their overall damage in these game modes would be required. Reducing their up-time is facile when you consider their potential. They're called Damage over Time for a reason, but who needs sustained bleeding when you can get 2,000 condition damage and generate 20-30 bleed stacks on a Mirage in no time flat, even if for two-five seconds. That's creating an unhealthy condition burst meta where people run high sustain gear and get free damage. And people will. Also, with a nerf to everything, you may need to seriously consider altering how food affects WvW. Suddenly 10% damage reduction food will feel much more noticeable, and now we have ascended food that generate higher stats on top.The issue with a highly ambitious patch of this regard is how much collateral it can cause within the game's core. Things have changed since 2012; power creep has not just been caused by specialisations. This is mainly speaking from a roaming perspective. I cannot really comment in-depth on zergs, but I will say this: HoT's boon meta was disturbing, especially over on NA servers. You had giant Maguuma blobs running around with boon share Mesmers that were impossible to kill. Literally impossible. If anything that was the beginning of the cries for more boon strip. I think both boons and boon strip counter play are something that made WvW extremely linear in its approach to wide spread combat. Combat is mainly centralised around bubble play, making fights drawn out and boring in open field, as commanders attempt to out-manoeuvre, and laughably short in chokes. Imagine asking forty people to double dodge through a million corrupts and warding lines and expect all of them to get through. It's pretty unlikely for less experienced back liners. Maybe some prefer this. I personally don't. Anyway, I'm less qualified than others to comment on zergs, but I think it's a highly volatile meta that is also extremely hard to balance in its current state, so it might just need reworked entirely.
