Joao.3410

Actually, the Empathic Bond trait does not work whatsoever in beastmode.

The ICD for Empathic Bond doesn't seem to recharge after swapping pets while in Beastmode when Eternal Bond is traited.

There are people who are very sceptical of this proposed "paradigm shift" because it appears that it will do more harm than good. I'm hearing a lot of complaints about power creep and TTK, but I don't think those are problems with the game mode at all. Anet has done a pretty decent job in buffing core specs so nearly all of them are as viable as their elite counterparts. Can this really be considered a problem if all specs are receiving enhancements across the board? There is a lot of reminiscing about how things were good pre-HOT before all the "power creep", but was it really better back then? When we had the pre-HOT GWEN meta, I don't recall TTK being any longer - you stand in that well bomb you melt just as fast as you do now. In small scale fights, those power mesmers and d/p thieves will burst you down in less than 2 seconds, and you also have those really tanky d/d eles and PU condi mesmers that will grind you down - all of which aren't too different than what we have now. My recollection is that the game was more fun back then because there were more people and the matchups were more even. Even though we (HOD) were stuck in the old T4 forever with NSP, CD, DH, and EBAY, we were very close population-wise so the result could be different each week and all the fights were pretty even. What do we have now? Last week, we faced against a fat FA with blobs on each map + Bully who queues a map by himself (no disrespect, he's an awesome guy) and we were outnumbered 24/7. Does that sound fun? Does that sound like it's a power creep/TTK issue? Back then, it was not an issue about PPT vs PPK - most of the action and best fights were from defending keeps, picking off the slower enemies until you the enemy zerg becomes small enough for your guys to push them out. That's so much harder to do now that we have mounts. I totally understand why there is a portion of the wvw community that is upset with this "paradigm shift" announcement because it's game breaking and sounds like it's another wild goose chase.

This. I believe this is how most vets who’ve stuck with the game mode for all these years feel. Let’s face it, that warrior earth shaker isn’t melting you because it’s “doing too much” by doing 1.0 damage coefficient and stunning. What’s melting you is his other 4 friends from his gank squad who follow up with coordinated attacks. This is the nature of the game mode and nothing this patch or anything anet does will “fix” that. Besides, it would be absolutely unfair to that gank squad if they weren’t able to melt you 5v1.

This has never ever been the case. I cant remember once Anet shortening any cooldowns with a "make combat more fluid" excuse. At best they introduced the ammo system to multi-charge skills. Otherwise its quite the contrary, Anet hits the cooldowns the hardest as a simple means to - in their mind - balance it, rather than changing the functionality of skills. We've even had to scream at the top of our lungs to stop them from increasing cds to ridiculous levels, sometimes they change their minds and sometimes they still do it anyway which this patch is literal proof of. Consider especially HoT and PoF release cooldowns vs the cooldowns we have now. My memory is a bit hazy since it has been 7 years and I’m too lazy to look everything up, but I recall many skills have had their cooldowns reduced since launch such as berserker stance, stone signet, contemplation of purity, retreat, all 4 ele cantrips. There are probably more but I don’t remember them off the top of my head. I guess one can call it power creep, but all classes got the same treatment across the board so it seems fair and the gameplay is a lot livelier with the lower cooldowns. I’m not sure if people would enjoy combat as much if we went back to long cooldowns and 5 minute cooldowns on passive traits. > @TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said: This. It has not been 7 years of balance. It has been 7 years of powercreep for the PvE and raid side of the game, while balance for WvW is an after thought if thought of at all. I really am starting to think that people have all this time thought that WvW/PvP actually had a balance team and had no idea they actually did not exist for years. Also OP, if you read the patch notes, you will notice that stealth, mobility etc that you mention are all getting nerfed as well. As for mounts, in the balance thread, the balance team already stated that they think the mount is to powerful and that changes will be coming, however the current patch notes are about skill balance. There are many more patches to come and on a much shorter release cycle. This up coming patch is a reset to baseline, with modifications to come as they KNOW new OP metas will come from it once people start experimenting with new builds and the much, much shorter release cycle will allow them to bring those back in line with the rest of the classes. Maybe I missed it, but I think I only saw the deadeye elite and the shadow arts minor getting a 1 second nerfs? I’m not sure if that solves anything since thief still has so many ways to apply stealth through weapons. I think the problem with stealth isn’t just limited to thief but the mechanic as a whole is broken. The ability to de-target making you almost un-hittable unless your opponent has a radial or ground marking AOE is too strong. Stealth also gives the user such a huge advantage in terms of positioning and often gaining a free hit coming back out of stealth. It feels like the stealth user is stopping and restarting the fight at will.

First of all, I’m not sure I understand the purpose of this patch. Devs are lowering damage coefficients and nerfing healing. Doesn’t that bring us back to square one in terms of time to kill? But at the same time we’re throwing 7 years worth of skill balance out the window? If time to kill is a concern wouldn’t tweaking base armor and HP stats achieve that without breaking game balance? Secondly, a lot of the balance changes that I recall since launch have been about lowering cooldowns but shortening their effects to make combat more fluid. Increasing cooldowns significantly seems to be working against this design and will make the game lethargic. Lastly, wouldn’t it be better for the devs to focus on balancing what’s making combat not fun in the game mode, namely “combat inhibiting mechanics” such as stealth, mounts, excessive mobility (run away, get out of combat, and re-engage) etc?