Exedore.6320

All from a PvP perspective: Longbow: Overshadows staff and scepter as ranged weapons. Longbow has better CC and better damage. It also adds ranged CC to guardian builds which didn't normally have it, which is particularly annoying when fighting burst builds which didn't normally have CC. Axe: Seems like a good alternative to other weapons for condition builds. Didn't seem overly strong or weak.

The consequence to bad gameplay decisions is players quitting the game and the company's income declining. However, the dedicated PvP population is so small that losing them doesn't matter. As long as PvE is fine, ANet keeps making money.

Grenade Kit has been busted since launch. It's power is so disproportionately higher than everything else in the engi arsenal that the class ends up balanced around it. Elite spec mechanics then get balanced against Grenade Kit.

Unranked does have matchmaking, but it's very loose; it favors finding games faster over waiting for "better matched" games.

OP is correct, though is being dramatic about it. Power creep has reached the point where a build can have enough damage to kill someone twice in a burst window (in terms of raw damage). You can spend defensive cooldowns to live through it, but power creep has given burst builds defenses and extreme mobility. If the burst fails, they just run away for 10 or 20 seconds and repeat. And don't even bother if two of them focus you. Plus power creep has given these burst builds a similar level of full damage mitigation abilities to sustain or bunker builds. Anything which isn't mobile burst DPS simply isn't viable. If you play support or anything focused on sustain and live through a burst, you don't have the tools to catch up to the mobility of the burst build or they just use defenses until their burst comes back. Meanwhile you're out of defenses for the next burst. In a burst meta, it seems whoever gets the jump on their opponent or preemptively reacts is the winner. That's fun for some, but for people who don't enjoy that, there's nothing left. The game started with team support, defensive side nodes, burst, mobility, decap, etc. Now we have burst mobility and everything else is gone. All because of power creep. And it's never going to be fixed. The developers are oblivious or are in too deep. The most recent patch added power to practically everything. In order to fix the power creep, you'd need to do massive nerfs, and that would upset the PvE crowd who are the majority of the game.

It's a step up from Developers who die to Svanir/Chieftain (no outside interference).

I would occasionally crash on match completion in the previous patch. Tonight I crashed on match start (when players reset and the 10sec countdown starts). This will destroy ranked play.

PvP was ruined by Chronomancer back in 2015. Anything since is just beating a dead horse.

PvP and WvW take a backseat to PvE. In PvE, the "cool factor" sells, so you get over-the-top elite specs and power creep. If players are killing stuff too quickly, you just increase boss HP by 5-10% and problem solved. PvP needs to have a power budget in order to function. The original devs had an idea of that, though it seems to have been in their heads and not well documented. When they left (many prior to HoT), the new devs just made elite spec abilities which sounded cool. Most of it didn't flow mechanically in game, so they just buffed the numbers to make the new stuff useful (Dragonhunter is the poster child for this). ANet is unlikely to re-design something completely to fix a fundamental mechanics issue. Even more-so if it's only affecting PvP. So CMC is hamstrung and limited to numbers changes only. Unfortunately there's only so much you can do with numbers tweaks before fundamental mechanics of a class or spec break down.

Play a burst damage build with mobility Kill the weaker players quickly, giving your team an advantage on the map. Use mobility to +1 fights and surprise nuke someone down. Keep repeating that and you'll keep the enemy staggered and give your team a constant advantage on the map. Know which fights you can win quickly, which take a while, and which are likely losses; pick the quick wins. Know when to retreat from a losing fight or avoid fights that your team has lost but where they haven't died yet. Duo queue if possible Let's you coordinate burst and makes the first point stronger.

What is your general feeling concerning the current meta? Do you like it? Don't like it. Damage is too high, mobility is too high, too many evades or ways to completely cancel damage. What do you think is a contender for a nerf. And why? All elite specs and some over-buffs to core. Need to reduce the overall power creep. Less might per application, less boon duration, less conditions per application, longer cooldowns on movement skills, etc. Quickness should only be from specific skills which are difficult to pull off or have long cooldowns. Possibly lower overall stats from amulets + runes. What spec do you feel like could use a buff. And what would you like to see buffed? Modify the amulet system to give more stat freedom. The amulet stat combos were never the problem; power creep always has been.

Collision or no collision is usually a very early design decision because it has major technical and gameplay impacts . The decision to go with no collision was likely driven by the large scale PvE events and WvW. Each additional person causes a greater than linear increase in processing demand. Further, you need to address the problem of latency and conflicts between server and clients without making it seem like characters are "rubber-banding".

Untamed doesn't seem any worse than other glass cannon builds. If it can sneak up on you without you noticing, it will drop you, but so can mesmer or thief. Otherwise, it gets focus fired or kited.

Translation: It's not my fault, it's everyone else's fault. Always.

Is "yo-yo" a poll choice? That's what it seems ANet balancing is like. "Hey, remember that thing we nerfed 6 months ago because it was too strong - and now the spec is too weak? Let's just remove all the nerfs we did. It won't be broken again, right?" * Catalyst still too strong. * Vindicator too strong again. * Engi rifle spam builds still too strong in all but high level play.