Poledra Val.1490

After reading through the latest comments a lot of people have basically echoed my thoughts about the current traits on WIllbender. Here is the bottom line with this Spec from a PvP aspect..... The more you play PvP with Willbender the more you naturally adjust your build to sustain itself with meditations then it starts to turn into basically Core Guardian....so you then ask yourself why bother playing Willbender when i can just play Core Guard and have better all round synergy with all things related to it...traits/skills etc In every scenario Willbender is in a very poor spot. The class still needs heavy adjustments which I mentioned in my last post to make it relevant in post EOD release. I hope Anet takes what we have been saying on board because its clear the class is bordering on not being used when there are far superior specs and professions in the game currently by a big margin.

These are my initial impressions of Willbender after playing it for a couple of days or so from a PvP perspective. Overall the spec is slightly better then the first beta iteration but overall im still dissapointed. By far in a way the biggest problem Willbender has in PvP is sustain, its simply a headless chicken dashing around and if you are focused by even a remotely decent class/spec its over. Again the Willbender Virtues do not seem to synergize with "core" Guardian traits, they are almost non existent at this point bar one or two traits. The main Willbender heal "reversal of fortune" seems to be failing me a great deal (with its full heal when hit) and is utterly underwheling it seems to be like a very cheap version of Revenants Infused Light healing skill which is infinitely superior in every way. Sometimes the heal does not even go off; example I was fighting a mechanist and its golem was hitting me the heal did not trigger and if you are CC'd the heal again never triggers when it should be. I would rather you change it to be a straight out heal, remove the charges and up the heal capacity with maybe the addition of removing 2-3 conditions at the same time. Willbender Flames, this is not a good mechanic imo in PvP when everyone moves consistently. If the developers really want this mehcanic to work then you need to remove the flames from the ground and apply them on the body of the Guardian itself which would be far better imo and increases chase/pressure potential. However if you guys insist on putting them on the ground you have to make them far larger width wise and last a tad longer. Currently they are literally little thin lines that most of the time dont even hit the target so its practically an irrelevant mechanic in its current iteration and has almost no impact in any scenario in PvP. Heavens Palm elite, i really have very little to say about this other then the fact that i have not changed my mind on it since the first beta, its useless in PvP and there is no scenario in any way shape or form that it will be picked over Renewed Focus in any game mode in my opinion. Again i suggest redesigning this elite completely to something usefull, Guardian is begging for another new elite to be used rather then Renewed Focus. Willbenders virtues.... F1 Rushing Justice is bugged it only hits 1 target and its suppose to hit 5, in addition the actual hit itself seems to be delayed slightly. When you use it there is almost a quarter of a second rooting to do the "animation" of a hit, this needs to be instant. F2 Flowing Resolve the dash needs to be increased to 550-600 with the addition of making it quicker and despite the fact it has two charges it does not make it any better, please insert a heal when we use this virtue and obviously i have already discussed how i find Willbender Flame lines utterly underwhelming and almost useless in pvp. F3 Crashing Courage seems to work fine and out of the three virtues that has shown improvement since the last beta, i would like to see some sort of block or barrier added to it when used to give Willbender some edge of sustain. In addition increasing its range to 800-900 range might be something to consider. Willbender Utilities... With the exception of Whirling Light which is fine, the rest of the utlities are literally there to make up the numbers there is no reason at all to pick them they are utterly innefectual and irrelevant in every sense. Again these need to be re-thought to something usefull, maybe an opportunity here to redesign them to something that will help with Willbenders sustain. The traits i will discuss at a later time once i have played around with it a bit more.

I am specifically talking about "traits" trade offs there isint a single one.

Anyone else notice today how Willbender has the most trade offs in its traits so far. Meanwhile the new 3 specs we saw revealed today didnt have a single trade off in there traits.

Many people have already spoken on other issues Willbender has but i will focus on just the ones that come to mind at the moment since the beta is almost finished. A quick afterthought as I forgot to mention it in my previous post but why doesent Willbender not have a trait that reduces cooldowns on there 4 new utilities? Irrespective with the possible exception of Whirling light and even that is just about a pass for me the utilities are abysmally inadequate and underwelming in every respect of the game. In addition the new Willbender elite skill and im sorry to say this is an absolute embaressement, the elite is just a giant copy paste from the Super Adventure Box elite......a little imagination here would not go astray because once again the elite everyone will use by a country mile will still be Renewed Focus (an elite created almost 9 years ago). Please Anet try to redesign this so we could at least have 2 good elites on this profession. The traits on Willbender is arguably one of the most unimaginative I have seen. 90% of them are basically a carbon copy of other traits renamed and rehashed for willbender. The minor traits are so woeful, far to much take and so little give. This is a great opportunity to make something unique so i am glad this is just the beta iteration at least. All in all Willbender is arguably the worst new spec I have seen in 9 years playing guild wars 2 for Guardian. It needs a major overhaul in every respect accross the board, damage/sustain/traits for it to be remotely relevant in any part of the game, PvP/PvE/WvW respectively.

Its to buggy its certainly not the strongest imo, along with the fact one of the bugs it has is if you precast the heal go into a fight whether its 1v1 or a team one....and you happen to get cc'd instead of a normal hit the heal does not proc.

First the good part, the mobility is excellent its very fluid overall enjoyable to play and move around with. (Baring the weird locking in place when you use your virtues) Now the second part, the class in PvP feels utterly underwhelming. Damage is very low even on zerk amulet the class is also littered with a lot of bugs in both tooltips and in actual numbers during combat. Sustain is literally bottom tier at the moment on this spec in my opinion the Willbender heal is also extremelly underwhelming probably one of the poorest to date on Guardian. Some of the traits are interesting but i find way to much give and take on a lot of these traits in comparison to other specs. There arent any extraordinary traits here just seem fairly generic and in truth as i mentioned earlier way to much give and take. Utilities are pretty much extremelly poor and felt like an afterthought. Overall this spec needs a considerable amount of tweaks/buffs to make it at least relevant in PvP at the moment.

First the good part, the mobility is excellent its very fluid overall enjoyable to play and move around with. Now the second part, the class in PvP feels utterly underwhelming. Damage is very low even on zerk amulet the class is also littered with a lot of bugs in both tooltips and in actual numbers during combat. Sustain is literally bottom tier at the moment on this spec in my opinion the Willbender heal is also extremelly underwhelming probably one of the poorest to date on Guardian. Some of the traits are interesting but i find way to much give and take on a lot of these traits in comparison to other specs. Overall this spec needs some tweaks/buffs to make it at least semi relevant in PvP at the moment. Curious on other peoples thoughts on this, clearly this is still a beta so many things can change in the next 6 months.

When you are a developer and you see a class so prevelant and to be blunt broken like Scourge is its an absolute embaressement to do nothing about it for months at a time. Irrespective whether your focused on doing the expansion its a rather sad state of affairs to not lift a finger and help to the health and betterment of the game you created, especially when your work force counts in the hundreds. Bare in mind I do not want to see Scourge nerfed to the ground like Firebrand was in pvp, just balance/fix the spec.

Amuses me no end but people dont seem to realize that DH (trapper variant) is in some small way helping to mitigate the biggest issue in ranked atm and thats Necro with Scourge in particular being absolutely rampant.

People have very short memories, the meta in January was literally close to a collection of one shot builds and the chief among them were thieves literally annhilating people with one or two hits. I am not a huge fan of the current meta either but I would like to look forward and not backward when it comes meta/balance development.

There have been to many discussions on why renegade needs to be balanced i will leave that aside for others to talk about. Anet can you please tone down the visual new year fireworks display that comes from renegade, I think most pvp players would appreciate it. Its just utterly obnoxious at this moment in time.

Why do people keep saying this? Last living story release came with a big balance patch. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/July_2020 A "big balance patch" consists of 11 skill changes to you? Alrighty then, shows the level of mediocrity that pvp players have accepted from Anet these days.

Make it only being able to do so up until you hit 1700 rating maybe 1650, post that you should only be able to solo que.

To be blunt Engineer as a class right now is utterly busted, its beyond my understanding why Anet does not balance this entire class properly.

Very simple fix for nade holo, just nerf the trait that gives them the massive upkeep in might stacking or split the trait from pvp/pve. Then you have a more reonsable dmg dealer to bring them more in line with everything else, rather then what were currently seeing.

I utterly lost count how many times I observed Tempests abuse this bug during mAT today, most impressive.

people use 30 skills to get a down, you use 2 to negate all that work he is talking about slots not how many times you hit a button and I am talking about skills as a whole, both utility, class mechanics, weapon skills and pet skills.If entire team puts in effort to get a down and tempest makes a no counterplay rez there is a problem.Finally someone understands, there should always be counterplay to someone being rez'd, bottom line this needs to be addressed.

They actually nerfed Mist form because of it, so I guess it's working as intended? And OP please, lets not make a topic of 'Fix Tempest' when there isn't anything to 'fix' more of a 'Glyph Combo with Mist form' If thats the case then every class should have the ability to revive while being invunrable free for all circus right?...I seriously doubt that is working as intended.

Anet do us a favour and fix your game please, when are you going to fix the Glyph of Renewal ability while being invunrable.

The meta is pretty much the same as it was before with a couple of minor differences, this balance patch in my opinion is by far in a way one of the poorest patches i have seen in years. However if some people are satisfied with it it shows how so many pvp players have settled for mediocrity. We will be witnessing a mass exodus of pvp players in my opinion which is sad, its a shame but the reality is Anet in its upper echelon's do not care at all about the pvp community bar Ben and CmC.

Not really. In the past three years the major changes were: pre PoF patch buffed 'nade Barrage and Shrapnel Grenade (20% and 12%). Barrage got nerfed twice since (coef. from 0.6-0.5, now from 0.5 to 0.4), Shrapnel just got nerfed (reduced coef and nerfed cd). Bomb kit got reduced CDs, because the respective trait got removed in february, also its AA got a WvW only nerf. I find it quite impressive how little numerical changes had happened to these kits since their release. Also, 'nade kit didn't see any proper use in the past 5 years, so it shouldn't be that surprising. The problem is the might up time on nade holo its crazy high and until they nerf it to more a reasonable number you will see nades holos consistnently.

Hey Anet do us all a favour and nerf this class pls some more, its become utterly obnoxious and rewards players so darn easily for very little effort. I know this will fall on deaf ears because the balance team wont cater towards anything but pve but hey ho.

If Anet dont radicaly change and balance Scourge before the patch tomorrow or soon post patch, then it will without a doubt be one of the most broken specs and you will see anything from 4-6 scourges per PvP match. The logic about reverting shades in my opinion is literally the fact that the balance team has no original ideas and decided to revert it to remove the bunker meta potentially. The irony is scourges will like be the bunker so not much change there then. Fun times ahead for pvp and wvw.

It is clearly easier to duo q with a solid duo partner that you synergise well with but as for solo que I like the challenge personally.