Saharo.5381

YES! Core engineer has suffered from the success of its elite specs since the beginning of time. > Nerf holosmith by nerfing core > Nerf mechanist by nerfing core Please don't do this. You will force every core engi/scrapper player to mutate into a mechanist player. Do not push the Mech Singularity agenda on us.

Put the person that said to revert WvW FB changes in charge. Cause they clearly know what's up, anyone on your team who didn't speak against this was lowkey clowning/should have no further WvW input. Cool, so does that mean you're also reversing the One Wolf Park nerf? Since that only popped up on your radar after being in one of those "unrealistic" situations with speedrun Cata.

The counterplay = strafing to ignore 90%+ of the dmg. It doesn't even cost a roll dodge to get out of it It's rarely worth casting the skill in PvP except to scare people off node for a few seconds. Also since this is on top of the page: LEAVE ENGINEER KITS ALONE

"Mechanist is the problem" --> nerfs kits used by all engineers Doing this shoves more non-Mech engineer players towards playing Mechanist, is that what you want? I sure hope they rename Blast Gyro to Stun Gyro. Why would there be a countdown to a stun?

There were already PvPers participating in that discord.

Is there not a massive difference between "pretty viable" and "absolutely optimal"? The reason people can bring at least a bit of diversity in current squad comp is because multiple classes are viable in different roles. Only the uber elite are going to be hardliners about only bringing the most optimized classes for each role, and they don't represent a large portion of the playerbase anyway.

Somewhere in my original comment I said you'd need to mess with 100% boon uptime, which is unlikely to happen. Healer +4 DPS would only be the sole comp if alc/qck providers were not optimized such that taking a boon provider pretty much equals same total squad DPS. Variety of options with near similar results.

Raiders are the only people who are going to check & enforce rotation performance. Because if you don't perform your role properly you drag down 9 other people with you. You can find your own group of more relaxed people to play with, but if you're LFGing people are usually going to expect you to pull your weight. Not necessarily hit the benchmark numbers, but at least meet base expectations. I agree that Anet craps on open world play when they nerf things that are "problematic" in niche situations of other game modes and carry it across. Like why take away open world Soulbeast (where I'm sure 80%+ of SB mains live) pet swap because of a PvP/WvW issue?

Wouldn't be an issue if anet capped alac at per interval/had other comparable alac options besides chrono.

Buddy. A majority of the playerbase sticks to casual, open world content. Where auto attacking gets the job done and roll dodging is optional. You only see people genuinely discussing and utilizing rotations in the harder, end game content like raids/strikes/T4 fractals or PvP. Where damage output matters. Anyone babbling in map chat about it in open world is just talking to the wind/the one or two people who actually know what they're saying, 90% of the people reading don't give a hoot. Maybe the easy strikes let you button mash through your rotation. Nothing else in the content I mentioned really allows for that. Ignore a mechanic on a raid boss trying to perfectly execute your rotation and you will wipe the entire squad. PvP is literally adapt or die... you absolutely have to read the animations of your opponent(s) to land ANY meaningful part of your rotation, heck even reading your own teammates animations is critical. Who's forcing you to optimize skills/dmg/rotation in open world? People in open world do whatever tf they want and no one cares at all.

PoF was nowhere near the departure that EoD specs took. Like Barrier+Alac to Thieves and Engineers...... subgroup quickness on Nec. Willbender as a whole, for crying out loud. So you're arguing that because class identity has been chipped away at, we should toss what remains altogether? lol ok

NO! Aegis stability support thief NOW! In all seriousness, the word "balanced" is loaded. Does that mean all classes have at least 1 spec that can output the same amount of DPS for the same amount of effort? Or solely from a benchmark perspective? Or 1 spec that can dish out the same amount of healing/boon uptime? I'd rather prioritize class identity. Like make Chrono and maybe one or two others the only mother kitteners who can give alac, and cap alac at a low duration. That way alac doesn't swing group performance the way it currently does. This would require fiddling with the 100% boonuptime meta, which I doubt will happen. I think you should give more specs diverse sprinkles of boons/profession buffs. That way you can slot different pieces in your squads and get different effects but still have a similar result with a variety of piece combinations.

Exactly, you can see this crap on Mech. Alac provision is 3 buttons you mindlessly press off CD, and one grants stab/aegis lmfao. Compare that to the management staff Mirage has to do to even attempt 100% uptime. Builds don't even get punished for clicking your dang Signet at the wrong time, suddenly everyone is retaining passives. Enabling that ability on Mech and changing for other classes is when I knew Anet threw any semblance of wanting remotely skilled players out the window.

So "high skill floor" = knowing how to time a few dmg increasing skills? And because this was too difficult for the masses, you nerfed Soulbeast? Because people wasted Sic 'Em on auto attacks? ... why are you mentioning this supposed skill floor? Does it justify the SB nerf? Lol, punish people who can time their burst skills? What are you trying to accomplish by saying this? Nerf burst skills --> punish "high skill floor" players --> force "high skill floor" players to play with less overall DPS This helps people below the "high skill floor" how? You dropped the "high skill floor" players down to the DPS ground with the nerf. Now you want to sprinkle back a little weapon DPS to fix it? So SB players of all skill levels can do mediocre flatline DPS? LMAO is this a joke? This makes competent SB players sound like magician-gods. This is right up there with calling the evade on GS chain "frustrating random dodges" back in 2019 when you removed it. Anet, why shift the game away to punish players for improving their skills? People are free to play lower skill classes that can still deliver DPS. Why punish those who practice, improve, and master their class?

I'm just giving the logic for why classes have what they have. You're asking Anet to break the core DNA of classes to cater to 10-man squad content. Not sure that's a good solution, and adding aegis/stab to a handful of other classes has implications across all game modes. Nothing to stop a aegis/stab stealthing thief in WvW then. At some point asking for more and more build diversity is going to directly conflict with class identity/uniqueness. I am more a champion of the latter. I don't want to see a class singularity where almost everyone can do almost anything and prefer boons/skills to have some basis from class fundamentals/lore.

...games are consumer products friend. Not the same type of commodity as art. Players are the lifeblood of a game. If no one views art, it'll survive. Game with no players? Dead. As for the dared to not book lick comment, people are mad because the dev clearly showed everyone he favored his own classes. That's indisputable at this point. I main guardian/mech, but I'm pissed for every other spec that got nerfed by this guy who clearly works to keep his own specs and the variations of them that he personally likes on the overperform list. Virt/Mech/Harb are way overperforming... coincidence? Nah

Release this list of "plenty of options" as soon as possible. It's really a shame (if not damning) that you aren't sharing a list of potential action items & tradeoffs NOW as part of your response. Because if you have to take time brainstorming it up, we know you weren't actually considering any of it until this situation boiled to a head and lit a fire under your kitten. There's been player outcry for this for years, and it's clear you've been ignoring it. Until there's a list of potential action items, I'll assume everyone is talking BS.

But thief gets stealth, which balances low HP. Aegis/stability would throw thief class identity to the wind as well. I hate the entire concept of WB (most EOD specs are way off the mark class lore wise imo) so I won't argue with you there, but I certainly wouldn't say the HoT/PoF expacs crapped on class identity, just built on it.

Did you miss the part where I said the HP tradeoff was nowhere near the guard level? You understand basic math, yes, and the concept of barrier? Guard has one full channeled block, Shelter. And that's a heal skill, a rarely used one at that. Engi has Hammer 3 or Shield 5. On weapons. That people commonly run.

You definitely do not need to prep for all wings at once. An average of 16 minutes for each really isn't that bad, but understandably our value of time can be different. I used to PvP a lot too. The way I see it, raids are easier to get started with in that for PvP, it's entirely on you to learn by your self without a training group. For a completely new player, working towards achieves for legendaries is ridiculously difficult. You'd need to spend more than 2 hours practicing. As you know, to unlock ranked play to get to achieves you need to spend hours and hours in unranked first. But I can see how trying & repeatedly failing in raids essentially nets you zero results, whereas in PvP 10-15 mins you get concrete results/feedback/at least a small reward and can restart fresh. I highly recommend joining a training discord/group, many offer lots of different timeslots/accommodate different time zones, and you're guaranteed a group of ppl who are committed to failing and trying over and over in order to succeed. If you can't find good training/semi-exp PUGs on LFG when you do have time to play, that is valid problem I can't really argue with. Raiding across most other games also requires set group communication/time commitment though. I agree that the visuals on some mechanics are terrible, for VG blues I need to turn my graphics up to see them. My first raid attempt years ago, me and a few others could not see the blue aoes at all and other players could not understand what the hell was wrong with us. Didn't raid for like 5 years after that experience. Also things like hand spawn glitches on Deimos or bad boss pathing in various wings are definitely valid criticism that contribute to frustration of new players, but I'd rather they be actually fixed individually than blanketed under easy mode.

Only thing I'm happy about is the cursor improvement lol. The rest... might be the worst changes I've ever seen. Especially on professions. Some things you really shouldn't tinker with, but here they are, altering the DNA of entire classes.... Face value, raid embolden seems like a participation award/free hand out, coming from someone who recently got into raiding. A number of help/learning tools could've been implemented rather than a blanket buff to carry with little effort/mech proficiency. As for all the profession reworks and boon redistribution... what problem were they even trying to solve? Why are we inching towards a more boring class/build singularity? (more like why the hell are you removing stealth from thief traitlines?) Cause it looks to me like a lot of these "fixes" were just sprinkling boons without any thought. Some classes have synergies with traitlines and utilities that make builds stronger. You can't just slap alac or quickness on things in your attempt to create more "build diversity". Did anyone in any game mode outside of squad content even ask for this? Some classes/specs are going to be stronger in some roles than other classes. The ones backed by synergies are almost always going to perform better, and thus be favored in 10-man content. In other words, why are they trying to make QuickWar, AlacRanger, or AlacTempest a thing? Are they going to overhaul entire traitlines to support these setups? Why not improve on existing traits rather than mess with the DNA of a class?

Why teach new raiders that mindless wiping can be rewarded? That is counter to everything about raiding. Give a buff after X amount of time spent on the same boss, hitting boss HP milestones X times, or only for your first X number of clears. Don't give it for running in to die and learning nothing from it. I think it should work more like a save point to keep trying where you wiped so you 1) can continue learning the rest of the fight 2) have chances to improve and not repeat the same mistakes 3) save the time spent slogging through the first part of the fight once you've shown you got that part down. That way it's not just a free hand out since with a full stack you can ignore pretty much any mechanic that's not an autodeath one. Even something like a Deimos oil trigger becomes irrelevant in the face of semi to max Embolden. You should progress the raid by improving each pull. If you can't learn from mistakes and progress, what's the point of raiding? At least force people to spend some effort and exhibit some mechanics proficiency. Also, did Strikes just totally fall flat on their face? Were they not supposed to introduce raid mechs to more casual players and get them ready for end game squad content? Have the people championing the raid accessibility issue done their time learning Strikes? If Strikes were a garbage fest (seem to be a lot of LFGs up for them when I run them, so I'd say they're healthy?), then I can understand the need to jump directly to raids and tweak. I made the transition from Strikes > Training Raids > Semi/EXP Raids like two months ago with no issues. Would love to see a nice incentive to move the Strike crowd over to raids, as that was the intended purpose of them right?

Wokeism aside, it's a kitten kitten rename. Clunky, ugly, hard to say. Nothing remotely cool/poetic/symbolic/in-lore about it. Did you hand your intern a thesaurus and tell them to go nuts with it? Who endorsed this?

-180 Vitality on Scrapper is like a 11% health loss. Plus Impact Savant gives you 5% dmg back as barrier. Not an equivalent trade at all. Scrapper also has better channeled blocks than Guardian sooooo

Aegis and stability are deeply rooted in guardian class lore. The entire concept of aegis balanced/offset guardian having the lowest healthpool in the game despite being a soldier class, so there's your tradeoff. That's why they have more access to it, and why other classes need to give up more to get it. Can't speak to Mechanist, as I don't think it should have access to aegis or stab. If you think other classes should get more aegis acess/uptime, take that ~25% vitality cut for medium armor, ~40% for heavy. RE: Tome 3 -- you would have to idle without a weapon for a good couple seconds to provide aegis upkeep, then the 75 sec CD you mentioned. Also please recognize that aegis has been nerfed for guardians consistently the past few years. The meta build for Healbrand now only grants Aegis on demand with Tome 3 and Shield 4. As Anet is doing away with more profession-specific buffs, by that logic the next thing to change is boons that are/used to be limited to one or two classes. They've mixed things the past few years, with more specs getting alacrity, etc. (and the existence of Mech lmao) so I wouldn't be surprised if they came for aegis next.