Arcaedus.7290

Couldn't the shattered aegis problem very easily be solved by giving it a 1 or 2s icd?

I know Anet will do whatever it is that they will do, but I just wanted to put some fun ideas/suggestions out there since everyone has already mentioned what feels bad/off at this point. I suggest these changes with PvP/WvW in mind, but I think any player in any game mode could enjoy these. I think any number of the following suggestions would be welcome improvements and maybe even fun: I think using one willbender virtue canceling out any other current active ones is a good idea, but the duration of the willbender virtue should be longer, say 8 seconds, and then have the GM trade off traits be -3 seconds. It's already very difficult for players to rack up 5-hits with this spec in pvp, so they either need more time to do so, or less hits to do so, and less hits kinda ruins the theme of willbender. Let the willbender flames of all 3 virtues persist/remain for longer, and also persist/remain even if another virtue is immediately used. Add a trait (or just a function of the specialization) that allows symbols to leave behind willbender flames after they end Increase the AOE of Willbender flames, and increase their damage Add more of a visual oomph to sword 4 and sword 5. I think the character animation is nice, but there are not that flashy of vfx for using/landing these skills Add a nice animation to Reversal of Fortune if it successfully absorbs an attack that results in the Willbender healing the greater amount Every single physical skill (save for maybe the heal) should have some sort of control effect imo. Flash Combo could do well to have cripple Flash combo gives off the vibe of a monk hitting pressure points. I think it would be neat that every single one of the 5 strikes does something unique, like maybe a different condition each (but very short duration), with the 5th hit doing bigger damage and unlocking Repose like it currently does. Potentially OP change for Heaven's Palm: Have this skill be two hits instead of 1. Both are unblockable. The first hit specifically boon-rips stability, and the second hit performs its current 4s stun. Both hits occur practically back to back, so it's easy to dodge/evade both, but you can't block it. Now THAT would be an absolute show-stopper in pvp, and would earn it a 45s cd like it has in pve. Heck, people might actually take that over Renewed focus for once.

Pretty sure it's supposed to function like Full Counter, but currently it seems bugged. Sometimes, attacks don't trigger the heal, and if you get CCed, you lose the charge, it goes on cooldown, you fail to heal, AND you get CCed. This skill also does not synergize well with on-heal traits or effects. They only go into effect if you channel the 1 second absorb, then fail to absorb an attack during that 1s.

I think this is a bug, but hard agree. I think the heal skill was supposed to function like full counter, meaning no matter what you get hit with - the attack is absorbed, and you suffer none of its effects. That means no conditions applied, no damage taken, no CC inflicted. Right now the heal is bugged on several levels. It doesn't synergize with certain on-heal traits, there are several attacks that can hit you during the heal channel and NOT proc the 4.2k heal, and then the issue with the CC thing like you said.

Played about 2 hours of this thing in pvp, and 1 hour in open world. Here's some feedback: What I liked: Overall, I see what you're going for, ANet. Specs has very beautiful animations and has a nice theme going. Conceptually very nice spec, and I love how I think it's supposed to work. Sword 5, F2, and the bottom/third master-tier trait are by far the biggest stars of the show here. There's a LOT wrong though, and some of these things may be bugs: SO much animation lock. F1 and Flash Combo are by far the worst offenders. These skills are terrible and really need their animation locks completely removed (no self-root). F1 also needs to just be sped up greatly. Speaking of animation lock, f3 could use some touching up too. It doesn't have much animation lock on the end which is nice, but the start-up and overall cast time are far too slow, allowing someone to CC you on reaction speed to interrupt this skill and send it on cooldown. I think this deserves the DH Shield of Courage treatment, where you get stability immediately on start-up, and that lasts for 3/4 seconds, and then once you finish the landing, you get the rest of your boons/benefits. In PVP, I ran Marauder's Amulet, Scholar's Rune. The damage is not there. Even landing my big hits like Sword 4, and Whirling Light will take a off a decent chunk of enemy's health, but I lose almost every 1v1 I'm in against a decent player around my skill level - these are 1v1s I would and otherwise have won on core guard, or DH. PVP-split cooldowns are too high, and not fair imo. Roiling Light is 30s? Every single physical skill is 20s+ cooldown.... these should all be 15-20s cooldown like they are in PVE. The heal. Oh dear Lord is it bugged. Like 60% of the time it reduces all damage I receive for that 1 second channel down to 0, but the heal does not proc at all. Also, when it DOES proc, it doesn't synergize well with certain traits. Namely Smiter's Boon (cast lesser smite condition upon using heal skill) does NOT work if the heal DOES absorb an attack. More complaints about the heal: It gets completely canceled out if you get hit by a CC. The heal goes on cooldown, you don't get a heal, AND you get CCed. This is either a bug, or terribly balanced. It should function like Spellbreaker's Full Counter, except healing instead of dealing damage and dazing. A suggestion here is to add a short animation if the heal does proc, similar to what Spellbreaker gets for Full Counter. PVP-split cooldowns for the virtues are too high IMO. They should be 12, 20, and 30, just like in pve. That was some fine balance if you ask me.

The T2 and T3 burst lacking in Spellbreaker is not equivalent to give and take of stats. As for the -300 toughness on Berserker: yea, just like with the WB adept traits, I'm not okay with this either? Unfortunately, Anet disagrees. Unavoidable trade off traits are just a thing we have to adapt to.

The trade off is that by picking one traitline, you can't pick another traitline.

@Arken.3725 Yo! I listened to your hour n a half vod there. This is a pretty good analysis. I agree with your ratings of each of the utilities and skills. Only two disagreements I have: 1. I feel like the only reason Deathless Courage is going to be is good as it will be, is that glass canon WBs are going to be able to lay out some serious hurt and get away with it thanks to this trait. I'd give it a grade of B+. Solid, extremely useful for some builds (and likely useful for what will be the meta WB build), but the other two GMs offer very stiff competition. 2. I think Roiling Light is really good. It's true that it doesn't offer some of the recovery/sustain that our other stun breaks do, but it has such as low cooldown and offers such amazing economy for a single skill. I'd give it a B+ as a skill. Question for you: Why Zeal? I think for Willbender/Radiance, you get more out of Virtues as your 3rd traitline - 3 condis cleansed/20s, additional protection uptime, excellent resolution access, and an additional stunbreak. Zeal gives you a bump in damage, but between Destroyer ammy/Radiance/Willbender, you probably have more than enough damage

Hey Lonami, just read through your post, and I think you have wonderful ideas. I wanted to address this point here: So I've mentioned this idea before, but I think an absolutely great way to add weapon variety into the game with this new expac would be to: Add in 1-3 entirely new weapon types. Almost every new elite spec would be getting one of theseAdditionally, make underwater weapons amphibious and let one or both of them be available for core classes.So with this, the expac would bring 2-3 new weapons for everyone. Second point there could be accomplished through narrative quite easily imo. There could be something in the expac about "repurposing" underwater weapons as land weapons due to their effectiveness at taking down underwater creatures (that are on land/floating in the air.... because Elder Dragon magic). Spear --> repurposed into a one-handed melee weapon, very similar to Paragon from GW1Trident --> repurposed into the two-handed polearm (2h spear). Similar to GS, maybe slightly lower dps, but more versatile (has some range on its attacks, variety of moveset, like blocks, parries, leaps, evades, a thrown attack, rapid-hitting attacks, wide-range melee aoe)Harpoon gun --> repurposed into either an explosive weapon, or a crossbow/crossbowgun. For the land version of harpoon gun, so many different things could be done with this - it could be a 2h mid-range weapon that focuses on large AOEs and is a bit on the slower side, it could be a 1h ranged weapon that focuses more on CC and AOE than pistol, or it could be an off-hand only weapon that has a lot of utility, kind of like the Clutch Claw in Monster Hunter World. Sky's the limit, yo.

This absolutely. I'll clarify though: No build should be able to indefinitely bunker a 1v2 in the case that you have two dps/burst/non-bunkers fighting against you. As to how long someone should be able to hold off a 1v2 is another question, but it should not be indefinite, that's for sure.

Sure, but if you compare LoW + smiter's boon before, to LoW + smiter's boon now, if things worked like you said, they should function identically. However, the way it functions now is that after casting LoW, there is a much longer delay between the end of the heal skill and smiter's boon proccing, so this almost seems like a bug actually. The only healing skill that smiter's boon SHOULD function differently for is Shelter - should proc after you finish channeling, which it didn't before but it does now.

I'll expand off this since what otto said is true. For the dps-based guardian specs in pvp/wvw, they are actually in a pretty decent spot, but fall behind the top contenders for similar roles since they can't output quite as much as these other specs.... whether it's dps, burst, CC, boons, mobility, or evades. Our two primary dps-based builds, DH and core guard just fall behind builds/specs like holosmith, soulbeast, mirage and revenant (historically). I've given this a lot of thought and I honestly don't think the solution is to buff DH or core guard much more. It would be great if instead of buffing guard, we nerfed some of the other classes. For example, one multi-class nerf that could be done would be to heavily reduce access to the protection boon, or make it so that it's nearly impossible to pull off high dps AND have high protection uptime (make the protection-granting traits compete with key damage-related traits). As it stands right now, the entire guardian class has absolutely no way of dealing with a class that can maintain the protection boon due to a lack of boon removal (and no, the pvp nullification sigil doesn't do NEARLY enough to even be noticeable). There are small QoL or even small numerical buffs that guardian could receive that I think would improve their performance a lot without overtuning them, but we don't need things like flat buffs to damaging/healing skills and traits since that would only further imbalance guard from builds/classes lower than guard on the totem pole.

Double posted, please ignore this one

This is a pretty terrible nerf. So not only has the Smiter's Boon trait been heavily devalued as a condi-cleanse, but it now is a far weaker offensive skill due to the enormous delay of the trait proccing after a heal skill. For example, if you use LoW, the delay between the end of LoW and Smiter's Boon proccing is significantly longer now than it was before. This is a bad change, and it should reverted ASAP. Literally no one asked for or wanted this nerf.

Right, my mistake, should have read that a bit more slowly. I missed the rather unexpected transition from talking about new weapons to new classes, which I think Anet has made clear they don't want to make any more new ones, just new elite specs.

Lol oh here we go again with this argument. I don't think this is a very strong argument against implementing new weapons in the game. Nobody other than Anet has the full picture of how "difficult" or how "costly" it is to implement something new. It's fine for you to be worried or concerned about implementation of new weapon types, but the debate on cost/monetization of implementing new things likely goes through a lot of debate on Anet's end so it's not something the customer base should worry about. What it comes down to is: do you want new weapons? Do you not care if they are implemented or not? Or do you actually NOT want them? You probably would either like new weapons or not really mind if they were included. Nobody would actually dislike if new weapons were included in the game.

Don't entirely agree with that. I think all 2-handed weapons should have at least one defensive option (and by defensive, I mean anything that can be used to on-demand negate an enemy's attacks, including ability to CC/interrupt them or that gives you mobility such as a leap), and for the most part they do. So too does LB on DH but it's worse than all of the others by far. Blind is one of the weaker defensive options out there, and if it was a reliable attack I'd be fine with it, but the blind is attached to an aimed skill shot which is slow (so it's practically not on-demand). If LB got knockback by default (so you could have HL and BGH at the same time), but no one else got nerfed, it would be balanced. If everyone else got nerfed, but LB and HL were left as is, it would be balanced. That's my final position on this. If your target moves outside your f1 tether range, you lose that +20% damage. Of course BGH is not a melee-only trait, however if you tether someone at 1200 range, then they can very easily break tether, which is why a melee build lends itself to maximizing BGH's potential. Am I missing something? You WOULDN'T be able to keep the 20% damage after pulling someone because that breaks your tether. And for this reason, BGH does not synergize with Test of Faith, because pulling someone immediately causes you to lose that +20% damage. Unfun, maybe a bit, but it's not overpowered any way you want to slice it. You're interpreting its strength in the most ideal possible situation to where it is maximally effective. You can't only evaluate skills in these scenarios otherwise you can make certain skills sound more broken than the dreams of the entire Millenial generation. If someone notices (purely by reaction speed) that they are in the center of your Hunter's Ward aoe, then can begin hobbling and in some cases (if they have swiftness or superspeed) simply walk out of the aoe without needing to burn a dodge. Let's go over them 1 by 1 to see if i think it's fair or not.(just responding to your points, not quoting)Alright but good luck fighting them close range when you lack counterplay options on LB. Also, if you cancel cast to dodge their burst, then as it turns out, they have made YOU burn a cd, and a dodge, and are likely to follow up with another burst/pressure right after your dodge. A smart opponent can force you to trade with them if they are aware of you and see you casting LB5 and DH is not very good at trading once their f3 is on cooldown. So then your ability to use Hunter's Ward is completely obsolete against a majority of encounters? Everyone who is directly focused on you is either going to be attacking you in melee range or ranged themselves.Sure it does. The vast majority of classes have access to stability in an accessible form as part of a meta build (either by default or very little change needed to access stab if they so choose).Sure you burned their teleport.. maybe only after you have burned both your LB 5 and a teleport of your own when you come in for the burst. If you trap a mesmer or a thief (the only two classes you will ever trap with LB 5 who won't use stab to get out), then teleport in with either GS2, or sword 3, then can blink/shadow step out.In the middle of battle once the enemy is not healthy, you're not going to want to be using LB5. They can simply continue auto attacking you (out-dpses you while you are casting + regen endurance), dodge the big hit at the end, and you just came out on the bottom of the trade. Yes i wish we had more situational skills instead of "just mash everything on cooldown", that's great. I should not be buffed to 2.25 channel time tho, because ranger's LB5 is TERRIBLE. The cooldown is long because it's a strong skill, it's just not supposed to be used off-cooldown, but a -5 seconds would be nice to make the weapon a bit more attractive. Well I sure don't. Not on a weapon anyways. Mash everything on cooldown is better than mash 1, and occasionally use 2, 3, 4, and 5 when necessary. Also, why shouldn't it be buffed to 2.25 seconds? That's a really inconsequential buff. And the cooldown is long because Anet THINKS it's a strong skill, not because it objectively is. You know what the cooldown used to be on Virtue of Courage in vanilla GW2? 90 seconds. Retreat? 60 seconds. Are you going to tell me that a single block is so strong that it merits a 60-90s cooldown, even in vanilla GW2? Because I would disagree. Agreed. It's unlikely to happen though. Why nerf 8 when you can buff 1? Anet only has so much time and resources and that's apparent. That's the reason I call for minor incremental buffs and nerfs rather than widespread nerfing to everyone elseEDIT: I'll add one more thing: I do appreciate you discussing Hunter's Ward with me. It's made me think about the skill a bit more. I can honestly tell you that in pvp/wvw, I do use the skill at least once or twice per match, but it is a bit disappointing that I don't get to use it in more situations. I am just of the opinion that some minor changes could be made to Hunter's Ward that would functionally keep it the same, would not increase its damage or it's dps, but would make it a whole lot more usable compared to what it is now. Just imagine if you had some changes like: A. Hunter's Ward takes 2.25 seconds to cast instead of 2.75 seconds.B. Hunter's Ward cast takes 2.75 seconds until final impact, but you only sit there casting for the first 2 seconds, leaving you some time to set up another skill before the final impact (could possibly overtune it too much)C. Hunter's Ward could be used while moving (also likely be overtuned lol)D. Hunter's Ward had a shorter cooldown (30-35 seconds) - maybe less CC to compensate.E. Increase the damage a bit (buff final impact 10%, and all initial hits 10%). I'm a fan of scenarios A or E at the very least. I think the skill has too long of a cast time and too long of a cooldown for the amount of foresight it takes to land it and the amount of reward you reap for landing it.

Don't entirely agree with that. I think all 2-handed weapons should have at least one defensive option (and by defensive, I mean anything that can be used to on-demand negate an enemy's attacks, including ability to CC/interrupt them or that gives you mobility such as a leap), and for the most part they do. So too does LB on DH but it's worse than all of the others by far. Blind is one of the weaker defensive options out there, and if it was a reliable attack I'd be fine with it, but the blind is attached to an aimed skill shot which is slow (so it's practically not on-demand). If LB got knockback by default (so you could have HL and BGH at the same time), but no one else got nerfed, it would be balanced. If everyone else got nerfed, but LB and HL were left as is, it would be balanced. That's my final position on this. If your target moves outside your f1 tether range, you lose that +20% damage. Of course BGH is not a melee-only trait, however if you tether someone at 1200 range, then they can very easily break tether, which is why a melee build lends itself to maximizing BGH's potential. Am I missing something? You WOULDN'T be able to keep the 20% damage after pulling someone because that breaks your tether. And for this reason, BGH does not synergize with Test of Faith, because pulling someone immediately causes you to lose that +20% damage. Unfun, maybe a bit, but it's not overpowered any way you want to slice it. You're interpreting its strength in the most ideal possible situation to where it is maximally effective. You can't only evaluate skills in these scenarios otherwise you can make certain skills sound more broken than the dreams of the entire Millenial generation. If someone notices (purely by reaction speed) that they are in the center of your Hunter's Ward aoe, then can begin hobbling and in some cases (if they have swiftness or superspeed) simply walk out of the aoe without needing to burn a dodge. Let's go over them 1 by 1 to see if i think it's fair or not.(just responding to your points, not quoting)Alright but good luck fighting them close range when you lack counterplay options on LB. Also, if you cancel cast to dodge their burst, then as it turns out, they have made YOU burn a cd, and a dodge, and are likely to follow up with another burst/pressure right after your dodge. A smart opponent can force you to trade with them if they are aware of you and see you casting LB5 and DH is not very good at trading once their f3 is on cooldown. So then your ability to use Hunter's Ward is completely obsolete against a majority of encounters? Everyone who is directly focused on you is either going to be attacking you in melee range or ranged themselves.Sure it does. The vast majority of classes have access to stability in an accessible form as part of a meta build (either by default or very little change needed to access stab if they so choose).Sure you burned their teleport.. maybe only after you have burned both your LB 5 and a teleport of your own when you come in for the burst. If you trap a mesmer or a thief (the only two classes you will ever trap with LB 5 who won't use stab to get out), then teleport in with either GS2, or sword 3, then can blink/shadow step out.In the middle of battle once the enemy is not healthy, you're not going to want to be using LB5. They can simply continue auto attacking you (out-dpses you while you are casting + regen endurance), dodge the big hit at the end, and you just came out on the bottom of the trade. Yes i wish we had more situational skills instead of "just mash everything on cooldown", that's great. I should not be buffed to 2.25 channel time tho, because ranger's LB5 is TERRIBLE. The cooldown is long because it's a strong skill, it's just not supposed to be used off-cooldown, but a -5 seconds would be nice to make the weapon a bit more attractive. Well I sure don't. Not on a weapon anyways. Mash everything on cooldown is better than mash 1, and occasionally use 2, 3, 4, and 5 when necessary. Also, why shouldn't it be buffed to 2.25 seconds? That's a really inconsequential buff. And the cooldown is long because Anet THINKS it's a strong skill, not because it objectively is. You know what the cooldown used to be on Virtue of Courage in vanilla GW2? 90 seconds. Retreat? 60 seconds. Are you going to tell me that a single block is so strong that it merits a 60-90s cooldown, even in vanilla GW2? Because I would disagree. Agreed. It's unlikely to happen though. Why nerf 8 when you can buff 1? Anet only has so much time and resources and that's apparent. That's the reason I call for minor incremental buffs and nerfs rather than widespread nerfing to everyone else

I agree with everything you said on the different encounters you face in pvp vs. WvW, so I'll just address 1v1 / dueling which is what I originally intended to speak on. You make some very interesting points here. I don't think I disagree with you. I made a few tacit assumptions though, so just to clarify: Both players are at least competent at their respective game modes and have invested similar amounts of time.The matchup of one build vs. another build (assuming equal skill of players) would play out the same regardless of the game mode (if A beats B in wvw, then A beats B in pvp) - probably the least accurate assumption, but it holds true for the most part.Both players are using builds that are either meta, or very close to metaNeither player is using a cheesy 1-shot build, or an eternal bunkerWe can even discuss the scenario that both are using identical builds or at least almost identicalI agree with your argument though that assuming equal or similar skill (even slightly unequal skill) that this game is more Build Wars 2 than it is about skill. A combination of better build and more favorable playstyle can overcome greater skill. I've seen this dozens of times over. However It's foolish to dismiss how important skill can be, especially for something like dueling or 1v1s which is a somewhat specific scenario that you can become more skilled at. In general, I've found that pvp players (especially the ones who frequent the duel lobbies, and even that free for all arena) tend to have much more practice and experience in dueling, and that's across a wide variety of matchups. They don't just practice A vs. B to death, they practice A vs. B, A vs. C, A vs. D, etc. and often times even practice their matchups on other classes.

The thing is that the WvW roamers who are truly good at dueling (and not trying to faceroll you with some bs build) also play pvp. In order to become good at something, you have to practice a lot. It's time-based improvement. You can get far more fight-practice in pvp than you can in wvw per unit time, so if you have two duelists, one who only does pvp, and the other who only does WvW (both for same amount of time), 9 times out of 10 the pvp player will win a duel. You should totally play pvp! It will help you improve. You don't have to live there to get your fix, but checking out that free-for all arena and frequenting the dueling/1v1 arenas in pvp will do a lot for you. Personally I do both (I think I spend more overall time in wvw, but in terms of fighting, more time is spent fighting in pvp) and while I find way more action in pvp, there's something about roaming that you just don't quite get from pvp which is nice.

It does make it incomplete if you're playing any build other than a pseudo-deadeye, 1-shot TS build. If an opponent knows that your deflecting shot doesn't knockback, they will not respect this attack AT ALL. They will literally let it hit them and just keep attacking you since it does the damage of an auto attack and has no further effect other than an easily removable blind. If you're on longbow and you have an opponent in melee range pressuring you, then you don't really have any skills on your weapon to deal with them. That's the whole reason knockback on LB3 is good since it gives you that option. It forces foes to respect you (by either maintaining distance, or strafing a lot while approaching you which makes kiting for you easier). I don't think we should have to choose between having CC and doing additional damage, I think we should have to choose between being rewarded for landing our CC and doing additional damage. As for your comments on BGH: I don't doubt it. One of my favorite builds to run is a full melee DH that doesn't use traps. While tethered to someone with f1, you do such insane damage that it actually outclasses core-guard during your 8 seconds of f1. It does however equate to less frequent bursts, your burst is almost entirely reliant on landing f1, and you have to be within 1200 range of your opponent for it to work (which is why it synergizes well with a melee-DH). These factors considered, I think BGH is perfectly balanced for LB and has counterplay options. I played a BGH-longbow build all but a handful of times (mostly pvp, not so much wvw), and it does great when you're +1ing but it does SO poorly for a handful of other situations (vs. spellbreaker, holosmith, reaper, daredevil in smaller scale or 1v1 fights) that it's just not as usable as meditrapper imo. That would completely change to more even matchups should BGH-LB build gain access to a knockback on LB3 and I don't think that's overpowered. I mean the core wombo combo of meditrapper wouldn't really even synergize with BGH. You'd immediately lose that 20% extra damage as soon as you try to pull someone across ToF. My argument is that it's not a powerful CC though. The damage is absolutely nothing to write home about (channeling damage is negligible and the final impact is identical to truesho iirc), and the CC itself is only useful if you're going to capitalize on it (follow up with trueshot, or some other burst combo). Of the 7 points I made to you, 3 of them were scenarios in which you get hit by the final strike and are trapped in the ward. you have so many counterplay options (to either avoid, or to react once struck) against Hunter's Ward that it just equates to a fairly ineffective skill. I almost agree. Nerfing the overtuned should absolutely be a priority right now, and maybe that would result in a game balance where DH never needs these buffs. Also, I think other weapons/skills need buffing on guardian before DH or LB do. I always make these arguments for LB buffs though given the current meta, or even recently historical meta: DH could receive baseline knockback on LB3 and it wouldn't overtune the spec at least not in pvp.

If you're interested in trying any on guard, I would recommend: Literally any guard build with minimum health (just try and make any build with Berserker or Destroyer amulet in particular work...) - can be any role you likeA FB build that doesn't have any investment in healing power - for the purpose of being a roamer/1v1 side noder

@"Scorp.6152" I disagree with your overall evaluation. Mount is overall 5.5/10 for me. I think it has brought a little bit more good than bad to the game mode as a whole. Two really big improvements I can name right off the bat are the back-line players/necros now more able to catch up and keep up with zergs, and also, the mounts giving them and anyone else a buffer stopping them from getting 1-shot by gankers. These are both good things for the game mode and reducing things like this always helps bringing in new players. I agree with many of your criticisms though. One of the worst things about mounts are that in a 1v1 or small-scale scenario, the one who dismounts first is at a disadvantage.... that's really bad design since it encourages non-conflict and a fix could easily be applied in the form of a dismounting skill like you mentioned. Another huge sourspot like you said is the movement speed disparity. In my opinion, defenders already had the bigger advantage compared to offensive siegers. All this mount did was favor defenders even more which is not a good move. This once again leads to a situation of non-conflict. This is a huge minus in my opinion, but I would rather they address the power of defensive siege than nerf mounts since that's what's at the core of the problem here. If I had to suggest some changes (mount-specific) I would suggest the following: Add a dismount skill. It would be a frontal cleaving melee-range attack, come out slowly (1 second cast time) and lock you into a non-cancelable animation, but could be casted while moving, and have virtually no cooldown. How it would work is that if you strike any target, you are dismounted. If you strike a player, you deal a small amount of damage, and you get dismounted. If you strike a mounted player, you dismount them, stun for 2 seconds, and are dismounted yourself.Reasoning: in the case you have a small-scale encounter where players really don't want to get off their mounts, you could force them off, but even then, there is counterplay since you can dodge the Dismount Attack. Counterplay is limited though since the Dismount Attack has no cooldown, whereas the dodge does (endurance). Add a CC-bar to the mounts. The magnitude of the bar (how many CCs it takes) would be up to the balance teams.Reasoning: This stops mounted players from being able to just plow through large enemy forces using their evades, since wards (necro and guard) cannot be dodged through. This could also integrate with the Dismount Attack, since that Dismount Attack could count as a CC against mounted players that completely depletes their breakbar when mounted. Let the siege ability of a mount only cost initial supply to deploy (maybe 3 supply), but allow a player to continue to siege down a gate without any additional supply needed. Reasoning: This would actually encourage players to use the ability since even if the ability was free, it sieges down gates much slower than even a basic catapult. This would also give offensive siege a much needed buff in the face of the massive advantage defenders already have.

@Jack Redline.5379 Meta builds were not CREATED by a few stuck-up pvpers having a God complex, and deciding what is best for all of us. Meta builds were DISCOVERED by these pvpers. These people spend all their time doing pvp. They know a thing or two about what works and what doesn't work in an environment where you have a defined goal to meet. Through experience, these players discovered what the most effective builds are, through a combination of educated guessing plus trial & error. The meta-build websites like Metabattle keep track of these builds, not for the purpose of rating which ones are or are not fun, but to rather to account for which ones are the most effective at fitting into a team of 5 for a conquest game mode and winning. I realized this long ago... this game doesn't have infinite possibilities (or even an extremely large number) in terms of builds. Some builds on some classes just work so well, they outshine all other possible builds on that class. You can improve your personal and mechanical skills, and you can improve your pvp/map/rotational knowledge, but after that, this game is build-wars 2 with maybe one or two dozen builds you can really win on.