Master Ketsu.4569

This patch must hold the record for most amount of changes made while accomplishing absolutely nothing. I'm actually impressed. It's like they deliberately challenged themselves to create the most non impactful balance decisions they could.

Rather than calling out specific teams, the main problem with allowing 5 man teams in ranked is that it will always incentivize the top 5 players, whoever they are, to teamstack. It makes matchmaking at higher levels of play where playerbase is low completely impossible. Add this to the fact that constructing teams takes significantly longer than just hitting that hot solo Q button, and player population will be even lower. It's an idea that works in theory, but fails miserably in practice.

A big problem right now is team comp matters heavily in the meta, which makes match manipulation comically easy. I won't say how to do it since the less who know the better, but I'll just point out that you only need 3 people in order to reliably rig most matches during off-hours.

Harbinger is objectively overperforming and anyone playing it is class carried. The recent MAT proved this beyond any reasonable doubt.

Double Harb comps present nearly every game lmao. Winning 1v1's against sidenoder builds lmao.

It's playable, but by no means competitive. The problem with Core engie is that the balance team, for whatever odd as heck reason, loves nerfing Core engie to fix problems caused by the elite specs. This happens to engie more so than it happens to every other class in the game. The most recent nerf against their shield skills is a perfect example of this lunacy. OK, so Mechanist could survive too long due to "sustain while mech plays game for me" builds. So nerf Mechanist sustain? NAAAAAAAAAH BRO. Random cooldown increases on shield skills!!!!!!!111111ELEVEN!!!!111. The result of this is Engie is the one class in the game where every elite spec is a direct upgrade in PvP. You need the benefits that come with those specs to make up for the unnecessary core nerfs. It's just a fact of Engie life.

I think a give or take would make more sense. Removing stealth entirely would be too much work and would likely break many areas of the game. Stealth instead should be "nerfed" to have better counterplay options. Having no soft counter to a mechanic is very dumb and encourages toxic playstyles. So they should add something along those lines, and then buff thief in other ways to compensate. Example: Dodging/Blocking a stealth attack now reveals the attacker, but in return many thief skills and traits now grant access to protection/resolution and overall sustain is buffed 10%. Damage on D2 and S/D3 possibly de-nerfed. For good thief players, this would overall be a buff.

The problem is something many have pointed out many times - Stealth in GW2 is not well designed because it has no soft counter. You either have the hard counter to stealth ( Revealed ) or you have no counter. There is no counter play against the stealth mechanic, only counter building. And build wars is not good game design.

Called it. They nerfed two of the counters that could beat them while supporting the team ( Vind, Mech ) with little in return. Harb isn't as bad as release scourge was, but it's definitely in a state where it is extremely effective in relation to how little skill it requires to play. Also once again, a big part of the problem is in the skill animations. Vital draw is a perfect example of a skill where it's very difficult to discern the windup cast from other poor quality "handwave" animations. Same problem with the elixers. The animation team and balance team need to work more closely together to prevent this kind of mistake. Because in all honesty, what Vital draw actually does is not that overpowered of an effect. It's just needlessly more difficult to avoid than it should be.

It's condi spam that is broken. The fact is every build has to be an anti condi build. Even during heavy power metas, everyone is forced to run anti condi because you instantly lose the second you run into that one condi build that is being played. People with poor reasoning skills often incorrectly interpret this as the meta being hostile to condi builds, failing to notice why every meta has to be this way.

Still needs to be said and regularly pointed out, because this stuff really is the biggest issue with PvP.

Hate to break it to you but if the only builds you know how to play are rott builds, you never really knew how to pvp.

Well what they really should do it just give it something else other than stealth that would aid in trapper builds. Like 3s vigor instead.

Yeah those shield nerfs were kinda unjustified.

The builds using ROTT were not overpowered, but they were bad for the game. I don't mourn its passing.

Yeah after playing a few games, sorry anet but this is a garbage-tier poorly thought out patch. People are abusing WB and Harb to the moon. That's generally what happens when you go nerfing the counters of the two top builds while not touching said builds in the slightest. Not exactly the smartest moment in GW2 balance history here.

Poe's law. This really is the problem with balance forums right now. Nothing is seriously breaking the game, except maybe now double harb since the main counterpick has been nerfed. And the things that are overperforming are only overperforming by a slight amount. Wanting this number of nerfs for WB would be unreal if I didn't suspect this is a troll thread.

Kurzick on Vind was overnerfed. It was already a questionable decision between running that and just running Jalis/Shiro, now you will likely just see a lot more Jalis/Shiro. I guess anets balance team forgot that a spec with a 100 endurance cost and 1 dodge kind of needs good defensive utility or else it's just a punching bag. Harb and WillB completely ignored. Reading over the notes this patch stinks of not being aware of what's actually being played. Like they decided on this patch 5 weeks ago and ignored the fact that the meta has noticeably shifted since then. The responsible thing to do would have been to postpone and do more research. Overall will not improve the meta in any way. If anything the death of Treesong means Harb no longer has a good counterpick, which means running condi monkeyspam just got a huge indirect buff.

The point is they don't heal as much as other heals but have a low CD. It's fine tbh.

Well, mainly just need better options for it. We should be able to adjust the height at the very least. The graphic for it is fine, the placement is not. There is an actual mod that does this for you, however it's not allowed in competitive play.

You want variety? Focus more on better animations and effective counterplay to mechanics so that skill matters more than build wars.

Default models sort of helps and sort of doesn't. It's mainly a workaround for the fact that Asuran animations are hot garbage and anet knows they are hot garbage, so they added that option for people who find Asura annoying enough to warrant making the game less colorful. But even with that a lot of animations are pretty bad. A lot could be fixed by better damage number UI options, and adding the old GW1 overhead glow animations back. It's bonkers that things like signets had better visual tells in GW1 than in 2. I would know as someone who mained Dshot ranger in TA and HA and used them to scan-interrupt. GW1 is almost 20 years old.

Yes I probably should have noted that it's 100% reproducible.

At this point, Rev could use a new mainhand. 4 two handed options. 3 offhand. 2 mainhand. A mainhand axe would be nice. Make it a condi/power hybrid as an in between for sword and mace.

Difference is in PvE bosses have patterns. In PvP people only have patterns if they are bad.