Jokuc.3478

The last couple of years the damage for every build in the game has gone up significantly, the baseline of 30k for a dps class increased to 35k which later reached close to 40 and now we have many builds that do well over 40k dps. This makes encounters and mechanics in older content more trivial for every update, HoT story bosses and dungeon bosses die in a couple of hits and so called "challenge" mode fractal bosses such as Skorvald die so fast you won't even get to see all his mechanics even if the group performs horribly. I really wish anet would do something about this awful powercreep. I realize that it's not as easy as just nerfing the damage of everything in the game since newer content such as eod strikes are tuned for the current state of the game and anet would definitely not have the time to go back and tune all old content. But is there something that can be done about this? One of the main appeals gw2 has to people is that old content stay relevant because of the horizontal progression, but even though it stays relevant reward-wise, does it really stay relevant in terms of modern gameplay/fun? People would probably get angry if their class was nerfed, even if every other class was nerfed with it but I say it's kind of necessary at this point, some numbers are getting ridiculous. Thoughts?

No.

I am extremely disappointed with it, they should just have added the ears as headpiece and tail as backpiece so you can customize it as you want and make it cuter. Now you're forced to use the lame clothes with it.. yikes.

The story was underwhelming. Party at the start was fun for a minute, but the amount of time the party + gathering quest at the start took up in comparison to the rest of the story was too much. Or rather, the rest of the story had way too little fun content. I don't really feel like it managed to build up any tension at all for the dangerous creatures that lives in the depths. What happened to the top tier mood build-ups that we had in LW4? It's completely gone here. They go "aaah there's a scary monster" and that's it. I'm also disappointed by the lack of mechancis on the final boss, but more on that later. The design of Gyala Delves is fantastic. The music on it is nice, but I would have liked something slightly more creepy-sounding. I really like the looks of the map, the layout and effects. I like how they captured the sense of going deeper, although I would have wished for it to be slightly larger with some different layers, you know secret caves and stuff like you'd see in HoT and LW3 maps. Great idea with the turtle thing to break the walls. The Filters are ..meh, I don't mind the idea, but the frequency at which you need to refresh them just makes it annoying and it feels like I can't take the time that I want to explore the map. The meta event sucks. Most of it isn't even that unfun or anything, it was actually quite fine for most of its duration. Maybe a tiny bit repetitive, but I'm giving the first zones a pass. My issue with it is that the final event or final boss you've been waiting to reach is an utter disappointment. A complete let-down. To begin with, the boss has no mechanics to speak of at all, he just stands there and hits people while random mobs spawn. The fight does not really change at all as you progress it, it's just more of the same and nothing really happens. The fight is split into 3 islands similar to Dragon Stand.. but players aren't required or incentivized to work together between each platform, the encounter design does not make use of this opportunity to make something interesting. Then there's also the fact that I'm not sold on the idea of having more maps being completely based around a closing meta event such as Dragon Stand and Dragon's End. I'd rather have an open map where I can explore or do whatever I want with other interesting events like we see in HoT maps. At least those other two maps managed to make the fight interesting enough where it's worth to actually visit just for the epicness, this one does not.

I'm very happy with the mantra changes. Mantras are much more interesting and now with flame mantra you can decide if you want to use old rotation which is easier, or use up final charge but have to fit in the recharge in your rotation, which is slightly higher damage but needs planning. Seeing the mantra animations makes me happy as well, I just wish I got to hear the voice lines more frequently when recharging, it seems kind of random atm if they play or not.

Simplicity is what made them poor. Just having boon buttons that you spam off cooldown without any thought going into usage or anything is poor game design and unfun. Newbies not being able to keep track of mantras and other stuff at the same time is a skill issue not design issue. Nobody said that the previous mantras were OP, we wanted the revert because they were boring and the old ones were better. Your whole argument about it makes no sense. What does HT CM has anything to do with it? lmao. HFB is one of the best support builds in the game, the reason you don't take it on HTCM is because you want a mobile kiter to do the mechanics, it has nothing to do with the boon or healing capabilities of a firebrand. "Pmech hardly a build anymore" - most noobs would still do higher damage spamming autos on a pmech than playing say weaver. And if you're not a noob then this doesn't even apply to you cause accessibility and ease of use isn't a problem in the first place. The playerbase grew because anet changed leadership, did partnership with twitch, launched an expansion and launched on steam with youtubers talking about it. I would hardly think that a simplified game is the reason why it became more popular. It's not something that gathers hype to people who never played the game. The change to revert mantras is fantastic and I've been asking for this ever since they changed it so I completely disagree.

I've heard a few people voice concerns about the final charge of the mantras that they don't like it because it's easy to hit by mistake (I don't share this opinion). But I thought of a solution that might work and thought I'd share it, would be neat to hear what you folks think: So for the final charge of each FB mantra, put one of those hold-release mechanics on only the final charge that you see in story/event instances on siege weapons and stuff, so that you would need to hold down the button for say 0.5s for it to be used up, and if you just pressed it once by mistake it wouldn't be consumed and end with a very sad qfb.

I am so happy to finally see the old Firebrand mantra animations back, I was so sad when they removed them from the game. Nice with some more skill expression back into the game with the last powerful charge. Very good idea with the auto flip out of combat to we get the best of both worlds. I'm kind of confused why they didn't do any nerfs to Virtuoso so that Chrono can be a closer competitor. I also think Bladesworn should have had a tiny bit more nerfs. I think the Reaper buffs are probably not enough to make it a true strong pick in Raiding/Fractals, but hey at least Chilled to the Bone got a nice buff. Happy to see the extra stability on Ele, but the Weaver buffs might be a bit too much lol as for what kind of player I am, I mainly play instanced end-game PvE such as Raids/Strikes/Fracs and enjoy pushing for fast clear times and low man groups.

lol of course we want color grading. Color grading is needed to give the game the look the art directors are going for. The problem with the current grading is that the colors are often too saturated and the contrast is way too high so everything looks dark and ugly or like a flashlight. Once they fully transition to dx11 I'm guessing their plan is to make more changes to the way the game looks so it should hopefully be improved in the future. As it is right now however, it's way too much and I (like many others) prefer to play without it. So what we want is the ability to turn it off. Not to just "not have color grading".

Calm down it's still going to be mega strong.

I already memed you a bit about this in the replies to your latest twitter post about "what would be the most universally hated changes by the player base" ...but yeah. If this is unintended to be a permanent change and you can promise us that you'll give back the post-processing off setting eventually, I can calm down. But if this is intended to be a permanent change.. idk what I'll do man I played the game for years without it on and I'd have to spam a lot of kittens here to describe my feelings towards being forced to play with it on. (Cause it's too high contrast, oversaturated and looks like kitten)

Yes, more booba pls.

Overall not bad but I'm surprised (and a bit disappointed) they didn't nerf Shift Signet and also would have liked to see Tempest (PvE) buffs. edit: also the deadeye range nerfs sucks, you should have just added the crouch

I really don't like the Gyro change to ground target on Scrapper. It removes some of the class identity. The amount of nerfs is already a lot. Instead of buffing the stab mantra on Mesmer I would have liked to see buffs to stab on Tempest. Distortion on all Mesmer specs is not a good idea. Virt is already strong as it is, it doesn't need an invul to make it even stronger. I'm OK with giving Mirage its 2nd dodge back, but be careful so it doesn't become too annoying to fight. I really hope you will not change the way Mirage cloak works as I would rather prefer to keep it at 1 dodge if that is the case. And since you mentioned it) I actually don't think the PMech nerfs in PvE will be enough. Even if dmg goes goes down to 34k it still has long range and rapid firing attacks that are extremely consistent, it gives itself quickness thanks to the Jade Dynamo trait which in a pug group means you'll have more quick than most other people, and Shift Signet is still OP and need some of its functionality moved to other skills (moving the the condi cleanse and boon copy to another skill makes sense to me as the other things are themed around movement and thus fit together with that skill). Sorry I'm only mentioning the stuff I didn't like or what worries me, just assume I think everything else is fine for now!

A few months ago I was hoping for a lot of specific balance changes but at the current state of the game I'll be satisfied as long as something is done about Rifle Mechanist, cause I swear I lose more and more of my sanity every time I join a Raid or Strike group that consists of 6-8 mechs. Mech is more ranged and has the OP shift signet, why is it higher dmg than Holo?

With the new update, ANet has added "Complexity" ratings for each class. How do you feel about this? I get the idea, but I think it might do more bad than good cause things change a lot depending on what Elite Spec and what build you play. For example, Condi Chaos Virtuoso is very easy but Axe Mirage is very hard. Power Mech is extremely easy but Sword Holosmith has a little bit more of a learning curve. So the ratings can be misleading.

bruh this is the best thing I read about gw2 since the reveal that we'd get a 4th expansion I did not expect this but am happily surprised. Obviously a 70k dps build isn't healthy for the game even if it's hard to play, but to some extent there needs to be room for these kind of builds to shine even if it means in some cases outperforming other builds in the hands of highly experienced players. While I completely understand that anet doesn't want some builds to be too strong even in theory, at some point it becomes unfair to balance them around this fact. Mirage falls into this category. I am curious what this means for the future of balance. I'm sure there'll be a few people opposed to this but if you ask me, this is the right decision.

Most of these changes are good! I think the FB stability getting nerfed is not the way to go, just give tempest a powerful stability utility skill or something. More importantly, the nerf to Axe on Mirage is BAD. Nerfing might on the staff is whatever (though it's kind of sad for open world solo players), but Axe did not need to get nerfed. It's like ANet doesn't understand fundamentals and just look at Soulless Horror speed kills on youtube and say "woah that's big numbers, nerf". Mirage is mainly only used on a couple specific bosses. It doesn't have the bursty dmg of some other condi classes like firebrand and cvirt. Axe is really hard to use and it takes a huge amount of practice to pull it off. Most players, even those who do end game content regularly can't get anywhere near peak numbers on actual encounters. Not to mention mech does pretty much the same thing with minimal effort. If mirage ends up doing similar damage to virtuoso, why would you play it? You wouldn't.

ANet, are you looking into this? Losing Ashes on fb is a significant dps loss so it would be nice if it gets fixed.

Anet can you fix the broken singularity pls. How do you make a big update to instabs but not fix the super annoying singularity bug lmao

Honestly mech will probably still be op after this nerf, but that aside, most of these are good changes! I do think that the change to slb to get rid of tiny burst window management lowers the skill ceiling which is really sad for high end players. Please don't do that.

I can already see where this is going.. If we simplify the game too much and homogenize classes I'm out. That's not the kind of game I was excited to play when I decided to try guild wars 2.

The concern is not whether axe mirage is good or not. It's about the fact that a balance decision was made simply because a developer did not enjoy a specific playstyle. If there was statistics that 99% of mesmer mains hate how axe work then there's something to work with, but it seems like the motivation here was entirely personal.

I'm happy we got a response, it's good that we will get an explanation for the notes, but I am very unhappy with the descision to still move forward with the patch. The thing is that your vision for the game - from what I have understood it judging by the patch notes and reading through the dev conversations - is simplifying class mechanics and build complexity to reduce the amount of effort a player has to put in to perform well. This is the complete opposite of what I and many other players want. Build and combat complexity is the main reason I chose gw2 over other mmorpgs. So, when you say that you listen to player feedback I don't doubt you, but if this feedback goes against the philosophy of simplifying the game you seem to just throw it away, which is where a lot of frustration comes from. And right now, we have devs making balance decisions on classes they didn't even play instead of having someone who has extensive knowledge about a class across all types of content. Seems to me like it's still not getting the attention it deserves. Would you not agree that it is - for example - better to have a highly experienced Ranger player have a larger role in balancing that specific class? --- I am one of the people who are extremely upset about the patch and the direction of the game balance. While I would agree that calling players names is a bad thing to do as a developer, I will also recognize that this is in the context of speaking about someone who is using an exploit that stresses the game servers and causes issues for the devs then purposely teaching others how to do it. It's definitely wrong but I understand that you get annoyed at such a person as a developer. I read through the entire leaks and while there are a few snarky comments here and there, this was the only one that in my opinion calls for any kind of attention. It wasn't a recurring thing. In my opinion it's kind of silly to ask for them to be fired, it's honestly whatever. What I am more concerned about is the class knowledge of said developer.

I hate this change. Getting rid of repairs is whatever, my issue is with the addition of buffs. They have been adding so many buffs lately it's ridiculous. Jade Protocols, Jade Bot Cores and now Anvil boosts. I really hate it. The most annoying thing about it is that I assume it will work for instanced content as well which is a joke tbh.