Game Update Notes Preview: Profession Skills

[ixon.2496]

24 minutes ago, Xylas Lothian.8473 said:

All these people freaking out and saying they won’t play more because of a balance patch have clearly never played an MMO before. You guys need to relax. If the balance changes aren’t effective I am sure it will be addressed in a future patch.

 

 

No. Just no..

 

GW2 has suffered from poor balancing for YEARS. 

 

"Placeholder" 300s cooldown traits, Dead trait lines, Overperforming classes (Guard/Necro)

 

This was supposed to be the big profession update, since the last one was Feb 2020. And it misses the mark on so many levels its just not acceptable. Player feedback has been universally ignored. 

 

After 9+ years or poor balancing, players are rightfully annoyed and  are expressing that. 

 

 

[Xylas Lothian.8473]

Idk what to tell you man but this is a big win for returning players like me. I understand being frustrated with class changes for a decade, I played EQ and WoW both for longer than I care to admit. But things are stagnant and raiding is completely ruled by the elite because the meta is so ridiculously specific and that locks out a lot of people.

 

Anyway good luck to you all and I hope your future with the game brightens up for you. I’m going to leave this post for dead because I know a lot of people are angry and I don’t really want to be a part of that. I just wanted to give a fresh perspective to try to lighten things up. Seems like lots of people are overreacting.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Xylas Lothian.8473

[Gibson.4036]

15 hours ago, Rogue.8235 said:

Came here to answer three simple questions.  Found a filibuster instead.  So... um...

Not sure what to do now.

 

Hold a cloture vote?

[Geos.4759]

You change the banners and lose players.

Are you even playing your own game?

[pallas.8150]

3 minutes ago, Geos.4759 said:

You change the banners and lose players.

Are you even playing your own game?

They are, but its most likely on Harbingers, Willbenders, Mechanists, and Firebrands.

[soulknight.9620]

34 minutes ago, Xylas Lothian.8473 said:

All these people freaking out and saying they won’t play more because of a balance patch have clearly never played an MMO before. You guys need to relax. If the balance changes aren’t effective I am sure it will be addressed in a future patch.

The problem is not that "they nerfed my main" or anything, but the fact that these changes do not make any sense and are contradicted by simple common sense. If something is overperforming (heal mech, firebrand, necro) you nerf it OR bring other classes on par with them. But they are getting buffed "for some unknown reason" (c). If something is underpowered (for ex. warrior) you buff it or nerf everything to match its power level. But they nerfed warriors big time AND killed the only reason why anyone at all would take a warrior into groups (banners). 

You need to take into account the context of balancing. Roughly there are 5 spots in a group (in strikes for ex. its 2x5, but they are usually mirrored). For each role you have specs competing amongst each other. You need 1 alac, 1 quick and 3 dps. And there are alacs like HAM which has built in sustain, heal, every critical boon, even some stab uptime. Same for quick and HFB. And now warrior for example needs to compete with HFB for a spot in the group with quite bad quick generation and bad boon coverage. Same goes for tempest and alac. There is literary no reason to take "small package" of support over the "all included package" that is HFB and HAM. 
And for example people have already multiple times stated that crit chance trait in condi based trait line for warriors is weird desing at best. Same goes for 5%crit chance while attuned to air on elementalists. This will no make any sense since to deal constant dps you will actually gear urself up for 100% crit chance in every attunement since you need to deal damage even in fire (and for catalyst for example you need to deal damage in all 4 attunements). So people will just ignore this trait and build 100% crit chance without it and this trait is literary "non existant" at that point. 

That is just an example on what people are upset about. As you can see its not ur average "they nerfed my main" situation. Not even gonna go into "leeks" territory. 
Ah, and yes to give myself some credibility (does it work that way?) i have been playing mmos since 2001.

[Khenzy.9348]

53 minutes ago, Xylas Lothian.8473 said:

Idk what to tell you man but this is a big win for returning players like me. I understand being frustrated with class changes for a decade, I played EQ and WoW both for longer than I care to admit. But things are stagnant and raiding is completely ruled by the elite because the meta is so ridiculously specific and that locks out a lot of people.

 

Anyway good luck to you all and I hope your future with the game brightens up for you. I’m going to leave this post for dead because I know a lot of people are angry and I don’t really want to be a part of that. I just wanted to give a fresh perspective to try to lighten things up. Seems like lots of people are overreacting.

 Do you realize this patch made the game WORSE to seasoned AND new players alike?  ALL power specs lost massive DPS with the loss of unique passive buffs compared to their condi variants which lost very little. Warriors have to sacrfice SO much more to attain quickness uptime while you have the allmighty Firebrands providing quickness effortlessly with twice the DPS and god tier utility. Partys are not going to take warriors anymore. Druid may still be decent but it now competes with the allmighty Mechanist, again with top tier utility and incomparable ease of play. Those are just some examples.

This is going to be a meta that heavily favours conditions, once again.

Very few changes to WvW and PvP balance if at all.

This was supposed to be a BALANCE patch as in, you know, tuning down overperforming specs/skills and tuning up underperforming/unused ones, yet they managed to unbalance the game even more! 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Khenzy.9348

[Zeph.5927]

1 hour ago, captrowdy.9561 said:

Please get a better balance team

Or just get a balance team in general. Judging by the way things continue to be handled, I'm convinced they don't even have a balance team at all anymore. Because there surely aren't human beings on this planet that are THAT stupid and blind. Right? Right!?

Edited June 26, 2022 by Zeph.5927

[Angesombre.4630]

Plus they already did the same thing to us with the change on the alterations, then in the end they nerfed them back.

[Zeph.5927]

21 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

The problem is not that "they nerfed my main" or anything, but the fact that these changes do not make any sense and are contradicted by simple common sense. If something is overperforming (heal mech, firebrand, necro) you nerf it OR bring other classes on par with them. But they are getting buffed "for some unknown reason" (c). If something is underpowered (for ex. warrior) you buff it or nerf everything to match its power level. But they nerfed warriors big time AND killed the only reason why anyone at all would take a warrior into groups (banners). 

You need to take into account the context of balancing. Roughly there are 5 spots in a group (in strikes for ex. its 2x5, but they are usually mirrored). For each role you have specs competing amongst each other. You need 1 alac, 1 quick and 3 dps. And there are alacs like HAM which has built in sustain, heal, every critical boon, even some stab uptime. Same for quick and HFB. And now warrior for example needs to compete with HFB for a spot in the group with quite bad quick generation and bad boon coverage. Same goes for tempest and alac. There is literary no reason to take "small package" of support over the "all included package" that is HFB and HAM. 
And for example people have already multiple times stated that crit chance trait in condi based trait line for warriors is weird desing at best. Same goes for 5%crit chance while attuned to air on elementalists. This will no make any sense since to deal constant dps you will actually gear urself up for 100% crit chance in every attunement since you need to deal damage even in fire (and for catalyst for example you need to deal damage in all 4 attunements). So people will just ignore this trait and build 100% crit chance without it and this trait is literary "non existant" at that point. 

That is just an example on what people are upset about. As you can see its not ur average "they nerfed my main" situation. Not even gonna go into "leeks" territory. 
Ah, and yes to give myself some credibility (does it work that way?) i have been playing mmos since 2001.

I think the guy you are responding to is an Anet employee. It's the only thing that explains his pure incompetence and ineptitude on the matter.

Edit: watch out y’all. The mods are infracting people for dissent apparently. Seems they’re a little touchy what with the balance team leaks that happened and all. Heaven forbid we express our frustration over the current bullsh*t we are dealing with.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Zeph.5927

[Bazsi.2734]

Just got back and had time to read the patch... wow. Getting rid of that pesky class diversity that persisted due to unqiue buffs, distancing PvP and PvE even further away by making skills act entirely different, and just in general powering up passives... this is filling up my bingo card. Keep up the good work a-net! I wish I could look away, but this particular car-crash just has something so unique and tantalising, i have to keep staring.
 

[Charley.1489]

Spirits?  Really?  

[Angesombre.4630]

Every patch is worse and worse, the problems are still there, other classes are getting worse and other classes are even more boosted than they already were, at this point it's not speculation anymore, it's an observation.

[Loke.1429]

I was going to rant about how disappointed I was, but enough has been said by others. I hope they do a 180, changing balance team / approach, feedback collection and rework the patch. Tbh, many parts of the patch is quite good. Some parts are quite uesless / show lack of understanding. The awful ones are warrior, catalyst and how they implemented some new quickness / alac gain of certain profs. GIven the information on reddit, they have some firebrand, mechanist, scrapper, willbender, virtuoso and harbinger (etc) nerfing to do ASAP. For me this is the most insane part of this patch, that they DARE to leave their favorites so far ahead STILL, and that studio managment seems to be IS onboard with that level of favoritism. Disgusting.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Loke.1429

[GoguSpatzialu.7948]

1 hour ago, Xylas Lothian.8473 said:

All these people freaking out and saying they won’t play more because of a balance patch have clearly never played an MMO before. You guys need to relax. If the balance changes aren’t effective I am sure it will be addressed in a future patch.

 

That’s how MMO’s have been for the last 23 years.

 

I can understand being frustrated about your “main” class being changed in a way you don’t prefer, but the fundamentals are all the same.

 

Banners are still buffs, for example. No one is going to “sit in air” for the 5% crit, they’re trying to make it more a more viable stance for pve. How many elementalists switch to air to do anything other than CC? The Shadow Arts stealth changes are also amazing for support thieves because you can actually get the abilities that apply benefits when you stealth while in pve content now without sacrificing active dps or healing. The ranger spirits pulse so that defensive and supportive players still get the buffs. Specter’s can dps (slightly) by just spamming barriers on someone, which doesn’t trigger the spirits right now.

They are trying to reduce the amount of raiding needing specific classes so that more people can get into raiding… which will make the game grow. I know you hardcore progression raiders are super used to your specific group make-ups but that turns A LOT of players off from raiding and is a big reason a lot of people don’t play GW2 currently.

 

Also there’s 9 classes with 3 elite specializations each… play something else for a while if the changes are so bad that you can’t even be bothered to adjust your playing.
 

The gear progression is also horizontal. I’m sure most of you have full ascended and legendary gear on your main. That character will be just as powerful when you try it out again later, and adjusting stats on existing gear has got to be the easiest thing I’ve ever seen of any MMO I’ve ever experienced. Especially on purples because you literally just right click it.  
 

Take this with a grain of salt and relax. Everyone acts like the game is ruined because it’s less specific about class makeup for harder content and that’s literally the biggest issue with raiding. Class specific buffs are an outdated concept. Not everyone that plays a warrior wants to use banners. Not every ranger wants to use Spotter. 
 

As for the pvp changes I’m sorry your optimal build may have gotten nerfed, that sucks and I sympathize because it’s happened to me  in many games including this one. But that’s how these kind of games stay alive. There are other class and build options though. 🫤

You don't understand the problem. Class specific boons gave those privileged classes a "base desirablity bonus", so to speak. This means that even if they're not competitive with the rest of the meta classes, if the disadvantage isn't too big, it will still find a place. With those gone, all classes are now on equal grounds. This is great!

Except for the fact that not all classes achieve dps, support, etc. in the same way, and some are vastly better at it than others (the meta classes). This patch, by removing class specific boons, ensured that those privileged classes get tossed into the trash like the rest of the non-meta classes. This, when the patch was promised to give new life to underutilised classes.
Instead of helping the non-meta, it further strengthened the existing state. That's part of the reason why people are upset. The other part (and I think even worse than this) is what the leaks reveal. However, those cannot be discussed here, despite them having been confirmed as real.

Overall, this whole debacle is revealing Anet to be incredibly incompetent, and wasting the absolutely massive potential that this game has.

[Nuunes.5046]

[Removed]

Edited July 29, 2022 by Nuunes.5046

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

A fair point here but if people stop playing the game or buying gems after this horrible preview maybe theyll step back and actually listen to feedback, otherwise hit em in the wallet.

 

Dint know much about thief? THEN FRIGGIN PLAY IT MORE! Dont have ability or time to get more testing in? MAKE A FRIGGIN PTS! it practically does the work for you!. Look at the division 2 pts for grenths sake

Edited June 26, 2022 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Ashen.2907]

2 hours ago, Xylas Lothian.8473 said:

All these people freaking out and saying they won’t play more because of a balance patch have clearly never played an MMO before. You guys need to relax. If the balance changes aren’t effective I am sure it will be addressed in a future patch.

 

That’s how MMO’s have been for the last 23 years.

 

I can understand being frustrated about your “main” class being changed in a way you don’t prefer, but the fundamentals are all the same.

 

Banners are still buffs, for example. No one is going to “sit in air” for the 5% crit, they’re trying to make it more a more viable stance for pve. How many elementalists switch to air to do anything other than CC? The Shadow Arts stealth changes are also amazing for support thieves because you can actually get the abilities that apply benefits when you stealth while in pve content now without sacrificing active dps or healing. The ranger spirits pulse so that defensive and supportive players still get the buffs. Specter’s can dps (slightly) by just spamming barriers on someone, which doesn’t trigger the spirits right now.

They are trying to reduce the amount of raiding needing specific classes so that more people can get into raiding… which will make the game grow. I know you hardcore progression raiders are super used to your specific group make-ups but that turns A LOT of players off from raiding and is a big reason a lot of people don’t play GW2 currently.

 

Also there’s 9 classes with 3 elite specializations each… play something else for a while if the changes are so bad that you can’t even be bothered to adjust your playing.
 

The gear progression is also horizontal. I’m sure most of you have full ascended and legendary gear on your main. That character will be just as powerful when you try it out again later, and adjusting stats on existing gear has got to be the easiest thing I’ve ever seen of any MMO I’ve ever experienced. Especially on purples because you literally just right click it.  
 

Take this with a grain of salt and relax. Everyone acts like the game is ruined because it’s less specific about class makeup for harder content and that’s literally the biggest issue with raiding. Class specific buffs are an outdated concept. Not everyone that plays a warrior wants to use banners. Not every ranger wants to use Spotter. 
 

As for the pvp changes I’m sorry your optimal build may have gotten nerfed, that sucks and I sympathize because it’s happened to me  in many games including this one. But that’s how these kind of games stay alive. There are other class and build options though. 🫤

Removing the only thing(s) that made a class, such as warrior or ranger, desirable to groups in raids, etc, leaving it inferior in every way to other options does not increase accessibility to that content for those who have been put off by build specificity in that content. It just means that the player who had the option to contribute to the group by playing his favorite class will instead run into an environment where no rangers or warriors need apply. 

This is an absolute, objective, reduction in accessibility to raids and the like for certain classes such as warrior and ranger.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Ruisenior.6342]

28 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

A fair point here but if people stop playing the game or buying gems after this horrible preview maybe theyll step back and actually listen to feedback, otherwise hit em in the wallet.

 

Dint know much about thief? THEN FRIGGIN PLAY IT MORE! Dont have ability or time to get more testing in? MAKE A FRIGGIN PTS! it practically does the work for you!. Look at the division 2 pts for grenths sake

I bought the game again (eod prepurchase) cause nostalgia. Having almost all unlocked the feeling of some maps that i enjoyed alot felt empty and i wanted to renew new memories and start from scratch.

 

Now watching the direction of those updates i wont give em a peny for sure.

 

What a waste of time and money, instead of those nosense changes they could spend those sources, as an example, on crafting legendaries being a thing more enjoyeable like chuka, add a new weapon to the game, or whatelse...

Edited June 26, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342

[eyobayona.8417]

I've played many MMOs for 10+ years and I understand how difficult balancing jobs is, it takes some time when new jobs or in GW2 case, new specializations are introduces, and it's even more complicated in GW2 particular case since there is no holy trinity for roles for each class or spec, however, I feel some classes are preferred within the Anet team more than others and this should not be the case, bias should not be an influential factor when making this profession changes, these changes should take into account every game aspect offered by the game ( Raids, Fractals, PVP, WvW and PVE) and every class and spec available. Any game mode should be playable with whichever profession anyone chooses to play, and it should be on par with any the other in the sale role.

 

I know Anet hardly takes player feedback into account, but I'm going to give it a shot at a suggestion; Anet needs a clear vision on how game modes interact with each specialization, if the game is not going to focus on tanking, dpsing and healing it should make clear what kind of setup is expected from a group to clear PVE content, once that vision is clear game balancing should aim to fulfil it. Since tanking builds have been forgotten since the HoT expansion, it seems Anet has been favoring CDPS/DPS, heal and boon based builds. Assuming this is the direction the game is taking , this is my suggestion on how the changes should be handled:   Professions are already divided into three categories: Light, medium and heavy armor, each profession within these categories should have a spec with a main focus and a sub-focus, for example, the druid's main focus is healing, thus making it a primary healing role in group content offering weak boons as well, it's sub-focus could be a strong boon/support DPS, offering  strong boons and low metered DPS. The other two medium armor profession would get different combinations as well making each spec the top at one of the given focuses, than applying the same formula to the other armor ranks in the game. Another example, let's take the weaver spec, based on it's selfish playstyle (not providing any boons or heals to a party) with either a power or a condi build it should be ranking high in DPS, alongside other DPS focused specs from different armor weight professions that don't provide anything else to a party.

 

I know there are some challenges and even maybe impossibilities to making these kind of changes, but I think it's a right step towards balancing the game. This is just and idea from the top of my mind, I would like to start a discussion on this and any other ideas that proposes a solution to current balancing issues the game has, if the community agrees on the direction the game should be taking based on a couple of ideas, then presenting well structured suggestions will make it easier to approach Anet to take them into consideration.

[Foxx.9150]

Oh god. this is not a troll post.

[Foxx.9150]

3 hours ago, Xylas Lothian.8473 said:

All these people freaking out and saying they won’t play more because of a balance patch have clearly never played an MMO before. You guys need to relax. If the balance changes aren’t effective I am sure it will be addressed in a future patch.

That’s how MMO’s have been for the last 23 years.

I can understand being frustrated about your “main” class being changed in a way you don’t prefer, but the fundamentals are all the same.

Banners are still buffs, for example. No one is going to “sit in air” for the 5% crit, they’re trying to make it more a more viable stance for pve. How many elementalists switch to air to do anything other than CC? The Shadow Arts stealth changes are also amazing for support thieves because you can actually get the abilities that apply benefits when you stealth while in pve content now without sacrificing active dps or healing. The ranger spirits pulse so that defensive and supportive players still get the buffs. Specter’s can dps (slightly) by just spamming barriers on someone, which doesn’t trigger the spirits right now.

They are trying to reduce the amount of raiding needing specific classes so that more people can get into raiding… which will make the game grow. I know you hardcore progression raiders are super used to your specific group make-ups but that turns A LOT of players off from raiding and is a big reason a lot of people don’t play GW2 currently.

Also there’s 9 classes with 3 elite specializations each… play something else for a while if the changes are so bad that you can’t even be bothered to adjust your playing.
The gear progression is also horizontal. I’m sure most of you have full ascended and legendary gear on your main. That character will be just as powerful when you try it out again later, and adjusting stats on existing gear has got to be the easiest thing I’ve ever seen of any MMO I’ve ever experienced. Especially on purples because you literally just right click it.  
Take this with a grain of salt and relax. Everyone acts like the game is ruined because it’s less specific about class makeup for harder content and that’s literally the biggest issue with raiding. Class specific buffs are an outdated concept. Not everyone that plays a warrior wants to use banners. Not every ranger wants to use Spotter. 
As for the pvp changes I’m sorry your optimal build may have gotten nerfed, that sucks and I sympathize because it’s happened to me  in many games including this one. But that’s how these kind of games stay alive. There are other class and build options though. 🫤

OH BOI, LET'S GO POINT BY POINT:

-> yes, MMO balance is always a mess. I agree with that statement. now, the fundamentals of guild wars 2 pve is getting changed. classes that were previously considered "bad but necessary" because of unique modifiers are now "bad and no longer necessary". so much for class diversity, right?

-> Air stance is part of the power elementalists rotations, in the case of power weaver, for example, you cycle between air/air -> fire/air ->fire/fire -> fire/air(or water if fresh air is traited) -> air/air and loop. now, you're losing 5% critical chance when not attuned to air/air, which means you're either having to invest ~100 more precision and overcap on air, or 100 less precision and get screwed by non-crits on fire/fire, potentially fire/air, which are the two highest damage stances the class has. same applies, with a bigger emphasis, to both tempest and catalyst, unless you're on a condi damage build. keep in mind condi builds already naturally overperform power builds due to the current state of the game.

-> there are 9 core classes, each with 3 elite specializations. let me mention specifically Warrior's latest elite specialization, the bladesworn.

Bladesworn is a very clearly power-based damage spec. it doesn't have good condition builds. power builds need the +150 precision from banner of discipline, as well as MANY assassin's pieces, ant THIEF runes to get to 100% critical chance. it's a big loss of stats. this balance patch basically makes warrior lose that 150 precision with no trade-off for power traitlines. the whole elite specialization has zero synergy with the Arms traitline, which is the condition-based traitline, where the crit chance compensation went.  that class is now losing a huge amount of personal damage that's not being compensated by the new ability of no longer taking the banners and thus becoming a pure damage dealer spec. meanwhile, condi berserker is also getting nerfed because of the banner stats loss, while getting a completely random "5% more critical chance from fury" trait, which doesn't do much other than making earth/tormenting sigils proc more often.

this balance patch effectively makes it so classes that are competing for the same niche of providing a specific boon to the party have no advantages over others. to put it simply, why would you play a quickness-based chronomancer with low dps (since you're forced to take a shield, inspiration traitline, signet of inspiration and wells that won't do a whole lot of damage compared to having a sword+focus offhands, phantasmal disenchanter+mantra of pain+mirror image to fuel your shatters, and also be unable to heal your group, when you can play a heal or condi firebrand which has easy quickness access, lots of heals in the case of healbrand or the superior form of damage(condition-based) with a really high damage output, in the case of condi quickbrand?

or why would you want a druid with less healing and a much more complex healing cycle than heal mech for providing alacrity and the necessary offensive boons. heal mechanist, which even gets buffed this patch.

-> the horizontal gear progression means that once you're fully built, the only improvement you can get is becoming a better player yourself. it's that simple factor of "git gud" - which, you're probably thinking right now "oh, yeah. that toxic mentality". to make matters worse, this patch effectively punishes players who have spent the time and effort into "getting good" by virtue of making their efforts into taking a class they enjoy to it's peak, meaningless. the power from characters in the game doesn't come from just gear, it comes from traits, which are being changed, and how much points those traits allow you to allocate into power/ferocity, which increase the outgoing damage, instead of precision, which only increases your chance of scoring a critical hit, therefore doing more damage. your argument is ultimately advocating that ANet must eventually remove all skills from the game other than an auto-attack factor, which should be normalized so the only difference between classes is what they look like. 

which is removing the gaming elements of guild wars 2.

not every warrior wants to use banners indeed. but now, there's no reason for a raiding group to take a warrior instead of taking a firebrand, a mechanist and 3 virtuosos on each subgroup of their squad.

firebrand and mechanist can argue who's going to be the healer and who's going to be dps, but the virtuosos, especially condi, have the best damage in the game, with a pretty intuitive rotation.

that means that, out of the 36 existing classes in the game, there's virtually no reason to play 33 of them. in fact, there's reasons to NOT play them. "but alacrity druid could replace the mechanist depending on how good the coefficients on heals are?" well, no. mechanist provides barrier, which is better than healing as it works as damage prevention. it's friendlier towards the writs that dps classes want to take for optimal damage

-> as for pvp, specifically structured pvp, yeah, it's just another mess of a balance patch. it's not that impactful as the pve one in this case. and much healthier to have messy shakes in that game mode because that stress of "my old build doesn't work anymore" tends to become "I can mess around with new stuff now" without any penalties, since you don't need to care that hard about class synergies in pvp, as opposed to class matchups.

not saying class synergy doesn't matter at all in pvp, it's just that the game mode tends to prize more selfish builds so that you don't have to rely on your team to do your own thing. if your team composition helps you achieve your build's goals, that's a bonus.

 

While in instanced pve such as dungeons, fractals, strikes and raids, you try to build classes assuming you'll count on other people to help achieve whatever objective AS A TEAM. your personal success depends on your friends. and THAT is what's being removed with balance patches for a while now, but especially on this patch.

[Ruisenior.6342]

7 minutes ago, LeopFolkner.2369 said:

OH BOI, LET'S GO POINT BY POINT:

-> yes, MMO balance is always a mess. I agree with that statement. now, the fundamentals of guild wars 2 pve is getting changed. classes that were previously considered "bad but necessary" because of unique modifiers are now "bad and no longer necessary". so much for class diversity, right?

-> Air stance is part of the power elementalists rotations, in the case of power weaver, for example, you cycle between air/air -> fire/air ->fire/fire -> fire/air(or water if fresh air is traited) -> air/air and loop. now, you're losing 5% critical chance when not attuned to air/air, which means you're either having to invest ~100 more precision and overcap on air, or 100 less precision and get screwed by non-crits on fire/fire, potentially fire/air, which are the two highest damage stances the class has. same applies, with a bigger emphasis, to both tempest and catalyst, unless you're on a condi damage build. keep in mind condi builds already naturally overperform power builds due to the current state of the game.

-> there are 9 core classes, each with 3 elite specializations. let me mention specifically Warrior's latest elite specialization, the bladesworn.

Bladesworn is a very clearly power-based damage spec. it doesn't have good condition builds. power builds need the +150 precision from banner of discipline, as well as MANY assassin's pieces, ant THIEF runes to get to 100% critical chance. it's a big loss of stats. this balance patch basically makes warrior lose that 150 precision with no trade-off for power traitlines. the whole elite specialization has zero synergy with the Arms traitline, which is the condition-based traitline, where the crit chance compensation went.  that class is now losing a huge amount of personal damage that's not being compensated by the new ability of no longer taking the banners and thus becoming a pure damage dealer spec. meanwhile, condi berserker is also getting nerfed because of the banner stats loss, while getting a completely random "5% more critical chance from fury" trait, which doesn't do much other than making earth/tormenting sigils proc more often.

this balance patch effectively makes it so classes that are competing for the same niche of providing a specific boon to the party have no advantages over others. to put it simply, why would you play a quickness-based chronomancer with low dps (since you're forced to take a shield, inspiration traitline, signet of inspiration and wells that won't do a whole lot of damage compared to having a sword+focus offhands, phantasmal disenchanter+mantra of pain+mirror image to fuel your shatters, and also be unable to heal your group, when you can play a heal or condi firebrand which has easy quickness access, lots of heals in the case of healbrand or the superior form of damage(condition-based) with a really high damage output, in the case of condi quickbrand?

or why would you want a druid with less healing and a much more complex healing cycle than heal mech for providing alacrity and the necessary offensive boons. heal mechanist, which even gets buffed this patch.

-> the horizontal gear progression means that once you're fully built, the only improvement you can get is becoming a better player yourself. it's that simple factor of "git gud" - which, you're probably thinking right now "oh, yeah. that toxic mentality". to make matters worse, this patch effectively punishes players who have spent the time and effort into "getting good" by virtue of making their efforts into taking a class they enjoy to it's peak, meaningless. the power from characters in the game doesn't come from just gear, it comes from traits, which are being changed, and how much points those traits allow you to allocate into power/ferocity, which increase the outgoing damage, instead of precision, which only increases your chance of scoring a critical hit, therefore doing more damage. your argument is ultimately advocating that ANet must eventually remove all skills from the game other than an auto-attack factor, which should be normalized so the only difference between classes is what they look like. 

which is removing the gaming elements of guild wars 2.

not every warrior wants to use banners indeed. but now, there's no reason for a raiding group to take a warrior instead of taking a firebrand, a mechanist and 3 virtuosos on each subgroup of their squad.

firebrand and mechanist can argue who's going to be the healer and who's going to be dps, but the virtuosos, especially condi, have the best damage in the game, with a pretty intuitive rotation.

that means that, out of the 36 existing classes in the game, there's virtually no reason to play 33 of them. in fact, there's reasons to NOT play them. "but alacrity druid could replace the mechanist depending on how good the coefficients on heals are?" well, no. mechanist provides barrier, which is better than healing as it works as damage prevention. it's friendlier towards the writs that dps classes want to take for optimal damage

-> as for pvp, specifically structured pvp, yeah, it's just another mess of a balance patch. it's not that impactful as the pve one in this case. and much healthier to have messy shakes in that game mode because that stress of "my old build doesn't work anymore" tends to become "I can mess around with new stuff now" without any penalties, since you don't need to care that hard about class synergies in pvp, as opposed to class matchups.

not saying class synergy doesn't matter at all in pvp, it's just that the game mode tends to prize more selfish builds so that you don't have to rely on your team to do your own thing. if your team composition helps you achieve your build's goals, that's a bonus.

 

While in instanced pve such as dungeons, fractals, strikes and raids, you try to build classes assuming you'll count on other people to help achieve whatever objective AS A TEAM. your personal success depends on your friends. and THAT is what's being removed with balance patches for a while now, but especially on this patch.

Good resume.

 

Not only that but, if im not mistaken as an example they nerfed some classes that they were trying to put inline with those cahnges like druid. Nerfing it's healing on Celestial avatar form and might aplication. The guys behind this are some kind of geniuses🤣

[Foxx.9150]

Just now, Ruisenior.6342 said:

Good resume.

 

Not only that but, if I'm not mistaken as an example they nerfed some classes that they were trying to put inline with those changes like druid. Nerfing it's healing on Celestial avatar form and might application. The guys behind this are some kind of geniuses🤣

Thank you!

 

And yeah. I could go in-depth for every single change and why it's bad, but I think just picking one example from the dps department and one from the support department illustrates the situation well enough... (also, I don't want to spend a whole day bashing on ANet's balance team. I'm sure they work really hard to find whatever copious amount of drugs they took to think this patch was good for the game. looking at you, Solar.)

[AliamRationem.5172]

5 minutes ago, LeopFolkner.2369 said:

Thank you!

 

And yeah. I could go in-depth for every single change and why it's bad, but I think just picking one example from the dps department and one from the support department illustrates the situation well enough... (also, I don't want to spend a whole day bashing on ANet's balance team. I'm sure they work really hard to find whatever copious amount of drugs they took to think this patch was good for the game. looking at you, Solar.)

He was right about one thing: The salt is real.