Genuinely afraid to pick one main to dedicate to.

[Sahne.6950]

Just play guardian. Support guardian is the core essence of every Group since the dawn of time.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Esufer.8762]

1 hour ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Just play guardian. Support guardian is the core essence of every Group since the dawn of time.

well great, now you've brought to their attention how great guardians are, it's not long before more unnecessary elementalist nerfs.

[Sahne.6950]

12 minutes ago, Esufer.8762 said:

well great, now you've brought to their attention how great guardians are, it's not long before more unnecessary elementalist nerfs.

What have i done...

[god fragment.5716]

What happened to the banners wasn't as much a nerf, as it was a removal of stat increasing buffs from the entire game (spotter was changed too) and a failure to come up with something to fill that gap. This is the reason and will be addressed tommorow.

 

As for maining: In my experience I spend most of the time in open world, where you can do the content regardless of build as long as you don't intend to solo group content. Groups make builds even less important as sustain becomes less important if there is someone who can revive you. So balance patches don't have much of an impact on this.

 

As for instanced content, raids and strikes are a lot more about doing the mechanics than actual dps and boon uptime. Every proffesion has a viable build for those.  The only time benchmarks and top tier builds come into play are the CMs and for those, just make an alt mech or firebrand, learn that one rotation and that's that. The rest of the time, play your main 🙂

[Valisha.8650]

3 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Just play guardian. Support guardian is the core essence of every Group since the dawn of time.

Not even guardian itself, dragonhunter got screwed just like every other power dps. It's firebrand that should be outright deleted and replaced with something less ludicrous in its design.

[Moradorin.6217]

On 7/17/2022 at 5:50 AM, Valisha.8650 said:

Perhaps I am being paranoid, but with all this mess around balance, Warrior's banners getting nerfed into oblivion for virtually no reason at all, and a lot of other balance decisions that even Teapot called unreasonable, I am honestly afraid to dedicate my time and effort to any class which is not guardian/mechanist (clearly OP) or condi necro (left in balance limbo).

Why would I put my time and, more importantly, money into gems for extra bag slots and cosmetics, only for my Specter to be turned into another Spellbreaker or pre-buff Untamed by some axe-only firebrand enjoyer dev?

GW2 has to be the first game in my history where I have such levels of uncertainty about a possibility of build, character, or something among those lines getting nerfed either for no valid reason, OR for a right purpose, but with absolutely awful execution, making it a total KEKW to play.

Seriously anet. Just like IRL people are unlikely to invest in countries with uncertain political stability, in the virtual world people are afraid to buy stuff in games with such questionable balance decisions being made about their characters.

Or maybe it's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yea agreed. I have spent thousands of hours on some classes and spent allot of time practicing things with them only to have them nerfed in such a way that everything I invested allot of time and effort into evaporates and I'm left with nothing to show for my investment of time and effort. I tried to be open to change and did change to a new spec or class many times and then reinvest time and effort into learning and improving only to again have the benefits of that investment removed for balance.

At this point, when I play I play what ever flavor of the month seems good and can be made simple. Then I take the meta rotation and cut out all the things that are overly complicated for 0.0x% gain kinda things. If I can get decent numbers have some kinda idea how to use it then fine I see how it does.

In my opinion with balance changes being what they are I wouldn't invest time in another class or spec at this point. Like ever. I play what I can pickup in a few minutes and I play it as long as its performing best in the role I want to do. If its too hard, unreliable, or if people give me a hard time for trying to run it in groups then I swap to next one, but I have avoided investing time in any class since they removed a dodge from Mirage in wvw/pvp and unless they can restore that with a balance patch I consider it a mistake to invest time trying to master any spec in GW2 because it doesn't pay off.

That said, I have found thief, engineer, necromancer, rev, guard to have so many simple builds to run that I can still play and perform pretty well without mastering any class or doing hard rotations. After investing thousands of hours in both ranger and mesmer and having much of what I learned get removed from the game playing what ever is easy is the only sensible thing to do. I no longer have a main. I play what ever seems to fit what Im doing that I understand how to operate.

The, perhaps, less obvious downside for ANet might be how much less I invest in GW2 now and looking around I dont think Im alone in that. What I mean is I used to spend considerable time and gold/gems buying things to enhance my look, in no small part due to how invested I felt in my main character. I used to try to maintain a complete collection of dyes. I used to buy BL skin sets upon release if I thought I might want some day on my main. I got into pvp/wvw to get legendary backpacks, armor and new skins for my mains too. I buy mount skins with them in mind. Well I no longer have a main. I have a decently large collection of skins, and dye. what I dont have is motivation to care about playing my Mesmer anymore. I mostly play engineer, thief, necro these days but I just play them for utility and refuse invest in any more toons unless my old tunes arent just left on the burning heap of refuse that is one dodge mirage.

 

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

Hiiii! I came to gw2 thinking I'd play ranger or ele but after beta my first creation was my guardian. It's been a wild ride since then. I was there for the 4 warr 1 mes meta, the unstoppable dragon hunter era, the ravager firebrands and so much of the rest. I'm currently mostly playing power willbender and sometimes a zerker/diviner alac build. I've usually had arc installed for my own self satisfaction and in terms of dps performance of other players I don't feel there's ever been a time that a well performing player of any class couldn't pull their weight. I don't believe that at this point in the game there is a class that can't do significantly more damage than required for any particular encounter.

 

In terms of support there's clearly a lot of work that needs to happen. It is clear that certain design ideas changed over time due to player feedback. This is good but it's bad as there's consistent disparity between design and desire and these two things may never connect properly. Anet clearly wanted support roles to be unique for each class but weren't able to harmonise these in such a way that there would be balance in support impact. Aka ideally we would pick any 1 support/off healer and 1 support/dps and just have fun with it. But it didn't work and now they're trying to equalise the support potential and give as many classes as possible the option to provide meaningful (and desired) support. I think this is great. It's going to take some time to work out and I am unsure if the vocal parts of the community will ever be satisfied but it's worth the wait. I say this while loving my power willbender that works hard to do the same damage that my half-asleep condi firebrand does, or my alac which works like a machine ninja to pump out bites of alac while others can stand around staring at the sky to share it. I wonder if there will be another power>condi shift one day, that would be nice. It makes sense to me that they must refrain from buffing damage for balance as much as possible and being humans they're not going to get all the nerfings right. Dragonhunter doesn't quite feel right since the blades trap nerf to cool down for example. Buffing up could lead towards rebalancing the game.. I don't envy that task on anyone, class balancing is already a minefield. It's a shame to hear there may be some favouritism among devs to their classes but it's also not surprising. Maybe they'll rectify that (play the other classes so you can make them more fun too!). I guess I was lucky I fell in love with guardian first and i sort of get why people might be afraid of major redesigns. But it seems to me that on the whole the goal for rebalancing is to make all classes more equally viable/desirable/whateveryouwannacallit.

 

Night night x

Edited August 2, 2022 by Luna.2158

[Sahne.6950]

literally play whatever brings you the most enjoyment.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

Part of me understand not wanting to invest time into something that can potentially be changed but that is just how games works.

 

If you dont want to main or even play something in fear that it may get nerfed in the future then you're just not going to be able to play at all. If you like something enough to want to main it then just go for it. If it gets nerfed well it is a shame I guess, if it gets buffed then good . Not playing a class in fear that it gets nerfed is kind of like not wanting to leave your house in fear that you may have an accident outside.

 

At this point I have invested so much time and effort properly learning how to play Engineer with my garbage ping that when something gets nerfed for no reason, I would just complain while making some tweak and just keep doing what I've always done. If Anet doesnt want me to do X then I'll do X in another way with the same class. That's my way to say F U to unfair balance patch.

[Dante.1508]

Same here op i just play whatever Anet deems is the best these days and some what fits my play style.. I've given up with what is deemed as a main, luckily i have two of every class so i can chop and change.

 

I used to main ranger but gave up on that mess a long time ago, i also am glad i never mained warrior.. even in August its a mess.

[Moradorin.6217]

On 8/2/2022 at 6:50 PM, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

Part of me understand not wanting to invest time into something that can potentially be changed but that is just how games works.

 

If you dont want to main or even play something in fear that it may get nerfed in the future then you're just not going to be able to play at all. If you like something enough to want to main it then just go for it. If it gets nerfed well it is a shame I guess, if it gets buffed then good . Not playing a class in fear that it gets nerfed is kind of like not wanting to leave your house in fear that you may have an accident outside.

 

At this point I have invested so much time and effort properly learning how to play Engineer with my garbage ping that when something gets nerfed for no reason, I would just complain while making some tweak and just keep doing what I've always done. If Anet doesnt want me to do X then I'll do X in another way with the same class. That's my way to say F U to unfair balance patch.

For me its more that I will never bother with a spec that has a higher than average skill ceiling and will just play what ever is pretty easy to pickup and perform well at that doesn't have some strange split-mode functionality like Mirage's 1 dodge in pvp/wvw vs 2 in pve.

Its not so much balance changes and that Anet just totally starts down a path of redoing things then kinda stops and moves to some other thing and leaves the first thing broken for years, maybe forever.

 

Because I feel like that is the reality of the situation I just dont bother doing certain things or trying to play certain classes. In the end I play less, I spend less on the game and I avoid feeling heavily invested in any single toon.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Moradorin.6217

[Kuma.1503]

On 7/17/2022 at 7:52 PM, Kuma.1503 said:

You might think core is safe, but Engineer also has a history of having their core spec nerfed because of their Elites, which will cause collateral damage to all of their other builds. 

History repeats itself.