October 8 Balance Update Preview

[willow.8209]

22 minutes ago, LilBiM.3581 said:

You don't know how broken that setup is. Trailblazers is Marauders with Toughness added as also as a main stat. Let's nuke it, that is part of what the next toxic transition will be in WvW from Celestial..

disagree for two reasons:

1. Power is burst damage: you might sometimes overwhelm and defeat your opponent before ever needing sustain. 
Condi on the other hand is damage over time: no matter how much damage you can do you will always need sustain. 

2. power has two clear damage augment stats: precision and ferocity  
condi needs expertise and sometimes also precision and/or power in order to reach full potential. one clear and two additional unclear augment stats. So for many builds, trailblazer is giving up damage utility to have so much sustain.
While marauder has somewhat reduced damage stats compared with berzerker (to make room for sustain), it doesn't lose any potentially-needed damage stats altogether.

My thoughts on Celestial are in many other posts: TL'DR This particular suggested change to celestial is a terrible move that won't fix anything, but will cause significant issues for disabled players in wvw, condi players in wvw, and players that want to try out several things without needing a new gear/template for everything they try. While additionally being unnecessarily confusing and complex (which again causes issues for disabled players). 

Edited Monday at 12:46 PM by willow.8209

[DESdrifter.7485]

29 minutes ago, Taydo.1926 said:

The transfusion nerf genuinely makes me want to take a break from this game and I probably will, I think its value of getting new players into pve content has been ignored

I just uninstalled the game after 5 years of playing. I showed my disappointment a year ago with the alac changes to scourge, this was too much, I will not be giving a company my money if they do not at the very least listen to their community. It saddens me. 

[willow.8209]

17 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Okay then, let's revert all skills in WVW back to 2014 versions and see how that goes. Oof. 😬 

Collateral effect: The revenant profession is no longer available in the WVW game mode.

Second collateral effect: condi players--and power players who can do a little condi on the side--score an own goal every time they use skills in WvW since it cleanses the previous condi from the opponent

Edited Monday at 01:00 PM by willow.8209
brain fog

[hedix.1986]

On 9/14/2024 at 11:27 AM, Titan.7853 said:

 I seriously would like whoever proposed this change to Transfusion, and whoever approved it, both off the balance team - and I am not joking.  This is exactly the sort of homogenizing change that rips out the soul of the game, just to balance stats.  You may as well get rid of portals for Mesmer, or Stealth for thief.  This is the sort of change that may appear "small," but speaks volumes about the mindset of the people approving the change.

Not wrong.

On 9/14/2024 at 12:55 PM, Ghizguth.8925 said:

Can we please not nerf what makes the classes unique, heal scourge in this case, AGAIN?
It is so baffling to me that this game has unique aspects and features, that attract and retain players, as state by community contributes like Mukluk who quite literally enticed people from other MMO to play GW2 because of heal scourge and its unique playstyle? Why would you do that to your own product?

Since I came back to the game, healscourge was the gameplay I enjoyed the most. It's fun, it's useful, it's being deleted from the game. It was powerful in WvW but it required skill and coordination. It wasn't super easy; a scourge would port their teammates into an enemy bomb often, simply because of the dynamic nature of epic large scale fights. Still, I could see this being a WvW decision, but it makes little sense to remove it from PvE, where it's a fun, unique feature that helps players learn challenging encounters. Sme say it was a crutch, fair enough, but it did help ppl learn and not give up. Many shy away from difficult content if they don't see any hope. Transfusion pull was helping new players not die immediately, so they could still have a chance to engage with the content an hopefully learn more, instead of being dead weight in a raid/strike until the boss is dead or the party ggs. Superhard content like LCM is for a small part of the playerbase (and good for them!), but how many average player you think will try it, now that the 'crutch' (aka a unique mechanic that existed for years) is gone?

Edited Monday at 12:57 PM by hedix.1986

[Malus.2184]

42 minutes ago, hedix.1986 said:

...where it's a fun, unique feature that helps players learn challenging encounters.

That's how you see it. In reality, it just makes the vast majority of people slack since they'll subconsciously depend on a Scourge being present to save them from a mistake.

It's like Fractals where people will just blindly go through t1-3 because it's easy and then be utterly flabbergasted over the boss doing X on t4 and having to learn the fight.

Few players can handle the air phase on Ai in Sunqua Peak because they rely on the damage skip to save them to the point that they'll get super-pissed if the damage is too low to make that skip.

Few people can do Viirastra in Shattered Observatory without the /GG because there are no consequences.

You'd be amazed at how incompetent a failsafe makes players. Most people will complain about a lack of Stability rather than learn how to do it properly. The same with Transfusion. People would rather complain about it being absent than learning how to play. I've literally been in Boneskinner where people started complaining that we had no Transfusion despite that the fight can easily be done without.

[patrickmaciel.1876]

About Ranger... Spear is terrible in PVE. Any future update related to that? Or ranger spear is good in your opinion? 
I craft a legendary spear to my main Ranger and... I didnt use =/ Not worth it.

- low damage
- rotation not improve anything in damage, like GS for example, 2-5-2, or Sword-Axe Burst 2-4-5 (plus utility)
- any utility using with Spear is not improve the damage like in other weapons
- not worth it swap axe, gs, sword and longbow for spear, every other weapon has more damage than spear
- the utility in open world is not good... except for in rare cases the stealth

Please, hear the voice of main rangers players haha.

We love you guys.

[Harbinger Of Ducks.9183]

I've been playing this game for about 5 years now and I have seen plenty of awful patch notes over all that time. I don't tend to get bothered by any of them and even when I do it has never been so much that I get genuinely pissed off and heartbroken or love the game any less for it in a way that will persist. Until now. I think that this might actually be the worst balance patch I have ever seen hit this game if this goes through and this is the first time I have even bothered to comment on the forums. I have thousands of hours in the game and my most played classes are warrior and necro by far, 2000+ in necro and 500+ in warrior. I already wasn't planning to play necro anymore before janthir wilds launched but then I saw the spear and the new relic of atrocity and saw the potential for a new fun and interesting build in pvp modes and non instanced group pve content that was completely unique and gave me a new way to play the game that no other class in the game could give me: a full melee lifesteal bruiser class with unnecessary ranged weapon swap options that were around as good for different reasons. And when I tried it it actually worked very well, I was routinely getting top damage, healing, and kill stats in pvp really easily majority of my games and i didnt get around to playing it in wvw yet or  unlocking it in pve yet but im sure it would have been no less fun, viable, or useful. But the boon block is just as important as the life steal 2 skill to making it work. This was never going to be the best build in the first place but it was viable and I have seen the most build viability on Janthir Wild's launch than I ever have in 5 years of playing this game on top of getting genuinely interesting and potentially fun new relic options, the only glaring problem I was seeing was some notable big overperformers. But now Necro is practically a deleted class. You have more or less only one way to play power and condi reaper which is the only necro spec you can still count on seeing a lot of. besides probably core now since some people don't have elite specs. Scourge will mostly be as unplayed as scrapper, spectre, and bladesworn after this patch in all likelihood. And harbinger was already a boring glass cannon that everything else has also been doing better than it including damage for a long while, SOTO at least spiced it up a little by making power harb viable and some people do genuinely enjoy harb so it'll still get played.....outside of wvw since its just bad there without the power celestial stats give it including the stats this patch is going to remove. But there are two more elephants in the room here.......

Lets start with the obvious elephant to anyone whether they play the class or not: willbender has desperately needed a nerf in pvp and wvw for ages now but not only is that conspicuously absent they also have the new necro weapon that makes them just slightly less oppressive by combating their boons and that was a key feature we were told to expect for the new expansion just as conspicuously have the mechanic that makes it anything more than a greatsword downgrade removed with no explanation. I don't think its a stretch to say that those two things are connected especially when we get no explanation for such a huge change but we get one for transfusion. Boon balls are a known balance issue that players routinely complain about and don't like. One ironically brought about in the first place by removal of boon strip and boon corruption.....from mainly scourge who is now being mercilessly ended this patch.

The other elephant in the room is warrior. Spell breaker has gotten so disgustingly oppressive in pvp since the spears came out between its in-class survivability, its survivability from staff, and its damage from spear......but here's the thing: those weapons were only so horribly overpowered when used on spellbreaker together. Spellbreaker has been very obnoxius and very meta for a very long time but always in a state that was acceptable even though I personally felt as someone who plays a lot of warrior that a spec built around counters and bunkering was always deeply unhealthy for the game and it should've been totally reworked ages ago or simply kept useless and irrelevant like it used to be (definitely my biggest hot take here lmao). But now that its glaringly overpowered and they have to do something about it they nerf the last 2 expansion weapons making them a lot weaker and a lot less satisfying to use for the other 2 specs instead of nerfing the actual big problem. Healzerker already had to sacrifice utility skills just to get enough adrenaline to use its burst skill, bladesworn was already lacking in utility as a support because of its inability to weapon swap to a normal weapon for nothing but some higher base damage which only really mattered much in pvp (where until recently I actually played healsworn a lot and it was pretty strong due to that and being a very rare and significant source of pvp alacrity), both of those specs were and are sorely lacking in boon support and were given the vague promise of "being kept an eye on and looking at reworking underused traits to strengthen should they continue to underperform". Well....guess what? It already was weaker than nearly every other healer and was only really played sometimes anyways because the design of the weapon was nailed so hard that it offered something that felt extremely fun and unique from every other option and that worked well enough with banners to make them feel satisfying as a support option despite their previous terrible rework. Yet instead of reworking underused traits to strengthen heal warrior as was suggested would probably happen we instead get big staff nerfs?!?! To avoid addressing the actual problem of spellbreaker?!?! And then a patch later as the cherry on top we get some very significant survivability focused utility skill buffs in Dolyak Signet and To the Limit that are just going to make the spellbreaker problem that healwarrior practically died for even worse and a whole lot of nothingburger for the rest of the warrior changes?!?! Make this make sense.....

There is a very clear and strong bias in the balance team and there's not even an attempt to hide it anymore. If this patch goes through like this then it is going to near singlehandedly wreck the best start to an expansion we have possibly ever had and more than likely substantially negatively impact overall reception to it.

This is supposed to be the first balance patch of a new expansion following SOTO which had very strongly mixed reception and made a lot of very poorly received design decisions or implementations. And you already had a widely publicized investor meeting that went so badly someone there had to announce starting to work on a Guild Wars 3 in a last ditch desperate effort. ArenaNet quite literally might not be able to afford a balance patch this disastrously bad right now, even if most people have already bought the expansion by now that doesn't mean that people will forget something like this or that you won't lose any players over this. (I wont be one of them, im just going to swap classes and seriously question over the next year for the first time if i even want to buy the next expansion and also quit buying gems but people absolutely will quit over this). This expansion started off so good that I doubt many people even expected or cared about much besides some key nerfs in this first balance patch yet you somehow STILL managed to completely bomb this.....

I very seriously and very strongly urge you to walk this whole patch back then don't come back until you have a much better balance patch that actually seriously does something meaningful for this game that is not negative.

Edited Monday at 10:43 PM by Harbinger Of Ducks.9183

[Mighty.4935]

Ok, so in essence as of next month as far as wvw roaming goes we are going to see ONLY willbenders deleting people with their new, shiny spear toy, harbs (as the cele nerfs will not do anything to them as their toughness, prot and condi vomit will not be affected) with the occasional thief and the rest will be vegetables waiting to be farmed... fun times indeed...

Edited Monday at 02:31 PM by Mighty.4935

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, Malus.2184 said:

That's how you see it. In reality, it just makes the vast majority of people slack since they'll subconsciously depend on a Scourge being present to save them from a mistake.

It's like Fractals where people will just blindly go through t1-3 because it's easy and then be utterly flabbergasted over the boss doing X on t4 and having to learn the fight.

Few players can handle the air phase on Ai in Sunqua Peak because they rely on the damage skip to save them to the point that they'll get super-pissed if the damage is too low to make that skip.

Few people can do Viirastra in Shattered Observatory without the /GG because there are no consequences.

You'd be amazed at how incompetent a failsafe makes players. Most people will complain about a lack of Stability rather than learn how to do it properly. The same with Transfusion. People would rather complain about it being absent than learning how to play. I've literally been in Boneskinner where people started complaining that we had no Transfusion despite that the fight can easily be done without.

I'm not commenting more on the balance patch but this hits home for me.

I came from pvp briefly to do boneskinner a couple times and was flabbergasted at the amount of people that would not dodge the puddle when it raises his hand despite being told explicitly that is how you win the fight.  It's not hard to imagine that getting saved by a necro is crutching through mechanics.

Whether or not that means it should be removed, idk. I don't know if not crutching players that don't do mechanics and causing the group to wipe is a BETTER timeline than just handholding the group so the content actually gets done. 

But that connection passes the sniff test. 

[mov.1246]

Enginner:

There is one thing that always bothered me when playing quick scrapper.

Rocket charge (hammer 3) is the main source of leap finishers. This skill triggers kinetic accelerators twice. But this skill isnt even affected by quickness.

So the main source for quickness is not affected by quickness?

I know the reason is the evade frame, but there is a little gap between each of the jumps where you arent evading.

How about closing that gaps while you have quickness and make this skill faster?

[Katary.7096]

4 hours ago, Vigothoras.1274 said:

I would also recommend caution with the current direction of the Kick buffs. The only times I currently use Kick is either for pushing during south Octovine or as a Quickness enabler in open world (Triggers Aggressive Onslaught). I suspect there is a sour spot where the knockback distance is too far to allow convenient follow ups in open world while still being too short to be useful in more demanding pushing roles like for Soulless Horror and Samarog.

Also, if you buff knockback distance enough, consider making it a launch instead of a knockback. No balance reason, I just think it would look funnier considering some of the kicking animations.

The knockback distance of Kick is not getting changed. The buff is similar to the changes made to the Guardian's knockback ring or the Necromancer's fear ring a few patches ago.

[H K.4057]

On 9/16/2024 at 7:34 AM, willow.8209 said:

disagree for two reasons:

1. Power is burst damage: you might sometimes overwhelm and defeat your opponent before ever needing sustain. 
Condi on the other hand is damage over time: no matter how much damage you can do you will always need sustain. 

2. power has two clear damage augment stats: precision and ferocity  
condi needs expertise and sometimes also precision and/or power in order to reach full potential. one clear and two additional unclear augment stats. So for many builds, trailblazer is giving up damage utility to have so much sustain.
While marauder has somewhat reduced damage stats compared with berzerker (to make room for sustain), it doesn't lose any potentially-needed damage stats altogether.

My thoughts on Celestial are in many other posts: TL'DR This particular suggested change to celestial is a terrible move that won't fix anything, but will cause significant issues for disabled players in wvw, condi players in wvw, and players that want to try out several things without needing a new gear/template for everything they try. While additionally being unnecessarily confusing and complex (which again causes issues for disabled players). 

A lot bad info in this:

1. You almost never burst someone down without them at least fighting back unless your target is afk or very bad. In either case, it doesn't really matter what build you have or don't have.

2. Condi doesn't really need expertise because your condis will almost never stay for full duration before being cleansed. Even very average players can ramp up to 10k dps on cele builds. Versus other roaming builds, that's about 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds time to kill. If your opponent can't cleanse your condis, having more duration won't matter because they'll already be dead.

The difference between marauder and berserker (and dragon) can be enormous if the build has a lot of baseline crit chance like WB. They have 39% crit chance in a single traitline, which is the equivalent of 815 precision. That allows them to stack Dragon gear, converting that unneeded crit to crit damage. This comes out to 54% crit damage. Since WB is crit capped, this means WB hits 50%+ harder than similar builds that don't have access to a similar traitline.

Edit: The impact of this cele nerf is being overstated here. Losing condi duration does not really matter. Losing boon duration doesn't mean cele builds won't have access to boons, only that they will have around 42% less uptime. The average player fighting cele won't even notice this because they are not able to take advantage of the gaps in boon uptime. Some cele builds don't even need the extra boon duration.

Edited Tuesday at 02:31 PM by H K.4057
Some more thoughts.

[Kulvar.1239]

4 hours ago, willow.8209 said:

only if we also take vitality and toughness off of all wvw-utilized power gear (note, this is sarcasm to make a point, it is not an actual suggestion--tho there's no danger of anyone nerfing any burst damage gear as that's clearly the favorite)

otoh I'd be in favor of adding a, let's see trailblazer is condi, toughness, vitality, expertise and you want condi, precision, healing power, expertise i have no objection to adding that gear but only if it's not at pain of removing something

Nah, not being insta-killed by meme builds is what keep PvP alive. The issue is too much healing that mean fights are endless.

[FinalShield.1968]

Please please please, can we Warrior players get a fix to Torch 4? It says it hits multiple times but it only hits once! This makes it quite useless in any game mode >< Warriors have a plethora of glitches and issues but at the very least, can we get a fix to the torch?

[lorephoenix.9185]

On 9/13/2024 at 2:54 PM, skirtsan.6372 said:

Transfusion: This trait no longer teleports downed allies to the user. 

The ability to teleport players who are in a potentially hazardous zone via Transfusion was really, REALLY useful in instanced PvE and boss encounters. If it passes through then allied healers wouldn't have much chance reviving fallen squadmates. Signed, healer.

Yeah this was gonna be my comment too! I understand for competitive modes sure. But for fractals especially makes me very sad. I’m really tried of every time i learn a necro role it gets kitten nerfed.

[Mighty.4935]

Then for the Transfusion nerf - the current direction seems like something a salty teen would do to a skill they do not like.

This type of mechanic should definitely be on a utility skill. Then if need be balance it by cooldown or number of people pulled - let's say 3 people on a 50-60 seconds cooldown.

Currently it is basically a scourge specific thing on a profession wide trait and tied to a fear causing shroud skill which doesn't make too much sense.

[Fenella.2634]

10 hours ago, Mae.1729 said:

If the problem with transfusion lies in fact mainly in WvW, there might be enough options to split it between the game modes.
For example... what about splitting the radius of the teleport? Keep it as it is in PvE and set it WvW/PvP to 0 or almost 0? There should be many options to handle this issue.

I hope this idea gets more attention. This could be a really elegant solution to the issue. Numbers can be split between gamemodes, not even a new debuff needed.

[Ashen.2907]

5 hours ago, hedix.1986 said:

, but it did help ppl learn

I don't think that telling players that they don't need to execute, or even pay attention to, mechanics helps them to learn those mechanics. Still, as much as I see the ability as OP, I would have taken a lighter handed approach to a nerf.

[Camniel.7238]

It just occurred to me that ANet might be removing the Transfusion Pull effect not because they think it's OP, but instead because they might be trying to put that effect on a Relic to open that skill onto other classes.

I have no idea if this would be a good idea or not, but I think it's a possibility. Although, if that is the reason, they should have flat out told us this plan in the preview notes. Taking away a specific effect from a class that is accustomed to having that effect is never going to go well, doubly so if you're closed mouth about why and how you want to replace it.

[Camniel.7238]

2 hours ago, H K.4057 said:

A lot bad info in this:

1. You almost never burst someone down without them at least fighting back unless your target is afk or very bad. In either case, it doesn't really matter what build you have or don't have.

I probably do fit into the "very bad" category in WvW but I do have something against this line. I've often been killed by Power Chronos in less than 3 seconds, through full Reaper Shroud and through 27k health within those 3 seconds. And this is not an exaggeration, there was not even enough time to actually activate more than 1 or 2 skills before I was dead, as a fully shrouded Reaper even.

Yes, I know I'm not a good player in WvW, but that was beyond ridiculous, and it happened enough times that I ended up just quitting the game mode entirely. So, I just needed to point out that the "almost never" is a bit more frequent than that. 

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

On 9/13/2024 at 12:34 PM, Joie.6084 said:

We've also tuned up the damage on axe in PvE and made some improvements to the core death shroud in all game modes. Reaper and harbinger both get some defensive updates that are primarily focused on slightly improving their survivability in PvP.

Since you're all so keen to supposedly balance WvW, core necro's Death Shroud in this gamemode has already been incredibly strong, to the point where it can take several people hunting down a necro before they can actually be taken down. Mainly because of their easy access to shroud, and how much damage they can do, including within Death Shroud.
So you're buffing this more. Including the survivability of both Harb and Reaper, who has not been having issues in that department either.

Meanwhile, you're gutting Transfusion, something we have not had this big of an issue with. It might need to be tweaked, sure, but removing it entirely from the class is such a nuclear option.

I have no idea AT ALL where the folks on the team are getting their ideas for balance. Because it seems like the things that are already doing too well, are the ones you're buffing even more. While the ones that haven't been causing issues, are the ones you're removing. Why?

[Supernova Starr.2069]

Healbender might be viable after this update in "serious" end game content, thanks

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

49 minutes ago, Camniel.7238 said:

I probably do fit into the "very bad" category in WvW but I do have something against this line. I've often been killed by Power Chronos in less than 3 seconds, through full Reaper Shroud and through 27k health within those 3 seconds. And this is not an exaggeration, there was not even enough time to actually activate more than 1 or 2 skills before I was dead, as a fully shrouded Reaper even.

Yes, I know I'm not a good player in WvW, but that was beyond ridiculous, and it happened enough times that I ended up just quitting the game mode entirely. So, I just needed to point out that the "almost never" is a bit more frequent than that. 

In order for a Chrono to burst you down like that, they'd have to press about 6 buttons within 2 seconds, in a glass build with about 15k health. And only if the burst is executed perfectly with the Chrono being positioned well (line of sight, have to start out far from you if they're using GS, and have to be able to port to you to finish up the burst).
Meanwhile, I have killed people in Reaper within that amount of time by simply pressing 5 and 4, with 30k health and in my second health bar.

If Reapers can keep their ungodly amounts of damage while sitting in a huge amount of HP, I'm pretty sure we can also allow other classes who has to do and sacrifice a bit more in order obtain the same kind of kill. Otherwise, if we're calling for a change in the damage output of Mesmers, then perhaps we can look at Necros as well?

Edit: I'm not necessarily condoning "one-shots". Hell knows that I hate that as much as fighting extreme bunker builds who can still deal a ton of damage. But it's a bit hypocritical to call out bursts from other classes when Reaper has been up there in terms of the damage they deal in every game mode. Anet definitely needs to balance things out, but they have to do that across the board.

Edited Monday at 07:49 PM by meerfunkuhtron.9725

[Hikaru.6704]

On 9/15/2024 at 9:15 PM, Malus.2184 said:

Portals are something they can do. Thieves can also do Portals, as can Scourges. Does that make it part of their identity as well? Just because it's something people use a lot has no impact on it being an identity.

It is their identity ! 

Not because others can't do it too, but because they are known for it !

Would you as a mesmer agree to the remove of something they are known for since the beggining of the game, and is because of that, part of their identity ?

So yes same for scourge, transfusion, is a decade old, we know they can do it, they aren't the only ones that can rez or can tp people (remember that now the rifle of mesmer can do it once and by the player), but the only one that can do it combine, and for years at that. Even before the heal exist on scourge, it was use as a dps transfusion. So yes it is their identity now !

You're talking to players that love their classes or even all of them. So please stop being something i won't event put a name on, because it would be rude of me, thank you.

Or yes, if you want to go that way, then tell them to update in taking back the heal, not the transfusion then. They didn't have it before and only had it for a year, so not part of their identity at all, we won't say hscrg anymore, just scrg again. That i would agree, but the transfusioon is a no no no no, it's the necro thing.

Have a nice evening either way.

Edited Monday at 08:09 PM by Hikaru.6704

[Camniel.7238]

41 minutes ago, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

In order for a Chrono to burst you down like that, they'd have to press about 6 buttons within 2 seconds, in a glass build with about 15k health. And only if the burst is executed perfectly with the Chrono being positioned well (line of sight, have to start out far from you if they're using GS, and have to be able to port to you to finish up the burst).
Meanwhile, I have killed people in Reaper within that amount of time by simply pressing 5 and 4, with 30k health and in my second health bar.

If Reapers can keep their ungodly amounts of damage while sitting in a huge amount of HP, I'm pretty sure we can also allow other classes who has to do and sacrifice a bit more in order obtain the same kind of kill. Otherwise, if we're calling for a change in the damage output of Mesmers, then perhaps we can look at Necros as well?

Edit: I'm not necessarily condoning "one-shots". Hell knows that I hate that as much as fighting extreme bunker builds who can still deal a ton of damage. But it's a bit hypocritical to call out bursts from other classes when Reaper has been up there in terms of the damage they deal in every game mode. Anet definitely needs to balance things out, but they have to do that across the board.

Uh, nowhere did I say Reaper's were incapable, nor did I say that the problem was only found in Chronos. I merely used that example because it was what I have personally experienced. Of course, other classes, including Reaper are capable of high burst damage, it would be idiotic to say otherwise. What I was saying was that "almost never" was a bit less than accurate according to my personal experiences. So, there was nothing hypocritical about what I said as I was only offering my personal experiences, and even just used one category as an example. I honestly don't know how you got that the problem was only Chrono's out of what I said.