Is it me or is the frustration in the community growing?

[GuriGashi.5617]

I can sense ALOT of frustration growing in the Guild Wars 2 community the past 3 to 4 months, be it in regards to balancing, banning cheaters or the general feeling of neglect felt by the player base. Maybe I overthink this, but this feels exactly like 2015-2016 when a huge chunk of the „veterans“ stopped playing and it should be seriously taken care of this time.

[Ovark.2514]

This is the feeling I get: CMC (who I think was an actual PvPer) got given free reign for PvP balance while the community was told we would be seeing more frequent balance. Community was hyped, then omega nerf patch went live and balance was kinda a mess but the community was not really upset about it because we suspected it was just a precursor to the actual balance that we were told would be more frequent. However, balance since then has been as slow if not slower than before and when it does come, only some of the main concerns of the community are addressed. Not only that, but since before CMC took charge anet was introducing major class/elite spec reworks. Those seem to have dropped off the table even though I think the sPvP community was expecting at the very least a rework to Renegade summons to make the spec actually usable in pvp without also being a broken cluster-f. Bots and hackers not being addressed is not helping matters either. Anyway those are just my feelings. . .

[Enduronex.4865]

Don't forget posts removed for criticism.

[Arheundel.6451]

It's the methodology of this company that annoy people......They don't nerf ...they remove ; they don't fix the problem..they just cover it...they don't create build diversity...they destroy it

[UNOwen.7132]

The big patch made PvP a lot worse. And it doesnt look like theyre gonna fix it. So people are just leaving.

[otto.5684]

This has been going on since early last year, driven by the downsizing. Anet said everything will be alright, but the community was skeptical. Anet made 4 vital mistakes since:

1. The huge debacle with build templates.

2. Over hyping Ice Brood Saga, which turned out to be nothing more than your average LW. Prologue kinda eased the tensions, but the next to episodes cemented that it is not going to be any good.

3. The PvP patch.. If you are going to throw away 7 years of Balance work, and nearly start from scratch, the result better be spectacular. It is not. The poll with over 260 votes has around 60% disapproval. This is major failure. Not to mention place holders like the 300 sec traits or one dodge mirage. Clearly the direction is not what the players wanted. The patch itself was not ready at release in Feb. Still is not as of today.

4. Slow updates. We got 2 quick patches, but also too small and focused primarily on meta balancing. There are major issues with foundation of PvP, that trying to fix meta balancing is not going to do shit. And afterwards, Anet went on 10 weeks hiatus (even though per Anet PvP is supposed to get patches every 4-6 weeks). Then we got this pathetically small patch, which again, is mostly minuscule meta balancing.

Add to all this, lack of communication, and bad forum moderation since Gale Gray left. In addition, the game did not have anything major in a while. My experience with MMOs and ARPGs, if you go for more than 2 years without major content the community starts to get frustrated. The over hyping and failure to deliver, on Anet's part, added fuel to the fire.

As for sPvP, I dunno. SPvp right now feels like it is in alpha state. This is for an 8 year old game... I would like to remove everything since Feb patch and start from the last stable point, but I know this is not going to happen. It is easy for companies to fuck up. It is so much harder to for them to admit they did.

[Dantheman.3589]

I don’t really have many complaints actually and plenty of veterans still play. Everything is fine

[Stand The Wall.6987]

i haven't played many mmos but this community seems impossible to please. there have been plenty of threats and many more demands for things ranging from big to tiny. the language used in many posts is along the lines of "we should get this changed", yeah like "we" have the power to do anything. i do/ did that sometimes too but lately have been catching myself. as soon as a company starts caving into the thoughts and feelings of its community, even if they're right, its usually all downhill from there. you would think a huge company like anet would have qa testers, and i'm sure they do, but for some reason tons of changes haven't been thought out very much for competitive modes and so after years of this the nonsense builds up along with the frustration. then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model. i often wonder about the average age/ experience of the devs at anet. i'm pretty critical but at the same time thankful for the great times i've had playing this game. probably the biggest failure was the choice to abandon their original plan of a non trinity system and the utter neglect of combo fields which encouraged organized play, backed up and reinforced 1000x by the tiiiiiiiiime it takes to make obvious fixes and changes. time is the biggest thing actually. you can have a crap and non functioning game but fix it in a few weeks and have a thriving population on your hands, or you can continue to make modest tweaks every couple of months and continue to destroy your own product. the choice is yours.

editsuggestions are a double edged sword. if you make specific ones, you actually discourage the devs from making that change since it will be seen as caving in. this is why its important to be as general as possible (i fail completely at this).

[Jekkt.6045]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model.

and that was the biggest mistake. the gw2 combat system only shines in pvp. raids or pve in general in this game is terrible and boring. class rotations are a snoozefest, there are no procs, rotations are stale and all cooldowns are pressed according to priority. raids are way too easy and there is no reason to run them more than once if you're not interested in legendary gear. the other problem is that they kept adding stupid stuff to the combat system like resistance or stacking conditions.

the best thing arenanet could do at this point is make a standalone pvp game with the combat system. a new game, free to play with skins and new classes/elite specs from time to time to make money. a good pvp mode, not an abomination like conquest. hire some people for a good balance team and some good designers.

frustration is high right now because people feel like they're being ignored. which they are to a certain extent. communication is something that would help a lot, but people lost faith in the balance devs (rightfully so) so even if there was a certain amount of communication, some people would just lash out at the devs. you reap what you sow and it becomes an endless spiral of devs not wanting to interact with the community because of toxicity, and the community getting even more toxic because the devs are not interacting with us.

it would help a lot if devs asked for feedback for all the classes, and i mean pvp feedback. create a thread for each class so people can express what's wrong/right with stuff. as we've seen with the new patch notes, some changes are just random and questionable.

i'm gonna be blunt here. it's really not much effort to get one post a week from cmc. take part in a discussion, if you're our balance dev then at least try to be part of the community too.

[Dantheman.3589]

@Jekkt.6045 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model.

and that was the biggest mistake. the gw2 combat system only shines in pvp. raids or pve in general in this game is terrible and boring. class rotations are a snoozefest, there are no procs, rotations are stale and all cooldowns are pressed according to priority. raids are way too easy and there is no reason to run them more than once if you're not interested in legendary gear. the other problem is that they kept adding stupid stuff to the combat system like resistance or stacking conditions.

the best thing arenanet could do at this point is make a standalone pvp game with the combat system. a new game, free to play with skins and new classes/elite specs from time to time to make money. a good pvp mode, not an abomination like conquest. hire some people for a good balance team and some good designers.

frustration is high right now because people feel like they're being ignored. which they are to a certain extent. communication is something that would help a lot, but people lost faith in the balance devs (rightfully so) so even if there was a certain amount of communication, some people would just lash out at the devs. you reap what you sow and it becomes an endless spiral of devs not wanting to interact with the community because of toxicity, and the community getting even more toxic because the devs are not interacting with us.

it would help a lot if devs asked for feedback for all the classes, and i mean pvp feedback. create a thread for each class so people can express what's wrong/right with stuff. as we've seen with the new patch notes, some changes are just random and questionable.

i'm gonna be blunt here. it's really not much effort to get one post a week from cmc. take part in a discussion, if you're our balance dev then at least try to be part of the community too.

They tried to do a big balance session with cmc and the community and it failed utterly.

[Jekkt.6045]

@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Jekkt.6045 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model.

and that was the biggest mistake. the gw2 combat system only shines in pvp. raids or pve in general in this game is terrible and boring. class rotations are a snoozefest, there are no procs, rotations are stale and all cooldowns are pressed according to priority. raids are way too easy and there is no reason to run them more than once if you're not interested in legendary gear. the other problem is that they kept adding stupid stuff to the combat system like resistance or stacking conditions.

the best thing arenanet could do at this point is make a standalone pvp game with the combat system. a new game, free to play with skins and new classes/elite specs from time to time to make money. a good pvp mode, not an abomination like conquest. hire some people for a good balance team and some good designers.

frustration is high right now because people feel like they're being ignored. which they are to a certain extent. communication is something that would help a lot, but people lost faith in the balance devs (rightfully so) so even if there was a certain amount of communication, some people would just lash out at the devs. you reap what you sow and it becomes an endless spiral of devs not wanting to interact with the community because of toxicity, and the community getting even more toxic because the devs are not interacting with us.

it would help a lot if devs asked for feedback for all the classes, and i mean pvp feedback. create a thread for each class so people can express what's wrong/right with stuff. as we've seen with the new patch notes, some changes are just random and questionable.

i'm gonna be blunt here. it's really not much effort to get one post a week from cmc. take part in a discussion, if you're our balance dev then at least try to be part of the community too.

They tried to do a big balance session with cmc and the community and it failed utterly.

what failed was the follow up to that. nobody expected it to be perfect. the lack of attention and communication after that ruined it.

[Dantheman.3589]

@Jekkt.6045 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Jekkt.6045 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model.

and that was the biggest mistake. the gw2 combat system only shines in pvp. raids or pve in general in this game is terrible and boring. class rotations are a snoozefest, there are no procs, rotations are stale and all cooldowns are pressed according to priority. raids are way too easy and there is no reason to run them more than once if you're not interested in legendary gear. the other problem is that they kept adding stupid stuff to the combat system like resistance or stacking conditions.

the best thing arenanet could do at this point is make a standalone pvp game with the combat system. a new game, free to play with skins and new classes/elite specs from time to time to make money. a good pvp mode, not an abomination like conquest. hire some people for a good balance team and some good designers.

frustration is high right now because people feel like they're being ignored. which they are to a certain extent. communication is something that would help a lot, but people lost faith in the balance devs (rightfully so) so even if there was a certain amount of communication, some people would just lash out at the devs. you reap what you sow and it becomes an endless spiral of devs not wanting to interact with the community because of toxicity, and the community getting even more toxic because the devs are not interacting with us.

it would help a lot if devs asked for feedback for all the classes, and i mean pvp feedback. create a thread for each class so people can express what's wrong/right with stuff. as we've seen with the new patch notes, some changes are just random and questionable.

i'm gonna be blunt here. it's really not much effort to get one post a week from cmc. take part in a discussion, if you're our balance dev then at least try to be part of the community too.

They tried to do a big balance session with cmc and the community and it failed utterly.

what failed was the follow up to that. nobody expected it to be perfect. the lack of attention and communication after that ruined it.

Not really the discussion should never have taken place in the first place. If these same ppl wanted to talk balance they could’ve just used the forums properly.

[Ovark.2514]

@otto.5684 said:

As for sPvP, I dunno. SPvp right now feels like it is in alpha state.

I've felt that way since launch. Anet launched the game with slapped on (filler) traits/skills then, instead of adding real ones later (even after the trait rework) they just tried to balance the existing ones. There was no way that attempting to balance filler skills/traits was going to work. It always felt to me like the people who made gw2 all left after launch and forgot to tell the people who took over that they will need to rework most skills if they want PvP to be taken seriously by anyone.

[mixxed.5862]

That's where I disagree with the community, or at least the vocal part of it that utilizes this forum. I think CMC did more frequent balance patches in the last few months. He did a patch every month and consistently made a couple of very sensible changes to a few builds that were overperforming. There were smaller balance patches on March 4th, April 28th and a few tweaks on May 26th. Yes, the scope of the patches was rather small. Especially condi rev was clearly too strong all that time and should have seen further adjustments. Other than that balance isn't even bad right now - thanks in part to these smaller, more focused patches.

The upcoming patch will continue to move balance in the right direction. Finally we get a nerf to condi rev's sustain, condi thief (again), tempest's sustain and the glyph bug, nadekit etc. Btw there are some patch notes missing from the preview i.e. a nerf to Grenade Barrage.

But most importantly: CMC communicates more than any of the other balance devs have in a long time. He gives us a good idea of where he wants to go with balance, shows that he has a profound understanding of the game and has a clear vision. In the last dev stream he gave some insight into what he thinks about the state of balance concerning a couple of professions. And honestly I think the points he makes are very reasonable. Seriously, it's worth watching.

With CMC in charge of balance I feel like we are slowly but steadily moving towards a better balance in PvP. Builds that are overperforming or simply toxic see reasonable changes. You can rely on it (but it takes a while). That's something we couldn't for a very long time. After all I think the game will soon be more balanced than ever (in PvP at least). I'm convince it'll be the best it's ever been before the next expansion releases...

[Buran.3796]

@"Stand The Wall.6987" said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model. i often wonder about the average age/ experience of the devs at anet. i'm pretty critical but at the same time thankful for the great times i've had playing this game.

Be real: they promised frequently balance updates, and they aren't honoring they word. And stop using "competitive game modes aren't their focus" as excuse of poor PvP/WvW support, because in terms of PvE currently ANet isn't shinning, neither.

[UNOwen.7132]

@mixxed.5862 said:That's where I disagree with the community, or at least the vocal part of it that utilizes this forum. I think CMC did more frequent balance patches in the last few months. He did a patch every month and consistently made a couple of very sensible changes to a few builds that were overperforming. There were smaller balance patches on March 4th, April 28th and a few tweaks on May 26th. Yes, the scope of the patches was rather small. Especially condi rev was clearly too strong all that time and should have seen further adjustments. Other than that balance isn't even bad right now - thanks in part to these smaller, more focused patches.

The upcoming patch will continue to move balance in the right direction. Finally we get a nerf to condi rev's sustain, condi thief (again), tempest's sustain and the glyph bug, nadekit etc. Btw there are some patch notes missing from the preview i.e. a nerf to Grenade Barrage.

But most importantly: CMC communicates more than any of the other balance devs have in a long time. He gives us a good idea of where he wants to go with balance, shows that he has a profound understanding of the game and has a clear vision. In the last dev stream he gave some insight into what he thinks about the state of balance concerning a couple of professions. And honestly I think the points he makes are very reasonable. Seriously, it's worth watching.

With CMC in charge of balance I feel like we are slowly but steadily moving towards a better balance in PvP. Builds that are overperforming or simply toxic see reasonable changes. You can rely on it (but it takes a while). That's something we couldn't for a very long time. After all I think the game will soon be more balanced than ever (in PvP at least). I'm convince it'll be the best it's ever been before the next expansion releases...

The problem is that a few small tweaks arent enough for the mess that was the february patch. Balance is pretty bad right now, 2 classes are outright unviable, and the remaining are locked into one build, with basically no variation in comps either. The problem is also that there is no indication that the fundamental problem the February patch caused, i.e. that damage is far below what it should be, with it being 20-30% lower than even pre-HoT was, is going to be addressed. Instead, it seems we will continue to get patchwork balance that will never fix the issue. Were moving towards worse and worse balance in PvP, and a worse PvP as a whole. Hell, the fact that were getting even more damage nerfs instead makes me think this current pool noodle sidenode meta where neither one ever dies in a 1v1 and instead knockbacks rule supreme will continue ad infinitum.

[otto.5684]

@mixxed.5862 said:That's where I disagree with the community, or at least the vocal part of it that utilizes this forum. I think CMC did more frequent balance patches in the last few months. He did a patch every month and consistently made a couple of very sensible changes to a few builds that were overperforming. There were smaller balance patches on March 4th, April 28th and a few tweaks on May 26th. Yes, the scope of the patches was rather small. Especially condi rev was clearly too strong all that time and should have seen further adjustments. Other than that balance isn't even bad right now - thanks in part to these smaller, more focused patches.

The upcoming patch will continue to move balance in the right direction. Finally we get a nerf to condi rev's sustain, condi thief (again), tempest's sustain and the glyph bug, nadekit etc. Btw there are some patch notes missing from the preview i.e. a nerf to Grenade Barrage.

But most importantly: CMC communicates more than any of the other balance devs have in a long time. He gives us a good idea of where he wants to go with balance, shows that he has a profound understanding of the game and has a clear vision. In the last dev stream he gave some insight into what he thinks about the state of balance concerning a couple of professions. And honestly I think the points he makes are very reasonable. Seriously, it's worth watching.

With CMC in charge of balance I feel like we are slowly but steadily moving towards a better balance in PvP. Builds that are overperforming or simply toxic see reasonable changes. You can rely on it (but it takes a while). That's something we couldn't for a very long time. After all I think the game will soon be more balanced than ever (in PvP at least). I'm convince it'll be the best it's ever been before the next expansion releases...

First, I would not call the May patch... a patch. They changed 3 skills on 2 classes.

Second, you are getting lost in the meta balancing. The entire sPvP foundation is fucked. Major changes are needed from damage levels, to sustain, boons, CC and boon RIP. Nothing is at an appropriate level for well paced fun game play. I don’t want to play bunker/CC wars. It does not matter if devs make a meta balance patch every week. Fundamental changes need to be made to the overall design.

Also, currently the of balance strategy is to remove most option and reducing diversity to the bare minimum, and then nerf everything to the ground, so it is easier to balance. Ya sure.. theoretically you could have better balance like that (we still do not), but is this... worth playing?

[Vayne.8563]

The frustration of the PvP community is absolutely growing. Mind you I've seen the PvP community frustrated quite frequently in the past as well. But the PvP community, even years ago, only represented about 10% of the playerbase (according to Mike OBrien anyway. If Anet is short of resources, and they're working on a new expansion, guess what area of the game will get attention last.

[Shiyo.3578]

@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Jekkt.6045 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model.

and that was the biggest mistake. the gw2 combat system only shines in pvp. raids or pve in general in this game is terrible and boring. class rotations are a snoozefest, there are no procs, rotations are stale and all cooldowns are pressed according to priority. raids are way too easy and there is no reason to run them more than once if you're not interested in legendary gear. the other problem is that they kept adding stupid stuff to the combat system like resistance or stacking conditions.

the best thing arenanet could do at this point is make a standalone pvp game with the combat system. a new game, free to play with skins and new classes/elite specs from time to time to make money. a good pvp mode, not an abomination like conquest. hire some people for a good balance team and some good designers.

frustration is high right now because people feel like they're being ignored. which they are to a certain extent. communication is something that would help a lot, but people lost faith in the balance devs (rightfully so) so even if there was a certain amount of communication, some people would just lash out at the devs. you reap what you sow and it becomes an endless spiral of devs not wanting to interact with the community because of toxicity, and the community getting even more toxic because the devs are not interacting with us.

it would help a lot if devs asked for feedback for all the classes, and i mean pvp feedback. create a thread for each class so people can express what's wrong/right with stuff. as we've seen with the new patch notes, some changes are just random and questionable.

i'm gonna be blunt here. it's really not much effort to get one post a week from cmc. take part in a discussion, if you're our balance dev then at least try to be part of the community too.

They tried to do a big balance session with cmc and the community and it failed utterly.

It failed because everyone he was discussing the game with were blatantly biased for their own class. Like you had a ranger who wanted to buff greatsword.

The discord it took place in also mutes anyone who disagrees with them, meaning they aren't looking for discussion and just want their own personal echo chamber.

[Dantheman.3589]

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Jekkt.6045 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:then theres the fact that this game was never designed for competitive modes in the first place, when you look at the damage system and business model.

and that was the biggest mistake. the gw2 combat system only shines in pvp. raids or pve in general in this game is terrible and boring. class rotations are a snoozefest, there are no procs, rotations are stale and all cooldowns are pressed according to priority. raids are way too easy and there is no reason to run them more than once if you're not interested in legendary gear. the other problem is that they kept adding stupid stuff to the combat system like resistance or stacking conditions.

the best thing arenanet could do at this point is make a standalone pvp game with the combat system. a new game, free to play with skins and new classes/elite specs from time to time to make money. a good pvp mode, not an abomination like conquest. hire some people for a good balance team and some good designers.

frustration is high right now because people feel like they're being ignored. which they are to a certain extent. communication is something that would help a lot, but people lost faith in the balance devs (rightfully so) so even if there was a certain amount of communication, some people would just lash out at the devs. you reap what you sow and it becomes an endless spiral of devs not wanting to interact with the community because of toxicity, and the community getting even more toxic because the devs are not interacting with us.

it would help a lot if devs asked for feedback for all the classes, and i mean pvp feedback. create a thread for each class so people can express what's wrong/right with stuff. as we've seen with the new patch notes, some changes are just random and questionable.

i'm gonna be blunt here. it's really not much effort to get one post a week from cmc. take part in a discussion, if you're our balance dev then at least try to be part of the community too.

They tried to do a big balance session with cmc and the community and it failed utterly.

It failed because everyone he was discussing the game with were blatantly biased for their own class. Like you had a ranger who wanted to buff greatsword.

The discord it took place in also mutes anyone who disagrees with them, meaning they aren't looking for discussion and just want their own personal echo chamber.

I mean they also let ppl publicly invite ppl to start shit talk session and fail to delete the stuff. But anyways there’s good reason not to have a “public talk” only with a select few on a discord mostly meant for ppl to advertise themselves. Some of us are glad these talks won’t happen because it’s a recipe for failure

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

@otto.5684 said:Add to all this, lack of communication, and bad forum moderation since Gale Gray left. In addition, the game did not have anything major in a while. My experience with MMOs and ARPGs, if you go for more than 2 years without major content the community starts to get frustrated. The over hyping and failure to deliver, on Anet's part, added fuel to the fire.

As for sPvP, I dunno. SPvp right now feels like it is in alpha state. This is for an 8 year old game... I would like to remove everything since Feb patch and start from the last stable point, but I know this is not going to happen. It is easy for companies to kitten up. It is so much harder to for them to admit they did.

Idk about you, but I honestly feel like it's going backwards. Like regressing.

It felt less Alpha at points. I don't know if anyone else feels that, but to me its felt less like a clown fiesta at certain times. To the extent that content droughts didn't feel as rough because things didn't feel as broken.

[Loboling.5293]

I actually just uninstalled for the first time in years. PvP was always my main game mode. But frankly, I'm not sure what it is, but I felt like I needed to take a break from the game. But ya, pvp hasn't really been that fun since PoF launched imo. There were some dark spots before. (Like omg Season 1, with mesmer bunkers everywhere I also stopped playing)

I can't believe that headbutt still does 10dmg. (15 if you have stability up....) Like just remove that damage increase and let us stab our headbuts again. This mechanic was just added this year I believe, and it's already removed, but not really. Details like this get noticed, and they build up.

I still think gw2 is a good game. But I just can't push myself for another season.

[Shiyo.3578]

You can't uninstall the game, though. You can only delete the 48 GB .dat.

[georgessj.4198]

@memausz.7264 said:Don't forget posts removed for criticism.

Thats whats driving me mad they delete sooooooooooo many bot threads including mine to hide the situation as if i cant log in and play ranked with 7 to 9 bots.I means whats the point??

[mixxed.5862]

@otto.5684 said:

@mixxed.5862 said:That's where I disagree with the community, or at least the vocal part of it that utilizes this forum. I think CMC did more frequent balance patches in the last few months. He did a patch every month and consistently made a couple of very sensible changes to a few builds that were overperforming. There were smaller balance patches on March 4th, April 28th and a few tweaks on May 26th. Yes, the scope of the patches was rather small. Especially condi rev was clearly too strong all that time and should have seen further adjustments. Other than that balance isn't even bad right now - thanks in part to these smaller, more focused patches.

The upcoming patch will continue to move balance in the right direction. Finally we get a nerf to condi rev's sustain, condi thief (again), tempest's sustain and the glyph bug, nadekit etc. Btw there are some patch notes missing from the preview i.e. a nerf to Grenade Barrage.

But most importantly: CMC communicates more than any of the other balance devs have in a long time. He gives us a good idea of where he wants to go with balance, shows that he has a profound understanding of the game and has a clear vision. In the last dev stream he gave some insight into what he thinks about the state of balance concerning a couple of professions. And honestly I think the points he makes are very reasonable. Seriously, it's worth watching.

With CMC in charge of balance I feel like we are slowly but steadily moving towards a better balance in PvP. Builds that are overperforming or simply toxic see reasonable changes. You can rely on it (but it takes a while). That's something we couldn't for a very long time. After all I think the game will soon be more balanced than ever (in PvP at least). I'm convince it'll be the best it's ever been before the next expansion releases...

First, I would not call the May patch... a patch. They changed 3 skills on 2 classes.

Second, you are getting lost in the meta balancing. The entire sPvP foundation is kitten. Major changes are needed from damage levels, to sustain, boons, CC and boon RIP. Nothing is at an appropriate level for well paced fun game play. I don’t want to play bunker/CC wars. It does not matter if devs make a meta balance patch every week. Fundamental changes need to be made to the overall design.

Also, currently the of balance strategy is to remove most option and reducing diversity to the bare minimum, and then nerf everything to the ground, so it is easier to balance. Ya sure.. theoretically you could have better balance like that (we still do not), but is this... worth playing?

You're correct about the May patch. It was but a handful of changes. It doesn't change the fact that we've gotten more frequent patches for PvP. And all of them consisted of good changes, all of them improved the meta.

I disagree that there is something fundamentally wrong with sPvP. GW2 has an incredibly good combat system. What do you mean exactly? Please be a little more specific.

• I think the damage is at a much more appropriate level than ever before. Just sustain is a bit too high on some builds. Ideally duels on a side node should always end with a winner, not necessarily with a kill but at least a full cap and disengage. Imo we're getting there. Once condi rev (= corruption trait line and resistance access) is adressed it may look much better already. Although certainly ranger will be the next best profession for bunkering down. It's a balance that's best achieved by nerfing the sustain capabilities of the builds in question. And that's what they're doing. I'm confident that we'll get there eventually. Even if it takes a couple of months. Before the issues kept piling up while right now CMC fixes them faster than the skills team can add new ones.

• Boons and boon rips should always be reevaluated. Although it's in a hugely more balanced state than before the february patch.

• Many on the forums keep claiming that it's a CC and condi meta. In the game I don't see that at all. Yes, there are strong condi builds but the power variant is usually better or at least comparable (a notable exception is condi rev, of course).

• As for CC in my opinion it's alright. It certainly needs work, but it's not even that bad either. It's fine that there are builds that can chain CC. Conceptually that's sound. In 1v1 and 2v2 the amount of CC is manageable. If you die to it you usually got outplayed. In anything larger than that it becomes more problematic. You get CC'd, are being ganked on, the enemy team keeps locking you in CC and you're just done. Therefore CC skills definitely need another pass.

• Here's the biggest problem with the state of the game: Team fights feel like a wild gamble, a real mess. They are too chaotic to feel skillful and fun (or I'm just not good enough and tunnel visioning). I don't know how to adress that. Maybe it's the amount of AoE, of CC and important abilities per class in general. A moba in comparison feels much better. Mostly because there are fewer abilities per class to keep track of. What they could do is increase the cooldown of CCs and other very impactful skills. The visual tells are mostly there already.

• But first thing they need to balance out is sustain. So side node play isn't as much of a chore and the build diversity increases. As I said, I believe they are making tangible progress towards that goal.

Sorry for the very long post.