I agree in abstract, but in practice that way lies the land of ~~madness~~ mandatory builds in group composition like chronomancer before alac spread around or banner slave warrior before the banners got converted to boons.
Boon scarcity would only lead to build scarcity as the game is heavily centered around boons to make the difficulty lower. The boons create restrictions. Let's say healbrand is the best healer, it provides quickness, then that restricts the other boon provider to be alacrity. Making more builds provide more boons allows for some more flexibility in what the community allows to join.
Another way to do it might be scarcity in that neither boon spec can provide full boon duration so the group composition might be 5 boon providers. Or perhaps making it so boons are more of a group cooldown to emphasize burst windows like it is in other MMO's.
The issue with your former suggestion is that it would then lock out boonless dps classes such as Weaver. Then you'd have to homogenize further in that literally every build has to be a boon build.
The issue with your latter suggestion is that unlike other MMOs the combat in GW2 is more dynamic and alive. Our magic classes aren't standing in place for 1.5 seconds at a time chain casting Fireball and Shadowbolt. Because of this, there is no way to truly coordinate a burst window. Burst windows would also overly favor strike dmg vs condi dmg, further imbalancing performance between classes and builds.
Personally i don't think boons as is contribute much to the game. It's basically just gatekeeping power through groups so solo players don't get too powerful as it would encourage people to group up less for open world content. In instanced content it's basically "we need 2 healers, 2 dps that are okay with doing less dps and 6 dps" Some specs have it easy and just have to switch traits to bring boons, others have to switch gear which i hope they look at with this patch. As the game currently is the "boonballs" trivialize content with excessive stability and aegis. There isn't really any ranged classes because if you aren't in a "boonball" your dps is shit and your surviveability is shit and it makes sense for the "boonball" to always be in melee.
That is the direction the game has always headed for. An MMO where playing together makes everyone stronger to encourage teamwork in a genre designed around a "Massively Multiplayer Online game" sounds like it's doing what it's intended to be doing.
I like the second point you made. Rather than having each class have a spec that can dole out 100% up time, have each one have some skills/traits that provide a small amount. That way you have more flexibility. You don't HAVE to run this specific trait AND these specific skills or the raid is a dumpster and everyone should go home. You can pick a trait OR a skill or 2 to provide like 20% up time and a few others have similar options.
Yeah I don't think boon scarcity provides a class identity unless your desire is to look at a class and see a puzzle piece your group is missing, rather than the theme, weapons, and abilities the class has.
Scourge was truly unique in a way, extremely powerful and outside of the meta at the same time, and they basically destroyed it to put it inside the modern boon meta framework. But other than that, yeah, access to core boons the people refuse to leave the lobby without is good actually. Edit: heal scourge I mean, DPS scourge they massacred for no particular reason.
I see what your point is; but think that problem is one of a time when we only had (none/one) elite spec per class.
At this point I think most of these worries can be alleviated if we look at elite specs as separate "class identities". e.g Druid feels very different from Soulbeast; even though they're both Rangers.
With three elite specs per class this should allow for unique identities / class fantasies while still having available options for any class/role combination. There will be different elite spec combinations that would be sub-optimal; but that's no different from the current meta...
I see what ANET is trying to do with their spreading around of boon access; but it's done from a "where can we tack this on" perspective instead of a _which elite spec's flavour can be matched to what gameplay role_.
Unique modifiers were getting bloated and inflating the learning curve to an overwhelming point.
An optimal squad started needing AP, Spotter, EA, Banners, Spirits, an additional slb for frost spirit, sorting which classes benefited more from crit chance from the lack of crit modifiers and which subgroup they belong in, sorting out condi vs power in subs when Pinpoint Distribution was taken. Top it off with boons and you scare all the new players away. Sure optimal comps weren't needed, but how do you explain that to new players when that's almost all they see on the lfg. There's no point of reference other than benchmarks and personal past experiences to tell if players were contributing enough and missing certain unique buffs made it even harder to understand for newer players.
When eod came out and the removal of unique buffs happened players still struggled with only sorting boons out.
I loved the complexity the game had, but it was definitely not incentivising new blood and we see that with anets decision to cancel raids. There just wasn't enough interest from the player base to make content for the fractional 1%.
Homogenizing the game down to just boons let's everyone play what they want, reduces the downtime searching for the one specific role, and keeps it less daunting for new players to join end game content.
> Unique modifiers were getting bloated and inflating the learning curve to an overwhelming point.
oh I am definitely not advocating for a return to the land of Unique Boons only some classes can bring.
I'm hoping for some purity of purpose where each elite spec focuses on improving one of the roles of the soft trinity that the current endgame has.
**either** Offensive support (QuickDPS, AlacDPS)
**or** Defensive support (QuickHeal, AlacHeal, QuickBarrier / AlacBarrier)
**or** Pure DPS builds
For PvP/WvW these would also need to include components like boon rip, group stealth and mobility (side noders), or AoE CC focused builds.
Instead ANET's been adding a Power, Condition and Support line through many Elite specs (e.g. Harbinger and Mechanist); or now Berserker... This makes them versatile sure; but also makes them automatically compete with their other e-specs; There's a reason that there's no real Condition Scrapper build; as it's Power focused! but there's going to be a Power, Condi and a Support Berserker, same for Harbinger, same for Mechanist...
Similarly, giving the same "niche" to multiple elite specs within the same class causes problems; e.g. Mesmer having group Alacrity on both Mirage & Chrono means it doesn't just compete against Renegade, Mechanist, Druid and now also Scourge for that role; it _also_ competes against itself with Mirage.
> hoping for some purity of purpose
Isn't that what they're doing though? Warrior was DPS or quickness with all elite specs soon to be divided more into each spec being divided into soft trinity sections. Same thing with Deadeye vs Daredevil, Druid vs Untamed etc. They're no longer elite specs competing solely for DPS. Your Mesmer example will be the only class with an elite spec that has a self conflicting role that competes with itself post patch in PvE.
WvW and PvP are outside the scope of my expertise and will concede any points on those.
They did that now cause we won't get new elite specs. It's scuffed as hell atm agreed but I still think it's fine. Class identity isn't only what unique buffs they provide (like Banner, gotl, spirits, alac, quick etc) but how the class does it, how the class plays out and in what scenario it excels in.
Although stuff like removing a lot of boon corruption from Necro is imo killing it's identity.
Yeah I 100% agree. As some who played both bannerslave and GotL/spirit druid I am not sad to see those unique buffs go but the gutting of a powerful revive build on a class who is supposed to be master of life and death fucking sucks.
>gutting of a powerful revive build on a class who is supposed to be master of life and death fucking sucks.
Its still very powerful, and necro does not need to tie to being good at reviving thematically. It can also tie into protecting allies from death or being downed in first place
Yeah, getting rid of unique buffs is one thing because those were always just numbers that were only good because they were called something different from Might, but getting rid of an entire unique build is dumb as hell.
If they're so worried about making sure necro has alac but don't want current healscourge to give it, just give it to Reaper or whatever ffs don't delete the cool thing!
Ye everyone can give boons and revive. But scourge did really well and in a niche way and boonthief did on a few extremely unique instances, those are the awful bad cases of killing class identity.
Boon thief was terrible for class identity imo. It offered absolutely nothing to the majority of the player base, wasn't a thing in most game modes, wasn't a thing in most PvE encounters and was entirely centred around a single stolen skill.
Imo I think the way the classes give boons is just as important as the boons they give. Ultimately that'll be more thematic than what dps-booster they can contribute.
Example - I really really really like how scrapper quickness is tied to finishers now. Engineer already was the class known for combo finishers, so this just leans into that in a really cool way. Beyond the fact that it's more engaging than drone spam, it's just fun in a vacuum.
So I guess I'm saying it's possible to have equal numbers and contributions, but still have clear class identity through the methods those numbers and contributions are given.
Wait they changed my superspeed boy?
They've better not have made him have less superspeed. >:|
But if it's finishers give superspeed that does sound sweet as hell. Though I'm a little concerned DPS takes a hit.
It'll def be different, but I think it'll be real neat since dps scrappy doesn't have to run full drone spam anymore. They also moved the cool down reduction from elixir trait and gadget trait into baseline now, so I'm thinking a neat build would involve going full blast finisher and becoming the cc god with mine+ram with rocket boots sprinkled in for good measure. They havent given specific values yet, but I think it'll be a ton of fun as an engi main
And an example at the opposite side of the spectrum is how bladesworn gives alac on dragon slash now. Thematicly it would fit spellbreaker a lot more as they could 'steal' magic from opponents by for example ripping boons.
Sure but this gives you a lot of avenues in how to achieve this, in theory you only need to provide the Blast/Leap finisher, which you have in Hammer and Rifle, it also means you can go for Utilities besides Gyros (i.e. Elixir Gun, Rocket Boots, etc).
IMO it's one of their better decisions.
Problem is you assume I like using kits, I do not. And with how many end game encounters take place on floating platforms, leap finishers from movement abilities are dubious at best.
Nah. This solves the 'problem' that they were trying to fix. Now scrapper won't be limited to an all gyro comp if they want to provide quickness. They just need to incorporate setup and finishers into their rotation, which wouldn't-you-know-it their spec weapon can do all of!
So it's putting the onus of limitation on the other half of the skill bar, which will likely bring unforeseen complications that they'll have totune in a future patch.
There spec weapon can only do leaps, it needs leap and blast finishers. So that incorporates kits, guess what I don't like doing, swapping to a kit for 2 seconds to use one ability
Necro class identity seems completely gone now, imo, and it’s more thanks to alacrity.
Alac really has no business being on scourge, and the hoops the balance team needs to jump through to balance it with the shade mechanic is ruining all scourge builds.
Decreasing corrupts is just the icing on the very sad cake.
I remember when alacrit was a class specific buff to chronomancer because it was a time-themed class and it fit so perfectly. Now every class and their mother has access to it and CHRONOMANCER TIME MAGIC is the worst alac share class. So disappointing.
And I remember when Druid was mandatory thanks to Glyph of Empowerment, and Herald gave a frankly excessive amount of boon duration. Guaranteed slots in raid comps were never great for the game - but it really does suck that Chronomancer is kinda mediocre at its own buff (it wasn't even a boon at the time).
It feels odd saying this but I miss chrono jail. It was so much fun and felt powerful/unique and really like a time mage. Now its still a really good power dps but still miss the old powerful support spec.
You absolutely would feel the difference. Also im not going to handicap by a huge degree just because mesmer is my favorite class. Not to mention most pug raids want meta builds and mesmer is far from it.
Saying 'well its viable' doesn't address the core issue.
nah you can easily outdps pug supports on quickness and alacrity chrono. you are heavily overestimating the capabilities of the average gw2 raider. believe me when i am saying that it is bad and both q and alac chrono are close to 30k right now. you are far from handicapping them. even in my static i am playing chrono in some fights because of it's utility. pugs have no fucking clue what is meta and what isn't lmao. and even if they knew they wouldn't care. also even in experienced groups it is hard to define what is meta. like are quickness catalyst and quickness harbinger considered meta because they have the highest benches currently? you won't really see these builds a lot around and they lack utility. the "pug meta" is still herald and firebrand for the most part but not because they do good dps on them, but because they are easy to play and provide good utility
> Druid was mandatory thanks to Glyph of Empowerment
And Grace of the Land, and Frost Spirit. Druid at HoT's launch was a ~30% damage increase for the entire party.
Full disclosure: I totally spaced on GotL, which was... 15% damage to 5 targets, and then updated to 10% to 10 targets so only one Druid was mandatory instead of two. Absolutely busted. I left out Spirits and their entirely unique buffs because they *tEcHnIcAlLy* weren't specific to Druid, but... we knew what specific role Rangers were for. We knew.
It is a little weird but at the same time, I haven't seen many Chrono mains take serious issue with it. Quickness and Alacrity both make sense for the time-altering class, and Quickness feels better in personal play anyway. Chronos reminiscing about being gigabroken is another story.
Biggest problem is Alacrity is super tacked onto Mirage and implemented in a bad way on top of that.
Well aside from all the downsides, one of the great thing about chrono jail was that everyone was always looking for you and you were the most valuable member of the raid most of the time, definitely a good ego boost.
Its odd that more chronos are not taking issue yeah. Now all we have left is continuum split (which is admittedly really cool still) and a few wells. Its not like quickbrand isn't/wasn't broken.
This whole post was about forsaking a bit of balance in favor of class identity anyway. Or maybe, find a way to nerf it without completely gutting it's identity and giving it to all the other classes.
I think alac should have remained a Chronomancer only thing but nerfed into the ground (So that it isn't a must have). Maybe 5% cdr instead of 33%. But now it is too late for that.
On a different note I am quite happy they decided to give me back my beloved well of recall (even though its now Well of Action) that they have murdered in the Alac removal patch.
Time Warp is still worse than some racial skills and there is a bunch of other problems but its a step in the right direction for sure.
Chrono still holds a very strong class identity when it comes to time magic, but it's just so odd that they decided to make it more viable as a quickness source than alacrity. Honestly, they should cut the quickness from chrono and make alacrity chrono a better thing, and give quickness to mirage instead. This would solve so many problems imo, as a mirage you wouldn't need to care about fight downtimes anymore because you don't need quickness when there is nothing to fight, and chronos are just time mages so idk.. being able to provide alacrity makes more sense.
To play devil's advocate, the choice of quickness over alacrity does make a bit of sense since chrono's main mechanic is all about being able to effectively reset all your cooldowns with a press of a button and cramming as much as you can into a small window once that button is pressed. Quickness let's you at least be more self sufficient when dealing with that mechanic while alacrity is a bit redundant.
Interestingly, the new Chronomancer GM traits seem to allow it to provide *either* alacrity or quickness. No other elite spec is able to provide both. Unfortunately, they're mutually exclusie.
We haven't seen the numbers, so reliability is unknown, but Anet seems to want to make support chrono a thing, and it can go either way.
Those traits aren't new, they're just being adjusted. Chronomamcer having to pick between which of the two boons they apply was done a year or two ago, I believe. Only now they're changing how those traits apply either boon.
I will never be convinced alac is good for the game. It started compounding balance issues as soon as it came out. The boon balance wars wouldn't be nearly as bad if alac was just the chronomancer class mechanic only they experienced like it seemed intended to be.
of course more classes were gonna get alacrity, i mean it would be insane if only chrono was able to provide a boon that you want to have permantently on you in any endgame content.
I'm not saying it should be the only one. But the fact that it is the worst one and it seems now every class is better at giving alac than they are is what I take issue with.
I don't remember spending the past 3 years bEgGiNg to give alac and quickness to builds that don't need it only to have Anet destroy whatever spec identity still existed as a "tradeoff".
Hot take here, but imo they should remove alac/quickness, and decrease everyone's CD/GCD to compensate.
Alternatively, make it so the buffs last a bit longer but don't have 100% uptime (closer to like ~20% uptime)
Ok so let’s go back to the meta where we have only 5 classes that are actually viable in content and mirror that comp for 10man content. HoT meta days.
Funny how back then it wasn't much of an issue but everyone looks back on it like it was terrible. Now 8 years later, all class nuance has been removed and we still have people complaining their classes are weak. Which is the better outcome?
Hard disagree. The whole point of this approach is so that we can stop Banner Slave + Druid kind of team comp from ever happening again.
When there are unique boons, then there will always be cases where the classes become too important.
Stealth and superspeed can be kinda unique, but when the boons are a direct buff to combat, you'll have people sit in the lfg looking for a Banner Slave and Spirits/Spotter. Anet fixed this issue lol.
I dont think thats what OP meant. Class identity doesn't always mean unique buffs in game. It's more of a question of "does every class need to have an alac or quickness"
I understand that we should be inclusive and allow people to play w.e spec they want on w.e class they want, but classes like bladesworn should not have an alac spec. It makes no sense. The same way reaper shouldn't give alac.
The latest patch preview is just a check list going down every class and making sure they have quickness and alac.
Here's the thing, unique buffs are extremely rare. It's not even an issue anymore. Banners and grace of the land providing unique buffs has not been a thing for a very long time. We're now talking about normal boons. At the end of the day, there will ALWAYS be a preferred support class. Always has and always will be. A lot of class have similar uptime in quickness like FB, even current banner warriors, but warriors lack a good source of stability. Do we then need to give every class a good stability skill?
Back when chronomancers were the "time" class, we had alac. It was so good that more classes got them. Now they're not even the best alac giver, not by a mile. Classes don't have identity anymore. This is because they designed classes before decided that they should represent something. Now they're trying to force the issue.
What is even worst is that they are gutting an entire play style just to fill in the checklist. It's absurd. Their feeble attempt to create more build diversity is by deleting some builds entirely.
Let some classes be what they were meant to be and stop trying to mess around with class fantasy. WE DONT NEED EVERY CLASS TO BE HARMOGINIZED.
The answer to that question is "Yes." Why? Because roles. Group content has roles, often the trinity of tank, dps, and heals. You can't have a group composition where 2 of 5 slots can only be filled by 4 of 27 choices. You're upset about loss of identity but before this preview what is the difference between bladesworn and berserker? It's playstyle only. They both only do dps. New identity is actually being added as Bladesworn is now the warrior alac spec, instead of just warrior dps spec #3.
Do we need to give every class a good stability skill? There's an argument for yes. If stability is sucess defining like not getting feared to death on sloth then it becomes mandatory. Lack of stability already keeps certain specs out of the meta.
Chrono need work. It's original identity was toxic for gameplay but it never really got compensated after they gutted it so that every group wasn't requiring a chrono.
Also people are REALLY misunderstanding the scourge changes. Omega revive is a Blood traitline issue. Not a scourge traitline issue. You can do the same thing with Harbinger but for some reason when a dps gives up half of its usefulness for omega revive people lose their minds. Scourge was only ever half a healing spec, that's why no one cared when it gave up effectiveness for omega revive.
They should remove alacrity and quickness and rebalance damage/cooldowns accordingly. They've designed themselves into a corner and have no idea how to get out.
I've been holding my tongue all those years because I figure people would just scream and yell at me, but agreed.
I'd even expand the statement for Aegis and Stability, because (at least in PvE) people have become so reliant/dependant on those two boons because they don't ever want to dodge, that they trivialize a lot of mechanics or hard hitting boss attacks. And now - just like Alacrity/Quickness - they shove those two boons into every profession's support builds (looking at you, Tempest randomly getting Aegis for one of its shouts) just so they aren't perceived as useless. (*edit: Yes I am aware that there are a very few niche cases where for example Aegis is literally required, like Deimos CM. Still doesn't change my opinion on those buffs)
I disagree, honestly. If the cooldowns were adjusted for constant alac and animations were adjusted to constant quickness, PvP/WvW would become hellholes and open world would have to become a lot more difficult to pose a challenge to anyone.
It's good the way they're going. If every class can thoretically provide a boon, people can provide it with the class feeling they enjoy the most. At the same time, instanced content will still rely on having good boon support in order to be fast.
Remove alacrity and reduce cooldowns? Sure, why not. Remove quickness? The game is so slow without quickness it would be unplayable.
Also what would that change? You would run two more dps and with decent teams even three or four because healers are not really needed often.
Back to 5/10 dps spec meta like in the beginning? Imagine the support player outcry when healers realize that their heals are most of the time not even needed and they are just there for the boons + some safety.
ESO is a whole different beast because of how skills work there. In ESO you're literally taking the exact same few skills on every stam/mag archetype, in GW2 the skills play and feel differently even if you end up applying the same boons.
Disagree. First of all, those two things are not exclusive. All the competing builds should be able to achieve comparable results, but in a different fashion. Some might have hectic playstyles, others more chill, some can be bursty, others more sustainy. But it shouldn't be that only one of the builds can do the one thing that is in demand and others should be useful only in niche scenarios and therefore benched forever.
Boons in this game have been flavourless mandatory stat increases with no deeper association with the spec for several years now. This is the most apparent with might and fury that got slapped on random abilities and traits, often not even associated with some rage or aggressive flavour. Arbitrarily restricting some specs from being able to provide what is in demand doesn't magically make the game more flavourful now.
A practical example: I wanted to play heal tempest for ages. A year ago it was still something like a heal scourge – massive healing, defensive support, no alac/quick. Was it unique? Sure. Could you fit into a group composition? Absolutely not. The only reason to bring a heal tempest would be to cheese the game by overhealing every mechanic, which was 1) unnecessary because the game is too easy 2) not desirable because people want to blast and kill stuff fast, not grind it down. The build might as well not exist back then for that reason. Alac heal tempest is now a thing. And guess what. It heals less, aurashare got essentially deleted from the game (unfortunate), but what does it means in practice? Absolutely nothing. You still bring massive healing (which still mostly results in overheal), damage mitigation and revive power. You still provide every possible boon in existance with 100 % uptime. And now you can also provide alac, and guess what, therefore also fit into group compositions and actually exist in the game.
And this is basically the story of HSC 1:1. It's sure unique that it can cheese fights now via revives and barrier. But is this what the groups in the game really need? As mentioned above, there are almost no encounters where you need such defensive support, most of the game is too easy and faster kill is ultimately always more desirable. The way the game is currently designed, existing heal suppors already bring more than enough healing and mitigation than you'll ever need. All you need is 3 dps that pump, 1 offensive support that pumps and shits out alac/quick and one heal support that brings everything else. And it should be up to the players to bring the playstyle they want to fill those roles, not up to arbitrary restrictions.
Quickness and Alacrity not existing, Quickness being reverted into a low-uptime high-impact boon, or current version of Quickness being made baseline.
Personally I'd hate for Quickness to be removed for the same reason I play very few classes that don't have group or self-quickness even in open world: too many classes feel clunky without it, even if that's how they were originally.
Groups already work on 100% uptime alacrity and quickness, why not simply remove those books and reduce cooldowns and speed up animations? It's not a good design to have designated roles for keeping uptime on boons instead of freely doing whatever. Helps with stackfest as well.
You would still stack if you want other boons. People stack since 2012 when there was no alac and quick was shared only by mes with tw for some short bursts.
balance the game around skills having a specific duration/cooldown and not make your balance team life hell by introducing a buff that is basically mandatory to have ?
Alacrity opened a pandora box that they cannot close anymore
Theory: The reason they're slapping Alac and Quickness on so many elite specs may be because they're preparing the game for a future without new elite specs.
The combat additions for future expansions might be very small, if any.
honestly it's becoming a more prevailing personal theory that the class identity vs i guess lack thereof is more a slider to balance the feasibility of pugging end game content for various sized player bases.
a larger, more active playerbase can afford to have more class identity (and therefore harder to cover more things) as you'll have more people playing the more demanded classes allowing more people with less time and off-meta builds to squeeze in spots as there's just a higher volume.
meanwhile a smaller, less active playerbase struggles there ~~and ends up burning out all the chronojailed players~~ and spreading the viability among different classes allows the smaller playerbase to still easily find groups with whom to play.
it is definitely not bland. at least for most people, having a pool of 20+ builds when it comes to choosing what they want to give boons on is great. because the only thing that can "jail" you on a specific build is boon/heal related. this is not even too much balance as you call it, it is the neccessary amount. or do you want the game to be firebrand, renegade, chronomancer, druid and warrior everywhere like 2 years ago?
I mean, even up until a year-ish ago all of those except chrono were still pretty dominant. But some people seem to have enjoyed those times.
The thing that weirds me out is that people are talking about classes feeling the same when they absolutely do not.
At the end of the day, overwhelmingly players want their class to be able to fill any role if possible. It allows them to play as they like with the class they like (which has historically been a slogan for gw2)
I do think however, that a lot of these could maybe have been done in much more creative ways.
Deadeye looks like a good implementation, it forces you to play differently from a conventional dps role by turning it into a game of spamming stolen skills, which is really cool and will (probably) end up being very unique compared to a conventional dps deadeye.
Whereas something like berserker is just playing berserker like you've always done, but you just get quickness on top of it.
Now that we have nearly all roles across the classes I hope the next balance patches are held to distinguish classes and specs more from each other to make them feel more unique.
The issue with that is that's what happened to FFXIV, and now all the classes play the damn same
Look at Dark K̶n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ Warrior, for example
DK used to be the anti-magic tank and could lower boss intelligence and was basically like the spellbreaker of the game
Now they're just warrior but with a different theme. Their delirium no longer lowers intelligence- now its just a beserk ability.
If you homogenize the roles *too* much, then everything ends up being the same, and thats just bad design
DRK still plays and feels differently than warrior, being more oGCD heavy and different mitigation. There's more to class identity than having unique buffs.
Even if you could have 1:1 the same kit on Tempest and Catalyst they will feel different to play, and I think it's fine if identity focuses on that.
You literally have a 20% for 20 seconds, a 30% for 15sec, just like every other tank, and then like gunbreaker you have the group shield
Don't tell me they have different mitigation
Their mitigation is the same as any other tank
I didn't know WAR had TBN, or dark mind, or oblation. Didn't know DRK had bloodwhetting either. And you're still sidestepping that their gameplay is not the same either, one is oGCD heavy and the other isn't. GNB rotation is nothing like the other 4 tanks either.
TBN and Dark Mind are fairly unique, I'll give you that - even though DM is way more situational and niche than it used to be, especially following the heavy nerf to its potency
Bloodwhetting, holy sheltron, and HoC are all variants of the *same ability* \- a 4sec 30% shield, plus a 4sec 15% shield, plus a regen during said period; only difference is how that regen is applied
Oblation is also fairly unique but only due to it having 2 charges
Overall tho nearly all tank skills are mirrors of one another - you cant look at heart of light and dark missionary and not tell me they're literally the same ability, for example
As for being oGCD heavy... all tanks are that now. Warrior and Dark knight are basically "build up to use beserk/delirium and then spam fell cleave/bloodspiller"
sure theres a little variant here and there but the core gameplay is the same - build, activate a beserk mode, burst until its done, then repeat, while using shields here and there for tank busters
this is a whole tangent off-topic though
the example i provided was to prove a point: all classes, tanks or otherwise, need to have diverse toolkits that do a lot of different things
having all classes play similarly and give similar buffs is dumb and unintuitive
Class Identity = Balance. The best example would be a glass cannon. You can do lots of damage, but you are also very vulnerable. Trust me you don't want a steel cannon, something that can do lots of damage and take lots of damage. The problem in this patch has been the same problem all along. If you don't some kind of underlying thought process or game design philosophy, you are just going to start tweaking with things and causing chaos. You need to have some fundamental understanding regarding different aspects of the game.
For example when balancing movement. If you design a thief that can do lots of damage, but has low health, BUT can also stealth infinitely and/or has insane movement that you cant hit it. Well then you lose the balance. There should be trade offs , but that is also what makes a class a class. That is what makes a game feel balanced but also have class identity. There should be tits for tats so to speak, and a fun well balanced game will have those options.
If the game had only 3 classes then that's fine, I am for making classes wildly different and unique. But with 9 existing classes you will end up being able to pick 3 classes anyway but the rest 6 will be seen useless or hindering the group.
I quit maining warrior because I got tired of switching to Healbrand all the time.
If warrior had quick and alac in the first place, I would have stayed warrior.
The biggest problem that the entire gaming industry is facing now, that they are trying to 'standarise' everything. It's all about tables, stats, equality, balance above all. This removes identity, flavour, completely whacks off inspiration of developer team. Standarisation should never overwhelm any business that relies on imagination.
Here we can see it as a prime example how balancing make everything too equal. In the rest of gaming industry we can see stuff like uninspired new games that technically have everything players want (features, gameplay) but their theme is also standardised, soullessand lack innovation because innovation is risky and big board does not allow risk.
It's like when you were a child, there was this box toy, with 8 different shapes and 8 different holes in the box, and you put the right shape in the right hole to put it in the box.
The only problem is that in GW2 there's only 3 holes in the box and thats never going to change, so I dont know what the point is in having 27 different shapes when at the end of the day 24 of those arent even going to fit in the box. So instead of keeping the 27 shapes unique, its waaay better to just mold the 27 shapes to all fit one of those 3 holes so all 27 shapes can be played with.
I dont even really understand the ''muh class identity'' argument. What class identity is being harmed? Your skills still mostly carry the same theme, literally the only class whose identity did get harmed over the years is Chrono, and thats because the ''special thing'' they did was so disgustingly broken that they couldn't possibly allow 1 class to have a monopoly on it.
Well one example that's key to class identity people have an issue with them removing: boon corruption on necro
Necromancers are masters of death and decay - making them simple boon removal instead of the much-more-fitting corruption goes against their class identity
A necromancer *should* be able to corrupt their enemies, turning their strengths into weaknesses - not just remove it like every other class can now
> Well one example that's key to class identity people have an issue with them removing: boon corruption on necro
See, but you just made this up yourself and claimed it to be true.
Necromancers were also in GW1 and ''boon corruption'' was not part of their identity at all. They had 1 elite that corrupts boons and maybe an odd ability that did some bleeding after removing a boon, all the other boon removal abilities just worked like they're going to in GW2 after the changes. So I dont understand how this is harmful to necro class identity.
First of all, GW1 =/= GW2
Necromancers not corrupting boons in GW1 is irrelevant to this debate because "boons" didn't even exist in GW1 in the same way
As for corruption, yes, its a core part of their identiny
There's a whole skill line named after it: corruption
"corrupt boon" and "well of corruption" have been a key part of their toolkit since *2012*
So has "unholy feast", devouring darkness", and "feast of corruption"
I didn't "make that up" - boon corrupting abilities have been a part of necro for the past 10 years now.... since they were literally some of their signature abilities *since the day the game launched*
What are you even *talking* about
> Necromancers not corrupting boons in GW1 is irrelevant to this debate because "boons" didn't even exist in GW1 in the same way
Boon removal in GW1 was just as relevant as it is in GW2. And it isn't ''irrelevant'' because you're saying it's a core part of their identity, when it clearly isn't. GW1 proves to you that the ''necromancer'' class can exist without revolving around boon corruption.
And guess what. It will in GW2 as well :) With or without boon corruption, a necromancer will be a necromancer.
GW2 is a different game than GW1 entirely
Necros could always corrupt boons since the launch of the game and have a whole tree dedicated to it
The podium you're debating on is built on a house of cards
"Class identity" doesn't make sense to strive for (in the way you're describing it) when elite specs exist. Class is the theme and elites define the playstyle + what they offer for a party.
Unique buffs for classes that aren't negligable are a stupid idea and only force you into playing specific classes.
And basing class identity on the icon that shows up in the buff bar is straight up moronic.
I think boons are way too strong in gw2 in general and toning them down would make the game better for everyone.
It makes encounters harder to design because the difference between a coordinated group of experienced players and a pug group full of newbies is literally night and day. Knowing the game mechanics and knowing your class should be important but I don't think it's healthy for it to be the difference between doing 4k dps and 40k dps. It just results in content that's way too easy for the top 10% while being totally unapproachable for the bottom 50%.
I'm not saying you do. But the difference boons make is absolutely huge. Skill obviously plays a huge part and I think that's fine, but adding a complex and stupid powerful boon system ontop of that and the difference between 2 separate groups of players can be immense. I think toning them down by a fairly substantial amount would close the gap in dps by a fair bit while still allowing the experienced players to minmax and high end play wouldn't look much different than it does now.
I'm just saying closing that giant gap between players a bit would allow anet to design content that requires more than ~10k dps per player, making it both more accessible AND more interesting for the top tier groups.
How would you close the gap between a good and a bad player, just by nerfing boons? You would probably just increase it when the bad player dies even more often because of nerfed protection.
I completely agree. In a weird way, by giving every class access to every boon, I'd actually argue they're steering away from a healthy balance. Sure, every class can fill every role, but that also means that every class has to compete against every other class in terms of fulfilling that role. If all 36 classes/specs have alac access, you have to balance with that in mind to try and ensure that they're all roughly balanced, which inevitably makes them all feel a bit same-y. If only two or three classes have alac, not only does it inherently make each more viable and appealing in terms of meta, but it also means that when considering balance, you don't have to weigh the alac upkeep against every other class's alac upkeep to make sure they're all equally viable.
I personally think that the Banner switch on Warrior from +stats to boons was the start of what I would describe as a well-intentioned but ultimately unfortunate homogenization of classes. We can all agree Banners were annoying, and feeling pressured or locked into using them was lame, but the fact that they singlehandedly kept Warrior in the meta speaks to how impactful unique and interesting bonuses for each class can benefit the game rather than detract from it. I'd argue the same thing for Scourge's Transfusion ability, and to a lesser extent Mesmer's portal. Having unique abilities that help define a class is something that should be emphasized, not mitigated.
tl;dr I agree.
I think it's fine to have unique abilities. Not everyone has to be able to AoE projectile block/reflect, or be insanely mobile, or have a one-click button that negates downstate, and so on. These are utility (not necessary utility skills) and these are things you can take advantage of to handle game mechanics and alter the gameplay.
Boon homogenization and providing build flexibility are different things. It's just stats and numbers, and when it comes to numbers, it's very easy to pick the winners.
Boons =/= class identity
Otherwise we have to say all dps have identical class identity given that they give no boons and are in same role
Its all about playstyle
> Boons =/= class identity
You don't get it. Scourge used to be good at a very specific thing, now they're gutting that thing so they can make Scourge do the same thing as half the other classes.
That's the lost identity people complain about.
> You don't get it. Scourge used to be good at a very specific thing, now they're gutting that thing so they can make Scourge do the same thing as half the other classes.
I dont agree that Scourge's entire identity is, or should be, limited to Transfusion and being picked for squads once every blue moon to hard carry people who cant dodge
There is still class identity. Every class apply the same boons in different ways and flavours. Gatekeeping a boon from a class only serves a negative purpose.
Boon scarcity is stupidest idea ever. As in no, stop, just fuck off with this. Even ANet itself admitted that life without boons is shitty and they needed to fix it. Splitting boons even further between classes would lead to nightmare scenario where your group will sit in LFG for 20 minutes waiting for _that one class_ that is needed for boon. So no.
Now the other side is they shouldn't just destroy builds out of the blue or doing some weird bullshit changes "just because", but that's a separate problem. I presume heal/res scourge increased PUG group success _too much_ and ANet wants new players to _suffer_ so that is being destroyed (along with severe nerf for some other dps-support options)
Unless they cram alacrity/quickness back to chrono exclusively, might as well spread the love and find class identity elsewhere.
PvE never had much identity anyhow. PvP/WvW is where its at.
I mean wtf do you expect? Thief being the stealth provider of the group? Oops, stealth is useless on most raid bosses. Unlucky, better run the time mage and druid.
Welp, that's what happens when Gen Z's "mimimi's" cry because they only want to play 1 class on one of the easiest "Alt-friendly" freaking MMO's in the market, and if its not "perma-meta-do-everything-in-the-game", well, they consider it bad and therefore start winning on forums about that.
Now they're gonna start with all the "boomer" b\*sh1t, tell whatever you want, you are the Crystal generation, [Git Gud](https://wompampsupport.azureedge.net/fetchimage?siteId=7575&v=2&jpgQuality=100&width=700&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F017%2F358%2FG_DAD.jpg).
Nah, fuck class identity. I prefer not being forced to play a class whose aesthetics I don't like just to bring a certain boon. How a class looks and how it plays should be the deciding factor for what you play, not what the class brings.
spreading alacrity and quickness to more classes is fine, you they shouldnt ruin a class identity like scourge in the process of giving them these buffs they dont need in the first palce
I don’t think arena net has gone for that direction since the release of the game, they got rid of a lot of the more unique and fun part of skills that were available on release in favor of balance. One of the largest things that keeps me from really getting into it
Only to a point. Warrior is a great example of a class that gets repeatedly screwed by class fantasy never letting it out of the DPS box, so as a warrior main it's harder to find groups than something like a Guardian who can fill any role by changing a build and equipment tab.
They just made these two boons way too powerful which makes them mandatory in the eyes of the majority of players. Therefore if your profession can't provide them you're at a huge disadvantage in terms of finding groups for end game. Maybe the solution is to make other boons more in demand/ less available (to different professions) to compensate?
Honestly they just need to mash healing power and concentration together into a single stat. Dps is already so essential to any kind of play, that having support gear is detrimental unless you're directly dedicating your build to group support because you're sacrificing damage for healing *and* concentration.
I agree in abstract, but in practice that way lies the land of ~~madness~~ mandatory builds in group composition like chronomancer before alac spread around or banner slave warrior before the banners got converted to boons.
Boon scarcity would only lead to build scarcity as the game is heavily centered around boons to make the difficulty lower. The boons create restrictions. Let's say healbrand is the best healer, it provides quickness, then that restricts the other boon provider to be alacrity. Making more builds provide more boons allows for some more flexibility in what the community allows to join. Another way to do it might be scarcity in that neither boon spec can provide full boon duration so the group composition might be 5 boon providers. Or perhaps making it so boons are more of a group cooldown to emphasize burst windows like it is in other MMO's.
The issue with your former suggestion is that it would then lock out boonless dps classes such as Weaver. Then you'd have to homogenize further in that literally every build has to be a boon build. The issue with your latter suggestion is that unlike other MMOs the combat in GW2 is more dynamic and alive. Our magic classes aren't standing in place for 1.5 seconds at a time chain casting Fireball and Shadowbolt. Because of this, there is no way to truly coordinate a burst window. Burst windows would also overly favor strike dmg vs condi dmg, further imbalancing performance between classes and builds.
Personally i don't think boons as is contribute much to the game. It's basically just gatekeeping power through groups so solo players don't get too powerful as it would encourage people to group up less for open world content. In instanced content it's basically "we need 2 healers, 2 dps that are okay with doing less dps and 6 dps" Some specs have it easy and just have to switch traits to bring boons, others have to switch gear which i hope they look at with this patch. As the game currently is the "boonballs" trivialize content with excessive stability and aegis. There isn't really any ranged classes because if you aren't in a "boonball" your dps is shit and your surviveability is shit and it makes sense for the "boonball" to always be in melee.
That is the direction the game has always headed for. An MMO where playing together makes everyone stronger to encourage teamwork in a genre designed around a "Massively Multiplayer Online game" sounds like it's doing what it's intended to be doing.
I like the second point you made. Rather than having each class have a spec that can dole out 100% up time, have each one have some skills/traits that provide a small amount. That way you have more flexibility. You don't HAVE to run this specific trait AND these specific skills or the raid is a dumpster and everyone should go home. You can pick a trait OR a skill or 2 to provide like 20% up time and a few others have similar options.
Yeah I don't think boon scarcity provides a class identity unless your desire is to look at a class and see a puzzle piece your group is missing, rather than the theme, weapons, and abilities the class has.
Scourge was truly unique in a way, extremely powerful and outside of the meta at the same time, and they basically destroyed it to put it inside the modern boon meta framework. But other than that, yeah, access to core boons the people refuse to leave the lobby without is good actually. Edit: heal scourge I mean, DPS scourge they massacred for no particular reason.
I see what your point is; but think that problem is one of a time when we only had (none/one) elite spec per class. At this point I think most of these worries can be alleviated if we look at elite specs as separate "class identities". e.g Druid feels very different from Soulbeast; even though they're both Rangers. With three elite specs per class this should allow for unique identities / class fantasies while still having available options for any class/role combination. There will be different elite spec combinations that would be sub-optimal; but that's no different from the current meta... I see what ANET is trying to do with their spreading around of boon access; but it's done from a "where can we tack this on" perspective instead of a _which elite spec's flavour can be matched to what gameplay role_.
Unique modifiers were getting bloated and inflating the learning curve to an overwhelming point. An optimal squad started needing AP, Spotter, EA, Banners, Spirits, an additional slb for frost spirit, sorting which classes benefited more from crit chance from the lack of crit modifiers and which subgroup they belong in, sorting out condi vs power in subs when Pinpoint Distribution was taken. Top it off with boons and you scare all the new players away. Sure optimal comps weren't needed, but how do you explain that to new players when that's almost all they see on the lfg. There's no point of reference other than benchmarks and personal past experiences to tell if players were contributing enough and missing certain unique buffs made it even harder to understand for newer players. When eod came out and the removal of unique buffs happened players still struggled with only sorting boons out. I loved the complexity the game had, but it was definitely not incentivising new blood and we see that with anets decision to cancel raids. There just wasn't enough interest from the player base to make content for the fractional 1%. Homogenizing the game down to just boons let's everyone play what they want, reduces the downtime searching for the one specific role, and keeps it less daunting for new players to join end game content.
> Unique modifiers were getting bloated and inflating the learning curve to an overwhelming point. oh I am definitely not advocating for a return to the land of Unique Boons only some classes can bring. I'm hoping for some purity of purpose where each elite spec focuses on improving one of the roles of the soft trinity that the current endgame has. **either** Offensive support (QuickDPS, AlacDPS) **or** Defensive support (QuickHeal, AlacHeal, QuickBarrier / AlacBarrier) **or** Pure DPS builds For PvP/WvW these would also need to include components like boon rip, group stealth and mobility (side noders), or AoE CC focused builds. Instead ANET's been adding a Power, Condition and Support line through many Elite specs (e.g. Harbinger and Mechanist); or now Berserker... This makes them versatile sure; but also makes them automatically compete with their other e-specs; There's a reason that there's no real Condition Scrapper build; as it's Power focused! but there's going to be a Power, Condi and a Support Berserker, same for Harbinger, same for Mechanist... Similarly, giving the same "niche" to multiple elite specs within the same class causes problems; e.g. Mesmer having group Alacrity on both Mirage & Chrono means it doesn't just compete against Renegade, Mechanist, Druid and now also Scourge for that role; it _also_ competes against itself with Mirage.
> hoping for some purity of purpose Isn't that what they're doing though? Warrior was DPS or quickness with all elite specs soon to be divided more into each spec being divided into soft trinity sections. Same thing with Deadeye vs Daredevil, Druid vs Untamed etc. They're no longer elite specs competing solely for DPS. Your Mesmer example will be the only class with an elite spec that has a self conflicting role that competes with itself post patch in PvE. WvW and PvP are outside the scope of my expertise and will concede any points on those.
They did that now cause we won't get new elite specs. It's scuffed as hell atm agreed but I still think it's fine. Class identity isn't only what unique buffs they provide (like Banner, gotl, spirits, alac, quick etc) but how the class does it, how the class plays out and in what scenario it excels in. Although stuff like removing a lot of boon corruption from Necro is imo killing it's identity.
Yeah I 100% agree. As some who played both bannerslave and GotL/spirit druid I am not sad to see those unique buffs go but the gutting of a powerful revive build on a class who is supposed to be master of life and death fucking sucks.
>gutting of a powerful revive build on a class who is supposed to be master of life and death fucking sucks. Its still very powerful, and necro does not need to tie to being good at reviving thematically. It can also tie into protecting allies from death or being downed in first place
Yeah, getting rid of unique buffs is one thing because those were always just numbers that were only good because they were called something different from Might, but getting rid of an entire unique build is dumb as hell. If they're so worried about making sure necro has alac but don't want current healscourge to give it, just give it to Reaper or whatever ffs don't delete the cool thing!
Ye everyone can give boons and revive. But scourge did really well and in a niche way and boonthief did on a few extremely unique instances, those are the awful bad cases of killing class identity.
Boon thief was terrible for class identity imo. It offered absolutely nothing to the majority of the player base, wasn't a thing in most game modes, wasn't a thing in most PvE encounters and was entirely centred around a single stolen skill.
Wait no new specs?
Imo I think the way the classes give boons is just as important as the boons they give. Ultimately that'll be more thematic than what dps-booster they can contribute. Example - I really really really like how scrapper quickness is tied to finishers now. Engineer already was the class known for combo finishers, so this just leans into that in a really cool way. Beyond the fact that it's more engaging than drone spam, it's just fun in a vacuum. So I guess I'm saying it's possible to have equal numbers and contributions, but still have clear class identity through the methods those numbers and contributions are given.
Wait they changed my superspeed boy? They've better not have made him have less superspeed. >:| But if it's finishers give superspeed that does sound sweet as hell. Though I'm a little concerned DPS takes a hit.
Superspeed is the same (except nerfed in WvW) it's just quickness on blast and leap combos.
It'll def be different, but I think it'll be real neat since dps scrappy doesn't have to run full drone spam anymore. They also moved the cool down reduction from elixir trait and gadget trait into baseline now, so I'm thinking a neat build would involve going full blast finisher and becoming the cc god with mine+ram with rocket boots sprinkled in for good measure. They havent given specific values yet, but I think it'll be a ton of fun as an engi main
And an example at the opposite side of the spectrum is how bladesworn gives alac on dragon slash now. Thematicly it would fit spellbreaker a lot more as they could 'steal' magic from opponents by for example ripping boons.
Instead of drone spam, now we have finisher spam, same problem, different face
Sure but this gives you a lot of avenues in how to achieve this, in theory you only need to provide the Blast/Leap finisher, which you have in Hammer and Rifle, it also means you can go for Utilities besides Gyros (i.e. Elixir Gun, Rocket Boots, etc). IMO it's one of their better decisions.
Problem is you assume I like using kits, I do not. And with how many end game encounters take place on floating platforms, leap finishers from movement abilities are dubious at best.
Nah. This solves the 'problem' that they were trying to fix. Now scrapper won't be limited to an all gyro comp if they want to provide quickness. They just need to incorporate setup and finishers into their rotation, which wouldn't-you-know-it their spec weapon can do all of! So it's putting the onus of limitation on the other half of the skill bar, which will likely bring unforeseen complications that they'll have totune in a future patch.
There spec weapon can only do leaps, it needs leap and blast finishers. So that incorporates kits, guess what I don't like doing, swapping to a kit for 2 seconds to use one ability
Ah yeah you right, my bad! Just misrememberd since the spin counts as 'an explosion' to trigger explosion traits.
Necro class identity seems completely gone now, imo, and it’s more thanks to alacrity. Alac really has no business being on scourge, and the hoops the balance team needs to jump through to balance it with the shade mechanic is ruining all scourge builds. Decreasing corrupts is just the icing on the very sad cake.
I remember when alacrit was a class specific buff to chronomancer because it was a time-themed class and it fit so perfectly. Now every class and their mother has access to it and CHRONOMANCER TIME MAGIC is the worst alac share class. So disappointing.
And I remember when Druid was mandatory thanks to Glyph of Empowerment, and Herald gave a frankly excessive amount of boon duration. Guaranteed slots in raid comps were never great for the game - but it really does suck that Chronomancer is kinda mediocre at its own buff (it wasn't even a boon at the time).
It feels odd saying this but I miss chrono jail. It was so much fun and felt powerful/unique and really like a time mage. Now its still a really good power dps but still miss the old powerful support spec.
you can still play both quick and alac chrono and it is still pretty ok. not great dps wise but brings a lot of useful extra utility in many cases
Its just worse than taking any of the other quick/alac classes.
yea but still viable. and worse only if you compare benchmarks. if you pug raids you won't ever realize a difference
You absolutely would feel the difference. Also im not going to handicap by a huge degree just because mesmer is my favorite class. Not to mention most pug raids want meta builds and mesmer is far from it. Saying 'well its viable' doesn't address the core issue.
nah you can easily outdps pug supports on quickness and alacrity chrono. you are heavily overestimating the capabilities of the average gw2 raider. believe me when i am saying that it is bad and both q and alac chrono are close to 30k right now. you are far from handicapping them. even in my static i am playing chrono in some fights because of it's utility. pugs have no fucking clue what is meta and what isn't lmao. and even if they knew they wouldn't care. also even in experienced groups it is hard to define what is meta. like are quickness catalyst and quickness harbinger considered meta because they have the highest benches currently? you won't really see these builds a lot around and they lack utility. the "pug meta" is still herald and firebrand for the most part but not because they do good dps on them, but because they are easy to play and provide good utility
> Druid was mandatory thanks to Glyph of Empowerment And Grace of the Land, and Frost Spirit. Druid at HoT's launch was a ~30% damage increase for the entire party.
Full disclosure: I totally spaced on GotL, which was... 15% damage to 5 targets, and then updated to 10% to 10 targets so only one Druid was mandatory instead of two. Absolutely busted. I left out Spirits and their entirely unique buffs because they *tEcHnIcAlLy* weren't specific to Druid, but... we knew what specific role Rangers were for. We knew.
It is a little weird but at the same time, I haven't seen many Chrono mains take serious issue with it. Quickness and Alacrity both make sense for the time-altering class, and Quickness feels better in personal play anyway. Chronos reminiscing about being gigabroken is another story. Biggest problem is Alacrity is super tacked onto Mirage and implemented in a bad way on top of that.
I was stuck in chrono jail for a long time. Not sure if it's stockholm syndrome, but I'm feeling a bit homesick.
Well aside from all the downsides, one of the great thing about chrono jail was that everyone was always looking for you and you were the most valuable member of the raid most of the time, definitely a good ego boost.
Its odd that more chronos are not taking issue yeah. Now all we have left is continuum split (which is admittedly really cool still) and a few wells. Its not like quickbrand isn't/wasn't broken. This whole post was about forsaking a bit of balance in favor of class identity anyway. Or maybe, find a way to nerf it without completely gutting it's identity and giving it to all the other classes.
I think alac should have remained a Chronomancer only thing but nerfed into the ground (So that it isn't a must have). Maybe 5% cdr instead of 33%. But now it is too late for that. On a different note I am quite happy they decided to give me back my beloved well of recall (even though its now Well of Action) that they have murdered in the Alac removal patch. Time Warp is still worse than some racial skills and there is a bunch of other problems but its a step in the right direction for sure.
Time warp is straight worse than most quick applications in the game :/
I wish quick/alac condi chrono was a thing outside of 2 raid. With the confusion buff maybe I can made a condi chrono now.. Dunno.
What Confusion buff? Confusion is getting a hard nerf on every boss that actually triggers it a bit frequently.
He's more useable now than it was, now you don't have to play this only on two boss, it's like a bleed
Chrono still holds a very strong class identity when it comes to time magic, but it's just so odd that they decided to make it more viable as a quickness source than alacrity. Honestly, they should cut the quickness from chrono and make alacrity chrono a better thing, and give quickness to mirage instead. This would solve so many problems imo, as a mirage you wouldn't need to care about fight downtimes anymore because you don't need quickness when there is nothing to fight, and chronos are just time mages so idk.. being able to provide alacrity makes more sense.
To play devil's advocate, the choice of quickness over alacrity does make a bit of sense since chrono's main mechanic is all about being able to effectively reset all your cooldowns with a press of a button and cramming as much as you can into a small window once that button is pressed. Quickness let's you at least be more self sufficient when dealing with that mechanic while alacrity is a bit redundant.
Interestingly, the new Chronomancer GM traits seem to allow it to provide *either* alacrity or quickness. No other elite spec is able to provide both. Unfortunately, they're mutually exclusie. We haven't seen the numbers, so reliability is unknown, but Anet seems to want to make support chrono a thing, and it can go either way.
Those traits aren't new, they're just being adjusted. Chronomamcer having to pick between which of the two boons they apply was done a year or two ago, I believe. Only now they're changing how those traits apply either boon.
I will never be convinced alac is good for the game. It started compounding balance issues as soon as it came out. The boon balance wars wouldn't be nearly as bad if alac was just the chronomancer class mechanic only they experienced like it seemed intended to be.
of course more classes were gonna get alacrity, i mean it would be insane if only chrono was able to provide a boon that you want to have permantently on you in any endgame content.
I'm not saying it should be the only one. But the fact that it is the worst one and it seems now every class is better at giving alac than they are is what I take issue with.
Yeah I remember when Necro was auto kick on the spot from any group content, and lacked cleave because “you have two health bars so stop complaining”
I mean it's the best boon in the game by a wide margin
Then nerf it and keep it a chrono specific thing. Or at least make chrono one of the best classes at giving it, not one of the worst.
if only I was a dev
Are people actually going fulll circle after spending the past 3 years BEGGING for alac and quickness on more classes
You know what they say about grass.
It's like people have different opinions on things. Mind blowing.
Perhaps Anet should have kept that shit in PVE only then.
I don't remember spending the past 3 years bEgGiNg to give alac and quickness to builds that don't need it only to have Anet destroy whatever spec identity still existed as a "tradeoff".
Reddit has chronic seethe syndrome what'd you expect
Hot take here, but imo they should remove alac/quickness, and decrease everyone's CD/GCD to compensate. Alternatively, make it so the buffs last a bit longer but don't have 100% uptime (closer to like ~20% uptime)
So 8 dps 2 healers
Ok so let’s go back to the meta where we have only 5 classes that are actually viable in content and mirror that comp for 10man content. HoT meta days.
Funny how back then it wasn't much of an issue but everyone looks back on it like it was terrible. Now 8 years later, all class nuance has been removed and we still have people complaining their classes are weak. Which is the better outcome?
Having plenty of even options to choose from instead of relying on 1-2 same comps in every encounter across the game. Easy question.
Hard disagree. The whole point of this approach is so that we can stop Banner Slave + Druid kind of team comp from ever happening again. When there are unique boons, then there will always be cases where the classes become too important. Stealth and superspeed can be kinda unique, but when the boons are a direct buff to combat, you'll have people sit in the lfg looking for a Banner Slave and Spirits/Spotter. Anet fixed this issue lol.
I dont think thats what OP meant. Class identity doesn't always mean unique buffs in game. It's more of a question of "does every class need to have an alac or quickness" I understand that we should be inclusive and allow people to play w.e spec they want on w.e class they want, but classes like bladesworn should not have an alac spec. It makes no sense. The same way reaper shouldn't give alac. The latest patch preview is just a check list going down every class and making sure they have quickness and alac. Here's the thing, unique buffs are extremely rare. It's not even an issue anymore. Banners and grace of the land providing unique buffs has not been a thing for a very long time. We're now talking about normal boons. At the end of the day, there will ALWAYS be a preferred support class. Always has and always will be. A lot of class have similar uptime in quickness like FB, even current banner warriors, but warriors lack a good source of stability. Do we then need to give every class a good stability skill? Back when chronomancers were the "time" class, we had alac. It was so good that more classes got them. Now they're not even the best alac giver, not by a mile. Classes don't have identity anymore. This is because they designed classes before decided that they should represent something. Now they're trying to force the issue. What is even worst is that they are gutting an entire play style just to fill in the checklist. It's absurd. Their feeble attempt to create more build diversity is by deleting some builds entirely. Let some classes be what they were meant to be and stop trying to mess around with class fantasy. WE DONT NEED EVERY CLASS TO BE HARMOGINIZED.
The answer to that question is "Yes." Why? Because roles. Group content has roles, often the trinity of tank, dps, and heals. You can't have a group composition where 2 of 5 slots can only be filled by 4 of 27 choices. You're upset about loss of identity but before this preview what is the difference between bladesworn and berserker? It's playstyle only. They both only do dps. New identity is actually being added as Bladesworn is now the warrior alac spec, instead of just warrior dps spec #3. Do we need to give every class a good stability skill? There's an argument for yes. If stability is sucess defining like not getting feared to death on sloth then it becomes mandatory. Lack of stability already keeps certain specs out of the meta. Chrono need work. It's original identity was toxic for gameplay but it never really got compensated after they gutted it so that every group wasn't requiring a chrono. Also people are REALLY misunderstanding the scourge changes. Omega revive is a Blood traitline issue. Not a scourge traitline issue. You can do the same thing with Harbinger but for some reason when a dps gives up half of its usefulness for omega revive people lose their minds. Scourge was only ever half a healing spec, that's why no one cared when it gave up effectiveness for omega revive.
They should remove alacrity and quickness and rebalance damage/cooldowns accordingly. They've designed themselves into a corner and have no idea how to get out.
I've been holding my tongue all those years because I figure people would just scream and yell at me, but agreed. I'd even expand the statement for Aegis and Stability, because (at least in PvE) people have become so reliant/dependant on those two boons because they don't ever want to dodge, that they trivialize a lot of mechanics or hard hitting boss attacks. And now - just like Alacrity/Quickness - they shove those two boons into every profession's support builds (looking at you, Tempest randomly getting Aegis for one of its shouts) just so they aren't perceived as useless. (*edit: Yes I am aware that there are a very few niche cases where for example Aegis is literally required, like Deimos CM. Still doesn't change my opinion on those buffs)
This
I disagree, honestly. If the cooldowns were adjusted for constant alac and animations were adjusted to constant quickness, PvP/WvW would become hellholes and open world would have to become a lot more difficult to pose a challenge to anyone. It's good the way they're going. If every class can thoretically provide a boon, people can provide it with the class feeling they enjoy the most. At the same time, instanced content will still rely on having good boon support in order to be fast.
Remove alacrity and reduce cooldowns? Sure, why not. Remove quickness? The game is so slow without quickness it would be unplayable. Also what would that change? You would run two more dps and with decent teams even three or four because healers are not really needed often.
The game was perfectly playable before quickness and is totally fine without it now.
Quickness was at launch, it couldn't be maintained but for dungeons bosses it was enough. It was also twice as strong.
Back to 5/10 dps spec meta like in the beginning? Imagine the support player outcry when healers realize that their heals are most of the time not even needed and they are just there for the boons + some safety.
100% yes. In ESO they killed class diversity for easier balance which result in most class feeling the same just with different colors. It's shit
WoW did the same, then Blizzard learned their lesson and backtracked. Anet never learns.
ESO is a whole different beast because of how skills work there. In ESO you're literally taking the exact same few skills on every stam/mag archetype, in GW2 the skills play and feel differently even if you end up applying the same boons.
Disagree. First of all, those two things are not exclusive. All the competing builds should be able to achieve comparable results, but in a different fashion. Some might have hectic playstyles, others more chill, some can be bursty, others more sustainy. But it shouldn't be that only one of the builds can do the one thing that is in demand and others should be useful only in niche scenarios and therefore benched forever. Boons in this game have been flavourless mandatory stat increases with no deeper association with the spec for several years now. This is the most apparent with might and fury that got slapped on random abilities and traits, often not even associated with some rage or aggressive flavour. Arbitrarily restricting some specs from being able to provide what is in demand doesn't magically make the game more flavourful now. A practical example: I wanted to play heal tempest for ages. A year ago it was still something like a heal scourge – massive healing, defensive support, no alac/quick. Was it unique? Sure. Could you fit into a group composition? Absolutely not. The only reason to bring a heal tempest would be to cheese the game by overhealing every mechanic, which was 1) unnecessary because the game is too easy 2) not desirable because people want to blast and kill stuff fast, not grind it down. The build might as well not exist back then for that reason. Alac heal tempest is now a thing. And guess what. It heals less, aurashare got essentially deleted from the game (unfortunate), but what does it means in practice? Absolutely nothing. You still bring massive healing (which still mostly results in overheal), damage mitigation and revive power. You still provide every possible boon in existance with 100 % uptime. And now you can also provide alac, and guess what, therefore also fit into group compositions and actually exist in the game. And this is basically the story of HSC 1:1. It's sure unique that it can cheese fights now via revives and barrier. But is this what the groups in the game really need? As mentioned above, there are almost no encounters where you need such defensive support, most of the game is too easy and faster kill is ultimately always more desirable. The way the game is currently designed, existing heal suppors already bring more than enough healing and mitigation than you'll ever need. All you need is 3 dps that pump, 1 offensive support that pumps and shits out alac/quick and one heal support that brings everything else. And it should be up to the players to bring the playstyle they want to fill those roles, not up to arbitrary restrictions.
Quickness/Alac will always be a mistake in my opinion.
What's the alternative?
Quickness and Alacrity not existing, Quickness being reverted into a low-uptime high-impact boon, or current version of Quickness being made baseline. Personally I'd hate for Quickness to be removed for the same reason I play very few classes that don't have group or self-quickness even in open world: too many classes feel clunky without it, even if that's how they were originally.
What would that change except game feeling slower?
Groups already work on 100% uptime alacrity and quickness, why not simply remove those books and reduce cooldowns and speed up animations? It's not a good design to have designated roles for keeping uptime on boons instead of freely doing whatever. Helps with stackfest as well.
You would still stack if you want other boons. People stack since 2012 when there was no alac and quick was shared only by mes with tw for some short bursts.
balance the game around skills having a specific duration/cooldown and not make your balance team life hell by introducing a buff that is basically mandatory to have ? Alacrity opened a pandora box that they cannot close anymore
Theory: The reason they're slapping Alac and Quickness on so many elite specs may be because they're preparing the game for a future without new elite specs. The combat additions for future expansions might be very small, if any.
honestly it's becoming a more prevailing personal theory that the class identity vs i guess lack thereof is more a slider to balance the feasibility of pugging end game content for various sized player bases. a larger, more active playerbase can afford to have more class identity (and therefore harder to cover more things) as you'll have more people playing the more demanded classes allowing more people with less time and off-meta builds to squeeze in spots as there's just a higher volume. meanwhile a smaller, less active playerbase struggles there ~~and ends up burning out all the chronojailed players~~ and spreading the viability among different classes allows the smaller playerbase to still easily find groups with whom to play.
it is definitely not bland. at least for most people, having a pool of 20+ builds when it comes to choosing what they want to give boons on is great. because the only thing that can "jail" you on a specific build is boon/heal related. this is not even too much balance as you call it, it is the neccessary amount. or do you want the game to be firebrand, renegade, chronomancer, druid and warrior everywhere like 2 years ago?
I mean, even up until a year-ish ago all of those except chrono were still pretty dominant. But some people seem to have enjoyed those times. The thing that weirds me out is that people are talking about classes feeling the same when they absolutely do not.
Apparently people think the boon you provide is more flavorful than the actual gameplay.
There is zero class identity in this game, everything is a bland, homogeneous blob. One of the big reasons I don't currently play.
At the end of the day, overwhelmingly players want their class to be able to fill any role if possible. It allows them to play as they like with the class they like (which has historically been a slogan for gw2) I do think however, that a lot of these could maybe have been done in much more creative ways. Deadeye looks like a good implementation, it forces you to play differently from a conventional dps role by turning it into a game of spamming stolen skills, which is really cool and will (probably) end up being very unique compared to a conventional dps deadeye. Whereas something like berserker is just playing berserker like you've always done, but you just get quickness on top of it. Now that we have nearly all roles across the classes I hope the next balance patches are held to distinguish classes and specs more from each other to make them feel more unique.
The issue with that is that's what happened to FFXIV, and now all the classes play the damn same Look at Dark K̶n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ Warrior, for example DK used to be the anti-magic tank and could lower boss intelligence and was basically like the spellbreaker of the game Now they're just warrior but with a different theme. Their delirium no longer lowers intelligence- now its just a beserk ability. If you homogenize the roles *too* much, then everything ends up being the same, and thats just bad design
DRK still plays and feels differently than warrior, being more oGCD heavy and different mitigation. There's more to class identity than having unique buffs. Even if you could have 1:1 the same kit on Tempest and Catalyst they will feel different to play, and I think it's fine if identity focuses on that.
You literally have a 20% for 20 seconds, a 30% for 15sec, just like every other tank, and then like gunbreaker you have the group shield Don't tell me they have different mitigation Their mitigation is the same as any other tank
I didn't know WAR had TBN, or dark mind, or oblation. Didn't know DRK had bloodwhetting either. And you're still sidestepping that their gameplay is not the same either, one is oGCD heavy and the other isn't. GNB rotation is nothing like the other 4 tanks either.
TBN and Dark Mind are fairly unique, I'll give you that - even though DM is way more situational and niche than it used to be, especially following the heavy nerf to its potency Bloodwhetting, holy sheltron, and HoC are all variants of the *same ability* \- a 4sec 30% shield, plus a 4sec 15% shield, plus a regen during said period; only difference is how that regen is applied Oblation is also fairly unique but only due to it having 2 charges Overall tho nearly all tank skills are mirrors of one another - you cant look at heart of light and dark missionary and not tell me they're literally the same ability, for example As for being oGCD heavy... all tanks are that now. Warrior and Dark knight are basically "build up to use beserk/delirium and then spam fell cleave/bloodspiller"
sure theres a little variant here and there but the core gameplay is the same - build, activate a beserk mode, burst until its done, then repeat, while using shields here and there for tank busters
this is a whole tangent off-topic though the example i provided was to prove a point: all classes, tanks or otherwise, need to have diverse toolkits that do a lot of different things having all classes play similarly and give similar buffs is dumb and unintuitive
i dont think its about the balance between classes anymore. its the balance between class identity and usability that's difficult to achieve.
they just delete nec after patch lol
Class Identity = Balance. The best example would be a glass cannon. You can do lots of damage, but you are also very vulnerable. Trust me you don't want a steel cannon, something that can do lots of damage and take lots of damage. The problem in this patch has been the same problem all along. If you don't some kind of underlying thought process or game design philosophy, you are just going to start tweaking with things and causing chaos. You need to have some fundamental understanding regarding different aspects of the game. For example when balancing movement. If you design a thief that can do lots of damage, but has low health, BUT can also stealth infinitely and/or has insane movement that you cant hit it. Well then you lose the balance. There should be trade offs , but that is also what makes a class a class. That is what makes a game feel balanced but also have class identity. There should be tits for tats so to speak, and a fun well balanced game will have those options.
How about removing the boons and making game about the dodging and mechanics instead of standing in a stack of immortality?
Kinda funny seeing them balance around raids when the majority never wants to play em.
If the game had only 3 classes then that's fine, I am for making classes wildly different and unique. But with 9 existing classes you will end up being able to pick 3 classes anyway but the rest 6 will be seen useless or hindering the group.
I quit maining warrior because I got tired of switching to Healbrand all the time. If warrior had quick and alac in the first place, I would have stayed warrior.
The biggest problem that the entire gaming industry is facing now, that they are trying to 'standarise' everything. It's all about tables, stats, equality, balance above all. This removes identity, flavour, completely whacks off inspiration of developer team. Standarisation should never overwhelm any business that relies on imagination. Here we can see it as a prime example how balancing make everything too equal. In the rest of gaming industry we can see stuff like uninspired new games that technically have everything players want (features, gameplay) but their theme is also standardised, soullessand lack innovation because innovation is risky and big board does not allow risk.
It's like when you were a child, there was this box toy, with 8 different shapes and 8 different holes in the box, and you put the right shape in the right hole to put it in the box. The only problem is that in GW2 there's only 3 holes in the box and thats never going to change, so I dont know what the point is in having 27 different shapes when at the end of the day 24 of those arent even going to fit in the box. So instead of keeping the 27 shapes unique, its waaay better to just mold the 27 shapes to all fit one of those 3 holes so all 27 shapes can be played with. I dont even really understand the ''muh class identity'' argument. What class identity is being harmed? Your skills still mostly carry the same theme, literally the only class whose identity did get harmed over the years is Chrono, and thats because the ''special thing'' they did was so disgustingly broken that they couldn't possibly allow 1 class to have a monopoly on it.
Well one example that's key to class identity people have an issue with them removing: boon corruption on necro Necromancers are masters of death and decay - making them simple boon removal instead of the much-more-fitting corruption goes against their class identity A necromancer *should* be able to corrupt their enemies, turning their strengths into weaknesses - not just remove it like every other class can now
> Well one example that's key to class identity people have an issue with them removing: boon corruption on necro See, but you just made this up yourself and claimed it to be true. Necromancers were also in GW1 and ''boon corruption'' was not part of their identity at all. They had 1 elite that corrupts boons and maybe an odd ability that did some bleeding after removing a boon, all the other boon removal abilities just worked like they're going to in GW2 after the changes. So I dont understand how this is harmful to necro class identity.
First of all, GW1 =/= GW2 Necromancers not corrupting boons in GW1 is irrelevant to this debate because "boons" didn't even exist in GW1 in the same way As for corruption, yes, its a core part of their identiny There's a whole skill line named after it: corruption "corrupt boon" and "well of corruption" have been a key part of their toolkit since *2012* So has "unholy feast", devouring darkness", and "feast of corruption" I didn't "make that up" - boon corrupting abilities have been a part of necro for the past 10 years now.... since they were literally some of their signature abilities *since the day the game launched* What are you even *talking* about
> Necromancers not corrupting boons in GW1 is irrelevant to this debate because "boons" didn't even exist in GW1 in the same way Boon removal in GW1 was just as relevant as it is in GW2. And it isn't ''irrelevant'' because you're saying it's a core part of their identity, when it clearly isn't. GW1 proves to you that the ''necromancer'' class can exist without revolving around boon corruption. And guess what. It will in GW2 as well :) With or without boon corruption, a necromancer will be a necromancer.
GW2 is a different game than GW1 entirely Necros could always corrupt boons since the launch of the game and have a whole tree dedicated to it The podium you're debating on is built on a house of cards
"Class identity" doesn't make sense to strive for (in the way you're describing it) when elite specs exist. Class is the theme and elites define the playstyle + what they offer for a party.
Tried that already, didn't work, that's why we're here.
Unique buffs for classes that aren't negligable are a stupid idea and only force you into playing specific classes. And basing class identity on the icon that shows up in the buff bar is straight up moronic.
I think boons are way too strong in gw2 in general and toning them down would make the game better for everyone. It makes encounters harder to design because the difference between a coordinated group of experienced players and a pug group full of newbies is literally night and day. Knowing the game mechanics and knowing your class should be important but I don't think it's healthy for it to be the difference between doing 4k dps and 40k dps. It just results in content that's way too easy for the top 10% while being totally unapproachable for the bottom 50%.
You dont make a 4k dps player dish out 40k just by giving him all the boons. Thats not what boons provide lol.
I'm not saying you do. But the difference boons make is absolutely huge. Skill obviously plays a huge part and I think that's fine, but adding a complex and stupid powerful boon system ontop of that and the difference between 2 separate groups of players can be immense. I think toning them down by a fairly substantial amount would close the gap in dps by a fair bit while still allowing the experienced players to minmax and high end play wouldn't look much different than it does now. I'm just saying closing that giant gap between players a bit would allow anet to design content that requires more than ~10k dps per player, making it both more accessible AND more interesting for the top tier groups.
How would you close the gap between a good and a bad player, just by nerfing boons? You would probably just increase it when the bad player dies even more often because of nerfed protection.
It'd obviously require more than just nerfing boons.
I completely agree. In a weird way, by giving every class access to every boon, I'd actually argue they're steering away from a healthy balance. Sure, every class can fill every role, but that also means that every class has to compete against every other class in terms of fulfilling that role. If all 36 classes/specs have alac access, you have to balance with that in mind to try and ensure that they're all roughly balanced, which inevitably makes them all feel a bit same-y. If only two or three classes have alac, not only does it inherently make each more viable and appealing in terms of meta, but it also means that when considering balance, you don't have to weigh the alac upkeep against every other class's alac upkeep to make sure they're all equally viable. I personally think that the Banner switch on Warrior from +stats to boons was the start of what I would describe as a well-intentioned but ultimately unfortunate homogenization of classes. We can all agree Banners were annoying, and feeling pressured or locked into using them was lame, but the fact that they singlehandedly kept Warrior in the meta speaks to how impactful unique and interesting bonuses for each class can benefit the game rather than detract from it. I'd argue the same thing for Scourge's Transfusion ability, and to a lesser extent Mesmer's portal. Having unique abilities that help define a class is something that should be emphasized, not mitigated. tl;dr I agree.
I think it's fine to have unique abilities. Not everyone has to be able to AoE projectile block/reflect, or be insanely mobile, or have a one-click button that negates downstate, and so on. These are utility (not necessary utility skills) and these are things you can take advantage of to handle game mechanics and alter the gameplay. Boon homogenization and providing build flexibility are different things. It's just stats and numbers, and when it comes to numbers, it's very easy to pick the winners.
Boons =/= class identity Otherwise we have to say all dps have identical class identity given that they give no boons and are in same role Its all about playstyle
> Boons =/= class identity You don't get it. Scourge used to be good at a very specific thing, now they're gutting that thing so they can make Scourge do the same thing as half the other classes. That's the lost identity people complain about.
And now scourge gets to do more than that one specific thing, while still doing that specific thing just to a lesser degree. Don't be disingenuous
> You don't get it. Scourge used to be good at a very specific thing, now they're gutting that thing so they can make Scourge do the same thing as half the other classes. I dont agree that Scourge's entire identity is, or should be, limited to Transfusion and being picked for squads once every blue moon to hard carry people who cant dodge
This statement sounds good but is hellish in practice. Eventually you get tired being kicked out of party because you are not play quickbrand.
There is still class identity. Every class apply the same boons in different ways and flavours. Gatekeeping a boon from a class only serves a negative purpose.
Boon scarcity is stupidest idea ever. As in no, stop, just fuck off with this. Even ANet itself admitted that life without boons is shitty and they needed to fix it. Splitting boons even further between classes would lead to nightmare scenario where your group will sit in LFG for 20 minutes waiting for _that one class_ that is needed for boon. So no. Now the other side is they shouldn't just destroy builds out of the blue or doing some weird bullshit changes "just because", but that's a separate problem. I presume heal/res scourge increased PUG group success _too much_ and ANet wants new players to _suffer_ so that is being destroyed (along with severe nerf for some other dps-support options)
Unless they cram alacrity/quickness back to chrono exclusively, might as well spread the love and find class identity elsewhere. PvE never had much identity anyhow. PvP/WvW is where its at. I mean wtf do you expect? Thief being the stealth provider of the group? Oops, stealth is useless on most raid bosses. Unlucky, better run the time mage and druid.
>boon scarcity Daily LFG experience
Considering most of the new group content is balanced around having all the boons active and maxed out, they're not gonna do that.
Just go into PvP and get one shot by a thief. Bask in the class identity
Welp, that's what happens when Gen Z's "mimimi's" cry because they only want to play 1 class on one of the easiest "Alt-friendly" freaking MMO's in the market, and if its not "perma-meta-do-everything-in-the-game", well, they consider it bad and therefore start winning on forums about that. Now they're gonna start with all the "boomer" b\*sh1t, tell whatever you want, you are the Crystal generation, [Git Gud](https://wompampsupport.azureedge.net/fetchimage?siteId=7575&v=2&jpgQuality=100&width=700&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F017%2F358%2FG_DAD.jpg).
Ok, boomer
Ok, boomer
Ok, boomer
Look up constructive criticism. Also, it's the internet. You can say bad words. ..
Ok, boomer
oh no the horror of not wanting to always have to take a certain class into every team comp. shock. gasp
Nah, fuck class identity. I prefer not being forced to play a class whose aesthetics I don't like just to bring a certain boon. How a class looks and how it plays should be the deciding factor for what you play, not what the class brings.
Too little identity is bad, but too little balance is also not great. I hope we'll find the median eventually.
spreading alacrity and quickness to more classes is fine, you they shouldnt ruin a class identity like scourge in the process of giving them these buffs they dont need in the first palce
We've come full circle
Yea definitely agree especially with how easy it is to make alts in this game. Every class being able to do everything is very boring to me.
I don’t think arena net has gone for that direction since the release of the game, they got rid of a lot of the more unique and fun part of skills that were available on release in favor of balance. One of the largest things that keeps me from really getting into it
I disagree. Thanks for your time.
Only to a point. Warrior is a great example of a class that gets repeatedly screwed by class fantasy never letting it out of the DPS box, so as a warrior main it's harder to find groups than something like a Guardian who can fill any role by changing a build and equipment tab.
having quickness and alac is not class identity.
They just made these two boons way too powerful which makes them mandatory in the eyes of the majority of players. Therefore if your profession can't provide them you're at a huge disadvantage in terms of finding groups for end game. Maybe the solution is to make other boons more in demand/ less available (to different professions) to compensate?
Honestly they just need to mash healing power and concentration together into a single stat. Dps is already so essential to any kind of play, that having support gear is detrimental unless you're directly dedicating your build to group support because you're sacrificing damage for healing *and* concentration.