I’m kind of unhappy with some of the changes but the more I sit on others, the more interested I am with this patch? It’s gonna have growing pains for sure but I’m curious how other people feel
I’m not a hardcore player or anything, but I was kind of unhappy with the changes. Others were mentioning how every class is being made to act the same, and I kind of see that. I like it when classes have unique abilities so there’s a reason to roll different characters and bring certain classes along. Everything else looks great imo.
I think the changes to boon strip will make wvw a nightmare where the only way to win is to have the bigger blob. It’s just all gonna be unkillable boon blobs.
In terms of PvE, I’m hoping some of the changes will make playing boon herald in raids more fun, but it remains to be seen.
I’m also annoyed that they keep forgetting that willbender exists. In PvE the willbender offhand sword is incredibly underwhelming and is used in almost no meta builds, and yet it has received zero updates since EoD launch if I’m remembering correctly.
The thing about the herald change that pisses me off is people were acting like draconic echo was just another “spamming facets off cooldown” enabler, but that trait was in the game five whole years ago and was really interesting, and enabling its existence on another build was cool? Having ticking upkeep skills just seems boring to me, but maybe I’m alone in that
And as the person that never shuts up about willbender, I completely agree with anet forgetting about the spec. It has received updates (notably, lethal tempo got pretty notably buffed, and now virtues can stack with one another) and is in a much better spot than it was, but it sucks that they nerfed alac willbender (a strong spec that was heavily restrictive in where it was playable), only to make it a slightly above average spec with literally ZERO boons other than alac, obviously, and regeneration, a boon you don’t want to trust to your DPS player. Not to mention upkeeping that alacrity is utterly painful on willbender, it just sucks seeing my favorite spec be an afterthought, and my second favorite build (alac specter) get gutted because people dont understand it and think its less cool than it is :(
I know this pattern. Skills that were fine for years and years and years are suddenly a problem and get gutted, dumbed down and/or removed. Entire mechanics get axed. Class personality dies in favour of homogenisation. Before that we got less content in lower quality but also a much more aggressive monetisation.
Well, it took ten years.
The thing that frustrates me most, is that it seemed to me like the past few patches (since solar’s departure) have been so excellent for the game, that this seems like such a major backtrack