He doesn’t seem to have a lot of positive opinions about the balance update - applying boons on druid seems much much worse than before (requires lots of ability spam and makes CA part of rotation instead of a reactive action), scourge has been hit hard and suffers from the same problem as druid when it comes to boon application and herald lost flexibility in how you play it due to the upkeep requirement.
One of my friends is currently using qHeralds for HTCM. This patch is making them reconsider due to the lower access to roads.
Ugh I didn’t even consider that, the road energy cost is pretty high so no way it’s gonna work with upkeep. It seems like they were only considering glint-shiro qdps herald with these changes, nothing else.
edit: I’ve tried herald a bit and it feels reeealllyy bad to play, keeping glint upkeep at -6 while also balancing skill usage for damage is just a nightmare
They nerfed Scourge when they didn’t need to. It was in a good middle spot for DPS and has great utility for staying alive and doing consistent damage. Maybe barrier Scourge will be better, but that spec is the laughing stock of fractals so my character is essentially dead until Anet decides to do something else.
This has been going on for years, it’s just a cycle of alternately pissing off about half the pop each patch and leaving the rest to worry about the other shoe dropping on them next time. Quick and Alac are a big part of it but I think the entire combat system needs re-thought, hopefully with a way to completely eliminate concerns from unpopular pvp modes from influencing pve
Kind of simultaneously agree and disagree with Muk’s take on scrapper (it’s actually amazing if you play around HGH and blast finishers in kits like it was still 2013, but I also get that a lot of players would rather delete their engies than suffer that), but all in all he’s spot on. Forcing classes to waste critical/situational skills in order to do what a couple can do just by hitting 1 only results in those classes getting shelved by players, especially when it’s brute-forced in such a way that it actually removes aspects of the class/spec’s identity.
Anet are probably rushing to get the expansion out on time right now, but I hope they’ve set aside some time for revisions on this stuff since it’s becoming a summer tradition.
