A full year of playing through this ridiculous meta - opinions?

[snoow.1694]

It is close to a full year of this ridiculousness, without effective follow-up adjustments and I fear a February Balance Patch 2.0 is coming, that will make things even worse.

 

What is your overall resumé for the last year? How would you rate the meta over the last handful of seasons?

[Ragnar.4257]

I mean..... it's not been the same meta for the last year?

 

A year ago we had symbolbrands. Then we had bunker necros and bird-rangers. Then we had tempests and condi-revs. Then we had nadesmiths and symbolmonkeys. Then we had (and still have) healbreakers and renegades.

 

Healbreaker+Renegade has been dragging on for a bit now, but the first half of last year was pretty wild.

[Kuma.1503]

The thing that irks me most isn't that Anet decided to de-powercreep the game. It's how they went about it. If you're going to rip away power, it needs to be done surgically. You need to consider the broader impacts of the changes you're making.

 

Do you want to take away damage on all CC? Fine, but what about skills like Executioner's Scythe, which is supposed to execute targets on low HP? What about heavily telegraphed skills Like Prime Light Beam, which are visually communicated as something that **should** hit hard? It doesn't make sense that a long cooldown elite should have similar impact to your average weapon skill. You could replace it with point blank shot, and it would be a drastic improvement.

 

Then you have other nonsensical nerfs.

 

Why does Grenade Barrage. **The burst skill with the longest cooldown** in the grenade kit, deal less damage than shrapnel grenade? At some point, when you're adjusting numbers, you have to stop and consider:

 

"I know the community asked us to tone down the hard hitters, but if we tone down any further, ithey'll be weaker than the filler skills. Is that good design? Is it intuitive? Is it logical"? If the answer is "no" to all three, that's a bad change.

 

At the end of the day, the only way I can describe the Feb 2020 patch is lazy. Even if the game was in need of a de-power creep, they went about it in all the wrong ways, taking a one size-fits all approach instead of the careful surgical approach that was needed.

 

It would be like if someone said "This table is too tall" and your response was to whack off the legs with a sledgehammer. I believe the patches should be reverted.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Overall boring. Best way I could describe it: It's like that awkward moment in Chess where both people have only their kings left and keep trying for whatever reason until someone gives up or a draw is forced. And Chess is already pretty boring on its own.

 

> @"Ragnar.4257" said:

> I mean..... it's not been the same meta for the last year?

 

On the other hand, this is very true. Its not like it hasn't changed at all like some people would have you believe. Plenty of meta builds have come and gone even through 2020, while some have been staples throughout most of the year.

 

Pretty much like any other year tbh; which, is really only a problem here because we were promised faster balance patches which didn't happen.

And because we were stuck with builds that most people don't find very fun to play or fight against at all.

[Shao.7236]

Outside the recent seasons, I have no complains. The XvX's might have been somewhat frustrating but conquest has been much more bearable and diverse than before the patch where all you would see is Firebrand with it's flavors, Tetherbreaker and Holosmith of all sorts.

 

Now it's just Renegade and Trap Spam, speed rune this, speed rune that, rune of resistance here, rune of resistance there. Rangers have also problematic pets. Finally, some bunker issues like Guardian Scepter spam or Healbreaker that one is not as problematic as Guardian. Stealth spam with Condition is pretty annoying though.

[Avatar.3568]

The meta made with this few patches still a big step, I wouldn't say it's that enjoyable, like pre Feb was, but we are still in the right direction. I tested out many builds since them and there are not that bad, but some classes (Rev, scrapper) and maybe the spirit sword from burn guard, are still opressiv, and some stuff is still questionable for Ranger amd warrior (probably I am just biased)

But compared to beginning, where necros where unkillable super sponges, guards covered the whole nodes with symbols while being tanky af, condi revs pressed just all buttons and where effective and don't forget the beginning of chief, they made slight changes to them bet markable.

 

Would anet give pvp a higher priority we may already have a decent meta, but it's slow and we maybe get some good stuff this year

[Khalisto.5780]

Balance wise i really it's not that really different from before, things get nerfed new stronger things pop up.

 

I'm leaving a negative vote cuz the population has gotten so low and that reflects the community's opinion as a whole

 

Balance wise the 300 icd traits ans 1 dmg cc are the most frustrating things

 

I think the worse things has been bots and hackers and their increasing numbers and how anet can't/doesn't care dealing with them

 

[Fueki.4753]

CC spam

AoE spam

condition spam

so many runaways

 

It just gets worse with each patch.

While the February 2020 patch was a big part of it, that wasn't the start of it.