Here is my biggest gripe with all this. ZoS claims that there combat is fast paced and exciting. Yet every time you need to stop your offense to wind up a heavy attack you are pausing and slowing your combat down.

I agree, I too was super excited to hear we were removing cost reduction and moving towards balancing resources in keeping our rotations moving. I was super excited to have sustain skills become more integral, to have to keep 100% uptime on Siphoning attacks, instead of casting once I hit 30% or lower mag. I was excited to incorporate equilibrium into my build as a high risk high reward situational skill that could be used in safe moments to get ahead of the fight, and maybe buy me some slack in the next five to ten seconds of the fight of micro managing resources. I was excited to up the challenge by being punished on missing shards or orbs, and maybe seeing new synergies brought in and maybe old ones buffed. I pictured ZoS nerfing passive resource return into the ground as it should be and buffing up ACTIVE class defining skills and group building and teamwork requiring synergies. This would go a long way to make combat more ENGAGING, FUN, and EXCITING. Also dare I say it, fast paced and active, maybe having to dodge out to grab an orb, reposition to hit that shard, anything to better immerse me into the combat and feel more connected and involved in the flow of the fight, making more important critical, must hit decisions and compromises.

Removing group sustain tools, nerfing class abilities, this is so profoundly the wrong way to go. Putting cost reduction on my jewelery.... That does nothing for my actively playing and immersing in combat... Stopping and losing all momentum to heavy attack, again does nothing to make the combat more active, engaging, or immersive. There is something fundamentally wrong with how this whole anti sustain thing was implemented and that is the fact that none of these changes will make combat more "fun" "engaging" "action oriented" "fast paced" "twitch based" or any rediculous buzz word you feel like inserting. I'm sorry, but the more I look at it the more I hear the more I realize how *** godawful this patch really is and it is irritating as hell to see this screwed up at the most basic and fundamental of levels... For God sake, no one gives a *** about parses or what numbers they're putting up or class balance, or equality, or any of that *** if the combat isn't FUN. Seriously, go back to the drawing board postpone this expansion and come back to us when you've learned the very basics of what an action based combat oriented teamwork intensive rpg is supposed to be because this isn't it.