Jestir wrote: »

I understand the meta has been stale for too long

And the meta is... Arcanist, right? So, what will actually change? Fate Realigned + Unbound Potential will enable "always 3 crux" for pure Arcs pushing them closer to meta, and subclassed Arcs will be only a bit weaker. Friendship ended with ARC, now ARC is my best friend.

I'd actually say the meta needs to change a lot more so players get rid of this "meta" idea altogether. We need diversity and not meta-chasing.

I am happy with the combat changes. HA builds are getting nerfed, so people are being nudged to play two-bar builds to do decent damage. Velothi is getting nerfed, so people have to do light attack weaving again. I just hope they make more changes so we get difficult rotations back for each class to master.

I just feel like we are going back to what was a few years ago wear every update something is significantly changed/nerfed and invalidating the time people spent trying to get the thing/build

I just remember being so incredibly frustrated when I was more casual and every time I tried to build towards something it got gutted

I dont care about new things coming out and being better, just don't go back to actively taking things people worked for "away" from them like this game did almost every single patch


ESPECIALLY when it leads to a fight of old info vs new info when this game might be legitimately the worst MMO when it comes to bad info being spread

Jestir wrote: »

The game has always had this as an issue, horizontal progression and all, but it's now worse than ever

I understand the meta has been stale for too long but I personally have no interest in this game if this is how it will be going forward

Disagree. Meta will always shift as you balance all classes to approach an equilibrium, unless all classes literally use the exact same abilities with the exact same numbers.

This is normal, especially for an MMO.

What matters is are the differences in power between the classes, regardless of which one is meta, becoming less over time, or greater. That one requires data and statistical analysis, not the subject experience of a handful of vocal players.

I trust the Dev team knows what they're doing, and will continue to fine tune the values.

My hope is when the class changes are done, the difference between them all will not be as extreme as they are now and the meta will only be slightly better. That way you can run off-meta and still be fine and accepted into groups. Then further changes should just be slight tweaks to the different classes and not wholesale changes that wreck them.

HA and Velothi should not be heavily nerfed because some of us are unable to light attack due to age and overuse, mainly due to trying to light attack for ten years. We aren’t just lazy.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

MMO players thrive on the chase, it’s good the combat team is doing this. The next 1.5 years are the most exciting the game has been, it harks back to the old days of ESO where discovering new builds was a common occurrence every patch.

You may find it exciting, but you do not speak for everyone.

Most players I know are tired of it. They have to chase the gear, get used to the new set up etc and then it all changes again. It makes trying to get groups together to learn vet trials & hopefully progress utterly dismal, which in turn pushed people away from the game.

And just seen rumours that velothi & ansuuls going to be changed. Ffs.

Stop tinkering. It’s frustrating and tedious.

What?

The game has been frozen in amber basically since Arcanist came out as a class three or four years ago. Entire years would go by with basically zero combat changes. So I have legitimately no idea what you are talking about.

Three or four years ago, in June 2023 right?

Not surprised that you struggle to comprehend others if three or four years have passed for you since Arcanist was released, you abide by a completely different ruleset to the rest of us when it comes to physics!

Just jesting, I understand that for some players it may feel like it has been forever since things have been dramatically shaken up.

Gold mats are cheap enough to be considered disposable now, at least.

Remember back in the day the game would be at a point where we had a huge variety of playstyles all viable and now its just oh DK build or Storm/animal/assassin or acuity+rally+mono build

Stamsorc - dizzy burst setup, or dw dot aoe setup
Magsorc - shieldsorc, overload burst, pets

stamplar - rollplar, dotplar, or potl burst
magplar - darkflare, block and burn, dotplar

stamblade - rollerblade, bowblade, 2h oneshot, bashblade
magblade - sap tank, invis speed burst, sustained range dots, vampdive

Magdk - Vamp brawler, double s&b, CCking, dotdk, defiledk
stamdk - dotdk, 2h brawler

stamden - 2h burst, reverb turn and burn, bleedden
Magden - offhealer, debuffer, frostden

I mean there was a time when all of these existed at once and were different playstyles being played. Now the game and combat is so homogenized into only one playstyle. IMO it really started going downhill after the elsweyr weapon skills reworks. S&B lost its damage playstyles entirely, dizzy became a generic spammable, dual wield fell out of favor, etc

EDIT: To add at the same time youd have like 10+ viable WD or max stat sets which built and played differently with skills and could be stronger or weaker on any given class.

I'm writing this because I'm disappointed that the HA playstyle is being nerfed again. I do agree that the Arcanist-focused meta should be shaken up, but not at the expense of people's time to grind out the requisite gear sets.

Moves like this are pretty confusing and frustrating. It feels like they introduce playstyles, enhance them with skill changes and gear sets, only to change it on us. We've seen this with frost, poison, heavy attack (multiple times), bashing, vampire, bleed builds - the list goes on. Some of these builds and playstyle are key to accessibility.

Furthermore, we have gear sets that've been a standard for several years and it's all of a sudden it's an issue. We're being told these sets didn't have the intended functionality and that's being addressed now. Seeing sets built in ways other than how they're intended to be built is confusing.

The combat team really needs to appreciate getting builds together takes a lot of effort. Now people have to go and find new options. Meanwhile, I can log into GW2 8 years later and my gear is still valid.

So, I have some questions for the devs.
Those questions aside, we haven't had frequent combat changes in a few years. Pre-U35, sure, it was pretty frequent and much more discouraging. They slowed their pace after that. Even with a slower pace, we're still not seeing them articulate their combat visions outside of the class rework.

It's really only little snippets of developer commentary once they've committed to changing people's playstyles again. I'm sorry, but that's absolutely not enough communication. Not for how much effort people put into gearing up and making their builds. It's the core gameplay experience, and should be given the same, if not more, screen time and fan fare as things like Tomes and new zones.

Communication around combat balance is the single biggest area for improvement for them. If SkinnyCheeks can go on hours-long streams and do some amazing analyses, there's no reason ZOS can't do the same. If anything, they should get on stream with him, and demonstrate that they can articulate the combat system as well as he can. Given the history of combat changes, you'd think ZOS would be absolutely eager to do that.

Even games like Pokémon undergo battle balancing adjustments from time to time, let alone MMO RPGs. Any changes developers make that benefit the environment deserve praise and encouragement. If you don't want to accept this, you can try playing Snake on your Nokia 3310.

Never in the history of the game have there been meta shifts every 1.5 months. Major patches only happen every 3 months, and not all of those patches even have balance changes.

Only times you see "meta shifts" that often is when an item set or some specific build is being exploited to reach ridiculous numbers.

And if the meta can "shift" with a single change to a single item or ability... then was it even a healthy meta to begin with?

Absolutely looking forward to the destruction of the Arcanist meta. It would be even better if they simply removed Subclassing but this is a good start. 3 years of the beam... it feels like 20. Hopefully everyone who does not like this change will remember everyone who quit the game over it and everyone who stayed and forcefully lost their characters for years because of it. This meta needed to go for a long time. Way way overdue. It never should have been allowed in the first place.

Some of the class mastery passives look appealing, but I am not sure its going to be enough for them to compete very well for end game and leaderboards.

Having mentioned those items, why are we now nerfing Empower? You already ruined heavy attack builds to force us into the Arcanist beam! Its been years already! And then poured gasoline on the fire with Subclass! Now we are supposed to make them even worse? We need MORE effective playstyles! Please, do NOT nerf Empower/HA builds! This is a terrible mistake! You should be restoring their ranged cleave! Or, take it off of the Arcanist too then. It is not fair in any way nothing else can cleave like that!

I'm waiting for magplar jabby jabs to be fun again. I don't have high hopes though.