Lhiash.4910

I'm really surprised nobody mentioned that thieves now have shadow portal skill, which doesn't show as skill effect like the mesmer's portal does and is pretty much invisible when placed on the ground. So one perma-stealth thief inside a keep/tower is almost a guarantee it will be able to port people inside and makes defending objectives impossible. Since now you can swap builds/equipment with one button nothing stops the thief from switching to pure tank build and be impossible to hunt down unless you bring 10+ people.

I would be okay with DB being only allowed to exist inside an objective, so if you walk out of keep/tower with it in hand it despawns. It would have a niche use as defender's tool, it won't be possible to stack them in a zerg and it would make defending stuff easier.

Very good move with restoring the 5th tier, it was no fun waiting in queue for 40 minutes to get 15 man guild on one border, then having a dc and be forced to wait again. Finally there will be chances to find a map with no omniblob karma training stuff and looking for "fights".

What about the nerfs to reaper? Mostly I meant the stability nerfs which already is very low on reaper and cutting it even lower will make the class even more unplayable. Since it already is already almost never seen class in WvW and more than nerfs it needs buffs so it might be a viable alternative to scourge at least in some cases.

No nerfs to perma stealth DE? They still can port people after easily hiding in keeps, really adding portal to thief was the worst design decision you guys made.

I agree that most of the outlined problems are also plaguing the WvW small scale fights, but I wouldn't say that "only few players play large scale". In general I would love for most of the PvP oriented changes to be implemented in WvW, maybe it will revive the dying roaming scene.

I have a suggestion that might help with the "Character Gear Loadouts interacting with Legendary Gear" issue: make all the achievements for acquiring legendary gear provide extra Character Gear Loadout slot, it could be balanced so for example 2 or 3 legendary weapons award 1 and similarly for armor pieces.

I can't believe you are going with the sand savant changes, scourge is already way too powerful in WvW and this is direct buff in pretty much all situations. Sigh I guess it means we need to get back to running 2-3 scourges per party. All this with core necro and reaper still being almost useless in any larger fights.

I would add that even without the mount soulbeast could dance around the full melee warrior and troll it forever. Any competent thief should be able to do it easily as well. The mount isn't really the issue here.

I would like to suggest a huge and revolutionary change - total rework of invulnerability skills. Invuln in WvW is the most OP defense, regardless if it is full invuln, warrior's endure pain style 0 dmg or mesmer's/thief's evade spam. The biggest issue with being invuln is that it scales infinitely, you can tank 1 or 100 people without any difference, because you simply cannot die for the duration of the skill. Another is there is basically no counterplay, blocking another defensive skill can be worked around with unblockable skills, but there is no way to go through invulns.The suggestion would be to replace all the skills that grant invulnerability with ones that grant barrier, it would still make you survive a lot of pressure but you couldn't just walk into danger without any thought and ignore all pressure.

There is one thing that I don't see mentioned anywhere, it wasn't mentioned on stream and it isn't mentioned here - the warclaw fixes and improvements. In WvW all the exploits using the dismount warclaw jump are still possible. The promised "dismount enemy and self" warclaw skill seems to be forgotten.

Would your gameplay change as a result? Further nerfs to Scourge will only make it more annoying to play, it already is quite uninteresting spec to run, that I only play because our 15-20 man guild group requires it. Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game? Yes it will improve the state of the game. Are you looking forward to these potential changes? Yes. What are your concerns with this set of changes? They are not touching more stuff that is broken right now in WvW, there are so many builds and skills that are overpowered it would take too long to list them all. Another issue is that for some classes like mesmer and necromancer it is only taking stuff away without any compensation to less used skills or traits. What consequences do you expect would come from these changes? Changes to group compositions, warriors being even more OP, mesmers seeing even less play, less close to 10k long range shot hits from 1500 range, other than that current state of balance will remain almost the same.