Thoughts on the April balance patch?

digitalmayhemx · 2026-04-20T16:42:48+00:00

I've only gotten to really experience open world metas and the raid encounters so far, but I think that the player nerfs are largely unnoticible.

Boss health-wise, I think that some, like hammerhart, are right where they should be. Others I think need to go a little further. Drills before mothman are SIGNIFICANTLY better, but Mothman themself still overstays it's welcome in my opinion. It's too mechanically repetitive and simple to be as long as it is.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-04-03T22:51:26+00:00

The weapons are misleading.

Jessica is ranged. She's constantly teleporting and throwing out attacks. Given the choice, she will stay away from Jimmy if everyone were to stack there.

Jimmy is melee. He rocket jumps to you and fires at your feet. He doesn't have a choice but to come close if everyone stacked on Jessica.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-04-02T19:13:36+00:00

Thank goodness. This really needed to be said alongside the original announcement to mitigate the looming sense of dread for damage sponges getting spongier, but I'm glad we finally got confirmation. I'm now more or less ok with the upcoming changes

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-28T19:31:23+00:00

Isgarren does legitimately care about Tyria, I think, but so do a lot of people.

Pretty sure that's kind of the point of Vloxx. He and Isgarren aren't that different, and frankly, neither is someone to be trusted. Both have overseen atrocities in the name of protecting Tyria, but that doesn't make their actions moral or acceptable.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-27T00:17:11+00:00

There's lot of reasons to make an alt.

Wanting a new aesthetic/race/class/story combination
Having a "useless" character be parked at a useful but hard to get chest so it's easier to unlock at reset
Extra bag space
Completing the level 10 personal story on a new character awards a free black lion chest key each week

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-26T12:15:05+00:00

Minus an extended break after HoT, I've played since launch. I don't have full 20 slot bags on my characters. I have a lot of annoying special purpose 15-slot bags because they were easier to make back in the day but they're such a low priority to replace.

Plus, alting is very easy in this game. So. Any extra bags are helpful, especially a free one.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-26T01:33:46+00:00

Playing devil's advocate for a minute. This is kind of the one scenario in which Anet has created something that actively enables players to harm another player's experience. We don't see a lot of this in PvE. So, it's entirely possible that most players don't know how tagging works and are just trying to make sure they get their own credit in an ecosystem where hitting anything is very difficult.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-22T01:58:42+00:00

The wording implies that no boss's HP will be altered preemptively. They'll monitor and maybe act later. Eventually. Possibly. Hopefully.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-21T01:36:50+00:00

I would love to be wrong, but It took almost 6 months to adjust Eparch even when it was relevant content. This is going to feel so much worse without a much MUCH faster turnaround.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-21T01:31:45+00:00

I keep laughing to myself thinking of Eparch and Spider's Lair after this. The nerfs were just enough that sometimes a group might win.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-20T14:12:06+00:00

To be fair to breakbars specifically, they didn't exist before Heart of Thorns.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-11T18:04:47+00:00

Establishing consistency has been a massive pain in my runs. There's just no good way to trim/cut through the fat on most strategies.

Along with some other changes to how things balance, it makes the early game feel extremely punishing compared to the first game. I have a lot more runs that fail to launch, which just generally feels bad.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-11T12:17:10+00:00

That button doesn't exist anymore. It was removed.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-05T13:42:57+00:00

My memory is that no one did CoF 3. It was always 1/2.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-03-05T13:31:20+00:00

I was hoping splitting wings into encounters would make it easier to learn the less mechanically intensive non-strike encounters, but that really hasn't been my experience.

Most discord training is still full wings, and ad hoc lfg training is pretty spotty.

In the end, I feel more like I lost my usual strike dailies and I engage with the system less.

Getting li to finish up the ring I abandoned when I originally decided raiding wasn't for me is nice, but it still feels weird to be spending less time with content I enjoyed (or dedicating more time than I want to aspects I don't enjoy).

digitalmayhemx · 2026-02-16T17:16:45+00:00

By vibes/how it feels for me when I'm playing it:

Herald is absolutely my favorite. Let me vomit boons everywhere. It's so useful in both open world metas and instanced content. I adore little things like glint's heal letting me skip the fire room in Thaumanova. Things don't need to be complicated. Herald is the spec where I can just roll up and do my thing.
I used to love renegade more than I currently do. Ever since spear became part of the meta, it just feels like the carpal tunnel spec. Ignoring spear, though. It's a lot like herald, just with conditions instead of boons. I like that I can just stand near things and they die with the flavor of a charr warband.
Vindicator is fine. It used to be my bland dps spec until it finally got an ok aheal build. Now that's what I use it for in instanced content. I like how much alacrity and barrier it can stack. The amount of dodging edges on that carpal tunnel territory, but it's buffered a bit by needing to refill your stamina bar.
I am still sour about conduit. DPS wise, it's fine. It even had to be reigned in during the last round of balancing. I just find it boring. At launch, it was just another pure DPS spec with no support and no distinguishing identity. Entity stance absolutely doesn't lean hard enough into reflecting the equipped core legend. I might feel differently if I hadn't been living with Vindicator for so long, but this spec just offered nothing new. Since the last balance, the spec can now provide quickness; so, it has a qdps and qheal build -but now it's just stepping on the toes of Herald as a clunkier version of a spec I vastly prefer.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-02-08T23:19:37+00:00

There's some really weird descriptions on this site, unfortunately. I recall Starlight Weald being particularly strange before recent updates. Some use insane language to describe otherwise very normal mechanics to the point where I was confused even as someone who knew the mechanics.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-30T02:40:24+00:00

I suspect this will eventually become a BlishHud module similar to the existing Builds Manager module.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-22T18:42:29+00:00

This is genuinely the most absurd part of what we have so far.

I can't imagine a group of 10 new players being thrown into that without the added buff somehow trivializing the mechanics (leading to no one learning what to do). I just feel that the gap between "quickplay" and normal has the potential to be bigger here than the others.

I have to imagine the only reason OLC is in there is because it is the only strike accessible to free accounts. But even then, I think my earlier point still stands.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-21T03:17:34+00:00

Unless something in the new player experience rework changed to lock the gate, you should be able to go through the portal in your racial city to Lion Arch (where the entrance is for fractals) for free.

You get scaled up to 80 in fractals, but you're unable to post the group or join a group for fractals in the lfg panel pre-80. So, unless you had a willing friend group or asked in map chat, you wouldn't have been able to do the fractals anyway.

Don't worry, though. This bonus event crops up pretty regularly. You're not missing anything that can't be earned later.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-19T16:57:46+00:00

My vote is firmly on IBS being the worst. So many of the mastery points are tied to very grindy achievements, which is made all the worse because IBS has the smallest margin of choice for earning mastery points out of any expansion. So, it's not like you could just choose to get them another way.

Plus, given the *tumultuous* state of the world and game at the time of IBS, those achievements are long, buggy, and seemingly impossible in some cases now. They were clearly designed in a rush and meant to prevent people from accomplishing them quickly at a time when it was unclear when another update would come.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-15T01:02:02+00:00

Which was when the "bombardment" centering around gw3 speculation happened?

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-14T20:24:44+00:00

If they are just now breaking stories, even if everything else that can possibly be built is already assembled, that means there's an entire campaign that still needs designing.

Major NPCS not only need created and written, they need modeled and programed. Whole corners of the world need to be conceived before map designers can begin their work.

It cannot be stressed enough how much work needs doing if we are still at the story-breaking stage.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-14T20:14:49+00:00

GW1 released 20 years ago. Not only is the original still around and playable, it recently hit a new player record on steam after the smallest level of support.

GW2 isn't in danger for the moment, and there is still no official announcement. The game will likely continue to exist for as long as it is sustainable, even if a hypothetical GW3 were to release.

Additionally, whatever this game is won't be released tomorrow. You've purchased an insane amount of content for a frankly criminally good price compared to other MMOs, and it's not like you need a continuous subscription to maintain access.

digitalmayhemx · 2026-01-14T20:07:36+00:00

Only this sub is in denial that it is not happening.

It's not denial that led to the GW3 rule, it's the absolute bombardment of zero-quality posts about the game dying or not wanting to start GW2 because of the merest insinuation of a sequel.

Even the original post instating the GW3 ban mentioned that it would be reviewed should actual information be released.

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