Skill Update Speculation

Wow, I must be playing a different game.

I never use SY or AOTH or AP. Yeah, I know them, just never saw them as necessary. I've never found any content (including all variations of Hard Mode) that even remotely required spamming SY constantly.

Weird.

PvP Changes

Most of my XP is in "non PvP-PvP"(AB,JQ,RA,FA). I use to "Press B" alot just to see how the PvP meta is evolving. As anything GvG or HA related is bound to effect the PvP I like to do. Only problem is, I dont think the PvP meta game is evolving at all. It seems pretty stagnant. I see the same cookie cutter builds all the time. My suggestion(i cant wait for the QQs), is to shake up the PvP meta. Make the current meta obsolete or at least add a larger variety viable builds. I have a gut feeling ANet will try to do the latter, and bring in more build options to GvG. When will they do this? not anytime soon.

Hexway, its not like its something new. Personally, I feel buffing anti-hex skills would be a more dynamic solution vs. nerfs. Excuse me, let me put my hater blockers on. Okay, go ahead.

PvE Changes

AoHM is the culprit, not scythes. If Anet is really listening to its players, they will tie AoHM to Mysticism/Dervs. That change alone would make only Sins slightly better with a scythe Vs a AoHM Derv. From there it would only take a few well thought out Dervish buffs to put him on top as the best scythe user. Easiest solution ever. Also, get rid of the Holy dmg conversion. This would allow players the option of going physical or Holy support. Again, really easy fix.

Another change I think we might see are Avatar buffs. Mostly in the form of utility. ie Lyssa provides interrupts, Balthazaar gives AP or KDs, etc.

I'm skeptical about Dervish enchantment buffs. Even though they could use some, it runs the risk of being either way OP or still totally useless.

Mysticism, its the most worthless Primary attribute in the game. I think this will change as well.

Other predictions:

600/smite, uh... I mean Shadow Form and ER Eles will remain untouched, even though Anet is against invincibuilds.

SoS spirit spammers will remain the best and easiest solo farmers ever made. Give me a 4 year old and a red bull, and ill get you a stack of ectos before the nights over.

We might see a decent Paragon skill update sometime after 6 months.

Smite monk buff, I doubt I will be around to see it.

Elementalists and Rangers will lag behind the power creep untill GW2 comes out.

Coming from Ensign, a "personal list" is probably pretty damn close to the truth. And the majority of PvE builds nowadays take next to no skill to play, especially the ones that are at the top right now (daggers, scythes). And the best build of a class is what that class is generally defined as. Sins are at the top because they have the best builds overall. It's not that difficult.

No, he explained why he ranked them that. There isn't anything a Ranger can do that other classes don't do better. Sure, they can do scythes, but Dervs, Warriors, and Wars can do much better with them. And "Couldn't play them on a decent level..." El oh el.

It's partly subjective, yes. And Ensign even said that it was his personal list. And PvE classes are far from complex; sure, there's lots of roles you can play, but at the moment there are very clearly builds that are superior to everything else that class can play (Ele is the best example of this).

Did you even read Ensign's post earlier? He already said that Dervs are outclassed by the other melee professions, but they're still way ahead of all the other professions. And FC was always way more useful than Mysticism, there's no comparison. The main problem was that Mesmers didn't have very much OP stuff to work with until PI and Panic, among other things, got buffed.


Just one thing to note - If Sins and Wars can't use AoHM, it'll put them waaay below Dervs. It's more than a 50% actual damage increase, even at modest rank. Plus, Dervs would have an open secondary, which would pretty much deem Crit Scythe completely obsolete. That would probably reorder the top 3 as Derv; Sin; War. Whether that would be a good thing or not is up for decision.

So, you admit that the dervish has nothing useful it can offer to any given party in PvE, and yet you think that it isn't a problem?

I bring up DPS in relation to the dervish because as a melee class, that is it's job (with the secondary responsibility of abusing SY). If it cannot do it's job as effectively as the competition, it will be sidelined.

In terms of melee damage, yes, the dervish is the third most powerful class in the game. We all know that. However, I think you're forgetting that there is more to this game than that. There's ranged damage and healing and minions and protection and stuff. None of these things are done well by the dervish either.

Even rangers can offer the party something that no one else can. Every class should be able to do that.

You are misunderstanding me. As an example, I wouldn't nerf SY. It is necessary to give paragons something worth doing in this game.

I don't want to antagonize you, but to help you understand what I'm saying, let's take your last sentence to it's logical conclusion. If all PvE skills were nerfed (which again, I do not want to do), would that prevent you from using them, any more than those skills currently prevent you from using underpowered skills now? No. It's the exact same thing. You don't want them to be nerfed because it would make your characters less effective. Well, what if some (not necessarily all, but some) of those same skills were making other people's characters less effective? There are some skills out there that do to other people exactly what you don't want happening to you.

I see your profession is Necromancer. So, let's say that tomorrow necros get nerfed in such a way that Ritualists suddenly become better with MoP, Orders, Minions, and everything else the necromancer is supposed to do. You wouldn't like that very much, would you? I know I wouldn't (I'd have to start campaigning on behalf of necromancers like I infamously do with the dervish!).

Fortunately, that's not likely to happen. But for Elementalists, this is a daily reality. Ritualists and Necromancers and Mesmers are all out there outdoing them at their job. The only thing keeping Elementalists from being sidelined even more than dervishes are is the fact that they happen to have an elite skill which allows them to spam infuse health and prots or Orders (for this reason, as overpowered as ER is right now, I would not want to nerf it; it's a necessary evil, as many overpowered skills in this game are).

Some skills that are overpowered are acceptable, because they do not make other classes less effective at their jobs by comparison. In fact, some classes depend on PvE skills just to remain relevant (I once again point to the Paragon as an example of this). But then there are others such as the old Ursan, which leave other classes out in the cold by rendering them obsolete. These are the skills that are bad and need to be nerfed.

The Dervish doesn't have anything *special* to offer. They still have something useful, it's just not unique. They still have retarded DPS, and if Sins and Warriors didn't exist they would be by far the best prof in the game. As is, they aren't the best at anything, but they're still good enough that other professions deserve a buff more than they do.

You still need damage. And Dervs provide lots of it. Sure, if you're trying to be totally optimal, you wouldn't want to take a Derv, but besides in farming groups (which isn't in discussion at this point) that doesn't really matter. On the other hand, Ele's and Ranger have next to no place in groups whatsoever, because they're pretty much bad at everything (with the exception or ER, but almost no one I have seen actually plays that).

Such as? Daze? Pets? Sure, there's some stuff they can do, but it's either done better by others, or just plain not needed.

No, I'm admitting they have no specialized task they excel at. They can still push a massive amount of DPS, far in excess of any caster, which is why your constant crying about damage is flat out wrong. Just because they are a redundant profession, and they are, does not automatically make them bad. The ability to spam SY! doesn't count as protection? It's easily in the top 3 for most overpowered skills in the entire game.

Do you honestly think normal PvE play is going to require 12+ Beast Mastery or Wilderness Survival for anything? Rangers are at the bottom by a wide margin, they are absolutely horrible.

For one example of what a ranger can do that no one else can (and there are admittedly precious few examples), they can provide ranged physical AoE while spamming SY. The only other class combo that can do that is the warrior, and they aren't as good at it.

My definition of the word "useful" in that context was likely the same as your definition of "special" in this context. I apologize for not being more clear.

Melee damage is not what casters do.

By your own admission, there is nothing a dervish can contribute to a party that something else cannot do better. Take my ranger example from above. With just one (not even good) build, the ranger is a more "useful" class than the dervish is.

Let's say you've got a dervish and a WE scythe warrior in an outpost, with a 7/8 party ready. Assuming the same equipment and identical players, the warrior will be chosen 100% of the time. There's not even a debate. If there were one it would be:

Warrior: I can do everything he can do, but better
Dervish: I can...uh...make it ever so slightly slower?

There is no situation in which you would ever want to use the dervish over the warrior, so it's effective usefulness as a class is 0.

Now let's say that instead of a dervish, there's a ranger there with the build I described above. Once again, identical players and equivalent equipment. Now it's:

Warrior: I can hit up to 3 targets at once and do massive damage.
Ranger: I may not do anywhere near as much damage, but I can hit more targets and at a distance.

Chances are, the warrior is going to be chosen anyway. But at least the ranger had something he could theoretically have contributed that the warrior could not. So his usefulness as a class is more like 0.1.

That's still a lot better than 0.

If there's never any situation in which a class is worth using, then it doesn't matter how "powerful" it is; worthless is worthless.

As another example, let's say you're a soldier and you have an M-16. Which is more useful to you after that, a knife or a flintlock musket?

The knife. While it may not be a better weapon for killing your enemy than the flintlock musket, it is at least useful for other things (such as for cutting things or as a survival tool). A flintlock musket, on the other hand, is worthless to anyone who has an M-16.

The dervish is that flintlock musket. While it may technically be more "powerful" than many other classes, it's still much worse off than they are.

Of course, none of this addresses the fact that the very assertion that the dervish is "more powerful" than most classes in the game makes no sense, because comparing melee damage (what dervishes do) to caster damage and healing and damage mitigation (what most of the classes in the game do) is like comparing apples to oranges and bananas and dump trucks. They are not interchangeable. Really, the only classes that the dervish can be objectively compared to are those that do the same thing it does: melee damage, just like how you can't objectively compare a healing monk to an SS necromancer.

Wel can't argue with that. But I still don't think nerfing PvE skills will bring the solution in this matter. Might be better like they tried before with the water magic skills.
To buff or change some Ele skills in the way that they getting superb in combination with energy storage skills, So they are only effective used by a Ele.

But yea, this is gonna be a never ending story. And I do respect everybody;s opinion, So keep on the good work

Trust me, I get it, I know that Dervishes are boring and have a terrible primary attribute, terrible energy that makes you unable to use terrible skills. I would not want to play a Dervish because there's nothing to them and I can't imagine it's fun.

However, you do get 16 Scythe Mastery, and you get to put up AoHM to multiply damage by 70%, and then Asura Scan for another 70%, and then you mash your face on the keyboard to autoattack for 100 damage, hitting 3 targets, with buffs multiplying and charging adrenaline like crazy and all that. Yeah, you're 3 PvE skills and a scythe, and it rolls over everything.

I'd love for the class to be more than 3 PvE skills and a scythe, that would make it a lot more fun, deep and interesting; but the fact is those 3 PvE skills are ridiculous, you have the best weapon, and anything that can't utilize those doesn't come close.

Linking AoHM to Mysticism would at least make this the province of the Dervish alone, so they'd have a unique role, even if they still were shallow and boring.


I love the Mesmer skill set. Unfortunately, it's inferior to the PvE skill set, which dominates the power discussion. Sure, you can run Panic, but then you aren't refreshing your PvE skills every 5 seconds. Every caster that isn't pooping as fast as he can is refreshing his PvE skills with AP. What their own skill kit is barely matters; you'll only use one, maybe two class skills. Necros use Mark of Pain, Assassin, then AP and shoutspike when the MoP has outlived his usefulness. Eles drop an Eruption or start a target and debuff with cracked armor, then AP and shoutspike, powered by GLE. Mesmers have a deeper toolkit for that, but their energy doesn't hold up.

Now if you removed PvE skills (as with heroes) then Mesmers are far and away the best caster (sans poopers), but the game does have PvE skills, and the dominant ones, well, dominate.


Rangers, well, you have like a dozen good skills. They're deep and interesting, very flexible, and are the canary in the coal mine in PvP - when they go, the format is about to get bad. But in PvE, those skills are, well...DShot is not Panic, Natural Stride is not Shadow Form, and Barrage let's you pretend you have a slow attacking scythe without AoHM. There are hideously broken skills that do everything the Ranger does a whole lot better. You have nothing to abuse, and can't even cast Heal Party like a Monk can.


Monks should be very grateful that there isn't a broken PvE party heal or they'd be relegated to whatever it is you farm with Prot gimmicks these days.

@reaper, my apologies if I took anything out of context, but I think I got the heart of the subject matter.

From an attack skill spamming perspective, Its a closer match than it would appear. Even w/o AoHM a scythe sin will hit criticals almost every time. Thats roughly 41% increase in damage. Plus an easily maintainable 33% IAS and the ability to use WS/RS as an elite. The Dervish can only attack skill spam with ZV, leaving no room for a IAS(w/o penalties or booze) or Elite. As it stands now, a sin can still roughly do as much damage as a Dervish w/o AoHM(test it yourself). Either way, it would be a simple solution to make the Dervish the best with his native weapon.

There is a reason why Critical Agility and "TNTF!" are class specific. AoHM should be no exception.

Ideally, the PvP metagame should shift due to players constantly evolving counters, and then counters to counters and so on. Unfortunately this doesn't happen either because of a lack of an understanding of how to counter certain builds by the pvp community, or the current builds are just so powerful there really is no viable counter to them. My money is on the latter.

Because of that, I will agree that A.Net should shake up the meta, but not in the way I think you are hinting at. I don't know because you don't go right out and say it, but I think you are hoping they would buff certain skills to allow them to see play and hope for more diversification. This does not work and has been proven through the history of guild wars.

The number one issue is that of the power creep. This doesn't just include skills that are currently meta. It includes a lot of skills. Even skills that see absolutely no use right now are still overpowered. They just aren't as overpowered as what is currently being used. Because we are at a stage with so many overpowered skills, you don't see diversification. You see guilds running whatever the most overpowered build is that takes the least amount of effort to use. You nerf what we currently have, they move to the next best option. You buff currently unused skills, they either stay put because the current is still better, or they switch to the new easy-mode build and the current build is abandoned.

So the logical move is to nerf what is in use now, and then let the players find the next best alternative. Then nerf that, and so on and so on. Eventually (depending on how effective the nerfs and how large the updates and how frequent) the power creep can be reduced to the point where individual skill plays a much larger role in getting the most out of your build. Basically, the game needs to get to a point where you can't be as affective as possible (with slight deviations) just by using the skills on your bar.

That is how you see diversification. Because players are better at doing certain things, they can begin to create builds around individual player skill rather than just a bundle of overpowered skills on a bar and you being effective by pushing a button while eating ice cream. Some players would be better at performing split tactics, others spikes, others pressure and shut down, etc.

Right now any team can take the most powerful build and be affective with it, because of how forgiving the skills them self are. If that can be eliminated, players would be forced to play things that best fit their abilities.

Honestly, I doubt it's possible to do in the current stage of Guild Wars. There are just too many overpowered skills floating around out there. And given A.Nets update history and lack of updates currently, it would probably take 20 years before seeing an effect.

Now for what really happens...

Random PuG teams are going to take the War in your scenario and make him run Defy Pain or /kick. Outside of Phys teams nobody gives a shit about WE, they do however love some 100b. A lot of it too is habitual frontline selection along with how common Wars were historically and still are today. So your group can either take one of the many Wars hanging around or gamble that the random Derv in the outpost is going to run something besides Avatar of Balthazar. That says nothing for whether or not that Dervish will even have the skills available to run ZV/SY!.

Nobody is going to take a Ranger for anything, ever, unless they just don't care about party composition and want some randomway. Ranged damage doesn't even factor into it.

You're using bad logic. Sure, in that very specific situation you'd pick a Warrior over a dervish, but in situations where the warrior is worse than the derv or the is no warrior at all, the derv becomes far more desirable, and you'd probably pick him over a caster over something. A ranger on the other hand, is semi-versatile, but is crappy at all of it, so you'd never pick him.

Here's a better example:
A dervish and some casters are sitting in a mission. You gladly take the dervish because he can deal craploads of damage easily and quickly, and can still pump SY just as well as anyone. You don't care that he might be worse than Wars or Sins, because Wars and Sins aren't around currently.

On the other hand:
A ranger and some casters are sitting in a mission. You take a caster, because rangers are just plain godawful. You don't care that he's better at using a bow than anybody, because bows are absolutely terrible in PvE.

A third situation:
A ranger an dervish are sitting in a mission, and no one else. You take the Dervish, because they actually do something, rather than firing the equivelent of 6 foam pellets at monsters (a.k.a. Barrage).

Here's another example:
You don't have ANYTHING, and you've got access to a taser (the Derv) and a bow and arrow (the Ranger). You pick the taser because, even though it's not as deadly as guns and stuff, you don't have access to any guns! You don't pick the bow because while it does have a niche role of being ranged, it's so ineffective compared to the technology power creep of the taser that it's not worth taking no matter what.

In other words, if I had to pick between ANYONE and a ranger to team with, I would pick anyone but the ranger. If I had to pick between anyone and a dervish, I'd only not pick the dervish if there was a good warrior or good sin around, which is somewhat likely not to happen, considering how dead GW is at this point.

I dont have enough GvG xp to say exactly what should be changed. But, I do know enough that the meta should change every so often. And that nerfing everything is never the answer. Just like Buffing everything is never the answer. Like PvE, its always a careful balance of Nerfs and Buffs that make the best updates and improve balance. As to how it should change, ill leave that to the GvG community.

Hmmm, face-rolling.
Yeah I guess face-rolling will get nerfed.

lol jk

The GvG meta changes whether Anet updates skills or not. Sure, builds like Balanced stay pretty similar over time, but things still change.

Hexes have been meta for quite a while now, though.

Um..... Wut?

monks are in serious demand for buffing, specially with all this hex-mania everywhere. Even if I bring veil + hex breaker i'll still be screwed by VoR spammers + the massive caster-hate with psychic instability. Hell, once I went HA against a team with 2 copies of Shame and Diversion. I couldn't do anything but wand people to death.

also necros are in a huge demand for viable elites for PvE. SS, discord and aura of the lich are the only elites worth bringing

air magic need some serious buffing, same goes to dervishes, specially when it comes to energy management

Funny... oh wait, you were serious...?!

Necromancers have tremendous versatility...

Plenty of average necro bars....

1.OoU Minion Master
2. Minion Bomber support
3.AotL Lazy Minion Master
4.Mark of Pain Nuker
5. Spiteful Spirit+7 randomskills nuker
6. Icy Veins cold nuker
7. Discord *If you insist*
8.MELEEMANCER?!?!

Also, it's Water that needs help the most... Air is fine. As fine as elemental damage goes.

What have I missed?

Sure, an Ele's Air/Lightning Dmg is good, unless you compare it to a Rt's ability to do Lightning Dmg.

Wow, you didn't get his point at all (not to mention the horrific analogy you used). The only thing I could agree with was the fact that rangers are god awful.

I'm not going to waste time writing something that was already said ad nauseam so I'll just quote it:

There's a point where straight damage outstrips pretty much all utility. GW is just about at that point in PvE. Things die fast enough that you can get a lot of "utility" just by killing everything before they can do much of anything. That, combined with SY, is what puts melees so far ahead of casters in general. Like I said, I'd usually rather have a good Derv in my party than a good caster, unless I already had 2 or more melees in he party.

Just as an extremely exaggerated example, if melees could deal 1000DPS, and utilities could perma-lock a mob for 10 seconds, you'd want to pick the melee over the utility simply because the melee kills a lot faster, and the vast majority of enemy mobs don't have the utility to shut down their rediculous DPS. Sure, the utility would work, and you could bring some slower DPS and still kill pretty safely, but it would take longer for little benefit. And considering how PvE is focused on doing things in the fastest way possible, that utility would be thrown out the window in favor of pure, massive DPS.

But my original point was, dervishes, while not the best profession, can at least do SOMETHING. But rangers are inferior in every aspect. That's what I'm trying to get Reaper to understand. Sure, dervishes could use a buff, but the game would be more balanced overall if Ele's or rangers were buffed instead. If my comparisons were bad, sorry, I was in a hurry, and I was just trying to make a point.

It's very easy to compare melee and caster damage actually. You just look at the DPS. Melee has it, casters don't, even the AP abusing kind.

The ONLY thing casters have business doing besides defense/heals (direct or indirect, i.e. panic, minions, spirits), is buffing melee further. If they have room left on their bar after doing that to their best ability, they can add some damage. Otherwise you're just wasting resources. It's also very easy to take too much "utility/defense" when you should just be adding more melee to your party. Melee rangers, melee eles, it doesn't matter if they suck compared to warriors and what not, it's better than their own alternatives.

H/H notoriously suck at melee movement and positioning, which forces you into more caster damage than you like. In general you should always be playing the melee role here, as heroes can adequately handle the rest. If your class makes you unwilling to frontline with a melee weapon then it's strictly inferior for H/H.

Alot of characters are thus FAR WORSE than dervishes, but people play by some fiction like casters are supposed to cast, or that classes should stick to their best role, even when that role isn't needed in the given situation or party. It's that fiction that makes dervs look bad, and unpopular with pugs, but it's extremely arbitrary.

I still wonder what game y'all are playing.

Sure, I can see the numbers, but they don;t matter. Really, you can finish the PvE game, hard mode and all, EASILY, without any PvE skills, AP, or whatever.

If you're having fun, wonderful. But making such absolute statements is just... silly. It's like saying someone shouldn't drive a car unless it helps the fastest cars on the road get faster. Do you only own a Bugatti or Ferrari?

Since when were classes rated based on how well they perform with h/h? In a balanced setup every class should have a role, and for most classes the main purpose is not to deal dmg. If you play pve wanting to deal as much dmg as possible you should obviously pick a physical character. There's nothing unbalanced or unfair about this, it's exactly the same way it works in pvp. The physicals deal the dmg while the rest of the team(the majority!) is devoted to letting the physical(s) do their job or to prevent the enemy physical dmg from killing their own team.

There are limits to how many physicals you can run in pve too, if you take away ER healers, SYs spam and the monster's dumb AI.

There are far bigger problems in the game than rangers and dervs not getting playtime in pve. I'm betting my life that 99% have more than one charater anyway, it's not like a big hurdle to pve. Just play one of your other characters that's not a ranger, or if you still insist to feel your ranger to be powerful again try some pvp.

Can we please start channeling anet's attention and limited resources to the areas of the game that need it the most?

Well played PI mes can keep a balled group of mobs 4 out of 6 seconds on the ground, just sayin'.

Damage is the last thing dervish needs. And you said it right although with with a dry sense of sarcasm thrown in. I played it and I felt it is fine except it lacks fluidity in executing its role as damage dealer, that's all. On the contrary, I felt scythes should be toned alot across all professions, and more efforts should be focused on making dervish enchantments relevant to their roles and not some random PbAOE damage mixed in with some conditions. If Anet cannot draw a clear line on what roles can a dervish perform in the party, I'd rather they postpone the update.

Fun is subjective. I don't understand why people love playing Warriors, Assassins, Necromancers, or Monks. I find them boring, tedious, and just plain not very fun most of the time.

There are only so many unique roles available to melee. We've got the flexible fighter (warrior), the glass cannon (assassin, though no one plays them that way, thank you Critical Agility), and the AoE meleemancer (dervish, though most enchantments other than AoHM aren't worth using). Tie AoHM to Mysticism, and suddenly 'sins with scythes aren't as superior as they supposedly are (having played my 'sin with a scythe, it sure as hell doesn't feel superior, but I'll go with it). Do something to Mysticism so it doesn't act as a half-assed Soul Reaping and is actually worthwhile. Change the enchantments available so that they're actually worth using. Make them instant cast, lower the durations, make it actually worth removing them, give more options of doing so...

Well my impression of what makes a dervish class an unique melee class when they were introduced is their ability to deal AoE damage. And what makes dervishes suck is that that unique ability is tied to the scythe that any class can use. The AoE melee property is also terrible since its radius is "adjacent to foes," which is very small. And looking at their attack skills, the Dervishes are very good at putting out conditions(wounding strike) I think it will be nice to play more into condition pressure with the dervishes instead of buffing damage on skills.

Anyways to another topic, Flash Enchantments prediction. Based on its name, that means the enchantments will be instant cast and based on this, I can predict that there will be some broken dervish secondaries running around. Anyways if they introduce this concept, it doesnt really help the dervish class as a primary, or maybe their goal is to make dervishes into a powerful secondary class. lawl

Exactly. I have been running hybrid builds since heroes were added to the game. It seemed obvious to take Dunkoro and Tahlkora and add some mesmer interrupt/energy gain skills to their bars after the first few times playing them.

Over the years I have fine tuned them both into protection/healing/damage machines that work very well. Nerfing Discord will not fix the perceived 'problem' because people will find something else. Then what? Nerf everything till nothing works well at all?

I personally do not consider such builds over powered. I consider them exactly what good players SHOULD come up with for their heroes. The fact that they have become common knowledge is also a good thing in my opinion. This makes the game MORE accessible to new players not less.

As to the OP. Dervish updates are needed because the mechanism behind the dervish is flawed. I am not sure how they can fix that but I have hopes that they will.

I think fun in games is like music. Not everything works with everyone, but there are some tunes that most people like.

After the changes they made to ritualists, mesmers and hammer warriors I played a lot again with them, even though I barely used them before.
Ritualsits where too slow for PvE. mesmers too single-target centered and warriors... well... you didn't see much effect while playing as a hammer warrior.

Going back to the music example, It's like comparing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20qZtnODB0w
And this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4
Some people like the original, but most people like Gary Joule's version.

While in PvP the most important thing is balanced gameplay to make it fair since you are not supposed to win 50% against players with the same skill; in PvE the most important thing is just plain fun, since you are supposed to beat the monsters 100% of the time once you get skilled enough.

Now, the hard thing is getting the tune that works with most people.

Strength needs a buff it doesn't do anything it is the worst primary out there, not mysticsm.

If they gonna nerf where there is no point in other classes using secondaries then just take secondaries out.

Strength has built in armor-pen, body blow, bulls, enraging charge, flail, prot strike, rush, shield bash, sprint and (in PvE) warrior's endurance.

There's nothing wrong with the strength attribute at all, and warriors are one of the most well-designed professions in the game. Quit whining and l2p.

Buffing lower tier professions to make up for years worth of unchecked power creep (aka 'fun') is certainly the easiest solution but it's also the worst. This is also historically a favorite strategy to 'fix' things...overshoot the mark and then nerf after the fact to adjust for blatantly overpowered elements. What should really be happening is selective nerfs to the top tier to bring their relative strength more in line with other available options.

Just to reiterate, Anet has stated they have limited resources numerous times. If it comes down to buffing a profession that doesn't need to be buffed vs. new content or work in PvP this is a no-brainer. If they still had unlimited resources and could do all of these things and do them well then I'm sure the objections, myself included, would go away.

strength has very strong skills in its line.

So..if it is going to happen to today it would be in the afternoon right? or was today just that maintaince which i can tell did nothing to help with the lag. xD

But PvE is not PvP. In PvE, the midline's role is significantly reduced. The main point of the midline (in a balanced setup, at least) is to mitigate damage through stuff like BSurge and Empathy, and also to make sure that the melees can deal the damage they're supposed to (enchant removals, snares, and sometimes hex/condition removal). In PvE, the whole damage mitigation area is made null by SY, ER, and in H/H, N/Rt's with Soul Reaping to power nearly unlimited heals. And in the majority of areas, keeping peope clean is unnecessary because the monsters pack inadequate skills that don't need to be removed. That means that the midline's only job in PvE is relegated to keeping the melees happy. Sure, they can do other stuff, but they'd be better off just buffing the crap out of melee and pushing their DPS into the hundreds.

But why take those away? They're there, and we're talking about who's the best and/or worst in realistic situations (as in, comparisons that restrict the use of PvE skills are irrelevent here).

But buffing characters is easier to do than fixing the rest of the game. And considering how lazy ANet's been when it comes to GW1 (I'm not faulting them on this - they should be focusing on GW2), fixing a profession or two would sound a lot more attractive than trying to unbreak the game. And anyway, sure, you can just say "don't play that profession", but it's hard not to play a certain profession when you're trying to progress them through the game and/or get titles for them. A lot of peoples' mains were ele and ranger, and now most of them are probably collecting dust because they're ineffective and boring to play.

After seeing how many costumes they sold this past holiday, the "limited resources" reason isn't a reason anymore. Last time I checked, it was money spent in GW1, by GW1 players for their GW1 characters. It would be nice to see some of those "limited resources" poured back into the game that it was spent on.

My gut feeling is it's a lot easier to get the art department to design and implement some costumes than it is to pull people off for balance updates and subsequent testing. Cosmetic items are almost certainly less demanding on development time than skill changes are and I'm sure the money that changes hands doesn't hurt.