And for once, I'm happy. I'm not sure what took them so long, especially since Anet has 'streaming technology' in Guild Wars, but they finally did it. They finally realized that some of the skills in their original design wouldn't work out in a game.
Hence, the skill changes.
Spirits are no longer a requirement to play the game. Instead, they are considered an OPTIONAL global enchantment for the players. No one can be wall of spirits anymore, and they can be destroyed easily.
Many ranger players think they got shafted by some of these changes. As a ranger player myself, anyone who says that rangers are the suxxor now does not know how to play ranger.
Rangers, in a sense, are the swiss-army knife class. They literally the jack of all trades but master of none. I can make my ranger into a damage dealer, condition spammer, an interrupt, to a drainer. Mixed with other classes, a ranger can be a deadly force on the field. The problem isn't the ranger class, but the people using them. Here's a tip: Do not use poison arrows as your elite. If you want degen, use Melandru's arrows. One more thing, pet's rock. Do not underestimate them. Hell, Anet should be able to make you select what type of pet you want when creating a PvP character.
Elementists also got a few changes that I appreciate. Chain Lightning isn't insanely powerful now, but it can still make the time to do damage. Just spamming Lightning orb, chain lightning, and lightning strike shouldn't make a good player. They need to make REAL builds instead of spamming the same three skills. I'm glad now that air eles would need to think outside the box now instead of the cookie cutter build. The rest of the changes are a benefit to elementists.
Mesmer got some good things out of the changes as well. Nothing wrong with these changes and made some otherwise "useless skills" into potential dangers (panic)
I don't play monk, but I do know what they are capable of. Healing seed has been reduced in duration, although I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. On one hand, prot monks won't be so damn powerful now, on the other hand, it might be hard for the monk's to do their job (meaning there will be a lot more bitching now towards monks).
Lastly, the necro. As a necro player myself, I'm finally glad that the stupid spell known as Putrid has received the nerf end of the stick. Now I can actually use OTHER skills and do something in the game instead of masterbating furiously to Playboy pictures while pressing "2" (my ex-putrid skill key) all day. People will, hopefully, realize that necros can also do other stuff besides making corpses explode. They can also strip, cripple, and summon minions. Minions do not suck.
Warriors didn't get many changes, mainly because they really don't need many changes. As a warrior player also, they rock (except sword warriors).
This weekend with the increased faction, I really hope Anet gets the message that they really need to up the faction points. Even with the faction increase, I still didn't manage to unlock everything. There is so many things to unlock, from the weapon hilts, to the skills, elites, and runes, that using the old current style would literally take forever to unlock everything. On weekend changes, I found the pacing perfect; enough to make it worthwhile to PvP, but not enough to break the system.
The only thing I would suggest is reducing the faction won in GvG back to the normal rate. As you can tell in the PvPx weekend, the faction was so much that many more powerful guilds decided it would be great to start ganking groups (I was in one of them). The faction reward was so high, that it encouraged screwing over the lesser guilds in GvG using smurf/shadow guilds. If you put the GvG back to normal (but 20 faction for each kill still), this type of behavior would be viewed as a waste of time. The rest of the faction changes from the 20 faction for each kill to tombs and arena, they should ALWAYS be kept like that. Only GvG rewards should be changed.
I hope the summer update comes up soon, because now my faith is back into GW and I'm really anxious to BUY the expansion
- Mark Iradian