I disagree. While skirmishing is enjoyable and.. useful to a degree in WvW.. the game type is supposed to largely crux on big group combat. So issues where considerably smaller groups (at times a single person) can cause issues to a much larger group, not due to their lack of skill but because of the strength of abilities.. that causes problems. A group of 5 people trying to ignore a BS Thief is simply going to die slowly (and by die slowly I mean each will get picked off one by one, individually) before they can get to wherever they're going. The Bunker Ele equally should die when getting hit by a much larger group. Individual builds being so strong against groups of players is counter intuitive to the WvW design.
Yup. And a lot of that is because most of the WvW forum is reserved for WvW mechanics and match up discussion. So most people instinctively head to the PvP forums to discuss any Player v. Player balance. Hell even PvE guys go in their to complain about PvP balance changes affecting them. Regardless though, WvW is the source of most of the frustration.
Honestly, I think the whole small vs large group scenario you outlined above is even "worse"(worse for the larger group) now than before. Staff eles can absolutely WRECK large amounts of players with static field now. We run a large backline group(usually 8 staff eles) and we have routinely wiped groups 2-3x(60-70+ players) our numbers.
^ That has MUCH more impact(and it wouldn't surprise me if it gets nerfed pretty soon) than a lone thief annoying people running back from spawn or an ele RTL'ing away and drawing 10+ people who ignore the plea of their commander("Don't chase guys").
I dunno, it just feels like ANet listens too much to the casual minority(ie: those who "play" by posting on the forums).
I won't even get into food/consumables/life-steal/etc, all of which can provide CRAZY gimmicky playstyles in WvW. Running with omnom compote + aoe = easy mode.
Also, ANet DID say that some of the changes were made for PvE reasons, and yes, quickness definitely IS one of those: CoF(among other things). If not, why would they blanket nerf ALL classes that use it? Why would Ranger, a class that already has enough problems(on top of, they didn't even modify the 2sec quickness on swap trait, while other classes got lengthened quickness), get hit by it?
edit:
Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.
As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.
Quickness also allowed for derp-quickstomps(by Rangers mainly) in s/tPvP(WvW too I guess, but who uses stomp there?)
