Responsibilities
As a consultant on Guild Wars 2:
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I provided guidance and insight on skill design and balance across all nine classes, 36 specializations, and structured PvP.
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Presented design feedback to the balance team to refine competitive gameplay.
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Led weekly and monthly balance discussions with developers and top-level players.
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Authored design documents that influenced skill reworks and game balance updates.​​
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I consulted on:
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Bird Knight
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Decap Druid
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Bunker Soulbeast
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Marksmanship Modifiers
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Mantra Mesmer
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Swipe
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Aggressive Onslaught
​And many more.
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DRUID
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Druid was designed as a support specialization. In practice, it functioned as a DPS or tank in competitive modes. I identified key opportunities to realign its mechanics with its intended design to make Support Druid a viable choice.
Design Issues:​​
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Selfish Sustain: Most sustain-related traits in the skill tree only benefited the caster, rather than supporting allies.
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Offensive Incentives: The specialization rewarded crowd-controlling enemies and attacking crowd-controlled players, counterintuitive for a support role.
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Lack of Survivability: Druid struggled to maintain range and survive in larger fights due to weaker defensive buffs and shorter ability ranges compared to other supports.
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Tradeoff Penalized Its Strengths: Years after launch, a balance change reduced pet stats by 20%. This weakened pet synergy, one of Druid’s core mechanics.
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Unreliable Access to Support Tools: Unlike other supports, Druid’s healing abilities were locked behind a 20-second cooldown transformation (Celestial Avatar), making it unreliable in key moments.
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Design Goals:
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Encourage selfless play by shifting sustain to benefit allies.
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Incentivize healing over offensive play.
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Improve positioning tools to help Druid engage in support-oriented fights.
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Increase reliability of core healing abilities.
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Introduce a unique "healing-over-time" identity, distinguishing it from other burst-healing supports.
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Proposals:
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Druidic Clarity: Reduce self-only condition cleanse from 13 to 3, and apply the same cleanse to nearby allies.
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Celestial Avatar: Reduce cooldown from 20s → 10s, making support uptime more consistent.
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Ancient Seeds: Change pulsing root effect to a 1-second root on successful CC.
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Defensive Buffs: Introduce AoE Stability (CC immunity) and Protection (damage reduction) sources.
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Pet Stat Tradeoff Removal: Reverse the -20% pet stat reduction.
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Glyph Adjustments: Increase radii of glyph abilities from 300 → 600, matching other supports.
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Glyph Swap Mechanic: Flip glyph behavior. Supportive versions become default, while offensive versions activate inside Celestial Avatar.
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Search and Rescue: Increase revive range from 600 → 900, bringing it in line with other support utilities.
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Ancestral Grace: Restore evade frames to its movement skill, improving survivability.
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Outcome:
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5 out of 9 proposed changes were implemented.
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​Support Druid became viable in PvP for the first time in 7 years.
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Playrates increased, improving its place in the competitive meta.
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MIRAGE
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Mirage was designed as an elusive duelist, capable of dodging attacks without rolling and executing ambush attacks. Instead of a standard dodge roll, it used Mirage Cloak, a unique defensive mechanic that:
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Lasted 0.25s longer than normal dodges.
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Provided evasion frames without interrupting active casts.
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Mirage Cloak and its associated traits disrupted the combat economy, creating an overpowered and uninteractive playstyle.
Design Issues:​​
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Invulnerability on Any Action: Mirage Cloak allowed any skill to be cast while fully protected, eliminating risk-reward.
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Bypassing Defensive Counterplay: Unlike other classes, Mirages could activate Mirage Cloak while stunned, feared, or immobilized, avoiding damage without needing a stun break.
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Universal Problem Solver: It cleansed debuffs and removed CC, allowing Mirages to counter threat with very little cost.
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Oppressive and Un-counterable Builds: Due to abundant endurance regeneration, Mirages could chain Mirage Cloaks repeatedly, making them:
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Untouchable (immune to damage, CC, and debuffs).
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Uninterruptible (key casts always succeeded).
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Able to capture map objectives while completely invulnerable.​
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Proposals:
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Prevent Map Exploits: Remove the ability to capture objectives while under Mirage Cloak.
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Reduce Duration: Lower Mirage Cloak from 1s → 0.75s to match standard dodges.
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Elusive Mind Adjustment: Remove its free stun break on dodge.
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No More Cloaking While Crowd-Controlled: Prevent Mirage Cloak activation while stunned, feared, or immobilized.
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Timeline:
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2018: Map capture exploit removed (implemented immediately).
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2019: Mirage Cloak duration nerfed from 1s → 0.75s.
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2020: Mirage dodge count reduced from 2 to 1, reducing its pick rate in competitive play significantly. The stun-break removal was also implemented.
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2023: Mirage regained its second dodge.
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Outcome:
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4 out of 4 proposed changes were implemented.
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As a result, Mirage went from one of the lowest picked specializations to a meta DPS in competitive PvP, with increased playrates and a frequent draft in tournament play.
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