Guild Wars 2

In the last months we have all read people declaring that ice bow made content trivial, that we were in a ice bow meta, that ice bow was 90% of the groups damage. So since the patch has arrived I wanted to share my experience with this brave new world of challenging content.

I started with a fractal 50 using the exact same group running the exact same composition of warrior, guardian, 2 ele’s and 1 thief. The run itself took about 40m, and is average for us when we got twins as end boss. The only time I notice any difference was during old tom (no fan, just dps) and berserker, and that because those fights are pure dps that normally end in 10s. Yesterday it took 15s, 0 deaths.

So maybe the change can’t be found in fractals. Today I went to check the place of origin for ice bow #4, AC path 3 and SE path 1. Both are places where groups original requested elementalists to equip icebow, so I here I hope to find a nerfed icebow causing problems. However I can sadly report that burrows died in a couple of seconds as it did pre-patch.

As a last effort I went to world bosses Tequatl and Tripple Trouble in hope that here I would finally notice something. Everyone wrote pre-patch that ice bow was trivially over powerful against large targets, but alas the dragon died faster this day than the hours before patch.

So now I ask the community, have anyone else found this challenging content that was promised?

its related to 50+ fractals and Raids. Not old content.
/try again.

When and where did they say that nerfing the icebow will bring out more challenge from old content?

The nerf is justified. If you feel that it doesn’t affect your normal activity in any ways then it’s a fairly balanced nerf. Get over it.

Remember when they nerfed FGS-sama?

So a 50% added time to kill old tom is trivial to you?

Now add that to a group that take 2 mins to kill old tom thats 3 mins and that group will feel the pain.

I always said that full zerker make content trivial bosses dont have time to do kitten.

Linken.6345:

So a 50% added time to kill old tom is trivial to you?

Now add that to a group that take 2 mins to kill old tom thats 3 mins and that group will feel the pain.

I always said that full zerker make content trivial bosses dont have time to do kitten.

i guess even with nomad’s rare armor its hard to need 2min with icebow-use for him^^
but even when it takes 10min, with that kind of gear even on 50 they wont get some close to death experiences.

for the other side, I did it yesterday with a realy realy realy bad “meta” party. Our 2 ele just didnt use bows and we nuked him down close to the same time as you’d need with old bows.

People who did not have a clue about how the game worked attributed the DPS meta to Ice Bow. Of course nothing changes, besides Elementalists not slotting Ice Bow anymore.

I still ask them to drop it for my poor mesmer :’(

The way people talk about Icebow sounds like scripting for a South Park episode

Iris Ng.9845:

I still ask them to drop it for my poor mesmer :’(

LH better for that isn’kitten I think the best thing about the IB nerf is it kind of frees up a utility spot for more variation. Glyph of storms is like a must, signet is quite strong, but then nothing is really so important that you feel bad not using it, I like that. Arcane wave for extra blast, LH to boost up your teammates with weaker DPS, maybe a second rocky?

Yea, as pointed out, the OP’s post is flawed/wrong because of misinformation and faulty assumptions.

- Difficult content that was promised is in HoT
– Ice Bow nerf was never promised as the be-all-end-all fix for the zerk meta

Also, the nerf to the ice bow did accomplish one thing. It got people to use more than 2 skills to down a boss. That doesn’t make content difficult and only made a negligible difference in the speed of clearing current content, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a step in the right direction.

The faulty information was people who said that we were in a ice bow meta, that ice bow was 90% of the groups damage, and that it was ice bows fault that content became trivial.

Now ice bow is gone and yet the meta has not changed, 90% of groups damage has not gone away. and content has not become non-trivial. People can call it a step in the right direction if they want, but the initial claims about the ice bow has demonstrated be shown to be lies and hype.

Dahkeus.8243:

only made a negligible difference in the speed of clearing current content

A good description of so called OP ice bow. Funny how a skill could be negligible and OP at the same time.

The 5 second freeze is the other OP thing about it. Most stuns can’t come close, there’s a few 3 second stuns and rangers can get a 4 sec daze with a traited moa. However hopefully the breakbar system makes it more in-line. As as a result it feels like half of a fight’s chatter is spent managing stacks to set up a mini burn phase with the 5 second stun.

Linecasting with ice bow was very OP, but content is too easy for most people to learn how to do it properly. Thats how people were doing these 30 second bloomhungers.

It was definitely out of line and deserving of a nerf. I’m not sure what you want, or are trying to get out of this thread but it seems unnecessarily abrasive, and baiting on a falsified premise to make your point (that people said ice bow was 90% of people’s damage, and that “challenging content” was going to be had from nerfing it.)

Anyway, stun should be nerfed to 3 seconds.