Guild Wars 2

+1 to this but please also dont forget to buff mesmer and ele with some of the tipps u get from the community

This meta is worse than what it was during beta.

having diminishing returns on cc would be the best solution for mace warriors and terror necros

+1 someone should be fired over this trash.

i agree with all these statements, but personally i think spirit ranger and elixir R are the biggest problem in this current meta. Your team makes the first kill but with either 1/4 of a second cast or a 1 second cast they can be revived and not only once but if the ranger spirit dies it will revive another person, this is not skill! this is 1 skill you cast that is very difficult to interrupt the person who just died, went down because they weren’t in the right position or weren’t playing defensively enough or even his team mates weren’t properly supporting him, why reward lazy game play when people are trying their hardest and just getting auto attacked to death. People are going to stop playing if this isn’t adjusted. When people just want to rely on AI or passive abilities let them go to pve or hotjoin dont ruin competetive games with skill less builds.

I’m a Guardian dps. i kill almost all the thief that I find. Some thief’s hard to kill, ok, but I kill them. They’re hard to use against an enemy that use AoE or that use stun. I use my defensive/healing skills to block the first assault, then use the 5 of the GS, taking them near me, 2 of the GS and the thief has 1/2 or less hp. Then it’s only the ability of the player, but frequently the thief is death in 3-4 hit. Frequently go in hide and run away XD

About the necro I’m ok whit you, the same for ranger and engi.
About engi, have you ever try to fight a engi bunker/condition build? it’s unkillable. Too much resistance, whit a good damage, ranged, AoE knock back, quick skills, confusion ‘till 9 stack in 2 sec… and they can auto ress… it’s a OP build XD

About warrior, that’s not the more powerful build of the moment, but yes, a war whit mace+shield can use 1 stun of 1 sec, un daze of 1 sec and a mace stun of 3 sec, whit a autoclean of 3 conditions. That’s a perfect combination for a bunker build. Whit banners that give regeneration and a lot of stun and 4 sec of block and an auto invulnerability to direct damage at 25% of hp, only a condition dealer can kill them “easy”. Anyway a mace build warrior can be killed for the lack of damage, expecially compared whit war whit GS or sword.
And if you have stability the war is F******.

Necro burst on condition build needs to be tuned down, dps needs to be buffed.

Not really. Hammer+axe/mace warrior will outpressure any condi build and most stabilities are long enough cooldown that the warrior will just axe auto your face off.

I think the specs that do best against warrior are s/d thief or a shortbow+d/p thief as you can pretty much control the warrior’s output. With points in acrobatics a thief can easily handle a warrior.

mace+ shield+gs warrior can just easily disengage when stability is popped and come back when it is on cooldown and finish you off.

Specs without heavy peels/cc/burst or evades will not beat warrior. You can’t out-attrition a good cc warrior. Their damage is too high to be tanked. You have to counterburst them or cc the crap out of them.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Let’s analyse the builds in order or power, which require nerfs because they aren’t fun.

1, Spirit ranger – the king of the meta is the spirit ranger. That is evident from solo q. It has evades, the ability to win ANY 1 on 1 easily, and possibly the best team fight utility with passive buffs and actives. There is NO counter play at all. If you kill the spirits they activate. Which sucks. Then they instantly summon them back because the cooldown starts when they are summoned. When back the spirits can be activated again and killed again to activate yet again. More than this, the spirits confuse any team fight. Finding targets is difficult. And no it isnt because of the effects. But even without this the spirit ranger is just broken. It is like the most op ele was but with signet of undeath x3 rolled into 1 build. It needs a massive nerf.

2, S/d Thief – again there is no counterplay. How do you kill something which is perma evading? It is close to impossible at times. The amount of evades has to come down because at the moment it is just a frustrating experience. You cant focus the stupid things and yet they are dishing out crazy dps. It really does suck. They should either get crazy dps or evasion. Not both coupled with boon hate. Way too much.

3, Terror necro – Getting chain feared again isnt fun. I am bored of necro vs necro. There is no skill. It is luck (who can rando dodge something) and just lame. YOu shouldnt be able to fear cc someone to death on any class. Remove the buff to doom within 600 range for a start and then reduce the number of bleeds on a few of the skills and add increased lf gain from some main hand weapon skills. Necro dps needs to come down.

4, Stun lock warrior – not brokenly OP but still it sucks. Again, like fear, nobody should die whilst constantly under the effects of cc in a 1 on 1. Reduce the duration of the mace stun.

5, Elixr r – nobody should be able to res themselves. Stupid concept. Not fun that this class gets an extra 10k health for free. You feel cheated killing them and then they get back up and kill you. Please fix this.

And please don’t wait for after this pax tournament to fix these issues. Why alienate the 4 million people you sold this game to in order to not change things for the 10 people in this tournament. In fact I beat most of the guys in the pax tournament want this stuff nerfed because it sucks.

The meta at the moment is skill-less, but worse – it is just not fun. Sorry to say.

/agree, but necro should be the 1st in the list not the 3rd

Agreed ! Very constructive post

Elixir R is fine the way it is because it is random and is not as good as it used to be. You won’t see that many Elixir R around in game. Also there are a lot of way to counter it. If you see the Enginen toss Elixir R at low Heath, either you stop heavily attacking until the effect wear off or you push him out of the effective radius and let Condition eat him away. By doing so, you make them wasted the skill. The skill also has super duper long CD 120s CD.

Spirit renewal on the other hand is 100% Rez, 30s CD, can be activated twice in one summoning with trait. And the CD start when he is summoning. There is no argue with you here that Spirit Renewal is way way better than Elixir R because there is no counter play except by killing renewal as fast as you could. Though, even so, they still get one Rez guarantee if the Ranger go down when Renewal die for some reason. You can not see where it is gonna be using his effect on, so almost there is no counter against them.

CC Stunlock and Fear : What they can do is either make Fear and Stun can not be stacked or give out 0.5 s immune to any CC after you have been CC, so that they can not be chained. By CC, I mean Stun and Fear, or any condition that blocked your char out from performing any action.

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I like how the devs wont touch this topic with a ten foot pole. If i was one of them I’d honestly be embarassed. I know balance is hard and thakittens not as easy as just saying ok lets change this and it will be done tomorrow but man… this is just really REALLY poorly thought out. If I could characterize the balance and meta of this game it is indicative of someone not taking the whole in consideration when making class changes.

My analogy is this: as a sound engineer one of my biggest tasks is to balance the EQ in a live mix so that everything is “balanced” in a way that things sound natural while highliting the qualities of vocals/instrument. I often see rookies boosting and reducing each frequency until it seems ok but doing this for each frequency one at a time. What results is a mess of sounds that dont work well together at all but maybe sound nice individually. This balance has been that. The devs are playing a different game, and that game is called wakamole. I dont have any suggestions but I do know that the state of this PvP game is so SO bad.

Last comment: wtf is with all the cheese builds. fear spam. AoE spam. cc spam and my personal fav pet spam. it makes me seriously wonder what goes on in Anets balance team. I mean how is that fun gameplay. How…

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

I agree with the post, Henry.
And also with the examples given.

Vyndetta.9415:

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

Can be ressed twice in 30s with a 240s cooldown (180 effective cooldown), compared to can be ressed once on a 120s CD requires enemy to not be AFK to counter. What would you rather have?

Vyndetta.9415:

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

We’ll trade him that kittenty signet of the wild and spirit for elixir R and supply crate.

Hell, we’ll trade him all the signets as long as we get his elixirs

jportell.2197:

Vyndetta.9415:

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

Can be ressed twice in 30s with a 240s cooldown (180 effective cooldown), compared to can be ressed once on a 120s CD requires enemy to not be AFK to counter. What would you rather have?

One can be killed long before it’s necessary. It’s not our fault your team is too crappy to bother aoe’ing the spirits down. It pretty much takes a single 100b+whirl to kill all spirits.

I agree with lord, these things + Insane AoE on node (don’t forget this) are the main problems for this meta. How to fix this?

Spirit ranger: Ranger without his pets, lost a lot of power, so CD to recast pet need to start when pets are killed not when pets are summoned. S/d set has too much evade, so when ranger uses evade skills, he needs to lose endurance or vigor doesn’t need to stack with endurance regen + evade skills.

Thief s/d: same ranger problem, s/d has a broken evade mechanics, so he needs to lose endurance when he uses evade skills or vigor shouldn’t stack with endurance regen + evade skills. Anet puts a cast time on Elixir R for endurance refill, i think sigil of agility needs to have the same thing (or both with cast or neither).

Necro/Warrior: Why together? Because the main problem is chain CC (fear for necro and insane CC – basically skull crack – from warrior). Chain CC sux because people can’t do anything, almost 4s stun every 7 and half second is a bad design and it’s a nosense. Same thing when necro can use more fears in a row.

Elixir R: here Anet makes a mistake because the problem wasn’t the elixir r but the toss elixir r. So why nerf elixir r instead of toss elixir r? No sense. Give back the break stun to elixir R (eng sux in break stun), leave cast time from elixir r (the old version) and DECREASE revive percent pulse from 20% to 15-18% with Less CD. Toss Elixir R needs to help people to ress, not for autoress.

Spirit of Nature (ranger elite): for me this is a powerfull elite but it’s not OP, i mean there are counters to this elite (pet can be killed or interrupted) and his CD is very long. I dunno, but if ranger spirit pet can ress twice people without be killed or interrupted i see a big mistake from enemy party. I’m not very sure this elite need to be nerfed.

MoA: ok Mesmers are out of meta but this elite is pure kitten because isn’t absolutely not fun to receive it and there is no counter. Eliminate this Elite from the game and replace it with a usefull team elite with a good condition removal aoe and CD max 60s.

And in general if anet wants to nerf these things (game would be better) pls don’t compensate these classes with brainless skill or mechanics, put stuff where people need to use brain.

Zenith.7301:

Vyndetta.9415:

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

We’ll trade him that kittenty signet of the wild and spirit for elixir R and supply crate.

Hell, we’ll trade him all the signets as long as we get his elixirs

You realize that aside from elixir R and elixir B engi elixirs are kinda worthless. The condi clear doesn’t break stun so its hard to use when you most need it. One stunbreak makes you easier to kill (GG Frenzy), the other makes you shrink to be invuln for 3s and unable to do anything else so when the 3s is up you are still pretty much a free kill. Yeah tell me how much it sucks to have your pet do way more damage with 2 different signets at no real cost to you. Tell me how awesome it is to have an immunity to damage for you and your pet (when traited) with no downside (still being able to perform other tasks etc.) yes ranger signets are absolutely terrible compared to engi elixirs. /sarcasm.

If you think engi’s have bad stun breaks then you haven’t played ranger. Pretty much all their stunbreaks are garbage effects with huge cooldowns.

But there is the same thief problem, why do you need good break stun when you have insane evade skills? Do you want good break stun and insane evade skills? It’s too much.

You forgot the phantasm mesmer that atm are out of the game only because the large amount of aoe.

Anyway:
the S/D thief have as counter the Stun Lock War.
With Elixir R you can w8 until it finish to before killing the engi, or use a launch skill to bring him away form the area, or autoattakittenil the end with poison maybe. There are some option to avoid autoress.

So much lol in this thread.

At the moment? There is always been a large amount of aoe
People saying nerf signet of agility? Are you effing serious?
Crying about Spirit of nature of all things you could kitten about on a Ranger. Of all things the Spirit that once you kill is gone for up to 240 blinking seconds, and has a visible interruptible active skill?
Good kittening lord.
Wtf happened to this forum.

This forum lost all the good players cuase the game is bad from the start and it isn’t changing

ensoriki.5789:

Laxuar.3504:

You forgot the phantasm mesmer that atm are out of the game only because the large amount of aoe.

At the moment? There is always been a large amount of aoe
People saying nerf signet of agility? Are you effing serious?
Crying about Spirit of nature of all things you could kitten about on a Ranger. Of all things the Spirit that once you kill is gone for up to 240 blinking seconds, and has a visible interruptible active skill?
Good kittening lord.

Wtf happened to this forum.

Spirits are immune to crowd control. Ever notice when an AOE pull or anything happens you get a few “Immune” messages on your screen. Those are d/t the rangers spirits.

jportell.2197:

ensoriki.5789:

Laxuar.3504:

You forgot the phantasm mesmer that atm are out of the game only because the large amount of aoe.

At the moment? There is always been a large amount of aoe
People saying nerf signet of agility? Are you effing serious?
Crying about Spirit of nature of all things you could kitten about on a Ranger. Of all things the Spirit that once you kill is gone for up to 240 blinking seconds, and has a visible interruptible active skill?
Good kittening lord.

Wtf happened to this forum.

Spirits are immune to crowd control. Ever notice when an AOE pull or anything happens you get a few “Immune” messages on your screen. Those are d/t the rangers spirits.

No I don’t because the spirits are dead as a result of cleave.
One of the few benefits of so much rampant aoe existing in this game which hands it out like hotcakes. It only irritates me once spirits get stacked and at which point you can’t blow all of them up like you would if it was just one ranger.
The spirits boost the entire teams efficiency, it makes sense to kill them or the ranger to cut out the team buffs. but when there is more than one it’s a pain in the kitten .

Who seriously going to say anything but Nature spirit is hard to nuke (and it should be hard to nuke as an elite). Especially when these guys are running without stun breaks and Spirits Unbound puts every spirit in cleave range if you are melee and if you are range you just drop down Nukes as you always have.

Maybe such a thing is hard because the threat of Necro’s has everyone bringing condi’s themselves, when otherwise as per normal spirits would get removed via power damage asap.

Half the crap in this meta is interlinked.

Zenith.7301:

Vyndetta.9415:

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

We’ll trade him that kittenty signet of the wild and spirit for elixir R and supply crate.

Hell, we’ll trade him all the signets as long as we get his elixirs

jportell.2197:

Vyndetta.9415:

Stealth.9324:

Zenith.7301:

Spirit also has a 240 sec cd unlike elixir r, so it should obviously be better. Engineer gets elixir r AND supply crate. Compare elites, not utilities.

Do you want to trade your spirit with my Elixir R? I would take it any day given

I’ll trade ye man. I rather have double elixir R any day. that’s of course I could have your supply crate as well

Can be ressed twice in 30s with a 240s cooldown (180 effective cooldown), compared to can be ressed once on a 120s CD requires enemy to not be AFK to counter. What would you rather have?

One can be killed long before it’s necessary. It’s not our fault your team is too crappy to bother aoe’ing the spirits down. It pretty much takes a single 100b+whirl to kill all spirits.

I would also question the team capable if you get the Engineer get his Elixir R off for res. A few comparison why Elixir R is Ults and Spirit Nature is Elite.

20% chance to Rez vs 100% chance to Rez And Remove Conditions.
120s Cd, Rez once vs 30s CD, Rez multiple as long as the Spirit alive and one guarantee when dead.
Counterable and visible vs Un-counterable and visible.
Stay in position vs moving.
120s CD in no matter what vs CD start after summon.
Not common see in tourney vs Common see in tourney.

Saying Spirit of Nature is better than Elixir R is wrong. Though, you can accuse me for being bias, I don’t mind. Caused I am not in the minority that think Nature is better than R period.

The only nerf I want for Nature is remove start CD time when summon. That’s it.

perma evade heal pistol/dagger assassin that summons a tree owns spirit rangers

You listed 5 classes, may as well buff the other four for balance.

Florgknight.1589:

You listed 5 classes, may as well buff the other four for balance.

5+4=8? Or do you know about a super secret class that is so low on the list it isn’t even played.

I’m bad at counting.

To all of you who don’t play engi commenting on elixirs is just silly.

Elixir R throw can be countered by a well timed reflect projectile. namely guardian shield.
CC the engi
poison (not great due to condition removal properties but the point is there)
cleave (this will prevent it almost always)
knock him out.
if he throws it below himself
a: cc him out.
b: wait till its gone. yes that is a nice technical invuln but see below
c: be prepared to cleave him. if you cant do above.

Stop saying it is an issue. its by far NOT a guaranteed res.

Yes I love my supply crate over any other elite by far. Hehe go engis!

If you complain about the cleave part most POWER builds are easily able to single-handedly out cleave it. Condition meta is damage over time. Much harder to cleave it out, re-apply poison constantly.

Lordrosicky.5813:

That is evident from solo q.

I agree with OP (this is something a lot of top-tier players have been saying for I don’t even know how long), but I don’t think solo q gives evidence for anything except solo q. For example, a team of 3 spirit rangers and 2 necromancers will dominate solo q, but not necessarily against top teams.

The big issue with these builds is that they’re incredibly easy to be effective with when compared to other builds, so when you throw them into a pug environment, of course they’re going to dominate.

I think the bigger issue isn’t how effective these builds are, but rather how simple they are to be so effective with. I’ve been saying this for months, but literally all you have to do with a spirit ranger is spam your offensive abilities. Using your defensive abilities is what starts to separate spirit rangers, but even then you have SO MANY that you can spam them most of the time.

The thing about conditions is that right now they’re effective because they’re being spammed. Not only are they being spammed, but they have access to SO many of them. Ontop of this there are SO MANY condition clears. So basically if you don’t have a ton of conditions to spam, you’re not viable. And if you don’t have a ton of condition clears, you’re not viable unless someone on your team does.

What I think needs to happen is there needs to be less spam, but less condition clears. When Necros don’t have access to burning, for example, then they can synergize with something that does have burning. It turns less into a mindless spam of conditions, and more of a “lets coordinate our bigger condition abilities together when we know they’re out of clears.”

On the flip side it’s currently a mindless spam of condition clearing as well. There’s so many conditions, with so many procs, from so many different classes, that you can’t isolate an ability (ex. engineer’s blowtorch: a long burning), or even from a certain player. It’s “oh, I have a long kitten burning on me, I can clear it now, but I have no idea when another long kitten burning can come” because their necro, engi, ranger, and guardian have either burning procs or aoe burning buffs that are given to themselves and allies. It’s stupid.

With that said other things need to be looked at. For example, CC warriors seem like they’re going to dominate if other things get nerfed. Not only is it good because of the insane uptime on CC, but they can also do a ton of damage ontop of it. A way to help balance this is to make it all pretty telegraphed, (which I know some of it is, and at least I know I can get a lot better at recognizing and reacting to them, but all of it needs to be recognizable and reactable.) but ontop of that they shouldn’t be able to kill certain things 100% in CC all by themselves.

A thief’s steal when traited also needs to be looked at (instant, usable when CC’d, prioritizes stability on boon stealing (or at least it seems like it), and is a 21s cd.) What am I supposed to do against this? I have no idea.

Same thing with stealth spamming and shadow trap. What is the counterplay here? How do I “outplay” someone that plays a sustain build that stealths every 4 seconds? How do I “outplay” shadowtrap when I have no idea where it is, when it’s activated, etc.

Finally, burst needs to be toned down as well. There’s no reason 1 player should be able to “global” someone, or even multiple people. When condition classes come down, there also needs to be a decrease in power damage. I don’t think it needs to be that big, because when you decrease everyones damage the bunker meta just comes back.

I think the biggest thing this game needs right now is for everything that’s important to have a cast time and a visible animation that can be reacted to.

p.s. I like how people engineers argue that elixir R isn’t a guaranteed res, when spirit res isn’t either.

MarkPhilips.5169:

But there is the same thief problem, why do you need good break stun when you have insane evade skills? Do you want good break stun and insane evade skills? It’s too much.

What a stupid post.

You’ve literally got 2 evades on weaponsets on 8-10+ sec cd’s.

Just because you have two more evades does not mean that when you do get hit by a stun you will explode.

The difference between a ranger and a thief is that a thief has 3 counters to stuns. And they all teleport him away from the incoming burst.

CachoDm.4639:

Not all of us have a team to team queue with Mr aL spirit ranger dont nerf me please

Yes, that’s exactly what I was saying. I’m so happy that this is what you get out of my post. I’m so happy that every time I make a post I get people like you saying things like this.

P.S. I don’t think you could find a bigger advocate of nerfing spirit rangers.

P.P.S. Solo queue balance shouldn’t be ignored, but it’s substantially different than balance in a highly coordinated environment. You can’t say solo queue is the optimal way to look at balance for spvp just as you can’t say hot joins are.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Let’s analyse the builds in order or power, which require nerfs because they aren’t fun.

1, Spirit ranger – the king of the meta is the spirit ranger. That is evident from solo q. It has evades, the ability to win ANY 1 on 1 easily, and possibly the best team fight utility with passive buffs and actives. There is NO counter play at all. If you kill the spirits they activate. Which sucks. Then they instantly summon them back because the cooldown starts when they are summoned. When back the spirits can be activated again and killed again to activate yet again. More than this, the spirits confuse any team fight. Finding targets is difficult. And no it isnt because of the effects. But even without this the spirit ranger is just broken. It is like the most op ele was but with signet of undeath x3 rolled into 1 build. It needs a massive nerf.

2, S/d Thief – again there is no counterplay. How do you kill something which is perma evading? It is close to impossible at times. The amount of evades has to come down because at the moment it is just a frustrating experience. You cant focus the stupid things and yet they are dishing out crazy dps. It really does suck. They should either get crazy dps or evasion. Not both coupled with boon hate. Way too much.

3, Terror necro – Getting chain feared again isnt fun. I am bored of necro vs necro. There is no skill. It is luck (who can rando dodge something) and just lame. YOu shouldnt be able to fear cc someone to death on any class. Remove the buff to doom within 600 range for a start and then reduce the number of bleeds on a few of the skills and add increased lf gain from some main hand weapon skills. Necro dps needs to come down.

4, Stun lock warrior – not brokenly OP but still it sucks. Again, like fear, nobody should die whilst constantly under the effects of cc in a 1 on 1. Reduce the duration of the mace stun.

5, Elixr r – nobody should be able to res themselves. Stupid concept. Not fun that this class gets an extra 10k health for free. You feel cheated killing them and then they get back up and kill you. Please fix this.

And please don’t wait for after this pax tournament to fix these issues. Why alienate the 4 million people you sold this game to in order to not change things for the 10 people in this tournament. In fact I beat most of the guys in the pax tournament want this stuff nerfed because it sucks.

The meta at the moment is skill-less, but worse – it is just not fun. Sorry to say.

ye those things Anet should fix ….

Anet u make is skillless builds most powerfull builds , there is to much fears and stuns in this game , this is not skill if u just fear fear fear +tons of ondis,or stun than stun and while immune to condis and direct dmg put tons of dmg (very bad path to fix warriors) ,thief evade hit evade hit evade hit teleport hit ….. spirit ranger with mass ress every 30 secs :/ u cant kill anyone in team fight couse there is spirit ress u have to kill spirit before , and watch not to kill spirit after they down becouse they ress:/
my main is engi so and i use elksir r (double) couse this is the only way to kill spirit ranger and nekro , couse first eliksir r i use to cure condis , second to ress ……but i would play without it if i dont need it ,couse i dont like skills that i must have or else build is not viable ……btw eliksir r is not that big problem in this meta ,chain fear +deathshroud +tons of condis -this is biggest problem ,and that spirit ress especially in team fights

Anet give immunity to fear for 5 secs after u get feared !!!

Follidus.8027:

A thief’s steal when traited also needs to be looked at (instant, usable when CC’d, prioritizes stability on boon stealing (or at least it seems like it), and is a 21s cd.) What am I supposed to do against this? I have no idea.

Wot. The. Puppy.
You’re talking about Bountiful theft? The only option a thief has against stability unless they take S/D specifically? What are you suggesting here Folli.
Everything being visual with cast would be lovely (though slow) and to be blunt I don’t think it’s a reality for the immediate or even distant future.

Follidus.8027:

Lordrosicky.5813:

That is evident from solo q.

I agree with OP (this is something a lot of top-tier players have been saying for I don’t even know how long), but I don’t think solo q gives evidence for anything except solo q. For example, a team of 3 spirit rangers and 2 necromancers will dominate solo q, but not necessarily against top teams.

The big issue with these builds is that they’re incredibly easy to be effective with when compared to other builds, so when you throw them into a pug environment, of course they’re going to dominate.

I think the bigger issue isn’t how effective these builds are, but rather how simple they are to be so effective with. I’ve been saying this for months, but literally all you have to do with a spirit ranger is spam your offensive abilities. Using your defensive abilities is what starts to separate spirit rangers, but even then you have SO MANY that you can spam them most of the time.

The thing about conditions is that right now they’re effective because they’re being spammed. Not only are they being spammed, but they have access to SO many of them. Ontop of this there are SO MANY condition clears. So basically if you don’t have a ton of conditions to spam, you’re not viable. And if you don’t have a ton of condition clears, you’re not viable unless someone on your team does.

What I think needs to happen is there needs to be less spam, but less condition clears. When Necros don’t have access to burning, for example, then they can synergize with something that does have burning. It turns less into a mindless spam of conditions, and more of a “lets coordinate our bigger condition abilities together when we know they’re out of clears.”

On the flip side it’s currently a mindless spam of condition clearing as well. There’s so many conditions, with so many procs, from so many different classes, that you can’t isolate an ability (ex. engineer’s blowtorch: a long burning), or even from a certain player. It’s “oh, I have a long kitten burning on me, I can clear it now, but I have no idea when another long kitten burning can come” because their necro, engi, ranger, and guardian have either burning procs or aoe burning buffs that are given to themselves and allies. It’s stupid.

With that said other things need to be looked at. For example, CC warriors seem like they’re going to dominate if other things get nerfed. Not only is it good because of the insane uptime on CC, but they can also do a ton of damage ontop of it. A way to help balance this is to make it all pretty telegraphed, (which I know some of it is, and at least I know I can get a lot better at recognizing and reacting to them, but all of it needs to be recognizable and reactable.) but ontop of that they shouldn’t be able to kill certain things 100% in CC all by themselves.

A thief’s steal when traited also needs to be looked at (instant, usable when CC’d, prioritizes stability on boon stealing (or at least it seems like it), and is a 21s cd.) What am I supposed to do against this? I have no idea.

Same thing with stealth spamming and shadow trap. What is the counterplay here? How do I “outplay” someone that plays a sustain build that stealths every 4 seconds? How do I “outplay” shadowtrap when I have no idea where it is, when it’s activated, etc.

Finally, burst needs to be toned down as well. There’s no reason 1 player should be able to “global” someone, or even multiple people. When condition classes come down, there also needs to be a decrease in power damage. I don’t think it needs to be that big, because when you decrease everyones damage the bunker meta just comes back.

I think the biggest thing this game needs right now is for everything that’s important to have a cast time and a visible animation that can be reacted to.

p.s. I like how people engineers argue that elixir R isn’t a guaranteed res, when spirit res isn’t either.

Have to agree with the whole, pushing for more active play/counter play. +1

I agree with Folly in terms of how conditions are currently ruling the meta but I believe power should either stay the same or be toned down only a little bit. I say this because physical damage takes a little more skill to pull off with their animations. Obviously not all skills have noticeable telegraphs but for those that do, the damage done is deserved if timed properly.

I don’t think we need to beat a dead horse when it comes down to conditions. They’re spammable, in abundance and easily reapplied after cleansed. Some of the problems attributed to this are specific skills/traits that proc long-lasting burning with virtually no effort involved. Another issue is the ability to spec tanky while putting out solid condition damage.

Certain specs within certain professions also need to be looked at. Spirit rangers are the obvious along with Necromancer damage/mitigation. Again, most of us understand this and I believe Anet does as well. To a lesser degree, I think S/D thieves need a modification, perm-stealth, specific traits that offer too much when they’re low in their respective trees and a few more that could use some modifying. Just like what was posted above, if these are toned down enough, CC-Warriors might become a little too strong.

Silv.9207:

[…]
About engi, have you ever try to fight a engi bunker/condition build? it’s unkillable. Too much resistance, whit a good damage, ranged, AoE knock back, quick skills, confusion ‘till 9 stack in 2 sec… and they can auto ress… it’s a OP build XD
[…]

The Engineer you are referring has Toolkit as Utility (otherwise 9 stacks of confusion is not possible), Bombkit, and probably you are referring to Flamethrower AOE knockback, because the shield knockback is on a 30 sec cooldown and a easy to see animation with casttime.

I haven’t seen any engineer running the three kits – but just in case you met one, here’s what you do:

1) “Bunker/condition build” – Engineer aren’t bunkers, they survive due to blinds and well timed knockbacks – if you really get your hits at him he will die easily.
2) “ranged” the Engi you are referring to isn’t ranged at all – the 9 stack of confusion can only happen, if you happen to stand in his bombs and the engineer will hit you with the pry bar – both melee attacks!
3) The engineer won’t have any stunbreaks – you stun them, they are pretty much screwed

Don’t argue with me that I see things differently because I’m an egineer – the engineer was a strong class, true (maybe on the very strong side of life if played well), but there are already too much counters out there, so it’s declining anyway. You won’t see that much in future anyway. The engineer you are describing isn’t played that way – get yourself someone who shows you the builds before mixing up things.

If you eat the whole 9 stacks of confusion – I’d say get yourself an engineer and practice playing against him.

Florgknight.1589:

You listed 5 classes, may as well buff the other four for balance.

No, no and no – enough buffing already. There has been so many buffs to damage that pure damage is dominating everything (either condi or direct damage) we have never had so much dmg before – it’s isn’t good for the meta, nor for the viewership. Let’s go to more hybrid setups where you can actually see whats happening!

Stealth.9324:

Elixir R is fine the way it is because it is random and is not as good as it used to be. You won’t see that many Elixir R around in game. Also there are a lot of way to counter it. If you see the Enginen toss Elixir R at low Heath, either you stop heavily attacking until the effect wear off or you push him out of the effective radius and let Condition eat him away. By doing so, you make them wasted the skill. The skill also has super duper long CD 120s CD.

Spirit renewal on the other hand is 100% Rez, 30s CD, can be activated twice in one summoning with trait. And the CD start when he is summoning. There is no argue with you here that Spirit Renewal is way way better than Elixir R because there is no counter play except by killing renewal as fast as you could. Though, even so, they still get one Rez guarantee if the Ranger go down when Renewal die for some reason. You can not see where it is gonna be using his effect on, so almost there is no counter against them.

This is jut so much BS only to protect elixir r. I am not saying that the spirit rezz is weaker but elixir has so many advantages that they both (all skills which can rezz yourself) need to be nerfed.

Your argument is, that you can just wait or cc the engi out of the rezz area. When you’re such a perfect player who does this all the time, then please tell me why aren’t you able to kill the a spirit before the ranger dies? Or to kill the ranger and cc the spirit so his rezz get ruptet?
You wanna now why? Cause both are really hard to do. Some classes do not have cc – and the 1 kick may be on a kitten cd?! And the engi is not stupid – he tries to die and there are situations when you can’ t do anything against it like when the engi has many conditions. Do you suggest a cond class shouldn’t apply any conditions at ~25% engi health??
Why do you think you see so many engi rezz themselves in high rated tournament matches? You think all the top players are not good enough when it’s so easy as you try to sell here???
Both rezzes are really hard to counter but both are ruptable if you get lucky and have your appropriate skills ready. But to say only one is balanced and the other one is not just shows you’re lack of knowledge about the classes and how to counter them or you just pretend to have no clue to safe something you maybe “exploit” yourself.

Btw – other advantages of elixir r are:
-only ~100cd (cause you always skill some points into tools) vs 240s cd if you killed the spirit which you always should do asap
-many engis play with 15 in tools which make them able to have a double rezz

→ i had a 1on1 against an engi with a hybrid dps/bunker class/spec which dealt enough dmg to kill him but because it was not very fast, the engi was able to rezz himself 3 times with elixir r (I know not gonna happen in real tourny but doesn’t change the fact that it’s still possible)

But as I said – Spirit of Nature need to get nerfed as well as Elixir R. I just hate it when people use some argument (which, is in this case not even doable in 90% of the time) and just pretend the same argument would not count on the other skill they try to get nerfed.

I am a 3 kits Engineer build. If you need help with their combo and counter,Silv, I can help. The combo is as following:

1/The Enginner place confusion bomb as where he stand.
2/He use Magnetic pull to pull you to him, just in time the confusion bomb ignites, 5 stacks of confusion on you.
3/He smack you with Pry Bar while you close to him and down, give you another 5 stacks of confusion.

The key here is to dodge the pull and you will be fine. How to dodge the pull? You found out yourself.

TL:DR: Agree with OP & Folly.
But I have concerns about how the change is going to be executed. A mindless nerf is not the way though; if anything the current meta was a “predictable” result from the buffs given.
What feels so mindless atm is both the spam and in some cases the lack of actual choice when it comes to traits, weapons and skills. Even the skill-sequence feels locked at times.

I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing, that some builds have a low(er) skill-floor and still be doing ok. We all have to start somewhere. Where it becomes horrid, is when the builds with the lowest skill-floor are so much more than “ok” and/or there are no real alternative.

PS: I think I am in favor of a PTR of some sort to ease the necessary changes through; else I fear we will end up in the opposite ditch :‘(
PPS: @Folly: If everything important has a cast-time, then isn’t it almost mandatory to also look at animations of the various races? I play a asura’s for the looks of them, but their animations sure are harder to tell. I do btw like how constructive you are; I think we need to point to solutions rather than just the nerfs alone.

Stealth.9324:

I am a 3 kits Engineer build. If you need help with their combo and counter,Silv, I can help. The combo is as following:

1/The Enginner place confusion bomb as where he stand.
2/He use Magnetic pull to pull you to him, just in time the confusion bomb ignites, 5 stacks of confusion on you.
3/He smack you with Pry Bar while you close to him and down, give you another 5 stacks of confusion.

The key here is to dodge the pull and you will be fine. How to dodge the pull? You found out yourself.

It can’t be done, confusion bomb detonates before you can pull him to yourself.
The 9 stacks of confusion are most likely to happen if you’re a ranger or mesmer because of the pistol #3.

I find it really sad that a “top player” from EU is saying Mace Warrior is hard to deal with. If people had the decency to do the following:

1.) Get out of the Warriors attack range during zerk stance. (e.g Flesh Wurm, Shadow Step)
2.) Spam frames (Even though evade frames themselves are broken akittens current state)
3.) Spam Blinds when zerk stance is down.
4.) Out-damage Mace + Hammer if you have stability. Seriously that build literally CANNOT DPS without stunning people.

We wouldn’t get statements such as “Nerf Mace Duration please” from deemed “top players.” Right now its the only balanced thing out of the “broken” things that the OP has mentioned because its so heavily telegraphed.

I think the biggest issue that needs looking at is ease versus effectiveness.

There has to exist some skills/builds with a low barrier of entrance that are effective. Those are essentially “training wheel” builds, that are there to allow an easier and more casual experience to be enjoyable for players that are new to the game/class, in order to allow them to benefit the team and provide a sense of contributing to the outcome of the game, while giving them gameplay experience to graduate to the next level.

Where I think we’re seeing the issue is once we examine those specs versus specs that require more know how, more rotations, and more complex strategies.

When the specs that require more skill to use effectively don’t have a higher (or high enough) output of contribution (damage/utility/etc) than the “training wheel” specs, then people are going to opt to continue to use those “training wheel” specs because not only are they easier to use, but they provide basically the same contribution as the harder to play specs, making it almost pointless to even put the effort into playing the harder specs since they aren’t strong enough to be used over the easy specs.

It seems right now that there is a lack of… direction I guess. Really, it seems like there is a lack in understanding of where the middle ground needs to be. There needs to be a level that gets set by the devs where the bar is set where they say “we only want the easier to use specs to be this effective” (preferably lower than where a lot of them are now).

Then, once that is established and the specs that are too strong for the level of difficulty are adjusted down, there can be some exploration into exactly what peak of capabilities they are willing to allow some specs achieve. On that note, there needs to be a direct relationship with how difficult rotations are and how “clutch” performances must be versus the output of capabilities.

tl;dr: Metaphor: A button masher is still allowed to have a degree of effectiveness, but up against a practiced and knowledgeable veteran, the button masher should rarely win; only when the veteran is making mistakes or the button masher gets lucky and accomplishes something skillful.

Agree, especially with the spirit ranger and the necro. Both create a “build wars” effect that is pretty offensive : if you face them with other builds, you will lose unless they are really bad. It’s really an awful experience to play three different classes in the game (warrior/mesmer/ele) and to estimate your chances of survival at about 10% when you need to engage them 1-on-1.

While I agree that S/D thieves are very strong and might need to be slightly toned down, they are not as offensive as the others. They actually have bad matchups and require some skill to play (sorry necros / rangers).

Stunlock warriors aren’t OP at all at the moment but might become too strong if they nerf the AoE blind/weakness as they said in the livestream.

Wait a second… stun spam warriors exist since a long time. Did you find out now it is annoying to play against them (I bet before you laughed at the slow and stupid warrior with the hammer)?

I think what bothers you is the burst that follows in greatsword builds.