Guild Wars 2

Is it just me, or are hard counters a lot, well, harder than they were back when the game was released? I confess I don’t have huge amounts of experience with all sorts of different builds, but back in the early days the only opponents I found insanely hard to defeat were s/d elementalists. They just had too much condi cleansing for me as a condition Necro, I had to outplay them till my fingers bled to stand a chance. Nowadays, though, there’s all sorts of builds I just don’t stand a chance against (power rangers, for instance), no matter how well I play, and, conversely, builds that just can’t touch me, however much they can outplay me (like rabid engis).

Clearly not every matchup falls into the “eat or be eaten” categories. A few matchups are fairly even, others one side has an advantage, but not an insuperable one. But it’s my impression that the number of builds that are absolute hard counters to others has increased, and I don’t like it. The causes of this aren’t hard to figure out: some questionable design decisions (like Diamond Skin, though thankfully I don’t see many people running it), and slow but steady power creep in most other areas (like ever so slightly decreasing the cast time of high damage channelled skills for most professions).

Do people agree that there are more hard counters in the game nowadays? Or is that just a misleading impression I’ve formed because of the builds people run at around my MMR? Can anyone come up with an argument why that could be a good thing, or do people mostly agree with me that it sucks?

I’m not sure what you’re getting at.. I think you’re just a little frustrated and probably rusty or something.

Power Ranger is not a “hard counter” to anything really… definitely not a condition necro considering if the power ranger is built 6/6/x/x/x then he has minimal condition cleansing.. that being said it is not the easiest fight for a Necro assuming the Ranger has a positional advantage which is what you need to avoid

The only hard counter is diamond skin ele – which is clearly not that popular for many reasons – zerker stance does not last forever and warriors in general are easier to overload with condis since the latest patch

Hardcounters do suck but I do not see many at all – there are difficult matchups that favor one build over another but nothing is unbeatable

No I’m not really frustrated, like I pointed out conditionmancer is also hard for other builds. It feels like I’m either dominating or getting rolled, with very little middle ground in between. Which is why it feels like there are more builds in the game that are hard counters to other builds. Maybe “hard” counter isn’t exactly right, maybe they’re extremely strong soft counters. But it really does feel like the rock<paper<scissors effect is stronger nowadays than it used to be. Does nobody else think so?