Heyhey, players and maybe a stray dev
I wanted to discuss roaming roles and perhaps the builds that lend themselves to this style. More specifically classes, lets break them down. Keep in mind this is in regard to +1’ing a fight to gain control, not to stall…
- Guardian, fairly immobile aside from one reliable teleport & limited access to swiftness. So unless a dragon hunter JI’s to someone and gets off a trap wombo-combo it’s really an ineffective +1
- Warrior, weapon kits provide mobility but no access to stealth, damage prevention comes from utilities which are needed in fights so you can take a lot of damage in between points. In short, an ineffective +1
- Revenant, great mobility (5sec blink) and pack significant damage (condi or power) when arriving to a fight, and can sustain that damage in a long fight. A good roamer
- Engineer, better served to fighting on point, has access to swiftness to move on map. Can position well, but not a good +1.
- Ranger, with the addition of staff rangers or druids can move from point to point very well, but much like the engineer they are better suited for on point skirmishes and excel at 1v1 matchups. So… not a good +1
- Thief, uh… yeah they’re pretty good at +1’ing. nothing more to say right?
- Mesmer, build dependent the oldy but goodie shatter can deliver a huge punch from stealth and with access to moa, the utility burst combo of mesmer can make it a great +1 tool. Oh and don’t forget about portal…
- Elementalist, very similar to druid and scrapper, Ele’s can move fairly well on the map but don’t pack a huge punch. Their damage is predictable and more suited for long drawn out fights or 1v1’s
- Necromancer, the juggernaut of gw2, they control space and once they get rolling can be hard to bring down with d.s. build up. Rely on warhorn for mobility, and so not a great +1’ing class.
Of the now 9 class types in GW2, I’ve selected 3 as candidates from excellent +1’ers with the intention to kill a target to gain control of a point node. What makes these classes so good at this role? Access to high mobility and spike damage.
Mobility is just part of the classes kit and we’ll leave that out of the discussion for today. Lets talk about the second aspect, damage.
Because of the one off utility that mesmer provides it is expected that the raw damage they produce would be a little lower than thief and revenant, because you can’t have everything…right? So lets put (shatter) mesmer at the bottom of the king of the hill for now, good spike, ok sustain (chrono alacrity)
Next lets try… revenant, doesn’t as easy access to a one punch spike as mesmer and thief, but if you have energy to auto attack with quickness for 4k (due to might stacking which is as easy as counting 1..2..3) then hey that’s not bad either, right?
Now thief, with the addition of daredevil “dash” dodge, they go wherever they want come out of stealth and smack. Thiefs claim to fame has always been their ability to move to a target and hit it for a great deal of damage all at once.
So that’s my take on the classes before the recent balance patch. Now for what it’s worth all of these classes when player power rely on marauder amulet primarily despite the difference in armor class health pools (light, medium, heavy).
This brings me to what I’m trying to get at, if all the classes rely on the same amulet, what makes one good at spike and one better at sustain. Easy answer, their weapon abilities and traits. Having % bonus damage added to attacks, and high damage ratios on attacks provide the scaling needed to be considered a high damage build.
So… This January 26th patch
What it did was bring thief more in line with revenant in terms of sustained strength in a fight, and at the same time alacrity was nerfed for mesmers.
Now… without sounding like an kitten , what’s going on here? Did we forget that three different builds/classes are looking for a spot on a competitive roster? Builds of a similar nature automatically compete for viability in the meta based on how they operate.
If alacrity was gonna be nerfed, why not revert the already nerfed alacrity on shatter trait. In this case mesmers will still have access to meaningful alacrity but the effect of alacrity would be less significant. Sure, alacrity is a huge plus for mesmer don’t get me wrong but it’s a shadow of what it was on release without any significant improvements to power builds.
I think the thief changes are good by the way, I like the idea of them being more than a one trick pony when it comes to spikes. But bringing one thing inline automatically makes other things weaker. And I’m sorry but a 10% damage to sword skills upon HoT release is a joke by comparison to the buffs thief received with this patch.
Long, long, long, long story short… when are damage ratios going to be looked at for mesmer?