Ranger is certainly not the weakest class. I win 90% of my 1v1 on ranger and I have very high burst (I can kill things like thieves and marauder revs in seconds if I land all my burst), great healing and support and good mobility and disengage.
Maybe you are just a much better player than the Rangers you have fought because a condi guard/trap ranger should not beat an equally skilled player using the meta Druid build. Rangers are especially good against condition builds because they have 2 full condi clears, one (celestial avatar) on a 15 second cooldown.
Thats not true, The meta druids just melt against my necro, even the really good one have very hard time.
Duel mine? My Druid hard counters condi necros…literal hard counter. No chance in hell for any condi necro.
Huh, what are you running? My experience is I can consistently beat a (good) necro 1v1 if I’m willing to give them the cap (by kiting shroud), but once you start vying for the point things get dicey for me (exception is mid @ foefire because it’s huge).
J/c since it happened to me for the first time just now. I didn’t get the 50 g asking fee (guy had 1 pip till legend), but pips is pips, you know?
It could be that this class just has a high skill floor to be effective. Its not weak when used properly but very suseptible to being used improperly. Theif is the one most like that in my opinion.
That’s probably closer to the truth. Playing a druid involves a fair bit of multi-tasking. Emphasis on watching the mini-map like a hawk (because they have mobility to make game-changing rotations), their teammates healthbars and condi bars to support, as well as manage their pet positioning/CD’s to maximize DPS, on top of the basic mechanical part of doing DPS while sustaining that every class requires.
I get the issues with this season, and I’m not coming at this from the winstreak perspective (I’m at 58% w/l solo queue, 5 pips till leg as of writing). But, remember the complaints in S1? That skilled players have to compete against each other to gain a pip, whereas lower MMR players only have to beat mediocre players to gain a pip. In this way, mediocre players could climb through the leagues to legend only ever facing other mediocre/bad players. Apparently, their MMR never rose drastically because their wins were never against high MMR opponents, or so the argument went.
There’s got to be some middle ground to eliminate the issue described above as well as the S3 issues you’re talking about. For starters they would have to reduce the MMR range within a given team (i.e., 10 9 5 3 2 vs. 7 7 7 7 7 shouldn’t happen like in unranked), and this combined with the S3 pre-season seeding might help but I really don’t have a clue what else could be done.
Many more things than just the matchmaker were changed from S1. S1 did not require a similar pip range when it matched. Think about the gravity of this change..
The league system should continue to make matches from pip range segments as it does now, I’m not speaking about reverting that, I’m speaking about reverting the matchmaker so available players are as equally distributed amongst both teams instead of stacking one side.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that change about the pip range. Yeah, I’m all for going back to that matchmaking then.
Did you see this topic? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Best-Suggestion-Ever-For-Ranked-Spvp/first#post6195009
There was a post with an interesting idea to make divisions MMR percentile-based, which could also help mitigate folks’ disgruntlement with “pip-grinding”:
I think it should go by MMR but keep divisions roughly similar to Elo percentile:
Amber: lowest 32%
Emerald: 33%-64%
Sapphire: 64%-84%
Ruby:85%-98.5%
Diamond- 98.6%-top 501-1,000 players
Legendary: Top 500
(edited by Salamander.2504)
I think it should go by MMR but keep divisions roughly similar to Elo percentile:
Amber: lowest 32%
Emerald: 33%-64%
Sapphire: 64%-84%
Ruby:85%-98.5%
Diamond- 98.6%-top 501-1,000 players
Legendary: Top 500Within Legendary have a Challenger league for the top 200. Their rank would be displayed alongside a reskinned Legendary icon. If someone holds their number 1 spot for a week of active playing they get a special title and the number 1 spot would be a temporary title called number one guy or champion of GW2.
This idea and Trevor’s are good and should be seriously considered by ANet. As long as the pip system system is in place, people are going to be upset, whether wrongfully or not. It’s like dangling a carrot on a stick over people’s heads. The “need more pips” mentality isn’t a good system and it doesn’t work with gamer psychology, as evidenced by the numerous complaints on the forums.
Frankly it’s irrelevant whether these folks need to “git gud” or not; if a huge sample of the population is unhappy, there’s a problem. Getting rid of pips entirely and going based on MMR percentiles would solve this, because people would no longer feel entitled to progress through the leagues (because all they need is 5 more pips or something). It would definately boost morale.
That, and go back to something closer to S1/unranked matchmaking but with a lower spread in MMR within a given team.
Season3 seems to have introduced this phenomenon where players are chosen at random (means unknown to me,) and they experience huge win streaks, crushing victories, and generally no opposition while they roll an entire division in a sitting.
In my personal experience, highly skilled veteran players seem to generally be stacked and face very little opposition, but now, I’m noticing even players that have known past struggles in the Leagues get on massive streaks of facing enemies that provide little resistance.
Every player who had struggled in the past and suddenly is on a huge tear, “I love S3!” For the rest of average and what I can only imagine as bottom half of the playerbase, “Whelp, this game has taken a huge crap on me.”
Nobody likes this matchmaker except the people who are suddenly winning a 75% of their matches and feel like they’re being rewarded for getting good’.
The above-average to the highly-skilled veterans are falling asleep in queues, and in many matches – crushing their opponents was more fun when they had to sweat for it.
For every player on a huge win streak, there are an equal amount of lose streaks.
Seriously, bring back evenly matched team MMR aka S1. There were improvements that could have been made to it, which I could detail, but the changes made since S1 are horrendous for the casual and veteran experience.
I get the issues with this season, and I’m not coming at this from the winstreak perspective (I’m at 58% w/l solo queue, 5 pips till leg as of writing). But, remember the complaints in S1? That skilled players have to compete against each other to gain a pip, whereas lower MMR players only have to beat mediocre players to gain a pip. In this way, mediocre players could climb through the leagues to legend only ever facing other mediocre/bad players. Apparently, their MMR never rose drastically because their wins were never against high MMR opponents, or so the argument went.
There’s got to be some middle ground to eliminate the issue described above as well as the S3 issues you’re talking about. For starters they would have to reduce the MMR range within a given team (i.e., 10 9 5 3 2 vs. 7 7 7 7 7 shouldn’t happen like in unranked), and this combined with the S3 pre-season seeding might help but I really don’t have a clue what else could be done.
Ranger at 3:30 using wyvern and spamming axe autos…trust me it’s not the class.
That being said, if you can load up condis on a ranger after he’s used CA, he’s dead unless he has the 60 s CD signet up.
^
If you want to win 100% of the time, PvE is available.
I agree its basically a lie. But what does happen in this game since just about any idiot can grind to ruby is people end up being stuck playing with people much better then they are if they play a lot since you can’t go down in league even if you lose 100 in a row. I think that’s what we are seeing in some cases when people talk about losing streaks.
If this were the real reason, people would only get stuck in “MMR Hell” at division barriers, which isn’t the case, is it?
Yep!
Server side lag-spikes are occurring all the time. It’s like 2 s of lag every 15 s. Other folks I’ve talked to have been experiencing it too. It’s making PvP unplayable.
I know I’m not the only one because folks ingame saying the same thing. Anyone else here getting these 2 s lag spikes every ~15 s?
Are happening almost every game now.
Internet speed test says I’m 58 b/s.
Then premades would get obliterated and no one would want to queue together…
Rather than separitng soloq and teamq wich probably increase even more q times ,why not implement a system thats not so punishing for pugs while fighting premades.
-If you as a pug lose to a premade you dont lose any pip.
-If you as a pug win against a premade you win an extra pip.
-If you as a premade lose against a pug lose an extra pip.
-If you as a premade win against a pug get only a pip regarding if you are on a win streak or not.
I dont think its a perfect solution ,but it will probably help a bit ,with that said i have not encountered many premades this season can not speak for others.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. If you can’t separate the Sq from the Tq then those 3+ groups & prems need to have their advantage reduced to level the playing field.
A solo sacrifice and suffering abuse (at least until you eventually find other solos with whom you synergise with) isn’t what guild wars 2 should be about
The advantage is already there: Premades have an “MMR boost,” which means that the opposing team has a higher MMR. Pugs destroy premades all the time because they are frequently composed of better players. Why should I get an extra pip for a match I was already favored to win?
You’re playing during off-hours.
I’m not hating on your attitude of conditions, I’m just pointing out that mesmer is actually one of the slowest DPS classes for killing the lord because so much of its DPS comes from torment and confusion. That’s why you should always facepalm if you see your condi mesmer go for beast. As you mention, the lord can’t attack while moving, so it will always be stationary for quite awhile, even when being kited.
Thought so. I always wondered why condi mesmers kill him within 10s once they get on him.
Condi mesmers are the slowet DPS against the lord (and all NPCs) because their damage is maximized when their target is moving (torment) and attacking quickly (confusion), neither of which the lord does.
Stealth stomp?
As of 4 months ago, the Devourer F2 wouldn’t act as a combo field, so it’s good that they fixed that bug.
I think people just find the game mode annoying. Teams stack minion masters and it becomes an AI slug fest. Long and boring.
Pff, those 5 minion mancers would have to be extremely kitten and the team they are fighting would have to be mediocre for them to pose a real threat. Sure they’d be annoying but, those guys are annoying in every game mode. I’d actually say they are more annoying in Conquest than in Stronghold. A good group of players can out-manuever them, making them look like fools for playing minions. A group of Trap rangers would pose a bigger threat.
No…good players can “outmaneuver” minion mancers in conquest because they get locked down and have no real utility skills. Why would you want to rotate out of a fight with a minion mancer? :P
MM work in SH though because larger teamfights are rare (so team focus w/lockdowns don’t occur as much) and because so much of the DPS is focused on NPC’s (doorbreakers, guards) rather than on the players, so the “focus the necro” conquest mantra isn’t usually applied. This allows the poison fields from all the dead minions shred the doorbreakers.
Heavy light is the worst offender of passive gameplay.
Not really…to use it effectively you need to set it up with traps, positioning, and weapon swaps. I hate passive gameplay 100% but Heavy light is actually a (surprisingly) well designed trait. It’s also only unblockable if you can hit with LB#3, which is an artform in and of itself.
+1 to remove #6 from nightmare rune, and do something about shocking aura…
“I can kill bad rangers”
“I can’t kill good rangers”No that is not what I am saying, I guess your reading comprehension is kind of weak but I’ll try explain again:
I can kill nearly every ranger I have played against this season and do it with relative ease. Compared to that, every other class (assuming HoT builds) is either challenging (eg Reaper/DH/Thief), or impossible (eg condi warrior, engi, ele).
As far as I can see ranger is by far the weakest class- almost laughably so.
Now I thought perhaps it was just that I was playing a direct counter build- but another poster says druids are strong vs conditions, so its not that. Nor do I believe that somehow almost every ranger I play against is a noob and every condi warrior is a pro. I think many of the rangers I have played against play well- they just have a weak sauce class that is really easy to pin down and burst.
Ranger has always been a class like that, where there is no middle ground: they are either terrible or they are great. Just like a thief. But the class itself is fine (minus the poorly designed core pets) and absolutely competitive. You might be really good at killing rangers because you main one.
(edited by Salamander.2504)
Seems reasonable. I’ll put it on the list of things to look into.
Another thing to please put on the list: Make boons on pets be part of the UI above the pet UI?
From my understanding, you obviously want to win games, but also work hard at getting close matches if you lose. You gain or lose MMR based on the relative skill of each team as well as how you performed. Win 500-0 against better opponents = big gain, lose 499-500 against better opponents = small loss.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but in simple terms I’d just say do your best at all times for max gain and less loss. Don’t throw, don’t give up because you’re down 100 points, etc. If you have a 100 point lead, keep pushing for more of a blow out.
I don’t think this is correct: score does not factor into MMR, only the MMR of you and your opponents, and the outcome of the match.
Moa is being reverted to 10s but instead will turn you into svanir.
Deathly Chill is being replaced with a fall damage trait.
I think those are the highlights, good luck in S3.
I also never understood why you would use merc… The condi warrior doesnt have much power burst anyways. Better go full condi, been doing that for months now… Even before warrior was buffed. Even made a video about it
You say that but I did a ton of damage with merc amulet and sword /torch mace/shield. My damage stats were almost exactly split 50/50 between power and condi which I like a lot especially when fighting ele and their diamond skin.
Yeah I’m getting a pretty even split with sage macebow. The damage coefficients on some skills like skull grinder (1.5) and mace 2 (2.0) make it worth taking power imo.
Build is not that strong though, DH’s or decent Scrappers with retal can easily beat you on point.
This falls closely in line with how strong I see the build. Kind of an easy rank up build.
Please Nerf it.
Umm…what?
Umm that is why I said closely inline. I was vague for a reason. You really must like your thief to directly attack me out of context like this. A change to perma evade or bandits defense shouldn’t bother thief too much anyway assuming they use mechanical skill.
You pretty much said it is only good for ranking up easily, implying it is only good at lower level play. Then you want it nerfed. That is why you make 0 sense. You want something that is only viable vs bads nerfed because you happen to not like it.
Believe it or not, but builds don’t only need to be nerfed if they’re powerful at top levels of PvP. If there’s a build that steamrolls new/inexperienced players without requiring any effort, that’s also bad for the game. It’s the same reason turret engis needed to be nerfed. Even if it can be countered at high levels of play, you discourage players from even trying to PvP when they see other players getting rewarded for faceroll behavior.
This build is nowhere near as effective as Turret Engi was.
It doesn’t have to be, but it was effective enough for people to hit legendary with it last season. =P
So? Reaching Legendary is hardly even an achievement.
According to the people who frequent these forums, there are no achievements possible by playing GW2.
ok guys, imo the removal of this amulet is not to balance classes, but this amulet is the amulet that kept other amulets from being used, no matter how you balance a game, condition builds will always take mercenary over every other amulets, it simply has the advantage over others and it is simply too good of an amulet. if it makes any sense.
+1
@Zelulose
I really disagree…DH is not lacking in sustain because it can’t chain together defensive abilities and heals. DH has access to medi heals and can reset virtues with RF, allowing prolonged “defensive chaining” with condi clears. It also has plenty of stability, but is sub-par in the stun-breaking department due to the long CD’s (and casting time) of F3 and JI. DH can chain together defenses with the best of them, and its medi heals are almost unparalleled. DH is weak because it is the only low health-pool class without mobility/disengage (chained defenses only last so long) and has long CD stunbreakers.
I understand this but meditation heals come at the expense of defense or condition removal or damage most classes can have the best of each world but guardian can’t Meditations (healing and utility) means less blocks and less traps.
1) DH doesn’t really have a problem with condi’s due to traited F2, SC on heal and SC on utility bar. Anyways, condi’s are about to become a whole lot less of a problem now that mercenary amulet is removed.
2) Meditations are extremely powerful because they are both offensive and defensive. JI is a stunbreak, teleport, fury, 2k heal, and some burn damage to boot. SC crits for 3k aoe and also provides 2k heal, fury, and condi clear. So going meditations doesn’t actually make the guardian give up defense, offense, or blocks (there is no utility block). The only question is how the guardians use them: busting JI and SC for your opening burst leaves you down 4k health, a condi clear and a stunbreaker, but that’s just part of the risk—the definition of a well designed skill that can be used offensively (start of the fight), defensively (kiting under focus), or both (almost anytime).
3) Saying that medi’s don’t provide the DH excellent healing capabilities because they use up a utility spot (that can be used for other things) is not a good argument—ranger’s, necro’s, thieves, etc. would kill to have the ability to heal in the utility spot.
4) I’m not sure “most classes can have the best of each world”…that might apply to Rev? Anyways, why would anyone want to take more traps? TOF and heal trap are all you need. The other traps are pug-stompers only and aren’t worth considering here.
(edited by Salamander.2504)
@Zelulose
I really disagree…DH is not lacking in sustain because it can’t chain together defensive abilities and heals. DH has access to medi heals and can reset virtues with RF, allowing prolonged “defensive chaining” with condi clears. It also has plenty of stability, but is sub-par in the stun-breaking department due to the long CD’s (and casting time) of F3 and JI. DH can chain together defenses with the best of them, and its medi heals are almost unparalleled. DH is weak because it is the only low health-pool class without mobility/disengage (chained defenses only last so long) and has long CD stunbreakers.
Yes but Merc amulet was great for my double melee Sword/Torch Mace/Shield Condi War.
Now it will have to be LB Mace/Shield to keep some distance when needed.
But i will probably test out Power War with Demolisher amulet and GS Axe/Shield especially now Mesmers and Necros will not have Merc Amulet anymore they will have to give up DPS or be squishier.
Honestly, Demolisher GS Axe/Shield already works really well. It’s just going to be even better now.
Let’s hope the “outlier” shaves include Revenant, now that mesmers and necros will no longer be able keep power rev’s in check (without toughness).
I’m a bit on the fence with Merc going away but now it looks like Sage’s Amulet will be taken.
In any event, we’re going to expect more changes next week so we’ll see where we stand.
I don’t think so. All those healing power will be a wasted stat imo. The healing shatters do not scale very well with healing power iirc.
Yeah, they don’t scale well at all—it’s only an extra 112 health per shatter with Sages. Carrion will work nicely, although the removal of toughness amulets for mesmer, necro, and warrior might make some room for power mesmers.
Sages or Carrion will work fine.
The damage coefficient is low and there isn’t really enough access to aegis. I haven’t actually tried it with the aegis trap, but it seems hard to optimize because there is no guarantee your teammates will walk into the aegis. SA can be frustrating when fighting ranged opponents, who will bust your aegis and be outside the range.
The other side of it is, going into Zeal means you’re losing out on condi clear, stability, and stunbreak, and virtue cooldown reduction from virtue traitline. So your taking a big hit to sustain in a landscape that already puts targets over DH’s heads.
@mrauls, thanks, got it.
It is worth testing however, I know that the pull is not able to be evaded.
That’s the first I’ve heard of this. Can anyone confirm?
It should also be confirmed that you can’t dodge guardian’s Binding blade pull on great-sword even if that is block-able.
I can confirm that that is dodgeable.
Only for the duration that isn’t interrupted which allows them to chain spear of justice after binding blade. Just tested it again. Edit:The pull is not dodge-able at all. Edit again: None of the pulls are block-able as I just tested it again.
I already complained about getting interrupted by guardian cages and being unable to dodge out of them. But these discoveries are more unsettling considering the effect it has on skill based gameplay even if guardian isn’t overpowered sustain wise. (Spear of justic + binding blade can stop a player for two knockdowns unless they have stab-ability if chained with virtually no other options for counter play.
This brings up the question: Of course, nothing should be undodgable, but does it make sense having 1 skill be dodgeable twice? If you remove the undodgeable effect from the 2nd activation, do you change the skill so you don’t have to activate it twice? I.e., When using binding blades and I hit my target the CC occurs immediately (and there is no 2nd activation ability)?
Thanks for the comms, Gaile, we definitely appreciate it. Any update on when Season 3 starts? We’re all dying to know.
It is worth testing however, I know that the pull is not able to be evaded.
That’s the first I’ve heard of this. Can anyone confirm?
It should also be confirmed that you can’t dodge guardian’s Binding blade pull on great-sword even if that is block-able.
I can confirm that that is dodgeable.
Only for the duration that isn’t interrupted which allows them to chain spear of justice after binding blade. Just tested it again. The pull is not dodge-able at all.
Got it, I had to edit my post.
It is worth testing however, I know that the pull is not able to be evaded.
That’s the first I’ve heard of this. Can anyone confirm?
It should also be confirmed that you can’t dodge guardian’s Binding blade pull on great-sword even if that is block-able.
I can confirm that that is dodgeable.
Edit: I misunderstood. I can’t confirm whether the pull itself is dodgeable, only the intial application.
(edited by Salamander.2504)
It is worth testing however, I know that the pull is not able to be evaded.
That’s the first I’ve heard of this. Can anyone confirm?
I agree that diversity is on the floor. But this does not mean that base classes must be on the same level as elite.
Is there any reason not to? Most people miss playing the core classes.
Spear of Justice needs to be fixed. End the unblock-able pull and make it block-able or remove the cc.
That will end this happening to thief or other non heavy armor class.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKDTAs4RiAIf the snare on great sword is used it can one shot 5 heavy armor golems In less than half a second. That’s 22,084 health and 2,595 armor according to gw2 wikki.
The traps themselves need to have damage reduced by 10-30% depending on the trap. The more damage the higher percentage of damage reduction.
I’m pretty sure the pull is blockable, but it’s the initial tether that’s unblockable.
Disclaimer: I’m not a rev main, but I’ve been downed plenty by rev’s. I’ve noticed they’ll drop Elemental Blast (from Facet of Elements) on my body, and swap to Shiro and quickness AA me to death with Impossible Odds and the heal. Just speculation here, but if you see an unfriendly coming, you can camp Herald and wait for them to CC you before swapping to shiro for a guaranteed stun break from Riposting Shadows followed by quickness AA.
Just make sure your crit% never exceeds 100% from precision, fury, or any other crit% modifiers from traits (or food since you’re wvw).
Furajir.3815
Really rare for me to encounter a well played enough Mesmer or Necro as plain vanilla war with CI that can bring me down. I run cleansing and generosity on sw/sh and GS though. Gives me 2 condi clears on wep swap, and a clear and a condi transfer, which is pretty funny.)Lol Sigil of generosity? really? this is pretty funny. I’m not knocking it though. extra condi cleanse about every 12 seconds when fighting is pretty cool
I play around with sigils a lot, right now leeching is broken, and the amount of decent ones is pretty slim, never been a fan of the on proc like air/fire, the damage is nice, but usually when I play an mmo I try to play outside the norm.
Ditto. I find it fun to come up with unconventional ideas then test how they pan out.
~EW
Here is a free-bee then: Headbutt* with Lyssa Runes. That combo carried my f2p zerker ammy core warrior to diamond in 3 days at the end of last season, back when warrior was trash-tier (*obviously I had to use signet of rage but headbutt works way better).
(edited by Salamander.2504)
…All that needs to be done is give DH thier old dps back. And u can argue for it to be somewhat good or give them a bit more sustain with our current damage. Warriors need very slight buff to thier condi cleansing. but very small.
Warrior has so many viable options for condi clear, they don’t need more. DH lost some DPS but bringing back 20% of True shot damage won’t make them meta; the problem goes deeper than that. Rather, IMO, it is the projectile hate (particularly) from ele’s and engi’s that needs to be toned down if DH is going to be competitive. The low health-pool is also a contributor but we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought ANet would ever change that.
Too many options for condi clear? It has some condi clear. But that’s about it. Discipline and defence are the only viable ones. Nobody uses tactics or shouts. Signets are pretty much useless as well. No signet will safe you from the conditions that can be applied constantly by the chronophantasma mesmer, corruptionmancer or even condi malyx revenant. U are better of running the standard berserker stance, cleansing ire etc and the trait that swaps condi’s on weaponswap.
The projectile hate is really just a tad of the problem really. Elementalist don’t Always stay in air attunment or earth attunment for long it’s really situational and said reflects pretty much lost thier effectivness as our true shot’s power decreased.
It’s the traps and nerfs all accros. I mean . Traps lose lots of thier effectivness the moment u fight against average players. Traps become quite easy to deal with. Nerfing traps on of that isn’t quite hand either no need to have nerfed test of faith.
Then they also nerfed shield of courage as well.
Dragonhunter as it was at the start prior to the daze duration nerfs, true shot nerfs, test of faith nerfs. dragonsmaw duration nerf. Hunters ward nerf(as if anybody is gonna stand there for the entire skill to complete). If the just reverted dragonhunter like it was prior to all these nerfs. dps back to it’s old self. All skill mechanics bieng the same minus the bugs. We don’t need invisable hunterwards barriers ofcourse. U can get pretty far as how things have been patched. Honestly I’d argue that u’d barely have to do anything to surviability. Heck u could leave it’s base hp as it is.
Heck make the shield of courage instant and wings of resolve instant and u are semi good to go.
Well yeah, I’m referring to cleansing ire and Brawler’s recovery being great condi clear, as well as berserker stance, and they are absolutely great. You can’t expect every traitline to offer great condi clear—no class in the game has that available to them. For condition management, warriors have Defense and Discipline, mesmers have Inspiration, guardians have Virtues, necro’s have Death Magic and Curses, Rangers have Wilderness Survival and now Druid, and so on. We can’t have it all.
As for DH, it’s OK that not all traps are viable. Most are pretty useless against opponents with a brain—but then, so are most utility skills on most classes. If all of the traps were so good, it would be an even bigger contributor to the HoT power creep. The fact that DH got 2 really fantastic traps (healing trap and TOF) is good enough. Hunter’s ward needed that nerf—there is no reason to have undodgeable anything in the game, let alone undodgeable CC. Instant cast DH virtues just sounds like more powercreep…there has to be some sacrifice for having the superior DH virtues, rather than a straight buff. That concept goes for all classes.
Dragonhunter:
-Reduce the amount of time spear of justice is tethered to an enemy, but increase the burn damage
-Reduce the amount of time shield of courage is active
-Longbow is fine
-Reduce damage on Test of Faith
You did absolutely nothing for Guardian other than nerfed them… we’re already borderline useless in progames. Can’t take this thread seriously now…
Most of the things I listed were nerfs, which is necessary unless you want to buff everything else. Of course, that would lead to more power creep.
Several of my friends are Dragonhunter / guardian mains and they say that they take the elite spec just because the virtues are that much better. As long as they dramatically outshine the base virtues, then the dragonhunter line will still be considered mandatory.
That’s true but it also points out how absolutely useless core guardian F3 is. An active block every 60 s (used to be 75?) or passive every 40s is really lackluster for a class mechanic, even before the HoT power-creep. The DH virtues seem OP by comparison only because of how bad the core virtues are.
Though, if you took the suggestion above (@LughLongArm) you would entirely solve any issues because then you would have to pick between the heal/leap and channeled block from DH virtues or the condi clear and stability from the traited core virtues.
(edited by Salamander.2504)