Guild Wars 2

RabbitUp.8294:

Aomine.5012:

Tome cd too long -> deal 30 stacks on burning to a whole group in a short time at an insane radius.

Have you played condi guardian before? That’s nothing new. Heck, even condi tempest can do the same.

Tome of Justice is nice for burst condi, but firebrand seems overall weaker at sustained condi damage because the passive VoJ is 50% weaker in pve and 70% weaker in pvp.

If it’s single target, the burn can go up to 50 stacks thanks to torch 4.

But the problem of Permeating Wrath shows up all over again thanks to Tome of Justice. (8 pages, virtue passive remains even using tome of justice, big radius for burning )

I won’t say it’d be a perfect pvp spec, but it’d be new meta in raid/ fractal/ wvw.
It’s not only a spectacular supporter in those contents (pulse aegis 3 times with one healing skill, pulsing group stability and so on), but also do insane damage too.

Mantra is abit situational and probably would be only good in PVE, but the traitline and tome are so brokenly strong.

Just made a build dedicated to Virtues (tomes) itself, and that aoe burn damage is just out of the roof, and the radius is insane. (50 stacks of burns all by yourself with some bleed)

I use Firebrand, Virtue and Radiance, with Balthezer rune.

If they wanna shorten the tome cast time, they have to massively nerf their effectiveness too.

Tome cd too long → deal 30 stacks on burning to a whole group in a short time at an insane radius.

Ok then, this is gw2 forum, so who cares, people will always say their main is underpowered.

Just grab Firebrand and Vitrue and Radiance and watch things explode.

Rezzet.3614:

1 how are you getting 4k autos without ally buffs

2 why is it OP if engi did 4k auto but its ok for Warrior to do 4k damage with dagger auto while might stacking with said auto and life stealing on crits and twice the attack rate?

this spec offers nothing but raw damage its extremely easy compared to any of the other specs with the exception of maybe sniper thief

Lol, Spellbreaker main-hand dagger dps is a joke even with full zerk.

You didn’t test anything and trying to mis-direct the attention.

Spell-breaking main-hand dagger so far doesn’t seem worth to use at all. (Off-hand is nice though)

jcbroe.4329:

Having finally gotten my hands on it for a few hours, all I can say is disappointing.

Part of it is just straight up core weapons suck in the PvP meta. Half your ranged burst it swallowed or reflected by some field that every other classes drops every other time they blink or do something, and you end up spending most of your time trying to bait people into a melee combo with a faceroll Smokescale or Gazelle F1-F2-F3 into GS maul.

It’s clunky, you’re forced into Jacaranda as your other pet for sustain, it’s bugged so sometimes pets and even players disappear from existence when entering/exiting Beastmode and the most important utility Stance doesn’t work right now.

A few hours into it and I was back to using Druid with new pets.

The good news is, Stance Boons do share, which means WvW Soulbeast can secure a position in organized parties. But in PvP? You’re forced into wombo style gameplay with poor pressure, so you have to just throw everything at damage spike.

It’s not weak, it’s just neither strong nor particularly effective.

It needs LOTS of TLC and mechanic smoothing. EVERY utility needs to work in and out of Beastmode for starters.

Again, a large part of it is that a lot of the spec relies on core Ranger and most of core Ranger’s weapons feel outdated.

I’m genuinely not trying to kill people’s hype but that was just a poor, poor gameplay quality. For the sake of design and balance I hope that once the initial hype dies down for you guys, you see that it’s only good in theory, and that Soulbeast is actually really bad and in a really bad spot in practice.

Meanwhile some of these classes are insane. Holosmith and Spellbreaker, and even Scourge are incredibly well done, and playing most other elite speces feels very night and day between their quality and Soulbeast.

fingers crossed for a working Dolyak Stance

Spellbreaker is a pretty terrible pve spec though.
Their main-hand dagger is really weak, weaker than even ours.
Their off-hand dagger is alot better, with decent burst, aoe, and utility.

I can see spellbreaker be a game changer in high-end pvp because people are forced to fight in small area, but in pve I don’t think it’s a good spec.
It probably can be a tank with full counter in raid, who knows, but the point is don’t use main-hand dagger.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Eponet.4829:

Upon testing, I can confirm that Maul procs Attack of Opportunity for you while in beast mode. Maul -> Beast Skill -> Autoattack -> Maul -> Beast Skill -> Autoattack Maul -> Weapon Swap seems like it might have the potential to be quite good in terms of damage over longbow.

Also, Sic’Em effects you as well, which should be a pretty significant damage increase, and while some of the traits were nerfed, you do get some of the bonus power/precision/toughness/vitality/ferocity that your pet would normally be given from the Beastmastery minor traits while in beast mode.

Awesome! Looks like Soulbeast Shoutbow will be a thing then if Sic Em stays like that…

Wow, that’d be a straight upgrade for my LB / GS power ranger XD

But may have to sacrifice marksmanship entirely because giving up on WS or NM is like suicide in wvw roaming.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Well, some shouts work in Beastmode, others don’t.

Sic ’Em applies the buff to you, WHaO copies boons on yourself, SotP grants yourself might when you strike a foe, and Protect Me taunts the next foe that strikes you.

Search & Rescue and Guard do nothing at the moment.

Very interesting for Sick-em to work on you!
May consider going a BM shout build for that 40% dps spike!

It’s a new way to keep up permanent fury as well as maintaining quickness longer.

Ok I Did It.2854:

So far from playing the Scourge, I have no desire to change from Reaper, I was hoping that we’d finally get a place in the game, but alas we seem to be left a drift for along time to come,

Some other classes got a massive boost with their new elites, but we will be left behind again sadly, there are key things we have been asking for, for years on the necro and we still don’t have them.

It looks like im going to be forced to play another class, just so I can get into higher end PvE content, to sad Anet to sad.

You complain alot but you didn’t give any example of this so-called “other better e-spec”, as well as why you dislike Scourage. You talk alot but express zero information.

It becomes a pure whine post instead of anything productive or worth debating.

The synergy of this espac is very solid. Lots of condition, good utility skills, good traits with lots of synergy with all the previous lines, massive aoe condition, etc.

It’s also an extremely good anti-boon class, and unlike spellbreaker, it actually has very high dps.

Don’t forget the range f5 #4 skill doing more damage than Rapid Fire with half of the Rapid Fire channel time (meaning double dps) and causes burning.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

narcx.3570:

lmaogg.7325:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Renegade is a PvE spec, get it in your heads.

The real problem is they didn’t allow us to test these specs in PvE. That was the real dumb decision they made

It’s just bad. There is no such thing as a “pve only” spec.

Also, it seems like it’ll suck for PvE too.
Not enough support to justify bringing such lackluster damage.

The damage IS very good, but just not usuable outside of PvE. And same way as scrapper and spellbreaker are pvp especs, renegade is a pve one

Agreed. The elite bonus damage has no ICD and works on multi-hit skills.
The whole spec is all about dps / breakbar and no self protection.

That’s why people say it’s a pure pve spec.

Spellbreaker has terrible dps, but it has utility to work in pvp, so it’s a pvp sec.

xarallei.4279:

Ah I edited my post but you didn’t see the edit in time. Anyway, for pve raiding hitting 25 targets doesn’t matter. There usually are never that many targets in raids. In WvW I suppose I see it being an issue.

For raid, I can see some uses from the Elite and Razorclaws.

I don’t really care about raid, so the introduction of SB for openworld and wvw is a huge plus to me, especially after hammer got nerfed to ground.

xarallei.4279:

Aomine.5012:

Are you guys seriously did the testing properly?

Short bow is doing so much aoe condition damage with just #1 (pierce trait) and #4.
It can hit up to 25 targets, causes massive bleed and torment, while dealing aoe burning.
This is everything ranger SB wants.

Well, it’s hard to tell on these targets because they die quickly. Which is why I said I wish I had special forces. For the class targets my mace/axe definitely killed them faster. And yes, I did use 4 and 1 on the SB. Didn’t go down as fast. I had full ascended vipers too. Plus I changed the spec away from the default pvp one.

Plus there is the real issue of SB#3 being pretty much useless if you are in melee (which if you are raiding, you are in melee most of the time). It only works best at range.

The max damage from shortbow can only be reached if there’re multiple targets.
It’s literally the new zerg weapon in wvw and pve.
Note that every arrow #1 pierces will do an aoe explosion that does bleed and hit up to 25 targets.
If you take Mallyx they also causes torment too.

Shortbow is broken when combine with piercing.
It literally hits 25 targets now and doing massive aoe bleeding

Combine this with Mallyxe trait line for additional torment, poison .
Use #4 for aoe burning for more aoe and some slow.

skill #3 and #2 are pretty terrible though. Not worth using at all.

Are you guys seriously did the testing properly?

Short bow is doing so much aoe condition damage with just #1 (pierce trait) and #4.
It can hit up to 25 targets, causes massive bleed and torment, while dealing aoe burning.
This is everything ranger SB wants.

I tested viper condition renegade and it’s op as hell with the pierce trait and Mallyx traitline.

ZhouX.8742:

Ok,

From testing already I am happy but also sad because I know how ranger gets nerfed especially WI.

1. Worldly Impact will almost 100% be nerfed in terms of damage. You’re talking 8k+ numbers in PvP with 10k+ being tested in WvW environments.

This will be definitely nerfed so I wouldn’t get too attached to it. This is an obvious and people will complain like kittening crazy about it.

Why would this be nerf when most of the Holosmith F5 skills hit for 7~16k?
The holosmith F5 #4 is a stronger rapid fire with shorter cast time. (Half of the channel time of Rapid Fire while doing MORE damage than Rapid Fire at 1200 range, and also causes burning. )

First Impression, would definitely be meta for Power Engi.
The damage is so high, and it has group fury/ protection on a big area for a long duration.

When alacrity is put into play, the dps of this specialization will go off the roof.
The Elite also does alot of aoe damage too.

Donnu about pvp yet, but for pve this spec is a big AOE class.

Dagger is ok, but I think Beast F3 cast time is so long that it breaks the fluidity completely, considering you’re ROOTED in ground when you use those skills.

anduriell.6280:

Aomine.5012:

Yeah, would take Soulbeast simply because of the better utility selection…
(Better heal, better utility, better elite)

I think WHaO will be still used more than Bear instance. Simply because it’s better. Traited with WK+runes you’ll cleanse 3 conditions on cast, it’s a great boon sharing utility which is mandatory for the ranger to do some damage + sinergies with the heals from WK and most importantly has reduced CD .

If you are in melee you’ll need more than just a heal every 25 seconds (no CD reduction available) .

I’d take 8 condition cleanse (pulsing cleanse too), stability + soft cc immunity over other heal/utility in wvw any day.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

STIHL.2489:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

STIHL.2489:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

STIHL.2489:

I have got to ask, how does a level 50, get enough AR, to even enter a T4 fractal without getting eaten alive by Agony?

You can purchase as much AR as you like on the TP.

Ok.. Well, Wow, in the off chance this was not a total troll response, as far as I know, Agony Resist infusions can only be slotted it into Ascended Gear which is ML 80 (might be ML79 on some pieces).

So, I’ll ask you again.. how exactly does a level 50, get enough AR to enter a T4 fractal?

On the off chance that you’re not trolling, as I added above, “L50” might have been referring to personal fractal level. (There are also more than a few exotics that will take infusions.)

Besides, you don’t need any AR to enter a fractal. There are only a tiny number of spots where agony can’t be avoided (and some people are good enough at footwork to avoid all the others).

If someone is at Fractal level 50, would have the common sense by that point to know what the abbreviations mean in the LFG panel , so that makes no sense.

Lets get real, anyone who has the twitch to dance agony in a T4 fractal with what amounts to No AR, could out strip any elitist with a meta toon.. because.. kitten they are serious pro.

Also, Exotics are also level 80 (I believe 76 might be the ML, or some such)

I’m not altogether clear on your point now. Do you claim that everyone reads the LFG? Do you claim that people who do always respect the requirements?

The issue raised was that someone looking for an experienced group got people who were demonstrably inexperienced or otherwise not ready to do T4 dailies. You’re still quibbling about the details, rather than accepting that people organizing for challenging group content sometimes (even often) get people who aren’t prepared.

I asked above and I’ll ask again:

• If you join a group that’s asking for experience (or whatever), is it okay for the leader to /kick those who don’t have it?
• If you join a group that is “all welcome”, is it okay for the leader to /kick those who demonstrate they are looking only for an experienced group (e.g. they complain about folks with low DPS)?

It seems to me that using a DPS meter makes it easier for experienced people to find and group with other experienced people. And it also makes it easier for the inexperienced and those who don’t care to avoid folks focused on DPS. Regardless of the other pros/cons, that seems like a good thing for everyone.

Except experience or not doesn’t mean much in the eye of people who use dps meter.
You can play a power build and be experienced cuz you did it countless times, and people who use cond dps spec will still shame you for not running the highest condition dps class, that they’re “carrying you” cuz they’re doing maybe 3~5k more dps than you on immobile foes.

If people don’t have dps meter, they’d be happy to clear the instance and move on instead of kittenting people not doing enough damage and save their precious 5~10 mins.

Yeah, would take Soulbeast simply because of the better utility selection…
(Better heal, better utility, better elite)

What I worry about is, at the pace of them releasing new legend, Elona legendary may not even be out by the time PoF lands, making the whole exploration unrewarding.

xarallei.4279:

It would be nice if they could balance the two to be equal. But yeah, power specs are feeling what it was like for condi specs for years. It was zerk or go home.

Except you can easily get Zerk from everywhere while Viper is expensive as hell.

We’ll soon find out tomorrow about the real dps.
Reserve your judgement til then.

Rauderi.8706:

DeShadowWolf.6854:

Because no one reads LFG descriptions. It’s not uncommon to put in “80s exp” on a dungeon LFG and get a lvl 50 who has never done it before.

Or maybe a fresh Lv50 doesn’t know all this abbreviated lingo? If someone can’t be bothered to type in a few extra letters to say “Level 80, experienced only”, he deserves to have his time wasted with false positives.

..and then there are those who still don’t read descriptions. I can at least offer my sympathy there. >.>

Much the same, people should be willing to make their groups with meter requirements and be open about it. It’s not hard to type “ArcDPS required” or “No meters!”

Yeah, never see the description saying: “T4 fractal highest dps condition raid build with dps meter only”, probably knowing it’d take forever for the team to form.

CptAurellian.9537:

STIHL.2489:

Now, In all my time, I never saw a ‘goof around’ or “test” build running in anything above T1

Go pugging T4 fractals for a while and tell me what you’ve seen. There’s literally everything around there – longbow rangers (has that ever been more than a bearbow joke?) and guards, staff guards, pure shortbow thieves, staff necros, all those greatsword mesmers and I don’t know what else. I don’t need a dps meter to tell me that they are bad, but I don’t want to know what remains hidden behind seemingly reasonable gear choices. When I do as much damage as the other four combined (yes, I’ve seen that happen), a lot of things are wrong.

What’s wrong with LB ranger?
They’re good against bosses that move all over the place or Scarlet.
The known power ranger rotation is LB , Sword+ axe.
The traits for power ranger has been buffed too.

So you’re denying the entire existence of power ranger in general huh…
Saying people are bad just because they didn’t run the top dps condition raid builds for fractal, this is the mind-set of people who use dps meter.

Aenaos.8160:

Aomine.5012:

Feanor.2358:

TheGrimm.5624:

There are champ trains that have been removed from the game in the past since they were deemed by ANet for creating negative environments. Denying that is wrong.

Then why are there still champ trains?

TheGrimm.5624:

Tools that empower players to be kitten to others to me are a bad idea. The fact that this thread was started already proves this was an issue.

First and foremost, it’s jumping to conclusions to state dps meters are a cause for anything. Again, toxicity existed before dps meters. And it will exist after them, if they become illegal at some point. You’ll have very hard time proving an actual causality between dps meter usage and an act of toxicity. Just because someone had a dps-related issue with another player proves nothing. Because when you’re underperforming, it shows. And the elitists are both good at spotting it and quick to become toxic about it.

Jump to conclusion?
From this thread alone we can already tell how people who use the dps meter thinks already.

They hate “carrying noobs who don’t perform as efficient as they do, and would like to eliminate whoever not play the way they did to save their precious time”.

I already saw many posts like that from various players here in this very thread.
Reddit have many similar people too.

Just like you like to run in casual pugs and it’s in your right to do so,other players like to run in more efficient pugs and not spend 40 min to clear a fractal that would otherwise take 15 minutes,and it’s in their right to do so.
What you propose is the mandatory imposing of your play style,because that makes you feel more comfortable,disregarding other players’ preferences.
So you don’t care about what your contribution to the party really is,but that other players won’t be able to measure it.

Besides that,I’ve read the various relevant threads in Reddit and here and all I can say is that Anet’s wording regarding to the matter is vague to say the least.
The truth of the fact is that GW2 still lacks basic UI and QoL functionalities that are very much wanted and needed by the players.
Why don’t they build a “legal” DPS meter and provide it to us,since they are so careful with their words in order to retain the right to ban accounts any time they feel like it?
Or have a page in their site where we can see which add on(God forbid) is allowed and which one is not?
If they see the need for such tools,but don’t provide clear solutions for the players,that’s on them not on the community that attempts to provide the basics for an MMO in 2017.

Lol, I’m running Monk rune and sigil of concentration for my fractal Druid, and ofc I’d have lower dps. I put effort into gearing, yet people are going to accuse me for not contributing enough because dps meter says so despite getting all the permanent boons uptime (protection/ fury/ might/swiftness/regen)and dps buff and heal and cc?

This is not an organized composition, so I can’t run the highest dps possible and still maintain a successful group layout, so I try to be more supportive and sacrifice some of my dps so the team can be more well balanced despite the composition, yet people are going to use dps meter to accuse my performance and said they’re carrying me?

Fivona.5061:

Aomine.5012:

It’s useless for me since I have countless lv40 scroll.

Why should I waste 80 times when in reality we only need 40 of them to begin with?

You can keep clicking then.

Took me less than a minute.
Big deal.

It’s useless for me since I have countless lv40 scroll.

Why should I waste 80 tomes when in reality we only need 40 of them to begin with?

Dextra.8162:

So I should just let a longbow “dps” druid/ranger in the party who offers 0 dps and gets carried for basically free loot while everyone else picks up the slack?

I see this THE MOST and I will usually leave the party. It’s a gigantic waste of time. T4 fracs should not take more than 20 mins. Adjust, stop being lazy, or get kicked. You can argue that that is rude, but honestly people coming in with their snowflake builds contributing nothing and getting carried is the problem and rude in itself.

Thanks for proving my previous point
Yeah, wasting that extra 5 mins of yours is such a sin!
All the Pugs are being carried by you cuz it takes more than 20 mins!

Feanor.2358:

TheGrimm.5624:

There are champ trains that have been removed from the game in the past since they were deemed by ANet for creating negative environments. Denying that is wrong.

Then why are there still champ trains?

TheGrimm.5624:

Tools that empower players to be kitten to others to me are a bad idea. The fact that this thread was started already proves this was an issue.

First and foremost, it’s jumping to conclusions to state dps meters are a cause for anything. Again, toxicity existed before dps meters. And it will exist after them, if they become illegal at some point. You’ll have very hard time proving an actual causality between dps meter usage and an act of toxicity. Just because someone had a dps-related issue with another player proves nothing. Because when you’re underperforming, it shows. And the elitists are both good at spotting it and quick to become toxic about it.

Jump to conclusion?
From this thread alone we can already tell how people who use the dps meter thinks already.

They hate “carrying noobs who don’t perform as efficient as they do, and would like to eliminate whoever not play the way they did to save their precious time”.

I already saw many posts like that from various players here in this very thread.
Reddit have many similar people too.

Sketchyyy.7103:

Aomine.5012:

Raven Glider is far superior than both cuz it’s dye-able (With 2 color combination which is absolutely amazing. )

It’s a nicer glider for sure but the raven wings doesn’t have a backpiece skin though..

If you absolutely have to choose, I think thematic wise Bat Wings are more unique.
There’re many replacement for Golden Wing thematically.

BGDM is kinda an excuse for elitist to kick people out because they did not perform to the maximum efficiency in order to save their “precious time”.

Aside from elitist raiders, general player-base usually don’t bother using a program like that honestly. They would probably learn the rotation from reddit/ youtube and try to perfect that rotation , but not many of them will actually open a dps meter to check how everyone else perform unless they do raids on a daily base.

The only community that’d probably disappoint about this is the elite raider guilds and gvg community, which are honestly quite a small community in GW2 tbh.

Raven Glider is far superior than both cuz it’s dye-able (With 2 color combination which is absolutely amazing. )

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firebrand

From what we get here, they seem to be a support melee condition spec that works best in a party.

What looks the most interesting is the quickness uptime for the whole party.

Durzlla.6295:

Garb Cost.3718:

Durzlla.6295:

Garb Cost.3718:

Also, why do we have a ‘Swine’ family. Has there ever been a functional use for the piggies? If there is and I’ve missed it, I’d love to discover it. If not, maybe they could be removed/reworked?

Very easy to imagine an aggressive skill/use for a boar. A farmyard pig, less so.

EDIT: just thought about hyenas – just pep them up a bit to make them more useful in a burst damage scenario…

The pigs are actually probably my favorite pet family, they’ve got decent damage for being a tanky pet, and they have the knockdown to end all knockdowns (3s knock down that cleaves), and their F2 gives an insane amount of utility, I mean who doesn’t like an AoE fear, a 3s invuln, 2s stun, chaos storm lite, or every boon in the game?

The problem with the pigs are, 1) their F2 is very clunky since you have to run up and pick up the item, or call them back to you so the item is nearby, and even worse enemy players can pick up the item (they never do, but they have the ability to do so). And 2) their godly knockdown has a very large windup and it hasn’t “homed in” since beta weekend event 2 (the pig would literally chase after its target until the pig was interrupted or the channel ended), which makes it very hard for the pig to land it.

I think the clunky F2 skill kills it a bit for me… purely because other pets are a lot easier to use. I would love to have a big, bristly, violent toilet brush of a Boar as a pet charging into things and knocking them down. Make that the F2 skill perhaps and you immediately have a viable option IMO!

I think the AoE knockdown being on all the pigs is fitting, and as much as i absolutely love the thematic and idea of forage, it just doesn’t work well, it’s clunky, and it feels very bad to use.

If they completely reworked the pigs F2s into something else, I think that they would probably be used as pets because they’re not that bad otherwise. If they changed their charge to work how it used to i can 100% guarantee they’d be used again in PvP if nothing else.

They’re bad and serve no purpose.
They have no aoe aside from long cd one
They have no range.
They have no condition.
They have very low dps.
They are not as tanky as bear
Their f2 sucks.

They’re the definition of worthless and Anet need to rework them entirely, along with most dogs

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Celldrax.2849:

Mounts will be available in core Tyria, and this in itself is just awesome.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

For glorious Raptor cavalry charges!

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Man, I’m really gonna need a better graphics card…

At this point in time, Tyria is a fashion game with hero’s that use cool moves to get where they need to go (like sword leaps).

With mounts in tyria, every bit of hero’s purity will be gone, every bit of fashion will be gone. We will officially be in a zoo. gw2 will become a zoo. And i’m sorry but i don’t play pokemon for a reason, and guild wars instead for a reason. There’s tons of games with mounts, why did you have to infest guild wars with it, and not play wow or ‘insert mount game’ instead? I wonder if you even will stay after 100 hours in PoF. For me the game officially got worse. There’s no only one way for Anet to salvage game for me, and it’s a hide mounts option, that will have people move with their respective fashion in the traditional way, even if they are using mounts, when i activate the checkbox option.

Except you can’t use mount in combat, meaning when you do meta events, people won’t be using mount.

Also not every class getting the privilege of using cool weapon/ utility skill as mobile source, and more often it gutted down player’s choice of what they could pick, and always have to stick with some mobility skills which is a huge annoyance.

PS: upset “alot” of people, which is just you, the minority that account for maybe 1% of the player-base. If we only sacrifice 1% of people’s enjoyment and make 99% happy, then it’s a rational tradeoff no matter how you look at it.

silvermember.8941:

Aomine.5012:

The Greyhawk.9107:

marelooke.9708:

(that said, I do really hope they will be disabled in cities)

THIS. This is an important feature that Arenanet absolutely HAS to implement or it will be a complete deal breaker for me. Mounts MUST not be summon-able within LA or any of the five racial cities. If this isn’t implemented I’ll probably not continue playing.

XD if you can’t stand something like that, I’m surprised you could keep playing this game until now. Not like it’d affect you in any negative way.

I agree. All those pink hair and terrible auras are far worse than anything mounts could do. Mounts at least do no clash with the game’s aesthetic.

Pink Hair?
Pfft, scratch that.

Norn is the biggest problem of this game by far.
https://i.redd.it/2c1l7qapx8fz.jpg

Wuselknusel.4082:

Lazze.9870:

Musha.4025:

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

I’m baffled people still think druid was a disappointment. Not to your liking, sure, but it’s a great elite spec nontheless.

And we’re not gonna get another “boring heal spec” down the line. That’s reassuring. No?

The Druid disappointed in the way that it has about as much Ranger in it as a Guardian. ANet went out of their way to sidestep the pet. You could slap the Druid onto any other profession with only minor changes and it would work, because the Ranger did not benefit from the Druid.

It’s not about benefit, but about the class mechanic synergy.

For example, Berserker uses Warrior’s core mechanic: Adrenaline to function.
Reaper uses Death Shroud as its mechanic.
Chronomancer uses shatter as its mechanic.
Tempest uses Attunement overload as mechanic.
Heck, even DH has some mechanic related to their Virtues which are exclusive to them.

For Druid, it’s not about pet mechanic or spirit or anything related to ranger.
It’s about attaching a brand new class mechanic on another class – > attaching a new bar and new transformation to a class.

Literally any class can get Druid and it’d work fine because there’s nothing about Druid that synergize with core ranger mechanic. It’s like a new class being forcefully attached to an existing class.

The Greyhawk.9107:

marelooke.9708:

(that said, I do really hope they will be disabled in cities)

THIS. This is an important feature that Arenanet absolutely HAS to implement or it will be a complete deal breaker for me. Mounts MUST not be summon-able within LA or any of the five racial cities. If this isn’t implemented I’ll probably not continue playing.

XD if you can’t stand something like that, I’m surprised you could keep playing this game until now. Not like it’d affect you in any negative way.

Except Dervish cleaves lots of targets while SB seems to be 1~2 target focus.

Also Dervish’s main attraction is not just transform, but the offensive aura they apply.
Basically Dervish is an AOE class. SB is not.

Yakez.7561:

Back in 2012 was expecting to play guard as main. Proper human char to relate. Never happened. Support was non existent in bers meta.

Then they released HoT with Dragonhunter. Longbow damage spec… Useless in PvE, fractals, raids.

And at least I played guardian as main in WvW. And now they nerf the main Guard weapon in WvW giving nothing in exchange, because of PvE lootstick? And lets be real WvW loot do not cover WvW expenses. And most of the time u use hammer or GS in melee train if u are proper guard, not tagging kitten.

Nerf then shortbow on thief then. Axe on ranger. And just remove necro from the game already.

Lol, axe auto 1 from ranger was nerfed to 2 target already, also being one of the lowest dps weapon from ranger, and locking you in BM line if you want to get any use out of it. Basically they’re inferior version of DH’s LB.

Know your kitten before you speak cuz Ranger’s axe main-hand is never that good in any contents. It also follows the projectile role, meaning they’d get reflected or obstructed constantly in wvw.

Brutaly.6257:

Aomine.5012:

Pretty sure they gutted Staff simply because they’re too OP in WVW after the buff in several condition traits for Guardian.

A bunch of Guardians Spam 1 -> bunch of AOE burn on a whole zerg.

Maybe they should have just separate Staff 1 per game mode (WVW/PVP/PVE)

PS: Did a quick test in mist, by spamming staff 1, I can apply 13 stacks of burning to a whole group of Golems with cripple and 11 stacks of vulnerability. This is only the auto attack.

Now imagine a group of Guardians do that from 600 range with pve condition food in a zerg… There’s barely any counter-play since they ignore projectile reflection , hit a wide arc and can hit through obstacles/ walls.

its not the buffs to vanilla that is the issue.

Its the final trait in FB that messes this up in combination with the amount of quickness a FB can spew out. I done some math and with staff it would be possible to maintain over 20 stacks of burning with the auto alone if you build for quickness in FB and trait QuickFire. Add in purging flames and judges intervention and can pretty much burn 8k per second and also spike burst with burns, from range.

So basically perma 20 stacks burning, 15-17 stacks vulnerability and perma cripple would be possible. And who said we didn’t have cover condis :-)

The issue i have is that the nerf is imo needed but they did go about it the wrong way. Why not increase casting time and up direct damage greatly. This would reduce the impact of permeathing wrath.

Or narrow the cone and increase the range to 900. This would also be in line with other skills in the staff and also reduce the impact of permeathing wrath.

Or combine a narrow cone, more range with longer casting times.

The solution they picked just had to be the worst one. No i got one that’s even worse, deleting the auto from the skillbar, but it is marginally worse since it’s of no use in its current iteration.

Thanks for summarizing the issue in a clearer way.

I think it’s pretty obvious why they nerf it. The people who didn’t get the reason and still saying staff was underpowered probably never leave their power build and try condition Guardian even once.

I’m well aware the way they nerf it may not be the best one, I’m just saying some people were still clueless about why they nerf it, saying staff was always useless outside of tagging foes, which is kinda hilarious.

Pretty sure they gutted Staff simply because they’re too OP in WVW after the buff in several condition traits for Guardian.

A bunch of Guardians Spam 1 → bunch of AOE burn on a whole zerg.

Maybe they should have just separate Staff 1 per game mode (WVW/PVP/PVE)

PS: Did a quick test in mist, by spamming staff 1, I can apply 13 stacks of burning to a whole group of Golems + cripple + 11 stacks of vulnerability.
This is only the auto attack.

Now imagine a group of Guardians do that from 600 range with pve condition food in a zerg… There’s barely any counter-play since they ignore projectile reflection , hit a wide arc and can hit through obstacles/ walls.

Pretty sure they gutted Staff simply because they’re too OP in WVW after the buff in several condition traits for Guardian.

A bunch of Guardians Spam 1 -> bunch of AOE burn on a whole zerg.

Maybe they should have just separate Staff 1 per game mode (WVW/PVP/PVE)

PS: Did a quick test in mist, by spamming staff 1, I can apply 13 stacks of burning to a whole group of Golems with cripple and 11 stacks of vulnerability. This is only the auto attack.

Now imagine a group of Guardians do that from 600 range with pve condition food in a zerg… There’s barely any counter-play since they ignore projectile reflection , hit a wide arc and can hit through obstacles/ walls.

lol, you have a very similar build to my high-end fractal zerk druid XD.
Utilizing spirit bonus and Druid buff.
I also use Monk to compensate the lack of healing power.
This build used to be stronger when default healing value of CA is higher. (I’m running full zerk btw)

Only difference is I often bring Stone Spirit in certain sections of Fractals for that permanent protection proc.

Ariurotl.3718:

They did it so that people who wanted mounts would shut up about them already and buy PoF. I agree, GW2 never needed mounts, but there was a ridiculous yet vocal demand for them, so there you go.

At least the dead horse can now rest in peace.

I actually vastly prefer mount over HoT masteries.

What are the difference?
For HoT masteries, it only works on section where they provide the interactable objects like mushroom tab or updrifts.

For mount, you can change it/ use it whenever you want, meaning you can choose when to use their special feature any time you want.

This is a bonus to me.

Fluffball.8307:

The concept bores the hell out of me. It’s pandering to the lowest common denominator, the pet class people who don’t want pets. Make the pet BETTER, not remove it.

Stupid fan service like the kitten quotes they sneak into Game of Thrones lately to cater to the kitten fan base.

But hopefully it’s fun to play.

Don’t expect Anet to make an AI entity to be stronger.
It’s already proven that Anet doesn’t like AI to be so strong.

Our pets used to be stronger, even back in Druid era which we gain 2 very powerful pets, they nerfed it to ground, showing that Anet will never release a class where the AI entity is the main focus of the class, let alone a pet buff class that’d make our AI even stronger than currently. If they allow stronger pets, they wouldn’t have nerfed it like 20 times already.

NemesiS.6749:

sadly i dont expect much for it. Sure it will be an upgrade for wvw, if you play wvw in groups you know the pet die in the first seconds and there is nothing you can do, your whole class becomes useless. So merging with the pet will be an upgrade since you wont have to worry anymore for it dying, that said i think it wont deliver and rangers/soulbeast will be still last for everything. Groups will still kick rangers out and they wont be wanted, time will tell but i am not expecting much from anet.

I think even if you don’t actively use beast form, taking the line itself is an upgrade to some aspect already.

You might just merge it for 0.5 sec just to get quickness/ cleanse , and have access to the use of stance, which looks very powerful. (Doyak and Wolf in particular)

Have you seriously check every traits / skills you get?
I’m much more happy getting Soulbeast compare to Druid despite I use Druid in high-end fractal, mostly because I am roamer and often play solo.

PS: I also find it funny that no-one consider the scenario of the pet actively dying in some scenario/ fight (even in PVE), that merging with the pet is the sure way to contain their benefit instead of just being dead meat. Before Anet turns all pets into invulnerable entity, there’s always a use for beast form no matter how you look at it.
I say it’s also another way to keep your pet alive and well if you find the pet swap is on CD and your pet is constantly dying still.

Also have you consider the bonus aoe you get and your aoe dps upgrade when merging? Pet is always lacking in the AOE department. If you considering the aoe scenario, which your 2k dps pet will be stuck with one target as compare your stat boost working on 3~5 targets, maybe it really is an upgrade to dps.