Guild Wars 2

Disagree. Ascended crafting just needs to be gotten rid of at best or an alternate where you can get the gear from sPvP which is the core of the game (or was supposed to be) should be implemented.

No mode should have to rely on the other. You want to WvW 100% fine. PvE fine. SpVP fine. Gear should be accessible in each with equal effort.

Crafting should only be the way to satisfy your PvE crowd.

For a person who thinks PvE is a means to an end, I LOVE waypoints. More please. I simply want to get where I am going fast, kill the champ for dragonite ore I need to make ascended and just get back to WvW or PvP.

Your suggestion, at best, would only be of interest to PvErs which is but one of several segments of players.

Before I plow my way to 500 Huntsman, does it matter given kits?
Would it be better to get armor first?

Warrior is just better now in all categories save fun. Ranger really is fun.

Unorthodox idea.

Add a light field on water spirit passive. That would also make the ranger water spirit used a whole lot more.

Now you just shoot your way out of conditions.

Unorthodox idea.

Add a light field on water spirit passive. That would also make the ranger water spirit used a whole lot more.

Now you just shoot your way out of conditions.

I’m all for you crafting my ascended gear for me. Believe me. . . all for it.

Waynze, it would have an impact to TP. But ANet has so many tools allowing them to adjust for balance. They could change drop rates, have vendors willing to provide a floor price, etc. Much easier to fix than players feeling they are forced to play modes of no interest to stay competitive. That has much greater impact.

Dishonorable is a mess. It forgets that real life happens and real issues come up with technology too.

There is a huge difference between repeats often offenders and the occasional “oh kitten I have to go” player. Only the former really needs to be punished.

Vrak:

With all due respect, they are giving you lots of different options.
The only person I would feel badly for is the player who took a break and had no idea during that break that the change was happening.

For them, I would suggest that when glory goes away, you convert all remaining glory into gold at some conversion rate.

Not sure what else anyone can do for you Vrak.

I think we hear reduction in damage and forget that we don’t have nearly enough details to evaluate what the change is going to be.

My concerns that I hope are considered are:
1. Abilities that proc on crit (will they unintentionally proc less than anticipated)
2. Will the change reduce “burst” and create a situation where power is more “damage over time”?

Overall, I LOVE the concept of making all stats equal to all other stats in efficiency.
Go for it!

When I play my healing engineer it usually is a power build.
My kits then become bomb, tool kit and elixir gun.
I do not take grenades in this case.
My weapon will typically be a rifle.

It synergizes well. Rifle does quite good damage at range. E-gun provides weakness and is not at all bad in power builds either given its fast attack. Bombs provide conditions which are more stacks duration than intensity. So you get good damage even with lower condition damage.

If you take grenades or pistols, there is more to scale off of condition damage.
Grenades can go either way just fine. Power based grenades do hit quite hard.

Either way works. Both work better in some situations and worse in others. It is about as even a decision as you will get when using apothecary/settler gear for healing.

One of the reasons I went to power was tool kit. When you run 25% speed v perma swiftness, that pull is very useful for killing enemies and the extra leap from the rifle has gotten me distance I have needed many times.

For the ranger: 10% more base damage still doesn’t really get you to par.

For the group: Rangers are not adding layers of group utility.

For the opponent: Killing spirits is pretty darn easy the way most rangers run with them constantly on.

Ranger should switch with warrior. That would be a good start.

Well the reason it is so powerful is simple:
1) On highest HP class
2) On one of highest armor classes
3) On class that has a lot of damage

It would be far more balanced on anything other than a warrior. I do concur that warriors need a good heal but not a big heal over time.

Trouble with gamechanging elites is when you have ohh 20 people stacked up each with something game changing spamming one right after another.

But in small group situations, yep. . . .

Does it take a special skill (or leap) to get there? I just can’t tell on the picture.

I wouldn’t say being able to drop siege equipment anywhere is an exploit as much as I would say that WvW needs a pass at making more areas unavailable to siege (roofs would be a good start).

Likes (Broad):
1. Every Night Is a Different Fight
2. Friendship is deeper in wvw and competition is more meaningful (than sPvP)
3. Ability to be effective solo, small group or zerg (Always something to do)

Dislikes (Broad):
1. Maps getting too familiar (want to know the best places to hide siege gear?)
2. Some classes scale to large zerg fighting MUCH better than almost all others
3. Staying current in WvW requires deep crafting or PvE grinding

Suggestions (Broad):
1. Redesign Maps frequently as if the maps were a Living World event
a. Placement of keeps, sizes, types of open objectives etc.
b. keep us on our toes for everything including new siege placements
2. Take a pass at skill balance in zergs as a distinct problem to solve
3. Decouple progression in WvW (essential) with a need to craft or do heavy PvE.

We disagree. Nothing personal. You make good points but I just think the other side is more compelling.

I would rather have differentiation in the classes (e.g. warriors not being able to escape easily and ranged characters not being able to close easily) than have as open diversity of play styles and clever play as you would like. There are a lot of little clues that suggest this was the intention but reading tea leaves is an imprecise science.

That is a real debate and I can respect both sides of it.

Lots of problems with zergs (not zerging as a concept but how it plays out in GW2)
1. Lag
2. Some classes scale better for large warfare than others (ranger doesn’t scale. Warrior scales outrageously well as does guardian).
3. You get fewer fights to pick
4. You get more PvD as the enemy will hop maps if the zerg is too big (now you have a karma train)
5. It leads to queues and that is boring
6. It leads to maps feeling too crowded and too small (but make them bigger for the smaller servers and you would feel like you were running track to get place to place v fighting).

The answers to the problems are not easy though

My ability to keep you off the cap for a relatively long period of time is tied to all the blasting knock backs I can take, all the AE blinds and chills and other conditions that ensure if you do get thru the knockbacks you won’t have time to stop me etc.

I may die, but I will get that point decapped. The best you can do is beat me to throwing me around like a wet noodle with your knock backs, pulls etc. Short of that, IN PVP, the relatively short time to decap I am going to survive. And as an engineer, I can probably handle a bit more outnumbered odds to get that decap.

And I am certainly not the best engineer (though I did watch one on Youtube lol).

Here is the reason it happens frankly. As an engineer, I have 3 kits and 20+ skills that give me far more sources of knocking you back or pulling you than another class would have. But a lot of them are smaller., It is when I add a trait or two that for purposes of decapping in PvP things get wonky quickly. Accelerant packed turrets does allow me to go to extremes for decapping.

I would add our elite supply crate but that is getting changed.

The logical thing to look at is the knockback of accelerant packed turrets. It could be changed to a condition or all sorts of things to make it fair. That being said, the issue is really limited to PvP (but that is important in and of itself).

The other thing you could do that would benefit multiple parts of the game is to limit the number of times you could be knocked back or feared or otherwise get the same type of CC on you in a period of time.

Sure. Making assumptions just like anyone not at ANet (and even some of them are making assumptions about the players).

But I think there is a greater logic to the idea that warriors needed a way to get into a fight verus needed a way to get out of a fight (considering they are supposed to beat the snot out of you in a 1v1 melee absent dodges, evades and elusiveness). In most games melee classes are not designed to get out of a fight (even outnumbered) by running away. You get into a bad fight as a melee class you fight your way out or die.

Same assumption that a melee class should do substantially more damage in melee range and pretty weak damage at range. A caster typically goes exactly the other way.

On the other hand, ranged classes are supposed to kill runners by SHOOTING them. They were not designed ( I would assume) to have gap creating skills being used to get into melee range.

We can always disagree on the definition of clearly or our vision on how to design classes or even class balance but that is my working set of assumptions.

But if you don’t have this then all classes are supposed to be all things and that is going to be a mess to keep in balance.

Ok, to stir the pot a bit more and provide a bit more balance.

Hypothesis:Warriors are far less OP in small fights than in larger ones. (that is not saying they are not somewhat OP in general).
When fights scale to large groups certain play dynamics simply matter more than others. In a scaled up large group fight, the warrior really outshines. This is where the start of any adjustment should come in.

Do warriors agree that the nature of how large zerg or wvw fights work favors classes like warriors? (Same for guardians frankly).

If one set of armor is much stronger than another, there is a fundamental problem in deisgn right? Each provides the same level of stats (well except celestial but that is supposed to be the all mediocre model). What that means is that some stats are simply too valuable. What that implies is that the balance of offense to defense is wrong or the balance of physical to condition damage is wrong, etc.

That should be the underlying issue to get fixed versus the set.

All stats should be equally efficient.

Well, as I understand it pets and AI and the whole rooting change on sword are really tough coding challenges. So, it is very hard to predict when a “breakthrough” will come.

On the other hand, a series of tweaks and swaps in skills and traits to get better balance is absolutely what I am expecting to start seeing in March for rangers. The only real question I have from listening to the podcasts is will it be in a series of evolutionary steps or will they take the risk of the problems with one revolutionary (big change) sweep at the ranger?

So long as that duration cap is not across the board and more condition by condition I could agree. Bleeds take a long time to stack up.

Or you could (gasp an engineer saying this about his build) have a duration debuff after so many conditions are on a toon.

It can’t be too high because there is this crazy -40% food. So if it were another 40% well. . . .you get the picture. Or it could simply get you to 40% duration decrease and you would only get the NET of your remaining duration decrease to add to the effect (that is anything over 40%).

That would be a much better way to tone down condition damage than nerfing the original damage (which hits hybrids hard too).

You could increase AE caps by applying the same logic. Each subsequent AE on a character would do X% less base physical damage. Just double those rates for pets and maybe pets could live in zergs. (You would already have the condition duration debuff in place for excessive conditions like I tend to throw on every one of my targets).

You might rethink it this way. . . .

certain leap skills should require a target. For example, a warrior’s leaps should be for getting into combat not out of it (and they don’t really need the leap finishers nor should be the one to be buffing the party).

You could go thru leap by leap to decide I suppose, but it is an option.

Clearly, something should be done about skills that are designed to be closers becoming escape tools. That is for most all classes.

That is almost as silly as I have seen things that are supposed to knock you back get used to close on an enemy. About face. Hit knockback and close on the enemy.

Neither really was intended. But you don’t want the solution to be worse medicine than the problem.

I’m ok across the board with elites on long timers breaking rules.
Maybe ranger’s is too good. But playing with and against one, not sure.
Same reason, I am quite ok with lich form.

If anything, I would focus on making the roots faster to break if you focus your damage on them when trapped. That would create a situation where you are out of the fight for a few seconds breaking the vines. That or speed up the damage and reduce the CC.

But even as an engineer playing against a ranger, I never found this elite to be that OP versus other elites. Annoying is sort of what elites are intended to be. But it isn’t clear cut for me either!

I buy that the LB AA should be faster. But I will ask you to buy that you have way too many utilities on the LB which make way more sense on a ranger.

In particular, what is the warrior doing with a blast finisher at range? Seems a ranger thing (say on barrage).
What is the warrior doing with an immobilize at range?

All for you having ranged damage and a bit of damage conditions like buring (though it should be middle of the road not the highest) but it is all the CC and combos you get from those weapons that seems unaligned.

The weakness of a high dps melee class should be I can get away easier from you and if I stay away from you, I should be able to whittle you down. Aimed Shot and Pinned Down violate this.

I would say non-“totally insignificant” changes. That is different than saying every change that has impact has the type or as much impact as we would want. It will be the “smell test”.

I’m perfectly willing to wait until March for the ranger assuming we get enough changes in March to make the class at least lower middle versus in a category of suck all by itself. But, given how bad it is, I wouldn’t want to get only part one of a six part process that will take (given how balance patches are done) 6 months to see any real meaningful result.

My guess is we get at least a third of what the end state intentions are. But I’m betting on not getting a goose egg.

You want to nerf it early. If you wait until after say 25% (which is a HUGE number in an 8 class game) migrate to the class, you start to have a very hard time with people who enjoy their new OP class.

The sooner the nerf happens the better for everyone. And just as you couldn’t incrementally boost the class (it was too underpowered), you need an “all at once” approach to getting it to the mean. Hit hard.

It is the synergy that bothers me with tool kit versus the individual skills. Likewise, many things these skills do, can be done much better with other kit skills.

The auto attack chain isn’t compelling versus a bomb because it doesn’t get the extra damage that almost any explosion will have in conditions.

Box of nails simply is the last of the viable escapes compared to glue shot, e-gun Elixer F or glue bomb especially with the differences in animation. Just not differentiated enough to be compelling.

But then come 3-5.

3. Massive hit and condition damage.
4. Best block period (I sooo wish I could use a kit for a weapon to have room for this)
5. Long range pull just has so much single engie and small group utility.

In a zerg, I don’t find that tool kit scales to the size of the battle much at all. But that is true of so many skills and builds.

The tool kit skill is solid (but not in comparison to grenade barrage, BoB which is arguably OP, and healing mist as a stun breaker).

Great kit. Use it frequently in non-condition builds.

My only thought would be to replace the turret heal capability of the auto attack chain with something a bit more useful right now.

Lots of things are a little harder when playing against a necro for my mains (engineer and ranger) but the lich form certainly isn’t one of them. . . except in one situation (see below).

The lich doesn’t move well.

On the other hand, if the lich is on a cap point or a choke point it is pretty darn amazing for a short period of time. And they are burnable from a distance. You just want no part of being close by.

Not on my list of things to be too concerned about. Situationally it is extremely powerful by design.

Absolutely just because it is popular it should be nerfed.
You have an 8 class game. You want reasonable balance in the numbers of each class or want to make adjustments. It doesn’t/can’t be perfect but if you get one class that represents far too much of a population, you better nerf it.

Look, on Star Wars, the great fear in design was that Jedis would be the “gotta play this” class. If that had been the case, they would have become one of the lowest powered classes to encourage or incentivize class numeric balance.

Absolutely, you want to nerf classes that become too much of the population for any reason.

Often, this is a playstyle issue. Warriors and Guardians are popular because melee is more effective than range. Improving range, AE and CC to lock them down (all things melee classes in every game hate) generally changes the balance better than almost anything else you can do.

There is a difference between a soft nerf and a hard baseball bat bludgeon to the head. But yes, if something is too popular, the heck with the numeric evidence to the contrary, nerf it.

One issue I have which Atherakhia mentions is the concept of having to “over invest”.
If I need a trait at 20, then I want there to be a useful one at 10 that synergizes. If I really need a trait at 30, then I want the 20 and 10 traits that synergize to be in the same line.

Too often, classes that have lots of different mechanics find traits for these mechanics spread all the heck over their trait lines to keep “even numbers”.

Or, if there is a trait that you feel you need for most any build (e.g. Ranger empathic bond) you, at least, want high utility traits at 10 and 20.

Lots of overinvesting I see.

Thanks guys. I had no idea I could project back the dagger condition transfer. Now that could be great fun.

It really is more about your giving me my conditions back which hurts than the minions. Just mentioning the two builds I see most necros playing (as I will take any advice inc the tidbit about the flesh golem).

Sure it may only be 3 conditions but they tend to be nasty ones like burning and confusion. I would be delighted to get back my “cover” conditions but seems I get the big ones back.

How does condition transfer decide which 3 (assume there are 7 on you)? Is it last in, first out?

Should the engineer do as much damage as a zerker war/thief/guard?
If so how? Damage or sheer number of conditions?

Not having much single target damage (assuming physical versus condition) is precisely because we have so much AE and so many conditions.

E-gun does quite a bit of damage. . . with conditions. We have solid single target damage. . . with conditions. But I would hardly say it is a single target beast in physical.

Isn’t that what defines balance. . . .tradeoffs?

One of the biggest challenges ANet has in balance is ability usefulness as you scale the size of the fight (or number of people on each side).

That is probably the leading reason why some classes are so over dominant on larger T1 servers in WvW.

@Zaxares Not at all if well designed. You have multiple markets. You can buy on TP (prices fluctuate). You could get gear from a good dungeon run (luck variability). OR (and this is a critical or), you could get gear from one of several steady price methods:

1) Crafting (where the amount of materials you have to collect is constant)
2) sPvP (where the amount of glory you have to collect is constant)
3) WvW (where the amount of karma you have to collect is constant)

The key is to realize that in a game that has a fragmented player base and caters to the idea that you can be a PvEr and enjoy GW2 or a WvWer and enjoy GW2, you need to encourage “play as you like” versus “play as forced” to get gear.

Multiple markets does not even have to imply that gear acquisition is “easier”.

There is nothing magical or even serious about markets in a game. You can introduce new ones at anytime. All variables are always controlled by the publisher. At some point, an MMO company in the past hired an economist (the story is interesting as to why) and ever since MMO economists have missed that there really is no economy, tried to create an artificial one, and too narrowly defined consumers as macro vs micro clustered.

Wanze:

I did consider the impact on the new player. There is nothing preventing ANet from buying low level materials at a fixed (or subsidized cost) on vendors establishing a floor to ensure that new players have gold during periods of deflation on the TP. In fact, that is far easier to control. Then the “free market” only provides an opportunity for a premium.

There is more than one market to access, adjust and/or tweak.

The key issue on player enjoyability is the limitation of gear acquisition to one mode or play style in a game that actively promotes itself as catering to both PvE and PvP/WvW player bases. For customer enjoyment, you would want a market or currency for each new set of items in each mode. That would promote “play as you like” versus “play as defined”.

For example, there would be little grumbling if you could trade glory or karma for ascended weapons and armor (versus having to craft or having to grind PvE).

Now look at the impact on TP or as you call it “the economy” (makes my economic background cringe but that is like a lawyer cringing at a TV show that is lawyer themed). Now you have the price of materials very much tied to those who care to acquire their equipment from the play style supporting it (PvE). Makes as much sense to me as any other model. And if it doesn’t work, there are limitless ways ANet can intervene. It controls all variables.

The trouble is when people view TP as THE economy versus just one market of many they lose sight of the purpose of the economy being nothing more or less than creating greater customer satisfaction/stickiness to the game. As the customer base is fragmented very clearly by type of activity enjoyed, the rewards should follow that same model .

That is the whole point of other posts around the fact that ANet has gone too far promoting TP versus several key customer segments. Move to play as you like and allow people to earn gear by avoiding things they hate whether PvE, crafting or for probably just as many sPvP.

While I know I have areas to improve with grenade targeting in particularly, I think I get quite a bit out of my e-gun.

I find it works really well immediately after an initial grenade and/or pistol set of conditions. In short, “light them up” with your other conditions and then start to apply weakness in a fight. E gun tends to ensure that the burning I initially apply stays applied with incendiary powder and its speed. It stacks extra bleeds and really reduces the enemy’s ability to do damage. I can’t think of a better auto attack in the game. E Gun tends to be my finishing kit.

Currently playing an engineer. I have played around with your class on PvP but it is much harder than other classes to get the hang of that way for some reason.

You are one of two classes my condition based engineer fears most.
I hate getting my conditions back.

What type of engineer play (if any), poses a great threat to your major builds?
In particularly, your well and condition transfer build and the new minion master builds are tougher than most classes for me.

What am I missing?

Not asking for the Colonel’s recipe (found that online anyway lol).

Leviathan:

I remember being right there with you when I first played an engineer. I have no idea if engineer is new to you or if you have played since launch etc. Not that it matters.

My point is that for me, the moment my damage got pretty darn good was when I started quickly using 2-4 kits and weapons in each and every fight.

1. I agree in part, each kit does mediocre damage if you stay in that kit too long.

2. But, I disagree in part, when you start to add up all the different conditions you do, it is a lot of damage

In short, my e-gun is “meh” if I just use it by itself. But if I land the weakness on the auto attack and poison, which will also trigger burning, swap to pistol for confusion, add more confusion and burning with bombs or bleeding and chills with grenades (depends on range), etc. etc. The total damage is quite high.

Even in a power build, what makes meh damage good damage is the extra condition damage you do. So even in a power build (which I run with heals), I swap frequently between the rifle and bomb, e-gun and it is those smaller ticks of conditions that make the difference from meh damage to pretty solid damage. . . in my humble opinion at least.

As for the amount of effort, well when you have 20+ buttons you have lots of effort. On the other hand, I always feel like I had a trick in the bag for an encounter. Of course, being old and slow fingered too often the trick stays in the bag. But it was there!!!!

Question:

Is there a problem with a mandatory trait if it is BUILD specific?
Example: Engineers using grenades will want grenadier.
Rangers using spirits will want them unbound.

So long as the trait is in a line that makes sense for the build, I’m not sure I mind.
However, when a trait is more or less the best option for ALL builds, then I think it obviously needs adjusted. Empathic Bond on rangers is classic for killing build diversity but I wouldn’t dare be the ranger not running it.

This game is great in that PvP allows you to get an 80% read on a class just by playing a low level for about a month or so. I have played each class in PvP just so I know a bit more about how to beat each class.

Few sane people would have all 8 classes they play in other modes.

@JorneMormel Agreed on warriors having easier access to traits. That would be a good place to start.

Agreed that warriors benefit from mechanics not working in other classes. You would think a ranger pet would give a melee class fits as it tries to decide which of two targets to deal with. Same thing with multiple turrets. Warriors should hate them.

But we have to live with the reality of the situation as it is today.

The mechanics don’t change that much.

Better question: Are we getting too many temporary buffs in WvW? Stacks from sigils, stacks from WxP abilities, buffs from food and consumables?

Should food be PvE only?

Only a few real troubles with the ranger spirits:

1) They are ANNOYING to look at
2) They have become the default way to play a ranger in too many modes
3) It is a passive style of play

Engineer Known Weaknesses (Simple):

1. We lack stability and are more subject to CC than most (certainly not all)
2. We are very susceptible to retaliation given our heavy AE.
3. We are very susceptible to condition transfers given all our conditions
4. We have a very high learning curve given our using 20+ skills (we go into and out of kits more than an elementalist changes attunement) which reduces our numbers.
5. We lack burst in most builds and rely on damage over time (power or condition)
6. Healing falls apart under lag situations given complex blending of many actives (and combos)
7. Most things I can do, but not as well as a specialist.
8. Condition removal FOR the engineer.
9. Few gap closers (we have one exceptional one but it is a utility on a longer timer and better for evading).

Engineer Known Weaknesses (Detailed as Necessary):

1. Engineer has good theoretical healing with HT but it is extremely complex. Lag can really reduce the ability to actually use the water fields given their short timers.
a. Tool Belt, Passive and Active 6 Button HT abilities, E-Gun 5 all tend to work in combination
2. Lag destroys damage of our grenades too as you have to throw them where the enemy will be. Jerky animation makes that very difficult. So even if the graphics are not running smoothly, it is difficult to land the majority.
3. We also have extremely long animations and flight paths of many of our skills. (Not an issue of telegraphing as much as timing). Again, in lag that is a real problem.
4. AI makes turrets less than desirable in wvw and PvP particularly.
5. Our fields are critical to our play (we have lots of combinations) but the duration of the fields is short leading to very high learning curves and susceptibility to lag conditions (e.g. large wvw).
6. Combinations require significant sacrifices on cool downs and hurt defense.
a. Our blasts often come from our key defensive abilities (healing turret and shield) which have long cool downs. This makes us susceptible to the very damage that these tools was designed to protect.

Engineer Strengths:

1. Build diversity (try guessing what my build of the day is)
a. Almost as diverse as a warrior.
2. The ability to put on so many different conditions and reapply them.
3. Top flight auto attacks for kits given how traits work (they apply conditions) or inherent (weakness on e-gun).
4. AE conditions
5. AE or bounce defensive abilities (blind, weakness, poison, immobilize, etc)
6. Access to high per tick conditions (confusion, burning)
7. Excellent team support
a. Can be a very good healer
b. One of best condition removers for group
c. Lots of fields and important ones
8. Short term damage invulnerability (blocking, retaliation, elixir immunity)
9. Long term condition invulnerability (OP automated responses if traited)
10. Masters of on swap or on heal abilities given how kits work.

One of the best ways of starting a conversation on class balance is looking at known weaknesses and strengths.

Will put out two threads. This one is about the classes YOU play and their known weaknesses keep it broad then go in depth in another section (see below). Later I will put one out where you comment on what you think the weaknesses and strengths of OTHER classes are. Hold off on that

I play a ranger and an engineer. Overall, the ranger is a bit weak even played well unless you truly enjoy “dance”/evade mode and the engineer is a solid class with bugs.

Ranger Known Weaknesses (Simple):

1. Pet AI reduces our effective damage to substandard
2. Trait inefficiency hampers effectiveness
3. We don’t have reliable access to out of combat movement without wasting utility slots
4. We don’t burst with range and lack defense afterwards.
5. Stability is on an elite
6. We have poor defense outside “dancing”
7. We lack group utility especially large group utility without gimping our builds or forcing a single build.
8. Pet F2 skills are unreliable.

Ranger Known Weaknesses and Causes of Weaknesses (detailed as needed):

1. Our damage is very low because our pet mechanic’s AI is very bad. This impacts every aspect of the game for a ranger including trait selection (as many traits are for the pet).
2. We have few ways to actively counter conditions
a. Our main condition removal is a GM trait killing build diversity.
3. While we are the masters of evading (‘dancing”), the rest of our defense is quite poor and we have no real escape.
4. Our traits are not aligned to efficiency in builds. In part, we have too many separate mechanics (all interesting in theory) with too little room in trait lines for them.
a. To the extent you pick a mechanic (traps, spirits, pets) you get “locked” into what feels like random skill lines to get “must have” traits.
5. We can’t do enough damage to a heavy armored class BEFORE it gets into melee range.
6. Our AE is limited and our key AE skill roots us.
7. We lack effective combinations. Too many of our fields are pet based and we have too few finishers (type and number).
8. We are very subject to CC. Very few ways for a ranger to cleanse actively save standing in a pool of water.

Ranger Strengths:

1. We have an excellent water field and ability to heal.
2. Our ability to “dance” and evade is second to none for 1v1 defense even if that doesn’t scale in larger play.

The idea that all you need is dodge could be said for any skill at any damage rate in the game.

The issue is you need dodge for much more than just the warrior especially in larger fights.

Dodge is not the answer to balance in most cases. Plus, it is very limited in the number of times you can dodge.

Understood, this might not be workable, but as of yet here is the state of it.

1) Warriors have at the very least a HUGE perception issue of being OP.
2) Warriors certainly are more passive to play (at least in spvp) than most classes. At least from a defensive standpoint.
3) Likely Warriors are numerically out of balance in terms of total capabilities (offense PLUS defense)
4) It will be better for warriors to suggest solutions and discuss where the problem may be, than simply wake up one day to adjustments.
5) The fact that there are too many warriors (at least on the server I play and those in WvW) is an imbalance itself, so the class just on this alone needs to be adjusted. Balance also involves class and build diversity.

If this is the wrong idea, what is the right one? Even if you just are perceived as being far too powerful, you really do have a problem. It would be best for warriors to open up a bit more on why so many think they are OP (versus any other class in the game) and what they would suggest the answer is (versus let’s buff everyone else which effectively creates nasty power creep and kills PvE).

WvW is often one of the most addicting modes of play.

One suggestion I hope you are kicking around is the idea of making the size of the maps bigger with more objectives to break up some of these really big zergs that pose even simple problems like lag.

Or you could have more maps. If more maps, it would be great to see an underground dungeon type fight.