After some more math-hammer I discovered what effect a carrion condi necro can have on diamond skin.
The effective damage of a carrion condi necro with a zerk staff life blasting with sigil of air proccing is 4027. The effective hp of a celestial diamond skin ele is 28503. This is with both using full ascended, which favours the celestial ele more than the carrion necro. That’s 14.1% of the ele’s hp in one attack.
Not an auto-win but far from being hard-countered.
Why would any guilds want to ‘take back’ eotm anyway? The guilds are the ones that abandoned it due to it being skyhammer 2.0.
Power builds lose massive proportions of their damage when their cooldowns are negated and ranged power builds do weak damage even when they land everything.
A condi necro needs only its 900 range, instant-hit auto attack to do the same level of damage as a melee power weapon that lands its cooldowns, while ignoring armour entirely and only being able to be mitigated by condi clears. The power weapon can be mitigated by prot, weakness, dodging cooldowns and heals due to lack of poison.
I drummed up the scrubbiest condi necro build I could and found that one auto chain that procs torment sigil and one instance of barbed precision would do around 7400 damage, which can only be countered by 3 condi clears. For a power build to hit this hard with its auto would essentially require full zerk with fire+air.
They could make it so you lost 1g every time you took any action and I’m pretty sure lordkrall would defend it.
Like I said in another thread, 100g for an account bound, colour-selectable tag or it sucks.
‘Condi is easier to negate than direct damage’
Do you enjoy being wrong?
Tags should’ve been account bound from day one. Nobody’s character is a commander, the player is the commander. As a result the only change to tags that should be in the patch is that they are account bound and can swap colours at will with a single purchase at the current price.
Anything less than this is a slap in the face to everyone that wants the best for wvw as a pvp game mode.
EotM is a wvw’ers best friend. Keeps uplvls and karma trains out of real wvw and lets them power level alts without having to do horrible things like map completion or crafting. If anyone wants to put a stop to that I can only assume they are bad.
QQ my passive easymode build got countered pls nerf so I don’t have to think when I play.
All rabid and dire do is make your already easy wins against virtually every other build in the game go a little faster. Condi hate exists, try thinking about how to fight it instead of just stacking more condi then crying when it doesn’t work.
If that’s all you do when you play then I’ll just say thanks for all the lootbags on behalf of every guild group that wipes you with 1/3rd your numbers.
Well, what I’m saying is I’m not sure that what you want is actually possible. AI being scripted means you can always win by following the script. If it’s meant to be able to be beaten, by definition it must be designed to lose. A lot of games try to make things harder, but it nearly always comes down to trial and error rather than anything you can deduce logically.
I wonder if they’ll undo the split between the pve/pvp versions of whirling axe. Surely if boosting it’s damage to 5.0 in pvp is fine then it should be fine in wvw too.
I don’t see what anyone expects anyone to be able to do about pve. It doesn’t matter how many dungeons you make or how ‘hardcore’ you try to make it, at the end of the day it’s still pve. You’re still just fighting against AI that’s been programmed to lose.
No one is demanding more of a ranger than a guard, war or ele. People demand exactly as much from ranger as guard, war or ele. You say meleemeleemeleemelee but in melee a ranger is just like a war or guard but with less damage and weak support.
Look at these numbers:
Ranger gs auto: 0.709 coefficient per second.
Guardian gs auto: 1.12 coefficient per second.
Guardian ham auto: 1.135 coefficient per second.
Warrior ham auto: 1.091 coefficient per second.
The only one of those that doesn’t have a skill #2 that does more damage than maul is the warrior hammer, which does 1.4 + weakness compared to ranger with 1.5 + vulnerability. What does a melee train get in return for swapping in these wet noodles? (Hint: not much)
I’ve done almost every task on the list before they were necessary. The difference between then and now is that back then it was the dynamic event system working well. Occasionally I would go to an area I had been to already and find something I hadn’t done before. That’s the kind of thing that Anet was hyping up about their open world experience and should be promoting and bragging about now.
The trait unlocks, on the other hand, are not this experience. These unlocks require you to go out of your way to do something that was designed to be random. This is utterly garbage game design. This is standard old-school wowclone questing trash, but with the added manure of needing specific quests that occur randomly, instead of a choice from many quests that occur when you want them.
For even more ‘fun’, the stat scaling system combined with the general lack of upgrades means that in general, when you gain a level, you get weaker.
Your trait system is bad and you should feel bad.
…if there’s any difficulty at all its more in the realm of how to do it rather than actually doing it…
That’s how pve works. Find the auto-win method by trial and error then roll your face over the keyboard.
Power bunkers lack the damage to kill anything more durable than a glass cannon and this has been accepted as a weakness of focusing too heavily on one aspect of combat to the exclusion of all others since day 1. Why do you think it’s so unfair that it’s possible for condi bunkers to have the same problem?
Zomg trait so OP that no meta build in WvW or SPvP uses it defs bad for pvp pls nerf.
1. 1v1 is irrelevant.
2. If you run a one-trick-pony build and someone counters your one trick, it’s your own fault.
Given that you realise rangers should never approach the front line, what do you think that water field is going to do? You vastly overstate the gank squad’s reliance on stealth if you think reveal will make a noticeable difference and you do not do ‘lots and lots of damage’. Destroyer warriors and death shroud necros do lots and lots of damage, rangers just have one good burst attack.
No synergy, no viability. The patch isn’t addressing that, therefore ranger is unlikely to become viable.
The only place a ranger could possibly see any use is as part of the gank squad, but the only trick they would have for that is rapid fire, which is fairly minor seeing as it’s just purely a dps skill with all the weaknesses of projectiles for added fun.
The problem with the ranger buff is that it’s boosting their 1v1, which they’re already good at, but ignoring their relative lack of teamplay options.
Prysin’s build features pretty much all of the possible melee train utility a ranger could have post patch and it’s just not as good as a warrior or guardian.
Better proposal: all pve content out of wvw forever.
Asura are the best race for every class, naturally the heavies are no exception. Get on our level, bookahs!!
Gotta love this bind-on-pickup rng stuff. All these people raging about how many chests they’ve opened without any fossils while I have two just wasting a spot in my inventory because I can’t sell them.
Teq and the Great Wurm were designed for large coordinated groups. This is the only hardcore content we have in this game. Please don’t suggest Anet take that away from us.
How can Anet take away something you never had in the first place? Pve is pve, no matter whether it’s made for 5 people or 150 people, it’s all scripted. You follow the script, you win.
So basically you find it unfair that people who work together get better rewards?
Or if you decided to be reasonable you might say that OP thinks it’s backwards that getting the rewards is nothing more than a matter of how many people are participating and therefore the barrier to getting said reward is finding a map that has enough participants.
The bazaar events tended not to reach gold most of the time and very little effort was actually required on the part of players, making it fairly clear that the only reason why map-wide events fail or only achieve partial success is that not many people are participating.
Don’t roam if you don’t want to fight, have a secondary set with you that you can use when you’re solo (considering you can reset traits on the go there’s no reason not to)
Yes sure I’ll just bring 2 complete sets of gear and foods that I have to swap to if I die then swap back out before I reach the fight again, wasting an inordinate amount of time in the process, just to feed the ego of someone that doesn’t realise 1v1 in this game of telegraphs and press v to not die is nothing better than pve.
Not to mention that a staple in any roaming spec is some form of escape skill solely for running away.
Yes, because something with player input on the level of wavedashing, rocket-jumping, mind-gaming someone in a fighting game, tribe skiing or even just aiming is definitely comparable to “press button; hit opponent.”
Mindgames are skill, but everything else you mention could be done by an AI, often even better than a human could do it. Being within the capability of an AI automatically disqualifies a technique as skilful.
WvW is a combination of PvP and PvE….
That’s about 90% of what’s holding wvw back right there.
GvG is as boring as pvd… 9/10 times it comes down to how many warriors and guardians you have in your party.
Guardians and warriors aren’t even close to the most important players in a gvg. Most fights are won or lost by the actions of thieves, mesmers and eles.
Would be cool to a just have one world like Eve and all alliances had territory to conquer Ç_Ç
There is literally nothing more like work than EVE. WORK is less like work than EVE.
0.0 space has not much to do with EVE being a job though. 0.0 is just that one shining gem in amongst an ocean of the kind of pain that gets you $30/hr in real life.
Not pretending a 24/7 fight between up to 1200 players that you can join or leave at any time will ever be a competitive team game would be a good start.
Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.
Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.
When you have as many survival skills as a standard warrior-guardian melee train runs, going into melee with the enemy is playing it safe, certainly safer than splitting from your group and getting focused.
Some numbers for fun(all these have fury and 25 might stacks):
Full zerk ranger axe auto (includes axe crit damage trait, strength runes and even dps food instead of lemongrass):
1995 effective damage per target hit.
Knight/zerk shout warrior hammer auto:
2730 effective damage per target hit.
Effective damage is the average damage dealt to a target with 1836 armour, which allows for easy comparison with a target’s effective hp. We can clearly see the support warrior doing more damage than the purely selfish dps ranger when the ranger tries to use an axe. Now lets compare these to a real dps build.
Full zerk death shroud necro auto:
7146 effective damage per target hit.
For even more fun, a necro only actually needs 30% unbuffed crit chance to hit 100% with both fury and deathly perception, so you could theoretically swap in some valk to get some extra hp and even more damage than this from your sharpening stone.
You can never have enough stability. (1)
…
And bad mouth the pet cause its a bear (2)
…
Lastly, getting 25 stacks is not Trivial, there is a reason why so many guilds stack on fire fields before a fight. It makes a difference. (3)
(1) And rampage as one isn’t close to enough stability, no matter how you use it.
(2) I bad mouth the pet because it’s a pet, bear is obviously the only pet type you can use because its high hp soaks damage, none of their skills are useful for anything.
(3) Getting 25 stacks is trivial because everyone else will also have 25 stacks from a much cheaper source than a 2min elite.
Extra stuff: a warrior hammer auto hitting 2-3 people is doing 0.9 to each target, meaning 1.8-2.7 on a weapon with higher weapon strength and faster attack rate than axe. Ranger axe auto hits 0.5, meaning a hammer warrior that hits 2 targets does more than an axe ranger hitting 3 (guardian greatsword does 0.8, so this still applies).
Everything in pve requires improvisation and skill the first time it’s done and neither of those things every other time. I imagine the very same ‘game is too easy’ complaints will be made in Wildstar since people think that having a dodge button makes the above no longer apply.
Solo stacking 25 mights using a 2min elite and an utterly ineffective pet skill isn’t very good, not to mention that it’s also your only stability and your only team utility comes at a far greater cost than similar tricks on other classes. Getting 25 stacks of might for an entire zerg is entirely trivial, really.
You can’t rely on condi for 15v15, so dire is a no-go. Spirits don’t really give anything a gvg team needs and can be killed. I assume by shouts you mean nature’s voice, as I believe soldier runes only clear condis for you and your pet with ranger shouts, but we hardly need more regen or swiftness.
Traps don’t have the cc pressure needed to catch someone out on their own, it often takes multiple flurries and leg specialist hits to burn through all the removal and all that warriors need to pull this off is a main hand weapon and an adept trait. Necros are mostly used for boon stripping and dps rather than stuff like well of darkness + chilling darkness, most I know of don’t even run well of darkness, so comparing traps to a necro doesn’t really suit.
The only combo field that’s of interest from traps is the ice field, but eles get one for free at only 10s longer cooldown.
It really is a case that any possible use you find just has such huge drawbacks that it removes nearly all chance of viability. I can only guess that Anet forgot they were making a team game when designing ranger, since selfish builds are all they can really run well.
Like I said way back on the first page, a lot of the concepts brought up are reasonably effective, but at one thing only. Rangers have to focus too significantly on a single aspect of combat to perform, while other classes can do the same job and other jobs with the same build.
You can make a ranger that is not useless, but you cannot make a ranger that is more useful to a group (talking gvg size here so 15-20) than a warrior, guardian, necro, ele, thief or mesmer.
What you shouldn’t do is make sustain necessary to clear content; that just gives us trinity faceroll. What you should do is make fight mechanics that allow players to save time by taking damage. By making fights that don’t allow for the maximum possible dps solely through stacka-dakka-dodga but instead would require strategic use of sustain in order to get chances for more damage you add more depth to the system.
To give a possible example, say a boss placed a full-room aoe that deals large damage initially, but the longer you stand in it, the less damage it does and the arena contains an object that turns you into an infinite duration mist form that can be cancelled on demand. A party that has no sustain (full zerk, dps traits) has no choice but to take the invulnerability and wait for the aoe to end. A party that has some sustain (eg a zealot guard with selfless daring) could potentially use their burst heals to survive the initially high damage then the continuing sustain from the guardian to survive the low damage. It would not be possible to simply burst heal, attack for a short time then take the invul and repeat because this would reset the damage to high again and your heal would still be on cooldown.
If you still have attacks that simply must be negated, this creates a boss fight where full zerk is still completely viable, but the optimal party has at least one member with at least some support investment. This also helps to deal with the situation of not being able to mix parties, as currently a full sustain party could win through sustain alone or a full dps party could win through dps alone, but having some of each negates all the advantages of either.
Couple this with giving bosses the ability to use all the same tricks as players for dealing with our attacks and you might eventually have pve that takes some real planning to optimise.
A really big problem I didn’t mention last time I posted is that requiring specific events to unlock traits really brings us the worst of both worlds when it comes to quests vs events for open world content.
The drawback to events has always been that they work on their own schedule, not that of any player, so there’s never a guarantee that there will be an event available. This had previously been relatively well offset by the spontaneity of events coupled with there not being a need to do any specific event, any event will do.
Obviously, that last bit doesn’t apply when you have to clear a specific event to unlock a trait. You’re told to go into that field and kill 10 centaurs, but there’s no guarantee the centaurs are even there, nor any indication of when they will be.
It reeks of preparing to have fun rather than having fun.
<sarcasm>Capped aoe and downed benefit skilled groups far more than they benefit larger groups.</sarcasm>
Fixed that for ya!
You would rather all large fights be random instant kills where the chance that someone on your team dies is proportional to the ratio of players your enemy has to the number of players you have?
Capped aoe and downed benefit skilled groups far more than they benefit larger groups.
One thought I had regarding churning earth was to essentially swap a large portion of the functionality of shockwave and churning earth. What you’d get would be what is essentially a kill shot for x/d (slow and powerful like the current churning earth, but as a projectile rather than an aoe) and a kiting skill for staff (immobilise on impact followed by cripple as long as you stand in it).
This would boost the utility of each set without just power creeping everything, as each altered skill would still do the same kind of things as what is currently on that slot, but more reliably.
The problem with ranger is a lack of focus coupled with a need for focus. Rangers have to spec heavily into something to be good at it, while other classes can typically match or surpass the ranger at the same job while doing other things as well.
A simple example would be trying to build a ranger for melee dps. You will dedicate most of your traits and all of your utilities to the role, but barely outdamage a shout warrior, while the shout warrior is tankier, has more soft and hard cc, provides aoe heals and condi clears, has blast finishers and can revive downed with warbanner. If a warrior had built for dps instead, while he would lose most of the utility of the shout warrior, he would still be tankier and more mobile than the ranger while also contributing nearly double the damage.
Ranger really only has potential for roaming and OS duelling. They are strong in 1v1, but lack group utility.
Uncover a section of Cursed Shore to unlock a grandmaster trait.
Obtain 100% completion in Frostgorge Sound to unlock an adept trait.
This really says it all as far as the quality of this new system goes. In what universe does this make sense to anyone?
I object to statements that stealth is a thief’s only survivability. Thief has extremely high access to evades, blinds, teleports and interrupts which provide high survivability without any need to invest in defence.
The only reason why you can generally predict a roaming thief who is in stealth is because most roaming thieves are one-dimensional thinkers. I dodged the same thief’s basi venom 3 times in different encounters in the same session because of how much he telegraphed it, even though he was using the instant cast mug to land it.
stone HEARTH not heart.
It is most assuredly Stone Heart.