Guild Wars 2

I usually solo roam, but I like a bit of zerging now and again Theres something quite satisfying about karma training around when you are in the mood for playing but not really in the mood for paying full attention, which solo play requires.

In regard to fights ending too quickly, thats probably just a result of the constant imbalance in numbers. If you’re in a random pug zerg, the chances of you meeting an opposing pug zerg of equal numbers away from any towers or keeps and without any large guild groups around is really pretty small. One side always has the upper hand in one way or another making fights end quickly and desisively most of the time.

GW2 in general has pretty fast kill times anyway.. is a lot of games you cant solo burst someone can in a few seconds, but here its very possible. The game just has a high damage to armour ratio I guess, and its meant to be balanced by active defences such as dodging, but in zergs theres so much going on that doesnt quite work and people just die all over the place :P

IFreedom.4637:

And here comes peoples 30/30/30/30/30 warrior build with full pvt and zerker armor at the same time. And this time with an added bonus of all the attacks of the warrior hits like a truck. Instead of whining and asking for nerfs for other classes ask them to fix yours. Tsk

I am pretty sure at no point did I say warriors can achieve everything in one build. I didnt even mention any builds at all.

All I said is every powerful attack should be signposted and that warriors have many more powerful attacks than other classes and therefore have more signposted attacks.

Is it that hard to understand?

Other classes do have obvious attacks, just not as many. Warriors just have a huge number of brutally powerful attacks compared to other classes who only have a few, so of course you also have more obvious attacks,

On rangers, for example, I can only think of 3 attacks which can hit over 5k, and all of them are easily avoided, or at least partially avoided. We also dont have super long stuns, or huge AoE stuns, or any of the other crazy powerful attacks you have. Out absolute biggest attck does less damage than Final Thrust does above the 50% threashold. Just think about that.

Warriors simply have the best attacks. If you could land them all warriors would win every fight hands down no questions asked. The only weakness of the warrior is that they cant land every attack against someone who knows what they are doing.

In specific relation to the LB#5 change.. its the same thing. 6 bleed stacks AND immobilize and even at 1000 range? In one attack? Most classes can only dream of that. Rangers are even known for their condition builds, and our biggest condtion attacks are axe#2, which applies 5 bleeds and requires <100 range, and dagger#5 which only applies 3 bleeds and cripple, and cant hit a target more than 500 range away because of how kitten slow the dagger moves. And to round it off your LB#5 bleeds last 2-3 times longer than the attacks on the ranger.

LB#5 is a rediculously good attack, its only right it should be well signposted.

Edit: And in reference to tainted shackles – Necros have such poor mobility, especially in DS, that getting out of range of it is easily done. And even if you do absolutely nothing about it, it still does much less damage that LB#5 and immobilizes for a fraction of the time. And its on a much longer CD. Taintess shackles is not even nearly as dangerous as LB#5 is on a warrior.. its an AoE DOT attack, not a single target “burst” skill.

If you want people to read that, put some paragraphs in.

I did read it though, and I disagree. Its good game design to make you setup your attacks and try combo attacks together. Its just lazy design and lazy play to make attacks like 100B immobilize and do big damage.. because you the user has to do nothing to land a huge hit, all the skill and active play is on the defenders end when infact it should be split between you.

Warriors have plenty ways to both stun and immobilze – use those. Comboing 2 attack together wont kill you.

Pretty sure all they said was the LS update was tomorrow, not the balancing stuff and whatnot. Guess we’ll see :o

Evading.. Honestly the most fun I have in WvW is dueling warriors, because its just so satisfying to see people throw themselves at you again and again as you dodge all their attacks. I mean sure you get hit sometimes its bound to happen.. but still, you can dodge easily 70% of attacks from a full melee warrior. Guards can be fun to, but they tend to have so much reta and random burnings and symbols that it kinda takes the fun out of it, because even if you dodge their main attacks you’re still taking damage.

I always wanted to see a thief drop SR to destract the enermy while they walk off in the other direction, or better yet BS them while they are trying to AoE the SR.

Oneday I’ll see it.. it will be amusing.

I have to say, it 1v1s I have never found AoEing SR very effective anyway. A good knockback like iWave is great, but using all your big attacks to try down them? Unless they were very weak to begin with the chances of you actually downing them are very slim and you’ll just waste your big attacks, because even if you do hit them for big damage they simply will disengage with the super long stealth they just got.

No.. I’d rather have my big hits for when I know I can land them.

Decaping is when you make an enermy point neutral, and in this context its being done when the points defender is still alive (most likely). Decapping doesnt take long so you just need to force the defender off the point for a short while.

Actually capping the point takes much longer and probably wont be achieved whilst there is still a fight for the point, but as long as the attacker (engi) can hold it on neutral for a substantial amount of time that counts as a win from his point of view.

To be fair, many classes are easy to play, but mastering any class is difficult.

I mean I have made a mesmer resently and its rediculous how easy it is to run full zerk and go around ganking people in WvW. Its like a thief but at 1000+ range, and if your burst doesnt work as intended you just lol off into stealth and try again later. I would never say I am a skilled mesmer though, and I wouldnt dare say mastering the class is easy because it certainly isnt.

My necro isnt lvl 80 but I have played it in sPvP and its simular.. its easy to just come up and condition bomb someone to all hell, and 75% of the time that kills people easy and anything.. but mastering the proffesion so you can actually win 1v1s you should by rights lose I imagine is as hard as it is on any class.

Full berserker builds like thieves, warrior, guardians (though they are rare), LB ranger (even though they are bad, its still rediculous how hard the AA hits if they get left alone) all hit way too hard – hitting over 10k should not be a thing, 1-2 shotting people should not be a thing.

I think this nerf is 100% justified and good for the game.

Are condition bunkers a problem to? Should they be nerfed to? Probably, but thats a different issue and doesnt change the fact that this is a good change.

IMO^^

I have to agree with Faux on this one. I’ll admitt I havent used it since it was increased to 50%, but I always found the same problem hes just described. It wont activate till you’re on 3-5k HP, which even with a 50% damage reduction is still within easy bursting range for DPS heavy builds (especially a thief who at this point could spam HS correctly to inflict huge damage due to your low health).

And then the same problem as always.. its competing with EB. Since I like to run traps, I dont afford to take SoR easily, and trying to mash together enough Cond Removal from lots of little sources to fill the gap becomes frustrating and costly.

To fix it? They might consider lowering it back to 33% instead of 50% and putting in a master slot? I’m not sure really, but that certainly would make it more attractive to me.

1)Many direct damage attacks are AoE too.
2)You can get -40% duration food to, and because of the way its calculated it actually reduces the duration more than the 40% food increases
3)Conditions are applies passively? I’d love to know when
4)Conditions attacks are often untelegraphed thats true, but most big ones are (attacks which apply 5+ stacks of bleeds for example), which is the same as direct damage attacks
6)People are forced to build in defences to enermy attacks? Thats horrific!

Sorry but I dont really agree with your points.The builds I run are usually a little light on condition removal and condition builds are difficult for me to fight, but its not impossible to counter play them.

I can agree with peoples complains against dire, and it being too easy to bunker down and have huge condition damage, but condition builds in themselves are not a bad thing.

Personally I am going to totally ignore their promise of “awesome things coming” until we get more details.

It would mean absolutely anything.. it could genuinely be some amazing pet update, or utility or trait revamp.. or it could be something that they think it awesome but the players universally agree is rubbish.

So yeah.. until we know more..

So essentially you are saying all you can do is gank someone and then run away if you dont 1-2 hit them?

Sounds like you should work on playing better and stop complaining.

Sounded like a fair nerf to me. I mean we dont know much about the active yet so… hard to say, but I was reasonably pleased.

So curious to see what they have to say, particularly about runes and sigils.

It should have its bugs looked into (like pets resing even after they are dead), and in underwater combat it really should be toned down because you cant stomp there, but really its not that hard to deal with in general.

I did pick ranger because I usually favour ranged combat / bow, but I am not unhappy with our weapon selection generally. LB still need some love, and a few tweaks here and there, but I dont think our bows or weapons in general are a problem.

I think you just need to realise whenever you start a new game you cant come in and assume the class you picked will be exactly everything you want. Every game tries to break the mould, do something interesting or different, and with that comes the fact that not every stereotype will be played out exactly how you think it should be.

To be honest I dont have a problem with really any of these. Too much passive play is of course bad, but choosing some passive traits is not inherenty a bad thing in my opinion. Even some passive effects can lead to active play.. any example being I almost always begin fights with a stun/daze as soon as I can, especially on warriors. Why? Because most people (and prettly much all warriors) run their equivalent of the trait which blocks the first CC they take. Simply knowing people will be running it causes me to play more actively in proc’ing it quickly, so that it wont be proc’ed when I really do need to stun them later.

Thats just a small example.. but really, I dont see a big issue with passive traits as long as they dont go to extremes, which I dont think too many do.

Atherakhia.4086:

Black Box.9312:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s not irrelevant though. A Warrior with 0 points in defense has only 2.2k armor. That is no where near a bunker. That’s only 150 more armor than a Ranger in the same gear.

How many points in defense do you feel a Warrior needs to invest before you’d consider them a ‘bunker’ spec? Would you consider another class that spec’d 20 points in their line that granted toughness a bunker spec? If so I have bad news for you… EVERY Warrior specs 20 in their toughness line at a minimum. The meta spec in sPvP and WvW both have 30 points in their toughness line.

Any other class that did that you’d call a bunker spec, why not a Warrior?

Refer to the above. Also thieves that run stealth builds almost always have 30 in their toughness trait, and many of them are glass cannons. Traits are meant to determine class abilities; in this game it’s the gear that determines how offensive or defensive you are, and no class that has full offensive gear should be able to passively fill a defensive role.

Then what about a Warrior in full berserker gear is making them defensive?

Is it because they have Healing Signet? Well we’ve already seen a Ranger has a nearly comparable heal.

Is it because they have Endure pain? Well the Ranger has the same skill but their’s lasts longer.

Is it because they have Balanced Stance? Well the Ranger has it with a 20 second duration.

Is it because they have high Toughness? A Ranger could have more in the same gear than a Warrior.

In your wildest dreams would you ever consider a power ranger a bunker? Because all the above certainly makes it appear they can out bunker the Warrior. I guess that 3.5k hp is making quite the difference? But of course I didn’t mention the Ranger had more evades, multiple sources of protection, etc.

And as I said before… the more we have this conversation the more we’re moving away from Healing Signet even being a problem to begin with, which is the point the Warrior community has been making for awhile now.

I like the way you make weird comparisons to the ranger whilst leaving out all the small print details about why rangers cannot play a power bunker anywhere near like what a warrior can.

Whats sad though is I dont even wholely disagree with your overall assesment of HS and the problems with the warrior.. just the way you go about arguing your point is well.. bad.. said simply and politely.

Personally I’d just make every classes down state the same.

Every class should have the guardians #1, #2, there should be no #3, and of course everyone has #4.

Or even let people choose their down-state skills.. I dont care. As long as everyone gets the same choices.. because at the moment it is a bit annoying that you are stuck with your classes downed skills and thats that, and of course leads to imbalance. In zerg battles ele’s downed state is better than everyones by a big margin.. in 1v1s ele’s downed skills are useless but the rangers are really good. Classes like necro are the losers and dont have good downed skills anywhere.

Should just be the same.

I have mixed feelings on the subject really. On the surface the arguement against conditions bunkers makes a lot of sense, but really looking at how WvW operates I dont really see a problem. Group fights are still totally dominated by physical damage, with conditions mostly playing a supportive role in the fight, so I am not sure why physical damage should dominate roaming as well. Its like to have a mix.

Even ignoring whether or not I agree with the OP, its not as simple as just making conditions depend on 3 stats like physical attacks do. If you do do that, you have to allow for people to take conditions to the insane extreme (the equivalent of a thief going full berserker and BSing for 20k). If you take away bunkering from conditions builds, you must allow them to be played in all the ways thay physical damage builds currently can, which means necros (taking them to be the condition equivalent of thieves) need to be able to completely floor someone in 1-2 hits with conditions.

Also then think.. every attack does physical damage.. if you’re really trying to enforce the same rules physical damage have onto condition damage, are people hapyp with every single attack in the game applying a condition?

I just dont think the solution people are suggesting is really a solution. Its poorly thought out and unfair on condition builds, even if there is a current problem with condition bunkers.

nicknamenick.2437:

Well HS on its own is that way bevause warr need it.
I dont get that many evades etc etc.

You do get blocks, endure pain and berserker stance though. As well as having higher HP and armour than anyone else. Theres no good reason why warriors NEED insane regen to survive more than any other class does.

nicknamenick.2437:

If you go bunker you shouldnt do that high damage.

Potentially true, but thats got nothing really to do with TU or rangers, almost every class can do the exact same thing.

nicknamenick.2437:

The mechanic between ranger or warrior os totally different so lets keep that out of this discussion pls

This whole topic is about warriors vs ranger… isnt it? Thats what the title and your OP says…

nicknamenick.2437:

I run zerker and yes i still got 400hps from HS but by no way you can say thats bunkerstyle.

The fact that a berserker warrior has more HP and regen than this bunker ranger probably did suggests otherwise.. but we’ll ignore that.

nicknamenick.2437:

I disapprove these builds (any! So no not only rangers)

Thats great and all, but dont then make a post acussing rangers of being OP if what you really mean to say is all condition bunkers are OP.

So essentially you fought a bunker who had stat-ed into regen and were then outraged than he could heal nearly as much as you (who hadnt boosted your healing at all)?

Ok.

The whole point of bunker builds it to stay up no matter what. Engis, guardian and warriors can all also build rediculous bunkers.

The reason people complain about HS and not other regens / heals is because HS requires 0 healing power, 0 traits, no casts time. You just pick it and you’re set for life, which is a problem. Theres nothing wrong with people building a build around bunkering down because they are investing a significant amount into achieving it.

Ikaros.7812:

I think it rather shows how few people could fathom warrior being buffed even further.

That.

And besides warriors already have 4 melee weapons which are purely for physical damage. Thats more melee weapons than most classes have at all.. I am not entirely sure why you need another one buffed up.

Maybe just make all leaps (on all classes) targeted only (like mesmer phantasm attacks, you physically cant use them without a target). Would seriously reduce the use of mobility skills in running away, but not effect them really at all for actual fighting and chasing.

Or give all leaps / mobility skills the same nerf RtL got.

Also on a slight different note.. I dont understand why people keep using the excuse “thieves have high mobility too”… Umm.. Yeah… they are a mobility class with no real defence other than stealth, evading and mobility. Warriors have a ton of other defence mechanism including armour, HP, regen, blocks and physcal damage/condition immunities. It just doesnt in any way make sense to have the heaviest tankiest class also be the most mobile. If you catch a thief out you can destroy them within a single burst no problem.. Even if you do catch a warrior out, even a berserker warrior, its very likely they will survive the burst and still escape.

Sirendor.1394:

Cufufalating.8479:

The number of rangers I have killed who just have a LB equipped and appear to have no idea where the swap weapon or utility buttons are in really quite sad.

Are you sure they weren’t uplevels? Figure that green arrow?

I kid you not, I have recorded footage of me fighting a Bronze Champion ranger who did exactly what I just described. To this day I do not know how he got to such a high rank being such a bad player.

Funny. I dont really PvE.. but I did 4 dungeons last week with my guidies.. 3 of which I had litterally never been to in my life. They were all a cake walk.. just stand where my friend told me to stand and press 1-5 in whatever order maximised my DPS. Occasionally you have to dodge one attack, but I wouldnt call that skilled in any sense.

95% of PvE difficultly appears to be in knowing all the tricks, tactics, places to stand, what to skip and what to fight, etc. Its all a knowledge game.. the actual execusion of the fights is a joke, and not even a funny one.

WvW is the same when you’re zerging and you’re the biggest zerg around.. It really is no different, but personally I roam which I find much more enjoyable and unpredicatable. You meet someone and until you engage you dont know what youre dealing with, what build, how skilled are they, you dont know how long you have before other people turn up, all these things are what make it interesting and challenging.. rather than running a dungeon you’ve done 100 times before, every time being exactly the same.

I think a lot of the hate comes from the insane number of bad rangers there are in WvW.

The number of rangers I have killed who just have a LB equipped and appear to have no idea where the swap weapon or utility buttons are in really quite sad.

Bad rangers are honestly the worst thing in the game… good rangers are good everywhere except organised zergs, where I do feel we lack somewhat, and this is sadly what classes are judged on in WvW.

If you want to burst, especially with melee, you want a WH offhand. Dagger gives a great evade and is great for condition damage, but for a burst setup offers almost nothing.

Using both WH skills as you initiate will help your burst a lot.

The added blast (combined with both your leaps) also makes HS a MUCH more viable solo-heal option, which will also help with your condition removal problem.

Some amusing thought.. never seen anything too creative done with mesmers, although my server (Gunnars Hold) did once do a minon master open-raid for everyone to join. That was truely insanity.. seeing a 60-80 man blob, all of whom were minion masters.

Nope. I cant. I main ranger and played through the whole world + story with Signet of the Hunt on, and that habbit followed me into WvW when I started there.

I have never played without my +25% speed so to me.. thats normal speed. Being without it is like being perma-crippled and I cant tolerate it xD

Traveller runes are a blessing <3

Bump because the ranger forum put in a lot of time to discussing these topics and Jacob has very kindly written it up for us

+1000 on point 8 especially. I’ve been playing on my mesmer a fair bit recently and its sad that I can equip glamours, clones, phantasm, manipulation, really any utility I want and have it be of use without any traits. I can trait to give them extra uses, but they work so nicely even without traits. Ranger utilities dont work like that.. when I am only trap build, more or less every other utility its out of the question because without 30 traited into them they cant be used.

I play WvW for roaming, either solo or duo.. and I just doing whatever I want. If I see someone and want to fight, I can. I can fight them here, or there, or lure them somewhere else. I can defend a camp, attack a camp, scout a zerg, or go pug around after the commander. I can just do anything and fight in any situation I want.

PvP is fun sometimes, but I get frustrated with the constant feeling I “must” be doing something – I must be guarding home point, I must stay on this point fighting 2v1, knowing I am going to lose because its better for the team, I must fight this OP condition necro on point because if I leave the circle he wil decap it. Its just annoying fighting people in a way which is clearly the wrong way to approach the fight, but having no choice because its a conquest game not a deathmatch game.

It also doesnt help that build diversity sucks in PvP because of the amulet system. In WvW I run a hybrid build which I love, but its impossible to do in PvP. You are conditions or direct damage or both but then very GC. Theres very little middle ground for fiddling stats to your exact liking meaning 90% of people are bottled into some 1-2 builds on each class.

jaykayy.6873:

Problem with trap ranger is that the only condi clear you have as one is from empathic bond + no stun breaks (unless you trait for one…then you get only one on a long cd). Good luck fighting a hammer warrior

If you cant dodge hammer stun in a 1v1, no amount of stunbreakers are going to help you – you’re just bad at playing. And besides, its very common to play trap rangers with 2 traps + LR, which is what I do.

Someone hit 7k with one of the highest damaging attacks in the game?

I dont see a problem.

Rune of the Ogre because I am cheap \o/

But really they are pretty good. Give lots of power, a tiny bit of crit damage and +4% damage. I generally think the precision you get from ranger runes is not as good as power, since as someone already said, in a max DPS build you’ll already have over 50% crit chance and fury ontop of that.

Honestly I have never tried scholar but I have always thought they wouldnt be that great, because fight where you can be above 90% HP a significant portion of the time is a fight you could have won with no runes at all.. so whats the point. I’d only ever consider using them for LB sniping people, but even then..

Rangers have been asking for this for… well forever. Its not gonna happen.

TBH condition duration food is manditory against someone using the condition reduction food. You will notice it instantly if you dont have it on.

But yeah as others said, Dire, Apothecary or Rabid are all great choices depending what it is you’re trying to do.

Make pets like phantasms.. make them scale with the rangers stats and make the BM line reduce their F2/swap times instead of buffing their stats.

Take 30 into MS for sure, there are too many fantastic traits for you not too.

30 Skirm works for the stats it gives, and Moment of Clarity will be on some use (especially if using GS as your weapon swap), but not essential.

You can put 10 points into any of the other lines depending what you want really.

10 in WS is great for the survival skills CD reduction, if you’re using QZ / LR, and the endurance regen boost is always good.

If you take 10 in NM it will be for traiting spirits and then using frost spirit. Thats for really full DPS mode, although I find it a bit limiting myself.

10 in BM is handy for Mighty Swap, which will help you stack a little might and make your pet a bit more damaging if you’re using it to help your burst (which a cat certainly will, especially if you buff its crit damage in the skirmishing line).

So really.. I’d recommend going 30/20+/x/x/x, all depending which utilities you want and how you plan on using your pet.

Rangers are top tier in dungeons, eiths just they need to run one specific build and do it fairly well, which 95% of people dont do, thus giving rangers a bad name in top tier dungeons thus making people reject rangers out of hand because its not for the risk.

That and also there are plenty people who dont realise rangers can and are good in dungeons if played right so they continue with the previous wisdom of “no rangers”.

All that is community problems though, not really balance problems.

There just needs to be a way for people to force stealth targets out of stealth. Whether its doing damage, some AoE ability, some passive aura around the player, I dont really know.

It isnt right that the only handicap to stealthing is the reveal debuff, which the thief/mesmer themselves is in control of (and that joke of a skill they gave to rangers, because we are all going to use a utility slot that is only useful vs 1/20 opponents) . Thats just wrong.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Gold. I wish my ranger was a norn just to kitten around with this.

I think that more or less sums up my thoughts xD

Sad I never came across you this matchup.. I do know what of the people you killed though which makes it all the more amusing lol.

I used birds when I played through the open world from 1-80 because it seemed to make no difference what I used and they looked the coolest

I’d stick with Sigil of Earth to be honestly.. You have such rediculously high precion it seems almost a waste to then use sigils with have a 10s IDC.

Heinel.6548:

If you really want to test your skill level as a phantasm mesmer, you could always pick fights with blind or stealth heavy opponents, or other opponents who can exploit the AI and use them against you. P/D thieves, stun lock warriors, all the other similarly criticized builds are fair game.

The people who’ve already lost to you are not worth your time. You’ll never know how good you are until you fight someone who’s better than you—whether by out-maneuvering you or by stacking odds against you.

I have to agree with Heinel. The real test of if you’re a good phantasm (or any build) player is how good your opponent has to be to beat you.

I main ranger and always use SB in my build, and from time to time people I beat come back crying that I am a noob and all I did was auto-attack with the shortbow. The truth is, in most of these cases that is all I did, because its all I had to do to beat them. Its not my fault they didnt play well enough to force into playing better myself, and the same I think is true for you.

So some people you might “auto-pilot” through with your phantasms doing all the work and it might appear cheap.. but the test of whether you’re just using a cheap build because its easy or whether you’re just being lazy vs bad opponents is when you meet a skilled opponent, whether or not you can rise to the challenge or whether you just fall apart.

Would help a lot with you posted a link to your exact build. Its always nice looking through other peoples builds, especially power builds (I think), and will help others give comments/advice.

I dont want to start an arguement here since I like this thread, but I dont really see the purpose of your post Forz. You essentially are saying noone should bother posting things which are wrong or unbalanced because every class has balance issues? How does everyone having issues mean that none of them should be fixed? Thats.. bizzare logic.

And besides anything is untrue.. I’ve been training a mesmer and spent a lot of time on their forums.. and they do have a few complains but by and large they forum is all posting awesome builds and arraging community competitions. They seem perfectly happy with how they are.. so no, not everyone is equally displeased with their class.

And your other point, that perfect balance is impossible to achieve and there will always be better and worse classes.. Thats probably true, but I think what people here object to is that we have been the bottom class in MANY regards since launch. Its not cycling round with the top class always changing and noone being bottom forever like you suggest. Rangers simply want our turn to be buffed up and are therefore trying to let ANet know what we think is wrong and what we think could/should be changed to help us.

What exacly is your problem with that?

Also a final note.. implying that everyone who complains about balance is just bad at the game and cant admit it is frankly rude and ignorant and your part.

Use a rifle.

I dont think much on warriors when roaming (they are by far the class I die to the least in 1v1), and the only time I even think twice about engaging one is if I know they are using a rifle.

Its doesnt have the best DPS warriors can achieve, but its constant, hard to dodge/mitigate the damage like you can with melee attacks, and you cant really kite. You’re left just trying to have a flat endurance battle with a class that have huge armour, huge HP, huge healing and still decent (even if not tip-top) damage.

I doubt anyone will listen and thats fine.. I’ll go on laughing at warriors in 1v1s because they only have like 4-5 gap closers, and I have 6 evades on shorter CD.