Guild Wars 2

Archon.6480:

Eurantien.4632:

Archon.6480:

Oh, one more image for giggles. This match was made in hell. Notice a problem?

I mean, if you are on a 30 game loose streak, you have to understand how the following match up would give anyone a rotten attitude? No?

Anyhow, if you are on a loose streak, find 2-3 people to queue with. Problem solved. Take it out of the hands of the matchmaker.

I’d argue it was a close game, and that your build wasn’t optimal to carry your team. Though the 2 queue on your side being ruby and emerald vs their 3 queue of diamonds would be upsetting.

Yeah, I usually run ROM’s build which, is probably the best build in ordinary circumstances. I can’t remember why I decided to switch to such a high condition damage build that time. Probably just kittened off and wanted to kill everything as fast as possible.

Regardless, even a well played shoutbow comes up short when you’re in the snowball:

I would actually argue that full glass ranger like the one I was playing might be one of the best carry options. You can single handedly slay a team fight, you can save teammates with search and rescue. Sure, druid is really strong, but if your teammates aren’t killing people you probably won’t be.

Archon.6480:

Oh, one more image for giggles. This match was made in hell. Notice a problem?

I mean, if you are on a 30 game loose streak, you have to understand how the following match up would give anyone a rotten attitude? No?

Anyhow, if you are on a loose streak, find 2-3 people to queue with. Problem solved. Take it out of the hands of the matchmaker.

I’d argue it was a close game, and that your build wasn’t optimal to carry your team. Though the 2 queue on your side being ruby and emerald vs their 3 queue of diamonds would be upsetting.

You could do owl, I just like the CD time on the F2 of Raven when traited in beastmastery + it is somewhat of a throwback to the times I played double raven lb/gs beast master when beast master builds were the meta. I prefer the utility of the blind over the chill from the owl, personally. I think it could be easily argued that the chill can be more beneficial than the blind though.

Because I don’t like the black one.

Israel.7056:

I think it’s a gross overgeneralization to assert that everyone who hits a sticking point is getting exactly what they deserve full stop. You simply do not have the data to support that broad of a statement. You would have to be watching all these people’s games to see if any of their complaints are legitimate.

You’re not a good test subject because you’re not really in a position to hit a sticking point in any division below legendary and probably not even in legendary. You’re not just a pro league player but arguably one of the better pro league players and to my knowledge the best and most experienced ranger player in the game. Your proper placement might actually be so high that you won’t even get there because there may not even be enough players playing regularly at the levels below it to get you regular matches.

To just flatly dismiss everyone’s complaints as being a l2p issue without having any data whatsoever to back it up other than because “it didn’t happen to me” is so obviously foolish that I can’t help but wonder if you’re really even serious.

Someone made a really good point earlier that MMR Hell was essentially players who were better (even if just slightly) than where they are stuck. As a consequence they aren’t yet good enough to really make up for the lack of their teammates skills. I think Chaith put it well as basically a solo queue mentality, over time you just know where to go, where the other team will go, which teammates you need to baby sit in order to succeed which ends up being a lot more impactful than a player who just goes far and wins a 1 v 1 over and over. So these players who are stuck are in a sense, are somewhat where they deserve to be, yet it appears that these players believe that they deserve to be stuck somewhere where their teammates aren’t making the terrible mistakes every game (like 1 guy who comes to your point for no reason) but in fact they are the ones making mistakes. I think there is a lot of validity to that claim because, as these players have stated, this is where their hard work can be seen to pay off. Instead of having to carry their team they instead are able to just focus on improving themselves. Unfortunately, with the current system it appears to be forcing players to simultaneously improve their personal play and their solo queue awareness/team play, understandably a frustrating thing for them to do.

I was genuinely curious when I started on this alt account to see if I would get stuck in MMR Hell. There are so many threads about it that it seems it is an inevitable outcome of queuing through tiers. Yet I never experienced it. Through the discussion on this thread it seems that yes, I am not one who would likely fall into MMR Hell and I have gained a better understanding of what is really going on and it is that mentioned in my previous paragraph. Players are not good enough to carry their way out of MMR Hell and they also feel that they should be somewhere where they are the ones who need the most improving and not their teammates. In an ideal world I would hope that sometimes players at their appropriate places should feel both ways. Sometimes they should have to carry a little but I think that also comes with solo queue awareness things like a body is down and your teammates is stomping and you realize they are stomping too so you need to swap targets interrupt the stomp so you guys can get your stomp first, or stealthing your teammate. Quick little plays that you can do that can end up making a big difference. A won fight often creates a snowball effect. Other times they should be the ones who need to improve in order to really carry forward, but hopefully they are only making small mistakes, like a player deciding to stomp a body instead of cleaving it out, because of this decision the other team got the stomp first and won the fight.

This is what I was running as core ranger.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjUqQ/K2wC+sAXLG+DKefz3N4TjfY43iIDCgCsWB-TpBEwAEuAAAOCAROEAIeAAZLDwc/BA

Though I would more readily recommend something like:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjUqQ/K2wC+sAXLG+DqPN+hh3z9tN43iIDCgCWtA-TpBEABI8AAI4CAkz+DRcIAA4IAYeZAA

@ OP none of the builds on my twitch page are accurate. I don’t use spike trap anymore for several reasons. But mainly I like to run with signet of renewal signet of stone and a stunbreak. Just to be succesful in queues I was running search and rescue in place of a stunbreak and was trying to avoid the necessity of one by always +ing fights and through positioning in even fights.

There is what appears to be a “MMR hell” this season where players are matches together with teammates of similar MMR and are then matched vs a team with the same pip range. This means that if you end up on a losing streak your MMR will drop and you will end up with other lower MMR players. Meanwhile you could be matched against a team of all high MMR players who have been on a win streak simply because you are in the same pip tier as them (ruby for example). This then repeats over and over leaving players stuck in a “MMR pit” they can’t climb out of. Still there are arguments as to whether this MMR hell means the players stuck there aren’t good enough to carry. I believe this is the case, however, these good players loath the current system because they feel they should be at a tier where they are the ones who make the big mistakes, instead it is usually their teammates who are constantly making mistakes, leading to a very frustrating time in PvP.

The general consensus was that since I was on a pretty fresh alt account my MMR was volatile and once I started winning I was matched with other higher MMR people and we just sailed right through all the tiers. It is also believed that this phenomenon will occur until I reach the point where I meet other high MMR players, which would be legendary.

@OP notice all the shouts have been reworked and many of them are just the best options for utility slots. When playing as a core ranger I recommend using beast mastery, nature magic, and then whatever else you want. With we heal as one you then get a ridiculous amount of boons because of the synergy between these lines. Then since you can trait for shout can reduction, the new protect me shout can be a stunbreak on a 24 second cd. So as a core ranger when I wanted a stunbreak besides signet of renewal that’s what I would take.

skcamow.3527:

Eurantien.4632:

Does the system this season really not try to average the MMRs of each team before matching them up?

It takes into account the MMR of your team, but does not for the team you’re up against.

See the season 2 preview:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pvp-league-season-two-changes/

Pertinent portion highlighted below:

As we’ve mentioned previously, Ranked matchmaking in PvP during season two will now be based primarily on your current division placement and a predetermined “pip range” that extends from that spot. We’ll search for other players that fall within your pip range (which can extend outside of your division depending on where you’re currently placed) and pair you up with teammates who have a similar skill level to your own. We’ll then find you opponents within that same pip range and pair them against you, regardless of their skill level.

That indicates the team you’re playing against is purely matched up with your team by division only, not MMR.

So then I did just skip over it. That’s a shame.

Are you EU? Queue with me!!!

Yasi.9065:

Its quite obvious, that players with high mmr are happy with the system – because they get easy wins – and want it to stay that way. So they provide phony evidence in the hopes anet will listen to them and will NOT reset their mmr, will NOT change the system and they keep on getting their cheap victories.

I’d rather have close challenging games than easy wins. Even if they reset mmrs won’t that just make it worse for everyone? Bad player get stuck in MMR Hell faster, and good players have to climb over each other to get their mmrs up?

Yasi.9065:

I think its hilarious, how “pro” players dont want to team up with players stuck in mmr hell and think they are providing evidence that mmr hell doesnt exist by creating new f2p accounts… it kinda says a lot about the so called “pro” players.

This was just my alt EU account I’ve had for awhile. I’d be happy to queue with someone whose stuck in “MMR Hell” and see whats up. I never said anywhere I didn’t want to team up with someone… so not really sure where you’re coming from with this.

Yasi.9065:

What you’ve actually proven, is how kittening BROKEN this system is. You think it takes skill to win if you are put against worse teams all the time? No, it doesnt.

I mean, of course they are worse, right? I mean my team has 4 players who are probably stuck in Ruby, and same with their 5? And then my team has me… while the other team might have that guy I used as an example. Although his build is better than mine is I am playing better than they are and am effectively carrying, right? Do people with higher MMR really get put against “worse” teams? Does the system this season really not try to average the MMRs of each team before matching them up?

I’m getting the impression that If I want to get into MMR Hell I need to lose a lot? I need to do it at the beginning of diamond or ruby (I just got into diamond so this might be a good spot)? As I am not going to intentionally lose I can try to win games on classes I’m bad at and builds that aren’t viable. I’ll lose, but I’ll be trying to win so I’d make myself feel better about it haha (sorry team). Yet It is my understanding that people think a proleague player, such as myself, that got into MMR Hell would actually be able to just get back out. Therefore, any attempt for me to try and get into and back out is pointless because I probably could? I’m not really trying to prove it doesn’t exist it is just my experience that it doesn’t. I’m genuinely curious to experience MMR Hell in this game but It seems like I won’t be able to? Which by extension would mean that for me, MMR Hell actually doesn’t exist… but it does for those who are actually not good enough to get out of the pit once they get into it?

SkyShroud.2865:

does anyone noticed that OP has a rather low rank and also low match participation history?

MMR hell hit the old players with high rank and big match participation history stretching all the way back to the old leadership board.

to make a point. a old player literally played an alt account with little match history like OP’s and manage to breeze through to diamond while his main account that has a lot match history is stuck in ruby. he also made a thread about it.

That would be really interesting if this was true and there were more people experiencing this issue. As it stands, I have had an easy time on my alt account. I think part of that might be the fact the good players are out of the way so I can just surf over everyone until I get to legendary. So far, I have definitely lost more games on my main account playing druid, however, I know that when queuing on my druid I wasn’t gunning for wins I was just playing the game however I pleased. I think that had more to do with why I’ve lost more games on my main than my alt on the way to legendary so far than any sort of MMR mysticism.

For my own curiosity I have been solo queuing on an alt account playing core ranger. Going through Ruby I had a 100% winrate.

https://www.twitch.tv/eurantien/v/56788837

Honestly, I didn’t feel under powered at all. With proper pet control I was able to CClock my way through most of my opponents.

Crimson Shi.5047:

Haven’t experienced the MMR hell either, and for those who “crippled theirs” I don’t know what to say to that. Sure I lost, but biggest lose streak I ever got was just 3 in a row then it changed around especially after I examined myself for the flaws, adjusted my build, and adapted.

Exactly,

For all the games I lost I know what I did wrong and stopped doing that. Started winning again.

I know that is often a difficult thing for players to do, but without it I can’t side with someone who says they are stuck in “MMR Hell” there is ALWAYS something you could have done better.

Is it based purely on MMR?

Did I skip right over it by getting a 100% winrate in Ruby playing core ranger?

Part of me thinks that I just wasn’t bad enough to lose? The only games I lost were 1 in Emerald because my teammates were awful and I was refusing to carry the team fight (so that was my bad). And then later I just kept 1 v 1ing for funsies in Saphire so my team also kept losing in the team fight. Afterwards I would just go carry the team fight and we’d be on our merry way to a crushing victory.

This kind of just makes me think that “MMR Hell” is simply that people are where they are supposed to be.

Amber/Emerald: https://www.twitch.tv/eurantien/v/55791944
Rest of Emerald: https://www.twitch.tv/eurantien/v/56057538
Saphire: https://www.twitch.tv/eurantien/v/56586587
Ruby: https://www.twitch.tv/eurantien/v/56788837

Meanwhile: There is a thread also on the front page atm:

“Lower tier ruby what do I need 2 do 2 win”

Faux Play.6104:

I’m in the lower tier of ruby and struggling to put together win streaks. What is the main thing I need to focus on to win more matches?

match 1 504 – 466 Loss
match 2 500-340 Loss

Take a look at my vod, playing a non meta build vs. his vod playing a meta build. Given that the OP of this thread is saying, “can’t put together winstreaks” I think we could say he is in MMR Hell? Yet when you compare the two the difference in game play is apparent. I do not believe this player, at his/her current level should be making it out of Ruby.

Edit: It seems that the way season 2 works players are matched up on their teams with similar MMR which would then allow for people on winstreaks to just keep winning. This is highly likely what happened and I did just skip over “MMR Hell”.

Would be really cool if Anet could tie templates in with their own data tracking. They would be able to see what builds are people using? How successful are they? How many people are using what skills?

That way they might have a number understanding of what is being used.
Oh, only 1 person used ranger spirits in PvP in the last 10 months? Oh, he lost the match he was in 500-0 despite playing with 4 meta classes? We should keep on eye on this!

jcbroe.4329:

Eurantien.4632:

Someone said it earlier. If you are healing you aren’t doing damage. That’s why menders is better. Less time healing because you get back to safe health pools easier.

You’re a bit out of context with the comment you’re referencing Eura lol.

The comment was made in regards to why Paladins would be better than Menders; because in Paladins the damage mitigation is passively handled by stats which means less time taken to have to actively heal to mitigate damage done to you, where Menders you’d take more damage and spend more time having to heal because of it.

The way I see it is that regardless of the amulet, you are still taking some damage. That 500 toughness really doesn’t mitigate a whole lot of damage. Sure it passively reduces your damage but since you probably have regen, the healing power is also passively healing you. That’s not my point though. The point is that you will take damage and get to a point where you will want to heal back to a comfortable health pool. Since you have to do that with both amulets then you actually end up spending more time healing in Paladins than in Menders because you don’t have healing power in the former. For example, you take 4K damage in Menders to get back to full hp you go into CF. lunar blast them and yourself, then you leave and you are at full hp. If you have Paladins and let’s say that toughness makes that 4K hit a 3k hit (overestimation on the effectiveness of toughness) and you go into CF and lunar blast, you don’t heal up that hp difference, you end up a few hundred under max, so you Cf 4 to get a tick or two before you leave CF.t That means you just spent more time healing because of less healing power.

Someone said it earlier. If you are healing you aren’t doing damage. That’s why menders is better. Less time healing because you get back to safe health pools easier.

verskore.4312:

Ananeos.4587:

verskore.4312:

the answer is simple, you do not stand a single chance in a 1v1 against a condi mesmer, not a SINGLE chance. No matter what class you play (unless you play condi mesmer yourself), you will lose to one that is decent. the amount of survivability and constant conditions that they can apply is ridiculous and soon enough your condicleanse will be on cooldown and then you’ll melt. This isn’t even taking into account the ridiculous OP skill moamorph which is basically a 8 second daze (which he can cast twice in a row if he’d want to).

In other words, if you see a condi mesmer on a point, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

This is ignorance at its finest, do not listen to this person.

nono, it’s not ignorance, it’s having a sense of reality. Condi mesmer is by far best 1v1 out there right now and if you enter a 1v1 with an equally skilled mesmer (or even a little worse) then you will most likely lose and you’ll get your team outnumbered. Best to do is go back to the teamfight, wipe them and 2v1 the mesmer or get the other point and simply ignore him should he be so stupid to bunker a point. You’re the ignorant one for not seeing that.

They can lose 1 v 1. I’ve seen the best Mesmers in North America lose to necros, druids, and dragon hunters. As a conclusion your post must be none other than ignorance. This is a learn to play issue. Is Condi Mesmer very strong 1 v 1? Yes. Is it unbeatable? No.

Take more condi cleanse, hit the mesmer between their blocks and evades, bait them out then burst them. This is either a build issue, a l2p issue, or both.

Druid can for sure win this match up.

On an aside: I know some DH players that have done well vs condi mesmers 1 v 1.

bloodpyrope.8630:

I like games where you can reroll classes without needing to grind in PvE

They don’t remove the same condis. Riposting shadows = immob, chill, cripple
LR = immob

Given how good reaper chill is that’s kind of big.

Granted we have more condi clear than revs do anyway

This is a good change. So many times randoms
In solo queue would go channel the buff after a fight causing someone to get outnumbered allowing for the other team to snowball. I’m talking about like, winning mid fight, instead of going to +1 before the respawns or match numbers people would go channel the ferocity buff closes to THEIR OWN spawn, really a bad rotation. Now they can’t do that. Less bad rotations = better bad players!

Answer: it does not.

This makes it impossible to compare ranger stats to other professions because we do not see how much damage we really do because of how reliant ranger is on pets atm. Also because everytime we use a heal our pets pretty much get healed too making it impossible to really compare how much healing we do compared to other professions as well.

There is only 1 CC in this game that can fully prevent player action by itself, slickshoes.

I would never stop playing this game if I could queue from outside the mists.

I disagree with this. Making these changes lowers the skill ceiling and the skill floor even more, something I don’t think this game needs any more of.. If you want directional skills now just detarget and rotate your camera.

1. Let us queue from outside the mists.
2. Balance around top tier PvP.
3. Make Spirit Watch ranked viable!
4. Return to the idea that every class can do anything, just differently.
5. If the game is balanced remove class stacking limits.

They had a warrior…

My load screens are usually about 2-3 seconds as well.

It’s probably not my PC.

S&R is very strong and I think when it comes to solo queue its one of the strongest skills in the game. For team play It doesn’t get a ton of use and can be shut down through coordination.

Died on Temple, took over a minute for my respawn to load, by the time I loaded the game said I had 50s left to move our I would dc from afk. We lost a won game during that time, loaded when they had 498 points. My bad for dying I guess?

Dodge the shatters!!!

Fluffball.8307:

The broadcast PvP does highlight problems though, for example the pro league match where someone rage quit over the bunker meta. It’s a kind of chicken or egg thing, pro league highlights chronobunker, everyone emulates it and it becomes this massive problem, but pro league doesn’t dictate balance.

I don’t recall running into a single chronobunker before Helseth ran that in a broadcast match, although I’d heard people theorycrafting about it. Next week, you had 6 per match.

That’s a good point. Case and point, all of ROM’s druid builds last season. So many people copied them yet they were not the best options. Granted I think a big thing to do with it is how metabattle copies these builds and then a lot of people copy metabattle.

That being said there is still a disparity. For me the nerfs this week has taken me from Druid kinda works to its just not worth it anymore for Pro league play. For solo queue it works but I know if I go against other pro league players or any good player that I will have to 1v1 I shouldn’t win. Yet I know that at lower tiers of skill Druid seems unkillable god mode. Yet balance is designed around the casual in my eyes which has lead to poor game balance for a lot of players as a consequence.

PvP is def a main focus for balance. But top tier PvP is not the main focus. Ranger has always been sub par besides spirit ranger. However they then nerfed spirit ranger and unnerfed the ele they had been power creeping. Since then ranger has been a sub par and been undeserving of a spot in top teams. In the last 4 World Tournaments (well 3 and 1 pro league) there have been a possible of 4 teams x 5
Players each x 4 times so 80 possible players. Of those 80 there have been only 2 rangers. Given that for the first 60 players worth there were 8 classes and ranger was the only class represented by just 1 player and with the most recent 20 players, despite their being 9 classes there was only 1 ranger. That makes 2/80 at the highest tier, the lowest represented class. I think if top tier pvp was the main focus for balance, the way other games that claim esports do, the ranger would be seeing a vast majority of buffs and few nerfs.

You have a warrior. And necro is like the worst class to try to 4 v 5 with?

StickerHappy.8052:

psizone.8437:

Eurantien.4632:

Then we are just at bad game design then. There is no reason to take anything but defensive lines given how much damage our pets can do with their independent stats. Not to mention how much survivability/damage everything else has.

If you go full defensive traits then you lose a good chunk of your own damage. Yes our pets can put out a lot of damage but on the other side of that, if they die (and they die quite easily) then they’re out of the fight for nearly a minute and then you’re completely kitten for damage.

Eura, this is actually my point, If you put EB into NM, you do not have any damage traits. you go full defensive. If you put EB into MM, you will have the best of both worlds in 1 trait line DPS and Sustain.

I’m struggling to see how putting a grandmaster trait that is defensive into skirmishing or marksmanship is going to give the best of both worlds. Right now, nature magic is the best of both worlds because you get defense, + high might up time with lingering magic and fortifying bond and their synergy with the beast mastery line and we heal as one. To compare with MM or Skirm you get 10 extra vuln stacks on entering combat, an ok uptime on fury with clarion bond, and maybe 10%? more damage if you have full endurance? or perhaps moment of clarity? Those are very comparable to NM’s fortifying bond which provides a roughly 50% uptime on fury (yeah its less than if you take MM and clarion bond) but has the ability to provide a lot more might than MM does. + You can get nearly the same damage increase with bountiful hunter (maybe even more so) than the 10% you can sometimes get in MM from having full endurance since bountiful hunter affects both you and your pet and the pets do more damage than we do.

Now maybe skirmishing gives more damage? But all skirmishing does is provide near permanent fury along with 10% crit chance increase while flanking. Along with spotter that’s a decent increase to your precision but again, your crit chance and fury uptime is still decent with NM + with NM you get those increased might uptimes while skirmishing doesn’t offer that. + Since you can’t take the GMs of either Skirm or MM where the real benefits of those lines come from, I’d say moving a “defensive trait” into a “dps line” should rather be moving a defensive trait into a sub par trait line.

So what I’m saying is given that you’d be forced to pick between GMs in skirm or MM to get this defensive condi clear trait, you’re not actually getting the best of both worlds if you were to trait into skirm or MM. This is because NM already is the best of both worlds since its damage increases come from an adept trait (bountiful hunter) and from minor master and grandmaster traits fortifying bond and lingering magic due to the higher might up times.

psizone.8437:

Eurantien.4632:

Yes, move condi clear to either marksmanship or skirmishing to promote build diversity is what I am saying. Even if we moved Empathic Bond to Nature Magic, despite having people having to choose between Protective Ward, they would still be picking Nature Magic. Yes, Nature Magic isn’t required! But its the best choice right now, adding Empathic Bond to it still makes it the best choice.

No, don’t move condi clear to those two lines. Maskmanship is the dps line and Skirmishing is the condition line. Adding condition cleanses to those lines would kill build diversity since you wouldn’t have to choose between damage traitlines and defensive trait lines.

Then we are just at bad game design then. There is no reason to take anything but defensive lines given how much damage our pets can do with their independent stats. Not to mention how much survivability/damage everything else has.

StickerHappy.8052:

Eurantien.4632:

You are right I just fear that putting passive condi clear into a line that is already strong is too good. I’d much rather see empathic bond reworked and something more active pop up in one of the other lines (skirm or mm). Like GM skirm: transfer 2 condis on initial trap trigger damage or poison volley now transfers a condition for each hit or something.

So then move my suggestion to a different trait line? I think this is where you are getting at. I do not even see NM being required? Protective ward? Again it will now compete with EB.

For the record not everyone runs boon share heal as one. Only the troops who bandwagon meta battle are the ones who use it. Allies Aid? Alkore wasnt even running Allies aid so..

Yes, move condi clear to either marksmanship or skirmishing to promote build diversity is what I am saying. Even if we moved Empathic Bond to Nature Magic, despite having people having to choose between Protective Ward, they would still be picking Nature Magic. Yes, Nature Magic isn’t required! But its the best choice right now, adding Empathic Bond to it still makes it the best choice.

You’re right in that not everyone uses boon share heal as one builds, but realistically and mathematically speaking they should. Without the benefits of having such high boon up times it becomes a lot harder to 1 v 1 most of the meta builds with the lack of damage. It can be done, but running nm/bm/druid is just the highest reward for the lowest risk and there doesn’t seem to be anyway around that at the moment. Sure, Alkore wasn’t running Allies Aid, but depending on how we want to look at this we can say…

1. He didn’t need Allies Aid because he had Search and Rescue, so taking Bountiful Hunter is the best net gain for the nm/bm/druid build because of that permanent damage increase.

2. He didn’t need Allies Aid, but its still a good trait if people want to take it. Given the build he was running, we probably shouldn’t take Alkores build/gameplay for canon.

You are right I just fear that putting passive condi clear into a line that is already strong is too good. I’d much rather see empathic bond reworked and something more active pop up in one of the other lines (skirm or mm). Like GM skirm: transfer 2 condis on initial trap trigger damage or poison volley now transfers a condition for each hit or something.

Empathic Bond has always been in Wilderness Survival.

StickerHappy.8052:

Eurantien.4632:

On one hand that also means that druid/bm/nm would be EVEN MORE of an optimal choice… Therefore killing build diversity even more.

That is only 1 possibility. This would open up MM/NM/Druid, Skirm/NM/Druid or even more core ranger builds

I don’t think it would. With either of those choices you lose regen/swiftness on shout use which means you lose the benefits of regen, the astral force generation, and use you lose the movement speed bonus. So you could run SotW and get by without regen, ok. Yet to get movement speed your options are like centaur, air, or traveler runes? You can take that druid trait +33% move speed. Unfortunately by dropping that 1 adept trait in beastmastery you lose a utility slot to maintain viability, a rune slot, or a master druid trait. By giving up celestial shadow you lose what is arguably the best self peel for what is already a squishy druid. That means you’re gonna be in more trouble than normal when something jumps on you (like a revenant).

Not only are all these things issues but you also have to make the choice of no “We Heal as One” or not. By losing it you lose the boon share between you and your pet, arguably the best thing we’ve got going for us. By taking it without Resounding Timber you lose the regen and swiftness and the CD reduction… which is already less efficient.

That’s not all! Druids main form of dealing damage is with pets. By giving up beastmastery you lose the boon sharing (ie might and fury for your pet). You also lose 150 power and 300 ferocity.

In the end, to give up beastmastery in the current iteration of GW2 is just a plain less optimal/efficient build. Therefore, we have 1 traitline we can change since we are stuck with BM/Druid. Which one already has the best synergy with these trait lines? Nature Magic because it offers a tad bit more condi clear (or vigor if you’d like) and most importantly fortifying bond and lingering magic which buff you and your pet even more with We Heal as One! Now, if you were to add even more condi clear to this line it’d just be silly.

MAYBE you’d have a case running Nature Magic and Wilderness Survival just for the condi clear and to just be able to faceroll necros 1 v 1? But you would be less equipped to kill anything else without beastmastery and we heal as one…

On one hand that also means that druid/bm/nm would be EVEN MORE of an optimal choice… Therefore killing build diversity even more.

rummy.4102:

Archon.6480:

Yeah, they had to nerf ranger after seven of them made it into the championships, and dominated the matches… What’s that? Oh, right, that was revenant…

This is the part that puzzles me. A few guys that I will never meet, and make up .0025 of the player base (that’s made up but its a very small percentage) have the most control and influence on what gets done to pvp. Why?

Just to clarify…

This was said on a reddit post.

“ArenaColin:

In regards to balance – balance is NOT driven by our PvP Pro League, the pro league is a marketing effort that has almost zero impact on our dev team. Drawing parallels between the two is at best disingenuous."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/

However, I do know that one of the PvP coordinators, who has direct communication with the balance team does talk to top players about issues. The issue is that GW2 balance is clearly NOT around top tier play. At the same time it’s not for pure casual play either. I don’t really know what they are doing with design. I honestly have no idea why druid was nerfed. In the last 4 world tournaments, or whatever you want to group them as. There have been 16 teams. That is 80 professions total assuming no teams changed team compositions at all. There have been 2 ranger players. Both teams got third place. The ranger/druid was clearly not the most efficient choice. It has been about a year and we still see ranger/druid nerfs. It really doesn’t make any sense to me.

Of course, it’s in the fine print, “no patch shall go by without nerfing ranger/druid without cause”.

Given that revenant, scrapper, and elementalist, can all stand on point longer than druid can, you are mistaken.

Just kite them. Burst em, get em in your roots, go invis/dodge the transfer/los while pet does damage. When they go into death shroud stop damaging and just run away. When they leave death shroud hit them hard again and interrupt their heal. Seriously, just literally turning around and running away when they go into death shroud works wonders, oh yeah and dodge their elite shout. After those tips and even builda without condi clear can win. As long as you are power and have decent damage.

Alekt.5803:

I still had two instances of frost aura granting regen and fury and a flat heal of 800. Maybe it would have been slightly in the elementalist favor. But, we’re talking about a pet class here.

If someone asks me to add Lava Font, I have a video with it, and the ranger would side step them, which caused the fireball to miss. No damage were added as a result.

Fighting off point, aka WvW, should not be balanced around. If this game wishes to be “esport” balance should be around top tier, PvE should be balanced around NPC design and mechanics, and WvW shouldn’t be the focus of balance because of 50 v 50 isn’t something manageable to be balanced around. Therefore, fighting off point isn’t an arguable point of contention to determine what is OP and what is not. In a node fight lava font becomes severely more effective given your enemy is more likely to stay in a small radius around it. Also, if you are skilled you can do things like immob the druid into your lava font, knock them into a wall, or put it in front of their path as they round a corner of LoS so they take multiple ticks from the lava font. Given the counterplay of bristelback the only thing I could say you have an argument for is that unrelenting assault is too strong, not just smokescale.

To me this demonstrates the blatant propaganda being spread by Alekt.5803.

For one: the druid is using a menders, has a trait that ends up providing 14s of protection over the 24s “fight” and 7s of regen each healing for about 266 hp/s because the druid is wearing a mender’s.

Second: if a skill is available then using a skill is almost ALWAYS better than autoattacking in PvP – unless you are a war, melee ranger, or revenant using quickness. When we look at the skills staff elementalist has, we find that every single skill that is meant for dealing damage has higher base damage and power scaling than druid staff’ skills (besides flame burst, because this applies 1600 base burning damage and has a power coefficient of 0.1 as a consequence).

Conclusion: this isn’t a fair test in the slightest because of the protection up time and high hp generation from the regen proccing on the druid. Nor does it capture the truth that if these 2 actually used their skills it would probably result in the ele slaughtering the druid, without the druid using his/her pet, given the damage modifiers on ele. Arguably since it is AoE the ele could miss more skills than the druid however, if someone else was nearby the druid and the elementalist’s skills landed his/her damage would double as the AoE is now hitting two targets. In the contrary situation a person standing near the ele while the druid is untacking will most likely go unharmed given the druids overall lack of AoE damage. Therefore, I must conclude marauder ele is vastly superior to a staff druid without his/her pet. Until such time as more details are provided by the OP I cannot conclude otherwise.

Top players aren’t even phased by this skill. This is the definition of a learn to play issue.