Guild Wars 2

Sweet balance patch…Almost everyone complain and what is Arenanet doing -> /ignore.
Yeah PAX is a good reason to stop balancing because its better to play with broken classes instead of balanced ones in final.
I just dont get it…

Btw Ostrichegg: You mean "high level tournament in "NA""

Epic.3950:

oh yea mesmers are DEEFFFFINITLLLY at the bottom… tell me again how they have the best team support/damage all in one bundle?

Mesmer will come back after they fixed S/D and Thief. However currently they are not viable because they get snowballed very hard. It not that Mesmer isnt strong but the class is very susceptible to the 2 mentioned classes (probably also engi, warrior, ranger, ele). Even before the meta change mesmer wasnt picked for his 1vs1 capability but just for his utlities.

My list:
S:
Necromancer
Engineer

A:
Thief+
Ranger
Guard
Warrior (Somehow the current stun build works. I think alot of teams are just afraid to use it – And its a strong counter against necros)

B:
Elementalist

C:
Mesmers

Everyone agrees Necromancer need to be brought down. It’s ridicoulus how easy this class plays out. Engineer also on top: Some of you might argue that there were brought down with elixir R nerf, however there are still extremly strong. The only class which might win reliable is a SD thief. In addition the engineer is a toolbelt of CC. This is also why it is possible to carry whole groups with an engi. Alot of Former Ele’s moved to engi due to that fact. It is the only class which can repeatedly win 2vs1 or even 3vs1. The simply reason is he can prevent rezzing better than other classes. Just place a bomb and start to spam your bombs (I know it requires some skill) if this is not helpful than pop your panic button elite, which is a mini version of an engi with net turret (prevent stomps, immobilize for whole 3 sec), fire turret (500+ ticks) and 6,5 k heal. In addition you have your insanely rezz (which btw. ticks also after the icon dissapeared which is quite frustrating for the enemy ). In addition the engi has the 3 strongest combofield combined with alot of explosion finishers – He can stealth he can stack up his heal or just stacking might- so if for example the bombs are missing he still benefits from his “air” blast. Actually I think more classes should be like the engi because the skill cap is high and it offers alot to choose. However this is not the case and wont happen in short time so i think its time for some adjustment.
S/D Thiefs are the actual reason for lack of elementalist and mesmers in the game. I really would liked to see some minor adjustment so that the cannot evade and you cannot hit them before you are dead. I think some small changes regards to the initiative costs are enough.
Ranger – Spirit build is strong but since it offers not the CC like an engi have, or the aggressive DPS of necro, it is tier A and not tier S for me. Like for S/D thiefs some minor tweaks to the spirit and the class should be fixed. However this class has no big CC at all – which has to be considered – Also they cannot go for dps builds currently.
Guard – OK
Warriors – Stun warriors can be very annoying for low HP classes and also for engineers and necros these guys are very annoying due to some mindless stunbreaker changes in latest patch and thus shift to “No stun breaker meta”.

Elementalist: Low Health pool, 1 Trick pony (Burst or die) – Can be worthy for the team but often he gets killed by thief, necro or chased by engineer/warrior before he can pull out his strength.

Mesmers: No condi remove and no effective counter against S/D’s. Enough said.

The problem is not the ele. I would call ele a balanced class but the laziness of arenanet to do significant balance changes more frequently than every 4 weeks and dont even consider to post or test changes before patch goes live is 1 of the main flaws of this game. The meta gets dominated by engi and necros (and maybe spirit rangers) for 2 months now. And there is not a single word about what they want to change in order to fix this bullkitten meta.
Currently every single fight is a hard fight for ele’s. It doesnt matter s/d thief, necro, any kind of engi, spirit rangers – These are fights you simply cant win against experienced players. I dont blame players for use somehow these fotm build, i blame arenanet for beeing so kittening slow in fixing things which were adressed broken from day 1. Instead they not involving the playerbase and what happened? In the last patch they buffed necro deathshroud that every single necro has at least 75% deathshroud in fights.
The problem is conditions were never intended to burst someone but i am currently get eaten alive by them despite i go into water and heal every possible condition due to the super cool condition rank system, which was also not adjusted to current meta. So you cleanse 3 stacks of bleeding instead of burning, well done.
I really hope for these changes tommorow:
- Undo: Signet and Hurl heal nerf
- Engi Elite: change cd to 240 sec – Reduce Immobilize to 1,5 sek – Reduce heal from 6,5k – 4,5k
- Engi: Increase Elixir R Rezz tick rate by 1/2 sec and decrease tick heal to 15% instead of 20%
- Engi: Flamethrower knockback no longer increases burning duration
- Necro: Remove Dhuumfire (never necessary)
- Necro: Decrease Terror damage slightly by 10%
- Necro: Spectral wall doesnt give protection anymore
- Necro: Clear animations for all their skills
- S/D Thief: Increase flanking strike and lazarus strike initiativ costs by 1 point
- S/D Thief: No longer be able to port while stunned with infiltrators strike

I really dont think that ele and especially mesmers are bad designed classes. They also worked before meta change. Its just that they get snowballed especially by these 3 classes heavily. Every minor mistakes you do gets punished heavily (what actually wouldnt be a bad thing if this would also be true for all the other classes). But lets see what they planned to getting ele out of this “1 trick pony” position, the class is currently in.

Necro = Chuck Norris, enough said :P:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA

I talked to some of the guys yesterday (and despite that thread was opened there were very calm yesterday). They thought best of 5 was intended for the pax qualification final. But after the match they realised that Best of 3 was planned for all qualification matches.

I mean I know it feels like alot of QQ but if you can’t win on a map (expecting same skill level – And yes thats possible because also no one is playing with 5 thiefs or 5 guardians in tournaments and expect to win) or with just alot of luck than you ask yourself why the hell this map is played twice. I mean even symbolic admitted that the spirit ranger saved the game at least on foefire.

There must be a statement from grouch if he asked CC, if he decided it by himself or with whom he decided it.

flo.2048:

Mist leagues rules… I’m not sure that everyone really read it.

By the way, both team diserved to win. 5 Great games.

The question is, if the PAX qualification tournament is an official Mist league match or if Mist league is just the executer and Arenanet is the organizer and hoster. I can also link these rules directly from the arena net page:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-invitational-and-regional-qualifying-tournament-details/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/arenanet-guild-wars-2-tournament-rules/

Only because on the mist league page is mentioned that they provide themselves to change the rules doesn’t make this a legal move because they override the rules from a tournament which they just execute but not host. I think the rules you linked are just valid for the mist league matches and not for the PAX invitational.

Best example might be if grouch had said: “Ok guys we think 3vs3 is the best format for the finals, please choose your players and lets start.” Everyone will agree that something like this would never override the rules determined by Arenanet. So why changing the format to a best of 5 before asking BOTH teams should be… I dont know.

I know why grouch changed it…it was enough time and he wants to show us entertaining matches and i truly believe that there was no ill intent in what he was doing. However from CC point of view its somehow tragic. And I remember a few weeks ago Teldo and Phantaram were discussing which maps are in TP’s favor. They said Foefire is there best and Kyhlo is the worst of the standard rotation. Again I don’t think there was any ill intent (because they also had some roster changes which might have influenced there map preference) and I also think that they deserved to win, but that + they were rested and thus probably more concentrated may have shifted the result in the direction we have now.

You can start to think about it above r60

Its pointless to discuss Morw ^^ These guys think that they just lost because necro sucked and now they are “finally” balanced. Fact is every Ele in the game is loosing against a hotjoin scrub necro since he just have to land 1 autoattack and you loose almost 50% of your hp. That is not what i call balanced…
And I dont know where these guys are playing but in every tournament game at least 1 (sometimes 3-4 necros) do participate. Maybe they confuse the mists with dragon bash….

If you play necro nowadays and still get owned by alot of classes you just suck…sad but true.

Who is B L I N X? And what is D/D?

Despite I like that Dhumfire got even before the tournement I dont think that this will change anything. Average/good necro is still able to 1shot targets by conditions since the burst time is underneath the 2 sec. Its the combination of burning, bleeding, fear, torment and terror which makes the necro so powerful. A necro in the current meta is not going for a long fight he spikes you with conditions and 3 ticks of burning less won’t change much :/.

Remove it completely would have been the better option.

alemfi.5107:

HPLT.7132:

This is a group of 3 or 4 necros which should help to understand certain concerns Allie. I have to say that 3/4 of these guys jumped all on the necro train. They maybe have 20-30 necro games.

http://www.twitch.tv/xsuperxgw2/b/435324465

I am fine with necros having decent survivability but in my opinion the burning has to go first. Maybe also changing weakness to some little bit more predictable since it can destroy entire direct damage burst (maybe permanent 10% damage reduction considering the duration one can stack). After that we can look how things will evolve. Also obvious animations for necro spells would be nice in future, just in order to predict and counterplay certain actions.

I had to stop watching after scrolling to 6:53 to 7:13. Based on the perspective of the necromancer we are streaming with, they are truly: " I have to say that 3/4 of these guys jumped all on the necro train." The order of execution of the skills is completely off. They consumed conditions after only getting burning, they applied spectral armor (while full on ds), THEN spectral wall, which doesn’t proc protection if you already have it.. just bad plays all around.

If you could point out certain sections of that clip that you’d like us to examine, please do so, as I’m sure we appreciate being able to see hard evidence, but I don’t believe we have time to look through an hour of gameplay that might not reflect anything.

So you agree that they just spam skills but and here comes the interesting fact…they still win against teams by 500-100. So this is a very good indicator that something is going wrong and nothing else i tried to proof. For current necromancer play you dont need to know what your skills are doing … just spam skills and if its not a stun warrior → GG

This is a group of 3 or 4 necros which should help to understand certain concerns Allie. I have to say that 3/4 of these guys jumped all on the necro train. They maybe have 20-30 necro games.

http://www.twitch.tv/xsuperxgw2/b/435324465

I am fine with necros having decent survivability but in my opinion the burning has to go first. Maybe also changing weakness to some little bit more predictable since it can destroy entire direct damage burst (maybe permanent 10% damage reduction considering the duration one can stack). After that we can look how things will evolve. Also obvious animations for necro spells would be nice in future, just in order to predict and counterplay certain actions.

timidobserver.7925:

Keyon.3841:

Well, the idea behind a necromancer is to get in the fight and either die or kill.

That`s why necros got high damage and as of the last patch good sustain. They nerfed the fear and I think they should adjust the overall damage of burning in the game which is too high in my opinion.

Besides that I think it`s pretty balanced.

Position is really important when it comes to necros because if we are not careful we can still be bursted down pretty quick.

When plague is on CD and we just died and have no Life Force we are very killable.
For me it makes sense that the more you fight a necro the harder it will be.
Hard CC and high burst are our weaknesses. Most necros have 1 break stun on their utility slots.

What you suggest is to nerf all condis in this game which is impossible.

I don’t think that all classes that use burning have as big of an overdps issue as necros, so no burning should not be nerfed for everybody.

Just make dhuumfire only able to trigger once every 15-20 seconds.

It has to be removed…the first tick is the worst because this is the one he is using for his condi burst and after that you are not able to recover… Even 30-45 seconds wouldnt make any difference because the first 1 you simple cant dodge and after that all he needs is bleeds to drain you down.

Thats an odd argument. Burning is the condition with the highest damage output…if you want to get coverage this trait could also apply 2 Stacks of Confusion, or 5s of weakness or 3 stacks of bleeding…
The burning trait is stupid simply because there is no way for counterplay. Everybody hates it on Engi’s and now also on Necros. First thing after the necro crit is that you have to cleanse…and after the cleanse he starts to apply all the other kitten. This trait was nowhere near necessary.

At the poster above: Yeah its not like that there is a priority list for cleansing…I will tell you no condi remove in the whole game is enough to get rid of the pressure…period! Simply because Condi Spam by autoattacks and stupid traits is out of control. When you get pressured by 10 stacks of bleeding, burning, torment you simply dont wait until chill or poison is gone…you cleanse.

Surreal.5243:

S Tier:
+ Necromancer (Condition)
- Thief (S/D)

A Tier:
+Ranger (Spirit)
+Engineer
=Guardian
=Ele

B Tier:
+Mesmer
-Warrior

Necros just out of control. Ridiciuluos damage.

S/D thief still good due to avoids not beeing that vulnerable to current condi aoe spam like a noob meta.

Engi just good at everything: has good sinergy with necro, great 1v1 potential, fast roaming, …..

Spirit Rangers seem to be the strongest 1v1 class right now and also nice groupsupport trough spirit boons (still spirits die allmost instant in grpfights)

Guard/Ele pretty balanced imo

Mesmer gets eatin alive by conditions and warriors just need a complete remake…

This is exactly how it is. However even Ele is not that strong. You get focused by a thief or necro in teamfights and you can count the seconds to your death. However if you get covered by other classes you are an option for teams.
Necros are out of control – Condition 1shots on short CD, decent survivability on a gc spec and a skillfloor which lets every BM ranger look high skilled.

But I would say Warrior is even more useful than Mesmers because they are actually able to kill S/D’s and Necros with a lucky stun-

But Arenanet dont want to admit and say everything is fine, just L2P issue qq, right?

What makes their state balanced in your opinion i guess. Did you see how easily he can kill the ele? Did you kittening see it? He is not supposed to be tanky he is a condition bomb. A 10 sec cd is nothing, what your proposed rotation for an ele to kill him when you start with a knock back (e.g. updraft) as an ele.

And 8k Firegrabs takes preparation, skill, luck and timing. You need to inflict the target with burning, you need to have fury up and you need to crit. In addition Firegrab is fairly hard to land. That’s how balancing actually look and not mindless spamming autoattack or staff marks until burning is critting and after that pushing the fear button in deathshroud and wait until he dies.

I leave this here for Mr. Sharp who actually think everything is a L2P issue:
http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

And now i am curious about your answer. When you look at the survivability/damage output is there something wrong?

Btw.: Beta playing Ele vs Fotm Necro (sry Helseth)

Authority.6145:

Authority.6145:

Remove stealth. In fact remove stealth for only the thief thief and let everyone else have stealth.

Let me have the damage output of a real assassin instead.

Feel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJyLRi6TmSE

To summarize,

So you don’t want a thief excelling in DPS.
So you don’t want a thief excelling in mobility.
You don’t want a thief excelling in survivability.

Short version;

You clearly don’t want to have a thief. You want to have your own little version of a wet towel thief. You probably want him to get kited to death while you are in your airplane dropping bombs on him.

I will also make a post regarding the viability of a mesmer.

For the time being, I am pretty sure this thread will lead “If you are a Mesmer reroll to a Necromancer”.

Warriors are popping up and players are rerolling from their mesmers. Guess we have got many players that want to do things easy cheesy fotm.

To continue my previous post.

First of all claiming that a mesmer is not only viable but rerolling to something else is the way to go is absolutely BS.

Let us look closer in which situations a Mesmer will not belong to any meta;

1.When portal and illusion of life is removed from the class.
2.When another classes has portal and illusion of life.
3.When one class has got portal and another class has got illusion of life.
4.When there is nothing unique about the class and everyone can do better than mesmer in everything.

Advantages with Team comps with a Mesmer

1.Portal, Illusion of Life, Moah or Stealth (the most fundamental team utilities for plays and counterplays, openings and so on and so forth in game right now).
2.Artificial Intelligence/A.I – Strong by itself, compliments other A.I comps i.e Spirit Rangers.

….

I really think you will revise your post after you played mesmer on your own and instantly get focused by necro and especially s/d thief. You can’t stand a chance and this is the reason why mesmer is not viable currently. The first target is the mesmer and you will never be able to shatter a good s/d thief (which can back line very hard) while you are also get kittened by conditions. You die before you can play out your advantages. Sad but true.
So another approach would be going phantasms than you are harder to kill but sacrifice at least portal or Illusion – Also you will use mass invisibility instead of moa because otherwise you are still an easy target for the thief and, in addition, your condition remove is still kitten.

And no, I am not playing Mesmer and try to complain here.

Computer said – Necro is balanced.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Also, a Warrior with an OH Shield can block all of this, but I’m not sure that makes Warriors OP in tPvP.

Just an aside.

I give up …. This indeed shows how much you know about your own game.
I tell you the difference.
What can a warrior do during a Shield block? Nothing! Can he using it when he is knockdowned? No. Is this skill on large CD after the warrior used it? Yes!

A necro can turn his deathshroud on and off within 10 secs. He can also do substantial damage during he is in deathshroud. And again a warrior has obvious animations. When he comes out of his blocks you can guess when he is trying to eviscerate you. Thats something you cannot say for a necro. Instant travel time is a serious issue. On full deathshroud a necro is a god. The combo phanta was doing is usually dealing about 10-13k and thats what? 20% of his deathshroud maybe less. Symbolic not even applied weakness…which you also skyrocket like their is no tommorow. So necro’s has now what? 50-60k life with deathshroud+ Plaque and can still deal alot of condition pressure due to your nice changes to burning and terror….Pls bring someone in here who actually knows how to balance kitten or at least use your own spectating mode in tournaments and watch some skilled players and not these hotjoin scrubs or your pve office friends.

I’ll will just make you a compilation of how nice it is to play a low HP class in your superb balanced condition meta…You wanna condi cleanse – Yeah necros spam autoattack and after 5 seconds I promise you will have again 5-6 different conditions on you…well played well played. People complaining about spirit rangers? I think you only need 1 hand to play a necro competitively nowadays…Clickers are welcomed!
So here are your 2 options. Either decrease all condition cleanses cd significantly or you tone down condition damage a lot because you cant bypass this kitten. Toughness wont help. Vitality just help to a certain degree. Condition cleanses have always a too high cd. And current conditions can kill you instant. If you caught in a fear you die…you cant do kitten…and thats not how conditions worked at the beginning of the game.

…Enough rage for today…but this meta makes me sick and you pretend that everything is fine and balanced while the “real” players just spam your forum how kitten it is currently.

To be honest all what you have to care is balancing around high level gameplay.
If you start to balance around casual play you either abandon builds or entire classes from Tournament (see D/D thieves) or you overbuff them to a completly broken state (see necromancers)

Zenith.7301:

This was a video of a guy popping DS with spectral armor from a single damage source. Not a necro that got stunned and is getting trained by more than one person throughout the entire game.

What a stupid whine thread, when Phantaram’s entire little combo could have similarly been nullified by a distortion or a blurred Frenzy or a mist form/arcane shield or shield block or endure pain.

Ask people what happens when that death shroud runs out and you’ve got no teleports or disengages. You flop over like a fish as you can’t peel anything off you.

Oh yeah because this game is about balancing around 5vs1….
Ok than I want to have old bunker ele back because he could also be killed by multiple enemys ./sarcasm off*

Ah full deathshroud is gamebreaking currently. A necro does way to much unavoidable and instant attacks to allow so much sustain. Its embarrassing that necros who just spam autoattack are more valuable than mesmer, ele and warrior.
“Oh did the necro applied his fear mark? No it was the Putrid Mark …or no it was the Mark of blood..Noo..seriously cant tell…Its just the usual necro hand shake….”
And Mesmers distortion will indeed kitten the combo. However mesmer have to sacrifice their clones and are 1shot targets with predictable attacks.

Every developer should ashamed watch helseth stream. He is raging but the core of what he is saying is sadly true.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Having a hard time seeing the vid (I’m in China).

Is it showing a Necro tanking a big hi IN death shroud, or using spectrals?

Explaining why the kitten you still not be able to fix necro’s. Seriously I am done with that. This class is broken – its not slightly OP – or borderline OP its broken. Fix it…
You not even able to nerf things. People telling you Dhuumfire is OP … fear is broken and you just shut your eyes and say: "Bahh but Karl is otherwise not able to 1vs1 ". You can’t predict this kitten…this is what you have to consider….

Evan Lesh.3295:

Rewards are high on our list. We’ve been coordinating with other teams, as it has a game-wide impact. They will certainly take some time to complete and you should expect to see Solo Arena much sooner.

Yeah giving PVPers some rewards will have a huge impact…..My god you stole rewards from players 6-7 month ago. There is real no incentive despite the combat system to play this game…a better rewards system should have been introduced yesterday…But yeah Achievement point rewards were much more necessary. Hail to the PVE.

Completly agree with Battosai. Had to fight against 2xs/d thiefs, 1xele, 1 guard, 1xnecro yesterday. And I really have to say I cant do a kitten against such a comp. If I try to spike the necro, the s/d thieves will shadow refuge and ele will jump me and I go down. If I try to jump the Ele my team gets eaten by conditions and the thieves jump me and I go down. In addition I have two handle two S/D Thiefs which I cannot hit due to the ridicoulus amount of evades and they kill me in 5-6 hits when I have cd on water – again I need teleport to disengange the stun or immobilize but oh wait he just ports back to me again. These Guys can snowball low hp classes so kittening hard its not even funny. You need to kill someone and pressure the guard heavily so that the have to rezz – then you might be lucky.
If you are skilled you can dodge mesmer burst or you can dodge ele burst and also d/p burst can be avoided. But you are not able to get rid of such a thief…its not possible and stunbreaker or not he is still able to port out of danger zone and in the mean time you still have to handle (some unblockable) necro attacks – You dont even see what necro is casting….everything looks the same – Even asura engineer flamethrower knockback is more predictable I would say. Every single ele will tell you thakittens hard to deal with that combo because you are the easiest target for them after the mesmer (even necros have more sustain due to plaque).
I dont think that the holy mesmer, ele, guard triangle was good in the past but I think it was more balanced than currently because one could dodge there attacks.

But we will see what they are doing on tuesday.

At Henry: I know its funny for you to play a necro and even before the patch you were one of the best necros in the game. But tell me how often have you been able to jump a mesmer or ele and kill him with a 1hit by your conditions since latest patch? I think conditions were not designed to work like that. They should kill the target by steady pressure and bypass of toughness.

It was already before the patch an outstanding class. No one said that happen after latest patch…

Derps.7421:

LeGi.3921:

burst would be d/p?

any decent pvp player can dodge basivenom/backstab in a 1on1 and when you need to 2on1 the engi we are in a bad spot (3vs4) on the rest of the map and will probably lose the teamfight there.

on top of that d/p needs to land that backstab and the engi got a blind bomb, a 7sec blind on FT#5 (instacast), this shield stun and so much area denial that it is pretty hard to be melee with him.

i say it again, to be great with the engi and pull all that stuff off it really takes practise and skill, much more than for example a s/d thief, but when you know your kittens then your are a freaking monster.

but like i said above, as Arenanet is not going to change anything soon, i guess i just roll engi myself and hope that i get good with this class before everyone else realises how OP this class is -.-, (omg he said it!)

Yes and good thiefs can always land a backstab. When you are playing the super op engineer you will see first hand how well the do against a good thief on point. Engineers lost all their reliable stun breakers. I am getting really tired of people who have no clue about the class decide how to balance it. Also you do know engi was nerfed last patch right?

You are not getting the point. A class is OP also when just 1 or 2 players are able to reach the necessary skill cap. Only because the average engi gets killed by the average thief doesnt make engi’s more balanced. Everyone aggress that engi is not easy to play BUT if you are able to reach a decent skill level he can do too much. Thats not good balancing.

And Ostrichegg: Phantasm Mesmer in Tournament…made my day…what are you smoking?

And something about actual tn comps: Using a build which is used to counter just a certain class (s/d thief, bomb engi etc) is inefficient because you become more susceptible to other builds. The current builds in the current meta, despite the mesmer which is using a teamfight build, are used because they are balanced. They are good in teamfights but never worthless in 1vs1. If you go for more 1vs1 you become worthless in team fights (like Phantasms, BM Ranger in some cases) and in return heavy team fight relying builds are useless in most 1vs1. Even Bunker Guards are decent in 1vs1 and good ones are capable to kill some classes over time. S/D Thief, Valkyre Ele, Bomb Engi, Terror Necro always the same, always balanced. If you would change something just to be able to kill an engi you have to sacrifice other parts. Its just inefficient to bring things like phantasm mesmers because its useless if you win closepoint but midfights become much harder due to that.

At Julius: Ofc also Engi’s have drawbacks otherwise you wouldnt be able to kill them BUT pls let me tell you something you might not realised so far. Bomb Engi’s also kill Guardians – WUPP – So strong condition removal is not a good counter. Another example? Bomb Engi’s kill Def Ele’s – Wupp – Also Strong condition removal not working. You might want to say that they dont have enough damage but tell me a class with high condi removal and high damage? There is no class…Its either condi removal or damage and Engi’s apply a bunch of conditions so that remove burning always takes more than one condi remove. So again what counters engi’s best? Engi or Necro.

Thats not what I meant. The statements were done in two different sentences. However if you have trouble with for example Mesmers as an Bomb Engineer I have to say you are pretty … :-). Fact is a good Engi can kill everything except Bunker Rangers (but even BM Ranger needs to go off point). This has nothing to do with Leaderboards. However players teaching other players how to counter their class and dont listen that it is not always to do it the way they explained, I simply call ignorant.
For example I could tell you that heavy stun is a good counter to BM Rangers. In conclusion Pistol Whip thief should be a very good counter – However did you see teams bringing PW thiefs against BM Rangers? No! Because, despite Stun is the weakness of the Ranger a Pistol Whip Thief on its own is not capable to kill the ranger reliably.

I Lol’ed about this thread but mainly due to the ignorance of some engis here.

Henry and Legi give it up – The problem is that there are only 3 or 4 great engi’s we are complaining about: Teldo, Yandrak, Super and some other still decent ones (Koroshi, Traq, …). However engi’s in this thread are nowhere near the leaderboards. They dont know how upper tpvp look like and they will never master their class to the level of the above mentioned.
However its a huge design failure of Arenanet. CC became a huge factor since spike damage was tonned down. However most classes have just kitten CC builds or no access to serious CC (ranger). In contrast Engi outshines every other class when it comes to cc. The main problem is that engi’s are versatile beast. The combination of the three strongest combo fields (smoke, fire, water) + the huge amount of explosion finishers + perma swiftness/vigor + instant blind (which makes a stunbreaker somehow unnecessary) + Selfrezz + 1500+ toughness+ High amount of Burning and Poison on short cd. A well played Engi can override Burning with alot of kitten conditions and spiking him is not possible at the beginning of the fight due to Vigor+ Endurance recovery by elixir R (5 dodges+). In the meantime burning ticks like hell and after your condi remove he will reapply it with his flamethrower toolbelt skill :/.
The main problem for me is that the build is good in every situation. While Ranger was only good in 1vs1, this build is good in 1vs1, 2vs2, 5vs5 – There is no real disadvantage of bringing this kind of engi nowadays. Engi is seriously the new ele.

Actually I would start with removing the water combo field in order to reduce teamfight capability a little bit.

Push for a very nice post…These proc traits are ridiculous. I mean I play ele and a engi hits me even when I dodge his first attack. Due to the burning I loose half of my life in a short period of time. I am forced to burst him but he also has access to perma vigor + swiftness , alot of AOE and blocks. Bringing a decent burst is quite hard in a 1vs1 – So if I fail to burst him from 100- 0 (20). He will heal up and I am forced to go into water . Afterwards he will use flamethrower “F” skill and apply burning immideatly again and probably increase duration by using flamethrower knockback – so I am again under huge pressure and if this is not enough he has decent access to combo finishers and to a gamebreaking elite (sorry but this elite is way too strong for a 180CD).
The same is true for necros. In a couple of seconds you will get pressured by Bleeds+ Burning and dodging the fear is almost impossible. Classes with low health pool (and ele was designed with a low health pooly but strong [oh wait nerfed] heal) have almost no chance against these classes because they can condi pressure you to death and evades wont help you.
I dont want to QQ alot but espeacially engi’s are in a too good spot for now (I always call them the new ele’s): They can pressure whole teams with their condis but are also good in 1vs1 and 2vs2, they have great access to CC, they have great access too combo finishers (Stealth + Water combo), they can rezz with their elixir, they have decent survability due to mediocre toughness (1500), stacking water combofield and perma vigor + swiftness, they have the stronges Elite in the game, they are great roamers. I mean something needs to go or other classes should have same access because otherwise you are always forced to bring an engi. Power classes cant kill a good engis (maybe S/D thiefs) – the only way are conditions, which is shifting the meta into even more conditions comps.

Xeph.4513:

Necro damage is completely out of control, its very hard to l2p against such a massive amount of condi’s.
I think that necro needs to be toned down, its sad but true, if only you could hear our ts during those matches, we had no structure or strat, we just asked our necro’s to kill things and we would assist where possible.

That was exactly how it looked. You just need stack decent necros and engis and the other team could be the best in the world … it would have no chance. I saw pugs with 3 necro’s and 2 engi’s winning against famous teams just because they cant handle teamfights anymore. Downstate become totally worthless because you cant rezz anymore. Guards are worthless because cleansing is not enough and thus worthless. Only way to handle the necro meta might be to start with 2+ d/p thiefs und try to oneshot necros.

There was a reason people stacked Ele’s back in the days. 2x or even 3x were common and there was no real counter. I dont main Ele but playing it alot since last 2 weeks.
But what was the first counter against bunker ele’s? A trap ranger – After that? – A HGH Engenieer – Now? A Necro just melt this class. You see conditions were always a good counter against heavy healing classes (Ele is not cleansing everytime he heals for example).
You have to balance conditions and direct damage and there is no real balance since latest patch. Its ridicoulus that a necro does not even has to dodge to kill someone in 1vs1. And their strength increases in teamfights due to epicdemic. You try to focus them in teamfights? Plaque incoming and they still have decent condi pressure when they playing above mentioned combo. They can even apply burning in plaque – which ticks for 600-700.
I talked to alot of necros (real necros not these FOTM guys) and everyone saying its broken. There is no skill cap …or its lower than it was for BM rangers.
I mean I can understand that necros dont want to be abadoned again and they have to balance very carefully but they have to either reduce the terror+fear damage or they have to remove the burning because a CC’d glass canon Necro is still far away from a one-shot target like thiefs, mesmer or ele’s – Not only due to buffed weakness (the second protection).

Edit: But 2 Classes shouldnt Pressure a whole group since its not possible with power builds (assumed well positioning )
I really like to ask how an ele for example should skill to kill a current necro? Bunker – He get kitten d by conditions due to low health pool. Valkyre- Even less condition removal and he get kitten d by conditions. Fresh Air? – Even less Healing power, not possible. There does no counter exist because you cant cleanse that fast (especially when he watches you attunements). I know its not about 1vs1 but I should be able to hold a necro a decent amount of time before going down, if I dodge his Marks etc.

Purie starts playing necro. Purie starts to complain about Necro QQ on forums.
You missing one point. The classes are designed with different health pools. Since latest patch on the same skill level ele has no chance against Necros due to the low health pool. They get 6-10 bleedstacks + burning and the first fear is coming in an instant. Than he adds Torment and you can see how your healthbar drops. That is not a L2P issue from allies its just the fact that you cant survive 5-6 seconds of fear with just 13k hp. And even if you survive and try to remove conditions with ether renewal he starts to fear and GG..you simple will not recover. I aggree that necro was in a bad spot before the patch. But it was the mobility/CC and just minor the damage. Now you get overwhelmed by conditions. Last match I fought against Necro+ Engi —> I almost died instant to conditions – I had every condition the game offered on me – After 5 seconds. That is not the game is supposed to be. Its really like a HGH Engi with Terror fear.
The Necromancer is not just viable …its mandatory – Thats the problem people have. You wipe whole groups with 1xNecro+1xEngi or 2xNecros. You force guards to use their utilities for heavy condition remove and even tough its not enough.
There is actually no balance between power and condition. Conditions are the way to go and the classes can support each other.

Edit: What you wrote was mostly right. I dont deny that ele was too strong back in old days. However even before the patch alot of teams were running nec+engi and the supported each other perfectly and the condition pressure was pretty high in long fights. Now you are pretty much kittened if you are not able to kill one of the classes instantly. And I am pretty sure Khylo will show that Necro is not in a balanced spot. You will not reach him with his stupid wall fast enough.

Ranger were and are never capable to kill a good guardian quite easily. Same was true for necros.

Arenanet seems to censor this thread – Here another post from my perspective.
I was thinking about necros the last two days and I think in 1vs1 they are fairly balanced, however like with engis before the patch and with ele’s the patch before they are beyond OP when it comes to stack classes.
With 1 Necromancer decent cleansing is possible (if well timed) when you have 2 Necromancer or 1x Nec + 1x Engi or in worst case 2x Nec + 1x/2x Engi you cant cleanse on purpose. You get kitten d by condition after you cleansed them. I didnt know that the game has so much different conditions before I faced a team with the last mentioned combo. And its not like you get 1x stack of bleeding – its about 10x stacks+ burning+ weakness+ poison+ chill+ cripple + blind+ torment+ confusion and if he plays smart he spread it with unblockable epidemic on a 10 sec cd and your hole group is kittened because you have to waste major cd to cleanse or you just die in an upcoming fear. That’s whats people complain about – The stacking potential is fairly huge. A guard is nearly becoming worthless because that condition burst will kitten him quite easily and you need huge spike to kill the nec+engi fast. And while its possible to shut down an engi with no stunbreaker pretty fast its not possible for necros though. If they recognised they get focused, they will use their deathshroud and afterwards plaque form.
The damage of necromancer was already in a good state before the patch – Necros complained about susceptibilty to cc and spike damage. Now you increased the damage and necros dont even have to dodge to kill you – Thats not what I call clever balancing. Instead of doing your own kitten Arenanet just listen to the feedback of the community. I think giving necros burning was never necessary.

I dont know which people work at Arenanet but with last patch they destroyed all their previous work. The necro buff is pretty hillerarious…now they auto attack you to 10 -15 stacks bleeding – than you get instant 5-8 other conditions + burning, and you drop in 2 seconds from hero to zero. Instead of buffing the overall mobility of necros they increased the damage to a point were a necro can kitten a entire group in seconds. You dont know which condition you should cleanse first because 5 seconds later you will have again 5+ bleedstacks + other conditions.
As a ele and in the current group combos you have to use ether renewal but oh wait mesmer is interrupting you and you drop again by bursty conditions. Its just too much.

Condition Thiefs with r30 talks about low end spvp gear? Seems legit.
Solution: Already mentioned

Battosai.5620:

first of all bm rangers had a too low skillfloor, thus not much was needed for it to be effective – same thing applies to other builds atm, its not just a ranger specific issue.
the trapper build you mentioned above is indeed not stronger than an engineer – the thing though is, that people try to force the ranger into a certain role that doesn’t really fit him, thus only making use of barely half ot the potential it has, if even.
the only thing the range nerf on sb will really hurt is chasing down fleeing targets – it never did really good pressure on maximum range in pvp anyway as it is more of a skirmishing weapon and flanking gets easier.
the ranger is a great harrasser, he can easily put pressure on a main dps like ele/mesmer/thief using control pets to help out his teammates or the traps for down pressure if you coordinate it right, thus taking a lot of pressure from your teammates as one of the opposing dps is focused on surviving.
also mobility wise the ranger is really strong – thing is with that build, that it basically can do everything decently well but it will always get outshined by a more specialized build in that specific role. the rangers greatest strength imo is adaptability and versatility, given that you could argue that a bomb engi is more versatile at the moment.
i’d like them to give the player more active control over the pets movement and their respective abilities – make it function like a kit or change f1 – f4 to pet abilities and have the control for it elsewhere, would make rangers that much more powerful while increasing the skillfloor on most of the builds.
a well played trap ranger offers quite a lot to the team, it’s not as easy to do well as it is on bm though.
i’m glad the fotm guys will vanish and bm ranger will actually still be a decent build, while not being that mandatory anymore. furthermore the ranger gets pretty much forced 30 pts into wilderness survival right now as well as it is our strongest traitline by far.

I agree that BM was too powerful for some situations and despite I played this build quite a lot of time it was always boring. On lower level you are right the skill floor was very low, however there were some very decent BM rangers – which were able to kill another ranger just through right timing of skills and pet skills. This skill floor increased with introduction of the latest pets due to viability of drakes.
I agree that rangers are pushed into one specific build with 1 specific role: The lone ranger who always either invades far point or defend close point. I also want to see more versatility, however as you have mentioned we always have to trait 30 in wilderness survival, a defensive trait line because otherwise we are susceptible to spike damage AND conditions. As long as they dont overhaul the complete trait distribution the ranger will never be a offensive supporter. Best example is that trap traits are located in a crit damage tree.
I would also like to have more control over pet skills but this wish was always ignored consistently by Arenanet. But this will not help the ranger, it will just increase the skill cap. Pet abilities always have a delay and despite from spiders the pets dont have alot of CC. Just 1 fear on 45 sec CD. In the past rangers have to be strong 1vs1 just because he do not provide anything apart from that. Now the 1vs1 build gets weakend without compensation while engis, another strong 1vs1 class due to extremly high burning uptime, condition spamming and ridiculous Elite (The CD has to be increased definitely!), amlost stays untouched (Ok Elixir R is no Stunbreaker more…). Also Engis have access to so much CC – which also makes them viable in group fights. Its just that ranger is so much inferior compared to this – Also in Rangers special event condition pressure. After patch pistol and short bow will have same range – But Engis can apply burning, confusion and poison, which will pressure the fleeing target much more than just bleeding stacks (because again burning can be covered).
It might see like alot of Engi QQ. However in current meta they get somehow annoying and there is a reason why so much teams reinforced there setup with engis. In my opinion both classes should fullfil the same role but the balance between ranger and engi is quite broken – at least after patch. I dont blame engi’s, I blame Arenanet for not providing test servers and bad communication.

Mpratisn.7249:

i dont have problem with my rangers zerk build for long time.
about survivability i run 30/30/0/10/0 with shortbow and greatsword, i have block from gs4, evade and stun brake from lighting reflexes, evade from sb3, absorbe dmg from signet of stone, 2x stun/daze 1,5sec from gs5 and sb5 and a very good over time heal of troll unfuent.
about dmg now my crossfire piere targers for 900-1100 average and swoop+hilt bash+maul is more than 8k + pet hits thats is a bit op now but is not my main dps cos most of the time pet running around slowed doing nothink. the only problem i have some times is vs condi builds. it’s a hard build i know but it’s working trust me :-) you need good timing on ccs cos moment of clarity+maul is realy good!!!

Sorry but its not a L2P issue…Maybe you will survive in Hotjoin because everyone is dumb enough not to focus you but I am tired that some r30-40 thinks they know how the game works. I really want to see your sustain when you get focused by Mesmer and S/D thief…I promise you die in seconds due to your amazing 800-1000 toughness.
As Oidmetalla said there are better options you could bring in than a zerker ranger and after patch there will be better options than a ranger (2x engis, necro+engi, etc.)

XII.9401:

That is called balanced. The devs don’t need to hire from their ‘family members’ to realize the ranger was OP. I guess people have to adjust their play style or practice more.

This build was never OP when it comes to tPVP, people just didnt know how to deal with it. Ranger on Close point? OMG my poor def ele cant get the point anymore. Ranger invades far point? OMG poor Mesmer died. However thats not the meta in upper tPVP anymore. Today the teams just outplay you very quickly with 2 people and cap the point. After that a Bomb Engi or Ele (even Valkyre) just delay your actions because you have NO CC, I mean really no CC. So you start to join a fight but you are subpar compared to engis or eles because even your group support is worse. Worst case would be thiefs start to decap your close point because BM Rangers like all Bunkers cannot kill him – and because this build dont use stealth, you cant decap the point when he is playing smart.
Again only because you die in hot join to this build in 1vs1 or you cant kill fast, doesnt make it OP. The CC is kitten, the support is kitten. And upper tpvp is about teamplay and now engis are very common due to their amazing CC (at least bomb engi), downed control and hillarious condition spam. While for example a trapper has spike conditions a engi just face rolling over the keyboard and still would be able to kill a guard in a short time frame. In addition the burning from engis is ticking higher than from rangers and engineers can cover it with kitten conditions, so that a guard has to use at least 2 shouts to remove it due to the kitten rank system of conditions – Arenanet! Burning has to be higher priority! Make the system damage based …. but o’wait than also trapper would be kitten…

Battosai.5620:

traps are actually viable – just not the standard rabid + 3 traps + entangle + TU and sword/torch stuff.

I have quite a lot respect on your opinion but there is a difference between viable and worth to pick. I played trapper (sb+sword/dagger+3 traps+hs+entangle/spirit) when BM was already Meta…however these desperate tries to make BM less strong also affected trapper pretty heavily. First it was affected by haste nerf – Now, with the next patch it will not have any haste+ reduced shortbow range+ reduced pet damage+reduced pet range+ no save stomping capability. Tell me in which world this build is superior compared to bomb engis? Also you cant just exchange the traps…poison trap -> essentially for downed control , burning trap -> your main damage, spike trap-> Without you will have less cc and might get chased heavily (then also lightning reflexes will not help much).
They want to increase build diversity, however for rangers they killed all possibilities to do anything different from 0/0/30/X/X. And these ridiculous longbow (really projectile speed? This thing is so kittening slow and clunky….) and spirit (They bring no substantial group support which would be worth risking to bring them AND they will still die in seconds – 360 range for such a kittenty spirit sorry these things need a complete overhaul like they promised for this patch.)

Its not … you wanna move out of aoe → punished , you wanna escape from chasing enemy’s → punished.

And you get the trait wrong: Air attunement means swiftness (and probably might+electric discharge effect).

And tbh you think someone wrote this patchnotes in 5 hours after reading the blog post? Hm kay sounds legit.

A quote from Anet blogpost:
“For example: elementalists have a new grandmaster Air trait that allows them to recharge their air attunement, "

A quote from the leaked patch notes:
“New grandmaster trait – Fresh Air: Critical strikes will now recharge Air Attunement. This effect can only occur once every 5 seconds.”

I bet 10g that these patch notes are the real ones.

Ah and Arenanet: Whats the difference between a good and a bad player – MOVEMENT. With the new condition you punish good movement – GZ for implementing conditions which punish good positional play.

Seetoo.9316:

Instinctual Bond: This trait has been swapped with Zephyr’s Speed. Quickness increased to 3s

So if this goes live, does that mean I can quick stomp again via pet swap (sure its gonna be 25 pts more expensive than before, but I don’t care)

This fact, sir, kills all the build diversity in pvp because rangers dont even have a save stomp…

Nobody uses offhand axe bro – n-o-b-o-d-y

Copied from the rangers forum:

http://pastebin.com/2rrFg9ps

I wanna see a Ranger on next SOTG because if these patch notes are true it will kill this class. Dev’s you should start to hire high ranked players instead of family members for balancing.

Still no reward system revamp, still no solo q.
But of course Custom Arena’s Beta end was worth to be mentioned.
Torment is hopefully not available for current mesmer and thief meta builds.

GZ

Wildstar this is your chance!

prozon.3561:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

A reason why I rarely soloQ. How can a good premade as twg face a soloQ-grp?
Totally broken.

ofcourse no other premade is queing at this time, or at least only lower ranked premades than the soloQ ranked group :-) Anet only told they want to increase the LB’s for working better, but they didn’t say there will be a seperated split for solo and premade que.

Thats the point, the playerbase is too low for a split que, we all saw it during the paid tournaments were online, huge queing time until game start.

At least yesterday, after the patch, we also got longer que times vs high tier teams than in the past… Example, a week ago, if 2 top20 LB Teams are queing, you had an instant pop for the tourney, yesterday after this patch, we weren’t able to get a pop up in less than 5minutes vs top 20 players.

Give the paid tournaments back like the old premade system without!!! any pay admission, give a interesting winning reward that players are supposed to build teams and than the solo Q games could be seperate fully. The mistake at the paid tournament was just the word “paid”, free joining and lower reward like in past and thats it. ppl also are focused on $, thats the way you get the missed playerbase into, maybe think about the Gem reward again.

As I was in the game posted in the screenshot, I can tell you that the queue time was a couple of seconds. For now maybe only Iisey and Mogwow doing more solo q – My experience is that solo q teams play rarely against each other. Often its the case that Good premades are playing against good solo q groups and bad premade will play against mixed solo q (1-2 r45+ plus r1-10). Classes are not taken into account.
I tested the system in about 10 games yesterday and I can really tell – Nothing changed. And as a experienced player you get frustrated the way some lower players playing the game. The first couple of games I told the players what there role is, however actually I have rank where I dont want to talk about really basic stuff (like please dont kill svanir/chieftain at the beginning).
Actually the MMR system deteriorated my Pvp experience in general. I mean I wait up to 15 minutes to get ranked against players r40-45 and my team is a good mix out of everything. 7 Months ago the same happened but the queue time was at least much shorter.
They always talk they want to improve PVP but nothing changed in 10 months. All incentives are gone and players are begging for new rewards since months- Devs only say “Its on our priority list” but a shout caster program is more important than satisfying the general player base.
And Empa is right Paid Tournament failed due to high entry costs, which also led to the high q times – You had to win at least first round if you didn’t want to pay for the competitive experience BUT instead of lowering the tickets costs to 3 tickets they removed it completely and two weeks later most of the competitive teams were gone because they were too lazy to implement a compensation for the lack of incentives. They think giving some t-shirts or in game gold will healthen the scene but at the end of the day MiM, TCG or Paradigm will have 10 GW2-T-Shirts in their closets and the average player base has nothing from that.

So enough Rage ;-) but I think posts like have to open the eyes of all developers. I believe Karl, Colin and John are passionate pvp players but they dont get support from other devs at Arenanet. They really have to change their strategy otherwise, from what i have seen, the other NCSoft MMO will make the game in terms of pvp.

Opened them indeed today. Was in hospital due to an ellbow injury in may (3rd-28th) and didnt found any special hint in the patchnotes on wiki. Since vendor is still selling the items i thought they would still be available. However lost alot of gems but learned my lesson.

Wizzy.7910:

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/8835/gw092e.jpg

to me its only gone worse lol..other team around top 100..and our team soloq with..well not so high ranks

Haha best. You also captured my rage

Spent 3000 gems on Keys – Opened more than 40 boxes – Got no ticket. Thanks Arenanet for learning me this lessons. I am out !