Ghost Yak
(edited by Shadelang.3012)
Having siphons scale from healing power is just like having them at minimal effectiveness 100% of the time.
Moving toughness to healing power will damage tank builds. Moving power/crit to healing power will damage dps builds. None of those builds will bother.
Also what benefits do healer builds gain from siphons? Healing Revenant just has to move the tablet around, you won’t get to siphon very often. You won’t attack at all probably.
So healer builds won’t use siphons and all other builds are not going to invest in healing power. Why the hell should siphon scale from healing power? Just to lower our dps to have a little bit more survivability (and maybe still less then knight builds)?
The idea is to have a build that resists attrition. Thats the entire idea of life steal in nearly every game I have played. You sacrifice your crit damage in return for reliable healing. Allowing you to stay in and continue dpsing when you get spiked instead of immediately retreating to heal. Atleast thats the way life steal style builds have played in every RPG and MMO I have played to date that featured them.
The goal isn’t to move toughness to healing power and create a new tank build. A tank build will ALWAYS be toughness or vitality focused. End of story. Healing power isn’t just for tank builds however so what your describing doesn’t really apply.
Also when you talk about healing revenants your assuming your camping one one legend. Spamming its skills. We already know that isn’t how the revenant plays. Also. We probably won’t attack at all? Thats foolish at best in all 3 game modes.
I made the idea based on zealots gear so ill use some examples based on that. A shiro/ventari revenant is supporting his zerg or his guild using the tablet and sees an ally being attacked by a thief. The rev cans witch to shiro and engage the thief and still put enough damage pressure to force the thief to back off. And he has the life steal so that even if the thief engages him instead he can still sustain through as long as hes skilled until his ally is safe. Then he can use shiro skills to evade away and switch back to ventari.
In dungeons (or whatever “hard group content” is going to be) a pure healing build probably still won’t be viable. So throwing on clerics gear still won’t be the best use of your stats. However the aforementioned revenant can both heal AND deal a decent amount of damage. Switching back and forth as necessary to support the grp or kill his enemies.
As to what healing builds benefit from siphons. If I was just going to camp ventari (No decent revenant will ever just camp legends from what I can tell. It would be a sign of a bad rev) you would be right. However thats a horrible idea. Odds are youd be attacking and dealing damage as well. The entire idea is to combine the aspects of a healing build with a dps build. Sacrificing the personal survivability to do so. (again. Glassy playstyle with a very high recovery rate).
So its not a healing build in the traditional sense. Its a dps/support hybrid. And dps builds that are engaging targets likely WILL be taking damage. Lifesteal means tehy can take more damage before they have to peel off. Giving them a higher damage uptime than pure glass players. So they might not be doing as much damage. But outside of speed clearing quality groups its likely you will have higher dps UPTIME.
Which makes your third statement pointless as its built off the assumption of the second. Which is false.
As for why? To enable a playstyle that doesn’t exist at this time. And to give players a different way of playing.
And to give players a style that allows them to support there team through healing without being completely useless in every other aspect.
Having lifesteal scale off healing power (which it does right now in game) won’t affect ANY OTHER BUILD TYPE IN THE GAME. It will create a new one
Ghost Yak
(edited by Shadelang.3012)
I hope they don’t. Siphon survivability is needed on toughness builds and power builds.
Healing power builds don’t have to heal by siphoning, but with Ventari healing skills.Siphon has to be a fixed coefficient based on damage dealt.
Two issues with that I can think of at the top of my head.
First. if its fixed coefficient then theres no point in investing in life steal as there will be no way to scale it aside from damage. That means pure damage builds (zerk meta ftl) will get more benefit from it than anyone else. Causing it to be just another lay of dps ontop of there own. Not really doing anything to branch out build diversity as anet said they wanted.
Second. Part of what would make a zealot’s shiro/ventari lifesteal dps/support build useful is the fact that healing power which is normally a wasted stat 90% of the time would be in constant use no matter what happens. It would also give them a way of scaling there damage higher without worrying about ferocity. (It won’t be as high as a zerk build. but the more powerful life siphons will turn them into a glassy build with middling-high damage and a high recovery rate. Easy to burst down. But if you fail the burst hes gonna be at full health quickly).
If we took that away thats another gearset/playstyle out of the window already. And it would hurt the shiro/ventari combination in general. Ventari would become banished to bunker focused builds as the gear stat required to make use of ventari’s skills would be completely useless in the other lines.
Edit: also from a balancing perspective having lifesteal scale off of raw damage just seems like a horrible idea. We already have issues with builds that are nearly unkillable in 1v1 and yet are able to deal large amounts of damage. Do we REALLY wan’t zerk shiro/jalis revenant to become another of those?
Ghost Yak
(edited by Shadelang.3012)
The new elite shout is so bad I don’t even believe it’s real. It maybe useful in pve – but even then only when you’re in teamspeak. In pvp it’s basically unusable.
25% less recharge isn’t much, it’s only really useful for skills with cooldowns above 2 minutes, i.e. other elites. So eles get an elite that doesn’t even do anything for them. Wow.
It has a ton of potential in organized groups. More time warps and rampages? Thats just so powerful.
Sure, but a skill that REQUIRES TEAMSPEAK to function correctly is insanely bad design, and useless in all groups where you do not have access to teamspeak – and even then there’s a delay for the voice coupled with lag from the game meaning you’ll still use the 25% reduction on the wrong skill sometimes.
It has bad design written all over it. Also, again, it’s the only elite in the game that needs allies to function at all. Horrible, simply horrible.
Huh, can’t you use to lower the CD of your own long cooldown casts as well? I mean yeah they could have made a better skill, but it already has more potential use than every other elite we have.
^. If it affects the overcharges themselves thats pretty huge.
Ghost Yak
TBH I vastly prefer the offensive shouts. The only thing im really jealous of is the tempests moving fields.
Ghost Yak
To be honest the moving fields i think will have a significant effect on not only TPvP but the wvw scene as well. Not having to break your momentum to remight or recover is going to be huge. And from what i can see the tempest will be able to place fields around them before beggining htere channel. A cele ele dropping the growing fire field and then beggining there channel is gonna be useful either way. Either an enemy gets close enough to interrupt risking the fire field. Or the spell goes off.
Ghost Yak
IM honestly curious on this as well. As im very interested in a zealots gear support/anti gank revenant.
Ghost Yak
Hey all. wanted to thank those that responded for the info. I do appreciate it and I did want to say im still reading this though I havn’t responded much. Thanks again.
Ghost Yak
It would be very helpful if the kitten Ranger mains stayed away from this thread if they have nothing useful to contribute.
“hurr durr, you’re just bad cuz we have range and you can’t deal with it” isn’t an argument nor an intelligent conclusion from reading my post.
Its the ranger forums man…your gonna attract mroe ranger mains than anything else here.
Ghost Yak
@DHawk. Because our competition (thieves and mesmers) always has the capability of ambushing us leading with a stun. And its not uncommon to lose the majority of our health pool in the first few attacks. That invuln can be the only chance a ranger has of recovering. As the range from the longbow is easily negated by ambush tactics.
Ghost Yak
the only thing i dislike about the longbow is that #2 causes vuln and it traces, for mesmer or thief it is kinda unfair
Stealth is a counter to targetting and longbow requires targetting. That’s unfair. Rapid Fire is an answer to stealth. Also, Rapid Fire was cast first, so stealth loses its ability to counter. If stealth was cast first, then Rapid Fire wouldn’t hit anything. So they counter each other.
They can still dodge. I run into Rapid Fire on my Ranger all the time and dodging once takes away the majority of the damage.
i have 22k hp on my thief, if i dodge a zerk rangers rapid fire 1 I’m still below half health, since a ranger can dish out massive long range damage, more than i can with 1 single skill, it’s not fair to make it trace through stealth, since almost all of your stealth skills have a cast time, I’d have to guess when the ranger uses his rapid fire, and if I’m not mistaking it’s a very low cd as well, it’s a single 1500+ (you can go a bit further and still hit the target) skill that will trace you no matter what you do, since thieves have no block or protection stealth won’t do any good, the only way to minimize the damage is by rolling twice, no more endurance left and still took a good chunck of damage, or hoping you can shadowstep out of the range (st is 1200range) or kyte behind an object
It’s imho too stong for a single target long range skill
If you have 22k health and a rapid fire takes over half your health then several things probably happened.
One: He popped signet of the wild. Meaning you should have seen a damage spike incoming and shadowstepped out of range or preemptively stealthed till it was over.
Two: He had moderately high stacks of offensive boons. Some rangers rune self mighting setups but these are very obvious when you fight them and there damage without might is sub par.
Three: He was shooting you in the back. If he had skirmishing then he gains 10% crit chance by hitting you in the back.
Four: If he had marksmanship he had 10% damage increases if hes at full endurance. Forcing him to dodge once will cut his damage before he can burst. Going super aggressive will curb his damage multiplier.
Any two of these together can account for that damage spike. But most are either heavily telegraphed (high boon uptime/enlargement) or they have the potential of being negated (forcing him to dodge/making sure your facing him) You can identify what he has by targetting him.
(Skirmishing will show a bird on his bar (spotter), Marksmanship will show an arrow on his bar until he lands his first attack and his first hit will apply 5 vuln to you and crit. Boon builds will likely be running nature magic so if you hit him and he pops natures ward (protection and aoe weakness) you might wanna watch his fury/might counter as the fight progresses, Signet of the wild will show a symbol of a paw in a a signet on his name and the activation will increase his size)
Ghost Yak
Ross I wan’t to really thank you for the insight. It seems like good advice and why I tried using some of what you stated before Ill give the whole picture you put forth a shot.
It really does help getting some perspective from a different classes mentality. Ill see if its duplicatable on a ranger and well see how it goes.
Thank you again.
Ghost Yak
As much as this meta tends to make me rage. It does feel more even with a few exceptions. I feel like the number of stacks of burning some skills give should be looked at. (Im okay with teh actual calculations. its hte number of stacks that I feel should be changed).
Mesmer simply isn’t fun for me to fight as a ranger. and fighting a necro even when doable feels like a waste of time with too much risk involved. (it simply takes too long to kill them to be worth what I could be doing elswhere in the match. its a different feeling from fighting a bunker. a bunker you can usually work through by forcing there cooldowns to coincide with yours. but a necros just so naturally tanky that doesn’t work.)
Im fine with nearly every other class atm. The only thing that MIGHT be an exception is rampage on warriors. But even then its manageable as long as you make 0 mistakes gainst it (if you make one your kittened though).
Ghost Yak
Let me start by saying I have been playing ranger since the first day of the game. I am not new to the class and I have experience with nearly every build. I have attempted half a dozen variants that didn’t force me to give up my play style. (I generally run Longbow builds with an emphasis on pet management.)
I am experienced enough that I am able to handle nearly any matchup with nearly any build.
With the exception of two.
Those being the signet necro and the current power mesmer build.
So far fighting either one seems to be a massive uphill battle.
On the necro side it is the boonhate involved thats the source of most of my issues. Seeing my swiftness and regen when im running a shout build or my strength of the pack turned into a death trap may be the most painful thing I have experienced in this game in the sheer “you will not away” nature of it. I have attempted running trooper runes to provide condi clear with the shout build and even using traited survival skills. There simply isn’t enough condi clear. And having the fury/vigor from survival skills corrupted is equally painful.
So far the most success I have found has been with full signet builds. Which are lackluster due to the lack of condi clear that doesn’t involve suiciding your pet. Or standing in confined circle saying “please spam me now”
On the mesmer side im sure everyone here has been hit by them by now. Or seen massive reflect uptime negating any chance you have of dealing damage before they blink into range and lock you down. Burning stunbreaks only to be restunned/or caught in an immob while they are LITERALLY untouchable is not a fun way to die.
So im asking those rangers out there with more experience than I after having played over 2k games. How in the flying hell do you cope with these builds.
Ghost Yak
Keep in mind theres a glitch in wvw where some players are getting hte buff from the golem event despite not being inside one. That may have been what happened here.
Ghost Yak
kinda considering a zealots setup combining shiro and ventari. supporting your team with ventari until you see a target then going in and nailing him while sustaining yourself with lifesteals.
Probably with S/S and Staff
Ghost Yak
Since theres a thread for it now id like to put one of my own concerns in if I can.
devourer: Its projectile speed is too slow to offset its offcenter flight path. Basically causing it to have hte same issue longbow rangers had before where there arrows could be accidentally avoided without evasion of any type.
It’s evasion skill takes way too long to cast/travel. And the evasion frames are unreliable. Its not uncomeon to see this skill kill your pet more often than it saves it. As it moves directly back from an opponent directly into a well.
The travel/cast times on carrion devourer f2s have the same issue as there auto attacks.
Drakes: I have no problem with some drakes. The only ones I have issues with are the ones with cone type f2s. So Ice/Reef/Salamander drakes. Marsh/River drakes are reliable in there damage as long as you position them correctly.
The cone effect f2s have multiple issues. They take way to long to cast for a melee range skill. There effect is far to narrow to be reliably applied (less than character width movement to either side will cause you to avoid it completely). And even with taunt active a players natural movement will cause the attack to miss. (Player moves to the side of the drake towards the ranger. Drake taunts. Players last bit of movement has moved it to an angle of the drake. Drake f2 misses). I really want to reccomend having these changes to the bolt type attack pattern of the river and marsh drakes. Which can be made to reliably hit with trait support (Zephyr’s Speed)
Birds: Quickening Screech takes way to long to cast when quite often the pet already has swiftness. I’t would be a much more understandable skill if the bird only casts this skill when its out of range of its target and it does NOT have swiftness. Giving it chase capabilities but not interrupting its attack patterns to give itself something it doesn’t need att.
Canines: I have little trouble with canines. But I would like to mention that the windup on their leap skill is so long that a player with swiftness can avoid the attack without dodging simply by running past it at an angle.
Ghost Yak
(edited by Shadelang.3012)
So far I started running soldier runes with my shout build. Seems to do a fairly good job of cleansing the worst of the condi load off of it. Its not a solution. But its a decent band-aid to the “kitten my pet” mechanics.
(while it may be sad soldier runes only affects you and the pet. it IS however the ONLY reliable method of cleansing your pet in the game at this time.)
Ghost Yak
I feel like too many people are attempting to defend there lane with there face so to speak.
Working around the group attempting to guard there doorbreakers and maintaining dps uptime on the DB’s themselves is more important than stopping the players. as I mentioned above I main a longbow ranger.
I typically focus down one DB at a time either by going in and out of the gate and making use of rangers rather high recovery speed or by being behind there group and sniping down the DBs one at at time.
If need be you can combo with another player doing hit and run stuff at the gate while you maintain pressure. In the end that team will focus on one of the defending players leaving the other open for short periods of time.
Ive done quite a few games now and this tactic seems to work almost every time.
One thing I will mention. If your going to be on the defense lane dps uptime is more important than actual dps unless your a burst spec (so mesmers and thieves). Outside of those two youl want to make sure your a self sustainable playstyle. If your build completely relies on other people around you to deal damage (bunker guardian) or relies on other people around you for cleanses and sustain outside of your ideal combat length your gonna find yourself pressured off the doorbreakers leaving your gate unprotected.
I will say the most important thing ive found is stopping the first push and then killing the players that are driving the second push (One thing a ranger can do is send a pet like a drake after the doorbreakers while he pressures the enemy player. Drake pets with on swap quickness rip through doorbreakers VERY quickly thanks to there tail swipe and there chain f2s on the marsh and river drakes)
Also as I said above some attacks are more effective at killing doorbreakers through there escorts than others.
Chain/cone attacks. (chain being anything that hits one target and then bounces to the next. Cone being anything that spreads out from the player) are really effective at hitting through body blocking. A mesmers time warp will pretty much stop the skritt AND there guards from preventing you from taking them out thanks to the slow on the skill. Ranger traps are a good way of nuking there health a bit and clumping them together before they reach the gate. Making piercing attacks much more effective.
And a stance hammer warrior is pretty much GG for doorbreakers. Preventing them not only from attacking the door. But also being able to largely ignore enemy players while there dpsing there targets.
TL:DR Defense is possible but it requires some indirect thinking. If you just try to blindly kill the doorbreakers head on odds are your gonna get kittened up. But as long as you do something to negate/limit the enemy players ability to interfere with you for a short time (nearly every class has something like this) you can freely take them out and get away or reengage on a player in order to punish them for entering your base.
Ghost Yak
Depends on your build. I run a WS/NM/BM longbow/sw-axe ranger and I usually spend my time on the defense lane. I figure each persons playstyle will lead them towards a specific lane/area.
As for the above. I find it fairly easy to defend just by being annoying enough that they can’t easily take me out while I kill the doorbreakers. Although I find being good at kiting almost mandatory if your on defense.
Ghost Yak
so far every precursor ive had drop (total of 3) has been from open field gvgs in wvw.
Edit: Those being flame of rodgort/ Storm/ and one I honestly cant remember at this time.
Ghost Yak
You can drop the Jallis road almost continuously offering significant stability uptime. Its part of the micro of the legend. Popping hte road hten going to heal or popping the great dwarf is gonna be a big part of it.
On the other hand. Some classes can still interupt through stab.
Ghost Yak
Hmm. I could see a ranger build running it. But I can only think of one trait combination that would be competitive. Its a really wierd gear set. I would love to try it in pvp though.
Ghost Yak
Yep. Taunt is no longer useful against the builds that it was actually going to help us against. Greaaaat. “sigh”
Ghost Yak
Oh comeon with the drama (oh anet doesn’t listen to us they must hate us) crap.
If this hits itl be something DIFFERENT in wvw for for the first time in such a long while that frankly they could turn us all into siege squirrels with only one attack skill and id be happy.
Just something to change up the game.
For a week even the most heavily fortified keep is a target. Golems will be used to fight golems on a massive scale. I am okay with that.
Its not a permanent thing. Its a short term (kitten it all) kind of event where the normal and BORING methods are tossed out the window for awhile in favor of chaos.
You should be looking at this as an opportunity to finally full flip the servers that before you couldn’t even touch.
Ghost Yak
As opposed to one more week of everyone doing the exact same thing theyv done for months?
I for one am looking forward to something DIFFERENT.
Ghost Yak
The thing is I would definetly use guard in its way in order to protect an area. A point in pvp atm for example is often far too hot a place for the pet to reasonably attack in.
I would very much use it in order to guarantee damage uptime on an other wise inhospitable location.
Yes in its current for its used as a boon bot. Thats because the shout simply doesn’t due its job.
If we were going to do a complete overhaul of shouts as the second half of your post suggests. I would instead go another way.
Guard : Grants the pet stealth and limits its movement to a confined area. The pet gains resistance while in this area (no more protection) The pet deals 20% increase damage to all foes in the target area. Canceled immediately upon receiving any additional commands. (would improve the basic attack damage of the pet without causing MASSIVE spike damage thanks to certain pet f2s. Would also guaranteed high pet dps uptime on target thanks to resistance)
Protect Me: Your pet absorbs 50% of the damage intended for you. Damage taken by the pet directly is reduced by 50%. Breaks Stun. The pet continues to attack for 30% reduced damage.
Sic Em: Your pet relentlessly chases down a specific target. Pet movement speed increased by 50%. All pet attacks crit on that target. (no more base damage increase. Instead let it crit so it can make use of on pet crit traits). All pet attacks that connect apply 1 second of cripple. (Allows the pet to MAINTAIN attack range. as opposed to what we have now). Applies 4 seconds of reveal (slight nerf to this to compensate for the higher raw damage).
Search and Rescue: The pet will search for a downed player within 600 range of it. (Note of it and not of you atm S&R is useless unless your standing near the downed player anyway which is a bad place for the ranger.) The pet will attempt to rez that player. Your pet grants resistance to the downed player while it is channeling. The pet takes 30% reduced damage during the channel.
Heal as One : Now cures 3 conditions from the pet.
Rampage as One: The ranger gains pulsing swiftness fury and stability for the duration of the ability. Grant might to the pet on hit. The pet gains Enlargement (size and damage increase) and gains a breakbar for the duration of the elite. The pet becomes immune to soft ccs for the duration.
Ghost Yak
(edited by Shadelang.3012)
Aoe resistance is a step im not really willing to go towards. Its such a strong boon that situation-ally you could see it turn fights all on its own.
On the note of shouts though. Ranger shouts have always been in the form of commands on there most basic level. Each one specifically tells the pet to do something (Guard this area. Kill that guy. Protect me. Help that guy) that it doesn’t normally do as effectively. Part of why I believe they also cancel when you give an additonal order. Something no other shout does. (You don’t see the buffs from retreat dissapear when the guard casts hold the line)
However the affects from ranger shouts are MUCH more pointed. (Sic Em does a good job of exposing a target and giving the pet the ability to chase it down. Guard (if it worked the way the skill description says it should) WOULD be a very good ambush skill.
If were going to improve guard I think we should make sure it fits the theme of the shout. Which is a command for a pet to remain in a specific area and patrol that location.
Guard: The pet is commanded to protect the target location. The pet runs to the target area and a ring in the range of the shout is generated around the pet. The pet CANNOT leave this ring unless he is given another order (pretty much any pet command skill would cancel the affect just like now)
While in the ring the pet is stealthed when out of combat and gains pulsing protection and resistance.
This would be a noticeable improvement on the shout. Increasing its potential significantly while making sure it retains the theme of the rangers version of shouts.
Our shouts are meant to be between the ranger and his pet. There is another build for group support.
Ghost Yak
Honestly. The one change that would make guard worth using full time to me is that if it gave the pet resistance. It doesn’t need to give resistance or protection in an aoe. Lets be honest that would be over powered in team fights. Massively so.
However. If it was just the pet. And guard could be used to secure the pets useability. (resistance would go a MASSIVE way towards making pets useable in wvw. Atm cripple/chill/immob kill pets faster than wells and meteor showers.).
My recommendation is to focus on the beast mastery aspects of shouts. Improving the base capabilities of the pets.
If guard did what it ACTUALLY SAYS IT DOES. And guaranteed that the pet was capable of fulfilling the role the shout assigned to it (I.E. Gave the pet resistance and protection or even just resistance.). It would be a good skill in nearly every game mode. (if a niche one as far as pve is concerned)
Ghost Yak
Thing is due to reapers attack speed condi reaper may be decent. But it won’t JUST be from chill but from a collection of different things. Chill will just be one part of it.
Ghost Yak
gr8 b8 m8
15 chars must be butchered in the making of your message.
Ghost Yak
Honestly. Id really like a pet with similar stats to the drake but with a more reliable attack pattern. The wind up and after cast of the drake abilities are painful >.< (could use a .25s reduction on BOTH).
On that note. A full DIRE wolf would be nice. Badger would be really cool. (Toughness Vitality Precision with a frenzy ability (increased damage the more it gets hit).
Basalisk would be nice. (although im terrified itl follow the drake system)
What i want more than anything is a rework on devourers though.
Just something to make them more relevant. As there the easiest to ignore pet on the field atm.
Ghost Yak
Id like to add something for rangers that prefer a pet focused build. A reliable and more importantly controllable method of removing conditions from the pet.
Trooper runes do this to an extent. But that involves burning otherwise critical utility skills if you run a shout build to remove the 11 second immobilize the other ranger put on your pet when your pet swap is on cooldown.
The pet swap mechanic simply isn’t enough. Becuase it involves taking your pet OFF your target for 5-6 seconds (as your new pet attempts to move into position) in a build thats supposed to be heavily invested in your pets capabilities.
(honestly. I wish guard gave resistance instead of protection)
They could attach some sort of condition clear on Naturl Regeneration, that trait is kinda lackluster atm.
Could also make Wilderness Knowledge affect the petStrenght of the Pack (elite) immune or reduced duration on cripple, chill and immob?
Honestly If there was somehow something on nautral regen and the shout elite I would be amazingly happy.
Just SOMETHING. Because getting caught by random soft ccs and conditions is responsible for more of my pet deaths than any well bomb meteor shower or grenade spam you can think of.
Ghost Yak
Id like to add something for rangers that prefer a pet focused build. A reliable and more importantly controllable method of removing conditions from the pet.
Trooper runes do this to an extent. But that involves burning otherwise critical utility skills if you run a shout build to remove the 11 second immobilize the other ranger put on your pet when your pet swap is on cooldown.
The pet swap mechanic simply isn’t enough. Becuase it involves taking your pet OFF your target for 5-6 seconds (as your new pet attempts to move into position) in a build thats supposed to be heavily invested in your pets capabilities.
(honestly. I wish guard gave resistance instead of protection)
Ghost Yak
Honestly. its pretty much the only effective weapon rangers have against Evade spam builds unless we go condi bunker…. Which is just as bad in a completely less counterable way.
Taunt is already incredibly short range.
Making it cast on completion would kill the trait. Sorry but the quickness on pet swap would win out almost guaranteed.
I feel it should still go through evades/blocks giving rangers a method of counterplay against builds that spam these. However I feel it should NOT go through invulns. (invuln should be invuln. period)
MAYBE it should be cleanse-able. You’d have to convince me on that.
Its short range and its predictable timing are already decent shortcomings once players learn how it works. While I agree it could use SOME changes. A too heavy nerf right now could pretty much ruin it. Making one more grandmaster that simply doesn’t add up.
Ghost Yak
T raw has obviously never watched MM gameplay. Or hed know it has one of the longest cc chain requirments in the game in order to land damage. Seeing as the main body is a dedicated CC bot for the minions.
But then I guess we can’t expect too much from someone that probably shadowsteps directly to the necro and wonders why hte bone minions hurt.
Ghost Yak
Actually im fairly certain that was because of hte eagle eye trait was it not? Which is now gone. So it would make sense its no longer shown.
Someone more experienced with trait mechanics please correct me if im wrong.
Ghost Yak
What likely happened was bone minions. You probably got hit by hte majority of hte pets simultaneously stripping any active defense you had. In retaliation he most likely popped both of his bone minions which were likely right ontop of you. All in all you probably took 9-10k damage over a very short period of time. Then took hits from the golem. That would be my guess atleast.
One of the best methods for an MM to kill is with those bone minions. Just catching someone by suprise with them can be lethal. Sounds like thats what happened to you.
EDIT: Before I forget to add this. If you loaded him up with burning its also highly likely his pets ate it then transfered it back to you. So if you had popped something to inflict high burning stacks on him you might have had that ticking on you as well. So if its a burst then 3-4k burning ontop of everything else….= ouch.
Ghost Yak
They didn’t destroy trapper runes. Just now you use it in order to set up traps ahead of time without being seen. Once healing spring is set youl be able to drop your healing spring before running in and planting traps around an unaware opponent. Or by dropping target early in the fight and setting things up before he cant start ccing you.
Its not meant to be a perma stealth get away free thing like so many people have been using it for. It was meant to be a way of further improving the trap laying “sapper” playstyle. I can’t even say im sorry to see that now you cant just spam them and gain long stealth times combined with super speed. Maybe people will use them as traps now.
Ghost Yak
99% chance its fake. its very obvious if its an anet mail due to the symbol it has that player messages don’t.
Ghost Yak
Dragonhunter Randiance Virtues is my goal. Already have a full sinister gear set ready and waiting for it.
Ghost Yak
I think they wanted a system to encourage players to try more than one build as time passes. Fractal relics are relatively easy to farm so infusion’s aren’t a massive grind to get.
Runes may be. However only certain runes are terribly expensive. And even they aren’t the end of the world to get.
The price of that vs the limit of only being able to change the stats one would be…. well.
If people as you suggested could only change the stats once they would be hesitant to try completely new builds. I recently swapped my soldier/cav gear on my guardian to ascended dire/sinister. And slotted him out in an aoe burn build I am loving every second of in wvw so far.
However If I could only change them once. its unlikely I would have chosen a radically different build. This way if my current build gets hit by a nerf bat I can always switch back to my previous gear type. With a relatively small cost.
There current system supports the players that like to take radical shifts in there playstyle.
What you suggest would discourage that pretty heavily.
Ghost Yak
Honestly taunt is kind of the only method of stopping certain attacks from landing. (instant cast untelegraphed abilities). So it actually is a clutch method of redirecting early burst to another target (your pet).
The target lock is one of the only ways to keep taunt from being relatively worthless. Its already making sure the taunter keeps taking damage. And in its current form is actually useful against classes that are highly resistant to being cc’d. You can actually peel a thief off your back for a couple seconds. What im worried about if the auto target is removed is that there are several skills other proffesions have access to that will let them lol-tele-break the cc within .2 seconds of it being activated and itl be like it was never used at all. In its current form they can still break the cc but we still have a slight moment to work with while there reacquiring target.
Its a big help against things like mediguards which would normally just flash towards you through the cc and laugh as you have burning to deal with. Or thieves that can simply shadowstep towards you as long as they have you targeted.
Ghost Yak
Longbow ranger is still very viable. But it also seems to require significantly more coordination with the pet. I run a BM WS NM Longbow/GS build. And a VERY significant amount of my damage and control comes from my pet (which is much more easily utilized when using shouts. Guard is like a free 7k crit as long as you set it up right)
More often than not the most effective plays I can manage are a combination of ranged and melee combat while using my utilities to direct me pet into performing certain actions. It’s a bit tricky. But once you get it down you realize you can absolutely destroy certain builds that used to terrify the standard longbow build pre patch.
So far the only “hard counter” build ive encountered so far is the mesmer build with the immobilizaiton on interrupt. Having long cast time skills makes us very easy to interupt (in the sense that if rampage as one is off cooldown I strongly recommend kiting until you can get a reliable stab source back up)
Ghost Yak
Id say that in smaller engagements power will still win out. However the burning scales mighty well with the number of opponents due to supreme justice and permeating wrath. It vary quickly outpaces cleave builds when theres large numbers of mobs. So id say there situational (again this is only in my experience) burning does enough damage now though it can definetly compete and the playstyle is quite different from the standard power builds.
Id try both out and figure out what you have more fun with. Some easy condi gear can be gotten in the silverwastes. All in all though id say you can effectively run either in most dungeons now. (guardian burn build has a very short ramp up time)
Ghost Yak
Ive been able to effectively use BM infused pets with guard and bark skin (generally NM WS BM power builds) to significant success.. Recently had my pet tail swipe someone for over 10k. And I havnt had any issue getting them to survive on point. Also had my drake pretty much facetank archdiviner in fractal 40.
Guard+barkskin seems to be the golden ticket for pet survivability. And if you have guard your running a pet focused build ANYWAY so its golden there as well.
Even helps with conditions now. Which was a big pet peave before.
Been able to make good use of my pets sense the patch. I still wish they didn’t get cleaved down in zergs. but hey. If a player dies instantly in that kinda area it makes a bit of sense for pets to as well. Sadly I still cant direct paths for pets (I swear If I could make my pet take a wide path around a zerg to hit someone behind it would be golden. On the other hand drakes can usually make it to there target with the barkskin guard combo as well as long as they don’t get immobd)
MORE THAN ANYTHING. A way to clear immobilize off my pet. Like. If sic em removed movement impairing conditions. That would solve 99% of my current issues and improve there survivability in wvw massively for those that invest in the pet.
Ghost Yak
It is closer to daze than fear in my experience. And there are daze skills which go through block and evade.
Ghost Yak
I dont see it as any different htan a mesmer or necro being able to interupt through those abilities. And it gives us some limited counter play to those abilities that we simply didn’t have before.
Whether its to strong or not I simply don’t know. Part of me will understand if its nerfed. But a bit part of me will also be disappointed.
Ghost Yak
This is one of those situations where im glad I went the other way. Instead of improving my rangers offense I went through some trouble improving its defense while maintaining its old damage. End result is im pretty resistant to alot of the heavy burst builds that are running around right now.
I feel people will end up falling into builds that fit there playstyle fairly quickly. Youl have the hyper bursters. And the more sustained damage focused players that take that extra bit more defense in order to turn the burst fights into attrition fights. Its curious to see how itl all end up.
Ghost Yak
… actually lugh I wasnt mentioned the extra 50% which activates in a pvp match. I was just reffering to the base model cause I was trying to keep teh fact that it can become 30 seconds in tpvp a secret. but meh damage done :P
Ghost Yak