Guild Wars 2

What i don’t understand: Why would you focus that much on (wasted) bleed duration with full viper when you can get to + 100% duration for all condis with nightmare/trapper runes and malice sigil and take geomancy sigil for even more aoe condi application? Krait rune + agony sigil make more sense with sinister, rampager or rabid gear.
And i would rather use fire and poison trap instead of spike trap and sharpening stone.

Btw, i made ascended viper’s weapons + armor just for soloing stuff (including dunkeons/fractals) and open world PvE – why not :P

Siege dmg doesn’t scale with the player’s direct dmg, so scaling with condi dmg was kinda unfair (on the other hand siege is immune to condis, which puts condi players at a disadvantage in this regard, but whatever). Banners scale with player stats (afaik), so there is no reason to make an exception for condition dmg.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

3. Less healing or longer activation time on We heal as one. More cooldown would reduce swiftness uptime and lock PvE players into Natural stride, which would be bad. Non-druid builds rarely run beast mastery, so it’s a valid nerf target.

Nerfs to any non-druid related healing would hurt those builds the most, that don’t have access to the additional healing from the elite line. And bm is a quite important traitline for non-druid builds too.

And i don’t think, nerfs to staff would be the right way. It is not a bad weapon, very good for team support obviously – what it is meant to be after all – but not what makes druid so strong overall.

Linked servers have a lower population limit. It is intended, that they can be full with less people than solo servers. Probably to prevent “overstacking” of a server pair.

Sure, you can have a screen, even though i have no clue, how those more or less meaningless numbers matter for this discussion. Am I now qualified enough to post in this forum? Want my AP too?

I already wrote about what kind of builds i’m talking and why. And I have stated multiple times that this thread is not meant to be a “pls nerf ranger/druid”-thread and that i wish, anet would reduce the power creep in general, not just nerf ranger. Which is – again – NOT topic of this thread.

Archon.6480:

I am curious what meta was more exciting than this one?

Every pre-HoT meta? Well, i can only speak about the time i play this game (about 2 years), but for me it was definitely more fun before the expansion. Even if ranger wasn’t meta, it was totally fine and fun in PvP with different builds unless we are talking about organised top tier PvP. Actually i never cared much about meta, because many non-meta builds worked quite well too. Now somewhat viable non-meta builds are much more limited, especially in PvP. It is a bit better in WvW, still not satisfying for me.

Swagger.1459:

Ok, well why don’t you stream your spvp and wvw gameplay and show us how easy it is?

I won’t stream because i doubt my pc can handle streaming and i’m not going to bother with playing boring builds again. But if i would, what would you expect to see? Me farming noobs in WvW 1vs3? Getting steamrolled by a zerg? Winning pvp matches against other faceroll metabuilds? Or dieing and losing against those? Everything could happen. What would it (dis)prove?
“Easy and boring” is primarily a subjective opinion. My opinion after playing ranger for about 2 years in WvW and PvP, and you can’t deny it (and i know, i’m not alone with my view about the state of class balance). It might be different for you and others, and i can’t deny it. We won’t agree – and it is ok for me. Isn’t topic of this thread anyways.

gloflop.3510:

They dont leave me alone. I suddenly get attacked right in front of sm (we hold it). Of course I can just walk straight forward and get inside. Does it annoy me anyway? yes!

Anyone can attack you, it doesn’t have to be a dueler. And attacking other players is simply part of the game mode. It can be annoying, sure. Many other things can be annoying too. As long those are not against the rules, staying away from “annoyances” is the only thing you can do.

Edit: Winning a WvW match without killing players is as unlikely as winning a pvp match without a kill.

Tragic Positive.9356:

The highest DPS on moving target has Bristleback hands down.

Assumption or actual testing?

I thought the same, but maybe it is not always the case. I compared tiger and bristleback in the dps test area. Both lose dps against the moving golem compared to the immobile one (~ 25% less) and the tiger actually stayed ahead (<10%) in my test. Of course it depends on the circumstances. Bristle was shooting from almost max range, closer distance will increase its dps. Fast moving/rushing/porting mobs will be a bigger disadvantage for the tiger, same with lack of speed increase for the pet (i was using beastmastery – without bm it would depend on swiftness access for the pet). On the other hand obstacles can be an issue for the bristleback.
Overall the difference seem to be negligible and my testing wasn’t very detailed, maybe it was just bad luck for the bristleback.
I still found the outcome rather interesting.

gloflop.3510:

Yes, your definition of WvW vs. sPvP is slightly better. SPvP is about killing, WvW about holding objects/structures.

Did you misunderstud me? SPvP is NOT more about killing than WvW. Killing players is part of PvP, but not the main goal. You can win a PvP match without a single kill. Holding objects (“capture points”) is more important.

Btw, why don’t you ignore duelers? You can just pretend they are not there and they won’t annoy you anymore, right?

Even if winning would matter – you can’t measure the “value” of a player. Sure, some things like killing dolyaks, flipping camps and commanding might be obvious. But a dueler who keeps an enemy busy might be more “valuable” than a zergling who does nothing but tagging doors, lords and downed players with autoattacks. Or somebody who gets killed over and over again when trying to get to the zerg or somewhere else. And what if the person who gets farmed was just unlucky and is usually more “usefull” ? Valuable or not? A scout can be give important information to allies – or sit in an uncontested tower all day long, doing essentially nothing.
Everyone has the same right to play WvW as long it isn’t violating official rules.

gloflop.3510:

I want you to think about it and give an honest answer. What would you say about a duelling area in hotm? You dont have to wait for opponents, you get opponents from all servers, you dont have to wait in a q to get on a map, you can actually be rated according to your skill, you can be sure that your opponent has proper gear (and not all blue). I dont see why you should prefer the side of sm towards a duelling arena!

1. Classes/builds are not balanced in 1vs1, so even in PvP duels are not always fair.
2. PvP is very limited when it comes to (viable) builds – and this limitation doesn’t lead to better balance -> see above.
3. In a duel both player agree to fight each other. If a player feels disadvantaged, he can always refuse a duel.

gloflop.3510:

It is a WvW map, not a PvP map. There is a small difference. PvP is about killing other players. You get points per kill. The points per kill were taken out of WvW. It brings nothing to the tick and hence no points for the team. WvW has a much higher focus on strategy, objects and large scale fights. It is a comparison of a world in total with another world in total. There is a game mode for players who want to compare their skill with other players. It is called PvP.

WvW isn’t called PvP to distinguish it from structured PvP, but techically both game modes are PvP. And sPvP isn’t more about killing players than WvW. It is about gaining score to win a match. Killing players is part of it, but not the main goal. It is possible to win a match without a single kill. Dueling in PvP is as “unofficial” as dueling in WvW. Some prefer dueling in PvP, others dueling in WvW – both has advantages and disadvantages and both is done “just for fun”. Which is all what matters, it is a game after all (same goes for zerging, roaming, scouting, GvG, watching fights, PvD or whatever people enjoy to do).

And when did they remove points per kill? As far as i know, it is enabled since HoT – instead of the old bloodlust points.

Depends on the situation/involved players, my mood and what i wanted to do originally when i came across the fight.

Usually i will

- stay and watch and eventually try to prevent a stomp, if my ally loses the fight.
- walk past if the fight looks in favour of my ally (or at least not too bad for him) or if i’m too busy or bored to wait for the end of the fight (i have to admit, i care less about players i don’t know)
- help my ally if he cleary doesn’t want to fight back and has no chance of winning (and wasn’t outnumbering the enemy). If he starts fighting then and the enemy disengages from the 2vs1, i’ll let him go. If my ally decides to chase, he has to do it on his own. I’m not baby-sitting anybody.

Shadelang.3012:

A cooldown increase of that degree on both guard AND protect me is a pretty big hit to shout ranger survivability as well as there group support. Keep in mind guard and protect me aren’t just for themselves. But for there team mates as well.

I think, it would bring those shouts in line with survival skills like LR and QZ – skills which were pretty good pre-HoT. I agree that shouts shouldn’t be nerfed in the current state of the game, however if anet decides, nerfs (to defensive skills) have to happen – shouts are the utility skills i would look at first.

Shadelang.3012:

But no where NEAR as much as your suggestion with heal as one. At the moment a shout rangers ONLY true gimmick is its ability to copy boons back and forth from the pet. Its how its burst WORKS. If you take away heal as one in its current form. You take away a MASSIVE amount of what is necessary for a shout ranger to function in the current meta.

I wouldn’t call boon/might stacking a gimmick or only important for a full shout ranger – it is more or less mandatory for many viable builds, including other classes. And this is imo a big problem. Boons grant dmg and defense with little investment, they allow for builds with high dmg and survivability at the same time – and all other builds become less viable, because the have to give up either dmg or survivability.
Again, you are absolutely right that those might/boon stacking capability is important in the current meta. Not only for (shout) ranger. And i don’t like it. Generally. Because it limits diversity.

Substance E.4852:

What exactly was the goal here?

Why i created this thread?

1. Curiosity. I simply wanted to know, what other ranger players think about nerfs to their own class. Usually nerf requests come from players of other classes who often doesn’t know about what they are talking. I didn’t want to know, if ranger should be nerfed – i already knew the obvious answer from most ppl. I wanted to know about the “how”, if nerfs were inevitable. This is why i created this “hypothetical scenario”. Didn’t work out well, whatever …

2. I know, anet has no intention to tone down the power creep, but nerfs can still happen. Nobody is safe. And if nobody, who is familiar with a class, gives them ideas about how nerfs could look like, they might make it worse than it could be.

Fluffball.8307:

Ya this thread is just asking for trouble. Trolls and devs that don’t play ranger don’t need to be reading this. When the devs release a full list of nerfs to all 9 elite specs (never going to happen), we can talk.

I don’t understand this fear of talking about nerfs. Luckily devs doesn’t pick up every random suggestion posted in the forums, doesn’t matter if it is about nerfs or buffs. They probably don’t even read it. And i’m not requesting nerfs for ranger/druid in the current meta (i didn’t post this in other class forums because ranger is the class i’m most familiar with) I just think, nerfs don’t have to be bad in general. But if trolls and clueless people are the only ones thinking and talking about nerfs, it is not surprising, that nerfs tend to be bad for a class.

Archon.6480:

HoT increased the speed and active gameplay required for Ranger, through the Druid elite spec. Reduced cooldowns, fast pets, low cooldow utilities, and fast movement have all made Ranger a pleasure to play.

Going backwards would be extremely boring!

For me, meta druid builds are among the easiest and most boring builds i have ever played. Lower cooldowns make it more forgiving to waste skills because they are ready again sooner. It becomes more “spammy” which can feel faster – but it doesn’t become more active or skillfull. PW – important for druids sustain – 100% passive. High amount of boons create builds with high survivability and dmg. Pets (smokescale/bristle) need less player input to be useful, compared to older “meta” pets like the wolf. The stronger traits and skills are, the bigger their impact on the outcome of a fight – and the lower the impact of the player. If it is fun for you – ok, i can’t deny it. But there are reasons to not like it, for me and for other players among all classes.

As already stated, most duelers are roamer who don’t only duel, but also flip camps and sentries, contest keeps, kill dolyaks, kill other player, scout or do other “valuable stuff” for your server. And even while dueling they keep at least one enemy player busy. A zergling on the other hand usually does nothing that couldn’t be done without him. The bigger a zerg, the lower the impact of an individual player (with the exception of the commander).

I’m fully aware that anet has no intention to bring down elitespecs to “core level” and that general nerfs won’t happen. This is why i’m talking about a hypothetical case. Just because i’m curious, what people would think in the described situation.

I’m sure you are right about PvE/raids being an important reason for anet to keep it this way. However i think it is a bad reason, because PvE encounters can be altered according to the power of the classes, it doesn’t have to be the other way arround. And you don’t need op builds for “difficult content”, they just trivialize it …

The trait changes last June, HoT and to a lesser extent even additional “balance patches” brought massive buffs to all classes. Now many people (including me) seem to dislike the power creep that’s currently characterizing the game balance, especially in PvP/WvW. And Anet keeps buffing more and more (not saying buffs in general are bad – many things definitely need improvements – but buffs alone aren’t an answer to bad balance).
Now if i look at class forums i see mostly people asking for improvements and suggestion for buffs. Outside of the occasional “mimimi, class xyz is op, pls nerf”-thread of course. But no constructive discussions about how to tone down the power creep without destroying certain traits/skills/builds/play styles.

So, let’s assume, anet finally decides to bring elite specs in line with core builds, to reduce the power creep generally and nerfs all classes significantly. This has to include ranger of course. How do you think should ranger/druid be nerfed in this hypothetical case? And why?

I also want to remind everyone who reads about all those nerfs that i’m NOT talking about the current state of the game, but about a theoretical situation where everyone has less dmg and sustain, less cc and stab, less condis and boons, less … everything. A situation where the need for nerfs is undeniable.
Just in case you want to respond something like “ranger doesn’t need any nerfs”.

1. You have way too much precision. Everything above 100% crit chance is wasted. Since ranger has decent access to fury (+20% crit chance) and 10% increase when flanking, it is better to aim for a maximum of ~ 70% with spotter (~ 63% without). Full zerk gear (exotic), ranger runes and precision food would be more than enough. Basically still 100% crit chance most of the time, much higher power and better sigils, resulting in overall higher dmg.

2. Traits:

Drop Wilderness Survival for another traitline, any is better. For solo open world stuff i would recommend Beastmastery. Nature Magic with traited spirits for soloing champs. Druid if you want to bring some support for allies.

Predator’s Instinct is a pretty weak trait. Clarion Bond is a much better option.
Light on Your Feet is pretty useless too, especially in combination with Steady Focus. Use Quick Draw instead for more Rapid Fire or Barrage.

The build would then look more like this for example (you can use air on both weapons instead of bloodlust, i’m not sure, which one is better).

It is not the most efficient PvE build, but for open world PvE it should work fine.

BurrTheKing.8571:

The problem with ANYTHING involving defensive stats and condi is that unlike power you only need to invest in condition damage to do effective damage. With power builds, a combination of power, ferocity, and precision is needed. The occasional condi trait and sigil benefits from precision, but it’s rarely a must have.

Amulets like Settler allowed for some builds to both be tanky and deal decent damage. While Mercenary is semi similar, not having healing as a stat at least limits its ability to also be highly supportive, it also has no precision or ferocity so the power stat is just more of a side benefit than anything.

Settler and other tanky condi amulets were never a big problem. In the past the meta was dominated by cele and power amulets. Settler was rarely used. And those few settler builds (shoutbow war, condi ranger to a lesser extent) were mostly support/bunker builds. No settler build was used for its dmg. Cele and marauder/zerk were (are) much better in this regard.
The reason, why condi bunker wasn’t op is, that defensive stats alone doesn’t make a good bunker and for high condi output most classes have to give up defensive skills or traits. With the powercreep from HoT, it is now easier to have high survability and high dmg, for both condi and power builds. It is a class balance issue, not an amulet issue. But of course removing amulets is an easier “solution”.

StickerHappy.8052:

wait.. does PO affect each arrow from Volley? (15% each arrow?)

how is that more than remorseless? since remoresless is 25%?

PO affects all attacks as long the required conditions/cc are on the target. Remorseless affects only one single hit. If used for poison volley, it will apply to only 1 of the 5 arrows, resulting in a 25/5 = 5% dmg increase for the whole skill (against multiple targets the dmg loss compared to PO is even higher).

Soldier rune cleanses the pet, it doesn’t cleanse other allies though.

Soldier rune helps keeping the pets alive. Without it, the pets will suffer from high condi pressure.

Edit: I was running mostly this on my non HoT alt account last season.
(If my team had no other condi player i usually swapped the spirit for SnR or a signet, didn’t happen very often though)

Sun Lian.4075:

But bleed doesn’t work like chill, it’s a condition where the dmg adds up because it stacks. Which means it has more synergy with any other skills that cause bleed, you can’t leave that out.
That’s why I think you can burst easier now for example.

All condis stack and therefore add up the dmg, even chill. The difference is between stacking in duration and stacking in intensity. And it has less synergy with other bleed skills, not more, because a stack of bleeds can be removed easier than bleed + chill, so a single cleanse has the chance to remove more dmg than before (necro has still plenty of access to cover condis though).
If you have 5 stacks of bleeding for 500 dmg (100 per stack) and add 1x pre nerf chill for 600 dmg you got 1,1k dmg/second, which needed 2 cleanses to be fully removed. Now you get 500 + 100 = 600, which can be removed with 1 cleanse instead. To get the same dps you have to apply ~ 6x more chill than before. Massive nerf, idk how this is something to argue about.

Cleanses can be a reason.

Btw, did you miss my answer?

UmbraNoctis.1907:

drcraig.9403:

How do you define weaker? […]

Weaker = less usefull in a pvp match.

There can be different reasons. Less dmg because their condi application isn’t high enough. Less survability because they have to give up defensive traits or skills for reasonable dmg. Less cc, less mobility, …, depends on the specific class/build of course. This doesn’t apply to all classes, but to many.

The point is, you can balance conditions by balancing skills and traits that apply condis, you don’t have to nerf condis in general, if some specific condi builds are op.

If power skills are op, people cry “nerf trueshot” or “nerf gunflame” for example, never “nerf power dmg”. But most of those who complain about condis, doesn’t even know how about which skills and traits they are talking. But how can you demand changes for something you don’t even understand?

So what? Total dmg of the skills stays the same and is often lower than the dmg of skills from a power build, and even if the total dmg of a condi skill is high, it usually takes quite a while to deal the full dmg.

Condi skills have cooldowns just like power skills. You can’t spam them more often than power skills.

drcraig.9403:

How do you define weaker? […]

Weaker = less usefull in a pvp match.

There can be different reasons. Less dmg because their condi application isn’t high enough. Less survability because they have to give up defensive traits or skills for reasonable dmg. Less cc, less mobility, …, depends on the specific class/build of course. This doesn’t apply to all classes, but to many.

The point is, you can balance conditions by balancing skills and traits that apply condis, you don’t have to nerf condis in general, if some specific condi builds are op.

If power skills are op, people cry “nerf trueshot” or “nerf gunflame” for example, never “nerf power dmg”. But most of those who complain about condis, doesn’t even know how about which skills and traits they are talking. But how can you demand changes for something you don’t even understand?

2 out of 9 classes had a viable condi build last season. For most classes power was better than condi, right? So please tell me about all those op condibuilds i have never heard about or seen myself that must be arround somewhere, if your claim is true.

If you want a balance (50:50), condi has to be buffed actually.

Furajir.3815:

So, I’ll say again, what exactly is NOT op or broken about conditions?

Many condi builds are weaker than plenty of power builds. This fact alone disproves all arguments about condis generally being superior to power dmg.

Then why don’t they use mender instead of cleric? If it’s all about condis they don’t need the toughness, right?

When crippled or chilled, Swoop (ranger GS 3) goes only half of the intended distance.

Those traits are both – passive side-effects of active actions.

Hitting burst-skills is usually something, warriors want to do anyways. Now they gain additional benefits from doing so, without additional effort.

You can do this with any autoattack chain.

Cele staff + s/t was meta, yep, until they removed cele from pvp. Now the only viable hybrid amulet is mercenary. But shortbow kinda needs sharpened edges/precision for enough pressure, so it would require viper/sinister which means going full glass. And then zerker/lb is simply the better option. For pure condi wanderer or rabid amulet could be an alternative, but both lack vitality wich might be an issue even with some extra thoughness.

I’m sure you can make a hybrid shortbow build work, “just for fun”, but i doubt it will be able to compete with meta builds.

Sword autoattack was never tracking stealthed targets. You just jumped away from stealthed targets, like you did if you hit it untargeted. Which made it for example impossible to prevent/slow down a stealth rez with sword – you just could’t cleave stealthed targets even if you knew their location.

You meant this video? Haven’t checked all, but in those i watched, she almost never used sword autoattack (only very few times for dmg) – for good reasons i guess.

Sword autoattack offered no defense. Yes, the third part could be used to creat some distance, however you had to use the first attacks of the chain too, which means you had to be in melee range, unable to dodge, which usually isn’t something you want to do under heavy pressure.

Fluffball.8307:

It was. It was a funny video, she was evading left and right and using the untargeted auto to make people unable to hit her in melee range or with aoe. It’s one of my all time favorite GW2 videos, I think the favorite being the poster (can’t recall his name immediately) that had about 6 people chase him from Wildcreek all the way to Quentin, again using sword to stay alive.

Can you link the video?

Fluffball.8307:

Cmon man, you’re better than that. Don’t just make ridiculous posts to prove your point. No one is claiming the sword auto is what keeps you alive as you attack their backlines.

“she was bouncing around in a 1v5 or something and no one could kill her”

This looked to me as if the bouncing around was the reason why she couldn’t be killed, which doesn’t make much sense. Guess i just misunderstood you there.
But i still don’t get what makes the current sword autoattack so important for you, especially against multiple enemys/zergs. Yes, it can be nice to finish of a single target which tries to run away, but in this case you often don’t need the leaps and could kill your target with “normal” autoattacks too.
Is it because jumping around between different targets is fun and looks cool? That’s a point i can understand. However, this isn’t a very efficient way to kill stuff, right?
And maybe the new autoattack allows you to do some cool stuff you couldn’t do now?

I think that better control over the charakter’s movement at any time during the autoattack chain instead of only between the individual parts is more valuable than those (imo) small benefits you get from short leaps at the cost of “freedom”.

I’m still sceptical though and really hope, anet doesn’t somehow mess it up, because generally i like the sword, use it a lot, and want to keep it up in the future.

How should “zerg surfing” work with sword auto? It offers nothing which would prevent the zerg from just killing you.
And i wouldn’t call a very short range leap which can’t be used from movement a “great disengage tool”. Yea, you could do some cool stuff with sword auto, but in many situations (including pvp/wvw) the animation lock is more harmful than usefull.

Looks like a build that tries to do many things but can’t do anything well.

Mostly condi gear but only two skills (+ 1 sigil) to apply condis.
As already mentioned, rune choice and poison master trait don’t make sense in this build.
Traps require melee range, but the build lacks tools to survive in melee (no stab!, no other defense like protection/invuln/…). Low ranged dmg, because of low power/crit dmg.
It offeres some healing/support and CC, but other builds can do those things much better.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

• Druids needing to play team support, DPS Peel roles no longer viable.

This is not the problem, at least for ranger. DPS druid works quite well actually. The problem is that even if you want to play a dps build you are better with taking druid (and bm/nm aka “meta traitlines”) instead of offensive traitlines. Because by going full offensive you lose much more survability than you gain dmg. It is the synergie between those 3 traitlines that offer not only high suvability even with zerk stats but also some extra dmg (might stacking, stronger pets), so other traitlines simply can’t compete.

Buffing druid traitline for dps roles would increase this problem even more.

Generally some traits and skills offer too much in one thing, so there is no trade-off anymore between dmg and defense.

Some classes/builds can deal with focus better than necro, that’s what i’m talking about. And now you are talking about thief being weak, but that is not a condi issue either. And many condi builds are even weaker than some thief builds, why do you want to nerf those too?

Furajir.3815:

Warriors, Guards and Thieves have NEVER been meta. Ever. Never ever. Less than 0 times. It’s about time Anet realizes that some classes have been on top for far too long. Speaks volumes.

Hambow was very dominant when it was meta (some top teams where using 2 of them) and shoutbow was meta too for quite a while. Thief (s/p, s/d, d/p) was more or less mandatory for years until HoT. Guard was meta as bunker guard, later as power medi guard and burn guard.

If we look at the times before the trait changes last year ranger, necro and mesmer were probably the classes with the least appearance at pvp tournaments.

Just check
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDCvogxNKN3mkRmRCNMj96JAfVS7oIytH&nohtml5=False
for example (especially the older videos).

Condi necro already gets countered by focus fire and rotations/mobility. (And i’m sure, certain builds can counter them 1vs1 – they might be not meta though because 1vs1 counter to necro is not mandatory enough to even out their weaknesses) As i already said, i haven’t had too much problems against teams with multiple necros (soloQ). (And necros pushing far are usually the first ones who die …). Idk about mesmer, so far i’m not worried too much about them. Probably because those mesmer players weren’t that great.
But i’m totally fine with a hard counter to condi necro/mes who has its own counter. But then why is every one talking about nerfing (deleting) condis in general? That’s two different things …

Ravenmoon.5318:

See … this is broken logic. Condi damage should be additional damage over time, not the only freaking tool. More control abilities like weakness and cripple could or would slowdown power blowouts and will bring a more fun experience.

Power builds don’t need additional dmg from condis, why would you even use them, if they can’t do things on their own? Let’s be honest. You don’t like condi builds. That’s fine. But that doesn’t justify the deletion this entire playstyle.

Ravenmoon.5318:

And as I said in my previous post, most condi cleanses are bad utilities. With the exception of shadow step, which actually does something other than cleansing. It’s an actual utility. Although the decent cooldown makes it a little bit ~~~ meh to fight versus condi build.

I can think of many decent condi cleanse abilities. And not only skills but also traits can offer condi remove. Often passive, so you don’t even have to think about it. (Thief can remove condis frequently through dodging or sitting in stealth – and yes, you have to trait for it, but you don’t get anything else for free either).

Btw i have read quite often that daredevil counters condi reaper. I don’t play neither of those classes, so i can’t say for sure if it is true, but since necos don’t have much defense against burst and dd can avoid getting hit quite well, it might work.

Which power builds are going to keep revs, scrapper, ele and druid in check? Thieves? Warriers? DHs? Those classes aren’t viable for good reasons, and those reason are not (only) condis. Nerfing only one part of the most op builds and nerfing already weak builds on top of it will lower build diversity even more. Condi builds are part of the game and should have their place just like power builds, bunker, support and whatever else. Power only would be the opposite of diversity.

Btw, nobody running power back then is wrong. Power rifle engi, hambow war, medi guard, just to mention few old meta builds. Many glass cannon builds were not viable because of thief, but not all power builds have to be full glass.

And i don’t get, where i said, there is no counter to power? Actually i think there is too much of pretty much everything – condis and boons, burst and dmg negation, passive defensive procs and random offensive procs, cc and stab and so on. That’s why i think, more powercreep in form of resistance spam is bad.

FrownyClown.8402:

The way I see it is that condi damage limits the amount of builds available for people to play. Its almost impossible to be affective without some form of condition clear. For example, I played fresh air ele one match and a necro beat me by constantly applying just chill.

Just like it is impossible to be effective without defense against power burst, CC and stuff like that. As a fresh air ele a thief or rev can destroy you just as easily. And just look at power revs. They are weak vs condis, yet one of the strongest builds out there. Lack of build diversity is not a condi issue. It is more a powercrep/elite spec issue.

FrownyClown.8402:

If condi is not stronger than power than how come you don’t see power necros and shatter mesmers? Its easier to kill a bunker with condis than it is with power.

Why don’t we see condi engis, or condi eles or condi guards and less condi revs than power revs if condi dmg is stronger than power dmg?

I can think of many skills, that can hit for more than 5k. Not everyone has perma protection and other dmg reducing stuff. And not every condi cleanse is on high cooldown and removes only 1-2 condis.

And what would keep those almost “unkillable” bruiser/bunker builds in check, if we nerf the only things that can counter them? Currently condi necro/mes is kinda necessary to deal with scrapper/ele/rev beause those are just as op in their own department.

Retaliation doesn’t protect you from dmg.

Increasing resistance aviability would nerf all non necro condi builds more than necros, because they can’t get rid of the boon. And high uptime of total immunity against anything is not good for the game imo.

I think, he meant power rev builds only. Not sure if power rev can beat condi mes unless there is a big difference in player skill. Luckily pvp isn’t about 1vs1 only, so those poor revs doesn’t have to worry too much about filthy condi mesmer and necros.

Ravenmoon.5318:

[…]
On the explanation of bulwark….once you use elixir c you forget about that utility for about 40 seconds in which time you eat power and condition damage[…]

Elixier C (traited) is a full cleanse every 32 seconds + additional aoe cleanse every 20 seconds which is pretty strong. Boon corruption isn’t really an argument against it, because you will have boons on you almost all the time anyways. Some other condi clear skills and traits are far from being bad either, they aren’t used, because other stuff like defense against power dmg is more important.

Btw, we can duel anytime, just /w ingame.

So what? Condi mes wins vs power rev? No surprise. Rev is still meta despite being weak vs condis. (I would lose vs anything with rev, because i suck at playing it. I wouldn’t mind dueling you with ranger though)
You don’t answer my questions btw …

I think i never lost a match against 3+ necros with a more power focused team. They don’t stack that well. I still think they should get nerfed, just like many other builds.

And i never said anything about wvw (ppl are crying there about condis as much as in pvp – no difference)

If condition dmg is a bigger isse than power dmg, then why

do most scrapper use bulwark gyro instead of elixier c?
do most druids use protective ward and SoS instead of EB and SotR?
do most (all?) meta builds not stack as much condi cleanse as possible?
is power rev even meta?

Power seems sometimes weak, because many builds invest heavily into defense against power. Otherwise we could all skillfully oneshot each other.

Edit: I really wonder how you all manage to get those incredibly high condi ticks. If i die to condis (which of course happens) it is usually 2-3k ticks at max. Often lower. That’s the dmg powerbuilds can do with autoattacks. The only really bursty condi builds are burn guard and burn engi (and maybe mistrust condi mesmer – the meta build is not bursty though) and both are not meta.