To be somewhat accurate, MMR requires a big enough sample size. This also applies to class/build specific MMR. If someone picks up a class only occasionally (which doesn’t neccessarily mean he is bad at playing it), the class MMR might be less accurate than his account MMR. And if someone plays multiple classes on a regular basis, his performance on those different classes will be reflected by his account MMR. Class/build performance is also not only dependent on the class itself and the ability of the player to play it, but also heavily on team compositions. Being able to pick the right class/build for a match is part of a player’s skill imo and shouldn’t be discouraged.
And locking classes/builds without balancing class/build distribution among the teams can lead to even more unbalanced matches, even if they would be more balanced MMR wise. Banning class stacking would reduce the amount of aviable players even more and the smaller the player pool to choose from, the worse matchmaking will become, no matter how good the algorithm is on paper.
Blind the pet to prevent the taunt (if the ranger even runs the trait – most don’t), and stealth up to prevent the dmg and then you should be able to stomp safely.
This would be semi-balanced if there were traits/consumables that converted x% of Precision to Ferocity only and it was balanced around it being a “extra damage bonus” stat. The problem is there is condition duration which is greater than all other damage type modifiers.
Imagine a food that added 20% power-related damage. For WvW, we have standard food and crystals (and there are worse offenders).
To me, it is not about dire/trailblazer (in a vacuum) that is OP. However, it is that all these condition modifiers scale mathematically significantly better than anything direct damage has. That is what breaks the balance for WvW and not for PvP.
Let’s remove consumables in WvW first (or at least limit the ones that are available).
+ 20% condi duration isn’t compareable to +20% direct dmg. 1. Condi duration is additive and capped at +100%. Direct dmg modifiers are multiplicative and not capped. 2. Condi duration increases only dmg over time, but doesn’t offer any burst. Direct dmg modifier doesn’t only increase overall dmg but also burst. 3. Condi duration can be completely nullified by cleanses. Dmg modifier will always provide increased dmg.
It’s not gear nor food alone that makes things op. It is always certain traits/skills/runes/other specific stuff and the combination of those. Or with other words, it depends on specific builds. And those have to be looked at.
As noted earlier, adding damage to a skill causes it to trip Venoms. Sure it might pop stealth but it will also apply a wicked amount of Poison and/or Torment in the right builds. Also, how would traps work. They cannot apply damage when they are used and if they apply damage when they are tripped, ouch Venom problem.
Adding reveals to Condi application is sort of OK but some skills such as traps would play VERY strange. Most stealth Mesmer builds wouldn’t work at all.
I keep circling the same solution… kill Stealth Stacking (and adjust some traits/skills as needed).
I don’t see an issue with venoms. A thief has already tons of ways to apply those, a few skills more won’t change anything. Traps would deal dmg on trigger, like ranger/dh’s traps do and thief’s traps used to do in the past. Nothing strange about it. Mesmer doesn’t has traps …
Yes , and I have already pointed this out to others who advocate adding a damage component to all applications of damaging condtions.
This would make STEAL into a monster and still allow Ghost thief. (4 extra damage procs per steal for venom adds).
It is not about adding dmg to the application of condis, it is adding dmg to skills that apply condis. Give steal small! dmg baseline and change mug to increase this dmg to its current level. Add dmg to traps like it was in the past. (Maybe buff/rework them in return to make them worth using in non-stealth builds). Add dmg to caltrops like they did with sb4. Ghost thief rekt. Other builds are barely affected by this change.
Condis also have secondary effect that they kept from times when condis were supposed to be utility. Imagine backstab would also reduce your healing by 50% for example and automatically cast on target when target hits thief – this is what condis are atm basically.
Imagine power thief could reduce healing with autoattacks … oh wait.
Non-damage effects of condis are the same for all types of builds.
I guess, the main reason, why people complain more about condis than about power (it has always been like this, no matter how the actual meta looked like), is, that playing against power is more intuitively. You see an attack, you get hit, your health immediately drops by a sigificant amout -> this pattern makes it easy to connect certain animations with the result (big dmg) and therefore it is pretty obvious, which attacks you want to avoid.
With condis it is different. You still see the attacks coming, but usually not much is happening after you see the animations. You got some condis on you, maybe use some cleanses, but your health isnt’t affected that much, so you don’t care. But of course condi builds will keep stacking condis on you and at a certain point those condis kill you. However, the attacks that killed you often happen seconds before this point, which leads to the feeling of getting condi bombed “out of nowhere”. Learning how to play against conditions (what to avoid and when to cleanse) requires an actual thinking and learning process and that’s something many players don’t want to do. They rather complain about op/cheesy/broken/whatever condis, often making wrong claims that reveal their cluelessness, and then wonder, why anet (and some other players) can’t take their complaints serious.
That’s the fallacy. It doesn’t take 5s to ramp up to 5K per second damage anymore and to maintain that damage. On my chrono, it takes me less than 3s to get to over 6K-10K damage per second (variable based on whether you decide to use abilities and move after). And that can be done when the target is under the full effects of daze/stun or allows immediate invisibility after.
People will argue that they can do 6K-10K after second 1 with direct damage (but that’s not the point) as it is usually more than half mitigated so everything past the first 3s (yes, just 3s) is in favor of condi to do more burst damage if everything hits.
The myth is that condis are slow to apply and take time to ramp up in order to do damage. And then further, can’t be spammed over and over for every single encounter (also untrue in the post-HoT game thanks to specialization lines/core trait line redos).
If you add a stat that mitigates condi damage, Resistance boon also needs to be reduced from 100% mitigation.
I got never bursted down by a condi mesmer (or any other condi build) in less than 3 seconds ever. Not even once. And i met tons of them every day. The only mesmer than can actually burst me (10-15k+ dmg in less than 2 seconds) is power mesmer. And i’m playing a build with high armor (2,8-3k) and few cleanses. Getting bursted by a condi mes is 100% a L2P issue (unless you get unlucky with aoe interrupts against a mistrust mesmer, but barely anybody plays that build, because it is too squishy to be really good). It requires somebody to facetank all shatters and then spam skills (except from cleanses) like crazy while running arround like a headless chicken.
I really want to see the insane condi burst, that everyone is talking about, because i can’t find it in wvw.
How would this work with Caltrops and Uncatchable ? If the idea is any time a condition applied there a damage component so as to reveal the thief , these would never be used as caltrops would mean no stealth for 10 seconds because all a person has to do is step in the field to reveal. Is the intent of that damage component that it work only on initial use or any time a condition applied?
The idea is, that anything that applies conditons also deals a (small) amount of direct dmg. Not additional direct dmg from applying condis. I can see the issue with thief being revealed by people who step into those fields (and taking damage as result – kinda what you want anyways), but that’s how it works for all classes. Yes, other classes tend to be less reliant on stealth, but not every thief build is (and should be) reliant of sitting in stealth all the time either.
I don’t see your issue with venoms and sigils. Those already require direct dmg to be applied, so nothing would change.
I guess, the main reason, why people complain more about condis than about power (it has always been like this, no matter how the actual meta looked like), is, that playing against power is more intuitively. You see an attack, you get hit, your health immediately drops by a sigificant amout -> this pattern makes it easy to connect certain animations with the result (big dmg) and therefore it is pretty obvious, which attacks you want to avoid.
With condis it is different. You still see the attacks coming, but usually not much is happening after you see the animations. You got some condis on you, maybe use some cleanses, but your health isnt’t affected that much, so you don’t care. But of course condi builds will keep stacking condis on you and at a certain point those condis kill you. However, the attacks that killed you often happen seconds before this point, which leads to the feeling of getting condi bombed “out of nowhere”. Learning how to play against conditions (what to avoid and when to cleanse) requires an actual thinking and learning process and that’s something many players don’t want to do. They rather complain about op/cheesy/broken/whatever condis, often making wrong claims that reveal their cluelessness, and then wonder, why anet (and some other players) can’t take their complaints serious.
That would certainly fix the issue with ghost thief.
However, 99% of conditions are already tied to an attack that applies direct dmg and therefore will reveal the player, so it would be easier to just change those few outliers to also apply some direct dmg. There is no need to change the whole mechanic. The outcome would be the same.
Traps and Caltrops are not like AI. Attacking AI, like pets, clones, turrets, never reveal the player, because they are an own unity. Traps reveal the player as soon they apply direct dmg. It is the lack of direct dmg of thieves’ traps, caltrops and steal that cause the problem, because applying condis alone doesn’t count as an attack.
For dps it is usually better to just use one pet, especially in condi builds/with lynx, because condis from the pet stop dealing dmg after swapped out and the pet loses boons. You should only swap if your pet is about to die or if you need something specific from your second pet, like certain boons or cc or whatever.
I know what a reaper can do and that deadly chill is pretty op atm. Doesn’t change the fact that reapers can’t do what Dusty Moon was claiming. Shroud 5 + 4 alone takes 4s to execute, taking reaper rune results in a loss in condition dmg and duration and blowing shouts for dmg means, the necro won’t have any defense left.
Durability rune won’t go away, because it is op. Condis can be dealt with if you got enough cleanses, but of course it is easier to just facetank everything with the help of boons … and then cry about corrupts and epi because facetanking doesn’t always work that well.
So that suggested AR can be trusted? I won’t be a liability to my group if that’s all I have?
The suggested AR is the AR you need for minimal agony damage. Having more won’t have any benefits. So yes, it’s trustworthy. You can do fractals even with slightly less AR than suggested. For example, for fractal level 20, 8 AR are suggested, but you can do it just fine with 7 AR. Once you reach lvl 20, there wil be an agony dmg test aviable in the factal lobby, where you can check, how much agony damage you would take with your current AR at the selected level – just in case you aren’t sure you got enough AR.
The best for power builds are usually berserker stats, for a maximum of damage. If you want to take some defensive stats, marauder is a solid pick with only a little less dmg compared to berserker, but a bunch of extra health.
Traitwise i would take Skirmishing over Beastmastery, for Spotter and Quickdraw, but BM can work well too.
And yet again more Pet buffs… wow don’t get me started the HoT Pets Tiger (reduce fury uptime…needs cooldown increase on it’s F2)…. Smokescale needs to be wayyyyyy less tanky, and Bristleback as well wayyyy less tanky. Very big issue on HoT pets simply being way to good and is never addressed In PvP. There is a reason people constantly use them instead of all the other pets and it has to stop.
Oh guess what I use Druid and also use these pets so don’t call this post im doing some thing against Druids… I got plenty of other issues with every class because simply nothing is being done to address the horrible state of balance.
If nothing is done with Pets at least axe Natural Healing trait on them… Probably the trait which keeps the HoT pets alive since they are bruiser Dmg/Tanky types. Sure that would cause riots.
Other pets aren’t used, because they can’t compete with all the overpowered stuff that HoT brought to the game for all classes/elitespecs. As long the powercreep remains in the game, smokescale and bristleback will be neccessary for ranger to have a chance in the meta. They have to be tanky, because a dead pet is a useless pet, no matter how good it is when it’s alive. You should not be able to easily kill pets, because that just means, you can deny a whole class mechanic. And alone that you belive, its the Natural Healing trait, that keeps those pets alive, shows that you have no idea about what you are talking.
After a little bit of testing i’d say, HB range is higher than maul. But only against a stationary target. The issue with HB is, that you can’t move during the animation, so targets can still easily walk out of range. Maul can be casted while running, so you can follow a target during its casttime.
They did not buffed rangers dmg nor cc. The changes to GS are pretty meaningless and won’t make this weapon good in PvP. Same goes for the buffs to pets. Smokescale and Bristleback will remain meta.
I guess “all dmg buffs” refers to dmg modifier in form of SotH, SotW, Remorseless and maybe Steady Focus and Bountiful Hunter, Force Sigil, Scholar Rune and so on. But even with all those modifiers you won’t oneshot anything but the glassiest targets (for 20k+ you need might and vuln too). And after a single burst attemt that you can avoid by walking away from the smoke field where he stealthed, the build has absolutely nothing left.
Edit: The did not buff the dmg of Maul with this patch.
Dieing to 3x Epidemic at the same time surely makes that skill op … As if coordinated power bombs couldn’t kill anything – oh i forgot, people tend to stack as much dmg reduction as possible to facetank everything. Too bad it doens’t work vs condis. But yes, lets remove every tiny aspect that still requires a little bit of thinking and active play.
Btw with more aoe cleansing people wouldn’t be able stack so many condis on one player, that epi would instakill, so you don’t need insta cleanses to counter it.
The change to GS plus reliable tiger f2 almost makes moment of clarity builds top tier. If they had better condi management it would be
The tiger can be killed relatively easy, which will keep builds that rely on it out of the meta. It only works if players ignore the pet. The dmg isn’t even new, just more spammable. And GS still lacks reliable defensive skills.
I guess there are no plans to reduce the powercreep and make player vs player fights more dependant on actual player actions instead of relying more and more on traits and skills, right? Because since HoT it often feels like i’m fighting mechanics more than players, and if i don’t choose certain traits and skills to counter those mechanics, it barely matters how well i play. Buffs surely won’t make those fights more fun again
When they wanted to nerf only condi druid, then they have to nerf druid traits or skills. Nerfs to core stuff affects core ranger builds as much or even more than druid builds.
Overall I don’t like the patch, even though “my” build seems to be buffed a lot. Haven’t tested it yet. I just dislike the overall powercreep since HoT, that made fights a lot less fun for me and yet they keep buffing stuff …
Powercreep make fights in WvW and PvP less fun and yet they keep buffing more and more stuff. Terrible patch that doesn’t improve anything in the mentioned game modes.
There is an ICD. It is called “effect recharge” in the tooltip. 10s for storm and stone spirit, 8s for the sun spirit. Frost spirit doesn’t have an ICD.
Most organized groups run 80% or more damage reduction to power-based attacks, while conditions are unaffected and ignore armor.
Currently, even in large-scale combat, condition damage off-tanks outright out-damage every power build option in the game unless it’s unorganized.
If people massively invest into defense against power, while ignoring defense against condis, then of course condis will deal more dmg. And that’s how it should be. I mean, how else are you supposed to counter such ridiclous bunker comps? In the past condis were rendered useless in group combat due to aoe cleanses. Should they have nerfed power dmg to an equal useless level back then? Doesn’t make sense, right? But that’s basically what you are suggesting, just the other way arround. Those aoe cleanse options still exist btw, but aren’t used as much anymore, because obviously people tend to view power dmg to be more dangerous.
Another “nerf PI, idk how to use stab, blocks, blinds, dodges, stow weapon, LOS, invul, counter-cc, instants, heals” thread eh?
Those things work against pretty much everything, so everything must be balanced, right?
The only actual counterplay (that doesn’t involve counterbuilding via stab – that can be stolen – or instant skills) against PI procs, is to do nothing, which is extremely unfun to play against. Sure, you can bait headshot (which isn’t even the only interrupt) by canceling skills, or avoid with the mentioned things, but when you do so, you aren’t pressuring the thief either. When you try to fight back, you will get PI procced. Headshot + PI provides easy and spammable dmg + defense. Granted it is by far not the only unfun and “op” mechanic in the game, which makes it kinda balanced, but that doesn’t mean there is no reason to complain about it.
I would replace Lingering Light with Grace of the Land, but otherwise it looks like a solid build for open-world. Your rune and sigil choice is ok. Accuracy could be replaced with air or bloodlust, but if you want to keep it, its fine too.
Since lb ranger is usually relatively safe to play, you could think about replacing some of the marauder gear with berserker, but of course it is up to you. Also keep in mind, that you can easily change utility skills and/or traits, so if you are struggeling with condis or cc for examle, you can just take an additonal stunbreak or condi cleanse. Don’t hesistate to adapt if neccessary. Builds don’t have to be set in stone.
When it comes to pets i would recommend the tiger or jaguar for dmg, as second pet either the electric wyvern for cc against bosses with breakbar, or the river drake for some aoe dmg.
And how is a dps meter supposed to tell you, what is better? With more power you will have more dmg and less healing and with more healing power it will be the other way arround. To know, what is better for you in actual fights, you have to try it yourself and then judge based on the outcome of those fights.
A dps meter can show you only numbers, be it healing, dmg, boons, whatever. But numbers alone are worthless in pvp combat, because there are a lot of other factors, that play a role.
1. Rampager (Prec, cond, power) is probably the best “cheap” alternative to viper, but rabid works too. Condi ranger gains a lot of dmg from bleeds on crit, so you want a stat combination with precision.
2. Balthasar or Krait rune. The first is better if you run a/t only, the second works better with sb though.
Reducing sample size doesn’t increase accuracy. Especially for classes that somebody doesn’t play regulary, class MMR would be most likely less accurate than account MMR.
And how good or bad somebody is at playing a class is only one factor among multiple other factors when determining how good or bad he is at winning games. A class based leaderboard would maybe make sense in a 1vs1 game mode, but not really in 5vs5 conquest.
The idea is that, just because you are a great mesmer, doesn’t mean you know how to play a revenant well. If the professions were locked we could place you into a match that reflects your skill with that class.
To be somewhat accurate, the MMR algorithm needs a lot of games played, so if a player plays some classes only occasionally (which doesn’t neccessarily mean he is bad at playing them), a class specific MMR might be less accurate than an account wide MMR. How good or bad a player is at winning matches, depends on a lot more than just on how good he is at playing a certain class.
Class MMR leading to better matchmaking is just an assumption, not guaranteed. It can even result in the opposite, by reducing the sample size.
The key to survival is learning to avoid the dangerous attacks of mobs by dodging at the right time (or using other defensive abilities like blocks, evades, blinds, cc). Most dangerous skills have obvious animations, which should give you time to react. Adding some gear pieces with defensive stats and using defensive utility skills, such as Signet of Stone, Stone Spirit or stun breaks and condi remove can help during the learning process, but goal should be to survive without those “training wheels”.
With a/t you should stay in melee range as much as possible, since Throw Torch is the only ranged high dmg ability of this weapon set. If you have difficulties at staying in melee range, i would advise the use of shortbow. It deals more dmg at range and it provides an additional evade skill, which can help with survivability. When going into melee range use sb2 (it can be used from higher range too, but is a lot stronger at close range – same goes for axe2), swap to a/t and use bonfire first, so you get the reduced cooldown from Quick Draw. Then just use the other abilites including a second bonfire and swap to sb again, sb2, sb4, autoattacks … (and get some distance if neccesary). I would also replace one of the traps with sun spirit, unless you are constantly on the move or there is already a ranger who has it. It doesn’t require melee range to be useful and other players can benefit from it too.
Boon and Condition Conversion
Boon to condition conversion and condition to boon conversion has been standardized and is functionality changed. Skills that convert boons and conditions now randomly select from all boons and conditions on the target.
I haven’t really payed attention to it ingame, so i can’t confirm it, but those notes are all information i can remember about this topic.
