So, no constructive feedback, got it. Just more reminiscing of GW1 which has a snowball’s chance in hell of being reproduced in GW2.
Don’t be like that. You know what I’m saying is true. You can’t balance things as they approach closer and closer to instant while also being on demand if they’re off cooldown. Instead of the game being about timing and positioning, it’s about cooldowns and twitching with passives that carry the rest.
If you want things to be “balanced” GW2 in its entirety needs a fat nerf to action speed, AoE size and a general restructuring of the role passive triggers play in combat. I’m not being specific, because that would mean going directly in and reworking the overpowered garbage with a concrete replacement. Every time that happens, everyone cries about not having a huge crutch anymore. They all think in a vacuum because they can’t imagine their own class remade into a fair player in a balanced game alongside other classes remade in the same way.
It’s a stretch because it’s so expansive in scope, and if actually written out would just bring a lot of whining and crying out of the woodwork. Don’t ask for your “constructive criticism” if you aren’t prepared to not cry about what the game would look like if GW2 combat were actually made into a fair game.
I’m complaining about your feedback because it is utterly clueless given the development practices.
We spent like 3 weeks complaining when reaper came out that Greatsword 5 wasn’t even functioning on moving targets or on most terrain, and look at what happened. No changes to greatsword 5 came out during the beta period.
No changes to the garbage traits like Shivers of Dread (2 sec chill tied to a 2 sec fear on a humongous cd as a minor trait, that is utterly useless in PvE because they made CC/debuffs useless with the breakbar).
No changes to reaper shouts, which outside Rise almost nobody uses.
It took them 3 godkitten years to increase the range from mainhand axe from 600 to 900, and it’s still a terrible weapon with terrible damage and virtually no utility.
Dagger is still bad. Greatsword is still bad after almost a year of showing it’s a deficient DPS weapon in PvE. Reaper Shroud #1 is a DPS loss to camping greatsword autoattacks, which is absurd given it’s a resource based attack you need to build up, making Reaper’s Onslaught grandmaster like all our other grandmasters in PvE useless.
They can’t even fix our minions and their buggy AI after 3 years, they can’t fix wells or make corruptions interesting like GW1.
But somehow you expect them to nerf/revamp the entire row of classes when their balance patches happen every 6 months and amount to merely tooltip changes and a couple of miserly tweaks?
3 years we had before the xpac came out, 3 years of elementalist stacking. Raids come out, more elementalist stacking. That’s 4+ years of encounter design favoring elementalists, so I doubt that will change unless it’s hamfisted like fractals and then we just see engineers and necromancers stacked instead.
Someone forgot about the 4 warrior 1 mesmer CoF runs that were huge back in the day. Also the fact that elementalist was trash for the first year of the game.
Elementalist was never trash the first year. Only idiots believed warrior was better.
You know, sorta like how people were stacking engineers and revenants when wing 1 of the raid came out, and now they’re barely used classes.
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Mind Stab should go back to being a 1 sec daze like in beta….
Diversion should be AoE like in beta, or the daze duration should stack by clone used.
We aren’t even the best CC class when mesmers were supposed to be the masters of control yet thieves and warriors and engineers can CC people far better.
If they just gave engineers or thieves and aura utility like Spotter or Assassin’s Presence that was strong enough (200 of a stat to a group), I bet you’d see less stacking of tempests and more class variety.
Same for Guardian, problem is Guardians got an aura that gives Toughness, and Toughness is a trash stat in a PvE where you can completely avoid most threats with the dodge button.
Scrappers could give an aura that gives 10% condi duration increase, and daredevils could give a 15% movement speed increase that stacks with swiftness.
Guardians could have an aura that increases the effectiveness of boon effects by 5% (so 5% more to prot value, might power gains, etc).
You would then see all classes represented.
This goes directly against what they want to achieve though and forces a super comp where you bring 1 of every “Aura Stat Trait” to coin a phrase. Which means that they then would have to design each encounter around a fixed comp to ensure all dps/mechanics could be met.
Instead of solving the problem that way they just need to design encounters that play to the strengths of each each class. IE a boss that has adds, but when the adds die the boss gets stronger somehow or reduces the kill timer (limits AoE’s, promotes thief) etc…
More creative encounter design is the best way to increase diversity, not that its in that bad a spot to begin with.
We already have meta comps, this changes nothing. I suspect this complaint derives from not wanting to change away from players who already committed to 3-4 tempests.
If you’re running a different comp, you’re already being subpar, so adding auras so some classes are represented isn’t changing anything.
Besides, I don’t buy the argument for one moment that encounters need to encourage some classes. That just means you’re gonna class stack differently for each boss, which is terrible.
It strikes me as what just happened to T4 fractals, where now you’re stacking the new optimal class for the encounter.
I don’t trust them with encounter design for one second as a surefire way to make sure all classes are represented and equally wanted.
There’s a big difference between a “meta comp”, versus needing to find one of every aura stat boost class. Not only does that effectively kill build diversity it leads to stagnant design encounter because you do have to design around the fact that every player will have an additional ball of stats. These words by the way were said on stream by Crystal herself at one point. I’ll see if i can find that stream just so you can view it.
Video here – https://youtu.be/1FUkGRxuxV0?t=22m
As far as not trusting them for designing encounters, i think they’re doing fine.
So fine that we’re stacking 3-4 tempests, sure.
This is being obtuse by now. There’s no build diversity when you can’t even have class diversity lol
I mean that’s your groups choice to stack that many tempest when its not required.
However the overall health of raids allows pretty much all classes to be viable, just not optimal.
………Why are you being dense?
The same would be the case with not bringing all classes with auras? You’d be completely viable, just not optimal.
Nothing in a game is required; gameplay is optional, but that’s beside the point.
We’re balancing around optimal scenarios because optimal is what most people shoot for.
You say they can change with encounter design, which is pure garbage.
3 years we had before the xpac came out, 3 years of elementalist stacking. Raids come out, more elementalist stacking. That’s 4+ years of encounter design favoring elementalists, so I doubt that will change unless it’s hamfisted like fractals and then we just see engineers and necromancers stacked instead.
Then we take your tortured view of encounter shifting, look at fractals, now we stack necromancers or engineers.
We need numbers and class mechanics balancing, not encounter gimmicks that just tilt the encounter to favor the optimal class.
The auras for each class are the most simple solution at seeing all classes represented instead of the realistic scenario of tempests being vastly over-represented, and in the absence of a driving utility you’ll always stack the best DPS class. The auras prevent that by at least making you want to bring every class to be optimal, and then maybe you’ll occasionally see 2 tempests instead of 3-4.
It’s not just the invulnerability.
It’s the fact their autoattacks and weaponskills hit significantly harder, hit significantly faster, their tratilines aren’t horrendous gimmicks, and their utilities are not weak.
If you think that they will nerf all classes one by one to create parity when they can’t even buff a simple one, you’re delusional.
The problem with GW2 is the playerbase (and anet too) still thinks that some things need a buff. Nothing in GW2 needs a buff, and most everything either needs a nerf or outright removal. “Instant and off-cooldown” does not provide room for proper counterplay, and that’s the only direction this game has been moving since Day 1. There’s something to be said when the average autoattack speed going from GW1 to GW2 has devolved from ~1.33s to roughly 0.5s.
So, no constructive feedback, got it. Just more reminiscing of GW1 which has a snowball’s chance in hell of being reproduced in GW2.
I’m sorry, but this is an mmoRPG. Focus on RPG. If ambiance and storytelling through the environment are obsolete to you, you are playing the wrong genre.
Not everything needs to be a skill check.
The only complaints I have is harpies crippling you midjump, and the portals on Thaumanova pulling you up from the floor below and making you fall down to youe death.
Everything else is perfectly manageable.
I’m surprised in your list of complaints you don’t list the scaling toughness, which thoroughly screws over power builds.
Yeah, they capped it to the lv50 value, but the difference is condi builds faced no such scaling mitigation, so power builds are heavily penalized at the toughness levels compared to what condi builds are doing.
It completely flipped the balance of classes. Seeing 3-4 necros daily on a fractal is pretty disgusting.
And yet compared to having a daredevil or tempest or revenant instead you know the the necros or engineers will highly speed up your clear times so long as you have a PS warrior in the group.
The toughness on mobs needs to be lowered so power builds are no longer kitten at high scales.
I tried slapping on my full zerker gear on my necro again last night in WvW. Ran into a zerker warrior with greatsword/axe. I also had greatsword/axe.
Yeah, I didn’t stand a chance lmfao. Even if I had played 100% perfectly, literally everything is skewed in the warriors favour. Even their “when you reach 50% health” trait is better – they get endure pain (used to be 25% health, power creep Anet plz).
Nothing new. Necromancers greatsword is too slow and has too little mobility. Good luck trying to fight a thief as well as a zerker necro lol. Headshot Headshot Headshot Headshot
I don’t have much issue with axe main-hand as I feel is has decent burst with the right setup but our focus skills are total kittening trash as is our greatsword. Some of our traits need to change too.
Your issues aren’t so much necromancer being underpowered as it is “direct damage underperforms against players” and “class balance across the board is completely borked.” The whole game needs a great big nerf to invulnerability-to-damage/effects spam and passive triggers which play the game for people. Instead, everyone just asks for more and more of it so their class is “better.”
It’s not just the invulnerability.
It’s the fact their autoattacks and weaponskills hit significantly harder, hit significantly faster, their tratilines aren’t horrendous gimmicks, and their utilities are not weak.
If you think that they will nerf all classes one by one to create parity when they can’t even buff a simple one, you’re delusional.
If they just gave engineers or thieves and aura utility like Spotter or Assassin’s Presence that was strong enough (200 of a stat to a group), I bet you’d see less stacking of tempests and more class variety.
Same for Guardian, problem is Guardians got an aura that gives Toughness, and Toughness is a trash stat in a PvE where you can completely avoid most threats with the dodge button.
Scrappers could give an aura that gives 10% condi duration increase, and daredevils could give a 15% movement speed increase that stacks with swiftness.
Guardians could have an aura that increases the effectiveness of boon effects by 5% (so 5% more to prot value, might power gains, etc).
You would then see all classes represented.
This goes directly against what they want to achieve though and forces a super comp where you bring 1 of every “Aura Stat Trait” to coin a phrase. Which means that they then would have to design each encounter around a fixed comp to ensure all dps/mechanics could be met.
Instead of solving the problem that way they just need to design encounters that play to the strengths of each each class. IE a boss that has adds, but when the adds die the boss gets stronger somehow or reduces the kill timer (limits AoE’s, promotes thief) etc…
More creative encounter design is the best way to increase diversity, not that its in that bad a spot to begin with.
We already have meta comps, this changes nothing. I suspect this complaint derives from not wanting to change away from players who already committed to 3-4 tempests.
If you’re running a different comp, you’re already being subpar, so adding auras so some classes are represented isn’t changing anything.
Besides, I don’t buy the argument for one moment that encounters need to encourage some classes. That just means you’re gonna class stack differently for each boss, which is terrible.
It strikes me as what just happened to T4 fractals, where now you’re stacking the new optimal class for the encounter.
I don’t trust them with encounter design for one second as a surefire way to make sure all classes are represented and equally wanted.
There’s a big difference between a “meta comp”, versus needing to find one of every aura stat boost class. Not only does that effectively kill build diversity it leads to stagnant design encounter because you do have to design around the fact that every player will have an additional ball of stats. These words by the way were said on stream by Crystal herself at one point. I’ll see if i can find that stream just so you can view it.
Video here – https://youtu.be/1FUkGRxuxV0?t=22m
As far as not trusting them for designing encounters, i think they’re doing fine.
So fine that we’re stacking 3-4 tempests, sure.
This is being obtuse by now. There’s no build diversity when you can’t even have class diversity lol
If they just gave engineers or thieves and aura utility like Spotter or Assassin’s Presence that was strong enough (200 of a stat to a group), I bet you’d see less stacking of tempests and more class variety.
Same for Guardian, problem is Guardians got an aura that gives Toughness, and Toughness is a trash stat in a PvE where you can completely avoid most threats with the dodge button.
Scrappers could give an aura that gives 10% condi duration increase, and daredevils could give a 15% movement speed increase that stacks with swiftness.
Guardians could have an aura that increases the effectiveness of boon effects by 5% (so 5% more to prot value, might power gains, etc).
You would then see all classes represented.
This goes directly against what they want to achieve though and forces a super comp where you bring 1 of every “Aura Stat Trait” to coin a phrase. Which means that they then would have to design each encounter around a fixed comp to ensure all dps/mechanics could be met.
Instead of solving the problem that way they just need to design encounters that play to the strengths of each each class. IE a boss that has adds, but when the adds die the boss gets stronger somehow or reduces the kill timer (limits AoE’s, promotes thief) etc…
More creative encounter design is the best way to increase diversity, not that its in that bad a spot to begin with.
We already have meta comps, this changes nothing. I suspect this complaint derives from not wanting to change away from players who already committed to 3-4 tempests.
If you’re running a different comp, you’re already being subpar, so adding auras so some classes are represented isn’t changing anything.
Besides, I don’t buy the argument for one moment that encounters need to encourage some classes. That just means you’re gonna class stack differently for each boss, which is terrible.
It strikes me as what just happened to T4 fractals, where now you’re stacking the new optimal class for the encounter.
I don’t trust them with encounter design for one second as a surefire way to make sure all classes are represented and equally wanted.
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[Question] If matched against only power builds, is greatsword still considered to be “not viable”?
If yes, then the weapon set itself needs some love, if no, then it’s conditions in general that need some looking at.
I’m not partial to Anets style of balance via tweaking the amulet stats in PvP. That just ends up as bandaid balance in the vacuum of PvP while letting the problem run rampant in WvW. I understand that may be a much easier fix, but it does not help the health of the game in the long term.
Power necro is just a crappier warrior without the CC, worse survival against burst and CC, and far less mobility and damage.
Your greatsword won’t be hitting anything before you’re getting rooted/pinballed around.
Axe mainhand damage is terrible, it’s just people are too dumb and think the final number on a long channel means it’s good DPS.
Reaper Shroud autos tickle people, they actually are less DPS than greatsword autos, and greatsword autos are already bad.
How come knights instead of marauder+cavalier?
Now most of the time I die in a zerg it’s the godkitten epi bombs everywhere.
Condi aids are the worst.
Soul Eater needs help, too. I am thinking that something like “bleeds generate life force” and set the amount per stack small but significant when using a scepter build.
No more buffs to condi necro please. It already kittens on power necro enough as it is.
True, corruption Necromancer is Meta-necro in PvP and raids. Necromancer could use a buff that only improves condition spike damage but may tone down bleed stacking so it is not so lax versus mobs with low health.
Condition damage is lame in roaming – very lame.
So is power anyways.
Necromancer is a pathetic roaming class for obvious reasons, and more damage to condi is not gonna fix that.
I mean, I don’t see the point of a necro other than for boon corruption in pvp.
Power necro is just a warrior with slower animations, less damage/spike/cc, and crappier defenses.
Condi necro is just an epidemic bot, otherwise engineer is better for every other need.
They made this class have no cc, no teleports, crappy stunbreaks, no vigor, no stability outside death shroud.
For what? Chill? Thieves are immune to chill, and every other class cleanses it in spades.
If they just gave engineers or thieves and aura utility like Spotter or Assassin’s Presence that was strong enough (200 of a stat to a group), I bet you’d see less stacking of tempests and more class variety.
Same for Guardian, problem is Guardians got an aura that gives Toughness, and Toughness is a trash stat in a PvE where you can completely avoid most threats with the dodge button.
Scrappers could give an aura that gives 10% condi duration increase, and daredevils could give a 15% movement speed increase that stacks with swiftness.
Guardians could have an aura that increases the effectiveness of boon effects by 5% (so 5% more to prot value, might power gains, etc).
You would then see all classes represented.
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Thief and engineers are fine. Ele is just OP.
Ele is the only class with a meta weapon that also happens to be ranged and is capable of the strongest aoe in the game from range.
I mean, what other class are you going to be dedicating to the balls in Gorseval? Who can still DPS boss while waiting to jump to cannons in Sabetha?
Other classes are fine, it’s just ele that’s too strong.
I love the profession. I have a max level Ranger of each race and love playing them. But, I hate seeing a Ranger in any group I find myself in. Why? Because I can count on whenever using a hard hitting ability that depends on a target being there for it, the target will surely be removed by a Ranger. If there are multiple Rangers I can depend on them to successively move targets around the battle field. I might as well just auto-attack.
What about Point Blank Shot is so difficult to understand? It’s great when soloing and situationally in group play, but, generally, it should never be used in group play. Why do Rangers use it in their rotation. It’s something that’s annoying every time I play. I’d almost be willing to give it up personally because it seems it’s impossible for people to use properly and regularly has a detrimental effect on others. I guess it might be a good troll ability.
With ancient seed trait from druid traitline, point blank shot procs entangling roots on the target, which in turn guarantees a rapid fire plus whatever your group is tossing.
Please add some stunbreaks into all legends like Shiro. Hell, we could use a source of stability that’s more than 1 stack per dodge.
Playing WvW I can barely keep control of my character in a frontline.
It’s crazy Mallyx doesn’t have a single one.
And the energy costs on our legend utilities need to go way down.
We simply do not have enough active energy regen outside swapping legends to use more than 1-2 utilities per swap, it’s terrible.
Shiro right now is unusable. I use a single utility and I’m basically stuck autoattacking with the occassional energy for #2.
Staff is also a huge energy hog offender. Not only is the healing from the auto miserable at like 150 health per orb (for a low damage auto), but staff 2 has a cost to activate the first part and then an even larger cost for the chain (which is a conditional, so it shouldn’t even require extra energy).
Everything about the revenant staff is just getting you energy starved.
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Gravedigger is a joke when you Realize daredevil’s Vault does around the same damage, has a 3/4 cast, can be cast every 5 seconds in between their OP autoattacks (which far outDPS our massively slower ones while also being quicker and a projectile reflect).
Most importantly, Vault evades.
Gravedigger opens you for death. Virtually all the greatsword casts are slow and have huge aftercasts, which means you’re interrupting/getting interrupted a lot of the time.
Doesn’t help Shivers of Dread is absolute garbage. 2 sec chill on a 2 sec fear on a massive cd, what a joke of a minor trait.
Then look at Druid’s Natural Stride. 33% snare reduction, 33% increased movement speed when not affected by snares. Way better than the crappy adept we have.
At the very least they could make the blood traitline trait also give us 25% increased run speed with a greatsword equipped.
And RS1 needs buffing just as well, as does RS4’s power coefficients. In fact, all the RS skills’ power coefficients need buffing, I don’t get why a resource we build ends up being a DPS loss to camping greatsword.
I also don’t see the point of swapping decimate defenses with Reaper’s Onslaught, unless it’s to be paired with the Soul Eater buff.
So stick with your commander and do something productive for a change instead of worthless dueling that does nothing of value for the realm.
There are other options that are a big help to the realm.
Capping and keeping bloodlust often involves 1v1 or 1v2 fights and directly benefits the realm many times over.Running a havok squad of 3-6 people where I’ve found a Dire Mesmer quite successful.
We flip camps all the time and shut down supply while the main pin is pushing a T3 Keep. Or pull the enemy away by hitting another objective….etc.I worry this will quickly devolve off topic.
I know MANY people squirrel off in WvW and waste space, but the Blue pin is not the only place to be to help win the week.
Sure, but in my experience a lot of those thieves/mesmers/scrappers I see roaming are just doing it for the godmode 1v1 ego stroke and not because they’re planning to contribute to realm goals.
I’m just tired of class balance being ruined over QQ posts about losing to an OP 1v1 class while our mesmer/thieves/engineers/druids rot in uselessness in teamfights while everyone wants to kick you for a warrior/guard/rev/ele/necro.
lol no. Scepter is a terrible weapon among our many terrible weapons. It is also a condi weapon, not a power one.
Unfortunately as a mesmer our weapons are pretty much all atrocious on the DPS and utility front.
The only truly important weapon is the shield for alacrity (what you’re brought for besides quickness) and focus in case of reflects.
Otherwise the rest of your picks are garbage anyways, sword being the least smelly garbage of the bunch.
When I look at Blurred Frenzy doing 1/3 of the damage a Pistol Whip or Unrelenting assault does while Pistol Whip stuns and UA is a chasing teleport with 8 might stacks drives me crazy.
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Rev mobility in combat is great but the problem is actually escaping out of combat or when there are no mobs nearby like in EB.
7.) This one I agree too, we have very limited cleave access so maybe pet revamps or new pets could help with these.
Do we really want new pets as an option to these issues though? With the time and effort they spent nerfing both the Smokescale and Bristleback 3 times, they could have touched on core pets and at least gave them some QoL such as cleaving auto attacks and/or lower cooldowns on F2 skills.
Not downing what you stated on that point, as I do hope there are some pet revamps done in the future. It just urks me knowing we might sooner receive a new pet in the next expansion that will address maybe 1 issue rather than all pets being improved.
I totally agree with what you are saying. But let’s face it, I have no idea why Anet does not want to buff core pets (might be a time schedule/ too much work issue OR what I fear the most is this is an upper division problem that prevents devs from doing anything)
If you ask me, I would change a lot of the core pets’ f2s and make them more utility than damage AS LONG as they fix the hitboxes on the pets. One can only dream though.
Anet doesn’t buff core pets because the guy behind core ranger was Robert Hrouda (who was also dungeon lead), and when they let him go somebody else came in (Roy, revenant dev), and then after roy they swapped us Irenio aka healbot dev.
So they basically always abandon the project of a predecessor for their own new one, and old crap remains crap.
Welcome to Anet, where you get a new dev/dev team wanting to each do their own thing and there’s no continuity in their schizophrenic design approach to class balancing.
Now they don’t even bother to send devs into these forums unless it’s an expansion about to be released and sold.
Instead we get the PvP community rep guy. Who obviously won’t do much of a good job covering PvE concerns with the class.
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And, yes, I care about character animations. Maybe you don’t, but plenty of people do.
I don’t want to imagine 1/4-1/5 sec cast attacks with quickness up, it’s just dumb.
All of our animations… Actually all animations, not just ours – under quickness look unrealistic and dumb already. I still don’t see your point.
Let me guess…
… We never had problems with Maul being the most obvious burst-attack ranger had? And haven’t we ever had problems to hit it since it was so slow that every enemy just dodged it one-handed?Attack Speed is one of the main issues in the game. While every single class has everything instant and bursty, we have delay on every bloody ability in this game (not to mention that our only burst ability hits for less than auto-attack of other classes), forcing us into twice the effort for still less reward.
Less reaction time is a drastic QoL improvement. I can’t blame you for having priorities in cosmetics over game-play, but I and a lot of others would rather play an entertaining game than a game that looks nice.
Having both is a luxury that I don’t remember having in this game.P.S. I’m not saying other ideas are bad. I’m just saying reducing attack animations is a solution that solves a lot.
The problem is not with the animations. It’s the toolkit.
Warrior skills cast slower and have even more tells than ours. So do elementalists. Look at how obvious Burning Speed and Fire grab are, or Dragon’s Tooth.
The problem is:
1- They actually have the built in CC to land their skills. Our CC has huge cd’s compared to theirs, and I don’t understand why Hilt Bash isn’t a guaranteed stun like their shield charge. Warriors have plenty of access to roots, knockdowns, and stuns.
2- When their skills land, they actually hurt. Maul hits like a wet noodle EVEN if it lands. Their greatsword whirlwind hurts a lot besides 100b. So does Arcing Slice and Rush.
Virtually all our weapon skills outside Whirling Defense and Rapid Fire hit for nothing.
3- Warriors have the tools to wait out opponents’ cd’s to land their cc and burst. They have endure pain, another endure pain proc passively at low health, shield stance which is just a better form of Counterattack, a signet that passively heals for a metric ton, and their condi removal/immunity is miles better with zerker stance and cleansing ire.
Rangers have…..Signet of Stone, on a 20 sec longer cd than Endure pain, no stability on activation, and no passive trait proc at lower health. Our condi clear sucks.
4- Our sustained pressure sucks. Because our autoattacks suck and deal small numbers of damage, we can’t burst like a warrior autoing you with greatsword or thief or revenant. If a target survives our “burst”, they heal back up to full and we have no pressure to keep them from recovering.
5- We have no aoe worth a kitten . Warrior, ele have it in spades, allowing them to deal better with the likes of mesmers and necromancers, and being far more useful in group settings.
6- Warriors and eles can self buff without gimmicks like wasting your heal with Heal as One just to gain boons. 12 might stacks is super easy at the minimum to get with a warrior or ele without building gimmick builds that are kitten in other ways.
7- Melee pets outside drakes don’t cleave, unlike all other classes whose entirety of their melee attacks cleave. This makes our already bad AoE even worse.
If the pets could actually hit targets, and we had control over dog knockdowns and F2 skills were instant or 1/4 sec casts at most and usable while moving, we’d have a lot less trouble controlling opponents to hit them with our skills (who still need numbers buffs, especially greatsword).
It’s also a matter of all our pet skills and F2 skills having humongous cooldowns relative to what other classes have.
Snow leopard has a ridiculous 30 sec cd for a leap with a miserable 2 sec chill. All cat leaps should share the same 10 sec cd tiger does, and buff leopard chill to 3 seconds and make it also weaken the target.
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If you call winning at a game’s format objective useless, then the entire game is useless. Of course things change when you win the Mist War. Somebody gets kicked off the tier, you get a new match up, and you get tourney tokens.
I mean, I can’t really take you seriously when you say winning keeps and towers doesn’t change anything. That’s like saying scoring a goal in soccer doesn’t change anything, because you’d just rather run and not play the game how it’s meant to be played.
Nobody wants many mesmers in their group. Nobody wants druids. Nobody wants daredevils.
What they want is a metric ton of warriors, guardians, revenants, and eles with a smattering of necros.
It’s that simple. Stop pretending like this is the worst class ever, it’s far from it.
Classes like necro and ranger are far worse off than us.
Greatsword needs an all around numbers buff. So does Reaper Shroud #1 for a power build.
Power necro is bad because its DPS is bad.
A thief staff auto is doing double the DPS for half the cast times.
Gravedigger is just a damaging ability that doesn’t hit too much harder than a Daredevil’s Vault, but casts significantly slower and has no built in evade or leap.
Greatsword #5’s cd should be 12 seconds at most.
They need to allow signets to work in death shroud.
Replace Shivers of Dread, it’s utter garbage. Make it a 10% increased damage against chilled/crippled targets.
Shouts need revamps, they’re garbage in PvE.
Chilling Nova should do damage similar to Mug from Thieves.
Minions should scale off power/cindition damage, whichever stat is higher, with higher coefficients so our minion utilities are actually worthwhile DPS boosts instead of useless meatshields that do no damage whatsoever.
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Dire mesmers are more than WORTHLESS in WvW. Do you honestly think your garbage dueling/roaming builds accomplish anything in a format all about large groups of people taking keeps and towers?
WvW should NEVER be based on duelist/5v5 builds. We’re balancing for zerg play in this format, and mesmer AoE is utter garbage as is their illusion/shatter mechanic in any large scale engagement.
One of the reasons why WVW succeeds is that it offers a wider range of challenges and experiences compared to sPVP (sh1tPVP)/PVE. In my experience, dire mesmers, while crappy for the zvz clash, are great at harrassing, picking off stragglers and reinforcements, not to mention key skills like veils/portals.
back on topic: yes every class has utilities or traits that continue to suck in all 3 game modes and yes it’s pretty appalling for this still to be the case in an almost-4yo game.
e.g. Ele conjures are a utility group that have had loads and loads of negative feedback and good suggestions over the years, all of which has been studiously ignored by Anet.
Arguably, Rev is in the worst position, being the newest and therefore, least mature class. e.g. the whole Ventari legend and traitline are still very beta.
People can solo dungeons/fractals in some classes for some niche challenge they enjoy. That’s no reason to balance classes around their ability/efficiency in soloing dungeons.
WvW is about capturing objectives and preventing your enemies from doing the same. Similar to spvp, but on a much larger scale and time slot.
Condi mesmer is worse than thief builds, because while it is a supreme duelist, it is utter garbage at chasing.
Virtually all you need to do if a Dire mesmer jumps you is keep running and use your cleanse/heal.
Mesmer has virtually zero mobility to chase you on staff outside his blink, and staff clones can’t hit a moving target with their pathetic projectile speed.
You only die to a dire mesmer if you are an idiot and stay there dueling him.
Unlike a thief who is just as good for duels but can chase anyone down except another thief or a warrior with ease.
We can’t ask for 1v1 class balance, especially in a pvp format like WvW which has no 60% crit damage bonus cap (which spvp does, so in WvW I can bring a character with 220% crit damage bonus, which is ridiculous), allows broken stat combos, allows condi/CC duration and reduction food, and which doesn’t punish crappy stealth spam or invulnerability chains.
WvW’s main objective is the Mist War points. If you deviate from that, by all means have your fun but don’t come back and complain about class balance because you lost duels in a game format that’s nothing about duels.
Condi mesmer is among the 1v1 kings.
If you’re not another condi mesmer or a scrapper, forget about winning against them.
Same principle applies to D/P or Staff perma evade thieves, it’s pointless they won’t die if they don’t want to.
So stick with your commander and do something productive for a change instead of worthless dueling that does nothing of value for the realm.
Dire mesmers are more than WORTHLESS in WvW. Do you honestly think your garbage dueling/roaming builds accomplish anything in a format all about large groups of people taking keeps and towers?
WvW should NEVER be based on duelist/5v5 builds. We’re balancing for zerg play in this format, and mesmer AoE is utter garbage as is their illusion/shatter mechanic in any large scale engagement.
I would take my hammer revenant over any mesmer any day for a 20+ man blob taking territory from the enemy. Which is what wins you match-up’s. Not some stupid 1v1 pride.
I don’t think he’s talking about anything. He needs to go to bed and sleep the alcohol off.
A good condi mesmer is nightmarish to any thief. Power mesmer is at a disadvantage.
Portal , , , , , , 72 Recharge time , Duration: 60s , Range Threshold: 5,000
Shadow Trap , 45 Recharge time , Duration: 120s , Range Threshold: 10,000Season 2 – I became Diamond with Portals
http://img01.deviantart.net/14be/i/2016/099/c/0/gw001_by_superkoreanbella-d9yaolt.jpgSeason 3 – I became Legendary with Shadow Traps
http://img13.deviantart.net/dc78/i/2016/182/2/1/s3_legendary_5_by_superkoreanbella-da8cw2r.jpg
The idea is that portal earns the cooldown, limitations, and duration under the assumption that there are more people than you taking it.
Unfortunately, Portal like many other mesmer skills has been the casualty of their refusal to split skill balancing, so in spvp where you often use the portal just yourself, you ate the nerf that was aimed at reducing their potency in WvW.
Welcome to Mess Wars 2. Where either way you’ll get nerfed, because some format will take a crap on the other, usually PvP on PvE.
Because it’s a dumb way of buffing numbers that’s all around inferior. You proc confusion more. You proc retaliation more.
All for a roundabout way of buffing a weapon that only need % damage increases.
Your animation speed increase instead of % damage increase is a numbers buff with far more downsides.
And, yes, I care about character animations. Maybe you don’t, but plenty of people do.
I don’t want to imagine 1/4-1/5 sec cast attacks with quickness up, it’s just dumb.
You have confusion, don’t attack. You see retaliation, don’t attack. At this late in the game, those are not issues.
It’s also a decent way of buffing numbers. Even if cast speeds aren’t reduced, after-casts and contact points reductions as found on the sword and dagger tweaks on Thief weapons (or Ranger axe) helps tremendously.
GS could use a bit of both: a reduction in those times and increase of damage. Having both would be great, but in GS case, after-cast and contact times could use some tightening up. Hilt Bash & the actual Counterattack (the kick portion) could use a faster cast time.
Another option of course is to reduce cd, especially on Spike trap. The launch effect is not so powerful to make this trap needing a 45 seconds cd (untraited).
Doesnt pulse either. A random clone or AI can waste that 45 second CD.
I think that’s one of the good things about Spike Trap not pulsing: all the effects are front-loaded on its trigger, especially due to a lack of a combo field.
It could have been worse, launching an opponent on trigger and then lingering around for 3s, only inflicting 2 stacks of bleed per pulse with no combo field like Thief Caltrops. If anything, I want the 45-second cooldown justified and not lowered.
Harder hitting direct damage, a bit longer bleeding duration, and some immobilization thrown in the mix to act as a secondary snare against foes that already have stability. Would be excellent then.
Yeah, it’s not like in WvW people have perma retaliation against any decent frontline composed of 7-10 guardians.
Don’t attack, guys, just let them roll over you while you do 0 DPS. Great idea.
Don’t attack during confusion. Duh? Point is, the attack speed suggestion adds a special penalty to the ranger against retaliation and confusion that other classes don’t have.
Buff the numbers, and the aftercasts are not an issue.
It’s the same problem with necromancer greatsword attacks. The aftercasts would not be an issue if when you DO connect, the reward is proportionate to the time investment. Which it isn’t.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the cast times.
In closed beta, greatsword rangers were amazing melee. Because their numbers were good. Just like necromancers.
Then, both rangers and necromancers got annihilated with numbers nerfs and haven’t recovered ever since.
It’s like a worse form of revenant. Revenants started great numbers wise, and a train of nerfs has been eroding the class into near irrelevance in PvE as a result.
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Eles don’t need damage increases.
What they need is better base survival, nerf the traits that make bunkering too strong, and buff their ability to land burst.
Every godkitten ele skill has huge cast times and obvious telegraphs. That’s why scepter ele can’t land any burst besides air 2 and lightning strike from air attunement swap.
Fire Grab is a whopping 35 sec cd when it requires a target be burning, and it still hits for way less than an eviscerate or backstab that can be used every 10 seconds.
Air staff 2 takes forever to cast, staff ele is a sitting duck defensively, needs to be babysat.
The nerf to RtL was ridiculous and needs to be undone.
Ele’s have way too long cd’s to be a proper offensive roamer. Their burst is on too long a cd cycle, far harder to land, and takes more hits for the same total damage a thief or revenant can do.
But then again, thieves make every offensive roamer obsolete. They got best burst, best mobility, spammable evades on top of stealth, and the best stun breaker in the game that allows them to stunbreak twice, teleport twice, and cure a condition on a single utility skill.
QQQQQQQ, all I see here.
All classes have been in beta for a while.
Ranger pets don’t scale with ascended gear, don’t gain the 220% crit damage bonus the player does, does not benefit from food, does not benefit from potions, runes, or sigils. Ranger pets do not attack doors or objects, and cannot attack from walls or up to them. Ranger DPS builds are garbage.
Mesmer Cry of Frustration is pretty bad in most of the game, and they don’t have any worthwhile DPS builds either. They’re a buffbot gimmick class much like ranger and revenant are. Except of course revenant does 30k DPS and mesmer does 14k at best, and ranger 17k on a power build.
Ranger pets and mesmer clones die instantly in WvW, rendering their class mechanics null in organized group fights.
Necromancer signets don’t work in death shroud, and their death shroud makes regen and druid heals useless on them, harming them more than it helps while classes like warrior/ele/guardian can be immune to damage and still receive heals and not be used as pinballs.
Class balance in this game is a joke. Revenant is not the only victim.
You get virtually “balance” patches every 6 months, and it’s miserably small changes and many of those changes aren’t even the right ones or to the right skills/traits.
Don’t expect much from Anet and try to enjoy the game as best as you can.
The only thing they do consistently and frequently is release crap on the gem store.
Even if you reduced the casting time, you would have to buff greatsword to such a degree where the animations would be so quick, it’d look bad. Now apply perma quickness on raids, I don’t think that will work.
Because we all cared about the animation when they reduced Rapid Fire’s cast time from 5 seconds to 2,5.
And we all mentioned it at least once in the forums. [/s]No, this argument is not valid. No one cares about speed of the attack animation. If all GS skills got reduced cast time – it would be a great improvement. #5 would improve QoL by 10 million, #4 counter would be a massive QoL, #3 and #2 are kinda unimportant and #1 would be a much loved DPS increase.
I see no reason why reduced attack animations would be a problem.
Because it’s a dumb way of buffing numbers that’s all around inferior. You proc confusion more. You proc retaliation more.
All for a roundabout way of buffing a weapon that only need % damage increases.
Your animation speed increase instead of % damage increase is a numbers buff with far more downsides.
And, yes, I care about character animations. Maybe you don’t, but plenty of people do.
I don’t want to imagine 1/4-1/5 sec cast attacks with quickness up, it’s just dumb.
- Great Sword auto attack chain damage buffed by 20%
I suggest an alternative to this. Just like how the Reaper has slower GS attacks, since Ranger is viewed as a more agile fighter, increasing the attack speed of the auto attacks would fit more thematically.
It would increase the auto attack damage a different way, making the chain go from: ½s ½s ¾s to ¼s ¼s ½s. Naturally, the 1s evade from 1c would have to be reduced to ¾s, but the trade-off is accessing it faster due to shorter cast times in the chain.
Two-Handed Training could also use bump to the damage modifier from 5% to 10%
Even if you reduced the casting time, you would have to buff greatsword to such a degree where the animations would be so quick, it’d look bad. Now apply perma quickness on raids, I don’t think that will work.
And reaper greatsword is not an example you want to use.
It’s an atrocious weapon, slower than the others while all of the abilities despite being significantly slower also doing significantly less DPS than thief or tempest autoattacks.
2-handed training trait is also horrendous. 3 fury on a 10 sec icd is just pathetic, there should be no ICD. Warrior greatsword trait gives them the modifier AND like 12-13 might off 100b, which is far more powerful than fury.
Rangers need more practical ways of might stacking that don’t involve wasting your heal just to copy boons.
I’d rather the trait increase GS damage by 10% and crit damage by 10% on top of its cd reduction.
Greatsword should be our big damage weapon since mainhand sword has utility in the offhands, be they pulls or reflects or extra evades or aoe might/swiftness/fury.
The final chain of greatsword autoattack should also apply a 3 second cripple, and so should swoop (or swoop could root the target for 1 second if you hit them).
Maul needs a damage increase around 40% (it would still hit for way less than a Vault from thief or ele overload).
Hilt Bash needs to not root you and always be a stun. I don’t get why they’re obsessed on psotionals with the ranger, when those should be on thief who has way better mobility.
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Had to spend 1500 coins for 5×15 AR infusions and STILL come up short.
For level 100 I had to buy 3 accessories and one amulet with +7 AR, but without the toughness to get to 151 AR.
Just plain wrong.
Why would you want toughness in fractals?
I agree, retaliation is worthless on this skill.
I don’t even think movement on WD would be OP, because unlike all other reflects this one is tied to your character channeling your skill, in which time you are not doing any attack damage besides this one, so don’t think its DPS is huge.
People are just used to ranger pathetic damage numbers and think WD damage is big when it’s a somewhat weaker 100 Blades.
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I’d venture that axe #1 should have a bleed as well, and remove the might.
No thank you. I’d prefer to keep the might.
why? the damage from axe on a power build is abysmal (dmg coeff on #1 is 0.5, the second worst of any autoattack, even Ele air staff which also bounces to 3 targets is 0.66). might as well make axe a full condi weapon.
Some people are attached to their terrible gimmick builds they swear are great in WvW.
As somebody mentioned earlier, this is only the case because the current pve meta takes into account of really high quickness uptime from boonshare chronomancer.
With that said, you need to take this issue to the pve discussion or the chrono forums because most other professions are in the same state at the moment when it comes to meta pve rotation (raids, fractal, dungeon). Take DH rotation for example: camp hammer and spam 1.
In fact, you shouldn’t even try to justify thief mechanics and game play based on pve because pve in general is faceroll. In high level pvp settings, you will note that thief has probably the highest mechanical learning curve compared to other professions and requires pinpoint player interactions to be successful.
If you want to press other buttons other than 1 and feel rewarded in pve, I’d recommend engineer.
Only problem with that suggestion is nobody wants engineers in raids.
People already barely want daredevils in raids and they compete with ele on DPS but lack the group utility. Engineer is like 5k DPS behind daredevil and suffers from the same lack of worthwhile utility to a group.
And it won’t be the first time a PvP guy calls raids faceroll. I could say the same of playing a perma evade/stealth thief cheese build in WvW or grabbing a PU condi aids mesmer in PvP. Definition of faceroll.
Or I could be a MOBA elitist kitten and scoff at MMO PvP. None of them are useful positions.
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Just to make sure, can one change ascended gear into the new 4 stats prefixes with the mystic forge without having to craft it that way? Simply by using an exotic insignia/inscription? What is the freaking point of adding fulgurite and all the other garbage to the ascended recipes then? LOL
Yup, before I checked some months ago, I bought the Viper insignia and inscription ascended recipes for 1200 aurillium total.
Then I checked the mats list, and it’s outright outrageous.
Not only because of the fulgurite, but other way more expensive mats as well. They really put no thought into this.
voult is more dps becouse of trickery ini dps trait. u must use voult
Hmm? Don’t most people run Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes with Daredevil?
With trickery you gain a 15% modifier, at the cost of using a DPS loss skill vs. autoattack in between bounding dodge.
With Critical Strikes, you gain 5% crit, 7% increased crit damage, 196 precision>ferocity conversion without food/utility included, 10% increased crit damage against targets above 50% health, and 250 ferocity under fury. Adding 250+196 ferocity and converting it translates to 29.7% crit damage bonus.
So Critical Strikes gives you a total 5% crit, 36.7% increased crit damage at all times, and another 10% above 50% health for mobs.
Don’t think a 15% damage bonus will ever be replacing that on someone’s who’s essentially crit capped in a group setting.
So now we look at Deadly Arts. This alone in modifiers brings a permanent 10% against targets with a condition, and a 20% on targets below 50% health. Plus mug on steal.
If you run dagger/dagger in PvE instead of staff, you also gain 200 permanent power from Deadly Arts.
I don’t see how either of those can be replaced by Trickery in a PvE group setting.
Staff Auto attack only out dps’s vault spam if you have quickness, since vault is unaffected with it being an evade.
Yeah, but that’s pretty much every organized group setting where you’ll have close to perma quickness if not full uptime.
If anything, organized group content should require larger use of skills.
I think it’s incredibly boring that the class is reduced to autoattack and dodge every time bounding dodge buff comes off.
I should not feel penalized for using a high impact, initiative heavy damaging ability because an autoattack is overtuned, eclipsing other abilities. The damage should be shifted to initiative spenders.
It’s as if suddenly using CnD>Backstab in d/d setup was a DPS loss compared to just autoattack spam in between dodges and you only used CnD backstab if you wanted to gain stealth.
Resources and frequency of use should mean something when damage numbers are assigned to abilities.
Less frequent, more costly skills should be DPS increases.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
The only problem with buffing ranger dps in any fashion would be its effect on pvp. Since pvp determines the skills for pve, as Anet has lumped them both together now, the pvp community would not stand for rangers getting a dps increase imo. Condi warrior was kicking butt – gutted. Revenant hammer – neutered. The list goes on. So for now, I shall enjoy my Pew Pew in Open World content where no one cares what you are running.
You could make this argument about mesmers who have crappy sustained dps in PvE but high burst damage in PvP. However, rangers have kitten dps in both game modes and are much easier to shut down.
High burst in PvP eclipsed by thieves and revenants, who are also more mobile and survivable in their zerker specs.
Power shatter mesmers are pretty much extinct, and in WvW it’s mostly condi aids which by definition is not burst.
Mesmers are in the same DPS hole rangers are in.
And it’s because they’re pet classes and PvP people hate losing to pets, so the classes suffer.
That’s why I’d rather they buff ranger autoattacks and weaponskills rather than the pet, because if people get hit for 3k by a pet they’ll flood the forums in tears even though a daredevil just crit them before for 9k with a dodge.
If you have no necros or mesmers, run Glint/Mallyx. Yes, they steal boons, but avoiding a couple of 25 might hits with Mallyx strip is still valuable. Mallyx is also great for Mai Trin, you’ll be immune to condis and so will your group with the immense amount of resistance you’ll grant them.
If you have at least a mesmer or necro, run Jalis.
There’s no reason to run Shiro whatsoever because you can’t use Impossible Odds while upkeeping Facet of Nature, which you SHOULD have up.
Jalis will give you the option of stability, guaranteed bar breaks with the taunt, or Vengeful Hammers which is still a DPS boost and makes you take significantly less damage.
Jalis is also besides Mallyx the only legend that allows you to cope with conditions thanks to its heal.
Shiro has been utterly overnerfed since its inception. It’s now a very niche legend used for the superspeed when you need the extra movement as a gimmick in combat, or when you’re out soloing.
Numbers buff and bring our godkitten trapper feature back. Ranged traps for the ranger.
If the Rangers in Ascalonian Catacombs can flood me with spike traps from range, why can’t I?
Rangers are not built to be frontline fighters, so traps will remain useless outside the niche circumstance of waiting for a zerg to get to your location as you kite back instead of helping your team keep their offensive momentum.
Rangers need serious help in the aoe department, and traps could serve that purpose besides a healthy buff to barrage, poison spread, and mainhand axe auto.
Rangers also need a serious look at stun breakers and condi cleanses. What we have is junk, not only of significantly higher cooldowns, but inferior effects to what other classes have. Signet of Renewal stands our like a sore thumb, and Lightning Reflexes is basically an inferior Shadow Step or Blink.
There’s also no reason whatsoever why signet of stone is a whopping 80 sec cd when Endure Pain can last 6 seconds, and trigger twice for warriors with a lesser cd on top of their shield invulnerability.
Sharpening Stone is also an utter garbage utility. It needs to be changed. Make it so in addition to what it does, the next 5 abilities that crit, do so for 50% extra damage. It’ll probably still be weak in PvE.
But they gave all our preparations and stances to thieves…..while all we were left with were crummy pets and their crappy shouts.
Don’t make the gear, it’s a massive waste of gold.
Get the recipe for exotic insignias, and stat change your ascended gear into commander stats with the insignia and inscriptions.
You buy the insignia recipe with 50 crystalline ore.
DO NOT BUY ASCENDED RECIPES. Buy the exotic one, ascended insignias are a massive waste of gold not remotely worth it. Stat swapping ascended gear with exotic insignias is far more gold efficient.
Condi rangers are an inferior version of condi necro or engineer. They’re on the garbage heap with mesmers because condi ranger is limited to a single target with only Bonfire as cleave while both engineer and necromancer have massively higher aoe/cleave, and in the case of ranger the vast majority of his DPS comes from being in shotgun range of a target, unlike a necro or engineer who can deal with spread targets or do more efficient target switches.
The only reason people say condi ranger is strong, is because in comparison to the pitiful DPS of power builds it seems great since ranger conditions don’t pay a pet tax.
But in terms of damage delivery, ranger not only lags in single target, but it will never be a serious contender for DPS spots so long as it’s the class with the WORST AoE in the game. Yes, worse than even mesmer.
I don’t accept the reality of PvE where autoattacking is better than a spender in most circumstances. It should be corrected.
I don’t even find vault that great in WvW/PvP, it’s so obviously telegraphed it never hits anyone remotely competent.
This is crazy. What kind of terrible game design makes a free, spammable ability be better DPS than a spender which takes out half our initiative bar.
It’s not like utility is an excuse, since while Vault offers a wonky evade, the auto offers reflects.
This is terrible and has a really bad effect on the daredevil’s PvE rotation where you’re just autoattacking in between bounding dodges.
You need to shift out DPS from these autoattacks and back into initiative spenders across the weapon.
Autoattacks should never be more worthwhile than skills who cost resources or have cooldowns.
Both revenants and thieves are in this weird scenario where several of their spenders are either DPS neutral or DPS losses compared to spammable skills. This is not good game design.
This also has the side effect of degrading the skill cap differences in PvE. A skillful thief with proper initiative management was the sign of a good dagger/dagger thief over one who misused initiative and lost modifiers.
Now the skill difference between two thieves in PvE is who can land bounding dodges on a boss, as the other part of their rotation is just autoattacks.
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Don’t ever use minions on the Dredge Suit or Ice Ele final boss in the Underground Facility fractal. They will draw aggro from the boss and prevent you from moving him under the pots to debuff his armor.
In any place other than that, minions work.
Obviously, in any dungeon like Arah where you’re doing skips (which don’t happen in fractals) and want to position bosses carefully, do not use minions as they will keep you in combat (you run slower in combat) and probably ruin the positioning of mobs.
The only minions you should be using are your blood fiend (heal minion), Rise, the ones from your Death Magic trait that procs on mob death, and Lich elite skill #4.
Regular minions are trash in PvE, such as the bone, shadow fiends.
You will occassionally use Flesh golem elite in cases where you want a boss to stay still and aggroed onto him, like with Mai Trin in fractals.
It’s ironic that the only build that uses minions is condi necro and it’s mostly for the utility condi transfers and bleed triggers. In general, our minion utilities outside our blood fiend (which is our best sustained heal imo) are pretty trash. They don’t scale well with gear at all and do pitiful damage as a result.
(edited by Zenith.7301)