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Just wait, eventually the meta will evolve to 5 tank warriors per team running each of the banners with 1 token warrior using healing shouts and everyone will just meet in the middle spamming sword autos.
This. Also, from another post “hope you have quickness cause first team to the point wins”
To be honest 1 shot mechanics and stack to dps are prevalent in all areas of this game.
Build wars 2 a lot of your success will be determined by build. Also Hotjoin feels like getting mugged by rats errr Asura
Great posts on ranger issues. Agree 100% on possible solutions; would really like to at least see the low hanging fruit of build diversity through trait amalgamation and placement happen.
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Like a lot of pvp matchups in this game I find my success vs mm depends almost entirely on what proff im playing. Meditation guardian? likely a loss. PU Mesmer or thief? Likely a win (too many stealths/teleports for ai to deal with). Ranger? hard fight but some luck as trapper. There is a lot of rock paper scissor in this games pvp
well the pets certainly need a redesign. There are other builds that are fun to play but need greater flexibility in trait choices. Traps for example, could be viable if they reorganized a bit , condensing traits into 1 and moving it to mid tier. Power ranger would be closer to viable if signets always affected ranger and pet as well as some on demand condition removal. Hardly a redesign as far as those go. BM on the other hand is &*()d till they change pet ai. As far as sword, well some people, for whatever strange reason, seem to like it. Imo it dosent work well but I would certainly be satisfied with another melee option that was similar (without the leaps ofc).
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Changes are meh. LB auto gets little love on lesser ranges and that’s okay. But for the rest, nothing really appealing to me.
Predator Instinct may look good on paper but… Honestly, 10 second cripple on 30 sec cd isn’t that great choice, especially when you have Malicious Training in the same line. MT is far greater if you use spiders/dog because of godlike long immobilizes. 10 second cripple will be cleansed in 2-3 seconds and you’re left with nothing. 4 second cripple on 10 second cooldown may be really good, but in current state…meh.We still lack at core. No movement imparing effects quick cleanse, no active condition removal, no changes to make pets more tile and controlable, both bows are still meh in depth and viability.
Not really impressed
Close to 1000 posts and still, “Meh” is what we got
I am in the same boat as LB changes are cool to see but still meh. Ranger’s problem still stem from these major issue.
- Ranger has to trait 30 for condition removal and has little ways to remove conditions.
- Ranger has to trait 30 into most lines just to make Utilities worth putting on their skill bar.
- Pet attacks root them in place, making pet damage akin to a weapon sigil that procs 33% of the time.
- The “Master Archer” class is still lackluster at range in PvP because people gap close almost instantly and render the range builds useless.
- Pet F2 skills are qued behind a pets pathing AI it seems, either that or they are just plain buggy.
I do like the Unbound Spirits being moved and while I am happy Longbow got tweaked it’s still not where it needs to be.
Good Necro:D. What the poster above stated, agree 100%
yea, its maybe fair to say that trappers can be situationally good, but as stated in the posts above regarding warriors , its close to a guaranteed lose, don’t even get me started on necros and engineers lol
That has always been good vs an immobile npc/player (non necro that is). Eh that being said, you can condition overload quickly as a trapper, problems arise however, if the opponents cond clear is off cooldown , cause long cooldown on traps.
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i’d prefer to be pro-ish at 1 or 2 as well, however, ranger (my first and only 80 that wasn’t uplevell’d through glory) only has 1 build that I can pro ish on so wtf can I do except reroll. I have since discovered the pure trollyness possibilities of a pu Mesmer in hotjoin. Am now thinking to myself “why the hell was I working so much on underpowered proff” (since I stopped playing spirits).
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agree 100% Kyubi
Ranger has an awful lot of qol changes required.
Pet functionality: f2 and ability to hit moving target pls.
Traps: either consolidate the traits and move them to mid tier OR give every trap a second condition ala spike trap (bleed and immobilize) say poison and torment, flame and frost woohooo. Well ok flame and frost would be totally op, so maybe flame and cripple. Each trap would have both a damage and “trapping” component.
Sword working as intended I know but… just $%^&, would like to be able to at least dodge while auto attacking sheesh.
A poster above suggested empathic bond moved to mid tier, good idea, would also like to see the ability to control when the cleanse occurs.
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Sword leap and cripple is a neat idea that just dosent work well in practice . Yes it is possible to work with the mechanic I suppose, but to expect to switch weapons and manually attack with say the shortbow is a ridiculous expectation. As far as pvp goes when I see a sword attacking ranger, I usually think cool, no need to really time my cc abilities/ heavy damage , just wait for the leap lol. Heres an idea…guardians have been needing soft cc forever, give them the sword mechanic so they can laugh then cry, at least they have heavy armor. Melee rangers that cant reposition without going into contortions of weapon swapping/carpal tunnel syndrome manual attacks are downed, certainly in pvp anyway. Pve it may be easier to adjust , but again, why go to the ridiculous trouble when I could play another class at least as effectively and with far greater ease?
toughness affecting condition damage would solve a lot of problems I have with the way this game plays out atm. Consider it, full glass power spec’s would have a good reason to start running toughness while condition damage would be toned down across the board . So 2 problems(extreme physical and cond burst) solved with 1 solution. Simple and would be effective no?
well, im on a lot if ignore lists soo
Yea but thieves do the glassy thing better than any other class atm. It is essentially thieves that make other gc proff’s non viable (outside of aoe cond spam anyway >.<). Invisibility with high burst wins when a battle is over in 3 sec’s.
yea it sucks in pvp too. rooting essentially prevents you from moving to avoid damage ie:can no longer strafe behind an opponent etc.
personally I cant stand to play bm anymore. Cats, the strongest dps pet, easily miss 30% of their attacks on a moving target. If their chilled/immob/crippled you can forget about them doing any damage and of course the lag on f2. My favorite ranger play style is traps, unfortunately, outside of a couple choke points and surprise attacks, they suck. The cooldown on spike trap is 15 or so seconds? When I play a condition warrior im able to get close to 50 stacks of bleeds in that timeframe; while necros and engineers will apply EVERY SINGLE CONDITION in the game probably twice over in the same time frame, its a joke. Eh /shrug rangers as a proff need some work, hopefully next balance patch will see some of the changes they need
k except im bored
BM was nerfed (pets, now energy) other proff’s buffed, so that build has gone from strong 1v1 to poor. I agree, rangers need an active condition cleanse and some burst potential outside of a long channel in order for power to be viable. Spirits, yea with the elite its top tier still, without it, mid tier imo. Rangers need some love:D
haters going to hate?
I have sympathies with the op, thieves can still essentially 1 shot, even on tanky proff’s (happened to my Mesmer with 1.9k toughness) Kind of a 1 trick pony now though, I think anyway as I don’t play a thief. The same character spent most of the rest of the match dead as it was pure glass and died to incidental aoe lol ( I spectated it to see what was up).
eh, no ,
as JC pointed out pu mesmers have more condition sustain than a ranger can deal with( given the fact that pu is close to impossible to pin down for a burst). So if you can force them off a point or get a neutralize by forcing their invis that’s a win.
PU mesmers are ridiculous. When im on mine I fully expect to not die and to take down any class 1v1. Its the 1 prof and build that will take me from hot join to hot join without dying. Ridiculous and op. That being said, if I have to fight 1 when im on the ranger I try to kill the clones when im further than 260 yrds( I think) from them, that way the conditions wont hit you when they die. It kinda helps to go bm as well, the pet will auto retarget the actual Mesmer as long as its not in stealth. To be honest unless im on my Mesmer I tend to just leave, which against a pu build you can do at least. Sucky but so is the build lol.
Giving aoe’s a form of diminishing returns is interesting. My concern with otherwise lowering the power of conditions is the fact that a power build can kill almost any class in under 4 seconds. If they toned down conditions that would be great, but they would also have to lower power damage or we would be right back to before the dhummfire buff ie:useless cond classes. Honestly I don’t see this happening, it seems to be part of the games design vision for it be reaction/dps based (viewed as more interesting to watch?). But lets face it, stack and dps is the motto in all areas of play.
My first question/test when playing a new build is whether or not it can survive a thief. Still, 7-8k backstabs, if not the norm, occur often enough to be annoying; couple that with 8k worth of noobseeker (my guardian,not pure glass, but in that direction ate that from 1 thief, 40% health to insta downed) and you have a class that can only be balanced cause….game mode? At least that’s the argument, I don’t buy it honestly. They could make a thief evaporate if stepping into an ele’s healing breeze and the class still woudn’t be balanced.
I would also add that lots of people don’t always play 1v1 classes in hotjoin or even the strongest build available, every game there are ele’s for example; a class rarely seen in other forms of pvp. So some of the attitude you’re getting may stem from people playing underpowered prof’s being forced into a 1v1/ hardcountered, a situation no one likes, but given some room in 8v8 as zerging covers up the weaknesses of these prof’s
Hotjoin is kind of a strange beast. People get used to zerging and feel some sense of satisfaction and mastery when they win, even if they outnumber their opponents. Therefore, losing a 1v1 can be quite deflating; its the sudden realization that maybe im not as good as I thought and the zerg was carrying me (as opposed to good team play). This is unfortunate, as losing a 1v1 in hotjoin is one of the few real opportunities to actually improve on a class.
Another possibility is the format itself. 8v8 is zergy and can be really frustrating to play , despite it being the expected forum for new players. I would also add that people invest quite a bit of time into learning a profession and feel some sense of attachment to it, so being defeated by a profession seen as easymode is frustrating in itself. No one likes being hardcountered (though I think this happens less often than claimed)
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spirit ranger=/ minions. The only op thing about s.rangers is the elite rez.
kill elite? It really helps to have sword/ dagger for this encounter, minions shoudn’t be able to touch you while you whittle down the zoo, at least the elite. Other classes can kite the ai, its a pretty bad build in most cases honestly. The same ranger hardcounter counters these builds too ie: warriors
I actually play a trap Ranger as well and usually I bail when faced with cond mesmers:D. There is a range at which its safe to kill the clones, not sure if 600 is far enough though. Worth testing, still would be difficult without dps from traps. A high dps pet does help as well. My cat has killed a few while I bounced around with sword ^-^
Its usually 20/20/30 but there are variations. Its a kitteny build to fight honestly, sustained damage is ok, survivability is high. I generally don’t lose to melee when I play mine, however the trick to beating them is to not kill the clones. Impossible if you have any cleave on your weapon. Clones produce the conditions, without clone death, dps goes from ok sustained to poor. The classes that have given me the most trouble are, believe it or not, power rangers. They have no cleave:D. And as other posters have pointed out condition overload (usually engineers, for some reason I can handle necro’s more often than not)
Middle ground should be the aim. Part of the reason I like playing a dps guardian is that i can fill out 2 trait lines, toughness and conditions, for a hard hitting yet survivable balance. Granted I haven’t been playing for that long, but this doesn’t seem possible on a lot the other toons I play. Its been said before, but bears repeating : extremes of burst or survivability both suck to play against. Im cautiously optimistic though, specs like the sword and dagger thief for example, while it needs toning down, seems like a good direction since it has decent damage and sustain. While other classes seem to have too much of both see Mesmers and BM regen rangers. Frankly Im also a little worried, coming from WoW pvp where cc is a mile long and everywhere. It got to that state through trying to balance out abilities by always creating new ones. The parallel I see in this game is the boon hate mechanic designed to balance out sometimes op boons. So whats next? Balance for the toons that cant abuse boons by throwing more abilities on to their abilities/weapons? Boon hate hate lol. Simpler is better i think, if boons are overpowered for some specs it might be wiser to tone down boon access and balance the other professions accordingly.
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As it stands there is no downside or risk to stealthing. Thieves can trait for health / ini regen while stealthed; they can get 100% crit chance/ condition removal in stealth and there is no way to interrupt the mechanic aside from running or maybe stun if you have access to that skill(they can also have +50% movement speed in stealth). Its too much; there is no downside. At least classes like the rogue in wow would be revealed if hit, the thief needs something similar in this game, a chance to waste the initiative it cost to stealth in the first place instead of mindless stealth spam, some sort of risk reward.
Mesmers are indefensible in the state they are in. To those of you that are still trying to , spent a bit of time playing a different class; this may help to improve your sense of fair play.
+1 TheMighty, I am amazed that you had to argue as hard as you did but impressed that you did. Shows that someone at least cares about the state of the game:D
I agree, Cast bars would work wonders in this game. Wanting immersive gameplay is understandable, however as a poster above me pointed out, you have character types/ color coordination that make spotting a particular skill difficult to begin with. Add to that the clutter of a large fight and it becomes extremely difficult. This is part of the reason why classes with access to perma vigor/evasion/untargeting do so much better in spvp compared to the say a warrior or necro. Those that can spam evade have a better chance of avoiding that burst skill. Nor do I think the depth of game play would be lowered, as you would still need to learn what to avoid, when to use stunbreaks etc…
Its just with castbars, the whole process would be smoother, so that instead of building a class with perma evade, we could focus on different aspects of a profession and truly use our evades skillfully.
True, but at least a ranger can be locked down
I can pretty much count on having at least 1 mesmer and 1 thief per team per game, usually more. It woudn’t bother me except for the fact that these 2 classes have both the most frustrating mechanics to fight against and arguably the highest burst. Hence hotjoins = killing pets or losing targeting , gets old.