Runes of Lyssa. More crit/crit damage + huge buffs on elite usage.
Players should be rewarded for every action that causes their team to win the game. Point defense is a huge part of conquest gameplay, and it’s largely ignored in 8v8 because there’s no point incentive to do it. This change is just common sense.
At the moment, there’s no underpowered profession. Mesmers, thieves, and necros weren’t utilized much during the beta, but now two of those three are on almost every team.
That’s because mesmers and thieves received huge buffs two weeks before release. People didn’t just slowly learn to play those classes. They weren’t played much before because they sucked, and they’re played constantly now because they’re amazing.
As for necro, they didn’t receive significant changes before release, and coincidentally the masses haven’t magically learned to love them like they have mesmers and thieves. Odd, that.
- Reduce Arcane Barrage and Arcane Blast nerfs from beta. Their cooldowns are so long and their damage so low that they’re completely worthless.
- Move Cleansing Water from tier 3 to tier 2 Water.
- Rework downed state 2 to be an interrupt.
That’s all the class needs to be on par in tPvP.
People should be able to come and go as they please. ANet should just turn off autobalancing as soon as one team reaches 400 points. Also, an individual player that volunteers to switch teams when they’re unbalanced should receive a glory bonus as incentive.
Agree that Portal -> Treb Repair is OP. And Pistol Whip’s stun should probably be changed to a cripple or a daze. Everything else on that list is an L2P issue.
As for beating Rangers, because most Rangers don’t have much AoE, it’s very difficult for them to kill phantasms more quickly than you can recast them, while at the same time doing any meaningful damage to you. Just spam phantasms and use line of sight and defensive cooldowns to keep the Ranger from focusing you and you should completely wreck him.
(edited by mouse.1689)
Based on their PvP performance in general.
For me, it would be like this:
1. Thief
2. Guardian
3. Mesmer
4. Warrior
5. Engineer
6. Ranger
7. Necromancer
9. Elementalist
Swap Mesmer and Thief and you have a perfect list, assuming we’re talking about 5v5 sPvP.
If you want to be able to do big melee damage without having to micromanage a pet, why aren’t you playing a Warrior?
Hide in Plain Sight doesn’t work with immobilizes, does it?
Immobilize is absent from the tooltip.
You’re correct. I listed it as an available tool for surviving cc/burst combos from Warriors and Thieves because it’s triggered by Bull’s Charge, Paralyzing Venom, Pistol Whip, etc.
Just to be clear, I totally agree that Ranger needs reliable condition removal. I gave 3 examples of changes that could be made to achieve this. There’s no need to argue that point further, because no one is disagreeing.
On a different note, glass cannon specs are awful in competitive play. Every class, even the “op” ones, take utilities and traits that offer them greater survivability if they’re serious about tournament play.
I couldn’t care less what’s overpowered in hotjoin 8v8, because it’s an unbalanced cluster**** of a mess and it always will be, so long as the game is balanced around 5v5 (which it should be.)
In summation: we agree that condi removal needs to be more reliable for Rangers. We do not agree that taking multiple survivability traits and talents is stupid, boring, or unfair — it’s basic common sense to anyone who’s interested in competitive tournament pvp.
I didn’t say “dodge.” I said “dodge, and if that fails, here’s 4 other things that will keep you alive.”
If you’re not willing to spec for survivability, don’t be surprised when you don’t survive.
To reiterate: I agree that Ranger condi removal needs to be more reliable, but you’re wrong if you think you don’t have the tools to survive cc/burst combos, even in group fights.
auhfel.4129I believe Elementalists can easily surpass thieve’s in Mobility.. if they set it up right. Ride the Lightning is a ridiculous one itself, and they have more than a few speed boosts and godly condition removal.
Infiltrator’s Arrow >>> Ride the Lightning with regards to roaming mobility. And both classes have high uptime on swiftness if they spec for it.
While I totally agree with the sentiment, in that Rangers definitely need more reliable condition removal, I suggest the following if you’re having trouble dealing with burst damage from thieves and warriors:
Take the Shared Anguish and Hide in Plain Sight traits in Wilderness Survival, take Protect Me, and take a Wolf Pet. This provides several tiers of protection against cc/burst combos.
The two traits make it difficult to land cc on you at all. If they DO land it, you can redirect all damage to your pet for 6 seconds, and if that’s on cooldown, you can use AoE fear right when you get immobilized to prevent the 100 blades/HS/Pistol Whip spam.
That’s all assuming you weren’t able to dodge the immobilize in the first place, which is what you should be aiming to do; you can’t dodge while immobilized, but you can dodge the immobilize if you’re able to predict it, which often isn’t that hard.
Durzlla.6295As for the on demand condition removal we have spirit of nature (it removes ALL your conditions), shake it off on the bear, activating the signet, evasive purity, and healing spring drops 1 condition on cast an an additional condition every second or so…
To be fair, he’s right that our condi removal is pretty awful in comparison to other classes. Even the “on demand” abilities we have are pretty unreliable. I recommend the following changes:
- Move Empathic Bond to tier 1 Wilderness Survival. It’s not even remotely Tier 3 quality.
- Make pet F2 abilities override any other abilities being cast by the pet, castable while moving, and remove cast time from Bear’s F2 ability.
- Remove pet range requirement from Signet of Renewal’s active ability.
These are mostly just quality of life changes which would help bring Ranger condi removal to a level comparable with other professions.
Mine reset constantly as well. Not all of them, but more than 2/3 of them. Every time I leave and re-enter the Mists.
Crit is the way to go. It does similar damage to condi builds without requiring position or being succeptible to condi removal.
Doesn’t work if your pet is dead or isn’t in range.
Immobilize is a condition. The Signet removes all conditions. 2 + 2 = ?
The problem with Greatsword is that its damage is completely awful. As a secondary weapon, its role is basically ONLY as an escape measure using Swoop. It’s a nice measure to have, but I don’t think it’s a viable alternative to the utility you get from Axe/Warhorn. Warhorn 5 is incredibly important for mobility as a roamer and as a group buff in skirmishes.
Jae – I’m curious why you think condition damage is the only viable route. I played a condi build for awhile and then just switched to a straight up power build (still using SB + Axe/Warhorn.) I didn’t change my traits much, just swapped out amulet/sigils/runes. I find I do similar damage, without having to be reliant on positioning, and without getting wrecked by enemy condi removal.
Honestly, outside of a trap build, I think stacking condition damage is inferior to a straight power/crit build.
Basicaly Ele Necro and Rangers
In that order. Ranger could definitely use some love, but Ele’s need it more. Necros too. I’d add Engineer to that list as well, right after Ranger.
First and foremost, they need to make a concerted effort to fix the majority of bugs for every class, because that’s going to affect overall balance a LOT. Right now, every class has 20+ bugs that significantly impact their gameplay. Once those are squared away, further balance should be priority.
Empathic Bond is the ONLY defense we have against immobilize and that’s a joke.
We also have Signet of Renewal passive, Signet of Renewal active, and Bear F2. You could also do what I do and just run Protect Me instead of Lightning Reflexes. That way you don’t die no matter what kind of cc is being used on you.
Don’t get me wrong – I agree that Ranger has crappy condition removal. I’m just pointing out that we have more options than you suggest.
At the very least, I think Empathic Bond should be moved to tier 1. Guardians have an identical trait, except it doesn’t require a pet and it’s tier 1 instead of tier 3. Empathic Bond isn’t even remotely powerful enough to warrant tier 3 status.
I think what he means is that he wishes there were more variety in viable builds for each class. Right now, most classes only have one, maybe two. The devs have stated that they wanted every class to have at least one viable build at launch, but their ultimate goal is for every weapon and trait line to be a viable choice. They just need time to do it.
In my opinion:
- Fix movement bug with Ride the Lightning.
- Slightly widen cone on Fire Grab.
- Revert or reduce damage/cooldown nerfs to Arcane utilities, to provide a bit more on demand burst damage. Most Ele damage abilities are skillshots, which mean they have to work very hard or get very lucky to do most of their damage against competent players. The Arcane utilities mitigate this somewhat.
- Move Cleansing Water trait to tier 2 Water. Ele condi removal sucks right now, and this would be a big step in the right direction.
For starters:
- Make Mesmer portals unusable while carrying an item. Being able to portal to the treb with a repair kit makes Mesmer absolutely mandatory in tournament play.
- Move a portion of the Mesmer’s damage from Phantasms to the Mesmer himself. The main thing making Mesmer such an incredibly solid 1v1 class is that it can pump out Phantasms, then let them do the heavy lifting as far as damage is concerned. If you choose to focus down the Phantasms, the Mesmer can simply reapply them. If you focus the Mesmer, he can simply reset the fight using Stealth, Teleport, etc., while his Phantasms wreck you. By moving some of the damage to the Mesmer himself it a) puts more dps responsibility on the player rather than on AI, and b) gives opposing players more opportunity to actually engage the Mesmer.
- Either remove the .5 second stun from Pistol Whip or change it to a short duration cripple.
- Address Retaliation uptime on Guardians. Traited properly, they can achieve 100% uptime on it.
Those changes would be a step in the right direction, imo.
(edited by mouse.1689)
Sprawl.3891i dunno i thoroughly enjoy playing ranger on tournies and have had no probs helping the team, could another class fill the roll better? probably but who cares when 90% of games are wins? When they add all of the tourny pvp extras like rankings, paid tournaments etc then ill worry about complaining about balance.
I’d rather they do as much as they could to balance classes before rankings and paid tournaments.
I’d like to point out that during the beta that mesmer was considered one of the weakest classes in the game.
Barely anything changed in terms on balance, but now they’re considered one of the strongest.
This is false. Mesmers and Thieves received a major balance pass 3 weeks before release. Before that pass, they were two of the weaker classes in the game (Mesmer was by far the weakest.) After that pass, they were two of the strongest classes in the game.
Incidentally, during that same balancing weekend, Elementalist, which was one of the better classes in the game, received several nerfs, and is now one of the worst classes in sPvP.
Simply put: there was a hurried balancing pass shortly before release, and the changes made had no time to be thoroughly tested before release. Mesmers and Thieves were overbuffed, Elementalists were overnerfed.
The balance problems facing the game right now aren’t insurmountable and don’t require major overhauls of anything. These problems are VERY easy to fix. They require minor tweaks to numbers and traits. Balance is actually much closer than people seem to think.
Saying guardians are the best at point defense, thieves are best at roaming, and mesmers are best at 1v1 is really ridiculous. I couldnt find a more false statement on this forum if i tried. Pvp depends on skill. In short, a skilled roamer/pt defender/1v1er is better than an unskilled one, classes make no difference.
Cool. You should totally hop on your Elementalist and duel me.
We`ve went from warrior is OP.
To warrior and Thief are OP.
To thief is OP.
To thief and mesmer and OP.
To mesmer is OP.
To mesmer and guardian are OP.Without them really changing anything.
You’re missing the context.
For players whose only experience with sPvP is hotjoin 8v8, Warriors and Thieves seem overpowered. This is because they don’t have the experience yet to understand how to counter Quickness + Hundred Blades and/or Pistol Whip/Hearseeker spam. Getting blown up in 2 seconds certainly feels overpowered. Play the game for a week or so and you quickly come to realize that these abilities are counterable if you know what you look for.
For players who play organized tPvP, on the other hand, Thieves, Guardians and Mesmers seem OP because they’re objectively better at their respective roles than every other class in the game. It’s not even that they’re OP necessarily, so much as that all other classes are underpowered in relation to them.
No class is better at 1v1 or treb support than Mesmer. No class is better at group utility and point defense than Guardian. No class is better at roaming than Thief. If you opt to bring another class instead of one of these 3 right now, you are nerfing your team. It’s that simple.
For a game that wants to be a competitive eSport, this is a serious problem which needs to be addressed. It’s not whining or an L2P issue, it’s simply recognizing that certain classes are objectively better than others, and that further balancing is required to remedy the issue.
Shortbow: Sigil of Air
Axe: Sigil of Air
Warhorn: Sigil of Leeching
They’ll definitely add ranked team 5v5. I’m not sure what the point of ranked solo 5v5 would be.
Oh god, 10v10 would be awful
So glad they didn’t do that.But yeah, I do find 8v8 is still too much.
For the design, it should be one global number and I feel 5v5 works the best.
I suspect the majority of players agree with you. I know I do. But the devs are VERY adamant on this subject. If anything, they’ll increase the number of players in hotjoin games. If they do, I hope they have the sense to create maps specifically to accommodate that style of play.
That’s a nice theory, but it’s wrong. The reason that hotjoins are 8v8 is because the devs genuinely believe that 8v8 is more appealing to casual players. The idea goes that in games with more players, individual contribution is less important to the outcome of the game, so newer/more casual players can make more mistakes and still do okay.
The problem with this theory, of course, is that the 8v8 games are happening on maps which were very clearly designed for 5v5. So you end up with a zergfest where the winning team steamrolls the losing team, and the casual players are dying so quickly they have no idea what they did wrong, get frustrated, and leave.
The concept of 8v8 or even 10v10 as a casual format is fine, but if you don’t create new maps to accommodate the larger teams, all you’re going to get is a bunch of frustrated players.
Mesmer is leaps and bounds better than Ele in tPvP right now. Portal alone makes them indispensable on Kyhlo, where they can instantly teleport from the repair kit hut to the treb. They’re also the best 1v1 class in the game.
As unhappy as you may be, all of this arm waving and threats of going to play MoP don’t mean a thing. It’s not like you’re cancelling your subscription. If you’re really that unhappy, go play MoP for a couple months and come back once they’ve implemented the features you want. It’s not like it will cost you anything to do it.
It’s not bugged. Stun breakers don’t break immobilize by default. Roll for Initiative specifically says it breaks immobilize.
As soon as you can explain why you’ve arbitrarily chosen release day as the day where “everything is pretty much balanced and we just need time to adjust”, maybe people will be receptive to your argument.
Three weeks before launch, Mesmers were the weakest class in the game, and Thieves were pretty bad too. Two weeks later, those classes are head and shoulders above other classes in the game.
Sorry, but this isn’t a “wait and see” scenario. They overbuffed those classes to the point where others are strictly worse in their respective roles.
If you’re actually interested in “the competitive nature” of the game, then you should be in favor of continuing, reasonable balance changes until all classes are more or less on equal footing.
Wolfe.3097street fighter 4, when the new chars came out (forget ther name, two kids) everyone cried OP, everyone played them, tourneys were filled with them. did they nerf them? no, few months went by, counters were found, tricks were learned, they were overcome, diversity was restored. obviously im not saying the game is perfectly balanced, but the company has a better concept of balance this most it seems, many things work themselves out even when people “know its obviously overpowered or underpowered” as you say.
Here’s the thing. They were making major balance changes to classes less than a week before release, which is very clearly not enough time to have thoroughly tested them. Among those changes:
Elementalists received several nerfs. Mesmers and Thieves received several buffs.
Now, a few weeks after release, it’s widely agreed that Elementalist is one of the weakest classes in the game, where Thief and Mesmer are considered two of the strongest. This isn’t coincidence; these classes were simply overbuffed/nerfed.
It’s just that simple. They released the game in the middle of making balance changes. The notion that they shouldn’t continue to make those balance changes in order to finish the job is outright silly.
Now is the best time to make further tweaks, well before they implement paid tournaments and a ranking system, where balance will be far more relevant.
I’d say Ranger’s strength over Warrior is its ability to do damage from range, which translates to higher survivability in endgame fights. Also, Ranger’s ranged options are more versatile than Warrior in terms of keep defense.
Generally though, Warrior does do more damage and has more group utility.
People observing the obvious aren’t crying – they’re pointing out what every competitive player already knows: 3 classes are head and shoulders above the rest at their respective roles.
Without balance tweaks, this isn’t going to change. You don’t need to let the meta evolve; these classes are very clearly better than the alternatives.
That doesn’t mean those classes need nerfs, necessarily (although I’d argue that it’s a no-brainer that Mesmer portal needs to be unusable while carrying a repair kit), but rather that other classes need to be brought to the same level.
After the nerfs right before launch, Ele is the weakest class in the game in sPvP. It’s not impossible to do well with them, but you have to work ten times harder than you would with almost any other class for the same results.
They should revert or severely reduce the nerfs to the Arcane utilities, and move Cleansing Water to tier 2 instead of tier 3 Water. Ele would be in a much better situation with those simple changes.
The truth of the matter is that the devs focused on getting one truly viable spec for every class out the door for launch. They know that a lot of the trait lines and weapons for all classes need further balancing to be viable. The limitation you’re experience is not with Ranger only. In fact it’s much worse with some other classes. Devs are aware of the problem and will address it in time.
a weak class complaining about more powerful classes
ive seen nothing but “my class sucks, x y and z is OP NERF”
tiz sad really.
Nothing he said about class balance is untrue (except Warriors’ downed state being op, imo). It doesn’t have to do with the class he’s playing, either. Mesmer, Thief, and Guardian currently fulfill their respective roles better than any other classes in the game.
No class is better than Thief at roaming. No class is better at 1v1 and trebuchet defense than Mesmer. No class is better at group support and point defense than Guardian. There’s a reason that every competitive 5v5 team runs at least one of each of these classes. That’s obviously a problem.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that those classes need to be nerfed, it just means that other classes need to be equally desirable in a competitive environment. That might mean buffs for them, nerfs for the others, or a combination of the two.
Yeah, I’d really like to see a damage meter, even if it’s only personally visible. It’s very hard to accurately judge a damage build’s effectiveness without a meter or a detailed combat log. Hell, give me a target dummy with 100k health and I’ll use a stopwatch. Anything. Please.
There’s a lot of “pop all cooldowns > go for the kill” builds. And that’s a major problem.
Those builds are garbage in 5v5 tPvP. They just don’t work against players working as a team and protecting teammates when they get focused. They also explode when people focus them.
I’m just curious – you’re a competitive PvPer; are you playing 5v5 with an organized team? Because hotjoin 8v8 is a clusterkitten without any semblance of balance at all. If you’re judging the game’s merits on that, then your rage is fully understandable, but also misplaced.
I think everything you said is true, but that’s basically what the game was designed around. It’s really not very difficult to be good at duelling in this game. With the limited number of abilities, there’s really only so much you can do at any given time.
The thing that’s going to set you apart as a player and as a team is knowing how every other class works at an intimate level, and knowing what abilities to use at what times to counter them. The nice thing is that the game is set up in a way that you can attain that knowledge very easily; spend a day or two playing every class in sPvP and you’ll have the foundational knowledge you need to do well.
I think just tossing an arena style gameplay mode into GW2 would make for a really crappy gaming experience. The classes and their abilities aren’t designed for it nor are they balanced around it. They could balance around it, but that would dramatically affect balance in objective based gameplay.
The bottom line is that the game was designed for and is balanced around objective based team play. This is not objectively a good nor bad thing. Some players will like it, some players won’t. The former will stick around, the latter will probably go back to WoW arena.
Greatsword abilities are fantastic, but the damage is too low. It needs to do similar sustained damage than Shortbow to even be worth considering. And even then, Shortbow specced for Piercing Arrows is probably going to be better.
Ranger-Druid the strongest 1v1 profession hands down Shhh.... don't tell ArenaNet : )
in Ranger
Posted by: mouse.1689
Warjin.8942Troll Unguent if I’m solo in WvW, that Heal over time is nasty with 1200+ healing, also with the trait Nature’s Bounty giving all my (Hots) a 33% up time I have found that my (Hots) stay up 100% of the time
Just a heads up, Nature’s Bounty doesn’t affect Troll Unguent. Despite what the tooltip on Unguent says, check your buffs when you cast it. It doesn’t put the regeneration boon on you, and that’s what Nature’s Bounty affects.
Nature’s Bounty does affect the regeneration on Healing Spring, though. I like using Dwayna Runes for builds like this. Less toughness than Guardian Runes, but you get a lot more regeneration, which makes Nature’s Bounty that much more effective.
Spirits got nerfed hard right before release. With their low survivability, smart players just single target them down. It’s just not a strong build at all right now.