The best content is stuff scaled for 1-5 players. Updates with stuff like SAB, that zephyr sanctum crystal collection jump puzzle, queens gauntlet challenges, etc are 100% better than updates that focus entirely on zerging.
The landspeed alone wouldn’t be too bad, but the issue is compounded when healing signet is taken, since they can just kite away, heal up and come right back for another go.
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Cheese builds aren’t exclusive to conditions. Stun/perma-run warriors and stealth spamming d/p thieves are both power based. In sPvP minion-mancer necros are also pretty cheesy. The old d/d ele was cheesy too and it wasn’t condi-based.
Conditions builds use Dire or Rabid gear, which are perfectly suited to counter power builds due to the high amount of toughness and vitality. Power builds use Zerker, which are…umm…not able to deal with conditions at all.
The time it takes for condies to kill a zerker is about the same as a bunker with equivalent health, the primary difference being of course that zerker gets the edge against the condi build compared to the bunker because it should cut through the toughness better.
Or at least that’s how it should be ideally. The problem is that Anet decided to throw the best ways to alleviate condies (cleansing traits/runes/utilities etc) under the bunkers also, making some pure bunker builds nigh unkillable. It should go condi counters bunker counters zerker counters condi, and zerker builds should have the better side of condition cleanses and bunker builds have the best access to just direct damage tanking IMO.
Flat crit damage will/should still exist in some form (look at crit chance, powered by precision but you also see sigils granting a flat bonus), so just change that MF stat that was taken away to a small (1-3%) crit value to compensate the shift to ferocity.
Since CritDmg% will still be around as a stat in some form (on pvp gear for example), I think to compensate Anet should take that magic find stat they took off of Celestial and just make it a smaller crit #, so each piece of celestial gear will have some ferocity and 1-3% crit damage on each piece.
Best blanket nerf would be to just get rid of body blocking on ethereal summons (clones, phantasms, spirit weapons and ranger spirits)
What’s ironic is that they are nerfing two sources of poison by about 40% for thief/engineer, poison being the only real counter to the signet :/ And by possibly changing the active the net result will probably be a buff for Warriors…
Personally I see ele in a weird spot. The class definitely has issues but I could easily see them reaching a tipping point where they become OP again. Hopefully they won’t make the same mistakes when they buff ele as they did with Warrior..
Maybe they’ll just make crits a static 2x or scale only off of precision and replace crit damage with something like -condi duration.
IP and Dhuumfire should have been looked at and changed to lower their cd and proc only when there are no conditions on the target (to be used mainly in openers and after cleanses). However, it’s a little too late now since, instead of shaving down engies/necros Anet chose to remove Warrior’s intended weakness to make it a class without any weakness to serve as a counter :/
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Players shouldn’t expect to stack a ton of toughness to become invincible. Bunkers are problematic enough as they are (to the point that they were banned in a recent 2v2 tournament along with PU mesmers). The irony with these type of complaint threads is all the passive-gameplay that gets hated on and toughness stat is about as passive as it can get.
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The fact that PU was outright banned in a recent 2v2 tournament should be reason enough for PU Mesmer to be looked at.
If thief can have a dual mechanic (steal + ini system), why can’t ranger? Add something else unique to the class to round it out, maybe like 2s weapon swap cooldown, or a pet bond meter that builds with damage and has special effects while your pet hasn’t died.
I think healing signet should be affected by proximity to your target. When you are in, say 600 range you get full hps, when not in range it gets cut in half or something. Change the active to something like Ranger’s Troll Unguent (maybe 600hps for 8s).
It would give healing signet some weakness to stealthing/ranged enemies, and the active would have situational use. You could use the active to help guarantee an escape and the change would mitigate the cheesy gameplay tactic of running away to heal/reset and coming back like the old D/D ele.
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5 mesmers. Maybe swap one of them for a necro or guardian.
If your reflexes are that bad then take defy pain and endure pain, one of the easiest, if not best, ways to deny a quick burst.
Ive never seen anyone cry how Rangers are OP in WvW. Nor have I seen people cry about Eles since they were nerfed to oblivion.
I suggested this before, but capturing a point needs to accumulate a buff like guard leech, something interesting but not necessarily impactful on combat though (magic find/karma/etc boost maybe).
The twist should be that you have to fully cap or risk having your buffs stolen if someone comes along and decaps your progress and gets the cap themselves.
To counter outnumbered situations, a counter-buff would trigger when taking damage from more sources than allies on point (if you started the cap), effectively disabling the above effect and disabling the buff capability of the point to enemies.
And to counter zerg farming the buffs should only apply to up to 5 people.
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Downed state works fine in PVE and sPvP but in WvW the whole mechanic is just flawed. It primarily benefits those with more people in a fight and punishes players that are outnumbered. Only when you introduce stealth-rezzing does the downed state help outnumbered players.
-How do you feel the reception has been to the new healing skills added, which ones were a success and which weren’t?
Pin down needs a telegraph and a unique animation.
The build is fine. It does nothing for group fights and the stealth means you can’t really bunker well.
If you mean sPvP, then yeah. But in WvW small-battles it’s a totally different story. Mass Invis/condi clear mantra are both excellent in small battles for support, and stealth is one of the best (if not the best) defense mechanism you can use. People also severely undervalue the clutter/distraction clones cause with their body-blocking/general presence as well.
A simple way to implement these could just be something like subcharacter slots. Basically when you’d log in on a new subchar and it would have empty traits/armor/trinkets you can fill. Each char could have two unlockable free ones and more available via Gemstore, just log in-out between your subchars.
Risk/reward mechanics could/should be added to areas like the bloodlust cap points. Let’s say that capping one of these points earns you an incremental buff (something like guard leech but not necessarily impacting combat, maybe +Magic Find/Karma/OoC movement speed).
But to make things more interesting, make it so that players are forced to fully cap or risk losing all their buffs to another player. That is, if they are chased off or killed while on point and the enemy caps it, the enemy leeches off all accrued buffs of the deserters/slain.
You might think, “But WvW is a numbers game, 2+ people could easily dispatch one on a point”, but there are ways to address that too. Staying on a point while outnumbered could give another buff (triggered by say, taking damage from more sources than there are allies), that would deny the enemy getting any buffs at all from their cap and give players a chance to escape combat without risk of losing theirs.
“What about Zerging on points to farm buffs for zergs?” You might also think, but that can be answered by just limiting the buffs given out on a point to a set max of players (say 5).
Any other kind of risk/reward mechanics come to mind? Am I crazy for wanting to see something like this? The only similar mechanic in the game is sigil stacking, but that just involves farming some mobs before going out to fight players (hardly any risk involved to get the buffs, just some time off to the side).
Ranged Ranger was never good (unless the only thing you like to play is PvE overworld or boring backline zerging in WvW).
Ranged combat is all about the ability to defend/kite against gap closers, but Ranger is third-rate when it comes to that (Mesmer/Warrior/Thief, hell even Staff Eles can kite better than a Ranger).
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It’s a terrible skill. All the pull skills should function like the Engie one (the only one close to being reliable), but with different graphical effects to fit the skill descriptions.
IMO you should be able to guest to a server for WvW if you want for fun/variety, with restrictions (ie. cant guest to a server your home server is facing, can’t lay/build siege, can’t switch servers for 24h, could only access a guest chat channel etc).
WvW is nothing but Warriors/Guardians with the occasional Necro. For roaming replace the guards/necros with mesmers/thieves, but Warriors are also in that picture too.
You never see spirit builds outside of sPvP though, and I only just recently have seen Rangers try spirit builds in WvW. The only change needed IMO is that all ethereal summons (ranger spirits, spirit weapons, phatasms/clones, etc) no longer body block.
Full celestial, 0/25/25/0/20 is what I run and it works quite well.
I said this in the other big thread, but IMO Diamond Skin should just be a Zerker Stance copy paste. Triggers when hit with a condition at above 75% HP, 100% duration reduction for 8s with a 60s+ CD.
Honestly, that tells you right there where balance is at with our class. Like with Dhuumfire, people knew a few hours after patch how broken it was and called for nerf. Same thing with Healing Signet.
A while ago you could exploit a variety of things with Ranger, like stacking 1min+ of regen/fury with pets, or abuse a mechanic to spam pet f2’s by resetting their cooldowns. And even then I didn’t get the sense that Ranger was OP with that kind of stuff factored in. If you want that giddy feeling of brokeness and the ability to wonder “why am I getting away with this?”, just roll a PU Mesmer. Ive seen players facerolling in WvW just running around without armor on with that spec.
I have a sneaking suspicion that charged quartz will be used either in the precursor crafting quests or in crafting one of the new legendaries. Previously it was confirmed that one of the issues with the economy is the insider trading that goes on, and it was explained something would be done about the mysterious supply drop and price spike in quartz crystals.
Now the assumption was that the market manipulation occurred because of the ascended armor release, but do enough players really care about celestial stats? It’s a niche stat set that only applies to a few builds, and only a minority of players would care enough to get ascended celestial stats. My guess is that what really happened is that someone at Anet spilled the beans that quartz would eventually be used for something with a broader appeal.
Backstab is poorly telegraphed, there’s no denying it.
Actually it has a fairly good telegraph, if you see a dagger wielding thief that’s going after you enter stealth, you know what to expect and can prepare accordingly.
The venom share trait needs to make venoms ground-target (900 range), and shadowstep you to the area where you want to share the venom. There also needs to be a trait that stealths you when you activate venom skills. Those two things would probably fix venom builds across the board.
Theres no such thing as a hard counter in 5v5. It’s build wars for a reason, pick a different class. This game is not meant to be balanced around 1v1 in the slightest.
Im hoping that one day Anet gets around to making 1v1/2v2/3v3 arenas, then finally they might address some of the ridiculousness that can happen in 1v1s. The unfun hard counters, the bunkervbunkers matchups that never end, mesmer stealth cheese, stun/regen cheese, etc
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The attack of opportunity part should be replaced with “reset weapon swap cooldown on interrupt”, then it will be a good trait.
IMO the best thing they could do to the skill is drastically reduce the CD, to something like 20s.
When roaming, people you run into run nothing but cheese/troll builds (and Ranger has no equivalent cheese/troll build of its own to counter these).
And while you can build for zerging, other classes can do it a lot better.
Ranger can do good in 1v1s, but good luck in situations where you get swamped as your 1v1 turns into a 1vX.
So overall Ranger is meh/10.
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Venoms are already viable when you only take one or two for utility, they just need to be made worth building entirely around, giving thief some of the same utility he would have in a typical thief build.
I suggested this in the other thread, but the Venomshare trait needs to make venoms ground target (900 range) and shadow step you the area to share where you step to.
And somewhere they need to tweak a trait, or replace a trait with a venom trait, that would give stealth when a venom skill is used.
There, venoms fixed. The only alternative option IMO would be to have venoms on F2-F4 so every thief build can have them at their disposal, and move most of the venom traits in the power line to the trickery trait line, which would be a MAJOR overhaul.
I’m gonna try 30/10/30/0/0 100% condition duration S/D again, it’s an alright niche build now but I think the ini boost dec 10th will help it more than the venom heal. But to be honest I don’t think venom builds will be good for a long time.
Rangers just need faster weapon switching and better kiting utilities. For a class that is supposed to excel in ranged combat (which needs kiting to function), it’s sad that warriors/thieves/engies/mesmers have better options in those areas when it comes to ranged combat.
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After the patch hits Im gonna try something like this:
Just tapping in and out of DS (never staying in it unless I need to) for 70% uptime on stability/retal. Add in the signet passive and it’ll be funny trying to troll people into killing themselves. Ill call it the “No Death Shroud, Death Shroud Build.” If it works that is.
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Two changes that would make venoms actually attractive:
Venomous Aura changed to: “Venom skills now use ground targeting. Shadowstep to target area and apply the effects to nearby allies. 900 range”
Venomous Strength or Slowed Pulsed scrapped to a new trait: “Venom skills now also apply stealth. 3s”
From the looks of it, Healing Signet will still be the best heal. The new heal will probably create a niche glass cannon build where a warrior can jump in and wreak havok for 15s, having popped his stances, and then run until his cd’s are back up again.
This reminds of Anet’s failed attempts at giving Ranger a valid GS build that revolves entirely around mauling people, without addressing the core issues of what makes such a build bad regardless of the many tiny tweaks they’ve put in every balance patch.
Though it wouldn’t surprise me if a full venom build becomes somewhat strong in spvp and maybe dungeon running, since you’d be able to combo share both leeching venoms and the heal venom. I don’t have my hopes up though, playing a ninja medic doesn’t seem fun to me.
There are already data-mined skill ideas out there. I didn’t look at the other classes, but Necro looks interesting.
They all have the potential to be interesting, with heals it really depends on stuff like cooldowns/heal numbers.
Though it seems like the thief heal might become the ‘ranger’ of the batch, powerful in spvp but a laughing stock in every other situation, and worthless without traiting entirely around it.
They need to add a lot to make venoms useful outside of taking one or two. Just taking one or two is fine, but investing a lot of traits to make one or two venoms better is a complete waste. Full venoms (3+), fully traited for sharing and everything leaves you without any flexibility whatsoever, taking away nearly everything fun about playing thief.
Even if Anet adds a healing venom ability in the Dec 10 update like some people are theorizing, venom builds will still be limited and unfun. Personally I don’t think full venoms will ever viable until Anet adds a trait/ability that stealths you when you apply venoms.