How can using what ANet gave us legit be cheating?? Just curious…
It’s called exploiting. Players also use the Mushroom Tonics (of which only one was disabled but the other ones work), to cheat and mobility exploit around the map.
What’s funny is that Anet disabled the Mushroom Tonic but failed to realize that there are other Mushroom Tonics (like King) that still work and do the exact same thing. I see people running around using them for a mobility exploit.
All the tonics should be turned off and a whitelist made to explicitly allow those that aren’t considered exploity.
I agree, necro goes down extremely easily. Nobody can seriously argue against that, but that does not make it a bad class. It just has to rely on support and it will be extremely effective.
The same argument was made about Warrior and Anet buffed it into the stratosphere anyway.
You know what needs to be unblockable? CnD (when not revealed)
What makes it a kick in the groin is that for a while now it looks like Anet has been manually massaging the matchups for a better WvW experience. They manually adjust glicko when it’s called for and they pair servers manually based on their data. But it’s too much to manually keep some servers like BG locked for transfers? With those kinds of oversights it makes me wonder if WvW as a whole has been put on the backburner again with only one or two devs on it while everyone else work on the next expansion.
1. Seems like a terrible idea that would just introduce chaos into the matches. Transferring servers is a zero sum game, new servers might get filled but at what cost to others? Every time you had free transfers to servers you had bad results with band-wagoners and more nails into dead servers’ coffins. It’s very demoralizing to see your server sink like a rock because guilds transfer off.
2. If you go that route, there should be a completely new set of worlds with the old ones removed. Create a backend for guild alliances and assign populations based on wvw guilds.
3. Using a free transfer would depend entirely until after things have settled.
Everything is fine about Warrior, except how broken its Resistance uptime gets when even a little boon duration is taken. Simple fix: Berserker Stance treats the Resistance it gives the same way a transformation like Rampage treats boons, once it’s over the boons are removed. The CD for Healing Signet’s active could also be bumped to 30s and the healing amount bumped to compensate.
People complained about condi, so Anet gave out condi removal like candy over the course of all the balance patches. But Anet also wanted conditions to be a viable option, so the path of least resistance for them led to the condi-bombing in between condi-clears route.
This “DoT Sustained damage lower damaging than direct damage but making up for it by ignoring defenses” type of attrition gameplay is simply impossible now. IMO conditions were actually more balanced in the early months of the game, before they started adding things like Zerker stance.
Final Thrust should have a condi component added to it, like it takes all the bleeds you put on and converts them to direct damage so you dont have to wait for them to tick down.
Downstate in general is a pretty bad mechanic outside of PVE so I support this.
Thief didn’t seem to receive a huge buff, other than a slight boost to venomshare. Im more surprised that Anet is ok with the idea of Warriors running around with perma-resistance
I had an idea for a MH Dagger Ranger/Thiefy type specialization a long while ago:
Shadowstalker : Replaces pet with a shadow clone. You can swap positions with your clone with the pet swap function, and instead of two pets it has two modes: ranged and melee.
Dagger/Dagger gameplay would basically be kind of like S/D Thief gameplay, shadow-swapping in and out of melee range (only very little, if any stealth since that should be a Thief thing).
The utility skills would be either deception or clone (temporarily summoning additional clones, or transforming your existing clone to an animal or something)
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I really hope they’ve looked at Warrior’s ability to stack perma-resistance. That kittens broken.
Big things that could be looked at:
CA self healing: should CA be allowed to be beneficial selfishly? I would consider nerfing the CA self heals a lot, but at the same time tweak the Live Vicariously minor trait to return a % of outgoing heals back to the Druid, making it so that the Druid gets the same self heals if he’s supporting other players.
Druidic Clarity is too strong for a tier one major trait. It could easily be swapped with Lingering Light, or changed to clear 2-3 conditions instead of all.
Staff: Nerf the autoattack, but increase the damage of Astral Wisp and Vine Surge to compensate.
The worst offenders are:
Near Perma-resistance/quickness Warriors
Staff boon Druids
Condi and boon-share Mesmers
Dragonhunters
Honorable mention:
Boon-sharing hammer Heralds
Bunker Eles/Scrappers that spam projectile reflects
Ghost trap Thieves
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(pure) Celestial doesn’t really work unless you can might stack, otherwise it’s best to go something like 50% celestial and the rest power. So for Mesmer you’re options are limited to a few traits, like might on shatter trait and the GS might strait. If you picked one of those up and some boon duration you’d get a viable build, but generally for Mesmer roaming its best to go full damage or full condi (or maybe glass viper).
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Sigil of earth, precision stat, sharpened edge, hidden barbs, sharpening stone, ancient seeds, madking runes or krait runes.
Its a gimmick build
What’s sad is that this is because Shortbow is so bad that people would rather pick Longbow as their condi choice…
Condi-evade Daredevil isn’t too bad atm IMO. Some things that could be changed though, without touching Condi-evade too directly:
Most of Thief’s condi damage comes from bleeds, and most of the bleeds are at a crappy base 4s duration, this should be upped to 5.
Pistol #2 still sucks, extended duration on the vuln and maybe replacing the immob with slow could fix it.
Backstab could use a condi on it to make D/D more hybrid, maybe something neat like 25 stacks of bleed for 1s. Maybe some poison or torment on Dancing Dagger.
Shortbow bleeds on cluster bomb and exploding cluster bomb should be adjusted.
Those are my main suggestions.
The main problem is boon duration stat. Zerker stance for example needs to either clear resistance when the buff ends, or it’s CD needs to be upped to like 80s, or it needs to be reverted to what it was.
We’ve been talking about personal score a bit. I’m personally of the opinion that it isn’t representative of a player’s effort in a given match, and it also can be incredibly misleading and potentially lead to bad gameplay habits (5-capping home).
If you were to redesign personal score, what would you do? Does it track different types of stats? Would you want your personal stats displayed to other players?
Just leave the personal point contribution with the stats viewable only to the player, but reorganize them to be a bit more prominent maybe (not hidden away in a tab)? Display to everyone things like “Most stomps”, “Most outgoing healing”, “Least deaths”, “Most damage taken” etc., and have an Overwatch-like MVP vote system.
Action cam should also be tweaked so that projectiles still auto-track when a targeted enemy is out of range. That is the current behavior when not using action cam. So for example Rangers can pew pew well past 1500 range with their traited Longbow with Action cam disabled, but with it turned on they are locked in to 1500 unless they can somehow miraculously manually aim.
I think they should pick up the rumored 3-guild alliance system they were going to implement. And switch the WvW scoring/matching to work a little like Edge of the Mists. The end result would be more of a loose faction system of Red vs Green vs Blue. Alliances guarantee being matched to the same faction/color, as well as the old server grouping if a player isnt in a guild alliance (i.e. all of Blackgate would still be matched to a color faction). Every reset populations would be rebalanced along faction lines, and there would be an overflow system instead of a static amount of borderland grouping.
I would remove the ground target from Vault, and make it shadowstep to your target when it reaches its apex, and reduce the damage by like 30-50%. That’s really the only change I would make, it’s dumb that Vault does as much damage as a backstab with an evade built in.
Condi Mesmers, and Warriors are by far the most overtuned faceroll classes atm and the most annoying to fight against. Second to that are bunker builds that don’t even bother fighting, they just nonchalantly walk into the nearest building even if its miles away tanking everything you throw at them(classes like bunker DH/Ele/Druid/Etc).
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INB4 Anet somehow introduces ultra-efficient boon stripping to siege such as arrow carts or the new build-able cannons, instead of you know, actually balancing class skills and abilities that apply an insane amount of boons.
Swap Blighter’s Boon and Soul Eater. Soul Eater is a new GM trait: You are invisible to enemies outside of 600 range when wielding a GS and out of combat. Entering combat recharges all GS skills.
Ranger has a very narrow range of viability in WvW. But it’s really, really strong in that range (many might see it as OP). You pretty much have to run Druid with double mobility weapon set (staff + GS/S+X), and your role is to roam about and engage in small scale combat.
Outside of that? Complete garbage – in zerging, GvG, everything .
Rendering Shade should steal life for each boon stolen IMO instead of the 10% damage reduction. The way boons are spammed now you can go full anti-boon thief and you’ll still never get that damage reduction.
I remember a long, long time ago Anet nerfed glamor mesmers because they though applying so much confusion in WvW zerging was imbalanced.
This boon cancer is way worse IMO.
If Druid were brought in line with vanilla specs then Celestial Avatar needs like a 30s CD. But compared to other OP HoT specs it seems fine.
The passive for SotW seems great for charging up Celestial Avatar so I would keep it even though its healing is kind of low.
The movement speed is what seems least necessary on SotW’s active. One of the things Ranger (LB Ranger in particular) desperately needs IMO is some kind of unblockability, since Anet is probably just gonna sit on its hands with regards to toning down the excessive projectile-hate they put in with HoT. I would replace the movement speed with 8s of unblockable attacking.
I think P/P in general needs some additional tweaks. I tried running a hybrid build for example, but even with the might stacking from unload, sneak attack’s damage is abysmal (sneak attack seems to only work with pure condition builds that pump +bleed duration). And with the unloading done you barely have enough init left for the other attacks.
Ive run a variant of this in WvW. If it’s anywhere as brokenly OP in sPvP as it is there then it’s something that needs to be looked at IMO. As long as there is access to boon duration in sPvP, the cooldown on Zerker Stance and Healing Signet active needs to be upped, or Resistance boon itself needs to be tweaked.
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Trapper runes + DA/SA/TR + Dire Gear
In WvW players are carried more by doing whatever it takes to outnumber their opponents, be it 2v1, 5v2, Zergv5, etc.
Hunter’s Call change is nice, so is the Sharpening Stone buff.
Shortbow continues to be garbage, as do Spirits. Nobody is going to use Moas/Drakes/Pigs, pets need a massive overhaul not incremental bumps that accomplish nothing (i.e. all pet melee autoattacks should have baseline 170 range, most F2’s need to be redone).
3 more months of things staying largely the same.
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I would like it if trash mobs didn’t generate white swords at camps.
Top 3 are Mesmer/Thief/Warrior.
After that Druid/Scrapper because of things like stealth access but ultimately they are better in small groups.
The rest are still viable but they come with downsides. However they can have key positions in slightly bigger groups making them better picks than the more solo-friendly roaming classes (such as boon sharing Revs or aura spamming Eles).
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Maybe something like this?
Find the right target, Basi→CnD Steal→BS→Impairing Daggers , and if it fails GTFO with Shadowstep/Refuge (dont engage without those utilities up)
I also don’t do buff builds on my warrior, I’m a pure killing machine on all my characters.
Don’t play wvw. You are going to get your face kicked in while your enemy stays at full hp.
If you don’t frontline zerg, WvW Warrior IMO is one of the few professions that can go full zerk and get away with it. Whereas full Zerk Ranger/Druid is kind of crud.
Ive tried celestial trapper with SB and S/T with some mild success. If I went with something different I would try something like this:
I run a build that OP describes, and yes, it works really well (in WvW only) because in addition to 100% Resistance uptime, your make up for damage loss with high quickness uptime and might stacking. However, I dont think it’s the most optimal Warrior build because you still lose some damage and become weak to heavy boon corruption Necros.
Also if you chain into Berserker Stance you don’t need 100% boon duration. I run with 64% and occasionally hit close to 100% when I weapon swap and still keep 100% Resistance up.
Im considering just dropping the Rev runes in favor of Surging Runes but Im too lazy to figure out if chaining Zerker Stance/HS will still provide 100% uptime. TBH this kind of broken balance shouldn’t be possible so I hope it gets nerfed down the line.
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Just make the spirits work just like Necromancer’s Flesh Wurm, complete with ground targeting, as well as activation into stun break and shadowstep (in addition to passives/active effects unique to each spirit).
Would be super fun to use with SB and it’s flanking bonuses.
I see a lot of people suggesting toning down Warrior sustain but personally I think it’s fine. What’s not fine IMO is high sustain paired with high damage/pressure. I would :
Reduce headbutt damage by 50%. Too much damage for such a high amount of control on such a low CD.
Remove some of the condis on Skull Grinder. Condi bombing is a little too effective with that much sustain.
Increase the CD of Zerker Stance and HS Active to 80s/30s and boost the active heal of HS slightly to compensate. Stacking 25s worth of Resistance is bad enough but boon duration pushes it even further.
Reduce damage of Arc Divider and compensate it with a circular ward like Guardian hammer, but much shorter duration. Right now it’s just Arcing Slice with ridiculous range.
I think the PVP wings could use some adjusting. Currently they look a step below the Fractal Legendary IMO. What’s particularly annoying is how they stiffly swoop over the shoulders when active and dont flow. The flaky particle effects can be hard to see also.
I think this could be addressed with more interesting world linking, to dispel the notion that a servers like BG are forever the top of t1. Like link T1 with T8 but also link T2 with T3. Imagine something like Mag/FA going against BG/AR
I’m not in T1, but I’ve never seen a rev roamer. It doesn’t seem like the class has a viable build for roaming – even condi rev is quite weak compared to other condi builds.
Revs are good for squads and zergs, but not in groups of <= 3.
“Roaming” guilds in T1 run in packs that gank 5v1, so it in that context Rev is quite strong.
Personality I think Druid is overrated too, lots of mobility doesn’t mean much with low killing power and a crappy pet mechanic.
Top 3 for actual roaming are probably Mesmer/Thief/Warrior.
Im still waiting for Shortbow to be made a viable PVP weapon.
Power creep is a given I think. What I fear is that this creep is going to come at the expense of what’s already been in place. Like Anet gutting Thief’s Acro traitline and paywalling it behind Daredevil, or gutting Ele’s Signet auras and paywalling aura builds behind Tempest.