Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

roamzero.9486:

Nike.2631:

Whose condition cleanse are you talking about that they don’t have to make sacrifices to have it?

Warrior/Mesmer/Ele/Necro can get enough condi mitigation to deal with just about any condi build and not sacrifice much at all.

Can you provide evidence of their lack of sacrifice, compared to Ranger?

Take Warrior for example. It has a signet that removes all conditions on a 36-48s CD. Ranger signet is on a 48-60s CD, whose active needs to have a pet in range and it can kill or render the pet useless. Ranger’s signet is also the only utility it has that deals with conditions untraited.

Warrior can take Cleansing Ire. A great dual purpose GM in a defensive traitline that many Warriors are happy to take (like Wilderness Survival), that ties into the prof mechanic. Takes some effort to use but high potential condi removal (up to 3 every 7-8s).

Emphatic Bond is a guaranteed removal every 10s, but those conditions are sent to your pet, again potentially rendering your profession mechanic dead or hampered. And that’s all it does, unlike Cleansing Ire which grants extra Adrenaline.

A Warrior can drop Defense if it wants and still get decent removal via Fast Hands and Brawler’s Recovery (in a traitline that is taken by most Warriors anyway, not related to condi removal) and extra utilities like Berserker Stance and Shake if off.

A Ranger can drop Wilderness Survival and take what exactly? A dodge trait in Nature Magic that doesn’t do a whole lot? A bear that has poor f2 behavior and poor DPS?

In terms of healing skills Warrior can take just pop the active of Healing Signet (Warrior’s best heal) for resistance. If the Ranger wants an untraited way to deal with condis, it needs to take Healing Spring, which sounds good on paper, but needs to stay inside the spring for full effect (a downside). Plus Healing Spring has less HPS than Troll Ungent.

The key point here is flexibility. A class like Warrior has options. With a class like Ranger, it’s take survival utilities and Wilderness Survival or suffer the consequences (and if the Ranger piles on extra removal or goes for something like HS + EB, suffer even more consequences to your profession mechanic).

Nike.2631:

Whose condition cleanse are you talking about that they don’t have to make sacrifices to have it?

Warrior/Mesmer/Ele/Necro can get enough condi mitigation to deal with just about any condi build and not sacrifice much at all.

One thing I do agree on is that there is way too much boon hugging and not enough boon counters. You pretty much just have signet necro. Thief/Mesmer boon removal isn’t much of a counter when it’s just used for focused burst.

Tornupto.2304:

Hm not enough condi clense?
healing spring, a signet, all survival skills if traited, 3 condis every 10 sec if traited, Spirit of Nature, Brownbear… Hm… 10 clenses are not enough? lol I think some other classes got less

Edit: Forgot about shouts with soldier runes.

Healing Spring is ok but its currently bugged to not heal pets (still to get full condi mitigation in it you are rooted inside for its duration, a big downside). Spirit of Nature is a crap elite, Brownbear is a horrible pet, and Emphatic Bond kills our pets most of the time even if we always swap pets when off CD.

It’s like apart from the Survival skill removals all Ranger condi removal options have horrible downsides to them. Rangers can’t even take EB and the survival trait together anymore.

I’d go so far as to say Ranger has the worst condi removal options at the moment compared to other classes. Only Engineer and Thief (nerfed slightly) come close, but Engie condi removal options were buffed a lot while Ranger has less than pre-patch now.

Sinbold.8723:

So now that they’re on par with thieves, they’re OP? I’ll bet a copper you don’t think thieves should be nerfed.

Cheesemers blow Thieves away ATM, god mode class up there with Ele. Only nerfs to Thieves that come should be the result of comprehensive stealth changes that affect anyone with stealth.

evilapprentice.6379:

roamzero.9486:

Since Anet gutted Thief’s ability to might stack, a good Acro fix IMO would be to reintroduce some might stacking ability. Prepatch SA/Acro together could maintain 10+ might stacks. So something like Upper Hand could be buffed to give 3 might stacks on evade or something in addition to the ini.

Another change I would like to see is some way to get vitality. Just make Assassin’s Reward add 300 vit and keep the healing as-is.

They removed the might stacking for a reason – the same reason they changed the GM minor trait for both Acro and SA – they don’t want defensive traitlines contributing meaningfully to damage.

Almost all defensive traitlines in the game (minus Thief) have traits that can contribute to damage, unless you are implying that the devs are singling out Thief by design (and hence why almost no one is taking Acro and SA is pales itself in comparison to what it was).

Since Anet gutted Thief’s ability to might stack, a good Acro fix IMO would be to reintroduce some might stacking ability. Prepatch SA/Acro together could maintain 10+ might stacks. So something like Upper Hand could be buffed to give 3 might stacks on evade or something in addition to the ini.

Another change I would like to see is some way to get vitality. Just make Assassin’s Reward add 300 vit and keep the healing as-is.

Just nix the ferocity bonus on the trait and make it cause the Axe autoattack apply bleed or torment instead.

Other than the hard counters like DS Ele, I really dislike using the Axe and hate the shortbow. So no significant range pressure and crappy gap closers means something like s/d and a/t set can get kited/reset very easily.

Sea of Sorrows was full for the longest time solely because of the PVE population that didn’t WvW, and still holds position in T2. As far as a higher tier transfer I can’t think of one with more potential.

The two problems with ele are too much access to protection/damage reduction plus the burn issue.

The protection on Elemental Contingency should be switched to 2s of resistance. Elemental Attunement protection should be reduced by 1s. Elemental shielding should have a small CD to keep from chaining auras and stacking protection. Soothing ice should have a 25/30s CD. Blinding ashes CD should be per target and raised by a few seconds.

Yeah the change was intentional, and as long as traps have direct damage they’ll be worse off than before the patch.

Since Anet doesn’t care too much about Ranger, I think we’ll have to wait until HoT when Guardians will complain how much Dragonhunter sucks, maybe they’ll make positive changes to their trap gameplay and those changes will somehow affect Ranger traps.

Sombike.6291:

roamzero.9486:

OP sounds like a Ranger, they probably have some of the worst condi mitigation in the game ATM.

Well, usually power lb rangers run survival utilities/elite/heal, and traited survivals give -2 condis, I’d say its pretty good as far as cleanses go. I see the OPs problem as a l2p issue …
Not shooting through reflects (bind a stop attack button), better positioning, faster reflexes, party comp …

Well, I wouldn’t go so far to say that Rangers have no options, Im mainly speaking comparatively to what other classes can get. Rangers used to be able to take the survival trait + emphatic bond, which put them in a good spot, but that is no longer possible. They can still pile on some extra mitigation via sigils/food/runes/brown bear but at that point there is nothing left over for a decent build.

As someone that plays every class I would rank them like this as far as achieving condi mitigation and still having good builds:

S Rank
Ele, Necro, Warrior (against everything but Necros), Mantra PU Mesmer

Decent Rank
Guard (lots of removals but long CDs), Engineer (need 2 traitlines for optimal removal), Thief (Shadow’s Embrace nerfed but still decent)

Needs Work
Ranger (would be decent again if they could take EB and Wilderness Knowledge)

Strategist.6132:

This sounds pretty interesting! I hope they would put some cool reward or mechanics / achievement into it then it would be fun.

For example: Getting a Fish Finisher when you fish a lot or somethingXD

This is Anet we’re talking about. If they implemented it we’d be fishing up fish-shaped bags of ascended mats/blues/greens that hit DR after about 5 fish. Stuff like the fish finisher would be put into the gem store to celebrate the launch of such a feature, along with fish minis, 800 gem rod skins and special bait in BL chests.

OP sounds like a Ranger, they probably have some of the worst condi mitigation in the game ATM.

Even in pvp condies kind of suck. For all the complaints condies get in WvW for being too strong for example, is it really worth being hardcountered by a bunch of classes, like DS Eles, Necros, and certain Warrior/Mesmer specs?

Banning is too much, but they should take all the playtime that the buff has been applied to each player abusing the exploit, and for that duration put an anti-buff when the event is over (something like “Cheater’s Debuff: all incoming damage to you is increased 100%”)

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

But then figured out they would be massively OP, high damage range with lots of stealth options, it was never going to be able to be balanced.

That sounds familiar…

Spirits are almost decent enough that you could fit one or two into a build (I like sun), but I think the GM trait needs to be tweaked so that a full spirit build can be viable. Something like “having the effect of 3 or more spirits grants a stack of pulsing stability (like Juggernaut for Engie), for each active spirit effect conditions have -20% duration on you”.

Warrior is definitely up there with anti-condi potential, right behind DS Ele and Condi-transfer Necros

There aren’t enough risk/reward mechanics in the mode. The base rewards for capping paper’d stuff should be gutted, and rewards should be doled out as a structure upgrades, with a required buy-in (say you put in 10g on a tower when it’s paper, when it upgrades to t3 you get your 10g back plus 20% for example, and a continuing reward of karma and various stuff mailed to you while the keep is owned). Enemies taking upgrading structures could plunder a portion of that investment. There could be a similar claiming mechanic for guards/camps/doylaks for solo/small group players.

Whether you agree with the idea or like/not like the examples my main point is that a lot of cool stuff could be toyed with this game mode, but according to Anet they probably look at metrics with a simple equation/mindset – Zerging/Zergers = ROI (pushing up the left pushes up the right). Anything that doesn’t fit that simple mindset and whatever design docs they have to follow just isn’t considered.

Clarion Bond + Warhorn + Tail Wind + Bird Pet + Quickdraw lets you stack up something close to a minute of swiftness when you enter combat, which you can trigger easily on enemy creatures with LB.

Personally I think Warhorn 4 should apply a half-second blind per strike. Rangers currently don’t have too difficult a time with Thieves and applying revealed is generally worthless against Mesmers..

If Shadow’s Embrace needed to be nerfed then it should have at least taken Last Refuge’s old Adept spot instead of that garbage res trait.

Xillllix.3485:

If you can’t remove 10% of the squishiest class then you’ve placed all your eggs in the same basket and are honestly just being outplayed by a counter build. Of course diamond skin will be a good trait to counter you if you rely 100% on condi.

Outplayed just by your opponent picking up a trait and letting it passively carry for him?

PU is a brokenly OP trait now. Remember when thief could permastealth with that trait that gave ini on every stealth application? And then they nerfed the trait to only apply when entering stealth. And then they removed the trait altogether. All this because they thought permastealthing was a cheesy way to fight.

And then they gave PU +100% duration on stealth letting Mesmer do what d/p could do a long time ago :/

Ranger condi removal is one of the worst in the game atm compared to what other classes can get. You can try either traited Healing Spring with Emphatic Bond, or a bunch of Survival utilities with Wilderness Knowledge. I would also recommend cleansing sigils.

Signet of Renewal kind of sucks sadly.

Final Thrust needs a buff somewhere along these lines:

Striking a foe under 25% HP converts all your damaging condition on foe into direct damage.

To make it worthwhile on condi builds.

My suggestion:

Diamond Skin grants immunity to conditions when in combat. Diamond Skin breaks when health drops below 80% or when it absorbs 10 conditions. 30s ICD.

It should also produce a buff icon that can be seen like Stoneheart does.

Zerker Stance is pretty OP now if you chain it with Healing Signet active. 20 seconds of condi immunity against any condi class that can’t strip boons.

Warriors can keep getting adrenaline while in Rampage right? Does this also scale the damage Peak Performance provides?

If so a good nerf would be to freeze adrenaline gain while transformed. Also toning down the Vitality gain or damage reduction would be another good step.

Sagat.3285:

The life blast damage based on condition sounds very pleasing and unique let’s hope it doesn’t end up like Radiant Retaliation.

Would be a nice middle finger to DS Eles.

Shortbow in its current state is partially the result of the old Spirit Ranger meta and partly from a kittenty attempt to make the Longbow attractive (before actually, you know buffing the Longbow as was done in the end). Once upon a time it had 1200 range and a much faster firing rate.

It’s a supremely underwhelming weapon now, useful only for +1 flanking. The main issue is that it just lacks meaningful utility for a 900 range weapon, where enemies can just get in your face and kill you. Quick Shot for example shouldn’t simply be a dodge, it should work like non-stun breaking Lightning Reflexes to be effective.

Make DB, in addition to stacking bleed, also put on 3 stacks of Vuln and a couple seconds of cripple and it will be good IMO.

Tweak the bleed duration if further balance is needed, the long duration bleeds are kind of useless with cleanses being so common

In WvW Body Blow/Distracting strikes builds are pretty ridiculous. Throw Rampage on top of any Warrior build for max cheese.

Turamarth.3248:

Not sure if that is enough but it is a start.

One cool thing they could try is killing a sentry extends your shrine buffs by 3 minutes, and make the sentry pulse this out when it dies as an AOE attack to a max of 5 players (so zergs don’t take advantage of it).

Rasudido.6734:

Ridiculous you cant actively punish one team because the other team is rage quitting.

If anything what needs a look into is the impact of OUT-MANED across all maps.
The buff should be significant as to give the severely outnumbered force a real fighting chance not the pathetic bonuses it gives now.:

I definitely think the outmanned buff needs a look, but the problem is the risk with making it too strong, which would potentially create incentive to use it for strategic advantage, and infighting to get people to leave the map.

One area that couldn’t hurt much IMO is to buff defensive siege during outmanned buff, increasing range/damage and possibly stealthing your siege until its used.

The only heal worth using with the trait is Withdraw, but the 24-30s CD on it ruins the potential synergy. It feels really clunky having only every other heal trigger it.

I think instead of triggering Needle Trap, it should trigger a nerfed version (Lesser Needle Trap or something), with the condi durations halved and the CD reduced to 18s

This is the build Im currently trying:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBjYDbkRFaXxuVwZFoaxghQ1vbqXCcAM6Ng36x+sD-TVSFABnp+zCHEAAuAAEr8769H4Q3QCHBgAVCm8DAgUAwMGA-w

Pretty fun to pop your sun spirit and start sniping with your lb, though it currently lacks a stunbreak. The traps are only for stealthing and kiting from the runes. They are pretty worthless even with the trait (the cripple does nothing when they can just dodge through) unless you land Entagle, in which you can just walk over and drop the traps on them.

I noticed if you have two HS traps set, setting off one also sets off the other? The behavior seems really strange, also the main heal comes from setting the trap, so you cant really take much advantage of setting up a trap in advance to optimize the cooldown.

Top:
Mesmer (do something about the daze/stun trait, mantra sustain, blinds and PU)
Ele (DS is one of the lamest traits in the game, too much bunkering capability)
…
Burning damage, or just look at each burn skill trait in the game and adjust.
Warrior Rampage needs a shave, might need to look into the ability to chain HS into Zerker stance and back again.

The rest:
Thief burst might be a little over the top
Some Necro stuff might be over the top if they get buffed in other areas.
No idea about engies but their sustain seems like it could become abuseable.
Guardians seem ok and Ranger pets need attention (buffs/fixes, like where is their condi damage with the condi changes? Why has the chill bug never been fixed?)

Sorel.4870:

Mesmer is finally a very good roamer.

What? Mesmer has always been in the top 3 for roaming, only downsides it ever had was slow camp soloing and catching runners. Mesmer now with all the buffs is complete faceroll, if you have any dignity roll something else or get laughed at (or try playing stealthless non-PU Mesmer).

PowerBottom.5796:

Even though it’s a pain, it’s still the best option to get to +25% movement speed or swiftness for rangers.

I also don’t like the runes at all, since a trapper will often have to guard nodes, because thats one thing he’s good at and stealth really is more counterproductive.

Anet should buff Trapper’s Expertise so that it grants +25% speed when a trap is set, and swap it to master tier with that worthless Strider’s Defense trait

Choppy.4183:

Watch that though…. astute opponents will wait for the six seconds to end before piling the condis on you, during which you’re deprived of any sort of healing.

What makes it OP now is chaining it into Berserker Stance and then cast the signet a second time. You can basically spend the first 20s of a fight immune to conditions.

Here you go OP, strongest non-GS build Ive been running (might change runes though) -

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAseSjMdQVI24BmdApIGICM8E03GBWA4D2z0vw0LGA-TFSHABMfCAwQfgIq/UnSQbfCA7s/QTK/A4QAQKAYGDA-w

Perma cripple, weakness, and a 6.5s immob (land that and go to town with your hammer).

Doug.4930:

The thief condi build is or (I can now happily say) was one of the most over powered builds to exists in terms of WvW builds. It stacks a stupid amount of condi’s while having access to stealth with a ridiculous amount of defense. There was pretty much no downside to it. The only thing that has changed is that the condi thief’s damage output has not been buffed too much, mainly because it has no access to burn (thank god)

Having played condi thief myself, I could hold a 3v1 with very little effort.

The build needed to be nerfed, and thankfully it has now indirectly been nerfed.

And yet, look what happened to Mesmers… Something tells me Anet doesn’t know what its doing.

The most common thief setups can now be hard countered by soft-cc. Chill is especially frustrating.

Either remove the double HP or damage reduction (or both).

Can it be changed to work out of combat now?

Hard counters are no fun. Change DS to grant resistance boon when struck above 90% hp instead.