Kuma.1503

I was going to respond to the post Trevor sent but I don't see it anymore. Was there mod action taken? There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it.

Anyway, I can understand the frustration. Going out of your way to explain your reasoning in as much detail as possible only for someone to hit you with a "lol too long didn't read" and provide a one sentence rebuttal that you've already countered within the post itself. Any hopes of productive conversation just grinds to a halt at that point.

If it's worth anything, something I learned from far better debaters than myself is that once someone makes takes a public stance, they're much less likely to go back on it because they feel like they're locked in. Admitting you're wrong almost makes you feel foolish, like you've "lost".

But the points you make aren't just for the person you're conversing with, it's for anyone else who happens to be keeping up with the conversation. If you do a good job of explaining yourself, you might manage to change other minds by proxy.

You've managed to do that with me on more than one occasion. I quite enjoy reading your walls of text.

I'm going to sound like a parrot at this point but:

QQ Nerf Thread Template: "Nerf X it can [insert list of pros while conveniently ignoring cons]. It's broken and needs a nerf."

Snark aside, the reason why Renegade can do so much is because of the way the Revenant class is balanced.

Pro: You have a deep bag of tricks that allow you to adapt to a wide variety of situations

Con: Your tricks come with hefty energy costs. You're the only class where your utilities share a resource with your weapon skills.

We can kill two birds with one stone here.

Increase the speed lightning orb travels by double or more. Leave the rate at which it fires projectiles the same.

The end result is less total hits, less damage, but the skill can actually hit someone who is paying attention.

That said, the skill in its current state is fine for a number of reasons.

1. It is **very** easy to avoid. You don't even need to use a dodge, just walk perpendicular to the skill and it won't hit you.

2. In a teamfight, it's more difficult to notice it among all the noise, but it will also spread out its damage among all targets in range, resulting in less damage per target

3. In a 1v1 where it can actually down someone, it's trivially easy to avoid.

It's one of those skills that seems rediculous on paper, but doesn't pose many issues in practice. It's a slow moving nuke trading speed and consistency for raw power. These kinds of skills are fine to have in a game, and tend to be some of the more fair/balanced skills in spite of their power in ideal scenarios. It would benefit from a more noticeable animation though.

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> Enough with the philosophical moral forum g3 assumption standpoints.

>

> Too many of you guys repost the same stuff every day over and over, with no real rhyme or reason other than making statements like this:

>

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > devs need to take "nerf this" threads with a grain of salt and focus on win rates and matchups as it relates to some metric for measuring skill (maybe player actions per minute in combat). I feel like if they just listen to you, you might be asking for nerfs to make your class "top" with no viable counter. Which is what i feel MOST nerf this threads are.

>

> > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> > Here we go again...The wheel turns, and the cycle continues.

> >

> > Here's a question. What do people think is a perfectly balanced game. When do you think we will ever reach a point where nobody has a complaint about any class or build ever?

> >

> > Does anyone apply logic to anything or is everything all based on irrational and biased view points?

>

>

> * As if not a single player ever existed who was attempting to non-biasedly give proper feedback.

> * As if every player posting in the forum was a villain trying to get everyone nerfed except their own class.

> * As if GW2 was already balanced and it were irrational for the consumer base to give feedback on that balance. lol that's funny.

>

> There aren't even topical statements in these responses. These kinds of responses are nothing but criticizing remarks aimed not only at the users who post threads, but also at the forum community in general who enjoy giving feedback and participating in discussions.

>

> Some of you need to lighten up and back off a bit. If you are so disgusted by a gaming forum designed to discuss a game, why are you here?

My only request is for two things

1. That people making claims for nerfs take on the burden of proof and provide reasonable evidence for why the build they want nerfed should be nerfed. Ideally consisting of more than simply listing off the builds stregnths in a vaccum and glossing over it's downsides. I would love to have discussions about matchups. Teamcomps the build works best in, teamcomps that work best against said build. Strategies that the build employs to win vs class specific strategies that can be used against it.

2. That players be willing to engage others in an intellectually honest way rather than deflecting with statements like "you're just defending your class" or "X player is higher rank than you and he says it's true so it must be true".

I'd love for the pvp forums to be a place for people to discuss pvp strategies, and share their knowledge with other players.

It would be great if instead of posting a thread titled

" Ranger is op and needs shaves" that someone might post the thread "Best counter to ranger?" or "How to counerplay sic em?" But perhaps I'm being too idealistic?

> @"Ragnar.4257" said:

> Weaver on both winning and runner-up teams, on both EU and NA. But naaah..... it's not viable rite?

I'm not sure what anyone is meant to take away from this.

"The playrate/winrate of weaver in high level play is > 0"

Putting aside the fact that one tournament is not an ample sample size, this tells us nothing about the context of the win. If all top teams play weaver, **regardless of how good or bad it is** there is a 100% chance that the top team will have a weaver on it.

> @"TheQuickFox.3826" said:

> > @"otto.5684" said:

> > > @"TheQuickFox.3826" said:

> > > I disagree. A year ago everything was overpowered. The overall nerfing has been a good thing. I'm not getting one-shot anymore in sPvP.

> >

> > You cannot say everything is OP. If everything is OP, nothing is. What you want to say is that you prefer higher TTK.

> >

> > And the issue is not the game play now requires lower skill level. It now defaults to AOE and CC spam.

>

> Well, I mean that damage was high in comparison to defense/health. And I indeed prefer a higher time to kill.

> Nerfing is an instrument and it should be kept in the toolbox for when it it appropriate.

Agreed, especially with the last bit.

Unfortunately, the community seems to think that nerfs aren't an instrument, but rather a universal cure-all. There are many problems plaguing pvp at the moment that more nerfs can't fix.

Tbh the problem with weavers is the problem with ele in general. Every time it starts to deal decent dps it gets gutted for one reason for another.

Burn Weaver? Gutted

Lightning rod? Gutted

Fresh Air? Gutted

Arcane skills? LOL

Being a super bunker is one of the few things weaver has left, and even that got a signficant tone-down when Anet nerfed sword, twist of fate, and removed stability on stances. Why bother building for damage if Anet is going to nerf it into the floor? Just pump those resources into being as tanky as you possibly can.

Part of this issue stems from the fact that Ele **needs** vitality and/or toughness/healing power in order to survive with it's low hp pool. It just doesn't have the damage to opt for a "I kill you or you kill me" kind of playstyle.

If Anet wants to change that, they need to re-evaluate what ele even is.

Is it supposed to have low vitality, but high sustain to compensate? If so, weavers being sustain lords is working as intended.

Do they want to push it down the glass canon route? Low vitality, low sustain, top tier dps. Then they need to give ele the damage to compensate for how frail it is. And they can start by turning staff into a workable ranged weapon so that they're not forced to get up in your face with their 11k hp.

Do they want ele to be a jack of all trades? That's fine too, but that requires the dev team to have even the tiniest inkling of what they're doing with it. Celestial amulet was the perfect tool to enable an all-rounder build, but that was deemed unsuitable for pvp.

**tl;dr** Ele is a class without direction. The less dev attention they get the better, because every time the class does get mentioned in the patch notes, it's to butcher what little the class has left.

-Rant of a salty ex-ele main.

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> > @"megilandil.7506" said:

> > > @"Svez Poizon XD.5268" said:

> > > just nerf spinning sword

> >

> > and how?

> > spining sword(SoJ) have 0 problems, its the way it works the full kit that interact to well with spining sword, guard aplies burn by natural 1 every 5 hits if you trait is 1 every 3 and in AoE, thats it, but for the other part they dont have a proper condy weapon set/utilities all is tied to passive justice ticking if you nerf passive justice or traits tied to it you make condi guard inviable, the only other way to nerf Soj for burnguard is reducing the ticks of SoJ but to compensate for power variant every tick have to hurt more

>

> no compensation.

>

> they have 4 casts, with 4 hits each, and each hit applies burning, plus additional burning every 3 or 5 hits.

>

> hyrbid style or even carrion can add stuff up real quick.

>

> NO COMPENSATION.

>

> REDUCE STRIKE, REDUCE AMMO, REDUCE REDUCE, DEUCE DEUCE

>

>

A friend of mine joked that getting things nerfed was like [a substance that people consume that may or may not contain kittens] to people on the forums.

This post makes me think he might have been on to something.

...He's also convinced that the forums are controlled by thief mains so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pro Tip vs IL.

Don't rely on the VFX. Turn up your SFX. When you hear the ear bleeding siren you know to pause dps.

Your brain can react to sounds faster than it can react to sight.

This has been your pvp life hack of the day.

Tempest: Uses Lightning Orb

...

Narrator: So much later the old narrator got tired of narrating and we had to hire a new one

Enemy: *dies*

Laggy Necro? Pfff, weak.

Let me tell you about the true god. Laggy Warrior.

> @"Noah Salazar.5430" said:

> By nerfing some classes you buff other ones as thay will be played more often ;)

And then you nerf those because they are the new "OP" classes!

Ohi Renegade didn't see you there.

What cons does pherald have?

* Little to no pressure from range

* Very weak to conditions when IL is down

* Most skills are heavily telegraphed.

* Does not like boon corrupts (Spinal Shivers vs Heralds go brrr)

* Only 1 stunbreak per legend swap.

* Low to zero stability uptime.

* Cannot customize utilities. What you see is what you get.

* Mobility requires target.

Some other things to be aware of.

* Herald does not run charged mists so only 50 energy per swap.

This means using Riposting shadows (40 energy) or Jade winds (50 energy) leaves them vulnerable. Got stunned just as you swapped into Shiro? Good luck with your ~10 energy while you wait on your legend swap to come off CD.

* Enchanted daggers consumes charges even if evaded or blocked.

* IL requires the herald to facetank damage to get value

Asuming a worst case scenario where you've got symbols on the ground and they have IL up. You can knock them out of your AoEs with Shield 5 or force them to dodge the KB during IL and lose value. As power DH you can use this opening to land chain. As GS guard, you can use this opening to land GS5.

Does any of this mean Herald is a weak class? Of course not.

However, they have downsides just like any other class, and it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge them when discussing balance.

QQ Nerf thread template:

"Nerf X. It has [reads off list of pros while willfully ignoring cons]. It's broken and needs a nerf."

Energy costs? Pffff, what energy costs. While we're at it, nerf thief, they have a 900 range teleport (no cd btw).

Rule of thumb for chat is keep it brief and to the point. No need for eloquent instructions. A simple "bell", "tranq" "thief inc home" ect. will suffice.

But there's also a second purpose to chat, one that any long time Lol player surely knows about. it's not for me personally, but if wielded under the correct circumstances, it can get you a win.

I'm talking about hurting people's pride. You don't need to be a jerk and insult their family. A simple "lol" or "?" after you kill someone is enough to make an egotistical player put a target on you for the rest of the game.

Want to really tick someone off, "lol" at them just before they die, let them know how futile their struggle is. Just make sure you win the fight, or you'll be on the unfortunate end of what we smashers like to call... the "Taunt to get bodied true combo". Trust me, you don't want to be that guy.

If done correctly, they'll be so caught up thinking useless thoughts like "wow did that guy really just disrespect me like that, he's so bad" or "He's acting like he wasn't on 1 hp there, that fight was much closer than he let on..." They won't have any mental resources left for strategy. In this small community, you may even know who these players are, and you can play off of that weakness.

Purely opinionated post, but stealthless or low-stealth thief builds are generally more fun than stealth builds imo. There's more risk of dying, but tend to make up for it with either more damage or more mobility/evades (e.g. running RfI instead of black powder).

If stealth gets a tone down, thief will need buffs to compensate. You could give them 15k base hp. Or what I personally like the idea of, buffing the damage of DA and CS.

> @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > @"Kuma.1503" said:

> > > @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > snip

> >

> >

> > Heal Tempest >>> Heal Scrapper in PvP. Heal scrapper doesn't offer it's team much other than spam cleanses, and Tempest easily accomplishes that with less effort thanks to smothering auras + soldier/trooper rune. It's not terribly difficult to train down a support scrapper because it generally runs 1 stunbreak tops (Elixir Gun toolbelt). It needs to be in close proximity to it's allies to heal which means forcing it to kite greatly limits its ability to support its team. Meanwhile Tempest can kite and support by simply spamming auras.

> >

> > Heal Scrapper >>> Heal Tempest in WvW. In fact that's my problem with it. I wish it wasn' t so good in WvW so that Anet couldn't use that as an excuse to let it suck in other game modes. This is the first time in a while that it's been better than Holo as a dps bruiser in PvP, and that's literally it's whole schtick. There's very little reason to ever run one, dps or support in PvE. Even as a noob carry, heal scourge does the job 10x better.

>

> Did you actually watch the recent tournament?...There was like a single ele...and it was a tanky weaver played by @Blam ...who didn't accomplish anything all match and his team lost miserably

>

> -Tempest is no more meta

> -It got easily replaced by Healbreaker and Scrapper

>

> "Support by simply spamming auras"?...I think you should jump on Healbreak and see for yourself what survives better and heal for more on top of better condi clear for the whole team.....I mean do you see any team dropping a Healbreaker for a tempest?

>

> I think you missed the memo where Tempest got nerfed several times during the last few months , the only reason teams had to use Tempest was the "Glyph revival bug", with OF and mistform CD almost doubled, TOP teams had little reasons to run an ele instead than a Warrior or engi fro support

>

> Also.....**Aura effect are melee range** so dunno where you took your "Kite away and support" strategy from

600 radius is melee range? For context, that's the radius of pre-nerf holographic shockwave. People compained til the cows came home about how that skill CC'ed people who were **nowhere near the intended target**. Why does the narrative on these things always shift when it's convenient.

DPS scrapper is currently very good at the moment. It has some team support with Elixir R, Elixir Gun, and Gyros, but that's a very different build than Med-kit heal scrapper. It's needs to face you to land med blaster (very difficult if not impossible while kiting) Bandage toss needs to be shotgunned. You need to be on top of the target you want to heal in order to land your 3-5-4 combo in med kit. The only heals scrapper has from range is a slight regen-like effect from Egun 5 or Mortar 5.

So long as it can stack with its team it's good to go, but its support drops off if it's forced on the defensive. A far cry from heal tempest who can at least kite (within 600 range of allies) while spamming auras.

> @"Arheundel.6451" said:

snip

Heal Tempest >>> Heal Scrapper in PvP. Heal scrapper doesn't offer it's team much other than spam cleanses, and Tempest easily accomplishes that with less effort thanks to smothering auras + soldier/trooper rune. It's not terribly difficult to train down a support scrapper because it generally runs 1 stunbreak tops (Elixir Gun toolbelt). It needs to be in close proximity to it's allies to heal which means forcing it to kite greatly limits its ability to support its team. Meanwhile Tempest can kite and support by simply spamming auras.

Heal Scrapper >>> Heal Tempest in WvW. In fact that's my problem with it. I wish it wasn' t so good in WvW so that Anet couldn't use that as an excuse to let it suck in other game modes. This is the first time in a while that it's been better than Holo as a dps bruiser in PvP, and that's literally it's whole schtick. There's very little reason to ever run one, dps or support in PvE. Even as a noob carry, heal scourge does the job 10x better.

I'm all for this.

Maybe reduce the ini cost on rifle 3 as compensation. Let their dps button do more dps than their cc.

My friend has this bug but I can queue up just fine. If he's in my party then I can't queue with him.

I recall you making a post once when the forum mob had come for ranger and everyone wanted it nerfed to the ground. It was before the patch that removed Knights and Cavalier from the game.

The forums complained that Rangers were far too tanky, yet had glass levels of burst from range. It supposedly led to them being unkillable gods on a side node while still being able to 100-0 you in a Sic Em burst.

You rightfully pointed out that, while these ranger builds might look alike to the untrained eye, each was built to accomplish different goals. A bunker ranger wasn't going to output as much pressure as a Sic Em sniper. A Sic Em sniper wasn't going to sustain as well as as a bunker ranger, yet the forums constantly complained as if rangers could accomplish it all with a single build. (Simplifying the points made for the sake of time.)

What's happening here, is a reason why I always try to make it known from the get-go when I have a bias against a class. No one is immune to bias, and I think a similar mistake is being made where Trapper DH is being conflated with your average bunker guard. Mistaking the support guard on node for a DPS guard and being bewildered at it's ability to hode node 4v4 is evidence of that. When you expect to see a DPS sustaining at the level of a bunker, you will look for evidence to prove that to be true, even if what you see directly contradicts the point you try to prove.

This isn't me throwing shade btw. Considering you were the player who inspired me to give Druid a shot in PvP (before immob/trapper builds became common).

But if a change is made to guard, I would like for the change to address problems which actually exist, and not problems which we only perceive to exist. The same goes for any class, whether it be thief, ranger, engi, ect.

> @"CookiesOverCake.1862" said:

> Sevenshot - Torment decreased from 7s to 5s , Damage reduced by 10% , Cooldown increased from 7s to 8s

You're taking the seven out of sevenshot. To even suggest such a thing is sacrilegious!

Accidental double post, but I suppose I'll use this opportunity to post the build I use

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAgqRlNwuYbsMGJW2WnvOA-zZIPkMlC9rAKZEYrB

It's balls to the wall, but a ton of fun.

I've been playing a glass thief d/p thief as of late, scrapping the sustain of SA for crit strikes. Despite claims of CS doing less damage than SA, I've been noticing huge numbers.

It's especially nuts when opting to run Deadeye, I consistently hit 10kish malicious backstabs against squishy targets. Mind you, DE has inherently higher risk with the d/p set than DD, but boy is the payoff nice. I honestly prefer the higher risk to higher payoff. It's more in-line with how I prefer to play.

What I'm getting out of this is that the community hates classes with good/consistent disengage. The comparison to mesmer and thief supports this hypothesis.

The idea that your opponent could simply choose to erase their mistakes by leaving combat at any time really grinds people's gears, and I reckon it's a big reason for the desire to nerf thief, as well as keep mesmer in the gutter.

This is just a hypothesis though.