DeceiverX.8361

Lots of practice learning the tab targeting system's nuances for targets in more spread-out encounters. Otherwise for selecting a very specific target, you just have to get faster at left-clicking them. Practice, practice, practice. There's really no better way and you just have to build the accuracy/speed mechanics over time like you would in a shooter. As an aside, if you get the target in advance from range, you can assign target lock and in case they break targeting, it'll stick, and then use take target bound to a hotkey. That said, I'm way faster on just clicking them and continuing on than playing that minigame of buttons.

> @"cyberzombie.7348" said: > > @"VICBEAR.1529" said: > > What is about Engineer, Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer etc? > > Many classes can escape from fight but why is thief so big trouble? > > > > Just make topic "Please delete thief class" > > From personal experience, most other classes except for some rangers actually commit to escaping. It's more common to see roaming thieves **_(dash d/p daredevils specifically) _**to be cocky and just ooc, stack on stealth, then come right back to anyone with their back turned and run away again when they realize they're still in hot water. The part nobody else ****ing understands. It's not thief. It's D/P Daredevil. All these people asking for nerfs should go play any other thief build. Anything besides D/P DrD pretty much gets splattered if it botches an engage and deals no damage except for maybe S/P into relatively bad foes who don't know how to punish it or are running bad builds. Thief has been balanced around D/P Daredevil existing because it's the worst offender of unhealthy designs, and ANet absolutely refuses to rework it because it'd require a huge class rework and I know they're too lazy to do so. When DE started eclipsing its bad design it actually got nipped in the bud and reworked properly.

> @"Svarty.8019" said: > > @"Lucio.4190" said: > > Interesting. I don't play much PvP (not at all), but why is this a problem? > > If it is only a thief and a mesmer, I'd say "well done". I think it's pretty cool that the thief can move to areas that others can't and the game doesn't need to be in total balance on everything. It is, in fact, a Thief? > > Or is there something special about this building that shouldn't make that possible? > > * The thief is one of very few classes that are capable of soloing the lord. Huh?????????????? Every class can solo blue/green bl tower lords. Not every build can, but every class absolutely can.

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said: > @"Sobx.1758" > I will explain it once again so even you can understand it. > Mesmers elite takes something away from mesmer, and then gives it back as a trait, to my knowledge, there is no other class that does this kitten. > All it does is leaves a dead trait. I dont get why is this so hard to grasp for you. I'd rather have that as to be able to regain core functionality AND the elite spec at a small cost than mechanics which actively work against core game or weapon skill ones. A few immediately come to mind. - Transfusion actively works against Reaper, a melee AoE spec meant to scale into enemy numbers, so it brings downs to you to immediately die. Dead Trait. Actually, a big part of BM is and historically was transfusion. Most of BM as a whole trait line is not useful or counter-productive on reaper. - Almost all of the warrior traits based on adrenaline level are self-nerfed with Berserker and spellbreaker counted as only one bar such as Cleansing Ire, one of the premier condition clear abilities it has access to. - Bounding Dodge AND Impaling Lotus are incompatible with OH dagger on thief as it self-reveals when cast after using CnD. Dash often actively works against getting into 130 range to land CnD/Backstab, so all three are dead traits for D/D where it's usually better to just not take any of the GM traits at all. I'm sure there are other obvious ones, and there are tons of anti-synergy traits found all over the other classes that aren't as egregious. It's not a mirage-only problem.

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > > @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > > @"Gogdarth.6741" said: > > > It's fitting that a necromancer subforum just doesn't let a silly bait thread die peacefully, but still. > > > > To the grave... and beyond! > > > > Well objectively the thread was enlivened by Arheundel... > ...who roams with boonbeast, immob druild, and longbow/GS hit and run sic em sniper (all 3 builds hardcounter necro and 2 of them are overpowered in general) excessively in wvw and therefore disqualifies himself for any criticsim on the necro class. > > I did showcase to him how kitten any non-speed rune + speed of shadows reaper build is against any ranger build he brings to the table for one evening in wvw and he is still on his agenda. I guess it's hopeless. He just wants a free-win against players that are clearly on a higher skill level than him. > > 95% of the nerf cries in this forum are delusional players. I've seen so many of them ingame and what skill level they truely are. And the loudest nerf crying players are usually the ones playing the broken fotm builds at the same time. > > > Because they think their opponents should always be as easy as the non-FotM offmeta or downright incompatible/bad PvE builds that get brought in by other inexperienced players, and struggle into those enough to think it's a fair fight. So when they lose to someone playing something FotM on another class, they lose their minds about how what they got beaten by is "clearly massively OP" rather than their low skill being carried by an OP build relative to most others. One of the perks of playing and learning off-meta with the occasional dabble in FotM is that every win you get is mostly deserved, and you can be more objective about what's definitely OP.

Applied Strength and Applied Fortitude. Those were immensely imbalanced way more than PoK. For specific skills... SotL on necro I guess? Though it was a bugfix and not really a nerf per se. I guess it's alright since they reworked how it life-leaches to be more consistent, but I don't really think it was super broken when it had the bugged healing value. **Maybe** RFI at 30 seconds, but I'd rather have seen it 40 instead of 50. 50 is too high and was raised for when SwEq was OP, and in its current state, why a lot of people no longer run it. It's hard to also really say because the state of the game has changed so much over the years. We had instances where longbow ranger dealt no damage but you could hit for 40k using Maul and a pre-rework SotH build, and a time when spirits were OP and and necro dagger AA was up there in DPS game-wide. It's hard to say "Nah that was OP" when such drastic shifts have happened over the years. Otherwise most of what I've personally played has been aggressively nerfed unjustifiably because I usually deviate a bit from the meta, or I've acknowledged it being OP as it was prior to being nerfed, and the changes were either not really related but did tone the power down enough. The bigger issue is more that ANet usually nerfs symptoms instead of problems. So usually the nerfs are heavy-handed bringing something unreasonably strong to be fairish, but to the wrong things which kills diversity, but everyone with any semblance of understanding balance also knows the original can't be restored to its former state by just undoing the change and not instead reworking the issue.

> @"Virgarth.6354" said: > Ok, so basically nerf, nerf and nerf again.... Seems i am doomed to find out this kind of "erase any chance customization" mmo. > Got the point, no more DLC purchase, not worth the price at all at this point... Can't really figure out why every weapons load out can't simply play any kind of "damage source", basically it makes traits half as useful as intended.. O.o > Thanks all for help. You missed the boat a while ago on this class and in the game in general. There's a lot of effort being put in trying to simplify things and a lot of design inconsistency on the thief for a long time. Guardian, Engineer, and necromancer currently have a large number of builds available to them whereas the thief over the past several years has had one or two viable builds and nothing else. Really, Death Blossom has been a rather pointless skill and the reason why D/D has been inferior to all other kits for 8+ years. ANet generally doesn't like to rework thief skills unless it removes an exploit. > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said: > > No offense, but if the issue is that Larcenous Strike is not considered a Dual Wield attack per Deadly Ambition, you should have specified that rather than talking about D/D or changing AA's to be dual wield skills. > > > > S/D is not meant to be a condi loadout and has been nerfed along with Panic Strike's poison as a consequence of it having previously been a viable condi kit in the past. > Man, it is the first claim of suggestion I did start to talk about O.o > > @"Virgarth.6354" said: > >What I did notice is that an eventual sword/dagger would be kinda effective on the condi side (especially on some kind of hybrid set as rampager is) unless a little...well let's call it "mistake" on the overall skill balance, and the same for the short bow to be honest. > > In the d/s rotation, the basic attack, in my opinion again, should be turned as dual wield, in order to make the Deadly Ambition talent really effective (likely the dagger attack lotus strike which will applies poison in any case cuz proper of the skill itself and not due the dual wield trait), the other skills are pretty much pertinent to the condi build cuz of traits like panic strike on infiltrator strike and deadly amb. on skill n3 (both of phases). In my opinion this would grant a better characterization from the build allowing to play it at its best. It's more that there's a dynamic where the skills and traits need to ideally be created and designed for the PvP formats, and that the competitive PvE community for raids etc. which freak out about numbers will get upset regardless unless you play an optimal DPS build. In the PvP modes if something over-performs, it's got to get nerfed, and if it's not optimal in PvE, it doesn't get played. Panic Strike's poison application used to not have a cooldown, and thus S/D condi was viable in the PvP modes by spamming IS/IR (Sword 2). This build was very low-skill and way too effective as a consequence. Poison is a powerful effect which cuts healing and deals a pretty substantial DoT, in which all conditions ignore armor, blocks, and dodges. Putting it on the AA and arbitrarily on mainhand sword by also arbitrarily making Sword AA be a dual skill doesn't make a lot of sense and goes against past precedence, and with the AA, this effect, which has no initiative cost, pretty much guarantees a target is permanently heal-cut and taking substantial condition damage, all the while letting the thief maintain its high evasion and non-committal combat approach that S/x kits already enjoy from IS/IR and either FS/LS or PW. While I'm normally not in opposition to suggestions to create more diversity - quite the contrary - the suggestion you implied of putting poison on MH sword AA is simply not a good one, and generally, S/D in particular is not meant to be condition or DPS-heavy by virtue of how it plays. Especially for WvW when access to Dire/Trailblazer gear is an option, with S/D already being a VERY difficult kit to pin down. You'll get a better understanding as you play the game more as to why this idea isn't a good one over time. I would fixate less on what mechanism you'd like to deal damage with (power vs condi) and instead focus on what playstyle you'd prefer. Some builds are just better-suited to one or another, and I don't really think S/D can be balanced as a condi kit across the different modes without making for drastic skill splits, which are not good long-term as it creates increasing levels of confusion as people switch modes with totally different expectations.

> @"Jugglemonkey.8741" said: > They just need an invisible wall above the gates on those structures. Problem solved. Not so much. Then you wouldn't have LOS to cast ground-targeted skills or ranged AoEs like AC fire, marks, wells, etc. through, and likely jumping through open gates with these same vertical leaps would be cut short by clipping into said wall pieces. Easier fix is to just remove the little humped wall you can stand on or reshaping the corners to be a bit further away. What this is really demonstrating is that the game was not designed for professions to have this much mobility, which is already an endemic problem in class balance alone.

> @"Virgarth.6354" said: > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said: > > To be honest, forget trying to make D/D a condi set. > Good opinions, all of you... But can I remember that the thread was talking about S/D (and not about D/D set which is just my backup). O.o I mean, there is a lacking of "dual wield" in that laceranous strike or whatever the name of the chain is... No offense, but if the issue is that Larcenous Strike is not considered a Dual Wield attack per Deadly Ambition, you should have specified that rather than talking about D/D or changing AA's to be dual wield skills. S/D is not meant to be a condi loadout and has been nerfed along with Panic Strike's poison as a consequence of it having previously been a viable condi kit in the past.

> @"Moradorin.6217" said: > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said: > > > @"Salt Mode.3780" said: > > > > @"Moradorin.6217" said: > > > > > @"Yoci.2481" said: > > > > > Mirage Cloak's Speed of Sand does not cover more ground than a dodge. A dodge covers 300 units. Speed of Sand grants 66% movement speed for 0.75 seconds. Base movement speed in combat is 210 units per second. > > > > > 210u/s * 1.66 * 0.75s = 261.45 units. That's a lot less than the 300 units from a normal dodge. Speed of Sand is also affected by movement impairing conditions like chill or cripple. In that case it covers even less ground. And it only works in the forward direction, not sideways or backwards. > > > > > > > > > > All of that combines into a pretty reasonable trade-off. > > > > > > > > > > edit: And you can't dodge jump. > > > > > > > > Keeping it 100% > > > > > > on top of tht the actual dodge itself is lower then a normal dodge just the visual effects dont line up so people think its longer then it actually is > > > > What? It's 3/4s as the base dodge is. > > >March 05, 2019 > > > All applications of this skill's effect have had their duration reduced to match the duration of a normal dodge roll. This change does not affect the timing window for >ambush skills. > > > > It used to be 1s. Because of its duration extension and easily-accessed vigor, using Dodge food to reach the endurance-refund cap, the mirage had higher evasion uptime than Acrobatics thief in WvW. > > MC also lets you dodge even while CC'ed, without EM. That's stupidly OP with consecutive evasion opportunities because it denies CC from being useful. Especially in the current iteration of the game where really, the only way to kill people is using specialized burst skills with the CC itself dealing .01 damage across most skills on most professions. Being able to dodge during CC invalidates any use of CC on the mirage at all. > > > > They should just give up the whole Mirage Cloak mechanic and try something different. It's impossible to balance. No cast animations is bad design which requires people to look at status bars for punishing, and allows the same damage-during-defense mechanics like immunes which the community has been fighting hard against since this game's launch. The idea stands against literally everything GW2 was built on, and keeping it in check forces the mesmer to be weak. > > > > There are just better options out there which don't hinge on removing visual clarity which are also much easier to balance and not implicitly weaker. > > Technically it doesnt ever let you dodge. It replaces dodge. Dodge becomes gaining basically a boon called MC that gives you evade for 3/4 sec (yes was 1 sec and gave super speed originally). Because you dont dodge you can still use non-instant cast skills, however, EVERYONE can use instant cast at any time just like a mirage regardless of if its dodge, Dash, Mirage Cloak. So the idea that this cannot be done with other classes is false. Every class can cast instant cast skills during a dodge (yes mid dodge). And absolutely nowhere did I mention instant-cast skills. These are universally utilities with longer cooldowns and are mostly run as cleanses and stunbreaks on every other profession. So what exactly are you saying? It lets the mirage cast normally while evading, or really, lets the mirage evade while casting without interruption. That removes visual clarity when fighting against an opponent without looking deeply at their status bar by removing the visual cues for both when they can interrupt, or when they can apply CC to punish in advance. There's an old video before GW2 launched with either CJ or MO about combat visibility, and how they wanted to make this game be more about what you see on-screen and what people are doing rather than traditional MMO's like WoW where you stare at status bars. Mirage goes directly against this mantra and it's a slap in the face to why a lot of people joined the game in the first place. If I wanted to play a game based on status effects, I'd play WoW.

> @"Salt Mode.3780" said: > > @"Moradorin.6217" said: > > > @"Yoci.2481" said: > > > Mirage Cloak's Speed of Sand does not cover more ground than a dodge. A dodge covers 300 units. Speed of Sand grants 66% movement speed for 0.75 seconds. Base movement speed in combat is 210 units per second. > > > 210u/s * 1.66 * 0.75s = 261.45 units. That's a lot less than the 300 units from a normal dodge. Speed of Sand is also affected by movement impairing conditions like chill or cripple. In that case it covers even less ground. And it only works in the forward direction, not sideways or backwards. > > > > > > All of that combines into a pretty reasonable trade-off. > > > > > > edit: And you can't dodge jump. > > > > Keeping it 100% > > on top of tht the actual dodge itself is lower then a normal dodge just the visual effects dont line up so people think its longer then it actually is What? It's 3/4s as the base dodge is. >March 05, 2019 > All applications of this skill's effect have had their duration reduced to match the duration of a normal dodge roll. This change does not affect the timing window for >ambush skills. It used to be 1s. Because of its duration extension and easily-accessed vigor, using Dodge food to reach the endurance-refund cap, the mirage had higher evasion uptime than Acrobatics thief in WvW. MC also lets you dodge even while CC'ed, without EM. That's stupidly OP with consecutive evasion opportunities because it denies CC from being useful. Especially in the current iteration of the game where really, the only way to kill people is using specialized burst skills with the CC itself dealing .01 damage across most skills on most professions. Being able to dodge during CC invalidates any use of CC on the mirage at all. They should just give up the whole Mirage Cloak mechanic and try something different. It's impossible to balance. No cast animations is bad design which requires people to look at status bars for punishing, and allows the same damage-during-defense mechanics like immunes which the community has been fighting hard against since this game's launch. The idea stands against literally everything GW2 was built on, and keeping it in check forces the mesmer to be weak. There are just better options out there which don't hinge on removing visual clarity which are also much easier to balance and not implicitly weaker.

> @"Smoosh.2718" said: > Hands down, Ranger being one of the easiest to play. You can eat your dinner and still kill mobs with it due to having two damage sources and a secondary target for mobs to attack. > > Not to forget the 'Oops i messed up... Anyway' button on downed state. Yeah not sure how this wasn't unanimous. The class can solo champions while under-leveled in blues if you cycle pets to manage aggro and heal, and pretty much cannot die to anything less than an elite or champion via its downed state self-res. With minimal experience it pretty much dominates and can solo everything short of a select few dungeon bosses, world bosses, and raids. Pretty much just needs six buttons to play and kill nearly anything with.

To be honest, forget trying to make D/D a condi set. It's been a "Hybrid" that's sucked since launch that they won't address, because ANet thinks spamming 3 is exciting gameplay and that power D/D should always be strictly worse than the other power setups except for its AA in PvE, which has been nerfed to mediocrity. Otherwise the other options are just miles better. Dagger Training used to have a 33% chance of applying poison on dagger strikes before Deadly Ambition existed, and they removed it in favor of the measly 80 power which is a nerf from the 5% it gave before, which still, nobody ran, and further reinforced spamming 3. Most professions get 120 power on their traits, or up to 150 ferocity per, and optional bleed on crit or bleed on-hit. D/D - and even a good chunk of DA as a traitline - is a jumbled mess with no identity and basically no synergy in any way. Play P/D and you'll do at least triple the damage with range and way better utility/escape, or opt for literally P/nothing and spam repeater because it's just better than spamming Death Blossom. For shortbow, it's one of the primary reasons thief is usable in the PvP modes due to IArrow, so don't expect much in terms of damage gains, as then the kit would be too strong. At one point, spamming Choking Gas used to deal substantial poison stacks, but they also removed that for being too good into Guardian, ANet's definitive favorite class.

> @"Salt Mode.3780" said: > the fact that you said thieves are less dominant in WvW + "they have the safest roaming disengage when things go bad" is all I need to read. A good mesmer vs a thief in the same skill cap mesmers should never win. In terms of reapers thieves cc locking + kite reapers / necros really dont have much left for them as they have NO access to stab besides elite + reaper 3. > The point of it wasn't to complain about thieves, for once mesmers don't get the oh they need a nerf and now going on thieves yet thief mains are defending how much they need buffs etc etc saying they arent that good blah blah blah. Honestly finding it to be hilarious. They're not dominant because they don't really win. They can disengage, but it doesn't really mean anything if their opponent gets to do the same and can match the re-engage. I call it Scaredevil because most of the time the class solely runs away rather than actually **doing** anything into a decently-skilled opponent. It's safe, but it's not actually effective. Safety is way more influential in sPvP where a decap beast without combat is totally viable to carry a team. This isn't the case in WvW. The problem is that the strength of the profession is extremely volatile and entirely upheld by a few bad design choices, which have been the same forever. The thief outside of a very specific play style and build is atrocious. In my opinion, about equal to core mesmer, with its lows being a bit lower in my opinion. The mirage suffered from a similar problem in that it was strong because of objectively bad design in a few areas that made all other options pointless and impossible to balance, and thus had to get changed (they should have just deleted MC and EM and reworked Mirage like Deadeye, but they didn't rather than hitting the dodge acces), and with the damage nerfs from February, made mesmer - a class literally designed to burst - like many thief builds, weak and purposeless. Thief's problem is the same as pre-nerf Mirage, but ANet has let the problem mechanics linger for close to a decade rather than doing anything at all to open up the other builds because said problem mechanics are entirely what has kept the class historically good. Across every meta. Ever. The offmeta choices continue to get nerfed and can't feasibly be buffed while the problem-design exists. So outside of the best build, the thief itself is in a really bad spot, so generic nerfs and statements like "thief is OP" are neither good ideas nor really correct.

> @"aleron.1438" said: > This is mostly the reason why I've been able to get away with dropping durability rune and air sigil on my DE and use antitoxin+cleansing instead. > > Those that stuck to bursty type thieves are quite a rare sight to see nowadays. They are like the last of the 1shot KO in the scene (with Slb's). > > The big DMG CC patch neutered holos. The subsequent nerfs to nades and explosives further sealed their fate for those that tried the scrapper suprise stealth gyro gankers. Mesmers and plasma beam ele's don't pack the same oomph since and so they do have been dwindling in presence. > > It's really just that there's absolutely zero incentive to doing so. The stacking damage modifiers which made it even somewhat worthwhile are almost literally all gone. It's down from like 68% to a hair over 20%. Daredevil offers more damage options than CS, and Trickery more than DA outside of PvE via Lead Attacks alone. Then the signet nerfs, then the damage nerf patch, and the -10% damage food... the list goes on. The weapons which don't offer defenses/utility have no purpose because there just isn't enough damage in the game to justify taking the damage weapons. Heck, the assassination thief build was actually really strong on D/P prior to all the nerfing (discovered years late for some reason when Sind started playing ASignet) because unlike D/D, it still has stealth stacking to pick its engages and disengages whenever it wants (which is really OP and nigh impossible to counter unlike D/D) with a lot of blind and sticking pressure to boot, and if you start a 1v2 by immediately downing the first guy, D/P can out-duel the second by virtue of kit strength with a small skill difference into **most** builds. Per the usual, the rationale behind "uncounterable damage" is stemming from underlying issues with some weapon combos and traits just being way too dominant over others, and nothing will get resolved until those interactions are fixed or the other possible options buffed exclusively.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said: > > > @"kharmin.7683" said: > > > > @"TrueTyrant.6458" said: > > > > Typical ranger, why not go beg for more range on your longbow? > > > > > > Please don't paint all ranger players with such a broad brush. > > > > There's been a bit of a trend over the years where the population of least-skilled rangers has a weird compulsion to go to other subforums and ask for nerfs to professions they have not yet played after hopping into the competitive modes. > > That's been a trend for almost every class for the last 8 years. Dude playing class X can't kill class Y ... there is a rant post about it in class Y subforum. > > What ACTAULLY needs to happen is for some people understand how this game works and has worked for 8 years. Game gets changes, classes move around in rank ... happens all the time. There isn't a need for specific calls to nerf or buff whatever class because history tells us it happens eventually to everyone. These threads aren't made by 'rangers' or whatever subsection of player is FOTM to be targetted by frustrated WvW players ... they are made by people that can't deal with what they are experiencing. > > Bottomline: Someone is always better for WHATEVER reason, so people need to deal with it. Sure, but I meant more along the lines of there's a trend beyond the general QQ. Notice that despite the state of the warrior and to some extent the mesmer, and the historic state of engineer for several years, few complaint threads were really ever made in the other class subsections. Weirdly, I've observed a small correlation between first-timer longbow rangers and a compulsion to ask for nerfs to other professions rather than a re-evaluation of ranger.> @"kharmin.7683" said: > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said: > > > @"kharmin.7683" said: > > > > @"TrueTyrant.6458" said: > > > > Typical ranger, why not go beg for more range on your longbow? > > > > > > Please don't paint all ranger players with such a broad brush. > > > > There's been a bit of a trend over the years where the population of least-skilled rangers has a weird compulsion to go to other subforums and ask for nerfs to professions they have not yet played after hopping into the competitive modes. > > Some have been so kind to record their "skilled gameplay" after thousands of hours in PvE to be absolutely eviscerated by the respective other communities, pretty much pointing out that they made a bad decision with extremely slow decision-making and reaction times at virtually every second of footage. > > > > It's not so much the fault of ranger players but the fact I think starting the game playing the class as a stereotypical longbow pewpew builds in PvE breeds some very bad habits and expectations that the mains and first-time rangers don't realize until they delve deep into the other professions. > > > > Even as coming from someone who's first-ever character was a ranger (and rerolled into thief due to the boring pet mechanics and underpowered nature of the weapon skills at launch when pets were designed to deal 40% of the ranger's damage) I firmly believe unlocking pets and longbow at 80 would remove at least half these problems, as to force them into being actively engaged more with the game's mechanics earlier on and taking just a few more risks. > > > > Even my girlfriend with limited gaming experience who joined recently quit the ranger as her first character cited that while she wanted to blast people with a bow and be a "cool archer -expletive-," the gameplay was not stimulating, and subsequently re-rolled into guard, hit 80, and then made a thief, and found much more depth and difficulty right out of the gates in both. > > I understand your points, but they also seem to be insinuating that they reflect the abilities and game-play of those players who choose to play rangers. My request, again, is to not paint all of us ranger players with such a broad brush. Not all of us ranger players exhibit the characteristics that you describe. I main ranger, and yet I also enjoy other professions as well. I just happen to prefer the ranger profession for a host of reasons and I'm confident that there are a lot of other ranger mains who likewise are not playing in the manner that you describe or who are quite adept at their preferred profession. > > Comments like the one that I originally replied to are overly broad and, in my opinion, don't do much to help relationships between players who happen to prefer certain professions. > > Not all of us ranger players are like that. Sure, my explanation is more the underlying rationale behind why conclusions tend to be jumped to in complaint threads on other professions' subforums more than systematically saying all ranger players are bad. I know some extremely skilled ranger mains who frankly are better players than I am. It doesn't reduce my observation (among others') that woefully-underskilled play is often the byproduct of camping "bearbow" builds in PvE, playing what's objectively the most forgiving class to level up and get started on the game with, and then having a totally different reality thrust upon them when put into PvP environments. It's not an innate lack of skill or inability to be skilled, but rather a completely and totally different perception of the way the game plays than how it actually does. And new players who start on such builds tend to jump to conclusions about balance rather than realizing they're fundamentally playing the game, strictly speaking, wrong, from a competitive mindset. It's a lack of preparedness and understanding of systems moreso than total ineptitude, and it manifests mostly in players who are new and primarily ranger players from PvE pivoting over to the PvP formats. Understanding and likely playing all professions to equal content is what will more healthily define a balanced and more objective perspective on power disparities between professions, but my mentioning is specifically more about approach to combat and engagement mindset moreso than total game knowledge.

> @"Salt Mode.3780" said: > > > > And if you don't know what the skills do, their relative strength, usefulness, etc., why the hell are you complaining about a class being OP if you don't know how it works at all? > > Mesmer says hi, as well as mesmers say suck it up. > Thieves are extremely dominant in WvW and as far as spvp goes with thieves being replaced by mesmers simply is not true. > Except this has nothing to do with mesmer? Also if you really want to get pedantic, release Mirage also phased thief out of sPvP entirely since it had better map mobility. This was addressed in one of Sindrener's streams, among other top thieves, many of which switched to Mirage for the weeks during its period of absolute dominance due to its strictly better mobility. Thieves are less dominant in WvW insofar as they have the safest roaming disengage when things go bad. Raw dueling potential by far and away goes to Soulbeast. If you're taking this from a perspective of mesmer as you seem to be, thief seems artificially strong because D/P Daredevil, the absolute best thief build by a mile, pretty much counters mesmer for a number of reasons. As it does Reaper, which you don't really see complaining much about its weak matchup because the rationale is fairly obvious. Although good reapers and mesmers alike stand roughly even chances against the thief with a +/- 10% variance based on skill level given the 55/45 WR favoring the thief.

> @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said: > 10k cnd? Never see them numbers. 7k is pushing it It was doable before the Feb patch on signet builds. Approx 4100 power and 261 crit damage if you built correctly. The problem was the build was still bad and way too difficult for most people to play reasonably well beyond the first target going down assuming they didn't see you coming and couldn't react in time to the CnD damage, because it was 100% engage-based and relied solely on using D/D to survive after that, with no stunbreak, defensive traits, or utilities to navigate away from the fight.  Currently, the same build is lucky to hit 6k+9k into most medium armor targets without protection, which obviously kills... basically nothing. **Maybe** a glass marauder ele without defenses up, which is uncommon. They've removed about 30% in damage modifiers and about 55% overall damage from the full glass all-in assassination DA/CS/Tr backstab builds over the last two years between trait reworks and the 30% nerf in February. Seeing as it carries no disengage and no defenses condition cleanses, stealth, etc., I've rerolled into SA since it does the same damage as DA when factoring mug vs life steal on stealth attacks and venoms, and even then, there's no reason to run any of the signets when ISignet is worse than virtually every other stunbreak on thief + removal of ambient creatures in WvW, ASignet only adds around 2k damage per entire skill rotation due to reduced coefficients and modifiers (SoS is better regardless for the 10 vuln), and SoS is pointless for the passive since everyone has rune of speed and perma-swiftness anyways, and the defenses on other utilities vastly outweigh 10 vuln because it's again, not like you can burst a single target down, regardless. Also, condi meta, so everyone's running dual cleansing sigils at least, meaning the vuln won't stick long enough to make a difference.

> @"kharmin.7683" said: > > @"TrueTyrant.6458" said: > > Typical ranger, why not go beg for more range on your longbow? > > Please don't paint all ranger players with such a broad brush. There's been a bit of a trend over the years where the population of least-skilled rangers has a weird compulsion to go to other subforums and ask for nerfs to professions they have not yet played after hopping into the competitive modes. Some have been so kind to record their "skilled gameplay" after thousands of hours in PvE to be absolutely eviscerated by the respective other communities, pretty much pointing out that they made a bad decision with extremely slow decision-making and reaction times at virtually every second of footage. It's not so much the fault of ranger players but the fact I think starting the game playing the class as a stereotypical longbow pewpew builds in PvE breeds some very bad habits and expectations that the mains and first-time rangers don't realize until they delve deep into the other professions. Even as coming from someone who's first-ever character was a ranger (and rerolled into thief due to the boring pet mechanics and underpowered nature of the weapon skills at launch when pets were designed to deal 40% of the ranger's damage) I firmly believe unlocking pets and longbow at 80 would remove at least half these problems, as to force them into being actively engaged more with the game's mechanics earlier on and taking just a few more risks. Even my girlfriend with limited gaming experience who joined recently quit the ranger as her first character cited that while she wanted to blast people with a bow and be a "cool archer -expletive-," the gameplay was not stimulating, and subsequently re-rolled into guard, hit 80, and then made a thief, and found much more depth and difficulty right out of the gates in both.

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said: > Core Ranger fails at condi builds > Core Ranger power builds were over-nerfed and can no longer compete in higher tiers unless it is vs. very specifically power damage > > Druid is bad unless you're playing in middle tiers > Druid is only "looking to be viable" because of Jacaranda > > Condi Soulbeast is atrociously bad and in no way viable > Power Soulbeast is still viable amongst high tier, but it literally takes "the most experienced Ranger players in the community" to be able to even make it work > > > Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast is middle tier amongst everything else at best right now in this current patching. Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast has always felt strong in middle tiers due to middle tier players not understanding how to work LOS and how to exploit bad pet pathing, which is what most of you are probably feeling. Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast in higher tiers is just really really difficult to play. It couldn't sustain anymore nerfing in this current patching without dropping out of the scene completely, and that isn't bias, that is actually true. > > The only thing that SHOULD be tended to is Druid immob spam builds. <- This has nothing to do with OP or UP, it's about obnoxious mechanics. The real root of the problem is the Jacaranda. Jacaranda is the icing on the cake of these builds that puts them over the top in terms of frequency of immob spam, and ability to deal a lot of damage while the player is caught in the immob spam. That damage coming from Call Lightning. If it weren't for the Call Lightning, I assure you that Druid has bad damage. Per the usual, the problem still is a split in gameplay from sPvP and WvW. It's not as good as guard on-node and longbow can't function well while engaged in melee. That said, anyone claiming soulbeast of any kind is even remotely balanced right now in WvW where it can leverage its entire kit in open-space fights with a more diverse set of gear options is absolutely full of crap. Bruiser longbow Soulbeast + Minstrel ele is literally the S+ tier combo in everything outside of ZvZ and can pretty much indefinitely tank any group of less than 10 while having enough kill pressure on the soulbeast to take targets down one at a time. The damage is still there even on a build meant mostly to sustain by sheer unconditional modifiers, raw stats, and innate damage potential. Even with only like 100 hours on condi soulbeast I frequently win 1v2/1v3 and it's my go-to class to roam on when I start losing and needing a free carry, well past a cut above 6k hours on thief and another 1.5k on my Dia+ level Reaper that I used to coach people on how to play... So yeah, maybe not top tier in sPvP but WvW-specific nerfs being requested are absolutely justified.

Long range, high burst, high mobility via constant superspeed, high stab uptime, siege damage splash, and very easy with good defenses to run back into towers. It's overtuned and very good for solo play.

> @"Yasai.3549" said: > > @"Dave.6819" said: > > > How do you fail to see that initiative system is as much limiting as cooldowns are? Id rather get cooldown system but be respected and buffed rather then being a shortbow5 bot. And even that was nerfed. We gotta thank to people like you that we get these treatments every balance patch. Soon we'll be gone from PvP just as much as we are gone from WvW. > > Yur welcome. > Ini system is a scourge just as much as Rev's bloated skills with high Energy costs. > I've mentioned before in many threads I rather Thieves have cooldowns and actual good skills instead of situationally powerful spam skills. > > > WvW though.. we are on another lvl? What are u on about? We get kicked from squads. If we were really "on another" level as you say we'd be wanted and we'd take up majority of squads. Just go to WvW. Join a commander and count how many classes there are and i assure you you'll either find 0 thieves or max 1-2 thieves in that squad. > > It has nothing to do with zerg play at all. > They simply take actions way faster at higher frequencies thanks to Ini mechanic. > > Thief Shortbow 5 was the perfect example of this before it was nerfed : > There is simply no catching up to someone who can teleport 900 range 3 times in a row tops with no delay. > That's more or less a problem specific to Shortbow and to some extent D/P's overloaded skills more than an issue with the initiative system itself. Most of the other professions get access to the same number of skill casts per time, if not more, with their separate cooldowns. The only thing initiative allows for is the use of the same skill twice in a row. Which is powerful, but less so than you'd expect for most of the thief's skills. Is spamming Dancing Dagger, Cloak and Dagger, Death Blossom, Shadow Strike, Infil Strike/Return, Headshot, BP, Cluster Bomb, Choking Gas, or Disabling Shot, Body Shot, or Unload a problem? No, because those skills don't really individually change a fight or lack counters. Target the specific skills, not the higher-level mechanics. I'm tired of people saying "nerf thief" when their sole gripe is and always has been "Nerf D/P's safety/fight control (such as SShot, Dash, and stacked stealth while having the free option for a SB alternate for IArrow as strictly as a getawat with so much innate power on the primary kit)." Because historically, the other builds/core skills/mechanics aren't having such a high impact at all, because they're balanced if not even weak. It's usually something about a fundamentally broken specific interaction more than the class itself. And if you don't know what the skills do, their relative strength, usefulness, etc., why the hell are you complaining about a class being OP if you don't know how it works at all?

@"Woop S.7851" That's a bunch of fancy diagrams (with very little relevance to the issue as a whole) but almost has nothing to do with the issue at hand. There are three exits from blue spawn; there's another whole path literally outlined on the map leading to Bravost and another one leading out behind lang, which said blob won't be able to shut down. The issue with Mag's strategy specifically is because they throw down groups of 15 on cloud builds at each exit rather than one blob at the main entrance. If a blob capable of wiping them shows up, the 15-man at one exit runs (because they're KDA-obsessed and don't actually like winning at a disadvantage, despite what they say) and people are let back in momentarily. The issue is the 15-man chases down stragglers to ensure their kills come at no risk, avoids the blob at all costs, and said blob ends up with no content, and leaves again, and the 15-man group just refills the spot. If the blob goes to take SMC or a similar objective, Mag cries about it being a blob server and then sits with 10mans on camps preventing anyone actually looking to run small/solo from doing literally anything except blob. The endless ganking and abhorrent whispers if you manage to actually kill any of them is insane. They're victims to their own toxicity, and pull the same strategy people are saying to deny them content in reverse; if they're not ganking 5-to-1, they don't give content. So deny them content. If they want to play a different game than the rest of the GW2 community, they can go play a different game, and they won't be missed. There's like three people on that server I respect who will take disadvantaged or even fights and don't throw huge tantrums when they lose. The rest are KDA whores who go into full meltdown mode if they die, acting like GW2 is an extension of that shitty Sword Art show.

Soon as I saw this I knew it was because of Mag. They've done it non-stop for years. Play the BL's or log out. Their community is pretty much 99% trash playing whatever FoTM safe spec is around to blast strings of unorganized pugs meanwhile proclaiming skill. Deny them content. They get super mad and it's absolutely hilarious.

Idk there's like no reason for a mesmer to even be able to summon the assassin given how long the initial cooldown period is. It takes longer than the initial spike by a fair bit.