Breaking the Myth of Rock/Paper/Scissors in Solo Roaming

In my other thread, I spoke about nerfing invis on Deadeyes as a Necro and saw a couple of slightly off-topic replies implying that Range/Mobility effectively counters Necro especially Scourge.

I hope to ask a simple question to make people rethink their stand that it is okay or working as intended for Necros to be hardcountered by Range/Mobility.

My simple question is, name one elite spec or one form of play-style or even one type of build that makes your class helpless in a solo encounter.

To my limited knowledge, Necros are the only ones who have such a hard counter.For example, no matter how we build our Necro, we are going to get hardcountered by a decent Range/Mobile Deadeye.Does your class have such a hard counter that no matter how you build, you are always very disadvantaged?

Glass ele with any elite spec (s/f FA for example) gets countered by almost anything that doesnt die to one burst, and considering that passive invulns are still a thing, it's a lot of classes.

Nearly every class gets countered by mirage or warrior. Or a ranger who understands that LB is not the only weapon in game.

As s/d thief my biggst or hardest fights are experienced fresh air eles/good long bow DH and may be a zerker soulbeast (if I don't screw up) and I am talking about fighting for a camp or something.

Tbh it boils down to what you’re running, for example above mentions mirage counters nearly every class which is true of the current disgusting meta builds for the class. However I run and interrupt build so guard, warrior and thieves can be a real headache for me either because they have lots of stability or there’s not much to interrupt and powerblock’s cool down increase effect doesn’t work on thief.

I think you’re right that necro is pretty much the only class at a significant disadvantage in whatever they play roaming however no class can come close to how dominant it is in large scale fights or being a self multiplier to itself especially since blood line became so strong for pulling and rezzing. Scourges are even replacing FBs a lot of the time because they only need 1 FB for stab to last the entire fight.

Revenants vs Condi Bunkers

If you want necro to be balanced outside of group play then say good bye to all that easy oppressive offense aoe.

Yeah melee rev vs scourge it's pretty much suicide. I'd be happy for Necro to lose all that vomit aoe cancer in exchange for some ranged options

@Napo.1230 said:Yeah melee rev vs scourge it's pretty much suicide. I'd be happy for Necro to lose all that vomit aoe cancer in exchange for some ranged options

Any melee against scourge ends up being suicide unless the melee can constantly cleanse.

All range shutting down scourge makes perfect sense considering how cancerous scourge is to melee.

I play a revenant. Here are all the builds/classes that should never lose to a roaming revenant in this day and age if the player playing these builds has even an inkling of what to do.

1. Mesmer. Seriously, any build. Mirage is the worst. Chrono disenchanter is also pretty cancer and will kill you with phantasm spam while maintaining perma prot. Base mesmer can build for the highest damage of any of them, but has slightly less mitigation- that said, it should still kill you. Oh wait, I've just only mentioned power builds! Condi mesmer of any type will kill you. Enough said.
2. Thief, Daredevil, especially S/D base thief and D/P daredevil. S/D thief spams unblockables and kites all over the place, D/P dash daredevil can kite you to the point that the only damage being done in the fight is from Mug, Shadow Shot, and PI, and don't forget that Essence Sap crits for over 4k and can be thrown backward. Condi thief? Don't even bother.
3. Scourge. I don't even need to explain this one.
4. That S/D bunker condi healing weaver build. Y'all know which one I'm talking about, the one that full regens you whenever you attune to Water and use Riptide on top of barrier application and oppressive aids pressure. You should be able to stalemate it but it's one of those fights that is you fighting for your life while they twirl around at high health percentages.
5. Druids. I'd rather fall asleep at my computer than waste my time facing one of these. Also, soulbeasts who spend half their time kiting in stealth to get 1500 range and then spamming unblockable longbow skills are pretty annoying. Maybe not a hard counter, but I'd still rather fall asleep at my computer.

As to the matchups that are close or favorable:

Warrior (base/SB). Most warriors these days just get carried by last stand and double endure pain procs to the point that the fight is painfully long and boring. A warrior can random dodge 20 times, get all their damage in via throw axe and reckless dodge, and still almost beat you. Spellbreakers are kinda even more annoying considering that you can make one mistake and get chunked for 75% of your health, not to mention with all the passive healing, they can just kite you and wait for throw axe and bladetrail to come back off CD while regen'ing to full. Warrior will always be the class where you have to make many mistakes to lose, but can still be a very fun fight if the warrior truly knows what he's doing.Guardian (DH) is a pretty even and fun fight. Since you're all melee your only choice will be to trigger their Purification every time, giving them a free reset every 25 seconds. However, if you can force them to miss deflecting shot and know that you can heal to full through a test of faith/glint heal, it should be very even. Base guardian SHOULD be a free win for a rev unless you get chunked.Necro (Reaper) should be a win. Of course you might lose a round here and there due to passive procs.Engi (Holosmith) is a super fun fight. I'd say the Rev has the advantage here but I don't really think I've fought any holosmiths worth writing home about yet.Fresh Air ele (Weaver/Base) is the kind of fight where the Rev should win majority, but you'll still lose some due to forgetting to dodge, or good CC plays by the ele.

So there you have it folks. Hard countered by anything condi, hard countered by mirage, thief, druid, and even that sword weaver build. I'm sure glad most people in this game don't know what they're doing anymore or I'd have a much harder time than I do.

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what the hard counter is for Deadeye (or Thieves in general). By hard counter, I mean if I see them while running the hard counter, they are dead whether they want to fight me or not. In general, when I find a necro alone on most of my ranger builds or my DE (which I rarely play and is running my PVE gear), the necro dies whether he wants to fight me or not.

@Shining One.1635 said:I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what the hard counter is for Deadeye (or Thieves in general). By hard counter, I mean if I see them while running the hard counter, they are dead whether they want to fight me or not. In general, when I find a necro alone on most of my ranger builds or my DE (which I rarely play and is running my PVE gear), the necro dies whether he wants to fight me or not.

what is the hard counter for your ranger that he cant escape?

A power Mirage with Evasive Mirror could be a possible counter for Deadeye, don't know about Thieves in general though.

@MUDse.7623 said:what is the hard counter for your ranger that he cant escape?Mirage. I might be able to escape if I played Staff Druid, but I don't.

Rangers get shat on by most roaming mesmer builds available in today's game, but I think that's more of an issue with how overtuned mesmer is than lack of counterplay on the ranger's part. Its crazy, back in the day our kryptonite was thieves, but thief encounters these days seem significantly more balanced. Marauder's gear certainly helped with that.

Necromancer is a different story, however. Even before HoT most specs were able to just run circles around whatever mobility the necromancer could bring to the table. If you die to a necromancer in a 1v1 scenario that's pretty much on you.

Of course this is a roaming perspective. The table turns if you throw the two in large group scenarios.

~ Kovu

@Shining One.1635 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what is the hard counter for your ranger that he cant escape?Mirage. I might be able to escape if I played Staff Druid, but I don't.

then anyone can kill my deadeye if i wasnt running shadow arts, but i do. (oke necros still couldnt)

@"Clownmug.8357" said:A power Mirage with Evasive Mirror could be a possible counter for Deadeye, don't know about Thieves in general though.

the problem is , he is asking for some build that can guarantee a kill. if i run around the map while not leaving permastealth till i get to a target that i do want to kill, then i dont think a power mirage is able to get me out of stealth and force a kill if i just aim to survive and avoid the fight. and i think power mirage while i need to be very careful approaching them, has a huge weakness against a deadeye : too squishy. if i attack with rifle then yes i will probably die but i attack power mes allways with dagger and hope i do get a crit, before i post numbers and get answers that 'no they dont hit that high' just an example of last week against power mirage in his SMC, his object aura for extra thoughness and still overkill :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF75Qv-gQIQ

oh and altho it might look a bit like it but he was not afk, i was already in there for 2 hrs and you see him moving at the beginning into the lord for whatever reason.if this hit does not crit and i 'only' got a ~90% crit chance at that moment, i am probably dead.

but i do think a well played ranger should kill me if i dare to attack him - sadly hard to find one.

If you aren't playing a thief or a mesmer, you are doing it wrong.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Shining One.1635 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what is the hard counter for your ranger that he cant escape?Mirage. I might be able to escape if I played Staff Druid, but I don't.

@"Clownmug.8357" said:A power Mirage with Evasive Mirror could be a possible counter for Deadeye, don't know about Thieves in general though.

For mirage countering DE then yes I think rifle is easier to counter, mantra of distraction with quick reflexes on the deadeye can interrupt DJ or you can dodge into counterburst, possibly even reflect. That is of course if when you can target the DE fast enough and the UI doesn’t suddenly think you have to kill that angry mom minding its business. The main way I fail at doing this is because targeting something that’s just popped out of stealth while there’s already 3 other players is the worst joke I’ve ever seen so I’ve taken to dodging and then counterburst rather than try to interrupt the DJ.

Dagger, a decent Mesmer has a lot of practise dodging a shadowshot and will in general keep on the move to prevent a BS which you can’t combo with steal as DE. You’d likely need to burn shadowstep or infiltrators signet but it starts getting risky at that point unless DE has something I’m missing that would allow a similar effect.

At the end of the day if you are persistent enough to stalk someone as DE I think you will always get the kill in the end, even if it does mean waiting till they fight someone else. While I don’t care to do it and it’s not a play style I find fun, enjoyable or want to learn to do I can appreciate how effective it can be to get that 1 kill even if most builds will have 20 times the body count usually.

@apharma.3741 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Shining One.1635 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what is the hard counter for your ranger that he cant escape?Mirage. I might be able to escape if I played Staff Druid, but I don't.

@"Clownmug.8357" said:A power Mirage with Evasive Mirror could be a possible counter for Deadeye, don't know about Thieves in general though.

@Napo.1230 said:Yeah melee rev vs scourge it's pretty much suicide. I'd be happy for Necro to lose all that vomit aoe cancer in exchange for some ranged options

ALL for SOME? How magnanimous of you.

To put it lightly, I almost feel bad killing necros on my ranger. It's just so easy; there is nothing they can do. I know many players read these forums and assume Scourge is some over-powered entity (falsely because people have no clue what they are talking about). Then when they bring their brand new shiny Scourge to battle, they are utterly decimated by ranged classes.

Even if barrier added reflect, they'd still be easy to kill. I'm not sure how Anet missed the mark on this. I know some builds are meant to counter other builds, but the disparity between necros and ranged classes is ridiculous. Any classes that has the capability of going ranged and pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 will overpower Scourge any day of the week.

I also remember back at the beginning how useless LB rangers were to thieves out in the open; that was a hard counter. At least now with Sic'em and the rangers ability to pop in and out of stealth, it makes it much more viable.

As for Mudse.7623 asking what a hard counter against a ranger is? A charging in melee; warrior is the worst with the constant 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ,0, immune, immune, immune, block, block, block, block, block popping up on the screen along with reflect. It's great that a Scourge is a hard counter to that garbage.

Longbow ranger was one of the hardest counter for thief in the early days, Deadly; RF always dealt the damage it does now and its long channel also always tracked stealth. Maul before it was normalized could pretty easily hit for 12-15k with a MMS core build without any real investment. That let good longbow players track and then immediately kill stealthed thieves quite easily.

Scourge is just trash design because it will always either dominate or be rendered useless. The issue is its biggest weakness (ranged burst) is hardest-countered in organized group play, and its strengths (AoE + boon hate, condition damage, and support) are the most-desired facets of group play.

It's the similar to the Deadeye, which is only ever really strong when simply ignored or the enemy doesn't just run away. It's not OP so much as it is poor design to fight against.

Worth noting, said warrior only counters longbow ranger played poorly; druid and a properly-specced soulbeast can destroy meta warrior/spellbreaker with its higher mobility and similar defensive posturing; MMS/WS/SB can run near-identical damage immunity to warrior via SoS/LSoS/Bear (16s uptime) versus warrior DP/EP/BS/SS (also 16s) with a ranged advantage, better condition cleansing, and similar mobility with GS3+Bird Swoop for double 1000+ unit dashes on strictly lower cooldowns.

Warrior might be a bit excessive right now in 1v1 just because it's pretty simple, but ranger, holo, mirage, and FB are in similar positions of strength and lack of counterplay.

@apharma.3741 said:Dagger, a decent Mesmer has a lot of practise dodging a shadowshotHaha yeah... the thing is, there is one thief build running around. Others are exceedingly rare. Like maybe 1 in 100 run something else. And they are all just as predictable.

In comparison, fighting on my power mirage the other day I met a gank thief that lost 50% of his hp in the ambush while I had taken no damage, because his approach was so predictable once he stealthed the first time. Of course he scampered away like a scared rat. Met him a couple more times while he was trying to gank others - as soon as he saw me he ran like hell and then usually he fell to gs autoattacks as I pursued, lol.

And then sometime later I lost a fight to a core guardian, because he was too damn good a player and I had no idea how to fight him because no one bloody play a stock guard, thats ridiculous!

@Dawdler.8521 said:And then sometime later I lost a fight to a core guardian, because he was too kitten good a player and I had no idea how to fight him because no one bloody play a stock guard, thats ridiculous!

I also find this happens when I change up my builds to suit a more personal style or situation which strays away from the current meta or common builds - I was shocked at what I thought was the effectiveness of the build when it was probably just people not being able to guess what kind of build it was. It's a nice surprise once in a while hehe.

@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@Napo.1230 said:Yeah melee rev vs scourge it's pretty much suicide. I'd be happy for Necro to lose all that vomit aoe cancer in exchange for some ranged options

This isn't true. I will say however that JUST melee offense isn't enough. You need some kinda defense when the scourge starts pumping out his condis, fears and boonrips.That could be stealth.. blocks or invuls. On soulbeast i can easily be right up in a scourges face 70 % of the time until he pops the elite which steals my boons and consistently applies torment and cripple. when the elite is over i can go right back and start hitting him right in the face with interrupts. Most of their skills have pretty obvious tells so...

Sure i do have a lot of condi cleanse but i rarely need it unless i screw something up. usually i can get away with either not using heal for condi cleanse or swap pets for condi cleanse ( but ofc i always need to swap pet for rotation anyway.. )

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Shining One.1635 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:what is the hard counter for your ranger that he cant escape?Mirage. I might be able to escape if I played Staff Druid, but I don't.

@"Clownmug.8357" said:A power Mirage with Evasive Mirror could be a possible counter for Deadeye, don't know about Thieves in general though.

I play soulbeast really well. Thing is.. for my build to work properly against 90% of the meta builds i cant use sicem. I need to slot in other things. and without sicem a ranger/soulbeast is going to lose vs a deadeye most of the time. Not quickly. not at all. but deadeyes can reset so often that you will eventually run out of the cooldowns you need to survive their stealth rifle burst. thats when you die. like others in this thread have already said, its very poor design.

They can fuck their rotation and burst combo up like 20 times and still keep resetting over and over. and in wvw... what are you supposed to do? every time i am at some odd location like a camp etc and someone uses deadeyes mark on me... i am basically forced to leave. cus 99.9% of all deadeye players have the exact same mentality:They never... ever.. ever give up. I mean.. i like when people have that mentality. I do too. but when all you have to do to try again is reset a never ending fight.. without facing any consequences of screwing up your dead-easy 1shot combo... i mean... cmon.

I have fought deadeyes that would keep trying over and over and over to kill me for literally 15 minutes straight. they wont leave me alone. im in combat so i cant WP to spawn or change maps. and everywhere i go they will keep following me forever until i am dead. that kinda shit just makes me quit the game for the day cus its so fucking stupid.

@DeadlySynz.3471 said:To put it lightly, I almost feel bad killing necros on my ranger. It's just so easy; there is nothing they can do. I know many players read these forums and assume Scourge is some over-powered entity (falsely because people have no clue what they are talking about). Then when they bring their brand new shiny Scourge to battle, they are utterly decimated by ranged classes.

Even if barrier added reflect, they'd still be easy to kill. I'm not sure how Anet missed the mark on this. I know some builds are meant to counter other builds, but the disparity between necros and ranged classes is ridiculous. Any classes that has the capability of going ranged and pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 will overpower Scourge any day of the week.

I also remember back at the beginning how useless LB rangers were to thieves out in the open; that was a hard counter. At least now with Sic'em and the rangers ability to pop in and out of stealth, it makes it much more viable.

As for Mudse.7623 asking what a hard counter against a ranger is? A charging in melee; warrior is the worst with the constant 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ,0, immune, immune, immune, block, block, block, block, block popping up on the screen along with reflect. It's great that a Scourge is a hard counter to that garbage.

If you play soulbeast youd have a much easier time vs warriors.Are they annoying? yes. very. They make so many mistakes and still keep living. you make 1 or 2.. oh look your health is at 20 %. They can make comebacks from like 10-20% hp because of their passives carrying them so hard... BUT. They have less CC than you. they have less gap openers/closers. gazelle-beastmode f2 is much faster than thier shield stun. we have immobilize and more dodges. we have much higher protection uptime and you can easily get 70-80 % uptime + the same amount of health/sec if you swap your stats around just a little.

Whenever i see a spellbreaker charge towards me I usually just prepare for an easy fight. Very rarely do i lose against them. the last 2 ive fought that i know are good are Vaans and a guy from my own server who i dueled in guildhalls. he beats me about 50 % of the time cus he knows how to dodge unlike 99% of warriors. Honestly i think i could have a much better chance of winning but i dont get to duel good spellbreakers very often cus they are kinda rare.