Balance Issues That Need To Be Discussed - Ranger Point Of View

[KrHome.1920]

Core guard has decent mobility since forever now. GS+Sword/X and meditations is 4 leaps/teleports at low cooldowns (10s, 12s, 40s, 40s untraited). Add speed rune + "retreat" and it is in the same spot like reaper: More mobile than you would expect, but still far behind any other class using speed rune, because their mobility skills are clunky and situational.

And the worst of it: they have this one build option for that competitive mobility, which sucks in a rock/paper/scissors game. Strip the swiftness (half of the classes can do that, so in a team fight of competent players a swiftness strip is basically guaranteed) off a core guard or reaper and watch him getting rekt.

Btw.: The balancing (*) isn't that bad currently. It's maybe 5 builds in pvp (!) that are problematic (that's fewer than ever before). And that's what is absolutely not understandable: very few issues, but not even these get adressed in a whole year. E.g. immob druid is so dumb, that it shouldn't have lasted longer than one week in the game.

(*) I am talking about balancing in terms of overpowered outliers. The balancing in terms of viable build options is as bad as it has ever been.

[Dadnir.5038]

1- Like KrHome said is true, guardian's mobility was always there as untaped potential. It's hard to advocate for a nerf.2- I agree that runes of the trapper need to go, the potential of the 6th bonus is really to high.3- Immob uptime itself is way higher than it used to be in the core game where the condition was tightly checked by the devs. I don't know why they've increased access so much to this condition but the effect show now and it's... well... not very enjoyable.4- Weaver and, in fact, elementalist in general, have the right to exist in sPvP. They have their counters (anything that break/steal/corrupt/rip their boons and poison them, counter them).

[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.

[aymnad.9023]

I have a rant against most players and the forums opinion about ranger but I think I already made it clear a few times and am not sure if it would be worth to put it here. So I am just going to once again state “According to the forums ranger should not be meta or good but average at best because it has a low skill floor”. Spoilers, all the professions have easy mechanics, builds, gimmicks that are annoying or carry them.

For guard mobility : I think it was supposed to be low because they have other tools, especially defensive ones. But most guard builds compensate with runes (speed, lynx, trapper) so this weakness is barely notable or existent. Also while I believe this “low baseline mobility” applies out of combat without any target, it changes in fights. I have recently picked core power guard and the in combat mobility is awesome.

DH : I do hate how low effort this build is and how impactful it can be. This is even worst when they have a support with them. I am not sure if the rune should be the main target instead of the talents. I also think spear of justice does too much (yes even if people do not activate it) because if you get hit by it on a berserker build you are going to lose a huge part of your health and give access to an unblockable undodgeable cc.

Power herald : the question never was will it come back but when? And the answer was as soon as renegade feels a bit harder to play. I have seen some terrible revenant players who just play it in duos. And together they just destroy anything in seconds. It still is tanky considering all the damage and all the mobility they have. (the unblockable burst feels so cheap when playing core power guard).+Renegade : It can have such a high pressure and be so hard to kill too. It seems to be a constant with revenants builds... I have not looked into rev enough or found something specific. (maybe shiro?)

Immob druid : a stupid playstyle. Knockbacks and immob are really annoying to fight but thankfully it has a low pressure. If I do not have utilities on cd I mostly win with power builds. Do I want to see it nerfed? Maybe? I am not sure because I can understand other people hating it but I seem to do fine vs them (players I fight could just be bad). My stance on druid is not going to change that much long as it does not have the ability to be a main support anyway. For jacaranda I do not know. The damage definitely seems crazy when you are stuck in it (like when you are trying to finish a down target or maybe immob). But as long as you are not going for this specific play style you are better with any other pet.

Weavers : I never saw it as something weak especially when playing ranger because they deal with the pets super easily while being hard to kill. They are in my top most unfun builds to fight between the constant pressure, barrier application, evade uptime. Maybe more of them are coming because the other professions slow nerfs make them harder to burst and people start realizing that it is better than they thought? I am not suprised. For the players on the forums something is "unplayable" and all your arguments make you a bad player until a mAT winning team plays with it.

Edit : I am thinking about going back to ranger at some point. I still hope for some mid support option in the next expension. Right now it still feels very limited to a single role (side node) with 1 somewhat ok mid option (sicem). As soon as I see some builds doing fine vs my damage or just cleaving the pet while having more impact mid I just sigh. Then again it could just be an issue with ranger core mechanics. Having a kit with way less options to support, way less aoes, less flexible / having less options in fights. I still believe the pet is a good mechanic. I like how core can play around it, how each spec found a way with some and not others. (I still think it is a good profession in solo queue because most of the builds do not ask you to be with your team)

I think the meta has a lot of good and decent builds. There are some mechanics I will never like (core guard on the sidenode beeing tanky and having retaliation, lich form 2 shots, magebane) but just like you I think some professions would be better if they could go more into a "specific role".