bigo.9037

1/4s is too short if you want dodge/evade as counterplay. The only realistic way to dodge a 1/4s cast is to "pre-dodge" it in anticipation. Human reaction time (to audio stimulus) is something like ~170ms, best case, not taking into account all the distractions and complications of combat. I'm pretty sure the average latency is 80ms+. That already covers 1/4s. In a combat situation, you're looking at ~350ms reaction time + 100ms ping. You'd want the cast time to be 3/4s to allow for counterplay. Haha what? No. 3/4s is as long as a regular dodge. Most people on my server in EU have 40-50 ms ping. When playing as roamer you're usually more aware and have faster reaction cus of adrenaline. 250 ms is the baseline reaction time. A lot of decent players have less than that. And by the way, most of the combat in this game is based in anticipation, so... Yea. As an example I regularly dodge enemy rangers PBS and occasionally hunters shot. As well as DH f1 spear.. list goes on. 1/4 s would be fine but .. it's almost like it wouldn't make a difference considering the ranger is usually far away when using it. All it would do is make it impossible to cast it while using another skill. Oh and by the way, turn on your ingame sound. Sicem used to be a shout, so you can hear easily when they use it :)

wrong. longbow can 1 shot with rapid fire or even with 2 lb aa's (yes it is more then one hit, no it doesn't matter since it is still one skill and the ttk is under a second. not even talking about longbow tho.)then you don't know how to do it, your problem.how many times do I have to tell you. we are not talking about normal builds. go ahead, lie and evade the question. im done. Look. The only way to kill someone with 2 AAs is if you are full zerk, 25 sigil stacks, run MM AND BM (which has 0 condi cleanse, no protection, no passive signet proc), run dps food instead of dodge food, (probably use a useless signet only for it's passive fero gain), gain fury from utility skill, then use another utility skill to proc attack opportunity passive with fury for the 2nd hit. Not even to mention that your opponent ALSO needs to have 0 protection, 0 TOUGHNESS..... That's a lot to ask for. Killing someone with 2 AA is not really doable. RF is standard cus it's just less of a hassle. If you don't want to get 1shot, get some protection and some toughness. Now they will deal anywhere between 40-50% less dmg and you've increased your sustain vs all power builds by a significant amount.

Yes and I literally said in the OP that bunker builds are just as much of an issue as burst builds. Good then we both agree

Lol, everyone knows powercreep is a thing. You and all the others pointing fingers at balance and other professions to defend this is about the equivalent to saying "drunk driving isn't the problem, cars are!" Let me put it simply for everyone who's having trouble understanding here:A gimmick or "one trick pony" is something that is simple and predictable. There are various builds that fall in to this category, many of which see little to no use due to their irrelevance against a meta, or even off meta build. Gimmick builds often only work by surprise and will fail to do so a second time on the same opponent if they're prepared. "Sic 'Em!" longbow Soulbeast falls in to the category of gimmick because it is predictable and not competitive. Despite this however, it's massive damage, ease of use, ranged advantage and mobility allow it to have relevance against players and builds beyond their realm of expertise. This puts it in to the same category as perma-stealth trapper Thief back in the day, pre-nerf Deadeye, point bunker turret Engineer back in the day, etc. Though the counters are obvious, the build performs it's gimmick so well that the risk of playing it is effectively non-existent. If the burst potential of longbow Soulbeast were to be reduced, it would still be capable within it's role but would then need to gauge it's risks. More conditions would have to be met such as timings, number of skills used, etc. As of right now, there are no conditions that need to be met other than having the target in range. And if they happen to close the gap, Soulbeast possesses enough mobility and melee range defense (even when fully spec'd in to damage) to kite away or fully escape. Powercreep across the board is an issue but not everything is the same level of low risk/high reward as longbow Soulbeast. A properly played one is incredibly difficult to pin down on top of having the burst potential to drill through the defenses of even more durable builds. We can sit here all day and list other things that are broken but "Sic 'Em!" will still be one of them. The only reason people are so defensive about this is because they know it's the source of longbow Soulbeasts power. Changing it will not suddenly make it incapable of killing anything and yet people seem to think by doing so you may as well remove the profession. I literally said I'm all for a nerf as long as we get nerfs to bunkers too. How about this: Give everyone a base of 40k hp, remove healing entirely from healing skills, or make aoe heals heal everyone except yourself etc. Decrease OOC health regeneration by 500%. (Include elite spec specific nerfs to sustain)Now you can nerf sicem to the ground for all I care.

this fallacy is old. it assumes that cuz soulbeast gets nerfed, bunker builds will dominate (nope). it also assumes that soulbeast cannot be balanced (not surprising considering anets record, but still, nope). im not against bunkers being nerfed, but they're not the subject here. yes the two topics are related, and yes it is possible to balance the two separately (just wondering, how much do your lb autos hit against squishies?). there is no legitimate reason why longbow autos should be doing more then 10k+ and wordly impact/ maul/ winters bite one shotting people. My AAs have hit 7k on an ele. That's with full zerk gearing on my side. I have not been in a fight where I was able to 1 hit an enemy with any one skill, except for the occasionally RF burst on someone who isn't ready for it.Yes, i too want 1shot or TTK in general to be changed, but I don't think soulbeast in particular is the only one at fault here. I still occasionally get 1shot by a mesmer who was in stealth... I don't want any nerfs to this build unless bunker specs get nerfed just as significantly, too.

Ranger is my second most played profession so for the record, the purpose of the OP wasn't to get something nerfed that I don't play/don't understand. I only made this thread because it seems like every other day there's a thread about SB being problematic and everyone jumping on the bandwagon about how it needs to be nerfed. And as someone who dislikes anything being kneecapped just because a loud minority cry until they get their way, I thought I should state a less one sided opinion on how to fix it. Though people have made some good points, I still believe longbow Soulbeast is overtuned as long as it is allowed to interact with "Sic 'Em!" as it currently does. And it does deserve the negative attention it has been getting because of this. Still, that doesn't mean a proper discussion on how to resolve it can't be had, unlike every other thread that has been here that has been nothing but one side of the party demanding blanket nerfs and the other half saying git gud. In fact I wouldn't have felt the need to make a thread about this at all if it weren't for how many complaints about it there have been. I'm just tired of repeating myself so I thought I'd make a thread for it so I can fully explain myself and stop being a broken record. I don't think my solution is the only or the best solution, but I do think it's a lot more fair and logical than much of what other people have been asking to be nerfed. Just how good are you at soulbeast? Specifically, the dps variant? Soulbeast is a class that has virtually no use in wvw outside of solo/duo roaming. Even in 3v3s it starts to become worse than other similar roaming specs. So this spec, which has nothing to offer outside of a niche playstyle needs to get nerfed.. why exactly? Because it's annoying? Yea, TTK needs to increase. But that means we have to remove some sustain from healers too. Only THEN can we talk about nerfing dps. Again, soulbeast is bad at anything that has 4+players in a team. 4v4, it's bad. 3v3, it's ok, 2v2 it's good, 1v1 it's good. "Ganking" 1 person who is unaware and not ready for pewpew burst? Soulbeast is great at it. But really. Mesmers can do that too, just not from 1500 range, but they have much better stealth stacking than soulbeast.

its more like rangers trying their hardest to convince ppl that their obviously op builds aren't bad for the game, and that we should look the other way since this class is a special victim with special privileges. Don't nerf any burst dmg unless bunker builds like chrono, scrapper, FB, selfsustain god boonbeast, and others get nerfed too. Yes, getting 1 hit sux. But so does traiting full dmg, zerker, having 40% dmg modifier and still not being able to kill a FB that knows what he's doing. Mained ranger since 2013, I play the build OP is talking about (but also many others without sicem) and I have to say FBs and are just so utterly broken I can't believe it. I can crit 7k with AA without MM traitline on squishes, I know my ranger and my build really, really well but I still can't kill a FB that knows how to kite. They just won't die. Sure he won't die but neither will I, right? Well that WOULD be true if it wasn't for the fact that he can also support other players at the same time cus all his healing and buffs are aoe based. Don't get me wrong, I've killed many Fbs before. But in the right hands, is completely unkillable 1v1, surviving most 2v2s while focus is directly on me meanwhile my teammate can have crazy amounts of support and can basically kill them for me if he has enough dmg. So TLDR: You wanna nerf dmg specs? Nerf support specs. The last thing we want for wvw is a bunker meta like we had in 2015 spvp.

Except that melee classes should have 0 problems with people when they are OFF mounts. They aren't going to be on them 24/7. If they want to take anything, or are already in a form of combat with ANYTHING they are probably off their mount. If they aren't, why bother chasing them. Move on to the next target. That's why the warclaw really isn't a big issue at all. People have a weird expectation that if you see it, you should be able to fight it every time. It's not how WvW worked previously, and that hasn't changed at all. Also, the thread was already focusing on the warclaw due to people protesting about the warclaw anyway. Which doesn't surprise me given how much "forum" hate there is for the mount. In reality the mount isn't a big deal to most players, the forums are just the most vocal about it. Sucks about the griefers but unfortunately that's been that way for a long time. I wish there was something that could be done, but I think that would need an overhaul to how tactics/seige placement works in general. That's time I think the wvw doesn't have given how many plates are being spun right now between working on the warclaw, the eventual release of alliances (maybe?) and whatever else they have in the pipeline. From a game design standpoint, where themap(s) are an open battlefield, it is bad that it's SO easy to avoid certain people. Necros who have low mobility just flying right past you, without him being in any sort of danger unless there are multiple players that can try to dismount him or a slb. You're supposed to sort of ""be in danger"" as soon as you leave your spawn area. There used to be a reason to take high mobility utility skills or weapons. Now it doesn't matter nearly as much.

But why? It's not like 11k hp is even that much, especially 11k that's has no way to be healed. Also why CC at all, again with a dismount skill coming you don't need this (also that would just encourage all the pew pew immob rangers more than there already are >.>) And the dodge has been cut, it had a longer range before. They halved it essentially. 3 dodges aren't THAT big of a deal. I mean we have to put up with thieves right? Like 2 and a half months late right? Okay but any class or spec that relies on melee is screwed basically. You could've just ignored the warclaw and kept the thread on track but here we are. I'll be happy to disagree that the warclaw is a bigger issue than you suggest lol

It is indeed dumbed down and the players want to play on easy mode always. I try to argue sicem 1shot soulbeast needs nerf, start nerfing sicem. They all say oh no soulbeast is useless and has 0 dmg without sicem! What? Are all the players so bad they can't win if they can't 1shot people? What happened.

Wrong. Thief backstab for 12k pretty much meant you were dead. Maybe if you played a glass ele. A 12k backstab was pretty high damage, but it didn't 1-shot most classes/builds and didn't necessarily mean the target was "pretty much dead" as you say. I played a lot of thief/engi/mesmer back in the day and don't recall having many problems with being 1-shot. My point is power creep in the current game is unhealthy, at least in my opinion. 20k Malicious Backstabs, 15k Backstabs, 8k LB AAs, 20k+ quickness rapid fires, insta-death mauls, 11k+ mesmer scepter channels, constant condi puke, etc etc etc. The list goes on. Power creep has gotten ridiculous. I'm an experienced roamer and can deal with quite a bit of it (not that I like it.) But I can't imagine trying to get into this game now with the absurd TTK.Yea sure increase the TTK but I feel like it hasn't changed dramatically over the years. The power creep, at the very least, went both ways. You get higher dmg but also more defensive options etc.But again, most of these 1shot builds today really can't fight players properly.I've died many times to players with these builds and sure it's annoying as heck the first time but then you just find them again, dodge their burst or rotate around it and win EZ.

Wrong. Thief backstab for 12k pretty much meant you were dead. Warrior axe MH 1 shots were a thing too. The main issue with 1 shot is stealth. 1 shot builds are so easy to kill if they don't kill you with their 1 hit combo.

Let me just stop you right there.It ain't a 3rd party problem it's a l2p issue as the OP is running pure glass against pure glass. His house got shattered and so he took the only route he can, come complain on the forums. Youre clueless.This oneshot build has been around for Months. Totally a l2p issue,lmao. that looks balanced... if players can get carried... its balanced for gw2 standards. Working as intended.Man. What the **** do you think dodges are for? Dodge his burst and you win easy. No dodges? Block. Anything that denies his burst, and now you have the upper hand. I play soulbeast too with zerker / assassins gear and I've fought some of these players before. The first time they get you, you're surprised. Next time you got fight them, just be a little more cautious. You see them trying to pull off the same 1trick combo and you avoid it. Then it's really easy from there. They have almost no defense after a certain point cus they traded it for 1trick offense.

lag in wvw has been around for years. what's new? anet won't upgrade any servers or make any changes to the state of the game anyway

I agree that ranger isn't that big of an issue in general wvw blob fighting but you're missing 2 key points.1: unlockable makes reflects irrelevant and as discussed earlier they have high uptime because of 1 single trait.2: the thread discusses 1v1, where soulbeast outshines pretty much any class in wvw balance. sure, wvw isn't made for 1v1 but neither is Spvp, yet 1v1s happen on the regular. dismissing 1v1 balance entirely is really stupid as it impacts a lot of players. anet knows this too, which is why there isn't only 1 class capable of utterly destroying everything while the rest are only good for group fighting. 1v1 needs to be completely dismissed in WvW because balancing around that would completely eradicate any means of balance in the mode in general. The classes can't be balanced both on a 1v1 potential and large scale battles at the same time. There is only so much unblockable up-time out there, and it's not as high as people make it out to be. Then combine that with the fact their damage is completely abysmal. As I outlined earlier, a full zerk SB is often met with 1.5-2k crit attacks (if they are lucky) with 2.5k crit attacks with their rapid fire. This is the exact opposite of overpowered, it borderlines pathetic, considering that same target you unloaded a 1.5K crit on, can turn around and land a 4-5k hit on you while sitting in PVT gear. Trying to reduce the SB's damage potential because of 1v1 potential (based on how elite players use it because that is what this really is coming down to), is just wrong. What are people looking for? To turn that 2.5k rapid fire crit into 1.5k and their long range shots never to exceed 1K? To remove their stealth potential which is useless when the melee train is running in your direction (given the scourge bombs). Want the unblockabe uptime reduced by half so they can only land 3-4 (then healed through), before all their projectiles become either blocked or reflected? People really need to think about what they're saying first.what I'm saying is not that ranger dmg should be nerfed. Imagine if anet completely dismissed 1v1 balance and it was just completely broken. 1 or 2 specs completely dominate 1v1 fights/roaming.. I'm pretty sure you're gonna see more complaining than you do now. every time anet tries to cater to the majority and forget about the minority, things go to shit. the majority are usually casuals who want to play on easy mode, get free rewards just for pressing the play button and be feel like they've accomplished something in a zerg fight even though they were really just a HP shield and supply carrier. that's the majority. catering to them will destroy the game. you get rid of roaming in wvw and suddenly a huge amount of players will stop playing because spvp doesn't provide the same game play. and most people know roamers tend to have more brains than the typical supply runner who does nothing but follow tags pug mode all day.

Im aware SoTP grants stab. So fine if you're knitpicking, that's two. But if you get caught by a rampage CC you will not have time to activate SoTP before you're caught in chain. From that perspective, dollyak stance is only skill because it breaks stun and grants stab. PoF elite is actually decent :p it's a solid pick for most builds most builds have at least 2 stunbreaks on low cd.1: sb merge2: utility slot like protect me or LR you have dolly stance too. save it for when he uses rampage. sotp as a general usage stab buff when the fight start and use it whenever you can. it's really not that hard to counter rampage. all you have to do is not waste your stunbreaks on nothing and save dollu stance for his rampage cc. even if you don't, and many times I've popped dolly stance just because of habit ( and nothing has forced me to change that habit because:::) the cast time for rampage is like 1 second so it can be interrupted OR you can just stealth before he gets to hit you without anything, then pop sotp. or kite him if you have enough dodges. I mean.. really. rampage is only good to beat someone down who is already kinda losing the fight. I have never seen a warrior go from losing out on the rotations consistently to suddenly winning a fight just because he used rampage lmao. taking into account soulbeast has more melee options for CC and dmg than warrior (except for when they pop rampage obviously) you should easily be able to save your dolly stance.

yeah my point is that it's not something you see happening regularly and is just as easy to kill for other players who are ready for the attack. unlike deadeye, rangers can't just permestealth and reset 100000 times until they win.

fake. you could just unequib your armor to get those numbers. show video or its fake. No its legit I did it to him.okay I take it you're running all the mm traits that proc opening strike with 25% dmg, bloodlust, warhorn to stack 25 might with whao and other things? what armor was the target using?? it's literally only on the forums I see anyone complaining about this stuff. never see it happen inside the game. zerk v zerk has always been broken. you could complain about thief backstabbing 10k+ from stealth as well. that's what happens when both run full zerk. posting raw combat log without any other info isn't enough to justify your position that longbow is dmg is OP.

I agree that ranger isn't that big of an issue in general wvw blob fighting but you're missing 2 key points.1: unlockable makes reflects irrelevant and as discussed earlier they have high uptime because of 1 single trait.2: the thread discusses 1v1, where soulbeast outshines pretty much any class in wvw balance. sure, wvw isn't made for 1v1 but neither is Spvp, yet 1v1s happen on the regular. dismissing 1v1 balance entirely is really stupid as it impacts a lot of players. anet knows this too, which is why there isn't only 1 class capable of utterly destroying everything while the rest are only good for group fighting.

fake. you could just unequib your armor to get those numbers. show video or its fake.

I don't know, heard of a skill called rampage? Even a ranger not running glass can easily be caught by that, with only one skill that grants stability. Bait their dolly stance with any other cc and then rampage. They will be caught. Also lb3 is not insta cast :F it looks like it, with no cast time on tool tip, but it has an animation thus not insta cast. Use it's unreliableness against the ranger- this skill will always fire when pressed, no LoS warnings, no turn around to face target, it will go off even if you're behind the ranger (as such wasting the entire skill) "only one skill granting stability" lol what you actually run the pof elite??? most rangers i meet play dolly stance + sotp.... thats twice as much stab uptime.

Power revenant counters soulbeast haha what a joke, joke even harder is engi countering soulbeast xD Engi (Holo) It's countered since always by 1. Condi classes, especially necro, 2. Ranged pressure aka Rangers.With the toss elixir u change only shield is left for engi to deal with range, and that's not a counter but an active defense which is different. In any MMO the ranger counters the melee warrior fighter class, this is not an exception, so you even counters warriors because you kite a warrior for days if you play right.If you are killed by a warrior you are just got outplayed and that's your fault. Sword thief got nerfed and I think it's a fair fight, definitely thief doesn't counter rangers at all, if you camp longbow you are actually the counter to thief who can't use sword2 as they want to, since you constantly pressure them from 1500 range. In an open field they have zero chances, in a field full of trees and upper/lower levels thief have an advantage.Condi thief not sure, but yeah since that build seems so low on condi cleanses probably counters you tho. Mesmer... let's see, only condi mesmer is probably a threat, power mesmer not so much, if you catch him in the free weak window you do 100-0 to him easily. I would love to hear from you why those classes counters you now. Power rev can counter rangers farely well. They have high range CC and a 1200 gap closer. In addition to a plethra of stability, good burst they also have reveal on herald and a strong heal that makes rapid fire useless.Ofc it depends on the skill of the rev.Warriors can counter rangers and vice versa. Also this depends on skill.Sword thief counters ranger fairly well as long as they try to pewpew them they will have a thief faster in their face as they like.Thief can be countered by a ranger too if they time the reveal right but also this depends on skill.Mesmer can kill a ranger pretty fast in a 1v1 if not on an open plain. In close quarters a mirage is a dethscentence for a average soulbeast. Ofc i agree that pewpew one shot ranger is cheesy and not really engaging gameplay but pewpew rangers have always been cheesy in any iteration. They can be countered if you know how. CC and gap closing is the key. Rangers are somewhat of a noobfilter fue to the fact that they kill a plethra of unexperienced players.Sure you have a vast disadvantage if your profession is countered by ranger heavily and you do not want to change profession just for the sake of meta and i can understand your grief, but a pls nerf is OP argument isnt really helping either. Its not a constructive critisism, its postmodern complaining. Saying sonething like: Move the unblockable from Call if the Wild to Hunters Call and make Hinters Call requiring a target, would be a valid suggestion for example. It reduces the time unblockables can be stacked at max range without reducing the unblockable availability. This way the ranger needs to come closer for dmg and takes a higher risk for more reward. I am main ranger since launch and i can understand the motives behind your complain. But pure nerf isnt going to change much. Rangers will even more camp range and annoy you from afar if you strip the dmg, instead give the optimal playstyle a shift so rangers need to close in before taking full ranged advantage, its easier to counter and would need more skilled gameplay but wouldnt reduce the potency. dude... rev does not counter soulbeast...soulbeast has way too much CC.what you guys are forgetting is that ranger has the best passive and active healing in the game. dodging gives you protection (33%) less dmg and health. baseline, without healing power stats, you can achieve about 200-280 ( iirc ) health per second if you have high protection uptime. over the course of 10 seconds that's 2000-2800 health... combine that with 33% less dmg taken and you have insane sustain. soulbeast hard counters warriors because they have longbow AND more CC and options in melee. they lose on both weapon swaps. revenant is just as bad against soulbeast. the only thing they have going for them vs us is their reveal but if you stealth and pop superspeed you can easily avoid getting hit by that. dolyak stance basically makes their staff CC combo useless cus it's only gonna hit once and you'll take no dmg. the only thing you have to watch out for is immob and sword 2 or 3 ( the thing that chills you and hits hard) that's it. they have less stability than us, they have less CC, they have no stealth, they have less sustain. and to make matters even worse revenant is also hard countered by conditions which soulbeast is not. soulbeast handles conditions like they are nothing.

I think it would be a good idea if you can mark your account as a roamer. Roaming NEEDS to be more useful in WvW. I dont know exactly how this should be achieved.. just make roaming, small groups and solo players have more of an impact on the score. Atm it feels like its kinda useless except taking camps and killing some people here and there.. If a server/world/alliance etc. has a lot of roamers in it though, wouldnt that make it weak? considering how zergs and PUG groups will have a much easier time taking towers and keeps etc. simply because of their size?I am worried that by linking roamers together you will just make our problem more apparent: there isnt a clear place for us to do what we are best at which is: smallscale fights or solo fights. I see it as the complete opposite. Not having a big server to lean on anymore mean more people will band together in guilds and alliance to form their own little clique within the world that has been generated and them put in. Sure it can go whatever which way in practice, but I expect more small parties and independant roamers instead of less.i HOPE thats the case. Im just worried this will somehow make blobbing and zerging an even better alternative to roaming, which is already not very useful.

I think it would be a good idea if you can mark your account as a roamer. Roaming NEEDS to be more useful in WvW. I dont know exactly how this should be achieved.. just make roaming, small groups and solo players have more of an impact on the score. Atm it feels like its kinda useless except taking camps and killing some people here and there.. If a server/world/alliance etc. has a lot of roamers in it though, wouldnt that make it weak? considering how zergs and PUG groups will have a much easier time taking towers and keeps etc. simply because of their size?I am worried that by linking roamers together you will just make our problem more apparent: there isnt a clear place for us to do what we are best at which is: smallscale fights or solo fights.