[Ranger is getting Alacrity in June patch]

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

For druid, are you running Nature Magic? The trait Nature's Vengance helps keep them alive big time. You do enough healing that you often should be spilling over to the spirits.

Yes I am using it on druid. Even with the trait on druid you still have to throw a heal once in a while to make sure they will stay alive once the squad starts to move or before a mechanic (like before the gliding at xera, split in vale gardian). The survivability / mobility is something I feel a lot on soulbeast in fractals where there is a lot of movement, they are not kept alive and you do not have the trait. Even with the trait it will be painfull to maintain buffs in fractals.

[Ranger is getting Alacrity in June patch]

8 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

Sounds like quick firebrand... 

ok, qfb is elite specialization, but ranger would be less and less supportive because fury and might will be more common. Ok we can give alacrity and... what else? cc maybe. Damage?

That’s a good question. Maybe alacrity and filling some boons will be enough? I am not sure we will see more than 2/5 players provide them.

Right now I have a hard time seeing builds like mirage (damage + might), renegade (cc / stab / projectile block) or specter (off support) being left for a ranger but the different especs have some interesting options.

There is some damage + stance share (it could be longer imo but is not bad) on soulbeast, some boon removal / projectile block on untamed. The effects of spirits just need to be easier to maintain. When I am not on druid checking their hp they just die alone (bye bye boon uptime).

[Ranger is getting Alacrity in June patch]

1 hour ago, RabbitUp.8294 said:

Chances are you won't need multiple spirits, let alone 5. I doubt they are tying alacrity to a trait, they are probably changing Frost Spirit to give alacrity, and the trait will double the boon duration or something.

I would guess the opposite. I think a ranger will need 3 spirits with some boon duration and the trait to have somewhere between 80%-100% uptime. This means going 3 spirits + moa on viper soulbeast (or 3 spirits and ritualist gear) or taking 3-4 spirits on druid.

Only 1 spirit seems very unlikely to me as it would make any ranger spec provide insane value without much investment.

edit : I might test how much damage this configuration does this week end to see how it compares with the other condi alac prodivers. I am more concerned about the "survivability / mobility" of the spirit on non druid builds  (if they stay the same) than their damage.

[Ranger is getting Alacrity in June patch]

2 hours ago, RabbitUp.8294 said:

Alacrity being part of core ranger will mean that there won't be a quickness e-spec for ranger down the line, unless they want another chrono situation.

Since alacrity will be tied to spirits and maybe even a trait,  I do not see what can stop them from adding quickness. If the quickness is also tied to some utilities and traits there will be no way to pick up both and maintain full time boons.

[Expansion Future Weapons]

Scepter or focus for a magic offsupport spec (consecration or corruption) would be great. Maybe mace or shield but no rifle please.

[Naru's ranked tier list]

After a small forced break (because of my pc) I started eod pvp yesterday. I feel like there a mixt of people being like me in unranked. They are trying to figure everything out, experimenting on their own while fighting people with a month of experience and some the new builds legitimately packing a punch. There are a few weird things that seem to lack animations or effects.

Are they that good in PvP? More specifically, is untamed that good to the point of surpassing soulbeast for solo play? I feel like sicem or condi slb are safer.

[Ranger is getting Alacrity in June patch]

That is a cool news, I love alacrity 🙂. There still are questions, how will the trait work? how will the active and passive effects work? 

Like any “druid” changes I am waiting for more (when they added glyph of stars and the reduction on ally I also hoped for more). Druid is still a very slow healer (skills have a delay / small aoe), locked behind a lot of conditions (full ca, lose everything on downstate).

I do not think power slb is going to bring alac. It already is a bit underperforming and cannot afford to lose sicem. Condi slb will probably be a decent option, even if it has less dps than the other alac providers.

I wonder how many spirits will be needed. 4 spirits with some boon duration? 3 spirits and 2 stances (moa + wolf pack) ? If spirits lose their effects (which I feel they will) I am curious how the “meta benchmarks” will be impacted.

["Bring the player, not the profession"-- but you REDUCED the boon cap from 10 to 5?]

17 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

This was their original reason for making Strikes, but its since been abandoned. In the next expo, Strikes are to be more a merger of all instances: Story, dungeons, Fractals, raids, Strikes and DRMs, into a generic template for re-usable content that takes less time to develop and deploy with less problems overall.

 

Raids (and Strikes initially being designed as a tutorial for them) are no longer relevant. Hopefully enrage timers will disappear to, or only appear on hardcore mode which is fair.

I do not understand what seems to be the concern with the future strikes.  It is still relevant and they never said once that they will change their goal.

In fact they used the title “Accessible Endgame” with the following quote :
 

Quote

 

Normal difficulty Strike Missions are intended to be an entry point into the world of 10-player content in Guild Wars 2. 

....

These encounters will introduce you to the mechanics you’ll need to learn and master in order to continue your journey, in an environment that doesn’t demand perfection but still pushes you to learn and grow your combat capabilities.

 

(from Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons Strike Missions | GuildWars2.com)

 

Even on a more recent post :

Quote

 we’re looking to grow the Strike Mission audience and encourage as many players as possible to give them a try.

....

With this wider target audience, we’ve tuned the base difficulty of each Strike Mission to make knowledge and mastery over the encounter’s mechanics the most important factors in achieving success.

Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons Strike Missions, Balance, and Rewards | GuildWars2.com

Only cms are supposed to be raid level which could mean anything from Kc to Dhuum.

[Don't forget about these outliers Anet]

Some suggestions should be taken carefully. Distortion (blurred inscriptions) / evade mesmer do exist and they are not really liked.

["Bring the player, not the profession"-- but you REDUCED the boon cap from 10 to 5?]

17 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

The problem is that ArenaNet is supporting the speed run mentality. For instance, the current Strike Missions give bonus loot when you finish faster; I have a feeling that this will also be the case for EoD's Strikes.

The problem is not Anet adding a timer but how you and other seem to perceive the timer. Strikes missions are meant to be a step into raiding. The timer is ULTRA GENEROUS (and meant to be). You ignore it all the time.

In a raid the timer has a meaning because it will most likely mean a wipe. The timer in strikes is meant as a way to reward the improvements you and your (training) squad will make learning rotations and mechanics over multiple sessions. This is to prepare you for what a raid will ask because the requirements are higher.

I can guarantee you that none of the squads I have seen, even those with kp / li requirement, care about getting gold everywhere.

[2/28 PvP Balance]

I am happy to see some changes but when I saw the title of the thread I expected to see a few additional professions (herald, holo, guard) or different updates. Most of the changes seem to be aimed at ranked queue and will (mostly) be good for it. I am excited about the necro nerfs but I also like the idea that other supports could see updates in the future.

Necro : I am not sure how important the lifesteal changes are but Unholy martyr, lesser enfeeble and lich are already really good changes.

Tempest : I did not expect anything for tempest but instead some guard defense decrease (it would have made more sense in my opinion). Tempest is not a bad support, just one with fewer defenses than guard. It looks good but only time will tell if this becomes too much.

War : I have been playing a good amount of games on healbreaker recently. The build, while not providing a crazy amount of healing, is quite strong. Good defense, cc, dispel, anti stealth make it a solid choice in ranked against a lot of annoying builds relying on stealth or those relying on guard stability. Some buffs will be welcome to bring it on the same level as other supports but, just like tempest, they should probably be given in small amounts.

Druid : not mentioned in the patch but I just add it because I would love to see it after the spirits rework, after all this is a support spec (or should be)

Thief : Smokescreen is a great change. Other cd look really high but I do not have enough experience with them.

Scrapper :  Less damage on ft auto is a good change. Maybe 0,2 would have been enough with some stab or support decrease? Ft scrapper is dangerous because it has both offense / defense into the auto while providing at the same time some strong support options.

[Changes to spirits coming]

It does sound intriguing. 

Maybe there are more reworks / mechanical changes like they did to some profession. Druid staff 4 staying like revenant Jalis road with resistance, traits less oriented on the druid only, less restrictions (20s + losing all CA on downstate), ranged glyphs with some new effects (small barrier / thorm armor)?

Staying on topic, if it means additional support options for core ranger that can be carried over soulbeast or untanmed, maybe some changes to Nature magic, this will be great.

[Nobody liked the FEB 2020 Patch.]

The patch was a good thing overall. There is no debate about that. It took some more patches after that but there are way more good builds now than there used to. It helped to lower the difference between the different options.

Could they have done a few more? Yes, I would have loved it but I can also see how the work on the beta specs takes time. While I can see some improvements to some traits / utilities in the future, I would be more inclined to see some shave to some professions (to bring them in line) then rework some unused traitlines.

There is and always will be some difference of gameplay and impact even between 3 builds using the exact same (e)spec. This is something that cannot be changed and most people fail to recognize or just want to ignore.

[Some of the best and most useless down skills]

That those threads are meaningless and useless (I care about what a profession does alive) and that guard is in no way worst than engineer.

[What is the most annoying profession to duel? (PvP)]

I think the most annoying for me are elementalist and mesmer for similar reasons. I do not find them fun to fight, it takes a very long time (which usually goes in their favor) and I just do not feel like my actions have an impact on the fight.

Some of the most frustrating fights for me are probably professions people do not usually expect in 1V1. Thief certainly fits this category but revenant is the one which gave me the most issues for the past few seasons. 

Then it becomes more build dependent. 

 

Edit : What did you mean by "way too slow"? It looks similar to "way too tanky / impossible to hit".

[What is plaguing the meta]

Some suggestions are only directions but I would not mind them. To be fair finding the correct implementation can sometimes be hard.

[Bring back half of the orignal damage from CC of Warriors]

It was a bad suggestion last year and it did not become better just like that.

CC are fine without damage, they already have an impact big enough + You do not make an exception “just because I want to” + Damage is not the part in need of improvement on warrior.

[Are Warrior Mains Masochistic?]

5 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Gw2 pvp community is prob the only community I've been in as far as mmo pvp where anytime thee most strait forward, no gimmick, highly telegraphed skilled class is strong its rally'd against to have it nerfed or stay nerfed, while the pvp scene is filled with classes like scourges, core necros, teefs, Mirage,holo, and guards. I really don't get it but then again I stopped trying to understand the community long ago, as I said maybe cuz its a f2p game it draws the playerbase it does I donno but at this point they may as well keep going in the direction the community wants which seems like they are, I mean they handed out mobility like candy over last 5 years and now their handing out teleports for eod lol. Once they bring up the power level of the new specs of the ones mentioned above at the communities requests the game will become even more gimmicky, just as the community wants 🙂

 

I think I know what you mean but I have a different take on this.

 

Technically you could describe shroud of core necro as a gimmick. Yet, despite its current impressive impact on the teamfight meta, I find core necro mostly fair to fight. I know clearly what everything does, know how to react, I get some feedback when fighting it, it has some strength and weaknesses. For me this is a mechanic, not a gimmick.

If we talk about core warrior, then I would also define it as a fair build to fight. Just like any profession there are things I do not like but I know what I get into before fighting one.

If we talk about berserker I also know how they usually fight, they have (mostly) clear animations, a rythm, it gives them a strenght and weaknesses. Even if it can be fun I would still rate it gimmicky because of how the current builds can be too much on / off. I see power berserk as a build “ I kill you even if you use your defense or have to run / die” (too high damage but not enough defenses). I think both could be adjusted.

If we talk about spellbreaker then I would 100% rate it gimmick. For me it has too much loaded into one mechanic that you pretty much need to spam to get everything (sustain, damage boost, evade, support stun) and I really do not like it. It became the defining element of any adjustment to warrior.

[Elite Spec Poll On Which Classes Took The Biggest Hit & Benefitted The Most (Hopefully Anets takes these numbers into consideration)]

I will not vote for any. I am sorry but this has no value. When I look at the votes after such a short period of time it seems obvious to me that :

1) People did not test the patch for the new e-spec and will not have time to play all 9. Even when I was playing 15 + pvp games and doing 5+ rotations on 2 different build for an espec I was far from mastering it (only doing that already takes such a long time when you have to do your usual raids, pvp, wvw the same week so I cannot blame them).

2) As a consequence a lot of people did only look at the patch and said “this e-spec A got more changes or the values increased  while e-spec B values decreased”. It does not matter if some B had broken values to begin with and A was under whelming/performing or even if A is still inferior to B.

[Untamed Beta 4 changes + ambush skills]

It sounds incredible in such a short amount of time. Some things were probably already thought earlier and they waited the first beta but it still is impressive.

There is a lot to praise so I am going to start by the 1 thing I think is a negative.

Vow of the untamed : The drawback was huge before and because there was a 10s cd it was punishing and not encouraging combos. Now that the cd is short I think you should have kept it with a smaller number (maybe 5-7%?)

 

The rest is exciting. I love the idea of an ambush skill. Some sound really strong (axe) and others are going great with the rest of the untamed kit(love to see the gs with the dh like roots). The reduction of the unleash cd is going to feel so good, I love that there are more boon removal options, the small changes to hammer (it seems like they are really trying to push it in PvE even if this spec was not meant to challenge soulbeast), boons / effects with unleash on each utility, rework of the heal, more impactful traits that are going to make the gameplay feel different.

 

I really want to give it another try.

[Druid's Lingering Light sucks, but it's a perfect opportunity]

This is a simple yet effective idea. I like it but I do not think it will solve what I consider druid biggest issue : being the most gated and static  (you do address it a bit with larger aoe) support.

Druid still lacks support outside of CA. Which means you need :

• full energy
• long cd
• NO DOWNSTATE because you lose everything which makes heal less, become more vulnerable to another downstate, heal less, become more vulnerable to another downstate
• delay and hard to land heals / dispels.

I really like some of the things they tried. Like giving cd reduction on staff 3 with allies, the way glyph of the stars works but I wish they pushed it further. 

[State of Unblockables?]

  

1 hour ago, Shao.7236 said:

Back then it was really overpowered and senseless without much of a counter.

 

Unless you had i-frames, evades is all that could counter and yet that wouldn't really do it because Soulbeast channeled attacks lasted forever and did a ton of damage for over at least 5 seconds while Deadeye would have the chance every 3 seconds to retry over and over Death Judgement because missing has no punishement on Malice whatsoever.

 

Those are good nerfs that I'll always agree to with Anet just like the Infuse Light nerf in PvP, they should actually take notes of that and realize that some stuff is fundamentally broken and cooldown/co-efficients won't be enough, changing the function or duration of effects have often greater and fair trade offs to balance better without ruining the flow because an extra 20 seconds..

 

It's like the old Shake It Off on Warrior, it cleared 2 conditions and had 25 seconds CD, it was in a great spot as a stunbreak to accompany other utilities. Now it's a 75 CD 2 charge with 4 conditions. Just what the hell happened to end up with such drastic changes that actually ruins the flow of Warrior. Meanwhile you look at Ranger and they still have that super safe rotation Bow3, GS4, Smokefield, GS3 on top  with 2 super low CD stunbreaks that never changed in forever, what was the reasoning to ruin Warrior this badly, Tether Might/Endurance generation was the main issue next to 4k unblockable dodge spam, not really anything else.

 

22 hours ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

Unblockable used to be much more prevalent back in the day. Soulbeast had a few seconds of unblockable after merging with pet for example(everyone took the trait as it was so broken OP), DJ on deadeye was unblockable etc... the ability to land key&hardhitting skills through blocks was so prevalent it rendered builds with blocking basicly useless.
It got nerfed to the state it is now. I'd prefere if it stayed like this.

 

Soulbeast was not 5s and was not even close to being op in the environment it was in. After gold 2 and in teams (tournaments) you would have seen more reliable damage, professions with more mobility, that have more synergy and way better defense mechanisms (thief, rev, engineer, mesmer). And guess what? It still is true today.

Is it a good change? In the current environment yes, definitely. But let’s not describe it like it was a top build at any point.

edit : I do not think we do not need more unblockable skills right now. It would throw off way too many builds or be harder to balance (even more if this is something anybody can get for free). 

[Power PvP Build]

Glad to help. I hope you will find something you enjoy playing.

[Power PvP Build]

Hi,

 

First thing is you should swap the build editor into the mode you want because the balance is a lot different in each mode. The shield + sword is PvE, the tower WvW and the 2 swords sPvp.

As an example stoneform goes from 56s to 240s (which makes it less attractive) and the gear is different. I am not a fan of signets in PvP, I think there are better options to stay alive or do damage.

If you want some mobility without GS I would suggest taking sword instead of dagger because it has a higher range than dagger + more defense (dodges).

You can have a build without gs or wilderness survival but your build also lacks condi clear which probably also makes it harder than it should because you lost a lot of defense. 

I do not think you need longer vulnerability. It can get dispelled easily. If you want to pressure you will probably need a sigil with a constant modifier (like sigil of separation with a +5% if you are >500 range away or opportunity because everybody has impairing conditions).

You did not choose any pets or runes. Is there a reason? You could go for smokescale, gazelle, even an owl (less damage).

I think this build looks close to what you are trying to build (anything can be changed) :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAMxflRwAZPsQmJO0W/vzSeQaA-z5IGExpg2A

You can use one wolf pack and share it with the smokescale before he jumps into a fight + use rapid fire /barrage / whirling defense (both of you will have the buff).

[Is core meditation guardian really that bad?]

It has some good damage, good sustain, good mobility. A well rounded build for solo queue because you can hold a node some time (even win versus some builds) and still be useful in teamfights. It will not be the preferred / optimal choice in a team composition because there are options that have faster or safer dps, other build are more focused on a role (duelist) but this is what I usually play on guard and what I find the most fun.