Trevor Boyer.6524

@Vinny.7260 At first I laughed, and then it terrified me when I realized how accurate it was. Wait till this thing has access to game accounts and learns how to play. Imagine fighting it in something Street Fighter, where it in immediance, reads exactly what you're doing in a nano-second, and know exactly what to do to counter you. Then we'll see real ape rage come out in human gamers.

Willbender is quite balanced right now, honestly.

Every build uses Pistol/Staff Chilled To The Bone. I said what I meant the first time around. The builds in use are essentially the same build. They swap small aspects from match to match to slightly better adjust for particular matchups, which Reaper is very good at doing. Necro in general is good at doing this, probably its biggest strength it has actually. It is very easy to swap a trait or two or even a full trait line, while maintaining essentially the same build structure. The variations they use are not 3 different builds, they are suggested skill/trait swaps for the same build, to toggle match to match. Anyone looking at this from the standpoint of: "What exact single build selection of traits/skills/weapons is the problem?" Is not understanding the strength behind Necro's swap versatility and how the game is being played today to capitalize on that strength. Most other classes don't possess this kind of versatility & ease of swap adjustment. Usually, if a class/build were to swap a single trait line or a utility or two, these are massive changes to the build archetype that risks completely destroying the dynamic flow of what the original build was meant to do and needs to do to be successful. But this is not a problem at all on Necromancer. In the case of just utilities as example, a Necromancer stands only to benefit when it readjusts its utility line for the current match it is facing. It has this plethora of very useful utilities that do not effect its build structure at all outside of "What is best to bring for this match?" <- This is actually GOOD game design and the way other classes SHOULD work. But this is not the way other classes work. Other classes/builds very strongly get pigeonholed into needing to bring certain things or the build archetype just falls apart. So in this regard, Necromancer can so to say: "rock/paper/scissors itself around the current matchup" in ways that other classes cannot, concerning what options it is able to bring. My point being in explaining this, is that this is happening on what is considered the same build archetype, and that is a power/condi hybrid damage Reaper that uses pistol / staff / chilledtothebone. They have all of these skills to mix in and out depending on what they need in the current match up, and it doesn't effect the primary build structure at all: Well Of Corruption "boon corrupts" Well Of Darkness "blinding chilling bleeding damage" Boon Corrupt "direct 3 boon corrupt skill 2x ammo" Spectral Ring "mass AoE control skill" Spectral Grasp "mass life force generation CC, fill your bar to full instantly in a team fight" Spectral Armor "protection, stun break, life force generation" Plague Signet "bounces back condis to target and is a stun break" Of course Spectral Walk "mass condi cleanse, stun break, life force generation, return teleport" Of course Wurm "stun break return teleport, can be used for forward teleport" Nothing Can Save You "unblockable shout" Good Reaper players toggle all of this stuff in & out from match to match depending on what they need or what will be most useful, and it doesn't effect the primary build structure at all. Again, point being, is that a pistol staff chilled to the bone Reaper wielding power/condi damage is the same build regardless of what he's toggling per the given match he's in. A Reaper changing his skills is nothing like alteration of say a Warrior choosing to take Bull's Charge or not, which largely immediately declares if the War build is offensive roamer or some kind of defensive bunker. In the case of other classes, a single utility swap changes everything and forces mandatory changes in other places that if you don't adjust, the build will just be dysfunctional. IE: If I had you in a match and I knew we needed someone to push side node against your Ele all game, I'd simply take every obnoxious anti-ele option possible + speed relic. There wouldn't be anything you could do about it on node and you wouldn't be able to disengage me with a single flash due to the speed relic + ranged CCs + shroud 2 + wurm if I chose to bring it. Reaper can adjust itself to hard counter almost every class build this way. The only things I have not been able to adjust to and absolutely destroy with these current Reaper builds, are specifically Thieves. Thief is the last class left that has enough mobility to just stay away from the Reaper's bully stature. I'm actually fairly certain that if we ran another 1v1 season, the Reaper would likely be the dominant 1v1. It would have difficult match ups against Thief but it would win in the end through defensive play being in those small arenas. In normal conquest map though, a Thief doesn't need to ever be caught by a Necro. But yeah, the list of CCs that pistol staff chilled to the bone is pumping out in a continuous cycle is just OP dude: Vile Blast - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 1s stun 12s CD 10s CD with trait - 900 range 180 radius AoE Wail of Doom - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 600 range cone 1s fear 24s CD AoE or Oppressive Collapse - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 900 range 2s knockdown 20s CD - and if you don't take these options you bring Lesser Spinal Shivers - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) for big damage and boon hate every 20s CD to make sure you rip stability so your other CCs hit. Reaper's Mark - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 1s fear 18s CD - 1200 range 300 radius AoE - often unblockable Terrify - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 1s fear 25s CD 22s CD with trait 360 radius AoE Executioner's Scythe - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) says it applies 2.5s stun for pvp split 30s CD 25s CD with trait but what it actually applies is a special ultimate CC named Reaper's Frost - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) that also pulses chill. For some reason they don't list the range/radius on this skill in the wiki but has got to be around 360+ range and the hit radius around 180 where it strikes. "Chilled to the Bone!" - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 2s or 3s stun which is actually Reaper's Frost - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) on a 48s CD range 600 AoE also goes vertical for that range. In most matches you can afford to bring Spectral Ring - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) a 900 range massive unblockable 1s fear ring that lasts 8 seconds on a 40s CD. This CC is so powerful it can immediately momentum shift a losing 1v1 into a winning 1v1 or even a losing team fight into a winning team fight. This is arguably the strongest CC in the game for several reasons, but primarily because it is a ground force effect that does not allow evade frames to surpass it. You need straight stability or a very well timed single stun break sometimes double stun break to get out of this or you're stuck for 8 seconds. All of this is just the hard CC it has ^ Do I need to go into the ridiculous amount of soft CC that Reaper is pushing out? Do we really consider Chill a soft CC at this point? Chill is a very powerful effect and when something is pumping it out with nearly 100% uptime, is that even soft CC at that point? Something to think about. If we were to run a thorough examination of CC rotations, I'm sure the modern Reaper can throw a hard CC at opponents about every 3 seconds continuously on a cycle that doesn't end, on top of perpetual Chill application. Come on now. And then you throw Demon Queen on top of all that CC on top of the poison it already naturally applies, for additional poison applications at a -50% heal function, and you're gonna tell me you don't think this is the most enormous power creep we've ever seen a class undergo? There is A LOT of hidden damage in all that perpetual poison application at -50% man. Reaper has too much CC and is dealing extreme damage values on its own, but when we introduce DQ relic, the kill value it possesses becomes insanely bloated. I don't know why you keep trying to cheap shot my skill factor with comments like "are you gold?" "tell us what you're struggling with?" come on dude. I don't do things like that to you, I don't know why lately you've regressed to doing things like this to me. I've already told you, I don't have problems with Reaper. Lately I run either LB Soulbeast as roamer which still handles them in 1v1s and for quickly picking them off, or a Bunker Support Druid that at the worst, holds a node under them even if I can't kill them, but usually they have to retreat or they'll die to attrition over time when shroud drops. I've already told you, my basis for these discussions in this thread is coming from what I see when running AT teams with other players. Regardless of if we are winning or losing a match, I notice that team fights are 90% decided on how many Reapers are present. It's true. You get 2x Reapers in the same team fight and then all of that hard & soft CC we just went over, turns into x2 output and it's just too much man. When both of them are running DQ relic, it's just too much ultra-benefits for a single class to have over other classes. All you have to do is cheese stack Tempest Sup with Guard Sup and 2x Reaper with w/e else you want as your 5th, and I'm telling you I don't care what metabattle says right now, that is the meta team comp. The 2x Reapers will have all the DPS & CC you need, and killing them is obnoxiously difficult when 2x Sup is present. The Reapers also possess so much AoE that provide easy cover for the Supports so it is highly unrealistic to target the Supports. And between all the stab coming off the Supports and the Reaper's themselves, you like can't CC anything, but they are tossing AoE CCs at you like every 2s is some massive ****ing AoE 2-3 second stun or knockdown that hits everyone in the team fight while perpetually applying perma poison at -50% heal. When you hear me talk about this Reaper stuff, I'm not talking about side node 1v1s dude. I'm talking about their snowball team fight value. It's just bloated as hell right now. Also, a great deal of this feedback is from me running Reaper and testing it in various 1v1s against players of all ratings in NA. If you're wise on these Reaper builds and don't overextend into stupid positions while burning important CDs, people simply can't push an offense on you without getting killed in 2s. I'm serious, if you play it ultra defensively/counter-offensively, anyone who tries to be the aggressor vs. the Reaper, is going to get killed. Again, only exception is extreme mobility & ranged DPS which generally only comes from Deadeyes & some other Thief builds if played by the right players. I think it was Flowki that said it and he's right, Reaper has become the ultimate Gate Keeper Class. It absolutely demands certain aspects out of a class/build to be able to even begin to be able to deal with it, and if a class/build cannot bring those mandatory aspects, it can't be viable in the face of Reaper's current design. This is a problem as it completely denies the majority of options that could be selected to use in the game. No, it isn't just "kind of better than those options" no, it shuts them down completely. This is what I'm talking about when I made this thread about Reaper. You want to nerf it or power creep other things? Fine, w/e man. Either way, people just want to be able to run stuff that isn't the same pigeonholed builds that you MUST use when some Gate Keeper like current Reaper arises. Right now there are a lot of things that would be semi-viable to run, viable enough to where a good player could outplay a mediocre player, if it weren't for the state of current Reaper. A good example would be a Core War. A great player on a Core War should be able to outplay a mediocre or good player on a Necro. But against Reaper? Nope, not gonna happen. Through sheer virtue of DPS output, hard & soft CC, stab output, the Reaper is going to truck over the Core War unless he just runs away and that's if he even brought options to be able to run from the Reaper "this is gate keeping". A great Core War could outplay many good players on most other classes, but it could never outplay current Reaper due to its insanely bloated close range combat value in 1v1s and team fights. Unless you have brought mandatory mechanics to kite in and out fast enough and/or to out-range the Reaper's mechanics, you will not be able to deal with its numbers output in close range. <- And this right here defines where it is gate keeping. It's forcing a certain of level of enhanced mobility & ranged, and if a class does not possess these, there are no ways to deal with it unless you are greatly outplaying the Reaper or are running some adamantine side node bunker that can't die unless it's getting 2v1'd. Anyway, this was my "wake-up while drinking coffee post" for the morning. Time to do something else now.

PSA: Current update on Reaper Reaper has too many CCs after the implementation of Pistol. Half of them are ranged AoEs and the melee range ones last waaay too long. Chilled To The Bone CC melee range 3s should be lowered to 2s. Chilled To The Bone lasts too long for being the lowest risk highest reward CC in the game that also buffs a ton of stability while leaving the opponent chilled nonetheless.

I made a similar suggestion not long ago in a different thread. IMO here is what needs to happen moving forward: Remove ranked game mode and shove all the related pip rewards/achievements to unranked. This will funnel remaining player base together, allowing the algorithm better proportions to do its job correctly. We can keep mixed queues of 1-5 for unranked. No one will care to abuse any of this because 2 -> Remove visible rating/badge icons/titles. Just get rid of it. This clout display is 95% of the reason why people win trade/multi-box/bot throw to begin with. Just get rid of this garbage. I hate saying that because I like the idea of competing for these things, but it is true that all the clout display does is create motives for match manipulation. I know the people who cheat get bored of doing it, but they keep doing it because they feel like "they have to keep up". Even those guys would probably feel relieved if clout display was removed so they could just relax and play the game again. If they removed clout display, no one is going to cheat in unranked, and if they do, it would be way way less frequent than what we see in ranked now. And because it's unranked, the people who were getting cheated, if that happened, it wouldn't kitten them off as much. Everythinig about removing rating/badges/titles would just be healthy for the game at this point. If people didn't feel like: "Oh I just hit the rating I wanted so now I want to stop for 3 days and sit on it" or "There is throwing going on right now so I should stop queue today" or "The strong people I duo with aren't logged in so I have to wait to queue so I don't lose rating" or "I just won a game and get +5 and then lose a game get -21 now I'm kind of angry and don't feel like playing anymore" we would see a lot more queue participating if these factors were not giving motives to "stop queueing". I mean seriously though. The times that I queue the most and have the most fun, is when I'm queueing unranked with groups of friends and no one has to worry about rating. Arenanet REALLY needs to consider this reality check, moving forward into year 12. Shove stronghold & courtyard into the normal map shuffle selections for the now merged unranked. Removing ranked and pushing all rewards to unranked will already merge player base together, but then merging stronghold & courtyard into normal map shuffle will merge even more player base together, which feels rather necessary at this point for the algorithm to be able to do its job. I don't think anyone would have a problem with playing the occasional stronghold or courtyard on a roulette shuffle for some different to do from time to time. It really wouldn't be a big deal now with build templates, when we can so easily swap builds for different modes. Leave competitive for 5man premade ATs, the way it was supposed to be to begin with. There are a lot of suggestions I could make as to how to make the AT scene better, but I'll save that for a different post.

You ever actually log into those builds and try it for yourself? I think if you did, your description of those builds would change to: "High risk/medium reward" They are not so easy to play.

Hot Take: I didn't see a single Necro use Sword/Sword or Sword at all during beta. I assume it ended up not being OP.

Try something like this. It is both an adequate side node that can deal with warrior and team fighter/half support. About 90% of everything you do on this is boon corrupt/removal with very heavy CC control. This will **** on warriors when you learn how to CC juggle after a good condi appliction. Even if you can't kill a great warrior, it won't be able to kill you and you'll be able to fear him off the node plenty for decap. Only thing to remember that is important here, is to stay very aggressive with attacking because a great deal of your sustain comes from consistent attacks that are life stealing from blood. Also make sure you stay near targets with use of WH#5, especially groups of things like clones & pet AIs/Turrets ect ect. The life steal that comes from blood + WH#5 used together is large. It's like a 2nd heal utility or better when hitting multiple targets at once with it. This build is about staying alive & decapping before it is about killing things. That's what makes it work. Avoid engaging stuff that outranges you 1v1 like DE. And remember that the shroud #5 pulse visually covers the elite Breach. If you want to actually kill the warrior on node, you need to fool him into standing in the Breach for a few seconds before you start the CC juggle. Try to use always use the shroud #5 on top of the Breach. Most people don't notice what you're doing and get slapped hard by it. - Blood 3 3 3 - Soul Reap 2 2 1 - Scourge 1 3 3 - Rabid Amy / Druid Rune / Nayos Relic - Pistol/Warhorn Energy/Cleanse "You want the compounded life steal & swift from WH#5" - Staff Energy/Escape - 6 Sand Flare - 7 Serpent Siphon - 8 Trail Of Anguish - 9 Spectral Walk - 0 Breach

Except that they actually do a balance patch every 2 months.

Well that's what I'm talking about. They've said everything they've needed to say to us without saying anything at all. It can quite clearly be translated into: "We don't care". This is unfortunately true.

Go duel Doze or Ckod. They play like counter-offensive Spellbreakers, and when they do this on modern Necro builds, there is nearly zero opportunity to find a way to interract with the Necro in a meaningful way without it turning into a numbers vs. numbers slugfest where the Necro will bully you every time. Oh he already does, but for some reason he's been strangely absent for about the past month. I'll see him log in for 30 minutes and then leave for a week. No idea what he's doing.

Nah, I run that Side Node Bunker/Support Druid lately. I don't have a problem holding vs. Reaper. You've fought it, that build is a damage soaking condi removing machine. What I'm mostly basing this on is the general observation of how much impact the presence of a Reaper is making in teams. Remember, I mostly just run ATs all day outside of the ranked match once per 3 days to maintain rating. In coordinated AT teams, a single good Reaper with support on it is just ****ing OP lately dude. I don't know how else to explain it. When this next 2v2 or 3v3 season pops up, you watch. A single good Reaper also auto counters most side noders. Eles, Untamed, even Condiserk has to be REAL careful you can die in like 2s to a Reaper if you mess up once. That stupid build I run is like the only thing with enough condi cleanse to make sure it can't die to the Reaper while standing on the node and not needing to to kite & get decapped.

Hrm: You're right, too much volatility in mixed MMR makes the matches not only not make sense, but it also in general convolutes the purpose & accuracy of the algorithm. But this is not actually the first priority. The first priority would be the amount of match manipulation going on. The algorithm wouldn't feel half as bad if it weren't for those issues. The second priority would be accepting that Arenanet simply does not care about the level of manipulation going on or the algorithm functions. This leads to the 3rd priority which becomes the only priority because it's the only thing they do tend to, and that is class balance. There is more imbalanced sloppy patching going on now than there ever has been. By power creeping everything to where everything does the same thing, they've made the game nearly impossible to balance. When A, B, C, D, E, F, G all do the same thing same role, if C deals slightly more damage than anything else, everyone only wants to play C. But when things are designed to have class individuality where A is healer, B is boon corrupts, C is fast mobile, D is damage dealer, ect ect, even if C is widely considered the most underpowered of them, he will still always have a viable role and people will still play him because he is the only thing that can do his role. <- This is exampled perfectly how DP Daredevil was for many years considered widely underpowered, but it still was always in the meta because it was the only true decap class. Games are much harder to balance when everything does everything because a slight increase in numbers on C, means he becomes inarguably the best and only choice. This is what we have happening in GW2 now and yes it is important to discuss, otherwise we get MATs where every good team is running 5x Eles, as one example of what goes wrong with this kind of balancing. Stop trying to undermine the experience & feedback of the community. Some of you guys act like somehow the longer this game survives and the more experience players have, they are somehow understanding less about the game rather than learning more about it. This is a ridiculous notion. There are people in this community who have been here playing pvp for 11 years. Regardless of if you agree with their take on balance or how they would approach it, their view of it is elaborate and well structures after over a decade of play. This kind of feedback deserves to be listened to. Meta listings are a joke nowadays for several reasons: 1) You have a small handful of Arenanet partnered streamers who when they play a build, meta focus is automatically put on it. Nothing gets attention unless it is played by one of these people. There are A LOT of very strong builds in circulation right now, that arguably are better than some of the listed metas. But due to these builds not being favored or used by a streamer, they'll never be listed as meta. 2) Metabattle.com simply posts the winning MAT comp as "what is meta". There is so much wrong here as to why this is really just not necessarily accurate for "What are the actual strongest current builds & comp". I won't even go into all. If you don't know what I'm referencing, don't worry about it. 3) 2 month periods in between massive balance shake ups is not nearly enough time to really narrow down a central power meta and its counter meta. 4) On top of this, you've got to make distinction between who are the best players and what are the actual best builds. The truth is that an S+ tier player can make an A tier build look S+ tier, and a B tier player can make an S+ tier build look B tier. Consider this. I would love to see manipulation & cheating of all kinds cracked down on, as well as something done to at least TRY to help the algorithm in low population. But at this point we've learned that we shouldn't hold our breaths on that one. Honestly man at this point, we could maybe realistically ask them for some simple chops that would help improve things. For example: Just remove the kitten ranked mode and shove all associated pip rewards/achievement unlocks to unranked and remove the visible leaderboards & division badge icons and titles. I hate saying this but seriously man, the ranked mode has become a cesspool for fake gaming. It's not even fun anymore. And the reason why it happens is because of the clout attached to the rating and titles. All of that just needs to go. If the pip rewards/achievements for legends were all in unranked, this would highly discourage cheating of all forms and just encourage people to play unranked for fun. Even the cheaters have to bet bored of cheating man. It would probably be relieving to them if they didn't feel the need to keep up with the cheating fake clout display game and they could just play for fun again. Then we can leave competitive for ATs & MATs 5 man premade teams that intrinsically due to the format, eliminates most forms of match manipulation. This is the way it should be. Even funneling the queue population into just unranked, would significantly enhance the match maker's functions. Fight more for balance issues. Yes, in contrast to your post, fighting for balance issues is an important thing my dude. If we didn't do this, we'd still have 5 Catalysts in every MAT team. Balance issues are important. Read my suggestion about generally eliminating the toxic ranked mode. If people could casual queue in unranked for all those rewards, we'd have a lot more people queueing within the first week. When they have to queue into ranked and run into a bunch of gobligook AFK & DC matches, throws, win trades, the mode isn't even fun enough to stick around to complete the legend they THOUGHT the wanted before seeing how boring it is to play bad matches over and over for it. I'm telling you guys, if they removed all that rating/badge/title stuff and just put those rewards into unranked and deleted ranked mode, it would eliminate 95% of the motives for people to cheat, people could play for fun again instead of for the eminence front of fake rating, games would be waaaaay cleaner, and the population for that unranked queue would at least double on the first day this was implemented, also enhancing match quality due to allowing the algorithm more people to do its job, and those numbers would almost surely go rise over the course of time when the game didn't feel like the worst fake larped match making you've ever seen in any game ever. After this was implemented ^ They could do something like provide pvp reward tracks that straight granted mastery points & mastery XP for pve masteries. Regardless of if it was repeatable or not, even a one time reward track that did this, would bring in a lot of new players to test the scene. And the more new players we have to fill games seeded with mostly new players, this would funnel in a new growth of players who might actually stay interested. But they have to be able to go into games with people of their similar experience levels, otherwise they get tired real quick of being farmed by plat+ players, and gladly leave to never come back. The idea here would be to provide reward tracks that really specifically target the interests of newer players. We don't need higher gold rewards and **** like that, we need reward tracks that do things like grant way more tomes of knowledge than normal or that grant hero points, stuff like that. Things that would allow a player to mess around in pvp while unlocking his pve stuff, would likely draw a lot of interest from newer players. The more interest we could draw all at once, the more new players that could arrive in bulk from this, and the more full we could get unranked games of new players, so they can play without the plat+ farm being present. This is what we need in terms of reviving a surge for the game modes we already have. It also wouldn't hurt to merge courtyard/stronghold into the normal map roulette shuffle for every normal queue, and just remove the check mark box system in unranked, which also divides player base and often confuses new players when they don't understand "why am I in a 30 minute queue for pvp?" because they have stronghold select. A lot of people don't even ask in map chat "what's going on here?" and they just leave and don't come back because 30 minute wait is immediately a bad first impression of the game mode. I also think most older veteran players would enjoy having a reason to play the occasional stronghold/courtyard match for something different to do. It wouldn't be a big deal now with build templates that allow us to easily shift builds per match type that may roll.

Do I really need to stream for you how fast you can kill things out of stealth with a Chrono or Scrapper? Have you never seen something like a Willbender duo & travel with someone who can stealth prebuff so he can gank? No I'm hovering in plat+ right now. But yeah, sometimes in NA you just go down to nearly gold 2 man. You EU guys don't seem to understand how bad the match manipulation is in low population NA. Obtaining and keeping even a 1500-1550 rating solo queue in NA WITHOUT playing a hard queue dodge game and/or joining into certain discords to know the schedules of when they log in and work the system, is like what old 1600-1650 used to be. All of this becomes exasperated when they identify each other's queue cliques and then they begin to queue dodge each other. Because with low population this results in a situation where usually only one game or two is seeding for ranked at any given time of day. You get one low elo game being seeded for guys down in silver 2 to gold 2, and anything g3+ is being funneled into the other game being seeded, often sucking in low golds & silvers to fill missing spaces because there aren't enough people g3+ queueing. When they queue dodge each other's groups, it makes then essentially stand in line for these games being seeded, resulting in every game you try to enter, there is a win trade queue clique in it. This is often easily identified by too many queue pops in a row that go: "queue pops - someone doesn't accept - it requeues - queue pops - someone doesn't accept - requeues - finally game starts - you lose the game 500 to 20 and notice you were 3v5 the whole game from guys walking in never dodging never using heal skills never go to nodes only swing auto 1s or sometimes they just AFK right at the gate before game start". You think I'm exaggerating this but I am not. What that is, is people trying to get their synch queues into the same game. When the window pops for the mains being supported, if the window pops same time for the others, they know they are in the same game together. If the windows don't pop same time, they just an alt not ready up to force requeue. Because the population is so low and there aren't enough games being queued, you can't avoid this stuff anymore. You either join in on it and play a fake larped pvp or you just do your best to learn how to scout it and wait for clean queues, which is becoming very very difficult to do. This describes the common day queueing ranked in NA when you are not in on what's going on. In NA, when you queue and see queue pops where there is always 1 person who doesn't accept, just stop queueing and try again later. This is also why you hear NA people say "I get better games when I solo queue". This is because when you duo queue, the algorithm likes to throw duos against duos, and most of the active duos in NA are wielding some form of manipulation even if it's soft manipulation. So when you duo queue in NA you're likely gonna keep getting matches against those duos. But if you solo queue, you have a higher likelihood of landing on the team with the match manipulators, which gives the placebo that "you're getting better matches". Some of the known better players in NA who are always wanted for ATs, are often sucked down into g3 and forced to fight back into plat+ for these reasons. The ones who don't join in on the monkey **** who try to organic queue, know exactly what I'm talking about here. Sometimes you just get a bad week man. Every game you try to queue into, even when it doesn't initially LOOK like there is any synching going on, it just ends up being a bad incarriable obvious win trade. Population is so low in NA that even in gold 3, you get +11 on wins and -15s -17s on losses. No joke. You shouldn't try to trash on the organic guys sitting in low plat. If you knew how difficult was to hold that position in top 100 ranked, you'd change your sentiment. Hey you don't believe me? I'll pay for you to transfer to NA. Come queue some games with me. See what you think after that experience. I'm serious, i'll pay for you to do it. Let me know.

It's ignorant or possibly apathetic to post stuff like this. The game's balance is not fine. We need more discussion on it, not less. Dude I haven't been in a Necro discussion for like 2 years or more. Me commenting now after rune/relics/new weapons is a lot different than me commenting 2+ years ago. Because it was a standard of damage output. Soulbeast has always been referenced in this regard concerning single target burst potential. Come on now. There are plenty of things that deal beyond 17k out of a 1s stealth burst if you don't dodge. I shouldn't have to list them for you. Yeah it does. Go test play a Reaper with speed relic. Things can't get away from you because you are faster with swift, you have mobility skill shroud 2 to chase as well and now you have ranged pressure on both weapon sides, A LOT of ranged pressure between pistol/focus/staff. And this isn't to mention the mega stopping CCs it has like Chilled To The Bone that goes through & around pillars and deep freezes you for 3 seconds which often results in an insta-free kill, or the constant chill that just in general slows you down so much it's like it forces "Anti-Speed" onto the opponent. Speed relic definitely makes the Reaper a thing that is extremely difficult to disengage unless your a DP Daredevil with a ton of stealth & teleports. But this is no longer a solid counter strategy anymore due to what I just explained. IT CAN CHASE YOU DOWN with speed relic and all these other effects, and when he's out of shroud he has a lot of mid ranged pressure, CCs and really high damage output due to pistol/focus. I don't understand how you're in this thread vouching what you're saying as an Ele main when you full well know a good Reaper is like an impossible counter for you to deal with for all of the reasons I've explained. I'm not even a Necro main but when I go on Reaper, I can **** all over Eles. It distinctly feels like a situation where I'm just shoving out double the numbers they are. Their builds are slow and they can't get away from you. Everything about current Reaper hard counters Ele. It does when you can't disengage it without a lot of stealth output and a bunch of teleports/long range mobility skills. Yeah I don't know what's going on in EU there, but there are like 2 Reapers in every NA game and lately I'm seeing teams of 3-4 Necros in ATs. Then some of our Necro players in NA are actually good. If you tried to 1v1 Doze on a Reaper as example, you'd see what I'm talking about here. When a player is good and doesn't do stupid stuff to allow you to exploit your described easy tactic of waiting out shroud, when they play counter-offensively like a Spellbreaker, Reaper wins nearly every 1v1 it takes and lords over team fights with its AoE DPS, CCs, and stab output. From my own play testing, the only exception here is specifically Deadeyes and very experienced Thieves in general. They are the only class that can stealth reposition often enough to dance around the Reaper. I can chase & kill anything else as Reaper, including Rangers "which it hard counters nowadays actually". Anything that's above 1550 in NA is win trade multi-window bot throw territory lately, or sometimes players duo with someone who likes them that they don't realize is manipulating. The only exception is a lucky day when you can find an hour to queue without running into manipulations, but then the very next day you're going right back down to 1500 or lower. It is exceedingly rare to find clean queue times in NA anymore.

-> Tanky Scourge with essentially maximum boon corrupts and maximum fear effects. It'll keep stab off the Warriors, perpetually fear them off nodes, and make them have to hop off nodes to avoid your big AoE pits. Even if you can't kill the Warrior, it shouldn't be able to kill you, and you'll be able to decap him fairly easily. A Scourge can be designed for more selfish bunkery play while maintaining a decent amount of half-support for team fights. Blood/SoulReap/Scourge - Look into rabid amulet, druid rune, nayos relic - Also look into dagger/warhorn for maximum jank life steal sustain factors with blood abuse.

Three main things to point out imo: General power creep from new rune/relic system and cross class weapons. I don't think any class has benefitted from the rune/relic system and cross weapons as much as Necro has, specifically Reaper benefitting the most. When they can attach something like speed relic to any other good rune that maintains damage/sustain, and put a Harb pistol on, it removes the one balancing factor drawback that Reaper had, which was being slower and nearly full melee. If they wanted speed before, they had to ditch damage/sustain stats for it. But now, they can stay on top of you much more easily and have a lot of ranged pressure to boot between pistol and staff, while maintaining all of their damage and gaining the extra CC off pistol. The ranged pressure/CC from Reaper is no joke in current patching. It's comparable to a Condi Ranger that has a bit less damage but more CC. Specifically relics that add additional condis that the Reaper wouldn't normally have. If they choose to ditch speed, they can take relics that are arguably better through the boost to bursting. It's not that the relics are adding too much raw damage but what they do is they provide imo too many cover condis for Reaper bursting. Lately Reapers who time it all right, can actually one-shot you from full health, nearly as easily as Soulbeast pre-nerf, because there are so many condis reapplying constantly and you can't cleanse all of it unless you have panic cleanses like Cont Of Purity. The chill also makes animation tied cleansing difficult to access during these bursts. A large contributor to what makes this burst so ridiculously strong are these: Target the Weak - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Furious Demise - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) <- This is A LOT of free crit chance, especially when the Reaper is applying nearly ALL condis with its burst. Even +900 power off Carrion becomes significant power damage when you're getting fury 20% + 2% more per condi applied. Necro already has the highest raw +condi stat damage in pvp easily. Due to traits that add this enormous amount of +condi stat, they can get upwards of like 2000 condi in pvp without might. Do they really need to also have around 60% crit chance for power damage as well on what is supposed to be a condi burst tank that doesn't even have precision on an amulet? It's just an awful lot of damage and too many condis to where the cover condis for the hard damage condis is too deep. And this right here Spinal Shivers - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) is hitting awfully hard nowadays. It's like a ranged Worldly Impact. It's a bit much.

The in-merge Heavy Shot deals less damage than other skills like Worldly Impact. To be able to even get close to one-shot damage with Heavy Shot, you have to run actual full DPS like pve level DPS on a glass cannon build that has 0 defenses, 0 cleanse, 0 utility and can't deal with being focused at all. If you run a build that is somehow pulling off 15ks - 17ks with Heavy Shot, that means you're automatically dead if anything targets you. Posting that video is making people question of Heavy Shot one-shots are a thing, but it's really not a thing. These builds are about as effective as a Core Warrior stating full DPS for rifle one-shots. Pretty good description of its value/efficiency.

^ Thread title. There, I said it. Someone needed to do it.

Guys this thread is taking the wrong direction. It should be more like a bigfoot sightings alert, where we discuss when we think we seen Chaith in random places.

No, what I said is that the Gazelle & Turtle fixes would be good but that it would still wouldn't replace Smokescale in what it does to enable DPS roaming builds. Same thing I'm saying in this thread, go reread it.

Let me say this again: About Untamed Roamer being good with Polar Bear, ha. Damage on Polar Bear is way too low man and way too infrequent. Anyone using Polar Bear has not yet figured out what Gazelle/Turtle is capable of on Untamed. <- That is dangerous damage output. The new fixed Gazelle Charge makes Gazelle OP. It is now a 2x CC pet where one of the CCs itself is also a high damage strike that can follow up with the Kick for more high damage. The Gazelle is also a tank. The Turtle now is not only a tank with an anti-projectile bubble that pulses prot, but he also now has 2x CCs and one of them hits like a Tail Swipe. Between those two pets you're getting 4x CCs and several high damage procs. You can't beat that combo if you're running DPS Marks Untamed, not just for the CC & damage, but also the extra bubble the Turtle provides. Guarantee you any DPS roamer Untamed meta will emerge as Gazelle/Turtle, IF they can find room to ditch the smoke field. But even still, that doesn't mean it'll hold efficiency in anything beyond yolo queues with mixed MMRs where you can target & farm low skill players. What I've been telling this whole time is true, Ranger roamers are just too glassy for competitive 5v5s such as ATs, without free stealth capability. When they have to sacrifice the Smokescale "which allowed them stealth blasts & leaps for disengage" they end up having the same problem like Engi/Holo where they look VERY impressive in 1v1s but are way too easily targeted & ran down by team focus. Like you could take the best Tool Holo player in the game who looks insanely impressive in 1v1, but in an actual 5v5 game against plat+ players, they know that build can only survive for a matter seconds if say a Herald + DP Daredevil focuses it, because it just doesn't have the kind of utilities it needs to seriously kite/disengage focus from more than 1 player at a time. This is exactly what is going to happen to any Untamed who doesn't run Smokescale for the smokefield. Opponents know that pressure from 2+ players just instant counters the build and so he becomes priority target #1 because he is the easiest to kill and the most dangerous if ignored, and there really is no way to counterplay this because an Untamed without smokefield has limited mobility on top of no stealth. A Soulbeast being able to merge for assault tele/evade frames and long range mobility run skills like with Gazelle, is what makes people think "Ranger is fast". Untamed is slow like a Core Ranger man. Slow Core Rangers running full DPS that don't have stealth get killed first in our modern metas. Again, Untamed DPS is going to look awfully impressive in 1v1s and in yolo queue games where half the players aren't rotating/focusing correctly, as do many builds. But it'll be a liability to run in coordinated AT teams who know how to focus targets. I've well explained this several times for several years now, the one biggest problem that Ranger has within the balancing: It looks & feels very strong in yolo queue games for the reasons I've explained, and generally within middle tiers where people have a lot of l2p issues that the Ranger design can exploit easily. But when it goes into more competitive environments where people know how to focus targets and have overcame l2p issues such as: "Knowing how to combat Ranger ranged by out-LOSing the Ranger with nades or melee things that can hit through walls whereas the Ranger ranged cannot" or just in general "Not standing/walking in the open directly at a Ranger" ect ect, the class Ranger begins have steep declines in its efficiency. This isn't just my own opinion, every high tiered Ranger/streamer who has ever discussed these topics has given this exact same feedback. The class Ranger is like the opposite of something like Ele. Ranger is strong in those middle tiers and takes dive in higher tiers, whereas Ele you don't see much from them in middle tiers due to l2p issues of knowing how to really work that class but in higher tiers wielded by players who really understand the class and its role, its efficiency goes waaay up. THE PROBLEM comes in with those middle tier complaints. because the middle to low tiers are by far the bulk of the player base, Arenanet listens to everything they say and caters balance around it, so that Ranger "Feels" balanced to those players. So they nerf it for middle tiers and when this happens, it just becomes invalid and in no way viable for higher tier play unless you're one the old GOATS who can make it work. This stuff has been going on with Ranger for years. As soon as a Ranger build is actually viable enough to survive in a top 3 placing MAT team, that intrinsically means that it has become an absolute monster in middle tiers and yolo queue games. Another example, it's similar to Rifle Mech on release. It was an absolute monster in middle tiers and yolo games where no one focuses and has l2p issues and EVERYONE in gold complained about it, yet NO ONE ran in any serious team because it had these same problems I'm explaining to you about higher tiered play where it became a complete liability when there weren't l2p issues and people knew how to focus, because it had bad disengage and virtually no tools to deal with 2+ focus. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. I've specifically stated several times now: That side node bunker Ranger can compete in high tiered environments, BUT that is all it can do in terms of getting serious to place top 3 in an MAT. Hey, I'm sure a lot of people are thinking "Well I don't care about top 3 placing team balance" but you know what? Some of us do. There you go.

Yes but is this system reading all of this including all the multi-windows and bots being ran, as well as all those AFKs logged into Lion's Arch that never move and do the same dances in the same places for the past 5+ years? During my estimation given, I had incorporated this perspective vs. what the "how many are logged in right now" polls. This is why I said realistically probably about 600-800 actual human players playing, regardless of multi-windows being ran. Yes it is a thing. In just pvp even, NA has had the multi-boxing come back into ATs lately. There is again 1-2 teams of full multi-windows in ATs lately. I also see people pveing where clearly 1 person is the actual human player and there are bots that follow them around who stick waaaay to tight on the player to be human players. They follow the 1 human player very tightly and fling autos at targets and do the same exact F interactions ect ect. Clearly these are people who run follow bots in multi-windows to do map completes/XP/ect ect much faster than normal with several accounts. I've also had wvw players admit to me that their "wvw guild core" is pretty much 1 human commander who has several multi-window bots following him that stick very tight and start spamming all the support & aoe when & however the human player has it designed to trigger. Very easy way to make things happen in wvw. All you need is 1 human with 3 or 4 bots following it who all wear the same guild tag and people will follow you. Those bot programs are actually efficient in wvw zerg play from what I hear, due to the nature of needing to stick tight and move like a school of fish = winning. But yeah, "number of accounts logged-in playing" is not the same as "number of human players playing". Aint no way. I mean I have no idea how active EU & China are, but even if you incorporated NA, EU, and China, there is no way there are between 30k and 80k actual humans playing at a given time. If that were true, there would be 30 people in the FFA pit in every instance, 40 people standing around watching, 60+ people running around in weird places doing random **** and probably 80-100 queueing games at any point in time. Every AT would have at least as many entrys as an MAT, and maps like Queensdale would be reaching maximum limits from players running new characters. You'd open LFG in fractals and see 20+ groups and wvw would have queue waits all day long every day at any time. Maybe between NA, EU and China combined, it may possible to see 10k-20k during peak releases, but 30k-80k aint no way unless the game is insanely more popular in China than it is in other places. I don't care what those websites say about "people logged in right now", sometimes you have to use your own eyes, common sense, and general math capabilities, to get a realistic gauge on these kinds of things. Companies/Corporations often gives misleading numbers on things. For example, the common dating website. You log in and it says it'll say some bull**** like "there are 5600 members near your local town" but that inflated number is simply counting every falsely created account it can search that has your hometown listed as where it lives. And anyone who has spent any time on those sites knows, 90% of the accounts you search are absolute fabricated bull**** to make paying customers believe the site is a lot more active than it actually is.

@Dredsh.2360 You're absolutely right. I went back in to test it in pve and it is definitely having some kind of buggy interaction where the Rugged Growth is not granting 1s of heal for the full duration of a protection duration. The thing is... I'm a bit confused as to quite exactly what is happening here. At first I thought: "The Rugged Growth is only tallying the base duration of protection for its heal duration and is ignoring duration granted from +boon duration." The more I was testing that, it sort of didn't add up. Because I'm on a build with 50% boon duration during this test in the raid golem room, and I'm buffing about 20s of prot coming from 50% boon duration, and then the Rugged Growth heal only stops healing me at around 18s. So I'm thinking: "Well that kind of doesn't add up if the problem was just it not tracking boon duration bonus". Then I try prebuffing 25s of protection, and in this case, the Rugged Growth still stops healing at around 18s and then I sit there watching the last 5s just do no healing at all. Then I start doing super elongated protection refreshes after the initial buff, and I found that every time it stops healing me at 18s, if I dodge roll to get protection off Companion's Defense, it would retrigger Rugged Growth. Keep in mind I would still have protection on just the healing had stopped at 18s and then I dodge roll and it stacks 3s more onto the protection and then RG turns back on again. I don't know what is actually going on here. I ran a bunch of different tests with different combos different variations to try and narrow down quite exactly what was happening, but this is probably the strangest bug I've ever seen in this game. I can't quite figure out where the problem is. In some instances from what I'm seeing, it almost seems like the RG has some baked in "maximum duration" where it will not go over that maximum duration, even if protection is still on, until you receive another protection and then it will turn back on again but stop again when it reaches that max duration. But then other times it only seems like what it is doing is this: It takes a prot of 6 1/2s, a prot of 2 1/4s, a prot of 4 3/4s, and then it adds the whole numbers and ignores the fractions. Like it grants you 12s of the RG but ignores the 1/2s 1/4s 3/4s which would be granting another 2s to the 12s making it 14s, but it only gives you 12s. You see what I mean? I also thought maybe it is possible that it is tracking SOME boon duration boosts but ignoring others, so like if you have 50% total boon duration, it is somehow only identifying like 30% of that. Could be the case but it's just really difficult to narrow down what's going on here. Regardless, there is definitely a wonky mechanic here that could use some fixing.

I've heard Arenanet makes statements like that quite a few times. I've even heard game coverage streamers quote Arenanet on those statemements. Clearly what they do is they look at the amount of "accounts created ever" and then use that number when they tell people how big the active player base is. Realistically this is what I see as a player who plays every day: Maybe 20+ players on in pvp lobby actually moving around pushing buttons and queueing games at any point in the day, and then there are probably 20 more guy standing around in areas that are not the pvp lobby who are also queueing pvp games. Then 40+ random accounts AFK at bank in the pvp lobby that never move or log off. Maybe 10 people on average playing for various sides in wvw servers in various maps at general times. This increases for sure during resets for awhile, but for the most part these numbers will go up a bit when a guild shows up on on reset or go down to nothing to where people are just outnumbered and there is seriously no one playing in a map. Probably about 10 people in every pve map doing stuff, with the exception of newly released content, and in that case the numbers from those maps crowd into the new areas and we get like 5-6 different map instances going of the new content that are all full for awhile until everyone completes what they wanted. Maybe 1 group running each dungeon at any time of day, at least enough people will join LFG fast enough to create 1 group if you list. Probably 4 to 6 LFG listings for fractal groups around reset, but dwindles down to 1 or 2 around during off peak times. Strikes seem to have just enough people rotating in and out to maintain functional group creation. Raids are dead. This content is barely accessible unless you're part of an organized group at this point. I see hundreds and hundreds of players standing around idle in main cities & hubs who never move or log off who seemingly don't actually ever do anything at all. I'll see the same characters going to the same places doing the same dances, for months and months on end. Are they real players? Hard to believe they are. Are they accounts logged in to make things look more active than they actually are? Probably. If we look at the obvious and do a quick estimate tally, in NA at least, there are probably about 400 to 600 pve players logged in actively playing in various portions of the game at any given point in time. Then there are probably around 100-200 wvw players logged in on average, which I'd say I've seen it go as low as 50 or as high as maybe 300 during reset nights when servers are trying real hard to take every map. In pvp we usually have about 20 players queueing from the lobby and maybe 20 more from pve zones. Sometimes around prime time I'd say that number increases to around 40 & 40 at the highest. I'd say it is pretty realistic to say that on NA, there is probably about 700-800 players online doing stuff in various places of the game, on your average day, not counting big releases like living world or a new expansion. During big releases, those numbers probably double or triple for a week or so before going back down to normal. These numbers are actual somewhat sizeable for such an old game, but because Tyria is absolutely massive and there are so many different game modes & zones, those numbers distribute and look thinner than they actually are.