Trevor Boyer.6524

yes Druid will be fine running something like I run now, more people will figure it out. It'll be good on sides for holding and have value in team fights as support. Soulbeast is already sat out my dude. Right now it's only good when wielded by veterans against lesser skilled players. It's way too squishy for the DPS it deals in higher tiers now. You do not see players running Soulbeast in higher tiers as of recent patchings that boosted so many other build archetypes. After the patch, you simply won't see much representation of Soulbeast at all. And even Untamed DD-Staff side node will lose its place to Druid side with support value eventually. After this patch Untamed won't be able to "take" side nodes like it can now, it'll only be able to hold if the node is already its color. It's going to lose a lot of value on sides due to this and it already has little to no value in team fights at all because its damage is garbage. Soulbeast/Untamed DPS is currently garbage in higher tier play. They're just bad dude. They straight up lose 1v1s to too many of the meta specs like Condiserk / Bladesworn / Catalyst / and now Specter condi slams. They have no special role in hard countering Necros or anything else used in higher tiered play at this point. They've simply been nerfed to where they have no place or purpose. Like I said, Druid Bunker Support is going to be the last man standing as any sort of viable Ranger role because not only can it actually hold a side vs. anything 1v1, but it can massively stall 1v2 in most situations, and it has value as a team support. People just haven't figured it out yet. Keep in mind my analysis of all this is from the standpoint of AT play, not plats mixed with silvers in unranked/ranked. Of course I'll still be able to go into an unranked and chase around silvers as a Soulbeast. But even in that case, the efficiency of Ranger has just dropped several steps and will drop another after the 28th patch. Which can only even be utilized with two things: 1) Nature Magic or 2) We Heal As One. The problem with WHAO is that you sacrifice all the condi cleanse and Fury buff that comes with Troll Unguent. This goes much deeper than you realize. When you run WHAO you may as well not run Wilderness because WHAO is what you run when you use Marksmanship. The only builds that Marks work well on right now are Untamed DPS builds and these generally don't use Wilderness survival skills at all beyond Quick Zephyr the utility for on-demand quickness that is LONG enough to be worth using WHAO for. You have to run Beast Mastery with it for the Greatsword trait and the Quickness on pet swap trait to make Marks mod combos work. And even when you do this, with WHAO, you don't have enough time to prime quickness and cast a ****ing heal skill to give it to the pet before opening an offensive combo, not to mention no one wants to burn their only sustain skill on an all glass build for a prepared offense. So this leaves an Untamed trying to utilize WHAO for some kind offensive pet quick buff in a position where he's waiting for the stars to align after he's taken damage, for the right moment to occur, to where using the heal skill after buffing Zephyr holds both value for the heal and the only 3s of Quick it will give the pet, and hope that combo lands. And does it even matter? I mean when the combo relies on the Ranger CC locking someone to make sure the pet's one big attack lands to combo the Mark mod with the Maul, does the 33% Quick buff even matter? Well it may matter to help the pet follow up with 1 auto after the big damage before the player gets away, that's about it. The Ranger simply has no other method to like "keep Quickness on the pet often so he is actually pumping out consistently more damage". It just doesn't work that way. In the case of "Quickness effects pets" with WHAO DPS builds, it will make such a slight difference that it won't matter at all. The Quickness is gated to that one moment the Ranger uses WHAO and by the time the cast is complete, the pet gets maybe 2 1/2s or 3s of Quick and as I stated before, it makes no difference in the DPS value whether it has Quick or no Quick, when the combo is just all about the Ranger CC lock anyway. In the cast of Nature Magic, every boon the Ranger gets also goes on the pet. But running Nature Magic means you have to stat as a Bunker. There is no way to run Marks with Nature and have it be more valuable than Marks/Beast or even Marks/Wilderness. Same thing with Skirm, there is no way to make it more valuable than Skirm/Wild or even Skirm/Beast. The only choice is to run Nature/Wild and this makes you a Bunker. The only viable choice to attempt to run something that could benefit a lot of Quick on a pet for DPS, would be Core Ranger which could run like Marks/Wild/Nature or Skirm/Wild/Nature for a condi variant, but at this point the abilities & features & raw DPS or sustain offered through Druid/Soulbeast/Untamed is just not a choice to ditch in favor of Core Ranger. You could probably go out into the FFA and do some non-node 1v1s and the Core Ranger might feel like it's sturdy, but it's gonna have the same problem as Core Engi in this regard. It'll feel hipster af in a 1v1 and then you go into an actual 5v5 conquest game where you need to hold nodes and be able to deal with being focused, and then it just sucks. I'm telling you, the only future Ranger has after the 28th is Bunker specs. And even a Bunker with Nature who has Quick Zephyr and maybe even a Dagger to spam Quick off #3, it's just not going to be any enlightened level of DPS from the pet. You've got to understand that their important skills are also on CDs that can only be used so often, regardless of if they have Quickness. And in terms of Quickness making their autos faster, no one stands in pet autos man. If anything, what would increase pet DPS the most, is if there were a way to keep something like Super Speed on them so they could actually keep up with players and stay on them. <- That would actually be impactful. This is one of the reasons why Smokescale has always been so important, because he ports at things and makes sure his damage lands. If the pets had like perma Super Speed or maybe just frequent Super Speed, then we're talking situation where Rangers could realistically swap out Smokescale for something like a Wyvern and the enhanced mobility would make his autos & CCs worth it. Either way, that Quickness effects pets will be an impactful DPS enhancement for pve where things stand still and let pets hit them, but it will have little to no impact on pets in pvp. In wvw on a cele roamer with high boon duration who is also using sigils that make Quick along with Zephyr, then yeah, if you can keep massively high uptime of Quick on a pet in wvw, that will make a difference, but that is simply not an option in spvp. He won't hit with that skill so often. The only time he's going to hit with that is after a Smoke Assault and if the players doesn't dodge right after or walk out with Super Speed or Swift with a Speed Relic. Super Speed or Swift/Speed Relic is fast enough to where you can walk away from the Smokescale after he lands from the Assault, and that CC attack that is turning into the damage attack, won't hit you. Even with the lowered CD of that skill, when he uses it the 2nd time in between Smoke Assaults, it's too easy to walk away from without the "stick to you like glue" effect from the Assault first. So essentially the damage from that attack is going to be gated to the Assault CD. The only people who will be hit by the lower CD 2nd cycle of that are going to be the Gohans who don't dodge, which will further exasperate the problem where lower tier players complain about how OP pets are. And in the case of new Smokescale with DPS builds, the lose of the CC is DETERIMENTAL. You're not understanding how Ranger attack cycles work. That CC that we see is about to happen after the Assault, that's when we know to start precasting a Maul animation or some other large strike. In the case of Soulbeast, we are not only losing the Smokescale natural CC but also the in-merge CC, which yoinks up our combos while in-merge. This change they are doing Smokescale is just bad for higher tiered play and even middle tier. There are other small things that non-ranger players are not understanding is so important about that Smokescale CC. Couple IE: 1) When you're peeling, that Smokescale CC will hit someone chasing you and give you a couple seconds to gain lead. 2) Vs. something like a Thief, that CC will often surprise a Thief at a bad time because it has a high practicality to land, granting you a good 2s to deal with the Thief before it gets back on its feet. The parameters of Ranger have been being balanced around these Smokescale mechanics for sooooo long, that suddenly removing that CC without any real compensation for the things I've explained to here, after the already recent very heavy nerfs, will be the straw that broke the camel's back, and the class is going to get benched by 95% of the player base. And I"m not just talking MAT representation here. I mean like normal players, even old Ranger mains like myself will be forced to bench our main class for awhile. Mark my words now and call me out later if I'm wrong.

Ranger is actually in a state of complete mediocrity middle tier or worse right now and it'll be worse after this patch that's buffing most classes again, while tossing these menial buffs at Ranger pets, 95% of which will still not get used because the buffs are small number tweaks along with the removal of utility from some important pets. Mark my words, you won't be seeing Ranger play after this next patch. The class is going to have to be benched for awhile even in middle tiers where it is normally strong. Arenanet went way too hard on Ranger nerfing. This is what class match ups will look like after the 28th: vs. Willbender - Ranger specs will still be able to toe to toe WBer only because they can out range it and it has no CC lockdown. vs. Berserker/Bladesworn - Rangers already lose to these specs 1v1. Best you can do is hold a node against it with Untamed or Druid Bunkers that don't actually have the damage to actually kill the Serk/BS just the sustain to hold vs. it. And that's all the Untamed/Druid can do is bunk a side. Their damage is trash to the point they are bad in team fights, contribute virtually nothing unless it's something like My Druid build I run lately that actually is designed for support with Lyhr and revives. vs. Vindicator, Rangers won't even be able to secure practical kills on these anymore either. DPS builds will find themselves in a losing match up vs. the Vindi and Bunker Untamed/Druids will find themselves in another stalemate on a side vs. Vindis with once again enhanced dodge skill defenses that they really don't need. vs. Holosmith is going to **** all over all Ranger builds after this next round of buffs. Scrapper won't be far behind, but Tool Holo is going to turn into a hard Ranger counter again and it won't matter what build the Ranger plays. Best we'll be able to do is stat hard Bunker vs. it and survive, but you'll never have anywhere the near DPS to actually pressure Tool Holos. And even as a hard Bunker, the Tool Holo has enough CC, DPS, and anti-kite mechanisms that even Bunkers will need to engage them 1v1 only and always run from 1v2s if Holo is present. vs. DP Daredevil & Specter, these two archetypes have undergone a great deal of power creep since SOTO released, whereas Ranger has undergone nothing but nerfing. At this point, it's questionable as to if Rangers even counter Thieves anymore. They may still have an advantage when surprise sniping, but any advantage they had 1v1 has diminished to where the match up is rather equal nowadays and in some situations like Condi Specter vs. mid to lower damage Ranger specs, it actually counters Ranger. vs. Mesmers is going to be a problem after the defensive buffs. Full defensive Mesmers, Rangers won't be able to kill and will again only be able to hold a node vs. it with full Ranger Bunker builds. Vs. Mesmer DPS with enhanced defenses, even if the Ranger can still win this match up ultimately, it won't be worth engaging because it will result in the classic scenario where to be able to win, the Ranger will have to kite all over the place using stealths to survive and the Mesmer will hold while the Ranger is off node looking for a way to kill it. It will become a situation where the Ranger will want to avoid the Mesmer unless he is +ing it. vs. Necros things have turned around lately. Ranger is no longer a hard counter to Necros, it is a light counter at best in the situation of Power LB builds. And even then, Necros are so powerful lately that if you misstep and get caught once, you pop and die because to maintain enough pressure to pose a serious kill threat against Necro, you have to run the least amount of cleanse possible. In case of Ranger Condi builds, Necros just hard counter you. After the buffs Necro is about to get, this match up will become even worse for the Ranger. vs. Eles, they still just hard counter the Ranger class in every mentionable way. There are two ways for a Ranger to actually kill an Ele or at least get it off a node: 1) The Ranger is a full Bunker and some guy goes at him memeing on an Ele DPS build, eventually the Ranger should kill it or at least push it off a node. 2) If someone is on Tempest Support and the Ranger is full DPS, the Ranger can kill it in time. But in all other situations, the Ele will win unless the Ranger is greatly outplaying the Ele. The class will simply have no value after the 28th. You'll see some casual players still trying to run Ranger for awhile, until they realize it's just bad post-patch and has no viable role. This is no joke or embellishment or biased point of view. Arenanet has nerfed Ranger way way too much. Even I have been playing Necro lately to prepare for this transition. This is no false alarm. Ranger is going to be C+ B- Tier for awhile. No matter how mediocre Ranger is, people will always complain about it because of this psychological placebo effect where the pet makes them feel like they are getting 2v1'd. Let me give you a classic example of the type of guy who comes in here and complains about Ranger: Guy is on some tanky side node build. Guy pushes far and holds far against several attempts to decap him for the first 8 minutes of the match, doesn't die once, and contributes nearly half his team's point total by himself. There is a sword/greatsword Soulbeast on the opponent team who is struggling. He can't hold nodes alone, often has to peel back to avoid immediate death, generally has to wait to come in on a + to contribute to the match. This Soulbeast has died 6x to 8x in the match in the first 8 minutes of the match. Most of his time has been spent kiting to avoid death. He's tagged a few downstates and it could be said that he has contributed 15 points for his team to the 40 points he's given the other team from his deaths, but he has contributed nothing in the way of holding node caps for point ticks. In the 9th minute of the match, the Soulbeast finds his way to Guy on the side node for the 3rd or 4th attempt to decap him. The Soulbeast has failed against Guy on side node every time thus far in this match. But finally on that 4th attempt, the Soulbeast gets lucky and moves just right, Guy makes a single misplay, and the Soulbeast gets a kill on him. The match ends, Guy on the side node's team wins 500 to 350. Guy on the side node contributed 250 of those 500 points for his team's win, by standing on far all game and bunking it by himself. The Soulbeast contributed 20 points in kills for his team and contributed 40 points in deaths to Guy's team. But because the Soulbeast was the one thing that was able to catch him by surprise that match, he has to come to the forum and complain about how OP it is. The fact of the matter is that people have a very narrow perspective on "balance" and they don't understand the difference between when something is actually OP contributing a great deal to a match, and when something is just annoying them.

A special message from Ray Charles to those who complain about things being OP that aren't actually OP:

Yeah, there are a few things I haven't gotten around to trying with it yet, which I can't believe I'm even mentioning this here cause they'll likely be ultra jank: Fear Necros with torment on fear trait with that RODQ. Old-school Impaling Lotus Daredevils with Choke Gas spam whirl finish through Choke Gas with bottomless dodge rolling perma poison spam + RODQ. And pretty much anything else that can roll a condi bunker and shove out a lot of disruptive CC. As annoying as all of that would be ^ I still specifically am concernd with the level of burst Specter is shoving out with it. It's just too high with too little of counterplay due to the channel.

Seriously though, Relic Of Demon Queen has made Specter condis extremely outrageous. The wiki doesn't have any of this new stuff listed correctly or listed at all. What it does is it makes poison -33% heal turn into -50% heal and makes poison stacks on every CC you land. So their normal routine of coming at you with a bunch of CCs and the condi tether while locking you into the CC bubble, has become the condi burst equivalent of what Power Soullbeast was doing pre-nerf. It's arguable that RODQ is the problem, but I don't feel like getting into that at the moment. I'm simply stating that Specter is dishing out too much DPS lately. You as an Ele main who would be perpetually out-ranged by this stupid Specter build would likely strongly agree with me if you logged in and did a few 1v1s with some players who are actually good on Specter. Anti-projectile is useless against it and the condi pulses are too frequent to realistically cleanse through the onslaught unless you are a true full anti-condi bunker. The only way to deal with it is to see it before it sees you and ride it with the highest DPS possible and kill it before it kills you. It's just an unhealthy stupid spec to exist within the intra-class spectrum.

Aight, someone needs to come out and say it: Specter condi damage potential need to be nerfed.

There is a Thief build that counters DPS Ranger specs, just not many people ever run the template. Blind spam Thief for real counters DPS Ranger if the Thief stays on the Ranger and rides it hard giving it no range advantage or breathing room. Here is why: It doesn't need stealth to do this, so reveals don't matter. Dangerous Ranger attacks are all single strike attacks with usually 1/2s to 1s between the animations, even with Quickness. So if a Thief rides it with BP Shot spam, the blinds reapply quickly enough to blind these attacks. This also includes blinding the pet. Blind pulses off Thief are also all ground targeted, which goes under all the bubbles and things that the Ranger has. To even be able to hit the Thief with anything outside of rapid successive attacks like Rapid Fire or Barrage, the Ranger has to start blowing its CDs on important cleanse skills that normally should be saved for stun breaks or a full heal when needed or w/e utility is attached to the skill, but they have to blow it early and waste the value just to be able to make sure say a "Maul" lands when a Thief is riding you with blind spam. Also keep in mind that Rangers, even Druid, can't condi cleanse pets outside of a few niche abilities that either don't get used because they are attached to other bad options, or don't get used frequently enough to be able to fight through the blind spam. So the pet is always blinded 99% of its attacks from this, and the Ranger will be put in a situation where it has to choose to attempt to preserve its CDs for defensive play for survival, or to blow them all nearly immediately in attempts to actually hit the Thief. Either way, it ends up being a losing match up either way and unless the Ranger can greatly outplay the blind spam Thief, the Ranger should peel back to its team or he'll eventually get killed. A quick swap to a build like what Valhor would run, allows Thief to become a solid counter vs. any DPS Ranger. When all init is preserved for perpetual blind spam that gives the Ranger no breathing room at all, a Thief can just auto attack a Ranger down this way. This is the same problem Warriors had with blind spam before defense line gained resistance on dodge. Too many big hard hitting single strike skills, not enough fast successive attacks like symbols or wells that can fight through blinds.

Because it's not allowed for Ranger builds to be competitive in the meta. The recent Untamed dagger/dagger/staff was doing too well so it needed a fat massive crippling nerf. They also nerfed the dagger unleash skill just to make SURE that Untamed would land in a state of mediocrity. I'm serious, someone in that office has a thing against Rangers.

New rune/relic system is great. It's like the best thing they've done to the game in half a decade.

lol way better. Increased laugh factor by like x20.

Don't be a Gohan, just dodge.

@Waffles.5632 You need to repost that video but with a CMC face superimposed over Thanos' face.

Nah, between myself and Eurantien participating in the 1v1 ladder, we could not devise builds that could beat Spellbreaker 1v1 builds. Considering Bladesworn & Condiserk now after buffs and after Ranger was nerfed, it would be an even worse 1v1 match up for Ranger. This is considering top 5 participants though, all old p2+ players. Like I've stated multiple times now, Ranger feels very strong in middle to lower tiers where people are not optimizing play and have l2p issues. But in higher tiers where players actually understand how to utilize LOS/environment, exploit bad AI pathing, and in general don't fall for such telegraphed gimmicks, Ranger's efficiency takes a seriously steep dive, which is why you rarely see Ranger representation in MAT finalist teams or even runner up teams. And yes, of course I've played against as Ranger as melee class. But your question and my answer is even more testimony to the facts that I've given you. I am no Daredevil or Spellbreaker main, but when I play a Daredevil or Spellbreaker, I can absolutely **** all over any Ranger because I know the Ranger class so well. I know exactly what you need to do to absolutely cripple its strengths & cycles. <- This is what I'm talking about. When you get to this level of play, you are able to see things like this, and any cheap advantage the Ranger once had in middle to low tiers don't work on you anymore because you've recognized how to easily avoid those.

Yeah it's getting old.

This is the most Mesmer-like **** I have ever seen. You are actually trying to spam illusionary arguments for distraction while you disengage the actual argument. This is amazingly entertaining. Thank you.

lol Dude, from your comment, I know the game and forums well enough, to know that the comment stated had an extremely high likelihood of coming from someone who plays a class that gets hard countered by Ranger. I assumed Thief because this is probably the strongest likelihood, the #1 guess. I was wrong and you yourself stated that you had only played Power Mirage, ever. But I was still right in my estimation that the player who made the comment "you" had to have been a player who was playing something that gets hard countered by Rangers. Thief may be #1 on that list, but a Power Shatter would be #2. My powers of observation & foresight usually have like a 90%+ level of accuracy as indicated from this forum example.

Bro you TOLD ME that you "only ever played Power Mirage" which is why I then knew that you had only ever played Power Mirage. What are you doing right now?

Yeah it gets countered by Ranger for the same reasons Thief gets countered by Ranger. There are other things that just completely shut down Ranger in the same way you get shut down by Rangers. If you are saying that you have seriously only ever played Power based Mes specs, this is why you think Rangers are strong. Go log on a Bladesworn or Condiserk or Tool Holo or Catalyst, then see how your opinion differs. As I've already stated, that is true in middle to lower tiers. But it is completely different when you hump over middle tier and head towards higher tiered play. Ranger doesn't become "evened out" it actually steeply losses a great deal of its value and ends up being a middled tiered option at best in higher tiered play. What bias? I've stated the same thing that you have and agreed with you, that Ranger is strong in middle or lower tiers. But I am also trying to point out to you that the broad statement that "Ranger is very strong in general" is coming from yourself who has only ever played Power Mesmer specs, which get hard countered by Ranger. You've got to admit that maybe your opinion on this matter, having only ever played Power Mesmer specs, might be less informed than you realize it is. DPS Ranger specs are definitely B-Tier at this point. The only viable meta role Ranger has right now is side node, which there are two specs that can fill that role. This PvP Builds - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds and this PvP - Lyhr Bunker Support Druid - YouTube You may hate pet AI but everyone else hates Mesmer clone spam, literally everyone. It's part of the same class kit. Don't let the pet vector fool you. The Ranger and his kit has no more CC than a Spellbreaker or a Tool Holo, ect ect. This is coming from a Mirage main? I am speechless and do not know what to say. Ranger can never be as mobile as Thief. Ranger is no where near as tanky as a Bladesworn or Condiserk. The only way it can equal that level of sustain is if it sacrifices all its damage to take every sustain option possible. Ranger & Willbender are definitely on par with each other for DPS output, but the Ranger has to run glass to do it, same as the Willbender. lol this hatred towards pets man. I don't get it. Even when I play other classes and I do, I rarely even notice pets when engaging Rangers. I know their AI patterns so maybe that's why I find them easy to deal with.

I don't know what environment you're playing in, but I'm definitely seeing all low skill players using Untamed lately. It's just a lot tankier and deals a lot of DPS with easier single strikes that don't require a very deep knowledge of how to combo. Even the extra pet skills have value when they spam them off CD. The only players left who are running Soulbeast are the old Ranger mains who have a great deal of experience behind knowing when to use skills and when not to use skills, and how to make sure to tag value out of them with no mistakes. Soulbeast is glass dude. If you make a single mistake while trying to run DPS Soulbeast builds, you die in like 2 seconds, just like a DP Daredevil. I disagree with you here, though not in the way that you may think. I would say that Untamed is now actually the easier class for newer players to pick up and get value out of, for sure. But Untamed & Soulbeast at higher tiers have equal potential, they just have different roles to be good at. IE: an Untamed is relatively sturdy for holding a node and is generally good in 1v1s, but it gets wrecked by certain things like Necros. A Soulbeast is more of a DPS+ and can hard counter things like Necros. When one or the other is better, it just depends on what your team comp needs and what is in the team comp you're against. At higher tiers, Untamed isn't more difficult to play. It doesn't have some elaborately deep playstyle with unleashed skills, it's just a rotation you spam all in a row. The natural pet skills being added as F1-F3 is not difficult to manage, and when you swap to unleash, it's just advantageous to spam all those F1-F3 all at once with the teleport anyway. Ther isn't anything deep or higher skill ceiling about it, though it may feel that way at first or seem that way to non-ranger mains. It's just extra buttons to push but it's easy because you always use those buttons in the exact same way. It's easy to manage after awhile. It's definitely arguable that Soulbeast with two sets of pet skills and two sets of Eternal Bond merge skills, requires a lot more experience & knowledge of how to utilize those skills to get value out of them without wasting them. Because those skills are not something you routinely spam off CD in the same order. You actually have to know when to use or when to wait or when to cancel, ect ect. There also raises the point to be made of the difference between a class with "good organized intuitive design" and a class with "scattered unintuitive design". For example, a Thief has a great class design. It's very straightforward and intuitive yet it is not easy to pick up and be effective on but still offers a very high skill cap for very good players. Everything about the Thief class is just good design in terms of how it feels to play and the pace it offers for risk & reward involved at both low and high tiers. The Ele on the other hand is what I would define as "scattered unintuitive design". Everything is laid out in kind of a random order amongst this huge keyboard piano. I would say that Ele is harder to learn than it is to play due to scattered unintuitive design. But a Thief is harder to play than it is to learn. So you've got to make a distinction between these two things when comparing "how much effort is involved". An Ele requires more effort to learn, but once a player has learned it, it's easier to play than the Thief. The Thief although easy to learn, is very difficult to master or even just keep up in higher tiered environments where you explode in .50s if you mess up once.

Oh it's about to get real unhealthy real fast when the super defense buffs for Mesmer arrive.

This is such bull**** and could only be said from the mouth of a Thief main who gets countered by Ranger. The insanely low representation rates of Ranger in MAT teams speaks for itself. Allow me to clear a few things up: When we ran the 1v1 ladder, it ends up being Engis & Warriors that are actually dominant in 1v1, with Ele as a close runner up. Ranger has a specific problem in 1v1s where it either can bring the DPS to be able to kill the Engi or War or Ele and then lacks sustain to survive long enough to do it, or it can bring sustain for adequate survival and then completely lacks the DPS to threaten an actual downstate on the Engi/War/Ele. There like isn't an in between when you're talking high tier players vs. high tier players. In Conquest with Ranger you're either running a DPS+ build that loses 1v1s to the classes that are better situated for it, or you're running a bunker that can hold a side node but doesn't actually have the DPS output to get things like Bladesworn/Catalyst off a node. There just isn't an in between. Ranger does not get to have an ultra build that can do everything like some classes get to experience from time to time. And then in 2v2, Ranger is just kittening bad. High DPS builds don't function well in the tiny arenas because they lack close quarter sustain when no kiting, and sustainy builds lack DPS & AoE CCs. The truth is that the only people complaining about Ranger or who claim it is the top class, are people down in middle or lower tiers. Ranger is a difficult class to balance because in middle to lower tiers where it can exploit l2p issues, it is a noob stomper class that functions well for players at that skill cap. But in higher tiers things are completely different and it can't wield those l2p issue advantages over players anymore and its efficiency takes a steep dive. IE: Two gold 1 players are in a 1v1. One of them is a War and one is a Ranger. At this level of skill cap, the Ranger class will have an advantage over the War. But in higher tiers plat+ players in the same match up, the War will have the advantage in their class of skill cap. The changes to those pets will reflect a small increase in average DPS output when testing on a raid room golem. Those changes for competitive are actually going to hurt Ranger. They're removing utility for tiny damage increases. It's straight up a nerf for competitive.

When we did the 1v1 first to five rounds season using 2v2 arenas where people could swap builds before each round, the best classes in 1v1 repeatedly end up being Engi, War. Between myself and Eurantien, we couldn't devise builds on Ranger that could actually beat Engi/War in 1v1s when people have actual 1v1 focused builds on Engi/War. <- These two classes have so many very versatile options like 1 utility swap changes to be able to counter anything they go against. I don't even think Ele can deal with Engi/War when the Engi/War is 1v1 focused. Been awhile since I ran a season though, things have changed. Maybe it's a good time to start one up again. Will have to think about it.

Firebrand needs real buffs in pvp. kitten fix the way that Shield Master - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) interacts with Aegis. Vindicator does not need the dodge buffs it is about to get. Thems are some mighty heavy buffs that Engi is about to get. Looks like maybe a bit too much. Slick Shoes should not be a force wall effect like Line Of Ward. You should be able to dodge/evade across Slick Shoes. For the love of God, please do not remove the CCs from Smokescale & Smokescale merge. You still haven't removed the random damage proc from Lightning Reflexes. The nerfs to One Wolf Pack were too severe, some of the damage needs to be added back in all modes. Lyhr Relic is awesome on Druid -> PvP - Lyhr Bunker Support Druid - YouTube Thief is hitting awfully hard nowadays, both DP Daredevil power bursts and Specter condi bursts. Even in wvw DP Daredevil is so strong & resilient in 1v1 that it is the only thing that can get away without using cele and still be a top roamer. The DPS output & 1v1 power here is getting to be questionable considering it still is the class with the best overall survival & mobility. Necros are fine. "Deadly Strength: This trait now also grants condition damage per stack of Death's Carapace." Holy **** you sure? Alright. Mesmer buffs - Nice way to bring back the Core Mesmer. Tolkien Underfoot should enjoy this. Catalyst/Tempest/Weaver is still running the show in team comps. This class still enjoys being the best support option, one of the best overall 1v1 presence, and in general one of the better team fighters. Ele is still very strong and I'm tired of hearing complaints about "the weak state it is in". Knock it off guys, it's embarassing. Akeem Relic needs to be shaved. Stronghold & Courtyard need to be added into normal queues into map select shuffle. Can we get some new maps? It's been awhile man. Can we get some different kinds off-season? Surprise us, do something weird. Give us something new.

I predict that this is the new thing to say. I'm going to start calling people meme lords now. Ty

The only people who seem to care about me pointing out illegitimate actions within this community, are the cheaters themselves and the alts they hide behind.