Mell.4873

I think you discovered the uncomfortable truth that most Ranger mains ignore. Their response is Learn To Play but the reality is you either spend your time doing two things as Ranger. Avoid taking Damage Maximize your Damage Most of the Ranger professions fall into a mix of these two playstyles. In terms of Soulbeast its far more on avoiding damage side, the best mix being Condition Soulbeast with Shortbow and Axe/Torch. In terms of what you should do, I personally would drop Soulbeast outside a group setting and focus on either Core or Untamed(better Core). If you are dead set on using Soulbeast then focus on Vipers and get a Shortbow (currently the best DPS to). If you want Power then Longbow and Greatsword but camping ranged will tank your damage unlike with Condition Soulbeast. Ultimately If you don't want to be a wet noodle you need to play Untamed since the CC on Hammer plus the Cantrap Heal will make you invincible.

Inspiration also means you have some nice 200-300 HPS to provide anyone around you, its not a lot but makes training runs in End-Game content much easier.

Again my point is its being abused far more in Gold and lower, this means we will have a huge number of them players in these ranks squeezing out players that play anything else. This does seem to a lot worse than any other time a profession dominated sPvP, even playing Necromancer's minions took some skill to finish people even if you could not die yourself.

I think over Torch: Without Demonic Lore which is solely provided by Scourge would mean less overall damage. I guess it could be better than any other condition offhand but not by much. Pistol: In terms of Torment applications you would are going to hard pressed to eliminate Scepter from most builds rather it could be a weapon swap and again you wont have access to Dark Gunslinger so you will not stay on Pistol long. I think most of the Weapon specific profession mechanic can be straight up removed when used on another Elite Specialization. For example the extra ability on Holosmith sword when above 50% heat level can just be removed. This would not invalidate the weapon as a healthy alterative to Pistol but instead be a good option for power builds who want to run a shield. Another healthy example is Staff on Druid, this would allow other Ranger professions to heal there Spirits since currently there is almost no way to of doing it since they need direct heals.

With the removal of most if not all the trade-offs and the eventual return of Mirage's second dodge. I was thinking that Guild Wars 2 has an interesting relationship with its Class balance. The more Elite Specializations we see the better the balance becomes, I don't think you could say the same with any other MMO. I think is because there is no way for a single Class to address all the complex Elite mechanics added to the game. This is very true for PvP where someone could easily play an off-Meta build and completely bait out abilities or burst/bleed you to death. A good example is a play a 100% bleed duration Druid in WvW which catches people off guard when they don't cleanse their bleeds.

In a funny way the introduction of new elite specialization creates balance in the simple fact that there are many OP builds. With Mirage and its second dodge there is no way you will be able to dominate like before since someone could just turn up with a Vindicator and just land on your face one shotting you. I'm not saying its a bad thing, I'm all for this meta shift.

True but its one of the hardest classes to play, I for one don't have time to learn it just to counter the meta shift.

This does seem worse than when we had Bladesworn and Willbender spam. This is primarily becouse it can't win you tournaments but it can get you gold very fast. It can be countered very easily with an organised team but how often do we see that even in Platinum. I mean most of my games no one players Support so expecting some meta pick to counter Engineer is probably not likely, what is most likely is everyone plays Engineer, especially below gold

Pretty much every match I'm seeing 2-3 Engineers on each team and I think it will only get worse as times goes on. There is no point in playing anything else when you can a 100 to 0 someone in a few seconds with Engineer Rifle Quickness. Reflections or not the ability to output absurd damage just means you can live a little longer. I'm also seeing a lot more people playing sPvP I'm wondering if this is the direct cause.

They are fine the way they are and you just have to be creative around how you heal them, Moa in particular can do this well. If we had another good Pet AoE heal skill maybe on F2 then that would be another good alternative. If you removed the Spirit health then it would be a nerf to Druid.

I don't think there are any weapons that are uniquely tied to a profession mechanic so why can't we use any weapon that an elite unlocks. Essentially I want to use the not-Unleashed Hammer on the entire Ranger since I like it so much.

I meant natural convegence so nvm.

The main nerf they saw was with their sustain with life steal. I would say a small buff to Reaper Shroud is on its way since there are plenty of ways to shorten it though taking damage.

1500 is top 100 players in the US so he is in the top 1%.

This build? https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Soulbeast_-_Trapper_Soulbeast Nothing should have changed since none of those skills got buffed. I would say maybe they are running some high mobility/stealth build but then why run Traps, you have stumped me about the match up. I think most people would play a high burst build that has many escapes.

Majority of players use cookie cutter builds which most of the time have rotations that are unrealistic. I mean Untamed is a the perfect example, the ability to weave (and not interrupt) Axe 2 while also essentially precasting both stun utilities to time the proc of Fervent Force so Axe 2 comes of cooldown at the right time is very difficult. I think most people underestimate there own ability to create builds, I mean not everything on Snowcrow is truly Meta. Until recently they never included allies so pretty much anytime before that it was a hidden secret that Soulbeast and Thief mostly had 5k+ higher benchmarks.

I guess the original design of the more auto attack traits in the Engineer Core Traitline was for Kits. Most of the kits are really hard to aim at moving targets so having a trait to offer them more consistency when hitting a target was the goal. Rifle and Mechanist changed all this since they have very good and easy to use attacks.

Good discussions so far. I think my main takeaway is no one has a problem with Mech doing the most over all damage the problem comes in the face that the rotation is so simple there is no point in playing anything else. If the rotation was more complex to achieve the same numbers then there would be an insensitive to pick another class due to its benifit. It does ultimately come down to end-game content so if its not being played as much there is will trickle down to other game modes.

Untamed without Fervent Force is still valuable but for a different reason. In PvP it is very tanky for a Ranger and still retains most of its damage unlike Druid. I personally sometimes have match ups were I can't die since I'm healing far faster than they are doing damage. While other times I'm able to line of sight other players then I go in on pet Unleash projectile block unlike with Soulbeast where you had to run away.

A good middle ground could be that stow your pet untill you need it, normally I just leave mine dead in a Zerg clash then pull a pet swap later to use its skills.

Isn't that what MMO's are all about the most rewarding stuff is the hardest to do, this is why I bring Support Chronomancer into Fractals.

YES That literally describes how I played the game for years with that exact Condition Shortbow Soulbeast build. Until I realized I could be much more useful playing initially Mirage then Chronomancer. Now that is all play in end-game Instanced content.

I don't want to add to the arguing but both sides need to come together with a solution. Mechanist can't continue to out DPSing other classes that have a much harder rotation but at the same time it should not be nerfed to point of being unusable by the Low Intensity population. I think a good middle ground is it should be able solo Open World content but not be viable in end-game Instanced content as a LI DPS. This might come in the shape of nerfing the support/utility synergy rather than directly making the DPS worse. Another good alternative is to Nerf is sustain DPS so in a drawn out fight it losses steam.

Technically you can report anyone who does this and they will get a warning. People used to claim I was an Arena Net employee since I stuck up for the early Virtuoso. Alot of them stopped since it is against there terms of service. That's why I said he should delete his comments and flag his post to removed since it is adding nothing positive, they might lock the thread if it gets bad enough.

Honestly though the Low Intensity Mech gameplay wont go away and the simple face you have a Pet + Defensive Utilities means you will never struggle for any content. What will most likely happen is the you wont be able to (LI) DPS in end-game instances. Very soon you will have to preform a rotation that isn't reliant on mech damage.