mulzi.8273

Technically, that is great, as Maguuma loves to ignore everything but SMC and rangers and necros bombing from SMC's fortified walls is quite effective.

Correction: It would not be taken away from you, as the amulet system would add these stat combinations in there for you. What it would 'take away' is your advantage of people who refuse to pve to get those scrub stats.

Amazing with the balancing going on that this crap is still way, way overtuned.

Nerf All Aoes. Make all dmg single target only and only CC's Aoe. Time to put skill back into WvW, rather than just spam red circles and hope you can hit enough people with enough circles to down them.

I play ranger like I play reaper: i do not join the zerg, but skirt the fringes picking off (or pulling int he case of reaper) enemies that stray from their herd during pushes. But as others have said, it takes field awareness to know how to stay on the fringes but close enough to the zerg not to get picked off yourself. You also have to be somewhat self reliant as you wont get the boons from the zerg. One of my favorite, though probably not popular here, tactics is to commander snipe. Weaving in and around my zerg pulling/sniping a commander can really turn the tide of battle. You dont even need to kill them. Merely pulling and focusing fire is enough for them to back out of a push, letting your zerg go on the offensive and pick off the backline that was too slow to follow..

I know it’s not guild rankings, but isn’t that what the 5 extra pips is for when you throw up a comm tag and have a certain number of ppl in squad? Credit?I agree coms should get a bit more to encourage new coms, but as for credit 5 pips a tick is a lot. Only if its a public comm tag. Everyone and their mother will abuse this if they can make the upcoming invisible have special perks.

people take WvW way too seriously. The key to be successful is to (1) bring more people and (2) spam the hell outta aoe condis. Loose rule of thumb is, the team with the most firebrands/scourges wins 90% of the time. You can dress it up however you want, but at the end of the day, if you put a dress on a pig, it is still a pig. Until they break up the holy-trinity that 80% of a zerg is made of scourges, firebrands and maybe revs, there is no competitiveness out there. All it is nowadays it is folks spammnig AoEs, preferrably condi aoes as there is no skill with applying condi pressure and running away letting dots do their thing. Yes, you'll see some hard-liners on other classes, but they are the exception rather than the rule nowadays.

Elementalists are in a wierd spot right now. Anet does not have a clue what to do with them. the premise originally was to make them low-survivability but high damage. Now they nerf the dmg, did not alter their survivability and as a double whammy boosted other classes damage. not to mention retal is outrageous in wvw. before they nerf damage however, they really need to get rid of the down-state in wvw. That alone will help small groups against zergs.

Agree with the no need to be in squad. Behind though, no. You hit the enemy zerg in the flank and/or side and aim to annoy their tag and if you have friends take it out or their mid-back line. Trade off knock out the enemy scourges running mid-front rank. Even better if you get a havoc with you and get the enemy zerg to turn on you or peel some off. Finish them and then assault the enemy zerg again. Running with a havoc, taking out their scourges will get you better results in turning the zerg. Then hopefully your zerg takes advantage of the enemy turn and hit the exposed zerg. Gear in a way that you take some hits but still give some, plan on not getting the zerg buffs and be more pleasantly surprised if you do. This is exactly how I play. I stay on the fringes (i normally do not join the squad unless asked) and prioritize picking off high priority targets like scourges and downs. If they really tick me off i'll start commander-sniping, but that is rare nowadays as once the commander dies the lemmings get confused and scatter making for a less fun zerg fight. But my whole build is specifically to pick off scourges. And with scourges like cockroaches making up 80% of all zergs nowadays, there is no end of targets for me.

I do find it kinda ironic that any site, like metabattle that lists classes for each mode (wvw, pvp, pve) never, ever lists the ranger as 'meta'. Yet these classes seem to get nerf after nerf after nerf. Playing WvW 75% of folks are on FB or scourge. Thats the balance problem.

Agreed. Although what really baffles me, as a WvW player, that 98% of all necros are scourges and they nerf Reapers for being too strong?

Mesmer has to be the worst balance class I have ever seen in any game. They have absolutely everything for both defense and offense: stealth, teleports, evades, clones, high damage (power or condi) . They should make one simple change: You cannot cause any damage while in Stealth, including Dots that would terminate if you go into stealth, along with not being able to stealth if clones are causing damage. This would 'fix' the condi-mesmer/thief cheese as well as the power mesmer, or at the very least, produce some sort of counter play. Other classes have these features, but they have to sacrifice some off/def for the other. Not with Karl's little baby though... People will jump all over this, but why is a mesmer the prefer commander nowadays? Cause they can do everything with no real weaknesses if the player has 2 thumbs and half a brain.

Already have a full zerk soulbeast named Pin Snipe Soulbeast to instantly kill enemy commanders with my multiple sources of unblockables and endure pain with resistance on pet for the big blob battles. Ranger as no spot in zerg fights? You have to be kidding me lmao. Power revs don't even exist anymore when I snipe them wit unblockable auto attacks from across the map. Tell me 1800 range unblockable piercing rapid fire with quickness and 25 might and 3k+ power with invulns has no spot in a zerg lmao. Wow, just wow. You go into a zerg fight with that build and every other will one-two shot you. Zergs push, and you will get obliterated. if you manage to stay on the outskirts, you will meet players like me on the outskirts of my zerg on a sustainable build, one-shoting these easy tomato cans. Yeah, you 'may' one shot a power rev, but the other 5+ power revs will one shot you with their CoD spam anyway. And no way you one shot a guardian commander. none. Maybe if everyone was focusing him, but in that case his power revs will eat the whole zerg in seconds. Oh, and since you are on the outskirts, you will be dead with a long walk back to your zerg. Whereas the one target you one-shot will be insta-rezzed and still fighting.

Using Anet logic, they will combat this by buffing Mesmer.

It is not the team balance that is causing the biggest WvW issues. It is the class imbalances. After this change, there will be no more excuses that 'X server has more coverage'. Everyone will point to the class imbalances more than they already do. This is just another band-aid. Another hood-wink to divert the players attention from the real problem. The profession/skill balance is important for enjoyment of the game play, diversity, and freedom to choose your playstyle. However every team is free to force their players to play the FOTM profession and be on an equal footing. There's nothing a team can do solve coverage imbalance. With true coverage balance the matchup/season victory can have meaningful rewards. Something that makes players try to win instead of bragging on the best KD ratio.I am not saying the server imbalance is not an issue, it is. However, you cannot grow a tree by just pruning the leaves, you have to have strong roots. And this patch is not addressing the underlying root of the issues in WvW. At the end of the day, you can paint a trash bag pink, change the plastic to satin and call it lingerie, but it still holdstrash. I fear you folks thinking this is a miracle WvW saving patch is in for a massive disappointment.