Gaiawolf.8261

Sure, microtransactions have altered gaming and how they are monetized. I never had an issue with that. I only had an issue with some players treating payments for expansions the same as micros and using the same terms for them. (And I'm glad you caught the sarcasm instead of taking it seriously. 😉 )

Good to know. Thanks, I wasn't around then.

I stand by that people tend to find tying alacrity to Flowing Resolve less fun both due to its forced movement and need to hit targets to function. No, those two problems are not related. They just exist together, and both have been called problematic. Sorry for giving too much information and for jumping on the quickscrapper bandwagon. I may have misread a prior post about scrapper skills.

You asked what was problematic about the skill for a certain build. I listed the problems people tend to face with it. No more. Comments are allowed to have tangential information. Stop being so argumentative. I'm not trying to win a debate with you. Only discuss people's opinions.

I never said they were the same. I said people have stated that they find playing alacbender not as fun as it could be due to boon sharing being tied to a movement skill. I happen to agree.

Small-scale combat isn't really supported in WVW. sPVP balance tends to apply there instead. WVW is balanced around large scale combat.

Just one movement skill, actually. It is required to share alacrity and cannot provide sufficient boon uptime during downtime or when needing to stay in a melee boonball.

Alacbender?

Condi in wvw? It's practically worthless with the massive amount of cleanses that get spammed every second. Power is the way to go in wvw.

Just to be clear, I don't think forced movement on support skills was declared unfun by folks at Snowcrows only because it's listed as a con. I think they find the practice unfun because they have flat out said so in their discussions. Although to be fair, they didn't use that word. I believe they called it "cursed" and "masochistic." It's also not about min/maxing. Forced movement on quickscrapper and alacbender are required to make the entire builds work at all. If you main that class/spec, it's your only option short of learning a new class mechanic. Not everyone has the time or wants to do that. Personally, I think that cornerstone skills for builds to function should fulfill only one primary function. A forced movement skill should only be required for a mobility build, not a support build, and vice versa. High DPS probably shouldn't be tied to a forced movement or support skill either.

Hmm, that's an interesting take. I never heard that before. Maybe you are right. Maybe they were just trying to gatekeep the term to unjustly preserve its meaning when other people tried to appropriate it for their own agendas. That sounds almost as bad as when my lawyer told me I couldn't declare stealing my donut a "capital offense." Or when the sad folks at KFC tried to tell me that my lamb and tunafish combo shouldn't be advertised as "finger lickin' good." 🙃

True, they don't list it as a con because they struggle to deal with it. They only list it as a con because it's not fun to deal with. This is really only a problem if you're one of those weirdos who think games should be fun.

If you want to make willbender easier, all you have to do is mount your monitor to a spinning fan while playing.

Why not just take quickness (or alac or other high value support needs) off movement skills, and put them somewhere more practical? Keep movement skills in the game, but make them be for something relatable like, I don't know, mobility, maybe? On second thought, nah, that sounds dumb. Who would use a movement skill for mobility instead of trying to keep quickness in a stationary little boonball? Silly me.

I propose we remove all boons. While we're at it, let's just remove all skills too. That would really help with the high APM many builds have now.

In both competitive worlds actually. SPVP and WVW guards never took it. We only used Renewed Focus, leaving all other elites except Mantra of Liberation underutilized. They buffed Feel My Wrath and Heaven's Palm so someone might actually pick anything besides RF once in a while. RF is still superior to FMW, though.

The hate for the guardian pistol symbol came from being so much better in melee than at range, despite it being on a 900 range weapon. Sure you could pop off Hail of Justice at range for an extra 5s of burning from Ignition plus maybe a few extra from Through the Heart shots before the symbol expires, or you could lay down Purging Flames, Peacekeeper, and/or Whirling Light in melee range while Rushing Justice and Ignition are active for 16s worth of extra burning from Ignition all in 4s. Which would you choose? And of course that meant it's balanced off using it in melee range, so the ranged damage was pitiful. To follow your own sentiments, "so much lost potential..." Edit: Oh and yes, the symbol is accompanied by an attack. It pulses 5 times dealing its own strike damage, so even more melee only damage.

Combos are also used in wvw but still heavily overshadowed by boons.

Neither. Must have gotten smoked by a FB. 😅

You don't care about the noises, you just want to do battle because you're a warrior! 🤣

This is part of my suspicion. I don't think they are just treating instance pve meta builds as ceilings but also using them to determine where weapons (and traits) have a place for the entire profession. I use Honor in my OW celestial/support build, and it's definitely appreciated but still way too small. I guess it's a small consolation that I can swap out a pistol for my axe, but scepter is still sometimes superior due to the GT symbol. I also like the theme and skin for my scepter better, so I'm not too salty about that. I just wish I had a decent ranged condi dps option for my Vip/Rit build.

Yeah, we have a few threads discussing how to make it better, but it seems the devs have no intention of changing it on that level, at least for now. At this point I'm just trying to figure out what the kitten the balance team are thinking. I have one theory that they only care how it performs in instance PVE/golem benchmarks, and I hope I am wrong, but... 🤷‍♀️

That's really the problem I'm having. The weapons' effectiveness is pretty good when you are on top of something, but it just drops off outside of the tiny symbol radius. Every time I try to get something out of its range, I feel like I'd be better off switching back to my scepter. I mean, what's the point of making them pistols?

Oh? They moving away from sc/p + p/t on wb? Still, that's only one use, and other combos are still viable.

Next up on Battle of the Bands: Thief Axe vs Guardian Scepter!! Can the King of Cacophony be overthrown?