Ashford.8540

I think he is coping because they nerfed Gyla dev and now it's another dead and soon to be empty (again) EoD farm. You'd think devs would want more incentive for people to play on the new maps but no, back to drizzlewood, RIBA, dragonfall you all go 🤣

Issue with ranger is that all the specs need a rework. Soulbeast is very specific to group PVE content and lacks viable open world/WvW builds outside of that. Druid is a sponge......that's it basically a sponge, it exists for open world because it's a sponge, works in groups because sponge. Untamed mechanic is in heavy need of decompression without it being gutted in the process. because it's the only spec that can do fine in any content provided players can master a piano's worth of cooldown management.

Honestly, all the specs are lackluster right now with the only saving grace being soulbeast, but even then it's a bad time because SB is only playable in group pve content but terrible at open world without significant investment into 2 sets of gear (Condi/celestial or trailblazers). Not to mention as the OP stated, there is a big stigma with rangers that they are bad which means as a ranger, players will get kicked out of groups alot. In some respect I do agree though, although all the classes are in a better state in PvE than it was months ago, rangers is one of the worst classes in the game right now behind necromancer considering for the amount each spec has, there are about a many number of things wrong with them, all while managing a pet AI

For a beginner? nah, soul-beast is not a good solo build. Like many underpeforming uitility/survival builds, they are utter trash without a full celestial/trailblazer sets. For a new player, that costs a fair amount of gold/time to get because without it, the player will get some aggro and then get 1-3 shot, especially in HoT > EoD. The only decent open world builds out of the box and ready are druid > untamed. Druid because it's a self sustain sponge, and untamed because quite frankly despite it's complexity, can get away with a power build considering it's heal can ignore damage, and it's abilities can reduce cooldowns meaning with the right rotation, it's pretty beefy.

Except a vindicator isn't optimal to begin with, that's what a herald is for so your ""point"" is sorta moot, because guess what this type of gear on a herald looks like? wow switch a few weapons around and all of a sudden it can be a DPS support, now who cares snowcrow andies? This is why I like this type of build it's great for vin in open world pve, not terrible for beginners, and there is less time being annoyed when asking a vin to switch to Herald because it isn't going to be pure DPS

No that's just vindicator in general in dungeons/fractals, the celestial stats are fine because you are not going to find gear that has power/precision/ferocity if you want toughness/healing for open world, it's a one size fits all sort of build If anything I would prefer a vindicator have these sort of stats because they wont have an excuse to switch to a Herald cause the Herald weapons are cheap and that Herald can do support stuff

Every build sucks The only PvP meta in GW2 is Spellbreaker and Catalyst, and historically in pvp and pve it always eventually gets reduced to 2-3 classes which is why PvP will always be a joke, and this is why, it's probably not a good idea to choose the most meta class and to stick with the safe ones cause chances are, if you didn't pick firebrand/necro/and maybe now engi, players should always dread another balance patch, in fact, I think GW2 should drop PvP altogether at this point cause it's already likely a case of too little too late. Maybe then, GW2 can do a little better than EoD and maybe make some endgame content with some better meat on it's bones.

I wouldn't say that players want ""accessibility" because the only players that want that are usually 2 thumb andies. What GW2 players actually want can be complex, but they want it simple and straight forward, not conveluted to the point of unplayability which in many way is best represented with a spec like the deadeye. "theoretically" deadeye should be the highest dps class in the game. However, it is such a counter intuitive playstyle, only a handful of players will ever actually break past 35k dps from a Deadeye. The same issue aligns with PMech. Sure, PMech needed to be nerfed, but reasonable players only wanted it nerfed to a state that a mech player would actually haft to put in some effort to get similar or close to similar performance. Instead, PMech was gutted, leaving the condi variant the only playable build. Issue with Condi Mech is that it requires 2 toolkits and the rotation is again, very counter intuitive because it's a very punishing playstyle. Now that the Guard mantras are back, GW2 is creating the same issue yet again, because the new mantras essentially nerfs the amount of charges you can use unless there is a window in which a player can wait 30+ seconds including the recast. Sure your probably going to have some snowcrow benchmark saying it now does x and y more damage, but that will only represent the dps in a perfect environment and will only represent a small percentage of players who are going to be able to pull off the rotation perfectly 100% of the time.

You know what this sounds like in PvE terms? Conquest players. "like actually you don't need any new pvp mode because conquest OMG conquest is actually so much better you don't need any other mode" Gotta love the brain rot of people so in favor of such a counter intuitive features even when it's leading to a decline in pvp, cause PvP is doing so well right? with 2 broken classes? no new features in X amount of years? oh ya old mantras are so great. conqx players man oof.

Because you will be SoL after that 60k. What are you going to do for those 30+ seconds after you spent all of your mantras? Heal? nope heal is a mantra so can't heal, rege- mantra, damag- mantra. Oh guess your a sitting duck now huh? pikachu face.

If they wanted to add a version of old mantra firebrand without downright gutting charges across the board without a severe penalty (because the third charge and inevitable downstate from having to wait for a cooldown and then a cast-timer) then the premise is actually simple. The mantra has 3 charge states, you can cast it now for immediate use OR you can keep charging it for a charge 2 varient, and if there is a significant window of opportunity, charge it all the way to charge 3 for a big payout. This is such a simple fix but no, revert back to an old system that did not work at all no matter how many times the dev team made adjustments. Oh well, I am just going leave the class parked and play rev so I can both do decent damage and stay alive.

I would say it's a sustainability and DPS nerf because the firebrands biggest sustain "was" mantra of solace but now that it runs out and you got to wait for the cooldown and you then need to wait for the cast timer, firebrand needs to rely on their other healing abilities instead. DPS wise, same issue, wait for cooldown, then cast timer. A massive downgrade overall because a balance team thought it would be a good idea to revert QoL changes when old mantras did not work the first time.

Never said 5 years of development I said 5 years to release an expansion.

I don't think it's biased to point out that it took ANet 5 years to release a new expansion and not only was it worst expansion behind HoT, it had less content than HoT, and less things to do to the point the maps are empty/abandoned. The fact players haft to wait for peak hours to do a meta either for the story or to get a useless turtle (and that's if the meta doesn't fail) and that's if your lucky says alot on how much players trust ANet to release smaller expansion when EoD is one of the smallest and performance intensive expansions to date. If Anet can only produce something like EoD in a 5 year span what makes you think these "mini expansion" aren't just going to be a years worth of LW seasons repackaged into an expansion to try to FOMO players into paying up for lower quality content? After all, this is coincidentally happening as the NCSoft CEO is being booted and under new management so not entirely surprising for a new CEO to be looking at their studios on how to increase monetization(nickle and dime) to keep investors happy. Just saying.