Flowki.7194

The logic; You are right, I played condi, and condi is a good counter to Vindi, therefore vindi is OP. Sound about right?

Here is a fun little story for you. I dueled a plat level vindi today on core rev, he had to run/los and reset 4 times before winning, the duel took over 1 min. On the second duel I won. That is core rev spec geared for hybrid dps/support, which is by no means a high pressure condi spec. If all it takes to continually send vindi into reset is a "ok" core spec, then vindi is not going to be over represented at top level. The only way that works is if elite players are inept at adapting with counter meta, if every team is running 2 vindi, run the most applicable counter spec. As you admit, vindi has a very clear counter in condi, yet multiple power builds can still kill it. The real issue in this game is people are scared to step away from what the top streamers or meta reccomends. Ive never seen a playerbase so sheep like.. Meanwhile; Mace ranger. Btw, the most important criteria of defining an OP spec is simple; Does it have more than 1 meaningful counter spec. If the answer to that is no, then there is a clear problem. Staff SPB had that issue, blade had that issue, scrapper/slb insanely high-reliable jump bursts had that issue, condi cata had that issue. Are you putting vindi in that catigory?

Kills only matter if you get them through capping/defending 2 points. You can farm 3 of their players all game, and still loose if the other two are playing points. Damage is also over rated, DHs on both teams were continually topping damage for standing on mid, like bots, spamming traps. The real measure is actually low damage with high kills, as it shows burst efficiency. Offense/defense stat is also inconsistant, you can top both just defending mid all game, you don't win games holding 1 point, unless others are avidly holding another.. which rarely happens since everybody zergs point to point and calls it rotating. What Im getting at is weve all been there, topping damage/kills and thinking we must not be the problem at all. Are you sure that damage is in the right place/time? If it is, then its a steamroll, which unfortunately also happens too often. Only thing to do then is go afk, or try and find a 1v1

Im not complaining if mesmer in general is underplayed with its current mechanics. If its not spamming you with confusion its spamming you with daze, if not daze, then its invuln/block spam. All of those mechanics (ontop of target drops) lead to a very uninteractive engagement of just checking your debuffs, checking their buffs, and retargeting, it isn't fun to fight, ever. It isn't the only one mind you, SLB is still annoying af as nion all of its damage is track/lock on, with enough stab/0 0 0/stealth/cc to make it 1 way traffic for the first 10 seconds, WB is much the same, and thief is thief. They are just unengaging to duel. Would they change mesmers reliance on this lack of interactive dueling? Unlikely, wish they would though.

Yeah I get it, In truth what ever nerfs happen to vindi probably won't effect the core build anyway, since nobody is using those weapons/traitlines. I just prefere to see the likes of holo/ele/rev in games = they get punished for mistakes, which is good. If the likes of WB/SLB/SPB/Necro/druid on one team (common kind of comp), I feel like going afk. The ease of damage application or sustain is just not fun to fight. Infact I had a game on power ele yesterday, a druid face tanked every single CC and hard hitter, surviving a 30k+. Then I remembered why I stopped playing ele, very punishing in group fights.. and has to contend with that kind of bs on sides. Nothing was dodged, I dunno how that is survivable?

What a terrible statement. I play core rev too, probably more than you have, and it is not behind hammer vindi in overall effectiveness, infact as a group fighter, core condi rev is better than hammer vindi. It counters far more specs, and has far more staying power/team support. It is ABSOLUTELY more bloated than vindi, if its condi got a slight buff it would risk being mega OP. Demon/vent High poison uptime High resistance uptime High resolotion uptime High team/personal protection uptime High projectile denial uptime High team wide stability uptime High personal/team cleanse access (including dome combo fields) High CC access The ability to CC multiple people @900 units while you are CC'd/blocking (read that one again) On demand weakness access 1500 condi damage 620 healing Good range+melee damage Decent kite ability with anquish+dodge, allowing the kiting of WB etc, until their stab/block spam is over. The only thing it doesnt have is superspeed and a TP, which quite frankly.. I'd take high stability/cc uptime over vindi tp... or even ele tp.

What are you actaully smoking? Vindi is nowhere near what staff SPB was, and the specs fill completely different roles anyway. Ive been dueling and doing unranked all week and hammer vindi is rare, unlike WB/SLB/power necro/power mirage. Sides are still pretty much the same; Warrior/druid/holo/SLB/WB/thief. Infact ive seen more heralds lateley than hammer vindi. It just makes me laugh at peoples perceptions in this game. SLB/Mirage for example, still dropping people in under 3 seconds from stealth, and regularly doing it in group fights. WBs still TPing into 3 people, and getting away.. the plate virsion of thief. Still 2x necro per team, with mass AOE cc and now decent mobility, I mean.. where are all the vindis? are they in 2s only? I get it, nobody likes death drop, but this thread is rediculous. Hammer vindi does not revolve around that either, the real burst is in landing hammer abilitys, and it does not have as much dodge spam as people make out. You also need to use dodge for the damage buffs before burst, regardless of somebody being in melee range or not. The sword abilitys are very telegraphed, if the enemy has a dodge/block and is not CC'd (hammer vindi has poor CC) then its easily avoided damage. The issue is that its like ele, there are a lot of abilitys and you have to know what ones should be dodged. That isn't easy ofc, but it is better than 1 hit wonder specs, like zerker rifle or DH when it was kitten <dodge this 1 ability you win, don't dodge it you lose>. Hammer vindi is not like SLB or power mirage, if you die in under 5 seconds to it, you kitten up, it is in view, it has very low CC output, and every hard hitter is well telegraphed. It is also not like WB, where you have to wait out blocks and stab indefinately during its burst, with vindi, you can CC between dodges/burst, at any time, if you time it right. Just landing 1 CC/condi bomb on a vindi can really fk the burst up, as stun breaks are not cheap on energy, and condi will force a defensive reaction. Im not defending death drop damage here.. just reality checking the statements that are expanding 1 bad mechanic across the entire spec.

Sure, but just know that I have never been able to bring myself to respect the skill of a p+ thief, too crutchy.

Ive touched all the builds, and thief debates always leave out 1 key factor. It is EASY to learn how to abuse thief mobility, become unkillable outside of 2v1 try hards (or another thief), and focus on +1.. creating highly impactful, but very low risk game play. Then, when you get more compitant, you can take on plenty 1v1's, and get out at the drop of a hat if the person was "better than you thought". The only bad thieves in the game are ones who are not vet, and try to 1v1 everything. Every other thief is a fking nightmare being such low risk, and having +1 dominance. You don't even have to have great game sense on thief, at the very least just abuse the mobility to back cap all game, wasting peoples time.. which is more impact than that same player would ahve on something like necro; roles upto the point > extends into enemy line (coz double life), forgot to place wurm.. gets ganked. I wish I had kept that one video. Quite a novice thief (in terms of doing dps) who had clearly figured out how to use the mobility to avoid pvp and back cap all game. It was so degenerate, and exposed that absolute crutch that is thief mobility. It was funny becuase it got to the point I stopped attacking him, and we continually walked past each other to cap/recap mid/home.. like, the only thing further from pvp than that would be to litterally play pve content.

That was the biggest let down for me, it looks like a complicated class but every spec, be it condi or power, boils down to spamming steal+3 most of the time, across most weapons. I found it the most boring damage application in the game, it was honestly more fun playing blade.

It still amazes me the amount of plat players who try to CC when I exploded tablet right infront of them. Anything past the cookie cutter herald/vindi builds see no light of day (including hammer), and it shows to me clearly when fighting players I know are decent. There are some very strong support/condi builds across vindi/core, I have a current vindi hammer support that has the most cleanse possible in this game+massive utility, and people still try to load it up with condi when I'm hard countering it in a very specific way, which has counter play if they know how (as some do).

Honestly, like 60% of the problem with vindi is that it has not been played much the past 2 year (I know becuase I played rev all that time), and hammer seen even less use. People, even vets are simply not use to fighting vindis with hammer. The other 40% is deathdrop and hammer 2 refresh. Hammer 4 is fine imo, should refresh get delt with (same as ranger maces). Its honestly true, I know how hammer vindi works becuase I played it for months before it was buffed, and I can kill most hammer vindis on core rev becuase of that. They need to be p1+ to kill anybody who knows how it works.. becuase almost every ability is broadcast massively, more so than just about any spec in the game. Ontop of that, when you know the windows to attack/CC in, its easy to load them up with condi, which royally fks them over. Im simply pointing this out so that hammer or vindi doesnt get nerfed into the ground, nobody was playing rev outside the hammer buff.. apart from vet heralds. The same kitten happened to ele, nobody really played it, condi cata.. massive nerf to stab/scepter.. destroying 90% of the classes builds. I prefere core rev anyway, but I personally find it refreshing to see more spec diversity, and vindis/heralds have to be decent to do well, there is no two ways about that. They are not a bad specs to have near/in meta, or do we want yet more face tanking bunker/duelists?

Its kinde unfortunate but all specs in this game crutch hard on a mechanic or two, 1v1's has never been that fun to me for this reason. You know, if they had given everybody 3-5 dodges as base, and vigor by default on succesfull dodges, they could have reduced all class passive mitigations/block/invuln, stun/stab spam etc by a long way. 1v1s would have been far more fun, more skill indexed, and the few stuns that existed, mattered that much more. It is still laughable to me that cripple in this game is nion useless, as just about every spec spams passive counters to it. Imagine if cripple meant you couldnt dodge, and it wasnt so easily negated.

I found the base concept of Blade fun, but it is mechanically too basic to remain engaging, and unjustifiable for it to be doing high damage/tank. I think they need to give warrior in general more weapons to swap to, and then reduce its traited sustain, a lot.

Ive seen kill times worse than this, around scrapper time, but I think the main issue atm is almost every spec has decent mobility+CC+dps. Ontop of that, almost every spec has access to good range damage, reducing counter positioning etc. Power necro CC stands out the most in group fights, combined with a WB or so.. its fking nasty. You can't counter CC either of them reliably as they pop stab/blocks during bursts, yet they both have decent mobility, so its not easy to kite the damage.

Funny 😜 Thief is pure cloak and dagger in pretending to be a hard punishing class. Every single spec essentially comes down to spamming 2 buttons. Its "shockingly low HP" also does not matter when nion every button you press outside of those 2 dps keys, gives you stealth or mobility/evade. If you want high risk game play in GW2.. play meme power zerker warrior. How ironic.

Well, they always say, if you have to explain a joke, the delivery sucks. Know your audiance I guess?

The most pressing question is; Did that 6 use to be a 9 and that 9 a 6?

I think you under apreciate the way vindi has to cleanse/heal, that third bar makes all the difference in drawing out mistakes from less experianced vindis. Don't heal up at the right time, you never recover under pressure, swap to heal/cleanse wrong time, you lose pressure. The same applies with its mobility, if you use it at the wrong time, you starve energy, or have to go into a legend you might not want to be in. It is half way between warrior and ele in terms of those choices and punishments for the wrong choice. Additionally, there is a constant balance between using energy for dps, and storing energy for sustain/stun breaks, with HUGE punishment for messing that balance up, it is by far the biggest learning curve and source of "error" in doing well on rev in general. If warrior had something like that to contend with (it could stall out for being too aggressive), I would be alot happier fighting the class, it is simply unpunishable most of the time because it lacks those sorts of mechanics. Cata even has this, if you get too greedy with DPS jades, you then starve yourself of water sustain jade. Vindi has both melee and range dps @1200, sure, as do many specs, some with more (ranger/DH) some with less (any scepter spec), and a number of specs that far more reliably pump out burst (ele/untamed/slb/mesmer, etc). Warrior is mostly limited to melee range damage, but that is a limitation, not a difficulty. That is why I don't have a problem with warrior mobility, its simply the easy and reliable sustain access that makes it very unlikely to push mistakes from a half decent warrior: So just avoid them? becuase the chance of playing flawlessly to starve their sustain is unreliable.. and they can still just los abuse if you get the upper hand. For context, I am not talking about p1+ vs p1+ here, I can't speak of that level. I think I always made it clear that I speak from the balance perspective of around g1-g3. You can balance for mid and top level play, it is a mistake to only balance for top play. That results in specs like hammer cata being unplayable at G1-3, becuase the skill floor is way to high compared to multiple other specs at that range. Increase skill floors of more forgiving specs, or reduce skill floors of more difficult specs, I don't really care which.. as either way would increase spec diversity, as more specs would be more equally competitive for the same skill/effort input.

This is where it pays to stay objective, and not let "forum feuds" cloud judgement. No decent player is going to justify damage on dodge, not me, not anybody else who cares about balance. The rest of hammer would be "ok" then, becuase hammer 2 is highly unreliable (buggy), and should they not change that.. then hammer 4 should remain as is. The refresh, its BS, but its not ranger maces.... so fix both? sure, not just one or the other. That said, please... do not compare the general mechanical ease of warrior to power rev. The average powe rev DOES NOT do what the average staff SPB, condi zerker, Blade or w/e flavour of the month warrior was doing. Staff SPB is still common now, with slightly above average warriors on sides, requiring a 2v1 to kill. I have versed staff spb warriors since the nerf, and you still have to play flawlessly, dodge/block nion all its abilitys to starve it of sustain, just to have a "chance" to kill it, while it does not have to play flawlessly for the same affec. That is outside of just ignoring it (why should you?) and that it is mechanicaly easy to play, hense why every average warrior becomes a massive watse of your time at best, and you have to just give up side at worse. It's bs. Look around when in-game, capture us some videos of the average vindi holding out in 2v1s vs semi-compitant players, and owning side nodes just for existing, will you?

Its true, it already basically has 20% dmg buff if you include vuln, then 4/5k dodge crits? pretty absurd. Would be better to remove this damage, and increase stab on the stunbreaks to 2 seconds, or just reduce some vindi CDs/energy cost or something. Death drop should give resolotion+damage buff, and then imperial impact gives protection+condi damage (which will be good for support/condi builds). I personally think saint is balanced and strong when traited properly, its basically a 4k panic heal -2 condi and +protection, for personal or group support.

I never spawn camp, its lame as fk. If the game is over, the goto tactic should be to organise 1v1s for fun (for the 2 guys that didn't go afk). But this is Gw2, full of toxic next gen gamers. Same people who jump from fotm to fotm to get an edge in a rank mode where the only real compition is who can que dodge the best.

Yeah I get the feeling the combination of 2x hammer2 and dodge damage is going to result in hammer being nerfed into the ground, rather than them reverting that silly refresh change. Power rev is punishing enough as is, it takes like p1+ to be reliably usefull on them (which im not). Making hammer 2 reliable might have led to a more user friendly power spec, which it desperately needs given how almost every other class has access to one.

None of the rev power builds are "easy and reliable". The condi builds are more forgiving, but they are a far cry from the likes of scourge/druid/staff SPB or bunker mesmer etc, you die to a power burst instantly if you mess up, along with condi bursts. In all, its nice to see more people playing rev in general. Vindi on power is a difficult spec to counter, but lets be real here, the average player is not good enough at the game to make power vindi a general issue. Compare it to the likes of SLB where any random could land 10k+ maul kits, before all the track damage, or scrapper.. remember that? Realiable 20k damage becuase you manedged to walk upto a player. Hammer vindi is far from that.

I got to be honest with you bud, I played all virsions of cata/tempest to a "decent" level, not great, just decent. They are difficult specs in there own way, but it is easier/more reliable to lay down burst with ele than it is with hammer vindi. You need to try the weapons to see what I mean, highly broadcast and can bug out in many ways, along with very limited CC to lay down the burst. Cata is difficult more in the mechanical sense, there are three different things going on mechanically, which is very hard to track while also laying down burst and reacting to counter burst. The vindi hammer had some nice buffs that I think it needed, unconected CC timer on hammer 5, faster auto attacks. However, I think the hammer 5 resetting 2 is overkill.. that should never have been implimented given its power co. Also, as always, I have never and never will defend vindi damage on dodge, aweful game design. It would have been better if they made hammer 2 more reliable to land, and lowered its CD, rather than giving this unrealible high power co ability that can be chained to 2 shot entire groups when the moons align. When I was playing the game more regularly I use to use anguish group pulls with the old hammer, and inteligence on weapon swap which ensured hammer 2 crit on all hit. Now you can do the same with 2x hammer 2, weapon swap, then 5>2>2 can be quickly chained right after anquish.