Substance E.4852

The massive success of WoW Classic says otherwise What in reality has been happening, is that MMO developers have been trying to gear their games toward the "casual cash shop" crowd for easy profit and largely been falling on their face in the process It's done Anet no favors and WoW Regular has only lost subs overtime by trying to move away from classic MMO systems FF14 is the powerhouse it is simply because it kept to the basic formula and ensured the rest of the game was up to snuff and people gladly pay $15 a month for the privliage

Didn't see any big hubbub on Reddit so I'm gonna assume it was a simple display to remind people that GW2 is still around

I have a feeling the wind was taken out of a lot of people's sails when they saw the "new reward" was a 200g skin for a mount they would never use outside of WvW A zergling might go for it but a pve carebear won't bother New armor's also less than great on medium and light so I doubt there's much pull there either

Lol, didn’t this used to happen the other way around when BG had links? Perhaps but it also means no one's gonna log on this week just to get one push farmed all night

You know, Soulbeasts kept saying that their trade off was not having their pet out all the time and look at what happened :wink: I try to play everything, mostly to know what I'm talking about. Reaper Shroud absolutely does not feel like a trade off and a straight upgrade. Ditto with DH virtues and Tomes. What would be a true trade off? Given Anet's solutions the options typically include stat reductions, increased CD's, or adding something to the Core class. Would a 4th virtue be cool? Sure! Make it strong, something like an AoE power based attack on active, but on passive grants 1 stack of might (5s) every fifth attack for 10 targets, 2 stacks if traited. But seriously, what would be a better trade off for FB would for Tomes to share the weapon swap CD, but once you use all your pages you go back to your last equipped weapon. DH might get a stat hit instead frankly. Soulbeasts can have their pets out the entire time if they chose to, tho. This is not really a trade off. Before the removal of pet swap, Soulbeast was simply an add on on top. You can have your pet out all the time just like the ranger, but you get the CHOICE to fuse with your pet additionally, if you desire to. Therefore this is not really a trade off. You were not really giving up anything to get the additional option to fuse with your pet. Imagine a Reaper gets the Reaper shroud as an F2 skill instead of replacing the F1. If you use your life force for the Reaper shroud, then of course you won't have life force left to use the classic shroud as well. But you actually have the choice to use either, the reaper shroud or your classic shroud with the resources. It would be a flat upgrade. And Soulbeast has been exactly like this, they were not giving up anything before, they just got another option added. That was my point. It wasn't a trade off, but they kept trying to insist that it was when it was just a straight upgrade. DH Virtues and FB Tomes are straight upgrades. This is only true for courage. SoJ works only with power builds and you lose the ability to put fire on the target. Core condi guardian is stronger than any DH variant. IMO VoR is better than WoR, espically in PvE, since there is no cast time. To be fair, there is not that much of difference between DH and core. The reason why DH is ahead in PvE is cuz of more consistent, and slightly higher damage multiplayers in the DH line compared to virtues line. And core have been stronger than DH in PvP for at least 3 years now (though both have been mediocre for like a year now, till the most recent patch).Stronger individual burns but fewer stacks. FB, tomes lock weapons. That is pretty huge trade off. In addition, FB without healing power has bad survivability in PvP. ToC is great in PvP. Too many casts and not that useful skills in PvE. It was meant to be an instant block, not sit here and cast. Reminder, at PoF release FB was very weak due to tomes being undertuned. It is actually after the first balance patch that FB became strong. The tomes do not make FB over powered by design. It is the value of skills and CD of tomes that make that difference. Same is true for engies and holos, either with kits or forge, and that is not considered a trade off. If you think DH works with condi GL to you buddy.Have you not seen the Burn DH build?The comparison with engi is... dumb. In the case of engi the kit is a different weapon, and is optional. The comparison is between instant cast core virtues and tomes. One is instant cast, the other requires cast to equip them and then casting again to get benefits. If you think this is not a trade off, you have an understanding issue. Performance is a different matter. The comparison to another equipable weapon set of skills is fairly spot on.Druid loses a massive chunk of their pet's health and damage to access a new espec skill bar There's 0 reason Guardian should get a pass other than people not wanting their favorite class to join the special table with the rest of us

Because the pet is complete trash that exists in pvp just to deploy CC , plasma, and a smoke field and is the only "class mechanic" that requires you to compensate for rather than leveraging to your benefit. No thief player or Ele begrudgingly deals with initiative or attument swapping No mesmer ever considers their clones to be a problem they have to adjust their playstyle for Your logic is "Ranger was fine and SB made it too good" rather than "Ranger was hobbled with antiquated game design and SB made it functional"

BG is currently getting spawn farmed by the NA transfer alliance so.... no

Shortbow is far from being trash and conid ranger is viable now more than before thx to direct dmg nerf....so condi ranger is viable ...the OP is wrong. Shortbow wasn’t viable before the balance patch and it also saw nerfs so it’s not viable now. I fought a trapper Druid using a shortbow inside an enemy camp and the guards were more of a threat than the player, thats how trash the weapon is.The weapon is pretty meh 1v1 because it requires you to flank an opponent to get the most out of it I have no idea why Anet insists on this being the case but we all know how much they play their own game so...

You now die in 5 hits instead of 3 It's a welcome change to roamers I'm sure but zerg fights still feel about the same. Maybe a little less instagib'y but I didn't really feel much of a difference when skill lag is applied on top

It's hilarious how much this board defaults to "Oh huh, well you must just want it for free, huh!?" when you criticize any element of anet's pricing or reward gating

Sloppy coding from when they made it so mounting up no longer popped us out of beast mode Hopefully this gets them to fix it finally but we may have to simply bite the bullet for a bit until they get around to it The sparse occurrence of the problem means that even if they focus on the issue, it might not be easy to find and solve

remove the damage reduction in pvp and bring it back down to 45s, leave it be in wvw our only other stab source is a 60s "command" 45s might not be a big deal in pvp but WvW is still CC hell and you still die instantly if you get stunlocked in red rings even with the nerfs

A 200g recycled mount skin and a box of armor I can't open for "reasons" Levels of WvW rewards that shoyuldn't be possible

Ah, the good old days when it took an hour to kill the SMC lord

They did this on purpose, fully explained exactly why it would be this way, and have never intended for the warclaw to be used in PvE. Care to link to it

Okay, nice skin Anet. Looks appropriately intimidating and combat themed. Now do something about it being nothing but a worse raptor in pve. It's engage skill doesn't even do anything beyond the base damage that several other do on top of an additional effect like pulling in enemies or applying a barrier. There's currently no reason to use the warclaw outside of WvW other than for RP value and there's no real reason for this to be the case

If you think that soulbeast is useless in WvW, you simply haven't got a clue how to play one properly.Melee CC boon strip soulbeast absolutely wrecks people both in 1v1, small scale and in blob fights while being borderline unkillable.People think soulbeast is bad in WvW cause 95% of the people either play pew or boon beast with it. Built and played right it puts many "meta" classes to shame inside zergs. It's a self sufficient monster that chews through people that don't even know what hit them. It's pretty much impossible to build ranger for high damage that "chews through people" and for survivability in a group setting The only place this works is small scale or 1v1 where our single target skills, active evades, and boon spam shine. Single target damage is worthless in a zerg, evades are only good for re positioning in long confrontations, and boonbeast stops existing when rip/corrupts are flying at you from 12 different scourges LotP needs to give at least base duration to allies and WK needs to extend the condition removal bonus to allies as well It's the only way we'll be even remotely appealing without major overhauls to our weapon skills or how druid works

This is the one They just used very poorly posed shots this time around so it;s not immediately obvious

PvE is largely in a pretty decent spot for the moment Unless Anet suddenly refocuses like a laser beam on Raids and T4 fractals, you're not likely to ever be in a bad spot for not being in the top 5 dps builds We still have strikes for the time being but they're easy enough that you should be able to find people who will let you play on any class you want assuming you at least put your best effort in

Whales are moving on to the mobile scene (FATE GO has made over a billion dollars at this point) and those of that remain have had years now to see what "free/buy to play" really means in the long run and are rightfully weary of games that may just end up taking cash shop profits and spending it on more cash shop items instead of the game. Sub games have an incentive to keep you playing and subbed. Cash Shop games have an incentive to get you to buy a limited time item before it's gone.

I can see why this is annoying, but isn't this the very purpose of the spec? To prevent/strip boons? The very purpose of Druid is to heal allies and they've never been good in a zerg Yes, bringing back pirate ship because no one can push into a zerg and avoid getting stun locked and eating 5 un-nerfed CoR's to the face is deffinitly what WvW needs Just go play fire staff meteor spam in a zerg liek every other Ele and let rangers have the one thing they can actually do well in WvW

Yes but Anet needs to actually do something to trigger that uptick Shelving all instanced content other than Strikes, delivering dull metas like Drakkar, and dragging their feet with WvW/PvP doesn't bring people back nor give prospective new players a reason to invest their time in a game that only seems to be downsizing itself.

You might see some gimmick builds if the cheetah and beastly warden combo works correctly but they still are a bit wonky when hitting a moving target Better off just going with birds if you want pure damage. Chaining a bird f2 right after their auto can add up to a good amount

Yes, because the Guild Wars 2 pets system is absolute garbage and it took them literally giving us a way to fuse with the pet to actually make the class good Reminder that pre-HoT, the only pets anyone used were spiders and canines because other types couldn't even hit a moving target with their attacks No one's going to play base ranger after this change because it still sucks and druid is still totally nerfed out of player vs player content and will only be worse after this update They will just play a handicapped soul beast like before and nothing will change. Pretty much everyone has already decided they'll just keep maining smokescale. Anet could have just removed Owl and Siamoth from the pvp pet selection menu and solved the "boonbeast problem" without doing some silly double edged sword nonsense

It was mostly a joke but in reality, a class that can't be touched by melee while it pelts you with ranged damage is the same whether it's a mile away or 5 feet away Difference is you can just about face and run 10 feet in the opposite direction from most rangers and be out of bow range if you don't want to fight. People tend to start pew pewing the second they get into 1800 range. Take one step back and sniping from the moon stops working. So the ranger is rooted in place as well?There are actually several skills that root the Ranger in order to use them, so yes