Substance E.4852

People are completely blinded by wishful thinking theory crafting They're hoping Anet gives them a mobile storm spirit that farts out perma alacrity instead of a frost spirit that farts out 5 might It's like what happened to "grace of the land" wasn't enough of a red flag to them

WvW Forums: "It's okay if ranger is garbage in groups because it's a roaming class that's meant to roam" Also WvW Forums: "Ranger is too good at roaming, everyone plays ranger while roaming. Please nerf it's ability to roam!"

The problem is "decent" isn't enough Stance share greatsword/longbow soulbeast was "decent" and all that meant was another 4+ years of "please go get another class" after the pile of "meh" that was Druid At least on soulbeast, we had decent stab generation so the whole "not getting a team slot with a guard" didn't sting so much Now, maybe this changes with any 3.0 updates the class gets at launch, but the 2.0 beta iteration of untammed is DoA in WvW and even more so once the WvW Alliance update drops and you can't just reliably tag along with a proper zerg anymore

It scales down to a more reasonable size when stowed but when you equip it, it scales up to what is probably the longest sword in the game Honestly looks like a sword made for a Norn when used on a human Blade might be as long as the greatsword's blade

Its because that's what the spec was meant for Anet had no real intention for it to be used anywhere else and it's why they never came up with a clever solution to the problems it caused in pvp, instead opting to just remove it via hard nerfing They could have fixed it's bunker capability but kept the team support in pvp by severely reducing it's self healing % They could have made it worth a kitten in wvw by making CA a mode you toggle and removing the limited timer, offering up some kind of trade off like the pvp "little self healing" or an increase in damage taken while in CA They did neither because all that matters is it's still a heal bot pick in raids and that's enough for them apparently The possibility that it's secretly used a lot in other areas seems incredibly unlikely I don;t think I've seen someone run around with that little sun icon on them outside of EotN or the raid staging area in years

Life from 300 years ago maybe No one in modern South Korea still wears their hair like that and the hairstyle isn't even legal in North Korea

Then whip out your credit card and save yourself the mind numbing, pointless tedium that is gathering "10,000 of X resource" This isn't WoW/FF14 where the most prestigious gear is earned through hard team content This is GW2 where the most prestigious gear is earned through dumb luck, TP bots, and hundreds of hours of repetitive manual labor Oh and hard cash since 99% of cool gear is Gem Store/BLC releases anyway

>Should Anet completely redo the untamed from scratch? In a perfect world? Yes In a world where such a decision would mean we get a whole new spec with only maybe 1-2 months of design time and no test betas? No, not really I'm not confident that we can pester them into giving us the Scrapper treatment after launch if it still sucks, but I'm even less confident that they can not only give us an entirely new spec before February, but that it will be any better All the current form of the spec needs to get a us a slot in wvw squads is enough damage on hammer to make us competitive with hammer revs and a way to either keep the pet alive or convert it into some kind of invulnerable boon spirit or w/e I don't know, make it so that when the player is unleashed, rather than the pet going full manual mode, it turns into a low/no damage npc that gives a buff that correlates to it's soulbeast archetype while gaining the same -90% damage while untargeted mod pets get in PvE

After more playtime, I can confidently say that ambush skills need to be moved off of Skill 1 and onto either another attack skill or a special action key They seem to have a problem where auto chains will cause the skill to refresh and prevent you from activating the ambush skill. This even happens with non-chained auto skills like the longbow's auto As an opening skill for a fight, the mechanic works as intended but will be a headache to use in long duration fights such as the new EoD strikes Moving the ambush skill to skill 2 would prevent this from happening and most ambush skills seem similar to their respective weapon's 2 skill anyway, making them feel like a more powerful version of what we already have (with the exception of the bows maybe) providing a more familiar play style

Once upon a time, support meant actually performing a dedicated role and not farting out perma boons on auto attack

*double post*

True, but the viability of "make sure it's good everywhere" becomes less and less a reality as more specs are released into completely static pvp and wvw modes Anet can barely keep every class in the "has at least one optimum general pve build" category as is They're rapidly running into the same problem they had with GW1 where an ever growing list of classes and skills became too many balls in the air and they eventually gave up People need to temper their expectations of what new classes should bring to the game or they're going to be very disappointed in the future This rings especially true for classes that already have a solid presence in every mode

Why? This isn't something as intense as CA form or Beastmode It's just 15% extra damage if the player isn't using a hammer Ambush skills have a 2 second window of use when you switch to "player unleashed" and it displays a plenty obvious effect when that happens

Skills that I'm going to be using rapidly like return and attack need to be familiar to muscle memory and reachable from the standard WASD controls Long cooldown, conditional skills get bumped to F6 and F7

The tooltip for the F5 "Unleash Ranger" still reads: "...enhancing your offensive power while becoming more susceptible to damage."

It's an objective improvement on the previous iteration but still lacks any real purpose If I'm correct to assume this is still meant as a "frontline bruiser" then the pet is still DOA on any real push into another zerg and can be totally disregarded Unleashed Thump, our "big nuke skill" does roughly the same amount of damage as Maul with 4x the cooldown Greatsword also has a better leap, a block skill, and generates endurance on auto If I'm expected to swing it with the melee train in WvW, I have no reason to use hammer at this time since GS still offers more and LB is just gold now that retaliation is gone Short of some use in sPvP and a different way to overworld PvE, I still don't see any real reason to take this over our other specs at this time Soulbeast likely still does more damage and "no team utility" is definitely less than what the Druid brings For the overwhelming majority of the game that only PvE's, this still has little to no reason to exist other than a reason to use a hammer after years of greatsword/sword

It's also only available for roughly two seconds after swap Any pvp'er worth a kitten is going to see these "big impact" skills coming from a mile away

It's the only way they can add new specs without the entire system imploding on itself People want perma quikcness/alacrity People want new specs every expansion The only way they get this is either design focused specs or colossal nerfs to the very idea of "support" that knocks us back to the vanilla GW2 stone age days when bringing a blast finisher for the fire field, pre-fight might stack huddle was considered "support"

The problem is Anet wanted to pretend that "frontline bruiser" was even a role in WvW so they could keep us pigeonholed in this ridiculous "selfish with buffs for no reason" design philosophy The only two roles we could have filled in WvW without entirely overstepping Druid's purpose in pve would be either melee team boonspam similar to scrapper or fragile but devastating backline aoe spam We aren't getting the ranged aoe so that really only leaves a scrapper'esc role but that would require massive reworking of the spec and one that doesn't require the pet to be alive for it to work As it stands, the best we can hope for is enough fine tuning to make it effective in spvp and enough damage for it to be worth using at all in pve WvW effectiveness is probably a pipe dream and they might as well include "Rangers need not apply" in the Alliance update patch notes at this point

Status as "WvW Frontline Bruiser" intensifies

And yet it's still so utterly kitten compared to Soulbeast and Druid that no one will care

Human bodies are sexual by nature and the exact reason women will wear low cut tops and skin tight leggings when a baggy track suit would be just as comfortable and have more pockets

No, I'm not playing your inane bad faith argument game anymore You're wrong, full stop

Bold words for someone who apparently thought "buff the hammer by 80%" meant buffing the actual item damage

lmao I don't care You asked for a whole weapon and I provided one Simple as