Arheundel.6451

The answer to your question is that ANet reduced damage, sustain and boon duration for some professions in competitive mode in the patch that nerfed those stances. It was merely in line with what they did. NB.: While ranger's support isn't optimal in organized squad, it's not in any way "lacking" (it's just not what's perceived as needed support in WvW atm). It's not difficult for a ranger (druid) to keep up prot, regen, vigor, fury and swiftness on 10 allies, all while healing and farting might stacks right and left. Soulbeast and it's stances is slightly less effective on boons and heal but benefit from different advantages (like group evade, groupe stunbreak, group stability... etc.). Fixed it for you : https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/98220/game-update-notes-february-25-2020#latest , this is not all professions, all I see is the obvious elementalist which doesn't get couple of patches without received nerfs , ranger which just get dumbed down whenever they become optimal for competitive gameplay at the top Revenants, guardians and holosmiths have not been touched at all in WvW for the last 1.5 year , holosmith is still the 2019 version for at least 80% of it, condi heralds basically unnerfed and so on

Courtesy of https://www.reddit.com/user/TPenny5071/ The one who made this fantastic concept Honestly how many of you think ele will get something even remotely close to this?

Everything I've seen you say so far contradicts that statement. I tried to start a discussion with you and you responded by giving me the same victim garbage that every profession main is always regurgitating. You think it's mediocre because the vast majority of people who play it are mediocre. In the hands of someone who knows how to use it, it is far from. Somebody who states that holosmith is garbage tier in WvW especially....he doesn't really want to have a discussion. I gave facts...where you just keep going moved by your bias and baseless assumptions. If any of what you say would be true...none of the videos I have linked should exist and the top 100 players who roam around in tight packs would do so on a boonbeast instead than holosmith...unless you want to claim that players with a god/baroness title and from MRGA - KILL -SA and similar guilds are mediocre players unable to abuse the presumed busted status of rangers. If you want to keep going with your assumptions...we need some video proof of your claims...Good luck It's not just a matter of staying alive that makes for a great roaming spec, it's why current boonbeast at best can meme 1vs1 and die easy the second they get ganked

So what? They need nerfs as well, what's your point? You don't really want to make an argument "but others are more broken", right? What you've posted isn't a even a drop in the ocean of problems, Boonbeast is just 1 of many that need nerfs lmao.Why does ranger can have near perma boons in the first place? Sustain for free cause why not? The child of powercreep like pretty much every class in the game?I don't really think A-net will be able to balance this game properly ever with how "elite specializations" are based on only 1 trait line. I am making a point of professions and specs being far far more broken than already hard nerfed boonbeast indeed. You can go ahead and nerf dolyak stance to your heart content...It would make zero difference at the top, I face/get ganked/chased by : baroness of the arena, gods of pvp/WvW ect ect , they all running around with permaboon holos+firebrands+condi heralds+reaper ...no magical boonbeast in sight and you know why? Because that works against pve zerglings only . Respect to the past, they nerfed the sustain, removed pet swap, reduced boon duration, reduced axe main hand damage and nerfed mobility...so yeah what is left only works against the low common denominator. And finally...mmo players always ask for nerfs on anything that kills them...It could be anything at any level, no surprise there

Very true, though it also depends how offensive you build. If you're mostly Marauder with a little bit of Diviner/Commander and some Boon Duration runes, then you still do pretty solid damage while also having moderate uptime on Prot and other Boons. In general though yes, the damage is a lot worse than it used to be and Boonbeast is a lot more manageable. Without being able to swap pets it's also much less mobile, but if it's using any pets with Leaps on merge it still has more mobility than S/D Weaver. This is the problem a lot of players create. They want to keep OP thing but also want buffs. You need to make some compromises. Dolyak Stance is an absurdly stacked skill that could qualify as an elite. It doesn't need to be gutted, it just need some small changes to give it more counterplay. Either it should have the -33% damage reduction (also Condi damage reduction) removed/reduced, or it should have the soft CC immunity removed. Then Soulbeast could get some small buffs in other areas, maybe to something like Unstoppable Union just for example. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/56636/balance-discussion-moa-stance-needs-some-changes/p1I don't think there are many people less biased than me.I consider builds ans skill in the context of equally skilled players who spent years in WvW equally and who own pretty much every single stat in the game, I consider people who have been roaming for years again, fought hundreds of duels and so on....in that context current "boonbeast" is mediocre at best : no aoe- no pet swap, minimal support...it get outshined by other professions in same category. To top it all, most professions enjoy a massive mobility creep atm and as such the previous mobility advantage of rangers in wvw is mostly void , I see professions with close to perma superspeed..you can swoop all you want with bird/GS...they'll catch you, as it stands the profession only shine in scenarios of mediocrity against randoms and possibly in uninterrupted 1vs1..other than that I don't see any use for current ranger

Because all of those things have various counters, are only viable solo/small scale, and have already been nerfed. "Raid boss" Necro is a literal meme. All it is is a lot of health and it's useless outside of 1v1/X. Similar to old S/D Weaver it only kills what commits to it because it has terrible damage but high sustain. You can literally walk away from it and it has 0 impact in large scale fights. The difference between the two is that Necro is shut down a lot more easily because it's weak to CC, and there are a lot of CC's in this game. Weaver on the other hand could just evade for days and heal through anything you threw at it.With that said, I wouldn't be against a nerf to Unholy Martyr and Signet of Undeath because both of them are overly rewarding of passive gameplay. So by all means nerf it, but it's already a bad build. Grenades are pretty busted in WvW, but it's largely due to the synergy between Barrier and multi-hits.Some suggested changes: Impact Armor should only grant Barrier from melee attacks, increase Bulwark Gyro cooldown to 30seconds, and split Explosive Entrance so that it deals reduced damage while used with Scrapper or Holosmith.This way Grenades/Grenade Barrage doesn't grant Barrier and Bulwark Gyro has more downtime, and you don't get a free 3 - 4k+ hit after every time you dodge from Explosive Entrance which pretty significantly buffs Grenade Barrage. Holosmith is garbage tier now, the only thing giving it any relevance is Explosives because of Explosive Entrance and Flashbang. Laser's Edge is also to blame, but at least it takes some resource management to maintain the damage increase. Still, reducing the damage increase to 10% would be fine.Otherwise, Holo does pretty terrible damage. If you're not using Explosives it literally hits like a sack of potatoes. Of the videos you linked, all of them have been nerfed, and only one (Grenade Scrapper) is still OP but will probably get some nerfs in the future. Specifically referring to Boonbeast here, it was (and to some degree still is) an issue because it countered its counter, Necro, and was at least decent in large scale fights. Solo and small scale it was just busted because nothing could contest a good one. Removing/Corrupting Boons is the only real way to kill them but with the mobility, Cleanse, and damage they have it's more of a soft counter.Although it has received multiple nerfs, some undeserving, others entirely so, it is still a strong roaming build. And somehow Dolyak Stance is still untouched, so there's also that. i agree on nerf to dolyak stance. though i feel like boon beast today doesn’t have the dmg to actually be a major threat to anybody. NM + WS means your pets are useless and you’ll have an extremely low amount of dmg, even if you can stack 25might. what you mentioned about weaver and necro apply to boonbeast today also. you can just walk away. they are also mostly selfish builds meaning you can simply focus attention on other enemies and kill them first and there’s not a whole lot a boonbeast can do about it.Nerfing dolyak stance wouldn't change anything , ranger is neither the top roaming class or a complete wvw class, nerfing dolyak stance at this point would be like nerfing a tool from 5 to 4.5 , it's not like a new player starts today, slot a soulbeast with dolyak stance and then proceed to tank 5-6 people in wvw with it. Ranger right now is a strong class vs mediocre players and it's the reason Top roaming guild just spam scrappers/holos/firebrand/.tempest/reapers and condi revs, on ranger you die quite easily once you face 2 or more above average players and this because Ranger doesn't have anymore a true bruiser build as NM boonbeast was, the class at best can play hit and run with good sustain to sport..nothing more than that

Because all of those things have various counters, are only viable solo/small scale, and have already been nerfed. "Raid boss" Necro is a literal meme. All it is is a lot of health and it's useless outside of 1v1/X. Similar to old S/D Weaver it only kills what commits to it because it has terrible damage but high sustain. You can literally walk away from it and it has 0 impact in large scale fights. The difference between the two is that Necro is shut down a lot more easily because it's weak to CC, and there are a lot of CC's in this game. Weaver on the other hand could just evade for days and heal through anything you threw at it.With that said, I wouldn't be against a nerf to Unholy Martyr and Signet of Undeath because both of them are overly rewarding of passive gameplay. So by all means nerf it, but it's already a bad build. Grenades are pretty busted in WvW, but it's largely due to the synergy between Barrier and multi-hits.Some suggested changes: Impact Armor should only grant Barrier from melee attacks, increase Bulwark Gyro cooldown to 30seconds, and split Explosive Entrance so that it deals reduced damage while used with Scrapper or Holosmith.This way Grenades/Grenade Barrage doesn't grant Barrier and Bulwark Gyro has more downtime, and you don't get a free 3 - 4k+ hit after every time you dodge from Explosive Entrance which pretty significantly buffs Grenade Barrage. Holosmith is garbage tier now, the only thing giving it any relevance is Explosives because of Explosive Entrance and Flashbang. Laser's Edge is also to blame, but at least it takes some resource management to maintain the damage increase. Still, reducing the damage increase to 10% would be fine.Otherwise, Holo does pretty terrible damage. If you're not using Explosives it literally hits like a sack of potatoes. Of the videos you linked, all of them have been nerfed, and only one (Grenade Scrapper) is still OP but will probably get some nerfs in the future. Specifically referring to Boonbeast here, it was (and to some degree still is) an issue because it countered its counter, Necro, and was at least decent in large scale fights. Solo and small scale it was just busted because nothing could contest a good one. Removing/Corrupting Boons is the only real way to kill them but with the mobility, Cleanse, and damage they have it's more of a soft counter.Although it has received multiple nerfs, some undeserving, others entirely so, it is still a strong roaming build. And somehow Dolyak Stance is still untouched, so there's also that. The videos show holos "tanking" several players = video proof of my words...you claim otherwise Come out with video of thse boonbeast doing the same thing as you claim...easy to talk with 0 proof , on the contrary of you I play : necromancer -elementalist - warrior -guardian and ranger and nothing of what you state is true...I can literally tank several people with core condi necro, the idea that core necro does no dmg lol..... Maybe it's you the problem...if you die to a ranger pewpew from a tower..you are the problem and if instead you die to somebody roaming and who spent years on ranger..again you are the problem Please tell me more about "poor nerfed holosmith".... In all of this..you are the problem not the class, there are holosmith builds out there with alchemy line and elixirs with more boon uptime than 2 "legendary" boonbeast combined, if you still insist with your argument..you go in WvW and try to survive outnumbered on the "dodge for day" weaver or "immortal" boonbeast Holosmith ...garbage tier...the amout of horse manure you can read on the forum is staggering, it's like being in the twilight zone once you open this forum...."Holosmith garbage tier in wvw"...my eyes are bleeding...I am dreaming Please..show me how this following build is garbage tier:https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Holosmith_-_Explosive_Roamer

It's still one-man army to some degree though. If you're not playing a class that have any kind of boon removal then gl. Let's keep the assumption that other professions in WvW are balanced At least boonbeast was nerfed to a certain extent...other specs didn't get touched at all in WvW since last year Here a true one man army class.... Isn't this a carbon copy of past boobeast? I just don't get this "agenda" vs rangers when there are professions which are leaps and bound above it

If you want to see this elite nerfed for real..OP should change title : Necro TornadoForm needs to go...by easy association the interim in charge of balance will assume is an ele elite and as described by contract, it will be nerfed within 1 month max...I guarantee you

nature magic has no place in a soulbeast build. we don’t want more ppl running around with perma boons and weakness spamming passives. you can argue it has a place for druid and core, but it does not fit with the soubeast theme. literally bonding with your pet so that you both merge into one entity isn't considered "nature magic"? lol i’m talking about what the nm traitline does. it doesn’t fit. plus, NM as a traitline just sucks to play against. it’s kinda like the ranger version of Shadow Arts on thief. any time i see someone use it in pvp/wvw it just tells me that person sucks cus they rely on heavy sustain and passives too much. tbh the whole thing needs a redesign but obviously that will never happen.You are not wrong but again Fairness is not a common virtue in WvW, I completely get it and I agree with you, I hate to play against those rangers who can't do crap outside their NM build double axe or warhorn, it's hands down the easiest build on ranger and I don't think it should be changed...as long as other professions will continue to cheese their way through WvW. While I hate the build , I can still play around it and certainly beat it with heavy condi burst set ups and interrupt and yet I cannot fault people for running it, not when we still have things like prot holo diviner with all boons under the sun in perma mode dishing out zerk levels of dmg and tanking several people at the same time In the end of the day should people feel sorry for running NM boonbeast?....not all, not when others are ready at any time to run something equally as cheesey or worst

Nah obviously the problem is Obsidian Flesh, for the sake of the game we must increase the CD t o 120s meanwhile we add 1/2s ICD to Purity of Purpose there...balance achieved just as usual 120 hahaha thats silly says anet let's make it 300.The nerfs ele receives are always heavy handed, always nerfs 50% of more in terms of dmg or sustain or CD

This guy here..get it! For starter boons were supposed to be mostly an ele and guardian thing as justification for the low HP at least that's what the devs stated at launch

Nah obviously the problem is Obsidian Flesh, for the sake of the game we must increase the CD t o 120s meanwhile we add 1/2s ICD to Purity of Purpose there...balance achieved just as usual

I don't trust this biased "balance" team..they would end end happily nerf the same ol`classes even if there is nothing left to nerf aka : Elementalist followed by slaps on the wrist for guardian , necro and engi...just QoL rev "fix" and some "out of the madhat" nerf for ranger

This minstrel boonball of firebrand - scrapper -revenant and scourge..is the most boring, non interactive, lazy, atrocious gaming experience of my entire life and it's in situations like this that I just log out disgusted....my question is why people are allowed to be super tanky and still do burst damage?

1) Great professions for WvW, shine from small group to large fights, hardly ever nerfed -best investment for your time and effort : Guardian -Necro -Engineer 2) Good professions for WvW, do great in small fight and large fight , slap on the wrist sort of balance, good investment overall : Revenant - Warrior 3) Good professions for WvW, do great in small disorganized fights , ok at best during large fights, harsh nerfs are not uncommon - overall is worth your time : Ranger -Thief - Mesmer - 4) Ok profession for WvW, does great in small and large disorganized fights , harsh nerfs are very common do not recommend unless you really love it : Elementalist The list above is the most Unbiased opition you will find at the moment, I am an active multiclass player and I play actively all professions minus mesmer and thieves, my opinion is a collection of experiences over years spent in this game, observing how the balance unfold and treats each profession accordingly. From PvP to WvW, I cannot stress enough for new players to invest in profession at rank 1 - to at least having an alt from the list , while 2 and 3 are good /great as mains but do not expect the best results when it comes to WvW loot/effort p/hr equation, that is reserved to rank 1 professions where your net gain of loot bags for time spent in WvW will leave the rest in the dust

I fully agree about the AOE cap being bad design . But I standby my statement, that support is in itself not the issue, with the reasoning that support works in Gw1, which is in design not much different then gw2. Gw1 had no holy trinity. There were just builds...and some builds that players made were healing builds. It is the natural progression of people that seek alternative playstyles and to further cooperative and competitive specialization. We even had similar "boon-ball" behavior team compositions in gw1, One example being "Eleball" which was a team composition of 8 bunker ele's that used wards and signature Obsidian Flame spike. The major differences between the two games is not that "support" is an inherently bad thing, but rather how much counter-play there was to defeat other things. Eleball had weaknesses that players could exploit : A ) It was immobile. It couldn't move around because it relied on wards in order to work.B ) There is no target cap in gw1, thus, focusing a lot of AOE attacks would pressure them and eventually kill them. Wards couldn't be stripped...but because they were immobile fields it limited what they could actually do in a structured environment. The counter-play was inherent in the skill and in addition people brought to counter it...and I think that's an important distinction between the differences of builds in gw1 and builds in gw2. Many builds in gw2, bunker and support builds included, simply don't have counter play built into the skills nor in opposition...and you get min-max behavior which is to just stack healing, and stack damage and "do it all" and that's basically what druid was...and that was basically the entire meta post HOT...it did everything...high damage, high sustain, highly mobile... counter play didn't exist. GW1 was amazing because it didn't have all this "stay in a circle" crap so support specs were healthy for the gamemode and made the game a joy to watch on the other hand all this capping gameplay turns everything into a slog when you start adding support to self-sustain options Also in GW1 you had no real invulnerability and could spike down support specs fairly quickly in a timely manner, sure we had prot monk and some earth armor eles but it wasn't the barrier/block spam of GW2

Something that doesn't revolve around sitting in a small circle and forces us to suffer a balance that wants to curb the ability of a class to stay in a circle

^This I play ranger for its solo gameplay...I got a ready to go guardian and necro when I want to farm bags that badly

you’re wrong about the reason. it was because the sustain you had from smokescale + siamoth was absolutely insane and couple that with perma boons from plasma + moa stance made NM a viable traitline, which meant perma stab, perma 25 might, nearly perma quickness, perma prot, 40-50% alacrity uptime, list goes on, and that’s on top of having stealth from snokescale. that’s why when trade off patch hit along with dmg nerfs, moa stance got gutted. it was siamoth + smokescale that was the deadliest pet combo. We can argue the reasons all day but everything got hit that patch. If the reasons they nerfed SB is because of simaoth / smokescale then Druid would still be broken as can pet swap and has much greater sustain potential through celestial shadow + those pets. Even pre-patch I hardly ran into another ranger running Siamoth, as the plasma is a gamble and you have to pick it up, not something you can do easily in a fight above a 1v1. Boon Beast is also something people still routinely complain about on here, so if the tradeoff was to mitigate that, it didn't do a very good job. Bird on the other hand was used (and in some cases still is) ALL the time. You could run a pet like Smokescale and run Bird, and not have to commit to the fight. Players, and Anet didn't like that. This is also why the patch mentions you have to choose your pet carefully before entering combat, because they didn't want both sustain ability and escape ability for SB. You cannot entirely remove boonbeast from WvW unless you remove gear choices like : all concentration gear because you can create boonbots on basically anything in WvW even a necro...so people complaining about boonbeast still being "alive" in WvW doesn't sit well with me. I routinely meet boonbot holos tanking whole squads of people or Firebrand healing like champs in a sea of fire or heralds or healbot tempest...if people wanna whine about boonbeast in wvw...we should whine about boonbots in general because they're not less cancerous. I am all for removing boonbeast entirely..as long as we remove every other boonbot in wvw....every single one of them On the other hand Boonbeast is effectively dead in PvP on the contrary of boonbot holo or revenant, they nerfed axe dmg and removed agility sigil from PvP to make sure double axe bunker can't exist there at high level. They nerfed dolyak stance by 100% doubling CD and moa stance boon uptime was reduced from 66% down to 20% in all competitive modes

I don't get this "pet centered" mania, it brings nothing to the table other than being a novelty for RPGers and in my opinion not worth a price tag, we need an useful elite for players in game modes, something fun, viable and interesting to play for everybody...not just PvErs

9 commanders out of 10 who do add a ranger to the zerg..will usually place you in a "no support" spot at the bottom or the top alongside thieves or some other "fringe" build not considered meta and at that point you may as well play outside the zerg...same thing

Without the trade off really there was no reason to play core ranger as Soulbeast was basically a ranger 2.0 plus we had boonbeast which made things even more absurd, I am a die hard ranger lover but hey...boonbeast was really busted..and still work to a smaller degree in the end. I think the trade off was well thought and necessary to make core ranger relevant again without unnecessarily buffing it..something which would have made soulbeast even more busted

If dealing with condi heralds and thieves, it won't be enough even if you dodge most of the incoming burst(condi rev is all about the mace CC rotation and Mallyx leap/aoe - where condi thief is about loaded steal that applies loads of condis followed by pewpew pistol)It really depends on the skill level involved, you can get away with just WS and Bear stance with soulbeast or NM evasive purity core build if the condi rev is bad/average while even average condi thief will wear down these builds. There are different variations of condi thief from DE immobilie to core steal or pewpew core, all rely on stealth to get burst and get away so ...I wouldn't know really, I have a dedicated anti-condi soulbeast build with resistance runes and condi based to bypass these dire/trailblazer , it works quite well against condi heralds of all levels but about condit thief...even met a good one in months but I suspect it would ends in a draw or with me running There is also condi mirage, extremely rare but still alive and kicking and against that, the anti condi soulbeast still works to a degree but it's an uphill battle, in which case I rely on power druid for mass condi clear and slowy wear down the mesmer. Overall there is no correct answer against condi builds when played well, with stats like dire and trailblazer you should either play a glass cannon +1 build or do your best on a duellist build with as much condi clear as possible

Nature Magic is not recommended for power builds, you want to end fights as quickly as possible while maintaning a relatively high sustain/dmg ratio and enough escape tools to avoid ganks .