Gotejjeken.1267

I think this is less of a roaming poll and more of a ganking one. Thieves and SBs (assuming glass ones) are very good at ganking or +1'ing but if they run into a bunker well the SB usually loses and the thief runs. Same holds true if they run into multiple people. Of course they are also the two most complained about on the forums by pepole that think 'warclaw = invincible' so they'd rank highly in this poll. If you meet actually good roamers / duelers, a good tempest / reaper / berserker can ruin your day pretty quick.

I don't see how WvW is more grindy than PvE. I'm around rank 800 and got most of my WvW rewards when I was rank 500 or less; essentially I had enough skirmish tickets and stacks (8-10 of them) of memories of battle lying around before I actually started playing WvW for ranks (i.e. joined a guild). Grandmaster mark shards are an annoyance, but nothing in the game is tailored to sitting in one game mode, so I just crafted most of the marks. I now have a full set of legendary armor and the most annoying part was not WvW related, it was the promotion of t6 mats to get enough for each gift. Contrast this with PvE, trying to get Aurora. Before you even get the collection to do it you have to go on a series of item hunts which take HOURS. Some of these items are in a very challenging jumping puzzle, which one could argue is pretty far from 'normal' gameplay. After you get done with that you have to do it all over again for each item in the Aurora collection, and some of it is boring achievement grinding--which I'm using WvW reward tracks to get around. Not to mention you have to grind out mastery points or be in BIG trouble as things like infinite gliding are required for certain areas (and cost millions of xp + mastery points to get). For basically a quarter of the effort I can get a set of legendary armor, Conflux and Warbringer in the time it takes to get ONE legendary trinket from PvE. So yes the rewards may seem lackluster, but at least you don't have to jump through a million minor hoops to get them. You just go into WvW play the mode and get rewards.

I don't disagree that soulbeast has some ground to retain the ability to revive pet in such fashion, but I would never dream of comparing it to mesmer clones or thief stealth. That's just nonsensical. Clones were made to die, and stealth was made to be broken by reveal due to hitting enemies applying reveal onto you. I would not argue rangers are punished for taking on condi classes if they run wilderness survival, that's only an issue if you're purposely giving up defenses for more boonage or damage. WIlderness survival's monopoly on ranger cleanses is a different beast.Anywho I totally sympathize with druid, used to main it before they gutted the healing countless times over instead of addressing the actual broken traits that were making it the cheese unkillable sidenode duelist it was. Don't shortsell ranger pets though, they may not be strong in direct combat but in duels they're great for keeping pressure when enemies move behind cover or using their command (or sometimes even normal skills) to really dish out some pain, debilitation, pressure, or control.Anyway I'm not saying ranger's top tier but don't act like it's the weakest or most handicapped class in the game (there's not a real correct answer to that but there are many more possibly correct answers and ranger never strikes me as the biggest victim in that category). i see countless people saying 1v1 balance is irrelevant but at the same time call for ranger nerfs. anyways, try dueling a condi herald or any type of renegade and see how long your pet stays alive. even mesmer shatters will end up nuking your pet in 1v1. reaper, necro. pet is completely useless most of the time. and yes ofc i’m talking about with WS, only soulbeast can survive without WS. druid needs it for CA charge and core needs it for condi cleanse. i started playing druid again last week cus of nostalgia, and oh boy have i realized how amazing it is not having to worry about pets dying on soulbeast. it’s such a stupid and pointless hazzle constantly having to micromanage your dying and crippled pets. and its not even like enemies are target them deliberately. they just die to aoe and cleave. even when i dodge all the condi and aoe myself my pet just facetanks all of it and dies eventually. in melee its not even like i can avoid it because if my pet is on passive it still follows me. but if its on attack mode it’s on enemy and will still get hit by aoe. Fair enough. I won't lie, the main reason I even discovered this whole thing and started playing soulbeast again to see if it was legitimate was because an evade-heavy condi soulbeast dueled my rather condi-resistant scourge for what must've been 20 minutes straight, and in the process he revived his pet at LEAST 15 times, which was painful as hell given it was a snow owl applying chill and dealing persistent 1-2.5k hits every two seconds it wasn't dead. i can see that being annoying yea. scourge tends to be somewhat countered by soulbeast in general though, i’m not sure the pet was necessarily the main reason for that. but if he revived his pet 15 times, that goes to show how easily it would’ve died on druid or core lol. Ehhhhh, condi soulbeasts are usually less problematic for necromancers than power ones (especially scourges, and especially especially my particular scourge build). This guy wasn't a powerhouse or CC train like the usual soulbeast. Matter of fact the only reason he won was due to his near endless on-demand mobility-escapes, powerful heals from snow owl merge and troll unguent alone, and constant poison to an extent that could rival the constant reapplication of a burnguard's burning. The owl npc itself definitely wasn't the defining factor, but it made up a huge aspect of his mobility and healing in merge and a solid amount of chill-pressure and curveball power damage when unmerged, both of which faced no drawbacks from the owl's usually limiting healthpool due to its endless free revivals. Using this logic though you could say the only reason necros win is the double health pool or shade uptime in the case of scourges. If they win because of a class mechanic, they won. Though if you're having a prolonged fight with a SB they probably have built wrong, even putting stock in WS as a SB is playing it too safe as you lose a lot of damage. If you meet a bunker core or druid though at best you are going to stalemate them, at worst they have many more options than your typical SB to use on you.

If you think moving walls aren't dangerous, look up the Demon Wall on Final Fantasy XII...

I just got the Runecrafter's, pretty good purchase IMO. It only has 5% less chance of rare mats and 100% chance to give you either a mote OR a symbol, both of which I'd prefer since I'm swimming in T6 mats anyway. Basically I don't get the fascination with silver, since it overlaps with mystic--so just get runecrafter and buy a mystic kit for the rare's if you really want to be particular about it.

Because the Devaluation of T6 mats can be more easily explained; just looking at trading data show the supply has been increasing for most of the materials for around a year now, this coincides with the releases of the Drizzlewood maps Yes... thank you for pointing this out.My point is this:Players who make this complaint (and we have seen a few over the past year or so) always point to how hard to makes crafting a legendary.They never acknowledge how much easier their loot farms have made it, how much faster it is to accrue t6 mats thanks to Drizzlewood or the Volatile Magic Farms. All we hear are the sob stories.Making a Legendary item in this game has never been easier, but these posts about Mystic Coins that cry "what about the casuals making legendaries??" don't stop. I am not even a casual player and I find out even with everything I do daily I can only make around 5-6 coins per day per 1 account. I am talking about Supply and Demand mostly. There is more demand than supply for the Coin market and a lot of TP Baron know that so they are holding coins especially Goldrim who holds approx 500,000 Mystics Coin and his account worth 16.3 million gold. Just this morning the moment I posted this discussion, the Coin price was 3 gold because some guy just purchasing a huge amount of coins on the market. I even know some people who have around 20k - 50k coins in their banks. They are all waiting for EOD and Steam release to jack up the coin price to 4 gold. When Coin reaches 4 gold each, Legendary Gen 1 price is up, T6 mats will also back to primetime. Not to mention, new legendaries might also be released with the expansion. I do not know how many Legendaries you have crafted but as a person who has unlocked 75% of the legendaries items in this game and I am crafting new legendary every 2 or 3 weeks, I am still finding out it takes too long to collect enough coins. You and I might have time to focus on grinding for legendaries but you need to have an open mind and think about the real casual player who has like 2-3 hours of game times per day. I have done some surveys with the real casual players, and trust me when I say it takes them approx 7-8 months for 1 legendary. There are a lot of contents in this game and what is fun when you only have 2-3 hours of game time and have to grind for something you want in a game. Remember this, Gw2 is a game, not a 2nd full-time job. Making a Gen 1 is easy but Gen 2 is a bit different, sure you get the clovers then what? Those 250 Mystic Coin for Mystic Tribute is not free. About the devalue of T6 Mats, the value is going down because you can grind that mats but for the coin, you have a limited way to do it. Grinding t6 map is not that easy either to get a full stack of T6 it takes hours too, it is not as you go to Drizzle Coast, goes around does some events here and there, and kaboom 1 stack of T6 mats. Stop using the word "cry" lol, people have the right to mention and discuss. If you do not like these posts so stop reading them. It is not that hard. Using words like cry does not make you superior compare to others. You might have a top value account in Gw2, you might say crafting legendaries is easy for you, well Good for you then. However, you need to stay open-minded and respect other people opinionReal casual players get out the credit card and buy every mat from the TP instantly. Then they play the game for the collection's and stuff you can't buy.

I like how the OP disappeared in the early part of the topic, and now we're discussing how niche SB actually is. Like, using a similar build to the one in the vid above (with a few trait tweaks) it is truly a monster in a small group / +1 situation. Roaming though? Awful. Way, way too glassy and all two of your survival / escape options are pretty craptastic compared to a good NM build on either Druid or Core. So yeah, I run two builds, this one for my groups where I can just kite and destroy people, and then an survival / immob build where I can duel just about anything (except DE's cause that range / escape advantage is nuts).

I don't understand the topic. I see WvW mentioned a lot but don't see it as a grind--I'm only rank 800 and a couple hundred ranks before that (rank 5-600) I had enough skirmish tickets and such for a full set of legendary armor. But I enjoy the mode, and do lament it has a worse skin than raids--I don't even use the skin at all. I find PvE more of a grind, have to play hours of story missions to get a chance at some basic stuff like ascended mat eaters. Not only that but have to finish some grueling tasks (i.e. chalice of tears) which WvW has no equivalent to. Add in all the mastery tracks you need to grind out to do anything (i.e. gliding / mounts) and it's a big time investment. But, I don't see why you need any of it anyway though, outside of the 'hardcore' content of raids and fractals. If you are doing those you probably enjoy them (like I do WvW) and aren't here complaining about it. Open world stuff has been runnable by literally any stat combo since the game launched--any hard events you have an entire mob to carry you.

Nothing better illustrates how old the GW2 playerbase is than this topic. Twitch is huge, get one streamer behind your game and you get an influx. Even as an experimental thing, like Summit1G did last year; he decided to play GW2 for all of a week and he had 15-20k active viewers at ONE time. That's a lot of eyes.

I thought the ET/DH pairing was weird...but DH/GoM? In the words of Onyx the Fortuitous...'I dunno'

honestly instead of new elite specs i’d rather have them put a lot of effort into revamping hot specs so they can have a purpose again instead of most specs just being kitten versions of pof. and then a new class or something idk. If we're talking about zerg builds here, HoT specs are arguably more widely used than PoF specs. You have Firebrand, Spellbreaker, and Scourge used as far as PoF goes. Whereas Chrono, Scrapper, Tempest, Herald, DH are all used quite often. What exactly do you want them to buff? Druid? Yes, buff Druid

We had Totems, they were called Spirits. They were nerfed to oblivion because people complained they could follow the ranger and also complained about the passive effects granted. If you make the totem easy to destroy or make the ranger easy to CC while using it (i.e. Druid) then it becomes meaningless, as CC is a huge problem in general. I don't love the multi-pet idea as already have to have the one I have on passive as they are awful at pathing. Can't imagine trying to find two pets in any combat situation and then attempt to micromanage them; the AI isn't nearly good enough for that. One new weapon is fine for me as I have huge doubts in the efficacy of any new e-spec.

You really have to look at it in the context of 'why would I play this'. With some of these suggestions I'd rather they not give us a new e-spec and buff pets again, but then the forums would cry they died to 'bad AI' and we'd be in the same spot. A spec literally cannot nerf pets anymore without them being useless; they are walking CC machines only at this point. So any nerf to offensive or defensive stats should be a no-go, we've had a ton of those over the games life. I'd rather 'less is more' approach. Make a sustain spec and fix spirits to work with it. Leave it dual pet like core/druid, and have some utilities or traits that make pets harder to kill in group settings.

Fern Hound is fine. It is a canine so it comes with a knockdown, and is supportive so you get spiritual reprieve. The 'meta pet' and 'meta class' discussion only matters to a point. It all depends on your skill level and how much you like the class, then meta is pretty irrelevant.

I like how a necro complaint thread about rangers turned into a physics discussion...

Interesting topic. My vote goes to nerfing boonshare, because it is lazy. I want the balance to be more like a MOBA where every class has their role and group comps require strategy to win, not mindless sharing of defensives. Most of the guild boonballs I see that roam around (5-8 players) aren't that skilled, they ball up and run but rarely ever down anything. A non-organized group can't down any one of them either, so you get my least favorite thing in WvW--the 20 minute north camp standoff that usually ends with either the defenders losing via attrition or the boonball getting bored and porting. More for the topic, if any class were to be reworked I'd say thief is a good candidate--it does need group support but a lot more things should reveal it or at least make missing on a commit harder. Basically you either get a hit out of stealth and then something to limit mobility or limit stealth / damage and keep the mobility. This way you either build for one big surprise hit or you build to be annoying, not both. For a reference, look up Team Fortress 2, the thief class there was pretty perfect on risk/reward balancing. A secondary rework candidate would be revenant, because they have the same issues of having a lot of positives for really no tradeoff. They can sustain, debuff, CC, teleport, all kinds of stuff and have little weakness outside of they're mostly melee only. They are kind of where OG warrior was, just bruiser without any real downside and in a fight a good melee is going to beat a good ranged as eventually they will close the gap. For my main, Ranger, I also do want some changes. I think entire traitlines need to be reworked so all of us aren't running WS; and if we are going to have stability, spread that out instead of making one overtuned skill in Dolyak Stance. If you look at that balancing it kind of shows you all the issues into one example case--they nerfed RaO (or SoTP if you like, but hate that name) repeatedly, but then years later come out with Dolyak Stance that is basically the same intent but not an elite. Dolyak stance also has little tell (no giant red super sayian flames or 2 sec cast time) which is crazy for a utility skill. Other wishful thinking on Rangers is have Shortbow back at 1200 range to give a solid alternative to Longbow, restore OH Dagger's evade range, and do...something with Torch.

Ah yes, Sic Em + OWP the glass meme build that only works against the unaware. I fought one of these recently, ran into a camp and let the guards do most of the work as the other ranger didn't have any self-protection. But you said it yourself, anything with protection uptime pretty much nullfies this build once you add toughness / vit stats into the mix as well. There's also reflects, barrier, etc. Once you miss that initial rapid fire, you're out. It's too one dimensional for my liking tbh. Anyway, the problem with your 'live fast die fast' meta is thieves. One shot from stealth is a lot easier to do than meme SB builds are, and can escape a lot better. Actually you explain this in your last paragraph about DE's and that's AFTER the big damage nerf patches. We've had buffed mesmer though and it was a lot, lot worse than you're currently 'OP' SB build. Stealth, clones, confusion / torment spam, teleports--they were practically unkillable and for all the wrong reasons. Condi mesmer is something I still find here and there, it just doesn't 1-shot shatter bomb me from stealth anymore. The overall problem is anet seems unsure of what they want to do. Either everything is unified and all classes can do everything or every class has a specific role and has dedicated hard counters. The game is in the middle of this, where most classes have access to pretty much every mechanic there is and also have specific intended roles / tradeoffs and soft-counters. Any change from here is going to be fundamental 'big bang' approach and I'm guessing this is why it's taken so long to do, as those typically cause waves in the community. after RF they have nothing??? my mauls routinely hit in the quintuple digits (10k or more). i have hit over 14k mauls without needing an interrupt first. soulbeast also has the ability to get 66% damage reduction for 6 or 9 seconds depending on your traits. just because you met a newbie ranger playing a build doesn’t mean the entire build is a meme. try fighting a good one.by this logic, do you think any class is OP when you meet player who’s significantly better than you?? yes ofc SA thief beats ranger, but SA thief currently beats everything, except maybe nades scrapper. Have a roaming vid? Curious to see the opponents you are facing. Boon ranger isn't new--it's been a thing since they introduced boon copying on WHaO. The 'broken' part is SB with Dolyak stance and to some extent Second Skin--if/when they nerf those, you will see SB start to take more defensive gear again. That is, those two skills do not make the build (or spec) 'good' to me--still has all of the buggy ranger mechanics and lynchpins on an overtuned skill / trait. For the Mesmer discussion I wasn't referring to a specific specialization, just mesmer in general has been toned down several times due to the tools it has. Mesmer, unlike Ranger, actually has more than a one dimensional playstyle; Ranger has been 'meta' at LB/GS for a very long time because the class as a whole is extremely one dimensional. mesmer uses nearly entire utility bar to pull off a burst, has to time everything right, and even then they have less damage than soulbeast using owp, sicem, PBS and rapidfire that requires no timing. please tell me how that makes sense? does mesmer have some kinda hidden sustain or hidden utility they can bring that makes up for their lack of damage and sustain? for the record, soulbeast pretty decent amount of depth to it as well. it may be easy to pull off high damage but playing it high level isn’t just spamming the same rotations btwI'd like to see a SB played at a high level to begin with--not that WvW has anything resembling 'high level' in it really. From my own experience, the depth options are limited due to the pet AI / selection (we have what, four viable pets) and were limited even more once pet swap was removed in combat. Now it's run a 'meta' pet and do the same standard range rotation, if it doesn't work and they aren't melee then reset. If they are melee try the GS rotation. If all fails usually dolyak stance, block with GS, swoop with GS and swoop with bird to your nearest structure.

Ah yes, Sic Em + OWP the glass meme build that only works against the unaware. I fought one of these recently, ran into a camp and let the guards do most of the work as the other ranger didn't have any self-protection. But you said it yourself, anything with protection uptime pretty much nullfies this build once you add toughness / vit stats into the mix as well. There's also reflects, barrier, etc. Once you miss that initial rapid fire, you're out. It's too one dimensional for my liking tbh. Anyway, the problem with your 'live fast die fast' meta is thieves. One shot from stealth is a lot easier to do than meme SB builds are, and can escape a lot better. Actually you explain this in your last paragraph about DE's and that's AFTER the big damage nerf patches. We've had buffed mesmer though and it was a lot, lot worse than you're currently 'OP' SB build. Stealth, clones, confusion / torment spam, teleports--they were practically unkillable and for all the wrong reasons. Condi mesmer is something I still find here and there, it just doesn't 1-shot shatter bomb me from stealth anymore. The overall problem is anet seems unsure of what they want to do. Either everything is unified and all classes can do everything or every class has a specific role and has dedicated hard counters. The game is in the middle of this, where most classes have access to pretty much every mechanic there is and also have specific intended roles / tradeoffs and soft-counters. Any change from here is going to be fundamental 'big bang' approach and I'm guessing this is why it's taken so long to do, as those typically cause waves in the community. after RF they have nothing??? my mauls routinely hit in the quintuple digits (10k or more). i have hit over 14k mauls without needing an interrupt first. soulbeast also has the ability to get 66% damage reduction for 6 or 9 seconds depending on your traits. just because you met a newbie ranger playing a build doesn’t mean the entire build is a meme. try fighting a good one.by this logic, do you think any class is OP when you meet player who’s significantly better than you?? yes ofc SA thief beats ranger, but SA thief currently beats everything, except maybe nades scrapper.Have a roaming vid? Curious to see the opponents you are facing. Boon ranger isn't new--it's been a thing since they introduced boon copying on WHaO. The 'broken' part is SB with Dolyak stance and to some extent Second Skin--if/when they nerf those, you will see SB start to take more defensive gear again. That is, those two skills do not make the build (or spec) 'good' to me--still has all of the buggy ranger mechanics and lynchpins on an overtuned skill / trait. For the Mesmer discussion I wasn't referring to a specific specialization, just mesmer in general has been toned down several times due to the tools it has. Mesmer, unlike Ranger, actually has more than a one dimensional playstyle; Ranger has been 'meta' at LB/GS for a very long time because the class as a whole is extremely one dimensional.

Ah yes, Sic Em + OWP the glass meme build that only works against the unaware. I fought one of these recently, ran into a camp and let the guards do most of the work as the other ranger didn't have any self-protection. But you said it yourself, anything with protection uptime pretty much nullfies this build once you add toughness / vit stats into the mix as well. There's also reflects, barrier, etc. Once you miss that initial rapid fire, you're out. It's too one dimensional for my liking tbh. Anyway, the problem with your 'live fast die fast' meta is thieves. One shot from stealth is a lot easier to do than meme SB builds are, and can escape a lot better. Actually you explain this in your last paragraph about DE's and that's AFTER the big damage nerf patches. We've had buffed mesmer though and it was a lot, lot worse than you're currently 'OP' SB build. Stealth, clones, confusion / torment spam, teleports--they were practically unkillable and for all the wrong reasons. Condi mesmer is something I still find here and there, it just doesn't 1-shot shatter bomb me from stealth anymore. The overall problem is anet seems unsure of what they want to do. Either everything is unified and all classes can do everything or every class has a specific role and has dedicated hard counters. The game is in the middle of this, where most classes have access to pretty much every mechanic there is and also have specific intended roles / tradeoffs and soft-counters. Any change from here is going to be fundamental 'big bang' approach and I'm guessing this is why it's taken so long to do, as those typically cause waves in the community.

Believe it is necessary now that you can't swap pets in combat; the most balance they could do is half the duration other specs have. So if pet downed reset time is 40 seconds on another spec, it'd be 20 seconds on SB regardless of if you entered / exit beastmode or not. I don't really see other classes (or even rangers) having to try hard to take out a pet though. Any AoE or concentrated condi and the pet is gone in seconds. In group fights the pet is useless, if you aren't a SB you have to have it on passive or be forced to pet swap all the time. Pets really do no damage either, the best you can hope for as a ranger is that your pet CCs successfully. If my pet goes down, I'm more upset about not being able to swap out for the swap bonus, not because the pet isn't functional.

Yeah it hasn't been touched since 2015...and 20s ICD at 300 range using the pets healing power is way, way ridiculous. I wish they'd just get rid of all beast skill related traits--as they do nothing for any spec outside of SB. If they keep them I think those are some good ideas for this one, especially using the players healing power since they've nerfed pets quite a few times in the past 6 years. Even some aegis may be fun, as it isn't on many professions and you'd have to be close to your pet for it to trigger anyway. Guess the problem there would still be boonbeast, as it gets the best of all worlds and really hinders development of the other specs with things like this, as they're borderline OP on one spec and would be interesting on the others.

So to answer some of that in my opinion... The unkillable builds are essentially just built to run, they have massive uptime of things like barrier, reflect, protection, and also teleports. Or you get the unkillible thieves that can use stealth uptime / cleanses + mount to just run forever. Your damage is probably weak due to the protection mostly, if it is SB it'd be weak no matter what you run because of dolyak stance + protection (covers everything). The gankers are just that, I too have always seen thieve pairs and to this day I can't find a solution for that. I play Druid so I do have some stealth and protection / cleanses, but its the mobility of thief that doesn't allow a successful escape unless very close to a structure. Think the night players are due to the mode being pretty stagnant so most people come around reset time no matter what day of week and play for a few hours. The chat thing is interesting...you wouldn't happen to be on ET or DH would you? I ask as I am on DH and have this same experience but with three players, one of which is a very well known 'quick automobile' (so as not to call out by name on forum and give an idea of who it is). I'd try to find a friendly guild tag to get the rest of your mount--I know that in itself is pretty hard as most guilds are either obnoxious fight guilds or non-welcoming of new players (private tag). After that, the rest is up to you--you're staying or leaving will fully depend on the unique nuances of WvW and if you can tolerate them.

Please run ranger. In a zerg.

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.

I've never been told this. Is this a server specific thing? Or is this a map thing, like are you on EB (I never go to EB).