Gotejjeken.1267

Running Druid? Demon Queen in outnumbered? Assuming WvW...yes? How does not having extra stab on swap, not taking antitoxin, centaur, nayos, or speed help you in outnumbered? Why would you even want ambidexterity in outnumbered? How are you running D/D in outnumbered and not dying fairly easily to literally anything with mobility? I mean, it is really, really easy to see when you can CC a ranger. On core, it's always unless they pop RaO and have super Saiyan red glow, on SB you listen for the Dolyak noise and wait out the bar icon, on Druid just wait for them to be done with CA #5. Untamed is the only sightlier tricky one as you can get stab on disable, but in general it's just kite the elite and watch them cry as they wait 80+ seconds for it to be on CD. That was the power of Shared Anguish, as while yes it should be at least 2 stacks of stab and not one, it wasn't even remotely close to 'useless'. The opponent has no idea when you will pet swap, and when you do the stab only enhances your turtle bubbles and whatnot.

Ranger axe is 900 my dude.

Tell me you have no idea what I'm talking about without telling me you have no idea what I'm talking about. Synchronous fighting with the pet is often a dumb idea, as it can do more than one thing (you fight on node, it fights off). In layman's terms, if I run on the node and my pet is currently fighting something off it--I get hit by the trap. You're not reading, because you don't want to read. If the Druid is spec'd for barrier, they can stay on the node but will get CC'd by anything on the node because no stab (unlike core guard). Also, to use your terms, in what world is a Druid fighting a Core guard 1v1? Also, to inform you--'gold player' is such an old insult, because on NA, you can look up pretty much any given players here (aside from a select few like grim and eura) and see that they are 1450~1550 (including Sayian who is the only Guard I've seen from NA on here in my games). The days of your '1600+ is a good player' are long gone, my friend.

The fun part here is they always pass condi druid off as nothing, then nerf it anyway; like every stream you will see CMC or now new guy talk about the 'weird condi build that's running around' but no explanation as to what it is. They also nerf off the legit weird and not really functional ones, like the current condi build on meta-battle. Like it uses Iboga (which will die immediately regardless of how careful you are with it), D/D (that has no CC or kiting ability) and Sw/Wh (which is power), then takes Nature Magic (to make sure you are super slow compared to Skirm) and some other weird choices (like Natural Balance over Celestial Shadow when the build has zero stab outside CA #5 and next to no barrier gen outside of Protect Me...). Someone legit copy/pasted the WvW roaming version to PvP (without the cele that would make that work). Wouldn't even take it in WvW as just asking to get roflblasted by random WB and not be able to drop target cause...Natural Balance. And yes, all that's super weird, and yes, they are nerfing condi Druid on that. Thankfully at this time it won't change too much on the actual good condi Druid builds out there outside of shared anguish removal hurting a lot. The rest of it they are swinging in the dark despite having a recent AT with a Druid in it. Pretty sure said Druid didn't use a thing they are nerfing and instead they are literally nerfing strictly off the aforementioned metabattle build. Like they may have used Glyph of Stars but they aren't even nerfing the rez in PvP which is...special? Carnivore and somewhat re-buffed UT will be the kickers here--I'm not sure they are actually the healthiest things but will be fun until they get hotfixed.

Thanks for expanding on that; I will agree to disagree with this as from my perspective, Druid has no good way out of traps like Dragon's Maw--as yeah you can roll/stunbreak through it if you time it just right, but that's really hard to do outside of when it triggers on an empty node. Pet also won't necessarily be able to trigger the traps if it is busy doing something else (asynchronously fighting another enemy), so many times I've accidently wandered into an off-node trap only to get stuck and have to try to blow stunbreak or get stab (which is tough on ranger to begin with). Oneshots are also kind of simplified here, as if get KD by trap or tether into it, it's fully possible to die from the amount of burn a Guard can then freecast on you. Sure, there are condi cleanses, but not always available when competent Guard pull you into said traps. I still think Core guard outsustains Druid if they know to wait out the astral avatar, as core guard has way more access to stability. So, Druid is going to have to kite off node a lot unless like spec'd entirely for barrier, but even then will just get CC'd to death because of lack of stab. WB is probably even fight, may favor ranger (unlike WvW).

Staff, Line Breaker, etc.

Agree with both of these. Also, Flowki you are correct that it is not the burst you remember because both this and WvW forums had that removed (Teleburst Untamed and Sic' Em Soulbeast). So now, the 'monster' that has been created is melee bunker Druid, which trust me, a lot of rangers are not happy about--as it's pretty boring. It's boring because you don't do anything for your team but contest nodes, however you can't keep them capped (because of AoE ground vomit and 25 CCs coming at you from any given class at once) and get constantly yelled at for keeping them neutral (twice yesterday this happened to me in guarding home, we won both games, still got called useless). It's also not a complete vision, which does no one any favors. What I mean is, right now it's in a somewhat overperforming state because we don't have healing spring, glyph of stars, and shared anguish nerfs. When those do go through Ranger probably is back in dumpster as Mace #4 is great, but not enough to carry the entire set. The thing is Ranger bunker is good but not as good as other bunkers (like the guard debate I was having above...Core guard is a far better bunker). This kind of sums up what I feel about that:

What about WvW? Anyone can enter it, and at this point it's I think six different games by your line of reasoning. It's also competitive endgame content. The counter here is, having no warclaw and on a core spec is going to be a vastly different experience than the cele wb or DE that just wrecked you is having. So, can we conclude that PvE mostly isn't pay to win because you can pick and choose subsets of what you buy and none of it is monetized for progression? As I do agree that PvE is mostly cosmetic--the only real overlap is fractals (as strikes/raids you have to buy xpacs for IIRC) but can still do the lower tier ones on core specs I'd think.

Such an overarching statement...care to elaborate? I'd love to know how ranger counters guard, as I've already given a bunch of unanswered examples of the opposite. Not sure it was, as I was speaking strictly on the stealth field being OP, which is a rotating carousel that this forum loves complaining about: the pet => the stealth field / stealth access => too much burst => too much sustain. You get a stun + target drop, or you get a ~8k burst from a sword skill and then a target drop...what really is the difference here? My point is, mace #3 is not the only stun ranger has, and not even a ranged one. It's literally balanced the same way as about 3 other ranger weapons and we still get all caps 'nerf now' topics 😂. Really though, what does all this forum complaining result in? Nothing...because went from teleburst untamed => burst soulbeast => stall condi Untamed (d/d+Staff) => stall builds with mace. It just made the ranger players change up playstyles literally every patch, but hasn't actually balanced anything.

LB/GS Untamed (Marks/BM/Untamed) with Signet of Hunt, Sic Em' and Speed Relic; mix of Marauder and Dragon. Run Smokescale and Turtle. Rotate between your GS block, your stealth, and your turtle bubble (both the actual bubble and the unleashed #3) when thief come in melee, and when they run LB them. You will counter DE's this way, as all the projectile hate they can't do anything. That will leave just the core thieves (as haven't seen a roaming DD or Spectre in a bit); with core just watch to see if they the eldritch horror condi variant (with scepter) or just your usual P/D nonsense. Either way, GS block + LB 2 charges (LB #5/barrage) will keep them out of melee range for the most part. Also, if you see 2 thieves, or a thief and a +1 (like Harb, WB, DH, etc.) just kite troll them (run away or pretend to attack) as good gank duos are very tough to handle, even on bunker specs.

OP, can you stop crying for three seconds and...

Yes please. Thief cope is fun, not enough that the mechanics of the class break most of the rules of all terrain but now the weapons do too!

A core guard vs a Druid on a point is a stalemate, or the two players are not the same skill level. It's also easy to trap Druids with DH if they aren't running a range weapon like staff--maces play into this by being pure melee, so it's the Druid that has to watch for the trap puke to begin with. I know, as random unaccounted for traps are really the only thing a DH can kill me with (either failing to stunbreak the tether or just stepping on the wrong node at the wrong time). Guard is not weaker than ranger. You might have to outrotate if you are running into higher rated rangers (1600+ probably in your case), but in general should be equal matching or dominating ranger of your skill level. No different than WH #5 => Stealth or GS #5 => Swoop => Stealth. In any case, losing almost all access to stability, ranger needs the stealth field anyway--if you think that is OP you are just getting outplayed.

Why do you need to see signets on a bar then? For me as ranger it'd be better to obfuscate my unlockable, but I currently cannot because signet of hunt shows. 30 seconds is also a pretty long time considering the number of ports a thief has to get back to said portal; here for instance the thief could commit twice, once to the far => home portal and once to attack me. The latter is the problem here, if I had known a portal was active, I wouldn't have PBS and taken them most of the way back to it.

Ah...yeah that would be nice if they'd update that to be seen (like signets can), especially in competitive. Just thinning out loud--wonder if you can chain thief and mesmer portal gun together then? Say a thief use a shadow portal back to home (like in vid), but mesmer gun portal was also home and mesmer far--so they could port thief right back?

👍😃

Right, the original core game counts as paying...correct? Assuming the actual game and not the F2P 'demo' or whatever some on here like to refer to that as. Out of curiosity, do people differentiate 'pay to play' and 'pay to win' depending on how toxic they feel the 'paying' part is?

Random unranked game and see this: I know thieves can do some things, and usually in stealth--but I've never seen that before. First port looked like shadow step, especially since it breaks stun and they had just been PBS'd. The second one though...that's some distance. I know shadow portal goes super far but thought you get stealth off it (maybe they didn't as rapid fire was finishing?), and not sure it can be used in combat like that? As in, shouldn't you see the icon on the bar for more than a split second? I'm just suprised I haven't seen it used more often--or is it more like a college type play in an NFL game? As in it doesn't get run often because while very effective it's somehow risky to run it?

Your ~1500 and still haven't figured out how to fight rangers on a class with how many active and passive defenses again? 💀

Why do you keep saying '11 years' as if mounts and such were in the game from the start? Mounts were just the first big departure. Business models are additional large departures. If there's anything this game does NOT have, it's a 'standard formula'. To pull a 'you', apparently they do keep veteran's interest over releases, as we're all here debating how boring the game is.

Curious, with what weapons/traits?

No? Used to have renown hearts, jumping puzzles, reasons for exploration. Core, HoT, and PoF were all complete expansions--but PoF started a big change in mounts. It's not hard to blow through new areas (and old) in minutes now with a Skyscale because it can go anywhere. This for me is a big change that facilitates boredom--just skip all mechanics (bounce mushrooms, zip lines, etc.) and use a mount. SoTO is a living world season sold as an expansion. That's far different than 11 years ago when the living world not only made permeant changes to the world, but it was also free as long as you logged in once every month or two. That is, standard formula is facetious at best because the formula has changed many times now: base game + free LW (core), expac + free LW (HoT-PoF), expac with no LW (EoD), monetized LW as expac (SoTO). Essentially what I think OP is getting at is they'd like something other than PvE to be a focus. Considering the age of the game that's probably unlikely, but who knows--there have been plenty of games to shakeup what they are doing (including GW2 in the LWS1 days).

Not all Gen 2 lege's. The 'true gen 2' or original ones (Nevermore, Chuka, Astralaria, and H.O.P.E.) don't require the mat sink. I also don't like this spin of everyone comparing the lege relic to a gen 2 when you all know you went the rune copout method; can't let that taint the vision for the new players. It's a ridiculous amount of crystals no matter what way you look at it.

I may not have gotten far enough in the new stuff (stopped after getting new weapons), but so far Nayos just feels too disconnected from rest of Tyria. I daresay need more than just random rifts hunting in Tyria to drive the point home as right now the entire xpac feels like a bottle episode of a TV show. Just the main character doing things with other characters in a location that has zero to do with anything else currently happening. Like, Inner Nayos looks super unique to me and may be among my favorite art styles the game has, but I can't remember a single thing going on (or tell most of the characters apart by name) as it's seeming to aim for some GoT style Kryptis drama but the gravity of it is missing. Lot of that might be due to the piecemeal nature of it, hard to judge an unfinished story really.

Yeah, for better or worse GW2 has always been 'pay to win' in this way. Before the 'omg it's not gacha with waifu girl summons and random super stat items so not pay 2 win!' brigade comes--I will just say this, there are no core specs that hold up to e-specs at this time. You can play core specs and weapons, but they will always be behind on any balancing, as all of that is done with the paying in mind. Fun fact too, if you go to the WvW notary and use the scroll but haven't done the steps--it just disappears, and you have to do it through the story anyway. It was unclear to me if you had to get to the step in the story and not want to do the 5-min treasure hunt so just go to WvW and buy it from the notary or what---but yeah.