Gotejjeken.1267

Just fought him yesterday and today in ranked

Think we see them now because of DH nerf--one of the big counters to Druid was DH trap/trueshot combo, as supporting allies is done in melee for Druid. It is alternative to core guard, but one I'd argue that is worse unless you outskill your opponents a lot. As it's really hard to camp on a node due to the lack of CC, and Glyph of Stars honestly kinda sucks unless you are only support. I use it for more of an offensive support, only for the stab as I really hate how glitchy entangle is, and on a power build don't really need it. Also, this is a better point to my admittedly snarky response above--CA #2 is a blind, so if you try to Chill to Bone or whatever during that, you will miss. Untamed actually should be more egregious with this, as you can trait pet unleash #1 to blind--and then either spec can use hammer #3 for a blind (untamed would have more flexibility here too). Guess you can add in blind from smokescale fields, which usually untamed runs more than Druid because Druid really doesn't need a secondary source of stealth (but can work).

L2P issue, sorry bud 🙁

Core guard alone pretty much makes condis irrelevant unless you have someone CC them (usually on a power build). Not sure how anet balances around people fighting in the aisles and actively running away from supports? Will say the cover condi deal is problematic though--would be nice if cleanses targeted different things or could trait to target different things first.

"Chilled to the Bone!" - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) vs Entangle - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Same CD

Chilled to the Bone is kinda loaded, ngl

Oh good, actual worlds are back now instead of Tumblr generated ones!

This is what happens when you pick Spirit Watch too many times...

Buzzbugs.

Spirt Watch? People fighting at spawn and ignoring all nodes as I scream 'welcome to pvp' (or BEAR) and run by with the orb? Instant 500-100 domination!

So...buff soulbeast?

Need some Drooburt x Goldclaw lore

It's pretty potent. No one will care though as yeah, 90%+ of rangers don't know how to use barrage properly--if at all. For the rest, thinking power druid setups may be fun in larger groups now (unsure of full on zerg, but cloud v cloud could make a build that gets many a bag)--may even outshine mace if they keep this double barrage around and don't change mace by quite a lot.

Well, Boyce is going to have to go '9k trueshot, noOoO tether, HmmmMMM' and then they will shave another .3 off

Okay, when you say you finish around gold 2, and an entire season (120-150 games) it seems as if most of those games are g1 and below? As last season I started at top end of g3, fell down to high end of g1, and then finished in mid-g3 again. That's with ~160 games and I think a 51% win rate (won 1-2 more games than I lost). That's on full dice roll solo q, a build that was good like 3 years ago, no decay playing, etc. etc. It's the point about extremes earlier--'gold 2' is average now and then top g3+ is Top 250+. Gold 1 and especially below that might as well be the 'clueless' category. So even if you are in gold 1 most of the time, you are close enough to the 'clueless' players to get bad games 70+% of the time. This is for NA btw, but I imagine the same would hold on EU as I thought someone said Top 250 there was 1550 instead of the 1470 it was on NA last season. Which would mean your 'clueless' category is probably even gold 2 over there. It's not a matchmaker thing unless you are higher up. The tldr; about being average or lower is as again I said above, there is no average. There are top players, clueless players, then the outliers stuck in a vicious cycle between that.

Here's a question...what do you expect from sub-gold games? Same applies to unranked really. I've done most of my rush even in unranked because of this exact reason--newer players will inevitably queue ranked and make things more difficult than they usually are. The point I'm getting at is, in unranked (as a general)/sub-gold everyone is a 'less than stellar' player. You may get a 'top X' player on your team because of the matchmaker, but that is literally the only outlier here. When everyone is subpar, it can't be blamed on the matchmaker. I can see on the flip side as a p+ player if you are stuck on carry duty all the time, that gets frustrating. But if you are on the other end of the spectrum, there's unfortunately not a ton you can do but learn to outskill your opponents at least 2 to 1. Then you will rise in rank and get to where most of us are complaining about, and that's g3+ where you are stuck in 'elo hell' between being on carry duty and being on some top X players stream with their duo carry chasing you all game. Whether all that makes pvp 'worth it' or not is subjective--I would tend to agree with you at the lower skill level end it most likely isn't, because it is a huge gap between 'low skill' and 'high skill'. As said above, if you are in low skill your teammates will most likely either be new to the game or no skill at all, and if you are 'high skill' your opponents are probably the same 10 streamers on mains or alts. The conclusion for me is, sPvP has no middle ground now. There is no 'average' rank. So, if you are even average you will end up in 'low skill' and most likely justifiably ragequit the mode.

Right, because that's what anet does. Boyce is also the reason teleburst Untamed was nerfed, and only he and similar skill level pulled that off consistently. Not saying good or bad, right or wrong--but that's the pattern. Anet balances around top players no matter what the rest of us can do.

I know somewhat (or really all) unrelated here--but the first 15 seconds of this I watch sounds like an auction 😂. Well yeah; the problem with seeds was as we know, the hard cc removing stab then the immob happening forcing a cleanse. So either the boonrip happens before the CC negating stab or it happens after, but it's already removed stab (as hard CC's remove stab stack)--so you are now ripping something like prot too. Of course, that's assuming only 1 stack of stab, but sometimes that's all some classes / configurations get. I see that getting problematic with shortbow builds for the same reasons seeds did--but not just shortbow, as WH also now has a CC (remember for years when it didn't daze?!), as does GS, as does LB....hammer has a ton...not sure about maces (I forgot that beta already lol), but still.

I never said melee, even though recently Boyce likes his GS ambush from stealth. What I meant is you can hit a 10k+ rapid fire with quickness from stealth too, and usually don't do the LB #4 beforehand to give it away. To me, both can be dodged, the DH one a little easier (to me) because if you dodge true shot that's it, ranger LB is channel, so you have to do probably two dodges (yes two dodges, much wow...but still 🙃). Just to kind restate my point here, I'm not saying DH damage as a whole is fine--I think the traps are and most likely always have been in need of some looking at. The rest of the DH kit though is kinda weak compared to a good roaming WB or just playing support (which yes I know no one wants to do, esp. in randoms).

Was endless whining about Ancient Seeds proc'ing off hard CC and giving bleed/immob... You really think they are going to put boon rip / corrupt on hard CC?

You get a CC warning beforehand? This is Boyce, you get hit with 10k from stealth and that's it. The LB #4 => #2 is noobstomber move at best. That is correct. You watched the clip and even listened to him go '10k True Shot with noooo tether...hmmmmm'. Nice. Again, a TS he's not getting hit with if he wasn't BM jumping up and down for 2s in range of said DH. But, since we're now throwing mAT into things..here's Decembers EU finals: See any DH there?

Oh good, so we are actually done... Thank...uh..Kormir?

Says who? I track it just fine and I only play to p1 at most. Also, it wasn't a chaotic team fight lol, it was boyce and a duo trolling a downed reaper. Just saying, but I thought it was obvious... Anyway, you'd have better luck with this argument and DH traps; not trueshot which has a friggin' huge telegraph.

Mmm...not too sure about that.

Should probably state your definition of grind for the class. As for me, 'grind' implies more than the traditional 'unlock new e-waifu by playing 1000 hours' grind from something like Genshin you may have been thinking of. Grind in GW2 for me is slogging through the same copy/paste meta events / convergences / etc. to get relics (ex: the Inner Nayos / Behind Demon Lines / etc. ones). For others, grind may be slogging through a WvW or sPvP reward track to get the Amnytas boxes. EDIT: Beat me to it as I was typing 😂.