Gotejjeken.1267

All I have to say is...reapplication rate. You probably survive the fights as the player skill is so low now that most rely on traps or other ground targets to burst with. So, you can avoid the entire burst by staying out of the range of a trap/well/etc., and that's pretty easy to do when lot of times they are highlighted in literal red. But, a good condi bunker will always outlive a power burst--you will survive any power burst as they can only hit 15-16k--but probably more like 10-12k with toughness, so you can take 2-3 of these with the 25k+ HP you have on a condi bunker build. Once a power build has done the burst they must kite and or switch to mitigation. There aren't enough cleanses for this on a burst build and eventually the bunker either wins (as good condi bunkers also carry plenty of CC) or outrotates--just by reapplying conditions like poison/chill and not even really using ANY active defenses, just toughness + vit. The tldr; is cond is the most 'burst' at the moment because you can reapply it at least twice if not three times in the timespan it takes to pull off a power burst. You also get access to a LOT more defense as you don't have three stats to worry about (power, precision, ferocity)---you have one...condition damage.

sPVP being small isn't a balance thing, its because anet has historically been horrible at tutorials. There is no tutorial in WvW and there is no tutorial in sPvP--just some random 'training golems' and a super toxic lobby. That, and the same maps have been around for years with the same dated three-point capture mechanic. Doesn't help most if not all of the maps are imbalanced for mobility / port in some way--especially stuff like Khylo. So, if you don't take any of that, you are just going to be killed in transit and quit the mode. Sure, high-ranking alts queing in unranked doesn't help matters (presuming new players start there), but that's always a 50/50 whether you get them on your team or not. Wouldn't want the combat slowed down at all, as that's what makes it different than other games. Every class has its defenses, if someone doesn't learn to use them it's entirely on them. There are overperforming builds and super bad decisions (blind spam, aegis spam, invuln spam, reflect spam, etc.) but not sure if that really drives player retention away as much as everything else does.

Wait, you are not running any condition damage but using Eclipse? Not to get too far in the weeds here, but cele would benefit you in WvW as the conditions there were even doing more work than the hammer was.

For my money, that was mostly sword/Eclipse doing the work there. Every time you switch to hammer harb had time to rest, as non-quickness hammer animations are very slow and usually miss just by the opponent moving or spamming dodge (guessing that reason for running what looks like celerity sigil). Also, reason I personally have issues about running hammer on hybrid druid as the Thump => #2 combo only did like 2.8k there (~24s mark)--it can hit upwards of 9-10k on a full power build. Anyway, have a feeling if it hadn't been a mismatch to begin with (harbs are generally ranged vs. your pure melee) and they went reaper instead, I think we would see a different outcome if you had to use the hammer to kite with, even with all the cleanse your build has. With weapon master I'm actually not sure why more necros don't just switch to reaper and use the pistol--to me it's way stronger than harbinger is. Anyway, one thing to keep in mind if you want to port this build over to sPvP is cele gear isn't a thing nor hybrid stat combos, so you'd have to go either pure power / support or pure condi (and that wouldn't use hammer).

What mode?

Oh I know, I've faced Youle, YouleALT, YouleHighOnMeme, YouleGoesFast (or something on engi lol).....

Think they would just nerf hammer modifiers a bit if they were to add it to 2H training. Still really unsure if it helps the situation though, as while hammer can be a menace in a group setting like WvW, it really does punish you for messing up. Say with GS, can miss the hilt bash and still put up the block and get kick CC => Maul, or Sw/WH can basically spam your sword skills and if those miss, WH daze => stealth, etc. for escape. But hammer, if you miss the thump or don't chain a CC into a #2 correctly (get blinded), you have to weapon swap or you have no other meaningful way to disengage. That's a problem to me and think it's a reason you don't see it often in high level play. It just gets competitively outclassed by the other melee weapons; dual maces may be closest parallel, but even those may have more disengage potential with the #4 on mace OH or couple WH with mace mainhand.

Depends on mode--in PvE, I'd agree--but in competitive, hammer lacks the defense GS has. In that light, think the CD reduction would actually be very beneficial there, as if you miss ANY skill on hammer you are at a bad disadvantage.

Yeah, how exactly are you getting multiple hate mails 'on a bad day' OP? Also, in PvE or competitive? If competitive, there's nothing to stop someone from BM'ing through emotes / siege / etc. even if they don't directly message you. So, I would probably stay away from sPVP/WvW if a little troll mail is bothersome. If PvE, hate mail would be a new one, as I've never seen someone angry over open world as to mail someone, and instanced content you usually do with a guild or group you know. EDIT: Actually, nvm--this topic kind of explains everything:

Test them in sPvP. Only thing left from there is the stat combos PvE provides, but you'd have a pretty good idea anyway as relics don't really make or break a build. Also some amulets from PvP overlap anyway..like if a relic is good with berzerker amulet in pvp it will be good with berzerker gear in PvE/WvW. In general, relics have promoted power creep though. Take Trapper Runes + Speed Relic, has made condition builds way more mobile than they were when Trapper Runes just had the 6th bonus. This extends across the board and couples with weapon master adding a ton of power creep...all of it is just causing players to leave I fear.

In WvW in a field...somewhere

This is true too, but reverse for me...had to actually block someone for whispering me in the middle of a game to tell me to 'stop afk'ing on home node' when there was a bunker untamed actively trying to camp it. So, if I moved, they'd just decap and / or backcap it. So I ignored and blocked them, and we won 500-300 or something as said untamed was now not holding their own home or bothering mid and our thief just kept decapping their home and we won the mid fights. But, I have also been blocked for yelling 'I like bears' in chat on spirit watch when doing unranked--a player on my own team seemingly took offense to this, afk'd, and started spamming chat for the opposite side to win. They didn't...but I lol'd.

I wish, except that Duo Q is a thing--so likely if you are g3/plat, the enemy team could have two plats and 3 silvers--meaning you still lose. This has happened twice to me in Naru games this season as he almost always plays with a duo. This also doesn't factor in smurf duos, where you have one known plat player and the buddy on 'Johnny Asura Sins' or some nonsense alt that is in like silver but is a plat 2 main. The other times that I have been frustrated and people messaged to tell me that I was on a team with mostly silver / g1 is few, but it's happened two or three times now. I'd probably say something about being gold 3 in chat then ask what the rankings of others were out of curiosity, and a few times I got whispers that matchmaker was putting like silver 2's with me. Basically your second point about sidenoding and not dying is really they only way to SoloQ climb. If you are holding attention of 2-3 ppl and still lose, then IMO you should blame your team lol.

Seems to make no sense in HoT when all that was available for ranger was Druid--and no one needs 8 supports. Especially when Tempest also came out then and were fighting for raid slots with them in the support category. Spotter used to give precision and from what I remember ranger was pretty much only taken in raid groups for that (to help other classes critcap) / healing druid could output, not sure how shortbow played into that when no significant changes have been done to it since the range nerf in 2013. If shorttbow was meta, it seems like Skrimish/Nature Magic/Druid or something would have been meta for a bit with shortbow because spotter got moved from marks to skirmishing right before HoT, so you could take it and the shortbow GM for the first time. Also, Frost Spirit gave bonus damage on hit, so could see a spotter/spirits druid being an appealing thing at that time. Would have fell out later when Soulbeast came along because power soulbeast gave ranger entirely new role.

It's not just 'nightclub housing'--it's an entire scene: I don't think every MMO needs this, and this kind of thing only happens when housing / RP is opened up. It just takes too many dev resources for a niche part of community, and will not generate traffic that some think it will.

The glider? We had those back in my day of 2023 when that was recorded--the Great New Year's Timewarp to 2012 took them away though 🙁

Think the second might have been due to Spotter? As used to give precision to allies---guessing that may have been enough to make it meta in raids for a bit.

Player housing is going to lead to dudes that like to dress up in cat outfits and run nightclubs like FFXIV--do we really need that kind of attention? Big streamers also tend to avoid it because GW2 is kind of weird. Like Summit1G played for a bit but then uninstalled on stream as he got wrecked in sPvP, and Asmon I believe doesn't like GW2 as there is no gear treadmill. They do need to work on the streams though as they are either awkward or in the case of balance ones just way, way too informal.

It's not cele that needs balanced, it's the interactions. This need existed pre-weapon master and relics, and now the interactions need triple balancing--so really will be surprised if they just don't keep ignoring it. For instance, look at something like scepter thief--the abomination only happened with combo of cele, opening up all weapons, and thiefs natural abilities / being able not to take specter and replacing all support type abilities with damaging ones. Or, now pistol reaper which has ranged component in addition to some insane melee damage (what it was actually designed for)--can run cele on this and be an absolute menace.

Yeah, that's just basic needing to cleanse. Condi bursts on ranger aren't new...the soulbeast one is a one trick burst but have an Untamed build that can kill people pretty quickly with condi: In fact, this isn't even a ranger specific thing--with trapper runes and various relic interactions, condi damage is higher than it ever has been. The downfall is outnumbered situations--at least on ranger, as if enemies are properly cleansing it is very hard to keep the condi pressure up with only a few conditions. Also do not have the stealth for disengage unless you run Druid, and that build is so niche it's pretty unreal.

From my perspective, it requires zero team coordination to play well. I only play it and have played against Naru/CJ/<insert name here> top 10's on opposite teams with games being very close--last one only lost 480-500. Currently I'm sitting at I think a mere 1420--but I've never duo'd in ranked, and at one point this season I decided just to grind out games for Wizard Vault and went 1490 => 1260 (lol) and since basically only have played enough games to get on the board...if I was trying harder / grinding out more games maybe could have top 100 with it. That's why out of any spec I like Druid as it really does require a certain amount of skill to be helpful on as so many things shut it down now. If you CAN play it well, then I think it's something to be proud of--well as proud as anyone can be in this balance nightmare 😂.

Not the swap, the F2. Instant cast ones will work fine like Turtle bubble and Moa aura, but attack ones like gazelle headbutt, wyvern charge, iboga pull, etc. etc. all lag if the pet is doing anything else. That is what I'm talking about, and that is the direct result of Mech auto-attack implementation. It's easily provable as mech because they had auto-attack before ranger did, for the first few months of Untamed's life had to manually use all the pet skills.

Swap freeze is dev issue on any new pet added since EoD, that one can agree may not have anything to do with a specific profession. Skill and specifically F2 delay absolutely was. Specifically, auto-attack and other 'mechanist first' items broke the way pets were able to cancel their own actions.

I love it. They will have to put resources and effort into making sure that fixing pet pathing doesn't break anything...buuutttt... Mechanist broke Ranger F2s for 2 years now and that's fine. Literally, for a garbage spec that even engineers hate. That's beautiful.

I bolded it for easier reading. Literally every time a major change like this happens, they put a red dev post in the actual sub-forum it affects, not just a random announcement in the news section. Since the gliding change ONLY affects WvW, they could have just stuck it here instead of announcements and gotten more benefit out of it. Like, CMC put the December AT announcement in the actual sPvP forums instead of a random announcement, because it only applies to sPvP. And sPvP is DEAD--that should tell you a lot, lot. I hope all this is clear now.