Gotejjeken.1267

If it a skill issue, you probably can't--that's more the matchmaker being ridiculous than anything. If want to fight them directly, then going to need to learn kiting/positioning to keep the node at neutral or better yet, keep it capped at your color and stall them. If they have it and you can't decap it, then best to ignore the node.

At least I can always count on you two coming at me to inflate a post count---thanks for the feedback, it was a fun read 😂.

I like how this silently got yeeted out of the sPvP forums 😂 Like, we have a billion nerf ranger topics over there they listen to, but the feedback ones get shuffled in the prof forums lolol

Oh ya, can we merge the two mace topics--every other topic seemingly gets merged but these two running in parallel with feedback in both which super confusing.

You'd have to step outside PvE to know this. It's clear you never have by your read of the video 😂

Yeah, all things considered these may actually be viable zerging weapons--here's a quick tower defense to add to your vid:

lol Engi is more than fine: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1990111292?t=03h00m59s Can't count the number of holos I'm facing in high level play now. All with crazy damage and mobility--the next game after this one I actually faced Naru on that build and he didn't even have to do much meanwhile I had to piano keyboard to stay alive (still lol'd at 'oh where'd he go? *looks around*' tho--had to do a ninja vanish magic act just to survive).

It's a cakewalk huh? I'd be interested in seeing how you do that through some current gameplay then (as in this season); since you seem intent on quoting and counter-debating me. Unless you mean 'getting to plat' by multiclassing and sometimes playing an Untamed when you are bored, in which case--QED?

I present to you...the number 1 and number 3 ranked on leaderboard, in a duo (Naru + CJ), and on their main accounts (Naru was even streaming this game with Boyce and a whole bunch of other top players in chat) vs...Gold 1 players! https://imgur.com/a/vXZl3Yx After wanting to keep using Druid and losing a ton because of it, I now sit at I think 1260 lol, but somehow found myself here. Most shocking thing is it wasn't even a blowout loss...I guess Naru team did have two of their players literally die to the beast 2v1, but I'll take what I can get 🙃

No, literally try it on the test golems in sPvP--you can't maintain Force of Nature with the offhand. I think this is a problem that shouldn't be ignored because the mainhand you can maintain simply because it has an extra skill to spam lol. I also don't understand what's so great about mainhand, you get a bland auto, a two skill that you have to wait for the secondary to do anything, and the three skill which does no damage in competitive for the same daze that weapons like shortbow and greatsword yield, but both actually do other things too--and GS in particular has the tools to keep you in melee (the block and counter-attack kick). The #3 skill on mace not doing damage is baffling too, because the #5 skill actually does damage AND has a daze as its finishing effect. That makes...no sense? I don't think the weapons are useless btw, just that they appear better than they are if you couple them with the rest of the ranger kit. Maybe that's the intent--just hoping they land on the usable side and not on the hammer / torch / mainhand dagger (for most applications) side...

Go in one of the southern camps and see how long you can hold it--guaranteed you will get committed 2 or 3 on 1's. These are winnable pretty easily on something like Druid because of the disengage through Celestial Shadow and used to be winnable on SLB through LB #3 + Smokescale (outdamage the weaker and kite the rest) but has always been very hard on Untamed unless you have a +1 helping out. As far as tagging, nothing Untamed offers beats Celestial Avatar for this. Both for selfish reasons as majority of CA skills are AOE (if not all of them) and they also help support by default even if you take Eclipse for offense. This is what I mean by my posts above. Yes, you can play other ways--you can sit in tower or keep in EBG and just kill passerby for perma-participation, but not the healthiest thing to base your balancing around.

Discovered more...it appears you can't maintain Force of Nature in sPvP (not sure about WvW) by using off-hand mace only due to the CDs. You can BARELY maintain it in PvE if you spam both 4 and 5 skills off CD. This is not good. Locking an entire new weapon set to you HAVE to take both is awful, what's the point of even having 1H weapons then? Sure you can use them independently, but you lose 50% of the entire point of the weapon set. I say this needs to be changed to you get force of nature somehow when you have a mace equipped; but considering this is a beta and dev time was spent to ensure each skill gives a certain amount of Force of Nature, I doubt this is happening. Even if every other weapon only gave a baseline amount when you use the skills, it'd be something. I do wonder how much practical time the person developing this has with ranger or the game as a whole. As I've only tested maces for less than an hour and am noticing a ton of flaws--the hard coupling at least should have been a non-starter on the drawing board.

Replace GS with Hammer and Ranger with Spellbreaker, and you tell me what's harder to kill. Anyway, smokescale CC removal is fine with me if it got applied somewhere else--but it didn't. Ranger meta is changing towards stability and less so stealth, so we should concentrate on how offhand mace is going to work going forward, as it's clear they aren't going back on any of this. If you think I'm wrong, go back and watch / listen to how many times 'bruiser' has been mentioned since EoD; they've been slowly killing off LB/GS for nearly two years now. Like, Hammer has stab, but lacks the mobility or defense to actually be useful in any scenario. OH Mace now has the stab, but the mace mechanic itself is going to hold that one back, and stab is the only defense you get on an entirely melee set lol. Sure, there is also barrier on 4, but it's overloaded compared to rest of mace kit and isn't a block/invuln/aegis/reflect/etc. etc. They need to rework it, or it won't hit meta just like hammer didn't. At the core, the problem is they aren't replacing our limited stealth options with anything meaningful. I would love know actual dev thoughts on this if every stream they had wasn't just three dudes laughing about how unprepared they are. Every stream CMC sits there ambivalent, Roy runs around chaotically either showing skills at random or not showing them at all until chat asks, and the other guy kinda looks super lost. The problem with looking super lost is he is the one that is supposedly in charge of ranger now--from the 5 minutes they spent on maces, it looked like PvE was the only place he'd seen ranger in action. That's the problem. Until that changes, topics like this unfortunately are empty air.

At this point you should get rewarded for just que'ing up.

Adding to the above, just noticed skill #3 does ZERO damage in competitive as it carries a CC component---this is terribly bad. Maybe on a 2H weapon set this works (hammer, gs, shortbow, etc.) but here it just feels awful.

First, I hate how we need beta characters for weapons--but I digress. Will need to take it into WvW, maybe unranked sPvP to really get a feel--but in the five minutes I spent using them so far, I can say I do not like the whole growth mechanic. It's too punishing, it times out after I think 10 seconds, will trigger on any non-auto that fulfills the requirements, and has a timeout period. Compared to Celestial Avatar it is very punishing. CA is the closest thing ranger has to this as it is also a resource you build, expend, and then are limited from using for a set period. The thing is, CA doesn't drain outside of combat--unless I Mandela effected myself, I believe it used to, and it was awful. Basically, the stacks of Force of Nature need to remain until weapon swap and should have some actual button for using them--the latter is more QoL as I guess using a skill is a discrete way to do it, but it absolutely should not time out or have a degen mechanic. By eliminating the degen mechanic it also allows mace to be used with something other than mace--especially offhand. At current you really must be running M/M or building enough Force of Nature is going to be tough if not impossible before it expires. Outside of that don't mind them at present, and as mentioned will need to try something like Mace/Mace + GS to really get a feel for how bruiser this can get. They do look more promising than Hammer at present.

Think playstyle choice sums it up best, as for WvW roaming I personally have never met an Untamed I can't take out with Druid or Soulbeast, and Druid can also do zerging where Untamed cannot (at least not in meaningful squad-based way).

Don't see why anyone would continue using in in competitive, even if it does have the smoke field--stealth is far less important for ranger than stab now. If I had guesses you'll see Dog/Bird/Gazelle for Soulbeast, some random tank/CC pets for Druid (because maces, zerging build, etc.), and either random pets for Untamed or continue non-use because why would you put yourself through trying to play a competitive Untamed build in 2023?

Smurf accounts is why the matchmaker cannot work. If you see an account with 300 AP, or an adult film star name, or random garbage for a name--it's 99% chance a smurf. The other 1% is its a bot, but I'm not sure I ever have seen that in sPVP (see them a ton in WvW though). So, you in 1200, are probably fighting some tryhard with alts in the top 250 but smurfing around as they play decay to keep their spot. Add to that where you genuinely get a crazy person placed with you that does not listen and has no skills--which is happening more now that the matchmaker can't do its job due to aforementioned smurfing + low pop. EDIT: Oh, and as the season goes on that will get worse--both because matchmaker at some point will set you in a spot where you get +4 for winning and -15 for losing (instead of like +20/-20 early on) and because as req. games get higher more smurf to keep their spots as they no longer need to play their mains. It happens at all levels--early on in the season I was at 1485, now at 1335 and will be there rest of season because no way to climb out of hole when at best you can hope for is a win streak of two or 50/50.

Some say I'm wrong, but the biggest buff I see for Soulbeast is bird/Quickening Screech now removing moving impairing conditions--that's a pretty big buff for both Soulbeast and Untamed as you can control it in one way or another (merge or direct). Smokescale change is probably a buff for PvE where only damage matters because break bars are hard, and a nerf for competitive where that CC is super useful. There's also some really wacky things that can be tried like Bear Daze on Icy Roar, or Iboga Ethereal Fields....but that's probably me theory crafting out of desperation at this point.

I don't understand the stacking fascination the current devs have. Nourys doesn't work, this won't work. Why, as a ranger do I want yet another set of fluff CDs to worry about? Why would you ever put a 'time out' mechanic on a weapon of all things?! Also, how do you actually trigger the stacks? They say in the stream the auto won't do it, but it makes it seem like it won't do it right away but if you keep auto-attacking it will expend them? It's the same nonsense they have with unleashed ambushes that you have an ICD and then a controllable variant with a different CD if you trait it (Let Loose), and tracking both becomes a nightmare. Now you need to track THREE on Untamed (current ambush timer, pet swap ambush, and now weapon stack...ambush...thing). The 1s of stab on the offhand is also hilarious. You have a weapon where you need 'thoughtful timing' in the same stream you have warrior who has yet another full counter mechanic in bullet catcher where stuff just happens while they channel it. The 5 skill I don't understand either--have they not learned the 'expanding effects' and 'double explosions' absolutely are trash on hammer? How exactly are we supposed to lock people down again to get them to stay in a 3-5s long channeled skill? Does any of this interact with traits in any way? I'm guessing not, since ambidexterity is condition based, two bow specific traits (glad to see all the new condi weapons just auto-pierce while we still have to trait for that), an axe specific trait, and 2H training which is essentially GS specific. Maybe trait interactions will come in Fall 2024 and pet interactions...never? Like seriously, seemingly every other ranger weapon mentions the pet in one way or another---here...nothing...

Have you taken a look at the top 250 lately? In NA, the bottom of it right now was at 1412 earlier tonight...that's almost G2. Matchmaker may work the way you say in theoretical land, but in reality, it is matching anyone and everyone right now. I mean, it isn't hard to tell who is in bronze/silver--forget micromanaging gold 1-3 as its all the same. A bronze/silver player is going to: die on a meta build, fight off point (i.e. kill chase, not the useful type of being off point), probably complain about a minute into the game regardless of what is happening, have zero idea of what a rotation is, etc. This isn't hard. And it's happening a lot right now. To the point to where I'm having coaching sessions in every game I play while 2-3v1'ing and still losing most games (usually close, like 380-400 to 500). Granted with my build the 2/3v1 is more of as stall tactic to stop all the deaths at mid and get points, which is why the games are close. This did not happen even earlier in the year when I started off I think 2-12 by multiclassing and ended up 1480 at end of season--I can't break 1330 right now no matter how hard I play.

Why is the one with the Druid in there--you run in, fail to...do anything really...stay a bit and then run back to zerg...lol.

The runes were pretty degen, ngl. They were fun a long time ago when you could throw traps, but once you couldn't they became kinda trash because ranger traps are for the most part, trash. This then just lead to a lot of trapper druids getting carried by the runes; I see a whole lot less Druid in WvW roaming now that those are gone (thankfully for me as I hate mirror matches).

True, but isn't that exactly what linking does now under the guise of a 'world'? They even internally refer to 'world' as a 'shard', presumably because they are taking pieces of the entire set and linking various parts together to try and create population balance? They've also used things like play time as reasons for why servers are 'full', 'high', 'low', etc. and no one could figure out what that actually means. With this new system, does AFK wall running count as play time? Regardless of semantics, this all points to absolute chaos in WvW in my book.