Gotejjeken.1267

True, but blowing your F2s for condi cleanse has same type of issue, since most of those are CC/utility based. It's akin to how they balanced Druid around CA being offensive if you take Eclipse, it just leads to some really weird gameplay experiences. With WK you use something like sharpening stone, then even if you don't need it right then can wait because it stays stacked, there is no waste there to get a free condi cleanse. Same way with dodge roll trait or cleansing unleash--you aren't losing anything. With EB you are potentially putting yourself in a very bad corner to clear out two condis, four if you go all out and clear / swap / clear. If they upped it to three/four condis it may be competitive then, as there would be acutal reason to use your F2/pet swap resources. Reasoning comes from something like Drudic Clarity, which also forces you to use a resource but clears three conditions.

That's another point I hadn't considered is that there are discords around WvW--my guild doesn't use one and I usually solo roam otherwise, but that is a very good point about actual organized WvW. Who knows, it may yet be. If anet linked random guilds into bigger anonymous groups in the exact same way they do world linking, would it really be surprising? In fact, the full 'alliance' version of this, would it be surprising to have a big 'host' guild and a bunch of smaller 'link' guilds? These are reasons I hate to use 'restructuring' as it isn't restructuring anything, it's the same thing under a far more chaotic set of paint.

Reading through the blog post again, it appears they are going with an EoTM style system with nameless teams (like Quaggan Boogaloo, Water Bottle Mayhem, etc.) and the actual manual guild grouping (i.e. alliances) is left until later. The post mentions guilds being used as a surrogate since both an alliance and a guild are capped at 500. Say a guild is created called 'Darkhaven' just to mimic current server identity--who controls this guild? If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed? If you are stuck with one or more people you dislike but like a different subset of people--you are stuck with half the surrogate guild on ignore / block? Basically, there is potentially a large problem with interpersonal issues. Alliances in full avoids this--as you can break up an alliance each 'season'--but here there is no way not to get paired with bad apples without becoming very exclusive and we know how that ends with private tagging. That is, from my experience, guilds can get VERY catty in WvW; I've seen so many splinter guilds of pre-existing guilds named in mocking ways and BM'ing all over the place. The problem is subsets of the pre-existing and splinter all get along with various other subsets and can continue to play with eachother because of server/shard--now it's going to be super difficult to peace keep / organize.

Safest would be to add to friend list so you can dodge the games they are in, because nothing ever seems to be done about AFK.

Without data from anet I say it's the same now, just gold concentrated instead of bronze. There aren't enough people so the matchmaker basically grabs from everywhere anyway.

Wait, Engi gets sticky bombs? lol *insert TF2 reference here*

No ranger 1v1's...maybe it is true that a good ranger is the only thing that counters a thief 😉

+1 Untamed is nowhere near this mobile either lol

I don't think they will as pet CC's don't trigger the effect, for instance. I am still running it on a few of my more CC heavy builds, with cover condis and in teamfights it can be useful as long as it isn't getting instant cleansed. Not like there are better ones to take in say WvW anyway, outside of speed--a few of the new ones are fun for more bunker but I don't find that particularly engaging.

Anything can manage just fine in the meta as long as you outskill your opponents lol. Of course, Boyce could do fine without the teleport as...it's Boyce? I can solo q into plat with immob Druid in late 2023 after about 5 nerfs and 3 adjustments to hammer it into a 'support' role, and in a super invuln / tank / projectile hate meta at that...does it mean it's good? No...

Not to derail my own topic, however as one of the most vocal ranger mains on the forums, I disagree--outside of probably raids, double melee ranger isn't viable really anywhere. None of the elite specs really emphasize melee either--on Druid nearly all your CA abilities are ranged, and staff is ranged (leaving weapon master out of equation). Soulbeast and Untamed came with melee spec weapons, however both have always operated at range with Sic' Em Soulbeast being the pre-dominant method for years and untamed with the pet ambushes which occur away from the ranger and do not require it to be melee--unlike Mechanist who is punished for being away from the mech. I doubt mace changes this, in 90%+ of the game modes you will still get say Longbow / Mace + Wh or Longbow / Sword + Mace or Mace + Wh / Shortbow or Mace + Mace / Axe / Wh---range is always there. Now for the topic, of course I'd rather at least UT be a ground targeted shadowstep, but realize it requires a target to avoid all the issues that occur with other classes that have ground targeted skills which cause topics like this to be made. Also, as an aside about specter...you may want to check again, they are very much used in sPvP 😉.

I use Nevermore: https://imgur.com/a/eLGX1x2 Outfit is a bit more 'magical' at the moment instead of straight nature Druid. For clothes that have the theme, the Druid backpiece you get (Wayfarer's Henge?) has the same type of look, and some of the new SoTO stuff looks between wizard and Druid with robes and such. EDIT: Adding second picture as not sure what my character was doing in the first lol https://imgur.com/a/X4sM0SY

To clarify, above I'm talking about condi untamed being a decent duelist--I agree that condi soulbeast is lacking as the merge skills are not up to par with what unleashed pet skills can do. The only change that made condi untamed 'decent' for me is the double ambush, you can do a lot of things with that which doesn't exist on soulbeast and is only marginally outclassed by Druid because of Celestial Shadow. I have some roaming here with a build I'm still working on for Untamed and my normal Druid roaming build: This one is before the new relics, so believe I was just using speed and Dire stats? Anyway, it gives some idea of my thoughts on roaming with condi variants of both Druid and Untamed.

Ranger? Deadeye? lol You really want to call for nerfs? Okay then, shadowsteps should only go horizontally not vertically, may not go through walls or any other obstruction, and the only vertical teleport allowed are mesmer portals--we need to remove the thief variant in order to standardize roles again.

So shadowsteps are only linear in your mind? As '0 jumping and 0 weird movement tricks' removes all elevation related movement. Or is the 'if I can walk it, I can teleport it' apply to elevation too because 'eventually' you can walk there (i.e. valid path to target location). Ex: The 'oh man I'm downed or in danger on Khylo but let me use shadow return / teleport to port myself out of danger, bypass all stairs, and end up back mid'. The former to me would be fine, if you could only shadowstep forward/backward on linear surface (not through walls)--this is no different than movement skills such as ancestral grace on ranger staff, or I think Death's Advance on Deadeye (believe this is only forward moving to valid target area?). The verticals / teleports need to go, as no reason to bypass walls or stairs for any reason in the name of 'flow'. This creates massive imbalances, such as Willbender being able to teleport up slopes with Crashing Courage, but Ranger having to have valid target with both teleports (UT and dagger ambush). Or the aforementioned Khylo example which I encounter a lot with thieves as the map is mostly vertical and tailor made to bypass literally all of it as long as you have shadowstep ability. EDIT: I should clarify almost all verticals besides things like mesmer portal which take actual resources to use, and you know what's coming, or have a good idea. Not sure how far that extends to things like thief portals and mesmer portal guns...but the original idea is one usage where vertical movement makes sense.

Virtuoso lol. For topic, I am skeptical of the usefulness of the growing mechanic since it isn't going to well with the relic. Also, I see OH mace getting nerfed 3 times in the next 3 months, and I obviously don't even know what the boons on it are yet.

Why is this topic so aggro? We had this functionality in GW1...called preparations: Preparation - Guild Wars Wiki (GWW) This is something I'd like to see return and we do have a single skill like it--sharpening stone. It wouldn't have to be limited to bow type, just extra utility that could be slotted--obviously tuning it as 10 stacks of burning is far different than 10 stacks of bleed. In fact, things like 'read the wind' were a far better solution than blanket quickness boon but that's an entirely different discussion lol.

I think it's both--ground targets give unrealistic/uneven mobility, and yes, as a byproduct exploit terrain. If you change those to target skills, you can easily fix the 'go through walls' bug and still retain skillful usage of a mobility skill. It's the 'flow' argument I don't understand, as at what point is bypassing stairs, teleporting up vertical surfaces, or actual exploits like into towers/keeps in WvW 'flow'? If it is flow, then they need to bake it into things like mechanist and ranger pets, maybe even necro minions (think mesmer clones teleport with the user?) because they have to do extra mechanics like pet swap/recall to get them up elevations, when they should be able to shadowstep to the user by default then. Judging by the new weapon previews--the former. Things like necro sword and mesmer portal gun are not going to decrease mobility, sadly.

Where in the PvP meta, exactly? The latest Untamed PvP build was hotfixed nerfed due to being a bunker--that one didn't use UT at all. You know what it did use? Neurotoxin Burst, which has been nerfed I believe three times now in sPvP, to the point to where, in persistent g2/g3 and above, I have never seen an Untamed use it. I've seen Solar Brilliance a few times, and by and large still Sword variant Soulbeasts--but have not fought an offensive Dagger untamed (ex: non-bunker) yet in over hundred games between the last two seasons. But power untamed? Completely and utterly relied on that teleburst, hasn't been 'meta' since late last year / early this year at best. The power meta since then was soulbeast, but they took a nuke to it in both PvP and WvW. Agree in general sense for WvW--from my perspective, Druid is really the only safe bet anywhere at the moment. You can run on Soulbeast, but do no damage (outside of obvious +1 ganks with a partner that always have existed), and if you run Untamed you either can't do enough damage on power, be mildly useful in guild duels / havoc, and be useless in zergs or have a decent duelist in condi but cannot do outnumbered or zergs like you can on a Druid. Who knows, this may change with mace--at least in WvW, I for one don't expect Mace to last long in sPvP due to it literally being designed as support/bunker.

I'm sure you were here for EoD when everyone was screaming about Willbender and Harbinger being OP--and they've dominated smallscale WvW for almost 2 years now. Outside of that, Necro and Guardian have always been staple picks for sPvP whether it's Core Guard, Reaper, Harb, etc. The only real spec we saw fall off entirely was Firebrand. The entire point of Reaper was it is slow, like a horror movie villain (actual stream quote, look it up). Like, the entire theme. Why does it, or any Necro spec need a leap?! Especially one with health drain, a chill, corrupt, etc. We know they never balanced blight properly to be an actual risk...there is no evidence this will be any different.

Which one? As this one was three weeks ago about 'PvP meta builds' and first one mentioned is the (now nerfed) condi bunker Untamed.... The DPS he mentions in duelist is catalyst which 'isn't ideal as it's slow' and scrapper which 'can easily be locked down'. His alternatives? Dmg bunkers like Vindi and Reaper, or roaming bunkers like Specter...

These were all 'X of the Arena' types, it's all I encounter unless I get to bottom of g2 then start encountering other titles again lol

Noticing a huge uptick in just all bunker specs--every game boils down to who has a scourge now. I mean, just had a game with two tempests, a core guard, and a mechanist--all bunker, not condi bunker, not support bunker, but just straight do no damage bunkers. The other team had Untamed Staff bunker, Scourge, think a Spellbreaker---it just boiled down to the scourge can hold node longest. I think this is due to can't really run DPS anymore due to all the mitigation, ground mark spam, etc. This won't get better with the new weapons which prioritize support.

I believe immob druid caps out at g2 in PvP for most--I've had it up to 1480, but dropped back into g2 as it cannot carry like the old version could. You can still stalemate a sidenode or +1 pretty well, but 99% of time you need more than that to win sPvP games unless you luck into a team that isn't actively throwing or doing something crazy--so you need that carry potential. I'd probably stick with thief in sPvP as ranger atm is quite weak--or at best middle of the road.

Even if WAS an area denial like Solar Brilliance, they will nerf it. They've repeatedly nerfed both Neurotoxin and Solar in sPvP because they are useful, I have no faith that changes here--especially if the mace has a chance of giving stab, aegis, another projectile block, etc.