Gotejjeken.1267

I think I understand now, and to most of it I agree. Grinding games shouldn't yield a higher rank but here it does because the 'skill rating' is meaningless since it also relies on 4 other people. They would need better criteria for individual rankings for it to have any merit.

I would love to see conquest ratings for you both at end of season--they better at least be mid-plat 2+ and not more than 150 - 160 games played. Also, must never be in a duo the entire season. Otherwise, ELO hell does exist and 99% in SoloQ are stuck in high-g2-g3 unless you grind enough games and then game the system through decay to stay plat 1. Above that dedicated skilled/meta duo and/or off hours + massive game grinding is a requirement (for example last season some in the top 5-10 had like 700 games played).

Charge currently is on 1.13 coeffic for 'impact damage', which I assume will be the only one left once they 'fix' gazelle not to go through things (i.e. travel damage). Also, since it moves you, it would be more comparable to smoke assault which makes you invulnerable--difference is you can use charge to move away from things while smoke assault requires target, but I'd still compare takedown to kick instead. Will have to see it in practice I guess.

The pet is not the ranger...are you new to the game? Just stealth before you stomp or apply stab like any normal person would and you'll be fine.

As long as you remove downstate across the board, sure.

I agree but am highly skeptical because they just nerfed Maul for essentially the same reason of using it to burst from stealth / it not being super telegraphed. The similarities are there with Takedown interactions, the complaint just switches from 'oh I got CC'd randomly' to 'OMG the pet did 4k crit on me without warning' and 'OMG merged ranger did 7-8k from stealth WTF'. If I'm wrong, then that would also mean ranger loses a CC for a mediocre damage skill which then I guess is still a nerf.

tldr; play bunker/support and grind games

Agree; and the fact that sPvP is the least played mode makes it all the worse. Actually too, they have a 3-mode split for a reason--so if they changed in sPvP they didn't have to touch it in PvE or WvW where it wasn't problematic. But like you said, they base everything on MAT for at least sPvP and WvW (sometimes they use test golem for PvE), which makes no sense.

Takedown (Soulbeast): Reduced the cooldown from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. This skill no longer knocks down enemies. Increased the power coefficient from 0.7 to 0.1 in PvE and from 0.01 to 1.0 in WvW and PvP. Only merged version matters for what I'm talking about.

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I believe the actual paradox here is that they intended to nerf it, but they actually didn't (at least not yet). As, Takedown now has damage--so you will get good stealth bursts with it; after a week or two of that THEN it will be a nerf once they adjust the damage down. As for the unmerged, the pattern is predictable on swap (smoke assault => takedown); if someone leaves the pet out then it becomes a bit unpredictable when takedown will come off CD, but it's also unpredictable for the ranger too--no one is trying to set up a burst outside of from swap. The fact the new 'pet master' dev apparently is missing all of this is the most concerning thing for me at least.

Literally sPvP--if anyone wonders why nerfs happen, look at the sPvP forums, you will always find the reason there. Anyway, the 'reason' is Plat 2+ players (e.g. Boyce) were using teleburst to great effect--the problem for the rest of us mortals is that specific combo was VERY hard to pull off in an actual situation without macro use. For the WvW side no one cared about it as Untamed isn't really used there, so yes, things like Judges Intervention seems out of line on WB because it has so much mobility. The problem there though is JI is a core skill that used to make sense when Guardians wern't sonic the hedghog speed.

Yeah, we've had this discussion a lot; I'm not even sure it has defenders just justifiers, as no one (at least competitive minded) has provided a good reason to even defend the change. It's more like 'well it does more dmg now and the old skills were all flash and no substance so meh'.

Right, but again it's not the only pet to do so. Gazelle, which they 'buffed' to not run 30 miles from target has its charge on swap, and has headbutt, so you are still eating 2 CC's. Even the actual CD's of the CC's don't matter as they occur immediately after pet swapping (headbutt is F2 so controllable, but 99% sure Gazelle uses Charge out of the gate after swap). What I'm getting at is the guy who is balancing pets, doesn't understand pets. You can't just nerf / change smokescale just because it has a smoke field, when plenty of pets have CC's on their F2 that are just as useful. I don't even think the Smokescale change is a nerf--I've said it elsewhere but what you will see now is Takedown burst from stealth which IMO is MUCH worse than a predictable pet CC that lines up with all other pets.

What's the difference here and say LB Dragonhunter with traps? Run onto point => get snared by DH trap => LB DH True Shotting from 1500 I've had that happen a ton of times on Skyhammer, Capricorn, etc. places with higher up ledges and absolutely nothing could do besides burn a projectile defense like you mention above. So, all long-range area denial should be nerfed? If so, I could agree there, but right now it's one-sided where ranger loses access to long range pet CC and only CC trap is spike which doesn't even keep you in place like DH one, but DH untouched--and same range with LB.

It's not that bad my dude--especially in a duo roamer situation. I've run into a number of them that were tough to fight even on power because defense stats in WvW are out of whack.

Condi mech is still pretty insane in WvW

Bunker / Condi Druid with staff is still better in every way, and even that's so weak I'd like to see it played past g3. In addition, it's very hard to do damage on this type of build and be melee with all the CC and AoE condi puke (scourge, DH, etc.) that occurs. That is, with dagger you can't really take Shared Anguish--or you lose the CDs + condi dmg--so getting in close via pet swap is tenuous with no stability (and popping your elite to go in melee is bad). Untamed simply doesn't have a defensive utility you can use offensively to go in melee (i.e.: Dolyak Stance). Condi untamed was ok in the 2v2 mini-season though; still hard countered by Reaper though.

Not RNG my dude. On pet swap smokescale will do smoke assault then takedown--all pets have patterns like this. Also, again, not the only pet with a non-F2 CC. L2P?

Was trying to go back and watch the balance stream... Is it me or are 2/3 people muted on the VOD? Like I watch it and only Roy is audible which...doesn't help since he isn't actually balancing anything 😂 November 28th Balance Preview Livestream! - Twitch

Ya'll need to agree on what you are getting wrecked with--one side we have ranged CC in LB #4 and the other melee CC in GS #5--both of which somehow lead to Smokescale KD being an issue? I'll just say as devil's advocate, the latter makes way more sense to me as you aren't setting up a ranged CC with smokescale unless you are Untamed, because while the AI is predictable in its ordering it is really hard to actually pull pet KD => burst on soulbeast off. I can see a merged ranger trying GS #5 then Smokescale KD as a backup--one of the reasons I advocated if they remove the CC only remove it from merged soulbeast. Smokescale CC isn't the only one that behaves this way while merged, but won't go further into that lest the other pets lose their CC's too. Anyway, I'm not actually sure what the dev rationale is because everytime I try to view the Twitch stream 2/3 of them are muted during the ranger portion for me. Like I hear Roy talking but the other guy that supposedly is balancing the pets has no sound on the stream. Which is ironic, but if someone can point me to them actually discussing smokescale it would be very helpful.

My question is how much experience you have with Ranger, and/or why you are posting in the topic when every post thus far is just directed at me? You say to fit 'my needs' but look through the topic, for instance, I'm not the only one saying the smokescale nerf was a bad decision, was just the first one in the topic to say it. Not sure how the rest fits 'my needs' either--an actual example of what would fit my needs is Iboga health getting increased, but I didn't mention that.

Not to mention it was necro'd by some dude talking about Fractals...

Agree to disagree here--Swoop may be on 18s CD but it is getting coefficient increase + 4 additional vuln stacks and new Quickening Screech is just mandatory, as still applies swiftness (hello speed relic) and now removes cripple, immob, and chilled every 15s?! The more I read the patch notes the more I hate them though; they are basically making a reciped for unbalanced soulbeast again and pets themselves (unmerged) are pretty much getting straight nerfs (ex: Jacranda with 'Fixed an issue that caused pet to have more health than was intended' lol).

Gonna have to name em. As in the last five patches (since July 18th) we had: OWP nerf, sword nerf, Prelude Lash nerf, Maul nerf, Signet of Hunt nerf, Ambush nerf, and Solar beam nerf.

It's the pulsing blind that is the issue. Smoke fields are fine, it is ok that some classes combo stealth with themselves; what becomes issue is the blinds that are generated and the most egregious to me is as I just mentioned, the pulses.