Gotejjeken.1267

Soulbeast while merged has additional mobility skills that Core/Druid/Untamed do not as well as increased damage--so my point was you saying the smokescale nerfs for non-soulbeast 'is fine' makes no sense when they are less offensive than soulbeast is (which can also use the KD twice, once merged, once unmerged because no CD share).

It will get worse, that 1.0 power coefficient means the damage will get nerfed within a week or two of patch for the same reasons Maul did. Makes no sense, SB can still use LB #4 atm and have additional CC of KD from Takedown (LB #4 => LB #2 => Smoke Assault => Takedown => WI or GS #2, etc. etc.). Part of the reason why I assume they are nerfing it in the first place. Won't matter, because with bird changes they just made SB way more powerful as can now come in melee range, destroy you and leave (something like Smoke Assault => GS #5 / WH #5 => new Takedown => WI => Bird swap and have 50 movement clearing abilities so you never catch them). Thus the above where the damage on Takedown or coefficient will get nerfed within weeks of this change. Also, about > 600 range CC's...those would be projectiles--use your mitigation, there are waay more than enough of those in the game right now. If you, in 2023, are dying to LB #4 => LB #2 then that is a huge L2P issue, and you would get beaten by literally any ranger using any weapon.

Reposting this here for Ranger change thoughts (competitive):

Wat I don't read the 'on you' part anywhere in there. What it reads like is they replaced the unique effect in Stalk with Stealth...so the pet can be revealed and also, so it becomes visible when hitting something. It's a nerf.

Smokescale is still meta, just in the wrong way now. I don't think people are understanding what giving Takedown damage is actually going to do, and then when they just reduce that damage how much of a nerf Smokescale will have received for no reason.

Still looking them over but... Takedown change is a HUGE mistake. No reason smokescale should lose a CC, and the tradeoff is the worst balance decision possible. Do NOT increase the power coefficient, you will just get the same 1-shot build again with some other CC in place (GS #5 => newly hard hitting 'takedown' => Wordly Impact => etc.). If anything, take the CC off the soulbeast merge and leave the pet one alone. The scary bursts aren't unmerged ones anyway, and you just hurt Untamed by removing a controllable CC all in the name of assuming hurting the soulbeast one-shot builds. Other quick notes, Phoenix Dash NEEDS to be a CC--it makes no sense as-is, when you have E-Wyvern dash being a CC and leaving a field for instance. Oh, and not sure I love Gazelle stopping at its target--but this is more of a nitpick like with sword idiosyncrasies. I liked gazelle as is because it running through target allowed it to survive in larger scale content as it'd be outside the blob and not get nuked. EDIT: Other bad changes I just noticed--quickening screech change is going to get nerfed like 15 minutes after the patch considering what Dolyak can do for Soulbeast and Unflinching Fortitude--just going to make immortal and uncatchable soulbeasts. Forage changes are also terrible. All that just to get rid of plasma which was like a 1/4 roll anyway? Still have to pick the things up off the ground, so no one is going to be using Siamoth just for stealth. At the very least you need to make Forage like steal where it's just available.

I think the pet becoming aggressive after F2 has always existed--at least I've always noticed it on things like smokescale, after putting the field down the pet goes and attacks nearest / selected target. Always thought the non-targeted F2s (smoke field, any boon pets, siege turtle bubble) should not cause pet to become aggressive, only the attack type F2's (bird's blinding slash, gazelle headbutt, etc.) The other issue in this thread definitely was introduced during the mechanist update--I look at old roaming videos and weep at how responsive F2 was pre-Feb 2022.

It's not ranger so it won't get hotfixed anytime soon 😂

They sort of did this with the original world bosses--it just ends in long boring fights.

Yeah, I don't see 'godmode' eles anymore. Either the player is good and the spec appears broken like with chrono, holo, and untamed, or the player is bad and contributes little to nothing. If anything, your LI specs right now seem to be condi zerk, bladesworn, virt, and reaper.

Sword was meta in sPvP like a month or two ago, but then people used it and got it nerfed for doing 'too much damage'. Anyway, think Pounce is fine it's better than anything else that was on #2 slot--it's Serpent Strike for me that needs its animation back. Double leaps aren't great since they are linear and Pounce doesn't go super far anyway so mobility is low. Other than that, think it's fine--trait is also better as strider strength is better than strider defense as it does yield a lot of power.

Mag tends to cloud around SMC so they can go in it at will, and also tends to blob around on various borderlands off-hours (also historically known as k-training); it all depends on who the link is usually, because I don't think Mag itself blobs, but its link will.

Blob is an organized cloud; blobs are tight around a tag, and clouds are not. Blobs usually run boonball but can just be a huge mass of players (see: VIP).

What's interesting about maces is they can go a number of ways. It's probably a given that the skills will be AoE, however they could be support but also possibly power or even condi AoE as we don't have much in the way of that (torch, and sb/dagger ambushes come to mind for condi AoE). Rifle/Pistol would most likely be more single target--I suppose you could make rifle into AoE skills but we really don't need another ranged weapon like has been said many times.

Sigil of Absorption? There is no rune of absorption IIRC.

Just wait for open world PvE, that way no one can hurt you (except possibly the NPCs)

So, superspeed nade engi right? Though I did have "fun" playing around that nonsense vs. you last season a few times on D/D Untamed of all things 🤣.

Only on Sic' Em Soulbeast--all of which is a Soulbeast problem and not a OWP problem. Burst is fine, OWP was fine; there's enough projectile mitigation to avoid it to begin with and it wouldn't get extreme damage without soulbeast merge modifiers and interactions. In WvW OWP never should have been touched regardless because of all the cele tanks going on, if you were still dying to sic' em soulbeast in WvW in 2023 it was essentially a L2P issue.

It was never a OWP problem though; anyone who plays ranger at a somewhat competent level knows this. The problem is, and always has been, soulbeast. The bigger problem is anet doesn't know how to balance it--at all. If this concept is too tough, put OWP on either Untamed or Druid and see if you get the same performance. You absolutely will not, because the merge bonuses are gone--this is what I mean. In general, you cannot just have nerfs, you have to have power distributions. If you say take from soulbeast in OWP, it should be given to the other specs--this patch it was not. We had OWP and Let Loose taken and nothing given to Druid to even remotely even that out. They have no idea how to balance. They are happy with it because the TTK goes up everytime they nerf and that gives the devs longer to play the game.

Yes; which was a big reason why the 60s CD made sense as you could revive them faster than that should you be able to get out of combat. Then they removed it but left the 60s in place...

Pets were never meant for zerg fights--it's more than an HP balance thing, they have no useful skill there. Closest are 5 target skills like Siege Turtle Bubble, but rest of pets are useless large scale. I was going to type something about complaints due to lower CD on death penalty but then reply came in that said it for me lol... This would be your common take--especially on the sPvP side of things--if death penalty were removed. I personally don't agree with it unless we are going to make soulbeast merge at least 20s+ and/or not revert dead pet on merge. If soulbeast is kept as-is, then pet swap needs to be baseline regardless of pet death; basically, I agree with OP on getting rid of any penalty and leaving it at 20/16s. Also, You don't want this---or won't once you meet a ranger that knows how to use one of these. Especially Iboga, I for one am glad there are like 5 people that know how to use this because he already received a nerf on consuming bite--don't want any more nerfs here. Seriously, I'd never need popcorn salt again if the pull actually worked right. Anyway, if anything, all but E. Wyvern needs a rework (E. needs fixes on its F2 though not to go thru things like a dope), as well as the other ones you named because it isn't survivability, they are just useless in current game.

Anet: Bad pathfinding? Cool, *nerfs Soulbeast* Semi-kidding aside, since EoD release, every new ranger pet has a freeze bug that has at least 6 months lag time on getting fixed--and its gamebreaking to where the pet will freeze for 2-3 seconds on swap and respond to no commands. Also, in WvW, SWC and NWC are undefeated champions of 'obstructed' on alpine---and they are mostly flat terrain. They have enough artists and such and apparently employed an economist once--they really need an engineer or two that understands pathing in a 3D environment.

So, you are a GW2 Karen? Nice

What in the blue hell is a berderpa 🤣 Also, love topics on unspecified 5 second ranger stuns--bonus points if OP is complaining about the pet doing it.

In a way, but we've had splits for at least 8 years---the OWP nerf this patch for WvW is a great example of that, it started in PvE and gradually made its way through as nothing more than a convenience item. That's my problem, is OWP hasn't been a problem in forever because of all the projectile hate now built in--and when it was a problem for a few years, they ignored it because of 'smallscale'. Just sick of letting WvW go stagnant because they keep adding enough new vendors to get the PvEr in, but the game mode itself is dying just as fast as sPvP and these patch notes prove it when all they've done is literally copy previous balance changes over and a few shots in the dark to combat blob lag. A WvW focused patch would literally be that--they would have to correct both small and large scale, and that includes addressing cele and a lot of the actual profession outliers like harb, wb, engis with speed relic (most things with speed relic)...hell speed relic itself...etc. etc.