Gotejjeken.1267

Bruh please: With no extra boon duration: Oaken Cudgel - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Line Breaker - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) 4s prot for Line Breaker, 3s prot for Cudgel; Stun and some Nature Strength / Force of Nature and Pet Heal (lol) vs. 3k Heal, Aegis, Unblockable and Weakness. 450 Range vs. 1200. Mending - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) "We Heal As One!" - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Mending 6520 base heal + 5 condis removed, 3s prot when traited 20s CD. WhaO 6520 base heal, 2s prot copy (if you already have it) 24s CD. So far, we're at 7s prot vs. 5s prot with just these two skills. For upkeep, war is way ahead due to a four second CD difference between healing skills. Now just assuming spellbreaker vs. protect me: Full Counter - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Guard Counter - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) "Protect Me!" - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Traited Full Counter: 5-Target Flat Damage, 100% Damage reduction on next attack, Stab, Daze, Counterattack Evasion, 3s Prot on 12s CD. Literal profession mechanic. Protect Me: 3.3k barrier, 4s prot, 32s CD utility skill--also blowing one of your usually two stunbreaks for this. Now at super basic level we have War with 10s Prot vs. Ranger with 9s Prot--but Full Counter is on a way, way lower CD, is not a utility skill (so you don't have to sacrifice a stunbreak)--so Warrior is still way ahead here. I'm not going into Invigorating Bond, because you threw up Smokescale as your pet of choice instead of Siege Turtle--so we're way past meme now. Even with Turtle I'm blowing a projectile block for another 3-4s prot. Don't need to fill out the rest of the builds (as for Ranger upkeep would require also blowing dodges with WS); just going to leave it at, please stop meme'ing. If you are losing to a ranger or stalemating a ranger on a healbreaker, seek help.

Which is fine. Most of them are only in Plat 2 because power of duo--if you take that away they aren't staying that high. Even if they smurf, I bet a lot of plat 2 settle to low plat 1 / g3 solo only, whether that's beating everyone until they get to that level or losing until they drop to it. People have to realize on NA there is zero difference in skill between 1550 and 1450 right now, despite crossing plat/gold threshold. Realize OP is being facetious / meme'ing but just wanted to throw that out there for anyone who isn't picking up the subtext. There is a large difference from say 1450 - 1250 though, and that's where I believe a lot of match volatility is coming from due to low population. It's also why you see people with like 300 games barely hitting 1500 at end of season with a 52% winrate or something...

8k on medium armor (ranger), not including the damages axes do after the immob + little tell gets you insta-gibbed when you combo both: gw2 thief axe — Postimages (postimg.cc) It was 16k dmg in under a second, from stealth lol

It not just stealth, it's stealth + ports, then weapon skills, dodges, heals that remove pretty much any soft CC (big one is immob) + blinds (pistol field, utils like blinding powder, etc.). There's no counter here except bunker and laugh as they lose decap / cap to stealth and roll / port around trying to dent you--but I really don't think that's great game design.

Sorry, but what kind of nonsense even is this 😂. What's this rotation look like, Mace #3 into enemy, random pet F2 for some prot, blow your stunbreak in protect me, blow your heal in WHaO...? It's like old Sic' Em Soulbeast but entirely useless...amazing. Meanwhile on War I spam Line Breaker and do literally anything else and have pretty much 60% prot uptime with a small amount of boon duration without even including traits lool. If you want perma prot, Line Breaker + Mending w/ Defense line + Traited Full Counter and some boon duration is really easy way to do it methinks. This also includes the condi clear, stability, etc. that Warrior gets by doing literally anything. EDIT: Just noticed you posted that on April Fools...please tell me it was April Fools....

We had a PvP rush event...so they know it's there.

True, but that was in July 23' (I remember one of my roaming videos having a cele harb that I fought / stalemated but didn't think it was too much at that point); now we don't have the ranger burst anymore, lot of patches since then to buff various classes (like WB), etc. In current April 2024 meta, I think cele is carrying too much, yes. Partially agree, because I don't think ranger needs cele like other classes do. You run your cele druid I run my trailblazer / apoc druid, both come out to condi bunkers in various facets--and both perform fine. Only disagreement I have is when we say ranger is 'fine' after numerous nerfs to it over the past 3-4 years. There's not a ton of point to the class anymore really comparatively to others, and there are reasons people come for rangers first, even if they know the player is decent. It's probably an argument of preference though. Ranger sits somewhere between thief and warrior--either bursty and mobile or tanky and mobile. For me, it does neither particularly well comparatively, so I'm unsure where they balance from here.

But your lynchpin is 'somewhat decently played cele build' because cele stats are overtuned, way, way overtuned. I don't know how to say this, but I think cele may be carrying you to the point to where you think Ranger is somehow the best class in the game. That's not to say you are a bad player mind, just that the stat set is so skewed its making Ranger look way better to you than it is. Anyway, if I say something like post up a roaming video of power ranger, you'll say you won't because its cele meta. If I say show some sPvP footage, guessing you may say you 'don't play sPvP because its toxic'? Regardless, it's super easy to find thief, wb, or mesmer roaming videos, bursting people down--even in a cele meta. The only 'roaming videos' we get from ranger are cele bunker--because that's all that's left.

Think lot of you replying that Ranger has good access to protection missed this part of OPs post. Basically, to get perma protection you must go full bunker (the aforementioned WS/NM combo above), when other classes have it with cele gear alone and get to do damage. Literally just running WS for a power build is a hugeish DPS loss over BM/Skrim or Marks/Skirm, even with the new traits. That said, if you do go full bunker you are going to be kitten near immortal now with the right setup. You will deal like 50-100 damage an attack (maybe 300 if it crits!) but nothing short of a 3v1 is going to kill you.

WB cele power + burning burst, DD cele condi burst, Chrono power burst, Ele Fresh Air roamers, Shiro Burst, Nade Engi bursts (cele Mech, Scrapper).... I've ran into or played with all of these in the past two days. They are all actual bursts though, as in you die in 2-3 seconds if you don't mitigate, cleanse, or dodge. Ranger has none of this--we have cele druid bunker with bleeds / poisons, maybe a few random burns (kite for 20 min and hope they die) or SLB power that are sustain / bunker as the burst has been nerfed out of OWP and the like. Untamed is also power bunker now, just less effective than soulbeast at that role (think I've ran into one in three months). So based on that, I have to disagree that it's the cele meta doing this--they specifically are balancing ranger around melee bunker now. We're essentially warriors with pets with all the drawbacks that come with it (practically melee only, CC's with no damage, slow telegraphed attacks).

Dolyak is literally the most overloaded skill Ranger has, so of course 'it's nothing' lol. If you enjoy cele bunker because you don't die and can do 3v1's vs other ranger that's great. At least you are having fun. Doesn't mean the class isn't a fraction of what it was though. From mobile burst class to cele bunker is just, boring. Extremely, utterly, boring.

Man now we gotta go into the wayback machine when I used to click my rez skills, was petrified of 1v2's I could probably actually win, and struggled with mesmer clones but still was pretty adept at roaming: The important part here is look at RaO--it was legit like SIX seconds of stab that very few classes could strip (maybe just necro) and turned a ton of fights. The pet also was responsive (thief kiting behind a wall from the bird lol), did damage, and despite swords backward #2 it was a menace. Was probably the last time I used torch too as it's still stuck in 2014...but yeah. Anyway, it's not that the players are bad, as a lot of us have been here since the start--it's legit because the class is a shell of what it was. You posted it yourself, all that's left is bunker Druid that only fights outnumbered because it's a cele bunker. Try outnumbered on something with little to no stealth and non-cele--do we still blame the players for being bad / dying? Ranger is useable, sure. It's just not fun at the moment. To make it fun or to be like the old way above, you have to be super skilled now as everything else is literally super powered. It's not even debatable for me--I could (and may) make a roaming video showing people losing to something like maces in WvW, but that doesn't mean they're good, and it doesn't mean we blame the players for being bad tower rangers that only afk double barrage; it just means some of us have played ranger way too long and still enjoy it / able to make most out of nothing, despite a lot of things being entirely non-functional now (i.e. the pet). In the end though, I kinda want to remake that old outfit now--it is fashion wars afterall, and maybe simple and black is what is needed to describe the current state of ranger 😂.

Yeah, it's a paradox. Pets can't have increased HP or stats in WvW as it'd break smallscale. Cele breaks smallscale and it's fine.

TIL Ambidexterity increases the condi duration for maces but no CD reduction--on an entirely power set. *slow clap*

I do enjoy that Naruto's last few posts on the forums were defending 'duo's with friends' and complaining about Sic Em' rangers 😂. Also, reading that topic it could be current and not 5 years ago. That's...not good lol.

There's two parts to this I see: First is stability access. I have a rather large issue with them removing Shared Anguish, but other than that ranger has always had the same amount of stability access. Two elite skills give it, Dolyak Stance, Untamed gets it on disable, mace has it on #4 (with reset ability giving potentially two uses), Druid CA #5, Centaur relic, etc. That is, ranger has stability, just not spammable stability. Second is longbow / 'archer' archetype issue. That unfortunately is the way the devs have balanced it out--it's not just an issue of projectile blocks / invulns, it's also the bunker/boon spam that makes power burst rather useless now. Not much that can be done there, sadly. As far as thieves and invis, as ranger you can have quite a few access points to stealth: smokescale field, lb #3, siamoth feathers, druid celestial shadow. You really just have to know what to use when, and the golden rule of don't chase thieves. For 1v1 its more of a skill issue as ranger does have tools to survive a singular thief--but two or more, avoidance would be prudent as not much is stopping a coordinated attack. In general, running condi bunker is the key to success. Bunker is the way of the game now, and condi just gives you more breathing room than power does in terms of securing kills. This is also a design flaw of the game where damage over time skills are essentially burst skills (due to the way cleanses and application rate works), but you also only have to worry about condition damage only instead of three stats on power.

Let's just agree to disagree lol. I'll just leave it at: Taste for Danger, Ambidexterity, Refined Toxins, and Poison Master were condi, no power--so 'underwhelming at power' means you didn't take it for power. It was a line only taken by condi builds, now it will be taken by select power builds (i.e. bunkers) because they randomly decided to add power traits in there. For my money, Carnivore is insanely powerful in sPvP atm / smallscale roaming in WvW. There's no difference between 100 HP x 5 from Thump giving you 500HP or 500 HP x 1 enemy giving you 500 HP. Your suggestion is either a nerf, because if they did like 100, 80, 60, 40, 20 or something it's much lower or probably overtuned if you are getting near 1000HP for 5 target skills (say like 500, 200, 100, 50, 50) as we already have enough in the way of immortal bunker atm.

Think cats have same DPS, but Tiger is chosen because of its Fury F2.

I blame CMCnomics

Not enough to keep up with cats or things that can output a lot of CC: Power Untamed Build - Guild Wars 2 - Snow Crows In competitive it's too squishy for most circumstances to do any DPS, and merged its outclassed by Gazelle or other pets that have movement skills + CC.

It is this: Untamed - Staff/Dagger Untamed Duelist - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds Core principles for bunker is you want full melee (or possibly melee + staff), and a lot of protection, regen, and barrier. You can expand that to add stability in certain manners too--basically Druid isn't the only way to make a bunker despite it appearing that way at first. For pets, you almost always want turtle and then something else tanky or that has some sort of CC/sustain abilities. The metabattle one uses smokescale as the field grants stealth--but pure bunker (like with sPvP) you don't even really want stealth or you mess up point contesting / capture as can't contest when invisible.

Some downsides I see are, one stunbreak, little to no stab outside CA form and no block from GS or counter CC pressure from hammer--going to make it a bit hard to stay on point. I'd personally also take White Moa over Pink because of the frost aura. Also Tides over Alignment, as the push to interrupt rez is more impactful than whatever they made Alignment to do. There are other quibbles, but don't want to brainstorm something actually OP on the forums so it gets noticed 😂.

Shocking Grasp....Spellblade... OP, what game are you playing atm? Just want to make sure its GW2.

For all you confused souls: Trust me, I'm as confused as you are 😂

I'd say bunker. You can also try a remorseless / midnight king build, but its less safe than a bunker build, so your results may vary. It's boring, but with bunker you can stand in zergs in WvW and also just perma-cap nodes in sPvP or perma contest them if the other side has a staff war or something. Essentially same concept as the old Untamed D/D bunker but for power and not condi--can use basically any of the specs to do it as well.