Gotejjeken.1267

Nerfing damage on Untamed of all things 😂. Bright side is they didn't nerf core...yet. Guessing the 'logic' here is that they hit Fervent Force in PvE and no one uses it in sPvP so they had to nerf something randomly to feel like they did a good job on balancing. There really is no other explanation for this.

They are somewhat comparable if you bring GS for the zerker, as both are 'blow all your skills and hope stuff dies' type builds. I would agree that the zerker is in a much risker position on messing up the burst, because the burst itself is far more important and it decently hard to disengage (you must blow your gs skills, where slb can just use pet merge skills to escape). With the amount of passive blocks and cele/tank builds I've given up on the one-shot memes. Can still run full glass and wreck people in two/three shots, much easier.

Should rename this to 'Lone Thief TROLLS Gank Group' 😂

Right, yeah, I wasn't clear on 'AI'; meant the entirety of the pet not just the logic it uses (i.e., awful pathing). They really have never wanted to buff damage, mobility, or utility of any of the pets, which is why the EoD ones remain broken 1.5 years after release. Sure, some of them (siege turtle) are marginally useful in specific situations, but by and large they have all been untouched for this very reason of hesitancy. But if we do look at 'AI' being the example of mobility, we can see the dancing around this problem by looking at arguably the most useful pet in smokescale having a teleport closer it casts before anything else, and also in untamed having the ability to teleport any pet to a target. Essentially, they have addressed the pet mobility problem in two ways, but neither works broadly. That is, SS is just one pet and not a general behavior, and Untamed port has issue of you really don't want your ranged pets being melee....ever. There is also the matter of quickness not applying to 90% of the pets... The question then becomes why not just fix the quickness bug and make teleporting to target baseline / fix behavior (melee teleport in with effect, ranged teleports out with effect)? Or if teleporting is not baseline, make pets way faster than they are now? Just increasing movement speed and fixing quickness bug should alleviate a lot of pathing issues they can't fix because someone way back in the day tied pet AI into global enemy AI or something crazy. The long and short of it is, if someone or something can target the pet and take away 50%+ of a non-soulbeast's utility and damage, then the pet should be buffed to warrant targeting in the first place. Otherwise, it's just an unfair disadvantage to the Ranger.

Oh, don't worry, they'll reverse course on it at some point. Just like they did with soulbeast pet swapping, which for years was so OP that had to be disabled, but not a peep since they not only added it back, but also added ability to do it when merged via trait. I personally never got hit by it in WvW or in 1480 and below in sPvP--so not sure most players actually could pull it off. Or maybe I just have too much experience on ranger and knew what to avoid, but even then, it was way easier to get caught by random mech rifle spam or engi nade spam then it was UT burst. The skill itself has always been bad though, because while horizontally it could be useful, it is/was useless vertically. That, and actually using the burst overcommits like no other, so either you hit or die and even if you did hit with it, in group scenarios you still die or blow your elite trying to get back out without being CC'd a million times.

From anet perspective it seems to be the answer, because they have nerfed pets multiple times--and have given reasons in PvE for doing so in that they don't want Ranger to have advantage in solo'ing content. Who knows if this is still the stance, but in general they really seem hesitant to buff the AI itself. How I read it was that anet pushed all damage into soulbeast; but do agree it wasn't necessarily through multipliers. It may seem that way, but it's how BM behaves with slb doing it, in that they can't buff core anything because slb will be way out of line when merged.

For PvE, yes, I believe 'just use soulbeast' is the answer due to how stacking mechanics work for any content that isn't open world. For competitive, believe all that's needed is scaling damage reduction. That, or traits that can be slotted to reduce damage to the pet. Having only a select few useful pets is another matter, but that is solvable by making sure each pet has a CC ability, getting rid of the AoE casts (or at least making them faster / always apply to ranger then AoE for anyone else near), and yes, fixing all the responsiveness issues Mechanist introduced. In competitive the pet is extremely useful, at least the ones that have CCs are. Of course they lose effectiveness in zerg combat, but we do have soulbeast, and maybe modify druid to turn the pet into an astral form as well if you are in CA (it takes no damage but can't do damage either or something). Untamed could always just reduce pet damage when the ranger is unleashed... The tldr; is pets aren't really up to par with the current state of boon/mobility spam this game has, but they are definitely not a passive ability.

I take it you are new here... Crippling Throw - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Block has always been a thing on Ranger GS, the only change 4 years ago was removing crippling throw and replacing it with selective use of counter-attack kick, instead of the kick just happening if something was blocked. Due to feature creep, I agree the channeled block should stay, and really just either choose to end it by throwing the GS or if something is blocked use the kick (essentially what OP said).

Maybe PvE, I'd love to see the sPvP / WvW forums if Ancient Seeds had no ICD 😂.

I fall into the camp of each specialization should have a function. For Ranger that would be: Druid = Heal + Control / Condi DPS (bleed) Soulbeast = Boon DPS / Pure DPS (Condi or Power) Untamed = Control / Power DPS (at current time due to how hammer functions) So, we already have all bases covered here. Shoehorning power modifiers onto Druid traits / skills is just a bad idea all around, as the spec was literally designed around healing and condition control. In addition, anytime they try to make a hybrid weapon it turns out sub-par or awful in one game mode or another, so I'd rather staff just stay a healing / kiting weapon instead of trying to add additional power options to it. Reason most people don't use Druid in OW has little to do with Druid, it's the fact that Soulbeast lets you perma merge with your pet. Outside of RP, I've seen few rangers actually use pet skills in OW, those are reserved for instanced content and especially competitive.

??? Sic 'Em Soulbeast Build (PvP) - Hardstuck (Same build appliest to WvW as Ranger has no zerg build aside from double bear / bear/turtle full heal druid) But, if by 'tiny boost' you mean the countless threads about getting insta-gibbed off a node or warclaw that directly lead to the rise in projectile hate, then sure.

I get meta-trolling, but from the novel length responses, you may need to be forum clean too.

This isn't new, they did the same thing with OWP and MH axe in PVE. Essentially OWP is useless in PvE while MH axe is insane, and in competitive OWP is great and MH axe is mid at best. Same with FF. In PvE it is now significantly worse, but PvE was the only place it was used anyway. In competitive not worth it since most skills are low CD or have built in refresh (i.e. Hilt Bash => Maul), so no reason for FF. A part of me wishes certain elites were split by mode, which would give more incentive to go between them and get rid of this having to balance around everything approach. As Untamed is very, very clearly a competitive spec--trying to shoehorn it into PvE is bad because of the piano rotation to get even decent DPS.

I'll take projection for $500. Personally, when I did PvP late last year /early this year it was just for the legendary and eventually Top 250 title because I was basically already there. No real compulsion to play other than competition---the entire point of the mode. This 'redpill' take you have essentially only applies to the sPvP lobby, certain reddit/discord communities surrounding AT's, and unranked. The rest are actually playing the mode. For me and forums, I come here to discuss balance mostly, not whine about lack of content (new maps, etc.) or glitches / hackers. Most games have these problems, if not all games at a certain point. Look at competitive games like Valorant where every map looks the same, or Fortnite which has been on 'dance emote' autopilot for years now since it launched. Anyway, the 'addiction' you are seeing may just be needing to step away from the forums and stop doom posting.

The pendulum has swung from all corrupts nothing else casino / disco light meta of winds + scourge to...this. All boons, all the time. There's no fix here except a giant balance pass that removes most of the functionality on both the boon and condi sides; literally every skill / trait /etc. would need a look at. Since that's not feasible with the nearly 11 years of creep, what it seems they are going to do is just unlock all different build types. This of course will not help anything, but if we don't see year 12 it'll give us stockholm types a reason to move on.

Yeah, Sword is essentially always going to be an RP weapon. Not really fixable in current state of the game and to be put in the bin next to MH dagger. To even begin addressing it, it needs some kind of damage mitigation ability and/or a shadow step to keep up with the mobility creep now in the game. The best skill sword has right now is the unleashed ambush and that's saying a lot...

They just applied it to sPvP 😂. Forget cele harb, we have to watch for that OP ranger OH dagger in smallscale roaming...

I'd say two different sets. The power, ferocity, precision, etc. from cele are useless on a roaming druid, so you are better off with Trail/Apoc there. Traps are debatable, in place of trapper runes / traps I run anti-toxin but that's more of a personal preference. For zerging, could just go minstrel and change up entire kit to healing, as ancient seed / immob there is pretty non-factor.

Issues for me are more pronounced in sPvP, because in WvW have a greater stat set to fight the cele variants with. Also, running away is an option in WvW where in sPvP that will 99% of the times lose you games unless you are specifically a roamer and not a duelist, etc. That's why I find spellbreaker and ele in general more egregious in sPvP, regardless of if cele presence. As I said, I don't really see the issue with cele unless its on specific classes / builds (aforementioned harb and willbender for example), THEN it becomes quite a large issue.

Tough one, as on one hand anything can be a skill issue--on the other hand, I've seen cele carry players that have no idea what they are doing otherwise. Now granted it's coupled with harbinger/willbender for the most part, but still, it's not really up for debate that cele is the low intensity WvW roaming/smallscale build.

Havoc is a misnomer here, unless you meant the PUGs you were running over being unorganized.

😂. Just make sure to avoid the games that have spellbreakers, or elementalists....

Attune them and salvage.

They'd have to fix earth keep double wall 'feature' and hills cata spot 'feature' to even begin to hit cata effectiveness.. Trebbing would still be useless on RBL because some genius decided to make the towers worthless--but you could still treb bay and alpine garri (from the towers, like intended) if they'd cut down on 'build 15 sup/guild catapults and shred a t3 in 35 seconds' meta.

Basically this. Anyone that tried to get a defense event at something like north camp knows the bugginess of the event. Repairing just guaranteed you got it, which you can only obviously do at structures. So, they didn't fix anything, just increased rewards on a buggy thing that people then misused the only sure way to get those rewards (repairing) and so anet does what it always does and just nukes the defense event by disabling repair credit. Which is actually baffling. Because, for instance, for about a week after the ranger spirit change you could put those things inside on a lord and get the buffs outside a keep--so surely they have the technology to sense something happening in a wide range. Yet, you literally have to kill someone on the lord itself just to hope for bronze credit...