Gotejjeken.1267

Basically this, but I'm even more confused at some of it. Like, if they are buffing attacking so that essentially structures are meaningless, why say they will buff rewards around fighting in structures? The idea here seems to be to create a literal large scale PvP mode but inevitably fail miserably and create a mode devoid of life where k-training is the only thing that matters. So yeah, EoTM. Because that worked so well the first time. Due to all the exploits and sheer speed which even a small group can take a keep, I question why have gates or walls anymore? Why not buff the lord to stall and then just make EWP always available? No need for siege, and permanent fights. As not even the math to this works out. If you reduce keep siege but buff yak health, you accomplish nothing as you aren't speeding them up and some of them have a LONG way to run. This rewards slapping yaks far more than defending, because they also take FOREVER to respawn once killed. Logical change here would be to double yak speed so they are harder to hit. I know why they didn't though because yak escorting is bugged so you need to stand next to them for a long, long time. If they run faster, you won't get escort credit. Finally, the balliste range change is going to be hilarious (in a bad way) for griefing.

DB/Dh?! 😂 Well, at least we know who is living at the bottom of T4 for 2 months!

You won't play it as condition unless they add conditions to hammer. Hammer is purely a power weapon just greatsword, which is why people tend to combine them on untamed. Outside of that, as you mentioned, practically the only condition applied by any untamed skill is poison, which is nearly purely used for heal denial and not damage. Shortbow is probably the best ranger weapon for conditions, but not on untamed. You'd run that on soulbeast or druid for the merge scaling / ancient seeds synergy respectively. Torch is pretty awful, almost as awful as OH dagger which is actually purely condition, but you didn't even mention cause it is so kitten 😂. Basically, condi untamed is up there with power druid for least effective use of a spec.

Why do diatribe topics like this always involve open world somehow...open world isn't a factor for balancing. Anyway, anet has repeatedly nerfed condi builds massively in competitive, to the point where power is almost always better. The only way you are winning on condi is by kiting (mostly stealth as found on condi druid and condi virt) or being like harb and blasting boons every 3 seconds. As in, it's very hard to kill someone with conditions now. Not to mention most of the things that apply conditions are evade/blockable, same as power. The other factor here is what OP plays in ranger, thief, and engineer heavily, heavily scale towards power effectiveness. Like you have power holo, power de / daredevil, power untamed / soulbeast to well bleed druid and pew pew condi thief (not sure I've ever seen a condi engi but guess it could happen, probably on mech?). Essentially, I think the balance problem here lies with cele/hybrid. Things like harbinger, willbender, and elementalist can be extremely powerful running hybrid; but even here I think you mostly die to the power burst.

I don't see how; it follows the Tactical Reload change on Bladesworn. Which by itself isn't a bad change, it's the other nerfs to BS that hurt it (ex: protection over stab on DT). The intent is to curb the DPS rotations of PvE (which it will), and it will also preserve functionality in PvP due to reasons I mentioned before of two of your cantrips already having built in CD reduction (elite and UT), and the other utility skills don't need CD reduction at all (i.e., mainly protect me and the heal skill). Altering it to only affect cantrips also opens up fixing it so that pet CC's count. They don't now because it refreshes all your skills and has practically no ICD, so there's no way they can have pet CC trigger it in its current state.

I'd love to know how you tell the sound difference between Hunter's shot and PBS mid-fight. As maining ranger and fighting ranger's, I never use sound for these two, purely visual. I guess it comes down to playstyle, but with all the art in the game and the great lengths they went to color code professions, it seems they were after visuals way more than sound when you are fighting things.

Apparently 'right' is too difficult for even the vast majority of raiders as this is on the Snowcrow's site for Power Untamed: "This build has an extremely fast rotation that can be hard to master and even harder to pull off." For Condition Untamed: "The rotation is hard to learn and may take a lot of practice, but has a consistent loop that rewards you with high damage output." For Power Alac Untamed: "Power Alacrity Untamed seemingly has a simple rotation but fast fingers are required." Now, if these are descriptions on a hardcore raider site, and open world doesn't matter, and FF isn't seriously used in competitive--why should they even bother nerfing it? As it appears the actual issue here is Untamed is too hard for anyone to play for the effectiveness it gives, so it needs reworked and not nerfing. It's been mentioned a few times now that FF could be reworked and only apply CD to cantrip skills instead of some major nerf or removal.

I do think this is probably the general-purpose answer. I've outlined above my thoughts on the practical limitations for PvP, but for PvE it probably comes down to spirits die too easily without perfect positioning, and/or boss movement messes up the axe rotation, and if either of those happen then huge DPS loss happens.

They can just split it for PvE like they did OWP. As no one is using it seriously in competitive as its a non-factor there due to both UT and the Elite having build in CD reductions without it. So, at most you are refreshing Protect Me or the heal when you could just take FS. People act like FF is distortion or aura spam OP, it's kind of odd.

By the powers of math, percentage increases will become more valuable than flat ones the higher your power is. I.E on 1000 power a 10% is 100, but on 1200 power it's 120 so you'd take the 10% over a flat 100.

They don't? I think it's pretty obvious what a longbow ranger is doing entirely visually; rapid fire looks like a machine gun, hunter's shot they stealth, PBS you go flying backward, and barrage has like a 3 sec animation. Not really listening for audio cues on any of these. Can extend this to both shortbow and axe on ranger as both poision shot and splitblade are super visual. Even winter's bite is visual with a frost trail behind it--the only ones that are not are shortbow 4 and 5 (even 3 is as they leap backward). Even something like Druid staff you have visual indicators on literally every skill: the auto has a giant beam, the two is swirling ball/wisp, 3 the ranger turns into a flying ball, 4 huge vines, and 5 a literal wall on the ground. For others we have dragon hunter's true shot that has long visual animation and stuff like virtuoso burst that is literally flying purple daggers coming at you. So that's why I think telling someone to listen for DE audio cues isn't all that helpful because the big thing you want to dodge has a large laser pointed at you, and the rest of it revolves around predicting when they go in and out of stealth. If they're sitting there autoing or skirm shotting while standing or kneeling you don't need to listen, just move or you are going to die.

Thought you were going LoTR here for a second...

Usually, I find afk happens if team is getting slaughtered--so rarely ever happens for me (thankfully). I've had way more 'late starts' then just straight up afk though. Matchmaker is fine; I find it has mirrored comps on most of my games if it can--there are times where it is on drugs and will put like 2 rangers and 2 thieves on a team...

Can we not bring attention to Ranger and act like its in a bad place right now. Don't need any random nerfs because people can't use the class right.... Thanks.

Not that you should do this, but you could take signet of stone. It's basically the same as endure pain is, but 1s less duration. Could also take gs over staff if you really want a long duration block. Surprised you haven't mentioned catalyst here as it literally is the only thing that should be giving you trouble outside an excellently played spellbreaker (and even then you'll stalemate) or like a 1vX situation.

This gets complicated, as from a Ranger perspective we already have what OP wants, in that we have a trait that increases crit chance when we gain fury (i.e., nearly always). I do think this allows for some measure of power creep as if someone takes Vicious Quarry they can focus on maxing out the precision without caring about ferocity--I do this via assassin's. The same trait actually increases precision too, so can even take more defenses and retain effective power. It also seems anet is or at least has the idea of moving away from this idea, because we can take Spotter for example. It used to be a flat precision increase for an entire group and now it's mostly worthless with pulsing fury every so often (and you have to go out of your way to not have fury on a Ranger). Think I also agree with condition needing an extra stat or rolling precision and ferocity together (again? thought they were at one time). It's just weird having condition damage be this flat thing where power you have to worry about crits to be effective. Not that I really want conditions to be able to crit, but they need something to balance them out.

Wat

Gotta disagree on that one. It's way slower with no staff traiting and like normie vs. usain bolt slower if you trait natural stride. Mobility is also my biggest issue with untamed because to get any semblance of mobility you have to burn a utility. No, I don't care about gs swoop or having swiftness on swap if you go Skirmishing...none of these are untamed specific. Untamed has zero to compete with staff, natural stride, soulbeast merge speed, or soulbeast merge skills. Untamed can be effective in small skirmishes where you aren't the main target because hammer has more CCs than any other weapon ranger has and CC is king right now. Solo isn't great because hammer also has no disengage, and to get that you usually have to run gs which puts you at disadvantage vs. anything that uses wells or traps. In short, I agree with the fact untamed needs more boon rip options and definitely more speed. The teleport also really should be ground targeted, or allow ally targeting so you can teleport to your pet or other ally for escaping. Also, as for the 'reason' to use it, I find Untamed fits a good +1 role in competitive situations, wheras soulbeast is pure roamer and druid is more of a sidenode / camper (quite literally in WvW if you guard camps).

I'm sure they probably easily won with the advice you've been giving. As if the big 'marked' icon above your head wasn't enough, and if the black ring of smoke from pistol #5 isn't enough tell about what is happening vs. thief, then you are definitely losing to thief. I do also like how you are accusing me of getting stomped by thief when I'm not the OP. I'm just the one telling you that its braindead easy to play DE up into high gold without knowing a thing about the intricacies of thief other than how to intelligently use stealth, height, and rotate. Against thief I rarely ever care about the sound of DJ. I just look for the marked and either kite or LoS it which forces them to disengage or die to counter-pressure. The only time it becomes a real nusince is a mid-fight or something where I'm the sole focus, and even then, sound tells me nothing--either I move or die as just the rifle autos hit hard enough to down you without waiting for any malice gain or DJ to hit. Also, since it's driving me nuts, it's literally 'cue': Cue Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster. Since we're being pedantic here, I didn't want people to think we were queuing up in line of some sort.

You want them to play the DE matchup by Death's Judgment sound? A few things...first: Shadow Meld - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) ; you have no advantageous position when DJ is fired off, because they can just use that elite and go right back into stealth. Secondly, the audio cue does nothing because you'll be dead from skirmisher shot spam way before they ever need to use DJ. Most of the time you can literally kneel high up and just spotter shot someone down with no recourse other than another counter DE or LB ranger chasing you around. And even then if you are pressured, you can just lay down sniper cover and advance/retreat your way to a new rotation. So, before you go breaking this down into memes you might want to fight a competent DE or two to see the other side on this one.

In a game full of visual cues (i.e. red rings, dodge roll animation, color scheme differences) you tell someone to use audio cues. Brilliant. Not even good audio cues like listening for OWP or Dolyak Stance on ranger (which have distinct animal sounds)--no, let's tell the difference between deadeye bullet shots! Which is facetious at best, because especially as an ele you aren't listening for audio cues, you wait for any damage to appear and hit one of your many blocks.

The moral of this story is don't try to climb ranked and do Ascension at the same time. I did it in reverse, started out at silver 1, slowly climbed with 50/50 wins on the 2 alts then just went on main and climbed back into g3 (as at that point the competitive part of Ascension is done). I don't find g3 any less toxic though. Maybe less rage afker's but people still whine and block for losing 450-500.

Casual PvE streamer posts a vid about WvW, how is this relevant? They literally compare Mag to Tom Brady when Mag has no skills just an insane number of people that are also dedicated to griefing.

Ele is weird for me as 90% of the time the ones I: run into are good but not problematic (even in mid-g3 where I should be getting matched with plat too). There's one or two that really show how absolutely nuts catalyst can be though, and from my perspective it does directly relate to damage mitigation and not burst. Same sorta applies to spellbreaker, but those are much easier to use and so even if they player isn't proficient you end up stalling or losing a node most times when one is present. Depending on spellbreaker I often have to go out and chase them around to avoid team just repeatedly feeding home or wasting time off-node, etc. I find if I chase them then team can do other things and have a higher win rate. Which is why I am torn on this. I'm not sure if these specs are super out of line or Ranger (which I main) is just under-performing outside of teleburst untamed; which I rarely see untamed anyway at higher levels and if do it has been tank variant and not burst.

All depends on comp, but even bad teams I found rotating between home and far works well to pull some from mid. If you can 1v2 / 1v3 (even if not killing just stalling) then it can swing games massively. Some games are unwinnable though, that is for sure; if you have a good player on a meta build on opposite side and bad team on your side, then probably going to lose if anyone on their team is not a bot/afk.