Gotejjeken.1267

Just gonna say, Blinding Powder is a bit insane on Deadeye. I have little playtime on thief and was able to win many ranked sPvP games (for Ascension) in high silver / low gold with Deadeye + BP for escaping. I assume it's still effective in higher tiers of gold but my thief knowledge isn't 😂.

Yeah, on review I think the 'only CC' part was a bit narrow; essentially what I meant is, if the pet was invulnerable and did no damage it could also provide pulsing boons or a CC or something useful. Not sure they'd go that route anyway as we've asked for this with spirits before and well... But in my view, any enhancement to the pet has to be with competitive in mind; I think this is the direction they've taken for both soulbeast (merge) and untamed (pet teleport), with varying degrees of success. This of course circles back to Druid and its need to utilize the pet, and here other than fixing some glaring skill issues (E. Wyvern whiffing 90% of the time comes to mind), if they just made a damage reduction by scale or something to keep the pet alive in big battles (like zergs), think that's all that is needed.

I do think from watching that its mostly a cherry-picked duel and then obvious skill issue from the WvW part. None of your opponents had any idea how to intelligently use CC, and most of them seemed like players running meta builds straight off metabattle with zero idea what they were doing.

It's a good troll, but categorically false. The ranger community as a whole has been vying to make pets more usable since the beginning, with some concessions such as soulbeast to handle the 'perma stow' requests. It is also true that no matter what they won't buff pets directly, because specifically the sPvP crowd will complain until its nerfed (as mentioned see mechanist for recent example). But no, the 'greater community of rangers' does not want to get rid of the pet because half of them RP in PvE. They want more variety for pets, not less. The only 'perma stow' cries come from situations where the pet just stands in AoE (i.e. raid type environments and WvW). The answers have always been the same, either make pet no damage only CC tool or make pet have scaling reduction with number of enemies or AoE's present. Rest is handled by soulbeast, because you can just merge and pet is no longer an issue.

Druid has the best kiting ability and stealth access, but is the one most likely to be counter-CC'd or stalemated due to low damage. Soulbeast has the highest power spikes and decent mobility, however sustain outside of Dolyak Stance is lacking and stealth access can be tough compared with Druid. Untamed has the best sustain, but is average in damage and below average in mobility. It really is a group spec at heart and was specifically made for sPvP which is a group-fight mode.

Yeah, the nerf to CC damage was ill thought out as it disproportionally affects Warrior; but I don't know why CC ever did damage to begin with. It just seems cleaner to have CC set up a burst skill which does damage, but that's a whole different discussion (that I know has been around since said 2020 patch). The point about PvE gear with PvP balance is a good one as that is what WvW is, and without fully making it a PvP system through amulet or something I don't think it's a fixable issue. Guess WvW at this point is just 'embrace the chaos'.

True, I don't really long for an amulet style in WvW, more of a devil's advocate point for how any semblance of balance could be achieved. Pretty much, GW2 balance is like chess if every piece was a Queen.

Judging by activity, the only reason I can see WvW player time would rank higher is due to the ease of rewards compared to sPvP. That is, for WvW you don't need to actually fight any players 90% of the time unless you go out of your way and actually want to. For amulet, I don't think it's a failure I think that WvW will never accept it just as they never accept WvW is a subset of PvE. Everyone wants to keep all the PvE things like armor stats, runes, sigils, etc. and then complains when it isn't balanced. This is the mistake to me on anet's part, trying to straddle the line betwteen PvE balance and 'almost PvE but with some pvp features' balance. There should just be two balances, one for PvE and one for competitive. But yes, I will get a lot of disagreement with this, mostly by people that won't ever step into PvP but insist on 'dueling' in WvW like it's a sport. As sure, there are macro problems here, but you don't ever seem to see complaints about blob vs blob balance, only random topics about smallscale when those would be better off just going into sPvP for that. So the tldr; is, community wants PvE stats then they get PvE style balance. They should not nerf anything specifically for WvW, should just adapt using the build diversity you so long for.

Those look like win-trader comps. Also, I wouldn't call it a vindicator show when there is a literal single one in the screenshot 😂.

Answer is a large-scale version of the sPvP amulet system. No food, no enhancements, and limited sigil and rune selection. Perfect balance scenario for them and no diversity for us. Is this good or bad? Guess you have to choose unmitigated build diversity vs. balance.

After patch I'm getting massive frame drops in WvW...anyone else?

Was going to make this topic then found this one...I agree, something up with this. It's either badly optimized (as I have had it fluctuate from 6Mb/s to 60 Kb/s) or is adding more than they are saying--or both. Hard to tell as overall size seems to be just south of 1GB, which considering today's coding practices could very well just be cosmetics; or it could actually be a new zone they'll announce in a month or so. The fact the launcher fluctuates from MB/s to below 100 Kb/s quite regularly is probably the most concerning thing. How do you manage to break a launcher?

Outfits probably should just be a gemstore unlock or something to change by template, or just do it automatically. Mounts and Gliders I feel should have a legendary version that can be reskinned, then it will work same way as weapons / armors / back in that it changes per template.

Yes, it's odd, as its utterly nonsensical. You'd have zero chance to beat said DE even without claiming 'mad hax' like OP. It is WvW, so 'attacking everything' not only gives that DE a free bag but also the enemy warscore provided you aren't roaming outnumbered. You obviously would learn nothing in this situation as well because you are roaming on a group spec vs. one of the best 1v1 duel specs in the game; if you DID win, they probably should uninstall.

I know, I know, nothing is 'exclusive' forever--but on the off-chance this actually gets read, is there a possibility those who bought the actual statue have some small difference in the cape? As at the moment I feel like all those 'previously verified' people on Twitter when some rando with $8 comes in and gets a blue check mark =\.

Literal placement match, and from the play--looks like silver at best.

You really shouldn't be able to break out of hard CC from a zerg lol. If you are for some reason fighting outnumbered (i.e. trolling zergs) then you better know your positioning extremely well. As in be on a mobile spec that can disengage, or they will (rightly) run you over. If the 'small group' you are facing is more coordinated than you and/or on comms, you are going to die, no matter what. It'd be wise to learn what is 'hooking you' before complaining about the CC system. Not that it can't be egregious at times, but even when it is if you are running a few stunbreaks and not fighting like 4v1 you should be ok. Also, as others have said, hard CC overwrites, not accumulates. If you doubt this, go near 99% of LB rangers and watch what happens when you lay a stun on someone...

Fighting a DE on Scourge in EBG and calling hacks...yeah seems about right.

I find perma-CC spellbreaker far more annoying. Normally I don't die to them if just 1v1 sidenode, but its annoying enough to either have to call a +1 or rotate--this to me is far more impactful than whatever I see eles doing >80% of the time. Anyway, Dragon's Tooth windup animation is like super long, and on my build I can facetank it and still not really feel it, but it also seems like it should be easy enough to dodge if timed right. Probably could just straight up invuln through it too but that seems excessive. Dragon Tooth does seem like it also can be destructive in mid fights where no one is paying attention and just dies to it though...

This is true, because axe change was done in response to OWP nerf in PvE. Because for whatever reason anet likes to balance via core and not specializations, so everything gets affected. Like they could have just updated Furious Strength modifier to offset OWP nerf, or adjusted dagger damage, but no they change axe. Which creates additional problem of now axe plays differently in PvE and sPvP/WvW among other things.

Other than the comp, not sure what this shows. All this talk about rankings and I'm 3 minutes in and wondering what exactly the ele is doing here? Red never focuses them, and in fact straight up ignores it for the most part until they do actually focus it and they die. Watching a few more min they proceed to go over and sorta +1 far (for reasons unknown, as in what world is a solo thief getting a spellbreaker off side node by themselves anyway), they then get attention again (from said thief) and die while trying to go back mid. This is showing me nothing except ele has some good kiting / defense abilities? The player sure seems to need them. From what I see, yes the comp won them the game overall, but the other comp was striaght up random at best. I think anything on comms would have beaten red lol.

I don't think in g3 I'm encountering any of this yet. Or at least I haven't noticed it, outside of defense spellbreaker being able to camp nodes, but rotating around it usually solves the problem. Don't notice much about eles except they die very fast if bursted at the right time.

They should rework it into an actual borderland. I don't care if they take the shrines out of the other borderlands and put them only on EoTM, it's something. Need some kind of incentive for fighting over there to stop the k-trains that inhabited it before. Not that WvW as a whole isn't just a big k-train now anyway. I don't see the difference of taking empty objectives over and over again in the BLs and on EoTM--still NPCs, still people that don't want to fight avoiding fights.

It's well-known fact they are on mag; I haven't played WvW actively in a month or two but I have scrreenshots of anet capturing an entire objective on mag (which marks all npcs with the logo too lol). For topic at hand, yes, it's not a great practice to be charging high for server transfers they know are warranted because the linking system is so bad. They won't fully close off transfer because its revenue (and as mentioned can't as any new player has no idea what a server's history or activity is), and they won't full on open it at low or no price because again revenue. It's price-gouging, but game is 10 y/o and they're assuming if you still play it's stockholm anyway. For perspective, I've been Darkhaven my entire time and never will transfer, but for those who do I still think the current methods available are a bit below deck.

This is pretty true for all but the most dedicated wall runners that keep their account to t6 participation by taking a nearby objective every so often. Usually these have a goal though like gift of battle, I don't know anyone sanely doing this for rewards as WvW rewards are utter trash. Seriously, speaking from a perspective of no longer really needing any WvW currency, the only valuable thing you get is memories of battle. You can sell as stack every so often for 40-50g; that's if you are at the point where you no longer need them at all (which I'm not sure if most actually are at this point). The sad part is the rest of the tracks offer mostly trash, or have trash baked into them like the EoD track with its 'junk item that may be 10s or 1g' boxes. You literally are better off doing PvE or even sPvP for far better rewards. It seems easy to just 10x the reward of like a yak escort as at least it means someone is doing something other than mindlessly capturing empty objectives or sieging up t3 objectives so no capture can occur.