Gotejjeken.1267

I don't see how Core Ranger is unplayable in any game mode--or even really weaker for that matter. This is because most of the things that make all ranger builds work are core related anyway; practically everything outside of outliers like Fervent Force making Untamed accepted into endgame PvE or Doylak Stance making Soulbeast a good roamer. You can still build boon bunkers, have alac or build quite a lot of might stacking / power on core only. Sure, you may lose alternate playstyle (merging/unleash/etc.) or certain roles (like Druid would be better support than Core), but that's just how the game works. It's also an odd topic to make when the next balance patch fixes a lot of your concerns and specifically addresses core lines on at least Warrior and Ranger.

We can always blame it on player skill disparity--but if we do, then there is no such thing as a good Mech. As far as my experience, Mechanist is a good +1 to a fight, but if focused or in 1v1 situation it crumbles to literally any pressure. Much like longbow ranger, dodge the burst, its ballgame. Also, I said holding on point vs. Bladesworn--meaning kiting / decap / distracting. Winning yes is a bit trickier but not impossible, I have a far harder time with good Spellbreaker's, and going to be doubly so after this next patch.

Did you get trolled by Fastcar or something?

The pet hate bubble, Pet Unleash #1 being an instant blind, Pet Unleash #2 being a blast finisher, direct pet control...yes total mess. No way to keep up with any other EoD elite, despite eating Mechanist for breakfast, holding on-point vs. Bladesworn, ignoring Spectre, destroying all but the best Catalysts, etc. You've never played against an Untamed?

Congrats, you managed to add ad hominem and strawman fallacies to your argument. To be clear, what I'm saying is cele has nothing to do with ranger boon application. It has nothing to do with ranger anything actually--as I said before you can change 'celebeast' to anything with some boon duration and get the same results because of fresh reinforcement. If you doubt I'm a main, check my YT or find me in game. Think we can easily see who's who.

This is called a whataboutsm. I don't care about other builds, and here it isn't cele--any boon set will get you there as long as fresh reinforcement exists.

Seed of Life still has the combo field though? Check the Twitch stream, when CMC hovers over it, the skill still says light field. The only thing that has changed here is you no longer need to blast the seed to get the condi cleanse--you did before because it took forever. That and you get one less condi cleansed than before--sort of--because if it leaves behind the light field, you just blast that and are pretty much back to how it is now. The clear advantage is not having to blast it with lunar impact at all--you'll get 2 condi cleanse by just using it now. I think Glyph of Stars is also a straight upgrade for the roaming Druid. Stability is the one thing the build lacks; to beat immob Druid you currently chain CC it. Now you can get stability from the elite on the same CD as Entangle is, and also don't need Entangle anyway because you have more than enough sources of CC/immob without it. You'll be giving up 2 condi cleanse with WS trait, but that's it. It's also a friggen' AoE/well type deal now--so you have crazy application ideas with this and something like healing spring. Another advanced thing...the pet counts as an ally, so you can theoretically attach the wisp to it for more healing. Can think of a few interesting applications for this. Only kind of big nerf is the full condi clear on entering avatar, which is a slight bummer since mutate conditions exists and is a full condi clear if you swap weapons (or all but vuln if you don't). Not sure this matters though because they bumped up Glyph of Alignment while in Avatar form--so you get 8 with a bit more APM (3 from enter, 2 from seed of life, and 3 from glyph usage). Sure, you have to take up a slot to run the glyph but might be worth it anyway depending on what you are doing.

So, to start, to be blunt CMC likes to balance via memes. Not just the dehydration thing but things like balancing around Tail Swipe or justifying Bladesworn being immobile by showing it can hit 500k burst with dev tools in one of the preview streams. The problem here is, the memes never stick. Tail Swipe was nerfed and never was the problem, Unnatural Traversal combos were, and Bladesworn is super powerful in a lot of game modes regardless of how much full Dragon Slash does. What does this have to do with Soulbeast? I fear we'll see a return of some tradeoff but different than what we have, based solely on past history and being very well acquainted with ranger. Yes, we have meme builds like Sic Em' sniper but only people who care or die to that are same ones complaining about Mechanist's OP damage. The real problem is Soulbeast gets the flexibility of Untamed, just minus the full pet control. Which yes, is significant, but Soulbeast is also way less APM to play for pretty much equal tradeoff with Untamed. Also, I'm not sure where Boonbeast isn't a thing---but it is in WvW. Fresh Reinforcement shouldn't get touched by these changes as it isn't triggered when swapping pets (its triggered when merging), so you can still might stack with axe and now get things like stability and all the same boons as before (just have to manually swap pet first), then merge...and voila. Basically, in WvW unkillible Celebeast is very much a thing and now it has alacrity if you wanna go full bunker. But I digress; yes, in the right hands this upgraded soulbeast will wreck pretty much anything in a 5v5 or small scale WvW setup. Not even sure if this is fair, balanced, will stick, or if it's just CMC finally meme'ing Ranger into the meta.

Thus, why Alac Untamed is run instead because of FF CD reduction. The way Anet currently is balancing, Soulbeast is Power DPS and Untamed is Support DPS, while Druid is pure support and Core is...lol.

Actually, just read your last paragraph on Untamed..and lol. I'm not sure what a 'teleburst' is other than if you are calling our buggy teleport => Maul 'OP', then thieves must be in a horrendous place at the moment. Which literally only applies to sPvP which is filled with glass egos anyway, so it's a moot point. As for the bubble, that's a new complaint for sure. Should they also delete Siege Turtle because you can get DOUBLE bubble? 😂 This is what I mean about Soulbeast. Once the changes are implemented the salt is going to pour from double swoops into maul, or swoop into KD into maul, or double swoop into prelude lash into axe #5...and then after all that using GS to swoop back out. Literal crisis mode will be happening over on our favorite sub.

I agree with the extreme need for paragraphs. Only iffy change for Druid is Druidic Clarity, only because Harbinger wasn't tuned at all to either not be able to dump as many conditions or cut on the boon spam. If they'd bring the PvP Harbinger to WvW I think the DC change is fine because a full 13 clear is pretty overkill--I probably would have halved it to 6 instead of quartering it, but whatever. Support Druid could be interesting though now with the change to stability on Glyph of Stars and how Staff #2 works--will have to see how well the Ally Targeting works there. The Soulbeast changes I see being reverted, so not getting too attached to them. On one hand it makes Sic' Em meme harder to pull off, but on the other the flexibility is just too much for most people to stand for. At the moment have topics in sPvP complaining about the buggy Untamed teleport and Maul damage....no way Soulbeast being able to switch archetypes on the fly while also retaining all the pet CC is going to stick.

For me, sPvP itself is fine--the maps (mostly) make sense and the basic mechanics and whatnot are fine. The problem is being unable to find pure SoloQ games. During normal season found it to be less egregious as where I'm at in Gold 2 or lower it doesn't seem to have a noticible effect. It's super painful in these 'off seasons', like the current TDM one though because most times you are going to run up against comp'd groups. Also, working on the legendary back is frustrating due to needing to multiclass, and some of us just don't. So, you're stuck in a situation learning a class in literal ranked, just to get an item that won't matter for PvP anyway. That part seems super ill thought out. Rest of the toxicity and whatnot is pretty normal for GW competitive. That part doesn't bother me as much since there's no real skill involved in it since it's all team based, so literally cannot have any real personal metrics. Any of the 'god tier' players I've seen on Twitch and whatnot usually are all partied up and just stomping PUGs, so nothing really to see there.

This forum is hilarious.

i had a feeling Paper Roll wouldn't be happy as nerfing Druidic Clarity pretty much breaks his roaming build. It may free up other options, but as mentioned I'm not sure any of them are going to be viable with the condi spam going on. It is odd they didn't touch anything about the boon or condi output of Harbinger, but did these 'support' changes for Druid which are most likely getting hard countered even further now. I mean in WvW Harbinger was already a crazy long / difficult fight, now I'm not sure it's a winnable one (solo roaming).

Any theories as to why big changes for soulbeast (not that I'm really complaining here mind you) over Untamed? Removing the one pet swap tradeoff is interesting to say the least--and to double down on that with merge swapping seems to entirely replace Untamed in the APM department, but with actual reward. The Druid changes at least followed some sort of logic, even if I personally don't agree fully with some of it. Soulbeast though? Are they rolling D20s over there and we hit a critical role? 😂

Mounts are fine if only if they'd add either a rental for non-PoF players or just make mounts unlockable for all only while in WvW. You do know the game mode is in pretty bad shape when people are no longer complaining about being able to perma-contest an objective with mounts + stealth though...

Why not just make it so you can only queue with those of same rank? Or at least very close so top of one rank could queue with bottom of another--but nothing crazy like now where you can seemingly queue with any rank?

I'm guessing it's because you are using core ranger--(mostly) everything discussed in this topic so far factors in the pet unleashed skills on untamed. If just using core then I would have a hard time believing any pet breaking a few thousand dps if all the stars align and the target has full condis / you have full boons. This is what I meant before by the pet mostly being a breakbar / CC tool. It's also not comparable to mechanist in any way shape or form, virtually apples to oranges. It's why I hate using the term 'pet' for mechanist, as the mech is about as much a pet as necro minons or mesmer clones.

It would be nice if one of these videos were against an actual boss. Preferably one that moves, would love to see the actual benchmarks--instead of stationary golem all boons / all condis theoreticals. Anyway, since OP didn't specify a mode--in competitive your pet is mostly used to setup CC. That may or may not change in the future, but right now you don't pick pets for damage as they struggle mightily with pathing and hitting moving things.

A+T = Ally Target

Your TED Talk needs more non-PvE experience 😂 As a ranger player who has played for the past 10 years, the mech trash needs to stay over on Engi. Mech itself is bad, melts to condis or pressure, and rifle is a meme. Once they hit the damage on either the mech or rifle you'll see the Mech trend stop pretty quick.

Pets getting an ambush of their own would be quite overpowered, as ambush skills are mostly super strong right now. Sure, there are some lackluster ones like shortbow, but by and large they are really good. There's not a situation where having additional on top of what we have would work outside PvE. For that reason, I also don't see a reason to have pets use their normal skills during unleashed state. This creates the same problem as hammer with dual CDs, and from the looks of it most of you want to set everything to auto anyway, so more micromanagement would be too much. Do not like limiting untamed to one pet either, as full pet control really is the saving point of the spec at the moment. One pet only makes sense on soulbeast because part of the spec is being merged so it works. Unleashing is nowhere near a 'merge' functionality, so one pet would be a huge nerf. All Untamed needs is some form of speed buff when unleashed--could rework the GM trait here as its kind of hard to get the stacks anyway. Basically, just make it so ranger has increased movement speed when unleashed and vice versa for pet. This would fix most of the issues with hammer--upping the power coefficients would fix the remaining part. Finally, I personally do not want to see any support options on untamed. The damage is low enough now, and 'support = healing' should stay on Druid only. Untamed is based around CC, best we leave it that way.

If we go full on conspiracy, I agree, A+T = Ally Target Not sure if I love Ranger being highlighted in the balance patch preview though--historically it hasn't ended well....

...When? Notice that rhymes with GWEN... We'll have to see. CMC brought us 300s CD's among other lovely things; his nerf bat is palpable when he's hydrated.

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