Reflect Reflect,Block,Reflect,Block.

[Infusion.7149]

28 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

SA for Life leech on pistol off hand or Rending Shade. You might be generating downs with Vault. Or you might/likely are just hopping around while the other side shrugs you off, unless the other side sucks pretty bad. 

Kind of ironic since the thread is about projectiles and you are telling people to run pistol.

So you're going to dedicate an entire slot in your party just to leech maybe 300 or 600 health (with Leeching Venoms not "life Leech") which is less than med kit autos. If you're running dagger pistol you hit at most 2 people ; rending shade only applies to stealth attacks so that assumes you stack thieves (actually no, it only applies to you), which is an even worse prospect when you have revealed from tower/tactics/guards. Rending shade only removes one boon.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Shroud.2307]

7 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth 24 thousand words per second. Behold.

 

kitten's ridiculous. Between the tempest auras, the scrapper / guardian bubbles, various other projectile destruction like Swirling Winds, and the mesmer skills, it's just a massive pain to try and use projectiles in any kind of medium sized or larger fight.

With all the hate, you'd think projectile skills would be insanely powerful if you ever do manage to land one, but no. They're often even weaker than their non-projectile alternatives.

Honestly, in this clip if I'd just swapped to a flamethrower build and ran around pressing 1 1 1 1 1, I'd be doing 10x as much damage. That's dumb.

I have nothing constructive to add other than that projectile hate frustrates me too.

I think people undervalue the impact of Tempest because Firebrand and Scrapper provide more Boons. Tempest does quite a lot of other things however, and tends to glide under the radar in how often it kills people with Shocking Aura, Immobilize, Reflects, and how much it supports its allies through the same means.

I don't have any suggestions on ways to change the difficulty of using projectiles in large fights, but I think it's important to consider how it feels. This is a game after all, and sometimes it's good to make changes in favor of more enjoyable gameplay. 

[Justine.6351]

5 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

Yeah, engi pistol pew-pew-ing single-target projectile poison at 900 range is definitely going to compete with that

lolwhat? Next time you come across a group like that get on a necro. The only reason hammer rev does damage is because of necros. You create your own problems by pushing scenarios your build is hardcountered by and are as ineffective as everyone else who was in that scenario unwilling to adapt.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

9 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth 24 thousand words per second. Behold.

 

kitten's ridiculous. Between the tempest auras, the scrapper / guardian bubbles, various other projectile destruction like Swirling Winds, and the mesmer skills, it's just a massive pain to try and use projectiles in any kind of medium sized or larger fight.

With all the hate, you'd think projectile skills would be insanely powerful if you ever do manage to land one, but no. They're often even weaker than their non-projectile alternatives.

Honestly, in this clip if I'd just swapped to a flamethrower build and ran around pressing 1 1 1 1 1, I'd be doing 10x as much damage. That's dumb.

I answered this question earlier in the thread.  I'll try to explain the mechanical advantage a bit further:

Imagine that there is a 1v1 fight between the same profession.  Lets say... necromancer, just to pick one at random.  The primary difference between the two is their chosen tactics: one likes to come in close and fight with the dagger or greatsword, the other keeps at a distance with axe or scepter.  By default, in this engagement the ranged necro has the advantage, because it can attack at a much wider range than the melee necro, letting it get extra damage before the distance closes.  Now, the default buildcraft response with the melee necro is to equip more mobility options to try and close the distance, or to equip more lockdown options to prevent the ranged guy from running away.  But... the ranged necro has the option to equip the same mobility and lockdown options, but with the express purpose of keeping the melee guy away.  The only real difference is what the weapons can offer, which usually have distance closing abilities on melee, and distance creating/maintaining abilities on the ranged option.  

The damage that these weapons do is balanced around this mechanical difference.  The ranged weapons have the initiative and the safety when it comes to inflicting damage.  Because of this melee weapons (with some exception) are tuned to be better overall, either doing more damage or having more additional effects to compensate for the greater inherent risk in using them.  As a roamer, you should know that two of the most dangerous builds you can encounter are nearly pure ranged: the immobilize druid and the quick-pockets rifle deadeye.  They capitalize on this philosophy, with one capable of locking players down for longer than their reflects can last, and the other capable of vanishing for extended periods of time with relative ease.  Using feedback or bulwark gyro against one of these does very little good against them.

All of these reflects are balanced for sPVP, which is roughly the same as small-scale roaming.  Because most of them are environmental effects, they upscale really well.  When it comes to large scale WvW, we don't know much about Anets design philosophy, but it can be argued that these reflects are working as intended.  Reason being that, if there weren't reflects, then melee builds would cease functioning in large-scale and we'd be left with the opposite problem:  "It's impossible to play melee builds in WvW!  All melee charges get cut down by bouncing, piercing projectiles before we can even get close."  

[Shroud.2307]

7 hours ago, Justine.6351 said:

lol? Ranged builds blow up people in wvw every minute of every day.

 

7 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

Ranged, but not projectile ranged. The majority of it is non-projectile like scourge aoe, CoR, etc. Projectiles are third-class citizens in WvW - only useful if any of the opposing players manage to not have their anti-projectiles up.

I want to note that I didn't record this video with the intent to share it, so this is actually not the best example of personal impact with a suboptimal build, but it gets the point across -
You can blow up pugs if you know how to situate and handle yourself, and how to read fights. In more "serious" fights, you're not likely to have any presence regardless of your skill or knowledge.
 

Projectile hate is significant in more organized fights, and not everything has a way to bypass that. That's okay, there doesn't need to be a counter to everything, but it should at least be considered how little presence things in this situation have. Very small reductions to durations, number of targets, recharges, etc. could go a long way in being more inclusive.

Also, I think it's important to consider how your decisions impact your experience. If you choose to play something bad/suboptimal, you're going to feel that, and changing your build is a more reasonable option than changing every other classes skills to improve your experience.

[GoldenPants.1870]

10 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

If it only covered that player's 5-person group, or better, only themselves, it would be much more fair.

Yepp, oh and I recognize your engineer, what is your build ? I was going to ask for it but I forgot completly.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 12/27/2021 at 2:27 PM, Echo.6310 said:

Is it not widely known that unblockable attacks (including projectiles) will pierce through reflects and projectile absorption? Pretty sure Ranger has the option of becoming unblockable... 🤔

 

Its not perma unblockables so the utility has been labeled as useless, i had that discussion with alot of players already, they dont want weapon swap to melee nor 40(less when traited) sec CD utility but more like try to keep unblockables for a very very long time . they want to be a signet warrior at 1500 range or better.. lol.. rangers what else?

its extremelly rare to see decent rangers anyway.

 

Ranger unblockables are burst out  momentos, trait brustish seals trait even fury, players actually have to bait those skills to burst trough wich is when enemy assumes when he is safe.

 

Edited December 30, 2021 by Aeolus.3615

[Magnuzone.8395]

14 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

When I suggested a reduced bubble size, I mean really really reduced - like barely covering the width of 2 players.

Or like barely covering the groin, and not moving with the player.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

rather make bubble size bigger, so more pepegas pew pew themselves, thanks

[Aeolus.3615]

On 12/27/2021 at 10:47 PM, Ferus.3165 said:

there is a simple solution really... blocks and reflects should only block or reflect a set amount of hits. Like all unblockable effects, all reflect or block effects should have a counter. That way not much will change in a small scale fight but one scrapper dome would no longer be able to protect an entire zerg from the projectiles of 50 other players.

That would make them useless, it would be almost the  same as a evade frame lol.... or that means players would gain something similiar to "aegis stacks" that would be out in the 1st seconds  wich would be awfull  for the game, gw1 aegis was a 50% block uptime since we lost its duration to gain a 100% block on next hit domes and reflexes need to exist, people have to pay atention most of time.

Also that would F+ up other classes domes and those other classes  dome usage is already punishive for them(some more than others).

 

 

1 hour ago, kamikharzeeh.8016 said:

rather make bubble size bigger, so more pepegas pew pew themselves, thanks

Imo issue is the trade off some specs do with the anti-range, some have and others dont, the ones that have it they are acceptable to huge drawbacks when using a dome, look are revenant very consuming dome all he can do is auto atack if uses a skill will consume large part of the energy for the dome uptime and will shutdown it, its strong defense against range but a huge drwaback for its user that can be killed anytime or forced to shut it down, guardian sanctuary  and shield being sanctuary a burn  in a better utility (altough i love sanctuary dome should be bigger :P and should become a elite skill), the most stable uptime absortion dome is actually scrappers stacked and theres plenty of those.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Aeolus.3615

[coro.3176]

10 hours ago, Shroud.2307 said:

Projectile hate is significant in more organized fights, and not everything has a way to bypass that. That's okay, there doesn't need to be a counter to everything, but it should at least be considered how little presence things in this situation have. Very small reductions to durations, number of targets, recharges, etc. could go a long way in being more inclusive.

Also, I think it's important to consider how your decisions impact your experience. If you choose to play something bad/suboptimal, you're going to feel that, and changing your build is a more reasonable option than changing every other classes skills to improve your experience.

 

This doesn't change the fact that there's no good reason why non-projectile skills like Flamethrower, Scourge shades, most of Rev Hammer, etc. are allowed to be good, but projectile skills are not.

It's not as if projectile skills are that much better than non-projectile skills. In fact, many are worse! Still, projectile skills get shut out of serious (not pug-stomping) WvW fights, and non-projectile skills are meta. Why? It's stupid. It's throwing away half the game for no good reason.

This is fixable too! All we need to do is tone down the shared anti-projectile skills. Make it so that 1 player can't protect their entire zerg from ALL projectiles simply with a bubble. Make it harder to do that, and it goes a long way toward having more skills that are playable rather than "bad/suboptimal".

[coro.3176]

8 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Ranger unblockables are burst out  momentos, trait brustish seals trait even fury, players actually have to bait those skills to burst trough wich is when enemy assumes when he is safe.

I don't mind unblockable skills as long as they have a tell and don't get confused with normal skills. It's not great gameplay if Rapid Fire, for example, is unblockable sometimes but not other times and as a defender, you don't know until it hits you.

9 hours ago, GoldenPants.1870 said:

Yepp, oh and I recognize your engineer, what is your build ? I was going to ask for it but I forgot completly.

Fairly standard condi roamer but with tools instead of alchemy.

[Aeolus.3615]

37 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

I don't mind unblockable skills as long as they have a tell and don't get confused with normal skills. It's not great gameplay if Rapid Fire, for example, is unblockable sometimes but not other times and as a defender, you don't know until it hits you.

Fairly standard condi roamer but with tools instead of alchemy.

And that's why some classes  will be in danger when using projectile hate :) its like playing poker, but some wont even be afected much if bypass dome.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Aeolus.3615

[Zyreva.1078]

20 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

 

This doesn't change the fact that there's no good reason why non-projectile skills like Flamethrower, Scourge shades, most of Rev Hammer, etc. are allowed to be good, but projectile skills are not.

Rev hammer is absolutely awful outside of large zergs, Scourge sucks solo and flamethrower has relative low range and isn't even meta for zerging as far as i'm aware. Meanwhile builds like longbow ranger, rifle deadeye or nade engi shine in situations, where those others don't. It has nothing to do with only one being "allowed to be good". Many projectile heavy builds are in fact very powerful if utilised properly. Don't forget, nerfing counterplay doesn't only affect zerg play, but also everyone else who has do deal with those already quite strong builds. Projectiles or not is also not the only thing, that decides what is good for zerging or not (i mean, how many scepter eles are played in zergs?) so stuff like ranger or deadeye won't suddenly become meta anyway. Just more obnoxious in small scale. Different builds are good at different things and that's ok.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

As a DE (both condi and DPS rifles) and Druid (both condi and DPS...mainly DPS tho) I notice how much projectile hate there are...biggest one really is the guardian wall one that lasts like 12s lol. Luckily I always carry a non ranged or non projectile wep set in my 2nd set (Staff for druid as still ranged but not projectile dependant and Dagger/Pistol..auto isnt projectile.

|There is a lot of hate, that cannot be denied, however mmo's are about adapting your builds to overcome so even tho I believe theres a lot of hate (and can be a huge pain at times) overall its not as big of an issue as you need to learn to adapt your build or playstyle to counter it.

[saerni.2584]

7 minutes ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

As a DE (both condi and DPS rifles) and Druid (both condi and DPS...mainly DPS tho) I notice how much projectile hate there are...biggest one really is the guardian wall one that lasts like 12s lol. Luckily I always carry a non ranged or non projectile wep set in my 2nd set (Staff for druid as still ranged but not projectile dependant and Dagger/Pistol..auto isnt projectile.

|There is a lot of hate, that cannot be denied, however mmo's are about adapting your builds to overcome so even tho I believe theres a lot of hate (and can be a huge pain at times) overall its not as big of an issue as you need to learn to adapt your build or playstyle to counter it.

I once CnD'd a guardian to death while he was camping his Wall of Reflection. But that guy was glassy. Most aren't that easy to kill with melee.
 

But Wall of Reflection does have a 8 second duration on a super low cooldown (should be increased to 40 seconds in WvW/PvP). 

[coro.3176]

27 minutes ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

|There is a lot of hate, that cannot be denied, however mmo's are about adapting your builds to overcome so even tho I believe theres a lot of hate (and can be a huge pain at times) overall its not as big of an issue as you need to learn to adapt your build or playstyle to counter it.

I think it becomes a design issue when "adapting" means not using a large portion of the game's skills in an entire game mode due to fairly arbitrary details (projectile vs non-projectile). It would be one thing if you see a wall and think "okay, wall. find an angle to shoot around it, except 1. Wall is on a short cooldown. 2. There are tons of guardians, so walls, bubbles, etc. are nearly always up covering all angles, and 3. they protect everyone, so you can't just target someone else.

5 Scrappers chaining bubbles is 100% projectile immunity indefinitely. That's not good.

Edited December 30, 2021 by coro.3176

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

9 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

I think it becomes a design issue when "adapting" means not using a large portion of the game's skills in an entire game mode due to fairly arbitrary details (projectile vs non-projectile). It would be one thing if you see a wall and think "okay, wall. find an angle to shoot around it, except 1. Wall is on a short cooldown. 2. There are tons of guardians, so walls, bubbles, etc. are nearly always up covering all angles, and 3. they protect everyone, so you can't just target someone else.

5 Scrappers chaining bubbles is 100% projectile immunity indefinitely. That's not good.

That boils down to adapting for sure...are you going to go balls to the wall ranged build? Are you gonna have a plan B to counter or are  you gonna "tunnel vision" on one aspect of the build and maximize on it (ie stealth heavy thieves vs stealth light thieves with a backup plan...one gets negated by a stealth trap and typically needs to run vs the 2ns teef that can still so what they need to...there are reveals in the game, some which cannot be shed by DE) Stealth heave either needs to adapt their build for that situation or tale the loss and just avoid that kind of fight.

Theres arguments on both sides that are all completely valid. Both need to be used together else ppl will just continue to complain and not do anything about it.

[coro.3176]

7 minutes ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

That boils down to adapting for sure...are you going to go balls to the wall ranged build? Are you gonna have a plan B to counter or are  you gonna "tunnel vision" on one aspect of the build and maximize on it (ie stealth heavy thieves vs stealth light thieves with a backup plan...one gets negated by a stealth trap and typically needs to run vs the 2ns teef that can still so what they need to...there are reveals in the game, some which cannot be shed by DE) Stealth heave either needs to adapt their build for that situation or tale the loss and just avoid that kind of fight.

Theres arguments on both sides that are all completely valid. Both need to be used together else ppl will just continue to complain and not do anything about it.

I just want to spread the hate. These defensive skills are always anti-projectile and never anti-non-projectile. Take half the bubbles/auras and instead of working on projectiles, have them instead cancel or block non-projectile hits, like ground targeted AoE.

Boom. Now we've cut the projectile hate in half and added some counterplay to ground target non-projectile. More diverse game mode. Hooray.

[zinkz.7045]

The combat mechanics were designed around sPvP, of course they become imbalanced with 15 - 50 clowns running around in a ball, they weren't designed for that.

And that is never going to change, because WvW never has been and never will be a priority.

Edited December 30, 2021 by zinkz.7045

[Zyreva.1078]

12 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

I just want to spread the hate. These defensive skills are always anti-projectile and never anti-non-projectile. Take half the bubbles/auras and instead of working on projectiles, have them instead cancel or block non-projectile hits, like ground targeted AoE.

Boom. Now we've cut the projectile hate in half and added some counterplay to ground target non-projectile. More diverse game mode. Hooray.

That's not how it works.

There is already sufficient counterplay to ground aoe. It is called "walking out of it". If you add more defense against what tends to be the most effective source of dmg in zerg fights, it won't make projectile based builds more effective in those situations, because there would still be enough projectile denial left, and most of those builds are lacking more than just non projectile dmg. It would just make zergs more tanky overall, while also potentially hurting small scale balance, where projectiles are already very strong.

[coro.3176]

1 minute ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

If you add more defense against what tends to be the most effective source of dmg in zerg fights

I guess what I'm trying to emphasize here is: why shouldn't projectiles also be an effective source of damage in zerg fights? Why counter some skills so hard and others not at all simply due to the method of delivery?

Non-projectile skills track targets too! Non-projectile skills deal big damage and big aoe too! Why all the hate for one but not the other?

[Infusion.7149]

37 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

I just want to spread the hate. These defensive skills are always anti-projectile and never anti-non-projectile. Take half the bubbles/auras and instead of working on projectiles, have them instead cancel or block non-projectile hits, like ground targeted AoE.

Boom. Now we've cut the projectile hate in half and added some counterplay to ground target non-projectile. More diverse game mode. Hooray.

That isn't true as aegis affects all skills and so does prot , Rite of the Great Dwarf, barrier, any invuln such as Renewed Focus, and any form of timed or channeled block (such as on guardian mace).

You think that people are going to ask for something like a druid , core ranger (barrage isn't projectile anyway), or deadeye? Absolutely not. They're going to run more power DH because they A. already do B. Longbow is a weapon-swap instead of swapping peoples' classes C. more stability.

The primary ranged AoE damage dealers are wells, symbols (180 radius if you don't run Honor traitline), CoR/phase smash, and sword of justice (180 radius). Lava font plus meteor maybe if you get a chokepoint or cast it with quickness on CC-ed people.

If projectiles suddenly become viable I'd think shortbow renegade would see more play than ranger (since your opening post is about "rangers never wanted") or deadeye as well if there's already a herald in party with the huge caveat that dodging drops crit chance 33%.

A DH can swap to support at any time without queue if the match changes in terms of defense/offense, what is a ranger or deadeye going to do? Even on engineer why would people run projectile other then the grenades (which aren't split from PVE) when they could be using bomb kit and hit 5 people in melee or use flamethrower and do more power DPS than pistols? If it's for something like berserker gunflame memes... how is that any more effective than the current offmeta build on gw2mists since scorched earth is an AOE with 5 targets instead of 3?

Edited December 30, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[coro.3176]

11 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

That isn't true as aegis affects all skills and so does prot , Rite of the Great Dwarf, barrier, any invuln such as Renewed Focus, and any form of timed or channeled block (such as on guardian mace).

Right, and they also affect projectiles. There are tons of skills that protect against everything, and tons of skills that protect against only projectiles, but none that only protect against non-projectiles. That's not very fair.

I want WvW to open up to projectile skills too. They don't have to be meta, but they shouldn't be completely shut out either. I don't think Engi mainhand pistol needs to be as good as Rev hammer or Ele staff in a zerg fight, but for godssake, it should do something. rather than nothing.

Edited December 30, 2021 by coro.3176

[Zyreva.1078]

24 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

I guess what I'm trying to emphasize here is: why shouldn't projectiles also be an effective source of damage in zerg fights? Why counter some skills so hard and others not at all simply due to the method of delivery?

Non-projectile skills track targets too! Non-projectile skills deal big damage and big aoe too! Why all the hate for one but not the other?

Projectiles tend to be easier and safer to land/harder to counter than ground aoe skills which literally can be avoided by utilising WSAD properly. Which is why many projectile heavy builds are far superior outside of organised large scale fights. Again, not everything needs to be strong everywhere. Also if you pick your targets and position carefully, you can absolutely pew pew at players in zergs just fine. What's holding most projectile based build back more than the source of dmg is the fact, that they are single target oriented and/or don't offer much in terms of grp utility. The exception would be scrapper with mortar and nades i guess, but considering how strong the class is already at pretty much any aspect of the game mode, i don't think it is a big deal that zergs don't run even more scrappers.

Look, you'd have a point if builds like longbow ranger, rifle deadeye or nade engi were bad across the board, but that's not the case. WvW isn't just about large stacked blobs with 2/3rd on support builds. Gotta take other stuff into consideration too.

Edited December 30, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907