Help with figuring out how certain classes are taking no damage

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

I wasn't really sure where to post this, but since I've only been seeing this in WvW, I'll ask here.
I didn't play for a few years but have started being active again recently. So I know there's a lot of changes I've missed, and just not familiar with the new classes. I've noticed that there's instances when I'm not damaging enemy players at all; specifically, I've seen this on Willbenders, but have also seen the same against auramancers. Now, typically, when a damage is being negated, the game tells you, right? Like if they're blocking, invuln, or evading, etc. But I'm not seeing those in this particular instance--they are simply not taking any damage, both from melee and ranged projectiles. With Willbenders, I noticed they have what looks like a light aura during this time, but I was looking at their kit and didn't see anything about light aura or anything else completely negating damage (except for their heal skill which only negates one attack, from what I gathered at least, and not multiple attacks lasting for what feels like 10 seconds). I am also not blinded during these situations, which is the only other thing I was expecting that would make my attacks miss.

 

Any help here would be great! I'm not enjoying the fact that I'm not seeing the typical flying texts or other animations that accompany such powerful skills. But the next best thing is to figure out what possible skills are at work so I can plan my fights better. Thank you in advance!

Edited December 24, 2022 by meerfunkuhtron.9725

[Dawdler.8521]

Boons, plain and simple. Perma protection, vigor, resistance/resolution, aegis up the whazoo, etc. And of course while doing all that, stack 25 might so that they can be bunkers doing more damage than full dps. 99% guaranteed to run cele gear.

Then add self healing, combo fields (eles are worse than guards though) and a shitload of teleports. 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Kate.3679]

They're outhealing your damage

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Boons, plain and simple. Perma protection, vigor, resistance/resolution, aegis up the whazoo, etc. And of course while doing all that, stack 25 might so that they can be bunkers doing more damage than full dps. 99% guaranteed to run cele gear.

Then add self healing, combo fields (eles are worse than guards though) and a shitload of teleports. 

 

1 hour ago, Ruru.1302 said:

They're outhealing your damage

That is what I was afraid of. Which at this point, I'm not sure really what to do? I run Untamed/ranger mainly, and use the boon strip from my pet whenever I can (traited it to where it turns 2 boons into damage and stripping another 2), but that doesn't seem to do much. With Willbenders especially, I can try to disengage but they're porting and constantly putting in pressure that they strip my health off pretty quickly anyhow.

The combo fields from eles are definitely really strong, especially when they're in a group and all they're doing is healing their mates. Nigh unkillable.

I'm running cele gear at the moment doing conditions, but also have a power build that haven't helped my situation. Is there no hope? lol 'Cause I'm finding that they can put a ton of pressure on me while having all this passive protection, but I can't do the same. Is there a way to overcome or are some of these classes just that strong at this time?

[Xoranium.6481]

37 minutes ago, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

 

That is what I was afraid of. Which at this point, I'm not sure really what to do? I run Untamed/ranger mainly, and use the boon strip from my pet whenever I can (traited it to where it turns 2 boons into damage and stripping another 2), but that doesn't seem to do much. With Willbenders especially, I can try to disengage but they're porting and constantly putting in pressure that they strip my health off pretty quickly anyhow.

The combo fields from eles are definitely really strong, especially when they're in a group and all they're doing is healing their mates. Nigh unkillable.

I'm running cele gear at the moment doing conditions, but also have a power build that haven't helped my situation. Is there no hope? lol 'Cause I'm finding that they can put a ton of pressure on me while having all this passive protection, but I can't do the same. Is there a way to overcome or are some of these classes just that strong at this time?

If ya can't beat em, join em. That's what most are doing. 

Or just avoid.

 

That wvw for you...

 

 

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

1 hour ago, Xoranium.6481 said:

If ya can't beat em, join em. That's what most are doing.

I have tried guard once upon a time, but couldn't get the hang of it. I definitely might try these builds, even if to just learn how to possibly counter them.

Just wanted to see if there's something I'm missing/can be done.

This is kind of reassuring though, at least perhaps I'm not that bad >_<

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

just focus on killing necros. Those are the only one without real healing and no defenses at all (some people complain about cele harbinger but the only time I couldn't kill one was when I was running cele gear myself).

[Chaba.5410]

29 minutes ago, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

I have tried guard once upon a time, but couldn't get the hang of it. I definitely might try these builds, even if to just learn how to possibly counter them.

Just wanted to see if there's something I'm missing/can be done.

This is kind of reassuring though, at least perhaps I'm not that bad >_<

It's refreshing to see the rare post in this forum from someone who is willing to learn what's happening rather than the usual post accusing players of hacks and exploits or calling for nerfs.  Trying and learning the builds is a great step to learning counters for them.

Edited December 24, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[Zyreva.1078]

5 hours ago, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

I run Untamed/ranger mainly, and use the boon strip from my pet whenever I can (traited it to where it turns 2 boons into damage and stripping another 2), but that doesn't seem to do much.

1. Even when traited, Rending Vines (F2) will only remove 2 boons (the additional boon strip applies to ambush skills).

2. Rending Vines has a very small radius and a delay, which makes it nearly impossible to land unless you precast it and then port the pet on top of your target with Venomous Outburst (F1) and hope it doesn't bug out or gets blocked/blinded/walked out of/...., so chances are high that it often misses.

But even when it lands it barely puts a dent into the overabundant boon spam. Untamed isn't that great in WvW right now, and ranger in general can struggle to kill tanky boon spam builds. However at least the average (=not so good) willbender is not impossible to beat on untamed, tho even bad ones can be a threat due to their high and hard to avoid dmg.  (Cele) tempest/cata on the other hand are nearly impossible to beat on ranger if they have at least an idea how to press their buttons. Too much defenses paired with great sustain and counter pressure.

Edited December 24, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

Just run [whatever class I main.] They're the only class that is inherently awful and that Anet hates and just constantly neglects or nerfs.

[ArchonWing.9480]

For Willbender it's a combination of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crashing_Courage

It's horrifically explained, but basically every few attacks it gives "boons" but basically that consists of a lot of aegis and is typically traited to give stab and protection. Because it can be made a stunbreak and is a blink and has a 30s cooldown, it is really that annoying.

Combine it with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune

which negates an attack and heals and 2 charges on the f2 virtue that cleanses condis you get a loop that's very annoying to deal with especially if they run something like celestial.  And if you're running Celestial too the fight will almost never end.

Note that Crashing Courage only gives boons when they successfully land hits so evading some or all of the damage will greatly reduce its effectiveness. Getting a willbender out of your face, however, isn't easy.

 

Fortunately most guardian players are just fotm abusers and/ or generally full of themselves, and can be punished.

Guardians of any kind are heavily deterred by fighting them from the side because most of their weapons have terrible tracking. Facing them point blank is a very bad  idea.

The most typical combo is usually them blinking in with Judge's intervention and doing the greatsword spin + kick spinning thingy. This is the easiest thing to counter because you can literally just walk away from it and make them chase you. Save your dodge for their 2nd attack as they will attempt to lock you down and unleash the rest of their crap on you.

Also if a guardian randomly wastes a CC on you they're probably crap. I would not even respect that and not even waste a stunbreak. (Eg. those dragonhunter that Hunter's Ward you from max range and don't really do anything.)

The goal is to simply not get distracted by the flashy and focus on evading the major attacks. (greatsword spin + spin), (Torch double throw -- you can see them light up first) (Scepter immobolize where they raise it into the air and follow up with someone else). (Offhanded sword blink immob + stab, but if they use this they're very easy to punish.)

However, due to the massive amounts of blocks they have, you cannot punish them by throwing the sink at them. In fact that will probably make you lose. You pretty much have to chunk them a few times and if they blow their invul, it's usually time to try and clobber them.

There is a high chance they will just spam their mobility and run away, and you simply can't catch  them though. This makes it not very fun to fight. But at least you can sometimes get them if they screw up and next time they will think twice before trying to attack you. And if you don't panic, they probably can't get you anyways. Unless they bring friends. Don't ask me what to do about that.

As for dealing with guardians in general I also recommend more soft CC (chill, cripple, immobolize) as they have far more stab then they do have resistance. However, WB also has better ways of dealing with these things still.

Oh, bunker tempests? I dunno either. Just bat them away with CCs and like, try to disengage and pretend they don't exist.

tl;dr small scale sucks

 

Edited December 25, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Dawdler.8521]

11 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

However, due to the massive amounts of blocks they have, you cannot punish them by throwing the sink at them.

A mistake I often make before thinking even if I see the target build. Since I run p/p core engineer stealth + blowtorch or moa is the native way to initially engage enemies. Completely wasted against guards though. They dont need to bother to do anything even if they see me coming. If I dont hit them, I wasted skills, if I hit them... I wasted even more skills.

[ArchonWing.9480]

34 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

A mistake I often make before thinking even if I see the target build. Since I run p/p core engineer stealth + blowtorch or moa is the native way to initially engage enemies. Completely wasted against guards though. They dont need to bother to do anything even if they see me coming. If I dont hit them, I wasted skills, if I hit them... I wasted even more skills.

Yea unfortunately they have too much counter vs blowtorch. Even if they don't block they can just use f2 cleanse (it has a ammo of 2! The nerf to 1 was only in pvp.). At least Moa can work if you do it fast enough because they have no innate passive aegis buffs like other guardian specs. Not true if they've already engaged. Poison dart is probably the most reliable opener since it'll at least strip their aegis if not much else but that's only useful if they're rushing you. Glue shot is unblockable though.

If you were a power build, I think rampage could actually be useful for pressure or at least trolling by jetting in a random direction to throw them off.  Sadly, you may roll tornado.

Can't really say much else since I've never really had any success with condi engi; my meme core  moa/lock-on shenanigans build is power and strictly exists to troll stealh enjoyers.

If you do hate their guts, you may try Mechanist lol.

Edited December 25, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

If you were a power build, I think rampage could actually be useful for pressure or at least trolling by jetting in a random direction to throw them off.  Sadly, you may roll tornado.

If you're not on power tornado is like 10x more powerful than rampage. I swear every time I get it lol.

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 12/24/2022 at 11:22 AM, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

 

That is what I was afraid of. Which at this point, I'm not sure really what to do? I run Untamed/ranger mainly, and use the boon strip from my pet whenever I can (traited it to where it turns 2 boons into damage and stripping another 2), but that doesn't seem to do much. With Willbenders especially, I can try to disengage but they're porting and constantly putting in pressure that they strip my health off pretty quickly anyhow.

The combo fields from eles are definitely really strong, especially when they're in a group and all they're doing is healing their mates. Nigh unkillable.

I'm running cele gear at the moment doing conditions, but also have a power build that haven't helped my situation. Is there no hope? lol 'Cause I'm finding that they can put a ton of pressure on me while having all this passive protection, but I can't do the same. Is there a way to overcome or are some of these classes just that strong at this time?

Its a matter of whatever build you grab for that playtime it's understanding what your targets are, what you can counter and what can counter you. As you will see others say in various posts, if you lost that fight take a second and ask what might have helped for the next one or is that just a counter to the build you have.

And yes, if you are uncertain if it was just understanding what they might have been doing one of the better ways is to create a build out and see what works to counter it. There is also theory crafting if you are into it. Sometimes the best thing is to jump out to a build calculator so you can see how they might have done what they did by creating what their build might have looked like. If you aren't familiar with these kinds of websites I would recommend gw2skills.net. The site also allows you to build out builds and save links that you can share with others after creating a build. Sometimes it might be understanding their rotation and you might have had other counters to it already. 

[oscuro.9720]

On 12/24/2022 at 8:22 AM, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

 

That is what I was afraid of. Which at this point, I'm not sure really what to do? I run Untamed/ranger mainly, and use the boon strip from my pet whenever I can (traited it to where it turns 2 boons into damage and stripping another 2), but that doesn't seem to do much. With Willbenders especially, I can try to disengage but they're porting and constantly putting in pressure that they strip my health off pretty quickly anyhow.

The combo fields from eles are definitely really strong, especially when they're in a group and all they're doing is healing their mates. Nigh unkillable.

I'm running cele gear at the moment doing conditions, but also have a power build that haven't helped my situation. Is there no hope? lol 'Cause I'm finding that they can put a ton of pressure on me while having all this passive protection, but I can't do the same. Is there a way to overcome or are some of these classes just that strong at this time?

I would recommend learning matchups in duels vs classes you struggle with. You’ll get a better grip of how to interact with them just from the volume of fights you can get dueling instead of roaming. I have a few willbender friends of varying skill level, if you need help finding someone to duel.

[Verungi.4396]

On 12/25/2022 at 8:00 AM, ArchonWing.9480 said:

For Willbender it's a combination of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crashing_Courage

It's horrifically explained, but basically every few attacks it gives "boons" but basically that consists of a lot of aegis and is typically traited to give stab and protection. Because it can be made a stunbreak and is a blink and has a 30s cooldown, it is really that annoying.

 

But the OP specifically said that they are not getting a "blocked" message so aegis doesn't seem to explain the situation, does it? Unless maybe  "blocked" isn't always shown on screen even if a block actually happens... in that case it would be useful to check the combat log (which would hopefully show everything, but I'm not sure whether that's true or not).

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Verungi.4396 said:

But the OP specifically said that they are not getting a "blocked" message so aegis doesn't seem to explain the situation, does it? Unless maybe  "blocked" isn't always shown on screen even if a block actually happens... in that case it would be useful to check the combat log (which would hopefully show everything, but I'm not sure whether that's true or not).

Well, maybe, though I would have to admit I don't even notice these things since the game can be so cluttered. It's just that either way it's very hard to attack them when they have courage up because of the combination of prot/stab/aegis. It's more likely to me that some of the messages may have not been seen, rather than the Willbender having no aegis which would be even weirder to me.

[Tryfan.1457]

The OP is probably getting blocked/evaded but the floating text is off screen. This happens all the time. Also, many guardians of all types use the block heal (especially right now while willbender heal is partially broken by not having block prio) and virtually all wvw willbenders are using the invuln elite because all the other elites are either for pve or garbage.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Tryfan.1457

[KeyOrion.9506]

Synergetic classes that pulse boons every nanosecond.  Not every second.  Not every 1/2 second.  But every nanosecond.  You strip it's back up.  They pulse every 1 to 3 seconds, and when the enemy has another of the same class using the same build, your out of luck and pretty much dead.  Then you have 2 players whose boons are on a forever tick up.  They never go down.  Even if stripped it's reapplied in less than a second.   If you can strip and instant CC, you might have a chance, but i'm starting to suspect a lot of these players are using third party programs to auto reapply some of these boon skills, because I notice the same thing.  I fire right into another player, and they're regenning 1000's of HP per second, not hundreds.  It's become a joke to fight certain classes now, if not impossible.

[Galmac.4680]

That's the new balancing. They just absorb damage with protection, invuln, blocks, etc. - and if the damage kicks in they run away, heal full up and come back.

[Kozumi.5816]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Minstrel's

A stat combination that shouldn't exist in an ACTION rpg.

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by Kozumi.5816

[meerfunkuhtron.9725]

Thank you everyone for your thoughts on this. It's really giving me a much better idea of what I'm facing with these classes, and therefore what to do in order to counter them (even if that means simply running away sometimes lol).

And just to clarify, since I saw someone mention it--the situations I've been confused about were ones in which I was not seeing them evade, block, or be invulned. There weren't any visual cues, i.e. they weren't dodging, no blocking animation, no aegis shields, no texts. Only visual I saw was the light aura. And that their health were stubbornly at 100%.

I didn't know that fly texts could sometimes not appear on screen though, so I'll test that out and see if maybe that's part of my issue. I didn't think about this because the texts seemed to work completely fine for other moments. For example, I remember fighting this one willbender, and I managed to get away from them during that "no damage" timeframe. When I started hitting them again afterwards, I then saw their aegis shields and block fly texts. So my assumption was that there was a certain period where they were somehow just not being damaged by me without needing those other statuses. If it is a text issue though, then that would explain a lot O_O

In any case, I will be doing a lot of learning and testing based on what I've seen from this post so far. It seems like I can at least try something on willbenders, so I'll start with them while accepting that I just can't touch auramancers at this point in time lol Thank you again for all the feedback!

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, meerfunkuhtron.9725 said:

so I'll start with them while accepting that I just can't touch auramancers at this point in time lol

"on my current build" should be the keywords added after. Eles just hardcounter many builds and even when they dont they can usually outsustain them if they are good enough. Spread out to other classes, learn more on how to counter and at least stay in the fight without dying to no effect. 

Of course, there's no shame in requesting reinforcements even if many will go OmG yOu CaNT FIggIT NOOB. You will undoubtedly meet solo enemies that consistently require 2-3+ to bring them down, or organized groups that require 3x unorganized to fight. Of course they will never ever admit they are that much better than you, it's everyone else that suck. The baseline for skill according to them is that they are bad players and everyone else is just worse than them so skill is not a factor.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[captrowdy.9561]

Your playing a class that’s not doing much dmg. Switch to soulbeast. There’s a glassy build and a tanky one that’s more forgiving. I run marauders/zerk with wilderness survival and beast mastery. Great for roaming and outnumbered fights.