Hammer GS Vindi - aaaaalright, it's gone on long enough

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

This spec is statistically jacked in both the DPS and defensive department.

1. Everything it does is a massive single strike that halves your health bar or one-shots you. And this damage isn't even easy to avoid/kite.
2. Perpetual ever-cycling sky dodges mixed with its hammer 3 & 4 and gs 4, makes this archetype worse than Staff Daredevil ever was, in terms of being an evasion tank.

This is the first archetype since Scept/Sig Catalyst that is breaking past the usual T1 and T2 levels of OP and is landing sternly into a T3 level of OP. If there are any more stupid buffs thrown at this, it will land into a T4 position where all we see is 2-3 Vindis on every team and probably 4 of them in AT teams.

Remember the OP Tier system:

• Tier 1 OP - Has numbers that are tweaked too high. Clearly it has too much damage.
• Tier 2 OP - Has mechanical advantages that is allowing it too easy of counterplay against other classes. Clearly the ever-cycling sky dodging, Death Drop, with everything else it has, is making it a super evasion tank that is overly difficult to even land strikes on without being forced into situations where the only way to deal damage to it are in these tiny intervals where it sets you up to have to trade damage with its Death Drop stacked with other attacks like GS#5. The way this mechanically flows prevents too many archetypes from being able to interact with it in any meaningful way at all.
• Tier 3 OP - Has both overly tweaked numbers and too many mechanical advantages. This is when we see many people begin to hop on and ride the fotm train, and start going out of their way to learn & spam a build structure because it's just clearly that much stronger than other archetypes. We start seeing 2+ being stacked in teams. I'm seeing it more and more every day with Vindi.
• Tier 4 OP - When something is so strong, there isn't a reason to use any other archetype in a team outside of maybe +1 support. Current Vindi is almost there.

We could go on and on about detailed nerfs that could be done to this or that, and that's great. But kitten please at least turn the damage down on this archetype. Do something. You guys know I don't come in here often with specific class nerf targets, but Vindi really has become another archetype that is too strong to a point where it's just making the game unfun to play again.

Edited July 16 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Sahne.6950]

I dont play conquest enought to have a based opinion on this. So its prolly best to ignore me (on good weeks i play 5 games. FFA is all i do nowadays)

But from a "can i beat it 1v1" standpoint...   Vindi is okayyyish.  

Bonk bonk guardian and Spb give me a harder time.

[ArthurDent.9538]

So melodramatic.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

3 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

I dont play conquest enought to have a based opinion on this. So its prolly best to ignore me (on good weeks i play 5 games. FFA is all i do nowadays)

But from a "can i beat it 1v1" standpoint...   Vindi is okayyyish.  

Bonk bonk guardian and Spb give me a harder time.

Ele's job is to get all up in thing's faces though. The only other class archetypes that can still brawl like that are Spellbreaker, Reaper/Harb, some Ranger variants, and Vindi, which are our viable side-noders. Everything else in this jacked DPS patching has to run full or near full DPS to be useful at all. Even supports are becoming unpopular because numeric DPS output is just superior to any support output with the way things are right now.

In the case of full or near full DPS roamers that have to play the "get in and get out" kind of play style, here is how our current side-noders feel to them:

• vs. Ele - It's still strong in a 1v1, but it's slow and it has limited ability to chase & secure kills. This means it's relatively easy to just leave the Ele if you are losing. Ele may win the node, but the roamer can survive. There is balance in this. The Ele is alright in a team fight but he doesn't make a good roamer +. There is balance in this.
• vs. Spellbreaker - These are actually generally indestructible in 1v1s right now. It's annoying and stupid, yes. But they are very slow and very bad at chasing & securing kills, so they are easy to leave or even ignore entirely when a player is on a fast roamer. They are good in team fights for tossing around CCs, but the damage output is middle-tiered at best, and as such they really don't contribute anything as a roamer +er outside of locking someone up with CCs so someone else can tag a kill. There is balance to this. But see right here, I can see why a good Spellbreaker is probably the most obnoxious thing to deal with as Ele right now, because you're just slow enough that a Staff Spellbreaker can stay on top of you and harass you endlessly.
• vs. Reaper/Harb - Strong in 1v1s and they even have decent chase power nowadays. But they still have that one glaring Necro vulnerability, the class has little to no defensive mechanisms like hard blocks/invulns, and it has few dodge rolls. It can seem like a Necro is winning but all it takes is one moment to catch them out of shroud with a CC juggle and you can melt them. They are also not good at dealing with stealth heavy classes. Any archetype that is stealth heavy, will eventually kill any Necro variant unless the Necro hard outplays. In other words, despite the attribute-tied power they possess, they still have plenty of mechanical holes that present room for counterplay.
• vs. Rangers - Ranger side noding is different because they don't have one build that is S tier like Staff Spellbreaker, but rather they have many different archetypes that are A tier. This makes Ranger possibly the best class at "playing rock/paper/scissors" when it comes to side noding. Depending on what they are against in the match, they can swap to some various A tier side node build to create functional counters vs. w/e it is they think they'll be going against on sides most often for that match. So even though there are some S tier side node builds in play that are generally stronger vs. everything than any one Ranger build could be, the Ranger "if it has a good template skew setup", will be able to swap between various A tier builds to create functional counters vs. very specifically w/e S tier someone is trying to roll in the given match. This is the true strength behind the Ranger class. Popular Ranger side nodes: Unga Bunga Untamed, very strong in melee range but it can't chase **** gets blown apart destined to lose against high powered ranged like a Power Shatter. Condi Druids/Untamed, these can deal with the ranged attackers but then they get bullied off nodes to the other melee tankards like Ele, Spellbreaker, and now Necros. Then there are stranger variants like the stalk druid I've been playing, where excessive stealth potential can allow you to actually hold a node against something like a Staff Spellbreaker, but you lack direct kill burst. Regardless, roamers either can or can't deal with the Ranger, depending on what rock/paper/scissor he's playing into that match. But at least the Ranger has limited chase power, so proper roamers can leave it. The only Ranger builds that ever had great chase potential was Sic Em Soulbeasts with smoke assault and Traversal porting Untameds, which both of those builds are in a bad place right now. There is balance to every Ranger build that is played right now. It's just that its ability to rock/paper/scissor situate itself is probably stronger than any other class, and this makes it look to players like: "Every time I encounter a Ranger build it's super OP". Again, it's not that any one Ranger build is S tier. It's that they have several builds they can run that are all A tier, that are compleeetely different archetypes, that can be swapped in and out to always be capitalizing on counters. This makes it look like Ranger builds are OP, but secretly it's the Ranger's versatility in build swapping that is actually OP.
• vs. Vindi - It has melee, it has ranged, it has port chasing, it has infinite evade trains. When you try to deal damage to it, it sky dodges. Any time it lands for just a split second to be able to damage it, it lays some stacked ground AoE damage all over the place so you are forced to "trade damage" with it if you want to hit it at all, and almost always the extreme damage output coming off Vindi will win the number exchange in the end. When someone is good on the Vindi and playing it correctly, there aren't any openings for any meaningful counterplay, it's going to out-brawl you, and you can't even leave it because it has plenty of ranged and phase traversal. When it comes to DPS vs. DPS, this is what it feels like vs. the Vindi if he is on a side node. Furthermore, not only is it good at side noding, but it is also really good in a team fight, comparable to Necro, and it's nearly as good of a roamer +er as a Thief. I mean.. it has too much, both tweaked numbers too much damage, and way too many alpha mechanics that allows it to be a good side node, an excellent 1v1, an excellent roamer, and an excellent team fighter. It needs its damage toned down or something, considering its mechanical design allows it to stack all job roles other than hard support, onto one build structure.

I don't know what else to say. This archetype is one step away from creating another "let's run 3 or 4 of these on every MAT team" situation again.

 

 

[Supernova Starr.2069]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

it will land into a T4 position where all we see is 2-3 Vindis on every team and probably 4 of them in AT teams.

I for one CAN'T WAIT cause i'm tired of 4-5 reapers every match

[Myror.7521]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 nah ranger has one S tier builds and multiple A tier once.

Not no S tier xp.

 

Also i agree vindicator is right goodish in every role the 5v5 Game mode has to offer (roaming/midfight/1v1/plussing peops). So its not S tier in anything but goodish in everything else making it realy flexible ^^ and in that case "OP" for especialy ranked

 

Edited July 16 by Myror.7521

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

10 minutes ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

I for one CAN'T WAIT cause i'm tired of 4-5 reapers every match

That's just because Necro is easy to play though. No matter what patching we've been in, Necro has always had extremely high representation. This is because it's just easy to play.

9 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

Also i agree vindicator is right goodish in every role the 5v5 Game mode has to offer (roaming/midfight/1v1/plussing peops). So its not S tier in anything but goodish in everything else making it realy flexible ^^ and in that case "OP" for especialy ranked

I see what you're saying when it comes to the roaming invocation variant. But if they change Invocation to Salvation, it just shuts down 90% of other archetypes.

Edited July 16 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[KurtLittleJesus.8139]

mobility and dmg surely A+ and S tier, allied with a A survavibility surely not fun to play against, but no god level as you stating

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

46 minutes ago, KurtLittleJesus.8139 said:

but no god level as you stating

I said it has currently just stepped foot into T3 OP.

And warned of any more buffs, which will shove it into T4 OP or "god tier" as some call it.

[arazoth.7290]

1 hour ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 nah ranger has one S tier builds and multiple A tier once.

Not no S tier xp.

 

Also i agree vindicator is right goodish in every role the 5v5 Game mode has to offer (roaming/midfight/1v1/plussing peops). So its not S tier in anything but goodish in everything else making it realy flexible ^^ and in that case "OP" for especialy ranked

 

anet only needs to make a small adjustment which will kitten up power vindi. And because of that full melee will be affected the worst and with ranged mediocre

[Myror.7521]

@arazoth.7290 I mean you could make it a herald 2.0 but yea idk how you should Nerf it wirhout actually destroy vindicator or every other build Rev has ....

 

[arazoth.7290]

26 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@arazoth.7290 I mean you could make it a herald 2.0 but yea idk how you should Nerf it wirhout actually destroy vindicator or every other build Rev has ....

 

Well what I said about that dodge trait some time ago, remove the damage entirely on it and give it some extra passive vulnerability stacks or such with a cripple condi gor example.

entire vindi dodge damage gone but traded for something else. In pve they will have to adjust the damage overall on weapons and alliance stance to buff it up because of this. Unless they do make it do it different things in competitive and pve 🤷.

But putting this up would remove lot of offensive/evasive potential rewarded by doing this currently. Evades will be defensive aside hammer or sword 3, which is okay. So you have less to worry when they're on defense and you can keep the offense pressure more up then.

 

But anet knowing, they will kitten this one up and make the most random nerfs that might even affect core traits

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Really, just nerf Death Drop.

That one trait alone provides way too much counter-offense that keeps people off of it when it comes out of dodge rolls, which allows it to stream right back into offensive rotations without much pressure to stop it. Because you can't afford to get pegged with Death Drop over and over.

Death Drop hits like a Ranger Maul. I mean, come on now.

Edited July 16 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Susi Musi.2964]

Death drop does not hit like Ranger mauland you must know it as well. Please restrain yourself in the future from spamming the forums with misinformation and promoting already low effort, busted ranger skills/weapons/specs, because it is getting cumbersome. (Remove DD damage when they remove damage from ranger as well) Thank you very much!

[Codename T.2847]

Make it 1 dodge again xd

[arazoth.7290]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Because you can't afford to get pegged 

But what if we want to ?

[arazoth.7290]

9 minutes ago, Codename T.2847 said:

Make it 1 dodge again xd

Along with spear on rev, the moment everything has hit, gw3 has been released then

[Flowki.7194]

6 hours ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

I for one CAN'T WAIT cause i'm tired of 4-5 reapers every match

Absolutely hilarious and 100% spot on. I read this comment, game started and bam: 4 reapers, 2 dragon huners and 0, ZERO, NIL, NAUGHT, ZIP vindis.

6 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

That's just Necro is easy to play though. No matter what patching we've been in, Necro has always had extremely high representation. This is because it's just easy to play.

Easy to play and HIGHLY EFFECTIVE, lets not leave that out please? It matters becuase in terms of effort/effectiveness ratious, necro is FAR more OP, but that logic seems to be too much for the average balance discussion around here. Nerf death drop, why not, but lets also nerf the effectiveness of low effort/low risk specs.. these double standards across the playerbase, even so called plats, are hitting comical levels.

Edited July 16 by Flowki.7194

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

24 minutes ago, Flowki.7194 said:

Easy to play and HIGHLY EFFECTIVE, lets not leave that out please? It matters becuase in terms of effort/effectiveness ratious, necro is FAR more OP, but that logic seems to be too much for the average balance discussion around here. Nerf death drop, why not, but lets also nerf the effectiveness of low effort/low risk specs.. these double standards across the playerbase, even so called plats, are hitting comical levels.

You're right. I already had mentioned in my "intra-class wide" balance statement, that Vindi/Reaper/Staff Spellbreaker were the 3 problems.

I just personally feel Vindi is the worse culprit of the 3 by far, because it's too good at every role and it shuts out too many otherwise viable build structures.

[Flowki.7194]

22 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

You're right. I already had mentioned in my "intra-class wide" balance statement, that Vindi/Reaper/Staff Spellbreaker were the 3 problems.

I just personally feel Vindi is the worse culprit of the 3 by far, because it's too good at every role and it shuts out too many otherwise viable build structures.

The point is, if vindi is a problem, it is an elite player problem at p2+. SPB and reaper are far easier/more forgiving than vindi, obviously backed up by the representations, a <gold reaper/spb is far more usefull than a gold vindi, and I'd argue the same is likely true at low p1. So basically, the top 100 players might be oppressed by 5 or 10 vindis (Q dodging etc), but hundreads of golds/silvers have to deal with spb/reapers x4, every game. From a developer point of view, the priorirty is obvious, but they can deal with all 3 at once. Problem is, people are defending the kitten out of multiple degen specs, while asking for vindi nerfs. Another high skill floor spec nerfed, all low skill floor specs indirectly buffed. The meta is very clearly heading toward nothing but necro/gaurd/warrior, low effort high impact... from the systematic nerfing of anyting hard to play that is remotely effective. Its so fking backwards there is no other explination than anet pandering to copers.

 

Hard spec > high reward for mastery > if you suck at it you die > take it like a champ > get better. That needs to be the ethos of every spec if it has high effectiveness. If low effectiveness, then ofc, lower the difficulty, and people can decide what they want by weiging up the pro/cons. For example, I play core rev knowing it is not as punishing for mistakes as power herald/vindi, but I take the hit to effectiveness, it is not as good at mastery level compared to vindi, and why the hell should it be.

 

Every encounter is increasingly feeling like 90% rock paper scissor, there is so little room for skill becuase more specs are viable that are so basic, there is little room for both mastery and error. Its nion just a game of trump cards.

Edited July 16 by Flowki.7194

[Myror.7521]

@Flowki.7194 the question you realy should asking yourself is ...... 

What realy does difficulty mean? Before u say x class is easy to play so it must be nerfed. To say the least for example:

Warrior: easy to play but hard to master

While for example ele is the exactly opposide.

Elementalist: hard to Play but easy to master

Now what do i realy mean by this you might gonna question? Here comes the answer:

Warrior is a class that is very easy to Understand this makes it a realy fast to learn to Play class BUT to Play it on a good Niveau you need to play around your high telegraphed and easy to learn mechanics .... why? Well cause everyone knows what you gonna do next especialy because most skills are also very telegraphed.

Elementalist is a class that is very hard to learn and you will get smashed hard in your First months to learn this class BUT once you learned it it fairly good to play since you have so many Options to sweap to in x Situations.

In the end Warrior gets harder to play the higher you get while ele is First realy hard but gets better at time. So both have their own reasons to be good. And no the badest part you can do is balancing around lower tiers Standard you should overall find a Mix between Low and high Tier ^^

 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Flowki.7194

Well the differences I see, which I kind of indirectly sort of pointed out, is like this:

1. If you can't deal with a Staff Spellbreaker on a side, don't engage it. If a person is getting trucked by Staff Spellbreakers, this is a critical l2p issue where the person is not realizing they should not be playing their class/build into the Staff Spellbreaker on a side. They are easy to avoid. By avoiding the Staff Spellbreaker on a side node, it forces him to leave that side node and go to the team fight if he doesn't want his team to be 4v5. This also opens the node for fast decap from thieves & w/e ect ect. When the Staff Spellbreaker joins the team fight, they are mediocre impact at best and at disadvantage. Telling ya, it really is a l2p thing that doesn't even require l2p mechanics, just general obviousness that anyone could read what I've said here, and then immediately apply it in their next match.
2. Reaper is strong right now, it is. But I could swear as the years go on, more and more people have developed a massive l2p issue vs. Necros in general, and that is that they try to play into the Necros when they have shroud up. This is not difficult to do, just "kite it" when it goes into shroud. Save your CDs for when it is out of shroud. Any class can get the better of any Necro build in a 1v1 if they keep this one rule of thumb in mind. But lately, it's like 90% of the community has no internal clock/gauge on "it's been about 8s since it was in shroud, I should probably pull a disengage move". It's just a l2p issue. Even saying as much, I do agree that Reaper is too loaded right now and it needs to lose something. The class Necromancer benefited the SOTO weapon utilization stuff & relic system way more than other classes did. That's where we are at now with Necro. Even in pve it's just simply the best class atm. It's like the best at every role in pve.
3. The Vindicator on the other hand, although it isn't wielded correctly at those gold levels, when it IS wielded correctly at plat+ levels, it's just too strong man. I don't know how else to put this other than "it's mechanics & flow is designed almost too well". Which, I don't want to see good mechanics get nerfed, but the numbers attached to those mechanics are too strong for what this build is capable of mechanically. Like it's good at all roles so you can't out-rotate it and catch it in a bad position like you could anything else. It can be played into any comp with no drawbacks. It has extreme survival rates vs. everything, there are no real counter builds to it or even counter tactics like vs. the Staff Spellbreaker. This build is simply too strong and it pisses people off.

Edited July 16 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Myror.7521]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 i would Go with what @arazoth.7290 just said ...... the vindicator dodge functions in PvP kinda like Spellbreakers fullcounter do. It is a pain cause it does dmg. Just remove the dmg and everything would be fine without death nerfing the actually spec ^^

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

16 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 i would Go with what @arazoth.7290 just said ...... the vindicator dodge functions in PvP kinda like Spellbreakers fullcounter do. It is a pain cause it does dmg. Just remove the dmg and everything would be fine without death nerfing the actually spec ^^

I honestly don't mind the damage buff % that it grants, or even that the dodge deals damage.

It just shouldn't be dealing massive damage. I mean look at this:

• Death Drop - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Damage: 997 (3.75) and there is a wvw split: 

  March 15, 2022

  Reduced power coefficient from 2.67 to 2.22 in WvW only.

   
• Maul (ranger greatsword skill) - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Damage: 807 (2.0) and actually this happened to it for competitive: 

  March 17, 2020

  Maul: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.36 in PvP and WvW.

To @Susi Musi.2964 who said this:

4 hours ago, Susi Musi.2964 said:

Death drop does not hit like Ranger mauland you must know it as well. Please restrain yourself in the future from spamming the forums with misinformation

Might want to recheck those numbers bud.

Edited July 16 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Myror.7521]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 Sir it doesn't deal that mutch dmg cause the dmg scales WITHOUT ARMOR AND WEAPON STATS. So it is doing around 3-4k dmg while Maul does 4-6k ^^