Goosekilla.2796

I don't like running thief. Almost never did before this. It's the only way to even maybe stay alive.

Pvp experience depends very hard on the specific games and context, so not sure I do play it the same as you. But it's a fact regularly recognized by casters and others.

Lol I guess you don't watch the auto tournies? Or play any higher tier games? Sorry you aren't good at warrior, but yeah a good warrior (esp condi zerker, but the lockdown spellbreaker somewhat also) is an unkillable duelist right now, which is a huge problem.

Kinda shocked to see they the comment about quick berserker, but no notice of the wildly overperforming condi berserker in pvp!? That build is completely dominating at all levels of play. Also would like to say that dh is still kind of a problem in pvp specifically because it's such a noob killer. I know several people who just stopped playing almost immediately because how hard that spec punishes newer players. That's bad for the game mode.

Curious to see how this will interact with the fact that all e-spec unlocks still have the associated weapon proficiency as the first (30-HP) unlock item. Since e-specs can't be trained until level 80, I had just assumed the inability to equip these weapons was intended. I guess I hadn't thoroughly tested it to notice that you actually could do it on level 80 characters before unlocking the first tier of the associated e-specs.

Does your dodge button not work? Not if immobilized I know, but then the engi has invested time/skills to 1) moa, 2) daze, and 3) immobilize. If they have all three of those effects overlapping for multiple seconds, plus doing damage, then yeah they've invested their entire skillbar into downing you. They deserve to get the lucky one-shot. I promise you, if they're running a set-up that does that, then they're also getting demolished constantly in their adventures elsewhere around the map. That's the part you didn't see and are missing from the balance equation.

Well that is kind of how they do damage... This is like complaining that no matter how many blocks and invulns you take, you still take damage when you aren't blocking/invuln. On the original topic, I'm not sure the relic is really the big offender here. It's more the fact that skull grinder can trigger the whole thing in one hit, and one hit that casts pretty fast and doesn't have a very telling animation. Maybe just trim one or two stacks of confuse off skull grinder (condi zerk needs a nerf anyway), maybe make it's confusion last slightly longer instead of we really have to keep zerker at invincible duelist status. Then Akeem is no longer broken. I don't see it as a big problem on Mesmer. It's not like Mesmer condi is exactly terrorizing anybody right now. I run almost no condi cleanse and still don't know the last time I was actually taken out by a condi Mesmer. Necro pistol in theory would get a lot out of Akeem too, but in practice I never see this one breaking match-ups either. Edit: and for the record, I don't play condi. I mostly play power shatter chrono, sometimes power mortar scrapper

You realize that this is a setting you can choose in your game options, right? All ground target skills can be set to fire with one button block mouse

Honestly this is what I do. Scrapper or chrono, zip around and delete people. It's fine and gets the job done in terms of securing a normal win rate. It's just really not a good answer. It feels like saying "yeah, we know we changed the rules so that rock now also beats paper, but you can play tag instead!" Another problem is that they aren't really a "do nothing 1v1". I'd maybe be ok with that (I remember druid being like this at one point). The big problem is that they actually also add quite a bit of value to the team fight. They're practically invincible without significant skill gap in 1v1, but they can also be pretty decisive in xvx (especially thinking about the zerker build here). They're not particularly slow either - plenty of swiftness access and several mobility skills. Sure, a good team comp with strong strategic execution will nullify the impact of a single warrior. But that still isn't an answer to how warrior can be countered. Boon corrupt necro seemed like a good answer from Mythras, but I'm honestly not sure how that works given how much cleanse and cc warrior has.

My read of OP was that they have been running support, but are asking what is something else they could run that would enable them to counter the warrior duelist builds that are kind of terrorizing ranked right now. The other responses in this thread seemed to understand that as well. Still haven't seen an actual answer to that. Is there anything (support or otherwise - literally anything) that is a specific counter to duelist warrior in an actual fight (i.e. not just "it's going to win every encounter, so you have to avoid them")? I understand that strategically avoidance is valid, but avoidance should never be the only answer. Everything should have some counter in actual engagements. Rock/ paper/scissors sort of logic.

Super bunker specs are not really a thing (thinking original mirage, condi herald...) Tradeoffs between damage and survivability feel mostly in a pretty good place. Build diversity is pretty good. Every class has something useful they can run and even good off-meta builds can be just as successful as well-known meta choices in most ranked matches.

I like how all these answers are basically "you can't"... Anet maybe notice that warrior might be in a bit too good of a duelist position and tune it back a bit, please? I was pretty surprised to see what looked to me like mainly buffs for warrior in this balance patch.

Use mortar kit because it was already more useful anyway.

This. Also you can get them with F3 if you pay even a little attention and know what their animations look like. Or mantra of distraction. Or any shatter skill if you take bountiful disillusionment. Or the stability mantra. Or just use GS 2/4 and press F1 to cleave then out. Yeah ranger really isn't any worse than anything else.

Like the title says. The new seeking bandages are awesome... except they also work on enemy targets. From the other bug posts it looks like maybe Mesmer healing traits might have some issues with this, too. Please make sure healing effects only target/effect allies 🙂