Caitir.6947

Pretty sure I remember SnowCrows saying a while back "without Chronomancer there is no meta." For the last 3-4 years, Mesmer has been one of the most highly-valued classes in raids for all of DPS, supporting, and tanking. Specifically because they bring utility that's much harder for other classes to emulate (especially portals), and is the only class still that can maintain Quickness and Alacrity at the same time. They are, despite the Confusion nerfs, still going to be a reliable go-to for pretty much all of the condi fights where you wanted them anyway. It's just that instead of being completely and unquestionably by far the absolute best in slot in there, you might actually be able to more easily justify bringing other condi classes without feeling the opportunity cost as hard. Listen, nerfs suck. But I don't think you're realizing just how utterly busted Chrono had to start for them to be able to get this many nerfs and still be not only a staple in raids, but remain an absolute pillar of high-end comps. Even with the latest round, Purple Class isn't going anywhere. To say that they're worse than other classes by a wide margin requires you to very literally ignore statistics all over the place that say otherwise. A class that's awful doesn't remain a pillar of the raid meta. Yet, here Mesmers sit. So I'll say it plain: If you think Mesmers are notably worse than other classes then that is entirely an opinion, and not even a particularly good one since stats don't even back it up. The latest rounds of nerfs they've seen this year were hitting what was very genuinely THE highest-performing class in the entire game in raids. Stacking Chronos was meta in every fight where it even remotely made sense because of Danger Time. Even now Mirage is a constant on the relevant condi fights. The Confusion nerfs leave them at... an estimated "highest damage on those bosses still." Mesmer's biggest problem is typically their difficulty in maximizing their effectiveness, not their toolkit, not their sustain, not their lack of unique buffs, not their tanking... really though, if you think Mesmers have a problem tanking then I don't even know what to tell you since you're talking about what is still considered the premier raid tank whose only real competition in that role is Healbrand, for basically the same sort of reason. I won't comment on PvP modes. But to say Mesmer is worse than other classes in PvE speaks to a fundamental lack of knowledge on your part over the last 3-4 years. People joke that Guard is the golden child and most spoiled class from ANet, but honestly, the more I read what some Mesmers say here, I'm pretty certain Mesmer is actually the spoiled golden child but thinks they're the red-headed step-child because someone finally gets what Mesmer had a monopoly on for years and used that monopoly to completely and utterly shape the meta in their image. So now that other classes get some of their toys they think they're the worst and most abused class and need more to compensate, even when they're performing very well in PvE and have been for an incredibly long time. Again, that only applies to PvE, because I won't comment on the status of Mesmer in PvP because I don't often use mine there. They may well be awful and overly risky in those modes, I won't refute that if they are.

Staff Mirage is definitely easy for vet players. For new players... a bit less so. And then almost any other Mesmer build is straight-out for a beginner in terms of easiest. It's already been answered, but Necro is by far and away the easiest for a beginner because you can build to be nigh-unkillable between minions and passive tankiness. In terms of group content later, Scourge (one of the Necro elite specs unlocked at 80) can be very nice to have in instanced content while amplifying your solo potential further in some cases. Reaper (other Necro elite spec) is strong as well, especially for soloing, but less desired in instanced content unless all you're after is raw DPS.

Infuse Light did need nerfs. Old Resistance also should not have worked the way it did it in the first place, but I don't think it's just because of Condi Herald that I think that. Anyway I'm not quite sure how this devolved into being an argument almost entirely around Condi Herald, but I don't immediately hate the idea of Resistance also affecting the 33% healing reduction of Poison. My bugbear with the idea isn't that specific proposal, but the current timing. The game is already incredibly bunker-heavy with WvW seeing Trailblazer builds as far as the eye can see as well as builds that sit on loads of sustain options all over the place, to say nothing of zerg boonballing. And PvP is currently going through a period where Guard's strongest build is a shout support bunker and Necros (especially Scourge for this particular point) are extraordinarily difficult to kill while making revives much more easier and safer than they otherwise would be. Maybe if bunkers were directly hit first (whether by increasing damage in pvp modes, or reducing the effectiveness of bunkers directly) then I'd consider the idea good, but as of right now poison is one of the few ways a condi build can hit a bunker build and make them actually care by hitting their sustain directly (this goes for other condi bunker builds, too, poison allows their sustain to be hit which is important for some of them). This is of particular note since condi builds already aren't terribly meta in PvP and in WvW there's a decent split of power vs condi but it's almost entirely off the back of Trailblazer letting them tank up while doing their damage or they'd probably be in an overall bad state in WvW, too. Though in PvP specifically I don't hate the idea since Trailblazer isn't even in the mode. For there, I don't mind Resistance hitting the Poison modifier. Partly because one of the bigger abuse cases for sustain (Necro) can only cleanse Poison, not really spam out Resistance. This would help those that previously relied on Resistance like Herald, while not doing much for Necro. And since Mallyx Herald isn't the most common, or the strongest, I don't mind it in PvP. I'm wary of that coming to WvW, though.

It's weird that people are comparing Ranger and Ele so directly when their roles in a zerg aren't even the same... Ele loves the pirateship footsies to mess with positioning before the hard push comes in, Ranger in a zerg excels at cleaving and immob spam to facilitate the cleave. For whoever mentioned Barrage... why are you bringing LB to a zerg fight? Doing so means you're giving up a weapon swap for the role the Ranger is actually decent at it in zergs (by replacing either GS or x/Axe) for ranged harass they can only reliably carry out with one skill because the rest will either be eaten by bubbles or reflected back to you/your own zerg, meaning the damage of the longbow will end up being negligible in terms of the push AND pirateship footsies. As for who contributes more or less... neither, really. There's a reason that if either join a lot of squads they're put into a different subgroup with no supports in it, unfortunately.

"Unreliable" and "death log." Name a more iconic duo in a competitive game. I remember when I played League of Legends and skills used to register all kinds of wacky on there. That was years ago now, and I remember them improving it by the time I stopped playing, but even so the death log isn't always a great indicator of what actually killed you. Add in something like what Leo is mentioning and it highlights how awful death logs can be. It's very easy for a death log to not give you the full story of your death in games, especially the longer and more drawn-out the fight becomes. This is true in pretty much every game. Anyway, for condi vs. power... I don't see a meaningful difference, nor do I see one being a "better" or "worse" meta than the other by default. Condi bunkers and draws it out? Okay, that's literally what DoT classes are known for in EVERY game that has them unless they specifically make them an assassin-style dot glass cannon who bleeds/poisons you out quickly but dies quickly themselves if locked down, so saying it's terrible for that isn't really a point worth noting since that's entirely opinion. And considering the popularity of DoT classes in various games... Tanky DoT style gameplay isn't going anywhere. For Power... Power's balance is precarious. Either it's high enough as a base on top of other conditions (say, Weakness/chill/fear/whatever else spam) so it doesn't have to fight quickly to wear you down via attrition, which means it bunkers all the same like the condi that people dread does, like say Scourge does right now... but if it can do that, then someone else can often see a squishier target and quickly blow them up if they both do build glass cannon (see: Power Herald against an unaware squishy, such as when Herald would literally blink from across a wall and down the target before most people had much time to react). Both Power and Condi have their upsides and downsides, and different things counter both, and even among both varieties they don't play the same. Power Scourge isn't winning the fight the same way Prot Holo or Power Herald are. Likewise, Condi Thief isn't fighting the same same way a Core Trapper Ranger is, who isn't fighting the same way a Core Condi Necro is, and so on. Also I've never much understood the point of Power vs. Condi for the simple fact that is: If a Power build hits you, say he hits for 4k... you took the hit, there's nothing further to mitigate it. The Condi puts some bleed stacks, let's say you've got 15. You'll either take a lot of damage because you couldn't cleanse it or you won't take a lot because you cleansed it when it was starting to become a problem and now they have to ramp up again. If you eat a power burst vs. a condi bomb, I don't see a meaningful distinction, except the fact that condi bombs take time to resolve their damage, so if you have cleanse they just strictly do less than if you ate that burst earlier because, again, you already ate it, there is no cleansing it after the fact. The only distinction I see here is that Power meta, if it isn't Power Scourge Bunker Mode, is just less forgiving. It has nothing to do with bulking up, because Power can also bunker if they have to. But something being more or less forgiving also isn't much of a statement on whether something is good or bad by itself.

I play a SB frequently, and they swap out GS/LB all the time for whatever content they're doing, and those are the 2 legendaries I have. I'm sure the armor/trinkets are better in the armory since you don't constantly swap them out, but messing with the GS/LB is just... I want to say annoying moreso than anything else. Stats aren't saved at all, sigils and infusions are booted out every swap, I have to reskin them every time if I want to maintain a certain kind of look. Add on that every time I swap I have to click the item like 2-3 more times in the Equipment tab to actually quickly put the sigils/infusions in quickly and the novelty has pretty well worn off for the weapons part of the Armory, for me.

Thing about that is that, unless you institute timers that can be described as less than "obscenely generous" then those subpar builds can, in fact, beat content. I've seen a rifle holo do only a few thousand dps because they liked their rifle so much they never made much use of their bomb kit or grenade kit... or melee range for their laser disk. And used Supply Crate over the Prime Light Beam. Come to think of it I'm not even sure if they had those kits or laser disk on their bar. Yet they still get through their daily fractals. It may take them longer, but they get through it, even if nobody in the entire group is doing over 10k dps and their burst is played subpar. Unless you put those timers, they will continue to beat almost all forms of pve content in the entire game that way. Raids do have DPS requirements, so there people often have to go over proper builds and the idea of a rotation, but anything outside of that? Not so much. But look at plenty of people on the forums: they're opposed to timers, even though timers in raids are basically never what kills anyone because they're so generous so it's the mechanics (and implied dps checks) that actually kill people. For open-world, timers are usually so generous that it's functionally just a warm-body check to make sure there's enough people hitting the target, so optimized builds aren't really a requirement there, either. Actually, if you look at most content in the game the timers are generous but mechanics are what kills people. That leads people to concluding their DPS doesn't really matter compared to staying alive (which is true, to an extent), but then don't extend that to staying alive AND doing good dps because that's not a requirement. Even if ANet were to give tutorials about that kind of thing and start to funnel people into good builds, people would be annoyed that their preferred playstyle is ostensibly being called wrong by the developers themselves. This leads to problems like asking why that playstyle is even an option at that point, and then you could likely start highlighting how many terrible prefixes there are, how many useless runes and sigils there are, how many weak traits there are (even outside of pvp with their 300 cd "needs to be reworked so we're nerfing it out of the game" traits), and hell, even how many weak skills there are in general (the aforementioned Supply Crate for example, it's just not very good, especially if you're a Holo and Prime Light Beam is an option). I don't know. If ANet did that, that has some major implications to many players. It's no longer a choice of how they want to play, it then becomes ANet dictating a meta everyone has to play by, and then balancing around that. Thing about making synergistic builds is obviously they're better builds, but it means there's fewer of those builds. ANet would kill any idea or illusion of build diversity, which is already pretty well lacking in pve to begin with. Berserker's if power, Viper's if condi (for the most part), then you have the niche sets like Harrier and Minstrel's for supportive healing (or Magi's if you're giving up the idea of sharing boons in any notable fashion whatsoever), Marauder as an option for open-world power, Trailblazer as an option for open-world condi, and then... almost everything past that is either niche to 1 build or just not used at all (in PvE. WvW/PvP are their own ball-game). ANet highlighting builds would make this apparent to even more players, and I can't imagine that's not a turn-off to a large proportion of players if they recognized that fact.

It's because a Legendary can become any Ascended piece, with full stats, at a moment's notice and there's no cost associated with swapping out runes/sigils/infusions on the fly. That's the QoL a Legendary is supposed to be: every ascended at once. Unfortunately with Armory, the Legendary weapons are just tedious. The armor and accessories work great, though.

I think the biggest problem with this event is... after the initial rush, how often are groups going to be able to summon forth 50 people at once for the private instance? So while the achievements are ostensibly able to be earned after this event, the odds of late-comers actually being able to get them after, let's say 2 months, becomes incredibly low. 2 months is both quite a ways off, yet not really at the same time, so that bears consideration. Meta trains can accumulate 50+ people across all their squads, but that's in part because metas are typically relatively easy and rewarding. This fight is, currently, prone to bugging out platforms, harder as a baseline, and the rewards aren't bad but they're more limited in use than the rewards you get from things like meta trains. Once the rush is over, if there's no public option then I sincerely doubt you'll be able to get a Marionette squad formed more than "infrequently." And if I had to guess, there may be people who form squads for this specifically on a schedule, but if you fall outside that schedule... good luck ever running it. If anything, this just highlights the feeling that a lot of people get in new content releases where they feel like they need to rush the achievements or else getting them will be more difficult or time-consuming later on down the line, and I feel like this event is likely no exception to that feeling for them. I won't comment on difficulty of the encounter, moreso just concerned about the 50 people needed combined with the comparatively limited reward for the effort required.

So is "nobody complains" just an ironic statement now? Half the time I see someone use that set-up it's always some sort of very common complaint. It's like the "Am I the only person who [...]" crap you'd see all over the place years ago. Nobody complains about Burn DH? You are coming across very different people than I am then, because Burn DH is mostly propped up by Rune of the Trapper... which is being complained about VERY frequently right now, and so is that by build by proxy. Core Trapper Ranger is also utilizing those runes, but I don't know how effective that build is in higher ranks, but I do know just by virtue of it being a Ranger that it'd get complaints anyway for existing. And Scourge is definitely a stronger overall package than Burn DH, for what it's worth. Guard's best builds are all Core right now, with that one DH outlier that's, again, being Weekend At Bernie's'd by the Trapper runes. If those runes are ever removed, then most likely so is Burn DH.

As nice as it would be to see Ascended be sellable in theory... the only people that really stand to gain much from this are people already at a point where ascended is largely devoid of value for them currently. For those not at a full array of legendaries or with all the builds they care about fully ascended then they'd just replace a gold grind to craft their ascended with buying it outright (assuming the prices are competitive with each other). It doesn't truthfully do anything for them: it trades one method of acquisition for another with no, or little, meaningful distinction. The only people that meaningfully profit from this idea are those with boxes they have no use for anymore. For anyone else, they'd hasten gear progression, maybe... but with a gear type that's necessary in only one form of content in the entire game anyway, and for that mode you typically don't want someone who just bought their way to T4s anyway if they haven't done previous tiers to learn them before. And if they have done them plenty of times to be experienced enough that buying their way to T4s isn't a big deal, then they're probably at a stage where, once again, getting the gear to get there on another character/build is likely trivial anyway.

This game absolutely has quests, they just aren't explicitly called quests like in other games. The renown hearts in this game, in pretty much any other game, would also be quests. And quests often have a story, you say? Well, that sounds an awful lot like the renown hearts where they give you some context of the situation, tell you the things they need done, and look at you to get to it. It's not like that's any less of a quest than some NPC in vanilla WoW in Loch Modan telling you to go fetch some viscera to make blood sausages because... well, it's been years so I don't remember if they were for himself, his family, or the town as a whole. Either way. This game is loaded with quests that just aren't called quests. Story Journal stuff would also pass as a quest, for what it's worth.

In GW1 there were no rifles or pistols, those came between GW1 and GW2 in the lore. But Rangers could effectively use hammers for CC-heavy spike pressure in PvP, or at least they could at one point. Not sure how the meta developed since I didn't PvP in that game much. The specific build idea was commonly referred to as "Bunny Thumper" if you want to look it up. I don't think I'd be inherently opposed to Ranger getting hammers again. I'm fine with most anything except Rifles, because if they make it an effective long-range power weapon then you just know you're going to get cheese with LB/Rifle sniping, and if you make it a really good condi weapon then you chance getting annoying ranged condi shenanigans with Rifle/Shortbow that just plays keepaway in WvW roaming while they wear you down (probably wouldn't be a terribly effective strat in sPvP due to the nodes forcing them to stand on a spot instead of endless kiting at least). At least with the current iteration of Shortbow + Axe/Torch that can only do particularly notable damage when they can shotgun and it lacks cover condis, which a rifle could potentially problematically bring.

The best part is that the one form of endgame PvE you listed is the ONLY content in which a Druid is really meta. Fractals? They've been phased out by a much easier and much more effective comp than Druid + Chrono ever was. Strikes? They're not required there: any healer works just fine in that environment, but if you bring them then you bring them for the exact same reason as you bring them in raids. PvP? They can be a decapper, but even when they're good they're never the best at that role. They can roam in WvW, but they can't join a zerg. A SUPPORT cannot join a zerg. That should tell you all you need to know about how Druid is doing right now in the meta. These people are right: Take away the spirit babysitting and they're a lackluster specialization from all sides. They have one form of content in which they are useful and it's only because they're an efficient way to bring in Core Ranger utility and 10-man might so that the DPS Rangers (if there happen to be any) can run more selfish higher DPS utilities. If we were to, say, nerf the "overperforming spirits" then you stand a good chance of nerfing them out of the last form of content the spec is relevant in since everything else the Druid brought has already been nerfed multiple times over. Anyway, for Rifle Ranger... I wouldn't be enthused. We already have the longbow, short bow, and axe for ranged weapons. Among those, longbow is a good power option, short bow is a nice condi weapon, and Axe makes an effective hybrid/condi weapon. And of those options, Longbow already has a sniper thing going, shortbow and axe both have "shotgun" skills that are fine with being in short range. Longbow fulfills a sort of sniper motif, short bow and axe both fulfill mid-range skirmisher roles that also give some control to enable gaining distance if need be while still not being entirely afraid of getting closer. I don't know, rifle just seems like an underwhelming idea to me right now without even needing to consider any sort of ranger themes (since that means different things to different people anyway). I feel like there's more notable ground a Ranger can cover than a Rifle unless they just get wild with it.

The one to go for first... I'd make it Berserker's. That way you get used to surviving on your 11k base HP for raids and fractals where people typically expect you to be in Berserker's for the highest damage you can put out there. Also because, unfortunately, yes, your dps would take a reasonably large hit from using Marauder over Berserker in that setting. You'll have a lot more HP, but do a lot less damage. Now, the things you want Marauder for, that does not have to be ascended. In fact, outside of fractals you don't need ascended for anything. Plenty of people raid in full exotics of the relevant prefix for their build before they can get their hands on ascended. For open world the extra stats from ascended don't mean much; in WvW blobs you also don't need ascended as much as you hope you have a vocal comm and supports to keep you up so you can do your job. The open-world stuff and zergs is where you'll want your exotic Marauder's. If you have to pick 1 exotic set now... go for berserker's. Why? Because you can buy a set of exotic on the TP for incredibly cheap (for you, look up "Devona's" on the TP). Use stat select on Marauder's if you're so inclined, but exotic berserker's is very cheap, no reason to have to only choose one since you're already working on getting stat select Bladed armor and ascended stat select trinkets. Berserker stats are very easy to come by. So get the cheap exotic Berserker's now since it's so easy to get so you already have it, then use stat select on Marauder's as you get them.