aathomas.4638

Hello, What you are missing is that while merged damage modifiers affect you instead of your pet including sic'em. Power Core is strong but you have to be really good because you have to burst with your pet around the same time. It's much harder than Soulbeast. I don't see links to your build but just with Beastmastery and Soulbeast you get 10% damage increase from Loud Whistle, 7% damage increase while having Fury from Furious Strength, 5% damage increase from interrupts from Twice as Vicious, and another 10% damage increase from Oppressive Superiority. All that plus 25% from sic'em adds a lot of damage. However, for pure burst, nothing will beat landing a full round of one wolf pack. It's what still lets rangers kill inexperienced players with one rapid fire.

Hello, I don't have much experience with condi so before I waste the little bit of gold I have, I am hoping for feedback on this hybrid build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAo6lFw0YcsRWJO8PdpWA-zRRYsRDuIszoXFQLTANeBCYD8aGwZE-e Do note that with the explosives trait line changes, the power will be 2333 and the health will be around 20500. I know this build lacks running away but that's not something I care to do. I'm more curious if I'd have the damage to kill anything. I'm expecting consistent pressure with the grenades/bombs then burst with grenade barrage when sigil of severance procs as that should make my crit chance around 80% and my crit damage around 200%.

This won't make a difference as splitblade will still do less than auto attack if left unchanged. While auto does have an aftercast, correct me if I'm wrong, but that only matters if you're chaining skills. Most of the time you'd use splitblade is when the enemy is about to get in your face which you'd then kite away or switch to your melee weapon set, both of which can be done without waiting for the aftercast. There use to be a damage reward for the risk of trying to get the .75 splitblade off. Now it'll be safer and more rewarding to just use the .25 auto. As for axe4, I love that skill. It is currently very rewarding to land. I know they plan to add damage to cc skills when they balance, so we'll have to wait and see. If the meta does go towards tanky condi, I'd probably prefer they remove the pull, add all the damage back, and just make it cripple or slow on each hit to help with kitting. You don't want to be pulling a tank condi right on top of you.

Just a mid-week comment for the miniscule chance this skill will be saved before the patch next Tuesday. Currently projected, the new axe auto will hit for .533 with a .25 cast time. The new splitblade will hit for .1 per axe or .5 if all axes hit, with a .75 cast time. Not only is it hard to land all 5 axes but even if you do, you will do less damage than auto while requiring a longer cast time! If you have a 70% crit chance you'll have a 70% chance to double your damage with auto. If you have a 70% crit chance you'll only have a 16.8% chance to have all 5 axes crit. This skill will become completely useless and is actually a detriment if used as an auto will always be better. Please change splitblade's reduced damage to .268 so it's aligned with a 33% reduction or anywhere near that!

It's a very nice surprise burst at close range that is hard to pull off and adds variety to spamming Auto and Winter's Bite. But if they leave it untouched, even if you manage to land all 5 axes (at point blank range) and also manage to have all 5 axes crit, you will still do less damage then a single crit auto attack while requiring .5 extra cast time. If they don't fix it, they've made it completely useless and are ruining a fairly balanced kit.

Splitblade needs to be brought in line with other skill's damage reduction. Not only is it getting a 75% damage reduction but its getting a 2 sec increase to it's cool down (which is not a big deal). This skill already has a niche use and only does good damage from melee range and now you're making it useless. A/A power already lost path of scars damage momentarily, please make splitblade a 33% damage reduction in line with the other skills.

Just quick thoughts for discussion: I think the biggest thing that needs to change is how soulbeast works with pet merging. Right now you can use your pet's beast skill, immediately merge, use your beast skill, then unmerge in time to use your pet's beast skill again. There is no trade off. I hope a trade off is what they are targeting. Off the top of my head maybe there could be a ~5 second cool down before you can use beast skills upon merge or unmerge. That way people can't immediately use smokefield/leap and are vulnerable for a bit if ANET doesn't want to change the smokescale. I agree on removing plasma, it's strong with WvW stats available. Or just change moa stance (maybe make it share boons you receive with party instead). Prelude lash, swoop, and leap beastmode skills should all have their cooldowns increased. The amount of extra damage traits also need to be toned down, it's too easy for ranger to have over 2700 toughness, 2600 power, 60% crit, 24k health, and 230% crit damage. Rangers also have better stunbreak skills then other classes which need to be looked at across all classes. As for bug fixes, I use Axe/Axe and I hope they fix the bug of dead bodies blocking axe skills, though I'm sure this impacts more than axe. Across the classes I agree on hoping they remove passive procs/invulns. I'd also like to see the removal non-pbaoe or target aoe skills that can be used when not facing the target. I hope they change boons so they scale based on specific gear stats, i.e. Might only give 30 might per stack if you are at a full offensive threshold and reduces effectiveness the more defensive stats you go, and create a new boon stat that affects how long the boons you give to others last so you have to balance between two boon duration stats. If they want to let condi stay bursty then I hope they let it be affected by toughness but create a third toughness piercing stat so that way condi is more balanced with Power/Precision/Ferocity requirements (assuming they balance condi class skills to create more burst for all classes.) Lastly from a wvw perspective I hope they remove rally off NPC at the very least.