Master Ketsu.4569

Broken poll.

Ranger GS is not much better than Rev or Warrior GS once you account for dumb stealth combos. Maul is a very fair skill to get hit by due to being highly telegraphed. The problem ONLY comes when you can stealthmonkey it. Before damage powercreep was addressed, a long time ago there used to be a really degenerate low-effort build you could play that would just oneshot people from stealth with 30k+ damage on Ranger GS, and then just run away while it recharged. That build got nerfed along with the damage patch so it's not really an issue anymore. However, it's still annoying for the same reason stealth is annoying. It's not actually a problem with Ranger. People need to stop blaming classes and certain weapons for the fact that the reveal-on-hit and no real soft detection makes stealth in this game naturally low counterplay. Ranger GS is not a problem. Stealth is badly designed. Thief DE rifle is not a problem. Stealth is badly designed. Just about every problem build that uses stealth has the central flaw of what makes it stupid and uninteractive rooted in stealth being badly designed in a way that makes it uninteractive. Other games let you either see an outline or hear a sound when a stealthed enemy is close enough ( WoW ), or make stealth reveal if you got hit with a CC Skill ( Tera ), or revealed you when you used an offensive skill instead of after it successfully hit ( Every game except GW2 ). At the absolute very least, dodging or blocking a stealth attack should reveal the attacker and I have yet to see a good argument against this that didn't sound like it came from a Rank<1400 player. The issue is that Anet has repeatedly failed to understand just how bad this mechanic is designed. The current iteration is waaaaaaay too hand-holdy. I can understand MMO's pandering to casuals but pandering this hard is just intellectually insulting.

This is a problem on at least 25% of the skills in the game, not just SoJ. It's part of an overarching "Poor animation balance" neglect issue where skills with high tells are often unimpactful in PvP and skills with low tells have major impact. So now you have all this visual clutter from skills that literally do almost nothing while the abilities that actually win games have either no windup, look indistinguishable from auto attacks, are instant cast, look too similar to other abilities, only play a strong visual tell after the skill has already hit, or a combination of these. Then you have some skill that summons a giant turtle covering the point that does almost nothing and should usually be ignored. This is something Anet has been consistently failing more and more on with every expansion. They really should just consider adding toggle-able skill bars/skill icons to the game. GW2 is has gotten to the point where the combat unironically feels less intuitive than GW1 did despite the fact that GW2 has action combat and a dodge bar.

The fact that no one seems to understand that the problem is how many of DH skills are unblockable or unevadeable gives little hope to it ever being fixed. People would rather complain about numbers rather than the fact that combos which can only be stopped by tons of invuln and stab ( IE: Build wars ) is bad for the game.

Trap numbers are fine. The problem is tons of nerfs to numbers and everything else over many years except for unblockable/unevadeable spam. So if you actually want to fix DH, don't nerf the trap damage. Instead do this: Spear of Justice: No longer unblockable Dragon's maw: No longer unevadeable That's it. Any other change to DH is nerfing around problems instead of fixing the problem.

Lower population results in lower average rank due to how the rank point system works.

GW2 can be described as a good PvP game that unfortunately has a short list of mechanics that have zero reason to exist in any competitive format. What we are seeing is yet another example in the loooooooooooooooooooooong list of examples of the conclusion of Anet nerfing around stupidly designed mechanics instead of fixing them. This actually makes the stupid mechanics stronger since other things have been nerfed, in other words Anets balance decisions result in monkey-mechanics being buffed by neglect since the monkey mechanics are never addressed. The lead devs have proven themselves for whatever reason unable to accept the fact that this is why the PvP game modes never really take off and GW2 PvP remains a niche mode with low population. One of these badly designed mechanics is that the vast majority of unblockable skills in this game have absolutely no business whatsoever being so, combined with skills that are also unevadeable in addition is a recipe for braindead uninteractive gameplay that is entirely APM based instead of skill. Why bait dodges and blocks when you can just play a build where you press 12345 and it just ignores defensive maneuvers entirely? ook ook ah eee eee eee. It was really only a matter of time before this terrible balance strategy resulted in a spec whose entire shtick is to spam unblockable/unevadeable combos became meta.

The problem is caused by anets design/balance philosophy of nerfing around mechanical problems instead of actually fixing mechanical problems, which ironically results in making classes more dependent on said mechanical problems. We are reaching the end goal of this bad philosophy, which is that the game is "balanced" in that every class has something worth playing, but all the most viable builds are extremely uninteractive degenerate low skill monkey spam. Engie is a fantastic example of this type of unskillful degeneracy. Holosmith before nade-EE monkeytrash was one of the most interactive builds with powerful damage but big tells. It was fun to fight against and fun to play as. Now what is Engie playing today? Run away with superspeed while throwing snapgroundtarget grenades behind you oook oook ah eee eee eeee

Make all skills require target facing like they do in action camera and disable snap ground targeting in competitive game modes. The above two changes would teach a large number of players just how much they suck.

Contained temper change sounds like a bad idea. Not just because it's removing a good source of fury, but because tying an energy management trait to something that depends on your opponent just sounds really clunky.

The biggest buff is that CoR fix. The main reason most serious players do not run Hammer is because everyone in 1600+ knows how to exploit the fact that CoR is bugged. With this fake-downside finally removed, it may get seen as a viable defensive alternative to shortbow.

Relic changes: Meh Ele: Hammer Cata is meta. Anets needs to stop buffing things that are meta. If it isn't broke don't fix it. Engie: Mostly meh, but hey spectrum shield buff. Nerf to condi mechanist feels more like a casual player nerf since the build wasn't actually that busted, but it is annoying so it's hard to care. Guardian: Meh Mesmer: Buffing condi mesmer in any form is always a bad idea. The mechanics of mesmer make it so whenever condi mes becomes viable in high level play it tends to become SS+ due to how extremely uninteractive the playstyle is. Necro changes: Meh Ranger: BEAR METAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA but seriously though pets needed some internal balance. The only problem here is this large amount of changes may result in a lot of unintended busted builds so don't be surprised if Ranger gets some followup emergency nerfs. Revenant: Very nice that Rev is being given a new weapon ( The CoR bug made hammer unusable against any non-braindead player so this is the same thing as a new weapon ). Thief: Oh look, they finally found a way to make Impact Strike worth taking. Warrior: Meh

Both post-SOTO MAT Finalists ran a cata on their team. If it was bad, top teams wouldn't be running it. Furthermore Tempest is considered SS+ God tier in 2v2 with nearly everyone in Ranked plat+ running it atm. Just accept the fact that you have an L2P problem if you are not stomping games with ele rn because it's easily still one of the best classes in the game.

Anyone who thinks ele is trash right now is suffering from "boosted-syndrome". Ele was redonkulously broken a couple meta's ago, with scepter cata being one of the very few builds in the game to reach the status of being so hilariously and obviously cracked that you could run 5 of them and win top tournaments against serious teams ( Who were also likely running at least 2 of their own ). Tempest was also top support, and hammer cata was also SS sidenode. Guess what, Tempest is still a meta support and Power hammer is still a fantastic sidenode. Ele still has access to a ton of mechanics which allow it to dish out unavoidable damage spikes and aura spam. The difference between then and now is that these things aren't completely breaking the game. And so players who were boosted by the previous metas borked version of Ele now think the class is "bad", when in reality they just can't cope with no longer being boosted.

It's a casual-pandering change. True strike is/was an extremely powerful skill, but with the caveat that it is only OP when used against EXTREMELY BAD players. It could oneshot people, but only if you built up 5 charges and they were dumb enough to stay in range of one of the slowest attacks in the game. So in order to actually get hit with a fully charged True strike, a player has to commit several noob mistakes in a row ( 1. Failure to notice to stupidly obvious block animation, 2. Failure to stow weapons against the block causing it to fully charge, 3. Facetanking the rev while he is blocking, 4. Failure to kite the true strike, 5. Failure to dodge/block if you failed to kite it ) Only by making all 5 mistakes in a row do you actually get hit with a full powered True strike, which is why almost no one on the forums can be seen complaining about it since most people here at least understand the basics of the basics of the kittening basics. You have to remember the average skill level of the forums is about Gold II, while the average skill level of the community as a whole ( Especially WvW ) is Silver II. This is an example of something silver players die to but gold players rarely do, and of course plat+ never does. But having instagibbed a few very new players who really do make all five of those mistakes in a row, I am pretty sure they felt pretty demoralized to just instantly die. Anet has made it quite painfully clear with the last couple years of "balance" changes that the balance direction is centered around the average player, not the best player. So occasionally we are going to see these changes which make absolutely no sense to anyone who has been playing PvP or WvW for longer than a couple months.