Expertise

I have to /sign, sadly. Rangers can use a hammer better than a Warrior. Rangers can use a Scythe better than a Dervish. There's a good argument that a Ranger can use Daggers better than an Assassin.

That just doesn't seem right to me. Then again, it may just be a sign that Strength, Mysticism, and Critical Strikes just don't mesh with the weapons well enough. There's no synergy, but Expertise does have synergy.

Synergy > No Synergy, so the Ranger rules.

/Sign, just put this in Gladiators Arena. At least the decent people react then, and not just the PvE'ers with a main ranger that like every buff and dislike every nerf to that class.

Can eles spend their energy on non ele skills ? Does a warriors strength attribute apply to non warrior weapons ? Can a necro use energy gained from soul reaping for non necro skills ? Can a sin use critical strikes with weapons other than daggers ?

Sorry I dont believe that a ranger with a sword is better than a warrior, I dont believe that a ranger with a scythe is better than a dervish. And so on. I believe that rangers do have a lot of versatility when it comes to secondary profession skill use but are not overpowered under such circumstances. In many ways I believe that ranger is a jack of all trades profession (sort of) but master of none.

If one has difficulty adjusting to an opponents versatility the problem is not with his versatility but rather with one's own ability to adapt and overcome.

Sorry if this sounds really dense but since my pvp experience consists of cripshotting AB and watching Obs , why don't GvG battles consist of front line Rangers if they R/w and R/d better than primary W and D ?

It's still degenerate. Versatility...in the form of degenerate builds is baed.

Thumpers are raped now it is all r/d.

Kill R/D's and Thumpers come back. Why not get rid of both? Mind you, the power on Thumpers comes from RaO. Limiting RaO to Ranger skills should get rid of them degenerate creeps.

imo make weapon attributes like primary attributes. Think about it, how many of those builds are non-retarded?

R/D => c-space-Lame
D/P blindbot => Lame
R/W => oldschool-Lame + daze-Lame + target-training-Lame... the trifecta!
A/D => like-a-dervish-but-better-Lame
E/A random-arenas-spike => lol-Lame
D/A dagger/lyssa => i-c-wut-u-did-thar-Lame
R/A => fang-of-melandru-Lame (<3 premade builds)
R/P => your-heroes-can't-kill-my-heroes-Lame
Rt/X spirits strength => IW-style-Lame

Sure, these builds offer "variety/versatility", but they're just plain stupid imo. Which of them makes this game better?

Sorry if this is off-topic, but I feel it is similar and not worth its own thread.

Please be nice and think of all the blood and sweat that went into this post

and that part was sarcasm. numbnuts.

R/A dagger users are just annoying but i have never seen them do much ever. also ego in guildwars=stupidity.

God forbid people use their secondaries. Let's just perma-equip swords to warriors, staffs to casters, daggers to sins, scythes to dervishes, and bows to rangers. Will that make you feel better?

absolutely brilliant! let's break the secondary professions system!

/sarcasm off

/signed.

Expertise should only effect ranger skills.

And why is this in Sardelac? 90% of the posts I read in this topic fail badly. Any1 wants to buy some clue?

Oh and R/D will invade GvG soon, trust me. The main reason as to why RaO fails in GvG is the pet.

I see three main arguments in this thread.

1: The expertise line is overused, therefore overpowered, therefore should be nerfed.
a.WRONG! You most commonly see Rangers using secondary skills in builds like Thumper and R/D. These are the most commons forms you will see, but they are IN NO WAY OVERPOWERED. R/W can indeed cause some considerable pressure, but harness almost no spike damage (DW+maybe 75 damage?). Any competent monk can counter these.
b. R/D usually rely on spirits to spam their powerful skills. While this may cause some problems in uncoordinated PUGs, any well prepared group can take these spirits down easily. These R/Ds indeed do have powerful damage, but you must realize that these teams are mostly PUGs looking for fast fame, and can rarely hold Halls, or even get to it. In this equation its not the Rangers that are the problem, it is the over-powered monstrous damage of the scythes.

2. This type of play involes little to no skill, therefore should be nerfed to promote good game-play.
a. "These noobs need to learn to play Rangers the RIGHT WAY!" These "noobs" also happen to be very effective if they harness their build's full potential, but the problems with this kind of thing is as I said before: most of these groups are PUGs and are no threat to any kind of well organized and prepared group. These builds do have a quality that makes it easy to pick up and play, but this is in no way "skilless"

3. The Ranger is Expertise, Expertise is the Ranger, therefore it should not be nerfed because the Expertise is what makes the ranger worthwhile playing.
a. YES! The main reasons these threads pop-up is because of QQers who predominantly HA, but the problem is that NO MATTER WHAT, HEROES ASCENT WILL BE PLAGUED BY CRAPPY FOTM BUILDS. It has been everpresent since bloodspike and Iway. The reason the Ranger is any good is because that is the Jack of all Trades. It can play nearly any build (discluding most caster builds), but it is in no way as effective as the original builds. Touchers can be defeated by and mediocre blood necro. Thumpers can be defeated by and smart warrior who knows how to target pets. R/Ds can be defeated by any dervish who knows how to stay alive.


Main sum of all my arguments: Stop QQing and L2P.

Last argument of my own: People should stop calling for nerfs on the meta. People should start realizing that by nerfing the meta, you will just create a vacuum for another crappy FOTM build. People should call for buffs on other skills that would create options for those who refuse to run the meta builds, and when they DO refuse, make it so that those options are viable.

Once again, I say -- It's not how powerful it is. It's the fact it's degenerate. Degenerate builds should be degenerated.

These builds are mainly skillless, as the people who play them. C-Space then mash the 12345678 keys.

Not really. It's the cheap application to conditions that makes the Ranger worthwhile playing. Expertise just allows spammability, which means yes, you're right in a sense.

But how will nerfing Expertise to Ranger-only skills affect anyone who knows how to play a proper Ranger and not these crappy, degenerate gimmicks? Not much. And besides, changing Expertise to this will get rid of the majority of R/X degenerate builds.


I would rather face a new gimmick than face the same one over and over. If I don't? The game gets stagnant. In your case, I would say "Degenerate builds deserve to get nerfed, so gtfo."

/thread .

And it's degenerate because....? This is clearly according to ANet's design philosophy; they even redid the wording on expertise to very specifically state what it did and did not effect, including giving the A-OK to touchers and thumpers and the like.

You're basically saying, "It's degenerate because I say so!" I mean, what makes it degenerate (thumpers, not sway)? It's really no less skill-less on its own than a standard warrior; it just sacrifices both the spike-ability and some of the pressure for more spammable kds and dazed. Why is a ranger using a secondary weapon so awful; are assassins using secondary weapons that disruptive to the game? They're clearly designed to do that (look at "melee attacks" under crit strikes, and enchs that give +xx% crit chance not just to daggers), so who are you to say that they shouldn't?

You want to nerf sway, fine, but don't take all of the diversity of rangers with it.

How is that the end of the thread? Ensign didn't say anything on the actual topic, he just commented that the entire idea of expertise is broken. It's an energy-management primary, just like most every other one; the fact that it does what it does exceedingly well (and that all of the class's skills are based around it) has no relation to whether or not rangers should be able to use r/x builds effectively because of it.

Actually, no. I'm saying it's degenerate, because Rangers weren't ment to do that role.

Warriors were ment to run around smacking stuff with a Hammer, rip things to shreads with Swords and Axes.

Dervish's were supposed to go around swinging a Scythe.

Rangers are ment to disrupt and create havok on the enemies side of things by developing strong pressure via conditions, and have survivability for splitting abilities.

Degenerate as in not ment for that role --

Like Bloodspike. Necro's were mainly designed as a Shutdown / Support profession, just like Mesmer and Ranger. Bloodspike comes along, and there's your degenerate spike.

Like Enchanter's Conundrum -> Shatter Delusions spike. Mesmers weren't ment to spike. They were ment to create havok on the enemies side of things like a Ranger does but in a different manner.

If I have to go through with this any more I can only say this -- you are extremely stubborn.

He implied that the design of expertise was originally for ranger's usages only as their skills are grossly overcost. And that design has nothing to do with other professions' skills.

1)The reason why ranger skills are overcost is expertise.

2)The reason why other professions' skills are expensive is the power of those skills. They are expensive because and only because their effects are powerful.

Obviously, those are 2 different things. Now if you mix 1 and 2, you will get powerful skills with very low cost which would make those originally fine skills become overpowered.
Therefore, the design of expertise now is not good for the game. Surely, you can nerf a couple of skills, but in the ling run, nothing would stop the abuse of expertise.

That wouldn't break the system, it would just prevent people from taking their secondary and pretending it's their primary profession, then reaping the benefits of their primary attribute.

A weapon that does 9-41 damage was not balanced around a near 100% crit rate, for example.

I'm glad we should be taking narrow minded advice like yours and not try to push forward with gameplay, or are overly used stereotypes suddenly a good thing? Anet gave us the ability to use secondaries for a reason, why do you want to completely trash this idea? Why are you the one to say what a profession should and should not do?
I agree with a nerf to R/D's because they are overpowered (just like Enchanter's Conundrum spike), not because they don't fit the role I feel a ranger should play. To do so is completely uncalled for, and, like I stated before, extreamely narrow minded.

Scythes were slightly imbalanced to begin with, but if Anet never pushed forward with the "bigger badder" mentality (the biggest culprit for the power creep), they might have actualy had to try to mix up gameplay a little to get players interested in a new game, instead of just adding game breaking skills and professions to each new campaign.

/notsigned
I think that rangers should keep their versatility. Nerfing expertise would be nerfing the ranger profession as a whole. Many people make rangers because they can do so many different things as a ranger. If thumpers or R/D Escape scythes are overpowered, then they would be nerfed, but not the expertise line as a whole.

basically what you are saying is that using secondary professions is bad

and that rangers MUST use bows and MUST spam conditions and MUST have self heal/blocking

and necros MUST be shutdown and support because they have skills that do that!

do an IQ test and tell me the result truthfully

Considering they redid the wording of expertise to specifically state what it affected, I think your idea of what rangers are "supposed" to be able to do is wrong.

There was no implying of any sort in that quote. If that's what he meant to say, he should come out and say it, because you can't simply go from, "Expertise is bad because all ranger skills have to be balanced around a 40% energy reduction" to, "Rangers break every other skill in the game because of their damage reduction." It's not like other classes don't have their own sources of energy management, which while not as good as a ranger's, is more than made up for by runes and other abilities granted by being a primary x. A R/A can do an expensive attack chain, but it'll be weak, and the primary sin can do the same thing just as well with crit strikes. A R/P can spam attack skills with reckless abandon, but since when has a paragon cared about energy with adrenaline shouts and leadership? A R/W can spam energy attacks as much as he wants, but a primary warrior gets a better attack boost (without using the elite and a 3rd att line for a pet), hits harder, and can do the same or better job with mainly adrenaline skills.

Bottom line, the ranger doesn't "break" anything with expertise. The only thing wrong with expertise is that the ranger is basically dependent on it, and basically all x/r builds are trashy because ranger skills are so overpriced. The uses of a secondary are simply different ways of running that profession, which I still can't see anything inherently wrong with. The only trouble with it right now is sway, and I'm sorry but there's a better way to nerf that than nuking every r/x build because you guys seem to think for some strange reason that they're not "supposed" to be like that. Well, they are, the description even says so.

Narrow minded? I'm against degenerate builds. Yeah, they gave us secondary professions for a reason, but that reason was NOT to misguide the role set for you on that profession. Rangers were never made to smash stuff with Hammers or swing Scythes round.
It might seem narrow minded to you. But you're playing a secondary like a primary anyway, that's not synergy, thats misguiding a role set.

Blood Magic is a Necromancer attribute. Nothing to do with secondaries, and Bloodspike is a degenerate build misguiding the role a Necro should be taking.

If you read, I was using Bloodspike and EC -> SD spike. Both of them are in one profession, Necro and Mesmer. Nothing to do with secondaries.


So you're saying I should delete my Warrior and turn my Ranger into my Warrior?
Take a look at skills like Cripshot, Apply Poison, Melandru's Arrows, Poison Arrow and the list goes on and on. D-Shot, Magebane, Punishing Shot...

This is abusing the primary attribute as a whole. In many different ways. Abuse shouldn't be tolerated to start with.

To be honest, R/W thumpers and R/N touchers are far more degenerate than Bloodspike teams, in a sense. Last I heard, necromancers were supposed to be able to steal health...

Actually, I believe that they were. I think that the developers designed the rangers to be a jack-of-all-trades that could do a little bit of everything. When I think of a ranger, I don't always think of them carrying a bow. A ranger is typically a soldier that is adapted for guerrilla warfare. Therefore, I believe that the GW rangers should be allowed to use more than just bows.

You could argue that soul reaping is be abused. Look at the N/Rt healers! The mesmer fast casting attribute can be abused to nuke using slower casting ele spells.

Blood should of been more of a support line anyway.
Things like Order of Pain and Dark Fury come to mind.
Stealing health for benefit to your party members might sound quite nice...

But still, Necromancers should be less of the damage and more of the shutdown / support mixture.

Then why didn't Rangers get their own melee weapon mastery, hmm?


I wouldn't be bothered in the least if Soul Reaping got nerfed. Really, the enemy AI exploits itself with Soul Reaping in PvE for being so gullable and weak in the first place.

And Fast Casting Nukers, wouldn't mind seeing them get hit aswell. More gimmicky crap killed. And in all honesty, runes with a 40/40 set are really much better...

Expertise is fine, I don't mind seeing any of the examples given of how the attribute is supposedly abused, unless it's Touch Rangers... But hey, everyone hates Touch Rangers... Well, unless they're on your team.

Because Anet introduced a little thing called secondaries.

The Soul Reaping abuse has been in HA for ages. N/RT's have been abused to hell and back since the days of spirit way, all the way to today's Sway, and you're saying it only effects PvE?

That would mean more work for ANet. I didn't say that rangers should get their own melee mastery. I said that they should be able to use the masteries that other melee professions use. Versatility doesn't mean the profession should get a line for everything. I thought ANet did a very good job creating expertise to make rangers the way they are.

Because they can use other professions'. As intended. Durrr?

Stop with the "rangers were never meant to do x" crap. ANet clearly defined what they are "meant to do" when they changed up expertise, made it so only ranger stances get the bonus, yet touch skills and ALL attack skills from ALL professions were accepted. You are wrong, and that's all there is to it; you're making up an idea of what rangers "should" be that has no basis in anything outside of your head. You can't give a definition for what a "degenerate" build is, because you just subjectively make it up yourself.

Er..no. Because, you see, they are different. A r/w will never take the place of a warrior, just as a r/d will never take the place of a dervish (whoever said that, I have to rofl loud and hard at you; a dervish without mysticism for AoM, yeah, that's worth it).

How about all the traps? Guess we have to nerf trappers too, since they use staffs; rangers must use bows to spread their conditions and interrupts, according to you. What about the entire beastmastery line? Is the Enraged Lunge beastmaster a degenerate build too, since it also uses a staff, and it doesn't spread conditions, just does big chunks of damage?

I could similarly point to all of the dagger attacks, and conclude that assassins are "supposed" to only use daggers...yet the Deadly Arts line exists, and is capable of complete attack chains all on its own, using only spells. Yet unlinked Melee Attacks (not dagger attacks) exist in the Crit Strikes attribute (as well as in warrior and dervish attributes) specifically so that we can use them with different weapons equally effectively. These things are in the game because, no, the classes are not "meant" to be stuck in one tight niche, and indeed are allowed to do, even encouraged to do, whatever they want. Some combos aren't as effective as others, but there has historically been no restriction on what you can do with a secondary, for good reason.

The ability of rangers to use secondary attack skills was deliberately affirmed by ANet. By any rational definition, they are "supposed" to be able to use them.

Yeah, and there are primaries too, which should be played the way the primary was made in the first place. Secondary professions should only synergise smoothly while keeping that playstyle of the primary in check.

I'm talking about today. It only really effects PvE these days.

Actually, no I'm not wrong about the defenition of what a degenerate build.
You're defending the abuse of a secondary profession virtually becoming the primary profession. Rangers, again were not meant to be for damage.

If Rangers were meant for damage, why not just scrap Warriors, Dervs and 'Sins and put all their weapon masteries on the Ranger?

The playstyle is the same in essence.
And if you really believe that Dervs will do better anyway (which they should.) why will it effect you?
Getting rid of degenerate builds stops stagnant gameplay and gets rid of the people who can't play the profession as it was intended from creation.

Enraged Lunge Beastmaster using a Scythe? How bad...

Anyway, Staves are ran on Trappers because of the higher energy. I never said once that bows NEED to be used for spreading conditions. And Trapping isn't really degenerate. It brings in condition pressure (Which the Ranger should be performing anyway, not using a secondary as a primary) and utilates fieldplay to restrict places to move unless they trigger the traps.

That's simply bad design. Whichever dev that came up with making these skills and letting the secondary professions get abused is beyond stupid.

And the Deadly Arts line should of been a support line, like Blood Magic.

-4% for Ranger skills, -2% else

When a hammer ranger puts out more pressure than a hammer warrior, there's a problem. (etc.)

i have an idea! everybody stop feeding the troll and just sit back and laugh at it in the comfort of your chair.

and a /lock would be nice, this is just a flamefest now

Again, more of your "I think Ranger should only...". Can you not see how biased your comments are? It's sickening

Tell that to half the teams in HA these days that have an entire or partial N/RT backline (most of them happen to be the same gimmicks you're currently slandering, even though you pass the N/RT off as PvE only.)

Maybe a Warrior should try using a 33% unstripable IAS/Speed buff (Rampage as One), an on call daze (Bestial mauling), and extra damage added in seperate packets (pet).....none of those are expertise linked, idk why you want to change expertise to fix thumpers that only use one warrior skill that requires energy (crushing blow).......

And wasn't a thread exactly like this locked a day ago? Why is this even up?

I'll say it again. Using your secondary as a primary is degenerate.

That's because things still die in HA. Like any other place. Not to mention the runes actually have little effect on the skills.

Agreed here. Only fix to RaO would be disabling all non-Ranger skills though.

And by the way, my comments aren't really very biased...I would like to see all degenerate builds die, which is what alot of people are hoping for.

What makes the builds degenerate other than the fact that you think that rangers shouldn't be playing a certain role? The way you're talking, it's starting to sound like all cookie cutter builds are degenerate, because someone else found it out and the user is simply copying what the original person did. If you want that changed, I don't have a problem with it, but ANet won't be able to change up the skills every once in a while just to destroy the builds you call "degenerate."

Eh? If I wanted to see things die in melee positioning, I would want to see a Dervish, Warrior or 'Sin using the roles set for them.

Put it this way -- One does not play a Ranger to go in melee and make things go boom. One plays Ranger to piss people off in the other team. If one wanted to go in melee, one should play a Warrior, Dervish or 'Sin and use the weapons that are provided.

By changing this primary attribute, it will kill the majority of them.

Infact, I don't even know why I'm still arguing.
I've proven more than needed enough times, and I misunderstand why these degenerate builds deserve to stay (Which they should apparently).
If you're defending these builds because they show up the versatility in a Ranger, you're wrong about the versatile part. It's mainly 1-dimensional skillsets as easy to play as 'Sins 12345678 builds.

Which is also degenerate play. It doesn't only rely on the playstyle as intended, but the skill required to actually run the build. Which is most of the time, none in degenerate builds.

You've posted this exact thing time and time again over the last two pages......do you not understand what we're trying to tell you?
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK A PROFESSION SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT DO. ANET GAVE US SECONDARIES, I THINK THEY HAD THE INTENTION OF US USING THEM.
/end rant

And I've already pointed out in several of my posts that expertise is not the culprit to a majority of these so called "degenerate builds". An expertise nerf would only effectively remove touch rangers, nothing else worth playing depends so much on the attribute. (yes escapeway would take a hit, but they'd still survive due to the imbaness of scythes, rending touch, and escape.)