Expertise

Good, and now let us calculate how much energy expertise saves:
Jagged Strike, Fox Fangs and Shattering Assault can be used about every 5 seconds, Leaping Mantis Sting and Exhausting Assault can be used about every 9 seconds. In a time frame of 10 seconds you can use the first combo twice and the second one once, with 14 expertise that's 30 energy saved, or 9 energy pips for a total of 12 pips.
Now, keep in mind we're talking about PvP here where your opponents might block or blind you; expertise reduces the cost of the attack skills no matter what, but with critical strikes you actually have to hit in order to gain energy.

If you suck at theorycrafting you shouldn't try to use it as an argument.

the fact that you don't see expertise as a problem could also be a demonstration of your own intellectual deficits. really, it's all a matter of opinion. tbh op isn't any dumber than someone asking for 7 hero parties.

I did.

It's rather stupid to waste energy on attackskills while you're blinded. Not a very usefull argument

Fox Fangs and Shattering Assault can't be blocked.


See below.

(Edit, I was out of line, apologies)

Khmm:
Bolded the important part.

So? Allright, my mistake, 3 combo's second one twice, not two

(Edit: recalc below - get's out of order otherwise)

Sorry I guess I should have bolded more then:
We are dealing with the energy saved over some 10 seconds when using certain skills.

It's not usefull to start with, if you spend 20 E on them, you need 20 seconds to recharge that energy.

You forgot to multiply the 20 (the cost of the first chain) by 2.
Bolded the mistake.

Right, lets recalculate:

2 x (5 + 5 + 10 ) + 10 = 50. they'll cost 2 x (2 + 2 + 4 ) + 4 = 20 (yes you 'save' 30).

So, 3 combo's, 8 attacks, 3 of which are duals, that is 11 hit's and another 2 from double strikes. The sin will get about 4 crits in those and thus 12 E back

In 10 seconds the R/A regenerates 10 E, the A/x 13.

So, after these 10 seconds, the net energy spending of the ranger is 10E (20 in attcks, 10 regen). It will require 10 seconds (auto-attacking) without skills to recover that energy.

The assasin spends 50, 25 is returned from crits and regen in the attack combo's, another 9 from crits and 13 from regen in the 10 seconds the ranger needs to recover. So, when the ranger is back to full energy, the assassin is still lacking 3 E.

Is that such a big deal? R/A will burst/spike for less energy, prolonged it's about equal. Not to mention that Critical Eye would more then make up for the difference.

The assassin has an energy pool of 25.

He'll get energy back while executing the chains, and he'll get energy back while simply auto-attacking. The second combo is the one intended to be repeated, Leaping Mantis and Exhausting are 'for the occasion'.

Sorry for the comment about theorycrafting, that was unnecessary.

Another weakness of critical strikes is that the energy gain is random; you might have three critical hits when you're nearly full, and don't have any if your energy is low.

Remember, you're facing intelligent beings. Your opponent will try to blind/blurred you right in the middle of your chain so that you're wasting at least one or two attacks; but due to the low recharge of the attack skills this argument isn't really convincing.

That's the time when blind/blurred/cripple/blocking kicks in, you're more than likely not be able to hit with 9-10 attacks to regain 9 energy due to crits.
Also you're fighting moving targets, then add target switching and one attack every two to three seconds is more realistic.

The problem is that for the assassin to actually execute the chain we talked about here - he needs to fully regen his complete energy pool to be able to even FINISH the chain.
The ranger on the other hand is able to pull of the whole chain and as he is doing that - he is already regenerating energy for his NEXT chain.

Not that I want to get involved with this argument, but I didn't see one thing mentioned, and one thing I think may be important. Ranger would not be able to use Zealous Daggers as easily as an Assassin, and in combination with Critical Strikes, the Zealous Daggers give back a ton of energy. Now, before you argue it, I do know you will get blocked/blinded and miss at times, and I also know you will want/need to use Vamp, Elemental, and possibly other mods (like condition extending). But weapon swapping is not hard if you know how to do it, and swapping to Zealous when you need energy can be a nice boost.

But I also think it is silly to assume a R/A would use the same build as an A/x, or that an A/x would use the same build as a R/A. Of course there are benefits to one over the other. And there are builds that an A/x can run better than a R/A, but those may not be in the meta when you want to use them.

NP.

Yes, not hitting is a serious downer for Critical Strikes, be it from blind, blocking or chasing a target. This particular build plays well with a Ranger primary, it's listed as 'Great' for a reason, but besides this one R/A there are also 5 A/x PvP-builds listed as Great, which tells me R/A is not replacing A/x. There's also a R/W melee ranger between 9 W/x, and a R/D. Ranger primaries aren't replacing the melee primaries.

That's partially true, he needs the 5E before he can activate the skill while the ranger only need the 2 E it costs with expertise. One chain (JS/FF/SA) costs 20 E but the Assassin gets energy while attacking so he doesn't need to be fully charged before starting a chain. He does need to (auto)attack to recover energy while the Ranger can just hang back, or chase, or miss.

The builds are pretty uncomparable.

The most prominent Assassin builds aren't builds that spam their chain every 4 seconds, they're builds that have a chain with a somewhat long recharge that deals a lot of damage while knocklocking your opponent. They are probably best comparable to Hammer Warriors, although they're a lot easier to play and less effective in the hands of good players.

Builds that spam a chain every 4 seconds are really best on Rangers because they're better at managing the energy cost. For that reason, Assassins that DO use a build such as this one have to take additional skills to be able to keep up their energy. On Rangers, these skill slots are filled with additional survivability, such as Lightning Reflexes.

Add the fact that Rangers already have 100 armor against Elemental Damage as opposed to an Assassin's 70 and you can conclude that Rangers get to have a shitload of armor and defense as opposed to Assassin's... What, again?

This is of course looking purely from a build-to-build perspective, which is pretty irrelevant to why this nerf to Expertise is needed. Neither build is acceptable. They both lead to mindless play and the Ranger's one even more so because it sucks up much more damage and thus allows you to pretty much ignore incoming Warriors.

Removing Expertise doesn't actually invalidate melee Rangers, it just invalidates Rangers using Expertise to spam short recharge chains AND have a great survivability. The R/D Wounding Strike Spammer (a build that makes me throw up, but hey) would still function: You'd have to watch your energy more but it wouldn't suffer very much from a nerf like this.

Warriors typically are strong with physical damage against which rangers have the same armor as assassins.

The builds don't have to be comparable to show the point, primary assassins have their place and are in no way threathened or outclassed by R/A's.

Have you read nothing? There are no R/A builds that allow repeating a dagger chain every 4 seconds, even expertise can not yield that much efficiency. Daggers could, especially with the Critical Strikes related buffs like Critical Eye.

Melee rangers have played their part since the early days, and have seen complaints similar to yours, but never did they outperform the melee primaries. The use of secondaries has been part of GW since the beginning, and is even encouraged, as can be seen in skills like Way of the Master. You may wish that to be different.

Removing expertise would make rangers impossible, 3 pips is insufficient to even feed 5 E skills, let alone the 10 and 15 E that are usually present in most builds. Removing expertise only from melee attacks may not hurt bow rangers, but it woul invalidate melee rangers, if you feel 4 pips + critical strikes are insufficient for assassins then how insufficient would 3 pips + nothing be?

The honorable RaO build wouldn't really suffer tbh. and if you really care if brainless button mashing dagger rangers get nerfed you're probably just baed.

If a build is brainless that not because of expertise. it's because of the skills from that build

the expertise allows the brainless build to function. pretty sure that point was well established in this thread already, but don't worry, it's ok to not read, then post something asinine like that.