R/N Vampiric Touch / Bite deserving of nerf bat?

This doesn't apply to gvg; But Its slightly annoying playing in Arena's against the R/N builds with high expertise (say 15) with the use of 2 ranger sprint skills and the spamming of Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Bite. Granted the best option is the slow these players down. But the fact that they can get a head start and simply outright destroy a warrior at close up range is alarming.

Please explain how this needs to be nerfed.

simple give the skills a recharge time. 2 seconds cycle time for each skill is rediculously low considering you can get in a warriors face and use one skill after the other after the other. Granted there are plenty of ways to shut this player down, diversion, cripple, water hexes etc. The skills should have a reasonable cycle time.

There are multiple ways of dealing with them, so I wouldn't say that they need to be nerfed just yet. However, if after a while a nerf becomes necessary, I believe the best solution would be to make Vampiric Touch a Spell instead of a Skill. This would make Expertise useless with it.

It's an effective build, but not overpowered. Slowdowns completely destroy the build, and so does Diversion. Also simple kiting brings the dmg down quite a bit.

I don't think 'Touch Ranger' and 'nerf' should ever appear in the same sentance.

Quote: Originally Posted by Shendaar

I had a touch ranger on my team today.

His first words were "any IW mesmer on the other team want 2 duel?"

Can't say I detected anything nerfable.

Quote: Originally Posted by The Real Roy Keane

Must have been a poorly set up R/N touch/bite build. The R/N easily out damages the illusionary weapon mezmer, unless the mesmer happened to have blackout on them. If spammable 50+ dps gained as health isn't outright silly, I don't know what is. Either way, these skills need a cycle time and shouldn't apply to ranger expertise.

Yes any build can be countered, but to take a counter build to the R/N touch/bite spammers would make you too specialized to counter other builds in any effective manner.

Take a team of R/N in RA/TA along with a snare / crippler and see how quickly you can mow down opponents. There simply isn't enough snares, diversion or blackouts to go around in a 4v4 environment.

Quote: Originally Posted by cookiemonkie