Touch Ranger - Overpowered?

Zui

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Mar 2006

The Benecia Renovatio [RenO]

Mo/

08 Jun 2006 at 05:41 - 161
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Yes but in RA you don't get to pick it, so you don't get support you might get in other arenas to deal with them. When a touch ranger gets on you and your team happens not to have one of the few counters out there for them, you're pretty much useless, dead or both. And I've already gone over how "just take a counter build" is a stupid statement, so I won't type it out again.
You don't get to pick your team in random arenas? Who would have ever thought random arenas was random...

As for your earlier post where you were adressing another one of my posts(since you can't bother to retype)...

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy RA is fundamentally different from other gametypes because you can't pick your teammates. Everywhere else you can make a team that can deal with touch rangers (boon prot, snares, whatever), but in RA you just kind of have to guess. It's certainly not ideal for everyone to bring anti-toucher all the time because it does limit your build. For instance when playing as a toucher I have yet to meet a warrior who could beat me. Many used knockdowns and snares. But without monk support, they still died. Does this mean we should all stop running warriors in RA, because warriors don't counter them in any way? Boon Prots are great against everything... but obviously it's not ideal for everyone to bring them. Again it all comes down to not being able to construct a team. Obviously you can't build your team in random arenas. Everyone knows this.

Boonprots don't work very well agsint touch rangers, since life stealing is not damage. If you're going to take a boonprot to speceficaly counter touch rangers, you are a scrub.

Bringing skills that beat touch rangers limit your build just about as much as bringing skills that beat warriors. The only difference is, degen and snares are useful against everything, alot of warrior-hate is only useful against rangers(that use weapons) and warriors. Everyone brings counters to warriors in organised teams, and almost everyone brings some counter in Random Arenas. Why don't we propose nerfing warriors too?

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy Again, any type of warrior will lose to a touch ranger, especially one who brings WD. They last longer if they bring heal sig but that's just delaying the inevitable. Maybe you think all warriors are "scrub builds" but really that's not the case. I never mentioned anything about warriors when you quoted me, it seems that you simply can't stop talking about a warrior 1 vs 1ing a touch ranger. The quoted section dealt with teamplay, and bringing skills that are useful regardless of the situation into Random Arenas, examples would be snares, conditions that cause degen, hexes that cause degen, inturupts, knockdowns, some types of shutdown(blackout, diversion). However, since we're on this whole 1 vs 1 of a touch ranger and warrior, I suggest you get over that. It is a team game. You even have a team in Random Arena.

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy Who says they'll be multiple people chasing? If there's already a teammate going after a kiter I just pick someone different. And in a 1 on 1 chase you'll be keeping yourself healed and doing constant damage to the kiter, keeping him out of the battle until he's dead a while later. Any way you look at it, it's a 1 for 1 trade at the very least. You won't be hitting me if my team has any kind of snare, or if I have any kind of snare. You know, you can kite and say cast spells too. You'll catch up when I stop and cast or fire my bow or whatever, but of course, I'll only stop when it's going to be a net positive to the team to do so, so it's more than a fair trade.

While you're busy doing greatly reduced damage to me and having much less healing, the rest of my team is going to be killing your team, or killing you. It's not a 1 vs 1 between you and me, it's a 4 vs 4 between our teams.

Quote: Originally Posted by Zui Well, if you're not running a sub-par build you're likely going to have something that's useful against touch rangers, a hex or condition snare, knockdown, shutdown(inturupts, diversion, blackout...), healing, somthing that causes degen. Anyone without at least one of those in a build is running a bad build, unless of course you can think of one up to par non-gimmick that's lacking one of those Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy We covered the warriors already... but let's move on. Anti-warrior/degen necros can do quite well in RA. Siphon, Faintheartedness, Signet of Midnight, Plauge touch is a favorite of mine. And it does quite well in a format where you can't guaruntee condition removal. It can be decent against casters too, if you just pile on the degen. But against touch rangers it falls flat. They heal fast enough to overcome even heavy degen and they ignore Enfeeble, Faintheartedness and basically everything in the curses line. This character, otherwise quite well equipped to handle a battle can't do anything against touch rangers. And someone mentioned Spiteful Spirit as a counter, but it really isn't as long as you keep away from your teammates. It heals for twice the damage each time you Bite or Touch and you're still doing full damage. Say, didn't I mention degen since this is a counter afterall... Kiting+degen+possible snare ftw?

The listed build also has 4 skills slots available, one is obviously for a res sig, any chance you could fit some kind of other counter that works in all other situations in the remaining 3 slots? A hex snare perhaps?

I don't see that build you posted being good anywhere outside of RA... Because it assumes you're facing a bad team in order to win. I mean really, signet of midnight+plauge touch? Why not just run a flashbot or an ineptiude mesmer? More effective, more damage, more support.

So Spiteful Spirit effectively halves your healing with the damage... Yeah, that's not going to help someone drop you.

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy Next build... how about a mesmer this time? Distortion, Migrane, Conjure Phantasm, Power Drain, Drain Enchantment, Spirit of Failure, Ether Feast can do quite well. It's quite hardy against Warriors/Rangers/Assassins, had good energy management, can really annoy casters and has decent degen. A fun build, again killed by touch rangers. Even though you're specced Illusion you can't really fit in a good snare without compromosing the build, through slots or energy management. Ok, so all you have against melee guys and rangers is spirit of failure, and distortion if they're dumb enough to attack you while spirit of failure is on them and feed you energy. One hex that makes spells take twice as long to cast and one interrupt against casters. One enchantment removal, one hex with the sole purpose of degen, and a self heal. Sorry, this build really isin't that great, you're trying to do just way too many things. Your choice of migrane just for power drain is pathetic... If you can't catch a 3/4s spell with a 1/4s mesmer inturupt when you have fast casting, that's sad. But hey, you still have degen. Say, doesn't that kill a touch ranger if they're not touching anything to heal? Or their amount of touching is greatly reduced to being kited, and even more so to being kited while snared?... Back to the build, I'd say the only real purpose(that's effective) is to just spread degen. Somthing that could be done with an apply+crippshot ranger(ok 1 less degen than conjure, and none from migrane)), by using only two skills... Add in hunters shot lol, you're about even there, especialy if you can keep bleeding on multiple people.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Same deal for Ineptitude/Clumsiness mesmers. They have degen, most carry conjure phantasam/images of remorse(speced into illusion too due to ineptitude/clumsiness!). They also have a slot to fit a snare if needed(again, speced into illusion, so imagined burdon ftw?).

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Blinding Flash eles can disable most physical damage dealers and do good damage to casters, not the case with touchers. Deep Freeze? I mean it's not like that's an insane skill for a blinding flash ele to run, and alot of people run it. Maybe even windbourne speed, although not as good IMHO.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
If you're not running AoD on your assassin, you're similarly screwed. Yeah, you see so many assassins not running AoD...

Either way, last time I checked they had quite a bit of other shadow stepping skills, and several skills that increase movment speed. In additon to a secondary profession...


Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
In most cases you can find someone close by to dump the snare on, even if the ranger is far away. Warriors: no, I'm sorry, shock will not help. They'll be on the ground for a bit then get up and touch back to full. If you sprint away you'll be useless to your team... so you start attacking someone else and the touch ranger follows, killing you quickly. And I'm sorry but if you don't bring Plauge Touch as a warrior in RA you're going to be very weak, very crippled and very blind a whole lot. Umm, so let your team know you're going to use a condition snare so they can steer clear of you?... Shock won't knock you down and let someone put distance between you and them? Shock won't knock you down and keep you from healing for awhile? If I sprint away and you follow me, won't you be useless to your team too? So it's 3 vs 3 now, you may be making me kite you, but in doing so and you following... You're letting me control your movment.

There are warrior-hate conditions. Big supprise. RA has far much more hex-hate for warriors than it does condition hate. You'd know this if you played RA, you'll find maybe one guy with blind or weakness for every 20 you find with hex hate. Of course, you're the RA master, you should have known this? Is loosing a choice in my secondary and being forced to bring a skill to deal with conditions really justifyable for say one in ten or one in twenty games?...

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Why are you even talking about QZ? If it's not killed instantly there's a good chance your team will hate you for it. Your suggestion was to make the skills have twice the recharge. Since people are too stupid to kite, and aren't able to play as a team, or use decent builds, or think of what they'll encounter and adpat, what makes you think they'll kill QZ? Your team may hate you for dropping it, but since you think random arena is all 1 vs 1 anyway, what does your team matter?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
I do know how to beat them. The problem isn't that I can't beat them, it's that doing so makes the game far less interesting. This is indicative of an unbalance, something if removed will make the game more fun. This is the case with every skill that was ever nerfed. You can always list counters for it, but that doesn't magically mean the skill is perfectly balanced Ok, so you find it boring to beat them. Everyone does. People find spikes boring to play against. People find paladins that waste your time boring to play against. People find groups in TA of 4 healing monks or boonprots boring to play against. People find groups in TA that have 4 charactars built for running and nothing else boring to play against, same goes for solo runners in RA. I guess those are unbalanced too? No, they are just a waste of your time for whatever reason, at least for the most part.

Chicken Ftw

Chicken Ftw

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: May 2006

08 Jun 2006 at 05:45 - 162
Quote:
Originally Posted by Criminally Sane
The fact that this is still going simply shows that some of you are as terrible at reading as you are at playing the game. The only thing I see that needs nerfing is the rampant stupidity that plagues these boards. Any time there's a build that comes up that beats someone because they don't know how to kite or work as a team, "nerf plx" is the first thing they say. Look, the build has its counters, just like any other. It's about as overpowered as a healing hands wammo. <.< You bring counters to IWAY to HA, so bring them to RA for touch rangers.

In my opinion, IWAY didn't really need a nerf, since the same counters that could beat it prenerf still apply today. All you need is teamwork and to not suck at the game. It weeded out the bad teams from HA, like touch rangers do from RA now. Bleh... I'm just going to sit here and laugh because another build gets nerfed due to people not knowing how to play. 'Nuff said imo.

floplag

floplag

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Feb 2006

SoCal

Gamerz United

Me/N

08 Jun 2006 at 15:19 - 163
while there are skills and build that need to be nerfed, this is not one of them in any way shape or form. this is an easy build to defeat... any mesmer or mes second can make this build run home to momma.

i like playing my mesmer in AB and PvP, and i get all warm and fuzzy when i see a ranger trying to get closer.. cause i know hes already dead.

the problem here is everyone still wanting to play cookie cutter builds and not wanting to think a bit on how to counter it

outside the box is a fun place to be peeps

Sacho

Academy Page

Join Date: May 2006

Mo/Me

08 Jun 2006 at 16:29 - 164
Time and time again people claim that there is no counter to the touch rangers, while the most obvious counter is something almost all monks do - HEALING! Yes, you know, healing?! The thing that your monks are supposed to do if they're not smiting!

Even a boonprot would have no problem healing through touch ranger spam, just kite and use sig of devotion(replacing your standard prot spirit, which is useless in RA), and if you get in a bind, put up a rof-guardian and cop it off. You know, touch rangers do really really crappy damage.The only reason why touch rangers are so potent in RA is because of the general lack of experience in it, especially in kiting, identifying the enemy's builds, and your own build composition. Time and time again warriors on my team have spammed their stances(....) in vain vs a touch ranger, or a monk on my team would be using signet of midnight(often seen elite on monks in ra....no comment). If you're running a gimmicky build, why are you complaining about being beat by another gimmick that exploits that EXACT fact? Even if you have no monk, coordinate your attacks to take out one person, and if one of your teammates is low, have him kite away from the touch ranger while the other 3 pile on another.

Again, crappy builds and no experience and coordination is the reason why touch rangers thrive in RA(and sometimes AB). I really wish a touch ranger team was added to the Zaishen challenge, and new people were prompted HEAVILY to try out the Zaishen. Really, instead of running around in RA with their warriors with heal party or fire storm or whatever, they should try out some "PvP-like" challenge to learn some basics(Imo, the trappers really help teaching kiting)

RandomEngy

RandomEngy

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2005

The Kansas City Hotsteppers [KCHS]

P/

08 Jun 2006 at 17:53 - 165
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
Warrior/Mesmer

Illusion magic 12
Rest however you like for damage dealing

Gladiator's armor and/or An illusion magic weaponset to switch to.

Conjure Phantasm
Images of Remorse
Accumulated Pain
Imagined Burden

Then warrior skills of your choice.
I'm just going to let this build speak for itself. Moving on...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zui
You don't get to pick your team in random arenas? Who would have ever thought random arenas was random...
Even though you can't pick your team, most skills are still balanced in RA. Such that you can create a character ready to deal with most any situation it can throw at you, if you only play it in an intelligent manner. Touch rangers greatly narrow this array of characters.

Quote:
As for your earlier post where you were adressing another one of my posts(since you can't bother to retype)...

Obviously you can't build your team in random arenas. Everyone knows this.

Boonprots don't work very well agsint touch rangers, since life stealing is not damage. If you're going to take a boonprot to speceficaly counter touch rangers, you are a scrub.
Boonprots in RA are the furthest thing from scrubs. They're the strongest RA build you can possibly bring, assuming you're the only one on your team. And they beat touch rangers simply with big, energy-efficient healing. That's all there is to it.

Quote:
Bringing skills that beat touch rangers limit your build just about as much as bringing skills that beat warriors. The only difference is, degen and snares are useful against everything, alot of warrior-hate is only useful against rangers(that use weapons) and warriors. Everyone brings counters to warriors in organised teams, and almost everyone brings some counter in Random Arenas. Why don't we propose nerfing warriors too?
Warrior/Ranger/Assassin hate goes a long, long way in RA. And the tools you have for doing it are so varied you can work it into a lot of different builds. That's why we don't nerf warriors too. And also why your statement that "building vs touch rangers limit your build the same as building vs warriors" is plainly false, because the set of skills you can bring against a touch ranger is strictly and vastly smaller.

Quote:
I never mentioned anything about warriors when you quoted me, it seems that you simply can't stop talking about a warrior 1 vs 1ing a touch ranger. The quoted section dealt with teamplay, and bringing skills that are useful regardless of the situation into Random Arenas, examples would be snares, conditions that cause degen, hexes that cause degen, inturupts, knockdowns, some types of shutdown(blackout, diversion). However, since we're on this whole 1 vs 1 of a touch ranger and warrior, I suggest you get over that. It is a team game. You even have a team in Random Arena.
Degen doesn't counter touch rangers. Their self heal ignores even heavy degen. And it's just a bad idea to put condition degen on a touch ranger, because for 2 mana and 1 second of time he'll turn that degen against your team. Interrupts, by and large do not work against touch rangers. I assume you mean ranger interrupts, because mesmer interrupts are right out the door. And savage/concussion/punishing are out because even if you manage to hit one of the 3/4 second skills, they can keep the skill spam coming. So a skillfully placed distracting shot can half-shut them down. Incendiary Arrows can shut them down if they happen to be casting on each hit instead of inbetween. All this assuming if they don't have WD up. Color me underwhelmed at this counter.

Anyway I brought up Warriors as an entire class that can't do much of anything against them. This also applies to any build that doesn't specifically counter them. And yes, in a randomly assigned team game it is more likely that you'll have a teammate with a counter on hand, than if you're fighting 1v1. But hoping that your teammates will deal with them is just dumb, and not really fun at all. What you do is change to one of the few builds that can deal with them and still be at least marginally effective against everything else. And then you get the suppression of build diversity that we want to avoid.

Quote:
Any way you look at it, it's a 1 for 1 trade at the very least. You won't be hitting me if my team has any kind of snare, or if I have any kind of snare. You know, you can kite and say cast spells too. You'll catch up when I stop and cast or fire my bow or whatever, but of course, I'll only stop when it's going to be a net positive to the team to do so, so it's more than a fair trade.

While you're busy doing greatly reduced damage to me and having much less healing, the rest of my team is going to be killing your team, or killing you. It's not a 1 vs 1 between you and me, it's a 4 vs 4 between our teams.
Oh you mean if you have a hex snare, or you can keep your entire team away from the TR at all times. Not even with good TA teams does it happen. Someone's always busy with something else and gets caught. And even if it does, and there's not a spirit handy, I would consider it a win if you're forcing the whole team to stop what they're doing and react to you.

And you're right, if you have a snare that sticks, you've countered the TR. But that's not the point.

Quote: Say, didn't I mention degen since this is a counter afterall... Kiting+degen+possible snare ftw?

The listed build also has 4 skills slots available, one is obviously for a res sig, any chance you could fit some kind of other counter that works in all other situations in the remaining 3 slots? A hex snare perhaps? When you're saying "every build is okay, as long as it has some of the few skills that counter touch rangers," you're in a bad place. I will remind you again that degen is only a counter when combined with a successful snare.

Quote: I don't see that build you posted being good anywhere outside of RA... Because it assumes you're facing a bad team in order to win. I mean really, signet of midnight+plauge touch? Why not just run a flashbot or an ineptiude mesmer? More effective, more damage, more support. It takes 5 mana every 15 seconds to keep 2 warrior/ranger/assassins blind, indefinitely. Then you have the rest of your build (and energy) to do degen/damage/enchant removal/etc. In an environment where condition removal is not guarunteed, this build can perform admirable shutdown.

Quote: So Spiteful Spirit effectively halves your healing with the damage... Yeah, that's not going to help someone drop you. You halve their self-healing, but do nothing to their damage by using an elite hex spell. Wheras on a W/R/A (warrior/ranger/assassin) you're basically forcing them to either stop attacking or kill themselves. I'd say that touch rangers are pretty strong against SS.

Quote:
Ok, so all you have against melee guys and rangers is spirit of failure, and distortion if they're dumb enough to attack you while spirit of failure is on them and feed you energy. One hex that makes spells take twice as long to cast and one interrupt against casters. One enchantment removal, one hex with the sole purpose of degen, and a self heal. Sorry, this build really isin't that great, you're trying to do just way too many things. Your choice of migrane just for power drain is pathetic... If you can't catch a 3/4s spell with a 1/4s mesmer inturupt when you have fast casting, that's sad. But hey, you still have degen. Say, doesn't that kill a touch ranger if they're not touching anything to heal? Or their amount of touching is greatly reduced to being kited, and even more so to being kited while snared?... Back to the build, I'd say the only real purpose(that's effective) is to just spread degen. Somthing that could be done with an apply+crippshot ranger(ok 1 less degen than conjure, and none from migrane)), by using only two skills... Add in hunters shot lol, you're about even there, especialy if you can keep bleeding on multiple people. It's an all-rounder build designed to keep your fraglie mesmer self alive when those two warriors come for you, but still annoy casters and spread degen. It's not great warrior shutdown but it's only one slot that can force them to go after harder targets, or protect yourself from interrupts when that ranger decides he doesn't like you casting Migrane.

And since when is not reliably interrupting a 3/4 second spell "pathetic"? Casting time, network lag time, human reaction time, and determining whether or not what was cast was actually a spell all add up and frequently end up above 3/4 second. Not to mention reaction times are invariably greater when in "stress" situations, like a heated battle. In any event it's mostly a perk to using migrane. They still get the degen and it still takes them twice as long to cast a spell for a while.

Conditions rangers are nice but hexes are more resilient against removal and can't be blocked or evaded when applied. Also they can't deal very well with multiple attackers, and don't provide the caster annoyance that a Migrane mesmer brings. In addition, blind will shut you down totally. So, suprise suprise, they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Quote:
They have degen, most carry conjure phantasam/images of remorse(speced into illusion too due to ineptitude/clumsiness!). They also have a slot to fit a snare if needed(again, speced into illusion, so imagined burdon ftw?). Sounds like a real winner. Snare them then cast Ineptitude and Clumsiness on them. Oh wait, maybe a snare doesn't really work well with the other skills after all. Not to mention Imagined Burden is energy-intensive and takes away a slot that might be used for degen or energy management.

Quote:
Deep Freeze? I mean it's not like that's an insane skill for a blinding flash ele to run, and alot of people run it. Maybe even windbourne speed, although not as good IMHO. Rangers are inherently resistant to elemental damage. But it is still a hex snare, and yes if you run a water ele you can counter touch rangers. We've been over this. And if you're running a blindbot with Deep Freeze you're not exactly going to be able to keep the guy snared with that one 25 mana spell.

Quote:
Yeah, you see so many assassins not running AoD...

Either way, last time I checked they had quite a bit of other shadow stepping skills, and several skills that increase movment speed. In additon to a secondary profession... The only one that's actually good at evading touch rangers is AoD. The others teleport you a little ways or have a significant recharge. And it might give a little incentive to try out other elites if you don't have to bring AoD to not get slaughtered by touch rangers.

Quote:
Umm, so let your team know you're going to use a condition snare so they can steer clear of you?... Shock won't knock you down and let someone put distance between you and them? Shock won't knock you down and keep you from healing for awhile? If I sprint away and you follow me, won't you be useless to your team too? So it's 3 vs 3 now, you may be making me kite you, but in doing so and you following... You're letting me control your movment. Shock will stop you for a few seconds. That's what it does. It won't kill a touch ranger. And you controlling someone's movement by kiting is not a special weakness of a touch ranger, it's shared by all melee characters. For the seventieth time, the argument is that touch rangers have fewer counters, not that they have none.

Quote:
There are warrior-hate conditions. Big supprise. RA has far much more hex-hate for warriors than it does condition hate. You'd know this if you played RA, you'll find maybe one guy with blind or weakness for every 20 you find with hex hate. Of course, you're the RA master, you should have known this? Is loosing a choice in my secondary and being forced to bring a skill to deal with conditions really justifyable for say one in ten or one in twenty games?... Me? I've played a darned lot of RA, with every class. Hexes are always a problem when you run a warrior. The best you can do is heal sig until they're over or pressure the guy casting them. But if you play intelligently you can tie up enough of their attention and energy stopping you that the rest of your team can do their work. However, you can do something about conditions, and they show up a lot more than one in 20 games. For instance that Poison/Bleeding ranger you mentioned? Conditions. The blindbot you said was better than my necro? Conditions. Pin Down, traps, Throw Dirt on a ranger? Bleeding from a Sever/Gash warrior? Yeah those too. In my opinion, it's a veritable crime if you don't take Plauge Touch with you on an RA warrior.

So maybe you can understand if I think you're retarded for wanting to replace it with Wild Blow.

Quote:
Your suggestion was to make the skills have twice the recharge. Since people are too stupid to kite, and aren't able to play as a team, or use decent builds, or think of what they'll encounter and adpat, what makes you think they'll kill QZ? Your team may hate you for dropping it, but since you think random arena is all 1 vs 1 anyway, what does your team matter? I never said people were too stupid to kite. I said all it does is makes you useless to your team while you die. Kiting will not save you. Maybe if you had paid attention to my posts at all? I have assumed nothing but full competence for people for people fighting a touch ranger. And that QZ will go down if there's even one of them.

And for the last time, it's not that there are counters, but that countering it makes for a boring metagame.

Quote:
Ok, so you find it boring to beat them. Everyone does. People find spikes boring to play against. People find paladins that waste your time boring to play against. People find groups in TA of 4 healing monks or boonprots boring to play against. People find groups in TA that have 4 charactars built for running and nothing else boring to play against, same goes for solo runners in RA. I guess those are unbalanced too? No, they are just a waste of your time for whatever reason, at least for the most part. Except that you can deal with those builds with skills you've already brought, because they're crappy. Runners will always be a problem in RA because you can't guaruntee a snare will show up on your team. However, there's no way to fix it, so we just have to live with it. Touch rangers are different. We can tweak to skills and fix them, resulting in a more varied and interesting environment.

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

Me/Mo

08 Jun 2006 at 20:28 - 166
Yes, actually, the build I proferred speaks for itself. You're not listening, however.

Once again, you whine that kiting won't save you. Whereas, if you bothered to take even one hex snare from the mesmer, necro, or elementalist lines, it would. Not to mention it ties up the ranger while you are free to go attack another target.

But you can't be bothered. The only thing that is boring about the metagame because of touch rangers is people like you who cry about getting owned because you refuse to display adaptibility. You know what's really boring? Wammos.

The rest of us are using the presence of touch rangers in the mix to learn valuable lessons about dealing with threats on the battle field. You persist in whining that toucher counters are only good for touchers, and that's simply not true. Put a snare hex and hex degen/condition degen on a warrior and you take him out as well. Do it to an assassin, and he'll be out of action. Hell, even doing it casters is useful - that mesmer has to get to touch range to use blackout or signet of midnight, hard to do when they've been cripshotted or Imagined Burdened. And all casters have to be in range to cast their offensive spells - they can't catch you if you've snared them. If you snare/hex/bleed players away from their healerand they don't have condition/hex removal or self heal, they're going to die.

Frankly, you can look at touch rangers as just like fighting your doppleganger. If you're an idiot, you're going to get your ass handed to you. If you plan ahead, you can have them taking a dirtnap in under 15 seconds. They're not overpowered, they're not unbalanced, you're just using the wrong strategy in a changed landscape and would rather whine about it than change your tactics.

Cirian

Cirian

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Oct 2005

European Union

The Amazon Basin

08 Jun 2006 at 21:23 - 167
Rather than taking Deep Freeze into RA, it's better to look at Ice Prison and it's Factions duplicate, Teinai's Prison. Frozen Burst and Armor of Mist aren't too shabby in RA either. A battlefield controller (hex/cripshot) is quite useful in RA generally, not just against touch rangers, but helping your warriors gank a runner or a monk, or saving your own guys from warriors and... touch rangers etc.

Personally I think a boon monk is more powerful than a touch ranger in general terms, but you know, there will always be a distribution of power in any game where a couple of builds will be at the top end of the power spectrum. The 'powerful' builds are always relative to the builds below them, and they change from arena to arena, so no matter how many adjustments are made, there are some builds that simply outshine all the others when the situation is right for them.

Now ok, touch ranger vampires shine in RA because they're easy to get results with, but I don't think they're the most powerful thing out there.

If you really want to do it with a warrior, you could just... I don't know, try a W/Me with 12 (weapon), 12 tactics, 10 inspiration and pack heal sig, mantra of inscriptions and ether feast and slowly wait out their defences and energy supply!

Zui

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Mar 2006

The Benecia Renovatio [RenO]

Mo/

08 Jun 2006 at 22:58 - 168
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Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Even though you can't pick your team, most skills are still balanced in RA. Such that you can create a character ready to deal with most any situation it can throw at you, if you only play it in an intelligent manner. Touch rangers greatly narrow this array of characters.
There is a counter to everything. Due the limit of two professions, two hundred attribute points and eight skill slots you can't counter everything. Touch rangers exploit what is normaly brought to RA(which the quality of such builds are highly questionable, and most are degenerate builds, or degenerate builds aimed at beating other degenerate builds) since there's hardly any snares, degen, non-melee/non-elemental damage. In addition to people not being able to kite. IWAY still has people bringing wards in HA. This greatly narrows the freedom of many people who feel they must have wards to beat an IWAY. Perhaps they should nerf warriors so they're not scary and you don't need warrior hate which greatly limits what you can bring and still be effective.

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy Boonprots in RA are the furthest thing from scrubs. They're the strongest RA build you can possibly bring, assuming you're the only one on your team. And they beat touch rangers simply with big, energy-efficient healing. That's all there is to it.
Let's read my post(the one you were responding to...) Quote:
Originally Posted by Zui Boonprots don't work very well agsint touch rangers, since life stealing is not damage. If you're going to take a boonprot to speceficaly counter touch rangers, you are a scrub.
Boonprots are extremely effective healing, however a pure healer such as a WoH monk is far more effective against touch rangers due to the fact that alot of the power of the boonprot comes from the ability of protection skills to reduce damage, and in the case of reversal reduce damage and heal in addition to the DF and boon bonus. Next time actualy read and understand before replying. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy Warrior/Ranger/Assassin hate goes a long, long way in RA. And the tools you have for doing it are so varied you can work it into a lot of different builds. That's why we don't nerf warriors too. And also why your statement that "building vs touch rangers limit your build the same as building vs warriors" is plainly false, because the set of skills you can bring against a touch ranger is strictly and vastly smaller.
Not really, infact both have very simmilar, very effective counters. Warriors my be effected more by things that deal with attacks such as price of failure, spirit of failure, shadow of fear and so forth, but it doesn't totaly stop them from doing damage, it just reduces it, to a point where it's still going to be more than that of a touch ranger even unless you bring a ton of hate, in which case it's still better to have the warrior since it's costing you time skills, attributes possibly a secondary and energy, in addition to attention, touch rangers don't cost as much as a warrior does. For empathy and such, it only deals damage to them limiting how much they can attack before they die, it doesn't stop them from doing damage. Both are effected equaly by degen, and snares. Degen deals the same amount of 'damage' to everyone. Snares prevent them from getting into adjacent range, without adjacent range neither can do any damage at all, it's just that without adjacent range touch rangers can't even heal, where warriors can. Healing works agsint both...

Last time I checked, Warriors have snares, rangers have snares, mesmers have snares, assassins have snares, heck even ritualists and elementalists have snares... Warriors, rangers, mesmers, necromancers and assissins have degen... Seeing the point?

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy Degen doesn't counter touch rangers. Their self heal ignores even heavy degen. And it's just a bad idea to put condition degen on a touch ranger, because for 2 mana and 1 second of time he'll turn that degen against your team. Interrupts, by and large do not work against touch rangers. I assume you mean ranger interrupts, because mesmer interrupts are right out the door. And savage/concussion/punishing are out because even if you manage to hit one of the 3/4 second skills, they can keep the skill spam coming. So a skillfully placed distracting shot can half-shut them down. Incendiary Arrows can shut them down if they happen to be casting on each hit instead of inbetween. All this assuming if they don't have WD up. Color me underwhelmed at this counter.
Say, I think I mentioned snares? I know I did, read what I said. Rangers can only heal if they're touching somthing, if you're kiting one that's not snared they can heal less. If you're kiting one that's snared, they can't heal at all. Same goes for plauge touch and conditions... Last time I checked, mesmers do have inturupts that work against skills, infact factions even gave them an insane elite called Psychic Distraction. Say isin't whirling defense only viable for 21s every 60 at 16 expertise? Wonder what you can do with ranger interupts during those other 39 seconds... And just to pre-empt your responce to that, during those 21 seconds, you kite so no the touch ranger will not kill you because you're an idiot and standing still, unless you are a scrub, and an idiot, and are standing still, in which case you have very little chance of actualy hitting a skill in the first place...

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy Anyway I brought up Warriors as an entire class that can't do much of anything against them. This also applies to any build that doesn't specifically counter them. And yes, in a randomly assigned team game it is more likely that you'll have a teammate with a counter on hand, than if you're fighting 1v1. But hoping that your teammates will deal with them is just dumb, and not really fun at all. What you do is change to one of the few builds that can deal with them and still be at least marginally effective against everything else. And then you get the suppression of build diversity that we want to avoid.
We're not fighting 1 vs 1. You have a team. Your team can do things when you're kiting. Your team probably has snares, if not they probably have somthing else that can beat you, or can overwhelm you with damage... Either way they can always beat you in an RA-type enviroment, unless they're running horrible builds are incompitent, or both. Build diversity is supressed by all effective builds, no matter what the build is. Deal with it.

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy Oh you mean if you have a hex snare, or you can keep your entire team away from the TR at all times. Not even with good TA teams does it happen. Someone's always busy with something else and gets caught. And even if it does, and there's not a spirit handy, I would consider it a win if you're forcing the whole team to stop what they're doing and react to you.
Say, cover condition if your team has poor postitional awareness... Mistakes happen but is one mistake going to cost you the entie game against a touch ranger? Not likely.

Why are you mentioning spirits? I don't see where you get any mention of them from what you were responding to. I also don't see what they have to do with anything, unless maybe muddy terrain?... But I still don't see how that has much relavance...

By reacting to you, they're countering your plans. You always react to the other team in every single match. There's no way to not react to them, unless you stand still and do absolutly nothing. Either way you're only forcing one member of their team at a time to react, and causing the other members to pay attention to where you are(which is the smart thing to do...).

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy And you're right, if you have a snare that sticks, you've countered the TR. But that's not the point.
It's not?

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy When you're saying "every build is okay, as long as it has some of the few skills that counter touch rangers," you're in a bad place. I will remind you again that degen is only a counter when combined with a successful snare. Or effective kiting. Or both. Or just degen+kiting+some damage... Or all those + a snare for even better results...

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy It takes 5 mana every 15 seconds to keep 2 warrior/ranger/assassins blind, indefinitely. Then you have the rest of your build (and energy) to do degen/damage/enchant removal/etc. In an environment where condition removal is not guarunteed, this build can perform admirable shutdown. They(the other team, or even that charactar) doesn't have condition removal or inturupts(inturupts, knockdown)?

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy You halve their self-healing, but do nothing to their damage by using an elite hex spell. Wheras on a W/R/A (warrior/ranger/assassin) you're basically forcing them to either stop attacking or kill themselves. I'd say that touch rangers are pretty strong against SS. It's not as strong against touch rangers if you're looking at a health lost/damage done standpoint, but if you add in other damage and degen in there... It's quite effective. Plus a warrior or ranger can just stop attacking and hit healing signet/troll unugent, or an assasin shadow refuge, gain some health, then go back to what they were doing, it may hamper them more than a touch ranger, but it doesn't make them that much easeir to kill.

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy It's an all-rounder build designed to keep your fraglie mesmer self alive when those two warriors come for you, but still annoy casters and spread degen. It's not great warrior shutdown but it's only one slot that can force them to go after harder targets, or protect yourself from interrupts when that ranger decides he doesn't like you casting Migrane. Ok, so they go after someone else. They then kill another soft target(who said you were the only 60 base al caster on your team?). Then another guy, then another guy, and when everyone is out of res sigs, they kill you. Rangers would only want to hit migrane if it was hurting someone on their team. There's that word again, team. Odds are it's not going to significantly hurt someone that doesn't have hex removal, but if it does, well then your distortion helps.

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy And since when is not reliably interrupting a 3/4 second spell "pathetic"? Casting time, network lag time, human reaction time, and determining whether or not what was cast was actually a spell all add up and frequently end up above 3/4 second. Not to mention reaction times are invariably greater when in "stress" situations, like a heated battle. In any event it's mostly a perk to using migrane. They still get the degen and it still takes them twice as long to cast a spell for a while. Ok, cast time for all interupts is 1/4s for rangers+flight time, and for mesmers 1/4s or less due to fast cast. Network lag has no place in this discussion. Human reaction time doesn't really matter here(highly predictable use of skills ftw?), but let's say most people have a 1/4s reaction time. Knowing what the ranger is using doesn't matter here either, unless they're routinely using another skill other than vamp touch and vamp bite every time they can(2.75s inbetween each use of each spell individualy). Seriously, if people can manage to time ranger inturupts at a distance without increased flight speed and hit 1/4s spells with them, you can hit a 3/4s skill with a ranger inturupt at point blank range(factoring out the flight time) especialy since those skills are far easier to predict than almost everything else you'll be looking to inturupt.

Right, what makes you think they won't jsut remove migrane? Or that delaying their spells will cause them great pain(if it would wouldn't they probably have hex removal?)... Or that the degen would really turn the course of a battle many times. There's just no reason to justify bringing migrane for use in that fashion.

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy Conditions rangers are nice but hexes are more resilient against removal and can't be blocked or evaded when applied. Also they can't deal very well with multiple attackers, and don't provide the caster annoyance that a Migrane mesmer brings. In addition, blind will shut you down totally. So, suprise suprise, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Did I mention Crippling Shot can't be blocked or evaded, it even says so on the skill description. Did I mention crippling shot can be spamemd, and it doesn't even need to be spammed if all you want is the poision? Being unable to move to kite or chase a target isin't annoying? Being hammered with savage/distracting shot isin't annoying? Are there counters to blind, how long does blind usualy last? Heck, how often do you see blind in RA? How many people there even put it on rangers when they have it, insead of on say warriors? They both have their strengths and weaknesses, I agree with that. That doesn't make your build good.

Quote: Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Sounds like a real winner. Snare them then cast Ineptitude and Clumsiness on them. Oh wait, maybe a snare doesn't really work well with the other skills after all. Not to mention Imagined Burden is energy-intensive and takes away a slot that might be used for degen or energy management. I said a slot for a snare if needed. If you're going to RA and expect to hit teams with many many warriors, and touch rangers, which is fairly common, a snare would be a very good thing to have. You not understanding the simple logic behind what I said is your fault, not mine. You loose one slot for energy managment, oh well, you'll just have to work with all those other free slots for that... Plus I think energy managment might be alittle less needed than that snare if you face a common thing like a multi-warrior team and touch rangers...

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Rangers are inherently resistant to elemental damage. But it is still a hex snare, and yes if you run a water ele you can counter touch rangers. We've been over this. And if you're running a blindbot with Deep Freeze you're not exactly going to be able to keep the guy snared with that one 25 mana spell.
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Originally Posted by Zui
Deep Freeze? I mean it's not like that's an insane skill for a blinding flash ele to run, and alot of people run it. Maybe even windbourne speed, although not as good IMHO. Tell me where in what I said(which you were responding to) where I said that you use Deep Freeze for damage? Or where you try to be a primary damage dealer as an Elementalist? Where did I even use the words Elementlaist and Damage in the same sentence(infact I didn't even mention damage...)?

You're not running a water ele, you're running a water skill that is helpful in just about every situation, and especialy so against touch rangers..

You'll be able to keep him snared for a good bit of the time, enough time to make a difference. Say, if there's a touch ranger that's really giving your team problems wouldn't it be smarter to make Deep Freeze a priority?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
The only one that's actually good at evading touch rangers is AoD. The others teleport you a little ways or have a significant recharge. And it might give a little incentive to try out other elites if you don't have to bring AoD to not get slaughtered by touch rangers. Maybe bring one of those
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zui
skills that increase movment speed. . That way you don't aboslutly have to bring AoD..

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Shock will stop you for a few seconds. That's what it does. It won't kill a touch ranger. And you controlling someone's movement by kiting is not a special weakness of a touch ranger, it's shared by all melee characters. For the seventieth time, the argument is that touch rangers have fewer counters, not that they have none. Fewer counters, but counters that can be done without any skills, or with common skills that everyone is going to bring(at least some of them) because they work in just about every situation... There are more counters to warriors, but then alot of those counters are also specialised to physical attackers, and brought most time specificaly for use against warriors/assassins. The things that counter touch rangers work against just about everything, and can be employed for a wide range of purposes.

Shock, if used in conjunction with a coordinated spike doing decent damage by the rest of your team does infact have a good chance of killing a touch ranger...

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Me? I've played a darned lot of RA, with every class. Hexes are always a problem when you run a warrior. The best you can do is heal sig until they're over or pressure the guy casting them. But if you play intelligently you can tie up enough of their attention and energy stopping you that the rest of your team can do their work. However, you can do something about conditions, and they show up a lot more than one in 20 games. For instance that Poison/Bleeding ranger you mentioned? Conditions. The blindbot you said was better than my necro? Conditions. Pin Down, traps, Throw Dirt on a ranger? Bleeding from a Sever/Gash warrior? Yeah those too. In my opinion, it's a veritable crime if you don't take Plauge Touch with you on an RA warrior. Yes I imagine you do play RA quite a bit after reading your posts... I should have guessed.

Conditions obviously cause conditions like deep wound bleeding poision... The fact is though you rarely see weakness in RA, due to their not being many skills that inflict it, and the fact it doesn't stop adrenal gain like blind. You also rarely see blind used enough or effectively enough to shut down a warrior completely, or stop the warrior from getting off any spikes.

The ranger i mentioned was a crippshot ranger. I said you could bring hunters shot only so you could have equal degen to that build of yours. No where did I reccomend the use of it on your standard crippshot, nor did I call it a poision/bleeding ranger. It's purpose is cripple as movment control, poision is just a cover and some damage. It's other purpose is to inturupt. It's also very good for flag running in GvG and base soloing.....

Ok, pin down can be strafed and can't be spammed, if you are crippled you're essentialy useless, and not going to get into melee range to plauge touch anything. So plauge touch = bad idea here.

Throw Dirt is far from total shutdown with blindness, and is a rare sight.

Traps... Hmm take out your +10% base attack attack speed nolani wand(without the miss chance) and wand the trapper? They get off any traps due to stances, mantra of resolve, or whatnot, just don't go near where they laid the traps...

Yeah, bleeding is really threatning on it's own with a sever/gash warrior, I'd say deep wound is more worrisome... Regardless, warrior attacking a warrior first? Yeah, only in RA, why pressure soft targets when you can go after the hardest target possible. Odds are that whammo only has 9 in swordsmanship anyway, and is going to be doing negligible damage unless you start attacking him through his 1337 gladiators defense...

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy
So maybe you can understand if I think you're retarded for wanting to replace it with Wild Blow. No where did I ever mention bringing Wild Blow. Ever. Not once. Get it straight. Whirling Defense, a skill that's only works 1/3 of the time if even brought isin't going to be game-breaking in the way you're using it, for what you're using it to do, it's just somthing that helps you for awhile, and is really good against scrubs who try to attack through it while you kill them. You can replace Plauge Touch for other useful skills that do damage or help you or your team in some other way shock is a good example... Or you could replace it for mend ailment and a hex removal... You could even remove cripple, and hexes...

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
I never said people were too stupid to kite. I said all it does is makes you useless to your team while you die. Kiting will not save you. Maybe if you had paid attention to my posts at all? I have assumed nothing but full competence for people for people fighting a touch ranger. And that QZ will go down if there's even one of them. Maybe you did assume that they kited, but you've also completely disregarded general skills that are very common and are useful in every single situation for a varity of uses like shock, and snares.

The fact is many people are too stupid to play compitently, are unable to adapt, and use absolutly horrible builds. This is why touch rangers are owning. This is why there will still be the same "problem" even with QZ, because all the scrubs who think PvP = 1 vs 1 will still be loosing to them.

You're trading usefulness when kiting(without snares). Decreasing the rangers usefulness, and your own. Essentialy keeping you both out of the game, except for the ranger to keep you out of the game he has to follow you. You can choose to stop and cast or perform any action at any point where it will be of benefit to your team. Or just lure the touch ranger who thinks you have no snares far, far away, then snare them and run back.... There are plenty of reasons why it's actualy beneficial to your team to do this... You're looking at it from too much of a narrow-minded view when kiting a touch ranger.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
And for the last time, it's not that there are counters, but that countering it makes for a boring metagame. Countering spikes in HA makes for a boring metagame, and to perfectly counter them you need to gimp your build. Touch rangers make for a boring metagame in RA, but you only need a handful of skills to beat them(heck, you can beat 3 of them+1 monk in TA using just deep freeze and no other real counters). Your argument of a boring metagame has no validity. They should make all spikes non-viable in HA and make all holding builds non-viable by completely remapping all of HA before they start to adress touch rangers...

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Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Except that you can deal with those builds with skills you've already brought, because they're crappy. Runners will always be a problem in RA because you can't guaruntee a snare will show up on your team. However, there's no way to fix it, so we just have to live with it. Touch rangers are different. We can tweak to skills and fix them, resulting in a more varied and interesting environment. Yet dealing with paladins usualy invoves degen or enchantment removals, isin't one of those good against touch rangers? Say, conisistent reliable snares and degen is good against runners and touch rangers alike? It's just that a pure runner team can waste someones time for far longer than a touch ranger team.

Personaly I wouldn't care if they nerfed touch rangers, but if they do they need to be overpowered, and deserving of a nerf. You've even said they're NOT overpowered, and just make for a boring metagame. This is exactly why they should not be nerfed, even though they're causing bad players to get owned.

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

Me/Mo

08 Jun 2006 at 23:01 - 169
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirian
If you really want to do it with a warrior, you could just... I don't know, try a W/Me with 12 (weapon), 12 tactics, 10 inspiration and pack heal sig, mantra of inscriptions and ether feast and slowly wait out their defences and energy supply! Exactly. Or you could go 10 domination and pack Signet of Weariness, Energy Burn & Signet of Humility. I mean, who would expect e-denial from a Warrior? Surprise, surprise, suprise! Throw a Diversion in there to really frustrate them.

RandomEngy

RandomEngy

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2005

The Kansas City Hotsteppers [KCHS]

P/

09 Jun 2006 at 02:12 - 170
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Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
Yes, actually, the build I proferred speaks for itself. You're not listening, however.
Since you don't really understand, I'll explain in more detail. Your build is utter trash, for the following reasons:
1) Warriors don't get much energy, so you're going to be far less effective than a dedicated illusion mesmer
2) You can't make even a half decent warrior build with 4 slots. Res sig, run skill so you can get at least some hits in, increased attack speed skill, then a grand total of one attack skill. And you can't remove conditions from yourself, if someone even felt like bothering to counter your lame DPS in the first place.

Seriously, actually try it out in RA, and contrast it with a real warrior build. If you still insist that it's an innovative and effective build, there's really no clearer way I can put it.

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Once again, you whine that kiting won't save you. Whereas, if you bothered to take even one hex snare from the mesmer, necro, or elementalist lines, it would. Not to mention it ties up the ranger while you are free to go attack another target.
Wow, you say snare hexes are good at countering touch rangers? I didn't realize until you said so!

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But you can't be bothered. The only thing that is boring about the metagame because of touch rangers is people like you who cry about getting owned because you refuse to display adaptibility. You know what's really boring? Wammos.

The rest of us are using the presence of touch rangers in the mix to learn valuable lessons about dealing with threats on the battle field. You persist in whining that toucher counters are only good for touchers, and that's simply not true. Put a snare hex and hex degen/condition degen on a warrior and you take him out as well. Do it to an assassin, and he'll be out of action. Hell, even doing it casters is useful - that mesmer has to get to touch range to use blackout or signet of midnight, hard to do when they've been cripshotted or Imagined Burdened. And all casters have to be in range to cast their offensive spells - they can't catch you if you've snared them. If you snare/hex/bleed players away from their healerand they don't have condition/hex removal or self heal, they're going to die.

Frankly, you can look at touch rangers as just like fighting your doppleganger. If you're an idiot, you're going to get your ass handed to you. If you plan ahead, you can have them taking a dirtnap in under 15 seconds. They're not overpowered, they're not unbalanced, you're just using the wrong strategy in a changed landscape and would rather whine about it than change your tactics.
But yeah this post is just "bring their counter and you win against them!" I'm getting tired of people missing the point, again and again, in the same way. Scroll up and look for bold words in my posts.

Next...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zui
There is a counter to everything. Due the limit of two professions, two hundred attribute points and eight skill slots you can't counter everything. Touch rangers exploit what is normaly brought to RA(which the quality of such builds are highly questionable, and most are degenerate builds, or degenerate builds aimed at beating other degenerate builds) since there's hardly any snares, degen, non-melee/non-elemental damage. In addition to people not being able to kite. IWAY still has people bringing wards in HA. This greatly narrows the freedom of many people who feel they must have wards to beat an IWAY. Perhaps they should nerf warriors so they're not scary and you don't need warrior hate which greatly limits what you can bring and still be effective.
I look at HA as how a gametype can go wrong. You have to bring skills for every little gimmick in the book rather than taking an all around flexible team, GvG style. But that's another discussion.

And I don't know how you think there isn't degen that much in RA. And you don't see much non-melee/non-bow/non-elemental damage happening simply because there are very few skills that cause it. Snares you see about what you'd expect... a mix of cripple snares, a few hex snares here and there, but you can't expect to have it on your team, much like you can't rely on getting a monk. Again, it all comes down to there being far fewer TR counters than there are against any other build.

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Let's read my post(the one you were responding to...)

Boonprots are extremely effective healing, however a pure healer such as a WoH monk is far more effective against touch rangers due to the fact that alot of the power of the boonprot comes from the ability of protection skills to reduce damage, and in the case of reversal reduce damage and heal in addition to the DF and boon bonus. Next time actualy read and understand before replying. Thanks.
In your post you said that if you use a boon prot against a touch ranger, you're a scrub. The pure heal you get just from boon and divine favor is enough to overcome TR damage. Our TA team runs one boon prot and we routinely trash teams with 3 and 4 touch rangers. Oh and they're much more hardy in any other situation, which is why every decent TA team has a boon prot as their backbone.

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Not really, infact both have very simmilar, very effective counters. Warriors my be effected more by things that deal with attacks such as price of failure, spirit of failure, shadow of fear and so forth, but it doesn't totaly stop them from doing damage, it just reduces it, to a point where it's still going to be more than that of a touch ranger even unless you bring a ton of hate, in which case it's still better to have the warrior since it's costing you time skills, attributes possibly a secondary and energy, in addition to attention, touch rangers don't cost as much as a warrior does. For empathy and such, it only deals damage to them limiting how much they can attack before they die, it doesn't stop them from doing damage. Both are effected equaly by degen, and snares. Degen deals the same amount of 'damage' to everyone. Snares prevent them from getting into adjacent range, without adjacent range neither can do any damage at all, it's just that without adjacent range touch rangers can't even heal, where warriors can. Healing works agsint both...
Wait was this big ramble trying to explain that non-snare based warrior hate somehow doesn't work? Yet somehow people keep bringing it and keep being effective with it. Strange.

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Last time I checked, Warriors have snares, rangers have snares, mesmers have snares, assassins have snares, heck even ritualists and elementalists have snares... Warriors, rangers, mesmers, necromancers and assissins have degen... Seeing the point?
It's like every other post people forget about plauge touch. Hex snares (or cripshot) are only practical for a few builds to take. Degen only works when you get a snare off.

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Say, I think I mentioned snares? I know I did, read what I said. Rangers can only heal if they're touching somthing, if you're kiting one that's not snared they can heal less. If you're kiting one that's snared, they can't heal at all. Same goes for plauge touch and conditions... Last time I checked, mesmers do have inturupts that work against skills, infact factions even gave them an insane elite called Psychic Distraction. Say isin't whirling defense only viable for 21s every 60 at 16 expertise? Wonder what you can do with ranger interupts during those other 39 seconds... And just to pre-empt your responce to that, during those 21 seconds, you kite so no the touch ranger will not kill you because you're an idiot and standing still, unless you are a scrub, and an idiot, and are standing still, in which case you have very little chance of actualy hitting a skill in the first place...
Why must you insist on defending every front, no matter how untenable? Ranger interrupts don't work very well even without WD. You can get lucky with distracting shot, but that's about it. Psychic Distraction is nice but kind of leaves you wide open to get rolled down when you don't have monk support. Also if you do hit the 3/4 second skill with your elite interrupt, you only disable it for 10 seconds.

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We're not fighting 1 vs 1. You have a team. Your team can do things when you're kiting. Your team probably has snares, if not they probably have somthing else that can beat you, or can overwhelm you with damage... Either way they can always beat you in an RA-type enviroment, unless they're running horrible builds are incompitent, or both. Build diversity is supressed by all effective builds, no matter what the build is. Deal with it.
Effective builds still usually fall into a class that has a wide variety of counters: interruptable, physical (blocks, evades, blind), low defense, enchant reliant, hex reliant. Touch rangers use a kind of loophole and don't fall into any of the standard buckets, getting away with far fewer counters than everyone else. This is how they're different.

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Why are you mentioning spirits? I don't see where you get any mention of them from what you were responding to. I also don't see what they have to do with anything, unless maybe muddy terrain?... But I still don't see how that has much relavance...
Even though it doesn't affect them, you can still dump crippled onto a spirit with Plague Touch.

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By reacting to you, they're countering your plans. You always react to the other team in every single match. There's no way to not react to them, unless you stand still and do absolutly nothing. Either way you're only forcing one member of their team at a time to react, and causing the other members to pay attention to where you are(which is the smart thing to do...).
Running away doesn't counter their plans. They're still doing damage to you, and you're running about not helping your team. In fact, that is their plan. Either you sit still and die quickly or stop doing damage or shutting down their teammates.

Quote: Or effective kiting. Or both. Or just degen+kiting+some damage... Or all those + a snare for even better results... Degen+kiting+a little damage won't do it. Degen+kiting+heavy damage will kill anything, so it's not really indicative of a TR weakness. Degen+snare is a TR weakness, but one that's been beaten to death.

Quote: <referring to Plague Touch/Signet of Midnight>They(the other team, or even that charactar) doesn't have condition removal or inturupts(inturupts, knockdown)? Sometimes they'll have condition removal, which means I can only keep it on one person, usually. Every so often you'll be up against a monk that's not being pressured or a plague touch warrior that knows not to try and put it on you, so then you have to be content with Faintheartedness and added degen. Plague Touch and Signet of Midnight are both 3/4 second non-spells, so they fall into the "difficult to interrupt" category, especially if the interrupter just so happens to be blind.

Quote: <about Spiteful Spirit>It's not as strong against touch rangers if you're looking at a health lost/damage done standpoint, but if you add in other damage and degen in there... It's quite effective. Plus a warrior or ranger can just stop attacking and hit healing signet/troll unugent, or an assasin shadow refuge, gain some health, then go back to what they were doing, it may hamper them more than a touch ranger, but it doesn't make them that much easeir to kill. You say if you combine an elite hex with damage and degen you can kill someone? That's amazing; a real weakness for touch rangers. By the way, one Shadow Refuge won't heal enough to cover 3 hits worth of damage on an assassin.

Quote: Ok, so they go after someone else. They then kill another soft target(who said you were the only 60 base al caster on your team?). Then another guy, then another guy, and when everyone is out of res sigs, they kill you. Rangers would only want to hit migrane if it was hurting someone on their team. There's that word again, team. Odds are it's not going to significantly hurt someone that doesn't have hex removal, but if it does, well then your distortion helps.

Ok, cast time for all interupts is 1/4s for rangers+flight time, and for mesmers 1/4s or less due to fast cast. Network lag has no place in this discussion. Human reaction time doesn't really matter here(highly predictable use of skills ftw?), but let's say most people have a 1/4s reaction time. Knowing what the ranger is using doesn't matter here either, unless they're routinely using another skill other than vamp touch and vamp bite every time they can(2.75s inbetween each use of each spell individualy). Seriously, if people can manage to time ranger inturupts at a distance without increased flight speed and hit 1/4s spells with them, you can hit a 3/4s skill with a ranger inturupt at point blank range(factoring out the flight time) especialy since those skills are far easier to predict than almost everything else you'll be looking to inturupt.

Right, what makes you think they won't jsut remove migrane? Or that delaying their spells will cause them great pain(if it would wouldn't they probably have hex removal?)... Or that the degen would really turn the course of a battle many times. There's just no reason to justify bringing migrane for use in that fashion.

Did I mention Crippling Shot can't be blocked or evaded, it even says so on the skill description. Did I mention crippling shot can be spamemd, and it doesn't even need to be spammed if all you want is the poision? Being unable to move to kite or chase a target isin't annoying? Being hammered with savage/distracting shot isin't annoying? Are there counters to blind, how long does blind usualy last? Heck, how often do you see blind in RA? How many people there even put it on rangers when they have it, insead of on say warriors? They both have their strengths and weaknesses, I agree with that. That doesn't make your build good. Really, you're just nitpicking the build now. Me and several other people have tried it out and it just works, and is fun to play. It works out better than most any Domination build, simply because you don't get stomped on by W/R/A. If you're going to play a squishy in RA you have to look out for yourself, not pray your teammates will happen to bring builds that can protect you. Down that road lies frustration and much unneeded yelling at teammates.

Quote:
I said a slot for a snare if needed. If you're going to RA and expect to hit teams with many many warriors, and touch rangers, which is fairly common, a snare would be a very good thing to have. You not understanding the simple logic behind what I said is your fault, not mine. You loose one slot for energy managment, oh well, you'll just have to work with all those other free slots for that... Plus I think energy managment might be alittle less needed than that snare if you face a common thing like a multi-warrior team and touch rangers... I never said snares were bad. I only said you shouldn't have to take a hex snare/cripshot to be effective in RA. And that a hex snare on an Ineptitude build is a bad idea. Why don't you try and play one? I'm guessing either your mana situation will end up rather tight or you just won't touch that skill at all.

Quote:
Tell me where in what I said(which you were responding to) where I said that you use Deep Freeze for damage? Or where you try to be a primary damage dealer as an Elementalist? Where did I even use the words Elementlaist and Damage in the same sentence(infact I didn't even mention damage...)?

You're not running a water ele, you're running a water skill that is helpful in just about every situation, and especialy so against touch rangers..

You'll be able to keep him snared for a good bit of the time, enough time to make a difference. Say, if there's a touch ranger that's really giving your team problems wouldn't it be smarter to make Deep Freeze a priority? You never said you were using it for the damage. I just pointed out due to lowered damage, it's less effective against touch rangers than warriors, which is my entire argument: touch rangers have fewer and less effective counters than other builds.

Quote:
<About run speed skills>Maybe bring one of those . That way you don't aboslutly have to bring AoD.. A 3 second 50% boost, that will surely lose him and his puny 10 second 33% boost.

Quote:
Fewer counters, but counters that can be done without any skills, or with common skills that everyone is going to bring(at least some of them) because they work in just about every situation... There are more counters to warriors, but then alot of those counters are also specialised to physical attackers, and brought most time specificaly for use against warriors/assassins. The things that counter touch rangers work against just about everything, and can be employed for a wide range of purposes. Everyone is going to be a monk, cripshotter, hex snarer, or energy drainer? You see that's what we're trying to avoid.

Quote: It might be the same concept, but the numbers are way different. You're doing less damage and getting far less healing. In practice, that makes all the difference in the world. Also you try and classify them as "PB range casters," yet they don't cast any spells, thus they don't care about the myriad of anti-spell skills out there. They don't really fit into any other category, in terms of what counters are effective.

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Shock, if used in conjunction with a coordinated spike doing decent damage by the rest of your team does infact have a good chance of killing a touch ranger... You're right. You know what other builds that has a good chance of killing? Everything.

Quote:
Yes I imagine you do play RA quite a bit after reading your posts... I should have guessed.

Conditions obviously cause conditions like deep wound bleeding poision... The fact is though you rarely see weakness in RA, due to their not being many skills that inflict it, and the fact it doesn't stop adrenal gain like blind. You also rarely see blind used enough or effectively enough to shut down a warrior completely, or stop the warrior from getting off any spikes.

The ranger i mentioned was a crippshot ranger. I said you could bring hunters shot only so you could have equal degen to that build of yours. No where did I reccomend the use of it on your standard crippshot, nor did I call it a poision/bleeding ranger. It's purpose is cripple as movment control, poision is just a cover and some damage. It's other purpose is to inturupt. It's also very good for flag running in GvG and base soloing.....

Ok, pin down can be strafed and can't be spammed, if you are crippled you're essentialy useless, and not going to get into melee range to plauge touch anything. So plauge touch = bad idea here.

Throw Dirt is far from total shutdown with blindness, and is a rare sight.

Traps... Hmm take out your +10% base attack attack speed nolani wand(without the miss chance) and wand the trapper? They get off any traps due to stances, mantra of resolve, or whatnot, just don't go near where they laid the traps...

Yeah, bleeding is really threatning on it's own with a sever/gash warrior, I'd say deep wound is more worrisome... Regardless, warrior attacking a warrior first? Yeah, only in RA, why pressure soft targets when you can go after the hardest target possible. Odds are that whammo only has 9 in swordsmanship anyway, and is going to be doing negligible damage unless you start attacking him through his 1337 gladiators defense... Gash needs a bleeding target. If you plague touch the bleeding before they get to gash, the deep wound won't happen. Plus they'll be bleeding instead. As for all the rest of the stuff, you try and write conditions off as rare and not a big deal, but I get them all the time as warrior in RA. I can't count the number of matches Plauge Touch has saved for me.

Quote:
No where did I ever mention bringing Wild Blow. Ever. Not once. Get it straight. Whirling Defense, a skill that's only works 1/3 of the time if even brought isin't going to be game-breaking in the way you're using it, for what you're using it to do, it's just somthing that helps you for awhile, and is really good against scrubs who try to attack through it while you kill them. You can replace Plauge Touch for other useful skills that do damage or help you or your team in some other way shock is a good example... Or you could replace it for mend ailment and a hex removal... You could even remove cripple, and hexes... I assumed you meant give up plague touch for something that's effective against touch rangers. But so far everything you've said doesn't really help in that regard, so I'm kind of confused. And you can't really replace one skill with two. You have to give up something else as well. And that effectively leaves you with 2 attack skills.

Quote:
Maybe you did assume that they kited, but you've also completely disregarded general skills that are very common and are useful in every single situation for a varity of uses like shock, and snares. Shock has not, and never will be an effective counter to touch rangers.

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The fact is many people are too stupid to play compitently, are unable to adapt, and use absolutly horrible builds. This is why touch rangers are owning. This is why there will still be the same "problem" even with QZ, because all the scrubs who think PvP = 1 vs 1 will still be loosing to them.

You're trading usefulness when kiting(without snares). Decreasing the rangers usefulness, and your own. Essentialy keeping you both out of the game, except for the ranger to keep you out of the game he has to follow you. You can choose to stop and cast or perform any action at any point where it will be of benefit to your team. Or just lure the touch ranger who thinks you have no snares far, far away, then snare them and run back.... There are plenty of reasons why it's actualy beneficial to your team to do this... You're looking at it from too much of a narrow-minded view when kiting a touch ranger. When you choose to stop and help your team, you're taking a lot more damage. You can't both help your team and minimize damage you take. This is the essential problem you face when your team doesn't happen to have their counter. Anyway that trick is good against any melee type, as I feel obliged to point out. Not a special weakness of touch rangers. Though it is indeed incredibly amusing to put AoD on, then kite a dumb one halfway across the map and cancel it, bringing you back into the fight with full energy while they're out in the middle of nowhere.

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Countering spikes in HA makes for a boring metagame, and to perfectly counter them you need to gimp your build. Touch rangers make for a boring metagame in RA, but you only need a handful of skills to beat them(heck, you can beat 3 of them+1 monk in TA using just deep freeze and no other real counters). Your argument of a boring metagame has no validity. They should make all spikes non-viable in HA and make all holding builds non-viable by completely remapping all of HA before they start to adress touch rangers... Right, because that would be easier than changing 2 numbers.

Quote:
Yet dealing with paladins usualy invoves degen or enchantment removals, isin't one of those good against touch rangers? Say, conisistent reliable snares and degen is good against runners and touch rangers alike? It's just that a pure runner team can waste someones time for far longer than a touch ranger team. The only way to get a consitent reliable snare in RA is to bring it yourself. Is your suggestion to never go into RA without a snare? Seems to be a bit limiting to me.

Quote:
Personaly I wouldn't care if they nerfed touch rangers, but if they do they need to be overpowered, and deserving of a nerf. You've even said they're NOT overpowered, and just make for a boring metagame. This is exactly why they should not be nerfed, even though they're causing bad players to get owned. But if you define overpowered as "not having counters," nothing is overpowered. Every skill or build that's ever been changed has had counters of a sort. Ether Renewal abuse had enchant removal, Grenth's Balance guild lord ganking had "don't let them into your base", spirit spamming had "shut down the spammer". Any out of whack skill or build that has since been corrected has had counters, and therefore was not "overpowered" and by your definition shouldn't have been changed.

Big_Iron

Big_Iron

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Dec 2005

The Edge

Tormented Weapons [emo]

09 Jun 2006 at 11:38 - 171
I usually hate posts like this, but I have to say it. I don't see what the fuss is about. While I like the build and respect it, I haven't met a Touch Ranger yet that my Wammo can't beat to death with an axe. Do I have some uber-secret Wammo build? Not at all. Just a basic Warrior played by an average player. Maybe I just haven't met any good Touch Rangers yet, but as far as I can tell they DON'T need to be nerfed.

baz777

baz777

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Dec 2005

South East England

Leader: Lady Hairy Armpits S[mell]

E/

09 Jun 2006 at 12:27 - 172
Quote:
Originally Posted by WoodyDotNet
I usually hate posts like this, but I have to say it. I don't see what the fuss is about. While I like the build and respect it, I haven't met a Touch Ranger yet that my Wammo can't beat to death with an axe. Do I have some uber-secret Wammo build? Not at all. Just a basic Warrior played by an average player. Maybe I just haven't met any good Touch Rangers yet, but as far as I can tell they DON'T need to be nerfed. Maybe you underestimate your own ability. I’ve played Touch Ranger in RA over the past week and have stood ‘toe to toe’ with many warriors. In all cases but one I have managed to take them down.

Sarevok Thordin

Sarevok Thordin

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

Scotland

W/N

09 Jun 2006 at 14:09 - 173
If you have been in AB and met the Touch Ranger 4 man teams out there.

They are just screaming for a nerf.

The only way I can take them down so far is a R/A spamming dagger chains with tiger's fury. And that is if there is only 1....

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

Me/Mo

09 Jun 2006 at 18:15 - 174
Once again, we discover your reading comprehension to be sadly lacking.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Since you don't really understand, I'll explain in more detail. Your build is utter trash, for the following reasons:
1) Warriors don't get much energy, so you're going to be far less effective than a dedicated illusion mesmer
First off, I said in the equipment section: Gladiator's and/or Illusion weapon set you can switch to. Gladiator's gives you 27 which is plenty, although a little tight and you may be waiting to cast the final spike a few seconds. But since they're snared, it doesn't matter. If you take an illusion weapon set, you're going to have at least 37 energy and possibly as much as 57. Plenty plenty. And nobody said you have to keep those equipped at all times, it's a *weaponset.*

Secondly - a primary mesmer makes a better mesmer than a warrior? ZOMG, who would have ever thought? That's not the point. The point?

Quote:
 2) You can't make even a half decent warrior build with 4 slots. Res sig, run skill so you can get at least some hits in, increased attack speed skill, then a grand total of one attack skill. And you can't remove conditions from yourself, if someone even felt like bothering to counter your lame DPS in the first place. You know, it cheapens the debate to say things like "You're a moron," so I'll refrain. The build was posted as an off-the-top-of-my-head example of ONE way to adapt to the current landscape if you insist on playing as a primary warrior, which you seem to. If you're going to go in as a primary mesmer, of course you'll do better, mesmers are much better prepared to deal with touch rangers.

But as obvious from your list of requirements for making a "half decent warrior build" you're incapable of thinking outside the box. A run skill? You don't need a run skill when your target has Imagined Burden on it. They're not going to get away, and if they try, you can laugh while you land a critical hit every swing.

An attack speed skill? You don't need to attack faster while your landing critical hits and they are losing health from degen and are 20% down from deep wound.

So there, that's two slots freed up. Want to free up a 3rd? Ditch Images of Remorse, you don't really need it, the Imagined Burden and Conjure Phantasm are enough to trigger the deep wound from Accumlated Pain. If you want more degen, use Conjure Nightmare instead of Conjure Phantasm. With an illusion weaponset and adrenal attack skills, you can afford the 25 energy easily. I personally don't think the extra 3 degen is worth the 15 energy, but your milage may vary.

And once again, this isn't about your ability to 1v1 the enemy. You keep snarking about kiting reducing your "usefulness to the team", which I find highly amusing, as your idea of usefullness to the team seems to be to be able to kill other players 1v1. The moment you have a difficulty doing that, you cry for the nerf bat.

By no means is this suggestion the be-all end-all of dealing with the changed threat level of PvP. It's just an example of displaying adaptability. See also my suggestion of going domination/e-denial with signets and one 10e spell, which wouldn't even require changing armor or weaponsets.

I'm fully aware that you have said that you know there are counters to touch ranger and that is not your point, that your point is there are fewer counters to touch ranger and that makes it unbalanced. In this, you're just plain wrong. The counters to touch ranger are just as effective on most of not all other builds, and counters to other builds are just as effective on touch rangers. It just requires using your skills intelligently and opportunistically.

I think what it really boils down to is that you have a favorite build or set of builds for your warrior and you used to roll over most other players. I even suspect you are probably one of those arrogant wammos who does the pelvic thrust on the corpses of your target. All of a sudden, a flavor of the month build has popped up that your favorite build(s) can't deal with. Since your way is The One True Way To Play A Warrior, this can't be tolerated, so you whine for a nerf so you can go back to rolling over people.

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

Me/Mo

09 Jun 2006 at 18:35 - 175
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarevok Thordin
If you have been in AB and met the Touch Ranger 4 man teams out there.

They are just screaming for a nerf.

The only way I can take them down so far is a R/A spamming dagger chains with tiger's fury. And that is if there is only 1.... <Lumbergh>Yeaaaaah.... I'm gonna go ahead and have to call bull on that one... that'd be great, mmkay? See ya.</Lumbergh>

My guild took a 3 toucher/1 monk team into AB yesterday and met a mostly Korean Luxon team.

We got owned.

Why? Because those particular Luxons had prepared. Crippling Shot, Apply Poison... trap snares, hex snares, curse snares... condition degen, hex degen, e-denial, knockdown.

And they didn't just own my sub-team of the 12. Why? Because those tactics are *very effective* versus just about everything. The warriors got killed. The nukers got killed. The monks got stomped on and killed. And my touch ranger team was lucky if between the 3 of us we got *one* kill in that match.

We'd be snared, poisoned, bleeding and e-denied, our monk would be under heavy fire or dead, an Assassin or R/A would bamf in with the AoD spike and we'd be toast before we could do a thing about it.

Say... I know! Let's nerf snares! They're overpowered! And degen! Degen isn't fair, it makes people have to carry a hex removal/condition removal or die! Those snare/degen teams are ruining the metagame!

SnipiousMax

SnipiousMax

Perfectly Elocuted

Join Date: Sep 2005

09 Jun 2006 at 19:29 - 176
Playing in RA with a standard team-dependant Meta-Game build is only going to breed frustration and annoyance anyway. With so many gimmicks, you almost have to play a gimmick to get anywhere. In GvG and HA, touch Rangers are laughed at. In TA and AB, touch rangers are easily dealt with. The only place that people seem to have problems is in RA... People who have any amount of success in RA (why are you still there... Go to TA for the love!) know that you have to prepare for any popular build. So you're going to have to drop your normal cookie cutter for a build with one or two gimmicky counters. Really it comes down to which team spawns with the better (only) monk anyway.... So I don't see why your getting upset.

joncoish

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: May 2006

10 Jun 2006 at 00:05 - 177
I've hardly spent any time in pvp, and even I could understand the basic idea to counter this is to not stay and fight the guy. Run around, use skills and spells to slow him so he can't chase you as easily. If he can't get next to you, he can't heal or do damage, so just pick him off.

That being said, I don't see how this is a skill less build. Just because it's annoying? Come on. If it's annoying, seems like these people are doing their job. Personally I think any build is valid. If it does the trick, why not stick to it? But this one obviously has counters.

Sarevok Thordin

Sarevok Thordin

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

Scotland

W/N

10 Jun 2006 at 01:14 - 178
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
<Lumbergh>Yeaaaaah.... I'm gonna go ahead and have to call bull on that one... that'd be great, mmkay? See ya.</Lumbergh>

My guild took a 3 toucher/1 monk team into AB yesterday and met a mostly Korean Luxon team.

We got owned.

Why? Because those particular Luxons had prepared. Crippling Shot, Apply Poison... trap snares, hex snares, curse snares... condition degen, hex degen, e-denial, knockdown.

And they didn't just own my sub-team of the 12. Why? Because those tactics are *very effective* versus just about everything. The warriors got killed. The nukers got killed. The monks got stomped on and killed. And my touch ranger team was lucky if between the 3 of us we got *one* kill in that match.

We'd be snared, poisoned, bleeding and e-denied, our monk would be under heavy fire or dead, an Assassin or R/A would bamf in with the AoD spike and we'd be toast before we could do a thing about it.

Say... I know! Let's nerf snares! They're overpowered! And degen! Degen isn't fair, it makes people have to carry a hex removal/condition removal or die! Those snare/degen teams are ruining the metagame! Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Guess you were too 1 track minded and predicable.

You know, doing that constantly is going to make people build teams JUST to counter that, try mixing it up and maybe that won't happen.

Oh I know, let's nerf originality! Making your own builds is overpowered =(

SnipiousMax

SnipiousMax

Perfectly Elocuted

Join Date: Sep 2005

10 Jun 2006 at 03:28 - 179
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarevok Thordin
...too 1 track minded and predicable..... <ahem> Submited as the very definition of a touch ranger!

RandomEngy

RandomEngy

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2005

The Kansas City Hotsteppers [KCHS]

P/

10 Jun 2006 at 08:04 - 180
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
Once again, we discover your reading comprehension to be sadly lacking.

First off, I said in the equipment section: Gladiator's and/or Illusion weapon set you can switch to. Gladiator's gives you 27 which is plenty, although a little tight and you may be waiting to cast the final spike a few seconds. But since they're snared, it doesn't matter. If you take an illusion weapon set, you're going to have at least 37 energy and possibly as much as 57. Plenty plenty. And nobody said you have to keep those equipped at all times, it's a *weaponset.*
We'll just assume 44 mana with Gladiators, a +5 mana axe/sword and a +12 focus.

Anyway, since you didn't bother to test out your build, I'll spell it out. Your skill chain costs 40 mana. It takes a full minute, with no other expenditures, to get that much energy under warrior regeneration. And you can cast it once, from full mana, before you're dry. Zealous can help, but really nothing is going to change the fact that warriors are not and never were cut out to be casting expensive spells. If you don't believe me, actually play this build.

Quote:
Secondly - a primary mesmer makes a better mesmer than a warrior? ZOMG, who would have ever thought? That's not the point. The point?

You know, it cheapens the debate to say things like "You're a moron," so I'll refrain. The build was posted as an off-the-top-of-my-head example of ONE way to adapt to the current landscape if you insist on playing as a primary warrior, which you seem to. If you're going to go in as a primary mesmer, of course you'll do better, mesmers are much better prepared to deal with touch rangers.
So what you're telling me, is that due to the touch ranger, I shouldn't play warriors in RA? You see, that's a balance problem, when your only option is to stop playing a class altogether, or turn it into some ungodly retarded monstrosity that can be effective 15 seconds out of every minute.

Quote:
But as obvious from your list of requirements for making a "half decent warrior build" you're incapable of thinking outside the box. A run skill? You don't need a run skill when your target has Imagined Burden on it. They're not going to get away, and if they try, you can laugh while you land a critical hit every swing.
Somehow I don't think 15 mana, removable skill that's going to be cast once per minute is going to replace a 5 mana (or free) skill that you can keep up a majority of the time, and that works against everyone.

Quote:
An attack speed skill? You don't need to attack faster while your landing critical hits and they are losing health from degen and are 20% down from deep wound.
When your target isn't kiting, attack speed increases are a 50% increase in DPS, straight up, not to mention increased usage of adrenal skills. If lots of critical hits are good, 50% more is a lot better, right? If you ignore them, you're throwing a lot of potential damage and spiking ability out the window. But now that I think about it you couldn't their energy cost in this build anyway.

Quote:
So there, that's two slots freed up. Want to free up a 3rd? Ditch Images of Remorse, you don't really need it, the Imagined Burden and Conjure Phantasm are enough to trigger the deep wound from Accumlated Pain. If you want more degen, use Conjure Nightmare instead of Conjure Phantasm. With an illusion weaponset and adrenal attack skills, you can afford the 25 energy easily. I personally don't think the extra 3 degen is worth the 15 energy, but your milage may vary.
For a moment there I thought you were seriously going to suggest Conjure Nightmare on a warrior. That would have been classic. Taking off a mesmer skill would be good, because it moves the build away from a complety terrible idea toward just a bad idea: a warrior build with degen hexes and expensive hex snares. To be a little more specific: it's not just having enough maximum energy to cast it, it's being able to keep on casting them, and continue applying pressure. With 2 pips of regen and no energy management you're just not effective with those skills, that's all there is to it.

And then you've got 12 points dumped into something you don't do very well since you don't have the energy to fuel it, lowering your damage and self-heal ability by stealing a ton of attributes away from strength, weapon mastery and tactics.

Quote:
And once again, this isn't about your ability to 1v1 the enemy. You keep snarking about kiting reducing your "usefulness to the team", which I find highly amusing, as your idea of usefullness to the team seems to be to be able to kill other players 1v1. The moment you have a difficulty doing that, you cry for the nerf bat. You're useful to your team by using shutdown skills or doing damage. When kiting, you stop doing those things, therefore it reduces your usefulness to the team. I don't think it's such a difficult concept.

Quote:
By no means is this suggestion the be-all end-all of dealing with the changed threat level of PvP. It's just an example of displaying adaptability. See also my suggestion of going domination/e-denial with signets and one 10e spell, which wouldn't even require changing armor or weaponsets. Signet of Weariness has a big recharge and will still take away valuable attribute points. Other domination spells run into the same energy problems. And I can guaruntee you you'd rather have Bull's Strike with decent strength than an energy drain skill or two. That's the thing... you keep making little adjustments to make the warrior better and soon enough all but a few cheap utility skills are gone from the secondary profession, leaving a skillset that plays to a primary warrior's strength, which is not edenial or hex-based degen.

Quote:
I'm fully aware that you have said that you know there are counters to touch ranger and that is not your point, that your point is there are fewer counters to touch ranger and that makes it unbalanced. In this, you're just plain wrong. The counters to touch ranger are just as effective on most of not all other builds, and counters to other builds are just as effective on touch rangers. It just requires using your skills intelligently and opportunistically. Counters to touch rangers can be effective on other builds. But you say counters to other builds are just as effective on touch rangers? Some are, like hex snares, but that's a completely hollow statement. The point is the counters for touch rangers are essentially a subset of counters to warriors, bow rangers and assassins. For instance, Blind, Weakness, the whole Curses line, evasive skills, condition-based degen and specific mesmer skills like sympathetic visage or empathy will generally counter those classes, while failing against touch rangers. The only special weakness is energy denial, which comes from a narrow range of skills not often seen in RA due to dom mesmers not being particularly strong without support, which you can only pray for in RA. Wither and maliase actually do worse against them because they can focus swap it off.

Quote:
I think what it really boils down to is that you have a favorite build or set of builds for your warrior and you used to roll over most other players. I even suspect you are probably one of those arrogant wammos who does the pelvic thrust on the corpses of your target. All of a sudden, a flavor of the month build has popped up that your favorite build(s) can't deal with. Since your way is The One True Way To Play A Warrior, this can't be tolerated, so you whine for a nerf so you can go back to rolling over people. Huh really, that's what you suspect of me. I guess you didn't read earlier in the thread when I mentioned that Plauge Touch was an incredibly powerful skill in RA and that I would always hesitate to take it out for anything else. That implies W/N, not W/Mo. And I'm known to say GG after a fight, not pelvic thrust. It's true that some of the builds I run can't counter touch rangers, but that's just because few builds do. Build diversity is something I like to see in RA, and touch rangers tend to stifle it. It's not really a vendetta or anything.

And there isn't one way to play a warrior, but do me a favor, watch some in high-ranked GvG. You'll notice that they all bring run speed stances. They all have attack speed increase skills. None use expensive spells. You might see gale being used rarely as the only non-5-energy spell a warrior takes. Spells they do use never require significant attribute investment. A lot use Healing Signet, depending on how self-reliant they need to be. This is because there are guidelines to playing a good warrior, that's just the way the game is. RA is a bit different from traditional environments, but I've played enough of it to tell you that those basics still apply.

Zui

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Mar 2006

The Benecia Renovatio [RenO]

Mo/

10 Jun 2006 at 09:18 - 181
Random, I would actualy write a reply to what you've said in it's entirity, but it's clear your mind can not be changed, and it's also clear you can not even read and undestand what is being said, or choose not to do so. I'll give an example of this by quoting what was actualy said in a moment. There's another thread on Touch Rangers in Riverside Inn. I'm sure you'll enjoy posting on that one too trying to explain why somthing so easily countered is overpowered.


So in your last post to me you said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
In your post you said that if you use a boon prot against a touch ranger, you're a scrub. The pure heal you get just from boon and divine favor is enough to overcome TR damage. Our TA team runs one boon prot and we routinely trash teams with 3 and 4 touch rangers. Oh and they're much more hardy in any other situation, which is why every decent TA team has a boon prot as their backbone.
So let's clarify exactly what was said relating to this in the entire course of our responces in this thread, in order of the first to be post to the last to be posted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy RA is fundamentally different from other gametypes because you can't pick your teammates. Everywhere else you can make a team that can deal with touch rangers (boon prot, snares, whatever), but in RA you just kind of have to guess. It's certainly not ideal for everyone to bring anti-toucher all the time because it does limit your build. For instance when playing as a toucher I have yet to meet a warrior who could beat me. Many used knockdowns and snares. But without monk support, they still died. Does this mean we should all stop running warriors in RA, because warriors don't counter them in any way? Boon Prots are great against everything... but obviously it's not ideal for everyone to bring them. Again it all comes down to not being able to construct a team.
Please note the underlined sections where to me it sounded like you may have stated boonprots are a counter to touch rangers. Since I was unsure if this was what you meant, I responed like this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zui Boonprots don't work very well agsint touch rangers, since life stealing is not damage. If you're going to take a boonprot to speceficaly counter touch rangers, you are a scrub.
Please note everything is underlined. Life stealing is not damage. Boonprots work mostly against damage, by reducing it and healing. This is mainly done with Reversal of Fortune, and with Guardian and Protective Spirit or Spirit Bond in some cases. You'll get a 121 point heal from any of those with the divine favor and divine boon bonuses, at 16 divine favor. There is no other heal from them applied against a toucher. From a skill like Word of Healing wich has no damage reduction component(or healing based on damage like RoF), you'll get a straight 190 point heal at 16 healing, providing the target is under 50% life. All for 5 energy, instead of 7 from the boonprot. Now we have the math clearly established, note how I said "If you're going to take a boonprot speceficaly to counter touch rangers, you are a scrub" Note underlined. You responed to this with:

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
Boonprots in RA are the furthest thing from scrubs. They're the strongest RA build you can possibly bring, assuming you're the only one on your team. And they beat touch rangers simply with big, energy-efficient healing. That's all there is to it. Again note underlined. You were the one who misquoted me. They may be the strongest RA build, but certainly not because of touch rangers. They're very strong due to the amount of warriors, rangers, assassins, and elementalists who think they're pure spikers in RA, and the lack of shutdown you'll likely have on your team(aka you're the only one mitigating damage - by healing). I didin't disagree with you on that, at all. You go on to basicaly say they have energy-effecient healing against touch rangers. This is completely false. I responded with:

Quote:
Boonprots are extremely effective healing, however [u]a pure healer such as a WoH monk is far more effective against touch rangers due to the fact that alot of the power of the boonprot comes from the ability of protection skills to reduce damage, and in the case of reversal reduce damage and heal in addition to the DF and boon bonus. Next time actualy read and understand before replying. Thanks. Hmm, so I responded to you by agreeing with you that boonprots were very effective healing. I then explained my reasoning for saying what I said, and gave a clear example. Your responce to this was:

Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
In your post you said that if you use a boon prot against a touch ranger, you're a scrub. The pure heal you get just from boon and divine favor is enough to overcome TR damage. Our TA team runs one boon prot and we routinely trash teams with 3 and 4 touch rangers. Oh and they're much more hardy in any other situation, which is why every decent TA team has a boon prot as their backbone. No one ever said the healing from boon wasn't enough to overcome Touch Ranger Damage. It requires mitigation by other players otherwise it'll drain your energy dry. Since all of what was said is convinently laid out here, you can go read it. I also did not say what you accuse me of saying. Read what was said. I also completely agreed with you they're far more useful in any other situation. You obviously failed to see that...


Just setting the record straight one one thing. If you actualy read all of what was said with everything, you'll find you've done this and simmilar things other places too. This is one of the reasons why it's pointless to reply to you, since what was said seems to have absolutly no value, as that's rarely what you respond to. By no means is this anything personal, I simply don't enjoy spending my time trying to have a discussion where who said what is mixed up and misquoted, especialy on a fourm, where it's right there above you(and you even quoted what you're responding to), all you have to do is read.

Last post on this thread,
Zui

Nightwish

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jul 2005

10 Jun 2006 at 10:43 - 182
I only wish you can get statistics on the RA matches. If its possible, I am highly convinced that teams with a monk will have significant wins over those with TR instead.

No classes in this game is more effective than a pure support monk imo. TR is a good build but not overly powerful.

Try to gvg/HA without a monk and see how far you will go...The same cannot be said for other classes. There are numerous teams that do well without war,necro,mes,ranger,ritualist,ele or assassin.

Monks are the only class in the game that a serious team cannot go without.

P.S. Nevertheless, if monks are designed in such a way that their presence not essential, then nobody will play them such a dilema

Tigers Anger

Academy Page

Join Date: Jan 2006

Master Casters [MC]

R/Me

10 Jun 2006 at 14:50 - 183
Just to see how touchers do in HA I did it last night. A friend invited me to a Touch Ranger party last night for fun, with 7 touch rangers and a hp monk. It was fun, we got to courtyard a few times, unfortunately never to HoH but overall we did pretty well. On relic runs we all Dodge ran to their relic, at which point they moved further back seeing how fast we were approaching, then we killed their Ghostly Hero while they were blocking the entrances to their relic. Ghostly Hero's go down very fast with 7 touch rangers Then we just easily ran the relic with our speed boosts.

Altar maps, we all ran to the middle and killed the Ghostly Hero because all their monks were far behind the Ghostly Hero was usually windborned and Warriors were sprinting in, and if we had time we would kill their warrior(s) too. We don't run it in a spike type of way, just spam calling a target then everyone runs and touches them :P. On one Courtyard match, it was 1 minute left and the blue team (some r9+ team) were holding with a ritualist and everyone on altar. The yellow team (some rank 500 guild with low morale) still hadn't gone in yet so we just rushed the Blue Ghostly Hero. He went down in a matter of seconds even with monk support and then the yellow Ghostly Hero came on and he got killed before he capped too but unfortunately our Hero couldn't be kept alive by 1 HP Monk and died to a few shock warriors

We beat WM International rank 72 in a fun Underworld match, they were very suprised that touchers beat them and i'm glad there was no noob calling after the match unlike certain other teams -_-. I think this build could become the new IWAY, an annoying build with lots of damage but their are some simple counters to it. We lost to an IWAY once because we got bodyblocked by ourselves and a mass amount of pets so even with all our plague touching and vamp touching the degen and damage killed us Ward vs Foes was probably the biggest counter to us, as was Muddy Terrain vs Blood spikes. In the case of Spike vs us, we usually won because ranger spikes can't touch us through dodge/zojuns haste/whirling and Blood spike can't keep up with our killing power. Bonders on ranger spikes and the ritualist on blood spikes don't hinder us at all, so we leave them to waste their energy on futile skills :P. I can see this becoming a good build in tombs, but their are some big flaws to touching.

hasse

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Dec 2005

ODA

Mo/

10 Jun 2006 at 17:38 - 184
Quote:
Originally Posted by zulu123
The above means a warrior is pretty much screwed when confronted with a touch ranger. Either we cripple the touch ranger and start running away OR we attack him and die. I know a warrior should also run when times are bad. But does that mean we put our tails between our legs and run whenever we see a touch ranger?

Also, I think an appropriate nerf would be making those touch *skills* as *spells*. That way expertise wont be useless with ALL secondary profession skills, just these 2 or 3 overpowered spammable ones. Or atleast increase the recharge on them. Ever heard of knockdown There are a hundreds of ways to counter everything. I dont cry for nerf, id say adapt. A bummer about the prot-spirit though, could maybe be a room for a slight improvement.

hasse

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Dec 2005

ODA

Mo/

10 Jun 2006 at 17:45 - 185
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigers Anger
Just to see how touchers do in HA I did it last night. A friend invited me to a Touch Ranger party last night for fun, with 7 touch rangers and a hp monk. Yes touch ragers does wery well in HA atm. Funny build with 7rangers + 1monk, usally 5rangers, 2 monks and 1water ele who snares the current target.

Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: May 2005

At an Insit.. Intis... a house.

Live Forever Or Die Trying [GLHF]

W/Me

10 Jun 2006 at 18:15 - 186
Just to see what it was all about, I made myself a touch ranger and went to RA.

Well, they're fairly effective, I could kill any enemy who stood their ground against me except necros with life transfer - that was a tie. Monks, wars, and eles went down quite easy, although I'm not sure the TR was actually better at killing stuff than my warrior.

It was also very obvious what the weakness of touch rangers is: energy.

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

Me/Mo

10 Jun 2006 at 21:09 - 187
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
We'll just assume 44 mana with Gladiators, a +5 mana axe/sword and a +12 focus.

Anyway, since you didn't bother to test out your build, I'll spell it out. Your skill chain costs 40 mana. It takes a full minute, with no other expenditures, to get that much energy under warrior regeneration. And you can cast it once, from full mana, before you're dry. Zealous can help, but really nothing is going to change the fact that warriors are not and never were cut out to be casting expensive spells. If you don't believe me, actually play this build.
Once again... ZOMG! You mean warriors don't do as good a job as spell casters than primary spellcaster classes??? I'm shocked, utterly shocked.

I'll say it again, this build was an example of displaying some fricking adaptability. Can you be ub3rl337 w4rr10r AND a decent secondary spell caster at the same time? Nope. It's a trade-off. However, you only need that spell chain *once* to finish a toucher. It's just a sample of how your warrior primary can easily kill a vampire 1v1, since that seems to be all you care about.

Quote:
So what you're telling me, is that due to the touch ranger, I shouldn't play warriors in RA? You see, that's a balance problem, when your only option is to stop playing a class altogether, or turn it into some ungodly retarded monstrosity that can be effective 15 seconds out of every minute.
No, what I am telling you is - "Know your limitations and work within them." When I monk, I know that I have tissue paper armor and very limited potential to cause damage. Therefore, I don't charge the tank 1v1. In fact, I know that a determined warrior is one of the largest threats I face, so I let other team members who are more qualified to handle the warrior deal with it. You're used to being the big bad wolf in the arenas, now there's a build that can take you down despite your strengths. So *let* the dedicated Illusion mesmer take down the toucher. Or the cripshot ranger. Or the life transfer/barbed signet/plague sending necromancer.

But what's that? It's RA so you don't know that you'll have those types on your team? Well, duh. It's RA. You rolls your dice, you takes your chances. You want predictability, go play in TA/HA.

But what the touch ranger does mean is that you can no longer count on being able to personally dispatch whatever build you encounter. If you could - then your build would be overpowered. It's this little thing called *balance* that the Anet devs have worked very hard to maintain. I think it's been very well established in this threat that touch rangers are far from invincible. If anything, their presence putting the fear of Grenth into warriors is much-needed breath of balance into the game.

Quote:
<snipped more arrogant point-missing blather about how warriors aren't spellcasters>

You're useful to your team by using shutdown skills or doing damage. When kiting, you stop doing those things, therefore it reduces your usefulness to the team. I don't think it's such a difficult concept.
The difficult concept for you to understand is that kiting *is* a shutdown skill. Not to mention an important tactic in coordinated teamwork PvP. Since teamwork isn't your thing, I figure you haven't grasped this. I'll try to break it down to easily digested chunks for you.

If you are engaging a major threat, such as a vampire, and can get them to chase you, they aren't threatening the rest of your team, because they're busy chasing you.

If you're kiting, you control their movement. Pull them far from their support team. Pull them through the trapfield that the ranger on your team has laid while the enemy you're kiting was distracted chasing you. Pull them toward your team so you can gang up on them. Pull them within range of your team's snare/degen specialist and turn the tables on them.

They're too smart to follow you into a trap/to your team/away from their team? Fine, they break off pursuit and you can then go target somebody else. Meanwhile they were busy chasing you until they broke off, and now must go seek another target, probably having to run a bit to get back into the thick of things. Pretty effective shutdown.

Quote:
<snip, blah-blah-blah warriors aren't casters I wouldn't get the point if it was engraved on stone tablets and hand delivered by 72 naked virgins blah-blah-blah>

Counters to touch rangers can be effective on other builds. But you say counters to other builds are just as effective on touch rangers? Some are, like hex snares, but that's a completely hollow statement. The point is the counters for touch rangers are essentially a subset of counters to warriors, bow rangers and assassins. For instance, Blind, Weakness, the whole Curses line, evasive skills, condition-based degen and specific mesmer skills like sympathetic visage or empathy will generally counter those classes, while failing against touch rangers. The only special weakness is energy denial, which comes from a narrow range of skills not often seen in RA due to dom mesmers not being particularly strong without support, which you can only pray for in RA. Wither and maliase actually do worse against them because they can focus swap it off. Boy, howdy, that'd be a convincing argument, if it wasn't suffused with bovine excrement.

"Counters to touch rangers are essentially a subset of counters to warriors, bow rangers, and assassins"? Nope. No wonder you consistently fail if you insist on treating a touch ranger like a classic melee class. Does an elementalist, monk, ritualist, necromancer or mesmer care if you blind them, weaken them, or throw up an evasion stance? Nope. Neither do touch rangers, because they are PB range casters. A touch ranger is a caster who can stand toe to toe with a warrior because they have hellacious self healing if it's not countered. That's no different than earth ele running Armor of Earth and Kinetic Armor, spamming Stone Daggers with Aura of Restoration up. Unless you counter their defense, you're not going to take them down.

"Some are, like hex snares, but that's a completely hollow statement. " and "For instance, Blind, Weakness ... while failing against touch rangers."
So, a hollow statement would be something that contradicts your worldview? Of course hex snares are effective, because they're effective versus *everybody* except monks while spellbreaker is up, eles while obsidian flesh is up, and assassins while shroud of silence is up. But those are extreme conditions. As for your litany of melee counters, see above. The touch ranger is not a melee build. You also mixed in "condition-based degen" as something not effective versus touch rangers. Bull hockey. Plague Touch does not save you from condition based degen. It can mitigate it, but only if you are in...*drum roll* Touch range! If you're snared from a hex or crippled, you can't touch off the conditions. Apply Poison + Crippling Shot/Pin Down + Hunter's Shot + Not Standing There Like A Moron To Be Plague Touched = dead touch ranger.

"The only special weakness is energy denial.."
What? It's been well established that energy is only *one* weakness of touch rangers. They have no self-heal other than their vamp skills. They have no hex removal. They have severely limited condition removal, only useful for punishing warriors stupid enough to inflict bleeding in touch range. They have to BE IN TOUCH RANGE, making them especially susceptible to kiting. In fact, the only thing that makes this a viable build at all is that most people in RA/AB are too inexperienced/inflexible and/or stupid to take advantage of these weaknesses.

Quote:
Huh really, that's what you suspect of me. I guess you didn't read earlier in the thread when I mentioned that Plauge Touch was an incredibly powerful skill in RA and that I would always hesitate to take it out for anything else. That implies W/N, not W/Mo. And I'm known to say GG after a fight, not pelvic thrust. Yes, that's really what I think of you. All I have to go on is your posts. The fact that you may run /N is irrelevant. Arrogant wammo is an attitude, and you broadcast it.

Quote:
It's true that some of the builds I run can't counter touch rangers, but that's just because few builds do. Build diversity is something I like to see in RA, and touch rangers tend to stifle it. It's not really a vendetta or anything. I find it laughable that you insist that build diversity is important to you, yet you flame all over any suggestion that you deviate from your ub3rl337 w4rr10r skill set. Touch rangers will either force people to learn counters and tactics, or quit playing RA. Either of these is good. The obstinate ones will continue to get pwnt, which is also good, because I like a good laugh.

Quote:
<snip, blah, blah, if u think u r a gud w4rr10r u hav3 to run th1s c00k13 cu++3r bu!1d, blah, blah> No comment, really, just included for completeness.

Talk to the hand.


JimmyDean

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Apr 2006

12 Jun 2006 at 02:12 - 188
Quote:
Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius
Just to see what it was all about, I made myself a touch ranger and went to RA.

Well, they're fairly effective, I could kill any enemy who stood their ground against me except necros with life transfer - that was a tie. Monks, wars, and eles went down quite easy, although I'm not sure the TR was actually better at killing stuff than my warrior.

It was also very obvious what the weakness of touch rangers is: energy. Offering Of Blood fixes that very neatly.

Niosisw

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Sep 2005

Few Fallen Heros [FFH]

W/Mo

12 Jun 2006 at 04:05 - 189
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song
Ok, so lets see....A Primary profession's attribute shouldnt be useful on secondary skills?

So essentially you want to destroy the flexibility and build synergies that makes Guild Wars unique?
Rofl @ that comment........ (I disagree with the comment)

OH NO! Expertise only affects Ranger skills!?? YOU HAVE KILLED GUILD WARS!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!

Sorry, but that's overexagurating (dear god, spelling).

If you read the description of Expertise... it says:

For each rank in expertise, the energy cost of your attack skills, Preparations*, and traps* decreases by 4%.

Now when I was beggining the game, my logic assumed that expertise only affected ranger skills, because to me, it just made sense. Notice in the above, the stars are things that RANGERS have, if they wanted some synergy like the touch ranger, they would have also put hexes and curses in there, logically speaking.

Here's another way to look at it, a simpler way. Take a look at the name of the class.

RANGER

Derived from the word, RANGE. Another thing my logic assumes... they were meant to be played from a RANGE away?

I know the above statement isn't always true, but sorry, I don't think Touch Rangers were meant to be in the game, period.

(Not saying that you wanted them, lyra)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri

The difficult concept for you to understand is that kiting *is* a shutdown skill.
Yes, it effectively shuts down you, and the Touch Ranger. It's a farfetched concept to put kiting and a skill like "blackout" in the same category.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
What? It's been well established that energy is only *one* weakness of touch rangers. They have no self-heal other than their vamp skills. They have no hex removal. They have severely limited condition removal, only useful for punishing warriors stupid enough to inflict bleeding in touch range. They have to BE IN TOUCH RANGE, making them especially susceptible to kiting. In fact, the only thing that makes this a viable build at all is that most people in RA/AB are too inexperienced/inflexible and/or stupid to take advantage of these weaknesses. As far as the weaknesses you listed.... those are pretty generic to say the least.

Warriors and rangers and assassins have a plethora of counters to say the least.

Casters also have a fair list, weak armor being A HUGE, generally constant one.

Generally even when you combine the proffessions, the build suffers from a much larger array of weaknesses than the Toucher, because they are generally either CASTING(which has a LOT of counters) OR doing physical dmg(which has a LOT of counters).

The Touch ranger is doing neither.

Therefore, NERF.

And before you toss some other build that doesn't cast or do phys dmg in my face, I'm fairly sure it has a much larger amount of counters. I'm also excluding support classes because they are kinda out of the consideration.

lyra_song

lyra_song

Hell's Protector

Join Date: Oct 2005

R/Mo

12 Jun 2006 at 04:16 - 190
Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Rofl @ that comment........ (I disagree with the comment)

OH NO! Expertise only affects Ranger skills!?? YOU HAVE KILLED GUILD WARS!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!

Sorry, but that's overexagurating (dear god, spelling).

If you read the description of Expertise... it says:

For each rank in expertise, the energy cost of your attack skills, Preparations*, and traps* decreases by 4%.

Now when I was beggining the game, my logic assumed that expertise only affected ranger skills, because to me, it just made sense. Notice in the above, the stars are things that RANGERS have, if they wanted some synergy like the touch ranger, they would have also put hexes and curses in there, logically speaking.

Here's another way to look at it, a simpler way. Take a look at the name of the class.

RANGER

Derived from the word, RANGE. Another thing my logic assumes... they were meant to be played from a RANGE away?

I know the above statement isn't always true, but sorry, I don't think Touch Rangers were meant to be in the game, period.

(Not saying that you wanted them, lyra) I played a pre-factions Touch Ranger. Ive dealt with Factions Touch Rangers.

They are not overpowered. They are just ANNOYING.

Touch rangers are VERY limited in their use. They are a super specialized build.

Expertise does reduce costs of some non-ranger skills.

This is not unlike the Elementalist who has a huge energy storage spamming Heal Party.

Or a Necromancer taking advantage of their quick regen through soul reaping to spam spells.

I have already posted before that expertise requires a rewrite of its description to help players gain awareness of the possibilities of using a ranger.

Niosisw

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Sep 2005

Few Fallen Heros [FFH]

W/Mo

12 Jun 2006 at 05:13 - 191
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song
They are not overpowered.
around 60 dps without using a spell or an attack, and healing 60 every sec? I disagree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song
Touch Rangers are VERY limited in their use.
I disagree
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song Expertise does reduce costs of some non-ranger skills.
Indeed, it does.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song
This is not unlike the Elementalist who has a huge energy storage spamming Heal Party. Yes it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song
Or a Necromancer taking advantage of their quick regen through soul reaping to spam spells. Yes it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lyra_song
I have already posted before that expertise requires a rewrite of its description to help players gain awareness of the possibilities of using a ranger. Ok, but the description now has the general undertone that it only works with rangers. I realize this isn't true, but that's just the undertone.

Amarth d'Arc

Amarth d'Arc

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2005

The Seven Sisters

R/

12 Jun 2006 at 05:59 - 192
R/N = Ranger Noob

samifly

samifly

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Dec 2005

Girl Power [GP]

Mo/Me

12 Jun 2006 at 08:49 - 193
Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Here's another way to look at it, a simpler way. Take a look at the name of the class.

RANGER

Derived from the word, RANGE. Another thing my logic assumes... they were meant to be played from a RANGE away? umm....pets are not ranged.....
and btw - if you nerf xpertise, you would be putting on limits no other primary has. strengh, fast casting, spawning power, soul reaping, energy storage, etc... all work with other skills then the profession. thats why we have secondaries. limiting it just for rangers would be totally uncalled for, and unfair to them.

Undead Preacher

Undead Preacher

Banned

Join Date: Nov 2005

United Scribes of Cantha (USoC)

N/

12 Jun 2006 at 08:56 - 194
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amarth d'Arc
R/N = Ranger Noob thats a pretty bold statement..

R/N Vamps are getting a bad "rep" already....and the peoples outcry for a NERF is simply ridiculous... No I don't play a touch ranger, and no I don't believe we need them nerfed.... there are SEVERAL ways to counter and kill a touch ranger, the builds not exactly new... it just made a comeback with factions. I'm glad its back, just have to be prepared for yet 1 more possiblity!

SnipiousMax

SnipiousMax

Perfectly Elocuted

Join Date: Sep 2005

12 Jun 2006 at 14:28 - 195
Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Rofl @ that comment........ (I disagree with the comment)

OH NO! Expertise only affects Ranger skills!?? YOU HAVE KILLED GUILD WARS!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!
Okay, it is ridiculous to imply that expetise should only affect ranger skills. That would essentialy mean, that Ranger's are limited to their primary alone.... There just wouldn't be a point in using any secondaries.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Now when I was beggining the game, my logic assumed that expertise only affected ranger skills, because to me, it just made sense. Notice in the above, the stars are things that RANGERS have, if they wanted some synergy like the touch ranger, they would have also put hexes and curses in there, logically speaking.
All that expertise suffers from is poor description. It does what it was intended.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Here's another way to look at it, a simpler way. Take a look at the name of the class.

RANGER

Derived from the word, RANGE. Another thing my logic assumes... they were meant to be played from a RANGE away?
Since we're appealing to logic here....

From dictionary.com


rang·er
n.
1.) A wanderer; a rover.
2.) A member of an armed troop employed in patrolling a specific region.
3.) Ranger A member of a group of U.S. soldiers specially trained for making raids either on foot, in ground vehicles, or by airlift.
4.) A warden employed to maintain and protect a natural area, such as a forest or park.
5.) Chiefly British. The keeper of a royal forest or park.

I'd point out that it doesn't mention a blinking thing about 'ranged attacks'.


Quote: Originally Posted by Niosisw As far as the weaknesses you listed.... those are pretty generic to say the least.
Which just means you don't have to bring anything special to counter them!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Warriors and rangers and assassins have a plethora of counters to say the least. And yet... somehow, warriors and rangers make it into high end PvP when Touchers don't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Casters also have a fair list, weak armor being A HUGE, generally constant one. How much armor do you think a Ranger has? Since they're touchers, they have to have druids. Which means they have a whopping total of +10 armor over a caster!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Niosisw
Generally even when you combine the proffessions, the build suffers from a much larger array of weaknesses than the Toucher, because they are generally either CASTING(which has a LOT of counters) OR doing physical dmg(which has a LOT of counters).

The Touch ranger is doing neither.

Therefore, NERF. Then I propose we nerf everything that is not a spell or physical damage, as it is all obviously overpowered and there is no way to counter it!

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

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12 Jun 2006 at 18:27 - 196
*giggle*

I am soooooo done arguing with teh st00p1d.

Quick review of the facts:Despite suffering from a poorly-worded description, Expertise is working as designed and exactly as Anet intended. Life stealing has always been different from damage, and has always ignored armor. Anet is not stupid. They didn't forget about Vampiric Touch and Touch of Agony when they were formulating the Factions Blood Magic skills, any more than the rest of the doubled skills are "mistakes." Quite obviously, they chose to provide players who have both chapters the option of doubling some skills, adding a different dynamic to game play, ie., the option of trading one of your precious 8 skill slots for the ability to repeat a particular attack/effect without waiting on recharge or depending on mesmer/elementalist skill doubling. Perhaps that was even part of the thought process - "Why not give non-mesmers and non-elementalists a chance to double some skills?" Touch rangers are not new with Factions, they're merely more common now. Counters already existed prior to Factions, and those same counters are just as effective now. Touch rangers cannot and will not dominate even medium-range PvP. They are laughed at and merrily pwned in Team Arenas, Hero's Ascent, and GvG. Their ephemeral dominance in Alliance Battles is waning as more and more people learn the importance of snares and hex- and condition-based degen, and discover just how much fun it is to pwn the vampires, and incidentally how effective those skills are at thwarting every other build. An actual Anet employee, Gaile Grey, has stated that she doesn't see a need for a nerf. (specifically this log image) Just because a tactic/build requires you to change your tactics to counter it doesn't mean it's overpowered. That's actually how it's supposed to work, it prevents the metagame from getting stale.
Toodles.

RandomEngy

RandomEngy

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Join Date: Jun 2005

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14 Jun 2006 at 20:57 - 197
Been sort of busy lately, have not gotten around to this topic.

Zui: My whole point is that yes, boon prots do better against standard damage than lifesteal damage, but they still do enough healing to effectively combat touch damage and win a match. Experience bears me out on this one and I don't know what else to say about it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
Once again... ZOMG! You mean warriors don't do as good a job as spell casters than primary spellcaster classes??? I'm shocked, utterly shocked.

I'll say it again, this build was an example of displaying some fricking adaptability. Can you be ub3rl337 w4rr10r AND a decent secondary spell caster at the same time? Nope. It's a trade-off. However, you only need that spell chain *once* to finish a toucher. It's just a sample of how your warrior primary can easily kill a vampire 1v1, since that seems to be all you care about.
So in 1v1 where you know your opponent ahead of time (which, despite what you say I never assumed), it works. In the actual, real landscape of RA, the build you proposed is demonstrably terrible. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you proposed that build not as a serious RA build but as a demonstration of how silly and futile it is for a warrior to try and "adapt" to touch rangers in RA. Even though you originally said that it would be easy for warriors to do so.

Quote:
No, what I am telling you is - "Know your limitations and work within them." When I monk, I know that I have tissue paper armor and very limited potential to cause damage. Therefore, I don't charge the tank 1v1. In fact, I know that a determined warrior is one of the largest threats I face, so I let other team members who are more qualified to handle the warrior deal with it. You're used to being the big bad wolf in the arenas, now there's a build that can take you down despite your strengths. So *let* the dedicated Illusion mesmer take down the toucher. Or the cripshot ranger. Or the life transfer/barbed signet/plague sending necromancer.

But what's that? It's RA so you don't know that you'll have those types on your team? Well, duh. It's RA. You rolls your dice, you takes your chances. You want predictability, go play in TA/HA.
It's random, but game balance still applies. Warrior/Bow Ranger/Assassin damage can be quite devastating but it just so happens that there's a wide variety of skills to pick from, from every class, that can allow you to cope, allowing a wide variety of builds that will work well with the majority of RA teams.

However Lifesteal damage is normally balanced because it ignores most defenses but comes at the cost of reduced DPS through recharge or energy limitations. When the energy limitation is removed via a loophole, it does much more damage than it should, given the lack of counters. Availability and cost of counters are very important in determining if a skill is balanced or not, especially when you cannot craft a team build that sacrifices very little to combat it. This is an aspect of game balance that you continuously ignore.

Quote:
But what the touch ranger does mean is that you can no longer count on being able to personally dispatch whatever build you encounter. If you could - then your build would be overpowered. It's this little thing called *balance* that the Anet devs have worked very hard to maintain. I think it's been very well established in this threat that touch rangers are far from invincible. If anything, their presence putting the fear of Grenth into warriors is much-needed breath of balance into the game.
I assure you, you don't need a touch ranger to effectively fight a warrior in RA. It's not that they're good against warriors, that's par for the course. It's that they're good against a lot of stuff, moreso than other builds.

Quote: The difficult concept for you to understand is that kiting *is* a shutdown skill. Not to mention an important tactic in coordinated teamwork PvP. Since teamwork isn't your thing, I figure you haven't grasped this. I'll try to break it down to easily digested chunks for you.

If you are engaging a major threat, such as a vampire, and can get them to chase you, they aren't threatening the rest of your team, because they're busy chasing you.

If you're kiting, you control their movement. Pull them far from their support team. Pull them through the trapfield that the ranger on your team has laid while the enemy you're kiting was distracted chasing you. Pull them toward your team so you can gang up on them. Pull them within range of your team's snare/degen specialist and turn the tables on them.

They're too smart to follow you into a trap/to your team/away from their team? Fine, they break off pursuit and you can then go target somebody else. Meanwhile they were busy chasing you until they broke off, and now must go seek another target, probably having to run a bit to get back into the thick of things. Pretty effective shutdown.
When a touch ranger chases you, true, they aren't a threat to the rest of your team. But they are still a threat to you, while you're a threat to no one. I still think it's a simple concept to grasp.

Anyway I'd say I have a trapper on my team at the most one in every 15 matches. I'm not sure why you're assuming they are standard. In any case, if you do, it isn't a special weakness of touch rangers, all melee classes share it. And since my whole argument is that touch rangers have fewer counters, I fail to see how this example is relevant.

Quote:
Boy, howdy, that'd be a convincing argument, if it wasn't suffused with bovine excrement.

"Counters to touch rangers are essentially a subset of counters to warriors, bow rangers, and assassins"? Nope. No wonder you consistently fail if you insist on treating a touch ranger like a classic melee class. Does an elementalist, monk, ritualist, necromancer or mesmer care if you blind them, weaken them, or throw up an evasion stance? Nope. Neither do touch rangers, because they are PB range casters. A touch ranger is a caster who can stand toe to toe with a warrior because they have hellacious self healing if it's not countered. That's no different than earth ele running Armor of Earth and Kinetic Armor, spamming Stone Daggers with Aura of Restoration up. Unless you counter their defense, you're not going to take them down.
"Some are, like hex snares, but that's a completely hollow statement. " and "For instance, Blind, Weakness ... while failing against touch rangers."
So, a hollow statement would be something that contradicts your worldview? Of course hex snares are effective, because they're effective versus *everybody* except monks while spellbreaker is up, eles while obsidian flesh is up, and assassins while shroud of silence is up. But those are extreme conditions. As for your litany of melee counters, see above. The touch ranger is not a melee build. You also mixed in "condition-based degen" as something not effective versus touch rangers. Bull hockey. Plague Touch does not save you from condition based degen. It can mitigate it, but only if you are in...*drum roll* Touch range! If you're snared from a hex or crippled, you can't touch off the conditions. Apply Poison + Crippling Shot/Pin Down + Hunter's Shot + Not Standing There Like A Moron To Be Plague Touched = dead touch ranger. And you say hex snares are good against everybody, bar Spell Breaker and Obsidian Flesh. I'm guessing you forgot about hex removal/prevention? And some characters don't really care if they're hex snared. Bow rangers with evasive stances or monks sitting in a ward or chain-casting guardian don't really need to kite. But let's go with it and assume hex snares really are as uncounterable as you make them out to be, and that they're great against everything. That makes the statement "Touch rangers are not overpowered because they are beaten by hex snares" even more hollow.

And yes, a covered, non blockable cripple is one of the weaknesses of touch rangers. As I have repeated may times, this is not relevant. Why are we going over this again?

Quote:
"The only special weakness is energy denial.."
What? It's been well established that energy is only *one* weakness of touch rangers. They have no self-heal other than their vamp skills. They have no hex removal. They have severely limited condition removal, only useful for punishing warriors stupid enough to inflict bleeding in touch range. They have to BE IN TOUCH RANGE, making them especially susceptible to kiting. In fact, the only thing that makes this a viable build at all is that most people in RA/AB are too inexperienced/inflexible and/or stupid to take advantage of these weaknesses. The key word here is "special". Warriors and non-AoD assassins have basically all of the other weaknessess, including your specially defined "limited condition removal". They don't have hex removal, sure, but then again they don't care about most hexes. And damage-oriented characters rarely opt to take hex removal, even though they have the chance, so touch rangers not being able to take hex removal seems pretty nitpicky to me.

Quote:
Yes, that's really what I think of you. All I have to go on is your posts. The fact that you may run /N is irrelevant. Arrogant wammo is an attitude, and you broadcast it. Yet you did not say I had the attitude of a wammo, you said I was a wammo, and that I jeer at people that I beat. That was false, and I called you on it. If you're just calling me arrogant I'm okay with that. It's a title you can apply to anyone who disagrees with you.

Quote:
I find it laughable that you insist that build diversity is important to you, yet you flame all over any suggestion that you deviate from your ub3rl337 w4rr10r skill set. Touch rangers will either force people to learn counters and tactics, or quit playing RA. Either of these is good. The obstinate ones will continue to get pwnt, which is also good, because I like a good laugh. Hey kids! Want to know how to defend anything in guild wars against a skill rebalance? Use this helpful template and you'll be all set!

<build name> will either force people to learn counters and tactics, or quit playing <arena name>. Either of these is good. The obstinate ones will continue to get pwnt, which is also good, because I like a good laugh.

For instance "Grenth's Balance guild lord ganking" and "GvG", or perhaps "Ether Renewal smiters" or "Spirit Spamming" and "tombs".

Holy smokes! It looks like we should have just kept Guild Wars as it was at release!

Quote:
No comment, really, just included for completeness.

Talk to the hand.


It's funny because we haven't gone over it already.

Wait no, I think we have.

Cassie McKnight

Cassie McKnight

Academy Page

Join Date: Apr 2006

Order of the Dingo

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14 Jun 2006 at 21:08 - 198
Anything overly popular is by definition overpowerd otherwise why would it be so popular?
It can be counterd easily? really the fact that you have make a specail build to counter it means it's overpowered.

Having 5-6 viable builds in game with so many skills and classes already is rediculous.
Might as well just get rid of all skills and class combo's that arn't viable and have everyone with exactly the same 3-4 builds.

Robin_Anadri

Robin_Anadri

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, GA

Girl Power [GP]

Me/Mo

14 Jun 2006 at 23:21 - 199
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomEngy
So in 1v1 where you know your opponent ahead of time (which, despite what you say I never assumed), it works. In the actual, real landscape of RA, the build you proposed is demonstrably terrible...
<snip, blah-blah-blah, once again I wouldn't get the point if it was tattooed backwards on my forehead and you handed me a mirror, I know the RA is the only thing that counts despite all evidence to the contrary, the only possible combat model is 1v1 and all game mechanics stem from that, blah-blah-whine-cry-bitch-sniffle>
Quote:
 Originally Posted by Robin_Anadri
*giggle*

I am soooooo done arguing with teh st00p1d.

Talk to the hand.


RandomEngy

RandomEngy

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2005

The Kansas City Hotsteppers [KCHS]

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15 Jun 2006 at 05:33 - 200
I guess you didn't read the parts where I systematically destroyed your argument? And you keep on saying I assume 1v1 when that is clearly not the case.

If you're tired of posting that's okay, but just calling my points "stupid" and declaring that you win doesn't really accomplish anything.