Touch Ranger - Overpowered?

I think the problem lies in the fact that when its used in conjunction with maxed Expertise it does *not* cost 15 energy, spams 65 dmg and 65 heal repeatedly, and creates a two slot build that can kill most characters with little or no trouble, while leaving six slots free to fill with defensive skills or what have you, whereas most characters have to fill their 8 slots with abilities and, for the most part, depend on all 8 of those to get the job done. Touch Rangers really don't. That's where the complaints come in.

Imagine the elementalist skill Stone Daggers doing 50 damage and healing for 50 health to the caster and all the while ignoring armor. That skill is fast, low cost, and spammable. It would create the same problem. As fast and spammable as Stone Daggers is, there's a reason it does low damage... I must have misread the Expertise definition. I read it as reduces cost of any ATTACK SKILL, PREPARATION skill, TRAP skill. Last time I read Vampiric Bite/Touch it said Skill (not attack skill/Sword skill/Bow skill/Axe skill/Hammer skill). So Vampiric Bite/Touch is an attack skill? Then evading and dodging will work, as should blindness, right? I think someone said Blindness doesn't work on Vampiric Touch/Bite, which it should, if its an attack.

Lol, I think you and I are going to give people more complaints.
Your contribution was the Imagine the elementalist using Stone Daggers and gaining health each time. My contribution is cast Vampiric Spirit and then cast Stone Daggers.

Definition of Vampiric Spirit:
For 5-17 seconds, your spells cost 3 more energy, but whenever you cast a spell you steal up to 5-41 health from one nearby foe. This is an elite skill.

Cast Stone Daggers (5/0/1) - under VS (8/0/1)
Damage: 8-24 per stone - under VS (8-24 per stone + 5-41 health steal)

Dravyn, there you have it, over 50 points of damage + healing (not affected by scourge healing)

The truly evil people will use:
Enfeebling Touch
Vampiric Spirit
Stoning
Aftershock

Dead opponent (or pretty much dead); you don't need to touch the guy either, just be "near".

Uh, oh... anyone want to complain about this?

No, with plague touch and any nearby enemy a regular ranger isn't near as much trouble as a Touch Ranger. Regular Ranger attacks are *counterable* whereas touch spamming is not, at least as far as warriors are concerned. TR doesn't need a sustained attack when they can easily down a warrior in 3 seconds that isn't getting spamhealed by a monk. However, I will add that after I posted earlier I was able to kill a touch ranger with a War/N sever/gash Virulence build because it became a plague touch fight after that. I still died, but so did he. My teammates weren't all that happy with my spreading poison about, but hey, I was able to beat a touch ranger...

As far Touch Rangers being "easily rendered helpless" I'd have to disagree. Warriors are "easily rendered helpless". Conditions don't mean jack to a TR as long as he's got plague touch, which he will most assuredly have since he only needs two slots for spammable attacks. Basically, nobody can dish the pain that touchers can and only use two slots to do it. The remaining six slots can be built to whatever they desire, defense, that leaves them virtually untouchable by melee. What a lot of you fail to realise is its that limited dependancy on abilities for damage that makes them overpowered.

As for plague touch, we could also use Plague Sending or antidote sig for condition removale...the latter of which is a Ranger skill...not usually part of a touch build. Plague sending costs more, being a spell, but would send conditions to more than just the warrior. Stances are a big part of not getting hit (along with Throw Dirt...they already nerfed my beloved Dust Trap when I run Trapper-builds)...tell me you can't remove a stance from a ranger as a warrior...tell me you can't remove conditios...tell me you can't cripple or daze...c'mon...you just want touchies as easy to kill as the usual soft targets and it bugs you that you can't kill one on your own because you are happy with your build and don't want to change.

Although, I will agree, without proper support Warriors fall to just too many builds imo. There are far too many ways to render a warrior useless. But that's a different rant. Any skill/spell that disables the Vampiric skills (even if it effects only one) will drop a touchie. Add to that stance removal (Wild Blow) and he drops even quicker. Seriously, just look at the skills that hit the touchie at their core...energy theft & denial, cripple & kite, skill & stance disable...heck a daze skill/spell would give ample time to do some damage...touchie is completely counterable if you are`willing to do a bit of homework...not sure, but wouldn't Wail of Doom at a high Soul Reaping disable attack skills? Up to 16 seconds...how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Touch Ranger? The world may never know.

Sure, -65,-65,-65...can rob you and heal me...but disable one of the two "all powerful" skills and you reduce healing and damage by 1/2...all the eggs are in one basket (so to speak). I was running around "Noob Island" to farm Naga Pelts...those damned Dragon Irises kept spamming Distraction and my touchie starved to death...

Touch of Agony costs 2 energy with Expertise of 16, while the Vamp Bite costs 5 and gives 15 more health/damage every other "hit"...do the math, the damage to energy ratio is better with ToA, but the healing is better with Vamp Bite...either way, the build is what it is...having 2 identical skills isn't that much of a help...if fact, it took me a while to adjust my play style because I kept spamming away all my energy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nothing is wrong with the build...It just happens to be one build that makes warriors soft targets. Warriors are just used to being at the top of the "stand and whack" gang...now they have a worthy foe, they cry "foul"...Every build has a counter, every build is weak to another...strategy overcomes weakness.

I have no problem with dropping identical skills if it happens across the board. Just don't "nerf" the touchie because it offers a viable counter to warriors...who else can stand up to them with any hope of not taking a quick dirt nap? Even with a touchie...unless the warrior is my first target, I'm out of energy by the time he's dead and quite vulnerable...air spiker, conditions ranger or necro and I'm often done-for if I don't keep an eye on them.

It is not a godly build. JR's comment about them being rediculous is pretty much on the mark. They are limited in playability and seriously goofy when you think about them and how they work. Personally, I find them fun...the ONLY people who ever get mad when they die are the warriors because they aren't used to it. I type "good game all...well done." after my team loses...the warrior I killed twice says "STFU you hybrid freak!!!" ...and his team won!

I see the point of view with people having problems with the doubled skills...It is built in as part of the appeal to buying Factions...while ANet says they aim to keep the balance, it is undeniable that anyone buying both games will have a greater variety of skills and therefor a bit of an advantage.
The advantage of having Vamp Bite and Touch is negligable...all the problems people have had with touch rangers have been there since the beginning...play to counter...and once again...NO NERF NEEDED!!!

To counter touch rangers...Easy EASY EASY subject. Like everyone else said, E-denial, knock em on their butts then take em out. My AoD (yes I still use the AoD spiking build) kills touch rangers easily. If they use whirling defense, end AoD then kite. Once you get the AoD combo off, end AoD and let degen kill them...DEGEN, E-Denial, Interrupts...Practically any mesmer domination skill... I'm still running it too... the mana situation isn't pretty but it's still fun. But they aren't exactly a counter to touch rangers. Good ones will Plauge Touch off the degen onto the nearest person, then heal back up off your friend before you get your energy back. They won't go running after an AoD assassin.

And to whoever thought taking Wild Blow in RA was a good idea: Warriors in RA need to take a lot of skills: if they don't take Sprint/Rush they're screwed, they need to take a Res signet, then Healing Signet so they don't just get degenned out, then an attack speed increase skill and then condition removal if they don't want to spend half of their time shut down. That leaves 3 precious slots to deal damage with. You're sorely mistaken if you think eating one of those slots with Wild Blow, just to annoy touch rangers, is a good plan. What's a hammer warrior with Devastating, Crushing and Heavy? At the very least decent. What's a hammer warrior with 2 of the 3? A gimp.

And it appears that people have completely missed the discussion so far, because they're still spouting on about how the prescence of counters always mean a skill is balanced. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they just missed it while reading the thread rather than just reading the first 3 posts and pointing out their oh-so-originial insight that cripshot rangers do well against them. So I'll make it bold:

Just because a build has counters does not mean it's perfectly balanced.

To elaborate, if the counters are limited so that only a handful of build types can do anything against them (big healing, hex snare, Apply/Cripshot, energy drain, Diversion if they're not paying attention), yes it's overpowered. Compare that to the list for any other class and it seems stupidly short. Assassins, Warriors and non-touch Rangers all have to deal with blocking, evading, blind, weakness, and the whole Curses line, which makes for an astoundingly high list of counters right there. Warriors still have to deal with still more counters, including the snares mentioned above. The only special handicap is energy denial, which can be fought by focus swaps and gotten out of with Offering. It doesn't come up outside of RA because you can guaruntee you have a good healer, but when you just have to make a good all-around build and hope for the best, it is a problem.

And just for the record, for every annoying build in the history of Guild Wars, people have procaimed loudly that there were counters for it, so it shouldn't be changed. Ether Renewal giving smiters astoundingly high healing and energy? It's not broken! You can use enchant removals or Signet of Humility! Chain Lightning doing a huge amount of AoE damage? It's fine! Just spread out and Prot Spirit! Nature's Renewal removing every hex and enchant when it's put down? It's balanced! Just interrupt the spirit-layer! Notice a trend here? These problems go deeper than just whether there are or are not counters for something. They disrupt the metagame enough that it makes it less interesting and more flat, so they get a tweak.

TR: I will touch you!
Mesmer: I'm casting Diversion on TR!
TR: Oh no! I have been defeated!

TR: I will touch you!
Ranger: I'm using Spike Trap!
TR: Oh no! I have been defeated!

TR: I will touch you!
Ranger: I'm using Pin Down!
TR: Oh no! I have been defeated! In the diversion case you can go after the mesmer and avoid having your skills disabled. Steal all the mesmer's life inbetween casts and you're golden. With non-covered cripple, getting close to someone on the enemy team is pretty easy. And after that happens the TR has a crippled target to feed on. Maybe you don't play as/against good touch rangers?

waaaiiitt people, how bought instead of the nerf bat... we just add skills to counter it somehow? Just so I'm sure, you want more ways to kill touch rangers? It is almost too easy as it is now.