[merged] Touch Rangers

Warriors do one thing. Melee. Same, to a lesser extent, for assassins. The whole purpose of these classes is that they have the skills to deal damage and survive in melee range. When a build is ccreated taht completely negates all melee advantages of a warrior except for knockdowns, then the issue becomes "is this unbalancing?"

When the chioces for a warrior become "run a hammer build or fall to all the touch rangers" then there IS a balance issue. Melee classes SHOULD be able to deal with rangers in melee range. The fact that the 2 spammable skills are not classified as attacks is a gross mistake. Touch rangers have all of the strengths of a melee class- heavy damage in melee, evasion abilities, with none of the corresponding weaknesses- blindness, high-armor targets, evasion abilities used by the opponent. When a build is inherently better at a thing than the entire class that was designed around it, the balance issues are obvious.

I can't see any reason to defend the abuse of 2 skills that are unbalancing the game. When warriors and assassins have to build to either counter touch rangers, or they die, then SOMETHING is going to have to give. I don't see any reason to continue letting touch rangers exploit the rules, at the expense of the balance ANet has tried hard to create. So basically your saying warrior should be superior to every other class in the game at close in contact. Didnt you just mention that hammers work, well then use them. When running a ranger spiker(high physical power) I find I cant rely on that build due to warriors heavy armour reduction I dont make a big song and dance about it being unblanced I simply change my build to face the situation ie......... changing my skill bar .........
I think with many warriors they think that each attribute in the warrior line is a different profession, compared to other professions you see rangers swapping all the time between marksmanship and wilderness survival,

Obviously the wilderness survival attribute is more effective against certain builds and situations it depends, and the marksmanship attribute effective in other situations such as doing damage to fire elems and interrupting casters and such.

So if other professions have to swap attributes why cant warrior, are hammers to uncool?

Tho I do agree about touch skills not being 'blindable', a little unfair seeing as they are acting the same way as a melee fighter it would make sense for them to be blinded.

So basically the only people complaining about Touch Rangers really are these "so-called Godly" warriors who have meet their match and unwilling to change their builds?

Mainly, I play an assassin when I visit the PvP areas. -shrugs- if you want to generalize, there's plenty of that in the thread (calling anyone who plays the build noobs, or the reverse, calling anyone who has trouble countering the build noobs).

My ONLY argument with the touch rangers, honestly, is that they face none of the drawbacks in melee range that melee classes face- skills like empathy that trigger on attack, (or even backfire, since that only riggers on "spells") blindness, high armor targets, stances that evade or block, or even the basic miss chance granted by high-end skills like shadow form. These "touch" skills never miss, always do full damage, heal the user, and are spammable. If that doesn't appear unbalanced to you, then I'd love to hear what you DO consider unbalanced, because skills that can be spammed for (other people's numbers) 65 DPS while ALSO healing for 65 health per second, and cannot miss from melee range, seems quite overpowered to ME.

Disagree if you like, you're free to do so. But try to disagree with my reasons, not with what you percieve my motives to be.

Mainly, I play an assassin when I visit the PvP areas. -shrugs- if you want to generalize, there's plenty of that in the thread (calling anyone who plays the build noobs, or the reverse, calling anyone who has trouble countering the build noobs).

My ONLY argument with the touch rangers, honestly, is that they face none of the drawbacks in melee range that melee classes face- skills like empathy that trigger on attack, (or even backfire, since that only riggers on "spells") blindness, high armor targets, stances that evade or block, or even the basic miss chance granted by high-end skills like shadow form. These "touch" skills never miss, always do full damage, heal the user, and are spammable. If that doesn't appear unbalanced to you, then I'd love to hear what you DO consider unbalanced, because skills that can be spammed for (other people's numbers) 65 DPS while ALSO healing for 65 health per second, and cannot miss from melee range, seems quite overpowered to ME.

Disagree if you like, you're free to do so. But try to disagree with my reasons, not with what you percieve my motives to be.
The blindness thing... casting a fireball blind, or directing a meteor show blind, or locating a target to backfire blind, or stone daggering blind, or actually seeing a corpse to raise while blind... it's all garbage, so having these skills work for the touchers while blind fits in with the game mechanics fine.

Most armor ignoring spells do full damage, hence the armor ignoring part. Furthermore, these are necro spells that are also life stealing.

Most classes have skills that can get past stances. As a touch ranger player, I know this is (ouch) true, because we lose stances all the time.

As for the spammable part? MOST of the good builds have a certain amount of spamming to them. Don't buy into the hype that the build is for noobs. It's a fairly solid build for alliance battles and swarming. One build that is spammable and can really hurt more than a touchy is a Me/W. And as far as overpowered spam beasts, nothing tops a boon protector.

Either way, it seems like ANet has spoken loudly in the past few days.

i still find W/* around more than anthing else becasuse they are the most damagin class out there with survivablilty

i say buff the eles i play ele so this is a bias comment. lol. They should be the most damaging single spell (short time spam) attackers but that will probably bring spiking problems with high dmg spells, so i can see why they don't Good god, he said all this before the last update! He's nostradamus!

I've said it once and I'll say it again:

- There is no need to nerf or change the life stealing skills.

- Just make it so if a person is blind they "miss" with the skills like anyother Melee skill or spell would.

Easy... That would mean my necro can be blinded too. No deal!

That would mean my necro can be blinded too. No deal! How is that a bad thing?

How is that a bad thing? Blinding is not supposed to have an effect on casters. Sure they can be blinded, but still cast with godly accuracy. Actually, I don't think that touchers are actually melee fighters, therefor blind should have no effect on them either.

There should be a paralize spell. "Target foe can not move for 3 seconds, your spells are dissabled for 5 seconds", or something like that. Nukers would have a field day with that. Necro paralizes vicitim and ele nukes the crap out of him

I'd like to see all touch-the-enemy skills converted to melee attacks. Or the more simple solution to just make ranger expertise affect only ranger skills. Doesnt affect any other profession, which is the concern for some regarding the necro skills in question. Since fast casting is a relativly moot point here now, i really do not see where the big problem in the cross class parity is here. Oh yeah, bigger energy pool does not equate out to faster regeneration. That regen only starts to catch up to the effect expertise has passivly after sacrificing a skill slot and other drawbacks associated with ether prodigy. Strength with dagger skills is just silly anyway, since armor penetration only affects the base weapon damage and is weaker than the 15&20% mods on top of being energy based on a energy starved character. Better off just spamming irresistable blow.

The annoying thing about this vampiric skills is that:

Goes through shadowform and spellbreaker
Can't be backfired
can't be spirit shackled
Very quick cast
Can't empathize them
etc... The annoying thing about warriors/assassins/rangers is

Goes through Spellbreaker
Can't be backfired
Very quick attack
Inflict a wide variety of conditions
Can knockdown
Traps avoid Shadow Form
Can interrupt

The annoying thing about casters

Some have skills to avoid Shadow Form/Spellbreaker
Non-targetable spells (Chilblains ftw) avoid it
Can't be blinded
Can't be Empathized
Inflict a smaller variety of conditions
Can knockdown
Can interrupt

Should we nerf them while we're at it?

I've said it once and I'll say it again:

- There is no need to nerf or change the life stealing skills.

- Just make it so if a person is blind they "miss" with the skills like anyother Melee skill or spell would.

Easy... I don't understand this at all, blind doesn't stop touchies. Even if it is made so it does, it won't help anyone. The reason. Plague touch ftw? Any condition made to a touch ranger is doomed to be used against the enemy, I've had funny experiances with BHA interruptors dazing me, causing the death of their own monks, or blinding me to cause the death of their warriors.

I might not be understanding you here, but spells arent negated by blind, or even effected by it.