Curse

zulu123 · Jun 09, 2006, 05:42 PM // 17:42

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Originally Posted by Lykan

Warriors are a character class which is why there are skills which can be called anti-warrior and as I said there are no skills which are specifically anti-touch ranger because they are not a class they are a build. The question your asking is like asking why are there no skills specifically made to work against blood spike or earth ele's or boon prots.
Anet didnt think about touch rangers and stick in a secret special skill just to counter them which will turn them into whimpering kittens.
To beat them you have to use what is available to you.

Look no one here cares about semantics that warriors are a class and touch ranger is a specialized ranger build. The point is there are too few counter skills against a touch ranger. So why is it ok in your book that there are waaaaaay too many skills that can counter warriors (whatever build they use) and touch rangers are affected by so few? Why doesnt that show that an unbalance does exist in terms of the existing skill set as far as touch rangers are concerned?

And no, the question I am asking is nothing like your example. I wish I PvPed a little more to answer that in depth. But suffice to say there are tons of skills that can counter a blood spike, earth ele or boon prot.

Ghull Ka · Jun 09, 2006, 05:42 PM // 17:42

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Originally Posted by Lykan

a secret special skill just to counter them which will turn them into whimpering kittens.

ZOMG I would love a skill like this!!1!

"I'm using Whimpering Kitten on X!"

*poof*

"Meow??"

Zorian Direspell · Jun 09, 2006, 06:26 PM // 18:26

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Cripshot cannot be blocked/evaded. Semi-spammable. Gg? Besides, good touch rangers don't use escape, they use OoB. Energy is touches, which = life. Mesmer/ele snares, no evading those either.

This "touch rangers benefit from kiting" is really quite stupid. They benefit from getting less touches off on people, and gaining less health/dealing less damage? Don't think so. Besides, OoB is for energy management, relying on kiting to regain energy is...dumb. Oh, and this "kiting shuts down the person running" statement works both ways... they've shut you down too.

Crip Shot = Elite. That's also only one profession, with a specific build probably for anti-touch tactics. That goes to the heart of the problem right there, the over-specialization borne by touch rangers. And that still doesn't solve speed boost + plague touch concerns provided you're near some other enemy.

Good touch rangers don't use OoB*. Having lots and lots of energy in lieu of damage mitigation for a damage spike class is just a bad idea. Without OoB you can still toss off 7-8 bursts of 65 damage, with intermittant wanding regaining you energy (because you're not using it) and finishing fleeing targets. If you can't kill someone with that, your team must not be clicking together very well at all. Tossing OoB should generally save you 75% of the damage you would take from warriors, rangers, and, most of all, assassins (where you may save even more than that by shutting down combos). The resultant gain in endurance makes the touch attacks even more effective as self heals, and saves your team as a whole lots of energy that otherwise would have been spent protecting you. You won't touch as often, but your touches will be better timed and more ably applied. (and in any other conversation, that line would sound horribly inappropriate. :P)

I never said that they benefit from touching people less. I said that they benefit from you running from them, letting them recover. If you're running, they're at least shutting you down until they can gather enough strength to perform a feat that may very well destroy a member of your team, and will leave them in great shape following it. What are you gaining from running that compares to what they will do when they're fully recovered (assuming you're not a toucher yourself)?** Simple logic suggests that if your recovery doesn't result in at least as impressive a gain to you as it does to them, you're losing the 'attrition war' that is inherant in kiting.

* At least from my experience, OoBers*** tend to drop properly (usually from assasins after one of their more limited stances ends) while escapers (and I wasn't the only one) tend to hold up longer, and know how to engage in psychological warfare well enough to lull others into thinking their energy has been depleted.

** I should note that an Escape using build will fall to an OoB using build 1v1 (from what I've seen of it). This only makes sense of course, as both have armor/evasion/blocking ignoring attacks, but one has a greater pool to draw from. However, having another variant of a build as a limitation on that build hardly seems suggestive of either balance or build superiority.

VGJustice · Jun 09, 2006, 06:31 PM // 18:31

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Originally Posted by Zorian Direspell

Crip Shot = Elite. That's also only one profession, with a specific build probably for anti-touch tactics. That goes to the heart of the problem right there, the over-specialization borne by touch rangers. And that still doesn't solve speed boost + plague touch concerns provided you're near some other enemy.

Wait, what? Cripshot Rangers have been around for a while, and they're anti preasure, anti kiter. Now they have slightly expanded use. That's not over specializing, that's just using what's already there.

Heh, kinda like the touch rangers. :P

Symbol · Jun 09, 2006, 06:35 PM // 18:35

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Escape has evasion. Evasion may not be unique to touch rangers, but it is unique to rangers. The evasion rate is 75%. For the most part, you shouldn't get hit with any crippling attacks. When you are, escape takes you back up 25%, so you may catch the crippler, or, more likely, you'll catch one of their team mates who didn't watch you get crippled. If it's rare that a good crippler sticks around to admire the job, it's rarer still that a good player gets kited away from the rest of the action.

Evasion is irrelevant to kiters, duh. They're kiting you. As for "crippling attacks", the only ranged one I can think of that's actually stopped by escape is pin down. Cripshot, caltrops, crippling dagger, return, all of those will merrily ignore your 75% evasion.

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Kiting warriors is more effective because they lose adrenaline while they are being kited. Touch rangers gain energy. Touch rangers actually benefit from having enemies run away (because if you're running, you're doing nada and the TR is gaining energy, while flipping through a list of potential targets).

You've got to be kidding me. Do you have any idea how long it takes for you to lose your adrenaline charge? A damn sight longer than it takes to catch up and strike a kiting target, that's for sure. Warriors also benefit from autocrits and the fact that their attacks leave them standing for less time than a toucher (1.33 secs for axe/sword, vs 1.5 for a vamp touch counting aftercast). If anything warriors are superior in the face of kiting.

Tijger · Jun 09, 2006, 07:39 PM // 19:39

After reading all the blurb here how overpowered touch rangers are I decided to spend a couple of hours in RA to see what its all about.

I encountered 6 touch rangers and (I'm playing W/N) purposely sought them out and went one on one with them, of those 6 only 1 managed to inflict serious enough damage to me that I ran from him. The other 5 I killed without too much difficulty.

Having said that, the amount of atrociously bad players, and especially warriors, in RA is astounding, out of 8 teams I was in only *1* that was able to get 10+ wins, if the monk hadnt left we'd have gone on to a lot more I suspect.
I encountered not a single warrior who had Hamstring, most of them were Wammo's with the occasional W/E, and none of them had any way to deal with conditions.

Before anyone calls me elitist or experienced, I earned my first Gladiator title point today, I have *1* fame, I consider myself a total noob in PvP.
I'm sorry but if touch rangers are nerfed because of the complaining done by these people it will be a seriously sad day for GW. There is nothing amazingly good or overpowering about them.

Zorian Direspell · Jun 09, 2006, 07:41 PM // 19:41

Last post and I'm calling it a day:

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Wait, what? Cripshot Rangers have been around for a while, and they're anti preasure, anti kiter. Now they have slightly expanded use. That's not over specializing, that's just using what's already there.

Heh, kinda like the touch rangers. :P

Fair enough.

Wouldn't say that touch rangers of today are the same as yesterday though.

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Cripshot, caltrops, crippling dagger, return,

Crip dagger has 'if it hits' in its description. I'd assume its subject to evade. Haven't used it though, so I have no idea. Caltrops is a ten energy hex for an assassin that doesn't contribute to your damage payload, or any strategy in general as assassins have better ways to kite. Return is one of the least efficient ways to teleport, which makes its utility limited. This is the problem I'm seeing. R/N dual touchers are paragons of efficiency (damage and heal, remove and cause conditions, evade and increase speed, evade and damage, nothing but hexes stick.) Answers to R/N touchers are not as efficient (cripple, and that's it, snare and maybe a little (very little if water hex v. ranger) damage, and so on. (Mesmer hexes, particularly degen, are effiicient, however, because they can be used as part of an overall effective plan.)

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You've got to be kidding me. Do you have any idea how long it takes for you to lose your adrenaline charge? A damn sight longer than it takes to catch up and strike a kiting target, that's for sure. Warriors also benefit from autocrits and the fact that their attacks leave them standing for less time than a toucher (1.33 secs for axe/sword, vs 1.5 for a vamp touch counting aftercast). If anything warriors are superior in the face of kiting.

1. The point isn't so much that a warrior must run out of adrenaline every time he gets kited as that a warrior not hitting is a resource waste while a touch ranger not hitting is resource gathering.

2. A sword attack has a 0.17 shorter delay than a vamp touch. Fine. A sword attack doesn't heal you.

3. Physical attacks of all kinds are still subject to a healthy stable of counters. The same is true of spell/hex counters, etc. The same is not true of touch attacks and stances. TRs use touch attacks and stances while other builds do not to accomplish the same thing.

4. I'm done arguing the point for now. I see both sides fairly well entrenched. Besides, the OP didn't even care about touch rangers (or so he said) :P. The issue was balance. My belief remains that a build isn't balanced if it suffers less hate than its competitor builds by nature of the game's design. As has been mentioned by previous posters, when anything that works against a particular build also works against all other builds designed for the same purpose, but the superset of skills that work against all the other builds do not work for that build, that build is superior to all other builds for the same purpose. In a game that is designed to encourage competition in that niche, superiority = imbalance. When someone suspects that such a situation has occurred, they should be able to engage in a conversation about it without resorting to veiled insults and petty witicisms. This is called 'constructive criticism'. Whining, whether for or against something, requires the extra element of pre-emptive personal attacks and the denigration of others. (I'll admit it before someone brings it up ... I began posting on this thread to whine about the whiners who were whining about whining ... proof, I suppose, that whining begets more of itself rather quickly).

Dahl · Jun 09, 2006, 08:07 PM // 20:07

Just because you can't figure out the touch ranger weakness, doesn't mean it needs to be nerfed, it means you need to use your brain.

The ONLY build i feel needs to be nerfed (again) is iway. Not because of the power or lack of skill to use, but because it's near impossible to find a PUG in HA if you don't play iway.

I personally will not play iway, its degrading and an embarrassment, but at the same time that's all anyone ever plays there, so unless I'm in a guild that plays HA often, there's no way to even enter halls. And people wonder why I hardly have any rank, making it that much harder to get INTO good guilds. Thank god for my immense gvg experience or I would be toast.

eternal pho · Jun 09, 2006, 08:12 PM // 20:12

by far the cheapest build in RA/TA/AB ^^

Chicken Ftw · Jun 09, 2006, 08:16 PM // 20:16

I give up on debating about whether or not anything needs nerfing. No matter how many counters exist, people refuse to use them, and just say the build needs nerfing. Fine, whatever. Nerf it all to hell, for all I care. I'll just play another game, because this one is infested with subpar players who somehow always get their way. ;p

Zui · Jun 09, 2006, 08:48 PM // 20:48

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Originally Posted by Chicken Ftw

I give up on debating about whether or not anything needs nerfing. No matter how many counters exist, people refuse to use them, and just say the build needs nerfing. Fine, whatever. Nerf it all to hell, for all I care. I'll just play another game, because this one is infested with subpar players who somehow always get their way. ;p

QFT.

ANET should add a skill that counters only life stealing skills with a touch description, and make it about as playable as Keystone Signet and Otugyhs Cry are. This way all the scrubs who complain there are "less counters" can get a specific counter that's totaly unsuitable for PvP play and be happy. Even though the counters to warriors and such are a class counter, not a build counter... This skill could be named "z0mg wtf I'm a total scrub anet couldn't nerf my scrubness, so they gave me this skill instead."

Ensign · Jun 09, 2006, 09:03 PM // 21:03

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