WLs Are In A Bad Place Now.

[wildwindblows]

Are you serious? Two wl dominate the ranked sc yesterday.

[Neverever]

WL is still one of the best classes in 6vs6 and 1vs1 and it has a good warband build too. Just because it can't one shot people like it used to do doesn't mean they are underperforming. I honestly think they still require a little tuning.

[jkelly4590]

people with battle kittens sad that they think their class is bad now

Ehh. I ain't sad about it. My cat has never been stronger.

[Yshra]

I 100% disagree. The WL has never been in a better place. All the AOE skill are together in one tree, where they belong. Pounce and Brutal Pounce work well together in a single tree, and they can dismount people reliably again. As with all melee DPS they require guard and healing to be survivable. If you're finding that you lack the front line durability, then stand further back. you shouldn't be on the very front line anyways. You're not a tank, that's not your job. If you're struggling with the class then run all the way up to whirling axe in Hunter, grabbing all skills and the tactic to boost it's damage, then path Guardian up to brutal pounce. I've been having a lot of success with it. It's super easy mode if you are cognizant of the fact that you have massive range on all your AOE's. Path of the Axeman is a bit lack luster, but so is single target melee DPS anyways. You're never going to get that to "feel really good" when you're staring down 50 destro in RvR anyways.

I disagree 100%.
Pounce has nothing to do in pet tree, as the pet is not involved, so no bonus from pet stat to the skill, but echoing roar yes. It made sense before. Now well, I think its dumb.
Oh WL dont have to be in frontline, so they will cast something at range ?
If its just spam aoe with whirling axe, well slayer do better in aoe. The purpose of WL is to pounce on backline and hit Healer/sorc/rSH. He can do very good aoe, i dont disagree, but now dev limit his possibility to just this with the pounce range nerf. (city pov)
WL is still good, but gameplay is more and more limited.
(Sorry for my bad English)

[Lithenir]

I disagree 100%.
Pounce have nothing to do in pet tree, as the pet is not involved, so no bonus from pet stat to the skill, but echoing roar yes. Was logical before. Now its dumb.
Oh WL dont have to be in frontline, so they will cast something at range ?
If its just spam aoe with whirling axe, well slayer do better in aoe. The purpose of WL is to pounce on backline and hit Healer/sorc/rSH. He can do very good aoe, i dont disagree, but now dev limit his possibility to just this with the pounce range nerf. (city pov)
WL are still good, but gameplay is more and more limited.
(Sorry for my bad English)

Tbh I think the change opened up more builds. Since pounce isn't as strong anymore it is worth considering to not take it at all.
Meaning you can go Guardian where you have all the utility now and go Axeman for Finisher and healdebuff to fulfill your purpose as healer killer let the pet do the armor debuff, which is strong enough for squishies.
With pounce still in Hunter tree no one would actually consider doing it.
You can actually go Hunter for aoe and Axemen for finisher, but you actually have to run in that build... How inconvenient as mDPS.
Or you run the classical build of Hunter/Guardian.

I think there are enough options and the WL is in anything but a bad place.

[Gurf]

WL can still do ok damage aoe and single target, but what is unique and fun about the class now feels like it's gone. While SH has all sorts of tools and fun things to play with WL had pounce. Now since patch you basically can't use Pounce with an Axeman build so they have made it more restrictive with builds, while also nerfing the range. 45ft feels too harsh and too big a step, if it was needed at all 55ft would have been more reasonable, especially now you have to choose between either armour debuff or Cull the Weak so if you choose pounce now your damage will be less than before patch, so double nerf.

[Gurf]

I disagree 100%.
Pounce have nothing to do in pet tree, as the pet is not involved, so no bonus from pet stat to the skill, but echoing roar yes. Was logical before. Now its dumb.
Oh WL dont have to be in frontline, so they will cast something at range ?
If its just spam aoe with whirling axe, well slayer do better in aoe. The purpose of WL is to pounce on backline and hit Healer/sorc/rSH. He can do very good aoe, i dont disagree, but now dev limit his possibility to just this with the pounce range nerf. (city pov)
WL are still good, but gameplay is more and more limited.
(Sorry for my bad English)

Tbh I think the change opened up more builds. Since pounce isn't as strong anymore it is worth considering to not take it at all.
Meaning you can go Guardian where you have all the utility now and go Axeman for Finisher and healdebuff to fulfill your purpose as healer killer let the pet do the armor debuff, which is strong enough for squishies.
With pounce still in Hunter tree no one would actually consider doing it.
You can actually go Hunter for aoe and Axemen for finisher, but you actually have to run in that build... How inconvenient as mDPS.
Or you run the classical build of Hunter/Guardian.

I think there are enough options and the WL is in anything but a bad place.

How is that opening up new builds? Those options were available before patch, rather now the builds are more restrictive if you want to include pounce. You can try running without armour debuff but see how well you do against anyone with half decent armour or any healer stacking armour talis. See how well any build without armour debuff goes against a DOK with 180 armour talis slotted then report back, the changes have basically removed Pounce from Axe Man builds, which is the opposite of opening up new builds.

[sighy]

Spoiler:

I disagree 100%.
Pounce have nothing to do in pet tree, as the pet is not involved, so no bonus from pet stat to the skill, but echoing roar yes. Was logical before. Now its dumb.
Oh WL dont have to be in frontline, so they will cast something at range ?
If its just spam aoe with whirling axe, well slayer do better in aoe. The purpose of WL is to pounce on backline and hit Healer/sorc/rSH. He can do very good aoe, i dont disagree, but now dev limit his possibility to just this with the pounce range nerf. (city pov)
WL are still good, but gameplay is more and more limited.
(Sorry for my bad English)

Tbh I think the change opened up more builds. Since pounce isn't as strong anymore it is worth considering to not take it at all.
Meaning you can go Guardian where you have all the utility now and go Axeman for Finisher and healdebuff to fulfill your purpose as healer killer let the pet do the armor debuff, which is strong enough for squishies.
With pounce still in Hunter tree no one would actually consider doing it.
You can actually go Hunter for aoe and Axemen for finisher, but you actually have to run in that build... How inconvenient as mDPS.
Or you run the classical build of Hunter/Guardian.

I think there are enough options and the WL is in anything but a bad place.

How is that opening up new builds? Those options were available before patch, rather now the builds are more restrictive if you want to include pounce. You can try running without armour debuff but see how well you do against anyone with half decent armour or any healer stacking armour talis. See how well any build without armour debuff goes against a DOK with 180 armour talis slotted then report back, the changes have basically removed Pounce from Axe Man builds, which is the opposite of opening up new builds.

You could always suggest they make pounce baseline, if you think it'd be a QoL/ build diversity improvement. They could probably even buff it up to the aforementioned 55ft, but I'm going to wager the man you are responding to means that it being in a state where it isn't a must take 100% of the time gives you the option of taking some other toys instead.

[Kornaker]

Saying you can't found a build without pounce is saying you can't manage to kill without it and with pull, charge and good target focusing you don't really need all the Time it. The only main problem i see is the 25% tactic which is very usefull and if you don't have pounce...
Maybe pet armor debuff could be a solution? Do you have numbers?

[Lithenir]

I disagree 100%.
Pounce have nothing to do in pet tree, as the pet is not involved, so no bonus from pet stat to the skill, but echoing roar yes. Was logical before. Now its dumb.
Oh WL dont have to be in frontline, so they will cast something at range ?
If its just spam aoe with whirling axe, well slayer do better in aoe. The purpose of WL is to pounce on backline and hit Healer/sorc/rSH. He can do very good aoe, i dont disagree, but now dev limit his possibility to just this with the pounce range nerf. (city pov)
WL are still good, but gameplay is more and more limited.
(Sorry for my bad English)

Tbh I think the change opened up more builds. Since pounce isn't as strong anymore it is worth considering to not take it at all.
Meaning you can go Guardian where you have all the utility now and go Axeman for Finisher and healdebuff to fulfill your purpose as healer killer let the pet do the armor debuff, which is strong enough for squishies.
With pounce still in Hunter tree no one would actually consider doing it.
You can actually go Hunter for aoe and Axemen for finisher, but you actually have to run in that build... How inconvenient as mDPS.
Or you run the classical build of Hunter/Guardian.

I think there are enough options and the WL is in anything but a bad place.

How is that opening up new builds? Those options were available before patch, rather now the builds are more restrictive if you want to include pounce. You can try running without armour debuff but see how well you do against anyone with half decent armour or any healer stacking armour talis. See how well any build without armour debuff goes against a DOK with 180 armour talis slotted then report back, the changes have basically removed Pounce from Axe Man builds, which is the opposite of opening up new builds.

Dunno what you mean tbh.
Just half an hour ago I killed a dps DoK in 1on1 with a guardian/axemen build. Sure the armor debuff from the pet is lower but as I said it is high enough for healer.
And you still have builds you can run without pounce.
Like I said, the "nerfed" pounce opens up playing builds without pounce, which you wouldn't even consider without the nerf. And it also kind of opens up different builds with pounce, which I already am trying out.

Also to your DoK thing.... You shouldn't hit DoKs before every other healer is down. And with the axemen healdebuff plus the healdebuff from fortress weapon you are able to put pressure on the healer.