Guild Wars 2

Hi peolpe

I made this topic with intention of showing some faults that, in my personal opinion are being made on the proposed ranger changes that will occur in the patch in a very near future (2-3 months).

First of all, im not saying that the thanges proposed for the ranger are OP or unbalanced, but they are made in a way that doesnt synergize with the skills purpose themselves (in my opinion).

Greatsword

ill start with the greatsword changes, but before i just want to say that, while the traits that improve greatsword´s cooldown is in a line that grants condition damage, the greatsword by itself canot inflict any damaging condition, wich leaves (at least) those 200 condition damage completely wasted for that weapon, which is something that should be changed.

and now with the skills…

Slash / slice / power stab

Proposed solution: increase damage from power stab by 10%.
For a start, power stab is a skill that evades attacks, and thus, it should be the last skill that should be buffed in damage.

My solution:Make slash / slice inflict one stack 5 seconds of bleeding
This way, the condition damage from the traitline that gives the cooldown reduction wont be wasted, and its not a giant ammount of damage increase also (it could be reduced to up to 3 seconds if you consider 5 seconds to long) .

Maul

Proposed soultion: icreased targets to 5 and increased range to 230 (not 100% sure).
Not a bad idea to be honest.

My solution: Add 3 stacks of bleed of 6 seconds on top of the vulneravility (no range or targets increase).
Many people complained that the bleed was better than the vulnerability, and this way, both worlds could be in peace.

Swoop

Proposed soultion: grant evasion on the attack portion of the skill.
In my opinion, this is unnesesary, since the greasword already has a lot of defences and this would be overkill to me.

My solution: inflict one stack of bleed for 10 seconds instead of the evasion.
In my opinion, this skill doesnt need that much change, and just buffing it sligthly by adding 1 bleed would be optimal to me

Counter attack/ crippling throw

Proposed soultion: reduce aftercast when hitting an oponent with the kick
Not much to say here, a good change.

My solution: on top of that, add 1 stack for 10 seconds of bleed to crippling throw and 2 stacks for 10 seconds for counter attack kick.

Maibe this is unnesesary, but at the end ill tell you what to do with all that bleed

Hilt bash

Proposed soultion: increase stun/ daze duration to 1.5 secs (+50% duration).
This could be exploited by some moment of clarity builds to have the same duration as skull crack lvl 3, so i dont think masive stun durations are good for the game.

My solution: Reduce cooldown to 15 seconds, add one stack of bleed for 5 seconds
Plain and simple, just increase overall stun and daze duration over burst long stuns with long cooldowns, and the bleed im about to tell you what to do with it.

¿And what with all that bleed?

Simple, my final proposal is to keep the Anet proposed changes (exept for hilt bash and probably maul), but add that bleeding to the two handed training in natures magic traitline, so all that bleed will be only accesible if you have that trait.

What do you think, good, bad OP?, im waiting for your feedback (im to tired to do the rest of the proposed changes,so i just did greatsword for the moment.)

Terrible and completely unimaginative.

Rangers don’t need more condition options. Wilderness survivability grants survivability as the major theme of its traits even though condition damage is a part of that, and that’s fine. You should get what you need from the traits and the stats are merely bonuses. The GS is a defensive melee weapon so it fits in perfectly. The trait also reduces swords cooldowns too and that can be uses as a hybrid weapon on any sort of build.

And adding bleed to everything is uncreative, unneeded, and doesn’t make sense whatsoever.

1- greatsword is a power weapon. it used to have bleeding on maul, and it was freaking useless. i’m pretty sure everyone liked it when they changed maul to apply vulnerability. power stab getting a buff is in line with most autoattacks, where the third strike hits harder than the first two. and power stab is “spent” whether you hit or not, since it has that evade, unlike most third AA skills.

2- see: “greatsword is a power weapon, there was much rejoice when bleeds got taken out of the skill”

3- ok, this is where i stop trying to analyze your suggestion point by point. seriously, stop trying to make greatsword into a condi weapon because of a single trait. it’s on the condi line, but it’s also on the toughness line, and guess what, GS is a very defensive weapon. thieves tend to get 300 condi damage that they absolutely won’t use just because they want steal recharge. every profession has a trait line like that.

ranger already has a two handed condi weapon, a mainhand condi weapon, a mainhand hybrid weapon, and an offhand condi weapon.

Im hearing all the complaints about the bleed overload, i just want to remember that on the second to last paragraph says that all that bleed wil come * Only when traite with two handed mastery* (Wich will also affect spear) , and also, the duration of the bleeds are considerably small so they wont be able to run a condition based build on its own, it

The reason of the bleed was just to try to make some use of the condition damage from using that line, in a more hibryd way, since the gs alone wont kill anybody.

BrunoBRS.5178:

1- greatsword is a power weapon. it used to have bleeding on maul, and it was freaking useless. i’m pretty sure everyone liked it when they changed maul to apply vulnerability. power stab getting a buff is in line with most autoattacks, where the third strike hits harder than the first two. and power stab is “spent” whether you hit or not, since it has that evade, unlike most third AA skills.

2- see: “greatsword is a power weapon, there was much rejoice when bleeds got taken out of the skill”

Actually, there were a ton of complaints when the bleeding was taken out because the bleed was a 3-5 stack before, which meant it could really do some damage. The change to it being vulnerability actually dropped the “burst” it had before, but it evens out if during the time that vulnerability is up, if all AA from the greatsword hits the enemy (which most of the time it doesn’t). It felt like a bad trade off.

uri.6521:

Im hearing all the complaints about the bleed overload, i just want to remember that on the second to last paragraph says that all that bleed wil come * Only when traite with two handed mastery* (Wich will also affect spear) , and also, the duration of the bleeds are considerably small so they wont be able to run a condition based build on its own, it

The reason of the bleed was just to try to make some use of the condition damage from using that line, in a more hibryd way, since the gs alone wont kill anybody.

Do you believe that adding a token amount of bleeds would make greatsword a viable condition weapon? With your suggestions, the player has to use and hit all five abilities to achieve a paltry 6-8 stacks of sustainable bleed on target. They also have to invest in a trait to make this all work. Not to mention two-handed training is obviously a trait meant for power builds.

I’m not complaining about your attempt at improving the class. But your suggestions reflect the sort of heavy, unfocused trait investment for mediocre impact that the ranger class is plagued by. Skills (for all classes) should be high impact, decent with no trait investment and strong with investment. There should be synergy between skills and traits, and a vision for what a weapon is meant to do for a class. ANet is finally taking steps in the right direction by making GS an impactful defensive power weapon without 20-30 points into a traitline. That’s why their changes – focused and impactful – make sense.

Should just move Martial Mastery out of Wilderness Survival instead.

I was pretty upset when they removed the Bleed on Maul to be honest. I think the GS trait makes a lot more sense when Maul was a Bleed instead of Vuln.

im not saying that the changes Anet proposed (save swop and hilt bash) should take effect over the ones im proposing here (practically all the bleed related changes). im mostly trying to buff two handed training, which is a really underused trait, so it now gives the greatsword a chance as an hibrid/ condition weapon,
These change im proposing are suposed do be made along with the anet proposed changes (save swop and hilt bash) instead of in place of them.

Sarision.6347:

Should just move Martial Mastery out of Wilderness Survival instead.

And perhaps move Keen Edge in its place?

If we’re trying to add bleeding damage to GS, why not via a trait that could just add a fair amount of bleeding to any melee weapon? Make a trait that grants Sharpening Stone effect more often?

Bleed while evading on AA. Attrition + condition is too op imo. Current GS is fine. Just have to wait to see how #4 skill got changed. It would help if counter attack and hilt bash are more fluid.

1. GS is a power weapon. Period.
2. The bleed has to be balanced → The other stats have to be nerfed.
3. The bleed the ranger would inflict would just overlap with the bleed from other classes or other rangers.

Neko.9021:

I was pretty upset when they removed the Bleed on Maul to be honest. I think the GS trait makes a lot more sense when Maul was a Bleed instead of Vuln.

GS has a pretty nice trait (on nature magic, yeah) that gives it +5% base damage (far as i know, condi damage is unaffected by % bonuses) and chance of fury on hit, boosting the crit chance and thus making room for a stronger second hit (the vulnerability stacks last longer than the CD on maul, even without the trait).

honestly the only reason someone would argue in favor of more condi on GS is what the OP said, there’s a trait in the condi line. which is a weak argument, considering traps are on the crit line and you don’t see people asking for traps to be viable on power builds.

BrunoBRS.5178:

it’s on the condi line, but it’s also on the toughness line, and guess what, GS is a very defensive weapon. thieves tend to get 300 condi damage that they absolutely won’t use just because they want steal recharge. every profession has a trait line like that.

He’s right to be pointing out that it’s poor design for the traits of a skill to be in a traitline whose stats do not benefit that skill, because it is poor design.

What disappoints me most about the ranger changes is that Sword #1 wasn’t fixed, and they didn’t do something about traps.

Maibe im trying to fix that problem on a very hard, and posibly OP way, so i think that the best and fastest solution would be just to move ferocity to wilderness survival and condition damage to skirmishing.

But on the other hand, two hande training is still very weak for a master trait in my opinion and they should be buffed it in some way (i use runes of the pack and those give me almost permanent fury (13/ 20 seconds) with 30 points in nature magic so for me the fury in that trait is not that good)

Yeah I’m not really seeing the point here. Greatsword doesn’t need conditions, especially not on the autoattack. And on top of that, there’s already plenty condition options for rangers, so this’d just leave either weapon in the dust.

uri.6521:

Maibe im trying to fix that problem on a very hard, and posibly OP way, so i think that the best and fastest solution would be just to move ferocity to wilderness survival and condition damage to skirmishing.

that would be more sensible, given skirmishing is already the line you have to invest points on if you want condis, and ranger is one of those classes that can actually pull off a rampager/rabid build. though that would affect some crit builds that do get benefited from skirmishing, and poison master gets to be 6 points into a line that has nothing to do with conditions.

honestly, there are far too many traits on those two lines that feel like they’re in the wrong place, but at the same time, if you shove all the condi stuff in one line and all the sword stuff in another, you end up with far less options in the long run (no more trap potency + poison master, for example).

that’s not to say there shouldn’t be some shifting of traits and maybe some merges too. two handed training feels completely out of place on nature magic, for example.

ideally, each weapon would have a “primary” trait tree, and then another complimentary trait tree, and each tree focuses on one type of utility. so you’d have one “obvious” tree to invest on, but then if you want to really specialize in a weapon you have another tree you can spend points on, or you can instead spend points on whatever kind of utility you want to bring.

it’s already kinda like that, but some stuff are still in need of reshuffling.

Needs more bleeds

If you want bleeds on a GS why not just take SS, rabid gear, 2 H mastery and Sharpened Edges with like Krait runes sigs of Geomancy and sigs of earth? That’d be significantly better overall, AND you could then take a real condi weapon along side it and benefit more from it...

Or hell, take Rampagers and just be a hybrid damage build and use the GS base survivability for your needs since you seem to think taking a CDR trait that has condi damage with it as a bonus means you NEED to use condis...

Don’t kittening think taking buffs away is a smart thing to do because you want some kittenty bleed stacks instead.