@Aridia;
Yeah, agreed. I would honestly say just a removal of the lowest range damage is fine for the auto imo, but that could just be me. Then again, I’ve already suggested multiple weapon reworks throughout this entire thread alone, so I think I’ve adequately expressed the idea that longbow is not okay (imo) in its current iteration lol.
I would say a lot of the issues with longbow stems right back to the 30 trait point investment discussion and our utilities. There just aren’t a lot of utilities that play all that well off of the longbow or even our power builds. Really, it’s only Signets or Survival Skills. The issue with that is that it either takes heavy investment for the signets, or you run survival skills and the survival skills are more situational where you react and use them than having an actual effectiveness to the point where they are part of a skill or damage rotation.
Theoretically you could run spirits, but a build like that favors smaller scale engagements. You could run Moment of Clarity, but you’re essentially sacrificing 1 to 2 trait slots traiting up through Skirmishing that high that could have better options for power builds like every other one of our traitlines do except Skirmishing which is more beastmaster and traps than anything for power builds, and that’s of the 2 minors in skirmishing that occur on weapon swap which aren’t active on a longbow based build nearly enough since you aren’t going to be weapon swapping and sacrificing your range as that’s counterproductive to the build.
Traps do poor direct damage, have minimal control effects, and favor condition builds, so those are out. You’re now left with lolshouts which is going to cost you more DPS to activate Guard compared to what you’re gaining from it than just running Sic’ Em with a DPS pet and no investment if you really wanted to play shouts that bad (unless you are a tanky longbow build, but even then there’s better survival options).
Those last 30 traitpoints now end up in Beastmastery, which is honestly going to be the best single target DPS we can achieve against other players, but have all of the drawbacks of pets, meaning that they die easily in large scale skirmishes and that often times melee pets have a hard time tracking targets, especially with the amount of swiftness some classes have and can use to kite. It also requires we sacrifice all of our defensive potential through traits except maybe picking up Shared Anguish, meaning that we are relying entirely on our weapon skills and utilities to survive. Assuming this is a Marksmanship heavy build, this is either going to be Signets or Survival skills, as mentioned.
Overall, an extremely limited build for anything outside of damage that has such a limited survival option that once people recognized the build, you would become the target and get dropped almost instantly every time.
Therein lies the ultimate problem with our direct damage builds in general, that our defensive capabilities, while existent, in these builds in comparison to the amount of defensive capabilities other classes can get out of their utilities, weapons, and mechanics, are severely lacking, making our direct damage builds that build for damage much, much more linear than many other classes going for the same build type, and ultimately weaker than all of those other classes options because of that.
I just want to recap the design philosophy behind the longbow, so we’re all on the same table again:
The longbow is meant to deal damage at range. Noone ever said it should deal high damage.
However, there is the major flaw that we aren’t able to utilize the range we’ve been given. This applies both to WvW, where we aren’t able to maintain our range to justify the longbow, and PvE, where is simply no need to bring in a ranged weapon.
So there are two things we could do to fix the flaw.
1) Scrap the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range and it wouldn’t need to if we would say that the longbow is meant to deal high damage on any range.
2) Fix the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range. Therefore we have to add cripples and immobilizes to effectively maintain our range. This would be fairly easy to do for WvW, but maintaining the range in PvE isn’t the problem. The problem is, that there is no need to range anything. You can melee all day long in PvE. So ANet has either to deliver content tailored to using long range weapons or they have to buff the longbow to a certain extent, so it’s more desireable to use longrange weapons than melee weapons. Either way, they probably have to buff the damage atleast a bit.It’d be far easier to simply remove the range penalty on the auto attack. It doesn’t need a bonus effect if it’s already the hardest hitting ranged attack in the game, that’s enough on it’s own. It then becomes useful in pve because you can stack in melee range and it’s still plenty balanced in pvp because melee will still hit for more and the bow lacks survival skills beyond a short stealth so you’re toast when they inevitably close the gap.
Then, if any balance issues do crop up, they can shave off damage from the auto till it works without having to drastically retool the skills.
Looks like a band-aid solution to me. Melee weapons should be more effective in melee range than ranged weapons. It is stupid to stand directly in front of the enemie and “snipe” him. It may be the easiest fix but it’s also the most silly fix I can think of.
They can, however, decrease the minimum range for the maximum damage required.It still wouldn’t do more than the 1H sword. And as I said, they can then shave down the damage if it starts to break the “melee > ranged dps” rule.
It may be a band-aid fix, but that’s how Anet rolls with Ranger fixes anyway…
The damage would probably be “normalized.” AKA, the new damage value would be the current mid range damage value.
Which is fine if you ask me. The mid range value for the Longbow is about the same DPS as the shortbow. The shortbow pulls ahead if you can flank the target just 25% of the time. 100% of the time, even with 0 condi and a straight up power build, the sbow wins by a sizable margin.
I say normalize the damage and give the Longbow something else at the extended range and/or flanking to make it more of a unique weapon to set it apart from the shortbow.
For example:
Middle range damage regardless of range, 10% chance to crit when flanking, +10% crit dmg for 900 range.I also agree with the other main discussion above… that the kiting advantages of the class simply don’t compete with the anti-kiting tools given to other classes. I’m still convinced that if this class were given a ‘fast hands’ trait like Warriors got so they could quickly swap between melee and range things would be fine though.
I don’t like the direction this is heading. A nerf shouldn’t be the outcome of making the LB “viable”. Also, lots of people complaining about the flanking penalty on the SB. It would be even worse with a longrange weapon. At last, I would still use melee weapons for melee range. There is, and there should be, absolutely no point of picking the LB over a melee weapon in melee range. I want a viable long range weapon. So Anet has to find a way of making long range combat more desireable than melee or mid range combat.
I just want to recap the design philosophy behind the longbow, so we’re all on the same table again:
The longbow is meant to deal damage at range. Noone ever said it should deal high damage.
However, there is the major flaw that we aren’t able to utilize the range we’ve been given. This applies both to WvW, where we aren’t able to maintain our range to justify the longbow, and PvE, where is simply no need to bring in a ranged weapon.
So there are two things we could do to fix the flaw.
1) Scrap the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range and it wouldn’t need to if we would say that the longbow is meant to deal high damage on any range.
2) Fix the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range. Therefore we have to add cripples and immobilizes to effectively maintain our range. This would be fairly easy to do for WvW, but maintaining the range in PvE isn’t the problem. The problem is, that there is no need to range anything. You can melee all day long in PvE. So ANet has either to deliver content tailored to using long range weapons or they have to buff the longbow to a certain extent, so it’s more desireable to use longrange weapons than melee weapons. Either way, they probably have to buff the damage atleast a bit.It’d be far easier to simply remove the range penalty on the auto attack. It doesn’t need a bonus effect if it’s already the hardest hitting ranged attack in the game, that’s enough on it’s own. It then becomes useful in pve because you can stack in melee range and it’s still plenty balanced in pvp because melee will still hit for more and the bow lacks survival skills beyond a short stealth so you’re toast when they inevitably close the gap.
Then, if any balance issues do crop up, they can shave off damage from the auto till it works without having to drastically retool the skills.
Looks like a band-aid solution to me. Melee weapons should be more effective in melee range than ranged weapons. It is stupid to stand directly in front of the enemie and “snipe” him. It may be the easiest fix but it’s also the most silly fix I can think of.
They can, however, decrease the minimum range for the maximum damage required.It still wouldn’t do more than the 1H sword. And as I said, they can then shave down the damage if it starts to break the “melee > ranged dps” rule.
It may be a band-aid fix, but that’s how Anet rolls with Ranger fixes anyway…
The damage would probably be “normalized.” AKA, the new damage value would be the current mid range damage value.
Which is fine if you ask me. The mid range value for the Longbow is about the same DPS as the shortbow. The shortbow pulls ahead if you can flank the target just 25% of the time. 100% of the time, even with 0 condi and a straight up power build, the sbow wins by a sizable margin.
I say normalize the damage and give the Longbow something else at the extended range and/or flanking to make it more of a unique weapon to set it apart from the shortbow.
For example:
Middle range damage regardless of range, 10% chance to crit when flanking, +10% crit dmg for 900 range.I also agree with the other main discussion above… that the kiting advantages of the class simply don’t compete with the anti-kiting tools given to other classes. I’m still convinced that if this class were given a ‘fast hands’ trait like Warriors got so they could quickly swap between melee and range things would be fine though.
I don’t like the direction this is heading. A nerf shouldn’t be the outcome of making the LB “viable”. Also, lots of people complaining about the flanking penalty on the SB. It would be even worse with a longrange weapon. At last, I would still use melee weapons for melee range. There is, and there should be, absolutely no point of picking the LB over a melee weapon in melee range. I want a viable long range weapon. So Anet has to find a way of making long range combat more desireable than melee or mid range combat.
actually, the longer the distance, the more likely you are to get the flanking, because the more likely it is that your enemy is not aware of you/running away from you. If you consider a +10% chance to crit during flanking in a sniping role of hte outskirts of a zerg, then you realize you got a massive DPS boost. It would also help increase sustained damage by loads.
I don’t like the direction this is heading. A nerf shouldn’t be the outcome of making the LB “viable”. Also, lots of people complaining about the flanking penalty on the SB. It would be even worse with a longrange weapon. At last, I would still use melee weapons for melee range. There is, and there should be, absolutely no point of picking the LB over a melee weapon in melee range. I want a viable long range weapon. So Anet has to find a way of making long range combat more desireable than melee or mid range combat.
actually, the longer the distance, the more likely you are to get the flanking, because the more likely it is that your enemy is not aware of you/running away from you. If you consider a +10% chance to crit during flanking in a sniping role of hte outskirts of a zerg, then you realize you got a massive DPS boost. It would also help increase sustained damage by loads.
If you make the longbow AA even weaker, there is no point in running away from a LB ranger. So you’ll never utilize the damagebonus if you’re not already winning. It would also interfere with the common stacking tactic. If you force the mob against a wall, he will probably stand with his back towards the wall all the time.
Been thinking about ranger, and how it could be improve. I agree rangers have trouble ‘kiting’. No i don’t want ranger to be op and uncatchable by warrior. However with rush, savage leap, stunlocks, stability to block point black shot, etc this is not good atm. Some other professions like engineer, necro, mesmer, have much better, anti melee (to keep kiting) tools then ranger.
We don’t need massive boosts, but some of our single target cripples, must become aoe, and some short duration ones (4 sec or so) must become 7-9 seconds cripple base. That’s my take on it, because that’s how i succesfully kite in pve, and unsuccesfully do it with ranger (well not totally unsuccesfull but harder, especially in pvp).
I have a lot of weapon improvements in mind. Most are minor, like for instance cleaning up animations (like you did for warrior).
Sword 2, 1st part of skill, clean up animation, if you press this skill it should save you like burning retreat. At the moment it’s to slow for that, you must already guess before enemy casts a skill. Mighty blow for instance, has such fast animation that while you cast it, it might be to late already and you still hang in the stun, but there other stuff as well, where this skill really comes to short.
Hunter’s shot is a bit clunky. To many variables if it will work or not. Thief, mesmer, survivability comes from, VERY fast responding cloack, teleports, evades, etc. That’s how pvp is played properly, action > response. Ranger is to limited in this or to slow. Hunter’s shot is to slow imo. ‘wait for it to hit target, aha finally now i’m cloacked’. That can already be to late. Make the cloack happen when you cast the skill. The moment you touch it, cloack. So you can immediately plan ahead, and keep the combat flow going. To prevent anoying repercussions, the arrow (wich is weaker then auto attack, so not overpowered at all) will still land on the target, but will be given a ‘revealed’ exception. The damage it does, will not uncloack you. ‘but but that could be op’. I disagree. We have no other true sources of cloacking (except maybe camouflage, but that is out of your control), so abusing this to win a battle, wont work. There is still (at least 6 secs, the enemy will see you, no matter what).
Rapid fire is a bit to slow imo. I like it does 10 strikes versus some kitten skills though. I would top the casting off at 2 seconds maximum.
Barrage should have even more control on it then the 2 sec cripple pulses. At the moment people just dodge it. Phantasmal berserker for instance, will 90% of time, hit and land cripple (and aoe at that). Barrage? maybe 1-2 times, and then ppl are out. You barely did damage/or CC.
I agree traps should do more power damage. They also should have 900 range versus 600 with the trait. I’ve been experimenting a lot lately and 900 range is still very limited, but if you push your limit it might become usefull. 600 range these days is usefull though in zerg/versus zerg. Then you are so close that you will die before your traps are even up. This would make traps already a lot more usefull. I also agree Frost trap would use some improvement. Making chill/frost armor combo’s off it should be a bit easier.
I also agree with need compression on our traits. I know anet is very scared for power creep. And I get it. But atm, piercing, -300 range, -20cd, are almost mandatory, that noone of the other traits are even usefull. For instance, the new trait for extra arrow speed, is good, apart from that for the boost is gives, is not worth a grandmaster trait. If anything i would make it adept (yes you heard me right). Pistols/rifle, bullets, land much faster then any bows atm. And that’s why i prefer them over bows. Pistol can also get 1050 range, rather then 900 of ranger. 150 range might sound like not so much, but imo it makes a great difference. For me 900 range is ‘just enough or just not enough’ it sits on the border of usefull range. 1050 is enough away from enemy that if you know your class well, you can easely keep up/keep away from target at same time in a kiting way. 900 however not so much. Most 900 range weapons also have a lot of aoe incorporated into them, and ranger weapon has only 1, (I don’t count piercing as aoe). That’s quite a few, for such close combat weapon tbh. Add +150-300 range somewhere to an existing trait (preferrable the bow one already).
That’s it for now, but i got a lot more idea’s flying.
snip
The kind of ideas I like
Though it should be clear wether the radius is me or the pet.
Both have advantages ans disadvantages (eg: dungeons, one might want the radius to be the pet, while WvW, one might prefer to have it be the ranger…
or given it"s hard to place the pet where we want it, the radius being around the pet might be problematic, while the ranger usually knows where he stand.
I suggest the Ranger Longbow role should play like a pikeman.
How can this be possible?
1. Saying a 3 second stealth will let you reposition is like saying a leap that moves 50 spaces instead of 900 is closing a gap.
Again. Repositioning doesn’t mean a free range reset. Just because stealth doesn’t fulfill the purpose you’d like it to fulfill doesn’t mean it is useless. I run a low stealth Mesmer build in PvP without Blink and I can assure you it does still have an enormous effect. As much as I hate bringing this up in discussions because it feels condescending, not being able to utilize a 3s stealth most certainly is a L2P issue.
Range weapons are meant to kite.
THIS is your issue and the one many Rangers have. They expect to be able to permanently kite and shoot arrows from a distance. GW2 doesn’t work this way and will never do so because it lacks classic profession restrictions which would make such an Archer playstyle possible. That is why melee weapons generally deal more damage. That is why refraining from picking up a melee weapon at least as secondary set will result in an overall worse performance than if you did so.
To phrase it in a different way: Your expectations (for the LB) don’t fit the game design.
2. You cover anything that you want to stay on the target. You don’t cover the cripple because you don’t see the value of kiting.
Wrong. I personally wouldn’t bother covering the Cripple specifically because there are other things which increase my performance or flexibility by far more. As long as you are willing to switch out of LB and don’t insist on playing a pure archer that is. If you insist to be an archer, be willing to make the sacrifices you need to make to succeed. I mentioned Sharpened Edges as cover up. Durzlla talked about adding sigils. But somehow you always find a reason to shrug suggestions off as unviable.
And no, I will never use a trait that’s worse than a sigil. If that doesn’t tell you how broken that trait is that a 16s sigil could effectively replace and surpass it, I guess there’s no point to discuss class balancing at that point.
Sigils are no benchmark for balancing traits. Especially not their tradepost value.
I see no point carrying on this conversation with you. Good day.
if rangers were given a trait that increased movement speed and/or endurance regeneration when using bows (like ele with scepter trait, or ele with dagger traits/ warrior with melee weapon trait) then we would be in a stronger position, overall, as a “archery” class.
Personally, i prefer to use a mix of melee and ranged. But i would be overjoyed to get a trait that gave +X% movement speed and return X% endurance when dodging while having a bow/ increased endurance regen while having a bow. It would make my life on ranged builds a whole lot easier.
Good trait, so long as it doesn’t end up in marksmanship, lol.
blablabla
i played again a bit around with a dps ranger in the hot join server, but stoped at least again after i tryed nearly everything to get such a build work.
trying to play a power ranger is just frustrating, nearly all other professions with all builds just overshine it so hard. even if you fight less experienced enemy players.
i think the two power based weapons, longbow and longsword need still a huge redesign how they work…
i saw on the official cdi topic anet dont whant power ranger to be able doing fast bursts, but do that over time.
but exacty that is just not possible, because nearly all other power dmg professions have way much survive + way much more dmg then a longsword or longbow power ranger…
even a thief overshine me in a 1vs1 if i use longbow and he use shortbow.
thief overshine on survive + damage and thats just one example.
but even with all this issues on this two weapon sets i found a bit of fun using them on hotjoin.
i play the ranger as main profession rly long now and im playing in a rly decent pvp team in eu.
so for me its just interesting how i have with my power ranger a rly amazing hard fight against new pvp players, where i easy win with my dps guardian or the spirit ranger build…
so the power ranger builds become for me the “i whant to have a challange even in hot join” builds…
thats why i rly think anet should look on the longbow and longsword survive and damage at least…
i have here some ideas for power based weapons how they maybe can work better:
longbow:
skill1: always same decent dmg
skill2: 3 arrows shots with much dmg, if attack in stealth more dmg, in stealth from behind it also daze
skill3: same like now but combinate it with skill 4 and give swiftness to player aswell
skill4: new skill: press first time huge dodge backwards, press again go in stealth and blind narly enemys with blindfield (animation is throw a smoke granade on rangers postion)
skill5: you can run when cast barrage, it fires 5 arrows with decent dmg, 1 arrow to your target and 4 arrows to nearly enemys. the target get cripled.
if you do this skill in stealth the target get root
longsword:
skill1: should be same, but a bit faster
skill2: same animation like maul, but a bit faster and without bear animation.
this skill have rly high dmg and is blast finisher.
skill3: step sideward (dodge) and attack with decent dmg
skill4: block like now arrows and melee, if block melee it knocks the enemy down with a faster animation then atm and decent dmg. if you press the skill twice then you do the skill swoop like it is now in the game but with cripple if it hits in front. if it hits behind it knocks the enemy.
skill5: step sideward (dodge) and daze, so its like the old skill but with dodge. but it needs more range to use it effective when you whant interrupt enemeys
my minds on the other weapons atm:
shortbow:
i think its in a good place right now,
but if you compare elexier cannon on engi, this one can stack more bleeding on auto attack without need to attack from behind.
i think the shortbow is a bit weak if you use it without the sun spirit, so i think actually shortbow looks only so strong because the spirit build, but without maybe not.
main hand axe:
the auto attack of this one need a improve,
the rest is pretty good
sword:
is fine in my mind,
maybe the auto attack need some improve
off hand axe:
skill4: is a bit slow and rly easy to dodge
skill5: there should a option to active this skill twice.
activate this skill first its the actual effect, press the skill again it should knock the enemy back and blast finish
(edited by Oidmetala.8426)
I suggest the Ranger Longbow role should play like a pikeman.
- As you use the Longbow correctly, Enemies can never get close to you.
That might be a little bit too much. We should however be able to negate 2-3 gapclosers.
if rangers were given a trait that increased movement speed and/or endurance regeneration when using bows (like ele with scepter trait, or ele with dagger traits/ warrior with melee weapon trait) then we would be in a stronger position, overall, as a “archery” class.
Personally, i prefer to use a mix of melee and ranged. But i would be overjoyed to get a trait that gave +X% movement speed and return X% endurance when dodging while having a bow/ increased endurance regen while having a bow. It would make my life on ranged builds a whole lot easier.Good trait, so long as it doesn’t end up in marksmanship, lol.
We all know it would.
So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.
Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.
Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
not sure how far this thread has gone but, discuss being resilient as a ranger. defensively i think we should have active condition duration reduction if traited on either NM or WS. offensively i think we should have more access to kiting mechanics on par to how melee classes can close gaps in a few seconds.
So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.
Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
It’s a problem that all classes have but I think it becomes more obvious because we have either pet traits or player traits and rarely do the two overlap as opposed to the other classes having mostly all player traits.
Longbow
I stand by my statement that this should be incorporated into the longbow itself, not slapped on as another trait. Longbow needs some more functionality to warrant being such a long range weapon with such low accuracy and mediocre damage with little burst ability.
LB is good against melee that have less than 2 gap closer with long cd or 1 with short cd.
In team fight it’s good for keeping pressure to the target but it also means that you are one of the first targets the enemy group calls, with my mates we usually call eles-necros- LB rangers, if we see the LB ranger dealing too much dmg we jump on him because we know he has 0 survival.
Give LB ranger more survival or more burst : ( few suggestions that might be crazy/OP)
- LB 5 – arrows instead of cripple apply 1s of immob and doesn’t stack
- Signet works without GM traits or no traits at all
- Range should be 15000 by default
- LB 3 should give stealth and the possibility to recast it to port 600 units away, the second skill aplies reveal.
I just want to bring up an issue with Signet of the Hunt and melee pets. Without Signet of Hunt, melee pets can’t hit anything, i feel like that force the ranger to bring Signet of the Hunt which only left 2 utility slots, and that’s a problem. INCREASE PET’S MOVEMENT SPEED !!!!! so we don’t have to force to bring Signet of the Hunt all the time. FIX IT PLEASE !!!
@AEFA;
I totally agree. The ability to play keep away is a valuable tool and, as it refers back to the longbow for me, I think I expressed in that discussion as an example of how unreliable I think it’s keep away mechanics are.
The shortbow is in a good spot on this one though. The gap creator isn’t dependent on the attack hitting it’s target, and sb 4 shoots fast and applies a decent enough cripple, plus a daze/stun for interrupting key skills like gap closers.
So I definitely agree with you. I still want Evasive Purity to remove a condition on dodge roll (any condition) but that just be me.
@Substance E;
Is it safe to assume that I’m not the only one who thinks the sheer amount of pet traits and the vast spread of them should be seriously condensed?
@Geekilo;
I’m assuming that it was just oversight that you didn’t mention Agility Training (30% pet movement speed). Remove the trait and make it baseline functionality for the pet, then rework how the passive part of Signet of the Hunt affects the pet. Would this be acceptable?
Pets, like on Gw1, should just move faster than players by default (it only makes sense), and then SotH and swiftness can boost that speed even more. It’d help the pet immensely when it comes with keeping up with the target.
@Substance E;
Is it safe to assume that I’m not the only one who thinks the sheer amount of pet traits and the vast spread of them should be seriously condensed?
Absolutely. Several of them need to just be inherent. The condition damage, heal power, and increased movement speed should be part of the pet as is. Even Pet’s Prowess could be reworked as an inherent critical damage mod based on pet type since it works much better for birds or cats than it does for bears or pigs. It’s easily one of my favorite pet traits, but I would love to not feel like I have to take it to make my pets hit for real damage.*
The idea of a bear that rarely crits but hits for massive damage when it does thanks to a low crit chance but a huge crit modifier is an interesting one.
I’d also love to see the traits that give bonuses be universal and not limited to pet types or condensed. Rending attacks and intimidation training could be combined and stability training is an obvious choice to combo with shared anguish.
*This, of course, would only be necessary in a world where we never get a system that shares our equipment stat bonuses with our pets.
Pets, like on Gw1, should just move faster than players by default (it only makes sense), and then SotH and swiftness can boost that speed even more. It’d help the pet immensely when it comes with keeping up with the target.
I really feel all they need to do is change pet melee skills to 250-300 range like the Polymorph Moa form and it will solve the “Run, stop, attack, repeat” system that makes them unable to hit reliably on a moving target.
If we became that one class that was impossible to kite completely because you couldn’t kite both the pet and ranger at the same time, we would not only get an identity, it would vastly improve the viability of our power builds based around nothing but sustained damage.
edit
Was just completing the heart in the Caledon Forest where you can turn into a fern hound and noticed that you can run and attack at the same time. The dog stops running and does the attack animation but you keep sliding forward. I would also suggest this as an alternative to the extra range on melee attack. It looks kind of odd but works just fine.
(edited by Substance E.4852)
I agree. If this class were given real kiting tools the sustained DPS model would be an easier pill to swallow. But can you imagine the amount of effort that would be needed to ever get this class into a position to kite a Warrior or Thief long enough to actually win? Especially when using a sustained DPS approach? As a power build… with only your pet being indirect fire?
I agree. If this class were given real kiting tools the sustained DPS model would be an easier pill to swallow. But can you imagine the amount of effort that would be needed to ever get this class into a position to kite a Warrior or Thief long enough to actually win? Especially when using a sustained DPS approach? As a power build… with only your pet being indirect fire?
You can kite a warrior EASILY with a ranger build designed to stay at range, the way ranger is currently set up is that if you want to kite you’ve gotta commit to it. Unlike, say a Hunter from WoW, you don’t have all your kiting tools with every build, you need to give up some of the offensive traits in order to pick up things like LR, or muddy terrain, or frost trap, or SoTH etc. to keep your enemy away from you.
A thief on the other hand? We could have every single one of our skills be some sort of CC but the thief would STILL close the gap, you’re not gonna be able to keep the thief away from you the whole fight like you could another profession since chills and cripples don’t hinder most of their gap closers since they’re teleports, not leaps.
That being said, thieves are made of tissue paper and it’s very possible for you to keep then away from you long enough that you can deny their damage and kill them with yours. It’s definitely much harder than a warrior though.
That being said, thieves are made of tissue paper
explains why they are seemingly terrified by flame traps and torch skills.
That being said, thieves are made of tissue paper
explains why they are seemingly terrified by flame traps and torch skills.
Flame Trap + Bonefire vs a thief in a Melee duel is hilarious btw, they lose every time.
That being said, thieves are made of tissue paper
explains why they are seemingly terrified by flame traps and torch skills.
Flame Trap + Bonefire vs a thief in a Melee duel is hilarious btw, they lose every time.
especially if you can dump a muddy terrain to cover over the flame effects for 2-3 seconds. Making sure they eat all the damage. Their reaction is simply priceless.
I’m still waiting for the “amazing changes” to Ranger that ANet mentioned in February.
Maybe we have different definitions of amazing.
I’m still waiting for the “amazing changes” to Ranger that ANet mentioned in February.
Maybe we have different definitions of amazing.
Seeing as how all we’ve heard about were the GM traits and the bug fix to fix all bug fixes (F2 responsiveness) I’m assuming there’s still SOMETHING they haven’t told us…. Or at least I hope so.
@Prysin that reminds me of my Carrion LB + Axe/dagger build, I’d stealth, muddy terrain, flame trap, split blade + SS + SE + Stalker Strike + Crippling Talon and watch the thief implode as if a necro hit em lol.
I’m still waiting for the “amazing changes” to Ranger that ANet mentioned in February.
Maybe we have different definitions of amazing.
their definition and the average forum ranger’s definition of “amazing” is so far apart, that even if you put the entire universe between them, it wouldn’t be enough of a “gap filler”.
That being said, i like several of the new GM traits. The change to 2H weapons is a godsent gift (stacking + crit proc and being able to run 2x proc sigils at once. YES PLEASE)
Seeing as how all we’ve heard about were the GM traits and the bug fix to fix all bug fixes (F2 responsiveness) I’m assuming there’s still SOMETHING they haven’t told us…. Or at least I hope so.
There has been several unconfirmed comments about weapon fixes, skill adjustments and other smaller changes that did not make it into the previews. In short, if they were to list all the changes done to each class, with a explanation as to why, then they would have to host a 2 hour podcast for each profession alone.
Not to mention, spilling the beans right away removes that sense of “mystery”. That way, they cannot keep everyone hyped up before the launch. Because right now, everyone is like, “disappoint, but well, they said there was more then just this”
(edited by Prysin.8542)
Am I one of the only ones the remembers the developer blog posts about balance from guild wars 1? Where they would literally write an entire paragraph about why changes were being done to each skill and how the changes that were going to be implemented were to address something currently wrong with the way the skill is in an attempt to give the skills a different usage or stress the value of it?
Here’s a sample: http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/september_2012_skill_balances.php
Am I one of the only ones the remembers the developer blog posts about balance from guild wars 1? Where they would literally write an entire paragraph about why changes were being done to each skill and how the changes that were going to be implemented were to address something currently wrong with the way the skill is in an attempt to give the skills a different usage or stress the value of it?
Here’s a sample: http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/september_2012_skill_balances.php
I miss those, I really liked seeing their insight on WHY stuff was changing instead of just “this changed”.
So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.
Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
Not once do I ever feel that I need to use weapon traits for them to feel effective, especially Sword, Greatsword, Axe, and all offhand weapons. You can argue for the bows and I agree there should be some trait merging, but, then again, I could spend all day listing weapons from literally every other profession that depends on traits to work effectvely too. The more traits weapons have, the less effective they are without traits. The less traits weapons have, the more effective they are without traits. This exists in the game by design, and Arenanet is not going to change that.
We do have alot of pet traits that are pointless unless they are used for specific builds, and some for very specific builds, for example, Compassion training only really affects 1 pet (fern hound). You don’t really notice the effect on Moas because of how unreliable the effect is. You also don’t notice a difference on skills like the Bear’s Bite, because 350 healing power adds 43 hp per second to the regen…for a pet with over 30,000 health.
But, I don’t think they should be removed or integrated into pets by default either, atleast until I see the pet fixes and changes on April 15th.
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.
Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
Not once do I ever feel that I need to use weapon traits for them to feel effective, especially Sword, Greatsword, Axe, and all offhand weapons. You can argue for the bows and I agree there should be some trait merging, but, then again, I could spend all day listing weapons from literally every other profession that depends on traits to work effectvely too. The more traits weapons have, the less effective they are without traits. The less traits weapons have, the more effective they are without traits. This exists in the game by design, and Arenanet is not going to change that.
We do have alot of pet traits that are pointless unless they are used for specific builds, and some for very specific builds, for example, Compassion training only really affects 1 pet (fern hound). You don’t really notice the effect on Moas because of how unreliable the effect is. You also don’t notice a difference on skills like the Bear’s Bite, because 350 healing power adds 43 hp per second to the regen…for a pet with over 30,000 health.
But, I don’t think they should be removed or integrated into pets by default either, atleast until I see the pet fixes and changes on April 15th.
Compassion training does not work on any other pet then fern hound, period. It has been tested several times. Same goes for the +50% boon duration one. Completely broken on all pets, tested and bug-reported about a dozen times within the last 8 months, nothing has been done yet.
So, me and Jcbroe were talking with some people about spirits, and my idea (based off of Battosais idea) for spirits is that you “summon” then for 60s (like now), but instead of an actual spirit a wisp floats around your pet (blue for water, purple for storm, orange for sun, yellowish brown for stone, white/almost white blue for frost, very large green wisp for elite) each one would give a passive effect, this effect would be “every 5th hit X effect occurs.” This passive would NOT be very powerful and would provide a very mediocre buff for everyone effected.
However, activating the spirit would “kill” the spirit and make your pet radiate with an aura, this aura would provide a pulsing benefit to allies near your pet as well as make your pets every 3rd attack apply a stronger effect than the passive.
EX: Sun Spirit: Summon a spirit to aid your allies in battle, causing every 5th attack for allies in range to Burn for 1s. Duration: 60s
Suns Might: The Spirit uses it’s remaining energy to imbue your pet with strength, causing every 3rd attack to blind and burn the target for 2s, and to give allies within X radius 1stack of might for 5s every second. Duration: 5s
The traits would OBVIOUSLY have to change as well, I’d like to see them become something like this:
Vigorous Spirit: renamed to Invigorating Spirits, is now the Grand Master trait, effect changed to: Your pet gains increased stacks for each spirit and aura attached to it.
Spirits Unbound: now an Adept Trait, your spirits CD is reduced by 20%
Natures Vengeance: The active effects of the spirits are increased, additionally effects of the spirits occur a hit earlier (IE passive effect is now 4 hits, not 5).
This would 1) remove cluttering 2) make spirits more fun to use and less mindless 3) allow MORE counter play to how spirits are, now killing the pet would end ALL spirit effects as well as the pet dying, this makes loading up 5 spirits into your pet very risky, but at the same time VERY powerful 4) this would allow tankier pets (such as bears and pigs) to be stronger in more aspects of the game 5) this doesn’t necisarily hell PETS in WvW, but it makes spirits less easy to pick off and die to AoE and 6) it makes spirits less point demanding to be good, but still rewards (and encourages) dumping points into spirits.
@Durzlla.
Definitely like the sound of something like that. Sounds as though it would polish the gameplay off much more neatly and make it more enjoyable. Though, like you say, there is the risk of having all your eggs in one basket (i.e. on your pet), it certainly puts more emphasis on tactical pet control so I’d hope that the supposed incoming AI improvements would compliment something like this.
As good an idea as it may be, I’m not holding out much hope for the implementation of these more elaborate plans and trait changes any time soon, simply for the fact that the “balance” history of the devs is much more ‘quick-fix’ and simple-change-based rather than reworking more significant areas of a profession. I just hope that by the time the next significant balance patch comes round there will have been enough QQing by Rangers to make devs pull their fingers out and actual deliver some of these quality ideas. I was, however, encouraged to see Allie take an interest in that ‘aspect of the pet’ idea. Let’s just see if it comes to fruition.
So, me and Jcbroe were talking with some people about spirits, and my idea (based off of Battosais idea) for spirits is that you “summon” then for 60s (like now), but instead of an actual spirit a wisp floats around your pet (blue for water, purple for storm, orange for sun, yellowish brown for stone, white/almost white blue for frost, very large green wisp for elite) each one would give a passive effect, this effect would be “every 5th hit X effect occurs.” This passive would NOT be very powerful and would provide a very mediocre buff for everyone effected.
However, activating the spirit would “kill” the spirit and make your pet radiate with an aura, this aura would provide a pulsing benefit to allies near your pet as well as make your pets every 3rd attack apply a stronger effect than the passive.
EX: Sun Spirit: Summon a spirit to aid your allies in battle, causing every 5th attack for allies in range to Burn for 1s. Duration: 60s
Suns Might: The Spirit uses it’s remaining energy to imbue your pet with strength, causing every 3rd attack to blind and burn the target for 2s, and to give allies within X radius 1stack of might for 5s every second. Duration: 5s
The traits would OBVIOUSLY have to change as well, I’d like to see them become something like this:
Vigorous Spirit: renamed to Invigorating Spirits, is now the Grand Master trait, effect changed to: Your pet gains increased stacks for each spirit and aura attached to it.
Spirits Unbound: now an Adept Trait, your spirits CD is reduced by 20%
Natures Vengeance: The active effects of the spirits are increased, additionally effects of the spirits occur a hit earlier (IE passive effect is now 4 hits, not 5).
This would 1) remove cluttering 2) make spirits more fun to use and less mindless 3) allow MORE counter play to how spirits are, now killing the pet would end ALL spirit effects as well as the pet dying, this makes loading up 5 spirits into your pet very risky, but at the same time VERY powerful 4) this would allow tankier pets (such as bears and pigs) to be stronger in more aspects of the game 5) this doesn’t necisarily hell PETS in WvW, but it makes spirits less easy to pick off and die to AoE and 6) it makes spirits less point demanding to be good, but still rewards (and encourages) dumping points into spirits.
Yeah these are definitely really awesome and I would love to see the system to switch over to this instead of what it currently is.
So, me and Jcbroe were talking with some people about spirits, and my idea (based off of Battosais idea) for spirits is that you “summon” then for 60s (like now), but instead of an actual spirit a wisp floats around your pet (blue for water, purple for storm, orange for sun, yellowish brown for stone, white/almost white blue for frost, very large green wisp for elite) each one would give a passive effect, this effect would be “every 5th hit X effect occurs.” This passive would NOT be very powerful and would provide a very mediocre buff for everyone effected.
However, activating the spirit would “kill” the spirit and make your pet radiate with an aura, this aura would provide a pulsing benefit to allies near your pet as well as make your pets every 3rd attack apply a stronger effect than the passive.
EX: Sun Spirit: Summon a spirit to aid your allies in battle, causing every 5th attack for allies in range to Burn for 1s. Duration: 60s
Suns Might: The Spirit uses it’s remaining energy to imbue your pet with strength, causing every 3rd attack to blind and burn the target for 2s, and to give allies within X radius 1stack of might for 5s every second. Duration: 5s
The traits would OBVIOUSLY have to change as well, I’d like to see them become something like this:
Vigorous Spirit: renamed to Invigorating Spirits, is now the Grand Master trait, effect changed to: Your pet gains increased stacks for each spirit and aura attached to it.
Spirits Unbound: now an Adept Trait, your spirits CD is reduced by 20%
Natures Vengeance: The active effects of the spirits are increased, additionally effects of the spirits occur a hit earlier (IE passive effect is now 4 hits, not 5).
This would 1) remove cluttering 2) make spirits more fun to use and less mindless 3) allow MORE counter play to how spirits are, now killing the pet would end ALL spirit effects as well as the pet dying, this makes loading up 5 spirits into your pet very risky, but at the same time VERY powerful 4) this would allow tankier pets (such as bears and pigs) to be stronger in more aspects of the game 5) this doesn’t necisarily hell PETS in WvW, but it makes spirits less easy to pick off and die to AoE and 6) it makes spirits less point demanding to be good, but still rewards (and encourages) dumping points into spirits.
Yeah these are definitely really awesome and I would love to see the system to switch over to this instead of what it currently is.
The idea of changing spirits to a kind of aura that the pet gains was one of the few ideas that seemed like it had a chance of being considered by the devs in the CDI and is probably the best way to handle them aside from massive HP injection or invulnerability since I just can’t ever see GW1 size radii ever being implemented.
Is there a reason you want to rework the passives and actives so much? I haven’t seen Battousai’s suggestion but it’s similar to one I posted on the CDI and I think the current spirit effects once moved to the pet which gives all the benefits and restrictions you listed at the bottom of your post more than make up for it.
Just use the current ones, make them permanent buffs with a cooldown once killed. You kill them by either killing the Ranger’s pet or forcing them to swap, like you suggested. If you want to destroy them when activated that’s fine, but if you make it so they only die when the pet is removed, you could open up some burst because you could use your spirits activated abilities and then swap pet, and if you use Vengeance, they’ll double go off.
Would open up some neat combos.
Is there a reason you want to rework the passives and actives so much? I haven’t seen Battousai’s suggestion but it’s similar to one I posted on the CDI and I think the current spirit effects once moved to the pet which gives all the benefits and restrictions you listed at the bottom of your post more than make up for it.
Just use the current ones, make them permanent buffs with a cooldown once killed. You kill them by either killing the Ranger’s pet or forcing them to swap, like you suggested. If you want to destroy them when activated that’s fine, but if you make it so they only die when the pet is removed, you could open up some burst because you could use your spirits activated abilities and then swap pet, and if you use Vengeance, they’ll double go off.
Would open up some neat combos.
Because as is the actives are incredibly boring, and the play style of the spirit is almost entirerly skill less, a suggestion you suggested would not change ANY of that.
Also, the actives as they are now have nothing to do with support (what spirits were designed for) and I’d like to see them fill that role better. Not to mention some of the current effects would be pretty broken/redundant when on the pet.
IE: Frost Trap and Muddy Terrain would both become entirerly useless because the spirit would fill their role better, and for Frost Trap, on a shorter CD, for MT it’d be on the same CD (no traits).
That’s because, as far as I know, Battosai’s list of suggestions was never posted in it’s most current iteration on the forums. I’m going to post what he sent me though because I agree with everything and I think it’s definitely worth sharing with you guys:
Signets on Rangers : Currently you need to heavily invest into the Marksmanship traitline and take up 2(3) traits to make them viable in a signet build and comparable to other signets, limiting trait choice and build variety a lot ( 30 pts already gone into wilderness survival leaving a measly 10 points to differ the build, due to the limited access to condition clearing). This also derives from Signet of the Beastmaster being a mandatory choice, especially in power builds. Moving it down to master tier or making signets apply it’s active effects without the need of being traited for would open up some great builds for power rangers.
Remoreseless – Speaking of the Marksmanship traitline, remoreseless by design is a really cool trait, but it feels lacking due to the rangers limited access to stealth and a rather high time to kill due to the lack of an inherent big hitter. I feel that with adding a condi clear/condi transfer or boon removal on opening strike it will become a really great addition making it a true grandmaster trait, that would benefit rangers greatly as well.
As for adding runes for spvp – Adding rune of resistance to offer power signet builds on rangers some skillful on demand defensive with the aegis procc. Making it a rather tough choice which signet to activate for the aegis and which to save for a later occassion. The cooldown of the Aegis procc would need to be adjusted though, as 30 seconds is a fairly long time in spvp.
Signet of the hunt – The ranger weapons feel lacking and the damage is usually coming from the autoattack. I’ve read an amazing suggestion on the forums about having signet of the hunts active change depending on the weapon the ranger currently has equipped. For example : LB sniper/killshot kind of move to add finishing potential on range, SB confusion/burning/torment for the next three attacks, sword final thrust/blurred frenzy. Things like that, this would increase the overall versatility and weapon choices ( pet choices even ) of rangers while providing a overall more active playstyle.
Beastmaster traitline – Adding a condition clear on petswap would be really great as it’d confront the player with a tough decision and a tradeoff again. (Cleanse 2 conditions on pet swap)
Another suggestions i’ve heard was regarding spirits and the AI cluttering the screen which makes it really hard to notice all the action going on. The suggestion is changing spirits to auras that are applied to you or your pet ( maybe adjust the range a little and just have it on one of these ) while still providing a visual effect for the buffs, the screen won’t be cluttered anymore and the ranger will have to make choices again – do i send in my pet to help my comrades to lose out on the condition clear from EB? or do i really want to run a dps pet that dies quickly in a spirit build? Or if the ranger is attaining the aura, he’d have to be in the middle of the fight in order to provide the best possible team support, making him a desirable target in a teamfight, if you want to shut him down – furthermore good positioning would be greatly rewarded.
I feel changes like this would add more depth to the game and adress a lot of issues with the ranger class ( mostly power and signet builds, but also for the spirit and some other builds) , while this is only a few small suggestions i can go into further detail and provide a lot of examples on situations those changes would really benefit the game.
[13:35:21] Nik: Trap Rangers : adding combofields to existing traps is a great idea, rangers could greatly benefit from a smoke field ( spike trap maybe? ) and a poison field ( vipers nest ) in order to utilize the many projectile finishers and the few blast finishers on the pet, if the latter get’s more responsive, the Ranger, given he’s an experienced one and a good player could make some really great plays and be very effective and desirable in a team, with overall raising the skill cap and a little raise on the skillfloor.
[13:46:46] Nik: Anyways, thanks for reading – I still care a lot for Rangers, the community and the game in general, excuse my messy type of writing and bear through with it at least, what I want to do achieve with this wall of text is to provide a balanced ranger with a skill entry floor that can achieve decent results and a skillcap/ceiling that will decide high level tournament games, given the player is able to gauge everything, the class, the opponent and his surroundings correctly.
Is there a reason you want to rework the passives and actives so much? I haven’t seen Battousai’s suggestion but it’s similar to one I posted on the CDI and I think the current spirit effects once moved to the pet which gives all the benefits and restrictions you listed at the bottom of your post more than make up for it.
Just use the current ones, make them permanent buffs with a cooldown once killed. You kill them by either killing the Ranger’s pet or forcing them to swap, like you suggested. If you want to destroy them when activated that’s fine, but if you make it so they only die when the pet is removed, you could open up some burst because you could use your spirits activated abilities and then swap pet, and if you use Vengeance, they’ll double go off.
Would open up some neat combos.
Because as is the actives are incredibly boring, and the play style of the spirit is almost entirerly skill less, a suggestion you suggested would not change ANY of that.
Also, the actives as they are now have nothing to do with support (what spirits were designed for) and I’d like to see them fill that role better. Not to mention some of the current effects would be pretty broken/redundant when on the pet.
IE: Frost Trap and Muddy Terrain would both become entirerly useless because the spirit would fill their role better, and for Frost Trap, on a shorter CD, for MT it’d be on the same CD (no traits).
I don’t feel like your change really adds much more interactivity than the current effects though.
Yours:
1 in every 5 attacks causes the nearest 5 people’s next attack to cause burn.
Active: Next attack will inflict blind and burn.
Current:
Next attack will burn with an ICD of 10 seconds.
Active: Blind all foes within range of spirit.
Just going from an ‘on next attack’ to a PPM mechanic it seems. Unless I’m not following your sun spirit example?
As for the theme of the spirits being more utility oriented, I do kind of agree with you. I always pictured the passives as the group utility and the actives as the more defense oriented things. I just feel like you sun spirit suggestion feels even more passive than the current one.
As for redundancy, I thought frost spirit was on a longer cooldown? Wiki shows 40 with MT and FT being less, but I honestly haven’t used spirits in 6 months so wiki could be wrong.
Heh, a lot of the ideas he’s come up with are the same ones I suggested, so I’m cool with a lot of them.
Heh, a lot of the ideas he’s come up with are the same ones I suggested, so I’m cool with a lot of them.
Yeah, I’m behind the suggestions 100%. A lot of them have come from a lot of different community members and in total it looks like an entire collaborative effort when reading through them of all of our ideas coming together in a simple but elegant list. Most of them were also regurgitated by Allie when she made her post of items they were taking away from the CDI, so let’s just hope those are the ones they go with.
So, me and Jcbroe were talking with some people about spirits, and my idea (based off of Battosais idea) for spirits is that you “summon” then for 60s (like now), but instead of an actual spirit a wisp floats around your pet (blue for water, purple for storm, orange for sun, yellowish brown for stone, white/almost white blue for frost, very large green wisp for elite) each one would give a passive effect, this effect would be “every 5th hit X effect occurs.” This passive would NOT be very powerful and would provide a very mediocre buff for everyone effected.
[…]
Suns Might: The Spirit uses it’s remaining energy to imbue your pet with strength, causing every 3rd attack to blind and burn the target for 2s, and to give allies within X radius 1stack of might for 5s every second. Duration: 5s
[…]
I personally enjoy the idea of linking Spirits to your pet. It would encourage players to actually utilize their pet and takes a lot of screen clutter out of the game.
That active effect idea, though… Besides doing too much at once (and probably too powerful things, too) it promotes pretty shallow gameplay. Everyone will use the Spirit for its full duration. They will only blow them up when they are about to expire anyway or the pet is about to die. Not a lot of active gameplay there.
At the moment Spirits active effects do something different than the passive effects and encourage people to use them early in certain situations. I’d prefer it to stay this way so players can make meaningful and tactical decisions when using the active effect. Otherwise you’ll make Spirits even more passive than they are right now.
Remoreseless – Speaking of the Marksmanship traitline, remoreseless by design is a really cool trait, but it feels lacking due to the rangers limited access to stealth and a rather high time to kill due to the lack of an inherent big hitter. I feel that with adding a condi clear/condi transfer or boon removal on opening strike it will become a really great addition making it a true grandmaster trait, that would benefit rangers greatly as well.
Signet of the hunt – The ranger weapons feel lacking and the damage is usually coming from the autoattack. I’ve read an amazing suggestion on the forums about having signet of the hunts active change depending on the weapon the ranger currently has equipped. For example : LB sniper/killshot kind of move to add finishing potential on range, SB confusion/burning/torment for the next three attacks, sword final thrust/blurred frenzy. Things like that, this would increase the overall versatility and weapon choices ( pet choices even ) of rangers while providing a overall more active playstyle.
Beastmaster traitline – Adding a condition clear on petswap would be really great as it’d confront the player with a tough decision and a tradeoff again. (Cleanse 2 conditions on pet swap)
Remorseless trait is decent. My only problem with this is the lack of continuous reapplication while in battle. What ANet expect from a Ranger traited 30 deep into MM is to finish off an enemy asap! But the problem right now is players are spec to survive (most) making battles last for more than 20s, at least. This is also a problem in PVE (to some monsters)
Like I said in most of my post, I love that Rangers apply vulnerability and that it should be our trademark condi.
Should be changed to one of the following:
1. Remorseless: Remorseless reapplies opening strike every 15s while in battle. Stealth applies Remorseless into your next attack.
Smooth game play and quick application and reapplication.
2. Remorseless: Remorseless reapplies every 15s while in battle. Your pet’s next attack causes cripple for 5s.
Kiting in LB as a Ranger solved!
Signet of the Hunt I agree as well, it doesnt provide much support to most of our weapons besides GS #2 LB #4 and Axe #4 traited 30 deep of course!!! Other than that, I never bother activating this, unless I really need that burst on my pet rather than the movement speed. I also told ANet that this doesnt make sense for the Ranger to use, because like they said, we are skirmishers. We are built to tear our opponents down, or thats the direction that they want Rangers to go.
Should be changed to one of the following:
1. Signet of the Hunt: Passive: Gives you and your pet 25% increase movement speed.
Active: You and your pet’s next attack applies 1s of Immobalize.
2. Signet of the Hunt: Passive: Give you and your pet 25% increase movement speed.
Active: You and your pet applies 5 vulnerablity for 10s on your next attack.
Like I said I love vulnerability on Rangers.
Beastmaster I actually don’t like that game play for Rangers, switching right now and current traits are ok. But having most of the benefits on pet switching is not something I would want to adapt as a game play for Rangers. A good example of this is http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyr%27s_Speed_
Which only really benefit the Ranger on swap, by the time your pet gets to your target that quickness wouldve worn off by now.
(edited by AEFA.9035)
i dont like the idea much about make the spirits to a pet aura.
sometimes they are not bad to bodyblock some projectiles!
for power ranger builds:
as long as the longbow and longsword skills dont feel smooth in use,
there will help no traits alone, anet have to look on this two weapons like on some thief and warrior weapon improves in the past.
they need to make longbow and longsword work better first…
both of this weapons feel totaly useless if a thief, ele, off guardian, necro, mesmer or everything is on you…
The actives I was proposing would be an aura around your pet that grants boons to allies and strengthens your PETS attacks with a stronger effect IE: you could keep your spirits “up” for a group buff or sac the spirit for a shorter, different support to allies in addition to enhancing your pets utility.
It would NOT be the next attack, it would be a duration I was thinking ~5s, and it would add more interesting play, it’d be more of “do I want to remove the burning and gain blinds from my pet and a might aura instead? Or is the burn more useful atm?”
At the moment there is NO downside to spamming your spirits on CD, it’s literally mindless.
I have to agree with Durz on this one that with the proposed change the actives also need to be more valuable than they currently are. Right now, the actives for spirits are used more just to proc each other at times than they are for the benefit of the actual active. Stone Spirit is probably the most useful though and the one most worth timing, but other than that, the game has such skill spam that the blind from sun spirit is always useful and usually not all that super potent since it is a singular blind, and then there is the proc on storm spirit which is always 2k+ and always useful, though you can perhaps save that active against certain other builds (Automated Response Engineers for instance).
Overall though, the active/passive skill design remains but it tied to your pet and would potentially be capable of offering up much more than what the current system offers. Yes, the spirit build is strong right now, but ultimate it’s just animation and screen clutter than that could be handled in a much better way, and in a way that doesn’t take up most of the screen since the Spirit Passives are just equivalent to other classes passive procs but as an AoE effect which makes them overly redundant in a lot of cases.
So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.
Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
Not once do I ever feel that I need to use weapon traits for them to feel effective, especially Sword, Greatsword, Axe, and all offhand weapons. You can argue for the bows and I agree there should be some trait merging, but, then again, I could spend all day listing weapons from literally every other profession that depends on traits to work effectvely too. The more traits weapons have, the less effective they are without traits. The less traits weapons have, the more effective they are without traits. This exists in the game by design, and Arenanet is not going to change that.
We do have alot of pet traits that are pointless unless they are used for specific builds, and some for very specific builds, for example, Compassion training only really affects 1 pet (fern hound). You don’t really notice the effect on Moas because of how unreliable the effect is. You also don’t notice a difference on skills like the Bear’s Bite, because 350 healing power adds 43 hp per second to the regen…for a pet with over 30,000 health.
But, I don’t think they should be removed or integrated into pets by default either, atleast until I see the pet fixes and changes on April 15th.
Compassion training does not work on any other pet then fern hound, period. It has been tested several times. Same goes for the +50% boon duration one. Completely broken on all pets, tested and bug-reported about a dozen times within the last 8 months, nothing has been done yet.
Your statement is 100% FALSE. FALSE, FREAKING FALSE!!!
I’ve tested it, and the +50% boon duration works just fine on many pets. Compassion training also works just fine. What you failed to realize for pretty much ALL of these traits that increase pet stats, is that they only work when you’re in combat. Test it in combat, the blue moa will give you 6 seconds of protection instead of 4, the stalker will give you 23 seconds of mights, and all birds will give you 15 seconds of swiftness instead of 10.
Maybe the suggestion should be “Make these traits work outside of combat too. It gives me more strategy and utility so I can preload 23 second of might instead of 15.” instead of “Its bugged anet. Fix plz!” Lets stop sending Anet bugs that don’t exist, and start sending them the actual bugs and suggestions.
i dont like the idea much about make the spirits to a pet aura.
sometimes they are not bad to bodyblock some projectiles!
Not only that: What if your pet is melee attacking a mob while you’re sitting on your LB?
You would probably be out of range to get the buff. What if your pet dies and you have to switch it?
They wouldn’t be spirits anymore, they just would be some sort of status effect.
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