Guild Wars 2

A not so short write up of an example where GW2 happen to severely disappoint me.
Integrating GW2 Skill Design

Here is the mentioned second write up of a single professions’s specific suggestions.
GW2 Ranger Suggestions

Again, please do not comment if you did not bother to fully and carefully read one or both articles. Many times I’ve posted things in which people disagree with things simply cause they failed to carefully read or take account of everything in which I said. I’m sure this happens to many people, but I just happen to not like flaming or incomplete responses. Thank you very much.

(Note: I often edit what I have written with new, or different, material so changes to the two posts may occur at any time.)

FYI, you don’t have permissions available for your first doc. Fixing that might get some conversation started here.

The second one I had already commented on in your thread in the Ranger forums about it, so I’ll let this thread stick to the first thing.

Also, copy/pasting the posts onto the forums might be a good idea. I don’t have an issue with Google, but I know some people don’t like using Drive/Docs/whateverit’scallednow.

^what he/she said

Thank you for letting me know, I thought I had set it to view, I guess I accidentally set the second one twice, tyvm for helping me out yet again Doom!

(The posts are frankly way too long to copy onto the forums with their invisible character limit) After several attempts I finally said forget it and downloaded this program for the very application of sharing things on this forum.

I would suggest titling your feedback more appropriately for the sake of clarity.

“Nerf hundred blades, buff rangers” is far more accurate to those documents than “Integrating GW2 Skill Design” is.

When did I ever say “nerf hundred blades?” Its good tho that you missed the point I was making completely. +best. Maybe next time I post something you can critically read it and identify the deeper points. The mere fact all you took from it was a kitten post about hundred blades and Rangers says a lot more about you than it does me. I used a Ranger in the example listed because they are the class I have the most experience with. I was going to go ahead and add-on a whole other section for another class but it was already long enough and I thought it made the point nicely. I guess I vastly underestimated the ability of forum goers (or simply just you) to analyze and apply critical thinking.
But Thank you for your feedback. It’s noted. My next written up post shall contain more examples and illustrations to prove my point and everyone reading it can suffer through my poor writing skills for the entire duration. ^.^ I sure don’t mind writing more, if you couldn’t tell.

For everyone else reading this post, I apologize you had to witness that and I’m sure it has already biased your opinion. For that I do not blame you. Thank you and have a good night. ^.^

Very well thought out arguments and I’ll try to keep my reply to a worthwhile standard in turn.

I too main a Ranger and have a lot of experience with all weapons but the off hand dagger and I must agree that since launch I have felt pigeon-holed into a Shortbow or left being mediocre. About skill fluidity, specifically about the SB, I never understood the idea behind skill 2 as in order to maximise its effectiveness you had to be as close as possible to the target which when using a bow seems to be counterintuitive. It really should be replaced with a more reliable single target attack or even replaced with a skill that isn’t so situational as a response to the recent skill 1 nerfs as Anet have stated they want to move us away from spamming 1. Also for the 3 skill on the SB for that to actually work you need the Sun, Moon and stars to be perfectly aligned with a 4mile north-westerly breeze and to be standing on a perfectly flat surface.

The same can be said about the entire idea behind having to be behind the target in order to gain bleed stacks. As hard as it is to stack bleeds now even in a perfect situation it is just not possible in high level pvp. Sure it is a good idea for pve to give that extra skill management factor, but in PvP and WvW that just simply never happens. In sPvP in particular the only way to get behind a person (other than being unnoticed) is to be up close and constantly flanking or running through them which again seems to go against the whole idea of the SB being a ranged weapon.

The lack of a reliable 2nd main hand weapon is an issue, I really love the idea of the sword but was implemented poorly and I feel like you addressed the major issues and gave good recommendations for it. Axe attack speed is just too slow or damage too low to be considered effective at dps and I won’t even touch on the GS.

Just too many of the Ranger’s mechanics are either unreliable or don’t flow with the idea of the weapon at the moment, the Shortbow can’t decide between being a range or quasi-melee weapon, the longbow has a nice idea behind it but is too stagnant to be effective in this game and with the amount of mobility and gap closing options available it is very easily countered. Pets are a big elephant in the room and require too much discussion for me to put in a post but I think you addressed many of their problems well. At the moment it seems we are purposely made weaker to make up for the fact that we have extra dps/survivability/utility in the pet based on spec but in the current meta they are either too unreliable for utility and the immobilize on attack makes them very easy to kite. In their current state I would much rather be without the pet, but they do have some potential to be great.

As for utilities I’ll just mention a couple things. First about Signet of the Hunt, why does it only give a 10% move speed bonus and frankly a useless active in comparison to the Thief’s Signet of Shadows which gives 25% move speed and a 6sec AoE blind active. The second being the lack of immobilize break (except for a heavily traited Protect Me) which I find to be an extreme weakness to the class in comparison to other guardians where on my current build I have 4. All it would require is Lightning Reflexes to break Stun and Immobilize and it would be fine.

I have a lot of experience with Guardian as well but I really can’t say I notice any huge instances where the design of the weapons don’t flow well, the Greatsword for example with a Leap, AoE pull, and AoE spin flows extremely well together, their support capabilities are also very well implemented. It just saddens me to not see the same fluidity of Ranger mechanics. Your post was a good read and I hope Anet gets around to seeing it as well. Sorry if I mentioned too much about the Ranger specifically but I find that class to be the most obvious example of a lack fluid skill integration.

Thank you very much for your response! ^.^
I feel the same way with the Shortbow basically being a single target skirmish weapon and then having skill (2) which is like useless AoE. In PvP the bleed is also ./zzzz. The Signet movement speed buff is really low but I think I could live with it if it got that active affect I mentioned. I do hate the fact that the “Ranger” or “Follower of Melandru” has like the absolute worst condition management in the game. Don’t even get me started on what I hate about spirits. I think I might go change that whole section. I feel that Longbow could manage range decently but it would require excellent pet set up. I read someone’s suggestion post about making Long Range Shot deal decent base damage then increasing it as it went further instead of decreasing it as it got closer. That made my day. Again, lots of Ranger examples but as you said, that’s what we personally have the most experience with. I’ll shut up now though. Again, thank you for your input.
I’ll have to invest some time into expanding my initial argument just for the sake of variety. I was going to last night but Corian kitten me off with his/her completely made-up response so I just went to bed.

GW2 Ranger Suggestions updated.
Just thought I’d throw it out there.