Guild Wars 2

Ryan.8367:

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

ouch

This infuriates me to no end. My survivability comes from my reflexes to dodge at the correct time. I am a master of dodging and this endurance reduction is going to kill me because I rely heavily on my dodges. I don’t want to have to rely on eating +50% endurance regen food every hour and spending all my spare silver buying them either. The whole reason I traited into those dodges was to avoid buying pots. I always forget to use potions and by the time I remember them, I am already dead or finished with the dungeon/instance.

I run longbow/sword dagger in WvW. If we’re zerging then I will go with longbow/greatsword. Sword dagger is an amazing combo because of its built in evades. However, it can’t save me every time, hence why that dodge from endurance regen is so crucial. Plus, every time I dodge, both me and my pet get reduced incoming damage. This helped my pet in so many ways. I use a wolf/jaguar combo. Since they are not amazingly tanky like the bear, this protection they got from my dodge made their survivability acceptable. With this nerf, I will not be able to dodge as much, therefore my pet will not be protected as much. Meaning, my pet will be back to being dead half of the fights. I am great at using f3/f1 to get my pet away from AOE, but as we all know that isn’t enough.

Why are thieves allowed to have 8 dodges (when traited correctly) at their disposal, but that is completely fair? Some thieves can keep up a perma dodge. Yeah they can’t hit for anything, but they sure aren’t getting hit either. It already stinks that we barely have active condition removal (if my pet is dead or too far away then I have no active condition removal), so the fallback was to avoid conditions altogether by dodge rolling their attack. Now that our dodge has been nerfed, it is going to be extremely hard to stay alive in WvW. Please, please reconsider this decision Arenanet.

Nike.2631:

pho.9412:

endurance nerf e.e’ wtf… a big one at that.

Its global – ALL classes are seeing less endurance/vigor.

If I had to guess, the PvE content designers had a little talk with the class designers that players have so much ready-to-dodge uptime they largely IGNORE all damage spikes which leads to berserker-uber-alles gearing because your actual defensive attributes and traits are MEANINGLESS compared to the power of dodging.

In a funny way, its a backdoor fix to our pets. When players can no longer dodge every single hit (like out pets), we might see start to encounters with less dodge-or-die design.

Except mesmers, their vigor uptime didn’t get touched, but yea, im glad theyre nerfing classes based on PvE in PvP environments because that makes sense…

Chopps.5047:

jcbroe.4329:

Chopps.5047:

I don’t know, dude, troll and signet is pretty good. Kill stuff faster. Stop bunkering down so hard. That’s what I do. I also make sure that through immobilization, the enemy cannot get close enough to be a threat until I tilt the battle in my favor and enter melee for the kill. Although you’re saying that won’t cut it and I’m a scrub basically? Lol

No not at all lol. Eurantien already said this though haha:

tanky condi ranger or full berzerker ranger are the only viable builds

Zerker builds don’t take Empathic Bond.

The main issue is that there is no in between. Without zerkers, you don’t kill quite fast enough and you need Empathic Bond for sustain against the massive amount of conditions being spammed, which in turn limits the build versatility because for a lot of the different gear setups available, Empathic Bond is still a necessity in order to have the required sustainability to win fights.

This also though is more of a metagame problem than a ranger problem, because if condition spam gets “shaved” enough to the point where sacrificing Empathic Bond isn’t as detrimental to as many builds as it is now, then it will open up quite a number of different options.

I bet I could prove some of your statements wrong. I wish I could play with you. A lot of the drawbacks you point out can be made up for by superior skill. Also, you underestimate other builds and playstyles you haven’t personally tested.

But…. anybody with superior skill should be beating the person with inferior skill. The discussion I’m having is about the options that determine how much of an uphill battle one side has against another.

What would be better though, is to just show a simple matchup chart in which Empathic Bond makes a difference against the current most commonly run builds.

It would go something like:
Classes using their most common build in which Empathic Bond is beneficial:

Necromancer – Dhuumfire/Terror
Engineer – Nade/Bomb
Ranger – Spirit

Classes it doesn’t help or make a huge difference:

Warrior – Hammer/Longbow Zerker
Mesmer – Shatter
Guardian – AH Bunker
Thief – D/P or S/D
Ele – (haven’t seen one in awhile, I’d have to watch CMC I believe if I wanted a build)

Looking at those numbers, and taking into consideration that most teams are running either 1 or 2 of the classes where Empathic Bond is beneficial, then in reality, it would only be useful against 40% of their team, meaning that it does have the potential to be unneeded.

That brings up the question; why then is Empathic Bond considered by so many people so necessary?

That would bring me right back to this point:

“This also though is more of a metagame problem than a ranger problem, because if condition spam gets “shaved” enough to the point where sacrificing Empathic Bond isn’t as detrimental to as many builds as it is now, then it will open up quite a number of different options.”

And I’m not trying to have a malicious argument with you Chopps Just trying to have an informative conversation about the topic. Oh, and if you’re NA, feel free to find me any time in game. I have a pretty busy work schedule right now, but I’m on quite frequently, at least until CoD Ghosts comes out Tuesday lol.

Nike.2631:

pho.9412:

endurance nerf e.e’ wtf… a big one at that.

Its global – ALL classes are seeing less endurance/vigor.

If I had to guess, the PvE content designers had a little talk with the class designers that players have so much ready-to-dodge uptime they largely IGNORE all damage spikes which leads to berserker-uber-alles gearing because your actual defensive attributes and traits are MEANINGLESS compared to the power of dodging.

In a funny way, its a backdoor fix to our pets. When players can no longer dodge every single hit (like out pets), we might see start to encounters with less dodge-or-die design.

I don’t think it’s global. They didn’t say anything about other class’s vigor being halved to 25%

We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits.

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

maybe I missed something?

Eurantien.4632:

So that means… Moment of clarity:

• Boar rock: 2s daze = 4s daze
• Boar bone: 2/3s stun = 4s stun
• Boar skull (with 30% condi duration) = 8s fear (on a 120 sec CD or something)
• Asura: technobabble: 3s daze = 6s daze.

Brb… re rollin asura and using boar again.

Stun duration.

Overall happy with changes and defiantly worth given it a shot.

I do feel that greatsword won’t make much use of fury. It’s a defensive minded weapon. I feel retaliation would be a more appropriate boon for this trait.

My 2 cents

Thank you, this all looks very nice.

I just had some questions with some ranger traits. Now, I actually like pets. I also don’t mind having to invest into utility to make it useful. Sort of makes you define yourself as a trap, spirit, signet, or shout ranger.

Shout-Beast Master
Spirit- Nature Magic
Signet – Marksmanship
Trap- Skirmisher?

My issue is some of the traits are a mess. For example, when I think traps I think DoT damage, and some rugged survival man. Neither of which say “skirmisher” to me. They say wilderness survival. To that, I feel Trapers Expertise and Trapers potency should be moved to Wilderness Survival Tree. Traps are DoT based moves, and more in line with the idea of a wildland survival man. Now, the Skirmisher line could take on some defensive traits to be more in line with a skirmisher… You could choose a purely defensive option, or offensive option. This would make the Skirmisher/Marksmanship lines a place to customize yourself based on your other build needs. On that note, I dont understand why 2H mastery is in Nature Magic…it seems like a skirmisher talent…

My other issue with the trait system, is that shouts are not that strong. Now Sic’ Em, is a strong CD for beast masters, however the other shouts are somewhat lacking, and have a weird cast timers. I ask if you could look intro increasing the viability of beast masters by improving shouts. On the beastmasters line, my question is to Masters Bond, which is the only trait which doesn’t want you to switch pets in its current design. I am sure there is some way of improving this (I recommend making it a Grandmaster trait which builds up stacks when you/your pet crits) to make it more in line with the spirit of “master of beasts”

There are other issues which people may add. But I just wanted to add this. I hope you see this and thank you again.

This patch has made me decide to stay, but there are some things that I see issue with.

BlackenX.7386:

Eurantien.4632:

So that means… Moment of clarity:

• Boar rock: 2s daze = 4s daze
• Boar bone: 2/3s stun = 4s stun
• Boar skull (with 30% condi duration) = 8s fear (on a 120 sec CD or something)
• Asura: technobabble: 3s daze = 6s daze.

Brb… re rollin asura and using boar again.

Stun duration.

Sigh, expected this. Have you tested it? No. Because if you had you’d see these things already scale with the current moment of clarity. Likewise, sigil of paralyzation (stuns last 15% longer) affect most CC even though it says stuns. Daze, boar fear, and stuns are all increased by moment of clarity (not sure about KB or KD).

Also, thief’s feline grace, which was a supremely better endurance regen trait than ranger, didn’t get buffed. Thief’s Feline Grace stacks with vigor, while our 5 WS trait did not.

We all know that endurance regen nerf is a blanket nerf due to spirit rangers that will now hurt ALL builds regardless of their viability.

Some okayish stuff, still like to know their plan for WvW, condition removal and shortbows.

Really like Mighty Swap.

in my opinion all of these changes are good, some of them may even make some builds that were previously unplayable, viable again.

Eurantien.4632:

BlackenX.7386:

Eurantien.4632:

So that means… Moment of clarity:

• Boar rock: 2s daze = 4s daze
• Boar bone: 2/3s stun = 4s stun
• Boar skull (with 30% condi duration) = 8s fear (on a 120 sec CD or something)
• Asura: technobabble: 3s daze = 6s daze.

Brb… re rollin asura and using boar again.

Stun duration.

Sigh, expected this. Have you tested it? No. Because if you had you’d see these things already scale with the current moment of clarity. Likewise, sigil of paralyzation (stuns last 15% longer) affect most CC even though it says stuns. Daze, boar fear, and stuns are all increased by moment of clarity (not sure about KB or KD).

From the game (underline the important part): “Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer.”

divine faithborn.8365:

Eurantien.4632:

BlackenX.7386:

Eurantien.4632:

So that means… Moment of clarity:

• Boar rock: 2s daze = 4s daze
• Boar bone: 2/3s stun = 4s stun
• Boar skull (with 30% condi duration) = 8s fear (on a 120 sec CD or something)
• Asura: technobabble: 3s daze = 6s daze.

Brb… re rollin asura and using boar again.

Stun duration.

Sigh, expected this. Have you tested it? No. Because if you had you’d see these things already scale with the current moment of clarity. Likewise, sigil of paralyzation (stuns last 15% longer) affect most CC even though it says stuns. Daze, boar fear, and stuns are all increased by moment of clarity (not sure about KB or KD).

From the game (underline the important part): “Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer.”

Boar skull fear is increased by 50%. That is a fact.

If moment of clarity truly increases a boor fear stun (and it’s not simply improved by your condition duration from marksmanship) then that is a bug. As a bug, it should be reported because it is not the intended mechanic of the trait.

And if it is a bug, and you knowingly use it, then you are exploiting a bug.

So tell me, are you exploiting?

divine faithborn.8365:

If moment of clarity truly increases a boor fear stun (and it’s not simply improved by your condition duration from marksmanship) then that is a bug. As a bug, it should be reported because it is not the intended mechanic of the trait.

And if it is a bug, and you knowingly use it, then you are exploiting a bug.

So tell me, are you exploiting?

He was testing it… He doesn’t regularly use it, he was proving a point to the guy.

Aww yiss BM GS build is going to be a lot funner now.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Ryan.8367:

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

ouch

This infuriates me to no end. My survivability comes from my reflexes to dodge at the correct time. I am a master of dodging and this endurance reduction is going to kill me because I rely heavily on my dodges. I don’t want to have to rely on eating +50% endurance regen food every hour and spending all my spare silver buying them either. The whole reason I traited into those dodges was to avoid buying pots. I always forget to use potions and by the time I remember them, I am already dead or finished with the dungeon/instance.

I run longbow/sword dagger in WvW. If we’re zerging then I will go with longbow/greatsword. Sword dagger is an amazing combo because of its built in evades. However, it can’t save me every time, hence why that dodge from endurance regen is so crucial. Plus, every time I dodge, both me and my pet get reduced incoming damage. This helped my pet in so many ways. I use a wolf/jaguar combo. Since they are not amazingly tanky like the bear, this protection they got from my dodge made their survivability acceptable. With this nerf, I will not be able to dodge as much, therefore my pet will not be protected as much. Meaning, my pet will be back to being dead half of the fights. I am great at using f3/f1 to get my pet away from AOE, but as we all know that isn’t enough.

Why are thieves allowed to have 8 dodges (when traited correctly) at their disposal, but that is completely fair? Some thieves can keep up a perma dodge. Yeah they can’t hit for anything, but they sure aren’t getting hit either. It already stinks that we barely have active condition removal (if my pet is dead or too far away then I have no active condition removal), so the fallback was to avoid conditions altogether by dodge rolling their attack. Now that our dodge has been nerfed, it is going to be extremely hard to stay alive in WvW. Please, please reconsider this decision Arenanet.

Yea I honestly wouldn’t have an issue if EVERY Class received the same nerfs, and most did, except for guardian and mesmer. Now, mesmers if any class need it, they have so much defensive survivability options it’s ridiculous. It baffles me how they did not get touched by this, guardian I can let get away as their mobility is terrible. Mesmers have blinks, distortion, decoy , veil, mass invis , torch invis , staff phase retreat, chaos armor, plenty of aegis uptime, i mean really anet?

divine faithborn.8365:

If moment of clarity truly increases a boor fear stun (and it’s not simply improved by your condition duration from marksmanship) then that is a bug. As a bug, it should be reported because it is not the intended mechanic of the trait.

And if it is a bug, and you knowingly use it, then you are exploiting a bug.

So tell me, are you exploiting?

Well I’ve reported it many times since I started using boar 8 months ago (I have since stopped using boar) but since it hasn’t been ever fixed how could it be an exploit? Was every player using sigil of paralyzation over the past… well forever exploiting?

We still have no practical active condition removal, and now we will be able to dodge that much less because of reasons?

Our most powerful build is still going to be regen tank that jumps on the condition spam bandwagon that anet refuses to address. Nothing’s really going to change with this patch and the whole thing ’s giving me Nov 2012 flashbacks.

Also, are we going to see the absurd “Trait 30 points just to get signet active effects” ever reworked or should we just stop asking for that altogether?

It is just a band aid , it does not affect the real problem : lack of active condition removal , really bad pet AI and low survivability , having to trait 30 points into a line to make utilities usable .

divine faithborn.8365:

If moment of clarity truly increases a boor fear stun (and it’s not simply improved by your condition duration from marksmanship) then that is a bug. As a bug, it should be reported because it is not the intended mechanic of the trait.

And if it is a bug, and you knowingly use it, then you are exploiting a bug.

So tell me, are you exploiting?

Fear is classified as a stun (for the purposes of stun-breakers) and is applied by you because you are the one holding and activating the skull. How is that an bug/exploit?

The tooltip may say “stun” but it clearly applies to the conditions classified as control effects and not just the specific condition itself.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

kitten nic Touch.7960:

Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.

Someone’s already posted the breakdown in damage percentage. I’m not really impressed – instead of hitting my target with a wet noodle at close range, I’ll be hitting them with a slightly less wet noodle. But any improvement is good.

My opinion on the whole issue is either they need to reduce all ranged weapon damage at close range like ranger LB and mesmer GS damage is reduced, or none of the ranged weapon damages should be reduced.

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

I’m surprised at this. CC like stun and fear which completely take away players’ control of their characters are usually the most hated in a game.

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

Reduces this from a “OMG I have to get this” trait to “a nice freebie if I go for the protection on dodge roll trait.” I’m sad to see it get nerfed, but at the same time I’m glad they kept it at 5 WS instead of making it a GM trait or something. Now if they’d just make it stack with vigor…

Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s

I never bothered with this as it seems like a partial condition removal. They really need to give this class more accessible on-demand condition removal. I’ve actually loaded the human racial skill Prayer to Kormir several times on my ranger for certain condition-heavy fights. It makes me feel dirty even admitting I’ve had to resort to doing that.

Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.

Wow. Just wow.

Bark skin used to be equivalent to a (.25/.7) + .75 = 1.107 = 10.7% armor increase (or hp if it affects condition damage).

The change will make it equivalent to a (.25/.5) + .75 = 1.25 = 25% increase.

Huge improvement to the trait. I wouldn’t be surprised if they scaled this back down to 40% damage reduction in the future.

Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%

Other classes will probably complain that this makes the ranger trait “better” than theirs. But bear in mind that this trait only increase ranger damage, not the pet’s. If you assume a 60%/40% ranger/pet damage split, the original 5% increase was actually a 3% increase to total damage. The new 7% increase will bring it up to a 4.2% increase to total damage.

This suggests Anet is using a 70%/30% damage split as their standard metric for ranger/pet damage. 7% * 70% = 4.9%, which is right at about the 5% other classes get from the equivalent trait. Frankly, all the “increase ranger damage” skills/traits need to get this treatment if they don’t also increase pet damage. (e.g. the 10% extra damage when flanking, endurance full, and hp above 90% traits)

Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.

Interesting. If you’re running a 50% crit chance, 100% crit damage build, fury is a

(1 + .7 * 1.5) / (1 + .5 * 1.5) = 17% increase to damage.

It should proc on average about 2 sec after the cooldown. 3s / 12 s = 25%. So overall it’ll be about a 4.25% increase in damage, bringing the total damage from the trait up to 9%.

Lower crit chance increases the effect, to about 12% extra damage at 4% crit chance, 100% crit damage.

Lower crit damage decreases the effect, to about 7% extra damage at 50% crit chance, 0% crit damage.

Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.

Should be an interesting change. I predict it will increase complaints about spirits dying too easily. =)

Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.

Very nice change to give the class some badly needed access to might outside of the 30 Marksmanship GM trait.

Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.

This means the spirit can just barely give perma-burn with 5 attackers (maximum number of entities buffed). And the burn will stop once the spirit goes away, instead of stacking in duration far beyond the lifespan of the spirit.

Seems like a good change for overall balance, even though it reduces the effectiveness of the spirit in solo play (4 sec burning every 10 sec with just the ranger and pet attacking, vs 6s every 10s).

Eurantien.4632:

divine faithborn.8365:

If moment of clarity truly increases a boor fear stun (and it’s not simply improved by your condition duration from marksmanship) then that is a bug. As a bug, it should be reported because it is not the intended mechanic of the trait.

And if it is a bug, and you knowingly use it, then you are exploiting a bug.

So tell me, are you exploiting?

Well I’ve reported it many times since I started using boar 8 months ago (I have since stopped using boar) but since it hasn’t been ever fixed how could it be an exploit? Was every player using sigil of paralyzation over the past… well forever exploiting?

First off, I apologize for the condescending tone. It was very heavy handed and rude of me.

That said, there are several degrees of exploitation. Exploiting in its simplest form means to draw a benefit from. in the context of gaming it is usually involved with bugs. Most of what we hear about is exploiting a bug is using whatever the bug is with the express knowledge hat it’s an exploit. If you didn’t know it was a bug, but still used it quite a bit for it’s unintended purpose, then you were still unintentionally exploiting.

For example, people using the siege duplication bug were intentionally exploiting, but people using the pure of voice bug without knowing it were also unintentionally exploiting in the process.

So were all those players using the paralyzation sigil exploiting? Yes they were. Was it intentional, maybe/maybe not.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Why are thieves allowed to have 8 dodges (when traited correctly) at their disposal, but that is completely fair? Some thieves can keep up a perma dodge. Yeah they can’t hit for anything, but they sure aren’t getting hit either.

I know exactly the build you’re talking about because I faced it today in WvW, three of em’ VS me and my partner.

It’s a troll build, exactly as you said; they can’t hit worth beans.

You’ll be hard pressed to nail them ever, but they can’t get you either. After about 10 mins of this, we did finally root and take down two of em’. Third one ran.

With this patch thieves shouldn’t be able to do that as effectively.

Instead of 8 rolls they’ll have like 4 or 5 and still be unable to hurt anything except field animals, so yes, Anet’s listening.

Good riddance to the end of that. :P

It sucks we’re getting a nerf there to the endurance trait, and I hope they reconsider that number (35% plz Anet?), but we’re not being picked on in particular about it.

Every class in the game seems to be getting major nerfs to vigor and endurance regen options.

You can guess those foods are about to go up. Prepare.

enlargement is good. gs furry is not bad. other things are nothing. this patch still wont make the ranger playable in wvw

Its interesting. In the live stream they mention that they promote active play, and than we get reduced endurance regen, and more damage reduction on passive. I just hope the next generation of sPvP bunker rangers won’t generate more QQ resulting in future nerfs.

Anyone running valkyrie builds surely looking forward to 7% vitality to power (especially if its not 3%) though. Enlargement with signet mastery looks better to me than two-handed training. Nice changes as an early christmas gift.

Basically feels the same.. Would rather choose the 50% endu regen over the long range damage increased any day. Marksman doesn’t even sound appealing at all. More of a nature’s magic development or trait fix. By the looks of it this would probably be all the result that we would get on december 10th update and any other suggestions from players would be disregarded.

CETheLucid.3964:

WatchTheShow.7203:

Why are thieves allowed to have 8 dodges (when traited correctly) at their disposal, but that is completely fair? Some thieves can keep up a perma dodge. Yeah they can’t hit for anything, but they sure aren’t getting hit either.

I know exactly the build you’re talking about because I faced it today in WvW, three of em’ VS me and my partner.

It’s a troll build, exactly as you said; they can’t hit worth beans.

You’ll be hard pressed to nail them ever, but they can’t get you either. After about 10 mins of this, we did finally root and take down two of em’. Third one ran.

With this patch thieves shouldn’t be able to do that as effectively.

Instead of 8 rolls they’ll have like 4 or 5 and still be unable to hurt anything except field animals, so yes, Anet’s listening.

Good riddance to the end of that. :P

It sucks we’re getting a nerf there to the endurance trait, and I hope they reconsider that number (35% plz Anet?), but we’re not being picked on in particular about it.

Every class in the game seems to be getting major nerfs to vigor and endurance regen options.

You can guess those foods are about to go up. Prepare.

Mesmer and guardian didnt get nerfs to endurance/vigor regeneration. But yea, it’s not a death of anything because we have to go 30 into WS anyway for any condition removal (still, no active removal anet? really?) so now it’s just ‘kind of a trait that is there’ as opposed to a benefit to the build.

I would have really liked to have seen like 2 conditions removed attached to heal as one, considering that heal barely gets any play at all.

jcbroe.4329:

Chopps.5047:

jcbroe.4329:

Chopps.5047:

I don’t know, dude, troll and signet is pretty good. Kill stuff faster. Stop bunkering down so hard. That’s what I do. I also make sure that through immobilization, the enemy cannot get close enough to be a threat until I tilt the battle in my favor and enter melee for the kill. Although you’re saying that won’t cut it and I’m a scrub basically? Lol

No not at all lol. Eurantien already said this though haha:

tanky condi ranger or full berzerker ranger are the only viable builds

Zerker builds don’t take Empathic Bond.

The main issue is that there is no in between. Without zerkers, you don’t kill quite fast enough and you need Empathic Bond for sustain against the massive amount of conditions being spammed, which in turn limits the build versatility because for a lot of the different gear setups available, Empathic Bond is still a necessity in order to have the required sustainability to win fights.

This also though is more of a metagame problem than a ranger problem, because if condition spam gets “shaved” enough to the point where sacrificing Empathic Bond isn’t as detrimental to as many builds as it is now, then it will open up quite a number of different options.

I bet I could prove some of your statements wrong. I wish I could play with you. A lot of the drawbacks you point out can be made up for by superior skill. Also, you underestimate other builds and playstyles you haven’t personally tested.

But…. anybody with superior skill should be beating the person with inferior skill. The discussion I’m having is about the options that determine how much of an uphill battle one side has against another.

What would be better though, is to just show a simple matchup chart in which Empathic Bond makes a difference against the current most commonly run builds.

It would go something like:
Classes using their most common build in which Empathic Bond is beneficial:

Necromancer – Dhuumfire/Terror
Engineer – Nade/Bomb
Ranger – Spirit

Classes it doesn’t help or make a huge difference:

Warrior – Hammer/Longbow Zerker
Mesmer – Shatter
Guardian – AH Bunker
Thief – D/P or S/D
Ele – (haven’t seen one in awhile, I’d have to watch CMC I believe if I wanted a build)

Looking at those numbers, and taking into consideration that most teams are running either 1 or 2 of the classes where Empathic Bond is beneficial, then in reality, it would only be useful against 40% of their team, meaning that it does have the potential to be unneeded.

That brings up the question; why then is Empathic Bond considered by so many people so necessary?

That would bring me right back to this point:

“This also though is more of a metagame problem than a ranger problem, because if condition spam gets “shaved” enough to the point where sacrificing Empathic Bond isn’t as detrimental to as many builds as it is now, then it will open up quite a number of different options.”

And I’m not trying to have a malicious argument with you Chopps Just trying to have an informative conversation about the topic. Oh, and if you’re NA, feel free to find me any time in game. I have a pretty busy work schedule right now, but I’m on quite frequently, at least until CoD Ghosts comes out Tuesday lol.

EB is must vs every class in PvP, can’t believe you put LB/H in the other group when LB is imob and burning is hole reason that build is so strong.

And still the entire Opening Strike mechanic remains. Everywhere where your damage really counts, i.e. in bossfights, prolonged event fights etc., you will stay in combat far too long for an initial crit to matter at all. I know remorseless was meant as a solution for this problem, but

a) I use the Longbow stealth skill as a defensive measure when I get aggro, I don’t have stealth on cooldown for the sake of it.
b) It competes with Eagle Eye.

The minor traits in a line should not depend on a grandmaster trait (or any major trait, that is) to be useful, but be useful on their own merit. And in this case ALL minor traits in the line are just that, Opening Strike. I hereby suggest merging Alpha Training and Precise Strike into the new Master Minor Trait and make Remorseless the Grandmaster Minor Trait. Alternatively, scrap the mechanic entirely.

Karl McLain.5604:

Xsorus.2507:

I’m not understanding the Enlargement change, not sure what they mean by that information.

Mighty Swap granting Might to me also is interesting.

Makes Boon Duration more interesting.

Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.

Harro Terravos! This trait is now basically the active portion of Signet of the Wild, meaning it can be reduced with Signet Mastery and will also apply to the ranger when Signet of the Beastmaster is equipped and Might if you have Beastmaster’s Might equipped.

-Karl

So 50 Points are required to make this trait somewhat manageable?

If Signet of Beastmaster didn’t exist, This trait might be useful, However the fact that I have to invest 50 points to make it worthwhile, plus go to 25% health…Makes it not that great.

It suffers from a lot of the Ranger problems, Which is far to high requirements for many things.

Interesting “mighty swap”
-pet and you got might 3stack 15sec right?
-If use Traits 15 on Beastmastery. swap pet every14sec.
-Have rune + Might duration(+ 40% it + about5-6sec)
-Our 3might = 15sec + 5sec = 20sec and we can swap every 14sec.
-We can got perma-might every time on pet swap in combat?
(I guess in WWW 1time swap is enough for end combat just you or me must dead.)
-But you can jump of tower wall to gain combat mode and swap forever -*-

3 more traits for vigor , so yea…

No real significant change to traits. More nerfs than buffs and people are still cheering? Hope some more changes come.

Chopps.5047:

jcbroe.4329:

Chopps.5047:

I don’t know, dude, troll and signet is pretty good. Kill stuff faster. Stop bunkering down so hard. That’s what I do. I also make sure that through immobilization, the enemy cannot get close enough to be a threat until I tilt the battle in my favor and enter melee for the kill. Although you’re saying that won’t cut it and I’m a scrub basically? Lol

No not at all lol. Eurantien already said this though haha:

tanky condi ranger or full berzerker ranger are the only viable builds

Zerker builds don’t take Empathic Bond.

The main issue is that there is no in between. Without zerkers, you don’t kill quite fast enough and you need Empathic Bond for sustain against the massive amount of conditions being spammed, which in turn limits the build versatility because for a lot of the different gear setups available, Empathic Bond is still a necessity in order to have the required sustainability to win fights.

This also though is more of a metagame problem than a ranger problem, because if condition spam gets “shaved” enough to the point where sacrificing Empathic Bond isn’t as detrimental to as many builds as it is now, then it will open up quite a number of different options.

I bet I could prove some of your statements wrong. I wish I could play with you. A lot of the drawbacks you point out can be made up for by superior skill. Also, you underestimate other builds and playstyles you haven’t personally tested.

Video or didn’t happen chopps. I’m all for believing you and I respect you but i’m tired of ‘me and a few other rangers know how to play and counter all the meta without trouble, while 95% of gw2 rangers doesn’t know how to play’. Stop this arrogance please. Unless proven otherwise you are not the Daphoenix (one of best ele’s out there ,prolly responsible for many ele nerfs) of rangers.

Any build that involves 600+ healing, is only viable for duels and wvw is not about duels. My engie can duel and zerg with the same build, same goes for warrior and necro. So imo cleric/apothecary setup looses credibility. (other profs can duel fine without it, and keep full damage component)

Honesty , i get trashed by a competent warrior , thief and mesmer in WvW . Either they kick my kitten or they reset the fight and then kick my kitten

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Some decent changes to ranger which needs the most help but your still not hitting some of the core issues the class has. The pet ai is terrible in wvw. It doesn’t listen it goes off into a zerg and dies always. The f2 ability activates 2-10 seconds after I hit the f2 key. The pet doesn’t attack while chasing somebody one of the biggest problems.

Other than the bad pet ai some other much needed changes are the auto attack chain on main hand sword roots us in place please please change this. Hornet Sting takes to long before you evade backwards. The class needs a utility that gives us stability without having to have singet of the beastmaster trait. To many of our traits/skills/utilites give the near useless pet boons instead of us. Change fortifying bond so that any boon our pet gets is shared with us and make it a grandmaster trait instead of nature’s vengeance. Last shouts need some love sic em is to gimmicky guard is only good if it gives you regen from nature’s voice but my above fortifying bond change would help it give you protection. Protect me needs a cooldown decrease and search and rescue just needs to be reworked.

My pet is my Rez buddy in WvW…not much else.

I wish we could take Signet of Beastmastery, Enlargement and Bark Skin…Unstoppable Greatsword Ranger..Even without the empathetic bond when you have 50% damage reduction with stability,25% more dmg and a Maul that hits like a truck in 5sec CD…you are a beast

Sreoom.3690:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Some decent changes to ranger which needs the most help but your still not hitting some of the core issues the class has. The pet ai is terrible in wvw. It doesn’t listen it goes off into a zerg and dies always. The f2 ability activates 2-10 seconds after I hit the f2 key. The pet doesn’t attack while chasing somebody one of the biggest problems.

Other than the bad pet ai some other much needed changes are the auto attack chain on main hand sword roots us in place please please change this. Hornet Sting takes to long before you evade backwards. The class needs a utility that gives us stability without having to have singet of the beastmaster trait. To many of our traits/skills/utilites give the near useless pet boons instead of us. Change fortifying bond so that any boon our pet gets is shared with us and make it a grandmaster trait instead of nature’s vengeance. Last shouts need some love sic em is to gimmicky guard is only good if it gives you regen from nature’s voice but my above fortifying bond change would help it give you protection. Protect me needs a cooldown decrease and search and rescue just needs to be reworked.

My pet is my Rez buddy in WvW…not much else.

That’s all I really get from my pet – a rez. I’ve had to level a different class for WvW. I still PvE with my ranger, but I’ve given up on it in WvW.

Here’s a clue as to how bad WvW can get for ranger:
I started searching for ranger builds to use in WvW, so I decided to look at the websites for some of the WvW guilds. There were plenty of ideas for other classes. However, when I clicked on the ranger link, I saw several guilds who didn’t post ranger builds. They just had pages that said (collective generalization here) “Rangers suck, use another class.”

Please, please, please… whatever changes are made to ranger, make them a viable option in WvW. Do something with the pet AI or adjust rangers so they can compensate for a pet that continually runs off into a zerg and dies instantly.

Quick disclaimer: the thread got to a point where it’s hard to go through the entire thread and check if this has been addressed.

Beastmaster bond i honestly don’t feel the reduction on the cooldown is enough. It still feels like an ability one can’t rely and manage in a practical sense. I mean if the cooldown was let’s say 20sec i would be able to tactically aim to trigger it on every pet swap, whereas on a 60sec cd i will eventually forget about that and just consider it to be a buff that “happens” as a still nice colateral buff, don’t know if i’m making my point clear.

Obviously asking to cut a cooldown to a third, sounds too radical and too much powerful so we could reduce its duration accordingly but at least it would be on a time frame that we could juggle in pratical terms and be rewarding for those able to track their pet’s management in order to make the most out of this trait, does that make sense?

Sreoom.3690:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Some decent changes to ranger which needs the most help but your still not hitting some of the core issues the class has. The pet ai is terrible in wvw. It doesn’t listen it goes off into a zerg and dies always. The f2 ability activates 2-10 seconds after I hit the f2 key. The pet doesn’t attack while chasing somebody one of the biggest problems.

Other than the bad pet ai some other much needed changes are the auto attack chain on main hand sword roots us in place please please change this. Hornet Sting takes to long before you evade backwards. The class needs a utility that gives us stability without having to have singet of the beastmaster trait. To many of our traits/skills/utilites give the near useless pet boons instead of us. Change fortifying bond so that any boon our pet gets is shared with us and make it a grandmaster trait instead of nature’s vengeance. Last shouts need some love sic em is to gimmicky guard is only good if it gives you regen from nature’s voice but my above fortifying bond change would help it give you protection. Protect me needs a cooldown decrease and search and rescue just needs to be reworked.

My pet is my Rez buddy in WvW…not much else.

Yup pet ai is so terrible I have moved to keeping my pet on passive all the time and just using pets that grant me boons like might or regen.

pho.9412:

I don’t think it’s global. They didn’t say anything about other class’s vigor being halved to 25%

That’s not vigor. That’s a continuous bonus to endurance recovery rate – same effect as vigor AND it stack with vigor. Similar to how a Guardian’s virtues give you a continuous self-heal tick that’s the same mechanic as Regen, but stacks with it also.

To all and sundry who thought I was oblivious to Guardians, Mesmers, & the occasional Elementalist getting off with their 5 seconds of vigor on a crit traits untouched… believe me, I noticed. I run a might-granting all-crits-all-the-time Guard, and I checked for a similar change to their vigor-generation engines. Its absence is curious, as a simple change to say 8 seconds of internal cooldown rather than the current 5 seconds would inject some choppy waters into the near permanent vigor up time my Guardian enjoys.

Those three traits were passed over. Perhaps the devs thought they were already erratic enough? Or maybe the amount of support required in Precision-stacking they need seemed like a sufficient opportunity cost to using them? But all the automatic vigor/endurance traits took a beating in this balance path.

Ariete.6509:

Quick disclaimer: the thread got to a point where it’s hard to go through the entire thread and check if this has been addressed.

Beastmaster bond i honestly don’t feel the reduction on the cooldown is enough. It still feels like an ability one can’t rely and manage in a practical sense. I mean if the cooldown was let’s say 20sec i would be able to tactically aim to trigger it on every pet swap…

Wiki says it automatically recharges on pet swap. Is that not your experience?

Dardamaniac.1295:

I wish we could take Signet of Beastmastery, Enlargement and Bark Skin…Unstoppable Greatsword Ranger..Even without the empathetic bond when you have 50% damage reduction with stability,25% more dmg and a Maul that hits like a truck in 5sec CD…you are a beast

I have to agree. If Hulk Out! (pardon, Enlargement) was a 20-pointer in Survival rather than Nature Magic that would be a rockin’ combo.

Not really. Besides i gave it a whril in pve dungeon only, plus with all the boons around, but eventually my current build stepped away from that trait. Guess it’s worth a shot even in its current form, disregard my comment then.

rpfohr.7048:

Overall happy with changes and defiantly worth given it a shot.

I do feel that greatsword won’t make much use of fury. It’s a defensive minded weapon. I feel retaliation would be a more appropriate boon for this trait.

My 2 cents

Agree on retaliation as we have so many fury options already.

None of these changes deal with the core problems of the prof. Pet f2 still has cast time and is unresponsive meaning we can’t use our pets reactively. Not to mention they’re fodder.

Spirits other than frost and son are mostly useless outside of spvp. Spirits need a complete rework.

Shouts no one uses. And overall utility on ranger weapons is questionable at best. Ranger remains the worst support prof in the game by far.

I like that lb dps keeps increasing but it still lacks utility. I like that I may be able to walk my frost and son while not compromising builds too much. Right now I’m thinking hs, frost, something for survivability, MT and Son for utilities. Lb/gs

Overall I don’t like the direction of ranger improvements or lack thereof but I’ll take the buffs if they’re free

Some more thoughts. I agree on retaliation on 2H Mastery.

I think Shouts need to be better put together. For example Signet of the Wilds active effect could be turned into a Shout Effect, that does its current duty, but also grants 3 seconds of group stability. Turn Signet of Wilds active into a condition removal. You give rangers a condition removal and make a Shout better.

Seems like a great step in the right direction, especially the longbow change, but how exactly does this address core problems?

Ranger continues to lack a unique support niche in dungeons (outclassed by everyone else), and our damage is inferior to other classes such as Warrior. Plus our pet damage is horrible, even with 300 Beastmastery and max Might.

Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.

Great change, a step in the right direction in theory. Problem is that it’s a TIER 2 Nature Magic trait, so anyone looking to do damage with Greatsword and actually make use of the fury, miss out on +200 Power, +200 Precision, or +20% critical damage from other, more better lines.

Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.

[/quote]
This one is actually pretty cool, I gotta admit. I’ll be using this a ton!

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

Perhaps the buff we’ve all been waiting for? Imagine how much havoc a Ranger could cause with this thing!

Boar rock: 2s daze = 4s daze
Boar bone: 2/3s stun = 4s stun
Boar skull: (with 30% condi duration) = 8s fear (on a 120 sec CD?)
Shortbow: Concussion Shot = 2s Stun+Piercing
Hilt Bash: Hilt Bash = 2s Stun
Asura: technobabble= 3s daze = 6s daze.

In addition, downed state: Thunderclap = 2s Stun

Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.

I’m hoping you keep it recharging on pet swap, because this trait is not good enough to recharge more than 15s.

Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.

Too unreliable, but a step in the right direction. I would suggest making a more reliable way to trigger it, or increasing pet HP threshold. In its current state however, it’s too unreliable.

Overall though, although many of the changes are good in theory, most fail to fix the core issues with Ranger (pulling their own weight compared to other professions.)

“Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.”

Please do not do this. I understand the thought process behind thinking that Rangers do have quite a bit of endurance regeneration. But as a class in general do Rangers really have too much of anything going on for them? This is a nerf that is not needed. The effect it will have on the few WvW running rangers I see could be substantially negative. I stopped running my ranger in zergs a long time ago. But for roaming I really do not want to see this. The effect it would have would just make me bummed.