Guild Wars 2

With full respect due:

I want to main a BOW while being of some other use to a group than a slightly more safe loss of dps.

For a class all about BOWs, most PvE builds shy away from them entirely and we are WAY too dependent on MM line bow traits to make them even baseline viable.

I want to use a greatBOW, but what’s so great about it? Uninspired stealth changes and a still dps crippled auto-attack? Bows have suffered tremendously due to a PvP only mindset.

Jon,

As far as your sword comments, I just disagree with your satisfaction of its performance.

The playstyle can remain, but you need to realize that this is not some skill activation on a 30 cooldown. We’re talking about a super fast auto-attack locking a player out of evades based on where they are in the chain. With your attention to evade mechanics in every dungeon I think this should still be a consideration. I don’t mind the premise, just question its place on an auto-attack.

Bows are now in a good place you feel? There’s more to a power build than greatsword crits. The majority of signets just aren’t worth using; same with shouts. No one talks about builds with bows as a main focus in them anymore — that’s something to be proud of.

I said this in the other thread, but I would like a good read of it, at least for an idea of how to make pets more useful overall.

I’d prefer a revamping of the entire pet system. Active would have the pet being its usual self. However, passive (on a 10-20 second cooldown) would turn them into spirits, untargettable, and unkillable. In return a buff hits us (dependent on pet type), which can be traited to hit allies. F1-F3 turn into various skills which we can use (depending on pet type), that work like Engineer gadgets. In other words, buffs, AoE attacks, etc we can use. Basically we’re nerfing our damage with the pet no longer useable in combat while in this mode in order to buff 1 or 2 stats (with the two stats getting buffed half what you would get if it was a single one, maybe 50 for the full boost) along with more flexibility in combat.

Example, with a canine on passive, we get a boost to vitality, and the F1 to F3 turn into moves that could give fear, one for AoE condition cure and regen, and the last one being a melee knockdown that’s a guaranteed critical with Torment attached (but in return its base damage would be low).

I know this seems like it would make it so every Ranger would drop pet, but if you really wanted to balance it so the pet would still have to be out and fighting at times, you could make this idea a ‘mode’ that lasts for about 20 seconds, and then is on cooldown for another 20 seconds.

Torment on Hornet Sting would be the bees knees.

Also, I typically only use the 1st attack in the attack chain, since most of my other cd’s are up again and I don’t need to do the full chain (so I actually turn the autoattack off).

TY Jon, these are awesome changes to Ranger, and a really good start to making the levels of ranger on a balancing edge. However the need for an active and good condition cleanse/ boon transformation is really needed. Also that axe is horribly underpowered for ranger class and it is one of the viable AOE weapons we have. Any chance of having something looked into this as improving axe (especially the number one attack) will also aid your goals of encouraging the means the further build diversity to happen.

Once again, with all due respect:

I’m questioning just how collaborative all these changes are, when we bring up so so very many suggestions on the forums just to have one voice tell us how it’s not going to happen because it goes against some vision.

That’s the way I feel; no ill-harm meant to anyone. The whole process just seems so inflexible and predetermined.

Miflett.3472:

I’m questioning just how collaborative all these changes are when we bring up so so very many suggestions on the forums just to have one voice tell us how it’s not going to happen because it goes against some vision.

That’s the way I feel; no ill-harm meant to anyone. The whole process just seems so inflexible and predetermined.

Same song and dance that we’ve always seen from Anet. They act like they’re listening, but nothing we say really reflects on the changes they’ve posted.

Love the Ranger – hate the pet. It would be a break through if we could have a viable ranger build that didn’t include pets but for whatever reason it seems there is an insistence that we have to have them.

Please give us the option to put a pet away and keep it put away. I know that can reduce ranger effectiveness. But that should be my decision and I Know the consequence, I get to experience it every time both pets are one shot within seconds of each other, I get a CD so I don’t have the pet. There are times you just DO NOT want the pet out period. Why are we not given the option? For example Dealing with Jump puzzles . I make a jump take a little bit of damage and the pet is once again In my face with the camera due to tight spaces and thus obscuring my vision.

I tend to keep pets on passive for the damage bonuses and removing conditions because I get tired of my pets being one shot by a boss/ champion or player and then having this huge CD waiting for my ability to come back. With the way pets AIs are I send it in for finishing hits on a target when It makes sense to.

Do not remove the evade on the greatsword!!!

That is my first reaction. Of course that is based on the fact that the only current use for the greatsword is in a defensive manner. If it is changed to be more offensive, I might learn to live with it.

However: We are medium armour. We are squishy. All our offhand options are aggressive damage dealers. We have no access to any other defensive weapon utilities than the greatsword. I think you have to think about this from a different perspective, if you want to raise the damage, buff maul. That would enable more synergy and spikes. Having the evade on swoop is a bit counter intuitive for me, isn’t it supposed to mainly be a gap closer? Maybe try to do something with the block instead, that one feels fairly useless outside duels.

Oh a dev posted a post of meaning and real engagement.. I am genuinely shocked but great Thanks Jon.

I’ll glad that power rangers and specifically signets are on your mind.. Its an area a lot of people would like worked on for rangers so I hope you explore that more (and get rid of the need for a GM trait).

Sorry to hear the MH sword is working as intended.. but its at least nice to know.

I just want to know if the pet mechanic is “working as intended” like the sword. That way I can keep an optimistic outlook, or give up and move on.

Miflett.3472:

Once again, with all due respect:

I’m questioning just how collaborative all these changes are, when we bring up so so very many suggestions on the forums just to have one voice tell us how it’s not going to happen because it goes against some vision.

That’s the way I feel; no ill-harm meant to anyone. The whole process just seems so inflexible and predetermined.

You’ve learned the not-so-secret secret of MMO Development! Shhh

Despite all the talk about metrics and numbers and whatnot, a great great deal of class design is subjective and opinion based. It comes down to things like ‘flow’ and ‘feelings’. Ultimately, the only gut feelings that actually matter are ANET’s. Very specifically, whoever at ANET gets the final say on implementing changes to the game.

Every single MMO ever made has operated the same way in this regard. Design is not a democracy, not even remotely. Your best case scenario is that someone with actual power to change things agrees with your suggestion and/or isn’t afraid to “kill their own baby” when it comes to game ideas.

Like, I really really like that ANET is posting some justification on their class changes, I find the insight fascinating. Yet, if ANET thinks X is good for the game, it doesn’t matter how many of us might think X is bad. X is going to happen.

The only real agency players have is their ability to play/pay, or their choice not to. The rest is a lot of hope vs. whelp.

The 1h Sword thing is like the perfect example of that. It is what it is because that’s what ANET wants, the end. There’s no argument to be had anymore, the want it that way, done.

/shrug

the problem is you have to spec deep into a line to make a utility USABLE . For example , vigorous spirit is a waste of a trait .

Make it so its default for spirits to have more HP and chance to proc , and give each spirit active a condition removal if the trait is equiped .

Same for trap mastery . Make the duration bonus default and move the cooldown reduction to the tier 2 trait . Then make a proper critical damage trait for power builds .

Also , signet and wilderness traits only give cooldown reduction . A cool effect could be added to both .

Signet of the hunt active is pointless , perhaps making the active give a few seconds of stealth instead of the bonus damage could give the power ranger survivability toos boost needed ?

Heal as one is useless , very nice place to put condition removal in an interesting way . For example , for each condition cleared up to a max of 3 , the pet gets a boon .

Some ranger discussion.

Natural Vigor

Completely agree that this is a necessary change, don’t even think you needed to buff wilderness survival to make it work. People need to bear in mind though that vigor (while duration is being reduced) will override this and that you could never have more than 100% anyway, which makes that engineer trait pretty worthless considering you could get constant vigor for 20 points, but I digress.

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice

For those asking, guard is useful as a support buff purely down to the use of natures voice. If you have tested the support build I suggested in a previous post (which could bring 50% uptime for vigor for party members as well as burning, over 50% protection uptime, full regen uptime, full swiftness uptime…) and found it not to be overpowered, then thats good news. Glad to have been listened to but also good to see you’re there ahead of us. However, I still see spirits as being the most powerful support build at the moment, disregarding the Guardian Bunker spec and I do still see this as a definite buff to the support capabilities of it.

Main-hand sword

Personally I use the main hand sword a lot in PvP, and do this mainly by disabling the auto attack, though I don’t feel its always necessary. For anyone irritated by not being able to dodge, just try it with the autoattack disabled and see how much you can improve when you control the leap movement.

Fordel.3208:

Miflett.3472:

Once again, with all due respect:

I’m questioning just how collaborative all these changes are, when we bring up so so very many suggestions on the forums just to have one voice tell us how it’s not going to happen because it goes against some vision.

That’s the way I feel; no ill-harm meant to anyone. The whole process just seems so inflexible and predetermined.

You’ve learned the not-so-secret secret of MMO Development! Shhh

Despite all the talk about metrics and numbers and whatnot, a great great deal of class design is subjective and opinion based. It comes down to things like ‘flow’ and ‘feelings’. Ultimately, the only gut feelings that actually matter are ANET’s. Very specifically, whoever at ANET gets the final say on implementing changes to the game.

Every single MMO ever made has operated the same way in this regard. Design is not a democracy, not even remotely. Your best case scenario is that someone with actual power to change things agrees with your suggestion and/or isn’t afraid to “kill their own baby” when it comes to game ideas.

Like, I really really like that ANET is posting some justification on their class changes, I find the insight fascinating. Yet, if ANET thinks X is good for the game, it doesn’t matter how many of us might think X is bad. X is going to happen.

The only real agency players have is their ability to play/pay, or their choice not to. The rest is a lot of hope vs. whelp.

The 1h Sword thing is like the perfect example of that. It is what it is because that’s what ANET wants, the end. There’s no argument to be had anymore, the want it that way, done.

/shrug

Then again, why even bother asking for feedback in the first place? Just for show, or?

I dont get all those tweaks…

As long as the “defining” ability (Pet) is not working properly (and no – no matter how many “pet is fine, ltp” guys out there want to tell me how awesome it is – no it is not!)

It does not matter….
Nice tweak here and there – 7% more damage here, 25% less vigor there, I really dont care….

tell us what you consider to do with the really not working very well petsystem?

Or is that also “working as intended” – cause if so I would not have to wait for patch after patch… you could save me some time reading the ranger forums

pretty please with a quaggan on top…

jonnis.2946:

Personally I use the main hand sword a lot in PvP, and do this mainly by disabling the auto attack, though I don’t feel its always necessary. For anyone irritated by not being able to dodge, just try it with the autoattack disabled and see how much you can improve when you control the leap movement.

…beating the dead horse some more

Even though there are some neat tricks you can do by disabling autoattack on sword#1, and also get more control over your character in the process, it still feels like a workaround to the issue most brought up with the sword – the inability to dodge during the certain parts of the chain.
Another workaround is to swap weapon and dodge. Should we really have to resort to workarounds?

“All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional”

Currently being the keyword here. For some QOL improvements, I hope you change your intentions some day.
No don’t change the behavior of sword#1 (I love it!), just allow dodge to override all skills (goes for all classes).

OGDeadHead.8326:

Then again, why even bother asking for feedback in the first place? Just for show, or?

Like I said, once in a blue moon, a developer type person will see feedback and go “hunh, that really is a good idea” and go with it. It’s rare, but it does happen.

In the grand scheme of it all though, it’s ANET looking at a barometer. Seeking validation of sorts.

Like, no dev can behold themselves to us (the players). We are too many and too varied… but if enough of us give something the thumbs up, there’s a sort of comfort in knowing people agree with you.

It’s also far far superior to the random changes in a silent black vacuum where we all shout at the darkness without even an echo as a response.

OGDeadHead.8326:

jonnis.2946:

Personally I use the main hand sword a lot in PvP, and do this mainly by disabling the auto attack, though I don’t feel its always necessary. For anyone irritated by not being able to dodge, just try it with the autoattack disabled and see how much you can improve when you control the leap movement.

…beating the dead horse some more

Even though there are some neat tricks you can do by disabling autoattack on sword#1, and also get more control over your character in the process, it still feels like a workaround to the issue most brought up with the sword – the inability to dodge during the certain parts of the chain.
Another workaround is to swap weapon and dodge. Should we really have to resort to workarounds?

“All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional”

Currently being the keyword here. For some QOL improvements, I hope you change your intentions some day.
No don’t change the behavior of sword#1 (I love it!), just allow dodge to override all skills (goes for all classes).

The fact is the ranges on the 2nd and 3rd part of the sword weapon are 400+. This means that the auto attack chain will follow an opponent for you rather than forcing you, like on pretty much any other melee attack chain, to follow them for yourself. Yet another example of passive play for the ranger, and yes its unique. I’d much rather have another one of the attacks be a melee range attack though and be able to dodge in it, the only time you can execute a dodge, is just after the third part of the AA chain and its impossible to interrupt the chain.

This makes for terrible terrible play at high levels, as you can’t use the evades efficiently in clutch situations. I can’t think of another weapon that does this, look at the GS attack chain. You can interupt any one of the three spells at any time by using another weapon skill, which you can’t do with the sword.

Personally I believe the reason they dont want to change it is that its the only melee weapon in the game that does a lot of the movement for you, add to the list yet another ranger class tool that is designed to be basic. The frustration from a lot of players that enjoy ranger is based around all this passive play designed for beginners, our best condition removal is passive, whatever % of our damage is pet damage, passive, melee tracking, passive, pet control skills/heals, passive or so out of our control they may as well be.

I really enjoy my ranger still, and look forward to the next patch given that I think the support provided will be very powerful. I agree that the sword AA needs some work, but I just can’t see it happening because Rangers continue to be the beginner class.

jonnis.2946:

OGDeadHead.8326:

jonnis.2946:

Personally I use the main hand sword a lot in PvP, and do this mainly by disabling the auto attack, though I don’t feel its always necessary. For anyone irritated by not being able to dodge, just try it with the autoattack disabled and see how much you can improve when you control the leap movement.

…beating the dead horse some more

Even though there are some neat tricks you can do by disabling autoattack on sword#1, and also get more control over your character in the process, it still feels like a workaround to the issue most brought up with the sword – the inability to dodge during the certain parts of the chain.
Another workaround is to swap weapon and dodge. Should we really have to resort to workarounds?

“All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional”

Currently being the keyword here. For some QOL improvements, I hope you change your intentions some day.
No don’t change the behavior of sword#1 (I love it!), just allow dodge to override all skills (goes for all classes).

The fact is the ranges on the 2nd and 3rd part of the sword weapon are 400+. This means that the auto attack chain will follow an opponent for you rather than forcing you, like on pretty much any other melee attack chain, to follow them for yourself. Yet another example of passive play for the ranger, and yes its unique. I’d much rather have another one of the attacks be a melee range attack though and be able to dodge in it, the only time you can execute a dodge, is just after the third part of the AA chain and its impossible to interrupt the chain.

This makes for terrible terrible play at high levels, as you can’t use the evades efficiently in clutch situations. I can’t think of another weapon that does this, look at the GS attack chain. You can interupt any one of the three spells at any time by using another weapon skill, which you can’t do with the sword.

Personally I believe the reason they dont want to change it is that its the only melee weapon in the game that does a lot of the movement for you, add to the list yet another ranger class tool that is designed to be basic. The frustration from a lot of players that enjoy ranger is based around all this passive play designed for beginners, our best condition removal is passive, whatever % of our damage is pet damage, passive, melee tracking, passive, pet control skills/heals, passive or so out of our control they may as well be.

I really enjoy my ranger still, and look forward to the next patch given that I think the support provided will be very powerful. I agree that the sword AA needs some work, but I just can’t see it happening because Rangers continue to be the beginner class.

The Ranger is inherently the leisure mode class of GW2. Even our best pvp build is just degen/regen tank cheese that’s more about stat stacking than actual game play.

It’s incredibly frustrating when requests for more active play options are answered with spirit changes and buffs to bark skin.

Malin.2490:

Do not remove the evade on the greatsword!!!

That evade is almost OP if you’re very skilled.

If you’ve mastered ranger sword by turning off autoattack and hitting 1 manually, try doing the same thing with GS. You hit 1, 1, then you wait until the opponent’s attack is about to fire. Hit 1 and you evade it. 2 seconds later you can do it again.

Heh a year and a half to just now say “working as intended” on the 1h sword?
Sounds a bit like “we tried and can’t figure it out, so… working as intended”

If it was truly intended, it would have been clarified long before a year and a half of constant complaints of it.

Just my thoughts from reading that line.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.
-snip-

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.

Thanks,

Jon

Hey Jon,

at first, thank you for answering on that poblem, we (the ranger community) waited for a statement for over a year.
But the problem still remains.
I’m (and most others) sure are fine with movement skills that are not interruptible, but our AA has 2 Movement-Skills.
Try to log in, go to the Heart of the Mists and just try to evade without disabling it. If you’re not very, very good at timing your dodge, you can’t evade while AA’ing.
Ranger is the only class, that has a Weapon, where you can’t evade properly while your AA is activated.
I’m not saying you need to make Movement-Skills interruptible, but please make it possible that the dodge comes after them and won’t get ignored.
Just let the current movement finish and then the dodges comes and the AA starts again from skill 1.
That way we could use dodge too (without limiting our weapon choice):
- if we dodge trough the target → good, we’re behind them, even if our AA starts again, they won’t hit us
- if we dodge away from them → the next movement skill shouldn’t get us right back in front of them
and you wouldn’t have to change movement skills.
But please, please make the AA not ignore dodging anymore (a important game mechanic!), because currently it just gets ignored

TL;DR: No need for interruptible movement skills, just let the dodge come after the current movement so the AA doesn’t ignore what the player wants

JonPeters.5630:

Main-hand sword

…snip….

In other words: “It’s not broken, it’s advanced”

I respectfully disagree.

A post was made in the main thread about the dodge-locking of sword 1 (thanks, Solandri!), because of the leaps. I rarely use sword for this reason, and only recently realised that the dodge prevention lasts for a good fraction of a second after the actual leap has finished, into the next skill. I fully understand not being able to dodge out of a leap, but preventing dodge in the gaps between leaps certainly feels like a bug. There’s a bug report thread here.

Regarding changing the greatsword, I’m apprehensive. I love how ranger GS feels, primarily because it’s a defensive weapon, and each of its attacks seems purposeful. The evade on AA helps the ranger stay alive in skirmishes, even if the damage is scaled back to compensate.

While a finisher on the auto might be nice, I wouldn’t want to give up the evade for it. The evade is always useful in solo and group encounters of all kinds. A whirl finisher would be very situational, and only have a tiny chance of any effect in solo combat. In PvE, it could even pull unwanted mobs…

It would arguably be better in group encounters, when there are lots of fields around, and you want to hit everything, but to have a variety of fields while solo, a ranger would have to spec traps, or slot certain pets.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

Merge the weapon traits. Bow damage should be merged with cooldown. Eagle Eye could merge with spotter.

Merge the Two-handed sword trait. Cooldown and damage.

Please make axe trait also affect offhand axe for the crit damage bonus, as the mainhand axe is a CONDITION weapon and has little use for crit damage bonus.

Path of Scars could use a reduction in cooldown and Whirling Defense’s damage should be increased considering its channel time.

Please buff Barrage’s damage. It’s a really inadequate skill for its cooldown, and an aoe cripple doesn’t justify it given how efefctively elementalists with staff and engineers and necromancers control areas with not only cripple but the more powerful chill.

JonPeters.5630:

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

Following that line of logic:

Guardian’s have a 5 point trait that gives them 5 seconds of vigor (5 second-cooldown) on a critical hit. Compared to the engineer’s grandmaster trait and the ranger’s adept trait, this is vastly overpowered and needs to be moved to a grandmaster and its duration cut to 3 seconds.

Warrior’s longbow trait gives it a range increase and cool-down reduction. Compared to the ranger this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Warrior gets a greatsword skill that decreases cool-down and gives him might on criticals. Compared to the ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Warrior gets a trait that allows rifle shots to piece and reduced their cooldown. Compared to this ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Bri.8354:

JonPeters.5630:

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

Following that line of logic:

Guardian’s have a 5 point trait that gives them 5 seconds of vigor (5 second-cooldown) on a critical hit. Compared to the engineer’s grandmaster trait and the ranger’s adept trait, this is vastly overpowered and needs to be moved to a grandmaster and its duration cut to 3 seconds.

Warrior’s longbow trait gives it a range increase and cool-down reduction. Compared to the ranger this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Warrior gets a greatsword skill that decreases cool-down and gives him might on criticals. Compared to the ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Warrior gets a trait that allows rifle shots to piece and reduced their cooldown. Compared to this ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feline_Grace was also not touched which is odd given that it’s almost better than Natural Vigor since it works with vigor.

What I don’t get about Sword #1 is why would it be the only autoattack in the whole game that requires micromanagement to use effectively? I don’t think saying “working as intended” is an adequate explanation. I know some people like it, but they aren’t really getting the point. This is similar to what Jon said on the Mesmer board about not wanting to overload the auto to fix Scepter even though the auto is clearly the problem with it. They clearly are not paying enough attention to how important the autoattack on any given weapon is in order for that weapon to feel good.

The autoattacks need to be designed consistently and balanced against one another or removed altogether.

I rather have evade than whirl finisher on 3rd autoattack of GS. Whirl finisher is pretty much useless.

Putting evade on swoop… if I wanted movement evades, I’d just go for sword.

Also, rather than touch the greatsword third stage, buff its incredibly low autoattack damage.

People don’t use the greatsword over the mainhand sword mostly because there’s around a 13% difference in damage between the too.

Also, power specs are not run over condi specs because ranger condi’s are not halved in effectiveness when the pet is factored, while power based abilities are. Conditions bypass boons like protection; ranger power specs have no way to deal with boon spam.

And please implement aoe damage reduction to pets already. Increasing their HP even by 500% wouldn’t fix anything because of the raw damage that happens in WvW and skills like the SE path 1’s stacked mirrored blades one shotting pretty much most pets.

Make ranged pet’s range 1200 and allow melee pets besides drake to cleave.

Rangers feel useless in WvW because the pet is dead on arrival to begin with, pets don’t cleave, and rangers in general have very poor AoE damage options which are necessary in WvW.

a other buff plz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MAKE THE BIRK SKILL WHO GIVE SWIFTNESS HAS A SHOUT, A INSTANT SKILL CAST.

PLEASE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will be greathfull

I think that the evade on the GS autoattack is quite important. As it is now it means around 33% less damage taken. If we lose this the greatsword ranger will be alot squishier as he is now. This is especially true in zerg fights in WvW where the evade is one of the reasons why a ranger can participate in the melee train. If you take this away he will be quite alot weaker in melee zerg fights. And in the overall perception the ranger is already one of the most useless classes in zerg fights and has to fight to find his role and to be accepted.
Removing the dodge would be a rather large nerf especially since in zerg fights there is often lag which means that you can mainly use your autoattack and the evade helped alot.
Having the evade on swoop sounds of course interesting since it could not be interrupted any more. You could also actively use it as an evade in melee range by just swooping at your target which is directly in front of you – but in zerg fights this won’t work since you can’t always target an enemy directly in front of you in the middle of a zerg clash and the swoop CD is alot higher than the autoattack CD for the evade.
Also when fighting for example warriors or thieves in melee range the evade helps alot by mitigating quite some damage and since power rangers need buffs rather than nerfs this change might hit us hard.

Please keep this in mind when you decide about a change to the greatsword. A great and welcome change to the GS would be if you increased the range on GS 5 so that you can also hit a moving target. Otherwise the GS is a quite nice weapon as it is. I think if the damage of GS1 was increased by 10% without removing the evade and if you made the knockdown on GS 4 melee block faster the GS would be fine.

For love of all that is holy DO NOT remove the dodge from GS #1. Our pets are useless in a zerg fight (easy to fix, just say’n) and one of the few things that even begins to make up for it is the survivability that we get from dodging on the GS auto in zerg fights with so much lag you can’t do anything but auto attack.

Change the GS and you’ll just be digging us even deeper into the pit of WvW inefficiency and it’s awfully lonely at the bottom.

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

Holland.9351:

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

Agreed completely.

We need some more talk on where Bows are currently, because I’m very disappointed that they are so far back on everyone’s backburner now. Class defined by its mastery of bows: yea.

The MM trait line is simply too diluted to do any good for anything but melee weapons. It seems that balance wants everyone to main melee. GW2 hates circle kiters and ranged professions, as evidenced by the pure ineffectiveness of kiting, and missing out on vital group buffing when in ranged combat.

Longbow needs a real focus, and the shortbow needs moment of clarity to actually bring something useful to the table.

JonPeters.5630:

Power Rangers
No pun intended. As many have said these guys are in an interesting position. In some ways they can be very strong, but everytime I play my ranger this way it feel like it comes up a little bit short. I think this is because they are lacking a few things as either additional tools for greatsword or as utilities. Signets are the somewhat obvious utility choice but their effect is too varied to run a strong full signet build here. Conversely all traits associated with signets tend to increase in power the more you bring. What signets need is a good trait that synergizes with bringing a single signet, like Nature’s Voice does for shouts. This would let you bring maybe one or two signets and suppliment them with something else. One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.

The biggest problem for power rangers is that our traits are split between Marksmanship and Nature Magic, but we also need 30 in Wilderness for EB and we need about 20 in Skirmishing to get enough crit % and crit damage.

Holland.9351:

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

Good idea.

Holland.9351:

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

Would love to see this change, also please don’t nerf GS by removing the evade.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion…

I think my only qualm was cutting it so hard right off the bat. I understand and for the most part agree with you guys here, but I would have seen if a reduction to 33% was enough before taking it down to 25%.

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice
I think the biggest change of moving spirits unbound is it allows you to take this trait along with Nature’s Voice. Internally we have done some testing where you bring stone spirit, guard, and then still have a open third utility slot to make some truly good support ranger builds. Spirits have always had that feel and I think this brings that to the forefront.

Spirits in GW1 were interesting because of how they interacted not only with players but with each other and non-spirit abilities, some with only moderate investment. I think toning them down but making them more universally accessible is a really cool idea.

Power Rangers
One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.

I think rangers would rather have more frequent mobility than to have the recharge on Swoop nerfed to accommodate an evade that could make our disengaging ability OP. Perhaps increasing the average attack speed on the auto attack chain with a slight base damage/ratio buff (this would create slightly shorter but more frequent evades from the chain). GS also needs still needs improvement on its #4; the throw is numerically weak for damage and cannot cleave, and in return we get an counter that is beyond easy to bait/fake out. The counter attack is too slow, locks you in place (unless you cancel animation), and doesn’t knock foes back to an optimal distance to combo with abilities. (looking at #2 and #5)

Maul is still not up to par for damage due to its speed/telegraphing. I realize the GS is an interesting defensive weapon but there’s really no reason for people to be afraid of it right now.

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended.

It seems you’re referring to the auto attack chain, but what of #‘s 2 and 3? Hornet Strike is too slow/clunky to be reliably used for anything other than completely disengaging an opponent temporarily, with a too-short window to use a Monarch’s Leap with relatively unimpressive effects.

Serpent’s Strike has really nice reaction time, but has awkward pathing that for many rangers makes it used more for the free evade and less for damage/poison.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

Power Rangers
One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.

Thanks,

Jon

pls dont remove evade from chain! GS the only useful weapon in zerg fights ATM and we need a blast finisher on GS, not a whirlwind. If u remove that we lose third of our survivability in big fights (and we are a mid armor class not a warrior with 3,5k+ armor).

The funny thing with rangers we need to trait 30 point on a trait if we want one of our utility to work. 30 points on marks for signets, 30 points of skirmish for traps, 30 points on nature for spirits and 30 point nature+10 point on beast line for shouts. I think this is the rangers 2nd greatest problem (after the pets). Pls make signets to affect us without trait and shouts to buff allis if traited

JonPeters.5630:

Natural Vigor

I thought the power level was to differentiate the class from other classes. Unlike the warrior and guardian, the ranger represents the agility of a rogue-like class (similair to a thief) and to offset their lower armour (and less tanky utilities) they were expected to evade more often.

JonPeters.5630:

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice

Why is anyone bringing guard other than its low cooldown to trigger Nature’s Voice? In sPvP I’m sceptical of how useful the protection, stealth and clunky pet control are worth the slot. Do you really want players bringing skills, not because the skill is good, but because it triggers a trait? That’s not good for the people who don’t use that skill and it’s not good for people who want that trait to work well with other shouts. Spirits don’t feel good in PvE and I don’t think this will change that.

JonPeters.5630:

Power Rangers

You talked a lot about signets needing a trait similair to Nature’s Voice and then jumped straight to greatsword without giving us anything about signet traits. Signets feel all or nothing. They have good passives but their actives are almost worthless unless you’re traited 30 points into them (or you run Signet of Renewal). If you’re looking at anything, look at their actives when not traiting into Signet of the Beastmaster. I don’t think many rangers would care about a whirl finisher. The greatsword needs more DPS (especially if you remove the auto attack’s evade). Whirl finishers are just weak and a power ranger build will have to rely on allies for a decent combo field (because without traps or torch off hand – from condition builds, Healing Spring’s water field and the spider’s poison field are about all the ranger will produce on their own)

JonPeters.5630:

Main-hand sword

If you want a unique playstyle for a mainhand melee weapon you should give it to a class that has at least two mainhand melee weapons. We don’t know how long it will be before rangers get a high DPS and equal control melee weapon (let alone a main hand). The current dungeon meta requires high DPS melee weapons and rangers are being pigeon-holed into one that has significant issues. There are always players who like something that gets changed, that’s not a reason not to change it (especially if there is strong support to change it). You aren’t giving rangers a choice here, the greatsword doesn’t have the DPS of the mainhand sword and it doesn’t have an off hand. At the very least could you alter how it works depending on the range from the target? If the player is within range of hitting the target no leap takes place (also note this isn’t a leap finisher, so it has the drawback of being a leap without on of the primary advantages of a leap). Leaping to a target you are already in range of is nothing but a hindrance in PvE. People want to play the ranger class in PvE today and on the same level as a warrior, guardian or thief. It’s not a very good situation for them to be in when they have to wait for some far off possibility of a viable melee main hand DPS weapon.

I’m also concerned about how limited balance goals appear to be when it comes to PvE. Can you give us some idea of how you think the class is doing in PvE and what you expect your balance decisions are going to do for the class in PvE? It would go a long way to alleviating the idea that the game is balanced almost exclusively for sPvP.

Am I the only one who wants to see that evade on GS gone? If you want burst then stop using the GS as a DEFENSIVE weapon. It is just another passive mechanic that has no place in game. I would gladly trade that evade for damage boost.

Miflett.3472:

Holland.9351:

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

Agreed completely.

We need some more talk on where Bows are currently, because I’m very disappointed that they are so far back on everyone’s backburner now. Class defined by its mastery of bows: yea.

The MM trait line is simply too diluted to do any good for anything but melee weapons. It seems that balance wants everyone to main melee. GW2 hates circle kiters and ranged professions, as evidenced by the pure ineffectiveness of kiting, and missing out on vital group buffing when in ranged combat.

Longbow needs a real focus, and the shortbow needs moment of clarity to actually bring something useful to the table.

Oh so much of this, please! Finally, after so much reading of skills and traits balance since launch, two posts that resonate for me.

I have level 80’s in all professions (Ranger and Guardian both have world completion, 81% on my Engineer that I gave up on long ago) and each has their ups and downs, but Ranger is the one I feel has become more and more disconnected with what it felt like she was meant to be. In GW1, I made at least 4 level 20 rangers and I loved them so much.

PLEASE.. oh I beg you so much, PLEASE pay some TLC to the beautiful unicorns and rainbows that I worked so hard for, beyond adding more special effects.

2.
I don’t even mind if I don’t get any buff for making my pet stay off, I can survive with the shortbow pew-pewing as it is already, taking away the flying aggro beast in itself is enough of a buff

Sarision.6347:

Am I the only one who wants to see that evade on GS gone? If you want burst then stop using the GS as a DEFENSIVE weapon. It is just another passive mechanic that has no place in game. I would gladly trade that evade for damage boost.

That’s the thing though: Ranger GS is a defensive weapon. It’s what separates it from a ranged utility weapon like the Mesmer, an offensive weapon like the Warrior or Guardian. If your skilled, the evade on chain 3 isn’t passive. Turn off auto attack and time your 1’s, and you’ll have an evade every 3-ish seconds that is actually timed. A whirl finisher wouldn’t add much in terms of offense. Honestly, it’s a pathetic finisher that relies on something worse than passive play — luck.

They never learnt the lesson of “don’t fix something that’s not broken”.

GS#1 evade doesn’t make rangers OP. It’s just right as they always wanna make GS a defensive weapon. And it’s actually one of the very few reasons that players don’t immediately throw GS away. So now they think about taking it out?!

Sword#1 is clearly broken for the rooting yet after 1.5 year they suddenly claim it’s intended. Why not just admit they are not able/willing to fix a problem? Locking down a target doesn’t mean it has to nullify your dodge. Stop justifying your bugs to players like they are 3 year olds.

Someone is clearly as clueless on fixing bugs as rationalizing it.

Sarision.6347:

Am I the only one who wants to see that evade on GS gone? If you want burst then stop using the GS as a DEFENSIVE weapon. It is just another passive mechanic that has no place in game. I would gladly trade that evade for damage boost.

The evade on the GS is one of the only things keeping power rangers relatively alive in front line fights in WvW. I dislike running conditions because of the passive use of cooldown play it brings. As such, the evade on the 1 allows me to control when i want to evade simply by removing the auto attack.

But adding an evade to swoop will create a much better escape mechanic than already present, the only problem with that being I would rather they look at ways for rangers to stay in fights than simply run from them. Trait reliance for reliable condition removal being one of the main problems. Builds without EB are doable but you are handicapping yourself out the gate. Fix the reliance on one trait line for active condition removal (signet mastery and SoR is a clunky removal that would only be worthwhile if the cooldown was reduced to 30 sec with trait and just removed conditions as opposed to being a sacrifice your pet button).

I reckon we could shave a little bit of distance on gap closers across all classes. Whats the point of picking up ranged weapons if it deals less damage than melee and it takes a single gap closer for people to reach to you? Either that or increase shortbow range to at least 1000.

An above poster said:

“I realize the GS is an interesting defensive weapon but there’s really no reason for people to be afraid of it right now.”

The reason people are not afraid of it right now is because that evade is keeping the damage in check.

Malachi.1836:

The evade on the GS is one of the only things keeping power rangers relatively alive in front line fights in WvW. I dislike running conditions because of the passive use of cooldown play it brings. As such, the evade on the 1 allows me to control when i want to evade simply by removing the auto attack.

I would prefer the devs create better means of sustain than relying on passive mechanics.

Actually, if they insist on leaving in the “cannot dodge” lock-out on the Sword auto-attack, there is a simple solution that should please everyone here. Just put in Evade frames during any portion of their attacks where they cannot use dodge.

Ohoni.6057:

Actually, if they insist on leaving in the “cannot dodge” lock-out on the Sword auto-attack, there is a simple solution that should please everyone here. Just put in Evade frames during any portion of their attacks where they cannot use dodge.

The sword is alright. Once you’ve played a ranger long enough you’ll learn all the tricks and gimmicks to get around broken aspects of the class. Apparently they are all “working as intended”.

Heres a video showing ways to dodge properly while using the sword. Works well with warhorn since the #4 skill is pretty useless and you dont have to blow its cooldown.
http://youtu.be/AUwHpIxY52U