Guild Wars 2

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.

Even so it’s more hassle than it should be. I know that there are really good, really experienced players that can make this work, and that’s all well and good, but you shouldn’t have to be really good or experienced just to execute the basic functions of your class.

I play all classes, and this is the same issue I have with Mesmers. Experienced Mesmers will tell you how great everything works, and if you really know what you’re doing then you can be very effective with that class, but at basic levels of skill and understanding the class is a fiasco! Just because something works at very high skill levels doesn’t mean that the developers are absolved from making it work well at low skill levels too. Every class and weapon combo should work well with moderate skill and experience. Greater skill should open up more options that would increase your efficiency or make the difference in high level PvP matches, but none of that should be necessary to do things as simple as “dodging attacks.”

I hope the main hand axe doesn’t get overlooked, it desperately needs some attention too. Remove one bounce and buff the first hit(At least 30% boost; the dmg is so low it deserves more than some measly 5% boost or such as is the norm) and change Honed Axes trait to 10% higher critical chance on axes. Presto, you’ve got a mainhand that works for both power and condition builds and becomes a reasonable alternative to those who don’t like the sword root until we get another mainhand which will come quaggan knows when.

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.

I suspect if the evade was removed the base DPS wouldn’t be increased (or Jon’s suggested “whirl” finisher would be the only addition and it would be a moot point for a lot of rangers). If it was a trade between the passive evade and having the ranger’s greatsword be similair to the warrior greatsword’s DPS I suspect a lot of rangers would make the trade. I personally doubt that would be the case and this change would adjust the defensive edge of this weapon (frequent passive evades) and give less evades overall but a controlled evade instead without a DPS increase. Note the warrior already has this on their greatsword yet Swoop doesn’t function like that.

It’s also ironic they want to move away from passive evades and give control of them to the ranger but are willing to leave passive leaps on the main hand sword instead of moving them off of the auto-attack and forcing players to work for their snares and target positioning. The former isn’t complained about, the latter is somewhat controversial.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

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.

With all due respect, i think this is a rather poor design choice. I’d rather see every class look at the other and see “wildly overpowered” traits and skills than see every major trick taken down so that classes only end up different because of a couple vaguely different numbers.

In the case of the ranger, we had a good few aces in our sleeve to bring something unique to the table. We had cheap on-demand short access to quickness, which gave us a little extra burst every now and then and made me one of the best options for “stomping duty” in wvw. That’s been taken away. Our pets could scale wall to harass defenders and siege, that’s gone. We could send the pets down the walls to attack siege, that’s gone. Our pets could be sent to attack at large distances in wvw to chase away pursuers or attack far away siege engines, that’s gone too. Our pets despite their failings had a hard rez, it’s gone. We had an extra long cripple field, it’s been cut in half. The 15s water field? Trimmed down and accelerated to be more bursty like everything else in this game. Two different styles for 1200 range combat? Make that one.

What’s left now? The various pet changes have reduced the pet to basically some random additional melee range damage. All utility is gone, it’s just about DPS. Even better, to use one of the buffs we should be grateful for, we have to spam Guard and force our pet to disengage/reengage all the time. The pet is supposed to be our main class mechanic, but it’s been reduced to the sorry state of a vaguely controlled weapon.

Now the endurance. Meh. It’s not even that i find it to hurt that much, frankly, i don’t think it’s going to be that huge, but there’s that feeling that once again, one of the few things left making a ranger is taking a hit. Yes we had pretty good endurance. So? What’s wrong with a class having better/cheaper endurance than the others? Should we have as much boon access as guardians then?

Mesmers have the incredible time warp, thieves can disengage at will, guardians have the cheapish vigor uptime ever, warriors can tank/dps/cc all at once, etc. That’s the whole point of classes. We should be jealous of the good stuff of all the others, but be able to say “well, sure, but then i wouldn’t give away [this] for it”. The more it goes, the less [this] i have on the ranger that makes me think that yes, i’ve got my tricks too. I’ve got a Mesmer, a Warrior and an Engi at 80 in addition to the ranger, there’s lots of stuff i love on each. I don’t like the seemingly constant streamlining that seems to be your approach to balance. It feels like you’re trying too hard to drag down classes to a common flavourless denominator.

Mardermann.7468:

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…

This, this and this again.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere, I’d like the question to incorporate the fact that we risk being without the class defining ability for 60 secs..

Can we get a reply once the devs have decided if they want to keep the old GS or change it?
I think a lot of us are very concerned about it.

Natural Vigor

This trait is just simply less OP than Critical Infusion or Vigorous Precision (Vigor can be buffed in duration).
This change will not ruin survivability but try to be fair with every class.

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice

Good for builds diversity.
But concerning “Guard” spamming with Nature’s Voice, do you like the idea that we use a skill to trigger a trait? Should we not use a skill because of the skill itself?

Power Rangers

So you say we won’t have to make of full signet build to have a nearly decent power build? Seems great!
Concerning the 3rd attack of the auto-chain I don’t think a whirl finisher will empower it. To empower Greatsword you can increase the base damage and/or add Might(Power Stab giving Might sounds nice)

Main-hand sword

How long do we have to wait for an other one handed melee option?
I really like Ranger offhand weapons but it’s means I have to choose a mainhand weapon… Crazy ninja sword or bouncy low DPS axe

cafard.8953 – well said, +1.

Devs, you don’t always have to take away something in order to give.

*

Opening strikes:
Needs some trait merging. Move Remorseless to Grandmaster Minor.

Beastmaster’s bond:
The cooldown is waaay to long considering the tiny effects and the requirement needed. Too situational.

Active parts of signets should work on the ranger by default without having to trait for it. Too many signet traits.

*

Agility training:
Doesn’t make much of a difference at all because of the way pet works. Consider adding a faster attack rate to this trait instead.

*

Nature’s voice:
This trait is more or less dependent on Guard. Well that’s fine, but what do you use Guard for, other than to trigger this trait, honestly? You can no longer send pets up the wall in wvw, the only really useful and fun part of this skill.

I would suggest you change Guard to instant cast, and make it a pet buff only – skip the part of sending the pet away, no one uses it for that anyway, it’s akward, slow and annoying.

*

Instinctual bond:
Buff or rework this trait completly. It would be good to have your pet “lick wounds” with quickness, but that’s not possible. Pretty much useless.

Master’s bond:
This trait goes against one of the core mechanics if you will with the ranger class – pet swapping. Desperately needs an overhaul – for many reasons.

Speed training:
Useless with only 10%.

Compassion training:
Needs a buff if you want anyone to ever take this skill. How about condition removal on pet swap?

Rending attacks, stability training and intimidation training:
Remove the pet specifics of these traits – open up for more build diversity – and yes, that includes pets (and having different types of pets).

Fortifying bond:
Drop the duration restrictions!

*

Also consider adding an evade mechanic on pet F3, would go a long way to allow us to get pets out of danger.

I’m losing my hope with regards to the direction this game takes…

As you can see, hardly anyone thinks that your “works as intended” is a correct statememnt of the present state of affairs with regards to rangers, generally speaking. Either you ask us for feedback and do honestly consider our comments, or be blunt about it and say you do not really care.

Although rangers can be viable nowadays, as someone mentioned above, they are 8th/8 classes with regards to their usefulness in WvW, even PvE I would say.

I have played the ranger class from the very beginning of the game ( since its premiere ), and you haven’t yet figured out how to make all the weapons/traits useful, which saddens all of us. But when there is a chance for us to participate here, on the forums, and put forward some pieces of advice, you straightforwardly neglect them and go against the current.

And you are wrong in your choices. It definitely doesn’t “work as intended”.

Finally, although I personally think that the ranger is awesome with all its drawbacks ( I still wouldn’t choose another one ), the interesting point is made here by a rather well known ranger player, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bjq1vcnhpQ:

“Short bow is used by me only as a mobility/evasion tool. Nothing else is good about it.” That’s quite a big ( and a correct ) statement about the class that is actually archer-based.

Best regards

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.

These are great ideas, so don’t get me wrong… but they don’t solve much. Marksmanship is still a bloated tree and it forces further specialization into a single weapon by investing in the trees. I think all it would really end up doing is forcing people into a 30/10/30 build and dropping the shortbow entirely as most are only going 30 in marks for the signets or dropping marks entirely and pushing shortbow on condi/trapper specs.

Something needs to be done to move traits from Marks into another tree or merge some. Not further specialize the traits that are already there.

I love the decision on sword. I’m really looking forward to dec 10. Thanks anet, you guys rock!

“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.”

Wildly overpowered eh? Having said myself that Rangers do have access to quite a bit of endurance I do believe it is currently a great asset for Rangers. But wildly overpowered? As a class in general is there anything that a Ranger brings to WvW that gets people to go wild and say, “OMG here comes that Ranger yeehaw”, other than when it’s, “OMG Here comes that Ranger free bags!”

But like others have said. Move the trait instead of nerfing it? The class has few enough, “wildly overpowered”, traits as it is.

^_^

SubAce.9863:

“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.”

Wildly overpowered eh? Having said myself that Rangers do have access to quite a bit of endurance I do believe it is currently a great asset for Rangers. But wildly overpowered? As a class in general is there anything that a Ranger brings to WvW that gets people to go wild and say, “OMG here comes that Ranger yeehaw”, other than when it’s, “OMG Here comes that Ranger free bags!”

But like others have said. Move the trait instead of nerfing it? The class has few enough, “wildly overpowered”, traits as it is.

^_^

Ranger in wvw will be able to shout nature’s voice on the frontline with unbound spirits and a stability trained brown bear that was just more than doubled in effectiveness. Why are you complaining? Especially when endurance regen is getting reduced across the board.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

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.

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.

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.

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

All fair mr. Peters, high vigor regeneration can still be reached with the pet traits, and this is right, I don’t like passive gameplay that much, and yes, it was a bit OP against certain classes.

The sword is cool how it works, but sometimes when the server lags badly you are stuck for like 2/3 seconds, and this can get you killed, but this can maybe be fixed with your upcoming lag improvements, I hope…

Just one question :

Can you please fix a little bit our pet ? I think 90% of ranger can agree with me on this, I love my pet, it’s very tactical, some times I use him to be in 2 places at once and this is extremely usefull, the only problem is that it has still some bug problems, can you please let us know if you are working on that ? and what is you plans ?

- Skill reliability
- Pet movements
- Attributes scaling based on equipe

Vaxx.3178:

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.

That’s a good question, I don’t think they’ll be answering it though !

Put the dodge in the second attack, so its more close to a “on demand” dodge..

To get an idea of how the ranger appeals to players look at WvW. I personally play a ranger exclusively in WvW – but the higher end tiers laugh at the notion of rangers in WvW. WvW has become bash this and bash that. Hammer time! They love Elementalists, Mesmers, Guardians, Warriors, and Necromancers. So two other classes are scarce and one of them is completely avoided in most cases – the Ranger.

I believe the ranger needs a massive boost to catch them up to all the boosts given to every other class. I still love how a friend of mine says that the ranger is over powered.

An example of continued nerfs. Endurance regen reduction. One of the appealing factors. You do realize a warrior can almost continually evade with his horn out, don’t you?

And no matter what changes seem to made to the thief and mesmer they always seems to gain in power while the ranger stays the same or is nerfed further.

I’ve seen a lot of good suggestions on how to make the ranger better – but I’m afraid they will fall on deaf ears.

Please make improvements to make the ranger a desired asset in WvW.

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.

+as-much-as-possible

Ranger in Zerg´s could be possibel, and good too. But the current Meta is easy. Brains out, Push W+1 (or F1 if u are a warrior) and loot loot loot.

A Condition overload Meta is possibel. U can add so much conditions that even a “zerg´s” aoe clease can´t get them off.
And to do this, Engineer/Rangers (possibel thiefs) are an important part.

But to do this, it need´s time, theorycraft, testing, buildung a Setup new gear. And probably equal Zergs (number of players).
And a lot teamplay.

So let the people play their brain afk Meta…… WvsW isn´t balanced, and it can´t be balanced. To talk about Balance in WvsW.
U need an equal number of players at the same (average) skillvl and teamplay, and no lags…does this ever happen?

Couple of quick thoughts.

General – Not too excited, some decent trait changes and tweaks to longbow but too many base mechanics of the class are either underpowered or broken therefore tweaking traits is just going to gloss over the real issues with the class.

Sword – As has been said sword is only melee 1 hand weapon and the dancing root is place is very annoying. I shouldn’t have to disable auto-attack and time attacks with dodges and so on for it to be effective. This either needs to be changed or an additional main hand melee weapon needs to be added.

Greatsword – Personally I like the evade. Greatsword is a defensive weapon with a small burst from maul. Of course I’d like to see an increase in damage on it. I suppose if you want to melee for high zerker like damage you have to use a sword but then with the aggravations sword brings people would rather increase greatsword to be more offensive. Fixing main hand sword or introducing a more appealing main hand melee weapon may quell this debate and potentially shift greatsword from defensive to offensive.

Axe – Needs a re-work. Damage is too low, aftercast is long, the target bouncing is interesting though. Either needs a damage increase with shorter aftercast or turn main hand axe into a melee weapon.

Skills – Only thing I want to offer here is Viper’s Nest. Could this be a combo field: poison or even dark perhaps?

Terkov.4138:

CETheLucid.3964:

thefantasticg.3984:

-snip-

…

I like pet too. And? Just because of that there is no reason to don’t have another OPTION. Just because one person likes or dislikes something, it shouldn’t limit all other ppl playing this class.

I learned to love pet classes in WoW, where I could do my normal dmg without thinking about pet and still be happy owner of pet.
Even in GW1 ranger could use pet and still don’t kitten his bow abilities (actually, I wanted pet so much I threw it into standard barrager build lol).

I wasn’t going to comment because this thread is so deep, and these posts are pretty old, but come on.

I don’t really like the thief steal mechanic. I think it’s dumb. I am perfectly ok with the thief’s mechanic being entirely based on initiative. Just because I don’t like it, though, doesn’t mean I get to just replace it. I really hate the Warrior mechanic. Compared to everyone else it just seems dumb. Charge up one big attack and then use it. That’s not very exciting. I still don’t get to have any options, though, that’s the mechanic. The Mesmer mechanic is also kind of annoying. It’s more advanced than both Thief and Warrior, since you have three or four different things, but it’s all based around breaking the things you’ve been spending your time building up. That seems dumb to me. There’s just nothing I can do about it. So why should any Ranger get to replace their pets just because they don’t like them?

That is the class mechanic. If they haven’t fixed it in all this time why in the world would you think they would replace it? Why do you think you deserve to have something different when no one else has that option? Because you want it more? Because unlike anyone who plays these other classes and realized their class mechanics aren’t for them you have some deep seeded need that forces you to play this class regardless? It just makes no sense.

I don’t like the seemingly constant streamlining that seems to be your approach to balance. It feels like you’re trying too hard to drag down classes to a common flavourless denominator. Quote from Carard, (put this way since quoting keeps bugging)
+1000000000000

Couln’t have said it better myself. Stop making classes weaker, so they get at a point of of ‘not being unique’ anymore Jon Peters. We’ve come at a point that there is only one way to keep balance in check: to counternerf meta every single time it pops up, and if you do that the game is gonna die slowly with no build variance whatsoever left over. I quit ele, mesmer, necro, guardian, thief all because of this. I cannot return to these classes because you took away there unique skills (and fun). Ranger is still appealing to me (even with all the crazy downsides), but soon if what you say here is ‘final’, then the feather might be broken without chance for repair.

Now on traits/skills discussion.

Natural vigor is overpowered (Jon peters words). It incredible satisfies me he had to go as far as compare to other professions to say WHY it’s op. And in doing so he fell into the trap. Jon Peters is wrong, and we can fully argumentate it, what a satisfaction, see following list why.

Warrior can have Natural vigor AND a full cond cleanse in one skill by only sacraficing utility slot. (Signet of Stamina). 10 traits point even improve it a lot (signet mastery).

Vigor is DOUBLE As good as Natural vigor. DOUBLE. TWICE AS GOOD. LET THIS WORDS SINK INTO YOUR MIND, Jon. Guard/warrior (horn)/mesmer can keep it up with 5 points traits, almost forever. Are you ultimately joking me? A trait thats 50% as good as other profession traits, costing the same, is overpowered? Nice joke man.

What about 18k base hp? let’s face it, it’s overpowered, cause ele’s have only 11k. What about 400 higher base armor? let’s face it, it’s overpowered, cause 3 professions don’t have access to it.

This list of stuff of other profession being better in something then ranger for no apparent reason is ETERNAL, i would litterally fill 5 forum pages with it. Let this sink into you Jon. Now think about what does ranger have that’s better then other professions? Natural vigor… and uhm what else? oh crap nothing.

Signets? thief/warrior much better.
Armor? Guard/warrior better.
Condition removal? Almost every prof better.
Hp? Necro warrior better.
Condition application? Necro/engie better
Passive healing? Guard/warrior better
Stun application? Warrior better.
Dps? Mesmer, warrior, guard, better. Even some others too i think.
Evasion? Maybe now a tie with thiefs, but soon by your choice gone.

List goes on.

Why is warrior allowed to have so much things they are better in then any other prof in the game, when ranger must have their few ‘strenth’ totally nerfed, so they can’t be special enough anymore, to be strong in that aspect? Seriously, take a break from balancing. You guys are so rushing stuff (bit to passionate maybe?) that you forgot nerfing is bad. You admitted at start of game ‘no no nerfs will not be the biggest part of balance we will always boost other stuff in comparison’. Right……

Everytime forum discussion pops up ‘ranger is weak’ one of the few counter arguments is natural vigor and healing spring, seems like you are slowly taking those two down as well. Guess Ranger will be officially without counter arguments bottom of the meta.

One thing i’ll admit is, purely from ranger only (ignore all other prof in game), natural vigor may be a bit op. But if you nerf that you gotta work a lot harder on the ramifications. You should have started with perma vigor nerfs (wich you didn’t, warrior/guard/mesmer stay untouched), those are double as good as this, and don’t even get a nerf… Big mistake there jon Peters. What’s worse these profs all have (easy) access to invulnerable skills, i wich ranger doesnt, how will we make up for this? Crap we can’t. Natural vigor was the only compensation we had and so far it worked adequate.

JonPeters.5630:

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.

So the dodge lock that occurs for a full second after the end of the leap while literally not doing anything, no animation, no action, nothing, is working as intended?

Recently, so no better reason than to screw around and see if I could get the hang of the sword, after all, I started playing with it in between offshoots. I have participate in many of these sword debates in favor of major overhauls, but I totally understand that it’s unfair to change the weapon to please some people when there are others who like it as it is.

Step one is, turn off auto-attack. This is the only way to use Sword effectively. Then attack something. Attack, Kick, Leap. Leap finishes, there is no movement. Auto is off, so no follow up attack. Dodge. Nothing happens. This is working as intended and not a bug? Really? No other leap works like this. All other leaps allow you dodge immediately after the leap finishes, but not Sword chain 3. So are you absolutely certain this is working as intended?

Kal Spiro.9745:

JonPeters.5630:

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.

So the dodge lock that occurs for a full second after the end of the leap while literally not doing anything, no animation, no action, nothing, is working as intended?

Recently, so no better reason than to screw around and see if I could get the hang of the sword, after all, I started playing with it in between offshoots. I have participate in many of these sword debates in favor of major overhauls, but I totally understand that it’s unfair to change the weapon to please some people when there are others who like it as it is.

Step one is, turn off auto-attack. This is the only way to use Sword effectively. Then attack something. Attack, Kick, Leap. Leap finishes, there is no movement. Auto is off, so no follow up attack. Dodge. Nothing happens. This is working as intended and not a bug? Really? No other leap works like this. All other leaps allow you dodge immediately after the leap finishes, but not Sword chain 3. So are you absolutely certain this is working as intended?

He said so – it is so – ltp
It is working as intended (like the pets) ;-)
/ end sarcasm

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

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.

Jon

Rofl…. NO… jon….Bloody No…

The Evade on the Auto Attack is one of the reasons the weapon is pretty much are only weapon useful for Large Fights in World vs World.

Swoop Doesn’t need an evade, Its there for 2 purposes, Getting me to the Fight, and Getting me away from the Fight… an Evade will not help that..

Also what Signets need is you to bloody remove Signet of the Beastmaster so Bow Users can actually use Signets active abilities (Right now they have to give up Longbow Range or Pierce Arrows and can’t use that other bloody trait you added either)

Power Rangers have to many needed Traits in the Master part of the Tree… You need to combine some of them or move them to other tree’s

Greatsword as a weapon is not a bad weapon, The only ability that annoys me right now is the number 5 Ability, It doesn’t Synergize well with Moment of Clarity (they provide the same effect) It also has an incredibly short range and long animation time.

Other problems with Power Rangers extends to think like Our Pets being a mediocre system that you really should redo

Orodret.8230:

Dam, thats a wall of text. sorry

Rather than reply to your own post, why not click the little pencil icon on your original post in order to edit it and clean it up a little?

Xsorus.2507:

The Evade on the Auto Attack is one of the reasons the weapon is pretty much are only weapon useful for Large Fights in World vs World.

Swoop Doesn’t need an evade, Its there for 2 purposes, Getting me to the Fight, and Getting me away from the Fight… an Evade will not help that..

This. You would be nerfing survivability of rangers by removing evade on GS#1. Evade on swoop – what for? I don’t need it, not sure anyone ever asked for it. It would not compensate loosing evade on #1.
This combined with the proposed nerf to Natural vigor seems to point, imho, that you’re trying to lower survivability of this class.

Im just wondering if moment of clarity dec 10 only increases the stun? cause there is daze in there as well, would that be a typo perhaps or they’re really just increasing the stun? lol

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.

Greatsword already can have incredibly high Burst, I’ve got builds were Maul can hit for 7-8k on Average…That’s good Burst…

What you’re not understanding is how much bloody damage that auto attack saves a Ranger in a Zerg Fight.

Plop on a greatsword sometime in WvW, and Charge in with a group, Pop Rampage as one and just spam the 1 key, You’ll cleave, do ok damage, But most importantly, Look at how much Evade Spam you get…If that evade didn’t exist, Everytime you saw Evade Spam, THat’s something that would of hit you instead.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Xsorus.2507:

The Evade on the Auto Attack is one of the reasons the weapon is pretty much are only weapon useful for Large Fights in World vs World.

Swoop Doesn’t need an evade, Its there for 2 purposes, Getting me to the Fight, and Getting me away from the Fight… an Evade will not help that..

This. You would be nerfing survivability of rangers by removing evade on GS#1. Evade on swoop – what for? I don’t need it, not sure anyone ever asked for it. It would not compensate loosing evade on #1.
This combined with the proposed nerf to Natural vigor seems to point, imho, that you’re trying to lower survivability of this class.

Yeap, I use that Leap to get to fights, and to Run from Fights… I’d rather have the bloody Auto Attack Evade During the Fight more then a bloody whirl finisher.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Xsorus.2507:

The Evade on the Auto Attack is one of the reasons the weapon is pretty much are only weapon useful for Large Fights in World vs World.

Swoop Doesn’t need an evade, Its there for 2 purposes, Getting me to the Fight, and Getting me away from the Fight… an Evade will not help that..

This. You would be nerfing survivability of rangers by removing evade on GS#1. Evade on swoop – what for? I don’t need it, not sure anyone ever asked for it. It would not compensate loosing evade on #1.
This combined with the proposed nerf to Natural vigor seems to point, imho, that you’re trying to lower survivability of this class.

Not to mention that if evade on Swoop was invoked as an excuse to increase the cooldown, here goes wvw mobility.

I’m not really impressed by this patch for rangers.

LB buff is ok, well even if i don’t see why we have a restriction on distance…

But the rest of traits are useless, in lines where i won’t give any points to get 4 sec cripple instead of piercing arrows/range/spotter or anything else more usefull…

50% reduction damage when you are at 25%hp, generally you’re allready dead at 25% hp

Spirits are good only for spvp/pve

Pets are still useless, not responsive, bad ia, bad animation, stand still for F2 and not according to stuff (ascended gear)

But yeah, as allways, promise (remember the awesome patch for ranger we never see?)

JonPeters.5630:

I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.

Jon

Jon, you are doing some great work. Keep it up! Rangers all over tyria will love you if ou pull it off.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Agility training:
Doesn’t make much of a difference at all because of the way pet works. Consider adding a faster attack rate to this trait instead.

Actually I’ve been testing it as part of a big pet state update I was planning to post soon. It makes about a 20%-35% difference against a moving target. If you assume a 70%/30% ranger/pet damage breakdown, that translates into the ranger going from about 80%-85% effective against a moving target to 85%-90% effective. Pretty good for a 10 point trait.

Unfortunately it doesn’t stack with signet of the hunt. If it did, I suspect the two combined would be a popular PvP/WvW combo since it’d basically add about 10% overall to the ranger’s DPS.

Speed training:
Useless with only 10%.

Really should be a 20% reduction like every other skill speedup trait in the game. Actually, it should probably just be rolled together with Commanding Voice. This is another problem with ranger – too many traits which do similar but slightly different things. Separately they are never worth taking. Together in one trait they might be.

Rending attacks, stability training and intimidation training:
Remove the pet specifics of these traits – open up for more build diversity – and yes, that includes pets (and having different types of pets).

Yeah, the pet restrictions on these always seemed silly to me. Kinda like if you broke up guardian’s inspired virtue trait into 3 different traits which only affected one virtue each.

Fortifying bond:
Drop the duration restrictions!

It’s not a duration restriction. The boons which stack in duration stack just fine with the trait.

With regular boons, the duration depends on the source of the boon. I guess they had a problem coding it to transfer the original boon duration to the pet, so just made them flat durations. The only real problem I have with this is the most common form of aegis is the guardian passive which has a 10 hour duration (basically blocks the next hit you’ll take no matter how long). But the fortifying bond version is only 5 seconds. Would be nice if they special cased that particular version of aegis to also last 10 hours on the pet of obtained through fortifying bond.

And it needs to give stability to the pet too.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Natural vigor is overpowered (Jon peters words). It incredible satisfies me he had to go as far as compare to other professions to say WHY it’s op. And in doing so he fell into the trap. Jon Peters is wrong, and we can fully argumentate it, what a satisfaction, see following list why.

Warrior can have Natural vigor AND a full cond cleanse in one skill by only sacraficing utility slot. (Signet of Stamina). 10 traits point even improve it a lot (signet mastery).

I don’t really mind the vigor nerf, but you’re right. Warrior signet of stamina is missing from the vigor regens scheduled to be nerfed Dec 10. As much as I hate calling for other classes to be nerfed, this is one of those things where vigor needs to be nerfed for everyone or for no one.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Why is warrior allowed to have so much things they are better in then any other prof in the game, when ranger must have their few ‘strenth’ totally nerfed, so they can’t be special enough anymore, to be strong in that aspect?

What I’ve heard is that three of the balance team members roll warriors as their main, and they’re not exactly unbiased.

On that topic, agility trainin is what you take for birds, cats, and any other pet that stops to attack. Using it with dogs or spiders makes only a tiny difference. Some traits are very pet dependent. I hope that helps you guys.

i didn’t even want to comment, lost all hope seriously. No change to shortbow, sword or any of the real problems the class have, the change to the spirit trait is nice but doesnt make them better, they will still be useless and people wont use them.

Overall the patch is a big nerf to the class, they put up some nice things to try to cover up the nerf and some people felt for it. Same happen to quickness remember? yea it was for “everyone” but the class that was most affected was Ranger. Same with vigor, the only good thing probably that we have is dodging and avoiding dmg now we wont be as good while warriors and others vigor abilities, as someone else said, are not been touched. Then is just rangers that are getting the nerf, because is so overpowered, those 5 points in WS is one of the only useful traits we have.

JonPeters.5630:

I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.

Jon

I like the idea someone else had of basing the way the skill is working on the range from the target. I.e. Monarch’s leap when far away and Hornet’s Sting when close, rather than Hornet’s Sting always being default.

Regardless, the autoattack should not require micromanagement, so I hope you have an idea to fix this.

I wouldn’t trade the evade on power stab for a whirl finisher. I might trade power stab’s evade for increased auto attack dps and either vigor or endurance gain on hit, but I wouldn’t give it up for a whirl. Take a look at the guardian hammer skills. That’s what you should be shooting for on damage and utility for ranger greatsword.

Guardian Hammer Skills:

Skill #1 .8 > .9 >1.0 + 1.5 (.5 × 3) = 4.2 coefficient / 3.6 seconds, plus protection (33% damage reduction)
Skill #2: 1.75 coefficient, 5 second recharge, blast finisher, 300 range, hits 5
Skill #3: 1200 range immobilize, 15 second recharge
Skill #4: 750 range launch, 25 second recharge
Skill #5: 5 second ward and light combo field, 40 second recharge

Ranger Greatsword Skills:

Skill #1: .55 > .55 > .65 = 1.75 coefficient / 2.56 seconds, plus 1 second evade (39% uptime)
Skill #2: 1.6 coefficient, 6 second recharge, plus 5 stacks vulnerability.
Skill #3: 1100 range leap, 12 second recharge
Skill #4: 3 second block, 15 second recharge
Skill #5: 1 second stun, 25 second recharge

Skills 2-5 are pretty well balanced, but I don’t see any reason why the greatsword’s auto attack damage is 60% of what the hammer is at. You could raise them to something like .8 > .8 > .9 without taking anything away.

JonPeters.5630:

I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.

Jon

If it’s like the range dependent leap component I’ve been tossing around or something similar, then I’m all for it.

JonPeters.5630:

I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.

Jon

I have an idea!

How about adding evade to all three parts of sword#1? Now that would be awesome!!!

…well, one can always dream, right?

JonPeters.5630:

Evade on swoop was just an idea to give that build a second on demand defensive skill. It would certainly help close/escape as well because not being able to be bit while closing/escaping is going to improve your chances of doing so. Also gives you a reason to use that skill outside of those situations which would help with rotations IMO. That being said you are correct that removing evade from 1 is probably too harsh so this is a change that will probably have to wait a while for proper testing if it happens at all.

Jon

Want to add another defensive skill to Greatsword, remove the 150% damage bonus for the pet hit off the 5 Skill, replace with granting Aegis to the Pet and Ranger for 10 seconds. That way it works with Moment of Clarity, ad we gain a second Defensive ability.

However I’m still of the opinion Greatsword doesn’t have a problem, Its actually one of our better weapons after all the changes (Though I still wouldn’t say no to Maul having a Blast Finisher)

A lot of the problems with Power Rangers extend to Trait Line issues we’ve all brought up, Pet Issues (In general, Our utility pets being crap, leaving us to choose mostly DPS Pets..Pigs for example), and the shared dps of the pet + ranger.

Face it, the only Builds that really allow extreme damage right now are usually the ones that are fairly glassy, But why are they able to do that? Because they have multiple Invul’s, or Stealth, and other cooldowns they can pop and the possibility of sustain.

Warriors for example, They have access to their Regen (Adrenal) pretty early in a Tree, Rangers get it 30 Points in Beastmaster, Meaning most power rangers have to rely on Signet of the Wild for Regen

Warriors get Condition removal fairly early in their tree, While Rangers have to put 30 points in Wilderness Survival for condition removal to be viable.

You take the Average Power Ranger spec and what do you have?

30 Points in Marksman

20 in Skirmish (or 10)

and 30 Wilderness or 20 Wilderness If its 30 we have condition removal, if its 20 we have none worth anything.

our Regen is also a pitiful 67 points per second with no healing power, When its taking SoTW + Trolls to = Healing Signet of Warrior and 30 points in a line to get kittentier Condition removal compared to a Warrior do you really have to wonder why Power Rangers might not be favored.

We’re basically Forced into our Beastmaster builds…kind of like how Ele’s were forced into the D/D bunker builds.

Also I wanna add Jon, If you wanna improve Power Rangers some, you really need to change how the Pigs F2 work. Those Pets provide a lot of utility that the Power Rangers could use (since they aren’t speccing pets for damage) and would make them far far better then they are currently. Right now those Pets are a complete pain in the kitten to use though.

My biggest concern about changing Swoop in any fashion is we’ll end up getting the RTL treatment

Adding an evade to swoop would certainly benefit the class though.

JonPeters.5630:

Evade on swoop was just an idea to give that build a second on demand defensive skill. It would certainly help close/escape as well because not being able to be bit while closing/escaping is going to improve your chances of doing so. Also gives you a reason to use that skill outside of those situations which would help with rotations IMO. That being said you are correct that removing evade from 1 is probably too harsh so this is a change that will probably have to wait a while for proper testing if it happens at all.

Jon

I respect that you are at least willing to put some personal ideas out there. I know it can be tough to do so where criticism is pretty high, especially when you have to contend with being a marked target already for being a lead.

No matter how tough some of the criticism may be, I want you to know that for a majority of people who actually enjoy a meaningful and respectful conversation and exchange, you will never be looked down on for putting your ideas out there. Quite the opposite actually.

My only point, which I may have been a little rough on, was that for me personally, coming in to say others’ ideas doesn’t jive with a vision without also putting some questions or seeding some ideas into minds seems a little post-factum.

Also: bows! =>

I’m going to post what I posted in the other thread days ago here also for completeness sake…

Ranger: Why aren’t you bringing rangers up to par with warriors via more trait compression and fixes to the class in general?

Trait Compression & Modifications:

• Piercing Arrow: Only Pierces yet Warriors get the same trait that also reduces cooldown of the same weapons. Suggestion: Merge Quick Shot into this skill from the Skirmish tree.
• Eagle Eye: This should be affecting shortbows too. It’s illogical that we can only increase longbow range and not our other bow too. Suggestion: Add shorbow to the skill for range and damage increase. Move to Adept Tier and move Trait V to Master tier.
• Quick Draw: (See Piercing Arrow above): Replace this skill with the following: Reduce cooldown on weapon swaps by 5 seconds. (same as warrior minor trait).
• 5 pt Natural Vigor: Seeing as you’re nerfing this skill, why not make the other 25% a chance on hit. 10% chance to grant Minor Vigor (25% end rec) on hit. It still won’t be perma vigor but it won’t be as crippled either.
• Signet of the Beastmaster: This never should have been a trait seeing as pets are intrinsic to the class and you can’t get rid of them. This should have been a natural class ability. Suggestion: Remove this trait and just roll it into the class. Add a new Trait “Active Signet effects, affect nearby allies”. This gives more party buff ability to a class that is sorely lacking in this department.
• Nature Magic IX: This trait should be merged into the cooldown trait, Martial Mastery and left in Wilderness Survival.

Weapons:

• 1hs rooting not addressed. This weapon is terrible due to that and having to use kludgy dps killing workarounds in combat sucks (eg not attacking and turning auto attack off to try and prevent rooting so you can dodge when needed etc..)
• Longbow.. the “miss party buffs to do damage weapon”. the mid range boost is ok but the auto attack is too kitten slow. It should be a bit faster as you’re losing damage to flight time and range anyway.

Skills & Pets

• Spirits still have internal cooldown, can be killed, can’t be moved easily and don’t do damage on summons unlike Warrior Banners (w/traits). Suggestion; Remove the internal cooldown and on every 25% health lost give the buff to anyone in range.
• Pets still die to AoEs from bosses in world events and dungeons. The health increase did little to nothing to remedy this situation. Pets should either be immune to boss aoe damage due to not being able to dodge or get out of red circles or have the damage taken drastically reduced from these things, otherwise in the fights that really matter you’re losing out on 1/3 your damage.

PvE of course. PvP needs to be split from PvE in most every way.
That’s enough for now….

Looks like the rooting may be addressed on the 1h sword so that’s good. The other stuff stands and the point about the warrior being able to get both vigor and cleanse made above in 1 skill is very valid compared to Rangers.

If you want a on demand defensive move on #3, add a blind effect to it.

Not particularly overpowered, defensive and could be used in a rotation.

The base damage getting some type of increase would be nice. I heard someone say something about it granting might (similar to guardians) which would be nice.

Its just the auto attack that needs aid. =D

The traits to make bow good should have some consolidation though (signets included)

Otherwise, amazing. You have made the ranger community no longer angry at the world.

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

This change can be interesting, but there are some problems with this trait:
1. Only 2 skills are affected by this trait.
2. These skills have long CD (25s).
3. One of these skill (Concussion Shoot) is on a set (Short Bow) that won’t get a great bonus from the 50% more damage.

For those reason I suggest do decrease the CD of Hilt Bash and Concussion Shoot from 25s to 10s. This will bring the CD of that interrupt similar to Warrior or Engineer interruptions.

With this change I’m sure we will see roaming rangers. They will run power build based on Great Sword. And with this other change:

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

I think we will see something like 0/30/20/20/0.

I think that rangers won’t run that build unless you change the recharge of hilt bash because they have to lose a lot of defence and have a conditional stun every 25s with a 50% more damage on a skill like Maul won’t be enought.

An other ranger problem is the Sword autoattack Chain. Can you make it more responsive like you did with Warrior Axe Chain? I hate to be struck in a 2 seconds animation, it is like a stun.
I know that a lot of people are asking it and i agree with them.

Thx a lot for reading this i hope it can be usefull to you.