Guild Wars 2

This might be worth a few laughs. Anyone have idea for questions? If we ask enough, a few decent one’s might get through the crap. Like where’s that one trait that gives Ranger protection on dodge? Companion’s Might or whatever? I think it’s under Beastmastery.

On a serious note though, does the balance team think the Ranger is good where they are now? Any serious changes being considered/in pipes in regards to dungeons? In particular pathing around persistent danger zones/red circles. The prevalence of OHK mechanics that pets are unable to dodge. Scaling pets with regards to Ascended gear.

You think it’s a beginner guide because they never play the class and that’s all they know about it?

Please don’t be disappointing. Just use your pet well.

PVE isn’t the major problem for rangers- it’s wvw doing anything other than soloing..

For pve: why does my pet die so much and yet there is a huge cooldown after both pets are dead? What other class suffers a 50% damage nerf whenever something decides to throw out a random skill that wipes your pet?

This should be comedy gold.

I’d like to ask about what’s in store for the future for this class, and what plans you have to improve pets, but I think that’s not quite the type of questions you were looking for here?

Isn’t ‘^’ it a bit ironic to call a guide, a beginners guide? I mean… you start out being a beginner, you don’t need a guide to be one.

Wouldn’t it be better to make a more advanced guide? Like what can you know that everyone here don’t and that is why people complain so much about this class?

^ added this because the forums recognize the female breasts in isn’t_it.

Looking forward to seeing the devs’ take on rangers in PvE. Based on [DnT]‘s experimentation, we have come up with a melee sword-based build:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84268-the-perfect-dps-ranger-guide-for-real/ (not to be confused with Eugene’s Ranger Build)

Examples of PvE ranger play:
5 ranger Lupi speedkill (41 seconds): http://youtu.be/UikyW7ITpmQ
5 rangers vs Simin: http://youtu.be/EPRFNsBqac8
Ranger POV in 5:27 CoF P1 speedrun: http://youtu.be/PWQ-39_C8LI

This is going to be quite a laugh

I swear I will lose it if I see bearbow

What the best weapon combo(s) (sets) to normally run with?
Favorite Anet pet (most common one used by Anet players, those that normally play a ranger)?

Why can’t we get a land shark? (:p) Sharks are the coolest pet we can get currently.

This is going to be good…

How should we go about getting out of the animation that one hand swords lock us into while attacking so we may dodge or use others skills when timing matters?

Victory.2879:

PVE isn’t the major problem for rangers- it’s wvw doing anything other than soloing..

For pve: why does my pet die so much and yet there is a huge cooldown after both pets are dead? What other class suffers a 50% damage nerf whenever something decides to throw out a random skill that wipes your pet?

^

how to get pet to not die in zerg meta events with out it doing nothing? or in wvw zerg.

with out the pet staying by your side the whole time (basically, the pet just follows you like a useless ornament)

I’d like to know, from the developer’s stand point, where the Ranger’s niche is?

Explanation: We know that all classes should be able to reasonably be able to fill most roles so the players can play however they want. But regardless, certain classes shine in certain roles that other classes have difficulty. Guardians can make awesome tanks and support classes, Necros can make awesome condi builds and Warriors make awesome DPS builds. What’s a build that a Ranger can provide and that they do better than other classes?

They should do one for PvP ele, I would pay to see a Dev play the worst best PvP class in the game in high ranked matches.

That aside, I hope to see the dev with Kudzu, that would be really cool.

Will this include WvW with the PvE? It’s hard to keep track of things as one day WvW is PvP and the next it’s PvE!

But I’d have to say the most important issue for me with Rangers right now is how you could go in the WvW forum right now, ask people to rank the classes from most to least valuable, and every single person will rank the Ranger as last place. Why? Can/will anything ever be done about this?

The next big sticking point with Rangers is the Sword’s #1 attack with the leaps. This is a very difficult mechanic to use for new players which turns a lot of player’s off the weapon/class. The only way to use it is to turn off auto-attack which means the player is going to have a direct DPS loss on their highest DPS weapon!

Next up is pets… even with additional health (why no in WvW btw?), they are still more of a hindrance than an asset to the class. With poor pathing, their inability to hit moving targets, unresponsive F2 abilities, their inability to dodge, and the fact that the Ranger loses between 25-40% of its damage because it’s balanced under the presumption the class will have the pet up 100% of the time… which is impossible. Will pets be improved?

Next up is utility. The class offers some reasonable utility with Spotter (a tree that’s mostly there to help Ranged attacks, which are awful in PvE) and Storm Spirit (which requires a 30pt investment to actually be functional), and a waterfield (which recently had its duration reduced), but that’s about it? Does this utility offset the fact that the class does so much less DPS and the horrible pet mechanics?

The next thing I’d love to hear discussed is why the class is so passive in nature? We have other classes that are actually fun to play with engaging skills that need to be combo’d or timed perfectly that have amazing effects on the class and your group. The Ranger not so much… you kinda select something, hit f1, and auto attack. Why aren’t the weapons as engaging as other classes? The ranged weapons in particular!

That’s about all I’ve got for the PvE (slanted toward real PvE and less about WvW for now

Victory.2879:

PVE isn’t the major problem for rangers- it’s wvw doing anything other than soloing..

For pve: why does my pet die so much and yet there is a huge cooldown after both pets are dead? What other class suffers a 50% damage nerf whenever something decides to throw out a random skill that wipes your pet?

Because you haven’t gone into Beastmaster to improve your pet and you insist on using melee pets against bosses/large scale encounters. The beginners stream may be just what you need.

gonna watch this just to have a few laughs, gonna be good

What’s your favorite pets to run?

Lbow with brown bear and polar bear? or do you go with murellow and black bear?

GOSU.9574:

Because you haven’t gone into Beastmaster to improve your pet and you insist on using melee pets against bosses/large scale encounters. The beginners stream may be just what you need.

Which leads so logically into the question ‘Why do I suffer a 25% hit to my DPS for a class mechanic that only (vaguely) works right if I sacrifice 40% of my trait points on the altar of beastmastery and even then only if I’m using a type of pet that makes up less than 20% of the range of choices?’

I am eager to see this… ’cause I got a bear, awwwwwwww yeah!

skullmount.1758:

What the best weapon combo(s) (sets) to normally run with?
Favorite Anet pet (most common one used by Anet players, those that normally play a ranger)?

Why can’t we get a land shark? (:p) Sharks are the coolest pet we can get currently.

We do have landsharks.

News at 11: Developer ignores the problem areas and proclaimes nothing is wrong

Faux Sheaux.6179:

skullmount.1758:

Why can’t we get a land shark? (:p) Sharks are the coolest pet we can get currently.

We do have landsharks.

Oh, how I miss the landshark. Some things should never be patched.

Another thing that has been bugging me for months is just what the role of this class is. It falls well short of the class description. It would be interesting to hear the devs explain what the class means to them, where they feel it has hit/missed the mark, maybe where they see the class in 6 months, perhaps some high level improvements we could see between now and 6 months from now. Just a general direction for where the class is headed and where it should be.

At the very least this will help the community focus their attention on areas to improve the Ranger in a way ANet may actually approve of. If it’s not meant to be a viable ranged class and you want the bows to be more supportive in nature like they are now, let us know so we can maybe focus our attention on melee issues the class has (and I can quit…).

Will he find all the traits …?
Will he excuse the less then exceptable pet AI?
Will he show us how good he is in WvW? (eh its pve only, sorry)
Only time will tell…

but then he always has the “ranger is good as is, ltp” crowd behind him, so all is good

Faux Sheaux.6179:

skullmount.1758:

What the best weapon combo(s) (sets) to normally run with?
Favorite Anet pet (most common one used by Anet players, those that normally play a ranger)?

Why can’t we get a land shark? (:p) Sharks are the coolest pet we can get currently.

We do have landsharks.

Ok, thats pretty good. And judging from the other comment from someone, it was due to a bug?
We need a useful land shark

Don’t go pve mobs one by one. This is the one area ranger is good in, and thus will not look underpowered into. Go zerg wvw or hard hitting boss (dungeons, balthazar shrine boss). Then you will know how bad ranger mechanic is.

When will ascended powercreep scale with pets?
When will ranger sword skill 2+3 be instant cast and instant evades? Cause now they are to slow to dodge the ongoing aoe/attack.
When will gs auto attack be boosted? It doens’t have to be much, but 10%-20% would be a great deal in making ranger more viable in melee.
When will all the Shortbow nerfs, be reviewed again to conclude, you went to far. The weapon is subpar now.
When will pet skills response as fast as player skills? That means a fraction of time after you press the button (now it takes 2-10 secs, depending on how luckey you are).
When will grandmaster, master traits, boosting a weapon/utility skills, be moved to lower tiers, like it’s with other profs, to open up more builds with ranger?
When will rangers have sufficient condition removal? Warrior had only one weakness (conditions) and you totally bandaged it with, dogged march, cleansing ire and berserker stance boosts. If such a strong profession deserves band aid of their achilles heel (weakness), then ranger deserve so too.
When will traps hit 5 players? poison trap for sure doesn’t.
When will you make signet of wild a viable passive heal, (without cleric gear). now 61 hp/s is laugable. The engi ‘when use kit you are healed’, soothing mist (ele), guard virtue, adrenal health, they are all much much better. 100 hp/s is least. But since this eats up a valuable skill slot (more important then trait slots), i think base should be 125-150.

Will rangers be getting a few more ways to stealth and fight stealth? Right now i feel that a 4 second reveal on a shout is not very useful against fighting stealth.

Does ANet have any plans to address the problems in the weakest class by miles in the game, or even just fix the numerous bugs and broken mechanics?

As you can see here the Ranger gets more hate then most other professions. My thoughts are that this is partly because the class is too forgiving. With all classes you learn to dodge early on. With the ranger however you have a nice pet to tank for you. This leads to problems later on. What would your advice be when leveling up to have a good understanding off the class and still learn the important basics off the game?

“This wont end well.” ~Trahearne

How do you maximize your pet’s effectiveness in dungeons and tough boss fights where the AI is a bit different for the mob?

How do you get attacks and F2 skills to best work esp. on moving targets?

How do you typically control your pet while engaging in combat?

How would you build a ranger today? What type of builds do you think a new player should consider?

Happy to see you are using the forums to announce streams.

Whoop whoop! My favorite class and my favorite game style.

Questions:
1. The autopilotyness of ranger 1h sword skill one, where can it it be useful in PvE? Is there even a slight chance that we can get a PvE/PvP break in this skill to allow free movement in PvE only (because the chase mechanic is still useful in PvP)?

2. Why do you think it is that compared to warriors and other classes more rangers in PuGs seem completely unaware of the more useful DPS or supportive builds.

3. In order to stay competitive in the DPS field, our pets not only have to be alive but they need to benefit from buffs so that their percentage of our damage raises along with the rest. Do you have any comment on consumable buffs and applying them to pets?

4. Not a question, but don’t forget to mention: Due to the fact that ranger pets continue to do their percentage of the damage while the ranger is holding an object, power/precision rangers are likely to increase party DPS the most by picking up a conjured weapon than any other class.

5. Getting a ranger up near 100% critical chance is more difficult than with a warrior, how do you feel about purposely equipping Ruby Orbs instead of Scholar Runes to help raise critical chance?

6. In boss fights, rangers can often get stuck in a pet limbo where they have to deal with the 60 second pet resurrect timer no matter what. 20 seconds is often short enough to swap out a pet before it dies, but many fights are near impossible to maintain your pet’s health for the entire 60 second recharge if the previous pet had died. How do you deal with that? Is there any chance we may see the pet death timer reduced to 20 every other death (60, 20, 60, 20) to prevent an endless chain of 60 second timers until combat is broken?

7. When you play as a melee ranger, which ranged weapon do you prefer to bring as a backup?

8. Do you ever play solely ranged?

9. When you’re in a group that provides fury for you, do you prefer to bring an offhand axe instead of a warhorn?

10. Which is your favorite healing skill?

The guy takes his time to address directly to the community, most of you decide to take a crack at comedy, i hope this doesn’t turn off Anet from doing further interactions with us. I know freedom of speech and all but some people should just keep the noise they make to themselves… i hope you watch it and understand better the proffession you think you know
/rant

Ontopic:
Search and Rescue sometimes fails to actually rez a downed player in dungeons. What can i do (timing, positioning pet type) to prevent a miss use of such a long cooldown. Can you name three situations where this utility is invaluable?

Nike.2631:

GOSU.9574:

Because you haven’t gone into Beastmaster to improve your pet and you insist on using melee pets against bosses/large scale encounters. The beginners stream may be just what you need.

Which leads so logically into the question ‘Why do I suffer a 25% hit to my DPS for a class mechanic that only (vaguely) works right if I sacrifice 40% of my trait points on the altar of beastmastery and even then only if I’m using a type of pet that makes up less than 20% of the range of choices?’

Because ranger was put together from the bits and pieces of early developement professions warden and marksman that made the abomination that isn’t quite an archer or a beastmaster hence the poorly thought out mechanics/utilities/bugs galore.

Fortus.6175:

They should do one for PvP ele, I would pay to see a Dev play the worst best PvP class in the game in high ranked matches.

That aside, I hope to see the dev with Kudzu, that would be really cool.

You must live under a rock, every time I see grouch on a stream he is playing ele or engie.

Storm Spirit buff seems a weird mobility buff for a spirit standing still. Do you use it just for the activate ability damage only? Do you take it for when you’re running unbound spirit trait?

Would it be possible to give rangers another pet for each new living story update?

Are there going to be any changes to give rangers more support capabilities? We are currently only able to give several boons to allies such as regeneration and swiftness (which most classes already have).

Are shouts going to be buffed? ATM, the only shouts that currently have an important role in builds is “Sic ’Em!” for BM builds and “Guard” for bunker builds. “Protect Me” is rarely taken because a few seconds of invulnerability isn’t worth such a long cd before we can use our pet again. And “Search and Rescue” is just a bad shout in general.

Are there going to be any changes to traits? We have several traits in our trait lines that have a decent effect but the cooldowns are ridiculous. For example, Predator’s Instinct applies 2 seconds of cripple when a target is hit below 25% health with a 15 second cd… There are also many traits that should be merged with another. Some examples are: Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye, Trapper’s Expertise and Trap Potency, and Speed Training and Commanding Voice.

Players: Ranger is borked
Devs: Ok, u can haz reveal

Players: We are still borked
Devs: Ok, u can haz beginner guide u nub

RubiBayer.8134:

Isaiah Cartwright is back with another PvE profession guide in tomorrow’s Guild Wars 2 developer livestream. He’s focusing on the ranger this time, offering a beginner’s guide to ranger setup and strategy. The livestream begins tomorrow, November 1st, at noon Pacific time on http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Do you have questions about the specifics of ranger PvE play for Isaiah? Post them here, and he’ll choose some to answer during tomorrow’s livestream. We’ll see you then!

Xsorus.2507:

RubiBayer.8134:

Isaiah Cartwright is back with another PvE profession guide in tomorrow’s Guild Wars 2 developer livestream. He’s focusing on the ranger this time, offering a beginner’s guide to ranger setup and strategy. The livestream begins tomorrow, November 1st, at noon Pacific time on http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Do you have questions about the specifics of ranger PvE play for Isaiah? Post them here, and he’ll choose some to answer during tomorrow’s livestream. We’ll see you then!

lolol

Consider the following two step plan for glory:

Replace the 5 point Skirmishing minor trait with~

Lone Wolf: You gain +25% damage while your companion is stowed.

Fix the stow companion command so that when we stow a companion it stays stowed until we click the button again.

Nike.2631:

GOSU.9574:

Because you haven’t gone into Beastmaster to improve your pet and you insist on using melee pets against bosses/large scale encounters. The beginners stream may be just what you need.

Which leads so logically into the question ‘Why do I suffer a 25% hit to my DPS for a class mechanic that only (vaguely) works right if I sacrifice 40% of my trait points on the altar of beastmastery and even then only if I’m using a type of pet that makes up less than 20% of the range of choices?’

Which also leads to: I have three rangers, and have tried every build you can think of in wvw, and if you didn’t see the obvious, my ‘pve’ question was geared towards wvw- as we all know if you ask specifically about wvw they all get blank looks on their faces.

Pet internal abilities Can you offer some insight on the mechanics of self usage skills?

For instance i know a drake will activate tail swipe on a pet swap, can we guarentee another tail swipe and its blast finish in 30sec? Any tell sign we can watch to try and coordinate a combo field right before a new tail swipe cast?

This is just an example others include swiftness from a bird, leap from a canine, poison field from a spider, and so on?

Please allow spirits to move by default with the option to command them to stay if anyone actually needs that.

Hi Isaiah, and thanks for your efforts with the Ranger profession.

Just a couple of questions:

1. Main-hand Axe … Currently MH-Axe is considered a highly underpowered weapon (especially it’s skill-1), are there any plans to improve the direct damage of its #1 attack-skill by 5% or so? Also, any plans to look at skill 2, split-blade, and perhaps tweak it so the blades miss less often when not in point-blank range of your opponent?

2. Longbow … You guys did a great job with the rework of Hunter’s Shot, but currently the tiered damage on LB attack skill #1 is greatly disliked by a vast number of Rangers, are there any plans to eliminate the tiered damage based on range, and instead have a flat damage number regardless of range?

That’s all from me, since I’m sure you will be flooded with pet questions and trait-line questions from others. Thanks.

Ariete.6509:

Pet internal abilities Can you offer some insight on the mechanics of self usage skills?

For instance i know a drake will activate tail swipe on a pet swap, can we guarentee another tail swipe and its blast finish in 30sec? Any tell sign we can watch to try and coordinate a combo field right before a new tail swipe cast?

This is just an example others include swiftness from a bird, leap from a canine, poison field from a spider, and so on?

You can definitely watch the animations and use F3, F1 quickly to put the skill on a short like 4 sec ish CD. Really annoying keeping track of all that though…