Guild Wars 2

Well, they will have to add some pretty amazing things to Ranger WH, after you look at Tempest WH, ours looks like the worst support weapon in the game.

Tempest WH

• Give stacks of might to yourself, then spread boons you have to allies.
• Release a fiery torrent that burns enemies.
• Send out a tidal wave that regenerates and heal allies, then knock enemies back.
• Blast out a cyclone that pulls enemies towards its location and grants swiftness to allies it affects.
• Launch an orb of lightning that fires projectiles at nearby foes.
• Apply protection to yourself and allies and then increase the duration of all boons currently existing on them.
• Summon a dust storm that blinds enemies and causes vulnerability. This pulses 2s blind and 10s vuln every 2s for 10s in a 180 radius!

And half the buff skills have a 750 range as base. The two in bold are just absurd to have on an elementalist. As well as that, their WH trait breaks stun for allies in range whenever you use a WH skill, 10s ICD. They already have -CD% traits for -33%.

As an aside…

Oh, yeah, I can’t wait to see how often Gale Song is combined with Tempest Defense. That would be pretty amazing in PvP… Whenever someone tries to CC the ele, the ele breaks the stun for allies in range and grants them 5s of super speed, gives shocking aura to themselves and they also deal 20% more damage to disabled foes… lol.

Sube Dai.8496:

Probably too much quickness given that we have 3 other sources as well.

Not really.
You have access to Quickness from Zephyr regardless. If you want to take Windrobne Notes and BM, you are either sacrificing Spotter or 20% damage from Marksmanship.
Nope, that much quickness is not even close to being much.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Well, they will have to add some pretty amazing things to Ranger WH, after you look at Tempest WH, ours looks like the worst support weapon in the game.

-snip-

Yeah, the Tempest WH compared to ours is… amazing (to say the least). It only got worse as I kept watching the POI thinking their shouts are better, too. Sure, the purposes are completely opposite since ours ties to the pet, but shoot, all that support the Tempest shouts offer while the only support ours can give is 10s of regen and swiftness when traited for? Ugh.

Durzlla.6295:

It makes sense because they were adding support to our only support weapon. It wasn’t a form of support that fit the weapon granted,

Which is EXACTLY why the trait in its current state doesn’t make any sense. It’s not the support part I’m questioning in the title and my first post, it’s the boon.

But whatever.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Yeah, the Tempest WH compared to ours is… amazing (to say the least). It only got worse as I kept watching the POI thinking their shouts are better, too. Sure, the purposes are completely opposite since ours ties to the pet, but shoot, all that support the Tempest shouts offer while the only support ours can give is 10s of regen and swiftness when traited for? Ugh.

The funny part is that the tempest itself isn’t all that amazing from an elementalist’s point of view.

Lazze.9870:

Wondrouswall.7169:

Yeah, the Tempest WH compared to ours is… amazing (to say the least). It only got worse as I kept watching the POI thinking their shouts are better, too. Sure, the purposes are completely opposite since ours ties to the pet, but shoot, all that support the Tempest shouts offer while the only support ours can give is 10s of regen and swiftness when traited for? Ugh.

The funny part is that the tempest itself isn’t all that amazing from an elementalist’s point of view.

Well, ele is already better than everything so for their elite spec to be even better again, it would have to be insanely OP in everyway possible. And they still complain. I honestly cannot wait to use the tempest auramancer build I posted in the ele forum. It just looks like a lot of fun to me for WvW with perma auras for your group.

But yeah, that WH is pretty amazing. They could literally quadruple the damage on Hunter’s Call and just halve the CD on CoTW as well as add another 3 might and it would still not be as good.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Well, ele is already better than everything so for their elite spec to be even better again, it would have to be insanely OP in everyway possible. And they still complain.

Exactly.

That being said, all ele weapons will outclass other weapons when simply compared one by one due to how they class works. That’s the perk of attunements in exchange for weapon swap. The ranger warhorn alone will never compete with the ele warhorn. It’s a pretty uinteresting comparison in that regard.

Speaking of quadruple Hunter’s Call’s damage, I like the idea of adding an aoe to it, making seperate hawk groups attack the foes in a certain radius around the target you use it on aswell – similar to the Mad King runes. Then perhaps add blind to Windborne Notes for aoe blinds.

The only bad ele weapon outclassed by other professions is the scepter.

The problem with ele, and warrior, and guardian is that they monopolize boon generation and sharing on top of being top of the line damage dealers.

There’s nothing more important to performance in this game than boons.

25 might stacks is an immense damage boost. So is fury. Protection and aegis and reflection are the best forms of group defense on offer.

And guess which are the classes who are best at applying those? The above.

Then they look at ranger, and necromancer, and mesmer, and tell them “well, boons aren’t your thing, you’ve got these conditions and tricks”.

Conditions are absolutely inferior to boons. Blind does not work on bosses like aegis or protection does. Weakness has marginal duration on bosses, protection has full duration since it’s based on the player.

Cripple is useless, chill is useless.

So, in terms of PvE, if you’re no good at might stacking, fury stacking, protection/aegis, and reflects, you are more or less useless.

There’s an argument to be made, where we could be similar to thieves and engineers. Really high damage classes that are brought for damage on their own (thief has stealth skips, but even without the need for stealth a thief’s single target dps is unmatched).

But not even that is true. Ranger damage coefficients and base numbers are absolutely atrocious. Our aoe is absolutely atrocious (your options being barrage, traps, or mainhand axe’s auto). And the same applies to necromancer and mesmer. Mesmer gets saved due to being a Time Warp/Portal bot, otherwise a guardian would take his place as guardians do reflects with more uptime and reliability.

I actually enjoy using WH in PvP and WvW roaming, with my particular BM build (#4 is great for stacking might on pet with SotP, and #5 is just overall nice for buffing), but the regen from Windborne Notes is just plain redundant. I still use it for the cooldown reduction, but it sure could be more useful.

problem with CotW is that swiftness, fury and regen are terrible boons simply because we have so many sources of them. the blast finisher is meh, but what truly makes WH a terrible choice is Hunter’s Call. I think this thing hasn’t been iterated on since the game launched and it’s kittening terrible.

because WH cant do any damage and its boons are lackluster, this offhand simply isn’t usable.

mistsim.2748:

problem with CotW is that swiftness, fury and regen are terrible boons simply because we have so many sources of them. the blast finisher is meh, but what truly makes WH a terrible choice is Hunter’s Call. I think this thing hasn’t been iterated on since the game launched and it’s kittening terrible.

because WH cant do any damage and its boons are lackluster, this offhand simply isn’t usable.

i haven’t used my Howler for nearly a year now the only build it works with is a high crit condi bleeder with sigil of torment which still plays very lackluster and the windborne notes only makes that type of build more tanky , doesn;t really help other builds so agreed its pretty much un-useable.

I take it for the reduction in CD honestly. I play a condi trap/burn ranger, so the lower CD on the blast helps when i want to blast a fire field, or when I blast healing springs.