Guild Wars 2

I hope it is not too late to offer this suggestion to be in the 11/15 patch. However skeptical I am that ANet truly reads these forums and listens to our concerns, I wanted to make a thread to show the huge support for a change like this to help us with what I consider one of our MAIN issues in PvP (its not lack of damage for the record outside the SB QZ bug):

Lack of ways to deal with Immobilize

Warriors have a trait that really should belong to us given our mobile style, which is: movement abilities break immobilize.

Currently Rangers are HARD countered by Immobilize. Empathatic Bond does not remove it reliably enough, Healing Spring removes the last condition applied, and SoR requires your pet to be near you and immobilizes your pet which sucks up your dps output.

I thought the design philosophy of ANet was to give every class plenty of versalitility and ways to counter all specs. There is currently NO way I can build my ranger that will NOT be countered by Immobilize.

This is because Rangers are a highly mobile class and Immobilize COMPLETELY removes the ability to dodge and leaves us as sitting duck medium armor classes:

Thieves can stealth to avoid disengage while immobilize and can also remove it frequently with multiple abilities.

Engineers have a removal for it with their Rifle and are flat out IMMUNE to conditions under 25% hp when specc’d.

Won’t go into all the other classes, but every other class I’ve played has had no problems speccing for Cond/Immobilize removal if they want.

Rangers options for that are currently too limited-

Suggestion

During the Beta, Evasive Purity was nerfed from removing all conditions on dodge (IIRC) to only Blind and Poison.

I think you will find with responses in this thread that the Ranger community DESPERATELY want the Nature Magic tree to be reworked. But DONT overlook this trait in your attempts to fix only Spirits. Evasive Purity should be brought up to par with other “Grandmaster” traits.

Blind and poison? I can’t afford to save my dodge rolls just to remove those, I have so much other burst skills to watch for.

I would GLADLY trade Blind for Immobilize removed on dodge. I would LOVE to see Lightning Reflexes remove Immobilize.

So please other Rangers, post your support for this change so its not overlooked amongst the Signet/Spirit/SB Fixes and reworks.

ANet you have stated that THIEVES should be the most “slippery” classes and hard to catch. Am I far off the mark when I say the way you have designed Rangers is that we should be the most hard to “Pin down” of all classes? Why then does a SINGLE condition destroy all of our specs (save maybe Protect me/SoS full bunker…) by making us completely vulnerable?

Lightning Reflex should remove immoblize and they should make it that enemies who are hit by it should be stunned for 2 secs. They already have a dodge with CC on the Elementalist which knocks everyone over, I don’t know how Anet didn’t follow through with this. If you shock someone, they should be stunned.

That would be pretty strong, and they’d probably remove the Vigor granted with that change.

Tbh idk why the skill wa even nerfed to begin with, it was a strong trait yes, but at least it was used, now it’s not even a thought in most rangers head it’s either they take spirits unbound or a second nature magic master trait…

I fully support your proposition OP! Make that trait useful again!!

PS: give us a reliable way to break immob!! The fact one condition completely destroys our prof is ridiculous

Fate.8673:

That would be pretty strong, and they’d probably remove the Vigor granted with that change.

Not really that strong IMO. LOL, the Ele version is a weapon skill and it’s infinitely better than ours which is a utility skill. If it came down to choosing vigor vs stun, I’ll take stun any day. You’re likely out of stamina already if you’re using Lightning Reflex so giving you vigor is just delaying the inevitable unless you can gap close away with a 2 handed sword. From my experience, if you’re not out of range after LR, your vigor won’t fill up in time to stop you from being killed.

And another thing that I don’t like is that LR is affected by your speed and conditionals on you. Typically you’re going to have some kind of poison or bleed on you already and if you get chilled and immobolized nothing will save you even if you have Kormir. I can’t count the number of times I use Kormir to clear immoblize plus some other conditional only to find I was still chilled which makes LR completely useless since all it does is roll you back a few pixels when you’re slowed.

Rangers have very little escape mechanisms, only have one gap close on broadsword, 2 gap closes on 1 handed sword, which are useless in a fight because they’re backwards (they need to reverse the direction to make it a gap close and then roll back), a short hop on SB and Lightning Reflex. It’s a utility, it should be powerful.

Bottom line: Ranger needs more reliable condition removal. It’s by far and away the profession’s biggest weakness. How exactly to implement improvements is up to the devs.

A good start in my opinion:

• Move Empathic Bond to tier 1. It’s strictly worse than the tier 1 Guardian trait which does the exact same thing but doesn’t require a pet. As a tier 3 trait it’s ridiculously underpowered.

• Remove the range requirement from Signet of Renewal’s active ability. That’s the biggest reason why it’s so inconsistent; if your pet is more than 600 range from you it just doesn’t do anything at all.

@aridia all leaps/ movement sort of skills get completely man handled by snares, if you have swiftness though you launch yourself all the way to freaking narnia and there’s not even a hope for them to catch you, especially if you have a great sword and use Swoop (3) to open the gap more (it goes further with swiftness as well)

I’d also like to see Short Bow Quicksot and Sword hornet sting remove immobolize so the mobile weapon sets can remain mobile and serve as counters to builds that try to shut us down.

Durzlla.6295:

@aridia all leaps/ movement sort of skills get completely man handled by snares, if you have swiftness though you launch yourself all the way to freaking narnia and there’s not even a hope for them to catch you, especially if you have a great sword and use Swoop (3) to open the gap more (it goes further with swiftness as well)

I realize that and I mentioned that in my previous comment. But it’s entirely unreasonable to expect to have constant swiftness or even trying to use the horn after using a conditional removal. You’re almost always being hit already when you’re immoblized, there’s no time to clear it and then blow your horn before using LR. And more often than not, something else gets put on you after using the conditional removal.

LR should be a stun/immo breaker and it should stun your targets so every time you launch yourself you’re not encumbered.

Swoop isn’t all that great a gap-enlarger. You tend to get caught up on uneven terrain and even flat inclines. Also, a lot of times if you’re still clicked on the target, you won’t Swoop the direction you want, but either towards the targeted player, or some wierd nonsensical in-between area.

All they have to do is add immobilize removal to LR and nerf the vigor duration(or even remove it entirely…I’m sure ranger’s will take what they can get). It’s still a 36 second recharge with the fast recharge trait.

Id like to see Lightning Reflexes work like evasion does in direction. I hate when it throws me back. Would be nice if it just moved me the same as a dodge roll would, whatever direction i was moving.

Xenos.1072:

Id like to see Lightning Reflexes work like evasion does in direction. I hate when it throws me back. Would be nice if it just moved me the same as a dodge roll would, whatever direction i was moving.

I think the evade back with lightning reflexes is fine. Can’t even count the times it has saved my life from enemy zerg combined with 2 dodge rolls. You can get some serious distance between you and the enemy in a heartbeat.
Now only if it would break roots and it would be awesome.

I would like to see an improved range for Signet of Renewal, tbh I would like it to read like this:

“SoR: Your pet periodically takes condition from you.

Active: Cleanses ALL conditions from you and your pet"

Could just rework Empathatic Bond completely then. TBH I’d love to be able to take the Bark skin in PvP and not feel forced to have Empathatic Bond.

I thought Empathetic Bond already removes all conditions?

Me and a few other guys were testing it a few weeks ago and it was confirmed as a condition dump. Was it nerfed?

Aridia.3042:

Durzlla.6295:

@aridia all leaps/ movement sort of skills get completely man handled by snares, if you have swiftness though you launch yourself all the way to freaking narnia and there’s not even a hope for them to catch you, especially if you have a great sword and use Swoop (3) to open the gap more (it goes further with swiftness as well)

I realize that and I mentioned that in my previous comment. But it’s entirely unreasonable to expect to have constant swiftness or even trying to use the horn after using a conditional removal. You’re almost always being hit already when you’re immoblized, there’s no time to clear it and then blow your horn before using LR. And more often than not, something else gets put on you after using the conditional removal.

LR should be a stun/immo breaker and it should stun your targets so every time you launch yourself you’re not encumbered.

I don’t think LR should remove our cripples and that and we should be penalized for using it stupidly like that, however i agree with the immob breaker + stun, that would make it a good CD instead of the mediocre one it currently is, i mean cmon engies even have a fly back that’s just BETTER then ours (granted theirs also knocks them down for like .5s at the end of the thing but it throws them so far that hardly matters).

And i have almost 100% uptime on swiftness from the spirit… i run longbow/greatsword and my god is it ridiculous how much that thing procs!! ~7s swiftness boon and a 35% chance to proc it onevery hit (360 degree swing arc on great sword ftw)

Chesire.9043:

I thought Empathetic Bond already removes all conditions?

Me and a few other guys were testing it a few weeks ago and it was confirmed as a condition dump. Was it nerfed?

I’ve heard and experienced that its a full dump every 10 seconds or so, what we’re debating here is that its not a reliable way to remove immobilize when we NEED to, to get out of combos. Any competent burst spec will use immobilize to set up their spec

Lightning Reflexes should definately remove Immobilize. Similar skills that other professions have already do, so there’s precedent (and need) for such a utility. Its the Ranger’s primary escape move, so it needs to actually let you escape from anything, and that should certainly include immobilize. And it also looks absolutely rediculous when you use LR while immobilized and just roll in place, for what difference that makes.

Not sure about Evasive Purity, though. Having a “free” immobilize clear available at all times might be a bit much on the other side of the argument (being too powerful as opposed to being too weak). Though it does force you to use a trait tree that isn’t all that great otherwise, so maybe that would even it out, but I don’t think balancing based on a bad trait tree is a good idea really, since hopefully the tree won’t continue to be bad.

I’d have to say no for Stun suggestion on LR as mentioned in the second post, though (especially not in place of Vigor). Considering that LR is already a free evade, I don’t really see what the advantage of a Stun would be. You’re already out of harms way, so what would be the purpose of the stun? I guess you could use it to interrupt an attack that might hit other players or buy yourself a free ranged attack or two (though by the time the animation finishes thats about all you’d get), but… I’d much rather have Vigor than that personally.

Rangers are fine at dealing with immobilize.
At least decently so.

Shortbow, one-handed sword, dagger all have on weapon evades that you can use while immobilized.
Yeup.
So even though they think they have you pinned, and go for that heavy spike… you just lol-evade… every 10~ seconds….

I actually have less trouble with imobs on the specs I run in this class than the few others I play.

For power specs, yeah they could use a lil help with dealing with them.
I’d replace beastmasters signets (and so make our undeniably mediocre signets work without a kittening grab-kitten wackjobbed, 3rd tier trait) for something like ‘break imob once every 15~ seconds if at full endurance’… but that’s just me.

Electro.4173:

I’d have to say no for Stun suggestion on LR as mentioned in the second post, though (especially not in place of Vigor). Considering that LR is already a free evade, I don’t really see what the advantage of a Stun would be. You’re already out of harms way, so what would be the purpose of the stun? I guess you could use it to interrupt an attack that might hit other players or buy yourself a free ranged attack or two (though by the time the animation finishes thats about all you’d get), but… I’d much rather have Vigor than that personally.

What’s the point of it doing damage? Is 200 dmg really going to kill someone? You can keep regressing the question back till everything is pointless.

Stun prevents the enemy from immediately gap closing up to you after you got out of the way. It’s a survival skill. It’s pretty ridiculous to think a supposed roaming class like the ranger can’t even run away from a mage or someone swinging a 2 handed sword. Even from a design stand point, having an electric shock without some kind of conditional effect makes no sense.

I would like to see evasive purity made useful again. Also, immobilize removal on lightning reflexes would be great.