Guild Wars 2

Alright, you guys know the drill! How are the changes so far? Either answer these questions for me or just talk about what you feel is important to mention for Ranger.

Specific questions:

1. The main builds for ranger were Condi Survival, Power Ranger, Trap Ranger and Spirit Ranger. How many of these are you still using?
2. Traps have been great from what I’ve seen. Has anyone been able to make use of the new spirits, even if it’s only a single spirit in a build (excluding the elite)?
3. Has anyone been able to make a true beast master style build? Not to much in that you take beast mastery, but more that you use your pet much more than builds like condi survival or power ranger.
4. Have you tried the opening strikes build (Remorseless) + beast mastery gs trait? Does it stand up to the LB power ranger?
5. Have any odd builds come out as viable (support or shout for example)?

1. I tried power ranger (double melee, lB/gs) and trap ranger. All are viable
2. I’ve seen no one use the spirit in pvp. And I don’t think ill use it except for the storm spirit with moment of clarity (but I heard it is bugged).
3. I am having a blast with this build atm. Remorseless and pet makes up for huge hit if you spec in Beastmastery (6k3 bite from a doge on a tower guard in WvW). Also, the new taunt mechanic is really good and responsive.
4. I only play that since I tested it. Sword/Axe + GS. Its really strong, mobile and bursty while still retaining some survivability (marauder amulet). Some also mentionned having sucess with valkyrie amulet to use the opening strike 100% crit to burst.
5. The forum theorycrafted a redefinition of shoutbow with the rune of the trooper and the ranger shouts. The only bad point, the rune of the trooper has been reported to not affect any shout in the game.

Also the only negative feedback I can give now is how strong is the condition damage. So, it force us to take the wilderness survival on every build. Therefore, nature magic is not really used anymore even tough it brings alot of nice utilities.

EDIT: I forgot to add that my biggest disapointement was the loss of extra range with off-hand training.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Alright, you guys know the drill! How are the changes so far? Either answer these questions for me or just talk about what you feel is important to mention for Ranger.

Specific questions:

1. The main builds for ranger were Condi Survival, Power Ranger, Trap Ranger and Spirit Ranger. How many of these are you still using?
2. Traps have been great from what I’ve seen. Has anyone been able to make use of the new spirits, even if it’s only a single spirit in a build (excluding the elite)?
3. Has anyone been able to make a true beast master style build? Not to much in that you take beast mastery, but more that you use your pet much more than builds like condi survival or power ranger.
4. Have you tried the opening strikes build (Remorseless) + beast mastery gs trait? Does it stand up to the LB power ranger?
5. Have any odd builds come out as viable (support or shout for example)?

1. LB Power Seems ok w/better survival
Cond Survival off hand radius far too small. I lasted longer pre patch cond build, but that may not be the Ranger as incoming damage is pretty high atm.
Traps just seems odd, even had my spike trap vanish when triggered (no knockdown or dmg done).
Spirit Ranger gave it a whirl, still meh. Hung it back up. They die quick, long cd, not worth the utility slots. Stationary and better replaced by a Engineer.

2. Still use frost for SHill Tequatl defense is about it.

3. Nope. My pets die quick (even BM spec), pathing is slow, and barely seem to tag a moving target to proc off some of those traits. Traited F2 durations are way to low with so many traits invested. Base speed/attack speed/f2 all are slow on my pet to really make a difference. I wish Anet would go play a BM hunter from WoW.

4. Not yet. But going melee traited like mentioned will melt me before it matters, unless 1v1 I imagine.

5. Still need to play around more.

This opinion is based off of Spvp & WvW with the limited playtime I have had since release. I know one thing for sure, no meta position in any game mode…still.

1. Condi-Survival and Power Survival. Really, with the conditions the way they are right now, you can’t afford to NOT run cleansing, and Wilderness Knowledge is best in slot over Empathic Bond right now (unless you are running a utility bar with not survival skills including a different heal and elite) unless you enjoy having your pet one shot by the current conditions.
2. I wouldn’t even call traps great. Great against lower tiered players, maybe. You won’t see any good players getting caught in traps all that often though, and most will just outrange/avoid the traps and make you feel over-invested on a utility (Spike Trap stands alone though now so you can take it on other types of builds like Condi-Survival and it works). Moving on to spirits, no, they’re terrible. Passives didn’t get changed, and the actives being changed doesn’t justify them being rooted in place, which was the weirdest expenditure of effort on the dev’s part I’ve seen since the game launched; reworking the actives of the spirits and them making them immobile so that nobody will ever get hit by the actives again.
3. Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch 0/0/6/6/6 is my favorite iteration running Beastmaster so far. Birds are still amazing when traited with BM, they hit like trucks, I use Owl/Raven so their cooldown coincides with Beastly Warden, so my F2’s are on demand interrupts, and I as a player can soft CC and condi-pressure down the target with a whole new level of pet utility that wasn’t there before.
4. No, I just don’t like the GS trait. Natural Healing and Wilting Strike are better in slot options than the GS trait. Fury proc’ing is too random to take full advantage of Remorseless the way I’d like to. You have a chance at gaining fury to gain Remorseless back which can totally be wasted by an autoattack or underutilized because your Maul isn’t off cooldown and it gets wasted on a different attack. The fury on crit chance should be 100% with the time interval in place.
5. I haven’t seen any “odd” builds at all as viable. It’s exactly how it was predicted to be, Wilderness Survival being a mandatory traitline with any other combination of specializations added to the Wilderness Survival staple with the amulet, corresponding weapons, and utilities working well, minus traps at top tier and spirits at any tier.

So yeah. I’ve played around with 6/6/6/0/0, 6/0/6/6/0, 0/6/6/6/0, 0/6/6/0/6, 0/0/6/6/6, and 6/0/6/0/6 and out of those, my favorites have been 6/0/6/6/0, 6/0/6/0/6, 0/6/6/6/0, and 0/0/6/6/6, respectively taking into account the order of the traitlines in the old system.

For what its worth here is my experience so far. I play mainly WvW and PvE second. I dabble PvP.
I still play power ranger although longbow pew pew seems a tad weaker since the update in WvW. It could be simply because everything hits so much harder. I do agree that my power build seems far more survivable, much to the ire of thieves. In PvE melee sword axe, greatsword remorseless quickdraw ranger is a blast to play. Its a very active build that keeps me engaged in the dungeon run or whatever.

The only spirit I ever take is the old frost spirit in the frost spotter build. Beyond that I agree that the spirit effects are lack luster with a long cool down. There are far better utility options available.

Beastmastery is far better. Pets still die quickly in WvW though. Of course I am on sos server and everything on our server dies quickly in those blobs. Still pathing is bad, pets aren’t particularly tanky and enemies seem to be able to simply stroll away from most of my pets attacks. The taunt is very odd and seems to work far better with certain pets rather then others. Works great with birds, awful with drakes. Birds die instantly in aoe though so… meh.

PvE I feel opening strikes build is better then longbow, Ranger still struggles frontline in a zerg though.

I tried a support ranger in frontline WvW combat, as I said ranger still struggles there. In PvE the ranger can give decent support to say a dungeon runs. Other classes do it better but the small boost to might and regen certainly doesn’t hurt the class.

1. Tried Power, Condi Surv., Trap and Spirit Ranger.
   Power – viable; Condi Surv. – viable; Trap – viable; Spirit Ranger – not viable.
2. Frost Spirit stays as a PvE option. In PvP – no spirits are really worth the investment. They are either used as 2-click 20cd actives or they die 2 seconds of the cast.
   Consider buffing their Health Pools significantly / On-Death Activation / Boosting “Nature’s Vengeance” boon application.
3. Not as a pure source of damage, no. There is a clear answer that needs to be addressed:
   Pets die to conditions extremely fast because they lack resistance/condi cleanse and our only condition cleansing option in Beast Mastery (Empathic Bond, Signet of the Renewal) kill the pet in seconds flat.
4. Yes, remorseless GS + BM trait for it becomes an option to PvE meta DPS that competes with the standard LB opening > sword swap. It beats this setup in longer (11 sec+) scenarios.
5. ~ Support Shoutbow definitely seems to be a viable option, but it still lacks the synergy with bugged Rune of the Trooper. But it has a success.
   ~ A strange build of Zerk (Valk) Longbow trapper (Frost Trap especially) became much more interesting (I can’t say if viable yet). I need further testing, but looked like really promising with the Projectile Finisher synergy.

Things to be addressed:
~ Conditions pulled onto pet – unrewarding, toxic, we have no counter-play to sacrificing our pets
~ Spirits – dying too fast for PvP environment. Frost Spirit (Nature’s Vengeance) 1 might for 1 second every 3 seconds is way too of a bad design with absolutely no impact on DPS whatsoever. Other are quite fine (33% uptime on duration stacking boons is fine)
~ Most Dangerous Game is weaker than other below 50% HP traits. In this fast meta, you can’t afford to stay below 50% hp for more than a few seconds. And the only reward being a few might stacks is way too low for a GrandMaster trait. Staying below 50% for 8 seconds is non-comprehensible.

I believe if I missed anything, my Ranger brethren will fill the space.

(Edited for better appearance)

The shortbow trait light on your feet is incredibly underwhelming. If you use shortbow you’re likely to be a carrion/rabid set up, so that 5% extra condition damage on evade.. really isn’t enough to warrant its use over quick draw, which is incredibly powerful.

Light on your feet should be buffed considerably to at least 20% extra condition damage to make it a more compelling choice over quick draw.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. The main builds for ranger were Condi Survival, Power Ranger, Trap Ranger and Spirit Ranger. How many of these are you still using?

Sadly, Spirit Ranger is dead.

Issues with Spirit Ranger:
→ Spirits are static and thats make them easy to AoE.
→ Their HP Pool is low, so same issue as ^.
→ They don’t trigger upon dying, so you have instant activate them before they die due to ^.
→ If you activate them, they die and they can’t apply boons to allies.
→ Their AoE Boon applied is meh, not punishing enough enemy for ignoring Spirits.

Summarizing: Everything is wrong about Spirits right now.

SPvP Point of View.

Power Ranger. (LB/GS)

• Survival is allot better but every single LB/GS build has to take Lightning Relfexs and Signet of Stone, leaving us with very little option to take damage modifiers like Signet of the Hunt and Signet of the Wild. Normally you would take Signet of Renewal, as you need full condition clear.
• Greatsword, low damage. It requires Signet of the Hunt/ Signet of the Wild/ Quickening Zephyr and Remorseless to land a maul, due to being highly telegraphed its almost always dodged, it require far to much investment to land 1 decent hit then back to waiting on long CD before we can do decent damage, without this combo Maul does sub-par damage. Counterattack would be decent if it didn’t counter attack Ai, also thieves completely counter Greatsword (Dagger #3). Swoop, will miss the target most of the time due to pathing (if the ground isn’t flat you will miss).
• Signet of Stone, very long CD forces us to Trait for Brutish Seals, so we can’t take Steady Focus or Moment of Clarity.
• Clarion Bond, should work out of combat at least then our Power builds have swiftness with around 50% upkeep.

Condition Survival.

• Decent Survival, no real complaint.
• Conditions applied are rather solid.
• Torch, lost its radius after just being buffed. This was majorly disappointing as it’s current radius is useless.

Trap Ranger.

• Rather bad survival.
• Trap’s are decent, but we only have room for 2 traps, 3rd utility is taken up by Lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal for on demand immobilize/stun breaker.
• There is still no middle ground between survival and conditions, if you try to spec for both you become too weak in terms of damage output and your survival lack’s. This is all due to Traps requiring 3 utility slots.

Spirit Ranger.

• Survival is decent.
• Spirit survival is completely null and void they die extremely fast.
• Boon’s applied have no real effect.
• Support is very poor, compared to other support classes/builds there
• You only have room for 2 spirit’s in your utilities, other slot requires lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal.
• Spirit Heal is lack luster compared to the other heals. Active effect radius is too small to be a decent team support heal.

Beastmaster.

• Solid survival.
• Good condition damage.
• Pet’s are 50/50, they have pathing issues and don’t seem to attack very often unless the target is locked down.
• Pet damage is good.
• Has no team support at all. So it won’t every be viable in top tier, other classes provide better team support. If Invigorating Bond would offer decent support but the Radius is very small compared to other classes, it’s rather hard to control location of your pet so most of the time your team mate won’t receive the heal.

Elites

• Entangle, most classes have almost no problem vs Entangle. The root’s die extremely fast.
• Strength of the pack, isn’t very useful most of the time you’re using it to stomp a target or res someone. Your pet doesn’t really land many attacks to make might stacking worth it with the new window of 10 seconds to apply. Just change might stacks to damage modifier.
• Spirit of Nature, no complaint it works the same as always.

We still have same problems vs some classes. This is due to builds normally being forced to take to much survival or damage, resulting in we lack survival or damage. It’s rather painful in order for us to kill some classes we require damage but to get the type of damage we require we lose out on taking survival which results in death vs that same class.

Will we be viable after meta settles. Top Tier (No), Low Tier (Yes)

• Lack mobility outside of combat. (Engineers get perma swiftness)
• Our Support builds lack team support. (Beastmaster/Condition Survival/Spirits).
• Power builds can’t compete with other burst builds in terms of damage.
• Conditions builds are solid but are too focused on dueling 1v1.

Hopefully this helps.

P.S, while running Protective Ward, I took 14k hit from a Enigneer Nades, 10 Crit from Rampagers Warrior, 7.5k Backstab with 3-4k damage from Sigil procs and almost 1 shot by shatter mesmer.

Sol.4310:

Snip

My exact thoughts.

PVE point of view:

3. I made a condi ranger using the BM traits that add blindness, weakness and taunt to F2. I used birds because people complained about the range on beastly warden, and bird F2s have low cool downs. And yes, I am using my pet a lot. For dungeons I’d probably take Zephyr’s speed over beastly warden. Traps seem a little clunky but it might just be a matter of getting used to the cast times.

4. Using GS and sword axe with clarion bond, remorseless, quick draw, two-handed training and zephyr’s speed. Absolutely loving it. For me it feels much more fun to play than the old LB, S/A combo. For the first time it feels like our traits synergize well, and I hope the devs continue this when designing future traits.
I’m also very greatful for the increased stats on the pets. All-round I’m very happy with Ranger in PVE. Ranger has become my favourite class to play post-patch.

As for spirits, I don’t want to go on like a broken record here, as I have said this in the other threads too and I know many agree but the boons they pulse should be OP by design in order to create strategic play.

If you place one outside a node and it is pulsing resistance to your team who is getting 33% immunity to conditions, that is fantastic. Or if Stone Spirit pulsed stability instead of protection, it would be a match changer. But the spirit can also be killed easily as a counter.

Right now, there is just no reason to even care if a ranger spirit is in the area because the boons are just not a threat, that and they will also die if anyone even runs past one.

Plus I think they just get laid anywhere without a tactical thought at all. If the boons were actually OP, people would learn to place them better to get full benefit and also the need to counter them when they are lain. The counter works both ways though, because you can lay it somewhere that the other team will need to be out of position in order to kill it.

1s of Might for 3s, sweet sweet party support!

Even if they pulsed 1s of a random boon every 3s, they would be better.

I would only like to add that not a single ranger has managed to make spirits work in spvp, not in any effective way. their redesign was a complete miss. boons pulse for inconsequential amounts, they die too quickly. actives are of average utility.

other important things:
- we have 3 shouts that aren’t useful in high tier pvp; only WHaO and SotP are slotted
- we have two offhands that are underwhelming and not used in any viable build currently: WH and OH axe; more specifically, Hunter’s Call and Whirling Defense are ineffective skills
- power builds are pigeon-holed into using LB/GS due to the burst, utility and mobility of these weapons
- various underwhelming GM’s, worst offenders being: MDG, invigorating bond, poison master, honed axes, and nature’s vengeance (due to spirits being bad); that’s a lot of GM’s not being slotted in pvp
- bonfire radius was nerfed for no reason, needs to be brought back to 240

Power lb and condi survival got some buffs with remorseless. I didn’t want them buffed because they were already our strongest and still weren’t tpvp viable…

Traps have the same problem which is that they are weak for the investment. All they do is provide damage for cost of utility, but no team needs more damage, especially from rangers. KD on spike trap is the right idea, but they all need something like this.

Spirits, I don’t even want to go there. Just terrible.

Remorseless GS – same old problems. GS AA is too weak and you will never hit a good player with maul (or hilt bash). GS AA should be our highest damage AA on account of being the slowest (apart from lb), and melee.

I still have hopes for shouts, although the utility in those skills is still pretty crap. Resounding timbre should offer unique boons for each shout. Then we might actually have a viable support build.

And I am surprised you didn’t know runes of the trooperare bugged Mr forum specialist. Its been noted in the forums from day 1!

First. DON’T SCARE ME LIKE THAT! I thought we would have gotten our Ranger specialist.

Second, traps. IMO they are weak. They never have been particularly great; they always were on the lower side of damage, but so is the Ranger in general (slow and steady as ANet called it). The great advantage traps had was, that they could be thrown and thus the chance for them hitting was higher. Now I can’t see myself running more than one trap, if ever, in my build. Also, the new spike trap is totally not worth the cooldown it got. I have a few suggestions to make traps feel better, but I don’t want to detail them here to not derail the thread. But throwing traps should totally come back.

Spirits have not gotten any stronger but got their utility cut. I don’t disagree with the change to make them stationary, but the buffs they got don’t make up for the lost utility, not by a long shot.

Shouts are still ridiculous useless. Really. “Protect Me!” is not more than areliable way to kill your pet as zerker, thus only useful as bunker, all other old shouts do not benefit the Ranger himself in any way (unless traited, but that is definitely no reason to leave them as they are right now) “Sic’Em!” is boring to use, eventhough it is the best old shout we got, “Search and Rescue” is just a wasted utility slot for the most part and “Guard!” is just laughable. The new shouts (We heal as one and Strength of the pack) are great (probably because they weren’t designed as shouts initially), but have many bugs currently (traits and runes not applying properly and stuff).

Shortbow is still meh at best, it really could use getting its 1200 range back.

Also, the new ICD on the “call of the wild on pet swap” trait is ridiculous and should fit the pet swap cooldown. Anything else I’d complain about are bugs ATM, but I’ll come back if I find something I’m not happy with.

some of us are making traps work for our builds, very effectively too. that being said, spike trap CD needs to be brought down and serpent trap needs to target 5 people instead of 3.

1) Power ranger, while pretty decent on the quickness front, feels lacking once you lose all the buffs from clarion and zephyrs. class feels very proc heavy right now on this front, so if you lose that + remorseless, your damage just seems lower on longbow moreso than before. Before the clarion patch, i could justify it because I was still a machine for boons fury and swiftness. Now, I have boons more on the personal front. This is not stellar, but not devastatingly ‘ranger is daed’ type thing.

2) Traps are both really bad and really good. on the positive front, viper’s nest and flame trap has enough duration and a low enough CD to make them both viable pickups for people using trapper runes or for a third utility in an already solidified build. The problem, however, still stands: getting the most out of them requires a trait that takes away your bleed crits, so you lose out on too much damage if you dont go for burning trap. You lose out on lots of survivability since right now, innate survivability means little to nothing. its active or nothing since DPS on warriors and necros have gotten slightly higher but also their survivability has. I dont believe they need nerfs as it was rare to see zerk warriors in the first place, but this shows that ranger is somehow left in a time machine by themselves, never changing. Also, spike trap is bad now. Yes, I understand the damage increase and knockdown makes it attractive, but the CD kills it completely. Don’t even get me started on healing spring.

3)Beastmaster specialization is sadly the way to go unless you go wilderness survival. While the new nerf to clarion bond MAY make nature magic seem like its worth taking, pet damage kind of trumps the horrendous majors in Nature magic. Actual beastmaster builds are functioning decently, but it was very sad to see that natural healing got nerfed as it used to heal the ranger also. Honed axes is both horrendous and interesting, making every default to beastly warden or zephyr’s speed. Axes for ranger is barely ever used for power in mainhand, so the fact that it increases it only for offhand axe makes it very silly. It should be increase ferocity on offhand axe and increase condition duration on while wielding main hand axe. This is more attractive and would make it a bigger competitor than it is now.

4)Nature magic in itself needs work. Instinctive reaction is bad simply because its a quickness when your health drops and it also has a horrendous conversion rate/ conversion period. If it was worth taking, it would be Power to healing power by 7%, not the other way around. The only attractive grandmaster also is Protective ward, which is sad because ATLEAST the other lines have one other good competitor. the line needs attention and probably needs more support for the team than it has, because right now it just seems to be wilderness survival’s less attractive younger brother. Spirit ranger is still dead, but atleast a few spirits are still useful such as PvE frost spirit and roaming sun spirit. the rest are completely worthless and making a build for them is making your team play 4v5

5) off-hand Weapons across the board have had themselves kicked in the face since their range traits are now missing. Torch, Axe offhand and even dagger all lost range they really needed with the splitting of their CDs from the old offhand training. This needs attention badly. I guess shortbow trait is good, but I still dont think shortbow is worth taking after using it which makes it funny since now the trait is taken without shortbows.

6) Probably the best thing to say about ranger right now is that skirmishing is pretty solid. I have a reason to take each trait in each tier (except strider’s defense) . Overall, all of the ranger builds I thought of sadly have a problem in adept spots for all the other lines (I feel like I have gone oakheart salve in 100% of builds with WS and I feel like Ive gone clarion bond 100% of marksman even with the nerf to it).

Class still needs some help, and it need to be in the damage area along with the support area. Its just lacking harshly there outside the standard DPS PvE build.

edit: i think ive said nerf 100 times about clarion bond. Its a bug fix, I know. But I only call it a nerf since its still a problem on the tonic front more so than the skill itself. I still dont like it, it should be on a 15s CD.

Loyo.8526:

…making up for the DPS loss we had from the new hunter’s tactics….

If you are in full zerker gear, it is a DPS increase.

WvW pov- power longbow lost damage but gained survivability.

Condi builds took a nerf from the changes to offhand range and radius, and not being able to run SotF+EB at the same time (although this didn’t matter at the moment because EB is useless now that condi’s stack in intensity)

Spirits are worthless

Traps might have a place in pvp but they are completely worthless in WvW now

Beast mastery is finally worth taking, the taunt could use a slightly larger range, but we still need control of our pet skills and they need better pathing. Natural healing needs to be changed back to what it was, it is beyond worthless now.

remorseless, protective ward, and quick draw are fantastic changes, they make melee really fun

Shortbow GM is terrible and needs to be changed, maybe a flat damage boost and access to faster movement speed/vigor. Shortbow also needs to be 1200 range by default

Honed axes isn’t close to being worthy of a GM in it’s current form and it doesn’t compete with the other 2 BM GM traits.

Any trait that activates on pet swap should have a 15 second internal cooldown to prevent tonic exploits. It shouldn’t be more than 15 sec for QoL

Strength of sprit (or whatever it’s called now) needs to go back to being based off vitality. If it is going to be based off healing power the bonus should go to condi damage.

Healing spring changes are pretty terrible for WvW

Shouts are in a much better place but they need to work with trooper runes.

Overall impression- we got some great options for 1v1 fights but took a nerf for 1vX and group fights, especially considering the massive buffs some of the other classes received.

1- I’m using my power ranger in both PvP and pve andit still seems pretty effective in both modes
2- I tested traps yesterday in pve they didnt perform poorly they did decent damage considering I had zerker armor. Spirits on the other hand are bad, the only spirit I use in pve is frost for the damage boost. The GM trait is more insulting than useful, 1s of might every 3s? You gotta be kidding me. The actives killing the spirits is another mistake (look at spirit weapons), lastly not having an option to make them mobile kills them for pvp.
3- I havent really tried.
4- YES! The damage was impressive but I dont think it will be easy to do it on pvp unless you join a fight and catch the enemy off guard. The maul burst requires a lot of setup and too much can go wrong.
5- I havent spent enough time trying out new builds

jcbroe.4329:

So yeah. I’ve played around with 6/6/6/0/0, 6/0/6/6/0, 0/6/6/6/0, 0/6/6/0/6, 0/0/6/6/6, and 6/0/6/0/6 and out of those, my favorites have been 6/0/6/6/0, 6/0/6/0/6, 0/6/6/6/0, and 0/0/6/6/6, respectively taking into account the order of the traitlines in the old system.

everyone else thought after this text, that we need a new naming for our line combos?
i mean we have 10 line combos until HoT, i think we should name them a bit

snow.8097:

jcbroe.4329:

So yeah. I’ve played around with 6/6/6/0/0, 6/0/6/6/0, 0/6/6/6/0, 0/6/6/0/6, 0/0/6/6/6, and 6/0/6/0/6 and out of those, my favorites have been 6/0/6/6/0, 6/0/6/0/6, 0/6/6/6/0, and 0/0/6/6/6, respectively taking into account the order of the traitlines in the old system.

everyone else thought after this text, that we need a new naming for our line combos?
i mean we have 10 line combos until HoT, i think we should name them a bit

What would you name them that would be easier to learn and remember than just x/x/x/x/x?
__________________________________________________________________

So, back to spirits…

I find it a little unbalanced that Warrior can take an unkillable banner in a utility slot with a master trait (inspiring banners) and have perma regen as well as 170 power and condi damage and we would need to take a GM trait, Water spirit and Frost spirit to get similar benefit.

Water spirit heal = 805/10s = 80.5/s
Water spirit heal with regen from Nature’s Vengeance = 1390/10s = 139/s
Healing Spring heal = 4920/30s = 164/s
Healing Spring heal with regen = 7260/30s = 242/s
Water Spirit heal with Regeneration, 3 procs and active skill = 267.8/s

So, Water Spirit with a GM trait is still less effective than a core skill by itself, for Water spirit to equal Healing Spring’s heal, you need to proc it 3 times, then trigger its active.

This puts it on CD for another 30s, effectively halving the healing you get from it. So over the full minute of 30s up, 30s CD, you get the same benefit of just having Regeneration for that duration! See banner example.

If you factor in that the allied heal on the active is half the amount of the self heal, this skill just gets worse and worse the more you look at it.

imo, Water Spirit’s effect should just be a cut and paste of the sigil of blood’s effect with no ICD and a smaller heal/leech, it may actually see play then because it would add to our utility in dungeons (would add another unique global source of damage) and it may also find a use in PvP, where it could be countered easily.

Water Spirit’s active could be something useful other than a heal, such as;Summon Spirits All your spirits are teleported to your location. Water spirit has an additional -20% CD if you use this active.

Right now, it is the worst heal in the game hands down, even if you trait it with a GM trait.

Nature’s Vengeance needs a lot of work, imo.
Nature’s Vengeance; Your Spirits pulse boons, have 75% more health, take 25% less damage, have 50% larger range on active skills, recharge 20% faster and trigger active skills on death.

They would be usable then. Assuming the boons got swapped to something useful ie 1.25s Fury on Frost, 1.25s Stability on Stone, 1.25s Resistance on Water, 3 might for 3s on Sun, 1s of quickness on Storm, 1s Aegis on Nature. Create a strategic play with them.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

snow.8097:

jcbroe.4329:

So yeah. I’ve played around with 6/6/6/0/0, 6/0/6/6/0, 0/6/6/6/0, 0/6/6/0/6, 0/0/6/6/6, and 6/0/6/0/6 and out of those, my favorites have been 6/0/6/6/0, 6/0/6/0/6, 0/6/6/6/0, and 0/0/6/6/6, respectively taking into account the order of the traitlines in the old system.

everyone else thought after this text, that we need a new naming for our line combos?
i mean we have 10 line combos until HoT, i think we should name them a bit

What would you name them that would be easier to learn and remember than just x/x/x/x/x?
__________________________________________________________________

Could just say MSW (Marksmenship, Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival). We’re lucky enough that none of our traitlines start with the same letter so… Couldn’t really be more clear.

Cufufalating.8479:

Could just say MSW (Marksmenship, Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival). We’re lucky enough that none of our traitlines start with the same letter so… Couldn’t really be more clear.

Oh, yeah, that would be fine, since it will work with the Druid line also and having a 6th line that doesn’t fit into the x/x/x/x/x would screw that way up.
Suggest using the / in between though, so M/S/W so you know it is not an acronym.

Can’t wait to try M/D/B Remorseless GS Druid. I like it

No Ranger’s ESL again, why because we have no real roll.

Other classes do each roll better. When you design team comp for TPvP you design it around rolls.

So you question the builds as whole and what team support they bring how effective they are in 1v1 2v2 team fights how mobile how good is there escape how good is there burst.

When you add up the options where does the Ranger really fit in I’m having hard time finding a roll for the class.

1. I stopped roaming on my trap ranger (w. trapper runes) in wvw. The traps work well against NPC who just stand there at sit in them with no condi cleanses of their own. It`s pretty fast and mindless to take a camp with them. But the build doesn’t work vs players because of the investment in trap utility slots (plus a trait) so you don’t get the good survival skills plus the superior condi cleanse from Wilderness Knowledge as opposed to Empathic Bond which kills your pet. You also lose the guaranteed stealth from them which you need since you lack defensive utilities – never mind that any mesmer clone or ranger pet can trigger them, leaving the ranger quite vulnerable to ranger attacks. For WvW the trapper rune set is dead in my opinion – which irks me since I levelled up crafting specifically for that rune.

Eliminating the offhand range and increased bonfire radius from the skirmishing trait is the type of annoying shtick that kittenes off the player base needlessly. It’s not like people were saying “OMG, rangers offhands are so powerful and need to be nerfed” in any game mode.

Quick Draw is a good trait, so much so that many shortbow builds think about taking it. Pets are better (especially vs NPCs), but still melt vs players due to power creep, especially if you take Empathic bond but we see how this plays out once condis are adjusted.

I really enjoyed playing Beastmastery after the patch.

From me, couple things:

1. Fortifying Bond should’ve been baseline or as one of Beastmastery minors. It’s incredibly important for any build with Pet as Damage role in mind. To achieve really good BM build, we need 4 traitlines together.

2. I haven’t tested if all the bugs with “Sic’ Em” were adressed in the patch, yet to see it for myself, but in case they weren’t, that needs fixing. Shout itself could use some love, like small CDR.

3. “Protect Me!” should keep it’s cooldown, apply Protection and Ranger should just gain bonus health equivalent of Pet’s max health for the period of Shout, similar to how Plague adds health.

4. “Guard!” and “Search and Rescue!” need to be changed:

1) Shout similar to this one – “Enraged Lunge”: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Enraged_Lunge_.

Shout. Immobilize the foe (1s) and apply Might (5s). Your pet’s next successful strike removes 1 condition and does +25% damage for each of your recharging shouts.

2) Shout similar to this one – “I Will Avenge You!”:
http://tinyurl.com/pyudhgo – in memory of W/R

“Shout. Apply Quickness (3s), Protection (3s) to your allies and Slow (2s) to foes for each downed ally within the range. Ressurect your Pet. If your Pet was ressurected, this Shout recharges 50% faster.”

5. Currently, Pets have problems mostly with professions with good access to Teleports. Maybe add a Leap to pets when foe is further than 600 range on activating Shout?

Rym.1469:

I really enjoyed playing Beastmastery after the patch.

From me, couple things:

1. Fortifying Bond should’ve been baseline or as one of Beastmastery minors. It’s incredibly important for any build with Pet as Damage role in mind. To achieve really good BM build, we need 4 traitlines together.

2. I haven’t tested if all the bugs with “Sic’ Em” were adressed in the patch, yet to see it for myself, but in case they weren’t, that needs fixing. Shout itself could use some love, like small CDR.

3. “Protect Me!” should keep it’s cooldown, apply Protection and Ranger should just gain bonus health equivalent of Pet’s max health for the period of Shout, similar to how Plague adds health.

4. “Guard!” and “Search and Rescue!” need to be changed:

1) Shout similar to this one – “Enraged Lunge”: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Enraged_Lunge_.

Shout. Immobilize the foe (1s) and apply Might (5s). Your pet’s next successful strike removes 1 condition and does +25% damage for each of your recharging shouts.

2) Shout similar to this one – “I Will Avenge You!”:
http://tinyurl.com/pyudhgo – in memory of W/R

“Shout. Apply Quickness (3s), Protection (3s) to your allies and Slow (2s) to foes for each downed ally within the range. Ressurect your Pet. If your Pet was ressurected, this Shout recharges 50% faster.”

5. Currently, Pets have problems mostly with professions with good access to Teleports. Maybe add a Leap to pets when foe is further than 600 range on activating Shout?

Very good ideas.
+ [over] 9000

Before the update, I played a condi trap ranger almost completely in PVE; because I tend to do a lot of solo play. My gear was balanced for survival (toughness, vitality) and damage (condi, power, precision) I was constantly tweaking things to improve my damage output while trying to not sacrifice too much survivability; as my survivability was rather low. I usually had a LB/SB mix for lots of pew pew and running around.

1 – After the update, my build had to be completely redone. It immediately seemed easier to survive, but with the lack of ground targeting for traps my play style became a little too defensive. If I want to play that style I will get on my Engi and play with turrets. As great as the traps are, they end up slowing me down while wandering maps and preventing me from dodging around as much as I do during combat. Maybe I just need to learn to kite my opponents better… This has pushed me over to a condi survival build which has been pretty awesome. Wilderness Knowledge is one of my favorites for the 2 condi removal and fury which gives me tons of condi cleanse while using trolls, lightning reflexes, quickening zephyr and entangle (I usually have a signet on for passive depending on the situation/map) LOYF is worth not having the quickness on weapon swap for the arrow piercing. Maybe not so in PVP or WVW but in PVE it is gold when fighting groups of enemies. especially because I have QZ and then poison volley x2 puts a significant number of poison stacks on groups, but I digress.

2 – Spirits were a fun support build I would play if I was bored before the update or if I wanted to run around with passive buffs. Now, I can’t see myself ever using them. They are stationary and, just like traps now, make you less mobile which makes them a waste of a utility slot in PVE because AI kills them real quick. And because there is no burst proc on death it makes them useless. I can only really see them being used in very specific situations where a ranger has a LB and is pewpewing from distance; which is then still not that great cause the range won’t really help any teammates in close combat. I like the idea of spirits, but it isn’t a feasible play style.

3 – The pet’s survival has increased slightly for me. I have a hard time with pet swapping actively; so pet central builds are tough. I’ve never used a shout… ever. Beast Master is a weird build to try and make. The shouts aren’t really offensive in nature; so you are almost always sacrificing a damage boosting utility for a defensive shout which makes it difficult to have good damage output. I always imagined a BM build where your pet hits super hard and you focus on aiding your pet/keeping them alive, but that never works. The pets just don’t ever do enough damage; so I end up spending more time trying to increase damage output so I’m not standing there forever to kill a couple mobs. In short, the problem is that there is no way to shift the focus of a build to the pet correctly without sacrificing huge amounts of damage potential making play extra slow and boring. Random idea, grandmaster trait that allows both pets out at once. There would have to be a lot of work put into balancing and adjusting things to make that even close to feasible, but something big needs to be done to open a pet master build up as a workable play style.

4 – I had been using opening strikes before the update, but I am not longer; so I don’t have much input here.

5 – No input.

Sol.4310:

No Ranger’s ESL again, why because we have no real roll.

Other classes do each roll better. When you design team comp for TPvP you design it around rolls.

So you question the builds as whole and what team support they bring how effective they are in 1v1 2v2 team fights how mobile how good is there escape how good is there burst.

When you add up the options where does the Ranger really fit in I’m having hard time finding a roll for the class.

Didn’t the caster for NA say something about Eura having played on the team in the game they didn’t show. From my understanding it was a PUG and they didn’t win, but still, it would have been nice to at least see the match.

Not that it changes your point at all.

P.S: why are we skipping viewing matches in such a small “esports” community anyhow? I mean, Capcom streams for like the whole 14 hour event and shows every match as far as I know, how come we are skipping showing games in a 4 team bracket lol. I’d understand a little more if there was double the amount of teams with double elimination rules, but as it stands right now, skipping stream matches might be “efficient” for the tournament, but is lazy and hurts the viewing community as a whole who are there to see team comps and strats and their classes in action in a PvP tournament. “Tune in for the things we aren’t showing you” seems to directly contradict why people even watch in the first place.

Sorry, had to vent.

jcbroe.4329:

Sol.4310:

No Ranger’s ESL again, why because we have no real roll.

Other classes do each roll better. When you design team comp for TPvP you design it around rolls.

So you question the builds as whole and what team support they bring how effective they are in 1v1 2v2 team fights how mobile how good is there escape how good is there burst.

When you add up the options where does the Ranger really fit in I’m having hard time finding a roll for the class.

Didn’t the caster for NA say something about Eura having played on the team in the game they didn’t show. From my understanding it was a PUG and they didn’t win, but still, it would have been nice to at least see the match.

Not that it changes your point at all.

P.S: why are we skipping viewing matches in such a small “esports” community anyhow? I mean, Capcom streams for like the whole 14 hour event and shows every match as far as I know, how come we are skipping showing games in a 4 team bracket lol. I’d understand a little more if there was double the amount of teams with double elimination rules, but as it stands right now, skipping stream matches might be “efficient” for the tournament, but is lazy and hurts the viewing community as a whole who are there to see team comps and strats and their classes in action in a PvP tournament. “Tune in for the things we aren’t showing you” seems to directly contradict why people even watch in the first place.

Sorry, had to vent.

Eura is like Nos. No matter if Ranger/Necro is meta, they play their class…

Yes! I agree with jcbroe here. I’d like to see the other games too. I’d really also like to see how eura plays his ranger too.. He doesn’t stream or anything does he?

Morwath.9817:

jcbroe.4329:

Sol.4310:

No Ranger’s ESL again, why because we have no real roll.

Other classes do each roll better. When you design team comp for TPvP you design it around rolls.

So you question the builds as whole and what team support they bring how effective they are in 1v1 2v2 team fights how mobile how good is there escape how good is there burst.

When you add up the options where does the Ranger really fit in I’m having hard time finding a roll for the class.

Didn’t the caster for NA say something about Eura having played on the team in the game they didn’t show. From my understanding it was a PUG and they didn’t win, but still, it would have been nice to at least see the match.

Not that it changes your point at all.

P.S: why are we skipping viewing matches in such a small “esports” community anyhow? I mean, Capcom streams for like the whole 14 hour event and shows every match as far as I know, how come we are skipping showing games in a 4 team bracket lol. I’d understand a little more if there was double the amount of teams with double elimination rules, but as it stands right now, skipping stream matches might be “efficient” for the tournament, but is lazy and hurts the viewing community as a whole who are there to see team comps and strats and their classes in action in a PvP tournament. “Tune in for the things we aren’t showing you” seems to directly contradict why people even watch in the first place.

Sorry, had to vent.

Eura is like Nos. No matter if Ranger/Necro is meta, they play their class…

Well since it’s too soon to tell what optimized team builds are just yet, there isn’t a true “meta” yet, there’s just a bunch of players on a team competing in a tournament on their mains trying to figure things out, which imo makes the tournament much more relevant to see every player and team play, both for theorycrafting purposes and for “class representation,” because when you watch a full tournament that’s mostly only Warriors, Eles, Mesmers, Thieves, and drool over rampages “nerdgasm’ing” the whole time instead of casting the tournament properly and talking about the gameplay, you alienate a large portion of why a community is even watching a tournament after patch; which is to see how things play and what ideas people have come up with.

But I digress; can’t change the past now.

BW will keep power rangers in the meta, with the right builds. when a few things get toned down (if). lookin at you cele ele, who only got stronger post patch!

the ranger forum has a forum specialist? lmao where have you been hiding?

Traps are stronger in that you can drop them and they’ll kill people without condi removal but the buff came at the cost of nerfs to range which makes them mostly useless for anything but dumping and also ruined trapper runes entirely.

Condi survival build also got a massive nerf when they decided to put empathic bond, survival of the fittest and poison master in the same line… I mean really? now we get one instead of two which is a MASSIVE nerf.

Also all condi builds took a hit with the offhand range/radius nerf which is also a big hit.

Spirits and beastmastery are as useless as they’ve always been and power ranger is now the one viable build we have.

All in I give this patch a rating of “0/10 wow really bad”.

Gates is PvP Forum Specialist who was kind enough to help Necromancers in giving feedback to Devs back after first preview and now is even more kind, helping other professions, too

Kudos to him!

vespers.1759:

the ranger forum has a forum specialist? lmao where have you been hiding?

Traps are stronger in that you can drop them and they’ll kill people without condi removal but the buff came at the cost of nerfs to range which makes them mostly useless for anything but dumping and also ruined trapper runes entirely.

Condi survival build also got a massive nerf when they decided to put empathic bond, survival of the fittest and poison master in the same line… I mean really? now we get one instead of two which is a MASSIVE nerf.

Also all condi builds took a hit with the offhand range/radius nerf which is also a big hit.

Spirits and beastmastery are as useless as they’ve always been and power ranger is now the one viable build we have.

All in I give this patch a rating of “0/10 wow really bad”.

The issues you listed here are the ones I’m having too. I loved using poison master, but it’s simply impossible to take now (unless you want to rely on healing spring alone for condi cleansing). I think spike trap is in a good spot (the CD might be on the high side), but the other traps aren’t really that great now, because you can’t throw them anymore. I’m fairly sure the decreased offhand range is not intended, there is simply no reason for it to be that way.

As for trapper runes, they’re fairly useless now. Not just because every trap now has damage ticks, but mostly because the first damage tick has some delay, causing the stealth to break (as opposed to before the patch, when the first damage tick occured before stealth was applied).

All in all I wouldn’t judge the patch so harshly though. I’m having fun playing PvP again for the first time in forever, simply because new things have been introduced (and people aren’t using the same builds they have been for over a year). Ranger did get the short-ish end of the stick, but with a few quality of life changes and bugfixes it won’t be nearly as kittenome people make it out to be.

They should make 2 condi cleanse on survival skills baseline, and have the trait add also cleanse nearby allies.
Then boom we aren’t forced to WS for cleanses, we can trait for group utility and poison master also becomes an option.
They could make traps interesting too by adding transitioning fields.
e.g. when flame traps done it leaves a smoke field or ice trap melts leaving a water field. No buff damage wise but I’m sure some clever rangers would make use of the fields quite well.

After playing rather solidly for past week, I have list of traits that aren’t going to see the light of day. I will list the trait’s I’ve tried many builds starting to find some niche setups.

Marksmanship

• Enlargement – I feel you should change it to Signet of Stone, it’s just not worth taking in its current state I tried using it but just didn’t seem to help.
• Predator’s Onslaught – The 10% bonus to damage really doesn’t do much at all, I’ve tested it with different weapons and my pet’s. Not sure how you could fix this trait but currently the 10% isn’t noticeable.

Skirmishing

• Strider’s Defense – Just plan useless, no build or reason to take this trait.
• Most Dangerous Game – After fair amount of testing, might stacking felt rather useless damage boost wasn’t noticeable. Required us to be at 50% health which in this current meta is death sentence for rangers. Duration of the might is to low even tried stacking with NM and Runes, just wears off rather fast. Required you to take MM/SM/NM so no condition remove to make it effective. Really needs improvement, stop making traits for ranger that require us to be on 50% health there not useful and they get us killed.

Wilderness Survival

• Expertise Training – needs the Attribute Adjusted to 750, with how conditions scale now pet’s do extremely bad condition damage its so low I can’t even find a skill in the game that does so little damage.
• Poison master – Needs to change trait lines, it can’t compete with our condition removal traits just not going to happen.

Nature Magic

• Instinctive Reaction – Change it to scale off vitality or toughness and not healing power. This trait is only really useful in Power builds, you need rather large investment into Healing Power to make it effective which won’t happen unless your playing bunker and there is no real need for more power.
• Invigorating Bond – Won’t ever get used, I tried my hardest to use this trait but we can’t control our pet’s movement. Radius is far to small change it to 600 already, also change it to shout so we can start making proper support bunker builds that offer our teammates some support.

Beastmaster

• Companion’s Might – Bleeds are now worthless, pet’s don’t have much condition damage so there scaling is completely wrecked.
• Honed Axes – Is in a rather bad state I’ve tried using this trait but it doesn’t really do much for condition builds. Can’t compete with current GM in this trait line.

Sol.4310:

Snip

Pretty much this… We need a role in top tier tPvP. I think the invigorating bond idea is REALLY good. This would help quite a bit in team support. Alot of these traits are beyond useless and yes , for god’s sakes STOP making traits that require us to be below 50% to benefit.

If you’re below 50% you won’t be for long because you obviously need to heal and if you’re getting bursted down and going below 50% then you’re not going to benefit anyway because you’ll be dead in the next 5 seconds. Rangers always get these kinds of traits and they’re just silly. Necro gets a skill that allows them to gain 2 might for 10 seconds when their enemy is below 50% health, why can’t we get stuff like that? Something like that would help us alot and could synergize with barrage very well and read the wind (piercing targets on multiple enemies below 50%, etc).

— Changing enlargement to signet of stone would help ALOT for power rangers, increase survivability tenfold and would work just like warrior’s endure pain trait.

— Companion’s might should really just be changed to something else… I was thinking of some sort of dmg modifier to both the ranger and the pet based on something. Maybe even a modifier buff , 50% chance on crit to build up to 5 stacks of ‘companions might’ which could be increased 3% dmg and condition dmg overall for 10 seconds per stack. Potentially be 15% increase dmg and condition dmg along with the bleed from crits on basic attacks.

— Poison Master needs to be reworked to compete with our only good traited condition removal, yes I know we get evasive purity in NM but it’s nothing compared to the 2 GM traits we have to already compete for, what makes you think we would ever choose it over EB or WK? Completely useless and needs to be moved or made very good to compete.

— Strider’s Defense – has to be one of the most worthless traits we have really. It was moved to master and still doesn’t even get picked… We didn’t choose it because it was a GM, we never choose it because it’s absolutely useless. Maybe remove the while attacking part and simply just have a chance to block projectiles, as much as I hate passive gains that’s the only way I could see people taking this skill unless you just reworked it entirely to do something else.

— Predator’s Onslaught , it’s a great idea but like Sol said the dmg is not noticeable at all. Maybe change it to all soft-cc effects last 25% longer and deal 20% dmg from you and your pet. Then it would be worthy of GM material and compete with the other traits, otherwise it’s rather useless compared to the other GM’s.

^^ Another idea I had for this was you get an “Onslaught Modifier Stack” , so if the person has a soft-cc on them and you attack them , you get a 5% dmg modifier stack with the maximum stacks being 5 and last 8-10 seconds , so you can get a potential 25% dmg from it if a person has a soft-cc on them. This is SORT of similar to the mantra skill for mesmer in that when you use a mantra, you get a dmg modifier bonus buff that shows up on your boon bar.

— Expertise Training: Like sol said, conditions from pets really do HORRIBLE damage now. Raising it to something like 750 and putting a 30% increase on duration would justify it because right now it’s just really bad – 350 does nothing.

Sol.4310:

Nature Magic

• Instinctive Reaction – Change it to scale off vitality or toughness and not healing power. This trait is only really useful in Power builds, you need rather large investment into Healing Power to make it effective which won’t happen unless your playing bunker and there is no real need for more power.

I feel like Instinctive Reaction should be the opposite way, so that power gave healing power, instead of healing power giving power.

As it is now, with healing power runes and cleric amulet, you get 97 power from this trait, which is good and all, but it is super niche and a bad trait unless you have bulk healing power, which most Rangers do not. In fact, most run with zero, so get zero benefit from the conversion.

If it were 10% of power becoming healing power, then every ranger could take this trait and get at least 100 healing power from it and it gets better the more power you take. Meaning a Berserker or Soldier amulet can take this and get 220+ healing power, or a Cleric can still take it and get 90+.

I think it would actually be useful then, since it is often the least worse choice when using NM, this way, it would actually have some benefit when used in a non Bunker build, but also benefit a Bunker.