Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer – this post is largely in the context of SPVP

So for power rangers in spvp, ranger GS basically gets a nerf where in the marksmanship traits, you now have to choose between beast master’s might and moment of clarity. Obviously beastmaster’s might is a tremendously stacked trait and signets are the only things keeping rangers alive in spvp versus the superior zerker builds (if for only a short time) so why even pretend moment of clarity is an option?

Not having moment of clarity is also a big deal for GS on power ranger since it’s rangers big melee dmg combo and this combo pretty much gets shafted when it loses the moment of clarity bonus from hilt bash -> maul combo. Not to mention losing the 100% increased duration on stun/daze which is the most threatening thing about greatsword’s offensive abilities. On top of that, hilt bash is already a difficult ability to land due its short range and being unstowable and uncancellable without swapping weapons with a 25s cd and without moment of clarity, hilt bash loses a ton of effectiveness for what it does.

Moment of clarity is what makes power rangers threatening in melee range and power ranger’s melee option receives a major nerf by not being able to reasonably take this trait since it gets completely eclipsed by beastmaster’s might.

Moment of clarity should either be made somehow baseline, rolled in with marksmanship minor traits, or dissolved and pieces of it incorporated into other abilities so some other trait can be introduced or reworked to replace it. Personally I think moment of clarity and its reset should just be rolled into the Opening strike minor traits in the marksmanship line and the daze/stun increase should just be made baseline with Hilt Bash since it’s exclusively the only thing used that benefits from it. Literally the only other ranger ability that has a daze is the shortbow 5 and condi builds dont take moment of clarity anyway.

Not only would this prevent (what I assume was an unintentional) nerf to rangers melee option but it would free up a trait slot so the devs could try to create a trait thats at least a respectable alternative to beastmaster’s might.

I agree with this completely. If Rangers can’t go into melee then we will go right back to being shunned for staying ranged the whole fight. Either that or forced back into condi builds.

Change your build to use Shouts/survival and you can take it. Protect me is fine and a shorter CD than SoS, you just have to time your pet swap to be right at the end of its health, if you get that close. SoR is taken care of by Wilderness Knowledge. You do lose the stability and damage from SoTW, but you get remorseless to make up for that. SoTH speed is made up for by Resounding Timbre with a couple of shouts.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Change your build to use Shouts/survival and you can take it. Protect me is fine and a shorter CD than SoS, you just have to time your pet swap to be right at the end of its health, if you get that close. SoR is taken care of by Wilderness Knowledge. You do lose the stability and damage from SoTW, but you get remorseless to make up for that. SoTH speed is made up for by Resounding Timbre with a couple of shouts.

Resounding Timber is nice, too bad our shouts aren’t.

Giving up good utilities to slot in shouts that also require a trait to even be considered useful isn’t really a good trade off.

I’m not experienced enough in the style of play the OP is discussing to have a strong opinion on that. However, I know enough to know our shouts are generally bad. Sic ‘em has uses but not the use you are suggesting. Guard is bad except that it has a low CD to basically use a trait. The revive shout has too long of a CD to be worth mentioning. Finally Protect Me isn’t really a substitute for SoS because of the inability to contribute to capture points and it kills your pet.

If you take Wilderness Knowledge and Resounding Timbre, you can then take TU or HaO as heal skill that both get additional effects and CD, LR, MT/“Sic Em”, “Protect Me” plus either “RaO” or Entangle, both of which also get the additional effects. Swap between them as you see fit during the match, OOC ofc.

That is a great trade off as you can swap skills on the fly and still have the traits there to boost them. Not contributing to capture points is a bit of a drama, but a small price to pay for such utility, learn to swap timing and the pet doesnt die and it has a -20s CD. Imo, having this is far superior to just 3 signets that only give might and recharge OS.

Yeh seems like a bad place to put it.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If you take Wilderness Knowledge and Resounding Timbre, you can then take TU or HaO as heal skill that both get additional effects and CD, LR, MT/“Sic Em”, “Protect Me” plus either “RaO” or Entangle, both of which also get the additional effects. Swap between them as you see fit during the match, OOC ofc.

That is a great trade off as you can swap skills on the fly and still have the traits there to boost them. Not contributing to capture points is a bit of a drama, but a small price to pay for such utility, learn to swap timing and the pet doesnt die and it has a -20s CD. Imo, having this is far superior to just 3 signets that only give might and recharge OS.

These aren’t good tradeoffs. Ranger shouts are gimmicky, one-dimensional, and generally badly designed. No one in their right mind would skip signets with beastmaster’s might for moment of clarity and shouts.

SoS is superior to Protect me in every conceivable way. Protect me is fundamentally poorly designed and worse than that, it’s completely counter-intuitive with the new ranger traits. Ranger traits practically scream “swap your pet everytime it’s off cd” because with just marksmanship and beast mastery lines you can get 4 stacks of might, fury, swiftness, and quickness on a 16s cd while the fury might and swiftness last 15s.

Risking killing your pet and tripling the cooldown of pet swap is never going to be worth it. Especially not when PM and SoS have the same cd except SoS keeps you AND your pet alive, and gives you 3 more stacks of might and a guaranteed crit + 10 stacks of vuln from your OS and your pet’s OS.

Ranger shouts are never going to be worth taking unless they are completely reworked.

Moment of clarity being made to compete with beastmaster’s might pretty much guarantees it and steady focus are completely dead traits that no one will ever take. Moment of clarity has extremely limited usage for a ranger. PBS and Hilt bash are the only ones that can proc it even somewhat reliably for power ranger, pbs being significantly less valuable since the best LB ability that benefits from it is just another autoattack but for GS, moment of clarity is tremendously valuable since it synergizes extremely well with maul (which is your highest damage ability in gs) after a successful hilt bash and the devs removed this synergy when they made it compete with a talent that will forever eclipse it in its usefulness.

Negativity.5801:

…SoS is superior to Protect me in every conceivable way. Protect me is fundamentally poorly designed and worse than that, it’s completely counter-intuitive with the new ranger traits. Ranger traits practically scream “swap your pet everytime it’s off cd” because with just marksmanship and beast mastery lines you can get 4 stacks of might, fury, swiftness, and quickness on a 16s cd while the fury might and swiftness last 15s.

Risking killing your pet and tripling the cooldown of pet swap is never going to be worth it. Especially not when PM and SoS have the same cd except SoS keeps you AND your pet alive, and gives you 3 more stacks of might and a guaranteed crit + 10 stacks of vuln from your OS and your pet’s OS….

You are right, it is better. But all the other skills are better than the other two signets you will have on your bar and have much more synergy as a build. If there was a signet heal and signet elite, then signets would be superior.

You are wrong that “Protect Me” is counter-intuitive with the new traits, it rewards you for swapping, which is exactly how you should be using it. You swap pets before it dies and get the buff. You are forgetting that Beastmasters Bond has a 30s CD and “PM” also recharges 16s faster than SoS when both are traited. “PM” is also a stun break. PM doesn’t have the passive +180 Toughness either, but it is still an invulnerability skill and it fits in with the other skills on the bar, you just have to play it a bit different.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Negativity.5801:

…SoS is superior to Protect me in every conceivable way. Protect me is fundamentally poorly designed and worse than that, it’s completely counter-intuitive with the new ranger traits. Ranger traits practically scream “swap your pet everytime it’s off cd” because with just marksmanship and beast mastery lines you can get 4 stacks of might, fury, swiftness, and quickness on a 16s cd while the fury might and swiftness last 15s.

Risking killing your pet and tripling the cooldown of pet swap is never going to be worth it. Especially not when PM and SoS have the same cd except SoS keeps you AND your pet alive, and gives you 3 more stacks of might and a guaranteed crit + 10 stacks of vuln from your OS and your pet’s OS….

You are right, it is better. But all the other skills are better than the other two signets you will have on your bar and have much more synergy as a build. If there was a signet heal and signet elite, then signets would be superior.

You are wrong that “Protect Me” is counter-intuitive with the new traits, it rewards you for swapping, which is exactly how you should be using it. You swap pets before it dies and get the buff. You are forgetting that Beastmasters Bond has a 30s CD and “PM” also recharges 16s faster than SoS when both are traited. “PM” is also a stun break. PM doesn’t have the passive +180 Toughness either, but it is still an invulnerability skill and it fits in with the other skills on the bar, you just have to play it a bit different.

It also protects against condition damage applied after its activation. Just as a side note.

Negativity.5801:

Disclaimer – this post is largely in the context of SPVP

I appreciate that. We need a topic function that can denote which way the thread is leaning towards… Maybe one day.

Negativity.5801:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If you take Wilderness Knowledge and Resounding Timbre, you can then take TU or HaO as heal skill that both get additional effects and CD, LR, MT/“Sic Em”, “Protect Me” plus either “RaO” or Entangle, both of which also get the additional effects. Swap between them as you see fit during the match, OOC ofc.

That is a great trade off as you can swap skills on the fly and still have the traits there to boost them. Not contributing to capture points is a bit of a drama, but a small price to pay for such utility, learn to swap timing and the pet doesnt die and it has a -20s CD. Imo, having this is far superior to just 3 signets that only give might and recharge OS.

These aren’t good tradeoffs. Ranger shouts are gimmicky, one-dimensional, and generally badly designed. No one in their right mind would skip signets with beastmaster’s might for moment of clarity and shouts.

SoS is superior to Protect me in every conceivable way. Protect me is fundamentally poorly designed and worse than that, it’s completely counter-intuitive with the new ranger traits. Ranger traits practically scream “swap your pet everytime it’s off cd” because with just marksmanship and beast mastery lines you can get 4 stacks of might, fury, swiftness, and quickness on a 16s cd while the fury might and swiftness last 15s.

Risking killing your pet and tripling the cooldown of pet swap is never going to be worth it. Especially not when PM and SoS have the same cd except SoS keeps you AND your pet alive, and gives you 3 more stacks of might and a guaranteed crit + 10 stacks of vuln from your OS and your pet’s OS.

Ranger shouts are never going to be worth taking unless they are completely reworked.

Moment of clarity being made to compete with beastmaster’s might pretty much guarantees it and steady focus are completely dead traits that no one will ever take. Moment of clarity has extremely limited usage for a ranger. PBS and Hilt bash are the only ones that can proc it even somewhat reliably for power ranger, pbs being significantly less valuable since the best LB ability that benefits from it is just another autoattack but for GS, moment of clarity is tremendously valuable since it synergizes extremely well with maul (which is your highest damage ability in gs) after a successful hilt bash and the devs removed this synergy when they made it compete with a talent that will forever eclipse it in its usefulness.

I think i’m with “my right mind” and one of my best ideas for builds ATM with the new changes is a melee ranger GS – S-A 6-6-0-0-6 with Call of Wild, MOC , Remorseless, Quickdraw, Resounding Timbre, Two-Handed Training – and Beastly Warden.

Get trooper rune set(remove condi on shout). Now you have prema swiftness, prema regeneration, prema fury and crazy combos with with MOC+remorseless and quick draw(~200% damage maul / POS with) Taunt on F2 is very good way to actuly land the combos(hit bash while foe attacks pet). RAO +remorseless(fury every 3 sec) Protect me and sic’em are just a bonus, u can have 1 sigent (like SoR) no harm in that.

Who cares now about beastmaster’s might?

If taking the marksmanship line, then `Beastmaster’s Might` & `Remorseless`, combined with the minors, and possible `Beastmasters Bond`, would be far more useful than `Moment of CLarity` IMO. Even without taking `Remorseless`, the loss of the 150% next attack damage from `Moment of Clarity` isn’t really an issue.

I’d personally rather have 5 stacks of 5s vulnerability, guarenteed critical hit and 25% more damage, than just 150% damage. Minimum critical damage combined with 100% crit chance equals 150% damage anyway, PLUS 25%, PLUS vulnerability, PLUS whatever extra your ferocity adds.

It’s also a hell of a lot easier to generate Opening Strike, than it is to get an interupt. I’d personally prefer it if they removed the Attack of Opportunity altogether, and replaced it with an easier way to get a daze or stun.

e.g. ‘When you gain Fury, your next attack is unblockable and will daze. Daze and stun durations that you inflict last longer’

Assuming you are using all signets and there are only 3 slots for those. There are much better options now our heal and elites have skill types.

Kaz.5430:

If taking the marksmanship line, then `Beastmaster’s Might` & `Remorseless`, combined with the minors, and possible `Beastmasters Bond`, would be far more useful than `Moment of CLarity` IMO. Even without taking `Remorseless`, the loss of the 150% next attack damage from `Moment of Clarity` isn’t really an issue.

I’d personally rather have 5 stacks of 5s vulnerability, guarenteed critical hit and 25% more damage, than just 150% damage. Minimum critical damage combined with 100% crit chance equals 150% damage anyway, PLUS 25%, PLUS vulnerability, PLUS whatever extra your ferocity adds.

It’s also a hell of a lot easier to generate Opening Strike, than it is to get an interupt. I’d personally prefer it if they removed the Attack of Opportunity altogether, and replaced it with an easier way to get a daze or stun.

e.g. ‘When you gain Fury, your next attack is unblockable and will daze. Daze and stun durations that you inflict last longer’

The conflict is not between remorslees or MOC (you can and should take both) But between Beastmaster’s Might and MOC. If you go Beastmaster’s Might you most likely go with 3 sigents, one of them is soth which replace MOC as source for attack of opportunity(and your shortest sigent for might application). If you go Beastmaster’s Might you’ll probably also want enlargment(for extra synergy ) so no Beastmaster’s Bond(call of the wild trait) for you. Its just a different build, no swiftness but sotw, no MOC but SOTH active, no prema fury but might stacking, no pre regeneration but SOTW etc…
BTW NM much more suitable for this build than BM as 3 trait line.