Guild Wars 2

Something appears to have happened with this thread. Going to assume that it extended into two pages, but wouldn’t allow me to view the first page until the second page was actually created, for some odd reason.

EDIT: Scratch that, the thread appears to have been merged into a second thread.

BladeBraverBureba.1052:

Something appears to have happened with this thread. Going to assume that it extended into two pages, but wouldn’t allow me to view the first page until the second page was actually created, for some odd reason.

EDIT: Scratch that, the thread appears to have been merged into a second thread.

Forum Bug, Been here for a long time. haha.

StickerHappy.8052:

BladeBraverBureba.1052:

Something appears to have happened with this thread. Going to assume that it extended into two pages, but wouldn’t allow me to view the first page until the second page was actually created, for some odd reason.

EDIT: Scratch that, the thread appears to have been merged into a second thread.

Forum Bug, Been here for a long time. haha.

Shows how often I have ever come to the forums in the past :P. Was afraid the thread got deleted.

I need to test out the points you made earlier, sometime tonight. Need to see it myself to get a feel for what is happening.

The “Passive/Aggressive” bug, I’m guessing, is the issue of Passive mode not working on pets?

StickerHappy.8052:

I had a thread in the past that had my points but It got deleted, Not making excuses but I figured at this point of time, much of the ranger community would surely noticed a lot of Pet AI problems already, but okay I will list them again.

Pet Pathing

a.) When you jump off a ledge like In Spirit Watch or Skyhammer, your pet takes the longer route to follow you, This isn’t a problem when your OOC but when you are in combat, this sucks and just swapped, this sucks.

b.) Pets for some reason have a hard time sticking to their target, especially melee pets. If the target is moving and kiting, the pet like cats will barely able to catch up. You can say I can cripple them, but all I’m saying is that, why would you need to do an extra effort just to make them hit more often?

Pet Skills/Pathing

a.) Drakes f2: If the target just moves an inch away from the drake, it will cancel its f2, and put it on cd, wasting it.

b.) leaps f2: target can just move away negating this completely (this one not really an AI issue just a design issue)

Passive/Aggressive Bug

and so on,.

Again speaking as someone that runs BM builds I wanted to throw in my two cents.

a.) I agree. It’s silly that my pet can’t follow me. This is especially harmful on the Khylo map where jumping from a window position toward the point causes my pet to run all the way around the entire building, leaving me without my primary offense for a solid 10-15 seconds. This is CRIPPLING for my build and is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. It can be fixed with a pet swap, but forcing my pet swap on a cooldown just for jumping over a ledge is almost as bad.

b.) I actually disagree here. Crippling and timing your crowd controls to land the pet burst is part of the skill necessary in playing a pet focused ranger. I certainly want them to be more responsive. The cast time on F2 skills is far too long and pets who offer buffs shouldn’t charge the enemy before casting them. Pets should have less of a cast time on their attacks so they can hit faster. But pets shouldn’t be able to stick to an enemy scoring hit after hit without player input. It’d just turn us into the next turret engineers. The reason turret engineers are so hated is because their turrets just need to be dropped and immediately do all the engineer’s work. What makes our pets a more acceptable form of PVP AI is that the pet needs constant input from the player in the form of commands and control skills to get the most out of them. That is a proper way to build a pet class. The pet can’t be a threat without the commander.

… Though it’s not uncommon for my pet to chase down an enemy and finish them off while I’m capturing a point as is. It’s hilarious when it happens. One mesmer tried to retreat with 25% health left and ended up getting downed and finished by my raven.

Sebrent.3625:

@Lazze:

• What says you’re shoehorned into Beastmastery? You still have 10 traits points left and now you have a shorter pet swap cooldown (usefulness varies based on build and pets taken) … those points in Beastmastery do make your pet more powerful as well, I have the math posted around here for over a year now).

I didn’t say, at least I didn’t mean, shoehorned into Beastmastery. I meant shoehorned into a less effective build unless you wanted 6 points in BM in the first place. If Mighty Swap affected allies, the adept minor trait wasn’t a complete joke etc., the investement wouldn’t potentially be all that bad. But compared to our other options, 4 points into BM for Vigor sharing isn’t worth it imo.

The thing is though, it wouldn’t take more than some buffed traits (like mighty swap), a rework of a couple of shouts to something more party oriented (along with a radius buff to nature’s voice) and some buffs to our spirits (they’re a joke compared to engie turrets in a pvp enviroment, and I can’t believe that Anet thinks the current state of spirits vs turrets is balanced) to make a support oriented ranger less subpar.

Sebrent.3625:

@anduriell:
You’re again just making claims without much of anything to really support them.

I gave you the reasons why in my statements, maybe i don’t explain myself good enough or maybe you don’t read all my texts.

Brown Bear condition cleanse
If you have the pet on passive it must not go first to attack the tagged. This is happening before the passive bug and i think is a feature of that skill. Fern hound do not do that neither the moas. Why does the brown bear do it?

The only options for support …
Ok so even you are contradicting my at the end you appear be agreeing with me. Spirits are too nerfed and you have to waste a full trait line to make them work a bit.
Pet support skills aren’t good enough, too long CD and the effects are too short. Again, you can trait that but you are trading beastmatery for other traits that could help you better. It’s a help, but none can think those a support team skills

Healing Skills
Now with the last changes healing spring got better. I think now even the wolfs howls can trigger the water field, but before that the only way to get a reliable healing was with troll unguent. Usually you can’t stay immobile in une place when you need the healing.

Signet of the Wild
Signet activated is nice i think i said that. The healing is just a joke with healing power or 800 you only get 100 heal. And then you have the hp of a fly and hit like a wet noodle.

Regen
That’s the thing, you have always to trade something that unbalance your build. Our condition damage does not do that much to trade it for power, and you miss also hit points. You could use shaman accessories however our condition damage is not as good as other classes and you are loosing too much stats in other areas because of this.

Signet of Renewal
We agree in this.

Before Longbow
Oh no, rangers has different states. First was the SB OP.. Then the nerf to the spirits. Now at least they gave back some DPS in power builds (LB).

Math
Actually it should be like that. Guard has it’s own mechanics but having the rest of the classes overcome the ranger in everything shouldn’t be possible. We learn to play better but doesn’t mean the class is not broken. Anet said multiple times that you shouldn’t know the end of a match just seeing the teams, right now you know ranger is a no go.

Sword AA
Not it not literally one But in practice it is.

Pet intercept projectiles
Yes in the strange case you can stay put in one place pewpewing. I can’t, can you?

Your Guardian
You misunderstood me, i meant guardian class (that class, not this one) is boring as hell. Yes a lot of support and damage but is for the ppl that only need to go hulking (smash) things. Only thing i have to do is keep close and smash all the buttons in my mouse.

Druid is broken unless overhaul
We know enough.

• Druid has pet.
• Druid share same weapons. Probably will loose LB and take staff.
• Druid has the same trait lines except some new traits/new trait line in exchange of others (probably skirmish) .
• They say pet will have new mechanics, I will believe it when I see it.

As i said, i like ranger class. Better than the rest and enjoy playing in WvW and PvE. However that doesn’t mean I don’t have to struggle to stay alive because there are a lot of broken things within this class that are contradictory not only against what Anet says this class is for (mobility and stuff) but also against your own skills and traits.

I don’t provide numbers because it takes too much and any player that plays ranger knows what i’m talking about. The ones that not i advise to try, just to see how hard is to play with this class.

@Lazze:
I think it depends on the pet. For example: when I use a bird, those beastmastery points are nice since birds are great at sticking to their target and landing hits. The terrain can, of course, affect this as well. For example, Khylo’s terrain is “the suck”.

@anduriell:
Let me try this from another angle as I don’t think we’re too far in our separate views.

I think:

• Ranger does have issues. Look on all sorts of topics around the forums. I’m there. I’m aware. I often agree.
• Ranger is not part of the sPvP meta not because Ranger is broken but because some other classes got a bit over-tweaked in the areas most desireable for sPvP … or everywhere given that one of those classes (Ele) is stacked in Dungeon Speed Runs, WvW GWEN, and sPvP.
• Ranger is not part of the Dungeon speed runs, again, because one class is stacked due to it being overtweaked for everything … then you have other classes with okay damage that support it (classic 2 Ele (Fury, Regen, Might, Damage, etc.), Warrior (Might+Vuln), Thief (Stealth+Vuln), Mesmer (Stealth+Quickness+Reflection).
• Ranger does poorly in WvW large-scale fights (zerging) because pets are made of paper (non-bears) or much less useful (bears) … this is an issue … Mesmers suffer similarly … though both are actually pretty nice to have for zerg busting due to some particular skills each has.
• Rangers do spectacularly in Roaming/Havoc groups as they don’t have to stand on a point, it’s small enough for the pet to not get insta-gibbed, and the tactic isn’t “stack up, boon stack, kill stationary target with weapon Elementalist gave you” … though I still assert that I’ve seen nothing meaner than our 5-man, all-Thief havoc group we used to coordinate with.

Healing Skills
Healing Spring is good if (1) You are going to use Finishers with it (2) Don’t have other sources of Regeneration (3) Won’t have Regeneration stripped from you (4) You need more cleanse.

Some builds are capable of standing in it depending on the ebb and flow on the fight which largely depends on their opponent as well.

Signet of the Wild
I would like to see it scale a little better, but paired with Troll Unguent, Regeneration, and one of two BM GM traits for extra healing and you’re pretty tanky. Whenever I look at Warrior’s [Healing Signet] and [Adrenal Health] I get quite envious. It wouldn’t hurt to at least match the first tier of Adrenal Health :-/ … but Warrior passives are another thing that irks me from time to time :-p … compare their Berserker’s Power to Mesmer’s Empowered Mantras … bull-[insert kittens here]

Healing Tradeoffs
This is why I’ve only been successful with two different types of Ranger builds with Healing. (1) Apothecary condition build. You can get away with not having precision and ferocity with condition builds so you can devote those stats to Healing and Toughness. (2) Cleric beastmaster build. You are a pain in the butt and just there to tackle them with your 1H Sword leapscripples while passing Might to your pet who is doing the real damage. This one isn’t as effective as the Apoth condition build, but it cracks me up.

Pet Intercept Projectiles
If you dance around your ranged pet against a range opponent, you can keep it up and they will rage :-) It’s just like dancing around terrain to LOS … except in this case you can shoot through that “terrain” and they can’t … and the terrain is shooting them too ;-)

Guardian
Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding. I think Guardian can be interesting … have to play different formats though else I can see it getting monotonous. Not as many roles in my mind … but I know far less about them than I do Mesmer/Ranger.

My List
If I could have three improvements to Ranger it would be:

• Better Pet AI (hit a moving target, responsive F2, etc.)
• Reliable Boon Removal … because “thanks for the boon-stacking meta”
• A condition weapon that actually applies conditions with its AAs (without flanking/crits).

Without these, I’m sure I can still whoop some tail, but these would be drastic quality of life improvements in my mind.

Lastly, look at how Elementalist has see-sawed in the past year or so between UP/OP with slight changes. Now realize that with the expansion we’re getting

• New Utilities
• New Traits
• New Weapon
• Specializations (whatever those do), lol.

It could very well greatly enhance Rangers even if we still deal with this of this other stuff.

I think it is far too early to be so certain of how good/bad Druid will be regardless of what we know about the current state of Rangers.