Guild Wars 2

This game has alot of mechanics that countering each other.
Mostly these counters have counter-play too, for examples:
1. A condition-weak class can help deal with condition through bringing more cleanses, cleanse through the help of teammates.
2. A class that have alot of stability that counters CC-reliant class can be dealt with if you or your teammates bring some source of boon removal skills.
3. A class that have lots of blocks can be countered unblockable skills. (They even buff Signet of Might by giving them x seconds of block denial in the reworked trait system)

However, currently there’s ZERO counter when it comes to projectile and projectile destruction/reflection. When an opponent lay a Wall of Reflection, Dagger Storm, Magnetic Aura, or Swirling Wind, currently there’s ZERO method, through teammates or any other means, to help you deal with the projectile destruction/reflection. All you can do is wait it out and nothing else.

Ranger is a class that relies heavily on projectiles. It is kind of unfair to us to have such hard-counter that have no method to counter it back. I think there should be traits or skills that help us “penetrates” through reflection or projectile destruction. It can be a Grandmaster Traits, it can be skills activation, it can be boon, basically anything that may help projectiles go through reflection.

I know people will argue about “it’d be OP!” and stuffs, so ofc this counter-play shouldn’t come cheap either. Maybe a duration limitation, a boon that can be removed as counter-play, or make ranger has to make hard-choice to get it. But at least give us option to do so. Note that Mesmer is a class that has all of those none projectile range abilities that can hit through anything.

With all due respect, this promotes even more brain-dead play. The counter to projectile reflecting is to melee or wait it out. Reflections often have relatively short durations and/or are static and can be flanked around. The further promotion for rangers to spam #2 from a distance has the potential to actually be detrimental to the development of the class as a whole.

Vaught.5198:

With all due respect, this promotes even more brain-dead play. The counter to projectile reflecting is to melee or wait it out. Reflections often have relatively short durations and/or are static and can be flanked around. The further promotion for rangers to spam #2 from a distance has the potential to actually be detrimental to the development of the class as a whole.

Weird, how come mesmer can do the same with GS and no-one has problem with it?
Yes, melee is an option, but unfortunately a sub-par one. If you switch to melee, those celestial classes will basically grin at you and safely waste another 9 seconds because you’re not scratching them a single bit during your low dps melee time. (Provided you waste most traits on range option already.)

You’re also quite wrong about the short duration part. Many of them have extremely long duration usually 5~15 seconds, and can be able to chain them. It’d be even worse after HoT when they introduce way more “mobile reflection” with 50%+ up time on many other classes.

Note that a Mesmer GS auto-attack is considered a “Beam,” and “Mirror Blade” is unblockable. What you are asking for basically is a way to make an attack/attacks unblockable to bypass reflections/projectile blocks.

It’s not necessarily “OP” if one was added to the Ranger, but seeing how reflections and projectile blocks are strong and viable ways to counter to a LB Ranger, I don’t see Anet making that option available anytime soon.

I agree with Vaught. Melee is a good counter to reflections.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

I agree with Vaught. Melee is a good counter to reflections.

So can we steal Guardian’s or Ele’s melee option ?

I don’t think counters need more counters, otherwise, those counters will need counters of their own. Then we would need more counters to counter those countered counters. As well as yet more counters countering those countered countered counters.

Guard’s sort of suffer from reflections as well if they are using a Sword main-hand. The last chain on the auto attack are projectiles. Always fun to watch a Guard kill himself when spamming 1 in a Feedback bubble.

In HoT reflection will become much more problematic. For example mesmers trait to get mirror on dodge. Or warrior with reflect on block merged with shield master (reflect on block makes his mace block don’t stop after single projectile).

+1 to some counter.

Terkov.4138:

In HoT reflection will become much more problematic. For example mesmers trait to get mirror on dodge. Or warrior with reflect on block merged with shield master (reflect on block makes his mace block don’t stop after single projectile).

+1 to some counter.

Warrior OH sword also has a channelled block that will reflect almost a whole RF. I don’t see why there needs to be a counter to reflection tbh.

I didn’t mention OH sword block because it has longer CD and block doesn’t break from single ranged hit anyway. Mace will benefit a lot from “free” reflect on block trait.

Normally I wouldn’t think there should be counter, but with tons of reflects added in HoT, that don’t really need special sacrifices to get them, I think any smaller fight will be major pain for projectile weapons. It’s one thing to swap to melee when someone pops 30s CD reflect, but what if someone has 25% or maybe even 50% (I’d need to calculate mesmer on-dodge one) reflection uptime? My weapon swap won’t go off CD before he pops it again O.o

Also, I don’t think we need some big counter. Rather something situational – 30+ sec CD with few sec “unreflectable” buff. It could be similiar to warriors signet that gives unblockable attacks on active.

Ok so I’m not too big on it simply because all it does is encourage people to stick to the lb and throw traits and everything at that weapon. However, if they did create a boon or etc for this reflection penetration thing, I really don’t think ranger should be the class to get access to it. I think it’s make for a way to show team synergy if another class got it so that one class gets another highly unique method of support and that the ranger can’t abuse it in 1 v 1s or be able to pick off things while roaming around that are reflecting. That’s just my two cents, what do you think?

Take a look at Wizzo’s videos. He’s usually playing a Greatsword / Sword+X in each of them … Ranger is quite capable of melee. Even a longbow ranger can be deadly with his greatsword … if he’s good.

singinggecko.5736:

Ok so I’m not too big on it simply because all it does is encourage people to stick to the lb and throw traits and everything at that weapon. However, if they did create a boon or etc for this reflection penetration thing, I really don’t think ranger should be the class to get access to it. I think it’s make for a way to show team synergy if another class got it so that one class gets another highly unique method of support and that the ranger can’t abuse it in 1 v 1s or be able to pick off things while roaming around that are reflecting. That’s just my two cents, what do you think?

And why do you think LB is the only projectile weapon ranger uses?
Axe is projectile, SB is projectile, basically almost all of the range options for ranger are projectiles.

Clearly this issue is not “Just a LB thing”.

I agree that melee is a good way to counter reflects.

There shouldn’t be a class in this game that sits on max range for the whole duration of the fight. Though I believed it was a fair trade off to have zero team support and zero objective contribution and like zero mobility…
…
I don’t think the least presented build in competitive getting countered twice as much is a good way to start.
I’m fine with lots of other builds… But I’m aware that thousands of others will not.

I never said it was just a lb thing. But sadly I think that’s the first weapon everyone thinks of when they think of this class and secondly that people would try if they heard they could break through reflect. Maybe it’s just me but I kinda doubt it. Besides when I was reading the second and fourth posts in the thread it looked like the conversation was aimed at the lb.

I don’t see the need for a counter to something that is so easily avoidable and greatly telegraphed as projectile defense. People aren’t even bothered to bring dozens of reflects to counter LB rangers because they are easily countered in other ways without having to make sacrifices to builds.

I also think our staff will have ranged attack not revolved around projectile finishers. So while they’re adding more reflects (I don’t get where people are getting “tons” from) to the game, perhaps we’re also getting some options that aren’t heavily based on projectiles.

Lazze.9870:

I don’t see the need for a counter to something that is so easily avoidable and greatly telegraphed as projectile defense.

I also think our staff will have ranged attack not revolved around projectile finishers. So while they’re adding more reflects to the game, perhaps we’re also getting some options that aren’t heavily based on projectiles.

Well, I believe that Staff would not be a dps weapon, so even if it’s not projectile, I doubt it’d be a good source of damage. I’m guessing it’d be like Guardian’s Staff, with even worse auto-attack damage. (Because Anet says we have pet to compensate the damage lost. lol)

I don’t care what anything things or believes about Staff. We know nothing about it so no one should really be even trying to use it in this discussion to make any points as the only points we know are that it is the new Ranger Druid weapon and it is a Staff.

I don’t think there needs to be a counter to reflection more than “use melee”. If you think there should be, please elaborate why. Also, let’s not forget that while a full-range spec might have to stop shooting during the reflection, a Ranger still has their pet who could very well be using melee attacks (most do).

Aomine.5012:

Well, I believe that Staff would not be a dps weapon, so even if it’s not projectile, I doubt it’d be a good source of damage. I’m guessing it’d be like Guardian’s Staff, with even worse auto-attack damage. (Because Anet says we have pet to compensate the damage lost. lol)

Neither do I, and it doesn’t matter. As long as it got some skills that do respectable damage and adds pressure in team fights. I don’t think we will see a straight up copy of an existing weapon for an elite specialization. That would be lame, and we haven’t seen anything like that for any of the new weapons they have showed us so far. They could mix it up, hopefully that’s what they’re doing.

Regardless, reflects aren’t really something we’re struggling with at the moment anyways, I don’t thinking adding some more will change that.

Sebrent.3625:

I don’t care what anything things or believes about Staff. We know nothing about it so no one should really be even trying to use it in this discussion to make any points as the only points we know are that it is the new Ranger Druid weapon and it is a Staff.

It had nothing to do about making any points, I was simply pointing out that there is a possibility that we’re getting ranged attack not based on projectile attacks. A minor sidenote.

We’re not struggling with reflects at the moments. That’s the main argument. Adding a couple of additional sources of reflects shouldn’t change that.

I agree with you Lazze. I just don’t think we should be bringing up the staff at all since we don’t know diddly about it.

Sebrent.3625:

I don’t think there needs to be a counter to reflection more than “use melee”. If you think there should be, please elaborate why. Also, let’s not forget that while a full-range spec might have to stop shooting during the reflection, a Ranger still has their pet who could very well be using melee attacks (most do).

I have to admit that’s good points about pets.

Elaborating why I support idea of counter-reflect: if HoT traits stay as they are, mesmers with single trait (“Evasive Mirror” from Dueling tree) will be able to use reflection more often than I can swap to my melee weapon and with such high uptime (1,5s on every evasion, 1,5s ICD) that it will simply make it impossible to fight them with any projectile weapon.
Another example can be warrior with mace and shield trait. Counterblow (mace 2. skill) has 10 sec CD and lasts 2,5s. With this trait, or to be exact with projectile reflection part of it, block doesn’t break after single ranged hit, meaning warrior will be able to reflect nearly every single ranged burst ranger can make (ok, I guess I’ll be forced to immob + barrage…).
I don’t think medium/long CD counter-reflect with short duration (or attacks limit) would really make it any easier for pewpew rangers, because using it would require timing. Goal of this skill/trait/boon wouldn’t be to just kitten more damage into enemy, but to allow us to synergize skills to deal burst right when we need to.

I know pewpew rangers are annoying and anything that makes them even a little harder to counter seems bad, but I still think we need something like this for higher level play. kitten ing is kitten ing and game shouldn’t be balanced around it.

But hey, we got Barrage on an 8 second cooldown.
… That one can’t be reflected.

Isn’t that a part of counterplay against these things?

Those are good examples of the counters to projectiles, Terkov, but you have to then look at how you can counter those counters … another layer of counterplay.

Mesmer dodging? Immobilize/Stun them. Apply weakness (reduces endurance regen). Let them waste those dodges then hit them with a nice burst/CC combo. To me, there seems to be an abundance of counterplay here. We’re also talking about Mesmers here, not Thieves. They can only dodge as much as anyone else that isn’t Thief :-p

The Warrior example is interesting. I haven’t thought about that one, but with stats being decoupled from traitlines, we could see Mace become scarier since traiting into it won’t be giving up on any Power/Precision/Ferocity/etc.. We are still talking about a 10s cooldown on the MH Mace block and a 30s cooldown on the Shield Stance. 8 second and 24 second if both are traited. That still leaves a decent enough window of time to pew-pew or whatever else you want to do … it also isn’t restricted to just ranged attacks. Those blocks affect melee attacks as well. Furthermore, those blocks aren’t like Guardian’s. When a Warrior is blocking, it is a channeled skill. They aren’t attacking you while blocking.

By the way, I also think that Mesmer reflect on dodge is not really going to be a problem. You know why? They’ll blow their dodges too early to proc the trait.
And they are vulnerable to Auto-Crits too. So just wait for your moment that will be two times as deadly. You wouldn’t hit them when evading anyways. So this will promote the smart strategic play.

In gw1 there was preparation. Some prep made your arrows faster, deal more dmg, do aoe dmg, do poison or bleed, interrupt enemy, but you could use only 1 at a time. It was an awesome mechanic. I miss it

I would love to see preparations back and they would be the only mechanic I would accept for the loss of the pet.

I’d love to lose Spirits for Preparations instead. Who knows, it might come back as another Elite spec utility. One could only hope.

I think the closest thing we have to preparations in game is Sharpening Stone.

Thieves have the closest thing in my game with their Venoms.

Both lack in comparison except that Venoms can be combined while Preparations could not.

I’ll be happy with Spirits or Preparations … as long as they are actually viable. I’m tired of having a very limited subset of my utilities be truly viable.

Sebrent.3625:

I think the closest thing we have to preparations in game is Sharpening Stone.

Thieves have the closest thing in my game with their Venoms.

Both lack in comparison except that Venoms can be combined while Preparations could not.

I’ll be happy with Spirits or Preparations … as long as they are actually viable. I’m tired of having a very limited subset of my utilities be truly viable.

I think they’re not quite the same because all of them have “charges”. A preparation skill should be duration base, not charge base. (In GW1, all preparations have unlimited charges, and they only differs in duration)

Aye, that was the “lack in comparison” I was speaking of.

The reason I’m not sure I’d like preparations is because they were designed for you to only take one. If we got preparations as our new skill type or as a replacement for spirits, we’d have 4 utilities, 1 heal, and 1 elite that needed to be replaced … yet we’d only ever want to take 1 of those. That isn’t helpful for build diversity.

Still, every attack applying poison or bleeding or torment or cripple for the next 20s would be the most amazing skill in the game.

@Heimskarl:
If that’s what you want … come play Mesmer with me sometime after the Specialization changes and I’ll introduce you to the Dueling Specialization’s lovely on-crit traits … and ways to have 100% crit chance (or darn near it) :-D

Honestly, I wish they’d give my shortbow some love and remove the conditional on my condition application. It already applies a much lower duration bleed than other hybrid/condi weapons. Heck, Warrior Sword applies an 8s bleed and they have a trait that increases that by 50% … not to mention traits for more damage versus bleeding foes. Shortbow is a pauper compared to that.

SB does have pretty nice power scaling though.

Wait… What if the class mechanic change is a preparation?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

SB does have pretty nice power scaling though.

Wait… What if the class mechanic change is a preparation?

QQ nerfs incoming then.
We have it after every good thing we get, especially the buffs.

A preparation that changes depending on what weapon we have out would be fantastic.

Yeah, why does that happen to us all the time?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

A preparation that changes depending on what weapon we have out would be fantastic.

Yeah, why does that happen to us all the time?

Everyone would cry in frustration when he’s beaten by a Bearbow.
… And we can’t help the global idea of Bearbow=Ranger, can we?

I already mentioned my opinion on Preparations … if done the same way as GW1 you could only have one active at a time. If the new skill type was done the same as with the other classes, we’d get a heal, 4 utilities, and an elite of that skill type. These two things appear to conflict and leave you with less build diversity.

Going into more detail on the Ranger Shortbow vs Warrior Sword…

Looks like you’re right Heimskarl … Shortbow performs quite well compared to the Warrior sword and Ranger has a pet (when it hits :-p). So that could be OP … especially given that the faster attack speed caters more to on-hit/-crit sigils.

Sebrent.3625:

I already mentioned my opinion on Preparations … if done the same way as GW1 you could only have one active at a time. If the new skill type was done the same as with the other classes, we’d get a heal, 4 utilities, and an elite of that skill type. These two things appear to conflict and leave you with less build diversity.

Going into more detail on the Ranger Shortbow vs Warrior Sword…

Direct Damage

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• Crossfire’s coefficient is 0.4
• Ranger shortbow weapon strength is 905-1000 (sPvP)
• Warrior Sword AA-chain coefficients are all 0.6 and Warrior … 50% more than Crossfire.
• Warrior Sword weapon strength is 905-1000 (sPvP) .. same as Ranger Shortbow
• Crossfire attacks once every 0.54 seconds.
• Warrior Sword AA-chain is 3 attacks in 2.5 seconds so an average of once every 0.83 seconds.

Since the weapon strengths are the same, we can just ignore them in the math as they cancel each other out.

So going with [Coefficient] / [Attack Speed]

• Crossfire = 0.4 / 0.54 = ~0.74
• Warrior Sword AA = 0.6 / 0.83 = ~0.72

0.72 / 0.74 = 0.972 repeating 972 … so round to 0.97 = 97%.

So Warrior Sword AA does 3% less direct damage than Crossfire.

So, you’re right, at base (no traits, etc.) Crossfire does better direct damage than the Sword’s AA-chain.

Bleeds Applied Per Second

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• Crossfire bleed base duration is 3 seconds.
• Warrior Sword AA bleed base duration is 8 seconds.
• Crossfire bleeds every hit (only if flanking)
• Warrior Sword AA bleeds only with its first two AAs.
• Crossfire attacks once every 0.54 seconds.
• Warrior Sword AA-chain is 3 attacks in 2.5 seconds so an average of once every 0.83 seconds.

So we’ll assume Crossfire flanks 100% of the time … to make the math (and thus my life) easier :-p

So going with [number bleeds per AA/AA-chain] / [time for AA/AA-Chain]

• Crossfire = 1 / 0.54 = ~1.85 bleeds applied per second.
• Warrior Sword AA = 2 / 2.5 = ~0.80 bleeds applied per second

So Crossfire applies bleeds more than twice as fast as the Sword.

Max bleed stacks

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• Crossfire bleed base duration is 3 seconds.
• Warrior Sword AA bleed base duration is 8 seconds.
• Crossfire bleeds every hit (only if flanking)
• Warrior Sword AA bleeds only with its first two AAs … so 2/3 bleeds per AA
• Crossfire attacks once every 0.54 seconds.
• Warrior Sword AA-chain is 3 attacks in 2.5 seconds so an average of once every 0.83

So we go with [bleed duration] * [bleeds per AA] / [Time per AA]

• Crossfire = (3 * 1) / 0.54 = ~5.56 max bleed stacks
• Warrior Sword AA = (8 * (2/3)) / 0.83 = ~6.43 max bleed stacks

So Sword can stack one more bleed than shortbow AA.

Looks like you’re right Heimskarl … Shortbow performs quite well compared to the Warrior sword and Ranger has a pet (when it hits :-p). So that could be OP … especially given that the faster attack speed caters more to on-hit/-crit sigils.

I think statistic is too far-fetched from the real in-game mechanic.
The best way to test it is actually to time it on undestructable Golem, doing the “normal rotation” and put “might stacking” into consideration, using “real build” to actually test which profession actually kills faster.

For example, Celestial Shoutbow VS celestial SB + sword/torch ranger.

@Aomine:
Perhaps I didn’t convey the purpose of those numbers well enough … or you’re reading too much into it?

What makes you think it is too “far-fetched” ? The only assumption made was “Ranger will flank 100%”. This is why I made sure to state that as the lower the % of time you can get that flanking the worse the shortbow is going to do in comparison (though its direct damage won’t care).

The statistics weren’t done to say “which weapon is better”. It was done to compare what Shortbow AA would look like compared to Warrior Sword AA if the Shortbow didn’t require flanking to apply its bleeds … hence going with 100% flanking with current mechanics.

If you want to compare specific stats, runes, sigils, builds … give they can be tested by any number of people.

I do like to not just crunch the numbers but play things in-game as well. It helps to have the numbers/facts and the feel of things … plus when getting the feel for it you might notice something that you didn’t account for in your numbers.