Guild Wars 2

Well, you can have a spirit build WITH nature’s voice after the 10th. You just lose the auto active ability on death of spirit and a bit of range (but the range buff isn’t much to write home about).

Bombsaway.7198:

For those of you thinking this spirit has no burst, you are wrong. You are thinking about using this heal like other heals versus like a spirit. On the other hand, this heal works when you can set the spirit early in a fight and have your “oh kitten I need a heal” moment later. If you need your “oh kitten” heal without setting up, you are in trouble.

Most spirit rangers will keep the pet up almost all the time (those who trait unbounded) or will enter a fight by laying down all the spirits first. When you see the enemy you start getting the spirits ready.

Let me explain.

Provided you have laid down the spirit, the burst is pretty quick for the ranger and reasonable for the rest of the group.

Let me explain. The active ability has 2 heals.
1. The self heal for base 3800ish is extremely quick. 1 sec it seems.
2. The group heal of 2k (which can also heal the ranger and pet) is a separate animation which takes another second.
You activate the effect and both go off 1 after the other.

Remember, you still get the benefits of the passive as you activate the big heal.

The regen is more or less going to be 4050 over 60 seconds it just depends on how quickly you get it to retrigger after the 10 second icd. Totally passive and you really don’t have to worry about staying in a field etc. It is like a group signet of the wild. So I suspect that high heal rangers will get this to about 140/second effective healing.

That is pretty solid considering you still have the big heal which is about 75% of the initial heal value of HS and 80% of the same for the group regen. The DIFFERENCE is no one has to stay in the water field outside the activation. HS pulses so you need to stay in it longer. If you combo heals out of the water field, unquestionably HS does more healing.

WS is better when a group is spread out. You get regen even if pretty far away from the spirit. Allies can run to the spirit for a heal burst or run in with the spirit to give a heal burst versus having to sit in the spring for pulses.

So the ranger gets healed for 6k base roughly. Allies 2k. This can occur once every 25 seconds. The spirit lasts 60 seconds. So what a good ranger tends to do is lay it down, apply the heal upon the group taking initial pressure (e.g. “fill the tank”) and then just before it dies.

In the 45-60 second range of a fight (when most group fights get really hairy) you can have a huge burst of healing with nature’s vengeance.

Assume you first activated at second 20. At second kitten you can again activate the heal. 5-15 seconds later (at second 60) the spirit dies and you get another heal.

So within 15 seconds or so you can heal allies 4k and yourself 8k base.

It is only if you then have to cast another spirit while taking pressure that your burst is lost. You never ever ever want to play this heal as:

1. Cast
2. Immediately Heal.

It should always be.
1. Cast
2. Get regen only for a bit
3. Heal
4. Get one more heal in before spirit dies

You are not removing conditions so this spirit probably will be more of a back line type play.

What the ranger community want and how the devs see the ranger are two different things. I see you managed to do the math in HS and WS, i agree with what youre saying. The majority of rangers who want to/is playing rangers they see the class as a burst class that should do damage in a small amount of time like warrior or thief, how devs see the rangers is long term dps with on hit on skills. and AI control Which most of these Rangers hate.

I for one is ok with WS, I like the dps heal and its consistency given that the spirit lives in its full duration and its the most mobile heal so far in game, I also understand its downside as well for no condition and combo field. Its a matter of choice now on how you see the Ranger, Devs are pushing it as consistent dps with on hit, I think if you don’t see that it really is time to reroll a class or quit the game.

AEFA.9035:

Bombsaway.7198:

For those of you thinking this spirit has no burst, you are wrong. You are thinking about using this heal like other heals versus like a spirit. On the other hand, this heal works when you can set the spirit early in a fight and have your “oh kitten I need a heal” moment later. If you need your “oh kitten” heal without setting up, you are in trouble.

Most spirit rangers will keep the pet up almost all the time (those who trait unbounded) or will enter a fight by laying down all the spirits first. When you see the enemy you start getting the spirits ready.

Let me explain.

Provided you have laid down the spirit, the burst is pretty quick for the ranger and reasonable for the rest of the group.

Let me explain. The active ability has 2 heals.
1. The self heal for base 3800ish is extremely quick. 1 sec it seems.
2. The group heal of 2k (which can also heal the ranger and pet) is a separate animation which takes another second.
You activate the effect and both go off 1 after the other.

Remember, you still get the benefits of the passive as you activate the big heal.

The regen is more or less going to be 4050 over 60 seconds it just depends on how quickly you get it to retrigger after the 10 second icd. Totally passive and you really don’t have to worry about staying in a field etc. It is like a group signet of the wild. So I suspect that high heal rangers will get this to about 140/second effective healing.

That is pretty solid considering you still have the big heal which is about 75% of the initial heal value of HS and 80% of the same for the group regen. The DIFFERENCE is no one has to stay in the water field outside the activation. HS pulses so you need to stay in it longer. If you combo heals out of the water field, unquestionably HS does more healing.

WS is better when a group is spread out. You get regen even if pretty far away from the spirit. Allies can run to the spirit for a heal burst or run in with the spirit to give a heal burst versus having to sit in the spring for pulses.

So the ranger gets healed for 6k base roughly. Allies 2k. This can occur once every 25 seconds. The spirit lasts 60 seconds. So what a good ranger tends to do is lay it down, apply the heal upon the group taking initial pressure (e.g. “fill the tank”) and then just before it dies.

In the 45-60 second range of a fight (when most group fights get really hairy) you can have a huge burst of healing with nature’s vengeance.

Assume you first activated at second 20. At second kitten you can again activate the heal. 5-15 seconds later (at second 60) the spirit dies and you get another heal.

So within 15 seconds or so you can heal allies 4k and yourself 8k base.

It is only if you then have to cast another spirit while taking pressure that your burst is lost. You never ever ever want to play this heal as:

1. Cast
2. Immediately Heal.

It should always be.
1. Cast
2. Get regen only for a bit
3. Heal
4. Get one more heal in before spirit dies

You are not removing conditions so this spirit probably will be more of a back line type play.

What the ranger community want and how the devs see the ranger are two different things. I see you managed to do the math in HS and WS, i agree with what youre saying. The majority of rangers who want to/is playing rangers they see the class as a burst class that should do damage in a small amount of time like warrior or thief, how devs see the rangers is long term dps with on hit on skills. and AI control Which most of these Rangers hate.

I for one is ok with WS, I like the dps heal and its consistency given that the spirit lives in its full duration and its the most mobile heal so far in game, I also understand its downside as well for no condition and combo field. Its a matter of choice now on how you see the Ranger, Devs are pushing it as consistent dps with on hit, I think if you don’t see that it really is time to reroll a class or quit the game.

“Constant DPS” Isn’t a class role. The only build in the game that even remotely revolves around burst attacks to get anything done is the D/D thief and thieves regen initiative fast enough that a failed back stab attempt isn’t going to kill them or force them to kite for 20 or 30 seconds for another go around.

The only reason the Ranger feels like a “constant/sustained dps” class is because we have no real burst skills outside of Maul and have tons of kiting skills forcing us to chip away at an enemy rather than overwhelm them with damage like most other non-condition classes can.

It’s a boring way to play and forces us to adopt cheese bunker builds to even win at all.

If you asked me if I love the way the ranger plays versus how I wish it played and I would tell you heck no. I do still love the character because I spent so much time making it etc etc etc. But at the very least it didn’t meet expectations. Sure there are things I never thought I would do when rolling the character that are interesting, but my expectation vs reality was a big miss.

I adapted, but. . .

But oh do I wish my zerker 2 bow ranger with power/crit could take you down before you stomped me. Sometimes, I just have to take off the apoth and rabid sets and just don the zerker and see if I can get one or two at 1500 before they get me.

I wish we could finish a kill versus just wounding our prey.

I agree entirely with the idea that we WANTED a power ranger build to be viable and that I wanted to see my power/crit build really chew thru an opponent (and be squishy if I failed dropping them).

We got a spirit heal. I would have loved for a heal tied to a signet that got rid of my need to worry everytime I leave the house without empathic bond.

But if I look at what we got and get beyond the fact, I really wasn’t thinking I would be a spirit class vs a bow/pet class, I can’t say that this heal is useless or that I can’t come up with a lot of ways to use it better than the alternatives.

Still it is another spirit. It isn’t a crappy heal just a disappointment that we focused on the wrong part of build diversity. It is almost as if they see the ranger thru the eyes of other classes. This heal and spirits in general are great for those who are near a ranger. But, they aren’t as much fun if you are the ranger.

I see this phenomenon far too often with my consumer facing clients. There really should be a voice of the Ranger in ANet. Instead, even on the livestream, it appears you see developers trying to make a ranger work but really seeing them thru the eyes of someone who plays something else. It wasn’t a lack of familiarity but it was a clear lack of the same familiarity.

You have 8 class segments. You have 4 or 5 activity segments (PvP, tPvP, WvW, PvE, Dungeons). Each needs a voice and pair of eyes.

DAOC had a brilliant program where one player per class would be in council with the developers as the sector’s voice. It is a “how would this work” “would this really be fun” type role. Even Walmart has its moms. It wasn’t easy to manage, but it provided great value in “keeping ideas out of just the developers’ sandbox”.