Guild Wars 2

Rune of the Pirate bird taking 22 seconds to take out test golem:

.

Untraited pet bird taking 24 seconds to take out test golem:

.

Rune of the pirate has 100% up time unless it is killed, as it has a 60 second duration and a 60 second cooldown on the summon as well as having some built in evasion.

Interesting, I think to be more accurate however it might be better to do 5 tries of each and find an average, I think then the pet will be more even with the pirate bird. Either way it is kind of surprising a rune pet is as strong as ranger’s core mechanic. That’s like having a rune that allows me to get phantasms. I’ve also never heard of these built in evades, if that’s true it’s really mind boggling why ranger’s don’t have pets with that same function, considering we’ve been asking for something like that for years.

warriorjrd.8695:

I’ve also never heard of these built in evades, if that’s true it’s really mind boggling why ranger’s don’t have pets with that same function, considering we’ve been asking for something like that for years.

Those are pritty much the averages – it dosen’t change much when the time to kill is as long as 20 seconds.

As for the evasion thing…

so you could basically have 4 pets with this then for atleast 5 minutes…. 2 from this, 1 from the Ogre Whistles (outside the fire shaman event) and 1 from the Elemental Dust? (fireheart rise)… or can only 1 extra pet be active at a time?

You don’t have a limit. You can have Ogre’s pet, ember, two hyenas and rune bird at the same time.

It is really not fine in my opinion that everyone can have a permanent pet which is as strong as our DPS pet on a rune
Imagine having a runeset for every professions core mechanic. Thats just not ok.
I think they should change that rune to have a pet who hits 3 or 4 times and then unsummons because thats already 4k damage from a runeset which is alot.
But having a permanent ranger DPS pet on your side is ridiculous really.

If the rune stays as it is it is a sad statement about how much they think our core mechanic is worth. They kinda tell us then that our basic core mechanic is worth the 6th bonus of a runeset

And two hounds of balthazar.

from the videos , i’d say they are different attack rotaions on the Bird vs rune, one is consistant with out a swiftness down time, doing a average of 1.2k per hit (but does not do any 2xhits like the ranger bird)

the ranger bird , has a double hit skill, that adds a timed semi burst that is trying to make up for the down time of attacks during the swiftness animation.

so i’d say the point is now , Why is a rune doing Slightly higher and more consistant damage than a rangers pet, not the amount of minons/summons/pets we can take in pve.

though also in the videos , the rune bird crits less too but still does slightly more damage compaired to a stock bird.

stripping it down to bare bones, the Bird ether
needs a 5% damage buff.
Faster Animation for the Swiftness
Or make that swiftness animation, a Damaging attack (that also applies swftness)

that would bridging the current gap to have the same Consistant rotation of attacks as the Rune bird.) and reverse the current standing that the Rune is currently only slightly better than our Stock birds.

it would need tests though of how much more damage the ranger pet would compair to the rune pet, as though it was buffed by the ranger 3 in nature magic + a stock warhorn or compainions might.

it’d be difficult to Calculate all the micro damage , a ranger can apply and a single stack of might just addeds to the many sources of damage.

The bird changes above should be applied and the Rune bird shoudl be nurfed by 5% damage, perm up time of 60secs (if it don’t die) and 1.2k every second.

the other Fix for the Bird rune would be to shorten the time its summoned.

like 50% chance to summon parrot, it attacks for 45secs (cooldown 60secs) then the time it takes to summon it again, and that won’t be long since its 50% chance you’ll just have to wait the 15secs till it summons again.
that would make it a 75% rune bird uptime, that compaired to a 5% damage buff from a 6th rune slot on a different rune, compaired to this Bird parrot , the parrot does a hell of a lot more and it needs a down time on it.

@Zenos the bird from Pirate Runes actually uses an old bird skill set back when birds were a different flavor of cat (IE pure damage, EXTREMELY squishy, but lots of evades) but they got reworked to be damage + light utility instead when they gutted the old pet system.

that still don’t justicfy the current difference , it should be brought uptodate.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

that still don’t justicfy the current difference , it should be brought uptodate.

Personally I think the bird should be squishier and have a lower uptime, leave the damage as is and make it so that if you take the parrot you get high damage with a 50% uptime (or pull a spirits nerf and make it so CD starts when the bird dies and reduce CD to 25s), this way you choose between rock dog (added damage that’s more reliable) and the parrot (higher damage, not as high duration).

I’m fine with the rune set giving them a pet, but their pet shouldn’t be equal to ours AND have a 100% uptime either nerf the bird (damage wise) or nerf the uptime.

PS: my other post was just a tidbit of info, not me justifying anything.

This thread is depressing. I knew the bird was strong, but I didn’t realize it was “replace the ranger entirely” strong.

Fluffball.8307:

This thread is depressing. I knew the bird was strong, but I didn’t realize it was “replace the ranger entirely” strong.

Not entirely, we get the bird too if we use the runes, and if we do we can pair it with a might stacking build (for pet mainly) which would make our pet (could also be a bird stronger) + having the rune bird.

It’s pretty silly that I can put these runes on my thief, venom share with the bird and feel like I get more use out of the bird than any ranger pet :/ Heck, that setup beats any BM build that Ive tried even.

@Arkanakaz
Hi, very interesting(and depressing) findings.
Do you think this post should be moved\copied to “Profession Balance” forum?

I see a lot of kitten here.
Rune of Privateer bird does not take away our own pet. And while others may have “our pet equivalent” (though without any real control over it), we may have 2 pets at one time with our own, and bird (plus we can swap our own out for 2nd one).

That and with runes out there like rune of strenght or lyssa or ranger or tons of others, rune of privateer would just become obsolete choice if nerfed.

Its not the point, i’m not looking for Privateer nerf. A.net always told rangers that pets DPS cant go higher( has it was a year ago ro so) due to balance issues, A.net told us pets cant get evade due to balance\AI issues. seeing higher base dps+evade on a rune bonus is just mind blowing for me. Its if A.net presented a rune that can give you better stealth than untraited stealth Thief or better\more clones than untraited close mesmer. Your argument could be apllied in those case as well(you can also get the runes to get the same bonus etc…)

So now the rune is going to give a 30% damage reduction, right? right? no?

LughLongArm.5460:

@Arkanakaz
Hi, very interesting(and depressing) findings.
Do you think this post should be moved\copied to “Profession Balance” forum?

Could be. I chose here becuse I thought ranger players might find it more interesting.

It is true as some have said that rangers can use this rune as well, but as has been said this rune pet can be used more efficiently by other classes as they aren’t designed with pets in mind:

Knocklock warrior to keep your enemy in place as the bird DPSes

Venom share

Mesmers and thiefs in the safty of stelth as the bird does the damage

Longer snares (immobolize, cripple ect.)

and so on…

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I see a lot of kitten here.
Rune of Privateer bird does not take away our own pet. And while others may have “our pet equivalent” (though without any real control over it), we may have 2 pets at one time with our own, and bird (plus we can swap our own out for 2nd one).

That and with runes out there like rune of strenght or lyssa or ranger or tons of others, rune of privateer would just become obsolete choice if nerfed.

Ranger + pet = Any other class
Any other class + parrot = Ranger + bird + parrot.

Just because we can have 2 bird npc’s out at once doesn’t make us any better off than other classes.

That is just sad….. My (me maining ranger) core mecanic (or something with a very Close similarity) is so easy to get for other classes…. That’s how unique we are (NOT)?

And – that bird looks far better than any of our pet birds. The raven and some of the Brown ones have broken wings…

This with a 0 0 6 4 4 might stacking build is good… Your rune bird gets burn procs as well if you run sun spirit. It’s really good ^^