Guild Wars 2

The proc chance for spirits won’t be made 75%. The trait that increase proc chance is increased to add up to that amount.

So not only will you have to waste a trait to get a better proc time, but they have not changed storm spirit where swiftness buff is worthless to sacrifice a utility for when there are classes that can grant group swiftness on their weapons.

Moreover, due to the internal cooldowns of spirits at 10 seconds, it changes nothing. The effects given by the spirits will still be garbage to merit a 10 sec internal cd. They will continue to be crappy, killable banners. The frost spirit even at a 70% proc chance and with the bug of no internal cd translates to a 7% damage buff for the group — it’s just too marginal a benefit compared to what other classes bring to a group.

Increasing pet toughnessvitality will also change nothing in dungeons and zergs. Guardians in fractal 48 with over 2k toughness still lose half their health to mobs.

They need to remove that ridiculous 45 sec cd on pet death and simply make pets resilient to aoe and be below aggro priority to players.

Pet stats also need to be rebalanced. Nobody uses moas or pigs or spiders over other much superior pets, because the damage difference is vast while the support utility they trade damage for is pretty weak.

Did anyone catch the Search & Rescue Nerf that’s incoming?

@ 53:40 in the SotG video

If they upped the proc chance of spirits but kept the same 10s internal CD for all of them, I will laugh.

Then cry.

Zenith.7301:

The proc chance for spirits won’t be made 75%. The trait that increase proc chance is increased to add up to that amount.

Correct.

Zenith.7301:

Moreover, due to the internal cooldowns of spirits at 10 seconds, it changes nothing. The effects given by the spirits will still be garbage to merit a 10 sec internal cd. They will continue to be crappy, killable banners. The frost spirit even at a 70% proc chance and with the bug of no internal cd translates to a 7% damage buff for the group — it’s just too marginal a benefit compared to what other classes bring to a group.

They mentioned increasing the proc duration. Also, regarding the frost spirit, if you look at people in the group who rely on direct damage, their attack is between 3000 and 3500 generally. To increase damage by 7%, you would need 5 to 7 stacks of might (175 – 245 power). So if you think about the benefits in terms of boons for the larger group, you are giving a decent benefit to people… about 150% the effectiveness of banners if you are talking only direct damage. Banners are better because they buff two stats for a good amount, but frost spirit is definitely on par with other class utilities when traited.

Zenith.7301:

Increasing pet toughnessvitality will also change nothing in dungeons and zergs. Guardians in fractal 48 with over 2k toughness still lose half their health to mobs.

A person generally cannot run into a zerg and live for a long time, so why should your pet? If a guardian with 2k toughness takes two hits to kill in fractal 48, then your pet shouldn’t last any longer – especially since it will definitely hit harder. When traited for beastmastery, pets already have more toughness and health than most people with a hell of a lot more regenerative abilities. Asking for more is like saying “hey make this game easy for me so I can kill everyone without trying.” People who play even generally viewed “overpowered” builds have to be good at playing them or they die as quickly as the next scrub.

Zenith.7301:

They need to remove that ridiculous 45 sec cd on pet death and simply make pets resilient to aoe and be below aggro priority to players.

It’s almost like you didn’t actually listen to the SOTG stream. They said they will lessen cooldowns and move in ways to take less aggro.

Talking of aggro priority for players… I don’t even know what you mean by that. Players will attack what they want to attack, we aren’t NPCs. The stronger the pet is, the higher a priority target it is. If you’re hiding in a keep and expect your pet to do all the work for you, yeah it’ll die quickly. If you are in the mix and your pet is still dying, consider a different pet for that type of situation or manage it better.

Zenith.7301:

Pet stats also need to be rebalanced. Nobody uses moas or pigs or spiders over other much superior pets, because the damage difference is vast while the support utility they trade damage for is pretty weak.

No, people don’t use these pets because they prefer more mainstream ways of playing. If you want to be support, you use moas. If you want heavy damage for direct conflict, you want drakes/wolves/felines who will be up, close, and personal just like you are. If you want to skirt around a battle, you use spiders.

The only thing I think is useless is a pig. Nobody uses pigs because they truly are RNG crap.

People who use spiders don’t worry about their pet dying as often though in zergs.

Aggro priority is obviously about dungeon mobs. And the reason a pet is different from a player in surviving zergs, is because there’s this thing called melee on the ranger.

If I go into a zerg as a ranger with my greatsword, I will live longer than my pet. Period. And f3 or a ranged pet won’t make a difference, because the pet still follows you within the attack range of the zerg.

The same applies for dungeons.

The guardian cannot survive those hits, but he can switch to a ranged weapon and the damage is concentrated 100% on him. The guardian’s scepter actually outdamages his melee mace.

Ranged pets, however, are garbage. They do not cleave or aoe, their projectiles are slow, and spiders in particular do absolutely horrendous damage.

The only way you will be matching a warrior in output as a ranger is by bringing a jaguar. Anything less and you’re just an inferior damage choice in dungeons, so if the jaguar can’t stay alive, you are a deficient class to take in comparison.

Rangers. Do. Not. Do. Best. With. Direct. Damage.

I always facepalm when I see someone compare rangers with warriors for direct damage. Warriors will always be more powerful in that regard, but they will never match us in ability for evades, dodges (yes, they are different), regenerative abilities, kiting, conditions, and other things that aren’t even coming to mind right now.

Regarding ranged pets, they do immobilizes and poisons. They can confuse and daze. There is more to this profession than the tunnel vision that is direct damage. A poison does damage as well as reduce healing potential. Your spiders are awesome at that. They don’t need to hit 3k damage on one person with one hit when they can drop a poison on a group of people and deal 33% damage in the form of reduced heals to each person that heals while under poison’s effects. This can be 10s of thousands of potential health points from a single attack in zerg fighting.

You look at this with tunnel vision. Think about other things than direct damage.

i want to be able to use spirits, seem cool to be a nature ranger and all that but honestly in the state they are now is not possible.

Noooo…you told them about spiders..and I thought I was the only ‘noob’ LB/SB ranger using spider..

Change to pets are all well and good but it still totally fails to address the 45 seconds down time, inability to use 50% of your supposed damage whilst in a keep/tower/wall/per downed/near a zerg and the fact that pets move so slowly that by the time they reach any target anywhere near a zerg they are slowed, crippled, poisoned, etc and there goes 50% of your damage while you pew pew in the vain hope your 50% damage output will actually cause anyone to worry about dieing.

Pets should charge in, and have a much better chance to hit than they currently do, as well as some inbuilt condition removal abilities- or a skill with a cooldown that transfers all conditions on the pet to the target (1500 range, 15 second cooldown).

SotG is great but we all know that it’s not the complete list. Once of the reason we dont get patch note’s on release of SotG is that things can still be added. Like the quickness neft in the last update.

As far as the cd on pet death: as long as when can attack at over 2500 their need to be a draw a back for allowing you pet to die. If they every remove this then i would be in favor of removing the cd. Also considering we have on demand 33% damage reduction for our pets (this includes aoe) by way of guard. I really dont see why people cry about aoe in WvW.

The pet ai update doesnt really worry me in that I am sure they tested it and if it does cause a problem. It will probably be remove the first day if not in the first couple of hours.

Using guard completely shuts down your pet by leashing it to an area. It’s not close to a proper response to survivability, especially when wells and null fields are thrown around all over.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

SotG is great but we all know that it’s not the complete list. Once of the reason we dont get patch note’s on release of SotG is that things can still be added. Like the quickness neft in the last update.

As far as the cd on pet death: as long as when can attack at over 2500 their need to be a draw a back for allowing you pet to die. If they every remove this then i would be in favor of removing the cd. Also considering we have on demand 33% damage reduction for our pets (this includes aoe) by way of guard. I really dont see why people cry about aoe in WvW.

The pet ai update doesnt really worry me in that I am sure they tested it and if it does cause a problem. It will probably be remove the first day if not in the first couple of hours.

Becuase guard would force us to ake an extra skill to try and be on the same field as another class. Guard is not a valid answer, reducing the pets portion of the rangers dps IS the answer. It can then be added back to the pet through the beastmaster line so that the people who enjoy the shoddy ai can use it.

Doesn’t sound like i’ll be able to replace PI in my build (even after its nerfed to hell) with something else in the patch.

Spirits won’t be good without heavy nature, and its doubtful whatever they add will be equiv to PI even nerfed…

Traps are still a no go unless you dump 30 points into Skirmishing.

Sharpening Stones is alright, Just wish it did something more besides a bleed.

link to the video, anyone have it?

It comes down to what you think is important. For most of you it’s dps which is kind of funny since not being able to keep your pet alive reduces your dps by at least 40%.

You don’t need to call your pet back to use guard. Just use it at its current location. I for one I’m not a BM I dont have a single point in beast mastery since the quickness nerf and I am able to keep my pet alive.

For the most part keeping your pet alive gives you access to it’s f2 skill every 20-30 seconds depending on the pet. I dont know what build your guys are running but for me giving up one skill slot for two skills is worth it.

We havent even seen what kind of toughness and vitiality buff we are getting, yet we are alreadying dismissing it.

With each patch we Ranger are getting a little bit stronger. Some complain about the sb neft even till this day. I’m glad it was neft. On that day ranger began to look at our other weapons. Began to develope other builds. People say that we only have two builds that is bs. You may only have two builds but there are quite a few viable builds in the Ranger community.

Our player base has gotten better with this class. We are able to kick kitten in every aspect of the game. While we are lacking a bit in WvW by no means are we useless.

Infact becuase we have no set role to play we are very usefull. Since the other class roles are so critical to wvw why would they do anything but.

So the SotG mentioned some class change there by be a global change the wasn’t mentioned or things that just werent ready at that time but are ready for the patch

We only have part of the picture so let just wait till we get the other piece before we try to but this puzzle together.

When they nerfed Shortbow i actually did start looking at S/D and A/T with pain inverter.

I did a test run with Rabid gear and was like “OMG this kitten #8221; then they added apothecary and I got a huge kitten cause I instantly knew that was going to be redunk with the Ranger.

I’ve not really seen anything since that made me go Wow like Apothecary being added.

Zenith.7301:

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Rangers. Do. Not. Do. Best. With. Direct. Damage.

I always facepalm when I see someone compare rangers with warriors for direct damage. Warriors will always be more powerful in that regard, but they will never match us in ability for evades, dodges (yes, they are different), regenerative abilities, kiting, conditions, and other things that aren’t even coming to mind right now.

Regarding ranged pets, they do immobilizes and poisons. They can confuse and daze. There is more to this profession than the tunnel vision that is direct damage. A poison does damage as well as reduce healing potential. Your spiders are awesome at that. They don’t need to hit 3k damage on one person with one hit when they can drop a poison on a group of people and deal 33% damage in the form of reduced heals to each person that heals while under poison’s effects. This can be 10s of thousands of potential health points from a single attack in zerg fighting.

You look at this with tunnel vision. Think about other things than direct damage.

That’s cute and all, but dungeons do not value these things. Stop being an idiot. Berserker builds are valued the most and effective EVERYWHERE in PvE. Not just cof1.

I know you like to play your gimmick builds, but some players actually want to build to be effective at what’s desired in a group. And an evasive toon is worthless in pve as all that suffices right now is vigor and dodging with protection spam from guardians. Condition builds are worthless in pve.

Poison is a worthless condition on anyone that brings condition removal, and many classes’ heals actually remove poison and other conditions before the heal kicks in.

And a ranger does not hold a candle in kiting evasion to thief shortbow, while thief still does more damage despite being more evasive at range.

I know if it were up to you rangers would just be BM condition bunkers, but there is a reason why the marksmanship and skirmishing exists, and a reason why there are direct damage pets and direct damage weapons with crap defense like the longbow. And berserker geared rangers do not have the survivability you boast about, so obviously they need to have the damage in exchange.

Feel free to campaign on limiting how people wish to play, maybe you’ll get a universal ban on berserker gear for rangers.

On the flip side, I realize you feel that berserker is the only way to go with ranger but developers have EXPLICITLY stated that we were meant to be inferior to warriors (which you like to compare us to for some reason) in the realm of direct damage. You keep comparing us to warriors, so you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

You had an issue with pets dying too quickly with zergs and fractals, I responded with respect to zergs and fractals. You explained issues you felt existed with ranger pet selections, and I responded to each one of them with valid reasons for them to exist as they are. Just because you don’t want to acknowledge them doesn’t make them any less viable for how certain people want to play. You campaign against these pets that other players use just because you don’t use them with your build. I am saying that they serve their purpose for other play types.

So attack me all you want about my “campaign for BM builds.” You’re campaigning just as hard against the play styles others want to use outside of berserker. To top it off, almost all the issues you had with the SOTG update were actually acknowledged, so you really need to listen to it again before complaining more about what needs to be fixed.

Ranger starts at a little past 30:00, if anyone is curious.

I don’t understand why Anet feels like proc chance was ever an issue with Spirits as long as there is an internal cooldown. There is no purpose behind having both these limitations on spirits which to be honest don’t even provide very useful buffs.

Internal cooldown has always been the issue for me concerning spirits.

Kain Francois.4328:

Where can I read about the upcoming changes?

Also, I’m concerned even a 75% proc for Spirit of Ice still does not justify a skill slot. The Warrior’s Banner of Discipline is basically a flat 15% dmg increase when you consider the fact it increases precision to the point 90% of your attacks are critical hits.

However, if they somehow resurrect the Ritualist’s usefulness in the Ranger, I will be very pleased.

It does? Huh… when i’m buffed by that banner my crit chance is 12%… oh look, my damage was barely adjusted at all, thank god that banner was there to buff my damage by 15%, you know, which it didn’t do because i don’t have a lot of crit…

Spirit of Frost > Banner of Discipline since you don’t need to crit for the damage increase… not to mention they -do- play nice together and both of them combined is A LOT of damage since the spirit of frost is applied PRIOR to the crit damage bonus.

Any spec that is concerned with maximizing damage will have high crit anyways, unless it’s a condition build and then neither are conditions affected by % damage modifiers like vulnerability.

And if you’re running a condition build, chances are traps will be much more useful to your group for exploiting more fields and controlling targets.

They need to halve the effect recharge, or they need to buff the effects the spirits give to merit the outrageous recharges.

Durzlla.6295:

Kain Francois.4328:

Where can I read about the upcoming changes?

Also, I’m concerned even a 75% proc for Spirit of Ice still does not justify a skill slot. The Warrior’s Banner of Discipline is basically a flat 15% dmg increase when you consider the fact it increases precision to the point 90% of your attacks are critical hits.

However, if they somehow resurrect the Ritualist’s usefulness in the Ranger, I will be very pleased.

It does? Huh… when i’m buffed by that banner my crit chance is 12%… oh look, my damage was barely adjusted at all, thank god that banner was there to buff my damage by 15%, you know, which it didn’t do because i don’t have a lot of crit…

Spirit of Frost > Banner of Discipline since you don’t need to crit for the damage increase… not to mention they -do- play nice together and both of them combined is A LOT of damage since the spirit of frost is applied PRIOR to the crit damage bonus.

Frost Spirit has an internal cool down whereas Banner of Discipline does not. Your personal build might not offer much in the way of crit chance but if you understand the current PvE meta you would realise crit damage is basically the beginning and the end of the highest DPS builds in the game.

Most builds under Banner of Discipline will get that 15% damage increase from all their attacks because they will be criting with almost every hit. A Frost Spirit might boost one attack but every attack for the next 10 seconds will not (and that’s assuming Frost Spirit will proc right away once those 10 seconds are up). This is a case where giving a flat 10% increase with hard limitations is drastically inferior to a conditional 15% increase without limitations but a condition which is easily and reliably filled.

I don’t think it’s going to matter how high spirit proc chances are, their main issues are the ICD and the fact that they spontaneously combust if they move within attack range of anything. Boosting their proc chance won’t matter when they will be dead all the time.

I’m weary of the vitality/toughness buff for pets as being any viable solution for dungeons. The kind of vitality/toughness buffs pets need in dungeons would probably make them OP and very difficult to kill in PvP. For as long as the buff was acceptable in PvP it probably won’t be enough in PvE. Then again, this will push some of the tanky pet builds in PvE closer to being able to take several hits (Signet of Toughness, 300 points in BM, durable melee pets).

As others have said, any improvement to pets is an improvement to all ranger builds so the more they keep doing this the better quality of life for all rangers.

Frost Spirit has no effect recharge. It’s a bug and expect it to be returned to an even crappier state at any point.

Both proc % and ICD are meaningless when they don’t live long enough to be of any benefit.

Although what is ANet’s idea of a buff in that department? Them dying from 2 hits instead of one from trash mobs? Lol.

Or, expect that it will become a duration which will be even more helpful since 7% damage for one hit every few seconds doesn’t compare at all to 7% damage over a burst that is applicable every 10s or so.

I highly doubt the devs think that making Frost Spirit proc for one attack with a recharge is viable in any way. No one would think that’s a reasonable fix, so I don’t understand why people on these forums immediately assume that the devs would do something that blatantly stupid.

Because they did something blatantly stupid by putting 10 seconds effect recharge as a blanket change to spirits when the value of a swiftness or burning proc is different to a prot proc?

Boneheaded nerfs in beta were what got rangers in such a weak state, and the same applies to necromancers.

They did that before to nerf the ranger. They know that it’s not working, so they are fixing it.

Seriously guy, just watch the video. They actually tell you what they are changing for the spirits. Everything you’ve brought up as issues with spirits were addressed in less than a minute of them talking.

I watched the ranger specific part of video and I didn’t hear anything about internal cooldowns, just that they were buffing their proc chance. I also didn’t hear anything about spirit survivability.

As far as drake F2 skills being more reliable, one of their issues isn’t the speed in which they act on the command, it’s the fact that if you activate it too soon after swapping them in they simply won’t target anything and will usually miss their target. There is a one or two second delay when a pet is activated where they will do nothing, it wastes the quickness on swap, it wastes the might on swap and it causes them to be almost useless against stealth. I think it has something to do with pets needing to be told to attack a target and the F2 skill while targeting something doesn’t do this if you use it right away.

Another issue for drakes is their cast time feels like they are casting meteor shower. I don’t think they said they are reducing activation times, just increasing the priority of the F2 command so that they begin that activation time as close to the command as possible.

Proc duration vs internal cooldown.

Doubling the duration gives the same expected results over time as halving the internal cooldown. So while they don’t say that they will reduce the cooldown, they acknowledge that proc duration will be increased. Obviously they aren’t the same, but they are statistically similar when you are talking about expected results.

While I’m typing this though, I’ll agree that it would be great if they fix pet skill activations. Activating, reactivating, and activating yet again only to have the skill reset without working gets frustrating after a while.

I listened to the whole SotG video and I noticed something I don’t remember reading in this thread (it probably has already been mentioned though). Pets (both ranger and necro, prolly ele) will no longer aggro mobs your party hasn’t already aggroed. This will be huge for dungeon rangers (and a quality of life improvement for open world rangers). I live in constant fear of my pet running some obscure path around a dungeon and bringing with it half of the mobs.

I don’t know if it will also be the case, but it might also mean we can send in pets to attack the Nightmare Tree in Twilight Arbor F/U path where pets would aggro all the spiders at the back of the room. I don’t entirely understand how far reaching this change will be, but it’s possible this could be one of the biggest changes the ranger pet will see since launch (skipping won’t involve a bunch of pets dragging aggro, stealth being capped at five people won’t involve ranger pets essentially resulting in the party being hit, pets running into melee with poor situational awareness won’t result in unintended pulls). I could be assuming too much here, but it really sounded like that would be a big improvement for dungeon rangers.

It is mentioned at the beginning (I don’t have the exact time because my player bugged but it’s before they talk about all the class specific changes).

Xsorus.2507:

Doesn’t sound like i’ll be able to replace PI in my build (even after its nerfed to hell) with something else in the patch.

Spirits won’t be good without heavy nature, and its doubtful whatever they add will be equiv to PI even nerfed…

Traps are still a no go unless you dump 30 points into Skirmishing.

Sharpening Stones is alright, Just wish it did something more besides a bleed.

I agree that utilities beside traits are much more of a problem than weapon skills. Sure LB and some offhand choice could be a bit better but overall our weapons are decent exspecially when traits would be reworked some day. What really sucks are our utility slot options:

• traps pidgeonhole you into a condition build, mixing just 1 trap into your build is punished because they are only good when traited -> bad design
• spirits are just a really flawed aura mechanic that would need a total remake done by someone that actually understands the class (I always cringe when I see 2 devs do balanicng for classes they most likely didn’t play in the last 3 months) … oh and they suffer from the same problems as trap that they make the traits 100% must have leaving no real options and limiting build variety, classical example of failed balancing
• signets are kind of a bad design aswell, they aren’t good at balancing so they even create signets where you not only have to balance overall strength but also find a good spot between active and passive use? …overall they seem to reward just filling one of three utility slots with a passive and do nothing
• shouts are just bullkitten and as bugged as pet AI in general, should be reconsidered aswell
• survival skills are like the only interactive skill typ that somewhat improves the combat in terms of fun but also here are really badly designed examples like sharpening stone which is just sooo boring to use

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Remember, those are just things mentioned in SoTG, and don’t reflect all the changes. Focus was paid more to pets/spirits this time around, so hopefully a few of the issues brought up in the old thread we had will be alleviated.

Robert, thanks for heads up.

Any chance that the devs will be looking into boon duration and pet boons? Tooltips indicate that the boons provided by pets are increased with boon duration, however in reality this is not the case.

Dojo.1867:

Xsorus.2507:

Doesn’t sound like i’ll be able to replace PI in my build (even after its nerfed to hell) with something else in the patch.

Spirits won’t be good without heavy nature, and its doubtful whatever they add will be equiv to PI even nerfed…

Traps are still a no go unless you dump 30 points into Skirmishing.

Sharpening Stones is alright, Just wish it did something more besides a bleed.

I agree that utilities beside traits are much more of a problem than weapon skills. Sure LB and some offhand choice could be a bit better but overall our weapons are decent exspecially when traits would be reworked some day. What really sucks are our utility slot options:

• traps pidgeonhole you into a condition build, mixing just 1 trap into your build is punished because they are only good when traited -> bad design
• spirits are just a really flawed aura mechanic that would need a total remake done by someone that actually understands the class (I always cringe when I see 2 devs do balanicng for classes they most likely didn’t play in the last 3 months) … oh and they suffer from the same problems as trap that they make the traits 100% must have leaving no real options and limiting build variety, classical example of failed balancing
• signets are kind of a bad design aswell, they aren’t good at balancing so they even create signets where you not only have to balance overall strength but also find a good spot between active and passive use? …overall they seem to reward just filling one of three utility slots with a passive and do nothing
• shouts are just bullkitten and as bugged as pet AI in general, should be reconsidered aswell
• survival skills are like the only interactive skill typ that somewhat improves the combat in terms of fun but also here are really badly designed examples like sharpening stone which is just sooo boring to use

Guess, I will not get signet of Renewal and frost trap then and instead grab sharpening stone and quickening zephyr, cause they are survival skills.
Oh and I won’t get sick’em either for my bm build, cause shouts are just “bullkitten”.

naphack.9346:

Dojo.1867:

Xsorus.2507:

Doesn’t sound like i’ll be able to replace PI in my build (even after its nerfed to hell) with something else in the patch.

Spirits won’t be good without heavy nature, and its doubtful whatever they add will be equiv to PI even nerfed…

Traps are still a no go unless you dump 30 points into Skirmishing.

Sharpening Stones is alright, Just wish it did something more besides a bleed.

I agree that utilities beside traits are much more of a problem than weapon skills. Sure LB and some offhand choice could be a bit better but overall our weapons are decent exspecially when traits would be reworked some day. What really sucks are our utility slot options:

• traps pidgeonhole you into a condition build, mixing just 1 trap into your build is punished because they are only good when traited -> bad design
• spirits are just a really flawed aura mechanic that would need a total remake done by someone that actually understands the class (I always cringe when I see 2 devs do balanicng for classes they most likely didn’t play in the last 3 months) … oh and they suffer from the same problems as trap that they make the traits 100% must have leaving no real options and limiting build variety, classical example of failed balancing
• signets are kind of a bad design aswell, they aren’t good at balancing so they even create signets where you not only have to balance overall strength but also find a good spot between active and passive use? …overall they seem to reward just filling one of three utility slots with a passive and do nothing
• shouts are just bullkitten and as bugged as pet AI in general, should be reconsidered aswell
• survival skills are like the only interactive skill typ that somewhat improves the combat in terms of fun but also here are really badly designed examples like sharpening stone which is just sooo boring to use

Guess, I will not get signet of Renewal and frost trap then and instead grab sharpening stone and quickening zephyr, cause they are survival skills.
Oh and I won’t get sick’em either for my bm build, cause shouts are just “bullkitten”.

Lol..i always liked the “Everything is bullkitten and i dont need to justify that,im just stating it” opinion…

They said the internal CDs will affect your entire party now. If it procs now, it’ll proc for the 5 of you. They explained that putting as an example the Elementalist’s staff. Besides the Frost Spirit which is currently bugged, your other spirits only affect 1 person right now, this is going to change.

Just throwing that out there.

Quick question, where is the video/source for all this? I had heard from someone that pets would be getting a significant AI buff (some are still awful at hitting moving targets) and hit the forums.. pleasantly surprised to see that there is more to it than that.

Can someone share a link for me plox?

Detharos.3157:

Quick question, where is the video/source for all this? I had heard from someone that pets would be getting a significant AI buff (some are still awful at hitting moving targets) and hit the forums.. pleasantly surprised to see that there is more to it than that.

Can someone share a link for me plox?

Here the video
Look at description for find the ranger discussion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pn_t43Xd18

Wispy.8679:

I don’t understand why Anet feels like proc chance was ever an issue with Spirits as long as there is an internal cooldown. There is no purpose behind having both these limitations on spirits which to be honest don’t even provide very useful buffs.

Internal cooldown has always been the issue for me concerning spirits.

No IcD on frost

Shiren.9532:

Durzlla.6295:

Kain Francois.4328:

Where can I read about the upcoming changes?

Also, I’m concerned even a 75% proc for Spirit of Ice still does not justify a skill slot. The Warrior’s Banner of Discipline is basically a flat 15% dmg increase when you consider the fact it increases precision to the point 90% of your attacks are critical hits.

However, if they somehow resurrect the Ritualist’s usefulness in the Ranger, I will be very pleased.

It does? Huh… when i’m buffed by that banner my crit chance is 12%… oh look, my damage was barely adjusted at all, thank god that banner was there to buff my damage by 15%, you know, which it didn’t do because i don’t have a lot of crit…

Spirit of Frost > Banner of Discipline since you don’t need to crit for the damage increase… not to mention they -do- play nice together and both of them combined is A LOT of damage since the spirit of frost is applied PRIOR to the crit damage bonus.

Frost Spirit has an internal cool down whereas Banner of Discipline does not. Your personal build might not offer much in the way of crit chance but if you understand the current PvE meta you would realise crit damage is basically the beginning and the end of the highest DPS builds in the game.

Most builds under Banner of Discipline will get that 15% damage increase from all their attacks because they will be criting with almost every hit. A Frost Spirit might boost one attack but every attack for the next 10 seconds will not (and that’s assuming Frost Spirit will proc right away once those 10 seconds are up). This is a case where giving a flat 10% increase with hard limitations is drastically inferior to a conditional 15% increase without limitations but a condition which is easily and reliably filled.

I don’t think it’s going to matter how high spirit proc chances are, their main issues are the ICD and the fact that they spontaneously combust if they move within attack range of anything. Boosting their proc chance won’t matter when they will be dead all the time.

I’m weary of the vitality/toughness buff for pets as being any viable solution for dungeons. The kind of vitality/toughness buffs pets need in dungeons would probably make them OP and very difficult to kill in PvP. For as long as the buff was acceptable in PvP it probably won’t be enough in PvE. Then again, this will push some of the tanky pet builds in PvE closer to being able to take several hits (Signet of Toughness, 300 points in BM, durable melee pets).

As others have said, any improvement to pets is an improvement to all ranger builds so the more they keep doing this the better quality of life for all rangers.

Frost has no ICD, tooltip is mislabeled.

Dojo.1867:

Xsorus.2507:

Doesn’t sound like i’ll be able to replace PI in my build (even after its nerfed to hell) with something else in the patch.

Spirits won’t be good without heavy nature, and its doubtful whatever they add will be equiv to PI even nerfed…

Traps are still a no go unless you dump 30 points into Skirmishing.

Sharpening Stones is alright, Just wish it did something more besides a bleed.

I agree that utilities beside traits are much more of a problem than weapon skills. Sure LB and some offhand choice could be a bit better but overall our weapons are decent exspecially when traits would be reworked some day. What really sucks are our utility slot options:

• traps pidgeonhole you into a condition build, mixing just 1 trap into your build is punished because they are only good when traited -> bad design
• spirits are just a really flawed aura mechanic that would need a total remake done by someone that actually understands the class (I always cringe when I see 2 devs do balanicng for classes they most likely didn’t play in the last 3 months) … oh and they suffer from the same problems as trap that they make the traits 100% must have leaving no real options and limiting build variety, classical example of failed balancing
• signets are kind of a bad design aswell, they aren’t good at balancing so they even create signets where you not only have to balance overall strength but also find a good spot between active and passive use? …overall they seem to reward just filling one of three utility slots with a passive and do nothing
• shouts are just bullkitten and as bugged as pet AI in general, should be reconsidered aswell
• survival skills are like the only interactive skill typ that somewhat improves the combat in terms of fun but also here are really badly designed examples like sharpening stone which is just sooo boring to use

This actually make me lol.

-Traps are made to cause conditions, I have used them plenty without building around em and they work really well imo. Mixing one into your none trap build = bad design? How I wonder lol.
-Agree spirits suck lol. ICD when they offer close to nothing is just…wow…
-Signets could have their passive effect removed and people would complain, leave the passive effect intact and people will complain, signets are by all means just another skill you use when you need, the passive is just an added bonus.
-I used some of the shouts, they seem useful enough to me. I wish there were more shouts out there to use but yeah…
-Boring to use? What you expect the ranger to pull out a stone and start sharpening his kitten in the middle of a fight? Survival skills are the ones I use the most, they aren’t flashy but why should they be?

Around 15 minutes in they mention the haste skills are going to get buffed a bit, including Quickening Zephyr.

Shiren.9532:

I also didn’t hear anything about spirit survivability.

This is what I heard:

“the Spirits utility skills that have not had a whole lot of… um, we’ve done some improvements to their overall health, by… quite a bit, and then we improved, uh, the trait, that increases their proc rate by about double…”

I like the Ranger changes I’ve heard.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

They did that before to nerf the ranger. They know that it’s not working, so they are fixing it.

Seriously guy, just watch the video. They actually tell you what they are changing for the spirits. Everything you’ve brought up as issues with spirits were addressed in less than a minute of them talking.

They said nothing of the effect recharge, which is the issue of the spirits, not the proc chance.

And I watched the sotg so you’ll have to link the exact part where they address proc durations, because I heard nothing of the sort about doubling the durations of the effects. All I heard for spirits was the proc trait, and increased health.

I am happy with the changes to Ranger in this patch, Rangers seem to have got a little love…

I don’t think the changes to spirits will make them a viable build in a competive arena which is sad…as I would love to use them at some point!

I really welcome the pet changes, not sure if the reduced pet aggro will work but I live in hope…

One idea mentioned in the SOFTG vid was a toggle switch for your F2 pet ability, so you could switch it to other pet skills…THIS WOULD BE AWESOME and I hope they consider implementing it in the future, it would open up a lot of build diversity for rangers…for example having control of when your pet pounces (knockback) or heals or immobilizes…instead of the rng we have now…

The only objection the devs had was it might be confusing for new players but if its on a toggle then they would just use the normal f2 skill, while we variety builders get to play about with a lot more build options…

Really, really good idea by that player in the vid btw…

Dardamaniac.1295:

Again i will say that WvW isnt a place where you want balance.Large battles take place..numbers matter,massive fights matters,duels doesnt matter..sPvP is the place where you need balance,where 5 fight 5 and every member has a unique role…And in there,Shortbow is the master..

Your view of what constitutes “balance” is ignorant at best.

Young padawan, “balance” isn’t sPvP only. Balance isn’t 5v5 only. There are more ways to play this game than 5v5 sPvP, and they should all be, within human limitations, balanced. The problem isn’t when something isn’t good in 5v5 sPvP. The problem is when something isn’t good enough at anything (or too good at something).

There are way too many ignorant scrubs running around thinking that the build they use for duels is (or should be) the same they use for large scale battles, or vice versa. Don’t be one of those. Nobody likes those.

Here is an idea:
F3=> Your pet comes to your side while evading attacks. If you command your pet something else the effect(evade) and the mode(stay close to you) cancels.
Evade 1 second, effect cooldown: 8-10 seconds.

So if the boss is about to make a powerful attack you can tell the pet to evade and survive.
This could also leave devourers tunneling skill free for another skill.

I just want to do my first post on this amazing game to tell the programmers your doing an amazing job for this FREE to play game. I’m sure your used to getting blasted if you read the forums for this and that but I think I speak for all the Rangers out there that this is a step in the right direction and we appreciate the love and feedback. Thank you for a wonderful job you do!

So pets are getting buffed. That’s good to hear. Now please work on the Longbow, the auto attack feels like I’m trying to shoot underwater it’s so slow. And Rapid fire is not at all rapid, I’m pretty sure someone worked it out that SB Auto does more damage.

Unfortunately the general way the PvE is played in this game (burning down targets quickly with burst) favors warrior over ranger and with the the overall dependency on pets and ‘sustained and survive’ playstyle Ranger (along with a few other) profession will be continue to be viewed as just plain inferior.

At this point we might as well as them to adjust the PvE encounter rather than improve the Ranger performance.

Not to mention that they said they were going to buff thief base numbers, and thieves are already one of the best DPS classes in a coordinated group.

They’ve addressed nothing of pet scaling with ascended gear stats or the difference in terms of berserker stats allowing players 110% crit dmg bonus but not to pets.

I watched the video a little while ago, but has was any profession given less ‘spotlight’ time than ranger. I seemed to me that most of the changes expressed are also effecting minions and clones. Sharp (if I recall correctly) even call the Ranger pets minions at one point. Probably just a slip of the tongue.

Zenith.7301:

Not to mention that they said they were going to buff thief base numbers, and thieves are already one of the best DPS classes in a coordinated group.

They’ve addressed nothing of pet scaling with ascended gear stats or the difference in terms of berserker stats allowing players 110% crit dmg bonus but not to pets.

If this were to happen, I would actually consider berserker builds worth it and possibly run my old one again. The fact that it doesn’t apply to pets already is the reason I ditched the build I ran for over 1200 hours.