Guild Wars 2

Here are my thoughts about the latest updates to Ranger and Druid. I’ve organized them according to Great, Fine, and Bad. Enjoy!

Ranger

Great!
• Kick + Leap (Sword Combo 2 + 3): This skill has been renamed Crippling Thrust / Precision Swipe.. The animation of this skill has been modified, and the ranger will now be able to move while activating the skill. – Finally a fix to ranger sword!…. but they forgot to change the skill icon.
• Poison Volley: Increased the poison damage duration applied by this skill from 4 seconds to 5 seconds. The physical damage per strike has been increased by 150%. – I’m fairly confident this skill is bugged. At point-blank range, the combat log only displays 2-3 [Poison Volley]’s (the actual projectiles), but 5 poison stacks are visible. If so, 2-3 arrows are not dealing their projectile damage.
• Quick Shot: The swiftness duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 9 seconds. The damage has been increased by 20%. – Great!
• Crippling Shot: The cripple duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. Base damage has been increased by 100%. The pet bleeding duration has been increased from 6 seconds to 12 seconds. – Great!
• Concussion Shot: The stun and daze durations have been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds. – Great!
• Ricochet: Might duration applied by this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. Increased the cast point by 0.1 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.16 seconds. – Great! I’ve heard that there was a weird delay after casting that prevented skills issued immediately after, but I never personally noticed it. Hopefully, this resolves that.
• Whirling Defense: The active portion of this skill has had its speed increased by 50% and will now scale with quickness. The damage per strike has been increased by 100%. – One of my favorite updates. This will see much more usage in WvW.
• Fortifying Bond: …boons shared have increased duration… – Great!
• “Protect Me!”: This skill will no longer attempt to break stun on NPCs who aren’t already in combat. – Great!
• Fixed a scaling and placement issue with the Celestial Avatar skill icon after the druid elite specialization is equipped. – Great!

Fine!
• Viper’s Nest: Fixed an issue that caused the combo ring for this skill to display at an offset time. – Umm, ok?.
• Winter’s Bite: The chill duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds and now also applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.32 seconds. – Umm, OK. The tooltip is missing the new bleed information, although bleed on the skill itself doesn’t quite fit the theme of this skill. Frankly, Winter’s Bite should be AoE without the trait, Honed Axes, and I could deal with losing the additional bleed.
• Vine Surge: Fixed a bug that allowed this skill to strike a target more than once. ¬– Never knew this was an issue.

Bad!
• Sublime Conversion: Fixed an issue that caused the combo ring for this skill to be visible to enemies. – Never knew enemies could see this field. Failed to fix the arching of projectiles through this field. Projectiles, even fired at a straight, quick shot, will become very slow-moving, high-arching projectiles, which often miss the ranger completely.
• Path of Scars: This skill is now ground targeted and can be cast at a shorter distance than the maximum. – Probably the second worst change for ranger has to be Path of Scars. There is literally no point in having this skill be ground targeted. Previously, PoS acted strange when sent directly over ledges (It would travel down the wall in the direction of cast, hit whatever target, and pull them back. Which, frankly, looked and seemed kind of weird and clunky.) I feel adding the ground targeting was a cheap way out of actually stopping the projectile once it hit a wall or a ledge. The reason given was so it “can be cast at a shorter distance than the maximum”. Why? Why potentially limit how many targets this skill can hit?

The ‘crème de la crème’
• “Search and Rescue!”: The radius of this shout has been normalized and now affects a radius of 600, down from 1200. The recharge time of this skill has been increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds. – Yes, this skill was way too powerful for competitive player-vs-player. I’m not suggesting we go back to the old version either, but this is not the solution. The glory of SnR was that you could pull allies well out of danger (AoE and cleave) as well as current stomps. If a player was mid-cast through a stomp, and you were able to pull your ally from the brink and get them back up, IT WAS GLORIOUS. Now SnR has a MAXIMUM range of 600. Imagine, if you will, a line of: You, Stomping Enemy, and then your Downed Ally with the stomping enemy being between you and your ally. You haul your way out of your comfortable longbow, shortbow, or even axe range into a very close proximity of the enemy. The enemy starts stomping. You pull your ally all the way to you!…..and the enemy spins around mid-stomp and finishes your ally. Yea, this is the way the skill works now. This skill is now a “I hope my pet can help you stay alive while I cleave at whoever is trying to stomp you”. Rather than the “I’m going to pull you down the staircase, over this wall, behind this rock 1200 units away, res.” that we’ve all come to love. The statement “the radius…has been normalized” is quite irrelevant when ‘Sic ‘Em!’ has a range of 2,000 and SnR had a range of 1,200. There is no standard shout range. If anything this ‘range’ should be standardized at 900.

Other things!
• Custom Ranger ground targeting is awkward because the logo is at an angle. Please make the Ranger logo always face straight from the ranger.
• In pvp, pets still revive at the location the ranger was defeated, can take damage, and usually always starts the ranger in combat.
• Ranged pets such as Bristleback still struggle with LoS and will use their f2 even if the enemy is obstructed.
• No spirit rework? Disappointing.
• Sword #2, needs directional arrows.
• Completely unused utilities like Sharpening Stones need reviewing.
• Lingering Light needs review. One blind on a 12 second cooldown, on an ally who may potentially not get to use it due to its short duration and reliance on the ally actually attacking. Is not a grandmaster-worthy trait.
• Love the new combo field looks!

Agree with everything , Off-hand axe in WvW worked wonders even in a my vipers gear skrimish/wilderness/Druid instead of using a LB now i can use Sword+axe to stack up bleeds+poison(vipers nest+WD)+vun (if using the MM remorseless set up its got a consistant chain on Vun application in a good window of time , sword keeps my ability to stealth with Smoke field on the smoke scale.

its improved my dualing too using Sword+axe , Lb(if MM instead of skirmishing clarions bond) or Staff(using skirmishing quickdraw) depends on how i feel if i want to support more or apply more Rapid bulk stacks of damage with a Ancient seeds+convergence>viper nest+WD>pos>swap pet and pbs>RF combo though in WvW i use Wilderness knowledge instead of poison master need more condi clears .

overall great changes agree with S&R after a few tries using a BM/WK/druid poison set up even my spare utility slot isn’t worth taking S&R anymore as i end up kiting away or too far away with Lb or Staff to really help anyone in the thick of it, though it may take people a while to notice and move towards rangers using down state ports to help the res distance.

As far as Path of Scars go, you have to remember that you’re not always fighting multiple opponents. Path of Scars being thrown at a shorter than maximum distance means the return hit has a MUCH higher chance to hit as it returns faster, meaning you can hit the enemy with both axe hits more reliably. At the same time you still have the option to throw it at maximum range if hitting multiple opponents is your goal.

The change made it more versatile at the expense of making it harder to use properly. Seems like a fair trade off honestly.

just one question: if you activate the snap ground target to the selected enemy (i think there is a keybind for that)… if it hits at the exact position, is that enemy puled or the axe needs to pass thru the target?

anduriell.6280:

just one question: if you activate the snap ground target to the selected enemy (i think there is a keybind for that)… if it hits at the exact position, is that enemy puled or the axe needs to pass thru the target?

you’ll have to aim further or behind the target , i used off axe today in wvw was very tricky when putting the Aoe ontop of a foe it didn’t always do the return pull so i had to aim manualy a bit more behind the target/targets to make it have more reliability.

so ground snap may work for pvp 2vs1’s but as i mentioned above it might struggle without the manual control vs higher numbers as you won’t be able to change how you use it without changing the Options.

i just like to double tap #4 for PoS. u can also animation cancel a little bit.

my impressions so far – Whirling Defense is a respectable ability now. it’s low CD, it applies a ton of blindness whirling on smoke field, and damage is decent. even more interesting with quickness. there are lots of projectiles around, so it’s not as situational as before.

mistsim.2748:

i just like to double tap #4 for PoS. u can also animation cancel a little bit.

my impressions so far – Whirling Defense is a respectable ability now. it’s low CD, it applies a ton of blindness whirling on smoke field, and damage is decent. even more interesting with quickness. there are lots of projectiles around, so it’s not as situational as before.

If you lead with Glyph of Equality and use Whirling Defense it also activates Ancient Seeds on everyone in the radius. Pretty handy to make sure they are stuck in it for the full duration. With traited Glyphs the two skills almost have the same cooldown too, and it will create a light field whirl finisher.

I don’t know if the light whirl finisher is worth much though. How does it work? Do the projectiles have to hit something to cure conditions? If so it might be a waste of a whirl finisher.

Ehecatl.9172:

I don’t know if the light whirl finisher is worth much though. How does it work? Do the projectiles have to hit something to cure conditions? If so it might be a waste of a whirl finisher.

They do but if you are essentially close enough to hit them with WD plenty of bolts will hit the target.

But ya, whirl finishers are pretty bad all around to be honest. Its the same effect as projectile finishers for each type but without the ability to actually aim them in any meaningful way.

light whirl finisher is way too situational unfortunately. i wish they actually removed the RNG from projectile and whirl finishers. not like people actually use them much now. whirl finishers should for sure be 100%.

still though, WD on top of smoke is pretty kitten, especially in a team fight, or on top of a downed enemy.

Thanks to both of you, that cleared things up. I suppose it doesn’t HURT given the point of the combo is to root the enemy so they take more hits from Whirling Defense. I’ll definitely try the smokefield combo though, since I am already using the smokescale for damage and stealth.

It might not have that much offensive power to it but whirling in a smoke field and spamming blinding bolts will certainly make it much safer to root yourself during the duration.

If there was any field to use it in on a power build in pvp, smoke is probably the one.

New PoS is so good, I’m just going to assume every Ranger that doesn’t like it to get used to it. More control on the skill is so much better. But when devs look at feedback like this and see Rangers like it when they can’t control distance and direction for more interesting and skillful play on their skills, it’s no wonder they won’t give us more pet control. :P

Amazing post!
Thanks Uni. Completely agree on all of the points.