Guild Wars 2

You need to try this elementalist exploit.

ItIsFinished.9462:

I have a feeling a long post is being typed up. A post that has a summary of all the ideas that caught the devs eye’s and will be discussed further. It should be arriving any minute now…..

What flavour is that Koolaid?

“But I thought you guys wanted PVE and PVP balance split?”

MAD CAT.9321:

byjiang.1260:

You are assuming this game has a future beyond 2015.

People like you are the reason this game is dying

Yep, it’s all his fault for alienating the franchise’s core base by introducing traditional MMO grind while being unable to attract new player base using the said mechanics because other MMOs make better grind than GW2.

Yep, let’s blame that guy.

Protip: Learn to chart.

Ectos have been in a rising wedge for months now, which is a bearish sign. When the price broke below the rising trend line it’s telling you to get out.

No LB cripple.

No piercing/cooldown consolidation.

No full snare removal on LR.

No ignore range for pet owners on pet F2.

Fail on all accounts in my book.

And LOL on stalker/moa buffs. Get your buff priority fix first before you try to buff F2. What’s the point of buffing it when half the time you won’t get your own buffs in a crowd?

F2 buffs should ignore range for pet owners.

Rainbow Jellyfish needs more rainbow.

Like this:

Three arrows in LB1? No thanks. That just turns it into a crappy shortbow and gives me even less of a reason to pick it over SB.

Give me chance cripple on LB1 and faster flight speed instead please.

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger isn’t expected to do burst damage. By sustained, we mean that the Ranger should excel at surviving (resilient) through burst while still doing enough damage over time to take the opponent down.

There’s a huge discrepancy in the theoretical design and the actual execution though because there’s far too many arbitrary choices made from the ground up.

You say rangers are suppose to sustain, if that’s the case, vigor should’ve never been nerfed on the class. How do you propose a class to have any sustain when they have less armor, hp, than the warrior but at the same time you give both classes the same number of base dodges? Not to mention there’s no gimmick like stealth/clones/ to carry you through.

Also why are only the sword and shortbow offering any sort of on demand build in evades? Even if you define sustain as just staying alive, which includes running away, the ranger can’t even do it as well as a warrior or ele, doubly so when there’s no proper cleanse for immobilize. It does not compute.

With Dark Souls II coming out in March, I implore your staff to check out that game and look at the checks and balances with their mechanics. That’s what’s missing from GW2.

In that game, armor choice matters, heavy being more damage absorbing, makes your stamina regen slower. Light armor offering better regen, more mobility, more and faster dodges at the expense of defense. Allocating more stats to stamina lets you dodge and attack more at the expense of lesser attack/hp/def etc. You also cannot spam attacks in that game as it’ll leave you without stamina which will prevent you from dodging, running or blocking when it’s out.

Armor and spec choices SHOULD matter. In a perfect game, you should be able to spec your toon however you wish to make it accomplish a goal. I feel the arbitrary choices that have been made thus far, not just within this class, is keeping the game from being improved.

If Robert Hrouda is still on dungeon design team, then he must be trolling us. It’s impossible to keep the pet alive for the rotating laser room. It’s doable for the first 2 phases, but when both the laser wall and beam come out in numbers, there’s not enough time to do anything cuz the pet can’t jump and the pet swap cool down is far too long. It wouldn’t even let me pet swap the pet to the top of the crates. Come on, really? Keeping the pet on passive does nothing either in this case. SoS’s cooldown is not feasible either. For a game that prides itself on the dodging mechanics, this is terrible design when you force people to take hits like this.

Chokolata.1870:

Game mode: all

Proposal overview: Increasing pet survivability with the tools that are already in the game

Proposal functionality:

1) Every ability, be it a weapon or utility skill, that gives evades now gives the exact duration of blur or a 5 second aegis to the pet.
This includes:
- Sword 2
- Sword 3
- Dagger 4
- Greatsword 1
- Lightning reflexes

2)Pet F command call back now teleports the pet to the ranger in a poof of leaves and smoke (like when summoning a spirit). This is to help rangers pull pets out of AOEs.

3)Pet PvE hitpoint buff is translated to WvW

Risks: Increased skill ceiling.

I’ve asked for this before. But it shouldn’t be tied to a skill. That kind of fast teleport is what should happen when you F3 and pull the pet back.

There’s zero downside to this because you’re expected to pull the pet back with F3 already. Secondly, pets don’t function like summons like in other games where you have to kill the pet before you can attack the master. Plus having to reset your pet partly through the chase lowers your DPS already so checks and balances are already built in.

This is how a bow user is suppose to operate. They’re meant to kite:

http://youtu.be/DGiRlGyuMkk?t=30s

I’m more convinced than ever that this class should get a Fast Hand trait like warriors. I’d actually argue that should be no swap cool down for this game across all classes but that’s for another thread. Again, every class has gap closers, range, and CC options. There’s zero need to disable kiting as it’s a L2P issue, not a balance one.

Notice also the channel time of the skills. Fast and furious, or slow and powerful. This is what’s missing from the ranger longbow along with the lack of CC. Lightning reflex doesn’t cut it with the long cool downs.

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

This is the reason why we can’t have nice things.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Ranger

To help Rangers support allies, we increased the ability ranger pets have to support allies. For instance, the Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that. Moas and Fern Hound will also be improved.

There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

F2 Pet buffs should be guaranteed on the ranger owner

F2 support skills should ignore range for the pet owner so that they’ll be guaranteed to get the buff. Then party members, then allies with AOE cap should be the priority in which the buffs get dished out. Go try using F2 buffs in dragons or Scarlet invasions. Half the time you won’t get your own F2 buffs.

It’s counter productive for LB/SB/Axe rangers to cast pet buffs because not only do you not get the buff in crowds, but in order to get the buff, you’re often negating your own range advantage in order to be close to your pet, or it is kept on passive which negates your pet damage entirely. This is especially being a problem with LB due to the range penalty.

Longbow1 needs a chance cripple

Optimal killzone for the LB is at 1k+ range. Problem is that there’s nothing to CC the target to keep them there even for a second shot. There’s no root with that range and the pet cannot close the distance to the target before they get to sub 1k range. (That’s assuming the pet you picked actually could CC.) Your increasing LB4’s push back range helped a bit, but it makes no sense to blow a CC to follow up with an auto attack. You’re pretty much forced to use rapid fire after LB4 because of how long RF’s channel is.

LB1 needs a chance cripple to allow the shooter to take a meaningful second shot.

Alternatives involve reworking Predator’s Instinct so that it procs on crit instead of based on sub 25% HP. Lower the ICD to like 9 seconds on a sigil.

Further alternative is to unnerf LB damage all together so that there’s no range penalty.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

• Celestial will stay as it is minus the MF bonus on it.

You’re screwing a lot of people with that. People crafted that to have some MF and not be completely useless to their party instead of going full out MF. I see Celestial as MF lite. You should compensate people who crafted Celestial given how much more time gated it is to make.

Staff

You’re pigeon holed into a power build since there’s no condi. Sprinkle some condi as part of the damage for each skill.

Solar Beam – Increase damage and/or make third pulse a blind from the front, and make it a burn when applied from the back.

Astral Wisp – Increase damage. Make the wisp cripple the foe in addition to healing allies.

Ancestral Grace – Add damage component and/or knock down for enemies.

Vine Surge – Increase the vine speed substantially. The longest immobilize in the game is Entangle with 1 stack for 5 seconds. The bulk of the other immobilize skills are between 1 to 3 seconds. Yet the cast time for this is 3/4 seconds. Even if you had the best of reflexes when combined with the slow travel time of the vines, you really won’t be clearing any immobilize off allies. Secondly, if you’re require to aim it, thereby delaying the execution vs something that’s tab target and fire, that move must be more powerful and worthwhile to perform. Compare Ele’s Phoenix to this, when aimed correction, it could hit 5 to 6 times, gives vigor, it’s blast finish and it clears a condi.

Increase damage and speed of vine projectile, add bleed and torment to enemies, increase it from 3 to 5 targets in addition to clearing mobility status.

Sublime Conversion – Converting range dmg to heals is not enough. Add small damage component. Make it knock down targets that move through it and turn 3 boons to conditions.

Celestial form

It takes far too long to fill up the F5 bar, unless you’re mashing staff 1 and overall feels really clunky.

I think the F5 bar should not drain when you leave astral form. One, there’s no damage really available in that form. Two, besides the auto attack, there are internal cool downs already for the moves but the heal are not enough to sustain you when focused on anyway. Three, it makes astral form spammy and devoid of proper rotation of skill for PVE, or proper counter play in PVP.

F5 should function like death shroud, in form. Slowly ticks down, but bar remains when you exit form early.

Add boons to celestial avatar skills 1 to 4, so the pet can be buffed to do the damage component in a 1 v 1 in astral form, and it makes more sense for WvW and PVE also since both healing and buffing should happen before attacking. I wouldn’t add condi components to the celes skills since condi specs mostly all have tanky builds, to output additional condi damage while healing might be a bit too much.

Not all healing skills fills the bar, e.g. signet of the wild, regen, procs from food etc. For some reason troll unguent fills it up even when you’re not getting healing.

Cosmic Ray – No change.

Seed of Life – Add aegis/resistance

Lunar Impact – Add fury.

Tidal Surge – Add might.

Natural Convergence – This is basically churning earth for ranger only this will never hit because this class has no cantrip to provide stability/protection and teleport for it to hit. Make the skill usable on the move and provide some protection during the channel. Allow glyphs to be cast in conjunction with the channeling, like glyph of tides to pull or unity to bait someone into hitting you.

Animation – When you go into astral form, a full moon appears over the head of the druid, when you exit astral form, it should go from a full moon to an eclipse so allies and enemies can figure out when your astral form is ending.

Glyphs

Glyph of Empowerment – It’s seems like it’s a worse version of spirit for only 10% boost for 6 seconds. Make it give pulsing stacks of stability regularly and resistance in astral form instead.

Glyph of Equality – Make the power of the effect based on the difference between your HP and the target’s. The bigger the spread, the more dmg, and longer the daze.

Traits

Celestial Shadow – Makes little sense to get stealth as you exit. You’re most vulnerable when you need the healing so it makes more sense to get stealth when you enter celestial form, and get super speed as you exit it. This way you can have added few seconds to get those heals off and might actually make it easier to land natural convergence while stealthed. Moreover, if you take primal echoes with ancient seeds, it makes sense to run hydromancy sigil on it to get an extra proc. This will actually get rid of your stealth and make this trait not work properly. You should get stealth when you enter celestial form, so people can control when stealth kicks in.

Verdant Etching – Make this trait turn glyphs into stunbreakers in addition to existing benefits.

Grace of the Land – Make it clear 2 conditions off allies when you enter celestial form in addition to lower condi damage.

Lingering Light – Make the wisp around you and your pet, clear 1 condition. Use this in combination with cultivated synergy and get 1 condi clear around your pet also

Ancient Seeds – It’s bugged with spike trap, the knock down from the trap won’t proc this trait.

Pets

Tiger – This is a huge pet peeve for me since day 1. The long bow’s killzone is 1k so if you send your stalker/moa out to attack your target you won’t get the F2 buff. The tiger’s F2 takes that penalty to the extreme, you don’t even get the buff when you cast it beside you since it leaps away. The bigger issue is, why should a class required mechanic have this contradictory nature to it that even when you try to play the class properly, you’re penalized? Make all F2 buffs ignore range for the pet owner!

Fire Wyvern – It doesn’t seem to fire the F2 at the target. It seems to only ever cast the fire field under the ranger.

I’d be happy with a full mats/laurel refund at this point. Getting an Anet fix is like 2 steps forwards 3 steps back most of the time.

Come on Ranger Crackshot.

Piercing and cool down in one.

Better yet, piecing and eagle eye in one so we can run beastmastery with it.

clint.5681:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I realize that many classes have high burst right now, but our intent is to limit power creep as much as possible. Just because the Ranger’s damage is more spread out, doesn’t mean it does less damage than the burst of other classes. Does that make sense?

For example: One class could, in the span of 30 seconds, do 15k damage in say 5-10 seconds, but then their burst skills go on cooldown so they have to wait out the rest of the time before they can try again. A sustained class should be able to do that same amount of damage in that same amount of time, but the damage is more spread out (hence sustained). This can be better in certain situations, and allows for the sustained class to fill a hole in a team comp.

I’m not saying this is a perfect system or that it’s even fully functional in the game, I’m just trying to explain why doing burst shouldn’t necessarily be better than doing sustained damage. It depends on the situation.

We also know that some classes right now are better at burst than others, and those are things that we look to address in balance patches so there isn’t a surplus of any one class.

The way this game is set up in pvp/wvw is that you want to down the opponent quickly as possible, especially so you avoid the chance of them calling in back up. Sustained doesn’t work for that.

Example:
You burst someone down to 30% in 5 seconds skills on cd for 15s, they heal to 60% you finish them off with second burst before they can heal again.

Sustained: you sustain them over 30 seconds they get to like 30% heal to 60% you sustain them and give them enough time to heal again because you took too long and now their buddy is there.

Sustain is a nonfactor outside of pve.

QFT.

Burst is what matters because you can’t out heal or out pot it. Doubly so when there’s no healer or hp pot in this game.

Sustain should never be taken into account for pvp balance. It’s a purely PVE concept, one that doesn’t particularly jive well with this game as pumping out consistent damage is a concept model for grinders, where people want to find the most efficient way to lvl a toon.

Cool downs are far too long.

Not enough number of skills and utilities.

Weapon swap cool down is too long and not necessary.

The result is game with very low skill cap, and high predictability that has little rotation choice on PVE and virtually no counter play in PVP.

Combined that with the dual stats and linear trait progression system it has basically stagnated the game. It severely limits the number of builds and play style.

They should change the name of the game to build wars because that’s what it is. 9/10 fights, the results are determined by builds and not by skill. I don’t understand at all why the game has taken this direction given how much Sharp supposedly likes counter play when he talks about all this on SoTG.

Chopps.5047:

I am sad about retaliation though because it’s something you have to be aware of. I feel great when I notice retaliation and say “NOPE NOT ATTACKING”. Don’t you? That’s a skill thing, I think. I wonder exactly why it is being nerfed, Xsorsus?

You’re on Tier 1, you should full well know why it’s being nerfed.

Every large fight starts out with the enemy casting veil, stacks of confusion on you, and the 20+ enemies from the back with no conditions rushing in to bowl over the people in the front that are on a timeout because there’s no way to cleanse immediately from having multiple stacks of conditions on them. It basically is kill yourself or sit there and be killed.

It has nothing to do with not attacking when you’re affected, that’s only applicable in 1 v 1, especially confusion even damages you when you have buffs that are procured from dodging. Like protection on roll. Confusion in mass pvp is OP and cheesy as hell, and it’s about time it got nerfed.

Fjandi.2516:

Sorry but one year has passed, we have a lot of quaggan backpacks, but ranger pets are still kitten, it’s quite evident they don’t know how to fix the problem, or they are wasting their time philosophizing.

I’m not convinced they realize what the problem is yet.

The problem is they’re trying to make a pvp game with bots as a significant source of DPS. To compound that problem, they didn’t even equalized the damage across the pets so it becomes impossible to balance.

People keep complaining about pets not being able to hit on the run, well it’s impossible to make any sort of balance if there’s no consistency, like if a jag could crit for 6k while a brown bear would crit for 800. Not to mention some pets hit more consistently than others. As a result your weapon scaling is being low balled while your pet damage ratio is wildly fluctuating. Even more so when you start to spec into BM. That ultimately leads to you having an unreliable pet, because they can’t even decide how often a pet should land a hit, and your weapons are kitten.

They need to hard cap pet damage at 10% max or better yet, eliminate pet DPS all together and make them a source of utility. Or they need to make the BM trait line act as a multiplier that takes down your weapon damage and upscales your pet damage the deeper you go into the BM line, while if you do not scale into BM, your weapon damage stays the same as other classes.

Where’s my Gangnam style emote with purchase?

killcannon.2576:

It enables the zerg, that’s the point of it. The question you should ask is why the devs want the zerg.

It drastically lowers the skill cap so even noobs could log in and not get decimated. Guarantee you’ll have less players in wvw if new players would log in and get wiped easily even when they’re in a large group because roaming with no gear, lvl and experience with the class is not an attractive option.

But I don’t agree with that rationale though. What they should’ve done is to give subs lvl 80 players some kind of aoe defense buff that gradually gets worse as they lvl towards 80 and finally take those training wheels off when they hit lvl 80. If you haven’t learned to roll out of the red circle when you get to lvl 80, you deserve to die.

Complete waste of a trait. There’s far too many essential traits already on marksmanship. You can’t even run Eagle Eye, Piercing Arrow, and Beast Mastery on it currently.

It should be a weapon unnerf. There’s no reason to have that range penalty at all in the first place. And if they keep the penalty, they need to add a chance cripple on Longshot1. If you look at the rifle’s cripple vs barrage, the refresh is 3 times faster on the rifle. I don’t know why Anet expects people to take long shots that miss half the time and don’t give player the means to take subsequent shots.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Perma stow wouldn’t make pets OP. In rebalancing for permastow, it would make those that still want to play with the pet op. THAT IS, unless we design something that gives the player a boost to balance it out.

The aspects I think were a little different. They talked about having specific bonuses based on the pet that the player was using. That is different from just giving a damage boost, which could end up being difficult to balance.

Make the BM trait line act as a new kind of multiplier for weapons and pets. Like each trait therein is worth 5%.

Trait 0 into BM, damage goes up 30% on your toon. (Or whatever percentage value you deemed it to be fair on avg)

The deeper you trait into BM, the weaker your weapons get, to the point that, people can do a 90/10, 95/5, split or the supposed 70/30 split when fully traited into BM.

Revert the pet damage to pre nerf lvl when they’re 30 deep into BM to account for Ascended equipment.

THEN play with the numbers on the pets to fine tune the balance. Every proposal that doesn’t involve folding potential lost damage back into the toon is a lost cause because that BM line makes it like trying to build a house on shifting sands.

If the team insists in allowing the pet to do automated dps, then they should offer a sliding option as mentioned above so players can find the happy medium and playstyle that they want.

I find the ascended weapons to be short sighted and kitten. It’s not grindy enough to give me a power boost like other MMOs but it’s not easy enough to deck out my alts in full ascended gear either. So it really doesn’t accomplish anything IMO. I got my bow after one week, but that’s from play GW2 like it’s a job. (e.g. play with an event web site on my 2nd monitor to hit all the events, repeat temple runs with all my alts and harvest all the nodes with my alts.)

It’s a problem of expectations. I expect to be rewarded for doing something boring in other games. e.g. I grind for better gear to let me kill mobs more easily/lvl quicker/two shot people etc. You don’t get this with GW2.

At the same time, when you play a game with supposed horizontal progression you expect to be able to play alts and deck them out easily. You don’t get this with GW2 either.

This ascended stuff serves absolutely no purpose. It’s not hardcore enough to make it worth your while but repetitive and annoying enough that you likely won’t do it for all your alts.

Figure out what you want and go with it Anet. It’s completely half-455sed right now.

Terravos.4059:

Anet, I have to ask a question, Do any of the balance devs actually main a Ranger?

Wrong question to ask. I fixed that for ya. You’re welcome.

And the answer is clearly, kitten no. You’re welcome, again.

Prysin.8542:

There is also another trait called PREDATOR’S INSTINCT, also worth trying.

Under no circumstance should anyone use this worthless trait.

Agreed. They just need to consolidate.

F1 – Toggle for attack/retreat
F2 – Pet skill
F3 – Toggle for active/passive mode
F4 – Switch pets.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

Please look into Gendarran Field where the centaurs are firing their catapult. There’s something seriously wrong there. When the rock hits the ground and it creates a buff of clounds, it would kill my fps and then lock up my pc before it returns to normal when the smoke clears. Running the game on i5 with gtx 670 so it’s not the pc.

New idle animation coming?

I want to pet my wolf like Eir.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP. That’s one of the core reasons we can’t just increase pet attribute numbers. Without a method for avoiding damage, it also means your pet takes 4 hits in dungeons instead of only 2 or 3, so it doesn’t really solve the problem.

I disagree with that assessment. The problem with the current framework, as you’ve already identified is that you’re automating DPS in the form of the pet where if you gave them to little power, they’re anemic to borderline useless as they are now; alternatively, if you overbuffed the pet and turn them into aggressive dungeon mobs that can hit moving targets consistently, they’re grossly overpowered in pvp. In a pvp based game, I would argue that there’s no way to balance this because it’s a catch 22 situation. Not to mention by taking control out of the ranger’s hand, you’re introducing all kinds of imbalance that we see currently, and also randomness and ultimately skill debasement into the meta. CCing is one of the basic things you need to do to shut down classes like thieves and ellies. If I cannot control whether my wolf CCs someone, is it really skill if I managed to beat him? How would you even try to balance something when the forms of pet attack are seemingly random?This is completely different from other forms of competition like Texas Hold’em where EVERY player is exposed to the same element of chance. Here’s it’s only in one class. This is why I think it’s a can of worms that should have never been opened in the first place.

In regards to your assessment that giving ranger full or close to full power would render the pet useless, the more elegant solution from the start should’ve been not to focus on pet DPS at all but make them a source of utilities. You have an ice drake, why not let the pet change all your weapon skills to have ice attributes and even change your skill set with each of the different elements? You have a bear, why not let it CC and physically block the enemy from getting to the ranger like a line backer or have the ranger literally hide behind it to dodge projectiles? You have birds of prey, why not let them change your skill sets and or increase your precision to snipe? Having the ranger play more similar to an elly where switching pet would be similar to switching stance would get rid of all of the problems this class currently faces.

I realize this is probably far too late but I really think this is something that needs to be taken into consideration in your expansions, maybe you guys will be given the opportunity to revise and evolve the class.

We should be playing a whole toon, not half a toon and letting a bot play us.

Sebrent.3625:

Hey boys, it is possible to do this and other things. Just saying.

Durzlla.6295 makes a good point about the fact that you still have the blue jellyfish with the same F2 skill available if you don’t like the new rainbow jellyfish.

While you’re at it, maybe someone can explain what the difference is between hawks and eagles…aside from hawks having a better icon.

Terravos.4059:

This game needs a PTS like every other bloody game does

Take SWTOR, it has a PTS, and when they were getting ready to add a really overpowered ability to Sniper in the coming patch, the PTS showed how overpowered it would be.

a Competitive PvP game with no PTS for the population to test and point out overpowered stuff before hand? Completely stupid

This 1000×.

It’s lol really. Like a perpetual beta test on live.

Jon,

With all due respect, looking at how or how often people use a skill is not the way to balance a game that’s supposedly PVP-centric. When you got rid of the trinity, balance should come from classes being able to spec differently and still remain viable and competitive. This is clearly not done currently in this game. Just look at how warriors and thieves burst down and mesmers dominate in pvp. I’ve seen numerous people in other threads including this one saying talking about class X, Y, Z etc is not conducive to the discussion, but I think those people are missing the point.

The measurement of class balance is what one class can do relatively when compared with another class.

Players are like the free market, it’s relatively efficient. People will find and gravitate towards setups that are effective and eventually to the optimal setup within the boundaries of the class. Just because everyone is doing X doesn’t mean the class is balanced or unbalanced; it just means X is the setup that works best given what people have to work with. If you find people are spamming skill one on the short bow, that’s telling you something; it’s that the other weapons and builds are not viable, at least in the PVP scene.

Go look at the WvW forum right now, there’s two threads about people being dealt 20k+ worth of damage by warrior’s killshot and thief’s burst down in mere seconds. There’s more at guru. The ranger’s shortbow wouldn’t do that even if you stacked all your bleeds while having multiple might stacks. I’m not suggesting those classes should be nerfed per se; I would suggest the team to tackle the problem instead by looking at buffing the other weapon and skill sets instead for the rangers and other classes.

If you feel spamming skill 1 is outside the definition of skill for something that’s destined for E-sport, then again, changing and buffing the skills which creates more complex combos and play style is warranted, but you can’t expect people to not have something to fall back on in the mean time. This one skill spam is just a symptom and not the problem.

TL; DR: Buff the ranger weapons and skills. You can’t blame the players for choosing the most viable route in a PVP-centric game when no real alternatives are offered to them, especially when the class pales in comparison to the burst down of some other classes.

Terrible looking sets.

Please look at L2 for better inspiration.

I’m in the same boat. Not sure what to run now when cleaning wave has been moved. I really don’t want to get rid of fresh air or EA. Pity I’ve made two ascended weapons already for my ele.

Went from ranger to ele. LOL, I sure know how to pick’em.

Switch out Ranger rune for Scholar. Power does more for GC builds and you should have 10% bonus to attack if you zerg surf in the back.

Switch out Axe/Horn for GS. For mobility and for d/d thieves. Most of them are spammy. Go 4, 3, 5, zephyr, switch pet, 2, 1 and you’ll down most GC d/d thieves. Swoop is the best mobility move in game now. You need it when kitten hits the fan.

Traps are pointless in wvw. Everything from clones, to pets will set them off. If you’re gonna just 1 vs 1, why play wvw? Run lightning reflex and zephyr for extra dodge/vigor and faster dps with LB2 and 5.

Switch RAO for Entangle. Hard to stack might with RAO using LB so you get nothing aside from stability. RAO flows better with sword and SB.

Switch vigorous renewal for wilderness knowledge. which would lower the cool down for 2/3 utilities and your elite. Plus dodging in your healing spring in hopes of getting vigor is death in wvw, you’re just aoe bait.

Geshque.1326:

What is State of the game??

It’s in shambles. If you’re a ranger.

Daemon.4295:

Who cares if your pets die there? Ranger is one of the best classes for that encounter thanks to traps, with or without the pet.

Because it’s kitten poor design given how the ranger is suppose to function in this game?

The hologram farm fest was a terrible idea.

8 min cool down on the node. So you basically can’t even make it from one to the next without someone blowing it up within 3 seconds of mobs spawning.

I run a lol ranger and even I can aoe the mobs to oblivion in seconds. Which basically meant the best thing to do is to play alone and hope no one is on the map, or you have to sit there and camp the node. I came to that realization after watching for 8 mins for a node to respawn and then just logged off.

Philosoraptor is not thinking hard enough.

He should be asking why signets require a grand master trait for it to function fully instead.

Pedra.4381:

Aden Celeste.3650:

Im honestly baffled… i cant express my disappointment right now… Is there someone at Anet listening to this?

Yes.

And laughing all the way to the bank. And they will continue to until we hit them where it hurts and force them to listen. We should all stop buying gems and spending money on thier store.

Stop buying gems? That would assume that I’ve bought any in the first place.

I’ve seen nothing yet from this team that would warrant further monetary support on my part. Broken classes, zerg/pvd WvW meta, RNG skins? No thanks.

My $250 I pledged on Camelot Unchained is looking like a better and better deal on every GW2 patch.

Holland.9351:

The removal of culling from WvW is great. So I like this patch.

I never used any form of quickness so I can’t miss it, but I might give the greatsword a try now.

I still hope to see some longbow buffs because it’s still my favorite weapon because of 1500+ range and Barrage AoE. These changes would make me happy:
- Long Range shot(1) attack speed increased and projectile speed increased some more.
- Rapid Fire(2) can be stopped by using other skills.
- Point Blank Shot(4) range increased to 1200 (1500 traited). Causes a knockdown instead of knockback beyond the current max range.
- Barrage(5) cooldown decreased by 10 seconds.

How could LB be your favorite weapon if you’ve never used QZ with it?

Does not compute….

mzt.3270:

But a CC can happen at 75% if traited and still be far efficient than the pet and do far more damage. A Guardian can DPS hammer blow with mass damage 100% of the time. Why can’t a pet? If a pet is 40% of our damage I would jolly well expect it to hit 100%. I don’t see the logic of a 40% critter damage as being OP when scaled to what else is out there

You can’t expect pets to hit 100% because that would be working under the assumption that you’ll land your hits a 100%, which you don’t. No class does.

Not to mention balance and the the cornerstone of the pvp in this game is about dodging and mitigation (e.g. aegis/blind etc) and you’re asking for your source of DPS to go up without giving your opponents more chances to mitigate the said damage.

If you want 100% hit rate on pets, your weapons will have to become utterly worthless. To foster a healthy competitive environment, one should lower the instances of automation and chance, which pets have in spades currently. I’ve asked this repeatedly on this forum and hope a dev would actually address this:

If I can’t control whether my pet CCs someone, is it really skill if I managed to beat him because my wolf happens to land a pounce?

I would argue, pets in their current form actually introduce way too much randomness and ultimately skill debasement into the meta. And that’s the last thing this game needs if they want to make it into an esport.

No one wants to play a bot. No one wants to watch a bot either. No one likes playing against a bot, cuz it feels cheap. That’s not skillful, fun, or interesting.

Anet,

Public test server please.

If not, post proposed patch changes in advance so they could be discussed. And no, we are not asking for deadlines on it, and we realize somethings can’t be finished by a set date due to unforeseen problems. All that we want is a work order list so the community knows what’s coming down the pipe specifically and what’s being worked on and be given a chance to provide feedback.

Spvp is moving at a snail pace while WvW seems to like to throw caution to the wind. There’s a happy medium in there somewhere…and it involves the community.

Peter.9406:

I play pure PvE. But from watching the State of the Game rangers are actually really well off coming from the top players so I think you just need to L2P.

No I don’t just kill rats, I actually do Arah, CoF, CoE, HotW, AC, and CM with my Ranger perfectly fine and am even the last man surviving most of the time. So, if Aridia, Gottejjeken, and Lyndis need proof pm me in game I’ll take you on a run with me and show you up.

I pve just fine thanks. I play well enough that I run GC in fractals. But I don’t really care about pve because bots are stupid.

I really wish they would stop saying things like in SoTG to confuse people because they’re mainly talking about spvp, not wvw or pve. The top build right now in spvp involves the ranger spamming 3 traps while circle strafing with an auto attacking SB over a node. The only reason why that works it’s because it’s a node cap game (enemies are forced to walk into it to prevent caps and due to match time contraints) which no one cares about regardless of how badly Anet wants it to matter. It is artificial, and it has zero skill involved and it’s not at all indicative in how well you can actually kill other players.

Try a trap build in wvw when people are not forced to walk into your traps. It is worthless unless you happen to find a stubborn player that insists in 1 vs 1 you.

You’re not even on the same page as what the forum is talking about.

Substance E.4852:

Pvp game modes are a direct result of balanced classes. The best pvp maps/modes ever made are worth crap if the classes in them aren’t properly balanced.

I’d go back a step further. They don’t even have a good mode yet in pvp. You need to work out a proper framework before you throw the moving pieces into the equation.

5 player node cap is flawed for an MMO, no matter how much Sharp thinks it has merit because even Counter Strike had secondary objective. And to balance the classes around that, is like letting the tail wag the dog. Doubly so when they try to transpose that “balance” onto other game modes that have nothing to do with spvp.

PVP should be about killing people, not how long I can hold onto a node, and secondary objectives like capping a node should not affect how a class is balanced. Look at the trap ranger, quite deadly on the point, when opponents are forced to walk into your traps to prevent cap, utterly useless in WvW when the target has the luxury of running away from you and your traps or when you run into 20 enemies. When you change the metric, you change the whole outcome.

A flawed starting premise could only let you arrive at a flawed conclusion. The ranger class is symptom of that larger problem.