Guild Wars 2

Totally agreed with the OP. I spent over 3 days trying to find the Electric Wyvern upon release of HoT and now that we know where it is I’m on the verge of giving up just because of so many failed maps and wasted time. I wouldn’t have a problem if the pets were just skins like (most) GW1 pets or the Hall of Monuments pets, but these have unique abilities and it’s ridiculous they get locked behind this event.

Oberon Vex.1389:

Atrabelos.7584:

Windsagio.1340:

I’m stuck between being amazed at your classist prejudices and remembering that most rangers seem to still be in Point Blank Shot Meta.

Still, the problem isn’t rangers, it’s bad rangers.

Class-stacking in an event like this is bad, period, and thus it’s bad that Rangers are more invested in this event than anyone else. A surplus of Thieves or Elementalists or Warriors (well, maybe not Guardians) would be about as bad. The only classism here is in saying that Ranger is an undertuned profession – low DPS and low party support outside Druid does not make for a good class in tough events like these. The fact that bearbows still exist only hurts more.

Plus it’s not as if the Ranger community would particularly mind the Electric Wyvern being moved elsewhere. Every Ranger main I’ve spoken to hates it.

As a ranger main, I’d take offense if I wasn’t just tired of this ignorant position. Rangers as a class are not low Dps. They are not Low party support. Even the “bearbow” can have reason beyond a bad player — Blackbear+wilting strike is a very high uptime of weakness, Murrellow can provide a on-demand poison field for condi-specs or again, providing weakness via combos, and Brownbear can help nearby players that don’t have the sense for condi-cleanse. They are not my choice, but there is a reason (and place) to use every pet in the roster.

Ranger’s may be outclassed by some other professions in some forms of damage, but it is NOT to the degree that a ranger is a wasted slot in an event/situation; and in fact rangers DO excel at long range damage, which is very helpful in several events/PvE boss encounters. Condi ranger is very viable. Power ranger is also very viable (guess what? Longbow is our power ranged weapon by design, so get used to seeing it).

With the various pets, spirits and warhorn, Ranger is a great source of MANY boons to the group including (perhaps most notably) fury. Regen, protection, swiftness and moderate stacks of might are all very easily handed out, in addition to a flat precision buff just for breathing. Oh, and they can maintain 20+ stax of vuln on target by themselves. And the ranger —if he or she so chooses-- can provide all of this support in a single build, at the same time, using only core ranger Specs, WITH MARGINAL PERSONAL DPS LOSS.

Well, at the very least, your advice is fairly decent – for 5-man dungeons, when classes aren’t being stacked.

But that’s irrelevant, and I’m not as dismissive and ignorant of the class as you want me to be. One of the class in a 5-man can provide a good amount of party support with their unique buffs, and they can keep up enough DPS-wise by bolstering the party with their traits. But with class-stacking in play, Rangers can no longer contribute effectively with Spotter, Grace of the Land, or even spirits when 3 of the 10 people they’re around also have it. Other classes have this issue too, but not quite as badly.

Not only that, Ranger’s access to group might/fury is terrible compared to a good support Warrior/Guardian/Mesmer/Elementalist, is generally gated behind Call of the Wild, and requires you to run either axe or sword mainhand for permanent uptime with traits (the first gimps your damage entirely and the second roots you in melee without a dodge). And Ranger’s protection uptime is laughable compared to what a Guardian can get simply by spamming hammer AA and providing group-wide benefits with shouts, nevermind that they lack group stability/quickness/alacrity entirely.

Again: if you agree that Rangers don’t play nice with each other buff-wise (which is a total given in zerg content), everything else is window dressing. I’d still argue that Rangers aren’t high-DPS or high-support, but that doesn’t matter. All I’m proposing is either gating other profession skills/mechanics to be exclusively attained within the Dragon’s Domain so that everyone is more interested in the map and pugs end up more balanced composition-wise, or moving the Electric Wyvern elsewhere. If either of the above happens, class stacking goes down, Rangers can more effectively contribute to their group because they aren’t competing with everyone else interested in snagging a wyvern, and the window for success grows larger.

Why do you believe this is objectionable?

Windsagio.1340:

I’m stuck between being amazed at your classist prejudices and remembering that most rangers seem to still be in Point Blank Shot Meta.

Still, the problem isn’t rangers, it’s bad rangers.

Class-stacking in an event like this is bad, period, and thus it’s bad that Rangers are more invested in this event than anyone else. A surplus of Thieves or Elementalists or Warriors (well, maybe not Guardians) would be about as bad. The only classism here is in saying that Ranger is an undertuned profession – low DPS and low party support outside Druid does not make for a good class in tough events like these. The fact that bearbows still exist only hurts more.

Plus it’s not as if the Ranger community would particularly mind the Electric Wyvern being moved elsewhere. Every Ranger main I’ve spoken to hates it.

Within the past day or so it was discovered by the Ranger subforum that Electric Wyverns were only available upon successfully completing the meta-event in Dragon’s Stand, and since then there’s been a massive influx of Rangers interested in the map trying to claim their wyvern. Of course, this has resulted in a relatively large population of Rangers migrating to the zone to try and complete the event, reducing the percentage of other less-invested classes.

Of course, this is causing the events to fail far more frequently, because Rangers lack many of the tools needed to be successful in these types of events and can’t put out as much damage as many other classes, which is a huge deal considering how timing-based and DPS-reliant Dragon’s Stand is.

If ArenaNet is going to gate profession-specific content behind this meta-event, can they at least introduce a new utility skill for every class and gate its acquisition in Dragon’s Domain as well? At least then everyone would be interested in slogging through this event and we wouldn’t have the class-stacking problem we have now.

Alternatively, can Electric Wyverns be moved elsewhere in the zone to stop the current congestion?

I doubt anything of consequence will be said officially. A lot of negative posts will start disappearing from the forums in a day or two, and then there’ll be white noise and radio silence.

I’d be less annoyed but I’d still wait for a discount. $50 is… steep for what we’re getting, especially without a character slot.

Kahrgan.7401:

Zefrost.3425:

6/10. Good for a norn necro.

My Necromancer.

8/10 I like the mixture.

6/10 in terms of the overall product, but 9/10 for effort – making a good-looking charr necro is very difficult. It’s clear that you had to fuss with the colors a bit to make the top half of your character match the bottom half, but the materials are so different it clashes a little even so, and your charr comes across as slightly top-heavy with the bulky shoulders/helm and light leggings/boots. Still, it’s a very nice Grenth look for a charr.

This is my own necro. I went for a Western-styled “witch hunter” look for him, with some elements of wizards and the asura aesthetic in general, and it came out surprisingly well.

Technically speaking, you’re using completely the wrong terminology here. A RNG in a video game simply creates a number for a specific function in the game from a variety of other functions (for GW2 the number of people currently playing, the current time, a variety of random mob movements with no relation to the value, etc.), usually also using a precalculated “seed” that is randomized based on a variety of other factors. This allows the game to create semi-random reactions in the game world, meaning that not every single action has the same result.

GW2’s RNG facilitates things like mobs being able to patrol with some degree of randomness, the functionality of the timing windows on many of the world boss encounters, variance on damage for every attack in the game, loot not being the exact same thing every single time for every identical mob in the overworld, and even things so simple as character dialogue not firing every single time you commit a single action. It’s nigh-impossible to develop any mildly complex game that lacks an RNG entirely, because the RNG is simply a Random Number Generator.

On the other hand, I agree that /abuse/ of the RNG in game mechanics is out-of-control right now, and the RNG is being unfairly exploited to produce “lasting” content, particularly in the gem store and in the loot tables. The odds of getting a remotely notable drop in the open world are completely out of hand, requiring players to sell mountains of trash that nobody wants in order to have a fair chance at gear. The Mystic Forge is perhaps the worst-made crafting system in any MMO that’s been remotely popular in the past five years, and for a game as prominent as GW2, that is shameful. And the idea that they added RNG-dependent items to the Gem Store like the dye packs which have a fractional chance to give you anything you want, or even worse the Black Lion Keys (which were shamelessly adapted from TF2 and remain a senseless purchase to this day, especially as you can simply run a Human Noble Ranger through the personal story and get one for free in a fifth of the time you’d grind for it), is on the other hand shameless.

See Mystic Clovers for the ultimate summation of GW2’s reliance on RNG to make lasting content: expensive, teeth-gnashingly frustrating, and ridiculous.

One alternative that I’ve seen posited a significant amount is the idea of a token system: by doing certain tasks that have the ability to reward you with a specific item, you’d gain tokens, and if you gained enough without getting the item you’d have the ability to trade the tokens in for something specific. WvW has a similar system with the Badges of Honor, but ultimately since the chance for getting usable equipment from an enemy player is so minuscule, and there’s no guaranteed chance to get Badges from an opponent’s drops ANYWAYS, it is only partially implemented, and very poorly at that.

A better idea could be to revamp karma as a currency, and allow it to purchase all stats of exotic gear as well as multiple unique skins and fun consumables, rather than have it be tied to its current position of uselessness. Having karma as a legitimate alternative to gold could, potentially, stabilize the economy, as if prices for equipment got too high and the methods of obtaining equipment became too sparse, people could simply fall back on karma to get them endgame gear anyways.

Whether you agree with the exact implementation I’ve suggested or not ultimately doesn’t matter: if you can see a similar, slightly adjusted system working well, then I’ve made my point.

Of course, that proposed idea wouldn’t be implemented for two reasons: one, ArenaNet’s philosophy has changed, and (despite their “manifesto”) they do not want anyone to attain the highest level of equipment this game has to offer anymore without having them run through several flaming hoops and three months’ worth of luck-based missions.

The second reason, of course, is even simpler. It’d make too much sense.

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the worst ideas proposed on this subforum yet.

People who have LFG at the moment are about as rare as unicorns right now. Give it some time.

My necromancer showing off his new Wings of the Sunless.

I’ve noticed that hot-button issue like gear treadmills and such rarely, if ever, get a dev response. I have a feeling that there are orders from within the company to avoid commenting on many topics, especially ones they know they can’t win.

Tequatl content? No response at all to the complaints. Gear treadmill opinions? No dev responses. Posts on how the dev team’s philosophy in creating GW2 has changed? No dev responses.

There are far too many cases where this has happened to simply disregard it as sheer coincidence. Frankly, it’s depressing – the devs need to communicate with the playerbase better, because they’re beginning to get a reputation as negligent, evasive, quite-often untruthful, and completely opaque. No matter what you think of the issues above, you can’t deny that their communication NEEDS to be better.

The implementation of Ascended gear has irritated me to no end since its launch, and if it weren’t for the fact that this game is subscription-free, I would have cancelled by now.

I’m not alone in this. Out of those I talk to in real life and online, a good 90% of them have quit – not for good, but simply because the concept of a gear treadmill does not appeal to them.

I’ll still play, and probably even enjoy playing, but it’s saddening to see how far the game has swerved from its original philosophy. So much of what Colin Johanson’s infamous blog post spoke about is so two-faced and duplicitous if looked at through the lens of what’s currently happening ingame.

ArenaNet’s silence on this topic speaks volumes more than any discussion ever could, I think.

If it looks like a one-man dungeon, it plays like a one-man dungeon, it feels like a one-man dungeon, it sounds like a one-man dungeon, and it smells like a one-man dungeon… but it’s labeled as a five-man dungeon… then it’s DEFINITELY a five-man dungeon.

At each underground spring, there is a random and rare chance of finding a stone dwarf guarding the spring from Destroyers. If you find them, they will follow you and fight alongside you until they die. They are powerful, immune to Burning or the heat debuff, and will take a significant amount of damage before dying, but they do not regenerate health and cannot be resurrected. They will split from you at the end of every depth and continue on their way.

In addition to Destroyers, a few other enemy types can randomly be found, all of which will be hostile to both you and Destroyers:

- Subterranean creatures, such as Cave Scutters.
- Dredge.
- Underworld creatures, such as Imps, Shades, and Aatxes. If they occur, there will be a portal in the area that they spawn from, and they will populate the entire area battling against Destroyers.
- Skritt.
- Inquest.

Every 5 depths, there would be a major champion-level Destroyer boss in a lava sea. Upon entering the area, the Destroyer boss would immediately aggro and begin to chase you through the dungeon. While it would be possible to beat the Destroyer, it would be extremely difficult, taking a long time, a very good gear setup, and intelligent use of terrain and underground wells to retreat into. The other way would be to attempt to outrun it and find the exit to the area.

While attempting to run straight to the exit of each depth would be possible, it would be extremely difficult, thanks to a significant amount of Destroyers using the Cripple status, other Destroyers using ranged attacks, pulls and knockbacks, and others such as the quick, explosive Destroyers from the Only Zuhl jumping puzzle. In addition, rewards at the end of the level would be based on how long you managed to hold out: speedclear the dungeon and kill very few Destroyers and your rewards are paltry, but hold out as long as you can to escape at the last moment and your rewards increase significantly.

Killing a Destroyer boss would yield a significant amount of loot. However, if a portal spawns on the same level as a Destroyer boss, it will instead spawn a very high-level Underworld denizen, which is unkillable, extremely hard-hitting, and must be retreated from, but will significantly boost the amount of rewarded loot upon completion.

If you attempt to camp out in a depth for too long, the caves will become unstable, and will begin raining down debris. This will be prefaced by shaking in the caverns up to a few minutes before it begins. The falling debris will quickly kill you if you don’t find the exit.

In my opinion, this would be a great deal more dynamic and exciting than the dungeons currently ingame, all of which are very static, based on grouping up and DPSing through content, and few of which have innovative dynamics which truly challenge player skill.

While I ended up showing this as a solo dungeon idea, I also think this could easily be put ingame as a group-based dungeon for five people.

With that in mind, what do you think of this idea? And if it were ingame, would you care to play within the dungeon?

And not just a new dungeon, but also a new dungeon style, like Fractals of the Mists.

Right now, there are a few things that are severely lacking in dungeon content: there is a lack of content that can’t be cleared easily by stacking DPS, there’s a lack of good solo content in dungeons, and there’s a lack of difficulty. (Not to mention persistent new content!)

I really liked how Guild Wars 1 pulled off dungeons, so this is my attempt to pull some of what I believe made Guild Wars 1 dungeons interesting into a Guild Wars 2 dungeon, along with adding several other unique twists and roguelike-based elements.

Depths of Tyria
Depths of Tyria would be a multi-layered one-person dungeon with a significant amount of differently numbered depths, and checkpoints at the end of every depth. Each checkpoint would save your progress on the character, and you’d be able to return to any depth that you’ve already cleared. And, of course, each depth cleared would also increase the difficulty of subsequent levels.

Due to taking place deep underground, a significant majority of the levels in the Depths of Tyria would be mazelike and populated by large swarms of Destroyers, with occasional lava seas acting as Destroyer spawning points and obstacles to be traversed. Due to this, the dungeon would be a test of not only skill but also perseverance: can you make it to the end of the Depth and navigate through the corridors, even as the lava seas spawn Destroyers every moment who patrol through the caves in increasing numbers?

Mechanics
The Depths of Tyria would be populated by Destroyers. A certain amount (dependent on depth) would start the area roaming through the caverns, and as time goes on, more would spawn from lava seas distributed around the depth. Obviously, the deeper you are, the more would spawn from the lava sea.

If you die within a depth, there are no waypoints to resurrect at. You have failed that depth and are promptly removed from the instance.

There would be a very large pool of possible cavern layouts, some of which would only appear at certain depth ranges. All depths, however, would select from a pool of cavern layouts available to their range, in order to make each level unpredictable. Only a significant amount of time spent in the Depths would allow one to recognize which cavern they were currently in, and things such as randomized spawn points and exit points could further shake things up.

At lower/higher-numbered depths, a debuff would be in place in the dungeon that makes you move slower and cast skills slower. The longer you are in a depth without finding a hidden underground wellspring, the more the debuff would stack, until it maxes out at 25, causing constant damage. Entering an underground wellspring cleanses the debuff, applies a long-lasting regeneration buff, and prevents it from happening again for a certain period of time.

There would be three “major” terrain features in the Depths of Tyria. One would be the natural mazelike caverns that make up the majority of each area. The second would be lava seas, which spawn Destroyers and bear significant resemblance to the area that the Great Destroyer from EotN was fought in, with small stepping stones leading across. The third would be underground springs, which would be distributed around each area. Each underground spring would apply a buff that removes the heat debuff you get from traversing the area at lower depths. However, after a small amount of uses from each underground spring, it would dry up, leaving it open to be attacked by Destroyers and forcing you to move on.

Substance E.4852:

Kichwas.7152:

AlexisRosewood.4210:

They’re called RANGERS for a reason they fight at range. Might as well call the profession a melee class kthxbyeinb4haters

When I was a kid in spelling class, we also had to write the definition of the word next to it on our spelling list.

Do they no longer do that in school?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.

Unparallelled archers…
from a distance…

“Rangers can adapt to any situation.”

The beast mastery nerf was meant to counteract a growing subset of bunker Rangers who stacked regen without sacrificing much damage due to relying on their pets. You saw these all the time in WvW – they were an extremely popular roaming build and were incredibly hard to take down. The damage nerfs for pets mean that you can’t stack defense anymore and still hit hard.

Shortbow is still completely viable anyways – yes, it’s now 900 range. Shortbows always functioned best in that range to begin with due to their reliance on flanking, so the main thing it sacrifices is the ability to chase down or intercept foes from long ranges. And to compensate, some of its underperforming skills got buffed to be on par with the autoattack.

Both of these are nerfs, no doubt: but before condemning the class to the scrap heap and crying for the end of Rangers, please reconsider exactly how bad these nerfs are. I would also like to note that there are usually followup patches whenever a huge update comes out that fix bugs and fine-tune issues from the last patch. It is a guarantee that one is coming – this balance patch won’t be the last update Rangers ever get.

Have patience.

Warrior’s Burst Mastery trait is now bugged with the changes to Discipline. It doesn’t reduce cooldowns whatsoever on burst skills (maybe due to it not stacking with the changes to Discipline?), which essentially reverts it to its old functionality. Eagerly awaiting a fix.

Necros got an uber-buff… As a Necro main I’m actually worried about becoming overpowered if these buffs continue. Tainted Shackles is amazing but it scares me a bit.

Overall, pleased with this patch. Look forward to seeing continuing changes by the balance team in the future.

Shame about Shortbow Rangers and Thieves though.

Targuil.3741:

Softspoken.2410:

Okay, I tested this a bit. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but I’m adding it to the list at the top of the forum.

One thing to note: your spreadsheet makes a point of the health per tick : total health ratio, but it doesn’t point out that between professions a tick of health constitutes the same percentage of their downed state health. As it is I was confused for a bit because it implied that necromancers take less damage than other classes from the downed state degen. (On a static scale they do, but on a % scale relative to their downed health pool, they’re the same as all other professions.) Maybe you could add another row that shows the size of the downed health pool for each profession, and compare that to their ‘standing’ health pool?

Edit: For the record, does this show up in WvW as well? It tends to use the same numbers as PvE, but there have been exceptions to that rule.

True enough, it could be confusing. I pointed out it was wrong later on that post. It isn’t included in the spreadsheet either because I don’t have accurate information for all classes regarding to that. Just necromancer and elementalist. Still, dying after same amount of ticks (precicely 30, but in reality 31 as ticks are rounded down), and assuming your first downed state starts at 3/4 of your downed health, we can say clearly how things are. As necro doesn’t follow same rules as other professions, there might also be another profession which does not follow these rules same way as other professions and my test wouldn’t detect all of those. This is just enough to know that necromancer downed state in it’s very basic calculations is in serious disadvantage compared to elementalist and VERY (99% sure) likely compared to other professions.

And yes, it applies to PvE and WvW as those follow almost same rules.

I can confirm that it happens to classes other than the Elementalist. On a whim, I decided to take out and test this theory in Cursed Shores with both my necromancer and my ranger, each of whom had roughly 22,000 health. While my necromancer lost 534 HP per tick in downed state, my ranger lost 1663 – just over 3 times the amount, which synchs up very well because I think that my ranger has a bit under 1k HP more than my necro.

I tested to see if there was some glitch in the game coding that was linking up Death Shroud HP to downed state HP, but nope. The amount of HP I lost stayed at 534 with 0 points in Soul Reaping and 30 points.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the Necromancer has 1/3rd the downed state HP. The data is pretty conclusive, and it’s noticeable even without testing.

I think it’s safe to say that with this bug intact, the Necromancer now officially surpasses the Engineer for the honor of the worst downed state in the entire game. Our life-leeching attack is decent, our single-target fear is very weak, and our third skill is nearly unusable – but on top of this we also get 1/3rd of the health as any other profession in the game.

I’m personally very surprised at how nobody found this out sooner. But a core mechanic of the game being bugged out on 1/8th of players is a pretty huge thing. Patiently waiting a quick resolution to this issue.

After playing as a Ranger for a while, I am noticing a huge difference due to this in WvW and other general PvE. I don’t know what could possibly have gone wrong that would cause us to have 1/3rd of the regular downed state health, but as it stands it is unacceptable, intentional or not.

Please fix this, ArenaNet!

“What’s left after Flame is extinguished?”

A few screenshots of my Ash Legion Necromancer.

My Charr Necromancer in Hoelbrak.

Head: Skull Masque
Shoulders: Deathly Bull’s Mantle
Chest: Tactical Garb
Gloves: Shadow Gloves
Legs: Shadow Leggings
Feet: Archon Boots
Staff: Final Rest

Level 80 Charr necromancer master race representing from Sorrow’s Furnace.