Guild Wars 2

To begin with, let’s assume the team’s name is “Balls Deep” (this is not written in stone or anything, but let’s go with it for the sake of having a name).
We are 5 very active players with in-depth knowledge of the mechanics who are looking for an additional member to fill up our roster. One of our players is not European (but we all play on EU servers) so his time schedule is a little off compared to us, hence why we would like to have 6 players so that there’s almost always a roster of 5 available to play. We ask of that player to be able to play several days a week and have a rough knowledge of which times he will be able to play – so that we can arrange and optimize our schedules.
Player names and roles:

Boot.7368 = Ranger + Engineer (Funk Load / Funky Boot)

Caerus.4970 = Necro + Elementalist (Shroudious / Ivy Shady)

Crysis.6947 = Thief + Elementalist (Skepter / ELE Skep)

Libersevenad.8275 = Mesmer + Thief (Liber Monster / Libersevenad )

Sal.9086 = Elementalist + Mesmer (Sali Arcana / Sal Mirage)

We had a great guardian player who we played with up until recently almost everyday for a period of 10 days and we performed very well for such a newly formed group. Our LB ranks varied between 80 and 100 at the time. Unfortunately we have not been able to find a suitable 6th since our last boyfriend became less active so we are looking for a new one.

We are looking for a bunker Guardian player who has in-depth knowledge of the game’s mechanics, both as far as his class in concerned and of the game as a whole. He must also be active enough (as already mentioned above). Last but not least, we will be using VoIP software, so you will need a microphone and you will have to be very talkative while gaming.

It is very important to mention at this point, we don’t want someone who just happens to have a guardian with a decent build – we want someone who enjoys guardian so that he and we can actually enjoy it and improve.

I main ranger/engi and generally dig the concept of “physical damage” from a distance. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to find a good power build I don’t think power ranger is currently viable. I’ve only played GW2 for about 4 months so I don’t know if it was viable at any point earlier. Here are my suggestions:

To begin with, “ranger/hunter/archer/ad carry/whatever other ranged physical role name”‘s whole point revolves around attacks from a distance and in most cases having a pet. However, with current state of weapons and traits, you end using weapons like axe, sword, dagger, torch. I dig the diversity, but, if not all weapons are to be viable, make it so that at least 1 of the bows are. That’s just from an “roleplay” if I may say perspective.

Below are some of the issues with power ranger:
(I proceed with arguments below under the assumption that your wep sets are shortbow – melee OR longbow-melee. This assumption is made because longbow AND shortbow is just not.. Well, let’s just leave it at that).

Shortbow-melee:

You had nice sustain damage with 1 spam but, that’s just it. 1 spam nothing else. It wasn’t ridiculously high, it wasn’t even a big threat for anything other than thief or warrior but I guess it COULD be played. Sadly, such a build would be limited. You would need 20 points in Marksmanship (MM) for Piercing Arrows and aside that, anything between 0 and 25 in Skirmishing (SK). I also ran a variation with 20-0-30-10-10, for the passive condi removal and stealth on cc. However again, with that type of a build (even if its 20-0-30-10-10 or some 20-25-15-0-10 etc), you end up doing less damage than everybody, granted from a distance but there’s no need to bring a ranger with that type of a build. It cannot burst and its sustain damage was low. Lastly, it was super squishy. Whenever a mesmer or thief decided to give you trouble, that was it. So you end up having a glass build without the pressure of a glass cannon, which in essence isn’t viable.

Longbow-melee:

If you manage to find someone who is AFK or coordinate a reasonable amount of immobilise and daze, then yes, you could theoretically dish out a reasonable amount of burst. However, you are even more vulnerable than shortbow. Again, you would need a minimum of 20 points in MM and 25 in SK (arrow pierce and LB skill recharge), which leaves you with 25 points, 15 of which would go in WS (wilderness survival) for Companion’s def (2 sec of protection per dodge for u and pet). Therefore, you once more have no defenses except for that protection. It’s nice but if you try any type of power build, you go down faster than you can say boobs.

The above 2 paragraphs are to briefly identify some of the issues.
Suggestions (these are just suggestions and some are interdependent but most separate from each other):

-Make MM’s VII trait be available with 10 points in MM.

-Better minor traits for mm – or different. 25 points to get 1st attack crit is worthless. An idea could be: MM 5 points: First two attacks crit and apply vulnerability, 10 MM: First 4 attacks of you and pet.. etc etc, 25: 10% more crit if target below X %hp or some other kind of damage increase

-Pet abilities need to be able to be used by the player. There can be a toggle on/off to be used either like now or active and available for the player – this suggestion is further to the today’s SOTG. Give experienced players the ability to micro pets.

-Need more “useful” traits for Spvp;
MM: VI (I don’t know the extent of its usefulness in Spvp, it isn’t as valuable as other traits), IX (Maybe 5 or 7 stacks or so. This way it can actually change your damage output), XII (Get a crit after you kill someone – wow thanks for that 900-1100 (sb) or 1800 (lb)!)

SK: V (maybe more stacks for same duration or same stacks for longer duration – when you play power you’d probably use CC pets not cats and such, thus they do much less damage. If you are gonna waste points on being squishy with these traits might as well get some pressure out of the pet even if it’s only for 2-3 of its hits), IX (needs to be a little more crit dmg, maybe 15% and some crit strike perhaps because atm it’s far from being useful), XII, – (ranger has no “big” attack or ability, thus a mere 150% means nothing. Make it like a 20% dmg increase for 3-5 seconds or something along those lines)

WS: XII (I don’t know to what extent this trait is appealing. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve always found 3 condis every 10 seconds better – just my humble opinion. Perhaps, if ranger actually gets viable power builds, this trait would allow you to score a kill by being harder to get killed towards the ‘end’ – just theorycraft at this point).

[To be continued on comment below yo]

[POST PART TWO]
-Longbow skills: Not enough pressure. Maybe if longbow 1 applied vulnerability (1 stack probably up to a fixed cap) and made 3 some kind of burst skill? Or LB 3 could perhaps be “X next shots do Y more dmg and shizz”.

-Longbow 5: Somewhat acceptable damage, long cooldown. Maybe a few seconds less? I could possibly agree with removing the cripple and giving much shorter cooldown or just less cooldown with cripple still on. Again, just ideas

-Shortbow skills are OK for power. Again, you have 0 burst whatsoever with SB abilities but I suppose if it’s changed so as to reflect a good amount of sustainable damage, it could be enough.

-Another idea could be to make ranger weapon skills interact with each other or with the traits. For instance, if your bonus condition damage is higher than your bonus power, certain skill(s) of SB and/or LB change. [For instance, SB 4 and 5 could apply some conditions if bonus cond>bonus power – I’m out of ideas as to the specifics, but I like the concept]

-The above suggestion itches for this one: “What if you build for almost same bonus power and condi? should there be a third category of different skills for that?” Why not

-When LB is equipped and you channel either 2 or 5, have X % less damage taken. Since you are stuck in the target’s line of sight for that duration, might as well mitigate the penalty of no-kiting.

-A new trait that gives you stability everytime you start channel for 2-4 seconds (just to finish LB 2 or 5) with a 10-15 sec recharge. It might sound OP but it would basically make a glass cannon stand still and take your damage. It’d enable the ranger to choose between downing someone but risk going down himself. And since you would be a glass cannon power ranger to hurt somebody, despite that 10-20 or whatever less % damage, two people will hurt your feelings in a nasty way if they focus you.

-Another idea is, if you trait 20/30 in MM, you get 1500 range on LB which is pretty sweet but there are plenty of downsides to it. A lot of times people spot you and try to get away from that and by the time the arrow arrives they’re gone. Maybe, it could make arrows that travel further than 800 or 1000 range to do extra damage to targets they pierce. This way even if your primary target escapes or outranges you, you have put SOME pressure in the process to unwanted targets.

-Also, if targeting someone at further than 800 or so range, you get a stacking buff that increases your arrows’ damage or make them apply certain effects. This effect can either stack in intesity – as in more % dmg or effects dealt or in amount of attacks.

I apologize in advance for the lack of TL;DR but I spent far too much time writing this to give out a short summary
This is it, just my humble opinion. Constructive criticism and comments more than welcum!

It’s not a hugely important issue but I think it’d be nice if we did get it. Mass salvage or some kind more efficient / faster salvaging option is pretty basic. Mass craft is not a huge issue but rather just a suggestion

Below I will list the problems that I see with specific classes – don’t pay too much attention to the numbers, they are pure speculation but rather, to the core idea of the suggested change. In my view, right now, the biggest problems are Ranger, Necromancer, Warrior and Thief (s/d). I main ranger and engineer so I will start with suggested ranger changes.

Ranger
Every single one of the ranger’s monthly flavours since I started playing (around March) have revolved around being tanky and outlasting – with the exception of traps which had nicef damage as well. There are several factors as to why other builds didn’t work until now. To begin with, pets do more than necessary damage without any traits (and thus deprive rangers of decent attack scaling)- I believe pet base damage needs to be severely reduced and increase their damage drastically from traits.
*Spirits: Too much AI reliance. You build tanky, summon the spirits and basically just dodge around until burning, pet damage and your protection outlasts the enemy. Spirit rangers’ strongest suit is team fights which they absolutely rock but they are also very strong duelists. I am afraid that, besides dropping the % proc chance I can’t think of a solution to the spirits issue per se. I really don’t like relying on AI so heavily in pvp but sadly, it is what it is.
Idea: Pets right now hit for average of 450-550 on a medium target w/o traits; they could hit for ~100-200 without any traits, and simply have BM traits giving 9-10% damage per point spent along with stats increase. This way, ranger’s scaling could be be similar to other classes’ (maybe even less pet base damage and just have traits scale better for more points spent). Right now even if you build full power (zerker and the likes) you end up doing very little damage while being super squishy (thus, restricting rangers to rabid/shaman amulet builds (and possibly carrion)). I believe this way, non-bm traited rangers will have pets just being utility class skills and this might open the path for new builds to emerge, possibly non-lame builds.

Warriors
Their damage has always been fine but had other issues. However, with their most recent additions they are over the top imo. Very good stun-lock from mace shield and stupidly high damage when stunned. In my view the critical strike % when stunned needs to change to additional damage %. Critical strikes almost bypass armor’s damage reduction so despite having 2800 armor you end up being hit for 8-12k bursts when stunned in 1v1s. If you are going to give a class so much burst, you cannot also give condition immunity and the signet’s sustain. It cannot be like this otherwise might as well run 2-4 warriors (jk, people already done).
-Overall, I find it of utter importance that the critical strike % when stunned needs to change to damage increase when stunned. One of the two following also: tone down a tad signet passive or tune the condi immunity. I think that their kit right now has got much more than it needs to be competitive.

Thief (s/d)
I’ve wanted to make this post for a while and ended up forgetting all about it until I watched: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/c/2831244 . In this video Helseth talks about the current meta and I found myself agreeable to a great extent with his opinions and justifications. Basically s/d right now does too much of everything. It has high burst, very high sustainable damage And is very difficult to kill. S/d needs to have its damage and/or survivability toned down because at the moment it is simply too strong. S/d thieves need to choose between dealing damage or surviving in fights and spending their initiative accordingly, not get to do everything with the same rotations.

Necromancer
Besides the fact that I haven’t played enough necro to come up with a more extensive suggestion, I believe there should be some type of passive change to fear bursts. For instance, in WoW there was the mechanic of Diminishing Returns (DR basically made consecutive crowd controls of the same type stun/fear/etc- the effect getting diminished for each application – 50%/75% then immune).
Now, I was thinking of something along these lines: Right now necro, does a little bit too much of everything. Decent necros running the terror build will kill you in a fear chain if you don’t have a stun break and overall their damage output is too much considering the “effort” they have to put for it. I was thinking of a change like: for each consecutive fear from the necro, his damage output is reduced by 20/40/60% for the duration of the fear. This way, his damage goes back to normal after the fear ends and you will not be stuck in an unstoppable fear chain once your stunbreak is on cooldown while taking silly condition damage. The % values are just for show, I haven’t put very much thought into them, but that’s the core idea.

Weakness should not be accessible passively with such a high uptime (or
be more rare/“costly” to have).

I main ranger/engi and generally dig the concept of “physical damage” from a distance. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to find a good power build I don’t think power ranger is currently viable. I’ve only played GW2 for about 4 months so I don’t know if it was viable at any point earlier. Here are my suggestions:

To begin with, “ranger/hunter/archer/ad carry/whatever other ranged physical role name”‘s whole point revolves around attacks from a distance and in most cases having a pet. However, with current state of weapons and traits, you end using weapons like axe, sword, dagger, torch. I dig the diversity, but, if not all weapons are to be viable, make it so that at least 1 of the bows are. That’s just from an “roleplay” if I may say perspective.

Below are some of the issues with power ranger:
(I proceed with arguments below under the assumption that your wep sets are shortbow – melee OR longbow-melee. This assumption is made because longbow AND shortbow is just not.. Well, let’s just leave it at that).

Shortbow-melee:

You had “meh” sustain damage with 1 spam but, that’s just it. 1 spam nothing else. It wasn’t ridiculously high, it wasn’t even a big threat for anything other than thief or warrior but I guess it COULD be played. Sadly, such a build would be limited. You would need 20 points in Marksmanship (MM) for Piercing Arrows and aside that, anything between 0 and 25 in Skirmishing (SK). I also ran a variation with 20-0-30-10-10, for the passive condi removal and stealth on cc. However again, with that type of a build (even if its 20-0-30-10-10 or some 20-25-15-0-10 etc), you end up doing less damage than everybody, granted from a distance but there’s no need to bring a ranger with that type of a build. It cannot burst and its sustain damage was low. Lastly, it was super squishy. Whenever a mesmer or thief decided to give you trouble, that was it. So you end up having a glass build without the pressure of a glass cannon, which in essence isn’t viable.

Longbow-melee:

If you manage to find someone who is AFK or coordinate a reasonable amount of immobilise and daze, then yes, you could theoretically dish out a reasonable amount of burst. However, you are even more vulnerable than shortbow. Again, you would need a minimum of 20 points in MM and 25 in SK (arrow pierce and LB skill recharge), which leaves you with 25 points, 15 of which would go in WS (wilderness survival) for Companion’s def (2 sec of protection per dodge for u and pet). Therefore, you once more have no defenses except for that protection. It’s nice but if you try any type of power build, you go down faster than you can say boobs.

The above 2 paragraphs are to briefly identify some of the issues.
Suggestions (these are just suggestions and some are interdependent but most separate from each other):

-Make MM’s VII trait be available with 10 points in MM.

-Better minor traits for mm – or different. 25 points to get 1st attack crit is worthless. An idea could be: MM 5 points: First two attacks crit and apply vulnerability, 10 MM: First 4 attacks of you and pet.. etc etc, 25: 10% more crit if target below X %hp or some other kind of damage increase

-Pet abilities need to be able to be used by the player. There can be a toggle on/off to be used either like now or active and available for the player – this suggestion is further to the today’s SOTG. Give experienced players the ability to micro pets.

-Need more “useful” traits for Spvp;
MM: VI (I don’t know the extent of its usefulness in Spvp, it isn’t as valuable as other traits), IX (Maybe 5 or 7 stacks or so. This way it can actually change your damage output), XII (Get a crit after you kill someone – wow thanks for that 900-1100 (sb) or 1800 (lb)!)

SK: V (maybe more stacks for same duration or same stacks for longer duration – when you play power you’d probably use CC pets not cats and such, thus they do much less damage. If you are gonna waste points on being squishy with these traits might as well get some pressure out of the pet even if it’s only for 2-3 of its hits), IX (needs to be a little more crit dmg, maybe 15% and some crit strike perhaps because atm it’s far from being useful), XII, – (ranger has no “big” attack or ability, thus a mere 150% means nothing. Make it like a 20% dmg increase for 3-5 seconds or something along those lines)

WS: XII (I don’t know to what extent this trait is appealing. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve always found 3 condis every 10 seconds better – just my humble opinion. Perhaps, if ranger actually gets viable power builds, this trait would allow you to score a kill by being harder to get killed towards the ‘end’ – just theorycraft at this point).

[To be continued on comment below yo]

[POST PART TWO]
-Longbow skills: Not enough pressure. Maybe if longbow 1 applied vulnerability (1 stack probably up to a fixed cap) and made 3 some kind of burst skill? Or LB 3 could perhaps be “X next shots do Y more dmg and shizz”.

-Longbow 5: Somewhat acceptable damage, long cooldown. Maybe a few seconds less? I could possibly agree with removing the cripple and giving much shorter cooldown or just less cooldown with cripple still on. Again, just ideas

-Shortbow skills are OK for power. Again, you have 0 burst whatsoever with SB abilities but I suppose if it’s changed so as to reflect a good amount of sustainable damage, it could be enough.

-Another idea could be to make ranger weapon skills interact with each other or with the traits. For instance, if your bonus condition damage is higher than your bonus power, certain skill(s) of SB and/or LB change. [For instance, SB 4 and 5 could apply some conditions if bonus cond>bonus power – I’m out of ideas as to the specifics, but I like the concept] {my favorite one so far}

-The above suggestion itches for this one: “What if you build for almost same bonus power and condi? should there be a third category of different skills for that?” Why not

-When LB is equipped and you channel either 2 or 5, have X % less damage taken. Since you are stuck in the target’s line of sight for that duration, might as well mitigate the penalty of no-kiting.

-A new trait that gives you stability everytime you start channel for 2-4 seconds (just to finish LB 2 or 5) with a 10-15 sec recharge. It might sound OP but it would basically make a glass cannon stand still and take your damage. It’d enable the ranger to choose between downing someone but risk going down himself. And since you would be a glass cannon power ranger to hurt somebody, despite that 10-20 or whatever less % damage, two people will hurt your feelings in a nasty way if they focus you.

-Another idea is, if you trait 20/30 in MM, you get 1500 range on LB which is pretty sweet but there are plenty of downsides to it. A lot of times people spot you and try to get away from that and by the time the arrow arrives they’re gone. Maybe, it could make arrows that travel further than 800 or 1000 range to do extra damage to targets they pierce. This way even if your primary target escapes or outranges you, you have put SOME pressure in the process to unwanted targets.

-Also, if targeting someone at further than 800 or so range, you get a stacking buff that increases your arrows’ damage or make them apply certain effects. This effect can either stack in intesity – as in more % dmg or effects dealt or in amount of attacks.

-LB 2 can be changed to 2-4 rapid shots after a short channel (0.5-1sec?) or a big charged shot that’d deal a lot of damage. Either way, it cannot stay the way it is – too easy to be dodged / LoSed.

-LB 1 besides applying vulnerability up to a certain cap (as mentioned above already), can also grant allies near the target a might stack (again, to a certain cap) – provided that the target is further than 800-1000 range.

-Some type of passive for all LB attacks where, the more targets arrows pierce the different or more effects they have. So that if you pay attention and practice your positioning you can be rewarded for it.

-One idea could be to implement some kind of “spike” ability, that would make power-ranger desired for setups with high burst. For instance, make LB 3 apply a “mark” on somebody (similar to the concept of ’Hunter’s Mark’ from WoW) and that person would be unable to block/ take increased % damage/ lose his endurance (any combination of these). This way it would make it a similar in concept but different kind of mesmer’s Moa. [Could be "target loses half his endurance and takes 10% increased damage for 5-7 seconds, 20 sec cooldown – this combined with some careful practice, u can watch for weapon swap, burn his endurance and spike dat]

I apologize in advance for the lack of TL;DR but I spent far too much time writing this to give out a short summary. I do not in any way imply that all of the above suggestions are to be seen or implemented together, they are just several ideas and/or possible solutions. I posted this here as well as Spvp forums. Unfortunately I didn’t think of this forum when I initially wrote it.
This is it, just my humble opinion. Constructive criticism and comments more than welcum!

a few questions before I try to answer this cute question.
Firstly, did you even read the patch notes?
Secondly, do you even know the skills they changed? Because if yes, then you would know that there’s no difference whatsoever. Maybe 1 signet is more viable now (wild)
Thirdly, in any decent tournament group line up, ranger brings nothing unique or important, except for a 15sec water field. Other than that he just does everything on a weak/average level.