Guild Wars 2

‘I main a Ranger and still think the damage is lower than the other classes.
(based on the fact my Rangers kill things slower than my other classes.)’

In the case of power ranger, yes. But condi ranger actually holds the highest potential DPS in the condi category. The rotation for it is rather simple too. I’d recommend trying it out.

http://www.qtfy.enjin.com/dps

I’m not sure where you are getting your information here from, but I assume from subjective experience. Let me clarify a few things.

It is not Druid healing that is so mandatory, but rather Grace of the Land and Glyph of Empowerment. Those two things together boost party damage significantly. Raid groups nearly always take two Druids to keep up these buff up for their respective subsquads. These buffs are also a huge boon to high-tier fractal groups, especially Nightmare Challenge.

As far as your claim they lack in condi damage, I’m happy to report that no, that is an incorrect observation. A full viper ranger (not druid) running axe/torch shortbow has the highest potential condi damage out of any class. Check out the rankings here:

http://qtfy.enjin.com/dps

I agree that most classic Ranger pets could use some improvements. However, HoT pets, namely Tiger for 100% group fury uptime and Electric Wyvern for CC, are fantastic aids in Fractals, Raids, and open world combat.

Rangers overall are in a far better place now than they ever have been.

Spirit Smith, hands down.

I understand the frustration of not being able to accumulate certain mastery tracks. However, the reality is that these Raid masteries apply exclusively to Raid content. They are of no use, and serve no purpose outside of that specific area, and therefore are not truly “lumped in” with other HOT content. You say “Separate game type, separate masteries for XP,” but that is essentially what the game does already.

They are not being removed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Revenant-Leveling-Tomes-Scrolls-etc/first#post5615232

I’ve been using my regular full zerker set, but still using Druid. The healing output is still high, but I don’t miss out on damage by taking healing power.

I was hoping to use Zealot’s as well, but according to
Ascended stats for BWE3
we won’t be able to pick zealots for beta chars.

Needless to say we are all well aware of the WHaO issue. However, I’m recreating this topic as it has less to do with this particular change, and more to do with the future of Ranger changes.

I’m satisfied with a buff. Any QoL change that boosts ranger’s playability in the 3 branches of GW2 is welcomed. However, the problem I see with this change is not that it was nerfed. The problem is that this change was added so quickly, untested, to the live game.

Clearly copying your pet’s boons has the potential to be overpowered. Rangers have a lot of quickness access (not to mention protection from Guard!), and the ramifications of such a change to this heal skill should have been obvious.

Regardless of how this class compares to all the others with or without this change, it begs the question of “Why was it added in the first place?”

At the end of the day, there is nothing to be upset about, all of this is out of our hands. I appreciate the devs’ work on all classes, not just ranger. I’m just concerned about future changes, namely those for the druid, and hope dearly that this kind of “untested buff->unsavory change” will be avoided going forward. All that it produces is a salty community, watching the shiny new addition deteriorate into mediocrity in less than a day.

tl;dr: This buff came from nowhere only to be immediately downgraded. Buffs are fantastic regardless, but I hope this style of implementation does not become a pattern going forward.

I’m satisfied with a buff. Any QoL change that boosts ranger’s playability in the 3 branches of GW2 is welcomed. However, the problem I see with this change is not that it was nerfed. The problem is that this change was added so quickly, untested, to the live game.

Clearly copying your pet’s boons has the potential to be overpowered. Rangers have a lot of quickness access (not to mention protection from Guard!), and the ramifications of such a change to this heal skill should have been obvious.

Regardless of how this class compares to all the others with or without this change, it begs the question of “Why was it added in the first place?”

At the end of the day, there is nothing to be upset about, all of this is out of our hands. I appreciate the devs’ work on all classes, not just ranger. I’m just concerned about future changes, namely those for the druid, and hope dearly that this kind of “untested buff->unsavory change” will be avoided going forward. All that it produces is a salty community, watching the shiny new addition deteriorate into mediocrity in less than a day.

tl;dr: This buff came from nowhere only to be immediately downgraded. Buffs are fantastic regardless, but I hope this style of implementation does not become a pattern going forward.

I’d expect that it’s not totally optimized yet. Remember, it’s still a beta weekend, so these are the kinds of things they’ll be testing and hopefully working on prior to release.

This doesn’t fix everything, obviously, but I am still more than content with the outcome of this patch. We are all in a far better place than we were yesterday.

Bunker build, relying on pet for damage. SB, GS.

Charged lodestones are becoming an increasingly irritating factor in creating unique exotic weaponry, namely the Foefire weapons including Aether, but also the hammer Mjolnir. With the trading post cost at approximately 4 gold at the moment, getting 100 of these lodestones for Foefire weapons is a but much. And 350 to create Mjolnir is absurd.

The low amount of these lodestones on the trading post has caused them to escalate rapidly in price, and the fact that they are difficult to obtain makes it only worse.

These unique exotics don’t give better stats or unique animations, only a different skin. Which is fine, I don’t have a problem with that. At this point I really don’t have the time to earn a legendary, so I am settling for a unique-skinned exotic weapon instead. But some of these weapons are extremely difficult to obtain; I will use Aether as an example.

Aether is a unique-skinned shortbow that requires the following materials:
- Eldritch scroll
- 100 mystic coins
- 250 ancient shortbow staves
- Gift of light:
— 250 orichalcum ingots
— 250 cured hard leather
— 100 charged lodestones
— Gift of Ascalon

So looking at these materials, most do not seem too challenging to obtain. Orichalcum and Ancient wood logs are harvestable and only require a bit of time (or a decent sum of money, 15-30g approx.) Cured hard leather is not expensive, and the gift of Ascalon takes only a few runs through the dungeon. The lodestones are what creates the issue.

The charged lodestones are what prevent many players from creating Foefire weapons or Mjolnir. The required 250 stack of the other materials in these weapons cost no more than 25g. But for a stack of 100 charged lodestones, the cost breaks 400g. In my opinion, this is just absurd. As much as I wish to create Aether, It seems unfeasible due to the cost of this one material.

I posted this in the Trading Post forums due to the material’s excessively high cost. However, changing the recipe to require less lodestones, or increasing the drop chance/amount of monsters that drop the lodestone, could effectively balance out the cost. I understand the difficulty of this based on the other lodestones. But requiring such an expensive material to create only an exotic weapon turns a lot of players away from forging it.

I see these unique exotics as the middleground between simple exotic weapons, and the glorious Legendaries. Most require realistic materials and are perfectly fine the way they are. But charged lodestones are an extremely detrimental factor in the creation of quite a few unique exotic recipes, and personally I feel something needs to be done about this crafting material.

I have seen Charged Lodestones mentioned before, but I figured opening a thread devoted to just this material could be beneficial.

Seeing as though the Ranger damage output is relatively small compared to other classes, I have found that using a critical build helps to close the damage gap. As far as between condition damage and critical damage, it depends on the weapon. If you are using the longbow, precision and power with critical damage is likely your best bet. But if you wanted a more condition oriented build, stick with the Shortbow for its bleeds, poisons and cripples.

Personally I use the shortbow and sword/warhorn combo. The horn (5) skill is excellent, the (4) skill is useful enough. The sword is a decent choice, though the root can be a bit of a hassle, especially when running a build that provides minimal protection. I focus on stacking bleeds and other conditions while relying on critical hits to deal my damage.

If you wanted to stick with the longbow/greatsword combo, you may even want to try a Power/toughness/vitality set. Gives a bit more survivability while still giving you solid damage output.

I hope this has been a bit of a help to you.

I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of work needs to be done to make Rangers a useful and desired class. I’d much rather have only one pet that I am actually attached to, that I rely to deal the missing portion of my damage, than remain with the current state of things. As of now, pets feel like disposable punching bags that are as amiable as a wet towel.