Guild Wars 2

HaO has set Boon durations maybe its overwriting the swiftness given from Timbre or that should show as two lots of Swiftness on the tooltip not one?

That might have been it. It might have been double piggy backing before between the pet and myself.

Nope, still running the same build setup and trait line in Spvp.

I swear I could use my heal before HoT was released to maintain perm swiftness and now I can’t.
I’ve looked through the patch notes to find why this is the case but haven’t found anything. Anyone have any ideas why this is the case though?

Why the need for the Resounding Timbre nerf so we can no longer have perm swiftness if we took the heal or Guard?
We can get perm swiftness in the form of the druid trait now anyway, this just opened up BM and druid as a potential roaming option with BM being the weaker of the two due to swiftness being a boon and having to use a utility to trigger it.

This has really reduced ranger’s build diversity and potential to roam in spvp.

A good player playing in Unranked isn’t about “killing noobs”. It is about playing a game without stress that isn’t ranked, hence the name “Unranked”.
MMR should take care of going against people at your own skill level and if you are struggling in Unranked you can always try hotjoins for a bit to get more experience on the maps etc.

As an Aussie 240ms is a good day.

As people have stated, the problem with shouts isn’t their CD, the problem is what they do.
Guard is ONLY used due to its short CD. It’s used for regen/swiftness spam and If running soldier runes, condi cleanse. It has no other purpose in PvP besides that.
That is horrible design.

Protect me? Ha! The pet dies instantly unless you’re running a bear which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Killing your pet kinda messes with all trait lines now due to so much of our utility coming from pet swaps or pet F2.
Signet of Stone does a much better job and protects your pet as well instead of killing it.

‘Search and Rescue’ is pointless besides for the trait in NM. I would never put it on my bar as it takes up too much space. ‘Quickening Zephyr’ does a better job for rezzing people anyway as I can get my wolf to taunt/fear enemies off the target. This would be impossible if Search and Rescue was being used.

“Sic’Em” is in a weird spot. I’ve seen some people use this and while it can be okay, usually it takes the spot of a better damage utility. e.g. Spike Trap, Quickening, Signet of the Wild etc etc.
The problem with “Sic’Em” is the fact it ONLY effects the pet. If it effected the Ranger as well then it might see some use on more bars.

SotP and WHAO are in pretty good spots.

Suggestions off the top of my head to fix the 3 other traits

Protect Me:
“The rangers pet becomes invulnerable and rooted in place, giving Protection and Resistance to 5 players in a radius of 300 pulsing.
CD: 60 secs Duration: 6 seconds, 3 second pulses. "
Placed using an AoE Cirlce like Guard.

This provides much needed group utility the ranger needs with the balancing drawback of the pet not doing any damage and not able to use their F2 ability.

Search and Rescue:
To be quite honest I’m not really sure where to go with this as they pigeon holed themselves into this skill with NA.

If I was to design something it’d be along the lines of
“The pet runs towards the player with the lowest HP (could be the Ranger) and blocks the next 2 attacks meant for that player.
CD: 30 secs.
Range: 1000 "

Guard:
The pet provides Aegis to Allies and Cripples enemies for 1 second.
CD: 20 seconds
Radius: 300.
Keeps the placement method.

Sorry if the formatting is a bit dodgey, it’s late and I’m sick.

TL;DR
Shouts suck because of what they do and how they only effect the pet.
Change the shouts to give more dynamic group support that could allow some cool group play.

Condi ranger using shortbow and Axe/torch could also work. You’re stuck at 900 range but damage can be achieved via said range. Not as effective as some of the builds mentioned above though.

In sPvP I use to run Air/Fire but lately I’ve been running Force/Air for the higher, more reliable damage on LB through piercing. Still have fire on my GS for finding stealth targets however.

If a match is that skewed that you deem it hopeless, then the match won’t take long to end anyway. They’re at 300 and you’re at 150? Still possible for a comeback but even if you’re getting dominated, they’ll likely 3 cap and it’ll be over in a couple of minutes.

Adding the resign would cause too many issues just to save 2 or 3 minutes.

Very cool idea. I’d definitely approve of more information when it comes to condis instead of seeing if something hurts on the first tick.

Your change to Hunter’s Shot would ruin LBs survivability without the stealth. Besides that some of these changes are cool. I also dislike the change to rapid fire as it;d be very easy to counter in PvP

“Or maybe because as a glass LB ranger you are not in the team fight most of the time but fighting from the side lines where you take less heat and it is harder to catch you by surprise.

When you are on point in amidst all the particle effects the odds of not seeing a tell and getting locked down and inst-killed (even on the tankiest builds) are much higher. "

Thing is though, any ranger worth their salt is going to be in amongst the team fight, not up on a ledge unless their getting FF’d and using it defensively. You utilize the 9 sec stealth constantly. Only use SoS when you finally get locked down or for a rez on a teammate.

I am a glass LB ranger. Even in team fights I don’t drop in 1 second (a really good blindsiding from a good mesmer is an exception). So I am guessing you’re a thief or this may be an issue of not understanding other classes mechanics.

Probs just a Med guardian or the Rev’s AoE displacement ability in demon.

Drennon.7190:

Phineas Poe.3018:

The leaderboards aren’t active right now. Ranked is just a smaller map pool.

Exactly. As long as people keep voting for courtyard, I’ll keep queuing ranked. Even during this beta.

TDM is never fun on a conquest build. At least not for me.

While I personally like Courtyard, I can understand this view point. I think it needs to go the way of Strongholds and have its own sign up. This would probably involve making another 1 or 2 maps though.
TDM is always interesting to me because each class has their own way to shine and it really puts more emphasis on rezzing/stomping targets.

I am with the others. This has occurred with Signet of Stone, LR and Hunter’s shot most noticeably.
I press the ability and nothing happens. I am not lagging, I have normal ping etc. The ability just fails to respond to the input. If I press a button immediately after it’ll work fine.
I would argue that this is a bug or potential server side lag, but client side UI responds properly by indenting the button when pressed (the actual ability just doesn’t respond) so be interesting to see what it is.

A simple solution for Hotjoin is if a person has already joined a team, they can no longer join the other team during that match. This allows friends to play together. Allows people to choose a side or still spectate etc etc.
It stops team swapping dead though.

Negatives are that some people may wait longer to see who is winning before joining but that’s at risk of the teams filling up. If that becomes an issues the suggestion of 3 games played for the daily mentioned earlier works.

Key for fighting mesmers is to get them early. I use taunt or a knockdown from stealth and then burst while they’re CC’d. Most don’t expect it.

Another trick is to stealth while they’re reflecting by shooting a clone with Hunter’s Shot. Then when the reflection comes down you can burst.
CC and timing is crucial for fighting them

Indoles.1467:

I didn’t mention the exploit I found but I can say that isn’t the exploit. It isn’t too difficult to find, and it feels like an unintended consequence of how these traits work.

Ahh okay. Glad to hear and good decision keeping it quiet, maybe submit a report to anet as well

I go Resounding Timber and use SotP and We Heal as One.
Run Zerker or marauder ammy.
Then weakness on pet F2 and taunt.

Have a raven for the taunt and a hawk for weakness spam.
Go Marksmanship and wilderness survival for the other two.

Only thing I’ve been having trouble with is a Really good mesmer or a engi who knows how to use Grenade Barrage.

It’s a pretty solid build as you get reduced damage by 5% when you have regen, a very strong 16 second heal, reduced CD on your stability, strong pet, strong damage and strong CC.

Played roughly 2k games (hotjoins, tournament, unranked etc. )

I’ve taken beastmastery for the very strong taunt as the Grandmaster. I find Quickdraw in skirmisher really overrated and not suited for LB due to the need to swap. Nature Magic is okay but offers no real utility like Beastmastery does.

I use Greatsword for mobility/ the block and Maul. The Block is the main purpose for the GS as it provides such much needed damage avoidance while you wait for your heal/endurance or stealth to come off CD. It’s also very helpful against thieves or mesmers who have gone into stealth.

If you go Beastmastery, you should probably choose a bird like the Raven as a pet as the F2 cooldown lines up well with taunt.

I don’t believe the 4.75 Weakness is an exploit as it is actually an exception to the rule. I believe the trait has a 10 second ICD (or something like that) but they made the hawk unrestricted (says in the f2)

Really solid post man. +1

I’m kinda liking the idea of 6 seconds of stealth on the longbow to help avoid those nasty bursts or wait for your heal to come off cooldown. Should be a lot of very skillful situational play around this one ability.

I think OH axe is quite powerful as it is, except being rooted while using number 5.
If they lowered the damage a smidge and allowed movement similar to the warriors axe skill then I think the OH axe would be a fairly popular choice.

Traps don’t currently activate on downed targets. This isn’t really a bad thing though as if you put them on someone that is downed and a team member goes for revival, the downed member is then effected by the traps. Makes for good pressure play.

I posted a similar thing earlier about the OH axe. Currently in the game there is a trait to reduce the offhand by 20% but this is being removed. Dagger/torch and warhorn all are getting new traits to reduce them by 20% but OH axe has not received one.

If I did miss it and it’s baseline then I understand. It just seemed weird to miss an entire wep reduction for rangers.

I can take quick draw and while it’d be okay it wouldn’t be as effective as having the reduction trait itself and it’d be a very clunky work around.

I started out taking dual axes to challenge myself a bit more but I’ve found it’s quite fun and effective at taking out multiple enemies at once and the HoT changes work perfectly with the rest of the build, just screws over the core OH axe ability.

I have multiple rangers and I pretty much strictly SPvP. One of my favorite unorthodox builds to run has dual axes and is built around OH axe number 4 (Path of Scars) doing big damage and then pulling the target into my traps. This is a berserk glass cannon build that is pretty effective at taking out multiple enemies.

The only problem is that this build will become obsolete next expansion for one simple reason, there is no longer a reduction trait for OH axe abilities. Currently we have ‘Off-Hand Training’ which is located within the Wilderness Survival line that reduces the ability from 15 seconds to the necessary 12 seconds. This however cannot be found in ANY of the new traits.

My suggest is to implement it into the trait Honed Axes or potentially Spotter. Honed axes has the advantage of already being a trait based around axes but it does not reduce the ability reduction (fair enough on the mainhand) but adding a reduction on the offhand would fit into this trait nicely and not be too over the top.

For the curious my current build is 4/6/4/0/0.

Not sure if this is the correct area to post for potential HoT changes but thought I’d share as this ruins a really good build for me.

I personally think keep it the way it is currently but add a chat system that allows for cross server communication while in the Heart of Mists (So Map chat that goes cross server). This reduces lag, allows people to talk cross server and form groups and gives people the option to leave Map chat if they don’t want to talk to other randoms.

It’s a sort of win win win situation.

Vialator, now I’m starving for some pig…

I think he is like the class clown, fun most of the time but when it comes to something serious, completely useless.

I agree with a lot of what Lobo says on pet survivability. I think it would be very awesome if when the player dodged an attack then the pet also “evaded”. This results in the pet being able to survive longer and giving the player a more direct control over damage incoming. It also allows the pet to “stay” on the target (and I use the word stay lightly)

Dante as cool as that would be I don’t think it would be very balanced. To put it into perspective it would be a ranged Backstab with no requirements.

I do agree with the comment about Rapid Fire, at the moment it’s our only damaging ability in an actual fight when we are being focused besides for our utility shot Point Blank Range. That’s why I believe a speed up on the attack speed of Long Range Shot and remove the first range requirement and put it within the second. So the groupings would look like 0-1000 and 1000+

I agree Drok, I use Diversity with the 30 30 10 0 0 build I mentioned earlier and most of the time Shortbow is more than enough in combat. The only time I really use Longbow is as a support weapon for shortbow by adding Vulnerability and Rapid Fire (generally as an opener) to get some burst on the target and some good damage before they realise I’m there. If the player is aware of me however, the longbow becomes obsolete almost.

Cempa, I have tried this before but it does not compare to using the Longbow as a support weapon to the shortbow through Hunter’s short and quickness and Crossfire… it just doesnt have the damage atm or the utility..

I disagree Majik, I think both need to happen. This is because the longbow currently in close quarter combat is clunky as all hell and way too slow for the fast paced style of combat in tpvp. ( I know it isn’t designed for that but that needs to change [Please read my post titled “The longbow and the shortbow” for further details]) I’m not suggesting it be up there in speed with the shortbow, but faster than it is today. It will also help arrows land a lot more.

I don’t think anyone has forgotten these, I know I haven’t. However it just seems that short bow is by far our strongest weapon at the moment so we just assume it’ll be easier to fix, therefore if we mention it enough, it’ll get fixed quicker than a general overhaul of some of the other weapons or abilities.

That is also true, however I would still like to see an increase on the attack speed on Long Range Shot to help compensate for this problem as well.

I remember the first time I saw Rapid Fire, I laughed because I had seen warriors charge faster than my arrows travel, that really takes away from the feel and actual damage of the abilities.

Faster arrows would make a big difference with both types of bows. For the shortbow it would slightly increase the stacks of bleeds you can get on the target at a time, depending on how close the target is and for the long bow it would help solve that stupid obstruct nonsense.

Completely agree on the longbow and shortbow points. I just posted something similar about them in my own thread. Glad people like you have a deep understanding of the class

The Shortbow:

Currently the shortbow is our strongest range weapon in tpvp and I believe this is because it THRIVES in close quarter combat around nodes. How many times has quick shot saved you from the burst damage about to hit you at keep? I know it’s saved me too many times to count.

The strengths of the shortbow are due to its fast attacks, pressure (through bleeds and poison at the right time), and survival capability (through 3, 4 and 5). However after the animation fix, the short bow seems to be a little bit lacking. To fix this, I DO NOT SUGGEST REVERATING THE ANIMATION GLITCH as that would encourage unskilful play and the ranger class does not need that reputation back.

What the shortbow needs is more reliable and useful ways to apply damage to a target instead of just spamming one. Therefore I suggest the following changes (Note: I do not suggest adding all of these together, instead I am giving ideas of possible changes to abilities that could help)

Poison Volley:
Currently all I use this ability for is to apply a poison at the 35% mark to lessen that annoying heal and it can have the habitat of just not landing due to the spread of the arrows and the base damage is just terrible. So I am suggesting making this a single target ability that applies poison to one target and have a higher base damage. What this in effect does is reduces the reliance in Crossfire as a damage source while assisting condition pressure and adding a small bit of burst.

Crippling Shot:
I would reduce the bleed damage on this ability by half and increase the base damage. What this effectively does is similar to the Poison Volley suggestion. It removes the requirement for Crossfire as our main damage source yet does not hurt our utility and survivability. The only possible problem with this change would affect condition shortbow rangers however I think the damage increase initially will out weight this change.

Thank you very much if you actually read all of this post. Please leave your opinions below and how you would suggest to change or fix the weapons.

Hello Everyone,

In this thread I plan to highlight some problems with the longbow and the shortbow, make suggestions to fix them and just generally discuss the weapons from a tpvp perspective. I apologise in advance for any spelling mistakes or errors. Please keep discussion on topic.

To understand my viewpoint on these topics it will probably be helpful if you understand how I play. I run a 30-30-10-0-0 with both the shortbow AND the longbow as my primary weapons. I find this a very well balanced build with effective damage, pressure and survivability however it has its flaws or I would not be posting this.
Now into the discussion.
—-————————————
There are two main problems with the longbow keeping it from being a successful weapon in tpvp:

First Problem:
The range requirement on the longbow is severely hindering the weapon in a tpvp aspect as many of the fights found are centred around nodes, thus making close quarter combat almost impossible to avoid. Due to this the longbow’s damage is hurt majorly and the weapon itself becomes rather pointless unless trying to use Rapid Fire or Point Blank shot.

Possible solution:
To fix this issue (on Long Range Shot), I suggest keeping the range requirement but slightly altering it. I would bundle 0-1000 together and have the damage at 500 (I believe currently it’s 497, anyway the number is debatable) and keep the 1000+ aspect range as it is, thus not affecting PvE damage but helping the PvP ranger keep pressure on the target.

Why it works:
This increases the damage of the longbow slightly while also making it much easier to balance as range isn’t so much of a factor and it works well within the current tpvp game design system of fighting around a node.

Second Problem:
IT SHOOTS TOO SLOW! I understand the wish to separate the longbow characteristics from the shortbow and to keep realism in the game but this shouldn’t sacrifice practicality. I say this as when I TRY to use this weapon within combat around a node and with Rapid Fire on CD (Our only real damage ability on the Longbow), damage just doesn’t happen. Sure you can use Barrage but when you are the focus attention of a warrior or a thief, that 2 second casting time just cost you the fight.

Possible Solution:
Increase the attack speed on the longbow by “20ms” or so on Long Range Shot, about half of what the shortbow animation fix was.

Why it works:
This allows us to have somewhat sustained pressure and damage with the longbow in a tpvp situation as we do not have conditions to apply to the target besides cripple. It also reduces the ‘obstruct’ or just the plain misses that the majority of arrows suffer.

On a side note: If we can reduce the ‘obstruct’ or miss on rapid fire at range that would do wonders to boost the damage and efficiency of this weapon as a large portion of our damage is lost to this.

With these two (possibly three fixes) the longbow has the potential to go from a hardly used weapon to one that is balanced in a tpvp situation around the game design.