Guild Wars 2

Bird in the game don’t really fly; they “walk” on invisible stilts, for the purpose of determining where they can and cannot get to. If your other pets are blocked by a fence, your bird is too. Flying is just an animation, but it’s still earthbound. Drives me bananas, but GW1 was the same.

We can add poison, burning, freezing, and healing to our attacks through combo fields that we can create ourselves. Underwater, we can also do blind, and through the reef drake, confusion. I think this is meant to take the place of preparations. Of course, it’s no longer exclusive to rangers either.

I do miss splinter barrage. Kerrrack! Crash! Crash! Crash!

Bri.8354:

Daemon Hawk.9406:

I don’t understand the point of your second suggestion. What problem are you trying to solve?

Currently you can send a pet in to fight at over 3,000 range and the enemy will only attack the pet. If multiple players do this they can fight without any risk. I suggested this because of concerns that this tactic would trivialize content if pets received a survivability increase.

Makes sense. Thanks for explaining it. I get the problem you’re trying to solve — I can already AFK-solo some group event champions, and that does feel cheesy.

Durzlla.6295:

2 25 MB bears, 2 Moas (with compassion training), and a jaguar are capable of ripping just about everything apart with no help from their masters other than a heal… It was fun, but I felt dirty doing it lol.

PS: this was in Honor of the Waves, and CM explos, it was hilarious, I use HaO for this and was supplying Beary Bearington the 25MB brown bear.

That does sound entertaining. And cheesy. I can see how a mixed group of pets could help support each other.

How far were you able to get? On which paths?

Electro.4173:

The only actual suggestion I’d make for you would be maybe looking at Expertise Training over Vigorous Renewal, especially if you aren’t dodging constantly, because with the Drake / Devourer bleed-on-crit and Sun Spirit having that extra condition damage for your pet might really help.

You’re right! It is a better pick for me, and I was so focussed on how overpowered AOE perma vigor was on paper, I was missing how under used it was in practice. Even with my new about-face mousebinding (go go Autohotkey), 3 dodges per 20 seconds is enough. Robert Hrouda mentioned making vigor do something useful for pets, and that might swing things back, but for now this is a definite plus.

Darth Llama.9217:

Iehova.9518:

They omnom up, get a dosh banner, get a dosh infusion and roll in mad dosh from sanic fast CoF1.

Other then the Omnomberry part, I don’t understand a word of that. lol

I have no idea what dosh means.

It’s slang for money. Jehova said they eat omnomberry bars (for 40% gold from monsters), use a guild banner (5% gold), get a Gilded Infusion (for the ascended amulet, 20% gold) and roll in lots of gold from running CoF1 insanely fast.

I think the existence of that path devalues gold, and likely deserves a nerf, even though I have friends who run it.

That would be consistent with the way speed boosts work.

I could live with an aggro change that only affected dungeon bosses, if it allowed a “middle path” that enhanced pet survivability in dungeons. Others might have an issue.

I don’t understand the point of your second suggestion. What problem are you trying to solve? There is already a limit on how far you can F1 your pet, and how far you can get from a pet in combat before it magically appears at your side.

It would break most uses of “Guard”, and the extended attack range of “Sic ’Em”. Would you also propose changing turrets to only attack what their owner is attacking? Necro minions? Other summons? Why?

All items of the same level and rarity have the same stats. They aren’t random or with in range like some games. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature is a useful read. A lower level exotic might be better than a higher level rare. With a level, better rarity is better. Within a rarity, better level is better.

Bri.8354:

In my opinion this can be achieved by decreasing the aggro pets draw while toughening up their health and damage reduction. This way the rangers pet could be very resilient without creating situations where they could hold the attention of and tank enemies.

In addition, a pet attacking should not make NPCs considered to be in combat. This way players cannot send in their pets alone to take down an enemy; a player needs to be fighting the NPC as well otherwise the NPC will gain health recovery.

This would break my game. I hate it when pets can’t hold aggro, and the idea of a mob getting to recover while I’m down but my pet is still attacking is awful. I see why someone would like your ideas, but I’d have to quit playing.

Thanks for the kind words, Beta.

Power seems to do more for me than condition damage, at least in my testing. I don’t have my notes, but I tested the DPS loss on practice dummies by going naked, and it worked out to a bit better than 1 DPS : 4 Power. Since burning and 5 stacks of bleeds, both scale at 1 DPS : 4 Condition Damage, it was a bit more favorable to go power.

If I habitually got in melee range for splitblade, that will give 5 stacks of bleed for 6 sec on a 6 sec cooldown, and I could keep burning up 14 secs out of 20 between bonfire & throw torch, even without the sun spirit. That’s enough condition damage to tip the scale, but I don’t generally like to get quite that close.

Also, power helps tear down inanimate targets, whereas condition damage does not. Burning’s base damage is pretty high too, even with no condition damage. Still, I really should repeat my experiments to make sure that I’m right about getting better DPS this way.

I have some of that stew that I’ve been meaning to experiment with. I expect 7.5 sec of might for me, and 15 sec for the pet, which is certainly enough to be interesting, especially with 2 dodges per 10 seconds available from vigor. I should be dodging a lot more than I have been, for the sake of stacking protection on the pet. The barrier is technical.

I play almost exclusively with my right hand, using a 4-button trackball. I move with the right+left button combo. I’ve got button 3 set to jump, and button 4 set to dodge. The dodge button works great, but the jump button (left + right + 3 to jump forward) is terrible. I fail so badly at jumping puzzles! If I could manage to get button 3 to either do an about face or a dodge forward, I could do a lot more dodge + dodge back combinations, and this would greatly improve my game. I’d just have to W + spacebar to make the jump after lining it up. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get either binding to work, both natively with the GW2 options and externally with the mouse driver. I’ve been meaning to give Autohotkey a shot to see if I can get that to work.

Incidentally, my inability to simultaneously move and act is the reason I play a “boring” support beastmaster. It’s the most effective turret build for any class that I’ve come up with. My play skills have to be in the bottom 1%, but my guild still finds me to be an asset. I’m thankful for that.

I carry a greatsword with ghost slaying on it for just that purpose. Doesn’t miss the burrow, cleaves the gravelings, gravelings are “ghosts”. It’s a ridiculous workaround.

Trace Manderiot.2980:

… but it means that maybe you only do 1 guild bounty of the highest possible tier a week, unless you’re farming merits and commendations.

Based on my guild’s experience, it seems like the guild gets merits based only on the highest tier completed, whereas participants get one reward per mission type. We’ve done extra missions, but the only benefit is for participants who missed the main run. With that in mind, there’s no reason to do a repeat higher than level 1. There’s not really such a thing as farming them.

I think next week we’re supposed to have a second mission type in my guild, but it’s the exploring one, which gives merits but no commendations. It’s fun to have something to work for together, and overall I’m really liking it.

Gee, thanks….

I ran into a bot once, while trying to figure out a skill point, which was apparently bugged. She didn’t respond to my question about the skill point, but that means little. I began to be suspicious the third time she came down the tunnel killing the same grawl, so I followed.

She was a longbow/brown bear ranger, at at one point, she targeted a mob on the other side of a wall. Her bear ran around the wall to attack, while she stood there and unloaded shot after shot on the poor innocent wall. Maybe she thought she had piercing arrows traited, so it would work. :P I even found the end of her track, which I could tell as she made several weird angles in her running that would have been hard for a human to do, not to mention pointless.

I did end up reporting her, and taking a screen shot the second time she tried her piercing arrows wall trick on the exact same mob. If you’re going to report, please do take the time to be really sure. I had a narrow escape once, and it didn’t feel at all nice.

I was up in Frostgorge with another ranger who was ~ 10 levels too low to be there. He got killed by some ice worms. I’m tanky, not glass, and we just wanted out of there. I decided to ignore the worms and just get him back up. I could have killed the worms, but my DPS is modest, and they might respawn. I went over to res him, got bounced, went back to it, got bounced, finished the job. He got hit, and died, so I started ressing him, got bounced, etc. They pose little actual danger to me, and I thought it was hilarious. Once we were out of danger, some guy asks in /local chat, “Bot?”. I was lucky I saw it, because I often use a tab with just whispers, party, and guild chat.

Just because someone is a ranger, or is playing differently than you would, or seems stupid, awkward, or inept doesn’t make them a bot, and asking if they are is pretty insulting. Please do be careful what you report.

I didn’t mean it couldn’t be soloed, although I’m skeptical whether I could. I meant it can’t be tanked by a pet.

Assuming you mean the Champion Risen Megalodon, no, not even close to possible. That thing’s damage is way too high, and shreds armor fish and devourer, let alone drake. The one in the straits of devastation is just as bad.

Nugget.8031:

That is one beast lizard. I wonder if he could survive against the troll in queensdale.

Seems like not, although trying was fun.

The major issue seems to be the bleeds the troll stacks which, of course, ignore toughness & protection. He lays bleeds on six stacks at a time in melee range. I can counter that by putting the spring under Tonk, but that only helps half the time.

It’s hard to get much solo time with him. The troll must be pulled from the cave with the grubs, as drake cleaves will get them all into the fray, and they respawn quickly. Even in the cave, the troll is a popular event, and people come running, even on lower population servers.

Pets aren’t useless in the fight, especially ranged ones, but the kind of tanking that Tonk did with the giants doesn’t seem feasible.

More ideas for targets?

misterdevious.6482:

Mister Flingy has tanked a couple Legendaries for the entire fight (and I was soloing them, so they were very long fights.)

Devourers are awesome. I wish I could do the insane things you pull off, but I’m just not that good. You could make much more interesting videos.

Oglaf.1074:

How on earth did you do that? :O

What specc?

I’m running 0/0/20/20/30. Full details at http://garik.fastmail.fm/boon_swap.html.

Quarktastic.1027:

Looks like a pretty typical beastmaster/bunker build. Dreadfully boring to play.

Agreed. Most people would hate it.

Beardmonger.4692:

Think how much better good ol’ Tonk will be once Chomp is fixed and actually heals HIMSELF and not the mob :{

That would be nice, although (in L80 terms) he gets over 900 HPS, so that’s only equivalent of missing an extra sec or two of healing. It’s stupid, but not enough to break anything.

Here are a couple videos of my reef drake, Tonk, tanking giants, if you’re interested.

Tonk and the Giant of Nageling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIugUg1ickI
Tonk and Kol Skullsmasher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTnEtxv48fA

There’s no music, no commentary, and no exciting gameplay. There’s no jumping, no kiting, and hardly any dodging. It’s just poor Tonk giving sass to a giant and getting wailed on.

They are about 12 minutes long, each. Both start off as solo fights, and get a bit faster as a couple other players add some dps. Both would have been winnable solo, but the added players made the video shorter.

I’m a bit happier with the second fight. In the first, I was using “Guard” for protection, and the brief invisibility caused him to lose aggro a few times, which allowed the giant to pay attention to something else, occasionally me. Also in the second, Tonk manged to get backed into a wall, so the stomps couldn’t throw him back as far.

If you like this, let me know what else you’d like to see Tonk tank.

I normally pack sun & stone spirits now. If they were mobile, I might rethink that.

I’m not quite sure what you’re asking.

Are you asking how to get there? Use you HoM portal stone in inventory. If you have not got one, read http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hall_of_Monuments_Portal_Stone, and get one from Scornheart. He’s in a cave in the NW part of Lion’s Arch.

Are you asking how to use a ranger pet from HoM? Go to your HoM and tame them, like any other ranger pet. They are the same as regular ranger pets, just with a different look.

They are worth it for me. I use 4 Altruism & 2 Water, although I look at them as boon duration runes that also give healing power. I’m currently at 1425 healing power, or 1675 with full stacks of life, and there isn’t really an upper limit to how much I would want. I’m not maxed yet.

Ranger pet healing over time scales REALLY nicely with healing power. It’s a steady 3:8 HPS, so 1675 healing power translates into an extra 627 pet health per second.

If the question about runes was to me, I use 4 altruism and 2 water. From these I get some healing power, 30% boon duration, and are might on healing spring. Full build details are on my site — address is in my signature.

First off, congrats on 70 in a week. Nice work.

Pet squishiness in dungeons is a hot topic, but there are things you can do to mitigate it. The root cause, their inability to dodge and the importance of dodging in dungeons, you can do little about. You can however:

• Choose a higher toughness pet to begin with, like a canine, drake, or devourer.
• Depending on the target, use a ranged pet, like a spider or devourer.
• Beef it up with beastmastery. 30 points gives 300 each in power, precision, vitality, & toughness to your pet. This helps.
• Stack a boatload of healing power. I’m currently running 1,414.
• Use all available heals, including signet of the wild and natural healing. I favor healing spring, and use fortified bond to push regeneration onto the pet. Combined, I push about 900 HPS onto a pet, not including the spike heal from healing spring. It goes down to about 600 HPS if I’m AFK.
• Mitigate damage with protection, which reduces direct damage by 33%, or looked at another way, effectively raises armor by 50%. Protection can be applied with companion’s defense, stone spirit, and guard. The first two benefit from fortifying bond, and any two of the three that I mentioned are sufficient to keep up protection indefinitely (with my traits & gear).

There will still be fights that are hopeless, like Kohler, Subject Alpha, and higher level fractals, but they aren’t all like that. My devourer, buffed with protection, has the equivalent of 4,500 toughness, and that plus 900 HPS makes it pretty hard to kill.

SkyChef.5432:

Don’t work yourself up that bad…

I fail at humor. I was matching the tone of the “life ruiner” comment, which I thought was also attempting to be overblown for humor.

SkyChef.5432:

As a matter of fact, I dislike anyone who told others in their party inside a dungeon not to watch a cutscene….. So what a couple of minutes of cutscene would save them?

… especially in a story mode. My initial question was really, “Why are people who are impatient about movies even pugging a story mode?” The answer is likely, “It was a daily” which hadn’t occurred to me, but explains everything, including why story mode groups were forming up quickly. If it had happened in explorable mode, it wouldn’t have been so puzzling.

In the process of getting to that, we kinda got sidetracked on how rude I was to just silently leave, rather than talk about why I was leaving first. Not the first time I’ve been socially inept.

SkyChef.5432:

We normally just proceed to whack the mobs, the boss without waiting for our new member finished watching the movie. Have fun watching it and join us when you’ve done.

I like your plan.

I also really hope this thread dies — it’s been as useful as it could possibly have been.

Awesome info. Thanks!

Heylo.4938:

The other day, running a story dungeon was part of the daily achievement. Not sure if anyone has said that yet. People were running AC story quite a bit, since it tends to go by pretty fast.

Come to think of it, that might have been the reason.

Heylo.4938:

I would have gotten nervous as well, about what they were planning to do to that person. It only takes 2 people to kick someone. I think that you should have said something before dropping group. It probably looked like you left because that person was watching the cutscene. You probably scarred him forever! He’ll never watch a cutscene again in his gaming life for fear of a group falling apart. You are a life ruiner.

:3

OMG! Now I really feel like a heel!

Seriously, I would never want to contribute to someone feeling pressured not to enjoy the game’s story. Never again.

I’ll try that, in the unlikely and unlucky event that there is ever need. Thanks!

That’s fair criticism. Thank you. In retrospect, I wish I had talked to the group before leaving. I’m not sure it would have made a difference but it would have been more polite, especially to the innocents involved. I regret how I left.

About my motivation, I didn’t leave because they were making fun of the guy watching the movie. I don’t think watching movies in story mode is funny, but laughing about it isn’t offensive, and my skin isn’t that thin, even if it had been directed at me personally.

I left because I suspected the guild guys of ill intent towards the guy watching the movie. One of them said they were going to “mess him up”. Together, they have the means to kick whomever they want out of the party, whenever they want.

ANet has built a griefing tool with the party kick system. One of the things I liked about GW1 was how hard it was to grief people, apart from minion master suicide. However, the game mechanics are what they are, and two coordinated party members have easy means of griefing at hand.

I would have read the situation differently, had the guy watching movies been in their guild. I would have read it differently, had the group demonstrated any kind of camaraderie or cooperation. There seemed to be no social barrier to griefing.

Given that I thought they were planning to grief the guy, I don’t know how to ask questions that would settle the issue. If they were the sort of people who would find humor in kicking him in the middle of the final fight, they would also be the sort of people who would deny that plan, and find extra humor in doing it anyway. How would you approach that, Malefide?

I get why watching cutscenes in explorable dungeons with pugs is frowned on. They’re not your friends, and they are taking up your time so they can watch a movie. I don’t feel that way myself, but I do understand it. That said, I was in a run this weekend that I don’t understand.

I was running around Ascalon, mostly looking for the elusive chili peppers, when someone was calling for more for AC story. I decided to go, even though the rewards are garbage, since I hadn’t seen it since the recent revamp. The party consisted of 4 level 80s, whom I’ll call guildguy1, guildguy2, movieguy, and myself, as well as a mid 40s whom I’ll call otherguy. Guildguy1 and guildguy2 are in the same guild, and movieguy, otherguy, and I are all in different guilds.

I wondered why all these 80s are running AC story — do they not all have their fabulous hats already? I’ve been wearing my fabulous pirate hat since I did AC story at level 34… Are they all bored too?

We get in, and the group is a bit uncoordinated in propping the door open with the boulder, but we got through. We find Eir, fight some ghosts on the central platform, and it’s time for the movie where Rytlock and Eir argue over her quest to find the sword. I’ve seen it too many times to want to see it again, but right after I stop it, the guild guys are talking:

Guildguy1: LOL! He’s watching the movie.
Guildguy2: That’s OK, we’ll mess him up later.

Looking around, I see that movieguy, the other 80, is watching the cutscene. I don’t know why — maybe it’s his first time or maybe he just likes Eir’s hot figure. Don’t know, don’t care. On the other hand, I will not be a party to whatever the guild guys were plotting. I dropped group without a word, and have no idea what happened after.

Apart from the obvious issue that 2 coordinated party members can spoil everyone else’s work, and how irritating that is, I just don’t understand the motivations. I’d get it if this was a CoF ’zerker grindfest. But this?

You’re doing several boss fights. The lovers, at least, are a bit tricky — I’ve seen groups fail. You’re getting hardly any rewards for doing it, apart from the fabulous hat and the explorable mode unlock, and those only if it’s your first time.

Why would you do it, other than curiosity, helpfulness, or boredom? And how does that line up with getting mad over the cutscenes? And why, if you were planning on being a jerk, would you plot it openly in party chat?

Ideas, anyone?

Hoyvin.3241:

achensherd.2735:

I’m probably oversimplifying, but basically every moment a pet’s not actively attacking is a moment in which a Ranger is missing xx% of his/her total dps output, and in dungeons and fractals where pets aren’t attacking most of the time due to either death or passivity, Rangers come out to be xx% less effective compared to any other class most of the time, and we don’t have the kind of utilities that Guardians and Mesmers have (portalling, for instance) that can make up for that disadvantage.

This is oversimplified, but not by much. I think it’s a pretty succinct summary of the state of the ranger in anything but open-world pve. Any ranger disagree?

No, the sentiment is right. In my case, my pet accounts for a majority of my damage output. It’s not dead “most of the time” in dungeons or low-level fractals, but there are fights (looking at you, Kholer & Subject Alpha) which are hopeless for it and thus my DPS. Level 12 fractals were rough for pets, although I was able to keep a devourer up almost all the time in the volcano fractal boss fight, despite the burning. I expect the agony jump at level 20 to completely overwhelm my healing.

The fractal I feel most useless on is the grawl boss fight, due to the need for kiting. Maybe if I had stronger player skills, I could kite with a pet.

Murderin.8269:

Torn between ele and ranger. Are either of these popular in dungeons?

Eles are more sought than rangers. Rangers are tied up with their pets, moreso than any other class. Pets cannot dodge, nor can they get agony resistance, and so they suffer during some dungeon encounters. Dodging is a core dungeon mechanic. The devs are aware of the issues.

I play a ranger, however, and really like it.

I apologize. I don’t know why I said that. If it didn’t matter to you, you wouldn’t have started a thread about it.

More than half the time, I’m throwing through a field, so I get a changed animation anyway. For me, it’s not a big deal.

Non legendary axes use a generic skin for the thrown model. Does it matter?

Please no. Lack of scaling makes supportive beastmaster builds, like mine, viable. I do not want my pet to have a boatload of healing power, especially not at the expense of other stats.

There are only a handful of combinations that you can actually get anywhere, and only some of those are craftable. Beyond that, mix sets…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

Thanks for writing this and recording your videos. Well done!

For PvE & dungeons, I often take stone & sun spirits, with traits for doubled health & increased proc. I like them, and my guild likes them.

Stone works out to about 8-9% direct damage mitigation for the party. With my traits, my pet gets twice that. Stone is also very nice when defending brainless NPCs.

Sun can apply 100% uptime on burning to a single target if everyone is attacking it. My leader is particularly fond of how well sun plays with his condition-based necro.

Boon duration does not affect proc chance. Boon duration does affect boons applied by spirits (protection & speed), but it’s the boon duration of the person who procced the boon, not the boon duration of the person who dropped the spirit.

They live better if you trait their health, place them sensibly, and drop a healing spring on them. I don’t use them on fights that are going to take under half a minute, and I don’t want them following me around. I’m tanky — they are not.

For PvE, I think it’s very viable.

I use axe mainhand almost exclusively. For offhands, I’ll pick two of warhorn, torch, or axe, depending on where I am. I use battle sigils of the offhands to keep might up on swap, and offhand training to bring the 25 sec cooldowns down to 20 to match swap speed. It works well for me.

Relative to a bow, I get the constant AOE bounce, so adds drop without retargetting, and a lot of utility from the offhands, at the cost of range and single-target focus. And, of course, I have to kill a lot of wandering moas that pull a stray bounce.

I’m 30/50, which cost me way more effort than the rewards are worth. The only thing I use with any kind of regularity is the title (closer to the stars), and that only because it reminds me of my first ascension (the real equivalent of hitting 80, when the game opened up to you). I main a ranger, and I wish I liked moas, because taming the black moa was a fun part of starting over again in GW1. It had a quest with hysterical dialog. These days, I mostly use a reef drake, as I like drakes for their stats, and getting a reef drake is a memorable experience.

If you MUST have nostalgic things, go make memories to be nostalgic about. It’ll cost you less to buy the games than I paid for them. You’ve got more flexibility with your heroes than I had, which will make it easier to solo.

eXs, it might be a guild that is basically a glorified bank tab, having nothing to do with other people. That said, I wouldn’t hang around a guild that had been sold.

Ethics.4519:

Sigils: Whatever the name of the one that procs swiftness on kill (only like 2-3 seconds)

Speed, and the superior one is 10 seconds, or more with boon duration. I’ve used it. If you’re tearing around a low level area, killing things swiftly, you can build up duration.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

that is something I can personally do

Both the white raven and the black raven share identical stats. There is no differences between them with the exception that one is black and one is white. Just cosmetic differences – all the numbers are the same.

Hurrah!

Tanthalas.1569:

Try using a different pet. I had the same problem with bears and one other pet, I cannot remember which (maybe Moas?). When I hit level 80, my bear pet would run up to a mob, I would not even attack it, and the mob would ignore my pet and come for me. This was a change in a patch, I believe to help with the botting problem. I use the wolf now and don’t have as big a problem with it.

This. Toughness (including armor) is one of the factors that attracts aggro. Damage, proximity, and ranged attacks also matter. A canine has both more toughness than a bear and higher power. Drakes are identical stats, but have AoE attacks.

Find the mob that’s ignoring your pet, and try different pet families on it until you find what works for you. I run high toughness, so I need really tough pets if I want them to tank.

Last night when I used it, water + whirl = bolts that provide regeneration. Pops up the “regeneration” combo heart and everything. Water + projectile combos = regeneration, again with hearts. Water + blast (drake tail swipe) = small AoE heal. I never use leaps.

I’m with Vox Hollow — it’s not amazing. But, if you’ve got a healing spring handy, and your offhand axe out, and you don’t have to save it for projectiles, and you’re in the middle of a bunch of NPCs too stupid to stand in the spring, it’s better than nothing.

Right now there are two types of tags on the map, party members and commanders, and I wish we had more options. As we start to do more guild activities, the existing marks on the map aren’t enough.

Firstly, I would like the ability to designate one party member as a “special” dot. If Alice, Bob, Carol. and Dan are in a party, and the plan is for Alice and Bob to do one thing while Carol and Dan do another, then Alice can flag Bob, Bob can flag Alice, Carol can flag Dan, and Dan can flag Carol. In this way, the each person can see where their partner is, and where the other pair is. When Alice finds what they are looking for, then Carol and Dan can switch the special mark to Alice, and everyone can converge on Alice.

I would envision this as art of the person context menu. If you mark one party member as special, then the one you had previously as special is no longer special.

Secondly, I would like the option to turn on map markers for guild members. Not only would this be good for helping to see where fellow guild member are when there is more than one party on the map, it would also be nice to see where guildies are running around in open world PvE. Nice for those of us in smaller guilds, anyway — if you’re ikitten00 man guild that might be way too much information.

I would envision this as a pair of controls, buried in the user interface options. One to “show guild members on the map”, and one to “allow other guild members to see my location”. Bob, who is in the same guild as Alice, would see Alice on his map only if he had turned on showing guild members and she had permitted herself to be shown. Meanwhile Eve, who is in the same guild but whom Alice has blocked, would not see Alice no matter what the other settings are, because Alice has the right not to be stalked by people she has blocked, even if they are in the same guild.

Thirdly, assuming the second is implemented, I would like the ability to designate one guild member as a “special” dot. In this way, Mike, who is is in another party from Alice but in the same guild, can also rapidly locate Alice on the map when she makes her big find.

I see this being implemented in the same way that designating a party member as special is, for consistency. Right click them in person or in the guild list to mark them.

Finally, I would like the ability to turn off display of commander tags on the map and minimap. I understand that they are useful in WvW, but I run into them most often in LA and fighting dragons. I think that commander should still get the mark over their heads so they can show off their tag if they are inclined. It’s still at least as big of a display as carrying around a legendary.

Again, I would envision “show commanders on map” to be an option buried in the user interface, defaulted to on, as it is currently.

In terms of who can use these abilities, I think that marking party members and turning off commander marks should be an inherent part of the UI. I think it would be good to make turning on guild map dots, and with it marking “special” dots, be an option for guilds to research, costing influence (but not merits). I say this because it’s mostly going to benefit guilds that run guild content, and the option to earn it is an interesting choice. At the same time, it shouldn’t be too expensive for tiny guilds, for whom extra merits would be prohibitive. Guild map dots would be very useful for guilds larger than 5 who like to do temple events and the like together. Tiny guilds are also more likely to use them for purely social reasons.

Are you looking to heal yourself, your pet, your team, or all of the above? Signet of the Wild scales stupidly well (on the pet) with healing power. Most healing over time scales 1:8, but on the pet, SotW scales 1:4. Keep up regen, and you’re scaling at 3:8. For team healing, healing spring is the obvious choice, but I get more healing onto my party through water combos than by enticing them into the field.

If you’re looking at regeneration-based healing, you might look into boon duration runes (water/monk/altruism) and boons you can give your party, such Call of the Wild from the warhorn.

For gear stat, I personally favor clerics over apothecary, both for cost and for damage output. Magi would not give you toughness, which is especially useful to a healing build, and I’d consider it only if I were procing something useful on crits.

I use stone spirit, too. It provides about 25% uptime on protection, for me, my party, and nearby npcs. Through fortifying bond, it’s more like 50% uptime for my pet.

Sun spirit is also nice, giving the focus target 100% uptime on burning in a grouped situation. Granted, some of that has no condition damage bonus, but “fire burns!”…

Unholey.3264:

Would a status bar for pets visible near their health bar be a reasonable request? Being able to see what conditions/boons/other buffs your pet has without having to click on them (as clicking on them mid-fight is not only usually difficult but takes time away from your own actions) would be wonderful.

Either there, or in the party interface would be a huge improvement for me. I run supportive beastmaster, and not having to target the pet to check it’s status would be great!