Guild Wars 2

Kasama.8941:

• I don’t understand where the pet is a problem in exploring or puzzles. You have to give me some examples there.

in exploring it tend to aggro mobs, which will follow you and your pet
in puzzles, it is constantly in the way, blocking your view and being annoying, it’s like your personal male max size norn accompaning you everywhere
“but you can stow it” – and it comes back immediately when you take damage by falling or whatever, forcing you to wait at least 15sec before you can stow it again

Kasama.8941:

• If the boss deals too high damage, you want to use a pet that either deals ranged damage (spiders and devourers), or that can buff you (like the Fern Hounds regeneration, or the Jungle Stalkers might). Basically, pets that stay close to you to avoid damage.

pets are terrible buffers, that option falls flat
ranged pets do less damage than their melee counterparts, also, their ~900 range isn’t enough to outrange most bosses. Add to that that pets cannot dodge and your pet is toast.

Kasama.8941:

• In dungeons I always use bears, as they simply just survive longer then any other pet, and because they can also work as tanks. I’ve played a ton of dungeons where my bear would tank the boss on it’s own, leaving me hands free to revive other players on my team. Sure they die often, but if you switch pets before they are defeated, the recharge time on pet switching is far less, thereby allowing you to switch pets more often. But there’s also a learning curve in knowing when to switch pets, and when to let your pet die, so you can use the pet switching in a situation where you need it. And when to have your pet in “attack mode”, and when to have it in “don’t attack mode”.

pets tanking bosses… yea, you might want to check where you are, these are the gw2 forums, not those of that other MMORPG

first of all, I haven’t read all of this thread, just the OP, so I’m replying to his “counterpoints”

1. Just no. Even with a high damage pet, other classes outdps rangers easily on single targets. It’s even worse on multiple targets. Also, birds and felines, our most powerful pets, are made of paper and die pretty much the second an enemy looks at them (especially in dungeons)

2. So, by using low (pet snares) or no (muddy terrain) damage skills, we can (for a short while) counteract our pets problems with moving enemies? Tremendous.
Not to mention: Only one cat (Snow Leopard) and one bird (Owl) have slows, both are short (~3 sec) chill effects on relatively long CDs (20 / 30sec). Of course, one could switch to other pets, with better CC abilities, but they do less damage, evening the scales.

3. Pet swapping has a CD (shared with stow pet, btw). Also, by simply stowing the pet, it causes even less trouble.

4. Even with constant F1 / F3 to engage / disengage, the pet will die. While it is running around back and forth, it deals no damage, when there is an AoE effect, it will most likely still get hit (because no dodge). True, one can help the pet a bit with F1/F3, but it’s a very weak form of control, doesn’t replace dodge, and requires the player to not only to take care of his char, but also of an unresponsive pet, up to 1500 away.

okay, on to the 2nd post

1. Pets die in a few hits, unless you take a “tank” pet and/or have a truckload of points in BM
In Dungeons, even a bear and 30pts BM won’t survive more than 2 hits

2. a) In some cases, yes, though the Karka Champ pretty much onehits pets.
b) The pet will either do no damage, or die. Probably both. Search and Rescue is a bit on the unreliable side, and the pet’s revive speed is horrendous.
c) On the one hand, the pet takes forever to destroy the crystal, on the other hand it’ll have died to Alpha’s AEs anyway
d) That isn’t exactly helpful. Fun, maybe, but not useful. That’s like saying Mesmers are the best class because of pretty butterflies.

3. In PvP / WvW you’re dead anyway, in PvE you must be very lucky for your pet to kill the monster before it kills you. When being downed, getting up quickly or preventing enemies from finishing me is more important than having some meager part of my dps still standing.
Now, if Lick Wounds was more reliable (and wouldn’t cause the Pet to drag the mob to you), that’d indeed be helpful

anet decided to make the main defense mechanism in this game dodging – quite a good idea
then they decided that pets cannot dodge – I’m speechless

In open world pve, hammering F3, using a bear and putting a kitten ton of points into BM, this can be mitigated
In Dungeons or WvW, you’re screwed; 30-50% of your dps (as anet likes to say) are either dead or out of combat 70% of the time

4 (Point Blank Shot): Knockback, Medium Damage, 15sec CD, 600 Range.
One of the best single target knockdowns in the game. It is also ranged and does okay-ish damage.
The only problem is, you will most likely never use it in a dungeon / party situation. When an enemy is within range of this skill, your Longbow autoattacks are already dealing pretty bad damage, so you would be a) moving away from the mob before he even got that close b) change to another weapon.
Now, of course, there are situations where it is helpful, though overall it’s not that great. Too situational.
No comparison here.

5 (Barrage): 2,75 sec casttime, 30sec CD, big AE Range with moderate damage, up to 12 sec cripple.
Now, Barrage has a very long CD. It is also the only worthwhile ranged AE Attack we have. The damage is not stellar, but acceptable. The crippling is nice to have, though not as great in PvE as it is in PvP / WvW.
Now, let’s compare this to the LB Warriors AE Attacks. Yes, attacks, he has multiple.
Burst (Combustive Shot), same Range and AE size. Way faster casttime (0,75 sec), way faster CD (10 sec), but requires Adrenaline to use.
The Damage is lower than Barrage’s. The Dot it applies is strong, resulting in higher damage. It also is a fire combo field.
The other AE Skill is Arcing Arrow (3). Same casttime and CD as Combustive Shot, lower range (900). The damage per attack is worse than that of Barrage, but one can use 3 Arcing Arrows in the time one could use 1 Barrage; resulting in higher DPS for the Arcing Arrow. Oh, and it is a BLAST FINISHER.

We dully note: Bows have Blast Finishers with short CDs and can provide combo fields; as long as they’re not used by a Ranger.

Long Bow Summary: Well, it is already inferior to our own Short Bow. It is also weaker than the Warrior’s ranged options. Especially the Warrior LB has some nice tricks (10sec CD 8 sec Duration Fire Field, 10 sec Blast Finisher), something a Ranger simply cannot do with his weapon skills.

I am tired, might comment on the other weapons et cetera tomorrow.
Just one last thing I think needs to be addressed.
Pets.

“Pets are an integral part of Rangers…” is something we hear a lot.

- Pets are made of paper. They cannot dodge, their AI is disastrous, in many fights they die without the Ranger even having a chance to prevent it.
- There are situations when the pets just stands around doing nothing. For example the Dragon World Bosses. Melee pets simply refuse to attack them. Same goes for the Eternal Flame in CoF 2 and various other “Objects”
- Some fights are made harder by having a pet, thus taking a Ranger with you hinders the entire group. Examples? Oh of course!
Krait Fractal: If the pet gets near the Jelly Fish and he decides to eat it. The pet won’t struggle, allowing the Jelly to regen lots of HP whilst being almost invulnerable. Just what we needed, making an already long, boring and tedious fight even longer and more boring. Pets are useless at best, harmful at worst.
Jade Maw: Maw shooting his laser at pets… Maw shooting his laser at dead pets
WHAT
I don’t even know what to say, having a class with minions / pets / clones at Maw is suffering. And while a Necro or Mesmer can simply not summon his minions to prevent these problems, the ranger is forced to make this fight harder for his party. I am speechless.
Arah Lupus: Grubs. Again, Melee pets are about as helpful as Randall. As in, they’re not helpful and only make things harder.

Might post more tomorrow; that is unless this post gets deleted due to being nonconstructive or w/e.

Long Bow (1200 Range on all Skills; 1500 traited (20 pts in Marksman (X, Eagle Eye)))
1 (Long Range Shot): Medium Damage based on range, slow attack speed.
A skill that wants you to stay far away from the enemy. Not the worst idea on a ranged character, though not always possible in narrow places. The main problem with this attack: It is weaker than Cross Fire. At maximum range, when the Short Bow is not flanking, they are about comparable in terms of DPS. Once the Long Bow leaves its desired range and / or the Short Bow starts flanking, things start to look real grim for the Long Range Shot.

Warrior Long Bow 1 (Dual Shot): 900 Range, Medium Damage, 2 Arrows.
Okay… this is difficult.
At a range lower than 500, Dual Shot is better.
At a range of 500-1000, they are about equal.
At a range of over 1000, Long Range Shot does more damage; also Dual Shot can’t reach that far without traits.
Still, Dual Shot is slightly better in my opinion because:
a) no range shenanigans. It always does the same damage, no matter if the enemy is far at the horizon, or already stepping on your toes. Especially in dungeons, where there are narrow, winding paths and Red Circles everywhere, you cannot always stay in your favourite position and range, you’ll more often than not end up closer to the enemy than you want. Dual Shot doesn’t care about that. Long Range Shot doesn’t like it.
b) 2 Arrows. Yes, the individual arrow deals less damage, but: 2 Arrows mean 2 chances to work as a projectile finisher (remember, we’re talking PvE groups here) and it also slightly mitigates the extremely slow attack speed of the Long Bow. A Long Bow attack is slower than an attack with a Hammer (3/4sec to 1/2 sec), slow weapons have problems with critical hits. Every crit makes a huge difference. On a fast weapon, a series of non-crits due to bad luck sucks, but doesn’t hurt the damage output nearly as bad it does on a slow weapon. By splitting the damage onto two separate arrows that can crit independently from each other, Dual Shot could as well have a twice as fast attack speed.

As with shortbows, our longer range cannot offset the drawbacks of our attack in the most cases.

2 (Rapid Fire): Fast(er) attack, high damage, 10 individual attacks, 5sec casttime, 10 sec CD, can move while casting.
At first glance this seems awesome, and indeed it is a vast improvement over our autoattack. Why at first glance? Well, there are two skills that share a rather similar mechanic, let’s have a look at them.
Warrior Rifle 3 (Volley): 5 Shots, 2,5 sec casttime, 10sec CD, can move while casting.
Well, half the amount of projectiles in half the amount of time, with the same CD, that seems balanced, doesn’t it ? It isn’t. Volley’s 5 shots do only slightly less damage than our Rapid Fire’s 10, this leaves the Warrior with 2,5 seconds to apply autoattacks to catch up to us. That’s a bit over 3 attacks. He easily catches up.
But we get 5 more attempts at Projectile Finisher! You said that’s good! Well, we get 1-2 attempts more, since the warrior can autoattack more while we are still Rapid Fireing. On a Longbow, that means the Warrior has MORE Projectiles than we. If he doesn’t switch to a Long Bow to appease our comparisons but instead stays on the Rifle, yes we have up to 2 more attacks in the same time span. The Warrior will apply 6 second bleeds with each of his autoattacks though, this we cannot hope to compensate by getting to use a combofield 2 times more.

The other Attack that is similar in its mechanics is Hundred Blades. I am not going to compare these two attacks. Just remember, they are both on position 2 of the “signature weapon” of the respective class. And we all know which of these attacks is pretty awesome in PvE, and which is pretty meh.

3 (Hunter’s Arrow): 10 Stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds, 15 sec CD, low damage.
Shot an arrow that doesn’t do much damage (really, a Point Blank Long Range Shot does more) but applies 10 stacks of vulnerability. This is a pretty decent opener. The damage is low, too low, and either the CD is too long or the vulnerability duration too short, still one of our better skills, and actually helpful for your party.
Other classes are better at providing vulnerability (Warriors, Necros, Grenadier Engies), but hey, we can bring something to the table as well.
This skill could be compared to Warrior Rifle 4 (Brutal Shot); it would win in terms of vulnerability stacks, lose in terms of damage and duration. At least it has no casting time, so I guess it’s the winner of this comparison.
It also gives your pet a whooping 10 seconds Swiftness…

Rangers aren’t exactly the most sought after profession for PvE.
I am trying to analyze reasons for this here, taking a look at our skills and traits and how they compare to other classes.
This post is about Group PvE / Dungeons; not PvP / WvWvW

Weapon Skills
Note: I’m talking about untraited Skills here, Traits come later.

Short Bow (1200 Range on all Skills)
1 (Cross Fire): low to moderate damage, high attack speed, single target, short bleed ig it hits the enemy from behind or the side.
Now, if we attack from behind / the side, one stack of bleeding (3sec) gets applied, in order to maximize our effectiveness with this attack, we have to position ourselves correctly and compete with other classes for bleeding slots, since there can be a maximum of 25 bleeding stacks.
There will always be situations where we can not apply the bleed, be it due to positioning problems, full bleedstacks or the fact that we do not want to screw over a class that actually specializes in condition damage via bleeds; leaving us with a fast but weak high range single target attack.

Let’s compare this to the Thief’s Shortbow 1 (Trick Shot). Trick Shot has lower range (900), higher damage, no additional effects. Except that it can hit up to three targets. For more direct damage. Independant of positioning.

I’d say, Trick Shot wins: as soon as there are 2 or more enemies, it is stronger due to it’s bounce, on single targets it is only weaker, if the ranger has ideal conditions (attacking from behind / the side and free bleed stacks). 300 more range cannot outweigh this imho.

2 (Poison Volley): 5 arrows, very low damage, short poison, 9 sec CD, short cast time.
I like to call Poison Volley “that skill I use when I want to lower my damage output”. The direct damage is a complete disaster. Against a single target, 4 arrows would have to hit to get the same damage as Cross Fire. The dot portion is hardly better, 2 seconds of poison. On a 9 sec CD.
But, it can hit multiple enemies! Well, too bad that the damage is so low that it is pretty much impossible to even tag mobs with it. Due to the CD, it would be more efficient to just shot each mob once with Cross Fire, than wasting time on Poison Volley.
Now, what skill does the other Shortbow using class have on their 2?

Cluster Bomb. Higher Damage, pretty good AE. Bleeding instead of poison. BLAST FINISHER. Same Range as our Skills.

Do I even need to say it? Cluster Bomb is so much better than Poison Volley, it’s not even funny.

3 (Quick Shot): Low-Moderate Damage, moves us away from our target, gives 3 sec Swiftness, 9 sec CD.
Well, it’s not a damage ability but an escape move. It does its job, when it works. Like many jump forward / backward skills it sometimes simply doesn’t move the character at all. Annoying, but a problem that is not exclusive to the Ranger class.

Let’s look at the Thief’s 3 (Disabling Shot): Slightly higher damage, 2 sec cripple instead of the swiftness, lower range (900).

I’d say those two skills are pretty even, Quick Shot maybe slightly better because of its higher range.

4 (Crippling Shot): Low Damage, 3 sec cripple, 6 sec bleed, 12 sec CD.
An okay-ish opener. The bleed is twice as long as the one on Cross Fire and not tied to any conditions (being behind the enemy). The cooldown is pretty long considering the low direct damage, alas it can be used when it’s ready without hurting one’s dps (so, unlike Poison Volley).
No comparison to other Shortbow Skills, since there is nothing comparable on Thief; Chocking Gas is an AE Poison Combo Field, serving a vastly different purpose.

All in all, Crippling Shot can be used as an opener, and to apply some bleeding when one cannot flank the enemy. If one is already correctly positioned, there is no much reason to use this skill.

5 (Concussion Shot): Low Damage, 1 sec daze, 1 sec stun when flanking, 25sec CD.
In PvE, this skill tends to be pretty situational. It doesn’t help with damage, the CD is too long to reliably interrupt enemies, stun only works when flanking the enemy. Bosses have Defiant, normal mobs hardly need interrupting; if they do, other classes can do a better job at this.
Again no comparison, for obvious reasons; Infiltrator’s Arrow doesn’t disable, Concussion Shot doesn’t Shadow Step.

Concussion Shot feels mostly useless. High CD, highly situational, easily surpassed by other classes’ skills, terrible damage making it useless in a standard dps rotation.

Short Bow Summary: The “Press 1 and go afk” stereotype fits. Everything other skill pretty much lowers our damage output. Except for the terrible Poison Volley, all the Skills are single target.
If you want to deal damage with a shortbow, play a Thief. If you want utility with a shortbow, play a thief as well, they can use a Poison Combo Field, a Blast Finisher and a Shadow Stepping Skill.

use the normal dungeon instance system for fractals and just disable vote-kicking, problem solved

the charr version of Tixx’ Dungeon is totally not bugged, anet wouldn’t mess up something simple like replacing a script now, would they?

clearly, working as intended…

also: if this is actually the way it is supposed to be, with the same events as yesterday, then this is truly lazy

NightyNight.1823:

Of course its sustainable.You have plenty of ways to refil initiative.And you can always get the trait for 2 initiative each time you stealth and that way you never run out of initiative while doing that combo.

Which part of I used every +initiative and + imitative regen trait didn’t you understand?

Nighty, I just tried out your rotation for kittens and giggles
I even used every +initiative trait, dual wield daggers on both slots for the +initiative on weapon swap and equipped Infiltrator’s Signet. Needless to say that the build is completely kitten and unusable…
Anyway, I went to town on some dummies and did what you do to outdamage warriors; [1,1,1 5 1 2] and, oh wonder, it was NOT sustainable, after a few rotations I ran out of initiative.

So, there you have it, your “evidence” (quotation marks, since providing no information about gear, stats, buffs and debuffs makes for questionable proof at best) of Thieves out-dpsing Warriors doesn’t hold up.

q.e.d.

the main problem is, that the bosses aren’t hard or challenging, but boring and tedious. If I want to shot for hours at some guy who can’t do anything, I’d do HotW. Or the Destroyer in CoE3. Or Grenth in Arah4…

gw2.exe encountered an error
oh shiii, you were in fractals? too bad, here nothing, lol

FIX THE kitten DC ISSUE!!

If you aren’t able to fix all the other stuff, then at least make it possible to rejoin fractals after a dc, this kitten is getting annoying like hell.

Just tried the 2nd AC route several times, once at the end, the Ghost doesnt spawn, Detha doesn’t tell us she has to BUILD them herself, game over.
so, no defense event, no boss, no chest, no loot, no tokens.

Thank you for taking the time to contact the Guild Wars Support Team. Unfortunately, your account is ineligible for the chest rewards as this was something only offered to players who were online and experienced the disconnection issue that occurred during the event. As your account was not logged in and part of the event, we have deemed the account ineligible for compensation. We’re very sorry for any inconvenience caused, however we are unable to award your account with the chests from this event.

It took them 5 (five) days to give me this response
well, no kitten Sherlock, I wasn’t online during the event since your awesome anti-farmingbot script decided I was botting and I had been banned. Just like I wrote in my ticket.
Meanwhile, people who weren’t online either receive chests anyway, and some who already got the reward since they didn’t get dc/ed get multiple chests mailed to them.
So, some players get like 5 chests, others get none.
Awesome job, anet.
Good thing you save the economy with your stupid anti farming code, people farming a dozen T6 bloods a day are way more problematic to the economy than gifting part of the playerbase with several precursers, whilst giving nothing to others.

Don’t get me wrong, I still like the game, but the way anet handles things, especially in regards to customer service, events and QA is just horrible.

Incoming deleted forum post and infraction in 10…9…

today I have learned of some people who got the reward chest via mail, despite not only not partaking in the Lost Shores event, but not even logging in during the entire Event at all
quality decision making right here…

soo…
some people who got the chest from the event received another via mail and might even receive a third one from the second wave of mailed chests, whilst other players who got dc/ed or couldn’t log in during the event at all might not get anything at all?

Here’s my advice to you, anet:
Next time you do a great server crash one time event, add a flag for “received reward” to the user accounts.
The flag should default to false, changing to true after the player received the reward. That way, your script only has to mail rewards to those who are still flagged false and no one can get the reward multiple times.

I’m just trying to be helpful whilst waiting for confirmation that I won’t be eligible for a chest…

Question:
During the Karka Final event, I was permanently banned due to botting (wrongfully, my account has since been restored); so I couldn’t participate and get rewards.
Am I eligible for the chest as well?

So, we can expect to wait for over a week until anet fixes their mistakes? And using the category that is obviously related to the problem at hand makes things last even longer?
Quality Customer Care right there.
I’m tempted to send a second ticket under the “Ask a Question” category now, though that’ll probably slow down the process again; merging tickets from the same account when they have different case IDs? Sounds like an unsolvable problem…

121118-000616 – banned for 36 hours now, still no reaction from anet.

neon.4863:

Can he create a new Support account? There’s a link to that in that page, maybe that’ll work.

This; Support Account =/= ingame account.
You can always create a support account, even if you don’t own any anet games.

a bit over 24hours since my ban
still no response from anet
also, thanks to the “human being” who “reviewed” my “botting activity” and effectively scammed me for 10g (I am referring to the free 20 slot bags)

I am kind of interested to know how these guys review their botting cases and what data they even have to do so, but I guess we shall never know.

Now, to see how long it takes the mods to delete this post, I’d wager somewhere between 50 and 100 minutes at maximum…

Cook, do you even know what a strawman argument is?

First of all, there is a post with over 2000 replies filled with people who have been wrongfully banned, quite a lot of them got unbanned after some time, so there is quite some evidence that anet’s current bot review process might be flawed.

Then, anet admitted / announced / is proud that they outsourced their bot reviewing to some external data analyzing company. This company uses automated algorithms to go through the server logs to determine whether or not a player has been botting. This is what the OP calls a “bot”, maybe not a perfectly accurate term in this context, though understandable.

So, think about it:
The reviewing process is done by an automated system.
There are people that have been wrongfully banned (otherwise anet wouldn’t unban them).
We can conclude that the system is not working as intended; judging from the number of people complaining about these incidents these aren’t single cases, but it’s rather a general problem with the system.

Anyway, to me it is unbelievable that a company actually bans their users based on logs analyzed by some software without having a real person review these cases first.
Heck, if that’d require too much manpower, send the maybe-botters a captcha test ingame, and review only the cases in which the player failed to respond.
Whatever, just don’t blindly ban everyone who acts “suspicious” and hope that the wrongly banned will not be upset after waiting for days / weeks to be unbanned. You’re just gonna drive your customers away that way.
And lower your income; do you honestly think that a player who has been unjustly banned, with no prior warning, or at least a notification mail informing him about his ban will ever buy something from you again anytime soon?
The trust is gone, and that is gonna hurt you more than the players, anet.

Yes, I am currently perma banned for botting (which I didn’t).
When I get unbanned I will continue playing, but I won’t buy gems or anything with real money; it’s just too risky considering that I might get banned any time just because of some mistake some stupid script makes. And I would dare to say that I am not the only one feeling that way; so for your own sake, get your stuff together anet.

The players have been patient about many things and problems with the game, since it is good overall, but there are things we won’t accept.

I am Incident: 121118-000616; banned for 21 hours and not having received any communication from anet.

I just got kicked from the game a few minutes ago, trying to log back in and it says that I am permanently banned for botting, macroing or similar behavior.
No email informing me about my ban or any information on anything at all.

I’ve been playing online games for over 15 years now, and this is the first time I ever got banned anywhere, I am excited to see if, when, and how anet reacts to my ticket; right now I am pretty angry. There are dozens of obvious bots in Frostgorge, Cursed Shore et cetera; farming for weeks, never getting banned despite being reported all the time (hell, some of these bots I reported daily for 2 weeks straight), but I get banned for doing nothing?
Awesome job, anet.

Oh wait, I got one email from anet today: “Thank you for your gem purchase!”
yea, that won’t happen again anytime soon, guys…