Guild Wars 2

My new main, really happy with how she turned out. She’s going for an “assistant researcher” kind of look. Generally assisting in the live dissection of large scary monsters.

Not specifically a vote for female though, I like a lot of the male thief looks I’ve seen when someone has put some thought into them.

Given the technological restrictions, I’d like to see the ability to create your own custom outfits. So you couldn’t mix and match weight classes (unless they somehow decide to re-make every armor so they work together), but you could take a custom set of heavy armor turn it into an outfit for your account, probably for some amount of gems, and then wear it as a light or medium character or vice versa.

psy.5437:

If I got my infinite choir bell out and followed people around ringing the one note constantly I would get banned for harassment.

Ho-ho tron should be banned for harassment.

I feel really bad for the people who painstakingly worked on the various cutscenes and effects, only to have the whole encounter be pitifully easy even compared to some of the earlier stuff from the same dungeon, and then the very last battle is everyone pressing the 1 key over and over until they win?

I realize since this is a main quest that everyone theoretically does you don’t want it too hard, but the final fight should at least be as hard as some of the stuff you had to do to get to the final fight, no? Seems such a shame for a defining moment of the game to be ruined by bad encounter balance / mechanics, at least if it was too hard it would be memorable.

The profession dailies seem to only have a negative impact on the PvP experience for both those engaging in them and those they play with so I would strongly support their removal.

I think having a few of the other more generic suggestions in this thread as well as always having a “Participate in 3 matches” would be the way to go, obviously requiring a certain level of participation (using the same metric that determines rank point gain). These dailies have a surprising impact on guiding player behavior, and I think something simple like “play more PvP” would probably be way more beneficial to the community than “play PvP as a class you’ve never even struck a training golem with”.

If the devs really want to encourage alting I think that’d be far more advisable as a PvE daily of some sort. Although personally I don’t see any reason for it.

As a PvP dabbler, I am often hesitant to even wade into the kiddie pool, and some of the attitudes within the community towards both their teammates and competition in formalized matches (or even just practice for that matter), make it a little daunting to decide if I’m actually ready/suitable to try out an unranked match. Running into a lot of dragon ranked or titled players in practice mode only further reinforces my hesitation to move beyond it :-)

I’m curious what the bar is for many of the people in the community as far as their expectations for their teammates and themselves in an unranked match vs a ranked one.

Malediktus.3740:

Guess what? People dont care about what you dont want to see. You have to deal with it and look at people prestige objects.

I would assume the whole point of you wanting to show off prestige objects would be to have people see them who also think they’re “cool” and think you’re “cool” for having them.

Why would you want someone like me seeing them and thinking you’re a tool for displaying it? You’ll be far more “prestigious” in my eyes if I don’t see your mini.

Is there any option I can turn on to disable minis on my client? They’re silly and garish in my opinion, and really detract from the ambiance of the game. If other people want to have a half naked barbi-doll Kasmeer running everywhere with them that’s their business, but I’d rather not be subjected to it or have my client waste resources rendering it.

That and the mini ho-ho-trons are slowly rapidly driving me mad with their incessant clanging. It feels like some sort of bizarre anet approved spamming, except you can’t add it to a blocked list.

Dadnir.5038:

If it were me, I would have just interrupt the pet while he was licking the ranger’s wound with something like… humm… GS#5.
And no, the pet won’t restart licking the wound if he is interrupt unless the ranger skill is up again. Though the wiki is wrong about the fact that the pet will resume and attenpt again.

The pet does resume if interrupted, although I’ve only ever had it happen in PvE, since in PvP people just throw on stability and stomp me >_>
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Muddy terrain makes a good condition cover no? Since it has both immobilize and cripple to start with and keeps reapplying the cripple so unless they do a big cleanse they’re just going to keep removing that instead of damage. I could maybe see adding sigils of doom for some extra poison, but it looks pretty nasty to me.

I’ve never felt particularly attached to the bows with any of my rangers, if you’re going to be primarily melee for a fight then there are plenty of great opener options using Axe + X. Personally I like to tailor my secondary weapon based on who I’m teaming with when it comes to fractals and the like, if we’re low on burning I bring axe torch, if we’re low on vulnerability I bring LB, horn is great for an extra combo blast and a nice buff. Honestly I haven’t found a combo that didn’t work well, just came down mostly to preference. I think the only danger of going Axe as your only ranged option is when you find yourself in a big boss fight and you’re not comfortable in melee, since the Axe auto attack is pretty abysmal against a single target.

I’m admittedly a newbie to the lore forum, and I apologize if this has already been presented or refuted, but just because the sylvari were “meant” to serve Mordremoth doesn’t mean they are true dragon minions in my mind, but rather the carefully cultivated children of a creature that is a true dragon minion. My interpretation is the following:

Mordremoth or his champions created seeds meant to create powerful new champions. As seeds they did not yet have any sentience, and only the most minimal amount of Mordremoth’s influence upon them, without even the most basic mind yet they couldn’t be fully corrupted. These seeds were stolen before they could be used by Ronan and possibly others.

Growing outside of Mordremoth’s influence they might have followed Mawdrey and just been a benign Mordremoth vine in appearance, but these seeds grew into sentient champions (equally sentient to any of the other dragon champions, but having grown without corruption in the first place) and had some influence over their appearance choosing at least in the pale tree’s case to be something more pleasing to those she grew amongst and watching. Sylvari are able to manipulate their own appearance to some extent (see the twins / young Caithe vs current Caithe), and unless I’m remembering incorrectly the Pale Tree’s avatar is of her own choosing, so it’s not hard to imagine the pale tree having significant influence on how she grows aesthetically.

Still largely uninfluenced by a sleeping Mordremoth at this point the pale tree begins to bear fruit, her nature allows her to likely make all sorts of horrific minions, but she chooses to create children in the image of those she grew amongst and their pets (Leading to human sylvari and doglike fern hounds). Her sister(s) (Malyck’s tree and possibly others) make similar choices in form based on those they grow around, but possibly not similar choice in terms of how they raise them.

This in my mind makes Sylvari twice removed from Mordremoth, not quite dragon minions, and being quite different from standard dragon minions as a result. Had the pale tree and her sisters grown as intended they would likely be churning out harvests of husks, thrashers and the like, but growing amongst humans and not as intended they have borne very different fruit. The tree herself and her children would be very vulnerable to Mordremoth, but not to the point of the dragon instantly taking them all over. I do suspect at this point all remaining sisters of the pale tree have been fully corrupted by Mordremoth and are responsible for much of the bulk of his army.

I think being creations of the pale tree vs creations of Mordremoth directly is why sylvari follow largely different rules. The Pale Tree quite likely does consume magic, and she may even be somewhat privy to the hive mind of Mordremoth’s other minions, but she has crafted her children as she saw fit, following Ventari’s tablet and making them physically as close to humans as she could since that is what she knew and cared for.

Personally I think rangers are fantastic, I keep trying to play other classes and end up back on my S/D bunker ranger for all forms of play from Dungeons and Fractals to SPvP and WvW. Mind you I likely have issues since my only 2 80’s are both rangers, and my third highest character is also a ranger >_>

Any time I play anything else I quickly miss my “Crazy Rabid Mongoose with ADD” sword fighting style, get bored, and go back to ranger.

It is odd for the amount of time and money aesthetics get in this game, these fashion atrocities would still be a thing after several years past release.

Same issue here, I had heard it is working for some people, but I have been unable to get it to do so and submitted it as a bug regardless.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

Actually, it doesn’t work when the pet is dead. It will run to the ally, but won’t ress. The pet will just stand over the body, until the ally is ressed or you make the pet attack a foe.

Unless it’s been changed since I last used it the pet will continue attempting to revive whenever they are active so if you’re out of combat they’ll just be briefly interrupted whenever they’re downed only to keep on rezzing once they’re back up. In combat this would obviously be a deal breaker, but it was pretty awesome when we had two people stuck defeated in the flaming boulder cooridor fractal and my pet slowly but persistently got them both back up at no risk to the rest of us.

There’s still plenty of work to do to be sure, but this is easily the best PvP I’ve seen in an MMO this soon after release. I look forward to seeing what they add in 2013.

I do WvW, but only rarely (mostly for the monthly). Probably the main reason I don’t do it more is the anonymity, I like being able to compliment people who fought well and start to recognize certain enemies on the battlefield and the thrill that comes from facing those I know are going to be a challenge. The current setup is so bland and faceless, and the only real personality any adversary generally has is how rude their emotes are. I’m not sure why they decided to set it up that way given SPvP is the complete opposite.

Yeah they’re very difficult to report, they appear to be the new bots of GW2 which are at least less of an eyesore than the packs of ranger clones running around firing in unison, but still annoying none the less and undoubtedly flooding the TP with the excess resources they produce.

Risen are definitely my least favorite group to fight, I don’t find them particularly challenging, just annoying and rather bland. I do find it strange that the ‘zombies’ of the game move faster than pretty much every other creature in it, and their one liners that they constantly spout just make them seem silly rather than remotely menacing. I really pity the voice actors that had to say ‘Death… good!’ with a straight face.

I personally like birds because they seem to lose a lot less of their dps to players kiting them, and their BM trait is pretty nice for keeping up vigor. In my golem testing cats did indeed generally take down the stationary heavy quicker than anyone else, but birds were the winners when it came to the roaming one (and weren’t far behind on the stationary). Their dps can be less consistent though depending on how often they decide to use swiftness.

I think this sort of scheme would be great for both paid and free. The 5th-8th slots in frees just giving a lump of glory/rank rather than anything special, but still giving those of us that pug a chance to experience something other than Forest of Niflhel for the eight hundredth time (which was my least favorite map before I even started doing TPvP) sometimes followed by a very abrupt stomping in Foefire when the premade we managed to dodge a match up with in round one finds us in round two.

My old SPvP build was very trap focused and it tended to wreck mesmers in short order just due to a fairly constant output of sizable AoE damage weeding out the clones/phantasms to prevent/reduce their shatters and the fact that trappers don’t have to stand still for very long to leverage their dps so you are usually dodging or using evade attacks and thus blunting the majority of their damage.

The current build I run with is a beastmaster/bunker build and it still does quite well, most mesmers are very killable with it and the ones who aren’t usually can’t prevent me from capping/holding a point so I’m not too bothered by them. I’ve met several I can only really fight to a stand still, but again they’re always on the defensive so even if they aren’t dead they aren’t capping anything either (and many of the really survivable ones just don’t have the dps to take me down even when they delay long enough for a friend to help them).

Yeah sword auto is pretty much the best DPS ranger has to offer, and it’s fun watching people trying to kite away only to have you leap all over them like a rabid mongoose in heat. Between it and some rugged high damage pets I can pretty easily melt most people I run into in SPvP despite being a very bunkery build myself.

I’m rather amazed at how little of value/interest there is on the gem store right now given it is the only source of continued revenue beyond purchase price. I know some people buy gems to turn to gold, but I still think ANet is missing out by not having a more robust set of offerings. So here are a few I’d buy:

Ultimate Transmutation Stones – As per fine transmutation stones but also allows different classes of armor so you can apply the appearance of a light armor to the stats of a heavy armor and what not. Charge 1k gems+ for these I’d still buy them by the bucket load.

Casual Transmutation Stone – Turns one piece of armor into a town clothes item.

Battle Ready Transmutation Stone – Takes town clothes as one of its options applying their appearance to the stats of the armor used.

GW1 Exclusives – Make them very expensive to keep them rare, but give us an avenue to get these that does not involve going back to GW1 which I doubt many people will do. I realize this might be touchy for those who have them, but I’m just saying I would definitely buy many of them.

Crossover Armor/Hair – Individually sold human and norn items for the other race to use. The models look easily compatible and already share many of these, and I know of several I’d like.

Just some ways to get me to spend more money, because I’d run out of gold long before I got everything I wanted…

I have to strongly disagree with the OP, out of the many many MMO’s I’ve played over the years (and MUDs before that) GW2 offers some of the most fun I’ve had PvP-wise. It definitely needs more game modes to retain my interest, but I think they’re off to a very strong start compared to where most games are at in this stage of development.

Honestly reading most of the complaints it sounds like we’re playing a different game, but to each their own.

I had done some very basic testing before the patch for other reasons and shown most melee pets taking double the time to kill the moving heavy golem vs the stationary heavy golem. Post patch most pets seemed to average 1.5 times the kill time, so there was an observable improvement. My sample was rather small, but the times were consistent enough that I was satisfied with it.

Not sure how much of an improvement this translates into in PvP, and I’m guessing it will be a while before we get a good feel for that.

Yeah I can’t seem to get it to work, tried fighting along side the pet for a bit rather than testing through falling damage and had the same issue. Also noticed compassion training was not affecting my fern dog’s regen ability either. Went ahead and reported it as a bug, even if there are situations where it works it’s obviously not consistently working for everyone.

Kainaru.4782:

If you use the trait “Compassion Training” (also in BM), it boosts the heal coming from your pet. Then “Natural Healing” ticks for 177 instead of 133 (and so does the fern dog regen). I tested it two days ago. I think it’s the only way to increase Natural Healing

Does Compassion Training not immediately ‘take’? I’ve tried testing this several times, and my pet’s healing power remained listed as 0 and Natural Healing came in at 133 not 177. I’ve tried zoning with the trait equipped, swapping pets, specifically equipping the fern dog since you mentioned him, and none of the above worked. Does it actually list the 350 healing power for you? If so I’m definitely bugged :-P

Idolicious.6091:

Clearly, everything is not fine, just looking at the ratio of posts here within 1 day is an indication of that.

Personally, I know several Rangers, both Guildies and just other friends who tried Sword, liked it, but stopped using it entirely – purely because of the root effect. Don’t sit there and tell me “everything is fine.” Which brings me to my next point.

I knew there would be one person who would be emotional about their precious animations changing, if they even did change them. FYI, leaps are already interruptible to some degree because you can be knocked down whilst flying through the air as it is. Regardless, you are in the [probable] minority 1-2% that cares about fluff more than actual gameplay. Therefore, your opinion is taken lightly, by me and probably anyone else that actually cares about gameplay and improving Quality of Life for Rangers (ya know, what they are supposed to be focusing on with the class right now).

Maybe I should be playing something else you say? You know that’s funny. Ranger is my 4th character, I have 3 other 80’s, and 2 more lowbies, so you really don’t need to tell me to play another class. I’d rather continue on my current Ranger character without crappy mechanics forced down my throat on my weapon of choice. I haven’t had this issue (because it doesn’t exist) with any other class or weapon combo, either. Maybe you are the one that should try another class – it helps in making observations and suggestions when it comes to balance.

Why don’t I use a Greatsword instead, you say? Uh, well, because I’d rather use a Sword – without dumb mechanics that no other class (or weapon set) has to face. Because GW is supposed to be a game where I can play however I want instead of being pigeonholed into using certain builds or weapons. At least that’s whats been advertised to us by Arena.net.

You sitting there telling me to play another class, or use a Greatsword, etc. is a perfect example of the anti-freedom Arena.net is trying to avoid, or claims to.

People who are happy with something don’t tend to come to the forums much let alone post, hence why most dev teams take the forums with a healthy dose of salt.

I am curious why this is such a passionate issue for you, what about ranger 1h sword is so awesome other than the animations that you’d feel the need to change the one part of it that drew myself and many other rangers I know to it?

I stated clearly above that I’m fine if they want to make leaps interruptable (which since you seem to have a misunderstanding about it, means that they would be breakable by either dodges, movement or both, not that you can be CCed out of it, you can be CCed out of pretty much anything). What I’m not ok with is people wanting to turn ranger 1h sword auto attack into warrior, thief, mesmer or guardian 1h sword auto attack just because they don’t like it in its current form.

If you want to play melee with that attack style there are plenty of options out there, if I want to jump around like a crazy ninja in combat and they take away ranger 1h sword’s current mechanics, I have no other option, I’ve tried them all repeatedly. So yes I’m a bit defensive about people suggesting they take away the one thing I really enjoy in this game. I would think given your obvious passion you could respect that and maybe push for changes that don’t ruin other peoples fun.

Idolicious.6091:

The kick is the 2nd strike in the auto-attack chain, the 3rd being the “spin” AoE sword attack.

Even still – if it is required to alter the animations to fix this issue, then so be it.

I don’t think any of us Sword Rangers would really prefer extravagant animation(s) to freedom of movement/ability to dodge. That said, I think they could fix this issue without altering the animations, anyways. ;P They have done so with other skills.

This is why many of us post in these threads telling people everything is fine. We’re worried we’ll lose those animations to placate people that should probably be playing something else. 1h sword root is not a bug, you cannot dodge/move out of any leaps and 1h sword has 2 in its auto attack chain. If that bothers you why not play greatsword or a different class? There are plenty of us that love one handed in its current form and don’t want to see it changed to something else as a solution.

If the devs want to make us able to interrupt leaps that’s fine, but calls for changing the animations entirely are not cool for those of us who run a sword ranger as our main and love it.

It would be nice if they modified the engine to allow dodges out of leaps (but not movement), but other than that any fix they add would likely involve removing the leaps entirely and I know I’d be very upset if that happened.

I prefer spear when possible for the vulnerability and the evading auto attack, but I’ll bring out the harpoon gun against heavy hitting yet kitable opponents. Honestly for all the talk of Rangers being the new Aquaman after our last patch I can’t say I see it, I don’t feel particularly effective underwater, but that could just be that I don’t do it often enough.

nerva.7940:

you cant bunker with traps in your utilities. bunker build requires signets, healing spring, 30 in BM for regen. and then you can go 30 in wilderness for empathic bond to give up SoS for more cleansing, or 30 in marks for SoS.

other than SoS, you have no other way of taking burst as a ranger and you cant disappear to reset the fight. so youre right, you’ll never achieve the same performance as, say, engie, ele or guard.

Sword/Dagger provides enough evasion to avoid more burst more often that SoS, and although I’m not doing as much damage through direct attacks during that time, my traps are usually wrecking people, so it’s a trade off.

When I was talking bunker performance though I wasn’t talking survivability, I have plenty of that, I was talking point control as far as driving people off the point/keeping them off long enough for at least a neutralize, and now that I’m thinking about that, I’m slapping myself for forgetting about pets. I’ve been relying on birds since they seem to provide far more reliable constant damage given their extra autoattack range, but there’s plenty of control pets I could be using instead to get exactly the results I’m looking for.

I run a Sword/Dagger trap based build and it can bunker fairly well, the one problem I run into is that some of my evades can potentially take me off a point, but at the same time most other players aren’t able to sit on the point when its constantly getting fresh traps. I like pairing it with Axe/Horn for the extra mobility and Axe #2 provides me with some nice additional damage when opening fights.

I will say most of the times I struggle with the character it seems far more to do with me screwing up my timing on something than the build not cutting it, so overall I’m really enjoying this build. I’m not sure I’ll ever achieve some of the performance I’ve witnessed from other bunker classes, but I’ll keep trying :-)

Stone spirit is one of those powers where you have to kind of do the math to decide if its useful or not because it’s rather underwhelming during game play. Doing the math though it provides a 33% reduction in damage with about a 30% up time (I tested it at a 3 second duration despite what the wiki says). Which essentially translates into a single utility to give a group a 10% reduction in incoming damage. Obviously there will be times where more hits are protected or less hits are, but overall if you used it every play session that’d be your average return with other protection buffs stacking with it to make the return more reliable. There are likely better skills, but in a system like gw2 one utility to provide an entire team with 10% mitigation is not too shabby, but also not very flashy. I completely see why you might be underwhelmed by it though :-)

Having just recently made an all spirit build just for kicks and to get a feeling for how bad spirits were, a couple observations:

Sun spirit is actually really good in a group without another source of burning, or even solo. Remember you and your pet benefit from it which means your foe will be burning around 60% of the time given a fast attacking pet and a fast attacking ranger (since it’s not a guarantee and its on a 10 sec cooldown).

Stone spirit is decent, I haven’t tested to see if spirits have a target cap, but given how they work I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t. If they don’t this one could be a game changer in WvW if placed well.

Lightning spirit is crap, needs an additional effect to be at all useful. I’d suggest a 2 second weaken proc that follows the same rules as sun spirit in addition to the swiftness (more to placate people who actually like the swiftness, because frankly it looks entirely useless)

Cold spirit is crap, a 10% damage bonus once per ten seconds on a class with the lightest hitting attacks in the game? Even if it procced on your best attack every time this still is a tiny tiny buff compared to sun spirit. I’d suggest adding a 2 sec chill proc.

Moving spirits are crap, this trait will get your spirits killed and is really only useful for solo pveing where you don’t need spirits in the first place. Better to use spirits strategically for hard fights and put them out of range of AoEs.

Spirit buff range is about 900ish, tested this in the mists and it was about as long as my axe’s effective range, this is actually a really good range, I wouldn’t mind seeing it boosted to 1200, but this is already good enough to place a spirit out of harms way and still have it boost the entire team.

Spirit active abilities are all crap, they’re all too small and require the spirit be in melee where it’s going to die. Center it on the ranger instead or better yet on both.

Watching how fast other players face melted when I was in a group with sun spirit active was honestly comical and made me have some hope for them, I think they’re fixable and potentially quite powerful, I’m already planning on whipping out sun spirit while on burn-lite teams.

I would advise against specializing in spirits though, the traits are largely useless, even the double life one is of suspect use given they still die incredibly fast once they start taking aggro.

Just my 2 cents

Having played a ranger at level 80 for quite some time now and done lots of Dungeons, WvW and SPvP I honestly think rangers are about where most classes are, we have stinker abilities, we have good abilities, but overall there are plenty of workable builds to go around. Once you get good at pet switching Dungeons lose a lot of their teeth (mind you many Dungeons are still nasty for anyone regardless of class), WvW is far more about numbers and tactics than particular builds/classes which really just leaves SPvP where at least in pug PvP I’ve seen no real issues, only really struggling against skilled players who just push me to get better at playing my character since its usually a mistimed dodge or a wasted attack that makes all the difference there.

I have lots of little complaints just like anyone else, ranger or no, but the one major issue I see with rangers is no obvious place in the current TPvP environment. The problem is outside of pug PvP I lose most of my usefulness, I can’t keep skilled players off a point and a true bunker will eventually get it from me even if I manage to fight to a standstill with them, I can’t kill/disengage fast enough to make a proper roamer, which really just leaves me as a generic teammate. That’s not to say I feel like a waste of space, but I’m just not bringing anything another class couldn’t and I’m unable to specialize in a useful role. That said I’m still barely getting my feet wet with TPvP, but the general attitude is that most organized teams don’t want a ranger on them (rightfully or not) which leaves me with daunting prospect of puging free tournies and hoping no premade teams decide to come wipe the floor with us. It doesn’t matter what your class is when half the team leaves after the first engagement.

I don’t see an easy fix for the TPvP issue, they could give us some gimmick which could be used/abused in that setting, but I honestly think the problem is more with TPvP itself and the conquest game mode than our class. Either way I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Just some thoughts for pets, better targeting/AI may help with PvP, but won’t really make a difference in dungeons where they also tend to be less useful.

• AoE Damage Resistance – Been mentioned before, but worth bringing up again since it works well in other games, should not be too high, just enough to take the edge off.
• Shared Evade – Whenever your character is evading, invulnerable or blocking your pet is as well. Only works for character -> pet not pet -> character. This would significantly improve pet survival against dungeon bosses and the like where a token amount of resistance would not help much.
• Faster Recovery – Whenever your pet is downed it gains a small amount of passive regen and becomes invulnerable to damage. If the pet is the ranger’s core mechanic they should never be permanently without them for a fight (big boss characters whose AoEs keep pets out of action the entire fight if they get downed).

Some or all of these would go a long way to keeping pets up and useful during meaningful dungeon fights rather than leaving us missing a sizable chunk of our damage after the first or second big AoE.

The recharge bonus already applied, but now it also applies a range bonus of 150 I believe. (Pretty sure it was 600 pre-patch, now its 750)

I’d like to be able to have two of the same pet species, and I’d like to be able to colorize pets or have a few additional selectable skins.

I use a fairly trap heavy build with sword + dagger as my main weapon set (usually running with flame and spike traps + both the trap traits). When I’m dealing with a thief I keep throwing down traps and using dodges and evade attacks. If you time your evades well you can avoid their nastier attacks your main goal being to outlast their stealth or take a backstab in the front, once they decide to flee a well aimed trap can be the end of them if you’re good at knowing where they’ll likely run towards. I’m guessing there are better builds for it though, I run with my PvE build in PvP so it’s not specifically designed for the task, but its what I enjoy playing. I have a pretty good kill ratio using this build, but thieves definitely escape more often than other classes barring mesmers.

No there’s no friendly fire in this game, and often the best place to be is in your traps.