Guild Wars 2

I agree with the forum title. ANet needs to be nerfed. Not a single class has been able to beat them. That’s not balance.

The stun break is still going to make protect me useful, I imagine. Maybe they’ll add a blast finisher to all the shouts. If there was a trait that made pet damage go up as its health went down, that could make things interesting.

If you wanted to make armor class affect endurance regen, you’d need to add another mechanic to armor to balance it out.

The only idea that comes to mind is to add a ceiling to the amount of damage you can take in one hit for each armor class. Then the light armor classes could have better endurance, but have to worry about being killed outright. Heavy armor classes have less endurance but can take some hits without being downed.

I was hoping for sword improvements or some trait consolidation, but it does look like things are headed in the right direction.

It’s a shame that the greatsword didn’t get more damage on the auto attack. Going from .65 to .75 on the third strike doesn’t seem like it will help much. At least they’re willing to go up on the damage though.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Gs1 = needs a silly amount of power to match its underwater copy , currently im sat on 1.98k with my hybrid and the gs1 auto only does 540ish compaired to the under water spear that does 710ish on the last strike. though underwater weapons have been pretty much untouched.
it shows the difference in a rangers weapons countless changes, to match the masses of different combat styles a ranger can do.
In the end it’s slowly unbalanced its weapons because of these vaired combat styles to balance those combat styles.
i remember in previous patches gs1 got nurfed a little in damage, then it go buffed by that new redifind two-handed mastery, although we now get fury from it , the previous nurf outweights the trait buff still, and saying that its a trait, not in a power line and needs 4 points.

i stopped using gs1 because of that.
i found more evasive defence+damage from two one handed weapons.
the gs1 needs a buff again no more than 5% that should let it scale well again, with flanking , steady and FS.

i realy hope anet can make power builds work more effictively with the traits, since other classes can build for power without investing everything in there power/crit lines, they can still make a power build without sacrificing too many traits.

gs power nature ranger. built with PPT stats + zerker/cav/val trinkets.
2,4,0,6,0 2 spare its sad currently even with near all power gear, its no good untill you put 4or 6 into Marksman and a bit in skirmishing , then miss out on two-handed training without a major Trait sacrifice in other lines.

I’ve been saying that GS is too weak for ages, even for a “defensive” weapon. I think it needs more than 5% though. Its auto attack coefficients are .55, .55, and .65. It should be .8, .9, and 1.0. That would make it match our spear and the guardian’s hammer.

The third skill on the guardian’s hammer has an additional AoE that only does its full damage if the enemy doesn’t move much, not unlike our pet when you think about it.

I think that having pets scale the same way as PVE mobs would work really well in dungeons and WvW. If they choose that route, toughness should be scaled over vitality so that heals don’t become completely useless.

My biggest problem with the pet right now is that it has a lot of pointless limitations. It’s like Anet decided not to look at our pets too closely because they were afraid they might find work.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Just IMO but I’ve always found birds to be the most reliable for consistent damage. They don’t appear to be as clunky as pets that are bound to earth and seem to be able to more effectively land attacks on moving targets. That and they also hit about as hard as felines do.
I personally like to use the raven because we don’t have much access to blinds.

They’re just as bound to earth as every other pet. They even take fall damage.

Prysin.8542:

However if we go by flat numbers, and assume zerker ranger, 0 points in BM vs zerker warrior, 0 points or traits to ehnahce burst. Then a Owl will hit for around 1.4k / second. The warrior, will deal between 8-13k in 7 seconds + the cast time for the skill (time it takes to build up adrenaline if using whirling axes and axe AA).

So if we assume pet hits 1.4k each second and doesnt faff about doing its stupid other moves, and the warrior hits the target for 13k. The bird will deal roughly 1450 damage LESS then the warrior burst in the same space. And that is AA alone. If the bird uses its burst, it will hit for 4-6k untraited. Putting it BEYOND the warrior DPS.

Now, this comparison is a bit skewered as pet DPS is our DPS. However a quick comparison of Sword AA vs Axe AA is needed here. I will save you from the number crunching, as it has been done before by others way smarter and more dedicated then me, but in short, we can remove roughly 40% of the pet AA and add it to our “sword AA damage” to bring us in line with Axe AA.

That means pet bird AA over 8.25 seconds = 11550 minus 40% = 4620 damage less. In short, pet AA + Ranger AA + pet burst is marginally weaker then warrior burst damage if we factor in no buffs.

The warrior’s auto attack coefficients divided by time to complete comes out to about 1.72. The ranger’s sword is about 1.05 and the second attack in the chain doesn’t cleave. That’s a big gap for the pet to make up, especially if both classes are full glass like in PVE. Eviscerate should widen the gap, especially with the cooldown factored in.

I’d like several things for pets.
1) Make pets a little better at landing their attacks and chasing down targets.
2) Add defensive scaling that’s based on the number and strength of nearby enemies. This would make them pretty good in dungeons, fractals, and WvW without making them overpowered in small fights.
3) Better response times and drastically reduced cast times on F2 skills.
4) Improve the lackluster F2 skills.

rpfohr.7048:

F3 is a good idea but it could become spammable

F1 F3 F1 F3 to spam pet evade

And F3 is important for movement, you don’t want to put a cooldown on it…

That shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re spamming F3 for pet evades you probably aren’t getting any meaningful contribution from your pet.

Durzlla.6295:

I want the sword to stay as is, I feel like the weapon fills what it’s supposed to do very very very well.

That being said, I would LOVE to see dagger as a Mainhand Melee weapon that DOESNT leap all over the place, that would be AWESOME!!

I’d rather see the current sword skills moved to a dagger main hand and get a new set of skills for the sword. A dagger strikes me as more of an infighter’s weapon anyway.

They just need to change the sword so that the auto attack only makes you leap when you aren’t in range to hit your target. I think that would make everyone happy.

If all they do is consolidate traits, make utilities less dependent on traits, make main hand sword something I can use with auto attack turned on, and up the auto attack on great sword, I’d take back nearly half of all the bad things I’ve ever said about Anet.

That said, I expect them to do only one of those things (while introducing bugs to things totally unrelated) and then do a bunch of things nobody asked for or complained about.

Oh, and I expect a few people on the forums to talk about how amazing the rework is, no matter what…in every topic everyone else makes to complain.

I think he’s advocating longer CD with a greater effect. That way builds with longer CD skills can make good use of them as well.

My thought would be to scale the effect based either on the CD of the triggering skill or how long it’s been since the triggering skill has been used. That would make things much more interesting.

I don’t think the new grandmaster traits are really about buffs or nerfs. I think they’d like to see how people like the new system of acquiring traits. They want to know who’s going to go out and cap the new traits and who’s going to buy them.

Besides, the main gripes with ranger traits are that some should be consolidated, some are weak, and utilities are too dependent on grandmaster traits. More grandmaster traits can’t possibly fix those issues.

Xaylin.1860:

meikodesign.6471:

And that’s the prob. If you want to maximize GS you already have to put 20 pt in WS and 20 pt in NM… The state of Ranger’s traits makes me really sad.

It really confuses me that people tend to always see opportunities as something which has to be maximized. Do you really have to ‘maximize’ GS to make it work or could it be more efficient to see it as a choice (cooldowns vs. raw damage) and get something else instead? It is more about evaluating their value for certain set ups. For example, when going 20-30 Skirmishing Two-Handed Training actually is quite unattractive because you already got a lot of Fury.

Even if you maximize GS it’s too weak, even for a defensive weapon. Lower coefficients than the sword AND slower attack speed? That’s a perfect example of Anet “shaving” skills with a chainsaw.

I’m kind of disturbed that Read the wind has so much competition from our master level traits. You know a tree has weak GM traits when they have to compete with master level traits.

Prysin.8542:

Kilger.5490:

Prysin.8542:

The Ranger trait (in theory) should give us back the epic Rapid Fire Gatling Gun from before quickness nerf (when using quickening Zephyr). Which is awesome.
Not really nice to be forced to get a GM trait for a proper burst, but hey, we now got a proper ranged burst. It is a good start.

Not to mention sustained DPS is way stronger now, as you can calculate LB damage from 0.75 + 1 second travel (1000 range) to 0.75+0.5 (1000 range)…. that means LB AA DPS will, in theory, be twice as high with this trait.

This trait is far from rubbish. It will allow us a way stronger ranged option then any other profession (2x speed is close to rifle projectile, which is almost instant hit even at max range). Dodging by doing ADADADADADADADA will be nearly impossible within 0-900 (the range you spend most your time in thanks to gap closers)

I think you read it wrong, the projectiles just travel faster, they dont fire faster.

I’d rather they add in that they are energy instead too, so that we dont murder ourselves on all the projectile defection in the game, and being added in.

yes, they do not FIRE faster. But animation is dependent on projectile connecting to the target. This is why your toon does not fire another arrow before the first one reaches the destined location (regardless of range)

This is also why, if LB did same damage on all ranges, it would do insane damage at 0 range, and “normal” damage at 1500 range. Because LB dps, as is, must factor in projectile travel speed in addition to skill cast/aftercast time.

Your ranger might be broken. I’m pretty sure mine starts the firing animation before the previous arrow has connected. I see this all the time killing ambient creatures at max range. The second arrow is being fired before the first one hits. If it wasn’t, I’d only fire one arrow because the target would be dead before the animation for the second arrow started.

I think I’ve got an explanation on this. They looked at the power of the other marksmanship grandmasters and made something similarly powerful. Unfortunately, our grandmasters in marksmanship are either weak and overspecialized (remorseless), or something we should have by default (signet of the beastmaster). Therefore, they made something else that we should already have by default.

I especially liked the first sentence. “Your arrows are swift and deadly, but in some scenarios they are not as fast as they need to be and your enemies can dodge them easily.” Since when is something swift and deadly easily dodged? Also, as unparalleled archers, shouldn’t we already have supreme accuracy at long range?

Have the devs given us their impression of where the class is at? I’d like to know where they think our damage output is (for each weapon), where we stand on condition removal, where we stand on traits (how much consolidation/improvement do we need?), where each of our utility lines stand, and where we’re at on group support. If they think this is still just a perception problem there’s not much point to us throwing out ideas.

Fancy Fool.1743:

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Make greatsword more attractive while giving rangers more blast finisher options.

Goal of Proposal
*Remove the evade from the auto-attack chain and put it on “Swoop,” as one developer once suggested. This takes some power away from that chain while giving us a timed evade.
*Add either an AoE might stack at the end of the chain, or make the first two strikes stack one vuln and the last stack 2-3.
*Remove the vuln from Maul, maybe add two seconds to its cooldown, and make it a blast finisher.

Proposal Functionality
Adding evade to the movement skill would be similar to whirlwind on other greatswords, the short cooldown blast finisher would be similar to Lightning Hammer. The AoE might stack on chain would be new, but I think it would be an interesting supportive ability that would make greatsword ranger more desirable.

Associated Risks
Depending on how this was done, it could make greatsword too strong or too weak

Not a fan of moving the evade. The greatsword has a role currently as a defensive weapon, but its auto attack damage has been over nerfed. Also note that guardian hammer skill 2 has a better damage coefficient, a 300 range leap, and a blast finisher on a shorter cooldown than maul. We shouldn’t need a longer cooldown to get a blast finisher on maul.

What about a unique mechanic that builds damage with consecutive hits? The stack would be reset if the enemy evades one of your attacks. Are dodges still too prevalent for a mechanic like that to be worthwhile?

Nike.2631:

WAY OF THE SKIRMISHER: TIME IS ON MY SIDE
As skirmishers, Rangers need to maintain consistent pressure over time. Recharge traits should be key to their performance but often lack secondary “flavor” effects. This is an attempt to update or combine traits to give recharge choices more flavor. New traits filling the resulting gaps are intended to enhance Ranger effectiveness as skirmishers by making it difficult to ignore or recover from pressure applied by Ranger attacks rather than increasing their raw damage. They focus on striping or countering boons that allow the enemy to endure the Ranger’s steady assault.

Marksmanship IV: Perfect Aim (NEW) – The damage from your attacks is not reduced by protection. (fills slot vacated by Signet Mastery; coding note – equivalent to +50% damage against targets with protection)

Marksmanship IX: Mighty Signets – Activating signets grants might and signet recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Signet Mastery & Beastmaster’s Might)

Marksmanship X: Marksman’s Speed – Longbow and short bow attacks pierce and recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Piercing Arrows & Quickdraw)

Skirmishing VI: Hunter’s Horn (NEW) – Horn skills also randomly remove one of Retaliation/Swiftness/Vigor from up to 5 foes in range. (fills slot vacated by Agility Training)

Skirmishing X: Nature’s Venoms (NEW) – Each time you or your pet poison a foe, that foe loses regeneration. (fills slot vacated by Quickdraw)

Wilderness Survival VI: Wilderness Knowledge – Using a survival skill removes a condition from both you and your pet and survival skill recharge time is reduced by 20%.

Wilderness Survival X: Martial Mastery – Critical hits with sword, greatsword, and spear attacks apply vulnerability (one stack; 5 seconds duration; 5 second cooldown) and recharge time for these skills is reduced by 20%.

Beastmastery I: Speed Training – Pets move faster and their basic skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (combines Agility Training and Speed Training)

Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 600 (15 second cooldown) and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery)

Beastmastery VI: Commanding Voice – Pets gain stability for 4 seconds when you press f2 and f2 skill recharge time is reduced 20%.

Thank you for reading!

I like these suggestions with one exception. The single stack of vulnerability on martial mastery is kind of weak. Maybe it could make vulnerability applied while wielding one of these weapons last XX% longer. Greatsword and spear would benefit directly. Sword would need either offhand axe, a sigil, or opening strikes to take advantage of it.

infantrydiv.1620:

Specific Game Mode
Primarily PvP and WvW, but decent for PvE as well
Proposal Overview
Reverse the leaps on Ranger Sword Skill #2
Goal of Proposal
Currently the Ranger sword skill #2 leaps backwards and then forwards, the goal of the proposal would be to make the sword first leap forwards and then backwards
Proposal Functionality
Currently the sword 2 leap feels kind of wonky and useless in most situations. It’s alright because of the hard evade on it and the distance generation of the initial leap, but reversing the leaps would improve fluidity of gameplay. For example, with my proposal you could do combos like this:
Sword 2 to leap into the fight, Sword 3 to poison, Torch 5 for burning field, Sword 3 to leap out of burning field, swap to longbow or shortbow now at range.
Associated Risks
Not much, I’d say that the evade on Sword 2 could be removed if this was implemented, but keep the cripple and leap finisher.

If you swap the chain on sword 2 we lose the evade and subsequent reengage. If anything the skill available should depend on the distance to your target. Then it can fill both roles.

My only real problem with sword 2 is the length of the animation before the evade.

Chrispy.5641:

oiseau.6481:

Chrispy.5641:

How big do traps need to be to be considered Aoe? Traps have an effective radius of 240 when traited, which is the same size as Barrage. Is Barrage not considered Aoe to you or something? How big does it have to be to be considered Aoe?

And what about Bonfire? Whirling Defense? drakes? What the heck else do you need to be able to do Aoe? (oh, let me guess, blast finisher like Thief shortbow….)

Traps sucks on power builds, Whirling Defense makes low damage, and barrage has a huge CD.

Fact is our mele weapons at the start deals less damage because they are seemed to work with the pet (70%-30% rule).
However most pets are single targets making us bad when not out of the zerg in WvW.
The main problem here is not the size, but the damage itself.

30% of our DPS is single target only when it ever hits.

Is it possible that traps suck on power builds because they are so good on condition builds? I hear people complaining all the time that our weapons need some sort of defined focus, why not our utilities?

Edit : If you want physical damage focuses utilities, then ask Anet for them, but don’t complain about traps not dealing enough non-conditon dps, when they are doing exactly what they were designed for.

Interestingly, the trapper ranger’s bread and butter in Guild Wars was dust trap. It pulsed high damage, blinded with each pulse, and was on a short enough cooldown that you could stack several in one spot. I kind of wish they would bring it back.

Greatsword doesn’t really need much. Just bring the auto attack in line with other weapons with similar defensive capabilities (spear and guardian hammer).

Game Mode
PvX

Proposal overview

Replace spirit health mechanic.

Goal of Proposal

Make spirits into something between banners and spirit weapons.

Proposal Functionality

Remove the health mechanic from spirits. Spirits are now destroyed by stomping the spirit. Once the stomp animation starts, the spirit stops moving and cannot use its active. Hopefully this adds some counter play where enemies must decide to either focus on the ranger or the spirits. This prevents them from soaking AoE damage but allows them to work well in PvE.

Associated Risk

Not sure. I’m just throwing out ideas.

Jocksy.3415:

Special mention to whoever proposed to have pets scale according to foes… A great “think out of the box” using existing game tools that would greatly help in many settings, while not making the pet overpowered in roaming/small scale play.
Love it!
:D

Might as well do it in proper format then.

Specific Game Mode
PvX (excluding PvP)

Proposal Overview
Implement Pet HP Scaling.

Goal of Proposal
Increase pet survivability in world events, dungeons, and WvW.

Proposal Functionality
Scale pet HP based on number of nearby enemies. This would help pets survive in areas of the game where they typically have problems surviving (world events, dungeons, WvW zergs) without making them too strong in other areas (WvW roaming). PvE version should probably scale with enemy level and quality (elite, legendary, etc.)

Associated Risks
Healing becomes useless when health scales up. May need to scale healing, but at a slower rate.

Prysin.8542:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

I’ve tried to summarize most of the feedback we’ve been getting. Most of this are the big points that are being made and the high level with a few smaller suggestions and tweaks for inspiration.

If what you wrote in that post make it to a patch, all of it that is, then rangers should be more then viable for all game modes.

Pet HP should still be increased in WvW similar to that of PvE. If you could manage to pull that off before the feature patch, in addition to the F2 fix that i assume will come with the feature patch, then those two things combined should make pets a whole lot more viable even though the traits (which is the second biggest issue with pets) are still being worked on.
This only pertains to WvW though, sPvP, AFAIK, pets are fine, except F2

I wish they could scale pet HP the same way that enemy HP scales in PvE. Then it could survive a zerg without being too tough while roaming.

Ltomato.8649:

Flytrap.8075:

I know some people are attached to Longbow, but I personally feel like Longbow and Greatsword are our most awkward, ill-defined weapons.

Haha! Where you you see awkward and ill-defined, I see “versatile” and “fun”! Longbow/Greatsword is my main weapon set that I use for general play. It’s definitely not the best for use in WvW, but I’ve had my share of contributions and epic fights!
The weapons might not have as much of a well defined role, but they have some really cool combinations together.

For greatsword, I’d definitely suggest a damage boost though. I understand that it’s a more defensive sustained damage type of weapon, but as it is, you’re literally better off in a lot of cases picking up a warrior’s banner for team support and more damage (I suggest Discipline, Tactics, or Warbanner for added Fury, Regen, or stability!). There’s a point when sustained damage becomes “damage outhealed by passive healing”, and outside of Maul, greatsword is still mostly under that level.

I like most of your longbow changes. I’d kind of like to see barrage changed to something close to what it was in GW1. Maybe a low cooldown cone AoE would be good.

As for greatsword, I agree that it needs more damage on the auto attack. It’s a defensive weapon for sure, but it’s completely outclassed by other defensive weapons. Our spear and the Guardian’s hammer both have 0.8, .09, and 1.0 for the auto attack coefficients. It won’t break the game if our greatsword has the same.

I’m surprised great sword isn’t on the weapons list. The auto attack is extremely weak, even for a defensive weapon. The coefficients should be equal to the coefficients on the spear’s attack chain.

Rangers had some very powerful builds in GW1, but the best bow builds were interrupt builds. Unfortunately, they destroyed that side of the game in GW2 with defiance and partial cooldowns for interrupted skills.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Diversify pet families.

Goal of Proposal
Make pets into unique tools that fill specific roles.

Proposal Functionality
Give pet families unique characteristics. For example, canines could give a damage bonus while flanking, birds could ignore terrain, etc. Basically give each family a role that they fulfill well and give them abilities that bypass some of the AI limitations.

Associated Risks
This would probably take lots of work.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I realize that many classes have high burst right now, but our intent is to limit power creep as much as possible. Just because the Ranger’s damage is more spread out, doesn’t mean it does less damage than the burst of other classes. Does that make sense?

For example: One class could, in the span of 30 seconds, do 15k damage in say 5-10 seconds, but then their burst skills go on cooldown so they have to wait out the rest of the time before they can try again. A sustained class should be able to do that same amount of damage in that same amount of time, but the damage is more spread out (hence sustained). This can be better in certain situations, and allows for the sustained class to fill a hole in a team comp.

I’m not saying this is a perfect system or that it’s even fully functional in the game, I’m just trying to explain why doing burst shouldn’t necessarily be better than doing sustained damage. It depends on the situation.

We also know that some classes right now are better at burst than others, and those are things that we look to address in balance patches so there isn’t a surplus of any one class.

This is really flawed. Sustained dps should have a higher average than burst dps. Otherwise you won’t be able to counter the extra dodges over that period of time, their regeneration, aegis, protection, etc. They’ll probably get to use their heal twice if they decide to stick around. There’s also a larger probability that reinforcements will come.

There’s no point in waiting for the long term payout if it isn’t any better than the short term payout.

Atherakhia.4086:

Killsmith.8169:

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Remorseless is weak for a Grandmaster trait, especially in PvE. Its refresh condition should be expanded to enable its use with weapon setups that do not include longbow.

Goal of Proposal
Make remorseless a worthwhile trait that is accessible to all weapon sets.

Proposal Functionality
Make remorseless refresh opening strike on application of any condition that hinders movement or skill use (cripple, chill, immobilize, knockback, etc.). Add an internal cooldown (5-10s).

Associated Risks
I don’t see any. It’s too situational for a grandmaster trait. This could be an opening strikes problem and not a problem with remorseless. Even with this change it might fit better as a minor grandmaster trait.

I agree that Remorseless is terrible. But simply increasing the chance it has to proc isn’t going to really solve anything because the number of skills that will make any real use of the trait is 1: maul.

Until the class has real burst the trait (along with Moment of Clarity) really aren’t going to live up to their placement in the tree. But that said, if this class were given some real ways to deal burst damage I’m worried allowing remorseless to proc this often would be overpowered.

Honestly speaking… openning strike and remorseless overall are just terrible traits and both should probably be changed

Path of scars is strong enough to take advantage of it as well. I don’t think it will ever become overpowered because of the addition of an internal cooldown and the cap on vulnerability stacks. I’m trying to increase the opportunities it has to proc, which are currently quite limited. The frequency is controllable via ICD.

It probably shouldn’t take a grandmaster trait to get opening strikes to trigger more than once every fight though. I’d merge opening/alpha and then move remorseless to the grandmaster minor. Neither of the grandmaster traits in marksmanship have any business being grandmaster traits, honestly.

Prysin.8542:

Killsmith.8169:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Prysin.8542:

However if we do it like this instead;
Marksmanship: Power + Precision
Skirmishing; Condition Damage, Critical Damage
Wilderness Survival; Toughness, Vitality
Nature Magic; Healing Power, Boon Duration
Beastmastery; Profession Specific Bonus, Condition Duration.

This allows us to the the most possible damage, and be as tanky as possible at any given time. Yes this might ruin trappers as they will lose out on duration, however seeing as most trappers run Carrion + Rabid you get the much needed boost to power, precision, critical damage and condition damage to be a more “hybrid” DPS setup, while speccing into BM Bunker will allow you to go heavy condi with direct damage from pets. Spirits may or may not become a problem area though. Shouts will be way way stronger as you get the much needed healing power bonus for the shout regen.
Wilderness survival will be just that, the BEST survival line in game. Giving us proper “Survival” stats.

That’s gamebreaking good sir. No, we do not move around the primary stats (power, precision, toughness, vitality, class mechanic), those can overpower any traitline easily with more than one in them. No, we change around the secondary stats, like the following, which would fix it so the current builds are allowed to branch out instead of being forced into the same traitlines as they are now.

Marksmanship: Power, Crit Damage
Skirmishing: Precision, Condition Damage
Wilderness Survival: Toughness, Boon Duration
Nature Magic: Vitality, Healing Power
Beastmastery: Profession Specific Bonus, Condition Duration

The other benefit to Ryu’s setup is that your power ranger won’t lose condition duration, which helps with maintaining vulnerability stacks. Given the function of the minor traits in marksmanship, that’s important to keep in mind.

Yes it will, he put condi duration together with pets, just like me…

Yep, I misread it. Somebody proposed swapping condition duration and crit damage. That’s the one I’m in favor of. It wouldn’t be a good idea to put two primary stats on one trait line.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Remorseless is weak for a Grandmaster trait, especially in PvE. Its refresh condition should be expanded to enable its use with weapon setups that do not include longbow.

Goal of Proposal
Make remorseless a worthwhile trait that is accessible to all weapon sets.

Proposal Functionality
Make remorseless refresh opening strike on application of any condition that hinders movement or skill use (cripple, chill, immobilize, knockback, etc.). Add an internal cooldown (5-10s).

Associated Risks
I don’t see any. It’s too situational for a grandmaster trait. This could be an opening strikes problem and not a problem with remorseless. Even with this change it might fit better as a minor grandmaster trait.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Prysin.8542:

However if we do it like this instead;
Marksmanship: Power + Precision
Skirmishing; Condition Damage, Critical Damage
Wilderness Survival; Toughness, Vitality
Nature Magic; Healing Power, Boon Duration
Beastmastery; Profession Specific Bonus, Condition Duration.

This allows us to the the most possible damage, and be as tanky as possible at any given time. Yes this might ruin trappers as they will lose out on duration, however seeing as most trappers run Carrion + Rabid you get the much needed boost to power, precision, critical damage and condition damage to be a more “hybrid” DPS setup, while speccing into BM Bunker will allow you to go heavy condi with direct damage from pets. Spirits may or may not become a problem area though. Shouts will be way way stronger as you get the much needed healing power bonus for the shout regen.
Wilderness survival will be just that, the BEST survival line in game. Giving us proper “Survival” stats.

That’s gamebreaking good sir. No, we do not move around the primary stats (power, precision, toughness, vitality, class mechanic), those can overpower any traitline easily with more than one in them. No, we change around the secondary stats, like the following, which would fix it so the current builds are allowed to branch out instead of being forced into the same traitlines as they are now.

Marksmanship: Power, Crit Damage
Skirmishing: Precision, Condition Damage
Wilderness Survival: Toughness, Boon Duration
Nature Magic: Vitality, Healing Power
Beastmastery: Profession Specific Bonus, Condition Duration

The other benefit to Ryu’s setup is that your power ranger won’t lose condition duration, which helps with maintaining vulnerability stacks. Given the function of the minor traits in marksmanship, that’s important to keep in mind.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Show pet information in the same format as the party window.

Goal of Proposal
Allow rangers to see boons and conditions on the pet.

Proposal Functionality
Display pet information in the same format as information in the party window so that the ranger can see what boons and conditions are on the pet at all times. Placement could be in its current location or in the same area as party members.

Associated Risks:
None. We should have been able to see this information from the start.

Specific Game Mode
PVE

Proposal Overview
Greatsword damage change.

Goal of Proposal
Bring the ranger greatsword in line with other defensive weapons.

Proposal Functionality
The greatsword auto attack chain has very weak damage. While it is true that it is a defensive weapon, the damage on other defensive weapons doesn’t suffer nearly as much for their added survivability.

Change power coefficients on auto attack chain from 0.55, 0.55, 0.65 to 0.8, 0.9, 1.0. This brings the ranger greatsword coefficients in line with other defensive melee weapons, such as the ranger’s spear and the guardian’s hammer.

Associated Risks
Might affect PVP balance? Does anyone use greatsword in PVP?

Specific Game Mode
PVE

Proposal Overview
Sword rework

Goal of Proposal
Make the main hand sword easier to use in PVE without losing any existing functionality.

Proposal Functionality
Make the second and third attack in the main hand sword auto attack chain range dependent. If the ranger is close enough to hit his target without the leaps (300 range?), replace those attacks with attacks that do not contain leap animations.

Make the #2 skill range dependent as well so that it can be used to leap to a target, placing it on full cooldown. When close to the target it would function the same as it currently does.

Associated Risks
I might play the game more.

I wish they’d replace rapid fire with something like barrage from GW1. Make it a cone type charge skill that shoots 5 arrows. As you charge it, the spread decreases. At max charge you have about a 10° – 15° total spread. Each arrow applies vulnerability. 2 second charge time, 6 second recharge.

That would solve some of our AOE issues and give us a decent burst skill.

For sword I hope they can implement something that will make the auto attack use the leap animation only when the range to the target makes it necessary.

I’d like the best of both worlds for once. Make the attack so that you only leap to the target if you’re too far away from it to hit. That way I can strafe and attack the boss without humping its leg the entire fight.

I want a bow that shoots greatswords! It should also cause random explosions behind me, but only when I’m walking.

Kilger.5490:

Maul on GS actually does get some pretty high numbers, I dont know that I totally agree there. I’ve never played guardian, or warrior so I cant compare though.

The thing I dont like is if we want to go for high survival it seems we need to rely on our pets or conditions for any damage, not the best options for wvw. I’d like to see more survival options for a power ranger, like a better regen on signet of wild.

If you want a comparison on maul and the guardian hammer’s #2 skill, maul has a 1.6 coefficient, 3/4 cast time, and 6 second recharge. Guardian hammer #2 has a 1.75 coefficient, 3/4 cast time, and 5 second recharge. It’s also a 300 range leap and has a blast finisher.

Prysin.8542:

The GS was intented to be defensive. It has a block, KB, gap closer/creater, stun and evade on AA. It is not intended to make tears-of-joy as 4-digit numbers pop up on your screen.

Sword – DPS
GS – Defense
SB – Evasive CQB ranged
LB – Power LD ranged
Axe – fast paced small group CQB

Dagger – defensive
Torch – Offensive
Warhorn – support

I don’t have a problem with GS being a defensive weapon. I do have a problem with GS being unable to hold a candle to the Guardian’s hammer, which is also a defensive weapon.

If they could just give us a popup skill bar like henchmen had in GW1 that would be enough. Most of the problem is a lack of information. All we really need is skill buttons with cooldown timers and click to enable/disable, boons/conditions, and better response times on the F2 abilities.

My fix for the ranger in PvE is to scale pet stats in PvP in the same manner that gear stats are scaled/limited in PvP and then buff the ranger coefficients across all game types. Then in PvE we end up with pets at the same strength that they are now and weapon skills that will actually scale decently with berserker stats.

We won’t ever be able to get the devs to balance PvE. If we want to be good in PvE, we’re going to have to push for PvP balance changes that just happen to benefit us in PvE.

Those traits should at least be affected by boon duration. Currently they’re 5 seconds no matter how much boon duration you have.

Does anyone know if pet stats are limited in PvP similar to the way gear stats are limited?

I know they nerfed some of the pet skills a while back, but if they’ve been balancing mostly by tweaking the ranger’s coefficients without adjusting the pet across game types, it would explain why some of our skills and weapons seem so weak in PvE.

If I cared one iota about PVP that stuff you just said might mean something.