Guild Wars 2

As someone that uses a surprising amount of that armor myself, I think it looks good! I like how you stuck to quite a dark colour palette with the crystals and the gem on the fractal sword. If I may offer some critique, the torso could do with being a little bit wider, and the Bloodstone Crown is a a bit sharper and taller than what you’ve drawn.

It looks really good though – I’m actually a little jealous of how nice the shading is!

These are really lovely, especially the backgrounds! May I ask how much you charge for gold commissions? I’ve got some cash piled up, and I’ve wanted some art of my characters for a long time now

Looks great, awesome work!

DawnSketch.7105:

Maximum Potato.5923:

I don’t have all the details down as of yet – depending on price, it would probably be anything from an action shot of a single character, to a desktop sized splitscreen of my three mains.

That sounds interesting! you want to continue this thru e-mail?

Sure thing! Sent you a PM

I don’t have all the details down as of yet – depending on price, it would probably be anything from an action shot of a single character, to a desktop sized splitscreen of my three mains.

DawnSketch.7105:

Trinibaje.7683:

Here are my two… Persephone (with larger horns) – determined and fierce and Tyr – Sweet but deadly when provoked. http://imgur.com/a/JW6jB

I didn’t feel like painting, but wanted to draw some Char so~ Yea. ; u ;
Hope this is still ok with you.

Super psyched to see you back! I was going to ask, do you happen to do gold commissions? I love your style, and I’d be more than happy to throw gold at you for work of this quality!

How does this not have replies?!? I’ve got a couple of Charr that I would love to see some art of, if you’re interested!

Avi Shattersword
http://imgur.com/a/kE17t
A stalwart legion commander with a strong sense of duty, though more compassionate than one would expect of a charr in her position.

Dekka Slickshot
http://imgur.com/a/zEMoL
Confident, sarcastic, outgoing, enthusiastic, and obsessed with replacing various parts of her organic body with guns and jetpacks.

Jeez, I forgot I even had a login for tumblr…my name is maximumpotatoes :P

I don’t know enough about how Guardian works to vouch for the viability of the traitlines, but what you said about the Virtues one interests me, specifically this:

“If you’re dedicating an entire trait line to them, they should be a much more dynamic, interactive mechanic than they are by default.”

Dragonhunter. This is Dragonhunter.

A bit off-track, but I think this is something ANet really needs to be careful of. Dragonhunter augments Virtues in a way that makes them much more dynamic and interesting…and as such completely obliterates the purpose of the Virtues traitline, which really should have been where these augments were in the first place.

First off, some facts about the Longbow. Quick Draw drops the cooldown on Rapid Fire to 2.5 seconds, which is about the same cast time that Barrage has. This means you can switch to longbow > Rapid Fire > Barrage > Rapid Fire > Swap weapons, making Longbow a very strong burst damage weapon, but not so great at sustained damage. As such, I’d recommend dropping your second longbow for a Greatsword or Sword, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

Next, let’s talk about the Ranger’s role in parties. Rangers are what I like to call ‘offensive supports’ – their damage isn’t top tier, but they can MASSIVELY buff the DPS of their whole party through a number of different trait lines and utility skills, namely Spotter, Frost Spirit, Glyph of Empowerment, and Grace of the Land. Heal as One and Strength of the Pack are both great skills, but Triple Signets is almost memetic in how bad it is – it doesn’t provide your group with any meaningful bonuses, and it doesn’t really do much to help your own damage either.

Regarding damage output, Longbow is a pure damage weapon, and so are Sword/Greatsword, so I feel they’d be a good fill-in for that second weapon slot. I’d also reccomend dropping the whole Condition Damage thing as a result of this – even with Sharpened Edges, you just won’t be applying enough conditions to make good use of it.

I assume by your post you’ve got Heart of Thorns, but I’ve drafted up a couple builds for you to consider that revolve around that Longbow – one is group dps, one is self DPS.

DPS Support: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBjYD7kSFoVFsmVwiFgrFssHYL3uAwojZgFwGBwx176e9EmG2JA-TRSBwAUOCAFV+B4hAgw83jLAwz9HQpbIiSwbq/QIARLAA-e
This is what I run. The utilities are focused on party buffing, but with Hunter’s call hitting 16 times and sword granting my pet might on crit, and Strength of the Pack, I can usually pop Heal as One after Hunter’s Call for a full 25 stacks of Might. Cats are one of the highest DPS pets in the game, and the Fury and Might they produce helps spread buffs to your party as well.

Beastmaster DPS: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBjYDbkSFaVxSWwiF4axweQt3eAM6fHUuPNPwB8IciTDzE-TRSBwAP3fooyPAPEAU6GioE8m6PUOCAPuAAIM/RIARLAA-e
This is what I ran pre-HoT. Not as much party buffing, but it’s got more personal DPS than the build above. Very similar damage strategy, but this one has much higher quickness uptime, and with your pet getting might on crit, you’ll be hitting those 25 might stacks with Heal as One more often. Just remember to switch pets often with this build – 15s cooldown on a few seconds of quickness can really add up over time.

It’s worth noting that the current meta for ranger is condition damage, but as I’ve never played condition damage ranger in pve, I’d rather not try and provide tips or builds for it – it doesn;t use longbow, but if you’re interested in it, I’d suggest checking out Metabattle.

So I’ve played Ranger for a little over 2 years now, and since I first hit 80 and realised just how bad a stigma the class had, I’ve worked my hardest to dispell the stereotype that Rangers are just Pewpew bearbowers that bring nothing to their team. I’ve tried several builds, ran calcs, and generally done everything in my power to gain mastery of the class and be an absolute asset to my teams in the content I love, providing as many boons and as much damage as I possibly could. It’s not been easy, what with the opinions people have of the class, but my passion for the profession’s theme and playstyle has always been a motivator for me.

Well, tonight I had a particularly unpleasant CoE run, where of course, the first words I see upon joining the group are “please not ranger”. Nothing new there, I convince them to let me stay, and I throw my absolute all into every path we do – throwing out Frost Spirits, optimal damage rotations, finishers, you name it. Heck, I even got some compliments from my group along the way! During the final path however, I faltered and accidentally aggro’d a champ, and the entire group came crashing down on me, telling me how they never wanted to party with me again, and how they knew they were wrong to trust a Ranger.

Again, not an uncommon occurrence, I’m sure we’ve all been through similar situations, but I’m tired of it now. It doesn’t seem to matter how hard Rangers try, if we make so much as a single slip up – heck, sometimes we don’t even get the chance to – we’re immediately torn apart by other players. Yet if a warrior or an ele makes a similar mistake, people just seem to glance over it.

So, what’s the point of this post, other than to whine? I want to know your experiences with situations like this, and how you dealt with them. How do you talk to people who act in this way? I’ve always tried whispering them and talking about how hurtful their comments can be, although that seems to be a hit-or-miss way of dealing with the issue. Is there anything I can say or do to convince people that this class isn’t just a crap-pile played by crap players, other than having my character controlled by some kind of combat bot?

Irenio, you are the Batman of the Ranger forums – you are the hero we need. Thanks a bunch for this change, this is a huge buff to Ranger’s offensive power. Love ya <3

Also, if you could get Roy to issue a public apology for capping the might in the first place, then I’d be REALLY impressed ;P

What if we looked at the Shortbow from a different angle, and instead of looking at making it super condition-heavy, we tried to solidify its niche as a kiting/chasing weapon? Here’s some thoughts, although obviously they’d require a bit of refinement to actually work in practice.

- Crossfire: Make this apply bleed as baseline. No additional effect from flanking.
- Poison Volley. Leave as is.
- Quick Shot: Now applies 4 stacks of torment to the enemy, as well as current effects.
- Crippling Shot: Apply a 3s cripple to your enemy. While the enemy is crippled, attacks from behind/the sides apply an additional 1s cripple.
- Concussion Shot: Stun your target, based on how far away they are from you.
(900-600 range: 0.5s)
(600-300 range: 1s)
(-300 range: 1.5s)

Inflames.8026:

Played since release, couple of classes I never bothered with, ranger among one of em.
Playing condi ranger with and without traps and pewpew I noticed a couple of things.

-Healing skills sucks, troll Unguents heal is so horrible any dps will offset the tiny bit of healing thanks to zerker meta.
- WHaO is poor, and almost seem mandatory for my next reason.
-Healing springs is a decent choice if you want to support, but in soloQ its just wasted.

-Pet dies so fast!, its out of commision in spvp within 10 secounds.

- Condition cleansing is soft, but with the current burn meta its quite devistating.
- Facing cele necros. Trying to widdle em down only to go through a secound hp bar with shroud, remove shroud, dps them alittle and then widdle down a full shroudbar again..

There seem to be alot of core issues with rangers, and honestly I’ve always enjoyed killing the pesky rangers, being one makes me tip off the hat.

First off, welcome to Ranger in PvP! It’s…really, really different to PvE playstyles ^^;

- First off, could you clarify what build you’re using? You mentioned Pewpew, Traps, and Conditions, but all three of those are totally different builds that play in very different ways, with very different strengths and weaknesses.

- Troll Ungent is more a preparatory heal than one you use when you’re low. Remember, Ranger has a trait that makes them take 33% less damage when above 90% health – use TU as you’re going in to a fight and keep using it as often as possible! It’s more about damage mitigation than recovery
Also, side note – the zerker meta is far less pronounced in PvP, since fights are longer and incoming damage is greater and spread evenly over the course of the fight. The only classes I ever see running FULL zerkers in PvP are Thieves and occasionally Warriors.

- WHaO is a good burst heal, especially if you build Toughness instead of Vitality. It’s also on a very short cooldown – again, spam it! With traits, it provides additional regen and has a poxy 16s cooldown. Just remember to avoid it when fighting necros :P

- Healing Spring is…something I tend to avoid, since I feel it restricts my movement and gives my enemy a chance to lock me out of my own heal. Ranger’s an excellent roamer in PvP anyway, and many classes heal better than us, so team support on that front isn’t something you need to worry about.

- Are you speccing into Beastmastery? That’s SUPER important for pet survivability, since it gives them a lot of free stats and health regen. Taking ‘Go For The Eyes’ helps too, since that’s +300 toughness right off the bat. Consider the pet you’re using as well – spiders and cats lack active defenses and have low toughness/vitality, wheras Birds have easy access to blinds, wolves have high toughness, and bears have stupid amounts of health. Also, remember to pull your pet out of zergs and teamfights! Keep it on passive, and use it when you see an opportunity to pick someone off

- I assume you’re using Wilderness Survival? Survival of the Fittest is a nice cleansing option, and if you’re fighting something with a lot of dangerous burning (Guardian, for example), it might be a good idea to save your Sharpening Stone for when the burning gets on top of you, and use it defensively instead of for a bleedbomb.

- Necros are a pain (especially on my build, Rabid does NOT like conditions!), but what I do is try to lock them down. Whittle away at them with shortbow 4 and basic attack until your pet’s in range, taunt, entangle, spike trap, then go for the condition bomb. If that doesn’t kill them, they’ll typically go into shroud, at which point I back off again and start kiting with the shortbow. As soon as that shroud reaches around 20%, I usually all-in them again so I can nuke off the last bit of shroud/hp before they can get a chance to heal.

Zenith.7301:

EthanLightheart.9168:

Levetty.1279:

Well my Druid is bugged in PvE and I no activate my pets.

On the plus side perma stow pets yay?

Umm why are you too lazy to delete it? Come on it’s a beta character… brains on please.

Some of us are using character makeover kits to approximate our toons (such as kit exclusive hairsyles and colors), and said kits are not restored by making a new toon…“brains on please”

I too am unable to access my pet – it seems to be permanently stowed, but only for my beta toon. Any chance on a fix for this please? ^^

Just a quick note here, since I want to give my feedback at the end, but I’ve noticed a bug – Lunar Impact is not functioning as a Blast finisher right now.

As much as I love those little plant puppies, what purpose do they serve on a Druid build? You already have so much healing, the channelled 2,000 Hp heal from Regenerate seems a little redundant.

I was thinking Nomad or Shaman myself. Shaman would be better for tanking conditions, although with Wilderness Survival+Druid, I don’t see that being much of an issue. We’ll see how things go I guess ^^

SoStone: Doesn’t harm your pet, protects your pet as well, provides passive toughness, and can be traited to give Might on use.

Wolfey.3407

Thank you for your kind words,
The next report I anticipate to be a lot larger and more in-depth. The report I just sent off covered a few topics within the Ranger community (really can’t do anything with Druid since we haven’t tested it yet x) ) .

As always, If I hear anything back (and I’m cleared to talk about it) I’ll keep you guys updated ^-^.

Hi Wolfey, thanks for coming in and lending a hand. Although not everyone here may say or seem it, we all really do appreciate your presence ^^

I think the main source of upset here is the speed at which the nerf was applied, considering how big of a change it was. We didn’t really get a chance to use the build to its full effectiveness, and, more importantly, other players didn’t have a chance to develop counter-strategies to it. Given a bit more time, the buffs we had might not have seemed QUITE as crazy, as other classes would have better learned how to deal with what they were up against, and had time to better understand where the build’s core weaknesses lay. I admit some aspects of the boon spam were probably more than a little OTT (cough 25 stability stacks cough), but I don’t think it warranted a response quite as quick and extreme as it received.

As I also mentioned earlier, the might stacking nerf doesn’t feel necessary, but I assume you’ve already seen that :p

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Rangers won’t be complaining when every raid group wants a Druid.

Healers are a fun and interesting concept, but not for everyone. And right now, Druid healing is the only thing it looks like Ranger will be able to do better than any other class.

Thaddeus.4891:

So if on the 29th Anet had buffed Heal as One like it is right now, everybody would be happy.

Since Anet buffed it a little too much and then nerf it partially, while still being superior to the HaO pre-29th, people are QQing?

I understanding if people want to have a constructive discussion about does this nerf was needed? Or was it overnerfed? But to act like this was a nerf to the core propriety the profession and that ranger is garbage because of that or that all other profession should be nerfed for some strange emotive vengeance, it’s kind of stupid.

I think the issue is that’s it brought up a lot of bad blood that had been buried in the past. Ranger has never been the most…favoured class when it comes to buffs, and the moment we get something that could be deemed overpowered, it was nerfed within less than a week. Compare that to other classes with overwhelming amounts of power – Icebow on elementalists was allowed to run rampant for years, and Phalanx Strength warriors still deliver a might cap to their entire party, which ANet doesn’t seem to feel is a problem (Fair enough, but I still think that’s a bit of a double-standard, with the might copying on WHAO). What’s really causing the issue here is the speed at which the situation was dealt with is way out of sync with how Anet deals with other classes.

Was heal as one’s boon stacking a little crazy? Yes.
Did ANet bring down the nerf hammer on it too hard? Maybe, it’s up to opinion.
Was the speed of the nerf similar to what we’ve seen on other overwhelming class builds? No, it wasn’t.

I don’t want to default to the whole “Anet hates rangers” argument – I think that mentality is asinine and whiny.

But it’s hard to ignore how quickly this was changed, especially when looking at things like the D/D ele and icebow, as you said. Anet certainly isn’t behaving in a way that treats all classes equally at the moment :/

I understand why you wanted to clip our wings (heh) on the protection, stability and quickness fronts – those were a little bit crazy. What I don’t get is why you reduced the might copying of WHAO to 3 stacks. I get that might is a powerful boon, but look at what some of the other classes can do with it.

- Elementalist? Most access to both fire fields and blast finishers in the game. Not only can they give their whole party >15 stacks of might easily, but they also have a trait that gives them and their allies fury when blasting fire fields as well.
- Warrior? Phalanx strength is a consistent 25 stacks of might to their entire team.
- Guardian? Empower, Virtue of Justice, a blast finisher and a fire field means that they can grant their entire party 18 stacks of might before a fight even starts, and that’s not even factoring in Empowering Might, which is 1 might per crit on a 1s cooldown.

…so why is it so outrageous that Rangers get to hit the might cap for ONLY THEMSELVES? Our party-wide boons have always been meager compared to other classes (Ele heals better, warrior provides more might, guard provides more protection/retaliation, thief provides more stealth, mesmer provides a long duration AoE quickness), so why can’t we have a little bit of selfish power?

Now this begs the question – Storm Spirit, Frost Spirit or both?
Frost is now a 7.5% damage bonus with permanent 3 stacks of might on you and your party (15 on your pet, assuming Nature Magic), while Storm is just 15 stacks of vulnerability. Thoughts?

My Sweet Lily.1952:

No F2 works

Jaguar stealth does, however that isn’t channelled.

Just a quick heads up. As of today’s patch, pets that have casting animations on their F2 skills (Fern hound, jungle stalker, black bear, etc) will now attack the closest hostile enemy when F2 is pressed, instead of using their active skill. In short, these skills can no longer be used in combat. Any chance of a hotfix on this?

Yerp. Only CC that effects both the Ranger and their pet that comes to mind is the death of the Ranger (The pet then dissapears).

mistsim.2748:

yeah I’m gonna be testing this next weekend as well. Irenio mentioned during the stream, the stats weren’t even maximized, so does that mean damage will be even higher? cant wait to find out.

obviously the sustain damage of the avatar isn’t that significant, but the burst and utility it provides are impressive.

It’s not the damage I’m excited about – can you imagine Druid in PvP with Nomad’s gear? The effective health would be stupid.

It’s worth mentioning that come tomorrow’s patch, Nature Magic will be a viable alternative to Beastmastery. Here’s an idea I’ve been mulling over – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBjYDbkSFaVxSWwiF4axweQ5B/xPF7tHAjOPwB8IUhTmA-TBSDwAMuIA9U+xa/hEKBfp+DIdDAM/F/JAIKgAD-e

Come HoT, you can throw a Fire Wyvern on there beside the Jungle Stalker for a nice fire field, allowing for more might stacking.

Very interesting, never realised the damage potential of Astral Form before you mentioned this. Will have to try this in PvP next weekend, thanks for the heads up!

Zorpi.5904:

Bryzy.2719:

Frigoris.7853:

Red in the ranger forum, tis an exciting time indeed.

Mentioned earlier but I think having solar beam bounce between enemy targets so you could potentially form a lazer beam healing array would be cool. Some people mentioned having it able to target allies, it’s our basic attack so should function primarily as an attack.

The vine surge animation could stay in place for a while crippling and bleeding? anyone who walks through it, acting as a short term soft barrier.

Glyphs feel wierd being all melee range when the staff has high range.
New pets are fantastic except for the slow attacks that have a higher chance of missing. I’d take weaker faster attacks from the pets any day.

I’ll need to take another proper look at the druid info for more.

I agree – the solar beam may need a tweak. What distracts me the most is that it shares the same name as Pokemon move :P

I like your “array” idea. If Solar Beam was changed so that upon impact with the target enemy there were, say, 3 strands of light that bounced off that enemy and hit 3 other enemies in its vicinity (IDK, say 240 -300 radius?) it would be a nice touch. Those additional three strands of light might add random conditions instead of damage perhaps? Or both?

ORRRR – the additional light array may not hit enemies, but instead hit 3-5 allies surrounding your target enemy, providing random boons like vigor, protection, resistance and regen. You could then re-name Solar Beam as “Solar Array” or “Solar Dispersion” and escape looking as though you’ve copied pokemon :P

Yes I like this… so, so much potential.

Well that is one way they can do it. Personaly i would like to see them alter that skill to be more like guardians Receive the light(old Healing breeze). Mid range (600-900) cone attack which heals ally and damage enemyes, whitout need for taking target.

What if Solar Beam was a simple beam that hit the target enemy (No healing aspect), but then once it hit a foe, it split into rays that bounced to allies, and those rays applied the healing effect?

PvE, I’m going to try Staff+Sword/Wh or Staff+GS, depending on how defensive I need to be. Staff’s ranged, so it feels most logical to me to drop the longbow’s burst ranged damage for the staff’s burst ranged heals.
PvP I’ll probably drop shortbow, and try Staff+Axe/Torch. Gotta keep that condition damage high!

I’m gonna stick to Zerker for PvE for now, since the base heals seem pretty beefy, especially with the increased healing effectiveness trait we get.
PvP I’m going to try Settler’s, since the effective health on a build like that is going to be stupid high, and Ranger has enough condition damage that their damage won’t actually suffer too much from running a tanky build.
WvW I’m thinking either Settler’s or Shaman’s, depending on what causes me more problems. SotF+Druid gets disgusting amounts of condition cleanse, so the extra vitality of Shaman’s gear might not be necessary.

Going to add my thoughts on things here, see if I can help contribute to the development of my favorite class

[/spoiler]

All in all, I’m super excited about this. Druid’s going to take not only Ranger, but all of GW2 down an entirely new path in PvE. There are some pressing issues that I feel need to be addressed about the class’ long term viability, but I’m confident that you can sort them out Irenio, and make the Ranger a class people are happy to see in their groups ^^

We already have a trait that gives us 7% of our Healing power as Power. If they buffed that from 7% to say, 15% (to compensate for the fact we start with 0 healing power, rather than 1000), I think that’d be a solid trait choice, and allow Druid to do good direct damage with Zealot’s gear.

I was thinking something similar, although more condition-oriented than hybrid. Unfortunately, the stat combo I was considering (Shaman’s) is not available in PvP, so I might try Settler’s instead. My general idea was to run a build similar to the current PvP condition damage ranger, but substitute shortbow and beastmastery for staff and druid. I considered using Celestial as well, just because of the nice combination of power/healing/vitality/toughness/conditions, although I’m worried that build might be spreading the stats a bit too thin. Where did you say the might would come from on this build? SotP and Companion’s Might I’m assuming?

It’s definitely interesting, and I think Druid will see a whole lot of use in PvP/WvW, simply because of the massive survivability it gives to an already resilient class. It’ll be a lot of fun to try out next weekend

It’s going to be interesting, to say the least. Right now, people are uspet because there is no place for a healer in standard GW2 play. However, it seems like HoT is going to feature much more challenging content (I was dying frequently in the BWE’s to even just some of the larger groups of overworld mobs, so I shudder to think what raids will be like). It’s there that the Druid will really sink or swim, not in vanilla PvE.

One concern I have though is about the transferability of our equipment. With the zerker meta, I’ve went all-in on ascended zerker gear with expensive runes, sigils, and infusions. I would be rather upset if I had to build an entirely new armor set and buy hundereds of gold’s worth of new infusions for HoT.

Ranger functions as a great off-healer imo. With the amount of healing Druid gets, you don’t even need to invest in healing power to do your job effectively (Healing makes healing more effective, MMHH). Also, the changes to Frost Spirit mean that Ranger can function as a half decent might stacker now, and spamming Fury and Spotter has always been our thing as well. Sure, our direct damage might not be exceptional, but we’re by no means short on offensive party buffs anymore.

Looking at the incoming buffs to Heal As One (You and your pet now copy boons to one another when you heal) and Nature’s Vengance (Spirit boons are stronger, specifically Frost Spirit now applying a permanent 3 stacks of might), Nature Magic is beginning to look like an attractive option over Beastmastery. With all the might Ranger has access to now, I was wondering what you guys thought about running Superior Runes of Strength instead of Scholar/Ranger. With Strength runes and Lingering Magic, the 5 might stacks from Mighty Roar last a whopping 29 seconds on a 25 second cooldown, and the 3 stacks of might from Frost Spirit last almost 6 seconds instead of 3. In short, you’ll be jumping between 8 and 16 stacks of might at any given time. What do you guys think?

I agree on this one, it would be nice if the idle animation was similar to human female mesmer, where they sort of plant the staff into the ground and cling to it.

Charr: Engineer,Warrior – Crude weapons and brutal fighting are just so ingrained into their culture.
Norn: Ranger, Guardian, Revenant -Due to their closeness to nature and spirits, I think anything concerning animals or anything spiritual fits them nicely.
Sylvari: Necromancer, Ranger – Ranger’s obvious, but I think necro fits too – Given that sylvari are born as adults and completely naive about the world, I think it makes sense that at least a few of them would develop a fascination with the concept of death.
Human: Mesmer, Thief – Humans lend themselves to a lot of things, but I like to think of them as a middle-of-the-road race in terms of skills (Pretty agile, pretty smart, pretty strong). Also, humans are well known for deception and backstabbing, so manipulative classes make sense to me ^^
Asura: Elementalist,Engineer, Mesmer – Just due to their intelligence and focus on learning, more scholar based classes seem to fit them well.

Huh, that’s odd. I play Ranger in sPvP, and I’m normally in-game with at least one other Ranger, either on the enemy team or my own. Right now, PewPew seems to be the preferred meta (Longbow Rapid Fire spam, general massively annoying range spam), with wolf pets, simply because how well they work with Beastly Warden. I have a slightly different Condition build I like to run, but I’d rather not reveal it on the forums – pop me a message in-game and we can do some stuff together

I don’t think I have the time nor commitment to run a central thread, but I certainly plan on playing the absolute kitten out of Druid during BWE3, and I’ll be doing everything I can to provide feedback on the specialisation.

What if they just made the cooldown stupid low? I mean, Flame Trap’s already something like 15s traited, what if they reduced this to 10s?

Ryou.2398:

I did not see it as black or white, but regardless in mmos it really is just like that something to set off the weaknesses just like in any rpg really.

I wouldn’t say that Ranger has the worst DPS – With sword/axe and Jaguar, I get about 2.5k crits per auto, my cat getting 2k, and 4k crits on the axe’s Path of Scars. Condition damage Ranger can pump out more bleeds than most classes as well – I’ve hit 27 stacks in PvP, and that’s not even taking into consideration the burning from offhand torch.

The Ranger’s a jack of all trades class, the way I see it. They don’t do anything BETTER than other classes, but they have the utility to bring lots of different things to a team (Good damage, good conditions, alright team buffing, longest water field in the game, 2 blast finishers, and the pet mechanic allows you to switch between lots of different types of support on a whim.)

Basically dude, I’d recommend you stop asking on the forums and give the class a shot yourself. This forum’s notorious for people who hate ANet and think the Ranger is a kitten class (yet they’re still playing them?). The Ranger really isn’t as bad as they make it out to be – takes practice to use effectively sure, but what class doesn’t? If you want to contact me in game, I’d be happy to chat with you and try and clear up some of your questions – I’ve played with most weapons and traits that the ranger has, so I’d like to think I’ve got a reasonable knowledge of the class ^^

Ryou.2398:

Thanks for all the info, but it does not sound appealing to only use one or two skills then swap I prefer using bigger rotations.

The Ranger doesn’t really have any big, elaborate rotations, since they’re cooldown based rather than initiative based. Ranger’s more reactive with its skills than Thief, saving them for the right time (eg, using Hornet’s Sting+Hunter’s Shot with Sword+Longbow to get to a safe distance and stealth if you take lots of damage, or using Serpent’s Strike to get behind the boss for a damage increase if he turns to face you).

Longbow’s damage begins to fall off really hard after the initial burst, since its basic attack does less damage in melee range, and is rather slow compared to melee weapons. If you’re running Axe/Axe, Shortbow would probably be a good secondary option for you, since it doesn’t get any damage penalties in melee range, and is better for single target condition damage, covering one of Mainhand Axe’s weaknesses.

Ryou.2398:

Anyways my questions are, what is so bad about longbow in dungeons if the player is skilled and knows what they are doing? How is the dps low if you have room to go backwards?

Why is short bow only conditions? Can you not build it for better damage?

Would an axe/axe build be good for anything? Its seemed incredibly fun.

What about the other melee types? Can they be just as effective?

Longbow is fine in dungeons, but not for its basic attack. Right now, staying within melee range is either the optimal way to kill a boss, or the most commonly accepted strategy (Melee typically does more damage than range, and when everyone sitting in melee range, it’s easier to share boons, making the whole party more effective.) I use Longbow in dungeons because of a trait called Quick Draw, which reduces the cooldown of your next weapon skill by 75% after switching weapons. Basically, switch to longbow, use Rapid Fire (which will now have a 2.5 second cooldown), use Barrage, then use Rapid Fire again. By that point, you’ll only have about 2 seconds left until you can swap weapons back to a melee weapon, and you’ll have applied +20 stacks of vulnerability, making it a fantastic burst weapon. You can also do this in melee range without losing damage.

What makes a weapon ‘condition based’ or ‘damage based’ depends purely on what its skills do. Shortbow has a bleed on auto attack, a poison on its second skill, and a bleed on its fourth skill – power builds make no real use of those bleeds, which are fundamental to getting the best out of the Shortbow. On the other hand, the Longbow has vulnerability on its second skill, and the utility of a stealth on its third, something berserker builds appreciate since it gives them some form of active defense. Longbow also has no damaging conditions, meaning a power build’s the only way to really use the weapon well.

Axe/Axe certainly isn’t optimal, but if you really like it, then there’s no reason not to use it. Axe main hand works best in areas where there are 2+ enemies to hit, or where you need some wide range AoE damage (Like the bomb golems in Crucible of Eternity). Mainhand axe’s second skill is a short cooldown bleed that does more bleeding at close range, so condition damage would be a good way to increase its damage. On the other hand, Offhand axe is more pure damage, with Path of Scars doing seriously stupid damage if it hits both ways. Whirling Defense is very situational – it doesn’t do enough damage to justify using it whenever its off cooldown, but it does reflect projectiles, so you can use it as a defensive mechanism or to do lots of damage to enemies with high damage range attacks. I’d reccomend making armor with the Sinister prefix (++Condition Damage, +Power, +Precision) for Axe/Axe, simply due to how well it scales with both condition and raw damage.

The Ranger has 2 melee weapons – Sword and Greatsword. Sword is the highest damage option, and has two built in evades, which is useful for keeping up the Steady Focus trait (+10% damage when your endurance is full.) However, the Sword has a nasty auto attack, which roots you in place during the 2nd and 3rd attack in the chain, and can make dodging very difficult. Kind of a high-risk-high-reward weapon. Greatsword on the other hand is a safer melee weapon, which allows you to move during auto attack, has evades on auto attack, and a block. Its damage is good, but not quite as good as Sword. Both Sword and Greatsword lack any real conditions, and are favoured as power weapons.

Prophet.1584:

are you running a condi or power build? I’d probably run a sinister condi build with a/a+a/t quickdraw. you’ll get to quickdraw your reflects and bonfire and you won’t have the drawback of being locked in sword aa.

Currently power – I’ve got some ascended sinister trinkets lying about, but I’d be reluctant about dumping a bunch of money on new weapons/armor for a single boss. How well would axe deal with the locust swarms?

So I got the stupid idea into my head to try and learn how to solo Arah, and P2 seemed like the most manageable. All went well up until Lupicus, which I’m struggling on (largely due to lack of experience), but also due to lack of damage. Greatsword feels high-risk, low-reward in this fight, since you need to actively dodge everything, and its damage feels lower than the longbow. On the other hand, Longbow’s safer, but can’t deal with the insect swarms, which royally screw me as soon as phase 2 begins. I know I’ll need axe in phase 2 for the reflects, but I’m reluctant about using sword main hand, since Lupi seems like an excersise in consistency, and we all know how consistent the sword’s dodge is.

I’ve not made it past Lupi solo yet, although any tips for Alphard and the final running phase in the dungeon would also be appreciated – the last run looks like a nightmare without permastealth.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

Snip.

This makes me worry about how well-received raids will be. Right now, we’ve had 3 years to play with dungeons, and in that time a small number of expert players have experimented with them and found out what team comps/skills/strategies make each run fastest and/or most rewarding. They share their knowledge with the masses, and larger groups of players less inclined to experiment latch on to their techniques and take them as gospel. Meta sheep, if you will. These people are perfectly pleasant to run dungeons with – as long as everything goes exactly as their meta says it should. The minute someone suggests doing something a different way or the group wipes, their attitude goes south.

Now, onto raids. This is not only new content, so will not have a meta for months after release, but is also going to be much, much harder than current dungeon content due to improvements in AI, changes in combat terrain, and of course the fact we’ll be running them with twice the players as normal dungeons. Imagine a meta sheep coming into this environment – the structured order they’re so used to up until this point is replaced by complete chaos, and the chances are that the zerker meta they swore by will be all but gone for a few weeks as people switch to more defensive/support stat combos and try new things. In the face of that chaos and lack of understanding, I worry that meta sheep will struggle to adapt, and simply do as they do in current dungeon runs when things don’t go well – leave groups, insult team members, or simply start all out flaming. If that happens, the community we all love so dearly could begin to take a serious downward spiral.