Guild Wars 2

This is actually a problem in multiple areas and there’s a lot of design decisions that were added on top of existing design decisions. For example, we have an achievement pane that gives us earned reward items. This could have been used to give us other stuff as well such as the hotm portal stones or maybe even the earned hotm skins. The opposite could have also worked. There is just so many small things that have slipped through.

In any case, I don’t see unification being done any time soon due to time/manpower as well as a rather volatile design strategy as they try and see what works and what doesn’t with the playerbase. They’d probably sell more makeover/hair kits if they did so maybe that could convince them to at least work on that part.

As it is now, defeating the same amount of world bosses takes longer than it did previously for people who actually did world bosses daily beforehand. Not only does it take longer, you also don’t get as many bosses such as the temples and a handful of other bosses who aren’t even on the schedule and yet still affected. If you miss a particular world boss, sometimes you have to wait an awful long time before you get your chance again where as previously, you could simply server hop. Guesting to the higher population servers ensured that you got most of the bosses done outside of maybe 3 wurm, teq, and on a lesser extent tadia. I also skipped eye of zhaitan but everything else was fair game and done several times a day if it wasn’t bugged. Even karka queen.

In the end, looking at an event/timer api is no different from the situation currently. You still need to go to an outside source to see the schedule unless these people who are in support of said schedule have actually remembered the entire thing. Nothing has changed. I realize that during your set time, a player will sooner or later remember that rotation but outside of that? The overlay was much smoother and should have been incorporated somewhere in game. I realize that world bosses were an afterthought to get working in favour of megaservers. It’s still an entirely negative change overall in regards to world bosses.

Left feedback in the wrong thread.

The first part was hilarious. Not really the part with the commentary about burnfall (?), but the start with “AoE kill the spirits and stun the ranger” was great. All I could keep thinking was if this was the thief forums, it would be the equivalent of Chopps saying l2p. Maybe I have a weird sense of humour.

I’m actually in the minority of opinion(I guess) in how the spirit “nerfs” were handled but it is definitely a nerf for PvE since it’s not 100% up time so the disconnect is obvious. While I heard a little discussion about cast times of spirits on demand, I didn’t hear any followup discussion about shortening the cast time slightly even though it seemed obvious to follow up on. 1.25s instead of 1.5s? 1s? .75s? Can’t go under that. Casting multiple spirits does add up. There were a few other parts that I had questions about. I mean, if a ranger switches to a sword/dagger – shouldn’t the opponent notice this and plan his/her offensive cd’s accordingly? S/he might blow a part of his chain at the start but not all of it even if you switch right when they start. More poking should ensue right? Then again, this gets into the whole spamming thing I guess and sword 1 deepes is pretty gud.

You should trade who comments first after each subject since it felt like Battousai allowed Durz to talk first a lot if you invite them in to talk in a round table type again (or anyone in a round table type discussion.)

I think the more logical suggestion would be the F2 mechanic changing to allow the ranger to res the pet like before once it is dead. I’m not thoroughly convinced it would get much use to warrant the resources as opposed to coming up with an actual solution for ranger’s class mechanic against AoE spam.

Mooodster.3470:

thank you and thanks for the reply now hopefully people actually read the part where devon said char progression and understand that it is meant to be something to work for after lvl 80…i have 14 toons and after i get them all to 80 im glad ill still be able to have something to work for on them…for everyone saying its a punishment do you also feel your punished when you start a new toon and have to lvl it to lvl 80 again?
edited cause of the funky filter

No, because it’s a new class with different mechanics and a totally different skill set/build. Even then, there’s a lot of “skipping” available via experience scrolls, crafting, etc. I do feel punished with WXP because an arrow cart is an arrow cart; no matter what the class or level.

The groups I’m in ask for specific classes if possible. They don’t ask “oh, bring your character that has xxxx mastery.” That’s an afterthought – normally all the way down to when siege is build and we need someone to man it. “Hey guys, does anyone have catapult mastery?” By then, it’s already too late to switch characters and you probably wouldn’t want to anyway as that might make the group dynamic unbalanced. This partially depends on the size of your group etc. but this experience is echoed by other players in this thread.

I’m sure there are more close knit groups that do take the time to direct specific people towards specific lines. In the end, they have to do that with every single character that they normally bring which does nothing for “character progression.” It’s just needless grind to bring characters up to speed. Some people enjoy that. Others do not.

This is all moot; I don’t think there’s a chance at swaying Devon Carter. While I appreciate his enthusiasm for WvW though I’m not quite sure I entirely agree with his vision. That’s to be expected as I’m sure he has metrics and information the player base does not so maybe he really is doing the right thing. Considering the full out damage control with the recent influx of posts, he means well at least but increasingly, I’m finding some his decisions to be so kitten that I might have to fill his inbox with kitten images like this one.

I’m sure this came across many people’s minds when first reading this dialogue.

I can’t be as nice as other people since this rubbed me wrong and you simply won’t let it go.

Let me get this straight, you make a public podcast, advertise it on the ranger forums in hopes that more rangers to listen in and then you are surprised when you receive feedback from people who listened in, disagreed, and decided to post about on the same thread you advertise your podcast. One would think that you would look on any interest in your podcast positively even if they don’t agree with what was stated in the podcast given the fact that the podcast is still quite young. Instead, you start off the ep 7 podcast by possibly insulting the very people who are supposedly your audience and then finish it off by acting condescending on the forums. I don’t even want to get into the end of the episode 8 one. Correcting facts is one thing; the rest of it is unbecoming.

My suggestion initially would have been to invite commentary from detractors or people who don’t have entirely the same stance especially for patch notes discussions but you seem to view it all as QQ judging by your last response to the above conversation (which was a bit heated.) If you do view it all as QQ, then you probably shouldn’t have even started on the forums despite jubskie’s jab on that particular podcast. I liked how he had to stop it after he started it too despite being the guest. Either way, this is all feedback on your ranger podcast content and choice of guests – whether you agree with it or not. You can stand by what you say (and who you pick) but take the criticism graciously if the ranger forums are indeed a part of your intended audience. Or don’t and risk facing irrelevancy despite your guest list. I know I tuned out the drivel. If this is what I can expect more of, I just won’t tune in.

I suppose this depends on the type of podcast SOAC wants to be though – especially with a tag line of opinionated. I simply might not be your target audience since I prefer NPR over Howard Stern.

The reason they lowered short bow range was one of the worst responses they could have given. It’d have been nice if they gave weapon metrics on what weapons receive play and where. I’m sure it’ll match most people’s expectations though but it would have been great to receive some info.

Personally, I could have understood the short bow range nerf if they had given a different reason – for example, if they were looking to lower the range on most weapons across all professions to help balance range vs melee and they just happened to start with ranger (and thief cluster bomb.) Obviously, toning down range is a small step towards making melee stronger. I wouldn’t have liked or even totally agree with this particular reason but I could at least understand it. Outside of a few select scenarios, I personally don’t see any increased longbow attraction but quite frankly, in those scenarios, I would have used a longbow anyway. I wonder how many people who disliked the longbow initially suddenly changed into longbow evangelists.

Unfortunately, at this point, complaints about the short bow is probably a non-starter. Also, I’m not seeing the draw for spirits really. In the pvp matches that I watched where rangers opted for the spirit elite, as soon people saw a big blue spirit go up, they stopped (or tried to stop) damaging the player and focused the spirit. In short, the passive effect on the spirit turns out useless because it’s only up for a few seconds anyway. There were a few suggestions (from the very start) to increase the effective spirit range but others have thought are fine as they are. I’m just wondering where the supporters of the current spirits are coming from. Sure, the active can be a game changer but it’s not like there aren’t utilities (and an elite) on other classes that accomplish the same thing and a bit more. It also needs some changing for WvW…

This should be self-evident since the first combination many/most/dare I say all rangers would think of with just the pet would be to fear someone, chain kd them twice, and then immobilize (or chill) the target reliably on demand. Rangers could even throw two back to back stuns depending on the weapon choices (though I admit this is rather unlikely) and finish it with yet another immobilize (or chill) depending on utilities. You should get the gist of it even though what I stated may not be optimal (instead of two canines, it might be a wolf/drake or whatever.) I’m also pretending that the cripples were used to help the pet skills land etc.

Even if you were to present this as “optional”, in effect, it would be end up being required for the class just as the devs are worried about since players would expect all rangers to do this or play another class if they don’t. This doesn’t even take in account the possible overall strength of some pet skill chains. I’m not against the idea but I can see where the devs are coming from on this particular issue. There’s definitely a lot that needs to be looked at if this were to make it in.

I’ve heard some criticisms on the AoE radius for Nature’s Voice (this wasn’t a big deal to me), the additional micromanaging that comes with spamming guard in a fight (annoying but can get used to it), and the cast time of Guard. That last one got to me personally. This doesn’t really get into the usefulness of Nature’s Voice but that’s something you can judge for yourself.

Edit: Also a pain that Guard isn’t available underwater.

I liked hyjaxxx’s use of runes of altruism since it’s pretty strong with the new focus on boons (and boon share with pet) though it’s less protection up time compared to forge. Still, despite whatever rune choice, I have to ask, what is the benefit of using the new boon ranger variants over guardians?

All I can think of currently – a water field (that rangers may or may not be able to blast depending on pets) and perhaps a fear (on a long enough recharge to be immaterial for comparison purposes) if you still use canines. Swiftness isn’t normally in short supply – at least in WvW. For roaming, it helps but I find I rely on weapon mobility far more if I need to get from A to B quickly. The regen from shouts overlaps some with healing spring (and others) though healing spring does offer a host of other benefits being a water field + vigor trait. The spammable shout means rangers will outlast some forms of boon stripping but completely kill any hopes of winning other match ups. From the small amount of playing that I have done, “Guard” also stops other actions momentarily and this is pretty noticeable like others have mentioned (or at least I think they did.)

While I do agree counterplay and being able to offer better group support is a good thing overall, I’m having trouble finding the silver lining for rangers currently to a degree where it’s often just better to bring another class entirely. To be fair, I was leaning towards this viewpoint even BEFORE the test patch notes were leaked so obviously, there’s some bias that may not be entirely based on facts.

I wonder how available torment will be for thieves. Halfway expecting them to tack this on steal since not very many people initially liked the healing mechanic but we’ll see. The weakness change is a pretty big too though hopefully the duration decreases will keep it in check.

Not looking forward to regearing all my alts yet again especially since they are looking to tone down a few of the popular builds. Judging from previous balances, it’s up in the air on how badly the builds in question will be affected if at all.

You seem to realize it’ll adversely affect solo roamers and smaller groups far more than the zerg. It also seems like you want to change camps into fortifications when they aren’t towers for a reason. Some camps already have natural choke points that you can almost lock down with the siege already available. In short, the idea is interesting but I’m not sure it’ll be good for the health of the format. It might boil down to whether you want more siege or whether you want more open field fighting, zerg or not.

Well, if this does get added, does anyone want to make a fort on the middle quaggan island with me?

Prysin.8542:

After the S&R nerf, rangers went from being somewhat useful to somewhat a hindrance. i play a ranger for the most part, i love it. But lets face it, it is an ego class. You play it cuz you can tag more people then anyone else (SB with piercing arrows/LB Barrage/traps… 5 sec later and you got the entire enemy zerg tagged, 5 seconds after that, again, your running for your life)

Rangers are a backbone of the zerg, due to ONE thing. they have undeniably the most OP waterfield ingame. The size, duration and healing power it grants dwarfs any other class. They can also lay down a decently sized firefield. So for blast-finisher support they are great. Mind you, not AS great as Guardians, which is THE most useful class in WvW.

But that in mind, my list would look like this:
1 – Guardian
2 – Ele
3 – Warrior
4 – Ranger (if played right, which most rangers aren’t doing)
5 – Necro
6 – mesmer (they got portals and invis, that’s it)
7 – engi
8 – thief (too much ego class)

I wouldn’t rate rangers that highly; the duration mostly matters in healing people on flame rams or when you have to stand in a circle. During other battles, the zerg is normally constantly moving. On restacks in the midst of battle, in my experience, the zerg runs through a blast finishers quickly and are back on the move. Using it in the middle of the fight (not during a restack) might be better but it’s hard to tell how effective it is since that means you are up front where it’ll matter the most and where you can’t see anything due to effects and circles everywhere. I find the ranger AoE immobilizes and the like far more clutch in helping to strip boons by keeping them in null fields/wells.

In any case, I agree mostly with Castaliea.3156 though I’d rate mesmers a bit higher. Feedback/null fields/veil are always useful despite your clones/phantasms not surviving long enough to even shatter due to AoE. I’d view portals the same way if I knew where they went half of the time.

Once/if they buff weakness, thieves might be bumped up for zerg fights too even if they are specced for roaming.

I think he was commenting on the part about thieves and how many cluster bombs they can shoot off rather than about rangers.

Yes, I’ve “bought” non-cosmetic items. My first “purchases” (trading with gold to gems) was digital collectors upgrade, full bank unlock and enough gems to buy character slots for one of each class. This probably isn’t what you meant even though it fits. Instead, here’s some anecdotal stuff: it was fairly profitable to buy black lion salvage kits in the past and use them so that is what I did. Other players did too.

As of late, I’ve grabbed mostly cosmetic things such as minipets and fine transmutation stones though I’m not too big on most of the current selection of minipets with no offense to Anet’s mini making machine team. (Please give me a Kuunavang again.)

As for some of the items, I can understand your point. I’m not sure if Anet is expecting people to buy them in bulk and instead; they give value to these items by simply assigning it arbitrarily. The only definitive answer you can get is from Anet and I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for them to divulge digital store sales in such detail.

You mean boon hate/stripping isn’t available and wasn’t made more accessible? Man, they should really do something about that even if it counters a play style. Oh wait…

Then you mention you are mesmer yourself and I have to wonder, do you not use null field at all? Well, I guess as a primary portal mesmer, it might be hard to fit on your bar but…

When in a larger group and you have several veils and mass invisibilities available, 30 seconds is probably necessary. It might need a reduction in time, but that’s something we’ll come to see if anyone actually starts using it on a normal basis. I remain skeptical that this will be a huge game changer for thieves and mesmer stealth resulting in their overnight disappearance. Instead, I believe no one will bother with this trap later on when people get up there with world ranks and AC mastery though I’m horrible with predictions.

I didn’t read everything in detail but I don’t think you quite explained how abuse would be handled. The rewards for escorting caravans was removed because of this and eventually evolved to what we have today.

Slamz.5376:

I don’t see why anyone wants to change arrowcarts.

I’m actually enjoying having to THINK again. Now we have to do sneaky things like distract in one area and speedbuild in another to counter defensive arrow carts. And zergballing doors almost never works anymore — even one guy on an arrow cart is a threat now.

Arrow cart nerfs will just be a return to zergballing. “We hate zergballs, fix it, ANet! Wait! Now we can’t zergball! We want zergballs back!”

ANet just needs to pick a side to support. Are they pro-zergball or pro-strategy?

Can’t be both.

Zergs still happen. Arrow carts actually promote the use of zergs and has nothing to do with strategy as opposed to placing/building siege quickly and properly especially when you have to place a lot more siege down. If the opponent has a couple of sentries with arrow carts/traits, a smaller offense group is out of luck. They will most likely have to retreat despite going against 1 to 2 people. If not, the few defenders should be able to hold the attackers off till a reinforcements arrive. Either way, zerging is pretty much the solution with a heavier emphasis on siege. More people = more supply = more siege = more effective.

I’m pretty sure sneaky things have been done way before the arrow cart buff but it may be different on your tier (I sincerely doubt this.) Previous posters have mentioned that increased objectives that actually matter would help limit zerg sizes. This is the route that Anet should be proceeding towards in my opinion. Well, I don’t really think adding the orb back in it’s original state would be a good idea but you should get the gist – constant multiple objectives means attention needs to be directed in different directions. If the objectives are important, people can still zerg and focus on a single objective but end up losing overall due to the singular focus. (insert GW1’s alliance battles) This isn’t the current situation, especially with the arrow cart buff.

Personally, I haven’t seen a huge diversity in tactics and rather meta knowledge being thrown about such as placement of siege, orange swords, etc. Not exactly thrilling and groundbreaking. What’s worse is arrow carts are popping up in open field combat and is generally a low risk/high reward choice. Really tactical right?

In the zerg, you will want a trap build of some sort to be semi-effective. You can still use a bunker equipment setup for this (apothecary) to increase survivability here but your fears aren’t misplaced – you’ll still melt in a zvz fight as a bunker ranger without external boon sources no matter what. It’s not like rangers are the only class to have this issue in zvz if that makes anything better. On the positive side with a trap build, your immobilizes/chill/entangling roots/whatever can really help stop any tactical movements by the enemy commander and decide the fight. This is far more evident on smaller scale fights however so you may feel limited on the real large scale engagements.

Unfortunately, out of the zerg and roaming, you’ll probably want the bunker setup without traps which uses a different trait setup with a larger emphasis on pets, regen, and vigor on heal. The utilities are also different of course. Honestly, I don’t think apothecary with condition damage doesn’t make a huge difference here if you are running gs and s/d. You’ll have maul (3 stacks of bleeding) and poison evades afaik but you may want to check with hard numbers which I’m not sure anyone has actually done. If you run a torch, then you’ll get more use out of condition damage so feel free to go cleric’s if you don’t use a torch and save a lot of money. There’s a build in the ranger forums that can get you started off in the right direction which is fairly different from the BM build in this thread since you don’t go down the nature line as far. Variants can be based on your pet choices etc.

You won’t get anywhere near the same performance as a pre-nerf d/d bunker ele with the bunker ranger. I’m almost sure you know all of this though and are focused on a one size fits all build.

I agree with this fully, especially with the recent changes. Having to tick siege, run supply/repair, sentry and other things has become a full-time job with very little recognition in terms of in-game rewards. This really shouldn’t be the case but I realize it’s ripe for potential abuse otherwise. Personally, I think it’s good that they have started to reward repairing things (though it causes other issues such as taking supply) but what happens during the longer down periods during sentry duty and the like? The game should be actively encouraging people to play and not make some people feel the need to stand around in an empty base just in case 30 minutes later, one of the opposing worlds actually decides to engage.

It’s a game. While I’m sure there are people who enjoy some or all of these aspects, I imagine the majority of the people who do take up these duties would rather be doing something else especially during the slow periods. At least, that’s how I feel most of the time when I do a supply camp run to repair things especially when you have to do it alone and you need quite a bit of repair. Tedious, not so fun, may or may not be challenging but necessary. (Better) Systems should be put in place to help alleviate some the monotonous stuff so no one ever feels obligated to do so without ever replacing the player entirely. Maybe others will disagree and think the current state of things are just fine – that’s great and I’m not trying to shove my opinion as the correct one as long as they are the ones doing the drone work and not me. I’ll just say thank you here and continue on my way.

A bit of an aside – I remember a post on gw2guru about teleporting to the commander. It got some negative replies and I didn’t pay much attention outside of instantly remember the Battlefield series (back when they had a commander still.) Despite the genre differences, I honestly think there’s a lot that can be applied at least in theory (i.e. not the respawn beacon since GW2 doesn’t use a ticket system.) In any case, large changes now may be unfeasible due to the work involved.

Pretty much shelved my ranger pretty much since the class is not all that wanted outside of an extra SAB toon and random DEs where no one can complain anyway. While I’m not sure exactly what they are planning to do, I’m not quite sure what they can do with pets that wouldn’t make them somewhat overpowered even in PvE but here’s to hoping. I’m halfway expecting any PVE ranger build to require 30 marks in BM to be semi-effective though I guess some people might say that’s the current situation anyway.

Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of the pet entirely and get a straight up stat boost and the devs already mentioned that they weren’t looking into this. I still somewhat disagree with this.

In GW1, pets were limited to the ranger secondary/class as well but at least you weren’t handicapped if you decided not to use one. In fact, the only time I remember pets getting serious use was with RAO and IWAY. The latter required your pets to be dead and the former was either gimmicky or PvE (with AB skills) so I’m not too sure why people mention rangers and pets all the time in relation to GW as opposed to splinter/barrage (the horror) or cripshot/BA/magebane.

Man, I miss cripshot. Yes, I realize that GW2’s ranger shortbow tries really hard to mimic the versatility and it’s arguably our best weapon. It’s still much weaker in comparison.

….wait, did I figure it out? Are we getting IWAY? That would be hilarious.

@Higmenson:
You know, you’d be a lot more believable arguing your case about rangers if you didn’t make wrong blanket statements that all people who are complaining that shortbow was nerfed to be slower is only feeling that way due to the patch notes. If you have used QZ at all with a shortbow, whether it be for a condition build or a power/prec/crit build, you should have noticed straight away even if you didn’t play ranger much at all. The thread you made on rangers building condition spec had some largely questionable posts as well especially combined with the post you made in this thread.

I’ll leave whether or not shortbows needed to be nerfed to the thread dedicated on it but I couldn’t keep quiet when accuse other people and make incorrect statements at the same time.

@HappinessFactory: I think exploits weren’t supposed to be posted on the community forum and you are rather supposed to be using the in game ticket system via Support > submit a bug or something to that nature.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they have special skins. Errol’s coat looks like the PvE exotic duelist coat armor. Someone said on the forums that Shiro’s armor makes you look like a ninja (?) but there were no pictures provided.

As the topic states, I’m looking for pictures of the above items and how they appear in game on the male and female characters. I was fortunate enough to get a picture of Errol’s coat (and the full gear on a female character.)

Thanks in advance.

I might be misunderstanding how RaO works (or how it is supposed to work) but when switching pets with RaO active, might doesn’t increase for the player despite attacks made by the pet. I’m not sure if the pet still receives might stacks.