Guild Wars 2

Here is what I’ve been running since the patch. Same deal about the site not being current with the patch, but the traits are in correct positions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBjYDbkSFaVxKWwkF4axQiQ5l+q36fAkszMfuNdoXxd3A-TFSBQBP4CAQJ1fQ5BBAAPBA+t/gZUCeFlf4R3gogwI-w

Boon build with an emphasis on high self-quickness uptime. Haven’t had much survivability problems beyond my own skill shortcomings due to the high protection uptime as well. I left the food blank since the boon food is different now (I use fried golden dumplings for 100Concentration and might on crit but no reason you couldn’t take an offensive food if you prefer). You could also change the pets I suppose, but Moa’s are good for party support with their area heal and boon skills.

“We Heal as One” does 2k less healing but because of the way it works, it is as good as another use of a protection skill or quickness skill if you make sure to do your rotation correctly. You can also be at 25 stax of might alone for 3/4 of the time.

If no ranger in your party is running spotter, then it is likely you will be expected to swap to it.

Personally I’d like to see them fought in this order: (Bubbles?) Primordus, Jormag and then Kralkatorik.

The bubbles campaign would be an equal threat to all of Tyria, but mostly focus on the ocean/coastal areas and lions arch as the main city under threat. This campaign would enlist the Tengu to help, preferably as a playable race (since they are in the effected area). I know underwater combat has been largely abandoned (and that no one likes it) but Anet is going to have to deal with bubbles at some point in some manner. After this expansion NPC’s from Cantha would begin cropping up in future living world updates and would build story over the next expansions/releases to eventually lead into a Canthan story/expansion at the end of the Elder Dragon saga.

We don’t HAVE to be swimming through the expansion from start to finish, and no one wants that, but bubbles has to be killed in-world. The one possible dodge would be to have bubbles be ‘last’ and actually killed by the Canthan heros as a prelude into a Canthan expansion after the other elder dragons are killed.

I would put Primordus next which would be an Asuran/Dwarf centric story and would take place largely in the depths and would explore current dwarf status, and possibly take us to the Ring of Fire islands (which are now accessible after bubbles is out of the picture). The story would possibly contain a betrayal by the Asura for national gain to the detriment of the other races (echoing the betrayal of the Mursaat in previous cycles).

With the death of Primordus, Jormag begins to extend it’s power, bringing on an ice age, with small differences to zones nearby the shiverpeaks and of course giving us access to the northern shiverpeaks and the Norn homeland areas. The story would be Norn centric and possibly introduce the Kodan as playable, or at least bringing them into the fight in a stronger role.

With Kralkatorik being the last dragon, there can be some nice themes of mistrust and betrayal against the charr: they have sacrificed and fought dragons and, as they are a militant race, they would likely have borne the brunt of the casualties — they are all soldiers afterall. It would be nice to have a fleshed out story where the other races initially do not support the Charr in their fight against kralk, instead looking to rebuild their own cities and leave the Charr to the elder dragon (who is mostly a problem in their lands). The problem with this is that kralk is more in the crystal desert, so perhaps there would have to be a Gold legion tie in to give us the Blood legion homelands area and parts of the crystal desert (perhaps the shamans now worship Kralk as their diety?)

Finally, with the dragons dead, we’d move into Cantha, possibly with a new playable race such as the Naga who are indiginous to Cantha and deal with the new Canthan empire, then after that move into Elona to take Palawa Joko out.

And there’s the next…. 12-15 years of guildwars content

Uh, just fyi, the chest train in silverwastes is by far and away the best source of Empyreal/bloodstone/Dragonite.

There are several things thieves can bring to raids, but you do have to build for it.

Venomshare condi-Daredevil is actually quite viable (but perhaps not top tier).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAqY4ansMBNmiNNBGNB8PhFZCjLH0D2BzdwQYJUbPNFCAA-TFiGAB4rGCuPBAAOJA5qfY+9H6V1D9UCqkyPSBAxYL-w

You have solid condi dps and you can contribute massively to breakbar destruction via Basi, distracting daggers and headshot. The mobility also is hugely important for Vale Guardian and Gorseval (on-demand imobo is also nice for Gorseval, but it is a very short duration)

Thieves are not bad in raids. Just maaaaybe not a zerker roaming build.

You get the points but not hte completion. I have the same issue

velmeister.4187:

They need to add some type of reward for doing hero points more than once. The issue is that many people will simply farm those hero points non-stop unless ANET somehow limits this. Not sure really what can be done other than reducing all champs to vets. Kinda bummer for ANET as they wanted the experience to be epic.

There IS a reward to doing a hero challenge more than once. It isn’t more HP though. You get event rewards in terms of xp, karma and (newly added in HoT) Gear, usually consisting of at least one zone-specific bag and a small number of zone-specific keys.

Also: I really hope they don’t. Not that I like fighting champs solo by any means, that can be changed. I mean they bugged out Treacherous paths HP for me and now it doesn’t give map-completion (even though I got the HP from it, it is still marked as ‘unfinished’). If overhauling the rest of the HP’s will introduce more bugs like this, I’ll take my chances with the champs.

Javonovich.5280:

What is this face roll build that everyone is using to dominate the jungle? Bc I sure could use some help!

Here’s what I’ve been running, and it is pretty face-rolly:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnMbCtbidbCu0A0bilaBT6HM2CYxbxy4ZEqrFAmBA-TRSBABUcRAsUFEa2fgS1PQTJYXK/wT3wCHBAAeAAkCYUhWA-e

Build can self-stack to 25 might, has 100% crit-chance in boss fights (aka, have fury and the target survives long enough to get 25 stax of vuln) and both Gravedigger and Ghastly Claws will go for easily 10k on most targets. Survivability is pretty decent with 2.7k armor (with minions out) and solid control effects (CttB, YaaW, Fear armor) and retaliation just turns the hordes attacking you back on them.

It is great I might refine it a bit more down the road, but it is serving me very very well so far.

Witchking.4380:

Tineks.9275:

Very annoying and boring fight not even close to battle with Zaithan. It look like game from 2008 fight not imprest Come on Anet you could do it like way better. And one rapair station would be nice. I ended up naked plus restarting if you die is annoying as hell to start everything again and do all boring staff again …

Or you know…you can actually do the content of Dragon’s Stand where you fight his physical form above where the story takes place and beat him. This boss has the best fight ever created. Please play it before you complain about him.

IMO the fight against the Jungle Dragon Lieutenant (the one that attacks the pale tree) was better in a single instance fight — aka, disregarding the fights against Paletree/Canach/Eir

While I have several negative things to say about this encounter, I have to applaud Anet for how they presented the fight. In the game there are 1000’s of other players running around, but we are each our own protagonist. By having an instanced fight against the ‘mind’ and a map-wide fight against the ‘body’ you get your cake and eat it too.

Every player is the ‘slayer of Mordremoth’ because they were the one that went into the Dream and destroyed him, while the rest of the population was struggling against the ‘body’ and distracting him.

I also enjoyed the mechanics of the fight, it was refreshing and having several stages made it feel more enjoyable.

This is the end of the positive things I have to say about the Mordremoth fight.

My smallest complaint is about the model of Mordremoth — It did nothing for me, he looked like a fat bowser without a turtle shell, to the point that my friends and I have taken to calling him Koopa-King. I know the fight takes place in the Dream and that this model is used to represent a ‘self-image’ of Mordremoth or even just a form that the Player Characters can perceive. I don’t have an issue with the ‘small size’ of the boss, as there are several things you can do mechanically and combat wise with a smaller (and humanoid) target.

I would like to say, however, that Anet does have a decent track record with four-legged enemies in Living World and the previous story steps in HoT. The Jungle Dragon Lieutenant that attacks the Pale Tree was a very good fight, that really felt action-centric — you felt as if you really were being hounded by a dragon in that encounter. I can’t help but think the fight may have been more ‘epic’ if they had followed this model, but at the same time perhaps they wanted to take a break since they have done that so often (Lieutenant, Vinetooth, Faolain). This really boils down to a personal preference, but I did not like the model for Mordremoth.

Next: BUGS. Oh good lord. How did this not get polish? This is the single most important fight of the entire bloody expansion (storywise), how did this not get the resources to nip the myriad of bugs that plague it? I personally experienced only three, but I’ve heard of a few more. The one’s I experienced were: Reality Rifts spawning in mid-air and being unusable, Pale Tree disappearing from the arena totally but having courtiers spawn and spell effects play (for 10+ minutes) and the final Rift ‘overload’ just not working. I also experienced some difficulty with the updrafts apparently not working but I’m not sure if this was a L2P issue or not.

All-in-all this fight was heavily tainted by the frustration of these bugs (some people have also reported crashing between cutscenes). The fight itself was not too difficult and the mechanics were novel and fairly interesting, but being forced to restart over and over by encountering bug after bug after bug totally ruined the experience for me. Please Anet, if there is one part of the story that you can choose to give extra polish and ensure it is bug-free, make it the climax! I have other problems with the story of HoT, but I dont’ want to derail.

TL;DR: Koopa King needs some TLC.

Knighthonor.4061:

FoN seems to lock Impossible odds out from being used for some reason….

I believe this is due to how the energy degen works. You have a base +5 regen and can go to a max of -5 degen. Impossible odds is -10 so you can only have it and no other source of degen on at one time. I am not sure of this, but it would be easy to test out by trying to have all 5 of the legendary dragon skills active (utilities + elite = 10 so you shouldn’t be able to use the heal as well).

That said, I don’t doubt that it is entirely intentional to keep from stacking quickness that will last till after the ability is turned off. Though I think the lower up-time of Impossible odds due to the increased degen of FoN would probably balance it out.

Atrabelos.7584:

Oberon Vex.1389:

Atrabelos.7584:

Windsagio.1340:

I’m stuck between being amazed at your classist prejudices and remembering that most rangers seem to still be in Point Blank Shot Meta.

Still, the problem isn’t rangers, it’s bad rangers.

Class-stacking in an event like this is bad, period, and thus it’s bad that Rangers are more invested in this event than anyone else. A surplus of Thieves or Elementalists or Warriors (well, maybe not Guardians) would be about as bad. The only classism here is in saying that Ranger is an undertuned profession – low DPS and low party support outside Druid does not make for a good class in tough events like these. The fact that bearbows still exist only hurts more.

Plus it’s not as if the Ranger community would particularly mind the Electric Wyvern being moved elsewhere. Every Ranger main I’ve spoken to hates it.

As a ranger main, I’d take offense if I wasn’t just tired of this ignorant position. Rangers as a class are not low Dps. They are not Low party support. Even the “bearbow” can have reason beyond a bad player — Blackbear+wilting strike is a very high uptime of weakness, Murrellow can provide a on-demand poison field for condi-specs or again, providing weakness via combos, and Brownbear can help nearby players that don’t have the sense for condi-cleanse. They are not my choice, but there is a reason (and place) to use every pet in the roster.

Ranger’s may be outclassed by some other professions in some forms of damage, but it is NOT to the degree that a ranger is a wasted slot in an event/situation; and in fact rangers DO excel at long range damage, which is very helpful in several events/PvE boss encounters. Condi ranger is very viable. Power ranger is also very viable (guess what? Longbow is our power ranged weapon by design, so get used to seeing it).

With the various pets, spirits and warhorn, Ranger is a great source of MANY boons to the group including (perhaps most notably) fury. Regen, protection, swiftness and moderate stacks of might are all very easily handed out, in addition to a flat precision buff just for breathing. Oh, and they can maintain 20+ stax of vuln on target by themselves. And the ranger —if he or she so chooses-- can provide all of this support in a single build, at the same time, using only core ranger Specs, WITH MARGINAL PERSONAL DPS LOSS.

Well, at the very least, your advice is fairly decent – for 5-man dungeons, when classes aren’t being stacked.

But that’s irrelevant, and I’m not as dismissive and ignorant of the class as you want me to be. One of the class in a 5-man can provide a good amount of party support with their unique buffs, and they can keep up enough DPS-wise by bolstering the party with their traits. But with class-stacking in play, Rangers can no longer contribute effectively with Spotter, Grace of the Land, or even spirits when 3 of the 10 people they’re around also have it. Other classes have this issue too, but not quite as badly.

Not only that, Ranger’s access to group might/fury is terrible compared to a good support Warrior/Guardian/Mesmer/Elementalist, is generally gated behind Call of the Wild, and requires you to run either axe or sword mainhand for permanent uptime with traits (the first gimps your damage entirely and the second roots you in melee without a dodge). And Ranger’s protection uptime is laughable compared to what a Guardian can get simply by spamming hammer AA and providing group-wide benefits with shouts, nevermind that they lack group stability/quickness/alacrity entirely.

Again: if you agree that Rangers don’t play nice with each other buff-wise (which is a total given in zerg content), everything else is window dressing. I’d still argue that Rangers aren’t high-DPS or high-support, but that doesn’t matter. All I’m proposing is either gating other profession skills/mechanics to be exclusively attained within the Dragon’s Domain so that everyone is more interested in the map and pugs end up more balanced composition-wise, or moving the Electric Wyvern elsewhere. If either of the above happens, class stacking goes down, Rangers can more effectively contribute to their group because they aren’t competing with everyone else interested in snagging a wyvern, and the window for success grows larger.

Why do you believe this is objectionable?

You assert that ALL players at these events are rangers? That isn’t true at all. If rangers in a 5 man party are a benefit while running party support, then clearly 20% rangers in a zerg could be of similar benefit, though this would be a little clunky depending on positioning. Also: not every ranger runs party support, so even if two rangers are next to each other, one or the other may not have slotted spotter, or be belting out boons, you can do one and not the other.

As for grace of the land? are you seriously gonna knock a free % damage buff? I’ll concede that while applying it the druid is not contributing to his personal dps, but giving 5 people a huge dps steroid massively makes up for this. And this ‘overlapping’ is only a concern if you are actually hitting 5 targets in every heal — only Lunar Impact is large enough to consistently allow this.

You claim to know rangers but apparently you don’t realize that they can provide 100 uptime of fury, regen, swiftness, might and (with blue moa and stone spirit) virtually 100% uptime of protection — while still providing 100% of his personal dps and not just sticking to auto attacks like a hammer guardian. Call of the Wild is a great boon giving skill, but it is NOT our only applicator of fury, there are two pets that grant perma fury to the surrounding area. Furthermore, you do not have to camp your support set — you could do the reasonable thing and use your support abilities and then switch back to your damage set quickly… And might? One ranger can permanently maintain 9 stax of might to the party, and burst it to 14 for 90% of the time.

I have to concede alacrity (after all only chronomancers have that, so I’m not even sure why you brought it up), stability and quickness, but surely you have to know that no one class can provide EVERYTHING at the highest level to the entire party. That isn’t the point, the point is that rangers DO provide more than an average amount of offensive party support. The other thing, again, is that not every player in the zerg a ranger.

I would enjoy being able to find the new pets in non-gated situations, but there is zero reason to lock other professions mechanics/skills behind events at this point. If they went with that as a design decision as a way to unlock things, that would be different, but at this stage this would be a terrible idea. Do you really think that locking the mechanic change for your e-spec behind this event would go over well? Mesmers can’t time split without completing this? Berzerkers can’t go berzerk??

What it really boils down to, is that you are upset that the group you were a part of failed an event. Whether your accusation of rangers is true or not (I think it is more likely due to people being unfamiliar with the mechanics/requirements of the fight because the xpac was released four days ago , but if you want to blame a specific community of the game go ahead) they have every right to participate in content when and where and HOW they wish. If they want to do the event on a ranger instead of a different class, that is their business, and it is unreasonable of you or anyone else to demand that they not play how they wish so that you can. Worst case scenario wait a few days for the mad rush of rangers getting their pets goes down. This ‘problem’ will sort itself out over time without Anet having to change anything.

Atrabelos.7584:

Windsagio.1340:

I’m stuck between being amazed at your classist prejudices and remembering that most rangers seem to still be in Point Blank Shot Meta.

Still, the problem isn’t rangers, it’s bad rangers.

Class-stacking in an event like this is bad, period, and thus it’s bad that Rangers are more invested in this event than anyone else. A surplus of Thieves or Elementalists or Warriors (well, maybe not Guardians) would be about as bad. The only classism here is in saying that Ranger is an undertuned profession – low DPS and low party support outside Druid does not make for a good class in tough events like these. The fact that bearbows still exist only hurts more.

Plus it’s not as if the Ranger community would particularly mind the Electric Wyvern being moved elsewhere. Every Ranger main I’ve spoken to hates it.

As a ranger main, I’d take offense if I wasn’t just tired of this ignorant position. Rangers as a class are not low Dps. They are not Low party support. Even the “bearbow” can have reason beyond a bad player — Blackbear+wilting strike is a very high uptime of weakness, Murrellow can provide a on-demand poison field for condi-specs or again, providing weakness via combos, and Brownbear can help nearby players that don’t have the sense for condi-cleanse. They are not my choice, but there is a reason (and place) to use every pet in the roster.

Ranger’s may be outclassed by some other professions in some forms of damage, but it is NOT to the degree that a ranger is a wasted slot in an event/situation; and in fact rangers DO excel at long range damage, which is very helpful in several events/PvE boss encounters. Condi ranger is very viable. Power ranger is also very viable (guess what? Longbow is our power ranged weapon by design, so get used to seeing it).

With the various pets, spirits and warhorn, Ranger is a great source of MANY boons to the group including (perhaps most notably) fury. Regen, protection, swiftness and moderate stacks of might are all very easily handed out, in addition to a flat precision buff just for breathing. Oh, and they can maintain 20+ stax of vuln on target by themselves. And the ranger —if he or she so chooses-- can provide all of this support in a single build, at the same time, using only core ranger Specs, WITH MARGINAL PERSONAL DPS LOSS.

I just want to put my own opinion here, as another small guild player (I do belong to a couple massive guilds too, but my core friends/family have a small guild as well). Our group had 5 players and we were able to take the guild hall. In one try. Now I am not saying this to brag or to intentionally demean anyone, but I do want to say that it is entirely possible to do the guild hall capture with a very small group — and perhaps it is even easier to do so than with higher numbers. Our group consisted of two warriors, a guardian, a thief and myself on my newly created rev. We only failed one maw spawn, and this was chiefly due to an unfortunate pairing of several knock-down centric mobs and a very confined space in which to do the event (inside one of the buildings). After this small set back we had no issue.

The thing I want to convey is: we wanted it harder. We wanted to be able to do it with our small core group as a mark or achievement, but I know that at least I wanted to experience failure the first time. Maybe the second time. I wanted it to be something that my friends and I could strive for and eventually achieve. I viewed it as a potential benchmark of raids. I was disappointed. I wanted to have to learn mechanics and do something efficiently in order to succeed, but it was a fairly straight forward “dps these three mob types quickly” and with a little coordination we were able to do that easily, again, on the first try. There were no new mechanics or environmental objects to utilize and I think that this was a missed opportunity.

Overall I am very happy with the expansion, but this is one of the two things that I wish were different (the other being that several hero challenges require groups to complete — NOT that I dislike the # hero points for E-specs, just that the difficulty of some of these points is too high to achieve alone). Coming from another “small guild” I know that I wish that these guild-hall missions were harder. Maybe I am in the minority in this, but it is my opinion.

Edit: minor spelling.

The elixir setup and elite were meant as part of a general build. I did go on about group dynamics so perhaps I should have made it have more purity of purpose in terms of a ‘raidbuild’. The elixirs were for defensive use against players and the supply crate again for against players. Your changes make a lot of sense for a raid slot, and thanks for pointing out AB — as engi is only an alt of mine, I had overlooked the elixir gun as a supporting option. I’ve never like the grenade kit in terms of play, though I’ll have to concede that is a fine kit — at least by general consensus. I may remove it from my actual build in-game purely for my own enjoyment, but I understand it may be a better option in the end.

Hey, I’m not an engi main, but with HoT around the corner (and scrapper being in the top 3 of my favorite E-specs) I thought I’d look around at some of the options for builds. While theorycrafting I noticed that the coefficients on the hammer are ridiculously high (at least on the builder I use).

Quick warnings before the build: I don’t know if the builder is accurate,. I don’t usually go into the maths myself so I may have errors. This build looks decent on paper — I have an engi alt, but I wouldn’t dare say I know how to play an engineer to it’s fullest potential. Also, this build is focused rather heavily on dealing high direct damage. It does have some decent healing thanks to the three leaps in a water field, and alright condi-removal, but again, not being an engi main I’m not aware of any tips or tricks that may be more efficient. On that note, I’d love some feedback on how to improve it.

The build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhqrY9VwALw6FLTGFY1ldhE9bn3/tYzUABAA-TFCBABHcBAqU1nzUCilyPAeAAWqGQR7PknOgAAHA/+bA48zP/8zPvf/93f/93SBMqIL-w

This build has good damage (according the site, which again, may not be accurate with launch build) even without might stacks/bloodlust, and has 100% crit chance thanks to traits and fury. The solo uptime of fury is moderate, probably enough for short 1v1 fights, but the build should shine in group play specifically in dungeons and perhaps other ‘endgame’ content like raids and fractals. (we don’t know much of the content of raids so it is hard to tell really). In these situations you would have full might and bloodlust, which pushes the damage through the roof.

Assuming that the builder is correct, if we take it’s skill damage against a ‘heavily armored target’ with 2600 armor we are dealing 5670 base damage with thunderclap (over 6s duration of the skill) with full might and bloodlust stacks.

Let’s add the multipliers.

We have 100% crit chance, so our crit dmg is a straight damage modifier of 2.1567
In a group we’ll have 25 stax of vuln so 1.25
1.1 from the hammer trait
And again because we are in a group let’s say 6 active condi’s for “modified ammunition” for a modifier of 1.12

This gives us a 3.321 damage modifier. That means our thunderclap is doing 18831 damage over 6s or 3138dps from a singular skill.

Shock shield does 13051 damage over 2s for an additional 6525dps WHILE BLOCKING.

Rocket charge does 3 hits over 1.75s totaling to 15651 damage or 8943 dps.

Electro-whirl does 2 hits over 1s totaling to 11484 damage/dps.

Autos deal 13569 per rotation (over 1.5s) for 9046dps

These are all on paper, they do not account for aftercast.
———————————-
On weaknesses: this build is pretty squishy. It has very little armor and an average healthpool and only one stunbreak (two if you count a 25% health threshold trait). It is not perfect. It just looks like something I want to try — and again the builder may or may not reflect the balance we’ll see at launch of HoT.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Oberon Vex.1389:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

He’s been there since around the start of BWE3.

and yes, it’s hard to tell if it’s their attempt to show that they want to involve ranger more, or a joke about how rangers are currently being played :P

This is something I just don’t get. Longbow is one of our best power-based weapons (and THE best ranged power weapon). I don’t understand why other players ridicule the ranger class for using it. The closest people get is complaining about D/P thieves for the cheese, but it is no where near the stigma of a ranger with a bow. Why don’t we see deriding comments about a different class using an optimal weapon for a certain playstyle?

It was a joke, lol. if you look at my signature you’d see that I actually own Kudzu. I own it because I love longbow. I said it’s a joke about how rangers are currently being played because people are using ONLY longbow (e.g. not weapon swapping) and not paying attention to their pet, both of which are extremely bad habits that a lot of rangers have.

And since I’m not being clear enough, let me state that I was joking! I don’t think A-Net is abrasive enough to make jokes about the state of their classes.

I’m sorry if you thought my comment was specifically directed at you, it wasn’t. But the fact remains that the community at large does view ranger longbow to be something to be mocked — the fact that even a longbow aficionado like yourself will make self-deprecating jokes is proof enough of how widespread it is. My post was meant as a general frustration of the ranger-stigma problem, though I can understand how that might not have been self-evident.

No.

With the current spell effects and even the lore behind the skills, Ventari should be the sustain healer. You can move the tablet every 2s according to CD, realistically it is more like every 3 once you factor in cast/aftercast — and the main heal “natural harmony” is also on a 2s cd. While you cannot maintain energy by spamming skill 8 “natural harmony” you CAN do so while spamming #6. As to the ‘lore’ reason: ventari’s tablet teaches a philosophy of acceptance and compassion that would engender a drive to persevere through hardship (aka sustain healing) rather than instantly right it (aka burst healing).

Secondly, while we don’t know the specifics of raids beyond the first encounter, it is likely that burst healing will be useful in some of the harder fights. In this vein, I would much prefer rangers (who up till now have been excluded by those afflicted by a ‘meta-centric mindset’) to be the ones to fill that role. I am not saying no other class should be capable of healing on par with the druid, nor am I saying that I am 100% satisfied with the healing capabilities or lore of the druid. I’m saying that in light of how useful Revenants/Heralds already have shown themselves to be, perhaps throwing a bone to a class that has been (arguably) underdeveloped for 3+ years might be in order.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

He’s been there since around the start of BWE3.

and yes, it’s hard to tell if it’s their attempt to show that they want to involve ranger more, or a joke about how rangers are currently being played :P

This is something I just don’t get. Longbow is one of our best power-based weapons (and THE best ranged power weapon). I don’t understand why other players ridicule the ranger class for using it. The closest people get is complaining about D/P thieves for the cheese, but it is no where near the stigma of a ranger with a bow. Why don’t we see deriding comments about a different class using an optimal weapon for a certain playstyle?

Why would it ever be cheaper…. Anet has made some questionable decisions during the development of HoT, but to betray those players that put their faith in the game they love by making the pre-purchase price higher than the retail price… That would be suicide.

I’m assuming this is a troll thread, because there is no reason whatsoever that the OP’s premise would be true.

Lunar Impact needs to be tweaked. The healing amount is very nice in appropriate gear, but the daze duration is a bit excessive considering “Moment of Clarity” makes it 6s.

A 6s, AoE daze is pretty strong, especially when you realize it is on kitten cooldown. I would suggest either shaving down the initial daze duration to 1.5s or increasing it’s cooldown to 10s.

niconori.7235:

Oberon Vex.1389:

Yeah. My point was there are 16 stax of might that the ranger can maintain without WHaO on a permanent basis.

5 from JG stalker (Naturemagic + Beastmastery = 22s duration on a 20s CD)
3 from Call of the Wild Warhorn (Windborne Notes + Strength runes = 24s duration on a 24s cd)
3 from Clarion Bond (24s duration 24s CD)
2 from Sigil of battle (20s duration on a 9s CD)
3 Zephyr’s Speed (15s duration on a 15s CD)

These are all maintainable with moderate build sacrifice, before using WHaO to double the stax for their duration, meaning you could have had permanent 25 stax of might with the “old” WHaO (or close enough to not matter).

Sort of proved your argument for you, but I’ll butt out if you want…

Sorry no offense but it seems like you don’t play a ranger.

If you want to take into account all these things you cannot do them separately.

If you have Zephyr’s Speed, you are swapping pets it means,
-your Jungle stalker 5 stacks might is on a 32sec cooldown
-Clarion bond is then on a 32 sec cooldown too.

if you are using warhorn 5,
-your sigil of battles are 12 sec cooldown each on average. coz you are waiting for that 24 sec cooldown on warhorn 5

Now it seems to me like all the might duration are shorter than their cooldown now, so no perma 25 stacks.

Realllly…. So the fact that Ranger is my main since launch and my first lvl80 has nothing to do with the situation. Some stranger I don’t know and that doesn’t know me clearly is an authority on my play habits. I don’t care if you believe me. I don’t need you to. I am a ranger main.

My point was that, ON PAPER, you was possible to maintain 25 stax of might. Which you could have. As Puck intelligently pointed out, it is not viable against other players. minor to moderate condi-cleanse could be worked in via Signet of Renewal, Sigil of Purity, Sigil of Generosity, and Shake it off from brown bear. Not ideal, but optional, and perhaps a fun gimmick build to run at best.

This will be my last post in this thread because the rediculous angst and general vitriol isn’t worth the time it takes to read. In fact I feel sorry for the poor dev that has to wade through this muck. I will say this: as much as I am disappointed in Anet for how they have handled this blunder, I am much more disappointed in my fellow rangers for how they have reacted. Very few people here have forwarded anything of value but many have shown how base and petulant the ranger community can be — to the point that I wonder why anyone would care.

EDIT: Zephyr’s Speed is on a 15s cd. With Windborne Notes, Clarion Bond is on a 24s CD. Again, if you can’t bear that 2s of not having 25 stax of might… then deal with it i guess… Throw in Strength of the pack, or brutish seals or a sigil of strenght… The fact is Ranger could have had 25stax for a really long time….

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

If it only lasts one rotation it isn’t permanent. That’s essentially the exact opposite of permanent’s meaning. Your initial argument was that the Ranger could maintain permanent stacks of max might due to WHaO. There are certainly ways for a Ranger to get high stacks of might but this isn’t due to WHaO. We’re getting into the land of shifting goalposts here so let’s bring it back to the original point: There was no reason to put a 3 stack might cap on WHaO. It was not the problem with the skill.

You simply ignored all of the other sources I gave you evidence for, I am not shifting the goal posts. I demonstrated how to maintain 8 base stacks permanently with an occasional spike up from Mighty Roar or teammates stacking might as well.

Teammates stacking might on you is completely irrelevant to the question. They can stack might on you all day without WHaO. It has nothing to do with WHaO. As for 8 stacks of might? It’s nothing. 16 stacks of might? That’s a good start. But your argument was that a Ranger using WHaO could permanently maintain 25 stacks of might. This is incorrect and has been shown to be incorrect.

The point was: if you can permanently maintain 16 stax of might without WHaO (which i proved is totally possible above), you could have used WHaO to get those stax of might from your pet to maintain 25 stax (since it caps out). The build to do so doesn’t even sacrifice all that much dps, all you end up losing is the Skirmishing line which acceptable for 25 stax of might in a fight.

Edit: YES, the cast times make you lag just a little bit. You dont’ have it every milisecond of every moment in the fight, but if you are going to argue that having almost 100% uptime of 25 stax isn’t worth the same as always having 100% uptime then this becomes a battle of semantics and there is literally no reason to continue.

EDIT2: if you must have every moment… use quickness to cast it…. it then becomes a 1.5s cast giving you a whole .5s to activate it to permanently maintain 25 stax. There really isn’t much sacrifice to this set up to achieve this… I use variations of it for general PvE/dungeon use all the time dependign on my group… /edit

He was right, you were wrong. Can we get back to the actual issue plz?

Mcrocha.3891:

Oberon Vex.1389:

PSSST. That is 16 permanent stax of might.

Right, but we were arguing base stacks.

Yeah. My point was there are 16 stax of might that the ranger can maintain without WHaO on a permanent basis.

5 from JG stalker (Naturemagic + Beastmastery = 22s duration on a 20s CD)
3 from Call of the Wild Warhorn (Windborne Notes + Strength runes = 24s duration on a 24s cd)
3 from Clarion Bond (24s duration 24s CD)
2 from Sigil of battle (20s duration on a 9s CD)
3 Zephyr’s Speed (15s duration on a 15s CD)

These are all maintainable with moderate build sacrifice, before using WHaO to double the stax for their duration, meaning you could have had permanent 25 stax of might with the “old” WHaO (or close enough to not matter).

Sort of proved your argument for you, but I’ll butt out if you want…

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Why in name of all that was good and kind was Might transferring capped? I can understand fixing a bug that lets you infinitely stack boons but Might wasn’t one of those boons affected since it stacks in intensity, not duration. It was literally never a part of the problem here. The best you could do was gain a big stack of might for a few seconds, burst and then watch it trickle away. The response here wasn’t a fix, this was butchery.

Rangers have several ways to apply long duration might stacks like 15s on Clarion Bond. It was very possible to have big stacks of might for around 15s consistently.

That’s still not a problem though. Exactly the opposite of a problem. That is a good use of boons, and it’s time limited. The problem was that you could infinitely stack every single stacks duration boon permanently. That’s not okay, but completely gutting the skill and putting a hard cap on a boon that wasn’t part of the problem is above and beyond overkill.

Well yes, but when you have things that can apply 15s of might that becomes permanent with WHaO if you have some boon duration, meaning that you could in fact get an infinite amount of might duration at 25 stacks.

No, it doesn’t. Because when you combine might stacks with WHaO you get more might until you hit the cap. When you combine say, protection stacks, you get more protection time until it builds onto itself over and over where it eventually reaches the duration cap of ~8.5 minutes. Let’s say you and your pet have 10 stacks of might with 20 seconds duration each, you hit WHaO and you now have 20 stacks of might with 19 seconds duration (due to WHaO’s cast time), 16 seconds later you press WHaO again and now you have 25 stacks of might with 2 seconds of duration.

You cannot permanently keep up stacks intensity boons with WHaO. Stacks intensity boons like might were never a part of the problem here and there was no reason for them to be capped.

You can permanently keep up the might stacks from something that is applied for greater than 16s if it is reapplied. So that is indefinitely, and in doing so you can double the stacks from using WHaO. I think we are arguing different things.

We’re not arguing different things, it seems you don’t understand how the mechanics work. Let’s say you have 20 stacks of might with 2 seconds duration, then someone uses a buff that gives you 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. Your tooltip hover will say you have 23 stacks of might for 15 seconds. In reality, you have 20 stacks of might for 2 seconds and 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. After three seconds have passed you will have 3 stacks of might for 12 seconds. Reapplication of a stacks intensity boon does not refresh the duration of your existing stacks. They stack individually atop each other and are individually removed as their durations expire.

You could not infinitely keep up stacks intensity boons with WHaO. The problem was stacks duration boons and solely stacks duration boons.

Yes, but if you get 13 stacks of might for durations longer than 16s that are reapplied and use WHaO you will have perma 25 stacks.

Edit: it allowed minor might stacking to be more powerful than it should be, by doubling stacks.

And where are you pulling these supposed 13 stacks of might with at least 18 second durations from? And keep in mind their cooldowns need to be under the cooldown time of WHaO to be maintained permanently.

Let’s have a run down of a Ranger’s might sources:

Jungle Stalker, Mighty Roar: 5 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 3 second cast time, 25 second cooldown. Not maintainable.

Hits from Strength of the Pack: 1 stack of might per hit, 8 seconds base duration, 1 second cast time, 60 second cooldown. Not maintainable.

Brutish Seals on Signet use: 3 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 1 second cast time on Signet of the Wild, individual cooldown times of (80s, 60s, 60s, 30s). Not maintainable.

Under 50% health with Most Dangerous Game: 5 stacks of Might, 3 seconds duration, completely useless once you hit your heal button. Not maintainable.

Critical hit with Companion’s Might: 1 stack of might pet crit, 5 seconds base duration, unlisted ICD. Not maintainable.

Zephyr’s Speed on pet swap: 3 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 20 second cooldown. Not maintainable.

Even if you slot every single trait and skill that gives you might, a Ranger cannot get 13 stacks of might on themself and their pet with a duration that exceeds the cooldown of WHaO and whose individual skill or trait cooldowns are low enough to be used consistently on the WHaO cooldown.

It was never possible for a Ranger to maintain permanent might on themselves with WHaO.

Maybe not 13, but 8 easily. Zephyrs Speed(16s with BM line) comboed with Clarion Bond is 6 stacks ~18s with NM line, sigil of battle weapon swap is 2 stacks. Second go around your Clarion Bond won’t be triggered bc ICD, but you could actually cast CotW. This is only including might that the Ranger could throw out. There’s also Mighty Roar from Jungle Stalker(might is perma with BM minors, but would only last one rotation I guess) and Might that teammates could apply. Very easily could maintain high stacks. Especially if say you were using Runes like Runes of Strength.

PSSST. That is 16 permanent stax of might.

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Mcrocha.3891:

Tapioca.9062:

Why in name of all that was good and kind was Might transferring capped? I can understand fixing a bug that lets you infinitely stack boons but Might wasn’t one of those boons affected since it stacks in intensity, not duration. It was literally never a part of the problem here. The best you could do was gain a big stack of might for a few seconds, burst and then watch it trickle away. The response here wasn’t a fix, this was butchery.

Rangers have several ways to apply long duration might stacks like 15s on Clarion Bond. It was very possible to have big stacks of might for around 15s consistently.

That’s still not a problem though. Exactly the opposite of a problem. That is a good use of boons, and it’s time limited. The problem was that you could infinitely stack every single stacks duration boon permanently. That’s not okay, but completely gutting the skill and putting a hard cap on a boon that wasn’t part of the problem is above and beyond overkill.

Well yes, but when you have things that can apply 15s of might that becomes permanent with WHaO if you have some boon duration, meaning that you could in fact get an infinite amount of might duration at 25 stacks.

No, it doesn’t. Because when you combine might stacks with WHaO you get more might until you hit the cap. When you combine say, protection stacks, you get more protection time until it builds onto itself over and over where it eventually reaches the duration cap of ~8.5 minutes. Let’s say you and your pet have 10 stacks of might with 20 seconds duration each, you hit WHaO and you now have 20 stacks of might with 19 seconds duration (due to WHaO’s cast time), 16 seconds later you press WHaO again and now you have 25 stacks of might with 2 seconds of duration.

You cannot permanently keep up stacks intensity boons with WHaO. Stacks intensity boons like might were never a part of the problem here and there was no reason for them to be capped.

You can permanently keep up the might stacks from something that is applied for greater than 16s if it is reapplied. So that is indefinitely, and in doing so you can double the stacks from using WHaO. I think we are arguing different things.

We’re not arguing different things, it seems you don’t understand how the mechanics work. Let’s say you have 20 stacks of might with 2 seconds duration, then someone uses a buff that gives you 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. Your tooltip hover will say you have 23 stacks of might for 15 seconds. In reality, you have 20 stacks of might for 2 seconds and 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. After three seconds have passed you will have 3 stacks of might for 12 seconds. Reapplication of a stacks intensity boon does not refresh the duration of your existing stacks. They stack individually atop each other and are individually removed as their durations expire.

You could not infinitely keep up stacks intensity boons with WHaO. The problem was stacks duration boons and solely stacks duration boons.

Yes, but if you get 13 stacks of might for durations longer than 16s that are reapplied and use WHaO you will have perma 25 stacks.

Edit: it allowed minor might stacking to be more powerful than it should be, by doubling stacks.

And where are you pulling these supposed 13 stacks of might with at least 18 second durations from? And keep in mind their cooldowns need to be under the cooldown time of WHaO to be maintained permanently.

Let’s have a run down of a Ranger’s might sources:

Jungle Stalker, Mighty Roar: 5 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 3 second cast time, 25 second cooldown. Not maintainable.

Hits from Strength of the Pack: 1 stack of might per hit, 8 seconds base duration, 1 second cast time, 60 second cooldown. Not maintainable.

Brutish Seals on Signet use: 3 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 1 second cast time on Signet of the Wild, individual cooldown times of (80s, 60s, 60s, 30s). Not maintainable.

Under 50% health with Most Dangerous Game: 5 stacks of Might, 3 seconds duration, completely useless once you hit your heal button. Not maintainable.

Critical hit with Companion’s Might: 1 stack of might pet crit, 5 seconds base duration, unlisted ICD. Not maintainable.

Zephyr’s Speed on pet swap: 3 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 20 second cooldown. Not maintainable.

Even if you slot every single trait and skill that gives you might, a Ranger cannot get 13 stacks of might on themself and their pet with a duration that exceeds the cooldown of WHaO and whose individual skill or trait cooldowns are low enough to be used consistently on the WHaO cooldown.

It was never possible for a Ranger to maintain permanent might on themselves with WHaO.

nature Magic and Beast mastery makes Jungle Stalker 5 stax of might for 22 seconds on a 20s cooldown. Windborne Notes + Runes of Strength makes Call of the Wild give 3 stax for 24s on a 24s cooldown. I don’t want to comment on your argument, but Rangers ARE capable of perma might without WHaO, at a respectable level.

Constructive feedback:

While the current fix stops the clearly toxic permanent quickness and Protection uptime, it is my opinion that the current fix does not suffice in regards to the intention of the original implementation — which was to allow the ranger to operate at an optimal range while still being able to gain the boons that are generated by those stacking on the boss/target. My stance is that this functionality should never have been implemented at all, least of all on a heal skill, but here are my suggestions.

It should have been tied to strength of the pack instead of We Heal as One — at least here it would serve as a temporary power spike due to the moderately long cooldown.

Failing this, it should have been a Grandmaster Trait using the Fortifying bond structure with modified values (50% increase across the board and without an internal cooldown).

My next suggestion would have been to add the caveat that any boon that is currently on the ranger, does not get copied from the pet — this would stop players from being able to double their quickness duration and limit the functionality to it’s intended purpose of giving the ranger the ability to be distanced from the rest of the party while keeping the party’s boons; Perma protection would still be possible via Guard, but this value could be shaved with little to no grumbling as it is an otherwise unused skill in the Ranger’s Kit — cutting it to 6s protection to pet would have been totally fine with most people, and would cut protection uptime to 50% (while still long, is not gamebreaking due to the investement in build/utilities).

Chrispy.5641:

Zalani.9827:

The thing is now I’m worried about how Druid is going to be handled post release of HoT.

Is other professions going to knee jerk a nerf to it because they don’t like the healing/etc?
I’m almost expecting it to get nerfed at this point, and I don’t think I am going to be surprised by this point if it did.
It’s been about 3 years now that I’m used to not being a wanted class in most game areas and being the most bottom level. I really love the class and it’s my most favorite one.
But I want to actually be an effective member of a team and not have such a bad stigma. It’s just tiring after a bit.

They (anet) tried already to justify the virtual perma daze with Druid and Celestial form, but they’ll quickly take that statement back and issue a nerf once every other class and “Rangers” start moaning about it. Meanwhile, us Rangers will wonder why we’re so hated and ignored….

With Moment of Clarity it is an AoE 6s daze on kitten cd. it will be changed.

“We heal as One” : heal yourself and your pet for X. Copy any boons on your pet that you do not have.

They could then shave the protection duration on Guard to a moderate level (8s or so) and call it a day.

Ideally this copy mechanic should have been placed on something other than a heal skill. Without changing functionalities of other abilities, the one I’d choose would have been “Strength of the Pack” because as an elite it has a solid cooldown and fits thematically.

We already had permanent boons. The only thing that this change allowed was broken uptime of protection and quickness.

Perma fury? Red moa with the Nature Magic trait-line minor that increases boon duration plus a small amount of boon duration — or just use WH5 too.

Perma regen? Ranger has a rediculous number of sources of it, but let’s just go with Fern Hound for 100% uptime or any mix of traited shouts or warhorn 5

Perma swift? Traited shouts + WH5

Perma might? You can maintain 8 stax forever (on 5 targets) with Jungle Stalker and WH5

Perma vigor? Depending on skill (continuously getting good evades) you can have virtually perma vigor between Primal Reflexes and Lightning Reflexes — toss in vigorous training for good measure if you want, but having a flat increase in endurance regen from a MINOR kind of cheapens it.

We already have the tools to have permanent boons, so nerfing WHaO for that reason doesn’t make sense. It DOES start to make sense when you consider permanent protection and quickness. We have good access to quickness, but 100% uptime — even with the caveat of sacrificing using our heal at appropriate times is not something the game was designed to do, nor be balanced around. The same can be said of 100% protection uptime (though technically Guardians can have 70s of continuous proteciton uptime WITHOUT USING SKILLS TWICE).

It is my opinion that a flat boon duration is a terrible, lazy solution that is NOT in the spirit of the original change. To this end I would have fixed the problem like this:

“We heal as one” : heal yourself and your pet for X. You gain any boon on your pet that you do not currently have.

This would allow rangers to hang back with their bow and still get the benefit of being in melee (for boon sharing/generation) but remove the ability to double the duration of powerful boons like protection and quickness — yet keep true to the initial concept. You WOULD be able to snag that nice protection from Guard which could be traited to provide perma protection, but devs could then tone down the duration as needed for the balance of the game. This would allow the devs to shave the balance off of a relatively unused skill (guard) instead of gutting the decent concept they came up with to help rangers as a class.

Ohhhhh, let me go get some popcorn before this thread get’s locked.

Seriously though, this thread is pretty toxic. While there may have been a few legitimate points for both sides of the argument, there are way too many fallacies and personal attacks for this to be any form of constructive criticism — and that goes on both sides with various parties being the offenders. Just because you point out a perceived ad-hominem doesn’t make your perception true; and pointing out fallacies in other’s arguments does not make your own points immune to them. Let’s try to keep it civil, yeah?

OP has a few legitimate concerns, but in the end this comes down to opinion, aka no one is wrong so stop raging at each other.

Electro.4173:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If ticks of regeneration count as healing allies, then it will tick up insanely fast. You are looking at 75% full force over 10s with one shout and RT. Hoping this is the case.

Which is precisely why I’m not at all banking on Regen having any effect at all on the power gauge.

That’s just way too passive. Click a button and watch the gauge just pour in willy nilly.

It may also partially explain why Druid has literally no regeneration anywhere. They want the focus to be on direct heals which boost your gauge, rather than passive heals which don’t.

Maybe.. but ranger doesn’t need any more regen. It has loads of it all over the place.

Now, we all knew druids were going to be support based (or at least should have known) and while I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing a highly damaging dps ranger, monk was my go-to in the first game and I’m glad that my main can take on this sort of role — so long as it IS in fact necessary.

As I intend to take part heavily in the raids (as well as pushing the envelope with higher tier fractals, though I’m not sure what surprises they’ll have for us and whether support builds like this would be useful/necessary there) I thought I’d theorycraft a support-line druid build. This is assuming that specialized roles will be required, and that one of these roles will be that of a healer — not necessarily a dedicated healer, but a character that can meaningfully contribute in terms of healing while contributing to other aspects.

The Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJBMhKSpitqQYWo8o+q/3PAqzvdAPA-T1xDABMcCAIUJYn6B+U9nrU+BwDAAl9HIFgfTtA-w

the missing utilities are: Glyph of Empowerment, Glyph of Tides (this skill is the variable) and Glyph of Unity.

Selected Druid Traits are: Cultivated Synergy, Verdant Etching, Lingering Light.

This build is designed to provide a healthy balance of dps, sustain and party-based support. It provides 5 targets with permanent regen (313hp/s), permanent Fury, permanent swiftness, and two 10% damage buffs.

You will always know the cd of invigorating bond, due to the matching timer of the the F2 ability, thus you can know whether you will have an average heal on the fern hound (2.5k) or a significant burst heal (5k).

I do not expect this build to be unaltered, nor will it have astounding dps, but I do believe it will be viable as a starting point for raid content, and possibly in other areas where support-based actions are wanted. While it has a respectable amount of power for a heal-spec, the lack of hard precision and ferocity will ensure that it has mediocre (at best) dps — this is why the build focuses on the pet for a significant portion of it’s dps, and is the main reason for taking beastmastery, though resounding timbre is a compelling argument as well.

My first variation (if it is clear that personal dps on a heal-oriented character in raids is NOT a concern) would be to replace beastmaster with Skirmishing to provide the Spotter buff and quick-draw to capitalize on “Call of the Wild” and whichever is the most appropriate Staff skill (Sublime Conversion or Ancestral Grace probably).

I generally use this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjEqQLL2wCesAVLGWEqtFCgj+f9Wf17ytDGhS2VFA-TJBFABAt/g4lBW4SAAwTAAA

It’s a slight variation on a metabattle build. It doesn’t have enough sustain to go outnumbered for long, but between the evades, blocks stealths and such, it does alright. You can either use a hawk to continuously proc the weakness and blind, or double canines so that when you go down you can always swap and get a free knockdown/interupt. Wolf is pretty much mandatory imo, you get about 3.5-4s lockdown with beastly warden.

Plenty of condi cleanse since 4/5 of the utilities will remove 2, and the build has good damage.

I would say that the build probably needs a decent grasp of the class to make the most out of — but that could be said of almost any build. I don’t mean any offense by this, it’s just a disclaimer.

Your build isn’t bad for the most part, but I really don’t agree with your choice of pets in a competitive sense. Canines are great for control, and birds are decent damage (realllly squishy though) and have low cd attacks to proc your traits.

Maybe something like this? Might be a little undertuned for damage, but I think it would be pretty darn hard to hurt:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsYVjEqQ5K2yCurAVLG4EK/vHgW+b8RNx7htSDgS+0DA-T1xBABfq+DAHBAC1FApSQvU+hxjAAm9HIFwXztA-w

EDIT: Nvm, didn’t read the notes enough lol

Personally I’d say keep the theme of risk/reward. But I’d change it to “While under 50% hp, deal 20% more dmg”

There is a 0.001% chance of druids getting mounts as a new mechanic. Why do I say this? Because in a video earlier in the week WP mentioned that he was still under an NDA in regards to twitchcon. Therefore, any speculation he might put forward in regards to the druid, or anything else to do with the presentation at twitchcon would have to be either outright wrong or ambiguous to an implausible degree, which his theories on mounts were not. If he is right, then he has most likely broken his NDA and there will probably be repercussions to this.

I don’t know what sort of access WP has to the devs or his official place in GW2’s marketing (he IS an accepted caster/content creator by anet — or at least something to this effect was said at a previous con) or even the terms of his NDA, but I highly doubt that Anet would use his youtube channel for an official reveal without outright saying so. I wouldn’t be opposed to Anet switching to other media for their announcements, I just think that it would be more explicitly stated if this were the case.

For the record, I don’t think mounts really deserve a place in GW2 due to general game mechanics like waypoints and movement speed modifiers. They have reduced the number of waypoints to increase the immersion and the amount of a map that the player sees — adding a ‘faster travel method’ like a mount would work against this goal. Furthermore I would think that any ‘mounted’ class would be an elite specialization in itself — they would have to rework all the weapon skills at the very least, and at least once per pet family in the case of the ranger. By this I mean that the name “druid” does not confer any sort of mounted concept. I would think they would choose something like “outrider” or “Cavalier” or “Hussar” or any other term for a mounted combatant.

The idea of a ‘broomstick’ version of mounts would be met with mixed reaction — there is not movementspeed bonus so many players would find them frivolous or frustrating. That said, I do realize that many would like them for aesthetic appeal or RP reasons and that is a valid concern.

Ryou.2398:

Man I do not understand why you guys misunderstand my post, it is not that I found it hard, which I do not at all I have been playing mmorpgs for ages and I usually play the top complex classes so that is not an issue plus I just play allot of rpgs as a whole. The issue was the feel and playstyle of the class itself. That is why I titled it I do not think mesmer is for me:)

I will admit I think part of the issue is I can never get into female characters and I thought it the powers looked odd on males for me, so I rolled a female. And no this is not an insecurity I just do not prefer purple in general, but it helped looking at a hot lady while doing it:)

1. No one can change how you FEEL about the playstyle, as such, this thread has little value for discussion.

2. Several players here have given you actual advice for improving your mesmer experience that you have ignored.

3. you are behaving very negatively so don’t imagine more people will continue to give you advice out of the goodness of their hearts

Personally, I’m drooling over the changes to Well of Precognition. Group-wide blur? That is Raid material right there. Not to mention you can chain it to give 5 targets blur for a total of 12s. (3clone shatter “Continuum split” > Mimic >Well of Precog > Time warp > Well of precog (last moment of CS) > Situational > Mimic > Well of precog > Time warp > Situational > Well of precog)

I’m going to be trying something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRncfC1fi9pBuqBUrhFij6sBugJwMAClFquS30RF-TFSBABBu/Alq/YmSwrU+FxDAAP9BLcEAA4EAQKgIGaB-w

Scrapper got a wonderfully versatile ability and Daredevils got access to a third dodgeroll. Perhaps these might not be on the same level as active combat skills, but they do meaningfully impact the gameplay of these classes.

Scrapper could rez or stomp at range while still performing other tasks — and this is only what they have explicitly stated: since it replaces you ‘f’ prompt to interact, it is possible the function gyro could throw environmental switches or such.

A third dodgeroll on a very squishy class is amazing for survivability. A full glass backstab build could theoretically be invulnerable (through dodge/evade) until it is able to stealth again. And the grandmaster transforms their dodges to very useful abilities (though this does take up the grandmasters + the mechanic change

From datamined sources, it appears that druids will be getting glyphs and ‘aspects’ though this will be confirmed or not at twitchcon. So to answer your question, no, it appears that the druid will introduce a rather significant mechanic change.

I personally think LtW is head and shoulders above relentless with the exception of solo roaming in WvW. I don’t camp longbow, but the piercing and cooldown reduction work very well into a burst rotation if you also take Quick Draw from the Skirmishing line.

Two piercing Rapid fires and a Barrage is about as strong as our AoE burst gets, and this combo also takes almost as long as a weapon swap cd to perform.

Thus my usual Dungeon/Fractal/WvW (non-solo roam) rotation goes: Rapid Fire -> Barrage -> Swap -> Maul -> Swoop -> Maul -> AA -> Swap -> Rapid Fire -> Barrage -> Rapid fire -> AA -> Repeat

It is a very good rotation that has served me well in almost all content (though Barrage is kind of weak to use in PvP modes other than zerg fights). The cooldown reduction allows Barrage (the NON-Quick draw skill) to come up faster which lets you get more dps out, and the piercing lets you burst entire groups of trash or single targets equally efficiently.

I can see builds that would prefer to use Remorseless, but in a general use sort of mindset… so long as you are using a longbow at all, LtW is better. Most individual strikes on the longbow aren’t that high unless you are camping at max range, so while some people may say that LtW doesn’t help your secondary set, Remorsless isn’t very good at helping your LB set. It does, just not nearly as much as it effects Maul or other large strike skills because except for straight PvP, you are either wanted to be or NEED to be in melee range.

Jaxom.7310:

Sits down at brainstorming session for engr spec… time goes by, decisions are being made, we settle on a hammer as the weapon.

dev1: ‘wat kinda skills could we use w/ a hammer’
dev2: ‘i dunno, thor kinda lightning be kool’
dev1+every1: ‘i lik it, we’ll fit dat in therr’

Yeah, I can see wanting to tie in some sort of ‘thor’ theme to capitalize on current movie success, but these aren’t really in line with Thor either. These are almost branching out from a more magical standpoint. I know Thor can summon lightning strikes, but most iterations I’ve seen (which are few, I admit) have him at least gesture towards the target with his hammer. Engie Hammer 5 just looks like a touchdown victory celebration.

In all honesty, the most galling thing is that these are just 2 skills. 2 skills that go AT THE END OF THE SKILL BAR. These could legitimately have been on the warhorn:

Air attunement WH 4:

Name: Storms Defense
Effect: Grant all nearby allies shocking aura and Aegis for 5s. on a 25s CD.

Air attunement WH5:

Name: Stormcaller
Effect: Call down a lightning strike on target foe dealing damage. It and nearby enemies are weakened for 4s. 35s CD

EDIT:

Alternate effect for “stormcaller”: Target takes dmg and is stunned for 1s, nearby enemies are dazed for 2s.

I just wanted to say that I, as a non-engineer and non-elementalist player, found it exceedingly strange that the quasi-revealed ‘scrapper’ elite spec totally overshadows the tempest elite spec in core themes.

Yes: more information will be revealed in the PoI and we don’t know everything. HOWEVER.

- Screenshots show lightning effects that far outstrip current ele ‘air-attunement’ abilities. Engineer can ‘call down a massive lightning strike’ with hammer 5 whereas any elementalist ability at most will produce a stick-thin spark. I could understand an electrical discharge effect when striking the target, afterall engineers are technology based… but the animation clearly shows they just sort of.. beseech the sky and a furious thunderbolt slams down — it looks so much more like an elementalist skill than an engineer one.

- Hammer 4 covers your hammer with lightning that will passively strike nearby enemies and block attacks for its duration… This sounds a LOT like harnessing an electrical STORM to your character’s action… something the TEMPEST sounded like it should be able to do with it’s overload, but it was given to the engineer as well — with the added effect of blocking incoming attacks. I just pray that this isn’t an effect that you place on yourself, and that it does in fact lock you into a cancel-able animation like every other block in the game.

As I said, I do not main either of these professions, and indeed perhaps the Scrapper (once fully revealed) will pique my interest and get me to play a mostly un-used alt. What I don’t get is why two elite specs were so similar. I can understand if later down the line, when there are 3-4 elite specs available then there is some re-iteration of themes with each class giving a unique take on an archetype; but this is the first wave! YES I know that the scrapper is about more than lightning effects, but two of it’s unique weapon’s most iconic skills just stamp all over elementalists hopes and dreams.

I am not a engi player or an ele player, but even I feel bad for the elementalists that look at these abilities and think “Maybe one day that will be us.”

Tannin.1920:

Hello, I came back from work now and saw that my post has several answers, thanks for the criticism, good to see what others think about what I said at the forum focusing on the staff of ArenaNet. I am a minority, maybe one doing this revindication, but think about it. The game could be sold (core game) because being free to play now? Losing players? I do not know, they know. What can I do it as a casual player looking for a new game.

;)

First, I’m responding under the assumption that english is not your first language. If this is not the case, I apologize.

I’m sorry if you do not feel rewarded for your time playing Guild Wars 2, but the majority of players in this community would undoubtedly consider this game very forgiving to casual players — especially considering its contemporary rivals. I understand that your opinion is the opposite, but please understand that you are, in fact, in the minority on this topic. That is not to say your concern isn’t valid, it is; but most players would like to see this game more adequately reward skillful play.

If a game is too casual, then it inevitably follows a ‘bubble-and-burst’ life-cycle and this game wouldn’t exist for long. There are already concerns about players leaving and Anet is trying to cater to those individuals who are more likely to stay long term by giving them things to do in-game. More difficult content, or even just content that takes a longer time/more effort to complete will only help this games lifetime.

Lastly, while your gripe may have been aimed at the staff of ArenaNet, you posted it in the public forums. It is unreasonable to assume that only Anet staff members will read and/or reply to your comment if you do this. If you have a pressing concern that you wish to convey to Anet there are other, more direct methods that will be more effective.

What.

I don’t want to be overly negative, but I do not understand this at all. There are currently three activities that a player can pursue in a solo environment: sPvP, Open World PvE, and solo roaming in WvW. Just about every other facet of the game will require you to group with others in some nebulous context.

Dungeons? 5 man team
Fractals? 5 man team
World Boss? get in the zerg
WvW Objective taking? get in the zerg
tPvP? 5 man team

Every facet of this game is geared to group players for the content. I’m not saying that you are not able to solo things and I’m not saying your concern isn’t valid. I’m saying that they aren’t doing anything new with creating content intended for more than one player. In fact, with how easy this game is, there is plenty of content that was designed to be for 5 or more players that is totally possible to beat as a single player (open world champions etc)

No one is saying you can’t do what you are doing, which is where my confusion starts. Yes they are promoting new content intended for larger groups, but that does not mean that those things you currently enjoy will not also get some update or new content added. It just isn’t a good marketing strategy for an MMO to highlight all the things you will be able to do alone. It doesn’t build hype. Furthermore, there is a (real or perceived) problem with customer retention — players are leaving because there is so little end-game content and/or difficult content to engage them. This expansion is supposedly intending to fix that, and this content will inevitably come in the form of group content — if it is easy enough for one player to do alone then it isn’t, by definition, difficult content.

Your position and players like you will be able to do all the things you may like that do not require grouping. There will undoubtedly be new:

Jumping puzzles
Event chains/open world content
Story Missions
Craftable recipes

On top of this there will be adventures which will be a new form of content aimed at solo players, including leaderboards.

TL;DR: there is nothing wrong with the new expansion or how Anet have been marketing it.

There isn’t anything to blame for this problem… It sucks, but due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control you are in the least favorable geographical location in regards to Anet’s home-office. It isn’t Anet’s fault you are Australian, and they don’t owe you anything for pre-purchasing 2 HoT accounts other than access to the expansion on launch day.

I can understand it is frustrating, but there really isn’t anything that can be done. If oceanic players can access the content at a different time then it is unfair to those not in those timezones — no matter what, someone is going to get inconvenienced. If oceanic players get to start a day ahead that is unfair; and if they have to wait a day extra that is also unfair.

The most egalitarian option is what (to my knowledge) Anet has opted for: all players can access the content at the same physical time, though the convenience of this launch window varies based on each player’s geographical location.

It is unfortunate that you are in a location that is the most inconvenienced, but you wouldn’t expect a Korea-based game to launch according to North American time tables, nor would you expect a game based in the EU to keep Oceanic players at the forefront of their decisions when it comes to event and launch times.

Any ‘one-time events’ have historically been keyed to local server time, not home-office time (Lost shores etc) so unless you are playing on a server that isn’t optimized for you, you should not have run into a ‘my country is asleep’ problem. I’m not saying there isn’t a legitimate reason or cause to play on a different server, but you have to make some compromises if you do so.

In the end, worst case scenario is you have to wait a couple more hours to play at a more convenient time. It sucks, no one will deny that, but I just don’t understand what you think Anet or anyone else can do about the physical realities of timezones.

Christina.7926:

StrangerDanger.3496:

I mean this isn’t something like one race gets magic bonus, another gets archery ect meaning if you go X class you must go Y race or be kitten, even if its a slight kitten .

This is more along the lines of what I meant. I don’t know if any of you have tried TERA (I did for a very short amount of time), and one of the (only) things I really liked in that game was how they gave each race a buff that didn’t screw over the other races. This is a link to some of their “race buff” examples.

http://tera.wikia.com/wiki/Racial_skills

Some of these would be bad (less stun damage, etc.) but others would be nice. Maybe free tele to racial capital, faster gathering based on race, less falling damage, etc. I was thinking more along the lines of buffs rather than skills

I accept that you said some of them would be bad for the health of GW2. But just to point out some of these….

“Active: Restore all HP. 2hr cd”
“Active: Restore all MP. 2hr cd”
“Passive: Your stamina cannot drop below 20%” <- this is on the same race with restoring all hp.

and then other races get uber lack-luster ones like: increased movespeed out of battle, or “increase critical chance by 1% while attacking from behind”.

There are a few thematic ones, and some fluff like faster gathering speed, but I wouldn’t personally call these racial passives/actives balanced, especially not for different classes/professions. I much prefer the current racial skills to anything in tera.

That said, I wouldn’t mind if they increased the effectiveness of the racial skills we have by a little bit, or perhaps gave faction/reputation groups we could earn utility skills from (calling back to GW1:EotN)

As a player that has been around since launch: I am emphatically against this suggestion.

I agree, though I am still concerned for the consistency of the experience. It would be amazing to finally beat hard content (with all new players your first time) and receive tonnes and tonnes of loot for this accomplishment. But I’m concerned that the following runs producing much less reward (whether everyone has already done it once, or there are simply fewer new people in your group than last time) would degrade the experience.

It would be like winning a massively on your first try while gambling then making next to no progress (comparatively) for the rest of the night. It would hurt the over-all longevity of the content type and create a point of friction between players.

I do want some form of incentive for new players to experience difficult content (whether its raids or higher lvl fractals or anything else) but it doesn’t make sense to me to have rewards decrease over time. I think the key is to not make the bonus as extravagant as your original post described. Yes, that many chests would convey a sense of accomplishment and reward, but those elitists would not care about instructing new players or ensuring they have a positive experience, they only care about the end result; ie, the rewards they get for putting up with the inexperienced.

I would suggest a series of achievements that produce a loot-able chest for the group whenever a person unlocks it (much like your suggestion) BUT this bonus chest is limited in number, and perhaps only one extra chest can be redeemed per run. This would make it a boost to rewards without being exceedingly over rewarding. Any extra ‘unlocks’ would be tracked and kept for future runs.

Perhaps it could work with items. Whenever a player unlocks one of the raid-specific achievements, all group members receive a key item that will allow the player to unlock a bonus chest at the end of the raid (that may or may not have unique rewards) but this chest can only be opened ONCE per player per run and only ONE key can be received per run (progress to other achievements is blocked once an achievement is earned). This would incentivise players to help others with achievements, and a player who as done nothing in the raid so far would be a source of many keys — and thus valuable to the raiding community. As the keys are limited to being rewarded once per run and can only be cashed ONCE per run, it would encourage players to repeat the content with the same player — this would allow the inexperienced to gain experience in the content while being valued by the group.

I believe I remember one of the main tyria masteries involving mentoring new players, perhaps any ‘bonus’ could be derived from some perk from this line? This way it would help cultivate a general inclusive mindset across multiple game modes/areas rather than a straight up perk everyone gets just for showing up.

There will be people who will max out all masteries, and if a perk is worth it people will get it, but having an ‘inclusive’ perk be at the end of a mastery track that promotes general community well-being may be a way to incentivise this mindset — after all with the introduction of all the new masteries there will be a host of things people want to get quickly, and a powerful perk related to rewards at the end of a ‘community wellbeing’ track might help skew those elitists into more directly powerful masteries that may involve reducing clear time vs ones that promote inclusiveness at the cost of clear time by boosting the end reward.

What does your guild do about dungeons? Do the same thing….