Showing Posts For Quincy.5490:
Spirits do not follow you anymore, that used to be a trait but was taken away. The most ranger can do for support without druid specialization is cast healing spring and warhorn 5 for a water blast, and use shouts with resounding timbre to give regeneration. Since everyone can blast a waterfield, and regeneration doesn’t scale well with healing power, it isn’t worth investing in healing gear on a ranger. If you have druid spec, your staff has pretty effective heals and you have high healing output with celestial avatar, which might get some value out of support gear, but it won’t be necessary in most pve content.
There are some smaller engagements where druid seems pretty good, though in my opinion, the druid is meant for groups of at least 5. The healing you put out can occasionally make a big difference in some fractals too. You don’t really need healing gear to heal effectively, so I don’t see using cleric or nomads being the better option unless in WvW.
Grace of The Land can make up for some of the damage loss from having druid spec. Up to 15 percent increase on allied damage as you heal them while in Celestial Avatar. Also, if you use staff you might be able to do without marksmanship, since the staff 1 pierces, unless you think having more daze with moment of clarity is worth it. The damage of staff is also either as good or better than longbow at medium and short range, so you can stay closer to your teammates, sharing boons and healing without losing dps. Don’t forget hidden waterfield on sublime conversion too.
I’ve been trying out something similar to the linked build below. It allows quite a bit of might stacking, support and damage.
I let frost spirit pulse might on my ranger, which in turn gives the pet a longer duration of it with Fortifying Bond and a roughtly 7 percent damage buff for nearby allies. After a while (the pet will probably have taken quite a bit of damage anyway), I use WHaO to give myself the might stacks, which can easily be near 25. I switch to longbow when enemies are in low numbers. Glyph of Equality has a stunbreaker as of my typing this, and Grace of the Land as I said, is damage amplification now. The site hasn’t been updated yet.
(edited by Quincy.5490)
I hadn’t used spirits very much before HoT went live, so I only just noticed this. Spirits don’t have any AI to select targets. They will use their effects and their boons, if Nature’s Vengeance is taken, on whatever target is closest, even if that target is a mesmer clone. This makes the spirits much less reliable for team play when people have pets. I also think spirits should at least always effect the ranger no matter how many characters are closer to it, so not to require the person who summons the spirit to stand right next to it in order to benefit from their own utility skill.
(edited by Quincy.5490)
Ok after testing, healing druid is completely worthless in pvp.
Secondly, even with the movespeed bonus from traited druid skill, in addition to the signet for 25% more speed…. Reapers are outrunning you easily
What the hell…
First comment, completly worthless feedback.
Second comment – First of all, movement speed bonus don’t stack. Secondly, if you’re at swiftness speed, how the heck can reapers outrun you??
1. reapers outrun druid- its a fact
2. not worthless feedback, its actually completely accurate feedback
Reapers being able to outrun a druid is a good thing. The reaper is a melee spec that needs to close the gap. Use crowd control.
STAFF WEAPON
In wvw the staff generates a full bar of astral force almost instantly if you have a large enough group of people with you, but with damage it is so slow that in order to help your team you have to equip the staff. I think the building of astral force should made a little closer between the two methods, maybe 3/4 percent from damage and 1 +3/4 percent from healing to balance that out. The staff itself felt great overall. The damage does not put it above longbow, but it still feels powerful enough to stand on it’s own and it’s support capabilities are balanced with celestial avatar. But I noticed what I thought might be an unintended function. If I targeted someone who was out of range with solar beam, the beam would still extend all the way to their character, affecting enemies and allies who were in range between their position and mine. It created an odd interaction where I would target someone who was in the backlines of the enemy team, and run back and forth to hit whomever I wanted. That functionality was very convenient and I like it as is but I want to know if it’s not a mistake. Astral force is an unfun still though, since it doesn’t have any skillful play. It gets used immediately when off cooldown if allies are within range and that’s it.
CELESTIAL AVATAR AND WvW
When I was in WvW it also felt awkward to have what seemed like redundant spells in celestial avatar. The cosmic ray and tidal surge basically do the same thing, aoe heals. Just one is more potent if coordinated with a team to blast in it. I always wanted to use Lunar Impact offensively since it provides the druid’s strongest control, especially if traited with Moment of Clarity, so I think it should just have damage added to it instead of healing, or be fully dedicated as a control ability and also be movement impairing, maybe a brief ice field. Also the seed of life could convert conditions to boons, have no healing and a bit longer cooldown to give it a more specific purpose, different from the other skills.
ASTRAL FORCE
After some use I started to like having the entire astral force disappear after being used. It makes the activation of celestial avatar a bigger commitment since, in theory, it should be down for quite some time. Only issues are that the staff can generate astral force extremely fast in large fights, making it’s use less significant. And like death shroud on the necromancer, an accidental double-tap can result in immediate cancellation of the form. I imagine that would have been very frustrating in spvp, or if I was trying to build astral force through damage.
GLYPHS
With the glyphs having such short range, their more offensive functions only make sense to use with melee weapons, and the glyph of empowerment’s effects feels too weak for it’s short duration.
(edited by Quincy.5490)
Since ranger pets are not functioning at the highest efficiency and ranger damage coefficients are calculated to include the pets, what about a grandmaster trait that woudl allow a ranger to exchange their furry/scaly/feathered friend for a % damage boost.
There was a trait in WHO (though maybe I shouldnt mention this, as warhammer was notoriously bad at balancing) for squig herder that allowed them to trade their squigs for a 25% damage boost.
Obviously the numbers wouldn’t be the exact same, but still an idea on how to make the class feel rewarding since any major AI improvement would require a gargantuan amount of time and effort. I would not mind switching out RaO, though that was always my favorite elite.
I’m pretty sure World of Warcraft did that too. Hunter’s can remove their pets for a %damage boost.
ah good point. I was always confused about them being projectiles. so it’s a pulsing field basically.
I don’t really understand what the boon stripping “theme” is. it doesn’t really make sense on any profession other than the guardian himself. necros are masters of condis, yet they get to strip and convert boons.
boon hate is simply a thing introduced a few metas ago to counter d/d eles and guards, and to make pvp more enjoyable. conceptually I think it would work just fine on the ranger. we have quite a few weapons that are dead in the water right now, without a single useful function. just empty. so it’s a good opportunity. we need more boon stripping, especially with the herald coming our way.
In my opinion…
The thief’s shadowstep and stealth seem magical, and since the class is all about stealing, it kind of makes sense for them to be able to steal magic. Necros strip boons, which is in line with their corruption trait. Guardians are masters of boon manipulation so may as well be able to burn them away, if that makes sense. On mesmers it makes sense too. Engineers could use a gadget I suppose. I just don’t think it would make as much sense on a ranger or a warrior, because I’ve never thought of the nature manipulating, animal commanding ranger as one to strip a magical property from someone. Unless they got a pet that could do it with their F skill. And the warrior is a martial master, so giving them magic would be weird. Though something tells me they already have or will get a boon strip eventually.
What if
ALL ranger shouts had the ‘Copy Boons’ effect with its current base duration? Or at least 50% higher base duration
Was thinking about it when thinking about fortifying bond
It could be the only tweak needed to all the other shouts, and with the PRETTY low Base Duration, it wouldn’t be TOO powerful,
I mean untraited, the durations are
- 20s – WHaO
- 15s – Guard
- 60s – Protect Me!
- 85s – Search and Rescue!
- 40s – Sic ’Em!
- 60s – SotP
Also, the boon copy would occur AFTER the Shout is cast, so for
- ‘Guard’ – the ranger would get the Protection Boon when it is cast
- ‘SotP’ – The Ranger would get double Fury/Stab/Swift duration on cast
Would add something different and something new to the ranger, make shouts slightly more useful. IF there’s also 1 or 2 added boons per shout, it could be very beneficial to the ranger (Resist on Protect me, Fury on Sic ’Em, Stability/Aegis on Search and Rescue)
Discuss
Maybe I’m a simpleton, but I would rather have an Invigorating Bond rework that just gives me all boons my pet receives. From shouts and other allies, it could be inverse fortifying bond. Much cleaner.
With the current “We Heal as One” boon durations, some are almost too quick. We get as much protection from a dodge roll with WS Companion’s Defense, as we get from that transfer. With the long cooldowns of some of the shouts, it wouldn’t be worth adding very short boons to them. Plus, that might encourage rangers to blow all their shouts at once for boons, instead of using them for their own tactical purposes.
We are, indeed, reading.
We particularly take time to read the constructive and well-crafted feedback posts.
I don’t want to make promises, which as many of you have pointed out can go horribly awry for a variety of reasons, but we are hoping to make some changes to the old ranger shouts (pre-WHAO & SotP).
Is there any sort of plan to make a pass on Guard ever?
It’s functionality doesn’t seem to tie in well with anything you’d want to do in any game mode. There have been a ton of great rework suggestions over time, but really, “Guard” has only ever functioned as fodder to get regen and swiftness through traiting, and even the changeover of WHaO to a shout has replaced that usage.
Cooldown adjustments given, some of my favorite suggestions that I’ve seen are:
- makes the pet instantly travel to an area, instead of traversing the terrain (so a pet teleport)
- becomes a two part skill, allowing rangers for the second part to then swap positions with their pet
- reveals enemies walking in the area being guarded
- grants boons to allies while in the area being guarded
This skill really seems like the only skill left in need of some sort of functionality adjustment for the time being. So if shouts are being looked it, seeing Guard on the list would be nice.
Unless the ranger is traveling through the earth with nature magic, I don’t think teleportation fits thematically. Boons and reveals sound great though.
Search and Rescue could send the pet to a targeted area, pulling a downed ally to the ranger’s position, pulsing a rez (like necro transfusion) for a few seconds as they return.
Guard could send the pet to location and cast aoe taunt, otherwise functioning as it currently is.
Sic’ em could make the pet unstoppable (like risen abomination) have a lesser damage buff, maybe 15 or 20 percent, and superspeed.
Protect Me! could have damage resistance added to pet and allow it to attack, but give it a shorter leash range, maybe 360 around the ranger. Even though this skill currently kills the pet, I like the idea of ranger pets willing to sacrifice themselves to save their master.
Barrage arrows are just a visual effect. It actually just pulses damage to the 5 enemies closest to the center. Would be awesome if barrage behaved similar to ele’s Meteor Shower though.
And I don’t think boon stripping really works with the rangers theme. Maybe if Hunter’s Call applied weakness or periodic daze + vulnerability? That would make some sense considering the animation is birds pecking at the person’s head.