Guild Wars 2

My standard roaming build is Berserker + rune of durabillity NM/WS/Druid,
Sword Warhorn/Longbow. SS, E-Wyvern

I regularly fight outnumbered and it’s a very effective build.

I’ve tried our Gladomers Dire(or trailblazer) Sword,Torch/Axe,Dagger build.
It’s missing lockdown, but other than that it’s quite good.

I’ve tried Sword/Axs + GS builds recently. Like Gladomers condi build, this one is very different from what we rangers are used to(kiting and pew pew) but once you get used to the build it works pretty fine.

And honestly, I think every build that is lacking right now will have the possibility to choose specific soulbeast stuff to make up for it. Better lockdown with prelude leash and maybe the Iboga F2
Constant close combat pressure through merging with smokescale or canines.
Extra bleeds from merging with BB.

There are other builds available and if you become proficient at them they work pretty well. And as soon as soulbeast comes, we’ll have lots of improvement on that end.

Remember only one stack of stability can be stripped every .75 seconds. It was implemented to stop the Pirateship Meta in WvW.
That basically meas with your suggested version of OWP with the current interval of .5 seconds a group of 5 with one Soulbeast can go in and wreck, as long as they survive the initial CC they will now have constant stability and resistance for the next 4 seconds on the joining players and the next 8 seconds on the soulbeast, all they need to do is hit stuff, and there are plenty of targets in a zerg fight.

I like your concept, but with the way stabi works currently you’d have people roll into your group unless the first CC they get hit with strips more stacks then what’s currently on the group.
And if that happens there is still Dolly stance(If it would work)
So let’s say the opposing side actually has a CC that blasts through the stacks, the Soulbeast only has to open up with dolly stance. You basically get a safe engage through Dolly Stance + OWP. I think 2 Soulbeasts could turn zergfights in their favor with these 2 skills if used right.

There needs to be a way for the enemies to break through that constant stabi application, otherwise they’re kittened.

Your version of One Wolf Pack would be too strong if shared btw. Imagine that in WvW zergs.

Good thing to see your view on it. The first name I recognize that has a proper position on it, not the “we need petswap in beastmode” whiners or “soulbeast is just bad” type of people. Enjoyed reading and I think you have some good criticism.

https://youtu.be/AUIYtL-UxvM

If you don’t stand at specific ranges, the aim for Spider F2(While merged) is terrible!
Just make it ground-targetable for us!

Btw, It’s more helpful if you list every bug seperately in the bug section of the forum, they will be taken care of faster this way.

Yes, Mail buffs itselt with AOO apparently. I don’t mind the 12k crits thoug TBH :P

Nr 16: This is actually the case for everything except Warhorn 5: The unblockable buff.(though it could use a small buff icon for clarity)

As I’m doing my overview of Ranger every 1000 hours of playtime on it, I thought I’d share all my thoughts on Soulbeast, so here goes.

First of: The the bad things.

We can’t move during Worldly impact. Moving during the cast cancels the ability. This is not the case for the other 4.(Common we have enough of this crap on ranger — looking at Whirling Defense and Warrior axe 5)
Beside the obviously bugged Dolyak stance that would be great otherwise, and some other bugs, I’m slightly disappointed in the dagger mainhand, and dagger offhand is still lacking. So playing dagger dagger is not really fun at the moment. The precast of dagger 3 without quickness feels clunky.
Dagger 2 is fine really, but it looks so boring. All the other classes attacks look pretty awesome, I feel like this is lacking on dagger, but that’s just looks.
Obviously Dagger 5 needs a rework, it has needed a rework since forever. Even a minor thing like a “your pets next attack” type of buff would be cool, or maybe an ammo mechanic.
“Protect me”: The Taunt is directed towards ourself while in beastmode. Maybe that’s ok? I’d rather have a fear on it, even if just for a second.
“Search And Rescue”: Doesn’t do anything.

And TBH, for now that’s already it… I don’t have any other bad stuff yet.

The “ok” stuff:

No pet swap while in beastmode. I know many people here want it, but I’m really ok with it.
When we go out of beastmode we only have 10 seconds cooldown. Just the right amount of time I’d say. Use your Pets F2, give it time to use it’s 2 and 3 ability, swap to the next pet, same again, F2 and 2 + 3 I think that fits neatly in 10 seconds. So as soon as the pet starts feeling a bit lackluster, we can just meld.
Swapping while in beast mode would probably be OP, and I’m really fine with not being able to do that.

Traits: I feel like all the SB traits can be useful in a way. Maybe not in every gamemode. Leader of the pack maybe in Raids if we’re a good damage spec and we’re in a power oriented subgroup? But it might be well possible that Oppressive Superiority is still better overall.

Things that are great!

Every buff that would normally go to our pet will now affect us, while in beastmode.
Here is everything I was able to think of so far:
Dagger 2: We get the poison buff for ourself.
Shortbow 4: We get the bleeds.
Greatsword 2: We get an extra attack of opportunity!
Refined Toxins: I think we get extra posion(not sure about this)
Sword 1: We get the might on 3rd attack for ourself.
Potent Ally: Extra reliable might for us, if we’re on a crit build!(I think?)
Sic’em!: We get 40% damage buff! For 10 seconds! Worldly impact crits for like… 7.6k on berserker in PvP! Imagine comboing this with Onewolf Pack and then casting a high damage ability like Whirling Defense.
Strength of the Pack: Stack might with yourself.

Similar things that we don’t get:
Sadly we don’t get extra unblockable attacks through Call of the wild, but maybe that would be OP..
Natural Healing does not apply to us in beastform. For Soulbeast this trait becomes absolutely useless. When will we ever have a situation again where our pet needs it to be tanky as a soulbeast?

I’m not sure what “Guard” actually does in beastmode. Our chacater doesn’t get the “Guard” buff. The character doesn’t even shout “Guard”.
So far I was not able to see any effect from it.

And I really like the stannces(if dolyak would work Q-Q). I feel like the might for evades on Griffon Stance will be kinda useless though…

Observations:
If you have 2 pets from the same archetype they will share their F3 cooldown(rather obvious).
Dagger 3 precast feels better if you have quickness.

I definitely see strong fighting abilities in Roaming and sPvP. If it will be Zerg(WvW) compatible I still have to see, though I’m confident that the Stance Share will be quite nice.

If I find any other interesting things, I’ll post them below.

When I press enter beastmost while my pet is stows I don’t get anything.
I can’t unstow the pet while in beastmode.
I need to leave beastmode again and it goes on cooldown to get my pet back.
Either make us unable to enter beastmode while pet is stowed or make the pet unstow when we press F5

Well, they’re definitely sick in some way…. doesn’t matter the situation, they’ll just start laughing.

https://youtu.be/UzLppqBnt4g

Reading the main post I just couldn’t resist making this video. Maybe it will even give good perspective. Dunno.
Anyway, thinking that we should stay in soulbeast mode all the time is quite unimaginative. I think there will be good builds where we will swap in and out of it all the time. Also yes, especially in PvP and WvW we will get HUGE builddiversity.

I already found a build where we would have 18 seconds invuln + tanky stats and we could trait to survive lethal at least once, maybe add the new rune of rebirth. If we’re lucky only one of the 2 will trigger at a time and we’ll have 2 ways to avoid lethal damage every 90 seconds.

And that’s just one stupidly funny thing I theorized.

While I can’t be sure of it myself I think you got one big thing wrong:

F1 F2 F3 were not called “Beast” skill in their tooltips while I was looking through all the pets. Only F4 had “beast” written in the tooltip.
I think for a good reason. They don’t want us to spam our enemys with all these perks we get with them the whole time.

Soften the fall can be quite good now, but remember that it is one ICD for both the fall and the heal activation.
I can imagine this build being good in teamplay, the amount of protection and heals you can give out to your teammates should be quite good.
Normally I’d say take Ancient Seeds, but you don’t have any CC in your utilities and weapons, but remember that you can still proc Ancient seeds with if you combo with your pets CC. Depending on use-case and how good it works for you you should maybe still consider using it. You’re running SS/Wyvern after all.

If you’re good at staying over 75% percent health on this build and you find you don’t need the Shared Anguish, consider refined toxins. I like it a lot in WvW since you can deny a lot of heal with it. Though I have to say that I didn’t test how well it works now, since they changed Bark Skin to Rugged Growth.

Sadly it always takes ages before ranger bugs get fixed, even in cases where it gives us big advantages. Remembering SotW here…

Pet F2 swap problems have already been mentiones in another thread here, so here is the thread for the second big problem:

The Ancestral Grace (Staff 3) changes. During AG our pets are stowed and our utilities blocked. This version of Ancestral Grace comes from the HoT-Bets(I’ve been told) and was complained about back then.

It resets all the buffs and conditions on our Pet and forces the pet into the other bugged state where it stands around unresponsive for a while.

We can not use our insta cast untilities anymore, and I really don’t get why. It wasn’t anything gamebreaking and it doesn’t give us any big fight advantage either.

Can we please have the old AG back where we are not “transformed”. Where we can use our pets and utilities?

I honestly don’t think Anet is reading forums…
That’s why I made a reddit thread to call attention to it.

I made the Reddit post calling attention to it.

I don’t really have hope of devs actually reading the forums, as sad as that is…
I don’t even wanna see statements, I’d just be glad to know devs are actually reading and aware of the problems.

It’s way too unfashionable.
I’d love it if it was like in the splash art, that it would actually be stylized towards the pet we’re currently bound with.

Wuselknusel.4082:

That is why I advocate for being able to send your pet to locations via ground targetting,

I totally get your stance on this, and I agree, a rework of pet mechanics would probably be great and I’d welcome it.

Though I’m a bit pessimistic on that. I don’t think Anet will ever put the effort into a big overhaul like that. I don’t mean to dissuade you or other from advocating for it, but I’ll talk about what I think Anet might actually take a look at. And I think going for many small changes(hopefully with balance patches coming more often, like many people ask for) is the way that all this will actually happen.

If anyone from Anet reads this though: Don’t take this as an excuse! Please consider reworking our pet mechanics!

Yes, 2 or 3 times I managed the combo, but it’s very complicated and some random dodge from the enemy can mess it up.

EnderzShadow.2506:

I like Bootts Bad Build Videos he does with Wooden Potatoes, they are highly entertaining and the builds can be something fun to play, for a time.

But they are admitedly “BAD BUILDS”. HOW DID YOU MISS THAT PART?

Don’t hold them up as the standard for anything. They aren’t.
Have you missed the time where wooden potatoes rips the build for minutes?

Whoa dude… calm down…
You sound like an elitist prick if you talk like this.
There are Ranger players that actually play something similar to the daze ranger on a higer level than I play my rankeds.
And Heavy petting ranger is actually quite fun to play and can be quite strong if you can use it and the enemy doesn’t expect the tiger to hit for more than 50% of their health.

But Ignoring all that, I just mentioned these non-meta builds to show that there is a tiny niche for these rarely used abilities. I think I made it quite clear in the post that I don’t think of these builds as anything close to the meta.

I don’t get why you gotta flame me for that? o.o

As I’ve said in the after my first 1k hours, If all the thing I mentione in my writeups would be buffed/reworked at once, it would probably make the class OP, but I’m still gonna do it, just to push for some minor changes/buffs. It seems to help, even if the process is really slow.

On GS4: I like this abillity actually, it’s one of the few things with a trick to it that you can jump to keep the counterattack from triggering. I know these things are not supposed to be, but every class has little… “gimmicks” like this. Ranger is one of the classes that has the fewest of these gimmicks and GS4 is the only one I know of.

Pets: Oh there is a lot to talk about here. Yes, the most loaded and hardest to balance classmechanic, that some rangers would even like to get rid of. Let’s get into it!

Not counting the GW1 reward pets we have 33 of them. Only 8 of them ever see the daylight on my ranger. Those are: Pink Moa, Lynx, Tiger, Fernhound, Wolf, Electric Wyvern, Bristleback, and Smokesclae. Maybe a number 9 with Junglespider using Paralyzing venom for Prides on handsome Deimos…

Yes, I know some other people might have some Birds or Drakes in some of their PvP/WvW builds, but they are not meta, and for good reasons.

The worst pets are probably Pigs and Devourers. Devourers need some more interesting F2 skills and better overall DPS, maybe people would use them then.
I gotta admit I barely ever played with a Devourer. Does the AI use the evade they have in any useful way? I doubt it…

On pigs: Ohh these are a big mess that is totally stupid. Pigs need an overhaul, or they will never ever be used.
Apart form the fact that improvised weapons are a remnant from the beta days and that enemies can pick up the digged up improvised weapons and deny you their use and even use them against you and the fact that you can’t even plan on what you’re getting, because it’s random(!) and adding that you have to walk to the digging site and replace your weapon skills with whatever stuff your pig found for their F2 to have any use;
these are the current problems that exist with the digged up stuff from pigs:

If the boar digs up a skull, the cooldown of the skull is 120 seconds, another digged up skull can’t be used untill that cooldown is over.

If a warthog digs up a Venom Sac: The poinson field is there, yes, but it’s borders are not shown.

Siamoth: Aren’t Feathers and Tuft basically the same thing? Both blind and Stealth… Plasma on them is one of the best things any of the procs can dig up, other than Hero Drink on Pigs.

Pigs: Egg: Restore Health and Initiative? Yay! Initiative! On a Ranger!

Seriously Anet, what’s with up with the porcupines, they are such a mess!

Traits!

For me, all traitlines are in use at some point, but some traits just never find any use:

Skirmishing: Light on your Feet and Most Dangerous Game can just never compete with Quickdraw.

Marksmanship(least used Traitline for me): Predator’s Instinct: This trait is total trash. Ranger has enough ways to cripple and immobilize without it.
Steady focus: Might be good if we had the skills to pull of something to do Power DPS.
Brutish Seals: Might be good if we had a healing or Elite Signet. The few we have are kinda bad, so it never gets used ever.

Beastmastery: The pet F2 enhancements barely get used, Maybe the Taunt now and then, otherwise not. They are not good enough to use a signet build.

Wilderness Survival: Empathic bond Basically never gets used, because Wilderness Knowledge is the way better trait for condi removal and you play this traitline if you’re up for a build with 3-4 Survival Abilities. Poison Master at least gets used for Cranger.

That’s it for this time, and again it’s a lot. Well, with any luck something might influence balancing again.

Hope you all have a great time!
~Ranys

PS: I didn’t look for misspelling right away, might fix them later.

Abilities that never get used in any serious build and any gamemode ever:

Glyph of Alignment: (The condis and damage on this are terrible, we don’t need more heal or condiclear in avatar. Casting this would just steal time in which we can cast better things)

Stormspirit: I’ll not accept Boots Dazy McDazerson daze build as anything serious, and even then there are better dazes available and in group content we always have 25 vuln on an enemy all the time. there are enough sources for it that don’t require a stationary spirit with just 1000 range.

Muddy Terrain: Yes, before HoT this was part of some immobilization builds, but now with all the condi clear and resintance it’s only there to maybe remove 2 condis, if it’s traited.

Signet of the Hunt: Though this on is not surprising, really… Most classes have a similar signet that is only there to provide some speed with a kittenty active.

Spike Trap: High cooldown for a bit of cc. If I want some bleeds I’ll take sharpening stones, we have enough CC available on Ranger to not waste an ability slot for this.

Frost Trap: Chills for a maximum of 12 seconds on a 30 second cooldown, terrible damage. If we go for traps we take condi damage/duration, okay then maybe the chill lasts longer, but we have better traps available on lower cooldown.

Skills that almost never get used, but still have their place in the game somewhere:

Water spirit: Sometimes in raids, if you’re kiting flak on Sabatha maybe, or kiting Cairn’s agony and basically only interacting with your team through spirits the whole fight.

Signet of Renewal: The mechanics of this skill are immensely convoluted.
1- Your pet hast to be alive for this skill to do anything other than stunnbreak, if your pet is dead, it ofcourse still goes on cooldown if you press it.
2- If your pet is more than 600 range away, you’re not Benifiting from the Condi clear.
3- Lets say 1 and 2 are not the problem in your situation: You and some other players around you have condis that badly need to be cleared and you cast SoR. You basically just killed your pet! Okay you got some benifits from it though. Now if petswap is on cooldown, because before casting it you wanted to make sure the pet is nearby, you’re going into a 60 second cooldown(45 if traited) for petswap now. And SoR itself also has a 60 second cooldown.
If on the other hand you have not petswapped before, you’re still forced to swap after the cast to keep a low cooldown on petswap.

Having to keep so much in mind and having so many risks added to SoR makes most people never use it at all!

Signet of the Wild: Basically I only have a use for it when kiting Cairn’s agony(again).
Yes, the unblockable bug that we had for many months was overpowerd, but without anything else it’s underpowerd, and only comes to use in Boots “Heavy Petting” ranger or similar builds. We have better alternatives to choose from.

Glyph of Unity: Like… still the most kitten elite ever. Only used in raids for extra heals and GotL application, There might be some use outside of raids to it if the “returning damage” mechanic was improved.

Quite some time ago, I think almost a year, I hit the 1000 hour mark on ranger, and decided to do a long talk about the troubles I see in this class.

Now I hit 2000 hours a week ago, I now have quite a lot more of experience. I’ve done raids and killed every boss, playing both healing druid and cranger, sometimes a hybrid of the 2.
I play WvW quite a lot, I’ve done healing for a smallscale lots of times and am roaming alone almost every other, winning most of my 1v1s and sometimes even against multiple enemies.
I’ve done PvP too. I’m nowhere near the top level, maybe because I don’t put enough time into it, but I’m in the lower gold and higher silver regions. I’ve finished Ascension

Last time I did a post on this some of the grievances were addressed, like the glyph not healing the pet(which it now does) or adding something to Warhorn 4 because it was a bit weak. If it was my post that made it happen or something else, who knows? But I’d like to think I played part in it. :)

So, let’s go into the class and its troubles. I’ll start with minor annoyances and work up to the big problems later on.

On Wapons:
Staff 5: Sublime Conversion: I already mentioned it last year, we don’t have an indicated Castime on the skill, but casting it interrupts other casts(like AA). 1 and a half years later and I still don’t know, is it 1/4ths of a second? Is it 1/2? How long does it take to cast it?

Sword 2: The first cast of it is still quite wonky. I’m still not entirely sure when exactly the evade starts, and sometimes while casting, one just stays on the spot even though there are no roots or anything to block the way. While making it activate like lightning reflexes(instant evade) would probably make it OP in combination with all the other evaded and low cooldown, I would very much appreciate it working like LR in the sense that when we walk backwards, LR always casts with the evade in the backwards direction, while with sword 2 we first turn to a target(sometimes through auto target).
I know it might annoy some other people, but I would very much like it to always evade in our current backwards direction. Clicking away target, shutting of autotarget, turning the right way, then casting, then finding my target again and turning on auto target again just to have 1 evade in the direction I want? That’s quite annoying, and I often mess it up.

Axe 5: Pls, let us move like warriors? Even if our movement was 66% reduced during cast, I’d still like that a lot more, because right now even the tiniest move interrupts the cast, and that makes me sad very often.

Dagger 5: This abillity feels so underwhelming… It barely ever hits if the target is moving in any way and the distance is over 600, but the range is supposed to be 1200.
By now I treat it as a 600 ranger, otherwise it’s basically useless. If it were more reliable I’d play dagger offhand a lot more often.

Longbow 3: Please, If our character doesn’t even bother to shoot the arrow, because the target is behind us, don’t make it go on cooldown? And I think something like that also happens on LB4 now and then.

GS2: Minor thing, but with 2handed Training the damage in the tooltip still decreases after 9 months now. The actual damage goes up though.

GS4: The hands on Deimos trigger the block. Experienced Rangers know that you can work around those triggers by jumping, but kitten , things that can’t be targeted shouldn’t trigger a counterattack anyway!

SB3: Similar to the first cast of sword 2, I’d like this to always cast in backwards direction, even if the shot cant hit the target that way, but since SB is barely usefull in WvW or PvP anyway, it doesn’t matter too much right now.

Half a year ago we got the Privateer set.
1 Ticket for each weapon, the first account bound ticket set.
And we gave you hell for it Anet. So I will give you hell for the Elemental Sword now!

The community was unhappy at things that are obtainable only by pure RNG that you have to pay money for. Back then you at least told us that it will stay on 1 ticket prices forever, but many in the community had the feeling that you’d have learned from this backlash and think more carefully about how you implement gemstore skins. Obviously you don’t and I know there is already a lot of talk about it, but I still think the community is too calm about it right now.

A GW1 nostalgia cashgrab is fine if it is done like Chaos Gloves. Flat price, you get what you pay for.
The way to get an Elemental Sword is not fine. I’ve heard of people who had to open 70 chests to get it. What is this? Knifes from CS:GO?

I feel extremely mistreated as a longtime customer and from now on I’ll not spend as much money on gems anymore. I will not support this!

Dunno, I see a lot of lockdown/Chase potential in it, but I guess I’ll see it when I try it out myself.

Quite curious how noone mentions/knows of Gladomers Dire-Druid build.
http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNMQRAnY8fjEqQNL2yC+rAVLW4EM4W6Ntn683GAHumhVfLAUxKpA-TRiAABJ8AASU/AAHEgl2f4U1f44IAIpSwKOBAip8LAACwMLzysMDO6RP6RP6RjUAwMNC-e
He plays it a lot on his stream, and he rocks with it. It seems like a fightingstyle that takes a bit getting used to, but it’s a good condi ranger build.
It’s also manages to make this build a hell for the condi stealth trapper thieves.
I have not tried it myself yet, but I want to do it at some point.

Throw some light? Nah, you better take a torch for that :P

Is this still going? If so, I’d like in!
Name: Carthia Dra
Server: Dakkarlake
Game Type: WvW/PvE

95% still relevant. This thread is still needed, so please lets revive it!

cough do you know combo fields? cough
Commi: Yes Zerk, let’s blast a fire field. Who wants to offer their life for us to blast for some might? After all, the damage we take while blasting it will be doubled back to you

People posting here like “these are the worst ideas we ever saw” have obviously not read your other forum post.

I like some of your ideas, but I would hate the “back to 0% OOC” I’ve worked for that astral force, let me keep it.

Problems with Verdant etching is that you still have to stay for the time it needs the seed to explode and the range is too small. I’d like to see a radius buff so I can dodge some attacks/stuff while I’m trying to stay at my seed. As I’ve mentioned in my thread about this: It’s way too hard to hit allies with ancient seed. It’s way to hard to even hit myself.

Against Warrior, yes they have the upper hand, you need to keep them on range if you wanna win.

Against Mesmer, … git gud scrub. If you know how to play your ranger and how to play against mesmers you win 8/10 times.

Against Thieve, oh man… you really need to get good.

I’d like Amazon Prime.

What Jim Hunter said.
I don’t have problems with condis when I run with my own guild, but if I go to the public zerk I’ll die without clear, if I go roam I’ll die anyway.
Yes, a year ago(before HoT) it might have been the case that condies were not very important at all. Now, they are.
Condi thieves are annoying in roaming groups, condi warriors/necros(and some others I’m sure)are quite well used.
I’m playing healer for my guild, I know what my people die from, I don’t know very well who’s casting it.
There are also CC condies that need to be cleared, taunt/root/fear, and some softer stuff like chill/cripple. Just because it doesn’t do damage does not mean it shouldn’t be cleared.

Also I’m pretty sure there are some condi mesmers in WvW. Almost died from walking with torment once.

And another big thing for WvW, Tagging! (Even though I don’t actually know if there might have been a change here) Lunar Impact doesn’t tag anything for loot, as far as I know. One thing we were able to do as zerk healers was using Mainhand Axe for some tags with it’s nice 3 bounces. That was already taken away from us last balance patch. Was that really necessary? It didn’t feel too strong in my opinion. I would rather have had a slight damage nerf, and kept the 3 bounces instead of what you have done to us.

Rant is done here

Conclusion:

1. The thing that makes the not-full-healPow builds viable at the moment is the survivability from CA. If you take that away, we will have less build diversity, instead of more
2. Glyphs desperately need to be looked at. Verdant etching(and Seed of life in general) is useless in WvW, and not good enough to be taken over shouts + trooper rune in all other modes. Also, Glyph of Unity is kitten, rather take Mistfire Wolf.
3. Wilderness survival Traitline + Abilities are(for Zerkfights) the only reliable condiclear beside Shouts + Trooper and the Shout + Trooper is just way better for Zerks.

I have not proofread it a lot, so if there is anything that doesn’t make sense, please tell me, I’ll have a look at it.

Lovely Greetings
Ranys

Well, the changes/nerfs to CA healing will not diversify us on their own. If you go with this, and only this, I can promise you, any non healer build will die.

This is gonna be pretty ranty, but it will touch on a lot of things. Short form down below!

PvP:
If this will be applied in PvP too, any build without HealPow will fall off the radar even more than they already have. You will have even more Bunker Druid players, because this is already good, and will now be the only good choice, because all other builds will loose out on survivability. They will keep using Solider rune/ Resounding Timbre and a bunch of shouts.

Raids(and maybe Fractals/Dungeons)
Even though I don’t run Raids myself yet, I have friends who taught me a little about how druids are used in Raids. Right now they use about 1200 HealPow, the rest of stats are used for damage, because more damage is good.
Now, depending on how you will balance this, we might actually see a bit more diversity in raids. If our scaling gets better in a way that we need less that 1200 HealPow, we can use the “left over” stats for other things. If we still need the same HealPow, nothing will change. If we need more, we will either be a pure healer class, or we will become useless, replaces by Ele healers or something like that.

And with a quick look at fractals: Our condi damage build was relevant T4 fractals, but that already changed with the recent fractal scaling change. If anything, Condi builds are maybe on par with power builds. And our power builds are already underwhelming.

WvW:
I play a lot of WvW, and right now we druids function just as a healer/cc dealer + fury/regen bot there. There are some niche builds for zerkfighting, like usic Sic’em and Berserker stats + longbow + ancient seeds to pick of all the thieves that wanna sneak around on the sides, but even killing them is not quite easy.
The projectile hate makes Longbow not very useful for the rest of zerkfights. Many times you can use LB5 and then throw it away.
Shortbow/Axe mainhand suffer from this too.
Condimeta forces us to pick some condi clear. So Druidic Clarity is almost a must. As already mentioned in the PvP section, many use Trooper Runes(read Soldier for PvP) for condi clear with shouts. This is a rather small condi clear, but it’s quite reliable anyway, also it’s AoE for 5 people. So that’s all fine.
There are 3 other options for condi clear:
1. Signet of Renewal: The problem here is that it’s a very long cooldown. Also the pet has to be within 600 range and alive. In zerkfights this is quite unreliable, chances are both pets are dead and switch is on cooldown, well, you’re kittened! Oh? You clicked it anyway, because you paniced? Well, it’s on a minute cooldown now! Even though it did nothing! Common, this is an annoying concept Anet. There has to be a better way for this! Even if the pet is alive, if we are in a zerkfight and it draws condis from a few allies(Is there even a cap? I bet it’s 5), that’s basically an instant death for the pet
2.Wilderness knowledge + Survival Abilities: Good condi clear, but the Troll Unguent is a very risky heal ability, for sharpening stones we would need good condi builds and who even uses muddy terrain?
3. Verdant Etching + Glyphs. So yea, for WvW this one is irrelevant. The seed of live only casts after our Glyph casting time is over and then it takes another second for the seed to explode and actually clear the condi and heal us and for that we need to stay in that small field around the seed? Need to doge something or run away from something or anything else that keeps you from standing still in the field? Okay! Your verdant etching is useless! Even if you buffed it, like for example: “Verdant Etching – One Condi is removed from you and your pet when you start casting a glyph” Or set the radius to 450 or make the seed explode faster. Also, Lightfield? Yes! We definitely don’t have enough lightfields on the battlefield!
Even then, the glyphs are still just kinda bad. Tiny radius, no boons, Glyph of Unity is more useless than Mistfire Wolf. Glyph of alignment is underwhelming in Normal form, If I’ll take it, I’d use it for the CA form, but even that it only has a ranger of 300 again.
Glyphs, as they are now, are just totally useless for WvW (Cept glyph of equality. Everyone loves equality)
BTW, why does Seed of Life have half a second Cast Time if I just wanna normally place it in CA? That means it takes 1.5 seconds for it to fully take effect! I will NEVER ever hit my allies with this! I never cast it. It’s no use. Allies are just too good at dodging such a small thing. Even I myself am too good at dodging it!

I found it a long while ago already. Just never got around to posting it.

You might remember me as the guy who made a long post about what I think are some problems with ranger when I got to over 1000 ours on it.

And I’m around long enough that I know it will probably just result in an updated tooltip, but I’m still full of hope

So, since forever we have the staff 5 tooltip saying there is no cast time. In my experience there is about 1/4 or 1/2 second cast time. It would be nice if either the tooltip or the ability could be changed, so we have consistency.

Would be really nice to have it without cast time, so we can cast it during our auto-attack.

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

So this is more of a complaint thread? Anyway, interesting points in there, my thoughts (with a similar number of hours)

Weapons:
I agree about sword 2 evade feelimg strange, but disagree completely on horn and dagger. Horn is a perfect fit to theme, and functions great (rnger warhorn us my favorite warhorn). Dagger is a close range (<900 range)weapon for hitting those people just out of range, so mine rarely misses. Speaking of closerange, I consider hunters shot to lso be a attack.

Shouts:
Search and rescue:. yeah, they nerfed too hard. I hated carying it even when it was op because it is otherwise useless in a fight…now back to the trashbin it goes.

wvw:
my guild hs been forcing me on my guardian latley, but I never had major issues getting bags playing healer druid. Staff 1 pierces crazy, take advantage of that while you fill your CA bar. Otherwise, cant commanders set you to get a percent of loot now if it is serious issue? Thought they were saying sonething like that.

Beastmastery:
I take beastmastery purley for traited shouts :-/ that perma party swiftness…

Then again, I don’t claim to be a good ranger…

Well. It could be called a complain poste, because I mostly point out problems, but I’m not unhappy with the class at all, I just thought I’d make a big list for all the stuff that is annoying/lame/to weak. I don’t expect all of what I said to be polished out now, but if I see some of it in the next few patches, there might be a chance this post was an influence

Any other things you’d like to see from an experienced ranger? I do have quite some time to write stuff down.

1000 hours is not much compared to some other highly skilled and knowledgeable players in this game, but I love(it’s my main ofc) the class and have tried to learn as much as I can about it.

In case someone doesn’t know: SS = Smokescale, BB = Bristleback (Pets)

All of what I say here is obviously my opinion, but this opinion has been honed by 1000 ours of play in PvP, PvE(Though I have not really done Raids yet) and WvW.

So here is my look at the class in 4 subsections: Pets, weapon abilities (1-5), Utilities (6-10) and Traits. Look for the bold stuff to find the sections.

Lets go for our main feature first: PETS! <3

I will not be talking much about drakes or Moas, because I just don’t like them, maybe someone can add to that in the comments

We Rangers love our pets to death(most of us anyway). They tank for us, they can bodyblock for us, they help us up when we are downed. Especially when downed they feel like a lot of help. We can still use F2 while downed, CCing or killing an enemy and “Lick wounds”(downed Nr.3) is awesome for PvE and not overpowerd in PvP or WvW because we can still be finished of while our pets help us.

That being said, this is where they stop shining and we come to the more mediocre parts of pets. They have some nice buffs(Fernhound regen, Tiger frenzy, etc.) and some good condis(Lynx bleeds, Eagle bleeds, Spider poisons, etc.) and some ok damage in general(BB feels a little underwhelming now though, same for SS).

Now here are the annoying/bad/underwhelming parts about pets:

Birds AI casting swiftness: Dafaq, I don’t give a kitten about swiftness in fights, I want it out of combat. You could be doing damage, burd, I don’t need your swiftness right now!
We don’t have any pets that cast swiftness on F2, but I think a bird would be a gread canidate, but those bleeds in the AI casts! They’d be fine there!

Close combat pets: Not really too much of a problem in PvE, but in WvW and PvP a good enemy never stands still, which makes many pets useless. now and then dogs and cats have their jump attacks, those do hit. Auto-attacks and stuff like that? Nah!

Random CC castings: Yes, I’m looking at you dogs! though some other have it to, it’s mostly dogs. I’d like to be able to control it.

And here I have an awesome Idea that would make all rangers SQUEEE if it was implemented, but (I think) it wouldn’t be overpowered: While our pet is already attacking, make F1 switch to a second cast command where we can have for example the dog leaps, and give us a check-box in our pet panel that sets this ability to autocast/AI-cast(so it would essentially work just like before if it was checked).

Other than this, please rework old pets so they are on par with the new ones again, PLEASE!

Part 2: Weapons:

We have a lot to choose from, that’s all fine. I don’t think we need more, but I want to go over a few things that don’t feel alright to me:

Horn:

• 4: I can’t really put a finger on it, but for some reason this ability just feels weird and out of place.
• 5: It’s a cool ability, it would be awesome though if we had a mainhand weapon that focuses on buffing(or maybe healing) allies too, so it works well together(Maybe next expansion… hey, one can hope alright?)

Sword:

• 2: The evade on this ability doesn’t feel good, sword 3 and dagger 4 feel way better. I think the problem is that the evade doesn’t start right when we cast it, but only when the backwards motion begins.
• 3: Not really necesarry, but can we have 1 more poison on this? I guess it’s a psychological thing. I’d rather see a 3 there than a 2 ^^

Longbow:
In generally longbow doesn’t autoattack even though the 1500 range shots would still be able to hit, can we finally change that please? Or is there a good reason for this?

• 3: You missed! No stealth for you! … Really? The only bit of stealth(beside trapper rune) and we HAVE to hit it otherwise we don’t get it? It’s only 3 seconds, please just give me that stealth… I actually never use this ability ever, it’s useless like this. at this range before I know if it hits I might have already autocasted another shot so I’m revealed directly. Cool, that was about .5 seconds of stealth! While I was 1200 or more away, they didn’t even care about me at this point…

Dagger:

• 5: You need some serious throwing knife skills for this one. It says 1200 range, but as if it would ever his someone at this range. It’s a slow projectile and it’s not homing. I’m not even sure if that should be changed. Would be cool if it were a little more reliable though.

Axe(offhand):

• 4: Oh, It pulls! The tooltip didn’t mention that… cool!

Staff:

• 1: Ping, Ping, Ping, Ping, Ping, Ping, Ping, Ping :| I know it was already changed once, but can we have a “softer” version if this sound. Tone down? the high frequencies in the second part maybe. It’s not really too bad, but it could be less annoying.
• 2: Feels useless, I know it heals some, but it’s so insignificant, I almost never cast it, because it takes 3/4 of a seconds. maybe with 1/4 or 1/2 I’d cast it, but like this it feels like wasted time.

Greatsword/Axe(main hand)/Torch/Shortbow
There is not really anything wrong here. IMO

Ok, On to Utilities!
The things I do not talk about are in a good place I think.

Heals:
All really cool, just 2 things:

• Why can’t Glyph of Rejuvenation not just heal my pet too T_T The poor thing!
• Troll Unguent feels lame. I know some builds use it, I don’t. Maybe I just can’t see it’s value though.

Now going through 7-9 skills by categories:

Glyphs:
They are all kinda cool but:

• None of them have a finisher, I feel like Tides could use a blast-finisher
• Empowerment: Normal one already feels lame, avatar one… o.O? Increase outgoing healing? Should I gather a dedicated healer group around me and buff them up to heal even more? I don’t see any value in this one.

Shouts:

• Sic ’Em : Make our pets great again! Maybe it will be useful then.
• Search and Rescue: Everyone knows this was overnerfed. You have to go into the dangerzone to cast it. Many classes (especially thieves) can already shadowstep/blink to targets so much, it’s no good with 600 range. Maybe 900 would be a nice balance?

Spirits:
In general annoying because they are stationary, the game is too mobile for them. Stone could use a stunnbreak on cast maybe? Not really necessary though.

Survival:

• Sharpening Stone: feel lame. I’m pretty sure it’s not just “feel” but generally bad.
• Muddy Terrain: When does this pulse? I guess once a second? I know it’s good to kite, but there are so few situations where it can actually be used well.
• Quickening Zephyr: Cooldown is too long I think, compared to other stunnbreaks (glyph, protect me, Lightning Reflexes). Yes, Signet of renewal has the same CD, but the signet is better in my opinion. With 40 or 45 seconds I would use Zephyr.

Signets:

• Signet of the Hunt: Common, especially since Natural Stride this is only used for getting the 300k damage achievement, if you don’t have it already.

Traps:
Nothing wrong here I think. The fact that they are all unblockable makes them very useful, but at the same time you have to get into the fray to effectively use them, so it’s balanced! Cool!

Elites:

• Can we have a trap here?
• Glyph of Unity is just lame. (would maybe be cool if it applied condis or something like that.
• Rest is awesome.

At this point a few notes about Celestial Avatar(F5):
Since the nerf “Seed of Life” doesn’t feel worth casting anymore. You have to stand it it till it blossoms for the condi clear. Almost impossible with the mobility needed in this game. The druid who casts seed of life will probably not be able to Projectile finish it, unless it was casted with Verdant Etching, but Celestial Shadow is probably the better option here, and Druidic Clarity as condi remove.
Healing is still bad for participation, especially in WvW zerk fights, because only when targets are tagged(enough attacks on them to trigger participation) do you get participation. The only ability in avatar form that makes damage is Nr.5 and that is close range, has to be cast while standing still and casts for quite some time.
The daze from Lunar Impact(this ability does no damage) apparently doesn’t count towards tagging. I will still go on to heal my team as much as I can, even without loot, but it would be cool to get some.
Other than this. Even here Glyph of Unity still feels lame, I can’t heal my mates past 100% hp, and I’m getting there without it.

Traits:

Skirmishing: Much synergy with many things the Ranger can do. I love it!

Nature Magic: It’s great. If spirits were not so stationary/useles I would even use Nature’s Vengeance.

Beastmastery: I feel like Nature Magic works better together with pets at the moment that this does, which is sad, because the problem is that my pet is at the moment mostly a thingy that I copy my buffs from with “We heal as one!”. If pets were not so useless atm, Beastmastery would be useful I think.

Marksmanship:
*I really love the synergy between “Clarion Bond” and “Windborne Notes”(NatMagic). It would probably be more used in general if Longbow were a bit better.
*"Predator’s Instinct" Only good for kiting, but weird with 30 seconds cooldown, that cripple will be cleared quite fast in most cases. Can We have 5 seconds cripple with 15 seconds cooldown?

*Wilderness Survival:

• “Soften the fall” is really weird. The other classes at least hat something useful with their fall-damage reductions, but this one just traps the enemies near you, while you are stunned for a moment from the fall, so you basically force them to attack you.
• “Emphatic Bond” Would be cooler if we had 3.5 seconds interval with 1 condition removed. 10 and 3 feels almost random in fights, because we can’t see/know when it will come up. (same with the passive of signet of renewal actually)

Druid:

• “Cultivated Synergy” I really really hope it heals the pet itself aswell! I don’t actually know, and I can’t test it very well. But it wouldn’t even be needed if Glyph of Rejuvenation would heal the pet(at least a bit)
• I think it’s a bit lame that T1 and T2 choosable traits feel way stronger than T3. I know T3 is strong, they just don’t feel like they are.
• I CANT DECIDE WHAT TO TAKE AND WHAT NOT TO TAKE T_T!!!!

Aaaaaand I’m done! Nope, this will not have a TL;DR! Read it! If you like Ranger, I’m sure you will actually learn something from it!

Didn’t proofread, may miss some words or letters here and there… if it’s too bad, please say so and I will have a look

What do you guys think? Anything to add?

Thanks for reading! -Ranys

Right!?! I loved being able to case Ancestral Grace midair… it was so fun. It screwed my playstyle for 3 weeks after the patch, because I was always jumping before I cast it, so I wouldn’t get blocked by some random edge… now I didn’t cast it at all, so I got blocked in another way ^^

Finally fixed. The actual problem was a corrupt network driver. Took quite some time to figure that out.

Hm. It’s not entirely fixed yet. I still have a lot of issues with connectin after changing maps, but at least it recovers and I can use whispers now. If anyone has tips on how I can get the rest fixed, that would be awesome!

Ok. Fixed it: Here is what I did wrong. When I installed on this PC I just downloaded the 64bit.exe and started it after putting it in a folder I named GuildWars2. What I should have done 1st: Get the normal setup and let it install. then put the 64bit.exe there. After going through the setup everything works fine. I hope this might one day help someone.

I have a very weird problem. If I log in and stay in one map, everything is fine. As soon as I change map I can’t use LFG, Market, Parties/Squads(If I am in one already I can’t leave, can’t use their chat either), Guildchat, whispers, (mails seem to work, which is funny)… basically a lot of what I wanna use doesn’t work anymore. About a minute after changing map I will get this error message.

I have been googleing the error-code, I have done a lot of research on what could be the problem, but I still don’t actually know. I have adjusted Firewall settings for GW2-64.exe which I am using. I am starting it with admin rights. The ports are forwarded on the router. This problem only happens one this computer that I’m writing from. Another computer in the same network doesn’t have any issues. The only security software on this PC is Windows-Defender, it’s running win10-pro 64bit. My ping stays normal(around 30ms).

Yes I’m the same guy that posted on reddit.