Guild Wars 2

Snow.2048:

Raven.9603:

Snow.2048:

Soulbeast was requested multiple times in that huge feedback thread years ago, I am happy to see it arrive.

However, the information so far (I watch the wiki mostly for elite specs because these streamers are failing to properly showcase on so many levels) makes me think that melding with your beast will be a huge damage loss, making it nonviable for the purpose I would most enjoy, namely petless Ranger. But this is just fear at this point and not based on anything subtantial. I really really want to see the traits, and hope we can see it the 11th.

That said, our traits have always been weird to play with, so I’ll probably try to make it work anyway xD

Edit: I like the condi clears though, might be worth slotting it as a defensive line.

I am really excited by the idea of the soulbeast, but a lot of how this pans out will depend on how they treat pet orientated traits.

For example, if empathic bond stops working when you are in soul beast mode, condition clearing would be a total nosedive even with this new heal. and that would be terrible in what is obviously an expansion that favors conditions over everything else (unless you are warrior and have a magic-negating elite spec).

still wish after all these years spirits would’ve gotten some love. i keep waiting for the day spirits are aura’s attached to the ranger and not some killable 3 hitpoint world of warcraft shaman totem.

I get the feeling that once you meld, a lot of those things may fail (which would be ‘acceptable’ because you can enter and exit beast meld.) It would be hilarious if you got the effects though (stuff like your crits give might to pet/pet crits giving bleed instead giving you both effects), which I would really think would be fun to build around.

Although its just speculation, I think in reality we’ll be enters beast mode to fire off one or two skills, then dropping it. If this is this case, I’d be far more worried about what happens to the buffs on the pet (if they get reset then melding isn’t going to be anything more than an opener in most cases).
-After looking at Auroras stream it looks like beast mode replaces f1-f4 with new f skills (3ish?) which confirms my suspicions when I started writing this. But maybe the f skills have great scaling/damage making up for the loss of the pet? I doubt it but I dream…

I too would love to see them revisit core ranger more. The buffs/changes since I took a break from ranger have been amazing but I feel like I have very little choice..

it looks like the other F skills become some of the pets other normally non-commanded abilities, for example, charge (boars), knockdown (dogs), ignore pain (bears)

i think a balanced compromise will be spider mounts as seasonal gem shop or black lion rewards.

they would make money for anet who probably doesnt want to waste the amazing talent and hard work they already did when they created the spider mounts.

they also wouldn’t be so accessible that every other person was using them.

never mind that it is ridiculous to punish everyone just to cater to people with irrational fears. whats next, do we get rid of the awesome mesmer / necro couple because some people are homophobic? what about racist grandmothers who play guildwars who are deathly afraid of non-whites?

for the record, i had such a grandmother, who played GW2 almost until she passed away, and she would literally rage/fear log if a black character joined her party, though for reasons i dont understand, asura’s with the giant afro hairstyle were okay.

i would’ve said “mobility matters for world completion with good quality of life” but, now I guess we need to see if: mounts are usable in HoT or basegame, and if so, how easy is it to get dismounted?

For over world travel mobility, from best to worst, classes generally stack up as:
highly mobile:
warrior (sw/wh/gs/utils)
ranger (gs/staff/wh/sw[if you got skillz])
thief (sb/utils)
ele (dagger main /air attune/ utils)

sorta mobile:
engi (swift kits and rocket boots)
mesmer (staff / utils / centaur runes)
not mobile:
everyone else

for completing champions, any of them could do it, but I would say in order of ease, its:
ranger (pet, best heals, med armor and hp, strong range)
ele (has the biggest kit to work with and solid sustain in all of them)
warrior (high hp, armor, sustain, dmg, oh kitten buttons, but mostly melee)
mes (med hp, low armor, avg heals, but can mix mobility with strong passive damage).
thief (with the right gear, not beserker, you could make a high sustain, highly mobile passive damage troll, either with lotus blossoms or pistol, that basically kites and dots).

if it ends up that you can ride mounts everywhere without being dismounted at the inkling of combat, then Revenant (good damage, heals, armor, sustain) and Guardian (same thing) become OK choices (good enough to win but unlikely to succeed at disengaging a bad fight).

Snow.2048:

Soulbeast was requested multiple times in that huge feedback thread years ago, I am happy to see it arrive.

However, the information so far (I watch the wiki mostly for elite specs because these streamers are failing to properly showcase on so many levels) makes me think that melding with your beast will be a huge damage loss, making it nonviable for the purpose I would most enjoy, namely petless Ranger. But this is just fear at this point and not based on anything subtantial. I really really want to see the traits, and hope we can see it the 11th.

That said, our traits have always been weird to play with, so I’ll probably try to make it work anyway xD

Edit: I like the condi clears though, might be worth slotting it as a defensive line.

I am really excited by the idea of the soulbeast, but a lot of how this pans out will depend on how they treat pet orientated traits.

For example, if empathic bond stops working when you are in soul beast mode, condition clearing would be a total nosedive even with this new heal. and that would be terrible in what is obviously an expansion that favors conditions over everything else (unless you are warrior and have a magic-negating elite spec).

still wish after all these years spirits would’ve gotten some love. i keep waiting for the day spirits are aura’s attached to the ranger and not some killable 3 hitpoint world of warcraft shaman totem.

keep in mind that soulbeast also means giving up all those druid heals and mobility from staff3, but that druids dont magically disappear. it could be that druid is still a great choice for soloing; i would be surprised if giving up 2 meat shields and self heals was an improvement for soloing.

i think we need to know more about how barrier works, but also it will depend on the mobs, which will dictate how much condi clearing is needed and how well condis perform, as well as how much boon hate is in play.

as someone thinking about returning all the condi focus is a real turn off even if the class concepts (outside of their condi focus) look incredible.

xbox controller has a keyboard attachment, though most of my WvW time is spent in TeamSpeak, Raids in Discord, and in dungeons I generally dont want to talk to the crazies.

ESO solves this in console specific versions by incorporating either XBL’s chat (great, because its your buddies) or zone chat in game (full of trolls when you’re in a city, not bad in actual zones).

while i doubt this will ever happen, i would love to see it, and it makes good business sense for Arena net.

ESO is success because of consoles. After a rough start on PC’s, being the only western RPG MMO on consoles has basically saved the game because they have the category all to themselves, unlike on PC where competition is steep. About 2/3rds of game sales and ESO Plus subs are console.

Skyrim is arguably the one of the most successful western / fantasy RPGs PC games in history. I’m not going to argue if Witcher3 is better, but more people play Skyrim (or Skyrim SE) on a daily basis today (per Steam user count) than Witcher3 by nearly double even though Skyrim is much older. 84% of Skyrim sales were on console.

Diablo 3 has sold over 12 million PC copies becoming the 4th* (wikipedia source is clearly missing some major games) most popular PC game of all time, but it sold another 18 million+ on consoles. And in an unusual twist of fate, it plays way better on consoles because its not such a carpal-tunnel inducing click fest.

I play GW2 with a controller (xb elite), and I do about 80% as good as I do with my razor naga epic. I play on my couch with the PC plugged into the bigscreen. It’s comfortable for long game sessions.

But I would buy a 100$ copy of GW2 on XBox in a heartbeat just to not have deal with the PC. Life is so much easier on a console (for a couch player) because you can easily watch TV, netflix, hbo now, play music or a game with a “hey cortana” or a controller.

But on PC-on-tv, either I need to keep a wireless keyboard and mouse in the ottoman (awkward and cluttery) or I have to get up and double click / sign in to GW2 before I start, then remember to swap inputs back to the Xbox when I’m done so the family can use their normal apps. Just thinking about that makes me sign into ESO most nights instead of GW2 despite GW2 being the better game.

Think about it Anet, even if its not until the next-next expansion or GW3. Diablo 3 more than doubled their money. ESO tripled their money. Skyrim quintupled their money. It would cost more development time, but it likely wouldnt cost double.

And if anyone is stupid enough to buy black lion keys its console players.

albarinos.6135:

hi,

i am here since the alpha, i spent most of the years on Wvw but now i do not go in WvW anymore now. There is something essential to me in it is that you have to build a reason to continue doing the very same thing over and over for years. That thing is the competition for your “realm”/“race”/“whatever” against an everlasting enemy you build against.

Now we have no more an enemy to hate and build against. The servers are switching so one day your friend is your enemy of the next day. You cannot have vocal , forums etc build for that as there is no more a single unit against another one.

The fights are meaningless as you figth with the “strangers of the day”.

Dark Age of camelott understand that. You had the “hairy” vickings against the “girly” arthurian etc.. you had someone to be proud and someone to gamely hate and compete against and show them ! This is key incentive you have to have a good vilain in a movie to have real meaning of the fight of the “good guys”.

I really hope you will rethink this and not mainly mecanics and lags but as primary target the psychology of WvW. Without anything at stake this is just a flat terrain with open group unbalanced pvp. And WvW could be so much more.

What i think it really need : a clear enemy to hate and figth. Community will build with ease around this Roleplayed “hate”/“competition”.

Server pride was not a real good one but it was one. We lost it so there is nothing left. There is no stake at winning anything or capturing anything.

Just my 2 cents …

I pitched this year 1 in the form of “we should have death-spam” and the response I got from devs was “why?”. I didnt have to respond, dozens of people piled in to say “well having an enemy you recognize makes you want to get back out there, because rivalry.”

But it never happened.

Lots of people pitched “We should have a mechanic like Darkness falls, where whoever is currently leading ppt gets access to a new higher-value map.” And the response from devs, again, was “why?”. And of course, everyone explained: It takes the dominant force off the main maps, which promotes balance and turnover. It gets PvE’rs interested in the outcome of WvW, even if they arent willing to fight for it. Never mind that clearing enemies off of the bonus map when you first win control is epic.

But it never happened.

I also said “we should have guild banners prominently displayed at claimed posts and the death of the guards should warn the sponsering guild, just like DAoC.” That got no response, but certainly the reasoning is “to help build the reputation among guilds who defend, and to foster community between guilds”. Example: My keep is attacked but I am the only guildy online. If i reach out for help and another guild helps, I will remind my guildies to cover their bases when they need assistance. Without this, guild relationships are fickle and its all just a WvW Karma train.

But…

I get wanting to be different than other games. GW2 is different in PvE in a lot of fantastic ways, and their combat is above and beyond what just about any MMO is doing, but the systems behind WvW are really lacking.

GW2 could have been the game that borrowed and improved upon the best aspects of RvR combat and they just didn’t care too.

I know the PC crowd is often no fan of console players but the console population is keeping ESO going very strong after all these years. Would’ve been cool to see Anet try to pull in those groups too; and it especially might’ve helped kick open their e-sports ambitions.

But living story once every few weeks keeps lights on i guess.

Edit: and Hibernia were the sissies. Everyone knows that. I ate my Lurikeens off toothpicks.

Play everything, then play what you enjoy playing. If you have to ask other people if you will enjoy something, you will get answers that apply to them and not to you.

• Rangers probably arent the best at anything in any game mode.
• Rangers arent the worst at anything in any game mode.
• Rangers, IMO, have the greatest freedom in terms of traiting. I can’t think of any 3 specializations that taken together are not viable.
• In PvP, Druid is part of every Ranger spec because Anet made elite specializations better than core. Pay2Win.

Things ranger can do:

• Bunker. Very well, probably equal to guardian, but not as well as engi or ele.
• 1v1. Very well, probably equal to ele, but not as well as necro, revenant or mesmer.
• Roam. This is weapon dependent. Very well, but not as well as revenant or thief.
• Forcefully Decap. Middle of the pack here. Guardians, engies, warriors are better, but we’re not bad.
• Play burst. Max burst potential is achieved with BM/MM/Sk and its pretty good, but its very rare to see. Because Druid is such a strong choice, most specs give up max dps potential for moderate sustained dps and better survivability/support.
• Play condi. Very well, probably equal to engi, but definitely not as well as necro. Significantly less burst than condi thieves, but much much better sustained output.
• Team support. Very well, but its a 1 trick pony. We sustain. Compared to Guardian, Ele or Rev, who can sustain and provide massive buffage and/or cleansing.

I wouldn’t give us an A+ in any category the way you might to a Necro at 1v1, a Rev at roaming or an ele at bunkering; but we are easily B+ in just about everything at the moment at thats not a horrible spot to be in.

zero.5316:

I made a build that focused on soloing for HoT. Figured in order to take more than 1 hit before I die in zerker gear I’d need to swap it out for something else. I made this build in mind as a cheap replacement while im mapping/doing story missions in HoT.

I used a mix of zerker/carrion/rabid to get a mix of perc/power/cond/and vit for condition sustain and some survivability.

I used condition cause I from what I understand, HoT mobs are tougher then old tyrian mobs and conditions would be more useful.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQNAV3fnUqAVsgtCC+sBctgBDh63int273N1raOAW3SvknVA-ThSAABUcBA8a/B3PIAQY+7WlgA8AAYS5XQq/wnuBPOCAAA-e

So, any suggestions on the build? Anything to change to make it better or is this just a kitten build?

I used this to solo the maps and story content:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQJATRnUqAVsgtsA+CCctgh9gav9A4s/44IeaegD4RoknlG-TRRWwABV/hgyPS6CAs/wNlgAA-e

Basic takeaways regardless of spec:

• Range wins HoT openworld content.
• Stealth is strong for keeping aggro on pets, giving you uninterrupted heals.
• Maps are big. Bring mobility.
• You need a little condi clear, or you will die.
• You need either an immunity or a stunbreak, or you will die.
• Use tougher pets for the tougher mobs. Drakes are probably the best (solid dps, constant cleave, very durable), but smokescale and bristleback are strong too. Dont use wyrvens, they cant hit anything.

This spec basically camps longbow on tougher fights but swaps as much as possible on easier stuff. Pets keep aggro, bow cleaves, runes manage conditions, stability is very available, 25 might stacks with HaO is enjoyable for the frequent veterans. The gear wasnt thought out, its just what I used to use for WvW back before HoT destroyed WvW. For condi intense encounters, I would temporarily pick the trap trait and use healing spring.

For your condi/power hybrid spec, I don’t think its a bad start, but.

• Light on Your Feet is inferior to Quick Draw, even for condi specs, even ones with shortbow. Double spitblade or bonfire + double poison volley > some condi duration from dodging and cleave on a short range weapon.
• Shrapnel mine probably isnt good.
• geomancy > blight sigil
• Ferocity is a weak stat for such low power here. if you want the hybrid power/condi, viper is a better choice than berserkers here.
• You will want tougher pets than birds.
• You need a little condi clear and stun break from something.
• You dont have mobility for moving around the map, but thats more of QoL thing.
• SotW and Natural Healing are probably over kill for pet support.
• Sick ’em doesnt bring a lot to the table. The mobs that stealth only do it for a few seconds, and they are tough enough that denying them one stealth doesnt change a fight much.

Maybe something like this for you:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQNAV3fnEqA9Ci1sAusAUtgBDh63int273NYbBOAW3G4knFCIA-ThSAQBU4CAABzfBU3wtUCCgHAATU+1hDCQQU/xDHBges/AA-e

Traps can also be very strong for champ soloing. Thats another route to consider.

Wahaha.7938:

I think Discord is pretty great. The main advantage is that it’s super easy to get people to join: paste a link that people go to and they’re sent right into your channel.

The client version does have push to talk, so yes everyone should be using the client ideally. But still, the advantage of getting people to join easily remains. So it’s not directly inferior to TS.

I like the big chat window, and the interface in general doesn’t kill my eyes like TS or Mumble does. I also haven’t encountered any bugs at all (honestly curious about what problems you’ve had). I’m fine with TS but I do hope that Discord becomes more popular because I like it personally.

i agree that the web based interface is nice, as is the ease of invitation. the other nice part is that you can create links for a session, so if you only want someone in your TS for one raid temporary links are sweet
the problems ive experienced with it:

• hot mics. this can be a major drawback with certain people or a non issue with others. only fixable with client, but Client+Link is not an improvement over existing client systems.
• people join and cant hear others talking. i’ve been on both ends of this and its frequent, especially in raids (more players = more chances for one of them to have a problem). it happens a lot.
• people join and things work normal for 5 minutes and then they cant hear others talking. sometimes fixable with a page refresh. voice coms are often for low-margin-of-error gameplay that cant afford people windowing their game to refresh a browser. this also seems to happen very often.
• its not browser agnostic. this is more of a pet peeve to me as a computer scientist.
• people crash out of the chat and dont automatically come back in the way they would with a client service. if someone crashes out they often need to be reissued a new link. again, when needing coms for serious play, we cant afford to be doing this.

so mostly, its a stability issue.
overall, i think a service like Discord is the future of game coms, but I am not sure they will be the ones to rise to the top.

Every system has pros and cons.

The only one I’ve found to be absolutely awful has been “Discord”, which is entirely web based. It spends most of its time living up to its name because it is so badly bug ridden at the moment and doesnt support push-to-talk so you hear every neckbeard mouthbreathing, chewing and talking to their cat, but it holds a lot of promise for a future where maybe we can have clientless chat (there is a client version for discord, but if youre going to use a client anyway theres no reason to both choosing discord in the first place).

As much as I am a die-hard MS Windows fan for gaming (there really is no competitive alternative) some people arent. RaidCall, like many things, is Windows only. Anet supports GW2 on Mac OSX, and for those players RaidCall simply isnt an option.

I don’t expect RaidCall to ever gain much popularity because:
A) the other coms platforms are already entrenched with users and TS in particular is very feature rich, while RaidCall has few users and few features comparitively.
B) No one wants to use a chat system that prevents or makes it difficult for other players (Mac users) from joining. It would be different if GW2 was a PC only game, but thats not the case. Even though Discord is terrible, the reason people use it is because its the most inclusive (no need to install anything). Likewise, the reason the best client based services are successful is partly because they are all multiplatform.
C) There are literally dozens of top notch coms tools and nothing differentiates RaidCall especially when its locked to Windows. Ventrilo is multiplatform and is probably the most simple to use. TS is multiplatform, the most popular, and the most feature rich. Skype is multiplatform and supports video and interfaces seemlessly with all of the mobile OS’s so you can message people even out of game.

No to this suggestion.

Hot Join matches are not real matches. the players there are not there to actually have a good game, fight and win. If you ARE, then you are the one in the wrong place. Go to “Unranked.”

Hot join is for:
A) People looking for easy access to wins for dailies (this is why you see spectator team swapping).
B) People looking to learn a class or test a build outside of a real match (hot join = fake match, training match, etc)
C) People looking for easy access to fights who absolutely don’t care about winning or losing in a fake match.

If you care about the things you say you care about, you are playing in the wrong spot. Come play with the rest of us in Unranked.

thieves will never be viable as long as some of them call themselves “teefs”

not sure what to say. for me personally, the bug never triggers as long as my initial ground target was outside max range.

what the actual f. why?

You can basically un-bug it for 95% of your use cases:

Go into your settings and check the box that resets your ground targets to max distance whenever you attempt to use them beyond their max range (“Lock ground targets at max range” under combat/movement section).

When you attempt to cast Staff3 at beyond max range and the game resets it to max range for you, you will not be put in combat.

For me, I am almost always wanting to go max range for traveling purposes, so this is just fine. For situations where I don’t want to go max range (combo in a field, or score a quick evade) I am already in combat anyway.

Anyway, hope this helps some of you.

i agree with the post, though personally i think druid holds you back in open world pve content. compared to base ranger, BM/MM/SK, speccing druid costs a large amount of damage by dropping any of those lines and what it returns in the form of CA survivability isn’t ever needed. Maybe its useful for a group event to rescue other people but certainly not to support yourself. So Ranger excels at HoT open world pve, druid is just along for the ride.

honestly i think the reason many players struggle in HoT is because they’re full zerk. if they would just get some tougher jewelry they’d have a much more enjoyable experience. My Dire characters do fine and with a little bit of soldiers stats so do my former-zerk characters.

There should never have been Astral Force to begin with.

No other profession in the entire game is forced into using a specific weapon and to a lesser extent a specific heal just to use their freakin elite profession mechanic except for us. It’s NOT okay.

• Zerker’s new mechanic offers some improvements for all warriors and doesnt require a torch just to use that new mechanic.
• Same can be said for reapers, many of whom dont use GS.
• Same can be said for tempests, many of whom dont use Wh.
• Same can be said for DD, many of whom dont use Staff.
• Same can be said for scrappers, DH’s, and heralds, all of whom use their new weapons because they WANT to, not because they NEED to just to use their mechanic.

Access to class mechanics should not be gated behind a single weapon or heal choice, period.

After using the normal metabattle build (Celestial Druid/NM/SV, Staff+s/t) i got a bit bored of the lack of mobility and condi cleanse:
Staff is okay for mobility but the put-you-in-combat bug really holds it down on the map movement side. Sword hasnt been faster out of combat than running with swiftness since the change to movement skills. Lacks swiftness unless you rune for it. Sustained condi-clear really is poor, you get a couple clears on utilities. Torch feels weak without quick draw. You will die to big condi spammers like necros or the heavy condi DD, but not to those who only use a few. It’s pretty good but it could be better.

Then I tried out ROM’s current spec, which is the meta, but with BM over SV, GS and WHaO. Much better mobility because of GS and constant swiftness. Same problem with big condi bursts. Also, damage is higher than the meta but only for a short time (during your 25 might stack after popping both shouts). You can solve the condi burst issue by dropping Primal Echoes but that is a HUGE loss on interruption and ancient seed proccing, as its one of the easier interrupts to land on a short cd.

Then I came up with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARWnMqAdrgVsCOsActgFGBDOqeV7qOhuRwpjpA8tCAlMtzA-TpBFwAFOCAx2fwxFAQxDAAaZAAHCAA

Druid/NM/Skirmish, Staff/GS. Condi’s are mitagated through healing spring and Lyssa runes. We lost swiftness from Resounding Timbre, so pick up Natural Stride. Drop the meta Glyph of Alignment for either vipers nest or flame trap (I prefer Vipers Nest so I don’t accidentally combo in the wrong field). Quickdraw means you can double leap or double blast your healing springs, makes leaving outnumbered matchups much easier. the staff 3 bug becomes an upside because it lets you proc QD for 2 swoops. More fury uptime from weapon swaps helps all around. Healing Spring drops a bit faster than the other heals which helps in this hard-cc meta.

Give it a try.

Sceletonx.7481:

season wont fix anything because its still based on non working matchmaking… you will just have some ranks which just show how lucky you’re in their RNG system of matching people

in everygame I played I had no problem to get to top 10% of ladder, or even higher… but not here, because I never had the mtivation to learn this game… everytime I jump into pvp I have to quit after few hours and don’t play this kitten for months again… I just cant believe how BAD anet is with matchmaking… like cmon… its almost over of 2015 and you cant still figure out thing that others (even much smaller companies) had more than 5year ago?….

and stopping stupid excuses like “playerbase is too small for good matchmaking” would be great kittening start!!! PLAYERBASE WILL NEVER BE LARGER if you cant even split team and solo join

The matchmaking system is actually really good, its just temporarily turned off.
So there are 3 options for PvP:

Hot Join: Just random maps, rolling people coming and going, no filter on skill or staying on the same team or even in the match. Dont pvp here unless you literally dont care about winning or losing and just want some fights, or unless you are just doing one of the daily maps. There is no matchmaking mechanism.

Ranked Arena: Players vote on what map they fight in. Only “Balanced” maps are allowed (eg you will not be offered Skyhammer, Spirit Watch, or Courtyard). You are locked into the team you are on and you can’t quit the match short of quitting the entire game for the duration of the match. Players are matched up by a combination of the size of their group (pairs more likely to fight pairs, premades more likely to fight premades) AND by their MMR, which is a score of those player’s win/loss ratio in Ranked Arena games. Because of HoT, this mode is temporarily disabled into class balance and meta is sorted out.

Unranked Arena: Players vote on what map they fight in. Usually all maps are allowed but I haven’t seen Courtyard offered since HoT (maybe disabled because Ranked is turned off). Players are matched up by the size of their group (pairs more likely to fight pairs, premades more likely to fight premades) but MMR is not a factor.

So, because Ranked Arena is disabled and Unranked doesnt filter matchups by MMR, right now all the really good players are fighting all the bads and normals and it creates very one sided matchups, especially because the very good players tend to group up. So if 2 high ranked dudes group up and 2 basic dudes group up, you end up on a team with a basic pair while the other team has the e-sports pair and you get wrecked.

If you are curious about whether people on your map are grouped, before the match starts you can right click everyones name to see if there are pairs or triplets or whatever. After the game is over, give the scoreboard a second and it will show you in brackets who was grouped on both teams. You will find that more often than not, you have some grouped players on your team and youre some fighting grouped players on the other team.

As someone who always groups, only 1/3 of my matchups are against non-grouped teams and that is likely a fault of how many groups are available to fight in the pool and not the match making system.

TL:DR; wait for Ranked Arena to open back up and the good players who are killing you will leave.

alain.1659:

Friend,

I do not now what game are you playing, or with which opponents. But lb is a not a smart choice for a main weapon with all these reflects. I love ranger ( especially longbow) and know every dirty trick. But when I encounter a ranger while playing a different profession, I kill it without breaking a sweat. There are too many problems with “core” ranger.

And I am talking about the core ranger, not with HoT skills and abilities. Please test it before defending this.

LB/GS was the best performing spec in high MMR play pre-HOT. It was tested from June-Oct by almost every high MMR pvp ranger. Certainly reflects are trouble for LB, but thats why there is a melee weapon swap or the ability to cancel shooting. There aren’t many more reflects now than there were before (its a little more common on engi and tempest now, but far less common on guardians and mesmers than it ever was). We can’t rate longbow builds poorly just because some players choose to shoot themselves to death or because by coincidence the poorest ranger players also tend to run longbow and never weaponswap. Every noob warrior runs GS, that doesn’t make GS a bad choice for good players.

HoT meta druid speculation was not in there to support the point, just to acknowledge that LB/GS BM-NM-SV is no longer the #1 spec. LB/GS is still excellent, it’s just probably not our best with Druid available.

alain.1659:

Rangers ranged dps sucks. My main is a ranger and LB is the worst weapon you can have in pvp apart from shortbow maybe. GS + sword/axe (or warhorn) is way better at dps. And you will have a black hole of stupidity called “pet”, which is unable to find his own bottom.

However quick draw talent + melee weapon combos are quite nice. Druid has some cool stuff but I lack HoT so can not say about that. Nevertheless if you want to play ranger, let me warn you; it is neither strong, nor helpful. And there should be a lot of fixes before a ranger can enter competitive spvp freely.

As an archery fan, I can say that this game lacks a proper archer.

“Doin’ it wrong”. We are pretty good in sPvP right now aside from the total $#@& that is AF gen when not using staff or TU (seriously, change that crap!). Rangers ranged dps is top of the game. Higher than warrior and dragon hunter single target.

LB outperforms GS on dps when paired with quickdraw and weapon swapped on cd. that, along with the vulnerability, is why the LB is the weaponswap for sword/x on ranger zerk pve. In otherwords, if its more damage than GS in pve, its still more in pvp.

The role of LB is not to sit on a point and duel people better than sword or GS. Its to pressure the bunker who is holding the point from far away, or to facilitate floating between points. A ranger can support home and mid with minimal travel often because of the reach of LB, this is especially true on Foefire. The GS/LB power ranger was the ranger’s best PvP meta spekittenil HoT for a good reason.

I feel now that has shifted somewhat, and if staff gets fixed to stop putting us in combat, GS/Staff Cele Druid/BM/NM with leadership runes and geomancy sigils will be THE meta swiss army build. They will be one of the fastest movers, with moderate durability, high condi clear, high cc, high evasion, high healing, and moderate hybrid damage for a bruiser/roamer. Easily what Ele’s were pre-HoT.

Better than necros?

Depends how the nerfs land. Necro’s lack mobility but their chill, damage and durability are at levels that no class has ever achieved in pvp right now. It needs to be brought down, but how much Anet decides to tone them down is really something no one can predict.

To Answer Jay’s Question on Playstyle:
right now…
Necro’s role is to be the brawler. They run power damage, and use marauder or soldier ammys and focus on Life Force Gen, getting into DS and beating people up. Their only weakness is that they are slow which can make escaping hard, but when you can take on 2+ players reliably theres no reason to need to escape. Its more like the fact that they are slow is all that keeps everyone else from being dead.

Ranger’s role is to support with DPS and CC. Power ranger GS/LB stays mostly off point and helps more sturdy players defend or assault. Cele druid GS/Staff is a highly mobile all-rounder, the role is to use speed to decap and heals to support the team fight. Damage is high enough to win many matchups but its not Power Ranger/Thief high where your damage IS your support. With druid, your support is your actual support abilities.

Counter to condi-cc-druid is stability. Stability means no knockdowns or dazes which in turn means no roots from ancient seeds.

Rock solid + harmonious conduit + imbued melodies + runes of leadership is more than enough stab uptime without even using armor of earth traits or util (60% boon duration without food).

No class needs more “cover” conditions than they already have. condi spam has been outta control for waay to long. I like your ideas, but weakness on snake trap is only going to worsen the condi spam problem.

For starters: Remove the Direct Damage component from ALL of these traps, so they synergize more fluently with the now nerfed (lol?) trappers runes.

Agree on cd and stun changes to Spike trap. Make this crap work with Ancient Seeds and MoC. 40sec CD (32 traited) on a stun is FINE, just ask mesmers.

For Viper’s Nest, just up the stacks. Upping the stacks also makes Poison Master less garbage, a reasonable feat considering someone using healing spring and trap utils is less likely to rely on Wilderness Knowledge for condi clear.

For Frost Trap, give it a daze and a stun break and up the duration a little so we have something to kite around. Players now have 2 good CC choices for traps, one that adds damage (spiketrap) or one that can save their lives (frost trap).

Add an Elite Trap that blind spams like black powder, smoke field. Lasts a solid amount of time. Oh look, traps are wanted in a team fight.

i recommend the Astro A40 series as the best all around gaming headset. Very good quality sound and microphone. easy to mute, and the earphones can be touched to balance forward or backward how loud voice coms are compared to game noise. the cloth (rather than faux leather) ear muffs last a long, long time, and the construction is sturdy so if you drop them no problem. They also come with earphone jack and controller adapter so that can be compatible with Xbox 1 controllers.

for pure sound quality like listening to music, Sennheiser’s are top-notch, but I haven’t found many that have the durability to be a daily gaming headset or that have the gamer-type conveniences of Astros. Sennheiser’s are more for the audiophile, i-want-to-hear-every-intricate-detail-of-Tool-playing-live kind of thing.

Tehpanzy.9843:

You as a ranger lack buffs for your party unless you bring spirits, your condition builds lack sustained damage, and your power builds require you to stand far away and contribute nothing to your team except a pet buff

Why wouldnt we bring frost spirit in PvE? Since the recent PvE damage reduction change spirits arent a hindrance in PvE.

What power build requires us to stand far away? The meta power LB/S+A is all melee. You double burst with quickdrawn rapid fire in melee then go back to sword for 10 seconds. Is vulnerability capping a boss while giving our party spotter and frost spirit “contributing nothing?”

Tragic Positive.9356:

Wrong, wrong aaaaand wrong.

A boosting druid brings 28% unique DPS boost for the party (Frost spirit needed)
Condition build has higher sustained and overall DPS than a sinister engineer
Full Melee Relentless build is absolutely viable and one of the better DPS builds.

Don’t mistake random comfortable builds of selfish people for “Ranger”. Those who main the class feel slightly offended by those statements and it keeps the rest in dark lies.

Any link for sinister ranger vs engi?

I wouldnt say full melee remorseless was one of the better builds. Double greatsword for QD mauls gives up moderate damage to the power-meta and completely lacks range utility.

Ryuujin.8236:

Combined with Resounding Timbre, Cultivated Synergy. Heal as One means I heal my allies for something like 30-40% health every time I use my own heal (16 second cooldown).

this is over stating things.

Cultivated Synergy is 1k base. 2k if you and your pet are lucky enough to hit the same crew. Regen over 10sec if somehow not provided by any of the other classes is another 1300. +270 from vigorous recovery minor. 3570 is only going to be 36% of 10k health classes with zero extra vitality. Its going to be 40% health for no one. And really, whether or not we should even be counting the 1300 from regen is pretty debatable.

is 2k on-demand heal nice? yes.

is it, along with all the other things druid brings, worth giving up either BM (pet damage, pet survivability, on demand might/quickness), MM (20% dmg modifier, fury), or Skirmishing (Spotter, Quick-draw, 10% crit flanking, fury)? Not in any non-raid pve content.

WP in keep as soon as you take it? Zero reason to defend it, you can just take it back later.
What if you wanted to scout it because swords? Too big of a keep.

What if you wanted to solo? Not only can you not contribute in any meaningful way, but you can barely travel (lol barricades) and barely get a good roaming fight (lol burning and stealth).

No reason to come back.

There was another post with a great suggestion about Nuroch Holes that had a global cd of ~5-10seconds. It would prevent blobs from using them but would greatly improve travel for havok or roamers. Keep buffs obviously need to go. Waypoints obviously need to be earned, not given away for free. Keeps need to be easily scoutable (add a sentry), smaller (so they can be sieged up), dolyaks need to chill the —-- out.

All this on top of massive class rebalancing.
You can’t rush good pizza. Anet is serving us undercooked food. Not going to eat it.

There are few Druids because other than the novelty of being something new, there is NO reason to be one.

• Doing open world HoT? You will do more damage and be more survivable using the PvE meta build with LtW instead of PO and two pets tough enough to tank champs. Does the healing you do as a Druid really offset the damage you gave up? No.
• Doing dungeons? There is no reason to bring a healer to any dungeon. PvE meta build it is.
• Doing PvP? Druids might have a place here, but with AF generation in such a terrible place for non-staff users and Astral Seeds not working on most dazes or launches, that place is limited to bunker trolling, which recently got hit with the LL nerf.
• Doing group WvW? The mobile water field is powerful, but staff has no place in zergs (no tags) and TU is a poor choice for zergs, so unless you kitten yourself to overcome the awful state of AF gen you aren’t going to see CA. That makes it only very marginally better than the (completely unwanted) Ranger. Which is all a moot point anyway, because with the stupid changes to autoatic waypointing no one defends anything anyway, and you dont need a healer for a freaking karma train. Which puts us back at running PvE meta ranger as the best choice for K train.
• Doing solo WvW? No you’re not, not really. The map is awful for solo wvw. Solo players can no longer make a contribution to the map and solo fights are ruined by area buffs. Never mind that solo play is ruined because you can’t escape a havok with Revenants, probably cant kill the new chrono-gods and pretty much everyone needs toning down.

That just leaves raids.

Before HoT I was a 60% WvW ( 30% pvp, 10% pve because WvW pays NOTHING) player who mostly roams or did havoc.

Got to be honest, since HoT launched, I havent touched the new WvW map a single time. Not once. I also haven’t pvp’d more than a few hours outside of a guild arena room for dailies. And this is after pvp’ing and WvW’ing almost every day for hours for years.

Why? Balance.

I have zero interest in playing PvP when there is 4 DH’s per map sucking people into points and blowing them up on traps. I have zero interest roaming in WvW when mesmers who had already basically destroyed roaming pre-expansion, got the most light-handed PU nerf followed by the huge buff of chronomancer. its out of control. Revenants alone are enough to kill solo roaming because with phase traversal on a mere 5 second cooldown no roamer will ever out-run a havoc or zerg again. Burning damage STILL hasnt been toned down. Druids still take 60 seconds of straight combat to generate CA without using staff, but when using staff and healing trinkets can survive 3 people on a point.

#@$% wvw and pvp until a severe, heavy handed balance patch comes along and flattens things out.

if they were remotely capable of fixing this it wouldve happened already.

evnw.9324:

I’ll be really kittened if they are a BL collection and not something directly tied to the revenant

huh? are there Greatswords that say warrior only? I am all for making more cool stuff available outside the Black Lion system (locking all the cool skins behind a paywall = fail), but why wouldnt cool looking gear be available to everyone?

Argon.1563:

Found it. The Superior Rune of The Herald gives
(1) +25 Toughness
(2) +5% Boon Duration
(3) +50 Toughness
(4) +10% Boon Duration
(5) +100 Toughness
(6) When using a heal skill, apply Protection to nearby allies (360 radius) (CD: 10s)

Terribad.

Suppose its 3sec of Protection (its either gonna be 2 or 3, right?). +15%boon duration runes, +20% more from glint. Now its 4 seconds of protection on a 10sec cooldown on a class that can spam heal with ventari. That alone is very good.

Now lets throw in Bolster Fortifications, which is another 2 seconds, and change with the boon duration.

We’re up to 6seconds of protection for every 10seconds. Thats very strong. This is enough to achieve excellent protection uptime without blowing a ton of energy on facet of chaos.

SoftLight.2175:

Raven.9603:

not really an improvement for zerging,

THANK TO GOD you´re right

the entire zerker kitten down while skipping what you can and avoid what you cant skip was the worst thing that ever happened to gw2 anyways.

like in no other mmor (GW1 included) noone would accept that playstyle at all. neither do i. but the good thing is that the entire meta thing is pointless anyways as there is nothing you get from rushing through content (well maybe in other games with item spiral where you can get ahead early)
And thankfully i am in a guild that is not meta based and we do the exact same content you do, we prob die less, have more fun and we might need 1 minute longer for a dungeon but who cares to be honest

I said “zerging.” as in, when in wvw, people form large zergs and stomp everyone with a smaller group than their own.

not “zerk” the meta pve stat.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If regen were removed it would be in all modes. I’ve seen that in PvP it is also a pretty heavy gating, but in PvE it is appears worse due to the more frequent travel time between engagements.

What about actual generation or avatar duration? It still takes 60 seconds of dps without popping TU or using staff just to get 5 seconds of avatar time.

Can the other heals be brought up to a comparable generation level with TU? Can damage sources contribute more strongly to avatar gain? What about condition tics? What about regen tics or SotW tics? What about pets?

What about our dreams???!!!

(Couldnt we avoid all this if we just got rid of AF all-together and just worked around having a cooldown on Celestial Avatar?)

No. I havent quit my ranger, because my Ranger isn’t any worse than it was last week. If anything, we are moderately better because of the buffs to spirits in PvE.

But so far, there is zero reason to take druid for any spec at all. It worse for support, worse for power, worse for condi, bad for roaming, not really an improvement for zerging, and can’t bunker in pvp. It doesnt provide any benefit at all except maybe raids so no real reason to use it.

I am pretty upset though. Really sucks to go from the bottom of the pile to… the bottom of the pile. And all of these problems couldve been avoided if we were afforded the same BWE time as others.

the damage needed nerfing, like it or not.

but the F2 skill change, like the garbage that is passing for celestial avatar duration and AF generation, is flat out unacceptable.

Here you go:

Rune of the Centaur + Ventari = perma swiftness.

Played all day yesterday (8hrs throughout the day). LB/GS, WHaO.

Other than the occasional champ event, there were NO instances where I was able to use Celestial avatar, including zero times in several pvp matches. It took about 60 seconds of sustained combat just to activate. That will never happen in sPvP. It will almost never happen roaming. It will rarely happen in small group combat.

Celestial Avatar is for ALL rangers. It needs to WORK, for ALL rangers. That means it needs to be reliable for condition damage, non-TU heals, and non-staff gameplay.

Please change Celestial Avatar to:

• Charge off of SotW (Glyph utilities count but this doesnt???)
• Charge off of regeneration (this should be so obvious)
• Charge off of Spirit of Nature (Glyph Elite counts but this doesnt???)
• Charge for a more competitive amount for non-TU #6 heal skills.
• Charge for a more competitive amount from power AND condi dmg.
• Get rid of AF decay. Maybe it only charges in combat, fine, but we absolutely should be able to show up to a point and start saving lives. We can’t right now, because we have to get to the point, then spend nearly 10% of a match locked in combat just to get enough AF to heal with CA.
• Make a fully charged CA last for more than 5 seconds. I mean seriously that is pathetic.

Of course there is a concern that CA could be “too available”. No worries, you guys PREEMPTIVELY put a 10second lockout on it. Worried that with all those regen’s ticcing we will charge CA too fast? Put a lid on it: Maybe we can only generate a max of 7-10% AF per second, or maybe the contribution of regen sources is very low.

On principle, our pre-Druid sources of healing should definitely count for something.

Program.8017:

Trying to open blue or green map meta bonus chests from auric basin will instantly crash my game every time.

I am having the same problem. for me, it began with the chest reward for killing an octavious. cause game to crash and critical error window to pop up.

LughLongArm.5460:

If you dont use : Staff OR TU OR Cultivated SynergyOR Verdant Etching OR glyphs OR Lingering Light OR healing sigils/runes OR rapid attaks weapons like LB/SB – it will be very hard to regenerate AF.

TU alone is like 50% AF.

The only thing that is true is your last sentence.

glyphs, even with etchings, only provide a minimal amount of AF. lingering light provides very minimal amount of AF and ONLY works IF you are standing on top of someone AND you have Staff equipped, because only staff heals count for it.

IF you don’t use staff or TU, no matter what else you take, you ARE NOT going to generate enough AF to use avatar.
IF you don’t use BOTH staff AND TU, it IS a struggle to get enough AF to use avatar.

Nevermind that a fully charged avatar now only lasts 5 seconds.
Nevermind that regen, spirit of nature and SotW count for absolutely nothing.

Astral force generation from damage is flat out unacceptable. I have to fight for a straight minute chain pulling veteran mobs without breaking combat once to get enough AF to transform, and the transform only lasts for a few seconds. Necros and warriors might not get a full bar off weaker mobs, but they can use their mechanic at much lower levels of power.

Meanwhile, using something like TU gets AF to about 50%, but no other #6 Heal Skill provides ANY meaningful amount of AF generation. Thats also really, really bad. Why are we pigeon holed into healing and TU for druid?

If the class mechanic is going to take this long to build up, why does it dissipate out of combat? Why does it only last ~5 seconds?

There is no enjoyment in a class mechanic that you can barely use outside of raids.

Why does healing from regeneration and SotW count for nothing?

Zaroua.2714:

I’m saying that I don’t want Druids to be the new PS Warriors: only brought along because of one trait. I want Druids to stand on their own in groups without having to rely on something as strong as GotL.

LOL. There is no such thing. You are living in a dream. No one is well rounded in meta. Everyone is brought because of some specific thing they do better. If you can’t do something better than everyone else, you are being carried by people that pity you.

• warriors are brought because banners are what spirits should be, and because they have might.
• druids, sadly, will only be brought if they have some must-have buff OR are the best healers IF healing is really needed (nothing suggests that its needed yet).
• Engi’s will be brought because they are the highest single target dps and there WILL be mandatory condi phases.
• Revenants will likely be brought because every mouth breather will play one, sword will likely provide the 2nd highest single target dps when inevitably there arent enough people willing to put up with the engi’s stupid @#$ rotation making it too much of a burden to stack engi’s. Also because the buff uptime provided for more rare buffs like fury or prot.
• ele’s will be brought because they are the highest aoe dps.
• either A guardian or A mesmer, for quickness.
• maybe a thief or reaper, IF a boss has an execution phase.

thats it. no one gets invited unless they are a special butterfly who does something mandatory better than everyone else. WOW coped with this by having class specific buffs that were so strong that class AND spec variety was mandatory. Anet, who have rarely ever designed a dungeon that can’t be cheesed, dont want you to be “forced” to wait for a specific class or spec so they ashew the buff model, which just leads to stacking the most optimal classes. well rounded people need not apply.

Because the Mad King doesn’t care.

2 years ago:

Got super bored in a WvW match against CD (and here we are, two years later, its still SBI vs CD). I decided to run around a bit in the BL’s dressed as a robot. I found a random boxing match with an EB Charr from “All the Cute Charrs and Me”, I had some necro from vT (who was trashing like 3 guys at a time, nerf) transform into his Asura Racial Golem and punch the crap out of me, and, best of all, half of Elysium Knights turn in to quaggans and mourn my death after I tried to run through their zerg.

<3 CD.

Your pets will be dead in a real zerg. if a drake with SotW, Beastmastery and Natural Healing gets chewed up in a single zerg push without blowing SoS, then your cats/dogs without any of those defensive options are going to be dead 3x’s as fast.

Sure, you can cc “10” people. **If you are lucky enough to catch 5 people in a single PBS and another 5 people in a wolf howl. Compare that to any hammer warrior or ele that are hard cc machines, each with way more than 2 skills that hard cc entire areas.

24-30sec cd on blast finishers (one of which isnt going to be up because you burned it trying to save a puny pet in a zerg) can certainly blast water fields. but not as often as say, the guardian hammer whose blast is up every 5 seconds (4 traited) or the ele eruption every 6 (5 traited). even the non-gwen misfits like engies and thieves can spam blasts all day. 24sec cd is pitiful.

Main hand axe as power is bad at anything other than getting tags for bags.

full zerk is called “full kitten” for a reason. rally bait.

ranger runes on pets that are easily killed is poor planning. no stability is awful for zerging. protective ward damage mitagation is greater than 2.5k health from invigorating bond. allies aid might be better for group play like this, zerging is not the area of “every little bit of damage counts”.

Jana.6831:

Raven.9603:

They are the same thing, except the mesmers can perma-buff the entire zerg with quickness with some outside help, while the rangers could only perma buff themselves with quickness in the same scenario…

You answered your own “question”, I hope you noticed that.

I wasn’t answering my own question, I asked if he really understood the comparison, then laid out what he seems to be overlooking. Just because the skills are slightly different doesnt make the comparison irrelevant.

Hopefully you’re reading what you quoted as:
’ Rangers could only perma buff themselves with quickness with outside help (the “same scenario” in which mesmers would also be able to do so). ’ Both were pretty okay by themselves. Both were OP grouped. One is gamebreakingly OP because it effects an entire group, but thats not the one that gets slapped with the hotfix in less than 24 hours.

coglin.1867:

Puck.9612:

coglin.1867:

It doesn’t matter how long the duration is stacked, because you can counter it with boon striping and worse for them that you can and will use skills that convert them to conditions. It is a non issue in my experience and my opinion.

It was a big enough issue that they nerfed rangers in less than 24 hours….

That’s nice. it has absolutely nothing to do with this topic though, so I am not entirely sure where your going with that. One skill stacking an multiple buffs for an unreasonable duration has absolutely nothing to do with a group stacking buffs from stack blasting skills and stacking utility skill buffs.

Are you sure you understand the comparison?

Ranger: HaO mirrors buffs on the ranger to the pet and vise-versa. This allowed some buffs to double in duration if they applied to both the ranger and the pet (like quickness from QZ, or buffs resulting from warhorn). If the duration of the boon was longer than the cooldown of HaO, the ranger could have a perma boon. This was really only practical for swiftness and regen which we could do even before the HaO buff. Fury and 3-might could be added with warhorn, but the weapon wasn’t viable enough even for perma fury. With a bunch of outside help, perma of any boon was possible. When solo, it was not really a problem. When grouped, it was huge problem because the ranger could have perma all buffs.

Mesmer: Signet of Inspiration mirrors buffs on the mesmer to everyone else. With Illusionary Inspiration, this can be done an extra time. When alone, this makes it possible for the mesmer to get some weaker perma buffs or extend the duration of powerful buffs like quickness, just like the ranger. With a bunch of outside help, it becomes possible to permanently buff the whole raid with buffs that are not normally stackable to that level.

They are the same thing, except the mesmers can perma-buff the entire zerg with quickness with some outside help, while the rangers could only perma buff themselves with quickness in the same scenario…

rangers got nerfed in 24hrs or less. and not a “hey lets make this useful but balanced”, but rather “you can now only copy stuff for a duration so small you can’t even notice”.

Exciton.8942:

Make it +100% wxp, + 200% magic find.

If you have less number, you shouldn’t be able to beat the side that outnumbers you .That is basically balance and can’t be changed.

However, I am all for giving more incentive for players to play when outnumbered. Every achievement you made with less numbers should give more reward.

Such buff can also encourage skilled roamers to come to map with outnumbered buff. And the number I gave I think is very fair. It can even be boosted more.

This.

Maybe +25% run speed wouldn’t be too much either… (non stacking).