Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing druid in pvp, fractal 50, Virdent Brink, and the raid. At first I didn’t like it much, and I didn’t “get” it. In Fractals I kept feeling like my zerker water ele was far more helpful than whatever I could put on my druid. Ele’s access to damage, blinds, tons of water blasting and group condi removal made it a clear victor in stacking content where a missed dodge downs you. With druid, I don’t do the appropriate damage to rally my teammates, and I can’t outheal the incoming damage.

When I tried pvp though, I started to get it. While druids don’t have access to blinds like an ele, they do have a good number of interrupts and stuns. It was fun locking down enemies and preventing them from ressing allies or completing stomps! Overall, pretty fun.

But when I tried the raid last night, all the skills on the ranger’s bar made sense, and it felt like the druid was crafted specifically for that fight. The mobility, the stuns, and the healing all came together and it finally clicked for me. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty cool.

So to go onto the more specifics:

General:
- Staff and druid are very tied together. You can’t really play one without the other.
- I also personally found that no other weapon goes well with Druid. So I camp staff. Being locked out of staff for 15 seconds is almost never worth it.

Staff:
- #2 feels like the cast time is very long. I always seem to interrupt it, and I can’t tell if I let it finish or not.
- #3 reeeeally feels like it should be swapped (placement wise) with #5. It’s so confusing and doesn’t line up with other classes. It’s a little buggy too, but not terribly.
- #4 Difficult to land on moving targets and the cast time also feels a little long.
- #5 It feels like the poor man’s wall of reflect. I’d love to see the duration upped on it. I like the skill, but a few more seconds added to it would be awesome.

Celestial form:
- General: Leaving cele form and losing all your cele energy feels weird. I like popping into it, using a couple skills, and then popping out. But it’s pretty easy to rebuild that bar, particularly in group content. There’s also some amazing traits with going into cele form that would need some ICDs if this change were to happen, and ICDs are typically pretty annoying since they’re difficult to predict. So would I want this changed? I don’t really know. It does discourage me from entering and leaving cele form, and from using glyphs while in cele. But it’s also pretty sweet to easily give allies stealth and super speed.
- General (again): The cast times in Cele feel pretty long. That’s not a problem, but the problem is that I’m pretty used to spamming skills to cast them. This might be a bug, but spamming things like Cosmic Ray interrupts it, meaning I haven’t cast a single thing.
- #1 Hard to land on allies that are running around!
- #2 Same problem.

Glyphs:
- General: I would so love one of these glyphs to pulse AoE blindness. Just a request.
- GoA: I haven’t really used it. It doesn’t seem very interesting.
- GoT: At first I wanted to flip this… after pvping and the raid, it’s perfect the way it is! Please don’t swap it.
- GoE: As other have said, the tether is buggy or very short ranged. Maybe that’s the price though of such a low CD elite.

I don’t have anything to say about the traits. I love them.

If anything can be added to improve the druid, in my opinion, it would be access to blinds, and a unique option to deal with downed allies. Even beefing up our elite spirit to be as reliable and fast as warrior banner would be amazing.

1. I wanted a staff, but I wanted it to be the first melee staff in the game. I wanted a Robin Hood inspired staff build, where control was the name of the game allowing you to lock down your opponent while your pet digs her claws in. I guess there’s always hammer though!

2. I know more of what I don’t want than what I do want. I think most rangers want a way to opt-out of having a pet, even if to a small degree. While we can’t entirely remove pets (as proof by our many, many pet-dependent traits and weapon descriptions), I think the easiest path to accomplish this is by transformation/merging with the pet. It’s known that there is a fair amount of content in GW2 that isn’t designed with rangers in mind (a number of Season 1 achivements, Mai Trin, jump-over-waves mechanic, large/medium scale wvw) and it’d be easier to give rangers a semi-non pet option than it is to constantly make sure content is pet viable.

3. What I want is kits. Kits have the most options, and could be an excuse to merge with our pets. A utility that’s like a mix between kits and glyphs (where the kit skills depend on the pet we’re running with) would be really fun. But it’d also take a LOT of time to develop. (5 kit * 5 skills * all classes of pets = not going to happen.)

4. They said Druid many moons ago. Between then and now Ele went from ??? to main hand sword to warhorn. By the time they get to ranger, Druid might have evolved into something else. (Though admittedly there’s no better expansion for them to release druid in.)

I’d like to add: I do a lot of google searches that link to these forums. A lot of the links I come across are already mangled from the maintenance. It’s really frustrating to be so close to an answer, and then find that the link is broken or now private. Please reconsider.

Whichever one is the daily win class. I can’t count on them to understand their role or trust that they know their class when they probably picked it to finish off a daily.

I can’t say I ‘m much of a fan either, for the same reason. Surely there’s something better that can take it’s place.

I agree with the title. Please no, please no, please no. I do NOT need any more stupid leather sections. I already sell all of the medium amor I find to vendors rather than salvaging it. This REALLY hurts long term players who have been at end game for quite a while and gives certain classes a HUGE unfair advantage, economically, over an extended period of time.

I want to repeat what Virtute.8251 said, because it’s so true:

The majority of players willing to purchase the alternate colors will be players we don’t want to obey as commanders.

The majority of players willing to purchase the alternate colors will be players we don’t want to obey as commanders.

The majority of players willing to purchase the alternate colors will be players we don’t want to obey as commanders.

The majority of players willing to purchase the alternate colors will be players we don’t want to obey as commanders.

The majority of players willing to purchase the alternate colors will be players we don’t want to obey as commanders.

Commander tool should not be treated as a vanity object.

Don’t bring a longbow to dungeons they’re subpar (you can hardly ever get at max range, and if you do, it’s usually a detriment to your team) and doing so makes other rangers look bad. There are situations where you can use the LB, but they’re very… well, situational.

In open world pve, it really doesn’t matter. Bring a tanky pet (bear, drake, etc) and it will hold aggro while you pew pew things down. This strategy won’t work in dungeons though! And in Orr, the AI is smart enough to ditch the pet and go after you instead.

In dungeons, bring a shortbow or an axe if you want to range, but Greatsword will be your best friend and sword is fantastic if you’ve mastered it and the encounter.

I usually agree with anet’s decisions.

This time, I do not. I understand it might be obnoxious to have so many colors on one screen, but gating that decision with a gold cost is -not- a solution. In fact, what’s the point of multiple colors for coordination if you can’t set it on the fly?

First of all, this is wonderful and I really look forward to this highly requested feature!

My only concern is over-standardization. Multiple mesmers on a team, especially, will be difficult to fight if they look the same as each other. But even a group of two warriors and one guardian makes for a tricky situation.

I propose a small tweek: Rather than everyone being red or blue, each character is a unique coloring. That way, you can say to your team “Focus the orange warrior – he’s squishy”. It’s a little extra work, but as a player, I, for one, would really appreciate it.

But again, this is super awesome!

Nevermind, it’s listed as “Maguuma Wastes” not “Arid”

I don’t see it at all. I’ve unlocked a couple regions, but not all regions – is that my problem?

I agree! Legendaries should definitely have sigil swapping once you unlock the sigil.

Secondary to that, I also agree that ascended should have stat swappability too. Even if that means you have to unlock new stats. (Say, berserker chest + knights chest + ???? into mystic forge gives you berserker/knights chest piece).

If ascended had stat-swappability, I’d finally make the upgrade from exotic
But runes will need to be swappable too after they’re unlocked!!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

a lot of people misunderstood.

anet agreed that THE COMMUNITY thinks that the warrior are too mobile.

anet agreed that warriors should not get any more mobile.

Actually, you misunderstood.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ready-Up-Balance-Philosophy-6-13-Noon-PDT/page/6#post4118467

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

there is no slight buff to mobility,

Rampage – Reduced the amount of incoming physical damage by 25% meaning that all strikes you take will be reduced. All incoming chilled/crippled/immobilize conditions will be reduced by another 33%. If you have dogged march and this ability you gonna be suffering from almost no movement impairing abilities.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

quit spewing lies.

No u.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I like the idea that warriors can resist to movement-impairing CC (flavorful with their “sturdy bodies”), but I dislike the idea that warriors can Ride the Lightning with their greatsword.

Would be nice to see their GS leaps range be decreased to 900 and Rush requiring a target (alongside being bug fixed, so it’s actually useful in combat). What do people think of that?

I like the idea of a target being required. But there’s still off-hand sword, banners, dogged march, so much stability and condi removal, warrior’s sprint, etc etc.

Not to say that ALL mobility needs to be taken away from warriors, but I was really expecting for at least a start today. But yes, a target required -would- be a good start.

I play a warrior as my second main, so I keep up with the warrior news. Recently, there has been discussion about the class’s mobility and how Anet agreed that warriors are, frankly, too mobile. I anticipated to see this problem addressed in the Skill Bar, but if anything, warrior received (very slight) buffs to mobility.

So I’m left wondering, did they change their mind and decided warrior’s mobility is in a good place, or are they waiting another nine months to reevaluate after new metas settle?

Solution found: My Trading Post was full. Checking it and clearing it has unlocked the episode for me

It says “Buy Now for 0 gems” in the Story Journal but when I click “buy now” I receive a network error. My friends say that when they logged in, a notification on the side of their screen popped up and they clicked that to unlock the episode. I didn’t receive any such notification.

I want my llama fingers crossed

Question about Intimidation Training: Will this be an AoE cripple or will it depend on the pet?

DeWolfe.2174:

The dev’s really should rethink that Rapid Fire change. I swear they never test or play with maxed WvW specs. The initial burst from LB is going to too high.

But, I have two LB Ranger’s already soooo…. I guess I should be happy.

1v1, it’s going to hurt. But 10v10, it’s not strong enough. Unless you’re an incredible strategist, single target damage isn’t going to help in large fights.

Now if you bring piercing arrow and sacrifice some range or drop RtW, maybe rangers can find a spot in wvw. But then they won’t be as good 1v1.

I think it works out. (And dear god if that burst is reflected…)

Oh man. If only Remorseless was in Skirmishing….

Moving Remorseless into Skirmishing would really help synergize these LB changes. Or move Read the Wind to Skirmishing.

There seemed to be implication that other pets would also be receiving the same treatment that brown/polar bear received.

Overall I found these changes very nice, and some of them unexpected. I didn’t like using axe before, as the auto attack always felt wrong with the weapon. But now, it seems like a perfect change. I think I’ll be packing up my shortbow for this one.

I don’t think the new Beastmaster Master traits have won me over yet, but they’re a start. It’ll be fun theory crafting in the least.

Sarrs.4831:

SafiMoyo.5130:

• Axe -> Ricoshae: Might on hit (including bounces) 3sec

ricochet

;( I knew I was going to get that one wrong.

I’ve typed up the notes from the Skill Bar for the ranger portion. Check them out if you haven’t! They’re over here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Skill-Bar-Ranger-Discussion/first#post4237030

Edited first post with notes from the Skill Bar segment

Go!

Looks like a great start on many needed changes! Question: Are the signets actives changing (other than that they affect master and pet)?

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/4743783
Ranger section starts @22:10

Changes:

• Removed Signet of the Beastmaster
• Signets affect pets and rangers by default
• Replacing Signet of the Beastmaster is Predator’s Onslaught: 10% additional damage by ranger (5% for pet) on enemies that suffer from movement-impeding conditions. (Cripple, chill, immobilize.)
• Read the Wind: Attack speed increased by 10%
• Strider’s Defense: Increased the chance to block projectiles to 20% from 15%
• Beastmaster traitline Master traits now affect ALL pets, not just particular pet lines
• Longbow → Long Range Shot: Short range (17% damage increase), mid range (7% damage increase), long range (unchanged)
• Longbow → Rapid Fire: Reduced cast time from 5 sec to 2.5 sec
• Longbow → Barrage: Reduced cast time by 0.5 sec
• Greatsword → Power Stab: 10% damage increase
• Greatsword → Maul: Increase number of targets hit from 3 to 5. Increased range from 150 to 220.
• Greatsword → Swoop: Evades on attack portion of the animation
• Greatsword → Counter attack: cast time reduced
• Greatsword → Hilt bash: Stun/daze duration has been increased from 1 sec to 1.5 sec
• Sick ’em → Increased time on reveal to 6 sec
• Entangle: Decreased CD to 60 sec. Decreased duration from 20 sec to 5 sec.
• Axe → Ricoshae: Might on hit (including bounces) 3sec
• Axe → Path of Scars: Velocity increased by 20%
• Black Bear and Polar Bear: Strikes but can now be blocked or evaded (so it can work with BM Master traits)

This has happened to me for months – almost a year – so it’s not due to anything that happened recently. Though it only occurs very rarely for me.

Belzebu.3912:

Hammerguard.9834:

So how bout that llama pet with AoE stability?

F2 skill: 3 seconds cast time,

:|

gives stability for 5 seconds,

:DDD

45 seconds CD,

:)

120 radius

>:(

Trap rangers are pretty fun, but some of these things don’t seem as great as they initially do.

Firstly, poison is a VERY weak condi. It’s about 2 stacks of bleed worth of damage, and with Poison Mastery, it’s about 3 stacks of bleed worth of damage. Furthermore, if your pet applies its poison first and you stack onto it, it’ll tick at his condi damage level (which is 0). You’d be better off taking something else, like barkskin or empathetic bond, or another point in Marksmanship. I’d recommend bringing almost anything over poison trap in pve, unless you’re fighting something that heals itself.

Second, Spike Trap applies only 3 bleeds, on a 20 second cool down. Don’t be mistake – unlike other traps, there is no ‘pulse’ for this one. It’s a one-hit-and-done. The duration is very long, so while the damage might be high, the damage per second is quite low.

Entangled is a good choice though, and flame trap is the best.

Recommendations: Drop the torch and bring sun spirit. Sun spirit will let you and your party keep burning on the enemies. Instead, bring a shortbow. If you hit from behind, you can cause bleeding. Shortbow + Quicking Zephyr + positioning will REALLY get those bleed ticks up. But that’s single target. You could go 4/5/5/0/0 and pick up piercing arrow, which I’d go with in this situation.

Keep in mind, most ranger traps hit three targets, not 5. So it’s a rather weak AoE.

To be honest, greatsword or sword are better AoE weapons than traps. Obviously they’re not condition, but with cleave you can hit 5 targets and do 2-5k damage per hit where as you’d have to work very hard to get 3k per condi tick. And you can hit more often than the condis tick.

But if you really want to play condi for the fun of condi playing, I’d only recommend bringing the one trap, a sun spirit, and lightening zephyr. Shortbow optional, but I’d pick it as I think you’ll keep perma burn on the enemies as it is.

Bunny ears

and crown/tiara that others have mentioned.

Terravos.4059:

Never Forget My friends…never forget

Still, I’d rather have an Aquaman patch than:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013/

I like your original post jcbroe. I agree with everything and reading it sounds like it’s coming out of my own mouth.

I do understand the flaws in Beastmastery (only TOO well) but I don’t understand your solution. It sounds mostly abstract, so I don’t have a clear grasp on what you’re suggesting. Could you clarify your solution or go over it again in greater detail?

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

You know what, Anet? I’ve changed my mind. I agree with the OP. It’s not fair to force players to find every last coin for the achievement. They should only have to find 30/34. While we’re at it, I think it takes too long to find all the PoIs for the map completion achievement. No fun, not fair. Everyone just looks at the map instead of looking for them. We should only have to find 688/723. Also, level 80 is too hard to reach. Could you lower the level cap to 77? This will prevent people from reading up on the best ways to level a character, which is bad. In addition, it’s unfair to make players collect 5000 AP for the massive achievement chests and titles. After 4423 points it gets boring and un-fun. You need to lower the threshold. Don’t you realize you’re making people look up achievement guides and alienating casual players? By the way, Legendaries take far too long to get. It’s not fun or fair. I’m basically being forced to look up the recipes instead of experimenting. You should definitely add them to a merchant so we don’t look up information on their creation.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

Excess coins would be nice.

I too wish we didn’t have guides on this sort of thing as it really takes away from the players who work for it. I use guides for this content too. Not because I want to, really, but because my friends want their achievement points and I want to both keep up with them and play with them more than I want to play alone.

Lazze.9870:

roamzero.9486:

Ranking from most to least:
Ranger – Not really wanted in pve.

L2P.
A ranger that knows what he/she is doing is a valuable member in most pve content.

Unfortunately the game teaches rangers to play subpar

The name of the class (associated very strongly with archer – a staple class in most popular MMOs) coupled with the distance provided by the Longbow (used to be matched with the shortbow, but now has no competition) and the tankiness of the never-dying and aggro-pulling (due to high toughness) of the bear family provides new players the path of least resistance and greatest reward by playing a selfish bearbow.

Uninformed players aren’t picking this set up because they -want- to suck. In fact, they’re picking it for quite the opposite reason.

((Not directed at you specifically. It’s just that, the reason rangers need to ‘l2p’ is because what they learned through leveling doesn’t represent end game, and that’s a pretty big problem for the class and makes it seem flawed by outsides for untrue reasons.))

Liewec.2896:

ranger should be first up,
too many mandatory traits that need merging together, (eagle eye, read the wind)
too many traits that should just be passives without the need for traiting, (30% pet speed) (arrows pierce) etc.
pets need to scale with gear or they should revert the damage nerf from back-in-the-day.

Yeah, I think this is the #1 problem with rangers currently. If/when anet decides to look at rangers fully, they should start with the traits. The Beastmastery line is an absolute mess of traits intended for the OLD pet system (BWE) and frankly really bad traits. I’d argue (perhaps wrongly) that it’s the worst traitline in the game right now.

Rangers probably still won’t be great in, say, wvw or large world events even if the utilities and weapons are made to be less trait dependent, but I don’t think we can even work on that until the traits/utilities are examined.

Eurantien.4632:

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Finally a constructive thread on these forums.

I think the F1 and F3 commands can be compressed into one command easily. Press F1 once to make the pet hostile, and press it again to make it passive and return back to the owner. This would also resolve the issue of having to press the “Hostile > Passive” button on our pet interface that currently does not have it’s own keybind.

This way we can have 1 free function command button. For the free F3 space, I would recommend putting all the slot 4 skills that pets have within this command. Canine Knockdown, Avian AoE Swiftness, Moa Harmonic Cry, Drake Tail Swipe, etc.

This would be a step in the right direction, without dramatically altering the keybind functions too harshly and allowing Rangers to control the most powerful, currently passive, skills that pets formally controlled on their own.

^ THIS.

I agree, this would be wonderful.

Additionally, if all or most hidden ‘abilities’ (ie: shared anguish, empathetic bond, warrior’s “last stand”) had an icon to display when they’re going to pop (empathetic bond would have a timer like time-stack condis do, while shared anguish would have an icon more like opening strike) to allow for the player to be aware and the enemy to counter play. With the option of hiding these (defaulted to be off), as they can cause quite the screen clutter for the inexperienced.

(Oh and let me see my pet’s boons and condis!)

Here’s some simple alternatives that can be made to the ranger that’d significantly increase their value in wvw:

1. Increase pet health. This, by itself, won’t do anything, but pet health, at it’s current state, is so terrible in this game mode. Pet health was increased in PvE as the enemies just hit too hard, but it went unchanged in wvw because it’d be too strong on small scale. While this is true, pet health should NOT match their health in PvP. In WvW enemies are faster and hit significantly harder (or are much, much tankier) than in pvp, as enemies can consume food to gain additional stats, crit damage isn’t capped, and particular rune and sigil sets are available. They need the extra oomph here.

2. Default speed needs to be increased in pets. WvW isn’t about fighting on nodes in small places, but running and chasing across the battlefield, pushing and pulling. Base movement increase is essential.

3. Spirits need to be invulnerable in wvw and pve. This would hardly effect small scale combate in wvw – but is that even balanced to begin with? Spirits die after 60 seconds regardless, and go on CD for another 25 seconds. Trait points are still required to make them move and to proc more often. I’d even give up their actives to have the option of making them invulnerable. Disable the actives if you have to. (Though having the nature spirit would make rangers an actually desired class and give us a real use in a zerg!)

4. Allow either (a) F2 skill to be selectable from the pet’s list of abilities or (b) allow more control to the player of their pet. If I could tell my pet when to give me swiftness or use it’s blast finisher, I’d be much more helpful.

5. Pets scale with number of (opposing) players, just as world events do. Or allow us to make them untargetable and invulnerable, and to only be used for their F2 because that’s better than no pet at all!

I’ve been thinking about this lately too. Based on Arenanet’s statements and actions, I feel like they want wvw to be mostly siege-warfare and less about open field combat. I’m sure they don’t like how powerful zergs can be and would prefer more coordination and many smaller groups working together to attack and defend.

What I’m saying is, perhaps the exclusiveness of GWEN is not the problem, but rather the benefits of zerging vs not zerging. Something as simple as making it so in wvw, when you give people the boons swiftness, only members of your party can receive it, might change the entire game dynamic and break up that GWEN zerg.

Or maybe not. You’re right that Guardians and Warriors scale REALLY well in the game – from solo content to the biggest, zergiest stuff, to the toughest PvE content and right back through the most hard core of WvW and PvP.

Aza.2105:

Malediktus.9250:

SafiMoyo.5130:

Stability stomp and nobody can save that ranger.

did you even read? I was talking about downstate vs downstate, rangers are basically godmode in downstate vs downstate, heck even downstate vs 2x downstate is no problem for a ranger

Someone told me that downstate is when rangers are at their best, they can not lose vs another downed class.

In a 1v1, yeah the ranger is probably going to win the on-your-back fight, except against warriors. In a 3v3 or larger, no. The pet melts from the cleaving, making it useless. It feels like it’s doing what it’s supposed to for a ranger: useful in small scale, useless in large scale.

Rather, some sort of “foreit” button would be nice if certain conditions are met (non even team numbers, score difference is huge between teams).

Stability stomp and nobody can save that ranger.

scerevisiae.1972:

Similarly, the icons for conditions and boons are minuscule and badly placed because we’re supposed to be able to see them in combat. Clearly this approach does not work because of how spammy the combat is, together with overly flashy particle effects.

I think a nice alternative would be to allow to display all condis and boons (one on top of the other) and grayed out when they’re not currently applied to you. That would mean you can always glance at the exact same spot to see if the enemy has, say, stability, or if you have confusion.

In pvp it won’t matter (except for size) but in wvw, you can use technobabble (Asura skill) + moment of clarity (+100% stun duration) and omg.

I Covered Wars.4380:

I don’t see Asura on here.

I think the poll was “which class is the most OP?”, not “which race is the most classy?” but I can see how you’d be confused

I just had the most disheartening match. First a guy leaves at the start. The other team destroys us at center. A second player on our team doesn’t say anything but clearly gives up by not leaving the spawn point. Enemy holds all the points now and controls the map.

Even if we had a 5v5, I don’t think we were going to win. But giving up like that… boo.

I tried this build today. It was okay at first, then I hit a wall.

I don’t know how to deal with hambow warriors. They forever chain me with their CCs and I can’t get out of their megacircle fire of doom. With all the knockdowns, my pets couldn’t get in and do their stuff either. And scratching the warrior was impossible. Any advice?

I’m guessing it has an effect once you’re in combat, like the other one that increases pet boon duration but only when in combat.

I don’t know how they implemented pets, but they definitely did something funky and cheesey. Out of combat pets seem like a different asset than in combat pets.