Not trolling if you read through the comments you’d see that I was saying have that I’m not calling for a nerf just for the issue to be addressed,
Your rationale for this “fix” is that no other class can use their class mechanic when downed.
No other class can lose their class mechanic while not downed.
You’re asking Anet to address the way this mechanic advantages the ranger, while not asking them to address the way the mechanic disadvantages the ranger. That’s basically calling for a nerf.
The “issue” as you’ve outlined it isn’t “rangers can use their class mechanic while downed.” It’s “ranger class mechanic behaves different from other class mechanics.” If you want the issue to truly be addressed, you have to simultaneously request that ranger pets be made unkillable so the ranger can always use their class mechanic while not downed – just like the other classes. They are two sides of the same coin.
(edited by Solandri.9640)
Always figured the Kudzu designer was a Freddie Wong fan.
What about turkeys?
One of the funniest clips from the 1970s.
This could be a way to do it but it would reduce this skill’s potential in PvE quite a bit.
The issue isn’t the skill’s potential in PvP or PvE. The problem is much more fundamental.
When Anet makes a skill, it has several variables to control its strength, it’s impact on the game (PvE, PvP, and WvV). One is obviously the effect. Then there’s the duration. Finally there’s the cooldown. The latter two combine to form a percent uptime, which you can multiply by the magnitude of the effect to get its time-weighted effect.
The current mechanic with WHaO completely screws that up. I’m trying to avoid a mathematical explanation, but I can’t think of a way around it. In the math of infinite series, there are divergent series and convergent series. A convergent series approaches a fixed value. 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + … which each subsequent number being half the previous converges on 2. A convergent series is well-behaved, and you can easily modify it. 2 * (1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + … ) = 4.
A divergent series blows up to infinity. 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + … approaches infinity (very slowly, but it does). And obviously infinite anything can be very unbalancing.
The current mechanic of WHaO takes well-behaved skills which act like a convergent series, and under certain reasonably easy-to-attain circumstances makes them blow up like a divergent series. The only reason we’re not seeing more unbalancing effects from WHaO is because it eventually runs into the boon stacking and duration limits.
Not only is that horribly unbalancing. but it makes it extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to balance other skills. Anet could balance (say) Guard – they’re happy with its effect, duration, and uptime. Something else like Resounding Timbre act as a mere multiplier – by reducing cooldown 20%, you increase the uptime of Guard’s effect (percent of time the pet has protection up) by 25%.
Now you throw in WHaO, and it can cause the effect to blow up to permanent uptime. In some cases there’s no way to fix it (the effect will always blow up to permanent uptime). In others, you can fix it, but only by nerfing Guard so badly that the skill without WHaO is effectively useless.
This isn’t how you design good game mechanics. You want all the skill effects to be controlled and predictable. Even permanent uptime in itself is acceptable if the work needed to maintain it occupies enough of the player’s time that it reduces their damage output. But WHaO’s mechanic is such that beyond a certain duration, the increase in duration with each application grows exponentially, making it horribly broken.
Capping the duration of each boon WHaO copies would stop the divergent/exponential duration growth and bring it back under control, making it compatible with a well-balanced game again.
Now we have to wait to receive damages to trigger it.
Actually, you have to wait to receive damage, move outside it, then move back inside it to trigger it.
The fact that its based on Healing Power is probably the reason it was put on a trait with a secondary function rather than just a trait that boosts one stat based on another (which most of the other “gain X amount of stat based on Y amount of another stat” traits are).
Nope, the other trait where the bonus is a secondary effect is based on an attribute with 1000 base.
Why ranger community do not allow themselves to have nice things is beyond me.
only on ranger forums you find people actually saying their class is op and needs a nerf… XD
Ikr.
Looking at all the Warriors, Thieves, Ele, Guardians, Mesmers crying how UP they are all the time makes you think Ranger community seem to have this sense of inferiority on themselves, that they can’t accept nice things :P
Those professions have been powerful for so long, their community is full of min/maxers who want to be as powerful as they can.
Ranger has been kitten for so long, its community is full of masochists and realists who are more interested in game balance than being OPed.
I agree, the might stacking was much needed since rangers had terrible time stacking might….
Yeah, after seeing the effectiveness of might stacking, one of the big problems with ranger is lack of access to it. I don’t think this is the right way to fix that though.
but they will probably end up nerfing the quickness…unless anet intended to make sure one class has more access and uptime to quickness than any other class lol
Before the quickness nerf, ranger had the most access to quickness. With the nerf, ranger got hit the hardest. They never adjusted ranger DPS up to compensate. (Some of it was given back when they made quickness on pet swap baseline with BM.)
Gain Power Based on a Percentage of Healing Power: 7% this is a little of weird we have 0 healing power and how we gain power? when we are not in healing gear meaning this trait is useless?
Pretty sure that’s a design oversight. All the other traits I was able to find that act like that are based on an attribute with a base 1000 points. The ranger one is the only one based on a attribute with a base 0 points.
Send them a bug report on it every week, and we should see it fixed in a couple years.
It’s horrid.
Scaling should always be based on vitality, toughness, power or precision, since those start at 1000 for everyone.
Healing power, condition damage and ferocity start at 0.
Which makes it so bad I feel disgusted I actually have to write this and ANet doesn’t even understand it.
This. Unfortunately the wiki doesn’t have a definitive list of traits which add a % of one attribute to another. But all the ones I’ve been able to find are based on the above 4 attributes which have a base 1000 (and usually give 10% or 13% – seems to correspond to master or grandmaster level).
Unless someone knows of another one, only the ranger trait is based on an attribute with a base 0 value, and it only gives 7%. This is an obvious design blunder, if not an outright bug.
I just turn autotarget off and use Next Enemy or Nearest Enemy to target. Those can be bound to keys.
The only problem I’ve run into with this setup is with ranger sword. Each of the autoattacks on that weapon leaps when in combat (yes I know the description on one of them says it doesn’t – but it does if the previous attack hit a target). Due to Anet not allowing dodges during leaps, most ranger players have to resort to turning off autoattack when using this weapon and hitting 1 manually just to be able to use the dodge mechanic. But if your target dies with autotarget off, and you hit 1 once more, you will leap forward sometimes taking you off a cliff.
So am I understanding this correctly? If I use this, for example, in Silverwastes and it ports me to the airship. When I exit the airship I will exit somewhere (where exactly?) in Brisband Wildlands. It does not simply let me let me enter and exit to the same location.
If you exit the airship, you will end up below it in Gendarran Fields, by the Vigil HQ.
I have both the Captain’s Airship Pass and the Royal Terrace Pass (what can I say, I’m lazy with my alts). OP is misinformed. Neither of them function the way he described.
There is Home Portal Stone which was briefly on sale some months ago. That one does function in the manner described. Click while in Silverwastes and it takes you to your home town. Click again and it takes you back to Silverwastes. I bought that too but haven’t used it, as having all the services I need right there in the Airship or Royal Terrace is worth a few silver’s teleport fee worth of convenience.
If all you need is to visit the bank, merchant, or Black Lion trade vendor, it is now more convenient to enter the PvP Mists since they added those NPCs there. Exiting the Mists takes you back to the same location you were originally in. Adding those NPCs there substantially degraded the value of the two passes.
I was disappointed with the initial character creation in the game for the same reason. IMHO the best way to handle this is:
1) When you initially make your character, for 24 hours you can hop back into the appearance editor and make changes.
2) When you use a total makeover kit, it gives you another 24 hours to enter the appearance editor and make changes.
This does have the drawback in that you can’t keep a hairstyle or makeover kit in the bank to “preview” what the new hairstyles are. But that could be made unnecessary by allowing anyone to enter the appearance editor at any time. Just make it so finalizing the changes consumes the kit (like with armor and weapon transmutation), and consuming the kit kicks off a 24 hour timer where a kit is no longer needed to make further changes.
Whoah Whoah Whoah!
Guys the ranger cannot afk and live if anything “actually dangerous” is about to re-spawn or appear via event where they are standing. I’ve come back to dead Rangers lots… Just unfortunate placement.
My main is ranger, has been since I got the game. (Was in GW1 as well.)
OP is talking about the difficulty of playing the game. By that measure, I’d agree that ranger is by far the easiest. You let the pet tank, while you plink it with autoattack from range. That will get you through 95% of the PvE content even if you’re mostly AFK.
What you’re thinking of is difficulty of overcoming encounters – i.e. effectiveness. By that measure, ranger is probably the hardest to play. In the time the pet-tanking autoattack-plinking ranger kills one mob, any other class can mow through 5-10 mobs. A lot of the ranger mechanics and trait combos are so broken, you can play it at expert level and you’ll only be as effective as any other class played at mediocre level. That’s the reason ranger is almost completely absent from competitive PvP. There’s no point playing ranger when you can work half as hard with another class and be just as effective.
This statement may hold weight, if they had removed the keys when key farming became mainstream, fact is its been in game well over a year, and now it gets nerfed, seems kind of strange, was there really that many key farmers upsetting the balance….doubtful
If you ask me, they deliberately left key farming in for a while to temper the effect of Lionguard Lyns allowing wealthier people early in the game to acquire massive numbers of black lion keys.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lionguard_Lyns#Trivia
If they’d banned key farming immediately, there would’ve been a huge outcry about how it was so unfair that early players were able to “easily” acquire so many keys, while it was near-impossible for later players. But by leaving key farming in, any complaints about Lionguard Lyns being removed would be met with, “Just go farm a key in 10 minutes.”
Now that we’re several years removed from the Lionguard Lyns key “exploit”, they can start cracking down on key farming. And they have been.
Scraps should be a guaranteed drop, in addition to the chance of more scraps. With this, skins would be around 7-8 keys/630-720gems/$8-9/130-150g average. That’s about the upper limit what a skin should cost in gems/cash.
As far as the BL weapon skins are concerned, it’s just a system to sell weapon skins at $30/150 each. The 33% drop rate on scraps doesn’t make it much of a lottery that you can win. It’s a fairly high chance, and all it does is set the average number of keys you’ll have to buy in order to get a weapon.
You’re only getting 33%? I’ve farmed/found about a dozen keys over the last month. Nearly every one has given me a scrap. And one of the ones which didn’t give me a scrap gave me two tickets. The chest drops guildmates have linked in guild chat have almost always included a scrap too.
The scraps used to be a lot rarer (I saved up 40 keys last year and opened them all at once – only got a dozen scraps). But right now they seem to be very close to a guaranteed drop. The tickets seem to be a lot more common too, as I’ve gotten 3 from the dozen recent keys. Several guildies linking their chest drops have gotten tickets as well. I only got one ticket the previous year from probably 150 chests.
I did still have a key though from the sale, so, like in my last post, I opened it. Contents:
Bank access express #facepalm
Trading post express #pullmorehairout
Speed booster #KILLMENOWThis change is utterly banal when the contents of these chests are abysmal.
At least those are all useful items. A year ago, more than a third of the items I got from the BLCs were those stupid mystery tonics. In fact I still have several stacks of them on some alt. Good move by Anet as they seem to have eliminated the tonics from the chest drop tables. The current chests are much improved over the past ones.
Both 1h melee weapons are clunky.
Wait what? What other than sword is a 1 hand melee weapon? Dagger?
An Axe.
Axe on ranger isn’t melee, its a mid range projectile weapon
Whether axe is melee or ranged is irrelevant to OP’s point. There are only two 1h main hand weapons for ranger, and both have severe usability issues. Inability to dodge with sword, and pathetic DPS with axe.
Since you must take a main hand weapon if you’re going to use any of the off-hand weapons, these problems also affect every off-hand weapon for ranger since 60% of your weapon skillbar is determined by the main hand weapon. (Well I suppose you could run around with just the off-hand weapon equipped, but that’s completely unrealistic.)
If you’re worried about your damage dropping i’d recommend that whatever build you run with celestial is hybrid damage (both physical and condi), if you do that your damage wont be that low. However, if you try to run a pure condi or power build with celestial and just take celestial for the defensive stats you’re going to have a bad time.
This. Celestial got hit harder by the introduction of Ferocity than Berserker’s. Before, you only had to want 5 stats before Celestial was superior to mixing and matching armor sets. e.g. If you wanted 3 stats (pow, pre, crit dam), then Berserker’s was best. If you wanted 4 stats (say pow, pre, crit dam, toughness), then a mixed armor set was better. If you wanted 5 stats (one of them being crit dam), then Celestial was better than any mixed armor set you could come up with.
With the Ferocity change, the trade-off point for Celestial moved up to 6 stats. That is, of the 7 stats (pow, pre, ferocity, toughness, vit, condition damage, healing power), you have to want at least 6 of them before Celestial is better than a mix-and-match set.
I actually run Celestial armor on my ranger (out of sheer laziness – I got tired of swapping armor every time I changed traits; put Traveler runes on it to free up a utility skill from Signet of the Hunt). I moved ascended celestial trinkets from my ele to try out a pure celestial build (pure except for weapons). I would not recommend it. Celestial armor + berserker’s or sinister trinkets and weapons is ok, especially if you run a bloodlust or corruption sigil and build up a full stack. But its damage is still markedly less than a pure build.
The defensive stats simply don’t give enough benefit for the offensive stats you give up, even at the 1.85:1 trade-off ratio you get with Celestial (compared to a single armor type like Berserker’s, you’re giving up 41.9% of those 3 stats, for a gain of 77.5% to the other 4 stats, or a 1.85:1 ratio). If Anet makes changes to make the defensive stats more desirable, then this will increase the viability of Celestial. But with the current state of the game, I’d only recommend it if you want to be lazy or switch up builds a lot like me.
Edit: Here are the numbers for an ascended armor sets:
Berserker’s: 439 pow, 315 pre, 315 fer = 1069 total
Celestial: 207 to each stat
1 stat = 207
2 stats = 414
3 stats = 621
4 stats = 828
5 stats = 1035 (Berserker’s and thus a mix-and-match set is still better)
6 stats = 1242 (Celestial finally becomes better)
7 stats = 1449
(edited by Solandri.9640)
On the other hand the teleport fee is quite a big annoyance for new players. I remember when I just started playing GW2 that I was constantly running out of money because of the teleport fee. It’s highly unfriendly to new players.
At low level, waypoints are a few copper. The only way you can run out of money when you’re first starting out because of the waypoint fee is if you’re gratuitously waypointing back and forth for no reason, or if you’re dying to every other mob you fight.
Anyhow, there’s a simple way to avoid the fee – don’t use waypoints and run from one place to the other. “But that’ll take forever!” Then use the waypoint and don’t complain about paying for the convenience of not having to spend all that time running. Technically, any long-distance teleport is a gold source, not a sink. Instead of keeping you busy doing something where you’re not making any gold (running), the teleport allows you to instantly get back to playing the game and making gold by killing stuff and collecting loot. Anet was willing to put this gold source into the game, because they felt it was better than the alternative (downtime due to running).
If you want to play a RPG with maximum convenience and an absolute minimum of hassle and cost, then you should be playing this game:
http://progressquest.com/
Actually, inflation would be bad for the GEMS sales as well. Their system relies on players giving up Gold for GEMS, inflation gets out of control and people will stop buying GEMs with gold, which would increase the price of Gold from GEMs, which would mean people would stop buying Gold with GEMs.
Er, no. If [gold] inflation gets out of control, people stop buying gems with gold (because you get so few gems for x gold). That increases the price of gold from gems, meaning gold inflation has been stopped and reversed, and everything goes back to normal.
Well, firstly, for maiming ranger, I’m impressed that you don’t know about all of our condi cleanse.
Troll ungent- cleanse 2
Sharpening stone- cleanse 2
Those only remove conditions if you take the trait he mentioned, which prohibits you from taking the other condition-cleansing trait. Because they’re in the same trait line at the same level (grandmaster). It also really hurts build diversity because you MUST take that trait line if you want reliable condition cleanses.
Healing Spring used to clear conditions, until they converted it to a trap. It still does if you can get the trap portion to trigger. But if the initial heal portion tops off your HP, then the trap portion doesn’t trigger, and you never get the condition cleanse.
My most frequent mode of death now is I get cripple/bleed/burn/whatever put on me, I use Healing Spring, the initial heal puts my HP to full, meaning I never get the condition cleanse, and I get killed. (If your hp drops while you’re in the HS trap, you have to move out of the trap and back in to trigger it and get the condition cleanse. Which is rather difficult when you’re crippled and quickly being beat to death.)
This used to be the ranger’s best heal, but its current state has made it the second worst. The dorky trap mechanic might’ve been acceptable when you could pre-set up to 3 healing spring “traps” for later use. But that was immediately “fixed” to a max 1 trap in the next patch, while the condition cleanse problem remained unaddressed. If they can’t make the trap trigger if you’re not at full hp or you have conditions on you, they need to make it so using the skill also cleanses some conditions.
Lightning reflexes- cleanse 2 movement impeding
The immobilize clear was added to this skill because it was silly/stupid to have a skill designed to make you leap back out of danger, but could be completely nullified with an immobilize.
Signet of the wild: cleanse 1 every 10 seconds or full clear
That is the lone utility skill he mentioned.
As far as traits I’m curious to know which one you are noting, and you might be forgetting shared anguish which transfers movement impeding conditions to your pets
That doesn’t transfer conditions. It transfers control effects like stun, knockback, and is equivalent to a stun breaker, not a condition cleanse. And it seems to be bugged at the moment. Or maybe it’s because Anet keeps adding mobs which repeatedly apply multiple control effects in quick succession, and the trait only transfers the first application to the pet before going on a 60 sec cooldown. (Side-effect of changing Stability to stacks.)
There is a ranger trait which removes blindness, cripple, and poison on dodges. Probably the weakest conditions out there.
I believe sword 2 is also a immobilize break as well as greatsword 3
Nope. They don’t clear any immobilizes, control effects, or conditions. In fact GS 3 is bugged in that if you’re immobilized during the middle of its leap, all your skills are disabled until you die or logout. Actually I think this bug affects all leap skills, it’s just more apparent on ranger GS 3 because it’s the longest duration leap.
(edited by Solandri.9640)
Reason for a TP : Security, Reduce Inflation, easier to use, free up the map and lfg of all the sellers.
Reason for direct trade : I don’t wanna pay the fee.
If you don’t want to pay the fee and are willing to give up secure trades for it, just mail the item to the person you’re trading with, and they can mail you the gold for it. That’s your direct trade.
“But that’s not secure!” You just said you don’t care about secure trades. GW2’s method just makes it completely obvious that direct trades are not secure. There is no illusion of security like with direct trades in other games, which is what allows scams to flourish.
If you want a bullet-proof secure trade, use the TP. If you want insecure trades, use mail. There is no in-between, because the in-between is what makes scams possible.
The game has no monthly fee so it costs you nothing to play it when your family member wants to play. When s/he isn’t playing, you can just ignore the game as usual. There’s no need to make this a a dramatic “do I start playing in earnest again or not?” decision.
That’s what I did with GW1. I quit playing 4 or 5 times, the longest was for a year. Then picked it up again when I had more free time or felt like playing it again. That’s the beauty of games with no monthly fee. You don’t feel compelled to play it to “get your money’s worth” even if you hate it. Heck, I just got off a 8 month hiatus from GW2 because I got too busy with work.
There’s also a pretty easy collection which gives a 20-slot bag. Everything can be bought (mostly from karma vendors), except for two drops which are pretty cheap on TP.
Actually, a confirmation before exiting the game would be really helpful, for the simple reason that if you’re playing in windowed mode and accidentally hit the red X in the upper right corner, the game immediately closes. (I suspect alt-F4 does the same, but that’s a lot harder to hit by accident.)
Back before Fortifying Bond existed, the complaint was that because of the 5-target limit for buffs and buffs going to players first before pets, pets never got a buff in a dungeon party. That seemed horribly unfair to rangers. Everyone else gets a buff and 100% of their damage is increased. The ranger gets a buff and only 70%-80% of his damage is increased.
We argued that either Anet either needed to stop nerfing ranger damage because we “also get damage from the pet” – so pretend the pet didn’t exist and raise all ranger weapon skills damage coefficients across the board by about 25%. Or our pets needed to automatically get a copy of every buff we got (and armor bonuses, and weapon bonuses, etc).
They opted for the latter. Except they made it a trait. So yeah, Fortifying Bond really should be made baseline. As it is, the trait just brings ranger up to par with the other classes (except for possibly minion necro). Or if they’re going to insist it be a trait, it should do more than just bring us up to par since it costs a trait.
My main is a ranger, and I submitted a lot of bugs when I first began playing. When the patch came I read the patch notes and… nearly every bug I submitted which was helping ranger had been fixed. Nearly every bug I submitted which was hurting ranger had the tooltip changed to say that was now the correct behavior.
I stopped submitting bug reports.
They really need to let you create a watchlist, so you’re emailed immediately when a certain item becomes available for purchase again, or goes on sale below a certain price threshold you’ve set. It’s 2015, not 1995 when people were first trying to figure this whole ecommerce thing out.
Pets F2 skills don’t priorize the rangers party which is very lackluster in WvW especially since even the ranger himself doesn’t get the pets buffs in a zerg.
It gets worse. Pet buffs prioritize players over the pet. So not only does the ranger and his party not get the buffs, the pet doesn’t either.
This really needs to be fixed IMHO. If AOE buffs affected everyone in the AOE, then it wouldn’t be a problem. But because they’ve arbitrarily limited AOE buffs to just 5 players, those buffs must prioritize (1) the player, (2) his party, and (3) his pet, before going to other players or pets.
They created this problem themselves with the 5 player buff limit. The game shouldn’t have shipped without the buffs prioritizing in the order I’ve listed.
I’ve heard the claim that the new sound is “more realistic” from several people now, but I have yet to hear any horn, be it made from brass or animal horns, that sounds like wet flatulence.
A well-made horn has a clear tone. What “realistic” horn is the new GW2 horn sound based off of?
I played trumpet in elementary school. It’s the sound made by large horns (e.g. baritone, tuba) when they’re played poorly by a beginner. You need to blow a certain minimum volume of air (while flapping your lips) to make a sound. The bigger the horn, the more air you need. If you’re just a little short, the horn will rapidly alternate between sound and no sound, giving it the pulsating effect that sounds like a fart.
https://youtu.be/dGVM5R2CYBM?t=25
Not sure why someone at Anet thought that would make a cool horn sound. Nobody intentionally plays that way, unless they’re trying to make the kids laugh.
If you want more survivability, here’s an idea. Carrion + Runes of Scavenging. Carrion gives +vit instead of +pre, and the 6th Scavenging rune converts 7% of your vit into condition damage. So it actually has higher condition damage than the Sinister build. Less duration with the runes most people are using with Sinister. And Scavenging is a dirt cheap rune.
Here’s how they look on gw2skills.
DPS is actually higher than the Sinister build for the first 10 seconds or so, then Sinister passes it in the next few seconds. Cumulative damage will take a few more seconds for Sinister to catch up. I left the second sigil slot empty so you can play around with the builds.
The other catch is you have 32% vs 56% crit chance, which will impact certain skills, traits, and sigils. But you do have 21k hp vs 16k hp.
I used sinister trinkets on both to make it easier to compare. There are no Carrion trinkets. You could go with Rabid+Dire, which would add even more vit plus some toughness, at the loss precision and power.
(edited by Solandri.9640)
We already have it as a trait. Shared Anguish – transfers disables to your pet. Basically the same thing as a stun break, except it breaks the disable before it ever actually affects you.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shared_Anguish
Only problems are the cooldown is obscenely long (60 sec), and it didn’t seem to be working the few times I tried it recently.
it seems to me that if you just switched pets and put them on passive (or used a ranged pet) while you were standing on the flower, your pet would also stay up there and survive.
That’s the first thing I tried, and the new pet appeared on the ground under the flower. I didn’t test it extensively so maybe there’s a way to get it to appear on the flower.
Anyhow, I tried it again using a single F3 instead of spamming it. Once time the pet survived, the other time the pet died. So I dunno – maybe the F3 only protects the pet for a short while?
Next I want to see if this is some undocumented protection-like feature of F3. Maybe you can use it to reduce damage the pet takes from other big attacks.
That pet F2 bug has been around for years. I first ran across it fighting Jormag in 2013, and have never figured out what exactly is causing it. It’s happened to me on lots of pets, not just the birds.
Swapping pets or switching to completely different pets doesn’t clear it. The only way I’ve found to clear it is to change zones, or logout the character.
Sun spirit is 2 stacks of burning for 3 sec on 8 sec cooldown. 75% chance to apply so add another quarter second (that’s not exact, but close enough).
The damage stated on the tooltip doesn’t seem to take into account some forms of duration. Without food buffs, it seems to be calculated as a flat 3 sec (5 sec for Solar Flare – it has the same problem). So if you’ve got +condition duration items, your actual damage is higher than stated in the tooltip. You’re probably best off ignoring the tooltip and calculating it directly. Burn damage at level 80 is 0.155*CD + 131.
Anyhow, assuming no +condition duration and not using Solar Flare, calculate your burn damage per tick, multiply by 6 (2 stacks for 3 sec). That’ll give you the DPS that Sun Spirit adds. For solo rangers, since the pet gets the buff too, double it (I assume its damage is based on the ranger casting it – dunno if that’s actually true). For a dungeon party of 5, multiply by 5. (You could add Solar Flare, but getting the target to move within range just before the spirit dies is going to be tricky.)
If that DPS is more than 7.5% your direct damage DPS, then Sun Spirit is better than Frost Spirit.
Example 1:
With 0 condition damage, burn damage is 131. 131*6 = 786. So Sun Spirit does 786 damage per application. Multiply by 2 for your pet, divide by 8.25 sec per application. (You could multiply by another fraction to account for the spirit dying after 60 sec, but I’ll assume all fights of interest are shorter than 60 sec. If you do want to include it, it’s roughly 70 sec/81 sec = 0.864.)
786*2/8.25 = 190.54. So Sun Spirit gives an average of 190.54 DPS. Divide by 0.075, and your direct damage (you and pet, since the pet also gets Frost Spirit) needs to exceed 2540.6 DPS for Frost Spirit to be better.
Example 2:
With 1800 condition damage and 100% burn duration, your burn damage per tick is 410. Duration is 3*2 = 6 sec, so damage per application is 410 * 2 stacks * 6 sec = 4920. Multiply by 2 for your pet, divide by 8.25 sec per application. That gives you an average of 1192.7 DPS. Divide by 0.075 and your direct damage needs to exceed 15,903 DPS for Frost Spirit to be better.
What about condition cleanse, was this fixed on Healing Spring?
HS works to cleanse condis.
The problem is if the initial heal from the skill brings you up to full hp, the trap portion which does the condition clear never triggers. They need to either add a condition cleanse to the initial skill activation, or make the HS traps also trigger if you have a condition on you.
The Vinewrath fight in Silverwastes usually splits up melee at south, reflect at mid, and ranged at north. Most rangers are using bows for this fight so end up at north.
The boss at north is Champion Morderm Dark Wing. At certain times in this fight, he’ll run to the bottom of the room, the floor will shimmer, followed by an attack which deals massive damage which pretty much insta-kills any player or pet. The only way to avoid it is to destroy one of the flowers to make it bloom, then jump on top of the flower. That’s fine for the ranger, but your pet can’t jump up there.
My pet somehow survived one of these attacks, and I’ve been trying to reproduce it ever since. I think I figured it out. If you hit F3 to call the pet back just as this attack hits, the pet will only take about half its hp in damage and will live. I’ve only been able to test it 3 times. I spammed F3, and the pet survived each time.
I’m not sure if it’s the spamming of F3 which reduces the damage the pet takes, or if the pet just has to be moving back towards you at the moment the attack hits (so you only need to hit F3 once).
There was some discussion about this in the condition ranger thread. Bottom line is don’t trust the tooltips – the extra burn duration from smoldering is usually helpful even if the tooltip doesn’t reflect it.
1) Flame trap’s damage is nothing like the tooltip says. You get an extra free burn pulse at the beginning (i.e. it actually pulses 4 times if the tooltip says 3.0 sec). But that first pulse doesn’t follow the normal damage scaling. I’ve tried about 4 different configurations, but haven’t yet found an exact pattern to how its damage is calculated.
2) Anet added fractional damage pulses. i.e. If Flame Trap’s tooltip says it’ll burn for 3.5 sec, you will get the above initial free pulse, then 3 burn pulses, then one more pulse for half your regular damage. I haven’t tested yet to see if Bonfire’s tooltip adds these fractional pulses to its damage – I don’t think it does. (Bonfire lists total damage from all the burn pulses. Flame Trap lists damage per burn pulse.)
Miniature giant space hamster.
F2 can go for the eyes!
We had spike trap on reviving an ally ever since release. A meaningless trap until the update where it became an AoE knockdown.
What happened? We had it replaced with Search and Rescue.
What’s even worse is that everyone else’s +10% revive speed trait somehow improves their effectiveness. They gain feedback, drop a well of blood, gain feedback, or an aura, or give AOE might, etc. Ours decreases our effectiveness by pulling our pet off of whatever we had it doing.
Blaming this change on the people who asked for it is a lot like blaming the guy who got ripped off by a used car salesman for not expecting to get ripped off.
There’s a saying in Engineering – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Or in less absolute terms, if something is working fine, you should be extremely wary of tinkering with it to try to improve it. Concentrate on fixing the broken stuff first, before you risk breaking something that’s already working fine.
Let this be a lesson to all of you asking for tweaks to skills and abilities which already work pretty well. If your car is already running pretty well, don’t go to a used car dealer looking to replace it not expecting to get ripped off.
The perverse thing is, once you complete the skill challenge (I’m sorry, hero point), it becomes this bright gold color which stands out pretty well. In other words, the thing you have no need to do again is easier to see than the thing that you need to do.
This is weird to me, since I’m able to see the icons all perfectly fine in the minimap.
You’re at a higher zoom level on the minimap. A lot of us prefer the lowest zoom level which still shows features, so we can spot resource nodes. At that zoom level, the edges of the incomplete hero point (or heart) icon are too thin and easily blend with the background clutter.
(edited by Solandri.9640)
Rather than delete the character, you’re probably best off buying a new character slot. That way you can use the original character as a mule, where the extra bag will at least do some good (the birthday rewards are not too shabby either – the 20 level exp scroll is basically a free black lion key). And who knows, maybe in the future you may decide to play the character again, or Anet may decide to make bag slot expansions account-wide.
Being able to spam an unblockable CC that locks you out of the targeting system every fifteen seconds is extremely overpowered.
Out of curiosity, doesn’t stealth do the same thing – unblockable and locks you out of everyone’s targeting instead of just players nearby?
Something extra to think about when with banners you don’t have to. Why make it intentionally harder than it has to be? Just seems silly. Banners are simply better because they can’t die, they’re mobile, and they are 100% the entire time they’re up.
Actually, banners last 90 sec on a 120 sec cooldown. So their uptime is less than spirits (provided the spirit doesn’t die).
My take on the banner/spirit comparison is just that – spirits can die. The thing that can be killed by the enemy should have a bigger effect than the thing that can’t. But it’s the other way around with banners having better effects (frost spirit excepted).
One of the great things about GW1 was that when you placed a spirit, you forced your opponent into a decision. Does he spend time killing the spirit to remove its effect? Or does he live with its effect and continue attacking you? That dynamic is gone from GW2 because of how weak ranger spirits are.
I think humans teend to dismiss “anti-leader” personality types all too easily. Apparently, many people-hopefully not a majority-have a problem with his “lack of charisma”, but should all leaders be charismatic/“personable”? I would argue that the usually more likable Thybalt, despite his sacrifice and quite more charming personality, wasn’t a good fir for that kind of leadership either (much as the other 2 sacrificial order leaders.) In short, it is fine for leaders to be so without meeting the stereotype.
That’s an interesting point to make. Prior to the mass media, U.S. presidents were pretty much evenly divided between introverts and extroverts. Calvin Coolidge was said to be so quiet, it’s said a talkative woman once boasted she’d be able to get him to talk when they met for dinner. She opened by saying she’d bet a friend that she could get him to say at least three words. He replied, “you lose.”
Basically, people would read about each candidate’s history, voting record, and decisions, then decide who would be the better leader. Since the advent of the mass media, and especially television in the 1960s, the Presidents have mostly been extroverts. Carter was the only obvious introvert, though there’s arguments that Nixon and Obama are introverts. The increased public exposure (and undoubtedly movies) have created an image among the populace about what a leader should be like, and charisma is a big part of it (hence favoring extroverts).
I didn’t really hate the voice-acting, as it was quite fitting for the character being portrayed. Voice changes were a bit unwarranted, or at least should have been put on hold until after attaining Pact leadership role. Though now they are fine, I miss the “this won’t end well” days when you play with new characters.
I don’t like his voice acting, but that doesn’t really bug me. What bugged me was his deference to you in major decisions. A good leader asks for your input (and the input of others knowledgeable about the issue), then makes the decision. Trahearne was always asking you to make the decision. Which makes sense from the standpoint of this being a game focused on you.
But I think he would get a lot more respect if they’d written his part so he would ask you for your opinion and recommendation (with the implication that he was also asking the other high-ranking Pact members), then in the next scene they’d show him having decided to go with your choice (and occasionally going against your advice).
edit: Oh and I hope the achievement for the sinister trinket does not include anything in the story with Glint’s domain. That one literally made me sick. I had to stop playing it I was so nauseous. Eventually, I made it through but it was very rough on me and I have no wish to reenter that place.
The one I listed as Echoes of the Past mastery requires achievements in Glint’s domain.
I don’t mind doing achievements, but a lot of these require you to play as Caithe – with thief skills. I made a thief my first month of playing the game, and hated it. It’s been sitting as a storage mule for years (the teleport on shortbow 5 is handy for moving between banker, BL trader, and guild bank in Rata Sum).
So I completed Point of No Return (last part of Living Story season 2), and only two ascended trinkets showed up at the merchants:
Jurah’s Jewel (amulet)
Verata’s Seared Ring (ring)
To get the other ascended sinister trinkets, you have to complete the achievement masteries (i.e. all the “optional” achievements for each part of the living story).
Accessories:
Caithe’s Blossom - Echoes of the Past mastery
Caithe’s Remorse - Point of No Return mastery
Ring:
Plague Signet Ring - Tangled Paths mastery
Amulet:
Wynne’s Locket - Seeds of Truth mastery
(if you don’t want to pay 10g for Jurah’s Jewel, or you want a defensive infusion slot instead of offensive)
There doesn’t seem to be an option to outright buy these – you have to complete mastery achievement before they’ll show up in the merchant. Ugh. I don’t have time nor the inclination to do every single one of these achievements. I’ll probably just piece together some sort of hybrid build instead of getting a full sinister set.
Is there some other trick to getting these that I’m missing?
[Black Lion Keys]
Still not a good deal. You are just letting them take your money for a few seconds of that addictive gambling rush. Which is the whole point of the keys and chests, to exploit that.
As opposed to letting them take your money for a few hours of that addictive gaming rush?
People need to remember that anything that’s entertainment can be considered a “waste” of money. People spend money on it because they enjoy it – it’s a quality of life thing.
As long as you don’t destroy your real life to feed your entertainment addiction, it’s not a problem. If you find it fun opening black lion chests and you have the money for it, then knock yourself out. Same goes for gambling in Vegas, playing video games, watching sports, going to concerts, etc. All those are fine in moderation. In fact they’re arguably helpful and worth the money if they let you recharge so you’re more effective when you’re working and earning money.
The copper fed salvage-o-matic is not cheaper from a real world monetary perspective no matter how long you use it, it will never give a rate of return that outweighs its gem cost because of the continual copper cost whch could be converted to gems and the fact that it doesn’t even give you the hightest salvage level. It is actually a better value to buy or convert MF stones and make mystic salvage kits in both the short and long run.
Basic salvage kits are 3.52 copper per use (88 copper, 25 uses). The copper-fed salvage-o-matic is 3 copper per use, so you actually are coming out slightly ahead. Of course at 0.52 copper saved per use, making back the 800 gems (@ 18 gold per 100 gems) would take 2.8 million uses so you won’t realistically ever make it back in terms of raw monetary cost.
For me though, it’s more than paid for itself by cutting down the number of trips I had to make to a merchant. During the Scarlet invasion event, I missed out on a lot of champ bags because I had to leave fights to find a merchant to sell or buy more salvage kits. That’s when I broke down and bought a copper-fed salvage-o-matic. Because you’re out in the field playing more instead of running back to a merchant every 15-30 min during a high-loot event, the extra loot I gained in the time saved paid for the item in a few months of play. (In fact I wish they would let us program macros for selling loot, since I have some very specific patterns for what I sell to a merchant, what I salvage, and what I list on the BLTP.)
Any shout which doesn’t affect other players shouldn’t be audible to them. It just adds noise pollution which detracts from listening for other aural cues. Which means all the ranger shouts should only be audible to the ranger (unless he’s taken Resounding Timbre).
Of course I would prefer if they fixed it by making ranger shouts actually do something for allies or to enemies by default. I want to know what was going through the designer’s head that made him decide rangers should have shouts, but they should be nerfed to only affect the ranger (since they balance things as if the ranger and pet were one unit).
Invigorating bond request for clearing conditions has been down for quite some time. A-net believe that the trait is strong. No one can tell how did they get to that conclusion, but no one can blame them. It’s their game, not ours.
My criticism of the trait (and all traits tied to F2 for that matter) would be that how powerful it is depends on the pet’s F2 skill cooldown. So Anet probably balances it assuming you’re using a pet with a short F2 cooldown (i.e. hawk/eagle – 6 sec). Meaning it’s lackluster for most pets, and downright horrible for the pets with long F2 cooldowns.
It could make sense if the shorter F2 cooldowns were tied to less useful pet abilities. But arguably the hawk/eagle F2 (bleed) is the most useful and on a 6 sec cooldown, while the owl’s (chill) is least useful and on a 20 sec cooldown. They need to go through all the pet F2 skills and revise them so the cooldowns make more sense. As it is right now, there are about a half dozen pets which are used 97% of the time.
I knew I forgot something. Swoop is a DPS loss, though.
Swoop is a DPS gain. The 1.75 sec channel time listed on the skill is only if you’re at max range (1100) from the target. If you use it in melee range, it takes less than a second, I’d estimate 3/4 to 1 sec with aftercast. Try it.
I’m pretty sure all the GS skills except Crippling Throw are DPS gains over the autoattack. I leverage them with an intelligence sigil by using all three immediately after swapping to GS in combat. Usually Swoop to get in range, hilt bash to stun/daze it, then Maul.
It’s also worth noting that GS’s AOE damage is much easier to achieve. The autoattack AOE seems to have the same range for both GS and sword (test among the grouped golems in the Mists), but with sword you have to select a target to use it (otherwise you go jumping forward and out of range). So you have to try to select a target that’s in the middle, and hope that means the cleaves hit the max 3 targets. With GS you just stand in the middle facing approx the midpoint of the targets (even if there is no actual target there) and the cleaves will hit.
Maul’s AOE radius is substantially larger too.
So now that we’ve seen the napkin math being an approx 11% difference, let’s not forget what that 11% really means in a group setting. You’ve got 5 other allies reach doing their own ~10k dps. Literally any ally would just need to auto attack once to make up the lost damage.
Don’t forget that in a group, the effect of the vulnerability from GS is multiplied (assuming you’re not at the vulnerability cap). Couple this with the Remorseless build repeatedly applying 5% vulnerability every time you get fury.
Solo though, the DPS loss going with GS is pretty noticeable. Not so much against sword (IMHO sword’s mobility loss when doing open-world PvE against multiple targets detracts from its DPS – you can’t maneuver yourself to fluidly move from target to target), but against Path of Scars combined with Quickdraw.
All that said, remorseless GS + S/A is a great combo. It’s got enough burst DPS that it even works well for hybrid builds (i.e. not full berserker). The addition of the Quick Draw trait was a game-changer IMHO. Suddenly max DPS no longer comes from selecting one weapon set and sticking with it. Quick Draw means you can substantially increase DPS by maximizing the number of weapon swaps.
And the interaction between the cooldown timers means it’s rare for two duplicate weapon sets to provide max DPS. e.g. 15 sec cooldown for Path of Scars means with Quick Draw it gets reduced to 5 sec. Do you fire Path of Scars once, then wait 10 sec to weapon swap before using it again, effectively gaining only a 33% cooldown reduction instead of 66%? Or do you just fire it again after 5 sec, then switch to a different weapon like GS and gain Quick Draw’s full benefit with that weapon.
That’s what makes Quick Draw such a great trait from a game design standpoint. It creates situations where the whole (two different weapon sets) can be greater than the sum of the parts (each weapon set separately). Which adds a whole new dimension to doing DPS comparisons.
Remorseless has a similar effect. Marksmanship (opening strikes are always criticals) + Remorseless (opening strike on fury) + 2H training (20% chance for fury on attack) + Clarion Bond (fury on pet swap) + Skirmishing (fury on weapon swap, overlaps effect of intelligence sigil) means you can have a substantial number of critical hits even if your precision is low. Valkyrie (power, vit, ferocity) and Cavalier’s (toughness, power, ferocity) suddenly become viable choices. I’m pretty sure if you’re using those stats, you’ll have higher DPS with a remorseless GS build than with a Predator’s Onslaught S/A build.
Anet is doing a great job adding wrinkles and niches so the best-DPS setup for one build doesn’t automatically mean it’s also the best-DPS setup for a different build.
(edited by Solandri.9640)