“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
@rabidsmiles
Thank you a thousand times for your knowledge. That’s exactly the feedback I was hoping for.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Wow… It looks like I’ve missed so much.
Also, amazing job, Wondrouswall. That chart is a wonderful piece of data for sure.
Also also, thank you for informing me about the stat optimization.
It looks like I’ll be joining the party, shortly. It already feels good to be back.
Thanks everyone for your intel. I really appreciate it.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
@HeadCrowned
Yes, I quit exactly at that point of time. It was the patch that made me realize I no longer enjoy my Ranger.
I’m really glad that you guys are doing so well. It really moves my heart that the state of Rangers has moved such a great deal, if what most of you say is true.
I’m considering I’ll give it a try, then.
About armor and stuff… Since I most definitely won’t be in a professional guild after such a long time – is berserker considered viable for pug Fractals? Or shall I get Magi/Cleric? … Or steal the Viper from my Engie? I’d rather avoid dragging people down for my lack of knowledge.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I really appreciate the feedback so far.
@Fluffball
Is that so? That’s some amazing news! If the Electric Wyvern hits, I might actually reconsider my return. Pets being reliable was technically the only thing that I couldn’t get over.
After going through some charts, Rangers seem to be high on personal DPS as well. And hearing from you about being viable even in PvP is encouraging.
Is there anything I should keep an eye out for, in case I return? Like accidentally entering PvE in berserker gear and being considered a dinosaur or something.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Hello everyone.
I’ve been out of the picture for a very, very long time and I accidentally stumbled upon an interesting patch that took place a few months back.
As you could say, I wasn’t really in a mood of studying all the possible changes, outcomes, data and results for all that time, so I’d like to ask you, fellow ranger for an opinion.
How is the Ranger(Druid) doing today? What is our role and how efficient are we? Are we still buff-bot condition PvE and Bunkers for PvP?
Please,tell me your opinions on:
1) Raids
2) Fractal Speed runs
3) PvP (structured PvP only, I’ve never played WvW, nor do I intend to)
And lastly… There was supposed to be a huge change for pets on moving targets. Do pets actually work now?
Thank you all for your answers!
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I stopped playing a fair while ago.
Always kept in touch with players and community, though. Had that backdoor prepared in case Devs decide to make their community stay. For once.
They didn’t.
I saw the new expansion – realized that while Blizz took and copied everything good from ANey, ANey only offers us Cataclysm. Which was a failure. And I already know there’s no point in hopes and dreams.
I will definitely take a look at what’s new in the expansion and how’s the ranger doing – but sadly, it will be no money from me. You know how it goes with the fool me once and twice.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Well… It seems like my intuition was correct.
We got plain nerfed in healing across the board (core and most common used heal included – WHaO).
We got our changes we’ve been calling out for stolen and given to another class (Warrior)
We have been offered nerfs that came out of the blue without any sense at all (SoTP).
And the only buff we got was to Shortbow that doesn’t come in Condi+Healing amulet setup for PvP (Sage doesn’t really go with enough Healing Power).
We’ve been lied to with build diversity. And we’ve been ignored.
It might have been better if other classes didn’t get mostly duration and DPS buffs. But seeing they haven’t change, this will be my last post, I assume.
Had a great time, all. I hope no one holds a grudge.
Cheers, and nerves of steel fellow Rangers. You always were the toughest and most adaptable community. I believe you’ll be able to endure.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I like the solution other pet-based games take. The master and the pet have the same HP pool and attacking one damages the other, thus, the pet lasts as long as the master but is still useful to target, and you can CC it to get rid of it for a while.
The problem with this solution is GW2 is all the AoE damage …
Let’s talk about untargetable and immortal pets.
OP? Why, tho?
You can’t kill elementalist’s Fire Attunement, either. The ranger dies – the pet disappears. The only other class with kill-able Class feature is a mesmer and – let’s take a guess who is the only class worse in DPS than we are.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I used to think it was player skill being the problem but I fought one this weekend where there was no doubt he was full celestial and knew how to abuse celestial avatar. It was like fighting a bunker scrapper before they got nerfed. The bs needs to die or something cause it’s moronic.
This might be half-true.
… But our weakness is a teamfight. Once it’s no longer a 1v1 or 2v2 but something with broader scale – Ranger is done.
We don’t have 3 immortality spells. We don’t magically get stability every 10 seconds. We don’t have even half the fighting potential any other class gets. We are only good at running. And yes, that’s the biggest feature and strength point in WvW. They can’t kill you if they can’t catch you.
But I don’t think nerfing the healing because of kiting potential is the way to go. Once we are able to face-tank a fight in a 5v5 scenario while being CC-focused, then we can talk healing nerfs.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
@Obtena
I think we misunderstood each other.
What I had in mind was that they created a game where it was Every Man for himself. That’s why everyone has a heal as a set ability in their action bar. And everyone has access to CC, just like mobility or straightforward offense.
Then, after they created a game like this – they decided they will force roles onto people to destroy that very same ideology they created. And what’s worse – the numbers they created just won’t work, ever, because the game’s structure is just not designed for that triangular role system (and they have been ignoring balance so far). It’s like trying to celebrate Christmas in prison. You can do that but will never have the same result as in your desired environment.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
If the game’s ideology is every man for himself, then I can see EXACTLY why they want to limit boon sharing and duration increases, regardless of the game element being played.
Does We Heal as One fiasco ring any bells?
They nerfed it exactly because it had synergy with boons from other people.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I don’t see anything in that assessment that tells me there is something wrong with Anet’s upcoming changes because Anet hasn’t put the changes in place yet. I’m not even sure it’s clear to you what Anet is proposing to do because it sounds to me that if you already stack healing power, the way Anet describes it, the change should be almost transparent to you anyways.
It’s true.
It’s not clear to me what ANet proposes. Balance has always been around PvP. Where Mender with healing power is the way to go. And berserker is not able to sustain himself against anyone and no one ever used CAF for healing in the 1st place.
If it’s PvE oriented – I double dare them to nerf the very role they forced onto us while half of the community was against it. I’m strictly against the idea that our Elite feature will be useless in today’s meta.
Nerfing their own idea that doesn’t even connect to the game’s ideology of every man for himself – while ignoring every single flaw in our design and our horrible DPS that we’ve been bringing for years…
No… I sincerely cannot understand their reasoning even if I really tried. Because it doesn’t make sense. What they want to achieve is already in game. If they want to force changes onto Ranger – they should completely rework CAF so you can use it both offensively and defensively.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
…
As far as I’m concerned, this is exactly why it’s happening … You’re not OK with having your stats impact your healing? Funny … everyone has NO problem with stats impacting damage. It’s a double standard.
This here is wrong.
Our heals have already been adjusted to meet this standard. You cannot sustain a raid without any healing power and if you try you loose DPS because of it – because you spend too much time healing something that could have gone from 10% to 100% in 2 seconds.
I believe that if you ask around – Magi is a very popular stat choice. Even now.
But there is still a reason to give your party that CAF #4 once every 20 seconds or so to heal them for 40% of their HP as a Viper DPS.
I mean … That’s what everyone can do without any healing power at all, right?
If they gut the numbers even more – they’ll practically murder the reason to pick druid for anything else but healing. In a game where everyone is responsible for their own footing. Especially when balance is done around PvP.
And please, don’t tell me that a Berserker Druid was able to heal anyone or anything in PvP. Not even himself.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
My gut tells me that they are nerfing healing even with investment, maybe condi clear on the druidic clarity trait. Six instead of thirteen. Reducing the damage of smokescale and bristleback considerably and nothing else as far as buffs for core ranger. This would be inline for what the community has been screaming for. That’s what I’m expecting to read on Tuesday. I’d be VERY surprised if they actually did anything to re work core ranger or pets.
The community largely thinks that rangers should be a worthless class and anet largely goes along with the community. Expecting any love at this point is only frustrating.
This. After the patch they will then ask for feedback and ignore whatever we have to say till some mouthbreather month later makes a new topic how OP druid is.
History of Ranger class in a nutshell.
Well said, both of you. I couldn’t do it better.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
In otherwords, it’s a really nice spin on saying “we aren’t giving you good damage AND healing, now you have to choose stats to decide where you are on that spectrum”. I don’t really see a problem with that …
I do.
You can’t really deal damage in CAF (which is the main healing source) unless you want to suicide. It roots you in place if you do.
So now we are forced into healing power exclusively because if we don’t, our whole traitline that made us competitive is absolutely counter-productive and useless – in which case we might as well want to play the core ranger that is super bad. And anyone will tell you that.
I personally would not be okay with that.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Trapper is terrible in wvw, even more so in zerg fights. Traps were decent when you could still throw them but since they were nerfed they have become useless. . .
Sounds reasonable.
… Sorry for the confusion.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Ranys since when is condi meta in wvw zerg/blob fighting? I haven’t wvw’d much in a year but those fights used to have more then enough cleanses for condi to be viable. Raw dmg was always the way to go?
I believe the trapper did good in WvW.
It was also stated as a popular build on metabattle. I’ve never been a WvW player but that’s what I heard.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I think there’s a lot of ways how to go around pets.
One of our fellow forum members had an amazing idea that pets would not deal damage but would work as a utility-oriented feature.
Dogs could sniff out stealthed
Birds could peck eyes for blind
Pigs could spawn consumables like now
Cats could cripple or make vulnerable
Spiders immobilize
SmokeScale provide stealth
Wyverns knockdown
I mean, there’s a lot of brainstorming around pets that has already been done. Most of ideas were brilliant. They are just afraid to implement them because I think they are aware of possible failures themselves. This way – it kinda works so they do not want to touch something that is not broken (even though I think they should risk it).
“Observe, learn and counter.”
personally i like that you have to invest in healing if you want to heal. I would take down the base healing and increase massively the contribution from healing.
For me that could make sense.. . .
They already achieved it with their previous treatment of this same kind.
But why aren’t other classes getting the same treatment, then? Other classes find healing power useless because they can heal themselves solidly without it.
Why are we glued into that stat as the only class in the entire game? Why don’t they just rework healing power and healing as a whole?
EDIT: To me it looks like we are suffering from their multi-level fail of design in healing role. And it’s bordering with having a bias against our class. We are limited on such a massive scale in so many ways that the only thing I can do is hope you guyz will get nicer treatment for the next expansion.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
Well…
… Their communication is awful.
So the only source we have are their quotes from 3-4 years back and they completely contradict their actions.
Players not only get their game-play gutted but they are not even told why. The reasons they give are usually to be laughed at since anyone who plays the game knows it doesn’t work like they claim.
For example, I’m still waiting to be able to “sustain a WvW zerg” and do “heals that we’ve never seen before”. How does reducing damage of pets over and over again, stealth-nerfing Sword DPS, adding ICD to BM traits and reducing healing/sustain of a Ranger help the cause, I wonder.
If I’ve been told beforehand that their promises are empty and I should be prepared to be useless everywhere except Hardcore PvE where people want (but not need) my unique buffs – I could have rerolled. This way we are all waiting for what are they actually going to do without being able to adapt or prepare for the strike.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
Actually, no one used Berserker or Viper druid in T4 for healing.
A druid usually got into CAF – used #4 to distribute GotL and went out.
As long as they do not touch the DPS portion, we’ll still be DPS meta in terms of offensive support.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I can’t do anything else but tag to OGDeadHead’s category.
Believing has brought me nothing but disappointment.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
It’s the same as always anyway.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
If we are lucky enough they’ll come asking for feedback. Of course they’ll ignore it but it will give us some place to vent.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
…
… Do they not realize where their problems are?
What am I asking. They never had an idea to begin with. They have been band-aiding their game ever since I can remember.
But this one in particular, I do not really mind or care about. As long as it’s not something like base healing reduced by 75% (400% nerf, anyone?) and Fern Hound F2 CD reduced as a compensation.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
If you want the ranger has more damage than now, you must consider other professions as well, balance is not one way to think about.
It has been proven ad nauseam that Ranger has a low DPS, followed by Mesmer as rock bottom.
Don’t pull out the condi SB + A/T that only work in a raid and stationary setting.
You’re not using Axe auto-attacks at all if you don’t have any other choice anyway.
I can’t see this as anything else but a PvP / Casual content improvement.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Please note that building for might is mostly only useful when running solo. In most group settings, your group should normally max out might easily anyway.
And using heal on CD is not a good strategy anyway.
Being surprised out of the blue (or stealth) without heal available can cost him dearly.
But he asked how to can it be done and that’s everything we needed to explain, I guess.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Not sure I agree, for Ranger at least. I don’t run druid in any story content or in roaming wvw. Not enough damage and the traitline doesn’t give me enough in return.
For raids and zerging I can see running druid as the support is obviously way better than core has (for healing at least).
The only thing hot gives you is smokescale which is undoubtedly the best pet in the game.
I can somehow relate to this.
Whenever I was soloing a content – unless it was soloing a champion or a difficult event where I needed to sustain myself through – Druid wasn’t much of help.
Druid is the best traitline we have for support – both offensive and defensive but without anyone to support – it doesn’t feel like “the best” if you know what I mean. But that’s for solo content (that is not deemed competitive and anything might work) only.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
If you get enough boon duration – you’ll be able to maintain 25 might with NM+BM only. Nothing else is needed. If you get any source of might, you can keep it rolling indefinitely by using WHaO on cooldown. If you swap the pet – you’ll mis-s one round but you’ll have it the next one again.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
No core class does well against elites. Kinda why they are called elites.
Kinda true.
… But other classes were competitive even without them. Druid’s the only reason why ranger become “wanted”. Not even as powerful as others but since unique – he became helpful.
The gap is just far worse when it comes to our class.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Build with Expertise. Problem solved.
If we are the only class that is forced to build into expertise just so our abilities work – that’s absurd and failed design.
User-unfriendly, unbalanced and unfair.
If developers think your way, I know why our class is in such a wrong state.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
They could balance it, but they don’t want to. Anet is aiming for perfect (or cyclical) imbalance in their PVP.
Little do they know it will never work.
… With balance update being no sooner than every 3 months – it will give players enough time to “realize” they literally ignore balance question at hand.
And players believe they want the game to be balanced. Players do not want to wait 12 weeks hoping their class would get updated to fit the meta. They’ll simply ditch it.
Core Ranger enthusiasts have waited 4 years. Nothing happened. I wonder how many Rangers have already abandoned the ship.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Entangle / Ancient seeds:
- Now apply the root every 0,75 seconds instead of every second (so people do not just walk out in case they decide to slot a talent or Equip a Rune … )I’m not sure what you are implying here. However, I believe Entangle to be balanced enough. There are supposed to be counter-measures available after one is rooted.
There are.
Damage yourself out of it. Or cleanse it. Or stealth away. Or port away. Or dodge like anything in this entire game. It’s telegraphed by far and on a 60 sec. CD.
Why walking in a heavy-movement game is a counter to our elite is beyond me. Most of classes have means to reduce incoming condi durations which will make roots last shorter. So they get rooted for (let’s say) 0,8 seconds, then walk out and we just witnessed a 0,8 sec. root on a 60 second cooldown. Now that’s just brilliant, assuming it’s almost the only elite in the game that is countered by almost everything, including damage.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
I’d always suggest going for Berserker builds if “you are not sure” what to do.
You can never go wrong by Berserker. And it works much better and can fill more roles of utility than condi DPS.
Condi DPS is the highest we currently have, but that’s for no one else but min-maxers. There’s literally no other reason why to get Condi apart from trying to get into hardcore PvE guilds. The DPS difference compared to the whole picture of party DPS is totally unnoticeable.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Works just fine on my end. Pet is healed for 125hp/sec with healing (green) numbers popping on-screen.
After seeing your comment i went out test some more. I just confirmed the bug.
Natural healing is working fine in PvE and SPvP, but its NOT working in WvW.I don’t know how should i proceed to get this to dev’s knowledge?
Find a religion.
… It sounds salty but sadly, that’s the reality we’ve had confirmed countless of times over and over again.
There’s literally no way. And even if they do notice after a very very long time, they’ll screw it up on a different end.
Good job on noticing the bug, tho. It is definitely going to be of help to some other players who might have been using the trait without ever noticing.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
How’s Grace of the Land useless? That’s a pretty massive damage buff for your team.
Balance is always done because of PvP.
… And GotL is useless for PvP. And even for PvE it’s a band-aid that you can’t leave out due to the fact that we have been designed as a role that … doesn’t deal damage … in GW2 … in 2016.
So the massive DPS buff is nothing else but something to make up for their mistake in design and lack of our DPS to begin with.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
They are additive %. Tested on my warrior, if you can wrap your mind around how that even happened.
That’s… sad news. But definitely a valuable information. Thanks.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Just a question.
Do the modifiers multiply or simply add?
Because if they multiply , it would be around 59,7% with sigil of transferance.
I’m curious. I didn’t test it back then.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
I’d suggest going for Berserker, having Monk Runes. Then you can get both Berserker and healing jewellery and swapping on demand.
Getting more healing via jewelery (rings etc) is much cheaper than crafting Zealot, and you’ll find occasions when Zealot is just completely redundant. You won’t really need more than 600 healing power anyway.
Keep in mind that Rice Ball + Monk Runes + Druid traits are 45% increased healing from base values, without any healing power to begin with.
Zealot is just not worth the gold.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
You can blast a smokescale field OOC for 9 seconds which should be plenty to do about anything you want. Warhorn, CA, and staff. Prolly get like 6 seconds of usuable stealth.
I’ve never been able to reach 9 seconds by the time I’ve used all of these abilities, since it takes time to execute them all.
They can be cast kind of on the move. You could even send Smokescale in, F2 > Staff there, Use CAF #3 on the move, and leave CAF whenever you feel like it.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Well, for looting stuff – I suppose you’ll be using LB.
The finest combo I can think of is LB #3 > Smokescale F2 > Warhorn or Staff blast > CAF #3 blast > Leave CAF for Celestial Shadow.
Consequently – It will result in 12 seconds of stealth (and 3 seconds of super-speed, and by using WH, even 15 seconds of swiftness). It will take you a few seconds to execute, but that’s the most you can get.
If you do not want to enter combat, or it’s better for you not to – then just leave out the LB part and do it the way it was already mentioned by others as well.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Omg… there really is an ICD… why? Why is there an ICD on this skill? The whole thing that would make it good is no ICD…
Because if there wasn’t we’d actually have a nice thing. And that goes against the rules.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Inserting Jewels. hummm
Exquisite Sapphire Jewel , probably.
This is true that Healing Runes aren’t existing.
I rather had in mind jewellery… Like accessories, rings, trinkets and stuff. Something that you can get from most rewards or laurels and do not have to be crafted.
Should’ve clarified earlier, my bad. Monk runes (reward from Ascalon if I remember correctly) are the best healing runes you can get and definitely should try for the playstyle you seek for.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
No leveling builds exist because they don’t matter.
You haven’t even read OP’s message, have you… ? Well, it’s obvious.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
The thing is … Ranger’s pet is nothing but a mere Open World NPC.
And in order to change that, they’d have to recreate the pathing system itself anew.
Well, the truth is… Nothing but Ranger class is affected up to a noticeable level. And there is no way they’d set their developers team into this task that brings no money when they have several other dragons (expansions) to do.
People do not pay to play. They pay for the expansion that has nothing to do with Rangers and never will.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
An interesting thread, I have to say. Definitely helpful to those having their first steps.
I’d still polish it a bit, though. As a shout user – you have no need of Signet of the Hunt ever since your 1st trait point in BM is resounding timbre.
Also, which traitlines do you recommend taking 1st – which is the most common question? Is it MM for the opening strikes that feel amazing while leveling (and nowhere else)?
“Observe, learn and counter.”
If your aim is strictly crafting ascendeds, then I’d definitely suggest what Wondrouswall said.
You can never go wrong with Berserkers. And if you need it, you can always get different – more healing oriented jewels. Jewels are easier to replace than armor.
Healing is not listed because experienced (meta) groups do not really need the healing. It is still useful as training wheels for inexperienced parties – but meta tries to squeeze the most DPS, assuming everybody knows their job.
But in real life situations, you’ll find yourself more useful healing than DPSing from time to time, or rather, from group to group.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Haven’t they nerfed smokescale and bristleback several times now? They are good because they can hit a moving target and because the other pets are either terrible all round for PvP, or very bad at hitting moving targets.
What’s normal is decided based on majority. Not logic.
We are just unlucky that 90% of our pets are useless. That makes Smokescale and Bristle look overpowered by default. And they will look OP unless they are brought to the useless level.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Pugging?
If yes, berserker healer should probably do. With the exception of S/A changed for Staff. You’ll be staying in healing mode more often but I think that’s acceptable for T4. The healing is needed there at times.
You should try the standard http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Power_Glyph_Buffer traits and equipment.
I mean, LB is our meta weapon. And when it comes to staff, well, you can always just pretend that you thought your party was bad and that’s why you took staff with you, right?
As long as you bring Frost Spotter and GotL – you should be fine.
EDIT: I kept changing my build 2-3 times per dungeon. So I guess you won’t really find anything like “best” that will do miracles for different contents. If you want to be as useful as possible, you’ll have to keep adapting. That’s what we Ranger/Druids usually do.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
(edited by Tragic Positive.9356)
I’ve leveled condi on my Mesmer and engi and it seemed just as fast as with a power build, faster in areas that had sturdier mobs. Also due to the stat line condi gear is generally on makes you tankier too
Which naturally allows for tagging more NPCs at the same time without such a risk as in berserker… Yes, it actually makes a lot of sense, now thinking about it.
I leveled almost all my characters through PvP tomes, which makes me lack in data here. Thanks for providing all the useful information from this field.
“Observe, learn and counter.”