The anguish it refers to is the anguish inflicted on the players, working as intended. Mallyx is a little kittened about being farmed in GW1. This is his revenge.
:P
I don’t actually have any female characters in GW2, yet. I tend to default to male characters when I have a choice for at least my first playthrough. I do play female characters in other games though but there is a variety of reasons why I may choose a female character.
1) The male character irritates me for some reason. This was especially true in the Mass Effect series, I just couldn’t stand the males voice so I played Femshep. After the first game I really didn’t give it any thought anymore. The game was just about a female named Shepard and that was the end of it really. Divinity 2 was another game I played a female, I don’t remember what it was about the male character that annoyed me though.
2) I’m replaying a game and want a different experience or I’m making a different story. This mostly applies to games like Skyrim which are about making your own story rather than having a story told to you. However, it also applies to games like Dragon Age Origins where I wanted to experience the story of my character becoming the queen. The game experience was sufficiently different based on gender it was worth replaying as a female and/or different race and class choices for different experiences.
3) Because I feel like it. This is why I will likely eventually create female characters in GW2. When I make a character I want to be invested in I infuse it with some sort of personality. Sometimes that means it’s a female, sometimes it’s a male. I’m considering making a Sylvari Ranger pre-HoT and it will most likely be female because it feels right to me. Honestly I have about as much explanation for a Female Sylvari Ranger as I do for my Male Asura Ranger. It just seemed like the thing to do. I actually wish my Asuran Guardian was female, so I may make another one. Just feels like it should be a female and not a male.
Before today Guardians were screaming how much they wanted longbow. They get a longbow that works like a longbow. Now everyone is complaining.
What exactly did people think Guardian Longbow was going to be?
Maybe some of you have been on ranger too long and only see it’s flaws now. Admittedly I’m that way with warrior. But for what it’s worth, my warrior of 2.5 years is banked while I play glass ranger 90% of the time or more.
That’s part of it for sure.
Part of the perception of rangers is it’s history. During the initial beta for the game Ranger was crazy good, really early ranger was stupid OP:
That’s just an example there was a lot of silly broken things in beta.
Then the nerfs happened. Greatsword was nerfed, Spirits got nerfed, repeatedly, our ability to apply bleeds with Warhorn 4 was nerfed (there didn’t used to be a CD on the bleed sigil). Basically every good build rangers found was nerfed. Throughout most of the beta period we also didn’t have all our utilities and were promised some good utilities to fill out our skill set, we got shouts.
At launch the ranger was pretty much useless in group content. Shortbow was the most damaging weapon we had by far (ignoring bleeds), Longbow 1 spam did more damage than Rapid Fire, and pets were dumber and squishier than they are now. Then the shortbow “animation fix” happened and quickness was nerfed too. Condi builds became the only real “viable” spec rangers had. We were widely regarded as the weakest class in all areas of the game and received NERFS instead of any sort of buff for the first 6+ months after launch. Several patches included buffs for other classes and nothing for rangers. It was a dark time in the ranger sub-forum.
I think a lot of rangers are still suffering from PTND (Post Traumatic Nerf Disorder) with the class. Ranger is actually in a fairly decent spot right now but it’s taken 2.5 years to get rangers back up to “decent.” We still have things like Shouts, Spirits, and Traps which are problematic in various ways. Pets are still a source of frustration at times (I think a lot of rangers just have a huge grudge against pets).
As it sits right now, today, Ranger has a number of viable specs and some good variety in play styles available. We still lack solid group support and damage on some of our weapons. Overall though the class is good and the proposed trait changes coming with specializations should make the ranger even better. Even if there are some questionable things that were shown.
Just remember when reading the ranger forums that there are some people who have been playing the class for 3 years (counting beta) and are a little bitter over some nerfs and some persistent problem areas which have never been addressed.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
I just came to bump this again and someone beat me to it.
It is indeed still broken. The whole reason I bought this item from the gem store was for the jokes.
Since it’s been so long, it was the March 16, 2015 patch that broke it. It did work prior to that patch.
Shouldn’t there be a more fair way to change servers? the longer you wait, the more expensive it gets, and some people who could have switched, now find it economically impossible. I think it should be a static cost. Over the last month prices have become out of control.
It’s hard to take you seriously when you complain about “the last month prices have become out of control.” Then you show a chart for the last YEAR to support your argument.
I would give you the benefit of the doubt and guess it was a mistake but you intentionally dragged out the graph at GW2spidy.com to get last year included and then cropped the image to hide the bottom that shows you are displaying 1 year and not 1 month.
I’d prefer our (utility) shouts just not suck rather than making a complicated trait that makes them worth using.
That’s not a criticism of your ideas. If some of those boons were baseline on the shouts they might actually be a viable option over survival skills, signets, or traps (which also require runes/traits to be useful right now but that’s another topic).
Change your build to use Shouts/survival and you can take it. Protect me is fine and a shorter CD than SoS, you just have to time your pet swap to be right at the end of its health, if you get that close. SoR is taken care of by Wilderness Knowledge. You do lose the stability and damage from SoTW, but you get remorseless to make up for that. SoTH speed is made up for by Resounding Timbre with a couple of shouts.
Resounding Timber is nice, too bad our shouts aren’t.
Giving up good utilities to slot in shouts that also require a trait to even be considered useful isn’t really a good trade off.
I’m not experienced enough in the style of play the OP is discussing to have a strong opinion on that. However, I know enough to know our shouts are generally bad. Sic ‘em has uses but not the use you are suggesting. Guard is bad except that it has a low CD to basically use a trait. The revive shout has too long of a CD to be worth mentioning. Finally Protect Me isn’t really a substitute for SoS because of the inability to contribute to capture points and it kills your pet.
I think we need to all sit back and wait. I see tons of potential in these changes and have to say I very much like them.
Not only that, but while we’re worried about things like condition removal being only in one traitline again we really have no idea how big of a metashift we’ll see with all the classes changes.
Technically you are correct that we don’t know how things may change but just sitting back and saying nothing tells the Devs “Everything looks good, please do all that and we’ll be happy.”
Also they specifically asked the community to discuss this stuff on the forums and theorycraft.
Current Problem with Wilderness Survival is that you will go there to grab either one since it’s the only specialization with good condition removal so that fact alone forces you to take it, no matter which of the two you would take.
People keep saying it’s a “problem with Wilderness Survival.”
I’m not sure Wilderness Survival has a problem. Empathic Bond has problems. Nature Magic has problems. Our lack of good condi removal outside of Wilderness Survival is a problem.
Wilderness Survival and especially Wilderness Knowledge seems fine though.
What exactly is the arming time? Is it time from laying down until it is ready for activation, or the time from activation (maybe including an animation) until detonation?
Based on what was said in the stream the arming time is the time from laying down the trap until it is ready for activation.
So first you cast the trap, then it travels to the location (assuming ground target) then it sits for a half second, or second, or w/e the arming time is, and then it can actually activate and do something.
It’s that 1-2 seconds between casting an AoE and it actually doing something that concerns me. Especially with how traps are currently. The reason people use traps as grenades rather than lay the trap and then lure the target into the trap is because using traps as traps makes them significantly less efficient as an AoE damage source.
Also in PvE spending a bunch of time setting up to do damage is generally a waste of time because you can just rush in and kill things faster. Not to mention the problem of pets taking aggro in places you don’t want them to if you are trying to lure things to a set location. If you don’t send in your pet then you are wasting more time doing less damage for an inefficient gimmick.
That would totally fix this arming time issue, make the trap go off, stacking all its damage into one hit and all the condition durations added together. Solved!
I completely disagree. The main use I have for traps in AoE damage and area denial. If I can’t reliably control what is or isn’t inside the AoE at time of detonation (which is my problem with the arming time) then make it a “One and Done” damage hit would make it worse. The first enemy to enter the AoE would get hit and everything else would take zero damage. It also completely removes the area denial function traps currently serve.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
1. Warrior retal uptime is 50%, you can still RF
2. Once warrior retal is up, switch to non-RF skills
3. Time your remorseless. Autoattack will still do massive damageSeriously, the ranger community’s been spoiled with RF. Does nobody remember the time where LB AA DPS was higher than RF? You’ll just be switching between meta-RF and old-AA playstyle according to the situation. Its much more interesting than just pumping out RF every time its off cooldown.
Your advice boils down to “Just don’t use skills 50% of the time.”
If my available counter play is “Do nothing” there is a bit of a problem.
Edit: I’m not saying there is a problem. I prefer to wait and see how it plays out. Your advice/argument is just really bad.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
In the AMA on twitch yesterday we learned that our traps and spirits are getting some changes but it was really short on details. The vague details we did get raised some concerns for me.
Traps: What We Know
Jon Peters said they want to change traps to feel more like traps and less like grenades with maybe an arming time or something like that. We also know that ground targeting is either gone or baseline now (I really hope it’s baseline). The new trait for traps is:
- Trapper’s Expertise: Conditions cause by traps last longer (100% duration). Your traps recharge faster (20%) and affect a larger area (60 radius).
It was mentioned that while this is currently a master trait in skirmishing it may be moved down to adept. It was also mentioned possibly making the larger area a baseline thing (please do that).
My Concerns
Traps are currently not that great. If you don’t take any of the traits and don’t use Rune of the Trapper then traps are actually pretty terrible. The radius is small, the damage is low, the condis are short, and dropping them at your feet makes it hard to hit anything with them especially if you are using a ranged weapon.
With all the traits traps are actually a fairly strong source of AoE, especially in a condi build. AoE is a weakness of the ranger as a whole and traps provide a way to supplement that weakness. The reason they get used as grenades is because of the relatively short duration it’s the only way to really hit a group of enemies for the whole duration. This requires the ability to drop them in the middle of the group though.
If traps get an arming time the group you are trying to hit will have likely moved by the time the trap is armed. Trying to pull enemies into a trap is usually not that successful. In PvE it usually means the lead enemy takes all the damage and the ones in the back take maybe 1 tick of the trap if you are lucky. In PvP/WvW it usually means the enemy takes 1 tick and just rolls out of the trap, or simply walks backwards and is out again. With ground targeting and instant arming rangers can control where the center of the AoE is when it fires off. That level of control is important with the current power level of traps.
I know Jon Peters mentioned they would change to compensate for the arming time and it might be fine. My concern is that the skill required to get full effectiveness out of our traps will increase but the relative effectiveness won’t. If I’m going to use a skill that requires set up to execute properly I want it to have a pay off. Other players should regret triggering a trap not just feel like it’s a minor inconvenience.
It would also be really nice if post-changes traps were actually a viable option in their vanilla form. I shouldn’t have to dedicate 6 rune slots and a trait (or 2) to actually feel like a utility skill deserves a place on my bar. Especially when with the runes people are putting up with traps to get the Rune effect because the Rune effect is better than the base effect of the utility skills they are augmenting.
Discussion of this topic is happening in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Revamp-Discussion-Feedback-Megathread
Looks like this thread appeared while I was typing.
I typed out a more comprehensive list of the traits (all traits with full details like boon durations) over here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Traits-shown-in-the-04-24-AMA-typed-out/
Probably best to keep the discussion all here in this thread though so it’s not all spread out. I linked to this thread in a reply on the other thread (couldn’t edit the OP, I think I hit the character limit)
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
Nature Magic
(Boon durations shown as Xs/Ys, where X is the base duration and Y is the duration with Lingering Magic)
Minor
Adept – Rejuvenation: Gain regeneration (5s/6s) when your health drops below the threshold (75%). (30s CD)
Master – Fortifying Bond: Any boon you get is shared with your pet.
Grandmaster – Lingering Magic: Boons applied by you (20%) and your pet (50%) last longer.
Major
Adept
- Bountiful Hunter: You and your pet deal more damage per boon you (1% per boon).
- Nature’s Wrath: Gain Power based on your healing (10%). Your pet gains extra stats (?).
- Healer’s Celerity: Grant swiftness (15s/18s) to yourself and your ally when you revive them. Increased revive speed.
Master
- Evasive Purity: Dodging removes Blindness, Cripple, and Poison from you. (10s CD)
- Vigorous Training: Pets grant vigor (5s/6s) to nearby (600 radius) allies when you swap pets.
- Windborne Notes: Call of the Wild also grants Regeneration (15s/18s) and warhorn skills recharge faster (20%)
Grandmaster
- Nature’s Vengeance: Activated skills of Spirits are larger (120 radius) and trigger when the spirit is killed.
- Protective Ward: When you receive damage nearby foes (240 radius) are weakened (6s) and you gain protection (6.6s/8s). (12s CD) (John kept saying “pet gains protection”?)
- Invigorating Bond: Your pet heals (1,518) allies in an area (360 radius) when executing an F2 ability. (20s CD)
Beastmastery
Minor
Adept – Instinctual Bond: When you are downed your pet gains quickness (5s). (50s CD)
Master – Loud Whistle: Reduces recharge (20%) on pet skills and swapping.
Grandmaster – Pets Prowess: Pets move faster (30%) and deal more damage on critical hit (Ferocity 450).
Major
Adept
- Companion’s Might: Your critical hits grant might (5s) to your pet
- Rending Attacks: Pet inflict bleeding (6s) when they critically hit with their basic attacks.
- Resounding Timber: Shouts apply regeneration (10s) and swiftness (10s) to allies (360 radius). Reduces recharge on shouts (20%)
Master
- Wilting Strike: Activated attack abilities for pets cause weakness (4s). This effect will occur once on each target affected by abilities.
- Two-Handed Training: Greatsword and spear damage is increased (5%) and those skills recharge faster (20%). Greatsword and spear attacks have a chance (50%) to grant fury (3s) on hit. (10s CD)
- Natural Healing: Your pet gains natural health regeneration (125 per second) and improved healing (350).
Grandmaster
- Beastly Warden: Your pet taunts foes near them when executing a command (F2) ability. (15s CD)
- Zephyr’s Speed: You and your pet gain might (3 stacks, 15s) and quickness (3s) when you swap pets.
- Honed Axes: Gain Ferocity (150) while wielding an axe in your main hand. Winter’s Bite is now AoE. Axe skills recharge faster (20%).
I did this partly for myself and partly to help good discussion in the forums about what is good and what isn’t. I think we’d all like the ranger to actually get to a good place after this.
Marksmanship
Minor:
Adept – Opening Strike: 5 Stacks of Vulnerability.
Master – Alpha Training: Pets have Opening Strike.
Grandmaster – Precise Strikes: Opening Strikes always critical hits.
Major:
Adept
- Enlargement: Use Signet of the Wild [50% move speed increase (8s), 25% damage increase (8s), 5 stacks of stability (8s)] when your health drops below the threshold (25%).
- Predator’s Instinct: Apply cripple (10s) to foes you hit while they are below the health threshold (50%) 30s CD.
- Beastmaster’s Bond: Cast Call of the Wild when you swap pets (In combat) [750 radius, Blast finisher. Gives Fury, Might, Swiftness 15s each. 30s CD]
Master
- Beastmaster’s Might: Activating a Signet refreshes your opening strike and grants might (3 stacks, 15s) to you and your pet. Signets recharge faster (20s).
- Steady Focus: Damage is increased while endurance is full (10%)
- Moment of Clarity: Gain an attack of opportunity (150% damage on next attack) for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer (100% duration).
Grandmaster
- Predator’s Onslaught: You and your pet deal bonus damage (10%) to enemies suffering from movement impairing conditions (cripple, chill, immobilize) or are dazed/stunned.
- Remorseless: Regain Opening Strike whenever you gain Fury. Opening Strike deals more damage (25%)
- Lead the Wind: While wielding a Longbow your attack speed is increased (10%) and your arrows pierce (5 targets). Longbow skills recharge faster (20%).
Skirmishing
Minor
Adept – Tail Wind: Gain Swiftness (5s) when swapping weapons in combat (9s CD)
Master – Furious Grip: Gain Fury (5s) when swapping weapons in combat (9s CD)
Grandmaster – Hunter’s Tactics: Deal more damage (10%) while attacking from behind or the side.
Major
Adept
- Sharpened Edges: You and your pet have a chance (66%) to cause bleeding (3s) on critical hits.
- Most Dangerous Game: While your health is below the threshold (50%) your attacks gain power (3 stacks of might 6s duration applied at 3s intervals). (may become grandmaster)
- Trapper’s Defense: Creates a Spike Trap while reviving an ally.
Master
- Primal Reflexes: When you successfully evade an attack grain Vigor (5s) (10s CD)
- Spotter: Increase Precision (150) of nearby allies. 600 radius, 3s interval application, 9s duration.
- Trapper’s Expertise: Conditions cause by traps last longer (100% duration). Your traps recharge faster (20%) and affect a larger area (60 radius). (may become adept)
Grandmaster
- Quick Draw: When you swap weapons your next weapon skill used recharges faster (66%) (9s CD)
- Light On Your Feet: Damage (10%) and condition duration (10%) is increased while moving. Shortbow skills recharge faster (20%) and your arrows pierce (5 targets). (may become master).
- Strider’s Defense: Chance (50%) to destroy projectiles while executing a melee attack. Sword skills recharge faster (20%) and you deal more damage while wielding a sword (10%)
Wilderness Survival
Minor
Adept – Natural Vigor: Increases endurance regeneration (25%)
Master – Companion’s Defense: You and your pet gain protection (2.25s) when you dodge roll.
Grandmaster – Bark Skin: You and your pet take less damage (50%) while your health is above the threshold (90%).
Major
Adept
- Soften the Fall: Create Muddy Terrain when you take falling damage. You take less damage (50%) from falling. (25s CD)
- Ambidexterity: Gain condition damage (150) while wielding a torch or dagger. Torch and Dagger skills recharge faster (20%)
- Expertise Training: Pets deal extra condition damage (350) and have their condition duration increased (20%).
Master
- Oakheart Salve: Gain regeneration (5s) when you suffer from bleeding, poison, or burning (10s CD). While you have regeneration you take reduced damage (5% less).
- Peak Strength: You and your pet deal more damage (10%) while your health is above the threshold (90%)
- Shared Anguish: Incoming disabling conditions are transferred to your pet instead (60s CD)
Grandmaster
- Empathic Bond: Pets periodically (10s) take conditions (3) from you.
- Wilderness Knowledge: Use Sharpening Stone (45s CD) when you strike a foe below the health threshold (75%). Survival skills have reduced recharge (20%) and remove conditions (2). (They also give Fury (6s) but the tooltip didn’t say that in the description)
- Poison Master: After swapping pets your pet’s first attack will inflict poison (2 stacks), your poison damage is increased (50%).
Continued below….
Wait, where is Survival of the Fittest in that list?
It’s Wilderness Knowledge(?) They just added Sharpened Edges, Sharpening Stone at 75% target health to it. It’s still the same and in the same line.
I’m guessing this is the video. I just opened the OP’s link and then deleted the first part of it so that was all that was left and I got a video.
zenos and unspecified just killed this thread. gg
If you, and anyone else, doesn’t want the thread to die posting something actually constructive or that leads to discussion would be far more useful.
Most of the responses to date have been lacking anything approaching the effort the OP put in to generating discussion. So far Zenos and I are the only ones who have actually discussed anything with specifics or detail.
If actual discussion kills a thread it’s no wonder the Devs have ignored rangers for 2 years. Yes we disagreed but I don’t think we were actually arguing in a detrimental way merely disagreeing and hashing it out, which we did.
Snip because long.
No.
You can’t evaluate a trait based on all that other stuff. Just with trait and without trait. All those other damage multipliers exist with or without the trait.
If you have everything except Predator’s Onslaught you are doing 10% less ranger damage and 5% less pet damage than you would with it IF the opponent is CC’ed. None of the other stuff matters when assessing the change of PO itself.
Also your 15% number is seemingly pulled out of nowhere. I assumed you were just adding 10% and 5% which is just wrong. Nothing you said explains where you are getting this 15% number from.
The example I gave was a short example to illustrate the way it works out all other things being equal. Nothing you said changes that. I made up a couple numbers for simplicity but they are reasonable numbers for a Power Ranger.
Even if you start getting into crits it still works out exactly the same 10% more ranger damage with than without and 5% more pet damage.
The only argument worth mentioning, which you didn’t even make, is that if a larger percentage of your damage is coming from the ranger the net benefit of the trait shifts further towards 10% and if a larger % of you damage if from the pet it shifts further towards 5%.
If you want REAL numbers you would have to figure out the effective DPS of the ranger and the effective DPS of the pet in a given build then add those numbers to get the effective DPS of the two combined. Next determine what percentage of the total effective DPS is from the ranger and what percentage is from the pet. Finally calculate the 10% increase on the ranger effective DPS and the 5% on the pet DPS add the totals together and figure out the net increase on the total effective DPS over the effective DPS without the trait.
You will get a number between 7% and 9% most likely but nowhere close to 15%.
This assumes 100% uptime on CC which may be reasonable in PvE but it is not reasonable in WvW or PvP.
Edit: I feel like I should address this part:
combine to roughly 68% more damage (1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.1 ? 1.677), not only 55% (the summation). Consequently, combining a lot of multipliers is exponentially effective (“the multipliers increase/affect each other”).
Yes that is the way damage multipliers work. However, that doesn’t “increase” the effectiveness of each multiplier it actually just maintains the effectiveness of each multiplier. An additive model would suffer from diminishing returns.
Example:
You hit for 1000 damage
Add a 10% multiplier and you do 1,100 (10% more)
Add another 10% multiplier (1,100 *1.1) and you do 1,210 (10% more)
Add another 10% multiplier (1,210 * 1.1) and you do 1,331 (10% more)
etc….
In an additive model it looks like this:
1,000 * 1.1 = 1,100 (10% more)
(1,000 * 1.1) + (1,000 * 1.1) = 1,200 (9% more than 1,100)
(1,000 * 1.1) + (1,000 * 1.1) + (1,000 * 1.1) = 1,300 (8.33% more than 1,200)
The multiplicative nature of of the damage multipliers in this game means that you also do X% more with the multiplier than you would without it. It’s some magical thing that makes a 10% turn into a 15% increase. You just still do 10% more with it than you would without instead of having a diminishing return where a tooltip say 10% more and you actually only get 7% more damage than you had without it.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
Predators onslaught is a huge boost to damage its 15% combined and it only needs a mobility CC
That’s not how math works.
If you do 1,000 damage and your pet does 400 damage then:
1,000 * 1.1 = 1,100
400 * 1.05 = 420
1,100 + 420 = 1,520
1,520 / 1,400 = (1.0857 -1) * 100 = 8.57%
It’s an 8.57% damage increase in that example.
I’ve been meaning to do something like this myself but you beat me to it it seems.
I agree with most of what you have said there’s just a few things I disagree with.
1) “Read the wind 4/5 This trait made longbow ranger viable in PvP/WvW.” I disagree with giving a trait a highscore because it makes something viable. A grandmaster trait shouldn’t be required to make a weapon viable. If the weapon was viable to begin with this trait would be bad. I’m not going to praise the band-aid.
2) “Trapper’s Expertise 4/5 This trait would probably define a trap build, but traps are a bit UP and lack synergy overall.” This and Trap Potency are a pet-peeve of mine and have been since beta. They simply don’t belong in Skirmishing and should be in Wilderness Survival. Frost Trap can’t even crit. This is also a case of needing a trait to make a bad skill useable. Traps without traits are terrible. The only way traps are even moderately viable is taking at least one of the 2 traits, both is preferred and a rune set (trapper) is needed to make them something really great and build defining. If I’m going to invest a Master and a Grandmaster major trait into something it should make it great not merely viable.
Obviously given the rangers current choices the trait I highlighted here are good by comparison but I have a real problem with the fact that 3 of the traits you (rightfully) gave high marks to are band-aids to deficient skills. That’s more of a problem with rangers than with your assessment though.
It’s been a while since I really gave HoM much thought but here’s a few suggestions based on what I did that you haven’t and it can all be done solo.
1) Black Moa Chick – This is a Unique minipet that isn’t that hard to get and is one point.
2) Armor – Vabbian, Canthan, Ancient, Asuran, Norn, and Monument are the ones I have that you don’t. I don’t recall why I chose those ones but I’m sure it was because I felt they were the easiest/cheapest to acquire at the time. Except Vabbian but that is a point by itself.
3) Titles – Your missing one Protector. Otherwise, Vanquisher, Skill Hunter, Cartographer, and Guardian are some relatively simple but time consuming titles to get. Eternal Conqueror of Sorrow’s Furnace is one I have which means I did it with heroes. I don’t really remember it though.
Just the Black Moa Chick and the armors I listed would get you to 30/30 though.
I said this in a thread I created recently but I’ll say it here too.
Reduce the cast time on spirits by 1 second so it’s a 0.5 second cast time. That way they can be recast mid-combat when they die. 1.5 second cast time is too prohibitive to use during a fight for the minimal effect they produce, especially if they just die immediately after casting.
I think there are other issues with spirits as well but given the current state I think that one change would make a significant difference in their viability. If nothing else you could trait for the active on death and have a double cast of the active after every CD.
Other classes have weapons that can maintain bleeding and poison at the same time without having to be at the side or behind someone. And I’m talking about pve anyhow.
It’s the attack speed that is the problem/difference.
Other classes weapons don’t attack nearly as fast.
They won’t do it, or you could maintain at least 12+ stacks of bleed constantly.
SB needs range increase, direct damage increase, and some way to get you in/out of dodge (the #3 skill doesn’t cut it).
The problem with it right now is it is a skirmishing weapon that can’t skirmish very well. Smart people know to pop reflect, retaliation, or stealth and you are SOL. If you DO manage to hurt them they run and you simply cannot chase them. They will pop block or something and there goes the crippling and daze shot.
AOE might be nice since it seems all the other bows have it.
I agree with basically everything you’ve said here, except I don’t think it needs AoE.
However:
- Shortbow used to be 1,200 range, they nerfed it.
- Shortbow used to attack faster, they nerfed it.
At launch SB was the only weapon worth using on ranger, and it was good. Anet didn’t like the fact that rangers had a weapon that you basically just spammed 1 and didn’t use the rest of the bar because it wasn’t “exciting gameplay.” They didn’t really fix the problem they just nerfed it so it’s not used as much.
As for the OP’s point, I have to agree with Gotejjeken, it would be too powerful that way. However, that doesn’t mean I think it’s fine as it is. I think Anet needs to revisit the SB and make some modifications to make it a more reliable condi weapon because it certainly can’t compete with LB as a power weapon.
Move speed hard caps at 133% of out of combat speed (294 * 1.33 = 391).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed
When you go into combat your move speed decreases (210) so the trapper rune super speed puts you back up to the 133% out of combat speed (391) which is why you notice it. Swiftness makes you move 33% faster than the base in combat speed (279).
When you are out of combat it’s basically just swiftness (391) though.
I actually run celestial on my ranger currently (except weapons). I mostly do WvW as far as where gear matters a lot (my PvE farming doesn’t really count).
That’s the build I use for roaming/camp flipping. That is exactly what I use, not necessarily my goal (which is why no infusions). I’m also unsure about the sigils on my GS but that’s what is there right now.
My power based dps is about 80% of a full zerk build but I have way more durability and some condi pressure as well.
I’m not going to sit here and claim my build is great, but I will defend to the end that it works for me. If I pull a camp properly I can clear all the NPCs before the swords pop and I win most 1v1 fights I encounter.
That build also does well in zerg fighting and traps can apply pressure to either the inside or outside of a tower. I don’t usually follow zergs but I meet up with them every so often and it’s nice be able to just jump right in without mucking around with traits/weapons to feel useful.
I’m not going to waste a lot of time on explaining why spirits have problems, it’s not exactly a secret. Instead I have an idea for a “buff” to spirits that I feel would actually put them in a good place.
Reduce the cast time by 1 second so it’s a 1/2 second cast time.
That’s it. They die rather easily but with the trait so they use their active on death that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The biggest problem is really that with a 1&1/2 second cast time they are cumbersome to cast mid combat. 1&1/2 seconds can get you killed. Yes you can cast them pre-combat and they last 1 minute but then they die. If it was easy to just pop them back out once the 20 second CD was up that wouldn’t be so bad.
That’s my suggestion anyway.
This is really just one many examples of Ranger’s core problem. We have to use our traits to make our abilities good.
Other classes have abilities that are good to begin with and traits just make them better. We have abilities that are okay to begin with and have to use traits to make them good (or just decent in some cases).
While I don’t really disagree with the comments above I don’t think any of those changes would really fix the ranger.
What the Ranger needs is almost a complete rework.
1) Traits – Too many ranger traits are straight up BAD. We also suffer from too many places where we are taking traits to make a skill useable. Traps for example are generally pretty terrible unless you take traits and/or use Rune of the Trapper (but then you aren’t really ‘using traps’ you’re using the rune). If you look at other classes they don’t NEED traits to justify using weapons/utilities. Their traits improve their weapons/utilities which they chose to use because they are good. Longbow on a ranger is okay unless you trait for it then it’s good but we have to suffer with 3 relatively bad minor traits (opening strike is bad compared to the majority of traits in the game) to get there.
2) Utilities – Seriously, our utilities are bad.
2a) Shouts are the biggest offender. Sure Sic ‘Em is great for trolling thieves but that’s hardly a universally ‘good skill’. Other shouts aren’t used because the shout is good. Guard is used to proc Nature’s Voice in some builds because it has a 15 second CD not because anyone cares about the actual skill. We have to give up a utility slot AND a grandmaster trait to make a useful utility skill.
2b) I don’t think I need to spell out the problem with Spirits. The idea is great, the implementation isn’t.
2c) Traps I touched on above. Take traits/rune or they aren’t worth using.
2d) Our signets and survival skills I don’t really have much to say about, they’re okay, not great, but okay.
3) Pets – Unreliable. That’s the single biggest problem I have with pets. I want to like my pet, I really do. I want to want to invest 30 in Beastmastery. As it stands though putting all your eggs in a basket that may just not hit anything isn’t a good idea. I can trait into things like Agility Training that makes it so the pet can actually keep up with people and maybe hit them but again I have to trait to make something useable. The pet should be good to begin with and traits should make it better (like every other classes F# skills).
Edit: I don’t hate ranger btw, 1,064 hours played on ranger of the 1,664 hours on my account (I have 5 other level 80s that share that other 600 hours). I have mained ranger since beta and will continue to do so.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
Still broken, still sad.
Is this related to the current latency issues being encountered in WvW or is that a different issue? Didn’t really see a difference before or after the build last night in WvW though it was noticable sPvP.
I suspect this was mainly related to the ranger traps and ele vapour blade taking 1 second to cast (instead of 1/2 second) and having a 1 second after cast. Which was fixed.
This problem has been fixed. Everything is back to the way it was before yesterday
This sounds to me like you are better at tagging with a longbow, probably because of Barrage.
Wrong type of plane dude. Even if it was the same flight concept as modern commercial, they’d be doing those people a service since many Americans never heard of the crash.
Wow really? You dont speak for every American and you shouldn’t generalize.
Nothing he said suggests he was speaking for “every American” and nothing he said was a generalization.
Many =/= All
Many =/= Majority
Many = More than a few
Every = All
See the difference?
inb4 people get their hopes up for tomorrow after sab didnt open today
You’re too late.
It’s only if you have trappers expertise, this must be a bug.
Hurray, we can trait into making our utilities worse!
I’m really not sure ground targeting and larger AoE is actually worth doubling the cast time.
I’m getting sick of seeing these threads.
1) People have to do VW to get shovels. A full event run will get you maybe 5 shovels if you’re lucky. Your claim of 90% chest farms is completely impossible. Each of those chest farms required at least 1 VW completion.
2) Learn to taxi. Seriously. I have no problem finding VW maps. Push Y, go to open world, look for “SW XX%”, join group, join instance. Hurray, not a chest farm.
3) Just because you chests pinging on the map doesn’t mean “chest farmers are leeching until breach.” Really the people who want to do chest trains don’t like people burning shovels randomly. Chest trains can’t exist if people don’t save shovels.
4) I’m probably one of those people you think is “leeching” because I don’t sit and defend a keep. Why? Because Yaks matter so I escort yaks to upgrade your keeps and make them easier to defend.
I will give you one thing, people afk at south entrance but that’s got nothing to do with chest farming. Otherwise your entire complaint is absurd. My experience for the last 3 weeks straight has been that if I want to do VW I can find a map in 5 minutes tops, if I want to do a chest farm it takes longer. You can’t even claim different servers because we all access the same pool of maps.
Edit: For you reply, Most maps are DEAD MAPS. Chest farms are harder to find than VW maps. Sounds like you’re mad you can’t just zone into SW and find a map that is underway. Guess what, all those 50% maps, people worked to get those there and then taxi people and the VW hunters immediately BAIL ON THE MAP to go to another VW map that is 50%+ and it becomes a dead map, not a chest farm map.
The Scepter of Thorn item skill 3 Madly Funny Joke stopped telling jokes. I suspect it was the most recent patch broke it because it worked a few weeks ago.
When using the skill a VO of the Mad King is supposed to tell a joke, it doesn’t anymore. The skill still works otherwise.
Also it is not useable in WvW, not sure if that is a bug (other costume brawl stuff is useable in WvW) but it makes me sad because I can’t regale my army with bad jokes while we ram a door.
Hahaha! It censored your URL. (Still works though)
It’s supposed to be “March-Madness(dot)html”
Thx for the link as well.
Assuming you got those numbers with a relatively large sample size then I guess it is safe to conclude that you should NEVER buy a BLSK.
That’s the conclusion I came too for ectos.
I do use BLSKs though but it’s for runes only. A lot of times exotics with valuable runes are slightly cheaper than the runes itself (e.g. 6.5g for armor with a divinity rune and 7g for a divinity rune). The price difference is because there is a cost in getting the rune out or transmuting it to something better.
However, if you use a BLSK to get the rune and get a few ectos (exotics can give up to 5 ectos) you can make more money removing the rune.
Of course I never buy BLSK anyway. I just have some from BLCs I opened with keys from story/map completion on alts.
So far I’ve only run Ranger and Mesmer in WvW extensively and this is a problem I only have on my ranger.
My mesmer I run the same trait build in pretty much every area of the game. I swap around my utilities based on what I’m doing though (unlike ranger the mesmer utilities are good untraited). I think the only time I’ve actually changed a trait in my mesmer build is to reduce the CD on ports when I’m in the JP.
This is one of the many reasons I dropped my ranger for my mesmer. I don’t have to carry around bags full of multiple gear sets and constantly retrait for different areas of the game (or in WvW the same area) or risk being seriously kitten because I’m specced wrong.
Whereas I did run a 100 item run with exactly the same item with BLSK and the averages were 1.5 ecto per item like it was nailed to it – so much so that 0, 1, 2, 3 all appeared to have a 25%. However it was a jewelry item, so it came “pre-slotted”.
While armor slot or 1-h vs 2-h have some impact on vendor value (just as level does) the biggie I am highly suspicious of is “does the item have a rune/sigil slotted?” The change in outcomes between unsloted crafted rares and sloted dropped rares is night and day for me. So much so that my next experiment is checking if slotting some left over major runes from previous dropped-item salvages into crafted armor before hitting them with a salvage kit noticable brings up my average ecto return.
Salvaging 100 items once is a horrible sample size.
The numbers I gave were what I concluded after salvaging around 5,000 items in lots of 250 each time. There were times I salvaged 100 items and got ~150 ectos but the following 150 rares gave around 50 ectos.
With a BLSK you’re actually pushing close to 100% return in ectos.
Safe numbers to work with when salvaging rares are:
BLSK = Average of 0.9 ectos per rare.
Master’s Salvage Kit = Average of 0.8 ectos per rare.
Obviously you aren’t going to get Ectos every time but some times you get 2 or 3. These numbers are based off me crafting and salvaging hundreds upon hundreds or rares (mostly gloves, boots, helmets, and shoulders).
There is actually a fair amount of customization available in the game at max level. The transmutation system means all armor appearances are always open to be used. When you start to mix and match pieces from all over the game and then factor in dyes (dyes make a pretty big difference) you can end up with a fairly unique appearance.
Take a look at some threads like this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Show-your-rangers-here/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/races/asura/Screenshot-of-your-Asura-Toon
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Show-us-your-Mesmer
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Post-a-Screenshot-of-your-Guardian
Once you start ignoring the ridiculous number of human and norn females in skimpy clothing you will likely notice a very diverse set of appearances. Oh, and CoF armor is over-represented too (the armor with flames).
Just for laughs, I tried the Frost & Stone Spirit and the Elite spirit of Nature in the Maw fractal. They also got targeted by the Maw’s beam!
Not even in the that instance, spirits are any good!
Mesmer clones/phantasms also get targeted. Although like spirits mesmers can control whether any clones exist or not, unlike pets.
Do yourself a favour and test this in sPvP on the dummies before you spend any money.