Guild Wars 2

Poelala.2830:

ddoi.9264:

Instead of keep buffing its negligible damage or non existant utility, I wish they’d make it more fun to use.

Like maybe instead of exploding after a second, it summons an ice ‘mine’ that detonates when enemies touch it and freezes them for 1.5 seconds. Would happily trade the tiny damage for some utility that can be used both offensively and defensively.

You want a 1.5 sec stun on skill with a 3 sec cooldown and 1/2 sec cast time?

Will need appropriate cd changes to balance it of course. Just getting the idea out there. As it is Shatterstone is simply a very boring and worthless skill.

Instead of keep buffing its negligible damage or non existant utility, I wish they’d make it more fun to use.

Like maybe instead of exploding after a second, it summons an ice ‘mine’ that detonates when enemies touch it and freezes them for 1.5 seconds. Would happily trade the tiny damage for some utility that can be used both offensively and defensively.

It’s far too weak to remain a major. It should be combined with Hidden Barbs and a new major trait created in its place.

Lousy change that kills viability of an entire build.

Downright insulting that a major trait is no better than minors given for free. Utterly senseless ‘balancing’ as always.

I’m in australia, usually ping hangs around 300 but since two weeks ago it wildly fluctuates between 400~800. Unplayable. :/ Not sure if it’s GW or my house though.

Lunatic Guard outfit is missing this Halloween! It’s basically the only outfit that actually fits a female charr without huge oversized shoulders and whatnot.

Final thrust should be buffed to finish downed foes.

Stalker’s Strike (Dagger #4) range restored to pre-HoT with offhand training (250 base + 300 range). It’s way too difficult to hit players with that tiny base range.

Serpent’s Strike (Sword #3) cast time reduced to match evade frame (3/4 sec).

Shortbow…well more than enough threads have been created to improve it. Just not happening.

It pulses the three boons every 3 seconds until the skill expires. Try using it.

It was a nice change, the skill isn’t wasted completely by one steal/corrupt.

The Superior Sigil of Draining – “Steal life when interrupting an enemy.” has no effect. No life is gained, no damage is done. Nothing is shown graphically and nothing of the sort is recorded in the combat log.

Ghotistyx.6942:

ddoi.9264:

obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed outofrange obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed

otherwise fine.

Have you considered not attacking the ground?

Can’t, too many pebbles on the floor blocking my view.

obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed outofrange obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed

otherwise fine.

Honestly…they could add 25% move speed to Signet of Wrath and I’d still take it.

Simply slapping on male version for charr and asura and calling it a day is a cheap and lazy solution that your outfit team often resort to. Yes-do change it so that there are no humanoid breast parts, but give another, different feminine version for them. Please stop with the whole humanoid-or-nothing armor designs.

Can’t stand using sword on my charr ranger anymore, the animation is hideous.

Er…what? There are 50 pages of complaints on that thread because you gated specialisations behind hero points for every single character we have. Not once have I heard anyone complain they couldn’t progress their story. This change solves nothing.

Many of us are happy to grind masteries as you intended as long as we can access and play around with the specialisations while we are at it.

Yep, having the exact same issues as OP. Some maps I cannot even enter because the game will crash if I try, and if I get in somehow after numerous retries I’m hit with 1200~4000 ping and the game becomes unplayable. Especially the maps being used for the current events; I haven’t been able to join at all thanks to this issue.
Only thing I can do at this stage is to stay away from said maps.
Thought it was because I have crappy internet in Australia at first but any other online game works fine.

Where’s the rest of Rifled Barrels? Pistol range? Tranquilizer Dart range?

^ What he said. With the amount of time it takes for the evade to happen after pressing the skill it all feels extremely clumsy.

Revealed sounds kinda op, but interesting if implemented nicely.

For example it could be toned down to “See stealthed enemies (300 radius) that are lower than 33% health while in deathshround” and combine it with the Close to Death trait or something. Fits with the whole ‘familiarity with death’ concept anet pushes with necro traits and skills.

I don’t understand why people choose Sylvari just to make them look human. They can be made to look really cool and unique but 9 out of 10 Sylvari all use the same human face and humanish hair.

Interesting idea, I love the synergy with a lower tier trait, makes sense. Though I run a duel melee build in wvw and I still can’t agree it will be elevated into a decent trait. I basically run it only because I need the cooldown reduction on sword skills (which is nice) but the projectile destruction cannot even be considered a bonus knowing how utterly worthless it is. I dueled a power necro earlier today spamming life blast and of course lich form, and it did not proc once in the entire fight. It is pathetic and I am surprised anet did not rework it this patch.

I do not want a chance to avoid projectiles, I want to know exactly when it activates so I can use it intelligently to my advantage.

I can think up so many alternatives to the current rng crap we got.

- Destroy every fourth projectile instead of 25% chance
- Destroy/block/evade the next three projectiles when swapping to a melee weapon
- Gain Protection for 3 seconds when you evade an attack while wielding a melee weapon – 15 seconds icd
- Deflect 1 projectile to a nearby enemy upon sucessful evasion or block
- Reflect 1 projectile after dodging – 9 seconds icd
- Projectiles do 33% less damage for 3 seconds after you gain swiftness
- Destroy projectiles while casting Leap Finishers

etc etc…

On Isle of Janthir, can confirm at least one guildie had this problem. Also starting around 9pm server time we are hit with sudden massive lag on all maps(mapchat complaining about it too), the worst lag happening in eb. It is strange because when I go back to pve or Obsidian Sanctum the game is fine.

sil.5832:

Did fire aura on signet use for ele really have to go away? I’m sure it’s a niche use, but it was a fun use =(

This. Putting fire aura on Conjurer trait makes no sense and adds absolutely nothing to the class. No synergy with any other aura traits and ruins builds that used signets actively to proc the fire aura on cast. Please put it back to signet activation.

If changing retaliation is a bad idea, I wish the devs would at least take another look at some skills that take massive punishment from retal for no real reason. The aforementioned flamethrower auto attack is a good example, as is Hunter’s Call which with 16(!) strikes basically makes you take the same amount of damage you deal, or more. It’s not like these skills are inherently overpowered and require such hard counters.

Wholeheartedly agree. RtW should never have existed. I never understood all the happiness that exploded on the forums when it was introduced; if anything I was angry devs decided we needed a grandmaster trait for a weapon to hit its target. Rifle, pistol, scepter, mes gs, etc etc can all hit the target reliably in its range; why does longbow need a grandmaster to do it?

The number one complaint about longbows before RtW was that it could be very easily side-stepped past a certain range. (1000+ ish?) If I trait a weapon so it can hit at 1500 range, then it should reliably hit up to 1500 range. Past that, I don’t care if enemies can side-step it or not.

100% increased velocity should be removed from RtW, and the default projectile speed on both bows should be increased by…I don’t know, 30%? Whichever percentage so that targets cannot simply sidestep as long as they’re in range.

As a replacement RtW can have something like “Long-ranged shot now hits for maximum ranged damage at all ranges” or such so that it is still a great trait for longbows, but not essential.

Now, if that crimson moa was a guardian with retaliation up instead…;)

I do wish you can do something about afk people when it is beyond doubt they’re just trying to leech.

Yesterday I was in a full map, hanging by mid lane. South lane failed their boss and started losing carriers rapidly so I went to go help…only to find 10+ people afking on one of the ledges where the mortars are.

They literally stood there and did nothing while the lane got overwhelmed with mobs and even though mid suceeded their boss the map failed due to loss of siege carriers. North didn’t even get a turn.

It was blatantly obvious they were trying to afk leech because sometimes a few of them would use their ranged autoattacks on one mob and not use any other skill and afk again once it died.

Time and effort of what…80 people? Utterly wasted just like that. Extremely aggravating for people like me who join < 50% maps and bring it up to breach stage.

Afk people do harm others. That is a fact, period.

-Severe clipping on Imperial Outfit-

Asura, Female, All classes

As you can see in the screenshots, the shoulder fan piece clips right into the centre of the asura’s heads when entering combat stance. Normally I shrug off clipping issues but this is far too severe. If you have no plans to fix this, I would like to request a refund on my gems; I would never have bought this if I knew the outfit had such ridiculous clipping issues.

So I popped into Divinity’s Reach for Wintersday stuff, and a thought just hit me. Why isn’t this a wvw map?

A thread pops up every week asking for new maps. There are three identical maps posing as Borderlands and one EB that has barely changed in 2 years. Why not replace one of them with one of your existing ones in pve if making new wvw maps is so difficult? All the racial cities look very fun to imagine wvw’ing in. Some cityscapes to fight in would be a welcome change.

Divinity’s Reach in particular seems like a fantastic map to wvw in. Many places to hide entire groups, funnel spots, vantage points, multiple paths to locations, portals, god statues that can function like Borderlands Bloodlust bonuses, districts as towers and of course a nice palace in the centre that can act as a keep/smc.

Some changes here and there, adding camps and walls, few adjustments for balance and it may well work.

Personally want the range returned to 1200. It is really pathetic how any class can use just one movement skill and become completely out of range from a bow.
Not to mention the reasoning for the nerf back then from the dev was utterly senseless.

I’m currently running my mesmer with the duelling grandmaster trait Harmonious Mantras, which gives one extra charge to mantras.

However I noticed that the extra 3rd charge often simply disappears for no reason, leaving me with two charges only. It seems to happen usually in cases including but not limited to after I take a waypoint far enough for the load screen to appear (on the same map). This happens far too often to shrug it off, making a joke out of a grandmaster trait.

Also, please give us a method to recharge our mantras to maximum charges while there are still charges left. It is utterly pointless to make people choose between running with only one charge left or risk getting into a fight with no charges by expunging it in hopes the cooldown will be up by the next fight. Make it a full recharge animation per charge, add a proportionate cooldown, make it give self vulnerability, make it out of combat only, add a timer that automatically adds one charge every full cooldown if you take the grandmaster trait, I don’t care; there needs to be a method to “top-up”.

Holland.9351:

Stider’s Defense on the Ranger should be changed to do this.

+1
I think ranger should get it as a minor skirmish trait too, but I’d be happy with this.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toxic_Sharpening_Stone
Not a food, but you might like.

Personally I feel this “Ranger has intentionally lower damage than other classes due to pet” has to change or the class will be forever considered a third-rate class.

You can’t give a class a permanent disadvantage based on the assumption that a non-permanent pet is always up. This flatout gurantees Rangers will never have good maximum efficiency uptime compared to other classes thanks to an A.I. that has been proven to be terribly ineffective; fragile, slow and have difficulty hitting targets.

I’m guessing there is something of a 70% : 30% ratio of Anet’s intended maximum damage of the class split between the Ranger and its pet. This is wrong, it should be something like 100% : 20%. If the Ranger player is skilled enough to make the pathetic pet A.I actually sucessfully work for him, the player should be rewarded with extra damage.

It seems what the balance team wants to do with Rangers is to make the pet synergise with the player as much as possible, and make sure players pay full attention to it. All those traits tied to pets, weapon skills, utilities…that’s fine. I love Rangers; I made two of them just for the heck of it and I’ve had some great pet/ranger skill combo moments that felt awesome. But such moments are so rare thanks to the barely functional mechanic, and the fact that I must jump through all those hoops just to reach the maximum efficiency built-in in every other class by default is disheartening and depressing. Even if I was some sort of god-tier ranger player and executed a perfect play, I would always know the results would have been better on another class.

Ah I see, that sounds more likely rather than the runes. Thanks for the info.

I was in Sparkfly Fen, chopping down some trees with my ranger that has superior runes of perplexity. A basilisk nearby interrupted me with its laserbeam attack that turns you into a stone, and I noticed the 6th bonus of the rune, 5 stacks of confusion on interrupt, proc’d on myself. I tried being interrupted while wearing different armor and there was no confusion proc so quite sure it’s from the runes.

Sword #2, #3 + dagger #4 + lightning reflexes + hidden pistol +protect me on my charr ranger. Contest lord circles for days until help arrives.

Though as pointed out, good looking armor choices on charr are just abysmal.

Well as long as we are spewing ideas, I’d say if something had to be changed about stealth, make it so that you slowly lose endurance while you’re in stealth. Or if that is too much, you stop gaining endurance while in stealth. Vigor/Sigil of Energy do not function while in stealth.

This would tone down the defensive nature of stealth which is probably where all the hate and annoyance of it is coming from, and offensively it would introduce some risk/reward factor. You can still stealth as often as you do now, but you would have to be smart about it and consider the consequences.

I wish Glacial Heart had half the cooldown and applied for maces instead of hammers. I’m loving using mace/shield now with a healway variant but if that happened, I’d never let it go.

Uncommon, but present.
There’s also a ‘naturalist’ asura in Fireheart Rise, seems not all Asurans are obsessed with technology.

The thing I’m curious about sword dps is that it’s based on the assumption you constantly autoattack, and you rarely get to do so unlike gs.

Yeah sure, if someone else has aggro and you can spam auto without worries I’m sure sword will out-dps gs, but usually you have to press 1 carefully or not at all for a second or so when you see a hard hitting attack coming so you don’t get dodge locked, which will lower your dps considerably. Then there’s pvp, but there are too many factors in that mode so I guess they even out.

Of course there’s the issue of axe or warhorn offhand, which increases sword dps through the roof in comparison. :P

Allie Murdock.8152:

Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.

As much as I like the idea of preventing the game from becoming “burst or die” fights, I don’t see how giving risks to bursts will solve the inherent disadvantages sustained damage has. Enemies can heal, run away, have time to cc you to disrupt your sustained damage, you take more damage from enemies conditions because you give them more time to (re)apply them, their burst can force you to back off and stop/run/die, you are more susceptible to retaliation, confusion, torment, fire shield, etc etc…there’s just so many disadvantages in sustained damage that no amount of risks in burst damage will ever make it a better choice. Even if it is, other classes can already choose to be a sustained damager, while rangers have no choice but to be one.

Not to mention in PvE burst damage is rewarded; bosses and difficult mobs have condition purging skills(alpha, CoE stationary golem boss), vulnerability phases(destroyer boss in CoE p3, dredge suit/ice elemental boss in fractals) where you are required to burst. The zerk meta already proves killing enemies faster are far better than whittling them down over time with higher survivability- and guess what the two most shunned classes in PvE; necros and rangers, are good at.

Also, bringing other classes’ bursts down/adding risks would be a nightmare of a balance fix, and something that I can’t see happening in the near future. How long would it take? 4 months? 8 months? A year? How long will rangers have to wait still to be considered useful?

Weapons

Skills

I would add more AoE or CC suggestions, but they go against the design philosophy so I only include these adjustments.

[/end wall of text]

Specific Game Mode
WvW, and PvE to an extent

Proposal Overview
General modification of traits and skills across the board

Goal of Proposal
Increase group utility of Rangers so that they are more useful in group engagements.

Proposal Functionality

Rangers are generally not welcomed because rangers bring nothing useful to a group. Or rather they can, but they fail in execution(spirits dying easily), are hardly noticable(aoe vigor on pet swap) or just plain useless(aoe swiftness and regen with shout).

I think one of the factors that contribute to this is that all the weapon skills on ranger are extremely self-centred/single target oriented. While this fits the new design philosophy, it pushes rangers even further away from being welcomed in groups, not to mention there is already a profession that perfoms better in such a role – Thieves, the king of single target dps.

For example,

Now this would be fine if our group utilities worked. They don’t. Spirits die at the drop of a hat, traps hardly make an impact(no, you’re not being useful because you cripple enemy players for 4~5 seconds), and these skills take up slots that should be used for stunbreakers/condition clearing which-oops, can’t take that because one trap/spirit/muddly terrain ain’t gonna do crap so you have to sacrifice personal survivablity by using at least two slots.

So why not change a few skills around to give rangers better group utility/AoE?

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Necromancer

Boggles my mind how anyone could possibly not place rangers in #1.

Love my asura ranger, uncommon amongst both players and lorewise, apparently. Also technobabble is a beautiful interrupt skill as mentioned by others. In terms of “Tell” Norn GS block is extremely recognisable compared to an Asura. Otherwise as Fomby said our animations are fairly prominent so there isn’t much of a difference. I’m just thankful long range shot / hunter’s shot / point blank shot animations and projectiles all look the same really.

MU, I don’t understand what makes you guys think you have the right to trashtalk other guilds just because they don’t give you what you want. You are not entitled to a GvG.

Any guild has every right to refuse/ignore your request and doing so does not give you the right to trashtalk them. If a guild doesn’t want to GvG, they don’t want to GvG. They don’t have to give you any explanation, justification or reasoning that would satisfy you and they don’t deserve to be called cowards or be considered “too afraid” to fight you. An example of a reason could be as simple as they find GvG boring and hence don’t want to. You guys are hardcore GvG enthusiasts, while they may find playing for the server more fun. What is cowardice to you of IoJ “camping keeps and towers all day”(a blatant lie), is to them simply doing a great job defending their land. This is WvW, structure fights are a part of it. Accept and move on. Different ideals and priorities, none of you are better or worse.

Having said that, I’m glad IoJ guilds are focusing on getting things done. Like Crimson said it is amazing to see all the guilds working together and fighting for the server, focusing on taking stuff and actually defending them. I will never forget the “KoR BAIT” on reset day, that moment was both hilarious and heartwarming.

Wiping or being wiped, we’re seeing a lot more people coming into wvw from what is without a doubt a pve server. Having new recruits who’ve never done wvw before and want advice so they can jump in right away is fantastic. Compared to the absolute rock-bottom server morale during season 1 this is such a great change, and easily maintained simply by us having our own corners which we are doing a great job at. The fights are good ranging from the assortment of highly skilled roamers I’ve fought to giant pug vs pug battles and oh shi- moments when encountering MU and FKB. The loot is good too. People are having a great time.

Vigor traits and energy sigils are nice and all, but that means we have to give up what little offensive boosts we have.

For example the vigor trait in Skirmishing competes with [30% more pet crit dmg/might for pet on crit/pet moves faster] which vastly improves pet performance. That energy sigil could have been a sigil of accuracy/geomancy/bursting/etc. Will we have to further lower what meagre dps we can do?

Not to mention I find the argument of “it’s only XX dodges less /min and 6.67 -> 8/seconds” presented here and by Mr Peters to be questionable. Yeah, in total amount of dodges available it’s not a huge difference. However, personally I feel dodging is more about having it when you need it, not how many times you can do it. And this nerf does affect the timing dodge is ready.
Sigil of Energy is valuable because it instantly restores enough endurance for a dodge when you need it. Imagine if it was “gain 50% of your endurance over the next 10 seconds” instead. Would it be used as much as it is now?

Considering the length of most battles, the fact that I won’t have another dodge over the next 30 seconds is not what is important, it’s the fact that my dodge won’t be ready for another 2 seconds compared to now in which time I will have to tank whatever comes at me in that timeframe, especially if I’m using a non-evasion weapon like longbow, axe/torch, axe/axe, etc.

Furthermore, what is the purpose of the global vigor nerf? Isn’t it to reduce the number of dodges all classes get? But as mentioned in this thread there are many ways to restore endurance, and if the nerf is too heavy people will reach out for them. Giving them even more dodges than pre-nerf. They thought sword/dagger + LR rangers relying only on Natural Vigor dodged too much? Wait till they use energy sigils, vigor traits and endurance regen food. The nerf would encourage the opposite of its purpose.

I agree it’s hardly worth going 30 into curses for that trait considering the duration and internal cd. Maybe if it was brought down to master tier power builds can consider it.

4% of endurance is 1/25th of your total endurance bar even when it’s full; it’s hardly overpowered since you probably naturally regenerate more than that already. It’ll be like weakness without fumble but longer duration. However it can always be adjusted to not be overpowered if it turns out to be so. Make it proc on crit, steal more but have a reasonable internal cd, or put it on a long obvious channeled skill like dagger #2 which no condi build will use so it complies with the OP’s concerns. (Though that’ll undermine its effectiveness greatly)

Not to mention every other class has fairly easy access to vigor which in itself is already a counter, so I do not think it would be as terribly overpowered as you say with proper adjustments.

I’m just putting out ideas, though I would prefer some sort of actual sustain or defensive mechanics as Bhawb suggested.