power builds were viable prior to the pet nerf, but not based on the strength of our power attacks. it was simply that power traits synergized best with getting the most out of insanely good pet damage ( with a 5,000 leash range ). our power coefficients have always been awful because the pet is considered part of our power damage.
i have been running BM Double Spider for the past two weeks or so. it performs very well. please note that Spider DPS has never been nerfed. comparatively to melee pets, you will get much more damage out of spiders because they also cannot be kited nearly as easily.
the new BM mastery is also strong ( much better than the pet regen mastery ). combined with sigil of renewal you can actually support team with spot offheals in addition to Spring ( 2k from BM mastery, 750 from weapon swap ).
i also use Rampage instead of Spirit. good players are well versed in Spirit counterplay at this point & Rampage counters a lot of problematic builds. Increases potential for actively teamfighting instead of the passive spirit style where just being there is your biggest contribution ( Spirit is still stronger teamfight overall, just saying that Rampage can allow you to contribute to plays when not fighting on the sides ). Pseudo res/stomp utility.
this build in general ruins warriors, which are very common atm ( huge stability & permanent poison / weakness uptime ( easy to reapply both of these consistently through cleanses ) ). a decap engi will also have a sad day when you Rampage and just sit inside his bubbles applying full suite of condis. i also use Travelers to chase if they try to kite the Rampage duration. thieves are not a concern at all. much toughness, poison, burning, healing. should not ever require Rampage for thief duel so steals aren’t a big concern. bonfire zones them out extremely well.
not to mention ( it’s like the best thing about this build ) that the immob stacking is just plain cruel sometimes. chaining a cave spider’s passive immob to black widow passive to black widow active with malicious training means that sometimes a player will literally eat a FULL bonfire if they have burned cleanses too quickly.
this spec plays peeler quite well to boot. spider is constantly crippling, immobing & weakening targets that are on your squishies. this isn’t taking into account axe chill / weak, dagger cripple, sword auto. combine with previously mentioned spot heals & condi cleansing from HS & Sig o’ Renewal.
BM, at least, feels in a pretty good spot right now.
here is the build i’m running: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAsY3fjMqUxa/Kusw1aAAhaVA0eGa2Y490etldJbKK-TJhHABPVGw2TCAa7PAwTAAA
each team vetos 1 map by vote ( red first, then blue ), then map is chosen randomly from remaining pool.
take a nod from StarCraft 2 ( i think they have a bit of eSports history ). in tournies like ESL, they should do a full map vote. ( Red veto → Blue veto → Red picks 1st map → Blue picks 2nd map → Red picks 3rd map )
profile filters would be amazing, but would also require map-specific leaderboards & a far larger population than we currently have.
came back to check out the patch.
all weapons missing from wardrobe, can’t even equip a different weapon type than the pearl weapon my WvW character had on.
need skill points for all new skills, no more access to skill point vendor in HotM? so i’m forced to PvE now?
transmutation points just to swap gear? serious?
as a returning pvp player, i spent about 5 minutes looking at changes & logged off.
buggy implementation & compromising core design principles. i didn’t even get to the point where i could try the content of the patch, & returning pvp players have very little patience at this point.
kbai.
diluted trait options reinforce a focused meta with low diversity.
“good for PvE” is not a thing.
more like, PvE is shutting down PvP diversity.
ANet’s PvP Devs are powerrless to affect change in their own product. it must be frustrating for them.
all the players who have poured so much passion into the game for the past 2 years are right in the same boat with them ( up a certain creek without a paddle ).
In the interim, any player-organized events should be banning Asura from play.
At least try it for one tourney & judge the feedback. I predict the viewership would be thankful.
An ESL Weekly would be the easiest to test with. If player-run tourneys start banning them with regularity, ANet will take more notice.
100% agree, Karp. Not just for players, but viewers as well.
Win streaks would add a lot to stream storylines, being able to watch how far certain setups can go. Would be nice to have those teams that win consistently feed into Team Queue like GW1 as well.
Consolidating the Mists has been long sought after, I hope it comes to pass at some point.
number of players is up, number of viewers is up, number of streamers is up.
despite the seemingly ardent wishes for complete demise, the game is quietly clawing its way back up.
i like SW a lot.
if your team doesn’t want to run orb all you need to do is send 1 durable player to delay @ Orb, just like you would do with Tranquility on Temple, while others control the nodes.
my favourite part of SW is the actual layout with clear multiple paths to each node. as someone without any Z-axis mobility, i don’t find myself limited by pathing.
bump for removal.
can’t see this being a time consuming task & would make so many ppl happy.
you’re bleeding players into teamQ, ruining quality of matches for teams who actually want to practice. this map has essentially reverted the game to a “pre-soloQ state”.
not that leaderboards were in a terrific state, but now the win % for teams will inflate further with pugs once again getting farmed by teams in teamQ ( which the pugs still prefer to Skyhammer, go figure ).
stop the bleeding. remove this map.
the hyperbole is strong with this one.
the appeal of PvP, is PvP. you don’t sound like you enjoy PvP, otherwise you would be doing it for more than just a daily. if you do enjoy PvP, then you need to increase your class knowledge / update your build so you can dispense the majority of your hyperbolic statements with actual counters to the problems you are facing.
it takes time to learn all your match ups in PvP & longer to gain consistent execution with that information. if you find learning & improving to be fun, then there is much to be had.
Passive: HoT which scales with # of hostile players in radius.
Active: AoE Heal which scales with # of hostile players in radius. Low base, high HP scaling.
Keeps it in the theme of a “Healing” Signet & forces player to choose between team support & self sustain.
If the Warrior is meant to be the durable, frontline fighter, then reward them for properly positioning to hold that line. Both the passive & active would have risk/reward associated with them if they both scaled with nearby enemies.
i don’t really care what happens to Healing Signet so long as the Active is incentivized.
considering the level of communication ANet has given us recently, it is quite depressing that a 400 post thread has not prompted an official reply.
Skyhammer has caused tremendous damage to the PvP community both through hotjoin & soloQ. can we not address this & stop the bleeding?
adapt to your team. everything is permissable under the right circumstances. if you have a far point spec on your team, let them push far. just be careful about choosing to assist them. many times, their job is to hold far neut in a 1v2 while you have the advantage in mid.
but if you go & assist the far point spec, you MUST win the teamfight & secure the node, which is always an uphill battle in SoloQ having to deal with their res waves, so it is usually better to let the far pointer do their thing & assist the teamfight on mid or close.
#thingsilearnedplayingwithacondiwar
i think even though the pet moves very quickly back to the ranger when killed, a set amount of time still needs to pass before combat is dropped for both sides. swapping pets immediately wipes “aggro” ( kind of weird in PvP terms to think this way, but pet has its own combat flags ( pet can be in combat while ranger isn’t )), so the swapped pet will drop combat very quickly.
i haven’t really tested this much since you would notice it most distinctly on the non-ranger side of the equation, but should be a very easy test to repeat if the pet does keep the other player locked in combat after it dies.
i like all ranger suggestions, definitely pet scaling. then pet affinity in BM can increase % of scaling.
Signet of Renewal — This skill now always transfers all conditions from you to your pet, regardless of range.
renewal is a nice skillshot atm. this change would make it simpler to use, but i think we need to take things in the other direction with ranger. more interactive. renewal is amazing as it is, it forces you to consider your petswap cooldowns & positioning relative to both your pet & the pet relative to allies. the reward is great & the counterplay is mostly self controlled, meaning it is up to the Ranger to execute it properly.
the proposed signet change would, however, help the Marks Ranger a lot by allowing max distance between pet.
suggestion:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_the_Beastmaster
1. this trait moves to Master tier.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beastmaster%27s_Might
2. renamed to Beastmaster’s Shield & moves to Grandmaster tier. removes 1 condi from all allies near your pet & grant Aegis in same radius on Signet activation.
this would synergize with SotB, so the Shield would pulse from both the Ranger & the Pet if traited for potential 2 condi removal AoE.
would make Signet play more active & team oriented while boosting Marks survivability. ( the Marks Signet spec would not need to run Renewal at all necessarily )
for projectiles, Light Fields are easily the best ( cleanse 1 condi in AoE @ point of impact ).
Fire is decent for 1 extra burn tic, Water gives 1 tic of AoE regen.
in general i think projectile finishers should be weaker since they are safer to execute than point blank effects like blast / leap.
Marks is a terrible line. Wilderness is a phenomenal line.
Power coefficients are reduced due to pet system. Condi coefficients are not reduced due to pet system.
Storm Spirit does not scale with Power dmg. Sun Spirit scales with Condi dmg.
Notice the trend? Ranger cannot mathematically escape Condi spec.
signet of renewal is the only signet that is designed correctly. it is a good thing that it doesn’t synergize with SoBM, since that trait shouldn’t exist.
so, the eternal complaint with CC is that players do not have fun losing control of their character for significant periods of time.
ANet solved this problem quite deftly by allowing CCs to simply kill you outright. no more waiting!
ranger.
never played a pet class before, so i decided to dedicate my time to it this time around for better or worse.
i like pet management & petswap is a great mechanic. being the longest range profession with split dps capability & 2 health bars is nice. has great small scale combat potential & healing spring is just the best.
12s petswap would be so kitten OP, haha. 25% quickness uptime for BM & immortal pets for any spec. ( would loud whistle bring this down to 9s? 33% uptime mmmmmm )
it’s nice to dream.
edit: aussie, i wrote a ranger response on p2.
Ranger
SkillsSpirits – all non-elite spirit passive effect radii are decreased to 650; actives are decreased to 240 radii
i would say 900 range for passives to line up with axe & shortbow range ( 100 range reduction ). the radius for spirit actives is already 240. it’s a GM trait now to increase by 120, this could be shaved to +60 to match other AoE increase traits.
Spirit of Nature – recharge increased to 200 seconds; passive heal tick reduced to 300hps
yep the passive heal is very strong. should be 320, as indicated by the tooltip. recharge is ok atm, 3 mins guaranteed downtime. this elite has a fair amount of counterplay, but the passive heal currently makes that counterplay a bit less effective than it should be outside of a full teamfight.
Sword – decrease of evasion frame durations during auto-attack by 25%
are you talking about greatsword auto evade? b/c 1h sword has no evade frames on auto. the GS is one of our most balanced weapons ( with abysmal trait placement ), i wouldn’t touch the auto.
sword2 has counterplay by means of 0.5s startup, the evades that have no startup are sword3, shortbow3 & dagger4.
have to be careful with balancing evades, as this will dramatically affect any spec of ranger that isn’t full condi bunker. if evades were truly out of control, then power rangers would be making good enough use of them to be viable.
it is the conjunction of max toughness + perma-prot ( +30% from Nature line, +20% from Forge runes means +3s Prot on every dodge above & beyond Stone Spirit & Forge procs ) that makes the spirit ranger so durable.
Traits
Bark Skin – damage reduction reduced to 45%
Sure.
Empathetic Bond – is now activated on pet swap; 3 conditions transferred to pet; recharge time of 12 seconds
makes it an active defense which is good, but is a substantial nerf to pet survivability. most non-rangers don’t realize this, but the time between your 1st in-combat petswap & the 2nd is the most dangerous time for your pet, so starting a petswap with condis running puts your pet behind the curve. recharge time doesn’t matter, because the recharge would now be based off petswap recharge ( 20s/16s ), which would be a massive nerf.
i would still support this change, so long as it comes alongside substantial buffs to support pets so the tanky ranger could actively contribute more to the teamfight. ( eg. a condi transfer F2 would have obvious synergy )
Runes
Lyssa – ICD of 60 seconds
fo sho.
Ranger:
The Good:
a) Spirit nerfs – Still a strong support build, but much closer to balance now.
b) Mighty Swap buff opened up new build variants.
c) Longbow damage equalization is still not enough, but a move in the right direction for Power.
The Bad:
a) Water Spirit – Too weak to challenge Healing Spring for group support & more screen clutter is the last thing we need.
b) Buffed Nature Traits – GS Training & Enlargement. Nice concepts, but they don’t synergize with their placement in the trees. GS is a power weapon with traits tied up in our condi & nature lines, while Enlargement requires 50 Trait points for completely selfish synergy.
The Missing:
Pet F2 Bug Fix ( F2 often goes on CD without activating when pet is in motion / immediately following petswap ).
if you have aoe condi, dot up ranger & pet then focus pet when EB triggers.
in general, you can guarantee effects will land if you target the pet vs the ranger ( pet can’t evade ) & if pet dies, no more condi cleanse for Ranger.
dogs are also the source of much of the control you are having trouble with, as the only cripple on SB/GS is a 3s cripple on SB4, but the dogs have 5s+ cripples + knockdown & Fear/Immob. dogs die fast without BM traits. edit: forgot about cripple on GS4 Sword Throw, but that has a huge telegraph.
don’t give up your back against the weaponset if you can help it, or About Face to accept CC while kiting so you are only dazed instead of stunned ( presuming this might be a 30 Skirmishing Ranger with double duration stuns ).
peace, gl.
(edited by faeral.7120)
to me, the profession mechanics of Engineer & Elementalist show that limiting profession complexity should not be an excuse with regards to controlling Ranger pets. it is a double standard.
pet management has potential for so much more depth than we have & much of our team utility is locked away in pet passives.
old argument from Sharp the last time this topic was under discussion:
“PvE Elementalists will often sit in Fire attunement for long periods without swapping.”
that is the CHOICE of that Elementalist to play this way. Rangers are given no CHOICE. Rangers are forcefully handicapped to cater to the lowest denominator.
if ppl are randomly spamming & the finishers coincidentally pass through a field, the effect on the match will also be random.
if the finishers are coordinated with the fields to produce a deliberate result, the effect on the match will be deliberate.
we cannot use random ability spam as justification to alter a perfectly functioning mechanic. the solution is for players to improve their level of play.
well just as an example, say an ally gets caught in a marks bomb from necro. if a mesmer uses focus pull, i can shortbow 4 → 5 → 3 the pulled target & that will be a guaranteed 3x condi removal to allies beside the target. same thing with guardian ring of warding or wall of reflection.
I feel 240 is still big enough to give good support through blasting. I think 480 or 600 is absolutely massive & would reduce the skillshot quality of combo fields. It would be too easy to spread to avoid focused AoE but still gain combo benefits; I think AoE skills & combo fields are natural balancing forces against each other. It should be risky for a team to stack so much Might or blast for heals, but if range on blast was increased, you would see massive might stacks being refreshed mid-teamfight without effective counterplay.
I also think ANet directly avoided a condi removal blast through Light b/c it would just be far too strong, especially with Guardians already being the core support having access to Light. But projectile finisher through Light is still strong for condi removal.
Spirit is 1.5 second cast, active 1 second I believe.
Yep, I was referring to reducing the Active to 0.5s cast, & the Spirit’s AoE aftercast can remain @ 1.5s. Still, without HP scaling, Water Spirit will never rival the effective HPS of Spring’s condi removal.
However, I’ve done some research into blasts today and I wildly overestimated their potential. Its only a 240 radius centered on the blast itself, regardless of the radius of the blast or the radius of the field. I was really disappointed in that and made another forum post suggesting that the radius be increased substantially to somewhere between 480 and 600. Feel like it could massively improve team play, interestingness of combos and the skill cap without limiting new players as it would still be an advanced thing to do. I also like to see leaps become aoe, but in a tiny radius, 180 perhaps, just to give combos a little extra play.
Yes, I saw that post. I’ll post my thoughts in there.
tested water spirit for a day in team queues. it certainly has its moments, but it is not good for backpoint b/c you need the condi cleanse for the classes you will face in 1v1 ( condi war, decap engi, spirit ranger w/ spring, etc ). edit: the staggered timing is also brutal when you need a heal in clutch moments. eg. low on health, spirit is off CD but not summoned → 2 separate cast times adding to 2.5s, with another 1.5s to get full effect.
in team fights, it has a more persistent impact than Spring ( Spirit starts helping the instant it is within 1,000 range of your team ) & you can stack a double active to relieve pressure by activating on the edge of the fight then running the spirit into the frey for the Vengeance heal.
however, Spring is just too good for team support because of condi wipe, blasts, leaps & projectiles ( your team can heal themselves with their own leaps, everyone’s projectiles will extend the regen in AoE by 1 tick, blasts are blasty ). Spring’s effect is also guaranteed for 10s, the main counterplay being AoE overlap but Spring is often used as counterplay to AoE itself.
the two biggest failings with Water Spirit are that the AoE active does not scale with Healing Power ( change the way Spirit actives scale with our stats please ), & the staggered cast time leaves you too exposed, especially when it provides no condi cleanse. the initial heal should be 1/2s cast, the spirit can remain at 1.5s for the AoE portion.
healing spring is still the king, baby.
(edited by faeral.7120)
plays game based around active defenses; complains about abundance of active defenses.
ban asura from casted tournies. instant improvement for viewership.
“spam” is a misnomer imo. GW2 has very low cooldowns so the APM feels spammy, but it is still the most skillful application & timing of abilities that win fights.
a part of the problem is that skilled players are always leaving, so the top level is always in a state of flux & the best players don’t have the proper competition to continue to elevate their game, so instead less intelligent application of cooldowns can still be successful when by all rights it shouldn’t.
DS is a huge team mechanic. The dynamic of Cluster ressing vs GTAoE/downstate pressure vs Res utility adds “phases” to the team fights that would not exist otherwise. It gives additional incentives for timing CC & Support in a team fight. also impacts focus target selection & positioning.
regarding 1v2s, they are perfectly feasible in GW2, & this game makes it a better representation of skill than one in which instant death occurs.
@risenlord, ele has incredible DS for teamplay. that has never been one of their issues.
stop hitting F5 on the leaderboard. you will enjoy soloQ a lot more.
people’s expectations are way out of line. if you have nubs in your match, don’t hate on them. they are the future. you can sob softly holding your knees to your chin in a corner of the mists when your match is done.
if you really can’t stand it, then it’s time to man up to teamQ.
@ppl who say this game takes no skill.
why is it that r1-20s aren’t doing better in SoloQ? if it truly takes no skill, they should be holding their own instead of getting 100-0’d.
why is ESL ruthlessly dominated by 2 teams? possibly a disparity in skill? it certainly isn’t the gear. ( obvious reply is that no real teams are left, but this still highlights a pronounced skill difference )
so long as SPvP is married to PvE & WvW, there will be no success.
that was WoW’s demise just as much as it is GW2’s.
it’s pretty simple, but apparently inconceivable to devs. i actually feel insulted by excuses like, “we don’t want players to be confused when switching game modes,” because this is giving your players zero credit & assuming they are illiterate plebs.
if there is one thing humans do well, it’s to adapt.
now i am waiting for a developer to adapt to the concept of making a new class-based PvP game without the fail trappings of PvE.
the PvE in GW2 should consist of fighting AI in conquest maps, nothing else.
ah ok, i was looking at the prospect of using a ranger pet to break me out but that sounds like no dice.
this skill is crazy strong if the ice has that much health. really gotta watch when that ice bow gets equipped. ty for reply.
The wiki states that you can’t stunbreak it, but other players can break you out.
How much life does the Deep Freeze have?
while this would be sweet, LR is already a great utility that sees a lot of play.
i would prefer for things like Muddy Terrain, Sharpening Stone & every one of our Shouts to see fixes to increase their viability.
give frost trap a damage component that scales with power. that would immediately open up 30/30/10 power trap builds.
if you’re gonna queue up for TeamQ solo, you aren’t going to get 1,000 Glory.
1. Ranger pet AI. Why have you still not fixed their AI so that once the target moves out of the pet’s line of sight, pet’s skill goes on a CD as if they used it? Why are pets that need to face targets to use spells (e.g. lightning breath by drake) completely worthless in spvp?
there are a lot of problems with Ranger pets, but this is not one of them. Drake F2 is powerful with counterplay, a model that more burst abilities should follow.
a better problem to resolve is why that Drake F2 ( or any targeted pet ability ) will not path to the target within the first 2 seconds of a petswap, but instead will simply fire off in whatever random direction the pet faces on swap. this bug renders Quickness irrelevant for a number of pet choices & has been here since launch. it is another reason why Wolf is so hard not to take; AoE actives are not affected by this bug to the same degree ( so long as you are not moving when you swap—another bug ).
Drake is far from worthless in PvP ( sees very high tourney use ). Blast, cleave, highest aoe F2, highest power among pets, good toughness & huge vitality for EB soaking.
honestly, this is a bigger problem than any balance issue.
if dec 10th patch notes read, “No more 4v5s”, you wouldn’t even need any balance changes. we would have to let the 5v5 meta settle first to see what needs fixing next.
yep, healing spring will remain king of all ranger heals. heal as one will remain as the heal we have on our bar during the lvl 1 PvE encounter.
should have made a Survival heal for Power specs imo.
I would like to know the reasoning behind adding Water Spirit. Certainly this is to help out underused Ranger builds, but I’d just like to hear it from them.
1. adding a heal that only interacts with the current meta build does not help build diversity.
2. adding another piece of AI clutter is indicative of not listening to your players.
ranks are for casuals, ladders are for the dedicated. both need respective reward systems that cater to both.
keep rank system with its current rewards. future rank system rewards should be oriented to casual players. regarding finishers, ladder system should have its own unique finishers instead of taking away those from the casuals that have been working towards them for a long time.
i like the idea of pvp gear going into pve & vice versa, but there should be unique skins to each gametype. i think the biggest thing is that players don’t like wearing R1 armor in PvP when they’ve been PvEing for a very long time already. So long as they can bring their gear that shows the experience they’ve had in their chosen gametype, I think they will be happy.
They would also be more willing to work towards the PvP-specific rewards while wearing their PvE gear, knowing that they will be able to take those PvP skins back into dungeons to show off to friends & guildmates.
Gear skins which overlap all game types will be seen as fairly generic & will not distinguish a player’s experience at all.
Ranger:
Signet Heal:
Passive: Heal the Ranger upon Petswap.
Active: AoE Heal centred on Pet location. Works with GM trait ( Power Ranger Support ).
Survival Heal:
Channel heal. Gain stealth & cleanse movement impairments at end of channel if uninterrupted.
Shout Heal:
Small heal. You & your pet’s successful attacks will leech health for X seconds.
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