Guild Wars 2

Specific Game Mode
PvP (…although also WvW roaming; anywhere where players are pitted against one another)

Proposal Overview
You frame the Ranger as a “resilient” profession, yet they lack in reliable/clutch condition removal. The proposal is for more reliable (perhaps even actively-controlled) source of condition removal.

Goal of Proposal
Presently, Rangers are forced 30 points into their Wilderness Survival (toughness and condition damage) line to take Empathic Bond for condition removal they can’t even reliably control. This limits the Ranger’s ability to skillfully respond to condition pressure, with respect to both damage-based and utility conditions.

The Goal of the proposal is to allow Rangers an option for more skilful counterplay to conditions.

Healing Spring is a poor answer to this proposal, especially if you want to frame the ranger as a mobile “skirmisher”, seeing as unless you stand in the Healing Spring’s radius, you reap no benefits from its passive condition removal. Furthermore, the Brown Bear’s condition-removal shout is unreliable (as most F2’s are), and very rarely cleanses the conditions you need gone in a pinch (we’re talking cleansing an immobilize so you can dodge the incoming earth shaker, or clearing a poison so you can get your heal off — that kind of stuff, which is necessary to survive when playing a glassier build).

Proposal Functionality
Works the same as every other class with reliable condition removal.

Cleansing Ire is a great example; yes the Warrior has to spec heavily for it (20 points), but at the very least they gain a reliable source of removal. The removal even scales with player skill such that more experienced players are better at landing their F1 to get the condition removal to proc.

The Thief’s Shadowstep skill is another great example of reliable condition removal. Against certain classes, the stun break aspect of the skill carries far less weight than simply double tapping it for the condition clear. This allows the thief to skilfully decide which functionality they will favour when using the skill. It need not be said that this promotes skilful play.

The Ranger has very limited skill-based counterplay options to conditions.

Associated Risks
Power-based Rangers that don’t usually spec 30 into Wilderness Survival may become a little more viable, and some degree of forum QQ may be expected. If another source of condition removal is added and Empathic Bond is maintained as-is (but it really shouldn’t seeing as it doesn’t promote skilful play in the slightest….) then certain builds may accrue excessive condition removal capability.

So after rolling with a Carrion/Rabid/Rampager mix for a little bit, I have to conclude that the added power is a huge boon. Especially against heavy condition cleansers, your direct damage can wear them down when your conditions fall short.

Survivability is not much different than going full Rabid, but you are more prone to getting spiked down by glass cannons. You have plenty of mitigation for that though. Hella fun spec, to be honest.

Thanks again for all the ideas in this topic!

Maskaganda.2043:

I aim for 1500 power and 35-40% crit chance. From there I go towards 1350~toughness. Oddly enough I don’t really care for my condition damage value but I still get extremely high ticks.

I like having my pistol#1 hitting for about 400~damage each. I’ve gone full rabid and having my pistol shots hitting for 180~ was much more hindering than having lower toughness (which carrion mitigates by adding vit) and lower precision which as I explained is still more than enough. My bleeds will still hit for 115~completley unbuffed. Trying to beat a decent ele, thief or anyone running melandru+lemongrass with just condition damage is very very hard. Also, your poison and burns won’t stack damage with other sources so yoiu need to have some decent power to still be useful.

This is now a product of a year of trying gear and adjusting numbers, it’s actually slightly different now because Im using coated bullets so I changed a trinket or two. It’s also built for my needs which are solo roaming or small group vs large group (not my pov, but my group http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWwS03-qhcg ) .

I won’t say full carrion or full rabid don’t work, but for me, a mix is way better.
Just test stuff and reach values that you feel work, gear is easy to get nowadays with badges anyway :p

Alright, the advice is appreciated, Mask! I’ll get to experimenting. I’ve run a similar build with full Rabid in sPvP, and I totally get what you’re saying about pure condition damage not being sufficient to down certain classes. I’ll scramble some gear together and give this a go.

Roaming without Speedy Kits doesn’t bother you? I guess there’s a lot of boon duration for the swift off Elixir B on that build though.

Thanks to everyone else for the discussion/contrasting views.

@ Mask, looks interesting. The necro forums also seem to prefer Carrion or a mix to pure Rabid for condi builds.

What’s the method to the madness in your gear choice though? Like, what setpoints/breakpoints were you aiming for, if any? I get the reasoning on the 40%-ish crit chance. Just trying to understand some of your choices is all.

Thanks for the help to all that replied!

Hey guys, in a P/P HGH condi build, is there any point mixing Rabid with Carrion gear? Or is it better to stack one of the two (probably Rabid for better use of on-crit sigils) for all your gear?

I guess you could mix Rampager’s in too. What’s the typical P/P WvW roamer look like these days?

Tail clipping, for starters. Second, the face-masks look like horse-feeders. Third, the hats have ridiculous positioning and clip with horns, ears, eyebrows, you name it. Need I go on?

Armours designed for a human frame/model are upsized and scaled-up to fit Charr. As a result, we get to enjoy kitteny stretched textures and awkwardly fitting hunchback trenchcoats.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the Charr medium armour that much. But it screams half-kittened.

Infinitism.6019:

Magic tends to be boring? That’s a new one. But, to each his own I guess. And where are you getting “one animation for most spells”?

Every spell has its own animation. As in from level 1 – level 80, every time you cast that spell, you’ll see the same animation. This gets boring (IMO), whereas you can swap up your weapons countless times.

Magic tends to be boring, and there’s only one animation for most spells..

On the other hand, there’s a lot more variety and kittenery to be had in weapon skins.

Dat Charr war machine.

Trolling that knows no bounds.

To each their own haha, I think the Haka is fitting/fun to watch. Does need more tongue sticking out though.

Yeah, I saw the topic, but didn’t want to hijack with my own ideas.

Dodge cancelling is a mechanic in a lot of games, so it doesn’t look like an exploit. It adds depth there, just as it adds depth here.

There is nothing skill-based about auto-attacking. On the other hand, there is a lot of skill involved in trading endurance for higher DPS by dodge cancelling (ninja skip as called here). Not just because of the timing it takes to pull it off (which is not that bad; got it down after 5 minutes on practice golems), but also because it promotes judgement calls about endurance management and fight awareness in general.

It’s fairly easy to dodge too, if you see your foe dodge cancel, just roll backwards. The mechanic reminds me a lot of Q-stepping from GW1, which was never considered an exploit.

Right now, we got this issue where pets are dealing ~50% of our damage, but not hitting anything in PvP with those attacks due to animations rooting the pet and taking too long. Doesn’t matter how much of our damage is in the pet; if it isn’t landing any attacks, that portion of our damage is effectively ~0%.

Some people demand fixes to allow the pet to attack on the move, or to shorten the animations so that attacks actually hit. The way I see it, this will lead to nerfs in the future. Think about it, our raven pets can deal a double 3k crit on their F2 attacks, and cats (particularly a stealthed jeaguar) deal monster crits too.

If our pets could be glued to a target and dish out this damage despite normal kiting (i.e. without the use of cripple/chill on the pet and speed buffs on the target), then they probably have higher DPS than the ranger themselves, or close at least. The new problem would be that a large amount of our damage would come free to us. Where other classes have to actively work (play piano on their keyboards) to crank out 100% damage, we’d have half of that done for us just for being a ranger. It doesn’t translate well to a skill-based game like GW2 is trying to be.

What I propose? (And I’m by no means a game designer, or know kitten about balancing)

—>Return to the ranger their damage from the pet; make it an 80-20 split or something in favour of the player

—>Have the pet less damage-based, and more control/support-based. As rangers, most of our control and support comes from pets anyway (it’s just on the unresponsive F2 slot). Give us more control over pets’ skills and let them do the control/supporting while we work for our damage.

—>Buff pets’ survivability as a result (doesn’t have to be much, but unless you rock bears, other pets are glass right now)

Before all you RPers out there who like fighting side-by-side with your furry pal start QQing, you’d still be doing that, it’s just that your pet would be more focused towards nailing enemies with debilitating conditions like immobilize, cripple, chill, fear, or buffing you/party members with vigor, might, fury.

It’s just an idea anyways, let me know what you think.