Guild Wars 2

7. You’re wrong. Not everyone would run it. It would be dead in spvp and solo pve. Further, a lot of people still wouldn’t run it in dungeons/WvW because if their pet has weak survivability anyway it’s gonna drop like a rock. That 2 seconds it survives under AoE fire from a zerg in WvW? It would be only 4 seconds if the damage reduction was as high as 50%.

1. Restore shortbow range to 1200. Longbow is currently the only option for poking in WvW without committing to a fight. Even Axe out-ranges this weapon by merit of bouncing to deeper targets. A lot of people felt cheated when the range was decreased having bought their dreamer to use in WvW, where range is very important. If the weapon is still thought to be OP following a range restoration then the damage or utility can be nerfed, but the response to this change has shown what rangers really want out of this weapon.

2. Increase base longbow range to 1500. This weapon lives for its 1500 range. Necromancers, Mesmers, Warriors and Elementalists easily outclass this weapon in DPS and utility at 1200 range. 1500 range is an attractive feature, and what drew a lot to Ranger in the first place, but pidgeon-holing rangers into the Eagle Eye trait is just no good, traits should be a choice, no a requirement for your weapon to function.

3. Rework Eagle Eye trait so it doesn’t increase range but instead gives more damage. On SotG it was said that the reason longbow’s base range couldn’t go up to 1500 was because of triggers that become broken at that range. Simply put, anything breakable by 1500 range is breakable now, and by removing the range increase from Eagle Eye there’s no excuse for longbow range to not be increased.

4. Restore pet leash range to 5000 for PvE and WvW. The pet leash distance was lowered primarily because pet leash range was being abused on certain sPvP maps where they basically had infinite range. In PvE and WvW this was hardly an issue. Some fun things removed by this change: long range jaguar assassinations (easily countered but still funny to try), attempts to attack siege at long range, using pet to try to disrupt a zerg without committing, punishing an enemy for chasing you after they’ve decided to flee (if they are chasing you and you’re running it’s trivial for them to make 2000 range between you if you spend a second or two continuing to run).

5. Reduce pet skill cast time across the board. And of course balance as needed. Many skills are a total hindrance in WvW and PvP. There was a recent post demonstrating that speed training (10% cooldown reduction for all pet skills) actually decreased some pets’ dps because of how clunky many skills are.

6. Fix Sword 1. This skill basically stuns you.

7. Introduce a major adept beastmastery (BM 10) trait that reduces the damage pets and spirits take from AoE. Pets (and spirits) currently are just not a thing in big zerg fights and higher level dungeons. This would solve their main issue, which is dying to the big red circles.

8. Replace Instinctual Bond (BM 5) with Speed Training (BM 10). In theory, pets with DPS abilities should do more DPS with this, and pets with utility abilities should provide more utility. In practice this doesn’t happen now because of cast times, but combined with faster pet cast times this trait is more in line with what a minor trait should be: not very powerful, but generally applicable, much like Necro’s Soul Reaping minor adept trait (10% life force generation). Also, Instinctual Bond is way too niche for a minor trait: most other “increase your strength when you’re downed” traits are major, but generally being downed is not a part of someone’s game plan and thus this trait is not very fun to build around.

9. Replace Nature’s Wrath (BM 25) with a new minor trait that lets you have manual control of all of your pets’ skills instead of just one. The idea of having manual control of your pets’ abilities was brought up on SotG. One of the main concerns seemed to be that it would overwhelm new players. This is a legitimate concern, but by having the ability tied to a minor trait you could circumvent this by not allowing new players access to this before level 60. Anyone that goes 25 deep into beastmastery would likely appreciate the greater pet control considering how many trait points they are sinking into what is currently largely controlled by AI.

Life Siphon (Dagger 2) and the Vampiric Trait are affected by HP, other forms of siphoning are not.

SafiMoyo.5130:

Speed Training can actually lower the pet’s DPS on a moving target because some of their skills just suck at hitting.

Pets are in such a sorry state. What’s the best way to increase pet DPS? Ignore half the pet traits, obviously.

Anyway, fantastic post. Should be stickied.

Informality.1279:

Sandpit.3467:

Informality.1279:

I do like the range changes for shortbow however. Realistically a shortbow can not shoot as far as a longbow due to the force exerted by the string itself. So it makes sense to me (as an archer in real life).

Longbow 1500 vs Shortbow 1200, they were not equal before.

Shortbow 900 vs Axe 900 and you don’t see a problem with that?

The thing is, there’s a trade-off for every weapon. The shortbow before was op in comparison to the longbow, making the longbow not worth it. They had nearly the same range (once you’re that far back, just a bit more does not make that significant of a difference), but the shortbow had rapid-fire where the longbow took longer. This left the longbow weaker in comparison.

What they did was balance the weapons for Ranger. To get the rapid-fire, you now have to give up some distance. To gain the distance, you give up rapid-fire. To me, it was a good change. Both player wise and development wise.

The shortbow was OP compared to the longbow because the longbow was utter crap. You need a masters trait to even make it worth considering. Shortbow’s function was mobile ranged pressure and it filled that role trait or not. Axe’s role was multi-target ranged DPS and it filled that role trait or not. GS role is high dps mobile melee weapon and it filled that role trait or not. Longbow’s niche is 1500 range weapon (because let’s be real, it sucks without that gimmick) and you need a master level trait to be able to fill that role.

Biggest questions on my mind:

1. Why the shortbow range nerf, and is there any chance of getting it reverted?
2. Is there any chance of us getting greater pet control options in the future? Options I’d like:
- Commands: stand here, stand here and don’t attack, guard here, attack nearest enemy (stance, map to guard/avoid combat rotation), avoid AoE (stance), lock on target, guard this ally,
- Ability to use other 3 pet abilities manually. Certain abilities like Quickening Screech, Tail Swipe, Poison Gas, and Harmonic Cry have inherent utility that often goes to waste because my pet is dumb.
3. Why not increase longbow base range? The longbow doesn’t even feel like a good weapon until you get the master trait.

Nope. Still countered by CC. Still countered by mobility. I’d say we’re on the same level as thief, mesmer, elementalist, guardian and engineer now where balance is concerned, while ranger and warrior just don’t measure up.

A ranger staff suggestion to enable a more supportive playstyle in-line with nature-magic. Draws inspiration from other ranger weapons and other professions’ staff skill-sets for mechanics, and of course upon the idea that rangers have a certain affinity for nature for the flavor. Ultimately this post is just for fun, since it’s unlikely Anet will implement a staff for rangers this far in, and since it’s fun to brainstorm what one might be like in any case.

Ranger Staff

Gift of Bees(1): Bees swarm the target, dealing damage to that foe and up to 2 others in a small area of effect. 1200 range. 0.75s cast time. 90 area of effect.

Bury in Squirrels(2): Squirrels swarm the target area, dealing damage and applying vulnerability (2 stacks, 5 seconds) to affected enemies each second. 900 range. 1.5 second cast time. 240 radius. 12 second cooldown.

Verdant Bloom(3): Creates a lush area for 6 seconds, dealing minor initial damage to enemies, as well as granting vigor (2 seconds) and regeneration (2 seconds) to allies each second. 600 range. 1 second cast time. 240 radius. 25 second cooldown.

Armor of Bark and Thorn (4): Grants you and nearby allies protection and retaliation for 5 seconds. 600 radius. 1.5 second cast time. 30 second cooldown.

Pollen Burst(5): The ranger gathers nearby airborne pollen into a dense ball to launch at foes, dealing damage and dazing for 1 second to enemies in the blast radius. The ranger can activate this ability again to detonate it early. Blast finisher. 1200 range. 1 second cast time. 120 radius. 45 second cooldown.

The underlying goals with this skillset are to provide the Ranger with a supportive weapon based on boons to align with nature magic builds, as well as give the ranger a weapon that represents the more magical aspects of the profession that currently is only represented by utilities.

Thoughts?

I use full cleric armor with rabid crests and knight’s jewelry (working on making that all-stats jewelry). Between Reaper’s Scythe, Mark of Blood and Full of Life (Blood Magic 5) I can have basically 100% regeneration uptime while I’m out of Death Shroud, so healing power is very potent.

However, don’t confuse healing power’s effectiveness with why cleric’s is good. Cleric’s is good because of toughness + hp. It’s the most effective gear for increasing your effective healing per second because each point of hp gained from your heals is more efficient from toughness.

It’s very solid for WvW and any solo PvE content, but very weak for speed clearing dungeons.

If you like feeling unkillable and don’t mind very low single-target DPS, it’s a great choice.

In WvW a thief with the right build and any brains will never die. They are the best roaming class. It’s not really thieves in general that are OP, just their Shadow arts and Acrobatics trait lines that make them able to do anything they want without fear of death.

My list of changes for necro I want:

- GW1 minions. No more sub-abilities, multiples of each minion type. Almost exactly like GW1 system except instead of the corpse system, minion skills cost life force. Other limiting factors on minions numbers are minion skill cooldown (ie, 1 bone fiend per 10 seconds or whatever) and innate hp degeneration.
- A new condition which necromancers have the most access too. Called Virulence, stacks in intensity, each stack increases condition damage by 1%. It’s vulnerability for conditions. Obviously the condition would be heavily tied to other conditions, featuring prominently in staff, scepter, offhand dagger and corruption skills.
- DS1 cast time decreased to 3/4s, total raw DPS remains the same. This is a buff for any on-hit or on-crit builds and generally would make DS feel a bit smoother.
- General buffs to Axe. Specifically, up front damage on Axe 1 and 3 increased, and life force gain on Axe 2 increased from 8 to 10%.
- Healing power scales siphoning abilities, 50% increase to siphoning trait nerfed in some way to compensate. Right now it’s totally counter-intuitive that toughness is a better way overall to amplify your long-term fight potential than healing power is, especially considering HP is totally shut down by poison.
- Buff unused utilities: signet of spite, signet of undeath, spectral wall, spectral armor, (and minions as detailed above)
- Buff or rework unused traits

Nemesis.8593:

mistermoo.6720:

All I really want from this patch is stability on spectral armor.

Stability on a 90 second CD… rofl… exactly what we were missing all along.

Well I think it’s an elegant change. Spectral Armor needs a buff and Necromancers need stability, it’s a perfect fit.

Truth be told I would make a lot of changes if I were in charge, but my main concern is WvW, and there Necromancers excel both on defense and in a zerg, so all I really want is the ability to set up my bar such that I don’t have to blow plague every time I want to engage a rifle engi / hammer warrior.

All I really want from this patch is stability on spectral armor.

Hi, Necromancer main here.

Just posting a suggestion for a trait change. Currently Spiteful Marks increases the damage of marks by 10%. Marks are mostly condition damage and utility, though, and this trait gives you barely any benefit at all. Further, Staff 1 is fairly weak for power builds. This means is that power-leaning necromancers have little options with regard to 1200 range DPS; the only option is to spam staff 1 and staff 4. (it has a reasonable nuke on it)

My suggestion is to replace Spiteful Marks with a trait that increases Life Blast’s range to 1200. This solves two problems. One, it makes the accumulated DS from spamming 1 in long range mexican standoff situations useful. Two, it gives non-condition damage necromancers a bit of love in the 1200 range department.

Thanks for reading.

ecthelion.6794:

Yes, the 3rd Arah boss is overpowered and not in a fun way.

As for firing people… Trust me bud, there’s a long list of people behind this game that should never work in the industry again.

They took an extremely well conceived and executed game in GW1, made a few improvements, and then basically messed up all the rest.

Oh please. Take your inflated sense of entitlement and faux-expertise on “the industry” and shove it.

At this point I’ve done all paths for CoE a couple times and I thought I’d give some feedback for my favorite dungeon.

Subject Alpha
- Very engaging; dodging his AoEs is make-or-break, and consequently the fights are pretty intense. Dodging is easy once you have run it enough, but still requires your attention.
- Despite having a lot of different attacks, only 2 are ultimately notable. Circles that kill you and imprisonment crystals. As a result, fights 2 and 3 feel largely the same. Silly suggestion: Give him a short-duration stealth for the third fight; the inquest spared no expense.
- Given that you fight him 3 times, he has a little more health than he needs to. I’d say reduce it by 15%.
- Sometimes gets stuck and won’t do anything, allowing for a really easy fight
-A lot of classes have a way to escape Imp Crystal or tank it; Not sure if any lack one or the other, but if there are some odd classes out, the health of the crystal should be reduced since the most efficient way right now to deal with it is blink and company

Champion Crab Destroyer
- This is easily skippable and most groups seem to want to. As a result, I’ve been unable to even fight him. I’d block progress until it’s dead unless bypassing it is intended.

Evolved Destroyer
- Boring fight for many reasons. Any 1200 range weapon can safely damage him from the stairs so there is little incentive to go onto the permanently dragon’s toothed platforms. Meanwhile, there is little pressure to the safe players besides occasionally dodging a dragon’s tooth, and furthermore you have to laser down his shields a lot. It’s mainly just tedious.
- Suggestions: Longer shield-down state, remove/slow the rate of the constant dragon’s toothing on the levitating platforms, spawn other destroyers above to pressure the players on the lasers/stairs and promote use of the platforms

Bjarl
- Gets stuck a lot
- Doesn’t really pose a threat since he doesn’t really have any tricks up his sleeve besides his shield
- Still fairly fun

Various Creatures [threatening the inquest in the shield]
- This fight is hilarious. The knockdown is over-the-top. Love it!

Security Golems [while deactivating the system via console]
- Same as above.

Overall I love the dungeon. A lot of the bosses get stuck a lot. Most of the enemies are sufficiently difficult to keep you attentive but not overwhelmed and Subject Alpha is the best boss I’ve yet faced.

One thing I was a little disappointed with is that the ‘evolved’ nature of the bosses (destroyer, husk, alpha) was not really fleshed out. When I think of mad scientists like the inquest forcibly evolving things, I imagine them getting wings, super-speed, invisibility, maybe even speech. It’s kind of weird that their alpha experiment is “controls undead” and “is an elementalist made of slugs” and that their evolved destroyer is a wimp that puts up a shield and also is an elementalist.

But I digress. Great dungeon!

Just wanted to chime in to say that these are great changes. In particular, the insurgents in CoE story were pretty absurd, and the Searing Effigy was way harder than anything else I’d ever faced.

Was it feedback on these forums that prompted these changes?

While I whole-heartedly advise against picking a profession because it’s the best replacement you can find for Ritualist, Guardians (with spirit weapons) have the most “spiritual” feel of all the professions.

Elementalist on the whole is fine, but only because of Water Magic and Arcana. I’d like to see Fire, Air and Earth magic brought up to par.

Watched a video from yesterday. Good stuff. I feel like you could be a little more liberal with your use of your elite, those elementals are pretty useful. Also, I think you’ve sold me on Armor of Earth over Lightning Flash.

I have a 22 elementalist. Just posting a tip for those using offhand daggers.

Your Air 5 skill is called updraft. You push away enemies in front of you and launch yourself backwards while gaining swiftness. The obvious use for this skill is to blow back melee foes running at you and gain swiftness to make the task of catching you even harder for your melee opponent. When you’re running away or trying to get somewhere, though, the backwards launch hurts more than it helps.

You can actually make updraft’s backward launch work to your advantage in these situations. If you open Esc > Options > Controls, you should see an option called “About Face.” This makes your character do an about face, or a 180 degree turn. Bind about face to a key (I use z).

To do the trick, run in the direction you want to launch yourself with updraft. Then, press your about face key and immediately after use updraft. This will cause you to turn around and look in the direction you were running from and then launch you in the direction you were running. After this, mouse over the direction you’re running and mouse 1 + mouse 2, causing you to almost seamlessly resume running that direction, but now with swiftness and the distance closed.

Um. That’s it. :-)

I’d like to see the heal on life siphon increased. The damage on D1 really isn’t that strong for a melee range, single target ability; I think it’s fine as is.

The axe, on the other hand, should have something extra. Make A2 splash (like Warrior GS) or give A1 a faster attack speed.

Worden.9241:

Keep in mind I mainly PvE. I use Dagger&Focus/Staff with an emphasis on healing and wells for support.

In sticky situations I stagger the wells as needed to keep protection up as long as possible. And I do as many heals as I can to keep party up: Reaper’s Touch/Well of Blood/life transfer/heal out of death shroud/mark of blood on staff swap etc.

I stack power, healing, and toughness as main stats

Reaper’s Touch and Well of Suffering also stack a lot of vulnerability quickly for quite a big damage boost when healing isnt needed.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MzVMMm9MoMxGmoMxGmx0ax0zMbmosR

This is pretty much my strategy as well. In PvE I mainly use staff and wells for aoe galore, but the dagger + focus weapon swap serves these main functions:
- Superior single-target DPS and death shroud generation, especially when marks are on CD
- Life Siphon and Reaper’s Touch for additional healing, especially right after using Mark of Blood
- Dark Pact and Spinal Shivers to disable dangerous melee foes

I like it a lot for killing time while important skills, usually your heal and/or utility, are on cooldown. Spite 10 lets you get 15s of might each time you use DS1, meaning you can get 8+ stacks of might from being in DS. Further, DS4 is powerful AoE and fear is an interrupt with no cast delay. Overall I find Death Shroud useful, but not over-centralizing.

Also, it has a lot of synergy with the necromancer’s skills. The necromancer is all about outliving and outlasting the enemy. As your enemies die from conditions and steady (albeit low) dps, your giant health pool, strong healing skills, and DS keep you alive to see out the full extent of your attrition.