Guild Wars 2

thiagoperne.7340:

The game is free, you don’t need to pay to log in again and find out yourself.

At least the community is still helpful!

Hmm. Sounds like garbage. Maybe we’ll check back in another year.

Hey gang,

Haven’t played GW2 in well over a year. I led Darkhand on the Blackgate server. I was thinking about setting up a couple days a week for my guild to come back and do some WvW.

Can you give me a quick rundown of what’s changed? When’s this new “season” starting? How bad will our PVP gear be (I think we stopped playing when the earring/necklace were the only pieces of epic tier gear released)? Is there a need for a small force 10-15 man PVP team on Blackgate these days? Is the meta still zerg?

Thanks in advance!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Semil.8279:

Now Robert is going to quit ANet and change his name, maybe move to Bangladesh or Mongolia.

Being that my namesake is Czech, I think I’d give them a shot first

While I wish we could make pets super awesome ASAP, this patch will be a good step in the right direction. Will it solve all the problems? No, but it’s going to put rangers and their pets in a much better place.
I realize you all may have heard this song and dance before, and it’s okay to be doubtful about the upcoming patch – folks have been burned before, and its just going to take experiencing the changes and playing them to soften that. As a ranger player I am excited about the changes, and I hope once you all get a chance to play what the balance team has worked on, you’ll be happier too

We’ll see Rob. Last time we heard pets ability to hit was supposedly improved… there was absolutely no change. I put the game on the shelf a couple weeks ago, partially because I was sick and tired of the run around this class has gotten. For me, it’s pretty much too little too late, even if your fix is decent. The quickness nerf was the last straw for me… pretty much the only thing that made the class fun was removed.

I’ll log in and check out the changes, but your balance team has done this game no favors in the retention of dedicated rangers.

Holy crap… good catch. I’ve felt that this skill was messed up too but couldn’t put my finger on it. Yet another reason to be depressed while using longbow.

Please post this in the bug section!

Crafted this right before the patch:

http://i.imgur.com/VuXpLdc.jpg

Entire wealth of my charecter spent. Now I stand around in town looking pretty. I don’t think anyone who plays Longbow can honestly say the weapon is “not that bad”. It was extremely clunky before the patch, now it’s virtually unusable in WvW. So incredibly easy to dodge, and zero burst potential.

-Banners: We’re playing with some other ideas on how to make them stronger/a unique play style, while also trying to make sure they don’t “step on the toes” of similar abilities for other classes, like Ranger spirits.

HAHAHAHA! You funny man!

If quickness spiking was OP… what the hell do you call thieves spiking from invis?

I feel like quickness was a hamfisted change that has ruined the feel of the game for people that loved it. Why not have made quickness reduce damage done by 25% but retain its 100% speed? Then quickness gets toned down but our arrows could still at least find their mark instead of being softballs we’re lobbing every 2 seconds? We still get to feel awesome, shooting super fast. Quickness was FUN. Rangers have very little in our arsenal that is fun. You might not have outright killed ranger, but you took away the fun parts of playing one.

Also, not that it matters now, but I’d love to know the reasoning behind why shortbow’s crossfire still doesn’t get the stated % speed increase with this boon.

The worst part to me, is that quickness made the class “feel good”. That alone kept many of us playing despite being dead last in power. Now it doesn’t feel good at all. Pet swapping as a mechanic is worthless. Our only good trait line is now hollow without QZ. I’ve fallen back to an incredibly boring all signet build and I just stand there spamming shortbow auto-attack and never activating any signets except my “oh kitten” button on a 90 second cool down. It’s hardly worth weapon swapping to longbow now as it is in a terrible state without quickness . LB feels horribly slow and all our attacks are incredibly easy to avoid.

I’ve tried many weapon sets and specs and none of it feels “fun” now, let alone anywhere near viable.

Honestly at this point I think we deserve a clear timeline of when we can expect some of these changes that have been flagged for months and months as Rangers problem areas. I know that breaks your protocol at some level, but your fans are unhappy and we need to hear something.

When can we expect longbow improvements. When can we expect spirits to actually be something worth using. When can we expect pets to hit moving targets in WvW and survive long enough to be an asset.

Necros have gotten a lot of attention and have pulled ahead in power. Engineers got huge attention in the last two patches and have pulled ahead in power. Rangers continue to languish and have fallen even further behind the rest of the classes with this latest patch. By all rights, April should be OUR month, but somehow I’m guessing we’ll see a big focus on improving Warriors again because their power has slipped from the absolute strongest, to 2nd tier.

They didn’t buff cats. They removed their crit spike based on the panther build people found. The patch notes are worded in a very deceptive manner.

Well I played all night in WvW to give it a fair shake. I’m raging a bit right now, because I honestly feel like the “feel” of my class has been gutted. Quickness defined Ranger, at least for some of us:

•QZ is now utter garbage. Remove it from your bar if you are a WvW player.
•Greatsword, despite the love, still feels like a “meh” weapon. And now with quickness gone, you’ll never burst enough with it.
•I tried hard to find a reason to keep five points in BM for 2 seconds of gimpquick… but it sucks hard. Stomp/rev with it is basically useless. If you use it with crossfire, you won’t even notice it’s on. What a freaking joke.
•I stared at my traits for like an hour trying to find a single build that doesn’t totally suck. The only one that is still able to pump out damage is condition/traps and I hate that play style.

Despite the amazing culling fix, I’m going to bed with the heaviest heart I’ve ever had in this game. Despite being the weakest class, I’ve never strayed for from the ranger because I loved the playstyle. Now my ranger feels like total kitten. You’ve gutted it’s spirit. Nothing fun about it.

How does this dev team, who swears by incremental changes, go from 100% to 50% for one of the games most important boons? WTF were you thinking? Did you even consider how this would effect rangers, the bottom of the barrel class, the most?

Everything feels slow and crummy with no more quickness

The “fun” of the class is totally gone with this change. I’m not even talking about DMG numbers. The class feels boring slow and totally kittenty now. GG.

And quickness stomping / rezzing is fairly pointless now as well. I’ll be ditching QZ and 5 points in beastmastery and trying to salvage some other form of a reasonable build. UGGGH traps… I don’t want to use them but they are really forcing me to.

I have to agree that this patch is just another in a long series of kicks to the nuts for rangers.

Rangers had two semi-decent builds (ranged glass cannon w/ quickness AND condi traps).

Now we have one, (condi traps) and that one is a real bummer in WvW.

Yay progress!

Nice post Rob.

Raven/Owl are decent for small group WvW. Panther and Snow Leopard combo are my favorite if I’m trying to find 1v1’s.

Large scale WvW… I’m afraid it really doesn’t matter. Forgive me but I have to eye roll a little bit when you say proper pet management is the key. Yeah you might get lucky and send your pet in at just the right moment to get a reef drakes skill off once. If you’re even luckier it might be facing towards some enemies at that moment, but it will die right after and you will be left at 60% effectiveness and a long cool down before you can swap him out.

Large scale WvW our pet’s are utter fail. No amount of lipstick is going to make this pig look good.

Robert are you aware if we should expect any tweaks to pets this patch other than agony resistance?

Seems like the fix is glaringly obvious. Take away the root effect of the auto attack skills and maybe increase pet in-combat movement speed a little bit. Zero impact to PvE, suddenly viable in PvP.

I’m 90% sure it works the way it does so the animation looks correct and the pet doesn’t slide along the ground as it swings its paw. While I appreciate the visual impact, gimping our whole class for it is a hell of a sacrifice.

I was over in the Norn starting area doing some lowbie quests yesterday and I came across Honor the Spirit of Snow Leopard in Borealis Forest from Shaman Sigarr. Try this quest and you’ll be transformed into a snow leopard to hunt prey. Since the Snow Leopard is one of the pets I use consistently I found this extremely interesting.

In leopard form, it immediately became clear to me why our pets struggle so much with hitting moving targets and therefore are essentially useless in WvW. The leopards primary attack roots it in place and has a painfully long animation. I was grinding my teeth trying to hit the slow moving rabbits as they easily evaded me. Keep in mind these are dumb NPC’s moving in a straight line… not erratic humans intentionally trying to avoid being hit.

Interesting exercise if you want to understand your crummy pets better.

How about explosive tips on the 1 skill making each shot a short range AOE. Make the LB a true multi-target weapon and something we could really use in WvW.

I’d love to see the longbow auto-attack get a nice AOE effect like an explosive tip. If the shortbow is our single target range weapon, give the longbow more multi-target efficiency other than just our long cool-down #5 skill.

Sooo, we might get a buff to LB and GS and utilities, and a partial fix for pets in dungeons. I’m not jumping up and down excited, but that’s more than we’ve EVER gotten in one patch before. I’m cautiously optimistic, especially if the utility fixes are decent!

Thanks for the agony fix Rob! Hope we’ve got more to look forward to in the future.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

As I’ve said before – I am not on the balance team… at best I can present things and harp on issues and constantly bring them up to keep them in focus, and to remind the people on the team and who make the decisions in the end that it is an issue that needs to get resolved.

Rob, that’s really all we ask… from you at least. The balance team on the other hand, has some ’splainin to do and owes us some kitten posts.

Seems like an easy solution would be to baseline the Ranger’s damage higher and the pets lower, and then offer a trait in beastmastery that allows you to flip it back.

For example: 90/10 split, UNLESS you take a tier 1 beast mastery skill that drops your personal damage by 20% and increases the pets by 200%. You could also easily slap that on as secondary effect of an existing trait like Masters Bond.

Best of both worlds. The 10 or so people out there who love their pets the way they are can keep them, while everybody else can move on with their lives.

They don’t want the pet to be “vestigial” so I know they won’t do this for us, but the truth is that our pets, as they currently stand, are EXTREMELY vestigial in end game content.

We tend not to announce these things since issues can pop up and derail us. However this next patch’s time for the balance team is mostly spoken for already. We all acknowledge the core problems that are listed, but the fix isn’t just going to be someone changing a few numbers. The issue of pet AI is being worked on, but that is nothing new either – our tech-priests have been working on that problem for a while now.

I appreciate your candor Rob, and this isn’t directed at you, but I have to say this doesn’t fill me with confidence. Seven months after go live, our core mechanic is broken to the point of near worthless in certain aspects of the game. Every seasoned player of this game knows that rangers are broken in dungeons and wvw. Even the balance devs have admitted that ranger is the class in need of the most help. The fact that the fix is difficult doesn’t necessarily mean we have an unlimited amount of patience with it’s arrival. You have a limited pool of resources, I understand that, but they are obviously being invested in lots of different areas of the game other than this issue.

For a team as talented at yours, who created such a wonderful game, I have to believe that if ranger pet fixes were a top priority, they’d be completed very quickly.

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda, could you please weigh in on whether or not things like the in-game advantages given by having HoM pets, etc. are also on the list of “issues” for the Ranger?

I think it would be beneficial if we knew where the community and the devs were on the same page. I think it’d be beneficial to the community to know what are the sort of things we know to simply “be patient” on. For example, we know to be patient on pet AI and pets have no Agony Resist in fractals. That’s comforting to know that those are acknowledged problems and being fixed.

Robert, it’s the fact that if I want two spider pets that have a stun, I have to have the Black Widow. If I want two ravens, I have to have the White Raven. If I want two Moas with a stun, I have to have the Black Moa.

Sebrent, of all the massive balance issues rangers face, this is the least important I can think of. Considering they’re obviously very limited in what they have time to work on, can we please agree to let stuff like this go by the wayside, at least until our true issues are fixed?

Soooo. How did JQ enter Durios? Please don’t tell me you had a mesmer hiding under our noses in there for the last 90 minutes.

Rising Dusk.2408:

neverborne.4736:

Please be our unofficial spokesperson Rob! Rangers have felt so lost for so long until you came along! We all love this class and just want it to be viable and on par with the others!

You should see how the classes Rob doesn’t play feel, haha.

I feel sorry for no other classes… except maybe Engi’s.

By the way Rob, burning question from the Ranger community that has never been clearly answered. Mad props if you step up to the plate on this one:

Was the change to our shortbow attack speed/damage output an intentional nerf based on thinking the weapon was too strong, or a shrugged-off side effect of the “animation glitch” fix?

I don’t think we should expect this discussion to resolve into changes for March. Maybe April though (if they take any of our suggestions to heart).

Once this pet issue is shored up, I’d like to invite Rob back to have one of these convo’s with us on our traits, and another one on our weapon skills if he could possibly spare the time.

Please be our unofficial spokesperson Rob! Rangers have felt so lost for so long until you came along! We all love this class and just want it to be viable and on par with the others!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’ll admit I don’t WvW as much as I likely should. When I do though, I tend to avoid the larger battles due to culling and those pesky stealth thieves who seem to pick my Anet tag out of the crowd and proceed to stick daggers in my spine.
When I WvW, I tend to run off into areas where I can get the drop on someone who is running to an objective that is contested. Rangers are really powerful in 1v1, especially when you can get the jump on someone and have good daze\evasion. When I am caught up ikittenerg trying to push back another zerg, I tend to keep my pet in pacifist mode so it doesn’t go running off to its death.
In a 1v1-3 situation though, double hyenas and a trusty spider can be a real game changer and difference maker.

Rob, again, I understand you’re not a WvW dev, but I am going to hopefully keep this in your mind, especially if you’re going to advocate for our changes.

By your own admission you leave your pet on passive in large scale WvW (which is really 90% of WvW). Don’t you think that points to a problem that needs to be addressed? Yeah, rangers can 1v1 decently, especially if they spec traps. But no ranger who wants to be part of a WvW guild can build like that and consider themselves useful. If our pets are being essentially taken our of the equation in WvW (which for some of us is the WHOLE game) we really would like somebody to offer us some sort of solution.

Rob,

As a WvW ranger, I feel we really get the shortest end of the stick when it comes to pets. We all agree pets are great at open world pve and even sPvP.

What, if anything, can be done about the terrible lack of survivability and versatility of pets in WvW where AoE is everywhere and pets are always dead?

Since you’ve shot down AoE reduction (which has been my go to fix for this problem) I have one other suggestion I hope you will consider. Buff devourers in 2 areas. Range, and projectile speed. Make their range 1200 or even 1500 and significantly increase their projectiles speed so they can actually hit moving targets in wvw. Also maybe they could hit an enemy on a wall or from a wall!

They would become more turret-like for sure, but at least we could potentially have a LIVING pet in WvW. I can’t see how this would negatively impact PvE. Can you? It seems only fair that somebody should have to target my pet for 5-10 seconds to kill it rather than just have it explode randomly from AoE in WvW.

Much respect for entering into this conversation and I hope you understand that this community feels like we’ve been ignored and scorned for a long time.

Enjoy that feeling while lasts my friend.

•Mesmers have veil, portal, mass invis and time warp.
•Thieves have shadow refuge and the best burst.
•Ele’s can reflect siege damage and rain fire from the walls.
•Necro’s are the only ones who can help their team kill a buffed claimer.
•Warriors deal out the highest range damage while wearing heavy armor, or can be the ultimate damage sponge.
• Guards have the best group buffs and disruption

What do Ranger do special in WvW? Absolutely nothing. Everything we can do, others can do better.

Give us a new skill to make us the ultimate scouts. With the 25 man requirement for orange swords, scouting actually matters in WvW. You can replace any of our utterly broken and worthless skills (take your pick, we’ve got tons.)

3 ideas:
Commune with Nature:
Lay down a commune field with a 5 minute duration and no range limiation. Reactivate the skill to briefly portal back to that location as an invisible/incorporeal form of yourself for several seconds to see what is going on around that area before returning to your body. Should be fairly easy to program with existing Mesmer portal code.

Send a Scout Hawk:
Activate the skill and then click an area of the mini-map to send the hawk. Several seconds later that area will become “revealed” allowing you to see red dots of enemy players, green dots of allied players on the map even though it’s beyond the normal range which you’d be able to do so.

Hunker down:
Create a sticks/branches shelter similar to shadow refuge that up to 5 allies can “hide” in (go invis, gain invulnerability). They get knocked out if they cast or attack. Enemies can destroy the shelter if they target it. Should have about as much health as a catapult. This would be a really neat skill for group fights, as your wounded allies can attempt to retreat to the shelter to try to regain health. Also I can imagine two or three of these set up in a wooded area near a road, with your team hiding inside waiting for the enemy force to pass by. So cool!

Any other “unique” skill ideas for Rangers?

Signet of the hunt + 30% pet speed buff is largely redundant as far as I can tell.

That is not good news. That is PR dribble. Means nothing.

You’ll be better off making a post about one single bug and describing it in depth with a lot of supporting information. Re pasting the class bug list like this, especially if people do it en-masse as a sign of protest, will just get you an infraction.

I think this change offers an opportunity to make rangers actually useful in WvW. Replace one of our borked skills (pick any, we have tons) with “Send a Scout Hawk”. Scout hawk “reveals” one area of the map for 10 seconds (i.e shows red dots of enemy players on the overworld map ala clairvoyance in League of Legends). Ranger can then report in chat and actually act as a scout.

Or, to be more realistic since they’ll never make rangers useful, add “scout tower” siege equipment. Costs 40 to build. Sends up warning pings on the map whenever 5 or more enemies pass within its line of site, or if it’s attacked.

I think titles should be applied retroactively, badges should be kept as the primary WvW currency for new items, and progression ranks should start fresh.

Everything in the interview was great, but there was one glaring omission that really has me concerned.

There was no mention of WvW gear improvements: new stat options for badges, and Ascendant options.

Gear is the 4th leg of the WvW table along with progression, culling and titles. Without it the table still sucks.

Well, they are celebrating loudly over in the Necro forum, so I guess we are now unequivocally the most broken and under powered class with not even a hint of redemption from ANet in the future or any mention of why we continue to be left in the dust. My jaw just about hit the floor when I saw the very nice improvements for thieves and guardians and nerfs for us.

I don’t need to be the FOTM class, or stomping everyone I meet, but at this point being a WvW Bow ranger is just a joke. We bring nothing to the table, and are a liability to our groups. With sadness in my heart, I started my first alt last night. Once it’s 80, my commander icon’ed, full ascendant ranger will be put on the shelf for good.

There’s plenty of great guilds on Blackgate to choose from, but let me tell you what might make Darkhand the right guild for you:

• Tactical WvW without the zerg: We run 10 – 15 deep in WvW most nights, and we take down forces twice as large on a regular basis.

• History: Darkhand is one of the oldest and most respected names in MMO PVP. We’ve been around for 15 years. You don’t have to worry about the guild having drama or collapsing. We treat each other like family and move from game to game together. Once you are Darkhand, you’ll be Darkhand for life.

• Ladies: do you like um? About 1/3 of our actives are honest-to-god, real life women.

• Pimp Web site? Check. www.the-darkhand.com

• Voice comm’s: Teamspeak server with all sorts of clever channel names. We’re so clever!

• Content: We will be unlocking all guild missions. Our first one is scheduled for this Friday.

Here’s a video I made of us owning some newbs:
https://plus.google....443381564/posts

If you want to own newbs with us, post here, message me in game, or apply on our site.

At this point. I’m finally giving up and re rolling. I can’t continue to play this gimped class, despite that a bow ranger is all I’ve ever wanted to play. But it’s not fair to the people I run with. I’ll be logging a ticket for a refund for my commander icon since this class is really and truly never going to be fixed.

Am I wrong? It’s not working for me I swear to god…

rylark.3418:

And a trap ranger isn’t useful for the team? He can defend 2 points at the same time, watch some videos from him and come back.

Trap rangers are good in sPvP. Nobody here is complaining about trap rangers in sPvP. Everything else we can do in every other game mode is borked.

This is par for the course. The Devs are very out of touch when it comes to ranger. Pets are still utterly broken. Necros got a TON of love, and even the overpowered theif and warrior classes got significant buffs. My build got a WvW nerf for the guard skill which was our only “cool” or “special” thing we could do in WvW (while mesmer clones still get to pop up on walls). None of the other patch notes affect any ranger playing a reasonable build.

Afro Dude.8423:

Mungrul.9358:

I’ve never had 50 ectos at one time. Running a full stable of alts puts paid to that, and my rare/exotic drop rate isn’t what I’d call generous. I’m more likely to get to 40 laurels before I get 50 ectos.
This new gearing policy of theirs that relies on grind is positively hateful.
I want max gear for peanuts, just the way it was in GW1.
All these eejits insisting that max stats should require grind because that’s how every other MMO does it have spoiled this game.

Ah well, yet another reason to continue not to buy gems.
As long as they continue with this despicable behaviour, I’ll continue to play without giving them a cent of money.
They can pay for me to play.

Well said buddy, the requirements for the new items are downright stupid for anyone that doesn’t like to grind to no tomorrow. Infact, here’s a key quote from the staff found here :“I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

Yes, because it sure is “fun” needing to grind dailies for ridiculous amounts of time (30-70 dailies & counting if you can sign in every day.) just to outfit one of my characters with gear that doesn’t put her at a fixed statistical disadvantage.

Please get over yourselves. Ascendant gear has been ridiculously easy to get if you play even semi-regularly. Go play hello kitty if you want a game for 4-year-olds.

My guess is that they are trying to make each Ascendant piece have a primary path and 2ndary paths of attainment. (I.E. Fractals = Rings primary. Laurels = Necks primary Guild missions = Accessories primary).

I think the idea is that there are easier ways to get the gear if you play all aspects of the game, but you have the option of just grinding one type of game play to get the gear at reduced efficiency. Makes sense to me.

I’m guessing this will continue next month with WvW becoming a primary path of some sort of ascendant piece with less efficient 2ndary options.