Guild Wars 2

Vancien.1980:

The longbow will always be used for a secondary weapon period.

I stopped reading right there.

When you force someone to spec a certain way to play, that’s a design failure. Especially for a game with no trinity. That is not a valid argument.

Go full glass cannon or go home. Get berserker sets. Extra few thousand HP is not going to save you if you get focus fired in WvW.

You just have to do the ebb and flow dance and use your team as a buffer and even 16k HP is fine. If your side gets an orb, then you almost to 19k.

Bran.7425:

That the ranger shouts were (probably) not originally designed as shouts, but as the Pet Skill category and sometime during the development they shift them to shouts without any adaptation at all.

This.

Shouts would make a great F5 to F8 and should’ve came standard.

What kind of worthless beastmaster are you if you can’t get your pet to sit and wait? (e.g. guard)

NemesiS.6749:

ookie.5972:

Yes….. very smart move add stun break to pure offensive skill…. Where’s logic? I say.

they probably were at anet like, ok we going to nerf hard QZ but to keep them happy lets add a stun break, they wont even notice it. They probably thing we are stupid or something

You give these people too much credit. Just like the people that think governments are smart or competent enough to orchestrate huge conspiracies.

No, it’s not a trick; they’re that clueless about their own game. No one who’s played this class for more than an hour would implement these changes.

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gw2-ascended-longbow.jpg

Argh…another ugly weapon in GW2. Surprise!

Not looking forward to grinding for something that I don’t even like.

No Walking.6349:

And it will probably never be mounts…..ever.

Probably a good thing. With the amount of culling in this game, all that would amount to is a bunch of characters doing gangnam style on the screen cuz their mounts won’t load on your screen.

Aberrant.6749:

So you’re saying that BUGS are SUPPOSED to exist? I disagree… a bug in a game/program by definition is something that’s not intended.

It has NOTHING to do with everyone having the same skills.

Balance also doesn’t require everyone to have the same skills. There have been many wonderfully balanced games where the different characters have different skills, yet overall they remain balanced.

It might do you a lot of good to read into some game design basics.

Some of the bugs made this game better. Ever played on the week when ACs didn’t work and people were forced to fight open field? Funnest week in WvW for a long time.

If this is a bug, then please get more bugs into the game.

And again, quit dodging the issue, if this bug is such a huge problem, why are FEATURES, aka guard killer/def in the game emulating the features of this “bug”? You yourself said a page back that it’s easy to stack 25 stacks so the barrier to entry is extremely low. Why should builds be hampered because people are too clueless to get a second weapon and sigil?

Paulytnz.7619:

If you are meaning being able to name Ranger pets we can. Simply open up the Pet page and check the box next to it’s name. However if you put in a new pet to replace this pet the name will reset to it’s default.[/quote]

Yeah, that doesn’t count…I want names that stick.

Mike.7236:

But the real problem is the clunky design of the game play – it’s just not a good idea to limit players to 5 main abilities, where most even have long cooldowns. You feel very little interactivity in this game, because there is so little your character can actually DO at any moment!

I agree with this. Cool down is too long and creates very limited rotation for PVE and counter play for PVP. The skill cap is too low for this game.

I’d love to see lower cool downs across the board combined with more weapon skill sets/utilities along with the elimination of weapon swap penalty. I’m thinking the hotbar should go from 10 to 18ish for slot numbers.

So basically Anet and Ncsoft expect me to subsidize a new player’s copy.

$50 + $10 USD = $73.39 CAD on today’s rates.

I paid only $47 for the core game at launch. There’s no way HoT will have as much content to warrant an even higher price tag than the core game.

Throw people a friggin’ bone here, money is not the issue but this leaves a bad taste in the mouth in terms of value.

Prysin.8542:

Best solution is to nerf warrior and remove fast hands altogether and give it to rangers.

Fixed that for ya.

You’re welcome.

This should be the effect for Signet of the Hunt when you use it.

Speed for passive. Slow stealth for active.

Retaliation needs to be hard capped. Having an ICD would be good also.

It’s clearly broken when you have people on the forum telling you not to use your AOE skills on a group.

These kinds of play mechanic is cheesy and have no business being effective outside of a 1 vs 1 fight.

Good lord, Anet. Please get your design team to play some Lineage 2 for inspiration because the well seems to be tapped dry if you guys didn’t see how badly of a recycled job this is.

It’s F2P and it doesn’t feature flaming armor on everything…

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Aridia.3042:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

*snipped junk

What is the point here?

You sure talk a lot someone who doesn’t even get what the point is.

Let me spell it out for you. You should never be able to 1 shot someone with full HP with any skill. Because there’s zero counter play.

And no, don’t bother to bring up backstab. That’s broken too. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

The only people it one shots are those in full zerk armor, with full zerk traits. That’s going to be a glass cannon ele, and a thief. That is also commonly with stacks of vuln on you.

There are counters to it. Let me help you.
1. The insanely obvious animation
2. The skill tracks you, should be obvious when you’re the one being targeted.
3. Immobilizes warrior, can’t move while channeling killshot.
4. Decent duration channel time.
5. Bullet has flight time

Tools at your disposal:
1. Dodge roll, easiest one. You have 2 dodges at start, and 1 dodge per 10 seconds BASE. You can dodge most killshots just with your BASE dodge rolls.
2. Running vigor, endurance regen traits, sigils of energy and stamina.
3. Evade skills… no point in describing this.
4. Block skills, unless the warrior is running signet of might, you can block killshots.
5. Interrupts, interrupt him……
6. Blinds, can’t shoot someone if you’re blind.
7. Invuln skills. Can’t be killshotted if invuln.
8. Weakness, weakness is amazing now, a weakened killshot warrior does MUCH less damage.
9. Teleport/Leap skills. Not only to get out of range, but if these are used at the right moment, they will cause the killshot to over-compensate it’s trajectory, and it will simply miss because it went flying off in another direction.

Irrelevant when you cannot see it. There’s zero tell when the person is behind you and the alternative is really asking for the impossible, to pick out multiple warriors with rifles in a zerg to the point that I should be ignoring the attackers in melee range.

You sound like one of those posters that tell people not to fire an AOE into a zerg when you see retaliation up, which is a nonsense tip completely divorced from reality. Which makes all your tips even more lol cuz you actually seem to believe this crap.

What you have is pure broken and lazy programming by a team that’s refused to skill split.

Killshot is the result of spvp balance and it’s still OP in spvp, only slightly less so because you’re more likely to see it against 5 players. But my point stands, you cannot see it if the person fires behind you and there’s zero counter play to it. You seem to think that’s ok, and we’re not going to convince each other so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

jubskie.3152:

Chill axe, bro. We don’t know yet. I have the same issue as you, I press F1 before I start pewpewing out of habit because I keep my pet in passive most of the time.

I’m planning on testing by:
1. going near enough to my target to make it auto attack without the message (gonna test with 1500 range longbow and see how far/near i have to be.)
2. I’ll then back away farther and farther. If I can leave my pet to attack farther than 2k range, we can assume that they are different things.

Attack range is over 2k right now. But all that means is your start range as well as your leash was cut in half. Which sound about right if the original leash was at 5k.

You can easily test this at LA with the dummies and use the NPCs and out of bounds skill red line as markers along with LB1 and GS5 as additional measurements.

If you ever WvW and know what the usual cata setup spots are for attacking Woodhaven, Longview and Sunnyhill, you used to be able to send your pet out from the tower to those siege spots, which is well over 2.5k.

It’s LOL people are debating this. People should really play the game sometime…

I honestly don’t know why people want this. You’re basically asking the player to take a 50% hit in the number of dodges he or she has. You’d be crazy to waste your dodge on the pet. Pet goes down, the fight goes on, albeit at a crappier dps rate. Player goes down, the fight ends. So why would I waste a dodge on the pet when I should be saving it for me? Damage mitigation via dodging is what separates this game from other MMOs. To ask the player to share that limited source of mitigation to get around a pet problem is such a cop out.

Fix the pet instead. Make F3 responsive by overriding all actions in the queue and make pets dash when you F3. Like when you hop across the floating platforms on the asuran fractal, your pets will dash across the gap like it’s almost teleporting. Do that when you F3.

Love Korean gears.

They’d sell a ton more weapon/armor skins if they’re even remotely close to what Aion/L2 offers. The intricacy of the design is really appealing.

THEmeltor.7295:

Aridia.3042:

Kincaidia.3192:

How are warriors buffed?

Err…crazy banner buffs that make your spirit build look like even more of a joke?

go to the warrior forums…it currently looks worse than this one right now…I don’t think anyone is excited about banner buffs plus minor buffs to Kick and Rampage.

Frenzy caught a significantly larger nerf than QZ did.

Quickness nerf was uncalled for, period. That doesn’t change the fact that the banner buffs were substantial.

What made the QZ nerf worse for ranger is that’s your only source of burst which was not even on par with another class’ burst, and even that is now gone.

Or this will happen to you. LOL.

Silly people…Eles are the real ninjas! Who else can do karate, breath fire, summon hidden weapons, teleport and change forms, and throw hadokens from afar?

Here’s my kunoichi.

Head = Eye patch – Cuz every shinobi has battle scars.
Shoulders = Cabalist Shoulders – Need a scarf for those cold night stealth missions.
Chest = Vestment of the Lich – Only ninja cape available in all of Tyria.
Arms = Seer Gloves – Good def and still has the sharp fingers to claw your eyes out.
Legs = Profane Pants – Sleek combat pants that don’t hinder movement.
Boots = Sorcerer’s Shoes – Don’t let the name fool you, it’s the best East meets West pair of sandals. Now made of metal instead of straws!
Back = Wind Catcher – Bringing good fortune with you on the mission.

Weapons = Usoku’s Needles – Dual wielding sais. Only one more deadly with these is probably Raphael.

Dyes: Ash, Midnight Fuchsia, and Black, cuz Abyss is so 2012.

pmnt.4067:

I’ll rather have a refund on the stat combination that gets the real nerf: celestial.

This.

I’m part way through crafting my celestial ascended set and I’ve just lost all urges to play my ele after hearing the proposed change.

JonPeters.5630:

*
Ranger:

• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.

This is not a sufficient change to help the LB. There’s no condi to cover the cripple and it’ll be removed fairly quickly. Keen’s edge, sharpened edges and sharpening stone’s duration is not long enough/too unreliable to be used as cover especially with the HP threshold requirement.

Cool down is far too long to be of use. You’re not likely to get the target to 50% hp before they’re in melee range especially if they’re bunkers.

Instead of giving long duration on the cripple, it should be a shorter duration with lower ICD.

Change it to 3 second cripple with 9 seconds ICD (so it’s better than a sigil) and remove the 50% threshold requirement. Or have a chance cripple proc on crits.

Pet buffs are still counter intuitive to cast for range weapons like LB/SB/Axe. Make pet buffs disregard range for pet owner so LB users can stay at 1k killzone and get stalker/moa buffs.

LB traits need to be consolidated. Too many traits in order to max out a weapon which is not found in other classes. e.g. eagle eye, piercing, cooldown, spotter, etc. Piercing and cool down should be on one trait to get a ranger version of Crackshot.

OP, get the Ebon Hawk short bow.

Don’t get it from the T1 karma vendor in the city though. There’s a heart vendor in the Ebon Hawk area where you defend her cattle from harpies and she actually sells the same skin for the short bow for a fraction of the T1 vendor.

Nihevil.8024:

Aridia.3042:

If the devs are reading.

For the umpteeth time, it needs to cleanse all snares before rolling back, stun the target, and have the damage removed.

What’s wrong with the damage? I don’t see the reason of removing it.

Because it’s pointless. I’ve ran LR since beta and I’ve never ever killed anyone with it. No one in their right mind would use it as a source of damage nor is it a deterrent to the attacker.

It’s a defensive utility and I’d take a stun on target over damage any day.

It should blind from the front and burn from the side/back on the 3rd pulse.

This is like GW2 ranger porn.

Warrior = favorite child
Ranger = red headed stepchild

It’s just par for the course.

NaturalPortman.9562:

Aridia.3042:

Loki.4871:

What I am saying is the plonkers who were expecting the ranger to magically start outperforming the warrior in ranged combat (especially since the warrior is supposed to win in a 1v1 headbutting contest) set themselves up for disappointment.

That’s funny. I didn’t realize they were making a rock, paper, scissors game.

Or did you mean current state of the ranger is in is due to the fact devs play warrior so therefore they are “supposed to win” because they don’t like losing?

Let’s be realistic, playing warrior is simple, but they aren’t THAT good.

Compared to rangers, they’re THAT good IMO.

Ranger is not complex in a good way like Elementalists; they’re complex in a way that’s forcing the player to deal with handicaps like overnerfed weapons, broken and/or ineffective traits, anemic utilities, and dodgy pet AI.

blud.8174:

That’s not fair. People are providing a rather hostile environment so that Allie has to watch what she says.

Look what happened when Allie did reply: People fixated on one thing and prattled on and on about permastowing pet in favor of aspects. Now they’re fixating on her usage of “power creep”.

There are certain people here that are so fixated on their own personal goals for the class that they aren’t willing to have a proper discussion and are also preventing one.

I don’t blame Allie for not replying because whenever she does we essentially attack her without having an actual discussion. She’s also the liaison between us and the devs and unfairly takes a lot of the brunt.

That being said, this can’t be a discussion if the devs don’t ask us for feedback on the specific things they’re looking for. It’s too one-way (something more like the Fractals CDI would be wonderful). Some transparency with regards to their short-term goals for the class and what they would like to prioritize would be much appreciated. Unfortunately, I’m sure they have a lot of work themselves and there’s a ton of pages to read through here.

(I have to admit, I am also feeling disappointed. People became excited because we thought Ranger might get some much needed love, but I think Prysin is right about the devs having lost enthusiasm for this thread. This is most likely going to be as underwhelming as the underwater-buffs-patch.)

There’s no coherent discussion until the devs acknowledge the facts.

This is the core problem with this class:

There are too many variables to properly balance pets because of the BM line with the number of different pets. (e.g. 30BM stealth Jag vs 0BM bear). As a result they can’t even decide how often a pet should land a guaranteed hit because they don’t know what pet you’ll be using and how deep you’re traiting into BM. The pet damage is constantly in flux.

Because your pets supposedly account for some damage, which is not really set in stone, your ranger weapons’ damage are being low balled. Otherwise, it’ll be grossly overpowerd, like you’d be getting an equivalent of 1.3x the damage vs another class. The total damage as a result is being short changed because pets are unreliable, while weapon damage is nerfed.

Notice what the commonality is for the ususal suggestions:

Perma stow buff, aura aspects buff; bump up damage across the board; eliminating pet damage all together and make them sources of utility; hard capping pet damage to 5% and increasing weapon damage.

They all involve folding the damage back into the toon instead of divesting it to the pet because people who understands this class realize this is not an issue relating to opinions, but rather hard numbers; this class is getting short changed in the damage department.

They’ve rejected giving more control over the pets.

They’ve rejected perma stow.

They’re rejected buffs as being power creeps.

They even do things that are contrary to their own model, like having pet down time. Err, remember that pets were suppose to account for some of the damage that’s why my weapons are not hitting as hard? Why then should there be pet down time at all given the current framework?

This is not a hard problem to solve. It’s a matter of whether they have the will to do it.

Trying to use an AI bot as a main source of damage in a PVP game is a can of worms they should’ve never opened and one that they should move away from if they value the future of this game as esport.

I can’t even begin to imagine how silly you’d sound if you want to convince someone unfamiliar with GW2 to watch a spvp match with the current framework. Wait, so you’re not controlling the pet? When the wolf pounced the guy and you stomped him, it was all just a bot that did the work?

That’s the antithesis of skill, balance, or fun.

Conncept.7638:

They put a pretty female human (most popular race) your character has been personally working alongside for months, against a shifty charr (least popular race) in charge of a marketinig company which for many symbolizes the gemstore and ANets recent greedy business practices.

Yeah… they might as well start getting the Elen Kiel version of the upcoming story ready…

It’s about the illusion of choice. Kind of like real politics.

Rym.1469:

Notice that he’s powerful, running bearbow (although he kills his loyal brown bear), without pet.

He’s running a perma stow build.

No wonder it’s OP.

Flytrap.8075:

So… you and a few others have specifically said that you love having a pet around, but at the same time, you want ANet to nerf pet damage and put more of it on to Ranger?

I mean, I’m all in favor of giving Ranger more damage, but I’m just confused why you’d want a pet in the first place if its damage is going to be even more pathetic. It’s entirely counter-intuitive.

I just think it’s hilarious that self-proclaimed pet supporters are looking to move the pet’s damage onto the Ranger.

Having a pet buff and actually using a pet are not mutually exclusive ideas.

An extremely effective and yet quick fix would be to give passive pets an aura buff for the ranger so that if pets are on passive and not attacking, the ranger’s damage goes up. Like the damage from the pet is folded back into the toon. The moment you send your pet out, then you divest the damage. Call it Aura of the Hunt on the buff bar or something.

There are perfectly good times to use a pet in pvp, like using them for diversions, harrassment etc. But there are times when pets are utterly useless, like when you’re camping your tower against attackers or against a zerg. So yes, I want a buff, but I don’t want to get rid of the pet all together either.

If you understand what the fundamental problem is, you’d realize passive buff is the only fix there is. Because “fixing pet AI” involves you getting more damage sources but the target still only has the current number of dodges and mitigation. So it’s basically you’re asking for free hits that are automated. That should never happen in a pvp game.

ALL viable solutions involve this common theme: folding most, if not all of the damage back into the toon and away from the pet, and the pet should only be used for utility or as a stance that gets switched into.

The quicker people, including Anet, gets this, the quicker this class gets fixed.

I’m all for options. So some kind of passive buff or perma stow option would be nice.

Even if you’re against perma stow, the current situation is not well thought out or acceptable.

The current weapon dmg is clearly factoring the pet as being part of the DPS. When you think about it, HP increase is insufficient as a fix. Pet uptime IMO should be 100% If they’re insistent in going down this route with forced pet usage, they should give rangers multiple pet pairs to swap on the fly, with the penalty being you not able to use the pet you want when they’re down instead of having no pet at all for 60 seconds when they both get 1 shotted.

Like if my wolf/jag is down, I can switch to drake/spider, they go down, I can switch to eagle/moa etc etkittenil the first set is back up again. There should be ZERO pet down time if they’re factored as part of the toon.

Zera.8907:

Guys, Rangers are fine! Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ru_rXq2LYg0#!

Again, Rangers are fine…..oh wait :-(

This is why I LOL when I hear people say Killshot is fine because it’s easy to dodge.

It’s only easy to dodge if you’re a half wit and open with it while face to face or follow up with it after volley when the target knows he’s being shot at. It’s virtually undetectable if someone snipes with it from the back in mass pvps. Not to mention there’s no counter to it when they fear you and follow up with it.

And this thing has gone untouched since BWE2.

There’s no reason to revisit the areas you’ve done. I think they need to give incentives for people to return to the areas.

They need to make mult-tier heart vendors. First time you finish it the heart turns yellow and you get to buy something from NPC. If you go back, and redo the quest and help the NPCs, the heart might turn red, green, blue, purple etc, and should all have better rewards that you can buy, like dyes, maybe new armor skins, hats, hair pins, weapon skins that you can apply dyes, or maybe even one time temporary things like bulk buying certain foods for cheap etc.

Zorby.8236:

So…before we were told that our dps was balanced around 100% uptime on the pet. And now that we’re getting close to achieveing that it turns out it’s not balanced? Who balances this game?

This is basically Anet:

Yet another example of devs not playing their own game.

I’ll give you a field for you to blast, I just won’t tell you when. Great, makes sense.

This kind of balancing is exactly why the pvp can’t be taken seriously.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The negative consequence behind “fixing the AI”, is that it would promote even more passive playing in PvP.

For this reason, the pet system DOES needs a redesign.

Making most pet skills requiring manual input from the player to trigger could be the solution. It could also promote rewarding skill sequences between the pet and the ranger, moving the profession away from too much passive, and more into a skill-sequence-driven profession (like an engineer, elementalist, etc). That would be healthy to the competitive side of the game, but also very fun by itself.

AoE resistance (but lower health so that targetted effects can counter it), innate faster moving speed, and a way to flag the pet would also be awesome.

Pet flagging could be a ground-targetted sequence skill that would force the pet to go to choosen location until the skill is clicked on again.

This. x100 times.

AI bots are not interesting to play with, boring to watch, and annoying to play against because it feels cheap.

These are not things you want in a healthy competitive scene. They introduce far too much randomness and skill debasement into the meta.

Stop and think about what “fixing pet AI” means. It means they should hit more consistently, in this case, without input. All that’ll get you is more QQ in the spvp forum, and get you less people interested in the game because the concept of watching a bot in doing what you’re suppose to be doing is frankly the antithesis to real competition.

Higher skill cap is a good thing, whether it be in the form of multiple pet/aspect rotation, (2 is not enough) or manual controlling both damage sources of the toon.

Server merge/alliance/player cap solves nothing. Because you cannot prevent people from stacking. If you let it, they will stack. You had a preview of it already in the first year with Titan Alliance in this game. There’s nothing in the game to prevent a group of dedicated guilds to create an air tight 24/7 coverage alliance and you’d be back right where you are. And no, OCX/EU guilds are a finite commodity, you cannot just recruit more if they’ve been taken by other alliances already. So it’s a futile exercise to try and let the community balance itself.

The horse has left the barn already. The kind of suggestions in this thread should’ve been explored in the alpha. You should take the low hanging fruits and make blobbing and coverage not as effective instead while keeping a majority of what exists currently. It’s more efficient, and more effective in the long run. The numbers therein are just a general idea to discuss the framework, it probably needs to be changed and test to fine tune it.

1. Make servers 2 vs 1. Give 2nd place 2x multiplier when they attack 1st place, give 3rd place a 3x multiplier in attacking 1st place. Second place gets focused too often, 1st hits them to keep them back, 3rd hits 2nd to try and catch up, and all that does it let 1st place get away with a bigger and bigger lead especially when they have coverage to PVD. Not giving the losing sides a way to come back makes it boring and contributes to the stacking. It’s like trying to watch a basketball game when you can’t take 3 point shots or getting a basket while getting fouled. Give this multiplier to bloodlust stomps also.

2. Change the way PPT is calculated so it’s based on population participation on the current map. Full 3 way blob? It ticks normally. 70 vs 30 vs 25, you’d tick for less. Holding things on an uncontested map should give you little points. Make it so one side cannot PVD and sit on it overnight to amass an insurmountable lead. Sitting on uncontested keeps should net you close to nothing if you’re in 1st place.

You’re probably thinking, what if my side just logs out after getting a 20/30k lead, so now you can barely score on me. But that’s where my first suggestion comes in, the opponents will be getting 2x/3x the score in my absence. If 2nd and 3rd place are getting a multiplier for all they do, under no circumstance would logging off to turtle be beneficial to me. And under no circumstance is 2nd or 3rd going to ask their players to log off because they’ll be wasting their multiplier to score and they can’t turtle their way to reclaim 1st place because you need people to attack to get points.

3. Increase AOE cap so stacking and blobbing is actually dangerous. It empowers small team play and makes things like guerrilla tactics and pincer attacks actually viable for the smaller side. When 5 guys can only hit 5 opponents and the blob can all hit the original 5 attackers, you’re just inviting everyone to group up and mash 1 to victory.

4. Unless the healer is out of combat, healer cannot res a dead ally. To further slow the blob.

I don’t know about you.

I hate rangers because I main one.

Majik.8521:

how about reworking the ranger to where they are not so dependent on the pet? Rangers lose around 40% of their dps from 1)having to call back the pet, 2) keeping him on passive(to keep him out of AoE) 3) when pet dies 4) fighting from walls of keep or tower or fight enemies that are on walls.

IMO the best thing to do with the pet is rework the numbers to the point that the pet is around 10% of the total dps.

how many other professions automatically lose a huge portion of their dps if they make a mistake and time their F1-F4 abilities wrong or for trying to defend their keep?

QFT.

There’s no future for this game as an e-sport if you expect viewers to spectate a bot. The more you tip the ratio towards the pet, the more imbalance, randomness and skill debasement you introduce to the meta. That is not skill. That is not exciting to watch. You guys are shooting yourself in the foot not just with the community but with your end goal.

Make pets change your attack style, change your stats, do combos, CC, a combination of the above, anything but focus on DPS.

I’d be happy with just reflecting projectiles.

It’s pretty hard to survive using it. They should rename it kamikaze until it gets buffed.

I think they’re true friends. They don’t want you to get your hopes up and have your spirits severely crushed.

Anet is doing a duck and cover routine. Conveniently not mentioning Celestial gears on the blog and completely ignoring the thread by merging the threads so it’s easier to bury it.

So yeah, they’re not going to do anything about it. Noticed how fast Colin commented on the Karma thread last time and got it fixed within a day, compared with this? I don’t know why they don’t just give people the option to switch Celestial into another stat. It’s almost like they’re doing it out of spite because this whole magic find issue created another bunch of work items for them.

Durzlla.6295:

The leash distance is 2k, that means its 500 further than your traited longbow, In other words its been buffed, you can actually send your pet FURTHER than before by using F1, on the downside your pet will no longer chase your target to the ends of the earth.

Err…no.

The leash has been shortened by at least 50%. This was changed because people in spvp were QQing that a ranger could leave their pet on mid and can still run to cap another point. So all of the other ranger players can now be nerfed for a mode they don’t even play.

divine faithborn.8365:

Black Scoutsman.5830:

divine faithborn.8365:

Read the Wind completely obsoletes Eagle Eye as the increased projectile speed makes it so that your attacks can actually travel significantly farther than Eagle Eye’s increased range.

I just tested it, and the distance isn’t that much further on a flat plane (I was shooting downhill when I said that), but seriously try it for yourself.

The increased projectile speed means less drop off which means farther range. It’s the same reason why eagle eye can now put out shots of ~1800 units instead of 1500 units – they upped the projectile speed.

RTW does not make you shoot further.

There’s an anomaly though. If you only use RTW, when you’ve reached your max range, every 5th shot or so will hit but the rest will say out of range.

And it doesn’t even come close to Eagle Eye. I can hit the light golem at where I’m standing with EE but you have to go down to the rock where the red arrow is and tip toe near the edge of it to hit the same target without EE.

All in all pretty lame GM trait for me as piercing offers way more DPS in wvw for me to even consider using RTW.

Specific Game Mode

WvW, but applies to PVE/SPvP also.

Proposal Overview

F2 Pet buffs are unreliable and it’s counter intuitive to use in some cases. This needs to change given the context of how this class is suppose to function.

Goal of Proposal

Quality of life improvements for game play feel and to make the pet compliment the class.

Proposal Functionality

Problem:Why are F2 buffs counter productive to use?

For instance, LB users need 1k range to get optimal damage. But when you send your stalker/red moa out to attack, none of the F2 buffs will reach the pet owner. But if you keep your pet on passive to try and self buff, you lose the dps you’re expected to get via the pet damage. All F2 buffs of this sort are counter intuitive to use for range weapons, LB/SB/Axe, especially in large crowds.

Solution:: F2 pet buffs should ignore range for the pet owner and should be guaranteed to benefit the owner even in massive player filled events.[/b]

Associated Risks

None. It’s how it should be functioning given how this class is designed.

Taushullu.6180:

I’ve seen quite a few suggestions of changing the SotH active effect (Attack of Opportunity) into something more sustained or some other effect entirely. Currently I find it to work well with:

• Maul
• Counterattack
• Tail Swipe (drake)
• Swoop

It’s pretty obvious there aren’t too many possibilities out there. Still, rather than changing Attack of Opportunity into something entirely else, I’d like to see more skills from other weapons changed to benefit from it. Here’s 2 suggestions:

• Monarch’s leap has potential to become a burst skill as the skill itself is well telegraphed and visually looks like something that would hurt you. Simply increasing the damage coefficient would make this skill work better with Attack of Opportunity.
• Longbow could use a real burst skill. I’d suggest changing Rapid Fire to first fire 5 arrows rapidly (1½ second channel / 10s vulnerability per arrow) and then charge up a more powerful shot in the end (3/4 – 1s charge). Attack of Opportunity would synergize well with this last arrow.

These changes would make the Attack of Opportunity from SotH more useful but Moment of Clarity doesn’t work with them as you need to interrupt your target first. Thus, I’d like to see MoC modified a bit. (I’ve suggested this before in my trait suggestions list but once more.)

• Moment of Clarity: Gain Precise Strikes (your next 3 attacks crit) for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer. (100%)

So one of the 2 sources of Attack of Opportunity would still get cut… oh well. The proposed Moment of Clarity would see it’s burst nerfed but sustain and number of skill combinations buffed. It would also have great synergy with “on crit” -effects. I think it’s a fair trade.

Attack of opportunity is a bad concept to begin with in a game with so much mitigation and so little skills for rotation. And counter attack and Drake tail swipe are situational and not on demand.

Unless your opponent is in a coma, maul requires a hilt bash setup which would involve swoop to begin that chain anyway. So you can’t even consider swoop as a potential move that benefits this.

Let’s not conflate the issue. I agree that weapon damage needs to be bumped up across the board because rangers are playing with a handicap, but wasting a skill for an unreliable move which involves 1/3 of your utility is not the way to do it. That’s par for the course currently for the design. The epitome of this class is : doing more for less. (e.g. Like not having piercing and cool down together, having to trait for signets to work, having to stay at max range only with no kiting mechanism to do range damage, inability to control your pet, etc.)

Unless AoO gives 5 attacks like Arcane Power, it’ll not be worth it. But there’s no way they’ll give you that, at 150% dmg.

I like how people want to argue that removing AOE cap will be overpowered but yet at the same time they want to argue zergs will not change the way they play. They’re pretty much mutually exclusive ideas….either AOE will empower smaller groups in which zergs will likely change the way they play, or increasing AOE cap won’t change anything so you can’t argue that they’re overpowerd. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. So which is it?

And I want to remind people that when we talk about removing AOE cap, the idea of change is predicated on the smaller group in not being half wits. Typical response is do you know how badly smaller groups will be wiped if we introduced no AOE cap? You’ll get complete area of denial! Well no kitten Sherlock. If you plan to face a zerg head on while vastly outnumbered, you’ll get wiped regardless with or without cap. In fact, you could take an equal number of people in 50 vs 50 fight and have one group being a ball, the other side in groups of 5s coming from all sides and the broken up side will likely lose because you can’t do anything to a zerg ball.

However, if you actually remove the cap, things like flaking and pincher attacks would actually work. Guerrilla tactics would work. If a small group can wipe 15 guys off your tail while a zerg pvd, would the zerg break off and chase? Or do you risk them coming back for more?

It’s LOL to have Anet wanting to not split PVE/PVP skills for the longest time because they want players be familiar with the mechanics across the game but yet have them using AOE cap in funneling players into zerg balls in wvw when in all of the 80 lvls of PVE they were taught to gtfo out of red circles.

On a more philosophical level, even if smaller groups cannot take out the larger group EVER, I would still want the cap the be removed or increased. This is an issue of equity and people who don’t want to increase the cap is looking at the wrong metric. I don’t care that zergs might not break up with no AOE cap. Players should not be given a handicap for no reason. I don’t care if I can’t wipe your 50 with my 5 but I want to have a chance to kill at least 15 to 20 of you if I’m going to die. That’s basically impossible to do at the current state. Yes, zergs might not break off anyway but at least I can kill more of you if you play that way instead of you being granted immunity. There’s at least common sense and fairness in this set up. If Anet has doubts, start by doubling the AOE cap to 10 and see what happens.

Live by the sword and die by the sword, that’s all I want.