Guild Wars 2

Its THE best tagging weapon ingame. Imagine a Meteor shower that is extremely small and fast. Allowing you to tag compact groups without any real effort invested, nor risk.

Tseikk.9032:

TyPin.9860:

Maybe even all NPCs can get a sort of downed state. Would make camp flipping with smaller groups or solo certainly more interesting.

Sometimes i’m glad ANet doesn’t listen to suggestions.

interestingly enough, you seem to be the only one truly agains this based upon the most ludicrous excuse any WvW player can make.

Sorry mate, but ive played in EU T5-T1 and NA T3 and T1. Neither of these places would have issues with this. Smaller servers would benefit, larger servers wouldnt benefit much from it as they would be steamrolling either way. Sniping a few dollies VS a much bigger server has little impact in the first place mainly because it only ever does one thing, potentially give the karma train something to recapture.

avalanchegamer.9675:

Warrior = Usain Bolt
Thief = Hollow Man
Mesmer = Binary Fission + Hollow Man
Ranger =??

All other classes have something to defend themselves and the only thing I had was the Ranger evade …. 8s can even be good in sPvP but is very WvWvW this nerf is the same as taking 1 clone of the Mesmer limit the invisibility of Thief.

What is your logic? Being Longbow damage is less at close range?? You need some lessons of physics …

You will never tanking as a Warrior or Guardian and focus on your damage will be hard as ridiculous.

ANet is destroying the Ranger and increasingly it becomes useless in WvWvW.

Gonna rain on your parade here.
With a BM bunker build, you can easily without issues or problems out-tank and destroy any and all warriors you face in a 1v1. And if you fail to do so, it is your own fault.
Let me elaborate;
If you spec 0/0/10/30/30 you get vigor on heal, 25% passive endurance regen, 35% increased chance for spirit proc, spirits unbound and natures voice, in addition to this you get -20% pet F2 CD, Vigor on Pet Swap and Natural Healing (passive heal 125/3sec for player, 125/sec for pet).
If you do like me, and run with Signet of the Wild, Signet of Renewal and Guard, you can get more condition cleanses then you need, add in the new healing spirit and you get so much healing power and regen that whatever pet you choose should not die even if the pet get focused by the warrior/guard. If you also happen to run with birds or cats, your DPS will be tremendously higher then ANY warrior or guard. As those kitten birds can easily do 2x 1200 damage on their AA. In addition to providing a blind-on-demand.
If you use Sword + Dagger and Shortbow with a Apoth build, and use +40% condi duration food, you can have 100% uptime of poison, which means they get their healing nerfed by 33%. And if your warrior run the dreaded regen build that has up to 900hp/sec healing, you literally nerf that down to 600 by using poison alone. Now, given that any bunker build can easily do 3-400 direct damage + condition damage, and pets do loads of damage ontop of this, you realize that a warrior or guard in tank spec does not hold a candle to a ranger.

a bunker ranger is way more OP then any other bunker build short of ele bunker.

a simple 20% damage increase to the skill itself, Crit damage + pr range, in addition to a fixed +x crit chance and you got a good attack

Example;
Longbow 1;
Damage; 750
Range; 1500 basic range, 1700 traited. (so stupid that a longbow should EVER have the same basic reach as a shortbow. its a LONGbow, it is meant to shoot FAR AWAY)
Critical Damage;
750 – +5%
900 – +10%
1200 – +15%
1700 – +20% (traited)
Critical chance increased by 15%
0,45 second re-fire (same as today)

stealth is too short to reset. You can create space, but not reset.
Reset happens at 8-10 seconds with a minimum distance of 4k from enemy, AFAIK.

LB is a good backup weapon. But not a good primary weapon.

Best weapon set(s) for WvW is GS + Axe/Warhorn. This set will be even better now that axe and GS is getting buffed.

It was suggested a way back. Dunno if anything got discussed. If anything it would make wvw players spend a great deal more money on gems

meh im in T1 EU and solo roaming is quite OK. It is by far not great.

best thing is to hook up with a friend, or two. If you are 2-3 then you’re not going to have such a hard time

If they could make Hide in Plain sight into something along the lines of “Becomes invisible when out of combat for XX seconds” then yes.

gawker.8340:

This game has been out for so long that most people are good with their main profession now. So I write this with the assumption that the human factor is negligible when comparing the power of different professions in GW2. Also, i’m referring to the game content where the majority of the GW2 community participates, WvW.

Major problems:
1) Extraordinary physical damage cannot be achieved without becoming completely glass. When a Ranger specs for highest possible damage, they are still going to lose to to others that also spec for max damage. They have no damage mitigation, and no escape tool in this build.

2)Every other profession is designed to be hard counter to Ranger. Blind/cripple/chill/immobilize are the conditions that prevent kiting and they exist in abundance. They are easily applied and kept on nearly permanently. Range battles don’t happen unless of terrain limitations because gap closing skills are the length of the bow range. Meaning, the range advantage isn’t significant.

3)Melee Ranger is terrible. Where other classes can hit harder at melee, ranger hits less damage guaranteed.

4)The incentive for ranger is to play a variation of condition bunker. Unfair, since any other class can freely play with any build well.

5)The pet is a failed mechanic. It is not reliable because it’s too random and too distracting. You have to be lucky to have it perform in your favor and this happens rarely. Not only is it a failed mechanic, it is a net deficit to have to use it 100% of the time.

Not a single sentence you wrote have any root in reality. Please do play the class beyond lvl 2 before making any wild accusations

Substance E.4852:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Durzlla.6295:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

DeadlySynz.3471:

I agree 100%. The best thing I find if you really want to enjoy the Ranger class is to just ignore your pet all together.

…………

No wonder why you guys getting kicked out of each dundgeon/fractal.

jaguar stalk + sic’em + RaO = 5k crits. (from the normal 1.5-2k each hit)

Yeah ignore them! Get a bear and a LB and stay at 1500m range with all passive signets. That’s gonna help!

At least if you use a Moa with a LB the Moa will be giving boons (if you use the F2) and healing the guys in Melee…

The only one that has a kinda-worthy special skill is the red moa for furry, but you should have a warhorn for that anyways. Also their damage is terrible.

Warhorn + red moa = perma fury with traits.

100% up time of fury on the whole team is a lot better than a couple of high crits from a cat if you can’t have both for some reason.

actually, red moa fury is bugged. It does not scale properly with boon duration, NOR with the trait that increases the duration of boons given by pets (tried and tested)

Red Moa fury never goes over 15 seconds.
I tested it with a 100% boon duration build, both with and without the trait. It never went past it’s original 15 second duration. Bug has been reported atleast 4 times since October. Nothing has been done.

Ranger pets, we need more diversity, they need to fulfill more roles, they need more power/functionality/reliability. If they refuse to give them more brutal DPS (understandable since it would wreck havoc on the PvE side if tanky pets could hit as hard as todays DPS pets), if they refuse to upgrade the AI because it will force them to redesign the general monster AI, if they refuse to give pets more HP and/or toughness. Then they might as well make more of them.

Ill rather choose from 100 half-broken pets then 45 completely broken ones that wont get fixed.

When it comes to medium armor it is down to mentality first, and profession design afterwards.

Take rangers. They are hated through and through by pretty much every player around. Why? Because once upon a time, they all tried to play it at some point, they couldn’t get the hang of it (it is NOT supposed to be an archer, if you try play as one, you die) due to the treacherous design. Most players fall into this design pitfall, making rangers seem weak and useless.
90% of rangers, are useless because the person behind the character got no clue what he/she is supposed to do, or how to build. So a profession made to be a all-round master just ends up being way too hard to play for most people. The main grief of the ranger is that learning to use the profession mechanic (pet) is like learning to how to fly a jet-fighter from reading comics. Sure you’ll learn it, eventually, give or take some years.

Engineers suffer from the same issue as rangers. They are hard to play at full capacity, this means that the community at large deem them “weak”. However engineers can dish out ridiculous amounts of conditions, so somewhere along the line the community had had their rear ends handed to them enough times to understand that it is far from useless if played well. However the definition of “a well played engi” is something like that of a legendary hero. This is why most engineers are ignored because noone seem to meet that “god-mode skill requirement” in the “Pro skill group” players eyes.

Thieves, are fine. They got a purpose, which they fulfill, it is up to the community to find a way to utilize and capitalize on that role. At this point, new strategies that includes rapid assassination of the backline or something of that sort must be developed/planned, before thieves should be changed further.

Akisame.9508:

I love this game and don’t really want to leave but if they do not either fix pets or give ranger’s 100% of their damage back, I’m gone on 4/4.

Well, if you think they can implement any of these suggestions, including balancing, testing, bug testing and effect/animation changes/improvements within 4/4 then you are sorely wrong.

So, goodbye for now, and i’d also use this opportunity to wager that you will be back on this game within the end of july.

Durzlla.6295:

That being said, I’d love to see the Phoenix’s make a reappearance and I’d love to see them as their OWN type (or at least share it with other large flying birds/animals).

could be a new grandmaster trait in wilderness survival though. something like the “downed #3 for warriors” “Rise from the ashes: From the remains of the ranger, a phoenix rises to seek out revenge upon those who defeated it’s master. Phoenix lasts 30 seconds, if phoenix kills the one who killed you, you get revived” (ICD: 5 minutes) Ofc, Phoenix only has OP attacks

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAsYRnEqQvg2KIWsAXLGAQoWFAvPjrtsdfE9wQfxVVVB-TlyBABUcEAYUJYFHCAAeAAfp8DQdANfCAka/hOV/5FtBBAQAuZAwRP6RP6RPa33+23+23+kCgJlRA-w

Bm regen bunker. Clerics is hard to play, but benefits enormously from the grandmaster minor in beastmastery. Full clerics will get you about 135 bonus power. Which is a big bonus to get just from traits.

With lemongrass and x2 shout cleanse you should be covered as far as condies go. Biggest issue is full glass thives, they can get the better of you in some cases

Stand The Wall.6987:

If the other classes would stop being so bad then Heavy Inc. might be more lenient.

its not about others being bad, it is almost entirely that the players that play the “metagame” refuse to budge even if bringing a few different professions can greatly help them.
Where there is a will, there is a way. However in the case of WvW meta, there is no will to change it, so there is no way to change it aside from forcing the meta to change through nerfs and buffs

MB should be like Signet of Perception or Luck. It stacks when you use the correct weapon, until death or change of maps.

Sneaky Turban.6823:

Firstly, as for Lich I have no problem with it personally but from the amount of rage I have heard on the forums it can be an easy win in any duel or small team fight if people don’t bring reflects or generally have enough vigor to keep dodging and I know you can strafe side to side and dodge it that way from range but not many people have the brain capacity to do so.

As for the ranger I’m no expert on it and I’m not going to sit here and tell you you’re wrong but from the people I’ve talked to they want the ability to be useful in zergs, which is where these ideas have popped up from and for the stow pet solution has come from people complaining about their pet dying in dungeons or in zergs and then being completely useless.

For the engineer it’s not really a buff but the idea behind it is they can sit in zergs and spam grenades now, if anything they are getting a nerf from the balthazar rune losing 20% burning duration.

Lastly the mesmer, this was a hard trait to come up with and I tried to stick to having a stealth themed trait, which I do realise mesmers rarely get revealed. Although I had the mindset of making mesmers get revealed more frequently such as when a phantasm deals damage the mesmer gets revealed. However this would be too frequent and just wouldn’t work so I am in need of help finding a new trait but I feel the PU trait needs to go or at least be taken down to either you get one of 3 boons OR 1s more stealth duration considering they can do damage while in stealth.

Most rangers you meet always do the same thing. They grab a longbow, put on some zerker atmor and call forth a bear. Then they run around, get wrecked and cries on the forums, pretending to be doing things correctly and being super skilled.
Simple fact is, ive posted a simple zerg surfing build some 20 times in the wvw section and ranger section, and noone uses it because it doesnt have a bow.

The ranger pets needs a buff, a lot of polishing and adjustments to cooldowns. The class was designed to use pets, therefor removing the pet is not an option and not going to fix anything. If you wanna zerg surf with a bow, there is warrior and thief.

In the end, ranger is the best. It can do all the stuff the aforementioned 3 do, just at 70% efficiency and with 90% more headaches.

Some of you may flame me for this, but is a “proper” GvG system something healthy for the game?
Looking at the current GvG guilds (generally speaking) they seem to breed an arrogant and spiteful attitude towards the rest of their server population. Often using abusive language in voice comms, leaving pugs in the ditch when things go south, systematically chase away people who just want to have fun (even when it is a not a real GvG going on but just random raiding). I have seen this myself, guilds who didnt care much for GvG but wanted to atleast try it, and within months, grew sour and arrogant. Laying blame on the pugs, when their own command failed.

Is “feeding and nurturing” such a tendency something we and arena net should do?
sPvP already have these issues, but they are not so prevalent as you can choose between “Solo Q” and “Team Q”. So the “epic pro” teams run Team Q and therefore these attitudes does not go to show very often. In WvW you can only choose between WvW and WvW. Adding a arena for the GvG to fight in, solves nothing. In that case, they can just make a few bigger sPvP maps with 15v15 and 20v20 battles, without the conquest mode.

I honestly can not see anything good come out of “GvG” guilds given the current (generally speaking) knee jerk attitude that such guilds seem to breed.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Another idea would be to change Healing Power to Boon Power. Basically every boon would be affected by it. So if you want strong mightstacks or strong protection, you would have to invest points into Boon Power.

bad idea, it would hurt builds/skills that benefit stronly from healing power, such as most healing skills, Guard shout on rangers, traited shouts on warriors, water attunement on ele and so on.

Bad idea, bad bad idea

Contrary to belief – Longbow or Trap rangers usually have an easy time with mesmers. I say usually, depending on the mesmer running certain traits such as Reflect on distortion/blur.

Thieves, depending on builds, usually deal with them in a fairly easy manner.

Other professions may or may not struggle, trick is generally to either lay down excessively high single target damage (they are not good at dealing with lots of heavy hits) or repetitive condition spam.

Now, necromancers are very strong with conditions, however mesmer is equally good at manipulating/removing them. unfortunately, the necromancer is very bad at repetitive spam. It can land huge condition bombs with ease, and if it has some help, it can spam condi bombs around with epidemic. But on its own, the necromancer is too slow at applying medium-high stacks to apply consistent pressure, and that is what you need.

Also help if you can lay down AOE chill to slow down attack rate and movement of clones/phantasms. That usually helps you pinpoint the mesmer (as they usually run around frantically)

If power necro – build for as much AOE DPS as you can, and do not burn ALL your wells/marks at once, use them sequentially to cover the terrain with damaging attacks all over so the mesmer cannot move around so easily.

Ranger will never be fixed ever. They told us rangers 100 times over that they wont redesign the AI since its tied up with the general monster AI (what a brilliant idea to not properly split those two). So basically, if Anet gonna fix rangers, they gotta redesign the whole monster AI, not just pets.

Also, fun fact, if you apply pet DPS ontop of ranger AA attacks, their AA DPS just wrecks havoc on most professions. Only comparable DPS weapon i know of is Warrior hammer, however that has a small aftercast between the skills, so its not as quick as it appears.

Either way, no matter what Anet does, ill stick with a ranger till i find some other game that interests me more. They work quite well in WvW, despite what people claim. And i have yet to find a warrior, necro, guardian or ele that can beat my ranger 1v1 without launching a surprise attack, so atleast in 1v1/solo roaming, i got nothing ot worry about.

Most of you “feel” that rangers suck because of your mindset. If you think the others do it better, they will “do it better”. Well, not really, you just think they will and when you try them, you automatically think it is so much easier and so much better and so much stronger. Then you 1v1 a upleveled bearbow zerker ranger and win hands down, feeling that rangers suck even more.

You are all victims of bandwagon psychology.

Warriors CAN be strong, but they are far from special. I got one myself, have been using it for a long time. No matter what build, it is nothing impressive. The weapons are often sluggish, they lack finesse, and the animations is boring as hell.
The bow have ONE forgiving function, that is the firefield from the adrenaline burst. The rest is just outright “MEEEEEEEEH”. I’d take a thief shortbow (just skills, not mechanic) over a warrior longbow any day.
The Rifle on the warrior is seriously dead. Aside from killshot it is about as exciting as a soaked firecracker on a stormy night.
The GS, what GS? That weapon is defined by one thing, 100b. The rest of it is mediocre.
Hammer – Fine, can be fun, i admitt that.
Sword/X can be quite ok to play, but it suffers from the “ezmode” decease.
500 regen/sec. a million condition cleanses. WOW, what a useful thing, guess what i play on my ranger, guardian, ele and necro? POWER. Now your warrior is useless. All those traits spent on countering conditions are hindering you. What a drag.

And finally, i have yet to meet ONE warrior, one single warrior, in the whole of EU, or anywhere else for that matter, that can measure up to even a glass cannon ranger in roaming.

Oh and if you think pets are too situational, you have yet to learn how to use them.

In the end, it is a L2P issue.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Doomdesire.9365:

Strongest possible build if played to the highest skill level when roaming is P/D thief, hands down. You can 1v2, and 1v3 fairly regularly, with the occasional 1v4. You should never lose a 1v1. The amount of conditions being put out + stealth + SA heals is extremely powerful.

Sadly, probably correct. Although I daresay you might have some issues going up against a regen/condi ranger running LB and s/d. With rapid fire tracking through stealth and the might stacking potential, plus the insane regen, you’ll end up with 20 stacks of vuln and 20 stacks of bleed + cripples, poison, torment, all sorts of crap that like p/d thief can be applied and reapplied in seconds that would be difficult to deal with.

well played condi ranger in general is a though fight for a thief, mainly because the ranger can, and will, be able to reapply large numbers of damaging conditions faster then the thief can get rid of them, on the contrary, PD thief relies heavily on bleed stacking, and with the passive condi removal of rangers, a thief will have issues doing much to the ranger.

DP is stronger vs rangers due to backstab spikes, PD is weaker.

Again, build is all that matters, either you go with the right one, or the wrong one. There is a counter to almost every build in existence

My ideal version of the meta, would be equality between power and conditions. Making both powerful, if built for it.
I would also like to add in that limited/reduced CC spam and stealth spam wouldn’t hurt either.

CureForLiving.5360:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

One Note Chord.5031:

It feels like they have very limited resources, and for better or for worse have decided that living world updates are the place to put them all. All these comments they keep making amount to “no new content outside the living world.”

I just don’t understand it. I mean they supposedly had over 300 staff. The LS has been nice this season, but no where near what I would expect from 300 employees. Maybe 50…

What are the other 250 people doing?

It’s not 300 developers however.

yup. you’re probs lookin at 20-30 people in design. some 3-5 in PR, some 20-40 coders, 2-3 story writers, audio will take quite a few, some managers and rest is more likely then not maintenance/support staff. Which is usually some of the larger parts of companies.

Taushullu.6180:

• 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.

Kinda like a ranged version of 100b…. not a bad idea…. 5 super fast shots, then one charge-up that does tremendous damage.

Perhaps, instead of vulnerability, the first five arrows apply cripple to “set up” the final deadly shot. This way, normal movement is less likely to work, and you have to dodge to avoid not just press ADADADADADAD

Most of this discussion can boil down to "But warrior can counter you with skill “A, B, C, D, E, F, G”.

Ok, here’s one for you all. Normally when you run in a zerg, each profession perform their own task. Warrior CC is in 99% of instances easy to negate. Why? Because really do you think the enemy do not have warriors too that uses SwWh? If you think so, you are an idiot. It is proven beyond a doubt that ALL servers spam warriors and guards like there is no tomorrow. So Warrior cancels out warrior. Skill is irrelevant in zergs anyway.

In the end, what you want to do is CHAIN your CC. Now a warrior does this naturally, thanks to the design of the profession. Hats off to Anet for making it so smooth. The guardian also does do some mentionable CC or rather Area Denial (RoW, LoW).
However, neither of these professions, even with max condi duration produce anything by mediocre effects on 1 skill (flurry is a cleave, not a AOE. In zergs you want AOE, not single target w/cleave effect). Ill give guardians a slight +1 over warriors as they can apply heavy chill and immobilize at once, albeit, at longer cooldown.
Yet, whatever proper AOE CC these two professions dish out, CAN BE OUTDONE BY ONE RANGER PET.
You say pet dies in Zergs, yes they do, if you run right into the enemy melee train. So yes you have to do some positioning. Generally, if you keep your pet hidden and just avoid the whole melee train your pet will survive long enough to use it’s skill(s).

Straegen.2938:

How many times have we heard something like this over voicechat: They have an AC up careful, oh wait it is just a Ranger no worries.

was quite common when you could abuse “Keen Edge” and “Sharpening Stone” for a lulzy 10 stacks of bleeding on 5 targets. Nowdays, not so much.

haviz.1340:

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

What happens with “play how you want” if we hypothetically need defensive passive stats to survive?

Then again sir, you cannot always get it your way. Balancing a game is a matter of compromising, a lot of compromising.
However, i think while we cannot directly change the DPS meta, we can change how the AI responds to said meta. Previously i suggested giving more evades, automatic heal upon hitting XX% HP, invulnerability, life stealing attacks.
What we need is not alter the player. It is to alter how the NPC’s work.

Theoretically, if we say the AI responds in 4 ways to an series of attacks. Each attack trigger one or more responses. The harder you hit, the more often the NPC heals or CC you. In the end, the “way you want to play” decides the “way the NPC tries to counter you”. If you spam Stun/daze. The NPC will use stunbreakers and stability. If you spam conditions, the NPC will try to cleanse, if you try to hit and run, the NPC will immobilize and charge you. If you try to facetank and DPS the NPC down, the NPC will evade and use CC’s or knockbacks.

NPC’s all get one or more ability to counter certain moves or all moves.
Bosses get a random set of abilities (RNG 3-4 different AI settings for bosses. making each encounter different and challenging). So say you fight Claw of Jormag. Normally it applies the frost aura, and uses standard fear waves and ice crystal thingies. Now perhaps, this time, it uses AOE chill splash attacks. It randomly triggers retaliation (NPC version, stronger then normal), reflects ranged attacks, swings around and smashes people with it’s tail.
Small changes in terms of coding. Massive effect ingame. The content will be much harder. And Events which at this point is 100% transparent after replaying it thousands of times, is now random, dynamic and fun or frustrating (depends on what you were hoping to fight :P)

If they changed, atleast bosses, to work this way. Different professions would shine in one or many areas. It would force people to take builds into account. If you cannot forsee if the enemy will be glassy and aggressive or passive and defensive, you cannot use one build.

At first, if anything, test this system out on a few open world bosses. They are the most encountered, and thus the ones you can get the broadest spectrum of feedback from

roamzero.9486:

Ive never seen anyone cry how Rangers are OP in WvW. Nor have I seen people cry about Eles since they were nerfed to oblivion.

no sane or self respecting player will ever admit that a ranger killed him/her. Thus you will never see anyone cry about rangers in public. They will just silently bear the shame and carry on.

The sexual harassment santa strikes again. Pixies and faeries, watch out.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Nice thread. I don’t know how many of these issues we can feasibly tackle, but I’m sure you’ll see at least a few fixes come from this.

well sir, you and your colleagues created the mess, so i’m sure you can fix it too.

KensaiZen.3740:

Neb.4170:

KensaiZen.3740:

The Rangers damage is comparable to the Guardians damage. A normal attack is around the 700-800 (1st trait line maxed) crits for about 1300-1400 (berserker earrings and amulet and knights rings)

This is comparable to the Guardian with full berserkers accessories. And as we all know, Guardians may not hit as had as warriors, but they have no trouble killing any other classes.

Guardians (In mostly Zerker gear) hit for much more than that. Sword (One hander) auto attack crits for 2k on the normal swings and 3x 1k on the finisher.

~6-7k on the short channel attack.

The rest of your post is nonsense, but yeah, if you want to cheerleader a broken class go for it.

Your comparing a glass cannon 1h sword Guardian to a non glass cannon Ranger. well done.

LB2 hits for 6-7k non glass cannon build at a range of 1500 (traited) and can hit up to 5 people at the same time.

See the difference?

I will continue to experiment with the Class to see how “broken” it really is. Just to throw it out there though I have worked in QA in one of the largest games developer/publishers for over 4 years and do have some merit in knowing what is as designed and what is broken.

There is a reason different pets do different damage scales. As designed.

this forum community is broken, the class is quite ok… not OP, but far far from worthless.

People simply think rangers should be warriors, and warriors should be rangers, and thiefs shouldnt backstab, but rangers should stealth.

Wanna play a ranger really good? Go play it. Don’t whine.

Atherakhia.4086:

The numbers are the coefficients stacked. It’s easier to get a rough idea of the damage you’re trying to compare than go through the whole process. And no one is claiming Ranger burst isn’t great. It’s just not better than Thief.

First off, for max damage, % boosters and stat % bosters is more important.
Second we should look at the point of when burst is performed, comparing sustained (low cd) to single occurence burst.

In one shot burst, ranger tops thief due to instant self might stacking, and instant 22 stacks of vuln. But over the scope of time, thief can burst more often, so it levels out.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

It was said often now, I’ll just repeat it: It’s not like the ranger is unusable, but it’s worse than all other classes at the moment.

^user error.

@OP
class itself is fine, but do need a lot of QoL fixes and some minor teaks. Most of it can be sorted out if the development team sat down and spent a month or two to fix ranger issues in particular. It is the amount of issues together that causes a lot of challenging and frustrating issues. Not one single issue. Albeit some incompentent and blatantly ignorant players that stubbornly refuse to play the class as intended nor listen to advice, still keeps saying pet is one big issue.

TL;DR -
Pet is mostly fine, needs some minor tweaks and QoL changes
Traits is fine, but need some minor restructuring.
Weapons are fine, but can be a bit bland/frustrating at first
Evasion spam is fine
Spirits need more HP/Toughness
Shouts need some love after all the nerfs
Signets are backwards and need fix
All other complaints is void.

Regen bm with settlers. 02066. Shortbow + sword torch.
With that you get enought condi and direct damage pressure to wreck most enemies 1v1. Rangers will be viable up until they day warriors and theives are merged into a perma regen super tank 100b backstab cheese with cc immunity class.

There exist no such build, on any profession, that can be the best at everything at once. Those who claim otherwise is simply delusional fanboys

ArchonWing.9480:

The key here is opportunity cost. People feel that warriors don’t need to sacrifice as much to gain something. I can’t talk about warriors or confirm this due to lack of experience, but I’ll just take your engineer example. Engineers CAN indeed clear conditions very well and certainly they can beat necros with a 409 build, but Guild Wars 2 is almost never about just 1v1 situations and I would think a hgh/409 build is significantly weaker in other matchups because you lose out on so much kit utility that is one of the strength of the engineer— some would argue you could just play another class at that point. You’re at the very least putting 4-6 in alchemy and sacrificing traits like backpack regen, invigorating speed, or protection injection. I doubt the expert engineers have simply ignored this choice.

If we compare to other classes that are worse off, we can see rangers that need to spend about 6 points just to have longbow not be useless, 6 to have signets actually work, and about 8 to have shouts be usable. Well, that’s not completely accurate at times, but if we look at what doesn’t work, such as rangers, you can see classes give up a lot to accomplish anything. A DPS guardian is made of glass and a bunker guardian pretty much has to invest almost everything in the lower 3 trees.

So I think that’s what people are complaining about that certain other classes have to pigeonhole themselves into something or more like many of the other classes are just badly designed.

Then again, I sometimes wonder in general if people have even played the class they complain about that much.

Actually, for warrior to make shouts worthwhile you need 6 points. They are quite lackluster, and even if you invest 8 points to get adren on shout, you still do not measure up to ranger shouts.

Its sad but look at it this way;
Max warrior shout heal (AOE) is ~9400 ish. To accomplish this the warrior needs to have AT LEAST 1200 healing power, and it needs the Lung Capacity Trait, Shake it Off trait and Invigorating Shouts trait. Thats 6 trait points. Now you are speccin into a fairly “passive” line, so you want to regain some DPS. Easiest way to do that is use Inspiring Shouts to allow rapid buildup of adrenaline for near instant bursts. While not a requirement, i will list “Inspiring shouts” as a “Very Valuable Trait” in relations to shouts.

The shouts themselves produce a very long lasting 3 stacks of might, which can reach 6 stacks cuz of duration vs skill CD. It also cleanses 1 (2 if trait trigger) AOE condition cleanses removing 1 condi pr shout activation and 10 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy.
The cost of this “utility/support” is 3x utility slots and 8 trait points.

Compare this with rangers that only need 6 points to gain a AOE regen of 310 hp/s @ ~1400 healing power. Stats that are easily avaliable to the ranger even with a clerics build.
Now, at the same time, the ranger can take Vigorous Spirits and Spirits Unbound. Allowing the ranger to also bring AOE Protection and AOE 10% damage.
This sounds all well, but we know that clerics is the “downfall of DPS”. Fear not. If the ranger bothers to, it can go 6 into beastmastery to get lower cooldowns on shouts (technically 4 points needed, but the shout heal is a GM so 8 points investment needed to unlock it), it can also get AOE vigor and AOE healing. The GM minor in BM line return 10% of healing power as raw power. Meaning 140 to the power stat.
In addition to this, a massive increase in pet DPS will further balance out the loss of DPS from using a supportive gear. Pulling the rangers DPS far beyond that of the warrior.

So in all regards, warrior shouts are underpowered… they require massive investments and even then, comparing them to rangers, they gain ~190 hp/s more healing (over a 20 second timeframe) But at the cost of 2 utility slots and a huge amount of damage.

In addition to this, nobody with their sanity intact will say ranger shouts are actually in a good spot. They got 2.5 decent shouts that has ZERO group value when not traited (sic’em is the 0.5 only cuz of revealed and DPS increase, but its a pain to use and CD is too long. Search and Rescue is a wasted utility slot after the overzealous nerf).

And yes, i do happen to run a shoutheal built warrior. It’s just sad to see the stark contrast between the two professions (ranger hitting for 6-800 + 1.3-2.6k pet AA vs warrior doing max 4k evis and 1200-1900 axe aa)

If warrior did more damage with LB auto then you, then he had zerker full ascended and you didn’t or your pet was not attacking.

Simple fact:
Ranger damage = pet + ranger
Ranger LB 1 coeff = 0.5 at minimum range
Most reliable pet is spider due to it being ranged.
Spider AA coeff is 0.35, and its “weapon strength” = 3000

Warrior LB AA has 0.66 coeff
Exotic LB weapon strength average is 1000

Damage formula =
Weapon strength x power x coeff / target defense

We assume just full zerk stats, no traits (ranger benefits more from traits due to more % boosts)

Full zerk power stat (pvp one for simplicity. Wvw id high but i am writing this on a tablet)
Is 1858

Pet stats is separate from ranger stats, so pet power = 1374

We will use heavy dummy golem defense which is 2600

Warrior damage = 1000×1858×0.66/2600 = 471 (for both arrows) pr skill use.

Ranger damage is
1000×1858×0.5/2600 = 357 pr shot
Pet damage is
3000×1374×0.35/2600 = 554 pr shot

Both spider and ranger has skills whith much higher coefficients just like warrior. But end result is that ranger will, even in melee range, unless it stands inside combustive shot for its full duration, win due to coefficients alone.

Substance E.4852:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

DMany of the ragers and trolls around here are actively working on casting a dark shadow upon GW2 because a new, soon to be released game needs more people and this is one way to attract them.

lulwut? I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight bro.

looks like its double layered in this case.

Rune of the Survivor (Rangers Only, can be unlocked as very rare loot in Ascalonian Catacombs and Honor of the Waves. Account Bound on acquire)
(1) +25 Healing, +2 Pet Attribute Points
(2) +3% Boon Duration +3% Regeneration Duration +3% Protection Duration
(3) + 50 Healing +3 Pet Attribute Points
(4) + 7% Boon Duration +7% Regeneration Duration +7% Protection Duration
(5) + 125 healing +5 Pet Attribute Points
(6) + 10% Boon Duration, Healing skill cooldown reduced by 20%

And a sigil just for fun :P

Sigil of the Survivor (Restricted to Longbow or Shortbow users)
Minor: +10% Movement Speed while wielding a Bow
Major: +15% Movement Speed while wielding a Bow
Superior: +25% Movement Speed while wielding a Bow

i hardly die, even in full zerker. It’s just a L2P issue. However, most of the guys at these forums are all “pro’s” that “know” that ranger can’t possibly outdo any other class. Or simply believe that since they can’t pull it off, no-one else can either without cheating.

there is no elite players in GW2, it’s a casual gamers game y’know

For rangers, i find the reduction in endurance regen to be too steep. A reduction from 50% to 33% would be more reasonable. Rangers only have 1 blocking skill (GS4) and invulnerability at long cooldowns/heavy costs. This means that our main source of sustain comes from evasion, and not all of us feel like playing sword-dagger.
This proposed change, would be completely ok, if, and only if, the rangers most reliable source of evasion wasnt tied up in 2 weapons. Given the change to Vigor on heal, the vigor spam has been dramatically reduced, aswell as the uptime.

I would also like to propose that Barrage (Longbow #5) and Hunters Call have the raw damage increased by 15-20%. The reason for this, is that both these skills, even when invested heavily into power, does not grant enough damage to outweigh the drawbacks.
For hunters call, you are forced to stay within 1200 range line of sight. Anything that obscures your view makes the attack useless. Barrage roots you. Both of these attacks, also suffer from the fact that 2 bunker guardians with retaliation can actually return more damage then a fully berserker geared longbow ranger can dish out. Meaning that not only is the skill completely obsolete in the face of 2 guardians, it is purely suicidal.

The proposed change to Predators Instinct is well thought out, but the internal cooldown should be lower. If not, even if it is a very good choice, the cooldown will make it less interesting/compelling to take. Reducing the internal CD between 20-25 seconds will make it just that little bit more useful. Most fights, as things stand right now, barely lasts 50 seconds unless both the ranger, and the enemy, is going full bunker.

I would also like to know why you did not/when you will, look into the core pet mechanics. Yes it is a daunting task to take upon you. However, it is the achillies heel of the ranger. The player can perform 100%, but aslong as the pet is barely reliable 20% of the time, it will be hard to be on par with the other professions.

Another pet related issue i’d like you to look into is why someone thought it was a great idea to put activation times of 1-5 seconds, when the playerbase has made it abundantly clear that the F2 pet skill function is bugged. This bug applies to all but one pet. The Brown Bear. Only reason the brown bear F2 works, is because it has a reasonable activation time.

Could you make “Spirits Unbound” Grandmaster Minor, and remove that completely useless trait that is there atm? This would make space for more interesting traits, may i suggest a trait that grants protection (short duration) to allies when using a healing skill?

Other then that, thank you for your effort, the changes proposed is most appreciated.

i had a nice one last night, 7 votes for skyhammer, 2 for khylo, 1 for temple…. RNG chooser went with khylo.

GG anet, not even your own RNG function likes Skyhammer.

i’d say reduce current CD from 10 seconds to 8 seconds, to reflect the lower proc rate and then it would be perfect!

Depending on where you play, the experience will be vastly different. The way cultures affect your game has a massive impact, aside from the game mode itself.

in NA, the tiers are worlds apart (as can be seen on any Mos history where a T1 drops into T2 or T2 in T3). The difference in coverage and sheer manpower is so large that any T1 vs T2 is not even a competition. The T2 can double team the T1 all tehy want, but the T1 server will smash them still. That is the sadness of the sheer difference in power.
This also translates to PvE. I know some people who play in mid/lower tier NA and PvE there is slow, but “better” then WvW (mostly cuz they get smashed in WvW). While the higher tiers are populated almost all day and night.
NA usually stack servers for 24/7 coverage.

Come EU and there is a massive difference in “power”. The strongest servers are strong, only aslong as they “want” to be strong. If one or two guilds decides to take a break, it is not unusual for a server to drop a few ranks in just a week, because the point score will fluctuate a lot more. This is why some EU servers that have a large nightcrew becomes incredibly “strong”. Despite lack of general coverage. EU has a tendency to try gathering “good guilds” rather then “guilds playing off hours”. Some server “leaders” have realized that having 50 good guilds at prime is a bad idea and try to get NA/SEA/OCX guilds to their server. While others just simply tries to hoard all teh most skilled people, yet outside of their “prime” they just fall apart.

In NA, people is a lot more fixated on “the collective sense of reality” contrary to “realizing”. You will be told, repeatedly, to not play this, or to play like this. Depending on commanders you will be yelled at even when there is no way you could have done it any better. NA players have a tendency to give up and try plan B instead of getting what they originally wanted. This is mainly done to maintain the almighty PPT.

EU is more laid back. While being competitive, they have some of that “oh well, who cares” attitude mixed in with some good old fashion guts. PPT play is not done like in NA. It matters, but in a different way. It is more a feeling of just beating the enemy and taking whats theirs, regardless of what you take that drives the EU players, rather then just the number at the top of the screen.

Spear is more of a survivalist/guard weapon, aka ranger, warrior, guardian.
For thief i would love mace, crossbow or a chain-sword.

elprimo.4398:

Pretty legit. If you are naked. I would like to see what a Double or Triple chop do to you.

or a Norn Bearform

Gotta love Norn Bearform signet setup

voidwater.2064:

Warriors and guardians are much better as frontliners, and rangers lack good ranged AOE. The support they provide can be covered by other classes with higher DPS, more CC, or even stronger support. The class functions much better in smaller fights. Rangers are not absolutely terrible and useless, but they have the lowest potential of all classes in zergs. I would say that many mesmer builds face similar problems, but mesmer support is unique and powerful enough such that mesmers have a common role in zergs.

1st i will note that unless the mesmer has veil + portal and mass invis/nullfield it is even more useless then a ranger. This means that Mesmers are pidgeonholed into one single build, and any variation thereof is even more useless to the zerg then any ranger build is. This is bad for the mesmer, as it creates a “unspoken law” as to how to build a mesmer, completely ignoring the overall goal of “have fun”. The mesmer also suffers from having bad AOE/tagging capabilities. So both for the player behind the mesmer, and the mesmer profession, the current meta is hurting them.

2nd -

“If that ranger were another class, he would’ve contributed more before dying and allowing enemies to rally. He had negative value for the team.”

That very same goes for all the zerker warriors that end up rallybotting on the first push, or all the eles being wiped because they think it’s wise to follow the melee train instead of kiting the enemy zerg. Or the guardians who bring hammers and spam lightfields ontop of any field you place. Sure its fun to have retal, but what we wanted was to blast that waterfield. Not some kitten light field.
And let us not forget all them necromancers who believe they are godlike, and doesnt stick with the melee train, resulting in 0 stability and one dead necro.

95% of the time, it is the player that is at fault, not the profession. the remaining 5% is due to all the horribly weak, useless, misplaced, unlogical and unreliable functions that are tied to the ranger.

voidwater.2064:

- “If that ranger weren’t here on this queued map, someone playing a stronger zerg class could’ve joined, and we would have had a better chance of winning that fight. We pay an opportunity cost by having this ranger in the zerg.”

And the odds for you getting a “stronger zerg class” is about 3/8. If a ranger leaves, you are most likely getting anything BUT the 3 classes you want the most (Warrior, Guard and Necro).
It is even more reasonable to assume, that you will end up with a PvE hero, trying to get some achievements done, or possibly do map completion, or hey, you might even get an upscaled player.

Wishing a player was not there, is bullying. Bullying people online, is no less hurtful to the one on the receiving end as doing it IRL. If you don’t want the ranger in your zerg, tell him and whatever other profession you do not want in “your” zerg, to go snipe some camps and dollies.
Rangers are not super useful beyond 15 man teams, however they are second only to PU mesmers in roaming. Best thing is, PvE builds, like bearbow, works fine in roaming.

Instead of crying about who should be allowed to do this or that or even play, find a use for them. If the player, regardless of profession, ends up being a liability to the zerg, send them off doing something else, something constructive, instead of rejecting the player and bullying them for the choices they made. Be a TAD mature, and THINK before you start telling people to bugger off and get a guard or warrior.

On that note:
A bad player is a bad player, be it a warrior, guard, necro, ranger, thief, ele, mesmer or engineer. If you play bad, you gonna end up rallybotting.
Those who rallybot in the first place, do so, because they do not want to play WvW the way you or anyone else wants to for that sake. They want to do their own thing. Rallybotting is the result.