Guild Wars 2

Oozo.7856:

King Amadaeus.8619:

Two support guards in a 5 man is cheesy as kitten.

This entire game is cheese.

Fonduewars 2
Buy the Collectors edition today and get a slice of premium Cheddar and Brie

Full zerker with banners works like a charm

Atoss.1056:

Venomshare + Epidemic from necro with +condi food = someone is gonna be mad :P

Insert condiclass here + necro with epidemic and +condi food is going to make anyone mad.

Venoms is one thing. Try trap ranger with 2x Sharpening Stone, krait runes and Sharpened Edges + epi…. end result – Burning, 12-15x bleeding, immob, cripple, poison and torment all in less then 1 seconds. Just for good measure, you can reapply burning, poison, cripple and another 10 stacks of bleeding within the time it takes for epidemic’s cooldown to reset.

Venoms is a niche thing. They are underrated by most. Iv’e said it probably 20 times or more in this WvW forums. Venomshare is strong. Finally people seem to realize it.

Mesmer is a good duelist, and seem deceptively strong, that being said.
I am not a uber pro player, i know how i should play to be at “pro” level, but my mechanical skill isnt good enough. However I am very good at building WvW setups for rangers, ive gotten good enough that i can tell that the build will be viable from the stats alone (the utilities make little difference). This is why i can say mesmers wont beat rangers without either one being drastically better then the other, or the ranger making a mistake, or the mesmer being lucky.
Mesmer is strong vs players unfamiliar with their functions, i do not play mesmer so my understanding is limited, however it is not hard to see how they can be beaten.

UNIEVERSAL FOR ALMOST ALL MESMER BUILDS IS THAT THEY ARE WEAK TO CONDITIONS.

this is not true for ALL builds, but most of their builds are not good at dealing with conditions.

Rangers on the other hand, they can get near immunity from sheer cleansing spam. Set it up correctly and you get bunker stats, kittened amounts of healing, the ability to cleanse so much that even a decent condimancer will struggle to kill you, and last but not least, they can dish out more condies faster then any other setup then a condimancer blowing all cooldowns.
This is the ranger in a nutshell, and they do not need fancy rotations or special gear to do this. You can roll full dungeon/WvW exotics and still get the right stats.

Mesmer also loses to ranger in mobility, like really badly. Just GS alone on a ranger has more mobility outside of combat then almost all the mesmers builds has.
Portal may seem like a great mobility skill, but it is only good for backtracking. You go “from here to there, then very fast back again”. You still need to get “from here” and “to there”. Which in no way is remotely fast on a mesmer.

If thief and ele is not your thing, the only strong mobile roamer left is ranger. Warrior and guardian is by no means an option. Engineer gonna take too much time to learn and by the time you get good with it, youll quit the game

Forzani.2584:

Prysin.8542:

Forzani.2584:

First thing. He was saying the nerf to crit damage hurts other classes more than Rangers …he was directing that at someone that was saying the opposite.

I am generally a Ranger advocate, but yes, Ranger power builds are the bottom of the barrel compared to other classes ….especially if the 70/30 ratio is accurate. It’s basic math.

….but yes, I also think a power build can work as I use one myself in WvW at times. The 70% rule still applies though.

depends. I made a build that goes 20/20/0/0/30 and ran cats and birds while in full zerker. Passive regen from traits or quickness on swap + pet hitting like a truck should not be underestimated. This build was a PvE build though. But +30% crit damage on pets, +10% crit damage on MH axe and spotter + 10% damage when 100% endurance gave me quite a bit of DPS.
Sure the build made you, the player, hit less, but it made your 30% from the pet shine.
This was during queens pavillion, and that build carried me through all bosses short of liadri. None of those bosses lasted more then 20 seconds at best.

Sounds good. Since I never PvE, but I bet that does a lot of damage. I am only concerned with WvW…and no matter what build or weapon set it always comes down to thieves for me. The pet is almost a liability for that encounter. Takes to long for the pet to realize where the Thief is after popping from stealth, and is a ready made source to help the Thief reenter stealth.

it does do a ton of damage, however it has some issues, namely survivability.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNAnXRjUqUyaHLWsQ1agoVgTsHHqQL69YWqv9XMRJSA-zUyAYLBRCCIRBiwAk8KiGblsIasqFMVJRUt3oIa1kCIihRA-w

i ran that in WvW not long ago. If you can just bind someone, so you can use Signet of the Wild to increase damage, and Quickening Zephyr for the pet so that the jaguar can just maul people down while you do your thing with the GS or axe offhand. The build is not easy to play, but with you, the player producing 4-6k crits with maul and pet doing 4-6k crits on its attacks, it is not a bad setup.

Rangers have 2 big weaknesses; Stuns and bursts. Unlike almost all other classes, they got NO reliable (yes, reliable is the key here) way of healing up once being bursted.
Every other class (only one i am not sure about is necro) got a way to HEAL a small chunk without having to resolve to using the healing skill. Rangers got ZERO such options.
While some say “what about Fern Hound F2”, well that is were the reliable part comes in, it is by no means reliable considering F2’s bug out, A LOT.
Eles got on dodge and a weapon skill or two, engies can use medikit/toolbelt which has much much lower CD, thief got Mug/heal on venom use, guard got dodge roll, meditations and virtue, warrior got shouts, mesmer got mantras…..
When “Invigorating Bond” was released, i hoped it would A: scale from rangers stats and B: affect ranger. It does not, instead it is a GM that does not use ranger healing (thus it heals abysmally little, comparable to Sigil of Renewal) and it only affects allies. Meaning your allies gotta be in 360 range of pet, or it wont work and even then it is bad.
Ranger also got NO stunbreaker under 30 seconds (look all you want, the closest you get is “Hide in Plain Sight” which only make you stealth, not break the actual stun). They also got few of them that synergizes with their builds (meaning if you take 2 rather then one, in most cases that actually lowers the effectiveness of that build both defensively and offensively)

Hedgehog in the fog.1053:

“The main issue being that if you make the cast/animation client-side, issues like lag and server extrapolation throw a HUGE monkey wrench into the mix. Then you’d have instances in Player-versus-player content the pet would effectively hit the target potentially before the target gets the visual queue to dodge. Seeing as this game features dodges and whatnot, this is a pretty serious problem which would make people get hit out of nowhere, the pet being far away visually, and then the pet would appear way after striking the target due to server communications.”

Possibly. However, yesterday I fought a warrior and as he said fear me, I was already feared. There is already a lack of visual Qs in some regards.

@Prysin, is there anything stopping them from doing this type of system, besides the lack of pet based visual Qs? Which, as you said, if the ranger had the command, there would still be a Q.

Also, since you seem to know a bit. Is there a way to change the priority system?

@Seraphin Storm. Personally, I would take the ability to have a reliable utility over simultaneous casting of F2. Im sure some would disagree, but sometimes you really need that wolfs fear to work, and it…doesn’t.

yes they could implement it through a buffer system. However it would be a horrible headache to implement it.

In theory, they could buffer any AI action and delay it by 1 second. Only downside is that whenever a ranger/necro/mesmer wanna do something, their AI friends will lag 1 second behind. The reason its not smart reducing the delay is because if its too short, people with pinglag will still suffer while the rest doesnt. On the contrary, too long of a buffer, and every AI’s DPS goes down the drain.

Rewriting the priority queue is about a big of a task as redesigning the entire AI system. Most likely, they would have to add more priority groups/edit a lot of values to ensure that the skills would fire off in the right sequence at the right time.

make it 5 seconds all over. Boost damage on stealth attacks by 3% – DONE.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

I think they’re all(for the most part) mindless sheep. Rangers are(in my mind anyway) loners and individualists by nature. That’s why the shed the trappings of civilization to live closer to nature.

And as individuals have shown, some will prosper where others will perish. Such is the fate of those that walk the path of life alone.

then again, we are never alone, because we cant get rid of that (/“#)(¤/)(”/#¤)&&%&&& pet

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

bug thats slightly balance stupid BUGGED pet ..
and yes if you died by ranger you deserve that and pls dont say you were a warrior as it would be really sad ..

i killed a warrior in melee range with LB last week at Thursday. and i ran full glass on my ranger. So pls don’t say that is sad, because every warrior will be grieving then.

Sorry OP, but you are indeed truly terrible.
Here are some things you should practice:
- Situational Awareness:
Notice how that guardian almost always manage to teleport and nuke you? That is because you only look dead ahead. Look around you, all 360 degrees, as often as possible.

- Tunnel vision:
You get so focused, so greedy, so hung up on your target that you lose track of other things. This is not only related to the point above, but also to how you play. You let yourself drop down to 4-5k HP, on a glass ranger. That means that almost any burst skill can down you instantly. You must manage your HP, and utilities, much better.

- Positioning:
You stop and shoot. That is a good tactic, IF and only IF, the enemy cannot reach you. However you do this on flat terrain, with no hurdles between you and your enemy. When playing ranger it is crucial to think “how can i position myself so that others cannot suddenly attack me?”. Get onto a ledge, or hide behind allies and attack from far far away.

- Pet usage:
It was nearly non existent. Use the pet and use it properly.
In your case, the spider is a terrible choice, you should opt for more AOE type of pets, such as Alpine Wolf (AOE Chill) or Black Bear (AOE Weakness). These will be more helpful for you then your spider.

- The Build:
It seems clumsy, like you put together some pieces here and there to try maximize DPS, but did not for a moment think about defense. You have one stunbreaker, which you “cannot” use if you want to maintain maximum offense. Which is fine, if you had some other defensive skills. Alas you do not, therefore the moment you get caught without stability or your stability gets stolen/corrupted, you will be destroyed.

Ranger pets are the rise and fall of the Ranger class. Their damage and utility should not be underestimated, but they are the key to massive failure too.

By now, you may understand that this will be a wall of text, so if you want a TL;DR version, forget it.

For a long time, i have contemplated as to why Anet chose to give pets such a massive respawn timer. This would be no issue if the pet’s themselves were resilient and one could expect them to survive, even if they had zero points into beastmastery. So, i’d like to discuss this.
Considering Rangers technically has 4 weapon sets at all times, whereas two of the sets (pets) can be considered semi-controllable, the balance between these “sets” are just too big. Normal weapon set has a 9 second swap – fine, could be 1-2 sec less since rangers rely on moving from one set to the next, but that is more of a QoL thing that would just help on the lower end of the skill-ladder.The pet “set” has a 20 second swap (trait-able to 16) with a 60 second “on death” respawn timer. Considering the pet is a portion of your DPS, and that keeping the pet alive despite heavy hits flying all over the place is nigh impossible, this death respawn timer is just unacceptable.

In comparison all other profession mechanics have the ability to trait for shorter CD’s and more uptime then the ranger has. This despite that their mechanic is not essential for their damage output and defense.
The pets shouldn’t have this long respawn timer, it is too long. However, i will note that just reducing respawn time can be harsh for enemies fighting beastmastery specced builds, and as thus i suggest increasing the swap time by 8 seconds and decreasing respawn time by 25 seconds. This ensures as close to total uptime as possible without making the mechanic impossible to counter.

If a flat out change to these values is too strong, a linear scaling with the beastmastery trait line would be preferable. Allowing for more uptime (despite deaths) the more you spec into the line. Ranger pets should not under any circumstances have more then 80% uptime (between two pets) in a scenario where pets can be killed fast (intentionally). This is to ensure that in PvP the beastmaster spec will not become a “final solution” for all ranger builds thus stagnating the profession.

Pets are also “weapons” and as they are part of ranger DPS they should be treated as such. Therefore i want to raise the question; Why cannot I, the ranger, give my pets sigils or runes?
It is an interesting thought, but given that pets have base stats, allowing them to make use of sigils. It would diversify pets seeing as certain pets can make use of certain sigils, but this can also help increase usage.
Runes are also a thing to consider. Seeing as pets have their own skills, why can they not make use of runes? Why can i not grant my pet some collar or a tag that gives it 150 stat of some sort?

If the pet are considered to be an essential part of the profession, it should have a equal ability to be tailor made into the pet of ones choice. Will it change the ranger meta? YES, without a doubt. But at this point, rangers are in a peculiar spot. They can perform on all levels, often much better then many anticipate, but they are unable to display their prowess upon first glance, this leaves them behind. Most of this is caused by lackluster utilities, too long cooldown elites or simply a un-appealing design, but a huge part of it comes down to one single entity; The PET

actually, they could make it that way, however it would have to trigger an animation in both the player and pet model.

So say you want to cast fern hound healing.

The casting is done player side, and a animation triggers in the player to cry out a shout-phrase like “heal me” or something, at the same time, it triggers a “howling wolf” like animation in the pet.
The most reliable way of implementing this system is by setting it to player side only, that would reduce the amount of server resources needed to make it work.

The current system, in which the pet is somewhat controlled by the server, and any action done by the player has the same latency as when you interact with any kind of NPC (like when talking to NPC’s, you notice there is a slight delay between pressing next/continue and the action happening. That is caused by ping-delay.)

@OP
IF you have to ask such a question, you should have rerolled something else a long time ago.
Looking for approval on these forums is like looking for a single special grain of sand in the Sahara. Asking such questions only shows that you lack confidence in your abilities with the profession. Lack of confidence leads to bad performance, bad performance leads to frustration which again usually spills over into RL matters and ruin your or somebody else’s day.

Daemon Hawk.9406:

Prysin.8542:

AOE “Condition trap”
By wielding a longbow, you can create a AOE “Condition trap” that will seriously hurt your enemy.
To “set” the trap, you will need to utilize multiple skills, but the effect can be devastating.
First you need a longbow, the more condition damage on it, the better (dont use this bow for anything but this trap).
The skills you need to use (in this order) is
Sun spirit (preferably with 15% spirit bonus trait)
Sharpening Stone (for bleeding)
Pet F2 – use a Forest spider with it’s F2 ability (next three strikes poisons your foe)
Quickening Zephyr (4 second quickness burst, makes the whole barrage fire in less then 2 seconds, instead of 5)
Barrage

This chain is quite good against gate attackers in W3 or against large numbers of mobs (Since you apply Bleed, burn, cripple and poison)

Sun Spirit will add three seconds of burn to at most two enemies, one for you and one for your pet, until the 10 sec proc cooldown expires. I use Sun spirit, and like it, but fail to see the synergy with barrage. It’s not like the cripple is going to hold them in a fire field. You’re just randomizing where your burn proc goes.

I also don’t understand why you’re interested in the Forest spider’s F2. 6 secs of poison added to its next 3 attacks is nice, but won’t that just stack 18 secs of poison on a single target? Are you planning on redirecting it to 3 targets with F1 during your barrage channel? Otherwise, how is this helping to spread poison to a group?

pre 26th February patch, Forest Spider F2 would be added to your character as a boon, instead of being used by the pet.
I noticed a few weeks ago that this had changed… a sad change, but probably just an unintended bug.

The idea behind that “field” is that barrage is a player AOE, but it doesnt always hit the same 5 enemies, so you can lay waste to crowds by simply applying massive condition spammage onto them.

Also, please do note, that while i am not totally sure of this, “Piercing Arrows” seem to make Barrage hit every player in the AOE circle. This needs confirmation, however it seems to hit more then the max 5 target limit that is imposed on player AOE in WvW

At the end of that CDI thread, even if we “win”.
Nothing spectacular will happen. The highest voted will get more Dev Time. Dev Time =/= Dev fixing anything or improving anything at all. It means they will be forced to look at the profession, find more exiting ways to circumvent the current issues, and execute one of these amazingly evasive updates. While the problems that has been haunting us will remain.

Krugan.7901:

Sarision.6347:

Does anybody find it funny that the current Ranger design fits new balance philosophy?

It’s funny because that design philosophy was proposed by an user on this forum in an attempt to give a more accurate description of the class to the new players.

The biggers lie of that philosophy is the sustained damage part. When someone say sustained damage they are talking about autoattack(mostly), but really, anybody can autoattack(and probably still do more damage than us) while still having the option to burst. There is just no balance in that. Sustained damage dosn’t work, pressure does, and we have none.

Actually, look at ranger AA and compare it to warrior AA. Ranger is usually 100-180 damage less, then add in pet, which does around 250-300 damage untraited (tool tip)
… end result, if target doesnt try to dodge pet; we do more DPS with AA then warriors.

Who could’a known that pet DPS was supposed to be included in our overall DPS? Honestly, i thought they just gave us the pet so they could reduce our DPS by 30% for fun.

If you want some more, interesting approach. Try a DPS supporter

4/2/0/2/6 is not a bad build
+10% damage when endurance is full
spotter
Pet gains 1 stack of might on crit
Vigorous spirits
Shout master
Rendering Attacks
Invigorating bond

use Drake and Artdoctus bear (only that bear, no other)
What will this provide?

If you stay in melee, you will provide spotter, DPS boost for your pet, fury from Warhorn, bonus from spirit. But most importantly, if you run like 500-1000 healing power or so, you will heal your party every 20 seconds for a small-medium amount.

I reccomend trying out Zealots to not “lose” too much DPS (main stat power, precision, healing power). It gives you a secondary “support role”. While you can maintain as much DPS as possible. It also gives YOU added survivability.

Armor – Celestial
Trinkets – Zealots with Assassins “gems” in them
Weapons – Assassins
Food – Butternut curry squash soup or whatever… +100 precision and 10% crit damage (150 ferocity)
Oil – Sharpening Stone

It will be a bit different then usual. but with a drake pet, you should be able to do close to “normal” zerk DPS (thanks to really hard hitting pet F2. Tip – Fire hits harder then lightning, if there is only 1 target. Because of burning. Marsh hits harder then lightning because it does roughly same “direct” damage, but has poison too)

recorded 3 games this morning. They are up on VoD… Didn’t go too well, seems like there is a more prevalent “EU Meta” during the early hours

the greatest irony is that the most unconventional/unpopular strategies are often what gives you the edge.
Load up a zerg with rangers. Doooo eeeet

why do you just copy old Anet statements and mix up 5 – 10 sentences/words of your own???

I dont see the point with this thread, other then “Q_Q this isnt what was promised a year ago”

petless option – no thanks

Dun like pets? reroll

Ltomato.8649:

You did bring up the damage coefficients, which I totally forgot about- increasing those rather than base damage would help immensely.

Finally someone who gets it!!!

I see so many, pardon the label, idiots, that suggest time and time again that base damage or simply “tooltip damage” needs an increase, while in reality EVERYTHING is decided by coefficients. Raise a coefficient by just 0.05 or 0.1 and the result will be instantly noticeable ingame. It is that important….

As for thread;
Sword is almost fine. They did talk about introducing some sort of “fix” to the whole dodging issue during AA rotation, if they can make that work reliably, then the sword itself will be close to perfect.
Target tracking for #3 and some extra debuff on Monarchs Leap would be the final step in order to make it perfect.

Damage wise – it is ok, but it would have some more pet buffs in it. The pet might in the AA rotation is good, but it lasts a bit too low to fully capitalize on it and you are forced into a continuous rotation spam in order to maintain and or stack the might. Some sort of pet sustain boost from one of the sword skills would be wonderful, perhaps protection when using #3 or Regeneration when using Hornet Sting.

Sustained damage IS pretty good on ranger, but the traits needed to make this damage worthwhile investing in is too far spread out. A major cleaning should be done to the trait trees in order to bring sword, greatsword, axe and offhand weapons either in a single tree or two separate trees.

Axe mainhand AA could use a slight buff to either raw damage output, a pet boost and/or secondary function (boon removal/convert when traited? Perhaps remaking Honed Axes into something worthwhile). Either way, as is, the axe AA is floating between being average to potentially very strong. It is extremely situational as it relies on several enemies and/ or AI or hostile objects for it to shine. the axe mainhand just needs, a little bit extra.
Split shot is well. bad, and i would rather see it as a burst “chop” style skill applying 5 stacks of torment with a slightly longer cooldown then in its current form. The axe has the potential to be a “debuff” weapon, instead in it’s current form, it is simply not showing any distinct role and or function at all. It just has some of this and some of that while being good or even reliable, at neither.

never met a good warrior. Their all the same. After the patch, there will be a distinct difference, but now? no. Warrior is warrior. They will die.

Thief? Just play one for 15 minutes and you know exactly how they work.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Hoelbrak gives -20% condi duration. You must be saying when combined with food. It doesn’t give you more stacks of might when empowering, just duration, and might is the first boon stripped. The point is Hoelbrak is for dps front line meta. However, if you are getting chilled and immobilized all the time, maybe you should change things up. Sacrifice getting some might stacks in combat for mobility and survivability through trooper runes.

And I don’t advocate every guardian run this. I find having a mix of shout and concecration for purging flames, and other consecrations a good mix. I’ve had many people come back at me saying “Trooper Runes are dumb,” “I’d never run trooper runes,” “What are Trooper Runes?” If everyone in frontline is running dps then kitten about being chilled and imob all the time.

I just hate people who think everyone should run one thing when a variety is better and usually help the group more. It really boils down to group comp. And if you’re running with a lot of pugs, they usually need more support as pugs generally run selfish, higher-dps builds.

gotta agree with a lot of your points.
I used to ask people to slot a Sigil of Water (30% chance to proc on attack) on their melee weapons. Because if you get enough people doing so, you litterally heal the whole frontline by just swinging your weapon. Took a while, then a guild tried it because what the hell, the sigils is less then 30 silver a piece…. end result, we had 15 people wielding hammers, greatswords or staffs with that sigil, healing for 5x 550-600 HP every 10 or so seconds. Does not sound like a huge deal, but that is almost 8k HP randomly healing your guild in a AOE every 10 seconds. Just from attacking.
Is there better sigils out there, sure, but can other sigils cause so much benefit to a group, for so low price ? i am not so sure there is any other sigil that can, not unless you want to spend some gold.

people do not think, especially in NA this is definetively true. EU is marginally more flexible in builds, but they too are moving towards " only builds on metabattle or gtfo ". which kills the game.

You wonder why a game stagnates? It is because players stubbornly refuses to look at their options and they MAKE the game stagnate. So instead players demand that the devs make their current setup so weak they HAVE to change, because their own imagination apparently cannot shift the direction on their own.

I see more commanders rage at hammer guards cuz of inappropriate light field spam then i see commanders rage at rangers. Go figure where the real problem is.

Congrats, TC just earned itself another WvW ranger.

Chaith.8256:

Sol.4310:

So going by your info every class beats Engineer

So going by this answer you aren’t worth arguing with

Well yes, pretty much all classes beats engineer, given time. However if it is a case of “gotta kill it fast” then very few classes can actually do that, and most classes will lose that fight because engineer simply has too much pressure for them to deal with.

But given time, yes, every class can beat engineer. Just like engineer can beat every class.

Still. PvP does not favor lengthy duels, its the start opposite, so Sol is by all means wrong, but still has a valid point.

Durzlla.6295:

Prysin.8542:

i agree, that makes sense.

Further specializing the pets would be good. Although, i think that if we were to do so, pets would have to get their own healing. Perhaps give them the same healing system as WvW guards? Seeing as that one is very reliable and effective in 1 v 1. But not OP in 1vX or against strong bursts.
Pets get 2 utility slots, we can choose from X utilities. Where as 1 utility slot is specced for defense (burst heal/evade/invuln/condi cleanse type of functions) and one for offense (quickness/burst dps/condition attack/CC).
Pet attack/retreat is put on same button. This way we get more control, higher survivability and greater overall reliability. Ofcourse this system demands more from the player. But once you learn it, just like the attunement/kit swap systems, it starts being a boon instead of a major drag.

Only question is how would you use said utilities? I have a VERY strong feeling Anet DOES NOT want to use more F keys than 4.

I do wish we had more customization for our pets whether it was traits ( in the BM traitline) or as you suggested with choosing skills so my Fernhound would be different from yours.

PS: why would they need a new way to heal?

By tweaking current system;
Current:
F1 = Attack
F2 = Ability/Utility
F3 = Return
F4 = Swap

New:
F1 = Offensive Utility/Ability
F2 = Defensive Utility/Ability
F3 = Action/Abort
F4 = Swap

EDIT:
Not us, but the pets. Currently, we have to burn OUR heal for the sake of the pet. This can in some cases, be a major hindrance and a large risk. By letting the pet get their own healing, either through an automated mechanic, such as guards in WvW, which automatically queue a healing skill upon hitting 30-40% HP. Or through a player controlled defensive ability. This ability can be a simple “Lightning Reflexes” like dodge, or a medium strength healing skill applied to pets only.

BM Ranger and support guard is the only two classes that actually BENEFIT from this set.

BM Ranger because it can actually still deal good damage while NOT having any power (all hail pets with their own stats) and because if you run x2x66 you can get massive regen, heavy pet strikes and with the upcoming change to axe auto – very good might stacking. Make no mistake, i have this armor on my ranger and it is FAR FROM a good set. Not the way the game currently is. That being said, the ranger will NOT DIE, unless the user makes several fatal errors.

Support guard for obvious reasons.

most of the issues with pet comes down to overly slow and highly telegraphed animations. Simply put, these attacks are not seamless and does not flow very well, or at all, with the rest of the attacks.
The fact that you have between 1 and 4 second warning before the animation start is ludicrous in the first place.

The main reason for me to suggest instant EFFECT application, is because in the majority of cases, the ranger is in need of the EFFECT, not the actual DPS. This is why i say that the damage must be bound by animation while effect is instantaneous.

When every other class can through one way or another inflict instant blind/fear/stun/daze/knockdown/immobilize/chill, then why should we not be able to do so too?
Look at other classes signets. Sure its not worth spending the signet, but they CAN. It’s the principle of having an effect, on demand, with an extremely short animation/instantaneous effect being applied. The main reason to use the Raven F2 is because A: it blinds, B: it does a good deal of damage. Introducing my system would add the blind right away, and the damage (which in the majority of cases is what you need to evade) is bound by the attack animation end.
Some pets, like Hawk, Eagle, Snow Leo, Lynx and others that apply condition upon hitting, should not be altered to fit into the system, as it would be incredibly OP to have 25s bleed on-demand at any time, from just having a pet there. Such damage should be possible to block/dodge/evade.

To simplify, the change in system should prioritize non-DPS skills, and disregard DPS skills. This way, your direct DPS/pet DPS does not change, however the pet utility and ultimately, reliability would

ItIsFinished.9462:

With the introduction of new runes and sigils, has anyone come up with any new builds? Or improved upon a current build? I’m interested in the new Torment runes because they look to be viable for a crit/bleed build.

torment runes should be epic with the good old Apoth BM Bunker. But you gotta go melee.
Pop healing and Wolf F2 at the same time. watch em run to their death

Rentapest.6503:

THE MOST STUPID QUOTE EVER

STOP QUOTING THAT OLD FART OF A DESCRIPTION. IT IS 100% WRONG; OUTDATED, MISLEADING, UNTRUE AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, IRRELEVANT TO TODAYS RANGER!!

Threather.9354:

• Rangers have no burst damage or reliable cc in zerg fights

Ahahahahaahahahahaahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahaahaha, no.

fake news

i like the existing system of amulet + gemstone. Already, the amulets comes with a “preset” gemstone in them. therefore the customization aspect and “dumbing down” aspect is already in place.
However, i think that adding 6 pieces of customizationable gear would be too much. Perhaps a simply system of Amulet + Gem (merged) and a backpiece. The backpiece offers unique stat combinations that does NOT mirror the amulets completely (kinda like how some ascended gear is merged with another part type of gear, IE; Rabid + apothecary). This way, customization can be further increased, while retaining a overall simple selection system.

I also think that in the case of PvP, Arena Net should produce some more engaging and informative ingame guides. The current system where you walk around with golems is ok enough, but it is too fragmented, and it is not obvious that you have to check out this or that in order to understand the game. A simple recording from a game with supplemental commentary, compartmentalized into sections covering node capture, node defense, basic strategy, basic linguistics and a easy to understand “how to set up gear 101” would go a long way in helping new players more then any form of “lack of customization” will.

Remember that the greatest obstacle to new players is not the basic gear setup itself, most players understand this part fairly well. It is how to interact with the whole game mode that creates problems.

atleast, that is how i see it.

sandvich.8259:

Pewp-Pewp not Pew-Pew

Rangers need toning down in WvW they are ridiculous.
Ridiculous regen with troll urgent
1200 lazer of death. Get close? get knocked back start again.
Passive evasion by spamming attack skills on sword dagger.
Fear, kD on pets.
Unrivaled revive potential from pets in down state.

Each class has risk reward kind of balance where Ranger is just reward with no risk at the moment.

They are just over the top. Either buff all other professions or nerf ranger.

good day good sir.

after reading through your post, i’d like to take a few minutes to explain to you where your fallacies lies.

Passive evasion: Does only exist on GREATSWORD. It is the only skill, on any class, that offers evasion as part of an “auto attack chain”. Sword, Dagger, Shortbow, Greatsword 3, Harpoon 5, Lightning Reflexes and attacks similar to these on other professions are ACTIVE skills. They cannot be spammed endlessly and continuously. They require you to think before using, if not, you will have a defensive function on cooldown.

Ridiculous Regen with Troll Unguent:
This is a healing skill, if we look at its total healing over 10 seconds (both zero and max healing power stat) then the healing per second with troll unguent is:
Zero healing power: 850 × 10 / 25 second cooldown = 340 HP per second
Max healing power (2147): 1108 × 10 / 25 second cooldown = 443.2 HP per second.

Warrior healing signet – NO healing power = 362 HP per second
Warrior healing signet – MAX healing power (2345) = 479 HP per second.

As you can see, the warrior clearly does better. The warrior healing is 100% passive. It has ZERO cooldown, because you do not NEED to use it. It is always there. Thus it is 100% reliable.
Troll Unguent however has a 1 second activation time, plenty of time to interrupt and or apply poison. Thus negating a whole skill and or stopping a skill. Interrupting or poisoning the warrior has less of an effect, as the heal will always be there, in addition to secondary sources such as Adrenal Health, Regeneration Boon and incoming healing from other classes (Healing Mist from ele, elite spirit from ranger, guardian symbols and shouts and other things etc).

If the ranger is destroying you at 1200 range, then EVERY CLASS can counter attack it. NO EXCEPTION. Even necromancer can actually destroy a ranger if there is only 1200 range gap to close.

So good sir, please leave this thread and take with you your blatant, misinformed lies somewhere else.

Thank you.

Sigmoid.7082:

We are in the skill fact meta….

and this meta is a strong one. It will last for a while, i predict.

Waffler.1257:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I understand the scale issues; just making sure there weren’t some misconceptions flying around. Most melee attacks have pretty large hit areas to make the game feel better with latency. I believe they’re bigger than the animations show for every race/scale. Especially to the sides.

I can’t think of a way to fix this off the top of my head without plastering ground decals all over the place or somehow making streak effects better show the attack arc. Any other ideas?

Option to display other players as any character model that you choose, lots of other games do this, for example, Quake.

just do like in WvW.

Set model limit to lowest – everyone the same. EZMODE FIX. Its already in the game. It cannot get more simple then that.

Hello Exami

This patch was advertised many many months in advance. Also due to this patch hitting in the early part of the tournament, the tournament is slightly longer this time (2 weeks longer?). In the end, nothing will change much, especially if you’re in NA, the meta there is rigid and will not change anytime soon.

Cheers
- Lynx

Since i actually PLAY a ranger, unlike most people on the forums, i can tell you that in 99% of times, a ranger will NOT be able to even use their downed #3 skill.

Reason is, their downed #2 skill, is a CLEAVE stun. It needs a target.
Want to kill rangers? Down it, stealth/pop stability and YOU WON.
Kill pet and YOU WIN
Kill pet #2 and YOU WIN

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

Lazze.9870:

pho.9412:

Ranger still has the worst party utility.

I’m assuming you’re doing pvp/wvw only.

PvE wise the ranger got some of the better party utilities in the game.

Shhh the noobs are not supposed to know that. If they did, rangers would suddenly be welcome in pug parties without any “reservations”….

But since it’s not true and after 2 years everyone knows better, we don’t have that problem.

Guess three times which group that comment put you in.

Like I’ve said in the past… when Rangers go a third year without a single positive thread in the WvW or PvP forums, we’ll know who to blame.

Positive thread – not needed.
QQ thread is what you want. Nobody makes “positive” threads. its QQ or nothing.

yeah, pretty much.

We used to have 1 good shout, before they nerfed Search and Rescue.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Why do people belive that because thieves go in stealth they should move slower, go on revealed when hit or even lose health/stamina like in some games I have seen (what?).

Do stealth fighters or bomber have any of theM symptoms when they go in stealth?

Stealth vehicles such as the S-117 Nighthawk, F22 Raptor and B2 Stealth Bomber, in real life become visible to radar when they prepare for attack. Not fully visible, but you can catch them on radar.
Their radar deflecting/absorbing coating does not cover the internals of the plane. Once the doors to their armory opens, they become visible because their radar profile changes just enough to be picked up.

To explain it a bit better with a crude analogy.
Imagine yourself trying to stab someone, but you have a special cardboard box covering you. Aslong as you sneak around while inside the box, you are undetectable. However as soon as you stick your hand out to stab someone, you are no longer a special cardboard box, you are a arm. Arms are not stealthed nor special. Hence you get busted.

Uhm, you guys seem to be mixing things up;
You talk about viable builds, then you talk about spirits, then WvW.
Ok, i do not deny that spirits can be used in WvW, i have used them myself, and they can be effective/supportive to some degree. However, the typical spirit ranger (sPvP build) that people consider to be viable, will get you instantly killed in WvW and it will be mediocre at best in PvE.
The two spirits i consider good are sun and nature spirit. Water spirit does have it’s niche but it leaves you more vulnerable to attacks then any other setup does.

Fact is, spirits and WvW, rarely works well. There is too much AOE, too much stuns, knockbacks, lines of warding, mesmer pulls, fear marks and other things for spirits to ever work reliably in large scale encounters.

Trapper is a build that works very well in PvP and WvW, but is borderlining ineffective in PvE.

Please keep the modes APART.
Ranger is in the higher tiers in PvP, High tier in dungeons, viable but not preferred in PvE and useful in smaller WvW encounters.

Claiming rangers is useless means you haven’t learnt to play the class properly. If you refuse to play the class as intended by the developers, then you will not be successful. Therefore, running full zerk longbow with 0 points in BM will NOT make you successful in all modes. It is just how it is. Deal with it, move on and explore the class. Learn to play, learn to listen to those of us who are experienced and successful. Just because i tell you that the class isnt useless doesn’t mean i deny it having issues, some of them being quite large. However it boils down to your ability as a player to lessen the impact the issues this class have on your gameplay.

GS Ranger
1 sec evasion on AA (spam 1 to live, spam 1 to win)
extreme fury uptime
Permanent passive regeneration close to 450 hp/second healing
AOE immobilize
AOE condition cleanse
23k HP
3.1k Armor
-40% condition duration
long lasting stability
Water field with 3x leap and a blast finisher

BM ranger. If you want to deal damage, you gotta work AGAINST you mechanics design to make it work. Which involves a combination of spamming F1, F2 and F3 coupled with utilities, weapon skills in addition to dodging the enemies attack and dealing damage yourself.

Naturally, this only applies to those who want to be good. Bad players or against bad enemies, you can dump 6 into BM and AA spam while pet runs about and land a nuke every full moon.

Honestly, i spent 2 years on a nexon game, and in hindsight i have to say. [B] even EA is better then nexon [/b]

urdriel.8496:

Xaylin.1860:

thefantasticg.3984:

…

There might be some aspects which have an individual AI (attacks) but I highly doubt that they have a different AI besides that. Look at their pathing. It is the same (e.g. iLeap, Shatters). I’m not talking about the responsiveness when hitting F1-F4. Shatters only reliably hit your target when you are close to it. Some Illusions also suffer from slow projectiles which can be avoided (Staff Clones, iMage) which is exactly the same issue certain Ranger pets have. And let’s not talk about the broken iWarden.

As said, the issues Elementalists have are different than Rangers. It is more related to cooldowns and access to their skills which is limited due their attunement mechanic.

urdriel.8496:

30% of our raw damage is on our pet,and our skills have less damage coef. due to class mechanic, all other classes dont have this problem, you can you choose to use phantasm or not, but you are not penalized with 30% of your raw damage, pet should be a damage buff, not a damage debuff like is now.

Guess what: A pet class is supposed to have a certain amount of damage and utility linked to their pet. That is why they are a pet class. I’ve never seen this being any different in any MMO I played (DAoC, LotRO).

Mesmers are penalized in form of damage because of their class mechanic. You might want to check their baseline damage without Illusions or Shatters. I can not chose to not use it. I have to use it or I will be inefficient. This is quite obvious when looking at both PvP and PvE. In PvE everyone runs Phantasm builds because their damage would be too low otherwise. In s/tPvP most Mesmers run Shatter because their burst would be too low otherwise.

Elementalists are penalized in form of cooldowns and being locked out of skills.
Necromancers are penalized in a lack of damage mitigation outside of DS.

People really need to get rid of this damsel in distress behaviour.

Guest what?? in all other MMOs with a “beastmaster” their pet was able to hit the enemy players, you can "evade2 50% of a pet attack only using WASD while stomping his master……

in all other MMO’s pet was either brokenly OP or a complete failure.
In GW2 we got a pet that works well in 1v1 but is broken as hell in mass encounters (those other MMO’s didn’t fare well in this area either).

Having damage tied up in the pet is NOT the core issue, it is using it. And yes, you can avoid pets by using WASD, but you can also use those same keys to avoid clone attacks, ele staff attacks, guard scepter attacks, warrior LB attacks, engineer grenades, engineer bombs, thief SB or pretty much ANY projectile and or AOE not derived from a rifle/pistol due to overall low projectile speed.

anduriell.6280:

Prysin.8542:

Straegen.2938:

Zintrothen.1056:

They’re already the most OP spec IMO.

Wha?????

That is a bold claim on a class that isn’t particularly good in a zerg, not great in skirmish, kinda meh roaming and gets routinely destroyed in duels.

That only happens on the server you play.

You mean that only happens in all the servers except the one where you play?

Because the commanders in my server are nice enough to remind all the druids to relroll something useful like a rev or an ele.

That is because most commanders are jerks by nature (as is most leaders. You dont become a leader by being "just nice). And because skilled rangers/druids is hard to find.

As for my comment: me and Straegen has a long history, i mained ranger for YEARS, i still play it. I still know how to build a ranger/druid to be useful, but i do not overestimate the rangers capabilities in my own hands. Now, not many has my experience with the class. I dont need to look at a guide to know which combinations/chains to use. Its not hard.

The main fallacy regarding rangers is their “role”. They dont really fit a single role, unless you go for commander DPS spike, in which they are far superior to any class due to their range and piercing.

The benefit of the ranger/druid, is never their ability to “match” a class, its the ability to do ALL the roles nearly as good, at once. People forget that. It’s not great to have many rangers, 4-5 skilled ones in a 80 man zerg is plenty for what they do. But having none, well, for the past 3 weeks ive mained guardian. I like it, but we have NO rangers/druids with any drop of skill, and it is showing. we lack the burst heal despite water fields and guard/revenant heals. We lack the atrocious focus fire on cannons, or the spike condi cleanse.

The benefit of a ranger/druid is not the ability to do X, its the ability to do X Y Z in order to let other classes save their skills for when you truly need them. And unless you intentionally build a ele or guard or warrior or revenant to do THAT task alone, they wont do it as good.

And i dare you to find a way to do this role, as effectively, as rangers does it, without wasting much needed sustain or support abilities in other classes.

Perhaps revenant can do some of it, i am not familiar enough with the class, but none of the other classes can.

Suggested Proposal Format:

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Stability Training becomes similar to Vigorous Training, applying 6 seconds of stability to allies in a AOE upon pet swap

Goal of Proposal
To increase the utility and versatility of rangers in WvW, in an effort to make them more viable for the current/Upcoming new META.

Proposal Functionality
Stability Training applies 6 seconds of Stability to allies upon pet swap

Associated Risks
Rangers may have “too much” stability access in total, however this would also help build diversity in those builds that does not normally have stability, potentially eliminating build weaknesses in certain areas. It is a 50/50 whether or not this can or will result in a overall power creep.