Guild Wars 2

The pet mechanics (F1-F4) are decent and can serve well in open world content or when the Ranger is just feeling lazy. However, there are those that want more control. Here is my suggestion for giving Rangers the OPTION to switch between the Traditional (current) pet system to a more controlled version (Manual Mode) as well as a few interface tweaks.

• Mode Swap button on the left side of the mechanics panel (similar to a player’s Weapon Swap) to switch between Traditional and Manual mode.
• F1&F3 are replaced with pet skills other than their auto-attack. F2 (unique pet utility) and F4 (pet swap) will remain the same on both modes for familiarity.
• Key-bind options for Manual Mode to compensate for assigning the pet to attack a separate target, returning to the player, attacking the player’s current target, attacking a team targeted enemy (red target marker), and for swapping modes to reduce time finding your mouse cursor and clicking the icon.
• Access to manually command pets to execute other attacks.
• Ability to view cooldowns on pet skills.
• Visual representation of the 2nd selected pet that is currently not in use.
• 1-second cooldown swapping between modes to reduce double-click mishaps.

Pet Behavior when in Manual Mode

• Pet’s attacking targets will use their auto-attack until commanded otherwise.
• Any pet skill used (F1-F3), even if the skill is on cooldown, on a selected target will assign the pet to continuously attack that target.
• If the assigned target dies, pet will automatically attack the current player’s target while on “Guard” or return to the player’s position and remain passive if placed to “Avoid Combat.”

If no key-binds are assigned or used while in Manual Mode

• Pet will attack the player’s current target while on “Guard.”
• Pet will be passive while on “Avoid Combat” until commanded to execute an attack or when placed to “Guard.”

Again, this suggestion is for the OPTION to have it for those that want it. That way, for Rangers that are comfortable and content with the current system can still use it, and for those that want more control over our pets, we can have it.

Thoughts?

Ranger bugs post 7/7 patch that still need to be addressed:

GENERAL

• Pets missing baseline 150 stat increase to Power, Precision, Toughness, and Vitality.
• Longbow skills receive full cooldowns when cancelled during the initial cast.
• “Hilt Bash” (Greatsword) actual range is 220 instead of 300 (tooltip).
• “Solar Flare” (Sun Spirit) activation time is faster than other Spirit actives.
• Resounding Timbre does not display bonus boons on “We Heal as One” tooltip.
• Resounding Timbre does not display bonus boons on “Strength of the Pack” tooltip.
• “Strength of the Pack” buff on the Pet uses Lightning Reflexes’ icon.
• Juvenile Marsh Drake selection image does not match the actual Pet.

UTILITIES

• Healing Spring can be placed multiple times (up to 4).
• Healing Spring does not heal the Pet or allies.
• Healing Spring does not activate when used at full health and losing health while inside the trigger area. Player must exit then re-enter the trap area to activate.
• Water Spirit prevents point-capture contribution when active.
• “Sic ’Em” buff removed from the Pet after using F1-F3.

TRAITS

• Quick Draw does not apply to “Whirling Defense” (Axe) unless the cast is cancelled.
• Quick Draw reduces only base cooldowns by 66% and does not include other traits.
• Light On Your Feet actual buff duration is 3s instead of 4s (tooltip).
• Ambidexterity bonus +150 Condition Damage is negated upon teleporting or being teleported without receiving a loading screen.
• Nature’s Vengeance reduces Spirit passive chance down to 70% when traited.
• Natural Healing heals the pet 189hp every 3s instead of 125hp every 1s.
• Natural Healing does not show visible green number floaters on the Pet.
• Go For The Eyes does not apply to [F2] commands when the player is downed.
• Wilting Strike does not apply to [F2] commands when the player is downed.
• Wilting Strike does not apply to the Brown Bear [F2] command “Shake It Off.”
• Beastly Warden does not apply to [F2] commands when the player is downed.

Note¹: Quick Draw will not take into account traits that reduce weapon skill cooldowns such as Strider’s Defense, Two-Handed Training, Lead the Wind, and Axe Training. Tested and confirmed with each trait.

Note²: Whirling Defense will not receive the Quick Draw bonus even with Quickness applied.

Edited to update.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Don’t like it. Won’t play it. However, others enjoy it so bring it on and let them have their fun!

Need more people like you. Seriously.

Sword 1 will never change. Peters may be gone, but his mentality lingers. Main-hand dagger? I bet it’s being saved as part of an Incoming new elite specialization weapon for the next planned expansion already confirmed to be soon or currently being worked on. Wait ’til 2017.

Change the title though to just, “An Opportunity to Look at Ranger Weapons” instead. If we look past the auto attack of Sword, there are other issues with it and other weapons.

• Hornet’s Sting: Reduced or removal of the cast time to remove the clunkiness of it.
• Kick (Sword 1b): Could this possibly be a cleave and have the cripple reduced to 1s? Warrior’s 1c chain on main-hand sword applies 1s of Cripple, damage, and cleaves. This move was never updated since they removed the knockback from it upon release.
• Shortbow: …
• Hunter’s Call (Warhorn): Update it to either have more utility (blind, boon removal, etc.) or up the number of targets it can attack to match Superior Rune of the Mad King. Why is a rune better than our weapon, again? “It’s because it’s Ranger” doesn’t cut it anymore after 3 years.
• Axe: Long after-casts on the main-hand set, and for a skirmishing profession, Whirling Defense roots us. Let’s also bring up Ferocity on Honed Axes because… let’s just merge traits without thinking about their effectiveness in the first place.
• Solar Beam (Staff 1): Mesmer Spatial Surge. Equal treatment, developers. Yes, either let us spam it without a target for posterity or whatever reason we want, or bring down another profession to our misery level – we’d love the company. Currently, the restrictions are in place to remove any benefit of using it out of combat to gain astral force.

Whatever else that I didn’t think of.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Having every pet available for WvW (like they are in PvP) would be nice. Sucks having to cap them repeatedly for each ranger when I have zero map completion on most of my characters.

This is going on the list. I like this because it can allow people to just jump into WvW and have right at it just like PvP. Place a Juvenile Wolf in a PvE map somewhere since there would be no need to charm it in WvW with this suggestion.

What’s worse is that party had 2 warriors.

You broke the first rule.

Yeah, we won a battle!

A few stuff on that list, sure. A lot of stuff on that list, no.

So, the questions are directed towards any developer that happens to stumble upon this. Many thanks on the update to Pets. No sarcasm, as the improvements are ace. Onto the questions.

Questions for Developers

1) There was a note for the Smokescale that all the on-land attacks were increased from 130 to 200. The Smokescale has only one attack that was below the 200 range, yet, the auto attack has been 190 since Heart of Thorns: Was this intentional?

Also, if it was intentional to increase the auto attack range to 200, the auto attack range is still at the default 190.

2) Most on-land attacks for many Pets were increased to 200 range, with a few noted ones such as Canine’s Crippling Leap which was increased from 130 to 180. However, a few on-land Pet skills were left at default ranges.

The skills I’m referring to are:

• Moa’s “Peck” (auto attack) – 170 range
• Moa’s “Frenzied Attack” – 130 range
• Bear’s/Ursine’s “Bite” – 130 range
• Shark’s/Armor Fish’s “Bite” – 150 range
  (not on-land Pets, but couldn’t hurt to ask)

Were there any plans on also increasing these or are they to be left as is?

3) Last question: Any plans to update Moa’s “Harmonic Cry” and Wyvern’s “Wing Buffet” tool-tip to remove the range description? Both tool-tips now have a radius and range description, which can be confusing to (new) players.

Note for all Rangers:

All on-land range updates to Pets that can also be used underwater have also been affected by the change.

Cheers!

That sounds like such a scam. Thank goodness I donated gold to a Charr Prince in need of funding for his country of Astralaria instead.

Well, to be fair, this outfit did address the issue of an over-abundance of trench coa-….

Lemme try this again. This outfit did address the issue of hair disappearing while wearing ha-….

Nevermind.

I wanted to test it, but it told me to “carri-on.”

One thing I can give feedback on that I hope will change soon™ is the Oakheart’s Reach ability to become a special action key instead of replacing your weapon. It would make traversing the new map much more fluid so the player does not have to drop it to engage in combat.

Kudos on the map, making most of it accessible with previous masteries (standard gliding and thermal tube) while having it open completely up once the new mastery has been unlocked.

This mastery and its use with the map truly feels like horizontal progression in terms of what was mentioned back when Heart of Thorns was being hyped up and referencing games such as Metroid and Zelda.

I just hope it will find its way as a true mastery rather than being available only in this map. As with gliding, zip-lining with Oakheart’s Reach would open up a new way of traveling, even if that access was limited to Heart of Thorn and LS3 maps.

So a small suggestion for Clarion Bond (Marksmanship – adept). Could we have a unique version of “Call of the Wild” with a reduced cooldown so it can better sync up with Pet Swap?

To elaborate: Reduce the ICD from 30s to 20s, which is a 33% reduction. In turn, reduce the boon durations of might, fury, and swiftness from 15s to 10s – also a 33% reduction. This would mean the duration of the boons gained from Clarion Bond, Vigorous Training, and Windborne Notes are equally 10s when swapping Pets.

Also, retain the ICD reduction with Windborne Notes, even though it would mean taking MM/NM/BM to sync everything together at 16s, but that still beats the current situation of 24s Clarion Bond ICD and 16s Pet Swap with that combo.

With this change, you could also remove the Clarion Bond icon that indicates when it’s ready. 1 less visual clutter on the buff bar and all that.

Dseaver.8740:

Stow pet Keybind option please!

Definitely.

’Twas the day before Christmas,
and all through the building,
not a single dev was working,
and for Ranger no (s)hits were given.
For the ones reading forums,
to those that still care,
keep posting out of boredom,
’cause no one at ArenaNet is there.

Yes, the trait is bad. Was bad as an adept and worse as a grandmaster. Only synergy is has is with Bountiful Hunter/NM, but outside of that, no strong synergy to speak of.

Only the overly naive theory-crafters with their “let’s fight under 50% with all 3 traits and might runes” like this sort of garbage. Because a bunch of traits procing under a health threshold is totally “synergy.” /s

Wait til Feature Pack 2016 for an update.

…

This is why I use only name brand foil for my hats. kitten like this happens when going cheap with bargain bin store brands.

I’d rather Anet rework some of the core game’s mechanics before reworking professions. Revert the change to dashes and leaps so soft-cc snares regain their value, alter defiance bars so – when broken – conditions such as blind, weakness, chill, and cripple affect the boss while it regenerates as an extra incentive and reward for breaking it.

Change traits so most of them provide 1-2 functions instead of now where some of them do 3 things and aren’t even in the grandmaster slot. More skill splits for each mode, reducing condition and boon output and durations in WvW, reducing the total allotted stat points of 4-stat gear to match the core game’s 3-stat equipment, and splitting passive movement traits that also reduce movement-impending conditions.

Do that, and the professions can have an overall go-around done to them. But even then, I’d rather see simple and smart tweaks that build synergy and go a long way then major overhauls.

Well, at least we still have Most Dangerous Game.

/s

Well, that feedback was nicely written. From my stance, all they need to do is change the refinement requirement from 3 back to 2 again. Simple tweaks that go a long way, but as you pointed out, they did too many changes at once.

Oh, well.

A nerf Rangers could tolerate is to remove sharing Vigor with Pets in the Fortifying Bond minor trait. kitten pet dodges are OP.

:-"

• Sausage Lynx – Lynx
• Carrion Luggage – Carrion Devourer
• Bipolar Bear – Polar Bear
• Need A Bigger Boat – Shark

That seems balanced. Otherwise, Beastmode would end up playing like an Elementalist with attunement swapping – which will eventually lead to not bothering with the pet mechanic at all.

This makes it so before one enters Beastmode, the pre-selected stance and pet that is merged with is meaningful and tactful, while ensuring the pet still plays a role and has an opportunity to be an active side companion.

We’ll see though. As far as I’m concerned, this is a a great move, as the restriction forces players to think twice about things rather than letting us have our cake and eat it.

The profession updates were underwhelming. Small adjustments scattered about with a few major ones such as Ranger Shouts and to an extent, Warrior Rifle. Plenty of weaker traits, utilities, and other aspects were left alone and are now weaker than ever.

Much of the old weapons and skills are not being updated to match what came with the new ones presented in the elite specializations of Heart of Thorns. The state of the game posted about focusing on more depth and not breadth, and all the balance update did was go after more low-hanging fruit, which has been done since launch.

Update the old and make it new. All that new tech that keeps being mentioned over-and-over on the live streams doesn’t seem to be used on updating the past to making the professions worthwhile as a whole.

I don’t know, man. The last town I was in had an orphanage and a hospital in it. I was unable to enroll as a doctor or a nurse, and had no option to adopt a child, only to leave them attended by 20 stray cats I picked up.

Then, this soldier that seems to be in charge of the local militia said I could only choose between saving the hospital or the orphanage. A high school seems like it would be a fire hazard in this particular town.

I hope Druids don’t get a transformation. The way Anet does transformations range from novelty to borderline useless.

This news wouldn’t be so bad if there was an update to the BLC drop table. Possibly guarantee 1 ticket scrap and remove all the worthless stuff such as Enchantment Powders.

Just a quick note here for PvE Rangers. Testing out Drake & Wyvern DPS on a stationary golem since the updates due to shorter cast times on skills. Here are the results (averages) with Beastmastery and 25 stacks of vulnerability on the golem. Sharpened Edges, Refined Toxins, and Companion’s Might were not slotted.

Drakes: 573 DPS
Wyverns: 1024 DPS
Felines: 1518 DPS

Even though neither Drakes or Wyverns apply vulnerability, the cap is easily reached anyway, and it was done for consistency since I had to run a Feline for comparison in the same conditions. I’m well aware it’s cleaving pets to a single target pet, but let me have my apples with oranges. :P

Note that the previous DPS of Wyverns conducted on Guild Wars Hub were done with the old Sharpened Edges (66% vs 33%), Refined Toxins, Companion’s Might, and a clean golem (no conditions). Following this setup, the new and old numbers for Wyverns are:

Old DPS: 424
New DPS: 986

That’s a 232.54% increase post-patch. Not bad, right? Wyverns definitely seem to be the better choice over Drakes as a cleaving Pet. They not only provide CC for break bars, but now have better DPS – approximately 178% better.

Hope this helps some of you out. Cheers!

+Note that F2 abilities were not used during either tests.

Linken.6345:

oh i thought this was a thread about to many old veteran players

lol I had the same thought going into this thread.

Most likely the Expansion Only option will appear once Heart of Thorns releases. My guess at least. I’ll be waiting for an expansion only option, too.

Amalgamated Gemstones
Milling Basins
Shimmering Crystals
Tenebrous Crystals
Vision Crystals
Philosophers Stones
Mystic Crystals
Doubloons

atheria.2837:

DANG it, that’s the FIRST thing we told them was wrong.

Does it even heal ALLIES? I haven’t seen it do it yet.

No, it doesn’t. Just tested it with a friend. Allies can trigger the trap for condition cleanse and regen, but not for the heal.

Great… another one of these.

At least you got to convince them to let you stay. Try playing a Necro. Sometimes, the only response you get after typing “Hi” is, “You are not in a party.”

Oh, you.

RNG is RNG. I can understand any disappointment in outcomes like what you have posted. My biggest disappointment with Black Lion Chests is that I can no longer just toss them from my inventory with a simple confirm prompt, and instead have to type out the name.

These chests are not that important, Anet. Revert this change. =/

bearshaman.3421:

It’s not that power ranger is bad (It’s not), it’s that condi for rangers is really good.

It’s not that power ranger is bad, it’s that power scaling and coefficients are low while conditions are not limited by skill coefficients.

FTFY

Rising Dusk.2408:

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

The dominance of Berserker/DPS is because of the WEAKNESS of other archetypes, not the strength of Berserker/DPS. So long as you and the rest of the balance team remain cognizant of that, whatever changes you make will be good. We do want condition builds to be good in PvE. We also would like you to completely get rid of Defiant stacks and use some other means of control reduction (give bosses stability when they use a skill or something, so that there is counterplay and we can remove the stability to CC them, for instance) so that control builds like Hammer Guardian/Warrior are useful in PvE. These sorts of changes will be welcome and wonderful for the PvE meta, and will also not hurt the direct damage players, which is good and helps keep things paced appropriately for speed clears.

The biggest change I think that can help condition damage dealers in PvE is to, in general, reduce the HP of enemy mobs and increase their Toughness. In this way, condition damage does greater percent damage over time, whereas if you tailor the enemy stats appropriately direct damage percent damage over time will be unchanged. This would be an optimal approach that helps all schools of thought.

But please, whatever you do, don’t nerf Berserker/DPS builds heavily! If you do that, you just slow down the game’s action, and you will alienate and damage countless players, and shoot yourself in the foot.

+15 chars and a bucket of zerks

I almost have a Bingo

Been doing a bit of testing, and for now, I’m going to retract my words. On paper, it looks very potent, but I’m beginning to see flaws if one were to build around this. I guess when Irenio mentioned adding more “niche builds” to the Ranger, this change counts as one of them.

Initial impression: This is extremely powerful.
After some hands-on time: It’s great, but not broken.

Time will tell though. When running this, boon strips and (as others mentioned before) chill are obvious weaknesses. Running into a Necro makes this build have a self-destruct button that Necros will press when they corrupt boons.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

To make all pets viable and actually work; Increase melee attack range to 300. Increase base run speed by +20%. Decrease all non-attack cast times to 1/4s. Halve all attack cast times. Give pets the Playing Favorites mechanic as baseline. Done.

Pretty much this.

I’d rather Canines receive the nice high-leap AOE stomp the wolves in “Frozen Out” have instead of the single-target crippling leap. Would be a nice upgrade for an already solid Pet. Or just give us a new Canine pet with it as its F2 skill to replace the Hyena.

Did some testing on Precision and Critical Hit Chance for Pets. Curiosity got the better of me and here are the results.

[LINK]

Updated it with more Pig results because… bacon.

Levetty.1279:

Light on your Feet should go back to its orignal ‘when moving’.

You know what, I like that, too. The original concept for it during the specialization preview was much better. I’ll change it to that.

Hammer ‘n’ Glamour

All Spirits have a 70% chance to grant passive bonuses instead of 75% when traited with [Nature’s Vengeance] (Nature Magic – Grandmaster Trait)

Dawdler.8521:

We have also noted the ~1800 range longbow ranger for 4 years and Anet has done nothing.

A Dev responded to that last year in the bugs sub-forum in the Ranger compilation bug thread. All of those arrow and lob projectiles (like Ele fireball and Rev hammer) can go extra distance due to the way they have their physics aka “working as intended.”

Bullets and other non-lob straight projectiles like rifles and even Necro staff auto will stop either at 1200 or just shy of it. Take that up with Anet in why bullets vanish and do not share the same physics. Mortar being an exception since it’s ground-targeted.