Guild Wars 2

Another round-up list of all things Quality of Life Rangers are waiting for, with extras that are just good, simple ideas. So, let’s see if the “State of the Game” address would actually address any of these within the year. All of the listed items are relatively low-hanging fruit.

PETS

• Conditions, Boons, Buffs, and Debuffs displayed on the player UI without having to click on the pet.
• Porcine “Forage” flips the F2 skill icon to the foraged item so it is not a bundled item on the ground or in the player’s hands.

WEAPONS

• Reduced after-casts on main-hand axe moves.
• Path of Scars is a ground target to control its distance, similar to Phoenix (Elementalist Scepter) or Envoy of Exuberance (Herald Shield). Allows users to avoid issues of the projectile disappearing when traveling into a wall or off a cliff. Also, it provides more control and ups the level of intricacy this move can have.
• Hornet’s Sting cast time is reduced from ½s to ¼s or removed entirely.

TRAITS

• Tail Wind & Furious Grip cooldowns reduced from 9s to 8s to be friendly with Superior Rune of the Warrior like Primal Echoes.
• Quickdraw buff duration increased from 5s to 6s so Whirling Defense does not have to be canceled to take advantage of the trait.
• Shared Anguish renamed and redone to cast “Protect Me!” when disabled.
• Allies’ Aid cooldown lowered to match the new cooldown of “Search & Rescue!”
• Most Dangerous Game pulses 1s of Fury. It is all this trait needs to make it competitive within its GM tier.
• Predator’s Instinct needs an interval to activate on multiple targets below the threshold rather than a single, universal cooldown.

UTILITIES

• Sharpening Stone needs attention. Either the cooldown is reduced, effect also applies to the pet, or is changed into something new or extra function added.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

• Bug fixes.

Thanks for making an updated and consolidated bug list for Rangers, Taverius!

While on the topic of bugs, I would like to post a [Debunk] report I have seen floating around since the new changes. Some reports have mentioned that some pet families have a smaller Taunt radius than others when traited for Beastly Warden. After extensive testing, this claim is false.

I will add that some [F2] commands are more difficult to land the Taunt at max range (240) due to the nature of their execution, such as AOE [F2] commands that aid allies rather than target foes (ie: Brown Bear’s “Shake it Off”). Tested using “Guard!” while pet was on passive at “Maul” max range + 1 step back.

Also, one bug to add to the list is an old one that was recently brought up in the Ranger sub-forum:

• Healing from Regeneration applied by pets is reduced to 5hp/1s if that pet is stowed or swapped.

Most notably is the Fern Hound’s [F2] command and the number is always reduced to 5hp/1s even if Natural Healing is taken (+450 Healing Power). Note that regen healing works normally if said pet that applies it is defeated.

Karaha.3290:

How about add a knock down, if target is moving? (work in the same way like immobilize.)

Perhaps. Slipping on mud is a common occurrence anyway. How many people would take it though if it worked like Engineer’s Slick Shoes where it can knockdown a target for 2s only once, and still pulse cripple?

No to slow, though.

Mcrocha.3891:

Apparently the devs are aware of the problem and trying to fix it.

Source? Or do we have to check Twitter again…

Anet’s going to keep doing what it does. Guild Wars 2 caters to a specific crowd of players, while Black Desert and Blade & Soul will cater to others.

Wouldn’t surprise me if there was a small, temporary sale of Heart of Thorns that coincided with Black Desert’s initial release. Granted, that’s more for attracting new players and solidifying a sale with free-account players – which are part of the player base anyway.

Did anyone else not notice that the SB dagger auto attack is a 4-hit combo? I find that kind of strange. Haven’t checked the footage again to see if there are new animations.

Just tested it. Yes, it makes Pet traits unblockable, applies to Clarion Bond and applies it to the newly swapped Pet.

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

or get superspeed while have quickness

Wouldn’t that be kind of pointless with QZ and lesser QZ?

So, basically, they slapped a 12s ICD on a trait because they couldn’t be bothered to program it so it would proc a bit after to prevent exploits. Awesome.

Still waiting for that Legendary Bearbow Longbow that fires bears. It seems like something that would actually happen, so, maybe I shouldn’t joke about it. :s

Lord knows I plan to do so. Update can’t come fast enough for me just because I want to see if anything else has changed besides the animations. I’ll admit that I would be kind of disappointed if the rest of sword’s kit wasn’t tweaked/modified.

No way to change your alliance. You are going to have to create a new character or take another character that currently has no alliance and choose the Order of Whispers as that character’s faction.

Chiming in once more to add 2 more small, but important things to the main list:

• Ricochet’s additional bounce returned.
• Crippling Thrust’s (sword 1b auto) number of targets increased from 1 to 3.

It’s some of the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit out there, but I’m really hoping those two things make it in somewhere before this next expansion releases.

Indeed. Power specs with Soulbeast is working out pretty well.

Think the one thing testing it again that bothers me is the effects of stances (unique buff portion) does not also apply to the pet by default.

Sure, Griffon Stance’s effect would be completely wasted on a pet since it doesn’t dodge, but Bear’s condition removal, One Wolf Pack’s second strike, and Dolyak’s immunity to movement-impending conditions would be nice aid to our pet if it’s out.

At least then we wouldn’t have to slot Leader of the Pack just to share (half of) it with the Pet – assuming allied target cap isn’t reach.

Wouldn’t mind seeing stealth added to Signet of the Hunt’s active. Would be nice coming out of stealth with +150% (typo I know) on your next hit (and your pet’s) – assuming Signet of the Beastmaster GM trait was taken.

At least we get a Wyvern pet!

I miss Med Kit (current one) when it was bugged, healed for more than the tooltip, and it was useful for that one brief moment.

Anet could have taken that opportunity to spin a mistake as a blessing but… ;/

Personally, as awkward as sword is, it’s like most things on Ranger: close to hitting the mark but falls short. It would be fine if they removed the leap range from 1b and 1c, upped the targets 1b can hit from 1 to 3, lower cripple duration of 1b from 2s to 1-1½s, and add ¾-1s of Super Speed to 1c so people can still pursue targets without getting locked.

The distance with super speed falls about 30 units (range) behind the current 430 while in combat, but without the “stick.” It would be like a compromise for both sides (I guess). No stick, allows dodge in the auto chain, keeps the unique animations without changing it to the standard ones, full cleave on the chain, and retains a decent measure of catching up to targets.

Better loading times, more details on bundled items, better contrast on items with quantity/price (such as BLC Keys), Home & Back buttons, History has its own tab; everything about the new interface (to me) is nothing short of stellar.

It’s simple, clean, intuitive, and slick.

Heh. I guess a mod shut it down due to the paragraphs about Heart of Thorns being closer to its release date. Thanks for the re-post!

Steady Focus is more in-line as a GM minor when seeing other profession trait lines. Doesn’t mean much at 80, but level progression and all that jazz. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind seeing Alpha Training merged with Opening Strike, and possibly have the old trait that allowed Pet F2 to cause cripple back in the Master slot.

It fits the line with one cripple themed trait in each tier and Irenio won’t have to come up with something new a few days away from launch if he wants to shoe-horn this change in.

Doubt Irenio hates the class. In my view, he’s done more good for the class than the rest of the balancing team has done in the 2 years Ranger had no dedicated developer for it since Robert Hrouda was laid off.

Unfortunately, the balancing team doesn’t allow individuals assigned/charged with a certain class have their way. As Robert Gee once mentioned in the Mesmer forum, changes he wants to implement on his professions (Mesmer and Necro) had to be pushed for approval.

Whether that approval is a group thing or a single person (Lead Designer), heads need to start being unjammed from their own kitten.

Disclaimer: The entire post has been edited in favor of what Heimskarl & naphack suggested.

It’s been mentioned many times that Ranger lacks a way to strip boons without resorting to external means. Below is a simple and brilliant suggestion offered by Heimskarl & naphack to give Rangers access to boon removal and give Rending Attacks more utility.

Add boon removal to Rending Attacks
Pet attacks remove a boon on hit with an internal cooldown of X seconds.

All in favor?

I can see the patch notes already…

Engineer

Since Plague was recently changed to Plaguelands on the Necromancer, we wanted to update the underwater skills provided by Elixir X.

• Elixir X: Plague duration reduced from 20s to 15s to be consistent with other transformation durations.

Dadnir.5038:

Underwater Spirits already hold the dolphin skin.

Still would like a Dolphin as a pet. Don’t care if the spirits underwater hold the skin or not. :P

Dagger

• Change the Dagger auto attack chain with the regular 4-hit/3-cast animations that Thief and Necro dagger auto attack chains have. Compact the chain to: Leading Strikes (2x hit), Serpent Stab, Deadly Delivery. Current effects remain.
• Replace Double Arc’s animation with the downward X-slash that Elementalists use when casting Dragon’s Claw on their dagger auto attack (Fire Attunement). It would make Double Arc flow smoother and noticeable as a unique attack.

Pets

• Replace the Swiftness on the Juvenile Cheetah’s Beast ability to Quickness for synergy with Essence of Speed.
• Change the Sand Lion’s Beast ability from a pulse-damaging area of effect blind to a non-damaging roar that grants nearby allies the new Sand Barrier mechanic as found on Scourge and Weaver. Would be interesting to have a feline with a defensive F2 for a change and justify its hefty cooldown.

Traits

• Fresh Reinforcement needs to work both ways, granting the player boons on the pet when entering Beastmode, and granting the pet boons on the player when exiting Beastmode. Being a minor trait would also help.

Stances

• Vulture Stance could use something unique, such as removing a boon on foes above 50% health and corrupting a boon on foes below 50% health. Would give Ranger a way to counter boons and up their value in WvW groups.
• Griffon Stance has a long cooldown and kind of wastes Vigor if it is applied at the same time. The effect can better serve if altered to grant endurance per second rather than the 100% endurance regeneration so it can stack with Vigor and traits.
• One Wolf Pack should be change so its effect can occur multiple times per interval to cleave targets. That would justify its current cooldown and make it useful beyond single-target encounters.

Fun facts ahead. Because I have so much interest and so little life, I went and compared the old sword with the new sword auto-attack animations. I will also list stuff we lost and stuff we gained.

You be the judge for yourself (obviously) if this change was more beneficial to you or less. All due to preferences and different modes Rangers of all types play in. Trying to keep this as non-bias as possible. [Cowers behind a shield] Oh, snap. Rangers can’t use shi-!!

Old vs New

What Was Gained

• The ability to freely move during the entire sword chain.
• The ability to dodge during and between chain strikes. #ImFree
• New sword animations. The 1st and 3rd strike look new. Actually, the 3rd strike looks like an axe auto attack found on Warrior, but with a twirl at the start. I play a Human Ranger, so your experience may vary due to race.
• 240ms worth of aftercasts; 120ms added onto the 2nd & 3rd strike! This is actually a bad one to be gained, but a gain nonetheless. Sadpandas be sad.

What Was Loss

• DPS reduction due to aftercasts. See above.
• Double Pounce trick.
• Gap-closers from 1b (Kick) and 1c (Pounce).
• Tracking targets going into stealth.
• Being able to stick on a target. Like it or not, it was a feature a percentage of Rangers favored, so it’s on this list.
• Old sword animations. For those that can’t remember, or never saw them, here is a link of a video I made per request of our local Ranger forum frequenter, Fluffball.
• Ranger Sword Chain Animations

What Remains

• Sword chain 1b still strikes only 1 target. C’mon, Anet. Really?
• Hornet’s Sting (Sword 2) cast time is still ½s. I’m tossing this one in here because it’s been a complaint since release!

Edit: Corrections made. Clarifications added on aftercasts.

Durzlla.6295:

AnariiUK.7409:

Pink-Moa nerfed as well, down to a single 2-second daze.

It’s always done this, the tooltip has just been wrong since launch…

No, it hasn’t. The last patch improved Pink Moa to applying 3 pulses of 1½s Daze. Now it’s been reverted back to before with only the reduced cast and aftercasts remaining.

Kind of a bummer. Guess they really want us trying to use Electric Wyvern.

Edit: So, the Black Moa remains unchanged. Congrats, Anet. The Hall of Monument Pets were supposed to be considered a cosmetic side-grade reward, but now, if you have the Black Moa, you have one of the best CC pets in-game.

Good job on that consistency.

+1

It’s not too big – just largely small.

Something seems odd about your description. I can see why Tragic was confused (or anyone else) because you use “Staff” instead of “CA” on said rotations. Didn’t become apparent until now as you typed out “(by this time CA form is drained)”.

Only to be covered up or clipped with a kit…

Congrats on the blades though.

I’m down with all these changes.

Edit: Not too happy about the DPS loss on new sword. Same cast times as before (½ ¼ ¾) but with more aftercasts. Even more disappointing is that the 2nd strike still only hits one target. Ugh…

I read everything and there was no mention of which word they would like to have. Guess I’ll pour these alphabets back in the cereal box…

P.S. Love you, too, Ren!

TE making them throwable again would help. Every time I do AC for kicks, I am reminded of how cool it is when the Ascalonian Rangers there like to do that little setup of tossing a trap behind you, then knocking you back into it.

I’d also like to see Frost Trap completely replaced with a Smoke Trap. Would be cool if we had 1 non-damaging trap so we can use it with Trapper Runes. Maybe have the initial trigger do a small daze like ½s and the pulses blind foes. The extra smoke field would also be nice to blast stealth.

One would think that the Tiger would be found by now with all the people running around exploring and doing events. I spent more time than I care to admit trying to locate it that I’m starting to think it’s not available. x_O

Oh, my bad. Keep forgetting the thread is asking for an opinion. Wouldn’t want to state something without “(to me)” at the end :P

Oh, yeah. That’s the other change Glyphs need: Rejuvenation should also heal the Pet by default.

We knew they were busy with the expansion already, but as Puck said, I would rather they focus on fixing issues instead of an expansion. I fear that once Heart of Thorns releases, they will again be focused on releasing Living World content to expand the rest of the story, leaving more bugs at the back burner along with adding new ones.

As much as I want them to take a solid 6 months or so just fixing bugs and not dealing with creating new content, there would be another cry-out from a portion of the community (like currently) about a content-drought. Can’t win them all, but props to the Devs for dealing with it the best they can.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I think an Elite trap kit would solve so many of Ranger’s lack of PvP Meta issues.

Man… I want Dust trap so bad back for the Ranger.

Last chime in on this for awhile. Updated the mobile DPS for all pets except for Drakes (since they are bugged).

Fun fact: Hyena performed better than Bears against a moving target, but not by much. Bears took the longest time to kill a trotting golem: approximately 1hr 6mins. Thank god for Netflix….

I was hoping for a full preview release of balance changes so they could get some more feedback, insight, whatever from the community. That way before the 26th, minor tweaks can happen rather than waiting for the 26th to find out, and then another 3 months before more minor tweaks happen.

Also, Karl looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Even though I’m not the hugest fan of his, he looks like he needs another vacation. Kudos, though for the hard work.

One of our porcine.

Same for Companion’s Might, except it works on the Tiger. I guess they didn’t code something that flags the new pets as… pets.

I want it to work, too, Bast. Unfortunately, it has to work properly first, and then altered so it does not require Nature’s Vengeance to be of use.

Since it’s still buggy, using it is a handicap.

XDeadzX.2581:

This is wrong. Companion might works on both the smokescale, and the bristleback. Just tested it in PvE.

Check the bleed on crit on basic attacks. I tested it only 2 days ago. Smokescale, Bristleback, and both Wyverns don’t inflict bleeding. Also, make sure you know Smokescale auto has a bleed already on it. Also, Bristleback has a passive skill that applies bleeding on its next 5 attacks. Don’t get those mixed up when testing.

No, keep Wilderness Knowledge in Wilderness Survival. It makes sense and it should stay where it is. I would rather they beef up EB instead, something along the lines of Necromantic Corruption for Necromancers (see below).

Having pets just take conditions away from us is a passive and bad trait to begin with, if it had the additional function of transferring those taken conditions onto enemies, then it will be worth while when compared to WK and a significant improvement on a whole.

Agreed.

Just in case a Dev glances at this thread out of curiosity on reactions: How about reducing that cast time on sword 2 to go with this update?

Earix.5684:

Main question:
If Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow were the issue, why wouldn’t you add a 25/30 sec cooldown on these traits instead of on our main specialization mechanic?

I would tread lightly asking questions like these, because: 1) You will not receive a direct answer from the developers and 2) They would most likely read feedback such as this and implement it while retaining previous changes such as the increased cooldown on Celestial Avatar Form in certain modes.

To sprinkle a bit of optimism in the Profession Balance Design team, they were smart enough to place no or proper internal cooldowns with a mechanic so the flow of combat is smooth.

To point out examples, check out Necromancer’s Spiteful Spirit and Weakening Shroud where one has no ICD (which Necromancer players had to request multiple times) and the other has a 10s ICD that syncs up with their Shroud mechanic.

Even on Warrior where Berserker traits such as Always Angry, Bloody Roar, and Fatal Frenzy have no ICDs so the flow of combat when using a profession mechanic isn’t hindered by out-of-sync cooldowns.

So, even though ICDs have a place and can be useful when attached appropriately, let’s not ask for MORE ICD increases (or more ICDs) and instead ask and suggest how traits such as the ones you mentioned could be more finely tuned.