Guild Wars 2

Soilder.3607:

You’re all dramatizing the kitten out of this nerf. The trait is nowhere near useless, its god kitten half upkeep on fury and swiftness, aoe, and a blast finisher. Enter combat with pet stowed and it procs, wait until you feel twenty four or thirty seconds has passed then swap. Should you need to swap pets before the trait has recharged, then oh well, you’ll get it next swap.

The reason they made this change was because entering combat with pet stowed proc’d the trait, but not the pet cd, allowing you to cast again immediately. And if you already had a war horn equipped, that meant you could do three call of the wilds in a row. Granted, the change they should’ve made would simply have been entering combat with the pet stowed not triggering pet swap traits, but they didn’t. The trait is still fine.

Meanwhile, I’m watching engineers instakill mobs in the silverwastes with a single grenade toss.

Having clarion bond available on every pet swap isn’t too much to ask for, given what other professions got with this latest patch.

Edit: these are upscaled event mobs btw.

Pet stats

According to patch notes – “All ranger pets now gain an additional 150 power, vitality, toughness, and precision at level 80.”

They don’t. Checking stats of pets in game post patch, with status of pets on the wiki (pre patch stats), they haven’t recieved an increase to their stats at all.

1. Condi-Survival and Power Survival. Really, with the conditions the way they are right now, you can’t afford to NOT run cleansing, and Wilderness Knowledge is best in slot over Empathic Bond right now (unless you are running a utility bar with not survival skills including a different heal and elite) unless you enjoy having your pet one shot by the current conditions.
2. I wouldn’t even call traps great. Great against lower tiered players, maybe. You won’t see any good players getting caught in traps all that often though, and most will just outrange/avoid the traps and make you feel over-invested on a utility (Spike Trap stands alone though now so you can take it on other types of builds like Condi-Survival and it works). Moving on to spirits, no, they’re terrible. Passives didn’t get changed, and the actives being changed doesn’t justify them being rooted in place, which was the weirdest expenditure of effort on the dev’s part I’ve seen since the game launched; reworking the actives of the spirits and them making them immobile so that nobody will ever get hit by the actives again.
3. Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch 0/0/6/6/6 is my favorite iteration running Beastmaster so far. Birds are still amazing when traited with BM, they hit like trucks, I use Owl/Raven so their cooldown coincides with Beastly Warden, so my F2’s are on demand interrupts, and I as a player can soft CC and condi-pressure down the target with a whole new level of pet utility that wasn’t there before.
4. No, I just don’t like the GS trait. Natural Healing and Wilting Strike are better in slot options than the GS trait. Fury proc’ing is too random to take full advantage of Remorseless the way I’d like to. You have a chance at gaining fury to gain Remorseless back which can totally be wasted by an autoattack or underutilized because your Maul isn’t off cooldown and it gets wasted on a different attack. The fury on crit chance should be 100% with the time interval in place.
5. I haven’t seen any “odd” builds at all as viable. It’s exactly how it was predicted to be, Wilderness Survival being a mandatory traitline with any other combination of specializations added to the Wilderness Survival staple with the amulet, corresponding weapons, and utilities working well, minus traps at top tier and spirits at any tier.

So yeah. I’ve played around with 6/6/6/0/0, 6/0/6/6/0, 0/6/6/6/0, 0/6/6/0/6, 0/0/6/6/6, and 6/0/6/0/6 and out of those, my favorites have been 6/0/6/6/0, 6/0/6/0/6, 0/6/6/6/0, and 0/0/6/6/6, respectively taking into account the order of the traitlines in the old system.

1. Tried Power, Condi Surv., Trap and Spirit Ranger.
   Power – viable; Condi Surv. – viable; Trap – viable; Spirit Ranger – not viable.
2. Frost Spirit stays as a PvE option. In PvP – no spirits are really worth the investment. They are either used as 2-click 20cd actives or they die 2 seconds of the cast.
   Consider buffing their Health Pools significantly / On-Death Activation / Boosting “Nature’s Vengeance” boon application.
3. Not as a pure source of damage, no. There is a clear answer that needs to be addressed:
   Pets die to conditions extremely fast because they lack resistance/condi cleanse and our only condition cleansing option in Beast Mastery (Empathic Bond, Signet of the Renewal) kill the pet in seconds flat.
4. Yes, remorseless GS + BM trait for it becomes an option to PvE meta DPS that competes with the standard LB opening > sword swap. It beats this setup in longer (11 sec+) scenarios.
5. ~ Support Shoutbow definitely seems to be a viable option, but it still lacks the synergy with bugged Rune of the Trooper. But it has a success.
   ~ A strange build of Zerk (Valk) Longbow trapper (Frost Trap especially) became much more interesting (I can’t say if viable yet). I need further testing, but looked like really promising with the Projectile Finisher synergy.

Things to be addressed:
~ Conditions pulled onto pet – unrewarding, toxic, we have no counter-play to sacrificing our pets
~ Spirits – dying too fast for PvP environment. Frost Spirit (Nature’s Vengeance) 1 might for 1 second every 3 seconds is way too of a bad design with absolutely no impact on DPS whatsoever. Other are quite fine (33% uptime on duration stacking boons is fine)
~ Most Dangerous Game is weaker than other below 50% HP traits. In this fast meta, you can’t afford to stay below 50% hp for more than a few seconds. And the only reward being a few might stacks is way too low for a GrandMaster trait. Staying below 50% for 8 seconds is non-comprehensible.

I believe if I missed anything, my Ranger brethren will fill the space.

(Edited for better appearance)

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. The main builds for ranger were Condi Survival, Power Ranger, Trap Ranger and Spirit Ranger. How many of these are you still using?

Sadly, Spirit Ranger is dead.

Issues with Spirit Ranger:
→ Spirits are static and thats make them easy to AoE.
→ Their HP Pool is low, so same issue as ^.
→ They don’t trigger upon dying, so you have instant activate them before they die due to ^.
→ If you activate them, they die and they can’t apply boons to allies.
→ Their AoE Boon applied is meh, not punishing enough enemy for ignoring Spirits.

Summarizing: Everything is wrong about Spirits right now.

SPvP Point of View.

Power Ranger. (LB/GS)

• Survival is allot better but every single LB/GS build has to take Lightning Relfexs and Signet of Stone, leaving us with very little option to take damage modifiers like Signet of the Hunt and Signet of the Wild. Normally you would take Signet of Renewal, as you need full condition clear.
• Greatsword, low damage. It requires Signet of the Hunt/ Signet of the Wild/ Quickening Zephyr and Remorseless to land a maul, due to being highly telegraphed its almost always dodged, it require far to much investment to land 1 decent hit then back to waiting on long CD before we can do decent damage, without this combo Maul does sub-par damage. Counterattack would be decent if it didn’t counter attack Ai, also thieves completely counter Greatsword (Dagger #3). Swoop, will miss the target most of the time due to pathing (if the ground isn’t flat you will miss).
• Signet of Stone, very long CD forces us to Trait for Brutish Seals, so we can’t take Steady Focus or Moment of Clarity.
• Clarion Bond, should work out of combat at least then our Power builds have swiftness with around 50% upkeep.

Condition Survival.

• Decent Survival, no real complaint.
• Conditions applied are rather solid.
• Torch, lost its radius after just being buffed. This was majorly disappointing as it’s current radius is useless.

Trap Ranger.

• Rather bad survival.
• Trap’s are decent, but we only have room for 2 traps, 3rd utility is taken up by Lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal for on demand immobilize/stun breaker.
• There is still no middle ground between survival and conditions, if you try to spec for both you become too weak in terms of damage output and your survival lack’s. This is all due to Traps requiring 3 utility slots.

Spirit Ranger.

• Survival is decent.
• Spirit survival is completely null and void they die extremely fast.
• Boon’s applied have no real effect.
• Support is very poor, compared to other support classes/builds there
• You only have room for 2 spirit’s in your utilities, other slot requires lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal.
• Spirit Heal is lack luster compared to the other heals. Active effect radius is too small to be a decent team support heal.

Beastmaster.

• Solid survival.
• Good condition damage.
• Pet’s are 50/50, they have pathing issues and don’t seem to attack very often unless the target is locked down.
• Pet damage is good.
• Has no team support at all. So it won’t every be viable in top tier, other classes provide better team support. If Invigorating Bond would offer decent support but the Radius is very small compared to other classes, it’s rather hard to control location of your pet so most of the time your team mate won’t receive the heal.

Elites

• Entangle, most classes have almost no problem vs Entangle. The root’s die extremely fast.
• Strength of the pack, isn’t very useful most of the time you’re using it to stomp a target or res someone. Your pet doesn’t really land many attacks to make might stacking worth it with the new window of 10 seconds to apply. Just change might stacks to damage modifier.
• Spirit of Nature, no complaint it works the same as always.

We still have same problems vs some classes. This is due to builds normally being forced to take to much survival or damage, resulting in we lack survival or damage. It’s rather painful in order for us to kill some classes we require damage but to get the type of damage we require we lose out on taking survival which results in death vs that same class.

Will we be viable after meta settles. Top Tier (No), Low Tier (Yes)

• Lack mobility outside of combat. (Engineers get perma swiftness)
• Our Support builds lack team support. (Beastmaster/Condition Survival/Spirits).
• Power builds can’t compete with other burst builds in terms of damage.
• Conditions builds are solid but are too focused on dueling 1v1.

Hopefully this helps.

P.S, while running Protective Ward, I took 14k hit from a Enigneer Nades, 10 Crit from Rampagers Warrior, 7.5k Backstab with 3-4k damage from Sigil procs and almost 1 shot by shatter mesmer.

Nausiation.1469:

They nerfed the longbow/gs combo. The GS might be better if you spec for it but then you can’t fully spec for the longbow. Not sure why they would change everything up that didn’t need changing so that returning players can no longer play their favorite builds.

They can play Longbow builds without traiting for it.
They buffed GS thousandfold. Do you realize you are asking for playing double buffed spec you played before? Which is not really playing the one you played before but the one 2 times more powerful.

LB/GS is still a thing in PvP.
And for PvE: LB was taken before GS just because the highest DPS output came from sword #1 spam and we didn’t even swap weapons. So you started with #5 LB and #2 and never took it out again.

Edit: They can play more powerful versions of their former build. If they do not like it – they can run with 0-0-0. Or leave some of the traits out.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Quarktastic.1027:

Chokolata.1870:

Steady focus is a PvE trait.

Fluffball.8307:

Those 2 traits are not what makes the GS so powerful with the new traits; it’s Remorseless and Quick Draw.

What they said. I’m landing back-to-back 10-15k damage mauls and I love it. The Ranger GS is more powerful than it has ever been.

This, this and this again.

Greatsword became a viable weapon for PvE meta. People should learn to learn before complaining. Forums would become less of a mess.

If people made informed arguments then it wouldn’t be a proper internet forum, now would it?

Serr.1853:

Look on the brightside, you don’t have to buy siege :-)

We need zerg disablers.
You pop it on the zerg and it get’s X’ed.

It’s a Krytan Wimphound. Bred specially for Logan.

Yay, Anet. Way to go!

Everyone should be represented in all games. There is no exclusivity in the gaming world and there shouldn’t be.

There is also nothing political about it. She’s not trying to take over Queen Jenna’s job lol.

SunFireDemon.5014:

Personally I liked the game better when sexual preference was left out of the game entirely. Why use it to promote or push one agenda or another.

Agreed. They should remove all mentions of heterosexuality from the game, the game was better when it didn’t have that stuff. It’s pushing the heterosexual agenda.

I don’t hate heteros btw, I even have some of them as friends somewhere, so I can say this without being mean. I’m just against this pushing of the heterosexual agenda. Why can’t games just be games like they used to be? Games should only be about blocks, like in Pong or Space Invaders.

honestly it’s just really concerning how much people will say this ‘agenda’ is being pushed down their throats and then when something subtle and progressive is implemented, they go out of their way to let everyone know how personally offended they are.

also lol to people expecting us to be excited and quick to listen to their lengthy but poorly spelled list of why exactly they dislike us

Mar/Kas was horribly written, and it did smell of pushing an agenda. But the alleged agenda was sidetracked by the fact the pairing reeked of bad fanfiction like many people already wrote.

Symon/Sya is one NPC. He wont talk about it
unless you ask.

Heres to hoping we see more good relationships between well written characters no matter what their orientation.

Love her! You implemented her very tastefully. Thanks, ANet!

That is so thoughtful and touching to see And added in so gracefully without any ridiculous pantomime too. It’s a small thing maybe but it makes Tyria feel like somewhere with a bit of heart invested into it

I was playing a berserker thief, mostly with crossbow, in EOTM and the damage was amazingly high both against NPCs and human players (this with exotic gear). And I am no expert with the thief. I felt like a evil lawn mower that just plowed through whatever was in front of me. It was pretty fun, it will be interesting to see what changes they make or if this is the new game mode.

This is so odd that it appears to be happening NA only…. weird.

EU gets world peace day, you guys get God smite

Long story involving an angry mob, an oak tree, and some rope.

Not sure if this is 100% a bug but it’s not working as intended.

My pet doesn’t get Call of the Wild (Buffs) from Clarion bond pet-swap.

So you’re in combat pet-swap and the trait clearly says nearby allies, my pet does not receive the buffs from Call of the Wild.

Is this a bug or does the pet spawn after the Clarion bond goes active.

According to patch notes:

“All ranger pets now gain an additional 150 power, vitality, toughness, and precision at level 80.”

This didn’t seem to make it into the patch, since by comparing stats with pets in the game to pets on the wiki, the stats are identical. Please verify.

As a thief with a scarf I can tell you.
It’s to conceal their grin because they know.
... how you will complain about balance after your death.

Yes ty Anet for adding this wonderful NPC! Or well… changing them I guess. It’s amazing to see things like this getting visibility everywhere from our TV shows to our video games.

I do have one complaint though. For LGBT characters so far we have two main lesbian couples and one insignificant male homosexual couple most people probably never noticed, now the only trans NPC is also female. Next time a LGBT character is added, would it hurt for it to be a guy?

Speaking as the parent of a transgender child, I can’t express enough how awesome I think this is. I hope to see more minorities represented in all places, including video games.

FYI, transgender people have a tough, tough go of it in life. Simply being accepted as a person (getting a job, making friends, etc.), which comes so naturally to a large part of the population, is difficult at best for people who don’t “fit the norm”. Every advancement should be lauded.

Please anet, remove all heterosexuals from the game because it’s just like pushing obamacare and I don’t want it in my game. Heterosexuality is a political issue and I can say that because I have hetero friends. No offense.

/sarcasm

I find it silly when people have the “I don’t want to see that kind of things in a videogame, a videogame is fantasy and I don’t want to see real life problems on it”
most videogames have war, murders, poverty, love stories, political complots, betrayals, thievery, and violence and that’s not a problem for anyone.
But when something that has to do with a non straight person or relatinoship, it then becomes a bold political move that should be left out of videogames.
irony at its best.

In a world with magic, it does seem political. As the character could have changed and no one would have known.

A Vegan Charr on the other hand would be scandalous however.

I wasn’t born sarcastic but I do personally identify as sarcastic.

Chrono.6928:

i don’t really get it… nothing against the lgbt community, have several friends who are, and legally i think they should have more rights, but why the need to put hot topic issues in a fantasy video game? In a game about unity and fighting dragons just seems like a good way to stirr up controversy and have more religion debates in trade chat and can see otherwise good people who just happen to have a religious belief getting banned just for having a discussion (even if in a polite/friendly manner)

why not put obama or hillary flyers up, or crosses or other religious symbols ingame too? Thought the whole point of a fantasy video game was to escape reality.

bunny trail but… why do voters even care about social issues atm when we are billions or trillions in debt atm in the usa. everything else seems kind of irrelevant in comparison to the giant problem that isn’t going away.

again (just to make it clear and i dont get banned for even posting this lol) i support the agenda, but I don’t get the need for it in a game. let the politicians and preachers fight in real life, ingame i just want to fight dragons and talk in trade chat without debates.

It’s only a hot topic because bigoted people are trying to push that’s it not normal and should be stopped. The LGBT community would love it if everyone could just say “ok were cool with that and accept it” and we could stop talking about it in every political debate.

Also, just as others have pointed out, you’ve said “I support it” then made claims directly not. It’s extremely insulting to say “I’m cool with it but I don’t want to see it here”. Taking no side is almost as bad as taking the wrong side.

Another thank you, ANet. This was a very classy move and very well executed, especially because it’s not heavy handed and not preachy. Small gestures like this go a long way in making people feel acknowledged, and in allowing them to feel like stories which have personal resonance for them have a place in the game world.