Victory, Beings Lost On Borderlands (BLOB), SFR & Gandara (inactive)
One thing I’d really like to see is a change for Offhand Axe 5. It’s a bit clunky to use as a reflect because of it’s high cooldown.
I think Offhand Axe 5 should be a ground targeted skill, you click on an area and the Ranger would roll(similar to lightning reflexes) to the area and then initiate the reflect bubble. I think this would improve the skill’s support tremendously.
For instance you see an ally about to eat a killshot, you instantly Offhand Axe 5 in between the warrior and your ally. Makes Rangers have more support in PVE as well.
Evade on swoop was just an idea to give that build a second on demand defensive skill. It would certainly help close/escape as well because not being able to be bit while closing/escaping is going to improve your chances of doing so. Also gives you a reason to use that skill outside of those situations which would help with rotations IMO. That being said you are correct that removing evade from 1 is probably too harsh so this is a change that will probably have to wait a while for proper testing if it happens at all.
Jon
YESSSS disaster averted. Please do not ever change greatsword autoattack.
More active condition removals and improvement of utilities that would supplement glassy builds . Better power scaling too .
I think Nature’s Voice should be usable with Sic ’em and not just Guard.
Changes could be somewhere along these lines:
Nature’s Voice
- swiftness increased from 10s to 15s
- regeneration increased from 10s to 15s
Guard:
- cast time removed
- cooldown increased from 15s to 20s
Sic ’em:
- no longer requires a target. It only gives the buff
- buff can’t be broken by other commands to the pet
- cooldown reduced from 40s to 25s
- 40% damage reduced to 25%
- 40% movement speed untoched
This way you can either use the defensive Guard in combination with Nature’s Voice or combine it with the offensive Sic ’em.
With the cast time removed from Guard it will be a lot less annoying to use.
With the target requirement removed from Sic ’em it can be used at any time to buff people around you, even when no targets are near. Sic ’Em also won’t send your pet everywhere like Guard currently does.
Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
This change can be interesting, but there are some problems with this trait:
1. Only 2 skills are affected by this trait.
2. These skills have long CD (25s).
3. One of these skill (Concussion Shoot) is on a set (Short Bow) that won’t get a great bonus from the 50% more damage.
For those reason I suggest do decrease the CD of Hilt Bash and Concussion Shoot from 25s to 10s. This will bring the CD of that interrupt similar to Warrior or Engineer interruptions.
With this change I’m sure we will see roaming rangers. They will run power build based on Great Sword. And with this other change:
Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown
I think we will see something like 0/30/20/20/0.
I think that rangers won’t run that build unless you change the recharge of hilt bash because they have to lose a lot of defence and have a conditional stun every 25s with a 50% more damage on a skill like Maul won’t be enought.
An other ranger problem is the Sword autoattack Chain. Can you make it more responsive like you did with Warrior Axe Chain? I hate to be struck in a 2 seconds animation, it is like a stun.
I know that a lot of people are asking it and i agree with them.
Thx a lot for reading this i hope it can be usefull to you.
I’m going to post what I posted in the other thread days ago here also for completeness sake…
Ranger: Why aren’t you bringing rangers up to par with warriors via more trait compression and fixes to the class in general?
Trait Compression & Modifications:
- Piercing Arrow: Only Pierces yet Warriors get the same trait that also reduces cooldown of the same weapons. Suggestion: Merge Quick Shot into this skill from the Skirmish tree.
- Eagle Eye: This should be affecting shortbows too. It’s illogical that we can only increase longbow range and not our other bow too. Suggestion: Add shorbow to the skill for range and damage increase. Move to Adept Tier and move Trait V to Master tier.
- Quick Draw: (See Piercing Arrow above): Replace this skill with the following: Reduce cooldown on weapon swaps by 5 seconds. (same as warrior minor trait).
- 5 pt Natural Vigor: Seeing as you’re nerfing this skill, why not make the other 25% a chance on hit. 10% chance to grant Minor Vigor (25% end rec) on hit. It still won’t be perma vigor but it won’t be as crippled either.
- Signet of the Beastmaster: This never should have been a trait seeing as pets are intrinsic to the class and you can’t get rid of them. This should have been a natural class ability. Suggestion: Remove this trait and just roll it into the class. Add a new Trait “Active Signet effects, affect nearby allies”. This gives more party buff ability to a class that is sorely lacking in this department.
- Nature Magic IX: This trait should be merged into the cooldown trait, Martial Mastery and left in Wilderness Survival.
Weapons:
- 1hs rooting not addressed. This weapon is terrible due to that and having to use kludgy dps killing workarounds in combat sucks (eg not attacking and turning auto attack off to try and prevent rooting so you can dodge when needed etc..)
- Longbow.. the “miss party buffs to do damage weapon”. the mid range boost is ok but the auto attack is too kitten slow. It should be a bit faster as you’re losing damage to flight time and range anyway.
Skills & Pets
- Spirits still have internal cooldown, can be killed, can’t be moved easily and don’t do damage on summons unlike Warrior Banners (w/traits). Suggestion; Remove the internal cooldown and on every 25% health lost give the buff to anyone in range.
- Pets still die to AoEs from bosses in world events and dungeons. The health increase did little to nothing to remedy this situation. Pets should either be immune to boss aoe damage due to not being able to dodge or get out of red circles or have the damage taken drastically reduced from these things, otherwise in the fights that really matter you’re losing out on 1/3 your damage.
PvE of course. PvP needs to be split from PvE in most every way.
That’s enough for now….
Looks like the rooting may be addressed on the 1h sword so that’s good. The other stuff stands and the point about the warrior being able to get both vigor and cleanse made above in 1 skill is very valid compared to Rangers.
i didn’t even want to comment, lost all hope seriously. No change to shortbow, sword or any of the real problems the class have, the change to the spirit trait is nice but doesnt make them better, they will still be useless and people wont use them.
Overall the patch is a big nerf to the class, they put up some nice things to try to cover up the nerf and some people felt for it. Same happen to quickness remember? yea it was for “everyone” but the class that was most affected was Ranger. Same with vigor, the only good thing probably that we have is dodging and avoiding dmg now we wont be as good while warriors and others vigor abilities, as someone else said, are not been touched. Then is just rangers that are getting the nerf, because is so overpowered, those 5 points in WS is one of the only useful traits we have.
Some ranger discussion.
Power Rangers
No pun intended. As many have said these guys are in an interesting position. In some ways they can be very strong, but everytime I play my ranger this way it feel like it comes up a little bit short. I think this is because they are lacking a few things as either additional tools for greatsword or as utilities. Signets are the somewhat obvious utility choice but their effect is too varied to run a strong full signet build here. Conversely all traits associated with signets tend to increase in power the more you bring. What signets need is a good trait that synergizes with bringing a single signet, like Nature’s Voice does for shouts. This would let you bring maybe one or two signets and suppliment them with something else. One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.Jon
Rofl…. NO… jon….Bloody No…
The Evade on the Auto Attack is one of the reasons the weapon is pretty much are only weapon useful for Large Fights in World vs World.
Swoop Doesn’t need an evade, Its there for 2 purposes, Getting me to the Fight, and Getting me away from the Fight… an Evade will not help that..
Also what Signets need is you to bloody remove Signet of the Beastmaster so Bow Users can actually use Signets active abilities (Right now they have to give up Longbow Range or Pierce Arrows and can’t use that other bloody trait you added either)
Power Rangers have to many needed Traits in the Master part of the Tree… You need to combine some of them or move them to other tree’s
Greatsword as a weapon is not a bad weapon, The only ability that annoys me right now is the number 5 Ability, It doesn’t Synergize well with Moment of Clarity (they provide the same effect) It also has an incredibly short range and long animation time.
Other problems with Power Rangers extends to think like Our Pets being a mediocre system that you really should redo
http://www.youtube.com/user/Xsorus/videos?view=0
Natures Ninja and Pain Inverter – Ranger PvP movies
http://www.twitch.tv/xsorovos
Natures Ninja and Pain Inverter – Ranger PvP movies
http://www.twitch.tv/xsorovos
Put the dodge in the second attack, so its more close to a “on demand” dodge..
“Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.”
Wildly overpowered eh? Having said myself that Rangers do have access to quite a bit of endurance I do believe it is currently a great asset for Rangers. But wildly overpowered? As a class in general is there anything that a Ranger brings to WvW that gets people to go wild and say, “OMG here comes that Ranger yeehaw”, other than when it’s, “OMG Here comes that Ranger free bags!”
But like others have said. Move the trait instead of nerfing it? The class has few enough, “wildly overpowered”, traits as it is.
^_^
80 Ranger DH Abyss
Some ranger discussion.
Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.
With all due respect, i think this is a rather poor design choice. I’d rather see every class look at the other and see “wildly overpowered” traits and skills than see every major trick taken down so that classes only end up different because of a couple vaguely different numbers.
In the case of the ranger, we had a good few aces in our sleeve to bring something unique to the table. We had cheap on-demand short access to quickness, which gave us a little extra burst every now and then and made me one of the best options for “stomping duty” in wvw. That’s been taken away. Our pets could scale wall to harass defenders and siege, that’s gone. We could send the pets down the walls to attack siege, that’s gone. Our pets could be sent to attack at large distances in wvw to chase away pursuers or attack far away siege engines, that’s gone too. Our pets despite their failings had a hard rez, it’s gone. We had an extra long cripple field, it’s been cut in half. The 15s water field? Trimmed down and accelerated to be more bursty like everything else in this game. Two different styles for 1200 range combat? Make that one.
What’s left now? The various pet changes have reduced the pet to basically some random additional melee range damage. All utility is gone, it’s just about DPS. Even better, to use one of the buffs we should be grateful for, we have to spam Guard and force our pet to disengage/reengage all the time. The pet is supposed to be our main class mechanic, but it’s been reduced to the sorry state of a vaguely controlled weapon.
Now the endurance. Meh. It’s not even that i find it to hurt that much, frankly, i don’t think it’s going to be that huge, but there’s that feeling that once again, one of the few things left making a ranger is taking a hit. Yes we had pretty good endurance. So? What’s wrong with a class having better/cheaper endurance than the others? Should we have as much boon access as guardians then?
Mesmers have the incredible time warp, thieves can disengage at will, guardians have the cheapish vigor uptime ever, warriors can tank/dps/cc all at once, etc. That’s the whole point of classes. We should be jealous of the good stuff of all the others, but be able to say “well, sure, but then i wouldn’t give away [this] for it”. The more it goes, the less [this] i have on the ranger that makes me think that yes, i’ve got my tricks too. I’ve got a Mesmer, a Warrior and an Engi at 80 in addition to the ranger, there’s lots of stuff i love on each. I don’t like the seemingly constant streamlining that seems to be your approach to balance. It feels like you’re trying too hard to drag down classes to a common flavourless denominator.
Olaf Oakmane [KA]
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Am I the only one who wants to see that evade on GS gone? If you want burst then stop using the GS as a DEFENSIVE weapon. It is just another passive mechanic that has no place in game. I would gladly trade that evade for damage boost.
I suspect if the evade was removed the base DPS wouldn’t be increased (or Jon’s suggested “whirl” finisher would be the only addition and it would be a moot point for a lot of rangers). If it was a trade between the passive evade and having the ranger’s greatsword be similair to the warrior greatsword’s DPS I suspect a lot of rangers would make the trade. I personally doubt that would be the case and this change would adjust the defensive edge of this weapon (frequent passive evades) and give less evades overall but a controlled evade instead without a DPS increase. Note the warrior already has this on their greatsword yet Swoop doesn’t function like that.
It’s also ironic they want to move away from passive evades and give control of them to the ranger but are willing to leave passive leaps on the main hand sword instead of moving them off of the auto-attack and forcing players to work for their snares and target positioning. The former isn’t complained about, the latter is somewhat controversial.
I reckon we could shave a little bit of distance on gap closers across all classes. Whats the point of picking up ranged weapons if it deals less damage than melee and it takes a single gap closer for people to reach to you? Either that or increase shortbow range to at least 1000.
Am I the only one who wants to see that evade on GS gone? If you want burst then stop using the GS as a DEFENSIVE weapon. It is just another passive mechanic that has no place in game. I would gladly trade that evade for damage boost.
The evade on the GS is one of the only things keeping power rangers relatively alive in front line fights in WvW. I dislike running conditions because of the passive use of cooldown play it brings. As such, the evade on the 1 allows me to control when i want to evade simply by removing the auto attack.
But adding an evade to swoop will create a much better escape mechanic than already present, the only problem with that being I would rather they look at ways for rangers to stay in fights than simply run from them. Trait reliance for reliable condition removal being one of the main problems. Builds without EB are doable but you are handicapping yourself out the gate. Fix the reliance on one trait line for active condition removal (signet mastery and SoR is a clunky removal that would only be worthwhile if the cooldown was reduced to 30 sec with trait and just removed conditions as opposed to being a sacrifice your pet button).
[FIST] Yaks Bend
They never learnt the lesson of “don’t fix something that’s not broken”.
GS#1 evade doesn’t make rangers OP. It’s just right as they always wanna make GS a defensive weapon. And it’s actually one of the very few reasons that players don’t immediately throw GS away. So now they think about taking it out?!
Sword#1 is clearly broken for the rooting yet after 1.5 year they suddenly claim it’s intended. Why not just admit they are not able/willing to fix a problem? Locking down a target doesn’t mean it has to nullify your dodge. Stop justifying your bugs to players like they are 3 year olds.
Someone is clearly as clueless on fixing bugs as rationalizing it.
Am I the only one who wants to see that evade on GS gone? If you want burst then stop using the GS as a DEFENSIVE weapon. It is just another passive mechanic that has no place in game. I would gladly trade that evade for damage boost.
That’s the thing though: Ranger GS is a defensive weapon. It’s what separates it from a ranged utility weapon like the Mesmer, an offensive weapon like the Warrior or Guardian. If your skilled, the evade on chain 3 isn’t passive. Turn off auto attack and time your 1’s, and you’ll have an evade every 3-ish seconds that is actually timed. A whirl finisher wouldn’t add much in terms of offense. Honestly, it’s a pathetic finisher that relies on something worse than passive play — luck.
NSPride <3
Natural Vigor
I thought the power level was to differentiate the class from other classes. Unlike the warrior and guardian, the ranger represents the agility of a rogue-like class (similair to a thief) and to offset their lower armour (and less tanky utilities) they were expected to evade more often.
Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice
Why is anyone bringing guard other than its low cooldown to trigger Nature’s Voice? In sPvP I’m sceptical of how useful the protection, stealth and clunky pet control are worth the slot. Do you really want players bringing skills, not because the skill is good, but because it triggers a trait? That’s not good for the people who don’t use that skill and it’s not good for people who want that trait to work well with other shouts. Spirits don’t feel good in PvE and I don’t think this will change that.
Power Rangers
You talked a lot about signets needing a trait similair to Nature’s Voice and then jumped straight to greatsword without giving us anything about signet traits. Signets feel all or nothing. They have good passives but their actives are almost worthless unless you’re traited 30 points into them (or you run Signet of Renewal). If you’re looking at anything, look at their actives when not traiting into Signet of the Beastmaster. I don’t think many rangers would care about a whirl finisher. The greatsword needs more DPS (especially if you remove the auto attack’s evade). Whirl finishers are just weak and a power ranger build will have to rely on allies for a decent combo field (because without traps or torch off hand – from condition builds, Healing Spring’s water field and the spider’s poison field are about all the ranger will produce on their own)
Main-hand sword
If you want a unique playstyle for a mainhand melee weapon you should give it to a class that has at least two mainhand melee weapons. We don’t know how long it will be before rangers get a high DPS and equal control melee weapon (let alone a main hand). The current dungeon meta requires high DPS melee weapons and rangers are being pigeon-holed into one that has significant issues. There are always players who like something that gets changed, that’s not a reason not to change it (especially if there is strong support to change it). You aren’t giving rangers a choice here, the greatsword doesn’t have the DPS of the mainhand sword and it doesn’t have an off hand. At the very least could you alter how it works depending on the range from the target? If the player is within range of hitting the target no leap takes place (also note this isn’t a leap finisher, so it has the drawback of being a leap without on of the primary advantages of a leap). Leaping to a target you are already in range of is nothing but a hindrance in PvE. People want to play the ranger class in PvE today and on the same level as a warrior, guardian or thief. It’s not a very good situation for them to be in when they have to wait for some far off possibility of a viable melee main hand DPS weapon.
I’m also concerned about how limited balance goals appear to be when it comes to PvE. Can you give us some idea of how you think the class is doing in PvE and what you expect your balance decisions are going to do for the class in PvE? It would go a long way to alleviating the idea that the game is balanced almost exclusively for sPvP.
Power Rangers
No pun intended. As many have said these guys are in an interesting position. In some ways they can be very strong, but everytime I play my ranger this way it feel like it comes up a little bit short. I think this is because they are lacking a few things as either additional tools for greatsword or as utilities. Signets are the somewhat obvious utility choice but their effect is too varied to run a strong full signet build here. Conversely all traits associated with signets tend to increase in power the more you bring. What signets need is a good trait that synergizes with bringing a single signet, like Nature’s Voice does for shouts. This would let you bring maybe one or two signets and suppliment them with something else. One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.
The biggest problem for power rangers is that our traits are split between Marksmanship and Nature Magic, but we also need 30 in Wilderness for EB and we need about 20 in Skirmishing to get enough crit % and crit damage.
John Snowman [GLTY]
Space Marine Z [GLTY]
Space Marine Z [GLTY]
One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw
The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw
Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.
The solution is quite obvious if you see it:
Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown
Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown
With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!
With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.
Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.
(edited by Holland.9351)
I think that the evade on the GS autoattack is quite important. As it is now it means around 33% less damage taken. If we lose this the greatsword ranger will be alot squishier as he is now. This is especially true in zerg fights in WvW where the evade is one of the reasons why a ranger can participate in the melee train. If you take this away he will be quite alot weaker in melee zerg fights. And in the overall perception the ranger is already one of the most useless classes in zerg fights and has to fight to find his role and to be accepted.
Removing the dodge would be a rather large nerf especially since in zerg fights there is often lag which means that you can mainly use your autoattack and the evade helped alot.
Having the evade on swoop sounds of course interesting since it could not be interrupted any more. You could also actively use it as an evade in melee range by just swooping at your target which is directly in front of you – but in zerg fights this won’t work since you can’t always target an enemy directly in front of you in the middle of a zerg clash and the swoop CD is alot higher than the autoattack CD for the evade.
Also when fighting for example warriors or thieves in melee range the evade helps alot by mitigating quite some damage and since power rangers need buffs rather than nerfs this change might hit us hard.
Please keep this in mind when you decide about a change to the greatsword. A great and welcome change to the GS would be if you increased the range on GS 5 so that you can also hit a moving target. Otherwise the GS is a quite nice weapon as it is. I think if the damage of GS1 was increased by 10% without removing the evade and if you made the knockdown on GS 4 melee block faster the GS would be fine.
(edited by Arpheus.6918)
Also, rather than touch the greatsword third stage, buff its incredibly low autoattack damage.
People don’t use the greatsword over the mainhand sword mostly because there’s around a 13% difference in damage between the too.
Also, power specs are not run over condi specs because ranger condi’s are not halved in effectiveness when the pet is factored, while power based abilities are. Conditions bypass boons like protection; ranger power specs have no way to deal with boon spam.
And please implement aoe damage reduction to pets already. Increasing their HP even by 500% wouldn’t fix anything because of the raw damage that happens in WvW and skills like the SE path 1’s stacked mirrored blades one shotting pretty much most pets.
Make ranged pet’s range 1200 and allow melee pets besides drake to cleave.
Rangers feel useless in WvW because the pet is dead on arrival to begin with, pets don’t cleave, and rangers in general have very poor AoE damage options which are necessary in WvW.
I rather have evade than whirl finisher on 3rd autoattack of GS. Whirl finisher is pretty much useless.
Putting evade on swoop… if I wanted movement evades, I’d just go for sword.
(edited by kiwituatara.6053)
Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.
Following that line of logic:
Guardian’s have a 5 point trait that gives them 5 seconds of vigor (5 second-cooldown) on a critical hit. Compared to the engineer’s grandmaster trait and the ranger’s adept trait, this is vastly overpowered and needs to be moved to a grandmaster and its duration cut to 3 seconds.
Warrior’s longbow trait gives it a range increase and cool-down reduction. Compared to the ranger this needs to be split into 2 traits.
Warrior gets a greatsword skill that decreases cool-down and gives him might on criticals. Compared to the ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.
Warrior gets a trait that allows rifle shots to piece and reduced their cooldown. Compared to this ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.
Personally I use the main hand sword a lot in PvP, and do this mainly by disabling the auto attack, though I don’t feel its always necessary. For anyone irritated by not being able to dodge, just try it with the autoattack disabled and see how much you can improve when you control the leap movement.
…beating the dead horse some more
Even though there are some neat tricks you can do by disabling autoattack on sword#1, and also get more control over your character in the process, it still feels like a workaround to the issue most brought up with the sword – the inability to dodge during the certain parts of the chain.
Another workaround is to swap weapon and dodge. Should we really have to resort to workarounds?“All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional”
Currently being the keyword here. For some QOL improvements, I hope you change your intentions some day.
No don’t change the behavior of sword#1 (I love it!), just allow dodge to override all skills (goes for all classes).The fact is the ranges on the 2nd and 3rd part of the sword weapon are 400+. This means that the auto attack chain will follow an opponent for you rather than forcing you, like on pretty much any other melee attack chain, to follow them for yourself. Yet another example of passive play for the ranger, and yes its unique. I’d much rather have another one of the attacks be a melee range attack though and be able to dodge in it, the only time you can execute a dodge, is just after the third part of the AA chain and its impossible to interrupt the chain.
This makes for terrible terrible play at high levels, as you can’t use the evades efficiently in clutch situations. I can’t think of another weapon that does this, look at the GS attack chain. You can interupt any one of the three spells at any time by using another weapon skill, which you can’t do with the sword.
Personally I believe the reason they dont want to change it is that its the only melee weapon in the game that does a lot of the movement for you, add to the list yet another ranger class tool that is designed to be basic. The frustration from a lot of players that enjoy ranger is based around all this passive play designed for beginners, our best condition removal is passive, whatever % of our damage is pet damage, passive, melee tracking, passive, pet control skills/heals, passive or so out of our control they may as well be.
I really enjoy my ranger still, and look forward to the next patch given that I think the support provided will be very powerful. I agree that the sword AA needs some work, but I just can’t see it happening because Rangers continue to be the beginner class.
The Ranger is inherently the leisure mode class of GW2. Even our best pvp build is just degen/regen tank cheese that’s more about stat stacking than actual game play.
It’s incredibly frustrating when requests for more active play options are answered with spirit changes and buffs to bark skin.
Connection error(s) detected. Retrying…
(edited by Substance E.4852)
the problem is you have to spec deep into a line to make a utility USABLE . For example , vigorous spirit is a waste of a trait .
Make it so its default for spirits to have more HP and chance to proc , and give each spirit active a condition removal if the trait is equiped .
Same for trap mastery . Make the duration bonus default and move the cooldown reduction to the tier 2 trait . Then make a proper critical damage trait for power builds .
Also , signet and wilderness traits only give cooldown reduction . A cool effect could be added to both .
Signet of the hunt active is pointless , perhaps making the active give a few seconds of stealth instead of the bonus damage could give the power ranger survivability toos boost needed ?
Heal as one is useless , very nice place to put condition removal in an interesting way . For example , for each condition cleared up to a max of 3 , the pet gets a boon .
I’d rather keep the evade on greatsword autoattack than trade it for a whirl finisher and an evade on swoop. I feels way too much like a nerf rather than an improvement.
The evade on autoattack makes greatsword such a nice weapon.
The Biggest change Anet can do right now is removing bloody Signet of the Beastmaster and making that baseline.
Absolutely silly we have to invest 30 points in a line to get the same effect as everyone else.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Xsorus/videos?view=0
Natures Ninja and Pain Inverter – Ranger PvP movies
http://www.twitch.tv/xsorovos
Natures Ninja and Pain Inverter – Ranger PvP movies
http://www.twitch.tv/xsorovos
Two things I took from this:
1) you are supposed to keep might stacks on your pet
2) you are not supposed to use a longbow
Actually, let me add to my post.
1) He says to stack boons on the pet to keep its damage up, but he also says to switch pets often. Switching pets removes boons, it also removes Rampage as One, it also removes Master’s Bond stacks, it also removes things like Sic’m, Signet of the Wild active, Enlargement, Search & Rescue, and Lick Wounds.
2) He says a lot of people pick Longbow initially. He then says people should change to other weapons because the longbow is inefficient. If a lot of people who pick Ranger are drawn to the longbow, but the longbow is inefficient, then shouldn’t the longbow be made perfectly efficient in at least 1 build? Instead he seems content to consider it a newbie weapon and tell people not to use it.
I was a little bit disappointed by the questions answered. Besides the fact that he didn’t really answer any question but gave some vague responses, for one thing. The other thing that he really did pick questions that have not that much value for any ranger watching.
The first question that was answered was about the uniqueness of the ranger. The Answer was that the unique thing about the ranger is the pet. Wow, big surprise there. The ranger is supposed to be more flexible using a pet. But not as much as an engineer or an elementatlist ist flexible(?!?). And we can split damage using a pet, like focusing on two different things at once. In which game is this an advantage? Given a group of enemy without any specific skill set, it is always better to focus down one before moving to the next. Granted, I don’t do too much PvE, but there can’t be that many bosses where it is really an advantage to split your focus, right? The one interesting thought I got from all that was, that you can mix your damage between condition damage and direct damage, but that’s about it.
The second question was about ArenaNet employees favorites pet. The answer was basically: “depends”.
The third question was about an evasion mechanic for the pet to mitigate damage without supervision. The answer was that they are thinking about it, but that changes like that are hard to make. To sum this up: Maybe sometime down the road, but certainly not while there is other stuff to fix. I hardly think that they change the way pets behave just for one profession, if it has such a huge impact on the mechanics.
The really tough questions weren’t even addressed. What about the pet AI? What about group support that can’t be killed with AoE?
The rest of the screen cast was about the three basic builds, direct damage, condition damage and spirits, but he did not talk for one second about anything specific. He mentioned some traits that support one build or the other. He highlighted some very obvious synergies in one or between two trait lines, but the entire thing had less substance than the chocolate bar I had for lunch.
Also, for my taste he “felt” a lot too much about certain mechanics for someone who has access to the math behind it. There have to be calculations or at least estimations for as much as anything that the professions can do.
Really guys, anyone playing ranger and owning a webcam could have done that screen cast. There are a lot of real issues here that are being discussed for months, most of them summarised here in this very thread. Please give us some real answers, not those vague responses that leave you with one less 30 minutes to live and not the wiser.