Guild Wars 2

Thank you for giving the ranger some attention at last! Also, thanks for opening up and giving us all a chance to provide feedback ahead of the changes.

Here are my thoughts around the ranger changes:

For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound, so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere.

The move on Spirits Unbound is excellent. However, I think some of the other changes will ensure that build diversity is not increased at all. All the trait buffs appear to happen in Wilderness Survival and Nature Mastery, both of which are already popular for excellent things like Bark Skin and the spirit enhancements. The trait changes around Marksmanship and Skirmishing really won’t make much difference to me in a power spec because I still lack the thing that makes that spec work – power. Opening up more builds could be better done by one or more of:

1) Allow more things to affect both the ranger and the pet (I’m staring at you, 30 point requirement for ever using active effects on all those super-long-CD signets; maybe just lower the CD’s on them instead? Also, shouts take forever to recharge and don’t give much benefit considering pets are unreliable).
2) Pull some of the pet’s stats back into the ranger himself (bear gives toughness/vitality, cat gives power/precision, etc.).
3) Give pets some benefits from the ranger’s stats/equipment bonuses.
4) Combine some of the power-related traits, such as Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye in particular.

Lévis.5489:

Ranger sword 1 still rooting?
Why should i get 300 points in precision and 30% more critical damage if i want to use traps?

^ Agreed with this.

I’m glad to see the damage buffs to longbow though since you sacrifice so much by being long range in GW2 (all the boons your melee friends cast don’t affect you when you’re more than 600 range away). From a PvE standpoint, I’m still not sure if the damage boost is enough.

However, the 1h rooting on the main attack is still the main reason I haven’t touched my ranger in…probably close to over 6 months now? Not sure. It’s been a long time. =/

I still follow up on Ranger news/builds/etc, but I every time I try to play my ranger, it doesn’t last long.

Here’s probably what I think the #1 problem is with ranger: The skill cap for something like a spirit ranger is very low, whereas playing a sword/X ranger in PvE has a very high, unforgiving skill floor because of the root effect on sword. The damage and utility of running a 1h sword build in PvE is also so far ahead of bow builds, this means that many rangers must either submit to the wonky sword mechanics or get trash-talked for using a bow.

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.
Still the only real buff for ranger in this patch. and as a WvW player i still wont play again with my lvl 270+ ranger with kudzu :/

I dont like half of the thief changes but luckily i stopped playing him in september. The changes to thieves kind of ruin evasion and stealth builds on a class that is already lacking build diversity and survivability. The thief class is already at a low point.

Warrior hammer changes were probably needed, although i dont agree with nerfing the direct damage of the hammer skills. The changes to the trait lines probably had to happen like i said, it and maybe even reducing earthshaking dmg, but dont reduce the damage of #4. The hammer is already slow.

Also will you guys please test removing the root of the second GS warrior skill? It makes it kind of hard to hit anything with half a brain in wvw and mobs in dungeons can simiply move out of range easily.

Wish Rangers got even more changes but the ones they got are cool. Hopefully you can increase the base damage of greatsword autoattack or skills in general.

Also Ranger pets still need hp increase in wvw and the auto for sword needs to be looked at. Power builds still arent very viable in pvp on rangers as they are on other classes. Also whats your stance on the shortbow getting it ranged reverted back to 1200?

In regards to the Ranger Trait Moment of Clarity and Skirmishing in general.

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

I still think that Moment of Clarity is a pretty junky trait. All in all, rangers have exactly two stuns – greatsword 5 and short bow 5 (both of which require flanking). There’s no real incentive to get it if you plan on using a power build because you won’t really be using those weapons.

The rest of the skirmishing major traits don’t really do much for you in regards to a power build so there isn’t much incentive to push past 25 points for the extra 10% flanking damage and just put your points somewhere else.

Hi Jon, I really like the updates to the Nature Magic line for Rangers.

The icing on the cake would be an adjustment to the casting time of “guard” which is effected by nature’s voice. Currently, this shout has a 1s cast time, causing rangers to spend 1/15th or 1/I 2th of their time not dpsing and casting Guard for regen and swiftness. I think that would really polish off the nature magic line.

Thanks!

No one in WvW bothered about the nerf to symbol of swiftness?

That’s the guardian staff 3 skill, that generally gives other players swiftness.

It currently gives 8 secs of swiftness, they are nerfing it to 4 secs.

Its probably one of the most used skills in WvW, also how can 8 secs of swiftness be overpowered and need a nerf?

The mind boggles…

JonathanSharp.7094:

We just posted this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Why? Anet has a long history of doing what was initially proposed, regardless of comments/suggestions from the player base.

I am in the same boat as LB changes are cool to see but still meh. Ranger’s problem still stem from these major issue.

• Ranger has to trait 30 for condition removal and has little ways to remove conditions.
• Ranger has to trait 30 into most lines just to make Utilities worth putting on their skill bar.
• Pet attacks root them in place, making pet damage akin to a weapon sigil that procs 33% of the time.
• The “Master Archer” class is still lackluster at range in PvP because people gap close almost instantly and render the range builds useless.
• Pet F2 skills are qued behind a pets pathing AI it seems, either that or they are just plain buggy.

I do like the Unbound Spirits being moved and while I am happy Longbow got tweaked it’s still not where it needs to be. Changes to Storm Spirit might make it less used in serious gameplay.

I’m still disappointed with the ranger changes, only because in this preview there is no attempt to spread out the sources of condition removal rangers have access to, meaning that for a lot of builds, Empathic Bond will still be a necessity, which hurts Power based builds more than condition based builds since it takes 30 trait points away that could have been spent in a traitline more beneficial to Power builds.

The changes to the ranger (and the other classes as well) look great though. I was just hoping to see some additional condition removal added to the ranger so that Empathic Bond doesn’t seem so necessary; preferably an active source.

Nice Ranger Longbow changes, but can we get Barrage to tick less often but with more damage? It destroys you if you Barrage and then a guardian gives Retal to 5 people.

Ranger Moment of Clarity. Did you mean it to increase the stun AND daze from 50-100%? I hope so as the stun is currently positional on the SB and GS. It would help a lot if it increased daze too for SB#5 and GS#5.
Mighty Swap. It provides BOTH might and condition to the pet but as stated would only provide the might to the ranger. Is this poor wording or intentional?

Ranger longbow has come along ways since release but is still frustrating because 3 traits (piercing, range increase, and CD reduction) are necessary to fully utilize the weapon. Consider merging the piercing and range increase traits to a single master trait in marksmanship. The extra trait points would encourage build diversity and could be used for defensive options such as traited signet of stone, which the longbow ranger sorely needs.

Well…This sucks… Most of these are terrible…

Keeping it short and simple, just gonna highlight some of the more important ones:

Necro:

- “Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.” Really? Mark of Blood was already massively underwhelming. It’s just something you use while using the rest of your marks before you switch weapons. That has ALWAYS been the problem of Necro’s staff. It’s also the reason that, no matter how much you want, Greater Marks is mandatory. Because marks are exclusive to the STAFF, and staff is exclusively marks.

- “Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.” – Nicest way I can put this is “Who gives a kitten?”. The bleeds on this are pathetic, they’re just cover conditions for the rest…

- “Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.” – No. Wrong! This trait needs to disappear from the minor trait and switched for something else… Or you need to move staff traits, and other traits not exclusive to minion master, away from this horrid tree.

Ranger:
- “Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.” and “Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.” – Yay, only….what? 15 skills left to go?

- “Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.” – lol…. because… kitten ranger… I guess… Nevermind the classes that have perma-vigor (coughcoughmesmerguardianengineercoughcough).

- “Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.” – This doesn’t need to be lowered in tiers, it needs to be kittening BASELINE for god’s sake… It’s a functionality issue. Spirits are useless without it.

Warrior:

- (general) gg. You still haven’t nerfed what you should (passive play), and instead nerfed what you shouldn’t (everything else). GG. 0/20/20/0/30 instead of 0/10/30/0/30.
- “Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.” – Who cares… Still a useless waste of a trait. The activation condition is too situational. Ditch it. Rework it entirely.

There’s more, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to some (engineer and ele for example), but yeah…. completely disappointment. There are some good changes here and there, but nothing is being done to address core, fundamental class problems.

The problem with Warrior is the kittening passive play of healing signet.

The problem with Ranger is that they’re ball and chained to a disfunctional mechanic – the pet.

The longbow still requires 3 MASTER traits to be at full power, meaning a 50 trait point investment, one of which (1500 range) should be BASELINE.

A lot of things that should be baseline because they’re fundamental to certain weapons or skills are still traits you gotta invest in, just to have that weapon/skill set work – Ranger spirit’s moving with you, Necro’s greater marks, Ranger’s 1500 range on longbow…

Several trait trees, some more than others, are still plagued by disfunctional and useless minor traits – trait you can’t opt out of in favor of more useful ones. Warrior’s Tactic’s tree, Ranger’s Marksmanship tree, Necromancer’s Death Magic tree… Traits that are extremely circumstantial and of practically no impact, or extremely build dependent and useless (or detrimental) for mostly everyone else…

Guardian still has issues effectively running after or away from people, or keeping people from running away… More so now with the horrid change to Symbol of Swiftness…

Start by fixing the core problems with classes… The stuff that’s broken… Then worry about tweaking minor stuff…

I’m still very concerned with the extreme lack of burst and AE available to the Ranger class. Are there weapon changes in addition to these changes perhaps?

You’ve given the Ranger traits like Remorseless and Moment of Clarity but scarce are the opportunities to use these traits. Remorseless in particular leaves you nothing to use this trait with but low damage #1 attack of the Longbow. The only other option is weapon swapping, but with no trait to reduce the cooldown of weapon swaps, the Ranger is stuck in a terrible weapon like Greatsword waiting for Maul to come off cooldown or waiting to swap back.

Now I don’t much care if you introduce a utility skill or change longbow to have a high burst skill, but the class desperately needs it. There’s still very little synergy with the traits for this class. Still no synergy between weapons. And still nothing to elevate the class above 8th place in WvW.

Oh jon…

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

Why must you tease me

If only it worked on Dazes..

I like what this does for PvP and WvW balance, but I don’t like how zero consideration is given to what this does for PvE.

I watched the Ranger stream today and Izzy talked about condition builds being viable in PvE and dungeons like that was really a thing. I am sure ANet plays GW2, so I am sure they have, at least on occasion, played a dungeon with non-ANet players. As such, I’m confident that you guys understand how bad condition builds are and how bad many classes are in general for PvE. Little to no consideration is being given here to balance in that vein in PvE, and that repeated disregard for an entire branch of the game is pretty unfortunate.

For instance, you keep talking about how Guardian power builds are “weak”. If you pay attention closely to dungeon runs, you’ll find that Guardians already do among the best raw power-based DPS of any class in the game right up there with Eles and Mesmers packing FGS. And here you are giving them a free bonus 5% damage in a trait that already gets used frequently in PvE? That makes them even more invaluable to runs. Where are the Necromancer power-build buffs for PvE? Make Close To Death (Spite XII) give +30% damage in PvE only, make Dhuumfire a 6s burn in PvE instead of a 4s Burn, make Siphoned Power (Spite 25) give 5 stacks of might instead of 1 and make its threshold 33%. Engineers in PvE actually see some love with that Modified Ammunition change, but it’d still be nice if they could get a bit more. Juggernaut could use some PvE love, among other things. The poor Thief is demolished by this patch in PvE, seeing as now it can’t layer stealth for initiative and it hasn’t gotten any positive dps or support buffs (it got nerfs instead actually) to compensate.

I really want to emphasize that while these changes are great for other formats, PvE is just being left behind and the dungeon meta is, quite frankly, disappointing at the moment. You guys (ANet) really need to put some thought into how this affects them and what you can do to improve the build and class diversity used there.

Seriously, it’d be nice to actually have a reason to use my Necromancer in a dungeon for once. You could flat increase the effect of condition damage in PvE by 50% and it still wouldn’t compare to most power-based builds.

I play a raw damage ranger focusing on marksmanship and skirmishing. I love:
a) Changes to Long Range Shot
b) Marksmanship V- Predator’s Instinct.

The unintended consequence is that you now have too many must have options in the marksmanship line and the potential solution is that you should offload a few to skirmishing adapt.

The missing trait change is tied to giving us out of combat swiftness to free up a pvp and wvw slot versus taking Signet of the Hunt.

Explanations:

1) The issue of an overloaded marksmanship line.

Right now you have for Tier 1 +10% damage and the new Predator.

Tier 2 Piercing Arrows or Spotter and Eagle Eye. So often you wind up going grandmaster in marksmanship to fit in that third trait.

Could you move a trait like piercing arrows to the skirmishing adept line? Or replace Trapper’s Instinct with the new Predator’s Instinct?

2) The issue of lack of out of combat speed.

For PvP and WvW, rangers often take Signet of the Hunt just to keep up out of combat. That is a whole slot for out of combat movement. Could you make a simple change to tail wind and make it apply swiftness even when we are not in combat much like the engineer’s speedy kits? Doesn’t need to be a trait you choose because the buff ONLY occurs out of combat (and allows us to travel at a good speed when not in a group).

Other Stuff:

1) Nature IX Two Handed Training is supposed to help give us fury but we have lots of options for fury (almost as many as we had for endurance regen). One of the most common is the 9 seconds on weapon swap. GS is often used with a LB in a power oriented build. You range then swap/leap/maul. So for a longer fight you might get a bit of fury with the new trait. Might be better to provide might upon a crit and change the cooldowns. Not bad, but you might want something other than fury.

I don’t understand your note on Nature X at all. Can you explain?

Mighty swap only applies the might to the ranger and not the condition damage? Would be more versatile if it did both. You tend to one one or the other (condition v raw builds).

There are 3 identical vigour traits for ele, gua and mes. Guardian and mesmer have that traits as’ 5 minor traits while elementalist will have it at 20 points. What is the logic behind that, especially when an elementalist is the squishiest of those?

JonPeters.5630:

We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.

From the top of my head and I might be wrong here. But ele’s, mesmers and even guardians can easily get perma vigor. Why take it away from engineers and not from them?

I’ll deal with the loss, but I do believe this change is uncalled for.

One more thing bow rangers really need: merge Piercing Arrows with ANY other bow trait – 20% CD reduction or Eagle Eye, or at least add something more to this trait.

News at 11: Developer ignores the problem areas and proclaimes nothing is wrong

I am eager to see this… ’cause I got a bear, awwwwwwww yeah!

This is going to be quite a laugh

I swear I will lose it if I see bearbow

This should be comedy gold.

As a Drakkar Lake player I have to appologize to FoW and Arbor for the Spawn Campers and 15+ Blob Runners for Camps. I can assure you this are not WvW Players. Most of them are normally not even seen in WvW as they play normally PvE or RP and are just started with the beginning of Season 1 to show up for their achivements. They are not listening to mapchat, TS or Kommandeur. The majority of the real WvW Players on Drakkar can´t wait that they have finished their Achivements and gone which will hopefully happen within the next days as they totally ruin the reputation and the WvW community with their spawn farming and behaviour.

So once again sorry that you have to face this.

I have to say you’re still to this day the only Viable Ranger i ever saw in wvw!
Ty for video, we’ll make good use of it, Feedback and stuff like that!

Nemesys.7251:

hey vyc just kick someone out u are really too many!

We take matters of blobing very seriously and as a result we have made over 20 employees redundant. As a serious corporation we have reached agreements on redundancy packages to minimize backlash.

When we raid as a company we always try to coordinate with other guilds to ensure that we are roaming with equal numbers. In the event that we can’t coordinate our accountants try to carry out on the field mathematics to ensure that we are fighting on equal terms. This has obviously failed and as a result we have taken the action described above.

This has obviously crippled our growth as an organisation and the road to economic recovery and stability starts now. As long as our employees and management maintain a strict work ethic and rigorous working schedule then we should be back up and running in 2 -3 working days.

We take such extreme measures to keep our name clean and away from negativity. We have always maintained a good working relationships with our partners and we aim to continue that as we grow in this sector.

Sird, Blob Administrator and head mathematician.

GD transfered recently to Miller so there is much more space for tears;-)
Pull out the Stallion^^.

Greets Myrmi

Well for your info mya runs 30+ normally, atleast that’s what I’ve been told so you’ll have multiple chances to qq then aswell!