Guild Wars 2

Fun changes! I main a ranger, so my focus is on their changes specifically.

I agree with Holland above – Sick ‘em is very buggy in its current state. I would love for a new reason to bring this shout with me, but until I know that it’s reliable, it might stay off my utility belt.

No, this probably won’t be a skill I kept on my bar 24/7 – however, utilities should be changed around depending on the challenge faced. You bet I’ll bring Sick ‘Em along for the Moss Man fight, and with WvW bloodlust, I’m bringing it with me there when thieves do their annoying thief thing. This looks like a fun change, and I anticipate future balancing to bring this ability up to a point of usefulness. (Probably will take a couple iterations to balance it just right.)

And as far as the health boost to minions – that’s pretty great news. It doesn’t fix the problems, but it’s still a nice head start. It makes me want to use spirits again. I ask that in PvE and WvW though, that spirits don’t die after 60 seconds and act more like necro pets (go on CD upon death). I’ve stopped running with them even before this latest patch because oh my goodness is the re-summoning annoying. Perhaps add this to the grandmaster spirit trait – spirit unbound and no spirit suicide for PvE?

EDIT: I forgot to add something important! I mentioned Sick ‘em is bugged (or very picky) and for that reason I don’t want to use it… But you see, as a ranger player, it’s so important for me to know what my pet’s status is. What boons it has, what conditions it has, and I just can’t with this current system. Please allow me to add my pet to my party or something, so I can see their status. So I can see if they have the sick ‘em “boon”, if I canceled it or if the timer ran out. How many stacks of might did Rampage as One give my pet? Should I heal up my pet because their boons are so great, or just swap pets because they’re a blank slate? And what about the ranger trait that increases our bond with our pet? I’ve never used that trait because I have no idea what it does (the tool tip is unclear, [“increases bond every time you kill a foe”???]) nor can I see it. This transparency is important and falls in line with the changes aimed for this update. Please, if we can somehow get the option to view our pet’s status without selecting the pet mid-combat, all rangers would be incredibly grateful.

Just for clarity, when you say pvp, make sure you put the ‘s’ in front of it, as most of what you are saying only applies to spvp or solo fights in wvw.

And are they REALLY going to nerf healing spring in all forms of the game just because in spvp it might be useful?

I really wish they would separate all changes between spvp and the real game as almost every change made solely for ‘balance’ in spvp is completely stupid when applied to wvw or pve.

And to the thiefs moaning about a 40 second cool down skill that will miss 90% of the time in any form of the game other than spvp where you are standing guarding some objective and have decided not to move- almost all rangers WILL NOT waste a utility space on a skill that is so useless.

It will be about as useful as the LB skill 3 giving 3 seconds of stealth- which only works if your shot lands on the target and isn’t dodged, blocked by your own pet, blocked by aegis, misses as your blinded, etc etc making it miss most of the time when you actually want to use it.

Pet skills will continue to be useless most of the time in wvw – 1.5 seconds to cast a skill while the pet stands still, try it and see how often that pet stun skill hits…and ranged pet attacks are just lol.

Of course they work fine on bunkers standing on an objective in spvp and we all know that’s the only thing they look at, so dreaming that they will change things so they work in wvw is a waste of time.

I main Ranger still, but I don’t like the sound of this at all.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Ranger
Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.

Unless stealth won’t drop the target anymore, this won’t work. Sic ‘m needs a target, but stealth drops the target. In fact, Sic ’Em is very buggy and stops working for various odd reasons:
“The effect will end prematurely if a shout is used, the pet is given an order, the pet falls in battle, or the pet’s target becomes invisible or defeated. This skill will fail when used while further than 2000 range from the target." (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Sic_%27Em%22)

On top of this, I don’t think people are willing to waste a utility slot on it. You don’t encounter stealth all that often and I doubt it’ll be very useful with its 40 second cooldown.

So unless this skill gets a complete overhaul, this won’t be any good.

JonathanSharp.7094:

To help Rangers support allies, we increased the ability ranger pets have to support allies. For instance, the Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that. Moas and Fern Hound will also be improved.

Pets are a terrible platform. Pets will often die in any and all group content. Give the Ranger utility / elite / weapon skills and traits to support allies, which can not die and don’t have pathing issues.

JonathanSharp.7094:

There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

This doesn’t bode well.

If the devs are still reading, it would be very nice to see a blog post similar to last years, where it took each class, discussed it’s current position in the game, how close you felt them to being in an okay spot (or the spot you want them in), and what spot the dev team is actually aiming for, with the functions the class should be performing well at, and how.

If you guys can take the time to do it that is, we know it’s a busy schedule.

The way these thieves are crying its like they expect half the people in wvw to be rangers running sic’ em.
I like this utility idea. Rangers need some ability to stop heavy dps pressure on them. I expect it to work well with bows.

raahk.2786:

No, it isn’t. Thieves don’t stealth just to use sneak attack. Stealthing is the ONLY survivalist method thieves have outside of blind spam, and that’s only doable with offhand pistol. A stealth-based thief will be completely crippled because a ranger has a single skill on their utility bar, and will then be left defenseless since he didn’t spec in to the acrobatics line and only has two dodges, with a maximum of four or five if using sword/dagger.

So a single skill. A single skill on a 40 second timer will completely invalidate a thief? A skill only one class gets? Really? Hmm. Seems fishy to me.

Xovian.8572:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Ruggan.4102:

All this BS about stealth needing a counter… there are counters to stealth… you just need to actually learn to use them.

The problem with thieves and stealth is…well, I’ll let these quotes do the talking for me.

“You can’t hit what you can’t see.” ~Walter Johnson (In GW2 you can, its magic!)
“You cannot dodge what you cannot see!” ~Gen (Sure you can, ever used block and didnt see what caused it? Happens all the time in GW2)

But to add to this, we need some REAL hard counters to stealth, something to get it off somebody. I really hope Sic ‘Em is changed to a pet damage increase for all its attacks for a certain amount of time, with the Reveal being an AoE around the pet of 900 range. If we can start seeing at least one skill that does that on at least half of the classes, you won’t see as much complaining from players about the ‘invincible’ thief.

2 things about the stealth complaints:

1: STEALTH is NOT thief only. Quit begging for nerfs to a mechanic that 4 classes use, just because one has some more entertaining ways to “annoy” you with it. Honestly I disapprove of the change cause most games that use stealth breakers also have classes that can actually perma stealth, GW2 doesn’t. Yes I have a thief ( i troll/harass/taunt with her in WvW, she has never killed anything 1v1, she cant), but I main a mesmer, and im in ill need of more nerfs to my favorite, and most played class that is currently the least played, and least used in PvP environments.

2: Adding hard counters BEGS the question for the developers of just what other hard counters do we need, it’s gonna be a pretty long list and that’s GOING to turn into a kitten you wouldn’t believe. Tweaks, yes, “shaves” yes. Just adding out right changes (counters) to core mechanics is just a bad idea no matter how you look at it.

Let’s take the thiefs stealth, then we can take the warrior’s weapons, the mesmer’s clones, the necro’s death….. Then we can all have the same stick character wielding the same stick weapon to beat on each other with.

Nobody said anything about TAKING Stealth from thieves. Get your facts straight. They are introducing a COUNTER to Stealth, that is not REMOVING it.

If i counter Immobilize with condition removal, condition removal is a COUNTER to it, that does not make Immobilize USELESS.
If i counter Daze/Stun with Stunbreaker, Stunbreaker is a COUNTER to it, that does not make Daze/Stun USELESS.
If I counter Knockdown with Stability, Stability is a COUNTER to it, that does not make Knockdown USELESS.
If I counter Stability with boon removal, boon removal is a COUNTER to it, that does not make Stability USELESS.

Follow the trend. Want more?

Ruggan.4102:

Charak.9761:

Some of these may not make it in for that release

Just remember this, some people take the words of a dev as final say.

I’m glad that tab targetting is finally getting a fix, was tired of tab targetting through a bunch of spirits to get to a ranger.

It’s about time there’s an anti-stealth mechanic in the game (similar to hunter flare). You’ll see alot of QQ from thieves, but this is necessary. I’ll keep a ranger near me now in pvp.

The one thing though Fix Guardian shield this weapon feels entriely lackluster is is mostly only used for the knockback for point control or thieves stealth in spvp.

Yea, its about time they added a counter to that god mode skill stealth… i mean seriously:
1) Ground Targeted AOEs did nothing against a stealthed thief… except have them take damage as they tried to approach for a melee attack and get whatever conditions were associated with the AOE as well.
2) Knockback, Stun, Daze, Knockdown… yea these did nothing to interupt the casting of things like Shadow Refuge or reveal the thief after knocking the thief out of the SR field.
3) Revealed Debuff… yup, nothing says perma stealth god mode like having a 3-4 second time frame where you cant use stealth at all.
4) Anti-Stealth Traps… yea, these are expensive but what other specific piece of WvW gear is specifically made to target a single class? NONE!
5) PVE mobs dont lose aggro with stealth anymore. Oh wait that goes for WvW mobs too.. so for those who keep QQ that thieves use ambient creatures to perma stealth… how about look where the creature that was just attacked is looking and strike there? Chances are, since the mob keeps aggro, it cant attack but it knows where the thief is.

All this BS about stealth needing a counter… there are counters to stealth… you just need to actually learn to use them.

1. Ground Targeted AoE can be dodged and walked out of by any thief. On top of that, you would be hard put to actually KILL the thief with that kind of damage(unless the thief is stupid) given that he has any 3 of regeneration during stealth, regains health during stealth, removes conditions during stealth or moves 50% faster(yes 50%, more than swiftness). If i was moving at 50% speed on any class, i could walk out of AoE without even needing to dodge.

2. I have 1 knockback skill that has a recharge of 35. You have 4 stealth skills, among which some have NO cooldown given that they use initiative. That’s provided my knockback actually HITS you. That means I have to actually PREDICT where you are before knocking you back.

3. So far, Revealed only applies to you provided you either walk out of Shadow’s Refuge, or you yourself attack. Revealed does not apply every time your stealth ends. So if you die during Revealed, it is your own fault for revealing yourself. Meaning that Revealed so far is nowhere near a COUNTER to the thief given that it is DEPENDENT on the thief, and not by the person who wants to COUNTER Stealth.
Example:
If my only way to catch up with you in a race depends on you injuring your leg, this is nowhere near a counter.

4. Hello? Mesmer and Engineer(soon) have Stealth. Thank you for seeing only yourself having stealth in that bubble. Here’s your bubble: pop!

5. I’m supposed to kill every rabbit alive to stop you from using Cloak and Dagger? Am i supposed to take everything off the supermarket’s shelf to stop people from shoplifting? Collect every dollar in the world to stop people from robbing a bank…good plan.

Thank you very much for the communication and heads up on changes coming. I am very supportive of many of the things listed. Pet survivability in large scale encounters is a huge concern for our class and has been for a long time. With the addition of ascended gear in general – trinkets, then weapons, finally armor at some point – our pet gets weaker in relation to our enemies at every stage, so I am glad that this is being recognized at some level.

On the flip side of the coin, making the pet survive pathing through an AoE minefield that it has no intelligence to avoid is one thing, by doing so I am deeply concerned that it makes the pet too difficult to kill in smaller scale encounters. It could even further pigeonhole Rangers into the roamer/camp capper role they are asked to play in WvW if their pet becomes un-killable in 2 or 3 player encounters. I hope that whatever is done takes this into consideration.

The biggest concern with our class, though, is the fact that it is balanced around 100% uptime of the pet – and this balance also assumes that the pet is actually functioning properly in battle 100% of the time as well. Against mobs who use the same AI as they do, they perform just fine, but when matched up with a player, the AI is terribly inadequate. As it is also in the more challenging PvE content which is being released lately – which has been so good it’s gotten a 100% WvWer like me even mildly interested in PvE, but the content is very Ranger pet un-friendly.

Some main issues with Pet AI that you guys really need to take into consideration:
- Players are able to move and attack simultaneously, while pets cannot.
- Pets stop for long periods of time to channel skills, and do not take into account the fact that their target moves while they are doing so (for example, you can outmaneuver drake breath attacks while in a siege golem without dodging… you would have to be a truly awful player to get caught by this attack, or be very concentrated on something else).
- If a pet is preparing to use another attack when you call for it’s F2 skill to be used, it will complete what it is doing first before doing whatever it deems necessary to position itself to start performing the F2 maneuver, and then cast. By that time the window of opportunity is usually closed, and some times after a 2-3 second wait the cool down on the F2 will trigger without them even performing the attack/buff they were requested to perform.
- Pets have 3 ‘skill’ attacks, but we only control one of them. Many of their AI controlled attacks could be incredibly useful – some even moreso than the provided F2 – but guided by the AI are used at times where they do not make a difference.
- Instead of sticking to their target they often are tricked by small elevation and pathing obstacles in combat. Besides being able to hit and move, they need to be able to jump – or warp – up and down jumpable elevation changes to avoid being taken out of combat by the terrain.
- There are more that worry me, but for the sake of brevity I’ll cut the list there….

But it’s not all bad news: In a recent post on the Ranger forums, it was found by accident that Ranger pets all of a sudden become far more useful if an opposing Mesmer Moa our pet – it makes the pet leap/lunge forward with it’s attacks, granting it the magical ability to hit moving targets. This accidental find shows that the mechanics to fix the rangers biggest handicap already exists within your game mechanics. We would really appreciate you reviewing the fact that this elite skill buffs our pet and makes it a viable source of damage against players who don’t stand still, and see what can be done to make this a permanent fixture of all relevant pet attacks.

The base AI should be looked at too on channeled skills so that the targets location is detected and the mob/pet turns to face that location at the END of it’s channel time. Also, if players can channel skills while moving, mobs and pets really should too. Remember, you are tying up to 40% of our damage and functionality to the idea that this NPC can keep up with us, with our opponent, and be effective. It’s not too much to ask that the AI be given the tools it needs to do so… it’s only fair.

Finally, the argument has been made that allowing us to access more of our pets skills would make the learning curve to play Ranger too steep. As a collective, Ranger players call BS on this one because many of us have been playing pet classes in MMO’s for upwards of a decade. We are perfectly capable of learning to control a pet through a full pet UI, and as a rule players who choose pet classes do so expecting micro gameplay… it’s a playstyle we crave. If we have been able to learn pet systems with far more complex UI’s for the past 10-15 years, I don’t see why a new generation of gamers cannot follow in our footsteps.

Thanks for your consideration.

RockSteady.7123:

It is really very frustrating to see the direction you are taking your game. If you ever want GW2 to be competitive it would probably be a good idea to start taking notes from posts such as the ones above. But it seems to me you have already made up your minds. You want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to play your game. And so long as you continue to neglect PvP you will have yourself a marvelous PvE game, and nothing more.

P.S.
I laughed at the possibility of giving engi’s guaranteed stability and rangers support abilities.

Giving rangers support abilities.
Rangers and their petting zoo.
Support abilities.
Okay then!

Umm … I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Rock, but pretty much all past patches have been balanced around almost exclusively PvP. This is one of the very few updates in which PvE players feel that balance might actually be done for them.

PvP has not been neglected for balance. Maybe for game modes and achievements. But not for balance. In fact you’ve gotten the most focus on balance of any game mode. By far. Despite having, again by far, the lowest population of players.

While you dislike the proposed changes to ranger and maybe even where the ranger is right now, the class, although strong in PvP, is considered one of the worst in PvE and near the bottom in WvW.

Then there are some issues with pets. While you said the pet leash range was increased to 2000 range it seems that I can send my pet only to targets which are max. 1500 range away. This is a huge issue because often when I move over the map my pet is next to me or behind me so once I want to send it to a target it will take quite long for the pet to reach it because sometimes it first has to catch up to me.
I would enjoy if you could change the range to 2000. That way we could also send the pet “in a direction” by sending it to a target in front of us.
You could also fix this by another great addition: What if the pet moved to our mouse cursor (if within 2000 range) once we keep F1 pressed for one second? That could bring a huge benefit to rangers. We could let our pet run in front of us if we want to and place it where we want to. To cancel this placement we can simply press F1 (without holding it one second) to send it to a target or press F3 to call the pet back.

Another issue with pets is when they attack moving targets. With all the leaps/charge/teleport/stealth abilities pets have a really hard time to catch a target. If someone knows how to kite a pet he can make the pet miss most attacks. If he even has teleports/leaps/charges/stealth a melee pet won’t be able to hit him at all.
With the leash range change which fixed the problem that pets would chase someone over half the map I think it is time to make pets move faster. This would solve the problem with pets not hitting moving targets and it would be more in line with other minions in the game which actually hit moving targets. Phantasm for example will always hit as long as you are in range. If you don’t dodge/block them you will get hit.
Our pets should also be able to actually land attacks on moving targets. A 30% base movement speed increase (with swiftness thats +63%) would help with that. Since they will still stop to do an attack they would still land alot less attacks on a moving target than on a non-moving target. That is the only way how pets will be able to hit moving targets like every other ability in the game does.
Ranged pets projectile speed needs to be drastically improved. It should not be that the phantasmal duellists hit you with every single shot no matter how you move/strafe while dealing five times more damage but our pets projectiles can easily be strafed so that not a single one will hit you. All you have to do is to change directions (move left/right) all the time and every single projectile will miss you.This should simply not happen. Since ranged pets damage is very weak it would be great if you actually made them hit.

The Canine knockback fails alot too often. I think it should almost immediately charge at the target (maybe 0.5 sec activation time) . As it is now it will miss 100% of the time if the target is moving. It will leap at him but the target will have moved out of range.
Other knockback skills are alot more reliable so I think that should be fine.

Thanks for taking the time to read my suggestions.

Thanks alot Jonathan for sharing these news with us. This patch brings some great changes for the game.
As I play ranger as main I will post some suggestions to this class. It will be a wall of text but I would be thankful if you took the time to read them.

The healing spring change from 15 to 10 seconds is understandable but it will make the healing from greatsword leaps quite a bit weaker since we can only use one leap in the field instead of two. Maybe that opens up the possiblity of a blast finisher on maul or hilt bash if mauls short CD is a balancing issue. It would be a great change for us rangers. Finally rangers could stack might and bring support to zergs with another on demand blast finisher.

In my opinion the value of how power affects ranger weapons should be adjusted. While condition works great on rangers, the power values of the weapons are rather low because you also count the pets damage as a part of the overall damage.
But what we see in the sPvP meta is only condition builds.
So I think it’s time to change this with a few changes:
- Longbow: Increase the damage at low range. As it is now it makes this weapon very weak at close range. I think at least 65% damage at close range should make this weapon alot more useful.
- Greatsword: From the leaked notes it seems you want to add damage to maul and increase the vulnerability stacks to 5. The vulnerability is great but I think you should add like 15% more damage to the autoattack. The autoattack is really weak and maul is very telegraphed and easy to dodge.
- Axe mainhand: In my opinion axe 1 is just too weak. The bouncing effect is good as it is but you might want to add +50% damage to the first hit while not increasing the bouncing effect damage. So first target gets hit for 150% of the damage, target 2 and 3 for 100%. Axe 2 might get a higher power scaling, otherwise it’s fine and Axe 3 is great as it is.
- Axe offhand: path of scars ist just awesome but it is easy to dodge. Especially if you trait for increased range the duration of the skill is increased because it flies further but at the same speed which makes it even easier to dodge especially the pull. You should increase the fly speed at least for the traited version. Also sometimes if you throw axe 4 towards a wall or over an edge it will not find its way back and disappear.
Axe 5 is really nice with the added retaliation. We rangers would of course love it if you could move while using it
Shortbow:
The shortbow was a great weapon before the range nerf. While I can understand the change you might want to give us an option in certain traits to increase the range back to 1200. You could also let the autoattack apply bleeds while not flanking, but only one bleed per two attacks (50% bleeds while not flanking).

Then there is one thing that bothers me about ranger traits. The Marksmanship trait line has too many good traits which we would love to use. Please merge the 1500 range trait with piercing arrows. At the same time add a range increase for shortbows to 1200 range maybe even to the same trait.
That way we could still use spotter or remorseless or signet of the beastmaster. It’s sad that we need to use our master and grandmaster trait to make bows viable.
By merging them longbow and shortbow builds would get alot more diversity and options. I know this is asked from alot of ranger players. An even better decision would be to make arrows pierce by default. This would allow beastmasters to get some AoE damage.

As an active player who has regularly criticized ANet for poor communication and springing crap on us we didn’t want, I have to strongly commend the OP for this huge step in the right direction. Well done.

Dasroth.9236:

I’d like to see the ranger trait eagle eye get some love maybe 5% dmg and 5% crit applies to bow skills and harpoon gun instead of just longbow and harpoon gun

I’d love to see it give some love to the SB as well. Maybe allow traited SB to regain 1200 range. Because, right now, rangers have no 900+ range condition damage.

I’d like to see the ranger trait eagle eye get some love maybe 5% dmg and 5% crit applies to bow skills and harpoon gun instead of just longbow and harpoon gun

darkace.8925:

3. It’s completely unnecessary for PvE.

I agree, although completely may be a little harsh, I very rarely use it in PvE – however it is very useful in PvP.

darkace.8925:

4. Its existence was made possible by the destruction of a universally useful skill.

Lexandro.1456:

I have no idea what you mean by that. You would need to clarify that further.

In a nutshell darkace means that Hunters Shot was useful for everyone, now it’s only useful for some.

For instance, I did some testing and discovered:

As it is Remorseless doesn’t give as large a damage boost as Eagle Eye for high damage rangers, as in Power > 2,000

I would suggest a compromise for the longbow, because invis can be useful both defensively and aggressively on the longbow:

Longbow changes
• Remove vulnerability from Rapid Fire
• Add vulnerability (10 stacks) to Hunters shot
• Chain Invis on hunters shot, with a locked target if the first shot hits
• 14sec cooldown from invis, 12sec from vulnerability

I went into great detail here some time ago, think some of those changes probably won’t need making but would still like to see an offensive signet.

So let’s see:

Ranger
Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.
To help Rangers support allies, we increased the ability ranger pets have to support allies. For instance, the Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that. Moas and Fern Hound will also be improved.
There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

So basically we get to equip an otherwise pretty useless skill as one of our three on the off chance we happen to run into a thief, who then, if we are really lucky and the pet manages to hit the thief whilst he is almost perma stealthed, gets a revealed buff and promptly resets the fight until the reveal is off then returns and rips everyone to shreds anyway.

The problem with the pet abilities is CAST TIME, pure and simple. Most of them take so long to cast, and the pet stops moving whilst it tries to do them, that they are utterly useless against anything that moves.

The other problem is the chances of your pet actually making it to an enemy and delivering any sort of damage before it dies to the melee train are almost 0.

Give rangers some way of still having decent damage when the pets are dead, or better yet just remove the stupid cooldown when both pets are dead in wvw. they are supposed to be a ‘constant companion’ not ‘dead for the next minute while the fight will be over’.

As for the guardian change, 3 conditions removed as an aoe and a continuing condition removal…sounds like another boost to the melee train meta and the end of necro condition builds in wvw.

Not exactly sure how are you are supposed to damage that melee train now- perma retal, perma regen, and now with a tiny bit of timing huge condition removal spam. Attack the melee train with conditions- removed instantly, causes burning. Fire arrows at them- boom, retal wipes you. Fire engineer grenades or FT- instantly dead. Elementalist – every skill pretty much an aoe (except annoying d/d soloists), can’t use skills or autodeath. Mesmer ranged- multiple targets, multiple retal hits, and feedback = death sentence (and null field ticks so slowly it’s pretty much useless now).

Glad to see thiefs getting another buff with ven aura now being in a large area….(/sarcasm). I wonder what class the devs play now- looks like warrior, thief and guardian.

darkace.8925:

RyuDragnier.9476:

darkace.8925:

My thoughts…

Ranger
Look at the longbow. For PvE players, Hunter’s Shot is all but useless. Stealth, when we’ve got the ability to fight from range while our pets tank, is worthless in PvE. Rapid Fire applying 10 stacks of vulnerability over time (one per shot) means it cannot benefit from the full stack of vulnerability. The old Hunter’s Shot applying all 10 stacks meant each shot from Rapid Fire could benefit from the extra damage. I’d recommend changing it back and giving Rangers stealth via a utility skill (if/when new skills are added to the game).

Easier change would be the following. Give #4 the 10 stack of vulnerability in addition to the knockback range the closer the enemy is. Means you have to choose whether to waste the possible knockback early from #4 for more damage or save it for when you actually need to get something away from you. Adds a bit of a tactical element to the skill.

Change Rapid Fire (#2), getting rid of the vulnerability on it and instead giving it the full damage one would expect from remaining at far range from the enemy. This increased damage to Rapid Fire makes it more useful overall. There, we’ve buffed the Longbow in a manner to where it’s more useful. /bows

The way it was designed (or at least the way I used it) was Long Ranged Shot for long range, Rapid Fire for close range, Point Blank Shot for single-target crowd control, Barrage for group crowd control, and Hunter’s Shot for opening fights with 20+ stacks of Vulnerability. Now I’m forced to choose between using Rapid Fire as a poor man’s Hunter’s Shot or saving it to offset the damage drop off Long Ranged Shot suffers when enemies close the gap, all the while Hunter’s Shot literally – literally – goes unused 100% of the time.

I get that PvP players find the stealth provided by the new Hunter’s Shot useful, but for PvE players it’s about as worthless as a weapon skill can be. Frankly, I’m tired of my PvE experience being less that it can and should be because of PvP considerations.

Hunters shot in PVE is a godsend most times , I dont know why you dont use it. Being able to drop agro near instantly is an excellent additon. It adds extra survivability to our class. Plus the stealth means we can reposition or take a shot from complete safety. The only downsides to it are;

1. 3 seconds it rather short, and you have to be fast to make use of it properly.
2. If reflected the TARGET gets the stealth, which is frankly idiotic.

darkace.8925:

My thoughts…

Ranger
Look at the longbow. For PvE players, Hunter’s Shot is all but useless. Stealth, when we’ve got the ability to fight from range while our pets tank, is worthless in PvE. Rapid Fire applying 10 stacks of vulnerability over time (one per shot) means it cannot benefit from the full stack of vulnerability. The old Hunter’s Shot applying all 10 stacks meant each shot from Rapid Fire could benefit from the extra damage. I’d recommend changing it back and giving Rangers stealth via a utility skill (if/when new skills are added to the game).

Easier change would be the following. Give #4 the 10 stack of vulnerability in addition to the knockback range the closer the enemy is. Means you have to choose whether to waste the possible knockback early from #4 for more damage or save it for when you actually need to get something away from you. Adds a bit of a tactical element to the skill.

Change Rapid Fire (#2), getting rid of the vulnerability on it and instead giving each shot for it the full damage one would expect from remaining at far range from the enemy. This increased damage to Rapid Fire makes it more useful overall. There, we’ve buffed the Longbow in a manner to where it’s more useful. /bows

Incurafy.6329:

What is the point of giving Ranger anti-stealth? I know that you said it’s for counterplay, but stealth already has counterplay, it’s pointless and just makes killing Thieves easier for one class and one class only. It’s not as though stealth Thieves are even viable in tPvP.

I’m sorry, but if a ranger debuffs a thief or a mesmer around me, he/she won’t be the only one who will be all over them. Just because thieves and blackwater type mesmers won’t have the free reign they have enjoyed in wvw since the dawn of time anymore, doesn’t mean that they are less viable. I’m looking forward to the changes they’ll be putting on the thief pistol and the changes for the mesmer support roles are an excellent idea to me. It’s about time some of the most selfish classes were given reasons to join the fight with others.

(I know there are other classes that can fill the role of selfish roamers as well, but I don’t think anyone can compare them with the abilities of what thieves and mesmers have done)

War- Please allow Quick Breathing(warhorn) and Empower Allies to both be used with 20 points in tactics, otherwise your killing my personal build :P

Ranger- I like the anti stealth and hope more finds its way in WvW. Do you have to target them before they stealth? You cant target someone when they are in stealth, so some more explanation or iteration may be needed. Rangers could also use more access to stealth, preferably from utility skills like signet of the hunt and lightning reflexes or muddy terrain.

GS could use an AA damage boost. Or provide more synergy with your pet. Sword, I think we all know what needs to be fixed there. Warhorn, as our only support weapon, it should do more support. Add blind to Hunter’s call and boost the might on Call of the Wild and increase swiftness duration.

Thief- Venoms need more help than that. Make blinding powder or another utility also reveal stealthed foes. Or create traits that do the same thing. Whos better to catch a thief than another thief?

Ele- Good start on the staff, I would also suggest increasing radius and duration of windborne speed. Reduce lightning surge’s cast time, alot. Make flame burst a blast finisher, or add blast finisher to beginning of meteor shower, or also at the end of cast. And either reduce cast time or increase damage of meteor shower, its cool looking but doesn’t always do much.

Mesmer- The staff could use some more supportive buffs, in the current meta, the GS is better at support than the staff. I would like a really good reason to take it over GS as my ranged weapon offset.

Some interesting overall changes. Honestly, my only major concerns would be as follows:

• P/P on Thief – besides the overall condition vs. power-based damage issues, it’s the only weaponset without either mobility or stealth potential. I’m wondering if that’s something you guys have in mind?
• Mantras on Mesmer – Great to see some work done to bring those up, but I would tend to agree with the idea that 2 seconds of Stability may not be enough to make
  MoC get used more often.
• Elementalist – Staff buffs and Conjure-love, excellent. But, I do agree with the posts mentioning that Focus and the class’ hobbling dependance on Arcane could also use a look-see. Perhaps at a later time?

As for things I rather like:

• Overall: Condition Damage scaling being looked into? Frack. YES. I, for one, am tired of Condition builds being rather … lackluster, in PvE.
• Engineer – Oh, my. Useful Turret targeting? Stability? Less accursed RNG? Thank you. Seriously.
• Necro – Good to see Minions and Vampiric traits getting looked into. Hopefully this makes a Vampire-spec Necro a lot more feasible.
• Ranger – Pet support buffing is an interesting option. More health is, as well. As far as weapons, I’d personally be darned happy if Sword auto-chain gets that self-root removed. Sic ’Em being a stealth-counter, depends on if it does so before a stealth triggers, or afterward … the first could be interesting counterplay, the second might just be cheap.

As for Guard/Warrior … I’ll admit my knowledge of both is mostly anecdotal, since those are my non-80 professions. As such, I’ll let others step in on those.

In closing, allow me to echo the idea that it is, in fact, plenty frigging cool to see this kind of transparency from the Dev Team. Kudos.

Sic Em!’s great for Rangers, but there are things Rangers have been asking for for a LONG time like:

1.) more pet control. I know Jonathan, you have said you don’t want to exclude lower level players, but at least give us players that know we can handle it a toggle for pet control. That way you don’t alienate low level Rangers and you keep high level rangers happy. It’s a win-win.

2.) Make it so pets dodge when the players dodge. That way we can get our pets out of bad situations.

3.) Either stop having the Kraken in the jade fractal stop targeting my pet, or refer to #2. (heck, can we get that stupid thing to stop targeting clones, guard weapons, and minions please?)

4.) Can we get at least one of the 2 week updates ONLY focus on QoL? That would be amazing and the community would love it. There are so many nagging little things that need addressing.

5.) Thanks for the awesome preview and game. Love all the other stuff, it all sounds good.

If you’re looking at pet support options please swap the eagle/hawk’s F2 skill. Currently their F2 is a low cooldown, somewhat spammable bleed called Lacerating Slash (it has a 6 second cooldown). When I use a pet I don’t want to press F2 every 6 seconds, it’s a waste. I’d far rather have control of Quickening Screech (a 20 second cool down that applies a 10 second swiftness buff, you could even have it apply quickness to the pet if you’re feeling generous) which would allow me another support option for my pet. I could combine it with my warhorn to help maintain swiftness on my party for dungeon play and WvW small ops groups.

One of the flaws of the bird pets is that their attack rotation results in lower DPS than similair glass pets (like the spider or cat) because the animation on Quickening Screech is so long and it’s rarely useful in PvE combat and often a hindrance to the total DPS of the pet.

Also consider that by default, not even “healing” pets or “condition” pets have healing power or condition damage (both attributes are set at 0). It might be worth looking into these two things and maybe changing some attributes around so that they can more effectively use some of their tools without needing the 300 points from the traits.

Its nice that ranger pets are getting looked at. However there are a number of other issues with the class that need resolving.

1. No real access to boons
2. Signets with bad “active” effects
3. Overly expensive “traiting”
4. Lack of pet skill diveristy
5. Pet F2 skill fails
6. No real meaningfull pet control ability

There needs to be a lot more work on the ranger class overall than just a couple of tweaks to a few skills. And to be frank very few players Ive seen even bother with “sick em”, or any pet utility skill for that matter such is the lackluster nature of them and the pets.

Personally I would like to see Rangers get access to boons properly, without idiotically long cooldown times on skills.

For example in PVE only ;
“Rampage as One”
Reduce the cooldown time before recasting
Allow might to trigger on the PLAYERS attacks as well as pet attacks.

Along with this a complete reworking of ranger sigs so that the active effects are actually usefull. 99% of the time they are unused “active” since they are either pointless or completely ineffective.

I also believe that the LB needs a buff in base damage and additonal effects on skills to be fully effective as a weapon choice. Point Blank Shot should synergise with skill 1, so that the KB range is increased to 1200 (putting the target at “long” range for #1 skill damage. Also skill #1 should have an additional effect in addition to increased damage at range, possibly more “vulnerable” stacking or “cripple” to synergise with point blank shot.

And lastly for the love of god reduce the damage split on ranger/pet. If I want a pet to do more of my damage I would spent points in the BM trait tree. A simple system is to start at a base 10% split, with each 10 points in the BM tree increasing the power split to the pet (ie : 10 trait points in BM = 20% / 20 trait points in BM 30% / 30 trait points in BM 40%).

This above method allows those who WANT to utilise pets more a feesible option to boost them and those that DONT want to to do an option to ignore pets if they so choose.

You need stealth on longbow in pvp dude. It’s a lot better. Just use rapid fire to stack vuln. Everyone stacks vuln. If you’re the only one doing it, it’s a major problem.

Aridia.3042:

Longbow1 needs a chance cripple

My opinion, that best thing they could make is to make “Opening strike” not small 1 stack of vulnerability, but cripple target for some time. And, probably, make it refreshing every X (maybe ~15-20) secs in battle, with rename of this passive. It’ll help and sounds logical.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Ranger

To help Rangers support allies, we increased the ability ranger pets have to support allies. For instance, the Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that. Moas and Fern Hound will also be improved.

There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

F2 Pet buffs should be guaranteed on the ranger owner

F2 support skills should ignore range for the pet owner so that they’ll be guaranteed to get the buff. Then party members, then allies with AOE cap should be the priority in which the buffs get dished out. Go try using F2 buffs in dragons or Scarlet invasions. Half the time you won’t get your own F2 buffs.

It’s counter productive for LB/SB/Axe rangers to cast pet buffs because not only do you not get the buff in crowds, but in order to get the buff, you’re often negating your own range advantage in order to be close to your pet, or it is kept on passive which negates your pet damage entirely. This is especially being a problem with LB due to the range penalty.

Longbow1 needs a chance cripple

Optimal killzone for the LB is at 1k+ range. Problem is that there’s nothing to CC the target to keep them there even for a second shot. There’s no root with that range and the pet cannot close the distance to the target before they get to sub 1k range. (That’s assuming the pet you picked actually could CC.) Your increasing LB4’s push back range helped a bit, but it makes no sense to blow a CC to follow up with an auto attack. You’re pretty much forced to use rapid fire after LB4 because of how long RF’s channel is.

LB1 needs a chance cripple to allow the shooter to take a meaningful second shot.

Alternatives involve reworking Predator’s Instinct so that it procs on crit instead of based on sub 25% HP. Lower the ICD to like 9 seconds on a sigil.

Further alternative is to unnerf LB damage all together so that there’s no range penalty.

Cool stuff I like the current direction of this game, don’t get distracted by all the forum QQ about whatever you have done to the GW2 it isn’t a WoW/Korean MMO clone and it will never be.

As for the future of class and pvp balancing I would like to see two things :

- greatsword or other 2h weapon on necro so we can go melee with cleave mechanic and wreck people’s faces

- a shapenshift mechanic for ranger cause that is also a popular thing in MMOs and many people miss that

- and for the love of god do something with zerging, I joined WvW for the first time in today and it was AMAZINGLY fun till I realized how does it work, all I had to do was to follow the mass of people spamming my swiftness and auto attack at whoever came close

there was nothing I could do alone or in a small group of few friends, always a zerg came along and wiped the floor with us

the big problem in my opinion is the downstate mechanic, wnich gives the bigger groups in small skirmishes an enourmous adventage both in wvw and spvp, I feel like it was unnecessary, it is not fun to use nor to play against

That… or you can just enable world pvp. I mean, you have a massive, living and changing world. There could be a immune buff to any1 who is in an dynamic’s event range so people don’t troll each other. But other than that I see no reason to keep pvp off the world.

You could make missions from vigil/whispers/priory NPCs to find and kill members of other fractions. Simply because each one of them wants to be dominant in the pact and they don’t want others to have too much power.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

You guys definitely need to take a nice look at Rangers skills and its trait lines, we have some pretty useless traits. Some of theives Traits could use another look at.