Guild Wars 2

No, but you can has….

KinkyWarrior.1879:

I don’t hit at middle of the night I play mainly primetime and only stay on til 12:00am the latest normally. At this time ‘le monobus’ is still online and so there’s still fights to be had :P

Thats our term! :O You STOLE it. Filthy tourist

Lets not cry nightcap guys, we have a substantial day cap that they don’t have(even though the patch kinda screwed it today), so grats to Gandara for playing the points game better than us this week. Had some excellent fights, and hoping for more of the same next week. Hoping to see less blobs as well, but meh, that may be a hopeless venture Bring on next week.

There’s something else that few here are pointing out:
How come some professions have the ability to teleport and flee when they are downed or even to use knockback to avoid the finishers?
Let’s face the true, for us rangers being in downed state means being dead, unlike other professions there is basically nothing we can do to avoid our fate and this is not fair.
IMHO every classes should have the same downed skills or at least skills of the same quality.

It’s pretty easy really- they take 55 minutes talking about everything else before mentioning rangers for less than a minute, tells you everything you need to know about it.

Be prepared to be disappointed again.

LowestTruth is really making me want to create a character named Thuggin Mc Lyfe and devote an unhealthy amount of time to it ‘til I’m quite the skilled player with him/her.

LowestTruth.2635:

Edit: What I find REALLY funny is that I’ve never reported or blocked anyone based on a name, even on an RP server.

What, exactly, would you even report someone for? It’s not as if there are any official RP servers. What I find really funny, in a sad, pathetic way, is that people are actually reporting other people, simply because they don’t like their names. Offensive names are one thing, but to report someone on the basis of non-lore, or breaking immersion? Seriously?

one of my names is Halfway to Narnia and i think it’s amazing. idc what RPers think about it tbh.

Can I be honest for a second? To me, it seems like there are lot of judgmental people playing this game. I mean, from some posts I get that feeling that some people think players who don’t choose a lore-friendly name are somehow inherently lazy, stupid, or both. That doesn’t necessarily have to be true – and besides, I (as the guy who named his marsh drake Fishbreath) am not exactly a highbrow humor guy -, but it sure seems that way. Like, some people going “Ugh, why would I mingle with these people?”. Sure, you can think that, ain’t nobody able to do something about that. Different folks, different strokes. But labeling other human beings as inherently lazy, uncreative or stupid just because they don’t hold the same standard in character naming isn’t exactly intellectual highrolling either.

Sorry for the rant, just had to get that off my chest.

ITT: Massive oversensitivity and discrimination over something as meaningless as a name.

I prefer silly names to the fortieth necro named something along the lines of Morphis the Insane, Sylvari named something with plants in it, etc. Do I block people with those names, even if they’re cringe-worthy? Nope. That’s equal to writing someone off as worthless because they have a cat named Fluffy.

My next character’s name? Based Quag. Sorry to say, dears, but RP is for RP servers, and people may name their characters whatever the hell they want. Being an insufferable little snob and snubbing strangers because of their character name just marks you as an unpleasant person I don’t want to associate with.

Except in this case, there’s a reason not to like you.

I think people need to suck it up and develop a sense of humor. Goofy names can be fun, why so serious?

That said, I’ll never pick a serious character name, but I like to chill just below the radar with obscure medical condition names like Tenesmus or Fistula In Ano. Now that’s classy!

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

Moxy.1594:

One thing I noticed is the majority of the time when I find someone with a first and last name they were Guild Wars 1 players. The ones that really drive me crazy are the XxX names because they couldnt get the name they wanted pwnzer becomes XxpwnzerxX ech….

This. This makes me gag. I Report and Block anyone I see with an X appearing at either or both ends of their name on sight.

And I also notice a lot more people from GW1 do have relatively sensible names, compared to their WoW-immigrant counterparts.

Not knowing the lore is no excuse either. It takes less than a minute to Google search ‘GW2 race naming conventions’.

You are wasting the support team’s valuable time by reporting things that are in no way a violation of any rules. Block whoever you like, but don’t swamp the support team with frivolous reports about your pet peeves..

LowestTruth.2635:

It only irritates me on “official” RP servers in various games. If it’s not an RP server, it’s more of a “look at that idiot!” and move on type of thing. My kids are well-trained though; they will announce stupid names they find so we can all have a good eyeroll.

It’s all about impatience; they want to play, they don’t want to see “name already in use” over and over and over again. It’s worse when there’s no name generator.

I will admit to having name prejudice, though. I just won’t waste my time with someone stupidly named. I’m sure I miss out on some nice but challenged folks through that.

I’ve had characters in other MMOs named Sammich, Icybeer, Gnomefoot…

Hell, my Thief’s named Scumbag Mawile.

Guess I’m degenerate filth, an idiot at best.

You know what bothers me more than silly names? Pointless elitism.

I try to veer away from making “joke” characters who look stupid and have names like “Poopy Farts,” but if others want to go that route then whatever. It’s a game, and it’s their toon — call it what you want. It’s not going to affect me.

As for trying to stick with the “lore” though — I don’t see how possible that is, if you’re new to the game. I got GW2 on day one, so when I first rolled my main I didn’t know what sort of name would be “appropriate” to Tyria, or for my race.

If you’re into RP, great — but to me, it’s just the opposite extreme of naming your toon “Poopy Farts”, and about as useful to me.

Just yesterday I saw Eir Stegalkin — I mean, somebody made a female norn that looks exactly like Eir Stegalkin, and somehow named her that. In a way, that’s more in keeping with the lore than anything — unless ArenaNet writes your name for you, you aren’t part of the lore.

capuchinseven.8395:

Not really sure how that is conclusive evidence of anything other than ANet are not good communicators.

Well, not trying to insult you or anything; but the giant sledgehammer that hit the Ranger from Beta to launch as well as the patch notes since then speak for themselves in my humble opinion.

Crossfire nerf getting passed off as an ‘animation fix’ (and later called out on it) and general changes that affected other classes where the Ranger just happened to benefit from as well (projectile speed for bows and 25% movement signets for example). Some minor health changes to Spirits that doesn’t help us much and general nerfs every single patch (this one mostly on other classes except for Warriors) where it feels as if the balance team is completely disconnected from reality and doesn’t even know what they’re doing (Symbol of Wrath and Spirit Weapon sledgehammer-nerfs for Guardians for example).

Since launch of this game I have yet to see Jon ‘Warrior’ Peters and his friend the Invisible Thief deliver on their promise that the Ranger would see a lot of ‘quality of life’ changes.

As such I feel like the Ranger community has been more than patient. I have done my best in offering my own suggestions regarding changes to the pets/ranger damage output percentages, pet AI modes incorporating shouts and the current imbalance of signets. I mean I’ve worked on games in terms of balance and testing myself but everything offered so far seems to be ignored unless it’s ‘common sense’ changes like shared Agony Resist.

So I sincerely hope that this in not another smokescreen to distract us, just like Jon Peters was doing before he left the Ranger forums entirely after making too many empty promises.

Sorry for the elevated tone of this message by the way. It’s not directed at you capuchinseven.8395; just my general view on the matter regarding Rangers, ANet’s balance team in general and the way they seem to set their priorities.

Poor Robert. He’s gotta feel like the last single girl available when last call is announced.

Awesome badge farming in Augury Rock garrison last night. We deliberately left the gates and walls down so pikes and augury can fight so we could kill them both.
Thnx guys your great, Same time Tomorrow?

And I actually wasn’t trolling. I wanted to play with xxx I like the way they roll. I’ve been a commander for less than a week now so I don’t see how i am experienced.
It may seem like I was trolling them but I wasn’t, they were at hills with south gate open we asked for a portal inside so we could come help, they ignored us.
We ran inside. And they stood on top of the walls and watched at the piken zerg wiped us. Then they left the keep.
Yea, whose helping Gandara?

The guild bought me commander so they can see where I am as their main pusher, but
I’ve took it upon my self to be an actual commander and I intend to be a dam good one at that, with my guild and with pugs.

The idea is XxX you don’t push the pugs away and tell them to F off, teach them. Roll with the pugs and watch as they learn.
Lots of pugs roll with Yaks. We teach em to stack up, buff up, and Push. How to blast in water fields for aoe heals, and lots more. Many non yaks members have had the best WvW experience they had since the start of the game rolling with yaks. The more people you show how to play the stronger server gets.

But it’s alright your not into that, you don’t have time to help players on your server learn the ropes.

What you need to realise is that the sooner we come together as one server, playing really well together (guildies, and pugs alike) the sooner Gandara will be one of the best WvW servers. Not relying on massive zergs to take stuff, but skilled organised players working together.

And someone said XxX vs YAKs ………..yea we’re called YakSlappers, not FlySwatters. LOL

honestly more and more i hear crap that reeks of guilds fooling themselves into believing wvwvw is a private playground where they can blob around the map and treat anyone not in their blob like pariahs…. if this is where wvw is headed it’s the road to empty maps and a dead game.

good guilds should be measured by how well they treat and intigrate with EVERYONE in their map and not how well they ignore everyone else and zoom around as a blob and then make videos to stroke their egos afterwards in threads like this.

IDarko.4709:

People following you can be annoying because they might use squishie builds and die, resulting in rallying the enemy. Or they die because they can’t hear the leader shouting commands via TS etc. Dieing is such a big deal because of rallying that it’s very undersstandable for guild groups to want to play alone. Besides, followers might not hide in time, so enemies will find them and the whole ninja attack or whatever might be ruined.

On the other hand, guild groups who actually think they can hide in WvW are very entertaining! Seriously guys, those huge red invader tags hovering over your heads, dead giveaway. And no, hiding behind corners and in buildings doesn’t work either. Those things sometimes even poke through walls.

Puggies used to be a problem for ninja groups when they would instantly go berserk on gates and pop swords, but that’s not an issue any more. As for rallying enemies, unless the group in question can guarantee that not a single one of them will be downed in any fight, I think that’s just an excuse to act elitist and creates division.

So forget all that, WvW is a server vs server thing, so just let’s all be nice to our team mates and play along.

This is embarassing for Gandara.

Yaks give xXx a break they do a good job and xXx it’s clear to everyone you don’t care about the server or the players in Gandara and are only in this tier for the fights you can get. No problem with that, we can all choose how we want to play. If people want to follow you in rvr, they will. If you want to sit in spawn for 15mins because you can’t handle 2-3 pugs following you, that’s also you’re choice. You’re an asset to the server, nothing more, nothing less. Hell, you start throwing your rattlles out of the pram when ONE SINGLE PERSON starts following you around.

Whose REALLY childish here? Because it seems to me everyone is. Whereas on the other hands, all yaks ever do is follow people. They have gotten better since merging with Dius, and I believe they can now exit a spawn area not only together, but not get wiped within 5minutes too, and have seen them also getting some good fights and winning more regularly.

MMO and trolling goes hand in hand, but Gandara is gonna have to get used to the way each guilds ‘personality’ is because this game is amazing, and unless you’re a bandwagoner, we’re all here for the long run. So let’s be adults and not give the other servers more ammo to troll us while we troll each other? (Some better than others, looking at you yaks)

Just wanted to tell everyone to stop being childish and we’re on the same team, not sure how it turned into a rant… oh well. Donning flamesuit.

See you on the battlefield.

I’m from Gandara too and in the recent past I got a lot of this “Don’t follow us!!!” and frankly, it made me feel very unwelcome at times and like I’m more regarded as a nuisance than an addition to the forces of our server.
I understand you want to play with your guilds. But do randoms really bother you that much? They don’t prevent any of your guildies from running with you, do they? How do they hinder/harm your guild play? You can still plan and coordinate in TS to your hearts content and you even get some more manpower!
Commander tags attract people. Big groups of people attract even more people. This nearly can’t be helped, I think. So why don’t you try to make the best out of it and put them to good use?

I can share my perspective as a member of a “small to medium”-sized guild with you.
I absolutely love my guild. Some of the nicest gw2 guys I know are part of it. We are big enough to do tier 1 guild missions and even get enough people for tier 2 with a bit of luck or when planning a week ahead to get enough people online at the same time.
Not sure how many we are. But to give you an idea, I’d say on a typical evening or weekend maybe 10-20 are on at the same time.
What I want to get at is: We have small numbers in WvW. The dedicated WvW players amongst us organized a WvW day last saturday. At the best of times we had 8 players in WvW and we were very happy about that! Finally we could at least cap some t0 targets. But normaly we are maybe 3-4 people in WvW.
For smaller guilds like ours this means that we usually have to relay on pugs or bigger guilds to experience quiet a big part of the WvW experience.
You can do small supply runs, you can scout, you can kill sentries and you can capture camps (even though it often takes long enough for an enemy group to show up and steamroll you if you don’t leg it). But you’ll almost never be able to kill a 5+ man group, defend something on your own or take anything except a t0 unguarded target. Heck, we even have to do a supply run to put up 1 cata…
I’d also like to become a commander. I have the money and a good bit of WvW experience and am eager to learn more. But I see no sense in it without a supporting and significantly big group of guild wvw players having my back.
There’s a lot of stuff we can’t do on our own in WvW and I’d cry tears of joy if we had some random guys following us around!

Because of the above a lot of what I do revolves around those small scalle stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that but it can get dull at times without some diversity.
That’s why I’m always happy to encounter a commander with a group of people following him. That’s my chance at crushing zergs, taking part in big scale sieges and taking down towers and keeps!
I didn’t mind the first time I was told to not follow a group. But it feels like it’s getting more and more often and it’s very frustrating and demotivating if it happens multiple times per evening (different groups).
I only want to tag along and have fun too. What’s the big deal? I keep quiet, I can follow your orders, I give you more DPS and group support, I carry supplies, etc., etc.
How can it be I seem to be in the way of not just one but multiple groups only by being present and wanting to help? I sometimes feel absolutely unwelcome
And for those running around with their commander tag on and complaining about wanting to do guild stuff: I know it sucks there’s no real way to keep track of your gild in WvW as soon as you’re more than one party. But if you have to turn your icon on, people will (rightfully?) expect you to represent your server first and foremost and not your guild and in my humble opinion you shouldn’t tell them to bugger off as long as you have a blue dorito floating over your head.

Of course it’s not okay when people follow you around and insult you. Insulting someone’s never ok.
But in general it would be nice if bigger guilds (especially with an active commander leading them) could be a bit more thoughtful concerning the “man on the street” wanting to follow them and in turn we try to behave, contribute as much as we can and listen to your tactics

i have a ranger. our downed skills are awesome!

oh no wait…

You guys of XxX are really funny (I mean really really really). Always crying on the forum that you see zerg all around you. VII = zerg? You are kiding. They are your new target? VII is by far a no zerg guild. I think I always see them with a group of 15. And we all know that. I think it’s just you…

Be carefull VII, sooner or later you will be 100. XxX were crying 2 weeks ago that [Tohu] were between 50-100. Funny isn’t it?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’ll admit I don’t WvW as much as I likely should. When I do though, I tend to avoid the larger battles due to culling and those pesky stealth thieves who seem to pick my Anet tag out of the crowd and proceed to stick daggers in my spine.

Those Thieves are not targeting you because of Anet tag. It is fact you are a ranger and one easier targets for a good thief to down. A Ranger provides a nice and easy target for C&D that only a mesmer can match but when you kill a mesmer clone with C&D it can put crap on you.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP.
…

Personally I tend to do well keeping a pet non-hostile until the zergs actually clash – then switching him to hostile and managing his target. Otherwise when I try to shoot some arrows at somebody,

Firstly, thank you for all your time in this thread.

I agree with your first part,
I disagree with your second part.
I mainly wvwvw.
Hence I am going to slightly digress from the thread topic.

Your quote is basically saying if you want to wvw you have to wait until your zerg commits full scale into the other before you use your class mechanic whilst suffering a 40% dps loss. No other classs suffers in not being able to use their class mechanic during wvw like this. You are futher saying that you have to run in wvwvw with specific class traits, and utility slots. I don’t want signet of stone and the sharing trait, I want a trap trait and a 3rd trap.

Which leads me back to a slight rewrite of your opening statement:

For me the pet is a useless and vestigal, because its dead most of the time or stuck inside or outside a tower doing 70 dmg to a gate and rangers are considered UnderPowered for wvwvw.

I don’t run BM, I run as a bow/axe-horn & trap user. Yeah I’ve got an odd build, it works for me, even though the dmg output is horrible.

We are supposed to be given optional playstyles, spirits, power pet, archer, trap … but in wvwvw, we are being told now: be useless or run full bm with specific utilites. And even if you do your still useless inside or outside a tower siege.

This is where my frustration comes from. Not dungeons I don’t really do them.

I would love to use my pet more in wvw but he just dies before I can get his f2 to fire. Wolves are a great example for a front line zerg breaker… send wolf in f2 howl for fear, cause choas, get back out. Trouble is the pet just never gets the howl off so I should spec signet of stone and the trait I don’t want. I don’t.

Currently, zerg breaking for me is the following:

Run in, with dodge rolls for evade / protection procs, drop entangle (this gives me all boons due to armour), 3 traps, nme panics, leg it, hit wolf f2 and hope it fires to cover my escape.

Mostly I survive, mostly the wolf is dead before I get to the nme, mostly the nme panics, mostly my teammates use the confusion caused to kill off those players who couldn’t escape entangles roots whilst the rest of the nme backpedal. Mostly I do this because no one wants to be first cos you are likely to die, but if one person commits more will and you can easily rout the opposition. I play low tier so the zergs are 20 – 30 players mostly.

For tower sieges, I place frost & spike traps to prevent nme players getting back in the tower to reinfoce defences, I use LB 4 and axe 3 to slow them further, I use wolf to fear them from the door, I use poison trap to reduce their heals to give us maximum opportunity to stop them making them gate. The wolf rarely ever gets his fear to hit or his leap or anything really but hey at least he tries assuming wall defenders and their aoe havnt already killed him.

This shows that obviously we can play with different builds and have use but and its a big BUT: I’m doing all this with no help from the class mechanic, so I lose 40% dmg on incoming players, I lose my F2 special, and this makes wvwvw far harder than it should be compared to other professions.

The only time I find the pet useful: fighting thieves (since latest patch) because he reacts before culling renders the thief. This lets me know where the invisible person is. He never actually hits the person but hey he provides me with targetting co-ordinates. Incidentally that lets me time culling on my computer to approx 2.5 seconds. Pet takes off you see the black destealth swirl , wait 2.5 secs, thief renders, you target and try to do some dmg in the 0.5secs remaining on reveal debuff

I could go on with more and more examples of wvwvw zerg play, 1v1’s, small group fights and so on where the pet is entirely useless and my class mechanic is a hinderance rather than power up its supposed to be.

Instead I would like to reiterate what some others have already said: please make f2 fire instantly, please up the protection the pet has against aoe in some form be it dodge aegis passive dmg reduction or other solution, please let us res/rally dead pets somehow.

Sorry for the ramble: its just so awesome and unprecedented to have a real life dev in our section of the forums!

Sorry for the lack of suggested fixes, but there are already plenty of excellent ideas in this thread.

Thank you again for remaingin with us.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’ll admit I don’t WvW as much as I likely should. When I do though, I tend to avoid the larger battles due to culling and those pesky stealth thieves who seem to pick my Anet tag out of the crowd and proceed to stick daggers in my spine.
When I WvW, I tend to run off into areas where I can get the drop on someone who is running to an objective that is contested. Rangers are really powerful in 1v1, especially when you can get the jump on someone and have good daze\evasion. When I am caught up ikittenerg trying to push back another zerg, I tend to keep my pet in pacifist mode so it doesn’t go running off to its death.
In a 1v1-3 situation though, double hyenas and a trusty spider can be a real game changer and difference maker.

Rob, again, I understand you’re not a WvW dev, but I am going to hopefully keep this in your mind, especially if you’re going to advocate for our changes.

By your own admission you leave your pet on passive in large scale WvW (which is really 90% of WvW). Don’t you think that points to a problem that needs to be addressed? Yeah, rangers can 1v1 decently, especially if they spec traps. But no ranger who wants to be part of a WvW guild can build like that and consider themselves useful. If our pets are being essentially taken our of the equation in WvW (which for some of us is the WHOLE game) we really would like somebody to offer us some sort of solution.

LB is a terrible weapon. it’s so sad that devs dont actually realize this, and newbs keep saying positive things about it on the forums. LB rangers in WvW are an embarrassment. thing is people dont realize how amazing a high RoF weapon like the power/crit SB is with sigil of fire. range is about the same, and utility so much greater.

anyway, getting off topic here. let me just add that the LB does not synergize well with the pet, mostly because both the pet and the LB fail at longer ranges. LB also fails at 900 or closer, where pets are most effective. issue is, at longer rangers both the pet and the arrows can be juked effortlessly. and landing your barrage cripple + pet combo requires a ridiculous amount of micromanagement for a subpar effect, while often making u dead while u channel. SB on the other hand gives you a spammable cripple that is effective at any range.

I already said it once much earlier on in this thread … but I want to reiterate my respect for Robert Hrouda coming to these forums. He bascially entered the lions den.

The honest feedback and responses we are getting in this thread are great. Interaction with a dev about a core ranger mechanic … really cool.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I am still here and watching. I’m currently composing a list of ideas and statements from this thread to bring to our balance meetings (held multiple times per week), that I can present to at least talk about with the group.
I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively. Here’s how my list is looking so far:

Core problems: (Note: we are very aware of both of these things)
-Pet AI.
-Pet management tools

Things to investigate:
-Pets auto attacks only hitting a single target.
-On “return” command, your pet gains swiftness so it can escape out of red rings more easily.
-A button that makes your pet momentarily not take damage. A sort of “Dodge” button for you to control. This is mainly due to us making sure players know how to use their dodge-roll or damage mitigation skills, which pets don’t have, and don’t always know how to escape properly when recalled without a direct pet swap. (NOTE: This is a springboard idea for pets being able to avoid damage)
-Pet/minion AR that is shared with the master’s stats.
-More defensive pet skills.
-Vigor applied to pets turns into swiftness or protection.
-In dungeons, pet’s get more health/armor.
-Lick wounds not always working. Pet just runs back and stands on your body.
-Search and Rescue buggy
-F2 skills activating faster.

nominating Rob for Bauss Designer Who Cares About Rangers (BDWCAR) position. fly high brother.

They are all mythical creatures…
Or do you think bunnies and racoons really exist? Never saw one in the city I live…

Seems like anything is a target these days. How about you get a grip of yourself, OP?