If you go with power/crit/crit. dmg , the best thing is to go with ruby orbs……Nothing comes close,especially if you consider the price ratio.
Not sure where people got this idea from. Pretty sure Scholar beats that. When I tested it out in the HOTM with a steady weapon, Scholars hits harder than Divinity even when my health was less than 90%, which means bonus 6 wasn’t even applied to it. And Divinity has better stats than even ruby orbs.
Pet AI is fine’ish, the only issue short of their inability to fallow up/down terrain is that you can’t control their other abilities (so they tend to be utterly random).
The pathing just means you have to either run a bird or work with your pet if you want to actually do anything worthwhile with it.
That’s not a bad concept.
Working with your pet means you physically jumping off that ledge, get up to the enemy and switching pet though. Which makes it completely useless for bow users.
I don’t know why is it so hard to make a pet being able to jump up or down ledges to take the most direct route.
I support the thought of either a canine having their f2 skill detect stealth for a certain amount of time. 6 seconds? Or having the pet skill “guard” reveal stealth for however long that lasts. (How long is that?/what is the area of effect)
Then people would be forced to use canines. If they put a skill like that in the game, it should be passive in the all of the pet’s AI routine so you don’t have to pick it or trait for it. This class is broken enough as it is without being pigeoholed.
If the ranger has the thief on target and sends the pet out to intercept then the pet should track the thief even when he stealths. But if the thief is not being targeted prior the stealth, then pets shouldn’t be able to track him. People make it sound like we should get some kind of radar like skill to reveal all stealthed targets. I’m against that. It should be single target only and you have to be aware of the target as the ranger to track. Shouldn’t be a skill to spam like you’re the dolphin in FOTM.
Maybe depending on the pet, certain pets could track for longer, like canine having the longest duration while things like drakes that don’t really sniff have only 1.5 seconds of track time.
What I am saying is the plonkers who were expecting the ranger to magically start outperforming the warrior in ranged combat (especially since the warrior is supposed to win in a 1v1 headbutting contest) set themselves up for disappointment.
That’s funny. I didn’t realize they were making a rock, paper, scissors game.
Or did you mean current state of the ranger is in is due to the fact devs play warrior so therefore they are “supposed to win” because they don’t like losing?
Let’s be realistic, playing warrior is simple, but they aren’t THAT good.
Compared to rangers, they’re THAT good IMO.
Ranger is not complex in a good way like Elementalists; they’re complex in a way that’s forcing the player to deal with handicaps like overnerfed weapons, broken and/or ineffective traits, anemic utilities, and dodgy pet AI.
What I am saying is the plonkers who were expecting the ranger to magically start outperforming the warrior in ranged combat (especially since the warrior is supposed to win in a 1v1 headbutting contest) set themselves up for disappointment.
That’s funny. I didn’t realize they were making a rock, paper, scissors game.
Or did you mean current state of the ranger is in is due to the fact devs play warrior so therefore they are “supposed to win” because they don’t like losing?
1v1, the ranger should lose. Thing is, with your animal companion it’s 2v1. The ranger should win with it’s animal companion if they’re skilled, but expecting to beat the warrior on your own is stupid. It’s akin to complaining the guardian is better at buffing teammates, and the ranger should match/be better.
Which is why the pets need improving, bugfixes need to be done, and things like spirits and utility skills need to be more viable. Currently everyone whining seems to be trying to play the ranger as a warrior; big surprise, the warrior is better at being a warrior. If utility skills are improved/changed and different playstyles are made viable for the ranger, suddenly you don’t have to waste time trying for that. It’s like the Necromancer isn’t really designed for raw damage (Warrior again), but a war of attrition. The ranger is not designed to beat the warrior in a headbutting contest, so it needs to win some other way. The only way it can do that is if it has better/alternate options than headbutting.
I’ve never heard this claim before from Anet that class X > Y > Z etc. If that’s truly the case, then there’s something wrong with the balance. It cannot truly be a competitive game when you have a rock, paper scissors setup.
Why bother to have traits and different skill sets if it all really boiled down to one class simply outclasses another?
So OP, basically what you’re indirectly telling us is that Anet don’t really know how to balance the game? Because according to you, they only got 1 out of 8 right.
What I am saying is the plonkers who were expecting the ranger to magically start outperforming the warrior in ranged combat (especially since the warrior is supposed to win in a 1v1 headbutting contest) set themselves up for disappointment.
That’s funny. I didn’t realize they were making a rock, paper, scissors game.
Or did you mean current state of the ranger is in is due to the fact devs play warrior so therefore they are “supposed to win” because they don’t like losing?
So instead of fixing a broken class, give another broken class the means to specifically counter the first broken class so the 2nd broken class is even more pigeonholed? Waste of an elite slot.
Something like this should be a default pet AI routine or a minor trait selection and not an elite skill.
I can’t find any other reliable condition removal. The signet is takes too long to work, and Kormir’s Prayer recharge is too long. Any ideas that would let me keep my mobility?
You’re doing it wrong if you think Kormir’s recharge is too long. Run Kormir with Lightning Reflex and roll back immediately after you’ve cleared the immoblize and stay behind your team for the refresh. No amount of removal is enough if you don’t fall back.
I think they’ve put too much emphasis on the pet. The damage should be around 80/20 if you don’t invest in the pet. Maybe 50/50 if you build for pet damage. That should also be balanced for the expected uptime of the pet.
This.
It even says in the description of the ranger class that pets are suppose to be a distraction and hence, not a significant source of damage. And they shouldn’t be. It’s lol that people expect a bot to play half of their class. How’s that fair for a pvp game where you expect every ranger fight to be a real 2 on 1 in your favor?
To please half of the kitteny ranger community (because they’re too lazy, and ignorant to learn how to play properly), you must give them the speed and stealth of a thief, the burst of a warrior, the defense of a guardian/earth ele, the confusion factor of a mesmer’s illusions, and most of all, 1 button kill skills. =]
Please post some of your vids so the unwashed masses can L2P like you too.
25% just like the thief. They’re still faster with a short bow, even more so with the porting utility.
This is suppose to be a roaming class and they move like a guy that’s eaten too much Cheetos who’s never ran before in his life.
Change the order of sword 2 while they’re at it. It should gap close and then roll back. It completely breaks up the flow of using it as a traveling tool.
I agree with the OP. It needs to break stun/immoblize, disregard status to launch the ranger back. But I think it also needs to put a 2 second stun on the target that the electricity hits.
Most people stun you, and if you roll back they just gap close immediately. For a survival utility it needs to do more than it does currently. When Anet talks about quality of life improvements, this is what I’m expecting.
Vigor looks good on paper but if you’re spamming LR, chances are you’re empty on vigor anyway and it won’t fill up before you get killed. Plus you can get vigor via a sigil. That tells you the sad state our utilities are in
Get rid of the vigor boost and give it stun instead. It makes sense from a design and game play point of view. I actually thought the utility was broken the first time I used it since I saw my target get zapped by electricity but didn’t get stunned….then I read the tool description and thought, lol who came up with this? It’s so counter intuitive.
The few things that cause the requirement for extra work are the pet portion of our damage/utility not function as expected, a number of unused utility skills and a few hiccups with weapons and synergies. Other than that, it’s bug fixes, as with other classes.
I think the main gripe people have with the ranger is that it actually takes a lot of effort to perform at the same level as certain other classes, and so you feel that you’re “paying more for less.” While this may be true, it doesn’t diminish the fact that you can perform well.
Heh, you realize you just mentioned there’s problems in every aspect of the class in one paragraph right?
This is what i love about Rift. They have a Public test server to test this stuff out with anyone.
It’s a very common practice in the mmo industry and very beneficial to the players and company as a whole why ANet doesn’t choose to do this is a mystery.
Because if they did, they would have to reveal the patch notes early. It’s VERY clear they don’t want to do that.
So all the experts on building Rangers ….the ones who complain massively about how tough it is to compete vs every other class in the game and have a hard time killing anything…..don’t like the build listed by the OP. The build the OP says has been serving him well….and gets called a liar and a troll.
So the suggestions to the OP is to ditch the build he is finding fun and having success with…and change it to what the experts say…..so then he could also not have success like everyone else ?
Maybe, just maybe he is on to something. I’m don’t know if he is right or not, but if something isn’t working …which is the opinion of the mass majority of the Rangers out there, maybe changing it up is a good idea ? Don’t they say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result ?
I remember back in Daoc. People laughed at people who made a 2H Shadowblade. Later on they screamed it needed nerfing. They said the same thing about a melee Scout. That it would never work…then cried for a nerf.
I am not saying the experts are right or wrong…or the OP is right or wrong. It’s just the same old same old with these games when the sheeple rise up against someone having fun with a class …and how dare they say they are when everyone knows differntly.
/flame on
Having fun != viable. And if you know anything about this class, this doesn’t even pass the smell test.
Over time, Tyria will be subjected to global warming as a side-effect of the industrialization efforts of the Char and humans. The ice-shelf will slowly melt, and in doing so, will set into motion the first step to Ranger global domination.
Entire continents will be swallowed by the rising sea levels, causing massive wars to erupt over the remaining land. Meanwhile Rangers, having evolved to master underwater combat, will band together and begin claiming the recently flooded continents.
Fast forward 100 years.
The population of what is left of surface-Tyria remains weakened from the wars they waged for stable plots of land. Still recovering, they face an enemy they have no hopes of beating. Rangers, by the thousands, begin to assault the remaining land settlements; a flood of human flesh, and pets who can only do one thing at a time. Individual Rangers are bested in combat on land, having not evolved to do anything remotely useful outside of the water, but their sheer numbers make up for it; where one dies, two rangers and four mentally handicapped pets take their place.
Soon enough, all of the world is dominated by Rangers.
But what’s the point of giving constructive feedback? Couldn’t you see on this forum that there are already tons of thoughtful and constructive ideas on how the rangers can be fixed, yet we received 16 bullet points of almost nothing?
Fundamental bugs [e.g. 1H Sword root] didn’t get fixed. All we got is the harpoon gun buff?!
What’s the point of giving constructive feedback?
What’s the point in being so negative? What’s the alternative: whine and threaten designers? No thank you. As I stated, I have a vested interest in seeing the Ranger class improve. While changes didn’t happen this patch, this does not mean changes won’t happen in the future. I believe if we discuss point in a constructive, positive way, we as players can help give developers a new perspective and ideas that they can hopefully play with.
Anyways. I think that buffing pet survivability is a tricky thing. The problem with pets is that they get one-shotted really easily on high-level content. But the thing is, so do most players. If you buff pet hp to a point where they can survive, then that means you’re making them INCREDIBLY hard to kill, even during normal circumstances.
However, the reason why players are able to get through high-level content is due to smarter positioning and ability to dodge. So there’s two potential solutions to tackle this problem
1. Better pet AI. Pets will avoid AOEs when they detect red circles, or try to escape red circles if they are already on it. Implementing this can be problematic, since it takes away control from players. So if a player wants to activate a skill while a pet is moving out of a way, what happens? Does the pet ignore the player? Or remain in the aoe and attempt to use the skill?
2. Pets gain invulnerability when you roll. Players dodge many many many life-threatening damage sources by rolling. So why not give pets invulnerability frames when the player rolls? That way, especially in dungeons, when players are dodging a boss attack, the pet will survive also on virtue on the player’s skills.
The definition of insanity is to do the same things over and over and expecting different results.
Not to be dismissive of your post, but your ideas have already been suggested. Frankly, there’s been so much feed back already from the end users in the previous ranger mega threads stemming all the way back to the beta, that there’s really nothing we can suggest anymore; it’s a matter of them actually stop doing the ostrich impression and finally pull their heads out of the as…ground and actually fix the class.
There’s really only 3 conclusions you can draw from how they’re handling this.
1. They’re clueless about the class and about balance in general.
2. They’re not interested in balancing this class.
3. They’ll never balance this class because it’s the favorite class for bots and farmed gold cuts into their revenue stream for gem sales.
Hi Anders, I’m totally not here so skip this post and read on…
We made the improvements we had time to test. There are still more ranger improvements but when our time is limited we have to focus on things we know we can fix. Signets and shouts are still on the docket, and I suspect some of each of these will get some love in the next time around. As you can see a lot changed in this build for every profession and we have to test these changes as well.
I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements. If we could fix everything at one time we would, but the reality is there are a limited # of hours to make changes.
I see a lot of talk about ranger weapons, but I don’t think that is the real problem. I think sword and longbow are both good weapons, which is why the changes take longer. The problems are deeper, in pets ability to hit moving targets, trait lines with not enough viable choices and skills that are often too specialized to really compliment the weapon builds. These aren’t things we can change overnight. The change to Greatsword block was in fact a very difficult change, but we made it because we knew it was the right thing to do.
There are >500 skills in this game, 480 traits, and 2 designers working on this. Even then often we are bottle necked by other issues. I’m not going to say we are not working on these things, nor can I say there are things we could have changed but just ran out of time on, but this was a patch that contained ranger improvements and it will not be the last one that does so. Maybe you want more than honesty but that is what I currently have to offer.
Jon
Longbow is fine eh? I must respectfully disagree. But please ask those two guys working on traits to start talk to each other. You clearly have a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
I guess Anet just doesn’t understand. I understand you guys though. So please buff my new main some more. I’m quite diggin’ my new warrior being able to plow through the story mode 5 lvls below the suggested lvl.
If not the ability to stow the pet, then reducing the impact of the pet should be warranted. If instead of 30-50% of the ranger dps coming from the pet, it was rebalanced so that 10-50% of the dps was coming from the pet I think it would go a long way towards encouraging everyone’s desired play styles.
This is supposedly Anet’s vision based on the ranger description. But somewhere along the line, they just over nerfed the weapons and gave us crap traits and utilities. Aside from the low HP, inability to jump down ledges to path properly, and buggy F2, pets are probably working as intended. Pets are not meant to be a constant source of DPS and we ARE meant to use bows.
I hope they read their own description when they implemented the changes for the coming patch because it’s confusing as hell when they say the class is one thing but yet it plays like another.
The rifle for a warrior has a similar trait as our Bows turning their Rifle and Harpoon gun into piercing weapons but also makes them recharge faster. It’s a combination of our Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw. Which more or less means everything in a straight line of the rifle gets hit by it and turning a already powerful weapon into something even more powerful.
Of course, with so many good traits it only makes sense to consolidate them or else they won’t all fit, lol.
I don’t agree with perma stow buffs. It’s a pet class, the pet should stay regardless of how much I dislike them ATM.
That said, I’m all for a buff when the pet is put on passive mode so that when they’re not attacking, the potential missing damage is folded back into the ranger itself. This fixes a lot of secondary issues with pet AI/pathing and balance and puts the control in the player’s hands without a lot of testing and debugging.
I also like having the option to send a pet out on the fly if someone managed to get up close and I like the checks and balance that it provides since it forces people to manage their pets.
What would be cool also is if pets have more characteristics in terms of passive bonus like some have suggested in the past. So switching pets in passive mode is like the ranger switching “stance” and it’ll play differently. i.e. hawk gives more crit power, bear gives more defense etc.
I play with longbow exclusively and I don’t spvp aside from testing out sigils and runes because the game and the class design is flawed.
Look at your LB1 skill for a moment, notice the range penalty? Your already pathetic attack speed and damage goes even lower at sub 1000 range. And the object of the game is cap and hold which means you’re forced to close in on targets.
Now look at your pets, they don’t even know how to jump off a ledge so you can’t even place yourself out of the way and snipe since a part of your pet damage is basically nullified.
So basically, Anet expects you to take the fight into areas not on your own terms, which is why playing LB ranger is like playing with a handicap. Ranger needs to kite, and they need buffers in between them and enemies due to the lack of escape utilities. Spvp is not the place for that which is why every viable build uses short bow.
This is why I LOL when I hear people say Killshot is fine because it’s easy to dodge.
It’s only easy to dodge if you’re a half wit and open with it while face to face or follow up with it after volley when the target knows he’s being shot at. It’s virtually undetectable if someone snipes with it from the back in mass pvps. Not to mention there’s no counter to it when they fear you and follow up with it.
It’s because people are ignorant and think that the word “ranger” = ranged dps, even though it’s clearly not.
Rangers are proficient with the bow. They rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature to slay their targets. Their loyal pets, which rangers tame and train, distract enemies while the rangers strike safely from a distance.
I find it particularly annoying in WvW. I am defending on a parapet and can see scores of baddies below. The only way for me to hit these enemies is to stand on TOP of the protective walling….thats not how castles work at all. However, the attackers, who cannot even see me, can put their AoE ‘ring’ half way up the wall and hit everyone from the walls edge to the back of the parapet, this is totally counter-intuitive to the so called advantage that defending a wall should have.
I should get
a) a LoS advantage
b) a height advantage
c) a damage mitigation for being behind a few feet of stone
Instead, I am obstructed, clumped up and AoE able by targets I cannot target.
Yeah they got it backwards in this game. It’s easier to shoot up than it is to shoot down, which makes no sense. Not to mention you risk getting scorpion wired if you go near the ledge. No surprise there, given how they’ve handled the AOE cap situation where it’s also completely backwards, where if people turtle together will actually counter AOE.
I also find it ironic that you’ll need line of sight for Barrage. Isn’t not requiring line of sight the whole point in raining down arrows onto people? You’re just shooting into the air and letting gravity do the work…
I run full glass cannon and yes Champions can be soloed. The only problems I run into are when i’m in lowbie areas, like 15 to 25 the stats don’t scale down well for some reason and or if the champion is pure range. I was in the map North of Metrica last night and this frog that spits poison darts destroyed me, same as the thief leader that pistols in Metrica.
Trooper looks like CM armor to me. It would be good if someone can confirm.
Trooper is the CM set and you can actually get the set from story mode. Unfortunately, I think it’s in the same missions as the one they give out the Commando set so you can only get one in the story.
Conquest can be gotten on the Kodan map…probably Frost Gorge, armor is in the NW corner of the map IIRC with the rest scattered all over heart vendors the map.
I’d have to say no for Stun suggestion on LR as mentioned in the second post, though (especially not in place of Vigor). Considering that LR is already a free evade, I don’t really see what the advantage of a Stun would be. You’re already out of harms way, so what would be the purpose of the stun? I guess you could use it to interrupt an attack that might hit other players or buy yourself a free ranged attack or two (though by the time the animation finishes thats about all you’d get), but… I’d much rather have Vigor than that personally.
What’s the point of it doing damage? Is 200 dmg really going to kill someone? You can keep regressing the question back till everything is pointless.
Stun prevents the enemy from immediately gap closing up to you after you got out of the way. It’s a survival skill. It’s pretty ridiculous to think a supposed roaming class like the ranger can’t even run away from a mage or someone swinging a 2 handed sword. Even from a design stand point, having an electric shock without some kind of conditional effect makes no sense.
@aridia all leaps/ movement sort of skills get completely man handled by snares, if you have swiftness though you launch yourself all the way to freaking narnia and there’s not even a hope for them to catch you, especially if you have a great sword and use Swoop (3) to open the gap more (it goes further with swiftness as well)
I realize that and I mentioned that in my previous comment. But it’s entirely unreasonable to expect to have constant swiftness or even trying to use the horn after using a conditional removal. You’re almost always being hit already when you’re immoblized, there’s no time to clear it and then blow your horn before using LR. And more often than not, something else gets put on you after using the conditional removal.
LR should be a stun/immo breaker and it should stun your targets so every time you launch yourself you’re not encumbered.
That would be pretty strong, and they’d probably remove the Vigor granted with that change.
Not really that strong IMO. LOL, the Ele version is a weapon skill and it’s infinitely better than ours which is a utility skill. If it came down to choosing vigor vs stun, I’ll take stun any day. You’re likely out of stamina already if you’re using Lightning Reflex so giving you vigor is just delaying the inevitable unless you can gap close away with a 2 handed sword. From my experience, if you’re not out of range after LR, your vigor won’t fill up in time to stop you from being killed.
And another thing that I don’t like is that LR is affected by your speed and conditionals on you. Typically you’re going to have some kind of poison or bleed on you already and if you get chilled and immobolized nothing will save you even if you have Kormir. I can’t count the number of times I use Kormir to clear immoblize plus some other conditional only to find I was still chilled which makes LR completely useless since all it does is roll you back a few pixels when you’re slowed.
Rangers have very little escape mechanisms, only have one gap close on broadsword, 2 gap closes on 1 handed sword, which are useless in a fight because they’re backwards (they need to reverse the direction to make it a gap close and then roll back), a short hop on SB and Lightning Reflex. It’s a utility, it should be powerful.
Lightning Reflex should remove immoblize and they should make it that enemies who are hit by it should be stunned for 2 secs. They already have a dodge with CC on the Elementalist which knocks everyone over, I don’t know how Anet didn’t follow through with this. If you shock someone, they should be stunned.
Please make point blank shot instant and also allow for jumping shots. :-D ??
Jumping shots are already in the game. Just start jumping when you Rapid Fire. It’s one of the tricks you can do to make your LB skills go a bit further and get some clearance.
There’s no reason to revisit the areas you’ve done. I think they need to give incentives for people to return to the areas.
They need to make mult-tier heart vendors. First time you finish it the heart turns yellow and you get to buy something from NPC. If you go back, and redo the quest and help the NPCs, the heart might turn red, green, blue, purple etc, and should all have better rewards that you can buy, like dyes, maybe new armor skins, hats, hair pins, weapon skins that you can apply dyes, or maybe even one time temporary things like bulk buying certain foods for cheap etc.
No need for a dedicated one
