Guild Wars 2

It’s not that rangers are spammy, but the game is spammy. It’s spammy because there’s limited usable skills with excessive cool downs and broken mechanics like weapon swap cool down which completely limits counter play and actually discourages people from using skills properly.

Why should I save my skills for use at the “proper” time when I’ll lose access to them for 8 seconds when I swap weapons? You’re always better to blow through your skills asap and what you have left is spam 1. And if you were saving your skills for proper counter play, what will you be doing in the mean time? Oh right, spam 1. Because I’m saving it for when the enemy does something.

Get rid of weapon swap cool down, double the amount of usable skills on the weapons and let people slot more utilities instead. That’ll do this game a world of good more than any redesign.

I would use SOTH and LR and change the third slot as needed. Sick’em for when you’re alone and likely to run into thieves, muddy terrain when you’re zerg surfing, spirits when you’re tower camping. I would only take SOTH off if you’re camping a keep for the long haul. You need to gtfo out of dodge when things go south when you run zerker LB. The alternative of running traveler runes gimps the damage too much so I have to waste a slot on it.

Not a fan of RaO. I think you get more out of entangle when solo and + muddy terrain when you zerg surf. It’s pretty fun to try and immobilize bomb while playing chicken with the other zerg.

And there’s no point to run anything but Scholar if you’re sniping. I don’t remember the exact numbers but the threshold to have the best DPS is pretty low vs Ruby Orbs even when you can’t keep HP above 90% half the time. Plus it makes no sense to go precision when you know Anet is nerfing Crit dmg in the upcoming patch. Precision centric stats will get hit even harder in the nerf.

pmnt.4067:

I’ll rather have a refund on the stat combination that gets the real nerf: celestial.

This.

I’m part way through crafting my celestial ascended set and I’ve just lost all urges to play my ele after hearing the proposed change.

Longbow Changes.

LB1. Add chance cripple. Condi affects duration, Precision affects proc rate. It buffs zerker specs, and gives a reason to have condi LB.

LB2. Swap the channel time with Barrage so it’s shorter to give it more burst. Instead of 4 1/2, it’ll complete in 2 1/2 sec.

LB3. Stealth should happen the moment you fire and not based on landing a successful hit.

LB4. Keep the current effects. But attack should do double the damage or immobilize players that are hit doing gap closers. (e.g. heart seekers, swoop, earthshaker etc)

LB5. Swap the channel time with Rapid fire and increase it to it 4 1/2 sec. Change it from 12 volleys of arrows to 8 volleys. Shooter will be rooted for the entire duration of the 4 1/2 channel. Each successive channel’s damage goes up 1%, final channel does extra 10% damage. Animation should change in the last channel, arrows will turn into piercing white beams that rain down instead. Any movement done during the channel will cause the attack to stop and the player will evade flip 300 distance in the direction of the movement.

Atherakhia.4086:

Where in the world are you getting 8k burst? You mean 8k with Rapid fire? You do realize that is a 4+ second channel right? That’s 2k a second which is about what auto attack is. That’s not burst.

Power options for the Ranger class will never work until the class is given real burst. Maul is burst, but it’s also on a weapon with nothing else to offer. If the class had a Fast Hands trait like Warriors do, Maul could actually act as a burst skill. But it’s just so unreliable because it is THE most telegraphed skill in the entire game.

Ranger should get a Fast Hand trait not for that reason but for the fact that it could open up to real kiting.

Every class has range, snares and gap closer options. If a ranger could swoop/monarch leap and range attack continuously, it’s a purely L2P issue on the part of the kitee and not a balance one.

The lack of a quick swap trait is bad for this class and the game in general. It limits the kind of counter play that could occur, and the types of builds also.

nagymbear.5280:

Aridia.3042:

Anet has confirmed they want to remove bloodlust stacking when you unequip weapons,

Did they? I must have misse that. What I remember them saying was that you still won’t be able to gather corruption AND bloodlus stacks.

I didn’t watch the stream so I’m not sure if it was mentioned, but it was confirmed long ago by Devon Carver.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Would-be-great-if-Arenanet/first

Absolutely unnecessary and not conducive to the game, but I suppose that’s why Anet is doing it, cuz it seems to be their MO.

nagymbear.5280:

I’ll definetly try air+fire on my zerker longbow ranger…. mmmm

Unless you’re filthy rich, I would not be hasty to jump the gun on trying double crit sigils.

Anet has confirmed they want to remove bloodlust stacking when you unequip weapons, which means if you want to stack pow/preci/condi, you’ll eventually be forced to use one of those sigils on your weapon.

Dollars to donuts this double sigil fix is the first step of that master plan.

This is why we can’t have nice things…

6) Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design

I want to touch on this point. You routinely read on the forums that pets account for X% of the ranger damage. Some even like to exaggerate the number to 50%. I don’t know what the actual percentage is, all I know is, it’s a fact that rangers have lower weapon coefficient vs other classes, so it’s reasonable to assume the way the weapon damage is balanced, pet damage is being taken into account.

In light of this, why is there pet down time at all?

The penalty for ineffective use of pets by not swapping should not be dps loss via pet down time but it should be the player not being able to use the pet of his or her choice. Rangers should have multiple pairs of pets to swap on the fly (e.g. Wolf + Spider; Bear + Drake; Eagle + Boar etc.) to ensure 100% pet up time.

So instead of being pet less for a minute, you should be able to swap into another pair of pets, the penalty being you don’t get to use the pet utility of your choice when they’re down.

This could also play into traiting in BM, like the way eles trait into Arcana, the cool down for the pair swap back to the one with the wounded pet would be lower the deeper you trait into BM.

F1 = toggle for attack/retreat
F2 = pet utility, same as currently
F3 = cycles through pet pairs.
F4 = swap pets within the pair, same as currently

Second issue is the pet buffs. We know pet damage is being taken into account as part of the total damage, so they’re expected to attack.

If that’s the case, why are F2s counter productive to use?

For instance, LB users need 1k range to get optimal damage. But when you send your stalker/red moa out to attack, none of the F2 buffs will reach the pet owner. But if you keep your pet on passive to try and self buff, you lose the dps you’re expected to get via the pet damage. All F2 buffs of this sort are counter intuitive to use for range weapons, LB/SB/Axe.

F2 pet buffs should ignore range for the pet owner and should be guaranteed to benefit the owner.

G600. Accept no substitute. You’ll get use to it. Just think of the mouse as one side of the console game pad, only you have 12 buttons on the face instead of 4. When you start to subdivide the 12 into two grinds of 6, it’s far more manageable than you’d think.

Don’t get the naga. They’re not well built and G600 has more features.

Philosoraptor is not thinking hard enough.

He should be asking why signets require a grand master trait for it to function fully instead.

Rhyse.8179:

I get the impression that Anet is afraid to make big changes, so they iterate tiny bit by tiny bit. Then they don’t come back to it often enough and those tiny tidbits become insults that highlight how many other, bigger things are being ignored.

This is the troubling thing. This sounds like people who don’t know what the problem is so they do little bit of each and check back and see what happens.

It’s basically just a nicer way of saying I don’t know what I’m doing, so I throw kitten at the wall and see what sticks. That’s not at all reassuring…

It’s fun to use it on narrow ledges at certain keeps like Mendon. It’s pretty hilarious when you use perplexity and spam 3 with it for the interrupt.

And you can actually speed up the movement by dodging while in tornado form.

I’m in the same boat. Not sure what to run now when cleaning wave has been moved. I really don’t want to get rid of fresh air or EA. Pity I’ve made two ascended weapons already for my ele.

Went from ranger to ele. LOL, I sure know how to pick’em.

Prysin.8542:

well, their now done with the power-creep (allegedly). This means that now they can focus on making the game more challenging and rewarding rather then doing something their not too good at (balancing)

I hope you’re right. But the way I look at their MO, I can only draw two conclusions from it:

1. They don’t listen, ever, whether it’s about balancing or power creep. So the CDI crap is just there to pacify the forums.

or

2. They’re not done with the power creep or else why would there be need to talk about it when ascended armor is supposedly the final tier?

Neither of these conclusions bode well for this game.

Sorry for the hijack, now back to the regularly scheduled programming…

Soilder.3607:

Two months to review and analyze feedback but they didn’t change a kittening thing.

It’s called humoring you. Yeah we heard you, we just don’t want to listen.

LOL, like how they’re talking about horizontal progression in the next CDI topic AFTER the ascended armor has already come out.

I’d be happy with just reflecting projectiles.

It’s pretty hard to survive using it. They should rename it kamikaze until it gets buffed.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

You won’t be able to see a LOT of skills in zerg fights. If that bothers you, go roam or play spvp. The argument that you’re trying to make is that any skill you can’t see because of a zerg fight should be nerfed. Ok, well we’d be left with no skills then. We’d all run around throwing paper towel rolls at each other for 0 damage and yell “Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!”

I don’t think I could ever explain things to you in a way that you would understand. Go to the spvp forums and make this same post about killshot being OP, you will be laughed off the forums.

If you have a multi hit skill like engineer grenades or a flamethrower, I will absolutely tell you not to AoE the FRONT of a zerg because of ret. AOE the back of it like a sensible player would do. But ret is currently unbalanced. When life steal on crit food had no ICD it was ok, but with that nerfed, ret is just too strong vs rapid multi hit skills and needs to be re-designed.

Take your selective reading and condescending tripe and post it else where. You’re not helping anyone with your protips which basically amounts to. Look for it and dodge it, if you can’t see it because you can’t look behind your or when there’s too many people, then it’s meant to be unbalanced like that.

Nihevil.8024:

Aridia.3042:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Aridia.3042:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

*snipped junk

What is the point here?

You sure talk a lot someone who doesn’t even get what the point is.

Let me spell it out for you. You should never be able to 1 shot someone with full HP with any skill. Because there’s zero counter play.

And no, don’t bother to bring up backstab. That’s broken too. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

The only people it one shots are those in full zerk armor, with full zerk traits. That’s going to be a glass cannon ele, and a thief. That is also commonly with stacks of vuln on you.

There are counters to it. Let me help you.
1. The insanely obvious animation
2. The skill tracks you, should be obvious when you’re the one being targeted.
3. Immobilizes warrior, can’t move while channeling killshot.
4. Decent duration channel time.
5. Bullet has flight time

Tools at your disposal:
1. Dodge roll, easiest one. You have 2 dodges at start, and 1 dodge per 10 seconds BASE. You can dodge most killshots just with your BASE dodge rolls.
2. Running vigor, endurance regen traits, sigils of energy and stamina.
3. Evade skills… no point in describing this.
4. Block skills, unless the warrior is running signet of might, you can block killshots.
5. Interrupts, interrupt him……
6. Blinds, can’t shoot someone if you’re blind.
7. Invuln skills. Can’t be killshotted if invuln.
8. Weakness, weakness is amazing now, a weakened killshot warrior does MUCH less damage.
9. Teleport/Leap skills. Not only to get out of range, but if these are used at the right moment, they will cause the killshot to over-compensate it’s trajectory, and it will simply miss because it went flying off in another direction.

Irrelevant when you cannot see it. There’s zero tell when the person is behind you

There’s this sweet thing called Panning Your Camera, you should try it sometime.

Someone should sticky this protip.

Yep, pan your camera to look behind you while you’re getting hit in front.

LOL.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Aridia.3042:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

*snipped junk

What is the point here?

You sure talk a lot someone who doesn’t even get what the point is.

Let me spell it out for you. You should never be able to 1 shot someone with full HP with any skill. Because there’s zero counter play.

And no, don’t bother to bring up backstab. That’s broken too. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

The only people it one shots are those in full zerk armor, with full zerk traits. That’s going to be a glass cannon ele, and a thief. That is also commonly with stacks of vuln on you.

There are counters to it. Let me help you.
1. The insanely obvious animation
2. The skill tracks you, should be obvious when you’re the one being targeted.
3. Immobilizes warrior, can’t move while channeling killshot.
4. Decent duration channel time.
5. Bullet has flight time

Tools at your disposal:
1. Dodge roll, easiest one. You have 2 dodges at start, and 1 dodge per 10 seconds BASE. You can dodge most killshots just with your BASE dodge rolls.
2. Running vigor, endurance regen traits, sigils of energy and stamina.
3. Evade skills… no point in describing this.
4. Block skills, unless the warrior is running signet of might, you can block killshots.
5. Interrupts, interrupt him……
6. Blinds, can’t shoot someone if you’re blind.
7. Invuln skills. Can’t be killshotted if invuln.
8. Weakness, weakness is amazing now, a weakened killshot warrior does MUCH less damage.
9. Teleport/Leap skills. Not only to get out of range, but if these are used at the right moment, they will cause the killshot to over-compensate it’s trajectory, and it will simply miss because it went flying off in another direction.

Irrelevant when you cannot see it. There’s zero tell when the person is behind you and the alternative is really asking for the impossible, to pick out multiple warriors with rifles in a zerg to the point that I should be ignoring the attackers in melee range.

You sound like one of those posters that tell people not to fire an AOE into a zerg when you see retaliation up, which is a nonsense tip completely divorced from reality. Which makes all your tips even more lol cuz you actually seem to believe this crap.

What you have is pure broken and lazy programming by a team that’s refused to skill split.

Killshot is the result of spvp balance and it’s still OP in spvp, only slightly less so because you’re more likely to see it against 5 players. But my point stands, you cannot see it if the person fires behind you and there’s zero counter play to it. You seem to think that’s ok, and we’re not going to convince each other so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

*snipped junk

What is the point here?

You sure talk a lot someone who doesn’t even get what the point is.

Let me spell it out for you. You should never be able to 1 shot someone with full HP with any skill. Because there’s zero counter play.

And no, don’t bother to bring up backstab. That’s broken too. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Aridia.3042:

Broken skill is broken.

And LOL at learn to dodge.

Do you WvW?

Do you?

I do. And if you actually do, please get off the ivory tower on SM3 and maybe play the game sometime.

LOL learn to dodge.

I’ll be sure to turn around when I engage a thief next time so he could backstab me just so I won’t get blind sided by a killshot.

Keep those protips coming.

Broken skill is broken.

And LOL at learn to dodge.

Do you WvW?

Nihevil.8024:

Aridia.3042:

If the devs are reading.

For the umpteeth time, it needs to cleanse all snares before rolling back, stun the target, and have the damage removed.

What’s wrong with the damage? I don’t see the reason of removing it.

Because it’s pointless. I’ve ran LR since beta and I’ve never ever killed anyone with it. No one in their right mind would use it as a source of damage nor is it a deterrent to the attacker.

It’s a defensive utility and I’d take a stun on target over damage any day.

If the devs are reading.

For the umpteeth time, it needs to cleanse all snares before rolling back, stun the target, and have the damage removed.

MAD CAT.9321:

byjiang.1260:

You are assuming this game has a future beyond 2015.

People like you are the reason this game is dying

Yep, it’s all his fault for alienating the franchise’s core base by introducing traditional MMO grind while being unable to attract new player base using the said mechanics because other MMOs make better grind than GW2.

Yep, let’s blame that guy.

Jayne.9251:

Strikes. So poison him.

I’ll get right on that with my Ele.

Wait, wut?

AEFA.9035:

Aridia.3042:

Meh, more spirits. More stuff that could be negated entirely by getting nuked. Why would this be picked over HS which could be blasted repeatedly?

I’m more excited about the elly skill. That sounds perfect when coming out of a tornado. Glad I decked out my nuker.

They did say that they want more ways for team plays in game, all of these healing skills are team based or are AOE affecting not just the player. I think its a good change (if true) for all classes specially tournament rangers and havoc crews in wvw.

I can make a build on top of my head already for ranger, guard, mesmer, necro, and ele.

How is it more team based than everyone blasting your HS? And how much could it possibly heal? More than 5 players blasting? More than your elite? I doubt it.

It’s sounds utterly worthless.

Meh, more spirits. More stuff that could be negated entirely by getting nuked. Why would this be picked over HS which could be blasted repeatedly?

I’m more excited about the elly skill. That sounds perfect when coming out of a tornado. Glad I decked out my nuker.

So I guess all that negative feedback did nothing? It’s bad enough to have this grind, but to grind for something so fugly…

You guys couldn’t have went back to the drawing board to get some new designs before implement it?

PraetorMortis.8610:

I’m not sure ascended armor has any value beyond being a carrot on a stick for OCD players who can’t do math. From what I’ve seen of it, it has NO infusion slots. It’s just regular armor but pink instead of orange.

For those worried about it in WvW: the shoulders, boots, and gloves are 35/25/25 vs the 34/24/24 of exotic gear. The coat is 106/75/75 compared to the 101/72/72 exotic. If a guy with less than +20 more to a stat can beat you, it’s not a gear issue. It looks like a full set of ascended armor will provide less power increase than a single stack of might.

If it’s a chore to get it, I don’t see the point. If it’s agony resist you need for future fractals, I believe they want you to craft infusions with the new drop items.

You also forgot that they’re fugly as sin.

The best configuration is to get rid of the Naga and get a G600.

That extra ring finger mouse button is so useful for attunement swap.

RedBaron.6058:

Lineage 2 has beautiful armor sets and weapon designs…check them:

http://www.lineage2media.com/pictures/kamael%20weapons%20gallery.jpg

Red

I miss my overenchanted Dynasty Bow. T_T

Wings of Dwayna doesn’t even compare…

+1

<3 Korean designs…well, minus some of the street walker outfits.

They’re just so intricate.

Anet should look at L2 also for inspirations.

Good lord, Anet. Please get your design team to play some Lineage 2 for inspiration because the well seems to be tapped dry if you guys didn’t see how badly of a recycled job this is.

It’s F2P and it doesn’t feature flaming armor on everything…

When you hunt, you either chase or creep and stalk the target. Since the passive is speed up, or running, the active should be a stalking skill.

It should stealth and act like camouflage as long as you stand on something that’s tied to nature and not man made. (e.g. grass, water, mud, snow etc. So no, you wouldn’t be able to camp towers or SM3 with it and should be used for scouting.)

I stopped playing for a month or so and when I logged in this week, I noticed there’s a new torment sigil.

What’s the size of the AOE torment?

I’m getting like 1100 to 1200 dmg for the fire AOE. How much per tick on the torment if the toon is running 30 in marksmanship?

Any Zerker running this on the LB and is it better than fire?

Leave the evade on GS1.

Make GS3 cleanse snares like Warrior horn.

Agreed. They just need to consolidate.

F1 – Toggle for attack/retreat
F2 – Pet skill
F3 – Toggle for active/passive mode
F4 – Switch pets.

sanictoofast.9317:

nope, it would only affect how often you look at utilities instead of combat. any diversity would be squashed by everyone using 1 or 2 of the same skills per class.

By that logic, then everyone should only have 1 utility. But it’ll still have the problem you speak of.

Diversity comes from having viable choices and not from skill set limitations. If people are picking the same things, whether they’re traits or utilities, it’s telling you the game is not optimally balanced because all choices are suppose to be good, but clearly they’re not so people gravitate towards the better stuff.

Looking more at your utilities is a good thing. This game has LOL low skill cap due to the lack of counter play and skill rotation because of how few utilities are given to players and the ones that are given to them have god awful cool downs.

They should give rangers multiple pairs of pets to hot swap. So pet up time is 100% with the penalty being you don’t get to use the pet you want if they’re dead, until the 60 seconds cool down is reset.

As mentioned, LB surf surfing has been viable since day 1.

The problem comes when you don’t have a team in front of you to act as a buffer, like in small groups, roaming or node capping.

The proposed changes make it even better at zerg surfing but hasn’t really made it viable for other things.

I frankly don’t understand why they’ve made it impossible to kite in this game. The common argument is that range is less risky than melee so the latter has to do more damage. I don’t have a problem with that, but it makes no sense to completely shut down kiting by having weapon swap cool down and range penalty on LB when every class has range/gap closers/snare options. If the target cannot use what they have to counter a range attack, that’s a L2P issue, not a balance issue.

The problem boils down to not having anything to CC the target at 1k plus range, the optimal killzone for LB1, in order to take meaningful shots. Having Predator’s Instinct bumped up to a 10 second cripple won’t change that, even with the bumped up damage because it just takes one gap closer and melee will begin to out damage you. The HP threshold and the lack of reliable condi on the LB to cover the cripple means it’ll just get cleansed very quickly.

There are a bunch of ways to address this:

Add a chance cripple on LB1;

Make Predator’s Instinct a cripple that procs on crit with a lower ICD so it can be reapplied easily;

Bump the range on muddy terrain to 1200k;

Give rangers a weapon swap cool down trait like Warrior so we can swoop/monarch leap and LB; or

Just remove the range penalty all together on LB.

Not sure what Anet’s rationale is with the proposed changes, the problem is still there…

JonPeters.5630:

*
Ranger:

• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.

This is not a sufficient change to help the LB. There’s no condi to cover the cripple and it’ll be removed fairly quickly. Keen’s edge, sharpened edges and sharpening stone’s duration is not long enough/too unreliable to be used as cover especially with the HP threshold requirement.

Cool down is far too long to be of use. You’re not likely to get the target to 50% hp before they’re in melee range especially if they’re bunkers.

Instead of giving long duration on the cripple, it should be a shorter duration with lower ICD.

Change it to 3 second cripple with 9 seconds ICD (so it’s better than a sigil) and remove the 50% threshold requirement. Or have a chance cripple proc on crits.

Pet buffs are still counter intuitive to cast for range weapons like LB/SB/Axe. Make pet buffs disregard range for pet owner so LB users can stay at 1k killzone and get stalker/moa buffs.

LB traits need to be consolidated. Too many traits in order to max out a weapon which is not found in other classes. e.g. eagle eye, piercing, cooldown, spotter, etc. Piercing and cool down should be on one trait to get a ranger version of Crackshot.

He was probably a redux of the broken warrior build.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Exuberance

Take 2 of each, minor, major, superior.

Stack sigil of life. Full vit bunker with cleric gear. Shout regen.

If you like this, you’re better off making the warrior version. It got even better after this recent patch.

SlothBear.9846:

Kill Shot is a highly telegraphed channel. It’s fine.

Warrior ability to shrug off all conditions and dash/charge away while passively regaining all their health and immune to CC is what needs nerfed.

Gonna disagree, any move that 1 shots anyone, no matter how squishy, it’s broken.

Any tell is basically rendered moot when shot from behind a blob.

Where’s your counter play now, Sharp?

Haven’t done it yet but it’s doable.

I don’t run valk either and was only using cheap foods, +80 power. So it’s actually only 4683 if you take that off. Dragon buns would add 200 on kill to push it to 4883. I haven’t unlocked guard leach back then and that would put another 100 to 4983. Empower allies would push it well over 5k. If you run valk on top of that it’s just gravy.

Whole lot of good that’d do though. I think the buffing system in this game blows. Boons go away far too quickly. It’s more of a theoretical exercise than an actual target to hit consistently in real usage.

Rym.1469:

Notice that he’s powerful, running bearbow (although he kills his loyal brown bear), without pet.

He’s running a perma stow build.

No wonder it’s OP.

Noobie.1073:

Aridia.3042:

Flicking your wrist to turn the camera is easier to do than using the turn around key because you can rotate the camera once you’ve been launched.

…how so? I do this on auto run, 180 turn on a button, reflex back, sword 2 and rotate camera, sword 2 and i’m pretty sure I’ve caught most people trying to flee.

I’ll have to try flicking the wrist, but I don’t see how that’s easier than pressing a button

Because the turn button doesn’t have a smooth transition like a manual turn. And you can’t control the turn if you want to turn at an angle. Like for example, you might have to cross a bridge but the target is not necessarily running straight after he has ran across it. He might’ve made a 90 degree turn after crossing.

1. Class balance, or lack thereof.

2. Ascended gear grind for alts.

3. Skill/server lag in WvW.

Divinity.8041:

You guys are not the mesmer or ele, so stop the QQ.

Check this graph out.

http://www.chartgo.com/share.do?id=05adfec8aa

You had the HIGHEST representation at the latest MLG tourney

Done, do not complain anymore. My main class had about 5%, and eles were not harmed in the making of that tourney.

Stop the QQ.

LOL this is why we can’t have nice things.

Protip: no one cares about spvp aside from Anet. All it is is a ghetto testing grounds for WvW theory crafting.