Guild Wars 2

What is also important to know is that healing power helps alot with it.
Its 690 like Cufu said + 0.5 x Healing power.

So lets say you have 1400 healing power thats 1390 healing x 2 in one healing spring.
So you heal everyone near you for about 2800 every 30 sec.
The first heal is caused when you place the field, the 2nd one after about 10 sec.
Combine this with two drakes which heal for another 1320 per tail swipe in the healing spring and you have good healing support + regen + vigor if specced.

retal is broken against some skills. It’s just not right that you are not allowed to use some skills because you instant kill yourself.
AreaNet needs to make some special factor for certain skills like grenades/flamethrower and ranger barrage.
Just put a 20% modifier for retaliation there and its fine. Leave it for all other skills as retaliation is ok except against certain skills that proc it alot too much.
So: 20% modifier means only every 5th hit procs retal for these few skills or the dmg is divided by 5.
Problem solved without messing too much with retal and without having the need to change the way the skills work.

I think the problem with reporting to an email-address or providing screenshots is that you dont see their account name on them. How shall AreaNet find the player using the hack on a screenshot?
The only way is to have an option to report a player with a new category like “possible exploit” or something like that. That way AreaNet knows the account name and knows the exact time/date and can verify if the accusation is true and if so take actions.

Usually I run with 0/0/20/20/30.
What also works fine is the well known beastmaster spec 0/0/30/10/30
As traits:
Wilderness survival: IV (vigor on heal), X (Sword/GS cooldowns reduced by 20%)
Nature magic: III (33% longer regeneration), VI (Protection for 5 sec if hit for 10% of your HP),
Beastmastery: V (F2 cooldown reduction), VI (might on pet swap), XII (Regen for pet and ranger)

As pets I switch alot. For soloing camps easily Riverdrake and marsh drake. For duels the drakes are good too but I also like the raven, panther, owl, snow leopard, wolf, dog

I use healing spring, signet of the hunt, signet of the wild (the regen one) and lightning reflexes. As elite rampage as one or entangle or a racial whatever you prefer

I can just confirm what was said here. Greatsword and shortbow are my favorite weapons. Both are just great.
GS has good AoE damage, block, an evade every 3rd hit of the autoattack chain, a charge/leap and a daze/stun. The charge is the only way for the ranger to move faster than the zerg if the entire zerg has swiftness. Even the sword 2 doesnt make you move faster than swiftness if you are out of fight. The greatsword does
A well rounded weapon.

For my roaming ranger I use cleric armor with “all-stats”-ascended jewelry. Backpiece is berserk usually.
GS is either cleric or PVT. My shortbow has Knight stats.
It’s working really well also for 1v1

Same thing happens with doors in the new dungeon for example. They won’t attack it no matter if I attack it or not.
Would be nice if this was fixed. We should be able to let pets attack anything that the player can attack. Even if the ranger himself didn’t attack the target previously.

Oh this could absolutely be the reason. I know that it happened a few times after I came out of the water

Durzlla.6295:

Arpheus.6918:

I am a norn and I use the elite skill often. But the pet is not dead after coming out of the norn form. It is dead when I switch it as a norn. Thats what matters me. And I will not stop using my form because of a bug.

It’s a known bug that if you use your norn elite while your pet is dead when you swap pets your other pet will be dead, just use the form -before- your current pet is dead.

I will try to reproduce that and if it is true AreaNet knows what to do

I am a norn and I use the elite skill often. But the pet is not dead after coming out of the norn form. It is dead when I switch it as a norn. Thats what matters me. And I will not stop using my form because of a bug.

Well what is possible is that another ranger was trolling us – hiding far away and sending his pet on us. What made me wonder was that the second I finished him both pets were gone – absolutely at the same time.
I remember that because I was really looking at this because I was expecting a possible exploit.
But it is possible that there was a ranger somewhere sending the pet and just as the other ranger died he switched his pet. Absolutely possible

Am I the only one with this problem? Is my character bugged? I’m really wondering that noone else is posting about this problem.

When I swap my pet sometimes the pet will be dead instead at 100% HP. Today it happened three times and overall it happened at least 15 times to me. It is incredibly annoying when it happens.
This happened since the patch where the pets remember the CD on the F2 skills and all other skills.
Anyone else is encountering this bug or am I really the only ranger with this problem?
Oh and until now it only happened in WvW to me but that might be because I’m in WvW most of the time

Pet being dead upon switch happened again three times today to me in WvW with my jaguar. It would really be great if you could fix it. I lost quite some fights because of that. 20 sec without a pet and after that 60 sec CD on the next swap is horrible for a ranger.
What makes me wonder was one time when I switched the pet to my jaguar it had only 10% life. Never had that before. And one time I was even out of fight pressing pet swap and it was summoned dead. That is really strange and this bug exists since you started remembering the CD’s on pets even after switch.

I had that happen twice to me. I don’t remember which pets it were but I remember that I was pretty baffled when he attacked me with two pets. I’m sure those were no hyenas or sylvari wolf and neither hounds of balthazar and that other summoned strange wolf. Were two standard pets but I don’t remember which ones exactly. Once I killed him the pets were gone.
Since back then it didn’t happen to me any more.

Immolator.5640:

naphack.9346:

Immolator.5640:

The solution is to reduce the times it proccs on flamethrowers, nades and barrage, not destroy a guardian’s ranged viability completely.

And how do you plan on doing this without screwing up skill balance even more?

Simple; flamethrowers nades and barrage don’t procc as much on Retal… flame counts as 5 hits not 10, grenades 1/2 hits work; etc.

If it’s not that easy, which it should be, make it a multi-projectile, I.e. 20% chance to procc for those particular things…

This would be a simple fix. Certain skills with lots of hits —> 20% chance to proc retaliation. That way you get hit for 2-3k instead of 10-15k. That would be fine.
AreaNet can play with the %-numers here but that would be the easiest way to fix it for sure.

Cake.4920:

Arpheus.6918:

4) People who AoE a Zerg should be punished

Why?

These are not my words. I just summarised what many here seem to think

@Chopps
Frost trap and Muddy terrain are great as support but you won’t get any badges from it. Ranger should also be able to kill and get badges.
Barrage is the perfect zerg skill. Good damage and AoE-cripple. Not being able to use it is a waste.

Immolator’s idea or a certain percentage of damage returned would both be good solutions.

OK let’s sum up some points we found out during the discussion:

1) Retal in it’s current state doesn’t hurt classes with skills that proc only one activation like one AoE on 5 targets (Example 5x 3k damage). Thats like 1500 damage returned for dishing out 15k damage.
If we implemented an ICD here and the 5 targets are hit at the exact same time which it usually does that would mean because of the ICD they get hit only for one tick —> 300 damage.
That is not fine.

2) Retal hurts classes by far too much which have skills that hit alot of times like engineer grenades/flamethrower or ranger barrage (60 hits) or that mesmer skill that reflects projectiles. They sometimes get hurt for 15k damage in just 3-5 seconds without even being attacked by anyone. Passive retaliated damage.
This is not fine at all since it basically makes these classes useless in zerg vs zerg.

3) Guardians complain that they will not be viable any more if there was an ICD. I think this would not be that much of a problem, since even an 0.5 sec ICD would make a fast attacking class like ranger hit themselves with almost every single hit. 0.5 sec attack speed would still return 300-400 damage for every shortbow attack which on my bunker ranger does average 350 damage^^. So I get back 100% of my damage which is also not fine.
But anyways the ICD solution is not perfect neither.

4) People who AoE a Zerg should be punished. Well this is only half the truth. Some classes are punished extremely (almost instant death) by AoEing the zerg while others who deal more AoE damage are almost not punished at all.
That is the main problem and bad design in my opinion. The goal of WvW fights is to bring the enemies down. If you are not allowed to deal damage then you cannot fulfill that goal and are therefore a useless class/character in WvW zerg fights.
Now some players say: well, then play another class, it’s easy as that.
Is that the answer? You are not able to play your class if you want to be useful? I guess we all agree that every class should be useful in every aspect of the game. Exactly those classes who are considered rather useless in Zerg vs Zerg are the ones hit extremely hard by retaliation. Amongst other things they cannot fulfill their role because of retaliation.

So my conclusion:
ICD would solve some matters (lots of hits in short amount of time) but make retal not hurt those who have huge damage AoE that hits 5 targets at the same time because it woult return damage only once.

So the only possibility that I see is throw back a percentage of the outgoing damage. That would be fair to everyone. Let’s say 10% of all damage is returned. You then know that if you are a glasscannon you will be punished for dealing HUGE numbers like 100k in one Killshot (10k damage returned) or that you will be hit for about 6k with a Barrage that overall deals 60k damage.
On the other hand when a ranger is bunkerish and his Barrage only deals overall 20k damage he will only get 2k damage returned.
I guess that would be the very most fair solution as it would punish those who deal the most damage to the zerg (the pure glasscannons) and people would have the choice: Do I want to go high reward and high risk (huge damage) and also eat lots of damage for that or do I want to be more bunkerish and get less punished.
The only possible issue with this solution is that condition classes would not be punished by retal but I guess that is an intended thing as they are not punished much now neither.

In sPvP/tPvP you might want to put the percentage of retaliated damage to 20% instead of 10%.
You could also think about a solution to make retaliation only last for very short durations (like 1-2 seconds) but return like 40% of the incoming damage. This would be a great tactical solution against burst attacks. What would then be important is that it cannot be stacked for long durations in zergs.

@Wish
The problem is still there that neither ranger nor engineer can use their most potent skills while other classes can. No other class gets killed by one spell/skill.

And by the time the first grenades reach the ground you have already thrown one or two more grenades which means you might be dead even if you stop immediately.
But either way. Rangers and Engineers need to be able to use these skills. You cannot forbid them to use them which you do with retaliation as it is now.
It is as if necro killed himself by using his wells and marks or a warrior killed himself by using one 100b or whatever. You get my point. These classes would complain too.
And Rangers/Engineers anyways need to become better for WvW zergs. They are considered to most useless classes in WvW and retaliation is one reason for this.

So the ultimate solution: 0.5 sec internal cooldown
2nd solution: 10-15% incoming dmg is thrown back. That would be great also against thieves and other hard hitting classes and would treat every class the same

How Anet wants to fix that is their decision anyways. I just hope they will make fast hitting skills usable

If retal for example returned 10% of the damage you deal it would still hurt glasscannons alot while not hurting bunkers using barrage or engineers using grenates/flamethrower too much.
A full glasscannon ranger using barrage would dish out 60 hits for about 1.3k which is 78.000 dmg —> thats 7.800 retal’ed dmg which is huge. Let it be 6.000 which is still alot for using one skill on a zerg.
On the other hand a bunker like me who uses barrage would be hurt for only about 2k-2.5k.
That is just one possible solution and pure glasscannons would have to think about going for more defense and less damage or take the risk.

The point is not that the guardian retaliates the dmg. It’s the entire zerg because not only the guardians have retal on them but almost everyone if a good zerg buffs each other.
You are always talking about us dealing 1k-2k and getting back 370 damage.
My ranger is bunker. So I dish out an average of lets say 2k per person and get back 15k damage. That doesnt seem fair at all.
My hits deal only around 300-400 damage per shot – 600-700 crit which is only every 5th hit (bunker) and I get back 370 per hit.
And my damage is divided on the zerg which means I won’t really hurt anyone but I die of one use of the skill.

The problem are the many small hits that retal alot more dmg than you actually do to single persons in the zerg.
Same thing for flamethrower. It does small damage and retals alot more damage than he does.
That is the main problem.
And an ICD of let’s say 0.5 sec does not harm the guardian in 1v1 at all. The thing it would change is zerg vs zerg. And that is what is needed for the classes that deal lots of small damage numbers and getting hurt for lot (300-400 per).

Btw what I am asking for is to only find one solution for barrage and engineers. They can either change retal with ICD or whatever or change the way barrage and grenades work.
No matter how they have to change something that rangers and engineers don’t kill themselves. Necros and eles do alot more AoE but don’t suffer from retal that much.
So there is some kind of a unbalance in that area which could be fixed by AreaNet.

When you ask for the WvW meta for Zerg vs Zerg engineer and ranger are at the very bottom of it. Guess why?
They can’t use their skills which would make them worthy. Denial of almost two classes for zerg vs zerg because of one boon is bad design.
What would make engineer good for zerg vs zerg? Grenades – what can’t they use? Grenades.
What would make ranger good for zerg vs zerg? Barrage – what can’t they use because of retal? Barrage
Guardian is #1 class in wvw. There is a reason why. Retal is one of the many.

@Haldunius
You know the moment when two fully might/retal stacked zergs clash together? In 5-10 seconds it’s often obvious which side won.
So waiting 20 sec til retal ran out is not an option. You cannot wait 3 seconds. You have to use all you have to help your zerg win. If 30 enemies run over you you can’t do nothing. You have to react and fight them or you will be dead.
In 1v1 you can kite the enemy for a bit until it ran off. But not in zerg vs zerg. At least not in the fast fights. There are also these everlasting fights but I am talking about those where both sides rush into each other. Thats what happens alot on our tier.

The best thing is: people suggest to wait for 10 or so seconds – retal will probably still be there by then.
Ok lets take a zerg of 20 flamethrower/grenade-engineers and 20 longbow/GS-rangers vs another zerg. You know what would happen?
The engineer/ranger zerg would start with their AoE and be down the moment the enmy zerg reaches them. No need to fight on the other side. Just stand there and laugh.
So this cannot be what the devs want WvW to be.
Now lets say there was no retal. The 20 engineers and rangers would have a real chance!
Huge AoE, lots of slows/chills/poison and whatever. They would probably not win due to lack of diversity but it would be an interesting fight.
As it is now this fight would end 1000:0 if the mixed zerg is somewhat competent.

Well I can get around if I simply don’t use longbow. But that is really bad design if you cannot use certain weapons because of the way retal works.
They should change the way retal works then.

Or make it so that everyone gets hit by huge retal numbers. Wait a week then and there will be so much QQ on forums since it suddenly hits everyone for the same that it will be fixed. Classes who are lucky to not really get hit by retal should be glad that they got lucky.
Play a ranger or engineer and you know what I am talking about. And a guardian has many roles in WvW. He would be far from useless with a retal change.
Walls, heals, boons. He can even be in the front lines if he wants. Guardian is very fine.

Midnightjade.3520:

Honestly, retal and confuse were not hard to deal with before the patch and are very easy to handle now, but DPS are still complaining? Wow.

You should read my first post. I am using a bunker build. I’m the opposite of GC/DPS. And confusion is skill based. You see it you wait for a short duration. You can even remove it with condition removals. Retal is on the zerg. You cannot remove it as a ranger.

frostshade.3617:

Retaliation only had a33% nerf btw

Yes it had but it was reverted. It now is back to what it was before 30. April. That is what bothers me.

And I’m in no way a glass cannon spec. Read my first post. I’m bunker and I still got almost killed by it. I was pretty much in the last row of our zerg and the enemy zerg came into our direction. While it is possible that I got hit by something else I know that the retal often had me almost killed by using only barrage. That’s not the first time this happens to me.
Ranger’s AoE skills are very limited. There is AoE and traps – for traps you have to specc for it to be able to throw them. So there is only Barrage left. And I cannot use it – even as bunker?
That is bad design really. In 1v1 I have no problems with retal. I can just wait until it ran out or whatever. In a zerg thats not possible. I can rely on others to remove the boons of the enemy zerg but well that won’t work every time.
Retal needs an ICD. That is my opinion.

Cosmic.6047:

Maybe paying attention to the fuzzy stuff you character has around your head ( purple or brown ). This might help staying alive.

You cannot stop once barrage is out. Once you started it —> 60 (possible) x 370 dmg returned to you.
You can jump around, dodge, run away --> you will (almost) die. Simple as that.

Another solution: let me block/dodge retal and I’m fine

It was never 650 – at least not the last months. It was not nerfed by 50%. Confusion was nerfed. Retaliation was not nerfed at all. It’s as it was before the patch from 30. April.

The problem is not weak random zergs. It’s guild zergs who know what they do. They will stack might + retal on the zerg.
It is bad design if one single skill kills you by a passive damage retaliation. I cannot stop the skill, dodging won’t work, blocking won’t work. There is absolutely nothing I can do except not using my strongest AoE skill.
There is two ways to stop this: ICD or make barrage instead of 12×5 hits (60 hits for retal) 3×5 huge hits. That way I wouldn’t get myself killed but people would complain by getting hit by huge AoE numbers. On the other hand it would be the same as meteor shower. Few huge hits which don’t get you killed by retal.

Engineer has the same problem with many weak hits.
ICD is the only real solution to this. 0.5 sec CD means you can still get hit by 700 damage per second. That is good damage and should be strong enough for retal.

Today with my bunker ranger (21k HP and 3.2k Armor) I casted one barrage from 1500 range (nothing hit me there except retailation). I was at full life before and I barely survived that ONE! skill use. It eat away 19k of my life with one single skill.

I remember after the patch retal hit for around 220 now its back to 300-400. Why did you undo this change? Or did I just meet a condition guardian or engi when getting hit for the 220?

Retal is still hitting alot too hard in zerg vs zerg.
Easy solution. 1 sec ICD or at least make it 0.5 sec ICD so that you cant kill yourself in 5 sec.
For me the solution to this problem: don’t ever use longbow any more. I won’t get many badges that way as other classes do but at least I survive. I rather go melee – I will survive it easier than staying at 1500 range using barrage.

This has to be changed. Really.

I am running with GS/Shortbow and I use cleric armor with the all-stats (ascended stuff) trinkets. In my opinion thats a good mix.
For the weapons I either use cleric or knight most of the times.

There is more:
Signet of Stone offers my pet and me 180 toughness. I think before todays patch the ranger got a really small amount of toughness.

For the reveal. Are you sure about it? In the sta of the game I thought they said for pve they change reveal back to 3 sec but not for wvw and pvp.

You can bring down the CD to 16/32 seconds with a trait but thats still too much especially with the 1200 range fix.

They could have made it 20/25 (traited 16/20 sec) or 20/30 (traited 16/24 sec). These two options would be alot better than 40 seconds.

And I really hope for the eles out there that it will only check if you had a target when you activated RTL for the check if 20 or 40 sec CD.
If you dodge it and it goes on 40 sec CD poor eles.

This new patch will change alot about game balance. Ele/mesmer/engi/thief will be easier for us while we are being buffed a bit.
Ranger has the advantage that he isn’t too reliant on massive boons because most of our regeneration comes from other sources and our survivability comes from evades.

I think warriors got buffed the most with us. It will be interesting to try to catch a warrior with -98% immob/cripple/chill duration^^ (-33% from new trait, -25% melandru, -40% food)

I don’t play ele and I’m glad that RTL was “fixed” for 1200 range (1500 was too much) but 40 seconds CD if you don’t hit a target is just too much in my opinion.
Well you can bring it down to 16/32 seconds but still especially with the range being fixed ele will be slower for roaming than ranger/warrior/thief by quite a bit.

I’m really sorry for you guys and I hope that they will reduce the 40 seconds to maybe 25 seconds max or something like that. The 1200 range change (which was needed) alone will reduce mobility alot because ele can’t automatically get out of attack range any more.

The changes for the ranger sound nice. Faster F2 will help alot, tougher pets is always nice to have especially in WvW and I’m wondering if the ranger signets will also be buffed. That would be decent.
Also the pet moving behind a target if it doesn’t have aggro is a nice change. It will help especially with the cats as they usually dont have aggro. That way they will survive alot longer.
What I still hope is that pets move faster. Somehow it seems to me that they were slowed down in a recent patch. My pet moves exactly as fast as I do (if it moves to a target) while it once was at least a bit faster than me. I’m not 100% sure if it is only out of combat but if the pet was a little faster it could hit more.
I did a test with a friend. He ran in circles and the pet did not even hit him one single time. While in combat chances are better that the pet actually hits as long as the pet is not crippled/chilled.
If a melee pet is crippled or chilled it is absolutely negated during that time and conditions stay forever on pets because it doesn’t ever clean them. A trait that reduces condition duration on pets would be nice.

What I also love is the change to retaliation and confusion for wvw. While I was able to not attack with confusion you can’t do anything about retaliation in zerg vs zerg and one single barrage was eating up 60-80% of my HP. Great change

One solution to the down state problem in WvW could be this:

When you get back to fight from rally or rez you don’t start with half life as it is now but with 15% life.
That way rally or getting rezzed is a nice thing but at least you have to care about your health and get away instead of just instantly jumping back into battle.

That would help a bit in a way that if you really focus on an area where you don’t want people to be rezzed they will pretty much instantly be dead again from all the aoe if they get up with only 15%.
As it is now they will probably get away alive. If you want to make it hard to just come back to fight immediately you could put a 3 second CD on every skill and put endurance to zero.
That way there would be no dodging away, no mistform away, no blink/teleport or whatever escape skills there are.
Being downed or dead would mean that you are really weakened and people might think about if it is worth rezzing someone mid fight if he probably will lie there again in a few seconds.

Another possible solution for wvw:
Slow down rezzing a downed player to 50% of the actual speed so that it takes twice as long. Rezzing a really dead player seems fine to me if one person rezzes. If a zerg rezzes one person it is just too fast. How about you limit it so that if a zerg rezzes a person it’s just about three times as fast as if one person is rezzing. That way there is no incredibly fast rezzing of dead people any more.

I hardly ever use axe mainhand because it just hits so weak if there is only one target. The chill is great but with the pathetic damage on axe 1 if there is only one target is just bad.
With two targets its fine when you get two hits on the main target out of one attack.
I think they should add +50% damage to the first hit and keep the bounce as it is.
So first target gets 150% damage of what it is now, the bounce still do 100% (like it is now).
That way more people would use the axe. Shortbow is so much better to me especially because of the dodge on SB3 and the 1200 range.
I tried a duel vs a trap ranger. With the axe I just lost every time while with the shortbow he had not the slightest chance to win.

Pet being dead upon pet switch still exists. It happens randomly and not very often but when it happens its devastating if you don’t have the pet at your side in a duel.
Happened in WvW a few times and it might have something to do with status being kept. You changed something that the pets remember the skill CD’s even if you switch them.
Is there maybe a mistake in the code that makes them remember being dead or something like that? Maybe if they would have dropped with that one hit and you just switch them out a second before or if the conditions on the pet kill it while not being active?
I’m really not sure what causes this problem but it is still there

@ Zenith
I guess you get the idea of my post. I brought up toughness just as an example. And in WvW toughness is a nice thing to have

Condition damage has to be weaker than berserker because on berserker you have to sacrifice all three stats for offense (power, precision, crit damage) instead of just one (condition damage).
So it’s fine that conditions are weaker than berserker damage.
If you just take power or precision or crit damage for example with healing power / toughness you will see that conditions are stronger if you just invest into one single offensive stat.

I have a few points I want to bring into this discussion.

At the moment running with the zerg is what gives you the most badges usually if you have some fights with other groups/zergs.
Also killing a zerg where you can tag 40 persons (which some classes can better than others – more reward for aoe classes ) can grant you 1000 wxp which is crazy. The larger the zerg the more wxp.
Additionally to this a zerg usually gets more wxp for everyone by doing karma-trains than solo players or small groups could ever get.

What I would enjoy is that small group play gets also rewarded. This could be done by reducing the wxp you get the more people hit the target.
So if a large zerg vs zerg occures and let’s say 30 persons hit one enemy instead of giving the 60 wxp for that one person to all 30 people who tagged that player they get alot less – for example 5 wxp. If you can tag 20 people in that zerg that is still probably about 50 wxp. But it’s not 500 wxp which makes it mandatory to stay with zergs if you want to level fast.
The formula should just have some diminishing returns but I wouldn’t just divide the 60 by 30 players and grant 2 wxp.

This would at least prevent especially encouraging zerging and people chasing down everything they see for huge rewards and it would stop building siege with the sole purpose to get the as much wxp as possible. You already see catapults which should shoot at the door/wall turn around to shoot into the enemy zerg for loot and wxp.

While balancing rewards could you also have a look at how the loot rewards work now and try to balance it. Support classes get alot less badges than those who can spam aoe attacks all the time.
I know it is very difficult to find a solution to this but it would be great to get reward for healing persons or buffing them / removing conditions.
That way someone can also play the supporter role instead of just spamming aoe (which some classes have a lot less).

In the end the reward system as we have it now can never be absolutely fair. But there is a solution that might work to fix the reward system and make the WvW players play how they want to play without being disadvantaged and without having to worry about getting their rewards.

That loot/xp system would have an equal base reward for everyone as long as they just do something “useful” which means not being afk.
Some kind of loot over time like per 5 min you get 100 wxp, 5 bags with random loot in there (like the ones that drop all the time) and 2 badges of honor.
On top of that there are some additional rewards for taking towers and such active stuff. Doing these should not increase the overall reward by more than 50% compared to those who just play as they want – maybe just scouting or supporting with heals, repairing walls or whatever.
That additional reward system could be as it is now but you would simply have to heavily reduce the reward amount for it and put a limit which can not be exceeded which would also be good against exploiting mechanics like trebbing a huge zerg with the poisoning cow and getting 50 loot bags and over 1k wxp…

This would actually change one thing in WvW. People would stop doing what gives most reward and do what is fun to them and what they consider important for the server. They wouldn’t have that bad taste in their mouth knowing that the others who follow the zerg not only have more fun but also get tons more rewards.

At the same time this solves the issue with picking up bags which people mentioned on these forums. You could just put every loot into bags which can be stacked to 1.000 for example. That way it takes one slot of the inventory and it is automatically increased every 5 min or whatever of good playing.

So as long as you don’t AFK or BOT you get pretty much the equal amount of drops (bags/badges/wxp/karma) even if you just scout. Those who actively cap towers and camps all the time will get a small bonus reward which is not huge.
As it is now the ones who scout or do other useful stuff pretty much don’t get rewarded at all, especially not with bags of random items which they can sell on the trade post for gold.

The only difficulty with this solution is finding out if someone is afk or running a bot. You would have to find a way to recognize that. What we absolutely don’t want is people blocking slots in WvW by botting there for the rewards.

I run 0/0/20/20/30 GS + SB usually with cleric armor/weapon and the new ascended stuff with all attributes on it.
It’s a very good mix in my opinion. You still have some condition damage and enough power. Mixed with powerful pets it works fine for me.
Runes are melandru, sigill either the might on swap or the endurance on swap and another weapon for stacking whatever you prefer (power/condition damage/ heal rating).

I love the greatsword. I have been using it for a few months and I just can’t replace it with something else.
It has great built-in defense, great mobility and the damage is fine too, on top of that a daze to interrupt and a hard to land cripple. What else could I want.
@ Sebrent
That is what I have been running for quite a while with great succes. Melandru runes + lemongrass is such a godly combination not only because it greatly decreases the damage you get from conditions but because immobilize, stun, chill, cripple and all other nasty conditions drop off alot faster.
My greatest weakness before using this setup was getting immobilized and chain-cc’ed. Well then I died usually. Now I often get away even when 3-10 people chase me. Add in a lightning reflex to break stun or gain some distance and you are really fine.
Best gear setup in my opinion and I have been using it for quite a while.

With the new trend for +condition duration (especially since they fixed lots of the runes condition durations) you really have a problem as a ranger if you don’t have -condition duration.
And giving the conditions to my pet is not an option to me – I don’t want a dead/forever crippled pet.

Btw: Greatsword is in no way OP – it just feels so great to play it.

I think Xsorus especially means the Asuran confusion skill Pain Inverter^^
Probably they will half the confusion damage for WvW to be in line with spvp confusion damage.
And I hope they make a change to retaliation for wvw – like an ICD how often you can be hit by it.

Retaliation as it is now is ridiculous. When I throw in a barrage with my bunker build (3k Armor, 22K life) I still almost die of one barrage. That is totally crazy.
You cannot lower the damage from Retal with armor and it seems to me even dodging, blocking is useless. So you just eat the damage no matter what you do.

This really has to be changed. One good suggestion would be: You can only be hit once per second with retaliated damage.
That way retal is still a good source of damage (~400 dps) but it’s not rididulous as it is now.
Areanet, please really consider that solution and if you don’t want to implement this at least let us dodge and block retaliated damage. There has to be a way to avoid it.
Confusion is crazy too because in WvW it can hit for 4k damage but at least it’s my fault when I get hit with it because I can simply wait until it’s over or try to remove it and I won’t get hit when I’m positioning myself well in a zerg.
So please do something about retal.

From what I read it really seems to be an issue. Just a few hours ago I made a build 30/30/10/0/0 with piercing arrows, 1500 LB range, bow cooldown reductions and trap ground activation.
I wasn’t able to test alot but the first results were not as good as I wanted it to be. As you said we probably simply won’t have any way to get as many badges/WXP as other classes do.

What was weird to me: When I was running a tanky build with piercing arrows it seemed to me that with shortbow and greatsword 1 I was getting the best results.
But I was able to test it only in few situations.

The idea behind the build which I am testing now is throw traps, LB barrage them and then shoot with longbow 3/2/1. On the Longbow I use sigil of fire. I was hoping that the AoE would tag people which would probably be the best way to hit more ppl and it does good damage.

To the question if tagging is all that counts to me: No. 70% of the time I am roaming supply camps / dollys and other stuff. But when I am running around in zerg I want to contribute and get rewarded for it like others do.
And since I love my ranger playing another class is not an option. The survivability/mobilty of the ranger and the great possibilitiy to solo even upgraded 200 camps while being pretty good in 1v1 and sometimes even 1v2/3 is just too important to me.

For pets I tried the poison field devourer but pets die so fast in zergs …

With the new WvW-XP tagging as many enemies as possible in zerg fights seems to be very important.
The class that tags most enemies not only gets the most loot (most gold) but also gets rewarded with the most WvW-XP and therefore will be a higher level which helps a bit with the new skills.

When I hear that necromancers or guardians sometimes get 30+ loot bags from a 50+ person zerg I am wondering what I can do to get approximately the same amount of bags. I get alot less. For a 50 man zerg its usually 10-15 loot bags. I run a beastmaster build and use the longbow + greatsword for zerging and I don’t have penetrating shots as these are not part of my beastmaster spec.
I am willing to switch specc for zerging and then switch back to my beastmaster spec for roaming.

Anyone got some advice how a ranger can also get rewarded for zerging as other classes without dying too much (retailation)?

I like the beastmaster ranger as roamer. You + your pet can even facetank a 150 and sometimes a 200 supply camp. While you are not the fastest killer your damage is still nice and in 1v1 there is not much that can kill you. There are a few ppl who can run away but really not many if you chase them for a while. With shortbow you have your slow and stun pretty often and with greatsword you have decent mobility.
If you are a norn it is no matter what class you are playing because with the snow leopard elite no zerg will get you if you use snow leopard early enough.
I love my ranger for roaming. Often I kill dollys while 2-4 people defend it and I manage to get away.

About the engineer solo roaming I have a question: How do you cap for example a 150 supply camp without picking out single mobs (which might take too much time).
From what I have experienced with my engineer I was not able to survive the entire camp and at the same time kill them quickly. I was able before omnomberries were nerfed but now I lack the healing really.
The ranger has the huge advantage that his pets tank like crazy and the ranger himself is also a crazy bunker.
I saw a video of an ele soloing a camp and he was also using his elite for a “pet” elemental. It seems the pets offer the needed tankiness it requires to rather easily solo upgraded supply camps efficiently.

Can other classes solo a 150+ supply camp? Best I’ve done was a 200 camp. 250 Camps are crazy especially as the mobs respawn fast^^

I already posted this in Ranger forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Pet-bug-dead-on-F4/first#post1723737

Sometimes when I switch the pet with F4 during combat it will be be switched dead.
I don’t see a reason for this.
Example: Pet 1 is at 30% life I switch to Pet 2 and it is switched dead. Pet 2 wasn’t dead before I switched to Pet 1.

So: Pet 2 alive —> Switch to Pet 1 —> Switch back to Pet 2 (Pet 1 is still alive) —> Pet 2 is dead before it even gets hit.

This happened to me 8 times now so it definitely an issue. Happened only with cats until now, on jaguar and on snow leopard. I was either using jaguar/snow leopard combo or jaguar/riverdrake or snow leo/riverdrake when it happened.

This bug is very annoying really because switching a pet and having a dead pet is game breaking for a ranger for obvious reasons. Especially if you after 16 sec without pet you switch to another pet (if you are still alive til then) the switch has 45 sec CD (or 60 untraited).

/edit: Happened to river drake too just before. Often happens when one pet is almost dead and you switch it out – at least it seems it could be related to this