Guild Wars 2

Idolicious.6091:

Gelltor.3015:

Isn’t the 3rd attack where he jumps up to kick?
as in i can kinda see why you’d shouldn’t be able to roll away with one foot still in the air….

The kick is the 2nd strike in the auto-attack chain, the 3rd being the “spin” AoE sword attack.

Even still – if it is required to alter the animations to fix this issue, then so be it.

I don’t think any of us Sword Rangers would really prefer extravagant animation(s) to freedom of movement/ability to dodge. That said, I think they could fix this issue without altering the animations, anyways. ;P They have done so with other skills.

It’s not the animations it’s the mini leaps. So if you fix the problem you lose swords ability to stay on a juking strafing target. Then everyone who lacks skill would be here complaining about the DPS nerf as they no longer stayed on target on autopilot.

Quantifying expertise training damage increase.

At 30 BM
Using lynx
Bleeds go from 43 to kittenage a tic or a net increase of 17 a % increase of 39%. Thats at 30 BM. (carries 4 to 8 stacks)

Using jungle spider
poison damage goes from 84 to 119 a net increase of 35 a % increase of 41%.

At 0 BM
Lynx bleed – same as at 30 BM

spider poison – Same as 30 BM

BM should add condition damage to pets not simply power/precision

COMPASSION Training
Natural healing – heals ranger for 177 in combat I used to get 166 – 133 without compassion training.

Signet of renewal no benefit on pet

Fern hound regen –
130 without
174 with
net of 44
% increase of 33%

NaturalPortman.9562:

looks like medic ranger will be the new ranger FOTM

Wasn’t it already?

And my favorite note in the patch

•Superior Rune of Lyssa: This item now applies 5 seconds of Protection and Retaliation while on a competitive PvP map. The item’s internal cooldown has been fixed to allow rune effects to occur every 10 seconds

well that and melee pets and longbow arrow speed…..

That’s not lazy ranger it’s remote control killer mode. See you’ve found the joys of boon transfer and a nasty pet.

As an FYI when I tested boon transfer I noticed the pet gets no more than 5 second duration per application and doesn’t benefit from duration increase on boons transferred from the ranger to them under 5 seconds base. AKA a duration increased protection boon applied to the ranger lasting over 5 seconds remains 3.5 transferred to the pet. Something to consider in regards to going 30 points in nature.

Oldgrimm.8521:

i will pull out my ranger from the abyss of my bank compartment,

imagine the glory of melee pets hitting moving targets,

i smell other classes crying for more nerfs towards rangers,

i hope pets can cast skill while moving ^^ hahahahah

I suspect they changed ranges as that seems a much easier change.

Jon,

Another pet issue specific to piggies is the animation freeze stutter when picking up environmental weapons. It feels like a .5-1 sec freeze that is somewhat annoying when you are pulling a dodge roll kite maneuver to pick up the object in transit.

I realize this probably isn’t a ranger specific issue and likely applies to other classes spawning environmental weapons as well. So perhaps there are assets outside the class dev team that could work on streamlining it more.

good news on melee pets.

In a high healing build where it’s putting out 280-297 a tic plus full BM at 133 a tic plus signet for 137ish with 90-100% uptime on the regen it’s pretty good continuos healing. how getting that 100% uptime isn’t just the +33% however and a boon stripper removes it. likewise you have to fight stationary for 15 of every 30 seconds.

However in such a high heal build you are around 15-18K and 5 seconds of protection on 20% of health damage in some scenarios is certainly more valuable as it tends to come exactly when you are taking burst damage.

Atherakhia.4086:

That DAOC Scout was nerfed in like 3 months though iirc.

And yea, my favorite in Shadowbane was the xbow warrior. It was absolutely amazing. Especially with a marksmanship trait. You could fire over castle walls and kill the defenders. Shadowbane, if it was stable at launch, could have been amazing.

I don’t think Shadowbane ever got stable. Sb.exe……………., to bad.

Atherakhia.4086:

Because as much as you may want to deny it, certain trends don’t work for a reason and a pet class is one that has never worked in an MMO without first designing the whole MMO around them in the first place.

And don’t limit your experience to WoW. Many MMO’s in the past have allowed Warriors to do more than melee. Shadowbane for example had Warriors being the strongest archers outside of scouts.

And it should also be said that GW2 isn’t breaking any new ground either.

Dual dagger interupt scouts worked quite well also. Ahh good memories.

Best scout was DAOC scout at release, however. Stealth long range massive damage….No stealth detect other than the standard stealth vs stealth check….Counter assassin skills added as gank potential reduced…

Recluse.6740:

Ok, I apologize. Apparently I was just enough to the side of the Golem to get crossfire to engage. I thought you had to be further to his side to get it to stack bleeds, but apparently not. Sorry again.

nope you have a 270 degree arc to apply bleeds in.

As for proccing the flame crossfire is a 20%, I suspect the warriors dual fire which is also 20 may apply 2 at a time and simply random chance.

You can be inside the field shooting out.

Dahkeus.8243:

Seetoo.9316:

I would trade spirit mobility for that godly (not really, but still better) range on their buffs. The 1st time I saw spirits could move I thought “good for a melee ranger” but later found out thrash mobs with cleave could take em out easy.

Ultimately, the ability to move spirits is amazing, but the inability to stop moving them is crippling.

Change your trait wait @ 3.5 seconds they move. Change trait back wait @ 3.5 seconds they no longer move.

Well at least that worked @ a month ago.

So out of combat you can/could swap between mobile immobile.

Division.9618:

Durzlla.6295:

icechai.2079:

and notice how Guardians have untargetable invulnerable spirit weapons..

Which are garbage compared to spirits? they last 20s and have varrying CDs, rarely attack, and their active destroys them.

Spirits last for 60s with a 60s CD, have actives that DONT destroy them, and can buff an infinite amount of people once per 10 seconds per spirit (5 rangers with the same spirit will cause the spirits to STACK meaning if me and 5 rangers bring stone spirit we’d have 100% prot uptime assuming my fellow rangers weren’t dumb with spirit placement), another thing that spirit weapons CANT do is take shots for you, ever lose a fight because you got hit just once to many times? yeah, see those spirits you’re bagging on? i’ve saved my own leafy butt so many times by dodging behind one of those things so it’d eat a finishing blow for me and leave me to win the fight or escape (have also dove INFRONT of them before to ensure they had time to heal back up to full before dying so they’d live long enough to let me proc them again, but this doesn’t happen nearly as often).

But nope, just because they’re unkillable -that- means they must be good right? right?

Or i can have
An easily killable spirit that gives me 1 second of protection every 10 seconds(that’s the internal CD isn’t it?) and a small immobilize.

An easily killable spirit that gives me a chance to do a bit of extra burning and an AOE blind (woo… blind. )

An easily killable spirit that gives me swiftness every once in a while and a ok damage AOE.

And a spirit that slightly increases damage for a bit and has an AOE chill that’s not really that impressive.

They’re not good because they’re unkillable. They’re good because they are useful. The hammer and the shield especially. They outdo every single spirit so massively that it’s laughable.
Also about cooldowns
Because ranger spirits can die, they don’t have a guaranteed 50% uptime. The spirit sword has a 65% uptime, the hammer has a 45% uptime, and the bow + shield have a 38% uptime. All the guardian spirits have the portential to have higher uptime than ranger spirits, depending on how much AOE is thrown around.

Just to correct your numbers.

Stone Spirit base protection duration 3.5(s) – proper charachter design can result in 50% protection uptime at 35% proc rate. You become a rock of gibraltar in bunker mode. Thats effectively barkskin every 5 seconds for 5 seconds. yeah worthless talent…..

Sun Spirit – 3 tic burn and with burn stacks taking the most powerful condition damage in the stack – situationally powerful. As a single target weapon it is higher DPS on faster application for a ranger than an unimproved flame trap (You and pet stack 3 tics)- plus a blind.

Swiftness spirit – Umm you can get practically perma swiftness uptime so long as you are in combat with something to hit…. This spirits bene is always up depending on spec.

+5% DPS in +10% bursts available on every attack of those with the passive or +3.5% DPS in +10% bursts on every attack. – running with a punch of power crit bursters it’s good.

Survivability is 100% accurate making your spirits mobile is a penalty. Hiding them in a stationary manner at say nodes, currenlty viable. For now they are viable partly because everyone seems to ignore them. If more started running at 50% protection uptime choosing their DPS spirit whether they were with condition or power crit monkeys people might stop ignoring them.

I had always used stone unspecced occasionaly. Based on Durzlla’s posts I did a 20 point spirit condition bunker build. It was a freaking rock and a half properly armored(Using 20 points let me armor for better set consistency). I frustrated a thief so much he started attacking my pet which had 70% protection uptime his 3.5 seconds plus 3 transfered from me perpetually and couldn’t dent piggie either.

Until people start targetting well placed spirits, it is viable to use spirits in sPvP, TPvP. They could be improved. Making them mobile is an effective penalty. It should be spirit stealth….. So only random luck aoe gets them;).

Luriyu.6873:

actually…

there’s currently 1 general accepted meta-build for PvP (with slight variation) which is the trapper ranger ( i don’t go full trapper for use of maximizing bleeds and survival via sharpening stone and spike trap), with a list of competitive pets (cat’s, dogs, hawk, raven). but using it you’ll have trouble against anyone who can reliably clear away conditions (i’m looking at you bunker guardians and d/d tanky elementalists).

It’s funny but I’ve noticed a diversification in pvp rangers away from trap builds based on the informal experience of what I’m seeing in Tpvp.

Rangers have viable tank builds…. Most dificulty is creating a legolas archetype that pwns in tpvp. In some ways that’s the rub for people that choose a legolas archetype class.

Durzlla.6295:

Arrys.7145:

OK at 30 I have to ask is removing poison blind on dodge that helpful;). Suicide mobile spirits shouldn’t be a trait but a penalty generally speaking.

If anything i can see them making them follow us default and have to trait to keep them still lol, THAT’LL be the day i table flip and punch my roommate in the face…

Agreed that would be horrible……….

OK at 30 I have to ask is removing poison blind on dodge that helpful;). Suicide mobile spirits shouldn’t be a trait but a penalty generally speaking.

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Am I missing something? Stone spirit’s Protection only lasts 1s so unless it doesn’t have an ICD I don’t understand how it can be that useful.

Tooltip is wrong, it lasts 3seconds, or 4.5 seconds with 45% boon duration (yes that math is wrong but it still does it, don’t question a good thing lol) which makes it A LOT better then the tooltip says it is.

Swiftness is also 7seconds pre boon duration buff, sun is 3s burning prior to condi damage, and then frost is just always 10% but has no ICD.

This games tool tip situation is highly frtustrating. At +45% I’ve actually seen CD’s on my protection buff over 5 seconds. AKA 5 for a few milliseconds before hitting 4. Which actually does match the math of a 3.5 second duration base.

Meanwhile I know you are seeing the 4.5 timeframe.

The functional question I have is server side are we getting the full 5 or not with communications lag simply accounting for the display discrepancies.

Durzlla.6295:

Arrys.7145:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Dahkeus.8243:

Are you talking PvE or PvP?

Does anyone actually run spirits in any form of sPvP? I’m completely serious with this question. And WvW does count as PvP to me.

I do, even in builds I don’t have nature magic in, then again I hide my spirits in out of the way areas so they’re either not seen or they have to get off my point to kill them, unless their ranged in which case fighting on a point immediately goes into my favor being able to Melee them and reflect their projectiles…

I have rarely as well. Generally It’s stone spirit in builds I’ve forsaken toughness and swapping to it once I’m in a larger force defensive/offensive situation. It’s really all about placement and getting to nodes with favorable placement spots. If I’m using stone it also means I’ve buffed my protection duration substantially and probably have lower toughness in the build.

I almost always have stone and as such have significant armor (3k) amounts with an additional 33.3% less damage which just makes me really hard to bring down, especially if my stone spirit is somewhere they can’t easily get to, or you kno, if they’re dumb and kill it in Melee range and eat a 4second immob (initial activation + death activation)

Hmm hadn’t thought of the dual activation potential. I’m normally in spirit at most 10-15 points.

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Dahkeus.8243:

Are you talking PvE or PvP?

Does anyone actually run spirits in any form of sPvP? I’m completely serious with this question. And WvW does count as PvP to me.

I do, even in builds I don’t have nature magic in, then again I hide my spirits in out of the way areas so they’re either not seen or they have to get off my point to kill them, unless their ranged in which case fighting on a point immediately goes into my favor being able to Melee them and reflect their projectiles…

I have rarely as well. Generally It’s stone spirit in builds I’ve forsaken toughness and swapping to it once I’m in a larger force defensive/offensive situation. It’s really all about placement and getting to nodes with favorable placement spots. If I’m using stone it also means I’ve buffed my protection duration substantially and probably have lower toughness in the build.

promurphy.2761:

If you knew what the Devs had planned for the Ranger… would you feel better?

I’m sure the developers don’t want to start an argument or what have you until changes are MADE. But I’d personally love to know what the developers are thinking may be potential fixes to our problems. Even if they say, “We won’t get to this until 2 months.” It would still make me stay on my Ranger, knowing that there will be fixes someday.

All this silence just makes me want to reroll or play another game.

Am I alone in thinking like this? I’m really frustrated and feeling lackluster about the state of things.

They tried to communicate with us like adults. They were rewarded with a childish backlash to everyone not getting their dreams despite their outreach clearly indicatting it would be an ongoing process.

They would be foolish to attempt to communicate proactively with us again.

The perception of an unfulfilled promise is far more harmful to retention than an unmet hope.

Durzlla.6295:

Arrys.7145:

Or we could just have him pulse the current active pets condition/boon benefit.

Spirit of the Beast

Confusion drake confusion, cat bleeding or frost or might, spider – their f2 options sans the stun……

Ok that would be OP flexibility…

That would be amazing… But I could see that quickly becoming OP lol

Ok your proc but pull the active from the pet’s f2. – AOE immobilize, AOE confusion, AOE stun, AOE bleed, AOE freeze, AOE etc….

Honestly due to the 10 second ICD on 3 spirits I find no functional benefit between 35% proc chance and 50%. On the frost spirit it makes it a 5% damage boost from 3.5% however.

In a pvp context the spirits applying their short AOE on getting killed does mean there is a modest penalty for killing them at melee. Blind imobilize plus snare damage etc… It also I believe may trigger the aoe when they expire based on posts by some who use them. Which for the elite spirit could mean an aoe raise condition removal on expiration and affecting a larger area.

AOE benefits IMHO are superior with the proc chance adjustments and considering atk speed and ICD effect.

Or we could just have him pulse the current active pets condition/boon benefit.

Spirit of the Beast

Confusion drake confusion, cat bleeding or frost or might, spider – their f2 options sans the stun……

Ok that would be OP flexibility…

CRrabbit.1284:

OK, just tried it, it does give wonderful survivability, but it also takes forever to kill someone.
Main problem is the axe, its damage/pace is just too low for pvp. (GS is OK but you can’t mainly rely on it) Shortbow is still the must-have weapon for ranger (except 1v1 situation), so sad ……

Yeah getting damage plus support ability is a big challenge. Perhaps something like this.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBHhx+1IRVmdXlcFolgYpQQ7vpQTm/poVs3VYUX80eTA;TwAgyCmoAycj4GLQOgkAt8YEweh5CA

Damage is from bleeding condition damage + fire. (I don’t usually play condition so haven’t tested this concept yet.)

Support
Fury warhorn and Moa
AOE vigor 2 sources (Healing spring tic’s and swapping to the Moa) active dodge boost
Protection from the stone spirit, every 30 seconds from armor runes(also critically early in the fight – duration bonused to +20% duration + 30% with axe birds
10 Seconds of +175 power and condition from Jungle stalker
+70 Precision allies

Healing
Healing spring plus leaps into the healing spring or ally blast finishers in it.
Regeneration (AOE potential) from healing Spring (Bonused to +33% +20% + 10% duration = +66% duration)

Condition removal
Healing Spring
Spirit of Nature

Damage – stack bleeding fast (Bleeding duration increased 35%)
Sharpening stone at 75% health
Sharpening Stone
Bleed trap
Splitblade at pointblank 5 stacks
7 seconds bleeding on swapping to the sword.

Defensive damage – thief deterrent
Torch flame field

The jungle stalker is a DPS pet.

Assuming a bit of your survival potential comes from your allies but this should let you put out bleed damage plus your aoe buffing. relies more on active defense dodge well used sword 1 hand etc…

I’ld test it with different amulet systems – shaman, Carrion, and rabid

Based on stun break needs as well as condition removal could seriously consider swapping out the active sharpening stone for signet of renewal.

Swords survivability benefit is on demand evade. So as you learn enemies animations I think it becomes more effective defensively. It’s evades can also be used on demand without having to hit targets to go through a chain. kittenhat guy 1200 units away is teeing me up 2 or 3 works with sword. GS uses it’s 4 on a much longer cd.

For pile fights Advantage GS I think. For 1v1’s probably sword.

jazzllanna.1278:

burning does not stack it increases duration

Yep and I think for DPS frost would definitely be better in groups for that. The lack of an internal CD that enables multiple +10% attacks to occur in sequence.

Sun assuming the ranger is a condition build is probably better when the ranger is out in PvE as the ranger applies 3 seconds of burning each 10 seconds along with the pet applying 3 seconds. Although pets low fixed condition damage makes their stack less impressive. In a condition build test I was putting out 1800+ damage on a single target plus the pet doing somewhere over 600. I don’t do 36,000 damage in 10 seconds so sun would be preferred for PvE solo work I think. (minus those pesky immune to fire damage targets). Essentially sun spirit gives you a single target unimproved flame trap of damage on a slightly faster CD + some extra pet damage from the same.

CRrabbit.1284:

Arrys.7145:

Essentially you can get better with armor runes.

Are you talking about rune of earth ? I used to think about it, but finally decide to go for centaur since it can give perma swiftness not only to ranger self but also team. (it’s protection vs mobility , self vs team boon, so I choose swiftness)

Arrys.7145:

Your utilities are rational to a power damage build.

I guess you mean QZ? My opinion is QZ is 1/2 offensive 1/2 defensive depending on situation. I know signet which give inv is the best defensive utility but I don’t want to waste 30 on Marksman. Muddy in my oppinion is the best value utility skill ranger has due to its super long duration.

I ended up using grove as I was in a signet build and the extra healing stat benefitted the pet heal. It’s protection boon also lasts 1 second longer than earth of which I used 2 runes in the build. But yes primary benefit is solo, if you aren’t built to extend protection(Likely other beneficiaries) you end up getting around 30% protection uptime from a stone spirit if it’s placed to survive and not being protected for 7 of every 10 seconds is functionally different from 5 of every 10). And give up a utility vs pet slot to do it.

CRrabbit.1284:

Thanks for correction, checked wiki, it’s bugged, only 3 sec instead of 10 sec in tooltip.
Then it’s not worth it. But Red Moa is still a good buy. Maybe 2nd pet switch to something else. (maybe white Moa for AOE chills)

Arrys.7145:

MOA protection buff is 4 seconds……

Tooltip used to be 10, last major patch they corrected it to the actual which is 3 my memory was off. Essentially you can get better with armor runes.

Soldier + Knight (Or a precision stone does work well). Your utilities are rational to a power damage build.

The only way I’ve found to get significant protection uptime on a ranger is stone spirit and armor runes to maximize protection duration. You can get 30 seconds of every 65 from a stone spirit but it doesn’t work well open field. That is if you have time to stash the spirit where the enemy won’t notice it (stationary defense or planned assault on stationary defense) it works great. Otherwise you probably save the CD. But that takes a utility slot to accomplish.

I’ve never ran with the fury moa in pvP so how well it works I won’t comment on.

Also check if the trait to extend pet boon duration is working. Seem to recall it wasn’t when I tested it or perhaps it was only extending the boon on the pet. Remember rejecting the thought of using it but not exact reason after I tested.

MOA protection buff is 4 seconds……

I just hope it means they were working on pet attack animation delay…

Durzlla.6295:

nldixon.8514:

Durzlla.6295:

blud.8174:

Arrys.7145:

Taym.8326:

racta.4250:

HOLD ON!!!!!

They actually stealth fixed “Opening Strikes”

It works at all ranges now AND works with all long bow abilities.

Thats actually a really really nice fix for longbow. Starting a fight with 20% vulnerability on people, I’ve been blowing them up!

Check for more stealth fixes imo

The lizard pets now properly apply it too, that is an unexpected change. It also no longer disappears on missed hits, so you are promised a 10 stack of vulnerability. Thats fairly huge.

Does the quick math. 10% endurance full, + 10% FLanking, +10% thief armor runes also flanking, 20% penetration + 5% weapon damage, (10% spirit 35% of time) = 165% damage potential to open a fight pre crit? 145% not flanking 135% reliably…..

OMG……….

Can someone explain this to me? Opening strike gives 5 stacks of vulnerability, each stack is 1% so that’s 5%, right? I’m not following the bonuses listed here…

You AND the pet put up 5 stacks, then there’s hunters shot which is 20% total, plus all of his other bonuses plus his force signet and then if you got 25+ points in marks its a guaranteed crit for you and pet on opening… Lets just say I have a strong feeling rangers are gonna have some OP as hell burst builds coming in soon…

How? It didn’t work as a burst ability before, it’s still not going to work now. The only change was that Opening Strike actually works past 600 units now (or was it 900 units?). It’s still working exactly as it did before, it just works at longer range.

It sounds good, it’s just (still) not that great of a solo ability.

Now, in a group situation it’s pretty nice. Increasing damage from everyone by 20% nearly instantly is pretty huge. The only real flaw is that if there is anybody else also building for vulnerability, you’re both rendered slightly less effective, since it only stacks to 25.

Dealing up to 170% damage from 1500 yds, yup, that won’t be jumped on pretty quickly!

PS: frost spirit actually has no ICD, so you trait that to 50% chance per shot and you got some mean damage!!

Even at 35% you can get 3 and 4 shots +10% damage in a row. It may only be +3.5% cumulative damage over time but string together 35% chances and that could make one happy.

You can literally do a 30,25,0,0,15.

being able to open at max range and inflict your vulnerability means outside the range of steals and pulls which was a huge vulnerability to LB sniper builds. If you waited to get your damage debuffs you’ld get pulled and stolen to. Now you can open at max range KB and KD. Not sure I can see a way to get 20 in Nature to get the 50% but I’ld prefer the pet swap + pet stats enhancement anyways. And the flanking arc is rather large.

Taym.8326:

racta.4250:

HOLD ON!!!!!

They actually stealth fixed “Opening Strikes”

It works at all ranges now AND works with all long bow abilities.

Thats actually a really really nice fix for longbow. Starting a fight with 20% vulnerability on people, I’ve been blowing them up!

Check for more stealth fixes imo

The lizard pets now properly apply it too, that is an unexpected change. It also no longer disappears on missed hits, so you are promised a 10 stack of vulnerability. Thats fairly huge.

Does the quick math. 10% endurance full, + 10% FLanking, +10% thief armor runes also flanking, 20% penetration + 5% weapon damage, (10% spirit 35% of time) = 165% damage potential to open a fight pre crit? 145% not flanking 135% reliably…..

OMG……….

Even more annoyingly, the tooltip screen incorrectly reflects benefit from stats of the ranger to pets damage charachteristics.

I think they may be working on it however as last patch agony and condition etc showed up on the pet screen.

It also IMHO is tied into the problems with entangling not scaling with condition damage.

Might on the pet improves their damage and beastmastery and MB attribute bonus does.

The pigs 3 second KD and durability aren’t bad traits either if you want to free a few points from BM to try something else. And since pigs rely on your traits applied to using their forageable that can be handy.

In point defense you can also stack up to two available items just make sure you know which will expend it’s 30 second timer first.

awe extender.1908:

Hi fellow rangers

The holidays are soon over us, and hopefully a new and better patch for us rangers. I’m sure we are on Santa’s good list. We deserve a nice present :-)

I thought we all could list 3 things we would like to have in the new patch ( or any patch in the future). I know a lot of issues have been discussed in other threads, but here is chance to keep it short and simple. Make a list of the 3 MOST important changes / fixes you really wish for your ranger. PLEASE do this on a serious and constructive matter. NO unrealistic suggestion like a 50% dmg buff . 3 things that would make your time as a ranger more fun and enjoyable. Suggestions that Anet hopefully will implement someday. Also make an effort to read previous replies to avoid duplicates and similar suggestions.
Cheers!

Here’s mine golden 3:

- Increase trap (cast)range to 1,200.
- Pet immune for 3 seconds when player dodges.
- Spirits have a 100% chance to grant benefits.

Spirit issue is not the proc chance but the ICD between procs, boon limit and survivability. I literally ran with 50% uptime on Protection at 35% proc chance.

30% – available on armor runes(45% actually but I’ld rather have another 4 second proc early in fight) +15% going to transfer an additional 3 second to pet. 6 procs over 60 seconds with buff reading over 5 seconds on display. That’s alot of protection uptime with all our evades and dodges to fill downtime gaps.

Passive buff limitation, survivability, possibly modest ICD adjustment and condensing traits, would be my spirit list. Proc chance really isn’t a problem when you attack twice a second.

NaturalPortman.9562:

mamourrir.9641:

Is there anybod who uses a build focused around axe offhand ? I’d like to know lol

I don’t theres an exact build focused on axe offhand, the only thing I can really think of is getting the 10% damage for having axe mainhand trait and maybe think of using the potential of the whirl finisher combo.

Theres a few things I want to test with it but yeah other than Off hand CD reduction and axe MH there isn’t anything obvious to it.

Might be a decent bleed or might on pet stacker on crit But I havent tested those specific combos in a crit build with proper rune choices under large scale enemy fire. Who knows maybe another way to stack might quickly on our pet. Might have to test that.

It works well with combo fields and rangers have acess to a good number of those.

If you run a 15K HP build the protection boon may be worth it. Easy way to tell check your damage logs after fights and see how often you get hit with whatever 20% of your HP is.

Regen is worth it if you use healing spring certain armor runes certain other traits.

Healing spring on death I tested a few runs didn’t find useful scrapped it quickly.

Vitality to power – depends on amulet much like protection. Knights amulet builds in particular.

Forzani.2584:

Arrys.7145:

Razr naga use the mouse thumb:). Profit.

Yea ? Do you have your 5 attacks on the side of the mouse ? It sounds fantastic in theory. How hard is it to train yourself to use it ?

took me maybe two hours in SWTOR to get it down although most of that was adapting from a trackball I liked to use for spin turns in FPS’ games. Gives you a full 12 keys on the side of the mouse. Was an absolute must use in SWTOR with all it’s hotkeys.

I actually hotkey 5 attacks plus heal and stun break to the mouse.

other 2 utilities and elite on 2,3,4

movement to esdf etc..(Opens more hotkeys on the keyboard).

Razr naga use the mouse thumb:). Profit.

Electro.4173:

Is there actual testing to support this, or is it just assumption?

I was under the impression that spirits were exempt from the buff limit.

I tested in HOTM by the portal so I could have a mass of player bodies. All you have to do is check the passive buffs. Move to the far side of the clump of players but well within range and watch your buffs drop click aorund notice a buff here or there and if you stack the pets on top of themselves on them.

Agadar.4931:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

The 1h sword is a great weopan. It can hit up to 3 targets and it cripples. Any ranger attemping to use a 1h sword should without exeption take auto attack off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbNuv4T8J1I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ5f7iEEFZc&feature=plcp

Ranger should learn to master this weopan without auto attack.

Just beucase other class dont have to remove auto attack isnt a reason for a ranger not to remove it.

Nobody should learn how to master a weapon without auto attack just to make it viable. That is logically flawed.

Heaven forbid I also disable auto target…

Telegraph.7509:

NaturalPortman.9562:

Telegraph.7509:

Agadar.4931:

I’m not entirely grasping where you manage to get an ethereal field from. Could you elaborate? It definately sounds interesting considering off-hand axe is part of my standard weapon set-up.

One of the possible foraged weapon from the warthog is the “gunk”, which allows you to throw it and inflict random condition on enemies in the area. It’s like a half-baked chaos storm, and comes with an ethereal field of around 5 seconds in its area of effect.

its too random though, your better off swapping to warthog when your out of combat until you get gunk and just run around with it

Yeah, it’s not something to be relied on – kind of like our version of the Engi’s Toss Elixir U. The other two possible outcomes are not too bad, however. Also, unfortunately the gunk appears to be biodegradable, so it doesn’t last very long in your hands.

Going off a tangent, pigs are really fun (I am running with a warthog and siamoth right now), even with all of the randomness. The problem that I have ran into is that the F2 skill sometimes does not activate properly, especially when the pet is in the middle of something. I don’t mind having to pick it up and use it when you prepare for it, but pressing it a couple of times and have nothing happen is annoying. Not sure if anybody else has ran into this issue.

The 2 major issues I have with activation. Right after the switch you need to delay @ 1 second. The second while running with the pet beside you if you trigger it while the pets at a full run it seems to bork most times.

If you wait for the pet to hit the target or pull up briefly then it’s reliable.

nldixon.8514:

Durzlla.6295:

You guys are using the whirl wrong…. You need to use it either A) with a combo field (an ethereal field + whirling defense = up to 15 stacks of confusion, yup, that skill sucks rolls eyes) it’s reason for being such a long channel is because you reflect ALL projectiles during that time, it used to also reflect skills like the warhorn, but I don’t think it does anymore, needs testing though.

If path I scars worked like the chieftains I would have a very hard time not going axe/axe…. A VERY hard time…

PS: take a warthog with Axe offhand they synergies AMAZINGLY well.

Did they ever fix the combo field with OH axe? Because last time I used it was buggy and didn’t work half the time.

[Edit: Also, are you referring to the ethereal field you can create from foraged items? Or is there some other reason it’s good with a porcine pet?]

yes it shoots a bolt out each cardinal direction as well as each half cardinal whether you are being shot or not.

It seems to apply the passive spirit buff by radius. So if you seperate your spirits and create a ven diagram using 3 or double sides using 2 you can band aid the negative impact by keeping the pets two far apart to steal each others passive while creating a multi buff window between them.

Annoying bugging it whenever I log on in game.

Burst was probably the bird you ignored or quite possibly two ravens. unloadfing the first then the second into you while you were distracted by our 1h sword dance.

It’s 1 skill is a 3 chain pretty much sticks to you. 2 is a leap back then leap into you(evades), 3 is a zig around you(evades) and poison. Dagger offhand adds another evade.

every time we swap pets we get a 2 second haste us plus pet plus he quite possibly used our survival haste. It could be one of several build variants.

The sword does decent damage but it’s the pets that unload on you.

Pendleton.6385:

Thanks Drasleona!

All the utility spirits work based on you attacking.

Frost spirit +10% damage has 0 ICD it can proc multiple times in a row. You can verify this by going to HOTM purchasing a steady weapon from bag 3 of the weapons vendor detraiting everything and stripping armor and beating on a golem while watching your combat log. Easier to test with a weapon that doens’t ahve multiple 1 attacks. I prefer SB.

The elite pet you cast and it procs it’s heal hit the button again to activate it’s raise condition removal AOE. It has a 30 second cd on it’s active lasts for 60 seconds traited procs on death. Die at it’s feat having hit your hotkey just before death.

That the underlying passive buff is only applying to 5 targets is accurate and the spirits if stacked on top of each other seem to always take 3 of those slots. This is a huge problem. It seems to be based on proximity with the 5 closest targets getting the passive buff. This is highly unfortunate due to their survivability as well as the fact the spirits themselves by virtue of never attacking have zero chance to proc the buffs. It definitely needs to be fixed bug it in game. However as it clearly seems proximity base placing them in a horseshoe in PvE should compensate some. AKA place 1 @ 600 units behind the targets to be buffed one on a left diagonal and right diagonal as well. Clearly this isnt’t very practical but it places the people in the center of the horsehoe potentially closer to each spirit individually a ven diagram sort of. They also annoyingly don’t place predictably. But it does let you keep them from stacking on each other. 2 would be easier.

Some people will tell you that all the passive buffs are linked and that when 1 person procs the boon other people are tied to their CD for that boon. Based on testing with my pet this is false. With no boon sharing was able to get both protection and swiftness procs up at the same time on me and pet. Just turn of autotargetting and beat on the lined up army of golems while your pet also goes to town and is your target. you’ll see it as well.

One of the interesting things I noticed is the minor trait Fortifying bond only seems to share a maximum of @5 seconds of additional boon duration from the ranger. The transer duration also doesn’t seem to be effected by + stacking on the ranger when initial boon is under 5 seconds. i.e. the stone spirits 3 second protection buff when boosted +70% remains a 3 second transfer to your pet(assuming rendering of duration is accurate anyways.)

That passive stacking is annoying bugging nightly.

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, it’s the same story with a jaguar. You can do some big complicated CC event or just hit F2 while you pop your cooldowns.

A moving target moves away from a stealthed jaguar as well….Stealth doesn’t increase the range of attacks or anything afterall. Not that stealthed jaguars aren’t good they just also aren’t automatic damage on a well played juking charachter.

Natures Bounty applies to regeneration boons.

Troll ungeunt is not a boon.

So no not a bug.

Durzlla.6295:

@Arrys yeah I either pair axe with my sword (most common because dagger doesn’t allow me to take advantage of my ice field as much which ruins a lot of people’s builds I’ve noticed) or ill go double axe with a power build for aoe damage out the kitten.

And one thing I will say about whirling defense it may not e a god send against good players, but it completely ruins most phantasms and thieves guild, not to mention enemy rangers who run a lightning drake, the goal is to use the skill when it’s to late for them to turn back (IE while its in mid air, or on a multi hit like unload).

And having a leap, projectile, whirl, and blast(as soon as drakes work again) not to mention the combo fields we can lay down (poison, frost, fire, ethereal are all available with one build) makes it so you can pull out tricks that people don’t think rangers can normally do, pair that with condition duration (or hell just take runes of the elementalist for all the burning and frost increase) and you’ll force people to play your game on your terms.

Nothing’s better then watching a thief butcher themselves on your chaos armor + whirling defense as you pummel them with confusion stacks!

Build that attracted me to ranger was what I considered a fire and ice build using the combo’s and sword/axe plus broken drakes blast which I didn’t know was broken at the time. I’ve just never reverse engineered it back to my aquired understanding of making rangers survivable as it wasn’t that good in a DPS mode. Might have to do that. I love frost traps particularly on mesmers….And particularly because one needen’t improve condition damage to get full benefit from them.

Do we have a source for ethereal field asside from randomized gunk? Don’t think I’ve found one.

In most builds particularly DPS – with the group not solo IMHO.

If you build tanky you can do some solo work but you won’t kill lightning quick most times.

be flexible to changing secondary weapon sets over your traited primary. offhand axe is great but against a team of guardians necro’s and a likely bomb dropping engineer I’m not using it. On map 3 I’m not using it positioning options to entice people to shoot at me are minimal but if I ever see a team of rangers and thieves that far I’ll consider it….

If I get into a match and notice the entire enemy team is relying on ranged bows rifles well heck I may switch to offhand axe as a secondary(particularly since I’m rarely in a condition build of any type).

And Durzlla we have other projectile finishers at 100% axe 4 is the only offhand one however which may be what you meant as sword axe combos give us accees to leap projectile and whirl in a single weapon set.

I don’t know that we really have 1 build to rule them all. We have builds that are strong at XY and or Z with vulnerabilities A B and/or c and being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and playing to them is pretty much what you need to do. Of course if you are pugging hotjoin it’s somewhat dificult to be assured your team makes doing that feasible.

OGDeadHead.8326:

nldixon.8514:

If your pet cooperates, bursting on a Ranger is actually very easy. Also, if you build for it, drakes can unleash an unholy amount of damage in a couple seconds by themselves.

Good luck getting your drakes to land their specials in spvp. Not even in when you’re in melee range swapping to a drake and instantly use its F2 ability (under quickness), you can be sure to land its attack. They simply take to much time to get their special attack out.

We do have immobilizes, and classes in tpvp often sit on defined areas to prevent cap flipping. (assuming you use lightning and not the cone.). Lightning really isn’t hard to get off if you choose the right anchor.

Now in an open field wvw fight…..