Guild Wars 2

Dawdler.8521:

Atherakhia.4086:

-Warring guilds can enter a 20v20 instance for GvG.
-Multiple GvG game modes including deathmatch, ctf, t&h.

So one of the main complaints is that EoTM “killed” WvW by splitting up the populations and emptying the borderlands…

How exactly would splitting it further and encourage guilds to not play WvW help?

The complaints about EotM is that it is being used for leveling alts and farming and not actual combat. It’s also rewarding players for doing this at a far greater pace than WvW is rewarding players who actually fight.

ANet also needs to start merging backwater servers so more consistent players can be found in borderlands and EB.

What we need is for ANet to stop investing all their resources in PvE and start developing WvW.

That said, how you decide to defeat these incredibly mundane boss fights is up to you. Not allowing stacking, turning on collision detection, or doing your AE cleave isn’t going to change much at all. If they didn’t want you to stack they’d introduce boss mechanics that discouraged it. Like spamming AE’s faster than you can regen dodge. Or making you jump over fights.

There are several encounters like this. Don’t blame the players for exploiting the encounter designer’s laziness.

Real class balance.
A reason for Rangers to exist.
Guilds can goto war with each other regardless of server:
-Warring guilds can enter a 20v20 instance for GvG.
-Multiple GvG game modes including deathmatch, ctf, t&h.
-Guild housing so their castles on each side of instance.
Server mergers to consolidate players.
Removal of waypoints.
Multiplayer transports and more siege to play with.
No way to hurt structures without siege
Proper rewards for WvW.
Finishers based of WvW rank.
More reasons to WvW other than sheer boredom.

At this stage in the game they don’t need to bother with leveling pets. It would have been nice if this game had some class specific quests players could do or they introduced some pet skins on the gem store though.

Just having an armored wolf or a barn owl would make me happy.

Prysin.8542:

well, i am only accounting for what the ranger brings on its own. If you are going to do calculations, then you must consider your own maximum potential before looking into what you may or may not get from others. However, yes, i agree that you could also look at base damage without might stacks and it would be a fair comparison too, just not very valid in terms of how it is ingame.
its like saying, i could deal this much damage with my sword, but i left it with a blunt edge, just to be sure i didn’t account for something i may or may not achieve.

But yes, pet DPS is imperfect, if anything, they may need a slight increase, or rather, i think their stats should be revised completely. As certain pets should function otherwise.

Like, why does my spider and devourer who obviously have poison attacks, not have atleast SOME condition damage as base stat? Why does my moa’s have 0 boon duration when boons is what they are good at?
Why does my Canines have 0 condition duration when they specialize in AOE conditions.

However, if i compare ranger DPS and warrior DPS, ranger stays ahead marginally. But if we add in conditions, warrior wins.

Right, you can’t just ignore the fact that the Ranger can provide some might and fury on their own. But the idea is that a group of 5 will bring enough might and fury that they will be stacked the whole fight so factoring them in is trivial. Vuln has the opposite problem. It has a very short duration and tends to stack early and fade off after 20 seconds or so and is never really maxed during the bulk of a fight. Plus it’s a enemy debuff as opposed to a self buff and everyone will have it. As such, it’s better to not include it in calculations either.

This leaves the raw DPS potential of each class that is only impacted by trait based damage multipliers which Guardians, Ele’s, Thieves, and Warriors each cap out higher I believe? So even if you factor in those, the Ranger is kind of at a disadvantage. This leaves really the unadjusted raw value as giving the best picture of the Ranger as most other scenarios leave it at a disadvantage.

So what is the Ranger’s base raw damage considering an optimal sw+gs or GS only build?

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

BUT, you gave me a very great idea for a trait that would give you what you want (I think) and create a very, very fun style of gameplay.

First, remove the ICD on the Skirmishing 1/3 swap traits. Then, new Grandmaster Skirmishing trait (ideally replacing Striders BS): “100% chance on crit to recharge Weapon Swap and Pet swap. 5 second ICD.”

Oh I would so use that trait – zephyr’s speed mayhem!

My issue with that trait is you kind of move the Ranger back into the problems it has had since release with condition removal—you’ve removed any hope of getting EB or SotF. It’s very hard going back to a 6/6/2 build after playing something like 6/2/0/6 for awhile.

Well that’s why you control for common variables. Once you remove things like might, vuln, and fury which are shared between everyone anyway you’re left with the much more realistic figure of 800 dps. 816,8ish. About 100 less without the crit dmg trait.

From that number it’s easy to say well the Ranger would have X stacks of might for Y% of a fight. Pet would have ~4 more on average. Everyone would have fury etc etc.

Prysin, be sure to adjust for the correct crit dmg by using the 0 column as base. It will throw off your numbers some. The table already considers base crit.

Awesome, good to finally have some math for the pet that seems well researched. Do you know if the pet has any ferocity/crit damage? Or do we assume the base (base uses the 0 column I believe which is why I ask)?

Again with your hostility… I’m simply asking you to support your wild accusations. I posted math a year ago detailing the rotational DPS for Warriors, Thieves, and Rangers and, like then, I didn’t finish parsing data for the pet to include int he calculations and I used someone else’s math.

I’m doing my best to remain calm with you despite me considering you the largest troll these forums have ever seen. I don’t consider it unreasonable for you to provide proper math to support your claims. Anecdotal evidence like you provided above isn’t enough.

Do you have anything to support your 1.4k DPS theory about pets to refute the 800dps number that people on guru throw around?

No math that I’ve seen supports that statement. The math I’ve done also doesn’t support it, but I’m using someone else’s math for the pet and I didn’t verify their numbers.

Please provide the guru thread or your math you’re basing Ranger damage is higher than Warrior damage from. The math above isn’t correct.

You should actually try playing it… Honestly, you should have tried it in PvP before you sunk anything into it.

In my opinion, things aren’t that fun, but I’m biased. I play Ranger for the bows and the bows are pretty much ‘auto attack and strafe in circles while you wait for you or your opponent to die of boredom’ weapons. The melee weapons, especially the condi oriented sword+torch/axe+dagger set is more interactive and is certainly much more viable. It’s just not why I made a Ranger and thus my bias.

You’re a ways away from that HHR. Longbow would need to nearly double to get into 1h sword territory for PvE which itself needs a 30-50% increase just to scratch the surface of Thief or Warrior.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Darox.8069:

I can’t wait for a Guangmaths post

I don’t really need to maths, I did this a while ago.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/91039-updated-dps-rankings-april-2014/

Mind sharing the math for the Ranger’s pet? That’s the one thing I never parsed and I’ve long since lost interest in the class to finish my spreadsheet

I honestly never understood the resistance to change for this weapon. You shouldn’t need a ‘work around’ to use the primary attack of a weapon regardless of how cool the animation is. Even with auto cast turned off, the skill is still highly frustrating and the locking mechanic isn’t something any other class has or needs for their weapon.

Because I mostly GvG and group roam as opposed to solo roam and PvP and the weapons fall flat in this area in my opinion. But if you want to discuss this we can move to another thread as I don’t want to sidetrack this thread away from the ‘one thing this class needs’ angle.

I keep advocating for a fast hands trait because I don’t consider LB or GS competitive (imo). Both are support weapons and unfortunately are the only 2 weapons that really work for a power build (again, imo). Unfortunately, LB requires such an enormous trait investment before it even gets close to being competitive that you leave nothing to support your offhand. This leaves the ranger needing GS to fill in the holes that LB has (burst and escaping a train) but not being able to support the weapon through traits once you swap to it. So if you don’t kill the target within seconds of swapping to the weapon, you effectively give your opponent a free 5-10 seconds to beat you while you wait for maul to come off cooldown or to swap back to LB. If you use the GS to defend yourself and escape, you’re once again left with nothing to do for 5-10 seconds because you can’t reposition and reattack on the fly.

This is why I’m such a strong advocate for the longbow needing ANY kind of burst. The weapon just doesn’t do anything. It’s a support weapon designed better at shooting someone till they’re close so you can swap and use something else. But the investment required to use LB in the first place doesn’t support this kind of playstyle.

A fast hands trait will not fix either LB or GS as both are still half a weapon individually. But the 2 weapons together actually have everything a power build needs and the only thing holding both of them back is the the dead time after you’ve used the cooldowns on each.

It just goes to show the game no longer carries interest for the people who level up alts and the grind is simply too much work. Perhaps if ANet adjusted the time and effort involved in leveling a character the problems in EotM wouldn’t be so bad.

You should be able to just do the DPS calculations for each attack for whatever class you’re looking for. Anything with a higher DPS than your auto attack will be in your rotation. Anything with less won’t be. Once you have a rotation, you can get a DPS for that and compare that value.

While it’s not a real world scenario it would give you the ballpark you’re looking for.

Simply changing LR to remove condis when pressed (I assume this is still an issue, I haven’t played my Ranger for 2 months) as opposed to the end of the roll and making it prioritize movement impairing ones over other condis would be just as good as your change imo and wouldn’t be that overpowered.

Hunter’s Shot I’d much rather see it always stealth regardless of hit (thus not needing unblockable) and with it being 100% reliable as a defensive cooldown, you probably wouldn’t even need the removal of weakness and blind on activation. You could then do what was suggested in the other thread and offer some other premium for actually landing the hit something like one of the following:

A brief immobilize
A 5 stack of vuln
A leap backward
A movement buff like Ele’s get

If I had to choose 1 single thing the Ranger class needs above everything else it would be a Fast Hands trait. I personally think this one change would at least raise power builds enough to be competetive in both PvP and WvW. Certainly not top tier like other classes, but enough to make it feel like you could actually win as opposed to an insurmountable brick wall all the time.

That all said… people shouldn’t compare skill X on class A to skill Y on class B. Just because another class has something similar and the Ranger would get more tacked onto doesn’t make the skill overpowered. It’s still in the hands of a Ranger afterall.

You need to settle down Prysin. In my post I never differentiated between F abilities or generic skills. I’d also argue no other class is really handicapped to the same degree Rangers are and I can’t imagine anyone would complain when we want to remove automated functions and put them in the hand of the players. Thieves aren’t asking for 3 more ‘F’ keys and they certainly won’t ask for a 4th if Rangers got one.

The simple fact is that the class should have as many skills as it needs to get the job done. But hey, if you want to get all emotional about it I’ll limit it to 4 keys..

#1: Attack/Recall function. Hold key to tell pet to move to target location. If pet dead, res.
#2: Use skill 1. If pet dead, res.
#3: Use skill 2. If pet dead, res.
#4: Swap. Remove your ability to swap a pet in favor of teaching your pet a shout command.

Oh yea… ‘does a little dance’… hit me… ‘does a little twirl’…

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Elementalists have more buttons… even with these additions. As for complexity, if a Hunter in WoW can manage 3x the buttons a Ranger has in GW2 I’m confident players will cope. Not to mention only one of the buttons truly add any real complexity to the class. The others are utility oriented and have limited use inside combat.

they got 4
Fire, Water, Air, Earth

Mesmers; 4 (Shatter, confusion, daze, distortion)
Guardian; 3 (Virtue of Justice, Resolve and Courage)
Necromancer; 1 (DS)
Warrior; 1 (burst)
Engineer; 4 (Kit 1,2,3,4)
Thief; 1 (steal)
Ranger; 4 (attack, F2, return, Swap)

They have 25. Technically 26 I suppose.

I’m sure a Ranger player can manage 1 or 2 additional ones thrown in. Complexity I’m not too concerned with. Balance would be my only concern with giving Rangers access to real control over 2 pet abilities. Plus the question of how to manage shouts etc.

Elementalists have more buttons… even with these additions. As for complexity, if a Hunter in WoW can manage 3x the buttons a Ranger has in GW2 I’m confident players will cope. Not to mention only one of the buttons truly add any real complexity to the class. The others are utility oriented and have limited use inside combat.

tfw fire grab does more damage than backstab

total power * (weapon min dmg + weapon max dmg / 2) * skill coefficient / target armor == base damage

Wiki assumes 916 base power and 2600 base armor.

Here are your weapons (exotic):
axe 952.5
dagger 952.5
focus 857.5
greatsword 1047.5
hammer 1048
harpoon 952.5
longbow 1000
mace 952.5
pistol 952.5
rifle 1095.5
scepter 952.5
shield 857.5
shortbow 952.5
spear 952.5
staff 1048
sword 952.5
torch 857.5
trident 952.5
warhorn 857

So for wiki backstab:
916 * 952.5 * 2.4 / 2600 == 805.30. Wiki says 806.

Wiki Firegrab:
916 * 952.5 * 2.8 / 2600 == 939.60. Wiki says 941.

Why they don’t match? Do I have wrong base power? Perhaps coefficients aren’t exactly as they appear on wiki?/shrug…. in the right ballpark though.

Option A.

For starters, there’s no reason the attack and return function can’t be on the same button. Second, why do we always work under the premise that they can’t add more buttons to control a pet? As to shouts being built into the pets, that would honestly be pretty cool. Imagine pets had an assignable skill slot and we could choose 1 shout to put there. I still feel the best approach to pet evades is to just give them a ‘take no damage from next attack’ buff every time the Ranger dodges or evades with some iCD to balance it.

But there are tons of other things pets could use that I see no problem with giving Rangers more pet keys for.

Something like:

F1: Attack and Return button.
F2: Special
F3: Secondary Special
F4: Shout skill.
F5: Move to
F6: Resurrect Pet.
F7: Pet swap.

WoW Hunters could manage it, I’m confident GW2 players could cope even if they’re trying to push for a LAS approach to classes. Granted in WoW I macro’d like all of that functionality into a single button.

As others have said, the 2.5 second cast time is simply too long. Especially if you aren’t going to allow a player to pre-cast them before engaging or if players are going to use more than one. I’m also not sure ANet has the capability to have any skill affect more than 5 players on a single cast like you mention. I don’t know about Howl but I don’t think Warhorn 4 actually affects 10 people. Perhaps it’s buffing 5 and choosing 5 different to cleanse debuffs?

As to the idea, it’s fine overall but I don’t see the need in the 2.5s cast since there’s a downtime built into the buff duration and skill cooldown. It would be one thing if you could manage 100% uptime or something, but a .5 to 1 second cast while able to move is more than fair for a 20 second buff on a 30 second cooldown imo. I also see no issue with using these out of combat because you really can’t abuse the duration any.

So you’re advocating taking 30pts in marks to run Spotter and Remorseless for a melee build? I just don’t see it working in a bow build with your changes imo. As to RtW, I can’t see picking it up if my goal was to use it with a shortbow simply because the weapon already has a snare and a daze.

But back to longbow, my issue with it is that even after you invest so heavily to bring it up to par, it’s still not a weapon that can stand on its own. With 50pts invested into using a longbow, it’s about where you’d expect any other weapon for any other class to be with 0 traits running around naked.

Part of it is horrible trait design. Part of it is the weapon itself doesn’t have any clear goal. But another part of the equation is it just doesn’t have another weapon to pair itself with like most other weapons for other classes do. As a skillset Greatsword fills in a lot of holes the longbow has, but the greatsword itself is another support weapon.

It’s not a case of ‘the sum being greater than its parts’. Neither the longbow or the greatsword can go 10 seconds without tripping over themselves. This is why a trait to reduce the weapon swap cooldown is so critical for this class imo. It would just need to be limited in some fashion because a condi trapper build running 2×2 would abuse the crap out of it.

I don’t buy into the whole ‘Rangers are great, they just have a bad rep because every Ranger is bad’. A complete moron can play a Warrior and still contribute tons of stuff to a group. The game has been out 2 years and I’ve never once heard a commander or seen a post on the WvW forum praising or complaining about a Ranger’s perceived strengths. Ever.

Is it as bad as people claim? Obviously not. But it’s not a group class. It’s a dueler. As the numbers go up the worth goes down. The issue is the decline seems to be exponential instead of linear.

Not worth the aggravation imo. While you make a very valid point and back it up with far more PvP experience then I’ll ever have (strictly GvG and WvW myself), is it really worth furthering the whole AI stereotype the class is dealing with?

I’d much rather see them find something to make the Ranger unique. How? We’ve had a whole CDI thread and more discussing that one.

The wiki assumes a base power of 915 and base armor of 2600. That’s where it’s getting the damage from

Power * Average weapon strength * coefficient / armor == damage
915 * 1000 * .9 / 2600 == 316.73 or ~317 per wiki for Long Range Shot.

The only way to increase a skills damage is by upping its coefficient to my knowledge? Other than some external multiplier like traits and such.

Traits:
Read the Wind: All ranged attacks should get the projectile speed base. Your change is ok but likely moves it into the ‘nope’ category due to the bloated nature of the tree and eagle eye being better. EE + Pierce + Spotter > Any 2 + RtW with your change imo.

Opening Strikes: Would be a bit too powerful imo. Swapping to GS to 100% chance crit with 25pts on maul for example.

Remorseless: I like what you did as it would allow controllable burst via 2x crits in a row. Class just doesn’t have enough skills to make something like that work because no single weapon has 2 burst skills to string together.

Signet of the Beastmaster: Awful on principle. Needing this trait for activated signets has always been an insult and always will be. That out of the way, it’s still a waste. People will get it for SoS or ignore it completely regardless of whatever the thing does.

Quick Draw: /shrug. Not enough to make me go out of my way for the trait. I’d still only ever get it for the cooldown reduction. It needs to make your weapon swap cooldown reduced by 50-75% if you have a bow in either hand.

Strider’s Defense: Trait is so far in the nope column I can’t imagine ever using it. Marks is a traps or nothing tree. The trait needs to give 1 bonus for melee weapons, another for ranged. I’m not a fan of RNG defense so still wouldn’t consider this trait with your changes.

Skills:
Guard: Really?
Sic ‘Em: Should be an PBAE that reveals everything around you but doesn’t put a revealed debuff on the target. Pet would then gain a ‘on next hit’ that put revealed on the target.
Protect Me: I’d use the skill like that. Probably would never give SotBM a second glance either.
S&R: I haven’t used the skill in eons. Still wouldn’t with this change.

Longbow:
#1: It has been said by numerous people numerous times. The weapon should do X from 0 – 900 and Y from 900+. Some want raw damage, others want multipliers. I couldn’t care less. Your change is fine (except 900+). Any reason behind you choosing the damage increases you did?
Wiki LRS: 915 * 1000 * 0.9 coefficient / 2600 = 317
Your LRS: 915 * 1000 * 0.929 coefficient / 2600 = 327

#2: So effectively a 15% damage increase?

#3: Should always stealth you. Should immobilize the target if you hit.

#4: Sounds good to me.

#5: I hate barrage. I’ve said this countless times so no need to rehash it. Your change obviously isn’t going to change my opinion.
Increasing the coefficient to 5.0 would give it a damage of 1759.6
increasing the damage to 1706 would give it a coefficient of 4.848

Longbow in general: You started off your post saying you didn’t want to just stand on wall all day with the weapon. You didn’t change the weapon. It’s still the same old longbow lacking any real role or purpose except now it does slightly more damage on rapid fire and barrage. You’re still on that wall.

The weapon needs a purpose. It either needs to be a power weapon (… a competitive one …) or it needs to be a support weapon (where it is currently trying to be but falls into the whole ‘rangers are duelists’ trapping). Want it to be a power weapon? It needs burst because in GW2, that’s what power weapons provide. Want it to be a support weapon? Then it needs to either compliment another weapon the class has (other than another support weapon….) or it needs to provide some AE support.

It can’t be both. Because both is what we have now. And now sucks.

Shortbow is actually a pretty good power weapon.

As to the rest?

ilr.9675:

LOL

The game is quite stale and I really wish they’d add new weapons and skills for classes to use. My only concern is the game is 2 years old and I still haven’t found a real reason for the entire Ranger class to even exist. It would be a shame to see other classes get new toys to expand on their playstyles and for Rangers only to get something to finally make them relavent.

I’m also concerned about how much worse balance will end up.

F5 – 6 second channel. Ressurect your pet.

The rest? Would be nice but highly unrealistic and not near the top of my list.

CrockyClockwork.4095:

As mentioned by others, I would also like to see that the Ranger CDI was not a total waste of people’s time. 70 pages of input including VERY thorough write-ups. Many of us still believe nothing became of the effort put in by players. Essentially all we saw was an addition of a grand master trait that allowed the longbow to actually hit targets at range.

Also, to the people still stating ranger=/=archer, ANET’s own description of ranger is “unparalleled archer." I am fine with a melee ranger, put I suggest until ANET creates a profession that IS what people consider an archer, stop with this.

Not to mention the Ready Up this entire thread is talking about very clearly stated that the Ranger should be the strongest single target ranged DPS in the game.

Chaith.8256:

Atherakhia.4086:

Rangers should be the highest single target ranged DPS in the game. That’s a high level goal. They mentioned various things for a lot of the classes.

I’d say actual design reflects Mesmer as that role. Ranger at it’s strongest (in actuality) is a condi-resistant, high evasion mid-range fighter.

Pretty far from the high level design… until Longbow is like, a must have, that high level design will pretty much never be congruent with how the Ranger plays.

They said it, not me. If it were expected to reflect reality it would have been a 7 class expose.

Rangers should be the highest single target ranged DPS in the game. That’s a high level goal. They mentioned various things for a lot of the classes.

I’ve done enough 10v10 GvG’s to know that no number of evades on a limited cooldown will stop the train from stomping a player foolish enough to bring a Ranger to a match. Just like I’ve learned it takes 2 seconds for a pet to die from just a 3 Warrior hammer train without support unless you bring a bear or drake.

So I’m sorry yours and my experience don’t mesh Fluffball, but I’m not getting into another drawn out debate for a class I’ve long since stopped playing and lost all faith in ANet ever improving.

Was a bit awkward to watch them talk about the Ranger to be honest. It was clear they were watching their words. Now that could be because they have plans for the class in the future and they don’t want it to slip, or they simply don’t know what to say.

I was especially disappointed that they didn’t go into the group utility issue much. That’s the #1 problem with the class in WvW. The pet doesn’t work, so the damage isn’t competetive, and the class brings nothing to the table so it is a waste of a slot. They mentioned our pets provide a lot of utility and so the spirits, but failed to recognize these things are nearly worthless in a true WvW setting. They obviously mentioned the water field (the only thing worth mentioning for rangers in WvW) but they grossly overestimate how valuable it is.

Was nice to hear they want the longbow to be a real option for the class though. They seemed to imply they wanted to give it some spike options which are much needed. Not expecting too much because we obviously have the pet holding us back again, but we’ll see.

Also not sure they truly appreciate how useless the high number of evades are in anything but duels. The evades aren’t adequate in larger engagements. Certainly not in zergs. Without true escape options the class is ran over just like Necros but we don’t have an effective health pool nearing 35k and strong burst and AE to dissuade it. Class kind of just gets trained and obliterated if you build to provide anything valuable or you can choose to provide next to nothing to a group but at least not die. Poor choices imo.

Didn’t hear any mention when they plan to roll out the next balance patch. They’re being yelled at quite a bit for making us wait 6 months for real change to happen so maybe we’ll hear more about the class sooner rather than later.

::Ranger::

Role: It would appear the role you have determined you want the Ranger to fill is the sustained damage role devoid of all burst or AE in exchange for high damage uptime that is both consistent and above average. I’ll say right now: you’ve failed at that and if this isn’t the role you’ve envisioned for the class then I’m completely lost as there’s simply no other vision for the class youv’e even hinted at.

What I feel the Ranger’s role should be is that of a hunter (not a WoW Hunter…). They should be the fastest class in the game (out of combat), able to cover long distances with ease, track enemy movements, and set up ambushes. Their approach to damage should be ‘death by a thousand cuts’. This doesn’t mean you leave them with nothing to do but auto attack while strafing in circles or give them near 0 access to AE or burst. It just means their primary damage should b weaker attacks in quick succession with enough burst and utility thrown in so the gameplay isn’t stagnant and boring (which it very much is right now).

The strengths of the Ranger:
It is a very strong dueling class. You’ve certainly given it enough condis, regen, and evades to make it probably the strongest dueling class in the game. When you add the pet’s damage on top of the condi coverage it just seals the deal. That’s where the strengths end. As the opponent numbers go up (and not just in a lopsided fashion, but just 2v2, 3v3, Xvx, etc) the value of the class goes down exponentially.

The weaknesses of the Ranger:
The pet is easily the largest weakness of the class. You’ve placed so much of the class’ utility in the pet and the pet remains 100% useless in anything but duels in WvW. Worse still is the limited utility the pet does provide isn’t even that great in comparison to what other classes have on offer.

Power damage has never been functional for the class. You’ve designed a game where the only damage that matters in PvP/WvW is burst, AE, or condi. You’ve given the Ranger no burst or AE and thus no way a power build will function.

Lack of raid worth. While the Ranger can certainly build itself to front line ‘zerg surf’, it does absolutely nothing but provide another body to the zerg to soak one of the 5 targets for AE while doing it. Entangle is on too long a cooldown and can’t be used while surfing because you need stability. Can’t run frost spam because you need the condi cleanse and survival skills. It has no real ‘support’ weapon like staffs and hammers of other classes.

The Ranger’s ‘kryptonite’:
Foolishly specing into a power build? It’s own pet? Thinking you’d ever pull your own weight in WvW? Or do we want to talk about which classes counter the Ranger? Mesmer comes to mind as my single toughest fight. With the lack of AE I simply can’t get a handle on the clones. With the lack of burst I can’t apply enough pressure to them to use their defensive cooldowns on my terms instead of theirs.

What is my main target:
Thief is probably the easiest fight as a Ranger. Not because the class has legitimate tools to beat them, but rather you’ve continued to allow rapid fire to track targets in stealth and Thieves almost always run full glass.

My Questions:
I very much look forward to hearing what role ANet has envisioned for this class. I very much want to hear how they feel the class has lived up to their expectations. I don’t remember who asked this prior, but it was a very good question: What is the one class you feel is best balanced in this game and why? And the least, and why?

I’d also love for ANet to answer the one thing the entire WvW community hasn’t been able to answer in 2 years… as a WvW commander, what functional role have you ever had the Ranger fill? Has anyone ever heard in teamspeak: rangers cast X like we do with things like Guardians and Empower, Warriors and Hammer stun, Mesmers and veil, Necros and wells, Eles and meteor or water (lol, I bet this is the Ranger answer…), etc etc.

Sorry about the whole ‘dripping with disdain’ vibe. I play an Ele now and actually do quite enjoy the game.

I don’t have an issue with various weapons rewarding specific types of play. My concern with longbow is the damage penalty for being at anything but max range. As it stands, if you’re not at max range, the longbow is weaker than the shortbow. At min range it’s weaker than every weapon but axe (assuming axe only hits one target).

Either make the Longbow do the same damage from 0-900 and extra damage for 900+ or make it do the same damage over all of its range and simply give it some other benefit at further range. for example… a 0/10/20% increased chance to crit depending on range.

This is largely in reference to PvP/WvW mind you. PvE I don’t even consider this to be a valid argument because of how inferior the ranged weapons are over shortsword as it is. If the damage was even remotely comparable that would be one thing. But longbow is nearly half the damage of sword iirc. Can’t justify using it in any situation outside of ranged only encounters (which few exist).

Now as for Mesmer, it’s the only class I dont have an 80 of and know nothing about.

No Carighan, that isn’t at all what I said.

Carighan.6758:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s a bit depressing how long this game came out and how far we are from a balanced product. They need to stop with the 3 to 6 month patching cycle and get these things fixed timely.

Oh, this is interesting. Considering the “Balance is subjective”-thread, how close or far are we to “balanced product”? How do you measure it? And what direction leads to a more balanced one?

When you have 8 classes with a viable role in all aspects of the game, balance will be achieved. You don’t need to give every class a way to beat every other class. But you need to at least have something for each class to provide so they aren’t useless.

For example, we have a GWEN meta for WvW right now. If you aren’t one of these 4 classes your role is relegated to that of a yak slapper. But even at that, the GWEN classes do do it too (if not better).

Same for Ranger.

Has been posted on the bug forums half a dozen times so far.

It’s a bit depressing how long this game came out and how far we are from a balanced product. They need to stop with the 3 to 6 month patching cycle and get these things fixed timely.

Crunk n monkey.3749:

Let’s just say Season/Tournaments shouldn’t happen because people complain about them.

You make it sound like their complaints aren’t justified. People complain because ANet has failed to make a balanced product after 2 years.

No was also the best answer for Season 1.

I’m justs happy it’s finally coming to an end. This season was a bigger failure than season 1 was. I hope ANet will finally take note of how terrible these servers have become and will merge some of them.

I can’t recall the last time we didn’t lose because the opposing team didn’t out number us 3:1 or simply logged on for the early morning shift.

Problem #1: Class balance. ANet has never given a [censored] about class balance in WvW. We’ve had the GWEN meta for going on 1.5 years now. I’m not sure a server has ever found a use for Rangers since the game came out. In a game with hundreds on each side, you only need 2 Mesmers per zerg. This isn’t the first game to have large scale PvP like this. Why does this one have the worst balance?

Problem #2: Population Disparity. Not just in overall population, but coverage as well. And again, ANet has ignored this issue since day one. Why aren’t servers being merged? Will the mega server approach to cloud server design make its way to WvW? Or should we just wait for GW3 before balance can be achieved?

Problem #3: Stagnation. The WvW map has changed slightly since launch, but the changes made were a failure overall. No one cares about blood lust. WXP is horrendously designed. Siege hasn’t changed. There’s still no ‘point’ or reward for WvW.

New skills personally. I don’t find the gameplay of the Ranger that dynamic or engaging. It would be nice to have more to do.

Ranger’s is bugged same way.