Guild Wars 2

Durzlla.6295:

Vox Hollow.2736:

You can certainly look at the mechanics with that kid in a candy store feeling of ‘and this one’s a fear, and this one’s an immobilize, and this one’s a heal’ and rationalize to yourself how surely that’s all so much better than a little bit of deeps.

But when you get right down to it neither PvE nor PvP make the most of that variety, and there really isn’t much a pet is doing to deliver those skills to the playingfeild that an AOE couldn’t do without half the fuss. So even though something like your bow popping down a fire field seems limited and simple; it’s also very relevant, flexible and consistent.

My straight-out-of-the-box Ranger Pet sounds so powerful in writing, but in practice, I’d easily consider the profession mechanics of other classes I’ve played more sincerely useful.

The only reason those fears and immobilizes are not powerful right out of the box is due to the F2 being unresponsive. And unlike most other profs our mechanic is not only 3 other skills (excluding auto attack) but is also a DPS split and an Agro split, which is a major strength. If we get stunned, or weakened or chilled etc part of our damage is unaffected, not to mention the pet can intercept attacks like bolas, and bulls rush etc etc.

I’d argue we have the strongest mechanic in the game apart from maybe necromancers second health bar + 5 skills

If the pet provided a DPS increase I’d agree. But we have a handicap in place to account for the pets DPS that is only balanced when using a pure DPS pet with 100% uptime. In every other scenario it’s a DPS loss. And those other scenarios (anything but PvP) account for a sizeable part of the game.

Pet responsiveness in WvW only gets the pets to the point where we can ignore them completely and expect their F2 ability to go off when pressed while the pet is sitting idle at our side. A mechanic that truly compliments the Ranger’s playstyle that is dependable and effective? Long ways off from that unless you stick to dueling, roaming, and PvP.

The OP has a point. The restrictions on transfers should have been communicated in game. I don’t know if they are or aren’t, mind you. But if they aren’t, ANet should offer refunds and/or remove the restriction.

I realize it was communicated well in advance online but people need to realize the people who actually read the forums and blog posts are a very vocal minority of the actual playerbase.

Shame on ANet if they didn’t communicate this ingame.

She completely mishandled the Ranger thread in the first place. How much actual value the whole process served will take months or even a year to figure out. I’m not expecting much considering the overwhelming majority of time spent discussing anything in that thread was spent on ways to trivialize/remove the pet as opposed to focusing on actual areas that needed improvement.

Stealth is a problem but the absolute last thing that’s needed is to give anything more to the Warrior class at all. If you want more ways to counter stealth give them to classes that are currently underperforming in areas where stealth is a real problem.

Rangers, Mesmers, and Eles for example.

oZii.2864:

Atherakhia.4086:

Gulesave.5073:

They read pretty much everything, as has been pointed out many times. It’s posting that they don’t do often, and that’s as it should be.

These forums are not a direct customer-service line to the development staff. They have work to do, and don’t owe us direct answers to all our petty questions. We are not entitled to have them publicly agree or argue with us over all the details of their work.

But the sPvP forums are? They don’t seem to have any trouble interacting with the playerbase over there.

Not sure why you would want glory/rank/reward discussion or changes posted in this forum. The last 2 topics I seen them talk about in just sPvP was perplexity runes, decap engi, pistol whip don’t really see a problem with posts in that forum about those things.

You missed the point. Players raise concerns and ANet responds to those concerns and have actual dialog and debate with the players on the sPvP forums. Changes are coming and ANet jumps through hoops to go over those changes in exacting detail with the players on the sPvP forum.

We have a Ranger CDI thread and only Allie could be bothered to respond to it? And even she shows an enormous lack of interest in covering it?

There’s a great disparity between the amount of feedback and interaction player’s receive outside of the sPvP forums and it’s starting to show in other areas of the game and how very little real progress is ever made.

jcbroe.4329:

@Atherakhia.4086;

I have to ask, do either of those actively use their class mechanic in a fight? I don’t know the warrior build, I’ve never seen nor played it because I mainly PvP, but I can imagine it isn’t using both of it’s burst skills on cooldown the way a HamBow warrior does. I know the thief in that build basically never uses steal unless it’s as a gap closer, but the build I was referring to uses Steal almost on cooldown for a damage rotation every ~20 seconds.

Now, maybe I’m inferring here, but I think the point you’re trying to drive home isn’t necessarily that those classes don’t have to invest into their mechanic to have a useful mechanic, but that those classes don’t have to invest into their mechanic to have a viable build.

If that is the case, I completely agree with you, and the sentiment that rangers are much, much more reliant on their class mechanic than every other classes except maybe necros for sustain through Death Shroud, and even then, rangers are probably still the winners.

In the same sense as HamBow, by allowing you to swap between weapons and use each burst skill back to back, no. But that’s the specialization I’m talking about. Without burst mastery, the burst skills still work exceptionally well. The above 2 builds I mentioned work great with the typical Hammer+GS or Hammer+Sw/Horn.

Thief build is the same thing. Steal is functionally useful as a gap closer, but the utility skills you receive are also exceptionally strong without any trait investment. That build I mentioned is what a lot of D/D Thieves run. It’s also what Yishis runs I do believe. Chances are any Thief is going to use steal every cooldown regardless of spec. Especially if they’re against something like a Guardian, Ranger, Warrior, or Necro.

Can the same be said about the Rangers pet? That without investment it provides equally useful utility/value to the class as any other mechanic (save engineers)? That’s the point I think the other posters were trying to make… it really doesn’t. And that’s the point I was trying to drive home as well. Chrispy was implying that a Ranger shouldn’t be asking for a viable pet if they don’t invest in it. I’m asking why not? Every other class has a viable mechanic before they’ve invested in it.

And I also want to appologize for extending this pet debate further. I honestly consider the pet to be the least of this class’ problems when it comes to WvW.

Gulesave.5073:

They read pretty much everything, as has been pointed out many times. It’s posting that they don’t do often, and that’s as it should be.

These forums are not a direct customer-service line to the development staff. They have work to do, and don’t owe us direct answers to all our petty questions. We are not entitled to have them publicly agree or argue with us over all the details of their work.

But the sPvP forums are? They don’t seem to have any trouble interacting with the playerbase over there.

But Jcbroe, every other class is at least functional before you invest traits. They have completely viable weapon sets and utility skills to pull from. Where other classes would use their traits to specialize their weapon skills and utilities into a specific play style, the Ranger must invest traits before their weapons or utility skills are even worth considering.

I also disagree with you that any other class in this game other than Engineers have a truly underwhelming class mechanic, and even engineers are much better than the state Ranger pets are in.

Your Warrior example is bunk right off the bat since the other meta build most choose is 0/0/30/30/10 in WvW. I personally run 0/25/30/0/15. I have no problem with fury generation.

Take the thief dagger build of 0/30/30/10/0. Nothing there to improve steal other than stealth on steal which most don’t take. Yet this is the most common build for WvW.

And cleansing ire? The simple fact is that condis in this game are completely out of control and nearly every class that has a trait to clear condis is considering it mandatory these days. Thieves with Shadow Embrace and Rangers with Empathic Bond. I honeslty wouldn’t be surprised to see Rangers running //30/30/* builds with Empathic Bond, the new Nature trait, signet of renewel and 2 survival skills come next patch.

Now as for a topic that wasn’t covered in the CDI? While it was touched on, I don’t feel it was sufficiently discussed… why does no one want anything to do with the Ranger class in WvW?

The Ranger is a duelist class. Nearly all their utility and weapon skills have 1v1 in mind and the class brings very little actual worth to a group. No one wants a Ranger anywhere near them in a zerg. Guilds don’t actively recruit them for GvG. Most guilds go out of their way to specifically mention no Rangers within 100miles of them in fact. Why? And why has this issue been around for a year now?

And just to get ahead of the debate I know that’s coming… I don’t buy into the whole thing being a conspiracy perpetuated by the GW2 player culture. It’s not a reasonable thing to say the Ranger community has the most baddies. Even the greatest PvP guilds can’t theorycraft a functional use for the class before you even factor in player skill.

This has to be the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time.

You’re implying that if the player’s deem something is overpowered it’s the player’s fault for continuing to use it as opposed to ANet’s fault for letting consistent problems go unaddressed for 6 months at a time?

You’re implying it’s the player’s fault if their class doesn’t have sufficient build diversity because the player’s should just accept horrible trait design and useless skills as a right of passage in an MMO?

For crying out loud dude…

You made Ranger signets, which are already the laughing stock of GW2, worse. I applaud you sir.

“Kill that ranger so hard he’ll reroll”.

It’s true too…

I asked this same question about 2 weeks ago.

For me, the only thing bringing me back each week is the fact that there’s nothing else out there to play.

WvW, like much of GW2, has become stale and boring. The game mode we play in has the same problems and shortcomings it had on day 1. The classes haven’t changed (or been balanced) in a year. There still aren’t any real rewards for doing WvW. PvP and PvE are still terrible distractions for WvW.

Shame really. ANet has really squandered their resources.

Body blocking is advantageous to the Ranger, but it’s pretty overpowered when it comes to PvP. Screen clutter is the other issue and is something ANet has said they want to improve on. The easiest way to do this is to simply remove the spirits and make them passive effects on the pet.

There are advantages to making them centered on the pet too.

For starters, the Spirits will move on their own at that point which makes them valuable to the class as a whole whether you invest traits into them or not.

It will also give the Ranger more control over them and how you deploy them because they’ll follow your pet instead. It will allow you to decide if maybe your spirits would be more valuable on the boss in melee range on a cat or a safe distance away from the boss in a scorpion. They’ll also be easy to relocate without dying because of your pet controls.

The only real downfall to the change is the fact that they’ll be attached to a pet that for all intents and purposes, simply doesn’t work. But ANet has assured us (lol, I know…) that the pet is a priority for them. Removing their ability to body block and all the clutter they cause was likely going to be nerfed anyway.

Heh, a lot of the ideas he’s come up with are the same ones I suggested, so I’m cool with a lot of them.

Durzlla.6295:

Atherakhia.4086:

Is there a reason you want to rework the passives and actives so much? I haven’t seen Battousai’s suggestion but it’s similar to one I posted on the CDI and I think the current spirit effects once moved to the pet which gives all the benefits and restrictions you listed at the bottom of your post more than make up for it.

Just use the current ones, make them permanent buffs with a cooldown once killed. You kill them by either killing the Ranger’s pet or forcing them to swap, like you suggested. If you want to destroy them when activated that’s fine, but if you make it so they only die when the pet is removed, you could open up some burst because you could use your spirits activated abilities and then swap pet, and if you use Vengeance, they’ll double go off.

Would open up some neat combos.

Because as is the actives are incredibly boring, and the play style of the spirit is almost entirerly skill less, a suggestion you suggested would not change ANY of that.

Also, the actives as they are now have nothing to do with support (what spirits were designed for) and I’d like to see them fill that role better. Not to mention some of the current effects would be pretty broken/redundant when on the pet.

IE: Frost Trap and Muddy Terrain would both become entirerly useless because the spirit would fill their role better, and for Frost Trap, on a shorter CD, for MT it’d be on the same CD (no traits).

I don’t feel like your change really adds much more interactivity than the current effects though.

Yours:
1 in every 5 attacks causes the nearest 5 people’s next attack to cause burn.
Active: Next attack will inflict blind and burn.

Current:
Next attack will burn with an ICD of 10 seconds.
Active: Blind all foes within range of spirit.

Just going from an ‘on next attack’ to a PPM mechanic it seems. Unless I’m not following your sun spirit example?

As for the theme of the spirits being more utility oriented, I do kind of agree with you. I always pictured the passives as the group utility and the actives as the more defense oriented things. I just feel like you sun spirit suggestion feels even more passive than the current one.

As for redundancy, I thought frost spirit was on a longer cooldown? Wiki shows 40 with MT and FT being less, but I honestly haven’t used spirits in 6 months so wiki could be wrong.

Is there a reason you want to rework the passives and actives so much? I haven’t seen Battousai’s suggestion but it’s similar to one I posted on the CDI and I think the current spirit effects once moved to the pet which gives all the benefits and restrictions you listed at the bottom of your post more than make up for it.

Just use the current ones, make them permanent buffs with a cooldown once killed. You kill them by either killing the Ranger’s pet or forcing them to swap, like you suggested. If you want to destroy them when activated that’s fine, but if you make it so they only die when the pet is removed, you could open up some burst because you could use your spirits activated abilities and then swap pet, and if you use Vengeance, they’ll double go off.

Would open up some neat combos.

What will Megaservers do to resolve late night coverage, low WvW population, and latency issues?

That’s fine from a PvE setting, but pet responsiveness will not resolve the WvW issue of pets, and so long as pets remain useless as a source of damage, the class’ damage will not be competetive with a Warrior.

On top of that, the skills and utilities that ANet gave to the Ranger class don’t allow it to maintain their sustained damage long enough to actually contribute anything meaningful because the kiting potential of the class is well below where it should be (especially when you consider what damage the class is actually capable of).

It’s the above that really bothers me with a lot of MMO’s these days. They go out of their way to handicap ranged damage but also remove a lot of the advantages ranged combat has in the first place. But then to further handicap the ranged damage because of a pet that doesn’t work at all in WvW, which is where the vast majority of the players actually play the game?

It’s this double dipping that will never allow a power option for this class to work at range. And Rangers are a far ways off from a power melee option being able to run with the hammer train with any success or real value.

I kind of miss the way Shadowbane did things. Players could get sledge hammers and siege bows to use against structures. These weapons did no damage to players, but good damage to structures. This way if you caught an enemy by surprise they didn’t have time to swap weapons back to their normal set and couldn’t fight back. But if you didn’t take defense seriously even a small number of people could ruin your day.

Why when I make a troll thread bad mouthing ANet it gets deleted and I get infracted. But when someone makes a troll post about the class I play, not only does it go on for 200+ posts, but ANet mocks us in it too.

Oh the horrors of being a Ranger in GW2

Prysin actually suggested something like this in another thread and I actually think it would be cool. Making the class faster and more agile feeling while also giving them a clear advantage when kiting an opponent is very in theme with the class.

But as Domey said, it couldn’t be permanent. I believe Prysin’s suggestion was for us to effectively gain the Elementalist’s ‘super speed’ buff after dodging?

Prysin’s post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-Post-CDI/page/16#post3837837

Put a cap on boon/condition duration (+40%).
Put a cap on boon/condition duration reduction (-40%).
Increase armor on gear.
Increase base critical damage to 100%.
Remove critical damage/ferocity stat.
Remove toughness from armor calculation.
Toughness changed to flat DPS decrease and crit chance reducer.

That should just about fix everything.

I agree. If this class were given real kiting tools the sustained DPS model would be an easier pill to swallow. But can you imagine the amount of effort that would be needed to ever get this class into a position to kite a Warrior or Thief long enough to actually win? Especially when using a sustained DPS approach? As a power build… with only your pet being indirect fire?

I would expect another sizable patch before the Chinese launch. So if it doesn’t happen on 04/15 it may happen in May. I’m putting the last hopes I have for the Ranger class on the Chinese launch.

…and?

It is common knowledge that the Ranger is 5th highest DPS in this game behind Elementalists, Thieves, Mesmers, and Warriors.

It’s also common knowledge that all of the class’ utility can be achieved by a single spec. On top of this, all the utility the class provides really isn’t that spectacular when you consider the loss in DPS you started with by bringing the Ranger in the first place.

That all said, I’m not sure I honestly care. Obviously this thread was marked for the PvE crowd, which I’m not a part of. But even if I were, the PvE in this game is so inferior to the PvE in every other MMO I’ve ever played with the exception of Shadowbane, I’m not sure I should care if the class is 1st, 5th, or 8th.

You’re entitled to think yourself a top-tier PvE’er all you want and invite whomever you wish. Simple fact is there’s no challenging PvE content in this game anyone really cares about and I’d sooner go with 5x Bearbow Rangers and take an extra 5mins to do something that bother grouping with someone who’s trying to use Guild Wars 2 as some benchmark for PvE success.

Prysin.8542:

if rangers were given a trait that increased movement speed and/or endurance regeneration when using bows (like ele with scepter trait, or ele with dagger traits/ warrior with melee weapon trait) then we would be in a stronger position, overall, as a “archery” class.
Personally, i prefer to use a mix of melee and ranged. But i would be overjoyed to get a trait that gave +X% movement speed and return X% endurance when dodging while having a bow/ increased endurance regen while having a bow. It would make my life on ranged builds a whole lot easier.

Also a very flavorful and fun idea imo. Could attach it to agility training or something perhaps.

I see no reason it shouldn’t affect all projectiles.

I just wish the trait did more. I personally will never use something just to improve projectile speed in WvW simply because the majority of the time I couldn’t care less if the shot hits what I’m aiming at or not. I’m firing blindly into a zerg anyway. In duels, I rarely get strafed because 9 times out of 10 they want to melee me anyway.

I really wish they would have merged something like piercing arrows or eagle eye with it and replaced those traits with something non-longbow specific.

I wouldn’t go Charr imo. They look hideous in nearly every piece of armor available in the game. Including their racial armor. I stopped playing my guardian entirely because it’s a charr and I didn’t want to spend 100g just to make it look good.

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Substance E.4852:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I just want to recap the design philosophy behind the longbow, so we’re all on the same table again:
The longbow is meant to deal damage at range. Noone ever said it should deal high damage.
However, there is the major flaw that we aren’t able to utilize the range we’ve been given. This applies both to WvW, where we aren’t able to maintain our range to justify the longbow, and PvE, where is simply no need to bring in a ranged weapon.
So there are two things we could do to fix the flaw.
1) Scrap the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range and it wouldn’t need to if we would say that the longbow is meant to deal high damage on any range.
2) Fix the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range. Therefore we have to add cripples and immobilizes to effectively maintain our range. This would be fairly easy to do for WvW, but maintaining the range in PvE isn’t the problem. The problem is, that there is no need to range anything. You can melee all day long in PvE. So ANet has either to deliver content tailored to using long range weapons or they have to buff the longbow to a certain extent, so it’s more desireable to use longrange weapons than melee weapons. Either way, they probably have to buff the damage atleast a bit.

It’d be far easier to simply remove the range penalty on the auto attack. It doesn’t need a bonus effect if it’s already the hardest hitting ranged attack in the game, that’s enough on it’s own. It then becomes useful in pve because you can stack in melee range and it’s still plenty balanced in pvp because melee will still hit for more and the bow lacks survival skills beyond a short stealth so you’re toast when they inevitably close the gap.

Then, if any balance issues do crop up, they can shave off damage from the auto till it works without having to drastically retool the skills.

Looks like a band-aid solution to me. Melee weapons should be more effective in melee range than ranged weapons. It is stupid to stand directly in front of the enemie and “snipe” him. It may be the easiest fix but it’s also the most silly fix I can think of.
They can, however, decrease the minimum range for the maximum damage required.

It still wouldn’t do more than the 1H sword. And as I said, they can then shave down the damage if it starts to break the “melee > ranged dps” rule.

It may be a band-aid fix, but that’s how Anet rolls with Ranger fixes anyway…

The damage would probably be “normalized.” AKA, the new damage value would be the current mid range damage value.

Which is fine if you ask me. The mid range value for the Longbow is about the same DPS as the shortbow. The shortbow pulls ahead if you can flank the target just 25% of the time. 100% of the time, even with 0 condi and a straight up power build, the sbow wins by a sizable margin.

I say normalize the damage and give the Longbow something else at the extended range and/or flanking to make it more of a unique weapon to set it apart from the shortbow.

For example:
Middle range damage regardless of range, 10% chance to crit when flanking, +10% crit dmg for 900 range.

I also agree with the other main discussion above… that the kiting advantages of the class simply don’t compete with the anti-kiting tools given to other classes. I’m still convinced that if this class were given a ‘fast hands’ trait like Warriors got so they could quickly swap between melee and range things would be fine though.

There are plenty of tools in other weapon sets to help kite or at least withstand melee combat for a fair amount of time. The issue is once you’ve burned through these cooldowns (especially in the case of the greatsword) you’re kind of stuck in a weapon that you haven’t traited to support (because Longbow requires such an enormous investment to be mediocre) with poor damage.

We also have the advantage of being rangers, so we’d probably avoid a lot of the complaints Warriors are currently getting over their fast hands trait.

Prysin.8542:

they should apply the zerg scaling they got on LS bosses to our pets. More people, stronger pets. End of discussion. Less people, weaker pets. They got the mechanic, shouldnt be too hard to add it

Would they get the DPS increase too

I could see it now, a row of bears leading the charge obliterating the front line of an enemy zerg. It would look like that Witch Doctor ability from D3!

Obviously you meant health and armor only. Still a man can dream!

But that’s not what you were arguing

Prysin is right, EE is a DPS increase. It may be mediocre like you claim, but it’s still an increase.

Well the defensive issues of the class would be resolved somewhat if there were actual CC immunities or diminished returns. Take stun break for example. The class has its fair share of options to break stuns, and while less than others, it’s still enough to succeed in dueling and the limited combat PvP has to offer. Breaking a stun just to have it followed by another stun in WvW gets you no where. The same can be said about the Ranger’s plentiful evades which gets them no where in WvW, their immobilizes that are removed instantly, etc. These mechanics simply don’t work at the WvW level largely due to the way they’ve designed the game and not necessarily because it’s WvW.

But even with that said, you still see these issues in PvP. Say the Ranger pushes for middle for example, he doesn’t excell at this role because they weren’t given the tools to do it. Especially not as a power build. the value of all those evades are largely lost because they don’t hold up when it’s more than 1v1 or 2v1. Immobilizes don’t hold up etc.

This leads into my overall complaint with the CDI thread though. Where you would expect ANet to bring the Ranger up to a level to fit into the game they’ve made, they appear to be treating this class as ‘business as usual’ and will take the 2 year plan of bringing the game down to the Ranger’s level.

The Ranger is a duelist (but only as a condi/bunker, not power) and all of their skills excell at only this one role. But where a Thief can still provide a lot of AE weakness and poison, or high burst to take out key targets etc, the Ranger doesn’t have a back-up plan. They’re forever a duelist. Stuck with tools that work in no other way. Left with no useful offensive tools. Provide utility that is simply too weak to take notice of.

I never played GW1, but from the descriptions you guys have, it honestly doesn’t sound that much different than a Ranger class in any other MMO.

Lower overall damage per shot, but higher rate of fire to maintain an elevated level of DPS with support skills to spike damage to apply pressure. All the while the majority of the class’s defense and offensive utility came from their ability to kite their opponents with limited on demand skills for emergencies and to escape from CC.

Sound about right? And then compare that model to GW2…

I’m not sure they’ve covered any of those area sufficiently enough for the class to handle anything remotely close to ogranized group play. Certainly enough for dueling or small scale roaming. But groups of 5-10 all the way up to zergs?

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Xaylin.1860:

While boon ripping probably should be in Skirmishing – at least from my point of view – I would enjoy Poison Master being replaced with something like ‘Remove x boons when applying Poison to a foe. x seconds cooldown.’ The increased Poison damage is rather uninspired.

That would certainly be one way to do it actually. Each tick of poison removes a boon. This coupled with our pets fields (working under the assumption the trait would even trigger for our pets) and the new snake trap field would certainly make the trait much more valuable.

Each tick would be too strong with our poison uptime unless there was an ICD to this.
Imagine using Forest Spider, that can apply 40+ seconds of poison duration almost instantly, with this. It would be total boon denial, seeing as soon as they cleanse the first “wave” of poison, we got atleast 3-4 weapon skills and or pet skills to apply more.

But say, every 5th poison application (pet and ranger has individual counters on this) will also remove one boon every second for X seconds ( i think, for the sake of balance, this skill should not be ruled by poison duration as that would make it completely useless in say PvP where durations are way lower. a flat out middle ground duration is better for the health of all game modes). Personally, i think 1 boon/second for 7 seconds is a decent duration.

That, or every X’th poison application corrupts all boons. In such a case, i think every 10th application should suffice for this to be balanced.

I certainly agree that it would be powerful. I doubt the trait would trigger off our pets though, but we’ll see. Straight up boon denial is kind of the point though and poison is quite easy to remove and somewhat difficult to reapply. It is an MMO afterall, group support is key.

I’d sooner go with an internal cooldown I think. Remove one boon every 3 seconds for example.

Xaylin.1860:

While boon ripping probably should be in Skirmishing – at least from my point of view – I would enjoy Poison Master being replaced with something like ‘Remove x boons when applying Poison to a foe. x seconds cooldown.’ The increased Poison damage is rather uninspired.

That would certainly be one way to do it actually. Each tick of poison removes a boon. This coupled with our pets fields (working under the assumption the trait would even trigger for our pets) and the new snake trap field would certainly make the trait much more valuable.

Prysin.8542:

nagymbear.5280:

How about this for boon stripping:

Shatter shot: Your point blank shot becomes unblockable and removes Retailation and Protection. ICD 30 sec.

somehow, i think traps would be better for boon stripping… ya know, pulsing field, AOE…
Maybe put it on frost trap? it would make it worth taking, even with the long CD, if it stripped boons.

As for LB – increase coefficiency of Rapid Fire and Barrage by 0.2 and Point Blank Shot by 0.7 and it should be good. Then we got proper burst(s)

That wouldn’t be burst. Remember that .2 increase is spread out over the entire duration and not per shot. It would still barely peak what max range shot does and still leave the only value for the skill that of its vulnerability and to provide higher damage at shorter ranges.

Hunters shot would also need much more of an improvement if it were to do damage equal to auto attack. Let alone burst.

If your goal is to simply not suffer a DPS loss from casting these abilities, that’s one thing. But to actually provide a DPS increase, would require much more.

Prysin.8542:

Terravos.4059:

Kaino.4913:

@Terravos You ‘do’ realize the CDI thread ended only a couple of weeks ago, correct? Also everything mentioned in the thread isn’t expected to happen, there’s also the blatant disregard you have for the current Grandmaster Traits in the game at the moment. Some folks do run berserker builds with sword or players who enjoy using Bark Skin’s trait as an indicator to back out of a fight. Do be more considerate of others instead of being an uneducated and utterly outrageous waste of characters on this post I just typed.

I’m not even taking the CDI into account, the last Balance Patch was in December, That should of been more then enough time to come up with viable traits.

As for folks running berserker builds with sword or players who enjoy bark skin, That’s great….I’m sure some people enjoy Bearbow as well..but adding more crappy traits because some players enjoy crappy traits and specs doesn’t make those crappy traits better now does it?

You do know that you sound awfully arrogant and condescending the way you always tell people to “play your way or reroll” ?

Just thought i’d let you know.

- lynx

My eyes almost rolled out of their sockets…

It’s hard to tell. I don’t know if a lot of people left or people are just not logging on as they kiss their loved ones good bye and spend their last moments of freedom with them before the season starts and everyone is locked away in their basements with the lights off and their headphones on.

Jocksy.3415

Atherakhia.4086:

To be fair, a Mesmer doesn’t have 2 stacking damage multipliers

Not that I think the picture is OP. We know it happens exactly once every min due to signet cooldown. Every other crit is in the 2k range.

And to be fair, not every rangers run boring signet builds… that costs us 2 utilities that we could otherwise use for survivability, while mesmers bursts can be really high, on a pretty low CD… and at the cost of no utilities…

Oh absolutely, and without those 2 signets and a 30pt trait, you’re not going to hit those numbers. Not without a lot of outside assistance anyway.

Jocksy.3415:

Naked /untraited ranger LB AA =
212 @ 0-500
265 @ 500-1000
317 @ 1000-1200
this is per second (because of after cast)
(see : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQFADAA-w for numbers used)

Naked / untraited GS mesmer (closest for comparison)
(couldn’t find after cast value, took it at 0.5 sec, so 2 sec per AA)
201 (3x) @ 0-300
249 (3x) @ 300-600
300 (3x) @ 600-900
348 (3x) @ 900-1200
(see: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQFABAA for numbers used)

So, per two seconds,
Range ……………………..Ranger…………..Mesmer
0-300 ………………………..414……………………..603
300-500……………………414……………………..747
500-600…………………..530………………………747
600-900…………………..530………………………900
900-1000…………………530…………………..1044
1000-1200……………..634…………………….1044

Yep, according to these numbers, Mesmer’s GS is really overpowered….
I agree, we should totally nerf it!

To be fair, a Mesmer doesn’t have 2 stacking damage multipliers

Not that I think the picture is OP. We know it happens exactly once every min due to signet cooldown. Every other crit is in the 2k range.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Atherakhia.4086:

Cogbyrn.7283:

You have a few seconds before passive healing takes away all of your work, eh? And do you consider doing 2k damage a lot of work? For passive healing to negate 2k damage in, let’s say 3 seconds of block, it would require about 666 HP/s.

But if that’s all the damage you can do every 3 seconds, then you have bigger problems, or you are built to bunker/sustain, in which case Healing Signet is specifically designed to win the long sustain game, really.

Play better.

Or you’re a Ranger and ANet has designed your whole class around their auto-attack being their hardest hitting skills.

Longbow for example… not the most productive weapon when shooting a Warrior at mid range but still more DPS than every other weapon but 1h sword :/

I had a Longbow/GS Ranger legitimately surprise me the other day by using Hunter’s Shot, then swapping to GS and Mauling me from Stealth without me seeing it coming. I was standing around outside of DS waiting for him to I don’t know, Longbow auto out of stealth or something like Rangers always seem to do. Instead. he Mauled me and Slice’d me for roughly 7.5-8k damage in a split second. I was legitimately impressed, and it was another case of “Why do I never see these kinds of things done by Rangers more often?”.

So I don’t know. The more I see good players do really interesting things with Rangers, the more skeptical I get about the community. I can understand that the pet’s AI is terrible. I’m sure it is, and I’m sure it has a bunch of drawbacks. But it seems like Rangers think they should be able to keep their Longbow out forever, use the knock-back when an enemy gets, close, use #2, then spam #1 (and maybe use #5) to kill somebody.

So please don’t try to appeal to my “Ranger pity” side, because it’s currently being waterboarded in an attempt to get more information about combos Rangers can actually do.

But did he actually kill you?

I’m curious what happens to items we put on once or received and summarily threw it out not knowing how precious it was at the time.

While leveling and doing story mode I didn’t realize at the time that a number of items would only ever be available while doing it and I should have kept the items to transmute later on at 80.

Hopefully these items will come back to us. Don’t look forward to leveling another medium armor class to 55 to get my chest again.

I plan to clear a few zones just to be safe, but I imagine they’d have mentioned it if they intended to remove the transmutation stones from normal gameplay just like they mentioned dyes being removed.

I’m with Jski. It looks like it’s the same screen to equip armor as it is to dye it. Dying is free. Only charged transmutation stones if you choose an armor you aren’t currently wearing.

double popped collars in WvW? My Ranger may be awful, but at least he’ll die in style!

felivear.1536:

infantrydiv.1620:

Generally I’m happy. The good:

1. All the PvP locker skins can now be used across all game modes, infinity times if desired.

2. All my alts will now have my cool dyes.

The bad:

1. We might have to buy transmutation charges to change our PvP appearance (unconfirmed atm). However this would be a way for Arenanet to monetize PvP at least.

It seemed pretty confirmed to me. What do you mean by “unconfirmed”. Also, did you notice on the dye preview that it also seemed to be tied to transmutation stones? Are they charging gems to use dyes now too?

I think that was there simply because it’s the same screen for both equipping armor and dying it. If you look at the transmutation cost, it says 0.

Cogbyrn.7283:

You have a few seconds before passive healing takes away all of your work, eh? And do you consider doing 2k damage a lot of work? For passive healing to negate 2k damage in, let’s say 3 seconds of block, it would require about 666 HP/s.

But if that’s all the damage you can do every 3 seconds, then you have bigger problems, or you are built to bunker/sustain, in which case Healing Signet is specifically designed to win the long sustain game, really.

Play better.

Or you’re a Ranger and ANet has designed your whole class around their auto-attack being their hardest hitting skills.

Longbow for example… not the most productive weapon when shooting a Warrior at mid range but still more DPS than every other weapon but 1h sword :/

The game is so old and, now with ascended gear, there are enough obstacles in the way of maximizing an alts potential. I see no reason we shouldn’t be allowed to trivialize the leveling experience a little by buying tomes.

It’s too deep to compliment power builds in NS imo. If it were a 20pt trait it would compliment them better. I wish it were in Skirmishing to be honest.

People go skirmishing for traps and that’s about it. Moment of Clarity is a strong trait, but the chances to maximize it are limited. A shame we don’t have a fast hands trait as that would certainly make moment of clarity more valuable.

Skirmishing is where I wish they would have put it.

Or remove ferocity/crit dmg from the game entirely and simply make it so everything had 100% crit dmg base.

I only really have any interest in playing a power build with a longbow and I feel it’s this area that ANet repeatedly misses the mark. I don’t feel we discussed this area enough for the class in the CDI thread. I don’t feel the trait changes impact power builds at all. And I don’t feel the issues for power play are limited to pet issues or the lack or AE/burst (though these are certainly top 3).

The area this class needs the most improvement in is group utility. And not just group utility, but something valuable on a large scale that is currently missing in WvW. While boon removal as Jcbroe mentioned would certainly help, it would have to be on a rather large scale to allow the Ranger to be noticed at an organized GvG level.

I’m simply not convinced number crunching and trait adjustments is going to be enough for this class if the goal is for it to ever be worth more than 8th place in WvW. Burst, AE, and more damage will certainly make it more viable as a class, and it’s most definitely needed.

But the lack of WvW worth in a group setting was completely missed in the CDI thread and no changes we’ve seen past, present, or future have shown any real improvement in this area.