Guild Wars 2

We talking stats or graphics?

Stats we just got 3 I think it was last patch due to the removal of the mf gear.
Graphics we’ve gotten 3 different gloves, 3 different shoulders, something like 10 new suits in the gem store, 6 back pieces?

The difficulty isn’t the only problem. It’s the reward. I’ve done him half a dozen times (not on my own server mind you, I had to guest) and have received nothing of any value. I’m not doing it again when I can capture 4 towers or kill 4 champions and get equivilent loot for MUCH less effort.

I’m sorry, but this isn’t a traditional MMO. There isn’t a real gear treadmill in this game. There’s no reason these things shouldn’t have a near 100% chance to drop loot with a rare chance of the unique tequatl skins.

These bosses need to be removed from the real world and placed inside a instance. It may require a UI rewrite and some actual effort, but there shouldn’t be a doubt in anyone’s mind that Tequatl was a complete and utter failure. Just like a lot of their most recent changes.

Tequatl… failure.
Bloodlust… failure.
Oct 15th balance patch… we’ll see.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

The addition of the bonus WXP for laurels/badges is simply intended to give WvW players an additional option they can spend their laurels/badges on, it is not intended to fix any issues with alts and WxP.

We’re aware of, and actively discussing the amount of progression we’ve added through WxP and the difficulty for playing multiple characters as a result. When we make changes to help address alts/WxP rank, we’ll make sure to specifically call out the change is to help address that issue.

Could always take the easy way out and make the level account wide ***hides***
…and dyes ***hides***
…and ascended gear ***hides***

Can’t we get some more ANet attention on this thread? A rough idea of things to come to tide us over as we wait for another 2 weeks for any positive changes to this game?!

mshinga.6540:

While I understand that a lot of people like conjures if Anet makes eles into some kind if weapon conjure class I will stop playing it. Simple put eles need damage to match their diminutive health and armor, it was clear to me that eles are intended to gun down foes before being reached just as necro is intended to outlast a for while working conditions. At present eles cannot hit hard enough to allow for this functionality.

In my option on the alternative to this us to make the Ele more survivable similar to the necromancer. But really I think it is fair to say people expect elementalists to be hard hitters that get hit hard if you aren’t good at protecting yourself. At present I find the protections to be decent, but the heavy hitting not so much.

Burst is there for Ele’s. They seem to only be struggling right now because the strong focus on condition builds and bunkers. This is the same for most non-thief power builds though. They need to find some way to reduce the power of conditions and move the meta in a way where players do more than stack gear with toughness as the primary stat.

Will you be putting videos on youtube too? Any other classes you plan to do? Still waiting on some Ranger love from the RIOT folks

Aevis.4632:

I don’t get why you people say rangers are bad right now. I have fought plenty rangers in wvw 1v1 or in group fight and they were pretty tough to take down. Just yesterday before the patch I fought this spirit ranger, dude murdered me. Even if I killed his spiris he just brought them back. He also healed like a mother with that troll heal thing.

Maybe rangers who say they are bad just need to learn to play.

They have a pet mechanic that doesn’t work.
That same pet mechanic is justifcation for why their damage is below everyone else’s.

That alone is reason enough.

Chopps.5047:

I haven’t ran the numbers but 40% of damage seems awfully high. Maybe in a regen bunker condi build. But rabid or berserker there’s just no way it’s 40%. Probably more like 10% or 15% tops.

Pets scaling with gear becomes a problem with ascended in wvw though, depending on your build.

I ran simple DPS numbers from a Thief’s dagger (their highest DPS weapon) and the Ranger’s sword (our highest DPS weapon) and found the Dagger at 2469 and the Ranger at 1663. So that would be about 33%. I haven’t timed the pet attacks yet as I got lazy so can’t do a DPS comparison as the wiki doesn’t have any values and I didn’t find them yet.

This is before traits and food and such. It’s also just auto attack. Rangers don’t seem to really benefit that much from using their abilities. Especially with the bows (which are the only weapons I really care about) so I haven’t done anything else to see if maybe the horn #4 is worth using etc.

Knighthonor.4061:

whats the issues Rangers have with pets?

what has been the cause of most the hate over pets?

All content in this game is designed around avoiding damage but pets don’t have any avoidance abilities. They have to soak damage. We have suggested giving pets Aegis or brief immunity everytime the Ranger dodges or uses a skill with evade.

Pets don’t scale with gear at all. This means every time ANet decides to mess with the gear treadmill (hello ascended gear!), Rangers benefit the least from all new gearing options. We must sit back and wait around for ANet to buff pet stats manually which will likely never happen.

Pet F2 abilities don’t work consistently. From not firing when we cast them because the pet can’t use the ability till it can fit it in between attacks to the F2 abilities simply having horrendously long cast times, they simply don’t work consistently.

The pet makes up a sizable part of the class’s damage so the aspect of damage the player is in direct control of (from the Ranger itself) is reduced in both raw damage and through the skill coefficients. No one has nailed down exactly how much of the damage we’re handicapped by, but it’s somewhere in the 25-40% range. Players feel the pet should account for no more than 5-15% of the class’s damage and would like our skills and coefficients brought up to normal levels.

You guys should get it out of your system now. I hope you’re preparing for disappointment in 2 weeks.

Flerch.4817:

lol, anti ranger build

Is there a ranger ranger build? You know where they do more than death by a thousand cuts over the span of about 30minutes?

Because they expect you to spend $10 on a makeover kit.

Decklan.7540:

You could go axe/axe in dungeon and still do decent DPS but if you want to min/max then you want sword/warhorn.

In general, for dungeons stray away from condition damage gear. Condition damage is very underwhelming in dungeons and can actually lead to groups kicking you if you show up with full rabid or full rampagers.

You want power, precision, crit damage. This is called berserker gear. If you find yourself dieing too much, swap in a few pieces of valk gear. This is power, vitality, crit damage. You won’t need toughness. Many dungeon mechanics are meant to be AVOIDED not TANKED. High toughness does work with certain professions in dungeons (guardian for example) but not ranger.

Axe mainhand is the lowest DPS weapon we have. It needs to bounce a second time to get close to the next worst weapon (longbow at min range).

If you enjoy dungeons, then run the dungeons that provide berserker gear. This would be Citadel of Flame, Crucible of Eternity, and Arrah(which you will most certainly want to avoid like the plague). This will give you good PvE gear you can use with your sword.

You should also try and find a server that has the temples open. I’m not certain which temple has them, but the karma accessories with Power, Vitality, and Toughness are a good starting point. Alternatively you could just buy the berserker ones from the trading post. If you have a lot of karma, you could also get the armor with the same stats to use while you slowly obtain the berserker gear.

You should start fractals as soon as you can. You will need to be rank 10 before you get a shot at a ring. You will need to be 25 (iirc?) before you can get the infused rings. Each rank above 10 gives you a pristine relic. Once you get 10 you can buy a ring if you havent’ found the 2 you want by then.

You should also plan to do your daily achivements every day. You should also use the gw2lfg page or post on reddit to find a guild that is doing open invites for guild missions. You will need guild commendations to get you loot as well. Most guilds just openly invite people to partake as it’s not a big deal. May even just be able to ask in Lion’s Arch on your own server and find some.

You may also want to goto the auction house and buy some quartz. You need 25 to charge one. You need 5 charged per piece of celestial gear you may want. Will take a month to get enough for you to craft one suit. You can only get quartz via the trading post (I presume you didn’t get the achievement to have a node of your own). They’re still relatively cheap though. By the time you have enough to make a suit of it you’ll have a better idea what you want to do. But a few pieces are nice to have.

That will get you started. By the time you’re above Fractals 10 and have gotten a full suit of berserkers you’ll have an idea what you want to do.

Lostwingman.5034:

Avatara.1042:

It would be PvE only.

On this note, can we just separate PvE, sPvP, and WvW skill/spell stats already?
Like, make it official?
This one or two suffering for another has not worked out…

pass.

If it’s a numbers only thing, that’s one thing. But for players who actively play eah of the systems, it’s very annoying to have skills work differently in each of them. Take revealed for example. It lasts 1 second longer in sPvP then it does in WvW. It’s very aggrivating playing WvW for a couple hours and then jumping in sPvP and your whole game is change.d

yea, on the general forum they imply the large balance patch is the 15th of october. Doesn’t mean we won’t see anything. I just wouldn’t expect much.

Durzlla.6295:

I really do wish we only had ONE pet at a time… the whole having 2 pets you swap between really lessens the whole Companion vibe…

Pretty much. It just reinforces the idea that the pet is nothing more than a DOT that can’t hit moving targets :/

STRanger.5120:

Atherakhia.4086:

The Hunter’s pet is only 15% of the class’s damage as opposed to 40% here.

I bet you never played a Beastmaster Hunter, right?

It has been 5 years since I played WoW. I honestly couldn’t tell you what my spec was. I was in a top 15US guild for raiding though, so if BM was a raid spec, I was it.

Too much involved for the community here to help you. You need to tell us how you like playing the class, which weapons you prefer to use, and what your goals are. There’s at least some way to make everything work in some fashion.

For ‘optimizing’ certain things, it’s generally accepted that Sword is the primary dungeon DPS weapon. There’s nothing that comes close to it. For WvW, most suggest 2800 – 3000 armor at a minimum, but you’ll need to decide if you want to play condition or power based.

Give us more and someone here can give you more.

Eurantien.4632:

I would love to get into the “GvG” scene just to understand why this all is. I think ranger could be highly effective in back lines rezzing and shutting down thieves and such. I also don’t get why engineers are there when coming from a pvp standpoint a group of engineers and rangers should be able to massacre everything with spam (granted retal is gonna suck on them nades).

Part of the problem is when a Ranger is focused, he’s dropped. On top of this, they don’t provide the kind of pressure a group wants. They either want burst damage to pressure a single target down or they want AE pressure to keep the enemy low. With no real burst to speak of and most condition application being either single target or trap/field with long cooldowns, it’s hard to achieve any real pressure.

GvG isn’t like sPvP where fewer than 5 people attack from a point and don’t want to leave. 5+ will come for you.

That’s 2700 attk… not 2700 power.

[code]Attack CritChnc CritDmg Health Armor Chest Leggings Helm Shoulders Gloves Boots Amulet Ring1 Ring2 Acc1 Acc2 Back Weapon
3224 40 85 17012 2800 Celestial Soldier Celestial Berserker Berserker Celestial Berserker Berserker Cavalier Berserker Berserker Valkyrie Knight[/code]

Sigh… I don’t feel like typing this from spreadsheet manually… you all can figure it out.

liefbread.9513:

tigirius.9014:

liefbread.9513:

and if “all pets get immunity to AOE” they will be broken in half in any pvp wvw scenario.

If I recall correctly, every single MLG team in the sPvP tourney was running a spirit ranger. “Mediocre at best.”

Come up with a better solution.

Nope they won’t because they are already weak. The last pet to be weakened were the Rangers.

This is exactly beside the point however, because this kind of thing has been done countless times in other games as the fixall for the heavy pet class system and it works! They know it’s a problem and you guys blew up the forums when they talked about nerfing AOEs well something has to be done and giving pets a 90% immunity to AOE damage across the board has been tested before.

But I predict mind you that instead of actually looking at the development history of these systems they’ll continue to delay this mechanism and continue to have cookie cutter non-pet heavy builds for at least another year before someone actually looks at it and says “hey you know what? why don’t we do this? it’s been done before” and poof it will be finally done but it will most likely be too late because people will have moved on to something else most likely having been tired of waiting on something so simple.

WoW has one of the most reputable/successful hunter/pet systems in MMO history, and to my knowledge, has never nerfed AOE for it.

They made the pet ignore a large part of AE damage.
They also made the pet always attack from behind to help avoid cleaves.
The Hunter’s pet is only 15% of the class’s damage as opposed to 40% here.

30-40ish per zerg is about normal for lower tier servers. The trick is finding a server that isn’t dead.

Solid Gold.9310:

Kilger.5490:

They arent getting rid of pets. If anything what we need to request is a transformation of the idea into something that might make us happy.

For a start, let me suggest “spirit” pets. They get attributes like real pets etc, but they dont actually need to manifest and run around to attack, they just appear at the person and automatically get their attacks, albeit weaker than ordinary pet.

edit: Kind of like phantasms from mesmer…

Oh yeah that would really be “Rangerish”.

It’s more “Druidish” but we do have spirits already and can summon that ghost wolf thingy with 3 Ranger horns.

I would absolutely love to see Ranger’s given a staff and the auto attack summoned a ‘ghost wolf’ that ran toward the target and disappeared after 3 seconds.

Stooperdale.3560:

Greatsword is good. Main hand axe isn’t so bad.

Mainhand axe is our lowest DPS weapon unless it hits the same target twice with the #1 bounce.

liefbread.9513:

and if “all pets get immunity to AOE” they will be broken in half in any pvp wvw scenario.

If I recall correctly, every single MLG team in the sPvP tourney was running a spirit ranger. “Mediocre at best.”

Come up with a better solution.

F1 changed to a basic attack/recall script.
F2 abilities will fire instantly when pressed instead of trying to fit into the next openning.
F2 abilities will have a .5 second cast time. Aftercast doesn’t matter.
F3 abilities are now player controlled and fire instantly. They are set to auto cast at default.
F3 abilities will have a .5 second cast time.
Any time the Ranger dodges or uses a skill that can evade, the pet gains Aegis.
Spirits removed from the game.

Spirits now simply buff pets. The pet is given an aura for 30 seconds representing the current spirit. Spirit activated abilities attached to F2 abilities for pets. You can activate as many spirits at once as you want. F2 will simply gain all the abilities for as many spirits as you activate. Alternatively, spirit activated abilities work like they do now instead of attached to F2 and simply activated at the pet’s location.

I deal with it by seldom using the sword (I don’t dungeon often so it’s not a big deal) despite it being the Ranger’s highest DPS weapon.

The mechanic is aggrivating, but easy to cope with if you do what Chopps mentions above. However, you must keep in mind that turning auto-attack off also means you’re likely going to see a DPS loss with the weapon in exchange for being able to use it effectively. Considering the weapon is already lower DPS than most other class options, it seems a pretty poor trade off.

It’s a very off-putting weapon for new players imo and really should be changed.

If you read the sPvP forums, this is really the number one complaint people have with this game right now. The whole meta revolves around conditions, and since conditions need only one stat, classes that have strong condition options can get by with focusing on nothing but condition, toughness, and vitality.

I’d also like to get OP’s opinion on where they feel the Ranger ranks in overall condition effectiveness? I personally find them quite inferior to the other big condi classes (Warriors, Engineers, Necromancer). I still don’t know why shortbow has a directional requirement to apply bleeds for example. Bleed application for Necros and Engineers don’t have these requirements. Their bleeds last longer. Granted they may not shoot every 0.52 seconds though.

I personally don’t mind the population disparity so much as I can’t stand the coverage disparity. Even though we’re outnumbered in almost every engagement, we can maintain some control over things because of how arrow carts and siege in general is designed. Where we can’t hold up is at night when no one is on and opposing servers take control of all 4 BL’s.

Wouldn’t just changing the PPM mechanic resolve a lot of the problem? For example, if you got something like 100pts for attacking a keep but 300pts for defending one. At night when some servers run unopposed and take over every BL, the outnumbered can defend one or 2 keeps and maintain some kind of hold on their server’s points.

Eurantien.4632:

Best counter to thief in game once the patch hits?

All depends how it works. If it’s single target or relies on the pet to hit before putting revealed? Or if it’s only 4 seconds of reveal? Probably not worth slotting ourselves, let alone worth bringing a ranger into organized pvp for.

First of all, signet of the beast master shouldn’t even exist. The signets should already affect the Ranger and the pet. If the Ranger did 100% damage and the pet did 40% damage, perhaps having them effect individual mechanics would be justified. But they aren’t.

On top of this, I’m not sure any of the signets are so powerful that they’d need a 30 pt trait to work as it is!

If for some reason ANet disagrees with the signets affecting both, it certainly shouldn’t need a 30pt trait to work! Instead, just attach signets to Concentration Training.

Now that all said, lets discuss Zephyr’s training…. the trait is awful and needs a buff before moving it anywhere.

Any WvW build should strive for as much toughness as they can get. 2800-3000 is a good place for a Ranger. You can still get 50% crit chance and 75% crit damage with 2200ish power with that.

They’re similar weapons overall.

One has an evade+daze.
The other has 2 evades.
Beyond that they’re very similar.

Sword has the advantage of doing considerably more damage and being an AE cleave. Shortbow can stack bleeds better but needs piercing shot to really land hits consistently.

Knote.2904:

Atherakhia.4086:

Drizzt.5078:

It’s really frustrating that certain weapon skills don’t mesh. For example, warrior’s rifle auto attack applies a bleed, but it’s #3 and finisher do “normal” damage. Likewise, warrior’s bow does normal damage on autoattack, but the finisher and #2 do burning damage. For QoL and building purposes it would be very nice to have weapons with consistent normal or condition damage.

Don’t warriors have traits that do things like X% more damage on a target that’s bleeding? ANet may have wanted to allow players some synergy between weapons and traits.

War Rifle Auto does pretty weak dmg to make up for the fact that it has some bleeding.

Right, I’m not trying to justify its low damage… only that a weapon with both condition and power attacks isn’t always a bad thing.

I realize that Warrior Longbow and Thief Shortbow are horrendously weak weapons even when compared to a Ranger’s shortbow.

Drizzt.5078:

It’s really frustrating that certain weapon skills don’t mesh. For example, warrior’s rifle auto attack applies a bleed, but it’s #3 and finisher do “normal” damage. Likewise, warrior’s bow does normal damage on autoattack, but the finisher and #2 do burning damage. For QoL and building purposes it would be very nice to have weapons with consistent normal or condition damage.

Don’t warriors have traits that do things like X% more damage on a target that’s bleeding? ANet may have wanted to allow players some synergy between weapons and traits.

Not surprised. When you’re trying to design an organized GvG or WvW group, why would you take a class that doesn’t provide anything? Or to be more fair to this class… you don’t provide anything better than anyone else?

This is how I wanted to play my Ranger and also about as effective as ANet has made them :/

SynfulChaot.3169:

Indoles.1467:

I’ve always been on the fence about this, until I played against the new Tequatl. If they are going to keep creating content where our pets are 100% useless then we need a permanent stow option. Buff or no buff, I just want the kitten thing gone in fights like that.

+1

Why is it that you all want the pets removed instead of improved? Because you don’t think it’s possible or because you don’t want them in the first place.

If it’s the latter, then you chose the wrong profession.

For me, it’s because ANet has shown over the course of a year that they’re either oblivious to the problem or don’t care about the problem. Nothing has been done to realistically solve the issue. Only band-aid fixes like the rumored 71% increase in pet health we’ll be getting soon.

Before we even want to pretend pets are worth reducing Ranger damage at all… they need to at least be able to hit moving targets, survive more than 3 seconds under pressure, have F2 abilities that actually work, obtain aegis or 2 seconds of invuln every time the ranger dodges/evades, and synergize with the class through traits. None of this is true and why people often suggest just removing it in favor of boosting our damage by 25-40%.

Rym.1469:

If they would remove range requirement, add some 1.5-2sec casted hard-hitting shot to #1 under some conditions I mentioned many times or simply replace Rapid Fire with it, make HS 4 second, unblindable, only blockable, reflectable or evadeable, make PBS instant and revmap Barrage or at least make it 1/2 cast, LB wouldn’t be that bad.
Without any decent burst one-hit skill, Remorseless is a joke atm.

Remove Spike Trap.
Remove Barrage and make it a skill.
Barrage changed to now bleed on all hits and immobalize on the first hit.
Replace Barrage with aimed shot.

jcbroe.4329:

The first step to making pets better in this game would be to do what guild wars 1 figured out what they had to do a few years before the end of it’s life cycle; give the pet an inherent movement speed that is faster than players movement speed, that doesn’t count towards the movement speed bonuses that can be attained.

Quoted from http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Animal_companion

“Pets move 20% faster than party members by default, but this bonus is not counted against their max speed boost. "

You still run into the problem that in this game, NPC’s appear to need to stop moving in order to attack. So short of increasing the attack range or making the attacks instant with a longer aftercast, I’m not sure simply changing movement speed will resolve the issue.

Chopps.5047:

I don’t know how long you should wait. That’s up to you.

I, like many, are tired of waiting. That’s why threads like these are created. If you’re fine still waiting for nothing to happen though, you probably should refrain from posting in topics like this.

I’m fine with you disagreeing with something. But you disagree out of ignorance and not because you have something better to offer. You simply sit there praying ANet will get around to fixing it. It has been a year…

Chopps.5047:

“I know it probably won’t happen”

Sometimes the first thing said is the most accurate thing said.

-1 because I want to see ANET make the profession a beastmaster-type that everyone loves

And how long should we wait for this? Clearly the answer is more than 1 year. Should we wait 2 years until we start to put forth alternatives? How long must the pet be a hindrance before players expect change?

Ranger would be a horrendous idea.

While the damage is comparable (in theory) when factoring in the class and the pet, the pet is always going to hold you back. If you keep the pet up even 75% of the time it’s a miracle sometimes. And given the way new content has been headed, 50% would probably be pushing it.

Bow damage is also dreadful for PvE with the Ranger so you’re left with only the sword as a realistic option. Sword is a pain to use because of the auto-sticking and leaping it does. Know how you attack through the wall to hit targets in Caudicus? LOL, try it with Ranger 1h Sword.

Warrior will be far more effective overall and far less aggrivating in the long run as well.

Thief probably does more damage than the Ranger. Especially if you’re going to throw the pet out of the equation. Thief Sword is also much more engaging whereas the Ranger weapon is a far more reactive weapon. Ranger sword, as mentioned several times, is also very aggrivating to use.

I don’t know how close you are to actually wanting to make these characters, but we’re coming up on some changes soon. Thief sword is being nerfed. We already know they feel the initiative use on the evade+boonhate is too low. This is targeted nerf at the evade spam though. ANet hasn’t said what they’re doing with Rangers, only that weapon changes are in our future. I would wager Sword auto attack is on the table. Although it can be dealt with and some players like it, it’s very aggrivating for new players.

If you can at least wait until next Tuesday you may see some changes. I think the Thief nerf is scheduled for next week? The Ranger adjustments hopefully the week after.

If you want to start now, I’d say play the Ranger some in sPvP and see if you think you’ll enjoy the leaping mechanic of the sword. If not, Thief is an amazing class and you’ll probably enjoy it.

Warrior is also a good class, but the sword is a bleed weapon so it may nto be what you’re looking for.

What class are you? The guardian in your sig?

Regen is low, but if you aren’t running a high serker burst guardian, your damage is pretty low. In duels, Rangers often run Troll Ungent as well which gives a lot of health per second with only a small downtime between casts. This is when the Ranger would use his evades and such.

The Necro destroyed him because he was probably still running Troll Ungent which meant he had limited condition removal and his damage relies heavily on conditions himself, which a Necro will wipe constantly.

I personally don’t want the pet gone. But I’ve also lost all faith in ANet ever getting the pet to the point where it’s a positive addition to this class. So if I had an option of removing the pet outright and increasing our damage accordingly vs. keeping a mechanic that doesn’t work 50% of the time?

Yea… +1.

What would you guys consider to be minimum crit chance for a power oriented roaming ranger?

Karizee.8076:

Never saw the attraction. Even in the video when the guy asks the girl what they are for she says, “It’s where you have a cup of tea and scone with your friends.”

What?

kitten contest.

Imagine if tequatl dropped a guild banner for each guild that killed him. The first guild on your server to kill him got another type of banner. It would show off the guild to others and remind the players the type of community they belong to.

It’s fun and in MMO’s its often the little things that make a difference. I’m honestly surprised MMO’s are still released without some of the more basic things like player/guild housing, mounts, inspectable player biographies, etc.

They should be more concerned that players want the rank and finishers but don’t have any interest in playing the actual game because it’s boring for 90% of the playerbase. That’s the true problem.

Players are begging for guild vs guild. Why can’t we get guild halls and 2 guilds can ‘war’ each other. They are given an instance with each of their guild halls on each end of the map 2forts style and you have to run in and get a ‘relic’ and get it back to your base. Would be hella cool.

I don’t know if we need something that extreme. This is why we have alternate weapons. What they should do is just give the Ranger a trait to reduce the cooldown on weapon swap by half. This way you can swap to the Longsword and swoop away and not be stuck with an awful weapon once you’ve blown the hilt+maul combo.

If more is needed, just allow lightning reflexes to break immobalize. We have our own cripples and chills to offset the enemy’s cripple and chills.