Guild Wars 2

Giotto.2607:

Also i dont get it when people say using MF selfish,
1st, you can use it, too.
2nd, if you count that selfish, i count people using ptv stats selfish and healing power selfish, because they still somehow low dps and useless in pve !

The people who call MF selfish call those sets selfish too.

You should run berserkers or get out. That’s the consensus.

google.3709:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Lapserdak.9056:

But its a elite, also it can be stunned/pushed to interupt rez, warrior rez banner cant be stoped and is instant.

Wrong. Battle Standard has a 2 second cast time and can be interrupted just like anything else. It’s also REALLY obvious when they start casting because of the animation.

those 2 elites arent even comparable
Spirt:

• Heals 480 per second
• Point wide ress on a 30s cd
• Full party wide condi clear
• Procs ress/condi clear when it dies…
• Self ress
• Another pet, large health pool and high amounts of regen

Banner

• Affected by posion (if down player is low, he wont ress)
• Can’t Self ress
• Doesnt heal
• Doesn’t remove condi

Doesn’t the banner heal with traits?
Doesn’t the poison reduce nature spirit’s heal?
Doesn’t the pet have a much longer cooldown?
Can’t the pet be killed?

The posted a ways back that they would be removing waypoints in WvW, so that will slow things down considerably. If they could just find some way to link the other BLs so players would need to do something in each of them to progress in EB, this would help things as well.

Like you can’t take SM in EB unless you have your own garrison in your BL plus either bay or hills in each of the enemies BL’s or both Hills and Bay and Keep in yours.

This way players have to split the zerg up to defend. If they’re overwhelmed defending something they could leave and try to take something in in the enemy’s BL to stop them from capping SM while you’re defending. Just something to split the zerg up and make it so they can’t run around as a single unit 50+ strong.

mtpelion.4562:

Lokki.1092:

By that reasoning by having the stat on Celestial originally they defined it as being in line, what has changed to make Celestial out of line, or more powerful and deserving of a nerf?

There are only two possibilities either Celestial was overpowered and in need of a nerf to bring it in balance, or Celestial was in line and is now getting nerfed because of… reasons.

Your theory is all speculation and while it could be entirely true that the devs think that Celestial is out of line with the other sets and needed a nerf, I would rather hear it from them directly.

Fact: All gear was in line prior to the change.
Fact: All gear is having Magic Find % removed.
Fact: Non-Celestial Gear is being replaced with other gear in order to make it in line.
Fact: Celestial Gear is not being replaced but is instead losing Magic Find % to make it in line.

Those are the facts. You cannot disagree with them being facts without being irrational. You can, however, argue that the facts are not fair.

Your first fact and last fact don’t agree with each other and that’s why players want an official response.

Go Norn Elementalist imo if you dont have one. Elementalist elite skills are somewhat questionable in value. The sword is good for escaping. The tornado is a gimmick and of no real value for anything. The other one that spawns the elementalis is what most use by default. This means the stealth from jaguar form for Norn is a good alternative imo.

Sylvari ranger is a good choice. If you ever decide to get Kudzu it will feel more appropriate. The problem I have with Sylvari is if you don’t run with the cultural or TA stuff it doesn’t look good. This is why my Sylvari are light and heavy classes as opposed to medium. That said, sylvari with the thief starter hood actually look good with the glow and bright eyes.

I say just stick with Sylvari.

As much as people complain about them, I really don’t see anyone saying just what it is that makes them overpowered. They’re still a pet with 8k hp that require 30 pts in a tree before they’re even remotely useful.

In fact, it’s probably the 30pt trait that makes them overpowered because if they couldn’t move, Rangers would drop them on the point when they get there and if they were killed timely, they’d still be on cooldown and couldn’t be resummoned.

If they wanted to nerf them, that is probably the most reasonable way to approach it. Cut their cooldown to 30 seconds. Change it so their cooldown wouldn’t activate until after the pet died. Remove the max duration of the pet. Change them so they moved without needing a 30pt trait.

Makes them useful for Ranger regardless of spec.
Removes the spamability of them.
They remain powerful as a slotted skill should be.

Then again this is ANet… and the Ranger class we’re dealing with.

Class balance comes into play a lot as well. The strongest classes in WvW currently are melee oriented. Ranged damage just isn’t good at this game and with the AE cap in place, they’ll never amount to much. This makes it more valuable to stay balled up in melee than to spread out and attack from range.

So you have a game that heavily favors melee for offensive damage over ranged. You then design your entire healing and buffing mechanic around standing in small circles on the ground. Worse still is healing from these small circles can easily outpace any/all AE damage thrown at a zerg other than arrow carts. Melee also have the luxury of getting quite a few blast finishers as part of their main DPS chain as opposed to range that often have to activate them at a DPS loss.

Improving the viability of ranged classes in this game would go a long way in countering zergs. Right now there just isn’t a threat for melee to close the 1500 yards to the enemy as they’ll never do any appreciable damage to matter before getting there. They also don’t have any real value when defending a tower/keep as the only thing that matters is arrow carts.

If they could improve ranged classes and simply increase the AE damage/cap in some fashion where it wasn’t so easily negated by blast healing things would turn around quick. Simply increasing the offensive AE cap to 10 and leaving the beneficial AE cap to 5 would probably be enough to push the game in the right direction.

Isn’t Brazil the Ranger who made the berserker video with 100% crit chance? I’m at work and youtube is blocked so can’t find it. But there’s a guide on youtube for gearing and spec advice to do what Guff describes.

sPvP is dominated by conditions so anything that can apply them quickly tends to win. The only reason the shortbow is used over the axe is because of the poison and the evade. The autoattack bleed is inconsequential. The reason most use sword/dagger in the offhand is for the evades and poison. Sometimes they run sword/torch for the added burn duration.

It needs a longer range. It’s great when someone is actively pounding on you, but when you’re chasing a runner and need to interrupt a heal it has a lot of limitations.

So where’s that blog post….

Shoe.5821:

you’re right its a minor imbalance but not a big deal either way tbh

i expect ascended rangers to be pretty intense

Uh… [insert random thoughts that would get me an infraction point]

Going from exotic to ascended is about 10% increase in stats (what that means in actual vitality, armor, attack power, etc is up to someone with more patience to figure out). It’s not just 10% less damage the ranger itself will end up doing. It’s 10% less damage the pet will end up doing AND 10% less ‘real’ hitpoints it will have. In a game where the pet already isn’t working. For a class that has no role or functional use in WvW.

Are you so threatened by the Ranger you feel it deserves this handicap?

Longbow is a fun weapon to use, but it’s more of a zerg weapon and not so much a small group one imo. Shortbow has the evade and the daze which is much more useful. If you can make longbow work, go for it though. I find it’s amazing against thieves, but doesn’t cut it against most other classes.

I also agree with the above poster, I would try to fit empathic bond unless you’re running with a completely prearranged group which will include a guardian or 2. Conditions are the bane of this class.

I think the more common roaming builds are 30/20/20/0/0 (if you plan to run signets) and 20/20/30/0/0 if you prefer empathic bond. Also is 30/10/30/0/0

For skills, I would try and squeeze in protect me if you can. Drop LR imo for it. If you run signets, take Stone instead of protect me.

Good luck.

This is almost identical to how WoW worked. While I do find WoW’s interpretation of the Ranger the best of any modern MMO (because I like ranged. I’m sure those who like melee Rangers probably don’t agree), it’s simply too much far too late for this game I’m afraid.

But you’re right… as of right now the pet is little more than a fire-and-forget homing missile or effectively a DOT. And worse still… it’s a DOT that only works 70% of the time and when told to do something other than DOT it only works half the time. For a year now mind you.

But as much as I would love WoW style pets, it will never… ever, happen.

Durzlla.6295:

I’m ok with our pets not scaling off us (as most know I actually like that) but the pets were balanced around exotic gear, not ascended, in PvE and WvW we need our pets to get “ascended” once the owner has so many ascended pieces of gear to help it keep up.

NOTE: all pets other than rangers scale off of the owner so no other prof should get this thing to avoid being over powered.

Do other pets scale from their owner? I’m not so sure about that. It’s easy enough to test. I’ll load up my Elementalist today and try out her minion naked and compare it to full berserker.

This type of class is usually one of the most played professions. Back when I played WoW I think Hunter ended up having like 10% more players than the next highest played class.

Ranged+Pet is very popular.

A good point was brought up on the Ranger forum that seemed fitting here. With the introduction of ascended weapons, and the later release of ascended armor, will Ranger pets be improved to deal more damage and have more health to offset the improved stats from ascended gear?

Without proper scaling in place for the Ranger pets, they’ll end up doing less damage and taking more once more players are geared. And since Ranger weapon coefficients are worse than every class in the game, the player will also gain the least from the weapons.

Has this been taken into consideration when you roll out all this new ascended gear?

Here’s a link to the original thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/More-Ascended-gear-vs-Pets/first#post2720429

Arganthium.5638:

It’s not balanced. Why? Because it gives a powerful passive effect in a decent radius with an extremely high probability of occurring, and on no CD. That’s ridiculous. Passive effects are supposed to give you a small advantage, and only occurring for either an individual or within an extremely small radius. Look at thief venoms. They’re active skills in that they require conscious activation to be useful (the same could technically be argued for spirits, but since they last for 60 seconds and their passive effects can be used infinitely many times within that margin of time, and because of the number of times these effects can potentially be used within the margin of time they’re usable, spirits are difficult to define as being “passive”). Thief venoms also have an extremely small radius of effect in being granted to allies, and they only even give them venom buffs if you grab 30 in SA. And yet, in spite of the fact that they’re active skills, venoms are still far, far worse than spirits.

Do you see the problem yet?

There’s a 10 second internal cooldown.

mtpelion.4562:

Lokki.1092:

Offset by a lack of focus is right, and part of that offset included the MF stat which has/had a value associated with it.

In other words all the MF gear was considered equal in value to every other set in the game by the devs because the overall stat points on the gear are not as important as how the specific instances of those stats are weighted on the gear. As such the 18% Magic find on a full set of armor is/was considered equivalent to 315 stat points. because of the increased chance at loot. And the players agreed, many flocking to MF sets.

Anet decided that MF is no longer a stat they want to pursue on their gear, and I agree with their reasoning. But Celestial gear is now less effective than before because a major reason for its use was those 315 stat points lost turned into MF.

I don’t think you believe that Celestial gear is OP or the BIS gear even though as you pointed out it has more total stats. So again. Why nerf it? It’s not like I’m saying they should put 315 total power on the set. It doesn’t even have to be combat stats. There are 3 non combat stats they could have replaced MF with!

I would not be opposed to adding Gold or Karma +%, but my main point is that Celestial does not need compensation for the removal of Magic Find because while the other sets had Magic Find at the expense of their stat allocation, Celestial had Magic Find in addition to its stat allocation.

The other Magic Find sets were less effective because they had Magic Find while Celestial is less effective because it is not focused.

That’s an assumption on your part though and that’s all people are asking. If that’s the case, ANet can simply say that Magic Find was a free stat on the Celestial pieces and call it a day. But you’re making too large a leap thinking Celestial is the only gear out there that doesn’t conform to the standard set forth by every other piece of gear in the game.

You could very well be right. In fact, I’d bet money you are right. But that’s really not the point. The point is players want to know for certain and not just assume something about a piece of gear that’s quite expensive and time consuming to achieve.

And the rest of you people in this thread arguing that ‘well you knew the risk when making it’ need to realize that not everyone reads these forums. Not everyone went home last night and bought up all the ficious claws and made a suit of gear. The overwhelming majority of players who play this game will come home from work on the 3rd and their gear will be gone and they’ll be faced with a screen asking them to delete their old gear and replace it.

Those people didn’t get forewarning. So the fact that a select few who read this forum did is irrelevent.

I personally prefer the hound and the timbre wolf (think that’s the name.. the one with fear). Especially when fighting thieves. They jump you, you can immediatly fear and hope to hit the thief. Best case, they’re hit with fear. Worst case is they blow a dodge avoiding it.

It’s best to roam with GS out as well. If a thief jumps you, you can push #4 to block and knock them back. You can also daze them to interrupt. Once knocked down you can longbow them away and auto till they prepare to stealth (most will drop the blinding field with pistol offhand. Others will do the heal animation, etc). Once they attempt to stealth you can use rapid fire. If you start the channel before they stealth, they’ll continue to be hit with it while stealthed. Once they come out of stealth, you can shoot them with hunters and stealth yourself and then swap back to sword for a maul for a big crit or wait out the delay for a second knockback or rapid again.

Thief really is a pretty good fight for the ranger which is why this class is often said to be a good roamer. It’s awful against other roaming classes usually, but so long as you beat Thieves you get the title of being a good roaming class.

Frostfang.5109:

Let’t just wait and see what the stats of the new weapons (and eventual new armour in the future) will be and then we can discuss this….

While you’re right and we should probably wait, things move slowly with ANet and seeing the amount of attention this class gets, it’s probably better to raise the issue sooner rather than later.

And the OP’s right… if they don’t adjust pet damage and survivability up, they will be disadvantaged. Of course I wouldn’t expect much, but the Ranger is in a state now where we should give up anything.

Lung Koku.9164:

Euryon.9248:

By the time you were able to use charged crystals to craft Celestial gear, you knew the nerf to MF was coming. Therefore you were knowingly taking a risk by crafting that gear without any reassurances about what would happen to the MF when it was converted.

No, I don’t know a word about that.
Even if this was said somewhere by Anet (once again I apologyze to not read every single word from Anet communication) why have say made a new set named celestial with MF stat ?

Not to mention the people who post on the forum are the vocal minority and not the playing majority.

While you guys usually focus on sPvP, it would be nice, since this is the 1 year mark for the game, to ask them more general class related questions.

Ask them to identify what role they feel certain classes should be filling and if they feel they’re filling them 1 year later.

Ask them how they feel overall balance is and which classes are closest and furthest from where they want to be.

Specifically I’m curious where they feel the Ranger class is and where it should be/where they want it. The Ranger just feels completely ‘lost’ in this game. But it would be nice to hear what ANet feels about each class in general.

Once this is done you can of course focus on the upcoming balance changes in sPvP that you always do.

MatthausW.8473:

I really hope they add some more impactful utility skills like the guardian/mesmer have. Wall of reflection, Sanctuary, Feedback, Null zone etc.

Would be nice. Signets need 30 points to be used effectively. Spirits need 30 points to be used effectively. We have 3 traps that do roughly the same thing. We have 1 good pet move and we only consider that good because some of us don’t want 30pts in marks for signet. Zephyr was nerfed because haste was o/p for warriors. What’s left?

Give us Wall of Thorns… blocks projectiles and any players that touch it are immobalized. Could be fun.

Staff more underwhelming than Ranger Longbow? pshhh.

But yea, Staff needs a burst option and another escape tool.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Dresden.1736:

As a former community manager for Kabam games, I’ll tell you right now that this guy only knows half of what is actually going on. Directors and producers don’t tell community managers anything because like this guy, he posts only part of the information online and causes a ****-storm. So, take what he says a grain of salt. All we know, now, is that we will be able to switch MF gear to another kind of gear. We don’t know anything beyond that.

I am sorry you had a bad experience in your former job. Here our developers actually talk to us and give us information we need. So what I am posting here is coming straight from the people working on the changes.

To answer a few more questions:

• If you currently have listed an item with MF on the Trading Post, they will be returned to you, as they become account bound.
• Upgrade components that currently give MF bonus will be updated with new functionality.
• All existing drops and crafting recipes that have created Magic Find gear will be replaced with new stat combos.

Any update on when the blog post will be available? You guys will hopefully stay handy after it’s posted to answer follow-up questions I trust as well? A change like this with less than a week notice is a bit much.

Vol.5241:

There’s nothing wrong with these changes, it’s good.

How about runes/sigils? Can those be changed to other stats?

Depends how it works.

Is travellers armor cheap? Cheaper than apothecary? Can I just buy a full suit of trabellers now and turn it into apothecary after the patch? Will CoE reward a different suit of armor now that Travellers serves no purpose?

The Talcmaster.7391:

Dresden.1736:

Okay, then what about Celestial gear? I sure as hell don’t want to change all the work I put into my Celestial gear into some cheap, generic 3-stat armor. Are you going to improve the Celestial stats, or replace MF with a different stat?

I always figured the MF on celestial was just going to disappear, since the point is more for it to be a jack of all trades, and not necessarily MF (though I can see why you would use it for that)

One would assume the MF was part of the item’s budget and thus why each stat is where it is at. It wouldn’t be fair to simply remove it and not replace it with something else.

Either increase the stats or introduce something else like a boon/condition duration stat that they can replace it with.

With any luck they’ll drastically reduce the number of badges needed per piece or introduce skins we can buy with the badges. Same with the cultural armor. Wishful thinking I guess :/

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Hey all, no worries, we got you covered.

Weapons, armor and trinkets with magic find will become account bound, lose their current stats and will gain the ability to be double-clicked to select one of several stat options depending on the item.

For example, if you have an Explorer’s Pearl Staff, you can now double-click it to change it to any other crafting stat.

We will have a blog post about it with more extensive information as well, keep an eye on the website.

What about celestial gear?

[quote=2713100;Kasama.8941:]

Grumpdogg.6910:

I assume Ascended weapon crafting materials will be easily available through WvW gameplay. Just like the Ascended back item is.

They said you get them from salvaging level 80 items. So yea, they’ll be available.

Since the patch notes are up and it’s confirmed the 9/3 patch is removing magic find… what are you doing with gear that has the stat on it?

Are there notes somewhere I should be reading? …

Found them on the front page (refresh button is an amazing tool!)

Also on dulfy http://dulfy.net/2013/08/27/gw2-super-adventure-box-returns-in-back-to-school-patch/

titanlectro.5029:

Time to learn a little game theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors#Rock-paper-scissors_in_video_games

Condition/tank feels OP because it counters your build. It is no more OP than “rock” is OP in rock, paper, scissors.

Right now, almost everyone is playing scissors, so people think rock is OP. Some people who did not jump on the scissors bandwagon are still running paper, and have nothing to fear from rock.

Condition tank has a hard counter: condition cleansing/self healing/sustain. If your build does not have these things, then it is vulnerable. But every build is vulnerable to something. A build is only OP if it is not vulnerable to ANYTHING. In rock, paper, scissors, only the Deathstar is OP.

If the game were balanced, maybe. It’s not though. While cleanses are the preferred counter to conditions, most conditions can be applied instantly without any cooldown. More times than not they can’t be stacked or spread that easily without skill use (epidemic for example), but even in that case, the cooldown on epidemic is shorter than the cooldown on many dispells.

On top of that, not every class has a dispel. So you presume they’re the scissor to the rock? But these classes also don’t have a way to tear through your HP, your defenses, your heals, etc so they aren’t scissors so maybe they’re paper. But they can’t be paper because they aren’t beating condition builds that means… they’re mushrooms.

The problem is this game doesn’t have anything that works aside from bunker builds and condition builds. Most bunker builds are condition builds. But the one thing we don’t have in any great quantity is power builds anymore. Why? Because power builds are only good against condition builds, but not bunker builds…. (conditions counter bunkers per your RPS theory)but every condition build is also a bunker build.

awge.3852:

Atherakhia.4086:

True?

I don’t know what you want

Flame Trap is only really useful when thrown imo.

That is not entirely true, there are ways to make it quite useful without throwing it. However according to the discussion going on above us I believe that it should be as effective as fire bomb even when not traited. Even if the radius remains smaller and non throwable, there is no reason why one should be greater than the other at least conceptually.

This is just my opinion, but if you aren’t fully traiting for traps, there’s little sense in using any of them.

Amins.3710:

If you want to have fun sometime w/ your 2-3 of your friends, run a GS (Melee) + Shout/Signet build w/ a Warrior & Guardian (all 3 running shouts).

Pretty strong trio.

Shouts -> Regen
Shouts -> Condi Removal
Shouts -> Heal

Good, fun /assist Train w/ lots of lockdowns and mobility.

Zerg vs Zerg… yeah, Rangers need something outside of Immobilizes and Healing Spring…. maybe if the immobilizes didn’t have a 5 person cap…

It’s a 3 person cap on muddy terrain.

Need posts are the same posts as everything else. People don’t like what the game is offering so they suggest ways to improve. They justify their suggestions by stating a perceived imbalance. Now whether that imbalance is right or wrong, who knows… but making a QQ thread about people QQing is not productive.

If you don’t agree with it, post in that thread why you don’t agree with it (but do it sensibly because ANet likes to use their Infraction Wand like it grows on trees). At least if you do it that way instead of this way, you may actually suggest something that the other player hasn’t thought of and that has changed his viewpoint.

But QQing about QQing? QQ….

Terrahero.9358:

MAGpie.7962:

The amount of Necro’s in WvW right now is just plain silly… and it should tell you something in itself right there.

Agree with the conditions meta needed a look at. A very hard look at.

Ow for the love of…

“I saw a necro kill someone with conditions, fix conditions”“An upleveld necro just killed a lv80 with conditions”“There are necro’s everywhere! Fix conditions”

Really? REALLY?

One profession is out of control, so we should nerf ALL conditions across the board. That sounds great, lets apply the same logic to everything else. Hey, guess what, Backstab Thieves are out of control. Lets nerf all direct-damage for all professions.

It’s not just Necros…

Spirit Rangers are getting enormous amounts of QQ.
Warriors are getting enormous amounts of QQ.
Engineers are getting a ton of QQ.
Perplexity is getting a ton of QQ.

You could argue it’s more of a burn issue than conditions overall, sure. But it’s still related to burn and conditions in general.

This doesn’t mean the solution has to be ellaborate or anything…

You could cut their damage by a set percentage (30-50%) but then allow them to crit. This would then force conditions to work in the same way power builds work. They sacrifice raw damage for staying power. The argument against this is that condition classes need staying power for their conditions to work. This is true… but the classes that rely on conditions were given other mechanics to help with this. Deathshroud for example. If those mechanics aren’t up to the task, then buff those.

Alternatively, you can make removal of conditions easier. Give more condition removal abilities to classes. Allow them to remove more conditions at once. Now this would be overpowered in some sense because the ability to apply conditions may be given around freely, but the ability to stack them to a degree to actually be a threat is somewhat difficult and time consuming. So simply spreading around more cleanse without a draw back isn’t very fair. I suggest simply make cleanses remove boons in addition to conditions. This is a very scaled down version of how dispels worked in Shadowbane for example.

You could also examine the true problem conditions. The largest of which is burning. Scale burning damage back and turn it into a utility spell. For example, it would only do 2x or 3x bleed damage, but now would put revealed on any target also burning.

Lastly, they could just take the easy approach to conditions. Simply make toughness and protection work against them and call it a day. One could argue they already have a stat to combat conditions in vitality. If this really worked we would expect the high HP classes to do better against conditions than other classes (Warriors and Necros for example) but these classes don’t, not because of vitality anyway.

Kasama.8941:

Having “lock target” on its own button, means that you can change targets quicker. If it was as you’re suggesting, you would have to call the pet back, and then send it to attack again, every time you wanted to change targets. Meaning there would be a higher chance of the pet screwing up. Sometimes pets are also slow to respond, meaning you need to press F1 several times.

That’s not how this would work.

Imagine there were 2 targets… Target A and Target B.

You would send your pet to attack Target A by pushing F1. You could have your pet stop attacking Target A and return to your side by pushing F1 again. If you want to have your pet attack Target B while it’s already on Target A, you would simply tell it to attack Target B. The script would know that you told it to attack a target it wasn’t actively attacking and would switch targets.

As for mashing the button etc etc, this isn’t the same as the F2 abilities that need to fit into an attach chain and wait for their time to go off. F1 and F3 always work and no mashing is needed. If the above script doesn’t work, it’s player error.

Has been suggested hundreds of times. Apparently giving the Ranger more control over their pet would make us overpowered and too difficult to play.

I don’t blame you.

While the class has its moments, they are few and far between. It’s not holding up with the way this game is evolving as the class isn’t as strong at roaming as it once was and it has never been much use to a zerg. My biggest concern is that even in organized 10v10 and 15v15 guild vs guild battles, the class is never considered because it simply doesn’t offer anything to the group that isn’t easily done by someone else.

There’s just so much wrong with this class that wouldn’t require much effort to fix but they’ve been issues now for a year. It’s hard to stay up beat about a class that is close to being where you want it when ANet appears to have forgotten about it completely.

The patch next Tuesday should be entertaining. I picture enormous nerfs in our future, but hopefully they’ll continue what they started and flesh out the Longbow playstyle further.

True?

I don’t know what you want

Flame Trap is only really useful when thrown imo.

There are tons of ways to handle conditions.

You could cut their damage by a set percentage (30-50%) but then allow them to crit. This would then force conditions to work in the same way power builds work. They sacrifice raw damage for staying power. The argument against this is that condition classes need staying power for their conditions to work. This is true… but the classes that rely on conditions were given other mechanics to help with this. Deathshroud for example. If those mechanics aren’t up to the task, then buff those.

Alternatively, you can make removal of conditions easier. Give more condition removal abilities to classes. Allow them to remove more conditions at once. Now this would be overpowered in some sense because the ability to apply conditions may be given around freely, but the ability to stack them to a degree to actually be a threat is somewhat difficult and time consuming. So simply spreading around more cleanse without a draw back isn’t very fair. I suggest simply make cleanses remove boons in addition to conditions. This is a very scaled down version of how dispels worked in Shadowbane for example.

You could also examine the true problem conditions. The largest of which is burning. Scale burning damage back and turn it into a utility spell. For example, it would only do 2x or 3x bleed damage, but now would put revealed on any target also burning.

Lastly, they could just take the easy approach to conditions. Simply make toughness and protection work against them and call it a day. One could argue they already have a stat to combat conditions in vitality. If this really worked we would expect the high HP classes to do better against conditions than other classes (Warriors and Necros for example) but these classes don’t, not because of vitality anyway.

Astralporing.1957:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

If every single recipe was given to every single player… then the entire concept of recipes would be obsolete.

Having all other different stat sets obtainable with discovery (before celestial gear was introduced) somehow didn’t invalidate the concept of recipes at all.

The problem with this scenario is the armor is account bound. So in order to get the gear, you one have to be the crafter, two be the miner, and three be the wearer.

I’d strongly suggest you rethink the Warrior. While Ranger is a strong ranged class, it’s clearly not strong enough to amount to any real value in WvW. You’ll also find the ranged ranger builds are incredibly straight forward and boring to play. Instead of wasting time leveling to see how each plays, I strongly suggest you go to sPvP and give each a couple hours of your time. If you can stomach the boring gameplay of the ranger then you’ll probably enjoy the class no matter how inferior it is.

Warrior is currently one of the most broken classes in this game though. A condition/regen build with Warrior is near unstoppable. While you will use the longbow, you’ll be using it more in melee and mid range (to great effect I might add) as opposed to long range sniping (which you can use the rifle for if you want).

Few classes in this game can take on a condi warrior 1v1. They’re very mobile and make good roamers too. And at the end of the day, you’re still a Warrior so you’ll always have something to do for a zerg. Ranger not so much.

Berserker gear isn’t a good option for this class because you’ll die quickly. If you want to run berserker gear, longbow is a better option than shortbow imo. Greatsword is also a given as you’ll need all the survivability options longbow doesn’t offer.

You’ll be better off just going condition based regardless of your playstyle though imo. You can go with a 20/20/30/0/0 build (which I run currently). You can also go with a 30/10/30/0/0 build (which I ran before my celestial finished and when I was in apothecary gear). If you go power, the 30/20/20 build is good. If you don’t need the signets, then the first build mentioned is also good with a power build.

I find I need empathic bond to survive though because I’m more of a backline pusher than a front line area denial class like others typically suggest. With me in the back I tend to not be near enough to other classes to get conditions removed. When roaming, conditions are a nightmare as well since everyone and their brother is running a condi build.

You won’t beat guardians, warriors, or engineers with these builds though. Not enough interrupts. Shortbow daze is very valuable when fighting these classes.

Good luck.

denimdan.8642:

ranger traps have a 50 man limit instead of 5

Which trap is this… because the only trap that actually hits 5 targets is Fire, Spike, and Frost. The others only hit 3.

Muddy Trap was def 3.
Poison Trap was 3.
Torch 5 is 3.
LR is 3.

I’ll check concussive and crippling shot later. I’ll confirm knockback also.