Guild Wars 2

Run from someone up a hill and longbow #4 them off the ledge. Never gets old. I can’t believe this one wasn’t listed!

The only scenario I’ve found the leap to be useful is when running from a target and they’re right on my heels. If you swing the sword, you can hit them and leap away. You’re still locked in the animation though and can’t heal or evade due to it.

I’m sorry, but this kind of mechanic has no place on an auto-attack chain. If you want to attach it to something else, that’s fine. A player can choose the opportune time to use it. But that’s not the case with an auto attack chain. Not using it means you’re losing damage.

There’s nothing saying they can’t just attach evades to the attacks just like they did with GS. But this mechanic on an autoattack is simply too much.

The duration of the stealth is fine. I find issue with how it’s applied. It’s simply too unreliable to have to hit a target to stealth that it’s simply not as valuable as it should be. I would say 1 in 5 shots fail for me and at that level I can’t rely on it. I’ve pretty much stopped trying to use it as an defensive tool and instead use it primarily for offense.

As for agro, stealth doesn’t break agro in this game. You need to be hidden for like 8 seconds for it to drop. It’s the same for Thieves. They’ll only ever lose agro with Shadow Refuge.

Now as for the autocrit, that’s what 30 points in marks is supposed to do. It’s clear they came up with remorseless first and were struggling to find a way for opening strikes to reset in combat. Instead of attaching it to knockbacks/dazes/stuns, they decided to give us stealth.

The stealth really does need to be detached from needing to hit the target. It’s far to unreliable the way it is now. But if all the attack did was stealth the ranger I’m not sure it would be enough for a weapon skill.

You meant to post this in the sPvP forums. In WvW, guardians outnumber engineers and necromancers 3:1. At those odds, conditions don’t exist.

They need to just merge a handful of servers and suspend transfers for a month or so to let things level off once they merge.

FC, ET, and AR have got to be the 3 least populated servers and are losing players on a daily basis. Merge these 3 into other servers and lets see how things play out.

Ele isn’t that complicated to play. It’s like a lot of classes where they’re easy to jump into and do well with but really reward individual skill. Thieves are another such class.

It’s very easy for a ele to go in, cycle every skill and attunement on cooldown and do well. As they develop and their skill grows, they start to build patterns into this mashing of buttons and the Ele rewards you well for the effort you put in.

I’d say Ele’s are more useful to zergs and are more interactive (fun) to play. Necros are powerful too, but a little more straight forward.

This isn’t a L2P issue. The mechanic just isn’t fluid and is simply too much for an auto-attack option. If you notice, no one is complaining about the mechanics of serpents and hornets despite them being all over the place too. It’s just a very jarring and to do it 2 out of every 3 seconds is too much. If the weapon needs an attachment mechanic and the snare form dagger isn’t enough (if you choose dagger anyway) then further improvement on hornet and serpent should be the goal. Or simply replace might to pet for a cripple.

No other class needs this auto leap mechanic on their auto-attack and tons of classes have fast attack speeds on their auto attack chain.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Atherakhia.4086:

Don’t most skills that have active effects with cooldowns have the timer start immediately?

Necro forms for example, don’t the timers start when you push the button and not when you leave the form? Same with dancing blade for thief. While they’re spinning, the cooldown is going down. Same with the guardian summon weapons. Same with ele weapons. Etc etc.

The only issue I’ve heard that could be legitimate is if the frost spirit buffs are honestly stacking because, once traited, the buff has a different name so the untraited spirit and the traited spirit each have an active buff on the target. I’ve never verified this is true, but it was brought up in the other thread.

Nay, most cds start after. Tried it on spirit weapons before I complained. Hammer spirit CD is kitten . I summoned it and waited for it to die—-cd is kitten . It should have been 25s if it were similar to spirits. Also Death Shroud cd starts after you leave. At most you can go back into DS after 7s which is the traited version.

I mean liche and plague form.

Don’t most skills that have active effects with cooldowns have the timer start immediately?

Necro forms for example, don’t the timers start when you push the button and not when you leave the form? Same with dancing blade for thief. While they’re spinning, the cooldown is going down. Same with the guardian summon weapons. Same with ele weapons. Etc etc.

The only issue I’ve heard that could be legitimate is if the frost spirit buffs are honestly stacking because, once traited, the buff has a different name so the untraited spirit and the traited spirit each have an active buff on the target. I’ve never verified this is true, but it was brought up in the other thread.

A reason you want to run complete glass? Full knights armor with cav trinkets still gets you like 50% chance to crit, 100% crit damage, 2.75k armor, and like 18k hp. You have access to fury in a couple places to boost crit up further if need be. I just think you’ll want somewhere near 3k toughness when all is said and done in WvW.

find a couple friends and make a power ranges club and have 3+ run axe/sword+warhorn for perma fury and swiftness. Plus you’ll get the wolf achievment. It’s honestly fun. I usually roam with a power ranger unit (we’re even colored like power rangers). Only 2 of us are actually power rangers, the others are spirit and condi builds. but it’s still fun.

Chopps.5047:

If you think marks is bloated, what do you think about wilderness survival?

I have a similar complaint with almost everything but skirmishing (which gets the opposite complaint). There’s just no focus with a lot of the trees. I remember the first time I played this class I was given the impression they put a bunch of traits on a board and started throwing darts to decide which one would be assigned to each tree.

This class just has a lot of problems in my opinion and the main problem seems to be related to this class not really doing anything in this game. That’s why I would love to get ANet’s opinion on just what they invision the role for this class to be. Perhaps if we had a real answer to what they want this class to do we could focus our dicussions on how to better improve it to reach that goal.

I’ve made my opinion on this clear in other threads… I want it to be a ranged class with melee support. this is why I spend the bulk of my time with shortbow/longbow and a GS off-hand. It just supports the way I want to play the class. It’s just not fun or effective most of the time.

Chopps.5047:

There’s no where else to put piercing though besides an adept spot. The reason is because you don’t always want to pierce, at least in pve. Examples are anywhere you need to control aggro like Candidate Trials t4 or arah. But if it’s a minor trait then you have to take it.

I ran with piercing while leveling and never had a problem. But I can see your complaint. Something else needs to go though as Marks is bloated right now and things need to change. Seemed like a reasonable option since this class is the weakest AE class right now and there’s no real excuse for not allowing them to pierce from a balance side of things. Perhaps change Ranger bows to use the new ‘beam’ technology that Mesmers and Ele’s got several months back. Where the arrow would pierce all the way to the target you actually had selected. Taht way you could control the AE potential (which is what many of us do in WvW anyway when selecting someone at the back of the zerg given the pathing issues with arrows as they pierce).

Greatsword is likely never going to get any more positive changes to it. It is a very strong weapon at this stage in the game and is an amazing tool for this class. While I would love to see Maul become a blast finisher, I don’t see it happening.

Sword I also am not a fan of the jumping around sequence and would much rather have full control of my character. I honestly don’t see the problem with serpent’s strike though. It’s always been reliable and certainly was 10x better than the Thief option until they finally fixed it. If you feel it has guiding problems then I see no problem with improving it. Really sword, aside from the leaping on the attacks toward the enemy, I find a good weapon option as well. The only thing I wish would happen is the leap after hornet’s was longer. Bump it to 5 seconds before you can’t use the leap.

Pets dodging when you dodge is worthless. The likelyhood your pet needs to dodge at the same time as you is almost nothing and I would absolutely never waste my dodge to save my pet when I can simply swap pets and lose nothing. If you were going to give the pet something on dodge, it should be aegis imo. Effectively does what your dodge does, but is actually reliable.

I’m on the fence with your marks change. While remorseless is less than powerful when used on the bulk of a ranger’s moves, it’s quite powerful on things like Maul. I’m not sure the trait is worthy of a GM spot, but I don’t think making it a minor one would be viable either. Personally, I’d much rather see piercing shots be a minor trait. This class lacks AE and if we’re not going to allow the shots to pierce to begin with, a minor trait allowing it seems reasonable. In another thread another Ranger brought up the fact that no other trait in the game affects specific weapons like this, and he’s right. So it may not be a realistic suggestion. Another problem I have with the GM traits for Rangers is Signet of the Beastmaster is just so insanely good I can’t justify using remorseless in many situations.

Some of the skill suggestions you make seem reasonable. I personally wish signets would affect rangers and pets at the same time regardless. I know this would end up nerfing a lot of them, but needing a GM trait to do this in the Marks line is very difficult because of just how bloated that line is.

I’m also not a fan of having Spike, Frozen, and Mud trap. While each has its niche, they’re simply all too similar to warrant having all 3. Drop Frozen and give the class a new skill. Something that either gives very strong burst potential or some AE options.

Spirits are also a major sticking point with me. They’re finally powerful (sort of), but still require 30 points to actually become useful outside of objective holding. They really should walk on their own. Needing a trait to make these things useful is very disappointing.

The longbow change was inconsequential in my view of things. Do you think ANet came up with the idea of stealth first or the remorseless trait first? I think remorseless came first honestly. The stealth is simply too clunky to use effectively because it’s so unreliable. The vulnerability on Rapid Shot makes sense logically, but it doesn’t really work out practically. And we’re still left with a Rapid Shot that needs a second trimmed off its duration.

The shortbow nerf I find the largest insult to this class because a lot of people out there use shortbow #4 and #5 to help kite. While the intended purpose of #5 is an interrupt, the travel time and unrelaible nature of shots can be a detriment on those clutch heals, fears, stuns, etc you’re trying to interrupt. When they reduced Shortbow’s range to 900 to match the axe, you left the 2 weapon sets being almost identical. A ranged snare, an AE condition, and an auto attack. With the changes, they should have removed the facing requirement for Shortbow’s bleeds and even with this, Axe is still probably a stronger overall option.

Now you’re right, a lot of the weapons have strong defensive options, but not every weapon for every class is split along these lines. There’s nothing wrong with expecting a class to switch to another weapon set when things are looking bad. Especially when one of those weapons is a Ranger’s greatsword which would probably be the most overpowered weapon in the game if it were given to any other class.

As to the traps, you’re right… some variety is nice to have… but the 3 traps are excessive. There’s no reason to have all 3 and Frost is the least used of the bunch (by me). When this class has such an obscene lack of AE and burst damage, having skills that are all functionally the same are among the first things that should be dropped to add it.

I’d just like ANet to come out and define their intended role for the class. It clearly isn’t as a condition class because it is horrendous at that role when compared to Necros and Engis. It has almost a total lack of AE damage which is odd since every other class i nthe game is so AE centric. I think the Thief is really the only other class with so little AE.

The burst mechanic for the class is the worst of them all too as pets still can’t hit moving targets reliably, they still are too clunky to use effectively, and they’re still a huge detriment to the class in PvE. Not to mention they’re nerfed so often because of sPvP.

There’s just so much wrong with the class and the turnaround time for improvement is almost nonexistent.

The ranger has a bad reputation because of how straight forward its gameplay is. If you really think about what you do while playing a ranger, 90% of it is running in circles spamming autoattack all day. The melee weapons aren’t much different really as a lot of the strength in sword/greatsword is the auto-evade mechanics and not so much their side effects.

I was very disappointed in particular with the shortbow nerf when they dropped it down to 900 range. The weapon is almost identical to axe, and since I have a thief and warrior among other chars, I still don’t understand why it needs directional placement for bleed stacking.

The class is just very boring to play and a lot of people equate the shallow gameplay to the class being more faceroll than skill. Class really needs a lot of work to make it ‘fun’ imo.

You can make it a rant if you want. This has been complained about nonstop for as long as I’ve been playing this game. It’s a shame because the animation looks good, but it’s just not functional at all. There is absolutely no reason it has to jump around like this.

jubskie.3152:

Atherakhia.4086:

If only ANet remembered they made a Ranger class perhaps some actual progress could be made with this class.

No trait line really makes sense. Marks is beyond ridiculous. Skirmishing as you mentioned. We have skills like Spirits that aren’t even worth considering unless you trait them. We have 3 trap skills that are effectively the same thing. Comparing lightning reflexes to roll for initiative is quite bad, let alone if you even want to consider withdraw.

I mean there is probably more actually wrong with this class than there is right… and ANet has visited this forum so many times you can count them on a single hand.

There’s so many things that are questionable about this post. :/

First of all, didn’t you read the patch notes? Rangers got buffed a LOT on the july 23 patch.

Second, marks is much better now than what it was before. Yes, it could use some more work, but you’re making it look like the entire line is broken. Care to expound?

I already explained why I think traps is ok in skirmishing in a post above. Spirits, on the other I agree with. It needs to be traited to be useful.

There are 4 trap skills.

Who was comparing LR with roll for initiative? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Withdraw a heal skill?

Wrong and right seems to be a matter of perspective. I found that majority of what the ranger has makes sense, but I will admit that there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Lastly, how do you know that ANet doesn’t visit t this forum? Do you have forum stats on hand? How do you know they don’t just lurk? Sorry, baseless claims like this can’t be taken seriously.

Do you feel the patch accomplished much? It was the first sign of life from ANet in ages.
Marks is bloated.
Mud, Spike, Frost are too similar.
I was simply stating LR sucks in comparison to most other stun breaks.
Who cares if they lurk and don’t post? Nothing is getting done despite thousands of posts on the same topics for 9 months. If they’re reading the forum, there’s no proof of it.

I think I covered all your points?

I’m not trying to be intentionally obtuse. This class has a lot of problems. I’d argue more than any other class in the game. If you don’t agree, that’s fine… neither of us will convince the other of something they don’t want to believe. There was a time I would have spent hours detailing every minute issue with this class. That day has come and gone. It was attempted. Nothing has come of it.

I don’t find this class has a real functional purpose for existing in this game as it is right now. Traits would be a great way to start, but there’s so very much more wrong with it at this point. If you don’t agree, that’s fine.

If only ANet remembered they made a Ranger class perhaps some actual progress could be made with this class.

No trait line really makes sense. Marks is beyond ridiculous. Skirmishing as you mentioned. We have skills like Spirits that aren’t even worth considering unless you trait them. We have 3 trap skills that are effectively the same thing. Comparing lightning reflexes to roll for initiative is quite bad, let alone if you even want to consider withdraw.

I mean there is probably more actually wrong with this class than there is right… and ANet has visited this forum so many times you can count them on a single hand.

From an attachment point of view, I think the reason we look at our pets as DOTs or Fire and Forget missiles, instead of actual companions that compliment the class is because we have 2 of them. They don’t grow with the character as he progresses beyond 80 (no scaling with gear). They have act very randomly (no control over several of their abilities). We can’t customize them (choose which abilities to use). They simply don’t work.

There’s no way to fix things at this point for the vast majority of it. If I were redoing the pet, I’d have given them more attacks that the player could control, but also allow the player to turn them on auto-attack if they wanted to.

Each pet should have 1 unique move to make the pet feel special.
Each pet should have access to 1 other skill of their choice from options that they share.
Each pet would have an ‘elite’ which is just the various pet commands we have now so you could choose just one skill to give them to use.

If we could customize them in this fashion we would have a better attachment to them. But short of all that, we could just start with the basics… like allowing pets to reliably hit moving targets, changing their skills to be instant cast (both the random and F2 abilities), and allowing them to actually get in and out of combat reliably. If the pets were actually reliable and felt like an addition to the class as opposed to a distraction, we’d probably care more.

The only concern I would have with remorseless as a minor trait, even if it’s the grandmaster one, is that the stealth can be quite powerful in certain situations. An auto-critting maul for example is a serious hit and in that scenario, remorseless could be considered too powerful for a minor trait. If it were only used on auto attacks then obviously the trait probably isn’t worthy of anything beyond an adept trait.

But you’re right, allowing Piercing arrow to be a trait would set new ground as far as minors go as I can’t think of any that really focus on specific weapons.

thieves have condition cleanse in stealth usually. could have been that. They could have evade rolled out of it too since entangle is awful.

Odd, my post didn’t show up…

But at this point ANet needs to give up with enticing players to move to lower population servers and just wipe out the entire bottom bracket and merge those servers with different ones.

ET, FC, and AR are probably the 3 lowest population servers. Each are bleeding players every day to higher population ones because ANet keeps pairing these servers up against others with 2, 3, or 4 times the population. I’m confident that if any of these 3 servers had real coverage for the midnight to 8am timeframe they’d have no problem rising through the ranks. But when you’re outmanned at even your prime time? Come on…. something needs to be done.

Since I’m on Fergs, my only option would be to move to ET as it’s the only other server with a lower population.

ANet needs to wipe out the bottom tier and just merge the servers. ET, FC, and AR all have no population, no coverage, and are bleeding players daily. And how can you blame the players for leaving?

Victory.2879:

That wasn’t a personal insult- guardians have way more in terms of heals, condition removals, defences, etc than necros and can survive very well with the right builds- that huge heal, retaliation, etc make taking down a guardian a real pain.

Necros aren’t OP as they are quite easy to kill if you know their skill sets and how the average wvw player plays it- and the best counter against a necro is another necro.

See soooo many guardians in wvw now, wonder why that is…could be as they are hard to kill and can tag lots of kills,,,

They’re also ANet’s golden child and have been at the very top of PvE, PvP, and WvW since day 1. Think people are finally catching on that Guardian is the one sure way to success in this game.

Even with spirit builds, rangers aren’t exactly amazing at this game (especially outside of sPvP where they’re borderline worthless and have no class identity to speak of). It’s a tough pill to swallow to usher in nerfs for a class that already isn’t performing.

I would hope that if they nerf spirits that they try to buff the class in other areas so the class still has some purpose even being in the game.

I’m still holding out hope they remove all spirit skills, give rangers staff, and come up with some quazi-mark/well approach to them similar to necromancer marks.

Aren’t many skills in this game that are so awful unless you first invest traits to prop them up.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem is conditions have a single stat feeding into them.

This is an oft repeated and completely false myth. Conditions don’t have a single stat feeding into them. They have 3:

Malice: this provides their damage, and is the stat most people refer to.

Expertise: This little factored stat accounts for condition duration. Expertise by itself is capable of doubling both the overall damage done of any condition, as well as the damage per second via how many conditions you can stack at one time. Because of this, Expertise is fundamental to any good condition build.

Precision: Now, this only indirectly affects conditions, but nonetheless it is an important stat. Many of the ways classes inflict conditions are with procs. The dreaded dhuumfire, incendiary powder, barbed precision, sharper images, precise strikes, Sigil of Earth, all of these need precision in order to function.

Because of this, you can think of the rabid amulet as the “pure condition damage” amulet. It provides the precision needed for procs, the malice needed for damage, and toughness to survive. The only stat it is missing is expertise, which isn’t given by any amulets.

By comparison, some amulets that are noticeably missing that would be the equivalent of rabid would be

Power/Precision/Toughness
Precision/Crit Damage/Vitality
Crit Damage / Precision /Toughness

And so on, listing primary stat first and secondary stats later. Now, Valkyire Amulet is closest to this by having power and crit damage, however this comes with the caveat that crit damage is wholly dependent on a stat that is missing, which is precision. Crit damage is the only stat like this, though.

Expertise isn’t a real stat. People aren’t going 30 points in spite for condition duration. They’re going 30pts in spite for Dhuum and the fact that they get condition duration is a bonus. Before Dhuum they would run 0/30/20/0/20 or 0/30/10/10/20 etc etc. So while this stat can be gotten via trait expenditure or select few sigils/runes, it’s not something gone after specifically to have it.

The same with Precision for the most part. While it’s nice to have for the on crit application of bleeds and dhuumfire, the fact that 30pts in curses gives crit chance is inconsequential. While not available in PvP, most rangers in WvW actually run Apothecary gear which grants 0 crit and 0 power and they have a lot of on-crit application as well.

So while there are other stats that have some loose connection to condition duration, the fact that they are taken is more utility oriented and not damage related and not really impacting the issues being discussed in this thread all that much. I mean afterall, if you’re going to factor in expertise for conditions, you may aswell factor it in for power too as people want it for daze/snare duration and the like as well.

Now that all being said, I don’t really find conditions to be the problem. It really is limited to burn and not Neco specific either.

Pets are an afterthought really. Even as a player, we don’t have any real attachment to them. We send them off to their death, moments before their head is ripped off we push a button to swap to the next unnamed pet and repeat. Well I’m overstating it a little, I really do treat my pets more as fire and forget missiles or a random DOT more than I treat it as an integral part of the class.

But yea, before they bother with trying to make bad pets better, they really need to resolve a lot of the mechanical problems that still plague pets in general.

Things like…
Pets still not being able to hit moving targets reliably.
Pets needing their skills to be instant cast so they can hit things reliably.
Pets not properly scaling with gear (this is the main cry for nerfs on this class for example).
Pet skill RNG is completely uncalled for in a PvP centric game.

And lets not even get started on spirits. They should remove every single one of them from the game, give Rangers the staff weapon, and rebalance Spirits to act just like Necromancer wells. Only then would it be justified in them not being able to move without traits.

Arheundel.6451:

They stated already that not all weapon sets can be viable in PvP, ele staff is one of them, you should just give up on staff and move on

Stakitten for Elementalists.
Bows for Rangers.
Swords for Warriors.
Shields for Guardians.

You know the iconic weapons for these classes… don’t expect them to work and you should be happy about it!

Just like bows for rangers, staff just needs a little burst to help put pressure down. Doesn’t need to be the focus of the weapon, but some burst wouldn’t hurt.

I’m on the opposite side of Fjandi. Power builds for Rangers are awful. They still have no group utility. They still have no ranged burst. Melee is still reliant on evade spam in order to function as well as it does.

The ranger continues to be a condition class, but the worst condition class in the game.

Both bows continue to be the worst weapon options for the class.

Any insight on what we can look forward to in the future Karl? Also some input on why longbow got stealth would be great as that one seemed completely random.

Takes awhile depending on build. Since he apparently wasn’t running condi removal you could just run in circles with shortbow. But your typical condi build in full apothecary usually can’t be beat by Warriors. Usually only struggle with Mesmers and Necromancers using it myself since the regen is so high and condi damage is reliable.

Red Jay.2516:

Atherakhia.4086:

While I’d love to see other weapon options, I feel the RANGEr’s main focus should be ranged damage and right now the 3 ranged options for the class are awful so I’d rather not add to the problem by introducing more ranged weapons that don’t work.

Here we go again.

You find shortbow, longbow, and axe to be working fine with no room for improvement I take it? He asked for people’s opinion on something. If you don’t agree, that’s fine. No reason to be a [censored].

While I’d love to see other weapon options, I feel the RANGEr’s main focus should be ranged damage and right now the 3 ranged options for the class are awful so I’d rather not add to the problem by introducing more ranged weapons that don’t work.

Kasama.8941:

The benefit of the Ranger, is that you are always two in one. Meaning that you can send the pet to attack one player, while you attack another. The other advantage that the Ranger has, compared to other professions, is a lot of AoE snare skills, that allows for very efficient condition stacking and control. That’s pretty much it.

I don’t want to come off as nitpicky or being overly difficult, so if I offend you I want to appologize in advance.

I don’t really agree that the Ranger is 2 in 1. It’s more 1 divided by 2. Without both, the class is simply half a class. The damage is well below that of any other class. Really the only burst this class is capable of is coming from the pet, but it often misses, is difficult to control, and pales in comparison to the other classes.

As for AE snares, they’re also all trap based. So just like needing to trait to make spirits even marginally useful, you have to trait into traps for them to offer real utility outside of self defense for the ranger.

Now conditions I somewhat agree with. But again, when you consider that the Ranger can’t stack bleeds quickly (directional restriction when no other weapon in the game has this?), you rely on the target to trigger a trap for all the others, and that unlike Engineers and Necromancers who have far more conditions and stack them much quicker, the Ranger is all single target damage.

So if these are the roles we’re supposed to focus on, why are we so awful at it?

I find the class has no defined purpose in this game. It’s the reason the class struggles in PvE and it’s the reason their role in sPvP is so passive. In WvW, the class offers very limited utility which further makes coming up with a reason to play the class so difficult. My main complaints with this class are it has nothing it excells at and it’s so boring to play.

Now that doesn’t mean it’s outright useless as you’ve found, you can still get bags aplenty and have fun with the class from time to time. But if you sat down and tried to rank the classes in overall value to WvW, where would you rank the class? Of 8 classes, I give the Ranger a solid 7 eaking out a win over the thief because of its waterfield and nothing else.

For a condition build, it’s awful when compared to the Necro or Engi.
For a power build, it’s awful when compared against nearly every class out there. Especially when you try to focus on the bow skills.
For utility there’s nothing but waterfields and potentially spirits if you trait them.
For burst there is none outside of a maul when you pop 3 signets.

Really the only thing this class has to set it apart from the others are pets, and we see how awful and poorly thoughtout they are.

I’m curious what the Ranger’s role is supposed to be in this game? In another forum, ANet came out and said why they didn’t want to change Necromancer’s in a certain way and it was because they envision the class playing a certain, unique role. That had me wondering… what is the Ranger’s unique role in this game?

It’s not ranged condition damage because it’s all single target and limited. Especially when compared to Engineers and Necromancers.

It could be as a pet class, but if that’s their role they’ve failed horribly at it because the pet is more of a hinderance than a benefit and doesn’t really synergize well with the class like you’d expect.

It isn’t single target damage because the class is awful when compared to other classes.

It’s not AE damage for the same reason.

I’m just curious what others feel the Ranger’s role in this game and if you feel it’s actually living up to it?

For me, I feel the ranger was supposed to be the single target damage dealer from ranged. Now granted the damage it can do at 1200 range is probably the highest of all the classes, but it’s all single target, no burst, no utility damage as well. So I’m l left wondering what niche they want this class to full?

It would seems the overwhelming majority of people disagree with your assessment that conditions aren’t overpowered. I personally agree with you for the most part as I only find burn to be the problem (and burn in general, not specific to the necromancer). The only other way conditions could be considered overpowered is their AE application.

I also don’t think you’d see a reduction in weapon use because, using your example, GS would still provide higher burst damage whereas sword would still be a sustained weapon. They fit different playstyles and functions on the battlefield. You would just see skills for weapons that currently aren’t used or used well, actually have a use. Take Warrior rifle for example. The auto attack is awful because it’s a bleed attack on a power weapon. Similar issues for nearly every class.

As for tankiness, I do find that classes are maintaining too much damage for their survivability. but I do agree with you that condition classes will be harmed heavily by a loss of survivability. I would hope having the power change to incrase raw damage in addition to the crit function would help level things out where their damage to survivability ration is still balanced, but I agree with you it will be a problem.

All I know is the way WoW launched it was like GW2 and it was awful. Over the course of 5 years they pulled it together and WoW is currently built fairly well where stats and PvP balance is concerned. This game shouldn’t be a WoW clone, but that doesn’t mean we ignore everything that came before it on principle.

But understand your point.

The Boz.2038:

Atherakhia.4086:

The problem is conditions have a single stat feeding into them. Where a power build has power, precision, and crit damage, a condition build has only condition damage. This then allows a condition spec to focus the remaining item budget on defensive stats like toughness, vitality, and healing power. If you notice, the only bunkers in this game are also condition spec’d as well.

The solution seems obvious… either remove the condition damage stat and make it a function of power (like WoW has) or simply allow conditions to crit and thus requiring condition classes to also stack crit chance and crit damage. Or, alternatively, just come up with a different stat for condition classes to collect. Things like:

A stat to increase condition duration.
A stat to increase condition resistance to dispell.
A stat to give conditions a chance to spread to nearest target.
etc.

Good lord, so much backwards reasoning… I almost don’t know where to begin.
But I’ll try anyway.
Conditions were DESIGNED to have a single stat fueling them and, rather than have a damage output that is gained through multiplying three different stats (which ends up a ridiculously high number), they generate damage output THROUGH TIME. What better way to buy time for the conditions to do their thing than… defensive stats?

And your ideas would flat out not work. Except for the condition duration one. I’d kill for a condition duration/condition damage/toughness combination. Chance to resist dispel? Yes, let’s implement MORE RNG into the game. Chance to spread to nearest target? I… No. Just no. Fueled by power? Are you kidding me? Why? What good could possibly come from this?

You’re right… this game was designed around conditions working with a single stat with the idea that they’ll focus on defensive stats so DOT’s can work over time and the class would still function. And look where we are now? Conditions are overpowered. They fuel bunker builds. You must use an all or nothing approach to conditions. We have 5 threads on the front page all complaining that the current system doesn’t work.

So lets go by one thing at a time (and keep in mind these mechanics of DOTs criting, or being fueled by a primary stat work in other MMO’s)

If conditions were linked to power you’d allow classes to use all their skills and builds would be more versatile and diverse. You also have the benefit of allowing toughness to work against condition damage.

If conditions needed multiple stats, it would bring bunker builds down to where they should be… sacrificing real damage in favor of defense. If condition damage was reduced across the board by XX% because they were now allowed to crit, or were made more reliable, or had any number of other things working for them, bunker builds couldn’t focus on defensive stats to the exclusion of everything else. If they did, they’d actually sacrifice damage to do it, which they should (and don’t) have to.

Now I realize this is the sPvP forum and everyne here’s is against on crit things, and RNG in any fashion, but you’ll need to suck it up and realize that every game is RNG based and it’s that RNG that helps provide pressure on the enemy and push a fight in a different direction. This isn’t a FPS or a 25 year old MMO. We’re not breaking any new ground here.

WoW has eSport arenas, critting DOTs, single power stat focus, resilience, etc. It works there. It could work here. And it’s not even that big a leap to make it work.

emon.1863:

Atherakhia.4086:

The problem is conditions have a single stat feeding into them. Where a power build has power, precision, and crit damage, a condition build has only condition damage. This then allows a condition spec to focus the remaining item budget on defensive stats like toughness, vitality, and healing power. If you notice, the only bunkers in this game are also condition spec’d as well.

The solution seems obvious… either remove the condition damage stat and make it a function of power (like WoW has) or simply allow conditions to crit and thus requiring condition classes to also stack crit chance and crit damage. Or, alternatively, just come up with a different stat for condition classes to collect. Things like:

A stat to increase condition duration.
A stat to increase condition resistance to dispell.
A stat to give conditions a chance to spread to nearest target.
etc.

First of all there are 2 stats for condition spec: Condition Dmg and Condition Duration. Both of them are important to deal good dmg. And since most of necros are now going full with both of stats, it is pretty clear where the dmg is comming from. Also making Condis Crit is a horrible idea, since necros have alrdy good crit chances if they are full in condis.

Conditin duration isn’t a real stat though. It’s available through traits for select few sigils/runes. It isn’t a real hit on your item budget and players are using it primarily for Fear and the fact that it works on conditions is just gravy.

And as for allowing conditions to crit, it would obviously come with a DPS loss as well. For example, cut condition damage by 30% across the board but then allow them to crit.

jportell.2197:

The Boz.2038:

Archaon.6245:

Real problem right now is that dps builds can’t have both dmg AND survivability but condition dmg ones have both cond dmg and vit/tough/boons and kitten…both from traits and amulets..that’s why meta radically moved to cond builds, dps specs can just kill or get killed condition specs can kill and survive while defending a point, expec vs a dps…guess wich one is better for a point control game? If you spec for dmg…both raw or condition you shouldn’t be able to get so much survivability too…you know, it’s called unbalance..

Working as intended. Tankiness is the de-facto multiplier stat for condition damage because conditions take a while to get stacked up, and then take a while to do their damage. Being able to buy that time is inseparable from the build.

Except for now we are seeing “burst” condition damage. DOTS is fine let them occur OVER TIME. But burst and condition damage should not be hand in hand. Right now they are.

Could you expand on this because I’m just not following it. By burst do you mean the ability to drop a ton of conditions all at once on multiple targets? Or do you literally mean burst damage on top of condition damage?

To my knowledge, most classes that use conditions at all (at least to the point to warrant complaint) are using rabid gear which doesn’t have power. In WvW it’s the same way, except there people are using Apothecary gear for the most part. So while I suppose it’s true that a class could hit something with their other skills, they should hit like a wet noodle.

The problem is conditions have a single stat feeding into them. Where a power build has power, precision, and crit damage, a condition build has only condition damage. This then allows a condition spec to focus the remaining item budget on defensive stats like toughness, vitality, and healing power. If you notice, the only bunkers in this game are also condition spec’d as well.

The solution seems obvious… either remove the condition damage stat and make it a function of power (like WoW has) or simply allow conditions to crit and thus requiring condition classes to also stack crit chance and crit damage. Or, alternatively, just come up with a different stat for condition classes to collect. Things like:

A stat to increase condition duration.
A stat to increase condition resistance to dispell.
A stat to give conditions a chance to spread to nearest target.
etc.

wiazabi.2549:

Maybe just maybe its gone to the point where scrapping the entire class and rebuilding a new one ( without a 2nd hp bar ) would be the better choice.

Ohh well wishfull thinking :<.

While at it can we get the necro bug compilation moved to the pvp forum?

Same could be said for Rangers and Warriors at this point. Rangers have been ignored forever and Warriors get an update every patch and still are ineffective.

jmatb.6307:

I think this discussion and many other issues will be solved by splitting PvP and PvE/WvW from each other.

I know it’s a sacred cow that keeps being called “very unlikely” and “upsetting to new PvP players” but the reality is that decision, which would be like taking a nail out of your foot, would be a short term issue that becomes a long term solution.

PvE and WvW can be balanced together because the Guild and Crafting systems are in synergy. You can make consumables and benefit from PvE skills there.

PvP being separate would allow for their own Guild System, balancing, rewards, and cross-game type incentives that could bridge the gap without forcing each other’s problems down their throats.

That’s fine if they were different games, but they aren’t. You can’t have a class work one way in PvE, a different way in WvW, and yet another way in sPvP. It makes it very difficult for players to go from one gamemode to the next. Take Thieves for example… have you tried playing one in WvW for a couple hours and then try to play sPvP right after? It’s maddening and the only difference is 1 second on revealed.

If there’s to be a difference in PvE, WvW, and sPvP it should be limited to damage adjustment if at all possible. And when you consider sPvP is using gear far inferior to the alternatives in WvW, it’s probably the way ANet wanted things to work.

A lot of what we see wrong in sPvP happens to be the same, just much worse in WvW anyway so balance changes in one should have a positive impact on the other. some of the PvE complaints I find are wildly overblown.

The problems in sPvP are usually made much worse in WvW. As strong as the Necro is in sPVP, it has very obvious problems. It’s trained down with little effort. The condition damage is bursty on demand, but has a 20second cycle time which is fine for sPvP but not for WvW where the most common classes are the same ones that cleanse conditions with ease.

Balancing for WvW is a lost cause generally. The goal should be to balance the game around sPvP while ensuring each class has at least the basics required to handle WvW (stability, avoidance, and mitigation) which the Necro really doesn’t have right now.

shimmerless.4560:

Caffynated.5713:

They may need to just go ahead and ban the PvE trolls. This is the sPvP forum and spamming about unrelated content is getting old.

i don’t agree with banning (bit harsh) but i must admit i’ve noticed how a lot of threads have been derailed into unrelated PvE stuff lately.

i think this board has a rep for being one that the devs pay particular attention to. it’s undeserved really, when you look at gw2 on the whole it’s obvious it’s overwhelmingly a PvE game and that’s where the lion’s share of money and development time goes towards.

the problem is ANet selectively enforces their posting policy. We see threads moved all the time from one forum or the next, often from the WvW forum to the class specific forums because they deal with a single class. The same should have happened with this thread. so instead, a thread talking strictly about the necromancer, which is discussing far reaching changes that will impact all 3 segments of this game, is only being discussed in a forum dedicated to the least popular/common playstyle.

This is why the conversation is all over the place… because it should have been in the Necromancer forum to begin with where people with far more experience with the class would see it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Atherakhia.4086:

Protection when leaving deathshroud for example. An AE knockback and protection if LF is reduced to 0 and you don’t toggle DS off. Things like this.

That would not be enough. Any boss hits right through protection. And bosses are by default all immune to knockback, so it’s still an insta-kill.

We really need a way to absorb a huge hit regardless of what the damage amount is. We already have the burden of having to build life force first, which no other class needs to do for invulnerability/evade. We can’t have a numeric-based damage absorption along with that. That makes us too vulnerable against encounters that don’t scale well. We need a solution that fixes us for PVE regardless of damage numbers.

But the necro has other advantages. Being a ranged class for example. Rangers in PvE don’t have vigor regen iirc, so they have the same 2 dodge rolls a necro does for example. Thieves have no invuln, lowest hp, and melee. What out there deals 50k damage that would kill a 20k hp necro with a 20k shroud with protection up?

Rennoko.5731:

Atherakhia.4086:

haven’t seen many good Necro videos period… so lets turn this into a necro video thread.

I have seen about a dozen since the start of this year that were great. You apparently don’t come around often enough.

Were they all power build deathshroud spam builds? Because most of the good Necro videos I’ve seen are always that.

jportell.2197:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

L2C learn to cleanse

yeah let me build for nothing but condi cleanse. O wait someone that does that who isn’t a guard or ele brings jack crap to their team. Im not saying that I don’t bring condi cleanse. I am saying that the amount of condi cleanse that anyone brings doesn’t do enough to give them a fighting chance. We need more than cleansing. That is the point.

But can a single class provide so much condi pressure that another can’t handle it if devoted to condition cleansing? Or is the issue that a Necromancer entirely dedicated to applying conditions is overloading you, someone who only brought a single condition cleanse to a condition fight?

There has to be some middle ground because the amount of condition cleanse in this game is over the top too.

I can’t imagine they’ll ever revert the DS issue. Despite it having a large impact on overkill skills, it really did feel like a bug fix. It’s pretty obvious they never intended Necromancers to live through enormous hits and such. The only thing you can hope for is for further improvements to offset the change in some fashion that wouldn’t instantly make things overpowered everywhere else.

Protection when leaving deathshroud for example. An AE knockback and protection if LF is reduced to 0 and you don’t toggle DS off. Things like this.