Guild Wars 2

Biggest problem with ascended gear is that typically you have to craft it. And I mean YOU have to craft it. You can’t buy it. You can’t get it from WvW or Pvp drops easily.
You can’t win a piece consistently in a dungeon or fractal run.

It forces a style of gameplay that many consider is akin to running your fingernails on a chalkboard while listening to your mother in law.

Rally really helps small groups (or can) if they lose one key player and need to quickly get them back up.

Why not start by not allowing rez for defeated toons as a first step. I suspect that is all that would be needed.

I also suspect that there would be less bellyaching if you could only PORT in to a single waypoint but would rally at the closest walled structure you owned (castle, keep or tower).

How much is your sigil of water healing for with high heal power? Must admit I tried this one last well before moving to a support build.

My experience has been that it really doesn’t add much as I won’t have high crit even with fury and it’s heal always seemed to be very lackluster.

Well actives as blast finishers would be a bit odd because all spirit builds would then want to take a healing spring for a water field vs the new healing spirit.

Maybe the healing spirit could drop a water field as part of its active and the other actives could blast?

I could get behind the idea of proposing spirit actives blast.

It would certainly help with:
1. Pets that create fields but rangers really can’t use them as well.
2. Torches
3. Trap/Spirit builds (that could be a hoot if one ranger went traps and the other spirits).

It certainly opens up build diversity.

This thread is wrong in soooo many ways. Funny but wrong.

Ok, I can admit to a harebrained idea.
I do like the notion that rangers should be more positional.

The issue with being a ranger (or a lot of classes frankly) is that it is way too easy for melee to engage without ever having taken damage on “the way in”.

Thoughts on what might work?

Pluses: It really would allow smaller groups to make a difference and open up a whole new realm of possibilities on breaking up zergs.

Minuses: You really want me to run back every time I die from a waypoint?

COMPROMISE: You port to the nearest walled control point (castle, keep, tower) you own. It breaks up flow but, that way the run wouldn’t be too far (unless you are deep in enemy territory). I thought about adding camps but you could be griefed too easily.

Hope you never tag the wrong person. That is the problem with these sort of efforts. Catching 10 and sweeping up 1 non-spy is no victory.

Seems to me that one way to really improve the ranger and focus a bit on range is to allow the ranger to move faster both in combat and out of combat than any other class.

We should be the best at getting into fights and getting out of fights (well thief too but that is tied to stealth).

Sure you can cc me, but without cc you should have a hard time catching me on the run or just sustaining melee range. The trick to winning against a ranger should be CC or counter fire. For the ranger, being faster would allow us to fire and move better.
10% increase for the ranger would help which should stack with quickness or even SotH. Then, if you did you SotH with no quickness, you would be just a little faster than another quickness buffed toon.

Speed would also make us better scouts. Ranger is a bit of a terrible scout right now lacking a good source of self quickness outside of combat (horn without traits doesn’t last long enough for the cooldown).

So many things make rangers a problem in PvP.
Point capping favors close combat.
The size of the maps doesn’t lend itself to 1200 and 1500 range.
There are too many obstacles and terrain features.
You wind up with a lot of mid range and close range builds.

I really think the best thing for pvp build diversity would be diversifying pvp maps.

Definitely, there is a problem with rangers and our conditioned expectations. When you try to play as you expect a ranger should play, you tend to get stomped. This is a whole different sort of ranger. I’m not sure that really was the going in premise of ANET at launch versus players figured out what worked and now you have something that works but is an oddball mishmash.

I will tell you the ranger build I am playing is not the one I thought I would play when I created the character. I really do wish a long range sniper build worked better.

There is not a lot of synergy. Look at how many threads there are on the fixes and the vast number of playstyles (pet v no pet crowd, melee v range crowd, spirits vs heck no crowd). There are so many unique facets to the class that it can lead to this sort of half cooked problem. Traps, Spirits, Pets all ranger. Now that makes placing traits difficult for ANET because you also have the fact that the lines are designed around Power, Precision, Toughness etc etc. So things always seem out of place and like they didn’t think about the full builds and skill/trait synergy. The overflows with weapon skills. What is the logical Spirit weapon? Traps? Typically, different trait lines logically lead to different weapons.

We have great parts. It is the sum of the parts that just lacks a little bit.

Reading boards I find the ranger class is a bit more fractured in terms of what they want. I would argue this is because our class isn’t what people expect a ranger to be and is such a mishmash that naturally you will have 4 people wanting 4 different builds/lines to be worked on first. That makes it tough to fix the class first, but it was a design issue from the start.

That just isn’t reality, sorry to say. You have 3 crafting items that didn’t get in and one pvp.

On the other hand, there are lots of things they did which were not on that list such as this new WvW zone.

It is positively nuts to say they only delivered 50%. You may argue quite passionately and honestly that the things you were looking for from the roadmap got reprioritized. That is fair enough. The worst roadmaps are those that are rigidly followed.

You have to be honest and remember that roadmaps meet reality. Technical reality I would agree they need to be the expert and make their promises work. So they should know what is technically possible and predict effort/difficulty fairly well. On the other hand, the customer/player community often shows that they have interests different than what was expected. It is quite hard to predict the interests and behavior of players in an MMO. Then, you need to adapt.

Remember when the game was released and the thought was players would be most interested in spvp? Well, it turns out WvW has outperformed in player interest relative to expectation while spvp has underperformed. So the roadmap logically changed. Is that because pvp wasn’t good enough? Is that because WvW was better than expected? Debate that all you want. More importantly, if it is that pvp missed is that because of any of the items you listed? So, you adapt a roadmap.

Most of what was missed, I will never miss save new PvP maps but they are making HUGE changes to spvp that are far more impactful (levels, rewards, impact on other parts of the game). That was a greater need for many but certainly not all.

If disappointed, ok. But 50% miss rate, really?

Sorry you were disappointed. I am not. I just feel ANET was flexible.

Let’s not assume for a minute that just because an update is released on the 24th it would be created then. I don’t know their hardware/software so I suppose it is possible they would need some staff to ensure stability initially or fix any critical bugs but that would only require it being pushed for a couple of days.

It isn’t like Dec 24th comes at a different time each year You just know at some point you are creating content which will be launched later much like columnist often writes many columns at a time.

Not saying I feel they need to have an update. Hey, I WvW more than anything but just highlighting that it doesn’t seem as if it should really be an issue of celebrating Christmas or creating content.

Well, having played ranger since launch and having gear for most builds, I disagree with the idea that a ranger isn’t weak. On the other hand, it isn’t nearly as weak as many think.

The issue is that the traits and weapons are far from optimized in terms of synergy so you have to chase a trait at the expense of a needed stat or chase stats at the expense of traits. It is always a glass that is half or perhaps 3/4s full. Now you can make a good drink with half a glass if you are a good player, but the idea that a strong player playing a ranger will have as strong of a character as a strong player playing many other classes is just not quite so. In power rankings, ranger is less powerful and less forgiving.

I struggle with the spirit’s revival ability. Can anyone explain exactly how it is supposed to work? Is it on some very short radius? And how do you make the long animation work for your team when under pressure (e.g. wvw or spvp)?

The passive is great. CD helps but the revive just isn’t working for me well.

Elctro that was very helpful. Thank you.
I do hope you can get both the caster heal and one of the 5 ally heals. That would make the healing quite respectable indeed.

The biggest challenge will be keeping the spirit alive for your big heal. If you lose the spirit, 20 seconds when you were counting on the heal NOW could be a problem.

Why is it called an interval? (Look at the link) vs an effect cooldown? Never seen the term interval being used in GW2 and wiki didn’t have anything on it too which is why I was confused.

If Duffy is right, what do you think?

I am not sure I understand how this will work.
You have a 623 heal on a hit (70% with trait/35% without). This only applies to 5 targets same as a spirit. Got it.

Now can you get the heal every 6 seconds or every 10 seconds?

Then it would appear no matter what the distance YOU get healed for basically 4k base while ONLY allies within 240 get healed for basically 2k. Or is it that you too need to be within the range?

Thoughts?

Let’s break it down a bit. Hope you view this as constructive. That is the intent. For the longest time I played a full zerker and was a good zerker in a bad spot trying to roam!!!! My biggest advice is to start with something that is working for someone else and make minor modifications first then gradually make more and more.

No sugar coating, but this spec is going to have a problem. You seem torn between wanting to retain what you are comfortable with (2 bows and a power set) with some survirorability. Trouble is you have half a glass of each. There is not a lot of synergy in your picks. You want to come down a bit harder on one side of the equation or the other.

Breaking down the film, it looks like:

1) TRAITS: In WvW, if you are not a pure glass cannon you need the condition removal of empathic bond. Fury and might are going to be a lot less useful on beastman’s bond when running a ranged pet.

On the other hand, steady focus adds a full 10% damage. That damage is far more than the damage gained from beastman.

One of the great things in Nature is the fact that boons you get are shared with your pet, but you have nothing really to add boons.

Evasive purity looks good on paper but blind and poison really aren’t the conditions you should fear. Nature’s protection would be better.

2) GEAR AND STATS
Biggest fear is that you have too little condition damage and too little crit chance/crit damage. You have lots of power, which helps, but you really want to pick a better synergestic second trait. Power without crits really will eat into your total damage.

You have a condition weapon and a power weapon.

Might stacks are your best friend when it comes to power builds. You have few.

Your sigils are designed for bleeds when might would be much better. Plus, increasing the duration of your conditions with such low condition damage is suboptimal.

The biggest gear issue would be with the rune set as it really plays much better with a pure condition vs heavy power build. Look at power runes.

Your defense just isn’t there. Toughness isn’t high and you have no healing. Vitality won’t last long. So you are not enough bunker or enough damage. Kind of 2 half glasses.

WEAPONS/SKILLS:

Entangle is good on high condition builds but this isn’t one. RAO works well because it allows you to rapidly get might stacks. Works even better if you have 15 in nature. A good volley or rapid fire will stack up your pet nicely.
Spider as one pet is ok. But you might want a fast attacking or AE pet for RAO.

2 bows is a tough challenge unless you go for a high power AND crit build. Have you considered a melee/offhand option?

Heal as one takes a long time to cast and you have no real condition removal. So you might want HS at least.

What is the thought with having the toughness signet?

Overall, you try to do a bit too much and are winding up with a little bit of a lot and not a whole lot. It happens. I did like a lot of the thought into combos like power/vitality in nature etc. Malicious training works well with spiders that have multiple conditions on their passives and active. Etc.

Overall, embrace either:
1. Power build
2. Condition build
3. Some form of bunker (spirit or BM) build as a start

Take a look at some of the “cookie cutter” builds in the PvP sticky and start adapting from there. Make changes that fit your playstyle but start with something that works and incrementally change.

Ok, remember with the superior runes of altruism (see above) you only grant 3 stacks of might on heal every 10 seconds. So when you drop it you get it, then at 10 seconds you should get another stack considering it will be 70% on hit. But it is only 3 stacks with basic duration. Sure you will have a few ticks of 6 with even 30% duration if using spirits. Not overpowered.

It will really help the pet that will have 2x your stacks (they take from the runes as well as from the 15 pt nature passive trait). Given our pets are underpowered it is no big deal in terms of fairness.

Where it becomes a problem is in a huge PvE boss fight. That could drive it to a nerf.
Assume your stacks last 15 seconds (easy with just modest +60% boon). Remember, you will be taking spirits anyway so you have +20 at least from nature and +15 at least from the runes.

But if you start maxxing (food buffs, water runes with the 4 altruism), you will have 17 second 3 might stacks where you can add another set of 3 every 10 seconds. Go crazy and change to 4 runes of noble and 2 altruism and you are up to 85% duration increases and now effectively have almost 19 seconds stacks which you can add to every 10 seconds. AND it applies to you and your allies (noble is self only) .

As time goes on, you gain a lot of stacks because you add them faster than they fall off. Talk about ranger group support with a 30/0/10/30/0 build. Wow! Spirits, nature’s voice, the might stacks, 50% uptime 100% endurance regen, a crazy hard etc.

Long fights with the team having 25 might stacks and keeping them? Hmmm. . .

Other than that extreme situation, it should be nice.

Anyone think it is a bit odd to think of a ranger as a the strongest healing class in an MMO? I realize there are no healers per se but this just breaks down all my stereotypes about rangers having bows, fighting at range, being fast and furious and you know. . . .

Not that I won’t enjoy a new heal. It just is odd. Oh, the idea of it working with runes of altruism is interesting!!!! That could be quite interesting.

The game is unfamiliar to many players. It should be easier to INITIALLY get into and understand. It is the initial hook that determines if a player stays typically as well as the INITIAL experience at end game.

You should require effort after getting over that hurdle.

I agree with the OP in that better understanding of your role would help. Back in the old days of MMOs groups mattered because you simply couldn’t do as many things on a single character. The trend now is to allow characters to have heals, conditions, direct damage, a lil melee, a lil range all on one toon. So, you really MUST do a bit more to get people to understand how to play their class upfront and upfront again when they hit 80.

Instead of having it create quickness on a hit, it should provide quickness as a passive
for 5 allies.

Eventually, the pet dies (you are on cooldown) and you get forced to use the warhorn or go slower.

Would increase build diversity by not requiring SotH or traveler runes to have some modest speed.

The other obvious thing to do would be to make the storm spirit give you quickness as a passive ability. That would help group and individual travel. Want to kill the quickness? Kill the pet. Not OP because the pet will die and you will have a period of time that you have to rely on the warhorn or just go slow.

Would help get rid of the need to take traveler runes, SotH etc.

No reason quickness needs to trigger on a hit.

Horn:

1. Love it for RAO. You use the hunter’s call and get your pet to 25 might stacks very very quickly with 15 in nature.
2. Blast finisher is important if using healing spring (more blasting equals more heals).
3. Hunter’s Call will give your pet 2 might stacks and fury. Not bad increase to damage.
4. long cooldowns.

Axe:
1. Best burst skill but doesn’t increase damage of all skills like horn can.
2. Pull can be great as an interrupt in PvE. In WvW it depends on the situation and likelihood the opponent is locked down and not dodging YOUR attack. Tends to be great damage when one of my group mates is also targeting the enemy.
3. Whirling ability is also good for healing and combos.

Dagger:
1. The key ability I find is its long range cripple and poison.
2. You don’t have other sources of poison with LB and Sword.
3. The evade is nice but you seem to have enough defense and need more damage.
4. Speedy cooldowns.

Well, I disagree on drakes (or any class) being the “go to” melee pet.

Pets are the most situational part of our class.

Birds are faster (better for chasing).
Cats can do decent condition damage traited. Drakes can too but it isn’t consistent and relies on F2 versus basic attacks. Canines are just better at it.

If you pop RAO, you want a lashtail. 7 attacks on an F2 which is ranged and fast typically lead to 5-7 stacks of might on you.

One of the biggest increases I ever made to my value as a ranger was playing around with all the pets until I understood which is better when. The more you are swapping out pets, the better you are playing your ranger. . . typically.

I would have thought the passive ability should be a condition removal. Remember it has an internal cool down of 10 seconds and the enemy can kill a spirit.

So 2 conditions removed. ICD 10 seconds. 70% on chance to hit.

Remember, you can’t exactly pick WHEN the conditions get removed. It would be 2 because you it is 5 allies after all.

The active (on a 20 second timer) would still be the heal.

Would make rangers have some very important group utility.

Tumult:

I don’t think their quote was ranger specific. They used the same language for any number of classes endurance skills. The bottomline is they want more active v passive regen. They don’t want as many dodges which is a good thing for PvP and WvW. Remember, the other guy can’t just evade your attacks now any easier.

Ranger has an enormous number of picked (v passive) traits that can get your vigor back to what you had. Other classes, not so much. . . . That actually helps rangers.

Fair point Tayn but they are getting nerfed pretty well on the damage side. Losing 1 sec of passive burn reduces damage as does the active storm 35% damage output.

Porcine family takes teamwork (like raising a real pig).
You basically have a heal, stealth, CC, and poison porcine that each has another really interesting skill (invul, all boons, etc).
It helps when you can forage early and have a player go back and grab the goodies when you need them.

Wrote up thoughts on pets in general in another post.

I play my spirit ranger a little differently and it seems to work (and will work even better post 10th).

I use Settler’s and apothecary. You can’t really compensate for low health/toughness but you can stack might for condition damage!

My condition damage is lower than it might be if I used rabid. . . AT FIRST.
And I tend to always use a horn.
I use 4 runes of altruism and 2 of water. That gives me +30% boon and 3 stacks of might on using a heal. That 3 stacks of might will give you 105 condition damage.

Ultimately, I play to stack might to get more condition damage and use my extremely high healing and toughness to outlast WHILE doing just about the same damage as when I have my trapper build with rapid. . . . ASSUMING conditions work on your foe as you still won’t have power.

On the 10th, you will be able to quickly do the following:

1. Get 5 stacks with Stalker (think I have the F2 working most of the time now)
2. Enter a fight with another 3 stacks from the heal
3. Immediately in the fight get with another 3 stacks from swapping pets.
4. Immediately in the fight get another 3 stacks from swapping weapons (with rune of battle on the offhand).
5. Get a stack of might from call of the wild (Horn #5).

Meanwhile, you have your pet getting to 25 stacks because anytime you get a stack they get one too (and many of the skills already give them stacks and are “you and your pet”0.

So you get quite good condition damage and quite decent power very quickly.
All the +boon duration means your might stacks don’t tend to drop while you are fighting. You can refresh most of the skills that stack might in fight with almost no dropping. OF course that time lost on those button mashes will reduce your dps so it is situational which way you play it.

Remember, 25 stacks is 875 additional condition damage. Only works because the stacks have such good duration. Now. . . I don’t see how in most situations changing the runes and ability to stack might with +boon can compete for damage over any sensible time (not to mention the defense). Getting even 10 stacks of might with high duration beats what you can do otherwise. I’m not losing much more than 350 condition to go apoth/settler.

AND, the pet hits quite a bit harder this way too.

When I get jumped (for a lot of reasons) I tend to use RAO. The elite spirits just are too small of a radius and have too much “wind up time” for their specials. RAO done right will juice your and your pet’s might to max quickly too. And when you are in trouble it helps to have extremely long stability and near perma quickness. RUN.

You simply Hunter’s Call (Horn #4). That is 16 attacks right there to refresh pet might (and you still have lots of near instant increases after that).
Using the Lashtail devourer, you can get a fast 7 stacks on yourself plus a heal pop and horn blow and you are back to good damage.

I also like horns with this build because it is near permanent (you lose about 2 seconds per 28) of quickness so you can keep 3 spirits when roaming with no need for SotH for the 25% movement buff).

The build counts on your being able to get abilities fired to provide stacks.

Well the ranger axe is a bit light on dps in comparative terms. I would like to see it’s auto attack increased a bit.

Agree GS and Sword can’t have the same damage.

At the very least, I think we should have our trait bonuses improve our pets. One of the biggest troubles is that 1/3rd of your damage is from the pet but you have very few ways of boosting that up like you do with your toon.

Our stats should somehow scale pet stats. Our condition/precision etc etc should improve the pet. Not necessarily 1:1.

Well, we need to see what makes it and the new heals too but. . .

I tend to have 3 specs:
Zerker
Rampager/Rapid
Apoth

My spirit build (apoth) will now be able to quickly stack might with the changes to BM. Plus, you only need 20 pts in spirit which will allow for a 20/0/30/20/0 or 0/0/30/20/20 build. Just depends how badly you want nature’s voice.

The water spirit suggests you might have a very good group healing build. We will have to see.

Barkskin becomes extremely interesting. Perma protection when under 50% health. Will have to see if I need empathic bond with the changes and new heal.

I can see possibly taking predator instinct on a trapper so you can cripple with a longbow swap a runner. My trapper/condi build doesn’t have perma swiftness.

So there are a few initial thoughts. Oh and getting a conversion of 7% of vitality to power could be extremely interesting in power/spirit 30/0/0/30/10 builds. Could be quite the build for PvE. You will need to get toughness elsewhere but you should put out good long range damage and you can still remove some conditions with the water field (I tend to find that the more at range you are the more you can stand in the water field or swap to bear for a fast condi removal).

Have to look at all the other characters but that would effectively be a blast every 7 seconds or so on rotation if you had 3 spirits up OR what might be even more overpowered is the thought of having 3 blasts almost instantly from one character.

Love the idea, but think the fields would be better. Hmmm. . . what if stone were the finisher and the others were fields?

I understand why they are changing spirits.
What I wish they would do to buff them just a little is to allow the active ability to provide a short 3-4 second combo field.

Blind from SUN spirit = light
Call Lightening from STORM spirit = lightening
Cold Snap from FROST spirit = ice
Stone doesn’t really have a logical mate like a few of our traps but also isn’t getting changed.

Not perfect and yeah you need might stacks for birds. Likewise, the leap does miss too much and stalker does miss his might stacks too often and go on cooldown. Pets are buggy, but when you get them to work, there is value in the variety.

Porcine are great in groups that know how to use the random items. It is much harder to make work solo.

Would love to see it move from quickness to say fury or might running the same cooldowns as our protection spirit.

Thoughts? Anyone finding quickness as being useful to them?

SPIDERS
Again, if only you could choose the rotation of the pet’s skills (or fire them yourself if you wanted to). But the spider has great passives if you watch out for them. Poison gas is a poison field which can really help if your group pays attention. It has an easy to spot animation fortunately. Don’t forget the pet eventually will shoot webs that immobilize.

The thing people often forget is that spiders basic attacks and web attack are projectile finishers (20% chance for each basic attack). Make sure if you have fields that the spider is positioned to shoot thru them especially if playing with a necro in your group.

I need to do some checking on spiders again and try to mix up targets with the weakness and poison F2 abilities as well as use AE attacks. Will edit later.

FORREST: surprisingly good ability to stack poison. Often pop it right after the poison field.

CAVE: 2 attacks each will have 3 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds is a healthy damage boost considering you also get weakness. This pet is underutilized.

DEVOURER:
Overall their passives are ok. Don’t forget the fast cooldown tail lash is an interrupt. When using RAO the twin darts help because they are two attacks. At 10% poison, yeah it helps sometimes. . . just not consistently.

LASHTAIL: Key for lashtail is it has a 7 attack bleed. This is GREAT when using RAO to stack might on yourself and the pet (assuming you have 15 in nature).

CARRION: the F2 drops a poison field. Depending on class makeup of group, this can be extremely useful.

BEARS: Tanky for PvE and camps. They have some specials which are well known and others I am surprised are not used a bit more.

BLACK BEAR: 10 seconds of AE weakness can be very powerful or can force a cleanse. I like keeping my opponent’s weak. This is a skill I am playing with more. range isn’t bad at 600. This is incredibly useful when traited to increase duration.

MURRLOW: Downside is it will need to be in melee range. Upside is the darn poison cloud lasts a long time (especially if traited).

POLAR BEAR: Pet is tough to use because the animation takes too long. It can’t catchup to the enemy etc.

DRAKES:
Remember the drake can blast finish but irregularly and is a good damage AE. Still in a long fight. . . . Drakes tend to tag more enemies and therefore are really ideal when trying to get stacks from sigils.

SALAMANDER: really good damage with burning cone.

JELLYFISH:
Couple of things to know.
1. They have a reasonably good regen another 130 sec can help.
2. Their prize skill is dark water which most folks forget is a smoke field. Not a lot of underwater smoke fields in most builds so. . . blast to stealth. Not predictable but if you get lucky it can certainly help.
3. The F2s are whirl finishers.

MOAS:
Don’t underestimate harmonic cry in a longer group v group fight. The key is to get that darn bird in the midst of your group’s pounding on the same target so when it goes off it helps. 240 range sucks but I have seen it be useful used well.

I need to play more with the mechanics and get back to you.

RED MOA: 15 seconds of group fury on 25 cooldown is great. You just need to work on placement of the group and Moa when you trigger it.

PINK AND BLACK MOAS: They daze in a cone. Ok, need to work with this one a bit more. In theory, it should reset opening strike with remorselessness. If it does, it would have some value as an interrupt. Not a big fan of them.

PORCINE:
Porcine Charge is well. . . buggy because of the wind up. But the class does have a bleed and a knock down. Bleed is on a 12 sec recharge and can hit a couple of very close targets. It you trait the pet or extra condition duration or extra condition damage it isn’t bad as an extra benefit.
Ok, the real value is the foraged items. They are clunky but can be extremely good in some situations especially with a group that knows how to use them. Takes some real practice. In 1v1, you often are not the right person to quit what you are doing to pick up the item.

REMEMBER, anyone can use a foraged item so call out when you are foraging and that tends to ensure it is your team collecting. I tend to forage in the backline allowing my group member to run and grab the item if they can use it.

BOAR: Your forage 3 of 4 items that serve as cc. 3 sec fear/3sec stun or a knock down. Remember ranges are different!!!! Also, the knock down rock is also a guaranteed projectile finisher. But more importantly, the gunk serves as an ethereal field. Blast for chaos armor.

PIG: Almost always useful to some party member with all skills that focus on healing.
Healing seed with also remove conditions and is another water field for a group heal blast or whirl. Eat egg isn’t much healing without some serious buffing of the pet but the initiative will help a thief. Elixir of heroes is great when one of your group members gets low. Run and drink the elixir.

SIAMOTH: This is one you forage with BEFORE a fight. So, you can go into the fight with a character with all boons or being able to stealth and blind quickly. Plasma has really good length on those buffs.

WARTHOG: A bit of everything but 50% chance you will have an item to create either a poison or ethereal field. 5 seconds of AE weakness with a blast finisher is nothing to sneeze at.

Continued below

Here are just a few thoughts on using pets given most of us rangers stick with just a few pets. Some of the pets have specific uses often missed.

Bird:

A. EAGLE AND HAWK The only class which has 2 F2 abilities which are the same. Lacerating Slash can be on a 1) Eagle and 2) Raven. This is a very fast bleed (6 second cooldown) and the bird is reasonably reliable and fast. Good damage too 1275 but remember to get good damage you really want to stack might which will be incredibly easy post Dec 10th.

B. OWL isn’t bad at slowing down runners so you can catch up and attack them. The bird is fairly fast to acquire the target and 3 seconds of chill usually does it. Works decently with rangers who go melee. Swapping pets while running to catch an enemy is pretty easy to do. Changing weapons/traits/gear is not and our utilities that slow the enemy down are not long range.

C. QUICKNESS. So you are running away but have no horn up and are using SOTH for move speed. I often put a bird on a mob and pray for quickness.

CANINE

A. HYENA. Sure it does less damage but having 2 with Howl of the Pack is quite effective for knockdowns and as a leap finisher. The leap finisher is great fun with traps especially to provide Fire Armor. Same for torch.

B. ALPINE WOLF. A lot of people like the Drakehound for its immobilize, but I prefer the Alpine wolf for an AE chill. It lasts longer and chill just has a wider range of uses.

C. FERN HOUND. It is a decent regen and heal to stack with all the great leap finishers of Cannines.

FELINES
Overall, the best feature of felines is bleeding and their overall damage. Traited, the felines can really put a few stacks of bleed on opponents. People also forget about the vulnerability a cat will provide with its basic attacks too.

A. STALKER Excellent might stacks (5) on a reasonable timer. I use Jaguar a lot when playing nature (15+ pts) because the stacks will go for the pet and me. When I get stacks, the pet also gets the same buff. So it is like getting 10 stacks on the pet with one howl. Nice! Fits any might stacking build even with it being a bit hard to fire consistently (a bit buggy).

B. LYNX and LEOPARD. Remember both of their F2 actives are leaps meaning you can do some decent combos. AND YOU control the timing unlike the other leaps (that is if you think the pet AI is really control but better than passive).

Cont in Pt2

It works best on “preload” as in something you do as you are engaging but not when engaged.

My group build is similar.

As for troll unguent it helps a lot with balancing its ability for healing as well as preloading your might stacks and is 5 seconds shorter. So, with good +might or +boon you get about 10-13 seconds of might per heal. Works much better than healing field which you need to drop more mid-fight to be effective.

Changes you might consider:

1. I would go 4 altruism/2 traveler. You get much better healing and your condition damage will still come from might buffs. The other upside is that while you lose 10% might duration, you get +30% duration for all boons. That really helps your team with fury/regen/swiftness in particular (see below I use horn v dagger). Best for you RAO becomes a massive stability (32-35 seconds) (see below I use RAO v entangle) and your endurance regeneration can get really good for a group by moving expertise training to vigorous renewal (8 seconds of group 100% vigor but then you use a healing spring of course). In short, it is more flexible at little real cost to condition damage (as you will be stacking A LOT of might).

The other thing is you should be blasting thru the fire field from the torch to add stacks. You will want your fury to last for the whole fight for the sake of the pet. Guessing your group can do the blasting.

Finally, you basically have perma swiftness with +boon vs +might duration. Your horn will go 25 of 28 seconds up. That helps me tons if I have to run off to kill a particular enemy. Swap in a bow, hit horn and bam no runners.

2. Pets. I love the jungle stalker as well as the lashtail devourer. The latter is because it does 7 attacks on its F2 so that stacks up might on RAO really well or quickly builds bleed stacks that with a lot of other might stacks starts to tick high damage. Jungle stalker is a mean 5 stacks for you and 10 for the pet. It is the first “preload” I do when seeing a fight coming (as it is unreliable as heck in a fight).

3. RAO over Entangle. RAO will get you and the pet to 25 might stacks very quickly and really helps if you get jumped because it doesn’t require “peloading” or might stacking versus evading if jumped. The only skills you need to ensure you do are the horn 4 hunter’s call (for pet) and the lashtail F2 rendering barbs (for you). It depends but I just think RAO offers more for a might build.

I can’t tell you the number of times my bunker with the stability of RAO has fled zergs and lived.

4. I’d drop signet of the wild. Looks good on paper. But if you rune mobile runes you are very slow with no real quickness when you need it. 15 seconds on the horn won’t let you chase down an enemy or run away. If in a group, then you can swap the SOTW for a fern hound for the regeneration that hits the group and add another spirit which I would use Sun for group burning. I know you have a torch, but unless they stand in the field or you projectile finish from it, more targets burn with Sun. When solo, I definitely run Sun/Stone.

5. Horn for Torch. That horn blasts and with RAO gets your pet to 25 stacks almost instantly. I often swap dagger for horn in solo. Remember the devourer will eventually poison and poison is more effective when the enemy starts to take pressure. Not perfect but that is what I do. Also, the horn is almost perma swiftness if you change your runes.

I could be 100% wrong and if so would love to hear about it. Maybe I will move to noble

Anyone using stews (might on dodge)? They seem to not create a very long might stack even with buffs.

I never ever knew that worked for each attack while under the “influence”. I thought it was only one and never really used RAO as more than stability. Too bad the rampage part doesn’t increase with boon duration.

That is crazy pet damage

I was going to bed. Now I’m testing. Thanks!

Wait. What if we could make “stow pet” not have the pet return upon entering combat and when stowed you got 20 more trait points BUT the minute your pet comes out (which you would have to activate) those points go POOF.

I guess you would need a mechanism for determining which points are the “extras”. That would be ideal but that may be hard to code and not break something else.

The only other way would be for you to get a full respec when you had extra points and pulled out a pet. That would suck in combat if you screwed up but hey, quick fixes are like meatball surgery.

Depends on your build. I tend to think it is our traits that will help the most.
For me, the nature line just opened up and with that +boon duration.
That means that things like swapping shared anguish with vigorous renewal tends to work well. Primal reflexes isn’t bad for a more melee oriented ranger. 5 sec vigor on a 15 ICD.

Here is the thing. We always had the tools to get more dodges but there was never a reason to use any of the multiple traits. Precision and Wilderness survival vigor skills are in the Adept traits. Only in beastmaster do you pay master level 20 pts. But that is all allies.

What tends to happen is that you have bursts of endurance that are even more than what you had with just natural vigor but in return you lose some of the control over timing vs need of that endurance. Not too bad.

All of the traits are 100%. If you use sigil of energy it is only 50% and you will be swapping weapons at just the wrong time IMHO. It is an option I suppose for some builds. I would probably argue though if you didn’t want to trait that truffle and meat stew might really help with might stacking on the pet (assuming 15 in nature) as well as give you 40% endurance regen which at that point you basically are the same.

It just depends on your build and if you are playing for PvE or WvW.

I pay more for gems. Simple reason: I can get “up to speed” much faster than a sub based game. You can basically buy a full gear set.

Soon with the ability to buy levels for gold, I can just pay my way to alts because I find PvE utterly boring outside my first character.

Buying gold thru gems is extremely casual friendly.

Ranger is the jack of all trades but master of none.
We definitely need a boost and it has to be relatively simple to have happen.
Pets can’t easily get fixed.

Our biggest problem is builds. We simply lack the points (and a lot of our skills are dumped into lines that don’t coordinate because we have so much variety in spirits, traps, pets, etc, etc.)

What if we went to 80 or even 90 pts? Would we really be overpowered then?

More fun.
Less fair.

I think that sums it up for me. It was fun to have more emphasis on WvW and something to strive for. It was so insanely unfair. Waiting to get in while on the underpopulated server? Really? I get that you don’t want people on the overpopulated server unable to play.

There needs to be a mechanic that helps balance the competition. I suggested that mechanic whereby a server that has over 1.5 or 2x pts (depending on time of day) could not get into the enemy’s zone. They could still fight over EB and their zone. Make them play defense.

How do you wind up with so many stacks of might with a drake? Not quite following that one.