Guild Wars 2

I agree that we need to stop generalizing the state of the class based on game variants, but I think we need to take it further than just that. The state of the ranger is also widely generalized based on a specific build or weapon, not the overall state of the profession.

For instance, just because a single weapon or build is good, players will claim the ranger is good when in fact the class is broken overall, and only that single build is good.

I mean just look at dungeons. The ranger is competitive with the well known sword/frost spirit/spotter combination, but what about the other utilities and weapons?

• MH axe is low tier.
• Longbow is low tier.
• Shortbow is low tier.
• Greatsword is low tier.
• Traps are low tier.
• Signets are low tier.
• Shouts are low tier.

We need to stop looking at the ranger from such a narrow perspective. The ranger isn’t fine just because swords are competitive when nothing else is.

Edit: I created this post as its own thread but a forum mod merged it with this one despite it being focused on vertical progression when this thread is about horizontal progression, so forgive it for being off-topic.

A question I’d like answered is where infusions are headed and if they are going to be a continued form of equipment progression, what is being done to address the flexibility in changing or upgrading them?

Early on we only had 4 types to choose from:
+4 to a stat
+5 to a stat
+5 AR
+5 AR and +5 to a stat

This made the choice fairly simple one. You would stick with one of the weaker ones until you could afford the one which combined the stat bonus with agony resistance.

However the introduction of WvW infusions started to complicate things. Now you had a choice between infusions for WvW or Fractals.

More recently infused items got a special infusion slot instead of their built-in agony resist. You can now combine agony resist infusions to gain an “unlimited” amount, but you cannot upgrade infusions on your items unless you extract the old one first.

Up next? A potential +7 stat infusion we have seen in livestreams and in item codes.

And every time you want to change or upgrade your infusion the only way is to destroy your old one or spend 250 gems per item to extract them.

So I hope you can see my concern with this. Something as costly as infusions is not a good form of progression inflexible as it is.

What I’m trying to bring up isn’t that pets aren’t useful, or that they have their flaws, but that they don’t fit the design of the ranger even if they functioned perfectly. You could throw in the ranger’s pet on any profession and it would work just as well, if not better, because the ranger doesn’t have the tools to create a natural harmony with the pet.

Just ask yourself, how does the pet support the innate abilities of the ranger and how does the ranger support the innate abilities of the pet?

A good analogy is the mesmer and its clones. Clones can deal damage and look like the mesmer so they can distract the enemy. This distraction is how the clones fit in with the class; they can stealth, teleport, apply confusion, and a whole bunch of other things which naturally support the class mechanic. However, take away this distraction factor and you sever that, creating clones which can still cause damage and take damage so they are still useful, but no longer fit in with the design of the mesmer.

This is what the ranger’s pet basically is; an ally which can chase, damage, and take damage, but has no natural link to the ranger’s abilities.

Server: Ehmry Bay
League: Silver

I don’t have a problem with the meta-achievement so I’d be fine if that stayed, but I’m against the return of leagues. The very design of WvW isn’t meant to be fair, so why do we have a competitive system in place, where the same 1-2 servers are always going to come out on top while the others are in hopeless situations? Why should the servers with the most population be rewarded more than the less populated servers?

When I look at the design of the ranger I can’t help but feel that its class mechanic doesn’t fit. It doesn’t synchronize well with other aspects of the class and doesn’t serve any important or fulfilling role.

Just look at the mesmer and thief to see how well a class mechanic can fit in with their overall design:

The Mesmer’s mechanic is all about distraction. It gets clones which look like the player which confuse the enemy, can stealth and teleport making it even harder to pinpoint the mesmer, and put confusion on the enemy to pressure their actions.

The thief’s mechanic is about mobility and quick attacks. The replacement of cool-downs with an energy system allows them to continually use skills for greater burst damage and mobility, they have access to a lot of stealth and mobility tools which allow them to effectively disengage or pursue targets, and stealth combined with a unique in-stealth skill gives them a very strong first strike advantage.

So much of those classes fit in perfectly with their class mechanics, but the ranger seems to lack abilities that would fit in well with the pet, and likewise, the pet lacks what would fit in with the ability of the ranger.

• The pet is like removing stealth attacks and initiative from thieves, leaving them with a lot of stealth and movement but little to do with it.
• The pet is like removing stealth, teleports, and confusion from the mesmer, leaving them with clones that serve little purpose because the enemy never loses sight or is pressured.

The role of the pet and how it relates to the ranger needs to be rethought. The ranger-pet combo needs a real design goal, one with synchronicity and direction.

The current state of mechanics in PvE, especially dungeons, is very biased towards melee play.

• The downed state allows players to instantly revive a player when everyone is within range.
• If everyone uses melee the party is always within range of support skills, combo fields, and combo finishers.
• AI in general only hit a single target and their AoE is often easy to react to and dodge, limiting risk.
• The attacks of AI often put players at the same risk regardless of if they are in melee or range distance.
• When using LoS pulls enemies are huddled together but have no way of supporting eachother, make no effort to gain distance from an attacker, and give the players no reason to separate enemies from eachother.
• Defiant makes it difficult to effectively CC bosses, limiting a primary form of defense used by ranged playstyles.

All this together creates some rather serious balance issues when it comes to melee vs ranged balancing.

Ranged weapons are viewed as inferior because they are balanced around PvP, not PvE. Using a ranged weapon in PvP puts you in less risk and allows you to hit targets easier, so in order to balance this their damage amongst other things is limited compared to melee weapons.

However, in PvE the risk and difficulty gap between these weapons is much smaller, yet ranged weapons get nothing to compensate for that. They are still treated as though they are in PvP and as a result become inferior weapons.

Furthermore, the range of support skills is too small, many requiring you to be right next to an ally, and some of the largest only extending to 600-900 range, encouraging the use of melee. This is also in direct conflict with certain weapons like the ranger’s longbow as it expects you to shoot from 1,000+ range for its full damage.

Melee vs Ranged balancing needs to be reconsidered in PvE. Either the risk of using melee needs to be brought up to what it is in PvP, or ranged weapons need to be buffed to better represent the difference in risk. Support skills and combo finishers need to have a larger radius and perhaps affect the entire party regardless of range in dungeons.

The funny this is, how often is using any of these vigor traits actually be worth it compared to the other options? Rangers are already so stressed on traits for every little thing that its a struggle to pick up even a single vigor trait.

If they want us to move further down the wilderness survival tree for defense like they say, or want us to pick up other vigor traits to dodge more, then they must condense traits to open up more viable choices.

My prediction is that eventually gem prices will reach a point where you cannot reasonably afford them through normal play. Only those who do things outside of normal game-play, such as investing in items and using exploits, will be able to afford a fair amount of gems for the time they spent in-game.

So far this has happened in every MMO I’ve seen, even in those FTP games which don’t support this sort of system if you look at trade rates of in-game currency for cash shop currency items/cards, and I don’t expect GW2 to be an exception.

Peter.9406:

Wow this post blew up while I was gone. First, of I’m not an advocate of LB I’m just deciding if it’ll be worth it after the patch and playing devil’s advocate for the sake of a fair argument. Second, I’m getting mixed reviews from everyone people start off with SB is better but then say that LB has more dmg when it comes to scenarios when barrage and rapid fire are successful? So am I right to assume that LB is better in PvE if the skills fire off successfully?

Well when fully comparing the two, it really depends what you are looking for.

The shortbow is a good primary weapon, can make effective use of piercing arrows to hit multiple targets, has an evade, and is good with both conditions and physical damage.

The longbow on the other hand is a great secondary weapon, being able to use barrage (which is also a great AoE) and rapid fire then being able to switch back to another weapon. As a primary weapon it has difficulty because of the distance requirement for damage, which also makes it harder to line up targets for piercing arrows. It also gets a great knockback skill and stealth which can often be useful.

When choosing which one is better it all depends on what you are looking for. Personally I find the longbow to compliment axe/axe or sword/axe better than the shortbow, but if you’re using a condition build with something like axe/torch, the shortbow is a better choice.

So basically, rangers are worthless unless they use a single build that consists of a sword where you just use the auto-attack all day and the other skills to dodge, which also roots you in place, frost spirit which is a very much passive utility, and spotter?

Its no wonder I rarely see any rangers using this; its very boring to use and the way the sword auto-attack works only causes frustration. I’d rather use something like a longbow and enjoy myself, or just hop on another class, than have to use a build like that!

Something else to consider is that the shortbow is currently bugged (well I think it still is, I haven’t checked in a while) and only receives half the attack speed bonus from quickness, making the longbow better with Quickening Zephyr.

Peter.9406:

Nice finally someone with numbers. Now did you take into account remorseless and hunter shot couples with rapid fire for 20 stacks of vulnerability? How does that affect the damage? And also you mentioned the bleed and poison on SB but failed to mention rapid fire on LB which puts out a lot of dmg. I’m curious to how this affects your data.

Rapid fire does 0.8333333… damage coefficient/second during its channel not counting its aftercast, startup time, or vulneribility.

I had the exact numbers of it before they lowered the windup speed on the skill but don’t have the patience right now to test it again. However you can still tell that rapid fire is better than shooting at medium range with long range shot (even after the update), is less powerful than long range shot at max range, and is more powerful than the shortbow’s auto-attack, because of how little the windup and after-cast actually affects the damage.

As for using hunter’s shot with remorseless, because of the low base damage of hunter’s shot (around half the DPS of rapid fire or long range shot not counting its aftercast) you’ll need to make up for the lost damage.

To do this, using long-range shot at max range, you’ll need to attack for at little more than 4 seconds of the 5 second vulnerability duration to break even. This basically gives your character 10% bonus damage for less than a second.

But you also have a pet which also gets the 10% damage bonus, as well as the guaranteed critical. How much benefit these things give can vary greatly based on stats and pet choice, but overall the damage benefit of using hunter’s shot with remorseless is:

10% bonus damage for less than a second for your character
A guaranteed critical hit.
10% bonus pet and ally damage for 5 seconds
Pet swiftness for 10 seconds.

Its not a really big damage bonus but is still worth using, although you’d probably be better off choosing something other than remorseless, especially if fighting champions which half vulnerability duration.

Some math on the damage:

Shortbow without counting bleeds:
0.7692 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot currently:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.65 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.5 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot after patch:
1,000+ range: 0.9 damage coefficient/second
500-1,000 range: 0.7475 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.6 damage coefficient/second

Then you have the bleeds and poison shortbow does and the vulnerability longbow does. Accounting for this, longbow does more damage at max range, while shortbow will do more damage at less than 1,000 range even after the patch.

Durzlla.6295:

i’m really hoping this nerf doesn’t make my glassy ranger a dead man walking… my entire survival is from keeping a distance and dodging, and i have a very strong feeling this will gut the whole dodging thing… And if they’re gonna be removing evades how about they drop a few evades from thieves?

You know… on like all their damaging attacks? Lets see…… Larcenous Strike, Pistol Whip, Leaping Death Blossom, Heart Seeker off the top of my head… plus their insane amount of vigor and endurance gain from acrobatics…

Dodges play such a vital role for non-melee rangers that this will without a doubt have a huge impact. You need them to not only evade strong attacks, but as a movement tool, used to gain some distance when a melee attacker gets within range.

I’ve been in so many close fights with thieves, warriors, and guardians where every dodge counted. That 50% regeneration plays a huge role in my survivability.

And what do they expect us to do to make up for it? We are already really stressed on traits and the ones that grant vigor are awful. Its like they expect everyone to get 30 points in wilderness survival with our best condition removal and damage reduction traits being there.

RyuDragnier.9476:

facepalms

If you guys hadn’t noticed, they’re hitting almost every class with this passive vigor nerf. Stop acting like it’s just us when most players are getting hit with something similar.

Did you even read the patch notes? The only two professions getting hit with nerfs to endurance regeneration are the thief and ranger. Elementalist even got easier access to endurance regeneration by Vigorous Scepter being moved to an adept.

I don’t understand how they can claim Natural Vigor is “wildly overpowered” when the guardian and mesmer get these traits:

Vigorous Precision: For 5 points in Honor you gain 5 seconds of vigor on a critical hit
(5 second cool-down)
Critical Infusion: For 5 points in Dueling you gain 5 second of vigor on a critical hit
(5 second cool-down)

So 50% passive regen that doesn’t stack with vigor is overpowered, but permanent vigor is not? It is this sort of thing that makes me lose confidence in the developers.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

The removal of evade from the auto-attack chain would only create a weaker weapon without some significant changes, not just a boon, condition, or whirl finisher. One thing I can think of that it really needs, and that players have been asking for since release, is more damage.

I don’t buy the reason for the nerf to begin with. How is 50% endurance regeneration (which doesn’t stack with vigor) for a class that is designed to have a lot of evades viewed as overpowered? Heck, guardians get a 5 point trait that gives 5 seconds of vigor on a critical hit (5 second cool-down) and that’s not being changed.

Screw our 50% passive regeneration, just give us the one guardian’s have since permanent vigor for 5 points apparently isn’t overpowered!

I don’t even see the point of feedback when it doesn’t amount to anything. The issues with the ranger are obvious, feedback is plentiful, yet they take months to address the most obvious issues.

I’ve been frequently lurking these forums for the past year and post whenever I see fit, but all the feedback given here seems meaningless. There is no valuable discussion from the developers, they haven’t made anything deeper than common sense changes based on our feedback, and they don’t seem to understand the core issues with the ranger or how to address them.

This latest update is evidence of that. They seem very willing to throw out their ideas but they have not commented on our suggestions and have made no changes to their update plans.

The following quote makes me wonder if the Devs are even aware of this:

(Commenting on the nerf to natural vigor)

I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

So now they want to force us further down the wilderness survival line and put more focus on our traits for defense when we are already heavily dependent on them for just our utilities and weapons.

JonPeters.5630:

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

Following that line of logic:

Guardian’s have a 5 point trait that gives them 5 seconds of vigor (5 second-cooldown) on a critical hit. Compared to the engineer’s grandmaster trait and the ranger’s adept trait, this is vastly overpowered and needs to be moved to a grandmaster and its duration cut to 3 seconds.

Warrior’s longbow trait gives it a range increase and cool-down reduction. Compared to the ranger this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Warrior gets a greatsword skill that decreases cool-down and gives him might on criticals. Compared to the ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.

Warrior gets a trait that allows rifle shots to piece and reduced their cooldown. Compared to this ranger, this needs to be split into 2 traits.

The change in the december patch won’t have any large impact on the longbow and won’t make power builds any more viable. I’d argue that this is actually a nerf overall to power builds because of the endurance regeneration being reduced.

Just to give you guys an idea of how poor long range shot will still be at all but max range:

Shortbow without counting bleeds:
0.7692 damage coefficient/second

Long range shot after patch:
500-1,000 range: 0.7475 damage coefficient/second
0-500 range: 0.6 damage coefficient/second

An issue I’ve noticed with the ranger is that many of its mechanics are heavily dependent on traits, often requiring a grandmaster or 2-3 separate traits, to be effective.

• Longbow requires 3 traits for piercing arrows, range increase, damage increase, and reduced cool-down.
• Greatsword requires 2 traits for cool-down reduction and damage increase (also applies fury in the next update).
• Off-hands require a trait for cool-down reduction and range + radius increase.
• Opening strikes eat up the 5, 15, 25 marksmanship traits and a grandmaster to be effective.
• Traps require 2 traits, including a grandmaster, for double condition duration, larger radius, reduced recharge, and manual placement.
• Signets require 3 traits, including a grandmaster, to grant might, reduce cool-down, and affect the player in addition to the pet.
• Shouts require 2 traits, including a grandmaster, to reduce cool-down and apply regeneration and swiftness.
• Spirits require 3 traits, including a grandmaster, to double their health, double their benefit chance, increase their active skill radius, activate their active skill on death, and move with the player.

Why are traits tied so heavily into the skills and why are the traits so numerous instead of condensed? Improving the core skill and merging some traits would go a long way at increasing build variety.

For instance, why not:

• Buff the longbow to 1,500 range by default (and the shortbow back up to 1,200) and merge the reduced cool-down and piercing arrows?
• Give off-hands the radius increase by default?
• Merge pets having opening strike and the guaranteed critical and move remorseless to the 25 point trait in marksmanship?
• Make signets effect you and your pet by default and merge the cool-down reduction and might on use?

About the ranger changes:

You speak about changing around a few things to make power builds more appealing, but in reality these changes do close to nothing to bring them up.

First off the longbow. While bringing up the power of the auto-attack at closer ranges is a good idea, you didn’t do enough to solve the problem.

Currently:
1,000+: 0.9 coefficient
500-1,000: 0.65 coefficient
0-500: 0.5 coefficient

After the change:
1,000+: 0.9 coefficient
500-1,000: 0.74 coefficient
0-500: 0.6 coefficient

See how large the gap still is? Long range shot struggles to competes with the shortbow’s damage output minus its bleeding at 500-1,000 range. I’d suggest buffing the damage to be 0.8 at 500-1000 and 0.7 at 0-500 to create more acceptable damage at non-max range.

Now the trait changes:

Predator’s Instinct is a nice change. Ranger’s have a lack of stuns available so increasing stun duration on Moment of Clarity won’t be very useful outside of gimmicky builds that use things like racial skills for extra stuns. The cool-down on Beastmaster’s Bond being reduced is nice, but the real problem with this trait is it relies on your pet going below 50% health to trigger. Why are we encouraged to let our pet get killed to buff ourselves? Don’t you think this trait would be more viable if it activated on something like a pet swap?

Furthermore, when comparing these traits with the other one’s we have available, none of these are worth using because the ranger is forced into heavy traiting to make their utilities and weapons acceptable. Do you want to make the longbow decent? There’s 3 traits for that. Want to make your signets not suck? 3 traits. Want opening strike, which eats up all the passive traits under marksmanship, to be good? Use a grandmaster AND a longbow for stealth to trigger it, otherwise it’s lousy.

If you really want to improve power specs merge some of the traits so they have more options.

Signet Mastery and Signet of the Beastmaster could be merged into the same trait under master or grandmaster. Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye could be merged as a master trait as well as Eagle Eye increasing the shortbow from 900 to 1,200 range to make up for the cartoon logic nerf you gave it to make the longbow more appealing.

So in conclusion: The longbow buff is insignificant and trait changes are nice but won’t put power builds in a better spot. Then you look at the nerf to endurance regeneration and realize this patch is an overall nerf to power rangers.

Population imbalances are a fundamental issue with the open-world system, both for WvW and PvE, that destroys any form of fair competition or well designed difficulty.

For this reason I’m a bit confused on what we are meant to be discussing here. Trying to solve population imbalances, which is an issue with the very foundation of WvW, is impossible without major changes like reworking the map population system, only letting equal numbers play, or server merges where all maps will be filled to the brim at all times of the day.

Of course nothing like that’s going to happen, so what are we meant to discuss? How to apply stitches to a wound which cannot be sealed?

I also agree that this needs to be addressed. They need to stop neglecting the class mechanic of the ranger and put in the extra work that is necessary to keep it up to date and competitive.

The issue as I see it is that torment, along with retaliation and confusion, punish basic actions yet are applied too often and last too long for you to be able to counter them via their own mechanics.

They need to tone down the duration and application of these mechanics, even if that means increasing the intensity. In their current state it’s unreasonable to expect someone to stop moving every time they get torment on them and stop attacking every time the enemy has retaliation on them.

I like the concept of segmented charge attacks, but I think the reason we don’t see them on any weapons outside of minigames, even though early versions of the weapons had some, is because they interrupt the flow of play. Having to hold down a skill, possibly rooting you, just isn’t as good as a passive channel that allows you to focus on other things.

Maybe they could tweak how they function to make them less clunky to use. Don’t root the player when its active and instead of having to hold the skill down make it a toggle where you press it once to start charging and press it again to shoot.

There’s also the matter of how a charged skill would synergize with other aspects of the ranger. It would be great with hunter’s shot, but the longbow wouldn’t get much out of rampage as one or companion’s might if the charge only fired a single arrow. Maybe after it hits the enemy with the initial hit, dealing 60% of its total damage, the remaining 40% damage would be dealt as a lasting effect, ticking twice a second for 5 seconds.

My concern with the living world design is that while we see a lot of change, there is very little growth. This has made the game feel somewhat stale as after a living story segment ends, you’re left with little more to do than what the game was released with.

Early on we saw fractals and southsun cove be released, this was great! Later in the year southsun cove got additions like karka queen which was also good. But sadly other than these, and maybe a few other things like mini-game rotations, the living story hasn’t added content of much value.

I’m sure a lot of us have grown bored with this game and are only logging on every 2 weeks for the discontinued skins and achievements at this point. We need the world to expand, not only change, and we need content of lasting value like fractals, not content we do once and never go back to.

The 24 second cool-down only needs to apply to the shadowstep skill which replaces hunter’s shot while stealthed, not hunter’s shot itself. This would allow you to use hunter’s shot as normal, but every 2 hunter’s shots you would have the option to shadowstep to better reposition yourself.

Chopps.5047:

Cool idea in principle but it’s not deceiving unless the pet changes. If they see the same pet teleport they know you teleported instead of swapped. The only way I can think of to make that work would be to summon an ally identical to your secondary pet and/or just summon the secondary pet. The reason why I said ally was because what if your secondary pet is on cooldown? You’d have to be creative (design wise) to get around that.

Having used the longbow a lot today, my opinion on a pet location based shadowstep has changed. It would be far too reliant on an alive and well positioned pet and wouldn’t be helpful enough.

What hunter’s shot, and the longbow in general needs, is better movement. All you have is point blank shot to keep the foe away and hunter’s shot when they get close, but once they get close hunter’s shot isn’t going to help much because you don’t have the movement tools.

Maybe while stealthed hunter’s shot could allow you to aim it at a location within 600 range (900 while traited with eagle’s eye) that will shadow step you to that location. Since you need to hit a target to stealth the ranger couldn’t use this to gain a movement advantage outside of combat like the thief, and it could be given a 24 second cool-down to limit its use.

Electro.4173:

Oh my god, I would love it so much if Ricochet bounced off allies to give them Fury (namely my pet). More pet synergy, yes please.

I think it has a good chance of being overpowered, though. Since its an auto-attack, it would pretty much be perma-Fury on a single ally, even if it was only a 1-second duration. Perma-Fury in itself isn’t nessicarily broken and can be achieved in other ways, but most of those other ways require traits, specific gear, specific rotations, ect. With something like this, it would be nothing more than “use mainhand Axe”.

I also love how bouncing off allies with synergize with the pet, which the ranger could really use more things like, but yeah, fury would probably be overpowered. Maybe stacking something like 1 stack of might for 2 seconds would be better.

Atherakhia.4086:

I would sooner change it so the 0-900 had one set of damage. 900+ had another set. And give it a increased chance to crit at the 600/900/1200 marks.

Rapid Fire I think is a good way to deliver vulnerability in a balanced manner. I do agree that a second needs to be shaved off the spell though.

Hedgehog in the fog.1053:

I think LB1 should increase critical hit chance the further away you are, or, should simply have a decreased cast timer for closer distance.

Substance E.4852:

Longbow just needs it’s mechanic reworked so it does something like adds 2% crit damage at 500+ range and adds 5% at 1000+ range. Its a big enough buff to make sniping at long range feel most powerful but doesn’t penalize you when the enemy inevitably uses a gap closer and cc on you.

A critical hit damage or chance increase based on the range sounds like a good idea.

As an alternative to my original suggestion:

• Long range shot should deal the same base damage at all distances but have a higher critical hit chance (0%, 5%, 10%?) the further away the enemy is.
• Keep rapid fire the way it is, but with a shorter channel time allowing quicker vulnerability stacking and burst damage.

Thoughts?

Chopps.5047:

I love these suggestions. Honestly, though, I am going to say something controversial. I know prysin disagrees with me at least: longbow needs a shadow step. It just does. It would function like spectral walk in a way, or thief sword. Basically teleporting back to a chosen location. This will allow the ranger to blink away when the gap closes. Or, if you want to make it clunky like the rest of the profession, you could make you the your pet swap locations.

Something like that sounds cool, although with the evasion tools the longbow already has it might become a bit overpowered and where do we put it? Maybe hunters shot could be changed so if you press it again while stealthed you’ll shadow step to your pet or switch places with it?

This might be a great deception tool. Much of the time when I stealth the enemy knows where I was and 3 seconds isn’t much time to get much distance from them, leading to me taking hits. But if you could switch places with your pet they might think you swapped your pet, leading them to attack where your pet is, while you’ll actually be behind them. If you could shadow step to your pet they would think you were still in the location you vanished and would be attacking nothing.

The option to shadow step would allow you to fool players who were aware of this mechanic. You could intentionally swap your pet after a hunters shot instead of a shadow step, leading them attack your pets old location, not knowing you never switched places with it.

Or perhaps a shadow step would be better suited for a new utility or pet F2 skill, where you switch places with your pet, or better yet teleport to it since pets stick to targets fairly well.

Atherakhia.4086:

I am also still a firm believer that the best way to solve the burst issue with Longbow is to give it a aimed shot similar in function to the Warrior’s rifle burst skill. Remove barrage and give us an aimed shot. Barrage could then be made into a skill that replaced spike trap. It would be a great replacement for Spike Trap if you change Barrage to also immobilize on the first hit for 2 seconds. Since it’s a skill the damage could be improved as well so it’s no longer such a mediocre AE.

I think the ranger longbow is a overall better weapon with barrage. An aimed shot might be better in certain PvP situations, but I find having an 1,200-1,500 range AoE with a decent radius to be very helpful in PvE and WvW.

That’s not to say it couldn’t use some work though. An immobilize like you suggested for barrage would be great. It’s just too easy to dodge roll or walk out of at the moment. Removing the delay when first casting before it hits an enemy, which I also think shows a red ring before any damage even starts, would also help.

Something else I just thought of was an improvement to hunter’s shot. What if it gave the pet 3-4 seconds of cripple with their next attack? This would help you get some distance from the target while stealthed or slow down a retreating opponent.

I’ve been messing around with ranger builds lately and something I’ve noticed is that both the main hand axe and longbow could really use some work.

The main problems I’ve come across with the longbow is that it is lacking in burst damage, its auto-attack is dependent on a long range to deal reasonable damage, and the rapid fire channel is very long making it bulky. The weapon’s sustained damage in perfect situations is fine, but when rapid fire is canceled by you needing to dodge roll or heal, or if the enemy gets behind you which cancels the channel, you’re stuck using an overly situational auto-attack. The weapon seems to be designed to be used at a distance and to keep your enemy away via knockbacks and stealth, but the lack of burst damage makes it difficult to wear down an enemy before they can reach you.

The main-hand axe is fine in condition builds, but is also meant to be used in physical builds, in which it is lacking damage. Ricochet is your main source of damage but it doesn’t deal much to 3 targets, let alone if you are fighting a single target, and has an excessive aftercast that can block you from using other skills. Splitblade deals almost no physical damage and can result in a loss of DPS even if you connect with all 5 axes.

I feel the longbow and main-hand axe could be greatly improved with a few simple changes:

• Long range shot should deal the same damage at all ranges and instead deal varying stacks of vulnerability based on the distance the enemy is hit.
• Rapid fire should no longer cause vulnerability and instead fire all its shots in a shorter period of time.

• Ricochet should have its aftercast shortened, bounce an additional time, and also bounce off allies granting 1-2 seconds of fury.
• Splitblade should have its physical damage tripled, dealing the physical damage of 3 Ricochet hits if all 5 axes hit.

Zikory.6871:

I would have to disagree from a T1 perspective. Assuming the keep/tower is fully upgraded, it can be either near impossible to take or very easy. I would never expect to be able to just throw bodies at a keep and take it. At least in T1 most T3 keeps are taken by either vastly out numbering the the server on the map or attacking multiple things across multiple maps. Being vastly out numbered is just a war of attrition, once your out of supply, there is only some much you can do.

So for the most part I think they are fine as is for tier 1.

My OP is directed towards low to mid tier servers.

Prehaps the issue comes from WvW being designed around far more players than we are seeing in these servers, in which case something needs to be done to create a better experience for servers based off the population, maybe through leagues which we could have different settings. Gold could remain unchanged while bronze and silver could see some of the changes I suggested.

Well they went and added some transmutation splitters. I suppose that helps if you want to switch your skin on something like an ascended item without destroying the old one, but hardly addresses the overall problem.

I’m also surprised they haven’t done anything with the achievement panel (the place you can claim zenith skins), not even add the new living story skins to them!

What I feel to be a core issue in WvW (at least in low to mid tier; I’m not sure how this affects higher tier servers with more population) is that towers and keeps have too much passive defense and detection. Not only is this a core reason why zergs are beneficial, but it often creates stagnant or hopeless situations.

Keeps have waypoints which allow players to warp directly to an attacked area and serve as a shortcut to defend locations faster. White swords display whenever anything is attacked, making it much easier to respond to attacks. Fortified structures take ages to break into, giving the enemy too much time to react to an attack.

All these factors encourage zerging and discourage splitting into smaller groups. If you have superior numbers you can easily go and overwhelm the enemy and if they try a counterattack it is easily detected and reacted to by the zerg, which then heads right back to attacking. Since buildings, especially fortified ones, take so long to capture and attacks are easily detected, players are encouraged to stick together and use their numbers as a defense, pool together their supply, and focus on taking down 1 building after another via force.

This ease of defense also creates stale game-play where the server with a number disadvantage is unable to make any sort of progress or capture anything other than their own territory due to the enemies ability to respond. Even in near equal match ups it can become stale, with no server able to take anything but the proximity towers, if even that.

I feel WvW could be vastly improved if defense and detection was more player involved.

- What if waypoints in keeps were completely removed?
- What if fortified walls and gates didn’t boost health, but instead increased the effectiveness of repairs and gave players standing nearby a defensive buff?
- What if white swords only showed up when a wall/gate was destroyed, or didn’t show up at all?

All this could make it easier for smaller groups to take towers/keeps and make sneaky and split attacks more effective, which could encourage smaller groups and help prevent stagnant and hopeless situations.

I can picture it already.

Permastealth Thief: Instantly kills light armor enemies, cannot be directly attacked, can be moved around on the field whenever you want, enemy cannot see when this is on the field unless it attacks, but at the end of the attackers turn it vanishes again.

The Ranger: 40% weaker than other creatures because it has a pet that is summoned along with it. This pet dies in 1 hit and has a 80% chance to miss.

Berserker’s Boon: Equipped creature gains double damage and can dodge up to 2 normal monster attacks every turn, avoiding all damage. Normal monsters only attack once every 3 turns.

Revive mechanic: If you have at least 1 creature on the field while your opponent has none, revive all your creatures who have died throughout the entire game.

Stack!: All your creatures move to the same slot on the field, become invincible to everything but siege and an equally large “stack”, all monsters are forced to rush at them and are instantly destroyed, player creatures that use AoE are instantly killed via retaliation damage.

Overall I’m happy with these changes, but I really wonder why these balance updates are so few and lacking. At this rate its going to be years before the ranger is in a close to acceptable state.

Thanks for the optimization and communication.

I have one question regarding this section if you don’t mind:

BillFreist.1527:

Q: My Second question is : Wasn’t all these problems caused because you have to broadcast every single condition/buff to everyone which is currently pushing your systems and servers/internet to its limits ?
A: This is a good question. Buffs are a large part of Guild Wars 2 and at first glance you’d definitely think that telling everyone about them would be really expensive. In reality, this is only a hit with server->client traffic, which has been significantly improved with the handful of bandwidth optimizations that have already gone out. As far as server processing, its pretty minuscule (thankfully).

With the optimizations that have already “significantly improved” bandwidth, and with those that are to come, do you think it would one day be possible to increase the condition cap in PvE? So far the answer given as to to why they can’t increase it is because of bandwidth concerns, so it stands to reason that if the game is better optimized, they shouldn’t be held back any longer.

Thobek.1730:

Completely agree, there is a large door by Ebonhawk which is guarded. Why don’t they open that area up, give us a new huge area to explore complete with a new threatening menace that isn’t a bratty teenage sylvari.

I think they are somewhat hesitant to open up new areas due to the understandable lack of popularity of the open world. The entire dynamic event system, which was meant to act as one of the core activities for players to participate in, is dull, repetitive, and doesn’t hold player interest. The only thing keeping the open world alive outside of leveling and dailies is guild missions, temple events, and world bosses, and that really needs to be addressed.

But yes, the world is loaded with opportunities for expansion. Not only could they fill the map we currently see, but they could open up other regions like Cantha and Elona.

My main issue with the living story, and concern with the games future, is that while we see a lot of change, there is very little growth.

The largest addition to this game was fractals and the southsun cove map, nearly a year ago. Since then we have only seen additions to southsun cove and more mini-games. Other than these, and perhaps a few small changes I’ve forgotten about, there has been no growth provided by the living story. Everything else has been changes to existing content, is going to be removed once the living story segment ends, or has been removed.

This is not good for the health of the game. The lack of growth makes the game feel stale as outside of what each living story release offers, you’re not left with much more than what you’ve been doing for the past year, and some of the content which you used to enjoy (I’m looking at you TA forward/up) is gone due to forced replacement in order to make the game look like it’s changing rather than expanding.

The living story needs to focus more on expanding the game, not just changing it.

Spartacus.7903:

Well i heard white or blue and i thought there would’nt be any difference.
You might be right but i won’t try it again right now, gotta get some gold for transmutation splitter again ^^
But i will try it again cause gold is only gold

Btw i tried it before with the vision of the mists with a blue one and it was working thats why i was wondering it wasn’t working for my legendary

I just tried it with a white item. After the transmutation the legendary with the white items stats was account bound, but when i split them it returned the legendary as soul bound, and the white item as account bound.

Atherakhia.4086:

My only concern with allowing the pet to dodge instead of just granting aegis is there are scenarios where I may want to dodge, but I may not want to interrupt my pet from leaping on a foe or I may want to use its F2 ability. But if I lost this functionality in favor of my pet actually living? It’s a reasonable trade too.

They don’t need to make your pet literally dodge with an animation and everything, that would be too clunky and difficult to implement. All they need to do is apply it via a buff that is placed on your pet that makes all attacks against it “evaded” during the duration.

They should just make it so whenever the ranger dodges, the pet evades all attacks for the same amount of time without interrupting any of its actions. They already have the system to apply this sort of thing, basically just give a buff to the pet that makes it evade all attacks for a second when the ranger dodge rolls, so it should be easy to implement. They could also do the same thing with the ranger’s greatsword if they wanted, adding an evade buff to the pet on the third hit of the auto-attack.

I also agree with Atherakhia; this needs to be available no matter to build you use, so it should be a default ability, not one unlocked via traits.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

would it make the game better? no… imo it would make it worse (consider it from a thief… or non-ranger perspective…)

I have considered it from the perspective of stealth classes, and I think a little more to look out for would be a good thing. Right now counter-play to stealth is lacking and I think an AoE they would have to be mindful of while in or out of stealth would be a nice thing, something a target requiring skill like sic ‘em (which you can only use while they are visible) can’t do.

Take infiltrating past enemy defenses to drop a portal. You stealth before going in, dodge twice to get through the AoE they are laying down in a choke point, and you make it to your portal drop point without much of a scratch. I’ve seen this done time and time again, and the methods of countering it are lacking.

But what if we had muddy terrain reveal? If it was put in the choke point the mesmer would be revealed while moving through the AoE and could then be focused on before they were able to lay down their portal exit.

The same sort of thing applies to groups using veils and the like.

For thieves it wouldn’t even be that bad. Just don’t try to backstab someone standing in it and if you get hit with it while stealthed, you’re only going to be reveled and immobilized for a few seconds, after which you could easily move out of the AoE and proceed to stealth again.

ilr.9675:

I think Muddy is already pretty good on its own ….. stupid kitten Recharge nerf it received recently for sPvP aside…. (am I contradicting myself here, I don’t know for sure).

It makes perfect sense as far as Visual physics of being covered in mud goes. But I think there’s plenty of other much less utilized skills that could use a reveal effect attached to them first. …. things like: Throw Dirt, Spike Trap, Sun Spirit (get it??, cuz the sun reveals stuff?), Sig of the Hunt’s Active, and Guard…

The change they made isn’t that bad considering they also increased the cripple duration. There are many other skills which I think reveal would fit in well with, but none would be as good as muddy terrain IMO as it is a place-able and lasting AoE.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

MH axe doesn’t need more damage. Why does everyone go to one extreme or the other. People has so much trouble with content because of this. Why do you Need to go all dps or bunker. Why power or condition. The axe for me is that middle ground weapon. It is both a condition weapon and a power weapon. Both range and melee.

Its designed to do both. Doing one or the other leaves you lacking. This weapon also applies weakness. While this weapon is best use for multiple targets; it is great in reducing thieves backstab damage and heart seeker.

Speaking of weakness with all the issues rangers have with damage scaling we don’t get hit as hard by weakness as our pets damage stays intact.

People specialize in one style because its often more powerful. You want to build your stats around the strength of your build; if it has mostly physical damage you focus on power, precision, and critical damage, if you have a lot of damaging conditions then you focus on condition damage, if you have a lot of heals you get healing power.

When looking at the axe it seems to be designed to fit in with both physical and condition builds, the off-hand being the main factor on which stat combo is more efficient. If you go with OH axe you’ll want to go with physical damage. If you go with the torch you’ll go with condition damage. Mixing your stats to suit both physical and condition damage will just result in a weaker build.

The problem here is that the main-hand has its skills split between both condition and physical, weakening its potential strength. If you go full physical you’ll be weaker because you won’t get much out of Splitblade. If you go full condition you’ll be weaker because you won’t get much out of Ricochet. If you mix physical and condition damage you won’t get as much from your off-hands, utilities, and other weapon.

I personally like the axe being a hybrid weapon, I just think think it needs some work to make it stronger in all builds, both physical, condition, or a mix of the two. One way this can be done by is by enhancing one aspect of the skill in order to make up for the shortcomings in another. For instance, because Splitblade has little place in physical builds it could be given more physical damage, and Honed Axes could increase physical damage while the opponent is bleeding.

Also look at the shortbow for a good example of a proper hybrid weapon. Its auto-attack, which makes up most of its damage, has strong physical damage and bleeds. It has poison and a bunch of control based effects, all of which work well for both damage types. This allows the weapon to be fully effective no matter what damage type you focus on, even a mix between the two.

And speaking of middle ground weapons:

Melee and ranged weapons are balanced around a risk vs reward system. Basically because melee weapons are put at greater risk when reaching and attacking their targets, they have higher damage than ranged weapons which can attack from a distance and can hit the target easier.

But despite the axe playing very close to a melee weapon due to Splitblade and its off-hand options, it is still balanced like a ranged weapon. Splitblade causing 5 stacks of bleeding and 1/3 the damage of a full Ricochet is not enough for the amount of risk involved in using this close range skill. Many ranged weapons cause more bleeding stacks than this while staying at a good distance from the enemy.

They should either lower the risk involved to effectively use splitblade or increase the damage to an appropriate level for the amount of risk involved.

Chopps.5047:

Speaking of pets, synful: “Feline pets no longer stop to attack”

If ANET did that even Burnfall would be jumping for joy lol

It would be amazing if they managed to do that. Pets being able to attack while moving would allow them to actually stick on their targets and connect with all their attacks. Just this single change would improve them so much in PvP.

Vaxx.3178:

mistsim.2748:

MH axe is probably the most useless ranger weapon. spamming axe 1 as power will get u killed due to horrible range, and the dps is lower than spamming LB 1 from 1200-1500. MH axe is only used *effectively in condi builds.

MH axe needs more.

I disagree. I don’t die often. Hitting a group of enemies with Axe1 does more damage than spamming a single target with a LB, especially if you are sped’d into Axe. The chill on 3, is also good with a decent recharge. Split Axe is nice for tagging lots of targets as well as doing decent damage with decent condition damage.

I am not saying Axe MH is where it should be. It could use some love like the OP suggested. Then again saying its useless, is pretty close minded.

MH axe can be a good weapon, but effective use of it is extremely conditional which I think is the largest problem with it.

The best part about the axe is probably Winter’s Bite. The 4 seconds of chill and 10 seconds of weakness on a 10 second cool-down is great. However even this is somewhat conditional, requiring an alive pet to apply the weakness.

But if you manage to be in circumstances where you can effectively use its skills, with there being multiple enemies close to each-other for Ricochet, able to safely touch the enemy every 6 seconds for Split-blade, and your pet alive for Winter’s bite, then it can be a decent weapon.

It really needs some changes to make it easier to use. Ricochet being able to bounce off allies (pet included) and Splitblade being able to cause 5 stacks of bleeding regardless of how many axes hit, are two changes I think would accomplish this well.