Guild Wars 2

McGarnagle.3607:

Why do you need to have Ascended gear at all? I haven’t got any Ascended gear on any of my characters and do absolutely fine. The only thing I can think of you’d need it for is Fractals, which is fairly self-contained (I don’t do Fractals though).

So why do people feel that they need them at all? Let alone for each aspect of the game?

You don’t even really need equipment in much of the game, except maybe a weapon. However its not a matter of what you need to complete content, but of efficiency, which is fairly important in competitive areas like WvW or if you value your time.

I thought obtaining ascended items for multiple characters and builds was bad enough, but now we need to have multiple sets of the same stat items for different infusions? Are you kidding me?

This is going too far. I suppose now I’m going to need multiple sets of berserker accessories, 1 with WvW infusions, 1 with utilities, and 1 with agony resist and stat bonuses?

Please give ascended items something like multiple infusion slots so we don’t need to deal with this.

solrik.6028:

How about instead of changing it, improve it?

Makes it worth to be stuck in a place for 3 seconds.
Add axes that are thrown out and bounces between enemies
Boost the reflection damage
Boost the whirl damage

An increase to its reflection radius would be nice as well.

Its damage has a 150 radius, but its reflection is closer to 75. This is okay if someone is targeting you, but makes it difficult to reflect anything but what is headed directly at your character.

This isn’t a bug; its working as intended.

What the red bar illustrates is if the enemy is within the stated range of the skill. As long as someone is within that range the auto-attack will be turned on. If they are outside of it, it turns off.

But due to the physics of the game, projectiles can actually travel further than their stated range based on height and other factors. The auto-attack just doesn’t have detection for the actual range of a skill so you need to use them manually past a certain range.

The bowstring doesn’t really bother me, but it does really look out of place on the weapon.

Barrage getting a unique animation would be great. They have done this with arrow carts in WvW, turning their arrows into candy canes, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to give barrage golden arrows and flower petals or something.

When looking at spirits I can’t help but feel their contradictory design is their downfall. They have close range AoE effects and can follow the character around, yet are also killable. This makes you want to keep spirits away from the enemy, but when you do this you can’t get the most out of them as their AoE won’t hit anything.

Due to their killable state players only use spirits for their passive buffs with aren’t tremendously helpful alone. The closest thing they can compare to is the banners, but without using their AoE effects spirits pale in comparison.

In order for spirits to be truly effective they need to use both their support effects and AoE. Simple things like better proc rates or survivability increases (unless it grants them near invincibility) will not address this issue. What we need are some larger changes, not just small numerical tweaks, so I suggest one of the two following changes:

1. Change the spirits manual use AoE effects to a 1,200 range (1,500 when traited) effect that buffs allies within range.

Example:
Frost spirit: Allies cause 4 seconds of frost and weakness with their next attack.
Stone spirit: Allies gain aegis for 1 minute.
Storm spirit: Allies gain 6 seconds of vigor.
Sun spirit: Allies cause 8 seconds of blind with their next attack.
Spirit of Renewal: Allies are cured of all conditions and gain regeneration for each one removed.

In addition, the elite spirit should also have the radius on its passive healing increased to 900-1,200 range with a possible decrease in the healing amount. At the moment it only heals allies right next to it which doesn’t fit in well with this design and generally makes it weak.

What this would do is make spirits something you have to be mindful of and protect while they provide strong support to the team from a distance.

2. Make spirits invincible.

What this would do is allow players to bring spirits up into melee range and effectively use their AoE while providing buffs to the team.

Rangers can be okay at speed runs, but that’s only when using a 1h sword and feline with pure berserker equipment. But even then, they are still much weaker than a warrior for a few reasons.

Warriors stack up might and fury like crazy with the GS trait and shouts, have more team support, can deal more damage to multiple targets since felines can only hit a single target, apply more vulnerability, and have better survivability in a berserker build.

Comparing the rangers weapons, the sword (1H) and shortbow (2h) have the exact same damage range. The axe (1h) also has a more wild damage range than the shortbow, but its very similar. In this case, the argument of 2H weapons having a higher damage range so they don’t get 2 sigils doesn’t hold ground.

In addition, because the weapons skills are a larger factor in how much damage a weapon does, and how good the weapon is in general, that argument doesn’t hold any ground from a balance standpoint.

Agreed.

Early on didn’t they say they would have this?

The vulnerability can be nice if you use WD for most of its duration but what deters me from using it is sitting there for 5 seconds next to multiple melee enemies. I just find it too risky to use like this. It might be nice if you are running a high survivability build though; the vulnerability would give some nice damage support to your team.

I’ve never found the whirl finisher to be of much use on this skill, it just spits out the bolts too slowly and randomly, but its a nice bonus when you are getting a good use out of the skill.

Durzlla.6295:

Tooltip says Radius is 150 (it goes further than the animation shows), i said diameter because we stood side by side and the group stood behind us/in us and attacked through it, so it’d be 600 units across.

My bad, but still, its reflection diameter is smaller than that.

The tool-tip is for the damage radius, not the reflect radius. The damage extends out to 150 while the reflect radius is closer to 60-75 (too hard to tell exactly, but it only reflected projectiles that reached half way into the diameter of a trap, which has a radius of 120).

Durzlla.6295:

I wont lie, i do like to blow things out of proportion when it comes to raw numbers (Oh yeah i was doing 4k damage with barrage ticks!! is a famous example), but i don’t blow gameplay and scenarios out of proportion, the math nonsense is Sebrents expertise let him play with his numbers, i don’t enjoy that i’d rather play the game.

If you -want- to play with my sometime by all means hit me up in game, i’d enjoy playing with most of the rangers on this forum, it’d be fun. But as i’ve said a multitude of times, i’m a PvP player, and my Pve gear isn’t even full exotic let alone being close to what i’d need for speed clearing. “Guyz i’m supportz ranger!” is how i tend to play PvE which is why this 20min run was so weird and amazing for me xD.

Was i carried through it? Maybe? But if 2 guardians and a warrior are able to carry 2 “dead weight” rangers through an instance in 20 minutes i think there’s bigger problems out there… I’m pretty sure you guys are underestimating the amount of Synergy that seemed to just be there for our team.

To be fair I’m a bit negative at times and make things sound worse than they really are. And I’d enjoy doing some dungeons with you some time, you can add me if you like.

About whirling defense, its radius is not even close to 300. I just logged into the game and tested it to make sure, and its reflect radius is about half of a placed (non-activated, non-traited) trap which has 120 radius. So it actually has a radius closer to 60, which is VERY small.

I’ve never been a fan of roaming as it doesn’t get much done in WvW, so I wouldn’t know much about that side of rangers, but in group based play rangers in berserker gear and a longbow traited to 1,500 range can be great! You can snipe people while the rest of your team takes the attacks, use barrage to deal a good amount of AoE damage, and destroy siege that the rest of your team can’t reach.

Killsmith.8169:

Wow, why all the hate? If you don’t think he’s being honest, go run a dungeon or two with him. But until you know one way or another, give him the benefit of the doubt.

I would usually, but he’s overstated things before. I get him and Chopps are trying to find the best in the ranger, but it seems like their bias causes them to overstate things or deny issues at times.

Giving people a false sense that something is good is just as bad as giving people a false sense that something is bad. There seems to be a lot of both in the forums so hopefully the developers can see past it and make the right decisions when taking feedback.

To my knowledge there is 2 ways for a ranger to instantly revive like that, if something he damaged died after he went down or if you he used that spirit trick White Dragon mentioned, which can only be used once every 30 seconds.

Its difficult to tell with the information you provided. Where were you (WvW, SPvP), were there any other players or monsters around, and how many times did he revive in this way?

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith actually I did not bring Guard, I used Sick’Em, I also ran axe/axe (as did a lv 25 ranger in the group who was using drake + fern hound), we cleared the instance in 20min with 2 guardians and a warrior.

Fights normally went as so: Guardians pulled everything together, rangers would WD in a position that made all group members safe from projectiles, both pets thrown onto called target via Sick’Em and/or sig of wild active for burst.

Ran with this group 3 times, between me and the other ranger we had 25stacks of vuln an 25 stacks of bleed on the entire enemy ball, -my- gear is total kitten, my weapons were Rares, I run in Magi + Cleric armor, my build is 0/0/10/30/30 so my cat has a perma +5% damage boost (normally not a cat).

Only time someone went down was the low lv ranger who had the RNG gods laugh in his face as he got smacked by every flame circle at once during the final boss fight. Had me and the other ranger, one of the guardians, and the warrior actually been in full exotic gear instead of a mix match of Rares, exotics, no runes/sigils and some greens it would’ve been A LOT faster than 20min.

So please, you have no idea what you’re talking about, pets hit like a truck he I was hardly gimping my group by allowing my pet to regularly hit the enemy for +2.5k damage in a build not built for damage, a few alterations and he could’ve been hitting a lot harder.

Hahahahahaha, you run2 guardians in a group on a 30 BM build and then say pets are fine.

Guardians mitigate the damage the group takes immensely. In fractals more deficient groups just stack guardians because projectile negation and aoe healing is actually effective there.

TBH I don’t even buy your “20 min” run. A lot of the time I’ve seen these wild claims for you but never have I seen anything to substantiate them, not even screen caps.

The “rangers would WD in a position that made all group members safe from projectiles” also sounds overstated or made up. I doubt the entire team would all bunch together in the tiny radius of whirling defense to be protected from the single gunner in groups while the many melee enemies rushed in and threw down shock-waves and the like.

Don’t you think one of the two guardians using wall of reflection while the rangers used auto-attacks would have been far more effective?

I only play on 2 classes, my warrior and ranger, and from my personal experiences banners are far superior to spirits.

On my warrior I run a full banner build in places like CoE. I use banner of strength, banner of discipline, banner of tactics, and the elite. This essentially provides the team with 170 strength, condition damage, precision, healing power, 10% boon duration, 15% critical damage, and regeneration that stacks upwards of 30 seconds throughout the entire fight.

When the elite is used it provides fury, swiftness, and might stacks to the entire party at a 40% duration increase thanks to 30% boon duration from traits and 10% from banner of tactics. You can also use this to easily revive allies.

Spirits on the other hand provide some burning (which does not stack intensity), protection 33% of the time, and 7.5% damage. The elite spirit is much harder to revive allies with than the banner and you practically need to be right next to it to receive the healing which puts it at great risk from attacks and isn’t that useful to your team unless everyone stands right next to it.

But if spirits were indestructible they could easily be able to to compete with banners. If you used melee weapons and got in the enemies face with the spirits following you, used their active skills, and the elite was healing you and your allies, they could be awesome!

A bit more clarification on why I think the skill needs work:

In PvE using it solely to damage opponents at close range will be about as effective as your auto-attack, even if used in a combo field, but doing so makes you very vulnerable to melee attacks and AoE. Since you’re using it in melee range and unable to move, the chances are you’re going to get hit hard. If using it solely to reflect projectiles, you will be less productive than if you just kept moving and used other attacks.

This skill generally becomes viable only when you can do both of these things; damage the enemy at melee range while at the same time reflecting their projectiles. However if you start getting hit by AoE or melee attacks you need to end it or take a lot of damage, requiring you to be fighting enemies that only have ranged attacks and for nothing else to be attacking you. A good example of this is the boss is the grawl fractal where you can safely use it in a group of elementals to damage and reflect all their projectiles back at them. The problem is situations like these are rare making this skill far too situational.

In PvP using it offensively is just not an option. Its low damage does not deter melee enemies from attacking you while it is going and due to it rooting you, they can easily just take a few steps to avoid it. Its only viable function is as a projectile reflector.

However, whirling defense is one of the worst, if not the worst, projectile block/reflect skills in the game when used solely for that reason. The best use your going to get out of it is reflecting maybe 2-3 attacks back on a skilled enemy, and if you keep it up past that they can easily take advantage of your root by better positioning themselves, taking the time to use long cast skills or heals without being interrupted, or casting AoE.

So much of this game is based around movement and when you take that movement away you become extremely vulnerable, not enough for a projectile reflect to make up for. If they want to keep the root it is necessary for the skill to be able to defend against melee attacks while still allowing AoE to affect the user so it’s not overpowered (this would also bring it in like with how the skill functioned in GW1). Removing the root would also address the issues with the skill but this wouldn’t fit in well with the skill concept or animation and would be technically more difficult.

Trait-less, the main-hand axe seems like a good weapon when compared to the shortbow. It gets a bouncing projectile which can compete with the shortbows single-target damage, a fan of bleeds, and a skill that causes frost and weakness.

However when traits start getting factored in, it becomes easily out-classed. Due to piercing arrows the bouncing projectile no longer has as much of an advantage. If you can line up just 2 enemies you are out-damaging the axe by a good amount.

I believe the problem lies with the only axe trait, which gives a lousy 10% more critical damage. If it had something on-par with the usefulness of piercing arrows, like perhaps the third bounce splintering and doing AoE damage and maybe 1 stack of bleeding for 5 seconds, it could become a great weapon.

For the off-hand axe, path of scars seems fine but whirling defense could use some improvements. Its root leaves you too vulnerable to AoE and melee attacks, making you not want to use it offensively, and if you use it strictly to block projectiles at a range its not going to be very helpful, not to mention your still rooted and vulnerable to AoE. They either need to remove its root or make it block all incoming attacks.

Does anyone else feel whirling defense (off-hand axe #5) needs some improvements?

I always bring an off-hand axe in PvE for the #4 skill, but I seldom find any situations were using whirling defense would benefit me. Between its root, delay before using, and low damage, it just isn’t a viable skill to use that often. In PvP I’ve found it even less useful.

What I really feel it could use is a block to all incoming attacks. This would actually make it a useful defensive skill and allow players to use it in melee range without the threat of getting slaughtered from the root.

A very nice update!

The update to pets is a good start, but more is definitely needed for them, especially in dungeons. The spirit health increase however will have no significant impact as they will go from melting in 2 seconds to 3.

The current state of crowd control (CC) such as stun and knockback is pitiful in PvE because of the unshakable and defiant mechanics.

Basically what goes on is that a single player uses a CC skill which typically lasts 1-3 seconds, then the enemy becomes immune to the next 3-25 CC skills (10 for a party of 5 in some dungeons).

From my understanding this was done to stop players from continually locking enemies with CC skills, trivializing the fight, but they went so far in trying to prevent this that they severely limited the effectiveness of CC.

The way ANet defines roles we have damage, support, and control.
Damage and support have nothing holding them back. You can take down a champion in under 30 seconds with enough damage (see CoF speed runs) and can permanently maintain boons and projectile blocks with support. Control on the other hand is impaired because of this mechanic, only being able to affect the boss every minute or two.

Just imagine if damage and support was treated the same way. What if after applying a single boon or heal to an ally, the next 10 boons and heals to that ally would be negated? What if after blocking/reflecting a projectile from a boss, the next 9 passed through? What if bosses became invincible for a time period if they took too much damage? Surely these wouldn’t be seen as good mechanics.

Unshakable and defiant need to be reworked. A mechanic like this is necessary, especially in large scale fights where people could be firing off CC every second, but making CC this much less effective is ridiculous.

The last thing I want to see going on is what is happening with mesmers portal, guardians projectile reflect and block, or thief’s stealth. That’s why I said it should only be done with widely available things. Most classes have access to stun, pull or knockback, movement slows, stability or stun break, and immobilize, so mechanics could be built around these things without issue.

The difficulty isn’t want bothers me, its that it can be farmed over and over so easily and dumps a ton of gold into the game which isn’t healthy.

In my opinion they should increase diminishing returns rather than making the dungeon itself harder. Make it so bag and pure coin drops from the bosses, as well as the coin reward for finishing the dungeon, takes hits the more you complete (or continually fail to prevent people from going through, getting the drops, this quitting at the end) it in a set time period. This should probably be done for all dungeons to prevent people from just moving to another like HotW.

My problem isn’t that the skills are worth using, it’s that they rarely have a part in the specific fighting mechanics. I’m not saying that the auto-attack is more efficient, but that the mechanics of a fight don’t go any further than damage, dodge, and heal. When the mechanics are this limited your 8 other skills only serve generic purposes like extra damage, extra healing, and extra blocking and do not fill a role that auto-attacks, dodges, and healing cannot.

The examples you gave like using stability, blocks, and projectile reflects to beat the harpies is exactly what I want to see more of. You actually have to use your skills to fulfill a role like blocking the lightning orbs, which dodges cannot do given the small platforms.

Likewise with one of the things I suggested, you would have to use a pull or knockback to force the enemy out of an AoE which is buffing him, requiring players to use specific weapons and skills to gain an advantage or perhaps even harm the boss for more difficult areas. Things like this would make dungeons a lot more fun to do.

I hope I explained it well enough this time around.

Something I feel could be improved upon in dungeons is more importance given to combat mechanics.

Right now few enemies have mechanics that relate to the 10 skills players have available. As long as you know the behaviors of the enemy you are fighting, you just need your auto-attack, heal skill, and dodges. Your 8 other skills are for generic survivability and damage increases and rarely have a special part in the mechanics of the fight.

An example of something which utilizes our skills would be the part of the grawl fractal where you need to stop the grawl from pushing the hostages off the cliff. In order to beat this effectively you need to slow them down with your skills.

An example of something which does not is the worm boss in TA. They just keep spitting at you and there’s no interconnectivity between your skills and the bosses mechanics. The closest you can get is interrupting their smash attack, but they do it so often and it’s easy to dodge so it doesn’t make a difference.

I understand why this was done, but it was taken too far. The removal of the “trinity” was a good thing but it was taken to the point where any interconnectivity of our skills was removed.

This is not good thing as it dulls the combat to very noticeable levels. Side mechanics are the main thing keeping dungeons interesting, making Bjarl the Rampager run into the pillars in CoE being a good example. Luckily they have done as great job with these.

But unfortunately for monsters which don’t have these side mechanics it’s just a matter of generic damage, healing, and dodges which can grow to be boring and really tedious against higher health monsters.

What we need is more importance given to the skills players have available in the actual mechanics of the fight. But these mechanics should only be based around widely available things like stuns so that players won’t have to search for specific classes.

A good first step would just be adding things like using a daze skin to interrupt a special attack, slow skills to stop the enemy from reaching a buff item that fell near him (if he is slowed he won’t reach it before it disappears), and a knockback or pull to move the enemy out of an AoE he placed which buffs him.

The unshakable and defiant mechanic should also be modified to allow these things to be better utilized and improve combat mechanics in general, but I thought this would be a better topic for another thread rather than throwing both ideas into this one.

People in general will always play the game based around its design. It doesn’t matter what the developers intend if the game mechanics contradict it. This is what has happened with dynamic events and its silly to blame the players for it. Game design is much like math in this way; whatever you put in the game is going to have a predictable outcome and it’s the developer’s responsibility to ensure the outcome meets their intent, not the players.

As for the issues with dynamic events, their rewards, repetitive nature, and no true impact on the game world are the primary causes.

When dynamic events show up out of nowhere, are completed in just a few minutes without having any real impact on the game world, then pop up again in another 10-30 minutes, there is little satisfaction and it creates a very repetitive feel. It’s simply no fun running around a game world you’ve already explored, looking for simple and uninteresting events to complete which have no true impact on the game world.

Then we have the rewards. 2 silver, some karma, and a bit of experience along with whatever you got from kills. It just isn’t enough unless you are farming an area like Orr

This is of course speaking of dynamic events in general. There are exceptions such as temple events and dragons, but for the most part dynamic events aren’t designed well for anything past exploring an area for the first time and leveling up.

Daecollo.9578:

1 might every critical hit for Two-handed training.

The warrior has something like this, but the ranger greatsword is utility based and this trait is under nature magic, so might wouldn’t really fit in. Something utility or support related like if you block an attack you gain protection, might work out better.

Diak Atoli.2085:

Honestly, a lot of the problem doesn’t lie with the traits themselves, but in their positions in the trait lines. Many of the traits would be better served in lower tiers, or even in other trait lines.

Example: Signet of the Beastmaster
A ranger taking enough points in Marksmanship to get this trait is more than likely not going to be focusing on the pet as a major source of damage. Granted, the trait benefits the ranger more than the pet, but when stacked against even master level traits, it’ll be pushed aside.

• Suggested Location: Master Tier, Beastmastery

Example: Trap Potency/Trapper’s Expertise
These traits are perfect; essential for every trapper’s build… But they’re in the wrong line. Traps deal most of their damage through conditions, and are unaffected by precision or critical damage.

• Suggested Location: Master/Grandmaster Tiers, Wilderness Survival

The location of some traits is definitely an issue. However I find the traps to be in a good area as it allows you to still use traits which go along well with a trap builds in wilderness survival. If they were moved you would actually have worse options than you do right now. The precision and critical damage also fits in well if you use condition dmg/toughness/precision equipment.

I’ve found ranger works best with 30/30/10/0/0, berserker equipment, and a longbow and shortbow.

With the longbow you can attack from over 1,500 range which can be very useful. You can hit siege other players can’t and fight from ranges the enemy can’t get you at. The longbow 4 skill, the shortbow 4 and 5 skill, muddy terrain, and entangle are all effective at stopping opponents from running away or reaching, and you can use lightning reflexes, the shortbow 3, and the many dodges you get to keep distance or escape fairly well if needed.

The problem I’ve found with rangers melee weapons is that they are too utility focused so you’ll have trouble killing high defense players or those who know how to retreat effectively. For condition builds you’ll need traps for them to compete with physical damage, but given the wide open areas traps and their 600 range aren’t generally effective. Not to mention neither of these are effective at tower warfare.

A list of traits I feel could use some improvements.

Marksmanship:

The Opening Strikes mechanic in general (consists of all 3 fixed traits): For 25 points you get 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds and a guaranteed critical (you must exit combat for 10 seconds for it to reapply).
- Because this cannot be reapplied in lengthy fights its effectiveness is very limited. Outside of PvP this mechanic makes a very insignificant impact. Opening strikes needs another method for reapplication, such as a 10% chance when flanking (20 second cool-down).

Predator’s instinct: Apply 2 seconds of cripple when you hit a foe below 25% health (15-second cooldown).
- 2 seconds is too short, it should be at least 4.

Piercing Arrows: All arrow attacks pierce targets.
- Although useful, this effect alone is too little. This trait should be given a secondary effect.

Beastmaster’s Might: Using a signet gives 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.
- 1 stack of might is too weak, 3-5 would be more appropriate especially considering the effects and cool-downs of the signets.

Signet of the Beastmaster: Active effects of signets also affect you.
- This effect should be on signets by default or at least be an adept trait. Requiring a grandmaster trait for this is too much.

Remorseless: Regain Opening Strikes when you kill a foe.
- An effect like this isn’t worthy of a grandmaster trait and would be much better suited as a replacement or addition to the third fixed trait. This trait needs a complete rework.

Skirmishing:

Trapper’s Defense: Create a spike trap while reviving an ally.
- This may sound like a nice thing to have at first, but in realistic situations you can’t reviving people that often and in the off chance something triggers this trap, it isn’t going to help much at all.

Companion’s Might: Critical hits give 1 stack of might for 1 second to your pet.
- With a fast attacking weapon or AoE and high critical chance you might be able to get around 3-5 stacks of might on your pet for a few seconds, but it’s your pet so this isn’t going to help much. This should be modified to something like this: You and your pet grant 1 stack of might for 5 seconds on each-other with critical hits (cool-down 1 second).

Agility training: Your pet moves 30% faster.
-Given the availability of movement speed bonuses on the ranger, this isn’t very useful. Buff it to 50% or give it some other function.

Honed Axes: 10% more critical damage while you have an axe in your main hand.
-This effect alone isn’t strong enough. Give it a second effect like a range increase.

Moment of Clarity: Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds. Daze and stun durations you inflict are also increased by 50%.
- With the limited availability of interrupts (and their cool-downs), and considering this is a grandmaster trait, this trait isn’t nearly as helpful as it sounds.

Wilderness Survival:

Healer’s Celerity: Grants 3 seconds of swiftness to you and your ally when you revive someone.
- 3 seconds of swiftness? Buff its duration and give it something useful like of stealth, protection, vigor, or healing.

Nature Magic:

Two-handed training: Greatsword and spear damage is increased by 5%.
- This needs a secondary effect.

Beastmastery:

Master’s Bond: Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. When it is defeated, deactivated, or swapped it loses these bonuses.
- This is like saying if the player uses a heal skill or dodge (common uses of the pet swap) they lose all stacks of bloodlust. This should only reset if the pet actually loses all its health.

The one in the image you provided looks too green and blue, not enough rainbow to fit its name.

There’s a nice concept art picture of the rainbow jellyfish in the hall of monuments website page. It would be cool if it could reflect that, which would kind of be a reverse of the blue jellyfish colors (blue/green on top, red on bottom opposed to red on top, blue/green on bottom)

And if its not too much work, would it be possible to give its F2 skill special colors? It would be awesome if its whirl would be all rainbow colored rather than snowy.

A fundamental issue with open-world content is that you cannot create equal teams leading to one always being larger in numbers than the other. Generally this number issue can be overcome when skilled players can take down forces much larger than their own, but the slow pace of this game makes it difficult. Between the down state, slow damage pace, and AoE cap, skilled players just don’t have much advantage over a larger force.

The simplest way to address this is to completely change the pace of combat either through strengthening of siege equipment or an increase in player damage, neither of which I think will ever happen because the game is designed to be slow.

And just increasing the AoE cap wouldn’t be a solution as it would be overpowered compared to everything else. You would also need to increase single-target damage and make changes to, or possibly remove, the downed state, in order to give combat tactics a real advantage over numbers in a balanced way.

I personally found 100% quickness to be too powerful, 50% being a better number, but my biggest gripe with this update was not doing enough to account for this decrease.

Quickness was the only form of burst damage many ranger weapons had and was an important part of many builds. A 1 second increase on QZ only accounts for a small percentage of its decreased effectiveness (it added 4 seconds of actions before, now it adds 2.5) and a stun break to bring it in line with other quickness skills, while the quickness trait remains untouched, is not enough to account for the impact this had.

Maybe if the balance updates were coming in at a good speed I wouldn’t mind this as much, but most of what we see are bug fixes with few actual balance changes in the 7 months this game has been out.

Tibbel.3450:

I recorded quickness frame-by-frame and observed 8 attacks in ~3.17 seconds. (I wanted to be sure all 8 shots were fully within the quickness window.) That’s ~2.52 attacks per second, which, compared to 1.92 attacks per second without quickness, is a gain of 0.6 attacks per second.

Before today’s patch, quickness increased the shortbow attacks by 1.2 attacks per second, so while it’s true we’re not getting the advertised 50% increase to attack rate during quickness, we are getting half of what we were getting before.

That’s interesting, receiving exactly half of what it used to despite this update. I always thought it was a bug but this makes me wonder if they intentionally cut the benefit crossfire receives from quickness by half.

Faolchu.1629:

Short answer, yes. However, Anet feels that we shouldn’t feel bad because it was mainly aimed at curving Mesmer and Warrior spikes, we just got caught by a stray arrow lol.

In the knee of all places too!

Most ranger weapons lack any sort of burst damage so quickness was the only form of burst damage many rangers had. Rangers also were able to apply more quickness on themselves than any other class. This has a pretty large impact on us because of that.

Good idea, that should provide a more accurate number. I’ll see if I can get some people to help.

Edit: updated OP with results

As many of you know, ever since that “animation fix” to the shortbow that decreased its attack speed it never received the full effect of 100% quickness. I was wondering if this change to quickness, reducing it to 50% attack speed, would fix this glitch so I headed to test it.

For the testing I attacked the training dummies in lions arch normally then using time warp. Here’s what I came out with:

Without quickness:
- 100 shots takes 52 seconds, so 0.52 seconds a shot. Nothing different here.
- You get around 9.6 shots in 5 seconds with this.

With quickness:
I got around 12.5 shots in per 5 seconds (2.5 a second).

In conclusion:
Quickness will give you around 31% faster attack speed when using the shortbow, not 50%.

Chopps.5047:

Geez, Bri, by “fixed” I meant “invariant” or “constant”. I didn’t mean re-implemented by ANET. And it’s only changeable in the sense that ANET is considering a rework of the mechanic. Right now, as the cliche goes, it is what it is so you must conform to how the pets behave.

Regarding your point about distracting the point of the post, no I’m not. This post clearly asks about defeating mesmers. If you want to start another QQ post about pets go ahead I won’t stop you. But that’s not going to help you beat any partiular profession. You will only beat yourself.

Its funny how around here posting an analysis of mechanics is considered a “QQ post”. I was going to post an actual reply to your points but I will take no part in a community that has that kind of mentality. Sadly it seems to be spreading like wildfire around here.

Chopps.5047:

Not really, considering the quickness change was global and ranger was the only profession to get a buff on a quickness skill to compensate.

Thief recieved a buff to theirs technically as you can no longer have negative endurance. This is a pretty large change, being even stronger than ours receiving a stun break (like all the other quickness skills already have) as they will no longer go into -100% endurance if they use it while empty on adrenaline like before.

My conclusion and comments:

Outside of the bug and common sense fixes, like agony resist to pets and pet revives working 100% of the time, most ranger builds took a hit because of the quickness change which cuts the speed in half.

Quickness from the pet swap did not receive a boost in duration and QZ only received a 25% increase in duration and now breaks stun like other quickness skills do, which makes it a less powerful skill overall due to the decrease in both overall damage and burst effectiveness.

The greatsword received a buff again which is nice, but when are we going to see changes for the other weapons, utilities, and most importantly pets which all need work?

Pretty much anything which breaks immobilize (which traditional stun breaks like lightning reflexes do not do), allows you to teleport somewhere while immobilized, or makes you go invulnerable will allow you to escape entangle.

I’ve found some classes like the thief break out far too easily while others like the ranger are basically screwed if they get caught in it as most builds do not have effective methods of escaping it.

I remember a long time ago wanting a whip that required beastmastery in GW1 so my character could attack with my pet without spending points on another weapon (if you wanted to do this effectively you’d have to put 9 attribute points into another weapon trait).

Whips in GW2 sound like a great idea though. Perhaps it could be filled with pet-centric skills, such as those that provide boons to the pet and increase the damage of its next attack when used.

I found the game more fun for a short period after I got it, but then I just grew bored and stopped playing as much for a month or two.

Now I’m working on a second one although I don’t have as much desire to play the game as running the same content with no exciting goal gets boring. Hopefully the update today will spark my interest again with the WvW rank and new content.

Chopps.5047:

Geshque.1326:

Maybe I missed smthing but I cat understand why are you all talking about yout builds if topic is about pets missing their targets?

Because “pets missing their targets” is something that is fixed. It is unchangeable. It is pointless to whine and cry about unchangeable things. Therefore, we post builds that counter mesmer and/or ideas for making your pet land hits more consistently. I’m sorry if this isn’t the answer you want.

No! You want me to come on here and say “ZOMG PETS ARE UBER BAD ONLY REASON I LOSE IS DUE TO PETS” and I’m not going to do that. That’s absurd. You and OP have to realize you aren’t getting magical pets that land every hit no matter what.

Pets missing targets was only partially fixed. There are still plenty of pet skills that have trouble hitting a moving target and ranged pets have slow projectiles that can make it difficult for them to hit their target.

The logic of the OP had nothing to do about how to fight mesmers; they were only mentioned to compare clones which the OP feels can reliably hit the target, to our pets which he feels doesn’t. Bringing up builds on how to fight them only distracts from the topic of this thread which was intended to be about pets being able to reliably hit targets, not about how to fight mesmers.

Right now pets are flawed, taking up a percentage of our damage while not being able to match the up-time of, or engage targets as well as, the players do. In order for pets to be balanced they must be near the level of players in their ability to both stay on and hit targets, which they are currently far from.

And this IS changeable, as much as you might not be willing to accept it. There are plenty of suggestions out there, especially on Robert Hrouda on pets in dungeons which has posts not only about pet survivability but also their reliability, and the developers are looking for solutions on this issue.

Food isn’t the only problem. Physical damage stats benefit the ranger less than other classes.

Because the ranger takes a cut in his damage because of the pet, anything which is calculated as a percentage or multiplier will benefit the ranger less unless it applies to both the character and pet.

This is a huge issue for the ranger as pretty much everything related to physical damage is treated as such. Power is calculated as a multiplier in the damage formula and critical damage is added as a percentage increase. Because the ranger has less base damage than other classes, power and critical damage, and thus precision, fury, and might, will benefit the character less.

I think this may have been accounted for to a degree with Jaguars being balanced around a full exotic zerker character, but the problem here is that not even the talkiest pet can stay alive and on target as well as the ranger putting them at a disadvantage.

Since the pet likely isn’t balanced around ascended equipment or other stat boosts such as boons, sigils, or food either, the ranger probably benefits less than other classes when it comes to these.

Edenwolf.6328:

You can do any dungeon with any mixture of classes, the only place where meta applies is cof path 1 farming. Outide of cof path 1, I’ve never been asked to play a certain toon for any other content.

The meta can be applied to the entire game but we are only seeing it applied to small portion of the game at the moment. I’ve done Crucible of Eternity runs that benefit just as much as the tactics used in CoF do.

Heck, if there aren’t diminishing returns in place it would probably be a really effective method of obtaining charged cores/lodestones.

Yes, you can attach a different sigil without affecting its color, name, status, or anything like that. Transmuting on the other hand will change these things.

phandaria.4891:

As much as I think it is true, you shouldn’t discredit Anet for making the content viable for ALL professions. Currently, the specialized groups are only limited to either speed runs/higher level fractals.

True, and I hope it stays that way!

With development usually comes more challenging content, which besides being able to compete with the profits generated by these speed runs unless I conform, is probably my main concern. Unless they handle it correctly we might start seeing the same problems we had in GW1.

After much experimenting with pets, I’ve come to the opinion that you should just stick with devourers in every area of high-level PvE and WvW unless you are using a beastmaster build, with the exception of areas like the jade sea fractal where enemies reflect projectiles.

My reasoning is this; all melee pets die too easily and run around too much. You get more out of a devourer than any of the melee pets as they stay alive pretty well, can hit things like burning oil and cannons, have decent damage output, and generate a lot of might for you with Rampage as One.

Why not spiders though? Mainly because of that poison spit attack. It can be useful if used on a group, but It just takes too long to use, isn’t useful at all if you have someone in the party using poison as a condition build (since the spiders poison damage is weaker than theirs), and I find it to just take away from its damage output in general situations.

Up until recently the tone of the community was very casual. Outside of private groups speed runs were rarely seen and players accepted any professions and class roles as long as long as the player was experienced.

However, after 6 months we are finally seeing a meta-game being formed, and honestly, I don’t like the looks of it. Mesmers, guardians, and a few high-damaging classes are essentially a requirement for high-level play. Many classes simply don’t have strong roles in the meta-game and are being left in the dust.

CoF speed runs which are very popular at the moment are a prime example of this, but it seems to be branching out to other areas. I’ve witnessed this spreading to FotM, CoE, SE and other dungeons where more and more public groups are starting to seek specialized roles.

This seems to go against what the developers intended for this game. They removed the trinity and attempted to make the game so it doesn’t require specific classes, but thus far the roles have only shifted. In comparison to GW1, instead of a monk in every group we need a mesmer for their portal and time warp. Instead of a warrior we have a guardian for projectile reflect and group buffs. As our damagers we have 100 blades warriors. We also have thieves for their stealth and decent melee damage.

But what about the other professions? Elementalists, engineers, necromancers, and rangers don’t seem to have strong roles in this meta-game. I’m not sure if this trend will shift, but it’s not a good sign to me. One of the selling points of this game to me was not being funneled into certain professions and roles, but it seems like that is starting to happen.

But if it does continue down this path of specialized groups, I hope we see the less popular classes receive updates to bring them in line with the others. I don’t want another one of my favorite professions (ranger) to be in the same state my favorite profession in GW1 (dervish) was.