So, to be redundant, PPT is not necessary for WvW. GW2 doesn’t need to exactly copy Rift or any other game’s large-scale PVP, but it could keep the weekly format, while change scoring to final percentage of structures controlled or 20,000 enemies killed (make up your own big number), with a 24 hour chance to reverse, or something like that… Please add ideas to this if you have any.
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Here’s a more detailed description of how Rift’s Conquest PvP mode works.
“The match ends when a single team has claimed 40% of the control points or 5,000 players are killed – once this happens a 10 minute timer will start, this is your chance to make a last grab for control – after which you’ll earn your rewards!”
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Rift’s WvW is called Conquest. Here’s a brief description. Hopefully I won’t get in trouble. I like both GW2 and Rift but they do some things differently.
In the game Rift, the equivalent of WvW doesn’t use scoring based on how long structures are held. Matches are only three hours and the winning team wins by holding a set number of structures and then there’s still a brief chance to reverse the majority. But the match ends when that large number is held for a certain time. You also can bring power-ups to structures which count for some points if delivered successfully, I think. There may also be PPK.
I also dislike the way stealth is done in this game and I wish it was changed. In another game I play, stealth has no maximum duration, but it ends when you get too close to an enemy. This has implications for WvW and PvP.
Stealth
Layering stealth over and over and over… needs to go period. Not only for the combat reasons, but to also help develop and take certain professions in a better direction.
Mid combat stealth needs to be toned down period. Individual players should not be able to go into stealth continuously. Thief stealth builds and PU Mesmers are the biggest offenders. Sneaky Gyro stealth duration is a bit long. Trapper runes exasperate stealth issues as well, and would like to see the stealth component removed from them.
There is zero need or reason for an individual be able to stealth over and over in PvE. For PvP, Thief “super stealth” builds are universally needed to survive, but also gives those builds a complete advantaged to control combat. PU Mesmers are next in line for this issue. The high survivability Scrapper builds the Sneaky Gyro increases their survivability three fold, and now we see packs of them raining in WvW…
These heavy stealth builds are one on one nightmares in combat situations and outcomes are extremely predictable. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen these ultimate stealth builds whack around multiple attackers or just simply escape. I’ve seen skilled players completely controlling fights against multiple opponents and killing them individually as well.
The current stealth mechanics are just not healthy for PvP and just not needed in PvE. And again, If combat stealth is fixed up, it would open the door to make some better profession improvements. I understand some changes to professions would need to be made to accommodate stealth changes, but I believe it should be looked at seriously.
Also, common counters to stealth are anemic in PvP. Players are basically limited to tossing a random ground aoe (if available in the build) or swinging a melee weapon randomly if one is equipped. The stealth removal traps are not a realistic counter at all.
The hardest hit by stealth changes would be Thief, so here are some suggestions. Make Thief a “heartier” combatant via better HP and and better condition resistance and removal (the condition proposal will help too). I would like to see stealth and blindness removed from weapon skills and removed from traits. Add stealth to a couple more heal skills and limit stealth and blindness skills to utilities and elites with long cool downs.
Follow this utility bar format to gain access to stealth and blindness for all professions.
I also had another idea to change stealth skills to a translucent form or shroud that reduces damage from all sources when active. This would allow all current stealth mechanics to remain in place while still providing advantages during combat.
Thanks for reading!
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Stability. I was thinking some more about this. The problem with old stability was that once it was stripped, then you couldn’t get it again until skill recharge. The problem with new stability is not enough stacks to counter CC.
Here’s a radical idea. Since GW2 is a casual game anyway, why not just change stability from a boon to a buff that can’t be removed? You could set the maximum duration to 30 seconds or a minute and set it so it can’t be reapplied while in effect. Stability still doesn’t prevent soft CC like cripple or chill. Just an idea.
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Get rid of PPT. It’s not a fun way to play. Make rewards for capturing and holding structures into combat buffs like you already do with Shrines.
Keep PPK.
Like people’s idea of rotating the maps. I’ve been away from the game a while and away from WvW even longer, but I didn’t mind the Desert Borderland. It has some fun mechanics. It just wasn’t fun to play because most people left WvW. Even if you remove it from WvW, it could be converted to a PvE map.
Population balance. I don’t have any new ideas…people have previously implied/mentioned server alliances or superservers. Or let people rotate what faction they’ll play in WvW.
Faction-wide PvP reward tracks everyone contributes to, so there’s a group effort for rewards.
Not sure about people’s ideas of just reverting to old stability. Both the old and new have drawbacks.
Ranger has been my main profession since starting the game and I can tell you pets are practically useless in PVP without Pet’s Prowess to speed them up. I don’t think I even use any builds without that trait anymore. The pet is half your damage, so this is really important in PvP.
What button(s) do you press to see the Death Breakdown? I’ve never seen that window.
Diamond Skin. I’m someone who does not play Elementalist, but I was stuck in a 1v1 Conquest battle against a Diamond Skin Ele while playing a Rabid Ranger with very high single-target condition damage and a condition damage pet with maximum attributes and I could not do anything to the Ele. Therefore, I’m very glad Diamond Skin has been changed. It was not fair to be stuck playing a condi damage build against this and not being able to do any sustainable damage or cause any control effects. I think this change is a good nerf.
“Supporting your allies will now contribute toward earning rewards for killing enemies and damaging event bosses.” Sounds great.
““Finish Them” Finishers: The stomping effect will no longer be time-scaled through effects like quickness and slow.
Reviving: Reviving characters will no longer be affected by time-scaled effects like quickness and slow.
Quickness and slow will no longer affect most defensive abilities. Abilities that are offensive and defensive simultaneously (such as Blurred Frenzy or Pistol Whip) will still be affected by time scaling for the time being.”
I think I understand why these changes were made, but this definitely makes finishing downed characters or reviving them more difficult, especially in a group battle. It also makes quickness and slow abilities less useful. The latter part about not affecting “most defensive abilities” sounds vague—I’d like the change to be clarified in detail.
Engineer
“Automated Medical Response: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 90 seconds to 120 seconds.”
It sounds like, among other possibilities, this is to nerf A.E.D. I don’t play Inventions Engineer often in PvP, but I recall using A.E.D. twice quickly in succession…don’t know if it was abused and that’s why.
Guardian
Glad the Dragonhunter traps have been nerfed in damage, duration, and effect frequency. Before this, I had one game where, playing as a non-Druid Cleric Ranger with 1400 healing, I still died in one Dragonhunter’s traps within about 5 seconds. They were too strong.
Ranger
My main profession since I started the game about two years ago. Like the buffs to Hidden Barbs, which I had not been using in favor of Spotter for my Rabid builds. Now it may be worth using. The changes to Ranger Shouts sound like they’ll become more useful now. Love the buff to Strider’s Defense, hope to use it now in some builds. Good changes overall.
Shatterer
Sounds like it will be more fun now and more involving.
“Objectives upgrades will no longer be automatic based on time. They will upgrade based on dolyaks that reach them. Smaller groups can now prevent an objective from upgrading by preventing dolyaks from reaching that objective.”
A small change, but it sounds good.
“Supply cost for all catapults are being reduced by ten supply. The layout of the Desert Borderlands map has increased the number of catapults required to take some objectives. We agree with your feedback that also increasing the cost of catapults pushed the balance too far towards defense so we are tuning that more towards offense.”
OK.
“Points per kill will be turned on and kept on. This is to more directly recognize the contribution that fighting other players adds to the success of the world.”
I like this.
“The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from five to one. Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. You still will be able to revive downed players while in combat. Both of these changes are designed to help fights resolve and to give smaller, more skilled groups a better chance against larger groups.”
I understand the reasons for this last proposal, but I’m unsure about it.
There’s an NPC in the Grove (bottom level) who sells special food. I think it’s for Grawnk to start the achievement progression.
ok i’ll tell customer support.
To ArenaNet: Last year I did the achievement For the Children! and got the Wintersday tree and Star of Gratitude. Months later I planned to leave the game and deleted the character who had the Star in their inventory. Just wondering…can I get the Star of Gratitude again if I have another character complete the achievement this year?
Nerfing the Crossfire autoattack would be terrible. Shortbow, despite its weaknesses, is a great weapon for precision and condition damage builds because of its fast autoattack. Adding torment to one of the weapon skills would be nice and confusion to Concussion Shot would be good, but I would never want to see the rate of attack slowed down.
Shortbow is now one of the worst weapons in the game, attacking with shortbow in a team fight, you might as well not even be there, and you are almost guaranteed to take more damage than you deal (lmao).
1. Slow down the Shortbow auto , but give it a guaranteed bleed, increased power scaling AND torment if hitting from 180 degrees behind target, this would make it way better in team fights, in 1v1s it wouldn’t be that much better since the target can usually face you.
2. This skill is fine as is in my opinion
3. Make this a leap finisher.
4. Change the bleeds from pet into torment
5. Add conditional confusion to this, also reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.
Another possible change is to take the axe auto attack and give it to shortbow with bleeds on it, then give axe a real condition melee chain.
Agreed. It has been frustrating for a while not being able to see what boons/conditions are on the pet.
Shortbow is one of my favorite weapons also. I always use it for my condition damage builds for ranged attack before switching to sword and offhand for melee, but I agree it could use some buffs. Concussion shot is usually weak and I like to see an increased chance at bleeding with Crossfire.
This Engineer Tools trait is not working for me.
All maps
Norn female Engineer, level 80
I posted a few weeks ago about this. The Tools Specialization Major Master Trait Lock On is still not working for my female level 80 Norn Engineer. It doesn’t apply Vulnerability or Revealed. Is this working for anyone?
Pets have no armor, so even the ones with high toughness take lethal damage much faster than a Ranger.
Please reply to my post in the Bug forum if Lock On is not working for you.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Lock-On/first#post5472397
Engineer skill Lock On is not working for me in Metrica Province on the red oozes, maybe other creatures…still trying it. It seems to be applying Analyze on my character instead of the enemy. I’m also using Reactive Lenses and Kinetic Battery, but I don’t see why that would cause it.
Engineer level 80, Norn
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Ehecatl.9172, you’re right. Drakes are magical and we have them, so I was wrong about that.
Yes, to the previously mentioned Behemoths, Raptors. I think Wind Riders and Colocals would feel wrong in flavor, because they’re magical/mythical creatures, unlike current Wildlife pets.
also Barracuda that summons allies like the Hyena underwater, Giant Beetle or Giant Spotted Beetle, Vampire Bat that drains life, Sea Scorpion, Electric Fish, Triop.
And please please give pets baseline condition damage.
Pretty thorough survey, and I can agree with some of the questions; but I feel some people have a poor understanding of the ranger class.
Like the questions about do you want more / less of such condition. I feel, now this is a personal opinion, that rangers should be:The best at: bleed, cripple, poison. (Baseline in most weapon sets).
Very limited: burning, immobilize, weakness, blind. (Some skills ex. bonfire>burning).
One or two at max: daze, stun. (Trigger after meeting criteria ex. trait specific).
Zero: torment, fear, etc. (These feel like they belong to other classes).I feel like all classes should follow some planning as above, but it feels as if all classes are getting every condition, etc., etc. Making each class feel less…unique. I feel people answered the survey going “Rangers don’t have any torment! Gimmi more!”, but, guys, that’s not really a ranger-ish theme.
To me, Torment is really the consummate Ranger condition because of its mechanic of dealing more damage when moving. Since Ranger is a kiting class, especially when using a bow, Torment fits perfectly with it thematically and mechanically. It is perfectly synergistic with Cripple for the same reasons. SB would be fantastic with Torment on Crippling shot in particular.
agreed
Survival Skills rule, New Spirits drool. Ranger Shouts are mediocre, don’t have much use in competitive play (except the ones that weren’t shouts before like Rampage as One and Heal as One). Traps are now too slow to activate and recharge.
Mainhand axe is a versatile weapon, but not good at either direct or condition damage. Offhand axe has some uses, but not being able to move while reflecting limits its usefulness in PvP. Shortbow is cool, but it needs to be more reliable at inflicting bleeding—having to hit your target from a specific angle is difficult. Longbow has been buffed enough. Greatsword is too slow to maintain damage output in PvP without using other skills or swapping weapons in between. Ranger harpoon gun has always been great, but spear maybe could use some buffs. Warhorn isn’t very useful and Hunter’s Call needs to be able to damage inanimate objects—why can’t it hit gates like other attack skills? Torch is okay. Dagger is pretty good.
Pets die quickly in zerg fights and the cooldown to swap is too slow. Pets need baseline condition damage and more aggressive features—in PvP they’re mostly just a nuisance to the enemy unless you’ve traited them to have full Pet Attributes.
Ranger is the best profession for evade skills, but why don’t we get more of them? And when we evade, we’re not doing (much) damage, just delaying it. Would be nice to have more evades and maybe control effects with the evades, and to have evades that last longer.
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If some people want to have stationary spirits and play with them, go ahead. Spirits were already stationary without the trait. Just give the rest of us the option of having them move again…
Been using a Crafting Booster in the Grove today while working on low level Huntsman recipes. It has been over 30 minutes of crafting Fine recipes and I have not seen any critical crafting experience.
Character: Level 80 Norn Engineer
I do want to point out that while we like to think of pets as unique entities from their Rangers, that should have unique attribute numbers, why do we not hold the same standard to Minions, Illusions, and Turrets?
ranger don’t need buff, if any it would need a nerf to taunt. rangers are doing just great
I’m surprised to see people saying Ranger’s one Taunt skill is too strong. It only lasts for 2 seconds and can be broken like any other control effect and has a 15 second cooldown. What about control effects that last longer than 2 seconds or repeated dazes from Mesmers?
Another thing about spirits…I remember when they were mobile and Nature Spirit used to heal the other spirits and Water Spirit I think at least healed Storm Spirit when it attacked, but that doesn’t seem to be true anymore.
Make spirits invulnerable or immune to aoe, and allow the ranger to reposition them like engineers and warriors can reposition their turrets/banners.
Spirits definitely shouldn’t be so easy to kill. Even in PvE now they die easily, not to mention the fact that you have to sacrifice them (your source of healing) and resummon them in such a clunky manner.
Are you using the trait? And are you putting them a ways away since they’ve got a 1k radius on their passive? Or are you dropping them at the feet of the enemies and praying they’ll be fine?
Wait guys, let me walk out of melee range and stop attacking, doing zero DPS, so I can place the spirit in a place which I hope the Molten Shaman doesn’t conjure a fire storm over it or the Jade Maw doesn’t target them either.
The whole babysitting argument is a load of crap. This game’s PvE rains AoE all over the area, Molten Bros is a good example of it it desn’t matter where you place it, aoe from the boss will kill it.
Well said.
Personally, I also think it would be wrong to give pets the same condition damage number as the Ranger, but their condition damage right now is zero without traits, and like 300 or 350 with Expertise Training, which is terribly low. Pets should have a base condition damage number—since basic pet attributes are determined by the type of pet, they could have the condition damage be determined the same way. But maybe make the minimum number like 500.
And the wiki says that Illusions and Minions use their caster’s condition damage, and I know Engineer turrets use the same condition damage as their Engineers, so it isn’t fair.
Make spirits invulnerable or immune to aoe, and allow the ranger to reposition them like engineers and warriors can reposition their turrets/banners.
Spirits definitely shouldn’t be so easy to kill. Even in PvE now they die easily, not to mention the fact that you have to sacrifice them (your source of healing) and resummon them in such a clunky manner.
Some ranger pet commands, and player skills, need to be explained better in their descriptions.
I want a snake, like an anaconda.
Pets never did great condition damage, because their attribute for it was always much lower than that of players, but the June 23 update made it even harder for them, because they can’t stack conditions high enough to do the same amount of damage they were doing before. I don’t recall the last time I saw any of my pet’s conditions do 1,000 damage per tick (maybe during Tequatl). It’s kind of weird also, because pets can often do more direct damage per hit than the Ranger, though their rate of attack is generally slower. Why not increase pet condition damage so that pets using condition damage can play on an equal footing?
Spirits used to be good. Now they are almost worthless. Using spirits as your primary source of healing is no longer reliable.
This isn’t a bug, but I just want to report that the changes made to Ranger Spirits make them unworkable in PvP and even PvE! Spirits are now so bad that I could barely stay alive using a Spirits build in a level 80 map.
Remorseless isn’t causing Opening Strike all the time.
Lead the Wind doesn’t seem to increase longbow rate of attack.
Enlargement isn’t showing any healing in the combat log.
Maybe in WvW, but not in sPvP
This new trait for daggers and torches is not giving any indication of being activated during combat, neither a symbol nor a change to the condition damage stat.
That’s a shame. I had a healing build that used this as one of 3-4 sources of healing on a ranger, really tanky.
The lag in Sea of Sorrows in WvW has been horrible today.
We’ve been rubberbanding all day in Sea of Sorrows in WvW today. Really bad.