Guild Wars 2

To address some of the answers, I originally thought of this as being a persistent passive buff for pets.

And a question to others, how would this be overpowered in the open world? I mostly ran dungeons, but I think the bunker guardian is a good analogy. Yeah it can’t be killed, but it can’t kill you(quickly).

Just thinking out loud, but would our pets be massively overpowered if they had this boon on permanently?

To clarify, let’s say it was a ~20s boon applied every ~20s. This way the boon could be removed and for a max time of ~20s and pets would revert to being as squishy as they are now. Otherwise, they’d be alive be able to take a few hits.

I don’t think this would really increase their effectiveness as they aren’t hitting harder or more often, nor are their abilities any more useful. The only change would be that our profession mechanic would be usable more often, since you know, according to the devs rangers were balanced with 100% pet uptime.

…..ranger really?
What ranger doesn’t take zephyr’s speed? Just quickness stomp him. If it’s on cooldown then just throw poison on him and wait out the elixir.

…..look again?
Rangers can get up to 12s invul with a traited Signet of stone and “protect me” shout.

Razor.6392:

nerva.7940:

The only finishers that are broken are stealth and invulnerability finishers. Quickness finishers you can easily react to, and stability stomps u can just focus fire. So ele mesmer thief and engie are the problen

I think downed state can be a lot of fun at times. It adds a whole new dimension

^plays a class with a quickness finisher.

The only professions that allow you to “easily react” to a quickness finisher would be ele, ranger and guardian. Every other one has a delay.

Quickness if anything is the only “unfair finish” that may surprise a downed thief, mesmer or ele. Stability or invulnerability will still be worthless against those 3 (the first cast that is).

I sorta agree with this guy. Every class should have an AoE/cone interrupt on down to save themselves.

Centhanir.3849:

That my friend is the Order of Whispers Coat, The Ascalonian Shoulders (ac tokens)
Rawhide Boots and Gloves i believe

^Can confirm this guy is correct.

Regarding Malyk’s appearance. It’s interesting to think that the other Pale tree also used a human template for its Sylvari. Also strange is that humans are not native to Tyria(planet). So why would Pale Trees base their offspring on them?

KaiZy.7513:

Hey, you rangers have

1) Loads of heal
2) 10 Sec AoE Condition remover (prots every second, rendering almost all condition users useless)
3) Loads of Regen

And these are just your healing spells. Whose ratio to the amount of healing is ridiculous?

Not to mention you guys have swords, daggers, shortbows which gives you extra dodge. (Making the dodge system a joke) + Using the correct utility spells you can get Vigor for 10+ secs giving you 100% endurance regen. Meaning you can dodge and heal at the same time.

I don’t see how a less than 2 second stun every 40 sec which deals “damage” is OP.
SO, what’s wrong with the GOLEM?

I’d like to point out that although we have most of those things,empathetic bond proud every 10s, you can’t have all that at the same time.

You can also consider running 30/0/10/0/30 traited for signets. Take Signet of Stone for the invulnerability and Signet of the Wild stacked with Natural Healing for passive regen.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

If things continue as they do now……. Horses will turn out to look like Kirin(Are Kirin horses? Will we see Kirin in GW2?).

Well the Kirin is kinda like an oriental unicorn. Historically it’s been associated with giraffes, so it’s up in the what Kirin would look like if they ever appear.

What does the ranger think is better for PvP and WvW? A feline/avian ’s burst or a canines cc and sustain?

Definitely consider soldier stats, it goes well with anything; power for damage and toughness/vitality for survivability.

I run with soldier armor, cleric or knight jewels and 30 BM.

Just curious, what class’s skills DO you consider exciting? I’m not disagreeing with you, but I just thought that a lot of what you said could be applied to pretty much every other class.

Maybe because most ranger players…..

…….aren’t too bright….

In all seriousness though, I ran my condition build S/T for melee and shortbow for range.

For condition removal, have you considered using the Signet of Renewal? If you’re smart about keeping your pet alive, you can replace lightning reflexes with it for some bar compression. Also, try using Sword/Torch for more burning uptime.

Just wanted to start a thread discussing how ranger sit in the current game environment. I’m a fairly active lurker here so I thought I’d share my observations.

PvE: One of the best classes. Pets allow us to solo group events with ease and makes for a fairly hands off playstyle.

Dungeons: Severely limited due to narrow spaces, AoE and powerful mobs killing pets. Not exactly welcomed to things such a the Jelly and Jade fractals.

WvW: We make for great roamers and solo characters. However, we don’t really have much to contribute to group fights and sieges except for Guarding pets up walls and Barrage.

sPvP: Apparently Rangers have made a resurgence on the competitive scene as a hybrid bunker/point defense and roamer character and is starting to step on the toes of eles/mesmers/thieves for the role of best 1v1 duelist.

Does anyone disagree with these observations? Confirmations?

I assume this about performing a Turing test to differentiate a player from a bot. In which case I believe it’s possible, but not really practical to implement it on a meaningful scale.

I know it’s only AC, but last night I tanked Kholher with trap setup using Soldier and Cleric gear while most of my party ranged him. Then I did the same to the troll. So yes, melee ranger is completely doable.

Daendur.2357:

it’s about timing… just practice and remember that a front bs is always better than nothing. (depends on build)

Personally I feel it’s better to not front stab because it’ll reveal you. If you let the stealth wear off normally, you can reenter it again as soon as it wears off.

I solved my problem too. Apparently I had my max CPU usage set to only 51% in power settings. Something worth looking into.

I fought a d/d ele in WvW with my ranger. I think the main thing is to save your burst until you know you will down him. In the mean time keep up.the pressure and force him to use his cooldowns. Play defensively and have multiple ranged snares to prevent him from running.

I think they’re pretty decent pets. Don’t expect much damage, but they’ll be around most of the time. They’re kinda like a mobile turret.

Tyber Valens.5148:

Well your spirits did get a 25% health increase on the Jan29th update. Not sure how much a difference this will make for them, buts its better than what we got.

All I have seen since launch are the repeated nerfing of Guardian builds. Slowly but surely we are getting pushed into fewer and fewer options to make gameplay interesting. I really did like my Guardian and the gameplay it used to offer. But with so much about the class being nerfed I ended up playing less and less because of the lack of options. I am saying games shouldn’t have balanced classes. But these pointless nerfs without adding anything new just gives me fewer reasons to play.

First off, 0 × 1.25 = 0. So, no +25% health did no REAL change.
Secondly, welcome to the club. Rangers have been getting beaten with the nerf bat since before release. First they took away greatsword, then spirits, then bows. The only thing we have going for us is a defensive healing build that relies on pets, and everyone knows how reliable they are. The only classes that seem to have resisted the power of the almighty nerfhammer are the mesmer and the thief, which I say is a testament to the power level/balance that those two professions have.

I could have forgiven all of this however, if I coudl just play the game. As of the last patch I can’t even play anymore because of abysmal frame rates.
Well that’s my rant. Good Night.

I’ve been having the same problem post-update. Before I would be able to run with 30-40 fps outside of WvW. Now I’m lucky to break 30. This is all with the lowest graphical settings at the lowest resolution.

I’m running with 8GBs of RAM, an XFX Radeon HD 6870(1GB), and an AMD Phenom II X6 1045t(2.7Ghz). When I use the auto-detect feature, not that I’d trust it’s settings, it puts most of my settings to high.

Running with an AMD Phenom II X6 1045t and XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB at lowest settings and still only getting 10-25 FPS tops while standing in LA.

Still no fractal love since pets don’t have agony resistance yet.

Ranger here…..welcome to the club. At least minions/summons aren’t you’re main mechanic with 20% of your damage delegated there….

To be fair though…I don’t agree with being able to target them, however, if they are being 3-shotted, then either their damage should be scaled up or their cooldowns scaled down.

I get pretty stable frame rates of 40-50 with Radeon 6870 with Phenom II
1045T. This is outside of WvW.

Most of the on crit abilities for rangers are pretty weak. For trait points, you might as well put them in marksmanship or skirmishing for the power/crit chance & damage.

The same way you bleed an ice elemental.^

The damage from conditions, imo is fine. The problem arises when you have 2+ on a team, also the duration stacking conditions.

It caps out the max damage you can do whereas damage builds don’t suffer from this.

Thanks for the all the speedy responses.

I am looking to field test the Ranger Bunker/Pet build. Personally, I’d use Apothecary, but the trinkets are ridiculously expensive and it neuters my direct damage.

I’d also like to point out that I don’t plan on crafting them myself, I have a friend with maxed crafting. I do have some mats though, just not sure if any of them are what I need, totems/sapphires I think are what’s used for clerics.

Maul being blast won’t make it a blasting “class,” since it, not counting drakes, because it’d be our only blast. And it’s close range as well being on a non-damage weapon.

For all the 400 Crafters and TP merchants I have a question.
I want to try a new build and need the equipment. Assuming all I have is coin and an empty bank, is it cheaper to buy materials and craft my exotics, or buy the items premade? I would do the math myself, but I don’t know the recipes. Finally if it helps, I need clerics gear.

Thanks for any help.

Also, thief shortbow 2 is spammable until he runs out of initiative.

You’re crazy, or at least illiterate, jk.
Piercing arrows always worked….a bit weird. Arrows follow a parabolic arc and are aimed at center mass. Meaning the would hit their target and then dip down a bit before hitting the next target. That’s why it is always better to aim at an enemy in that back of a mob to take full advantage of the piercing trait.

And Opening Strikes/Remorseless was fixed 1~2 patches ago.

I am aware that both ranger and pet get the attack of opportunity as well as themany skills that can activate it. However almost all those skills have, as I said, cds about 30s long. I too will investigate if pet swapping resets cds.

I feel that companion’s defense is only a token trait because of the short duration. Only our pets benefit from it. And while the trait only has 5s cd, since it is tied to interrupts, the effective cd is closer 25-30s. I did forget the stun buff though.

IMO the current effects are not befitting of a Grandmaster trait because of their limited benefit and long cooldown.

I would redo the trait as follows:

Gain an attack of opportnity on dodge(evade maybe?) This way, while thieves get a might on dodge and elementalists get a spell on dodge, we can get a buff that affects us and our pet.

I’ve learned not to rely on, “get out of jail cards” like Protect Me! and traited Signet of Stone, and by learned I mean died many times.

I’m running 0/25/15/0/30 With a combination of Soldiers/Knight’s gear. Nice passive healing and durability.

So, we know that Legendaries are going to be promoted to Ascended level when the weapons are rolled out, but is a similar treatment going to be extended to dungeon gear? A fair amount of work was required to get my full Ascalonian set, the easiest one. Doing only the 3 dailies, it’d take a week. I know this is nothing compared to Legendaries, but as opposed to crafted gear, the only way to get these armors is to do the dungeon. An alternative would be to burn gems and just transmute the skins. However, with slowly rising gem prices, I’d rather not see this happen.

What does everyone else think about this?

Durzlla.6295:

After playing a non pet based build (I know weird) I have to agree with this, sure if I put 30 points in my pet it shrugs of hits like a kittening champion, but I shouldn’t NEED to do that, I mean kitten, my Mesmer doesn’t need to drop 30pounts to have good shatters, nor does my ele need to drop 30 points to utilize his attunement a why should my ranger -have- to invest 30 points to have a good pet?

PS: I am a BM and will be a BM regardless of what they do with pets, but we’re supposed to play how we want, not be pigeonholed into 30pts BM for half our damage to be useful.

It is debatable whether Elementalists need 30 points in Arcane to work well. Just pointing that out. I will agree that 30 points is de-facto mandatory if you want your pet to anything more than dead wait or a buff bot.

Burch.5732:

Only if the pet is in range, I am a Ranger, I need a healing skill that works both at range and melee, and at melee range I can dodge and kite out of the healing spring and it does me no good, group play is important but until we have a true healer in this game a Ranger must look out for themselves or we will be like the above mentioned ranger dead!

It probably has a finite range, yes, how many Rangers are using LB at 1500 range in anything other than WvW? And the regeneration ticks only every 3s, giving you the time to kite in and out of the spring w/o wasting the boon.

Burch.5732:

Azure Prower.8701:

A ranger in a fractal said to me they use heal as one or troll unguent because they’re a ranger that keeps on moving. Yet even when standing still stacked on top of each other at the chest seal of cliffside, they still refused to use healing spring.

Guess who went down the most during daily fractal run?
(Hint: it wasn’t the glass cannon thief who didn’t go down at all)

Do you play Ranger? Healing Spring is not the best heal for the ranger it’s recharge time is 30 sec and it does not heal the ranger’s pet and other than a LB ranger who can just stand still and stay in the small area of healing spring. It’s only value is condition removal but not worth much as a healing solution to the Ranger. In this game you better learn to take care of yourself if you expect to survive – the above mention ranger died because he used Troll Ungent which is the worst heal of any for a ranger.

What are you talking about? Healing Spring is not only the fastest activating heal, but it does in fact also heal our pets. It is also 1 out of 3 of our only on demand conditional removals skills. Andif you’re in a coordinated group, it provides great utility, especially if you’re playing melee/short range ranger in the thick of the fighting.

Psymon.4750:

the moa will heal u on swap as soon as its out all day everyday and as for the f2 skill, look dont be lazy making ur pet have to run to the person why not kite the person to ya pet ? i have used the moa to daze rupt being stomp sooo much that i was able to hold off till help came or till lick wounds actually worked.

I will concede that I don’t play with moas much and have not gotten their behavior patterns down yet, however, one problem with the daze, disregarding range as an issue, is still the long 1s animation before effect. If you’re in melee though, and swap it in to gain quickness, I can see this being really effective. I’m going to give this a try on my melee builds for interrupts.

Flubble.8093:

that’s because there is no direct way for the pet to get to them as they cant run through doors

the only work around is using “guard” to throw your pet down there or use a ranged pet (that will probably fire at the floor instead)

^What this person said. As a PvE example, I’ve taken to using Guard in the uncategorized Fractal jumping segments.

Psymon.4750:

wow ummm we also other pets with good cc abilities. im not gonna bash ur ranger knowledge but try using black and a pink moa on that bunker. they can heal u pretty good and they have a f2 skill which can daze/stun a foe and if ur running a bunker spec them skills are on a 15 sec cd. we also have hyena that can summon an exta dog pet or we can use devours that also has a knock back skill just saying we have plenty of cc. maybe l2build a better bunker or actually try to fully balance ur builds more. here is a link to where i post a few of my builds the first one is actually a good bunker spec u can tweak to suit u better. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/76271-psymons-ranger-builds/

You make valid points, however, as many players know, pets are not always the most reliable mechanic. Dogs often leap on swap, but the same cannot be said for a devourer’s knockback or a moa’s screech and heal.

SilenceBlack.4973:

Hi all!
I am wondering to make a new set of armor for hardest pve content like high level fractals and Arah explorable mode. I am a bit confused, should i go for Knight or Valkyrie stats set (or even other)? In general, how much armor and hp should i have to be attuned to that content?

Thank you in advance!

Hey I’m doing Fractals 10-19 now and I have to say a set of 50/50 jewels and armor of Knights and Valkyrie work great. You get it all, Power, Toughness, Precision, and even Vitality.

thrice.9184:

Raven, Jaguar, Wolf, – Raven does the most damage(it has terribad defence tho); Jaguar for stealth crits; Wolf for Knockdown/cripple, Howl for battles you cant win..to try and escape.

For the record, Ravens have more health the Felines and the same defense. Felines do crit for much more though.

To put the above in context, running full berserkers’ gear, I have the following stats:
2101/1768/1001/916
A canine would have the following stats:
2626/1768/1502/1145
908/394/-559/-573

Wearing a Soldier’s armor set with Knight’s trinkets gives me:
1755/1261/1776/1288
A canine would have:
2194/1261/2664/1610
476/-113/603/-108

This way, each pet ends up with +858 stat points.
In the end, this isn’t so much balancing rangers. It is more future proofing a design change, ascended gear/gear treadmill, by the dev-team.

horaxx.9728:

Traits:
Marksmanship 10 : I Steady focus
Skirmishing 30 : II Sharpened edges | VIII Trappers expertise | X Quick draw
Wilderness survival 20: III Shared anguish | IX Hide in plain sight
Nature magic 10: III Nature’s bounty

Get ready for a world of hurt…..just kidding.
I personally don’t like Steady focus, but than again, most of the minor marksmanship traits aren’t much better. Drop the Nature Magic points, you’re only getting a few additional secs of regeneration off them anyways, and put them in marksmanship for piercing arrows.

Sharpened Edges is a joke since it’s only one stack of bleed for one sec. Take one of the pet one’s, Agility for melee or Prowess for crits. Also, why are you taking Trapper’s Expertise without any traps? I suggest dropping 10 skirmishing points and replacing it with quick draw.

With those 10 points, at least 5 should go to BM for Zephyr’s Speed.