Guild Wars 2

Probably a single pet and that we can control the second ability. The pet would probably be beefed up in HP though.

Well I want a useful warhorn seeing how I have Howler.

They said the fixes are incoming with the next patch. We will see how it goes from there, ye?

Well the casters are tools themselves, seriously they are. Any other game they would be trash tier level, but not gw2. So sad.

Yes, and considering its a premade team comp he took the res trait, which is amazing because you can res someone within 2 secodns with the pet help and ZSpeed.

This build is a utility box. You can survive both conditions and power spikes due to WS training, bark skin, protective ward. You have good mobility with GS and traveler runes. Your dps is solid with the marauder amulet and Longbow and you got a low CD knockback.

And your res capabilities are pretty amazing especially for 2v2s. I dislike BWarden, I find Zephyr swap better due to added utility for stealth stomps and especially on ToSStorm. Quickness channels are awesome.

Hahaha , he is playing my build… hahahaha awesome

I have red Kuis post on how ranger OH range increases will be made baseline with the next patch, whenever that is, probably after the WTS.

However, nothing has been said on Whirling defense and how this skill is rather bad at the moment. The number one issue is that it roots you and makes you vulnerable, i.e. a sitting duck.

There are, in my mind, two ways to tackle the issue. The first one is to make this an ability that does not root you, similar to how they fixed the engineer shield ability.

Suggestion 1:
-after a 1-1.5s channel you summon a reflective bubble around yourself and maybe your pet. The effect is the same only you no longer have to spin in place. This bubble will inflict vunlerability, give you retaliation and will reflect and damage foes. You can attack under it. The spear has a similar ability so the tech is there

Suggestion 2:
-After a 1-1.5 channel you summon a bigger AOE effect similar to mesmer feedback, but around yourself. It does no damage but will inflict vulnerability on foes, retaliation on allies and will reflect projectiles. You are free to move around and do other stuff. It can even be a field, perhaps a lightning field.

Suggestion 3:
-the simplest one, while whirling you and your pet gain 5 stacks of stability and protection for the duration of the whirl, 5 seconds worth.

Thoughts? suggestions? Cmon guys lets pressure them to fix this worthless ability!!

Well, quite honestly I would start off with a tweak to CotW itself.

I would reduce the boon duration from 15s to 10s but reduce the CD from 30s to 20s. This would place it on the same timer as untraited pet swap. When you trait both, then you will have a 16s CD which matches the 16s CD on CotW.

After that I would tweak the no4 on the warhorn. How? simple:
-reduce casting time
-transfers 2 conditions from yourself to your target when you hit an enemy with it. God knows that ranger needs more non traited condition removal

Then how would you tweak Windborne notes themselves? Simple:
-Call of the Wild now applies 4 extra might + the regeneration for 10s
-Hunters call also removes 2 boons from the target on hit. We need boon removal too haha
-CD reduced by 20%

There, I made warhorn good

Ok guys, lets get serious. How would you tweak rangers in a realistic way, which means taking what we got right now and doing non complicated changes. I hope this topic does not devolve into a cry fest, so here goes.

The issue with Ranger is that we have a lot of utilities that simply do not do anything. Builds, that have glaring weaknesses that makes the class almost there, but not just there yet. Asking for the Dev team to remove or remake pets is ludicrous at this point, so lets stick to simple tweaks-

The core changes

• Ranger becomes a high HP class. Basic HP is increased to Warrior and Necromancer level.**
  The reason for this is that compared to Engi, Thief, Mesmer the Ranger class has poor damage avoidance capabilities. Sure, we have evade frames but we are not the class with top vigor up time. We have solid but not good protection up time. We have some blocks and no reflects or blurs other then whirling defense. Furthermore this will put every armor class into having 1 low, 1 medium and 1 high HP class.

-Pet PvE HP bonus is translated into WvW and PvP
I think this is a no brainer. Seriously, the pets need the extra HP in WvW and in PvP there was a huge power creep that our pets now die even faster then before. It also goes with ANet goal of not splitting things between game modes. This needs to happen!!

-Increase basic pet condition damage
Since the latest big patch the formula for calculating condition damage has changed and thus a lot of pet abilities and traits that would do condition damage became worthless. I think that giving pets a baseline 300-400 condition damage would make it so that these pets and traits are useful again. Pets cannot overload someone on conditions anyway.

The lack of party support

I have been thinking a lot about what could be done to remedy this problem. The Ranger has tools to be a support character but they simply do not compare to some of the other classes that are out there. What could be done to give Ranger a proper niche of party support. Well I feel as if the problem can be fixed by tweaking a couple of traits and utilities.

The spirits
The spirits have mechanics in place that could be tweaked upon to make them much more reliable and desirable, all we need to do is make some simple yet elegant changes.
Ability to target the summon place, the same as warrior banners, choosing a place where to put them is very important and they can be used offensively then to dislodge or disable someone in a tactical manner.
Buffing some of the passive bonuses – Water spirit passive heal proc ICD reduced to 5s down from 10s. Frost spirit damage bonus increased to 15% from 10% damage on proc. Storm spirit swiftness changed to 2s of quickness. Nature vengeance might boon bonus changed from 1 stack for 1s to 6 stacks for 2s.

The traits
-Vigorous training gives 1 stack of stability AOE for kitten duration as well as the vigor
-Invigorating bond activates on pet swap in an AOE and not on pet F2. It also removes 2 conditions

The shouts
-Guard also makes it so that allies take 15% reduced damage in the AoE affected. The pet actually GUARDS people

Many more ideas to come from me and hopefully from other people too.

BS has a clear lore now, and that is to save you from 1 shot abilities or to keep your pet from dying if your health is above 90%. It is a good trait.

Ok, can we have a serious list of builds that work?

Perhaps we get MINIONS!!!!!

Ranger gets a 150 precision aura, Revenant gets a 150 ferocity aura.

Probably stances

Um, really guys, the core of the issue is not beating a Mesmer 1v1. The issue is usefulness in a team.

Every class that has stealth in abundance has the edge in 1v1, that goes for thief and for mesmer when facing them as a ranger. The problem is being useful to the team.

So mesmer brings:
-boon stripping
-great single target and AoE burst
-portal
-stealth

Thief brings:
-absurd mobility
-stealth
-+1 ganking potential

This is the core of the issue, team viability.

Nothing will happen before the next big tournament. Probably not even after that.

@JC:

There is a very real reason that Ranger is neglected. No high level team plays one. The last time Ranger was usable in high level was the spirit build, but that was almost 2 years ago. Like really, no one cares about Ranger. It is all about Ele, Thief and Mesmer. Perhaps a Guardian and a Warrior. You saw what they even did to Engi in PvP, how they made him far worse then before.

I would be perfectly happy if they just fixed the bugs. Trap rework actually made Traps worse, Spirit rework made them worthless and we have 2.5 usable shouts. Like I said, there is simply very little to no top level feed back on Ranger.

Unless you are an Ele… or Mesmer..

You know what will happen, don’t you? They will buff Thief because it is lacking compared to Ele and Mesmer.

Guys, you need to understand this from a PvP perspective. There were so few Rangers in top level play over the last couple of years that the class is simply irrelevant. They will balance towards their preferred classes, the Ele, Thief, Mesmer, Warrior and Guardian.

If you ask any of the top players about Ranger, in any game mode, they will dismiss it outright and just ignore you going forward. Sounds familiar?

While some things might be toned down a little bit, we will be dealing with this situation 6 months from now.

Guys, I dislike being the bringer of bad news, but Ranger will not be having another pass over.

I think he is talking about the new boon.

Fluffball, true Drakes are good in a HS, if the HS was not worthless now hahhahaa.

Well, sooner or later he will come to the inevitable conclusion that all of us came to and that is that the Ranger is pretty OK in the lower to middle brackets of any game mode, but at soon as you start making considerations into optimizing your team, in any game mode, you will realize that there are far better and more reliable classes out there.

Bunker – Guardian
Bruiser – Rampage Warrior and Cele DD
Ranged/Spike/Control – Mesmer.
+1 Spike/Map control – Thief

Fun part is, you can probably make a team with a Hail Mary composition of builds and classes for a specific map but getting it to work on a large scale, game after game, like these meta builds do probably will not happen. Please do try though!!!

Quite honestly it really isn’t just the Mesmers. Elementalists are far stronger then pre patch. And I mean far stronger. Rampage warriors are just silly too. I don’t think PvP was in a bigger state of crap then now. It was fun the first week but then it became apparent that you can toss aside 4 out of 8 classes right away and be absolutely worthless unless you are playing one of these 3 classes and/or builds. Perhaps toss a bunker guard in there somewhere to support them.

And the funny part is, A-net is silent 1 month into the patch.

or boon strip you?

Who here is asking about balance? Fix the bugs first and foremost.

Yes, I am at a loss as to why they changed how HS works. The reduced CD from the trait and increased boon duration would have been enough. But nooooo, they need to freeking change how it works and ruin it.

I think I might have misspoken here. I am not asking for a new ability, I am asking for the option to use already existing abilities that are controlled by the A.I. at the moment. At least the most important ones like the dog leap, moa heal, bird swiftness, etc..

OK A-net, why didn’t you guys implement another F ability for the Ranger pet? I mean, Engi and Thief got one to enable more control over their class mechanics.
It would go a long way in improving Ranger pet responsiveness if you could control directly when your dog leaps, moa heals or bird casts the swiftness.

Come one, you can do it!!!! There is absolutely no reason not to anymore!!!

What pains me is that, even though I have many other characters, Ranger is the most fun for me theme wise. It is not even about ranged combat, but I am always drawn to ranger/druid type characters in any RPG.

Even now, the Ranger remains very very easy to fix, but they are simply doing the opposite. One should look no further then what they did to Healing Spring.

I stand by my comment that they will simply not bother, hell it is evident in every single Twitch episode that deals with classes and balance!! Ranger always has the smallest segment or is simply brushed aside!!!

I have a feeling that that Ele was simply a new player who did not really understand how to play an Ele or fight a Ranger. The build you are using is a variation of the old condition survival build but only worse because you can’t take EB and WS together anymore. Also, in no shape of form do you have a proper burst anymore in terms of existing burst now. Celestial elementalists can stack just as much might, have arguably more condition damage due to higher stacks of burning that can be maintained, have higher condition cleanse, healing and raw damage due to higher damage coefficients. Also they are faster due to permanent swiftness.

Hell, I made a build that does pretty in WvW or PvP vs normal players, but face someone from TCG on an Ele, see how little to no damage you do and then come back and say how Ranger is in a good place.

We are in a really really bad place compared to the other classes. We are really the bottom of the barrel now.

@jcbroe:

What you have said about the inability to implement ideas goes for pretty much any business or company. Having said that, I do not think that it can apply in this scenario however.

As we have seen, A-net is not adverse to making rather big changes as far as specialization and balance changes go. Mesmer, Engineer, Guardian, Necromancer and even Elementalist changes can be called anything but conservative. However, in the case of Ranger they just did not bother.

I am of the opinion that in the case of Ranger something else is afoot. It is not a conspiracy or anything like that, it is just that no one really wants to bother fixing something that can not be fixed. And many things that really could be fixed are brushed off by the standard it is not in our design philosophy for class XYZ, and in this case Ranger

Prime examples:

We need more F abilities to better control the pet – Said it was to complicated for new players, but with the latest patch Thieves and Engineers got another F button. Mesmers will get a new one with the Chronomancer

Permanent stow – Said that the pet was meant to always be out even if it completely ruins the experience for an entire team, ex. skipping in TA and pets activating blossoms. Just having the ability to force stow it even if its at a damage loss for the ranger would go a long way in increasing the reliability of the mechanic.

Single target sustained damage – Anyone remember this golden sentence? How Ranger is designed to be a sustained single target damage class? In a game that absolutely does not support it, with very poor innate defenses and zero bunker busting capacity or boon removal.

Ranger + pet = total other class damage – Damage tied to an AI that even got nerfed a while back for doing too much damage, even though it simply can not hit moving targets.

Think of the whole situation like this, it has fallen to the Ranger to be that one piece of the game that no one actually bothers with. It is sad for us Ranger players but it is what it is.

except there are always 2 elementalists on each high level team. Not overpowered? Nice try.

Oh my god, you people just do not understand. The Ranger is better when you compare it to the Ranger from a month ago. The problem is how it compares to other classes.

In PvP we are bottom tier and then some.
In PvE there is no longer any room for us anymore, FrostSpotter is no longer needed.
In WvW, bleh

Well, with mesmer you can pretty much point out what the problem is, a couple of traits and the damage is a bit OTT.

With elementalist, I have no idea where to begin. Celestial amulet, new condition formulae, burn stacking, might stacking, passive defensive procs, EA made a minor.

I really do not believe that they will nerf Ele by much if at all, too much pressure on them from the top teams, which, by coincidence, use 2 Eles on teams.

So most likely this will happen:
-Ele will be shaved ever so slightly, probably through burning and celestial amulet.
-Mesmer daze into stun will be nerfed a bit, perhaps PU, but they will remain super strong to be a viable Ele counter
-Rampage perhaps toned down a bit

But they will avoid the core of the problem, Ele doing everything and thus always being on a team.

It has been more then 2 weeks that I have been having the same though over and over… Why did they change how Healing Spring works?

They should have just made it so that the trap trait reduces the CD and increases boon duration and not the mechanics of the ability itself. They have made it from one of the best healing abilities in the game to absolute garbage.

I am at a total loss.

They wanted to nerf Ice Bow but people complained and it got reverted. Imagine the poo storm if they really nerfed Elementalist, seeing how there are 2 of them on every high end PvP team.

Funny part is how they actually butchered Healing Spring. It went from being one of the best healing abilities in the game to absolute garbage.

Well, not all classes can do solid DPS in dungeons. Look at Ranger and Necromancer. Even Warriors are bad when compared to Thief and Elementalist when it comes to damage.

It is very hard to say if any class will have as much modifiers as these 2. Ele for example:

150 power when in fire, 10% damage when in fire, 10% damage vs Burning foes, 20% to foes below 50% HP, precision into ferocity trait, 20% vs stunned foes , 20% to vulnerable foes while in water. And you have Sandstorm, and very high damage abilities like lava font, Ice Bow, etc.

No class comes nearly as close really. But this is where other content comes in, no? What if you need defensive stats or abilities? What if you cant stack and melt? Even now 4 of the 8 classes are pretty bad compared to the other 4 in the current content.

Remember that other classes, the main DPS classes, have a lot of +% damage modifiers and stat bonuses. As far as I understand it this will come with the Shiro line.

It is a matter of a single build doing too much. It has great damage, survival options and utility. Same issue with CeleEle. There is no real trade off or risk anymore.

Make Ranger a high hit point class.

Light classes:
High HP – Necromancer
Medium HP – Mesmer
Low HP – Elementalist

Medium classes:
High HP – none
Medium HP – Ranger, Engineer
Low HP – Thief

Heavy classes:
High HP – Warrior
Medium HP – Revenant
Low HP – Guardian

See the pattern? Ranger has worse damage avoidance then Thief or Engineer and far worse mobility and reset options then Thief. I feel as if the Ranger is a good candidate for a base HP increase. Thoughts?

The top DPS classes are a bit silly at the moment. The damage of those classes needs to go down LOL

One of the reasons for the Beta is to see how thus far implemented stuff compares to existing stuff. If something is too weak it will be buffed, if it is too strong it will be toned down.

The NM adept trait converted 7% vitality into power

Whats wrong with S/A as a melee set? It is actually quite good.

I have had good success with a marauder/traveler 00666 build but I am quite certain that there are much stronger builds for other classes at the top level.

But, it is quite hard to judge ranger in the current environment where Mesmer can instant kill you, Celementalists are far stronger then they were and burning is a bit OTT.

Aside from bugs and some rather silly design choices, as far as build variety goes Ranger is in a much better place then it used to be. Mandatory traits like RtW and EE are baseline now. We were given a solid boost to sustain and burst mitigation.

The problem is some classes got multiple stacking boosts where they should have gotten none. Mesmers/Eles I am looking at you

Hey guys. I wanted for us to talk about and brainstorm about the good things the Ranger can do. Personally a feel as if, even though there is a bit of a gap between us and the top professions, that there are things we can do now that we simply could not before the patch. Furthermore, I hope our bugs will get fixed soon but even without that I think that there are some positives to take out of the changes that have happened.

By the end of this wall of text I will hope to have touched on some questions about specialization lines, traits, skills and general flow.

So i would like to start off with the things we can do now that we could not before!!

We can survive a 1v1 spike and a coordinated spike now. This was the number 1 issue with the previous glass ranger before. Someone sneezed in your general direction and you would die. With the change to the Nature Magic line primarily and the addition of protective ward the ranger has become far better at taking the initial hit. Even the Wilderness line alone is better at taking the initial hit but this is only true for things like backstab but not as much for Mesmer shatters because those are many smaller spikes at once.
As far as coordinated bursts go, the WS and NM lines work so well together now. How you would ask? The initial spike is reduced by 33% and right after the first hit you gain protection and apply weakness and when it gets brutal you activate Signet of Stone- SOS haha. Evasive purity works well with WS mastery and we have access to two actually useful stunbreakers. QZ is one of the top utilities across all classes now IMHO and TU is the best heal in the game, 425 Hp/sec and it clears conditions when traited.

So, passive reduction, 2 stun breakers, 6s invulnerability, on demand condition clear within those stun breakers and a good heal.

Marksmanship is no longer a must for LB builds. This one is huge. I mean really huge. People go into MM by force of habit but this, my friends, is an utterly crap PvP line. It offers nothing. Opening strike is a bad mechanic. Remorseless makes it passable. The only heavyweight trait here is Moment of Clarity if you are a GS user. But it works with a very unreliable GS5. It allows a conditional semi spike. For PvE purposes it is still mandatory due to the 20% dps increase but I am talking about PvP here so i will ignore it.
This is an important thing to consider, previously we were forced into it to make LB playable, but now all the boosts are by default. We are free to go into a line that actually increases the DPS and utility of our skills like the Skirmishing line. Quick draw, spotter and hunter tactics are actually a much bigger boost to the LB then MM could ever be. Higher KD possibilities, or higher stealth uptime.. Consecutive RFs and a 17% increased critical chance when flanking.
Furthermore if HS gets debugged we will have a possibility to not take WS for a more offensive oriented build.
Please understand this message you do not have to take MM anymore for LB, AND PLEASE DO NOT!!!

A rather big power up to utility pets. Why am i talking about utility pets here? Well, DPS pets were always bad in PvP by virtue of not hitting moving targets. Utility pets like dogs or spiders have gotten a massive boost to both sustanability and utility. The CD reductions are huge now!! Every swap you have a guaranteed KB for dog or an immobilize for the spider. Actually with this and a solid timing of Rangers own immobilizes and stuns we can be very good in chaining someone for a long time.

So while pets are bad, utility pets are much much better now!!

High quickness up time. People have been captivated with Beastly Warden and have overlooked a simple trait that was there for 3 years, albeit in a different incarnation. Quickness is something that has innate utility value for us. We sacrifice nothing to get it. When playing dual dogs or dog/spider 1 more 2s control ability can be good but I feel as if it is not a be all end all. Quickness on the other hand can help us do things like quick stomps, swap 100% fear resurrections , swap entangle dog GS5 or axe4 spikes with a high success probabilities, fast heals, etc. Its good and we got 3 sources of it. 2 of them are on demand and a third is rather clunky but extremely useful.

Conclusion:
-Yes we have bugs and that sucks
-Yes mesmers and elementalists are extremely good now, OP is to weak a word to describe this
-Yes some things that should have happened, like OH training being baseline, did not happen and our condition builds are worse off for it
-Yes we are very playable in PvP now!!!

Gl hf out there guys!!

Guys, the Druid will get nothing useful. Seriously. And Eura, i still feel the pain from that pet damage nerf…. Pets doing too much damage, hahha what a joke that was.

The only build ranger ever had that was useful in team fights was the spirit build, which I am sad to say no longer exists.

The issue is and always has been a 3v3 or bigger fight. 1v1 or 2v2 the ranger does quite ok. Team fights, we do nothing. And we cannot sustain with a glass build in a team fight either. Mesmer and Thief can because they can stealth and just TP the hell out of Dodge. Ele bunks, buffs, damages all in a single build. So with 2 Celes and Thief and Mesmer all you need is a fifth. Probably a warrior or a necromancer. Used to be Engi.

Oh one more thing, we have a bad burst and we have no way to strip boons. So by definition we are a bad spike class. Guess who has good boon strip options and is a spike class?

You need to understand that balance is how classes or builds match up against each other.

Sure, conditions deal more damage, but this is true for other classes as well. Survival condition rangers edge was that it was very resistant to other conditions. Emphatic bond, SotF and evasive purity coupled with dodging was something that made the build. It was very hard to take down with a condition build and it had solid defense against power builds which made it a solid side point holder or assaulter.

Its drawback was its single target damage and lack of a proper burst. The closest definition of the build in MOBA terms would be a condition bruiser.

Also, we are THE ONLY CLASS that did not get the half of the class mechanic bonus by default with this patch be it a bug or intentional. So even by that we were left behind. I love Ranger, i have 3k+ hours on it but it is simply in a very very bad state now.