Guild Wars 2

Ursan.7846:

Chopps.5047:

Yeah, it’s a shame ANET hasn’t tweaked the drop rate of passion flowers. I even go to southsun from time to time to try my luck and I never get any.

They did though.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-February-26-2013/first#post1514186

Increased the drop rate of Passion Flowers from Passiflora Vines.

Ah, good eye. To the…well read?…goes the spoils…

Zetus.1476:

I think it divides the condition durations in two to share it with your pet, so I don’t think it’s really instant death as everyone says.

You think or you know? Please, guys, don’t respond with guesswork. It clutters the thread.

Softspoken.2410:

I’d bet that it makes the ‘pull condition’ effect trigger twice, first on the ranger, then second on their pet. This means that 9/10 times, when you pull conditions, they are immediately pulled to your pet as long as you are within range & your pet is still alive.

So I think that the interaction there is that signet of renewal can pull from more targets in a larger range.

I don’t know…no room for betting or guesswork here. It either does it or doesn’t. I never got a chance to test though. :/

Taym.8326:

The ability is not an aoe stun break either, the stun break is for the ranger (and can be used out of range from the pet), the condition draw is only from the pet.

I’ve used it to break stun in TA after team members get knocked down…unless I’m crazy and am remembering wrong.

Nugget.8031:

(Vid)Legendary Elite – Natures Fury

I told you they would nerf it!

I wish it did that. That looks awesome. Can we have?

Someone else mentioned this before and I just tested it and it appears that spirit of nature does not revive allies in wvw. Has anyone else experienced this behavior?

Wanderer.5471:

beastmaster trait doesnt make you pull conditions to yourself, i run it with my latest build, seems to have no effect at all

Do you know if it pulls everything in range to the pet? That’s good info, now we know it doesn’t pull to the player, right?

“Seems to have no effect at all” Are you just saying that or do you know for sure whether its pulling a lot of conditions to the pet?

Krugan.7901:

If only the apothecary wasn’t so expensive

Yeah, it’s a shame ANET hasn’t tweaked the drop rate of passion flowers. I even go to southsun from time to time to try my luck and I never get any.

This is probably the kind of builds whose existence justifies the massive burst professions like theives enjoy. Is this build on the compilation thread? Thanks for sharing.

Manekk.6981:

Or you pull all conditions on players closest to you to yourself and die, that’s actually how I interpret it but I haven’t tested.

I assumed that wouldn’t happen because who gets what condition if they’re split between you and the pet? I guess you could read the tooltip that way, though. This seems easy enough to test in a hotjoin game, let me see if I can get someone to help me test it later this week.

The best dungeon/PvE build I know of is 20/20/0/0/30 (natural healing in BM and honed axes in skirmishing) with sword/warhorn and dual axes. I use troll unguent when alone and healig spring in a group with full berserker gear. Natural healing and signet of the wild keeps the cats alive in all but the worst situations (dungeon bosses being one). At the boss, switch to drakes for the blast finish aoe it procs on swap when inside a water field (healig spring) for nice group support.

Try that and get back to me, whisper me in game if you still need help. I have a full aet of gear and/or multiple token weapons from each dungeon and am playing 30+ FOTM and being successful on ranger, although in arah or fotm, I suggest using 20/5/15/0/30 to sacrifice a tiny bit of DPS for the 2 sec protection on dodge roll. Most of DPS comes from armor anyways so you end up losing the honed axes trait, which means shortbow is the way to go.

Let me know if you’ve tried that and how it’s gone for you. Remeber: Sprit of nature revives fallen allies (npcs on ascalonian fractal) and so does search and rescue. When traited for it, ranger is a healing machine. But that’s generally best for a support role, of which is, for the most part, not needed in PvE in general.

The way I understand it, if I trait Signet of the Beastmaster and run signet of renewal, then all conditions within both my own and my pets range are pulled to the pet upon activation, as well as a group wide stun break. In other words, if I run longbow in this scenario, it seems that I could potentially clear hundreds of conditions in a big battle all with just one click, albeit at the cost of swapping pets or maybe even killing the pet before I could get the swap off.

That’s huge group support, IMO, particularly when rushing a tower and everyone is getting crippled by defenders on the stairs.

In theory, this should work, but has anyone tried it? I’m just going off what the tooltips say, I don’t know for sure if this works. It sure would be cool to break a dozen stuns and pull dozens more conditions from the army, partiularly given the recent surge in engineers and necros playing T1.

What build are you using?

Do you think dungeons are hard enough such that ranger isn’t viable? Because my fully geared ranger will outperform my other alts for days since I lack time to level and I’m bored of PvE and dungeons. I would say ranger is a great roaming profession, second only to thieves. Ranger is a great role player right now in wvw and pvp. It will be difficult to 1v1 a theif or engineer with ranger but I doubt many professions can go toe to toe with those two. For me, all the work required to level another profession isn’t worth it. I’m not going to craft it up because then I don’t know how to play it, and I’m still too new to spvp to try playing seriously with other professions.

It’s not that big of a deal. Some people like ranger and some don’t. Some people play more casually and will accept flaws, some don’t. Some people like the challenge of playing a profession with this kind of reputation, some don’t. At the end of the day, it just doesn’t matter because its a game and its meant to be fun. If you’re not having fun with ranger do something else or stop playing. The world still has angular momentum. If that’s your central message, I’m on board with that.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I really don’t suggest sword at all if you’re going dungeoning. It does some nice DPS sure, but in a dungeon all that bouncing around will either get you killed by falling off a high ledge, or attract enemies you do not want attracted. I’d stick with the axe as the main hand weapon.

I use sword/warhorn and dual axes in dungeons. (1400 hours on ranger, dungeon master title before simin nerf / full set of armor from everyone dungeon except SE—thats ugly gear unless you like star wars—and arah because I’ve been buying arah weapons with tokens instead of armor. I’m level 28 FOTM and I play 30+ but I haven’t played FOTM lately because it’s about an hour commitment or longer and I like playing pvp a lot more lately)

The bouncing around is awesome but to control it you need to turn off autotargeting. You also need to turn off melee assist and turn off autoattack and rather spam the sword’s basic attack sequence. With a little practice you will not fly off an edge (I did that when I wasn’t very good and I’ve improved my positioning—dont aim at edge!—and my autoattack off such that if I do it now it’s incredibly embarrassing and I probably need sleep. I have to be tired to make that mistake now.

It’s funny you say you’ll attract enemies you don’t want…so you recommend axe. You know axe ricochets right? That will tag way more enemies than sword ever will. Again I suspect this behavior of targeting lots of things with sword is from autotargeting being on in the settings. Ranger play is hard mode so it depends on you getting your settings and keybindings right.

Keep in mind that sword is great for melee because serpents strike is a built in evade which is great for saving endurance while avoiding bosses attacks.

Stooperdale.3560:

Unfortunately Chopps I play a defensive ranger in dungeons as well and it seems fine until there are two rangers in a group. It’s then very difficult to contribute extra offensive skills to take control of a combat.

For example, I’ve seen the Ascalon fractal a few times now with two rangers in the group and it’s been a struggle to push into the courtyard. The rangers can lay traps in bottlenecks and put healing springs on the perimeter but there’s nothing to help an advance into the melee. Rangers going into the control area will probably get squished. The player groups inevitably get pushed out of courtyard and have to snipe the enemies from the perimeter making very slow progress.

Well that’s a completely different fight. I was talking, with that example, about how to melee stack with ranger in arah or coe. In that fractal, you’re better off pulling mobs to the gate entrance first. Don’t run a might stacking build if you have no source of might (in pugs you find tons of warriors so this isn’t generally a huge problem in normal dungeons), firstly. Secondly, if you have trouble with DPS—it’s a 5 person team ya know? Make sure the team has enough DPS for that fight—rangers are actually quite good to have there, along with warriors and necros. Spirit of nature will instantly revive your dead NPCs and the captain is best fought at range. Cleaving axes / bows are great for this. I’ve been successful with many group comps on that fractal. Your rangers probably made the mistake of traiting marksmanship and skirmishing and then sending a cat out into aoe without signet of the wild or anything.

Rangers have something that, when they mess up, outwardly looks bad: a dead pet walking around on CD. Everyone knows, at that point, the ranger is kitten PvE in this game just isn’t hard enough, though, where not bringing a ranger is really going to make a difference. The dungeons are easy and forgiving for the most part and whenever ANET tries to make it hard (simin for example, which I beat with a team of ranger, elementalist, engineer, guardian, warrior) people complain and ANET nerfs it down. I wasn’t carried either in that group—know how I know? We couldn’t beat it twice in a row then checked gear: the elementalist only had 2300 attack. After re-gearing to 3000 attack, we won. My attack was roughly 3200 with cats beastmaster and honed, dual axes. I beat her before she was nerfed, back when the Dungeon Master title meant something—even if you couldn’t display it openly.

Pets dying a lot in PvE/dungeons—where you should almost always be running beastmaster—just shouldn’t happen.

There’s a lot of armchair analysis going on but some of it has merit. In any case, some people only took the time to level an 80 once and maybe they’re trying to gear it up for when the game changes in ranger’s favor. Unless the ranger is clearly inexperienced, there’s not really any good reason not to play with them unless you’re being elitist and exclusionary just for the sake of hearsay.

It hasn’t changed, I use it all the time. If anything, though, swoop needs to be longer and it should give 2 stacks of might upon activation, as well as blinding foes instantly as the start of the swoop. Ok, maybe the blind is too much, but the might is alright.

BroScientist.9875:

The only thing my ranger brought to dungeon parties was QZ for reviving. Now it’s been nerfed so ranger really has no redeeming qualities for dungeons.

I always wonder why people say that. “No redeeming qualities”. I think I can argue against that extreme point of view. I PUG a lot of dungeons so I’m not always playing with pros, ya know? So in places like TA or Arah, I can trait the down state a little and become the best resurrector in the group.

Search and rescue with a clerics build focusing on regen and power and might stacking, maybe even fortifying bond and master’s bond with a bear; SoR for group stun break / group removal, trait healing power and maybe run Spirit of nature. I can be giving almost permanent protection (I can come close in CoE since with spiders you get immobilize and with spirt of stone and blue moa you can give the team pretty decent protection—just make sure you pop spirit right on top of subject alpha or else he kills it) and a big, long, aoe blind from sun spirit on alpha can be nice too. I generally bring a blue moa for when we stack and a drake with healing spring. If the group has members who are not dodging well, the blast heal from the drake can be really nice. With two rangers in sync in the group and other blast / leaping profession skills from other professions, you get 100% healing spring uptime and plenty of chances for leap/blast heals on alpha. A guardian and a ranger or two guardians or two rangers can really make a CoE run go much smoother.

I mean, yeah, the consensus is that rangers “don’t bring anything” when I’ll be resurrecting zerk warriors and mesmers—-with my pet—-while I hit Whirling Defense to pull aggro to myself. I’ve saved more than one warrior in my day, unfortunately, warrior tends to attract a certain kind of gamer—a selfish gamer—and I rarely get any ty’s from them. Maybe they don’t want to admit to being saved by a “kittened profession”.

This is a decent 1v1 build and a good team support build. Thanks for posting and testing it with me tournies the other day. It’s also good in wvw. I like dropping my sun spirit next to ally Seige when defending a keep and literally lighting up the enemy.

There’s a problem with Monarch’s leap, that’s for sure. It’s CD is such that about face leaping with it is no faster than running. I don’t like that TBH.

I love how reddit downvoted me for posting this. There’s this kid that doesn’t understand that 100% boost" equals times two or 200% of the original value and the. And then all the people that thought he was right. And then all the people that think they can accurately measure the true effect of this change via a back of the envelope DPS calculation. And then all the people that forget Time Warp is a group buff when comparing the effect on ranger with mesmer (Solandri had a post on this).

And then all the people just waiting DYING to cut you down for doing a little analysis and try to start a healthy discussion. It makes me sad and really makes me want to break from the forums for a while again.

Longbow really ain’t that bad.

How do you account for the fact Time Warp is a group buff? :P

Come on naphack, let the man speak. I can almost guarantee 95% of the people here didn’t know that. Thanks for rocking out ranger and posting, my man Xsorsus.

jkctmc.8754:

Durzlla

I look forward to your videos of using QZ as a stunbreaker, and making it work without it getting you killed. Shouldn’t take you more than a day, you think?

Durzilla is a good player, jk, I have played with him and seen him crushing opponents. He shouldn’t have to make videos for you. Just stop.

I’ve spent well over 100g on Faelwan and I don’t regret a single copper.

Solandri.9640:

phantomFury.9168:

So, to determine the reduction in damage, we subtract r (.75) from 1:

• 1 – .75 = .25

Multiple by 100 to get a percentage… 25%.

This part is right.

For the first, consider this:

• Duration of Ranger’s old QZ = 4s
• Skill speed was twice as fact, i.e., a factor of 2
• 4s * 2 = 8s
  Ergo, QZ allowed a Ranger to execute 8 seconds worth of skills in 4 seconds.

For the new Quickness:

• Duration of Ranger’s new QZ = 5s
• Skill speed is 50% faster, i.e., a factor of 1.5
• 5s * 1.5 = 7.5s
  Ergo, QZ allows a Ranger to execute 7.5 seconds worth of skills in 5 seconds.

This part is wrong. You’re comparing 4 seconds of damage to 5 seconds of damage. If you want to calculate it correctly, you need to look at the same time period for both cases. In the simplest case, assuming base (unquickened) DPS = 1.0 over a span of 5 seconds:

• With no quickness you do 1.0*5 = 5.0 damage
• With old QZ you did (2.0*4) + (1.0*1) = 9.0 damage
• With new QZ you do (1.5*5) = 7.5 damage

The difference is thus 1 – (7.5/9.0) = 16.7% reduction in damage over 5 seconds. That’s still pretty huge. At least for 5 seconds.

In reality, you can’t just look at 5 seconds. You have to look at total damage output. For QZ that’s 60 seconds (48 sec if traited) before the cycle repeats. So the actual math is:

1 – (60 + (1.5-1) * 5) / (60 + (2.0-1) * 4) = 2.3% reduction in damage over 60 seconds.

But you also need to factor in the other ranger quickness skill – pet swap. Once you do all of this, you get the numbers I posted in the thread I started.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Effect-of-quickness-nerf-on-class-DPS/first#post1717625

And I don’t want to sound alarmist because I agree with you, the overall difference of all this is a few percent DPS. But if burst damage was the target of the change and not sustained DPS, and one assumes they were happy with the DPS balance prior to the patch, well then the patch has just scrambled DPS balance and they need to fix it. The extra 1 second added to QZ/Frenzy/Elixir U/Haste isn’t sufficient.

I think you’re late to the discussion.

Gingelyr.3648:

ahurtcorncob’s comment is exactly right. The 6.25% number is completely wrong.

Redo the math that gives 6.25%, except this time pretend quickness had been changed to: 1.0x attack speed (aka no increase) and 100 seconds duration. Now the math in the OP shows that this completely worthless haste is in fact better than the old haste. That means the math behind 6.25% is completely wrong.

Yes, his comment was very clear without your condescending example which uses an extreme to point out a logical fallacy.

Let me comment on this: this is a subtle point. What is the proper time from to measure it over? Maybe there isn’t one and we have to accept that any DPS comparison would be flawed in that it cannot account for intangibles like stun break and we can’t even decide on a good way to “solve the problem”.

And the guy that said “you have to compare over 5s”, well, why not 6s? And what is the actual number of skills? There are a lot of a priori assumptions being tossed around.

The point of a bunker is not to be burst down. I recommend rabid or carrion gear and traits in wilderness survival to defeat bunkers. DoTing them to death is a good way to go. Of course, this is just a general answer, but it’s a good start. Experiment, have fun, post your results.

It’s not wasted on me, Dojo. Forget those guys, they need practice. They are not like water, they do not flow and they do not crash, if I may quote my favorite karate master. PhantomFury, thanks for showing the math.

You have shadow refuge….

Well, shoot. We’ve had a couple blips on the radar here, a couple derails. But it’s good. Thanks to everyone who responded so far. Keep the ideas flowing.

Recycle.5493:

I pity those who are still using longbow and saying it’s still viable. Hiding in zerg and hiding behind teammate in dungeon must be fun. Good thing I changed to GS build a looooooooooonnng time ago.

I just watched Durzlla pwn with longbow today. That boy can play.

swiftpaw.6397:

Geshque.1326:

Chopps.5047:

It’s just a game.

Free game? No. Period.

Not only did Xsorus spend money, he spent time. A great deal of which he used to help others with builds and such for a class that has now let him down enough he feels he has to quit it. Sure it’s just a game, but it’s also time and money.

Having spent 2331 hours playing myself, my main being a guardian (1498 hours) with a legendary.. if this (what happened to ranger) is what became of my main class, I’d be pretty kitten annoyed too. Luckily for me I’ve only put in 430 hours on my ranger.

Pvp me with your guardian.

I saw more rangers in tier 1 yesterday than I ever have before…so…yeah. Anecdotes.

This is a thread for remarking on the positive changes rangers have and the builds they enable. Please, no whining or moaning on this thread—if you want to do that, go on one of the many QQ threads you can find on the forum.

So we got greatsword cooldown reductions and a stun break on QZ. Tell me why I should stop running conditions in pvp and give me a build to test. Or brag about the new Awesome build you got. Or brag about how your build is even stronger with the buffs. Go!

Durzlla.6295:

lol omg that’s hilarious… granted i don’t think it’s as bad as most the forum goers think… but still funny as hell.

Ya the fish is moderately appropriate too. Last night I was underwater with like four people pounding on me. Did I escape? Heck yeah! You can’t down a ranger underwater, son!

Thanks for testing durZ !

Relativity.3264:

It’s 26% if you count it from the end result (1.5*0.74=1.16) but it’s 34% from the start (1.16*1.34=1.55)

Anet just gave us the wrong number – not a bug

Yay!

Victory.2879:

Most of the wvw I’m involved in using GS would be like committing suicide, but I’m glad they buffed any of our skills.

It still doesn’t help the main problem, which is that in any decent sized fight your pets are dead more often than alive and as a result your damage is kitten (and please, assume I do know how to control my pets). Having your pet stand beside doing nothing isn’t an option- that’s just admitting the whole problem, which is pets are useless when it comes to avoiding aoe, etc and they will never be able to fix that.

They are worried any buff to pets would make them OP in pve where the mobs are either dumb or predictable.

There is a simple solution- I Will Avenge You. pet dies, you get a 30 second buff to your damage and attack speed (basically to make up for the fact your pets are dead and otherwise you are kitten .

For roaming, I might have to dust off the GS- although it does make me wonder about the definition of ‘masters of long range damage’ when they buff a melee weapon on what is apparently supposed to be a ranged class…

Greatsword committig suicide in wvw? Really? It’s the only weapon I use and it’s not uncommon for me to be running around with 25 stacks of corruption with my greatsword, especially on a reset night when we’re “Serious” with a capital S.

I run Martial Mastery, son. Who said ranger’s are ranged? Sword/dagger and greatsword condition damage build. GG

So…all the whining and moaning might stop? HALLLULYA! You’re saying there’s no point to whine and cry? This is the greatest moment of my life on this forum. Yay! You guys are leaving!

Ya Maul is awesome now.

It’s just a game.

Oolune.4357:

It may have helped in PvP. It hurt in PvE.

It hurts mesmers and their silly 4 warrior 1 mesmer speed run more. Does that make me happy? Yes. I don’t like mesmers! :p unless they’re on my side!!!!!

Bailey.6892:

Ungood.3054:

So it’s broken and does not work right. Thanks. Was wondering what the problem was.

The description says: Entangle your foe. They are immobile until the vines are destroyed.

Apparently that until the vines are destroyed is a typo.

It is just one more thing anet screwed up on. Sadly the biggest problems the ranger have is anet.

It may be. Note the the vines are a physical, literal immobilize in that they physically box someone in. At least that appears to be the reason it works on mist form. From what I understand, the Immobilize will keep them from escaping the physical binds via stealth or whatever other abilities let you get out of physical binds. More clarity on this sure would be nice.

Uncle Salty.6342:

I assume most of you only skipped str8 to the class changes and missed this part.

Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.
As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.

Nothing much else to say. So think again if you thought your quickening zephyr was buffed. It is actually semi nerfed, along with the 2second quickness buff off pet change.

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

Bri.8354:

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.

No stun break in the game breaks immobilize. Why? Because immobilize is a CONDITION not CROWD CONTROL. Sorry for caps but the emphasis is needed.

And sol, pal, I’ve watched your duels on youtube. You have a lot to learn. And that’s ok. Everyone does.

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.

Renowneddragookitten36:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

While it isn’t mentioned in the Ranger info area specifically, we also added owner Agony Resistance to pets.

yes but pets still will die due to the lack of dodge or any evade with the low heath they have

That largely depends on what pet you use, where you use it, and how you are using it. If you can cite a specific instance where you’ve tried several things and still struggle, please document it on the forums. Specificity is crucial to a healthy discussion.

Fractal rangers will like this.