Guild Wars 2

snow.8097:

Chrispy.5641:

At one time I had 11 separate sets, but I needed the money so I salvaged a few of them, I only have 6 full exotic sets of armor right now (with ascended thrown in all over the place).

Berserker with Scholar runes.
Cleric with Water runes.
Magi with Exuberance runes.
Rabid with Undead runes.
Soldier (I use different cheap Runes almost every time I use it).
Rampager with Pirate Runes.
I used to also have a set of Apothecary, Shaman, Settlers, and Dire, and I am still working on getting a full set of Zealot’s and Celestial, as well as Nomad. Not in too much of a rush for any of those though.

There isn’t really a set that I prefer to use over the other.

Chrispy u had a Shaman and a magi set? can i ask for ur builds?

I made builds with those armor sets just to se if they could work, and they do in the right situations just like everything else. Just to warn you, I got mixed results at best.

Shaman – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjEq0savK+rw1aAMhqdB0pBwzZ4UduBfQJfKK-TVyCABQcFAs4gAciuBAeAA4t/QRK/Mw8HsKBtR9HSBAzyK-w

The Shaman set was always a work in progress. I started with a build that used Apothecary gear and worked from there, just replacing toughness with Vitality. I also used spiders and the Intimidation Training trait, especially the Forest Spider. There wasn’t actually a whole lot of damage coming from this build which was why it was always a work in progress. It had insane amounts of poison and cripple, and I never actually had that much trouble killing things in WvW. The never ending cripple caused many players to panic and try to run away (not really sure why). The non-existent armor meant that some builds could drop you pretty quickly though.

Magi – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnEqQvg2KIWsAXLG4QoYGAFwzhNLcPEvQNfxUlIB-TRSEABKcIAQ4JAQkyvaU/h49HSQJIAXAAwM/ZiuASBwuwI-e

This armor set was another experiment, and I only use it for PvE (the lack of condition removal and stun breakers should be an immediate clue to that). It had 3 major concepts. First was to not invest in any toughness, and rely on the pet and their high damage to pull all enemy aggro to themselves. The second concept was to use Fortifying Bond and Companion’s Might to keep the pet essentially at 25 might forever (in reality, it was usually between 15-20, and I do also have a sword/warhorn weapon set I sometimes use with the build in place of the longbow that guarantees 25 might). The third concept was to use Guard to give the pet perma-protection, and signet of the Wild with the 1100 healing power to give them a constant 400 or so per second health regen, which combined with the perma regen equaled to about 670 health per second.

It actually worked, and until the Mega server rolled out, I used it to solo pretty much any champion that ever existed. It is still way slower than other armor sets like Zerker, but the pet was essentially un-killable, and did decent enough damage so I wasn’t standing there for 10-15+ minutes waiting for the boss to die.

If you were looking for something for a game mode other than PvE…sorry, can’t help. The one time I did use Magi gear in WvW, I switched a cat for a River Drake, used Quickening Zephyr, Signet of the Wild, and Sick ’em all at once with a well timed Lightning Breath while I was using Barrage to stack might on the pet. I used it on players that were taking a tower. They had dropped the Champion and already healed. I downed all 3 level 80 players before they even knew what was happening. (this works with any precision build but the timing has to be immaculate. If only drakes could track their targets…..).

arkealia.2713:

jcbroe.4329:

For bows as far as some suggestions I’ve seen goes, I would love to add a functional AoE that doesn’t revolve around piercing. Something like: “Splinter Arrows: Arrow attacks now splinter when they hit a target, dealing 75% of the damage dealt to that target in a 120 radius around the target.” Obviously a Grandmaster option.

Could be added as an effect to Sharpening Stone (either core or trait). Not the best option due to the CD but add the minor trait to that and you could get 10 hits with AoE potential over kitten (or 36s when traited). This would make the skill usefull even for non condition builds.
Another option would be to create a 3 skill chain for longbow auto, with the last one being splinter (and why not make the second one not restricted by range or with armor penetration, see under). In the same way, shortbow could also see a 3 chain combo with no positionnal requirement for the 3rd skill.
Also some bow skills had armor penetration in GW1 and I think it wouldn’t be too abusive to see that on Ranger since the DPS is poor in power builds if you don’t factor the pet.

I made a post over 6 months ago that suggested grandmaster traits for adding effects to arrows (including barrage). Looking back, the suggestion needs work, because the effects are kind of weak with individual arrows, but are ridiculously strong with piercing arrows or Barrage Its still sort of relevant :::

me.1234

Glass Arrowheads Marksmanship
Effect Conditions caused by your Arrows last 25% longer.
Effect 2 Arrows Shatter at the point of Impact, damaging all nearby foes. (damage is with a 0.05 coefficient?)

Heavy Arrows Skirmishing
Effect You Inflict vulnerability with every Arrow you fire. (5 seconds)
Effect 2 If your Arrows are Blocked, they still deal 50% damage.

Winter Arrows Wilderness Survival
Effect Your arrows transfer 1 second of a condition you are afflicted with to your target.
Effect 2 Blocked Evaded and missed Arrows shatter at the point of impact, chilling nearby foes.(Chill for 1 second)

Spiritwood Arrows Nature Magic
Effect Every time your Arrows Damage a Target, Allies near the target are healed for a little. (healed for 25 + 5% of healing power?)
Effect 2 Your Arrows are Immune to Retaliation.

Alternatively, we could benefit from an arrow effect being added to weaker grandmaster traits, like Read the Wind and Strider’s defense (though I’m more in favor of asking Anet to just get rid of Strider’s defense and adding a different trait)

Garm.9750:

I dunno about this whole rifles and druidic/nature stuff. I mean, there’s little about class lore in the game, apart from few lines on character creation screen. In fact, I play my ranger as an “adventurer” who have found cub when he was exploring caves, rather than “forest sentinel”.
Fact is, variety = good.

Variety is always good, and every class uses every weapon differently anyways, so you know that the Ranger’s style of rifle is going to be unique compared to the other professions. Though seriously, we need another melee weapon(mace/Hammer/etc.) or at the very least a support weapon(staff?) before we get another ranged weapon.

Chokolata.1870:

I would like to suggest changes to 3 traits that annoy the hell out of me. Oakheart salve , Rejuvenation and Natures bounty.
For anyone who does not remember, these 2 offer 5 seconds of regeneration every 15 and 30 seconds respectively.

My suggestions:

-Oakheart salve- Gain 5 seconds of regeneration when suffering bleeding, poison or torment. These conditions have a 33% reduced duration on you and your pet.

-Rejuvenation- Instead of the current activation requirement its changed to – Gain 5 seconds of regeneration when using a healing skill.

-Natures bounty- instead of increasing duration by 33% it should increase regeneration effectiveness by 33%, as in increase the amount healed by 33% to self and allies.

I think the reason why our regeneration traits are so weak is because we have so many of them….no wait, no we don’t… Also…

Oakheart Salve – I don’t think that Anet is going to give any profession anymore condition reducing traits, even to a master trait. 33% reduced duration, combined with 35% from melandru runes, combines with 40% from food, makes the reduction in condition duration literally 99%.

You could argue for it though, because Warriors have an Adept trait that not only gives regeneration, but reduces the duration of immobilize, chilled, and cripple by 33% (dogged march), allowing them to stack effects and get literal immunity from those conditions as well. Just another example why Warriors are way too powerful compared to other professions.

I do agree that Oakheart salve is weak compared to equivalent traits from other professions. It should at least remove those conditions (even if a health threshold is established for the trait, like Thief’s Pain Response)

Rejuvenation – Lets compared to traits from other professions. Engineers get essentially perma regen (under 25% health). Mesmers get 10 seconds every 30 (under 75% health), Necromancers get 5 every 30 (under 90%). Rangers get 5 seconds every 30(under 75% health). Our regeneration trait is half as effective as the next closest profession, for the same investment, and I don’t think armor weight or health differences really makes a difference here. That needs to change! Changing it to apply regeneration on healing doesn’t really make it better than it is now though.

Nature’s Bounty – I actually have no problem with this trait, as its one of the only traits in the game that affects the duration of a specific boon (the other is the Guardian’s Vengeful trait). Its not particularly strong though. Increasing the healing effectiveness instead of duration would definitely make it stronger.

A few other pathetically weak traits (I have no suggestion for improving/replacing them though):::

Primal Reflexes – Other professions have a similar trait that gives them vigor when they critically hit. Ranger have to be hit by a critical hit in order for this trait to activate. Not only that, but the cooldown for our trait is longer than those other traits. we also have to actually waste a major trait for it, unlike 2 other professions that have it as a minor trait, and a profession that has it as a major trait, but can get perma vigor from it.

Listen Anet, I can understand the need to knock this trait down a little because of the access to evades we have on a lot of out weapons, but if it requires you to make the trait pathetic by comparison to other traits, why bother having it at all? Why have it like this instead of actually working to get a different, actually useful trait?

Evasive Purity – All on dodge traits that remove conditions are extremely weak compared to pretty much anything else. Its weak because of the 10 second cooldown. Also, Blind? We can easily remove that just by attacking once. Who is stupid enough to waste a dodge removing that? This trait all around is bad design and needs to change.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Not only is there a second seed place on the ground right next to it, also the region for July 29th is already done and in game but there are no NPC for now. How do I know well you can climb to it via those jumping crystal. I have done some guided tours for many people already and no I will not post pics those would be spoilers for even more people. If you stand on the seed patch the way up is to the right cliff. The only spoiler I will give is as you reach the plateau going up the hill the first thing you’ll see is a camp for more victims of a second or 3rd air ship. Climbing there is only a spoiler and certainly not an exploit. I even think Anet does that on purpose sometimes to quench our thirst for curiosity.

yeah, but looks like we wont actually be able to see the events and stuff there until the next patch after this one.

The only thing in the trailer that confused me was the 3 second scene showing ice brood. Anyone want to explain that one?

The build is marked under ‘PvE mode’ when you get to the site linked in his post.

Ross Biddle.2367:

So what the OP is saying is: Now the warrior has immunity to forum based arguments as well.

Another buff for Warriors!

Its only a matter of time before Anet buffs other classes to the Warrior’s level, or nerf’s the Warrior to the other classes’ level. Warriors are just getting desperate, trying as hard as their barbarically simple greatsword swinging mind can to justify why Warriors should stay exactly the way they are.

Fact is, balance patches come and go, and in any MMO, classes are routinely bumped from bottom to top and back to bottom again. Its going to happen, even to warriors, even to Anet’s so called ‘golden child’. If there was ever a truth that is as inescapable as it is moronic, this is one of them.

@Mad Queen Malafide,

I see your Skallagrim (which is an example of someone who if WAY overthinking things….), and raise you Vsauce3 :::
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MejveUjpw8U

And no, I’m not defending the ridiculous excessiveness of some weapons in guildwars 2. Many of them are quite weird looking, even by fantasy standards (like this one, but then again….Fantasy. Some people (such as the guy’s video you linked) like to say that fantasy is no excuse…..but, it actually is. If every single weapon looked practical, from a distance, they would all actually look indistinguishable from each other and have 3 basic looks to them (from a distance), straight longsword, katana, and sabre, and you would have a very hard time identifying the hilt at all.

Sure, you would notice the differences as you get closer, but from a distance, realistic swords all look boring and uninspired, and the exact same. This is probably the reason why Skyrim had such bulky looking weapons, so you would notice them from a distance. (Oh shoot! That bandit has an elven weapon and you’re still stuck on iron and steel. Might be a little above your level…..fight anyways?) The point of an Fantasy MMO to many people is to look better and cooler than everyone else. Bigger and more ridiculous weapons just accentuate that.

P.S. – This is one of my favorite looking weapons in this game, the plain old, realistic looking Mithril sword/greatsword ::::
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Mithril_Sword.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Mithril_Greatsword.jpg

@HHR, I agree with everything you said.

I see no reason why Eagle Eye shouldn’t affect short bows, other than Anet’s insistence that short bows always have a shorter range so its ‘different’ than the longbow, even though mechanically the two are different enough even if they had the same range. I also see no reason why Read the Wind shouldn’t affect Short bows for the same reason. Also, an increased chance at a projectile finisher would be a great addition(read: replacement) to Read the Wind (and I mean for all Ranger projectiles on all weapons including shortbow, axes, dagger, torch, greatsword, etc……like 20% increased chance, so those 20% chance projectile finishers become 40% chance projectile finishers, and 0% chance projectiles become 20%). Its kind of annoying that ‘bunny hopping’ exists in this game at all, and that players can dodge a majority of my Shortbow and longbow attacks at long enough ranges just by jumping up and down. Increased projectile speed should be a given. The lower damage is more than enough of a tradeoff compared to melee weapons.

Cufufalating.8479:

Prysin.8542:

Rangers get confusion from pet. L2Pet

I’m aware of that, but I dont count it because it’s a terrible skill which wont hit even if the other person has never seen it before, but more importantly it’s a pet skill and thus doesnt scale off the rangers condition damage. It’s stuck because very low damage regardless.

It’s like when rangers go grab birds or cats and then jump around saying how awesome their bleed stacking is… Completely ignoring that half those stacks are ticking for 25-50% what a bleed should tick for on a condition build. To me, it’s like saying rangers have access to Ethereal Fields because the reef drake can create one underwater.. well yeah, sure, it can, but none counts that because it’s not worth counting.

I agree, 5 stacks of Confusion that has less than a 0 percent chance of hitting a moving target, or a target more than 250 range away (a distance that can be covered in way less than the cast time of the F2, even when crippled), with only 350 reliable condition damage and 5-7.5 seconds……not really that great actually, even after using 2 traits on it.

It can’t track targets, and the fact that it can hit 5 targets with each individual attack doesn’t make it any more relevant either. It is utterly pointless to use in PvE since AI controlled enemies normally attack too freaking slow for confusion to even affect them. Because all 5 stacks don’t get applied at once, even when someone takes the confusion damage, its not from all 5 stacks. They work great if your attack is well timed…..and copious amounts of immobilize is used, but the work isn’t worth the result you get.
((Ice Drakes and Salamander Drakes have it worse since Burning and Chill can only stack 5 times, and both drakes apply 5 stacks that last only a second, meaning that if you use them, you are blocking other players and yourself from applying either condition (and doing it better with minimal investment in condition damage for burning)))

Prysin.8542:

you get etheral field from pig F2. Gunk

Quite useful too……but, it has a 25% chance to get when you use the F2, and since the skill has a 40 second cool down, you can expect to produce an ethereal field every 9 minutes, 20 seconds, and that doesn’t include the time to run to the item wherever your pet is, pick it up, and use it. better hope you have the favor of the RNG gods that day!

cheshirefox.7026:

gee, i dunno.. an mmorpg with quests. . . how long have you been in tyria? you must be new here.. i mean, the resources it would take to cram scarlet, mordremoth, and the pale tree into orders missions.. it boggles the mind

What are these, quests you speak of? I always thought that MMO’s were made of nothing but endlessly repeating public events…..oh and pixie dust, unicorn farts, and pictures of cats!

silentnight warrior.2714:

Nice post OP.
Just to add that warrior dont have the ability to lose target so they are always available to be hit by players. The absense of ports and weak access to blinds demand that warrior take all the damage while persuing their targets.
In the beginning (snare) was a huge weakness by it self (along with the other damage conditions) and ANet needed to buff warrior to allow them to keep up with their targets. Now warriors have “windows of oportunity” to do their things and that keeps them in the meta. As soon those windows close they are just like in the past, but this time their oponents need to play better than before.

Edit:

Just to had that Warrior damage comes from their weapons skills, not AI. When you have classes working with AI and they have much more time to prepare their defense while the AI does the damage from them, you start to realise why warrior needs to be the way it is.

Yeah, because AI pets in this game are so good(bad) at attacking moving targets, they are obviously superior(inferior) to your sweet, helpless, defenseless, perfectly balanced warriors who can attack moving targets.

Rangers are able to use Rifles! See ::::::

(okay, I know its just a Frost Gun, but I think I answered the question!)

At one time I had 11 separate sets, but I needed the money so I salvaged a few of them, I only have 6 full exotic sets of armor right now (with ascended thrown in all over the place).

Berserker with Scholar runes.
Cleric with Water runes.
Magi with Exuberance runes.
Rabid with Undead runes.
Soldier (I use different cheap Runes almost every time I use it).
Rampager with Pirate Runes.
I used to also have a set of Apothecary, Shaman, Settlers, and Dire, and I am still working on getting a full set of Zealot’s and Celestial, as well as Nomad. Not in too much of a rush for any of those though.

There isn’t really a set that I prefer to use over the other.

When I was exploring in areas I shouldn’t be exploring in, sometimes a graphical bug would pop up around the time of the Mordrem event showing another vine bridge just to the southwest of the current one getting destroyed. My guess is that we’ll be planting that one to get to the next area in the next update.

BrunoBRS.5178:

@Chrispy – you’re so focused on the trees you can’t see the forest. want an example of how rotscale could have that emblem? he was alive during, i don’t know, the guild wars (giving it a reason to be on the shiverpeaks, if it wanted to punch some ascalonians), but any time frame before the cataclysm is fine. so he’s alive, with an orrian emblem because he was under orrian control (tamed or with a conscience of his own, who knows), dies on the shiverpeaks. bam. the end. having an orrian emblem doesn’t automatically tie you to zhaitan. orr didn’t even know zhaitan was a thing. all having an orrian emblem indicates is a tie to orr, not zhaitan.

zhaitan didn’t begin corrupting risen until after his awakening. there is a difference between regular undead and risen. rotscale is the former.

kuunavang is mentioned in the movement exactly 3 times, and none of them is to do anything other than provide a point of reference. she’s the only other “dragon”. the first mention is pointing out how she and glint are much lesser than elder dragons in scale of power, because those two are the only “dragons” we knew of.

“Although these creatures are called dragons, they are as different from Kuunavang and Glint as night to day—more powerful, older, born of different, unfathomable magic, these horrors are controlled by no god nor any other power known to the races of Tyria. What connection they have to these “younger dragons” is unknown, but they certainly do not possess the mercy or familiarity with the sentient races of the world that Kuunavang or Glint portray."

please do remember how glint got said mercy and familiarity. she was a dragon champion, but she was also “cleansed” (wrong word, but you get the meaning) by an extremely powerful Forgotten ritual. had the forgotten not been around, glint would still be Glaust, bane of tyria and all living things. she’d be another tequatl, with no mind of her own, only a desperate will to spread kralkatorrik’s power.

so how would kuunavang be an elder dragon champion when she has this same free will as glint, but no forgotten (or records of a previous rise) in cantha? in fact, if all dragons are converging to tyria, what would kuunavang be doing on the other side of the world?

what’s more, all elder dragon champions that were active between rises were a relic of the previous rise. if kuunavang came to exist (and “spontaneously appearing” is as good a theory as any, given we don’t know where the heck the other younger races of tyria came from) after the previous rise, that’s more evidence to her not being a champion.

Wow. Are you sure you aren’t using any mental gymnastics in your posts? It seems like you put a lot of thought into exactly nothing since not a single thing you said disproves my post.

• Now to Kuunavang.
• The Movement of the World Article mentions Kuunavang several times, and every time she is mentioned, it is always “Glint and Kuunavang” or “Kuunavang and Glint”. They are also always compared to the ‘Elder’ Dragons when they are mentioned, and specific mentions are made that both Kuunavang and Glint didn’t exist until after the Elder Dragons did.
• We know that Glint was a Champion of Kralkatorrik.
• There is no reason to bother mentioning Kuunavang in that article at all if she wasn’t a Dragon Champion, a Dragon, and especially if she was just some form of a giant flying Drake.
• Since we know that she only came into existence after the Elder Dragons came into existence, we can’t just say that she spontaneously existed, and there is no evidence that she came from the mist either.
• The only obvious conclusion that can be made based on all this evidence is that Kuunavang is possibly the Champion of an Elder Dragon, just like Glint was. Whether its a Dragon we know about or a new dragon related to her power set is unknown.

I don’t need 100% of the facts to make a conclusion on already existing information. Scientists didn’t make a theory on the Higgs Boson when they discovered it. They made the theory decades before based on already existing evidence.

You say they aren’t …. based on nothing. you can’t even bother yourself to link anything that disproves a single word I have said. If You disagree, you need to actually present facts supporting why any of us are wrong. If you cannot, then you yourself are wrong and there is no point for you to be endlessly arguing about speculation if you have neither speculation to add yourself or evidence to disprove it. If the burden of proof falls onto me, then the burden of disproof falls to you to disprove anything I have said so far, which you can’t.

BrunoBRS.5178:

again, kuunavang is not a dragon champion. nor is rotscale for that matter. please don’t assume every winged reptile in this game is tied to elder dragons if there is absolutely no proof of it.

here’s how it works: if you want to assume that kuunavang, rotscale or whoever have you is an elder dragon champion, the burden of proof is on you, because you’re the one making the assumption. it’s the “innocent until proven guilty” argument. no proof that she is, thus she isn’t. unless you can provide a source to the contrary, that is. but other than “scales and wings”, there’s nothing linking any of the GW1 dragons to elder dragons, except glint, who was explicitly said to be an elder dragon champion.

i don’t see any mental gymnastics on my part, i’m just listing things. the only dragon champions known to be active prior to their rise are glint (who gained self will through a seer ritual, but still calls kralkatorrik her master. she’s a traitor, but still his creation), the great destroyer and, to an extent, drakkar. kuunavang and rotscale are absolutely not champions until proven otherwise. rotscale was fromthe freaking shiverpeaks. at no point in time was he anywhere near zhaitan.

I say they ‘could’ be, and that ‘could’ be is based on reasonable speculation on what exactly constitutes a drake, a dragon, an elder dragon, and a champion of a dragon.

• In Guild Wars 1, Drakes were considered dragons in Tyria and Elona though still called Drakes. In Cantha, everything with scales was called a dragon though there were no actual drakes. There were turtles and salt spray dragons (who looked like miniature versions of Kunnavang)
• In Guild Wars 2, Drakes are more like common reptiles with magic breath abilities, and there isn’t anything in either game that links them to the Elder Dragons or their Champions, the only things understood to be actual Dragons in Guild Wars 2.
• In either game, nothing called a Drake ever had wings or could fly. Kunnavang, Saltspray Dragons, Rotscale and Rotting Dragons were the only ones that were.

• Lets stick with Rotscale and the Rotting Dragons. They are considered undead, and even if Rotscale and his small army of Rotting dragons originated from the Shiverpeaks, one of the items they drop is the Decayed Orr Emblem, an item that they could only be holding if they originated from Orr. It doesn’t matter if the Rotting Dragons were part of the undead army raised by the Lich or, not. The fact is, they are linked to Orr.
• Based on that conclusion, we can say without a shadow of a doubt that Rotscale and his Rotting Dragons originated from Orr, went to the Shiverpeaks, then went to Majesty’s Rest. Being an Undead Dragon from orr begs the question over whether or not he was originally a minion of Zhaitan. There is no proof that can disprove anything I just wrote, even the scribe article that explains Rotscale a little more, because it only says that Rotscale came to Majesty’s Rest from the shiverpeaks, but made no mention of what happened before that. The Decayed Orr Emblems prove where they came from before that.

3 Way conversations are the best conversations! Although its not really 3 ways, I was just disagreeing with one part about who was and wasn’t an active dragon champion from before the Elder Dragons ever woke up (and I did snip the irrelevant parts of BrunoBRS’s post as well before I replied to it).

Also @ Arghore ::: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_champion

there can be many more than just one dragon champion at a time.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Neko.9021:

Chrispy.5641:

Neko.9021:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Neko.9021:

Uh, Sun Spirit giving Burning is like one of the hugest buffs that a Ranger can give in sPvP. It’s similar to how Frost Spirit increasing damage is so strong in PvE.

If you removed the passive chance to burn from Sun Spirit, it would nerf Spirits heavily. Say goodbye to the last viable build Rangers have in sPvP.

You did notice my suggestion of the AoE actives being ground targetted, right? So the build could easily become a double-whammy, and could make the spirit build stronger since instead of just defensive, it could easily switch to the offensive with the actives.

It’s REALLY hard to beat passive team burning. When everyone gets that Sun Spirit buff and focuses target on one person, it really hurts. A lot.

The sheer amount of damage that Sun Spirit brings to sPvP really can’t be understated. Recall that it’s already been nerfed from 3 seconds of burning to 2 seconds, and yet it’s still the meta build for Rangers in sPvP to take Sun Spirit, just for all the burning. I know for PvE and WvW, it’s pretty lackluster, but for PvP, it’s really, really strong. Far stronger than some Endurance Regeneration buff. There is a reason that Spirit Ranger, as is, is still the meta for PvP Ranger. And that reason is Spirit of Nature’s utility + the damage brought by Sun Spirit.

its the passive part of that burning that makes it way too powerful. Didn’t Anet nerf something similar in Necromancers(dhuumfire)? Whether spirits change or not, it might be only a matter of time before sun spirit gets nerfed to the ground as well.

I don’t think it’s really ‘too powerful’. I think it’s simply build-defining, and allows the Ranger to have a real valid team-fighting and support build where they wouldn’t otherwise.

To ruin the only thing that’s been proven to be strong on the Ranger in this current PvP meta seems pretty dumb.

Didn’t stop them from nerfing pets. Expect Anet to nerf the sun spirit…because then we’ll be stuck at a position similar to Warrior so long ago, which then we’ll get superbuffed.

The fact that Sun spirit is part of one of our only useful builds in PvP is the reason Anet hasn’t nerfed it yet. When they find a reason to, they will.

I’m sure that some people felt attached to Belinda a little, especially the Anet devs who spent months obsessing over the finer points of her character as they worked to get her in the game…only to take her out of the game. Its also going to affect Marjory for a long time.

….but for me…..meh. I saw her exactly 3 times in the whole living story. This is different from Tybalt (or other order mentors) who you dealt with for a huge chunk of the personal story. I genuinely felt kind of down and demoralized when I had to fight him in the Nightmare Chamber.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Chrispy.5641:

BrunoBRS.5178:

but let’s say we ignore all the lore, all the facts, all the estabilished things that disprove your theory, because you really, really want it to be true. what does it achieve? what importance can the order of the “stirring of the champions” possibly have? with the exception of glint and the great destroyer, none of the elder dragon champions so far have had any relevance to the plot, and with the exception of glint, they’ve all been disposable and replaceable (there’s a freaking army of tequatl clones flying through orr).

I know that you are neck deep in an argument, arguing over the finer points of speculation….., but your statements aren’t entirely true. There is atleast one other Dragon champion we know of that was active 250 years ago in Cantha. Kuunavang was very important to the plot in Factions. And even though Drakar was frozen in a lake, he was influencing several characters on Tyria, which could mean that he too was active in a way.

That’s 4 of 6 champions that we know of that were active before their masters woke up. Either way, the order would still be wrong, because the blue(or white) and purple orbs should have lit up first if this was the case.

kuunavang is not an elder dragon champion though. she’s an entity in itself, not tied to any elder dragons. and drakkar only became active around the time of eye of the north, and even then, we can’t tell if svanir was a one-off or if it became recurrent until jormag’s awakening.

but regardless, the whole “champion awakening” thing is moot because glint never went to sleep to begin with. she’d been around for 10.000 years.

So now whose the one using mental gymnastics?

I know the whole champion awakening thing as a theory has as many holes in it as any other theory so far, and I already said that in my last post that the theory falls apart when you look at the order of the orbs.

on the champions…..There is no evidence that Kuunavang is or isn’t a dragon champion. No source has said otherwise unless you have a link.

There isn’t even a source that has confirmed or denied that Rotscale was or wasn’t a champion of Zhaitan. In fact, he was updated to be much stronger, and drop unique weapons when defeated. Updated a few months before Eye of the North and Guild Ward 2 were revealed. (hey, that’s 5 out of 6 elder dragons with active champions! Lets see if we can find one for the last dragon!)

Neko.9021:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Neko.9021:

Uh, Sun Spirit giving Burning is like one of the hugest buffs that a Ranger can give in sPvP. It’s similar to how Frost Spirit increasing damage is so strong in PvE.

If you removed the passive chance to burn from Sun Spirit, it would nerf Spirits heavily. Say goodbye to the last viable build Rangers have in sPvP.

You did notice my suggestion of the AoE actives being ground targetted, right? So the build could easily become a double-whammy, and could make the spirit build stronger since instead of just defensive, it could easily switch to the offensive with the actives.

It’s REALLY hard to beat passive team burning. When everyone gets that Sun Spirit buff and focuses target on one person, it really hurts. A lot.

The sheer amount of damage that Sun Spirit brings to sPvP really can’t be understated. Recall that it’s already been nerfed from 3 seconds of burning to 2 seconds, and yet it’s still the meta build for Rangers in sPvP to take Sun Spirit, just for all the burning. I know for PvE and WvW, it’s pretty lackluster, but for PvP, it’s really, really strong. Far stronger than some Endurance Regeneration buff. There is a reason that Spirit Ranger, as is, is still the meta for PvP Ranger. And that reason is Spirit of Nature’s utility + the damage brought by Sun Spirit.

its the passive part of that burning that makes it way too powerful. Didn’t Anet nerf something similar in Necromancers(dhuumfire)? Whether spirits change or not, it might be only a matter of time before sun spirit gets nerfed to the ground as well.

BrunoBRS.5178:

but let’s say we ignore all the lore, all the facts, all the estabilished things that disprove your theory, because you really, really want it to be true. what does it achieve? what importance can the order of the “stirring of the champions” possibly have? with the exception of glint and the great destroyer, none of the elder dragon champions so far have had any relevance to the plot, and with the exception of glint, they’ve all been disposable and replaceable (there’s a freaking army of tequatl clones flying through orr).

I know that you are neck deep in an argument, arguing over the finer points of speculation….., but your statements aren’t entirely true. There is atleast one other Dragon champion we know of that was active 250 years ago in Cantha. Kuunavang was very important to the plot in Factions. And even though Drakar was frozen in a lake, he was influencing several characters on Tyria, which could mean that he too was active in a way.

That’s 4 of 6 champions that we know of that were active before their masters woke up. Either way, the order would still be wrong, because the blue(or white) and purple orbs should have lit up first if this was the case.

+1 to this idea and Prysin’s. Spirits are one of the things I think doesn’t work on Rangers and it needs to change.

I had a similar idea, but instead of creating a new thread, I’ll just give my suggested add-on to your idea here.

I suggest reducing the effects to this ::
Water Spirit – Gives you and allies healing equal to :: 42 (0.03), using your healing power. Would be half as much as Virtue of Resolve.
Frost Spirit – Bonus Damage output of 2%
Stone Spirit – Reduce Damage taken by 1%
Storm Spirit – 1% Damage taken is reflected back to enemy.
Sun Spirit – 2% Increased Endurance Regen.

My Suggestion is that the effects Stack up to 5 times if Multiple Rangers are using spirits, meaning that while the passive is somewhat weaker than the old spirits, they could be much stronger if multiple Rangers are working together.

Untraited, 5 Frost Spirits would give a 10% damage bonus, Traited would be a 20% damage bonus. Stone spirit could reduce damage by as much as 10%, Storm spirit would reflect as much as 10% damage back to enemy, and Sun Spirit could increase endurance regen by as much as 20%. Water spirit could heal for as much as 210 (0.12) per second. The Tooltip could show how many stacks of the effect you have, and could show the total bonus you get from the effects.

For Traits :::::
Vigorous Spirits – Doubles Passive effect.
Spirit’s Unbound – Spirit effects persist even when downed.
Nature’s Vengeance – Automatically cast Spirit Actives when downed.

It doesn’t seem like much, especially if there’s only one Ranger, but it is an un-targetable, 60 second in duration buff, which would actually make it quite strong. This would allow Multiple Rangers to coordinate in a Group, and it would also make them useful in WvW

Another idea is that instead of unique buffs (aside from frost spirit) that nothing about spirits actually change except for the spirits being immortal for the 60 second duration (or just float around you). The passive effects stay the same and have chances to give boons (or burning in the case of the sun spirit). If that’s the case, then Storm spirit should definitely change to a useful boon or Condition like Blind or Retaliation. This would also require that they keep their icd’s.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Leallax.1482:

The orbs seem to light up in the order the dragons awoke, except for Zhaitan/Mordremoth.

You mean, only Primordus and Kralkatorrik’s orbs shine in the placement they awoke (1st and 5th respectively). The order of orb shining is:

Red->Blue->White->Green->Purple->Black

Tying this to the CoE zone colors we get:

Primordus->DSD->Jormag->Mordremoth->Kralkatorrik->Zhaitan

However the order of dragon awakening was:

Primordus->Jormag->Zhaitan->DSD->Kralkatorrik->Mordremoth

Thus the color order should be, if representing awakening:

Red->White->Black->Blue->Purple->Green

So the orbs lighting up don’t represent order of awakening.

What if it’s strength instead, with strongest to weakest? Or order of intelligence? Or order of dominion size (biggest to smallest)? Or even order of age (oldest to youngest)? There’s a dozen possibilities…

And I am liking the strength level or age concepts…

The blue orb could just as easily represent itself as water or ice. Dark blue does not automatically equal water, and neither does white/light blue automatically equal Ice. Another problem is that while Ice and water are represented separately by the Gods (Grenth and Lyssa), Elementalists themselves don’t really distinguish water and ice as separate elements on Tyria, so why would Dragons native to Tyria distinguish between them either? I can understand extraterrestrial beings trying to separate them. Even if Ice and Water are treated as separate elements to the Dragons, and that the white is Jormag and the Blue is Bubbles, it still wouldn’t violate the order they woke up…..

We weren’t ever specifically told that the Deep Sea Dragon woke up after Zhaitan did. He could have woke up before then and only gathered enough power to drive the krait, karka, largos, and quaggans nearer to shore later in time (and probably wiped out who knows what else). Whose to say that the dragon immediately wiped everything out and wasn’t at war with these races?

There’s indirect stuff saying that the Deep Sea Dragon woke up 50 years after Zhaitan and 50 Years before present day, but the cutscene could also be used as an indirect speculation that the Deep Sea Dragon actually woke up earlier than that.

It also makes more sense for the dragons to wake up when they are ready to wake up rather than every fifty years apart from each other (and even if you insist on the 50 year time, Primordus’s awakening was delayed by almost 50 years, which means that another dragon should have awakened around the same time he did unless by defeating the great destroyer, we delayed all of the dragons from awakening)(I can also argue that the reason it was 100 years between Zhaitan and Kralkatorrik is because Glint possibly did something to delay his awakening in the same way that we delayed Primordus’s awakening by defeating his champion)

Basically what I’m saying is that the Deep Sea Dragon could very possibly have woke up 3rd even if Tyrians understand Zhaitan as waking up 3rd, and that the Deep Sea Dragon may not necessarily be a ‘Water’ Dragon.

This would mean that the order is correct, and that the colors themselves are correct (I’m also saying that Mordremoth is the black orb, but lighting up as pale green, and Zhaitan is the dark nasty looking green)

Basically I’m saying this :::

Primordus(Red) -> Jormag[or DSD](Blue) -> DSD[Or Jormag](White) -> Zhaitan(Dark green) -> Kralkatorrik(Purple) -> Mordremoth(Black/Light green)

And that Zhaitan was the one who crashed into the center because that was the dragon we killed.

((Of course, I will admit that everything I just said falls apart because the last orb lit up and moved before the 4th orb crashed in the center, because we also directly know that Zhaitan was defeated before Mordremoth woke up. BrunoBRS’s incessant posting on every thread related to this might be right, that its just a lot of artistic liberty was taken and the cutscene means nothing.))((It also falls apart because, yeah…..the living story has been about Mordremoth, not Zhaitan, so that also makes no sense for Zhaitans orb to crash and merge.))((probably other stuff that makes it fall apart as well. but, its all just speculation….)

I do agree that there had to be some sort of conflict before the gods came to Tyria. The whole reason why Dwayna came to Tyria and brought humans with her was to lead the humans to peace, and paradise. I should also note that the gods weren’t even in agreement over how much control humans should have over Tyria. Balthazar wanted to defeat the already existing races and give Tyria to humans. Melandru wanted peace between everyone. Balthazar probably spent most of his time leading humans in battle fighting everything in sight while Melandru was fixing all the destruction that was caused…..yeah, some paradise. Lets also not forget that when Arah was built, Lyssa was living among the humans, but was commanded by one or more of the other gods to join them in Arah. Lets also not forget about Grenth.

Using the timeline, that was in 205 BE (Cantha places that time a few hundred years before). barely 200 years later, humans spread all over Tyria, drove the Char out of Ascalon, and Abaddon gave magic to the races of tyria. Somewhere during this time, Grenth was born, rose to power, kicked Dhuum out and took his power, and took over the Underworld. Also, barely a few years later, Abaddon was defeated and imprisoned in the Realm of Torment, the Bloodstone was broken apart, most magic was resealed inside of them, and the Gods left Tyria forever.

There’s a lot of stuff happening that we’ll never know about, but basically, I’m saying that there wasn’t just disagreement between Abaddon and everyone else, or Dhuum and everyone else. Every god seemed to be in disagreement with each other over some very fundamental issues (such as humans ruling over all of Tyria or living in peace with who lived there already)(such as human gods living among humans or not)(etc.)

I haven’t even gotten to how the dragons could fit into all of that yet if they even do, or how the Bloodstones and the huge amount of magic plays into this. There’s already too much going on between the gods themselves. Too much stuff gets thrown into play once you go back to that time period.

One thing that could possibly give the whole Dragons and Gods are related thing credence is that there is that book in Scarlet’s Secret Room instance… I’ll post everything and bold the important part…..
(it goes without saying that there are actual ingame SPOILERS in this post. Not using spoiler tags, since no one should even be reading this thread without playing the newest release yet)
(and also, I still don’t believe there is any ‘literal’ link between gods and dragons)

• “The Nature of Dragons” by Ogden Stonehealer
• Or should I say the “Dragons of Nature”? Yes. Dragons have long been thought to be a part of Tyria as the sun, moon, land, and seas.
• No one, not even the dwarves, know how long they’ve been here. The jotun and the norn both have lingering stories passed down through the generations about the last rise of the dragons.
• Most scholars give these tales little credit, unfortunately, kitten much time has passed. It was over ten thousand years ago that the dragons last returned to their slumber.
• The very existence of these tales, however, have indicated that the dragons have awakened at least twice in history.
• Ancient documents, found now in the Durmand Priory’s collection, reveal accounts passed down by other races such as the powerful seers and even the Human Gods themselves. (end) (also, screenshot of this last part to show its in game for those who haven’t read it)

This means that the Gods did, in fact know about the elder dragons (I originally thought that they didn’t, but sources are starting to say that they did), which makes me wonder about some past events, such as the war between Abaddon and the rest of the gods over most of the world’s magic being sealed in the bloodstones. And if the Gods knew about the dragons, and the dragons most certainly were a threat to the gods, why did Abaddon give all the races of Tyria magic? Did the Gods break apart the original bloodstone only because of all the bloody wars Abaddon indirectly caused, or could the reason be related to the Dragons? And also, what about the bloodstones? And does this indirectly lead back to the Realm of Torment? Do this stuff fit into this at all….(Gah!!!! Too many questions, not enough time in the day to find answers!!!)

Ronin.7381:

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

The central Orb represents Light……

The central orb represents Tyria, not light. It also bears resemblance to an Armillary Sphere

See Here

Starfleck.8392:

I came across an interesting find today while perusing the Armillary Sphere page then looking for more images to find what I believe I saw.
http://www.smphillips.8m.com/article-46.html
[img]http://www.smphillips.8m.com/images/A46fig2.JPG[/img]

I think it could quite easily be a “tree of life” diagram we saw at the center of Scarlet’s drawing, and in the eternal alchemy.

Then I assume that the two of you noticed that all 6 of the colored orbs had their own rings surrounding them as well (at least 2)? The sphere in the center also appeared to have stars surrounding the white light. The Eternal Alchemy is supposed to be all emcompassing and if that was what we saw then it should be showing us a lot more than just Tyria and 6 dragons, even if it was a simpler representation that we could comprehend….

The entire scene could have been a visual representation of the entire (Tyrian) solar system or even a larger universe, and the Tree that we saw could be a representation of a World Tree (Could be the Pale Tree as it seems to be connected to just about everything through Sylvari and the Dream.)

(((and this is where my theory escalates out of control!!!)))

I think what this scene was trying to show us is quite a bit higher on the cosmic scale than Mordremoth trying to corrupt Tyria. The game said that all the larger vines we have seen could be the dragon itself, which means that it is spread from the Maguuma Jungle, all the way to the Shiverpeaks, and beyond. He could even eventually reach into the Mists.

I think that whatever threat (/change/revelation/etc) that Scarlet released is on a scale that is far larger than any of us are willing to look at.

Other things to note….if your so intent on comparing the gods to the dragons, then you should read this page from the GW1 wiki (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Path_to_Revelations) which basically equates certain aspects of the gods with dragons (you also face 6 of these in the Dragon’s Lair mission). It also suggests that Anet was planning something similar to these Ley Lines for years before the living story, and that intersections of the Ley lines could be areas where you can enter the Mists.

(((That, or I’m just crazy from drinking to much caffeine tonight, I’m thinking about this way too hard, and I really need some sleep!!!)))

@Arghore,

I stand corrected (wiki says that she didn’t have the water aspect until after Abaddon died). If that’s the case though, this means that non of the Gods are actually gods of anything, they just represent what they represent because humans equated the gods with those aspects (much like we did in real world history). This means that Lyssa doesn’t have power over water anymore than Grenth would, just in different forms.

This will actually make it entirely pointless to compare the similar aspects of Elder Dragons to the similar Aspects of the Gods because while the dragons seem to have power over only one or two very specific aspects of nature, the Gods are a little more fluid in that regard, and could potentially have power over whatever the hell they want.

Arghore.8340:

….snip…

Nope. Lyssa became the Goddess of Water after Abaddon was defeated long before the events of GW1.

Rainshine.5493:

shogei.8015:

Here is a possible alignment based on gods, facets, dragons, and the Infinite Coil reactor. This was put together with help from my guild, but I would like to see if it holds any water here.

Lyssa – Illusions – Kralkatorrik – Chaos – Violet
Grenth – Death – Zhaitan – Darkness – Black
Kormir – Spirit – Jormag – Elements – White
Balthazar – Destruction – Primordus – Strength – Red
Melandru – Creation – Modremoth – Nature – Green
Dwayna – Existence – Bubbles – Light – Blue

I actually did a diagram labeling the orbs and I did them similarly … Kormir felt forced as Jormag though. The white orb could be truth, but the rest are tied to elements so it seemed more logical it was ice. And if it’s ice, Grenth has ties to both death AND ice soo…

Thus I went with the dragons instead of the human gods.

Isn’t Grenth also the God of Ice?

Isn’t Lyssa also the Goddess of Water?

It seems more like you can place 2 gods with every Elder Dragon….

Kralkatorrik – Lyssa and Dwayna (remember that Glint is a champion of kralkatorrik, and that the zephyrite crystals represent different facets of air magic. Dwayna is the goddess of air. I also chose Lyssa because everyone equates the dragon with chaos (and by extension, illusions))

Jormag – Grenth, Balthazar (Grenth is the God of Ice. Balthazar seems like a god to put here, but remember that Balthazar is the God of War, Fire, and challenge, all representations of power. Jormag corrupted many Norn with promises of Power. This also cements Grenth here even more because in GW1, Necromancers worshipped Grenth because he gave them power)

Zhaitan – Grenth, Kormir (Grenth because he is the god of death, Kormir because she is the goddess of order, spirit, and truth, and there aint no greater truth than death!)

Primordus – Balthazar, Melandru (Balthazar is the god of fire, Melandru is the goddess of Earth. Primordus created his minions out of molten rock)

Bubbles – Kormir, Lyssa (Abaddon was the former god of water, and Lyssa is the current goddess of water. Kormir inherited Abaddon’s power and might still have an unseen link to water. Of course, this is if Bubbles if a dragon of water, and wasn’t just sleeping down there. He could be a flying, celestial sky dragon for all we know (in which case, these two goddesses would still fit when you look at their other aspects))

Mordremoth – Dwayna, Melandru (Dwayna is the goddess of Life, which people think Mordremoth represent. Melandru is the goddess of nature, which people also think Mordremoth represents.

Leallax.1482:

My own theory is this.
- Primordious opposite is Jormag. (fire vs ice)
- Kralkatorrik opposite is “Bubbles”. (desert vs sea)
- Zhaitan opposite is Mordremoth. (death vs life)
The death of Zhaitan throws everything out of natural order, thus it became necessary to wake up Mordremoth ahead of schedule. Only Mordremoth can naturally absorb the power and essence of Zhaitan, perhaps even restoring Orr in the process. Then filled with magical power, Mordremoth goes back to hibernation.
However, the corruption seems to be overwhelming Mordremoth and nothing is going as expected. So who knows what will happen next. I believe that the vines are the result of the clash of Mordremoth’s and Zhaitan’s power battling for domination.

I didn’t realize this. I really like this theory.

Mordremoth doesn’t seem so much a dragon of life as he is a dragon of plants, Just as Zhaitan doesn’t seem like the dragon of death as much as he seems like a dragon of undeath.

Plants do not equal life and Undead does not equal dead.

Also, Bubbles only awoke deep in the ocean, but that doesn’t automatically mean that he is a water dragon. The world of Guild Wars 2 normally doesn’t distinguish water and ice as separate elements, so its kind of weird that there would be both a water and an ice dragon with water and ice powers.

And Kralkatorric isn’t a desert dragon just because he’s in a desert.

warriorjrd.8695:

Kain Francois.4328:

Rangers are a nature class, and gun clash with that.

Now, as much as I want rifles on my Ranger, that is something we must acknowledge.

Instead, I’d like to see Rangers get Hammers, so that we can bunny thump some dragons.

I think if we ever got a new weapon, it would be staff or MH dagger. Those two are really all that fit in with the “druid” lore atm.

What about some sort of high primitive tech, weapon with a blunt edge for smashing objects, such as Clubs (Maces)?

Dhuum was the god of death before Grenth defeated him and ascended to a god in his place. They have similar powers (except one is evil and the other isn’t), so there wouldn’t be separate dragons representing them.

Also, what about Kormir, who took Abaddon’s place?

What about Menzies?

Also, Melandru is the eldest, atleast among the current gods. I should also note that there were gods before the current one. For example, when Balthazar came to Tyria, he was carrying the head of his father, which means that there was some serious conflict before the gods ever came to tyria, and might be what caused them to come to Tyria, and bring humans with them.

Also also, the Dragons went to sleep before the Gods came to tyria, and the gods left before the Dragons awoke. They are not linked in any way. There isn’t even evidence to support that the Gods even knew or cared that the dragons existed.

I would love it if Anet brought the Gods back into the story, and some of this hyper mythic, cosmic history, stuff, surrounding them was ever explained in fuller detail, but, trying to link them to the dragons is not the way to do it.

If there is a link between the Gods and the Dragons, then this link goes back to Tyria’s creation, back before the current Gods came to Tyria, back before the current gods even existed, back to a previous pantheon of Gods, back before the last Rise of the Elder Dragons, back to the first rise of the Elder Dragons, back to the beginning, something I don’t think will ever get explained because there is way too much time and history that we would have to go through first.

Ropechef.6192:

you don’t get it.

…blah blah blah…..

dont “fix” fix what is not broken. I don’t want Arena Net wasting their time and ours trying to balance something out. when they could be making a new map, or dungeon, or whatever.

You accused someone of ‘not getting it’ but apparently you don’t get that there is a separate balance team and a separate team for things like profession balance and map creation.

Harper.4173:

Azhure.1857:

stuff

…blah blah blah, blah, (insert ‘Melee is for the Elite and Range is for bad players’ here), Blah Blah Blah……

So…to summarize your entire post…..Range is inferior to Melee by design and only bad players use Ranged weapons because a random player said so….good to know, though…..

Melee weapons are designed differently as well, and cater to different skill levels. Look at the Ranger’s 2 melee weapons, and which one do you think requires a higher skill level? The one with a rooting auto attack and movement based skills, or the one with a built in evade on the auto attack that doesn’t root you in place?

That’s one example of many, making it quite ill-informed (also a little elitist) to be saying that only Ranged weapons are for less skilled players, and have less risk, especially when that is totally not the case in PvP and WvW, the many 1000 range gap closers on melee weapons make sure of that.

I love my Ranger! I hate the way its designed, but I love the base concept!

…..still not sure why I named her Cida (Latin for ‘killer’), but oh well, it fits!

Tman.6349:

Ranger is ‘an unparalleled archer’ though. The only other competitors are longbow warrior and short bow thief, both of which, a Ranger would destroy given a weapon vs weapon duel. This, however, has ABSOLUTELY NO BEARING on the fact that Ranger can “adapt to any situation” and that melee is inherently a superior choice. Being ‘an paralleled archer’ doesn’t change the fact that a melee Ranger is superior in a melee situation. It seems like you are ALL mistaken " an unparalleled archer" for ‘bows are (should be) the Ranger’s superior option". These are entirely different expectations/assumption and you should recognize the difference.

And ‘archer’ isn’t the only meaning of ranged combat. If you would like to argue this, then I’d be more than happy to wreck ANY bow Ranger with my staff Ele.

Then you missed the point of almost all of this thread. Rangers are a big talking point because everyone incorrectly refers to them as ‘Ranger = Ranged’, but that’s not all of it. Instead of a Ranged Ranger vs. a Melee Ranger, Look at the situation from a general Ranged Weapon vs. Melee Weapon standpoint. If Melee weapons were purposely designed to be superior in 99.9999% of all situations, then why bother to have Ranged weapons in this game at all if they were purposefully designed to be inferior weapons?

(That’s what the discussion evolved into, though the original thing was about the range of boons..)

Ashen.2907:

Harper.4173:

Azhure.1857:

Are you seriously trying to say that the Ranger profession isn’t iconic and known to be “range based”. Just because it has the ability to use melee weapons, doesn’t mean that its a primary weapon type for the profession. …. That because of cheap combat/game mechanics the Ranger now has to melee and view its bows as equally cheap toys?
I’m not a Ranger main… but I feel the need to speak up for them in this.

The ranger class is based on the ranger archetype. What’s that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragorn

This guy. He’s not a bowman or sniper – he’s a ranger.

Ranger comes from the verb “to range” which means : to roam at large or freely
or to move over an area so as to explore it

It has nothing to do with ranged combat.

Also there’s a distinct advantage for ranged players that has nothing to do with AI.

If you’re melee the time it takes for the boss to hit you when he’s preparing to is much lower than the time it would take the same boss to hit you 1200 units away rather than right on top of him.

It takes longer for the boss to reach you at a range distance so you have a time advantage on your dodges/ reflects/ blocks /etc.

In RPG’s the Ranger archetype is more closely associated with hunter/archer. This has been the case since the earliest RPG’s. Although DnD Rangers, for example, had options for melee, including dual sword wielding, they were the game’s primary physical ranged combatants.

Ranger originated as a term for game wardens. They ranged the king’s (or other lord’s) lands. Their primary armament was generally ranged.

There is definitely an advantage inherent to being at a distance from your foe. Then again melee damage is higher as a form of compensation.

I must disagree with your DnD argument, because Fighters could arguably be better than some Rangers depending on how players built their character….(Which does actually mirror the Warrior somewhat). The Fighter could be your primary Ranged attacker, while your dual wielding Ranger was the primary melee attacker.

To the point though (which I put in Bold in your post….)….

In other games, the aggro system actually works to where if you deal high enough dps to an enemy, the enemy goes after you. In Guild Wars 2, 99% of the time, the boss/mob/etc. just attacks whoever is closer, and sometimes whoever has higher armor/toughness.

If Anet really cared about Ranged Combat that much in PvE, then many of these enemies would have been designed better to be able to deal with both Ranged and Melee players. Instead (either by time constraints or it was designed as intended), it seems like Anet took the easy way out by making a vast majority of enemies with no ability to counter both a ranged and melee player, and not designing bosses properly to have countermeasures for any style of combat, and by extension, making Ranged always weaker than Melee because of the shortcomings of the enemies.

In PvP and WvW, I will argue that it doesn’t matter if Ranged deals the same damage as melee, because of all the 500-1000+ range melee gap closers/openers that almost every profession has access to, and even the professions that don’t makes up for it with other skills. Those gap closers that half of all weapons have, combined with the lower dps output of ranged weapons, is what always puts range at a disadvantage in this game (on the player vs. player side).

Harper.4173:

Azhure.1857:

Are you seriously trying to say that the Ranger profession isn’t iconic and known to be “range based”. Just because it has the ability to use melee weapons, doesn’t mean that its a primary weapon type for the profession. …. That because of cheap combat/game mechanics the Ranger now has to melee and view its bows as equally cheap toys?
I’m not a Ranger main… but I feel the need to speak up for them in this.

The ranger class is based on the ranger archetype. What’s that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragorn

This guy. He’s not a bowman or sniper – he’s a ranger.

Ranger comes from the verb “to range” which means : to roam at large or freely
or to move over an area so as to explore it

It has nothing to do with ranged combat.

Also there’s a distinct advantage for ranged players that has nothing to do with AI.

If you’re melee the time it takes for the boss to hit you when he’s preparing to is much lower than the time it would take the same boss to hit you 1200 units away rather than right on top of him.

It takes longer for the boss to reach you at a range distance so you have a time advantage on your dodges/ reflects/ blocks /etc.

The Ranger in Guild Wars 2 is mostly based on the classical Fantasy Ranger, meaning, it came directly from Dungeons and Dragons. Ranged combat, dual wielding, animal companions, and some Nature Magic. The Ranger in Guild Wars pretty much follows that exactly.

While you can always go back to the original source, that does not mean that it’s the meaning of the word or title today.

Stooperdale.3560:

Rangers don’t just have boons as distance problems :
- Utilities like traps and spirits are too defensive and static. Most dungeon runs, for example, are based on forward progress through enemies. Traits partially solve a problem that should be there in the first place.
- The pet and the ranger can be in different places and this leads to difficulty in maintaining boons or spirit buffs. If the ranger has to fight beside the pet then this negates many of the advantages a mobile pet should bring.
- In my opinion the main/off hand weapon pairings are badly designed and have little synergy.
- The ranger has poor gap closing and mobility skills. This exposes the limitations of the poor weapon options.

If all those other problems were tackled then maybe rangers wouldn’t see boon sharing as an issue.

Other problems……

The Sword’s auto attack roots you in place, and its difficult to move around while stuck like that. Even if you disable the auto, you can’t interrupt 2 of the 3 skills in the auto attack chain, which means that your reaction time is always slower

The Greatsword is all around slower than the sword, and deals less damage because its slower. Maul does not actually make that much of a difference in your dps, and neither does any of the other GS skills, unless seeing slightly bigger numbers is your sort of thing.

Rangers aren’t that great in melee compared to other professions. The Longbow doesn’t work in melee range unless you got a good weapon/skill rotation. The Shortbow is a condition weapon. The Axe is….the Axe.

Going back to Boons and distance…there really aren’t any good solutions to that. You could remove the range limit, but there goes any strategy. You could make it to where any boons you give automatically affects the party, regardless of distance, but that would leave out pets and summoned creatures, and would be bad in WvW if you are trying to support immediately surrounding allies, and not your half-afk party in the tower.

Possible fixes for Ranger (and why they wouldn’t work)
- For Spotter, you could make it to where the Ranger and Pet give the Spotter buff, so the ranger can still Range, and buff the melee people.
- You could make Fortifying bond work both ways.
- You could make Spirits a ground targeted skill so you can strategically place them.

With this, you can set yourself up to give and receive buffs and boons, no matter if the Ranger was ranged or melee, but all 3 come with their own problems.
- Spotter would be going way over the 5 target limit for this stuff unless you can figure out a way for the target limit to be shared between the Ranger and Pet.
- Fortifying Bond would infinitely stack boons unless you find a way to tell the difference between what boons were already shared, and which boons are Ranger/Pet only.
- Ground Targeted spirits wouldn’t work very well with Spirit’s Unbound, though having spirits move would serve an entirely different purpose that having them stand in place. It would also make it possible to summon spirits in unreachable places to prevent them from being killed.

I like the Ranger and its what I play 99.99% of the time, but honestly the entire design of the profession is screwed up, and if Anet tries to fix those screw ups…it will just screw up more stuff.

Astral Projections.7320:

Because we are moving into the western areas of Tyria, which is historically Asuran territory. The Norn territory was North and the Charr held the eastern areas. It makes sense now for us to be running into Inquest now. That’s where they live.

Once the living story heads north towards where the Hall Of Monuments is on the map, that’s the time to expect to see the Sons of Svanir and their story.

You’re actually thinking of the Tarnished Coast, and even then, 250 years isn’t very historic.

Sunshine.4680:

Seems like the game for Rangers and most classes is people deciding how you play and what you do. If that’s the case bring back Hero NPCs so people can get the meta ranger and warrior and whatever else they want.

That is the problem…well, that’s the problem in super skilled, highly organized, dungeon speed-running groups, a game mode where playing a very specific build where 100% efficiency and 100% skill is not only needed, but required of everyone in the party.

The other problem is that many People can’t actually distinguish any difference between that hyper skilled group and everyone else (about 5% of all PvE players, and obviously most PvP players). Some of the posters on this thread have proven to either be unable to tell the difference, or they don’t care about the difference*.

Otherwise….no one could give two kittens about what build you take with you. I welcome bear/bows in my group. Sure the fights take a whole minute longer, but the point of the game is fun, not efficiency. If that Ranger’s version of fun is to take pigs and double bows, with a mostly Rampager gear set with 100% boon duration*, I’m not going to stop him. Its not right to ruin someone else’s fun for an extra few seconds of efficiency in a Videogame. efficiency is for jobs and people with no life, not games.

*-(and I’m not trying to say anything bad about you guys, I’m just saying you should probably look at the bigger picture instead of quarreling with me over axes and bows)

*-also, I have seen a Ranger like what I described above.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Prysin.8542:

actually that is WRONG.

When the peak damage is lower, crit chance should be higher so you hit harder more often. Since you can no longer “rely” on very high peak, you must strive to have a very very high average.

Gonna take a while before the PvE scrubs understand this simple concept of how-2-DPS-properly but frostspotter will still be the best avaliable PvE setup you can bring.

Uh, they didn’t buff crit chance at all, they only nerfed crit damage. You seem to have missed the point entirely, which is that the loss of crit damage makes the ranger’s ability to boost crit chance less useful. The reduced overall benefit from Spotter + Fury makes the boost the ranger provides marginally smaller, and coupled with all the other stuff I mentioned above, makes the necessary tradeoff in personal DPS not worth it.

He never said that crit chance was buffed. He said that you should raise your crit chance higher so you can hit harder more often.

And the problem with Ferocity is that it takes a large investment to raise your damage by small margins. Your crit damage already starts at 150% base damage. In order to raise that by 10%, you need to increase crit damage by 15%, which requires 225 Ferocity. The highest you can realistically raise your damage through Ferocity is about 50-60% It is way better to invest more in Precision and Power than Ferocity.

Prysin.8542:

it is a bit more complicated then that durrz, its not 7% for sure. Also the 10% only applies to traits, the total DPS loss is over 25% overall because of all the reduction to gear and trinket stats (yes they reduced it by a good margin. Example being; old Exotic celestial LB = 10%, Exotic LB = 9%. Current Ascended LB = 5.2%).

Since pets only has base values, it is unaffected, however rangers are capped at the same ferocity limit as anyone else so in that sense we lost 10% from traits, a whole load from gear, but overall damage is affected less because pet never had anything to lose, nor gain from that nerf. Pets are pets, their damage is dependnt on their power, not their ferocity.

Meaning, if pets hit the same, and we got nerfed then class damage (since we have the biggest potential for increase in damage) is THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE.

I have to disagree.

When the hit to crit damage happened, the maximum crit damage I had in one of my builds went from 259% to 229%. a 12% drop in overall critical damage, and That’s just for the Ranger.

Assuming a 100% critical chance, the Overall damage decrease would be 12%. The problem is that in my build, I only had 60% critical chance with spotter, not including fury. This means that if I am only hitting with critical hits 60% of the time, that 12% drop in damage, becomes 7.2. My Overall damage drop is 7% or so, and that is the same for every profession, assuming they have a 60% crit chance, and their crit damage dropped by the same margin.
After the change hit, pets can still have 180% crit damage when traited, meaning that they didn’t get affected by the change. People say that pets are 30% of our damage, though I disagree because depending on the build, the pet can be greater than 50% of your damage. Lets be safe and stick to 30%.

7 – 30% = roughly 5. This means that the overall damage drop in my build, was 5% total. (due to rounding errors, that number might be off a little)

Didn’t affect me at all. It did greatly affect people who were mixing Knight’s gear for the highest damage margins w. minimal loss in Toughness. Or, They just went Celestial and had quite high damage, while still having some extra health and toughness. That was quite unfair, and had to change.

Kain Francois.4328:

“[complaining about how the content is only a few hours long]”

And Metal Gear Solid 4 is only 3 hours long, and cost $60 at its release.

Season 2 chapter 1? Costs only $2 if you miss it. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me, especially compared to Metal Gear Solid 4.

What exactly do you want from Season 2 anyways? An entire expansion campaign the size of freaking Nightfall!?

Yeesh, gamers these days are so spoiled… Try to think more of season 2 like a cake. If you rush it, you will find yourself only wanting more. And more. And more, and more.

But if you take your time, and enjoy what it has to offer, you will find yourself really satisfied with your meal.

Personally, I am impressed by season 2 so far because it gave us an entire new endgame map with cool farms, interesting mechanics, sweet achievements, and a new story and setting expanding the lore.

Seriously, if you can’t appreciate all the hard work ANET had put into this for just $2, then I think you wont be missed very much if you quit the game.

I know you are trying to make a point, but you made your point poorly. Learn your video games.

1) Metal Gear Solid 4 was 10-25 hours long (pending how much content you see, and not including cut scenes), with the most dedicated speed runners clearing a perfect game in a little under 5 hours, and that’s skipping everything. 60 bucks is a pretty darn good deal for that.

2) You must mean Metal Gear Solid 5 : Ground Zeroes, which was 19.99 to 29.99, depending on which system you got it on. It was 2 hours long, with 10 hours of side missions.

3) that is comparable to this latest Guild Wars 2 release, except for the price (and graphical fidelity). roughly 2 hours of story, 10 hours of side content.

(next few lines are directed at thread, not you)
4) That is FREE, if you log in. Kojima proved that you can charge 30 bucks for 2 hours of content that can be completed in 10 minutes, and people will be crazy enough to buy it anyways. Anet could have done that! …..Just saying.

@Kain, you need to go repent and ask the gaming gods for forgiveness for what you said about Metal Gear Solid 4 (no matter your opinion on 5). Otherwise, I mostly agree with you.

Ronin.7381:

Almoryk Kane.6085:

BS. Make it mystic forge so that all the people that don’t have that high a crafting can make this item.

Well the reason why it’s not, is because it has stats. So that explains the weight discrepancies. It should have been a skin which upon equipping molds it to your profession based on what character you’re on in binding.

No. Making it a piece of gear means that it can’t be stacked. Not allowing it to be stacked means that players only have a limited number they can carry (instead of multiple stacks of 250 of them)

This means that players need to sell them instead of hoard them since it will be wasting space. This is what is keeping the price relatively low(er) instead of artificially inflated by trading post barons.

Durzlla.6295:

Chrispy.5641:

I’ll be honest here, and will examine some rangers a little…..

Durzlla – No opinion. Pocast is good though

Lol does this mean I have no opinion or you have no opinion of me xD?

And I’m flattered by how many people consider me influential, i haven’t been on the forums nearly as much as I have been… Hopefully I’ll be more active, and hopefully we will get more people looking at the podcasts/watching streams!!

no opinion.

Kibazuka.1390:

Chrispy.5641:

And neither does the Greatsword (which you yourself specifically mentioned), or Sword, or Axe, or Shortbow, or Dagger. Your point is what exactly?

A quick interrupt, good landspeed, amazing channeled block with a strong counterattack and a actually reliable burst. That right there is utility

So, a stealth with 25-33% uptime, an Interrupt/knockback, and 12+ seconds of Cripple isn’t Utility? That knockback has come in handy in several situations. As well as path of scars as well as the reflect from whirling defense (the offhand axe that many of you say is so bad). It just depends on the situation. Its kind of foolish to say that we should use only one weapon set for 100% of all situations when you know that has never been the case.

I think I know what your problem is…..

See, I think you, don’t actually know how to use the longbow, because you, like many other Rangers that have posted, are too afraid to bring the Longbow into your rotations to see how it can be beneficial in a dungeon, because you are too afraid of the big, bad warriors and Guardians kicking you, because you don’t have the courage to demand they ping their build, and as a result, you are running with sub-optimal Warriors and Guardians, because you are too afraid to tell them their builds is ‘wrong’, because you think you’ll be kicked.

Its okay, supposedly ‘Great’ Ranger Players. Really, its okay. You keep living in fear instead of taking advantage of your full toolset of skills for the right situations. Me? I’m going to keep using the Longbow when its in my/the group’s best interest to use it (instead of always using the exact same build out of fear instead of enjoyment)

Prysin.8542:

Aggrostemma.1703:

Take the range limitation off of the LB.

So you can yell: “Stack at me! Stack at me!”

=bearbow problems solved (well, the half of it…)

Anyway what’s the whole point of a ranger going into a Dungeon when they are the King of the WvW?

/Ijustwokeupfrommysweetdream

Oh, kitten

just use Artdoctus bear. Dat 15 sec CD F2 has quite the punch too it and actually allows for traited bear to reach the same DPS as a 4 BM points traited cat or bird would. Sure, DPS loss, but much less so. If you also take the trait that grants pets 350 condition damage then that bear is gonna hurt you, badly.

This guy gets it, and is not afraid to go outside the established ‘norm’.

Signet of the Wild increases your damage by 25%. Depending on how much power you have at the time, that is equivalent to anywhere from 500 extra power (at 2000 power) to 750 extra power (at 3000 power). You can make up that lost damage easily by getting that damage bonus from other sources, other traits, by getting more power, or taking advantage of items, such as Bowl of Seaweed Salad will help you with getting.

Signet of the Wild offers 8 whole seconds of extra damage while there are many other better ways to improve your damage output. It is much better to deal 5% more sustained damage then bother trying to get 8 whole seconds of 25% more damage.

Kibazuka.1390:

Not to mention longbow obviously gives zero group support or utility whatsoever

And neither does the Greatsword (which you yourself specifically mentioned), or Sword, or Axe, or Shortbow, or Dagger. Your point is what exactly?