Guild Wars 2

Oh, you mean like the Shortbow’s Poison Volley, only instead of a cone, its an aimed (ground targeted) line in front of you. Or am I wrong again?

Supreme.4051:

Seems many skills are delayed or going on full cd while not doing anything. In particular torch, dagger and axe skills are affected. Also getting a lot of obstructed with projectiles when there is nothing in LoS. Thoughts?

Hunter’s Call is the worst offender, at least with the new change. It used to be that you could cast WH#4. The skill would start out obstructed, but you could move into line of sight so the skill could deal damage. It worked fine on hills and in wooded areas, it just sucked when the enemy moved into a gate, or ran behind a wall.

Now the skill relies on a straight line, and if the first hit misses, the rest of the hits miss, and it seems like the slightest bump obstructs the skill (which can happen in 99% of the game where there is no flat ground). This is an example of Anet ‘fixing a bug’ and actually making the skill less functional.

Jim Hunter.6821:

RoyalPredator.9163:

Wasting a 3s worthless stealth on a whole weapon skill is just ridiculous.
Stealth with minimum of 5s has to be moved for additional effect on Point Blank Shot.
That is the only logical skill where we could really use Stealth on…

That is a terrible idea. Having stealth and point blank shot separate is exactly what makes the stun lock warriors so easy to kill. I would love for the stealth to be longer but not at the expense of raising the cool down. I can’t tell you how many times stealth has saved me.

The only real problem with it is what the op was complaining about, sometimes the skill doesn’t work, or it gets obstructed by a random blade of grass. They need to change it so you can stealth without hitting a target.

I use Hunter’s Shot, then switch to Greatsword and use Hilt Bash then Maul, (or use swoop to get the heck out of there). Its not a 13K backstab or anything, but 9K damage works for me.

shadowpass.4236:

@Sigmoid, that’s what I was intending with the changes for the longbow

Then why the barrage change? If you shoot 8 arrows on a 2 second cool down that deals 500 damage each on a critical hit (so, 333 damage base, which is stronger than our Long Range shots are now), you get 4000 damage overall if all crit (2667 on no crit). That is 4 times the damage of Long Range Shot. Since its on a 2 second cool down, just using that skill gives us twice the DPS that long range shot does now.

Did you mean a 2 Second channel time? In which case, the skill is kind of nothing but burst and has nothing to do with dealing damage and cripple pressure over time like the current barrage does now whether you think it works or not due to the nature of Hunter’s shot.

Rauderi.8706:

As far as gear grind, Legendary, while best-in-slot and customizable, isn’t the only best-in-slot option. >.> For those who aren’t fortunate enough to get a precursor, Ascended weapons provide the same tier of damage and bonuses.

No, Legendary gear IS the best in slot option, period. Legendary weapons (and I assume, future legendary trinkets and armor) allow you to change stats. If you are someone who likes to use multiple gear sets, either for different situations or if different play styles is just what you do, it would take much longer to grind out multiple ascended gear sets than some people who got lucky with finding Precursors on day one, so, what’s the point in even bothering to get ascended gear? It would be a much better investment of my time to just grind for materials and gold and wait for legendary versions of everything to eventually get released.

Rauderi.8706:

lack of hardcore content
There’s some. A little. People have done it enough that it’s no longer “hardcore.” And really, stop using that word. -_- But yes, we do need some engaging challenges, either in open world or better dungeon encounters.

Or smarter enemies in general. Most enemies has the most basic of AI functions that every other game has (online and not), and even the toughest enemies in this game can be defeated with 2 well timed dodges and a whole lot of easy to access might and burst.

lack of reward
…Yes. So much yes. Beyond so much yes. Bad enough I get more excited for silk than gossamer, most of the challenging content in the game just isn’t worth it.

Area specific rewards would be nice, beyond two world bosses, and beyond the Living World.

Rauderi.8706:

lack of area to explore
False. There’s plenty. But I know many waiting on the wings for an expansion or new zone. (Get it? Wings? Dominion of Winds? …no? Sigh.)

the world is big, but it doesn’t take long to see everything, and it only just becomes a lack of area to explore after you’ve done it once or twice (or as some people have done 7 or 8 times)

Rauderi.8706:

lack of build diversification
Again, there’s plenty available. The problem is the encounter design enforces the zerg-and-stack dungeon mentality and often shoves PvPers into condition builds. PvP ain’t gonna change that, because control is power, but boss design needs to be improved greatly.

I agree. At one time I had 11 different exotic gear sets on one profession, and there were multiple builds that could come out of any gear set. The problem is, Zerker wins over all because of how stats are balanced, except in WvW and PvP.

Its a direct result of Anet wanting any group to succeed in dungeons without needing a tank or healer, which is a good thing. I run dungeons in FFXIV lately, and all it is this ::: Tank pulls enemies, Healer heals tank, DPS presses the same three skills to win. Its the same in every fight. occasionally, DPS goes to kill an add or 2. That’s kind of boring, and GW2, even with a DPS only system, still has way more diverse tactics than that, and it forces every player to have an active role in combat instead of everything being passive except for the tank, who has to aggro a new enemy from the healer every few seconds.

Rauderi.8706:

And yet, I still play daily, just not with the enthusiasm I had before.

Same, but hopefully Anet changes that in the very near future, and actually releases expansion worthy content. 5 new traits, quality of life upgrades, and a skill balance is not expansion worthy content. Expansion worthy content in other games normally doesn’t just refine any given system in a game, though game refinement is an essential part (feature pack example : Dyes, world boss update, mega server update, skill balance update).

Normally Expansion Worthy Content that you normally find in a traditional Expansion Pack, actually Expands on the game’s systems (of which the only thing in the Feature pack that actually does that is the wardrobe system, though you can argue that too was an update/refinement/removal to the existing and awkward transmutation and town clothes system since everything the wardrobe system does you could find in the game already prior to the update.)

I need content to keep coming back. I need the story to continue, I need new areas to explore at my leisure. I need smarter enemies to kill in the absence of a level increase. I need new weapon skins to show off that doesn’t include buying everything from a cash shop or an infinitely small random chance from an updated world boss.

laokoko.7403:

It is well known in the mmorpg community, GW2 dont’ really have an endgame(or have an focus on endgame).

It is probably intentional by design. So they can draw the casual crowd, at the same time don’t need to focus develop time on endgame.

I’m not sure what the endgame is supposed to be in this game, and that to me is what separates gw2 (in a bad way) from other games, even offline ones.

• Its not PvP or WvW, those are just separate game modes that you don’t have to play the PvE portion of the game to get into.

• There are Legendary Weapons, but I don’t consider grinding for thousands of hours on end for a Precursor ‘endgame’, because it is entirely random whether or not you get a precursor. This leaves grinding game content you already did before for gold in order to get a precursor and progress through this brand of ‘endgame’. Or you, buy to win this particular endgame, by buying gold through the gemstore, and just buying your precursor/legendary.

• There are endlessly repeating Dungeons and Fractals, but, there is nothing you are actually achieving by doing them since the gear you are grinding for isn’t even ‘best in slot’ gear (unless you are grinding gold on your way to a legendary)

• There is no story progression after you beat the game, (kill Zhaitan), as basically all of the open story threads in the game don’t get picked up on in the Living World, and are endlessly recycled through Content that you probably already did.

• Then there is Living World. I can’t call that endgame. More like ‘Side Game’, because it is temporary, you can do it at any level, and there is no penalty to not doing it. You are just as caught up in the story as anyone who was playing for the last two years.

If there was to be an actual endgame in Guild Wars 2, it needs two things….

• On the gameplay side of things, there needs to be an actual quantifiable progression system for acquiring best in slot gear (legendary), not random chances and endless grinding and buying from people who got lucky on the random chance. (((I understand that other games do the same random chance thing, but, its normally for specific gear, in a specific location, so you at least know that if you do a dungeon enough times, you get this weapon or that armor set, especially since in most other games, at least one loot drop will happen, meaning you know how many times you need to do a particular dungeon for end game gear. Its still more quantifiable than GW2’s system where there is nothing but uncertainty for end game gear (legendary weapons) for anywhere from 1 hour to 10,000 hours of playing the game, depending on how lucky you are)))

• On the story side of things, story threads in this game not related to the Living World needs to keep moving in a direction, instead of standing still and waiting for its turn to maybe be explained five years from now. I understand that due to the nature of the event system, pretty much all of these event/story threads explain themselves in a way so they can repeat themselves forever, but, they need an actual conclusion (even a temporary one) instead of sitting on the backburner for another 5 years.

Zero.6592:

I agree, one should never be forced to have a trait like this.

Yeah! Get rid of this pathetic trait! God forbid you actually have to be skilled enough to pay attention to your own health bar!

Orpheal.8263:

But you don’t make any profit with something, that you permanently remove out of the game…

Actually, Anet still would make some money.

Since these weapons will be (even if temporarily) removed from the rotation, the price will shoot way up, meaning that some people who want them bad enough, will still buy gems and trade for the gold to buy them, which as I explained, can be more expensive than just buying the weapon directly for gems, or for the cost of the black lion keys to open a chest to get the claim ticket to begin with.

Its still a business decision. These unpopular weapons suddenly became very popular in demand, and worth more, meaning that no matter how you look at it, it will temporarily increase revenue (even a tiny amount) for Anet.

lockheedlight.5910:

I am honestly tired of how the black lion weapons are handled. I would never buy black lion keys cause of all the chests I have opened with free keys I have never seen even a weapon ticket fragment drop. Keys are such a huge waste of money that it boggles my mind that anyone even buys them.

When will ANet move away from black lion ticket weapons and just sell us the weapon skins for 500-800 gems each in the Gem store? I might actually start purchasing them instead of just thinking “oh look, more weapon skins locked forever behind RNG”. And no, I am not going to waste $25+ dollars or more on keys just to get one weapon skin (even it would even turn out to be that cheap).

I think one reason is that buying a weapon directly through the gem store isn’t possible (except for special cases) is because it floods the Style tab. Each weapon set has 20 pieces, and that’s would be half of the style tab. Navigating through that single list would be a nightmare as far as trying to find what you want.

Yes, I understand that argument is stupid, because it makes more sense to just list a single weapon chest for every weapon set, then choose the weapon you want from a list. (They would obviously be account bound this way, and unsellable so that way the only factor in gold to gem conversion is through the exchange on the gem store.)

Its more likely that the Casino Style RNG that the Black Lion chests are famous for, means that, on average, people spend more money getting a weapon claim ticket than the weapon would actually be worth if bought individually with gems. Not only that, but once put on the Trading post (since this way, the weapons are not account bound), the price can soar quite high, meaning that people who want it bad enough, will buy the gems and trade for gold to get the weapon. And often, the gold cost means that people actually again, buy more gems than the weapon would actually be worth if bought individually.

This means that for every weapon skin in the game, Anet gets money for them twice. once for the black lion keys (though yes, some are acquired for free through regular gameplay), and once through gold sales (though in many cases, the gold is acquired through regular gameplay). This also means that Anet can potentially get a lot more money for any individual weapon skin than if sold individually through the gem store. (@Orpheal, this is why Anet isn’t just going to recycle them in the game for free without thinking very hard about why they are doing it, and it will (or not) bring them more business in the future)

I don’t fault Anet for it. Like I said earlier, they are a business, and they are in it to make money (even if that means making more money by catering to only certain kinds of customers instead of all of them).

I don’t pretend to understand any of Anet’s business model, but I have more than enough experience playing other games with cash shops to make an educated guess.

It’s like this because there’s more profit this way

Devata.6589:

When I started my complains and worries about this (over a year ago) I did get a lot of negative feedback. I should not complain because at least the cash-shop was not P2W (with that they mean P2Kill) and besides you could grind gold to buy gems anyway (that’s in fact one of the ways the cash-shop focus does influence the game, turning everything into a gold-grind.)

Well, negative responses or not, I would have to say that the game is Pay to Win…., in a way. Just look at the prohibitively high costs of Ascended Gear. Some of the more zealous among us like to argue that the stat increase is so minimal, you don’t need it, but I would argue that even the >10% overall increase in stats from ascended gear does make a difference in places where it would actually matter, like getting dungeon speed runs done that much faster, or WvW. Just because the actual, hyper balanced competitive aspect of Guild Wars 2 (PvP) isn’t influenced by the gem store doesn’t mean that the rest of the game isn’t.

In an MMO like this, there are multiple ways to ‘win’, and its according to the person actually playing the game. In this case, the gem store (and exchanging gems for gold), can most certainly become pay to win.

Prysin.8542:

Narkodx.1472:

Shirk.6421:

In all honesty and despite the fact that I love roaming with my ranger:

It’s all fun until you run into another player who plays a dueling build. like a mesmer, warrior, necro, thief, ele or engi. Even if you’re as good as the other person, the class WILL make the difference. Go into the dueling area and fight some people using dueling builds there. Have fun – or not.

THIS sadly is the truth. Once you face top tier players on META roaming builds you will lose. Ranger does not have the damage in a condition/sustain build to defeat a perplexity engi/thief/necro. (Perplex not even necessary just makes it more OP) Power builds have no chance against those type of builds either; Power builds also have weakness against high burst classes like warr/thief. They have better mitigation skills. In the end though you should run with a ranger if you enjoy it. I sure do. But you must know the limitations of the class.

Any meta build can be beaten with any ranger build. Skill is all that matters. Also lol at perplex thief, their annoying, but not that difficult to beat. Its a L2P issue.

Oh and, the only real threat to rangers is glas thieves and condi engies. Luckily, there aint too many of those two around.

Even glass thieves are easy. If you’re running a Zerker build this is what you do :::

Counterattack → Maul

Counter attack could be a little better as a skill, but this is my standard response to any thief build.

Andred.1087:

Devata.6589:

Azrael.4960:

It’s basically a way to get you to buy BL keys instead of buying the skins directly. Players were given the opportunity to get the skins for a very long time. Sclerites dated from the other Southsun Cove event series from last year after all. It’s like any business. You don’t keep a stock of dated merchandise forever, you need to continually revamp your merchandise to keep people buying stuff.

Granted, this stuff is virtual but the concept holds the same

No it doesn’t because the reason you don’t keep a stock of dated merchandise is because it’s not useful anymore (outdated) and because the room cost money and so can better be used for other stuff that does sell.

Both are not true for this.

It’s more the ACTION!!! Only now!!! sort of stuff where you compare this with.

Only problem is that people want to play a game, not a commercial.

Do those ACTIONS just when selling expansions.

It’s the classic MMO cash shop scheme. Players have been conditioned to believe Anet is different than the other MMO developers, but they’re really not. They avoided some of the more obvious pitfalls of the cash shop, but in the end, it’s still all about them getting more money, and leaving the items in the shop indefinitely doesn’t sell them as much as putting a deadline on them does. And they will always be coming out with new stuff people will want, so they really lose nothing for taking stuff away.

Quoted for Absolute Truth. Not that I hold it against them or anything (they are a business), its just that Arenanet is not that unique among MMO developers based on their actions alone.

If you don’t want them, then this change doesn’t affect you. Stop worrying if you are.

If you are among the poorer/casual players, and were saving up the 50-100 gold to get a Sclerite weapon skin, I feel sorry for you. Those things were past 200 gold last I checked, and this stunt pulled by Anet made the price of all ticket weapons go up, (except for the Dragon’s Jade weapons which use a different claim ticket, and may or may not go up depending on if there is a dragon bash next month). Its unfortunate that you can’t actually play your way, and that you are literally forced to be an early adopter, or succumb to the market speculators, but, that’s life….(literally, just look at real world Tesla stock for example. It tripled in the last year. You’re probably regretting not investing in that stock now if that’s your thing)

Liadri was kind of difficult because ranged weapons didn’t work on something you had to destroy in the battle, so you had to use melee for at least part of the fight, pets died instantly, and you had to spend more time fighting the camera than you did the boss itself..

Deadeye was freaking easy with a Ranger though. I would use a Rabid build and pull him with Axe #4 to start the fight, use Rampage as One, then use Axe #5, He would port behind me, and I would just keep hitting him, stacking on the bleeds through critical hits, and reflecting any attack he tried to hit me with. Even after he ported away he died pretty quickly because he still had stacks of bleeds on.

Made at least 200 gold in about 3 days before I got bored and went to something else. I did hear of some people playing for a week straight and made 1000’s of gold, (which was mostly warriors playing on Anet’s favorite easy mode class.)

Unless Anet randomizes all the enemy actions instead of having a set routine (like they did when they updated Deadeye), any new boss (if they add new bosses) they add should be as easy as the old ones. You have to use the right skill rotation. After that, it should be easy.

Vulnerability is often ignored by players, and even 10 stacks gives you a noticeable increase in DPS.

Also, on the first build you posted, switch out that useless food with something better. I would recommend a Bowl of Seaweed Salad, since the 10% damage increase (while moving) is greater than any other food can provide you, and you are pretty much always moving around in this game anyways.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

I wish so bad that they would go with the first. I would love to have my pet feel more like an actual player rather than just a dumb mob. Even if they did add a way to perma stow him I wouldn’t. That cat has been with me from day 1 (literally) and I would delete my character before getting rid of him. I’m probably in the minority, but he feels as much a part of my character as my armor.

I also wish they would make Master’s Bond not screw up if I step into the water. It’s the same kitten pet anyway. Sorry, I’m starting to rant. That is no good for anyone.

You should take some time to read the Ranger CDI topic if you haven’t. It might take several hours, but the discussion between the players and Anet over this very issue was….interesting.

Hater.5807:

What is the most effective profession for a ranged style of play in PvE content?

back to the actual topic….

Staff Elementalist is best, if you can get around the fact they are so glassy and anyone (even many enemy npc’s) can close the ranged gap in this game in about 2 seconds.

Grenade Engineers are second best, when you get skilled enough with aiming the aoe’s. Rifles are okay, but it doesn’t really have a singular focus, (much like most other two handed weapons in this game). If you want to try close range (while still technically using a ranged weapon), try the Flamethrower. I know there are some nasty builds out there that use that.

There aren’t many ranged Thieves that I’ve played against, and all of them I haven’t had much trouble with, even with a Ranger that everyone says is inferior at everything. In actual PvE, I have never even seen one.

Warriors are good with everything, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Rangers can be good at ranged, but playing a Ranger is harder because of the DPS/utility/everything else split with the pet. You have to make effective use of both master and pet, or invest so far into one that the other is pretty much useless (at least at damage).

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

NinjaEd.3946:

To answer the bolded question, warrior. It’s sad but until they design some inventive pve mechanics that don’t rely on heavy armor classes using zerker-like builds warrior will remain on top. Ranger dps ranger might compete but effectively warrior would win because they can bring defenses in and still pull off high damage with rifle. It feels like all the pve content is balanced on anet’s favorite class :/

I agree with you that Warrior is a better ranged profession than ranger.

People need to stop the “favorite class” bs though. Warrior is a pretty balanced profession, it’s not alone. Right now elementalist is also up there. Other classes simply need quality of life changes (not buffs) to bring them up to that level. The big changes that made warrior so strong lately were all just little things. That and they keep changing where they want professions to go, like giving guardians all of this condi damage but only one condi. Imagine how balanced guardians would be if they had access to some respectable conditions.

I don’t think Anet has a favorite class, it’s just that some classes have an obvious direction they are moving in. While it’s obvious that some of the devs have no freaking clue where they want other professions to go. Do they want guardian to be a condi tank? Do they want guardian to be a control setup (pretty useless in pve anyway)? With the last patch they fixed a bunch of things with ele, and hopefully they will get around to addressing other issues.

This relates to the OP because on my ranger I really feel like Anet has no clue where they want that profession to go. I make it work because I really like ranger, but it’s no where near as effective as some of the other professions. They need to either go “o.k. we want these guys to be a master of ranged combat” and then give them the tools, or better yet just provide power rangers with the tools to make that choice on their own. As for damage being tied to a pet with bad ai, yes it is. That sucks, and I wish that they could simply give rangers more tools to help with their pets since fixing the AI seems to be impossible.

There is two things Anet can do that wouldn’t involve deleting the pet or giving Rangers the much asked for permastow option that, in effect, deletes pets anyways.

Either untether all companions and Pets from standard Enemy AI, give them their own AI, and actually make them more threatening than the mob they were based on, or balance the Ranger around the fact that the pet AI doesn’t work under utopian conditions, and probably never will.

Atherakhia.4086:

Those are not strong ranged choices for PvE. I don’t know what an ‘adventurer’ profession is. Is that code for medium armor? I imagine Elementalist or Rifle Warrior are out of the question?

Of those 3, the Ranger is the strongest sustained damage for ranged combat. Keep in mind that isn’t saying much as the longbow is still about half as valuable as the sword.

…..

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Adventurer
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soldier
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scholar

shadowpass.4236:

wait, sorry, this is kind of confusing, so the time it takes to shoot 3 arrows on aa is 2 seconds, while on warrior, it takes 3/4 of a second to shoot 2 arrows, so, doing the math, a 5% increase on each arrow should bring it just above a warrior’s, so if they shot twice (1.5 seconds in total), they would hit for like 3.3k damage, so if we shot once (2 seconds in total), they would hit for 3.5k damage, overall, I think they’d still probably do more damage over time than us

so here’s the thing, in order to make this fair, there is not going to be any increase in damage per shot, this puts our damage right below a warrior’s but makes up for with the ability to track targets in stealth with the autoattack

Warrior’s Auto attack with the Longbow takes 1.19 seconds to complete (according to the Wiki). This means they deal 356 base damage per second.

Ranger’s (current)Auto attack with the Longbow takes 1 second to complete (according to the Wiki). This means that at max. range, it deals 317 base damage per second.

The Warrior’s Longbow auto attack is about 11% stronger than our Longbow at base power(916).

At 2500 Power though, the Warrior’s Longbow is about 20% stronger than our Longbow. This is because if you combine the Warriors two shots into one, you get a damage coefficient of 1.32(not 2x 0.66), while our damage coefficient stays at 0.9.

This means that the Warrior’s Longbow does infact scale better with power than our longbow does, especially when you factor burning in (where the damage difference can be as much as 50% higher in the Warrior’s favor at base power and Condition damage)

shadowpass.4236:

well, like I said at the top, i’m fine with the way ranger is now, I have no problem in most 1v1’s, and have won my fair share of 1v2-4’s, but yeah, again, like I said, 33% is a bit much, i’ll do the math later and bring it back in line with another classes

basically, with the 3 shots, it should do around 3.6k damage on average (not full zerk, not full tank, 1.2k a shot)

my reason for this is that most classes do more damage in melee than in range (there are exceptions, I know) but this would actually make people not take zerker longbow rangers as a joke, which then, the arrows should hit for 5-7k damage with the auto attack (if all 3 arrows hit on like full zerk) actually making us a viable “sniper” or “archer” class

and also, zerk thieves can hit for like 4-5k on dagger and sword auto attacks… so 2k autoattacks on long range shots (the 3 arrow version), is still less damage per hit than a thief, and even if they all hit, would still do less damage than a thief’s aa chain

If the 3 arrow auto attack version matches up with what I do with the Longbow now, then it would deal roughly 2700 damage per arrow.

Also, the way I see it, The fact that Gap Closers/Dodges/movement skills/stealth/blocks/etc. exist in this game should be reason enough for Anet to take a closer look at Range and make the damage equal to melee damage, because Range has no actual range advantage if a player can close that gap in less than a second.

But, not every build has a million gap closers/blocks/stealths/etc. for that reason, Range should always be inferior to Melee in some way.

Every solo player who has tried to attack me head on in the last month, ended up running away with a dozen holes in their back. I’ve won a few 1v2 fights, and I have won every 2v2 fight in the last month. I say “No Handouts!”, so I can get free kills off of the enemy that think’s I’m also a free kill by association.

Also, A 33% increase in Longbow Damage will make me do 6000-7000+ damage Auto Attacks (and hit poor uplevels for 9000+ damage). That’s as much as many players do with Maul. It’s also before using any skills to increase damage, or modifying it any further with Vulnerability or Might.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

If you have 50% condition duration your burns will be 1.5 seconds long like the tooltip states….but the way it works is this:
1st Pulse:Adds 1.5 seconds of burning, they take damage from the 1, however the .5 is “stored” in case more is applied.
2nd Pulse:Adds 1.5 seconds of burning to the .5 that is stored, so this 2nd pulse will stack 2 seconds…
3rd Pulse:same as 1st
4th Pulse:same as 2nd
and so on, and so on….

But, Unless you have alot of control keeping the enemy player standing still (regular enemies are dumb enough to stand in place), then they may only take 1 pulse of burning, lasting only 1.5 seconds. Therefore, they take only one second of damage, not 1.5.

The damage does not increase because Burning only damages on a full second. The tooltip will not calculate damage inbetween seconds.

If you increase your condition/burn duration to 100%, then each pulse of bonfire will be 2 seconds long, and the damage in the tooltip will increase.

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Chrispy.5641:

Yeah, because before and after that, the Ranger had absolutely no way to give themselves perma fury without that trait. Okay……

I’m just going to make a bunch of assumptions and humor you since you’re being slightly antagonistic with your tone.

Red Moa with Call of the Wild and RaO with Furious Grip? Sure, that’s okay Fury overload I suppose. Can’t deny, however, that being pigeonholed into use a Moa just for the sake of a boon is kinda’ pathetic considering you’d be losing general toolbox utilities like KD, Cripple or Fear from wolf, DPS from ravens, or blasts from drakes. Swapping weapons for the sake of earning fury is somewhat unideal – rangers aren’t warriors with Fast Hands who can dip in and our of weaponsets with 0 limitations. Stepping out of the Longbow weaponset just to earn fury via Furous Grip and using Call of the Wild prevents you from effectively taking advantage of the full fury durations once you dip back into longbow 10s later. The point being: having to swap out of the longbow weaponset in order to make the longbow viable is somewhat purpose-defeating.

At least with perma-fury with just wielding the longbow, you were able to sit on that weapon set and actually pose a threat for the long term. Most competitive rangers who take longbow typically take greatsword for blocks, disengage, additional rupt’ for Moment of Clarity, burst with Maul – it proports everything that the longbow lacks. There’s simply no room for the Warhorn in a Longbow build.

Why do you need perma fury to make the Longbow Viable?

Atherakhia.4086:

Khenzy.9348:

I don’t think the longbow is a bad weapon, it’s decent, the only change I’d do is removing the need to be static while channeling Barrage, and vastly reducing said channel.
Rangers need so many traits to make a single weapon viable is not even fair if you compare them to other professions. That, and poor condition removal, unreliable damage and dead pets on team fights make this particular build underperform.

Again, it’s not the weapon, but mostly the builds associated with it.

Its not the weapon, but the weapon needs 5 traits (with room for 2) before it’s good?

These 5 traits? :::

• Steady Focus
• Eagle Eye
• Quick Draw
• Hunter’s Tactics
• Peak Strength

Or these? ::

• Signet Mastery
• Beastmaster’s Might
• Precise Strike
• Signet of the Beastmaster
• Moment of Clarity

There’s more than one way to skin a cat (not that I want to find out how many ways there actually are) And there is definitely more than one way to make you more viable/deal more damage than just trying to take all traits that say ‘longbow’ on them.

Caedmon.6798:

Draknar.5748:

Man Arah story is one of the coolest dungeons I’ve ever played in any game ever. So the fight with Zhaitan himself is easy, whatever, take in the dungeon as a whole, the story, the environment, it really is pretty awesome.

Its not about the dungeon…its about the lamest Boss battle in the history of gaming Ever. A Boss battle should be interesting and difficult and memorable,yet zaithan is a huge dissapointment in each and every way.

And what were you expecting exactly? A God of War 3 type of Battle where you are running up the back of an acres sized dragon? Each one of those sequences in that game (as well as other games like Shadow of the Colossus) cost millions of dollars to develop and get working properly, and I am kind of glad that Anet didn’t blow their whole budget on a single boss battle.

runeblade.7514:

dancingmonkey.4902:

So, define “garbage” ?

What makes the skills garbage?

If you wanted anything fixed, you sure are going about it an a manner counter productive to do so. Unless you explain anything in applicable means, all your doing is broad complaining with no reasonable input on the matter.

Are you going to ever use Alpine wolf for the aoe chill? I will assume no because it is garbage.

Krytan Drakehound aoe immobilize is far superior than that garbage. It has less cooldown and better snare.

Its kind of hard for me to take you seriously when you keep calling everything Garbage without defining what ‘Garbage’ is.

Maybe you should explain how Immobilize is a more valuable condition than chill is, and having 2 seconds of AOE Immobilize on a 20 second cooldown is better than an equally weighted 3 seconds of AOE Chill on a 30 second cooldown.

Sasajoe.1509:

Actually since thieves got stealth for more survivability i dont see why doesnt the ranger have like :

stealth spell with 60 seconds cd !!!!!!!!!!!!! that stealths him for 60 seconds & the ranger breaks it hes left with rest of the cooldown to handle with

OR

since long bow power ranger is the squishiest target in the whole game it should deal MASSIVE amount of damage not a lackluster as it is currently

How much Damage would you (and everyone else) consider a proper amount of damage for being so squishy? 3K Damage on an attack, 4K, 5K?

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Lorelei.3918:

The simple brute force remedy is leave everything else as it is and increase Longbow damage to compensate. If Ranger is the squishiest, easiest kill in the max dps configuration…..it should also be the most deadly when left alone, pet or no pet.

This really stood out for me. It makes sense too, honestly. Power Rangers are the squishiest class in the game, requiring 6 points in respective lines to get mediocre condi-cleansing, damage immunity, or just general potency of utility/weapon skills. Given the extreme opportunity cost, it really does make sense that Rangers should hit like a truck with their Longbow. It kinda’ makes me regret not taking advantage of that perma-fury bug back when Two-Handed Training’s buff affected Eagle Eye… the damage was so great, and felt like the longbow was actually USABLE. Maybe that bug really wasn’t as crazy as people made it out to be?

Yeah, because before and after that, the Ranger had absolutely no way to give themselves perma fury without that trait. Okay……

Vox Hollow.2736:

Just how often is ‘being effective at single target damage’ an actual desirable thing in this game? I am all for AOE vs. single target being a efficacy tradeoff, but not when focus firing is so rarely applied and you’re one of the few weapons in town that has to play by the rules.

Forzani.2584:

When you play as a pure sniper.

Forzani.2584:

Chrispy.5641:

Snipers in other games, the real world, and any story you ever read aren’t exactly known for being able to survive a one on one encounter at close range. So why should GW2 be any different if a Ranger decides to build for damage at long ranges?

I think we agree? Not exactly sure of your point either.

The point was just to see if someone would start talking about the finer points of whether the Ranger qualifies as a Sniper or not, and Vox just made a nice long post about it.

AEFA.9035:

Chrispy.5641:

AEFA.9035:

Any response from the devs here who are responsible for ranger? I mean i looked into mesmer forums and the dev responded within a day from an idea posted in may 1. 21 pages and not a recent response?

There’s a Dev responsible for the Ranger? I thought the Ranger was the red-headed stepchild of the family, and the only reason we get any attention is to keep the social workers away.

……Seriously though, what you are talking about was one of the Only dev response for any of the professions in quite a while.

21 pages with over 33,000 views and no post CDI response from the devs? a little bit of

“Hey my semi abandoned child!!! What do you think of LB being rooted to the ground when you auto attack? in return you do 5% more damage!!! me and the team have been playing around and we all think this would help the Ranger class Let us know what you think!!! very excited for Ranger beta”

To be fair, this thread is way older than the Ranger CDI is, and Jcbroe changed the title of this thread several times. There is maybe 4 pages of post CDI discussion here.

AEFA.9035:

Any response from the devs here who are responsible for ranger? I mean i looked into mesmer forums and the dev responded within a day from an idea posted in may 1. 21 pages and not a recent response?

There’s a Dev responsible for the Ranger? I thought the Ranger was the red-headed stepchild of the family, and the only reason we get any attention is to keep the social workers away.

……Seriously though, what you are talking about was one of the Only dev response for any of the professions in quite a while.

Forzani.2584:

Vox Hollow.2736:

Just how often is ‘being effective at single target damage’ an actual desirable thing in this game? I am all for AOE vs. single target being a efficacy tradeoff, but not when focus firing is so rarely applied and you’re one of the few weapons in town that has to play by the rules.

When you play as a pure sniper.

Snipers in other games, the real world, and any story you ever read aren’t exactly known for being able to survive a one on one encounter at close range. So why should GW2 be any different if a Ranger decides to build for damage at long ranges?

Lorelei.3918:

On the other end, the Longbow is a trait heavy weapon (to be effective it needs Steady Focus, Quick draw, Eagle Eye, Piercing Arrows, Hunter’s Tactics and Read the Wind….OOPS, you can’t even slot all of these traits together. Another issue entirely…)

Playing Devil’s Advocate here (since no one else will…..)

For a Ranger to Be Effective at Single Target Damage, they only need Quick Draw, Eagle Eye, and Read the Wind.

For a Ranger to be Effective at Multi Target Damage, they only need Quick Draw, Piercing Arrows, and Read the Wind.

There is no reason to need both Eagle Eye and Piercing Arrows at the same time, unless a 5% damage increase (100 power at 2000 power. 125 power at 2500 power) is really that absolutely, utterly important to you the world will end otherwise. The extra 300 range doesn’t help piercing arrows in any way.

Though, since Damage is pretty much standard across all Longbow attacks anyway, Quick Draw doesn’t actually increase your damage. It does make you stealth more often, but stealth is not a requirement for the Longbow to be effective.

Steady Focus and Hunter’s Tactics are both Conditional Damage Boosts, and are not tied to the Longbow in any way. You can just as easily take Peak Strength or bountiful hunter instead of Hunter’s Tactics, also removing the need for Quick Draw for the reasons I already stated.

So, that’s 2 Required traits for Longbow, depending on whether you want to focus on single target or multi target damage, not 6 (7 if you want to include spotter)

The weapon will also never deal as much damage as weapons from other professions because of the Pet (which is roughly a 30% damage loss. This point is needed for the next paragraph, don’t TL;DR this paragraph!)

I’m not saying its a strong weapon. Its weak in almost all situations if you aren’t using it right. Longbow as a condition weapon is one of those situations, unless you have crazy high crit chance and are trying to bleed out an entire group of enemies. Trying to take both Eagle Eye and Spotter at the same time would be one of those situations as well, and it will always be one of those situations, even if the Longbow did 30% more damage and pets were removed, the bow would still not be optimal if you took both of those traits, solely because the 2 traits are designed for two totally different purposes, and trying to take them both to be effective at everything will infact leave you effective at nothing.

@HHR LostProphet.4801, I agree with #1/2/3/and 5 on the points you listed

scerevisiae.1972:

Chrispy.5641:

The OP said that traps need to have 900 range because Other Profession skills have longer range than traps.

…which is a completely valid reason to buff trap range. The key comparison skill type here is marks, which are 1200 range with very similar effects to traps, which require 0 traits. 900 range is completely reasonable.

Don’t forget that traps don’t require a trait to be unblockable, Marks do. Marks are weapon skills, traps aren’t. Etc. I went over this is my previous post.

I don’t want Traps to be marks on a Ranger, I want them to be traps.

scerevisiae.1972:

Chrispy.5641:

If you can just toss them across an area at will, it turns them into grenades instead of traps, and, isn’t there another profession in this game that uses Grenades already?

um, you can already do that.

If you try to use traps like grenades (as many people n this thread say they do), and go head to head with another profession using traps, you will get your kitten handed to you on a silver platter 9 out of 10 times, and rightfully so.

scerevisiae.1972:

The only issue with trap traits is the obvious incongruence of having condi-based utilities in a precision/crit damage trait line.

Wouldn’t hurt to have an additional trait that granted a support-ish aspect to traps, which is the other area of ranger need in WVW.

Agree with the second point here, but on the first, by your logic, shouldn’t all shortbow traits also be in Wilderness survival then because its condition based?

dylan.5409:

Give and take.

If there are underperforming builds then there is no reason for there to be a nerf accompanying a buff.
One of the biggest shortcomings of trap rangers is their kitten survivability. So if traps were turned into a kit, with grandmaster traits that allowed for a greater variety (say dust trap for example) or something along those lines it would greatly expand rangers versatility and survivability. Traps need to be good without a 30 point investment, and they aren’t at the moment.
Would this make the build similar to other aoe cond builds? Yes ,I suppose it would, but I dont have a problem with that. It would still retain the ranger flavor while narrowing the, imo wide, gap between aoe cond classes.

Traps as a kit so we can still use some survival skills would be a cool idea. Of course untraited(with current traits and trap skills), it would function more like the Engineer’s Bomb kit with Pulsing bombs. With traits, it would be more like pulsing Grenades. That would be cool.

However it works, they should retain the flavor of traps, not turn into Pulsing grenades and bombs.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Chrispy.5641:

Carighan.6758:

Entangle is an AE skill, though. It’s balanced around that use, it shines in situations where you need to make sure enemies cannot orderly withdraw from a certain position. It’s very strong when cast on the enemy retreat direction in a WvW engagement, for example. Or when enemies are trying to dodge siege fire.

Entangle activates 600 range from the Center of the Ranger, and must have unobstructed targets in order to be used. There is no direction of casting either because of this.

Ummm, yes there is. It hits your target and enemies around them. You can very much direct the position of the skill’s radius.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Atherakhia.4086:

Are you sure you’re not thinking of Muddy Terrain? Entangle is a PBAE. It leaves vines on the ground that people can run into and be entangled themselves, but they can also be killed.

It’s certainly not worth the horrendously long cooldown. 60 seconds would be more like it. While immob is a powerful effect, it’s important to remember what class is actually casting it.

Silly to have entangle with a 2.5min cooldown and Muddy Terrain with a 25second one imo.

I’m pretty certain. I’ve been using it a lot on my Ranger recently and it hasn’t hit some enemies that were closer to me than my target. It’s always an AoE around your target.

I agree it isn’t quite worth the cooldown when Muddy Terrain exists and does something similar, but it’s definitely not a PBAoE around the Ranger.

Yeah…okay dude……

From the Wiki, and personal experience…. Also, an Attached Screenshot with the Effect/Bug I was talking about, because some people don’t like to click on links.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Entangle

edit – If you want to test this yourself, go into the game, disable auto targeting in the options. Run into a group of enemies and use Entangle without selecting a single target. If you don’t have a target selected, then Entangle wouldn’t work and go on cooldown, if it requires a target like you say.

The OP said that traps need to have 900 range because Other Profession skills have longer range than traps. When I press the issue on you Lorelei, you completely skirt around that, instead making a completely different reason why traps should have longer range, citing our weapons instead.

Traps need 900 range

No. The whole point of traps is to lure your enemies into them. If you can just toss them across an area at will, it turns them into grenades instead of traps, and, isn’t there another profession in this game that uses Grenades already?

dylan.5409:

2) trait compression so they dont take 30 points

No. We have only 2 trap traits that, while it does require a 30 point investment, it is nowhere near as bad as Necromancers, who for marks, have 4 traits spread across 4 trait lines, and for wells, have 4 traits spread across 3 trait lines. I didn’t include the revival traits, since they are generally useless and unrelated to making traps, marks, or wells better.

If anything, traps need more traits, not less. They don’t even have to be in Skirmishing. They also don’t need to be so damage centric like the current traits are. There could be a trait in Wilderness Survival that makes traps break stuns. There could be a trait in Nature Magic that makes traps remove boons from enemies.

Trap AoE sux

No. Trap AoE is the same size as marks. Both have traits to increase the radius, and after increasing the radius, both sets of skills have the same traited AoE as Wells do. Lets keep note that traps and marks have shorter cooldowns than wells have normally, so it is justified to give them smaller AoE unless traited. Lets also keep note that the AoE I’m talking about is after the trap activates. Try not to forget that traps are Invisible to enemies until triggered, and you need to actually have some ability at luring enemies into them instead of just grenading them everywhere.

Is there anything else about traps that someone thinks is horrible? I’m sure I can explain why its like that to you.

…also, this ::::

Just because I use something doesnt mean I automatically am in favour of any and all buffs to it. Hard as it is to imagine, some people genuinely hope for balance in this game, not just to have their build / class / playstyle be the most powerful one to rule them all.

Lorelei.3918:

I quoted a single sentence, not the entire paragraph for a reason. Don’t pretend like " (that you probably wont get)" isn’t a backhanded way of saying I’m dim witted. ok?

No, its just that very few people get my jokes, so I decided to take initiative in saying that you probably wouldn’t get the joke, and I said (that you probably wont get) as a direct reference to the last paragraph, calling it a joke without actually calling it a joke(that you TL;DR’d, then subsequently got insulted by the next paragraph that you did read). It doesn’t make you dim witted. It just means that your sense of humor is a little different than mine is. And also, that you should read the entire post instead of skimming through it.

Lorelei.3918:

So I was right after all. Kay. A political joke won’t get a post deleted but

“scathing sarcasm aside (that you probably wont get)”

personal attacks will.

I didn’t even read your medi trap stuff. Sorry it was TL:DR.

But I get the gist of it. You think anet will nerf traps if they buff them.

That’s silly. Anet has buffed LOTS of things without nerfing them at the same time. They upped Maul and LB damage in the past(not nearly enough, but they did buff it). What about Dhuumfire? That was a crazy buff with no tradeoffs for necros and it took almost a year for them to semi nerf it.

But put that aside…

Not even being able to request a buff out of fear of a nerf is just plain bass ackward. Its ridiculous on its face. That is what this forum is HERE for. If we can’t even discuss a buff for a utility that needs it for fear of the wrath of god Anet, we might as well just close up this forum right now.

What? Define how my metamorphic commentary that (mostly)jokingly compares how Anet balances skills to how a country handles healthcare attack you personally?

Also, They upped Maul in the past, but you need to realize that this was after nerfs that also happened in the past that aparently nerfed the skill a little too far. LB damage was also buffed in the past, but also came after ‘changes’ to the other skills on the weapon that some think of as nerfs (10 stacks of vulnerability over time instead of all at once for example). You can’t have one without the other, especially since Anet has said numerous times that they want to avoid power creep (and increasing trap range by 50% could be considered a form of power creep)

What you need to do is explain what the 900 range will do? What will make a 50% increase in the range of thrown traps better than they are now, and what will keep traps balanced against those other skills that OP mentioned, considering that the ones that aren’t weapon skills and can be compard to traps as utility skills have longer cooldowns than traps do, and wells (the closest comparison) have 5 traits spread across 3 trait lines, while we only have 2 traits in the same section to deal with.

Carighan.6758:

Entangle is an AE skill, though. It’s balanced around that use, it shines in situations where you need to make sure enemies cannot orderly withdraw from a certain position. It’s very strong when cast on the enemy retreat direction in a WvW engagement, for example. Or when enemies are trying to dodge siege fire.

Entangle activates 600 range from the Center of the Ranger, and must have unobstructed targets in order to be used. There is no direction of casting either because of this. It can also be dodged, evaded, missed(blind), and blocked(even though its supposed to be unblockable). And I’m pretty sure that last point is a very valid one (the blockable part). Are you sure you know this skill?

Lorelei.3918:

So some of you who use traps are against having them buffed? You are against something which is beneficial to you…

You don’t happen to be republicans by any chance…?

Anet doesn’t just “Buff” anything. There is usually a trade off. For example, with Hunter’s Call, they ‘fixed a bug’ so you can now hit enemies behind objects. What they didn’t tell you is that the new improved version, get obstructed anyways when there is the slightest bump of a hill infront of you. This causes the skill to deal no damage at all and go on cooldown. unlike the previous version of the skill, this newer skill also goes on cooldown whenever it is blocked, evaded, or misses the first shot, meaning the 16 other attacks the skill has never has a chance to deal any damage (but it did with the old version, and I suspect the low damage of the skill was made that way to compensate for that). The skill isn’t anymore useful than before, and I would argue that this so called bug fix made the skill much worse.

I’m not against having traps buffed in any way, I just don’t want to, for example, see the Physical Damage aspect of traps get buffed then see the Condition Damage aspect get nerfed as a result, or see other changes to the skill that makes it work opposite to how it worked before the patch.

And since you made a political comment… (that will inevitably get our posts forced edited by moderators or deleted…..,) my feelings on traps in Guild Wars 2 is not too different from the healthcare outcome in America right now…

Let me ask you. What if Anet came to us and told us about the Trap reforms they are working on. It will improve traps, and it wont mess with our current builds, we’ll get to keep them.

How would you feel if Anet buffed the Range of traps to 900, removed the Physical Damage from traps, nerfed the Condition Damage, and then gave them an effect that you really don’t need them to have (like, for example, red circles from traps are now visible to enemies before they trigger, removing your ability to preemptively throw traps and lure enemies to them), because of the changes to traps, you have to completely change your build to be effective with them, if thats what you want to call it.

But, good news everyone! Out of the 300,000 Rangers that the new Traps affect, only 6,000 actually signed up to use them over the last year, and a further 4,000 signed up for the alternative medi-traps because they didn’t qualify, which are just as effective as the traps that regular rangers have access to, but without a cooldown….since every medi-trap user has access to them, all 12,000 medi-trap users are put on a waiting list, and might get to use them once every couple of days, and if they fail to use the medi-traps during that time, they get put back on the end of the waiting list. Regardless of whether you are using the reformed traps or the new medi-traps, Some medi-trap Rangers might have Characters less than 12 months old, or more than 65 months old,… in which case an employee at Anet will have authority over you and decide if you have the right to use traps at all!

scathing sarcasm aside (that you probably wont get), I don’t see any reason to change traps unless you or Anet can guarantee (and prove beforehand beyond a reasonable doubt) that its actually an improvement to the skill instead of an unecessary addition or change.

Entangle
I wouldn’t say the most useless elite skill in the game, but definitely the one that is easiest to counter/ignore

• Enemies just walk in and out of it like the vines aren’t even there because the effects from the vines only triggers every 1.5 seconds.
• There is no need to ever destroy the vines, since Immobilize is so easy to cleanse from so many different sources/traits.
• Enemies also port away or stealth themselves, also negating the effects.
• The skill also says unblockable, but I have seen this skill get blocked and have no effect, forcing the 150 second cooldown.

• This skill should not be so easy to counter if the effects are so weak to start, that basic skills can do the same effect for way less effort and cooldown.
• If this is supposed to be an elite skill, then enemies should be bound to the vines until the vines are actually destroyed.

Oidmetala.8426:

will anet focuse much on ranger profession for the next patch or was this “the patch” which should help this profession already?

because i just wonder, anet have still to look really much on this profession.
i can just speak about pvp, but a viable power ranger build with a longsword or longbow is still not working.
and there is much reasons why it dont work.

just some problems ranger still have after so long time:

-trapper build is not working well because traits are not in the right traitline
-power ranger dont works well damage/survive is to low
-longbow and longsword skills dont feel smooth enough
-shouts are not interesting to use
-so much single target skills
-traits like stability training for pig pets or instinctual bond…
-~60% of the pets are not interesting to use
-only healing spring is a interesting healing skill
-only the rez spirit is a interesting ulti, everybody can port or even run out from entangle and there is always a professions can steal or remove stability from rampage as one

Nice talking points. Can you possibly elaborate on them a little? Telling Anet that traps suck because they are in the wrong tree is not going to convince them to change it, and just bringing up the other talking point about condition damage is not going to really make your original talking point any more interesting than your perception of our utility skills

In the current state of the game, these traits makes no sense where they are, since these traits are 2/3’s as effective, and that’s with maximum stat investment. The lower the investment, the more worth the toughness traits have over healing power. At the lowest possible stats with these traits, the healing power traits are only worth 22% of what the toughness traits are.

I agree that the easiest thing to do is to add 91.6 Power + the 10% of healing power that the trait already gives.

The oversized swords in Guild Wars 2 are not oversized at all. Many of them are actually quite small compared to the largest swords there ever were :::

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidenh%C3%A4nder

Even the biggest, craziest looking swords in the game seem completely plausible by comparison, and they seem to just plain make sense after you factor in the fact that everything that ever existed can use magic in this world (possible to make heavy kitten swords lighter to swing but still hit like a truck)

Kvera.1649:

I know what you say about critical rate and Sharpening edge, but a toxic cristal not will up all your dps? I think is not mandatory focus only on condition for ‘condition build’ the right hybrid is the solution – like what you sugest on your condition trap build, certainly I will try run this.

(sorry for bad english) Thank you

Trust me, there are some native English speakers with way worse english than you. You don’t have to appologize for anything!

for the DPS increase, It all depends….

• 100 extra condition damage is equal to 5 extra dps of bleeding on each bleed.
• 100 extra precision is equal to a rough 5% increase in critical chance.
• At 1610 Condition Damage (in the build), each bleed deals 123 damage.
• At 1710 condition damage (with toxic crystal), each bleed deals 128 damage.

If that extra crit chance gives me an extra bleed, then it would equal the damage of having to manually (without crit) apply 25 bleeds. To be fair, I only added up the bleeds, and there might be a very marginal dps increase from burning, poison, and other conditions if you have them with sigils and runes.

And also, that toxic oil only gives me a 3.3% greater chance to apply an extra bleed, which is kind of small, but I still value that more than the tiny dps increase from 100 extra condition damage.

If you are going to use that build, please be cautious! There is exactly ZERO Survival in that, and you might die really fast against some players in wvw.

Cufufalating.8479:

I wouldnt listen too much to the tool-tips on condition attacks because it depends entirely on how well they cleanse. I mean you can get Entangle to read well over 30k damage, and then if you hit 5 people with it you can theoretically do 150k damage with the single attack.. but thats never going to happen in reality

This is also the reason why I favour condition damage and re-application of conditions (precision) over condition duration.. because extending durations to too long doesnt actually make a huge amount of difference after certain point because they will be cleansed by then anyway, whereas if you are constantly just reapplying short bleeds non-stop then their cleanses really make very little difference.

That’s pretty much my reason right there. You need to be able to constantly reapply conditions after the enemy runs out of cleanses

I could try to use Undead Runes and give myself nearly 2400 condition damage. The dps from conditions is on a whole different level when you get that high ((and it does totally work for some people to invest that far into a single stat)), but if the enemy just cleanses the conditions and you can’t reapply them for a few seconds, that condition damage is going to do nothing for you.

Kvera.1649:

I think is better try use a Toxic Focusing Cristal, because do you have precision alot

Get enough precision for 95-100% crit chance with fury, then this trait procs 66% of the time. This means that any attack I make has a 66% chance to give the enemy 3 seconds of bleeding (4 seconds if you take krait runes instead of balthazar with the build I posted)

I’ve found that with Rabid builds you end up dealing more damage in the end if you get your crit chance as high as possible while still having 1500+ condition damage….

You got the 13k burning because you got burning duration past 100%, which makes each pulse of bonfire deal 2 seconds of burning instead of just 1. That damage will be cut in half if the duration isn’t 2 seconds because burning needs a full second of duration in order to tick its damage, as these 2 builds show (just see Bonfire):::

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnfVjMqUua7KerQ1aABhaVA0uGS2umkittenBbwF3dyE-TVCBAB/o+jL7P0wBCAG9Bfp8DgTBQgaIUTJo2PBASBAzuK-w

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnfVjMqUua7KerQ1aABhaVA0uGS2umkittenBbwF3dyE-TVCBAB/o+jL7P0wBCAG9Bfp8DgTBQgaIUTJo2PBASBAzwI-w

You might notice that the only difference between those 2 builds is 10% condition duration, but you can see the difference in damage potential.

Omnitek.3876:

Shirk.6421:

And about condition spamming… necro>ranger.

^this

But…. I like to roam on my ranger. People see other classes and avoid them sometimes. Everyone runs at the ranger thinking free kill. It takes lots of the work out of finding fights.

I get instant, free Thief kills every time one tries to attack me, which happens alot, because as you said, people look at Ranger, and say “FREE BAG!!!”
There’s maybe 1 out every 10 fights against thieves that I lose because the thief might actually be a good thief.

Shadowbane.7109:

<———- WvW Trapper Ranger. Love em. Don’t change em. Seriously. Don’t. I’ll cut you.

I agree with this statement. I like my traps just the way they are.

Experiment with Runes of Balthazar and Koi Cake food if you want more burning uptime. With 100% burning duration, your bonfire’s damage doubles since conditions only damage on the second. This way you can keep perma burn on an enemy, or just make it more painful for anyone caught in your entangle that wasted all their condition removal already.

Here is a condition build I use in WvW that maximizes burning, bleeding, and poison (It lacks group support and exchanges all survival for more damage, so its probably not what you are looking for) :::
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnfVjMqUua7KerQ1aABhaVA0uGS2umkittenBbwF3dyE-TVCBAB/o+jL7P0wBCAG9Bfp8DgTBQgaIUTJo2PBASBAzuK-w

cakesphere.5910:

Chrispy.5641:

And on the Star Wars thing…..If you remove Jar Jar and Ewoks, there is no difference between The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi, other than an evolution in how special effects are made and presented that many people refuse to acknowledge out of a sense of nostalgia that also ended up ruining Indiana Jones for them.

I’m going to have to stop you right there because if you can’t see the difference between a compelling hero’s journey plot with interesting (if cliche) characters as opposed to a LITERAL MESS at every level with braindead characters doing a lot of crap that is not very well explained or thought out with lots of shiny special effects to cover up the absolutely awful characters (paper thin. I’m pretty sure a rock emotes better than Padme in ep1) and the needlessly complicated yet still completely boring plot (TL;DR Palpatine engineers a crisis to maneuver into power as chancellor but this somehow has to do with Padme signing a paper to make an invasion legal? Pretty sure an ILLEGAL invasion would be more of a crisis. Killing the jedi and bringing attention to himself somehow helped his plan? How? I don’t understand, I get the premise but nothing in the movie makes any logical sense) then you should not be participating in this discussion because you literally do not understand what makes a story successful.

Apologies for the massively run-on sentence and hyperbole, but as a writer and an avid consumer of pop culture (yes, including Star Wars) that post had me seeing red because it offended me on so many levels.

I don’t think anyone has ever said that Star Wars is some sort of perfect space epic, but as a fun, engaging romp through a galaxy far, far away? Hell to the yes.

I’m going to have to stop you right there, because, if you’re title dropping youself ‘as a writer’ then you should be able to see the artistic/plot/character similarities between both trilogies. Both trilogies had the same flaws (mostly bad acting and making heavy use of special effects to cary the audience through the bad acting), the same 1 dimensional characters (If a rock can emote better Padame, then a rock can emote better than Leia), and the same awful animal/creature comic relief (jar jar and ewoks).

Are you sure that I should be removing myself from this conversation instead of you?

And I’ll admit that politics in any story is boring, unless there is a shocking death every chapter/episode/etc. (like Game of Thrones), in which case Tobias is right….Its Predictable, which in my opinion is even worse than boring.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Chrispy.5641:

What? You mean when I shoot someone they bleed no matter what direction I hit them in, Its no longer from just the side or behind? What rock have I been living under for the last two years? (/obvious sarcasm)

What I meant is that ShortBow is mostly used as a PvP weapon – for it’s utility it provides.
You can feel that Shortbow is effective enough even if you don’t have 100% flank uptime.

Poison, pet bleeding and Cripple, also a daze. That’s all nice even without flanking.

Of course your damage is laughable if you don’t hit from side or behind – but it’s not Flank restricted.

Fixed that for you.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Some of the ideas are actually pretty exact.

Some are not.

RtW, Sword Root, 7, and All the Shouts – I agree. Maybe I’d add an AoE aura around the pet for cripple (let’s say 450 range) every time pet attacks while in “Protect” mode. People should be scared of beasts in their territory.

Others I don’t. E.G. Rangers are not supposed to be healers. We provide nice support utility through Spirits – and that’s our support role. We don’t provide enough healing anywayz.

Our Fire traps are supposed to bring damage – offense. Defense is not needed.

ShortBow is not flanking restricted. But could welcome better Power coefficient – that’s for sure. It hits like a Hamburger. Looks tasty but you don’t wanna know what it’s made of.

What? You mean when I shoot someone they bleed no matter what direction I hit them in, Its no longer from just the side or behind? What rock have I been living under for the last two years? (/obvious sarcasm)