Guild Wars 2

Intense.8235:

I played a bit when it first came out, then – for whatever reason – stopped. I just got a new gaming machine and am looking for a new MMO to enjoy. Is this it? I don’t like investing a lot of time into a dying game. Is GW2 dying? Or is it alive and well? I want to play a game that’s vibrant; radiating with personality and people. Will the majority of areas I go to be completely deserted? Or will they be thriving with life? Is one server better than another? I don’t have any attachments to my current server, Fort Aspenwood, so if there’s a better one, I have no issue going to it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

The game isn’t dying but the developers have made some wildly unpopular decisions lately that have alienated players who feel the game has become a massive and pointless grindfest. Whether or not these players will stick around with newer MMOs on the horizon remains to be seen.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If you guys spent half as much time grinding as you did complaining in this thread you’d all have an ascended weapon already.

The only “grind” is that you need to do world events, kill champs, and run dungeons… the horror… playing the game… how could they…

I regard champ farming as the single most tedious thing I have ever done in a video game. I can only hack it for an hour or two at a time, even with my own music on while I do it. Ask US military vets what “hurry up and wait” means and why that is so frustrating and you’ll grasp my distaste for champ farming. It’s like being in the Army again.

kitten just go back to the system you had at the beginning and stop creating these convoluted Rube Goldberg contraptions and calling it progress. Did anyone but you have a problem with the old system? You know, keep it simple and all. Most of us down at the lower tiers don’t give a crap about scores or winning we just want to have good, balanced fights and fun, preferably without our skills lag-failing. Getting steamrolled by a “skilled” zerg that outnumbers you five to one gets old real fast, as does being in that steamroller.

The Goat.1940:

One way to fix the whole “coverage wins WvW” is to group servers into something like a war group. basically group a set of severs with different coverage strength into said war group. bam a more equal WvW system…

Great idea, I was thinking along these lines myself but couldn’t figure out how it could be done. But 2 small servers combining into one big battle group to go up against a bigger server makes sense to me.

I’ve recently received an infraction as well. Apparently, Anet thinks the answer to their customers’ anger is to enrage them more with censorship while continuing to ignore legitimate complaints. The very fact that they feel the need to engage in this reactionary behavior whenever they screw something up speaks volumes. Not much confidence in your decisions there guys, eh?

You might wake up one day to realize that those of us who are criticizing your actions are trying to keep you from destroying your own game. We are the canaries in the coalmine warning of impending disaster, but you choose to go on your merry way alienating your customers to the point even your most inveterate defenders are now becoming disgusted.

All of us have invested a lot of time, energy and effort into our characters, so we have a vested interest in seeing you succeed. We are not out to get you. We are trying to get you to straighten up and fly right but you are too arrogant or oblivious to see that your customers are right. You don’t seem to be too concerned about your customers being able to succeed in this game, an outcome in which you have a vested interest in as well, though you don’t seem to realize this. If you give us a fail class in a fail game most of us are eventually going to give up and go elsewhere. If you keep mindlessly thrashing about and making ham-handed decisions that give the impression you have little respect for your customers’ time or clue what to do with the game you created then you need to recognize that the reaction you’re getting is the reaction you deserve to get.

Now go ahead and infract me. Do that enough times and maybe the truth will go away…along with your customers.

kitanas.3596:

I would just like to ask a question here.

can you name an MMO that doesn’t rely on time gating?

Time Gating exists because there is a type of player, commonly called a “content locust”, who will burn though content at the fastest possible speed and then call (loudly) for more.

This isn’t necessarily a defense of a-net, more-so an explanation as t why I think Time Gating was Implemented.

How does time-gated grinding constitute “content?”

Lambent.6375:

If the other mats are anything like this, I wouldn’t be too worried.

You obviously saved up your champ bags to be opened after the update. Don’t be disingenuous.

Azure.8670:

actually these runes are ridiculously expensive right now and people are buying the guts out of them. I just bought 6 for 35 gold for my thief for his p/d build. These are going to be HUGE for Mesmers. I gotta get another 6 for him

That is good to hear as I just salvaged 5 of them off my warrior’s mf gear and I had two others saved up.

I just leveled a mesmer to 80 and don’t know how to play the class properly or fully understand it yet. One of my issues so far has been the lack of run speed increase in WvW and always feeling like the short fat kid in gym class trying to keep up with the jocks.

I am wondering how experienced players feels about using Runes of the Traveler in WvW now that they have a 25 percent run speed increase. I know there are better runes damage-wise but do you think the trade-offs are worth it to get that increased speed plus the other goodies it comes with?

New stats:

(1): +10 to All Stats; +2% Critical Damage
(2): +15% Boon Duration
(3): +10 to All Stats; +2% Critical Damage
(4): +10% Condition Duration
(5): +10 to All Stats; +2% Critical Damage
(6): +25% Movement Speed

I just leveled a mesmer to level 80 using the boost that starts you at level 20. At level 22, with 2 levels of actual play experience and no clue, I went into WvW and killed a level 80 ranger 1 v 1 even though he had me caught in entangle for a bit and attacked me from behind. It was truly a wtf moment that showed me once and for all how badly this class sucks.

Funny I did get knocked down by a wolf in a 1 v 1, as I usually dodge the knockdown automatically without even thinking about it just like most of us do with red circles. The wolf was up on top of the wall at Stonemist and knocked me down straight with no windup or warning. His owner was outside the castle.

The guy was hacking. Says it all.

I am trying to figure out how to craft low levels items for my new toon as it levels. I have all 8 crafts leveled so I don’t need a leveling guide. I need a guide that tells me what materials and inscriptions. etc I would need to say, make a level 40 staff with power and condition damage.

Looking through the recipes it tells you the crafting level you need to produce the item, but not the level the resulting item is going to be. It also doesn’t tell you the specific mats needed unless you already made the item. This is very frustrating as I have no clue how to just make a weapon or other gear that I need.

Chopps.5047:

This is because players do not value trap rangers or resurrection, for whatever reason, I don’t know. Our unblockable traps are excellent zerg busters—particularly frost. Apparently, finishing isn’t valued either: zephyr’s speed, quickening zephyr, longbow, or RaO are all really good ways to get off stomps.

Bears are undervalued in the zerg (stability training + black or polar bear).

Just look at everything we deal with: everything is undervalued until they (every other profession’s main’s) can claim it’s OP and nerf us to “our place as huntards”.

That’s what this is all about.

Think of spirits: Community: “WAHHH ANET WAHHH. SPIRITS ARE PAPER” now that spirits are functional, it’s “ZOMG SPIRITS ARE OP”.

We need to stop letting others in the community push us around. Start standing up for your profession. If your friend is truly the best ranger around, then he or she should know enough to defend the profession. It’s time to stand up for rangers; to learn how to properly play them. To see the strengths instead of the weaknesses.

I bet those very people would say “guardian has no weakness” or “necro has no weakness”. That’s not true! If you’re a real player you will learn and exploit the strengths of your profession against the weaknesses of others.

Losing to rangers is not one of the guardian’s weaknesses. It is nearly impossible to kill a guardian as a ranger because we do little damage to them, they have a gazillion ways to remove conditions and they can outheal what little damage we do.

Sticking up for the class means demanding that Anet fix what’s broken in the class, improve our near useless pets, and give us better, more viable abilities as well as more killing power, all of which we desperately need. Pretending this class is viable or has “strengths” that aren’t easily outmatched or countered by other classes doesn’t help.

I am having this same issue. I have 12/13 maps but can’t get the last. I have done all zones at least twice ( I now keep a checklist), getting the reward at the end.

This is borked and they need to fix it. For the life of me I can’t see why Aetherblades or Molten Alliance wouldn’t give you credit for the event. This makes no sense.

GG as always Anet taking something that could be fun and turning it into a frustrating grindo nightmare. Why don’t you just make it 13 maps altogether and leave it at that, rather than requiring us to do all 13 individual maps? 13 hours of grinding and waiting around isn’t enough for a kittening achievement you have to make it worse? Then it’s bugged on top of that?

Please hire a common sense consultant. Your company needs one desperately.

It would be nice if you would wait until the end of the invasion cycle to do updates, rather than do it at the beginning of an invasion. Most of my server failed to complete the invasion due to the karma reversal update occurring just after it started. Some of us were sent back to our homeworld where we started bu the invasion wasn’t there and we got the “return to homeworld” message.

I don’t know why they refuse to give us the ability to stow pets in combat. It is not a solution overall, but it at least let’s us keep them alive during times when they are otherwise a liability. Apparently, giving us this feature would amount to admitting that the pet mechanic in this game is borked, and we mustn’t have that.

This comment from someone on my server in WvW says it all. You will never hear a comment like this about thieves or mesmers.

Once again you are resorting to a strawman argument to make some kind of moral equivalence between fanboys who troll and those who identify certain behaviors as fanboy trolling. I usually don’t respond to strawman arguments because it just bogs you down in refuting an argument that isn’t yours, but my language was pretty clear. I didn’t say “anyone who doesn’t agree that the game is broken is a fanboy” I said “My opinion is that people who deny the obvious fact that there are aspects of the game that are broken are fanboys”

The difference between these two statements is unmistakable to anyone being honest. The “game is broken” is an opinion. You are free to differ with that opinion. That there are aspects of the game that are dysfunctional is not an opinion, it is proven fact. Even the developers acknowledge this. Fanboys by definition are those people who get extremely defensive about games and often refuse to acknowledge aspects of the game that are broken even when they are obvious, proven, and admitted to by developers. Do you fall into this definition? I don’t know, but I never called you a fanboy jerk. That’s what you chose to read into my comments.

As for the “tone” of criticisms in these forums, I have spoken before about tone trolling, or ignoring the substance of people’s arguments to attack them for the manner in which they express them. This is the internet, and comments here are a helluva lot more moderate in tone than most forums I’ve been on.

Most of us assume that Anet developers are mature adults who, if they are sincere about fixing the game, will welcome feedback in whatever form it takes. If their customers are angry about something that’s something a legitimate company wants to know about so they can address it. You apparently think they cannot handle anything but mindless adulation, and will reject any complaint that isn’t wrapped up in a nice package with a pink fluffy bunny ribbon on top.

When developers lie to us, or come in here to troll or blow smoke up our kitten, anger is the appropriate and correct response, not sycophantic fawning and demands to respond to them only in hushed and reverent tones. It’s been a year now and there are still major issues with this class that haven’t been fixed. Instead we got some heavy-handed and gratuitous nerfs. There is no longer any excuse for this neglect and people are right to complain about it.

Star Ace.5207:

Cuchullain.3104:

Sandpit.3467:

Wow, can’t believe the garbage being spouted in here these days. Rangers are kittened, even ANet know that. They are especially a joke in dungeons, really broken. Now we have people saying that they shouldn’t be using bows if they want to play ranger. How broken is that?

Rangers regularly get kicked from parties because everyone knows how crap they are, and yet still we get people saying they are fine! Unbelievable.

The people saying “Ranger is fine!” and complaining about people complaining are just typical fanboy trolls. Every game forum is infested with them. Ignore them.

Your post is actually a trolling post. “Anyone who disagrees with me must be a fanboi”. Read yourself again and see. There’ is also no counter to it, because you can always claim that people who are positive about Rangers MUST be fanboi trolls, just because they disagree with how you see the current Ranger. Therefore, either you were angry while writing and genuine about your bitter feelings, or trolling the supposed “fanbois.”

If you were honest in your comments above, take no offense, but not everybody who enjoys current Ranger must be a “fanboi.” They may just genuinely think differently than you do, and actually enjoy playing their character-it’s only fair to allow them the right, no?

That would all make sense if it wasn’t a complete strawman. I never said everyone who is “positive” about the game is a fanboy troll. I never said people who disagree with me are fanboys. I disagree with your false dichotomy between “positive” players (those who side with everything Anet does) and “negative” players (those who are complaining about broken mechanics in an effort to get them fixed).

My opinion is that people who deny the obvious fact that there are aspects of the game that are broken are fanboys. “Ranger is fine” is an all-inclusive denial that anything is wrong, which no matter how positive or comfortable you are with the class is a blatant lie. The refusal to acknowledge that a game is deficient or broken in some areas coupled with personal attacks is the defining characteristic of the fanboy. See the definition.

People who constantly accuse people of “whining,” telling them they need to L2P or launch into personal attacks for addressing the class’s deficiencies are trolls. They see people who are upset about something and immediately try to get a rise out of those people by making them more upset and angry. People who complain about broken mechanics are complaining about something substantial. People who complain about complaining are trying to attack the person’s character for making a criticism about the game. One is legit, the other is trolling.

People are free to disagree with anything anyone writes here and be “positive” about the game (if you think thwarting efforts by others to get the game fixed is “positive”). Launching endless, repetitive, rubberstamp ad hominem attacks, denying that things are broken and making it harder for those of us who like the game to get the game fixed is not being positive. It’s being a fanboy jerk.

I love how if I have an enemy targeted and hit my wolf F2, my wolf stays in place and howls at me. But if I hit my bear F2, the bear runs to the enemy and tries to apply his condition remover to the enemy, rather than me. Makes sense.

I run a bear to serve as a target dummy in zerg fights, sending him in as a decoy to draw enemy fire for my side and occasionally I can get that F2 to work….somehow. I know how annoying it is to have to tab-target through dozens of useless pets (that aren’t even worth shooting at unless you have no other targets) to get a human to shoot at. I try to return that courtesy to the opposition.

I also figure a live bear is worth more than a dead wolf, despite the otherwise superior damage of the wolf. Bear can tank guards pretty well for solo camp taking.

But yeah, I agree bears suck.

Not until huge numbers of rangers leave the game, which is hard to ascertain given that this game doesn’t have a subscription fee. It’s what it took for the developers of that other game who thought people would be willing to play a target dummy class forever to wake up. When hundreds of thousands of hunters left that game because of the same exact BS Anet is pulling on us they finally wised up. I am one of them, and I will never buy another product from that company because of this and their utter lack of respect for the time I invested in that game. Ditto for Anet and NCSoft unless they clean up their act.

Sandpit.3467:

Wow, can’t believe the garbage being spouted in here these days. Rangers are kittened, even ANet know that. They are especially a joke in dungeons, really broken. Now we have people saying that they shouldn’t be using bows if they want to play ranger. How broken is that?

Rangers regularly get kicked from parties because everyone knows how crap they are, and yet still we get people saying they are fine! Unbelievable.

The people saying “Ranger is fine!” and complaining about people complaining are just typical fanboy trolls. Every game forum is infested with them. Ignore them.

Thanks guys this is really a great new feature. My bank is bleeding WvW badges right now and the ability to pool resources across all characters is awesome. I can go into WvW with any character I like and no longer worry where the karma is going or which toon is going to spend it.

Those guys wanted you dead like you violated their sister Should have had Benny Hill music for that pursuit.

Target dummy for the elite classes in WvW. The ranger is designed to fail in anything but a pro’s hands, and even there…it lacks. This game is geared toward having ridiculously op classes downing people with passive abilities like retaliation or three-shotting them when standing there like an idiot getting shot at fails. Someone has to be the broken class that’s easy to down and spike. That’s us.

The guy with a pirate hat and a pet next to him is always easy to identify and kill. Rangers are definitely my easiest kills and rarely kill me unless they are melee.

You will see a group of wolves north of Umberglade supply camp, most of which are hostile and there are some veterans with them. In between them you will see the green juvenile wolves. I see them there all the time and often aim for them to run past the hostile ones without aggroing them.

JorneMormel.9850:

Iavra.8510:

Retaliation currently punishes every class for using multi-hitting AoEs in a zerg. Mesmer Blurred Frenzy/Feedback (reflected projectiles count as yours), engi granades, even guardian Whirling Wrath can easily kill the user.

There needs to be some kind of internal CD to retal (like, you can’t get more than 5 ticks/sec from it) at least in WvW only. Won’t change anything for 1v1/smallscale but nerfs retal for zerg fights.

I have a few questions about this. Why nerf retaliation? As it stands now, it’s a mechanism to defend against AoE’s in larger group and it doesn’t affect AoE damage from siege weapons. So nerfing relatiation would only promote mindless spamming AoE’s instead of mindlessly spamming auto-attack. Also how else would you promote more active (small scale) play in WvW? As it stands now you either hold up in your tower and camp AC’s or go with the blob if you want to be succesful at higher tiers.

To me the only real problems with Barrage are the root in place and the last decrease in damage being too much.

Retaliation hurts classes like longbow ranger whose main attacks are channeled, so it hits some classes harder than others. It encourages mindless zergs and makes it harder for small groups to fight big groups because big groups will have tons of retaliation up and will be able to keep it up longer making it extremely painful to use aoe against them. Retaliation does not punish you for “mindless” use of aoe, it punishes you for “any” use of aoe, even when that use is tactically appropriate.

Anet seems to favor OP classes running around in massive OP zergs ROFLstomping outnumbered and outclassed groups rather than having combat be balanced and challenging for all. The only thing worse than being wiped by an unstoppable, all powerful zerg you can’t shoot at without dying is being in that unstoppable, all-powerful zerg, where you can kitten little groups with massive aoe and they can’t fight back. The former can be challenging if frustrating but the latter is just boring as hell.

I was able to solo T4 Evon as a full zerker with longbow and Eagle Eye for max range.

It was actually easier than in a group as the groups I tried it with kept running forward and aggroing the mobs and getting killed.

The name of the game is to kill the plunderers while not aggroing the mobs. So if you stay on the left side of the beach at first, and use wolf and dog for their knockdown effect, you can stop and kill the runners before they get too far. After each kill switch to the other pet to get a pet with a fresh knockdown. Also switch pets and run away if you or the pet aggro the mobs. If the runners do slip away the longbow’s range can be very helpful in downing them on the way out or back in.

You can pretty much ignore the mortar guys unless you chase too far. If you are getting hit by them you are definitely further out then you should be.

Contrary to what many have said, there will be plunderers running on the right side even if you solo so you also have to take them out.

jubskie.3152:

Nothing wrong with reminding people of existing issues, but posting like the class is broken to the point of being unplayable is just spreading misinformation.

I see a lot of glass half-empty people in this thread.

Show me where anyone says the class is broken to the point of being unplayable. The fact that people play the class and make do as best they can proves that no one believes this. The class is broken though, kitten many of our abilities don’t work properly or are unreliable. Push a button and what is supposed to happen often doesn’t. That’s what “broken” means. It’s like switching a light switch on and some times the light comes on, and at others you have to spam it on and off to get it to work. Pointing to the times it works as evidence that it’s not broken is incorrect.

You can work around these things to some extent, but having to do so tends to ruin the fun for many people.

Games are supposed to be fun, not a job. This is what people rightfully complain about. They are trying to get these things fixed and are fed up with Anet ignoring the problems for so long.

Durzlla.6295:

As it turns out… Magi, Soldiers, and Carrion gear (oh look the 3 i use lol), have next to no issue against retal because hey, vitality is awesome vs condis and retal.

braces himself for “Those Sets are terrible!” posts

Yeah, wear a full PVT set just to avoid damage from retaliation. That’s a solution.

How about this for a solution: get rid of retaliation. It’s stupid to punish people for shooting the enemy while rewarding them for being shot.

I like my solution better, don’t you?

stale.9785:

Am I really the only ranger playing who doesn’t have a problem with retaliation? Honestly, there’s another thread up that I’ve been posting in where someone is complaining because if they’re specced as glass and unload rapid fire on a guardian with retaliation, they suffer damage. WTF people?

Either 1) learn to check your bloody target before unloading a skill (single target, obviously) or 2) tap a direction key to cancel the channel and get a reduced cooldown on the skill if you start to eat retaliation damage. This isn’t neurosurgery.

Retaliation is up most of the time in any group that knows what it’s doing. So your “choice” here boils down to shoot and kill yourself or don’t shoot and let the enemy kill you. When the enemy can three shot you you don’t have time to look for icons over his head you have to act and hope for the best. Hesitate a microsecond and you will be dead before you get your Rapid Fire off, because it is useless at close range against anyone with the sense to run behind you or circle kite you.

There shouldn’t be a penalty for shooting people, especially not one that does more damage to you than them.

Retaliation should be removed from WvW altogether. I can think of no other game where you are punished for shooting at an opponent while the opponent is rewarded for grouping in a nice aoe-able ball and getting shot. Completely counterintuitive and frustrating to deal with.

This is nobody’s idea of a fun time in PVP:

Tooltip: Unleash a Divine Wind that let’s you sacrifice 70 percent of your health by shooting at retaliation-spam zergs while doing minimal damage.

They nerfed some of our best pets, like the wolf, 5o percent. My pet dies standing at my side in WvW yet we don’t have an option to stow them in combat. It’s ridiculous.

They also severely nerfed longbow damage in this patch, and gave us some wonky stealth mechanic that doesn’t work all that well. It is supposedly an escape tool, but you have to shoot someone to get stealth and that puts you in combat and slows you down. We still have variable range damage which is horrible given the realities of WvW and PVE where a lot of combat occurs at close range. Longbow has a very narrow cone of fire in front of it and it is kitten near impossible to circle kite someone at close range with it as you will cancel the shot with the slightest turn.

Oh, did I mention that Rapid Fire still looks like this:

Obstructed, Obstructed, Out of Range, 1256, Obstructed.

Out of 8 times I tracked my use of stealth in WvW it has failed 6 times and worked twice. One time it failed was due to a warrior blocking it and the other times I have no clue. Beyond that my impression is that it fails a lot though I haven’t been keeping tabs or noticing why it fails. Add that to Point Blank Shot which routinely fails due to the 1/2 second cast time allowing NPCs and humans to get behind you and cause the shot to fail.

I don’t know why some people are so enthusiastic about the changes. The class is still broken and while stealth is a “step in the right direction” it is a baby step and still dysfunctional and of marginal utility given its high failure rate and requirement that you hit someone. It simply is not something you can rely on in combat and at best it’s kind of a Hail Mary Pass and nothing else.

Haven’t had a chance to test it in WvW yet but if you hit someone with retaliation up does it break stealth? I see that having condition damage on you from PVE mobs does. Can confirm that PVE mobs just stand there waiting for you to come out of stealth.

Some of us are getting tired of these repetitious fanboy troll posts that say the same kitten thing over and over again we’ve been hearing for decades on dozens of gamer boards.

We get it: everyone who doesn’t like a change or complains needs to L2P and stop qq’ing and go play another game and be positive and adapt and worship the Precious or they will feel the wrath of the Precious. Someone needs to come up with a standard fanboy response form you can fill out with blank spaces for things like class, game name and company so you can just fill it out once and then spam it to the forums ad nauseum. This will save you a lot of typing.

Anet is a corporation, not your girlfriend. They could care less about you so long as the money keeps rolling in.

JonPeters.5630:

Among other benefits the stealth on hunters also let’s you cast the beginning of barrage without detection.

Now if I can just fire a barrage at a zerg without taking 4 to 10k damage from retaliation…

Almost everyone who accuses other players of “crying” is a troll. It is an attempt to get under your skin and make you more angry. The “_______ is fine” meme is also a dead giveaway.

If you were ever on the hunter forums in WoW, you would have seen a dynamic identical to what we are seeing here, both in terms of how the developer treated the class (continuous nerfs while acknowledging that the class was lagging behind in all areas) and the rabid defense of fanboys and trolls. The comments here are verbatim straight from those forums, just substitute the word “ranger” for hunter.

Wading through troll/fanboy/braggart comments to get to what the intelligent and thoughtful people are saying grows pretty kitten ed old too, especially when the same hackneyed fanboy arguments and comments are repeated millions of times on dozens of game forums.

But to the OP, after reading that my ranger wants to release all his pets back into the wild, and /wrists with an arrowhead from her broken shortbow

Be grateful we got nothing but a bug fix in this update. The nerfs are coming in the next one

They are not going to fix anything, but continue to nerf the class. That is my prediction. Let’s see them prove me wrong.

And to think I used to get annoyed accidentally picking those banners up while looting. Sorry warriors, I didn’t realize. We’re not worthy!

hyjaxxx.1584:

With everyone in agreement that a new blast finisher needs to be added to the Ranger Roster Arena Net immediately started Beta Testing new potential moves!

This kid is going to grow up to play thief, then come back and three shot you with heartseeker spam.

If you are unable to address criticisms of your podcasts or Anet developer decisions without…

1. Accusing critics of thinking Anet is out to get them.
2. Launching into ad hominem attacks against critics.
3. Demanding that people limit themselves to “constructive” comments when discussing Dear Leader.
4. Demanding that people who are upset about changes leave the game.
5. Creating strawman arguments against critics
6. Denying the obvious bugs that plague this class.
7. Insisting that critics must hate the game or people that like it.
8. Tone trolling and demanding that people be civil towards you when you are engaging in the above behavior.

….then please refrain from posting in forums frequented by adults who do not share your opinions. You respond to the changes the way you like and I will do the same. I’ll leave the validity or accuracy of our respective comments to the judgment of the reader. But no one needs or is convinced by your ad hom attacks or tone trolling. So follow your own advice and keep “emotion” out of it.

You have a lot of nerve attacking people here for their tone when most of your comments are ad hominems, and when the podcast you showed featured snide, condescending and hostile attacks against critics of the poorly-considered changes Anet made. So demanding people be “positive” when your own tone is so relentlessly negative is hypocrisy.

What more can be said of a video that actually claims the shortbow range reduction was positive? By apologizing for Anet’s incompetent handling of the ranger class you are in fact throwing us all under the bus. Are we supposed to be grateful for this?

As to the claim that I am “exaggerating” when I claim that pets sometimes don’t stand by our side when we stop but run forward as much kitten feet ahead of us into aoe or aggroing NPC mobs, here is proof. I have other screencaps like this. Considering we often have to stand on the edge of aoe circles to get range on our opponents a pet that runs even 5 feet ahead can be a severe nuisance, let alone the distance shown here.

jubskie.3152:

I have never once said that the Ranger is perfect as it is right now. In fact I’m one of the people that badly want it to get fixed. What I am against, however, are people like Cucuhullain that greatly exaggerate the shortcomings of the Ranger class.

If I were to believe him, my longbow would never ever hit a moving target, which is false, and all of the people I’ve hit with my dog’s knockdown is afk or a noob. which is also false. Also, the pet range is 2000, so how can my pet be 50 feet ahead of me?

Nothing I wrote is an exaggeration but in fact has been reported by hundreds of people other than me. If you were truly interested in getting things fixed rather than apologizing for Anet, you would realize this.

You, on the other hand, are exaggerating my complaints and putting words in my mouth. Nowhere did I say you can’t hit a moving target. I said that people can dodge your longbow shots by moving sideways at range or running behind you while you fire. Anyone who plays this class realizes this. I also said that pets can’t hit moving targets, and this is also true. Our pets hits when the enemy stops or slows down, or someone ccs him for us.

I never said our dog knockdowns don’t work, but that they are easily avoided by moving or dodging, which is true. The knockdown takes two seconds to proc and is obvious as hell, so any good player will be long gone by the time it does. That is not the same as saying ti never lands or that only scrubs get hit by it. A good player can be hit by it from behind or in the confusion of a zerg as I clearly stated.

As far as the pet being “50 feet” ahead I am obviously scaling real world distance to the game world as we don’t have a standard of measure in the game world. Stop being so obviously and willfully obtuse and trying to obfuscate the point. The fact is our pets often do not stay at our side when we stop and run ahead into the aoe by a distance at least the equivalent of a 900 to 1200 range weapon. Similarly they lag behind when me move or doge out of aoe. A huge percentage of pet in aoe problems would be solved by either letting us stow them when necessary or forcing them to stay by our side when they are not attacking.

jubskie.3152:

Sigh.

Another one of those people that greatly exaggerate their claims. No point replying to you, you’re just using me as a sounding board for your rants.

You are just using me and everyone else who complains about this class to minimize the problems everyone is reporting by making the problem about us, rather than the broken class design. You do this by tone trolling, launching ad hominem attacks, and deliberately exaggerating and obfuscating the points people present here. That was pretty much the tone of the Attk video as well.

Were you the one on the video claiming that the shotbow nerf was actually positive, because it is easier to flank in a 900 long arc than a 1200 arc? If so that was truly an exercise in cynical sophistry. You and the other people on that video remind me of those downsizing specialists whose jobs it is to explain why getting fired from your job of 20 years is really a positive, life-improving experience.

jcbroe.4329:

I’m sorry, but anybody who is advocating that a system where it is okay for an AI controlled creature to be doing an extreme portion of rangers damage is a person who I am glad isn’t in charge of developing the game, because it is the least competitive aspect of guild wars 2 period; being able to hit F1 and have the pet do insanely good damage for not having any control over it other than yes attack, no come back, please swap, and maybe use the F2 ability after I’ve hit it 10 times.

Pets need to do less damage, and the player needs to be more active in order to be effective, end of story. If people can’t comprehend why what I’ve said is true, then they truly don’t understand what makes a game competitive or skill based, and aren’t ever going to hear their opinions heard as such because they’d rather have a mechanic carry them through the game than actually play the game themselves.

I don’t see where anyone argues that pets should do an extreme amount of damage. I disputed the notion that they do extreme amounts of damage because they are so easy to avoid. When I have a ranger pet on me I just run in a little circle while firing and the pet does nothing. Simple fact is that with or without a pet my berserker warrior with a rifle does more damage one-on-one than my berseker ranger with wolf pet, and has a helluva lot more survivability and utility to boot.

As far as the ranger doing the lion’s share of the damage I am all for that. I think the ranger should do 100 percent of the damage and the pet should just be for utilities. Putting a huge amount of the damage we are supposed to be able to do as well as many of our utilities on a poorly coded AI pet that can’t hit moving targets, likes to bathe in aoe, has broken F2 abilities and gets insta-gibbed in WvW is not exactly my idea of “competitive” gameplay either.

jubskie.3152:

What I understand from that is he sent his pet to assist allies while he did his duty to the team. It was never explicitly stated that the pet alone was downing enemies.

Also, you talk like the pet forcing someone to dodge is a bad thing. If your enemy uses a dodge to avoid the knockdown, he has one less dodge to use against your attacks.

He doesn’t have to dodge, he just has to move, which he should be doing anyway. This is all he has to do to “dodge” my longbow as well, just strafe sideways or run behind me. I have to dodge to avoid his attacks which don’t usually miss constantly like mine do, and pets not only do not dodge but when you stop they run forwards 50 feet ahead of you into aoe circles, or they lag behind and sit in them when you dodge or run out of them. Forcing me to run back 100 feet to get my pet out of aoe isn’t good for the enemy? Pets are also slow and will often die before they even reach the enemy.

The idea that our pets are in any way OP is a joke.

jubskie.3152:

Cuchullain.3104:

Bas.7406:

They nerfed pet damage because it was bordering on ridiculous levels. In every single episode of Attk, Battosai kept repeating how insane pet damage was, and that half the time he could sick his pet and wipe out multiple people while he was standing back watching his back point.

The Barrage nerf is baffling since LB hits so weak and takes forever to do it.

If this video is any guide he is full of it. Even as a glass cannon ranger other ranger pets don’t do squat for damage against me, and it is easy to avoid any damage just by moving around. The only way your pet is going to kill multiple people is if they are all afk. I’d like to see how long it takes a solo pet to down a tanky guardian who is not fighting back, let alone multiple active players who are.

You’re taking the wrong approach to this whole thing. Batto never said anything about a solo pet downing a tanky guardian, or killing people all by itself. Which is obviously not gonna happen on a player that pays attention.

He uses pets in tandem with his ranger, which is how it’s supposed to be. One of his examples is using dogs and when it knocks down a target, he unloads all the conditions he can via traps, axes and torches before the target recovers.

What part of this didn’t you understand:

“In every single episode of Attk, Battosai kept repeating how insane pet damage was, and that half the time he could sick his pet and wipe out multiple people while he was standing back watching his back point. "

If this statement is true, he appears to be claiming that his pet could solo multiple people while he stood back and watched. My response was that pets are so weak they could not solo a tanky guardian who was standing there and not fighting back. I know because I have fought a guardian like this in WvW with not just my pet, but my full on damage with a long bow and he just stood there and laughed at me… literally.

Wolf knock down is a joke. The windup for this attack is like 2 seconds and telegraphed a mile way. Only players who are unaware or not paying attention could possibly be caught by it (like in the mass confusion of a zerg). All you have to do to avoid is run away or dodge. Wolf F2 fails to go off most of the time just like other F2 abilities.

As often reported here and obvious to anyone who plays the class, our pets can’t hit moving targets and get insta-gibbed when we use them in zerg fights. So in any kind of one-one-one with someone with a clue, your pet is just a mild nuisance forcing your opponent to move around as he usually will be doing anyway if he’s in any way experienced.

Bas.7406:

They nerfed pet damage because it was bordering on ridiculous levels. In every single episode of Attk, Battosai kept repeating how insane pet damage was, and that half the time he could sick his pet and wipe out multiple people while he was standing back watching his back point.

The Barrage nerf is baffling since LB hits so weak and takes forever to do it.

If this video is any guide he is full of it. Even as a glass cannon ranger other ranger pets don’t do squat for damage against me, and it is easy to avoid any damage just by moving around. The only way your pet is going to kill multiple people is if they are all afk. I’d like to see how long it takes a solo pet to down a tanky guardian who is not fighting back, let alone multiple active players who are.

Durzlla.6295:

It’s not, Anet likes to focus on one or two profs at a time, this patch was warrior and necro, rangers day is coming to shine, just be patient

Your check is in the mail.

Xsorus.2507:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Yes, we care about the forums. We also care about all the classes equally.

sign

You honestly shouldn’t bother posting one line posts here like this, it will only make me more angry in the long run.

Esp after you nerf a class.

It will be seen as nothing more than trolling.

I have to agree this comes across as trolling. Not only is he lying right to our faces but he is doing so after a completely unnecessary and excessive nerf which has justifiably enraged a lot of people. Any fool could have seen that coming into the forums with a trite, dishonest one-liner complete with cutesy smiley face was only going to enrage people more.

Apparently we are supposed to clap happily like trained seals whenever a dev shows up here, no matter what he says.