Guild Wars 2

It’s a fair point that Rangers lack a true condition only weapon (other than OH weapons) since both the SB and Axe are hybrid weapons, but the sword doesn’t seem like the obvious choice to fix this with.

Axe seems like the obvious choice, since it’s already much much closer to being a condition weapon than the sword is. With that it mind, wouldn’t it be better to change the Axe #1 to give it a condition and fix it all that way, rather than bring the Sword into it unnessesarily?

I’m really doubting it will be melee at all, mainly because of the skins in the game. Most of the staff skins would look rediculous with any sort of melee attack, so if they wanted to make a melee staff I think they’d have created a new weapon entirely to get around it (like bo staff or spear) rather than have they new shiny explansion look like a tacky rushed out add-on.

Edit: Oh, fluff beat me to it :P

Dude you can’t change weapons or armour while in combat.

Hmm strange, I usually find Warriors to be among the easiest matchup on a trap build.

In any case, I’d suggest taking a sword. The easiest way to beat anyone is to make them sit in your traps for the entire duration, and the easiest way to do that (especially if they are throwing off your soft CC) is to sit in the traps yourself. This of course means being able to avoid damage while doing this, but with a S/D plus a regular dodge you can avoid any attacks for a good 3 seconds while they sit there and take all the pulses, and then just sword2 out of there and swap back to the SB.

Sube Dai.8496:

Yeh I will try honed axes as well for the aoe winters bite. That is a great buff to that skill.

Along with the CD reduction.. it’s a huge buff to a skill which frankly didn’t need one. Should be fun

What Heimskarl said. SB is great because it’s so hard to counter. It’s ranged, making it hard to kite away from, it does decent condition and direct damage making it hard for any one build to shrug it off, and it is AA dependant meaning it can’t be countered with a well timed evade / block / reflect (like Axe, GS and LB can be), and it’s condition damage is done through short-duration fast-application meaning it’s not really even effected by cleanses.

It’s the ultimate damage over time weapon.

Basicly they should have just invested MUCH more time into making genuinely good AI in this game in the first place. It would solve most of our pet problems, help Minionmancers, and make the PvE in the game more engaging that the “stack and full DPS” situation we have. Would have probably saved them time in the long run since they wouldnt have to keep going back and adding in so many crazy mechanics and rules to PvE content to try and stop people doing that.

Coming in off-topic (something I seem to do a lot :s), but looking at link ItIsFinished just posted made me wonder…

With the new trait system can we still take 2 Adept Traits rather and 1 Adept and 1 Master? Or are we locked into taking one in each tier?

I ask because as a SB fan I definately want both Sharpened Edges and Light on your Feet, which are both going to be in the Adept slot.

We’ll have to wait and see what they change on traps, but like Heim said, it’s unlikely. Traps are all condition damage and our melee weapons are all power (GS) and mostly power (Sword). You can get away with using one melee weapon for survivability, but using both? I doubt it, unless they make traps do a serious amount of direct damage.

You could try the obsidian sanctum for duels. The server I play on (and those I play against) don’t seem to make much use of it and I can never find anyone there.. but I know people on other servers who do.

As others have said, there really is no replacement for dueling with someone over and over again and discussing it with them.

If you really can’t do that though, the next best is to record your fights and watch them back. You’d be amazed how many stupid / strange / unessesary things you suddenly notice yourself doing when you watch it back, and being aware of those things the next time does help you stop doing them.

I know you don’t have the kit on all the time, but it does still replace your weapons a significate portion of the time which for a Ranger is a much bigger deal. It also encourages people to equip the the kit, spam all the traps and them unequip it to get back to their weapons, which is a terrible design.

It doesn’t suit us, it’s not how we are designed to work.

I’ve never liked this idea because I don’t think it works for Rangers.

Engineers are built to use kits. It’s what they do, and so they don’t rely on their weapon skills. They have a toolkit to give them some survivability and utility when using their kits.

Rangers don’t have that.. we need our weapon skills, not least for survivability. I don’t think it would play well and frankly I don’t think having 2 utility slots would make up for losing our weapon skills constantly to use traps.

Or we could just wait till all the specialisations are properly detailed before complaining about one being too strong?

Just a thought.

Change wise I think we’ve done pretty well, actually.

I will say though I do hate the way they do Streams, especially when it comes to the Ranger. It is prettyy cringeworthy how they constantly try to be funny when actually I’d much rather they just went through each change and why they did it in a professional way. Hell, maybe it wouldnt have taken them 4 hours to get through if they’d just get on with giving us the info and cut the crap.

So personally I don’t watch the streams anymore.. I just read the notes Dulfy always makes because at least she cuts to the chase. But like I said, as far as content goes, the Ranger is getting some of the best changes I think.

@Sebrent

I know. I am certainly not saying Moas are great, but what I am getting at is that so far you are assuming / planning around you being the only source of fury. I’m just pointing out that you could quite easily be in a group where you are giving eachother fury constantly and that this takes this trait from being really good to genuinely OP.

Yeah…. It’s definately getting an ICD :P

And hell, all this is assuming solo play. Get yourself a team of 3-4 Rangers like this, all with WH, Beastmaster’s Bond and maybe some Moa’s and we take it to the next level of silliness.

LughLongArm.5460:

It already is …. Sharpened Edges: You and your pet have a chance (66%) to cause bleeding (3s) on critical hits.
Its both you and your pet and they raised the duration to 3 sec, kinda strong trait.

Offtopic but I keep meaning to ask this…

I saw the duration was 3s on this trait now, is that actually a confirmed change or did the character they showed it on in the Stream just have +duration boosting it to 3?

You guess correctly.

Stealth Attacks are attacks done from stealth in place of the normal #1 attack. All weapons have one.

As far as giving advice on how to land a good BS… I will leave that to someone else. I am a pretty inexperienced thief too^^

I agree EB and SotF really shouldn’t be in the same line, but moving EB to the BM line seems a strange choice. The whole point of the BM line is the make the pet better, so why would you them put a trait which makes it quite a lot worse in there?

It’s fine how it is now. SotF in NM, EB is WS.

It’s more or less only there because it’s one of those traits with every class has some version of, like SA. Our isn’t very good.. but it’s sure as hell not going anywhere.

I wasn’t expecting HoT till the mid summer at the earliest, but I don’t actually follow oe read any of the news so… what would I know :P

Of all the new trait this is definately my favourite. So many possibilities. Not sure which will be the best but I look forward to trying it all out

And lets not forget.. we still have a new weapon coming.. who knows what wonders this trait might have with that^^

Durzlla.6295:

I love how remorseless went from absolute garbage trait that doesn’t synergize with anything to being amazing and synergizing with EVERYHING.

Well after years of failing.. it’s time to over-compensate

A thought though.. They will have to put an ICD on Remorseless because otherwise you could just use RaO and get fury every 3s… plus other fury sources (not least Two-Handed Training and cleaving with a GS) you could easily be getting +25% every other attack, possibly every attack with some luck.

I haven’t read the other classes changes yet… but I think it would be pretty naive to think they aren’t also looking at some huge buffs. I wouldn’t get too carried away till we see how this all works in action :P

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Why not put traps on Druid staff? Like marks.

Really wouldnt suit Rangers. We depend on our evades on our weapons for survival, unlike the Necro who just face take everything. Losing our weapon skills to use traps would be pretty bad.

I read it to mean another class will get traps.

My guess is going to Mesmers. Could have some crazy mind-trap style skills^^

I can see why some people dislike the change, I mean everyone has their preference… But I can’t see why it’s objectively worse.

I mean before, the only thing people wanted was GWEN, with a very heavy focus on the GW part and just a few of the EN part. To me, that was pretty boring. With things as we are now, pretty much every class can get in on the action… so objectively I would say things are better now, even if you personally prefered the 2 class melee train.

All look like great changes to me, although so much is changing I fully expect every build will need updating which will probably ruffle some feathers… But for me, I like change so I am looking forward to it

Ooooh exciting news.

Traps are the obvious one.. I mean we’ve been asking for them to be merged / set at default since forever.

You really do like looking at numbers.. All interesting stuff, thanks Though not at all surprising to me since, as I said right at the start, I am a huge SB fan. I always knew it was amazing :P

It’s always been fairly generous with the flanking requirement.

Was bored so I went tried it… that’s me standing on the exact point where I start putting on bleeds.

So yeah, you are still more infront of them than you are to the side when the bleeds kick in.

I feel the Final DPS should include CD times, or there should be another column to factor that in.

Also, I am not sure what to suggest on this front.. but it does seem a little hard to take the list seriously when Poison Volley is showing as our 3rd best DPS attack. I mean I can see why it is, because it has an insanely low cast time which is pushing the DPS unnaturally high… But it does seem a bit misleading. Having another column for Cast Time + Aftercast + CD should mitigate it though, I think.

But still, thanks for this

P.S. I take full credit for “making you want to crunch some numbers” the other day

You can just as easily argue that GS can be easily kited whereas SB can’t be. Obviously in a real situation there are many more factors and every fight will have a different “actual” DPS value for each weapon.. All we can reall compare on the forums is their theoritical values.

In regards to the Axe… Yeah that’s why I dislike it so much. Obviously it has the bouncing, which takes it’s damage waaaay up… but I just find it too situational. Against a Mesmer the bounces are amazing… against a Ranger they can be great to, if they aren’t using a ranged pet… but for anything else the only pressure it has is the #2, which bugs me.

StickerHappy.8052:

Gotejjeken.1267:

SB mathematically scales a bit better with power on the autos than GS. It in no way out damages it in cleave situations or if you factor in Maul.

Scales better? How? Tried slotting zerk amy. Sb aa does 205 with 1.8k power while gs aa does 405 with the same stats.

Don’t forgot to factor in attack speed^^ Big numbers mean nothing if you only do them at a fraction of the speed.

Well, my original answer still is the answer.

The short duration of the bleeds is purely to balance the SBs attack speed. Clearly it can’t be applying bleeds of the same duration as other weapons but firing twice as fast as them. So the short duration is purely a reaction to it’s attack speed.

The flanking, on the other hand, is a balance for the fact that the SB has a very high power scaling compared to other classes bleed-AAs. If you remove the flanking you need to remove the high direct damage to bring it in line, which is ultimately what I am against here.

@Sebrent

You just asked why the SB had half the bleed duration of other AAs. I interprited that to mean you thought it shouldn’t be half, and therefore assumed you wanted it doubled. In any case, I anwered your question.

@StickerHappy
Well now we’re sort of comparing apples with oranges if we are comparing a #3 skill to the AA, but still, I take your point.

One could argue, though, that the scepters damage is much easier to avoid which is what balances it’s superior theoritical performance (just as melee attacks are all better on paper and are blaanced by hpw hard they are to land), as it comes in the form of a very long, obvious, interuptable / avoidable channel, which has a CD. The SB, on the other hand, actually has no real counter play you can use.

And in any case, I have already conceded that the SBs other skills could use some love, rather than the AA.

Genuinely not sure why you think the Mesmer Scepter has good power scaling.

I mean sure it has decent coefficients, but concidering the SB attacks well over twice as fast, the SB blows the Mesmer Scepter right out of the water in terms of direct damage.

The short duration is balanced by it’s much faster attack speed, the flank balances the hybrid-ness.

Necro Scepter does 5s bleeds, but only attacks once per seconds. If crossfire did 6s bleeds (double, like you are suggesting) every 0.54s then thats clearly taking the kitten.

Sebrent.3625:

They are already getting twice the bleed per auto-attack as Ranger shortbow but without requiring flanking. I don’t see why we couldn’t have our bleed, which is half the duration of theirs, without the flanking requirement

You pretty much answered your own question when you worked out the SBs DPS earlier. The Ranger SB is not a condition weapon, it’s a hybrid weapon.

The Engineers pistol or Necromancers Scepter or Eles Dagger / Scepter.. they do put on much longer bleeds with no flanking but they do truely aweful direct damage. It’s because they are full on condition weapons whereas the Ranger SB just isnt. It’s a hybrid weapon so of course it doesn’t do conditions as well.

The exception here is the Warriors sword which does both insanely well. I suppose ANet sees that as balanced by the fact it’s a melee weapon. Personally I am not convinced it’s entirely balance but thats a problem with their sword not our SB.

Also, it is a fair comment that Rangers actually do lack a condition-only MH weapon. We only have the Axe and SB, both of which I would class as hybrids rather than purely condition based. So in that sense I see where you’re all coming from in wanting more from the SB, but it’s not because the SB is broken at the moment.. it’s because it was never designed to be the pure condition weapon you all want.

If I were you, I’d look at getting the MH axe AA changed instead… You could drops it’s power coefficent right down (because who actually cares about it anyway) and maybe make it apply torment of the first hit, bleed on the second and weakness on the final bounce. Or something. Something to make it the condition weapon you all want rather than a slightly awkward hybrid. The Axe is a far better candidate for going condition-only than the SB.

Well, I am still a huge fan of the SB because I like the flexibility it brings to a hybrid build (which is what I like to play).

It’s direct damage is not that bad. It does about 25% less damage than the LB AA (at 1000+ range), which is of course noticably worse but still enough to give people serious problems.

Then there’s the bleeds it applies, which in my opinion are fine just the way they are. It requires more work and postioning than just kitten-a-kitten stand at 900 range and press 1, but if you get it right and make the use of the Rangers soft CC you can get plenty of bleeds out.

Then there’s the insane first rate, which synergies beautifully with Sharpened Edges as it has no ICD. It also helps proc on-hit/crit sigils a little more often, though not as much since they all come with ICDs.

And then there’re the range. I like to kite people and keep constant pressure on, and that does require having a ranged attack. The only other option is the axe, which is no doubt a fantastic condition / BM weapon, but it’s short range. You only appy pressure at <250 range since Split Blade is worthless further than that and the AA is slow and hit’s poorly.

So yeah… it’s not the be-all and end-all of Ranger weapons, but I think it’s fine as it is and has a unique purpose. It might not match every build or playstyle, but no weapon does (or should).

EDIT: If Anet were to change it though, I would suggest changing the #2 or #4. The SB is already a very AA heavy weapon, so buffing the AA seems an stupid idea even if we all agree’ed the SB needed buffing. The #2 doesn’t fit the weapon that well, and the #4 is good but could be better IMO, so look at changing those if anything.

Just to play devil’s advocat, Gorath, but as far as using Celestial goes that’s not the best.

You have to use all or all but one stat to make Celestial worth it, and in that build you make no use of Condition Damage and pretty much no use of Healing Power.

Mango Pies and Natural Healing don’t scale at all with HP, and Dolyak Runes and TU scale so poorly that they might as well not scale at all. SotW scales OK-ish but that’s about it.

You don’t lose anything particlarly by using Celestial… but it’s really not making any use of it either. Now if you took HS over TU and used some condition apply weapons, then you’d be talking since Regeneration scales really well with Healing Power and some putting that 600 condition damage to even a tiny bit of work would go a long way.

Good suggestion, definatelt needs ro be looked at.

Pretty sad that the minor traits can only be used once per fight unless we take a GM trait and one specific weapon.

Given what we’ve seen on the Revenant and how they will be loaded up with directional AoE attacks, I am pretty much assuming that is what our staff will be like as well.

I usually just ask the person why they can’t counter me if “all I am doing is pressing 2”.

I mean if all I’m doing is pressing one button it should be pretty easy to work around that, right?

StickerHappy.8052:

Cufufalating.8479:

ANet did come out and say classes which were getting a new Off-Hand were getting compensated. Don’t think they said how, but they have acknowledged the issue and said it would be addressed.

But we do not get an OH so are those 5 weapon skills from staff enough to compensate for the lack of pet improvements? I hope not.

I know, I was replying to nagymbear.5280.

Probably should have made that more clear :P

ANet did come out and say classes which were getting a new Off-Hand were getting compensated. Don’t think they said how, but they have acknowledged the issue and said it would be addressed.

Zefort makes a fair point, but I am still in favour of a change along the lines suggested.

I also wonder if giving Resistance might be a nice idea. Would give the skirmishing line some condition management options without adding a straight up cleanse on swap.

I think ItIsFinished summed up the points I wanted to make… A lot of the claims you make simply aren’t factually correct.

RF is never unblockable and Entangle can be overcome by cleansing like any other source of immobilise can be. Also, immob doesn’t prevent you using evasion skills, just dodge-rolling, which is most often how I deal with it since I don’t always have active cleanses available.

I don’t usually like telling people to just L2P, but the fact that you seem to have such a painfully low understanding of Rangers and how our skills work does suggest that you don’t know how to deal with the situation, meaning that the first logical step should be better to educate yourself on the subject.

Let’s be honest, chill kittens off anyone. I mean that kitten is OP and kitten, and it’s actually something Rangers are remarkably good at.

Can’t comment overly ok the OP’s build.. but condi builds focused of chill can be hilarious.

Trying to decipher your post I feel is the first issue we need to address….

From what I can understand the information you’ve given is:

- You use a Stealth Trap build
- You, plus a random team-mate, who was using some Perplexity hybrid build, went against another Ranger 2v1
- Both you and your team-mate have 3k+ armour
- Your opponent had a S/A
- Your opponent had good cleansing
- You lost many times
- Duck snorting was involved
- Bleeding was also somehow invovled.

Honestly… that’s pretty much nothing to go on.