Guild Wars 2

Both proc % and ICD are meaningless when they don’t live long enough to be of any benefit.

Although what is ANet’s idea of a buff in that department? Them dying from 2 hits instead of one from trash mobs? Lol.

Or how about GW1. I stopped playing before Eye of the North but I’m pretty sure the model was to simply have a game that was buy then play. This game doesn’t have expansions yet but it will and we will have to pay for them.

Sneaking Stig.6820:

You could, until A-net nerfed it in September.

Btw; I don’t wanna share my build, but none of the updates that has come over the last months have removed the annoying “Obstructed” even though the MOB is in Melee range of me…

And i’m probably going to get butchered for saying this but:
The pet control in WoW as a hunter is something A-net should be looking at. WoW hunters are truly Beastmasters compared to Rangers here.

I agree. I miss my Loque’nahak. WoW’s pet control is far superior.

I hear ya. There are F2 skills that should be one of the automatically used attack skills and there are attack skills that should be F2.

Much of the following I just finished typing up in a different thread…

I use the naga with the 12 button grid under my thumb. I rebound the F key commands to Shift+# commands. We currently have F1, F2, F3 and F4. We could easily use Shift+# and have up to 12 functions (including “-” and “=”) for our pets.

I too would like to see more control. A go here and/or guard that spot command. An actual revive. Our pets are weak enough to get stomped in less than 10 seconds. Having to wait out 14 seconds before you can save your pet or else face a 60 sec CD is BS. The pet is designed to be far too valuable to the class to have it be so useless.

You’re pet is about to die, swap, 14 sec CD. Your pet dies before the CD is up, you swap and face the 60 CD. That pet dies in less then 14 seconds and you are now doing 30-40% less dps than every other class for 36+ seconds. Total BS. I’d much rather have a command to rez the pet like I would a player.

Also, boons and conditions on our pet should be displayed above the pet’s command bar. That info is important when it comes to pet management.

Edit: Left something out.

GW1 mobs would run out of the effect of an AoE. If our pets did that on their own, it would be great. As true as calling them back and having them run through more AoE is, calling them back when you are within melee and in an AoE yourself is also useless. Sometimes you can stay and take the punishment no problem but your pet can’t. What are you to do? Back off just so your pet doesn’t die?

Khayoss.2019:

Let me preface my post by saying that I am a WvW junky. I PvE occasionally to afford tower upgrades, I’ve run 4 dungeons total, am at roughly FoTM lvl 5 and haven’t set foot in sPvP since November. So, nothing I say can be taken in any context other than how it works in WvW……………………..

Very much this.

Just to add a bit…

Telling my pet to go to some spot should be a command not a skill I have to take in place of another. Also, why is there no shortcut for active/passive mode? By default these are the “F” keys but I remapped them to “Shift+#”. If you include “-” and “=”, that is 12 numbers. 1 through “=” is what makes up the 12 button grid on my naga. With only 1, 2, 3 and 4 used, that leaves 8 more functions. I would like to see a guard area command. I think we should have a pet rez command. Also, why can’t boons and conditions on our pet show above the pet command bar? Why do I have to click on my pet to see these things?

The whole system is very much underdeveloped. It’s quite sad. As for the pet missing? That is a mechanic thing that is also shared with mobs. I easily solo champs when they are primarily melee because they stop chasing to attack. They don’t attack on the run. That’s the issue. I can attack on the run with my GS but my pet has to stop to attack? Which, with the cast time tied into the animation, gives any moving target time to run out of range. Does the game have state rewind?

In GW1 they gave the AI the feature of running out of the area of effect of AoE spells. Why can’t our pets do that without having to call them back? What if I know I can tank it but my pet can’t? Calling them to me still leaves them in it.

Also, how hard is it to link our dodge roll to our pets? We see the enemy doing that 1 shotter, we dodge roll even though we are out of range so that our pets (who are in range) will “evade” it. Simple.

zerorogue.9410:

BadHabitZz.1856:

Toy and another Plush backback omg stop please !!!! The quiver looks amazing more things like that!! LESS things like kittenning quaggans…Please ArenaNet treat GW2 like MMO not like virtual toy shop for kids

They put out what sells. As always we vote with our wallets and plushies won.

Just the other day I saw a norn or charr warrior with big, bulky, spikey full plate armor and some small plush teddy bear looking back item. It was quite sad.

I was using the Eagle at the time when I thought it would be convenient to not have to worry about manually using it.

So how would fellow rangers feel about being able to set the pet’s F2 to auto attack independently to the ranger’s auto attack?

Anet has always rolled out annual content. While this content is part of the game, it certainly isn’t the game itself. Sorry Killcannon, but I think a reasonable person would understand the difference between seasonal content and the game’s core content. I believe that it is the unreasonable people, the kind of people that would say what you quoted that do more harm than anything to these games. Being online games, the gaming community is part of what makes the game. It doesn’t matter how good the game is, if the community is garbage, the game takes a big hit because of it.

EVE is a fine example of this. The sand box game is great. It offers a ton of freedom. The community is the worst I’ve ever seen. Egocentric, egotistical, arrogant, selfish, and spiteful. The worst of the worst when it comes to griefing.

Anet is trying to do something new. They are trying to play the role of “dungeon master” with a video game and have the story (and thus the game world itself) constantly move forward. ‘Right place, right time’ is a spice of life and is something that can add spice to a game.

Every player wants to make their mark and/or have their character stand out and/or be above the rest. In order for that to work, not every will be able to. On a few will be able to. This is what compounds the issue with elitism. It’s what turns the impressionable new players (new to gaming in general) into the majority of what can be found in EVE.

‘Right place, right time’ is a two way street. By having your character experience events that only you and a dozen or so others have, and ever will, experience, you get that feeling of uniqueness. Especially if you have something visual to show for it. However, since it involves being in the right place at the right time, you will not experience everything and other people will have things to show for it that you won’t.

Right now, the biggest thing is RNG. Low proc rates that a minority seems to get lucky on while the rest gets nothing but the same thing that everyone else can get, even those that got lucky.

It’s one thing to get something for being extra clever and figuring something out or being quite skillfull at a particular meta game or happening to be at the right place at the right time (especially if everyone at some point or another gets a kick at the cat) but it’s another to simply be lucky.

The worst is when it’s not just vanity items that are awarded to the lucky but things that actually effect performance and what not. Like the highest stat gear being depended on pure RNG to get. New MMO’s focus should be to eliminate such a thing. It only creates a poisonous attitude in both the person who gets lucky (they become a bit egotistical as a minimum) and the people who don’t (they become bitter and resentful).

Edit: Wanted to say something about the post above mine. There are restaurants that change their menus daily. In fact, some of the most prestigious, fanciest, most expensive, and successful restaurants do it.

Anet made the attempt to replace the trinity with something else. Props for it but I think it failed. You still have professions that are chosen over others. Last I heard for pve it is Ele, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer that are prefered and Thief, Ranger, Necro and Engineer are viable but are generally not wanted.

The best thing they could’ve done to replace the trinity is to allow each profession be able to spec to fit each role. We have 6 trait lines, so it is simple. Two are for damage, two for soaking/avoiding damage, and two for healing/buffing.

An ele can tank and a warrior can be healer. Instead of people saying they need a healer or tank and be referring to those by profession, they would be asking for it by spec. This way, if there is 5 people, they can designate who will play what role then the player spec’s their character to fill the role. Putting on the right gear, filling out the right trait lines, and selecting the right skills to fill the role.

But that will still leave one of the major issues. One can one profession bring to the table that another can’t and do better?

This is one of the issues facing the ranger in group play. Bow? Warrior LB is better and Thief SB is better. Pet? Has pathing and other AI issues and can be more of a liability than anything. With the AI and 1 shot bosses, having no pet up means having a player putting out significantly less dps than any other even if they don’t spec BM. Spirits? Warrior banners are superior. Spirits can be one shot by trash mobs sometimes.

Skin wise, I plan on getting the Nightmare weapons. My Sylvari ranger looks like he’s a member of Nightmare. While I grind out the tokens for them, I’m hoping to get enough gold to buy the appropriate T1, T2 and T3 culture armor to use as skins to complete the look.

For those who have a problem with comparing MMO’s. Get over yourself. Comparing one MMORPG to another, regardless of their age, is absolutely and undisputably valid.

It would most likely be a different story if comparing a MMORPG to a RTS or FPS but even then, that depends on what it is that is being compared.

Of course any MMORPG will be compared to WoW. While many MMOs get their turn in the spotlight, WoW is still in the spotlight after all these years. It has become the standard and no amount of a grade school tantrum will change that.

However, as far as a living world goes, a world that changes, a better comparison is to Skyrim.

I’ve heard the lame excuses before. ‘This is an MMO, and that is a single player game so it’s easier to have the character have an impact on the game world’.

Listen, it’s not easier or harder. They do it for single player games and not for MMOs because with MMOs they want every player to experience the same game. They want to make it “fair” and give every player, from first release to the player that buys it a year from now, the same game experience. That’s it, that’s all it is. That is why a single player game world like Skyrim can have the player have an actual permanent impact, and why MMO game worlds are frozen in time. The sooner they shed themselves of this, the better off they will be.

No, MMOs do not offer more freedom either. In fact, TES games give the player more freedom of choice than any MMO I’ve played has ever done. Except for EVE.

With Skyrim, you could jump into a quest at any point along it. Talk to the npc or just happen to come across the cave where the bandit leader is. Also, once you cleared out a cave, after a few days it would become occupied again. Which may or may not be tied into another quest.

Dynamically generated quests. If we can have randomly generated 3D game worlds that make use of some algorithms and a random number seed, then why not randomly generated quests. Only the seed wouldn’t be just a random number (you would end up with multiple quests over lapping and bugging each other out), but instead would be generated based on various factors. Hence, why it would be dynamically generated.

The trick is to make use of some creative programming. You want the game to develop the new content for you. Even if by talking to the npc, them talking to you is text based. Save the voice acting for the bigger, developer made content.

But really, I would be content to simply see the npc’s have a day/night routine to them. Some NPCs work nights, others work day (with more working day than night). Some NPCs going to the local tavern for happy hour, and some closing up shop for a short time to have lunch. Guards should be running shifts. It shouldn’t be the same npc standing guard 24/7 but rather it should be two npc’s swapping every 12 in game hours.

They already have the day/night cycle, why not give the npc’s a day/night routine to follow. That one thing alone would have a massive impact on giving the world the illusion of being a living breathing world. In fact this change would have a bigger impact than them constantly developing new content and it is something they would only have to develop once and leave it be.

I’d have to confirm in game after work but I’m pretty sure I’m still under 200 hours of logged in time since I bought the game. I only have one 80 and if I were to guestimate the amount of gold I have accumulated (including what I spent) it be about 50g. I had just shy of 30g in my ranger’s bag when I hit 80 with him. Converting 26g over to gems to buy that mining pick.

Does anybody play the market? I know the market game usually takes a large investment of coin to get a decent daily return.

I tend to use LB and some kind of melee and I found that swapping just doesn’t seem to flow. Not nearly as well as it does on my DD/AF necro.

First is LB (or even SB) and the 1H sword. Swapping weapon sets in combat puts an eight second CD on swapping. With the 1H sword, Hornet Sting causes you to evade as you jump back from the target and this is an opportune time to swap to range and fire off some skills there. The problem is that after using Hornet Sting, you have just 2.5 seconds to use Monarch’s Leap but the swap CD is 8 seconds. It would be nice if Monarch’s Leap was available by the time you swapped back.

The other is with the LB barrage. This is a pretty good skill to use if within melee range. Unless you trait for it and the enemy is lined up in a row, the other skills are just not AoE. With sword and torch, you can put out some really good AoE on a group of enemies. The problem is that you will want to start with the bow because you want to end on your sword and torch. It would be nice if you could start out with the sword and torch, switch to the LB to cast Barrage then switch back as soon as you are done casting.

But how can you do this without throwing the other balances out?

I think that they should consider “If/Then” situations.

Eg.

If I swap weapon sets after casting Hornet Sting, then the 2.5 second availability is paused until I swap back. The exceptions would be;

Being put in the downed state or dying, and
Exiting combat.

If Barrage is the first skill you use after swapping weapon sets, then the swap CD is instantly reset. Same exceptions apply.

These “If/Then” situations can apply to all the professions in various ways as I’m sure they all have similar situations where the mechanics just don’t seem to flow as naturally as it should.

Razor.9872:

LB has a longer learning curve than SB. You don’t use LB for its auto, but rather ints 2-5 skills starting with the 3rd. I prefer it over the shortbow, really. It has more…more…manipulation.

In pve this actually isn’t true…

You start with 5 until you are done with the cast. The skill continues to go after you finish casting provided you don’t interrupt the cast. You then cast 3 as soon as you are done with casting 5 and follow it up with 2.

The result. You have the damage of both 2 and 5 occurring at the same time on an enemy with 10 stacks of vulnerability.

I found that if you start with three. If you move on to 5 then 2 or 2 then 5, the vulnerability has worn off more or less by the time you are done casting either skill.

If you swap pets (if spec’ed) or use qz before casting 5, you will shorten the cast time but the time the skill is active remains the same. This allows you to get to casting 3 then 2 quicker and get more of skill 5’s tics on a target that is vulnerable.

With the current CD’s, I found that 5→3→2, then 3→2, then back to 5→3→2, repeat…. works out pretty well.

I stopped reading at Aion. That game is so unbelievably fail. Making characters so small that a vertically challenged person would call them midgets, running around at rediculous speeds doing nothing but stun locking other people to death.

Someone gets the jump on ya, you might as well just go take a bio break.

Using maxed pvp gear that buffs you against other players and using it in the pve environment against people wearing the pve gear they happen to come across as they level.

To get the max gear for your current level, you have to spend 5+ hours per day for at least two months. Having to kill yourself over and over for 20 min straight just to reset your xp and prevent leveling. After all, if you allowed yourself to level, all that time spent grinding to get the top gear for your current level would be obsolete as you would have out leveled it.

Or how about having to get 2k+ of each ingredient (8+ ingredients) to actually get the top craftable gear. Since you have a low % of success to proc the higher end version of what you are making. You then have to get enough of those higher end versions because they become ingredients themselves which gives a small % chance to proc the higher end of what your are now making. Do this through 3 or 4 tiers to end up with just one of what you are trying to get.

So it’s like 10% chance to proc and 3 teirs to get through….

It takes an average of 5 amount of 5 things.

5000
5000
5000
5000
5000

That is 25k individual items (eg. 1 ingot of iron = 1 item)

This is to make 1000 of the first item in the hope that at 10% you get 100 higher quality. These 100 higher quality then become an ingredients (you then have to grind 3 or 4 more ingredients at amounts of like 10 or more to add to each crafted item to make the next teir). Out of these 100, at 10%, you hope to get 10 of the higher quality of the second teir. You hope for 10 so that at 10% success rate, you hope to get that 1 top quality at top teir item.

When Aion was as old as GW2 is now, it was already going through server merges.

Between the excessive multi hour grind just for a single chance at a poor RNG game, and the people exploiting the xp loss punishment system to twink out their character at the max level for the lowest level pvp zone and then jumping through the portals into the other faction’s zone to beat on other players trying to level. The whole game is just fail. It encouraged online bullying (griefing). I spit on the developers of that game.

nekitten234:

As I commented here (did not saw this thread) I do agree that combat can be made much better.

OTOH I agree with Vayne that going back into “Buld Wars” is not the solution, at least not for the “majority” of players.

In short, AI changes to the PvE can do wonders to the combat feel without even touching current system.

As forums are nice place for the (imaginary) wish lists:

Remove dodge from the heavy classes! PLEASE! : its stupid seeing character wearing a ton of armor dodging around — replace it with real blocks (same endurance), they should be able to take hit one way or another and not jump like rabbits around.

This. I like this. Although if I may expand upon it a bit….

The “dodge” mechanic is somewhat bad but it is bad on the AI side of it. It’s not the fact that we can dodge that is bad, but rather that you basically have to stare at the screen without so much as blinking because some of the attacks that require you to do come without warning and have a fraction of a second cast time.

Just remember that given any cast time you have to work with, subtract .08 seconds from it. Most don’t know it but even our brains run at a frequency when it comes to processing information. 80ms. In short, we gather up 80ms worth of information then process the ‘packet’ at once.

Add on each person’s unique delay in reflexes, motor skills, etc. etc.

Then there is ping.

Then there is all of the particle effects taking place that can mask the mobs action causing you to miss the, sometimes, subtle move that indicates what they are going to do.

It all just a little too twichy.

Rant aside and more to the point of expanding on the idea above…

If “dodge” was something that was more unique to the class. Block or parry would work great for a warrior and a guardian. Keep the current dodge for ranger. Thiefs could phase out / stealth for a second. Elementalists can “block” with a large rock. Mesmers can phase in some way.

Snowy.9580:

The only thing Blizzard is guilty of is, making MMOs popular.
Now they (MMOs) are filled with console kiddies that want RPG roles in their super Mario online arcade show.
Don’t believe me? Go check Defiance, not a RPG but it shows where the companies want the MMO to go, and that is straight to the milking stool.
In DAoC I used to grind and farm mobs for XP, now? Now the companies grind and farm us!
The world of the MMO is in a bad way (better add a “in my opinion” before my Aussie friend, Mr. V. pulls me up about it!), 1 step forward and 2 backwards – welcome to MMORPGs!

This right here is the biggest problem. It’s not about turning out a great new game for players to enjoy while making a decent profit as a sort of side effect. It’s about turning out something that can be milked for max return in profitability. Going as far as hiring psychologists to ensure that the game has the necessary elements to catch and reel in the people who pay.

Sometimes reading what some people find while playing I will ask myself “are the developers also players? Or are they simply post grad programmers who just happened to get hired on by a game developing company and could have just as easily been hired to develop security software?”.

Things that they say they do that is innovative is actually quite shallow. Also, I’m curious if there is some physical law that exist when it comes to game development.

The better the graphics, the worse the substance and vice versa.

Is it too much to ask for a game that is visually stunning, has a vast freedom of choice (with appropriate and permanent changes and consequences), and everything within the game world has properties and can be interacted with?

I didn’t even make it through the first page when I got fed up with the ignoramuses that often plague forums.

I completely agree with the OP. Some classes change dramatically as you go up in level while others stay consistant. Thief is a fine example of this where they have a hard time serviving against 3 enemies of the same level (I’m talk pre lvl 10 here), while others can tank through 5+ (Mace/Focus Guardian). My warrior is just as bad as the thief in pre lvl 10 and it wasn’t until I got my warrior to 14 did it go complete 180 and I can mow over the 5 mobs.

Hell, with my Guardian, I was able to solo that underground place when the ghost had it taken over. I solo’ed all 4 champs at level 22 in lvl 20 masterwork gear! I’m willing to bet that I won’t be able to beat half of them on my warrior when I get to that point.

As for learning to play the class. This issue actually prevent new players from learning to play the class. If the class you are playing will change so much from start to max level, then what you learn early is for nothing and as you will only have to relearn later.

It’s an unfortunate thing really. Once upon a time you could buy a single player game, take it home and play it on a stand alone computer. Now, even single player games tend to require an internet connection.

Companies are starting to rely on this and I think this is where MMOs come in. Since you absolutely need an internet connect to play a MMO by its very nature, companies have learned that they can get away with skimping on the polish and release the game to start making money sooner. Letting the player base provide them with the statistics and feed back they need to then start polishing.

They simply need to polish it enough so players actually stick around to play it.

Look at MWO. It still has the beta tag on its name yet for all intents and purposes, it is completely released and turning a profit. They are doing a poor job at fixing bugs while releasing new content to both attract more customers and to keep the ones they have interested.

The problem with all this? Adding new content can introduce new bugs. If the game already has bugs, these can become worse with the new content.

Companies need to cycle through it;

Release content,
Fix bugs,
Balance content, then
Repeat.

Instead of trying to do all of that at the same time.

The Lost Dr. Seuss Book: I Love My Job

I love my job, I love the pay.
I love it more and more each day.
I love my boss; he/she is the best.
I love his boss and all the rest.

I love my office and its location.
I hate to have to go on vacation.
I love my furniture, drab and gray,
And the paper that piles up every day.

I love my chair in my padded cell.
There’s nothing else I love so well.
I love to work among my peers.
I love their leers and jeers and sneers.

I love my computer and its software;
I hug it often though it don’t care.
I love each program and every file,
I try to understand once in a while.

I’m happy to be here, I am, I am;
I’m the happiest slave of my Uncle Sam.
I love this work; I love these chores.
I love the meetings with deadly bores.

I love my job-I’ll say it again.
I even love these friendly men,
These men who’ve come to visit today
In lovely white coats to take me away.

Sorry, but your post about loving the grind reminded me of this poem.

I see it as poor game mechanic. If I could view and hit him, he should’ve been able to see me and thus use that AoE on me. It could very well be that my pet was acting as a kind of meat shield. A tactic that is quite commonly used. Even if he did use that AoE, it wouldn’t have meant anything. There is a decent CD on it and can be easily dodged.

It could be that it was because my pet took him down, but I did use my own attack for the first half of his health bar. Then my ex came to get something for our daughter. Real life and all :P

It is a personal challenge of mine to solo all the dungeons. I’ve done Ascalonian Catacombs (Story Mode) solo. Fighting the ‘lovers’ was the worst, I must’ve died 20 times. I’ve defeated the spider post patch on exploration mode and made 2 or 4 attempts at defending that npc while trying to collapse the tunnel. By then it was 1am and said screw it, time for bed.

I’ll give it another go. This time I’ll try not to find those “sweet spots” that all dungeons in just about every game seems to have.

I’m currently in this dungeon right now. I went up the stairs and fought the mobs that come through when the doors open. Died twice but was able to finish them off. Then from the top of the stairs I was able to take out the large shard. The three mobs didn’t even aggro. Once the shard shattered, taking out the three mobs was pretty simple. They seemed to be taking damage now with the shard gone and they didn’t even move or fight back.

Then was the champ that cam through the next door. This guy was tricky. Lots of kiting, dodge rolls and well times healing springs as well as good use of take root for the invulnerability. Eventually took him out.

After some trash mobs left over, I got to the stairs on the left which lead up to a bridge. I didn’t like what I would have to face so I stayed low and found some different stairs to go up. The mobs here were easy enough to kite around and take out.

I was then faced with a big door which wouldn’t open and a bridge opposite of said door. Across the bridge were two mobs on either side of a champ. I could pull the mobs without aggro’ing the champ and took them out. I then pulled the champ and took him out.

Timing it so I wouldn’t aggro two wandering mobs, I ran inside the place that the champ was in front of. There I face Kulag the Fallen. After a few attempts at trying to stand in the door way and shoot from there, I figured I would have to keep moving or get taken out by some AoE that he does. I made my way around to the opposite side and positioned myself against the wall just so he was barely in sight and not obstructed by some pillar. From there he stopped using that AoE and focused on just my pet. Although all he did was knock back, do some other attack(s), then knock back again when my pet got close.

So long as I kept using Healing Spring, my pet couldn’t die. I set healing spring to auto attack and at this time I had to go afk. When I came back, the boss was dead and there was a chest in its place. Yay. Time to move on. I get back out and there is some talk of tracks. I ran to the big doors and nothing. I took out the remaining mobs, nothing. I went down where there is an invisible wall I can pass. I ran back the start and went up the other stairs to the other door. Nothing.

There is no place for me to go to. The npc will not open any more doors.

I solo’ed that spider with my ranger. You can pull the little spiders up the stairs carefully. If you pull the champ, run and let it reset. Eventually I got to a point where there was just a few left but the champ would aggro with them no matter what. Two or three suicide runs finished them off.

After that, it was a matter of getting just the right engagement with my pet. I didn’t even use my own weapon as I was up on the stairs and they were across the room and behind the statue. My trait line is x/x/20/20/30. I just used Healing Spring every time it was off CD and my pet couldn’t die. The champ eventually did.

Longbow:

LRS causes cripple and/or does the same damage regardless of range but instead shoots farther (default 1500 instead of 1200).

Rapid Shot stacks bleeding.

Barrage, instead of crippling, rains down fire arrows creating a fire field and causes burning to foes within the field. This way if they dodge/run or otherwise move out of it, they will continue to take burning damage for x seconds.

Sword:

Pounce, the third attack of the auto attack chain, should be an evade while performed.

Spirits:

These suckers should not be targeted and should not take any damage. Honestly, the only other class that has skills that can be killed before they can be used is the Necro with minions but at least the minions stay out unlike the spirits which are only out for a minute. Also the minions follow you without having to spec for it and have more base hp.

Sarlack.4096:

The only thing lacking on it is the Auto attack, the other skills have their uses.

Sorry but this is just flat out wrong.

Yes, the auto attack is bad. Long Range Shot should simply mean it has a greater range than the rest of the skills. It should do the same amount of damage throughout this range.

Something I noticed today was that my dps was actually less by including Rapid Fire. Fighting mobs I was averaging 2k in 5 seconds. By simply auto attacking at optimal range, I was averaging 500 per hit. With my auto attack having a cast time of 3/4 seconds, that is 2k damage in 3 seconds.

400 dps
vs
666 dps

At least the benefit of Barrage is the ability to hit multiple enemies for the same amount each.

Honestly though, if LRS is gonna do less damage at closer ranges, then it should apply cripple to allow for kiting at range. Barrage provides cripple but is on a 30 sec CD and PBS is on a 15 sec CD. These have proven to be inadequate time and time again when trying to keep the enemy at optimal range for LRS.

They need to move cripple from Barrage to LRS, give Barrage fire, and make Rabid Fire stack bleeding.

Um, how about no. As in…

No you should not have to turn off auto attack
No you should not have to sheath the weapon

You should not have to do anything above and beyond what you would do for every other kittening weapon.

Not to mention that sheathing still won’t be of any benefit. Timing is crucial and having to sheath your weapon places a considerable delay on something you need to do “right now” and not later.

The pet is what defines the class. Thief has steal, Guardian has virtues, Necro has death shroud, ranger has a pet.

The pet’s damage combined with the rangers is what puts it on par with the other classes. So you can ignore the pet, which means it will die often, but you will be kitten because of it.

MatthewMedina.5419:

The periscopes did undergo some changes to hopefully make them better for all players. Also to clarify, not all periscopes have a chance to trigger the backup events. Only 3 out of 10 in each map have the events attached to them.

How long ago? I very recently rolled a charr warrior. The starting area, where you have to clear unexploded ordinances, fight off some flame legion that pops up and clean up scrap metal and tools, there is one. In short, it did enough damage to me before I did enough damage to it and it killed me.

Although here is the trick since everyone has some range. Alternate between strafing left and right at max range for your range weapon. It will try and lead the shot, so by the time it gets to you you are already moving the other way and it will miss you.

Is this exploiting? I say no. It is dealing with a troll game mechanic appropriately.

If the class elites are better than the race ones won’t be used. If the race ones are better than the class ones won’t be used. Also, with regard to their exceptionally long CD, they should be used when going is at its toughest. You just have to make sure that you can change the situation for when it wears off or that you won’t be facing a tougher situation shortly later on.

They should also be something that either compliments your build or something you can build your character around.

Picking a particular race for the skill set they come with is as good a reason as any. Just as picking a class for the skills is. Other than racial abilities, that really only leaves aesthetics and story line / lore as reasons to choose a particular race. As long as one race’s elite skills are not better than another’s right? Well, I find that some race’s skills are better than others. Like the Sylvari. Becoming immune while you pop up a bunch of flower artilery has saved me in both pve and wvw.

In pve it has caused enemies on me to switch to attacking the flowers.

In pvp, it granted enough time for the battle line to shift so that I was among allies instead of enemies.

In both, it granted enough time for my healing skill to come off CD.

I don’t lose any of my skills while the flowers are active.

That is just plain superior to the Norn’s shape shifting.

Dustfinger.9510:

Only the frailest male norn could be mistaken for a tall human. otherwise they look straight out of a fairytale, to me.

The problem with that picture is the angle of the shot. Take it front on and you will find that the difference in shoulder width is quite small while the change in girth of each body section is rather large.

Norn females are fine. This is mainly because their body proportions are scaled properly with their height. If, for example, Norn females are 40% taller than human females, than their shoulder width, head circumference, arm and leg circumference, even bust size is all 40% larger. Even the upper body height to leg length ration is maintained.

The same isn’t true for the males. If they too are 40% taller, than what you have is all those things mentioned above being scaled up by 60% instead.

While the female Norn look like larger versions of human females, the male Norn look like larger versions of Dwarves.

Had one. It was to be part of my World of Darkness theme. To have a human necro who is of nobility(giovanni bloodline) and a Norn Guardian. Norn because they can become a ‘werewolf’ and guardian for a couple reasons…

With a heal over time build, it works as a simulation to regenerating (my necro follows the same concept of heal over time) and the werewolves in WoD are protectors of Gaia (at least they were in Werewolf: The Apocolypse).

I rerolled for a warrior charr instead. I know the charr are more feline/bovine in nature but the wolf form for Norn actually makes you weaker if used, and is too short lived with too long a CD (as are most elite skill IMO considering how underwhelming they all are). Also, while the Norn females are proportionally correct (just a larger version of a female human), the males are unproportional. The feet are to big, legs too short while the upper body is too tall. The upper body is also too wide and this is something that gets exaggerated if you make yourself anything but the beefiest of body type since the location of the joints don’t really change when you go with a leaner body type. I felt more like a gorilla.

I replaced guardian with warrior simply because the guardian never gets a movement speed increase as a passive effect. The warrior still gets the health signet for a passive regen so that shoe fits better as well. I believe (if I remember correctly) that the guardian has to purform actions to get a heal over time (use skills, attack with the mace, etc.).

If they redid the male Norn’s body proportions, and made wolf worth using, I would gladly go back to using a Norn. I would still make a warrior over a guardian though.

Playing with a thief, ranger and necro and having that passive movement speed buff makes playing a guardian pretty much painful. Honestly, it gives me a head ache now to have to run around the map so slowly. It doesn’t help any that the Norn’s movements are made unnaturally slow due to their size and wanting to keep that race’s speed the same as the other races. Although when the charr are down on all four, they feel like they should move faster too.

Hoyvin.3241:

Can someone explain the attraction of this? I’m not looking down on you if that’s what you want to play, it’s a semi-free world, after all, but why would you pick a class generally known as a ranged class and then want to play melee?

For myself I play longbow/shortbow. I started out longbow/greatsword, but found that I very rarely used the greatsword, and liked some of the crowd control/condition damage (sorry I hate acronyms on forums I generally have no idea what the refer to) aspects of the shortbow.

I have a guildie that pretty much thinks the same way. Again, you paid yer fitty bucks for the game and you can play it any kitten way you please.

Because the melee weapons, particularly the great sword, out performs the bows. Unfortunately.

All I got out of it was…

‘Rangers can use half a dozen skills and use twitchy reflexes (read: Get lucky getting an evade off against skills with no cast time) to counter a thief’s pressing of 1-2-3 & profit so they’re fine’

And that somehow makes ranger’s OK?

I think Marilyn Manson said it best when he sang “you can’t see the forest for the trees, you can’t smell your own **** on your knees”

You play it a certain way and so it is designed to be played that way. You’re so blinded that it works for you and how you play that you don’t see just how bad it really is to most others. Other classes are better simply because they are designed in such a way to allow them to be played with a greater degree of flexibility in play style.

The short bow comparison brings up a good point. We are the ranger class. Our performance with bow (both short and long) should out perform the other classes. Instead, they out perform us. It’s not just the thief with the short bow but also the warrior with the long bow.

What do you mostly see used? The kittening great sword! A ranger using a great sword? What are you smoking?

Not only that, but it is basically the strongest weapon we can use. It out performs the long bow.

Redo the sword’s auto attack. Right now what makes the gs so good is the skills that it provides. The auto attack cycles through every 1.75 seconds and the third attack provides a 1 second evade which means that you can not be hit for a second with just .75 seconds between while auto attacking. Yet what does the sword get? The second attack cripples and the third makes us leap to the target. Umm, if they are being crippled why would I need a gap closer? Not only that but the third attack for the sword takes the same amount of time to do as the third attack for the gs! However, instead of getting an evade, we get rooted? Absolute fail. Serpents Strike is buggy and you can end up rolling away instead of toward. You can even roll yourself off of a ledge if you don’t pay attention. As for Hornets Sting, yet another leap toward the enemy and cripple with Monarch’s Leap.

The Pounce skill should be an evade while we perform the action.
Serpent’s Strike should swap spots with Hornet’s Sting as the #2 skill and should be the skill with the 8 second CD. Hornet’s Sting should simply be replaced by Monarch’s Leap but instead of crippling, it should cause confusion.

As for the Long Bow. If Long Range Shot is suppose to do more damage at greater ranges, then it should cause cripple. So, you know, we can keep them at range. Also, every other weapon provides either a bleed, poison or burn except the bow. With the main attack causing cripple, make barrage flaming arrows that create a fire field and causes burning. Not too much to ask considering all the burning that the warrior gets with the bow.

I prefer sword over the axe. The axe bouncing between things can be a pain. It will often bounce to destructible objects instead of the enemy. Your pet will then auto engage the destructible object instead of the enemy. I’ve even had the axe bounce from an enemy, to some object, to an enemy that wasn’t agro’ed. Pulled 5 more mobs because of that.

Also, some pets work well with the torch. They will get a flame shield and provide additional AoE damage to any enemy within range.

If the mobs are melee, just walk backwards a bit before you start attacking them. They will clump up in front of you and you can hit multiple enemies using the sword.

When you first get it and use it, it will remove a condition right away and will then remove another again and again at a regular interval (don’t know if per tick or longer).

It gives you a burst of health right away and puts up regen boon for 3 seconds. It ticks, refreshing the regen (and maybe removing another condition) every 3 seconds for 15 seconds for a total of 5 ticks.

If you trait into Nature’s Bounty, this will up the regen from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. With each pulse occurring every 3 seconds, you will have two seconds remaining when you get another 5 seconds added on. It works out to be 5 seconds to start and two seconds added on per pulse for a total of 15 seconds by the time the skill expires. Similar to how the pulse was synced with the regen without Nature’s Bounty, with Nature’s Bounty, you will have 15 seconds of regen and 15 seconds remaining on the skill’s CD.

With Fortifying Bond, your pet will get the benefit of both the initial burst of healing and will get the regen without being within the circle. The only benefit that the pet doesn’t seem to get is the condition removal. Only if the pet is within range of the spring will it get the condition removal.

If you pair these up, your pet also get the full 5 seconds.

Between these skills and using a Fern Hound’s regen howl (with Concentration Training), I tried to get as much regen stacking as I could. There is a hard cap on the duration but as long as you stay within range of your pet, and you stay within your healing spring for the full duration, you can have endless regen.

Also, regen is not vigor. Vigor is an increase to your endurance’s regen. Not your health regen.

Barrage, Torch off hand and traps. Although if you are having trouble against 3 mobs, you may find working on your survivability to be better. If those 3 to 5 mobs can’t kill you, you can simply take them out one by one at your leisure.

If the vendors offered a lvl 80 skin for a fraction of the price (say 10%), that would be good.

Right now the price is too high for what it’s worth. That is too much gold and people will simply do without. If they offered the skin at a reduced cost, then people would actually be more inclined to buy gems to use the lvl 80 transmutation stones.

uknortherner.2670:

No, I’d rather see in-game vendors offering town clothing items that are buyable with in-game gold, especially the clothes that are already being worn by NPCs. As it is, the town clothes function is underdeveloped and at the moment, a missed opportunity especially as you have no real way of storing your overpriced gem purchases anyway.

Agreed.

This is nothing more than short sightedness on their end.

First of all, the pet names can be stored client side as a pet name table. They then make use of the name associated to the pet slot like they do now. When you assign a new pet to that slot, the name would be changed automatically. This would save them space as the names are using the clients hard drive instead.

Second is the size of the table itself. I figured that they would need a unique ID code and I went with a random ten digit number. Then they would need a name to go with that identifier. I went with my fern hound’s name of “Nightshade”. I made use of 10 columns and 54 rows which would be 270 pets (far more than what you can have). I over did it on purpose to compensate for info that I could possibly have missed, like a unique ID code for the player character to tie in the pets with your character. 21kb was what it came to. If we assume that 10 million rangers exist and are saved (again, an excessive number) then that ends up being roughly 200GB of information. I can buy a 500gb hd for $50.

The banner makes a great comparison with regards to pointing out just how lacking spirits are. Banners provide their benefit to the nearby part, just like spirits, but can be carried along from the start. Rangers have to spec into their spirits coming along. Not only that, but it demands a full 30 pts into nature magic just to do it.

Also the banner is its own weapon and so it has its own skills when picked up.

So I agree with Kiran, they should simply be a visual representation of a passive/active skill.

More specifically the Death Master trait line.

In light of the following….

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

“What we’re really trying to do, as far as balance goes, is really focus on trait revisions.”

Reanimator and Protection of the Hord are good to have when running a MM build but there is the problem. These traits are not selected. You get them for simply investing the points without any option other than whether or not you invest the points.

Trait lines for all the professions have this to some degree but I found this particular case to be the worst. What I’m getting at is that, these three skills of the trait line should not be build specific. They should benefit the player character regardless of the build they are going for. Traits that are build specific is what the changeable ones are for.

So if/when you get around to redoing the traits, my suggestion would be to simply take the above into consideration.

I find that they are comparable to signets only signets are worth taking. Spirits are immobile unless spec’ed and they die real easy even when spec’ed for double hp. For what? A passive effect that works on the whole party and not just you, provided you all stay within range. Then there is an active effect which is offensive for most of them and with such a short range that they have to be close enough to get taken out by the enemy to actually hit the enemy.

If they couldn’t be targeted and couldn’t take damage (even if you had to spec into it), they would provide the ranger something that they could bring to the table in a group setting.

Yeah, unparalleled means that the other classes that use a bow can’t use it as well as the ranger. I can’t say anything about the short bow since I barely use it but the long bow needs a tweak.

Long Range Shot does more damage the farther the enemy is away. Yet Barrage, with the longest CD, is the only cripple.

I’ve been thinking about the warrior’s skill set with it and been playing with the sun spirit. What the long bow needs is for the cripple to be removed from Barrage and given to long range shot. It’s far too easy to close the distance on a ranger with a long bow. Give barrage burning instead.

Nice. I just started leveling a thief but I find they can’t take much punishment at all and lack decent healing. Mind you I’m not even lvl 20 so that is probably why. lol.

I soloed Ascalonian Catacombs last night with my ranger. Lowest level dungeon so probably the easiest to solo. Did it with my lvl 60 ranger wearing lvl 50 rare gear.

Sebrent.3625:

Thanks, Tuluum.

Looking at the graph, I’m currently thinking about the following:

• If you take cleric’s gear you have ~1,300 Healing Power
• If you take all the sources of regen (including Dolyak and Pie), you heal ~614 health per second
• If you swap out the Dolyak for Runes of Melandru and the Pie for Lemongrass, you heal ~499 health per second (115 less health per second), but you are less “bothered” with stuns (-25%) and conditions (-65%).
• Melandru and Lemongrass is useless against pure direct damage while healing is good against both direct damage and condition damage.
• Melandru and Lemongrass is good against crowd control conditions while healing doesn’t help there.
• With ~499 hp per sec, a Ranger with 15k hp (roughly base hp) can full heal, in combat, in ~30 seconds without using their #6 heal.
• With ~614 hp per sec, a Ranger with 15k hp (roughly base hp) can full heal, in combat, in ~24.5 seconds without using their #6 heal.

---

Also, do please note that Cleric’s gear will do less direct damage than Soldier’s (which has more power and vitality) and Knight’s (which has precision and more toughness).

Apothecary will do direct and condition damage than Rabid (which has more precision and condition damage)

Without using heal skill?

Ok so if you can get that kind of regen without the heal skill, what could you get with using a fern hound’s F2 and healing spring with Nature’s Bounty? I can alternate between the two and have 100% regen boon uptime.

You people just broke the first two rules. Seriously….lol..

If they were to make the changes you suggest, especially the damage immunity part, they would have to make one more for balance.

I agree that it should be one of two ways..

Rangers are on par with other players on their own and have the pet be extra while keeping the lack of survivability.

Or

Keep the pet as a requirement to be on par but make them tough as nails to take out.

I think the issue that they want to avoid with pets with too much survivability is to avoid rangers being able to solo content that wasn’t meant to be soloed.

If they made the pet damage immune but subject to certain effects, then two things will need to happen.

1. In PvE, mobs would ignore the pet and the ranger would have constant aggro.

2. The pet can not travel any farther from the ranger than the ranger can attack. So if the ranger is using a melee weapon, the pet will not run off to attack the enemy but will instead stay by the ranger. If the ranger uses a long bow and starts hitting a target at 1500, then the pet will go out to 1500.

I believe, that with the current level of survivability, that we should be doing 75% of what other classes do without our pet and 125% with our pet.

Catisa.6507:

Deamhan.9538:

The best point has been made already. These items are not in the hands of better players, but rather in the hands of players who simply log more hours grinding or bought gems and used the currency exchange.

So what system or metric do you suggest to measure who the skillful/better players are?

There are already some systems in place. Karma. To unlock the person as a karma vender, you must first complete the task. Not that these tasks are all that difficult, but the items these venders sell are not all that great anyway.

The main quest line is another where it presents you with a choice. Not that these are all that great either. Blues mostly.

Dungeons where each boss has a chest. Although the final boss should always give you an item that your class can use that has a minimum value based on the difficulty of the dungeon for the first time you run through it. Maybe the first two or three but no more than that. If you can beat something three times, you are no longer really challenging yourself anymore on it.

Games will often reward pvp tournament winners. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place sort of thing.

And the thing is that they already stated this to a certain degree. Look at what they did for mob loot. I start killing a mob and someone else comes by and helps finish it off. Who get’s the loot? In some games, the person who had the killing blow got it. In others, it was who got the first hit. In GW2, everyone gets it and in such a way that I can’ t click faster and get it all before the other person. They don’t see what i get and I don’t see what they get.

Kiran.2705:

Defensive: Pets die way too easily. They should be able to evade. Pets also need some sort of AoE and siege damage reduction so you can’t spam AoE them down effortlessly. What’s the worst that could happen? People actually have to target pets to kill them? Oh noes, ranger pets are a threat. What is the world coming to?

I really don’t know how Anet could miss these gaping design flaws. Other games had this figured out years ago.

Here’s the thing. It’s not like the damage our pet does is above and beyond. It is what we need in order for out damage output to be on par with the other classes. Also, extra things like virtues for Guardians or the Adrenaline skills for Warrior all fall on the player’s character. What is our pet? As it is in this game, our pets are a third weapon that comes with 4 skills. Damage wise, it works with our character’s weapons to produce the 100% damage output. Skill wise, although it brings 4, we only control one and these skills are only enough to bring us on par.

So without the pet, we are sub par and with the pet we are on par. Yet no other class has to worry about loosing something they need just to make par. a Warrior can’t have their weapon poisoned. A guardian can’t have their focus killed while just leaving them with a mace.

What they should do is….

When we dodge, so does our pet.

In GW1, mobs were made smart enough to run out of AoE. In this game, they don’t. I think our pets should. They are not immune but they don’t just stand in it either.

Without our pet, we should be only doing about 75% of what every other class can do. With our pet, we should be doing 125% what every other class does.