Guild Wars 2

As a quick note i didn’t go through the traits, as that is alot of detail in there.

Traps:

Well, you didn’t really change anything about the traps, you just buffed them a bit. I don’t think that this was something important enough that you would include it in a rework.

For the ultimate trap, it just doesn’t feel like an ultimate. I think an ultimate should be strong and impressive, but the smoke trap is just strong.

If I was going to make a change to traps, i would shuffle some traits around to put the trap traits into the wilderness survival traitline from the skirmishing traitline, so that traiting for traps naturally gives you the condition damage.

Shouts:

Ya, shouts definitely need a change like this.

One thing i like about shouts(for all the classes) is that they are tied to the profession. Warriors are for charging with allies, Guardians are for defending your allies, and Rangers use it for communicating with their pets.

I am not a fan of “Show Yourselves”, this type of aggressive shout sounds like it should belong on a Warrior, and it doesn’t involve the pet.

I see you merged “sic’em” and “protect me”. I think that the better name for this skill is still sic’em, as it is closer to the original skill and more fun to hear in-game.

“Run” is too similar to the guardian’s “Retreat” for my tastes, though it isn’t a bad shout.

“Don’t give up” is an ok shout as well, but i like the concept of having the pet manually go to a target and get them up. As the shout is now, it just feels too convenient.

If i were to change up the shouts, they would look like this:

“Sic’em” : unchanged

“Distract’em” : Your pet taunts a target enemy for 3 seconds. Skill only goes on cooldown if an enemy is selected. 30s cd.

“Search and Rescue”: Ground targeted ability. Your pet goes and tries to resurrect an ally in the target area. The skill only goes on cooldown if a downed ally is in the target area. 15s cd.

“Find Cover”: You and your pet gain camouflage, making you and your pet invisible until you move. Max invisibility of 40 seconds. Skill goes on cooldown after camouflage is finished. 30s cd.

Spirits:

I really like your idea for this one.

Do the spirit skills still have an internal cooldown on their passives? If not that is probably a smidge overpowered as is.

I am kinda sad that the sun spirit lost its burning on hit. If i were you i would have kept burning on hit with sun spirit, gave frost spirit your suggested chill on hit, and put the extra damage on hit to the storm spirit, but that is just me.

On a side note i will be sad that i won’t be able to swim with my dolphin spirits if this happened, but it is a fair trade off for the new functionality.

Weapon Skills:

I am not a big fan of the weapon skill suggestions, the smoke-bomb and concussion grenade skill just feel like they belong on a thief or engineer, not a ranger.

If i could change one thing on the longbow, i would change the get invisibility on hit mechanic, as it really just feels off. I would change this to a “gain camouflage” skill that gives you might, fury, and swiftness upon exiting camouflage.

Pets

I think moving to a 1 pet system is the right choice, just because it gives us more access to pet control. I do think however that there is a way to do this without stripping the pets of their individuality.

With my idea:

F1 is still attack

F2 is still the pets special skill

f3 is now a skill based on the type of pet. If you think about it, every pet has one skill that the player would like to have control of. Dogs have their knockdown, porcines have their charge, birds have their swiftness, moas have thier heal, and the list goes on. These skills would now be activated manually by the player..

With this the ranger can control 3 of the pets 4 skills. The 4th skill is typically not that important, so you could either choose to discard it or you can simply include it as a part of a basic attack chain like it is right now.

f4 is now a ground targetted “move here” command, replacing the “return” command. It adds alot of micromanagement to the pet, but it allows the ranger to guide the pet out of aoe skills and position them in battle. using “move here” on the ranger would make the pet follow you.

That is all i have for you right now, thanks for taking the time to write all of this up.

I don’t really understand your point, are you saying that you think the expansion should be free for everyone? That we should buy the expansion and get the same content as everyone who doesn’t upgrade? That upon HoT coming out, the upgrade should be mandatory and the original GW2 would be locked out to those that don’t upgrade?

Expansions have to add gated content or else there is no point them.

Personally, i hope that we lose the “guard” shout and gain a new shout called “distract them” that makes enemies get taunted by the pet.

I am getting this too, other games are not experiencing any lag.

If human, a ranger(Meladru), warrior(Balthzaharr), guardian(Dwayna), necromancer(Grenth) or a mesmer(Lyssa) could be a priest for one of their gods (i don’t know who to match up with Kormir).

If Norn, a ranger would be the closet thing to a havroun (a havroun being a head priest or shaman for a Norn great animal spirit). A priest could also be a warrior(like havroun Gretchen) or a necromancer (like havroun Weibe).

Charr dont have gods (anymore), but you could make a fire-based elementalist to be a priest for the flame-legion.

The Sylvari and Asura both have no gods and have no obvious priest class.

The point of clicking the ranger button is to ensure that you get a weapon or armor that a ranger can use. A ranger getting a greatsword is appropriate.

They could do something interesting, and make RaO give some stacks of stability on cast, and then have each of your pets attacks grant further stacks of stability.

Kodiak.3281:

I had another idea this morning, not sure if others thought of it yet.

What if they do something that removes the Attunements and instead makes you like a “Zephyrite” elementalist. Instead you gain the ability to equip two weapons which have skills from existing attunements placed on them. For example Staff might have Air 1, Fire 2, Water 3, Earth 4, Fire 5. Then add in additional weapon set to this as well with a few new moves like a sword or mace main hand. This new spec would be focused around mobility (something Zephyrites are known for).

Boom, lore and class all in one.

A zephyrite elementalist has been suggested previously, but in different ways to what you suggested.

Your suggestion currently could be a specailization, but it doesn’t really seem like it should be connected to the zephyrites. The zephyrites aren’t really known for mobility, they are known for channeling the sun, the wind, and lightning. The more interesting thing about this is that they are elementalists that only focus on the air and fire while neglecting earth and water.

Your idea would fit better in the mold of a battlemage

If you are willing to go 4 into nature magic, you can have your greatsword grant fury on hit, so lack of fury isn’t really a con.

Also the 1h sword has higher dps than the greatsword, it just doesn’t have burst.

In my mind specializations will be similar to race skills in that they wont be in pvp due to balance reasons but will be available in wvw.

The amount of info they give us will depend on how extensive the demo is in 6 weeks. It wouldn’t make sense to pace all the information out only to have the demo come in and spoil all of their reveals.

I had an idea. Maybe a future specialization will be for an elementalist to become an aspect master like the Zephyrites. Instead on the normal attunement swaps you would switch between sun, sky, storm and crystal. It would be a bit too altering to do this for all of the elementalist weapons, so it would only be applied to the main weapon that they would add, and it would likely also have to be a 2 handed weapon so that the off hand wouldn’t cause problems.

The next release isn’t likely to be this though, as they are likely to be getting a 1h sword, but maybe a future specialization this will be true.

Frostfang.5109:

For every new patch i Always check the K-panel… disapointment strikes every time…

It is nice to know i am not alone

It is also true that the miniboss directly after this is made trivial because we have a pet to distract it, so i would say it balances out.

Thank you anet.

For my armor i chose to make celestial armor. I don’t know if it is really the best choice, but i chose to do it because it felt i could get exotics of all the other armor types, but celestial armor doesn’t drop and is a paint to make, so if i was ever going to make a celestial set, i would make the best set possible.

Do the claim tickets have an expiration date, or will we not be able to use them after the next wvw season? Was just curious, as i figured i would just save my tickets to use them for another mistforged weapon after the next season, but then i get confused as to why the mistforged crafting system exists.

for my longbow i am using a sigil of force (because i had one left over from somewhere) and a sigil of air(because it is relatively strong and relatively cheap)

I really think that you need to specify which game mode you are rating for the profession.

wvw:
I find that the best downed skills are the ones that you can use quickly and allow you to move, or bide time to either get your third skill off, get a rally, or get a rez. The Thief, Elementalist, and Mesmer tend to be really slippery, the Thief and Elementalist especially for their ability to get inside a tower even when downed. The last 5 are all kind of equal in my mind, with the ranger being a little better because they have access to their pets while downed.

1. Thief
2. Elementalist
3. Mesmer
4. Ranger
5. Necromancer
6. Warrior
7. Engineer
8. Guardian

pve:
I find that the best downed states are the ones where you can take the foe that you nearly killed and can kill them inorder to rally yourself. You tend to live long enough to use your third skill as well. Ranger wins by a mile, due to its ability to rez itsself and the fact that they still have access to their pets while downed. I can try to organize what i think are the weaker downed states in pve, but they are all not that great when compared to the ranger.

1. Ranger

2. Necromancer
3. Elementalist
4. Mesmer
5. Warrior
6. Thief
7. Engineer
8. Guardian

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Mesmer

I got one too

Staff 1:
Whack,
deals damage similar to great sword 1, but in a larger aoe around ranger

Thwack,
similar to whack

Whirl,
another whack with a whirl finisher.

Staff 2:
pole-vault,
use your staff to pole-vault at your opponent, knocking them down and moving behind them.

Staff 3:
Thorn Bush,
Create a thorn bush in an area around you. the bush cripples and torments enemies that walk in it.

Staff 4:
Uproot,
bring up roots in a line in-front of you, briefly immobilizing enemies.

Staff 5:
Oakheart’s anger,
a spirit oakheart appears above your head(similar to the bear in maul) and then you both pound the area infront of you, knocking down opponents and is a blast finisher.

i fully support this

i would love to see a staff. it would mainly be used in melee range to differentiate it from the other staff users.

River Drake, Marsh Drake, and Misleading Tooltips

the river drake and marsh drake have misleading tooltips on their abilities. the damage that the skills show only indicate the damage that one bolt of their attack does, and the skill strikes 5 times. so at max level, the river drake does around 4500 damage, and the marsh drake does around 2500 damage not including the poison. Considering then that the bolts also bounce and can are cast at range make them considerably powerful. also remember that the marsh drake has a range of 900, which is really impressive.

there could be at least a 4 second delay, that would be slower.

i would like to see the staff as a melee weapon for rangers

as a tip you have to stay there for 2 rounds, the peacemaker has 2 differnt sets of lines.

personally, i would love to see rangers able to use a staff for that nature mage feel. but not a ranged staff, it would have some nature magic built in, but i would want it to be melee. you would hit people in an arc around you and do fun aoe damage (something the ranger cant do easily right now)

they already have all the base classes, and they can just continue adding to them.

one thing i would like would be a nature-mage, they would manipulate plant life and summon animal spirits ect. to do this, i would enable rangers to use the staff as a weapon, as they are already closely tied to these elements.

asura have superior animations, often being very acrobatic, it is very fun.

dont do a sylvari female, they have this really annoying quote “this rose has thorns, and here they are!” which grates on the mind very quickly ^^

buki.3108:

Oh god why? It’s the choice again… Charmander, Bulbasaur, or Squirtle?

play pokemon yellow, get them all

i agree. only one problem i found. i was in the ascalon fractal, and found i was having difficulty hitting the oil things on the wall, was getting obstructed, but really this is a great buff all in all.

there are some in a sense. the HoM pets are exactly the same as other pets but have a unique appearance.

Black Moa = Pink Moa
Black Widow Spider = Jungle Spider
Rainbow Jellyfish = Blue Jellyfish
White Raven = Raven

What i would actually prefer is an in game way to customize our pets, like doing a quest that not only gave the pet a buff but also increased it’s stats ( i would lower the stats of all normal pets to balance)

some will argue either way. if you like the idea of a ranger, go with it. i personally really enjoy mine.

having our arrows hit our target before they can easily sidestep them will increase dps

my moa is named lawn moa, i love him

Razor.9132:

While seeing rifles on rangers would be somewhat nice I can’t support the idea, because, as many have said, it wouldn’t bring anything new.

If anything, I’d ask for an offhand sword with more offensive oriented skills or even a staff (nature(spiritual) magic, anyone?)

i agree, staff would be the cool thing to see

what % did your dps drop by?

i am among those that didn’ t know

i love piercing arrows, highly suggest it

in the Snowden drifts, you will see a waypoint called the lost childs sorrow, here you can talk with a kodan female that tells you the story of how she lost her child

(ok, i think this is the waypoint, but im not sure, i do recall the conversation with this npc however)

they could add something like a ‘city chat’ that allowed people to communicate from every major city

most racial skills are designed to be underpowered
– imo pain inverter is ok, gets better if your tanky and using a melee weapon
– never used hounds of balthzahar, but i heard it was actually really strong in the beta events, not sure where they stand now
– take root roots you in place, rangers dont like this
– never used druid spirit, heard it was underwhelming

on a side note i used radiation field for a while because it is easy access to a combo field, cooldown is just a little long.

heres my idea

grats 10-25% move speed based on how close you are to your pet

it would be good for scouting and would help the melee ranger out a bit

posting this in the ranger forums will likely be a little biased, you should try this in general discussion

1: this is a good question, before, with the maximum level of gear being exotic, this wasn’t an issue, as the pets could just be balanced to be at max level. with the ascended gear im curious if they wont add scaling at a later date.

2: the way you stated the question is a bit nebulous. aoe attacks should be able to hit pets, perhaps just more ability to counter play aoe perhaps. we have that ‘gain protection for yourself and your pet on dodging’ trait that is a good concept on how to help mitigate damage, and the swapping out of a pet to avoid a nuke is also a good counter to this. these could perhaps be more effective, but i dont think its a huge issue, more of an issue for spirits.

3: i think its mostly ai related issue. this should be fixed eventually. it is good if pets have some counter-play for your opponents, but having them miss all the time is a bit too much. if we could get a trait that did gave something like ‘10% more damage to moving enemies’ it would help to fix this too as we would punish people for kiting our pets.

4:

5: i quite agree, not sure what to use shouts for really.

this is a really well structured post, well said.

2 and 8 i don’t think are problems really, its just the flavor of the class

4 i can agree to an extent, but i don’t see what they could do with the weapon to make it more interesting, and it shouldn’t really be a priority

5 should have had a little more emphasis put on it

7 is a problem, but i think it is more a problem where the thief should be nerfed rather than the ranger should be buffed.

for the most part i agree with you on the rest of the points

thanks for putting in the effort to post.

never played gw1, but i have an idea for something like this.

it involves quivers, basically i would like to have quivers equipped in the off-hand slot of the bows, and that they would give a permanent buff similar to these, but a little weaker. bows would have to be nerfed across all classes, but i think it would be nice.

its too bad they released quivers in the form of back items though.

for the stealth remake, riot said they would remake the characters evelyn and twitch because they were extremely strong with their ability to be permanently stealthed. the first thing they did was nerf the characters into the ground below where any character had gone before, telling the playerbase that they were getting reworked soon. about a year after this they were finally reworked, but the year was filled with the forum goers spamming “stealth remake where?” for the entire year, and riot’s answer was “when its finished” which didn’t help anything.

the magma chamber was a new map that riot was going to release, and gave a formal announcement of the map. the community was quite hyped, but then riot turned around and said that they were not going to release the map(i dont remember the reasons). the community was not pleased.

anet really isn’t attracting new buyers with the lost shores expansion. it added an endgame area and a repeatable dungeon, the outsiders do not care much for these things, they are meant to give existing players something to do.

communicating on the forums is not the best answer. most players don’t even read the forums, and many rangers probably don’t even care that the class is under-powered, communication only affects such a small portion of the player base it is not often worth it.

i also don’t think they are catering to new players. the game has a powerful pve focus, one that most all other games don’t have, with the tedious gear treadmill gone new content and events are the best way to keep the pve crowd. i do agree however that the pvp crowed could use a little attention in the form of balance patches.

transparency with the players is also not always the answer. if you have played league of legends, you should be aware of the terms ‘magma chamber’ and ‘stealth rework’. these were 2 instances of transparency that went horribly, horribly wrong.

finally there is the problems with us forum goers. we are an incredibly inhospitable bunch. whenever we get a developer post, there is always someone flaming the developer or complaining about one thing or another. on large we don’t appreciate them. perhaps if we could be a little kinder they would have more incentive to post more, but for the most of what i’ve seen we really don’t deserve the this communication.