It is the most logical thing to happen. They are rather kittenty at the moment and don’t do what they are supposed to do very well – protect their owner.
Nearly all the pet traits and most of the 5th line are garbage.
Imo it would become viable if 5 was a stunbreak. That and a slightly better autoattack.
Also it just sucks because engi got gifted with a trait that puts burn on everything. This is why grenades dominate so much (they get the burn of other kits anyway). Bomb kit which is also not so bad also suffers from that.
For a certain amount of time.
I think they should completely change the projectile to something more fitting.
The thing is in wvw you can tune your stats a bit more with food etc and also this were all duels and he propably swapped out a few traits/skills everytime.
In spvp you build has to survive the meta which means on average it has to win matchups and be somewhat good in different situations, 1on1 or group fights. You cannot chose that much and another factor is that yu are less mobile and bound to control points.
Versus equally good people this build will unfortunately not get you far in spvp if they play meta builds. You cannot play without lb if you want to stay competitive in a power build and this is what this thread was focussing on.
Viability is relative. If you define it as staying competitive against equally good people playing meta builds in spvp then this one isnt viable. For wvw roaming it definitely is.
But your post still helped. This is the exact kind of stuff that would be great if it would be more playable in spvp since it obviously takes way more skill than a lb setup.
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Mainly talking about ranked PvP here. The more competitive you want to be the less creative you can be with your builds in my experience. :/
Your build looks fun but it wont work against people from TCG etc or just good players with meta builds in general.
I think this is the main issue people have. Especially on low level it feels incredible easy to play against equally (un)skilled players and even versus good people where it actually becomes hard to stay alive and thus viability drops the offensive part feels rather brainless.
Suggested changes:
- focus on melee weapons for future buffs, they should give you a slight DPS advanatge for the greatly increased risk but right now you only swap away from lb for the utility
- maybe give ranger the interruptor role, moment of clarity could be a fun trait if there weren’t so few interrupts (GS only #5 triggers it which is extremely hard to land and on bow it doesn’t do a lot because you follow point blank shot with rapid fire)
- traps require tactical placement but you just cannot use them individually, instead you have to run an all out full traps build and even that is not good enough in current meta
- spirits could lose strength on the passive part and instead have their active effects increased in power or cooldown lowered
- pets that require interaction f.e. by spawning a waterfield randomly for the ranger to leap into, the only field right now is super short poison field on spiders, drakes could spawn a fire wall so that the ranger can position behind and rapid fire through it etc
- make weapons like offhand axe really worth taking by giving them important utility (maybe new resistance boon on axe 5?)
Any other ideas?
This should indeed work while moving OR it should have its cooldown cut in half. The dmg isn’t bigger than autoattacking anyway.
Increasing the % wouldn’t do anything.
I like the suggestion to make it proc on weapon swap to a melee weapon instead of randomly.
“Reflect the next 3 projectiles when swapping to a melee weapon while in combat.” Should have the visual effect of whirling defense. (propably smaller but something like that)
I think the new class mechanic should fuse the druid with his pet allowing you to directly control your pet for a certain amount of time and mictate dmg for that duration because it goes into pet hp. Pet swapping might be removed though.
Beast Mastery traitline become Animal Spirit and focusses on increasing the duration for which you can fuse as well as traits that increase dmg/hp/… of the fused form and add overall healing/group support.
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Signet of hunt, for me something like next 5 attack are unblock able so they can still counter you using blinds, dodge and invons now that would really help with melee builds would also combo better with signet of wild meaning hunt would be worth taking in some builds.
What do you think about letting the next 5 attacks daze for 0.5 sec each.
With useless pet traits I mean most traits that focus on the pet, not just BM traitline. The one that increases pet crit dmg by 30% is ok. Others that increase pet healing power, boon duration, movespeed, condi duration are plain bad imo and should be replaced. And since pet in general is really not promising for viable builds I would chose the save way and keep pet traits in BM line (that still needs improvements ofc) and exchange most other pet traits with stuff that imporves ranger himself.
the last thing dps gaurds need is a nerf, a good source of their damage is also there survivability, truly a double edged sword
dps guard gets too much out of investing in Valor
all you need for the basis of any dps guard is x/x/6/x/x.
Valor is essentially shadow arts with critical damage instead of healing power.something honestly needs to be done about how ridiculously faceroll guardian is against anything with a zerker amulet.
Uhm this is why zerk build require some kind of evasion and that is a good thing. Guardian Bursts → you pop your Evasion, Signet of Stone, leap/teleport away. If you don’t run stuff to evade them just too maximize the DPS of your zerker build then don’t complain.
Btw neverplayed DPS guard but I hate when people ask to nerf specs that aren’t even played in top lvl team queue because they aren’t good enough.
I would like to see Warhorn #4 apply a 1 second blind every time a bird comes down to hit the foe. I think that this would make it a valid survivability utility that the Warhorn was otherwise lacking.
When you talk about Survival you need to factor in few things why would you be blinding someone with #4. “Normally they are about to land a burst skill or you want to counter play”.
- would have to be reworked currently has a cast time so making it blind wouldn’t make it an effective skill at all. There isn’t any counter player, blinding them for the duration of 12x would be over kill.
To me the skill should be used as a burst skill reasoning behind it, currently offhand axe and warhorn are our only offhand DPS weapons. Axe/Sword main hand is to low on damage to be viable in a power build. So buff damage on #4 so you can catch them foe’s running from you.
The birds apply the blinds over a certain duration. Not the overall duration stack is what matters but that it gets reapplied while the birds attack effectively removing enemy damage for 2-3 sec. Certainly decent for 1on1 but warhorn would still need more might stacks for 5 (1 stack is a joke) and propably some really good warhorn specific trait similiar to warrior. I actually think they should replace most of the useless pet traits (and nearly each of them is useless) with traits that buff a certain weapon.
Maybe: Using a warhorn skill refills 25% of endurance for allies in 600 radius.
Ranger needs more team utility. Giving allies next to you an additional dodge if you use both skills seems appropriate and would make ranger less of a 1on1 class.
I think flavor wise troll unguent would be the better survival skill and I think it works well even in a berserker spec.
Heal as One is just an underwhelming healing skill though that needs something unique. Maybe “Heal for X. For the next 10 seconds heal yourself by 50% of the damage your pet takes. 20 sec cd.” Would work nice with all the damaging conditions transfer, AoE dmg the pet takes would actually be beneficial and most importantly it would be awesome with Protect Me which desperately needs something to compete with SoS. You could even think about making Heal as One a shout.
If Power Range became meta in Top Tier team’s all ele’s would change to S/F and hard counter us.
This is very accurate. I mean competitive players hardly complain about power ranger because it is rather easy to counter just by playstyle. But in general people dont even consider it that big of a threat to adapt the meta. Yet some people already demand LB nerfs.
If anything the melee weapons should try to catch up with the LB buffs. Swoop into Hilt Bash/Maul can actually be nice if it connects but Hilt Bash being the bottleneck there needs a lower cooldown and in general if we had an utility skill that interrupts to interact with MoC that would be great. I miss gw1 interrupt potential of ranger and ranged supression (beside dmg) would actually be a nice niche for the class.
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I never really understood striders defense. I mean even if it would reliably reflect projectiles … ranger has to survive classes that are faster than him but thief mostly hits melee and mesmer doesnt use that much projectiles.
Maybe it should be some kind of evasion similiar to mesmer that triggers on the next attack after a dodge roll. Like 1 sec distortion. This is a greatmaster trait in a very offensive traitline.
Imo GS 5 needs a cooldown reduction since it is hard to hit. Agree on Warhorn and Axe Offhand.
I think in general would benefit greatly from more access to interrupts. Imagine something like Sharpening Stones would daze for 0.5 sec for the next 5 attacks instead of causing bleed.
Both bows are fine now but most other weapons are somewhat lacking. The real needed fix would be a pet/shout rework though. Remove all the bad pet traits and add stuff that buffs weapons.
I guess the bounce is the main reason. People would torch 5 and autoattack 3s of burn onto targets every hit.
Which would be completely fine imo. I mean it is spread across 3.
Also I don’t even say it should be 100% but more than 20%.
Will it still work with the new system? I mean using a staff for swiftness or warhorns etc.
Personally I would like to see it go. Some engis even precast incendiary ammo with flamethrower. You should only have what the build you actually use offers.
Just saying that they do it for other stuff. It is not that the 20% are hardcoded on autoattack projectiles.
This is 20% chance with a really low attack speed. Should it be higher? I know it bounces but I find it odd that they use either 20% or 100% but nothing inbetween. This could be 50% or more imo and it would fit the playstyle used for axe and interact nicely with traps/torch.
Staff ele earth attunement autoattack offers 100% projectile finisher for example.
I feel like one stack of might is a serious joke. Propably relict from alpha when there werent classes with easy 20 stack acccess.
The ranger one seems extremely bad.
Here is my idea:
Disrupting Accuracy
60s coldown Survival Skill
Your next 5 attacks daze the target for 1 second.
Would add great synergy with moment of clarity and add much needed utility and the ability to shut down targets.
Hunter’s Call should add 5 sec of blind with each hit and the birds should attack over about 2-3 seconds.
They could also start by making Search and Rescue a viable option. Rezzing an ally without disabling yourself could be huge but they crippled the skill so much that it is unusable. Shouts in general could be more group play oriented playstyle for ranger, it just needs some more help in terms of viability.
Spirits can’t be the only ranger build that somewhat offers team support.
It also would help if we had an utility skill with comparable utility to shadow refuge or portal.
I agree on most of what you said, especially the improving pets part.
If we look at pets from a trinity point of view we have:
- actually decent Control pets with dogs/spiders
- somehat decent DPS pets with birds/felines although competent players will find it rather easy to avoid pets, AoE attacks etc could help here
- horrible defensive/support pets
Now you could say that an actually useful brown bear that manages to somewhat help the ranger stay a live could certainly helpt a lot. I don’t think there should be too influential skills like damage absorbs because it is hard to tell where it comes from on pets but they could give every bear f2 some kind of actually decent condi removal or protection. Also would not hurt if one pet could provide a 3 sec stealth on f2. Or maybe they could create some kind of http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unsteady_Ground with an attack.
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I know it draws a lot of hate especially on low or mid tier skill levels (top tier actuallly considers it bad and kind of respects if you can play it efficiently). One thing is for certain though. It is very fun to play and for the first time I feel like ranger does something that no other class does in the same way. Sure, there is a lot of direct dmg on thief and mesmer as well but not on that high range and projectile/LOS based.
Question is how can we further improve the playability of power ranger and I am not speaking about buffs but rather changes that finetune it for different skill levels (optimum would be changes that make it harder to play on low/mid tier but actually help on high tier).
There are currently 2 main variations:
- signets which is really somewhat a one trick pony but certainly the highest possible dps with nearly no condi cleanse
- survival which has more interactive utility skills and is slightly more balanced between offense and defense which is why I think it might be a more fair/healthy build when it comes to playstyles
What ranger lacks compared to the very viable thief and also mesmer are mobility (thief being way better and mesmer having portal), utility (refuge and portal) and disengage potential but here I would say ranger isn’t that much worse – mainly the matchup vs thieves would have to improve.
It is basically the unmatched thief mobility and the lack of certain key skills that puts ranger on a lower tier. Entangle adds high team fight potential but I feel if we had 1 more survival skill with some nice disengage potential or team utility then ranger would be fine.
Opinions/ideas welcome. Btw I think power ranger is NOT toxic for the meta and actually balancing out build variety. They provide a counterweight for glass specs and brings more direct dps into the meta.
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Oh, then I misunderstood him. I had a similiar idea for utility goggles but propably selective for certain conditions like blind, cofused, weakness and fear.
Was adressing Frenk. Sorry.
TLDR: I don’t think giving gadget engi heavy boon access makes them a warrior.
Btw imo currently engi absolutely needs Toolkit and also the Incendiary Ammo trait but those are clearly OP from an isolated point of view and should be changed once engi gets other tools. It will always be incredible hard for other utilities like gadgets to compete with that one slot efficiency machine that is tool kit. For the undodgable burn I think that engi has enough burn sources that they should not get it thrown in their face as a trait if you play grenades that has no burn as pretty much its single downside.
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It is always such a good indicator if someone is unexperienced in the game if they think power ranger is too good.
It appears easy to play and it is certainly easy to noobstomp but being any efficient versus good players is incredibly hard to the point of no one actually playing power ranger at top level.
Ok maybe it is not RNG for the top 0.01% of condi players if they are in a situation where they can track a single target for > 10 sec.
But practically for most people and in most situation the proc will be more or less random.
Beside that I find Frenks argument really odd. You can always force different classes in nearly identical playstyles. That is how the build system works and it is good that way. There are still some mechanics that are unique to a certain class and for warriors I would say it is just the raw amount of base stats and high weapon variety.
Everyone has boons, so what.
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Your suggestions would make it even better but I don’t think that is necessary. Just that small change I suggested would make it a lot less random/silly sometimes.
Another thing worth mentioning is if you have additional condi removal it can be really unlucky like you trigger the removal but just a milisecond before empathic bonds procs essentially wasting the removal. Not that bad with 1 condi/4 seconds.
On paper it would be a nerf because it means 3 condis only every 12 seconds instead of 10 but it would make it more predictable which is a good thing for pvp. Less random procs.
If we talk about icons then stuff like shared anguish should have even higher priority to be displayed.
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Right now it transfers 3 condis every 10 seconds. If the necro burst hits right after the tick the ranger is kittened. Then again this can be good if high bleed stacks are covered by other conditions still removing all of them.
My suggestion though: Transfer 1 condition every 4 seconds.
Just increase the boon durations by about 50% and make the toolbelt skills of each gadget give the boons as well.
Or make a “Gadgets are instant” removing the casting animation like on guardian meditations which would be really good for PBR and the healing skill.
Ranger is propably the least played class in high level turney right now but it is not damage that thiefs/mesmers do better, neither is it survivability.
Those classes are played due to their ability to move between point in less than 5 seconds. In my opinions ranger should get a way to compete with that. Either make a shout like Guard similiar to Necros Fleshworm (order pet to guard area for 15 seconds during which you can reactivate the skill to teleport to the pet) OR give another swiftness access similiar to engis.
Also still so much totally outdated traits and skills on ranger. Most pet traits and Search and Rescue are a joke. Warhorn 5 giving 1 stack of might (this one is my favorite) etc. This stuff is still on alpha status from 2 years ago.
To do list:
- buff/rework shouts and pet traits to bring back beast mastery specs or make shouts more usable in general
- do some small buffs to key skills like Muddy Terrain which would be a lot better with lower casting time
- rework weapons like warhorn, torch (also needs something more unique), axe autoattack
- rework tons of pets
- take a second look at traps and think about making the trap runes PvP compatible (eventually with some changes)
Signets are fine, most Survival Skills are fine, Traps are actually good if they had slightly better placed traits, Spirits are fine.
Longbow is fine, Greatsword is fine, Sword is fine (just speaking about power level, not weither you like the mechanic or not), Shortbow is fine, Axe Offhand is somewhat fine it would have a build in which it works.
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I cannot possibly understand how Striders Defense as a new (!) trait made it into the game. It is so bad and redunant on so many levels.
Replace it by something completely different Arenanet. Maybe give 2 seconds of http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blur when you are stunned or knocked back.
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I’d say least played class in competitive scene is Ranger. They’re just not super unique snowflakes right now in the fact that:
- Power Ranger < Thief/Mesmer synergy.
- Res-bot Ranger < Res-bot Warrior. But both are proven to function.
- Survival Condition Ranger – still loses against the godmode D/D Ele on side nodes, and can’t teamfight or downed body cleave as well as other professions.
This is very accurate. Most of the time ranger can only become on par with other stuff while still having way less allround options in what he does. The reason for that is imo a still large amount of completely useless pet traits as well as really bad utility skills and even very mediocre weapon choices.
Yes it does need some sort of buff. The casttime is too long as it is now. And yes it just heals, Nothing more. Thats pretty boring.
I Would Like it to be a survival skill. So it could remove 2 conditions, Grant fury and the cd Would be reduced if traited. The numbers Would have to be adjusted but i think the casttime Would Keep it in Check (easily interrupted)
I think if anything Troll Unguent would be a Survival Skill (because you know, it’s an unguent) and would see a slight nerf for the heal amount to balance the possibly lower cd and condi removal.
Ok basically this has always been that one healing skill of all classes that does nothing but heal (considering every ranger heal affects the pet as well). So it could need some sweet extra effect. And since shouts of ranger need help as well why not make it a shout? Here is my suggestion:
Heal as One
Shout
Cooldown: 25 seconds (since it will be reducable with traits)
Heal yourself and your pet for X. If you or your pet have full hp after healing then heal the other one by X*0.3.
Edit: X would be approximately current heal amount * 0.9.
In my opinion http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hilt_Bash should just get its cooldown reduced to 18 seconds from 25 and it would help a lot in direct combat. This skill is incredible hard to land and has a really high cooldown for that.
Would help power ranger to duel thieves as well which is basically its exact weakness resulting in overall more viability.
I posted this in the other thread. What if Guard would become “Aid Pet” for its duration of 15 seconds and if you trigger it you teleport to your pet. Then the cooldown starts, something about 45 sec seems appropriate. If you don’t trigger it nothing happens and cooldown starts afer the 15 sec of protection.
Somewhat like the necro skill. You could argue that Ranger should not get a teleport (with Warrior and Engi the only remaining class without it) but imo it would fit well and make give some distinct effect to this skill that is only being used to trigger a trait right now.
For Protect me while definitely not useless and somewhat different to SoS I still think it is indeed too similiar to SoS now. The pet should be allowed to keep attacking for the duration. It also could instantly transfer all conditions that are already on the ranger to the pet and make the pet also get all the new ones. If so it could even be made that it doesn’t protect from direct dmg so that it makes SoS a direct dmg counter and Protect Me Condi counter.
I had this idea for guard:
Guard – 45 sec cooldown
- orders your pet to guard target location for 15 seconds, it gains 15 seconds of protection
- activate Guard again during those 15 seconds to teleport to your pets location
- cooldown starts after those 15 sec or when swapping pets or when activating the teleport
You can argue a lot here but one thing is for certain.
Arenanet made a huge (!) mistake adding it to ranger which has no other main hand option for melee and in general just 2 melee weapons.
If they did something like that for warrior where you have like 4 other things to chose from it would have been no problem at all. With ranger it is just a pain in the kitten fo the people that don’t like it (which apparently are quite a few) because it is not that they could pick another melee mainhand.
I am aware that giving up Empathic Bond if Trap Potency enters WS would be painful BUT oberall traps would be much better placed in the condi/toughness traitline than in crit chance/crit dmg. They propably should place empac bond differently then as well to allow to keep condi removal but I was not sure about how to do this yet so I kept it like that for now. Suggestions welcome.
For guard only the time interval to reactivate the skill would be 10 seconds, oberall cooldown should be increased with my suggested change. Sorry that I again kept information that I should propably have added but I wanted to keep the post simple.
Axe changes are certainly potent but axe autoattack IS garbage even after the might change and even with decent might stacks (which in pve you get from other stuff anyway). Keep in mind that Honed Axes while doubling the dmg would remove the bounced and thus only give 1 might stack instead of 3. The 30% faster autoattack is definitely something that would need testing but I am pretty certain that it would have to become a good bit faster than it is now to make axe autoattacking any viable.
Thx for your feedback though.
Devs posted already that perma-stow options won’t happen, rangers are supposed to be the pet class in GW2 (Not that I agree 100%, but that is what was said by a dev).
Search for the Ranger CDI in the profession balance sub-forum, the post is there.
At the same time they don’t improve pets and their utility skills (shouts) and their traitline. Ranger is the one class where the class defining mechanic works by far the least.
Especially in pvp pets have huge issues and a large amount of pets sees nearly no use.
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Weapons
- Axe 1 attack speed increased by
30%20%. - Axe 5 cooldown reduced to 18 seconds from 25.
- Greatsword 5 cooldown reduced to 18 seconds from 25.
- Torch 4 now blinds the target for 5 seconds upon hitting.
Traits
- The following traits have been moved to Wilderness Survival: Trapper’s Defense, Trapper’s Expertise, Trap Potency.
- The following traits have been moved to Skirmishing: Soften the Fall, Martial Mastery,
Poison MasterEmpathic Bond. - Honed Axes (Master, Skirmishing) has been changed to: Axe autoattack does not jump but deals double damage.
- Shout Mastery now also gives your pets stability while the shout is active.
Utility skills:
- Muddy Terrain casting animation is now 50% faster.
- Rampage as One is now a Shout, cooldown increased by 10 seconds.
- Protect me will no longer stop the pet from attacking.
- Search and Rescue countdown has been reduced to 60 seconds from 180.
- Guard can now be reactivated up to 10 seconds after casting to be teleported to the pets position. Addition (thx Zatoichi): It now only give 10 seconds of protection to the pet, cooldown is 45 instead of 15 seconds.
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Arenatnet is bad at applying quite simple solutions.
I propably also would prefer just a bigger kitten nal of pets. When the game was released they made it look like they would constantly release new ones woth game updates but we pretty much only got that southsun drake.
Personally I would like to see some of these that we dont have yet: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Mystery_Cat_Tonic