Guild Wars 2

Nugget.8031:

Half of the reason warrior GS damage is so much better than everything else is all the damage traits that go with it.

• 12% damage bonus with full endurance
• 9% crit chance bonus with full endurance
• 10% GS damage bonus
• 20% reduced cooldown on all GS skills
• Gain might on crit when using GS (easily stack 10+might in a fight, going up to 25 when cleaving mobs.

This is definitely true. I only compare the pure untraited weapons in the opening post and obviously also utility is ignored completly. Still nice to have some unbiased numbers instead of “level 20 warrior does more damage than my ranger” posts.

You can calculate the coefficients yourself. The damage formula in GW2 is:

Damage = Power * Weapon Damage * Skill Modifier / Target Armor

1) If you now go into the mists you can look at your power and get one of these purple testing weapons that don’t have a range (f.e. 133-133 for GS it was I believe). Then you can attack a light golem (which has 2200 armor) with your skills and will always get the same damage numbers popping up (because weapon has no range). You then can change the formula for the skill modifier and voila!

2) Not yet but with the method above it is easy to do. Feel free to ask me if you have problems doing it.

3) I was very surprised about the 100 blades numbers myself but it seems to be true. Things might change a bit if you get traits that reduce skill cooldown but if my claculations are correct (and there is always a chance I made a mistake) then yes, autoattacking and using hundred blades only makes a minimal difference.

Edit: Oh and I only measured the Ranger GS numbers myself. Warrior was already done in this very imformative reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10o4mi/the_damage_formula_and_the_efficiency_of_sigils/

Edit2: Oh and also I took the skill animation times for Warrior from the wiki. If those are outdated or wrong this would also alter my results.

So with the upcoming buffs and the general complains that warrior DPS is so much better I took a closer look on the skill modifiers and the resulting power scaling/overall direct DPS.

Ranger GS

• 1: 0.58/0.58/0.69 ==> 0.73/s
• 2: 1.57 ==> 0.90/s [Old: 1.16 ==> 0.83/s]
• 3: 1.05 ==> 0.71/s
• 4: 1.36/1.05 ==> 0.76/s
• 5: 0.52 ==> 0.74/s

Warrior GS

• 1: 0.7/0.7/0.9 ==> 0.94/s
• 2: 4.4+1.1 ==> 1.22/s
• 3: 0.7 ==> 0.99/s
• 4: 0.75 ==> 0.94/s
• 5: 1.7 ==> 0.93/s

So the first numbers are the skill modifiers for every skill including the autoattack chain. The higher these are the more damage you will do with every point of power. The bold numbers are the actual DPS skill modifier (the damage you would do per second multiplied with the power and weapon damage you have and divided by the target armor). This factors in the animation times of the skills so for skills 2-5 this shows the DPS you would do if you use the skill between autoattacks whenever it is off cooldown. Attention: While I meassured the the duration of 1 autoattack chain myself I have to use the ingame tooltips for skills 2-5 because this is hard to accurately meassure. Arenanets tooltip tend to be very unprecise or wrong so take the bold numbers as approximations.

Example: Warrior autoattack chain has 0.7/0.7/0.9 skill modifiers and takes 2.44s to cast. This means the per second skill modifier is (0.7+0.7+0.9)/2.44s = 0.94/s. Skill 2 (Hundred Blades) has an overall 5.5 modifier but 3.5s animation time (<- ingame tooltip) so this means you are unable to autoattack during those 3.5s.

What does this tell us?

• constantly using the DPS skill (which is at position 2 for both weapons) increases overall DPS for the Ranger by about 20% (depending on you condition damage and armor of the target) and 30% for the Warrior
• overall untraited DPS of Warrior GS is about 30% higher than Ranger GS when autoattacking and 35% higher than Ranger GS when both maximixe damage using skill 2 (not including bleed damage of ranger)
• using Swoop when you already are in melee ranger does actually decrease your DPS
• Swoop and Maul tooltips are wrong because they state Swoop would deal more direct damage (actually Maul deals more direct damage)

First Edit: Thx to Tibbels who also did testings last year a confounding factor was revealed. I had a 10% more damage trait while flanking active when I did my initial tests (I forgot that heart of the mists saves different traits). I updated my values (which are still only approximate!). However this makes the difference between Warrior and Ranger quite a bit bigger.

Second Edit:
Solandri pointed out that using ingame tooltips for the autoattack animation time distorted my values by a lot. The autoattacks are actually way slower. I fixed this by meassuring the true autoattack speed ingame and updating my data.

Third Edit:
Included March 26 GS buffs. Overall Warrior still beats ranger by ~30% with the use of 100 blades. In a PvP scenario where hundred blades is way more unlikely to connect than Maul DPS advantage for warrior shrinks to propably less than 5%.

Sav.2096:

Bri.8354:

KensaiZen.3740:

And a lower cooldown as well please 60 seconds on a ranger is like an eternity… considering you usually drop in about 10 seconds lol

Its actually 45 seconds, 36 if you have the 20% cooldown trait.

Speaking of other improvements to the skill though, I’d love for it to break immobilize and perhaps stun any enemy it damages for 2 seconds. Heck, I’d probably take a stun effect over the unimpressive damage it has.

well i dont expect they will even buff it since they wont buff rangers and only will nerf it even if ranger is so weak already
i just hope i can have a reasonable skills that at least you can dodge to the direction you press and not only roll backwards and falling down from a cliff to death
i think this shouldnt even consider as buff this is just a simple request
dont even try to ask them to buff any of it becoz they will only buff the profession they like and not for balance

Wow could you act like a crybaby a bit more? Sure, ranger didn’t get the changes he deserves since months now but please stop that.

My main issue is immobilize completly countering this skill as someone above already said. This is why I suggested giving ranger the warrior trait “movement skills break immobilize”. This would effect lightning reflexes, GS, Sword and even Shortbow 3 and it would actually make a lot of sense because immobilize is a condition and ranger nearly exclusively has pulsing condition removal every X seconds which is very bad versus immobilize.

nerva.7940:

I should really get my underwater exotics. That being said u shouldnt be dying to thieves

Didn’t say I die but you wont kill a good thief either so when he returns from his stealth the 5th time critting your back you might chose to just run somewhere where he is 10x easier to kill if he choses to follow you. And suprisingly many do.

I agree. It isn’t even that just some skills on the weapons are incredible strong (what often is the case with underwater stuff). They are all fun to use and have their use. They should try to reach that for the land weapons aswell and I hope they rather buff other classes underwater than nerf ranger (despite maybe lick wounds, this should stop when pet gets CCed or dies but then again this is only justice for it being bugged since release on land).

misterdevious.6482:

Storm Spirit is the one spirit that never gets mentioned by people who say they use spirits… it speeds up a lot of people… but only in combat… while it remains alive. Compare that to warrior banners which can speed up everyone while travelling outside of combat, and can help you escape a fight. Storm Spirit is good for running out of red circles and kiting in a small area if it is immobile. If mobile, it is good for running out of red circles, kiting, and chasing in a larger space. The problem is the red circles it helps you run out of tend to kill the spirit. It really isn’t good for escaping because it doesn’t last that long once you stop shooting.

*What ikitten Storm Spirit had a chance to cause Lightning Strikes on hit?

• Storm Spirit had a chance to cause Dazing on hit?
• Storm Spirit granted a passive movement speed buff?
• Storm Spirit produced a Static Field as its triggered ability?

It took a long time before traps produced combo fields, perhaps it is time a spirit produced one?

This is basically my suggestion. Also guys I really would not ask for spirits being less squishy but rather ask for lower cooldown in the 30 sec range. This comes with many more upsides not at last that getting the “spirits follow you” trait would be less of a must have because you can recast more frequently.

Giving spirits a 30 second cooldown and just let them trigger their actives effects (that should become combo fiels of the correspodning element) on death would make them more fun to use and less polarizing when they die. This is really the way to go imo(beside I hate heaving huge cooldowns on utilities).

… underwater.

Anyone else that likes to skirmish in WvW and when things get ugly jumps into the lake with like 20% hp left to then 1on3 them under water? Both weapons do really nice damage. Lick wounds actually works. It doesn’t even stop when the pet gets CCed or dies making it nearly broken.

When thiefs kitten me on land I go swimming and they suddenly become easier to kill than a Mosquito.

Ranger, King of the Ocean

Manekk.6981:

I just hope they let me dye my quiver…

Inb4 new black Quiver skin and everyone with the brownish one is mad. No but srsly with all those bugs stuff like eye candy is the last thing I want right now.

Yeah as I wrote I have kind of a hard time to evaluate Agility Training. Personally I run with Signet of the Hunt in WvW so it has no use for me. Here are other scenarios where its efficiency gets limited:

• using Rampage as One
• using Warhorn
• using Melee weapons a lot which makes pets spawn next to you on swap
• using Birds
• running with more than 2 allies which usually means AoE swiftness

So I really don’t know what I would want to sacrifice even if I would use it. Pet’s Prowess? Doubt it … but maybe I should rate it a bit higher.

Marksmanship
[II] Malicious Training – Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets by 50%.

Given you use a pet that manages to keep up 3 stacks of bleeding constantly this will increase DPS by 60. During a 10 second fight this will haven done 600 additional damage if your pet can maintain those stacks and you enemy wont cleanse or just dodge its attacks.
Rating: 3/10

[VI] Beastmaster’s Bond – Gain fury and 3 stacks of might for 9 seconds when your pet’s health reaches 50%.

This trait doesn’t help the pet but you. In theory with the right pets you can propably trigger this on a good rate every 20 seconds. Then again it might do nothing at all in other scenarios. A bonus is that this still is an Adept trait.
Rating: 5/10

Skirmishing
[I] Pet’s Prowess – Pet do 30% more damage on critical hits.
High Precision pets like birds and feline will obviously benefit the most from this trait. With a 60%-70% chance on crits those pets will increase their overall direct DPS by atleast 20% which will easy generate numbers like +300dmg per hit. Great for an easy to get trait like this one.
Rating: 7/10

[V] Companion’s Might – Critical hits grant 1 stack of might for 1 second to your pets.
I wont do fancy calculations on this one. It is not hard to realize that no matter how high your crit rate is 1 second duration is a bad joke. Don’t get it.
Rating: 1/10

[VI] Agility Training – Pets move 30% faster.
This doesn’t stack with other speed boni which means it becomes useless whenever your pet has swiftness. Overall I find it hard to estimate what this trait does. In theory it should allow your pet to better stick to its target and thus do more damage but from practice I don’t think it helps. Would be nice if it said “Pet attacks cripple for 2 seconds.”. Right now it is hard to see any benefits of this.
Rating: 2/10

[VII] Carnivorous Appetite – Pets gain 276 + 10% of their healing power health on critical hits.
As mentioned above the values seem okay to me on a high crit rate pet. Still this will just act like some kind of regeneration and will not prevent your pet from dying while it tries to reach its target in wvw through tons of AoE. Pets don’t die over time, they die to burst so I doubt this is worth a Master slot.
Rating: 3/10

Wilderness Survival
[V] Expertise Training – Pets deal 350 extra condition damage.
This will increase condition damage (mainly bleeds and poison) by about 40%. Effectively this does the same as Malicious Training. Slightly worse but a dmg increase instead of duration which helps against cleansing. If anything these 2 traits should be merged into 1.
Rating: 3/10

Nature Magic
[II] Concentration Training – Boons applied by your pets last 50% longer while in combat.
If you go through the amount of boons your pet can apply you will realise that the durations are all very low. Arguable the best one is Red Moas Furious Screech which applies 15 seconds of AoE Fury. This will give 22.5 seconds instead if the animation doesn’t bug out so I might understand people taking this trait with Red Moa and another Boon pet.
Rating: 5/10

[X] Enlargement - Pets get enlarged when you reach 25% health giving them Stability and a 25% damage increase over 12 seconds.
The effect is very powerful. Having to drop health below 25% is not though. I actually lack date on internal cooldown and if the duration is actually 12 seconds. I guess with a burst heal you can proc this and get back a decent hp at an okay ratio. I dislike these kind of traits but maybe some people like it. It takes a Master slot though.
Rating: 4/10

Actually also for a PvE point of view GS might have the most potential. You will have to deal with it. They will NEVER put DPS of ranged weapons that allow you to stand on some higher ground and autoattack over melee DPS. So if you really want to come somewhere near warrios DPS then melee weapons are you best bet.

And between the 2 true melee weapons of ranger GS offers way bigger AoE swings. It is really easy to hit 3 targets every time with skill 1-3. Beside that it has inbuilt permanent protection while autoattacking (yes you are invulnerbale 33% of the time so even if you are bad at timing the evades you will naturally prevent damage). Another huge aspect is that melee weapons will allow pets to attack more often because they spawn next to you.

TLDR: If you really want to put your hopes into somehting bringing ranger closer to other classes damage in dungeon then I would put my hopes in damage buffs for the weapon that is most likely to achieve this goal.

Daze.6914:

Leave the area completely? It is more or less 400 units, you’re still in the range of most attacks after it, especially in wvw when you are often surrounded by foes.
Well, it’s cool if it works for you.

Uh you have to turn around, deselect and leap again.

Would you have to do the dance like in DBZ?

I think low health is fine if there just also was a really low cooldown like 30 sec. The active skills get removed but every spirit has a effect when it dies. Passive efects get reworked:

Sun Spirit: 50% chance to burn on attack for 1 second, creates a fire field on death for 6 seconds that burns foes every second.

Storm Spirit: 25% chance to daze for 0.5 seconds, creates a static field on death stunning foes that leave/enter it for 1 second.

Earth Spirit: Grants protection to nearby players every 5 seconds for 2 seconds, creates a poison field on death for 8 seconds poisoning foes every second.

Frost Spirit: 25% chance to chill foes for 1 second, creates an ice field on death for 4 seconds chilling foes every second.

This is all without traits. Most traits get removed. Remaining/new traits:

• spirits create a blast finisher on death (will trigger the combo on their own create field right when they die) → master trait
• spirits follow you → grandmaster trait
• all spirit cooldowns are decreased by 20% → master trait

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

gs on ranger lv 80 deals dmg like warrior on lv 20 ..not mentioning that 4th skill dont block..especialy warrior hundred blades or thiefs spaming heartseeker.. it block 1st hit without even kicking tief or warior back .. sometimes not even block

Ye lets shout out some wrong statements. This will help getting our class on a decent spot. In melee the block is triggeringing a knockback on targets that can actually be knocked back. On range it will block for the full duration which is why I actually prefer it for projectile blocking in most cases. The melee block helps in 1on1 though.

Ryan.8367:

“You should watch some roaming beastmaster GS vids then. It is a great weapon and already workign right now due to the pure utility it offer. If it now gets damage even better.
It is already viable now so what you say is jsut wrong. Maybe play with it some more.”

Played with it for months , its good , but you stalemate with alot of people in 1on1s as you have too much regen and hit like a needle and with the eb nerf, your precious bm spec is kitten now as most dmg is from your pet. The bm was great only because it EB was broken, now the BM spec is horrid and you die alot faster now and ALSO not deal as much dmg becase your pet kills himself now passively with EB.

I’ve played nearly every spec you can play as a ranger dude, don’t try to throw this cookie cutter bm build at me like I’ve never used it before.

GS is terrible, end of story.

It is not terrible. A lot of great ranger vids show that. I don’t know why you insist on saying that. If anything it is supbar due to yes, weak damage. The utility is great though and damage is exactly what they announced they would buff so I don’t get you negative POV saying “this will change nothing”. They change the exact thing that was not good on the weapon: damage. Utility always was very decent and already now made many people use GS over other wepaons.

Neb.4170:

GS is pretty ‘alone’ in that regard.

Not many other weapons have a random condition slapped in that doesn’t mesh with any of the other -actual- weapon skills.

It’d be like… longbow #3 giving poison… Just why?

Oh there are many weapons that have some conditions onto them without making viable condition builds.

Ranger shortbow (ever tried going for a pure condition build even if you flank all the time and apply the poison perfectly?)

Warrior Sword (well you can try to make this work with longbow but warrior just has not the survivability to make conditions tick, everything including the utility skill ask for burst builds)

Engineer Rifle (basically the exact same thing as ranger GS with plunderbuss)

A lot of thief stuff … I could make this list 3 times that long (don’t get me started on under water weapons).

This is actually a very very common thing and believe me in a properly balanced environment it will rather support build variety than hinder it.

Neb.4170:

Dojo.1867:

This is not true imo. Yes, it is the only condition damage skill in the set but it simply does both. The power scaling is decent right now. Consider the bleeds just a bonus that will add damage even with 0 condition gear because you know … there is a base cond dmg and if you get might stacks etc. it will even raise.

Having both damage types does not mean a weapon makes no sense. It just has a bit of hybrid flavor and I can see people that used sword+GS with traps and some condition gear to be very happy over more bleeds. It is a plain buff and even if it doesn’t help pure power builds that much (it still helps) it will allow for more build variety.

I always thought this game has to many weapon sets that either do only power or only condition damage. It is great to get more choices that have a bit of both.

1 Bleed skill does not a hybrid make.

It might make it into a hybrid build though if the other weapon is sword + torch or axe + torch or shortbow or if the utilities are traps. I hope you get what I am trying to say. If a condition skill makes sense or not it isn’t enough to just look at the single weapon.

I think big part of this reason should be spirits though. I jsut don’t think the original intent was to make it a field and finisher heavy class like elementalist or engineer. Some classes just don’t have many fields or many specific finishers (take warrior). It is supposed to be like that.

The problem really is that spirits suck but who knows. Maybe one day they get a buff that gives them permanent combo fiels or makes their active part a field or a blast finsiher.

Ryan.8367:

“Wait you think GS skills make no sense?”

Yes that’s what he’s seeing, and he’s absolutely right. The greatsword doesn’t mix with the very little trait synergy that the ranger has. If it had a blast finisher on maul i could maybe SEE it being viable. But it’s not , there’s too many foundational issues wrong with the class so this change will absolutely mean nothing. Last month was the biggest nerf hit the ranger took with the EB fix next to the greatsword nerf in beta. Just sayin’

But the big change I do see happening this patch is agony resistance for pets, other than though there will probably be a couple tooltip fixes along with a nerf or 2 in some other areas to further encourage us to use greatsword.

You should watch some roaming beastmaster GS vids then. It is a great weapon and already workign right now due to the pure utility it offer. If it now gets damage even better.

It is already viable now so what you say is jsut wrong. Maybe play with it some more.

This is not true imo. Yes, it is the only condition damage skill in the set but it simply does both. The power scaling is decent right now. Consider the bleeds just a bonus that will add damage even with 0 condition gear because you know … there is a base cond dmg and if you get might stacks etc. it will even raise.

Having both damage types does not mean a weapon makes no sense. It just has a bit of hybrid flavor and I can see people that used sword+GS with traps and some condition gear to be very happy over more bleeds. It is a plain buff and even if it doesn’t help pure power builds that much (it still helps) it will allow for more build variety.

I always thought this game has to many weapon sets that either do only power or only condition damage. It is great to get more choices that have a bit of both.

This is 100% true, all he has right now to actively help his group is healing spring but don’t you think if your group is any decent they would be able to use their own blast finishers on your field? I mean others just do this better so tell your engineer, guardian, ele to do it and this should work aswell.

The true reason why he lacks group support is imo the broken state of spirits. Once these would be reworked this would look very different. They are actually perfectly suited for helping in a dungeon, it just would need to work.

Neb.4170:

Dojo.1867:

Lert.6287:

Well, they will boost GS – weapon barely used by rangers and not even requested.
Pretty much for one (unneeded) boost comes 3-5 nerfs, so it’s pretty possible they will nerf something common claiming they just fixed bug.

What? It was requested by many including me. You say yourself it is barely used because it was overnerfed in the betas. Getting some love finally is what it deserves and it will be quite nice for some beastmaster builds and also for pve. The huge aoe swings and evades help there.

From what I saw they gonna buff Mauling Strike damage and work on some cooldowns which must mean 4 or 5 or both. If they allow for more blocks or interrupts this will either mean more survivability or more pet damage. Anyway I am very happy with GS getting some buffs. Was about time and I am atleast satisfied with the incoming Rnager changes due to that.

Neb.4170:

Maul will get more bleed damage… for a weapon that has absolutely zero condition support.

Seriously you people need to atleast aknowledge good changes. The GS changes ARE a good thing so we are atleast getting something. Don’t kittentalk if they give us something. And GS alwas had those bleed on Maul and while it sure is no cond DPS weapon this is still a plain buff. Also many people pair GS with SB.

Again … I can see that Ranger once again doesn’t get the amount of changes he would need but THANK YOU ARENANET FOR THE GREATSWORD CHANGES!

I would rather the weapon skills made sense, rather then just receive bandaid damage increases of 5%.

But that’s just me.

Wait you think GS skills make no sense? I agree on the throw sword part of 4 (and even that might be decent if it was a good damage burst) but beside that GS has an awesome skillset with tons of utility. All it ever lacked was damage.

Well this really would make Healing Spring + GS a heavenly combo. I love that they are gonna buff GS. It always has been my favorite weapon concerning the whole skillset that has a lot of utility and interactivity: evade, huge leap, block, interrupt all on one weapon.

What I disliked:

• overall weak damage and the evade is unreliable being on 3rd strike
• the throw sword part of 4 is just garbage locking you into the place for the throw and having pitiful range/damage/cripple duration
• the interrupt could have either a bit faster animation or a bit longer range to make it easier to hit moving targets, a cooldown change might be also nice though

Your suggestion would also be a nice possibility given that ranger really lacks blast finishers. Then again he already has the leap and maybe his strenghts jsut are supposed to be somewhere else (agility, evades, heal interrupts).

We also should aknowledge that beside sword GS is the only real melee option for ranger and unlike sword the AoE is rather high making it a nice PvE choice. All it still needs is decent damage and this is what we might get now. Another thing is superior interaction with the pet. Being melee pet swaps make it spawn right next to you (ranged they always have to run to the target again first) and the 5. skill boosts pet damage + locks the target for the pet to land his attack.

Lert.6287:

Well, they will boost GS – weapon barely used by rangers and not even requested.
Pretty much for one (unneeded) boost comes 3-5 nerfs, so it’s pretty possible they will nerf something common claiming they just fixed bug.

What? It was requested by many including me. You say yourself it is barely used because it was overnerfed in the betas. Getting some love finally is what it deserves and it will be quite nice for some beastmaster builds and also for pve. The huge aoe swings and evades help there.

From what I saw they gonna buff Mauling Strike damage and work on some cooldowns which must mean 4 or 5 or both. If they allow for more blocks or interrupts this will either mean more survivability or more pet damage. Anyway I am very happy with GS getting some buffs. Was about time and I am atleast satisfied with the incoming Rnager changes due to that.

Neb.4170:

Maul will get more bleed damage… for a weapon that has absolutely zero condition support.

Seriously you people need to atleast aknowledge good changes. The GS changes ARE a good thing so we are atleast getting something. Don’t kittentalk if they give us something. And GS alwas had those bleed on Maul and while it sure is no cond DPS weapon this is still a plain buff. Also many people pair GS with SB.

Again … I can see that Ranger once again doesn’t get the amount of changes he would need but THANK YOU ARENANET FOR THE GREATSWORD CHANGES!

Karl looked a bit bad prepared in that one. It is just natural that a single person can not know all 8 classes so I think for every class the main balancing input should come from a person actually “maining” the class for a long time. Even if it gets bound to this persons opinion then it would help more than the very confusing balancing going on right now. Looks a bit like they try to answer what people ask for but it would be more healthy if they just analyze the class themselves (and someone has to do it that knows it).

One stack of might is a flat 35 power and cond dmg. so it is way more than 1% unless you usually have 3500 power and 3500 condition damage. Just wanted to get that clear. Beside that nice and direct dmg build for group play. Also propably the most efficient build for that. I would get kind of bored with it though.

Also the damage difference between Sigil of Air and Sigil of Fire is only like 20% I think. Might aswell take the AoE option even if you want to pressure single targets … the AoE will just be so strong in big group fights.

That would be kind of a boring fix and not change the core problem. What about “successful max range LB autoattack hits give 1 second of quickness”. lol

Hey! Your videos are awesome. I kind of dislike being bottle necked into pry bar though. Basically every condition build you posted takes the biggest chunk of burst from that one skill.

Do you think there are rifle builds possible that arent glass cannon but rather Power/Vit/Toughness? I don’t know if they still can bring up the damage to do soemthing then.

Make those buyable skills like the wolf thing you got for deluxe edition. In the gemstore there would be the new flamthrower kit skill for like 300 gem and when you buy it you learn it.

Then it is your choice if you slotskill the normal one or the new one.

I really have trouble deciding which one to get for my engineer.

I run condition specs 80% of the time but maybe Pvt would be more universally good?

Hammer would be the best fit but I agree that Mace would be the best options to allow more combos for shield (even though pistol IS awesome).

I really would be happy with both.

I guess you are right. Also you still have to consider direct damage for the pistol/shield and kit skills. Pistol autoattack direct dmg – as low as it may be – will still hit for some nice AoE with this bit of precision and the 10+ might stacks that are also common in elixir builds.

I gues Apothecary really is a niche item that as you said will cost quite a lot. And still for 80% of condition builds Rabid will be the better offer.

May I ask what Ascended Amulet you bought for your condition engis?

Can people that have full Apothecary sets pls offer feedback?

I have a full Rabid set since release but ye … only reason for the precision is pretty much proccing sigil of earth and the 2 traits a bit. I just don’t know if all the healing power wouldn’t be more worth it?

Speaking about a pistol/shield (pistol/pistol) and bombs (grenades) + elixirs build. So due to elixirs propably also high regeneration uptime.

Shiren.9532:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro.

How is this different from warriors being able to solo half of the dungeon encounters in competitive times to most pugs?

So you want 2 classes to be broken? Please don’t be that kind of guy in this thread.

People mention more direct dmg on it might make it op. I don’t think so because remember that elixir throws have cast animations. You basically sacrifice something you could do instead (from simple autoattack to laying a big old bomb) and thus it really is allowed to be somewhat decent.

I also love Kais idead exspeically the “coat yourself with poison” one but I doubt Arenanet will do anything that requires more than 5 minutes of code change.

The way we use thrown elixirs right now is pretty much selfbuffing and a bit group buffing (the radius really is rather small for that). It would be pretty useful if it added poison while I do this to enemies in melee range. A small 5 secon poison combo field would be even cooler, I agree. Everything would be more usefull than the 100 dmg it does right now.

First of all thank you Robert. You helped us more than any of those “real class balancers” ever did already.

I like your general idea of changes. Basically fix stuff, work for a longterm solution. Stowing pets might be an emergency fix but it would hurt the class concept. Still this is what I might want to add:

• review traits, some of them seem really awkward or should be merged with other traits (example more damage on crits and more condition damage should become one, influence of +30% pet speed is also questionable)
• reworked/removed traits would leave space for new ones like “if you have a target selected pets spawn next to it when swapped”
• dynamic petswap timer (I think this would adress the problem you described of petswapping abuse versus bosses): it starts with 20/15 seconds but every swap adds 5 seconds until the timer resets when out of combat

Hope this helps. Solutions are possible and atleast concerning the pet this would be a good start. As far as pure number tweaking goes I think Greatsword damage would be something that could be adressed just by that.

What did they think when they entered the damage value? It is really a joke. I mean this trait will always have a hard time competing with stuff like forceful explosions (the bomb/grenade aoe increase) and incendiary ammo (the +1000 dmg every 3 seconds in a condition spec).

If they want to keep it just doinh damage this would atleast have to exceed the bomb autoattack given that even with low cooldown elixirs you will do this about every 10 seconds at best. I say just give it poison. Goes really well with the name and I just think it will bemore useful that way.

Why not 30 skirmishing for momemt of clarity? The increased daze/stun time feels great and it offers a +50% dmg pet strike also for shortbow 5.

Horrorscope.7632:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Will we ever release a video of our internal testing process? Highly doubtful. Just as I doubt we will ever post the builds, classes, and gear our testers test with.

May I ask why not? Remember, it’s just a game.

What does it mean you will propably never post the classes your testers test with? I assumed it would be “all classes”. Oo

Holy kitten new content quality testing is a mess in GW2. No wonder balance is so abyssal.

Oh and to make things clear. I really don’t think this is something the dungeon designers have to improve on. Class balance needs to become a thing. People posting this issue here is kind of a backdoor attempt and just shows how desperate they are not getting any answers in the corresponding class forums. If anyone of Arenanet reads this: The way class balance is handled by minimum ressources makes people very mad right now. I know a whole lot of people that are nothing but frustrated and only play the game in hope for the next balance patch just to get disappointed once again. Stop this fast. Change your mentality towards class balance. There should have been way more progress by now for PvE and PvP. New utility skill should have been released. Mayor flaws like condition caps should have been adressed. Instead nearly nothing happened for certain classes.

CETheLucid.3964:

Do people know Anet can pretty much push an update whenever they like? More then likely whenever it’s good and ready?

Or is this a case of “it wasn’t on the big day woe is me” bunk?

The guard thing was a bug and any honest soul will confess as much. That was fixed, and rangers were given several minor quality of life buffs.

We got ‘something’. They’re still aware of ranger issues. A more serious update is in the works.

If it’s a massive overhaul unlike anything they’ve done with any other class that they’re doing, that’s going to take time.

Deal with it.

Not true. We didn’t get quality of life buffs. The ‘buffs’ do nothing. And yes the pet walking up a wall seemed odd but then again look at the problem here:

1. class atleast partially focusses on ranged DPS
2. class heavily focusses on pet damage (about 40-70% of our dmg actually)
3. pet cannot jump over obstacles so whenever you attack something without a walkable terrain inbetween your pet cannot attack or will have to run a huge circuit first

And now they ‘fixed’ the only tool that helped with this problem without doing ANYTHING else to adress it. This is nothing but ruining the class for people. Stop playing ranger or stop playing the game is what my only choices are. Thanks Arenanet.

Why don’t they work on their utility skills to help us out? Why cannot Sick ‘em also teleport your pet to the target? Answer: because it isn’t important enough to balance one of the least played professions. They don’t give a kitten.

Boomstin.3460:

Worst balance team ever. And i tought Bioware was bad

There is no balance team. Whatever Arenanet tries to tell you and whatever poor guy was tasked to do some fake changes every now and then to silent the community … don’t call this balance team.

There is no other conclusion possible than that they don’t give a kitten about balance. They put together their flawed combat/skill system and only change the environment. They actually seem to think the system is fine or atleast it is not a big enough problem for them to direct ressources to the matter.

I am so close to quitting. Since weeks now I only start the game everyday to walk around in WvW a bit and soon get frustrated about my class and the limited amount of builds. They passively ruin the game.

Awarw.5081:

“Hi everyone,
there is no need to create another thread in this subforum.

Yes there is need. They are doing nothing since months, not even communicate in this board. So yes, there is a freaking need.

nerva.7940:

thanks.

some sort of condition/crit hybrid is my next project, and SB/GS synergize really well together. you’ll need 30 in skirmishing but bear in mind you’ll be kinda squishy without any points in wilderness survival. so maybe something like 0/30/20/0/20 and knight’s gear.

Funny I played this setup recently quite a lot. Love the extended disable time for shortbow and GS 5 (wish GS 5 had slightly higer range + faster animation time though because hitting moving tarets has a high fail rate and cd is huge).

I still think 30 BM gives too much damage to sacrifice though so currently I run 0/30/10/0/30. Only 10 into wilderness survival hurts a lot but you still can run the signet of removal (for roaming signet of the hunt speedbuff is just to important though even if it feels like a wasted slot during the fight).

Still annoying that succesful pet hits are kind of random but SB/GS cc helps and guess this will always be rangers burden. Increase F2 animation speed/leap ranges pls!!!

It has been said a lot here and the problem really is that pets are designed to be a huge part of the rangers damage while (of course) not having the options to apply/avoid damage that a human player has (attack while walking/dodge/jump across obstacles).

The more you need those abilities (like doing actually difficult dungeons that require dodging) the pet will propably die and thus you lose those 40%-70% of your damage that was given to it by design concept.

Solutions:
A) Stow pet for a stat buff that pushes DPS (cond. dmg/power) – the most practical solution.
People are very split about this but it actually would be a logical choice. Atleast if implemented in a way that pet + ranger is still the most efficient way to play but playing without pet only costs like 10% efficiency than like 70% if it dies right now.

B) Work on pet AI/handling – the ideal solution.
If they would actually manage to optimize animations, leap ranges, general direction, casting times of f2 skills this would change A LOT. Consider that this would have to be done for every single pet type (and every future pet) which I consider impossible to do with the current ressources Arenanet directs to class balance.

C) Create workaround systems – innovative solutions.
I can see them work on pet switching cooldowns, death timer or allow for in combat stowing/autostow/switch to other pet when the pet would die. They could also just buff the ranger and decrease pet influence/stats overall or work utility skills that allow pets to survive better un dungeon. Another option would be decreasing aggro priority.

There were multiple threads where people discussed this skill and the general opnion was that it would need some form of utility to be viable for an offhand weapon slot (with another very situational skill being whirling defense). They added 85% damage and …

… it still feels really bad.

The animation time always was rather long exspeciall if you also calculate the flight time in. Hitting a person more than twice is actually hard enough that it would require some kind of reward (added bonus) for the returning axe. People suggested daze on first hit and stun on second for example. Right now we still have a skill with very minor damage compared to just keeping autoattacking (to not lose the target).

They didn’t listen at all and the single buff we got with the latest patch isn’t worth anything due to that. This is really disappointing to me but reflects their balancing politics since release. This is just very very lackluster or honestly … just plain bad game design.

Does superior rune of the grove now actually proc the entangle?

Ebon Vanguard Shortbow is neat (actually uses LB model).

Chopps.5047:

raubvogel.5071:

We are talking about the base damage. You may check the wiki for figures.

And the pet can’t be calculated in because it will never ever be a suitable component in regard to playing solo since the pet does what it wants to do. If i play solo i can lure 3-5 foes next to me and kill them difficult if not impossible with a pet due to the lack of control.

Therefore it’s better if we do the main damage and our pet is just supportive.

I control the pet just fine, in fact, I can target multiple enemies (kiting 3 sparks with my pet and 2 with myself in Arah path 4 simin fight is not out of the question, in fact, I’m certain that it can be done). We call this micro (1010 hours on ranger so far so I’ve had plenty of practice). Go ahead and neglect the pet; neglect it while it’s hitting you like a truck in dubs. We’ll see how much you want to ignore it then.

Sorry but you disqualified yourself completly with the WvW statement. You need to be really bad at your class to get hit by the pet for anything more than 1-2 attacks. I have yet to see the day when my pet actually hits a decent thief or dagger ele and at no point I would call this hitting like a truck.
The pet isn’t useless and I would never neglect it because it applies pressure and may force them to use dodges/blocks/movement skills sometimes but pet dealing damage? You need to hit some very lucky CC at the right time of its animations to make that happen.

And the worst part it that you have zero reliability. Sometimes you just NEED those hits but exactly that is the time it suddenly hits air/stops/switches direction and so on. This is why the current concept of 30%+ of our strength being attributed to the pet is a bad one.