Guild Wars 2

Please don’t make this a salt thread. The balance is off anyway. The concept counts, not the exact values.

Most of them depend on how frequent traces are generated. Imagine running from a sidenode to mid on Legend of Foefire and picking up like 8 on the way. This stuff has to be tested and tuned, hard to estimate the strength in theory but the potential is huge. I don’t think they are weak if you consider all the stuff, weapon skills, tricks, that can apply Marked. Also consider the Elite Trick. And like I mentioned traces can be picked up by anyone which means your pet or allies.

You are right about Marked. While it mechanically would not matter much since stacks alone don’t do anything it would be certainly stupid if they remain forever. 5 seconds is a bit short though and especially when the pet attacks they might disappear too fast. What about 10?

I like your trait suggestions. Wish more people would give feedback but I guess this forum is primarily for complaining.

Minor

• Tracking: You and your pet apply ‘Marked’ stacks. You can now wield a dagger in your mainhand. You can now use tricks.
• Fierce Hunter: Reaching 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ removes some Endurance on the target (10% of the bar).
• Easy Prey: Deal 10% more damage to targets with less than 50% Endurance.

Adept

• Infectious Wounds: Apply 1 second of poison whenever you apply bleeding (multiple stacks still only apply one stack of poison). Thanks to Justine!
• Replenishment: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies Regeneration (3 seconds).
• Last Straw: Gain 5 seconds of Resistance when your health reaches 10% (60 seconds ICD).

Master

• Stay on Path: Picking up a ‘Trace’ removes one condition.
• Fearless: Take 10% reduced damage from ‘Marked’ targets.
• Knife Juggler: Reaching 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ with a dagger attack removes a boon.

Grandmaster

• Blood Trail: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies 2 stacks of Bleeding to its source (5 seconds). Thanks to Justine!
• Outrun: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies Slow to its source (0.5 seconds).
• Unseen Predator: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies Stealth (1 second). This one is propably broken but I wanted to throw out the idea.

Hey. Didn’t post here for a long time. Since we basically just wait for the next balance patch and I got in the mood to be a bit creative I thought about what the next Elite Spec could look like.

Pathfinder

Role: Offensive Melee Skirmisher/Roamer
New class mechanic: Tracking
New weapon: Dagger Mainhand
New utility skills: Tricks

Tracking

This class mechanic makes the attacks of the pathfinder and the pet add a debuff called ‘Marked’. Whenever this debuff reaches 5 stacks the enemy drops a ‘Trace’ which can be picked up by the Pathfinder or his allies by walking over it. This deals X direct damage to the enemy that left it behind. ‘Traces’ expire after 6 seconds.
Example: If the target has 3 stacks of 'Marked' and 5 stacks are added a 'Trace' will drop and 'Marked' will be set to 3.

Dagger Mainhand

1. Fierce Dagger -> (Fierce Stab -> Fierce Slice): Fierce Dagger has 900 range. If it hits a target in melee range it swaps to a full chain. 2nd and 3rd attack are melee and add 1 and 2 stacks of bleed (5 seconds) in addition to dealing more damage.
2. Dazing Dash (5 seconds cooldown): Small leap (450 range) that damages and dazes your foe for 0.5 seconds. If it interrupts the target cooldown of Dazing Dash is doubled (10 seconds).
3. Falcon Strike (12 seconds cooldown): Melee. Damage your foe and add 5 stacks of ‘Marked’. Your pets next three attacks apply 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ each instead of 1.

Tricks

• Feign Death (20 seconds cooldown): Trick. Healing Skill. You and your pet get knocked down for 3 seconds and become invulnerable to direct damage. After those 3 seconds you both get healed. Prevents capture point contribution.
• Camouflage ( 30 seconds cooldown): Trick. Remove 3 conditions from you and your pet. You and your pet gain stealth for 4 seconds.
• Sense Foes ( 25 seconds cooldown): Trick. Stunbreak. Reveal all enemies in 900 range around you and apply 5 stacks of ‘Marked’.
• Throw Dirt (10 seconds cooldown): Trick. 450 range. Blind target foe and remove all boons. Add 3 stacks of ‘Marked’.
• Hold Breath (40 seconds cooldown): Trick. Deal 50% more damage on your next 5 attacks. Each of them adds 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ and they cannot be blocked.
• Chase Down (35 second cooldown): Trick. Stunbreak. Remove movement impairing conditions and dash forward (600 range). Add 5 ‘Marked’ stacks to all enemies you pass through.
• Tracker’s Focus (90 seconds cooldown): Trick. Elite Skill. ‘Traces’ don’t expire. Activate this ability again to instantly collect all ‘Traces’. Ends and automatically activates after 30 seconds.

Traits

Those are a bit specific for just a concept but they obviously would use/modify the ‘Marked’ mechanic. I definitely would like to see a Grandmaster Trait that adds condition damage like bleed stacks when picking up a ‘Trace’ to enable condi builds. Maybe I add some more traits at a later point but this is just a concept.

Feedback appreciated.

Sheobix.8796:

balanced based on noobs… unbalanced pro play
balanced based on pros… qq noobs play
balance based on PvE skins… perfection

give everyone a tangible block bar so they can use skills to regen, reflect, etc. while mitigating damage and therefore making a necromancer class mechanic irrelevant… sounds good to me!

no.

Actually at this point necro feels like the only “fair” defensive mechanics. Despite a huge kitten health pool I’d rather call target on a necro than anything else where the whole burst is eaten by some bullkitten blocks that exist in such frequency that there is always something off cooldown.

I don’t see how this would make the mechanic irrellevant if some aspects of it, because they are healtheir than what we have now, are spread to pther parts of the game.

… should say “block the next X damage” and end when this cap is reached (or their duration ends as it is right now). The blocking is shown as a blue “shield bar” similiar to deathshroud and visible to player and enemy. This way toughness would still be a bit relevant. Ofcourse X should be balanced seperately for each skill and could ranger from 1k for small blocks to up to 4k. That whole design of skills blocking ALL incoming attacks whenever they are not on cooldown is silly.

Furthermore evades should be kept under very close watch and be a lot less spammable than they are now.

Developers need to get people on board that are actually good at playing the game. I completely get that you cannot let pros do all the balancing because most players are noobs themselves but it is hard to imagine that the devs even can find the time to play the two classes each of them is supposed to “balance” enough.

Love the Grace of the Land idea. Guess would be pretty strong for PvE though but they could balance that with duration of the stack and skill cooldown.

Thx for testing stuff so thoroughly. Quality Assurance is really written big at Arenanet. I had to use staff 3 like 5 times to find this bug, lmao …

Did that dev really not know that you can right click names? :|

ITT people that get it but twice as many that don’t get it. Staff dmg is already really strong and yes, it is pretty much only the autoattack. I would definitely like to see #2 and #4 improved but it should not be in form of dmg increase (unless they nerf the AA dmg) or otherwise it would be a joke for the old weapons.

MatthewMedina.5419:

They’re definitely not a glitch. I’ve been asking for a visibility toggle for the foot slot for a while, but to no avail. I think people finally got tired of my pestering and created this item for me to equip on all my characters so that they can be barefoot like me. :-)

Is there a chance that we get such a thing as chest piece? Really would fit with some berserker themes I have in mind.

Skill 2 and 4 both need love. However the overall DPS of the weapon should not be increased by that since it is actually quite good already. If anything they should lower the AA dmg if the give high scaling to 2 or 4.

It is just you. The dmg of staff autoattack is actually insane, even more so considering the general theme of the weapon (healing/utility). Obviously a weapon that heals and has huge leaps should not also deal insane damage to not make weapons that have the deticated role to deal dmg obsolete. Staff comes pretty close to that. Damage is almost equal to longbow and propably beats GS by a large margin. Only thing saving GS is the bursty nature of its dmg.

This thread is a bit silly.

I hate the idea of making this a fixed cooldown. Please stop suggesting that kitten.

Keep in mind that we will see more elite specs than druid that you cannot combine with druid. Also the trait is linked to how fast you can actually generate AF. Right now you have it almost on the 10s cd but I actually think Anet isn’t too happy with that.

Imo the cooldown should be higher unless you have a deticated healing build with healing power to build it up very fast like I mentioned in the opening post. Let’s be real here. 10s cd all condi clear and stunbreak isn’t exactly balanced. I would HATE if they slap an ICD on that trait though. They need to get the balance right on how often you can activate Celestial Avatar and how much you have to invest into that with your build.

Personally I even think ending CA form should leave you with no AF but I know people would hate that so I dind’t put it into the opening post.

Dunno I still find survival condi removal superior in many situations. You have to stand in gylphes which makes them good for builds that fight on point.

You will never be able to rely on them in stuff like power ranger that has to stay very mobile and cannot wait 1 sec in a circle to clear 2 condis.

That being said, the way it is now you don’t really need TU anyway for AF. Regeneration does the same thing and already comes with WHAO.

TU has its own benefits being a survival skill. I don’t think they should artificially use the druid elite spec to promote certain skills. Also TU still heals more than WHAO unless you look at multiple casts. In any build without beastmastery traited TU is a very viable option.

Druid Changes

Astral Force is now generated based on the percentage of damage or healing done:

• 1% per 500 healing
• 1% per 2000 damage

We disliked the inconsistency of AF generation between many skills which forced players to pick specific skills and thus limiting build variety. We also like to reward players running healing power with faster AF generation which was previously not the case.

Celestial Avatar now only loses 3% of AF per second (33s duration) when activated but CA skills have an AF cost attached to them:

• Cosmic Ray (#1): 3%
• Seed of Life (#2): 5%
• Lunar Impact (#3): 15%
• Rejuvenating Tides (#4): 5% per pulse (5 pulses total unless interrupted)
• Natural Convergence (#5): 30% (when the skill finishes succefully)

We felt that our glyphes didn’t really work out because players felt forced to spam Celestial Avatar skills because the whole thing was timegated. Players were basically punished for spending animation time on the alternative glyph effects which was not our intention when desinging glyphes.

I agree that being able to leave CF and save some AF will be a balance problem at some point due to the potent asociated traits. I rather have to stay in CF until it ends and have an AF generation system that makes sense though.

This is getting ridiculous. All those workarounds like the recent staff autoattack change just make the game worse.

Why would you hold on to that incredibly flawed system? Since BWE people complain that the system is neither intuitive nor consistent. Certain skills have infinitely higher potential to generate AF than other just due to the way they work, Troll Unguent being an example.

What is so freaking hard about linking it to percentage of healing/damage done instead of counting individual ticks. Should have done this in the first place but atleast do it now or every further balancing is effectively worthless since it is based on a flawed system.

The problem is pets are never designed to be pets. They just create PvE mobs and then decide secondary which could be ported into a ranger pet. For this port the only real effort goes into deciding what becomes the F2.

This is how they “design” ranger pets. Basically they don’t design ranger pets. They just pick a PvE mob that seems fitting themtically. Minimum developement effort, yep.

Sometimes accidents happen when a pet is actually good and can hit some of its attacks/damage. Then they nerf it. Improving bad pets is not a priority.

I am usually not such a negative nancy but on this ocassion everything I said is 100% what is happening. If there were atleats more pets ported with this method so that we could chose the least broken ones …

So when you released druid you aknowledged the fact that it gets only one BWE and thus much less balancing than other classes and that you will consider that fact post release.

Where is this balancing? What we got so far were some back and forth changes concerning smokescale and astral form. Do you think Druid is in a good state otherwise?

There are many people that noticed flaws with staff skills and glyphes like staff skill 2 and 4 or the fact that you cannot really justify casting any astral glyphes because you want to get as many skills 1-5 in as possible. The way AF is generated through skills is extremely inconsistent with certain skills like Troll Unguent generating more than 15x the amount of others. You nerfed smokescale but wyvern are the best example for a horrible “pve mob to pet port” and no improvements there.

Quo vadis Irenio?

For the love of god. Please do that arenanet! Please. Do. That.

This thread…

Ofc he is one of the best ranger players. It is totally legit to say that. Most people disagreeing with his build never even played in an actual tournament setup. So many solo queue heroes in here…

If he thinks he needs 21k hp instead of 16k to win duels on a good average then I believe he has more experience than you guys. I already said that I dislike the idea of cele on druid due to the lack of actual condi dmg but hybrid stats also means offense/defense hybrid and cele just offers the best mix especially if you can stack might.

After all condi dmg is just one out of eight stats it offers so it is kind of okay to waste it or just leave it for geomancy and some poison uptime. It actually hurts a lot more to not have condi applicators for the 25 might stacks but other amulets dont solve this problem.

Firelysm.4967:

You would basically be forced to pick shouts to make your pet meet new standards.

But i would support other type of idea, which would be empowering defined pet skills on their next shout use. I could see that happen with new beast mastery trait or something.
Example:
merge Natural Healing + Wilting Strike
Move honed axe on Natural Healing place
Create new Trait: Empowered creature: healing and utility shouts empower next pet attack/abilities, elite shout empowers 3 next pet attacks/abilities.

But since this topic is touch also about reworking pet control this suggestion is looking promising:
Except for the toggle skill, i don’t know how to perfectly solve this problem, but i could see ranger with 5 skills instead of 4, as it is shown under IDEA1.
http://prntscr.com/8yrijg

That idea will allow us to control two skills (and put druid at 6 f-keys) but soon again some people would also like to be able to control the other (last) pet skill on certain pets. And we start again. I seriously think a tradeoff is neccessary and running one of these shouts if you want a specific pet skill (which can be very strong if we think about all the cc) seems fine.

I don’t think it would force shouts. Look at it as giving us like 8 (how many pet families are there again?) new utility skills for each of both shouts. Sure, it is a tradeoff and utility slots are precious but it doesn’t force you to run shouts at all – only if you think a certain pet skill will be better if actively controlled than an additional utility skill.

Manekk.6981:

I don’t like this idea at all you are overthinking it in my opinion, just give us the ability to use all of our pets abilities manually instead in a similar way we do for our weapons 1 we can pick to “autofire” and the others can be hit manually.

The thing is that they wont give ranger like 7 f-keys (we have 5 right now on druid and there are 2 pet skills we cannot control yet). Actually I hardly believe they will ever make more than one ability controllable on core ranger (it might happen on a new elite spec) because that is part of their design decision for ranger. They don’t want to overwhelm new players too much and there are supposed to be “go to” profession for bad players.

So no, it wont happen that way. My suggestion makes the whole thing opitional. You would have to pick one or both these shouts to control the other abilities and you can just chose not to pick them to keep your pet automatic. If anything they will make it happen in this way (or something similiar) in my opinion.

Ranger shouts are already supposed to “command” the pet. I find this a very fitting idea that also solves a lot of complaints.

Imo other elites are much better. SotP offers just too much dmg via might, fury and also much needed stability.

Entangle is traited condi removal and very good group cc.

The glyph just is too situational/hard to use in comparison and really only deals “some” mediocre dmg. In my tests it hardly exceeds 2-3k dmg which is comparable to a maul. If it didn’t have a casting animation it would work.

This rework adresses “Sic’ Em!” and “Protect me!”.

• both skills lose their original cooldown and effects
• “Sic’ Em!” now adds an Attack of Oppotunity to your pet (50% increased dmg) and adds Reveal.
• “Protect me!” creates a bond between you and your pet that makes the pet take 25% of the dmg that you would take over the next 5 seconds.
• these effects can be discussed/changed/will need a lot of balance but they are just the preparation for what comes next

The new cooldown of these two shouts is synced to the #2 and #3 passive ability of your active pet. If you swap your pet both will reset their cooldowns instantly. They now trigger your pets skill #2 (“Sic’ Em!”) and #3 (“Protect me!”).

Examples:

If your active pet is smokescale “Sic’ Em!” will now trigger “Takedown” and “Protect me!” will trigger “Smoke Cloud”.

If your active pet is raven “Sic’ Em!” will now trigger “Swoop” and “Protect me!” will trigger the “Quickening Screech”.

Notes:

• for some pets #3 and #4 should be swapped, for example it makes more sence to sync the moa heal (“Harmonic Cry”) with “Protect me!” instead of “Sic’ Em!”.
• once you run any of these two shouts your pet will stop using the associated skill passively since it becomes controllable, for example if you run “Sic’ Em!” your smokescale will no longer knockdown enemies unless you use the shout.
• some traits might need some slight changes to work with the new system

Disclaimer:

The idea is not perfect. But you get the point. I am not saying it has to be like that exactly. Any improving suggestions you have are welcome.

I am totally for additional pet control.

Give us 2 controlled pet attacks. Also they could always just allow people to rightclick the f2 to toggle autocast if they cannot handle it manually.

The ironic thing is that having only ONE controllable petskill makes it much HARDER to handle for people seriously playing ranger since you have to constantly cancel pet stuff to make them somwhat useful.

No. It is not combat only.

I actually think cele is not that prevalent right now. Revenant adds so much burst to the meta and dragonhunter aswell … I think it is kind of balanced at the moment. And also I don’t even think cele are the best stats for druid.

I think this skills has a cool idea behind it and is some interesting new mechanic. The more unfortunate it is that this skill does nothing of significance at all. There is almost no difference to what the autoattack already does. The damage is almost exactly the same and you are even more at risk to miss dmg because it all happens in a single tick instead of three. The healing is also not better than the staff auto beam, it actually fills AF slower.

Astral Wisp needs a significant improvment! It either needs to be a skill that you want to hit on cooldown because it has a significant effect (like maul compared to GS autoattack) or it needs to add something to the table that the autoattack does not (mechanically).

Post your ideas here!

Sol.4310:

@mistsim.2748 How are you fielding with trap ranger against this plague of Cele Druids, I’m rather disappointed with how many Ranger’s are being carried by the new Cele Druid, before HoT you would could tell difference between top ranger and avg ranger now you can’t tell them apart.

Personaly I prefer Remorseless Druid but what exactly makes you think Cele Druid takes no skill to play? Actually staying alive vs pressure does take skill on this build because it is easy to get CCed at a very bad time so you got to hit your evades well. Also I feel like most people only die because they underestimate the dmg (especially the pet adding up) and think they face a bunker. Most people don’t know how to play against it yet.

A launch is actualy a combination of knockdown and knockback as far as I am concerned. Launches can for example even move downed targets.

Wyvern and Spiketrap are not launches.

Yo playing pve I came across this light purple acid they spread. Looks a lot cooler than what acid bomb leaves on the ground right now. Can we have this effect instead?

Wonder that aswell. How much longer til there are leagues? Do they want to get balance right (like fix biggest issues that came with release) or is it that leagues just arent rd yet?

Like I said, frequent CF is the lowest cd stunbreaker you can have. Consider swaping out of CF as fast as possible unless you really need the healing. Would propably not even use #5 unless it secures the kill.

Just stunbreak and clear condis. If you swap out fast one TU will put the bar at ~80% already.

With this build you might even try to run vipers nest aswell, drop spring for TU. This way you have a frequent celestial form which is condi removal and stunbreak.

Yeah … I really dont have a problem play sword on condi builds but at the same time I don’t like the auto and am all for a change.

It just makes you jump around in an unreliable fashion. I would take warrior sword over ranger sword any day from a pvp perspective.

Firelysm.4967:

Hi Runeblade, i don’t want to say it but i’ll.

You are not experienced, that’s why you demand this changes to stay.
Please learn to use your pet. And you’ll see that even with F2 smoke field, you CAN use assault on demand.

That is a common argument but it is actually not true that this is as good as having smoke assault as f2. Having it on f2 makes it actually usable a lot more proactively and especially with skills like signet of the wild, strength of the pack and sic’em. First time I actually feel like actively using my pet to kill people (aka feel like a ranger). I actually wait for them to dodge/use their evades and the let my pet burst like I would do it with my own skills.

I can see why people want the smoke field and I would also take the pre change smokescale without hestitation but at the same time smoke assault should be controllable aswell.

Best scenario would be if they finally made 2 skills per pet controllable (f2, f3, old f3 as toggle of f1) or if they created like a “Red Smokescale” with Assault f2 and “Grey Smokescale” with the Smokefield f2.

Signet of the Wild trait proccing (when you reach 50% hp) ends Celestial Form. Huge downer.

It would be an insane improvement if pets worked like that.

Other QoL changes:

• indicator icon when taunt is usable
• indicator when shared anguish is up

The question is not if there are counters. The question is if there should be a class that is tat easy to play. It is extremely primitive playstyle.

So I see you keep nerfing stuff.

Meanwhile Sic’Em still interrupts pet skills and requires a target to be cast. Both makes no sense. Protect me still is an incredibly underwhelming version of Signet of Stone to the point of even shout traited builds running SoS. It even makes the pet stop attacking lmao… Search and Rescue is still on that ridiculous 85s cd. Check ANY comparable skill. I don’t know what the kitten you are thinking …

Druid is already in a spot were it gets easy countered in my experience as well.

After LL nerf survivability dropped hard. Send 2 people and they take out the druid much faster than bunker guard.

The stupid part is if a skill is only borderline OP but that last 1% for a nerf is missing it stays broken. If it hits that 1% they destroy the skill. Stop doing those massive nerfs and btw fix stuff first.

Ranger has currently one really good pet (smokescale) and it almost feels it happened on accident. Bristleback looks worse every minute I play it. The f2 doesn’t work at all in slightly non flat terrain. Typical example of a PvE mob that got “ported” into a ranger pet but doesn’t work out.

Yeah. Get killed by air? Why didn’t you dodge it? xD XD

Huhuhu I play DH and this is 100% a l2p issue you have there. We are balanced, XD

Just nerf that kitten finally. It is the most idiotic playstyle in the history of gw2 pvp.

Is all Karl can design perma dodge classes and “press your right skillbar every X second to kill stuff”? On ranger they do 400% shaving and on DH they nerf rune of the trapper by 1 sec stealth rofl …

Finally reduce the damage of those kitten traps.

So today I started playing this and it is insane how much damage it can put out compared to the tanky stats.

Build runs GS and Staff with the former being the main damaging weapon. Heal as One, Daze Glyph, Knockback Glyph, Signet of Stone and SOTP on right side of the skillbar with some experimenting possible (like Sic’Em). Traits are MM for MoC and Remorseless, BM for reduced shout cooldowns and Taunt, Druid with Lingering Light and glyph condi cleansing.

I am not posting a build here since there is a lot of variety possible. You can either ran Valkyrie for super high health pool and max dmg or Cleric for sustain.

Fury Sources for Remorseless:

• SOTP (feels like going Rampage)
• Tiger
• Two Handed Training BM Master Trait
• can also run stuff like Runes of Evasion but not sure if that’s right

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Going to be investigating this. It may require some change to Smoke Assault, since the active skills are intended to be a little stronger than the passive skills.

You just nerfed it by 50%. Since smoke assault is passive right now, you will buff it, right?

Btw rofl when I made the thread were I said I like controllable smoke assaul I got torn to pieces. But honestly … give us both. Just create a second Smokecale with a slightly different skin and swap the skills.