Guild Wars 2

Imo raising the trait cd slightly would work. Procing every 3 sec is a bit silly. 5 sec seems fine.

Also saying again that I liked the inital trait of adding the astral wisp to allies or self on heal but I don’t think staff 2 in a vacuum does enough considering the effect that it is basically the same thing the autoattack does already. Like there is literally no consequence between casting staff 2 or just keep autoattacking.

It needs cooldown 3→5s and it is fine imo. Also I liked when it added the astral wisp to allies/self but the astral wisp on staff needs some added functionality. The autoattack already does the same exact thing.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Dojo.1867:

What makes you think it cannot be salvaged/improved? The layout is not bad even if different compared to the other maps. Don’t forget that you have a very fast extremely safe route to the close cp with the alternate base exit. The only thing the enemy could potentially try to wall you away from is raven but even there you don’t have to move straight through the middle but can go up the little path ways on the side when exiting base (or just also go via close which honestly doesn’t take much longer).

I like the idea of spawning the orb a set amount of times per game but “just fix the orb running abuse abilities” sounds easier than it is. To the point that it is almost impossible imo. Forbidding teleports makes sense due to the vertical layout of the map which makes the distance you can close with them kind of extreme. But leaps/superspeed will just exist and that is fine imo. This is why I suggested not rewarding any points when delivering the orb. Making it a decap mechanic alone is very strong and would actually be some kind of anti snowball mechanic.

The orb needs to be a transform and the player characters gets an entire new skill bar (including skills,heal,utility, and elite).

That would work from the competitive side but it will make the game unfun for casuals. Peoples want to play the character they picked – nobody would orb run.

Exedore.6320:

Disagree with OPs suggested fixes

Skyhammer
This map has potential and could even see ranked play if given proper fixes.

• Make skyhammer undodgeable again. Give it a slightly longer cooldown between shots and turn between points slower. This forces enemies off points that it’kittenting, but remains reasonably avoidable.
• Side nodes areas need to be expanded and the breakable glass moved away from the point slightly. Remove the half-panel at the side nodes. Right now they heavily favor close quarters combat builds and it’s really hard for a ranged build to kite effectively.
• Expand the cannon room and move it above the middle plateau at a lower height. The room is too cramped and it becomes too gimmicky due to the small size. Getting knocked off should hurt, but not be so punishing. Taking moderate fall damage and being somewhat out of position is good enough.

Spirit Watch
This map can’t be salvaged. It’s the worst conquest map by far.

• The orb only helps teams which are ahead get more ahead. The restrictions for it make little sense (you can use superspeed and leaps/rushes, but no teleport, regardless of distance and needing a target). Making it more of a decap mechanic would be a huge step in the right direction, since it would then help the team which is behind.
• The map layout is poor. The node areas don’t provide much cover, the stairs wreak havoc on range abilities which don’t have a z-axis, the middle node doesn’t offer a good vantage point for incoming enemies, and the spawn gates funnel teams into a mess at middle.

What makes you think it cannot be salvaged/improved? The layout is not bad even if different compared to the other maps. Don’t forget that you have a very fast extremely safe route to the close cp with the alternate base exit. The only thing the enemy could potentially try to wall you away from is raven but even there you don’t have to move straight through the middle but can go up the little path ways on the side when exiting base (or just also go via close which honestly doesn’t take much longer).

I like the idea of spawning the orb a set amount of times per game but “just fix the orb running abuse abilities” sounds easier than it is. To the point that it is almost impossible imo. Forbidding teleports makes sense due to the vertical layout of the map which makes the distance you can close with them kind of extreme. But leaps/superspeed will just exist and that is fine imo. This is why I suggested not rewarding any points when delivering the orb. Making it a decap mechanic alone is very strong and would actually be some kind of anti snowball mechanic.

I don’t think the massive knockdown that only occurs if you run out of dodges justifies putting your team into a 4on5. Not at all. Reduce the knockdown time aswell then but I believe decreasing the cooldown is absolutely the way to go with skyhammer.

princode.2750:

Well maybe I’m noob in druid but I’m seeing druid facetank 3 or more player on a point and its not 1 match its almost every match well maybe all the 40 plus match my teammate is all noob. Explain please

This is the same thing as the “power ranger is op” threads. Yes, on low level people happen to be bad at the game so this is a completely legit explanation.

Learn to counterplay the druid. There is plenty of counterplay that people listed here. People always refuse to adept some new approach is needed because it is much easier to cry on forums.

Druid is more killable than bunker guardian but people never complained too much about that…

If you want to kill the druid then get 2 people that can deal damage. It does the job. CC also helps, if druid runs out of stability he can actually even be killed in 1v1 if your build does damage.

If cele or soldier amulet players expect to kill a druid that invested fully into sustain then no, this is not supposed to happen.

So as someone that has played ranked exclusively for the last years and is now forced into unranked I want to give some comments on these 2 maps. Personally I never vote them and I am upset when I still get them but the thing is I actually like them from a diversity point of view.

I just wish these 2 maps were part of the rotation to pick from but actually on the same competitive level as the rest of the maps.

Skyhammer

• the major secondary mechanic (the hammer) basically became useless, you can literally fight 5on4 the whole game while getting hammered, it is still a major advantage and if you know how to dodge the skyhammer players achieves absolutely nothing
• there is still really gimicky stealth pulling going on that is incredibly punishing and also unfair since it ocasionally straight out wins you fights

Skyhammer Fixes

• now this is a very experimental suggestion that I made a few times before but please arenanet explore what enabling gliders and updrafts (latter placed strategically) would do to this map, the extremely punishing deathpull would become a “glide to nearest updraft and enter fight again” but still reward the person that applied the CC because it removes the gliding player out of battle for a couple of sec anyway (but less than if he would have to respawn)
• with this implementation there obviously would have to be som additional thoughts to be made: can gliders even be attacked? how can we stop people from just jumping of and glide to escape certain death in a legit fight? My point is please explore the possibility Anet, test it!
• also Skyhammer Cannon should do 30% less damage but have 50% less cooldown to make it punishing and less dodgable again

Spiritwatch

• again some gimicky abuses on how to orbrun really fast exist
• beside that the map has an interesting layout and I actually think it would work like a normal map without the orb mechanic just fine

Spiritwatch Fixes

• gradually lower the impact of the orb as an objective, that means lower the point gain
• might aswell just make it a way to instantly decap without awarding any further point, would still be a great tool to debunk people initially

Feel free to post your opinion as long as it is constructive. Please no “just remove skyhammer”. Everything can be fixed with enough effort and I think visually those maps are stunning so it is kind of a waste (not even touching that it is much harder to create 2 completely new maps and these are also likely to be flawed/unbalanced for competitive play). Please Anet fix these maps! You gave up way too fast in my opinion.

To be honest I think that is how it is supposed to be. If you want on the run condi removal then there are survival skills which will always be viable (TU, LR, Entangle).

Glyph condi clear is for very sustained area control playstyle. If they were faster then they would be just as good as survival condi clear but also blinding, group cleansing and offering a field (which is neglectable, I agree).

What I personally dislike is the mediocre animation. All the celestial form skills have awesome effects but that exploding seed just looks odd and unfinished. Parts of it just stay in the air and then suddently vanish.

I completely diagree. 2h event chain for a pet how do they DARE to make something remotely hard to obtain. A pet that will be usable for the rest of all times on your ranger. 2 hours, come on people.

Do you want everything handed to you for free? Then you also complain about too easy content. If you want this wyvern then do this minimal effort.

I am preaching the problem with CF and gylph usage since BWE. CF should NOT be solely time gated because you will always just use as muhc of 1-5 as possible. Unless the glyphs have no animation and you can just press the button you actually get PUNISHED for using gylphes.

My solution to that is make CF only partially time gated (like 1% decay per second) but also attach an AF cost to the 1-5 skills. For example skill 4 costing 10% AF, skill 5 costing 20% and so on.

At the moment I am not aware of this problem on any other class I play (mainly engi). So it would atleast be very rare on those. I would say it happens 95% of the time for ranger.

On engis keep in mind that mines and stuff like that could legitimately cause a similiar experience but not bugged in this case.

I played cele for quite a bit but staff just has too low dmg to make alle the offensive stats work imo.

Having some insane sucess with trap druid at the moment.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8fjEqQLL2uCerAVLWYEM4o6Vtr2MuqVhAmCwlLAUyzSD-TZhAwArLDsc/BOPBAAHEgOXAAA

The AoE pressure makes him excellent for holding points and with skirmishing the leaps almost put him on thief mobility level. Try it!

Ranger can run Remorseless. Engi has crit chance in Firearms line. Not saying this is all competitive but it is good that the amulet exists if someone makes this stuff work at some point.

Last match it actually happened to me as the trap druid so no bright side. It just sucks from both perspectives.

This is bugged since I don’t know when now and it is frustrating because the bug is really easy to narrow down. Apparently when the pet was dead and the ranger player respawns it gets revived to full hp first and then moved to the player starting location. However this short interval of respawing were it died is enough to trigger stuff like for example traps and apply damage/condition damage to the pet. This will put the ranger player in combat and slow him down and also be frustrating for the person with the traps because they get triggered for nothing.

Also ancestral grace ocasionally puts the caster in combat for no reason.

The trait change just makes troll unguent even more superior compared to other heal. They really need to rethink how they want to proc all this stuff. Traits based % instead of per tick (same for af genration) would be much better and not require clunky ICDs. Just let that trait give us some healing power …

There is a reason for this to be ferocity. There are classes that can build around getting crits out of their traits/sigils/runes instead of the precision stat. Bad suggestion. People are already running crusader, inform yourself first.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

I’m looking into the combat degen resulting in too heavy a gating of Celestial Avatar in PvE situations; from what I saw over the weekend it seemed overly restrictive in open world battles. If this continues it then the degeneration when out of combat is likely to be removed.

Hey Irenio! Thanks for this changes however there is STILL a mayor flaw to AF generation the way you implemented it. It should be based on a percentage of damage dealt/healing done. Right now Troll Unguent will give you about 15 times more AF than any other healing skill. Is this intended? It just means to use Celestial Form you have to pick TU and thus limits build variety. I cannot believe this is intended.

Please change this to be percentage based instead of “per tick”!

Another thing is glyphes. Right now it doesn’t feel like they really work that well with their 2 aspects in celestial/normal form. Reason: celesital form skills are very strong and they obviously have to be. However since cele form is timed gated this means you don’t really want to spend animation time on anything on the right side of your skill bar since it means less time to use the CF skills. I am always in a rush to get as many in as possible already. Casting a glyph or anything else is basically getting punished.
Solution: make the time gated part weaker (lower consumption per second) but add an AF cost to each of the celestial form skills. Skill 4 could for example cost 10% but you only lose 1% per second. With that change I would again make it so that AF is set to zero whenever CF ends.

Thanks Irenio and don’t be discouraged by some minor outrages.

PS: Swap the smokescreen skills again. Personally I didn’t mind but it really means a lot to the ranger community.

Flame trap is fine, Spike Trap is a bit high cd but also kind of okay. Viper’s Nest needs to strip boons or something like that. Frost Trap needs a complete rework.

Both skills feel like they do way too little especially for the animation time you spent on them. Atleast from a pvp perspective.

The autoattack could also need some love but I guess it is an okayish filler concernining the direct damage part and the fact that as a beam it has a relatively high chance to connect.

My suggestions (some of those I have already seen other people suggest):

Solar Beam

Yes, burning seems like a super logical addition here. Adding 1 sec of burn on the last tick gives the weapon a more hybrid character and makes it a fairer deal when having almost no power stats. Also would require you to channel the full autoattack which is actually taking some time.

Astral Wisp

This just needs to do more in the damage department aswell. What about adding vulnerability to the target? The purpose of the skill is already support and help allies that strike something. 5 stacks of vulerability for the duration seems good and makes it more worth ever using it.

Vine Surge

Now this one feels so underwhelming compared to the cast time and actually cool theme I think it needs a bigger rework. The vines should become a pulsing skill that pulses 3 times over 3 sec immobilizing on every pulse and adding bleed. So basically pick up the entangle theme. Breaking out of immob ticks is usually easy but at the same time the skill is hard to hit and should do something when it does.

PS: Elite Glyph needs love aswell. Damage too low. Worst elite right now by a large margin, even if traited. Increase damage by atleast 50% and consider removing the cast time so that you can actually just “activate” it when getting bursted.

The f2 of the electro wyvern is pretty good. Unfortunately the more I play it it is a slightly weaker wolf. And since you now have smokescale + x (even after the nerf) the wyvern seems meh. Fire wyvern is trash tier with that animation and meh damage imo.

I hope not but what would be really awesome is enabling gliders for everyone on the skyhammer map and adding updrafts aswell.

I mean it is kind of obvious that the most viable druid builds actually utilize the sustain in some way. Having fun with a celestial version. Not enough damage to kill deticated bunkers but I score about 400-500k per match which is quite something.

Ragnar.3916:

at least making a second smoke scale like
Gilgalas says in his topic would be the perfect step.

everybody would be happy.

Agreed.

Why do people keep saying I am supposed to take birds if I like to time my burst?

You are aware that bird f2 don’t really do any burst dps, right? They are about same dmg as just normal attacking.

Chokolata.1870:

The pet is 100% worthless now.

This is exactly the type of bullkitten comment that I hope would finally vanish from this forum.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

You can still combo this exactly the same way when it was the #3 pet skill. When you swap pets, they use the #3 skill if they are in range. So you could have just swapped pets, used SoTW and Sic Em and achieved the same result. In fact it would probably be better, because you could have hidden the fact that you were using a Smoke Scale until you needed it to burst. The AA damage is not amazing, so you would be far better off with a pet that does good AA damage, then swapping to the smokey for burst. You can do the same thing now, but you lose the massive utility of an on-demand smoke field.

I felt it was perfect the way it was, because I had control over both. You still do, but smoke field in combat is not as good as on-demand ooc.

Yes it used to work on pet swap but after that it is random. If smokescale ever stayed in rotation for a second cast the new implementation is superior control by a large margin.

Also what you describe perfectly applies to the smoke field now. You get it when you swap to Smoke Scale “on demand”.

mistsim.2748:

a few of the esports rangers raise some noise because, apparently, them being on some team all depended on this bloody smoke field. lmao. yeah, right. then the entire forum loses its freaking mind because now their “teams” cant blast finish the smoke to open up on the opposing team.

Describes the situation very well.

So in the last weeks there were some posts of Irenio that he intends to take a look at shout. WHAO and SOTP are at a decent position after the recent improvements already. This leaves us with the following shouts that need work:

• Sic’Em – still clunky, interrupts pet F2
• Protect Me – still a mediocre copy of SoS
• Guard – still merely an “acitave trait” button
• Search and Rescue

Sic’Em

• make it always activate on demand and not interrupt anything, you should be able to cast this during pets performing their f2 just fine
• also add a 40% buff to condition damage, I know that this is highly neglectable anyway but if at some point it will be a thing this will be a flaw of the skill

Protect Me

• Put this skill on a much lower cooldown of about 20 seconds to make it differ from SoS
• it now only transfers 75% of the damage
• no longer prevents capture point contribution
• no longer stops the pet from attacking
• now creates a visual bond between the ranger and the pet with a range treshhold (similiar to glyph elite but obviously different particle effect), if the pet moves further than 800 away the skill ends

Guard

• pet guards area gaining 8 seconds of protection and stability (3 stacks)
• ranger can cast ‘Return to Pet’ while active (during the 8 seconds)
• ‘Return to Pet: Teleport the ranger to his pets position.’
• new cooldown: 45 sec

Search and Rescue

• cooldown now 20 seconds down from 85
• pet now gets 3 stacks of stability for 8 seconds

This is not what I discuss here. I also would have prefered the dmg nerf to be less massive but I talk about the swap of both skills here that seems to upset so many people. I like it.

Unpopular opinion here but are you aware that the smokefield does not blind? All it does was enable stealth combos and from playing ranger with this pet the last few days I found this VERY situational.

Being able to control the burst on the other side seems like a mayor improvement. I am sure it can be used a lot more frequently now aswell. You can succefully combo it with Sic’Em (would stop the attack before if you just use it when Smoke Scale started the mist walk) and you can stack 7 might with WHAO.

So unless they would also change the smokefield to actually pulse blind I MUCH prefer the new installment. You can hate me now.

To gain 3 stacks of stability/might for 5/10 seconds INSTANTLY when you swap to Flamethrower on 10 seconds ICD?

Would feel a lot better than the awkwardness it is now. Camping in flamethrower is bad. Keeping this trait like that is like teaching new people how to play bad.

Wasn’t able to play much yet and well it is all unranked right now but just running around in the mists they seem pretty strong. At the same time it is kind of balanced because it does not do much in on point 1v1 (the situation trap ranger pretty much will be in 90% of the time) except even risking a decap and in general the stealth interval is short/often gets revealed almost instantly due to trap procs.

I really like the new flavor it adds though and there is no denying that this is a survivability boost. Still hard to put enough condi clear/stunbreak into a full trap build.

The astral force thing is a perfect example of unsufficient opportunity to test stuff (only one BWE). Imagine we would only be at BWE 2 now.

This “solution” feels rushed. It feels like a joke how you still start with full force in spvp matches (guess they forgot to remove that) but it depletes to zero before the gates open.

I gave extensive feedback on what should be done to AF but I guess it went unseen so far or there was not enough time to implement it. Although I think the required fixes are really rather small changes of formulas/parameters.

As a PvP guy I love the skill retargeting. Really makes everything more responsive.

• AF should be based on % of the healing/damage done
• AF should not deplete out of combat
• CF skills should have an AF cost attached to them and the loss over time should be slower (like 1% per second)

(Power) Ranger is a map control based spec. You either complitely dominate the opponent team or you lose harrd.

Once you dominate more ranger will add up to this effect. Also strongly depends on the map (foefire being good for obvious reasons) and the other classes in your/enemy team.

I don’t get this thread. Are you upset that druid might see play?

In any case atleast wait a daamn month and judge then. Asked too much?

I don’t think condi dmg will be a thing on a longbow version of ranger ever. So in any case the stats of the trapper runes would be kind of wasted. Might still be strong on stuff like marauders power ranger. Like LR, Spike Trap, Freezing Trap. You don’t need SoS due to the stealth. Both Traps help when people jump you not only due to stealth.

I think the current amount was somewhat balanced but I also thing with the addition of glyphes one of them should stunbreak in normal form. Daze one seems perfect for this job.

mistsim.2748:

the new f2 for the bristle does something like 5k in pve. so with 25 might stacks, we’re talking 10k. but likely they will nerf it. that smokescale attack looked pretty broken. 8k without crits or might.

I would not call anything broken before you actually played it versus other players. That wvw video someone posted here? You can do the same thing with drakes if you commit all your high cooldown utility skills to it and have opponents that cannot dodge or avoid damage.

Bristle doesn’t seemt that good at applying damage to players to be honest. Have to play it myself first. This seems like very avoidable damage. For smokescale a large amount can also be dodged but the pet as a whole is just a good package.

Ye companions’t might kind of adds stacks but the trait itself is really kittenty due to the low duration and atleast for sPvP running the reduced cooldown on shouts is much more important in a build with WHAO.

Furthermore the ability to basically spam SOTP makes it a legit part of the calculation imo. It adds up.

1. Don’t claim something is borken or overpowered unless you intensively tested it yourself in multiple scenarios.
2. Don’t create silly videos with a onesided presentation of certain mechanics.
3. Give the meta of every mode some time to settle and give counters the chance to react to things.
4. Consider the strength and weaknesses of other classes compared to ranger before you claim something is overpowered.
5. Ranger might potentially feel a lot stronger which might overwhelm some ranger players and make them initially feel “too strong”. Keep this effect in mind when posting.
6. Don’t test your stuff vs golems or other immobile targets.

With this we can prevent kneejerk reactions from happening. If something turns out to be actually overpowered a nerf should be well thought out and not happen as some weird hotfix after two days.

I don’t know what they did to smokescale and testing for sPvP was not possible so far but if they keep it approximately where it was then I actually think it starts to be fair to have less damage on the ranger himself.

This thing feels like the perfect pet and the other new ones are basically atleast on dog level aswell.

You can easy stack 25 might with signets or just maximizing all other sources.

Just pet swap with clarion bond and the grandmaster in beastmastery will put your pet at 6 stacks or 12 with nature magic which will put you at 18 if you WHAO.

But honestly the signet build does it best.

Uhm they changed it back with hot release to transfer all stacks, not just three.

Have been running this build. I don’t think you can justify not running GS though. Yes, sword has an evade and leap but the GS set has a much higher impact on survivability. 2 condi removal skills is weak and even weaker if both have actually a very distinct purpose (stunbreak, dmg spike) that you want to keep them for.

With this build you will want to stay on longbow 90% of the time. Skilled enemies will have no problem bursting you down in coordinated focus once your SoS is gone. Will win games if people don’t deal with it so in uncoordinated solo queue games it will shine.

Rating: 7/10 Very glassy interpretation of the power ranger archetype. Works well in a less coordinated environement. Not usable for high level play.

How will skill retargetting interact with the original target going stealth?

What skills does it affect beside Rapid Fire? Are skills like ranger warhorn 4 affected?

This will continue forever. 7 people saying it has to be changed and then 3 people saying they like it the way it is.

As I suggested before. Fix this with a trait, propably adept or master. Picking the trait removes the leaps. If you don’t want that then don’t pick it.