Guild Wars 2

Oozo.7856:

Durzlla.6295:

Oozo.7856:

Durzlla.6295:

Actually, the reason Mesmer does so well is because a lot of people that are regular RPG players can’t seem to grasp how to fight them, ALL of my friends who picked up GW2 as their first rpg have no issues finding the real mes and killing it but all my friends who have played WoW and other such games for freaking ever can’t even lay a finger on the real mes… so idk why that is, especially since some of the experience RPG players are better players overall.

No, the real problem is that they can run a build with 4 different stealths and 2 different ports. where almost every utility breaks stun. If a mesmer doesn’t run with this kind of escapability then they don’t know what they are doing. Those are the ones that die. Stealth acts as a target reset.

I don’t run with that much stealth and i kitten and pillage in my 3k armor, so you clearly don’t play mesmer at all…
And btw, if they have 4 stealths that means they have torch, 2 utilities, and an elite set for stealth, therefore they can’t HAVE 2 different ports, and they’d only have 1 stun break, so stop talking out of your kitten

You do realize that a mesmer can weapon swap, right? Torch for one stealth. Two utilities to stealth. Elite to stealth. One utility to port and (what you are forgetting) staff to port.

Decoy stealths you and breaks stun. Blink breaks stun. That’s two stun breakers right there. You can get a third stun breaker with Mirror Images, but would have to give up one of the stealth options (Veil) to do that.

For someone who plays a mesmer, you don’t seem to know much about your own profession.

Well for starters I alt a Mesmer, main a ranger, and I’m more into the condition overload thing that mesmers are good at, I have 2 stealths in my build (mass invis and torch) and then have mirror images, sig of illusion, and 3rd utility switches depending on scenario but is normally either mirror, arcane thievery or mantra of free dazes (idr the name), I didn’t realize you were grouping staff in as a teleport…

@Xsours I know I tested it back in the beta an the enemies couldn’t pick up your foraged items, but that was beta. Haven’t checked recently (going to Friday or Saturday) I can confirm that allies -can- pick up the items which gets REALLY annoying, especially when they waste one of my second heals/3sec invuln or my ethereal field/throw scale!! (Poison cloud as much as I love it isn’t -that- big of a deal if they waste it)

Sleepy.2647:

Axe is so powerful for direct damage that it does the least damage among all weapons, that defines itself how strong it is. It has 3 skills, one is condition damage based, one is a chill and the other one is autoattack. I didn’t say they were MOSTLY conditions.

Even if you happen to hit twice your main target with the bounces which won’t happen that often it will still deal low damage and give you less utility than other weapons.

actually, when it double strikes it does significantly more damage than all of our other weapons auto attacks, and less utility? Yeah, ok, not like we have 30% uptime on chill from our 3 skill alone (chill makes it so enemy runs 66% slower and their skills take 66% longer to recharge), and then i believe it’s 100% or nearly 100% uptime on weakness, which has a 50% chance to make them deal 50% less.

It has plenty of damage, and as i said, you want to use it more for crit builds than raw power builds.

Sleepy.2647:

If you look at the skills from axe you will notice they are more condition oriented and off hands are usually condition oriented as well except axe off hand and horn.
Imo axe is the worst direct damage weapon rangers have unless you happen to fight 2 enemies at once all the time, then it becomes “average” at most.

lol what? If you look at the axe skills the ONLY condition oriented skill is the #2, so idk what skills you’re looking at…

@OP the axe is absolutely a good direct damage weapon, it’s really good for crit builds due to the +10% crit damage trait while you have a mainhand axe equipped, it’s actually quite powerful, not to mention if you hit an enemy that’s standing near one other enemy or near a wall/pillar/tree the axe can bounce off of you deal double damage with your 1 skill.

Eh, the more i think of it the more i think we -should- let rangers who don’t want to use their pets to do so, but they should still do -less- damage than rangers who -do- use their pet, they’d have less utility, and they shouldn’t be compensated on signets or shouts for their choice to drop their class mechanic.

IE: if they’d get X% damage boos to not make it entirely unviable, but it shouldn’t make them on par with a pet using ranger.

Xsorus.2507:

Durzlla.6295:

Ranger bunkers are actually among the most dangerous because they are sturdy AND can kill their attacker, and using a pig + warthog makes it so you have a second heal and can drop a field to essentially tell the enemy to kitten off

Yea, Pigs would be pretty decent for Points i think.

well the only downside to pigs is their F2 requires them to run over and grab it, and at a point they can only go so far, and you can stock pile them, so that makes their downside nonexistent and actually turns it into a plus.

Ranger bunkers are actually among the most dangerous because they are sturdy AND can kill their attacker, and using a pig + warthog makes it so you have a second heal and can drop a field to essentially tell the enemy to kitten off

Wasdclick.1764:

Well, it wouldn’t be able to work both ways.

Pet gained might (1s). Yay! Player gains might (1s) too!

Oh! The player just got Might (1s), better give the pet Might (1s) too…

Then the infinite loop divides by zero!

It’d be nice if the pet buffed us instead of the other way around, but I like the way it is right now too. It’s a good trait regardless.

Lol they can set it so it can’t loop forever, they did it with reflection after all…

Oozo.7856:

Durzlla.6295:

Actually, the reason Mesmer does so well is because a lot of people that are regular RPG players can’t seem to grasp how to fight them, ALL of my friends who picked up GW2 as their first rpg have no issues finding the real mes and killing it but all my friends who have played WoW and other such games for freaking ever can’t even lay a finger on the real mes… so idk why that is, especially since some of the experience RPG players are better players overall.

No, the real problem is that they can run a build with 4 different stealths and 2 different ports. where almost every utility breaks stun. If a mesmer doesn’t run with this kind of escapability then they don’t know what they are doing. Those are the ones that die. Stealth acts as a target reset.

I don’t run with that much stealth and i kitten and pillage in my 3k armor, so you clearly don’t play mesmer at all…
And btw, if they have 4 stealths that means they have torch, 2 utilities, and an elite set for stealth, therefore they can’t HAVE 2 different ports, and they’d only have 1 stun break, so stop talking out of your kitten

Xsorus.2507:

Oozo.7856:

People have to tear you down. You see, when someone does well with a class that they complain about… it says something about them, not you.

I fought a melee based ranger the other day 1v1 and was quite impressed. Very good health regeneration and evasion. It was a solid dueling build. It was a human, so no pain inverter to explain away his success.

I do alright, but just because I do alright doesn’t mean the class doesn’t have trouble.

I mean hell, look at any number of Thief/Mesmer video’s you see of them owning groups…Very rarely do i own a group, most of the time i’m getting smashed pretty hard as I can’t go invisible to take a breather in the middle of the fight.

So i don’t understand why anyone would take offense to my video’s

I do get why some people complain about me using Pain Inverter though, cause i imagine being the other races it’s like a swift kick in the nuts to be so close and yet be so far away.

Actually, the reason Mesmer does so well is because a lot of people that are regular RPG players can’t seem to grasp how to fight them, ALL of my friends who picked up GW2 as their first rpg have no issues finding the real mes and killing it but all my friends who have played WoW and other such games for freaking ever can’t even lay a finger on the real mes… so idk why that is, especially since some of the experience RPG players are better players overall.

PS: look carefully on the mesmer and thief videos, there’s a LOT of clever editing, almost all the people they fight aren’t lv 80, i know there was a few times on my ranger i killed like 10 people at once only to find out half way through that fight that all of them but 1 had the little green arrow by their lv showing they weren’t actually 80.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I haven’t rerolled at all. I’ve made a few alts to play around with so I can see how things are for other classes, but the Ranger will ALWAYS be my main. Its playstyle just fits me like a glove.

about this, but i have issues deciding between mesmer and ranger… god both the play styles are so awesome if only i could combine them…

However, in the end out of all the alts i’ve made i’ve always returned to ranger, so i doubt i’m going to be rerolling anytime soon…

Sleepy.2647:

Durzlla.6295:

They’re not as easy to kill as you think, i know my hundred blades friend always gets pissed when i use those because he can’t break them at a reasonable rate (IE before he gets to double digits of bleeding) unless he pops hundred blades.

They have like 4-5k HP or so i think and you can even use certain skills to get out of the root.

Pretty sure they have a little more than that… but if you get -out- of the root you can get trapped by it again if the root touches you lol

Sol.4310:

Only problem I see Xsorus is you lack the burst damage now. Seen as your not running PI your missing that sudden burst damage you used to have, need to find a new way adding that damage back in.

Sick’Em, he has a lot of points in his pets (you can tell from how much healthbar vanishes when he uses an F2) so increasing that damage by 15% and increasing their movement speed by 50% would certainly give him some burst.

Sleepy.2647:

Not really a good example, not to sound like a cliche but…i couldn’t see any decent 80 on that video, maybe one.

Hell, watching the greatsword guardian (and his mate) rooted by entangle trying to move instead of pressing “1” twice to break the vines really hurts my eyes

Your build is quite tanky with good conditions dmg tho.

They’re not as easy to kill as you think, i know my hundred blades friend always gets pissed when i use those because he can’t break them at a reasonable rate (IE before he gets to double digits of bleeding) unless he pops hundred blades.

DragonFlu.7314:

We would get any boon the pet received. That way, it seems more like the pet is supporting the player rather than the player supporting the pet. Also, Rampage as One might get a bit OP lol

Thoughts?

I kinda wish it went both ways at the same time, however that’d get OP really fast…

And that’s cute… you think it’d be more OP for -us- to have the 25 might.

Aerwyna.2541:

Hiiii, I am new to the ranger forum. So just wanted to say hi before I get onto my question. So hi. >.>
ANNNYways..

What is this small rumor I am hearing about ranger getting a new tamable animal with the upcoming patch(es)? Anyone have any idea? c:

I wouldn’t count on it, we did -just- get one, the rumor mainly forumed because we got the Reef Drake last patch so a lot of people are excited thinking we may get one every patch now.

Agadar.4931:

PearlGore.7419:

Agadar.4931:

PearlGore.7419:

How can you say Rangers are not meant to have stealth? We are a jack of all trades for one thing, for another we already have a few ways of gaining stealth via a pet and a trait. Although both of those are kind of crappy.

Jack of all trades? Every class is a jack of all trades. That’s the whole point behind not having the holy trinity.

The point of not having the holy trinity was to avoid looking for a tank or healer for hours upon hours.

Doubt it, because something like that can be avoided easily. For example, WoW for the longest time had only one tank class and one healer class, the warrior and the priest respectively. It look quite a while until paladins and druids became valid tanks and healers as well. I cannot recall ever running into trouble looking for tanks and healers since.

Point being that if 1/3 of your classes can tank, 1/3 of your classes can heal, and the other 1/3 of your classes can DPS, you won’t have to search for any specific role for long.

But we digress.

If 1/3 of your classes tank, 1/3 of your classes heal, and 1/3 of your classes dps then 2/3s of your class selection are going to be significantly underplayed because a vast amount of people (myself included, who is an avid SUPPORT role player) absolutely despise the tanking and healing roles because they’re boring.

But this isn’t the theme of the thread…

@OP: As much as i would LOVE to have a nice sexy attack to use while leaping out of stealth, i just don’t feel like it fits ranger all that much, make just make it so every attack has a 100% crit chance when you exit stealth (there are combo finishers that cause people to stealth) and then nerf the normal damage on thieves stealth attack so it’s not OP with the crit every time?

ChillyChinaman.6057:

I wish this skill made it into the game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Alpha_Strike
It’s basically what you’re calling for, and it fits in line with skills like Thieves Guild.

lol they removed alpha strike because people like me would’ve brought 3 amphibious pets ( i love my drakes) and would absolutely DESTROY people because they kept all of their BM point buffs xD

Still wish it was in…

@Person saying make it 5s on Swap, YES!! that would be AMAZING!! Ever since they nerfed instinctual bond into the dirt it’s not even worth taking! (10s of quickness on you getting downed with a 20s CD seemed fair to me… but i guess anet though 5s of quickness on a 50s CD was better…)

Kifyi.6479:

Gonna be honest, I flat out hate this idea. I’m a very huge fan of pets and pet classes. If you don’t want a pet, then don’t play a pet class, bottom line. Think I’d quit the game if I lost my ranger pets.

I wouldn’t quit, but my struggle between picking ranger and mesmer sure as hell wouldn’t exist…

I don’t like the idea at all, i rolled a ranger because i wanted to be a Druid/shaman sort of beast master, i have my pet, i have my spirits, why should i merge the two together? that’d be stupid, not to mention we’d have to have EVERYTHING reworked.

If i wanted a fake pet i’d be playing a minion master necromancer with his abominations, not picking the ranger.

Agadar.4931:

PearlGore.7419:

How can you say Rangers are not meant to have stealth? We are a jack of all trades for one thing, for another we already have a few ways of gaining stealth via a pet and a trait. Although both of those are kind of crappy.

Jack of all trades? Every class is a jack of all trades. That’s the whole point behind not having the holy trinity.

We are more of a jack of all trades than others, every single one of our weapons can be used for multiple things where as most other profs are pretty much “It does X” for example, a necros scepter, only a condition weapon, for ranger our condi weapons are torch, axe (main hand), shortbow, and arguably GS (i would say no, but my friend actually made one that works ridiculously well which caught me off guard, he still wont give me the build the jerk), all of those can also be used for power builds, you try to take a scepter for a necro and turn that into a power build and you’ll just be worthless.

Not to mention that we don’t form to the current meta because we don’t really “specialize” well because we’re a jack of all trades, where a bunker guardian is PURELY bunker and can’t do kitten for anything else bunker rangers are more than capable of killing people (and are quite good at it mind you), and can still provide some support to allies. Where a glass canon warrior just runs in and kills one person and can’t do much else we can still provide some support (SOME not a lot) through pets/spirits as a glass canon especially seeing as how a lot of our glass canon builds are still pretty bulky because they either front load the damage into pets or perform that damage from 1500yds away.

So yes, we’re a jack of all trades, and that’s why a lot of people complain about how “Every one can do X better than us!!” the thing is though that we can do X, Y, and Z all at the same time, where prof A can only do X, Y, or Z at once.

Siamoth —→ Forage --→ Throw Feathers/Tuft (2/3 chance of getting either of these) congrats! you have an easy access stealth ability!

None were spared Durzllas wrath, the trash mobs fait shall be no different….

i’ve designed a build tanky enough to be able to toe to toe with most veterans and as such me and my friend (never dungeon alone) will kill everything together, if the group doesn’t like how long we take they either help out or have to deal with it.

Division.9618:

Durzlla.6295:

/snip for length

I don’t know about that. The burn isn’t a 100% chance proc and it does have an internal CD . It also only lasts for two seconds meaning that extra damage isn’t that much.

Bonfire does the job much better with its massive fire field and 100% proc. Fire trap does a good job at it too.

And as for HB and backstab, it’s still 5%. This is on average though. When the thief gets that backstab in, he may get 10% damage, or no bonus damage at all.

Arrys.7145:

Survivability is 100% accurate making your spirits mobile is a penalty. Hiding them in a stationary manner at say nodes, currenlty viable. For now they are viable partly because everyone seems to ignore them. If more started running at 50% protection uptime choosing their DPS spirit whether they were with condition or power crit monkeys people might stop ignoring them.

I had always used stone unspecced occasionaly. Based on Durzlla’s posts I did a 20 point spirit condition bunker build. It was a freaking rock and a half properly armored(Using 20 points let me armor for better set consistency). I frustrated a thief so much he started attacking my pet which had 70% protection uptime his 3.5 seconds plus 3 transfered from me perpetually and couldn’t dent piggie either.

Until people start targetting well placed spirits, it is viable to use spirits in sPvP, TPvP. They could be improved. Making them mobile is an effective penalty. It should be spirit stealth….. So only random luck aoe gets them;).

That’s my problem though. It seems like the only reason spirits are doing anything right now is because no one knows how to fight them. Once people figure it out (not that hard), spirits will go back to being useless. This is especially if you’re a bunker. When battles take long and people know you’re a spirit bunker (they can see your buffs), they’ll easily find your spirits and kill them.

I would like to bring up as an aside. I did a bit of testing with the guardian’s avenger shield skill. It keeps a shield of absorption up near constantly, making you pretty much immune to ranged attacks during its duration. The hammer also knocks back every 8 seconds and has a 20 second CD knockback. I’m still not impressed with spirits.

you’re not getting the point of bringing a burning spirit, YOU DO NOT NEED CONDITION DAMAGE if you have a ally in your group who has condi damage, as i said, if i have 0 condi damage and i give a necro with 1700 the ability to apply burning the damage for all the burning that target takes (so long as it doesn’t drop off) will be over doubled, where as if i were to apply it with a torch it’d still be piss poor damage.

And for the knockback on 8s the hammer has to hit you with the 3rd chain in a combo, and when he does the combo he is 100% stationary, in otherwords if you’re brain dead and just stand still yes, you’ll get hit with an 8s knockback otherwise there’s no way that thing will hit you, you have a better chance of your pet hitting a target with 100% of their attacks then that hammer does of hitting you with the 3 chain combo if you’re moving.

And you do realize as a bunker you can hid your spirits yes? there are plenty of pillars, and walls and other such things you can hide your spirits behind at each capture point (minus the middle one, that things always a death trap) where it doesn’t matter if they know you have the spirit or not because they’ll either have to outwait the buff (in some cases this can mean their undoing IE if you get significant chill amounts on them with frost trap + combo finishers) or play hide and seek with your spirits as you and your pet pew pew at them while standing on the point, making them doing a whole lot of nothing for their team.

Shiftnox.4957:

Ha nice I should try that! make a pet set.

Yeah for the longest time with my spirit build i used hyenas and ogre runes in PvP the amount of procs you get off of those guys (and they do a lot of damage when you have that many people ganging up on someone) is fun!!

PS: Can you use the whistle multiple times? or does it replace the pet you currently have? I know with hyenas as long as you are still in combat (well the summoned allys are in combat they have a massive aggro radius) you can summon more and more and more, max i had was 5

Shiftnox.4957:

Ogre Whistle :P There is no 5 minute timer in towns.

Oh really? I didn’t know that lol, i remember a friend of mine was running around with an ogre whistle, ogre runes, Hyena pet, and sigil of demon summoning + 4 mobile spirits xD it was kinda funny watching him run around with his mob xD

Stabby.9815:

I miss so many skills..

Way back when before the mantra of persistence nerf: Mantra of Persistence + Crippling Anguish. Let a whammo with 8 attack skills on his bar chase you far away in RA, whack a 50 second slow on him, and run back to battle

Signet of midnight (good with plague touch). Stand next to your monk in RA and make 2 melee useless for the entire event. I had so many assassins rage quit doing this.

Diversion and Psychic instability.. (omg psychic instability)… is the anything better than watching a noob ele not use glyph sac and try to cast meteor storm? wait for it … wait for it … wait for it .. so close to finishing the spell… kd!

lol mantra of persistence was great!! But what’d you get the 50s slow from? Was that Imagined Burden? If so i thought that was just a worse version of Etheral Burden…

Shiftnox.4957:

Havn’t seen this posted. My pet Griffon. :P

you just turn an ally into one using the forest creature potion? Or is there another trick?

PS: I have a feeling you used an ogre whistle now that i think of it…

Division.9618:

Durzlla.6295:

Look, i’ve explained this like 5 freaking times, i grow tired of explaining how spirits work to ignorant clauds such as yourself, and if you read more then 2 posts in this thread you’d know that spirit of protection gives 3 seconds of prot before boon duration (and is bugged so it gives 5 seconds at 45%, so don’t rely on that it’ll be fixed eventually) and that frost spirit, you know the “pitiful damage” one has no ICD

Oh hey, you’re right. It is 3 seconds. Looks like the GW2 wiki is wrong. Still doesn’t change much though. While the protection does make it slightly more useful, the other spirits still aren’t worth it, and it can still die easily.

Also i didn’t say “pitiful damage” i said slight damage increase, which it is. Even if you spec for it, you get a 5% damage increase which is futher diminished by the fact that, again, spirits can die very easily.

Well, to throw this out there for the burning spirit, if you have a condi necro (i’ve seen several have ~ 1700 condi damage) in your group, he can’t apply burning on his own, but the second he gets a burning condi up there all other people who apply burning then apply a burning at the same damage level that his burning would be.

So if you have say a warrior and guardian with 0 condi damage that are putting burning up they’re only doing 328dmg per second, that necro gets a stack of burning up on that target via your spirit and suddenly that burning is doing 753 per second, this will keep going until that burning falls off which if you have other people applying it BEFORE your spirit allows your necro to and it’s maintained that’s a TON of extra damage you gave the group. (this spirits boon is also its curse, if you have no condi dmg players he’s useless if people are already applying a lot of burning)

PS: Frost Spirit + Hundred Blade Warrior + Back Stab Thief = SIGNIFICANT damage increases.

Dahkeus.8243:

I say bring back Edge of Extinction so we can lol EoE Bomb everyone in WvW!!!!!

Make sure it doesn’t matter which side the persons on when they die just so we can be the last mans standing lol (oh god the “griefing” that’d cause)

@ person above post i quoted

Look, i’ve explained this like 5 freaking times, i grow tired of explaining how spirits work to ignorant clauds such as yourself, and if you read more then 2 posts in this thread you’d know that spirit of protection gives 3 seconds of prot before boon duration (and is bugged so it gives 5 seconds at 45%, so don’t rely on that it’ll be fixed eventually) and that frost spirit, you know the “pitiful damage” one has no ICD

SaintKairu.7925:

I mean, yeah, it’s nice to not be bogged down worrying about Aggro-Machine 2.0, but going alone just feels so… Alone without my pets.

Anybody else getting this feeling, or am I just weird?

Nah i’m the same way, whenever i play on my mesmer or other non pet using class i had to get runes of the ogre/noble/parrot so i felt like i had my pet with me at all times still xD

Ludovicus.7980:

Gubrz.7283:

it kinda feels like gw2 mesmers were made first, then they thought “lets make them cooler” and went back in time and put all the cool fun stuff in gw1

i miss all the IF THEN ELSE builds back then
now its just “which clones and phantasms do you want to deal with”

watered down lameness!

bring on complicated and cool!

So phantasms are supposed to be like physical hexes, how about a phantasm that does nothing but has high retaliation to punish AOE damage.

IF you do damage to that phantasm damage THEN you get hurt ELSE you stay ok.

We’ve got feedback, which is a IF THEN ELSE mechanic, It’d be cooler that the feedback bubble was anchored to the target though.

we also have mirror, and reflect diversion, the retal for all phantasms trait, confusion (lol i love that condition) etc.

PS: There’s also mimic, i just learned recently that reflected projectiles after absorbing the first.

Gubrz.7283:

it kinda feels like gw2 mesmers were made first, then they thought “lets make them cooler” and went back in time and put all the cool fun stuff in gw1

i miss all the IF THEN ELSE builds back then
now its just “which clones and phantasms do you want to deal with”

watered down lameness!

bring on complicated and cool!

I kinda like GW2 mes more, but it’s more because it’s a total mental game, which i’m good at and have convinced so many players (some of which are regular paid tourney winners) into attacking my clones, oh nothing makes me smile more like causing a hundreds blade warrior to waste his burst on a clone only to blow it up in his face.

TrevorEh.6915:

Had a lot of fun with Signet of Illusions

That was my the key piece in a few of my builds (lol 16 illusion magic 12 fast casting, god forbid i didn’t get my illusionary signet off at some points xD)

Eurantien.4632:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Agadar.4931:

It’s frustrating. Just comparing rangers with elementalists, you see that they can outdamage us, outlive us, and outheal us. And don’t even make me start about guardians.

And yet in a 1v1 situation against a ranger they get taken down fast. I’ve yet to be killed by a elementalist in a 1v1 fight…

I second this.

I’ve never -lost- to an ele in a 1v1 but i sure as hell have been in a fight with one for an entire match… god that was the most intense fight ever… i think i downed him in the end… maybe… hell i think we might’ve actually both been around half health…

Criminal.5627:

spirit size in the original gw1 was the radious of the compus, the radious of the portal active area for mezmers is about half that, and its about 1/3 to 1/5 the map depending on the map. the point is having to be standing that close to them makes them near useless cause they litterly are in the thick of the battle with near kitten to no HP, the point is you will want to find them in pvp not let them sit there the whole match. it would also invlolve stratagy and thinking on rangers using them to try to put them in areas out of sight for safe keeping as they did in gw1 where spirits were actually a nusance if they were hostal….all i can say is frozen soil +EoE bomb in HA, funny as hell wipping 3 teams minus 1 person on ur team

lol my personal favorite to add onto that combo was QZ + Famine, oh so many people were ill prepared for QZ and their energy would just get man handled (especially when you have some E-Denial mes on your team for good measure >=D!) Like i said in my post though, i would LOVE for them to have super huge ranges, i just could see the butt hurt flowing from all angles if it were to happen…. i’d also ask that our spirits last longer so i wouldn’t have to go hide it somewhere every minute, that just gets annoying..

Criminal.5627:

ok i got 2 relitivly simple ideas that would make spirits alot better imo
1. make spirits ground targeted insted of on the caster’s location.
2. increase the radious that they offer their benefit greatly, near or up to around the distance that mezmers can use their portals

both of these would solve every issue that plagues spirits, with them dying if they are anywhere near combat and with them being left behind once combat moves to a diffrent location. spirit abilities back in gw1 had a huge radious and that i think more then anything contributed to their effectiveness, the spirits here in gw2 have a very small radius which is leading to them needing to be summoned right next to most fighting and they are generally killed by player aoe in pvp and by npcs once their benefits proc in pve.
anyways what is eveyones thoughts?

Um… near the size of a portal? Are you kidding me? Do you -know- how large of an area that is? Now don’t get me wrong i’d LOVE to have the HUGE coverage (you know, like an entire freaking sPvP map) for spirit, but i think that may be a little to large…

As for the first suggestion, i would love that, would be a lot easier to place my spirits in a safe place should they run out of time mid fight instead of having to run around to do it.

Disastro.4086:

Most of my favorites have been listed all ready but they definitely need to look back at GW1 for some more inspiration for the Mesmer. Feels like we don’t have as much build variety now. So much I miss from there.

I feel like we have some of the greatest variety when compared to the other profs…

Crippling Anguish or Shared Burden… they’re both so amazing…

garethh.3518:

Durzlla.6295:

Hyenas absolutely launch their KD as soon as it’s off CD, no doubts about that!! I’m pretty sure all the wolves do however, because whenever i swap my pets over my wolf will use his KD asap (unless the enemy isn’t using an ability at the time then he doesn’t)

I’ve noticed, without a doubt, a fair number of times that I pet swap in a canine (while I was downed) and the canine doesn’t go for a knockdown, mainly if he spawns already in or close to melee range of the target.

i haven’t had this happen before

awe extender.1908:

pve
Superior Rune of the MAD KING!!!
+165 Power, +15% bleed duration, + 10% condition duration. (=25% bleed duration)
I’m condition trapper. It’s awesome with hawk and eagle pets.

I have all the matts i need to craft one of those minus the lodestones, what does the raven swarm on elite use actually do?

Panther Chameleon.8465:

garethh.3518:

Panther Chameleon.8465:

I’m not sure what you mean by luck since the hyena lands knockdowns like nobody’s business and they automatically use knockdown when you swap in combat. How was he terrible w/bow? He landed shadowstep, and clusterbomb, but missed crippling shot. That’s not terrible. And when he thought about kiting me I knocked him down right quick. If anything I would of just waltzed right back into base and fixed my utilities instead of chasing him with sword like a kittening idiot.

They don’t knockdown right after being swapped out, it’s a chance at it, at least from what I’ve noticed.
Especially when you swap with an enemy right next to you.

He never bothered to kite with shortbow, he used it for a few spammables (and basilisk venom!!!) when he couldn’t catch you, keeping a close distance instead of kiting, then swapped back as soon as the weapon swap CD was up. Good thieves use shortbow then spike when they can finish you with the backstab combo. That or if they just go balls to the wall and spike off the bat, they immediately kite out of it with shortbow and pew away instead of chasing a sword ranger with d/d out and blowing shadowstep for nothing but a spammable attack or 2….

Shortbow can evade like its nobodies business, that with a little sidestepping would mean you would never land a hit on him with your bow and he would be doing 750-2k to you a hit (depending if your pet is next to you).
Its a MEAN weapon in the right hands, one rangers have little answer for besides a lucky pet CC/imob/chill/cripple or using sword’s hornets sting and Lightning reflexes with your back to them to roll towards him.

From my experiences, the Hyenas are the go to dogs for knockdowns. For instance, I can use Guard like it’s a knockdown ability, and I think the Hyenas have a higher chance of using their knockdowns because they have very poor auto attacks. Ok, that makes more sense now that you explained it. I guess I don’t see too many people side strafing hot-joins. Yeah, the pet def screws us over when it comes to that nonsense.

Hyenas absolutely launch their KD as soon as it’s off CD, no doubts about that!! I’m pretty sure all the wolves do however, because whenever i swap my pets over my wolf will use his KD asap (unless the enemy isn’t using an ability at the time then he doesn’t)

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Durzlla.6295:

I was screaming at my computer “ACTIVATE THE SPIRITS!!” while you were just standing there ontop of them (poorly placed btw, out in the open, right next to each other, tsk tsk) you could’ve chilled and blinded him, he even missed with the first backstab and hit your spirit as you could see by the frost spirits health sky rocketing downward while nothing was around…

If you’re gonna use spirits you need to practice with them, it’s apparent you don’t know what you’re doing with them, and i’m really surprised you managed to win that fight lol he was wrecking you…

PS: What gear do you use? It’s clearly not my high toughness gear, that much damage from a thief is alien to me.

Yeah, I think the fact that I was down under 1k hp about 3 times made it a very dramatic fight. Gear? kitten if I know. This was a while ago, mind you. Also, you might want to have your eyes checked because he certainly didn’t miss that first backstab. The Frost spirit was already damaged from a fight earlier, and I wasn’t even looking at my screen when he jumped me. I’m surprised he couldn’t kill me…I was afk for like 5 seconds.

Ah, after rewatching it you’re right, i thought i saw the spirits health drop before he engaged (thinking it was him hitting the spirit). Thieves are pretty much just all damage though, they have piss poor health and armor and after they use their stealths (survivability CDs) they drop like rocks.

nldixon.8514:

Durzlla.6295:

nldixon.8514:

Durzlla.6295:

nldixon.8514:

Durzlla.6295:

nldixon.8514:

Durzlla.6295:

EDIT: Spirits aren’t horrible, they’re quite amazing when you know how to use them, i highly suggest learning them (assuming you want to support your allies, if you don’t care about your allies it doesn’t really matter)

I agree that spirits have the potential to be awesome. They require way too much micromanaging to make them effective right now. The ROI is way off.

ROI? Not gonna lie, if they buff spirits survivability back up (oh god how i long to become a god once more…) i’m going to have a hayday with that because of how brokenly stupid i could make a build if it had survivable spirits… the change they’d likely -have- to make to prevent kitten holes like me from taking advantage of it would be to buff what the spirits themselves actually -do- and leave them super squishy, that or they’re going to nerf spirits but buff their survivability and people would -still- not use them, hell even less people -would- use them if that were the case.

Sorry, ROI is return on investment.

I know some people are using spirits pretty effectively, but that doesn’t mean they’re good. Michael Phelps could probably beat most people in a race wearing a chicken suit, but that doesn’t mean everybody should start wearing a chicken suit to the pool.

lol that would be REALLY funny to see tbh…

that being said, i never said i don’t think spirits need some spicing up, currently their fairly dull with their set em and forget em play style in PvE, and there’s only so many places you can set em in PvP at each capture point to put them, well unless you’re baiting someone into killing them/using them as a shield but that’s a different story…

They’re definently not bad though, they’re just kinda meh (you know like all of our utilities) hopefully the patch in 9 days will fix some of that.

I’m not gonna hold my breath. I got excited for the last update where we were promised a lot of changes. Even though I already felt like Rangers were in a pretty decent place, I was still excited for the promised improvements.

This time I’m not gonna take any chances. As long as they don’t nerf anything, I’ll be happy. Haha!

Also, I would totally use a hammer on my Ranger. Especially if it was in the same vein as Warrior and Guardian hammers. Love the control you get with those babies.

Personally im not a huge fan of hammer warriors (never played them, but from the ones i’ve fought against ALL they do is CC absolutely 0 damage it’s just like, yes yes, go away you’re just a minor inconvenience, are you done? Yes? ok, and then they die), however hammer guardian OMG is that fun, i love the combo field generated off of Auto attack + the leap for aoe retal, not to mention my favorite guardian move is the line of immobilizing awesome lol

I was running a hammer and axe/mace build for a while that was on the Warrior forums and it was TONS of fun. Knockdowns for days.

You know what’s REALLY fun on Guardian? Pre-casting Banish then teleporting to an enemy with Judge’s Intervention and launching them off of cliffs or other high objects. So much fun in W3.

That is awesome thing to do on a guardian lol, another fun thing to do is use empower before doing that so you have 12 stacks of might, so much fun =D! I feel like this is getting a bit off topic though lol

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Aesseus.4596:

This fight reminds me a documentary I saw, where the male lion with all the tools in the world to defeat his prey, got kitteny on this young exhausted, bleeding to death buffalo (of which died eventually), the lion proceeded to go for the neck only realising too late that the buffalo had enough strength left in himself to lunge and plunge his horns into the Lion skewering him and later leaving the lion to die of his wounds.

Not to say this isn’t an impressive video, only that this thief had all the tools in the world “sustainability, stealth, and far superior burst” to demolish you, yet you being on the defencive that whole fight, you took advantage at the opportunity and you won.

I’ve had similar fights to this, but I’ve lost more than I have won, I live and roam alone. The way that thief fought is frustrating beyond all hell, and to me you won with a slither of health.

Thank you for such a constructive response and that’s a remarkably good comparison. I don’t normally use spirits, so my usual signet of beastmaster and protect me would have affected the way I played. How could the Thief have done better in that situation? I’m just curious, so I know what to look for. I believe he backstabbed me twice in the beginning and I know that’s enough to drop most classes with little toughness.

I was screaming at my computer “ACTIVATE THE SPIRITS!!” while you were just standing there ontop of them (poorly placed btw, out in the open, right next to each other, tsk tsk) you could’ve chilled and blinded him, he even missed with the first backstab and hit your spirit as you could see by the frost spirits health sky rocketing downward while nothing was around…

If you’re gonna use spirits you need to practice with them, it’s apparent you don’t know what you’re doing with them, and i’m really surprised you managed to win that fight lol he was wrecking you…

PS: What gear do you use? It’s clearly not my high toughness gear, that much damage from a thief is alien to me.

That looks pretty awesome!! But my heart still lies with The Bifrost… i shall have it one day….

Aveneo.2068:

Not using any runes at the moment as they are way too expensive. Instead I use 6 Ruby Orbs

oh i only have runes that were already in my armor (2 melandru, 2 grenth, 1 lyssa, 1 dwayna) so my stats are all sorts of messed up in PvE i only put what i have in PvP… need to determine what to do for PvE still…

mamourrir.9641:

What is your favorite for your ranger ? Mine is rune of the thief.

So many options… Ogre, Pack, Melandru and The Grove are mine, flock is pretty fun too.

kash.9213:

Going by the numbers on these threads, no one ever loses a 1v1. Anyone who wants to make absolute claims about the class can post videos of a few matches, unedited, start to finish (and leave out the stupid music).

If you get me a power supply so I could put my graphics card in my comp I’d do it ASAP, until then you’ll have to wait! (Or just pvp with me or w/e next weekend, always wanted people to pvp with)

Seetoo.9316:

Ah, so 33% damage reduction is far superior right? But with an uptime of 20% that all boils down to 6.6% reduction. With 8 sec of nothing, you are likely to take more damage in 8 sec than reduce anything significant in that 2 sec of protection. I do better with the protection from roll since that is on demand and doesn’t suffer from an icd. Let’s not forget that your stone spirit can just die leaving you with nothing. Spirits are not high risk high reward, just high risk.

Oh look, a spirit ranger, lets just kill his spirit and leave him alone since he’s not even that big of a threat really. Just to piss him off.

Alright stony, make sure your buff comes up juuuuuuuuust before this huge lump of metal falls on me. Any time now stony. Stoney? Sto*splat…

Here’s an idea. How bout spirits have 100% chance to proc buffs, but they need charges to do it. Have them gain charges at a fixed rate (1 every 2 sec) with a 5 (or 10) charge cap. We could be known as burst buffers. And then I wake up _

Well for starters, it’s 3 seconds untrained and math is stupid so 45% puts us at 5s (I’m not kidding it does lol, I don’t get how they got that math but w/e) so that’s a lot better numbers then you’re saying…

I personally think spirits should just pulse the boon onto everyone every second to really explain why they’re squishy, it’d reward to good players and leave the bad ones in the same situation where their spirit dies in 2 seconds. And have you seen what happens when you give a glass cannon a ice spirit? I do, the enemies get slaughtered like, but not just the men, but the women and the children too!! (Frost has no ICD)

agnostAnts.7065:

The question I have is; if the Nature Ritual’s trade off is that you can kill the spirit, what’s the warrior’s banner trade off? Far as I know, it can’t be killed, doesn’t have a % to proc effect tied to its benefits, and can be moved around, even without traits. I know they’re not exactly the same skill type, so it’s not a real fair comparison, but Arenanet HAS to do something about spirits because they suffer from issues that most AI companions do.

Either make the spirits bulkier/invulnerable to damage so they can get their effects off more consistently, or buff the effects they grant to make up for how terribly flimsy they are.

The downside to a warrior banner is the buffs freaking suck compared to spirits, the Defense banner makes it so you have like 200 more health and toughness IF THAT that correlates to almost nothing % wise, maybe 5% less damage if you’re a glass canon where OUR defensive spirit applies protection which reduces all damage we take by 33.3%

The attack banner, same scenario, very minor buff that doesn’t even come close to 10% increase on my ranger who isn’t stacked for damage (it only gets worse % wise the more and more of the stat you have) yet frost spirit gives me a large % boost to damage, then there’s the whole 3s of burning which can be a HUGE damage increase given the right scenario (condition damage necro being some condi damage in group, give the entire group chance to burn and the second that necro hits with his burn all that burnin starts being scaled of of HIS condi damage instead f the 0 condi damage warrior/guardian)

Then there’s spirit of storm whose just kinda there… He gives 7s I swiftness though with no boon duration, so if you have a “does X when you have boons up” trait it’s good, or if your team is mostly Melee and wants to stick to a running enemy like glue, but other than that just ignore storm spirit.

EDIT: according to the wiki you get 90 of each stat from a banner, that’s pretty god awful when compared to a spirit, keep your invuln banners, I’ll keep my higher risk more reward spirits!

Bohun Martell.8963:

Hadrians.4567:

@ Bohun

Not just harder to learn, all is harder, ranger is broken

Spirits die in seconds

Pets die in seconds

Arrows are 90% obstructed, missed or something else, they hit anything but not moving Players

Rangers dont have Burst Dmg! if u think we have, then play a Thief and u know what Burst Dmg is.

It isnt me that Rangers doesnt have Burst, its Anet and the Class, is it my fault that Arrows didnt hit? is it my fault that Pets dies in Seconds in Dungeons an WvW?

It is easy to say, yes! but if u say yes u didnt really know to play ur ranger

Honestly, I don’t use spirits, so I don’t know.
But my pets don’t die in seconds, and if they do, I can swap them. No loss.
My arrows are 10% obstructed. Annoying, but I can live with that. And they miss when enemy is moving in evasive way, but if he is evading, he is not hurting me too.
I do play thief and I do play against thiefs. So I know I can dodge/evade his burst. He cannot dodge my constant damage.
So yes, Ranger does not have burst. Guardian does not have burst too. They both do have different strong points.

Spirits are actually really strong pre traits, with traits they’re amazing, the problem I they require strategy and trickery to use In PvP, and being a player that’s good at bending people to my will (yes I have a Mesmer alt) I can often make them choose to kill my spirit over me, get immobed for 4 seconds and then die.