Guild Wars 2

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgUB3AKUA-g~

I feel gaining access to double Rapid Fires and double Mauls compensates for losing a few stats and 5% damage. Not to mention we get piercing arrows and the cooldown reduction in the same trait. Plus the endurance regen, extra vigor, Bark Skin, and plenty of condition removal. Longbow ranger will be stronger than ever both offensively and defensively.

the high access to fury from weapon and pet swapping also compensates for any precision we might lose with the stat revamp.

I play mostly a cleric’s Beastmaster ranger. I tank while the pet chips away at the opponent’s HP with 25 might stacks. Lots of chill and cripple to keep the enemy in place. It’s pretty effective, and at the very least it takes a long time for most celestial builds to kill me. Meanwhile most zerker builds lose through my superior sustain and the pet’s critical damage. Thieves and mesmers especially.

It’s really nice because most players still treat me like a longbow ranger. Focusing me over other, squishier targets because they aren’t use to tanky rangers or trying to use line of sight to avoid a rapid fire that never comes because I don’t even have a longbow equipped. It’s pretty funny to be honest.

Spirigo.2897:

^ He’s not the one who posted the video so your point about him not using his pet optimally is unwarranted.

The point being that you don’t have to use your pet optimally to easily beat good players with a pewpew Ranger. It’s just the way the build is, super easy with 0 skill involved.

That’s basically what Ranger is good at. Not fighting head on or contesting points but +1 a fight to ruin everyone’s day. Power Necro works in the same way except you have to press more than 2 buttons when lich runs out.

It’s a sad state to have either profs in, especially the Ranger who has a bunch of cool weapons and mechanics that rarely see play due to being irrelevant.

Thanks for pointing that out. It’s super late here and I was about to head to bed. Not reading right.

It definitely isn’t a zero skill build, though. I wouldn’t say the people he was beating were good. Most were going after his tankier companions and just eating his damage. The few times they did focus on him he melted and had to pull a full escape, which meant he couldn’t deal damage while taking his rounds around the map to get out of combat and get health back. He could’ve done with better positioning and perhaps bringing more defenses than he did so he could handle himself a bit better.

Aaaactually power necro does only press two buttons. They press Lich Form and then spam 1 to three shot pretty much anyone they want. When Lich Form is off cooldown they do the same thing but with Death Shroud. Now, they totally do press more buttons during the window that both these forms are done, but it’s only for personal defense and to build up life force. Similarly the longbow ranger presses a buttload more buttons whenever they get pulled off their perch or an enemy closes the gap. Both builds can wreck someone as a +1 with almost no input, but both have to use a lot more button presses per second if someone looks their way.

While I would love buffs to other builds (which we seem to be getting with the specialization rework) I don’t want to see the longbow ranger go away. I enjoy fighting them too much. For two years I played this game fighting nothing but people in melee. The day the patch that buffed Rapid Fire hit I had to engage in my first actual fight against a ranged opponent. A TRUE ranged opponent, not a mid-range skirmisher. It added a dimension to this game’s PVP that it sorely lacked. I look forward to Dragonhunters coming in with their longbow next. Maybe we’ll get more ranged builds added to the mix and have a much more diverse game.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Eurantien.4632:

Ross Biddle.2367:

18 matches ever on Ranger, 11th win, its a super simple easymode class to play. You hit the skill ceiling about the third match you play and its all profit from there. Once you’re 18 matches deep and a super pro like me you’ll fully carry your team.

https://youtu.be/pOizCMxVXOU

I do it for the daily but my soul still withers after playing it : D
OP? In need of balance? Eh, I don’t know.

Skill ceiling? You swapped your pet once in the entire match.

Proof of how easy ranger is maybe…..?

He means he was not using his pet to it’s optimal level. In other words he’s not at the skill ceiling.

I also could’ve replicated all his victories with a zerker staff ele. It’s not hard to +1 fights already in progress and come out looking good.

Laraley.7695:

Do you read at all? It’s not about being effective, it’s about ranger being easy as hell and still being able to dish out lots damage. No one talks about 1v1’s, couldn’t care less about that. You might not have the experience as a soloquer but lots of us do. You think it’s fun to fight against power rangers who keep camping ledges the whole game without moving? No. Do you think it’s fun to have these players on my team? Hell no. Seriously, the most fun games are without a ranger on any side, but sadly lots people actually do play ranger. Do you know why? Exactly, because it’s that braindead. I really don’t care if rangers are overpowered or not, it’s a dumb build with nothing to offer. Most players playing ranger are so bad, they will waste their most important skills on blind, backpaddle from you while shooting you with LB with no distance, never bother press the kitten F when a teammate is down, never rotate. I’ve met only a few good rangers that I was actually happy to have on my team while I’ve met hundreds that I wish I never met.

If you want to play a build that requires no skill, go on, but I would much rather if they actually rework this class and make it viable AND skillful to play. But then again, half of the people crying here about rangers being too weak would cry it’s too hard.

And btw there is no valid reason for having a ranger over 1500 either.

1. If you’re letting the power ranger camp a ledge without moving the entire game you and your team are awful and deserved that loss. I’m sorry, but that’s true. Most of the professions in this game have access to the means to mitigate that damage and pressure the ranger off the ledge. Some professions, such as thieves, can both out maneuver and overwhelm the ranger to the point that the ranger has to outplay the thief considerably to still be able to do that damage. There is a lot of available counterplay that you don’t need to be especially skilled at the game to use.

2. This is where the argument always falls a part. If the build is extremely powerful and effective when the enemy has one why would that NOT hold true when they are on your team as well? A profession cannot be both overpowered and a liability at the same time. That logic doesn’t hold up.

3. I actually enjoy playing with and against power rangers. Some of the most intense fights I’ve had have been against a really good power ranger who knows what they are doing, and there’s little in the game more satisfying than managing to outplay a power ranger on a perch who has every advantage against you and securing that stomp. This is in stark opposition to my experience with every celestial build. Do you know why the power ranger is fun to play against but not the celestial builds? Because the power ranger can be overcome if you execute your skills properly and make intelligent use of the terrain. A celestial build, however, has a massive amount of passive sustain that allows it to soak up damage while dishing that damage back out. It’s mechanically superior to other brawler builds and will nearly always win because of the sheer numbers involved in the fight. It’s aggravating to be outplaying someone and still be losing because their health is returning faster than you can deal your damage.

4. Longbow ranger requires similar skill to the other burst focused builds. They give up a ton of sustain and have to rely purely on active defense to survive, which means if they are not skilled in the management of these active defenses they will die. Yes, they can catch you unaware and down you from afar, but that is no different from catching a burst from a hidden thief. In both scenarios you are equally in trouble. Only in the case of the power ranger there’s still a chance to win where as the thief can disappear to reset the fight.

Lion’s Arch is the central nexus between the races of Tyria both figuratively and literally. It’s where the asura gates all lead. If Lion’s Arch falls to the Elder Dragons we’d be at a massive disadvantage logistically speaking.

Not to mention LA is sitting on top of a major ley line that Modremoth is likely going to be attracted to sooner or later.

Our offense against Modremoth failed miserably. We need Lion’s Arch to be back at full strength if we’re going to survive any sort of counterattack by the dragon. It is far too important to the war effort to just be ignored.

Lion’s Arch is a major port town that’s the center of trade for all of continental Tyria. It serves as the nexus for the asura gates that connect every major city on the continent as well as the largest port with the largest naval force. So to answer your second question, Lion’s Arch has an economy built around trade with all the races as well as a healthy dose of piracy on the side.

As for the first question you see lumber yards in both Krytan territories and charr territories. My guess would be they import the wood from one of these two areas.

It’s also worth remembering that the charr are a carnivorous species. It takes substantially more farmland to produce a certain quantity of meat than it would to produce the same quantity of vegetables and fruit. Combine that with the charr being somewhere between 800-1,500 pounds (just eyeballing them and estimating the weight) while having a high activity metabolism befitting a mammalian predator, and the charr would need a massive source of food to sustain their population.

It’s extremely unlikely the charr Legions are comparable in size to major human empires in the real world. The sheer amount of farmland they’d need would be tremendous.

I don’t swap, but I do avoid running builds that would be a death sentenced if stacked. So pretty much all burst builds.

Ranger is only strong under one of these three conditions.

1. The ranger’s team is well organized and have good communication, allowing the team to protect the ranger so it can do it’s job.
2. The ranger’s enemy team has next to no awareness and don’t do anything to try and counter the ranger’s attacks.
3. The ranger is substantially better at map rotation, positioning, and kiting than anyone else on the opposing team.

All it takes is slightly more than dirt-tier skill and communication to counter a longbow ranger. It’s very much capable of being done with just team chat.

“Hey, thief. Can you shadow that ranger and kill him every time he enters the fight?”

“Sure.”

Done deal.

A ranger specializing into a druid isn’t just a ranger anymore. They are a druid. A staff is an iconic druid weapon.

Besides that, you aren’t being forced to use an elite specialization.

If all you want to do is use a longbow for damage you might consider rolling a guardian and taking the Dragonhunter elite specialization.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

But are they really worth that much in the other game modes? The problems I have with the transforming skills isn’t neccessarily the DPS, it’s about how slow, clunky, and unresponsive the transformation skills are. One skill that does work well with the transformations is the radar for traps skill during the guild event…

I use Take Root all the time in open world PVE when I’m running solo. It’s a good skill to deal with being overrun by large numbers of Modrem in the Silverwastes. A short invuln to give me some breathing room and a lot of bleed applications to kill some of the mobs quicker.

As for transformations being used in all the game modes.

Lich Form: The staple move of the strongest necro build in PVP AND in the only meta necro build for Tequatl, and both the meta dungeon builds. It’s also used in a couple different WvWvW builds. So it’s used prominently in every game mode.

Plague Form: Used in the main event farming build for PVE, the only zerg build and one roamer build in WvWvW, and the traditional terrormancer build in SPVP. So it sees use in all game modes.

Rampage: Mostly sees use in SPVP where it’s a valid variant elite choice in almost every build. It’s not used in PVE purely because of how strong the other two warrior elites are. Still, used heavily in one of the three game modes.

Tornado: Is in desperate need of a buff. Strong in underwater combat at least.

So, two of the four major transformations in this game are seen prominently in all game modes, one is used mainly for PVP, and the last is niche use at best. Still a pretty good track record for transformation skills, and is pretty solid proof that they can be very strong.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

There is a reason if your premade is using voice comms or something to communicate while everyone else has to struggle to get basic information across to their scrub team.

Not everyone who’s playing with friends are also using voice comm. More often than not it’s just some friends who want to have fun playing together in unranked. And since unranked doesn’t matter there’s no reason to stop people from joining with their friends and having fun. Unranked is for fun. It’s not meant to be taken seriously as a major competition. That’s what ranked is for.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Then we will agree to disagree then because Snow Leopard is terrible as is Take Root and there’s never a situation in any PVE from open world to dungeons to fractals where they should be used outside of trolling the group you’re in.

I use Take Root all the time on my sylvari trapper ranger. It’s a free invuln to help with a trap build’s lack of active defense, and the plants are easily able to maintain 20+ stacks of bleeds on my target for their duration. If it didn’t have such an insane cooldown it’d be an ideal elite to bring on any condi build.

I’ve seen videos of norn elementalists using Snow Leopard to compensate for their lack of stealth in WvWvW. It’s pretty effective, especially since elementalist elites are all garbage compared to even racial elites.

And once more, norn elite transformations are weak BY DESIGN. Anet wants racial skills to be niche use at best because they don’t want there to be a “best” race choice for any given profession. You can’t use them as a reference for how strong or weak a profession elite transformation would be.

You need to look at other transformations that come from the profession. Lich Form, Plague Form, and Rampage are all strong elites that see use in various builds across the different game modes. They are game changers when activated. The only elite transformation that genuinely has no value is Tornado, and even that was extremely strong when used on Raid of Capricorn back when underwater combat in PVP was a thing.

I mean. Sometimes people want to play with their friends and aren’t grouping up just to secure an easy win. Unranked doesn’t matter, so there’s no reason to not allow people to play with their friends when doing it.

Sneakier.9460:

as a Norn Ranger, plz no anet…

i have already a couple of nearly useless racial elites…
the only shapeshift that deserves to be called a shapeshift is Polymorph Moa because shapeshifts the target

Norn racials are weak because racials are weak in general. The actual transformation elites in the game are quite strong. Lich Form and Rampage are both game changers. Tornado… Well. Two out of three isn’t bad.

On top of what everyone else here said the actives are also almost impossible to hit with.

If they are traited to move then you have no control over where they go. They run around trying to keep up with you with the same pathing as miniatures enjoy, which is to say they sometimes run off in a weird direction or stop randomly. You can’t aim where it’s going to go off, and in a heavy movement game like GW2 there’s no way the enemy is going to stick around long enough to get hit.

If they can’t move then well… The enemy would have to actually TRY to get hit by the attack by moving on top of them during the long cast animation.

On top of having actives that cannot be aimed the spirits die very quickly and have a long summoning time, which makes it hard to place spirits mid-combat.

Simple way to change all of this would be to give spirit actives a 600-900 range and make them ground targeted. That way you could place the spirits off point and still control where the actives activate. Then cut the cast time in half so you’re not so easily interrupted. Suddenly spirits are a lot more fun to use and more effective.

But that still leaves them with their other issues of having lackluster passive bonuses and being made of paper mache… Or Radditz.

I like this suggestion. I enjoy Courtyard and unlike most I even find it a well designed map, but being spawned one at a time and being forced out of the spawn room before the rest of your team respawns is a really, really bad design choice.

I’d absolutely love the ability to transform into a druid spirit. Make it an elite transformation on the same level as Rampage or Lich Form but give it a strong support/control vibe and we’d be golden.

Make it large and have it give us pulsing stability and provide AoE protection to itself nearby allies for group damage reduction. Double the druid’s health pool like other transformations so it’s nice and tanky to compensate for being kind’a slow.

Then have it’s skills be something like:

1. Brambles: Summon thorn vines from beneath the target for moderate damage and inflict cripple. Taken from the attacks of some Mordrem.
2. Warding Vines: Summons a ground targeted wall of vines that destroy projectiles and knocks enemies back. Impassible.
3. Thundering Stomp: Smash the ground and launch nearby enemies. Applies weakness.
4. Nature’s Oasis: Strong ground targeted AoE heal and converts conditions into boons. Healing Rain sized area coverage. Two uses per transformation.
5. Druid’s Rage: Conjures a large AoE storm centered around the druid that inflicts pulsing blindness, cripple, and weakness on nearby enemies while striking the area with periodic bolts of lightning that, if they hit, do high damage and inflict daze. One use per transformation.

Imagine a team fight with a druid and a necromancer meeting and using their transformations. It’d be pretty epic.

Laraley.7695:

I was pointing out why your reply to mine was irrelevant. That’s great for you, power ranger takes hardly any skill and is nowhere near to being as squishy as thief or zerker ele while having a good amount of cc and longest range in game.

Actually in order to get damage like what’s displayed here the player had to have been using a 6/6 set up, which means they have no survival from their traits, and blew two utility skills for the damage spike. So this ranger’s entire survivability is summed up as one block on their greatsword, a 3 second stealth on hit, and 6 seconds of invuln from Signet of Stone.

Meanwhile any good thief build is going to have loads of stealth and far more mobility, making them harder to pin down and vastly harder to track. A thief has much, much better disengage potential and can easily reset the fight. Zerker ele has three powerful cantrip defenses, more mobility, and has more healing and party support built into the class baseline.

The main defense for thief is stealth. The main defense for ele is cantrips and heals. The main defense for power ranger is that incredible range. Without it they wouldn’t be playable.

I could see the druid elite skill transforming them into a druid spirit like the GW1 druids became. I could not see them transforming ally players because holy biscuits that’d be used to troll HARDCORE.

Even if the transformation is powerful it still won’t work with just any build, and it’d still murder all the person’s minions/clones and remove access to their profession mechanic.

I feel the scoreboard would be a lot more accurate if you earned a small number of points per second when actively fighting someone on a point.

I’d further expand on that by having you only accumulate points when fighting on a point you own or is contested, thus increasing player initiative to decap and hold a point rather than fighting for an extended period of time on a point your enemy has firm control of. Fighting on a point you control would offer slightly more points per second than fighting on a contested point so that players will want to cement the capture faster.

So the most points would be awarded to those who can QUICKLY capture the most nodes and the people who can successfully maintain control of their nodes without being decapped. But if no one is attacking the node you’re trying to bunker you wouldn’t get any points as you were just wasting your time not rotating properly.

scerevisiae.1972:

IMO that’s what would make it a good GM – it requires a unique strategy to maximize its effectiveness, IMO the hallmark of what makes a good GM trait.

also, it’s not altogether different to SotF – sometime one needs to blow a Survival CD in order to clear those 10 confusion/bleed stacks, rather than using the Survival skill for the skill effect per se.

In any case, losing condis passively every 10 or 16sec IMO is not a good GM trait. it’s maybe ok for master (albeit a little boring), but not for GM.

I can appreciate being forced to make strategic choices, but not like that. One of the reasons elementalists didn’t like Glyph of Elemental Power becoming a stunbreaker is because it was counter-intuitive to use it as a stunbreaker. It’s an offensive skill that was given a vital defensive mechanic.

Similarly not all F2 skills are meant to be defensive. Say I have my river drake out. Should I blow my 30 second cooldown offensive blast when my enemy isn’t properly lined up? Even with the defensive pets I wouldn’t want to blow my 45 second cooldown AoE fear that is VITAL for my survival because I need to clear two conditions.

Then you have the problem with cooldowns in general. Making the F2 clear conditions would make this trait highly sub-optimal to anyone not running dual birds, thus making Empathic Bond a bad trait to bring for any build that doesn’t call for two pets with extremely short cooldowns.

Meanwhile pet swapping is something you can usually afford to do fairly regularly, and there’s a ton of synergy with other traits to encourage you to swap pets often.

Though I agree that Empathic Bond as just a passive removal of conditions every 10 seconds isn’t very good. I want my condition removal on command, but I also want it attached to something that I would benefit from using when I need to lose conditions. The survival skills aren’t nearly as situational as pet F2 skills. That’s why I’m in favor of it clearing conditions on pet swap, but not on activation of the pet F2. Pet Swap is already a utility/survival move.

scerevisiae.1972:

IDK, removing condis only once every 16sec is pretty useless IMO.

Curing conditions every 16 seconds on pet swap is fine as long as you bring Healing Spring for a second source of cleansing. Healing Spring alone is a very strong condition clearing skill. Between Healing Spring and the described Empathic Bond I don’t see condition users being an especially large threat.

Or, if you’re going for a shout build, you’d be able to cure one condition each time you use a shout to cover you during those 16 second intervals. Then spirit rangers have the Spirit of Nature’s cleanse for emergencies and are probably running Healing Spring too for the AoE regen. Trap rangers will definitely be using Healing Spring after it’s made into a trap. Since Empathic Bond is meant to be our condition clear for non-Survival builds it’d work fine with the builds that don’t use survival.

And it’s not like a single trait should make us 100% immune to conditions anyway. Survival of the Fittest is only effective if you bring a bunch of survival skills. Likewise Empathic Bond is meant to give us some breathing room against conditions baseline so that we only need one other strong source of condi cleanse to survive, which it does with this change.

Besides, I really don’t want to be using my pet’s F2 to cure conditions. Those have to be timed very well in order to maximize their effectiveness, and if I’m blowing them to get conditions off me I’m not using them to the best of their ability.

There is an ENTIRE queue for people who are too elitist to play the fun maps. What, are you too good to play Courtyard once in a while but not good enough to play Ranked?

I really, really dislike playing Forefire but I still do my best whenever it pops. And unlike Courtyard or Spirit Watch, which rarely get chosen because they are unpopular, I am forced to play Foefire every day for the majority of my time. I have to play three or four Foefire maps for every one map of Spirit Watch or Courtyard. It’s gotten to the point I almost don’t want to queue at all because of how annoying it is to have to play Foefire constantly.

And yet here I am on the forums NOT advocating they remove Foefire from the game. It’s a map in the game and while I don’t like it I don’t want to hold back my team by not doing my best or try to ruin the fun for others who do like it.

I am fine with all these changes. They’d go a long way to improving build diversity. I’ve long wanted Fortifying Bond to be in the Beastmaster line. It’s a little frustrating that the best BM trait is in Nature Magic.

nightblood.7910:

Yeah this feature wouldnt work. People block other people all the time, the queue times would be insane.

Even if they made it to where you wouldnt be on the same team, it would still send queue times through the roof.

While in your mind I’m sure you take first priority than the person you have blocked, that wont be in the programming of it. Its just not realistic.

The people going around blocking everyone for any reason would just isolate themselves. The people like myself who only use the block system as a last resort wouldn’t be effected.

As I said, the only people with dramatically higher queue times would be the people trying to abuse the system to get into higher tier groups than they deserve, which will only be hurting themselves, and people who are so toxic they end up on a large number of block lists.

Your scenario only occurs if the majority of the community are toxic and petty players. From my experience it’s quite the opposite. GW2 has a pretty chill community with a few bad eggs that pop up occasionally.

Hard to say without knowing what the staff skills or druid utilities do.

That being said I’d favor the greatsword. It gives me more mobility, strong defense, and a decent melee burst that will be easier to land with the staff’s control skills. Imagine using a utility for a buff to damage, then following that up by ensnaring the enemy in vines and hitting them with a quick Maul critical.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If you put EB in the BM line, it has perfect synergy with Loud Whistle as it is a complete cleanse and heal every 15s. Only a fool would allow their pet to die from conditions transferred via EB, it would take forever. Just swap pets when they get under 25% health. Also gaining the advantage of Beastmasters Bond/Windborne Notes/Poison Master/Zephyr’s Speed, the on-swap traits.

There is nothing more important to a Beastmaster build than learning when to swap pets. Therefore EB is perfect for BM.

I like it, although I would merge HiPS and Shared for a GM.

You may have a point if it weren’t for conditions like cripple, chill, weakness, blind, and eventually slow. Any of these conditions can royally wreck a pet’s effectiveness in combat, and Empathic Bond purposely pulls these same conditions off the ranger to the pet. If I’m running a beastmaster build I definitely do not want to increase the uptime of these conditions on my pet. Not to mention that every time I pet swap I have to re-apply my boons to the pet, meaning anything that makes me swap pets more frequently than I’d normally need to is wasting time and resources.

Now if it were merged with another trait and made into an active CLEANSE I’d be on board with the change. As is Beastmaster ranger’s only valid way to deal with conditions is either Healing Spring or Survival of the Fittest, with condi cleanse shout runes being a weaker variant of Survival of the Fittest. Rangers need more cleanses and less pet sacrificing.

I like these ideas. Of course I like most people’s suggestions for improving shouts. Ranger shouts causing the pet to do physical skills makes a lot of sense thematically and would give them a unique niche on our bar. A beastmaster ranger would have even more crowd control effects to maximize pet damage, which still producing high amounts of regeneration and swiftness through Nature’s Voice.

I rather like that totem idea that’s been floating around where you lose your second pet but gain the ability to merge the pet with your druid to get unique F1-F3 skills, and the mechanic becomes about when to use your pet as a companion and when to use it as a spirit totem for the unique skills.

It’s also possible the pet will start being able to build up a resource that makes the pet stronger as it builds up and can be used for either a more powerful F2 attack or a new F5 attack coming from the druid. That would make for an interesting dynamic where the enemy has to try to anticipate if the druid’s big hitting burst will come from the pet or the druid.

My only problem with Empathic Bond going to the Beastmaster line is that it’s completely counter-intuitive to a beastmaster build. You do not WANT your pet to get loaded with conditions as the pet is a major source of utility and damage with that sort of playstyle. Empathic Bond saves the ranger in place of killing something the ranger invested an entire trait line into improving.

It needs to be changed to fit a beastmaster playstyle if it gets moved to Beastmastery.

I actually like this idea. I pretty much never use my block list save for gold spammers, but if someone were to be such an angry, intolerant piece of filth that I was forced to block them then I’d certainly never want to play with them again.

As for thinning out the community, this would only really hurt two kinds of people, both of which are a stark minority.

The sort who are so vile that they end up on a large number of blocked lists because they just can’t play nice with others.

And the sort who have massive block lists because they are trying to block every “noob” they come across.

Personally, I wouldn’t want either of these two on my team. The second one is their own worst enemy, ramping up their own queue times. It’d also give the community a way to punish people who ruin matches by going afk or feeding the enemy team kills because they are just waiting for the game to end.

It’s intended and has been like this for ages. I’m surprised you only just now noticed it was possible.

We don’t need your list of pros and cons, though. If you’ve not been playing the game long enough to notice this feature until just now you probably aren’t experienced enough with the ranger to make an unbiased review. No offense intended.

I really hope the druid specialization will have some condition cleansing on the staff skills or in their new utilities, because otherwise every druid build will only be able to pick a single trait line for variety. Druidism/Wilderness Survival/ X.

I use the cultural armor mostly. Wrangler’s Coat looks good and doesn’t clip with the tail. Then I use Privateer’s Pants and Accursed Treads. That’s pretty much it for my outfit. I also sport a Mist Walker’s Cap but that makes the mane disappear so I usually go without a hat, and I don’t like how bulky the shoulder armor is on charr. Makes my guy look too big to be a fast moving ranger.

I tend to not be very flashy with my character outfits since I’m a roleplayer and my characters aren’t attention seekers.

Aerathnor.8305:

That would be interesting to see, especially with spinal blades.

The Katana isn’t incredible, just figured I’d mention it with the quiver since I tend to dislike a lot of the GS skins out there for being absolutely massively wide.

The quiver was definitely the more important of the items for ranger looks imo

That’s part of why I like my tribal greatsword. Yah, it’s overly thick. But the traditional weapon is suppose to function as a warclub as much as a sword and tended to be on the thicker side.

Granted the historic macuahuitl wasn’t large enough to be considered a greatsword. But you know, fantasy.

Edit: Though apparently there were two handed macuahuitls. I’ve just never seen one.

There’s a fair few things they could do with pets to make interesting new mechanics out of it. Admittedly it’s a little more limiting than others have as they get resources to manage. But then, there’s no reason the pet couldn’t have a resource added for us to take advantage of.

Maybe one elite specialization is… I dunno, Dragontamer? Shaman? Beastkin? Something like that. Your pet could build a symbiosis resource as it hits the target and is hit by enemies. Then, once the bar is built up, you use the F5 to initiate a powerful combo attack with the pet and the ranger for high cleave damage. Keeping up with the Elite Specializations as dual classing theory this would basically be a Ranger/Warrior.

Some ideas of burst combos could be the wolf howling to summon spirit wolves that all attack with the elite ranger. Feline and elite ranger could leap at the enemy together and hit them with a flurry of vicious slashes stacking high bleeds and good direct damage. Drake could breath on the elite ranger’s weapon so the ranger’s special attack is imbued with elemental energy. etc.

Then of course there’s the idea where the pet can be triggered to become a stationary totem that provides animal specific buffs to the elite ranger and allies. This one is a little less interesting to me because it basically turns the pet into another spirit skill.

I do like the Aspects idea where the elite ranger takes in the pet as an aspect and gains unique F1-F3 skills based on the pet and you have to choose between having your pet out as an autonomous entity or fused with the elite ranger in order to get the special skills. That would create a very interesting playstyle and let rangers have a set up where they can stow the pet for large scale combat where it becomes a liability without completely removing the pet for a passive buff. Keeps the playstyle very active and engaging, and keeps the pet around for when you need it.

I’m not a fan of the katana. I much prefer my macuahuitl (Tribal greatsword skin).

As for the quiver… I’d like to have it, but my chest set’s hood (charr cultural armor. The Wrangler Coat.) interacts strangely with back slot items. It makes the item attach to the tip of the hood rather than the back, so it just floats there awkwardly.

Given Anet isn’t even upping the level cap and making a new tier of gear only available with the expansion this is far less of a Play to Win scheme than pretty much every other MMO that has gotten an expansion. AND it doesn’t have a monthly fee on top of the new expansion price tag like other MMOs.

Aragorn’s pet was the legion of undead. Dude multi-classed.

But yes. A longsword/greatsword is a viable weapon for a ranger. The idea that a ranger must be a ranged class is a misnomer as people see “ranger” and thing “ranged attack” when it really means “ranging” as in traveling far distances. Rangers oversee places and act as wardens.

The rangers of Lord of the Rings used mostly melee weapons. Aragorn used a longsword and one other ranger used a spear. Their purpose was to protect the former lands of Arnor from Sauron’s minions. They lived out in the wilderness and tirelessly tracked down and slew Sauron’s agents to prevent Sauron from getting a foothold in the north.

Only one of the original Power Rangers used a bow, and even she mostly fought in melee with it. They were rangers in that they protected Angel Grove and the world from the evil witch Rita Repulsa and her monstrous minions.

The main reason bows are so strongly associated with rangers in most games is because a bow is a good weapon to have in the wilderness. It’s great for hunting and a good stealth weapon. However rangers are not rangers because of the bow. Rather the bow is a part of their weapon selection because it’s good for ranging.

I can count the number of greatsword skins that would work for practical combat on one hand. Most of them are blatantly over sized, weirdly balanced, blatantly dangerous to the wielder, or have so much ornamentation that they’d be completely non-functional. Usually ALL of these things at once.

I’d rather keep them as spirits. Signets are pretty boring, and spirits are very unique to the ranger.

We’ll just have to wait and hope that the spirit redesign makes these skills more appealing to use.

If I had to guess I’d say the greatsword will focus heavily on life draining and life transfer abilities. A throw back to life steal necros from GW1. It’d drain health from enemies while channeling that life energy to the necromancer and nearby allies as a bunch of small heals. Utilities could be shouts that enhance allies and weaken enemies, or maybe glyphs inscribed with the necromancer’s blood to activate them that provide a chunk of the necromancer’s health to nearby allies or converts Life Force into health.

New mechanic could be an F2 that allows the necromancer to impale their opponent with a shadowy spear that drains and immobilizes the target and that becomes stronger the more life force is spent when used. That way the necromancer has to choose between the defense of Deathshroud or the offensive potential of rooting the opponent and doing high damage.

Names could include Bloodletter, Vampire, or Impaler.

No. If we did that then half the game’s maps would never get played, and the people who normally vote for those maps would never be given a chance to play them.

The current system works fine. The majority get what they want the majority of the time and the minority get what they want when they get lucky.

ronpierce.2760:

It will be Dragon Yeller.

You mean Dragonyeller.

Aerathnor.8305:

I would consider smacking someone with a wooden staff a “plant based attack” ;-)

Just because the AA would be melee doesn’t mean all of the skills on it have to be. They could put ground targeted or radius abilities on it, the vine thing we saw looks like a skillshot of sorts.

The support could come from either the weapon or the heal/utility/elite skills we get in addition to cc on the weapon.

I really just want a melee staff so we can all be “Beastmaster” clones :p

https://youtu.be/FF4sFVUsvi0

Still would prefer a long ranged caster playstyle for the druid staff so we could switch from casting to melee with weapon swap. I just really like the idea of throwing out spells at the enemy to wear them down and then switching to a greatsword to finish them off. Given druids have always run along the fine line of martial and magic this would be an ideal playstyle.

That being said, Daar was the best. I loved that show.

Beastmastery for sure. Likely Nature Magic or Wilderness Survival with that, depending on what works best for druid.

To be honest I don’t think Team Death Match would do that badly as far as queue time. The games tend to be pretty short compared to a Conquest game that isn’t a complete blowout.

If anything it may attract all the track farmers away from Conquest and to a game mode that requires less rotation skill and more combat skill.

jcbroe.4329:

Meh, I still don’t like the idea that the druid can decide what is and isn’t sacred.

Still, I guess I have to factually accept that it’s an existing design, even if I would prefer the theme of just channeling and focusing the power of nature to literally just full on wielding it like that.

But oh well. I won’t be upset with what they end up being named. As long as their are no summons/conjures and what we get isn’t lackluster.

What if we get conjured weapons that allow us to summon minions that lay down consecrations when activated?