I don’t have the drive to farm materials or gold, so I am perpetually poor. I have enough gold to fund the things I actually want to do in the game, and that’s all I need.
Additionally as a roleplayer I prefer my weapon skins to look fairly realistic. Like a weapon an actual person might have. Very few of the legendaries look like something you’d take to a battlefield, and the ones that do don’t look significantly better enough than my current gear to warrant such a massive time and resource investment.
For example, I wouldn’t mind having the torch daggers for my charr elementalist. However the sheer grind needed to get them make them a less desirable weapon skin than what I already have. Plus I mostly use a staff anyway, and Bifrost just doesn’t suit a charr elementalist who specializes in fire magic.
The animation was beautiful and majestic, especially on my max sized charr!
There is just something wondrous about a 500 pound devil cat swinging his huge, clawed foot to perform a slashkick to someone’s face.
Even my minimum height mushroom Sylvari was amazing. Such a tiny little man, and then suddenly he breaks out into a flurry of kicks and slashes!
I will really, really miss the old animations even if I was one of the proponents of the change.
Trahearne might be the current wielder of Caladbolg, but he is no Riannoc.
He is referred to as a scholar on more than one occasion and is extremely knowledgeable about all things related to Zhaitan and dragon corruption. He’s also a great strategist and tactician. He isn’t much of a warrior however. Putting him in the final battle would have just risked him getting killed without really contributing much to the effort.
I don’t have a guardian currently.
I DID have a rather nice idea for a human guardian who was Ascalonian/Krytan mix. He was a former blacksmith who took to the drink when his sons died in the war against the dragons. Became a drunken wastrel. But ended up being deployed to Orr himself as a weaponsmith on the front lines. There he had a religious experience near the shrine of Balthazar and changed his ways, becoming a Priest of Balthazar and choosing to purge Orr of the Risen blight that infests it in order to atone for his shameful past.
He used sword (fiery dragon sword) and torch and used the spirit weapons to fight, owing to his past as a blacksmith. Forming his magical energy into weapons came naturally to him.
A good dragonhunter could be a norn who took up the way of the Guardian and just adapted those skills to his already impressive hunting skills. Alternatively you could fulfill the witch hunter model and go after the Sons of Svanir in an inquisitorial manner. Purge Hoelbrak of the dragon worshiping menace!
If the auto does give the pet a little buff that would make sword an amazing option for beastmaster rangers. Cripple spam makes it a lot easier for the pet to land it’s big hitting moves, and the might can be transferred to the pet for easier might stacking. Adding a third effect could be interesting.
I do miss those cool kicks though. I guess they couldn’t get the kicking animation to look good with strafing.
I feel Garm is a wasted opportunity. So was Faolain. Their roles should have been reversed.
Garm should have been the one killed and then corrupted by Modremoth. Then let loose on his master, killing Eir. I feel it would have been a lot more impactful than Faolian, who we already know is evil, being corrupted.
Meanwhile Faolain should have been the one left ambiguously dead/missing, giving Caithe something to do in the story that wasn’t “HIDE THE EGG! Oh, I had the egg. I’m sorry!”
Then end with a team up with the Nightmare Court to fight a common enemy.
I am very happy about the change. With my latency issues half the time the leap would go off and I’d move further AWAY from where my target really is.
Sword might actually be usable for me now.
An SAB map would be nice.
Tho because of the sillyness idk if it may be better suited as a stronghold one…
An SAB themed Stronghold map would be funny. Cannons instead of trebs. Have monkeys for doorbreakers and snakes for archers. Make it more vertical for more platforming to get around the map faster.
Could be fun. People would never let it touch ranked, but it’d be fun.
I am sure the fact we’re not on the list IS the joke.
We’re always complaining about how Anet forgot us, after all. Also.
Chronomancer
Fixed an exploit that allowed chronomancers to go back in time and kill their opponents in PvP before the match began.
This should seriously get fixed. I hate it when that happens.
The Guild Wars franchise actually has a decent history of having strong female characters in their group. Guild Wars 1 wasn’t exactly an all male cast unless you specifically chose to make it that way by not bringing any girls.
Cynn, Lidia, Jora, Gwen, and Nika all come to mind.
It’s not a surprise at all to me that Anet would continue to focus on having a strong female presence in the center of their story. And I like it that way.
Being told I suck has literally never improved my gameplay, and I assume it wouldn’t improve the gameplay of others either. Therefore I don’t do it. People seem to forget that if you insult someone they will almost always be compelled to defend themselves, and every second they spend typing is a second they aren’t using their skills for combat.
It can also distract and demoralize the teammate you’re yelling at and lower their already poor performance to even worse levels, as well as reduce the morale of your entire team by removing the friendly atmosphere most people prefer to have during a GAME.
If you see someone making a lot of mistakes the best thing to do is try to offer some POLITE advice. It will help the player improve while keeping the environment from becoming hostile and unfun to be in.
I typically win FAR more games when my team and I are having fun and actually have decent chemistry than when there’s one guy complaining and insulting everyone else. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever won a game with someone like that on my team.
The Nightmare Court outfit is the only thing I could find that doesn’t clip with my male charr. I don’t use it because it’s too Sylvari-esque, but it’s there.
Medium armor charr really got the short end of the stick when it came to armor skins.
In open world PVE the ranger is king. Get a tanky pet and you can solo just about anything, even champions, with very little effort.
I love the axe offhand. The teleport is pretty useful to chase down runners. Shield is great too but I really don’t like moves that limit my mobility, so axe feels more natural.
It seems strange to me that you could feel ROBBED because you weren’t given the toy you were hoping for. It’s an extremely selfish, narrow minded point of view.
Druid gave rangers something we’ve needed for a very, very long time. Support. This was HEAVILY asked for on the forums because the core ranger design, while quite good in 1v1 or small scale skirmishes, brought nothing to the table that benefited team fights or large scale content like WvWvW. Our lack of support options was stifling, and was one of the biggest hindrances when running this profession in any game mode.
Druid brought us support. A LOT of support. Both offensive and defensive. We have a ton of healing that can make a big impact in team fights while also improving our natural sustain, which makes us even better at 1v1 than we were before. It also brought us even more control skills, allowing us to support our allies by hindering our enemies, while again improving our 1v1 options.
Ranger’s biggest design flaw, the lack of impact in group combat, was addressed with the druid. Is there still more that can be done? Certainly. But it was a huge step in the right direction.
Meanwhile core ranger was given four new pets, two of which being extremely good in comparison to our other pets. So even core ranger is in a much better place now than it was before HoT. Even if you don’t like druid and want to stick to core ranger you got something new to play with.
I’m sorry you didn’t like what you got, but you have to understand that not everyone was going to be made happy regardless. If we had been given an elite sniper specialization I would have been very disappointed because that isn’t what I made my ranger for. I rolled ranger to be a nature loving survivalist with an animal companion, not a straight up archer that kills people like a ranged thief. And of course, we’d be back in the same boat we’ve been in for years. Lack of group support with no way to contribute to the group beyond single target damage.
Maybe we’ll get that for our next elite specialization, but for now I’m glad we got one that actually addressed some of our biggest, most glaring weaknesses first. Now we’re viable in all game modes and I’m loving it.
Elementalists are a stance dance class. Their auto attacks are incredibly weak to compensate for their much larger number of other attacks.
To limit a profession that’s entire mechanic revolves around their sheer variety of attacks by making them only use one is even more detrimental than making a profession that gets a large chunk of it’s damage from the pet use only it’s auto.
All the pets need a major overhaul. I feel like both Ranger and non-Ranger players would be happier if the pets were there to supplement the player, not be the main source of damage.
Supplying combo fields or applying condis like Immob or CC like knock down and Fear so that the Ranger can land its damage sounds good. Instead right now we have Rangers building to have as much sustain as possible and just supporting their pet as they decimate the target.
It’s not even about being OP or UP, it’s about making the class both fun to play and fun to play against. I want to fight other players, not brain-dead AI that are only good cause their attacks are dealing high damage while being able to just soak up hits. It’s all subjective but I’m pretty sure few players go “ahhh yay I LOVE fighting the pet!” or “I love having my pet be my main source of damage!”
I agree with you in that the other pets need buffs, but I disagree that NONE of the pets should be viable damage sources. That’s the whole point of the beastmaster playstyle. To use your own weapon skills to set up your pet to deliver it’s burst successfully.
You aren’t fighting the pet’s AI. You’re fighting a pet that is being guided and supported by the player you’re fighting. The player has to manage the pet to keep it out of AoE fields and make sure it doesn’t go down by supporting it with heal skills and well timed pet swaps, as well as time the pet’s F2 with the ranger’s control effects to ensure the burst lands. It’s a very fun playstyle that the ranger profession was literally designed to accommodate.
Rather the support and control the other pets offer should be made to be competitive with the raw damage pets. Running a sustain build you could go with a damage pet to pressure enemies or a control pet to improve your ability to bunker, and running a glassy build you could take a damage pet for high burst potential or a control pet to compensate for your own lack of defense.
Increase pet variety to improve build diversity and potential choices, but don’t remove a playstyle entirely.
(edited by Ehecatl.9172)
Celestial Amulet is gone. Druid isn’t very tanky at all anymore.
Can you provide a source that says Joko is more powerful than Zhaitan? I find that incredibly hard to believe.
The whole “Light armor classes shouldn’t look like they have heavy armor!” concept also loses merit when one can very easily build a light armor class that has a higher toughness stat than a heavy class.
No, no… What if you have a Druid at one side, in the distance and a team on the other side. If you are the enemy team, where can you safely prepare the cleave. Under the body, or under the Druid?
I don’t understand your dilemma. Have your ranged focus the druid as one player begins the stomp. The druid can either teleport the player to his location, at which point you interrupt the rez and then spike the druid down, or wait for the druid to come to you where he will go down from your team.
Druids aren’t so tanky that they can survive the burst of a team.
As to Reikken. Astral Grace isn’t a teleport silly.
But what if you set up the cleave at the druid’s location and they decide to rez at the body instead of teleporting it. What happens then?
What? The druid can’t teleport to the body. If you’re cleaving on the druid and he uses that skill he brings the body to him where you’re cleaving.
If he runs TO the body then that just gives you a huge opportunity to hit him with control skills to prevent the rez.
To be fair, Tybalt was written to die before we even met him. All the mentors were.
he clearly stated “the map selection should choose the map with the majority vote.” He never implied that his opinion was more valuable than another’s, but that the majority opinion should always take precedent over the minority.
The problem with that thinking is that it means the minority will NEVER get to play the maps they enjoy. Ever.
In fact the only maps that will ever be played are Foefire with the occasional Niflhel. We might also get a Kyhlo once in a blue moon.
Three maps are not enough. If this ever went live I’d flat out quit SPVP. I already hate how many times I’m forced to play Foefire, but I deal with it because this is a FAIR system for map selection. The majority get what they want the majority of the time while the minority still get to play what they want the minority of the time.
The wyvern surprised me. Why did you go with that over the smokescale?
Unranked isn’t the competitive queue. Losing because of what you perceive as a bad map doesn’t negatively effect your league status.
So basically what you’re asking for is to remove maps other people consider fun because you don’t feel like adapting your strategy.
If your glider isn’t working try using some invuln skills. I was able to do it with just the Sylvari racial elite Take Root and some healing.
I noticed the OP waited until someone replied to the thread to completely change the content of the OP.
GG?
Huh… They did. Well, now my post looks crazy and nonsensical.
Well played, OP. I fell for your trap card. Well played indeed.
NO. Stop trying to force anime into a western style setting. it doesn’t work from an artistic perspective. At all. If that’s the art style you enjoy all the power to you, but you should go to an MMO with that art style instead of trying to inject it into another MMO.
Also, I’d get bored with this game really, really, really fast if there was no PVE or WvWvW. Making an MMO that only offers PVP is a bad way to get a large playerbase.
I had an interesting thought. What if we’re not entirely done in Maguuma?
The Pale Tree is effectively a dragon champion like The Shatterer or Tequatl, and we know she is just a purified Blighting Tree. What if another blighting tree got a boost from Modremoth’s magic, gained power comparable to the Pale Tree, and took over the Modrem, forming a new Modrem Court?
This could very well tie in with Malyck and the other Pale Trees we don’t know about yet. A war of Sylvari waged between the Pale Tree and a super powered Blighting Tree.
After all, defeating Zhaitan was fairly easy compared to Modremoth. Once he was gone his minions lost the ability to easily raise new Risen. We know for a fact, however, that Modremoth’s trees can function and produce more minions without him thanks to the Pale Tree.
Season 3 could involve finding a way to end Modremoth’s corruption since we didn’t have a Caladbolg to do it for us like we did in Orr. Maybe a corrupted and empowered Blighting Tree is the disturbance up north in the Maguuma Wastes.
Amusing that you went the “ELITE SPEC PAY TO WIN!!!!” path with druid, Online. It’s one of the few professions right now where the elite spec isn’t just a straight upgrade to the base profession.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-versus-Druid/first#post5955495
Druid is extremely strong at what it does, but for the ranger it isn’t always the best option depending on what you intend to do.
Is core ranger meta? No. But then it wasn’t meta BEFORE druid was introduced either.
This just happened to me today. I went into my friend’s Setting the Stage quest as we were doing our missions together. Me with the Priory and her with the Order of Whispers. When the message popped up I assumed it meant that, because this mission is the EXACT SAME for everyone down to the smallest detail, that it would count mine as complete and let me progress to the next story step.
Now I’m stuck doing the Order of Whispers line, and from what I’ve read I won’t get the Priory achievements and I will get Whispers agents in my Home Instance rather than Priory explorers.
The fact that a single button push on a rather vague message box can completely and irreversibly alter my character and his home instance is absolutely not acceptable. I opened a ticket, but if this proves to be permanent I will effectively have to delete a level 80, fully geared, fully specialization unlocked Revenant that was made using a Total Makeover Kit and re-make him just to do the story steps I CHOSE to do with him when I purposely and knowingly joined the Priory in the first place, I will be absolutely livid.
If you’re not going to make the warning more obvious as to exactly what this does you could at LEAST allow the player to back out of their friend’s storyline so they can resume their own.
They wouldn’t have gotten to work on the next expansion so soon if the last expansion didn’t turn a profit.
I already pointed you they are pretty bad and the reasons. You saying thing that are good because they are used coz you have to choose one is not a real reason.
Also eles can have pretty bad elites because compared to their other skills anything looks bad. So yeah there is that.
Elementalists have bad elites because two of those elites actively make the elementalist weaker by removing their weapon skills. Tornado just makes them a big, slow target.
As someone who went from ele main to ranger main a couple years ago trust me, rangers are the promised land of elites by comparison.
Base ranger could slot Healing Spring and run a shout build with Runes of the Soldier/Trooper too. Take Evasive Purity in Nature Magic if you want to have ready access to poison and cripple cleanses. Or take the signet which is basically a bursty version of Empathic Bond.
Also, ranger cleanses blow revenant cleanses out of the water.
Rangers have two great elites in Strength of the pack and Entangle.
Elementalists are the ones with terrible elites.
The hard-counter is even worse when said hard-counter has the best mobility in the game and can easily out rotate their target so they always end up engaging and can always chase their target down if they try to disengage.
If a thief gets it in their head that they want to farm you there isn’t much you can do beyond getting another player to babysit you the whole match.
And what about those of us who use it so we can have our pet reviving a downed ally while we prevent stomps during the process, and who did NOT slot Search and Rescue?
How is that weird ? You’re punished for using it in fights including more than one target, that’s totally fitting the design of making it an assassination weapon.
Like a poster above said, it wouldn’t be a problem if the weapon had the tools needed to separate someone from the herd. Unfortunately the sword doesn’t. The closest it has is offhand sword’s Grasping Shadow, but that only pulls someone back 600 range, and you have no skills to lock someone down in order to unload your burst aside from Shiro’s elite.
It also becomes a huge issue when you go up against rangers, mesmers, and minion necromancers. That’s two professions that can accidentally neuter your burst rotation and a third that can build for it.
Thieves don’t have that problem. It makes them far more efficient as a +1 assassin because they can unload their burst on anyone anywhere at any time, where as the Revenant needs very specific conditions to unload theirs.
This is EVEN WEIRDER when you remember Anet originally intended Revenants to only have one weapon set. What? Did they just expect Shiro Revenants to never fight more than one person (who isn’t a ranger or mesmer) at once?
Personally I feel Revenants would be in a better place if Unrelenting Assault was single target. It’s ability to hit multiple targets in such a wide area is nothing but a handicap.
I don’t really find myself needing to rez teammates very frequently so the 85 second cooldown isn’t that bad. The teleport functionality also isn’t needed since it activates when you begin rezzing.
Just because the shout it’s based on got buffed doesn’t mean the trait is suddenly useless. It’s exactly as useful as it use to be.
Thieves also have an advantage in that their burst isn’t mitigated by the mere presence of other targets.
That is a really weird design choice to me. Sword is meant to be the single target burst weapon, but both it’s damage spike attacks will divide that damage across multiple targets if they are too close.
Allies’ Aid is still a useful trait. It has the same functionality as the old version, which means you can start to revive a player, stop, and start fighting while your pet does the rezzing. Or you can speed up the rez by continuing it with your ranger and pet together.
All I want are more pets to be brought up to the level of the bristleback and smokescale.
Allow drakes to rotate when using their F2 the same way bristlebacks do. Widen the cone and increase the damage of the short range drakes so that they can hit something with their F2. Cut the cast time of the F2 in half.
Change the wyvern auto attack into something faster and more fluid. Maybe an areal attack like what birds received, or give them a breath attack of 350-600 range. A more fluid animation would go a long way to making wyverns hit more reliably. Increase the burning pulses from the fire drake F2 substantially so that enemies standing in the fire will actually be in danger of going down if they don’t move.
Give moas stronger boon application and a healing power stat of 1,000 or so. Support pets need support stats. Similarly give the Sylvan Hound some healing power or change it’s F2 into a root skill so it matches the other hounds as control pets.
Make porcine foraged items appear in the ranger’s hand ready to use and drop a second on the ground that ONLY ALLIES can pick up, making the skill function like the elementalist conjured weapons. Some of the porcines give items that grant stealth. I’d like to be able to use these items reliably.
Changes like these would go a long way to improving pet variety.
Nah, it will die down eventually. Everyone is testing builds and a lot of them haven’t tuned themselves to deal with thieves, so it’s a thief player’s wet dream. Tons of untested builds with no defensive amulets left to prevent massive damage spikes.
But in time people will react to the influx of thieves and start to build to trash every thief they see. Then the thief population will drop to more reasonable levels.
I can typically deal with a lone thief with this build. It’s just when I get ganked by a duo or trio of thieves and go down instantly that it becomes a problem.
I also picked up the Mender’s amulet and fell in love with it. Lost a lot of tankiness from Celestial but I got a fair bit of damage back. Now I can feel the weight of my greatsword when I use it. Both my druid and my pet are considered threats. I was using the Nature Magic variant.
I went with an all shout build with soldier runes myself. I just couldn’t help but try them out! Loved them. Guard helps with the Mender’s lack of toughness and Protect Me is a good peel. I also took Sic ’Em for a 40% damage boost on Smoke Assault. Completely shreds thieves if the rotation lands.
I did feel a bit vulnerable to burst myself, though. But it’s probably because every game I was fighting like, 2-4 thieves on the enemy team. Once the thief population stabilizes I feel the build will be able to shine even brighter.
I think Empathic Bond should be removed entirely and a new trait of any kind should just take its place.
This is my stance on the matter as well. We don’t need two condi management grandmasters in the same line, and Empathic Bond is too weak and too much of a handicap for our class mechanic to ever be taken over the other options.
Plus with druid we got a second line with decent condi management, and there’s still a bit more spread between Nature Magic and Skirmishing via Healing Spring.
I’d like to see something else take it’s place. Maybe a good defensive grandmaster trait.
I swear some people don’t understand the difference between a buy to play game and a pay to win game. Pay to win comes down to you spending money on micro transactions that give your character advantages over other players who don’t spend money on these transactions. In just about every MMO there is always a expansion that comes out and if you usually don’t buy that expansion you’re going to be left behind it’s just the way it is.
If the company’s goal is to succeed in true esports market, the game should never be pay2win.
It’s not pay to win. It’s pay to play. If you didn’t pay for the expansion you don’t get to use the new content. Pay to win is when you can spend real money on micro transactions that make your character stronger by giving it a statistical advantage.
Heart of Thorns was LESS of a pay to win strategy than anything WoW ever put out given that if you didn’t have the expansion you couldn’t even COMPETE because of a level difference. Yet I still see this “pay to win” accusation all over the forums where it was never brought up in WoW. I don’t get it.
You’re wrong. Factually and definitively wrong.
I don’t understand. What druid build is giving out 20+ second of protection to the entire team?
Are you asking for Stone Spirit to be nerfed? Dear God…
I love these changes. I’ve wanted to play a shout focused Beastmaster ranger since I made my charr ranger over a year ago. I tried so hard to make it work.
But now with druid, the stronger pets, and these shout changes my vision of a team support nature mage using shouts to command their beasts in battle seems viable!
Can’t wait to try them out.
Especially happy about the Guard change. A skill should be worth more than the boons the trait provides.