Guild Wars 2

OrangeMint.7980:

I feel the same way you do, staff ele is not so great in sPvP, but in WvW it is pretty good. I wish that their single target spells projectile speed or the cast time would be faster.

staff elementalist excel in open spaces but when it comes to close-quarter fighting, they get dropped pretty fast against a competent melee player.

The staff’s casting animation (1.2 seconds), is imposed on the autoattack skills, causing their differing activation speeds to be ignored and resulting in Fire (1 sec activation) being slightly weaker than is supposed to be and Air, Earth, and Water (3/4 sec activation) being substantially weaker than they’re supposed to be.

Why in the world people aren’t screaming about this rather obvious problem is beyond me, because it’s affecting lots of professions and several weapons.

You just have to close out GW2 and log back in. I don’t know why this is still happening, though, to be honest.

An attempt at explaining this differently to try to make people realize how big a problem it is:

Even though all skills in the game, including #1s, have an activation speed (even if it’s 0), weapon/skill animations interfere with the activation speed when a skill is set to autoattack (usually the #1 skill). This would seem to be both intentional and not a big deal.

However, since it’s easily inferred that skills were balanced around their activation speeds, this creates a very serious problem for some weapons where the weapon’s cast animation (which differs from weapon to weapon) is significantly longer than the activation speed of its autoattack skill.

The best example to illustrate this is the Elementalist’s Staff (though the most egregious example is probably the Longbow, followed by the Pistol). What we see from the #1 skills for each element is this:

Fire – 1.0 second activation speed
Earth – .75 activation speed
Air – .75 activation speed
Water – .75 activation speed

However, the reality is that all 4 elements have the exact same rate of fire. This is because the staff’s attack animation takes around 1.2 seconds to complete and that delay is imposed on each of the skills, causing their activation speeds to be entirely ignored, and consequently making Fire objectively stronger than the other three elements since it was balanced around the assumption that it would cast more slowly.

It’s obvious this is not intended, because it’s obvious when you play staff Ele that the Fire attack is stronger and more generally usable than the Earth, Air, and Water attacks. It would also mean that Activation speed is a useless metric. This should be a very high priority for review and correction.

I responded to your post in one of the class threads. Despite your condescension, you are not correctly understanding the problem I’m describing, which is very clearly a bug/oversight, so let me try again.

No one is saying that the attack speeds need to be the same across all weapons. The problem is that the delay between each activation of a skill set to autoattack is inconsistent from weapon to weapon. It’s clear that this inconsistency is a result of the way the animations were designed (they force a minimum recast depending on the weapon), but more importantly, it’s clear that this is not intended because the ‘power’ of each of those skills is precisely inversely proportional to the delay that occurs between each skill. In other words, it very plainly is a bug or design oversight with the interaction of the skill and the animation.

Here’s a reiteration of the above data (numbers are approximations, but they are close):
Rifle (Warrior/Ranger)- .75 activation, .1 delay, .85 total refire (fine)
Pistol (Thief/Engineer) – .50 activation, .3 delay, .8 total refire (broken)
Longbow (Warrior/Ranger) – .75 activation, .5 delay, 1.25 total refire (massively broken)
Shortbow (Thief) – .25 activation, .3 delay, .55 total refire (somewhat broken)
Shortbow (Ranger) – 0 activation, .3 delay, .3 total refire (broken before, band-aided)

Now, you humorously mentioned the Ele’s Staff in support your assessment, when it actually betrays you and supports my theory (well, fact really) instead:

Fire Staff – 1.0 activation, .25 delay, 1.25 refire (comparatively functional)
Earth Staff – .75 activation, .50 delay, 1.25 refire (broken)
Water Staff – .75 activation, .50 delay, 1.25 refire (broken)
Air Staff – .75 activation, .50 delay, 1.25 refire (broken)

Let me spell out the obvious- Fire’s #1 is better than the other 3 because the other 3 are supposed to be faster, but aren’t due to the aforementioned bug/oversight, which “forces” a recast of 1.25 seconds regardless of the activation speed of the skill being used. Because the damage specs were clearly balanced around activation speeds without taking this delay into account, Water, Air, and Earth are weaker than they are supposed to be. Fire probably is too, just not by as much.

This is why you see endless complaints about those weapons on the forums, it’s just that most people, for some reason I can’t fathom can’t detect something that to me is as plain as day and is made even more obvious through casual analysis and comparisons.

Yep, it’s not working correctly. Neither is Vital Shot, and LB autoattacks for Rangers and Warriors. It’s not even so much a problem that Activation speed doesn’t accurately reflect rate of fire, it’s that the delay between ‘casts’ is erratic from weapon to weapon, causing balance issues with weapon comparisons. It’s painfully obvious that it isn’t intended, because the power of #1 skills for each weapon is precisely inversely proportional to cooldown of that skill. Basically, the Rifle and Ranger Shortbow are exactly as strong as you would expect, while the Pistol and Thief Shortbow are somewhat weaker than you’d expect and the Longbow is much weaker than you’d expect.

Basically, here’s a rundown:
Rifle (Warrior/Engineer): .75 activation, .85 refire, .1 delay (functional)
Pistol (Thief/Engineer): .5 activation, .80 refire. .3 delay (moderately broken)
Longbow (Warrior/Ranger): .75 activation, 1.2 refire. 45 delay (massively broken)
Shortbow (Thief): .25 activation. .5 refire, .25 delay (slightly broken)
Shortbow (Ranger): 0 activation, .25 refire, .25 delay (broken until activation speed was removed, now band-aid fixed)

It almost certainly affects Staffs and Scepters as well, but I don’t have the numbers for those. It’s a majorly egregious problem that Anet needs to address and that the forumites need to stop trying to deny.

I’ll be blunt here: The fact that this issue is as obvious as it is and goes continuously unnoticed and not commented on by Anet staff leaves me doubts about their competence to get this game as polished as it should be.

Eurantien.4632:

If you use all the skills on the longbow then you end up firing like 2 shots on the auto attack before you have to switch weapons. If you are at a good range you can crit for about 2k per auto attack.

For those hatin’. Do you want me to post a vid of LB + GS dominating in Paid tournaments?

I’m pretty sure nobody is hatin’. I’m pretty sure “accurately analyzing flaws and design issues” is a better way to put it. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if you leveled the entirety of Lion’s Arch with a longbow, Long Range Shot is not working as intended.

Prism.5649:

And where does it say that fire rates need to be the same across the board?

I responded more thoroughly to your response in the Game Bug forum, so check it out. In this case, I’ll summarize a little bit more:

No one is arguing that the fire rates need to be the same across all weapons. The problem, in summary, is this:

The “cooldown”, or time between the end of one activation and the beginning of the next one, is erratic from weapon to weapon. This is because each weapon has a minimum delay (probably based on the animation) that it forces on the refire regardless of the activation speed of the skill being used. The reason this is “broken” is because the skills in the game have offensive specs that are balanced around their activation speeds, when for non-chain autoattacks in particular that metric is either heavily minimized or outright ignored due to the delay imposed by the skill’s animation.

Here’s some data:
Rifle – .75 activation speed, .85 refire = .10 sec cooldown
Pistol – .50 activation speed, .75 refire = .25 sec cooldown
Longbow – .75 activation speed, 1.2 refire = .45 sec cooldown

The result is that, while the Pistol is clearly supposed to fire much faster than the Rifle, it doesn’t due to the actual pistol shooting animation, which creates an unintended and unaccounted for delay between the individual castings of the skill. When you give it even a cursory analysis, the power level of the skills is precisely inversely proportional to the length of the cooldown.

In other words, the Rifle autoattack for both Engineers and Warriors is a strong autoattack that hits in the same range of DPS as other autoattacks in the game, because there’s only a .1 cooldown between each shot. The Pistol autoattack is worse and is weaker than it should be, because there’s an inflated .25 cooldown between each shot. The Longbow autoattack (for both Warriors and Rangers) is very noticeably weaker than other autoattacks, because there’s a hugely inflated .4 cooldown between each shot activation. If you don’t believe me, go start a warrior and equip a longbow and try to fight something using the #1 skill – you’ll notice that it does pitiful damage. No matter what anyone says, the #1 skills are not supposed to do pitiful damage, they’re supposed to represent a healthy baseline of DPS, supplemented by other skills.

It is so painfully obvious that this is not working as intended that it amazes me the forums aren’t lit up about it. What they need to do is make all #1 skills chain attacks OR normalize the delay between skill executions to something like .1 seconds. That would fix many of the problems people have with ranged weapons.

kiwituatara.6053:

Einlanzer.1627:

kiwituatara.6053:

Activation time sucks:
“Activation time, also referred to as casting time, is the length of time it takes for a skill to prepare before it can initiate.”

Heres the activation times for your regular auto-attack skill:
Ranger Longbow: 1.25
Warrior Longbow: 0.75
Ranger Shortbow: 0.5
Thief Shortbow: 0.25

Pathetic.

Not exactly. Activation time doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t include the “refresh”, or the delay that occurs after one shot before the next one begins activation, which is erratic from weapon to weapon. Consequently, it’s a misleading and totally useless metric.

Here’s the breakdown:
Warrior/Ranger Longbow – .75 Activation speed, 1.25 total refire (BROKEN)
Warrior/Engineer Rifle – .75 Activation Speed, .85 total refire (about right)
Thief/Engineer Pistol – .50 Activation Speed, .80 total refire (BROKEN)
Ranger Shortbow – 0 Activation speed, .4 total refire (debatable, but certainly better)
Thief Shortbow – .25 Activation Speed, .7 total refire (BROKEN)
Elementalist Fire Staff – 1 Activation Speed, 1.2 refire (about right)
Elementalist Air/Water/Earth Staff – .75 activation speed, 1.2 refire (BROKEN)

Unsurprisingly, the Rifle and the Shortbow feel much more “right” than the Pistol and Longbow do, regardless of profession. I’m sure there are also examples with Scepters and other Staffs, but I’m less familiar with them. It seems to be a problem with the lack of chain attacks on ranged weapons and the erratic design of animations accompanying those attacks.

Please fix this ANet, it’s a glaring problem single-handedly causing tons of balance issues.

My bad, not too familiar with the refresh rate and whatnot. But the warrior longbow rate of fire feels better? maybe im just imagining it~

No, it’s actually just as bad. If you play a Warrior and use their Longbow autoattack, you’ll see that it’s just as pitifully weak as Long Range Shot is. It’s very, very obvious it’s a design issue with the animation and that the damage specs on both skills were balanced around the idea that it fired significantly faster than it actually does in-game.

The fact that this continues to go unnoticed by everyone really causes me a lot of cynicism about things in general.

nerva.7940:

LB feels off mostly because it misses moving targets past 900 range. LB should be a sniper weapon, with a slow fire rate but hitting reliably for more. LB projectile speed needs another 30% increase, and then we might be getting somewhere. it’s the worst weapon in the game.

No, as I said – it feels off because it is off. And it is neither the projectile speed nor the damage that’s off, it’s the firing speed. It seriously could not be more obvious that it isn’t working as intended, and that it’s the entire reason why LB is weak.

Long Range Shot is broken, and I’m 99.9% certain that it fires more slowly than it was designed and balanced to, and that the dev/QA people are somehow still oblivious after 6 months even though it’s as plain as day.

It’s not just Long Range Shot either, it’s the LB animation, the same problem affects the Warrior’s Longbow (you’ll notice that the #1 skill does laughably poor DPS). It also affects Pistols, Staffs, and Scepters. Get it together Anet.

I’m posting this again because it’s a huge problem affecting balance in multiple areas and everyone in the world seems to be oblivious to it. There is an issue with the fire rates on ranged autoattack skills being erratic from weapon to weapon when excluding the activation speed. This means that:

A. “Activation Sped” is really a misleading and mostly useless metric.
B. The autoattack skill is very noticeably underpowered on a few weapons relative to most, almost certainly due to the specs not properly taking the between-cast delay into account (or, more likely, the animation is interfering with the intended refire rate).

Here’s the breakdown:
Warrior/Ranger Longbow – .75 Activation speed, .5 delay, 1.25 total refire (BROKEN)
Warrior/Engineer Rifle – .75 Activation Speed, .1 delay, .85 total refire (about right)
Thief/Engineer Pistol – .50 Activation Speed, .3 delay, .80 total refire (BROKEN)
Ranger Shortbow – 0 Activation speed, .3 delay, .3 total refire (band-aided)
Thief Shortbow – .25 Activation Speed, .3 delay, .55 total refire (BROKEN)
Elementalist Fire Staff – 1 Activation Speed, .2 delay, 1.2 refire (about right)
Elementalist Air/Water/Earth Staff – .75 activation speed, .5 delay, 1.2 refire (BROKEN)

Unsurprisingly, the Pisol and Longbow feel very “off” in comparison to the Rifle and the Shortbow, regardless of profession. I’m sure there are also examples with Scepters and other Staffs, but I’m less familiar with them. It seems to be a problem with the lack of chain attacks on ranged weapons and the erratic design of animations accompanying those attacks.

kiwituatara.6053:

Activation time sucks:
“Activation time, also referred to as casting time, is the length of time it takes for a skill to prepare before it can initiate.”

Heres the activation times for your regular auto-attack skill:
Ranger Longbow: 1.25
Warrior Longbow: 0.75
Ranger Shortbow: 0.5
Thief Shortbow: 0.25

Pathetic.

Not exactly. Activation time doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t include the “refresh”, or the delay that occurs after one shot before the next one begins activation, which is erratic from weapon to weapon. Consequently, it’s a misleading and totally useless metric.

Here’s the breakdown:
Warrior/Ranger Longbow – .75 Activation speed, 1.25 total refire (BROKEN)
Warrior/Engineer Rifle – .75 Activation Speed, .85 total refire (about right)
Thief/Engineer Pistol – .50 Activation Speed, .80 total refire (BROKEN)
Ranger Shortbow – 0 Activation speed, .4 total refire (debatable, but certainly better)
Thief Shortbow – .25 Activation Speed, .7 total refire (BROKEN)
Elementalist Fire Staff – 1 Activation Speed, 1.2 refire (about right)
Elementalist Air/Water/Earth Staff – .75 activation speed, 1.2 refire (BROKEN)

Unsurprisingly, the Rifle and the Shortbow feel much more “right” than the Pistol and Longbow do, regardless of profession. I’m sure there are also examples with Scepters and other Staffs, but I’m less familiar with them. It seems to be a problem with the lack of chain attacks on ranged weapons and the erratic design of animations accompanying those attacks.

Please fix this ANet, it’s a glaring problem single-handedly causing tons of balance issues.

Thomassassinate.9370:

I never exclude people for being squishy.

However i hate having thiefs on my team. Don’t know why but they always seem like the weakest of the bunch who can barely survive anything.

Also engineers sometimes only sometimes.

Yes, other classes have decent attrition either through good tanking abilities or the ability to avoid or mitigate damage. Thieves are easily the “worst” class in this ranking, arguably making them the weakest class in PvE in general. They just really need some development attention on a lot of different fronts.

The refire rate on Long Range Shot is significantly slower than I believe it was intended to be. It fires about 1 shot per 1.25 seconds when it should be about 1 shot per .80 seconds. It’s an animation/cooldown design issue that affects the Warrior’s Longbow as well (but not the Rifle) as well as Pistols and Staffs/Scepters for various professions to a lesser degree.

They really need to look into this.

Agadar.4931:

Einlanzer.1627:

Yep, it’s bad design. I was floored when they announced they were buffing the Elementalist’s and Ranger’s signets to 25%. What they should have done is buffed them to 15% and nerfed ours to 20%. That way they wouldn’t feel as necessary and wouldn’t render other movement speeds buffs as obsolete. And, Thieves would still be the fasted class, which they should be.

The thief is still by far the most mobile class. Stop whining. Only the mesmer and the elementalist can come close to the thief’s mobility.

That’s not really the point. The more important point is that it’s bad design. It’s bad design because it forces you to use a utility slot to get something that should either be passive or baseline, and that the skill brings you close to the movement speed cap by itself, rendering lots of other things pointless and obsolete.

Yep, it’s bad design. I was floored when they announced they were buffing the Elementalist’s and Ranger’s signets to 25%. What they should have done is buffed them to 15% and nerfed ours to 20%. That way they wouldn’t feel as necessary and wouldn’t render other movement speeds buffs as obsolete. And, Thieves would still be the fasted class, which they should be.

Asthalon.6875:

I would rather see a boost to our range with the longbow (beyond traiting, a base 1300 yards would be great) than an increase to damage. I think that’s a more versatile avenue of “unparalleled archery” than just damage can do, as it increases control as well as damage (indirectly via reduction of incoming damage by kiting and consequently less time/slots blown healing/popping protective skills).

Range bonus would be decent, but the biggest problem with Longbows is the slowness of Long Range Shot’s refire. Warriors have the same problem, which is why Rifles are better than Longbows for them. It’s an animation issue that needs to be addressed for several autoattack skills.

900 yards make sense for Pisotls and Shortbows I think. There needs to be a few improvements in other areas (especially for Pistols), but I’m really okay with the range.

What I would like to see is the introduction of the crossbow, with a 1200 yard range.

Jack of all trades is really the best way to design the ranger class, which is why WoW’s version of a hunter is full of fail.

I just wish they’d do something about the pets and about the rate of fire on the Longbow #1 (which is also a problem for warriors and a problem for pistols on Engi and Thief).

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Rangers are a pet class.

This mentality right here is the problem. People don’t seem to get that GW2 isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, designed as a gamist system; it’s a system which plays off of verisimilitude. Classes are broad in scope and encompass a number of gameplay options which fit the underlying theme of the class. This is why, unlike in a crappy gamist MMO like WoW, Thieves can use bows and guns and why Rangers can melee well. Peoples’ inability to grasp that classes should be more than a simple designation of “melee” or “ranged” or “pet” is just astounding to me.

Pets should not be as pigeon-holed into the Ranger ability set as they are, and Rangers should not so dependent on them, period. In truth, it would make way more sense for pets to be short-duration utility skills while the “special” F skill set would revolve around the broader Ranger theme of tracking and survival which didn’t force a needlessly specific (and ineffective) play-style onto the class.

Yes, I would like to add to this and say that now that the various secondary/profession attriutes are easy to see with their own tooltips right there in the Hero pane, I’d really like them to revert to the beta names for the attributes (Compassion, Malice, Concentration, etc.)

The generic ones are just flavorless and dull. They would be fine for the tooltips but IMO it actually detracts from the game.

While Venoms are still a bit weak (especially Basilisk), this was a needed bug fix and an appreciable buff; it should not be mocked.

Now that that they’re staring you in the face from the basic hero pane, I know I’m probably in the minority, but I would really like for them to revert to the beta names of secondary/profession attributes (or at least give a checkbox option in the menu between the two). While the current ones are more intuitive, the original ones are a lot more flavorful, and once you learn them the former stops being a problem.

There was clearly a lot of work and effort that went into this patch. While I agree that we need some more class adjustments, your rant reeks of childish petulance.

Yes, while I’m a little disappointed about the lack of class balance changes, this was a very large and appreciated step in the right direction.

Substance E.4852:

Einlanzer.1627:

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Bastionhawk.7120:

The name Ranger isn’t indicative of being ranged.

Anet’s definition of a ranger is indicative of it being ranged, so that’s all that matters.

Rangers are proficient with the bow. They rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature to slay their targets. Their loyal pets, which rangers tame and train, distract enemies while the rangers strike safely from a distance. As an adventurer profession, rangers wear medium armor

Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation

Their own definitions. So let’s stop the parroted “Rangers aren’t ranged” argument when clearly anet defines them as such. Which is where the largest issue comes from when people speak of the ranger.

False. Being good at range does not necessitate being bad at melee. You cannot call Rangers (or any other class) a ‘ranged’ class (or a ‘melee’ class). Why? Because no such designation exists in GW2’s class design philosophy. Why? Because it’s a terrible class design philosophy. The class designs are thematic, not gamist. The ranger class encompasses everything you might consider a ranger to be – a tracker, a ranger, a skirmisher, and utilitarian, a survivalist. The same for every other class.

I’ll consider us “Trackers” when we can finally detect stealthed thieves (glowing foot prints maybe?) Until then, we are just a guy with a dog. Also, the only reason to even have a minion of any sort is to allow you to operate at range while your minion soaks up damage/attention. Without that kind of mechanic, any buff they give us might as well just be part of the class inherently. Why have a melee player and a melee pet hit each for 10 when you could just have the player alone hit for 20?

It makes for a fun role play type of class but mechanically it’s completely superfluous. It’s especially evident in pvp and Orr where the enemies completely ignore your pet all together.

I was not making an argument that the whole pet thing is working well, it frankly isn’t.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Bastionhawk.7120:

The name Ranger isn’t indicative of being ranged.

Anet’s definition of a ranger is indicative of it being ranged, so that’s all that matters.

Rangers are proficient with the bow. They rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature to slay their targets. Their loyal pets, which rangers tame and train, distract enemies while the rangers strike safely from a distance. As an adventurer profession, rangers wear medium armor

Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation

Their own definitions. So let’s stop the parroted “Rangers aren’t ranged” argument when clearly anet defines them as such. Which is where the largest issue comes from when people speak of the ranger.

False. Being good at range does not necessitate being bad at melee. You cannot call Rangers (or any other class) a ‘ranged’ class (or a ‘melee’ class). Why? Because no such designation exists in GW2’s class design philosophy. Why? Because it’s a terrible and shallow class design philosophy.

This isn’t WoW; the class designs are thematic and broad in scope, not gamist and narrow in scope. The ranger class encompasses everything you might consider a ranger to be – a tracker, a trapper, an archer, a skirmisher, a jack-of-all-trades, a beastmaster, a wilderness survivalist, or a nature magician/priest. In short, the Ranger isn’t a “ranged class”, it’s simply a “Ranger”. The same goes for every other class.

More simply, if Rangers had been intended to be “ranged only”, then they wouldn’t have access to Swords and Greatswords. You are clearly wrong, thankfully, because that would be a horrible way to design the class.

Blacklight.2871:

I wouldn’t say that there’s really any night cycle at all, since it doesn’t really ever get dark. The only way I can generally tell that it’s supposed to be night is when my sylvari’s bioluminescence kicks in. The ambient light level of the world is pretty much unchanged.

Yeah I agree that it really doesn’t get dark enough at night time.

Since WoW introduced it, I have to admit I prefer a 24 hour cycle, because even if it’s technically less realistic, it’s more immersive.

Taking it a step further and making the length of the day/night change in accordance with the seasons would be even more awesome.

Yes, nerfing PW was an extremely hasty (no pun intended) and poor decision.

PW was never the problem, Haste was, and to some degree still is. Even then, it isn’t so much Haste that’s the problem as it is the Quickness buff. Why on Earth they think that 2x speed from that buff is better than 1.5 or even 1.25 or is somehow less of a problem than the original damage on PW is just mind-boggling.

It was just a ridiculously short-sighted nerf.

I rather like your idea for Headshot and Unload, but I kind of disagree on Vital Shot and Black Powder. The former just needs an appreciable boost to its refire rate (it should be .6 – .7 rather than .8 – .9) while the latter is pretty much fine as is.

Body Shot is really the only skill I’m on the fence about. There’s a part of me that thinks Head and Body Shot should be reversed (Body Shot is an OH while Head Shot is MH), but I think that’s mainly for thematic reasons (you would be able to aim better with your MH). Regardless, I feel the real problem with Body Shot isn’t the skill itself but the way Vulnerability works.

I dunno, there are a thousand different ways you could dissect it. Only one thing is for sure: Pistols need more work.

CLASSES/COMBAT

1.) We need more weapon options and skills. Skill-set crafting was one of the most enjoyable aspects of GW1, and it helps facilitate greater longevity in a game. On top of that, you acquire most of your skills too early in GW2 and are left to focus mostly on traits as you get higher level, which is a bit lame. Also, certain classes don’t really have an adequate set of weapon options. Suggested new weapons: Polearms, Greataxes, Whips, Flails, Claws, Tomes, Crossbows.

1.) Skill/interface responsiveness is an issue. There should not be such a long delay between when a skill is activated and when it is executed.

2.) Some classes are very clearly stronger in PvE than others, especially at lower level. In my experience, the hardest to play is the Thief (Caltrops help substantially), followed by the Elementalist (D/D helps substantially) while the Guardian is faceroll easy. In large part this is due to large differences in the ability to take damage vs. the ability to avoid it. I think medium and low armor classes should have bonuses to their endurance regeneration, or their innate dodge/avoid, to compensate for their defensive weakness. Thief’s stealth mechanics also need a lot of work (see below), while several weapon sets for both classes are just weak (Pistol for thieves, Staff/scepter for Eles).

3.) Auto-attacks for lots of ranged weapons seem to have a slower refire than they are supposed to, because they aren’t chained and the recast is dependent on animations. The #1 skills for Pistols and Longbows for all classes that use them fire more slowly than they should, resulting in the autoattack being very subpar compared to other weapons (this is also likely why you see so many complaints about Pistols and Longbows). The Elementalist staff seems to have the same cast speed on all 4 elements, even though Air/Earth/Water are supposed to be a bit faster than Fire. There are probably other examples as well, this needs investigation.

4.) The thief’s stealth is clearly balanced for PvP (even though culling ruins it), and is consequently way too weak in PvE. It constantly fails to drop aggro, it doesn’t void incoming attacks, and it doesn’t last long enough to get you out of harm’s way. The Smoke Bomb downed skill is laughable in how it never does anything useful to the point that it feels like a glitch. Because thief’s are low health, weak armor, their Stealth ability really needs to work well as a defensive utility in PvE in order for them to not feel gimped, which isn’t currently the case.

5.) There should be a way to turn off skill queuing. It’s quite an annoyance that there isn’t. Once again, it disproportionately affects the Thief due to their unique Initiative-instead-of-cooldown mechanics.

That’s it for now, I’ll edit in more if more spring to mind. Thanks for reading!

Greetings, denizens. This is presented as a state-of-the-game analysis, focusing of course mostly on areas that I perceive as problem areas that are in most need of attention.

First, I want to say that I do not intend to convey a negative tone in this post. Anet has crafted a game that is impressive in scope and by and large quite enjoyable to play. However, it doesn’t do a lot of good to spend enormous time or energy elaborating on what’s great about the game (particularly because there’s so much that is) rather than providing some direction on what needs work.

I also want to point out that I’m mostly an open-world PvE’er, so this will be primarily reflective of that. I also focus more on Thieves in the class section, not because I main a Thief but because of all the classes I’ve played they have the most problems. Without further ado, here goes:

GENERAL

1.) While some degree of casual-friendliness is a good thing, the game is a bit too casual friendly in most respects. The effect of this is that it’s often quite easy to progress while playing solo and inconvenient to group with others, harming the potential community and camaraderie-building aspects of the game. I like the Orr zones in concept for this reason, but the execution leaves a little to be desired. Instead of just spawning crazy numbers of mobs that have annoying attacks, how about creating a few “hard mode” zones (including some sub-80 zones) that are intended to be tackled by groups of 3-5? I really like the idea that some zones are essentially open-world raids that force you to group up to tackle them, but it needs to have a more polished implementation.

2.) The economy is sort of whacky. For starters, while leveling it is far less expensive to entirely upgrade your armor through the TP than it is to repair (or upgrade through vendors) most of the time, which is pretty nonsensical. This is in part due to the costliness of repairs, and in part due to the over-proliferation of crafted items. Both of these things need to be addressed in some way. I think there needs to be a meet-in-the-middle approach. Repairs need to be reduced in cost modestly, while the crafting system needs an overhaul. There should be a lot more variety in what you can craft at a given level, and most items should be tougher to get recipes for and require more extensive mats, but you should get more craft xp per item crafted. As it is, most items are too basic and are crafted repetitively for leveling and therefore the supply is overloaded for the demand, which results in them being far too cheap and crafting being less satisfying than it should be.

3.) I suspect this is something that will be solved over time anyway, but I kind of feel that, while the zones are beautiful, there isn’t quite enough variety to them. I want to see deserts, ice palaces, misty valleys, and lots more fantastical landscapes.

4.) While the level scaling is an awesome feature, by itself it doesn’t provide enough incentive to visit lower-leveled zones. What the game really needs is more diversified loot tables. You should be able to get unique, thematic drops from different places around the world. I would take this opportunity to complain about how the game ‘forces’ you to run Fractals over and over at the level cap, but the devs have stated their intent to fix this. I’m holding out hope for that because it’s a problem.

There are 3 very big problems with Thieves in PvE that are particularly pronounced at low-medium levels and combine to make them one of the hardest classes to get to higher level with. Primarily, it revolves around Stealth being balanced for PvP and consequently being dramatically underpowered as a solo survival tool for PvE given the Thief’s defensive weakness and lack of damage avoidance/mitigation tools. In order of importance, the specific issues are:

1. They go down easily, and the downed state is so atrocious that it has to be an unintentional oversight. Good luck ever getting a rally OR being able to escape anything with it. I’ve found this one to be consistently infuriating while being a thief.

2. Stealth has a number of bugs and efficacy issues from not lasting long enough to not properly dumping aggro to not stopping incoming attacks. Because thieves are extremely squishy and this is their main survival/damage mitigation tool, these issues seriously hurt them and make them feel underpowered in solo play/PvE.

3. MH Pistol is weaker than it should be in terms of both damage output and utility. Because it’s one of only 2 distance-friendly weapons, this does major harm to Thief versatility.

Now, having said all that, there are a couple of tricks in the thief’s arsenal that help alleviate their PvE problems substantially. One of those is Caltrops, which is far and away their best solo survival-oriented utility and one of the best on any class (very arguably overpowered). They are incredibly useful even if you aren’t specced for condition, and even better if you are.

The other is Signet of Malice. Hide in Shadows is fine if you are using D/D (a recommended set-up with a condition spec), but if you enjoy something more like S/P (recommended for power) , the heal from SoM is much better than HiS and will allow you to fight multiple mobs much more easily.

Ensign.2189:

Vital Shot has a 0.4 ratio and 4 second bleed on a ~0.88 second refire.
Bleeding Shot has a 0.4 ratio and a 6 second bleed on a ~0.96 second refire.

Rifles do ~15% more base damage than Pistols.

I think Vital Shot wants to fire around 10% faster – that is, a 0.80 second refire or so instead of a 0.88 – and that’s all. The power ratio and bleed duration are right where they should be.

A 10% boost in rate of fire, I believe, would not be enough to maintain more than 5 bleed stacks, which I believe is the primary issue afflicting both P/P and P/D. I think the refire for Vital Shot should be more like .65, which would allow it to maintain 7-8 stacks like other bleeding autoattacks. Sneak Attack helps a bit here, but I would argue that P/P should actually do slightly more damage than the Warrior Rifle (as opposed to equivalent damage), on account of the following:

1. Weaker/less defensive utility
2. Shorter range
3. Thieves are very squishy

And I believe pretty strongly that that was actually the original intent, and that the entire reason it’s as weak as it is is due to the Vital Shot animation bug.

Lokheit.7943:

The main problem with P/P is that at the end it’s BORING and lacks a lot of utility, mainly being 33333333333333333333333333333333333.

Yes, this is a side effect of Vital Shot being broken and Body Shot being overly situational. Those are the two things that need fixing.

ComeAndSee.1356:

P/P isn’t supposed to be better than your melee because you’re a melee class.

Stopped reading right here. Classes in this game are thematic, not gamist. There is no such thing as “melee class” or “ranged class”, thankfully, because that’s an incredibly stupid and overly-simplistic class design paradigm.

krixis.9538:

daecollo try going glass cannon and spam unload. i assure u its not lacking dmg.(as P/P is clearly designed for unload spamming).

its mostly #1 that is the issue when going P/P.

as for traits, since when is there any “original” builds in any mmo that has a tallent tre / trait system, we all use the most effective build for our playstyle mostly cos any other uncommon or unused builds are just rubbish.

now i do agree #1 #2 and #5 for pistol need to be sorted out.

1. = 6 ini cost but no stealth = lame, so make it 4 ini cost for its blind field when only using P/P so its not OP when using D/P S/P,
   make #1 scale better, make its direct dmg do twice as much at the same attack speed and have its bleed scale with power when P/P.
   now as for body shot when using P/D make bodyshot stack bleeds, and when P/P make body shot snare/slow.

due to unload spammy nature maybe a small dmg increase would be nice. and maybe reduce its ini cost to 4 perhaps.

headshot is perfect as its an interupt not a dps ability so its dmg is fine for what it lets u do.

You’re correct that it’s Vital Shot that is the problem and that P/P damage heavily depends on Unload spamming, but it is very obviously not designed that way intentionally and is basically an animation bug affecting Vital Shot’s rate of fire.

How it should be working:
Vital Shot provides steady/sustained moderate DPS w/ occasional boosts from sneak attack (which is tertiary for P/P given lack of stealth access)
Unload provides an Initiative dump for burst DPS and through consistent use (by ignoring other skills/utility) gives P/P a way of managing good sustained DPS (as opposed to mediocre).
Prognosis: Good DPS through Vital Shot + Unload spamming (regardless of build), moderate DPS through Vital Shot and using Initiative for other skills (more condition/utility oriented).

How it is working:
Vital Shot provides crap sustained DPS due to a short bleed duration and long recast
Unload therefore is single-handedly responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of the set’s potential DPS, so P/P is enormously over-dependent on optimizing power/crit and initiative refresh so you can stave off reliance on Vital Shot and do mediocre DPS through Unload only as opposed to garbage DPS through a combination of Vital Shot and Unload.
Prognosis: Mediocre DPS with power/crit build through constant Unload spamming and Vital Shot avoidance. Poor DPS otherwise.

Xenth.2408:

A couple weeks ago I decided to try p/p – sb combo in fotm when I get up there in level difficulty, to great success. After adjusting some gear and traits, I now d/d-p/p in wvw except when needed to aoe people on walls or from walls.

I’m quite happy with pistols.

The only way you can be totally happy with pistols is if you’re extremely un-analytical. They are not good.

Troponin.4081:

Good luck with that. The entire non-thief community is complaining that stealth is OP, which is funny, because it’s one of the few games that the thief class doesn’t have perma stealth. So why would they bother fixing another stealth ability right now? That would just make the rest of the community complain even more.

Because stealth bugs are plaguing this class in every which way. As an offensive PvP tool it’s way stronger than it should be (mostly due to rendering and also skill interactions), while as a Defensive PvE tool it’s way weaker than it should be (mostly due to short duration and failure to properly dump aggro).

It just needs a lot of repair work and debugging.

Oglaf.1074:

Because unforunately Rangers in GW2 are the lame Legolas-kind of Ranger, not the cool Survivalist/Frontierman-type of Ranger.

The only difference between the two concepts is related to historical periods. Tyria is still mostly pre-industrial and also magical, so thematically it’s likely that guns aren’t supposed to be so prevalent that every primitive rugged survivalist walks around with one.

ASP.8093:

The purpose of Smoke Bomb is to interrupt stomps. If you are stealthed while the finisher animation is playing, the stomp will have no effect.

If they want to make it more useful in PvE they really should change the downed-state sneak attack to be an immobilize or something (daze/stun would be a bit unfair).

Actually, they need to make the #1 cause bleed, and they just need fix almost everything about Stealth. It doesn’t properly drop aggro, it doesn’t stop incoming attacks, and 3 seconds is not enough time in PvE; it really should be about twice as long.

Let me sum up the problem for you:

Gamist Delusion:
Warrior = Melee Fighter
Ranger = Ranged Fighter

Reality:
Warrior = Industrial Military Fighter
Ranger = Nature Magic Fighter

While I’m sure that in real life some folks who call themselves Rangers would use rifles, you have to keep in mind that they’re a product of recent industry in Tyria and most Rangers are primal nomads strongly attuned to nature. In short, Rifles don’t really fit with the theme of the Ranger and fit perfectly with the theme of the Warrior.

It is as it should be, they just need to fix Long Range Shot.

muscarine.5136:

Like i said most of you are just waiting for that extra update that will go too far because of biased feedback, putting p/p way too far above what it needs to be, once it will be there you will maybe consider it and we will start to see another round of nerf thieves, only p/p this time.

It’s like the d/d eles all over again.
That’s how you create an actual fotm.

Right now p/p needs minor tweaks, no more. It’s actually a very balanced set, and if anything the game should be balanced around this kind of design instead of faceroll 123456 or facetank 123456.

Instead of this, we will just end up with another broken spec that goes way too far forcing the meta into more burst vs tank dynamic.

Precisely. Currently, 80% of the problem is the animation bug with Vital Shot. If it was fixed (increasing rate of fire by 30-40%) both P/P and P/D would feel much more balanced and usable. What’s going to likely happen though is that they’ll ignore that issue and either do nothing or make a bunch of unrelated “tweaks” based on player feedback that will end up breaking the set even more in one direction or the other.

It’s irritating to say the least.

Ugh, the people on this forum.

It is very demonstrably not good, it is weaker than both the Thief’s melee sets AND most other ranged sets. By weaker I mean lowish damage AND poorish utility. If you want to see an actual correctly working ranged set try a Rifle warrior.

No, it isn’t just you. It’s designed so poorly you might as well call it a glitch and laugh as it fails to do anything useful 95% of the time.

Deathwhispr.8210:

I have watched the recent videos of the so called “gunslinger” builds, and they seem very fun. But I cant seem to find a solid guide for the skill points, traits, gear. Could anyone help me with this

They can be somewhat fun, but are badly hindered by a host of problems such as an unintentionally slow autoattack, weak traits, and lack of stealth access. These things, especially the issue with Vital Shot, make the set underperform.

If you still want to do it, I can’t really help you with guides, but can give you the very basic advice – build for power, crit, and initiative extension and use Unload as much as possible.

I’m actually really tired of seeing people saying “it’s their mechanic”. Rangers have a lot more going on with their theme and their abilities besides just pets. You shouldn’t be forced to use them 100% of the time, period.

Rannulf.9417:

One of the problems with LB is that in order for rangers to do high damage the enemy have to be max distance, i get it Anet wanted the LB to be a long range dps weapon, make it so that the damage doesn’t scale with the distance, make it that whatever damage you do at 1200 we do it at melee range, the cast time is ok, make it a longer distance 1800 would be more awesome and an ideal weapon for WvW, right now the SB out performs the LB in every aspect, even the range is 1200 and unless if you spec the LB the max distance is gonna be 1200.

The problem though is that the staggered damage by range is not a bug, for good or ill it’s working as intended. The attack speed of Long Range Shot however, is not, and it needs to be fixed first and foremost.

Sera.9750:

I think the general consensus is hunters shot is relatively ok, barrage is fine as is ( love it…use it once its off Cd every time.. ), what we mostly agree on is the longbow auto attack needs some love still. For me personally the attack speed is a bit annoying but i think its designed like that on purpose.

It isn’t designed that way on purpose, I can promise you. It’s actually an animation bug that Anet seems oblivious about, if you compare the activation speeds to the actual recast speeds of various weapons you’ll see that it’s inconsistent, and the damage on many ranged #1 skills is very low. The only exception is rifles, and it’s easy to see why:

Rifle – .75 activation speed, .8 recast
Pistol – .50 activation speed, .8 recast
Longbow- .75 activation speed, 1.2 recast
Staff – .75-1 activation speed, 1.2 recast (this is why Fire is stronger than other elements for Elementalist Staff, the others are supposed to be faster but aren’t).

It’s obvious the skills’ damage specs were balanced around their activation speeds and not around their total recast speeds. In short, it is clearly a bug. Either the skills were designed improperly or there was an oversight with how animations interact with autoattacks. I think the latter is more likely, and it needs to be fixed more desperately than almost anything else in the game.