Guild Wars 2

I’m still clinging to the hope that Act 3 / 4 will provide non-random ways to get the rest of the Mad King gear. It just seems so wierd to give 1 guaranteed from a challenge and then throw the rest in a random generator.

The fact that the gear doesn’t have a unique appearence is a major bummer. Its what I assume is supposed to be the “penultimate” Halloween reward, and it doesn’t even look different than standard gear?

Guess only stuff you have to pay for is worth making a unique look for.

Would cause a lot of problems with the many attunement-based traits Elementalists have. Spam Air attune with trait for damage on air attune for a “free” damage boost (likewise with Fire and a free Burn), permanent Protection / Swiftness / Might / Regen from the trait that gives you a boon based on attunement, on-demand status healing any time you need it from Water attune swap, and so on.

Would pretty much require a massive rework of the Elementalist traits.

Might end up better in the end, but I don’t know if such a large change would be a good move this early in the game when they haven’t really even tried to fix Elementalist in its current state.

I think F2’s are fine. Most of them are unique. A few could use a bit more variety (how about a Spider with an actual attack and not a buff? Or a porcine with something other than Forage, even if they are all different items). But on the whole, I’m fine with F2’s as they are.

What I want is other skills to become more unique among different pets. Having 3/4 attacks identical between pets is pretty boring. Actual different attacks would be great but at least a bit of different “flavor” between shared attacks could be added if not different attacks. Instead of all Devourer basic attacks firing 2 projectiles with a chance of poison, maybe one could be changed to no poison but higher damage and one could do guaranteed poison but lower damage.

Some different stats between different subpets of the same type would be nice too. One cat could have higher Precision, one could have higher Might, ect.

Its entirely possible to do it on a lower level character even without a guild / guide. Just run your way to each objective avoiding enemies (you don’t have to avoid combat entirely as long as you keep away from projectile enemies, enemies won’t catch you as long as you don’t engage in combat even if they’re chasing you), and once you reach the entrance of the area wait for a higher level player or two to come by and follow behind them the whole way. If you have any support abilities, be nice and use those to at least help somewhat even though you won’t be able to damage enemies and should avoid actual combat. And obviously use a guide, you can’t really afford to be searching around at a level where enemies murder you.

I’m not saying it isn’t annoying, not at all. I would have absolutely preferred an event thats fully available to all players (the way that the Mad Realm is available to all players via level scaling ala PvP). I’m firmly of the belief that holiday events should be open to all. But, ya know, make the best of what you’re given.

Agreed, account-bound would be fantastic. I don’t want my Memories books to go to waste sitting in the bank if I find another back item I think fits more on my main character (which is very likely since my main is a Ranger and rangers and books… not much synergy there), I’d much rather transfer it over to my Mesmer for instance and actually use it.

Running the quest 5 times to get 5 copies of the book for each character in case I want to use it on that exact character is tedious (and given the timed nature of the event, not a great use of time either). Better if you could just pass it around amongst your characters as needed.

It would also be a particularly nice option for those people who have higher level mains and lower level alts, so that they can run the quest on the high level character (since the quest now runs through a somewhat mid-highish area) but give the item to a lower level character they’d rather use it on.

I don’t see the problem with waiting at the beginning. Its a way to let everyone get out of the cutscene and up to a “safe” area before the thing really starts going, and its not that long a wait.

Waiting for the puzzle to start again after you fail is a much longer wait.

Indeed, I had a ton of fun. Challenging, but still exciting and enjoyable (looks cool as well). Especially since I didn’t look at any guides so it took me a while to even figure it out.

I’m pretty sad its going to be a 1-time event, because I can totally see myself running it again on occassion. Guess I’ll have to get my fill before the event is over.

Beat it with one of my alts.

Asura
Elementalist
No boosts

Just beat it with my Asura, still wasn’t really seeing the problem with other characters, even the 1 Charr that was fairly regularly right in front of or behind me.

However, I did notice another problem with my Asura. The camera goes crazy and zooms in super-close at some points (also accompanied by crazy camera shake), which is something that didn’t really happen with my Charr. Probably because the Asura is shorter and when he goes onto certain platforms he’s hidden by the rocks or platforms behind, so the camera tries to zoom to compensate. This happened even when I was the only one on-screen, so I know its not a player issue.

I’d say it is a little harder with an Asura character, but I think its more a camera issue than an issue with other players. At least it was for me. Still managable though, since it happens for the most part in the same spots you can learn and compensate for it.

Charr
Ranger
No speed passives

Later on I intend to do it with my Asura.

Seems fine to me. Challenging yes, but I think for the most part its fair. The fact that you have to wait at the beginning even means that people with slower connections who might not get out of the cutscene quite as fast won’t be in much trouble.

There’s no reaction time to getting started. Just hold Up (or whatever button you use to move forward). So I don’t see how you can blame reaction speed for dying at the beginning. Maybe a horrible internet connection that lags the scene, which is a problem and maybe they should tone down the speed of the gunk right at the beginning for that reason, but overall the speed is fine.

As for not being able to see your character… meh. Don’t see the problem there either. Its possible enough to judge your jumps based on the screen position and not rely only on your character, even when I was in a cluster of other players I never really felt others messed me up, when I fell it was because I wasn’t jumping properly. Granted I was playing a Charr, but my Charr is quite small, I still had to deal with other bigger Charr and Norn oversizing me and it never really bothered me.

I suppose making it instanced and solo wouldn’t be a horrible thing to do, though. It would remove some of the frantic nature of the start of the climb (when you start hearing everyone else get pulled in its rather tense), but I think the core difficulty would still be present.

Electro.4173:

I maintain that a weapon swap with very high penalties (40-second cooldown on the actual weapon swap itself and a 20-second unreducable cooldown of every attunement except the active one) would be a good comprimise, giving an Elementalist an “oh crap” button in the case where your weapon of choice just plain doesn’t work without making it something you can use / abuse like a normal weapon swap.

You’d be gaining an extra 5 skills every 40 seconds (and in return losing access to your other 15 skills for 20 seconds due to forced attunement cooldown), thats hardly broken, and in fact would be a detriment to use in any normal situation. But in a situation where you’re using Dagger / Dagger and fighting an enemy that completely screws you in melee, it would be a good emergency function.

Quoting this because apparently people overlooked it and it solves the problem that everyone keeps bringing up about having “40 skills”.

With something like this you’d have access to 25 skills, assuming you blow all your skills before weapon swapping. The other 15 skills of the swapped weapon would all be unavailable for 20 seconds, which would be too long to really consider “access to 40 skills at once” IMO. A 5-skill increase isn’t bad, especially when you consider that in order to gain those 5 skills you’re locking yourself out of all switching for 20 seconds, so you’re losing a lot of versatility for a pretty decent period of time just to “gain” those 5 skills.

Its perfectly possible to rez someone on a trap, depending on where in the trap you go down. If you’re anywhere near any of the edges (which you should be, why would you walk through the middle?), another player can utilize the decent range on rezzing to stand outside the trap while still getting you up.

I maintain that a weapon swap with very high penalties (40-second cooldown on the actual weapon swap itself and a 20-second unreducable cooldown of every attunement except the active one) would be a good comprimise, giving an Elementalist an “oh crap” button in the case where your weapon of choice just plain doesn’t work without making it something you can use / abuse like a normal weapon swap.

You’d be gaining an extra 5 skills every 40 seconds (and in return losing access to your other 15 skills for 20 seconds due to forced attunement cooldown), thats hardly broken, and in fact would be a detriment to use in any normal situation. But in a situation where you’re using Dagger / Dagger and fighting an enemy that completely screws you in melee, it would be a good emergency function.

I’d be happy if they just left clones active as long as you’re in combat and then removed them all once combat ended, instead of linking clones to one specific enemy and having the clones pop when that enemy goes.

I hate facing multiple enemies, having a nice group of clones summoned, then the enemy you were targetting dies and all your clones are removed along with it, and you’re stuck still facing more enemies but now with no clones.

Link clones to the combat state (combat ends, clones die) and not a specific enemy where enemy dies = clones die and I’ll be much happier.

Cempa.3645:

I may have not been clear in my post, I maintain no operational link between ‘Shatter’ and Cripple or kiting, they are two different and unconnected mechanics that I employee.

Cripple:

Following on what Ribos said, I have realized that Crippling in PvE “seems to carry the side-effect of lessening agro.”

The actual mechanic I use is auti attack to grab the attention of the mob then spawn Berserk Phantasm which Cripples and whirls some distant away while I get closer for the bounce and then spawn my clone. At this point the Phantasm and I are furthest away and the mob will go for the clone which snares when killed.

I attribute the trait with transforming my solo PvE experience from horrendous to hero!

Shatter:

As soon as my Phantasm is up again I shatter especially if I have 3 Illusions up. If I have 2 or less I tend to just cast another Phantasm.

Hmm. I’m attempting to run the same general setup with clone spawn, the “cripple on clone death” trait and hoping enemies kill the clones and get crippled while I’m using GS, and it doesn’t work at all for me. Enemies either go after the Berserker (quickly killing it) or go after me. I’ve been having to use Decoy (stealth) quite a lot just to “force” enemies to go after my clones instead of just trying to go after me.

Maybe its all in the attack order, though. I usually start with #2, assuming the clone will be right there and the enemy should attack it immedietly since its the start of combat and the enemy shouldn’t have much aggro toward me yet, but it usually doesn’t work that way, it just keeps coming towards me and ignores the clone. Then I’ll throw an auto attack or two, then I’ll use Berserker (which usually draws the enemy’s attention for all of the 3 seconds it’ll still be alive, and sometimes the enemy just hits it and kills it before it even attacks). Perhaps your order would be more effective, I’ll have to give it a try.

Even if the strategy works perfectly I don’t really see how it would work against multiple enemies, though. Whenever I come up against multiple enemies (any more than 2) the enemies will quickly destroy every clone / phantasm on the field and leave me alone faster than I can bring clones back up.

Another couple Flame Grab-esque abilities could be nice, but I don’t agree with putting them in different attunements. There’s already plenty of reasons to attune-dance, we don’t need skills that blatantly force it.

Dual dagger is not only my favorite Elemantalist weapon set, but possibly my favorite weapon set in the whole game period. The flow is amazing, the mobility is awesome, and its just so strange for a mage to be rocking a close-range agile moveset that it makes me like it even more for the uniqueness.

I really wish I had an “emergency weapon swap” for those situations where you just can’t fight at melee range, though. Many bosses will just completely screw you up if you try to fight at close range, and in those situations you are really SOL unless you’re bringing some backup weapon conjures or something.

Male Asura say some pretty awesome things. Reading through the post so far, I think only human female has any that are quite as good, and I still prefer my Asura.

I really like that every race has different things to say, its a cool little detail.

Fire: “Fire” / “Turn up the heat” / “I have ignition”
Water: “Water” / “Cleansing will now begin” / “Turn the tide”
Air: “Air” / “Now they’ll feel my turbulance” (my favorite line by far, fits perfectly so that he says turbulance just as the electrical sound effect plays) / “Severe weather warning”
Earth: “Earth” / “Rocks and stones will break your bones” / “Geological forces at my command”

There’s a lot of animals already in-game (but not in pet form) that I’d like to see added as pets. Griffons are definately on that list, they look really nice in GW2, I especially like the fact that they have breeds based on birds.

Other pets I’d like to see include…

~ Worms (particularly ranged ones)
~ Caterpillars / Grubs (also ranged, need more ranged variety besides devourers and spiders)
~ Spikefish / Scorpionfish (especially the deep sea glowing variety, I love glow)
~ Bats
~ Raptors
~ Hermit Crabs
~ Thundershrimp
~ Skale (I’d prefer the finned kind to the stealth ones, but both would be cool too)

I’d rather have a Scepter than a Staff if a magic option gets added. Ranger already has two 2H ranged options, I want another 1H ranged attacking option (mainly because the axe aggroing yellows with auto-attack is REALLY annoying), especially since all of Ranger’s offhand weapons have at least 1 ranged attack.

A low-damage basic is a no-no from me (at least comparative to our other weapons, though you could say all of our weapons are lower damage due to the pet). A small AoE buff would be fine, perhaps have the attack a 3-attack chain with the 3rd shot causing a buff around the target hit ala Mesmer’s Scepter chain, but not at the cost of damage (for comparison look at something like the Guardian Hammer or Mace, they both have support but aren’t bad for damage). I’d do something besides Vigor though, Vigor is nice for allied players but useless for pets, so something that could support pets and players both would be preferred. Maybe Regeneration, since Nature Magic has a large healing focus.

Hunter’s Mark sounds really cool, so that as the second ability would work.

Not sure about the 3rd ability. Shouts and Traps seem better suited as utilities than weapon skills (very few classes have skills shared between utilities and weapon skills, only Mesmer really and thats a special case since its what the entire class is built around), though I suppose it would make them fairly unique. Stationary camo seems useless to me, all it would be in PvE is a tool to lose aggro and in PvP it’d be completely pointless (you can still hit an invisible enemy and if you can’t move you’re a sitting duck, invisible or no).

One animation causing a disappearence isn’t so bad. Having a shield equipped and sheathed causes back items to disappear as well, and thats a constant thing while walking around (unless you walk around with your weapon drawn all the time).

Planned enhancements for this patch but had to go back on them? I can understand that. Better to get working changes than a bunch of changes that are going to cause more problems than they’ll fix.

I do agree with some of the previous posters who said its odd that EVERY change had to be pushed back (considering that there are a lot of bugs that could simply be fixed with very little potential for problems), but I’m willing to give a benefit of the doubt. Maybe its the case where they were working on actual enhancements and changes, had problems with them and pushed them back, and didn’t even get to the bug fixing stage at all because of pushing back the actual changes. Maybe thats the way they generally do things, enhancements first then bug fixes with any time remaining once the enhancements are ready.

Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll be looking forward to the next patch with bated breath, then. Hope it doesn’t take too long.

It can start using condition damage when it gets unbugged and stops screwing ranged attackers.

Some actual armor-looking medium choices would be nice. No more of this cloth and leather longcoat stuff, I want a full-on leather armor (with few or no coat / dangling parts) with bone or metal inlays or maybe even some light chainmail.

I’ve never equated trenchcoats to armor of any sort, its more like clothing (which would fall under light armor) to me.

Maybe I’m the only one, but the Staff and Trident animations seem really strange and disappointing to me. The animations themselves don’t look “bad” or anything, its not like they’re jerky or stiff or poor quality, but why do the majority of staff attacks not even use the weapon for the attacks? I can think of only 2 Staff attacks between 3 different professions (Elementalist, Mesmer, Guardian) that actually have the staff used for the attack animation, Elementalist Air 2, and Guardian’s auto attack. Haven’t played a Necro, so can’t say about that one.

Every other Staff attack animation is just arm waving with the free hand while holding the staff uselessly in the other. Projectiles are launched from the hand, waving the hand creates AoE fields, everything. Why am I carrying around this staff if I’m attacking by waving my hand around and not actually using the weapon to fight? Just for show?

It doesn’t need to be every attack or anything. A bit of hand waving here and there would be fine, but I think the staff should at least be used as often as hand gestures.

Would also allow for a bit more general variety among the staff / trident animations, since right there doesn’t seem to be too much variety, a lot of the animations are shared between all professions which use a Staff or Trident. Necro could have wide horizontal swings (fitting of the scythe effect), Guardian could have animations in which the staff is swung while pointing downward for stuff like Glyph of Swiftness or the wall, Elementalist could have animations where the butt end of the staff is slammed into the ground for Earth specials (Eruption and Unsteady Ground) or raised into the air for Fire / Air fields, ect.

This is a much, much better solution than eliminating free transfers altogether, thereby inconveniencing all the people who want to switch servers for other reasons (like joining a certain guild, or in my case just jumping around looking for a server with more random conversation) just to stop people from WvW jumping.

The only problem I can see is that barring people who do switch servers for other reasons from WvW for 7 days would be kind of harsh. Maybe someone likes WvW, wants to switch servers to join a guild, and in the process they end up banned for a week from something they enjoy.

Agreed. I only have Copper and Iron on any of my characters thus far since I’m leveling 5 characters at once and none have reached high enough to go into areas with better stuff, but I can definately see it being a hassle once you get 4 different harvesting equips per type. Don’t even need to actually make custom icons for each (though it’d be nice), just apply a simple color filter over them.

True, it’d be better if it was fixed. But it IS a useful tip and one I never realized, so thanks for that Ravno.

Flails would be awesome. I love flails, and they’re criminally underrepped in video games. I could see them being used by Warriors (traditional), Engineers (mid-range and gadget filled), and Elementalists (second melee option with actual damage arcs instead of mostly single target).

Combat staff would be cool. Also one of my favorite weapons. I see it mainly going to the more agile professions like Thief, Ranger, possibly Necro and / or Mesmer (or maybe Elementalist to give them a 2H melee option).

I think a brass knuckle type weapon would be really nice, and could have some really interesting options between classes. Thieves could use them as “hidden claws”. Mesmers could use them as a ranged “illusion fist” type style where the Mesmer makes punching motions while illusion fists smack enemies at range. Guardians or Warriors could have a boxing type moveset. Perhaps Necro could get a “touch of death” style moveset with quick, pinpoint movements.

Another topic here on the suggestion forum got me thinking about grimoires as an offhand weapon (obviously for scholar types mostly) which could be targetted / AoE heavy.

As someone who’s played 5 different classes, I can usually spot the actions of the professions I play quite easily. Its obviously much easier to spot the different animations when you’re more intimately familiar with them, which is the case if you play the class. On the other hand, when its one of the other 3 classes I haven’t played (Warrior, Necro, Thief) I pretty much haven’t a clue which profession I’m witnessing in action or what attacks are being used, other than knowing staff Necro’s for the scythe staff effect (and I can always tell an axe Necro from that sound effect >.>).

Of course, in massive groups or situations where you’re focused on heavy dodging or something (as in a hectic boss battle) you’re going to notice it less, because your attentions are elsewhere, you’re focused on yourself and what you need to do and not “wow, that guy next to me just used his skill really well”.

I don’t really think further “recognizability” is nessicary on a whole. As long as you’re familiar with the profession it feels pretty recognizable as it is, and I really don’t see the need for all that recognizability anyway, why do you need to know what everyone else is doing unless you’re going to yell at them and tell them to stop sucking?

There are certain skill trees / weapon sets that could use a bit of work, though. Ranger bows seem awfully generic, especially compared to the “animal spirit” concept / visual effects of stuff like the Greatsword or Warhorn, what happened to that idea when it came to the ranged weapons or even the second half of the GS moveset?. I hear Necro’s don’t have very many unikittenfects to thier attacks in general. Engineer elixirs seem pretty low-key, thrown ones are barely noticable (need a larger bottle and a bigger splash) and self-used ones don’t even get a graphic at all, just a drinking animation with an invisible bottle.

Agree. Traits definately need more accurate descriptions. Some of them are quite good, others are woefully inadequate.

I can understand the dev post above about trying to reduce localization overhead and traits being frequently changed to the point where keeping up on specific values is hard, but it just needs to be done. It shouldn’t fall to the players to test everything to figure out stuff that could be clearly stated, especially since some of these things are extremely difficult to test without any of the internal data the devs have access to.

One of the ones that I really feel is particulary bad description-wise is the “Master’s Bond” trait in Ranger’s Beastmastery tree. “Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. When it is defeated or deactivated, the bond is reset.”

Uh, yah. How much increase? Which attributes? Is there a cap, and if so what is it? Does it apply to enemies you get the killing blow on, enemies your pet gets the killing blow on, or any enemy you hit at least once before it dies?

The worst part is not only that the description of the trait itself is so bad, but then the bonuses are not listed anywhere else in the game either. The pet stat screen doesn’t reflect the boost. A buff icon does appear if you target your pet, but all it says is “boosted stats”, it doesn’t tell you how much. I’ve seen people say its 6 stat points per stack (and its capped at 25 stacks, that much at least is clear), I’ve seen people say 8, I’ve seen people say it doesn’t work at all. I have no idea where those numbers are getting pulled from because nowhere in the game does it say anything, and I don’t know whats true.

Capes are a nightmare and a half to rig to character models in a game where there’s any sort of appearence customization, where you need to work with hundreds of potential models as opposed to just one or a couple. Ironing out even a portion of the potential clipping issues and getting them to look decent (and not just like plastic)would probably be a massive undertaking and not really worth it, which is why most games don’t have them despite the fact that everyone requests them constantly.

Grimoires would be cool, but it sounds like something that would be better suited as a new offhand weapon type than a purely cosmetic option. I can totally imagine my Elemantalist running around with a Scepter in one hand and a book in the other.

I’d love a weapon swap, even if it needed to have massive disadvantages attached to it (something like a 40-second cooldown on the weapon swap itself and a forced 20-second cooldown on every inactive attunement) to keep it balanced.

I just want to be able to swap out of dual daggers to scepter / staff when I come up against a boss that just cannot be fought at melee range. I don’t want it as a tool to use with any sort of frequency like normal professions’ swaps, I just want it in emergencies when melee just isn’t going to work, instead of having to run 50 feet away praying that combat stops just so I can grab a different weapon.

Brainload.3742:

My jungle spider’s F2 is so kitten slow, sometimes i don’t even bother unless it’s like way early in the fight, lol.

Spiders’ F2 skills are just buffs for their next auto attack(s). So I actually find those some of the fastest and most reliable ones, personally. Especially since they have no animation, so no waiting for lengthy breath or anything. They actually do seem to activate instantly (the buff itself at least), its just that you have to wait for the pet to actually throw out a normal attack after the fact.

Focksbot.6798:

I find Entangle incredibly useful – particularly against bosses who spawn lots of lesser enemies. You can pin down the minions and leave them to be slowly killed by an AOE, while concentrating mostly on the boss.

For some reason, I’m not allowed to buy Mistfire Wolf. It doesn’t come up with a price when I hover over.

I believe Mistfire Wolf is something you got from the Collector’s Edition of the game, and not acquireable by normal means. Wish they wouldn’t have put it into the list for those who didn’t buy that, its just taunting you sitting there (like how they put stuff like the Black Widow into the pet list even though you can’t get them normally).

Kita.7819:

I went into the game thinking i would use spirit weapons. Instead I use everything but. Their usefulness is lacking and require a large devotion to traits to be good. Unlike most skills, such as shouts or meditations, their traits are spread across different branches. Bane Signet seems to outclass hammer, bow is useless, I still have no idea what shield does and sword is the only decent one.

The main problem with spirit weapons i feel, is their wonky activations. I can use a spirit weapon and never activate it. At the same time, I can activate it instantly after I summon it. What they should do, is instead of disappearing once their CD is up, perform their activation skill-THEN disappear. Let players have the ability to activate it at any time, but I shouldn’t have to start a mental eggtimer to ensure I get the most out of the spirit.

It’d be even better if they’d add some kind of timer for them on the HUD, whether it be in the corner of the skill icon, or adding a “buff” icon (and hopefully adding an option to display time on buff icons like the option to display time on cooldowns), whatever. I’d like to see timers added for so many things in this game, though spirit weapons are definately one of the worst offenders because wasting ability activations sucks.

Bow is definately lackluster. Duration is too low, firing speed is too slow, and it would help a lot if the bow would actually wait to fire until you or an ally nearby actually has a condition, rather than just firing on a timer and wasting the shot a half a second before you get slammed with a major Poison effect and really want some curing. Heck, just implementing that last bit without changing anything else would probably be a huge boost.

I’m like you, I came into the class expecting to use Spirit Weapons. Its what made me roll this class over a Necromancer. But I’m determined to use the Spirit Weapons regardless, effectiveness be darned. I will kitten myself if need be but darnit they’re cool and I’m using them. Thankfully it doesn’t sound like they’re too bad.

This thread makes me think they should either….

A) Split the Ranger profession into a “Shaman” class and a “Beastmaster” class. The former could be the “I want to be good without my pet and just have my pet throw in a supplemental attack here and there” profession utilizing that whole “pet follows you and provides passive buffs but can’t deal normal damage or be killed” idea that keeps popping up and keeping most or all of the Ranger’s current abilities. They’d utilize animal spirits instead of actual animals, though they’d still acquire different animals in the same way that Ranger does with Juveniles, except they’d “commune with their spirit” or whatever rather than actually taming the creature. Spirit theme would fit well with the spirit utilities and the spirit visual attacks on stuff like the Greatsword and Warhorn. The latter would be a class with new weapon sets, new utilities (other than Shouts) ect. that would focus almost entirely on the pet, with the player mostly acting as supplemental damage and offering various boosts to the pet, a greater degree of control over the pet itself, ect. They’d be the ones using the actual tamed animals in combat.

B.) Start doing some major PvP / PvE seperation balancing for Ranger, because it seems like the stuff needed to make Ranger good in PvE is going to make Ranger broken in PvP, while balancing with PvP in mind will make the Ranger useless in PvE.

I do as above, carry one of every single usable weapon on my person and switch off between them periodically. Keeps it interesting that way. And considering that I’m planning on building my character based on full Beastmastery and probably a split of Survival and Nature Magic to supplement, I’ll probably continue to do so since I won’t really have any traits centered around any weapon in particular.

But my favorite weapons are Axe / Warhorn, Sword / Torch, and Greatsword (and as for specific 2 set configs, usually A/W and one of the two melee options, with S/T probably the highest).

Axe / Warhorn would probably be considered my main weapon period, since its the one that best supports my pet. Call of the Wild buffs my pet as well (wish it had a bit more range though, so I could stay closer to max Axe range and still catch the pet with the buff), and Winter’s Bite’s secondary function to let my pet apply weakness is very useful for helping my pet tank.

Sword / Torch has a nice flow to it, the two weapons work quite well together. I love throwing down a Fire field with Torch 5, then jumping out with Monarch’s Leap, hit them with Torch Throw while at range, and then jump back in, nabbing a Leap combo finisher and getting a Fire Aura. Using a Frost or Poison trap lets me do the combo again without waiting for the long cooldown on Torch 5. Though the final combo field hit doesn’t work too well against fast attacking / highly mobile enemies.

My liking Greatsword is probably largely style. I just love the visuals on the 2 and 3 skills, they’re amazingly fitting for Ranger. Makes me wish the other half of the Greatsword attacks were equally “Rangerish” (and the same can be said about the majority of the other Ranger weapon skills, seems like they had this great idea of animal-inspired attacks, got a few weapons like the Sword and Warhorn done, and then just gave up with the rest of them, which is a shame). The moveset itself isn’t terrible or anything, but nothing about it is amazingly fun or effective, just the visuals are so good.

I’ve never noticed any problem with getting my pet to use its F2. I click it once, and it’ll use it.

The only problem I’ve seen is that it doesn’t cancel actions already in progress at all (like most player abilities do), so you have to wait until your pet finishes what its already doing before the F2 will go off. That in combination with the cast animation makes some quite delayed, especially for pets that have long attack animations to begin with. I do think that should be changed, make it like normal player abilities where activating the ability will stop everything the pet is doing and start the ability right away. A bit of reduced casting / animation time for some abilities (namely the roar skills of the cats / moas and the drake breath skills) would be nice as well. Keep the animations, but its not really nessicary to have 2 seconds of “power charge inhaling”.

Earth seems great to me with Staff. Eruption is delicious (though I play strictly PvE, I can see how it’d be lackluster in PvP because its probably easy to dodge), auto-attack is solid, Shockwave is very nice. The only one that isn’t great is the cripple wall, and thats only because it hardly works on enemies stepping through it, only enemies that actually stand on it for a long time. If it worked right I think it’d be quite good.

Seems pretty decent in Scepter as well. Auto attack is again pretty nice with good DoT damage, rock shield is cool, magnetic shield is amazing.

Earth has one of the better Focus sets. Semi-AoE blind is nice and damage immunity is delightful.

When running Dagger / Dagger (which is what I usually run) I don’t find Earth very impressive at all, though. Well, namely mainhand Earth. Auto-attack seems very lackluster (bad range, almost no up-front damage which is much more of a problem at close range where you don’t have the luxury of waiting around for DoT’s to tick), the spike circle is just kind of there, and Magnetic Grasp is slow and overall meh compared to RtL or Flame Dash. I mostly find myself attuning to Earth, unleashing Earthquake / Churning Earth ASAP (often after Ring of Fire) and getting out of Earth immedietly.

The thing Earth really seems to have going for it is combo finishers. Other than utility skills, I believe Earth attunement is the only source of finishers in the class.

I’ve not noticed this. But I found myself unable to hit mines using Dagger Water’s auto attack in Brisban Wildlands yesterday (Fire worked fine though, thankfully), so I can see how it could be a real problem and I just haven’t run into it.

As mentioned, duration does increase damage as well, because damage is actually constant for each “tick” and just added up in the tooltip, rather than the move actually doing a set amount of damage period.

Very thankful that GW2 does condition duration right, because I’ve played other games (Darkspore comes to mind) where it literally was just the same total damage over a longer duration making it WORSE to lenghthen it, at least for DoT’s (though it was still nice for disables and the like).

Agree that the attunement cooldown bit of Arcana is not that great. Like you said, its more about the cooldowns for your good attacks in the individual attunements than the actual attunement switching itself, and most of the time the default attunement recharge is perfectly fine for that.

Disagree that it makes Arcana less worthwhile of a tree to spec in regardless, though. Sure, the attunement cooldown is probably a partially (or completely) wasted stat, but the boon duration is nice. And Arcana has some brilliant traits (both minor and major), traits that apply to a wide variety of situations, which is especially big for Elementalist since the way the traits are set up into attunement groups means that there tend to be a lot of situational traits that will only be active some of the time.

EDIT: Also, someone brought up Arcana not being good for Dagger / Dagger, which I also disagree with. But, I’m glad to see someone else annoyed by Dagger’s “trait” of 15% speed increase. With all the swiftness Elementalist already has, all the lunging attacks Dagger / Dagger already has… I just hate that trait. What a let down when I was reading through the trait trees for the first time, saw the “Staff increased AoE trait” and then was like “Wow, nice, wonder what daggers get” only to see… a speed increase. Whoop de do. 5% more speed than just putting 5 points into Air, thanks a lot. I bet half the reason its broken is because even the devs realized it was useless and so they just don’t care :p

Eh, completely new species of animals would definately be nice and are probably a given. But even of the animals already in the game, there are quite a few I’d be glad to see added. Wouldn’t even need to be expansions, could just be added in standard periodic updates to already-existing areas. Off the top of my head, I would really like to see the following added…

~ Worm (particularly of the ranged variety, EG Plains Worms, though there could be one or two of each type)
~ Caterpillar (could also be ranged, need more ranged options besides spiders and devourers)
~ Raptor
~ Hermit Crab
~ Thunder Shrimp
~ Scorpion Fish (especially the glowing deep sea variety)
~ Griffon
~ Bat (could be a neat Halloween addition!)
~ Basilisk

I guess they should have named the class “Huntsman” or “Outdoorsman” or something instead of Ranger. Apparently Ranger makes people think its a class for all ranged weapons and only ranged weapons.

Many findable weapons do a lot more damage than basic attacks from any class. Its to make them at least somewhat worth picking up since they’re breakable and such.

Wayfinder.8452:

I don’t like this at all. It will break what little immersion there is in the game for me.

Some sort of minor outfits might be ok, lets say collars, but that’s as far as I’d go.
I like my Ranger, I like Pokemon, but pikachi and magikarp have no place in my game. :P

But hey, if people rly want this why not, it might be fun as well.

What does Pokemon have to do with any of these suggestions? You can’t dye or customize pokemon either, and the only dressup is during the lame musicals. Unless you’re just suggesting that people would dye their leopard yellow and call it Pikachu.

I wouldn’t like pet dying / customization. Dying in particular would just be out of place, what are you going to do, throw your spider into a vat of dye? Thats just wierd, pets aren’t clothes. And stuff like scars or different markings wouldn’t work because you don’t create your pet, you tame it in the wild. Sure, in some way it would be nice to have a pet thats a little different from everyone elses, but it just doesn’t make sense with the way the pets are set up.

Clothing would be the only thing they could really add and have it make sense. Though preferably stuff like collars or armor and not top hats (though I guess they could have both). Or maybe warpaints that would let you paint certain patterns onto your pets and that could be dyed (think the paints on the warhounds in Dragon Age), but nothing too silly or over-the-top like changing the pets natural colors.

I would absolutely hate it if they implemented the changes you suggest.

It would make your pet feel less like an actual companion and more like a little sprite that follows you around and occassionally throws you a buff. They wouldn’t actually be participating in battle or anything, no tanking hits, no normal attacking, they’d basically just be an extra couple of utility slots with a special appearence.

It wouldn’t make much sense to have an animal following you around but never have it get attacked nor ever actually engage in combat. They’re flesh and blood creatures, how would they be immune to everything? The only things that are immune to damage are Guardian Spirit Weapons, and they’re just spirit energy so that makes sense. And why would your companion just stand around and watch you get stabbed while doing nothing?

And from an overall profession design / gameplay perspective, it would require a full rework of the Ranger profession since damage output and tanking ability is split between the Ranger himself and his pet right now, and cutting that out would completely mess it up (a lot more than its already out of whack).

I’m really not fond of the medium armor in general in this game. Not nessicarily the longcoat issue (I don’t really have a problem with that) but the fact that to me medium armor should be… well, actual armor. Not cloth with a bit of leather, but stuff like light chainmail. Full on leather, perhaps with metal or bone plate.

I suppose they went this route because other than Engineer, the medium armor classes in this game would traditionally wear lighter stuff (Thief especially). But it still doesn’t make for much variety. Its more like clothing > light armor > heavy armor to me.