Guild Wars 2

Your issue is your playing to gain gold not have fun which is why your finding the reduced rewards to be “ruining” things for you. I hate to sounds like a broken record but as other people have said, just play the game. Enjoy it. The money will roll in.

Here are some simple ways to make some coin and enjoy your self:

• Do you like pvp? Play it. You get 30s on a win and 15 on a loss.
• Do you like events. Play some. You’ll get loot, karma and a bit coin. Loot can be salvaged or sold, karma can be converted to salvage.
• Do you like dungeons or fractals? Run those you still get rewards they still do add up.
• Do you like wandering aimlessly? If so do so and pick up nodes along the way.
• Do you like standing around in lions arch all day? fine do it you can even make money at that even though I personally wont give anything to beggars but there are people who do all the time.
• Do you like to play korean farmville mmorpg? then farm some god awful mob for its drops(EG sparks for charged cores and loadstones) and sell them.

Aironfaar.6218:

If you use Action Camera mode and lock on a target, whether by right-clicking, tab targeting or even click-targeting before enabling Action Camera, creature-targeted skills should actually be directed at the target you locked on, ignoring the cross-hair. That’s what locking onto a target means, after all.

I think you misunderstand the point of action camera. The whole goal of it is your aiming with crosshair. Your skills are supposed to go the crosshair. Lock onto target in action camera is more show me this persons stats and this is my prefered target.

The only other way I can describe it is think of a fps. A lot of them you can lock onto a target, but your bullets don’t home in on a locked target you still have to actively aim for it. That’s the intended functionality here.

What your looking for, is closer to the base aiming in the game using free camera while holding right click and having snap ground target at current target enabled.

Aironfaar.6218:

What really discouraged me was the realization that, if an enemy gets between the cross-hair and my targeted enemy, the attack would not only ignore my selected target, but target the enemy now closer to the cross-hair (or sometimes miss both of them, depending on the state of the Autotargeting settings).

This only happens when autotargeting is enabled. I do exactly what your trying to do with druid all the time, I target an opponent behind a stack of opponents and beam away hitting all of them. This only works on skills that pierce or cleave.

Aironfaar.6218:

Since right-clicking while neither allies nor enemies are in the cross-hair is the only way to clear the selection during Action Camera play, this may require the implementation of a hotkey for clearing the currently selected target other than ESC, otherwise this might become another deal-breaker especially in scenarios where free space is hard to target.

We have this its mislabeled as lock auto target. The intention of the button is it holds the current target for as long as you press what ever its keybound to. Taping this drops the target completely.

Aironfaar.6218:

The way it is right now, Action Camera is a nice gimmick, but it lacks the necessary precision to be considered an actual alternative to the classic control schemes

I completely disagree. Action camera works almost perfectly fine. Either auto targeting is getting in the way, or you lack precision to be able to follow a target or want your skills to home in on targets (which none of the camera modes do).

My only complaint with action camera is that right click + left click makes you run forward and does neither intended action (attack or select target).

Here is what I’ve been running in wvw . Had a lot of success with this. It has a lot of damage despite having low offensive stats. Very tanky, lots of might and decent heals.

Some things that I change up / swap are

When running solo I prefer to run omnomberry ghosts and bountiful sharpening stones. The life steal on crit adds to the sustain.

Dragonfish candies when I am in zergs and need to stay alive/do more damage.

Currently having this issue. Oddly its only the 64 it. Tried the 32bit and it worked.

Have to agree with OP. The only time I’ve found people is when there is 30minutes on a map that people have decided to wait on to end. Taxi’s are a tool to find other people but half the time its a failing/unstarted map.

The map is really unaccessible being on the time slot and duration it is. Additionally I’ve found that they all seem to run at the same time. Which means yes there is 4 maps active, but only one of them actually has people in it. It would be nice if there was new map with players being allocated to it every 15 or 30 minutes. So that people could join in without having to wait an hours to find a decent map.

I’ve spent more time looking for group than I actually have doing the event and I’ve yet to complete it.

I do love the new action camera, but there is one glaring issue that has been bugging me to no end.

Left click obviously attacks what ever target with your 1 skill so long as its held down. Right click became an option to target an opponent which is great and means I can reliably target with the dot.

However, Left + Right Click is run forward. If you happen to be trying to target an opponent while using auto attack on another, your character stops what it is doing and walks forward. Neither selecting the target or continuing the attack. The moment you let go of the right click your character just stands there unresponsive.

I don’t know how many time after targeting an opponent in pvp, I’ve been standing around doing nothing because of the above said combo, when I actually mean to be attacking the new target. This happens very often when fighting targets that have lots of stealth or during a fast paced fight.

Please give us an option to disable the right+left click option so that the attack can functions on the new target without being interrupted by walking or have the game recognize and resume attacking the new target after letting right click go.

There is another option, just play the game to enjoy it.

You’ll eventually get ascended armor. I have an entire medium set thats all came from drops/boxes either from PvP, wvw or fractals. You don’t have to craft to get the gear. You just have to play the game and your going to do that more if your actually enjoying your self. Please stop grinding and just do things with friends, guildmates what ever. You’ll get there eventually.

This who attitude of I can’t do content because I don’t have ascended armor is confounding.The difference between exotic and ascended is only 12.5% and the largest portion of it is rings and the weapon. The armor its self is only worth 1.8% increase in stats. The accessories minus the back piece are all easily obtainable. Weapons are much cheaper to make. Exotic gear is decent for armor.

No one will notice your lacking 1.8% stats in raids. I can tell you that now. As for fractals you can get 60 ar without a single piece of armor only use +5 infusions. Which is enough to do up to scale 50. Which along the way to level 50 rewards level, you’ll probably get some ascended gear as rewards.

The reason I want to see ascended gear become tradable is not because I’m having trouble getting it, but because I keep getting ascended gear drop for me that I have no interest in using because the stats aren’t what I want. Gear that other people want and would be willing to pay for, but to me it’s only worth what I can sell it to an NPC for.

I am sick of the feeling I get when I get a rare drop that I know a guildie really wants but is completely worthless to me.

You do know you can convert stats on ascended gear right? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Anthology_of_Heroes

Eh I kinda get where your coming from and see the same attitude from some other guild mates.

The cost of crafting full ascended gear and begin higher level content (fractals) is very high. For the most part tho, you can easily get around with just weapon smithing and getting accessories. You really don’t need ascended armor until you begin 50+ scales(with +5s and the new attuned rings you can get 60 ar which is enough to do 50).

The issue here is how you play the game though. I would consider my self a hardcore player, but I never did armor smithing/leather smith or tailor. I have one full set of ascended gear and a pile of weapons (I only made two). The game does dish out a lot ascended chests you just have to play it. If you want to get ascended armor and not craft go play pvp, wvw or do mid level fractals(really what ever you enjoy). Your bound to get something eventually (the other day I got a zojas weapon chest, a box for gloves and a armor box in one day).

I had guild mates that told me I was nuts when I told them I would get the gear that I have the way I planted to. They got theirs earlier via crafting but complained about all the money they grinded and spent on their armor. Ive spent maybe 4g tops per piece to switch stats on gear. I got all my stuff from playing the game to enjoy my self and here I am. If a lot more people did this and had some patients the prices would be a lot lower. The game is really only a gold sink if you allow it to be by being impatient and deciding you want or need something now.

IMHO its a matter of perception and you allow your self to be capitalized on your perception.

Bumb. I contacted support 7 days ago now. Still have yet to get a slot. I’ve tried contacting them again and was told sometime this week. Now its friday…

Mcrocha.3891:

Yes. 3s passive blind spam is not healthy for pvp.

Agreed neither is nerfing by 400%. Thats no healthy for anything. Can you tell me of a single trait that if nerfed by 400% would still be an attractive choice? They might as well have just deleted the grandmaster out of the line.

Daharahj.1325:

Not only do rangers get access to frustrating amounts of daze but now they’re also rewarded for it with a free Entangle on a 10 second cooldown.

This is not okay, Daze is an unfun mechanic and it shouldn’t be rewarded in such a noninteractive way, either reduce the amount of daze they get or get rid of the snare component from Ancient Seeds.

Holy crap people. Are you just going to go on till there is nothing left? We just got lingering light nerfed. After pets and base heals nerfed. Also a stat set that was made for druid sustain also deleted.

Now you want ANOTHER grandmaster in druid to do nothing. Not even a suggestion on what to change or add in exchange for removing the immobilize. Just straight asking for another delete please.

On dazes. We have… 3(GS 5, staf swap, glyph of equality) things that daze in our entire kit not including technobable or moa. I agree with dazes are unfun. However they are more forgiving then stuns(you can at least move and dodge).

I swear to god if anet kneejerks this ima kneejerk and refund my HoT.

Offer advice on how to deal with things when people complain. Leave people that are throwing tantrums alone. Sadly I feel its beyond us to actually get the community to stop think, try new things and reason like adults with each other. Which is ultimately what these forums need.

Anet also continues to reinforce the crying behavior by responding to it via posts, balance or game changes. Anet really need to put down the foot in some places and say learn to deal with it.

umm you need to attack them in some form while they are dazed… So yea you need to either use natural convergence or swap out of CA and attack it for seeds to take root.

Saiyan.1704:

Timiok.1048:

Why have we been doing the same exact thing for like 2 years? Heck, why do we come here to complain to other people, and not the devs themselves? We could have actual meaningful threads if we could directly contact them about the ‘balance’ issues.

I mean, this part of the forums is just toxic and everywhere is mild.

To be honest, the only thing that can be toxic is two players offering two different experiences based on their own point of view that may or may not be 100% accurate. These heated debates could originate from

• #1 The competitive realm they compete on.
  SoloQ meta is different than Team ESL play

• #2 Learn 2 Play elements from the player himself.
  including engagement strategies on the map

• #3 The build a particular person plays
  using a non-meta build for example

• #4 A one sided aspect that’s seen on one build from one class, while the other professions have 0 issues

The first three, in order, are the most common. It’s why they’re mentioned first.

A perfect example is a Thief calling burn guard OP when other classes typically have 0 issues with it. The thief is right in that this particular build is OP. But the build itself is not OP compared to other classes. These other classes think it’s a l2p issue as the thief shouldn’t should have played the map better from the get-go.

The majority of the QQ thread originates from solo players on unsyncronized teams. Considering the vast majority of players are new, #2 and #3 suddenly stick out like a sore thumb.

+1 this is all so true. A lot of the toxicity tho starts from the OP’s post. Has a lot to do with the mentality here. I see X is OP or Nerf Y 50x more than How do you deal with Z. Thats the problem from there it just end up into one of your 4 categories you mentioned.

A lot of people that post on here also have issues with tone when writing and everything comes across as condescending and belittling instead of constructive advice.

oshilator.4681:

Could we have some sort (ANY sort) of explanation as to why ranger/druid has been hammered seemingly non-stop since HoT launched?

Are you going to provide us with any hope at any point that we might someday be effective?

Or are Ancient Seeds & Grace of The Land next on the chopping block?

Because people lost in a 1v1 and complained on the forums. Rather than learning how to deal with the class or try and find counterplay. Anet also continues to support the complaints with kneejerk changes.

I swear anet should just delete every single Nerf X or Y is OP thread. The community would get a lot better if we saw threads like: im struggling vs druids with lingering light what can I do about it? People could actually learn and improve at the game and a lot of people like helping and sharing info. If by the end of the thread its a gree there doesn’t seem to be any kind of counterplay then obviously what ever mechanic needs work.

Instead we have this constant kneejerk balance where everything gets kitten on until anet decides its done adjusting for 3months.

Ive always hated the pet but loved the runes stats. Its a more reliable version of scholar. Why can’t they reintroduce it without the pet.

You can totally tell which anet employee did this change. Roy need to calm his kittens and stop smashing things on ranger; adjust them the small amounts and iterate. At the knee jerk rate were going I expect us to not even have healing at the end of the month.

@op just a few things looking over your build…
Remeber this is just my opinion.

Jungle stalker is cool, but you would get 20 stacks of might from bristleback using SToP. You could then WHaO for 25 stacks toward the end of the skill duration. Additionally it is a really tanky pet and it would live though some condi pressure that you pass onto via signet of renewal.

Glyph of equality isnt that great without MoC(unless your using it as a stunbreak). Your better off taking tides to be more disruptive as its on a shorter cooldown.

Warhorn is neat. Honestly I think you get more mileage out of torch or dagger. You should be stacking to 25stack of might twice with bristle/smokescale anyways. Swiftness is abundant with resounding timbers. I guess it does make up for the loss of furry from not having wilderness survival.

Then again I am all partial to Mistism’s marauder staff/LB build. I see the two builds as a difference of using NM + glyph of equality and signet of renewal vs WS, lightning reflex and QZ. Its the same principle, high might, furry, and regen uptime while having decent damage. I’d be willing to bet your build would be much better with new minstrels gear than the other.

Father of Devils.6135:

What I think would help is something like Retaliation application through trait when in CA. The reason I say ‘like’ is because retaliation only helps if you’re getting hit and in PvE this might not work the best. So perhaps a small bit of AoE damage when healing allies already at max health. Even adding a stack of Cripple to foes around your heal targets would be awesome. This feels like it would pair nicely with the Grace of the Land GrandMaster trait and Glyph of Unity by replacing the Condition damage modifier on the trait.

Perhaps even a trait that adds Might or another boon once you leave CA to encourage people to use Druid aside from healing.

Here is a few things idk if you know of yet:

• CA has access to retaliation. Seed Of Life is a light field which you can blast for retaliation with clarion bond or lunar impact or ancestral grace.
• Ranger recently got tones of might application in its kit from WHaO changes as you can easily give your self the might you build up on pets from strength of the pack, or the might to pet on crit trait in beastmastery or sword auto attack.
• to add to the above Bristleback and Smokescale are both excellent at stacking might on you when you use strength of the pack.
• CA has access to cripple, SLOW! and immobilize via natural convergence. Which is awesome for breaker bars.

All the things your asking for here are already in the kit

I love it! mind you I used to use combat mode mod. I like that right click gives us a way to actively target. Even though it took a while to get used to not using it as dodge. Targeting is way better than what it was. I really do love some of the other feature that came with action camera too! Such as being able to swap targets mid channel and the ground target as far as possible features.

I never have or will play the base aiming mode. After playing raiderz, neverwinter and thousands of hours of skyrim I just can’t do tab targeting it feels so.. foreign.

I only have two issues with the action camera:

1. if you hit both left and right click at any point your character stops what its doing and runs forward(and if you let go it does not resume auto pressing 1). I’d prefer to be able to disable that.
2. mouse wheel up and down. I used to bind keys like weapon swap and lock auto taget(drop target) to these. Most of the time after you’ve found a comfortable zoom level you do not want to change it. I’d prefer to have the option to bind to them.

@OP you may want to increase your turn speed if your struggling to keep on targets.

if blood sigils work so does life steal on crit food. Onomobery ghosts are a good idea then.

neville.3420:

Eval.2371:

I looked into zealots my self, even had all the parts. The things I wanted out of the set was the power, the precision and healing power. However there is a few issues with it…. your basically glass which is not good for the class that needs to be alive for the others.

I’m running zealots armor + zerker trinkets myself and I really love it. There’s a lot of misinformation about us being glass not but personally I found I have a tremendous amount of sustain from the healing power.

Resounding Timbre + WHaO is a 16s heal that does 11s of 200/tick regen PLUS 7000~ healing + 1000~ healing from the “heal allies on yourself and your pet” trait.

This is in addition to all the other passive healing capabilites of the druid.

The way I see it is that healing power itself is a defensive trait inline with toughness or vitality.

This is my build and I’m absolutely loving it so far. Zealots worth every penny:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQJAWRnUqAFsiVsCGsActglFBDOqeV7qLXuAwg7JKcCWdjIN-TRCEABJ8AAI4IAslSQDOEAMp8rT1fob/h20FAwFAAA-e

Totally agree with you that healing power does work as a defensive stat. In some instances you’ll have to take hits, and when you do your build will take roughly 25% more damage because of the differences in toughness but both builds will have very similar damage.

Glad we both like what we have. Both builds are probably equally expensive seeing as your money is in zealots parts and mine are in str runes.

Lastly, you may want to consider hoelbrak, strength or monk runes over altruism unless your playing a remorseless based build.

I looked into zealots my self, even had all the parts. The things I wanted out of the set was the power, the precision and healing power. However there is a few issues with it. Yea its pricey which was my first issue and then there is no zealots accessories of any kind. To add to that, your basically glass which is not good for the class that needs to be alive for the others.

After tinkering around with the numbers I ended up settling on a clerics / captains mix with strength runes seeing as we now have a lot of might upkeep.

Tofu.1978:

Is lingering light triggered on multiple allies if a heal hits multiple targets at the same time (like ancient seeds hits multiple enemies if you use an aoe damage)? Or does it only hit trigger on one ally per 3 second icd?

One per ally, however the ally can be a pet. better explained above

I honestly don’t think its that broken unless its stacked. The issue with lingering light is not the ICD or the amount healed its the length of the blind and the potential of being combined with the raven and smoke scale pets. The smart way to go about nerfing this is changing the duration on these skills so that they are still disruptive but do not make the opponent useless.

Something like:

Raven blind 5sec -> 3 sec
Lingering light blind 4sec -> 2sec

Would prevent the abuse that is frustrating some people.

Nier.8741:

Alekt.5803:

It’s just not fun to fight undying Druids that a 8 year old child could play.

Also, nothing is going to change even if they remove minstrel. They can just go back to clerics and they will be the same. Try again.

Hint: The problem is the class, not the amulet.

Because let’s face it, the same 8 year old can play it logic can apply to ANY ranger build because it’s just an easy class in PvP no matter what.

Yea right because ranger has always been super OP for the last 3 years and you see 3-5 them on every pro team. Ranger does have a low skill floor, and that doesnt make it op. if that was the case people would be crying about warrior too.

The problem is people refuse to accept they were outplayed and don’t know counter play(see condi, posion, cc, burst) and cry for kittens.

As some one that has been playing a lot of druid, the things that counter us are:

Burst immediately after leaving CA.
Heavy CC
Condi pressure when CA is not up.
Mesmer and thief burst.
Being split from your group (druid excels with a team mate)

amadeus.5081:

Would think they get paid enough to make it happen.

Lol. Op and you need to get off your entitled poneys. Anet specifically said they would make all sets they designed as pieces available for free in the game. They also said they would only be making outfits for blc because it is the only way to deliver skins that are high quality, without clipping issues and frequently.

Tao.5096:

Eval.2371:

Personally I am still waiting on “vetran” character slot anet sold us with xpack to make a dragonhunter. More than likely going to replace ranger/druid with it or with reverant.

Contact support then.

What’s the problem?

already did so.

mistsim.2748:

Eval.2371:

mistsim.2748:

are you talking about pve or pvp? druids are quite strong in pvp. there are a few builds that work, many that don’t.

the one adjustment that I necessary for the druid is increasing AF gain rate for condi weapons, like for the axe/dagger + sword/torch builds. druid remains more or less unappealing for condi builds because of that reason.

Both and WvW. Ranger and druid really dont bring much to the table. I could get everything I get out of playing ranger(and more) by bringing a guardian or revenant instead. That is my issue, I feel our class is miles behind the others.

I do agree with you that druids are strong in organized play(so are many of the other classes). I primarily play solo when I pvp so its much harder to help a team. Having only unranked que atm does not help either.

I’m also a solo’er. it’s all about finding the build that fits your playstyle. if youre unable to find one right away, that doesn’t necessarily mean the prof lags behind others. it just means you haven’t explored all the options. and perhaps other specs are easier to play effectively than the druid. which doesn’t mean the druid cant be played effectively. for example, any newb DH can put down all of his traps on point and blow up 2-3 scrubs that walk on top of them without any stab. but that same DH will basically burn out 10 seconds into the fight, and get blown up by any half-decent power staff or LB druid/ranger from range.

ive been playing only conquest since Friday and I cant really complain about any crazy imbalances, other than the thief and ele being in a really rough shape, which isn’t too relevant to me.

While I totally agree with you that we have not explored all options yet ranger is still subpar no matter what way you want to spin it. Base ranger really has nothing unique to bring to the table. Druid is nothing to write home about either in my opinion(see no scaling). Druid scaling with the healing stat is laughable at best. Same goes for damage in both condi and power stats. It is also why celestial is so good atm. The fact that are so many builds that do not work, shows that there is a glaring problem and it is primarily with the base class.

But that wasn’t soley the point I was trying to get across… let me simplify:

We have already seen nerfs on launch and then the pet nerfs following but not a single buff in any of the other areas ranger or druid struggles in. Anet should be shifting power on this weaker class rather than solely removing it. Every time they go about this slippery nerf slope with no compensation we very quickly fall out of meta(be it pvp, pve, wvw).

mistsim.2748:

are you talking about pve or pvp? druids are quite strong in pvp. there are a few builds that work, many that don’t.

the one adjustment that I necessary for the druid is increasing AF gain rate for condi weapons, like for the axe/dagger + sword/torch builds. druid remains more or less unappealing for condi builds because of that reason.

Both and WvW. Ranger and druid really dont bring much to the table. I could get everything I get out of playing ranger(and more) by bringing a guardian or revenant instead. That is my issue, I feel our class is miles behind the others.

I do agree with you that druids are strong in organized play(so are many of the other classes). I primarily play solo when I pvp so its much harder to help a team. Having only unranked que atm does not help either.

Personally I am still waiting on “vetran” character slot anet sold us with xpack to make a dragonhunter. More than likely going to replace ranger/druid with it or with reverant.

Ragnar.3916:

haha

yes that’s a nerf we need.
come one roy where are you.

swing your hammer.

Jokes on all the people still asking for nerfs. The pet has already been through the guillotine as of yesterday, 50% damage nerf, and they took away our control on smoke field.

You people either dont read patch notes or are “I dont play this so nerf it!” kids.

Something that has always confounded me with ranger is how anet does its adjustments to the class; most of them just straight nerfs. We are seeing this pattern repeat with druid. I completely understand nerfing strong areas but why are we not buffing weak areas in exchange when it comes to ranger and druid? Why not shift power in the overall kit instead of just taking power away purely. I can’t help but feel jealous as Elementalist gets this kind of treatment all the time yet we never see it on ranger, and have yet to with druid. I’ve always felt that this is rangers biggest balance issue… not the kit its self, but how anet handles adjusting the ranger kit.

For example smoke scale got damage reduction. I totally agree that smokescale had to much damage. A lot of people were using this pet because of the lack of damage on ranger. They were using it to bridge the gap. In exchange for the nerf why not buff some of rangers/druids damage coefficients on a few skills by 0.2 or even 0.1 and address some of the problem.

Ranger and Druid both feel un-impactful and disjointed compared to the other classes and elite specs. This is a result of how the class has been handled. Now the class as a whole needs a lot of work again to be at par with others.

So please anet next time you go to make adjustments on ranger please for every negative add a positive in somewhere else to the class. Ranger is also in some dire need of some free positives in various areas to make the class competitive with others.

To others reading this, what short comings do you feel the class has and what adjustments(that are reasonable) would like to see happen for ranger and druid?

Narrrz.7532:

well over the week since posting this i’ve fairly heavily tested the ‘lock autotarget’ function as a drop target button, and it’s not reliable. at all. approx 33% of the time it will work as desired, another 33% it takes 3-5 key presses to get it to actually deselect my current target, and the final 1/3 of the time neither love nor money will make it drop my target and i have to resort to spam clicking around to unselect my target.

This was mostly tested in fractals, and high scale at that (40-50) and it’s just not viable in this function. Having to stop my rotation to wrangle with a keypress for 2-3 seconds is simply too inconveniencing.

Did HoT bring any new keybinds which could work in this regard?

Odd. I have never had this happen with lock auto target. It’s always dropped targets 10/10 times. The only things wrong I could see is:

• Your keyboard keys are sticking, thus locking the target
• Lag causing keys to not register

What areas/actions are you trying to drop target on?

The only thing that may help you that came with HoT is action camera. Some people love it some people hate it.

The AF changes are bad. Rather than ranting I’ll give anet the benefit of the doubt they will do something about this.

jcbroe.4329:

Druid on the other hand is more like, Ranger…. About a 1.5 maybe? It just isn’t really sewn together as well as some other elite specializations.

This. All the other specializations enhance the current base class providing it with new tools. Cronomancer as you stated is a perfect example of this. Druid does give us new tools, but does not line up at all with base ranger. Druid does not enhance core ranger. The current iteration of druid adds to ranger in the same way ketchup adds to a burnt hamburger. It goes on, but things still taste awful.

Thats the issue tho. Base ranger for the most part is awful. Ranger has all these little bits of other classes at lower ratios and cool downs making it subpar in every area of group support (be it dps, utilities, etc). Mind you there are a few gems (Longbow and signets, survival skils), the rest is really lacking. Having all these low impact tools that have low cool downs screams: mash buttons! The only thing druid is in-line with ranger is that it is conveniently set up the same way (mash heals!). Aside from that the rest of our class has no healing/enhancing for groups outside of spotter, resounding timber and frost spirit.

The more I look at druid the more it makes me ask the question:

What is anet expectation of ranger?

As a player now, I honestly can say I don’t know anymore. We were a support class(which got gutted), then long range dps( which is now in the dust comparatively to other classes), now were a healer(which I imagine reverant will outshine once the #’s are done). So really, where does anet want ranger in the meta?

All that said, I do have one positive thing to say about druid. I really like the work done on animations.

Still have not received mine either. Waiting patiently.

Alex.1496:

I dont understand. Are they doing it manually?

Looks like.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Lazze.9870:

This isn’t something they have been taking knowledge of over the past years, it’s done simply because they want the dragonhunter to look shiny and good after 3 beta weekends of complaining. It’s one of many selling points of the expansion, ranger and thief traps ain’t.

If they had learned anything from the past three years of ranger and thief feedback, the dragonhunter traps wouldn’t have to go through betas to get the additional stuff they have now – they would have simply implemented these things from the get-go.

Rangers (and thieves) may very well get updated traps after this, but the fact that they can’t just LISTEN to the players for once and implement these kind of changes earlier is getting extremely tiresome.

That point of view makes sense for someone who isn’t involved with software development

Your statement is completely naive. Good development of any sort has iterations, and changes based on feedback. Saying that his outlook is invalid because of perspective basis is wrong. Especially when hes the end user(the perspective that matters the most).

I agree with the points many that have been made in here. I am glad anet are doing new and intresting things with traps for dragonhunter. I also agree that the some improvements make dragonhunters traps a lot more attractive current traps for the two other classes. The current traps are pretty much undesirable in many instances. I hope there is room for all the base traps for thief and ranger to be improved upon after HoT and hopefully have interesting game play other than trapper runes.

I had the same issue, go find some water and open the pet menu.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARWnUqAtsgVsCuCCUtgl/ADet+WvrO7utVwbpIkBCAA-TZBHABAcFAQb/hsLDEwhAYgHAAA

is the most consistent thing so far.

I like our range, but doing anything other than bunkering or +1 healing is hard. CA is very unrewarding in player vs player combat. Lots of the skills have to long of wind ups or very noticeable making them easy to counter.

This is first impressions, so far i’ve done mostly pvp duel testing just compare. I’ve included a lot of suggestions as well. I will edit this post if my opinion changes on specific things. No more edits! off to cuba!

With druid in pvp I keep coming to the same problem, I have tones of sustain, but really struggle to down a target(even classes I normally counter). The lack of damage on staff really accentuates our low damage on other weapons. The only thing I could really get to work with staff was longbow. Aside from that you can chip away all day but more than likely they will sustain just as much as yo will because it takes forever to kill them. Either we need more aggressive damage on staff or our other weapons need some boosts.

Core mechanic: celestial avatar(CA) seems to be really hard to generate. When we leave it consumes all our CA power for nothing in return. I would suggest a trait that radiates a heal scaling off our leftover power at the end.IN pvp i would spend periods of two minutes of non healing combat to charge this thing, seems way to long. Edit: I found more in group settings this skill is really easy to charge. You can basically always have it up in wvw and most of the time in group pve. i think for conquest style maps the mechanic falls short.

Scaling: someone else did the math, I don’t have the exact time to find the post, but the numbers on healing power across the board are pretty much a joke(we have 1 skill that is a 1:1 ratio and rest are low; as low as 0.0005 on one). Your better off to take toughness or damage over healing power and telling your group to do the same. With the current coefficients druid has no scaling. Gear is irrelevant for staff.

Solar beam: Seems buggy. Half the time it registers CA generation half the time it does not. It has really low damage. Which is understandable because its a heal based weapon. I would like to see our healing power play part in our damage calculation for this weapon. The healing with clerics is very unnoticeable. Edit:This skill generates tooo much CA power in wvw, yet too little in in pvp. I hope there can be some balancing done to make this skill equally effective in both.

Astral Wisp: Again another low damage skill. It either moves to fast or doesnt last long enough. I can never get to it without using Ancestral Grace. Again the heal feels very unnoticeable. Its almost never worth getting in range to grab the wisp on a human target, as you will lose tenfold the hp you gained.

Ancestral Grace: I love this skill. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT. no seriously, it has a lot of interesting positioning potential it synergizes well with getting to wisps. The blast does feel nice, however I always think im doing aoe damage with this skill because of it. Could it be possible to make the blast a damaging effect?

Vine Surge: Again low low low damage. Has very nice range and you can combo it with ancestral grace for free escape route. For the cooldown or the aim required of the skill it is not worth it all for the damage. it feels so under tuned. The root is also very unnoticeable.

Sublime Conversion: I have to say this skill is fun. You can dive back and forth and basically cancel all the damage. The healing portion is pretty low. It should scale more or less off the damage the projectiles should have done.

Glyph of equality: works good. Have been trying it with MoC and it appears to be a nice setup. I have yet to have a chance to use it in CA for a stunbreak due to how low our generation is.

Glyph of empowerment: Very low cd, interesting idea, unfortunately it does not work with having the cast time. in every single instance I went to use it, I began canceling it immediately. I personally think its too close to signet of the hunt, which frankly is better for active fighting situations. I think this glyph would have a place in the current games dungeons as they dont require much thought or mobility. I would take this over frost spirit any day. The CA porition of the skill I really like however, its really rare to get to use it.

Seed of life: feels odd. The few times i’ve gone to use it has served me well for clearing conditions the glyph trait for this feels useless as your usually on the move. A lot of the time I find sticking around for this skill costs me more hp than I gain from it. As people will throw down fields or wells on it immediately.

Lunar impact: Of all the times I tried to use this skill offensively, its missed. The falling animation is too long. It makes it hard to land on moving opponents. The heal feels very generous and I notice this skill more than the others.

Natural convergence: This skill looks so good. It feels so climatic and then it feels like does nothing. It requires such a large tremendous amount of setup to land this skill and feel like I threw a stuffed animal at my opponent at the end of channel.

Few comments on glyphs

• generally the radius feels to small on all of these skills. its very hard to give allies the bonus/buffs with them
• cannot reliably set up the CA versions

Trait wise:

Primal echos & druidic Clarity: both feel really good. I notice the daze on and like that Primal echos extended with MoC. Druidic calarity is a nice get out of condi jail free card. It does make one our grandmasters kind of redundant, however it still supports the rest of the party.

Verdant etching I like the cd reduction. I don’t like the blooms usually when i use glyphs im on the move and basically forces me to stay and be predictable or continue my path and waste the bonus. Staying often costs me more hp then I gain from the heal so it does not feel worth it.

Ancient Seeds:I like this trait, I think. I have yet to see an animation pertaining to this effect. It could be that im usually throwing Vine surge which overlaps it. It would be nice to know for both parties when its on cool down. Maybe a buff showing that its off cooldown would help with this.

All and all druid is interesting and fun to play, but arguably the base ranger hold it back way to much to be able to do anything on its own. The CA generation is way to low in pvp. Staff is so dependent on healing that it can’t do anything else, which makes it somewhat binary being that all the skills pretty much feel the same. Using staff really makes our other weapons stand out how weak they are singularly. As they cannot get the fighting job done.

Eval.2371:

Here is a list of changes in reguarding shouts that I was saving for a rainy day.

I think shouts really don’t do what they should with the exception of sickem. I also dont kinda like resounding timber either. Here how I would change/envision them.

---

Guard

Guard should be area denial. Be it for holding a point or stoping an advancement. Guard currently only serves to set up taunts or apply regen. Here is how I would change that:

Tooltip: You mark the ground and your pet actively guards an area. While your pet is in the area, it gains defensive boons and attempts to knock opponents out of the area.

• Removed stealth and protection for player
• Guard zone radius 600
• Denies cap
• Modified Pet gains retaliation in addition to protection while in the area
• Added Pet gains knockback attack(unblockable) ever two seconds while in the area.
• Pet attacks the target closets to the center of the guarded area. Retuns to center if there are opponents in its radius
• if the pet leaves the guarded area, guard is ended.
• Duration: 12 seconds.
• cooldown : 30 seconds

This allows the pet to defend an area by pushing targets out and not being allowed to be bursted while on its point. Additionally the guard has counterplay here, as the pet can be cc’d out of its defending area thus ending the skill. Rangers telling their pet to return or attack a target would also do the same if the pet left the guarded area

---

Protect Me

Protect me could be an awesome skill but currently it kills our main mechanic and we have a signet that does a similar job. I would alter the skills intention to be protect us allowing the skill to be used on allies and provide a heal functionality that rewards us both on the pet dying or managing to get through the skill duration.

Protect Us

Tooltip: Instead of attacking your pet channels taking all damage for a target. At the end of the channel your pet heals both the target and the pet for half the amount of damage. If the pet dies, the target is healed the full amount of damage taken.

• capture prevention removed.
• channel duration 5 seconds.
• Stunbreaks target
• if no target is selected assumed self cast.
• can only target allies.

This allows our pet to protect any target not just our selves. It gives some play and use out of the fact that our pet may die for using the skill. Also it adds some counter play by allowing the pet to be interrupted.

---

Search and rescue

Currently this skill is lack luster because the pet can be cleaved or stunned out its cast.

Tooltip: your pet seeks out and revive allies.

• pet pulses every 3 seconds granting stability and agis on its self for every downed friendly in the area.
• max target 2 .
• Duration 15 seconds.

These changes allow the skill to actually function, the pet can res without being interrupted and will be more effective at not being cleaved down during the skill duration.

---

Sickem

I personally like sickem. The damage increase and stealth reveal are nice. I would suggest what some people have already done. Change the movement speed boost for quickness and the damage boost for furry.

---

We Heal as One

With the whole recent buff/nerf diabolical, I think the idea of coping boons to the pet is a great idea, but we have a trait that already does this in an unpopular line. I think this updated version of the heal could function alongside the trait or provide a much needed gap for those who do not go down nature magic.

• Removed copy duration caps.
• Copies boons from player to pet only.

This allows our pet to effectively be the sixth party member by getting the boons we have.

---

Resounding Timbre

Personally, the regen feels too passive and to long. While I like the swiftness I feel it is out of place as we already have tones of mobility. Currently I think ranger would add a lot more to a group if it had furry for the group and it would synergize well with remorseless.

Trait tootip: Shouts apply regen and furry to allies. Shouts reduced by 20%.

• Halved the regen duration but adjusted the regen amount to be 75% of the current.
• swiftness changed furry application.

There are some pretty good ideas floating around in here. I like that especially some of mistsim suggestions.

Here is a list of changes in reguarding shouts that I was saving for a rainy day.

I think shouts really don’t do what they should with the exception of sickem. I also dont kinda like resounding timber either. Here how I would change/envision them.

Guard

Guard should be area denial. Be it for holding a point or stoping an advancement. Guard currently only serves to set up taunts or apply regen. Here is how I would change that:

Tooltip: You mark the ground and your pet actively guards an area. While your pet is in the area, it gains defensive boons and attempts to knock opponents out of the area.

• Removed stealth and protection for player
• Guard zone radius 600
• Denies cap
• Modified Pet gains retaliation in addition to protection while in the area
• Added Pet gains knockback attack(unblockable) ever two seconds while in the area.
• Pet attacks the target closets to the center of the guarded area. Retuns to center if there are opponents in its radius
• if the pet leaves the guarded area, guard is ended.
• Duration: 12 seconds.
• cooldown : 30 seconds

This allows the pet to defend an area by pushing targets out and not being allowed to be bursted while on its point. Additionally the guard has counterplay here, as the pet can be cc’d out of its defending area thus ending the skill. Rangers telling their pet to return or attack a target would also do the same if the pet left the guarded area

Protect Me

Protect me could be an awesome skill but currently it kills our main mechanic and we have a signet that does a similar job. I would alter the skills intention to be protect us allowing the skill to be used on allies and provide a heal functionality that rewards us both on the pet dying or managing to get through the skill duration.

Protect Us

Tooltip: Instead of attacking your pet channels taking all damage for a target. At the end of the channel your pet heals both the target and the pet for half the amount of damage. If the pet dies, the target is healed the full amount of damage taken.

• capture prevention removed.
• channel duration 5 seconds.
• Stunbreaks target
• if no target is selected assumed self cast.
• can only target allies.

This allows our pet to protect any target not just our selves. It gives some play and use out of the fact that our pet may die for using the skill. Also it adds some counter play by allowing the pet to be interrupted.

Search and rescue

Currently this skill is lack luster because the pet can be cleaved or stunned out its cast.

Tooltip: your pet seeks out and revive allies.

• pet pulses every 3 seconds granting stability and agis on its self for every downed friendly in the area.
• max target 2 .
• Duration 15 seconds.

These changes allow the skill to actually function, the pet can res without being interrupted and will be more effective at not being cleaved down during the skill duration.

Sickem

I personally like sickem. The damage increase and stealth reveal are nice. I would suggest exactly what mistism has above.

We Heal as One

With the whole recent buff/nerf diabolical, I think the idea of coping boons to the pet is a great idea, but we have a trait that already does this in an unpopular line. I think this updated version of the heal could function alongside the trait or provide a much needed gap for those who do not go down nature magic.

• Removed copy duration caps.
• Copies boons from player to pet only.

This allows our pet to effectively be the sixth party member by getting the boons we have.

Resounding Timbre

Personally, the regen feels too passive and to long. While I like the swiftness I feel it is out of place as we already have tones of mobility. Currently I think ranger would add a lot more to a group if it had furry for the group and it would synergize well with remorseless.

Trait tootip: Shouts apply regen and furry to allies. Shouts reduced by 20%.

• Halved the regen duration but adjusted the regen amount to be 75% of the current.
• swiftness changed furry application.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Guy,s Ranger doesn’t ship units. Rev does. That’s why he doesn’t come here.

That is not true. For me at least druid was the deciding factor. I bought HoT after the druid stream on twitchcon. I am sure I am not the only one who did this either.

I think that a soft trinity is a good thing. We do have other classes that could become dedicated healers (see ele, engineers, rev, necro, guard, and mesmer) so being able to make it through content without a druid will more than likely be possible.

I will agree with diovid druid doesnt create a need for healing or change meta from zerker its the content it’s self which the devs are aiming to be really hard for HoT content; specifically raids having unavoidable damage.

I think you and many others are hung up on druid only being a healing based line. A lot of people may not realize this, but our class will have tones of access to cc via daze. Which will allow us to break down those breaker bars AND amp our damage via MoC. Additionally there are some pretty interesting condi options available with druid. To say our line is only healing is very short sighted.

Lastly, compared to other classes we already have an interesting use for healing power via instinctive reaction which converts 7% of our healing power to power.

Photinous.4628:

So they will probably just use the same durations as fortifying bond. Incoming 2s quickness duration, oh yay.

I just wanted to stop in and say, thank you Guild Wars based Genja. You were right… again

Kitty.1502:

Eval the biggest issue with Rangers is that we are balanced around the pet. Our pet dies often really easily in pve or in pvp they don’t hit often enough. Pay attention to your pet when you pvp you will notice that they miss over half the time if not closer to 70% of the time against anyone who doesn’t stand still.

While I totally agree with you on this point, I don’t believe its within anets or the engines capacity to do much better than currently have. If they could I think that they would have already fixed many of our pet issues but have not. I would rather turn my attention to other areas that could actually be improved on.

Gaile Gray.6029:

oshilator.4681:

What guarantee do we have that they’ll read any of this?

Because one of the key designers stood at my desk 20 minutes ago and told me. I trust him. I hope you trust me enough to know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true: This thread will be read.

But again, constructive is the key, and I’m hoping that people won’t continue to flare, but will give good, substantive feedback.

Edit to add: Many of the comments are constructive and valuable. Didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.

In light of this I have few things to say:

I can name a handful of people that have made numerous well thought out posts that are supported by many and all of these post just simply dive off this forum section. Buried forever. If the devs want ideas on how to improve the class, they really should start digging into post history of the ranger section. To name a few people:Tragic Postive, Jcbro, Heimskarl Ashfiend, and Puck have all made some posts that really resonated with where I would like to see ranger be or directions that ranger could be heading.

With that said a lot of people are frustrated with ranger. Really the class aside from the pet has many of the same tools as other classes, just weaker versions of things on shorter cooldowns. Which does not allow us to stand out anywhere and it makes the class really frustrating to play as because it does not accel at anything or feel unique in any ways other than pets and longbow. Which makes a large portion of our class feel unrewarding and watered down.

I think half of our problem is weapons:

Weapon wise we have a problem. Longbow is really the only weapon done really well. Greatsword is really close but is lacking compared to GS on other classes(it only has 3 person cleave, has long windups and low damage, buggy animations etc its high risk low reward weapon). All of our weapons need some love. Comparatively our bases on many of our weapons are terrible compared to other classes using the same weapons. Some of our weapons do not functionally work like short bow. I couldn’t tell you where to exactly begin on changing our weapons but there are many posts out there already that could.

The other half is utilities.

Now don’t get me wrong. Survival and signets are done really well. All of them have clear actives and uses. Additionally they are used as intended. That said the rest of our utilities have issues.

As someone else stated well in here and its been done before in many other threads as well, one of problematic families of utilities is shouts. Shouts for the most part, do not function well as their core intentions they are used for other reasons. IE most people use guard to make the pet invisible so they can set up a taunt, or make sure that the pet is not killed or to simply stack regen and swiftness. The intended use; to defend/deny an area is irrelevant.

We have very few utilities types aside from the two families mentioned two paragraphs above that are not like the above example. This is the second half of the problem. While these skills having multiple uses makes them flexible; it also makes them hard to balance and be fair, which is why they get tuned down and ultimately feel useless.

We heal as one is a prime example of this cycle where these skills that have either no substance or are too general and get something very well needed that makes the skills an interesting choice. Yes the changes were potentially broken, I don’t believe its the right direction for ranger and, I do not personally believe it was overpowered in rangers current state. I think that buffing many small things across the class is better than trying to make the class viable by buffing one skill. Which is what this kinda looked like, you guys threw us a bone we ran with it, people freaked not understanding counter play, and now here we are, with you guys taking away our bone.

Edit: and if you wanted to change the Guard to actually be used for its intended use change it to something like:

• removed stealth
• Stops cap
• Pet gains protection and regeneration.
• Pet becomes Unblockable and targets any opponet in the area its guarding.
• Pet auto attack gains a knockback buff every 3seconds while in area its guarding.
• Guard lasts 15 seconds
• Guard ends if the pet leaves its guarded area.
• CD-> 30 seconds

Additionally I want to come out say, while some of our traits still need tweaking, in general most of current specs are pretty solid and offer some interesting choices. Kudos to groups of people responsible for that. I am thankful you guys are still making some improves on things like MDG. Are our traits perfect? No, but they are meaningful have substance which that counts more than anything else.

Lastly, there is a certain outlook/stigma that most of the ranger player base has gained about the devs on class favoritism/bias and I completely understand why. I am not going to point fingers, but certain classes have gotten better treatment; more frequent responses, changes being give and go(rather than taking away), more frequent improvements, etc. the issue with this there is a large base believes you folk hate one of your classes and actively ignore the group of people that give feedback on it. This needs to change. A lot of it has to do with communication and I’ve said this before on reddit and I’ll say it again, it is beyond poor Gaile Grey to keep active feedback and constructive communication between the devs and the base in the ranger section on class changes/progression. We need more people talking on anets side to and with us. The moment we feel we are being ignored and not having a conversation about the classes with anet, is the same moment we go off into nonsensical unconstructive posts. Please do something about breaking the current pattern we have in regards with communication about the ranger class.

Will be Done editing for speeeeeeeling and more better grammar I more than likely missed some things somewhere oh well.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Mark.1679:

I actually like fightning rangers now. Maybe the 100% Uptime of quickness is a bit much.
Although it feels like ranegrs still do meh damage with the quickness.

They do, because to get that quickness they have to sacrifice their offensive trait line entirely. Roy obviously has no idea how to balance rangers (of course, if he did know how to, there would have been at least one ranger in the World Tournament Series, so QED).

Sadly roy only shows up for ranger nerfs. Wouldn’t mind getting some 400% buffs on ranger tho, his buffing notes on reverent are hysterical.

Garrisyl.7402:

Eval.2371:

Ok, but how is that any different than people telling other that ranger is trash in every game mode. We should just not allow other players to see each other classes.

That’s an awfully forced argument. And anyways, how is the existence of trash talk an argument for inciting more trash talk? If anything, the existing toxicity towards certain classes, builds and players should draw you a picture of the hell that would break lose with in-match rank badges.

Yes your right it is very forced(but there is truth behind it). MMR toxicity is the same kind of talk as dungeon or WvW elitism. Just pvp does not have a measurable scale. PvP is going to get a scale via leagues anyways regardless if they show mmr which will cause the toxicity your so afraid of. The issue is anet reinforces these kinds of attitudes by allowing them to continue either by not saying no you can’t do that or by continuing to ignore common valid complaints and not fixing problematic classes.

Toxic or not we cannot move forward without information. Things like matchmaking can’t be improved without a scale and we can’t give valid feedback on; simply because we don’t understand the process.

Garrisyl.7402:

Showing mmr would only be drama inciting and it’s a good thing it’s hidden.

Ok, but how is that any different than people telling other that ranger is trash in every game mode. We should just not allow other players to see each other classes.