You have it easy, since you basically have 2 distinguishing features. I wonder if anyone has done this successfully who doesn’t have any facial hair. That would be neat to see.
Weeklies could be a way to drive people to different areas of the game for extended periods of time. I think that’s what things like “Shiverpeak Killer” were supposed to do, but in reality people just go slaughter 50 level 2 skelk in a few seconds and call it a day.
A weekly might be… “push the assault on Orr in 10 different ways.” I don’t know, I just made that up.
I’m willing to bet the very first weapon addition to ranger will address this with a new 1h melee weapon (hatchet or something?) A lot of us are extremely happy with the sword. I actually switched to ranger specifically because of the sword and it would be devastating to take that away from us for no good reason.
I don’t think the metrics that ANet has from their own monitoring of the game are conclusive to what people liked to play, just conclusive to what people actually played. I played through a lot of content I did not like just because I wanted completion and the AP, and I sincerely doubt I am alone in this.
I loathed every second I was in the Tower of Nightmares and I felt the sky fell on me every time another event popped and I couldn’t go further to reach the top before I finished it. But I spent some time there doing content just to get the achievements.
You probably didn’t continue playing it heavily for 2 weeks then, but rather stopped around the first day. Some updates are clearly things people want to keep playing and playing. If there would have been more to do in the Zephyr Sanctum I could have played that for weeks. It was sad when I finished all the achievements.
Actually, we have metrics on every LW release. While SAB was indeed successful in terms of participation, so were the other releases (Scarlet ones included). I understand that forum feedback can color perception on which releases were the most popular/best received/most enjoyed but opinions on this are largely anecdotal. Please keep that in mind.
This made me laugh. People on the forums try every possible method to convince Anet to do things the way a particular poster wants. All sorts of attempted reverse psychology and personal insults trying to convince Anet no one wants to play content that that poster didn’t enjoy. And the whole time Anet is looking at the stats and seeing “oh hey, people loved playing _”. I for one can not stand SAB, but realize a lot of other people like it.
I find it all very amusing.
The stealth heart is far and away my favorite, followed by the rabbit. The one I can’t stand is the FedEx Jotun trading one in Wayfarer. The first two have interesting mechanics, the Jotun one has no mechanics at all.
More experimentation that hopefully helps (this bug is killing me, literally): If I don’t start moving the mini-map will never recenter.
Really slowing down my PvE and ruining my WvW.
I used to be able to pan around the mini-map, which is obviously very important in WvW. Now I have to come to a full stop, wait a second, and only then can I pan around without it forcefully recentering itself on me. Is there an option to turn this off? If not, it’s extremely annoying. Opening the full map in WvW is a death sentence.
Edit: I just did some testing and it definitely seems to be a bug because it is not consistent, and I can’t find any pattern to what causes it. I’d estimate more than half the time it bounces back to my location before I can move it very far. If I stop moving completely and then start moving again, it often fixes the issue for one attempt, but if I stop and start again, it will likely recenter too aggressively.
2nd Edit: Found a trigger. Sometimes the “headlight” that shows what direction I’m facing on the mini-map will never appear. If that happens it will always recenter on me. To fix it, I have to come to a complete stop for ~a second.
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are you put off by the fact that you have to show initiative of your own instead of the game holding your hand and telling to to form a party?
This kind of post is what ruins these forums. No one can have a discussion of game mechanics; it has to turn in to passive aggressive insults.
Reread the first post and try to understand the thoughts of others without immediately starting under the impression they’re an incompetent person and bad player.
I don’t care about any other side benefits other than removing immobilize. Completely-100%-no-options shuts down a melee ranger. Warriors have super easy access to breaking immobilize, presumably because they need that to melee…
Skill 3 on the sword poisons.
Actually, if you timed it right, a boar in to wolf could be powerful. I’ve never done it, but I can see people using it.
Also it’s worth mentioning the invulnerability is a big deal for the dredge fractal. Rangers have insanely high uptime for invulnerability, so they excel at standing on buttons for that fractal at high levels.
I know, I’m a GWAM. I just found it amusing that shortbows provide literally EVERYthing GW1 rangers brought to the table.
It just goes to show how much build diversity they added with weapon sets and traits.
GW1’s ranger was a fantastic PvP class because the bow was adept at spreading and maintaining the poison and bleeding conditions across several targets. It could achieve this while also disrupting enemy skills and providing snares via the crippled condition.
That’s EXACTLY what the GW2 shortbow does, actually. Not commentating, just pointing that out.
My WvW ranger has never been taken down by a longbow warrior, and killed literally thousands of warriors. But that is totally off topic. Ranger = “a person who wanders about large areas of country; a rover”.
Edit: I want to see a video of a longbow warrior beating any type of ranger. Pure bow warrior, not just a warrior using it for a 1 skill DoT and then winning with a melee weapon. I don’t believe even the worst of rangers will fall to that.
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Not to ask the obvious, but are you on the same server every game?
Edit: Oops nm, you said you’re using the solo join tool. I’ve been doing some 5v5 hot join and my mind jumped.
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Again with the silly idea that “ranger” comes from “to use ranged weapons”. rolly eyes
On topic, I always loved playing a beastmaster in Diablo II. It could never work in GW2, other than as a necro. But it fixed basically all AI problems by you just on-demand summoning whatever you wanted wherever you wanted.
Worse than, definitely Diablo I. That ranger was awful haha.
You will remember halted traffic more than the normal traffic speed, as there is no reason to remember normal traffic. You spend more time thinking about being halted in unusual traffic than not thinking about being in normal traffic.
If you think traffic is always heavy, you might tend to even more often remember the heavy traffic and forget normal traffic.
If you flip a coin 100 times, you will often wind up with streaks of 6 heads or 6 tails, not what we think of as “pure randomness”, which would be perfectly distributed.
Stacking is what kills rangers, but take heart. The devs have said they realize “stack here” in dungeons is a horrible problem, and they’ve put out a lot of good content to make that not happen anymore.
- as a Warrior main, I love melee.
- melee has several advantages to it, going melee isn’t the same as the stack here problem.
- melee damage is far higher than range damage.
- all 5 going melee ensures all 5 benefit from all boons and condition removal.
- I love fighting my enemy up close, making them eat my GS / Hammer to the face.
I even say it out loud a lot, here eat it ! eat it ! oishi daro?
I agree, melee is all I play on all 8 classes (I even managed to get my engi in to a point blank range, but shes basically a failure and I don’t care to remake her.) But stacking without moving is called for in a lot of the old dungeons, and that’s really kitten (edit: difficult on, lol) the evasive classes like rangers, mesmers, thieves, etc.
The devs have been making a pretty big effort to keep people from stacking in dungeons, and I think it makes for a lot cooler gameplay! Look at the dungeon bosses in the living story dungeons vs. the crap dungeon bosses in the old dungeons. Mai Trin or the Molten duo vs. the ghost king.
Oh man, I didn’t think about that in a zerg context. There HAS to be a damage cap, surely Anet wouldn’t be so shortsighted as to give a zerg of 20, 30 warriors 30k heals.
The GS isn’t worse. It hits 22% more targets per autoattack chain than the 1h sword does, plus it evades once every 1.75 seconds. The 1h sword hits less, provides cripple to 1 target and 1 stack of might to your pet.
I view those are comparable. If you disagree, feel free to state why. Just don’t get confused that we’re arguing here because you misunderstood how many targets I thought things hit.
Perhaps for kick but not other 2. They hit AoE. Still your point isn’t valid.
Re-read my post. I said it has a single target autoattack in the chain. Calm down.
I assume we all already know AoE melee weapons on all classes hit 3 targets. And I’m pretty sure kick only hits 1 target? If it hits two that will be awkward since I have probably 20k kills with a 1H sword. Take it easy on the vitriol.
Edit: Wiki also says 1 target.
Stacking is what kills rangers, but take heart. The devs have said they realize “stack here” in dungeons is a horrible problem, and they’ve put out a lot of good content to make that not happen anymore.
Another way of looking at it: the 1h sword doesn’t root, it follows your target, which is why a lot of us don’t want it changed. Give it a whirl in PvP and you’ll see why it’s downright amazing.
I get that people want a ranger without a pet, but since rangers are quite specifically the pet class, it will never be an option, just as a warrior using clones will never be an option.
Non-pet rangers are never, ever going to happen, so I’ll skip that.
As for the weapons, GS having the same damage as 1H doesnt make sense. GS autoattacks are AoE, while 1H sword has a single target autoattack in the chain. You have to also factor in the evade on the GS, which is worth a LOT more than a cripple. The autoattack is the only thing used for DPS calculations, so we can ignore all the other skills.
Increasing axe damage would be weird, since it’s both ranged AND AoE OR double up on a single target. If you’re using an axe autoattack on a single target in melee range you’re not in the optimum weapon set.
Adjusting the axe or GS would harm the uniqueness of the weapon sets. I also don’t think they would address any of the common complaints about rangers, unless you boosted the damage of all their weapons. And that could easily lead to rangers being OP. (Not that I would necessarily be against a flat damage boost, mind you.)
It’s the “petting zoo” build from sPvP. 30 in condition damage with a shortbow and 30 in making the spirits follow you around (which I believe is getting changed next tuesday?) 10 in marksmanship for the sharpening stone. Burn and bleed people to death.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-FF3V;1wEkv-l2BEk-0;9-8E;19-TT-2;323A36A;1VN17;2Rk06Rk061FY
I dunno if you’ll actually want to use this for anything. It’s basically the most boring build in all 8 classes.
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Maybe they could take a page from baseball. FA and presumably HoD have their best matchups a league up. So like the AL will sometimes play the NL in the regular season, maybe occasionally FA plays Maguuma, and that counts as a regular season game.
There is also the fact that not everyone is equally good at playing all styles. Thieves are a good example: a lot of people think of their backstab ambushes as a free kill, but in reality, a lot of people are really bad at playing thief. Mesmers are the undisputed gods of 1v1, but I am TERRIBLE at mesmer, despite my best efforts in sPvP to get better.
On the other hand, I can beat almost anyone I come across on a ranger. I’m better off roaming on a ranger than any other class, even if anyone could prove rangers are clearly inferior (which I would totally disagree with anyway.) I say this after putting major PvE/WvW/PvP time in on all 8 classes. The weapon skill evasions just somehow click in my brain where hiding in plain sight as a mesmer does not.
I often use semi-random pets for low level PvE, things like getting a daily. It’s good to use a pet a lot so you get used to when it will be useful. I bet most rangers don’t fully know what most of the pets do. I cognitively knew hawks had a fast bleeding special attack, but until I took it out for a daily the other day it didn’t really hit me that it has a 1275 damage bleed every six seconds. Was fun to play around with.
Spiders are significantly better than devourers in most people’s opinions.
This isn’t new. The labyrinth had the same problems but people would just leave if they didn’t like it since there was pretty much no reason to be there.
That’s actually a good point. The queen’s pavilion had a similar feeling.
The third floor stands out because you literally can’t exist on it, so you can never form an ad hoc party. You need to make one before hand, like an instanced dungeon. Even unofficially grouped players will break up at the third floor because it’s difficult to do anything but save yourself at the expense of others. A formal group in an instance doesn’t have that choice.
I did actually make some ad hoc parties in the labyrinth and pavilion because I was able to exist there long enough to find other players. That’s the only way open world ad hoc grouping can work.
I’d also toss out WvW as a great example of ad hoc group forming. You can be on your own just fine, but seeing another player opens up additional opportunities.
The were entirely unclear as to the duration of these changes though. Rank removal is at the end of something they say will take a long time. I for one would like to know if I have time to make it to the next rank, or if I would spend 3 months on it and then fail at the last second.
I figured someone would respond with how amazing they are at the third floor, and miss the point of all this for an excuse to brag. I’m not talking about running past the hordes of elites while you are bombarded with permanent health degen and conditions, I’m talking about the third floor as playable content. You can not solo play the third floor.
I wonder if a dev could comment on an ETA of the rank removal. I’m sure we’d all like to get one more rank before they’re gone forever, and figuring out if that’s possible is probably a big deal to a lot of people.
Why do you like the keep the sword on autoattack?
Up till now we’ve had two methods of getting together with other players. You either have an instanced dungeon where you form a workable team before going in, and know that you must work as a team or it’s all a waste of time. The other is open world, where you see someone doing something, and join in because that looks like fun, leave when you’re done.
The third floor is open world, but you can’t just wander in and start the third floor by yourself, hoping someone will join you and you’ll make a new friend. You need to have a party already formed to assure success. And since we’ve never done that for open world content before, it’s a little off putting. The players also have to be very proactive to form that party, since the goal is so open ended. The closest thing I’ve seen is the LFG tool being used to find a party for the hybrid daily.
An open world dungeon is an awesome concept, but I think the challenge should come from things like the bosses or puzzles within. The challenge of the tower comes from just existing in it, and that does not condone ad hoc parties.
Your BMIX trait seems like a big waste. Both your pets already disable with their activation for a large percentage of the cripple duration, both have massive cooldowns even with the BMV trait, and your wolf already naturally cripples. Without checking the numbers I feel like you’d get more cripple out of BMI. Or since you seem to want some damage from your pets, maybe BMVI or II.
It’s hard to tell without hard facts, but I feel like rangers are substantially increasing in popularity in WvW. It may be because large numbers of rangers charging you looks pretty intimidating. I also suspect the build awareness is increasing, sort of how the 1h spirit/spotter build made rangers desirable in dungeons. I run in to enemy greatsword rangers in zergs all the time.
This is a repley back to Fluffy…just because you can kill uplevels and noobs doesn’t make you good. I’d like to see your Ranger run away from a thief who actually knows what he’s doing.
I didn’t watch any of that video other than the escape the I gave you a specific time for. You said rangers have no escape options which is blatantly wrong. If you think that about rangers, especially since it’s common knowledge rangers are extremely mobile and evasive, everything else you think about rangers is also blatantly wrong.
Listen this as you read: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YzWlxbg34Y
“Fear not this Night” really invoked something, and presumably in most of us since it was so popular. The song was a nornish epic ballad. Elder dragons were ruining everything, and this was a defiant anthem; good versus evil.
I am not a Scarlet hater, but at the same time she has completely removed this focus. There was SO much build up for YEARS and then it’s just gone in favor of Scarly-come-lately. The logo of GW2 is an elder dragon.
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#2, Tricare.2946 posted this beautiful video recently of a ranger escaping. Fast forward 3:54 to the end. Most people will recognize rangers have top-tier mobility.
I’m not going to bother even addressing the other points, but #2 should set the tone for how much you know about rangers.
I’d use PvP builds as a starting point, as that’s quite close to what roaming is. You need to be mobile and have several survival tricks up your sleeve.
Unlike PvP, WvW does offer a viable berserker option due to the significantly better equipment and consumables. You hit so hard that you can kill almost anything before it kills you, surviving mostly via CC and evades. You should be very comfortable with ranger if you want to go that route, though, as you live or die in a matter of seconds. It’s the most fun I have in GW2 though.
Mm, sPvP pets aren’t as good as you think. If you aren’t playing bm, they’ll die fairly easily as sPvP is all about bombarding points with AoE.
How can they not be as good as I think if what you say hasn’t been what I know? PvP pets almost never die if you’re paying attention to swapping.
I’m glad you show rangers can play in zergs contrary to popular belief, but I play with the exact same playstyle on my zerker ranger. Wait half quarter second for the front of your zerg to hit (10 or so pure bunker heavies) and then do whatever you want in melee, pull back and range if things get too hot.
It’s more awareness than ranger specific.
PvE it should be fairly trivial to keep your pet alive. Some basic recalls, swaps, prots, and heals will suffice for all but the toughest of bosses. CoF: your pet is never, ever going to die if you’re paying attention (boulders aside). Fractal level 39 molten facility, maybe, but it should actually do pretty well.
PvP pets are powerful. WvW roaming pets are even more poweful. Zerg pets die too much; that’s where the conversation should be centered. Do zergs deserve a special pet consideration, or are the mechanics of a zerg weird enough that it’s ok as is?
To me it just feels like they’re being taken out of context. Ele signets naturally affect them, but they don’t have rampage as one. It’s the total picture, not direct comparisons of utilities.
But really I don’t feel strongly enough about the signets to argue the point.
Totally off topic, but I like 1h sword for PvP. The autoattack (which no one actually uses as auto…) both cripples and gives might to your pet. For group fights, the “can’t hit moving targets” bit is suspect. It’s total chaos, attention is not on pets, and CC is getting thrown around left and right. Also CC pets are the standard. Then the empathic bond and blah blah blah all sorts of traits blah blah pet rezzing yada yada two targets two attacks two health pools etc etc etc.
Pets got a 75% health increase, so they are actually very important in dungeons now. Brazil even takes sic’ em in his latest build video, using an entire utility slot on his pet, as well as several traits.
Who in their right mind thinks pets aren’t good in PvP? They got massively nerfed a few months ago in PvP because they’re so strong, in so many different ways.
The signet GM trait would be too powerful to be innate, but I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing all arrows pierce. Even in the Anet ranger intro video Izzy said if you want to use a bow you basically must trait to have your arrows pierce.
I just go ahead and always drop eagle eye if I’m with others as they likely won’t benefit from spotter if I’m at 2100 range. On my own I’d like to have all 3 traits, and considering the difficulty of taking on multiple opponents using a LB I don’t see how that would be game breaking.