I am no revenant expert (nor is anyone, I guess) but I keep wishing I had a ranger to give me fury for 100% crit with no investment in precision. Valks or cavs armor/amulet makes for a tanky, hard hitting revenant.
I will probably be irrationally hated on for this, but my concern about F2 skills is that when the skill is “too good”, it can virtually make most other pets obsolete and will call for major nerfs to itself, or buffs to the others (would it be easier to buff other pets to match, or to nerf the “overly meta” one?) While some pet types have been wildly favored over the years, there has usually been a safe # of player preference/choice in the matter.
Even if we had no control at all over the smokescale, it’s still a decent PvP pet. It’s bad for PvE, but since it can actually land its attacks on players and has some CC, it’s not bad for PvP. It’s more than other pets have terrible AI than smokescale is much better.
And then anet regrets wasting time on ranger when 1% of players prefer the higher skill-cap smoke field pet. Ranger improvements deleted for 12 months.
The thing is all you listed, bloodpryrope, can be done with the damage skill on passive. The smoke assault is a good skill but it doesn’t need to be on demand, unlike the smoke field.
I know I’m not the only one, this is a common bug. Why in the sweet poop do we crash after we spend an hour pushing a map meta event to completion? I’ve NEVER crashed GW 2 until now.
then you are blind, and/or ignorant. there are plenty of good arguments for it.
Ok, I see one argument for it, and I find it weak enough to ignore. I’m surprised you of all people prefer smoke assault, I think the more “hardcore” posters prefer options over simple might stacking. I really just think in all 3 game modes utility far outweighs a mere damage skill.
I really don’t see any argument for smoke assault on F2. It’s the same thing with birds (although you can force the F2 to be useful with traits.) Damage on F2 is low skill, low reward. Utility on F2 is high reward.
Furthermore, smokescale is barely a PvE pet. I see this focused around PvP, and giving us more options in PvE. Options, options, options.
Open world is still incredibly easy in full zerk. People just refuse to adapt their playstyle. If you have to take an invuln for open world, do it. Jeez, problem solved.
I just don’t understand why anet seems out to get ranger. I mean they created ranger, we like it despite the major flaws, and for 3 years they beat the hell out of the ranger community. Doesn’t make any sense!
You’re going to do best in PvP on the class you like best. Ele has been ridiculously OP in PvP for like a year or 2, and yet my ranger win percentage is nearly double my ele win percentage.
Yep and together they are doing less damage than one zerker. They are just scaling the event up and making harder for the rest. Not to mention warriors have a lot of condition removal. Group resistance maybe of use but what you loose in dps for seconds of resistance isn’t worth it.
The argument that dead zerkers deal no damage is moot as having a dedicated healer is like having a player dead for 50% or more of the fight.
We’re talking about open world. You have zero control over party comps in open world. If you run into another player that is struggling, he’s either going to die or you can heal him. Running druid over one of the other specs isn’t going to hurt your damage much if you want to play it. It’s absurd to be that authoritarian for open world content.
I keep repeating myself, but I would highly recommend waiting until raids come before gearing up. We have no idea what we’re going to be up against, we’ve seen one encounter out of presumably several dozen.
Some popular ideas are full zerker or full magi. Big difference and we don’t know which will work.
IMO it was pretty clearly caving to the voice that doesn’t like Trahearne for no reason. Scarlet was one thing, Trahearne dislike is a completely different issue.
It is VERY CLEARLY a code issue. The whole “it’s too confusing for baby rangers” is complete horse kitten when you look at the number of buttons an engi or ele has to push. It’s just PR, and actually anti-PR because we know they’re lying.
Edit: It actually enrages me everytime this is brought up. It’s like “ok engis are adults and can push a lot of buttons but you rangers go sit at the baby table and be kittenwads.”
Re: everyone deleting druids. It was never meant for open world, and I have always been incredibly skeptical of it being meant for PvP. I think it’s real, sole, focused role it raids. Raids might even be balanced around a dedicated healer.
I know for a fact that anet consults with the top PvP players for feedback and even play PvP with them on a daily basis. As far as I know the really knowledgeable ranger players aren’t asked for feedback. Maybe anet would consider talking to the guys who really, really have good ideas like jcbroe. What is Radioactive “Bear’s” account name? I’m not terribly familiar with the guy and then all the sudden he’s the highest profile ranger in the game.
Because I never was satisfied with random Tail Swipe, either.
And I never found any real reason why should I want smoke field. I support a theory that “not everybody is supposed to replace everyone else”
I want classes for skipping which are Thieves and Engies. And I don’t feel like I need to have closer to any of them when I know I’ll never be on par with my 2 almighty blasts and a pet ruining the skipping.
Random tail swipe isn’t random at all which is why people use it as a blast finisher. We’ve just learned to live with it. Ideally tail swipe and smoke assault would both be hot-keyable.
I don’t see it as replacing engis and thieves, I see it as giving us options. Smoke assault doesn’t add as many options as a smoke field does. If I can get a brutal charge to land, I follow up with a kill. If smoke assault lands, we can do the same. You can’t make impromptu use of a smoke field.
Lena has been knocking it out of the kitten park since the start. She’s responsible for the Halloween and Marionette music as well, right? Just phenomenal stuff. A++
Oops, I looked it up, Maclaine did Marionette and Halloween. Well whatever, all the music has been great. They’ve been nailing it.
exactly this. rangers just need a little bit of that extra burst. taking it away from us for the smoke field would nerf a lot of builds, whereas not a single build is benefited by the smoke field.
You were in favor of a semi-controllable random smoke field because you wanted the burst for you own build. Smoke field is clearly the better group support. Why would you not be ok with the semi-controllable random smoke assault that is similar to how a brutal charge or tail swipe works? Pet abilities on every pet I can think of off the top of my head can be predicted. This is a quality of life issues, and smoke field benefits far more in this case.
And the fact this is being discussed just further highlight how badly we need more pet controls.
How is it defined as a dragon if its just the jungle come alive?
It’s not different from how the other dragons work. They are more “entities” than dragons. Zhaitan would corrupt a random farmer and then know all about how to grow corn. Everything they corrupt becomes the dragon. Who knows, maybe Mordy had an actual dragon shaped root-body underground somewhere, but it doesn’t matter since we can’t kill him that way.
If your getting one and two shotted healing is going to save you. A zealot druid will go down just as fast as a zerker Ranger/Druid.
However a PVT warrior standing in a hylek poison field will benefit massively from druid healing. A zerk LB druid can absolutely work if you want to play a solo druid.
I’ve seen a lot of other professions advocating to start wearing non-zerk armor in the jungle. Rangers have no need for that since we have lots of evades in melee and the LB, but that means you have ample opportunity to heal if you want. I have been playing regular zerk ranger, but it is completely understandable if someone wants to use the new elite spec. It’s good practice for raids too.
I never really got the trahearne hate. He was the one who did all the leading and administrative duties while you were the one who got kitten done. It’s a nice dynamic, and you get acknowledged for that too. He’s not even present during the final battle. And he never acts like did anything either. In fact he’s the one who is like “This is the guy who did everything.” points at player
I honestly think it’s just that people are influencing each other. It’s a popular opinion that GW players hate Trahearne, therefore, you must hate Trahearne. It’s why they look for people who have never heard of a high-profile crime to serve on a jury.
People kept saying it was so bugged… I saw no bugs, just various mechanics that I assume people didn’t understand, and then just chalked up as bugs.
No, it is very, very buggy. The actual fight is extremely easy (you don’t even need to dodge, there is almost never any danger in dying), the bugs had me redo it I think 17 times. You got extremely lucky if you didn’t encounter a single bug and finished it your first try.
I dunno dude, have you taken a walk through Maguuma? Monsters hit like freaking MAC trucks. I see players go down frequently just fighting veterans. I think healing is going to have a place in this expansion if not immediately. Gotta think long-term here.
Healing is only really useful if you have high toughness and vitality already, since if you don’t you’re probably getting one or two shot and healing beyond what you have already with traited WHaO isn’t necessary.
I got through all of the HoT story and the Dragon Stand event in full Berserker, LB/GS, without having major issues. I just had to learn all the telegraphs for the heavy hitting mobs (Shadowleapers and Guard Snipers in particular).
I haven’t been using druid since it went live for real, but I used druid in the beta to heal others. I think what nick is saying is that OTHERS are dropping a lot, and healing them can save a difficult event. The stupid warrior that stands in a hylek poison field could use a helping hand.
I think full zerk with some random ally heals is totally applicable to HoT event chains, assuming it’s not a full on zerg.
I’m looking for a good Power Druid build but I’m totally indecisive with my skill and trait choices. Recently I’ve been using LB/Staff with Marks/NM/Druid.
Thoughts?
I’d drop NM for BM and get resounding timbre/WHaO, and take a sword/WH, jungle stalker, and RaO. The new WHaO is too good to pass up for might stacking in PvE.
Confirms my initial feelings that I had during beta on the Wyverns being completely and utterly terrible, though.
None of the new pets are just straight up damage like a jaguar is, except perhaps the tiger. They’re more about CC or fields. I think the entire GW2 community hasn’t quite learned what is going on with the new pets, and you have people overly worried about smokeskale bursts when the thing is actually a CC pet with stealth possibilities.
A lightning field from a wyvern can apply daze from our sword leaps.
If you want to use a druid solo, you can use it as a backup heal for yourself and perhaps emergency ally healing in difficult events, and just use damage focused armor and traits.
They haven’t released the raids yet, which are the end-game 10-man PvE content where druids will supposedly be highly valued. So we can’t evaluate that yet, but presumably druids will be highly desired.
I’ve been using sword/LB in the new maps. The only time I swapped to GS was for the last story mission because I wanted to circle strafe to up my damage by removing the need for dodging. I initially went in to the expansion with double melee but didn’t find it practical because of all the melee hate.
I made a revenant and it’s really highlighting why I love ranger sword so much. With rev, I feel like I’m just waiting for unrelenting assault to come off CD, and then whack that button again; no grace what-so-ever. The autoattack and skill 2 suck.
With ranger, the autoattack can just give me big damage without me paying attention to it and I have a constant tension of when to use 2 and 3. I find it much more engaging.
Slightly off topic, but that’s sort of how I feel about most of the ranger weapons. The actual numbers definitely have their flaws, but the weapons are just better designed than many of the other professions.
I honestly feel bad for anet. They clearly put a lot of effort into EotM and the new BL maps, but they just keep giving us high quality stuff we won’t want at all.
It feels like when someone you don’t know that well gives you a hand-made scarf for Christmas, and you live in Southern California. You’re like, “I needed a swim suit” in your head.
On the other hand, there have got to be tens of thousands of posts on these forums saying what we want for WvW maps are simple maps with wide open spaces, easy to understand layouts, and little to no added mechanics.
I’ve redone the Mordremoth fight so many times I had to zone out to repair my broken armor, and then went through another set of armor. The jump “mushrooms” just aren’t working consistently for me. Sometimes they get me into the air, more often they don’t. On top of that, every other retry Braham opens a rift out in the middle of floating air that can’t be reached by me, so I have to just kill myself at the start of the mission.
Am I doing something ridiculously wrong? That actual fight is super easy and I’m not having any trouble at all with it, but I can’t get past these bugs. Or is there a hidden mechanic to using the bounce pads/floating Braham?
Edit: Well I finished it. Basically just got lucky on the mushrooms. I had to use some invulns and try various mushrooms until one jumped me and didn’t just spin me in place. Maybe that’s the mechanic? Very frustrating since the actual fight was no trouble at all.
I can’t read this entire thread, so apologies if this has been brought up. Just want to get an idea in the devs’ heads.
My main problem with the cost of elite specs is that there are 9 professions. It’s unreasonable to do map completion on 9 characters to be able to use something. I have zero desire to play necro, I want to give reaper a try.
My solution:
First elite spec can be whatever anet decides. I imagine most people’s mains have map completion. Anet, make a reasonable choice based on feed back.
Second elite spec can be half (exact amount can vary) cost.
Third elite spec is quarter cost, and so on.
There is probably a bottom number so you can’t unlock an elite spec on a level 2. But on your 7th profession, who you clearly are not that invested in but would still like to try the elite spec, you probably don’t want to run around Queensdale doing “skill” challenges.
I can see why you said don’t use full zerk on an ele, but I’m not having any trouble on a ranger since I start with more health and toughness. It’s important to have a ranged weapon on swap though, many of the enemies have some strong anti-melee defenses like those hylek that drop poison fields at their feet. And on that note, I’d add take “condi removal” to your list.
Edit: I was unclear, I realize you said “if you’re having trouble”, I just think zerk is not the problem but rather being in ranged at the wrong time or being in melee at the wrong time.
