Guild Wars 2

Yes, I find it very unreliable. Sometimes the pet will even run over to you and stand on top of you laughing that he survived and you didn’t, all while not healing you a bit.

Well, if you guys are just forum lurking for updates, then you might as well not come back to the forum for a couple months.

TBH, I’m pretty thoroughly convinced that Anet pretty much has all their resources focused on new little events, upcoming expansions, etc., and pretty much no one working on class issues and fixing broken things.

I guess it’s a whole lot easier and more effective to let the players see you releasing new content than it is to go around fixing everything. I feel bad for the skeleton crew who is supposed to solve all those issues.

They actually remind me alot of Blizzard, to some degree. They seem very, very slow to get things done. Like how it took them close to two months to fix broken skillpoints, etc.

It’s mind-blowing how we have to download a 50+ MB patch nearly every night, yet hardly anything is coming from them… so much patching data for so little ^^

All that said, I haven’t quit, and I still enjoy playing ranger in WvW and stuff, despite its problems. But, I’m a realist, and I knew their patch would be way less than people were believing.

Props to EB for their absolutely huge start. Great job getting a jump on the rest of us and defending hardcore. Great defense. You guys have a massive presence tonight, it’s hard to gain much ground.

We’ve been fighting hard but you guys kept repelling us back out of our BL’s garrison. We did manage to get a few towers back here and there, but you guys aren’t giving much away.

As to HoD: Good luck! It looked like you guys were having a worse time of it than we were. Quite a big deficit for both our servers for just one night.

Signed,
Dragonbrand player

Wow, hadn’t even considered aggro being screwed up just from your stats/gear alone. If that’s true, that’s some really wacky game design.
I knew ranger aggro was a mess, but didn’t really know why.

I’d be interested in hearing some other classes testing this out to see if it works that way for them also.

There is also a set that gives just Power/Crit damage and Vitality or something with no precision, iirc, though.

I’m torn between torch and dagger for offhands(although I seem to use warhorn alot just for swiftness, even though I hate it).
I really like the burning and fire aoe from torch, but I think overall I like the dagger better for the extra evade + snare-bleed.

I wish they would synergize sword/dagger to where they didn’t both use poison though. Maybe make the dagger stab do bleed instead of poison, and turn the dagger throw into a “flaming dagger” or something. Throwing daggers-on-fire would be pretty fun.

Skar Hand.5037:

May or may not be coincidnece, but maybe they upped server caps a bit due to the free demo weekend…So people can play with their friends.

I recall then at some point saying “not to worry” about playing with friends you invite.

I actually did see one of the devs or CMs mention something about this the other day. So, that could be it. They said something about messing with server caps so that friends would be able to get in and play with you for the event, or something along those lines.

Yeah, it’s another unfinished, poorly fleshed-out system… just like 90% of the stuff in this game, it feels like.

Fact is, simple-minded people can’t think for themselves and all they can do is follow the pretty blue object. So, in a case like yours, where you aren’t willing to lead everyone, they don’t know what to do and freak out.

I think the way you are using it is fine. If people ask you and you tell them you are just leading a guild unit, they should say “ok” and move on.

I’m amazed at how much trolling you have received in this thread already. It just goes to show that the mindless zerg player can’t fathom any type of strategy or coordination beyond the entire team running in a giant circle chasing the blue arrow.

I don’t think Anet knew what they wanted to do with the commander system. It’s like they started to implement some type of system then just stopped after putting in the tome.

Well, I personally think the entire cat family is at the bottom, because of how quickly they go down with low toughness/vitality. They do have some nice F2s though.

Healing spring removes one with each pulse. There’s also a signet that removes a condition every 10 seconds.

Arlandino.7513:

Any word on when Thieves will be brought into line with the other classes people play in this game for WVW?

Just curious how long the rediculous imbalance is going to be allowed to persist

For a good while longer.

On that note, they have stated they fixed the culling/rendering issues for sPvP, etc., but they haven’t worked out a fix yet for WvW.

MeGaZlo.9516:

I hope they’ll give us normal damage, normal support spirits, normal signets, normal buffs from shouts, normal marksman, surv and bm traits and normal cond removal. Then they can even simply take this pets.

Even if they fix all this stuff up a bit, it’s still mostly useless, because every single spirit, etc. takes up a skill slot on the bar. We just have too many things fighting for the same spots, honestly. I feel like with having spirits and traps, etc., we just have too many class abilities we can’t even use. I don’t think you are going to find a ton of rangers running around with their entire bar covered in spirits, etc.
If you use spirits, you give up something better for escape/evasion, etc.

Something like all spirits sharing 1 button summon would be nice, but then you can’t control their abilities individually. So either they’d have to spam their abilities all at once, or something else.
Personally, I want to see some more little action bars added. Like the totem bar shaman had in WoW for spirits/traps.

Solid Gold.9310:

Yup unbelievable, Rangers are not allowed to gain an advantage by using the terrain, if you can call standing on a rock an “advantage”.

If I remember rightly, being higher in GW1 gained a Ranger extra damage, I always used that to my advantage.

It’s just stupid.

You know, I don’t understand why they don’t use the good features they had in GW1. You would think they’d take advantage of their own game features….

It sure would be nice to have a terrain advantage… but given the way arrows don’t even work on nearly level ground half the time, I’m not sure if it wouldn’t just produce more mechanical issues than we already have, at this point. Rangers having the longest range traited, combined with terrain/elevation bonuses would make archery feel like it had a purpose for sure.

Dark.6083:

Elementalist is the most engaging class by far. There’s just no payoff for the effort though, so even if you master all the buttons you’ll still be no better than the Ranger, Warrior, Thief, Mesmer, or whathave you. You just spend a lot more effort to so it.

Fun, but not rewarding.

^ – Eles use more abilities and swap skills more than anyone else probably. If you enjoy the constant stance shifting and using tons of abilities, ele is the way to go.

a) It does not matter if they target the same foes as you. It’s the same as other combo zones. You don’t have to stand in the combo zone to get the regen, you can fire projectiles while standing far away, as long as the projectile goes through the combo zone. Also, I think it affects people standing near the circle, not near you.

b) I don’t think the rejuv from healing spring stacks really, does it?(someone else can comment). It just fades and you can’t get a new stack until it fades, then you refresh it. So, yes it would always be 5s each or however long it lasts.

The best use I’ve found for longbow’s rapid fire skill is in WvW, for sniping downed players. It’s a nice quick long-range burst to take them down before their friends run over and revive them.
Obviously, ranger isn’t going to outdamage reviving teammates though, but usually a teammate of yours will drop an aoe or attack and scatter them, so even then it can tick the downed player’s health down long enough to keep them from getting up before the rezzers scatter.

It’s not particularly useful against living players since our master archers apparently aren’t skilled enough using their bow, after shooting it 30 million times, to lead their targets, and all the shots just fall behind a moving target. But, it’s great against downed players…

swilkers.5938:

Well are you in WvW or PVE?

He said he tells his bird to attack, so clearly he’s talking PVE… every ranger knows your pet would already be dead in WvW before you could give it commands

OP: The others are right, longbow as a finisher isn’t really it’s main purpose, it’s too slow to be an effective finisher(plus low damage at short range). Axes don’t hit very hard, but they are nice for the bounce damage and bleeds(condition damage).

I personally like the sword myself, it hits everything in melee range when you attack, and it’s a pretty solid finisher.

If you really like your axe, i’d recommend it as your 1st weapon, and have a sword/greatsword/shortbow as your 2nd if you are just using it to finish stuff off.

Stealth is also pretty buggy. There are alot of issues with people not appearing properly after stealth fades too, which you can probably find a million posts about in the forums.

I don’t agree it should automatically stick your face in the map screen. You need to be able to see if your teammates are around and can revive you, etc.

They really do just need what someone above mentioned, some type of death cam system. Either make it so you can’t see enemies, but can see your allies… they already have this in game, they call it “culling” when you are alive still
Or, they could make it so you can’t speak/type at all while dead… but this is too easy to avoid with voice chats and crap, so it wouldn’t completely stop spying.

I think making enemy players and such invisible while you are dead is really the ideal solution. It solves all those problems. It lets you still use your camera and look around for allies and ask for a rez, but not see/do anything else.

It was a thief, their downed special ability is to teleport away a bit. They also have some talents or something that stealths them while downed, iirc.

As far as damage, thief has a trait that gives them +50% damage while downed.(not sure if he was using that or not)

Frankly, damage output while downed is way too high. In PvP, this really needs to be adjusted. A downed player should never be able to take a healthy player down like that.
I’m all for, in a close fight, the downed guy still having a shot to win the fight if both were low health or whatever. But, if a player is still at half health+ there really should be no chance of dying to a downed player, it’s a stupid system in need of tuning for PvP.
A simple 50-75% damage nerf while downed would be nice.(Just for PvP, downed is fine in PvE)

I can see what you are saying, it’s pretty annoying to win and still be beaten. At the same time though, during sieges and such, it would be pretty annoying to have to run all the way across the map everytime an AoE takes you out if you have 30 teammates that can revive you.

I’d rather see them instead of making it so you can’t revive while in combat, they should just make it so anytime you take damage, it stops you from reviving… this would make the most sense to me. I mean, it must be pretty hard to doctor your teammate while you are lit on fire or getting stabbed in the back or shot in the head with an arrow…

Maybe even a short debuff when you are interrupted while reviving would be feasible. If you take damage while reviving someone, it interrupts it, and gives you a 5-10 second cooldown before you can revive again.
You know, they could always just make it so if you are reviving, it makes you super vulnerable. Say, for instance, if you attack someone who is sitting there reviving someone, it’s automatic crits every hit, or you do 5x more damage or something against them because they are an easy target.

There’s really several things they could do without disabling it altogether.

If you are satisfied with short bow, then there’s no real need. Longbow is pretty nice in WvW and for farming in PvE. You can wipe out an entire pack of mobs pretty quick with the AoE barrage hitting them, while farming.

I usually use longbow, myself. I’m not a huge fan of the shortbow with the flanking system it requires.

Longbow has some nice things. The longer range(traited) feels so much more freeing. The knockback and AoE cripple are pretty great. 10 stacks of vulnerability is nice since it’s about the only debuff we have(not a very spectacular ability though). The major drawback is how slow the arrows travel, and rapid fire could certainly use a dps buff.
Rapid fire + piercing arrows is pretty fun too if you are able to line up your shots.

I think shortbow is alot more commonly used in everyday life. Alot of people only use longbow for WvW.

You trade the leap evade for knockback, and trade bleeds for more direct damage. And only have the long cooldown AoE snare instead of a fast single-target snare. I usually have frost trap or something up, so the snare is never a huge deal for me, but it’s something you might have to worry about.

Gisei.5749:

Running time is important to the balance of the war. When a player is killed, he needs to be ousted for a few minutes, or actually gaining ground would be impossible.

If you wanna go faster, spec for more speed.

This is the sum of it, it’s to create a balance. If you could just respawn right by where you died, no one would ever win a battle. And, since they can’t just kill you off altogether and have to let you respawn and rejoin the fight, this slows down reinforcements, allowing one side to make progress.

With a bit of practice, you’ll learn to stay alive better in those big groups.
Tip: when your dumb teammate pack runs up and is attacking a keep and no one sets up any siege weapons, people are going to die. I’m amazed at how often I see people try to “siege” towers and stuff without any siege weapons.

Usually, like people said, your allies will revive you if you wait(unless your team gets wiped out or pushed back too far to reach you)

Perdan.1045:

xtorma.1283:

It requires you to think about how to engage, your chances of success, and the ramifications of not coming to the proper conclusion.

You would have hated the original everquest.

This one time in Sebilis, I died 5 times just to get my corpse back. That was fun.

Good ol’ Plane of Fear… Talk about some corpse retrieval memories.

Obsidian.1328:

As for weaps, I prefer sword/dagger. The “sticky” bug can be annoying but you get the timing down pretty good after awhile. And having 3 non-dodge evasions is nice.

Yeah, I love all those evades. I, personally, also find sword/torch pretty fun. The sword leap ability is pretty good for combo fields too. AoE healing with healing spring is pretty nice, you can do 2 leaps in the duration of a spring to get some extra healing power. With torch, you get that fire aoe/field.

Momo.6972:

They should of made better variety and have different pigs have different f2’s Such as:
I’d rather the warthog have charge. The pig should have a mud roll ability where they can evade attacks. Maybe even a squeel to stun the enemy.
The Pigs

i will have to say that pigs are the most useless pet, the forage ability is “neat” but in a movement oriented game the pig may drop something for me but i have moved way to far to grab it or what not, id prefer an attack or a buff thats useful…personally i wish i could use my jelly fish on land. the heals it has are awesome and its F2 is just pure beauty

Lol that’ll be funny as hell to watch. LAND JELLYFISH! or they can give as a land octopus and it’ll be like invasion of mini cthulhus
^ these posts are exactly right there needs to be land jelly fish in replacement of pigs… all kidding aside a land jelly fish that didnt even move and could be used as a paralyzation MINE would be more useful to me then the pig also i think the idea of pick’n me up a Jelly fish and throwin it down like a trap quite amusing if anyone else would think so as well!

They could, in the same vein as jellyfish, use breeze riders for pets. They are basically flying land jellyfish(similar models anyway).

I have played games where you could talk to opponents in pvp and it just makes people behave rudely and destructive towards eachother. A lot of emotion is tied to the gameplay. When you play for so many hours trying to win a weekly match up there will always be emotions.
I don’t disagree that it would open up some nice features. But I for one don’t have enough faith that everyone playing an mmo is mature enough.

Being able to talk to opponents in PvP is something I really miss. I understand why alot of developers disable this, but I wish they’d bring it back. I know there are alot of immature idiots, but it’s not that hard to ignore/report them if they rage on you.

The good times I’ve had talking to an opponent after a fight, have outweighed the trash talking. It’s pretty great to have an intense fight with someone and then be able to pay your respects, or to give tips/advice, etc.

Even if they won’t give general speech to opponents. They really, badly need to at least let us see player names. Even if you can’t talk to your opponent, knowing who they are and recognizing them would add so much. This is the most important thing, in my opinion, they need to add.
I think most of us would prefer to see names, rather than faceless opponent #58710. This really needs to change to create recognition and rivalries, etc.

Kuthos.9623:

Thidrank was amazing. My favorite times in DaoC was in that BG. I spent so much time there…….

Eternal Borderlands is pretty cramped. Needs to be bigger.

Aoe cap limit on player abilities needs to be gotten rid of as soon as they fix culling issues.

Or they could get rid of the downed state in pvp, but I dont ever see that one happening.

There’s no incentive for a “smaller” size group. You get a smaller group together and then you just get run over by the zerg. You can occasionally do some 3v6 or something like that. But whenever you’re outnumbered if you’re opponents are even close to average skill it’s going to be really hard.

I think bigger battlegrounds would help alot, more space between control points. It’s really dumb having siege that can fire from one fort into the next, for instance. Like firing trebuchets from the outlook garrisons, etc. and taking down walls with no risk.
More open space, in general, would be nice in EB though. It really does feel pretty cramped.

AoE limits are a terrible idea for PvP, let’s be honest. I have no idea why they did this. If people are dumb enough to stand in a clump when they see AoE firing, they deserve to be AoE’d to death. The way it is now, you are actually encouraged to clump up into it. I’m all for using my teammates as meat-shields, but that’s a bit much

I’m not sure if the removal of the orange battle swords would be good or bad. I think it would just break even either way. If you remove them, then maybe you won’t get rushed as fast, but at the same time, it’s near impossible to tell what’s going on without them. Especially with NPCs constantly attacking stuff and making it look as if half the map is under attack.

I’ve noticed, in general, that rangers have stupidly high aggro(particularly in Orr). It’s kind of sad since our damage usually isn’t that high. But, I’m talking even with other players attacking, not just pets.

Maybe there is some sort of proximity aggro system. Or maybe ranger’s just have super high aggro abilities. I’d love to know.

Also, dying does not seem to clear your aggro count. I’ve died from that crazy ranger aggro, then people have resurrected me, and immediately found myself back on top of aggro and being attacked.

I personally believe rangers have built-in high aggro on their abilities, or that the AI was designed to target rangers for some reason.

AlexRD.7914:

1) Reduce entangle chance to a 20% success rate. Rooting someone for 20 seconds is not fair, even though they can kill the roots. Some people actually don’t know you have to kill the roots so i think its unfair.
…

Bit off-topic, but, I’ve noticed alot of times when I’ve been hit with the binding roots that for some reason I can’t attack them at all. If my pet is alive I’ll have him come attack mine, otherwise it’s AoE or bust. It’s almost like the root is behind you and you can’t turn to face it or something.

BAEK.8561:

Personally expecting Signet of the Hunt to give 25% movement increase. Thieves get it. Why can’t we?

I’m hoping for that… not expecting, but hoping. If I can toss my stupid warhorn in a bag and not have to run around with it in my hand all the time, I’ll be happy.

Well, for starters, the game is designed so that warriors aren’t just a “melee” class.
That said, it is kind of sad that rangers have the weakest ranged damage.

Thieves, warriors, etc. all do way more damage with ranged. The only actual advantage rangers have over the others is that they have(at least with traits) slightly more max range.

With thieves having the handy bouncing arrows and cluster bombs, and warriors having bleeds and huge burst and kill shots, it sure does make ranger abilities feel very mediocre.

Rangers are like a far-shooting BB gun, while the others are slightly less far-shooting shotguns(thief) or elephant guns(warriors).

Arekai.5698:

Makes you wonder why people still play their Rangers.
When i come across newcomers and they play ranger i already whisper them to better switch classes before they quit the game at level 80.
Those 16 bullet points are nowhere what is needed for Ranger. Probably 80% skillinfo fixes.

Well, bullet points is pretty vague.

But, what worries me is that I haven’t seen JonPeters or anyone specifically mention ranger damage at all(I could have missed it). All the signets and bug fixes are great and all, but between our useless pets and super low damage scaling(compared to other classes), fixing signets and shouts isn’t likely to help us in the grand balance scheme.

I do appreciate “quality of life changes” and bug fixes, but I hope they are doing some more impactful things as well.

I think an extra mini-bar, similar to the pet bar that Rangers have, specifically for Trap skills, would be a nice addition, and help free up some clogged utility skill buttons. This would be a great help to Rangers, and perhaps Thieves as well, since they also have several traps.

That way, Traps become much more usable and convenient, and don’t block out other types of skills that are often more demanded on the action bar.

Kudzu.7569:

The game would probably look really great through a first-person perspective, though it may or may not mess with my engie’s grenade targeting (I have that target-where-your-cursor-is option enabled). I would definitely love to see a toggle for it put into the game though; it would be especially helpful in tight places where you can’t quite get a good grip on your camera anyway. It’s also fun to occasionally get your character out of the way and just look at the world.

Absolutely agree. GW2 has some of the biggest, most beautiful cities also. It would be nice to roam around and actually see them from an immersive perspective. I’m really amazed they don’t have a basic toggle button for this. They don’t even really have to do much with it(animations, etc., if they don’t want to). It’d be nice to just have the camera setting.

Focksbot.6798:

I don’t hate my ranger, but when I play with my lower level thief, mesmer and elementalist, they just seem so much more versatile, with a lot of fun/interesting moves.

The most painful things that ranger lacks, for me, are realistic escape options and speed. In PvP, I just haven’t found a way to disengage from a battle when I’m outnnumbered. I can use shortbow 3 for swiftness, activate the signet of stone for invulnerability (a level 30 trait transfers its effects from your pet to you), and a drop spike trap, and I still get chased down every time. Thief, mesmer and elementalist all seem to have stealth and speed options that actually give you a shot at getting clear.

I think this is one of the biggest problems we have. Ranger is a class where escapability is mandatory, and we have very little of it. Thieves and Elementalists and Warriors all have some nice movement speed boosters, for instance, that don’t rely on specific weapons to be equipped.
If you want any type of movement buff as a Ranger, you are pigeon-holed into equipping a warhorn all the time.

Another issue with escape/mobility options, is that they all take up a slot that could be better used for other stuff. All of our traps take a slot on the action bar, the 10% movement speed one does, lightning reflexes is another slot(I love this skill, personally, and can’t take it off my bar).

I personally wouldn’t mind seeing some type of “pet bar” for traps, instead of having to stick them in skill slots, but I’d be more interested in movement speed options. I don’t like being forced to carry the warhorn in my hand, and 10% is a joke when everyone else has more, and better.

My other major complaint is sieges. That blasted Obstructed issue whenever you try to shoot someone/something during a siege is just ridiculous. I don’t want to leap up onto the outside edge of a wall(completely exposed) just to shoot at the attackers or their rams, etc.

Super long cooldowns on those elite skills drives me nuts, as well.

There’s other issues people have mentioned in this and other threads, as well, such as long-flight arrows being easy to dodge, pets having to stop to attack(this is so dumb), low burst, etc.

But, still I really like the overall style and feel of the class. It just needs some tweaking to balance it out a bit better. A really fun class that should be fantastic if they buff up/tweak some things.

I’d just be happy if I didn’t have to leap up on the side of the walls where everyone can hit me to shoot down at the guys sieging the gates. You would think an archer wouldn’t have to climb outside of his own keep walls to attack people below.