I agree Belzebu, but I also think this is a good opportunity for them to make the pets, you know, actually good. If pets get some kind of damage buff, better attack tracking, and an upgrade to the AI they work with, a CC focused weapon would essentially hold enemies down while the pet beats the hell out of them, and it’d help make up for lost damage by going for a supporty role.
That’s just my own speculation. It’d feed in to the druid providing support though, so you could do that even while solo.
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I’m gonna say to hold off on that judgement, Quark. From what we’ve heard from the devs (including Colin Sohandsome himself) it appears they want healers and tank type roles to be more present in the game, and are using new enemy mechanics as well as the Elite specs to help involve those sorts of things.
Based on the datamined staffs on reddit, there’s two new staff skins that have been introduced – one that’s basically a bo staff, and one that’s rather spiky. Apparently, the spiky one is the druid staff and the bo staff is the thief spec staff.
As far as usage goes, it would appear that druids are a type of caster.
After 3 years still my pet finds some really strange paths to chase foes sometimes.. Sometimes i find myself screaming at it “JUST GO STRAIGHT YOU STUPID BURDEN”..
What really scares me with Druid specialization is if an option where you merge with your pet comes out i strongly believe that its the end for every other thing Ranger has..
It would be like we were playing for 3 years a beta class.. And we can finally say “Ooooh! So thats how it is?”
well if we merge with our pet it’ll be for utility, not damage.
If we merge with our pet for utility, it will see no use in the current PvE environment.
Which is the best argument for them not doing it at all.
Ok, does Revenant Main-Hand Sword provide any dodges or cripples? It seems to be almost entirely dps (with the exception of a chill and a blink).
Also, did you adjust for Longbow range?
Revenant Main-Hand Sword provides a chill, extreme vulnerability stacking, and an invulnerability skill that stacks might, which is a good deal better than any other weapon in the game.
Your exception of “a chill and a blink” is two thirds of the weapon. Don’t be ignorant, particularly when including the entire main hand Ranger sword.
I thought they already confirmed that we would still have the pet “out” (correct me if im wrong).
Not directly as far as I know, but the Druid in the announcement trailer had an alpine wolf with him and Anet has gone on record stating numerous times that Rangers will never drop the pet.
Well Gman, I can see one way they could do it, but I don’t know if people would be happy about it.
Pet mastery could be the focus of the Druid. Fold the stats of two different pets into one (so if your two pets are a salamander drake primary and a jungle cat secondary, your drake gets all the cat’s stats added on) and make the F4 heal it instead of swapping it out and suddenly you have a horrifying bruiser of a beast that more than makes up for your own lack of damage, shifting the focus away from you and allowing you to focus on keeping everybody standing and buffed.
That’s just quick and dirty of course, as an example. Assuming they found a way to actually balance the double-pet (probably by only adding together the precision and power stats and then increasing attack speed and base damage slightly), it could theoretically cover any basic DPS loss by the ranger.
Alright, I’m also gonna hop on the “Stances Sound Cool” train, but with the condition that they somehow add to team buffing. The entire reason I prefer the idea of consecrations over meditations is because meditations don’t have a team buff aspect – if they had a way to do that with stances (say a trait that lets you apply your stances to all nearby allies) then I’d be all for it. I’d also seriously prefer if they weren’t transformations, for reasons mentioned in the opening posts.
Consecrations:
Consecrations are ground effects that provide a utility or buff to those within or behind it, taken from the Guardian Profession. Examples include pulsing stability, condition removal, healing, and reflection of projectiles. The Druid take on these would most likely be areas of buff and healing potentially with some counter-enemy utility. One idea is a plant that spreads spores that buff allies and debuffs enemies in the area it affects.
-Pros: One of the biggest complaints that plague Rangers is that they lack any form of decent support – Frost Spirit and Spotter are the only usable team support abilities Rangers have, and they’re crippled because Frost Spirit is clunky and Spotter is obviated by a good build + Fury. These would apply utility buffs to allies, potentially deal conditions or damage to enemies while active, and what’s more would do them in an area, allowing you to work with allies for the sake of providing buffs to the team and yourself. Even in solo setups, providing a buff area to your pet as well as yourself can create situations much better than if you couldn’t place consecrations – Versatility is power, after all, and the ability to place buffs in specific places is definitely versatile, as the Guardian shows us. Even when solo, the pet provides a target for your support abilities; the Ranger just lacks any truly decent skills beyond survival and signet abilities, so any viable skills that don’t come with inherent problems would help shake things up.
-Cons: This solves a few complaints about the way ranger operate, and I can’t think of any serious cons to go with them, beyond perhaps obviating some existing skills, and that’s not even an inherently bad thing.
Meditations:
A curious form of skill, Meditations are another skill type that comes from the Guardian. They focus on personal ability to survive, spawning the infamous MediGuard bunker and DPS setup, as they obviate the need for defensive stats
-Pros: Meditations would provide the buffing necessary for the Ranger to maintain a strong DPS level, and even include some extra mobility with them. they’re much like consecrations in this, but unlike Consecrations, meditations fail to address certain important facets of the Ranger’s problems
-Cons: Meditations are selfish, except in a few unique circumstances. They’re very much focused on providing you the ability to eat whatever comes laughing, but don’t actually provide any team support – chances are, druid meditations would provide their benefits to your pet as well, but that’s not enough to justify it when (for example) the Team’s mesmer is suffering from the immobilize, weakness, and poison you just cleansed off yourself. Damage buff? Yes. Survivability buff? Yes. Team Support? No.
Minions:
I’m probably going to be yelled down for even suggesting this, but yes, Minions. With the advent of AI improvements to the game, minions may well become viable as minions. The druidic version of this skill type would almost definitely be summing plant creatures and animals to do your bidding; perhaps you call a bear to distract your enemies while a wolf trips them, while an Aloe Seed heals you and your teammates and the sapling oakheart that takes its place as your elite smashes things.
-Pros: From a thematic standpoint, this fits. Charming animals is something Rangers can already do, and Druids are plant based mages from all that we know, suggesting that the charming of plant creatures wouldn’t be beyond them. From a mechanical standpoint, if the staff provides buffs to the Ranger’s ability to team support what’s better than taking your own team into a fight, in addition to your allies?
-Cons: Battlefield clutter can be a real problem. As cool as having an eagle peck out your enemy’s eyes while you have a pet eat their shins would be, most AoEs have a target cap of 5, and that includes buffing AoEs, meaning your minions would be competing for buff space with your teammates, and in many situations that’s unacceptable. On top of this, minions are classically very very stupid. Pets have shades of this, but at least if you’re worried about your pet doing something dumb you can pull it away from the target. Minions have no such option, so even with AI improvements could cause serious issues for a team (Though, in theory, they could be attached to pet AI so you can control them whenever you control the pet). Additionally, they’d be competing for space with other, more useful skill classes to be added to the Ranger (notably consecrations) and step on the toes of the already existing pet mechanic. Finally, Signs are pointing to engineers getting drone minions, and once again I seriously doubt that Anet is going to double up on skill proliferation.
This thread is made in response the current speculation regarding the Druid elite specialization for the ranger. Specifically, what we know is that the Druid will add a new trait line, bring the staff weapon to the profession, change the way the profession mechanic (pets) works, and add a new class of skills to the profession.
This thread is focused on the last of those; the Skills
As I see it, there are five ways Arenanet can take this concept, and I’ll go over the pros and cons of each.
- Physical Skills
- Weapon Kits
- Consecrations
- Meditations
- Minions
(As a disclaimer, I am personally against Physical Skills, Kits, and Minions, but out of respect for those that might like these, I’ll attempt to keep my bias out of the following post.)
Physical Skills:
Taken from the Warrior profession, Physical skills are typically control oriented abilities focused around using your body in a way that typically isn’t covered by a more esoteric skill type or the use of a weapon. This includes kicking people and shoulder-checking them, but the Specialization changes brought Rampage into the list of Physical Skills, suggesting transformations are possible with this skill type. Druidic physical skills would likely be transforming body parts into animal or plant-based features and smashing someone with them, or transforming wholesale into an animal.
-Pros: Rangers are not lacking for control effects – the problem is cleaving control effects, rather than single-target. Hilt Bash, Point Blank shot, and Canine takedowns are all single target, though the introduction of taunt as a pet specific mechanic has helped alleviate this slightly. Physical skills would add that class of control to the Ranger.
-Cons: Rangers don’t need more control to be effective. In fact, many would claim more control effects for the Ranger would be a bad idea, and I don’t believe lack of control ever been a complaint people have leveled at the profession, given the myriad other problems Rangers suffer from. there’s also thematic concerns that this idea suffers from – druids in Tyria are humans that ascended to become nature spirits, rather than the animal transformers they are in other games and worlds. Transformations also typically rid you of your profession mechanic and weapons, obviating something like 60% of all Ranger traits.
Weapon Kits:
Weapon Kits as utilized by the engineer are types of weaponry that you can quickly swap between for different playstyles; for example, grenades, a mortar gun, and a flamethrower. These weapons replace the existing weapon the character currently uses. For the purposes of a druid, these would likely be, much like the physical skills above; transformations in part of in whole to an animal or plant for the purpose of changing playstyle.
-Pros: A variety of playstyles would certainly increase the versatility of the Ranger class as a whole. A healing kit, a control kit, a damage kit, a tanking kit, and a buffing kit would all be useful for expanding the repertoire of what the Ranger is capable of as a whole.
-Cons: Kits presented in this way follow the same thematic concerns that are present in the Physical skills entry. Aside from that, there aren’t a lot of gaps here; a healing and/or buffing kit could easily cover team support, and the other kits could be custom built to deal with the other issues druids suffer from, and kits don’t disable the use of a profession mechanic like transformations do. Of course, that bonus goes out the window if these “kits” are indeed transformations with the serial numbers filed off. On top of this, there’s some speculation that thieves are going to be getting weapon kits, and I’d be shocked if Arenanet doubled up on Skills.
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Keep in mind guys, when the Mesmer shield was announced a lot of people went “I’m going to use the Wells, but I think I’ll stick with my normal weapon set”
All the classes that get an offhand are getting something awesome to make up for the limitation. There shouldn’t be a reason why you can’t be a Tempest with a staff.
+1 to Zenith. was just thinking how nice it’d be if my raven or drake had my runes and sigils.
Rangers are really popular as alts for PvE boss trains, but that’s why I clarified competitively. Effectively no one plays rangers competitively in PvE, WvW, or PvP. Pretty close to 0%, which is… disheartening.
There was a pvp tournament a while ago. Each class, except for ranger, was represented by at least three people. Often five or more.
Ranger had one.
United Chaos points that out rather well.
Movement is not defensive. It’s versatility, and versatility is power. The capability to actually do things and not be ludicrously predictable is power. Your DPS is 0 when you’re dead, and repositioning is often the only way to avoid that.
Every single other class can self buff to one degree or another – my necromancer can easily maintain 8 stacks of might with her auto-attack and nothing else because of the traits she has. if I added in the other ways she has to gain might, she can maintain over 15 with complete ease, and that’s only going to go way, way up once Reaper becomes available. self buffing.
A warrior, though? A warrior with a Greatsword can get a stack of might every time he hits if he builds well, while having the same base damage as the ranger. and, better yet, doing it while also providing that same stack of might to all his allies, and giving all his allies a flat +150 power. Better mobility as well, despite that supposedly being the ranger ‘thing’.
This isn’t a defensive issue, not by a long shot. With my ranger, in berserk gear, a rapid fire will deal about 5k-6k damage. An elementalist can deal that with a single hit during a meteor shower, which will be constantly pelting the field with hits like that for a fairly long duration. on top of this, that same elementalist can then swap attunements and heal all his allies while providing regeneration and clearing their conditions.
This is not, and never has been, a defensive issue. This is all about the fact that we simply cannot keep up in any way; defensive, offensive, mobility, or support.
This may no longer be relevant, but the ranger was at one point the second most played profession in the game, closely following warrior.
If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, this still holds true. Though I’m not sure if popularity of a profession has any bearing on how Anet conducts its balance.
A recent survey done by a user on Reddit got over ten-thousand responses. Rangers, according to that survey, are the third least played class, barely beating out Engineer and Necromancer, both of which are classically low population classes.
If you recall, Ranger was the preferred class of bots, suggesting that they hyper-inflated ranger numbers near launch.
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To say we need more dps when we are equal because of what is really a defensive issue is just beyond belief.
I just did an examination of this, like, three posts ago.
You are wrong. Very, very wrong. We don’t have the same level of attack damage any other class does and lack the buffing capability they do, for either ourselves or allies.
Don’t spread misinformation, please.
Speaking as an Ele main, I think the bigger problem is that Ele is just so utterly over the top these days. I actually think the Ele needs to be brought a bit down, rather than the Ranger brought up.
I’m pretty sure a bit of both is in order.
While I agree that Revenant sword appears stronger than ranger (and probably is) did you consider that this variation might be attributed to gearing, or are you assuming Zerk for both sets?
The second criticism is in regards to our most trusted, and hated ally. Our pets. The ranger as a class, and most pet classes in games (e.g. Hunters in WoW, etc.) will never deal equal damage to another class without their pet. This is a balancing point for our class. Hell when I played WoW in BC Beastmastery was the “meta” build for hunters and pets equated to ~60% of the class’s damage. Now you can argue that pets need a rework (they do) or they need to do more damage (not necessarily the case, just smarter AI, imo) but that is an entirely different argument.
Personally I believe that yes, on equal footing WITHOUT pets revenants SHOULD do more damage with their power weapon vs. our power weapon. While I’m not saying you are wrong and rangers are in a great spot (though we are arguably in the best spot we have been in years) your comparison is not entirely a valid one without considering our other source of damage.
Ignoring the fact that the Ranger Sword has the dubious honor of being the only auto-attack that can kill its user. Ignoring the usability concerns of skill #2. Yes, let’s look at pets. Let’s take a cat. Say, a lynx, to be specific.
The lynx, at level 80 and specced into beast mastery, will deal about 850 damage per hit at a rate of about 1 hit per 0.9 seconds. It’ll have about a 40% chance to crit (60% if you manage full Fury uptime) and deals about 1600 damage on a critical hit. This gives it a DPS of about 1300.
The ranger sword, assuming berserker gear, will deal about 600 damage base per hit, and hits at a rate of 1/2, 1/4, 3/4. This gives it a DPS at 50% crit chance, 1800 DPS.
This BARELY matches the DPS of a sword revenant, without taking into account the fact that the Revenant can move. Without taking into account that the pet can and often will die. Without taking into account any revenant Devastation traits, which will all increase its DPS considerably. Without taking into account that some people want a pet that isn’t going to die as soon as an enemy breathes on it. Without taking into account that Revenants cleave, while pets and rangers don’t. Without taking into account that a moving enemy cripplesany attempts for a pet to deal damage.
Ignoring all that? Yes. Rangers with a pet and Revenants have almost equal auto-attacks.
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I love playing my ranger. Have since I got the game a month after launch. She’s the only character I seriously enjoy playing out of all of them, but I have a level 80 character of every other profession because the ranger just doesn’t feel good enough to compete, and I keep drifting over to characters that can actually do things.
It HURTS.
All they need to do is make all minons ranged and that will make them proper viable again. Blood fiend and Bone Fiend never bug for me, only the ones with melee.
Thankfully, this problem should reasonably be fixed with the introduction of the new AI routines they’re adding in HoT
I play a MM build in pvp. It generally takes a minimum of three people or a staff ele to kill me.
So, yeah, it’s viable. Is it good, or amazing? No, not really. but it’s hella fun and can provide a nice distraction for teammates to take other points. I wouldn’t use it in a pve environment though, dungeon or no.
I’ll be using the Gallant Greatsword. I like that it looks so massive and heavy.
The entire dungeon up to that point is building on itself – use what you learned against the other facets and you’ll be able to handle it. Get creative, and don’t be afraid to use Marjory and Kasmeer as distractions.
Signets are basically artifacts that store spells for use by people without magical training. So any class that uses signets uses magic in some form.
Also I seem to remember something about warriors using magic passively to increase their strength and durability etc. Or maybe that’s just my brain making stuff up again. It does that sometimes.
Noteworthy is what precisely your armor stats mean – Power for a warrior, thief, or ranger is almost guaranteed to be strength. On another note, the thief? Shadowstepping is almost like a muscular action for them, which is why you can even do it while disabled. Hell, there’s monsters that turn invisible or shadowstep around, and that’s because of how magical the world is rather than some gaming abstraction.
Tyria is so suffused with magic that everybody has some level of enchantment to them. Warriors are just “nonmagical” in that they’re not actively utilizing spells.
So, I was watching the borderlands streams today when I noticed a monster called the Smokescale, which I initially mistook for a rock dog.
Now, this is kind of important because Rangers have been asking for the pets that ogres can tame that we can’t (Raptors, Rock Dogs, and Griffons) for a long time now. Griffons and Raptors already have “Families” like other pet types do. For drakes as an example, you have salamander, marsh, ice, river, and reef.
Every family has a minimum of three of that type of pet in them, with fish being the exception (having only two). Griffons and Raptors already have that, but Rock Dogs have lacked it, until now. If Smokescales are part of the same family, that means just one more and we have a new family of pets entirely, which would hint at it being a newly tamable type of pet.
If we’re to go off datamined skills, legends, and weapons, We still have sword (both main hand and off hand) to see, shield, and two legends to go, one of which is Shiro and the other is Glint. I don’t know about you, but Shiro screwing people up and being unable to be screwed up sounds pretty reasonable to me, and I feel the same way about Glint. So cool your jets on this until we have information on every skill that Revenants can get access to.
It does.
-snip-
Again, no, it doesn’t. So, Rangers become more acceptable? Great small change there. Utility-wise? We’re still the same as before. Nerfing Frost Bow won’t change much – Rangers will still be a Ranger.
Give the class a unique support, buff, or boon that can fit into both old and new PVE content – now we’re talking.
You need both. Without nerfing Frostbow, our mechanic wouldn’t matter anyway, so we need something extra over Frost Spotter and also a nerf to frost bow, then we can be in a good place.
We bring perma AoE fury, over 15 stacks of vulnerability uptime, 2 unique buffs in terms of 15% dps increase and DPS that only got higher ever since we were able to out-DPS warriors and guardians before patch (I don’t want to jump to conclusions because because I can’t say for sure if we do more DPS now, since I haven’t played Warrior or Guard, yet).
Do you really believe we “need” more? If I was to build a party without Icebow possibilities – I would definitely go for Warrior (banners), Ele (might), Ranger (unique 15% boost), Thief or Mesmer (skips / quickness).
As a matter of analytical and scientific results in terms of DPS and time economy. Not as a personal preference.
Warrior brings AoE perma-fury with less investment, while also giving out might. Engi can currently maintain 25 stacks of vuln by themselves while dealing more damage. Spotter isn’t amazing because a good number of builds are running with 100% crit chance anyways. We don’t bring anything unique to the table except a built in tank, which isn’t a necessity due to the DPS meta, and frost spirit, which isn’t super useful to begin with due to being completely stationary and killable.
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i think speced rightly, a necro can stay in shroud forever. perma tank ftw.
That’s impossible. LF regen from skills within DS is minimal, it will always drop from damage or skill use. You can drop in and out of DS for an extended period of time if you are fighting another bunker that hit like a wet noodle, but chances are you cant hurt him either.
Reaper is going to have a DS generator on auto-attack, that gets +life force for every enemy hit, and can cleave up to 3 enemies. I’d hazard to say that it’s actually going to become very easy to maintain death shroud for a long, long time.
Easiest workaround is to get fortifying bond, since that means if one of you gets fury the other will too.
Still, this is pretty stupid. Hope it doesn’t last.
beast mastery makes pet worse?
not directly, but we got a net 300 stats for pets pre-patch, and now we only get 150. Beast Mastery is overall weaker now.
I have no idea what you’re yammering about, rangers are as good as, if not better than, they were before the patch.
that’s my point. We’re just as good as we were before the pathc – which was when we were limited to one or two builds per gametype. Thing is, everybody else got buffed, and left us in the dust. that’s the issue.
The reason for this* is because the process for how Corrupt Boon works is currently this:
- Read what boons are on the target
- Apply conditions that are the “conversion” conditions for the boons read in step 1
- Remove boons.
For most purposes, this isn’t different from handling it instantly, but for the application of stability to fear, it means the Stability is still up when the fear gets applied.
*Speculation. I’m not a coder.
So, the more I look at things, the more I realize this class has fallen into the same position necromancers were in before the Specialization update. What happened there was simple – they didn’t have the ability to really keep up anywhere that mattered, because their class wasn’t really built to keep up in those situations. And then the trait change was patched in and suddenly they’re good at everything except for conditions. By and large, nothing changed – except that they got some support, some numbers shuffled, and the ability to access a full three trait lines.
The thing is, there was complaints before the patch went up. Specifically, regarding the Reaper, and how much it opened up. This may seem kind of strange, but it spoke of a larger problem – before the Reaper was revealed, there was one, maybe two good necromancer builds in each game mode. As soon as the Reaper was fully revealed, 13+ new builds suddenly showed up all involving the Reaper, because they covered problems that Necromancers had simply built into them. This brought to light the issues with the base necromancer, and led to them becoming what they are now – powerful in a large variety of ways, and genuinely fun to play because of it.
Are we in that position now? We have something like 3 or 4 builds floating around that are actually good – trapper, quick draw, and remorseless, with some build trying to figure out how to tank in a meta that simply doesn’t support it. People feel like it’s required to use Wilderness Survival because the defensive options we get from it (most notably Empathic Bond and wilderness Knowledge being in the same slot) completely outweigh the benefits of speccing for damage, with marksmanship or similar. Beast mastery is basically required due to it being necessary for several builds, and yet is bugged so that out pets are actually worse off than before when we’re focusing on beast mastery.
What this forum feels like, to me, is what Necromancer was before the trait changes. The same sort of feeling of dread, the feeling of almost not being worth playing, because it feels like the Devs don’t respect rangers as a class. It’s probably not true, but it’s endemic of a larger problem, and that’s that rangers simply aren’t good right now, and are probably worse off than before because while every other class was buffed, rangers are sitting at about the same level they were before the patch went live.
If they reveal the Druid to us and we suddenly start churning out builds because the druid actually solves the problems the class has, then it’ll become eminently clear that the Ranger needs the same treatment, or we’ll continue to fall into obscurity in the shadow of classes that are actually working as well as they should be.
Problem is, Unholy Martyr pulls the conditions off your minions too. you can theoretically get infinite life force in the right conditions because of this, but it’s a little counterintuitive to be trading them back and forth.
Reaper is interesting because it’s not locked into anything – Cold Shoulder makes tanking pretty viable, but since they’re chilled anyways, why not use Chilling Force to get might as well?
It’s what I’ve heard called a ‘brute’ style setup. Hits hard and is hard to hurt, but doesn’t get from place to place very well. Given the Necromancer’s other abilities, it’s actually an extremely versatile and powerful setup.
I’ve been running a minions + siphons build and haven’t see anything like this. If it’s true and I just haven’t noticed (entirely possible) then we’ll need someone to look into testing it.
Can confirm – I run a MM build and found that while my minions were pulling conditions off me, I was then pulling the conditions back off them. It was kind of a strange situation, but there you have it.
I was looking into it myself, regarding what you can manage with it. 2500 toughness is pretty powerful. If you want to go full tank, I’d recommend using the shouts that come with Reaper, but also Runes of the Trooper (they’re called runes of the soldier in pvp, for some reason). the reason for this is if you do, every time you use a shout the rune’s tier 6 benefit kicks in and gives you a condition cleanse, with no cooldown, in addition to all the other shout benefits.
After that, you’re going to want Chilling force and blighter’s boon in the Reaper line. chilling force makes it so that any time you hit someone with chill on them, you gain a stack of might – this may not seem like something important to you, since you’re going for a tanky build, but blighter’s boon is why you take it. every time you get a boon applied to you (such as through chilling force, or any number of your shouts) you gain 1% life force or, if you’re in death shroud already, you heal for 1% HP.
Reaper shroud #5 is a big cold field, applying chill to enemies and then hitting them more than once. Reaper shroud #4 turns you intoa necrocopter, hitting everything in the area – which are now chilled as well. Using this, you can apply boons to yourself something like 50 times in the space of 10 seconds, allowing you to heal healf your health while allowing shroud to tank the incoming damage you’re looking at. Additionally, keeping enemies chilled like this will work with your cold shoulder minor trait, which will reduce incoming damage from those enemies by 15%. It’s a win-win-win.
Conventional wisdom says you want Soul Reaping and Blood Magic as your other to specs. soul Reaping will make your shroud much more effective, and since it’s a whole second HP bar that means quite a bit for a tank. blood Magic, on the other hand, will allow you to add sustain to yourself while you’re hitting people – a little extra HP granted to you every time you hit is nothing to scoff at, since it really adds up over time. Vampiric aura and Transfusion can also be big helps to party support, allowing you to provide some healing for your teammates in addition to being nigh unkillable yourself.
Alrightso, yes, Minions are still idiots. It’s so hard to find good help. However, that doesn’t matter if you build for it right, and that’s what I attempted to do here.
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQEvAXoA1Q~
What we have here is the build I’ve been trolling people in sPvP with. In Blood Magic, you take quickening thirst because this build works best with a power setup, and that works best with Daggers. Vampiric presence increases the number of life siphons you and your minions are churning out. Transfusion, on the other hand, is meant to keep your minions alive, as any time you use Shroud Skill #4, you’ll start healing yourself (through lifesteals) and your minions (through transfusion) and if you’re smart about timing, you can even rescue downed allies.
In Soul Reaping, you’re just trying to get as much power as possible, and death perception really keys into that. No matter what, even in full tank gear, Death Perception will give you a minimum of 50% crit chance. Vital Persistence and Speed of Shadows are mostly just there to lower cooldowns in your shroud to a much more managable level, and to make it easier to maintain death shroud in high-risk environments.
Death Magic? Well, it’s minion master build, what did you expect? The traits are all there to increase the efficacy of your minions. There’s a choice here, though, and it’s dependant on how you like to play – I personally prefer Death Nova, as the minions do die and there’s no getting around that, so making them still be dealing life siphons and some extra damage even after they’ve been exploded feels important to me. Unholy Sanctuary, on the other hand, is a useful “Oh Crap” button that automatically activates if you’re about to bite it, and makes the build even more survivable.
Soldier stats, Runes of Melandru. Weapon set should be Dagger/Warhorn to maximize your power DPS, make use of Quickening Thirst, and have both a long-lasting daze an AoE that ticks for ten seconds to also give you more lifesteal. I currently am using Bloodlust and Water for sigils, but I’m sure someone’s going to tell that’s not as good as something else. All your skills should be fitted with minions – yes, this even includes the crappy Blood fiend in your healing slot. As one of the ranged minions, I find it actually survives a lot longer than the others, for the most part. The big choice for your utility skills is whether you want an Flesh Wurm or Bone minions – Flesh wurm gives you an escape teleport. Bone Minions give you extra damage and extra toughness due to counting as more minions on the field and, well, exploding. the choice is yours, but flesh golem, bone fiend, and shadow fiend are all basically required.
For playstyle, the idea is simple – when you see someone, you pull up a locust swarm and run over to start stabbing them, which will get your minions moving on them as well. If your minions are being AoEd, move into death shroud and use life transfer to proc transfusion, healing them back up. It’ll also likely make the enemy think you’re a priority target when they should be focusing on your minions, given each minion also adds into your toughness. This build excells at dueling because you’re so hard to hurt, and you regen when you are hurt, and it can even give some of the really OP builds currently in the meta (looking at you, grenade engi) a tough run for their money.
It does have a couple weaknesses though. First and foremost, if your minions are on cooldown, you’re lost a massive chunk of toughness and will feel it when people start smashing your face in. this generally only happens during AoE heavy fights or in teamfights, neither of which this build handles well. It’s tough enough on several levels that one-shot rogues are barely a blip on the radar, while Guardians and Elementalists are easily the worst matchup you can get, but can be worked with if you’re diligent. Just something to keep in mind.
Give it a try sometime. It’s hilarious watching people run to their doom trying to kill you.
So, I’ve recently played through the asura personal story regarding the joining of an order, and one of the most prevalent things that happens near the end is you find out that the Arcane Council thinks they can save Rata Sum by itself.
Now, this reminds me of something. It’s been stated before that the Musaat in the far past betrayed the other races of their time (the forgotten, the dwarves, jotun, mursaat, and the seers), which was the last time the Elder Dragons rose. They hoarded their magic, which left them more powerful than the other races at the end of the dragon cycle, but had also left the other four civilizations crippled and floundering, so that wasn’t really a high bar.
So far, I can easily see three different racial “problem” factions cropping up. First, we have the Sylvari and mordremoth, given how they’re connected to him. The second is that, in the wake of Gahaeron Baelfire’s death, the Flame Legion is looking for new powers and will likely leap on their chance to, and there’s a big fiery beast lurking in the depths right now. The third, of course, is the Asura and them potentially following the example set by the Mursaat, though that’s not really Dragon specific. A couple others that are much more speculative is the humans and norn. The norn… well, the Sons of Svanir are a problem, certainly, but that’s just more of a pervasive unfortunate circumstance than the others.
Humans as a problem race is where it gets interesting, though, because it relates directly to certain things that GW1 players are extremely enthusiastic about; Elona and Cantha. The reason I say these two is because of what we know of these two continents at the moment – Elona is currently in the undead grasp of the ancient lich Palawa Joko. It’s another human undead nation though, so I don’t think that’s as likely to be a problem, since we’ve already dealt with one.
Much more compelling of an issue, though, is the current Canthan government. The Ministry of Purity is highly xenophobic, and went about eliminating nonhumans from Canthan soil (as an example, the Tengu that crossed the sea and are now roosting in the domain of winds). Now, thanks to the Luxons, they have rather powerful naval knowledge (not the least of which is thanks to the siege turtles), so what I’m thinking is that when we try to go after bubbles utilizing ships to go after his minions and such, we get interrupted by imperial navy, and come into conflict with them. Much like the asura in this example, they wouldn’t be serving the dragon, but would be an antagonistic force all the same, as our ships wouldn’t just be manned by humans (if they accepted outsider humans at all) but by all five of our primary races. This would likely make them immediately hostile due to the Ministry’s influence, leading into a three-way-war scenario. One that the Tyrians would be having problems with because, despite having greater tech, they’d have suffered huge losses fighting the other dragons.
I don’t know, these are just my thoughts on directions things could go. It’d be an interesting and thematic way for things to go on, though, and adds additional involvement from the various races, the same way we’re looking at Mordremoth and Sylvari here.
There’s a few things to keep in mind regarding Druids in GW2.
The first and, in my opinion, most important is that druids are jungle mages. They work with the plants of Maguuma and specialize in growth and protection. There has never once been any indication that they are shapeshifters beyond their becoming spirits, and that’s less transforming their body and more shedding it. The datamined medium armor shoulder skin that is almost guaranteed to be the druid armor piece, which is basically moss growing on your shoulders, supports this.
Second is that Anet have classically been adamant about not giving an option to perma-stow pets, and I don’t see them changing that concept now. Changing the class mechanic into changing into an animal doesn’t jive with that.
Third, Arenanet has done its best to distance itself from its competitors in the past – thieves and assassins instead of rogues, rangers instead of hunters. That sort of thing. WoW has no way of playing the druid class without being a shapeshifter, and therefore Arenanet will probably attempt to do something completely different.
Fourth, What rangers perennially lack is support, and arenanet have gone on the record saying that they’re trying to give classes the combat styles they’re missing, as can be seen with cleave on the Reaper. Druid casting support is an excellent way to do this.
Finally, we’ve been begging for pets to be made useful since launch.
With all this in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that Druids will be a beast master style of play, with the pet(s) acting as a powerful bruiser while the druid stands back and keeps everybody alive, while applying CC to different enemies in the meantime. Possibly buffs and debuffs as well.
Probably the easiest way to solve this dilemma, and the one I’d be most willing to go for, is basically, if you set a skill as an auto-attack, whether it’s an AoE or not, it will always automatically fire at your target.
Look at the fire ele staff #1 for that. The Fireball skill is an AoE just like the Mortar kit will be, but it’s not ground targeted. This is what we want.
For the record – is there any reason we can’t go with a WS/BM/NM build? I get that you lose out on marksmanship’s DPS setup, but that’s only super relevant when you’re doing extremely high end damage dealing. It’d be an incredibly potent setup for keeping you and your pet alive in the face of overwhelming odds, which happens an unfortunate amount in pvp, where a single extra crit and a few vuln stacks don’t really matter much.
Don’t forget, the additional Healing Power also upgrades how much the pets heal you for when you use lick wounds while down. A small change, to be sure, but I’m certain it could mean the difference between a win and a loss in some situations.
On top of this, pets will actually have decent damage due to the overall +450 power and precision they’re getting. The +450 vitality and toughness are less important, but not by much, since you can now reliably let a pet tank bosses for you in all but the most difficult situations and PvP.
Only problem I see is that Invigorating Bond is still balls. 20 second ICD for such a low heal is terrible. if they either lowered the cooldown or increased the heal, it’d be useful, but as it stands now it’s pretty terrible.
On another note, this build should take Wilderness Survival (though, that’s kind of a given now). Wilderness Knowledge with Troll Unguent will keep you and your pet alive much longer and can clear conditions on you, and bark skin will make you and your pet even tougher to kill.
I’d like some new pets for sure.
Bat
Tiger
Crocodile
RaptorPersistent pet names.
Tiger and crocodile aren’t terribly likely – Tigers are Canthan creatures, and we already have drakes filling the Croc spot.
We do have Raptors, Griffons, and Rock Dogs though. All pets that can be tamed by existing NPCs on live that we apparently can’t get ourselves for whatever reason.
the thing about Mursaat is that they weren’t visible through armor infusion – they were visible through ascendancy giving us the gift of true sight, so no there won’t be that dynamic.
On top of that, Mursaat can choose to be visible or invisible at their whim. We’re seeing them because they want to be seen.
What? Are you trolling?
He’s not. According to multiple sources, you only get one key – which includes the base game if you don’t have it, but doesn’t give you anything extra if you already have the base game.
Okay, so, I just heard that when you buy Heart of Thorns in one of the packs, you don’t get two serial keys (one for the expansion, one for the base game). Instead you get a single HoT key that, if you apply it to an existing version of the game, you do not get the vanilla game as an extra in any way.
I have a boyfriend who wants the base game, and I want the expansion, so I was considering getting it and giving him the base game key, but if I can’t actually get the base key it’s simply not worth it to me, and Anet will be down a potential player. Potentially a lot of players.
Also, If this is the case, it’s false advertising.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Harnel.6810
$50 for the expansion is expected. Dunno what all the fuss is about.
It’s not JUST the $50… It’s $50 for the Expansion (without an additional character slot) and it includes the Core Game.
Thats the problem…. We already have the core game, we feel like we’re buying it twice and not getting anything to show for it.
Then your playing 50$ for the expansion and getting a free copy of a core game. Often you cant chose to not get a free thing in a bundle to drop the prices with out destroy the ideal of the bundle in the first places.
At this point most ppl who are complaining about this is more complaining that they are getting something for free.
Actually, they are not getting it for free. They will link it to their current account and the “free” core game will not exist. New players will be getting the core game for free.
Hold up
What?
Is that confirmed? I have a boyfriend that wants the game, while I already have the base game. I was thinking of getting it so that he could have the vanilla game while I get the expansion, but if that’s the case they’ve killed off a potential new player before it could even start.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Harnel.6810
I like how anet isnt responding to ANY of the community outrage here, and on reddit, and in game. No one is happy right now. I don’t know, I’ve sunk so much into this game but this is insane.
It hasn’t even been an hour.
PR systems take time, because you have to go to the people who write what you can and can’t say to the public, ask the company heads if it’s alright to do this, and then actually write up the response. I’d give it a few hours, at very most a day given the time of night in Seattle. then if there’s still no response, they’ve had ample time to say something.