Guild Wars 2

I always wonder why Anet never takes a look at traits with these balance patches. Those boring cooldown buffs/nerfs won’t do much to improve the quality of the game (and so build diversity). I can’t say Im unhappy with this patch, but it is just way too poor if you consider the amount of time they had to implement some REAL improvements.

Finally some SB improvements that are worth it. Mainly the buff on #3 is important.

No new amulets

Aomine.5012:

Ghotistyx.6942:

This is a good change. I’ve always been a proponent fit lowering base and increasing scaling to make specialization more important. There now will be distinct differences between healing druids and non-healing druids.

The difference is like 2 times or more already lol…

95% pvp and raid druid use healing power because without it, your heal is insufficient.

Not true. For a dps build (lets say Marauder for example), the healing capabilities are very good.

Indeed, basically every meta build at that time used cele amulet. I don’t think they will implement it again, but if they do, they have to add a lot of other amulets as well.

They should have brought the old capricorn map back into the game, but with the under water node on land. The map in general was actually good I think. But no, lets not bring back under water combat into PvP.

If they do so, that might mean that they need to add more amulets with healing power.

What a topic. Totally ignorant of the fact that a ranger has the only profession mechanic that can be shut down fully by an enemy. Also they often just melt in teamfights.

I don’t think its because its a 3-stat combination. It’s because most 3-stat combinations are just bad (for example with ferocity without any precision).

You could try something like this my friend:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBHhZakRFKXxuVwfF4axCjg5E6KdnOmCwlLAA3Unqd1SceaA-TpRHABhs/AAHBgAeAA3XG42DBwAnAAA

Im testing this one atm, it seems to do quite well. Tip: try to combine the blast finishers you have (warhorn #5, staff #3, CA #3) effectively with your water fields (healing spring and staff #5) and poison field (vipers nest).

Yes please. Start by removing ‘’if you take falling damage…’’-traits.

Yeah, agreeing with this. This amulet system has a lot of flaws. There is a huge lack of certain stat combinations (for example condi dmg – healing power) and an overabundance of useless stat combinations (for example ferocity without any precision). Even during the Celestial Amulet era there seemed to be more build diversity possible.

Blighters Boon really needs a buff indeed. But I don’t think a 50% increase in gained health will solve the issue. It might be better to make it as it was again, in which buffs from allies also triggered this trait, but then with a lower health gain modifier than we have now.

Tragic Positive.9356:

HeadCrowned.6834:

Hmm that could be optional yes, but then the spike trap probably needs to be altered as well. Most hard CC-options we have are already power-damage oriented (glyphs, longbow, GS, axe offhand) so removing the CC from the spike trap (condi oriented) would be a shame I think.

Trap-oriented play-style is mostly WvW related, yes?
Giving Spike Trap a brief daze to keep Ancient Seeds proc, and reducing CC accordingly (from 45 to 30?) could do, what do you think ?

I mean, it’s not like you’ll go for condi trapper build in PvP theses days. That’s a suicide. And this way, power builds have only 1 option for utility trap, and that’s … bingo – a condi trap.
So by having Frost Trap as a hardcore utility dedicated trap that both condi and power builds can use would definitely be worth the nerf to Spike Trap in my opinion. And spike trap could still be used for condi bombing with the daze.
(I would be willing to go that far as to suggest even more of a nerf to spike trap – to change knockdown for 2-3 second root that would keep you in traps – being it a massive QoL improvement for Trapper builds)

Changing the knockdown to a daze is reasonable yes

Other utilities that still need some love:
- Signet of the Hunt
- Glyph of unity
- Glyph of empowerment
- Muddy Terrain
- LR
- Spirits
- Sharpening stone

Tragic Positive.9356:

HeadCrowned.6834:

Increase damage modifier by 100% on Frost trap, and add Weakness of 6 seconds as well.

I always thought Frost Trap was supposed to be the one with knockdown, tho.

Hmm that could be optional yes, but then the spike trap probably needs to be altered as well. Most hard CC-options we have are already power-damage oriented (glyphs, longbow, GS, axe offhand) so removing the CC from the spike trap (condi oriented) would be a shame I think.

Increase damage modifier by 100% on Frost trap, and add Weakness of 6 seconds as well.

Actually much more amulets might be a solution to a few things, for example reduction of a ‘’tight meta’‘. It will allow basically every class to come up with a strong build, not leaving a few professions in the dark as has been the case since ages. Although it won’t nearly fix everything thats wrong.

Didnt watch the video yet, but thumbs up on beforehand by playing and trying nonmeta-ish builds.

EnderzShadow.2506:

HeadCrowned.6834:

You can also try a wanderers build with skirmishing/wilderness survival/druid and shortbow + axe/dagger. Really fun to play with the bleeding chance on crit trait + sigils. High damage output, but not viable in higher levels of pvp.

Without a gs, a staff or a 1h sword, how do you ever escape?

That seems to be the issue with condi builds and rangers in general. They aren’t tanky enough to take dmg in melee range. Condi builds, even less so. That always lead me to believe you need an escape route.

And even though I said all that, I’d be interested in the wanderers build if you don’t mind dropping a link.

There are multiple variants ofcourse, but you can try something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV3YjEqQJL2wCusAXLWMEM4s6YNtyEAGdlum3VwqFUyzSD-TZRFABsdBASZ/BAeCAJcQAOvMAA

Bleeding output can reach very high levels, but survivability is low. Basically only participate in 1v1 or 2v2, or sniping with shortbow from a good distance.

You can test it and alter the build to your preferences. Some suggestions:
- Take beastmastery over Druid, with Wilting Strike and Beastly Warden. Pick the Eagle as your pet. This pet has a very low cooldown on its F2, which applies even more bleeding + basically perma weakness because of the wilting strike. Beastly warden can cause a nice interrupt when applied a good stack of bleeds. Although you should take WHaO and resounding timbre, otherwise you wont have enough swiftness (cuz you lost natural stride from the Druid traitline)

- without thieves on the opposite team, you can consider sharpening stone/signet of the wild/spike trap/vipers nest over signet of stone. Spike trap might turn out as a valuable alternative to interrupt heals/blocks of the revenants warriors or mesmers. Although the cooldown is quite high.

- spare QZ and LR to get out of nasty situations, unless you really need their condi cleanse.

Condi druid in PvP is less effective than power based damage druid. Main reason for this is the removal of the settler amulet a while ago. Im testing a condi druid build at the moment, I might post it here next week. It is quite fun to play, with a better damage burst than regular druid, but also much more vulnerable. I wouldnt recommend to use the druid traitline without using staff, but signet of the wild and/or dolyak runes might compensate. Problem is; u need a condi duration rune so dolyak might not be a good choice (didnt test that yet).

You can also try a wanderers build with skirmishing/wilderness survival/druid and shortbow + axe/dagger. Really fun to play with the bleeding chance on crit trait + sigils. High damage output, but not viable in higher levels of pvp.

Necro: Axe/Focus/dagger offhand/Greatsword

Ranger: Axe/Axe offhand/warhorn/shortbow

If you saw someone try these: it was me.

Unholy sanctuary with a berserker amulet is just essentially bad. In a bit of casual PvP it might be fun to play power necro, but a little higher among the ranks you’ll eventually get destroyed.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

HeadCrowned.6834:

The point is that they implemented a new map, something that almost no one was really waiting for. Creating and testing a new map costs quite a lot of time, while some good old never-used-weapon attacks are still the same as years ago. Anet has very wrong priorities when it comes down to PvP.

You do know that the balance team is different from the design team that pushes out new maps and so on right? They are most likely working on both simultaneously, and they have a timeline they stick to, every quarter they put class balance with the major updates, while small things like a new map and polishing go out in the smaller updates

I do know that. But that is a wrong allocation of resources. A new map is not a ‘’small thing’‘. Put less people on the ’’PvP-maps design team’’ and more people on the balance team.

The point is that they implemented a new map, something that almost no one was really waiting for. Creating and testing a new map costs quite a lot of time, while some good old never-used-weapon attacks are still the same as years ago. Anet has very wrong priorities when it comes down to PvP.

Good suggestions.

Most damage from the Meta Druid build will come from its pet. Watch out for the teleport/flurry skill of the Smokescale pet, it will hit you many times and pretty hard. The other dangerous one is the spike barrage skill from the Bristleback pet, avoid that one!

You’re starting off wrong when you consider the SB a ‘’team damage support weapon’’.
The weapon has zero support, AoE or escaping capabilities. It is a 1v1 weapon, but one that is designed badly.

Supreme.3164:

HeadCrowned.6834:

Well, the man has a point. Although CA is actually the broken thing of Druids, not the Staff. If you increase the cooldown on staff #3 the weapon is just fine.

Problem is even DPS druid ( rare sword/warhorn/LB or similar variants ) use CA and the rate at which CA refill for them is slower respect to Bunker staff druid.

Now you could either link pet stats to ranger stats ( technically challenging or something Anet is unwilling to do) or you nerf the staff making it harder ( but still better than normal dps druid) to refill CA bar

Non-bunker variants can also quite easily fill the CA bar, as they get the same amount of healing ticks with their staff and regen as a bunker variant. The only thing that would make a difference is the use of the dolyak rune. So it is not necessarily the staffs fault that the CA bar fills so easily, it is the fault of the CA bar itself.

nicknamenick.2437:

HeadCrowned.6834:

Well, the man has a point. Although CA is actually the broken thing of Druids, not the Staff. If you increase the cooldown on staff #3 the weapon is just fine.

Btw, (posted this on wiki also some months ago) but the AA on staff does around 20-25% more dmg compared to tooltip..
So even a bunker druid does pretty good AA dmg with non reflecting projectiles (beams..) they count as single melee attacks also so they break block skills like counterblow and are great vs blind because the pulsing..

Ow and they cant miss/strave or strafe? sorry bad english..

So a pretty kitten good AA attack for sure :-)

The staff AA is very decent indeed. But not really out of line in my opinion. Besides, nerfing it would also hurt non-bunkering builds, so we get even less build diversity. The ranger has no useful autoattacks on any other weapon, it would be quite unreasonable to nerf this one as well. Don’t forget: almost all druids use Menders amulet, an autoattack in combination with 1050 power and 560 precision that hurts a bit is not really extraordinary.

They need to make the shortbow a full-condi weapon in my opinion. We already got plenty of ’’hybrid’’ stuff across all professions. Remove the attack-from-the-side requirement on the autoattack, and make it a standard bleed every second arrow in a chainattack for example.

nr 2 is fine.

nr 3 sucks, rework this to quickness or some sort of dodgeroll backwards. At least something you can escape with.

nr 4 sucks as well. Add burning or confusion. At least a damaging condition, or chill is an option as well.

nr 5 is fine.

Well, the man has a point. Although CA is actually the broken thing of Druids, not the Staff. If you increase the cooldown on staff #3 the weapon is just fine.

The problem with necro traits and GS since HoT is that they were kinda designed in synergy with the Reaper Grandmaster trait that makes Chill do damage. Although short sighted Anet just nerfed the Chill damage trait (Sorry, forgot its name) but didnt alter the rest.

Nice suggestions, although I think we are in a more urgent need of a non-bunkering weapon. A focus as an offhand damage weapon or a scepter as a mainhand damage weapon would be most logical imo.

The mistake that you make is that the Pro League live events are largely sponsored by other companies, who will stop sponsoring if there is a lack of live events. PvP is probably the most anticipated part among streamers and viewers, and as a company I would enhance PvP leagues and events to make a better name for yourself in a gaming world full of rivals.

Last big patch, Anet updated and improved some of the non-HoT pets that barely were used anymore (at least in PvP). This was a good step, however the HoT pets still seem to be better. Another possible improvement for those pets (and the Wyverns/Tiger as well) will be discussed here.

One of the more powerful traits the ranger has, is Beastly Warden, where the pet taunts its enemy if its F2 skill is used. This trait is quite original and fun to use, and not so boring as many other GM Ranger traits. However, in PvP the taunt is quite often missing, reducing its effectiveness heavily. The reason behind this, is that WAY too much F2’s are ranged attacks or leaps. The trait triggers when you press F2, so the leap still has to be made. The 240 radius the Beastly Warden trait posesses is often too small for any ranged F2, so it is rather useless to use with ranged pets. Nearly all pets have a ranged F2. The pets that do actually well with beastly warden are birds such as owl, which have some sort of delay on the trigger of the beastly warden trait after pressing F2.

Ranged pets only will be useful with beastly warden if the radius of the trait is enlarged, however this would be too powerful. So this quite hard to alter, but pets that have a leap F2 could be enhanced. The taunt should proc at the end of the leap, not at the start. This might open up more pet options and therefore cause a little more build diversity. For Ranged F2 pets, it could be an option to make the trait trigger at the first attack after the F2. This would open up for moas, canine, wyverns, drakes and bears.

Another option is to transform certain ranged F2’s into melee/close range F2’s. For example: make the Black Moas ‘’Dazing Screech’’ a headbutt instead of a shout.

Thanks for reading

A lot of things (speaking from a PvP perspective) need a nerf actually. The easy road that was taken by Anet was to remove a lot of amulets, but that is clearly ineffective. Lots of things got out of hand, such as blocks, invulns, heals, CC, Boons, etc. They all need nerfs to get to a ’’normal’’ and clear level. We need less chaos and more viable builds that don’t depend on these chaotic things.

Every subject that is being adressed in this topic needs a nerf imo. There is too much CC, too much Stability and too much AoE. Everything became too much in PvP.

Im not really going to dig deep into this build, but two small condi cleanses seems to be too less. Considered Rune of Lyssa? You can handle this one as you have 3 stunbreaks, so its not too necessary to use Strenght of the Pack immediately at the start of a fight (so you can spare it to use as a condi cleanse or better: conversion actually). This will also give you extra precision, which you will need more than the ferocity of the Rune of Rage. You can already have a 100% fury uptime without the Rune of Rage, so this is not a reason to keep it.

Yeah it is better than entangle.

I would make it 50% and then we have a deal.

Druids can get focused quite easily in teamfights. Druids shine better in 1v1s and 2v2s.

Basically the HoT-specs give too much of everything, and indeed including defense. Also just too much CC, too much boons, too much condi’s, too much healing. It seems that every profession is getting less and less an individual role; the potential of doing damage by necro’s, mesmers, guardians, warriors, revenants, rangers and engi’s is just too high as their survivability is also high.
You got to be a ‘’can-do-it-all’’ for the meta, which shouldnt be the direction that the game wants to go to (as can bee seen from for example the removal of the celestial amulet). It is not surprising that Thieves and Eles were barely used in the recent pro league matches: they aren’t can-do-it-all professions at the moment. It makes the game much less interesting.

Yeah, although this was already possible with for example a staff/LB setup. But the warhorn buff definately stimulates build diversity a bit, so its good.

I like the change. Its a good step forward in my opinion. I like the warhorn as a weapon in general, but as said: the buff is not large enough to make it meta-ish.

Axe #4 is badly designed yes, a pity. This skill has a good potential but the radius is way to small for a ground targeted skill. You could enlarge the radius, but I’d rather make it a single target skill (so no ground targeting at all) with maybe a little reduced range.

Hmm if you are running 3 glyphs I would go for Verdant Etching. However it is doubtful whether its a good idea to run those 3 glyphs. There are also other ways to get some condi cleanse (sigils, runes) so you dont necessarily need 3 glyphs for condi cleansing. You could try a build with Celestial Shadow, just the Daze glyph and then two other utilities (signet of renewal for example). The thing is, you play with 2 longranged weapons (staff and longbow), while all the glyphs are used in short range combat. That does not synergize so well.

This topic… lol.

Kaffeglass.5371:

Fix:
-Remove all passive procs/buffs, make everything active gameplay
-Decrease condi dmg by 30% for every class.
-Make more builds viable (Example : GS on necro , D/D on thief)

Decreasing condi dmg by itself by 30% won’t be a good idea. It is better to fix the survivability and sustain of certain condi classes/builds.

Warhorn #5 is fine, #4 is not. Let’s not forget that.

Rangers dps is fairly weak. It relies too much on AoE and damage over time. We lack real burst skills and utilities. If you take a look at our utilities, probably Sick Em has the most dps potential as an individual utility. Now that is quite an illustration.

StickerHappy.8052:

HeadCrowned.6834:

StickerHappy.8052:

HeadCrowned.6834:

No, don’t make it AoE. We need a single-target burst or dps skill.

why not AoE that hits hard? like meteor shower, you both get the benefits that you want with 1 stone.

Because we already have too much AoE skills in-game. And then I mean for all professions, not only ranger. Almost all our dps skills are actually done over time or is an AoE in which the enemy has to stand in; traps, glyphs, LB #2 and LB #5, Torch #5, Axe #5, etc. We need a more reliable ranged 1-hit burst skill. With all the blocks, invulns, projectile hate and movementimparing reduction traits we barely get to land all potential damage from skills like LB Rapid fire. With a single hit burst you can do something about this.

SO lets make it like this

Damage Damage (16x): 612 (3.75)?
Range: 1,200
Unblockable
Deals 1 random condition each hit
Blind (1s)
Cripple (2s)
Vuln (2s)

Same coefficient as rapid fire.

I’d rather make it an attack that is a 1-hit. So the birds peck your target all at once and then that’s it. Then you could add something like 5 stacks of invuln and 5 seconds of blindness to it, and then we will be having a nice skill, if the base damage is improved ofc.