Guild Wars 2

Wulf.5431:

This thread makes me so sad. Love the gameplay style and variety of both gs and sword, and was hoping to give gs a shot when pof rolled out. :C

If you love the gameplay style of GS you shouldn’t be worried about the DPS.

Vayne.8563:

Class forums for almost any MMO are never happy. That’s because the most disenfranchised people are the ones who post the most on them.

It’s the grass is always greener on the other side syndrome. If everyone is complaining the game is balanced. lol

Yep! A good compromise leaves everyone angry.

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

Kreed.2768:

Caeledh.5437:

I saw the traits in the wiki just now.

And so died the hope that shapeshifting might be one of the unrevealed ones.

That’s two for two in disappointing elite specs for ranger.

Considering how many different pets we already have and will get in the future, shapeshifting would have been too huge an undertaking to achieve visually. And why are some people so hung up on the whole shapeshifting thing anyway? I’m honestly curious here.

They want the game to sacrifice it’s identity so that they can play a ripoff WoW shrugs

Let’s not seriously pretend that our Druid wasn’t heavily inspired by WoW’s druid with it’s focus on healing and zapping moonbeams and lunar energy all over the place.

We even turn into a spirit wisp with our staff.

Are you sure it wasn’t DnD? Or literally any other Role-playing game even before the era of digital gaming that had Druids?

Even digital gaming… 1986? Actually, it was.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Hepatolith.6389:

Substance E.4852:

It’s reasonable to assume the one video shows her using the dagger on either a zerk amulet or some other power build based on the damage of worldly impact.

If that is the case, then I doubt the dagger will outpace sword in a power build even with near perma quickness from the trait and dagger 3.

I guess we’ll find out in a week here though.

It’s Pretty Safe to Assume she uses a 4-Stat Power Amulet + a Power Mainstat rune. She hovers over Crippling Talon for a second and it shows 594dmg and that’s pretty much the setup you get that dmg with (=

And that allows calculating the damage coefficients, giving

dagger #1.1: 0.4
dagger #1.2: 0.4
dagger #1.3: 0.4
dagger #1.4: 0.5
dagger #2: 1.0
dagger #3: 0.6

which can be compared to
sword #1.1: 0.7
sword #1.2: 0.7
sword #1.3: 0.8
sword #2.1: 0.8
sword #2.2: 1.1
sword #3: 0.8

You’d need activation times as well to compare DPS though.

Well, the cast times on Dagger 1-4 is the same as Sword 1-3.

StickerHappy.8052:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

borya.2964:

jcbroe.4329:

Still need the info on the last stance though.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Moa_Stance

This one ?

Looking forward to this one with Sigil of Concentration on my WH, Clarion Bond, Spiritual Reprieve and Dolyak Stance, assuming the stances stack and not cancel.

56s Swiftness, Fury, 20s 3xMight, 30s 3xMight, 6s Resistance/Prot, 12s Retaliation and 6 × 12s Stab with no concentration at all Then throw in Fresh Reinforcement!

Actually, not certain about those durations and how the sigil will interact with Moa Stance, but it will be a lot of boons for support.

Quick question, the boon duration on the toolip (i.e protection of 3 seconds) is before the actual 66% added right?

Also, can you give me a quick rundown on how fresh reinforcement works? (This without HaO or FB) or do I have to get either one? When i say how it works, I mean what is a quick and effective way to make use of this?

I’m not sure.

I think the best way you can take advantage of it is when you are running Nature Magic and a boon build, otherwise it is likely to be wasted.

Wulf.5431:

Having a hard time deciding if power or condi is the way to go. With power you could pick up Soften the fall and wilderness knowledge for more condi clear and fury. And then replace Skirmishing with Marksmanship and get lesser signet of stone, longbow traits, and all that opening strike goodness, which synergizes well with the fury everywhere. This is so hard to pick

I think Hybrid damage is going to be the best for SoulBeast.

Pifil.5193:

I don’t like this system either, charging us to identify the loot we just got seems like another, significant cash sink. The cash drops will have to be boosted a lot in order to compensate for this.

Why is this unidentified loot system any better than say having mobs drop a single type of “loot bag” for the expansion zones? A loot bag that can be salvaged or opened to drop one piece of loot.

Yes, it is a cash sink and cash sinks are absolutely required unless you want everything to cost more and more as time goes on.

Because it’s more affected by MF. If you have low MF, salvage the loot or sell it on the TP. If you have high, buy it and ID it.

DaShi.1368:

If they want us to complete hearts, just make the hearts automatically completed when we enter the map. Or make hearts interesting. But the point is that they shouldn’t be forcing us to do things like this just to manage loot.

They aren’t forcing you to do anything. The unid stacks so that makes managing loot even easier. You can just salvage everything and reap the rewards of the extra materials salvaging the unid gives you.

fluffdragon.1523:

Identifying gear made sense in GW1 when we could salvage upgrades off items.

That no longer exists, so unless they’re tacking on prefix/suffix upgrades to all gear in the manner of GW1 and conveniently didn’t tell us about it, then having random unidentified stuff thrown in seems like a total waste of time and bag space.

You realise you can still do that yeah?

jcbroe.4329:

…Also, do we actually know for sure that pet swapping is available to the Soulbeast? I’m not saying it doesn’t appear that way, but the footage we have didn’t actually confirm whether Beastmode is a mechanic placed on top of core ranger, or whether it replaces pet swapping, afaik, but would need info on this if we have it.

Follow up to that is; assuming pet swapping, does Soulbeast cooldown interact with the pet swap cooldown, or are they separate? Pet choices might vary if you end up getting “stuck” with 1 pet for a longer period of time than we’re anticipating…

I just hope that entering and exiting Beastmode counts as a pet swap for purposes of traits.

Megas.4980:

Posted an idea of a power ranger rework on reddit couple of days ago. Its aim is to make power build viable in raids. Check it out and share your thoughts about the matter if you’re interested.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6tb65z/rework_idea_make_power_rangers_great_again/

Have you tested Power ranger for DPS since the trait changes?

Henrik.7560:

A lot of valid points there.

The number 1 problem I find with ranger is that most of it’s autos are trash DPS. Take greatsword, so slow clunky and deals horrendous damage. Sword isn’t much better, its just slightly faster. Axe auto is ew. Longbow is powerful at range, but not so much in raids. However its auto at melee range still hits harder than a greatsword.

Mesmer also has this issue but at less they have phantaams.

GS is not a DPS weapon. It’s a utility weapon with powerful defense and CC. Sword is semi-DPS with evasion. Dagger on SoulB is looking to be straight up DPS if built right.

DeadTreeJig.6714:

The PoF demo was the first time I played my ranger after the patch and I really noticed the lost of condi removal from the SoR. A few have mentioned that it was useless, but as a solo player it was my main source of condi removal.

In PoF the first time I am was ablaze I ignored it as I usually do, then I notice I am loosing health quickly, then I notice I am STILL ON FIRE! “Oh yeah, they took my condi removal away”, I remind myself as I bravely run away.

I tried a few of the other removal methods, but they feel really cumbersome to me.

Also, the health regeneration that they moved to the SoR seems less effective, at least to me, but that could be because I am STILL ON FIRE!

For the rest of the weekend I played the demo with my reaper. I think my main character has just changed.

Power LB is better than ever and should make light work of anything in open world.

Wulf.5431:

Curious to see how predator’s cunning works. It seems to have no icd, does it work for each application of poison? If so, poison volley especially would be a pretty big heal, especially in a group if you took piercing arrows trait…

FYI, Poison Volley pierces baseline.

Nilix.2170:

You’re just rolling greens and these green rolls just so happen to be GAMBLING TICKETS that you can throw 1.68s at for the chance at something better than a green. Now, if you roll loot, achieve yellow, but it comes out as an unid in the same color as the rest of your unids, then you’re losing something. But I highly doubt this is being done.

That said, it costs 4.2g to ID an entire stack. At current prices, you’d have to recover 12 ectos from the result just to break even. Comparatively, those using the Copper-Fed-Salvage-O-Matic would only need to spit out 18 Silk Scraps out of 250 items to surpass the 7.5s cost.

A small sample size of 85 salvaged unid. Then 85 ID’d & salvaged.

Sojourner.4621:

Dragon.8762:

I don’t mind this system that much. A lot of other games do something simular, like identifying loot in destiny and Diablo 3. But I don’t like the fact that in order to identify, I need to complete a heart and talk to an Npc and it cost money per identify.

If they get rid of the heart requirement, lower the cost per salvage, and separate the loot by rarity, I think the system would be a much more welcomed change.

The problem with “unids by rarity” is that it defeats the purpose of Identification being effected by magic find. With all the unids being the same rarity while unidentified, you can transfer them to a single character with a lot of magic find boosters to ID, or sell them on the TP for someone with higher Magic find than you to gamble on. I do think there should be at least one non-repeatable heart per map if they are going to lock it by hearts… and lowering the cost per ID would be nice too… it is a bit high as it stands.

I dunno, if they just had two tiers of unid it would be far better. Green contains all the rarities in their respective drop rates and yellow which is guaranteed rare with exo possible.

Ryou.2398:

I still think class armor needs to be something added to the game.

They should definitely add the Obsidian Armor again, I’d have to roll a Human Ranger for that!

Durzlla.6295:

Caeledh.5437:

I saw the traits in the wiki just now.

And so died the hope that shapeshifting might be one of the unrevealed ones.

That’s two for two in disappointing elite specs for ranger.

Shapeshifting will never be a simple trait, we may get an elite spec and get “kits” that shapeshift us, but there’s no way Anet is going to put all the resources needed for a player character to be able to shapeshift into every pet we can get.

Keep your hopes reasonable, we could get 6 shapeshifts if Anet is feeling generous and goves the “shapeshifter” espec “kits”, but more realistically I think it’d probably function more like Firebrands Tomes, where they’d get a set amount (likely no more than 3) useable without giving up a utility.

I can’t see shapeshifting ever happening because there would be too much QQ about fashion wars and it would be too similar to Soulbeast now.

Although…. Petless shapeshifter, 3 “forms” like elementalist attunements; F1: Ursan Blessing, F2: Volfen Blessing & F3: Raven Blessing. Could be cool. Doubt its gonna happen heh.

zedapoc.1493:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

zedapoc.1493:

100% hope I’m wrong, but I really don’t see this being good at anything in wvw. Not enough condi clear to make it roaming and not enough group support with traited stances to take a spot from a guard in groups.

Looks fun to play though…

Not enough condi clear?

10 condis removed @ 25s cd (Bear Stance + WK + StF)
2 condis removed @ 32s cd (LR) & 40s cd (QZ)
All movement impeding condis removed @ 35s cd (Unflinching Fortitude)
All condis removed @ 40s cd (SoR)
7 condis removed @ 48s cd, 5 converted to boons (Entangle + Lyssa runes)
-33% condi damage with Protection (Second Skin) which you get 2s of each dodge and 30% up time of vigor and +25% endurance regen via Natural Vigor. Then you can pick Eternal Bond for more Protection.

That’s likely enough condi clear.

That’s a neat list, but what build capable of killing someone/fighting outnumbered would ever take most of that? 40s SoR isn’t good to use, ever. It remains to be seen, but I don’t see protection being good enough vs. all the boon hate.

I guess the best hope with bear is that it lets you skip SoS for more clears? But then you’re stuck with a trash pet that can’t utilize quickness (still doesn’t work on old pets afaik) outside of beast mode.

You said it didn’t have enough condi clear, so I threw together a build that has virtual condi immunity, SoR for the investment is the best clear around!

Although that build is lacking speed boosts, you still have plenty of room to move in adding some, like WH. I wouldn’t run Bear, I’d go Alpine Wolf and Smokey for lots of CC or drop one of those for Owl with swiftness and Spiritual Reprieve. Whatever you want. I was just illustrating that the options are all there.

borya.2964:

jcbroe.4329:

Still need the info on the last stance though.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Moa_Stance

This one ?

Looking forward to this one with Sigil of Concentration on my WH, Clarion Bond, Spiritual Reprieve and Dolyak Stance, assuming the stances stack and not cancel.

56s Swiftness, Fury, 20s 3xMight, 30s 3xMight, 6s Resistance/Prot, 12s Retaliation and 6 × 12s Stab with no concentration at all Then throw in Fresh Reinforcement!

Actually, not certain about those durations and how the sigil will interact with Moa Stance, but it will be a lot of boons for support.

Belorn.2659:

Before dps meters we had party search requirement that tried to do the exact same thing. You had to have over 30k achievement points…

Really? Are you sure you’re not exaggerating here? There’s only 750 people in the game total with over 30k AP.

InsaneQR.7412:

Could we have a rune update for PoF?
I mean there are a lot of interesting runes in the game with a way to high ICD.
Best example i know of is rune of the grove and rune of rata sum.
Grove: 4s protection on a 30s CD. And 1 root on a 90s CD. For comparison there is rune of durability with 3s protection,regen and 1s resistance on 20s CD.
Rata sum: 90s on a 15s poisonfield. Ranger has a trap with more than half its duration but third of ots CD.

My suggestion cut down the ICD on these runes for more build diversity.
Rata sum would be nice with a 30s CD and a 8s radoationfield.
Grove would be great with a 15s ICD instead of 30 on protection and 20s ICD on the roots. In line with ancient seeds.
Of course there are much more, all of you can post which need some inprovement because of lackluster effects.

While Durability is an absurd rune to compare anything to, those changes to Grove would be pretty huge. 30% uptime on Protection from a passive on your rune set? As well as 20s cd on a passive immob?

Rata Sum radiation field at 30s is not bad. Orr & Earth could do with a reduction in CD on the (6). Infiltration, Sanctuary and Svanir need an overhaul, they are useless by comparison.

Ok I Did It.2854:

…Which brings back the old topic of accounts are tagged to get rare loot vs accounts that are not.

You must be joking. Right?

I like that adventures are part of the game for those that enjoy them. I’m not one of those people. I don’t like that collections were gated behind a particular success tier of them.

The reason I don’t like them and gating behind them is they are very affected by latency and rubberbanding which I have dramas with since I have to play over mobile wifi, it just makes them next to impossible for me to complete.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

DeShadowWolf.6854:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m wondering if we’re really losing anything. If unidentified gear stacks, then how can the game identify which one is an exotic and which isn’t? Is there a secret, unseen list that keeps track of the identity of the items that have yet to be claimed?

From the sound of things, unidentified gear is just another die roll that drops on top of the kinds of drops you would normally get. Is there any proof that we’re missing out on rare and exotic drops that we otherwise would’ve gotten?

There is no list, it’s more RNG. The phrase “missing out on rares/exotics” is to indicate that if we salvage unids, those might have ID’d into rares or exotic.

In that case, I do not see the problem. If something we previously earned is being taken away due to unids, then there would be a problem. But if it is an additional system added on to loot that people are complaining about gambling on, then that is strictly an opt-in system. I’m going to salvage all my unids and never look back.

I’ve yet to see a definitive statement from anyone which suggests that we will still get the normal chance at rares and exotics as we get elsewhere. All I got was blue and green normal drops, but that might be due to a relatively small sample size.

It’s the other way around. You’ll have to prove that we’re losing out on drops elsewhere with the unids. It is a bit defeatists to assume a new system is inherently ripping you off via hidden changes to loot ratios mentioned nowhere.

Given you never get Un-ID’d gear and regular gear together, it’s safe to say Un-ID’d replaces your normal loot.

So every time you get one, you did not get regular loot.

There are several people on this thread that claim otherwise.

mistsim.2748:

…D/A for a power build, for sure. wanted to do a poison/bleed themed build…

I wouldn’t discount the usefulness of /A in a condi build. As long as it is somewhat hybrid stats it will work pretty well. Vipers Nest into a KD with beast skill into quickness Whirling Defense. Pretty decent power numbers plus 15 stacks (30 ticks) of poison and 12 vuln if you take them by surprise or they are out of stunbreaks.

Hepatolith.6389:

cafard.8953:

mistsim.2748:

Aveneo.2068:

Some of you may not remember JP’s antics but the infamous shortbow firerate nerf where his explanation (excuse) made no logical sense

oh, I remember.

Ah, the “animation fix”… Still doesn’t hurt as much as the infamous “Pet Leash distance increased to 2000” patch note. I don’t think they hate any class, but I’m still very bitter about that pet leash nerf. WvW used to be glorious with proper hunting pets, but since the range inconvenienced Conquest…

My personal Favorite has to be the “Nerfed Shortbow range to 900 so Longbow sees more use.” patch

Very much time to revert that change too. Irks me that I can throw a torch, dagger or axe further than I can shoot my Shortbow…

zedapoc.1493:

100% hope I’m wrong, but I really don’t see this being good at anything in wvw. Not enough condi clear to make it roaming and not enough group support with traited stances to take a spot from a guard in groups.

Looks fun to play though…

Not enough condi clear?

10 condis removed @ 25s cd (Bear Stance + WK + StF)
2 condis removed @ 32s cd (LR) & 40s cd (QZ)
All movement impeding condis removed @ 35s cd (Unflinching Fortitude)
All condis removed @ 40s cd (SoR)
7 condis removed @ 48s cd, 5 converted to boons (Entangle + Lyssa runes)
-33% condi damage with Protection (Second Skin) which you get 2s of each dodge and 30% up time of vigor and +25% endurance regen via Natural Vigor. Then you can pick Eternal Bond for more Protection.

That’s likely enough condi clear.

borya.2964:

Crippling Talon can easily crit to 1200, 1400 in a power build (wvw), nothing crazy but MH Dagger could (have to) work in power builds (Double Arc base damage is not that bad + Instinctive Engage will have ammo) with good beast skills damage.

Sword / Warhorn & MH Dagger / Axe : if it could shine, i would be so happy.

Yea, that would be a nice combo. S/T – D/A too imo, whirl finish the fire field with Axe5. Either that or a big heal from a group fight and whirl finish a poison field (vipers nest, spider pet) with Predator’s Cunning.

borya.2964:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Essence of Speed could do with 2s of Super Speed too.

Well, i was thinking something like :

- Fresh Reinforcement is the Minor Grandmaster Trait (new room for Minor Adpet, hello Stances !)
- Merge Twice as Vicious & Essence of Speed : when you gain Quickness you gain Vicious thingy (1% direct and condi damage) up to 5 stacks 1/3 sec CD.

Sounds good to me, I’ll take that, tyvm!

HeadCrowned.6834:

In my opinion, the shortbow doesnt excel in 1v1’s, as the flanking option is virtually non-existent in 1v1’s.

Yeah, “flanking” is a pretty easy thing to do, the angle for not flanking is pretty small.

The solution is to sell them on the TP if you have low magic find. If you have high MF and like a gamble, you buy them, ID and then salvage the trash. If you just want lots of materials, you just salvage all.

Aomine.5012:

D/D seems illogical to me.

I see much more potential for D/A.

The quickness for dagger 3 is invaluable for axe 5.
A huge dps boost with less time rooted in one place!

For straight up DPS, sure D/A is going to be king, but evasion in PvP/WvW setting? D/D is better for that.

borya.2964:

StickerHappy.8052:

The only two traits that are weird to me was The protection trait – You have to build around it, and as rangers we don’t have a lot of sources that are reliable, one is dependent on a trait line (2 if you count the dodge one) and one is a shout.

Yep, it’s 3 core traits lines so you won’t have all the few sources of protection when picking soulbeast in the first place. You probably want the new Bark Skin trait for a good synergy, so you’ll have to choose between NM (for only one trait ?) and BM (with Protect Me and shouts traited + reduced CD with Beast skills). WS / BM / SB is the way to go to me for now (in a wvw roaming purpose)…

It’s a shame the Spirits have 1s cast time, do not move, do not have ammo charges for the mediocre active skills or are viable at all for PvP or WvW because Nature’s Vengeance and Stone Spirit would be pretty awesome with Second Skin and Rugged Growth.

Essence of Speed could do with 2s of Super Speed too.

borya.2964:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I keep looking at the Lyssa runes and just total condi build shutdown… Lyssa Runes, LR/QZ/SoR/Entangle, WK, StF, Second Skin with Bear/Dolyak Stance and Spiritual Reprieve/Unflinching Fortitude. It’s essentially immune to conditions. Looking forward to trying that out in WvW.

I liked & used Lyssa runes for a long time before HOT, but now i am stucked with Durability and Leadership in my two main wvw roaming builds. What’s your movement speed in & outside of combat with your build ? Where it comes from, Warhorn ?

OOC likely from WH swapping (geeze I wish we had weapon sets like GW1) and from Swoop on the Owl, Lyssa converts Cripple and Immob to Swiftness, Super Speed from QZ.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Combine Spiritual Reprieve with Invigorating Bond and we’re talking about “We Heal As One” numbers, but can heal up to 5 ppl in aoe. Looking good!

That’s pretty great, I wonder if Spiritual Reprieve counts as a heal skill for purposes of runes too. Lyssa, Defender, Brawler, Water, Revenant, Altruism, Vampirism, Herald, Adventurer, Balthazar etc, all have interesting interactions if it is classed as one.

I keep looking at the Lyssa runes and just total condi build shutdown… Lyssa Runes, LR/QZ/SoR/Entangle, WK, StF, Second Skin with Bear/Dolyak Stance and Spiritual Reprieve/Unflinching Fortitude. It’s essentially immune to conditions. Looking forward to trying that out in WvW.

Earix.5684:

I added some of them and arranged them on the wiki. I used the datamining info from reddit, screens from the preview and the leaked skill wheel.
Might not be 100% accurate so better wait till Friday

Cheers for adding them to the wiki and also letting us know.

Zenith.7301:

Loxsus.3841:

Zenith.7301:

Both are garbage weapons for PvE with abysmal DPS.

GS is the worst of them.

Maul hit for what a thief’s bounding dodge does (a trait damage proc). It’s that pathetic.

What is “Garbage” and “Abysmal” in this context? Like 5%? 10% difference? Those are hard to quantify.

lol not even close to 10%. Power ranger barely reaches 22k DPS. Greatsword breaks 20k if lucky.

Compare that to the 30-34k of the meta DPS spec. It’s a 31.25% difference best case scenario with sword and worse than that with greatsword.

Your one and only option in PvE is condi ranger, and that got nerfed.

I’d like to see the difference now with the additional ferocity changes we were given. If we were 32% behind the top tier before, then it will be pretty close with all the right elements. The “meta” S/A-LB build doesn’t take advantage of Honed axes for the Ferocity and we got 680 additional ferocity (in that build, if you select the traits) and the ability to hit 100% crit chance in zerker gear, 680 ferocity translates to 45.33% more crit damage. I’m not sure that Predator’s Onslaught is the better option now either, Remorseless may give a damage boost there now with the additional fury procs, assuming you are taking damage below 75% health. SotW loses it’s 13% uptime of +25% damage to provide the +180 Ferocity which is 12% crit damage all the time.

Either way, it will be interesting to see how the update has changed max DPS. I’d test it myself but…

Aomine.5012:

Zorpi.5904:

We onlty know place for Unstoppable union, Twice as vicious, Eternal bond, Oppressive superiority and Leader of the pack. All the rest is just guess some one made in reddit.

Go check GW2 wiki.
Every traits and skills are out now.

No more guessing or speculation.

That was just updated from the information provided via the datamine, so there is no way of knowing if it is accurate either.

Edit: I think they have been arranged correctly now that I look a the image here also.

I’d like to see some counter to boon strip as well, not a “counter” as such but something to make it not completely destroy our boons without some repercussion, add to Essence of Speed since it’s pretty boring. Like; “Gaining quickness increases the duration of other boons affecting you. Whenever you lose a boon, Poison nearby foes.”

Only stripped boons, not ones ending on their own.

Haven’t been to Droknar’s Forge lately have you?

The order of the traits seems well off, I’m not sure the wiki is correct… Hopefully not, if the wiki is correct, the traits are definitely in weird spots.

Fresh Reinforcement and Unstoppable Union competing in the same tier is absurd.

I’d make the top trait row be Fresh Reinforcement, Unstoppable Union and then Eternal Bond.

Middle Row would be Live Fast, Essence of Speed and Leader of the Pack.

Bottom row would be Second Skin, Predator’s Cunning and Oppressive Superiority.

That way you can focus on top row for beast mode interaction, middle row for boon interaction and bottom row for condition interaction.

My $0.02

jcbroe.4329:

I’m not sure I’m excited for this elite spec. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of synergy between the GMs and the functionality of the rest of the traits within the line. None of the traits themselves seem particularly strong either.

I mean, aside from some of the more obvious interactions, like building for a pet swap offensive build to take advantage of the unblockable trait, going into beastmode and going for the big burst, and F2/beast skill based build, or the condi DPS spec that will probably see more PvE use than anything else, I’m not really seeing how this elite spec competes well with Druid, outside of PvE (and even then people will still want Druids.

Maybe I need to get my hands on it but from the level of information we have, the mechanics are carrying the appeal, and the functionality in the traits is lacking.

While I am excited for Soulbeast, I agree there is little synergy within the traits (in the Soulbeast line), it seems as though each of the traits was picked to work with other core lines and not provide a great deal of synergy with the others in the SoulB spec.

With Druid, a complaint was that none of the traits played into our other traitlines, this time we have that but the eSpec traits don’t seem to work into each other, apart from one or two examples.

Caeledh.5437:

I saw the traits in the wiki just now.

And so died the hope that shapeshifting might be one of the unrevealed ones.

That’s two for two in disappointing elite specs for ranger.

For me it’s two for two in great ones that add a lot of variety to our core spec.

Natfrog.4310:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Natfrog.4310:

I made my second Ranger and to my suprise I have to re-tame all the creatures. I remember in GW1 we got a whole area just for Ranger pets so we didn’t have this issue. I was wondering if maybe there was any plans for something like this in our HOME location. As a Ranger main, I’d love to see this happen and with the new mount system every character could have a use for this as well.
My idea is to simply make pets/mounts roam our home instance and give the imersion of them being real and a part of us.
2 birds with one stone so to speak. Once you tame them once there is no real game play reason why I shouldn’t have them to use on all my characters.
I’d love to know the communities thoughts on this.

Pets in GW1 were pretty generic, there was not a lot of difference between them, mostly it was the skin being the only difference. Only one pet had an actual skill. The evolution was player controlled, but that’s it, even then the difference in survivability and damage was not huge. Except for the Racing Beetle which attacked a fair bit faster.

The Zaishen Menagerie was a cool idea and I really liked being able to get whatever pet I wanted whenever, also death levelled a ton of different pets there. It’s a good idea to simply have the pets in the home instance, I’d really like to see that too, purely from an aesthetic standpoint and sort of a throwback to the Zaishen Menagerie. But only tameable core pets if the character that opens the instance is under level 80.

Aomine.5012:

I also don’t find that locking ppl away from pets on their 2nd ranger is a smart thing to do. It’s just a waste of time.

If you are levelling a ranger from scratch, then having access to a Tiger, Smokescale, Bristleback, Sand Lion or the other PoF pets from level 1 is likely to trivialise it all completely, but upon reaching level 80, unlocking the pets would be fine.

octagon.6504:

Pets and Teria is almost completely unexplored again. That at least should have all waypoints discovered.

This trivialises exploration too much, since 100% completion is required for the 1st Legendary weapons. It hardly takes any time to run across any map anyway, at least this game has waypoints.

You are entitle to your opinion but I cannot figure out what your point is about the level of the pets? Pets are always the players level. Remeber we get down leveled in GW2 when we go to diffrent leveled areas.
Also I’d like to point out all we are asking for is that they be account wide so the player would still have to find them and unlock them the first time. Adding them to the home instance would solve this with very little coding. This would allow a new character on your account to easily unlock the pets instead of wasting the players time running multiple characters to known locations of pets. Obviously this would also allow a player who joins said instance to see them. I kinda see it as attunments for the ele. Eles don’t need to go around collecting attunements they are unlocked at certain levels. Why hinder a build in the first place?

I didn’t actually mention pet level except for death levelling in GW1 and that having access to a HoT or PoF pet when your Ranger is level one is likely to trivialize that early content, since they are so much more powerful than the core pets, which is why I don’t think they’ll go for this.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Another thing. I normally give containers to my level 53 to open. This won’t be possible with the requirement of doing a heart first in a level 80 area. Even if I can get it to that area, doing the heart on a regular basis will give that char XP so that starts leveling again.

Can’t you just salvage them directly on the 53 char?

Idk. Will they be level 80 gear when salvaged directly or level 53ish? The gear from HoT containers originally was level 80 only. Lower level options was added later. And there’s the problem again of losing all rares and exotics.

Do these not drop as trophies in addition to other loot?

No, those only come from heart vendors and cost 1 silver, 68 copper plus one unidentified gear.

If you were asking about unidentified gear, they very much seem to replace normal loot, not in addition to it.

If that is the case, then the rate at which they ID into rares and Exos seems to completely justify a 1.68s price tag.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Another thing. I normally give containers to my level 53 to open. This won’t be possible with the requirement of doing a heart first in a level 80 area. Even if I can get it to that area, doing the heart on a regular basis will give that char XP so that starts leveling again.

Can’t you just salvage them directly on the 53 char?

Idk. Will they be level 80 gear when salvaged directly or level 53ish? The gear from HoT containers originally was level 80 only. Lower level options was added later. And there’s the problem again of losing all rares and exotics.

Do these not drop as trophies in addition to other loot?

Zorpi.5904:

Lazze.9870:

Zorpi.5904:

Lazze.9870:

Eh. What? You’d rather have cooldown trait for stances than the ability to run Fortfying bond, use heal as one, enter beastmode and gain all those boons? You realize Fortifying bond is completely useless whenever we enter beastmode without a trait like this, no? Or even sharing boons to our pet at all before entering beastmode?

I would rather have cooldown trait for stances(or something else) than Fresh reinforcement. There should not be need for trait like that at all.

Excuse me, but do you ranger at all?
We got one heal, one trait in nature magic and now one trait with soulbeast revolved around sharing boons with our class mechanic. You’re wrong when you’re saying Fresh Reinforcement is too much. You got two other traits to chose between. This trait is perfect in combination with Nature Magic. Period. It was needed.

There already is a stance trait. You can roll that boring stance cooldown suggestion of yours into that trait instead. Anet doesn’t do multiple traits for single type of utility skills anymore, except passives procs (and if its anything this game doesn’t need more of, it’s passive procs of defensive utility skills).

No i dont play ranger. Only come here to get my daily ammount of salt.
Seriously speaking i don’t have problem with boon shearing as it is now. But in this case i don’t see eany point adding new trait to move boons from pet to ranger, when i would ben far more reasonable have fortifying bond to do same thing when enterin beastmode.

You can’t have a core spec trait interact specifically with an eSpec.

Khenzy.9348:

To be completely honest, aside from unblockable attacks and high quickness uptime, it looks more like a PvE spec.
It doesn’t have any form of condi cleansing aside from the heal skill, which is not good (look at Healing Spring), it also has really poor base healing.
I don’t understand this sudden emphasis on the protection boon, on average, rangers don’t really have high protection uptime unless heavily specced…

The heal is excellent if you remove the 8 conditions, that’s 8227 healing, so the best heal we have. That’s without any healing power and you can get +25% on top of that for melding with a supportive pet. So a possible 8 conditions removed and 10283 heal every 25s you call not good? If you are melded with the supportive pet, you get another 5k heal and 3s of Resistance for 5 allies in a 600 radius per 40s too.

They can’t give the SoulBeast any more condition removal, the core spec has enough to cover it, look at the changes to Survival skills and WK. Traiting Soften the Fall & WK with Bear Stance is 10 conditions every 25s… One skill.

Speaking of Wilderness Survival, that’s the reason for the Protection Boon focus, synergy with this traitline. Also see Protective Ward and Eternal Bond. As well as -33% condi damage when you have Prot.

D/T & S/A, Wilderness Survival (StF, RT, WK), Nature Magic (AA, VT, PW), Soulbeast (LF, PC, EB), Grove Runes, Sage amulet, Snow Owl & Bristleback, Bear Stance, MT, LR, QZ, Entangle. Think about it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Another thing. I normally give containers to my level 53 to open. This won’t be possible with the requirement of doing a heart first in a level 80 area. Even if I can get it to that area, doing the heart on a regular basis will give that char XP so that starts leveling again.

Can’t you just salvage them directly on the 53 char?

Thornwolf.9721:

I dont understand why people are so hung up on the 1 -80 storyline, and the issues with just having them start as an 80. Make it so you have to have at least one level 80 on your account to make one, and call it good. They dont need to go through the zaithan storyline because to be fair the vanilla story does not matter. Most people skip it REGARDLESS, so forcing people to do it would be redundant…

If that’s the case, then a cosmetic change is all you want and a costume with sound effects is all that is needed and far easier to implement.

Substance E.4852:

I still fail to see what the issue is other than people being anal and neurotic that they might be selling/salvaging a rare or exotic and their OCD is preventing them from not identifying literally every single piece they find.

I mean, the cost issue doesn’t even add up, either the rate of drops of rare/exo gear is high enough to make it worth the cost or its low enough that salvaging the majority of loot isn’t a problem. It can’t be both.

This.

Substance E.4852:

DeShadowWolf.6854:

Why have the price at all? I’m not opposed to removing it, but if Anet does want to keep the cash price as a part of it, this would at least give them an opportunity to balance it better. Part of the reason it costs so much now, under this principle, is that Anet is setting the price knowing it can drop anything from blue to orange

I agree no one will ID green ones, but that’s half the point: it cuts down on Inventory Wars 2. And I think it would be completely reasonable for rare/exo unids to not give ectos (so you ID it if you want the good salvage stuff).

I have a feeling it costs what it does because the items have a potentially high rate of rare/exo items. You have someone here saying they ID’d 33 items and got 4 rares and 2 exos.

At ~1.5s per that’s 49.5s which is more than covered by what was identified.

Maybe this is an outlier. Maybe not.

Like I said earlier, either the drop rate is so high that you have to ID them all to avoid missing out on rares such that you will almost always recoup the cost with profit.

Or, the rate is too low to justify the cost and you should just salvage them into mats which all have a nice value to them (not you silk) or sell them to some TP baron who can afford to open enough of them en mass to make a profit like with loot bags.

If there’s one thing i can trust their economy team to do right, it’s to calculate the average market value of the items and charge an appropriate amount per ID. It’s something anyone with access to the loot table and a basic understanding of middle school algebra can figure out.

It’s affected by account magic find so…. Yeah. If you have high magic find, it will be worth IDing, if not, salvage.

Ash.4159:

I can’t find any information about grievers gear? What does it do? And what will make it a good choice for axe axe Druid? :’)

Greivers will be Power/Condition & Precision/Ferocity, so it gives up Expertise (condition duration) for Ferocity when compared to Vipers stat, which I think may make it better for shorter fights that don’t take long.

I just made the assumption that you didn’t want healing power. There is another stat set coming that I don’t know the name of, but it is Power/Healing Power & Condition/Precision.

In the wallet, there is this entry;

Elegy Marks
Earned by completing legendary bounties in the Crystal Desert. Spend at the Tomb of Primeval Kings. These markers were used to commemorate great deeds in the Primeval Dynasty era of ancient Elona.

Fyi, Elegy means “A poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.”

So Tombs will be a thing in PoF then! I wonder if it will be a raid entrance, it would be amazing to go back! If not, will it just be an outpost?