Guild Wars 2

It was probably an Arrow Cart

I think only the longbow works as a defensive weapon.
Although, I once read this idea that I haven’t tried yet myself:
Jump down on the gate using Soften the Fall trait while under the effect of Rampage as One and traited Signet of Stone and drop your traps and torch fire field before dodging back into the tower. I don’t think I ever see people do this, so it might only look good on paper.

Rym.1469:

Holland.9351:

Plated Behemoth

End of discussion. Thank you all for participating.

It’s considered as a Bear…. New generation of Bearbow?

It just looks awesome. Its F2 could be awesome too.

For example, a built-in “Protect Me” comes to mind. Use the “Protect Me” utility in combination with it and you got a bear that can tank 12 seconds every 60 seconds. Yes, Bearbow would like that.

Plated Behemoth

End of discussion. Thank you all for participating.

Benjamin.8237:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Call_Companion

It says it was a downed skill. So we actually have a better version of it:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lick_Wounds

Solid Gold.9310:

And as Jon Peters hasn’t posted here for the past 17 days I would assume we have been dumped again.

They only had a short time reserved for discussing the new patch notes. Noone got dumped. He talked about all the classes, not just the Ranger. Jon did say it was a successful experiment, so maybe it will happen again.

Just don’t expect any other changes for the 10th of December since none have been confirmed for the Ranger. It’s not that odd since we almost only had buffs. We only really had Natural Vigor to complain about. I don’t think anyone even bothered to complain about the nerf to spirit actives.

I do hope they picked up on some suggestions for the next patch over.

Girion.5483:

I always thought that merging “Sic ’Em” into Signet of the Hunt, to become its active effect, would be a nice move. Both skills attempt essentially the same: boost pet damage. So why not combine them? I’d definitely use the signet active during combat then and the passive when travelling outside of combat.

Sic ’em gives 40% movement speed and 40% damage for 10 seconds.
I don’t think they’d be willing to give Rangers either. However, x% damage for 10 seconds would be much nicer than 50% once. But then again, that’s basically Signet of the Wild.

That said, I don’t think they’ll ever be improving Signet of the Hunt. It’s probably the most used utility skill for Rangers, so it must already be good enough and doesn’t need to be improved.

Maybe Signet of the Hunt could get camouflage added to its active.

Signet of Renewal active is the most unreliable utility skill Rangers have. The traited version makes things even worse, because it could draw all conditions from allies around you to your ranger, rather than clearing the ranger’s conditions. So it would do the opposite of what you would want it to do.

It really needs to be redesigned. I have a feeling the leash range of pets was reduced in hope to save this utility skill, but it failed. The pet can still be out of range. The pet can also still be dead.

Signet actives should affect the Ranger by default.
Signet of the Beastmaster should be changed to:
Activating a signet revives your pet or heals it for 50% of its max health. Pet swap goes on a full cooldown.

Signet of the Beastmaster used to be Adapt Major (10 points), but it was moved to Grandmaster Major (30 points) just before release.

I don’t recall with which trait it was switched.

cafard.8953:

Holland.9351:

I think the power of 1500+ range Piercing Arrows is dearly underestimated in WvW.

Piercing arrows get reflected, rarely hit 5 people, don’t blast combo fields, and the shooter isn’t an additional body to mitigate the 5-targets-max aoe that hits the melee ball. If anything, it is vastly overestimated.

Yes, that’s the general consensus. I think the general consensus is underestimating it.

cafard.8953:

1500+ range Piercing Arrows are good for the one wielding the bow (until he gets noticed by a thief pack) to tag a good few people while staying mostly out of harm’s way. But it’s a net loss to the team compared to a melee contribution imho.

Exactly, it’s unreliable. The contribution of a Ranger longbow is very random. He might die within 3 seconds to a thief or he might tip the scales or anywhere in between. It’s a very broad range. Barrage in a corridor followed by Rapid Fire can be very deadly for a stacked zerg coming in. The single target take-down is also where it shines. With piercing arrows there is no escape. In fact, the more he tries to hide behind others, the more damage the Ranger does. With each added target the ranger does exponentially more damage. Hit 8 targets in a row and you do 8 times more damage than if you didn’t bring Piercing Arrows. Positioning is very important.

It might not be effecient or even effective or even useful or reliable, but I like the playstyle so I play it. However, I also understand that guilds don’t want any Rangers. Guardians and Warriors are very reliable contributors.

Belzebu.3912:

I’m on my way to have all classes at lvl 80, a couple weeks ago I got my engineer to 80 (now I only need thief and ele to finish) and traited granades also have 1500 range, are faster than LB, have a pretty good damage, is AoE, and cause many conditions (bleeding, burn, poison, vulnerability and freezing), can be used in walls and spots where arrows would cause “obstructed”, all that using only 1 utility slot, so you can also have many more support skills.
Ranger is my main, but I would pick a engineer over a LB ranger anytime.

I would agree with you if the AoE targetting was improved. I just find it very annoying, especially with engineer grenades where all skills are AoE. You really need a multi-button mouse for it I guess. Pressing 1-5 while trying to move with WASD while keeping the right-mouse-button pressed to turn and the cursor to aim and having to trial-and-error to find the max range. Too much of a struggle with the controls.

This is the first time I hear that endurance regeneration stacks.

I think the power of 1500+ range Piercing Arrows is dearly underestimated in WvW.

But the Ranger is an unreliable and useless class, so I can’t blame them. Reliability and usefulness are both very important.

In fact, the only reliable team support skill Rangers have is Spotter. But noone cares about that if instead of a Ranger you could be a Guardian that gives 60 stacks of might within 2.5 seconds with Empower (Staff 4) or a Warrior with multiple indestructable Banners that each give stronger buffs. To compete with that, the Ranger’s Spirits would need to become indestructable and trigger 100% of the time without any traits.

It’s all about being the most reliability and useful class in WvW and the Ranger is at the bottom of that list.

I just play ranger in WvW because I like the playstyle, not because it’s the most useful and reliable class. Thieves often aren’t welcome for the same reasons, but at least they can bring AoE stealth. Mesmers can bring portals, AoE quickness and Veil (stealth). Elementalists have great AoE skills and Necromancer as well. Engineer is in a bit of trouble too.

Rangers simply aren’t wanted compared to other classes. The only original thing Ranger has is 1500+ range Piercing Arrows, but you deal little damage because you have to bring an unreliable pet. And if you go full berserker it’s possible that you die within 3 seconds, so you are unreliable.

So yes a bit sad.

Substance E.4852:

If you really want to use the upcoming patch to the maximum WvW zerg effectiveness you should really be traiting for the new bark skin that cuts damage by half at 25% health instead of 1/3.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQNAsXRjEVN2FWCWs2Bili9s/2jMZ+zzUYI+fyqakK-jEyAYLBRyBE9BkEBk9KiGbZsIasKbM1LRUNA-w

Only suffers from a lower crit chance but with spotter you’ll even out a bit while providing ally support.

The most interesting about a trait like Barkskin is if you go max Vitality (Sentinel or Shaman). You should be able to reach 30.000 health with traits, runes and food. So at 25% health you still have 7500 health. You start taking half damage at that point, so the last 7500 feels like 15000 (unless you take condition damage). So, 30.000 health will feel like 37.500 health.

If you can afford sentinel armor, you’ll have a good amount of toughness as well. Bad damage, but it would be fun to see what it’s like.

1) Alpha Training (15 points) merged into Opening Strike (5 points)
2) Precise Strike (25 points) moved to Master Adept (15 points)
3) Remorseless (30 points) moved to Grandmaster Adept (25 points)
4) create new Grandmaster Major (30 points).

5) improved Predator’s Instinct (10 points) switched with Piercing Arrows (20 points)

Why?
Ranger longbow currently gets:
- Steady Focus
- Piercing arrows
- Eagle Eye

After change:
- Piercing Arrows
- Eagle eye
- Remorseless
- Signet of the Beastmaster or Spotter or the new grandmaster trait

Longbow has access to some really good traits. It just can’t get them all.

Traits that should NOT require combat mode:

1. Spotter
2. Companion’s Defense

Others I’m not 100% sure about:

1. Compassion Training
2. Concentration Training
3. Expertise Training
4. Pet’s Prowess
5. Malicious Training
6. Agility Training

Rangers, please confirm if you know these traits need combat mode and if I missed any others.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I agree with everything you said, you did miss 1 nerf however.. the one that bothered me the most.

They cut barrage damage in half (or possibly more) from what it used to be. For me, it went from doing 1800-2600 damage per hit down to 800-1300. To get those damage numbers, one has to be in full berserker gear which obviously is a disadvantage in itself. This is why I felt the nerf was completely unnecessary, as I’m basically rooting myself for this attack with the possibility of getting killed in 1-3 hits.

I didn’t add it because it wasn’t in the patch notes and I wasn’t doing any WvW at the time to notice a change. But yes it should be on the list and is one of the worst stealth nerfs to date.

The longbow can have 1500+ range. That’s something that makes the Ranger unique. It’s especially fun in WvW. In sPvP and PvE it doesn’t really have a place.

However, some things aren’t that good:
1) The traits are kind of wrong for the Longbow. It has 4 good traits to choose from in Marksmanship, but it can only choose 2:
Piercing Arrows (Marksmanship Master)
Eagle Eye (Marksmanship Master)
Spotter (Marksmanship Master)
Remorseless (Marksmanship Grandmaster) (only Longbow has stealth)

Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye are basically required for where Longbow shines in WvW, so there is no room for Spotter nor Remorseless.

On top of this, the cooldown reduction trait is in another trait line:
Quick Draw (Skirmishing Master)
Skirmishing also has nothing for Longbow to put in the Grandmaster slot.

2) The Longbow requires 50 trait points to invest, but even then it can only choose 3 out of 5 good traits. With 50 trait points invested, you only have 20 points left to spend on the rest of your build (other weapon set, pets, utility, etc).

3) The damage on the Longbow is rather low. You need to go full berserker build to be able to make it do any noticable damage. This is apparently because the Ranger has a pet, but pets don’t work where the Longbow shines in WvW. This makes you very likely to die if someone targets you.

Although the Longbow has these issues, I still like the gameplay in WvW. Any improvement would be very welcome, especially requiring less trait points, but it works for me. It makes the Ranger unique. 1500+ range on all skills is one of the things that has kept me playing Ranger.

Jow.4385:

Agility Training: Pets move faster.

Change to:
Agility Training: Pets move faster. Melee pets teleport behind your target (10 sec cd)

40% speed instead of 30% would be great too.
30% is less than Swiftness buff and 40% is the same as Sic ’em utility.

It can not be used while the target is in stealth. It does not remove stealth.

It can only be used to prevent a target from going into stealth for a few seconds.

Pretty weak, yes, but not bugged and unfortunately working as intended.

Let’s not forget that this topic is about the December 10th patch.

You are not going to see big changes to the Ranger other than “low-hanging fruit”.
The best you could do is comment on the proposed changes or suggest other simple changes to traits or weapons.

They’re not going to improve the pet responsiveness for the 10th of December, nor are pets going to show their boons and conditions, nor are pet tooltips going to use the stats of the pet. It’s needed yes, but not going to happen this patch.

However, it’s been about 1.5 years and this is the first time a balance dev has actually come to discuss the Ranger class, so I understand the need for people to voice their bigger concerns in the hope it gets picked up for the next patch over.

But this topic is for the December 10th patch, let’s get back to that.

I just thought of an alternative to the merging of Quick Draw with Piercing Arrows.

1) Move Piercing Arrows down from Master to Adept

This will open up many new variations to bow users, for example:
Piercing Arrows + Eagle Eye + Remorseless
Piercing Arrows + Spotter + Remorseless
Piercing Arrows + Spotter + Eagle Eye
Piercing Arrows + Eagle Eye + Signet of the Beastmaster
I think you get the point.

It will reduce trait cost for Longbow from 50 to 40 (Quick Draw still costs 20), but people will probably still spend 50 points, because they can now also get another of: Remorseless, Spotter, Eagle Eye or Signet of the Beastmaster.

It will reduce Shortbow trait costs from 40 to 30, but again, people will be able to spend more points on relevant traits.

The newly buffed Predator’s Instinct can probably be moved up from Adept to Master. Noone has used it yet anyway.
_________________________________________________________
If you want to go one step further:
2) Move Quick Draw down from Master to Adept
This will further reduce the trait point requirement for Longbows from 40 to 30.
This will further reduce the trait point requirement for Shortbows from 30 to 20.
You could probably move Trapper’s Defense up from Adept to Master. Noone uses it anyway.
_________________________________________________________

These one or two minimal changes will have no possible downsides to anyone’s current build.

At least seriously consider moving Piercing Arrows down from Master to Adapt tier for the 10th of December.

I want to call some attention to Hide in Plain Sight while I can.

It gives 3 seconds of camouflage, which is like stealth that breaks if you move. 3 seconds is very short and you often break it instantly because you are moving.

Is there any chance to make this 3 seconds of stealth? This would allow some movement and it could combo with Remorseless, which resets Opening Strike. Currently Remorseless only works with Longbow Hunter’s Shot.

Otherwise, is it possible to make it like 10 seconds of camouflage? You can’t move after all.

A utility skill that provides long duration camouflage has been on my wish list since release. Are you willing to give Ranger more camouflage? Or otherwise, please make it stealth and let’s move on.

JonPeters.5630:

• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.

Coming back on this. Only the Longbow is really AoE and that only in 1 skill.
Shortbow only has Poison Volley which is a fan, not really an AoE.
Unless you count Piercing Arrows as AoE I suppose.

I would like to see Longbow get another AoE attached to it.
Sigil of Fire synergises really well with the longbow in WvW, it would be great if it could be default behaviour of a skill.
So in a sense like the Smoldering Arrow on Warrior Longbow. A single target skill with a radius (not a targetable AoE like Barrage).

The question is on which skill:
Long Range shot would be awesome if it had a small radius attached to it.
Rapid Fire would also be awesome if it had a radius, but it already does a lot of other things (multiple hits, no penalty to distance and vulnerability)
Hunter’s Shot could work, but it does a small amount of damage and already does other things as well (Stealth/resetting Remorseless and pet swiftness)
Point Blank shot is too short range and needs to be kept off cooldown if possible.
Barrage could be replaced with a single hit skill with a radius I suppose, but is probably too big of a change. I wouldn’t mind personally however.

Would a radius added to Long Range Shot be possible?
Otherwise Hunter’s Shot I suppose, since it doesn’t do as much damage and has a much longer cooldown. The problem is the stealth stopping auto-attack if you want to use it for damage.

My conclusion: I don’t know. A Sigil of Fire-like trait would be nice I suppose.

Is there any chance to have all F2 pet skills (that can) trigger their effect at the start of the animation, rather than at the end?

The Moa pets currently mostly work like this. The F2 is nearly instant after triggering it.
Jungle Stalker has it the worst for an AoE buff, you should have a look at it, it takes ages.
Bears are pretty bad too, except Brown Bear, which was recently updated and now uses a quicker animation. If all bears could be like Brown Bear they would be a whole lot better. The cooldown on bear F2 skills is still abysmal (except for Brown Bear).

I’m sure there are plenty more examples. Canine howls could be twice as fast I think.

I have to quote myself here

Hilt Bash Attack of Opportunity given to Ranger instead of pet (or to both). Maybe increase its range if that’s possible. Or maybe make it always stun and not require flanking and increase stun duration without Grandmaster trait.
Or a knockdown… yes I’d like that more than stun/daze. Just don’t make it a knockback

Just imagine…
Hilt Bash-> knockdown -> Attack of Opportunity -> Maul.

It’s a great combo and it makes sense to have an Attack of Opportunity on a knocked down foe.
Hilt Bash is already tough to land, so it would be very rewarding if you managed to make it hit.
You could make it stun from the front and give it a knockdown+Attack of Opportunity if you flank. Now you have some serious reason to try and flank with Hilt Bash.

Possible Greatsword improvements

Crippling Throw 1200 range up from 900. I mostly only use it to stop people who are running away, but 900 is kind of short range for that.

Hilt Bash Attack of Opportunity given to Ranger instead of pet (or to both). Maybe increase its range if that’s possible. Or maybe make it always stun and not require flanking and increase stun duration without Grandmaster trait.
Or a knockdown… yes I’d like that more than stun/daze. Just don’t make it a knockback.

Evade on Swoop is welcome, but not at the cost of it being removed from chain 3. It’s a good skill as-is though. It’s a Leap finisher and a gap closer and an escape tool.

Maul could use a Blast Finisher. I’m not a fan of using warhorn nor drakes, so I personally rather have it on Maul.

JonPeters.5630:

Holland.9351:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Why do you want to change the Greatsword?
Does the evade have to go and you need to come up with an acceptable solution for it?

I don’t have to change it. I am hoping to improve it with changes without making it overpowered. I think right now one of the major problems, despite being good is that the evade on the chain is very hit or miss and feels very RNG when using it or fighting against it. I would rather put more of the skill of when to evade under player control to give this weapon more agency.

You could put evade on Swoop or improve Hilt Bash without removing the evade from chain 3.
The evade can be really good on chain 3 eventhough it’s a bit random. Removing it would have too much impact I think.

I use Greatsword a lot and find Hilt Bash the most lacking. It’s slow, has short range and the animation is a bit rough. I’m rarely able to hit with it, so I rarely even bother trying anymore. You could change this into anything else and I wouldn’t shed a tear. I wonder how others feel about it.
You could make Hilt Bash have an “Attack of Opportunity” on the next attack, so you could go Hilt Bash -> Maul for a nice combo. Currently it only gives it to the pet or you need a Grandmaster trait + an interrupt to do it otherwise (Moment of Clarity).
Related to this, please make “Attack of Opportunity” stackable.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Why do you want to change the Greatsword?
Does the evade have to go and you need to come up with an acceptable solution for it?

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

There are two big problems caused by this delay for Rangers:
______________________________________________________________

• F4 (swap) directly followed by F2(pet special skill) will result in the F2 to not have a target and fire blindly. This completely wastes all F2 skills that need a target.

For example:
Lightning_Breath on River Drake
Rending Pounce on Lynx
Try it for yourself and see. There are more than just these two.
______________________________________________________________

• Rangers have some on-swap pet traits that lose valuable time by this delay

Zephyr Speed
Mighty Swap
Especially Zephyr Speed suffers from it. It loses 1-2 seconds of quickness on the pet eventhough it only has 3 seconds total and still needs to path to the target.
This is really unacceptable from a gameplay point of view. These on-swap traits should, at the very least, activate after the delay.

My general suggestions for 10th december patch:

1) Switch position of Natural Vigor with Companion’s Defense

This way the old trait won’t be completely gone and traits like Companion’s Defense and Evasive Purity won’t be indirectly nerfed by the reduction in endurance regen. Because those traits trigger on dodge.
Natural Vigor will be much harder to get, but still be attainable in its current form.

2) Intimidation Training, Rending Attacks and Stability Training lose their pet familiy restriction

There is really no reason for these traits to be restricted to certain pet families. The traits only try to force Rangers into using 2 pets of the same family.
It has worked well for Vigorous Training last patch, which used to be restricted to birds and moas.

3) Merge Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows

Or otherwise two traits with the same effect, but one for Shortbow and the other for Longbow.
This way it will only cost 20 trait points instead of 40 for Longbow and Shortbow to pierce and have reduced cooldown.

Plated Behemoth

No contest.

I think Nature’s Voice should be usable with Sic ’em and not just Guard.
Changes could be somewhere along these lines:

Nature’s Voice
- swiftness increased from 10s to 15s
- regeneration increased from 10s to 15s

Guard:
- cast time removed
- cooldown increased from 15s to 20s

Sic ’em:
- no longer requires a target. It only gives the buff
- buff can’t be broken by other commands to the pet
- cooldown reduced from 40s to 25s
- 40% damage reduced to 25%
- 40% movement speed untoched

This way you can either use the defensive Guard in combination with Nature’s Voice or combine it with the offensive Sic ’em.

With the cast time removed from Guard it will be a lot less annoying to use.

With the target requirement removed from Sic ’em it can be used at any time to buff people around you, even when no targets are near. Sic ’Em also won’t send your pet everywhere like Guard currently does.

For Rangers

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

One of the major issues with Longbow is it requiring 50 trait points to grab its traits:
30 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

The Shortbow has the same problem:
20 in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows
20 in Skirmishing for Quick Draw

Both Quick Draw and Piercing Arrows only affect the Longbow and the Shortbow. So both the Longbow and the Shortbow need to spend at least 40 trait points to get their relevant traits.

The solution is quite obvious if you see it:

Longbow Mastery (replaces Piercing Arrows – 20 point into Marksmanship)
Longbow arrows pierce and Longbow skills have 20% less cooldown

Shortbow Mastery (replaces Quick Draw – 20 points into Skirmishing)
Shortbow arrows pierce and Shortbow skills have 20% less cooldown

With this both the Shortbow and the Longbow only need 20 points to get piercing arrows and less cooldown on their skills instead of 40. Talk about improving build diversity!

With this change, If you still want to use both Longbow AND Shortbow together and want both to pierce AND have 20% less cooldown, then it’ll cost you 40 points. Which is exactly the same amount as before the change.

Currently the game basically tells you to go dual bow with how the Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw are set up.

I’d rather keep the evade on greatsword autoattack than trade it for a whirl finisher and an evade on swoop. I feels way too much like a nerf rather than an improvement.

The evade on autoattack makes greatsword such a nice weapon.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.
Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

How about moving it further up the line instead (switch with Companion’s Defense)? This way the current trait won’t be completely gone.

JonPeters.5630:

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice
I think the biggest change of moving spirits unbound is it allows you to take this trait along with Nature’s Voice. Internally we have done some testing where you bring stone spirit, guard, and then still have a open third utility slot to make some truly good support ranger builds. Spirits have always had that feel and I think this brings that to the forefront.

That’s a really good point. Spirits passive + guard + spotter could be good.

Is there any chance to remove the 1s cast time from Guard? It’s really annoying and removing it won’t make it overpowered. At the very least, reduce the cast time to maybe 1/4s or 1/2s. I don’t think anyone was going to try to interrupt it anyway. if not, could you please tell us why?

JonPeters.5630:

Power Rangers
No pun intended. As many have said these guys are in an interesting position. In some ways they can be very strong, but everytime I play my ranger this way it feel like it comes up a little bit short. I think this is because they are lacking a few things as either additional tools for greatsword or as utilities. Signets are the somewhat obvious utility choice but their effect is too varied to run a strong full signet build here. Conversely all traits associated with signets tend to increase in power the more you bring. What signets need is a good trait that synergizes with bringing a single signet, like Nature’s Voice does for shouts. This would let you bring maybe one or two signets and suppliment them with something else. One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.

I’m torn on this one. I really like the evade on the auto-attack, but swoop could use it too. More damage on autoattack might be better than the evade, but Maul is already used for the damage, which interrupts the autoattack chain anyway.

On a side-note, is there any chance of Maul becoming a blast finisher?

JonPeters.5630:

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.

Maybe sword chain 3 could get the evade from Serpent Strike and Serpent Strike becomes a Leap (the current animation would have to be changed). This way sword will have an on-demand leap forward and get the evade on auto attack (especially if you move the evade from greatsword to swoop).

JonPeters.5630:

Thanks,

Jon

Thank Jon, 1.5 years we waited for a discussion post like this.

The Ranger changes are far from good enough. There is still so much wrong with the class that is still completely ignored.

for example: condition removal is horrible.
1 passive grandmaster trait(Empathic Bond),
1 healing skill(Healing Spring),
1 UNRELIABLE signet(Signet of Renewal) that doesn’t work is most situations (pet dead or out of range).

Ranger needs grandmaster traits just to make their utility skills be useful.
Signets(Signet of the Beastmaster),
Traps(Trap Potency),
Shouts (Nature’s Voice)

Longbow needs 50 out of 70 skill points to be useful:
30 Marksmanship (Eagle Eye, Piercing arrows)
20 Skirmishing (Quick Draw)

Sword has 2 leaps, but
- one is hidden in the auto attack 3rd chain(Pounce) and
- one is hidden behind a leap backwards (Monarch’s Leap).
The leap on autoattack (Pounce) is preventing movement and dodging.
The sword has no gap-closer without turning your back to your enemy first.

Ethics.4519:

I think this would be too OP for small roamers.

Powerful maybe, but not overpowered.

Xsorus.2507:

The Biggest change Anet can do right now is removing bloody Signet of the Beastmaster and making that baseline.

Absolutely silly we have to invest 30 points in a line to get the same effect as everyone else.

It used to be an Adapt trait, but they changed it to Grandmaster for release. I think it’s time they changed it back.

There is something interesting he said:
The more toughness you have, the more you get attacked.

I did not know this. I thought PvE was mostly random.

Holland.9351:

Two things I took from this:
1) you are supposed to keep might stacks on your pet
2) you are not supposed to use a longbow

Actually, let me add to my post.

1) He says to stack boons on the pet to keep its damage up, but he also says to switch pets often. Switching pets removes boons, it also removes Rampage as One, it also removes Master’s Bond stacks, it also removes things like Sic’m, Signet of the Wild active, Enlargement, Search & Rescue, and Lick Wounds.

2) He says a lot of people pick Longbow initially. He then says people should change to other weapons because the longbow is inefficient. If a lot of people who pick Ranger are drawn to the longbow, but the longbow is inefficient, then shouldn’t the longbow be made perfectly efficient in at least 1 build? Instead he seems content to consider it a newbie weapon and tell people not to use it.

Two things I took from this:
1) you are supposed to keep might stacks on your pet
2) you are not supposed to use a longbow

Shirk.6421:

How I love laughing about these kind of posts. grabs popcorn

And don’t forget the “5k dmg on storm-spirit is too op, nerf please” thread

JonPeters.5630:

• Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

(http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133116)

kitten nic Touch.7960:

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

This really ruins it for me. Again a big nerf out of nowhere.

Let me add it to the list:
- endurance regen nerfed from 50% to 25%
- Healing Spring no longer gives vigor each tick and water field duration reduced
- shortbow nerfed from 1200 to 900 range
- damage skills from many pets reduced by 50%
- pet leash range reduced drastically
- “Search & Rescue” can’t revive dead players anymore
- quickness on pet swap moved from Minor Adept to Major Grandmaster (swapped with worthless trait)
- “Guard” no longer works up or down ledges
- “Signet of the Beastmaster” moved from Adept to Grandmaster.

I probably missed some.

Other unsesolved issues:
- Guard is a shout, but has a 1 second cast time
- Nearly all AoE attacks hit 3 targets instead of 5
- Require grandmaster traits to make signets, shouts, traps and spirits useful.
- Require grandmaster trait to have relatively useful condition removal.
- “Sic ’em” gets cancelled if the pet is told to activate another skill or told to change target.
- Signet of Renewal fails if pet is out of range.
- a healing skill (Healing Spring) is the only reliable on-demand condition removal rangers have.
- pets f2 often doesn’t activate or very late.
- sword auto-attack has too many leaps and makes the character feel out of control and prevents dodging.
- shortbow auto-attack bleed requires a flank.
- longbow Barrage too long cooldown.
- longbow requires to spend 50 trait points to get its basic traits (20% cooldown, piercing arrows, 1500 range)
- skirmishing has too many bad traits.

If these were fixed/changed we might actually be getting somewhere with this class.

Thief dual pistols with ricochet (20 points into Trickery) is particularly fun. It’s like a shortbow that fires faster (skill #3) and doesn’t require a flank to bleed on auto. With the Ricochet trait it bounces to other targets, which again means you don’t have to worry about positioning (unlike the Ranger shortbow’s Piercing Arrows).

I decided to play a thief for other reasons, but I really like it while leveling in openworld PvE so far. I haven’t tried it in dungeons, nor WvW, nor sPvP.

BlackenX.7386:

Ages ago, Ranger’s trait:
Evasive Purity – Remove condition from you and nearby allies on dodge roll

But Now,
Evasive Purity – Dodging removes blindness and poison from you. (10s CD)
LOL!!!

The Ranger class has only gotten worse since launch.

I think Frost is best, because that’s what everyone is using that tries to max out damage.

It’s probably because Frost doesn’t have an internal cooldown, so it procs a lot more. Also, burning can only stack once, so maybe not that good in boss fights.

I think toxin will be a very annoying mechanic. But I don’t think it will affect Healing Spring.

“Toxin” can probably only be removed by this new healing skill and will only be used by krait in some temporary dungeon. There will be a lot of “stacking” and “cleanse now” moments and noone will enjoy it.

Please make this a sticky thread.