Guild Wars 2

Seeing as I’ve personally answered at least 3 other threads exactly like this, I feel like saying use the search bar you lazy kitten. However, I’ll just say both. They stack on each other. So if you have both traited, they both will activate on the first stun giving you 3s of stealth with the ability to move.

Very interesting.

I don’t understand why anyone would use lynx over snow leopard. Sure the F2 on Lynx applies bleeds, but the F2 on snow leopard applies over 7s of chill. That is amazing control that allows your pet to land more attacks in the same amount of time. Spiders are like devourers; out of sight, out of mind. They don’t really do any real damage but can have some nice cc, assuming they land it of course.

I use wolf & snow leopard in W3.

I’d speculate some spirit work and signet work. Nothing much else. Our signet passives and actives are kind of weak, even if traited for Signet of the Beastmaster. I hope for some more on demand condition removal options as well since we really lack that.

I mean really, 35 toughness at lvl 80 for Signet of Stone? At least give us half the pet’s toughness (+60 is what I’m asking). 35 would be nice at level 5, not 80.

As most would say, the ranger is good at everything, great at nothing in its current state.

Why? For starters, we can’t put down any fields without using pets or utility skills. We have almost no finishers and out of the ones we have many are 20% chance. Our elites are all fairly lackluster with long cooldowns. Pets die often if not micromanaged properly, and even then may still die often. Our arrows are still easily evaded. We lack on demand condition removal. I’m actually bored right now or else I would go on. The point is, we can do it all but not well because we are too versatile. We need more specialization to be truly good at anything. However, a huge part of builds right now is pets. Pick pets that synergize well with your build! Oh, and never, I mean never, pick a bear in PvP.

Point in example, pets can deal significant damage, but long cast times on most skills result in very high miss rates making them fairly insignificant. The best pets right now have aoe control to increase success rate and low cast times to increase damage while still having survivability (canine).

I play because I enjoy playing the underdog and like a profession with a dedicated minion (pet). I almost chose necro but the pets seemed ever more mentally dead and I don’t think I would still be playing if I chose a pet necro as my main.

If you use longbow, especially in PvP (W3 included) you NEED an alternative weapon.

Hell, how could it be op when thieves can stealth finish, engi can invulnerable finish, and ele can mist finish. I have 5 points in BM just for this.

Aquaman strikes again! I went 1v3 today underwater and walked it off like nothing because of my armor fish healing. Once i rezd I got out of combat and came back to kill 2 of them. Then my armor fish was so pleased it lept out of the water and joined me.

While I agree that is should have at least 1 skill that applies some sort of damaging condition, it isn’t as useless as people on this forum may try to make you believe. Longbow’s rapid fire tracks through stealth while barrage is the only aoe ranger’s have. Coupled with 10 stacks of vulnerability and knockback, we actually have a fairly versatile weapon if used properly.

No.

This has been suggested before and I don’t think anyone has ever gotten a response. As a ranger main, I would also like to see this implemented. Funny thing, when I made a male Norn, I hated its physical appearance so much I did actually delete it.

I’m completely lost. Do you want npcs to follow you around the game forever?

Honestly, if you do not do any PvP outside of the required amount for the monthly, you do not know how to play your profession. PvE doesn’t give you the experience required to master your profession. Sure you can learn all the tricks to every dungeon, but you will never be a truly good player unless you can play against (and defeat) other players of the same and different professions. And yes, this makes a difference in PvE content.

If you want the kills fast, wait until reset night and jump in any map and follow any group around. You are bound to get 50 kills in 10-40 minutes.

They trigger when available. In other words, they both can trigger simultaneously. So, trait 20 in wilderness Survival and get 3s stealth (and you can attack) every 90s. Hide in plain sight by itself isn’t very good because you tend to be stunned throughout the duration and continue to take severe damage (against players). I don’t stop attacking just because somebody went stealth.

Rapid fire tracks through stealth. One of the many reasons I still use longbow. Shortbow can’t do anything against stealth.

While I agree overall, your original statement is somewhat false. In terms of melee pets, birds now miss the most followed by felines unless your opponent runs in very small circles.

~300g. I then made a few long term investments, so currently I’m at 70g.

They do not stack. The highest takes over. However, Agility training is ALWAYS active and it works properly.

I think Anet’s original idea was, no trinity, no counters. Sadly, this doesn’t work all that well in the both PvE and PvP. I actually like your ideas too. Such as shame.

WvWvW and/or a legendary weapon is the endgame. I guess Fractals are too now.

PvP or PvE focused? I guess there isn’t a right and wrong with this kind of thing, but I’m curious about your skills more than stats. I don’t see much use in using Signet of Stone without it affecting you as well. I guess you want you pet a little more viable, but in PvP (I mainly play WvW), your pet is rarely attacked directly.

They are working on class balance. Expect mast fixes and balance to be done by around February (WvW patch). If it isn’t done by then, I don’t think they can ever expect any esport scene from this game, which is sad. If you are getting one shotted, your doing it wrong. Try some more toughness/vitality.

The only thing this will change is that people will start targeting pets more. It isn’t op to anyone saying it is (I main a ranger). All you have to do is knock the pet off and defeat it. You just have to treat it as a veteran mob instead of trash. It is a threat, and should be dealt with or else it can be a nuisance. Make sure you kill the pet to put it on a 60s (48s traited) cooldown. Watch the pet run back to the guy and attack him. Why? BM rangers deal no damage whatsoever, especially at range.

Honestly, for me it is a tie between Engineer, Ranger, and Elementalist. They all require quite high skill levels to defeat opponents even though ele is a bit cheap in the downed state right now. Obviously, this means you need to be good with the profession or else you look terrible giving the opposite impression.

I think air took a hard nerf, otherwise that is the obvious choice other than bloodlust. 5% damage > 5% crit chance in terms of raw damage (no bleed on crit stuff).

The problem seems to further be enhanced by how the game renders characters (fading in). Imo, they need to address one of two things.
1. Remove the fade so that players suddenly appear. (May not fix the issue entirely, but it will reduce what the player perceives as stealth.)
2. Change stealth so that all it does is remove target and apply the ally stealth visual to enemies. The issue I see with this is that aoe will be an even stronger counter to stealth.
I don’t see why nothing has been done, aoe stealth a zerg and they all have this bug giving them a very distinct advantage.

I’m taking the Power/Tougness/Crit as a compromise between tankiness and damage. I’d honestly rather see more options because my current backpiece is Power/Toughness/Vitality with ruby jewel and I would want to see more of that. I think 50% crit chance w/o fury is plenty.

I use the boon removal sigil on my GS, but that only works once every 10s. What I noticed works on engineers is simply out ranging them and bursting heavily after you cc. How? It is actually pretty simple. Send a pet wolf after him/her, as soon as knockdown goes off hit F2, now you can choose to get in close or stay at range, as long as you have QZ you should be able to do significant damage and simply burst through retaliation, even if you are a trap/condition build.

I don’t see why everyone is up in arms about this now (and by everyone I mean the few outspoken people that try to sound like everyone). This has been a part of the trading Post since it opened. There has ALWAYS been the “Legendary” filter option. What did people think that meant? Honestly, if someone wants to spend the money to buy it, that is fine by me. It has no impact at all on what that character can do to me.

Xarbokk.3195:

Just curious where this moving target is. I would like to test my melee pets attacks to see how the melee compares to a ranged pet.

The moving golem is in the target practice area between the lines of golems and the large group of them. It runs around a pillar. It is the only moving golem. Hope that help. If you don’t mind, the issue with ranged pets is that once the golem breaks line of sight, they reposition by chasing it, resulting in large dead times during combat. Honestly, I find this an accurate depiction versus players since smarter players will try to do things like break los, flee, gap close, etc to make it harder to kill them.

Electro.4173:

tiboi.3108:

very nice analyst on your part, imo whether pre-patched or post-patched, it’s still crap. Plus, I think there’s probably a speed cap in combat, because if you calculate 25% signet + 30% Agility Training + 33% swiftness boon buff, then our pets would have 88% speed increased right? But I don’t think it’s the case then, since my panther could barely hit the stupid thief strafing with their auto-attack…

Swiftness doesn’t stack with passive speed increases on players, nor do passive increases stack. Swiftness takes precedence over passive boosts, and if you have multiple passive boosts you only get the single highest boost.

I assume pets would be the same. Don’t try stacking speed boosts, just pick one and go with it.

Interesting resaults. As if people needed even more reason to use Canine pets the most :p.

I’m really suprised the ranged pets kill so slowly, though.

Ah yes, I forgot about the stacking of speed buffs. So swiftness took over and gave the pet more slightly more speed resulting in slightly quicker times at least for the few tests I did with that. I didn’t test that as much as I did everything else because it wasn’t meant to be part of the experiment.

The issue with devourers is that they like to tunnel when the golem gets close, resulting in a dead period in dps for about 5s each time. Spiders and devourers also miss fairly often because of the short range. If the golem is running away and they attack at 900 range, they miss.

I’m glad you guys like what I did, tomorrow I may update the original post with F2 skills whenever possible. I may also do more pets if you all suggest some you want to see results for.

I decided to analyze pet kill time on the moving golem post patch and have some very interesting results. In this analysis, I test 4 types of pets at least 5 times each, used no F2 abilities and only used the passive from Signet of the Hunt to allow pets to keep up with their target (However upon further testing, mixing SotH, the 30% speed trait, and swiftness didn’t aid significantly in kill times, averaging 2-4s quicker.) (Edit: Speed buffs don’t stack, swiftness took over resulting in 8% more speed which may have caused these slight changes.).

Feline- Low: 19s Average: 32s High: 46s
Bird- Low: 32s Average: 38s High: 54s
Canine- Low 32s Average: 36s High: 42s
Drake- Low: 48s Average 52s High 1m4s

Compared to prepatch results (not listed), we have some very interesting figures. Wolves saw an average increase in speed of 14s! Felines nabbed another 4s while birds remained the same. Drakes saw similar results to wolves, lowering their time by 10s. What do these results mean? Well, it seems to me that if you want a consistent high damage pet, your choice is now rather obvious, pick a canine. The range in the canines score is only 10s while the jaguar and bird have 20s+ ranges. Why is this? From what I could see during testing for felines, they need to land crits to kill fast. This is similar for birds but not as extreme. For birds, the biggest issue is the long cast time and waiting period after attacking. If a bird misses one attack, they set themselves behind 5s+. Plus, birds like to cast the swiftness buff while in combat, resulting in a dead period on a moving target of at least 7s. However, when they hit, they tends to crit more since they strike twice and are overall more consistent.

How should these results be interpreted? Remember these results lacked the F2 skills of pets entirely (because I was lazy and didn’t want to test every pet). Therefore they shouldn’t be the deciding factor when choosing a pet. While it wasn’t extensively tested, I did average slightly better results with the feline and bird when the F2 was used. The biggest gain was the range being highly reduced (which I find more important for PvP because this is how consistent the dps of your pet is). The canine found no real change and the drake added about 5s on average but reduced the low by 2s once when the F2 landed partially (river drake was not tested in this).

I purposely only tested what I consider damage pets because I don’t think anyone really cares how quickly a moa can kill a player (believe me it is slow, once it hit 1m20s I just stopped and killed it myself). If anyone is interested, it took the spider an average of 1m10s and the devourer 1m21s to kill the golem. Whichever pet you choose, know that they can still die extremely quick, so use them well!

By the way, I use a wolf and jaguar as my pets in WvWvW because they compliment my build more than any other pets.

This gets discussed fairly often (use search bar) and personally I hate the way the bows look, especially on my charr. I am working towards Sunrise because I like how it looks and I enjoy the play style of the greatsword.

Kellie.3687:

My main issue is pets in pve Dungeons. I feel like I am forced to use bears more often than not, or use ranged pets. Sure on trash I can get away with cats now and again, and I am switching every 16s for quickness, using “my” heal for my pet more often than not and yet it still drops dead from random frontal cleaves from trash.

Would be nice if pets that had low health would try to stay behind mobs, would also be fantastic if pets took reduced aoe damage in dungeons. So that way I could have a choice and play the way I want to play, to some extent anyway.

While I agree with what you are saying, I disagree with you (and many others) with how you use your pet. Swapping it every 16s for 2s of quickness is a terrible waste (If the pet dies the cooldown go up to 60s or if traited, 48s anyway). Try and utilize the pet to it’s fullest potential and take pets that complement your build. Why? When you swap pets, your new pet comes out beside you, which is rarely near any enemies, making the 2s of quickness on it nearly worthless. With your build, I assume base damage is terrible so quickness on you results in a chance at quicker condition application and skill activation. Problem is, if you get interrupted, that quickness was wasted. If you opponent evades, quickness was wasted. The way I see it, 2s of quickness is so meager that having a dysfunctional pet out far surpasses it in usefulness unless the pet is dead. With the recent patch, melee pets aren’t nearly as bad at hitting moving targets.

Sleepy.2647:

GS #2 probably is the highest hitting single skill we have, birds/cats can also pop big numbers if you use every single pet buff reaching 6k+ crits easily.

GS#2 is the highest hitter we have I think. With a crit I have made it hit 5k on an 80 in WvWvW. I could boost that more with SotW or SotH (assuming they fixed the bug where it didn’t apply to your character when traited), but the damage with it is already spectacular and I want to maintain some survivability. Pets hit high if ignored. First thing I do when I fight another ranger is check out their buffs to determine their build. If they seem to be geared toward conditions or pet damage, I burst the pet down first and then the ranger is an easy kill.

Interesting, I found the opposite to be true. With 1 death and over 200 kills last night in WvWvW, my pet and I were hitting much more often (though still getting the occasional obstructed on still and moving targets). Afterwards I went into PvP training against golems and found melee pets do in fact hit much more often than before. A wolf prepatch took an average of 50s to kill the moving golem, now it takes 37s. A jaguar averaged 26s and I managed to get it to kill the golem in 19s twice. Birds however, only saw about a 3-5s improvement due to their delay after attacking and random swiftness boon period. As for pets dieing, you just need to micro them better. Don’t send them into a zerg and hope they can do anything. I am very pleased with this patch, but improvements can still be made for sure.

If you don’t I will. Sure they keep prices down, but they entirely ruin a gaming experience. I don’t want to try and kill a few sparks for charged lodestones to find a bot train of 10 doing the same thing lowing my chance of getting drops. The main reason they do this is to sell that gold to people for cash. I want to be able to farm if I feel like I have the time and buy if I don’t, not be forcing into buying because farming is near impossible.

They said it takes some time for them to gather enough information to ban them. You just have to wait until the next big wave of bots is cleared. Also, these kinds of threads usually get closed soon. The forum mods don’t like them.

Although this may not be what you want to hear, I love the Pact Longbow and have used it since it was released. Why? For the opposite reason you want large skins. It is a small sleek bow that packs a nice punch while looking great. I also don’t want an enemy player to be able to distinguish it from a shortbow giving me a slight visual advantage. Mainly, I just love how it looks.

This is the exact reason I don’t use drakes, 2.75s means almost no chance to strike a moving target. Should be 1.5s at max.

I know everyone already said this, but don’t get too excited. Anet themselves have stated they prefer to make small patches over time rather than one large patch. I’m not expecting anything more that what Jon Peters already posted in the ranger subforum. If there are large changes, I’ll be shocked, in a good way.

So you are the guy I keep killing while I camp the skillpoint in my borderlands. He doesn’t even fight back, just tries to walk away.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Just some food for thought.

Trait overhaul – Marksmanship
(These suggestions all take into account a possible change that active effect of signets apply to the ranger instead of the pet, or to both the ranger and the pet)

*

Minor traits:

Adept
Current: You have opening strike
Suggestion: You and your pet have opening strike

Master
Current: Pets have opening strike
Suggestion: When you swap pets, you and your pet regain opening strike

Grandmaster
Current: Opening strike always critical hits
Suggestion: Opening strike always critical hits, and you regain opening strike for you and your pet when you kill a foe.

*

Major traits:

Steady focus
Current: Damage increases by 10% when endurance is full
Suggestion: No change

Malicious Training
Current: Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets by 50%
Suggestion: Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets by 100%
Kind of OP. So no.

Keen Edge
Current: Use Sharpening Stone when your health reaches 75%
Suggestion: Use Sharpening Stone when your health reaches 50% and gain quickness, duration 3 seconds (internal cooldown 30 seconds)
I feel like the quickness is unnecessary.

Signet Mastery
Current: Signets recharge 20% faster
Suggestion: Signets recharge 25% faster. Activating a signet grants 2 stacks of might for 5 seconds for you and your pet.
Reduce signet recharge back to 20% and we have a deal.

Predator’s Instinct
Current: Apply cripple (for 2 seconds) to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (15-second cooldown).
Suggestion: Apply cripple (for 2 seconds) to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (15-second cooldown). You and your pet gain swiftness for 5 seconds.
A longer cripple would work as well (~3s), but this works too.

Beastmaster’s Bond
Current: Gain fury and might (3 stacks) when your pet’s health reaches 25% (for 9 seconds)
Suggestion: Gain fury and might (3 stacks) when your pet’s health reaches 25% (for 15 seconds)
I feel that 9s is enough.

Spotter
Current: Increases precision of nearby allies by up to 70 points
Suggestion: Increases power and precision for you, your pet and nearby allies by up to 35 points
I don’t mind it the way it is, warriors give power. Why gives rangers a crappy version of both?

Piercing Arrows
Current: All arrow attacks pierce targets
Suggestion: All ranged weapon attacks pierce targets
Axes already bounce, the only thing I can think of that doesn’t already pierce with the trait is the Harpoon Gun

Beastmaster’s Might
Current: Activating a signet grants might (1 stack for 5 seconds).
Suggestion: Activating a signet grants you and nearby allies aegis for 10 seconds.
Interesting. I’ll agree that the current trait is terrible. This could world.

Eagle Eye
Current: Increases longbow and harpoon gun range. Increases longbow and harpoon gun damage by 5%
Suggestion: Increases longbow and harpoon gun range. Increases projectile speed by 25%
I suggested this a while back as a means to make up for the distance traveled; I agree.

Signet of the Beastmaster
Current: Active effects of signets also affect you.
Suggestion: All of your signets are recharged when you swap pets (internal cooldown 45 seconds)
This would ruin my signet build and demolish one of the few viable builds still remaining for the ranger.

Remorseless
Current: Regain Opening Strikes when you kill a foe.
Current: You and your pet adds en extra stack of vulnerability when using opening strike, and the effect lasts longer (10 seconds, up from 5)
I don’t quite understand, “extra stack of vulnerability”. We already apply 10 stacks through opening strike and 5 seconds is enough.

I believe you are fairly accurate in your assumption. Us forum goers are definitely in the minority. Even considering the 113241 views on the thread “Ranger update” which was posted about a month ago, helps reassure this point. Assume any ranger that attends the forums looked at this thread at least once in that month. Then you have 113241 rangers on the forums. As a rough estimate for forum goers, multiple this by 8 (all the professions) and you have 905928 players. Not quite 1 million and the math here is obviously terribly flawed because anyone (not just rangers) could have viewed that thread multiple times. Even if you consider this accurate, this only makes up for about 45% of GW2 owners (assuming GW2 has about 2 million purchases). So yes, those that post on the forums are what is called the outspoken minority.

I think Anet actually does a decent job of listening to the forums and getting feedback from the community through it. Sure, they don’t give us all the information we want, but it is quite clear they spend time reading it (probably laughing a a majority of it).

Aww let me play a song for you on the world’s smallest violin.

I made this suggestion about a month ago, and while I said that things like one time events don’t need to be spoiled, certain aspects of them (such as loot tables, difficulty, game-breaking bugs, etc) can be tested by players. The main purpose I see in a public testing server in GW2’s current state (in terms of PvP) would be for mass testing of balance patches to get things rolling sooner. We all know Anet prefers to make small patches over time, so speeding up that process through massive testing would be nice. Especially if they want to get this game in esports.

Fyi, the invisible karka is the same thing that has plagued the game in wvw (or anywhere really) since the beginning. The game simply doesn’t render characters fast enough and has a limit to how many can be rendered at once. When your allies hit that cap, rendering enemies means that allies need to disappear. This takes time. What this game needs is a slider that controls rendering. I’d set my allies render distance fairly close and enemy render distance fairly far. Also a cap on allies rendered would be nice so that we always have room to render enemies.

“He is going to use a knockback skill isn’t he…” used to happen before I started positioning myself better in wvw. Or “I wonder how other people get this skill point.” when an event starts while I try to channel a skill point and a champion spawns beside me, I die and realize I was on an event. Lastly, “Oh kitten!” when I am autorunning to grab something (phone usually) and walk off a cliff or into a zerg.

I think you missed the whole point in what they were shooting for build wise in this game. Did you seriously buy this game thinking that they were lying when they promoted the idea that the holy trinity isn’t in GW2 (although this can be argued in the games current state in terms of PvP)? You know what makes you feel special in this game? Your own ability to perform well in combat with your profession. So if you don’t feel special, you think you aren’t good. Tell me I’m wrong.

I had a very similar suggestion, and decided to use the search bar and found this thread. My idea is very similar to the OP, but imo, more balanced. Essentially, when a ranger tells the pet to attack (or the pet is in guard mode and is attacking) that target is revealed (apply a new irremovable debuff named “Tracked” that applies a 1s reveal to only the ranger & pet (and adds 0.75s once 0.25s is remaining to keep it applied) to only the ranger and pet as long as it is within a 1500 unit radius pet (ranged pets have slow attack animations and 900 range autoattacks usually resulting in a fleeing opponent being ~1200 units away). The pet must be alive, and attempting to attack the target, F2 skills will not break this track, but if your opponent flees and you use the F2, chances are they will break the 1500 unit radius well before your pet can cast it .I would also suggest all targets hit by an offensive F2 skill be “revealed” for 3s (allies included).

How would a thief counter this? Kill the pet (which is quite easy in most cases), break combat, wait until the pet stops chasing (you are no longer being tracked when the pet stops) and reengage, do both of the above at the same time, and bring a buddy (ranger can only reveal a single player).

Unless they buff arrow speed so that a person 900 units from you can’t strafe quickly back and forth to dodge every arrow, they really don’t need to nerf damage (although I feel that you are correct in this assumption) and I hope they test it so that the arrows are fast enough so this kind of thing can’t happen.

Overall, I’m excited after the 2 buffs mentioned, but I don’t think I’ll use SotH still (I’ll use it out of combat) because the active is garbage in the current state and a passive +25% movement speed increase isn’t worth losing QZ, SoR, or SoS.