Guild Wars 2

Another big reason is the crit damage cap being severely lower in sPvP, making dps professions less viable, while tank professions saw no such nerf.

When YOU (not your pet) interrupt an opponent, you and your pet gain a buff (~10s) to inflict 50% bonus damage on next attack. Interrupt means you need to see the “interrupt” text over their player to gain the benefit. Stunning them when they aren’t casting anything wont give you the interrupt. It does a 50% bonus, so if you crit for 3000 normally, you will hit for a crit 4500 on the next attack (assuming you crit). GS#5 (sometimes GS#4), SB#5, & LB#4 are all the interrupts we possess. Most people that use this use the GS for the simple combo of 5 then 2 for high burst damage. You will see the buff appear in the UI if you successfully interrupt. But it may be very quick because the next attack that “hits” (block, evade, etc will also consume the buff!) will use the buff.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

The problem with this build, is in a PvP environment, you won’t be able to take anyone out, and as soon as they find out they aren’t getting anywhere, they’ll just run, and as a guardian, you have no reliable means of catching them.

You would be surprised at the amount of people kill (1v1, 1v2 even) with my full heal/support build simply because they decide not to run and fight to the bitter end. A lot of people have more pride than brains. Quite a bit of the time they Alt-F4 or invite me to their party to talk kitten. I just call laugh at them and tell them how bad do you have to be to let a guardian who hits ~700 damage per attack beat them (no real condi damage either) and they usually rage quit.

Source: 8,500 WvW kills

I’ve been casually working my way towards sunrise on my ranger from before GS was even used (obviously after the beta but post launch). Honestly, it was never a weak weapon, many rangers just don’t understand it more potent as a defensive and burst weapon. It doesn’t provide the sustained dps that the other weapons do in the current state, but it wasn’t ever terrible as many rangers would have had you believe. It has begun picking up considerable usage lately as well.

Off topic: Back when it was widely considered worthless, I used to rock the greatsword ranger in dungeons and get praised by nearly every group. I was constantly asked how I managed to stay alive and what my build was. To everyone’s surprise, I’m fairly close to a glass cannon, but the defensive capabilities of the gs ranger are potent enough to make up for this weakness to a large extent.

So, go for it.

jubskie.3152:

FrouFrou.4958:

What about underwater combat pets? No jellyfishies ’n a-likes mentioned :<

Underwater pets and combat is a different beast altogether, I’ll write about that in a different article

I got you covered, lakittenail devourer and armor fish. Why? Armor fish is tanky while still dealing a lot of damage with an on demand 2s stun (you should cc your target first to guarantee it hits). Lakittenail devourer deals 2 1s stuns on next attack = 2s stun at range. Very strong to have all these stuns available underwater.

Shark does have the ability to fear, but it isn’t very reliable even though they usually cast it first. Their power is also misleading. Auto attacks from them are weaker than armor fish if I remember correctly. I know a lot of rangers like the jellyfish (especially for the F2) and while it works in PvE, it just isn’t as useful elsewhere. I much prefer the on demand stuns provided by the other two mentioned. Also, devourers attack significantly faster underwater increasing their dps to be on more par with other pets.

While I hate to promote this, I have noticed (and documented) a significant drop in ecto per rare salavage for the last 50 rares. However, the last 7 rares nearly made up for the deficit. RNG is RNG i guess.

I don’t think anyone is content with pets atm. Didn’t realize alpine wolf was bugged, but I had tested the others. Most rangers really need information like this to help them decide what pet to choose to compliment their builds. The issue is that most rangers use builds that they don’t understand (because we are pigeonholed into certain builds to be viable) and therefore pets that have no synergy. Before you decide on what pet you want, first determine what do you need in you build. Do you lack cc? Pick a canine. Do you lack burst but have cc? Pick a feline or bird. Are you squishy? Don’t pick a bear.

They said longbow buffs and greatsword cooldowns decreased so I expect.

Longbow #3 now applies a 1s stun on hit.
Longbow #4 now applies 5s weakness on hit.
Greatsword #2 does 20% more damage and applies 5 stacks of bleed.
Greatsword #3 cooldown reduced to 10s.
Greatsword #5 cooldown decreased to 25s.

And maybe the random:

Lick wounds now functions properly. (but still doesn’t work 100% of the time)
Some obscure toolip is now fixed.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I enjoy watching PvE players struggle to obtain badges and complete jumping puzzles. How can I tell who is a PvE player and who is a PvP player? Easy, walk up to a PvE player and they do 1 of two things. 1. Turn away from you and jog (possibly using a heal if they remember). 2. Auto attack and backpedal. Never do they look at positioning, escape mechanisms, or cc to even help themselves. Hilarious. Keep trying though, I really enjoy it.

Some of your data isn’t correct. Alpine wolf deals 4s chill, owl 6s, snow leopard 8s. Canines have 2s knockdown. And drakes … still useless. Stalker applies 5 stacks of might with 10s duration with a 3s cast time. It isn’t very good.

Not only are they difficult to catch but you can’t be entirely sure that they are bots. I have heard of players that claim to park toons on nodes to farm them. After they gather, they switch toons and repeat I assume. However, I have a hard time believing this excuse and would assume it is something made up by a teleport gatherer in the first place. Anyway, you can’t be entirely sure.

Quick update, I might add it to my video, but marsh drake doesn’t quite do the damage salamander or river drake does (even with poison). Your just going to have to take my word for it, but against 3 targets I was able to deal 6165 direct + 3780 poison = 9945 damage versus the 11k+ from both salamander and river drakes. In PvP (any form) most players won’t let you get a 15s poisons to last full duration on them or they will die before it ends so expect real world results to be much lower. However, it is the easiest to land while still bouncing between targets.

And to those of you talking about other pets (jaguar) I think the op was asking/telling about what F2 abilities were the strongest in terms of reflected damage. Technically, jaguar F2 does 0 damage.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

That’s against many foes ( AOE ) , but which is the strongest pet against a single target ? ?

River drake will still deal more damage against a single target, and it is much easier to land the F2.

Durzlla.6295:

Indoles.1467:

River drake F2 deals the highest damage by a considerable margin. If used in conjunction with quickness, you can significantly increase your chances of hitting with it. Marsh drake is similar to river drake in terms of a ranged tracking channeled F2, except it has another 300 range and inflicts a high amount of poison, but with less direct damage. Devourers are only good underwater.

I am talking fairly strictly in pvp terms (wvw included), in which case drakes are still poor overall pet choices and devourers are near worthless.

River drake does less damage than the salamander drake when both breathes fully hit, granted the river drake can do more damage (or maybe tie it when you include the burning from the salamander drake) when it bounces between 2 targets and hits the same guy twice. And before you say that he can hit up to 3 people so that’s more damage, the salamander drake can hit up to 5 people, and his breathe goes right through that BS guardians call sanctuary, kills them every time =D.

@OP i did not realize that the lakittenail devourer did so much damage with his F2… this explains a lot now…

River drake F2 deals the highest damage by a considerable margin. If used in conjunction with quickness, you can significantly increase your chances of hitting with it. Marsh drake is similar to river drake in terms of a ranged tracking channeled F2, except it has another 300 range and inflicts a high amount of poison, but with less direct damage. Devourers are only good underwater.

I am talking fairly strictly in pvp terms (wvw included), in which case drakes are still poor overall pet choices and devourers are near worthless.

Personally, I think path of scars is actually worth using now for increased damage and a different type of aoe IF you are running oh axe, and nobody is. However, one way to make this skill more useful would be instead of increasing the damage to add a 1s stun or daze (you are throwing the axe with enough force to go through enemies correct?) on hit. Still, I don’t think this will make up for the incredibly weak axe oh #5 skill that is entirely useless in any form of pvp since it grants no stability, movement, protection, or even real damage. If somebody sees you using this they will either melee you, drop aoe bombs/conditions, or simply stun/daze you and burst.

Overall, rangers took more nerfs than buffs in this patch.

I would pick up a second bow and place bloodlust on it, get 25 stacks, and then swap to your main weapon with either fire or air (air does 10% more damage but single target). Being able to deal 1k+ damage every 5ish seconds is pretty powerful.

As others have said, F2 is too random and slow for me to use. I don’t like to leave much up to chance when I’m playing (I do mostly WvW). Canine 2s knockdown is practically guaranteed as long as the enemy doesn’t use an escape mechanism. Pigs miss the F2 way too often due to long cast time.

Their damage is surprisingly high compared to their stats, but that doesn’t make up for their cumbersomeness.

I would like to the the F2 automatically place the item in the rangers hand, that would really solve a lot of issues I have with them.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Skill 2 just needs… something. I don’t think conditions are it – unless that condition is weakness or cripple. The big problem with Rapid Fire is that it’s just too easy to make useless through a dodge.

I think Skill 5 could use some projectile finishing on it – perhaps have each arrow be a small projectile finisher.

When I use skill 2, i make absolutely sure that they are stunned/feared/knocked down/no endurance. Currently,this skill is more about timing (which I am not against). Wait until your opponent rolls twice, cc and burst. I just feel that some random conditions would be a nice addition.
The way skill 5 works, I would assume that making it a projectile finisher is impossible, but I was thinking that it should cure conditions on allies once every 4 ticks (12 total, so 3 conditions). Adding bleeds would be interesting, but this skill already does pretty high damage and aoe cripple fields+bleeds are just too common imo.

jwaz.1908:

Sabertooth.2374:

These are some really good ideas, for skill 5 i was thinking maybe add to / instead of cripple we could have bleed or burn

If they removed the cripple on skill 5 I’d be kitten haha. It’s my favorite ranger longbow ability because of the cc and damage.

While I do agree that longbow needs revisions, not all your revisions make sense. Longbow isn’t a condition weapon so random conditions would be weird and out of place. I do agree though, that ranger longbow should have a longer range by default. I was also thinking that skill 1 could possibly ignore armor if at max range, playing off of the ‘sniper’ aspect of the weapon.

I can understand why you would say it doesn’t make sense at first, but to me, it would only seem appropriate for the ranger to be equipped with an assortment of arrows (think shortbow bleed and poison). I liked to think of this skill as a reckless ranger grabs arrows as fast as possible and fires not caring which is grabbed. Therefore, a chance at poison, bleed, blind (maybe an arrow with some kind of pouch that contains dust?), and confusion (simply being hit my a mass of arrows so fast might cause one to be confused, or crippled).

Ignoring armor would be terribly broken though. I have hit “naked” players before for well over 10k when not trying hard to get high numbers.

First, I have a ton of experience using this weapon on ranger in both pvp and pve, so just because you use it in paids (I have too) doesn’t mean it is a very good weapon for a ranger (even berserker ranger). I’d like to see some changes made to make it more viable for all builds (while still leaning towards power builds) and give rangers a better reason to use it.

Skill 1: Leave it as is except give it 1500 range by default and/or give the ranger (and pet?) 1 stack of might for 3s per hit. With the perk, it can have 1800 giving the ranger the longest range in the game. I know that this may sound op, but honestly, the arrows are easy to dodge at 1200 (strafe), 1800 would be so simple that getting hit by just one arrow should make you want to commit suicide. Honestly, this also just plain makes sense. Why can somebody throw a grenade as far as as arrow from a longbow? Because it’s a fictional game? I guess that can explain why bullets disappear after 900-1200 units too. Anyway, the might would also be a nice compromise for an average damage auto attack that lacks any utility. With a range increase, the damage zones may need to be reworked as well.

Skill 2: Leave mostly as is but add random conditions (bleed, poison, confusion, and blind only) on 25% per hit for 5s duration each. In the description, add something about the ranger rapidly and randomly unloads all types of arrows in his/her arsenal. I still find fairly lackluster due to unpredictability, but at least there would be some form of condition damage on this weapon.

Skill 3: Same except make it unblockable.

Skill 4: Same.

Skill 5: Same except grants 5s fury to your pet on use (much like feeding frenzy to add some more pet synergy to this weapon).

I tried to make it as balanced as possible, tell me what you think. I know some will find skill 3 possibly op, but realize this skill does very little damage in the first place. Making it unblockable just feels right for a “hunter’s shot”.

My build honestly probably utilizes as little of the pet as possible, but I still find myself hitting the pet buttons very often (F1-F4), especially casting the F2 in good situations. In other words, if you want to be a decent ranger, you do need to learn how to use your chosen pet.

Tribio.8531:

If you read the skill description it says that your pet will use the active target? Drop target and try casting, no?
(not sure, to be honest, never actually use a pet skill by purpose without a target)

There still lies in a few issues I have noticed and would really want fixed. First, when no target is selected (unsure if pet is on passive or not), hitting F2 can still cause the pet to go after some random nearby target before casting and sometimes forget to cast and just begin auto attacking anyway. Second, sometimes you hit F2 and the pet cancels itself by moving. So, you have to keep hitting it at intervals so that you don’t accidentally cancel it when it is actually working but make sure it does go off because if you cancel it by hitting F2 twice quickly, you put the F2 on a 3-5s cooldown.

These two things are the biggest issue I currently have with pets. Sure, some PvE damage mitigation should be added, but I would like to see properly functioning pets first.

Edit: A common use for no target F2 casting would be moas in combat and canines when fleeing. Casting the wolf fear without a target usually causes it to stop and fear any approaching enemies the other direction, which is great for escaping.

The devs admitted that trap ranger is a bit strong, but locking them down does work quite well since most of them build without any on demand condition removal or any stun removal. I don’t find them op however, and many pros have said the same, people just don’t know how to fight them yet.

Another issue with this games balance lies in condition damage itself. With no way to mitigate it, condition/tanky builds are naturally very strong (and easy to put together sine you can get gear with +condition damage & +toughness). It seems the only way to skirmish in this game is to be the better bunker. Sure, you can say, “My gc build kills all!” But face some more serious pvp players and you will see that your gc warrior can’t do anything to a bunker ele.

Wolf is a must for any ranger. It deals nice consistent damage with a leap, knockdown, cripple, and fear giving it excellent control. It is the most versatile pet we have and can be beneficial for any build. Your second pet can be what you choose, be it a dps pet (feline or bird) or more control (canine). Obviously, this is assuming you are talking strictly pvp (wvw). Just don’t make the biggest mistake rangers can make and bring a bear. They deal almost no damage but are decent tanks. The issue with that is in how gw2 pvp is played, mass aoe. Nobody will give 2 kittens about your tanky bear since it doesn’t do anything and just mass aoe spam you.

Definitely not. Sure it is fun, but part of the appeal to me is being able to play whenever I have time. If I was paying, I would want to play more just so I feel like I’m getting my monies worth. Playing more than I should would probably burn me out quick and make me ignore more important things than video games in my life right now. Plus, the paying monthly for access to a game just doesn’t feel right to me. I know people that have put thousands into WoW and it amazes me that they have to keep paying to play. Don’t the devs think enough is enough? Probably, it is the publisher that doesn’t give 2 kittens about people though which is why they all tend to have very poor public opinion.

The sPvP players found out the trap ranger to be a nice debunker (in NA) because traps are unblockable, provide short fields, and deal decent damage. They just haven’t learned that cc and conditions completely destroy the ranger due to the lack of on demand condition removal. Nobody is really afraid of the ranger, they just know that a trap ranger is a viable option in sPvP for conquest.

Does this work outside of sPvP? Not as well. Why? Direct damage builds can deal significantly more damage outside of sPvP and trap rangers don’t have very strong teamfight potential. They do best in small skirmishes where conditions aren’t too heavy.

I’m pretty sure the devs said they are sticking to conquest for the time being. They want to make it polished and balanced before they work on any other gamemodes.

Considering elementalist is the strongest pvp profession right now, I think op is just trolling. Sure, thief rocks low level tpvp and spvp, but a good ele (or 2) will completely shut down another team with less elementalists.

• 25% aoe mitigation in sPvP and WvW
• 75% aoe mitigation in dungeons
• lower cast times on many pet skills
• drake F2 cone increased to 600 with wider angle 60 degrees minimum
• a function key that is similar to guard and a new skill that replaces guard
• pets take no fall damage
• pets evade when you evade
• when F2 is pressed, the pet will make an effort to cast it if within range instead of cancel itself often

All of you saying pet should attack while moving need to either heavily reconsider how op that would be or get better at ranger if you think that needs to be implemented.

While not much of a conspiracy theorist myself, I would believe that the purpose behind the 250 stack cap (other than being a practical number under 256) is to keep players buying bank expansions with gems. Plus, using them once you get enough to buy an item is preferred if you need storage space. You don’t ever need to stack thousands of them unless you have ocd and need to buy the entire set at once. And even then, I say, suck it up or give in.

A guildmate of mine got one as a drop during the event and sold it for 15g at the time. If they do still drop (I know of nobody that has gotten one after the event) they must drop extremely rarely because their prices are all above 30g each. I’ve been farming karka for a while now, but I haven’t gotten one yet.

Lol, you might have come across me tanking dolyaks for the dodge daily. I got pretty kitten when somebody came up and attacked all 5 of them. Why? There was only a few minutes left in the daily and I wanted to get it done.

Anyway, I’d totally just let people die now to get the res daily too. Once I walked up to a dead guy and he said, “rez daily?” and I replied, “yeah, dodge daily?”, he answered, “you know it”. The new GW2!

5700+ kills in Wv3. 1300+ badges. ~23% chance to get a badge per kill. I don’t do the jumping puzzles (I have maybe done 5). I feel like it is fine.

Tip: You need to deal damage to players to get drops. Executing them gives you nothing.

While Wv3 drops do need a look over, I don’t think badges are in a bad spot. They should be something earned rather than bought or easily farmed. You have 2 choices, kill people and help your server or do jp and help your server by giving away bps.

The culling is on your end, not theirs. Your cpu isn’t “fast” enough to display the models even though the server allows them to attack you. While I agree that culling was a big issue before the latest patch because even people with high end computers (i would call myself mid range) were having to deal with it, I haven’t had an issue with it since the update to a large extent. The worst I have come across since the patch was a zerg rushing towards me (unrendered) but I saw 1 guy pop up about 1500 units away and knew something was fishy by how confident he was. At about 1200 units I saw 4 more pop up and knew it was time to gtfo. I warned my guild while fleeing to them and survived with relative ease. There was about 25 of them total and they all were rendered by the time I regrouped with my guild (they were about 2000 units away) so I was able to pick targets and fight without much issue.

Or you could give those blueprints to a friends or guildmate that does do Wv3.

You take fall damage and condition damage. You are not invulnerable, you simply take 0 direct damage for the next 6s.

Time to start grinding. Plus, I think the WoW transfer fee is the same price. If it means that much to you, just buy the transfer. Otherwise, they gave you a pretty big warning, yet people will always complain. Reminds me of those monthly achievement threads where people complain that they wanted to finish the monthly on the last minute to find that it was reset.

What happened with precursors is that some smart fellow(s) made a bunch of money off of some investment (maybe hoarded tons of T6 mats before ascended came out and then cashed out). He/she then used this money to purchase as many precursors as possible to raise the price. Knowing that others will ultimately buy the precursors for use (essentially removing them from the game), they then place some back on the tp for large profits. The cycle continues and worsens as they gain more money. How it can be “fixed”? Allow players to choose a certain precursor (maximum of 1) and do a long quest line to obtain it (it can be grindy, confusing, difficult, and expensive as long as it doesn’t cost the player a truly significant amount of gold ~50g would be acceptable to me.) making obtaining it somewhat of a task that cannot be repeated. This will allow players that want their legendary a feasible means of obtaining it while still being something earned over time rather than prying from the clutches of somebody who played the market at the right time.

Or they could add more ways to get precursors so they become more common and prices fall.

The F2 hyena is a separate pet entirely. It has its own cooldowns, buffs, ect. The good thing about this is that you can theorically double cc, dps, and durability. However, in practice it doesn’t prove to be quite as effective.

I have done extensive testing of all the pets against the heavy moving golem in the mists as a semi accurate model for when fighting players. Dps when compared to other canines without the F2 is less than half. It takes ~40s for an unbuffed (0 in BM, no buffs except +25% move speed from SotH) wolf to kill the golem while it takes ~90s for a hyena to. With the F2 activated it takes ~55s to kill the golem. Why? The second hyena doesn’t get the passive speed boost making it take longer to reach the target when compared your hyena. Yes, speed boosts actually increase pet dps on moving targets significantly.

So, while it can have its uses, I find the hyena to be fairly lackluster because its damage is so poor and while the F2 lasts a long time, when it isn’t active the dps decrease is almost equivalent to having a bear out. Also, the ally hyena can sometimes do its own thing like necro pets because you have no way to control it. I heard that the hyena F2 ally doesn’t despawn as long as your target is alive, but from my testing, it despawns after 30 or 40s (I can’t remember). I didn’t test if it despawns early if your target dies.

5 stat points – upgrade slot of Trinkets and Backpack
7 stat points – ascended Backpack & Orbs
8.5 stat points – ascended Ring
9.44 stat points – ascended amulet
10 stat points – traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
12 stat points – Glove, Shoulder and Boots
12.8 stat points – 1H Weapons and Amulet
13.33 stat points – Earring
14 stat points – Backpack (rare version)
14.22 stat points – 2H Weapons
14.4 stat points – Coat
16 stat points – Ring, Helm and Legging

So your rings, helm, & leggings should definitely not have crit damage on them (knight’s will make you tankier while still providing damage). Place a Exquisite Ruby Jewel (or the jewel that gives power/vitality/crit damage) in all trinkets (including backslot if not ascended) because the amount of attribute points lost to crit damage gained is insanely high. I would suggest your coat also be power/precision/toughness but that is up to you. As for runes/orbs, I have ruby orbs as a placeholder for when I feel like divinity runes will be worth buying.

Ha, no. What would be the point in playing if you get nothing? Aren’t the main two points of acquiring gear the ability to show it off and the ability to more easily kill players? Without loot, we would have no gear except what is provided. It would basically be sPvP as PvE which means there is no reason to do any dungeons, dragons, fractals, etc since you get nothing out of it for the time spent unless you actually enjoy “wasting” time. I quote wasting because technically anything can be classified as wasted time, but ultimately in most games, we play to progress towards a virtual goal. Without any goal, why play?

I don’t tpvp much, but i prefer longbow to shortbow for the point-blank shot. The ability to throw them off the point so you can gain control is very valuable.

Idea! Why not also a biweekly as well? Then, we can have a daily, weekly, biweekly, and monthly for those of us that can’t do the weekly. Come to think of it, quarterly achievements could be useful as well. Why not just throw in yearly too?

You get my point? Daily and monthly are enough. I don’t do the daily every day, just when I have enough time.

This essentially falls under the suggestion that we need a way to view other players stats. So some players will reject this and others will want it. I want it to happen and don’t know why it wasn’t in the game on release.

Saweth You Him.9047:

Or something like mesmer cast time reduction from GW1 where the spell casts faster but follow through results in same overall dps.

Do you not understand? I have over 5000 kills with the longbow (PvE) and over 5600 kills in WvW where I only use longbow and greatsword. It is the same. It was a tooltip update. Damage is the same, fire rate is the same.

I’m starting to think it always said 3/4 seconds anyway even though that is incorrect. The actual cast time is 1 1/4 seconds.

There were 3 large beta’s and several short beta periods after those up until release. An MMORPG has so much content that bugs are bound to be present. Yes, quite a few still exist, but I can’t say many other games do it better or faster these days.

Tooltip fix, nothing more.

These are just excuses for the real reason. Op wants dailies to take as little time as possible. This new daily system takes more time, but is more rewarding. I enjoy it.

If you can’t evade. Grab a group of mobs and roll around in them. After a minute at most, you should have all 15.

It’s only been 5 months, sheesh. /s