Guild Wars 2

I never join meta groups. Layely, with new players everywhere, it is easy to find pug groups to do the dungeons for fun, which is great

Just after, anet states Glicko is to be updated saturday, so that might include the current MU…
Not very clear… I doubt anet would calculate glicko based on only 2 days…

Guys, take a deep breath and re-read the announcements and related dev posts…

What we get in WvW is a random PvE hero challenge unlock.

The current hero challenge give one HP.

The new hero challenge give 10 hp.

So that means it is possible to unlock it all with less than 40 levels per character.

Though someone having the bare minimum of Hero challenges done might need somewhat 200 and some levels. If they are unlucky and only randomly unlock the current hero challenge….

Attack 2 on GS is strong, so AA has to be lower to compensate. Aa also cleave.
Sword AA is hard to manage, so it’s higher. Aa don’t cleave on 3 attacks, and the cleaving one only hit 3 target.

I think GS is ok, especially compared to rangers’ other weapons (except LB, but, well, LB has it own downside).

Pets had an increase of their health pool for PvE in a prwvious attempt to make them useful in dungeons. Would this change allow to bring it back to normal HP?

Also, when that change occured in PvE (twice higher health), it was stated it couldn’t be implemented in PvP or WvW because it would be unfair, which I concede.
But the necessity to target the pet, I believe, would bring an higher level of play in WvW and PvP. I do know it can’t be applied for all minions (imagine having to target one by one all minions to get to the minion mancer…), but I wish it could be implemented for professions mechanics (mesmers and rangers) even in PvP and WvW situations.

Tl;dr :
Profession mechanism (ranger pet, mesmer illusions) should get an incoming untargetted damage reduction from all sources (players also), and not just from NPC.

I am sorry, but Roy states it’s only for PvE (WvW is PvP), anything planned for WvW, eg, zerg fights?

I want to be able to chose. Depending on my armor stats, am I more on the damage, or on the healing side?

As is, the only option is heal, with poor damages.

I hope better heal scaling means better damage options on staff.

I do hope also that the scaling with healing power will also mean a way to scaloe with power and/or condi also. But since Irenio wrote :

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

[…]reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.
[…]

I do believe we should get some damage on the staff (along with some boons), and not just a fix of animations (the vine port skill blocking the player).

Be nice with Irenio, so he don’t run away!

I don’t believe we should have butter and butter money – which is what some are asking. (huge heal without healing power), but I do believe we shouldn’t be struck with needing a specific stat (healing), and that there should be a trade off (healing or damage). For it to be a trade off, we will need some damage on staff, so I trust Irenio to work on it.

Irenio did some good job on ranger and balance, and he sure looks passionate enough to help bring us out of the "unwanted’ category (as long as he can keep Roy away).

I have faith in you, Irenio!
Don’t let us down!

Star Ace.5207:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The animations for staff are getting looked at.

Thanks Sir, though I do admit that I LOVE the way the Staff skill #1 animation works, and it would be a pity to lose that over people’s dislike of the regular staff hold. If one needs to be sacrificed for the other, I rather have the melee-type staff wielding. The hand-cast wouldn’t make that much sense for that skill, IMHO.

Someone mentionned having the ray out the top of the staff, like the gardian animation, which I find would fit better.

Lots of great feedback in this thread
My guildies pretty much had related impressions

Some of our brainstorm that dont seem reflected here:

About the new pets, can’t AOE F2 be ground targettable?

About the staff, against stealth mechanism, staff becomes useless. We find it is not good, especially seeing that staff is absolutely needed for the spe (celestial generation).

At least AA shouldn’t need target – or at least should be targettable on allies.

For the rest, what came to my hear was pretty much the same as stated here.
lackluster damages, pour scaling with armor, glyphs being close range and so on.

All in all, my guildies found it fun to play, despite it needing some adjustments.

Further to looking at stats in build editirs, I’d advise you try build you can in PvP, since you play that game mode. It costs nothing, and you can see if you like the gameplay.
I personally don’t like celestial on ranger, cause I think our builds are not making the most out of the stats. But some people do enjoy it.

Solandri.9640:

Single F1 should order your pet to attack, but intelligently avoid red circles (nothing like ordering your pet to attack and watching it walk right through every red circle to get to the target.

Double F1 should order it to attack at all costs, including standing in a red circle until it dies.

Single F3 should order your pet to dodge/evade/whatever.

Double F3 should order your pet to come back.

I get the feeling they’re trying to avoid double-clicks and double-presses in this game though.

Double clicks/press are problematic with lags.

FunSeeker.4815:

slingblade.1437:

Dodges are too valuable to have blow them to save your pet from damage, IMO, and one dodge won’t save your pet from a WvW zerg. Others have proposed damage reductions based on a percentage, as well as Resistance or reduced condition duration/stacks, which I would be in favor of.

This way of thinking is what needs to change. Pets should be a valuable asset for your damage and build where there are no seconds thought of whether spend a dodge roll to save my pet or just let them die. I dream for a day when you get your pet killed you’ll feel the lost, that way pet management will be a skill needed for ranger players.

When they give us more pet management option, when we can see what conditions they have, when pets are able to jump over obstacles, when they are able to actually hit players other than noobs or to hit moving targets, when we can control what they do, where they are , when we can protect them from OS mechanism, when we syop having traits hurting them, in short, when they really are a useful part of the class, that would come by itself.

Make us WANT to play with it by giving us a reason to care for it, and tools to do so (ranger controlled pet dodge, pet heal, pet positionning tool), and they can be central to the class.

Why waste heal or dodge on pet? If my pet dies, which it will do anyway, I can still hit; if I heal for the pet, and don’t have heal for me when needed, and I die, pet not gonna do much. Heal on pet is useless against OS mechanism. We have nothing to save the pet from these. The Signet, with it’s CD, can only save the pet once in a fight. Swap has to be timed at the exact same time ranger has to dodge, given AoE OS, which could only be done with a macro, which is forbidden. And swap might be on CD, so not so useful.

Here is not the subject for pet problems, though.

On topic:
I’d love the pet to gain a dodge or aegis or else on demand with a decent CD. Have it dodge with me, less so. It might be good in PvE, but not practical in PvP. Pet is to be a second DpS source, so it migh not be in same danger as me, ie, when I send it on side target, it does not need to dodge what I dodge.

Support will unlink it for you once they get to your ticket and have all your informations. Took less than a day for me to get it unlinked, after I provided all informations.

Didn’t find the patch note for when it was implanted, but thanks for adding the possibility to assign a hotkey to the pet combat toggle.
(might be a long time ago, and I just found out :s )

It will be great when the passive/agressive option will be repaired/working.

:D

Mentality changed, since edge of the mist got out. Many send uplevels there to level up.
But if she was following a guild – and not a pug group – I understand their reaction, and find it’s been mellower than what would happen on my server if an uplevel took to sticking a guild group…

Tao.5461:

Well when it comes to ranger’s being worth something in a zerg, anet still have not address the main problem and that is that pets can’t survive for long in high amounts of aoe so they die quite quickly most of the time. Once your pet is dead you are of limited use.
Hunter’s in WoW had the same issue with their pets and Blizzard fixed it by giving pets an always on buff that gave the pet 90% protection from aoe damage, it worked well and anet need to do something similar if rangers are ever going to be take seriously as a class in this game.

I took to using bears in zergs.
I keep it on passive and send it with my melee to soak up some aoe damage – helping with my melee’s survivability (most aoe have a limit of 5, and many have just one pulse – so if the bear is on front, melee have way less AoE to go through).
With just a little bit of health monitoring, calling it back to my side when it’s in trouble, or plain switching it when possible, it works great, and is almost never dead (only when I’m too focused on myself I’m a bad master, at times ).

As others said, building is about making choices…
As to “it is already impossible to make an effective longbow ranger without sacrificing traits.”
It can be effective – just not OP.
And OP calls for nerfs…
Building possibilities – as far as LB goes – looks pretty good to me.
Is SB user ineffective because less traits apply to SB? no…
Is axe User less effective for its lack of traits? no…
Is sword users ineffective because of few traits? No.
LB is one of the few weapons that can be almost totally customisable now – which sounds great to me…

" is there any migrating process planned to join up underpopulated realms"
Whith seasons, Anet most of the time offer some free or cheap transfers according to ranking – that is, lower ranked server of each league is free / less expensive, higher get more expensive
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-ready-for-wvw-spring-tournament-2014/

but yeah immediate transfer might be the best option, we don’t yet know if there will be another season or if they will use the same transfer options – since it was pretty messy…

The colors were not always what they are now.
Red – Overgrowth – almost always outnumbered the ennemies, like it is now for green
Green – frostreach – less than more present, like it is now for blue (in EU, at my playtime)
blue – baldlands – more or less present, like it is now for red (in EU, at my playtime)

I believe it has to do with the buff – take the light, and reach your team unharmed and pretty fast.
Worm’s tunnel offers something like that, but not as convenient,
FR offers no movement buff to reach the team.

Mikuchan.7261:

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

I don’t see any reason at all to record voice in other languages than english. It costs a -ton- of money and it complicates things very very much and it gives very little gain.
Why not just have english voice and subtitles for the rest of the languages?
Makes things much less complicated and with subtitles, people who blatantly refuse to learn english for whatever reason will still understand.
The biggest part of the population in GW2 does speak english and it’s good enough to cater to the minorities who aren’t native english speaking (like me) with subtitles.

On the “no player name in the dialogs” issue, voice synthesizing technology is getting better and better and would be really cool to include if done right. The player would, similar to the japanese dating game Love+, set how they want their name to sound and then the name is synthesized whenever it needs to be said. Maybe a bit of a dream, but would be cool and quite unique.

English is not the most spoken language on earth…
Why English? and not ont of those chinese language that has the most people speaking it?
I play in French, I love to have access to most of the game in an acceptable French (while many translated games are horrible), and I really appreciate that Anet takes the time and effort of making the game good in my favorite language.
I cannot immerse myself in a story when I have to read all text all the time.

Gw2 is one of the very few games that I play in my favorite language, because it’s good. It’s part of why I do choose to open that game instead of an other one.

All languages have their own subtelities. English is a very “prosaic” one, while french and spanish are more lyric/poetric, imho, better to carry on a story.

You should try it one day, you’d see the light it sheds on the story is very different that the light shed by the English…

KSIBBQ.8123:

Jocksy.3415:

Asnip

I think pet conditions scale with yours…from what i can see. Their poison is the same Dmg as mine.

They don’t – the builder might be off – or Anet changed it since last time I checked – maybe the poison trait might have an effect on it, didn’t really test it…
(none of our traits and armor stats apply to the pet – only their own and a few specific traits, like expertise training, pet’s prowess or compassion training)
I used to take direct damage and CC pets on condi/trapper build – in pvp/wvw settings though…

Would also be easier to control where the heal goes off (pet’s F2 not necessarily to be launched where heal is needed). It’s easier to place ranger where heal is needed than to bring the pet there.
Though the advantage of having it on pet skills instead than on swap is that i can be a pet heal, and heal allies at points where rangers might not be (eg, in melee while he is ranged, if the pet is melee, or at range if the pet is ranged while the ranger is distance)

Appart for a few little things, it’s pretty ok – stun break and condi removal are pretty useless in most pve content anyway, and I personnally never thought much of a passive stun break once every 90 seconds.
Overall, you would achieve higher condi damage with rune of undead, and 60% condi duration is pretty useless – most of your conditions are ticking, and the 1/4 or 1/2 seconds you gain on most skills are not taken advantage of.
So I’d replace the toxic cristal by a regular one.

The following is just opinions
I’d replace survival cd reduction with off hand training – depending on the situation, and I’d take sword over axe – cause I like to have a distance and a melee option, and melee main goes well with torch (I find). Plus swords allows for jump heal combo with Healing spring.

Geomancy on SB seems weird, but I guess it depends on your gameplay (need to swap while in melee)
I’m not sure of when agony gets applied. If it’s after your condi duration (eg: 5 secs from earth sigil * 50% duration = 7.5 * 20% duration = 9 seconds VS 5 secs * 70% = 8.5), 50%, it’s good, otherwise I think sigil of accuracy (more precision) or bursting (more condi damage overall) might be better, especially since you have different conditions.

Jeknar.6184:

If they use the ranks as currency, people would just create new characters and keep expending their rank points as currency.

Low level caracters used to get ranks faster, but it is not so anymore with the shared pool. All caracters get XP as fast, and only the firsts WvW ranks demand less WxP; it is not linked with the character level, but the account WvW rank…

Love the idea of getting superior siege with ranks!
Though I doubt Anet would put anything that can be monetized, given they wouldn’t want to upset the economy…

Anything reapeated would get in the spam filter.
So either be creative as Aneaos wrote, and/or write in-between. (eg, write other things than TY, if/when revived).
Avoid pinging without writing things around (eg: “[Waypoint]” vs “go [Waypoint]”, changing the “go” for other things.
Change the lenght of the messages – like when giving instructions pre-events, write some 2 lines, some 1 line, etc.

Things that must be in a template:

• Weapons
• Sigils
• Rune
• Amulet
• Skills
• Traits

Add (out of pvp)

• armor
• Trinkets

What could be in a template:

• Skins
• Dyes
• Outfit
• Finisher
  (or could be a side template, eg: one template for the build itself, another template for the look, and the possibility to save them as mega template)

Things to consider:

• Sharing (chat links? codes? urls?)
  Out of pvp sharing sounds like an inspect feature to me, which is not something I wish to see happen…
• Viewing (seeing some else’s vs. seeing your own)
  I guess in PvP, it would be nice to view the “active” template. Saved templates, less so…
• Saving (notepad vs. local vs. account vs. web)
  No opinion – the less demanding on performance / subject to abuses.
• Building (one spot in UI vs. multiple spots)
  New tab in UI, PvP, added to the build UI, Other areas, added to the hero panel (new tab from the eqiupment, die, wardrobe part)
• Websites (third-party sites should work with in-game)
  That would be nice, but it comes with build sharing / inspect feature
• APIs (Could expose an API to third-parties)
• PvP vs PvE vs WvW (each mode requires different configuration options)

How would you like to see any/all of these work?

How I see it work :
(in PvE/WvW – PvP seems easier to implement, since one does not really have to owe anything)

Build tab with 3 sections

• Mega build (association of build template and appearances elements)
• Build (weapon / armor / trinkets / sigils / etc.)
• Appearance (dies, outfit, appearances, skins, etc.)

The build could only be made with what is in inventory. There would be an added option “save build” and another one “update builds” (to write over existing saved build) in the hero / equipement panel
If the player calls a build and don’t have all the items in inventory, the build is charged with the available items, and an error message appears that states someting like “items are missing for this build. please go to the equipment panel to complete and update it. You can go to the build panel to see what’s missing” and the missing equipment would be in a red square (seeing the same when charging the build).

Just to give an Idea (warning, I’m bad with paint :p )

I usually either F1 the pet on a nearby target, then F2 before reselecting my original target, or have it on passive when I F2, and I had no problem.
If pet is set on a target, I feel it’s natural that it will try to cast offensive F2 on the target it’s set on…
Now, what’s weird, is that stalker will sometimes try to go on the other side of the target before it lauches (so that it faces me), causing a delay, but it’s not happening that often, and most of the time that’s because it was beside me when I pressed F2. When I’m in front of it, no problems…

Jim Hunter.6821:

snip

@OP If you’re running with a zerg drop the bear for something like the jungle stalker or wolf, and a little toughness will go a long way. Might want to look at something like steady focus in place of predator’s instinct.

snip.

Bear is underrated in zerg. Stalker would die right on, thus putting us on a 60 sec CD for the utility the pet can bring; bear can sponge AoE damage so that our allies are hit a little less badly.
And (I’m not sure) I think signet of renewal active is only supposed to work if pet is up, so one pet that can hold is not a bad idea…

@op : nice build, and glad it works for you.
I would personnaly never go in with as few vita as that, and I’d put in a few Valkyrie pieces, but the important part is that you are able to pull it off

Fern’s heal heal allies (Howl to grant regeneration to nearby allies).
But pet’s healing power does not scale with our own. So for it to be worth it, better take compassion training (BM # IV – 350 healing power increse for the pet – but it’s a combat only trait, so if your pet is on passive beside you, the trait is useless).

About spirit
We tested spirit in guild, and it was just not worth it.
It basically give a 6 seconds boost to few allies before dying, and below 50% uptime, the passive was not deemed worth it.
What is important in fights is to put the good field at the right place. Random activation by death does not cut it. And placing the spirit in the right spot for it’s activation also was nearly impossible.
Plus spirits in zergs need to move and have their death trigger their active. The increased chance is also nice.
That means giving up an whole branch for vitality and boon duration.
We don’t give much boons to allies, thus points in that are not best used.
Taking 3 spirits traits mean we don’t have access to the vitality to power one, which is a great trait for both damage and survivability.
To max on spirit traits, we’d take 3 spirits, thus no survivability option, thus have to go get it in traits and runes, thus less damage again, for less survivability…

Overall, there was nothing going for it in big scale conbat…

About non-GWEN
Never saw “no thieves, engies, mesmers” in guild posts, but 9/10 states no rangers.
Thieves are great for bursts, for scouting around the bus for ennemies, to impede enemies’ casters work, and, of course, they have an insane amount of explosions).
Engies grant useful boons (stability? Protection?), have a great amount of explosions and fields (@Terrahero: which is why they have more stealth uptime), deal great damage while being tanky, can easily switch from melee to distance and also have a water field…
Mesmers As much as I feel sa for mesmers, at least they have a purpose. being a veil / portal / boons bot might not be funny, it is nonetheless great for the bus.
Rangers Though somewhat better off with the last update, they have top build to do anything. Spotter is useful for the bus, but very few rangers take it because they play with bow and need the traits. Their traited control options are way below those of an untraited staff necro (chill – 4 seconds every 20 seconds, plus the necro can stack weakness, which is way stronger than our vulnerability), untraited sword war (up to 4 sec immobilise every 10 seconds). Most of our shorter durations are due to the facte we have pets that are supposed to add to our ability, which, even with careful management, is dead (plus it’s mostly single target).

In any competitive setting, anyone would take what’s giving them more for less. And we unfortunately don’t fit in that
Our only argument is that while we do it, others don’t have to. Best example is Ele that build for damage, when they go in water, it’s a DPS loss for the group, while we only have to be there to lay our field, without stopping pressuring the ennemy. And our immobilise is distant, thus better in some situation than the war’s immob. And our rez spirit might prove to be better than war’s banner, when traited to activate on death (even untraited, CD is lower… but we all know war’s banner sometimes fail, when the to-be-revived-ally is getting lots of damage, the banner don’t heal to full – two spirit charge would…).
____________

With the right build, rangers can be quite tanky while dealing decent damage (6/0/2/6 – signet /survival build with the vita to power trait), giving a boon that noone else can (spotter = +7% crit chance to 15 players), distant control option that can help set the pace of a fight (muddy terrain placed to trap the casters, so they are separated from the melee – to help form a spaghetti, instead of a ball), can help mitigate damage (send the bear in foe’s AoE), can help DPS uptime (DPS Ele don’t have to go in water).
But it just don’t cut it.

I believe that the simple addition on “and allies” on some of our traits would help a lot. (That, and the need to trait signet.)
Examples :
Beastmaster’s bonds : you and allies get might and fury when your pet’s health drop below the treshold
Alpha training (might be too strong) (pets and up to five allies also have opening strike(maybe “precise strike” don’t apply to allies))…
Signet of the beastmaster: half active effects of signets also applies to allies…
Strider’s defense : you and allies have a chance to destroy projectiles
Vigourous renewal : you and allies gain vigor when you use a heal skill
And so on…
These would not be direct buff to solo rangers, but would help us find a place in a large fights setting…

Hard to comment without the purpose of the build.
Seeing the stats, I’d guess it’s bus in WvW?

A non-precision crit build is possible, though hard to pull in in bus.
(doesn’t go well with signet build)
You’d need, as other states, some more crit damage (can do that by changing the armor and a trinket from soldier to Valkyrie, and changing the runes to Melandru (relying on the pet to take conditions off you is not much of a good idea) for some more toughness (since it’s no more in armor).
then you’d need to trait remorseless, and hide in pain sight, plus take a pet (pig family) to give you some more invisibility, though the best would be to pair up with a thief or mesmer… at least until foes start falling and dying…

with a signet non-precision build and low crit damage, you’re as well to take permanent, on switch or on hit sigils on the weapons, along with one bloodlust…

Pretty much agree, though I don’t think hilt bash’s problem is the range, just the overly long animation that makes it clunky (why do I have to stop moving to cast it?). I feel it would be way better already if there wasn’t this half-second root on it before the start of the animation.

About read the wind and piercing arrow : read the wind would be too strong, so we’d see more incoming LB nerfs… and some people do not want to use piercing; forcing it on them wouldn’t be fair.

AEFA.9035:

Jocksy.3415:

I see how taking off AA evade on GS would be more skill ful play in small fights, but it would make melee totally unusable in big fights.
I use swoop to engage/disengage or catch back with the lead if I happen to be separated from our main force.
It’s a great mitigation tool, and without it, it would be impossible to go melee in big fights with a build that also has correct damage….
It would just be another nerf to our survivability…

What if Swoop knock down your foes

Would once again help mostly in small fights, might make it somewhat useful for the group in bigger settings, but would not help at all survivability in zerg when in melee…
mid-melee rangers are, imho, the best option for group support, since we are in reach for water field, in reach for spotter, we get the buffs and we give our own…
If rangers don,t have the tool to survive heavy melee, the only build left is full distant, which means bows, which means no spotter, water field, explosions for the group (cause not in range/need traits for the ranger over team support)…
I don’t want to play an egoist ranger, but taking survivability off GS means the LB egoistic build would be the only build to work in zerg.

And why do some people want evade off AA? don’t sword (with AA disabled) fullfil the purpose of more skillful play in smaller encounters?
I admit sword is cluncky – but it’s a sword problem, and I don’t see the point in making a change to a somewhat working weapon that has nothing to do with the sword, change that would make it unusable in the contexts in which (imho) it works the best? (eg: GS is ok for duels and small fights, but sword is better // sword in a zerg is an almost sure death (and only cleave on 1 AA, unless 2 foes are on the same pixel…), while GS shines there).

Wanting all weapons to work in all situations makes weird weapons that have no real purpose… I think rangers already have too much of that…

I see how taking off AA evade on GS would be more skill ful play in small fights, but it would make melee totally unusable in big fights.
I use swoop to engage/disengage or catch back with the lead if I happen to be separated from our main force.
It’s a great mitigation tool, and without it, it would be impossible to go melee in big fights with a build that also has correct damage….
It would just be another nerf to our survivability…

“ranger , deal or no deal , your damage over all is increased by 20 % but your pets damage is decreased by 10 % ?”

Lol, deal for sure!
Though it should not be all about damage output, but also about utility output (because if only damage is targeted by the shift, it would mean it’s better to run utility pet…)

By default, it would be too strong… but I think it’s something a trait should allow to do (and not just for one family or so, but all pet’s families.
Eg, trait should read something like swapping pets in combat grant a boon based on family for itself an nearby allies, and not something like “swapping to cats in combat grants might to itself and nearby allies”…

I almost didn’t play lately. Between skill lag (which is a usual lag in WvW when there are many people), and latency (which is what I experience lately, in almost every area of the game), pretty hard to have fun playing.

Weirdest thing is that it comes and go, and the two VPN I sometimes use (most of the time, if one doesn’t work, the other will), seem too do nothing for me either…
I live in Qc, and some of my fellow Quebecker players that used to have no problem are also having weird latency…

Every single stance has one thing in common:

• they have a unique atrribute to them that cannot be cleansed corrupted or otherwise removed until it is over.

examples:

• endure pain: immunity to direct damage for a short time. (4 seconds on a 60 sec CD)
• beserker stance: immunity to conditions for a short time. (8 seconds on a 60 sec CD)
• frenzy: all actions 50% faster for a short time. (6 seconds on a 60 sec CD)

• balanced stance: immunity to CC for a short time. (8 seconds on a 40 sec CD)
  If it wouldn’t be strippable, I guess it would get in the category of 6 seconds on a 60 sec CD

Elementalist

• mist form: invulnerable for a short time.
  (3 seconds on a 75 sec CD. Cannot use other abilities)
• earth armor
  (6 seconds of stability on a 75 seconds CD)

Necromancer

• death shroud: 2nd health pool and damage dealing capability.
  (you can stip necro f death shroud, by dealing damages to it. plus, it cannot be healed when in DS)

Engineer

• elixir S: shrink yourself and become invulnerable for a short time.
  (3 sec on a 60 sec CD)

So, according to the examples given, warrior stances should in fact never last more than 4 seconds on a 60 seconds CD, should cut him off his normal attacks, and prevent healing…

Great! I agree!

Apparently Danica has one, thought not really a dev
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/New-animal-hats-mini-polar-bear-in-gemstore/first#post3996565

I am really getting more and more of a good laugh when I read “anything the ranger does, any other classes can do better”. any other classes?
I’d love to see a war lay a water field, an Ele lay an immob that is not countered by stability, any other class give to 15 people a 7% crit chance increase, a possibility to pop the zones before the zerg gets on it without risking to lower the group DPS or use a 60 sec CD utility, and soak up AoE damage like we can.
Plus, most Ele I know hate to have to go in water (because they built for DPS and water is a loss of DPS). With 3 melee rangers in a zerg, we can have permanent on demand water field (most commanders ask for one every 15 seconds or so). 3 melee rangers in a zerg, when used right, can control the tide of the battle, by forcing the ennemy zerg to not be in a ball. those same 3 melee rangers can give 7% crit chance to up to 45 people (noone in WvW has 100% crit chance, so it’s a great addition). Those 3 melee rangers also help soak-up 3 places for AoE cap, at no cost for the zerg. with the proper build, they also do correct damage (1.5k AA, 3.7k maul in exotics, pretty constant)
This is the kind of build I run when all goes well or when in guild
With it, I almost perma-crit, which means almost perma 2k AA and almost 5k maul (plus the mauls vulne means my fellow players can hit harder too).
When there’s lot of AoE, I send the bear ahead, then either call it back or swap it, to keep low swap CD. It pops all zones on which my melee would otherwise have to step, and bears are resistant enough to soak it up. With GS4, I can cross a big amount of AoE wothout dangers, which is now counting in the AoE cap, which means also protecting one of my melee. When in melee, I take great advantage of Power stab (one sec evade every 3 sec), and when things get hot, either lighting reflexes or GS#3 will get me out of there. I’ll then switch to Axe/WH, circling around the melee until the repack/heal…
Being in melee range means I’m in good position for healing spring whenever it’s asked (while ele often have switch CD, we can give it on the spot).
Entangle is to be used when our group is going to impact their distant. (Most in a zerg fight don’t see the entangle before our melee is on them).
And Muddy terrain to spread out the enemy bus, or help create new cells on which our melee can concentrate.
With 2 break stuns (one that also breaks immob), and lots of almost on demand condi clean, all the built-in evade and break stuns, I find I’m way less down than many “faceroll warrior” (I mean the easy goer build where the player has not much more to do than attack while traits proc to keep them alive, not the more elaborate builds), while doing damages pretty over standard gard ot necro builds, and pretty much equal to the faceroll warrior build.

For some more survivability, especially with pugs, I’d go with this build
Which is basically just going to get some self stability, though it lowers the damage by crit, and some condi remove (changing polar bear with brown bear to compensate, and two traits in marks for the signet traits).

I did feel like the pre-patch ranger wasn’t bringing much to the zerg, compared with other class. But the ferocity nerf, the pet responsiveness corrections, and the active ability to cleanse condis did good things for the rangers.
We just have to re-learn how to play with pets, would it be for snipers to help finish their targets, for melee to help with aoe soaks and/or buffs, without the pet being perma dead. it was impossible before; it is now somewhat possible…

It’s just their usual cast time…. (see activation time on the wiki
Also, I noticed, for drakes, if the pet is directed at a target, it will wait to be in range of it’s target before starting the animation – so not lauching immediately… I guess it might be the same with other pets.

As a side note, if a player is lagging, it’s pet cast will also lagg…

Other wise, given flat ground, I have no problem directing my pet. Comes back when I hit F3, attacks when I press F1, starts the animation when I press F2 for support pets…

Other posters already stated pretty much what I thought, but I’d just chime in to say the precision sigil is rarely better that the raw power one.

Some calculations with Sword AA1 given the first build, not taking in consideration any other modifiers.

With Perception, base AA is 533, with 227 crit damage, it crits for 1210.
With Bloodlust, base AA is 588, with 227 crit damage, it crits for 1335.

Perception is 71% crit chance (so 29 non crit)
Blood lust is 59% crit chance (so 41 non crit)

Perception :
71 * 1210 = 85910
29 * 0533 = 15457
Total = 101367
(divided by 100 = 1014 per hit)

Bloodlust
59 * 1335 = 78765
41 * 0588 = 24108
Total = 102873
(divided by 100 = 1029 per hit)

So overall bloodlust gives (in your build) slighlty more damage output than perception.

Only “problem” with this rune is that with two sigil of strenght, anyone is sure to get a constant 7% damage. The condition is not really a condition. The 10% if over 90% health and the 7% when having a companion are more “if”, because in many game mode, it is impossible to keep the pet alive or to stay at the level of health, while it is always possible to keep a few stacks of might.

The rune is not specially overpowered for the current meta, it’s just too good compared with other options… all other runes are going down… That is the problem, the fact that they are the best in all game modes, and not just for a few game modes… that they are not the best for some builds, but for all power-based offensive builds…

Thief’s traps are invisible also…
And no matter how one specs, traps are still dealing way less damage than necro wells, and are way less spammable than necro marks…
So yeah, give me the ability to almost constantly put traps down, that would deal damages comparable with necro marks and wells, and I wouldn’t have problems with traps showing…
(just compare untraited chilblains: 20 sec CD for 4 sec chill and 6 sec poison… while ranger’s frost trap chills for 1 second on a 30 sec CD, and viper’s nest poisons 3 secs on a 20 second CD. Untraited putrid mark deals a base damage of 444, on a 25 sec CD, and is a blast and transfers conditions to foes, which makes it scale well both with condi build and power build, while no ranger traps is much good for direct damage (base damage is way too low, while all traits for traps are in precision and ferocity line – which brings noth much to condi builds), none offer any real survivability options (no break stun, no condi removal, no stability – while a well necro has access to it all).

So yeah… if our traps were almost spammable and could deal real damages (and not just damages that a signet war could outheal), maybe we could look at making traps seeable…
Until traps are a real option in builds, and not just a tagging option because they are our main access to AoE’s, I’m not gonna agree with the fact traps are invisible.

(not talking about ele or thief, canse I don’t know them enough, but comparing necro and ranger is like comparing strawberries and vinegar – they’re just not the same)…

renss.5764:

They do have 4 attunements but those 4 do the same as 2 weapon sets do on other classes but with only 2 sigils instead of 4 which is unfair. And look at the cooldowns ele skills have …

Untraited Staff ele,
Fire : 1 -6 -10- 20 – 30
Water : 1-4-20-40-45
Air:1-10-30-30-40
earth : 1-6-30-30-30

breakdown – compared with ranger untraited, cause it’s the class I know best
Fire, 1- pretty much the same as LB max range in terms of damage and cast time
fire, 2- fire field every 6 seconds that deals 296 damage on a 1200 range – rangers have access to 2 fire fields; one every 15 seconds that deals burning damage and one every 25 sec for equivalent damage (who stays more than one tick in those) (and not ranged)
Fire 3, small AoE attack (5 sec burning on 180 radius) – closest equivalent on ranger would be throw torch, 15 sec CD, one target only, less damage
Fire 4, small evade (1 sec), combo fire field, closes equivalent: Lightening reflex, 40 sec cd, no combo field, lower damage than one tick of Ele burning retreat…
Fire 5, equivelent on ranger would be LB5, same CD, more damage and cast time for Ele

Water 1, no equivalent.
2, possible 5 stacks vulnerability for 10 seconds every 4 seconds. ranger’s equivalent wuld be maul : 5 stacks of vulne for 8 seconds every 6 seconds

3 and 5, equivalent would be ranger’s healing spring, on a 30 sec CD (one of ele is shorter, the other longer)
4 : Ice field – ranged – for 2 sec chill on 40 sec CD – unblockable. Ranger has Ice field for 1 sec chill on 30 sec CD, not ranged; also unblockable…

Air
1 – Ele hits less fast than ranger’s axe
2 – ranger don’t really have blind, except randomly on porcines pet F2 (40 sec CD, not sure what we get, no damage attached)
3- knockback that one is longer on ele than ranger’s LB
4- no direct equivalent : without curing condis – so speed only, ranger’s WH has 35 sec CD…
5- cant’ find equivalent that can stun an almost unlimited amout of people… given it’s strenght, 40 sec seems ok…

Earth:
1-sure physical projectile on AA… (or tooltip off?)
2- Explosion and 6 stacks of bleeding for 12 seconds. Rangers explosion has 35 sec CD, it can put 3 stacks bleeding for 5 seconds every 25 sec (spike trap)…. or apply bleeding with 5 attacks (sharpening stone; 45 sec CD)
3- 5 sec projectile reflections every 30 sec; rangers have 5 secs projectile blocks every 25 seconds, with 4 sec retaliation… Ele can do other things; rangers can’t. so pretty equivalent…
4 – 3 sec wall every 30 seconds… ranger’s don’t have suck blocks, but gardians’ staff wall blocks 5 seconds every 40 seconds on same range…
5 – rangers closest would be muddy terrain, 2 sec immob and 2 sec cripple ( no damage) on 25 sec CD, while ele is 30 sec for 2 sec immob and damage.

So, overall, I do not feel like ele’s CD are so much over the top, compared with (at least one of) the other professions.

A 30 sec CD fo 3 sec of stabylity is basically the same as a 50 sec CD for 5 sec of stability… just that the guy with the 50 sec CD has to be more strategic in when he/she places his/her stability…

1) pets are not affected by general traits or ranger armor – so pet bleeds over rangers bleeds are not that interesting, imho, + “But how big a different are those traits contributing towards the overall damage of the pets?” : Unless you select traits for the pet, none.
2) “Any suggestions?” for which game mode? I’d strongly advise you get a general build / trait attribution for different content. In WvW zergs and most open world boss, putting points in the pet it useless. Spirits are still an option in PvP, though the new condi cleanse trait is changing it; in open world PvE, any build would do, and pet/spirits is pretty fun… and so on…
Also, do you like to play melee (better DPS, more active)? prefer ranged (less DPS, more passive)?

Spotter’s precision and spirits buffs are benefitting the pet, if you are at ranged, so spirit/beastmaser might be good – in general open PvE, yes

I’d love it if the pigs gave me the things right in my hands… I just don’t like running on it,s track to pick-up an item, no matter how good it might be…
And it seems to me the enemies can pick it up, so really not much. Though I do like Siamoth best

I like dual birds cause their tells are harder to read and they give some speed, and they hit pretty bad, without missing much. But that is just in general duels…
Wolf is often a better option in sPvP…

As soon as megaservers were announced, I knew this would be a problem, and also advanced a server chat option.
And team and map are not, imho, that redundant in WvW. Most of the time, we pass important information in team, and general matters or chit-chat in map.
Night crew grew very small lately, with the impossibility to speak in map, and the fact that they made a chat change that wasn’t advertised means many on the server don’t see the messages (eg: french server players, if they have their client in english, won’t see french people’s messages if the client of the messagers is in french).
So not only do we have to map hop, we have to make twice the same message with different languages, because most players don’t know they are no more seeing all messages, all that with the risk that enemy servers see the message

Please, a server chat would be great!