Honestly? Probably not, maybe as a secondary weapon when you need the range. Longbows dps is just really really bad compared to almost any other option.
Ask again after the 23rd. Honestly not trying to be rude, but everything is going to complete hell on the 23rd when HoT releases. There will be no balance for like a month at least.
If Ranger gets to out of hand (or looks almost like a good idea while drunk) there will be a hotfix on the 24th.
I don’t think they will allow that mistake again, it will happen on the 23rd
This is literally the only reason I don’t spvp much any more. Premades are not fun to go against.
Every competitive game I have ever played (CS, SC, etc) has never allowed premades to go against randoms. It is literally one of the most non-competitive things you can do in matchmaking.
Greatsword just isn’t a great dps weapon even with fury on, it is just a low dps option compared to sword/axe if you are going to go be going power build. Signets are vastly inferior to sun/frost + zypher. Those are the basic things, but you want to know if this build will be viable, not whether its optimal, and at its base it looks like it is usable.
It’s not per target but AoE will trigger it on all targets hit before going on cooldown.
lunar impact daze followed by natural convergence is super deadly combo that can wipe an entire point with the help of your team.
similarly u can use glyph of tides. the knockback/pull registers first, and the damage right after proccing the seeds. this doesn’t work on equality glyph I believe. but u can do maul after the daze.
you shouldn’t need to slot entangle at all if youre going ancient seeds. SotP is best choice for pvp imo, at least until they buff unity.
Entangle gives you 2 condi clear if you get the right traits and is one of the best elites we have access to. Further more, while against some classes the daze can be amazing, a large portion of the classes run stability and against a good group comp daze + SotP shouldn’t wipe a point, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good compare because it is.
Yeah, these people are asking for some crazy OP stuff. Entangle and Ancient Seeds are both already extremely strong. It shouldn’t follow, it shouldn’t trigger with conditions, and it shouldn’t be per target. Any of these would make it ridiculously overpowered.
Not really, we are asking for a way so that an elite and a master trait aren’t easily dealt with by a dash, condi cleanse, teleport and plan damage.
Yes it was removed, spirits really are only useful in pve, and only then when you are going to be in one place for long enough to benefit such as dungeons.
Per stream, Irenio said it is 1 target. But, if you hit more than 1 target at the same time, it can proc up to 5 times which is not likely to happen. Also, it doesn’t actually proc right away. I was using LB4 and watched many people walk away before AS actually procced. Proc needs to be 1/2 second and changed to 5 targets.
This was actually my concern, this trait would only work against Cleanses on Cooldowns and 0 Cleanses on classes.
One can literally just walk away after the first pulse of using a cleanse OR if one reacts fast enough, they can actually walk away before the trait procs effectively nullfying a GM trait
They can do this with entangle too. Always been an issue.
Exactly. That is the point, Cleanses completely counter or even nullify an elite skill heck even destroying the vines is an option esp on Power specs.
I agree its a very serious problem how easily entangle can be nullified, the elite should follow the target for the duration and re-entangle at each pulse.
Per stream, Irenio said it is 1 target. But, if you hit more than 1 target at the same time, it can proc up to 5 times which is not likely to happen. Also, it doesn’t actually proc right away. I was using LB4 and watched many people walk away before AS actually procced. Proc needs to be 1/2 second and changed to 5 targets.
This was actually my concern, this trait would only work against Cleanses on Cooldowns and 0 Cleanses on classes.
One can literally just walk away after the first pulse of using a cleanse OR if one reacts fast enough, they can actually walk away before the trait procs effectively nullfying a GM trait
They can do this with entangle too. Always been an issue.
For DPS: Condi ranger is the best option for dps, power ranger is vastly inferior for PvE dps. If you are trying to be optimal don’t bother with power rangers. With the new condi power being added to pets, condi ranger will have even more dps.
For Support: Ranger offers a lot of different options including spirits (Frost and Sun being favorite for dps support) also with the addition of the druid spec you also get the Glyph of Alignment but as a dps you wouldn’t want to spec into druid due to losing a lot of dps, assuming you go condi, but druid does have good synergy with power. Many pets offer different things from a smoke field for stealth on the smokescale, to moas that offer group buffs.
For Druid: Druid has the best burst healing, and as of beta 3 you could stay in in CA at least 95% of the time with little effort.
The issue is that condi ranger builds just aren’t competitive against good players who know what they are doing. So I wouldn’t use that as an example. Can you get away with it? Yes, at low end pvp, against high end pvpers? it would get eaten alive. While Power Ranger still struggles, it is the most viable option available to rangers by a long shot.
Power Ranger isn’t viable in high end PvP either so your point is moot. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind seeing GS getting a damage buff on auto, or sword becoming a little less clunky, but it’s not our weapon skills that are keeping us out of the meta.
I meant that it is the most viable build we have compared to any other build, and it isn’t close.
Solar Beam – Reward positioning even more. Based on number of allies you hit in a single Beam Channel, procs special effects based on number of allies hit at once, or based on number of enemies hit at once. Rewards skillful play. Could be a way to introduce conditions and boons.
Astral Wisp – Each Rotation does unblockable damage to the enemy as it circles them. Makes for a Power based DoT. Scales better with Cleric gear. DoT that scales off of Power rather than Condition damage.
Ancestral Grace – Heals allies it pass through with regeneration and 1 second resistance OR Vigor.
Vine Surge – vines left behind cripple, bleed and torment enemies if they walk into it. Gives Retaliation to allies.
Sublime Conversion – converts one of enemy’s boons into a condition.
CELESTIAL AVATAR:
Cosmic Ray – Radius increased and speed of cast increased.
Seed of Life – Grants Regeneration, and regen 10 Endurance, and 5 Revenant Energy.
Natural Convergence – Stability stack on use.
Ancestral Grace is really strong as is, though it could benefit with invulnerability frames. I like your Vine Surge idea. Sublime Conversion is already as is with projectile hate, this seems to push it into OP status for a 25 sec CD wall.
I like the idea of Seed of Life, though I believe stability is something that CA should pulse while in the form. Also Cosmic Ray casts pretty fast at 1/2 CD how much faster to you want it?
Irenio is here for druid only really, don’t count on him caring/fixing core ranger.
he was behind a lot of the trait revamps for June 23 patch.
Every class had to get their traits revamp, it wasn’t like it was something unique for ranger nor did it really fix ranger.
Irenio was behind the trait revamps for the ranger and they were excellent, albeit not perfect. you said he doesn’t care about core ranger, so I’m simply just destroying that argument. youre just hitting your head against a wall, and you’ll complain regardless. it’s basically all you do on the forums. haven’t seen one constructive post from you.
I have made plenty of constructive posts, you must not be reading. It doesn’t destroy the argument when it is something forced that they had to do for every class. Where are all the changes for each balance patch to the fundamentally broken ranger mechanics? No where to be found.
The issue is that condi ranger builds just aren’t competitive against good players who know what they are doing. So I wouldn’t use that as an example. Can you get away with it? Yes, at low end pvp, against high end pvpers? it would get eaten alive. While Power Ranger still struggles, it is the most viable option available to rangers by a long shot.
Currently the best anyone can answer is that ArenaNet has no plans to fix the Core Ranger. This is based on lack of feedback and fixes over the past 3 years. Do not get your hopes up.
It’s always amazing to me that a change like the HaO one takes months to come up with but four hours to nerf. Without explanation other than some very short tweets.
This tells me there will never be a fix for our actual class mechanic. Remember when the excuse for not touching it was that two rangers could solo a dungeon with just their pets?
So I am going out on a limb and saying core ranger is never getting fixed.
Tend to agree with you, I think the only real way it will now is that if the community as a whole is very grumpy. ArenaNet doesn’t want a grumpy portion of their community because that will mean less chance of getting money from gem sells (right now I refuse to buy anymore gems until core ranger is fixed for example)
The issue, though, is that 99.999% of the population of the game do not post on the forums, ANet has their metrics and if X% of people play Ranger on a regular basis, it must be fine.
I don’t disagree with this totally, but if we create a loud enough voice showing our disapproval it might work. Patients hasn’t worked, trying to suggest things hasn’t worked, I am personally boycotting it, but I am also going to keep reminding them and everyone of the sorry state of affairs rangers are in and the lack of care ArenaNet has given them.
It’s always amazing to me that a change like the HaO one takes months to come up with but four hours to nerf. Without explanation other than some very short tweets.
This tells me there will never be a fix for our actual class mechanic. Remember when the excuse for not touching it was that two rangers could solo a dungeon with just their pets?
So I am going out on a limb and saying core ranger is never getting fixed.
Tend to agree with you, I think the only real way it will now is that if the community as a whole is very grumpy. ArenaNet doesn’t want a grumpy portion of their community because that will mean less chance of getting money from gem sells (right now I refuse to buy anymore gems until core ranger is fixed for example)
I don’t think there is any animosity towards the player base or community. At least not as a universal whole. That would be fairly petty and childish. I have never really bought into the idea that the developers have animosity towards a class or community.
However neglect can be a function of not having a clear plan or not having the right people in the right places. Jr. level experience making sr. level decisions for example. It can also be a function of someone caring but unable to provide the support required of them. The person that LOVES cats and takes in every stray cat they find even though at a certain point they are unable to provide for the cats’ needs. I don’t think this is the case as I don’t feel there is an abundance of love for the class.
I lean towards an unclear plan or a structure in which class balance is handled individually instead of as a whole, classes balanced in a vacuum so what would be good changes for the class become rather ineffectual when put up against a class that is being over balanced for whatever reason.
I’m not sure the community can make it any clearer that we feel we are underbalanced. If they don’t know by now they never will. Honestly if another game comes along that I like better I’ll move on to that. Trying to effect real definitive change on a forum is a herculean task and I play games for fun. Not work. If its not fun then see ya.
I wouldn’t use the term animosity, but more of the fact that rangers are a none issue/don’t really want to deal with/fix type of dislike.
Improving the Ranger class doesn’t make money for Anet. Expect nothing except Druid improvements from here on.
It has been 3 years, I think its obvious that ArenaNet doesn’t care/like its ranger community. The time to be patient is over, we are tired, and we need to make it clear to ArenaNet we won’t stand for their lack of care about us.
Popping in,
The developers are reading this still. They are not going to post anything until they are certain of any changes they are going to make.
The thread is not being ignored, just not being posted in at the moment. They don’t want to shoot them selves further in the foot by saying something and not following through with it 100%.
They also don’t want to start a chain reaction of: This class raged and got ton of responses from developers so now they hate ____ and ____. So now _ and _ rage and start expecting the same thing ranger go.
Again, It would be nice if they popped in and posted more; however, they are still reading this thread. (waits to get flamed).
They have been saying that since day one, we don’t and shouldn’t buy it any more. Their actions and their history speak much louder then token words. We should not believe what they say, they need to actively engage us as a community to fix this.
It has been one week since the devs have promised to communicate with us on the issues of the core ranger, yet we have heard nothing. I am leaving this here so we as a community do not forget the neglect we’ve received for the past 3 years.
Well, if any of you feel like good rangers and want to teach me how to become a better ranger I’d appreciate that. Ive found troll urgent to be quite good, specially when being abit more active with my dodges. Ive also managed to be more active with my pets which was quite unusual.
All in all the challenge makes it worth it. I’ve mastered engineer and it has become dull
I am willing to help and look at your build, you can contact me on Kitten or Kitty Smallpaw
-Troll Unguent is our best heal, use it when you are about 80% hp to see the best benefit for it, because its healing is over 10 seconds it takes a while to ramp, but it will heal for roughly 8k.
-WHaO is just really poor, some like it because of the burst heal, but with proper Troll Unguent use you won’t have this issue.
If you compare the traited versions of both heals WHaO actually provides more health per second. It also provides a burst heal and aoe swiftness for better rotations. TU’s only real benefit is the additional condi removal.
Assuming you want to give up Go for the Eyes for Resounding Timbre, with the bird having a 4 sec CD its hard to give up that is a lot of defense in of itself.
I’ve stopped using hawk and eagle until we get a indicator on the buff bar letting us know when BW is off cooldown. The swiftness comes in a lot more handy for me.
That is fine, but would say most won’t be willing to drop Go for the Eyes
I have dropped it, and i feel that it’s much better for me.
I run in 3 shout/2signets power ranger and i feel much better than before.
From BM i take RT WS BW and i feel really good with it.
When Casting WHaO, after 0.5sec dropping Guard, so i get in additional 3sec protection after cast heal and clean 2 conditions from solder runes.
Then you can show to enemy, that you want to hide from it.. hide behind pillar and in that moment you unload From stealth Bird Burst damage then knockback and rapid or if Taunt OoCD, then rappid, knock 5th skill/stealth.
I am a kiter by nature so survival is my bread and butter since it has access to the best utilities that help with kiting. As such skills like protection don’t do much for me. Also, shouts are very weak in general making those skills very unappealing to me.
-Troll Unguent is our best heal, use it when you are about 80% hp to see the best benefit for it, because its healing is over 10 seconds it takes a while to ramp, but it will heal for roughly 8k.
-WHaO is just really poor, some like it because of the burst heal, but with proper Troll Unguent use you won’t have this issue.
If you compare the traited versions of both heals WHaO actually provides more health per second. It also provides a burst heal and aoe swiftness for better rotations. TU’s only real benefit is the additional condi removal.
Assuming you want to give up Go for the Eyes for Resounding Timbre, with the bird having a 4 sec CD its hard to give up that is a lot of defense in of itself.
I’ve stopped using hawk and eagle until we get a indicator on the buff bar letting us know when BW is off cooldown. The swiftness comes in a lot more handy for me.
That is fine, but would say most won’t be willing to drop Go for the Eyes
-Troll Unguent is our best heal, use it when you are about 80% hp to see the best benefit for it, because its healing is over 10 seconds it takes a while to ramp, but it will heal for roughly 8k.
-WHaO is just really poor, some like it because of the burst heal, but with proper Troll Unguent use you won’t have this issue.
If you compare the traited versions of both heals WHaO actually provides more health per second. It also provides a burst heal and aoe swiftness for better rotations. TU’s only real benefit is the additional condi removal.
Assuming you want to give up Go for the Eyes for Resounding Timbre, with the bird having a 4 sec CD its hard to give up that is a lot of defense in of itself.
Played since release, couple of classes I never bothered with, ranger among one of em.
Playing condi ranger with and without traps and pewpew I noticed a couple of things.
-Healing skills sucks, troll Unguents heal is so horrible any dps will offset the tiny bit of healing thanks to zerker meta.
- WHaO is poor, and almost seem mandatory for my next reason.
-Healing springs is a decent choice if you want to support, but in soloQ its just wasted.
-Pet dies so fast!, its out of commision in spvp within 10 secounds.
- Condition cleansing is soft, but with the current burn meta its quite devistating.
- Facing cele necros. Trying to widdle em down only to go through a secound hp bar with shroud, remove shroud, dps them alittle and then widdle down a full shroudbar again..
There seem to be alot of core issues with rangers, and honestly I’ve always enjoyed killing the pesky rangers, being one makes me tip off the hat.
-Troll Unguent is our best heal, use it when you are about 80% hp to see the best benefit for it, because its healing is over 10 seconds it takes a while to ramp, but it will heal for roughly 8k.
-WHaO is just really poor, some like it because of the burst heal, but with proper Troll Unguent use you won’t have this issue.
-Healing Spring is never a good choice, most of the time combat is to active for you to stay in one spot to see the benefits.
-Pets die fast, try to not send a pet into groups, instead pick people off on the sides for best results.
-Ranger actually has access to a decent amount of survival with wildness survival, get Wilderness Knowledge is fantastic removes 2 condi and gives you access to fury buff. Furthermore every ranger build should run two survival skills are min (troll unguent and lightning reflexes)
-Depending on build, a lot of the times you best option is to kite while you widdle them down. In reality we don’t have much burst so being able to stay alive while our decent sustained dps does it works is the only way you can beat some classes.
Since Ranger community has had no real dev support for the past 3 years, I will be moving on from the core ranger and make the Revenant my main. I will though keep a druid for wvw/pve raids.
Very entertaining, you are definitely a pro at clutch plays. I know class is new so no one is a beast with it yet but just a couple things i noticed:
The f2 ability is really good if you are using Shiro and you often forget to use it. I remember same thing happened to me when i was starting, had to make a conscious effort to use it when on shiro and after unrelenting asssault because the protection doesnt help when evading.
Unrelenting assault to start a fight often doesnt work out too well against good players because they will be blocked or evaded and you are more vulnerable afterwards. I found it better to rush em with “One With Nature” active and kite for bit while auto attacking then use it while they are bursting.
Noticed you used elemental blast on yourself a few times, the swiftness from the passive is actually really useful, i would say elemental blast is best used when you think they are going to stand in a place for a bit then you smack em with unrelenting assault
These were the first duels I did for myself, so I have a lot to learn about the class. I looked at the F2, but that was in hareld didn’t realize it changed with legendary. I like doing the unrelenting force to force them to use their defenses right away to put them on a back pedal for sustain, and mostly I do that with elemental blast but need to better at it. As a ranger coming over to rev we don’t use that type of game play enough.
Don’t expect any statement from a dev to be truthful here.
Irenio is actually keeping his word, so far.
You can’t blame him for other developers have the very same right to impact a game with changes … or better said counter-changes.
Yet he has not yet addressed core ranger concerns or really talked about core ranger. He is just here for druid. Core Ranger will never get support.
If you haven’t noticed – anet has moved on from core ranger the moment they started working on Druid…
Unless the next elite spec down the road does something drastic, core ranger is left in the dust….
This is due to the fact anet has moved on from their orginal class mechanic (pets) to a COMPLETELY NEW and 100% unrelated mechanic to ranger core (celestial form).
This tells me anet has NO intention on fixing pet – otherwise, they would not have given us a totally new class mechanic.
You look at all the other elite specs and what did they do? their new elite spec mechanic gave their profession core a twist like reaper shroud from death shroud or over charging attunements to get attunment related buffs/synergy…
Our elite spec mechanic? completely and utterly unrelated to pets, no synergy whatsoever , and its pigeon holed directly into synergy with healing and glyphs ONLY – none of which is ranger core.
Druid is more of a new class than it is a new elite spec (IMO)
I think you are right. ArenaNet has a history of not caring about the Ranger Community.
Don’t expect any statement from a dev to be truthful here.
Irenio is actually keeping his word, so far.
You can’t blame him for other developers have the very same right to impact a game with changes … or better said counter-changes.
Yet he has not yet addressed core ranger concerns or really talked about core ranger. He is just here for druid. Core Ranger will never get support.
Rifle and mantras. Mantras can act as like different types of ammo, so you might have a damage ammo, a condi ammo, etc. Rifle will be a burst ranged weapon (something we really need) the mechanic change would to go into a stealth every 10 seconds or so. Would be fun I think.
in pvp, the pet is maybe 10% of my dps. but I understand why this issue is greater for pve.
in pvp, we just need all pets to have useful F2’s.
in pvp we are balanced around the pet being 30% of our dps. It doesn’t even provide 5% of our dps atm. This is why they are broken for pvp.
Pretty much this. For me, in PvP, my pet tends to be 0% of my DPS because of how quickly it succumbs to AoE and cleaves on its way to its intended target.
it really has little to do with pets. that’s just a SMALL part of what needs fixing. core ranger has 4 unusable weapons, almost a dozen unusable utilities, half a dozen bad traits, and yes, a bunch of bad pets.
the core ranger will literally be eaten for breakfast by the elite specs come launch, while the druid might have a niche role or two. we just don’t have the “new tech”, we don’t have the tools to fight em. we’re working with baggage from the days of vanilla release.
While I won’t disagree that the weapons in general all need to be fixed, we have 30% of our dps trapped in the pet, and it is very unreliable. Fixing pets is the most major/serious thing for the core ranger. The weapons are major but just not on the same level.
in pvp, the pet is maybe 10% of my dps. but I understand why this issue is greater for pve.
in pvp, we just need all pets to have useful F2’s.
in pvp we are balanced around the pet being 30% of our dps. It doesn’t even provide 5% of our dps atm. This is why they are broken for pvp.
it really has little to do with pets. that’s just a SMALL part of what needs fixing. core ranger has 4 unusable weapons, almost a dozen unusable utilities, half a dozen bad traits, and yes, a bunch of bad pets.
the core ranger will literally be eaten for breakfast by the elite specs come launch, while the druid might have a niche role or two. we just don’t have the “new tech”, we don’t have the tools to fight em. we’re working with baggage from the days of vanilla release.
While I won’t disagree that the weapons in general all need to be fixed, we have 30% of our dps trapped in the pet, and it is very unreliable. Fixing pets is the most major/serious thing for the core ranger. The weapons are major but just not on the same level.
People aren’t learning from history. I don’t know why people think he’s going to single handedly save the profession. The past week or two this forum has been completely swamped in dozens of threads with that assumption. He’s the public face of druid is pretty much all we know, he’s not the founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Arena Net®.
Many of us have learned to not wait around for a ranger fix. We’ve been here for several years. It sometimes gets better, it sometimes get worse, but we’re literally never, ever, ever going to be a top profession.
If you can’t play ranger as it is, and aren’t a masochist like the rest of us, definitely make a new main.
Really thought things can change, but they won’t. ArenaNet doesn’t care about core ranger it is abundantly apparently as they have yet to really engage the community about the core ranger which is in a broken state.
So HoT is coming within the month, and I am left here wondering if I want to stay with a ranger as my main. It would be nice if the devs (Irenio and anyone else) would let us know if they plan to fix the critical core issues of the core ranger (pets) within the next three months. Would like to know this to inform my decision if it is time to change my main or if there is hope that core ranger will see improvements. I don’t need details, but would like to know if its just time to move on.
the new pets have allot of good things and they are the only reason why I am still playing as a Ranger never the droods tho. don’t limit your self here and go make a different class like Revenant and play both until something good really happens to Rangers, even if it takes 3 more years at least you have another class that will keep you occupied.
While the new pets have a wonderful theme (omg I do love the fire wyvern) they don’t address the issue with pets, that is with hitting people in spvp and surviving in wvw and a lesser extent pve. This issue is critical and one of the biggest issues why ranger is one of the worst classes in the game for all forms of content. Druid is a nice theme, and I will be running a healing druid for wvw zergs, and pve raids, but I am tired of waiting for core ranger to be fixed.
So HoT is coming within the month, and I am left here wondering if I want to stay with a ranger as my main. It would be nice if the devs (Irenio and anyone else) would let us know if they plan to fix the critical core issues of the core ranger (pets) within the next three months. Would like to know this to inform my decision if it is time to change my main or if there is hope that core ranger will see improvements. I don’t need details, but would like to know if its just time to move on.
All valid points, but the TU point needs more discussion. I would be okay nerfing it ONLY if we are provided another way to build up AF without staff. As you mention, there is little reason to take staff at all, and if TU is nerfed then this is the only real way to build AF and will certainly hurt the class if we are forced to take it in it’s current state.
Why would you want to nerf out best heal, which is an average heal at best? What use does that do. If you want to nerf how fast it is to get into cele form then nerf how much heals improve cele gen. Right now its at 20% per heal.
Please add a short duration burn to staff 1, similar to what was done with warrior’s longbow. As almost everyone has noted, the staff has pitiful damage, but rather than just increasing it’s direct damage, it’d be nice if staff synergized with both condi and power builds since it’s our only group support weapon.
Issue is that traits don’t have good synergy with condi, if you go druid you will be giving up a lot of dps if you try condi.
Zealot’s armor is a thing that exists, folks. Seriously. Not everything needs to be set up to perform optimally in Berserker gear. Poor healing coefficients hurts game diversity – if you want to play a pure-Berserker Druid, then accept that you should by all rights heal for less than someone in Zealot’s armor. Just like the Zealot’s guy needs to accept that he’s not going to hit as hard as the Berserker guy.
Telling the Zealot’s-wearing guy that he gets no return on his investment of Healing Power is kinda awful. If you go Berserker stats, you lose healing efficiency. That’s what you get for taking a support class and giving it zero supportive ability.
I agree the healing coefficient should go up the base shouldn’t. Why? Because then it would not be in balance with every other classes sustain.
