Guild Wars 2

+2

This subforum has more salt than the actual salt forum.

~ Kovu

Give me a rifle.
I’m going to be a proper park ranger.

~ Kovu

Put 1 second of stability on every single stun break in the game. Or something to that effect.
That will solve a few problems. Being given the tools to properly react in a situation would be nice. Popping a cooldown to break a stun just to be immediately restunned is mind numbingly poor design.

~ Kovu

edit- And yeah, imob could use some work. That coming from a ranger.

Lets take a bite outa power creep! That’s my motto!
Make wvw great again! Yarrr!

Nerf both.

~ Kovu

Jeknar.6184:

If anything, they should add more reliable stability sources for each profession so we don’t need a guardian babystitting us when we’re in a CC heavy fight.

’Murica!

Korgov.7645:

What do you miss out on when the enemy uses alt-F4?

A perfectly good screenshot of a dead yaks bend player (or five) that I’m /sit’ing on with a kite out for me to print off, frame and hang on my bedroom wall with the others.
Its really disappointing.

~ Kovu

Not to mention the lag…

Ah, fair enough. We’re on the same page then, I just didn’t think to include warrior might.

~ Kovu

^ Good detailed post, I like. I’m curious about it myself, actually. I enjoy rolling around with the front line of my zerg and watching the green numbers fly.
Does any of that include things outside of the profession itself that buff healing to allies, such as Delicious Rice Balls, Runes of the Monk or Sigils of Transference?

Also, 1,873 seems a little higher than I can get with straight Minstrels. I’m usually in the 1,600~ range. May I see your various sources of healing power?

~ Kovu

Lol, no ele can outheal my no-blasting-required 6k Lunar Impacts, 600 regen ticks, 4k Ancestral Grace, 2.2k-per-pulse Rejuvenating Tides et cetera. But they bring a number of other elements to the table (heh, get it?) that Druids do not. Boons, auras and the such. Its probably a better support profession overall.

My problem with support Druid is healing is about all they do in the wvw environment. I really wish they hadn’t changed Spirits to be immobile, boon rangers (you know, beyond swiftness and regen) might actually be a thing in a zerging environment. Pulsing stability would be REALLY nice on the front line.

Also, run high HP pets when melee’ing with a zerg if you can. Even if they’re on passive, they’re still useful for swapping bonuses (I tend bring a sylvari hound to zerg fights for further regen, and swap to the tanky bear for aoe condi clear on demand).

~ Kovu

I’m not sure on the balance here, but I’m not against the Healing Power stat having more versatility in general.

~ Kovu

Definitely agreed on Muddy Terrain.
You could double the velocity, halve the cast time, double the radius, reduce the cooldown to 20s, double the maximum targets and make it unblockable and I would still hesitate to take it over QZ & LR on a survival build.
Its simply an underwhelming effect. It doesn’t feel any worse than a lag spike, or getting hit with Staff 4.

~ Kovu

Initially Rangers had 0 proper stealth abilities.
LB3 was updated to apply stealth about a year into the game, iirc.
Camouflage was activated on a trait. A useless trait, at that.

~ Kovu

Not long ago FA was stuck in T2 despite being matched against servers much larger than us. For weeks on end. This is when our paired server was SoR, a relative non factor.
Best thing you can hope to do is find the times when the opposing servers are most competitive and play then. NSP has a solid EU presence and YB can carry hard EU through early OCX. Might not be possible depending on your schedule, not much can be done about it though.
FA will swap with SBI soon enough. We’ve been ranked 5~7 for three weeks now, and despite rolling T4 several times I don’t think FA ever actually had the glicko rating of a T4 server.

~ Kovu

Jeknar.6184:

Kovu.7560:

I’m not going to quote every skill individually but I don’t think scrappers really need a nerf on their stealth tonic. I don’t even count their smoke field since its rng.

Smoke bomb isn’t random. Sure, there is a trait that drop one at your feet, but people who actually use it to stealth actually do it with the Bomb Kit.
But the Engineer (or Scrapper for that matter) Stealth everyone complains about is the Sneak Gyro.

Oh. Fair enough. I don’t play engi but the one I often roam with complains about engi rng. Apparently half the time his smoke field is a reflect line instead?
Anywho, I don’t know why people kitten about the gyro. It follows the engi so you can cleave on it and hit both. Also, once you kill it RIP one of their utility slots for 40s. That kitten has nothing on the shenanigans thieves and mesmers can pull.

~ Kovu

Thieves have leaps, blocks, a metric kittenton of evades and numerous spammable teleports/gap creators that allow them to pull out of combat whenever they see fit. Stealth is hardly their only means of sustain. I think a slight nerf to stealth across the board affecting all classes, including thieves would not be unwarranted. Some of you seem to think the posters in this thread are out to get thieves, but I’d gladly take hits to smokescale field, longbow 3 and the druid stealth trait if similar cuts were made to mesmers & thieves. I’m not going to quote every skill individually but I don’t think scrappers really need a nerf on their stealth tonic. I don’t even count their smoke field since its rng. Rng-based skills are inherently worse. For example I’d take a skill that gave me 5s of stability over a skill that gave me 15s of stability 50% of the time (doing nothing the rest of the time).

I would, of course, want similar nerfs to professions that excel at hard chain CC’s. Stealth isn’t the only issue pointed out in this thread.

~ Kovu

Geez, could I trade you one for a fractal spoon?
I’ve put hours into fractals with no result.
I hate it when they lock mastery points behind RNG. >.>

Well that at least is an easy fix. Put a small amount of direct damage on the traps.
Similar to ranger traps.

~ Kovu

@OriOri: That’s fair. Ghost thieves should not be a thing.

~ Kovu

3 seconds of superspeed at the end of CA (which is locked into being utilized at the same time as that stealth) won’t keep up with the various kiting abilities and gap closers available to thief. I’d gladly trade that kitten for a CA stability trait. I don’t like blowing 60~75s stab cooldowns just to be able to heal my zerg in a larger fight.

Also, having condition ticks break stealth is an awful idea. It basically destroys any hope of not being revealed — many power builds have a small number of unavoidable conditions built into their weapon skills (or traits).

I do like the idea of diminishing returns @ hard cc though.

~ Kovu

Lol just play during EU. NSP has more numbers than FA in that timezone.
But yeah, FA is likely to roll up to probs T2 next week. What FA is doing to T4 now will pale compared to what JQ or TC will likely do to FA next matchup. As well, DH actually has a player base, which is more than can be said for SoR.

By all means, though, let the salt flow.

~ Kovu

Just change it so thieves can’t contest waypoints.
[/thread]

~ Kovu

One person can take a keep.
I wouldn’t enjoy a gamemode where the only way to know something’s safe for sure is to constantly watch all of its destructible bits. As a previous poster mentioned, we’ve been through that.
Keep the swords. If someone wants to sit next to a keep all day tapping it, good on them.

~ Kovu

The real achievement is getting them to Alt+F4 before hitting downstate.

~ Kovu

I’m done playing devil’s advocate. While Jim seems to prefer ignoring the points I make about successfully managing the system we have, I don’t disagree that certain elements of the pet mechanics could use a QoL overhaul. I’ve said as much twice, I’m tired of rehashing. I’ll leave it at that.

~ Kovu

I’ve seen a fair amount of lag on the green map in T2 (JQ this week) since reset. Not really sure what that’s about. I solve the problem well enough by not playing on the map.

~ Kovu

Aye, I generally make it a habit of reading the posts I reply to.
And yes, as was pointed out in the first post I wrote in this thread there is definitely room for improvement in regards to pet interaction (and the AI). However, people constantly having their pets dying in various situations and blaming it on the system are incorrect for several reasons I’ve listed in previous posts.

~ Kovu

Have you tried utilizing the options provided?

You’ll find that if you micromanage your pet to not attack someone while the enemy group is passing through they’ll survive longer, and that swapping pets automatically restores your pet’s health to full.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. Sometimes the pet will die. That’s life.

~ Kovu

Tonics that transform you into a golem with arm mounted arrow carts and the speed of a dune roller.

GO!

(The ‘g’ in gw2 stands for gundam, right?)

~ Kovu

Bringing a ranger to a large group fight is your first mistake.

*is glared at

Okay, okay. In that situation keep your pet on passive and swap when its low on health. Sending the pet in to die is never a good idea. As a druid you have lots of heals and even as a core ranger your heal skill in conjunction with pet swapping should be enough to manage any aoe damage that comes your pet’s way.

If the enemy zerg is explicitly going out of their way to target your pet, good for them.

Oh, and running tankier pets in group fights never hurts. You’re not locked to bristleback/smokescale/wolf. If they’re going to be on passive, pets with useful F2 abilities are better over those with more damage. Regen (mostly for af generation), condition removal, smoke field, cc are all options.

~ Kovu

Ever since they nerfed Celestial I’ve had trouble making hybrid builds work on rangers.
Their weapon abilities just don’t support it as well as other professions. I don’t want to have to run traps on a build that’s not utilizing full condition damage/duration.
That said, if you’re able to find something that works well for you, great.

~ Kovu

Oh, and there was some mention of pets ruining the kiting effectiveness of stealthed rangers. If that’s the case, make sure the pet is on aggressive before you stealth so it attacks something instead of following you. Obviously this won’t work if you’re not in combat, but if that’s the case you can just stow the pet.
It’s just a bit of extra micro management, but that’s how ranger do.

~ Kovu

I happen to agree with the OP, though never enough to start a thread about it.
It strikes me as one of those QoL things — giving the ranger full control of when they decide to and not to utilize their class feature.

Still, this isn’t something I care enough about to start an argument over.

~ Kovu

You stomp the ranger before they activate the ability.
There are 8~9 (ish) seconds after the ranger goes down before they can even use the skill.
Once the ranger uses the ability the only way to stop the pet from attempting to revive the ranger is to kill the pet. (Oddly this doesn’t work underwater.) Or kill the ranger through damage.

Still, stomping the ranger before they use the skill in the first place is the best method. Easy enough to do in a game where everyone has teleport stomps, invulnerabilities or stability. (The good players know when to dodge. =p)

~ Kovu

Please, transfer to one of the servers with a heavy OCX so that its even easier to ktrain other servers at night.

That was sarcasm. Don’t. Don’t transfer to T1 or SoS if you actually want fights.

Go to Yaks Bend. They have absolutely 0 OCX. SBI is also an option. Bring your friends. create a community instead of stacking one.

~ Kovu

Just remove the whole gamemode if you people are going to kitten so much.
You have options. If you don’t like DBL play on Alpine, EBG or EoTM — whatever your cup of tea is.

~ Kovu

OGDeadHead.8326:

Druid Clarity should be an easy fix. Rework it to remove one condition every second instead of all at once (been suggested before), or grant resistance while in CA and clear one condition every third second. Keep the stunbreak.

This, though I’d prefer the straight condition removal tick (a nerf for bunker roaming but a buff in group fights) over resistance. Personally I feel resistance should apply to the pet upon activation of the Renewal Signet (which they also need to get rid of the range limitation on).

~ Kovu

Yes, because sacrificing the specialization’s healing abilities in favor of a quick stealth is totally “cheap”. Heck, with the lame channel times we rangers have on our elite spec abilities, I wish the stealth proc’d upon entering CA instead of exiting it so we could actually use our channel heals without being trained or cc’d to kitten. But alas, we can’t have everything.

Go back to the thief subforum. x.x

~ Kovu

This isn’t just a problem in wvw.
I feel heavily camped on the new pve snow map, too.

~ Kovu

In b4 match-up threads are not permitted on the forums.
I think Anet checks this particular area of the forum once or twice a month.

~ Kovu

It’d be silly to say that Celestial Shadow is more accessible than the options that thief and mesmer have. I dislike that the whole CA mechanic suffers because of that trait.
As it is now I wouldn’t even take Lingering Light if it were competing with the other Master traits. Or at all.

Pretty much agreed with Draeyon.

~ Kovu

OGDeadHead.8326:

And what icd timer would you have put in there actually?

You see, having a trait with a different cd bound to a gated mechanic that by itself has its own cd, is perhaps the worst design decision you could ever make. As such, your solution is NOT a solution, and would in fact be even worse than what they (Anet) did.

It would encourage players to actually USE the abilities of Celestial Avatar instead of popping it as a stealth/speed crutch. Moreover, there isn’t anything forcing you to use Celestial Avatar the second it pops up, its supposed to solve your conditions & healing problems (plus offer some cc), again not intended just as a stealth/speed crutch. Its fair to say the trait should be marked in some way, similar to Clarion Bond.

Regardless, you ignored the primary point of my previous post. Effort should be made to improve the potency of CA in larger group fights while not making it overpowered for roaming or small scale. Perhaps increase the target cap? I don’t know, just throwing out ideas.

~ Kovu

Personally I would’ve simply thrown an ICD on the stealth trait and left CA itself as it was. It would’ve nerfed those pesky roaming builds while not harming larger group healing specs — which desperately need some improvements. To encourage people wanting to play within CA I would also modify the condition removal trait to tick remove a condition every second while in CA instead of removing them all at once. Again, it would nerf the roaming specs while adding some sustain to group support builds.
But hey, I don’t decide this stuff.

~ Kovu

Fort Aspenwood is a great place to be.
If you play wvw on FA during late NA consider joining [TLC].
We rally PST 4 times per week, including a #Backcap rally on mondays where we only cap objectives that have been flipped in the previous 15 minutes.
If you prefer to play during earlier NA consider joining [DIE]. Because that’s what you’ll be doing, the driver likes to yolo into blobs three times his size.
If you prefer to play in any other timezone, well, have fun with being outnumbered and listening to people play in spanish. =)

~ Kovu

Good stuff. Looks like some solid roaming.
I find this stuff much more entertaining than the big zerg fights.

~ Kovu

Boysenberry.1869:

Some areas do seem a tad over-populated.

lol’d

I won’t be happy until I can afk, pour a cup of coffee and make a sandwich in the time it takes for a warrior to raise up their rifle. =<

~ Kovu