Guild Wars 2

Guardian traps nerf inc.

~ Kovu

akeldama.6709:

And you’re welcome for the bags. We debated letting FA have the keep because we clearly weren’t gonna hold it for long once TLC joined the fray, even with the WP bug; but figured what the heck, let’s repair our gear a few times throughout the ruckus. :P

Sorry we were late, we were too busy farming Rx at SoS spawn tower.
Goodness, that was a good night for bags.
No precursors tho, lets do it again tonight.

~ Kovu

Good lord.

~ Kovu

I happen to favor a Saturday reset, but the masses have spoken and cried out for the return of TGIF.

~ Kovu

Sadface.jpg

OGDeadHead.8326:

Well let’s just say AF is NOT an issue anymore. At all.

Personally I found the knockdown on the bleed trap to not be worth the cooldown increase (not to mention it’s a weird effect). With all of the cleanses in this game you need to have ongoing pressure to have any hope of winning a condition based fight (at least on ranger). I’d halve the cooldown and tack a 1s stun personally. I particularly agree with the frost trap, too. There’s something I’ve never used.

Shortbow is kind of garbage.

~ Kovu

You, friend, need to play some wvw.
At that point your pet is just always on passive ’cause you want to keep it alive for swapping bonuses / f2 abilities.

~ Kovu

The field does not blast via Clarion Bond, or any blast produced after pet swap while the field is still active.
Not sure if this is intentional.

~ Kovu

Of course it was a damage nerf. This pet gives Rangers easy access to stealth and blinds.
If you want a timed burst, use a different pet.

~ Kovu

Rooting has already been a little unreliable, which makes me sad. Missing a 60s cooldown entangle simply because your foe is strafing is always annoying.
I’ll certainly second an icon for the trait.

~ Kovu

No news is good news.

~ Kovu

There was an entire uncourteously titled thread with a whole lot of kittening demanding changes and even after those changes took effect people still kitten.
Good lord, welcome to the internet.

I suppose my two cents:

• The Bristleback has a perfectly decent burst skill, people can fall back on that.
• The smoke field provided by the Smokescale should blind just like any other smoke field. If it doesn’t (haven’t tested myself), I suspect it’s a bug. Give them time to fix it.
• Staff 3 still puts me in combat. I am le sad. =(

~ Kovu

Burn trap is fine.
The other three utility traps need reductions in their base cooldowns of about 25%, or other effects. The chill trap is absolute garbage, I’ve never seen anyone run it.

I’d also reverse the effects of Glyph of the Tides so you have a non CA option to pull enemies towards you while trying to maximize the effects of your traps. Usually while in CA you want enemies to kitten off a moment so you can heal without being cc’d, anyway.

My two cents.

~ Kovu

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW3fnMqAtrgdrAGsCEtiFGBD+pWV3qNjrOXSjpAc5CAlsizA-TFSFABAY+LR1fuUXQpKBT4KAAmyvU2fAhHCQAAEgZOzkZAH34G34G34QKg+WWB-w
Settlers Trap Druid

This is the build I run personally. You can swap the viper’s trap for a signet of the wild if you want the ranger-regen (probably not needed) or a stun break, and you can swap the glyph for 12 seconds of stab on a 60 second timer if you want, but I find the condi burst to be quite effective on that krait rune. You could run empathic bond over the extra poison if you want, but between the glyphs and healing spring condition removal shouldn’t be as much of an issue.

I’ve tried the critical bleed + staff aa build, it’s not worth giving up the trap trait and healing power for precision. Not when you’re playing a healer spec that also wants condition damage. At 15k HP you’ll have to watch out for those bursts.

~ Kovu

albotelho.2931:

Agreed that for sPvP trapper runes are OP, as I never used it this nerf willl not affect my build, but I know a lot of rangers that use it in WvW, they might not be happy right now.

We aren’t.

~ Kovu

Frigoris.7853:

but if we make enough noise they just might hear us.

I don’t think it works that way.

~ Kovu

Zalani.9827:

Tbh if healing gets nerfed theres going to be another revolution in the Ranger forums.

I lol’d.

~ Kovu

This is the reason you never see rangers in high level competitive stream play. The second they get something decent to work with, people kitten on it until Anet nerfs it into the ground. If a ranger manages to pin you with a buried entangle and and you’ve blown all of your cr, you probably deserve to die. So much removal in this game that you’d only have yourself to blame. God knows, rangers that get caught in a condi/cc bomb generally die.

~ Kovu

lxghostxl.5097:

please do not change smokescale F2. it is the pet along with bristleback that makes up for the dps loss of a druid. and more stealth for rangers are just too much. for the OP please just learn how to play better because if you only think that this is the way to make your class more interesting then I will tell you now that you are mistaken. use your brain and wait for the moment the pet use the smokefield then decide if you should use it or not to add challenges.

You’re suggesting we wait for our already unreliable NPC ally to decide if when to use the ability instead of utilizing it when we need it to get out of a bind. It’s not a matter of learn to play, it’s a matter of utilizing class mechanics effectively. F2 skills need to matter.

I haven’t posted here yet, so I would be in favor of a revert. THOUGH I DON’T THINK ALL CAPS IS GOING!!!! TO GET DEV ATTENTION!!!

~ Kovu

Chaba.5410:

Kovu.7560:

I, for one am looking forward to Saturday resets, even for just a little while.
I can’t play on Fridays, so I’m never on for reset. =(

~ Kovu

Shush you. 9pm PST is not reset. We just cover the transitions that night. :p

Yeah, but it’ll still be more interesting than the Mon-Wed rallies I’m used to being able to attend.
Working ’till 8 PST most nights has its drawbacks.

~ Kovu

I, for one am looking forward to Saturday resets, even for just a little while.
I can’t play on Fridays, so I’m never on for reset. =(

~ Kovu

Everyone has a lot of interesting ideas on developing the mechanics further.

I suppose my two cents is that if you pop Ancestral Grace (staff 3) while you have quickness, you’ll only travel half of the distance. I imagine the intended result would be (as with any other activated skill) you travel the full distance in half of the time (or 75%— h/e the math works out).

~ Kovu

Hit up T4-T6. Those are your best odds for decent and consistent roaming.

~ Kovu

I only run condi ranger in pvp sometimes. In wvw zerkbow is definitely the better choice.
A well played power ranger (lel) will beat a condi ranger 9 times out of 10. Ranger’s condition options are just too unreliable, limited in variety, are short range and very transparent. (Seriously, who actually gets hit with a throw torch or a serpent’s strike these days?) They’re good with bleeds, but to be good with poison they have to sacrifice empathic bond or survival of the fittest meaning their own condition removal is limited to healing spring (if they run traps) and the signet. (And people wonder why lots of rangers run with a bear.) Bonfire is nice, if you know, your opponent stands in it. Not going to happen. The nerf to traps and spirits didn’t help things much, either. Rangers apply fewer unique, though more potent conditions than all professions other than guardian, meaning it’s always easier to cleanse.

In my experience mesmers and engis have been the most difficult condition classes for me to deal with. The odd necro can be a pain, too. Engineers in particular are particularly potent at filling your condi bar up, and keeping it full. I’d rather have 22 stacks of bleed. 2 stacks of burning and 4 stacks of poison on me than an entire bar of fairly short duration, constantly renewing filler conditions that prevent me from cleansing the relevent ones. It gets to the point where it’s not even worth trying to cleanse.

Oh, and for the love of god nerf of condi+ (and condi-) food. Only been saying that for 3 years.

~ Kovu

If they’re anything like they were a year ago when I transferred off, their SEA displaces them into matchups that their NA and EU cannot effectively compete in, and as a result their daytime coverage is often overwhelmed and eventually demoralized by superior numbers in those time zones.

As a result, though many will move to the server for the prospect of having overnight coverage keeping them in the game, many of us NAers will move away due to the lack of even competition during the time that they enjoy playing. It has always been about holding the fort until the “night crew” logged on.

Though there’s some pretty good karma trains at night, if you’re unemployed and have nothing better to do at 4AM than run around in a computer game popping fireworks, animal tonics and beating on defenseless wooden structures. Obviously less inviting for some now that EotM is a thing.

Can’t speak to the community now, but it was a pretty lax and enjoyable place when I was there from release until the summer of last year. They aren’t as pptryhard as some of youmad.jpg players on their opposition servers would claim.

~ Kovu

Draknar.5748:

Kovu.7560:

This is an MMO. There shouldn’t be anything in the game that only certain people can access. It goes against the nature of the genre.

~ Kovu

I guess it depends on what you mean by “only certain people can access.” Since the dawn of MMOs there have been items that only certain people have access to. You want that raid armor? Gotta raid. Want that PvP set? Gotta PvP. Want that cool sword? Gotta do this dungeon or some long quest line.

It’s like people being upset about the fractal legendary back piece and how its not fair that people who do fractals get access to it and they don’t (everyone has access to fractals, which is why them being upset about it makes no sense).

So long as everyone has access to that content they have access to that item.
Whether they choose to execute that privilege is up to them. So long as it’s available to anyone.

~ Kovu

This is an MMO. There shouldn’t be anything in the game that only certain people can access. It goes against the nature of the genre.

I’m sure they will release a fair amount of new aesthetic material in the expansion, but really we have a lot to work with now — the majority of the updates the past three years have been aesthetic.

~ Kovu

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Not sure on class itself but for Rangers I use healing spring trap. If traited it lasts for 10 seconds and clears 3 conditions every second. Basically 10 seconds of condition immunity. Also it grants regeneration which I always considered a soft counter to conditions.

Sorry, three conditions per second?
I believe it’s 1 tick per 2 seconds, 1 condition removed per tick, assuming you remain in the circle.
Who do you think we are, elementalists?

~ Kovu

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I say Anet should allow players to mount each other. It could lead to combo attacks!

I agree. =)

~ Kovu

Looking forward to this change.

~ Kovu

lb/gs zerk is super fun.
cele builds are good, also.
I feel if rangers are weak somewhere, it’s conditions. Too difficult to effectively land conditions, and condition removal on rangers took a hit when Survival of the Fittest got merged into the same line as Empathic Bond.

That said, rangers work wonders on pick teams and can trait for fast revivals with their pets in team battles.

Are rangers perfect? No. The pet mechanic is still awful. Are they better than they were before? Certainly! Relative to other professions? Can’t judge. Guardian and engi are much better than they were before, and shatter mesmers are kittenedly good now. But as it’s been said above, rangers are in a better position than they were before. I’ll take it.

~ Kovu

I have a Ranger main and a Necro alt, though I’ve played all of the professions.
Which profession you’ll enjoy the most will depend on the type of game you prefer to play. For instance thieves are really good in the open field wvw maps, while engi is good at bunkering down positions in pvp. Warrior is generally the biggest dps contributor in pve, though semi-recent ranger buffs put them into contention too.
However you mentioned that you were a little bored with the simplicity of warrior.

Everyone feels different about each profession, but if you’re looking for a profession that’s a little more mentally involving I’d suggest the Engineer. Does it have the highest skill cap? That’s a matter of opinion, but it has a unique skill rotation in competitive play that the other professions can’t match. So it might interest you the most. Ele is another option. If you’re bored with the simplicity of warrior I would suggest against ranger, thief or (to a lesser extent) guardian.

~ Kovu

Huh.
This for real?

~ Kovu

timmyf.1490:

Samis, Kovu, and Jim Hunter are all talking about weighting PPT based on population. I’m pretty confident that this is a terrible idea. Why?

Elitist guilds trying to bully people out of WvW because they aren’t efficient enough.

Any change to the scoring system should ensure that it’s always better to have more players. There should never be a case where you can attain a higher score by having fewer players.

There’s also the fact that a lot of people in wvw aren’t there for the ppt element. I’m not saying the solution is perfect, and it doesn’t solve the underlying problem (as noted in the above post) but weighing coverage is still a step in the right direction.

~ Kovu

Samis.1750:

One could adjust the score, at least to some extent, based on the numbers playing to reduce the affect of off-hour coverage on scoring. The present system gives too great a weight on off hour coverage. There’s a reason why California has more electoral votes than Delaware.

One could weight the scoring as follows: .3 (highest pop server) + .6 (middle pop server) +.1 (lowest pop server). I picked lower weight for the lowest population server since one doesn’t want to discourage people from playing so as not to harm their server. You can normalize things with some type of log function. I made another post on this topic awhile back.

I actually like this idea.
Have the points scored per tick be modified (amplified or mitigated) based on the number of people playing the game at the time of the tick. If there are 3 servers and one is ticking 400+ but has 5 times the population then their tick should be mitigated as such. However if they’re ticking 400+ and there are plenty of unorganized defenders on the other two teams then that 400+ is earned. Likewise, if you’re ticking 235 with half of the population than the next guy ticking 235 then your 235 should be worth more.

If this were to happen then balancing the servers would still mean something, but would be significantly more relative. It wouldn’t need to be exact by any means.

~ Kovu

Fluffball.8307:

Kovu.7560:

I played a ranger before it was cool. =)

~ Kovu

So.. you played a ranger before Tuesday?

Yeah, I made Kudzu a year and a half ago but it’s been sitting in my inventory waiting to be useful. Up until now I had been roaming with a dire condi build.

About time I could pew pew with some vigor. On the flip side, I’ve never had an entire rapid fire dodged until now. I usually open with it for the vuln.

~ Kovu

I played a ranger before it was cool. =)

~ Kovu

Lol only silly people think SoS is dying.

~ Kovu

Blackgate seems to be handling this “2v1” just fine.

~ Kovu

Dat weather.
Get on it Anet! Nothing compliments a prolonged siege like a big rain storm!

~ Kovu

I personally feel like you’re trying to do too much with this build. It’s neither primarily zerk nor condition focused. Now in pve I’m sure you’ll get by just fine as you can easily kite most mobs but in wvw/pvp you’ll likely run into the problem that you’re not doing enough raw damage with your longbow due to the fact that your stats are all over the place and you lack ferocity (crit damage) — and also due to the fact that you’re limiting yourself to one weapon set for conditions you’ll be stuck waiting on your cooldowns.

It sucks that traps require you to go down a trait line that doesn’t help your conditions at all. I find I basically never use them in competitive play.

~ Kovu

This is a viable poison master build I use in pvp (I use a similar build while roaming in wvw). I don’t think it’ll serve you as well in pve — zerkbow is probably the way to go there — but if you’re looking for a build to try that is heavy melee and sustain with tons of poison and bleed then this would work for you.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAsf3YjEqUzaJLGsw1aABhaVA0uGS2u2dPcDfdGrkyMJ-TJxCwAiLDA4IAIc/hJPAAA

edit- whoops, replace quickening zephyr with lightning reflexes. stun/immob break /w vigor op. =)

~ Kovu

That might do it. Thanks for the suggestion!
I think I can handle moving down the odd exotic drop. XD

~ Kovu

Alright, so I’m playing a condi ranger with sword/torch – axe/dagger.

But I want to be able to utilize the ranger’s greatsword 3 skill while out of combat to move around more quickly. So I bought a generic greatsword for a few copper for that purpose.
However, anytime I equip the greatsword I’m unequipping two weapons and as a result while one weapon replaces the greatsword in my inventory the other has to find an unused spot in my inventory well down below.
So I decided to open up an extra slot right next to the greatsword at the top of my inventory so that I’d be able to constantly switch back and fourth between my greatsword and my other set of two weapons while not in combat. (as you can see in the second image.)

However, my problem is that whenever I pick up anything it automatically takes up that first available slot in my inventory causing me to have to sluggishly manually move it down to a lower part of my inventory before switching weapons or cause having one of my two equipped weapons moved down to the new first available slot when I do switch to my two-hander. (see the first image)

My question is, is there a trick, or a particular storage bag that would allow me to keep that open inventory spot specifically for when I switch my two weapons out for one, or am I basically boned here?

~ Kovu

2013 was Year of the Ranger Nerf.
Let’s be original with 2014.

~ Kovu

Due to the guild cap limit I think if I were to join anything like this I’d prefer it to be run by someone in the same tier as me. 500 is not a lot of players.

~ Kovu

I’m enjoying T3 as it is. A big improvement over T4.
Roaming’s a bit lacking though. Guess the higher up you go, the less you can roam without getting zerg’d down.

~ Kovu

Rangers work in wvw like ninjas work in the ongoing ninjas vs. pirates debate.
If it’s 1 ranger vs 1 somebody else, the ranger does well. However, if there are a bunch of rangers and a bunch of somebody elses, the rangers will get destroyed.

Rangers are just not great in group fights. 1v1 they’re fine, but they lack zerg utility.

~ Kovu

Sexiest Charr on Dragonbrand. =O

~ Kovu