Guild Wars 2

cafard.8953:

Lazze.9870:

Chain of three is better than nothing, but just overall inferior, less viable and more clunky than an easy ground targeted version.

Clunky indeed, but it’d have the benefit of catering to both the static and follow crowd. It could be a good excuse for a neat animation too, with the second skill showing the spirit ‘take root’.

It wouldn’t cater to anyone if its clunky, and the ranger doesn’t need more clunky and subpar stuff. If making spirits actually viable and good comes at the cost of catering to both view points, that should be an easy pick. Your version wouldn’t solve the issue of having pointless activation skill to activate if you placed your spirit in a safe place.

Ground targeted activation solves the problems of having to position to place them and all the other problems that comes with that, aswell as making the activated portion of the skills meaningful because you would be able to port your spirit and detonate it.

Anet wanted stationary spirits, and this is the way to make them viable without completely altering the mechanics.

Chain of three is better than nothing, but just overall inferior, less viable and more clunky than an easy ground targeted version.

borya.2964:

Resounding Timbre : Shouts apply regeneration and swiftness to allies. Reduces recharge on shouts. Your pet gain Aura Of Nature when activating a shout 3s.

I like it, but it suffers from having the effect wear off before getting the chance to take advantage of it.

Why not go all out for once, and make the pet apply the auro to nearby allies aswell.

niconori.7235:

And do we really need a second source of stability?

You wanna bound our only source of stability to an elite with an activation time? It’s bad enough not having instant stability.

Why not just kill off the class at that point.

Jackums.3496:

Defend their PvE viability and oppose baseline mobility, but don’t try rationalize stationary spirit viability in PvP. It’s simply an uninformed argument.

What’s uninformed is thinking that spirits in their current state would be any more viable if you tagged on mobility to them. They wouldn’t.

They don’t activate on death and the condi update made them weaker to conditions than what they used to, meaning anything hitting the ranger would melt the spirits aswell. Nothing about your argument favors mobile spirits.

Spirit health from the trait should be baseline, the trait itself should be buffed. All the spirits should have ground targeted summoning AND activation portions, meaning you wouldn’t have to position yourself to summon them or activate them. Passive effects from the spirits need their raidus increased.

That’s a proper spirit fix, and unfortunately a better fix than anything we will see from Anet anytime soon.

OGDeadHead.8326:

No support for the idea “Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there”?

:(

Yup. I’ve said the same thing earlier. Teleport and instant activation on their active skill would be great.

I don’t get people who demands spirits unbound baseline. It would be incredibly annoying NOT having the option to leave the spirit in one place. Making them good as stationary would be way better than any incarnation of the previous spirit traits.

We wouldn’t need a pet revival skill at all if the penalty of pet death wasn’t a ridicoulous 300 % CD increase.

This is NOT what the ranger needs. Some of the trait changes would just make it more of a mess. Marksmanship as an example needs to be properly streamlined, and that isn’t done by adding some poor condition options to it.

“Windborne Notes: Call of the Wild now also removes 2 conditions from affected allies.”

This is lazy copying. Stuff like this works on Warrior because they have a warhorn with two low cooldown skills. It’d be inneffective as an addition to Call of the Wild.

I said it several times, put a set duration, but don’t butcher it.

And they butchered it. Of course they did. The boon copying is negligible now.

Hilt Bash has had a shorter range than intended for 3 years. WHAO got (over)nerfed in 24 hours. It’s the ranger routine.

I expected a set duration of the copied boons. That part is okay – again though, don’t butcher it completely.

Don’t do the Nature’s Vengeance implementation twice..

Coming from the creator of the Herald. Is this a joke?

Just don’t butcher it.

anduriell.6280:

I like the way you shut down when someone tells you some facts you don’t like.

You’re not worth it, it’s that simple.

anduriell.6280:

Well i’ve heard that the devs are thinking to rename Celestial Avatar to tome of courage 2,0.
The only skill that is different between the tome and avatar is the best skill the tome had: full heal your party (avatar -5).

Why couldn’t they have to come up with more differentiating skills instead 10 heals? I think with Cosmic ray we have already enough clickfest and healing for the party….

I was replying someone discussing the thematics, not the mechanics. So what about quoting someone who can be bothered with your pile of complaints, because at the moment I can’t.

They mentioned potentially adding damage to the heal skills. And we got a beta which after you can tell Anet exactly how one-sided you feel the druid is.

Fashion Mage.3712:

So what you’re saying is, you think it’s okay that rangers have an elite spec which spams blue healing light at people 24/7, and you think it’s okay that this somehow isn’t on guardians? Also, let’s not ignore the monk references or that over half of Celestial Form is stolen from Tome of Courage.

The druid’s role in Guild Wars lore outside of shiftning their shape into spirits hasn’t been very well established by Anet so far. Expect they had something to do with the healing nature of the Maguuma Jungle.

So people might wanna slow down a second or two before they start hitting the ceiling in anger of how little this might fit the ranger, or rambling about how it slightly resembles a dead guardian skill. Half of the warrior longbow are stolen Ranger skills from the first game, you don’t see people moaning about it.

Simply put, the druid potentially offers a ton of options in terms of sustain and surviveability to current non-viable pvp/wvw setups. It gives people a reliable way of cleansing conditions without being forced into Wilderness Survival. And on its own it has traits and skill that offers more than just healing. It adds both build and role variety. The question isn’t what’s wrong with being a healer, the question is how people don’t see the potential this elite spec has outside pure healing roles.

Wether people like it or not, it’s objectively a strong looking specialization on paper in 2 out of 3 game modes, with a current question mark lingering on how it’s gonna fare in PvE. Regardless, Irenio did a good job – that’s a good thing in terms of future ranger changes and elite specs. Take that for what it is.

Set fixed times to prevent the ridiculous duration of some of the boons. Permanent fury, regen and swiftness was something we already had.

DON’T BUTCHER IT. It is good to have something nice for once, at least keep its might stacking potential.

Kitty.1502:

About the same as before, pets weren’t addressed, rangers still don’t fill a role in any core aspect of the game. Druids will be limited raids only and sporadic wvw uses.

If you don’t see the potential the druid has for ranger pvp builds, then I can’t help you.

Levetty.1279:

and I’m tired of the PvP crowd thinking that GW2 PvP isn’t any less casual then PvE but meh what you going to do

The only difficult thing about level 50 fractals is to keep yourself calm when the reward rng screws you over the 5th day in a row. But meh, what you gonna do.

TJgalon.5012:

Lazze.9870:

Sigh. PvE scrubs…

What does that even mean?

It means I’m tired of reading comments from the pve crowd thinking the druid spec is borderline useless.

Sigh. PvE scrubs…

My jaw dropped. Druid looked good (I mean, for being a healer, not something I would normaly be interested in). New pets looked good.

AND he has been reading the forums and been working on CORE CHANGES.

Jeez.

Perhaps people could start posting these posts at already existings threads for once?

Tragic Positive.9356:

If anything, traits that have been mentioned over and over again are the ones that need changes. And those are:
~Predator’s Instinct
~Strider’s Defense
~Most Dangerous Game
~Instinctive Reaction
~Invigorating Bond
~Honed Axes.
(~ probably a way for opening strikes to work more often than once per day if you are speed-farming. Sacrificing Remorseless for that is not cool)

Was going to repeat myself, but quoting this is easier. About opening Strike, it is an easy fix. Merge the first two minors, move down the gm minor, add some kind of a refresh trait as gm without touching remorseless.

Done. Stop QQing about stuff that doesn’t matter. Like merging shortbow benefits into the longbow trait. Like, really? This probably tops your complaints about Troll Unguent.

Our elite should be “Summon Wicker Man”, accompanied with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WddjLLFxoow

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lazze.9870:

Except it is a lot easier to balance your own health around the 50 % than your pet, especially when considering the pet is a useful utility when not treated as death fodder. I don’t see anything wrong with my reasoning when I don’t struggle to keep the pet alive or want any trait that promotes killing of our mechanic.

Anyways, as a bottom line, MDG or any other offensive grandmaster trait shouldn’t have a trigger dependent on our own, or the pet’s, health in the first place.

Still the same thing over again.
It promotes keeping your pet below 50%. If you let it die – you lose a lot of DPS and utility – that’s exactly it.

Currently the mechanic promotes killing ourselves..

Because it’s nothing wrong about my reasoning. I’m not defending the current MDG, it’s crap. I’m telling you why I, personally, wouldn’t use your suggested version of the skill. Your arguing also suggest that my pet is often close to dying, which isn’t the case.

Your suggestion was that the the trait would still function if the pet was dead. That’s actually promoting death. Way more than MDG does. It gives you something for having a dead pet (more than what you currently have with a dead pet), MDG gives you nothing for being dead, because, well, you’re dead. The problem with MDG, aside from being a lackluster leftover from the Necromancer, is that the ranger lacks the tools to make it worth it. It’s not outright promoting death as strongly as your suggestion, it just happens to be the result of overly relying on it because of reasons already stated over and over again in about every thread about this trait.

Protect me is bad. Empathic Bond is bad. For some of the very same reasons I don’t like your suggestion. We don’t need more of this crap. We need less of it. That’s not saying people can’t make more use out of your suggestion than the current version, but it doesn’t change me not wanting to use it or finding it overal counterproductive to the profession’s main mechanic.

But you know, whatever.. We both want something very different to what MDG currently offers, so what’s the point..

There are other things to do and other games to play. I’ll do whatever floats my boat.

If the druid is “poo” and it stays “poo”, then I know spending time on this forum is wasted. So I can cross that off my list aswell.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lazze.9870:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Trying to fall below 50% HP yourself is a disgrace for the game itself. That’s much worse than keeping your pet dead in case you know he’s going to die again even if you ress him up.

Doesn’t apply to me because
_I’m not using the trait as a “reason” to stay below 50 %. I look at it as a bonus when I am below 50 %. _

…
…

The same applies to your pet.

Except it is a lot easier to balance your own health around the 50 % than your pet, especially when considering the pet is a useful utility when not treated as death fodder. I don’t see anything wrong with my reasoning when I don’t struggle to keep the pet alive or want any trait that promotes killing of our mechanic.

Anyways, as a bottom line, MDG or any other offensive grandmaster trait shouldn’t have a trigger dependent on our own, or the pet’s, health in the first place.

HotHit.6783:

Poison Master is not a terrible trait. Honed axes isn’t the worst trait in the game either. Both are used by our PvE burn build, poison master being our only source of poison in said build ‘cause burning is broken. For PvP, poison master builds would see use if the trait wasn’t competing with all of our condition removal traits besides evasive purity and conditions weren’t currently in a position where everything does scratch damage except burning. Again, Poison Master, with no balance changes, could become an incredible trait for Druid builds, condi removal/resistance, healing and poison to prolong and win prolonged fights.

Poison Master should have never been reduced from 50 % in the first place. How they managed to go through testing, deeming it too strong with the new condi stacking, while letting all this burn damage to through is beyond me. The only reason it has use in PvE is because it’s no better option, not because it is particularly good.

Honed Axes is still bad. Feroctiy for mainhand axe is bad, AoE chill could have been a nice baseline buff for axe. But no, they tagged it on a bad trait to make it “grandmaster worthy”. Bad design pouring all over it.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Trying to fall below 50% HP yourself is a disgrace for the game itself. That’s much worse than keeping your pet dead in case you know he’s going to die again even if you ress him up.

Doesn’t apply to me because I’m not using the trait as a “reason” to stay below 50 %. I look at it as a bonus when I am below 50 %. That is exactly why a healthtrigger grandmaster is lackluster in the first place, because thats’s the only viable way to use it.

Besides, keeping my pet alive in PvP ain’t something I’m struggling with, and therefore I wouldn’t want to use a trait that works against my playstyle. That’s why your suggestion, to me, is counterproductive.

It doesn’t really matter how bad MDG currently is, a trait that promotes bad use of our mechanic and function as a band aid for our other mechanic problems is not a good trait in my opinion and not something I would be running.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lazze.9870:

Tragic Positive.9356:

If the trait provided the benefits according to your pet’s HP (dead pet included), well yes. I would consider it. DPS increase when my pet get’s low would be triggered often, wouldn’t endanger Ranger himself and would provide an option to compete with Quick Draw.

I would honestly never run it. Counterproductive to the profession mechanic.

You mean even more than it currently is?

Yes. The current version isn’t all that counterproductive, it’s just lackluster with poor trait synergy. Balancing our pet health around the death treshhold on the other hand is counterproductive to our mechanic and our pet swap trait. Keeping it dead is even worse. The old Beastmaster’s Bond trait that functioned simulairly was poor aswell.

Or to put it differently, I don’t want a trait that promote not using our pets properly.

Furthermore it would be counterproductive to the only build I ever tried MDG with, a celestial hoelbrak/strenght build where zephyr’s speed was a part of the might stacking.

But that’s just my opinion. It’s not like I ever run MDG in its current state either.

Tragic Positive.9356:

If the trait provided the benefits according to your pet’s HP (dead pet included), well yes. I would consider it. DPS increase when my pet get’s low would be triggered often, wouldn’t endanger Ranger himself and would provide an option to compete with Quick Draw.

I would honestly never run it. Counterproductive to the profession mechanic.

Ryou.2398:

How did some of you make sense having an asura ranger?

Got a dedicated PvP ranger asura. Its animations just feels smoother, and the size is a nice bonus.

Kinda the same reason I don’t have a charr nor a norn ranger. Clunky and stupid-looking.

Holland.9351:

GM:

• Your pets and spirits take 50% less damage from all sources.

Band aids.. please, no.

My first impression is that all of this is way more complicated that it needs to be as far as traits go, didn’t read through the weapons or mechanic changes yet. Some of it kind of reminds me of those quirky mesmer traits.

We just need some adjustement and overhauling of a couple of really bad traits, make a refresh mechanic for opening strike as a minor trait that syngergizes with the line as a whole while keeping the Remorseless trait as it is, and make Fortifying Bond baseline.

Greatsword needs a Hilt Bash fix and autoattack buff. Swoop could be looked at after the “nerf” it got. Shortbow needs a fix. Both axes could use some love. The sword rooting and the cast time of the evade skills could need a second look.

That’s the kind of changes we can expect, if anything. A complete overhaul like this ain’t happening.

HotHit.6783:

There are a few reasons why a rifle/pistol isn’t baseline for a Ranger. Many have said it’s off -theme for what the ranger represents. What I feel was the deciding factor is, what would the rifle do?

Nothing. The only positive thing about it would be me not having to read cafard’s comments about dogs and moustaches and hunters and whatnot any longer, but that’s hardly worth it

cafard.8953:

UnitedChaos.8364:

Bunny Thumper – A hammer-wielding, close-range, knock-down master.

And they tell me a rifle hunter is unthematic…

Ranger with hammer was a thing in GW1, even refered to in GW2 by giving Master Ranger Nente in AC story mode a hammer.

They tell you rifle is unthematic for a pretty good reason. It doesn’t have anything to do with ranger, not even in a historical sense like the hammer does.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Lazze.9870:

Loki.9412:

give this prof a rifle option at least, better yet a gunslinging look would be cool.

Play thief or engie then, the ranger archtype Anet went with has little do nothing to do with guns.

Warrior has rifle, although that’s sort of a gimmick in PvP. Also, p/p sucks with the thief. For guns, go either p/p flamethrower condition engineer, or elixir rifle engineer.

I didn’t say anything about viability, those two profession are simply the most gunslinger-ish characters you can get in this game.

Enginer is obviously the only viable profession you can play while still pulling off the gunslinger look.

Loki.9412:

give this prof a rifle option at least, better yet a gunslinging look would be cool.

Play thief or engie then, the ranger archtype Anet went with has little do nothing to do with guns.

Kraljevo.2801:

Lyger.5429:

After reading the official Scrapper reveal article today, I am very excited to see what Druid brings. Scrapper seems to have great traits synergy, fun weapon skills, as well as useful utility skills. ICH (ranger and engineer developer) might also have some awesome stuff for Druid as well!

Isn’t Roy responsible for the ranger? It was him presenting the specialization traits in the ready up.

No, he isn’t. He even said during that presentation that he didn’t do any of the changes they were presenting.

Irenio Calmon-Huang is the current ranger dev from my understanding.

Holland.9351:

That’s why the Opening Strike-reset-mechanic should be part of the minor traits rather than being an optional GM trait..

It should be both. Keep Remorseless and add a reset mechanic to the grandmaster minor that goes well with the other traits in the specialization.

Remorseless all the way over LtW btw.

I’m personally more annoyed by how they couldn’t just leave Healing Spring as it was and still let it benfit from Trapper’s Expertise. The traps themselfes aren’t terrible, Spike Trap and Flame Trap with a third utility skill works fine in PvP, although the Spike Trap cooldown was slightly overdone..

I wouldn’t mind throwing traps, but I can live without it. I do however think the cripple portion of the trapper trait could have been a tad more interesting and impactful. And even if the our new revive trait is good, it sucks that they removed Spike Trap from it as soon as they added the knockdown effect to the skill.

Edit: About trapper runes and pet stealth, pets gaining stealth when the ranger do should be baseline. For obvious reasons…

anduriell.6280:

Don’t be fooled

I’m not, I just happen to play the class better than you do.

Traited Troll Unguent ticks for 850 health per sec with no healing power for 10 seconds on a 20 second cooldown. To put it simply, that’s warrior Healing Signet levels on average just based on healing. Then you have condi cleanse and fury on top of it.

anduriell.6280:

Again, rangers do worst DPS than any other class in game. I do better dps with my necro in condi and in power (and necro melee weapons are really bad).

You don’t, but that wouldn’t be the first time you’re wrong about something.

Ryou.2398:

Sarision.6347:

Ryou.2398:

Sarision.6347:

Why don’t you play it instead of asking us then?

If you have a problem with me asking your welcome to not enter to post at all:)

If you spend the time playing instead, you actually get an even better answer than here.

Well maybe I do not want to waste my time playing a class being shoehorned into playstyles because of a mentality.

Do whatever you want then. Stay at range, pew pew with the bow and do subpar contribution to the group if that’s what you enjoy. The ranger’s best contribution to a group, Spotter and Frost Spirit, have a 600 and 1000 radius respectively. Longbow got 1500 range. Do the math yourself.

Meta is meta for a reason, and the GW2 dungeon meta is what it is because of certain poor design decisions that allows a certain playstyle to be vastly more effective than others. It will probably change with raids, but the dungeons will remain as easy content that people want to finish as fast as possible for the rewards.

snow.8097:

the only thing we lack in are good player. Eura and Hiro are my hope for Muricah, while ROM and…i always forget his name… for EU, but both play rather warrior in Tourneys.

And you know why ROM only plays warrior in tournaments? Because he flat out said during the last WTS that the ranger isn’t in a good spot at the moment.

That’s pretty much the opposite of what you just said. Now, isn’t that funny.

anduriell.6280:

• Ranger does not have good access to healing. The trap is just weird, the survival does not work because when you need healing is at the spot not when you finished the fight, the shout takes like 1.5 seconds to cast.

They ruined Healing Spring, but saying that Troll Unguent and Heal as One is bad is just wrong. Especially complaining about Troll Unguent not being a burst heal when it is not supposed to act as one is rather ridiculous.

Appart from fixing Healing Spring, the Water Spirit is only heal skill with serious reasons to complain about. That skill was pure crap even before taking into consideration all the other spirit problems. HaO and TU are good, and even better when traited.

snow.8097:

It is time for rangers to think about tweaks and small changes instead of hard buffs and overhauls.

There are loads of skills that are in a spot where an overhaul is more needed than just small number tweaks or changes. The spirits and a couple of the shouts are the main offenders. And there are skills that, yes, a few tweaks is good enough, like the greatsword’s Hilt Bash leap (that one isn’t really a matter of tweaking, it’s shorter than intended – unacceptable 3 years into the game) and the autoattacks. Other weapons like the shortbow should in my opinion get an overhaul simply because it promotes boring gameplay, but it would also do with some simple changes.

It is the same with traits. Some are bad, others just need some number tweaking. Marksmanship as en example, where Predator’s Instinct competes as one of the worst traits in the game, and where the minors still function in a way where they need a grandmaster trait to be fully functional (solutions have been presented several times, merge the first two minors, put Precise Strike in the master tier and add some sort of refresh trait that synergizes with the specialization line as an whole without stepping on Remorseless toes – this should have been done with the specialization update).

When introducing traps on the guardian elite spec, the same complaints appeared there as we’ve seen from rangers since the release of the game.

And then there is the pet mechanic. There is no doubt whatsoever that this mechanic can be improved. That doesn’t mean it’s useless, but it got wasted potential and certain lack of player control. Some would say that is putting it nicely.

The ranger is not in a place where mere tweaking is all that is missing. There are legitimate issues that ranger players have been adressing for a long time. And regardless of wether Anet adresses these things or not, it is important that the players make them aware instead of just sitting idle and wait for nothing. And sure, people can do that without QQing, but some of these stuff has been a issue since day one, and at some point people are getting tired of it.

Ryou.2398:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Thieves may be at their lowest point in ever, but they still are pretty much a permanent fixture in tournament team compositions. Ranger is almost never even seen in tournaments at all. That should tell you all you need to know as far as PvP is concerned.

I think their bigger issue is being forced into one spec.

What’s funny about all of it is that ranger is currently mainly fighting for that one role in the team composition the thief is complaining about being stuck in.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

The only problem is dodge; it should go through blocking.

Probably, I just worded it like that because I haven’t seen any statements from Anet on how they intend it to work. But I was mainly referring to dodge.

Zapperx.1649:

As i mentioned before go test the pets on target dummies you will see what I am talking about.

I’m gonna break it for you, most people bothering to engage in this discussion don’t need to test it on dummy, they’re already aware. I ran double birds way before they introduced taunt, I’m very well aware of their movement and how they function with taunt.

Problaby why I also don’t have any problems with other rangers using birds to taunt me. I know their attack patterns, when to avoid them, when to cc them. Bird taunt is not a problem. Taunt possibly going through stuff it ain’t supposed to go through however, that’s a problem.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Lightning Reflexes just needs the damage portion removed and it will not be cancelled by SA anymore. Instead of the damage, add 10 stacks of confusion for 2s in a 180 radius.

Stun. Add a stun to it. Way more fitting.

“Evade back with a crack of lightning, stunning nearby foes and gaining vigor”

And voilà. You have a moment of clarity trigger aswell, on top of the possibility of benefitting from the Wilderness Knowledge+Remorseless combo aswell.