Guild Wars 2

I agree that Glyph of Empowerment needs a boost. I’d suggest an increase in damage to 20%, as well as affecting condition damage. Perhaps increase the duration slightly to 8 seconds but also increase the cooldown to 30 or 40.

That way it feels much more satisfying when you pop it and you can clearly and immediately see a burst from your team. 10% just isn’t enough.

the Clarion Bond version applies 12 seconds, but the warhorn Call of the Wild applies 6.

I wonder if they have the technology to “ground tether” for solar beam. So you could put the beam ground targeted and it would damage enemies and heal allies that it passes through. That could help with the damaging aspect. Or it could just be piercing. :P

Glyph of Empowerment needs to be buffed
10% damage across 5 seconds is not a big or very noticeable burst, especially given the amount of damage support that other classes can provide. Also, from the tooltip from the stream, it doesn’t appear that this affects condition damage at all.

I would increase the damage buff to at least 20% and have it affect condition damage. This would be appropriate due to the relatively short range and duration of the skill. It makes sense that it should have a high reward for good positioning.

I like the direction and design- but i have a couple of suggestions.

1. priority: Glyph of Empowerment. 10% more damage for 5 seconds isn’t a very impactful burst. I would increase it to 20% for 5 seconds or for super craziness, 40%.

#2: Just a suggestion for the addition to life shroud 2- perhaps have it clear condis?

Hiya! Some feedback about the glpyh utilities from a Ranger main!

Glyph of Rejuvenation:

As of now, other than Healing Spring’s weird functionality (having to re-enter to trigger if you are at full when placed), Healing Spring is outright superior in that it provides not only more base healing to those in it, but is a water field allowing allies and you to combo for even more healing. EDIT: also pulsing condi clears!

All that the glyph provides is a wider range and synergy with life shroud. Perhaps an even further increased range would be appropriate to give it a different role than healing spring, and make it feel more clutch in life shroud.

EDIT2: Or, if the functionality is there, have it heal more based on distance- heal allies for more depending on how close they are to you, for example.

Glyphs of Alignment, Equality, Tides:

These three are grouped together- the utility they already provide is great, however, they should have some additional effect (other than healing times a million with traits). Considering the animation, it would be appropriate to make them blast finishers or stun breaks, allowing them to have additional team utility.

EDIT 3: Or perhaps apply some boon to allies depending on the utility (such as stability, protection, regen)

Glyph of Unity:

This glyph is… weird. It feels like retaliation. However, Ranger’s playstyle as of now has been to avoid getting hit when possible. I would suggest having it return damage based on if your allies (within a range) are getting hit as well. That would increase the damage multiplicatively, but it would definitely make more sense thematically and mechanically. perhaps the direct damage numbers could be lowered in exchange for this aoe retaliation.

Glyph of Empowerment:

Oh man oh man. I love the concept of this. The damage boost is a bit low though. Just as a comparison frost spirit + empowerment on autocast (2 utility skills) would provide about the same amount of sustained damage boost as the Revenant +150 ferocity trait. (7.5% from frosty, 2.5%-3% from empowerment depending on traits) I would suggest buffing the damage boost of Empowerment to 20% minimum, max 40%. This would emphasize its use as a damage boost- the druid wouldn’t be able to spam it if its functionality is met- the use would have to be timed well or else it would be wasted. At the same time, its use would be immediately and obviously effective (more so than a 10% damage increase).

I really like the design of Druid- I won’t lie, I cringed hard when I heard “Heavy Healing”, but my expectations were blown away. These changes to Glyphs would bring them up to the level of the current standard for utility skills, and give t hem all a situational place on the Druids skillbar.

Yes, but Sun Spirit is a utility skill while Spotter is a trait. It doesn’t really make up for the fact that we’re rapidly losing an old support option as a result of power creep.

Given that Reaper, Revenant, and Warrior can easily hit 100% critical chance without the need of Spotter, and most other classes can get very high critical chances without the need for Spotter; it, or its alternatives, need to be buffed to maintain Ranger’s presence in parties.

When one of our 2 major support options is becoming quite obsolete with nothing to replace it with, there is cause for concern.

Doubling Spotter’s effect, or adding 10% damage on sword to Strider’s Defense are two options.

Doubling Spotter’s effect would make it better worth taking just for the ranger, who needs the critical chance- Despite being a master marksman, the Ranger has among the lowest critical chance in combat potential among the professions.

10% damage to sword on Strider’s Defense would allow for an alternative to take other than Spotter, but still doesn’t make up for losing half of our support options.

And with no word of Druid yet, it’s hard to stay patient and wait while the profession becomes more and more sidelined.

EDIT: other options include buffing spirits more, other traits, etc.

Engineer Speedy Kits gets a trait buff whenever it’s off cooldown. (20 seconds of swiftness on 20 seconds cooldown)

That’s not particularly hard to time- But Ranger’s Clarion Bond is harder to time- 30 or 24 seconds for 15-18 seconds of buffs.

Could we get a trait buff that shows when Clarion Bond is off cooldown?

Cool. I did the math on my own too, and it looks like you’re right. There are definitely other external factors and things (such as fireball/lavafont being AoE, while pet attacks are single target, sword chain 2 single target), though.

I don’t know. I’m just frustrated, I guess.

The issue is that he’s comparing an optimal situation for Condition Ranger and saying “look at all the things that zerker Ranger could possibly lose”, and taking the worst case zerker Ranger and saying “look how much better condi is!”

Things like Scholar Runes, Night Sigils, Spotter (???), and Frosty.

In my parties, Scholar is usually up. Either I’m running with my friends who know where and how to blind, or I’m not getting hit. If you’re not running with Spotter or Frost Spirit, you’re not running the right build. And Frost Spirit only has about a 10-15 second downtime on average. You can have it up for every fight if you time destroying it well.

Why on earth would Rangers be running Strentgh runes? Rune of the Ranger is a fantastic sub for Scholar, if not better.

And then he just ignores the burst damage of ranger in his calculations as well “to keep it simple”. Well, simply, burst damage is still damage.

He compares a single weapon’s autoattack to a whole set of skills.

I won’t deny that Ranger condi is good damage- it is. But it’s not better than berserker yet. also, axe mainhand is almost as boring as shortbow.

It’s probably the highest practical DPS you will get out of any class in this game currently. Engineers have more in theory but you need to manage your cooldowns really well. Zerk staff ele remains top tier for zerk DPS but requires a bunch of buffs you don’t normally get with common group comps (i.e. Spotter+Frost Spirit) or which aren’t always up.

Please provide some proof of your claim; pictures, math, etc. All I can see is maybe 4 or 5 stacks of burning, with supplemental bleed. Nowhere close to zerker damage.

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

This does make me wonder though- will Fractal Masteries bring anything substantial for those of us that already have full collections?

Hmmm….

I did try it with zerkers too in PvP, and I killed things 4 times faster.

A single barrage rapid fire killed the heavy golem.
A single path of scars and sword chain killed the heavy golem.

I easily got the signet of the wild bug where if you activate it and leave combat, you can’t swap utilities from the hotbar.

Also you do realize that Sun Spirit has an 8 second internal cooldown between burn procs?

Yep, I’m on the Stance train!
Those seem to have the best potential.

Stances that affect both you AND your pet!

Eagle Stance could be like, 10% faster skills for x seconds.
Bear Stance could be take x% less damage for x seconds.
Wolf Stance could be x% more damage for x seconds.

And traits could be so cool too!

Activating a stance gives x boon depending on the stance to allies in a radius!
And more!

The only thing about this is that I remember in one of the blogposts that they said Druid was originally designed rather staff centered. Then again, it’s been a while, and things change, for sure!

I’m pretty sure that
1. that build isn’t even optimal condi damage- it takes a lot of defensive traits and doesn’t take advantage of poison master. It also misses out on the cool synergy between krait runes and Strength of the Pack.

2. zerkers is still better, at least for rangers. You lose so many damage modifiers from going condi in terms of frost spirit, warrior banners, signet of the wild, etc.

3. Even if condi were stronger than zerker, I just did a quick build based off of your link in PvP (using rampagers), and the damage was a significant amount less than berskerker’s. Even if Sinister came out ahead by a small margin, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near the top.

4. Axe mainhand is so boring to play :c

Awwww! You’ll get it eventually! (maybe)

I just want to show off.

Now for that silly tonic!

How many of those tables could conceivably judge “player enjoyment”?

Outside of time, participant #, and repetition data, there’s very little that would even likely correlate with such a subjective concept as enjoyment.

How would one judge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LhvuomaJaY

There’s no surveys going around asking how “into” certain game modes you are.
And if ArenaNet has developed psychic data, then we have a whole ’nother problem on our hands.

Something I’ve seen a lot of controversy about recently is the whole “No one plays only one game mode” idea.

People get outraged by this- say, how can ArenaNet be so out of touch?

But then, where they get this information is clearly from their data. Big D.

Data can be powerful, but also very easily misinterpreted.

Take, for example, a player that spends most of their time in WvW. If they want a shiny new aesthetic, they must look elsewhere. For example, dungeons, or PvP. That doesn’t mean that they enjoy the other game modes, or consider themselves a serious player of them. They’re making an investment into the other game mode to get what they want, and then they return to their preferred game mode.

Data will say that this player clearly is not solely a WvW player. And that would be technically correct. However, I mostly play PvE, but do my dailies in WvW. It seems that the data would consider us to be equal in terms of game modes played. But just as the WvW player couldn’t really tell you the aspects of PvE teamcomp, speedrunning, and strategies, I could never even dream of trying to explain the complexities of WvW.

The person who primarily plays WvW, would naturally identify as someone who solely plays WvW, even if they’ve dabbled here and there in other content, or get pulled into dungeons occasionally by guildies.

I would identify as a PvE-er, despite having Tiger rank in sPvP, and Rank 244 in WvW. I don’t find either of those game modes particularly enjoyable for myself, and I probably couldn’t help you with the finer details of either as well.

So, what does this mean?

When data shows that players are all playing the different game modes, and that people who play sPvP have a higher retention rate, you still have to ask why.

Correlation != Causation.

I “play” pvp. I’ll be honest, I just farm dailies with friends on private rooms. Those friends are players that have played for a very long time as well. This does not mean that we are interested in sPvP. It just means that sPvP is a practical way of getting achievement points and rewards for low effort.

Similarly, just because I got in a golem and took a tower with a friend in WvW yesterday, doesn’t mean that I play WvW, or that I participated in or even enjoyed the golem event. Someone left a couple golems at spawn, tower capture was a daily, and we said why not.

Yet another example- Silverwastes. You could argue that Silverwastes has the highest consistent density of players in open world PvE. Is this because the events in Silverwastes are that much more fun? Is it because players find chest farming to be so enjoyable? No. As has been a consistent issue with GW2, the effort/reward level of Silverwastes is such an oasis, that despite it being mindnumbing, it is still extremely profitable for very little effort. Yet when we saw the beta of Verdant Brink, there was already a similar system to Dry Top and Silverwastes in place (yes it’s a beta, yes things change, and hopefully things will change). .

Priority based on misguided conclusions due to data makes the game stuck. Feel empty. Where despite content updates, everything still feels the same.

There’s a Catch 22 here.
Players will usually play new content en masse, regardless of what it is.
New content also has exciting rewards, and high profitability long after the release. Data says that players are playing this content.
People look at the data, and say, players must be enjoying this content if they’re playing it so much!
More content similar gets developed and prioritized.
Other types of content, i.e. dungeons, gets left behind.
Players get bored of old high effort, low reward content that hasn’t been updated in years.
Data says fewer players are playing such content.
People look at the data, and say, players must not enjoy this content.
And it receives less priority.

And then everything just cycles.

Those that play and enjoy the old content become the “vocal minority” because there are fewer people overall playing the content.
Those that play other types of content become the majority, even if they do not enjoy said content. And when the vocal members of those communities speak out, they are given higher priority since they are members of the majority.

This already was a disturbing trend during the Scarlet clockwork events- when the most profitable thing to do was just run around and farm champions at events. It was absolutely boring as heck after the first few times, yet it seemed as though those at ArenaNet thought people were enjoying it immensely due to data.

So please, please please, ArenaNet. Look not only at the data correlations, but also take the time to look at the causation.

If you cast Signet of the Wild’s active in combat and manage to leave combat before it wears off, your utility bar gets locked until you either re-enter combat or change them from the build UI in the character screen (h).

tl;dr

Thought Ranger was in a fine place.
Made my first Ele since launch 2 days ago.
Ranger is not in a fine place.

Yep. Everything got buffed, but rangers much less than others. Still staying around pre-patch dps, while other classes are leaping ahead. Really disappointed.

“Light on your Feet:
Damage and condition duration is increased for a while after dodging. Short bow skills recharge faster and your arrows pierce.”

The tooltip says the duration is 4 seconds, but the duration in game is 3 seconds.

I don’t have an ele, but this is coming from asking two of my guildmates and another friend to confirm this for me.

Take all your gear off, and if you are in fire spec, you should have a base of 1150 outside of fire attunement, and 1300 in fire attunement.

Swap fire spec for something else and you’ll have 1000 base like normal.

Elementalist’s Fire minor trait Empowering Flame adds 150 power even when not in fire attunement. And when you are in fire attunement, you gain another 150, for a total of 300 bonus power.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Precision-Calculations-were-adjusted/first#post5207076

Precision calculations were messed up. Not sure if intentional or not, but everyone lost 4% crit chance at 80, despite gaining precision.

Elementalist Fire Adept Minor trait “Empowering Flame” adds 150 base power to elementalists no matter what attunement they are in.

EDIT: This means, an elementalist who takes the Fire spec line has base 1150 power, even when not in fire attunement.

Then, when they are in Fire attunement, they gain 150 MORE power, for a total of 300 bonus power.

This seems like a really serious bug. No other class can even come close to having the same amount of base power.

When base stats were announced to be increased to 1000 across the board (other than vit, of course), I’m sure we expected the scaling and calculations to remain teh same.

However, Precision calculation has changed. I noticed that my after patch stats had a much lower critical chance than expected- lower than before patch, despite having more precision!

I did some math, and it looks like precision calculation has changed from (precision – 824)/21 = crit chance to (precision – 916)/21 = crit chance.

This means that despite the increase from 916 to 1000 precision, base precision has remained 4%.

The extra 84 precision, or 4% crit chance, has just vanished into the aether, resulting in lower critical hit chances after patch than before, despite having higher precision.

Is this intentional?

Let’s add up the effective power against a single target, assuming a group situation, so, like, a boss. Assuming 25 stacks of might on the player, perma fury, swiftness, regen, and protection/stability/aegis on rotation.

Nature Magic:
Pet: 750 power →~50% more damage, fury →20% more crit chance, 5 boons → 5% damage from Bountiful Hunter =
55% more damage with 20% higher chance to crit.
Player: 5%damage from bountiful hunter

BM
Pet: 150 power ~10%, 150 prec 7% more crit chance, 10% more damage, 8 might stacks (3 from swap, 5 from crits), 240 power, ~16%, 20% more crit damage, 12.5% more damage from quickness = 48.5% damage with +7% crit chance to do 20% more damage on crits, plus bleed on crits (minimal, given the condi damage nerf).
Player: 12.5% damage from quickness but only when the pet is alive.

It actually seems like a toss up, unless you get more boons than 5.

What other considerations are there?
NM: Call of the Wild on 24 sec cd, pet swap on 20
BM: Call of the Wild on 30 sec cd, pet swap on 16

I’d say Nature Magic wins this- It has the more efficient Call of the Wild proccing, I believe. i.e. wait 4 seconds after pet cd is off and proccing every swap vs swapping off cooldown (which you’ll need to do for BM in order to get that 25% quickness uptime) )and only proccing Call every other swap.

So Nature Magic actually has the MUCH better uptime for Call of the Wild- 24 sec vs 30/32 sec.

It’s better than that too, since you get 20% longer boon duration from Nature Magic. And boons your pet applies- moa fury, jungle stalker might, get 50% longer durations!
Beastmastery gives 20% cooldowns, but, Nature Magic wins out by a couple seconds for boons. Beastmastery would win for Jaguar stealth time though. Or would it? You’re going to swapping off cooldown, so that’s every 16 seconds. Jaguar stalk cooldown goes down to 24 seconds. However, that’s still long enough that even if the Jaguar cooldown were 30 seconds, you’d still have to swap the same number of times, and it will be up on the same swap. And if you’re not swapping, as I’ve said before, you’re not getting the 12.5% damage from quickness.

There’s also the matter of the pet being alive. If the pet dies and you’re running Beastmaster (say, from mai trin, or alpha, archdiviner, mossman, bloomhunger,or SE, or anything with AoEs, pretty much) then you lose a lot of the benefit from Zephyr’s Speed until your pet comes back up- 48 seconds. In that case, the 5% from Bountiful Hunter will be better.

Then there’s Nature Magic’s “mystery grandmaster”. Quickness is becoming a boon, so if the boon provided by ANY of the spirits is quickness, that’ll be the way to go. Otherwise, it won’t really be worth it.

I still like Nature Magic more- the more Call of the Wild procs and less dependence on pet AI is very tempting for me; but I’ll admit that Beastmastery is pretty snazzy.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Ltomato.8649:

Sure, but we still have to go Nature Magic anyway. Fortifying bond is just too good.

I used to think so too, but read my post on the NM/BM thread.

Read my post in that thread too. I do very quick napkin math- Fortifying Bond in a group situation completely outclasses whatever Beastmastery can add. Bountiful Hunter also gives your pet bonus damage too. Fortifying bond = 750 power, fury, and quickness for pet.

More toughness isn’t that appealing, isnce the pet AI is going to stand in AoEs still anyway- if you couldn’t keep it alive before, you can’t keep it alive with more toughness. Weakness and blind are nice, but blind has a lot more consistent ways to apply, not to mention you have to go off of damage to take those.

If you want weakness, Nature Magic has the grandmaster trait that gives 6s aoe weakness and 4s protection on you when you are hit, on a 15 sec cd.

Beastmastery could come out on top in solo situations, but in dungeons or any group content, Nature Magic is much better.

Regarding the overpoweredness of the spirit actives- Spirits take a bit to summon, and now die on active use. So if you do try to spam the daze, it’s going to be very predictable and should have plenty of counterplay too.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

FS has a 1000 radius, it should never die in a boss fight if you place it properly.

75% proc chance is baseline now, not 35%, there are no traits to improve the chance.

10s additional CD is nothing really, although, I can’t see why they needed to increase it. It is really not needed at all for the other fights except bosses and certain places. I don’t see the increased CD as a problem, but it still makes no sense to do it.

Overall, its a great buff imo as you do not need to take NM at all for the spirits.

Sure, but we still have to go Nature Magic anyway. Fortifying bond is just too good. Bountiful Hunter is decent too, and they add up to be better than the buffs in the dedicated pet tree (for dungeon/fractal groups, that is. Single player, beastmaster might be even or better.). So while the buff is nice, the 5% extra chance is absolutely minimal (.5% effective damage boost- if you dont’ have any might, that ends up being less than half a might stack’s worth of damage), and it doesn’t really open up other options.

And while it’s not “necessary” for all the fights, it definitely helps.

For example, in the Molten Weapon Facility fractal on 50, with the current cooldown, you can readily summon the Frost Spirit at least every room of mobs. With 30 seconds, it’ll end up being every other room- but you’ll want to make sure you have it for earth eles or oozes that need to be taken down fast, and then it’s up again for the mobs at the end of the hall.

But yeah, I’m glad we agree that it doesn’t make sense for them to nerf the cooldown. It’s a very very strange decision. I’m wondering if the best tactic will be to summon spirit, immediately pop it for the effect, let the 10 second buff stick, and hope you win within that time? That’s still not very effective against bosses, though

And spirits are not going to last against many bosses. Any alpha, fractal bosses, SE bosses, anything with targeted aoes will destroy them, even if you put it far away. In a lot of cases, it will end up similarly to how it is now. it gets put down, lives for a while, then gets nuked and dies, but still has the lingering buff. But it also has that 20 second cooldown. Now it’ll have 30 seconds, so that’s 10 more seconds of downtime against most of the bosses in the game.

Nature Magic is still better. 25 stacks of might is 750 power- that’s more than 50% of a cat pet’s base power. You also get Bountiful Hunter, which increases you and your pet’s damage by 1% per boon. Seeing as you get 4 boons just from swapping pets with call of the wild (also in nature magic), that’s at least 4% damage for both.

The might stacking on crit will never reach that high because we can’t crit 25 times in 5 seconds.

150 base power helps make up for it, but it’s still lower than Fortifying Bond. Add 10% damage, and say, on average, 5-10 stacks of might, and it’s still not near the power of Fortifying Bond. Fortifying Bond also transfers other buffs such as Fury, and presumably Quickness when that becomes a boon.

Zephyr’s Speed sounds good in theory, but in execution it’s not very great. You have to keep swapping your pet off cooldown to get the most out of it, which, combined with the lower pet swap cooldown, totally screws with Call of the Wild on pet swap cooldowns, which in turn messes up Remorseless proccing.

Pets also have a tendency to just spaz and not attack for a second after swapping, so you’re losing DPS there.

You’re also swapping the pet more, which while it seems nice to be able to keep them alive more often, also means that they lose their boons that much faster.

So Nature Magic, to me, is the clear winner.

To start, this is regarding PvE dungeons and fractals.

Frost Spirit’s cooldown has been nerfed from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. In exchange, we get a 5% more chance to activate, and 35% has been made baseline.

The 35% made baseline is not that great of deal. Presumably, it is to open up other options so that PvE Rangers do not need to take Nature Magic, or take other options in Nature Magic. However, we still are forced to take Nature Magic because that’s where Fortifying Bond is. Fortifying bond with 25 stacks of might is at least a 25% damage increase whenever your pet attacks. It’s huge. It also transfers Fury, and now, possibly quickness.

So the trait that we would have taken gets replaced with the new Bountiful Hunter, and we have a toss up still for grandmaster. The 35% baseline doesn’t really change much regarding our builds.

As a result, we don’t get that much benefit from the deal. 5% greater chance translates to .5% effective damage. Tiny.

Regarding the the ability to kill the spirit by using the active. We already could kill our Frost Spirit on demand by swapping it with another skill and then back. Killing them when the active is used is a lot worse for us, as it hastens the 30 second downtime if we accidentally use it in battle.

As for the cooldown itself, it’s 50% longer. That is an insanely large change. Can you imagine what the response would be if warrior banners suddenly got a 50% longer cooldown?

The 10 extra seconds you have to wait between summons means that when the spirit dies in a boss battle for instance, that’s 10 more seconds where the spirit’s buff is unavailable. When running from mob pack to mob pack, that’s fewer mob packs where the spirit is available for use.

This is a huge nerf to the already shaky viability of Ranger in PvE, and I hope that some consideration can be taken regarding this issue.

Thanks.

The 50% more Frost Spirit cooldown is HUGE for PvE. That is an effective 50% longer downtime on one of our best utilities, in exchange for an effective .5% boost to team damage. This is absolutely insane. It’s not a small change, it’s a gigantic one, and it’s really really not good for Rangers in PvE, where they already have a bad reputation.

And just like last time, when passive endurance regens were nerfed, Warrior’s Signet of Stamina is untouched at 50%.

Durzlla.6295:

Uh, no, the ranger changes are amazing, I don’t think I could be happier with them unless they made guard an aoe taunt.

I don’t know about that. The changes really change the playstyle of PvE ranger from sustained damage to bursty complex fury and cooldown management, without much in return since the 10% damage from flanking has been replaced by 10% crit chance.

The 10% crit chance is in itself an anti-synergy with Remorseless. However, since spotter is in that line, PvE rangers must take that line, and therefore that Minor trait, which is rendered almost useless in perfect Remorseless fury micromanagement.

Frost Spirit’s cooldown has been nerfed by 50%, which is huge- it’ll slow down the availability of it between fights, for (in PvE at least) only .5% increase in party damage. That’s just a flat nerf in terms of PvE.

Rejuvenation’s threshold to proc has been lowered to 50% from 75%, making it more risky to run Scholar runes, since you won’t be able to stay near your max HP as easily.

Bountiful Hunter is now less reliable. You will be able to put at least 4 boons on yourself pretty constantly just by swapping pets with Call of the Wild, but those are all common boons of might, fury, swiftness, and regen.

Nature’s Vengeance sounds like it could be an option, except that the duration of the boon it provides is for 1 second with a 3 second cooldown. That’s not long enough to do anything, and whether the boon is effective or not might as well just be rng. I would increase that boon duration to at least 2 seconds.

Wilderness Survival is no longer an option since Peak Strength has been removed.

The best build with these specs is a quick swap/remorseless fury micro build taking Nature Magic or Beastmastery.

This build is going to be insane to play correctly. You’ll have to manage double cooldowns and fury procs well, or you’ll end up doing less damage than before patch.

The gap between good and poor ranger players is already extremely wide. This just widens that gap.

I would give back the +10% damage when using sword to Strider’s Defense and swap it with Light on Your Feet, combine Hidden barbs and Sharpening Stone, and add Trapper’s Expertise back in. I would also change Hunter’s Tactics to 10% bonus direct and condition damage when flanking.

Ranger feels very unfinished still as well. We have no information on how Rampage as One is going to change when it becomes a shout. We do not know what boons each spirit pulses with Nature’s Vengeance.

“All Ranger Spirits now have a 30s cooldown.”

Why was the cooldown on Spirits increased from 20 seconds to 30 seconds? This lowers their viability quite a lot.

The thing about buffs on the pet is that because the pet has lower base stats, might is much more effective on it than normal. So they’re VERY important.

Peak Strength no longer exists. It’s not an option.

Companion’s might is okay, but you lose out on Fortifying Bond. We don’t need companion’s might if we have fortifying bond because any might we get will go to the pet too, along with other stats.

The quickness requires you to swap pets constantly which removes their buffs, and you also have pet spawn lag where they stand around confused for a while before attacking, so you lose dps there.

Remorseless is good if you can micromanage your Fury appications, or use Rampage as One, if whatever they turned it into still gives pulsing Fury. I’d like to use Predator’s Onslaught, but you just lose out on so much damage potential by taking it, which is even more necessary now with all the other nerfs.

Frost Spirit gets 5 secs longer cooldown, Rejuvenation procs at 50% instead of 75%, heck, even Natural Vigor got hit from 25% to 20%, in case you were even thinking of going wilderness survival without Peak Strength. Bountiful Hunter is now much less consistent.

If you take Predator’s Onslaught, you’re going to be doing barely any more damage than rangers do right now in game, while every other class gets power creeped out the window.

This is even worse, because I guarantee you, no average Ranger player is going to be able to micro Remorseless procs well enough to be better than PO. So the class itself, already with the huge divide between good and “bad” is going to stratify even more, and to what end? A well played Ranger with these traits is still going to be miserably outclassed outside of frost spirit and Spotter. Which leaves us at the same place we were an entire meta ago.

Well, apparently PvE ranger got nerfed even more, losing 10% damage from flanking into 10% crit chance. This basicalyl means if you want to PvE ranger, Predator’s onslaught is no longer viable. You have to go remorseless and quick draw and micro your fury procs or you’re going to lose out on SO much damage.

I’m not even mad anymore, I’m sad and confused.

Levetty.1279:

Flanking has been changed form damage to crit chance now.

I…. I don’t even….

Why?

Rangers didn’t have the best damage before, so CLEARLY the logical action is to nerf them? This makes no sense at all. The only justification I can see is them saying “Oh, well, skirmishing is the condition damage line now”. But even then, why couldn’t flanking give 10% to condition and direct damage? Or something that makes sense?

Other classes get power creep, Rangers get nerfed. I don’t understand why this is happening.

You have to take Skirmishing for Spotter and the 10% flanking. Quick Draw is still a damage up, although it’s harder to calculate by how much, and it’s going to be annoying to use. Nature Magic > Beastmastery because Fortifying Bond is OP. It’s just down to whether you feel like microing for Remorseless or having consistent damage with Predator’s Onslaught.

Oh wow, I didn’t even think of that problem. Double ranger has no beneficial options now. This really sucks. :/

Like, before, you would swap off spotter for some damage, and swap off traited frost spirit for untraited, but now, you can’t do any of that.

Build diversity for pve rangers has narrowed insanely since last preview, unfortunately.

Instead of having options to go into Wilderness Survival (with the +10% damage when over 90% health), or any competitors for Quick Draw in Skirmishing in the form of a +10% damage when using sword, we lost both of those.

This means that pve rangers will have to take Quick Draw, and then decide between remorseless or predator’s onslaught.

This is really disappointing. I thought PvE ranger was getting some love from the previous preview, but no.

Instead, PvE ranger gets a difficult to manage dps burst build that will just extend the gap between good and bad rangers that is already way too wide.

Please consider giving back Strider’s Defense with +10% damage on sword instead of Light on Your Feet.

After all, I thought ranger was supposed to be sustained damage, not burst.

When a Ranger uses Signet of the Wild in combat, then leaves combat while the active is still up- for example, if the enemy is defeated, then the Ranger is unable to swap utility skills from the hotbar until they zone or next enter/leave combat.

As you can see in the first picture below, I am out of combat, but do not have any arrows on my hotbar to allow me to switch my utilities. If you doubt that I’m out of combat, my pet is hidden, which is supposed to only be possible if you are out of combat.

Steps to reproduce:
Find an enemy.
Attack it to enter combat.
Use Signet of the Wild.
Kill the enemy while the active effect is still up.
Stay out of combat.
Hotbar locked. :c

This event
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protect_krewe_leader_Dobbs_as_the_krewe_clears_the_excavation_site in Timberline Falls
doesn’t seem want to start. I’ve been playing Guild Wait 2 for almost 2 hours now here just so I can buy a trinket for a collection.

This isn’t fun. At all.

ip 64.25.33.84

You know, Frost Spirit’s effect lasts for a few seconds even after the spirit itself dies- as well as providing that damage bonus to all party members. If you don’t use the active skill, the cooldown is also only 20 seconds when it dies- you can force spirits to die by swapping skills out of combat.

I personally wouldn’t use QZ as a revive tool in Fractals because, especially at say, 50, reviving is extremely dangerous. Since QZ lowers your healing to yourself, it makes it even more so. If your group has that sot of trouble, it’s usually worth bringing nature spirit instead, in my opinion.

A place where condis get laid down would be the first boss of SE p3- the dude who applies a ton of bleed. Usually Healing Spring is enough for that though, since it pulses regen/condi clear for everyone, while SoR is a one time all clear. I like SoR for places where condis get applied periodically, such as Grawl Shaman boss’s burning.

SoW/QZ combo is definitely riskier in pugs that say, Lightning Reflexes/SoR, yeah.