Guild Wars 2

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

As a note, Signet of the Beastmaster is about to become nonexistant, so all Signets will be masively improved in functionality.

In which case, Signet of the Wild becomes the clear choice. However, until then, there’s a bit of a dilemma.

While we’re waiting for a response, why not discuss some alternatives to take instead of Frost Spirit?

Sic ’Em- +40% damage and Speed to your pet for 10 seconds on a 40s cooldown. Good in fights where the pet doesn’t get oneshotted.

Signet of the Wild + Signet of the Beastmaster- +25% damage and stability for you and the pet for 8 seconds, 60 second cooldown. Not terrible, but the cast time and requiring the use of Signet of the Beastmaster sets things back quite a bit.

Flame Trap- Some extra damage and a fire field on 15s cooldown. Not bad, but the damage is kind of miserable.

Storm Spirit + Call Lightning- A pretty nice burst on active with 20s cooldown. Best against single targets- passive is almost entirely useless though. Also, since you’re using the active ability, forcing cooldown (by swapping skills) can take up to twice as long if the spirit does not get killed.

Quickening Zephyr- 6 seconds of quickness to self and pet, 60s cooldown. Typical quickness skill, so about +50% damage for 6s. Other than long cooldown, can be a solid choice.

None of the skills really stand out for adding damage to self or team. Maybe some cultural skills?

The damage is not that good as to offset +7% damage to all party members.
And if you don’t take the new trait for whatever reason, it ends up being quite a large damage decrease from present ranger overall.

It’s like if Elementalist conjured weapons suddenly couldn’t be picked up, or Warrior banners only gave 10% of their bonuses. Or if blast finishers no longer gave buffs to allies. Except they do enough damage where even if those changes happened, they’d still be viable.

The whole idea of “Look shiny buffs!” and then having this slid underneath is almost insulting. Justifying it by saying “Rangers will still be okaaaaaay” doesn’t make sense to me.

About to lose an arm? Don’t worry, your motor functions with your other arm will improve when you use it in your day to day now!

Clearly the intention is for the 7% damage increase- as detailed by the Official Developer Guide video that I linked in the first post.

So this must be a bug, and must be addressed, or else rangers will have no place in dungeon parties, since they will not be able to bring sufficient unique utility.

If this is intentional, then it makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t follow what they said about design- balancing with “shaves”. This is more of an amputation.

I’m about ready to give up on Guild Wars 2.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game- the story, the gameplay, etc.

I just can’t stand the amount of non-documented contradictory game changes.

For example:
I play ranger, and was very excited about the upcoming September Feature Pack.
Now, I’ve just been slapped in the face with the information that Frost Spirit is essentially useless now.

I couldn’t believe it, so I went and tested for myself: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ranger-Frost-Spirit-bugged-w-maths/first#post4365014

ArenaNet is all too happy to announce cool balance changes, but something that breaks the class’s viability in dungeons? Sneak it in and hope it’s not noticed. (Okay, I’m sure that wasn’t the intention, but I can’t help but feel that)

Another example: The Fractured release.
Yay! Fractal weapon boxes! So much hype and excitement!
Oh wait, they don’t drop from the available Fractal levels.
Completely pointless.

Not to mention the myriad of “Serious Error” crashes that plague the game.
Everyone loves waiting an hour taxi-ing, and setting up for a world raid boss just to crash halfway through.
Is it pointless to send the error logs? Is anything being done about them?

What about the Hammer Range nerf in the Cliffside Fractal?
Oh, the hammer range is too long. Let’s prioritize that change instead of the BUG where the hammer never respawns, meaning you have to quit on your THIRD fractal.

I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe there’s an issue with internal communication between teams. But it’s really stretching my patience thin. This is ridiculous. There should not be this kind of instability and disorganization 2 years into the game.

I was looking forward to the feature pack. I thought that maybe things might be getting better. But they don’t seem to be. And it’s disappointing.

Pets are bugged- if you send them into combat, and tell them to retreat using f3, and then run out of combat, once you’re out of combat, the pet will try to run back in on its own to fight.

@Cletus Van Damme: If you look at my traits in the screenshot, this is actually WITH Vigorous Spirits

In case you’re wondering or are too lazy to do the math, if Frost Spirit’s buff were working as intended-

We would expect :

w FS to have around 1011.29 average per hit on non crits (vs 962.92)
and
w FS to have around 2002.69 average per hit on crits. (vs 1887.68)

According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y8uGM1CGV8g#t=820

Traited Frost Spirit should be applying about a 7% damage increase over time- however, in personal testing against the indestructable golem, it is very clear that this is not the case.

I used longbow with and without frost spirit, at constant range with the Vigorous Spirits trait- attachments 1 and 2 are without Frost Spirit and attachments 3 and 4 are with.

I did some math on the results: PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK ME!

Non-crits:
w/o FS: 15 hits, average 945.13 per hit.
w FS: 13 hits, average 962.92 per hit.

Now, I don’t need a caclulator to tell me that that is nowhere near the 7% increase detailed in the build.

Crits:
w/o FS: 18 hits, 1871.67 average per hit
w FS: 19 hits, 1887.68 average per hit

Again, it’s fairly obvious that there is by far no increase in damage of 7%.

This is completely inconsistent to what the developer guide details!

EDIT: I did account for Opening Strike Vulnerability- I waited until it had faded before taking the screenshots from which I based my calculations.

Agreed times 1 million!

This is going to become a problem.

Please make kicks require 3 votes instead of 2 to counteract this.

“Oh you’re already inside the dungeon? We’ll be taking this instance!”

I can’t seem to locate my crash log, but I’ve tried repairing, deleting/renaming local.dat, and I still end up crashing.

Most often happens in Lion’s Arch when I’m not doing anything for extended periods of time. It also happens at Karka Queen occasionally, and it happened once at Triple Trouble. It also happened while I was wandering around Mount Maelstrom.

You can progress with the pet seedling- at least, I was able to after trying again today.

Kept my seed in my inventory as a sort of RP feeling.
Didn’t notice it was a Pet Seed until I created my Chaos Infused Clay Pot and Attuned Glow Lamp and tried double clicking.

Once I noticed, I thought maybe using it with the pot just let me continue with the ascended version, and started working on that.

I had the “Pet Seed” bug, and didn’t realize it was a bug until after I started working on it and came to the forums for help on locating some parts.

In my attempt to find Elementally Charged Plant Food, I realized that the Heat Stone I made would probably be heatable at the Megadestroyer! Imagine my happiness when someone in map chat pointed out the Heart of the Destroyer.

So, I waypointed over, and clicked on it with the Heat Stone in my inventory. I got a generic message about the heart cooling, so I thought, maybe it needs to be done right after the Megadestroyer falls. So I waited patiently, and did the event, and lo and behold, it did not work yet again.

On a related note, is the “Elementally Charged Plant Food” phase supposed to point to Mount Maelstrom? The only thing that I thought could fit was the elementaal jumping puzzle where you collect all the cantles, but that didn’t give me anything, nor did I see anything to interact with.

EDIT: The two megadestroyer events were done on the same map. Perhaps there was an issue with the Heart of the Destroyer not resetting properly?

Megaservers are detrimental to community growth and development, from one to one interactions to world events.

1. The Megaserver algorithms are particularly ineffective at properly sorting players.
2. Megaservers facilitate the proliferation of vulgar and unwanted map chat
3. Megaservers make it nearly impossible to properly organize and recruit for events.

A couple months ago, we were told that the megaserver “algorithms” would eventually match us up with people we played with, and would develop to get better.

After being sent to a different megaserver Lion’s Arch while in the same party as a guildmate that I play with often, I decided to conduct a little experiment.

I usually hang out in the same place in Lion’s Arch when I’m just chatting. So my experiment was thus:

On average, when I log in or waypoint in, how many people do I recognize?

4 guilds that I recognized over 8 screenshots. (these are guilds that I have seen before, not necessarily people in the guilds that I recognize, nor duplicate people from these guilds.)

2 people that appeared in multiple screenshots (although, in this case, it was 2 screenshots each)

To be fair, it is a fairly small sample size. However, it does correlate with my experience in general. Every time I log in, or waypoint in, I’m surrounded by strangers. On the rare occasion that I do engage in chat or general tomfoolery with someone, I never see them again.

I can see two main causes for this.

1. Megaserver algorithms are NOT effective in sorting players, in fact, they appear particularly in-effective.
2. The triple-hub of new Lion’s Arch is not conducive to player interaction/community growth.

Counterarguments:

Q: Why not just party and swap over? Are you that lazy?
A: It’s not so much lazy as the idea that I should be able to expect to be in the same map as my guildmates, with whom I am on the same server, and often already in the same party. Not only guildmates, but friends who I have from the same server. Not only that, but they’re also often spread across multiple megaservers. It’s a huge hassle to just party people and swap maps just to say “Hi!”

Before Megaservers, just being able to jump your character around someone you knew, or mess around with emotes or costume brawl was a given. Now, things are just dead more often than not.

Q: Why not just add these people you meet as friends?
A: Because as awesome as people are, one nice conversation is hardly a “friendship”. Maybe if I would see them more than once ever, and had more casual conversations, things would be different. But as it is, there’s rarely any growth.

Megaservers facilitate inappropriate and unwanted map chat.

This is a big problem. I’m sure everyone now has at some point, gone into Lion’s Arch to be greeted by some vulgar discussion. This is a direct result of Megaservers. With a server, there’s an expectation to maintain a certain environment. Some servers preferred a more loose chat, while others wanted to maintain a friendly space. This no longer exists.

Q: Why not just close map chat? Block and report the vulgar people?
A: Because I do like chatting with people. I do enjoy helping people who post questions in map chat.
Block and report?
I do. Yet it doesn’t help much, since chances are, I’ll never be in the same map as these people again anyway.

Megaservers make it nearly impossible to properly organize and recruit for massive events.

Gone are the days of “Not enough people at Tequatl? Go to Lion’s Arch and recruit!” “Not enough people defending Stonemist? Go to Lion’s Arch and recruit!”.

It’s no longer feasible, since these people are not only inconsistent, but there is also no guarantee that they’ll end up in the same map should they decide to join in on the event.

World versus World recruitment is dead as well, since there are few people from the same server, or perhaps enemy servers in the same Megaserver.

The end result of this is that communities are no longer growing, or at least growing at a much much slower rate than before Megaservers. It’s harder to make friends, meet new people. People in maps seem more hostile. When you’re surrounded by strangers, you’re more alone than if you were by yourself.

We were told to wait and see when we voiced our concerns before, and during the Megaserver roll out.
We waited.

This is what I see.

The main reason for this is that the pet return still isn’t responsive enough.

Try going to the training golems in PvP. stand a distance away, and tell your pet to attack with f1. Then use f3 when the pet is halfway at its target. The pet stands there for at least half a second before actually returning. If you have your pet attack, it’s unreliable at best. Sometimes it reacts quickly, sometimes it doesn’t.

If you’re fighting something like the Champion Ettin in the Uncategorized Fractal, that time + walking speed is all it takes for the pet to be smashed by a power attack, and there’s nothing you can do about it if your pet swap is on cooldown.

Would it be possible to have this implemented?

I recently finished Infinite Light after months of saving and scrounging, but it is nearly impossible to preview what offhand weapon might look good with it without spending transmutation charges.

This affects all mainhand/offhand weapons, and is a pretty big pain when trying to design a character’s look.

Weird. All my guildies see them.

It’s like a chinstrap scar. If you’re playing on super high fuzzy shiny graphics, it might look like a large mole.

- at first, I thought it was just a really weird reflection, but it lets you see inside the head and through the textures.

-Apparently female norns have this problem too.

A guildie’s screenshot of her norn, on high graphics:

http://i.imgur.com/z5mQEAa.jpg

it’s more prominent on lower graphics, but is still a problem.

-It’s more prominent on some face styles than others.

Human female characters have a seam around their neck, right under their chins.

This is visible on all texture and shader options, and is seriously distracting, in a sort of curious way.

It’s been visible on all of my human female characters, as well as others in the world.

rpfohr.7048:

F3 is a good idea but it could become spammable

F1 F3 F1 F3 to spam pet evade

And F3 is important for movement, you don’t want to put a cooldown on it…

The 10 second cooldown would be on the evade. So if it were on cooldown and you pressed, f3, the pet would simply try to return as it does now. The cooldown would also prevent the spamming you describe.

Think of it like the dodge roll stamina bar, but with only one segment. And once it’s depleted and recharging, it just pulls the pet back.

So say i’m running around southsun and my pet aggros onto a karka. I press f3, and the pet gains evasion for 3/4s while it’s coming back. In combat, you’d have to press f3 to dodge, then f1 again for the pet to go back to attacking.

Right now, in many fights, the walking of the pet just isn’t fast enough to get out of large channeled aoe attacks.

I think the evade would be great even for new players because it would provide them with a clear function of what “Return to Me” can be used for, other than de-aggro.

It doesn’t necessarily add to the skill required to play ranger well, rather, I believe that it would add another dynamic to pet management as a natural extension of what is already in place.

Ranger sword is… Ranger sword. It loses out to warrior axe in terms of sustained damage while the Axe still has a large burst. The evades are rather finicky to use on sword as well- I find that between the leaps and precast time, hornet sting is fairly unreliable at best, while viper’s strike is not usually reliable for repositioning (its a good spot evade though!)
There at some good strategies with swapping to greatsword for evade, but they feel really forced.

Axe is interesting. It has really nice damage if you can bounce it between two enemies, and the weakness+chill on 3 is amazing. At the same time, if the damage is buffed, then the maximum potential of 2 hits on one enemy gains double the buff, and becomes that much stronger. It’s something to consider for sure- however, I find that axe already excels in certain situations.

You did bring up the damage coefficients, which I totally forgot about- increasing those rather than base damage would help immensely. With the relatively low damage coefficients on weapons, and pet damage that does not scale with gear, rangers get less stats from improving gear than other classes.

Getting people organized for guild missions has been getting more and more difficult.

More and more people are in WvW, since that’s where the server community is now (as a result of megaservers splitting people from the same servers)

Guild Missions are more difficult to coordinate, as there are conflicts with many other guilds now on the same map. Getting everyone on the map for a single guild bounty is also much more painful.

Our guild is a community- we want to be able to hang out together. A lot of us have different interests, so we’re not all running dungeons or fractals or world bosses as a group. It would be nice to be able to hang out and chat in-game without having to jump through hoops of partying and taxi-ing.

Megaservers really hit existing communities hard, and those communities are not recovering. Moreso than ever, I find myself wanting to block inane map chat and find myself frustrated at lack of organization/cohesion in major events.

Recently it was said that the vision for Rangers was for them to be the best sustained damage. The problem with this is that with the relatively short cooldown burst skills of other classes, this results in Rangers just being less damage overall.

Therefore, I believe that some changes are necessary for Rangers to be the best “Sustained Damage”.

The f3 skill, “Return To Me” should allow the pet to evade for 3/4s on a 10 second cooldown.
While the reaction time on f3 has been improved, the pet is simply not responsive enough to avoid channeled, large, AoE attacks (which often do massive damage).
The only way to avoid these is to swap pets, which can be detrimental to strategy- through no fault of the player.

This change would make Ranger play much more interactive, with more of a sense of controlling both the character, and the pet, while also making the loss of pet damage output more of a factor of player ability than unresponsive mechanics. f1 and f3 micro will add a good layer of active skill as well.

Another option along these lines would be changing pet AI to avoid AoE fields when they have no target.

Increase the Sword 1 and Greatsword 1 chain skills damage by 5%

For sword and greatsword, the attacks (other than greatsword’s maul), lack weight to them. As a result, even though the damage is “sustained”, it’s comparatively less in most situations due to the low cooldown bursts of other classes.

Increasing the base damage or even better, the damage coefficients, on the attack chains would thus make Rangers more competitive in terms of sustained damage.

I would like a keybind that allows for quick cycling through buildsets, or at least easier to access than going to the equipment screen (h → equipment).

The optimal solution for the players would be the option to choose whether or not to use the Megaserver system.

The biggest issue I have with the system is the complete loss of server identity. Right now, the only real difference between servers is their WvW tournament ranking. What do you tell a new player who wants to start, but doesn’t know what server to pick? “Oh, just join the non-full server that’s doing best in WvW. You’ll get a lot of passive bonuses, and won’t have to lift a finger!”

And that’s it. Before, guesting to another server was an adventure in itself. You’d visit and see all these different strangers with their own customs and community, but there was always home, where everything was familiar, where people knew each other.

There no longer is that sense of home. There is no sense of belonging, unless you play in WvW- and even then, each map is isolated- separating the community even more.

With the previous system, the community came together to do amazing feats- developing organized methods of slaying tequatl, wurm, even saving citizens of lion’s arch, or World Boss Trains. Servers could get together easily, and hold community events. Now, it’s difficult to even get all people of the same guild on the same map!

This is why an option to opt out of the megaserver system would be best for players. You get the best of both worlds- If you want a large group of people to play with, you can have it, but in the back, there’s always that sense of home and identity, and community.

Sure, it’s nice to see lots of people in previously empty maps. But when everyone’s a stranger who you’ll likely never see again, you’re more alone than if you were just on your own.

Imagine this- two new players, starting out. Both are pushed into the same shard of Rata Sum. They meet, bond over saving each other from wind riders, and become friends. They work together and party up often- sure, there’s occasionally a need to transport one player over from one shard to another, but that’s a minor inconvenience, right? Then one day, they discover WvW. But wait! They’re from different servers! What option do they have? Congratulations new player, you made the wrong friend, and if you want to hang out and do all the things with them, you need to shell out some more money!

Every map becomes an overflow, and with overflows, there’s no community. You don’t know whose commander tag is “serious”, you don’t know peoples’ reputations. There’s no community.

Another anecdote- last Saturday, during guild challenges, we ran into another guild from our server prepping to do the same challenge. Because we were on the same server, and knew of each other, it was easy to coordinate both guilds to complete the challenge twice- once for each guild. Now, you end up with each guild separated on different shards with new, faceless, also fractured guilds that you don’t recognize vying for the same spot. There’s unplayable chaos.

Please take a look at returning server identity to the established communities. Right now it feels like there was no compromise made, no consideration given to existing players. It’s nightmarish right now.

gawker.8340:

Honestly, no one in the CDI suggested “Read The Wind”. I think it was something in the pipeline for Rangers back from 2013 that finally saw the light of day.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Power-Ranger-Longbow-Needs-Change/first#post3485787
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/44#post3729143

It’s something I’ve been talking about for Longbow attacks for a long while now. I never expected it to be a Grandmaster trait, but I also didn’t expect it to be twice as fast. While I’d prefer the arrow speed to be default, this will still be a pretty big buff to longbow rangers in WvW. No longer does the enemy need to stand perfectly still in order for your arrows to land! And if you’re running longbow, it’s not likely you’re using Signet of the Beastmaster, and Remorseless isn’t as useful in PvP as it is in PvE.

What I’m mostly worried about is that this is their first showcase trait. What does that say about the quality/status about the other traits?

Fantastic topic!
I have a few questions on the way the Living Story affects programming.

1. From a coder/programmer’s side, how do you like the Living Story type of relatively quick releases? It seems like a lot of fun to work on new concepts every month, but having a whole release cycle in that shorter time seems like it could get a bit stressful too!

2. Do you rigidly follow any sort of software engineering pipeline for efficiency? In the end, they’re organizational methods, but it would be neat to hear if/how they’re used in the Living Story release schedule.

3. A few releases in the past have had some major bugs on release- on a month-long release schedule, with enemies, fights, and environments on such a large scale, it seems like a lot of testing must be done with automated tools. As someone interested in both programming and QA, I’d like to learn more about the experience of developing such tools, as well as the process of updating them for different situations (if applicable).

4. What do you think is the biggest lesson you’ve learned regarding development since the inception of the Living Stories?

5. What background do most coders/programmers come from at ANet? From what I’ve researched, it’s notoriously difficult to get into the games industry without networking/connections with other people in the industry. Do you have any suggestions on how to build up a network and meet different people working in the industry?

That’s all from me! Thank you!

PS: Jorun! I know you! Haha!

Berk.8561:

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Give Rangers a larger pool of pets to rotate through than 2. I suggest 3-5. Don’t trigger the switching cooldown counter until the pet attacks.

Goal of Proposal
The death of a pet is less of a problem if the Ranger has has more healthy pets to rotate through. This also gives the ranger a lot more tactical flexibility to pick the right pet for an encounter without having to swap out pets between combat. This would also mitigate the problem of losing pet names when the pet is changed.
-snip-

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Give Rangers a pet with a block or reflection ability to help them survive ranged AoE attacks.

Goal of Proposal
Make it easier for pets to survive AoEs, bosses, and other players.
-snip-

I can’t say that I like the idea of pet shuffling between 3-5 pets- I personally think the prospective risks you outlined outweigh the benefits of implementing it like that. Perhaps 4 pets? Kind of like Engineer toolbelt skills, but with pets! Having to iterate through your pets to get the “right one” would be a weird mechanic though.

I do like the idea of more reflect/block pet skills. I think the only one we have right now is the Reef Drake underwater skill. It makes a feedback bubble at its location, which is super cool (in your face, krait!)! Having a skill like that on land would definitely be interesting- but it would be cooler still if we didn’t have to rename our pets when we wanted a reflect (I know, I know, I keep going on about that).

SkiTz.4590:

I pray this is a joke and devs don’t even bother looking at this

Name of a pet has absolutely no impact on gameplay what so ever.

You honest to god believe people will use more pets if the nicknaming system was revamped? dear lord

I do. I know I would.

I already need to swap out my traits, utilities, and weapons to best match different encounters.

Pets are tied directly to our characters. My guildmates can recognize when I’m around when they see Zappy the River Drake wandering around, even if they don’t see me.

I use pretty much River Drake and Marsh Drake exclusively as they are the mutlitools of the pet toolbox. If I can swap them for Mr. Snugglekins to provide might or KFC to provide fury without having to worry about renaming everything, then I would be much more inclined to do so.

Everything has an effect on gameplay, from the color of your armor dyes to the size of your UI.

Then again, maybe that’s why the “Guard” shout takes 1 second to cast. “Juvenile Lashtail Devourer! Guard!”

But seriously, excuse me if I have offended you by suggesting that being able to name something in an RPG has an effect on gameplay.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Allow pets to retain nicknames on hard-swap

Goal of Proposal
The myriad of pets at a ranger’s disposal can be and has been compared to a toolbox. However, needing to re-label every tool after you take it out or put it back is a very un-fun chore.

As with most chores, people tend to (subconsciously) avoid doing them! So we end up not using all of the tools in our box, despite them being there- instead, we use our favorites, rarely swapping for others. We end up using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail and determine that yes, screwdrivers are bad at hammering nails.

By retaining nicknames, that chore is eliminated almost completely, allowing for more open access to all of our pets!

Proposal Functionality
Have pets retain their nicknames even after being stored. “Mr. Snugglekins” the Juvenile Jungle Stalker should remain “Mr. Snugglekins” even if he’s been stored in favor of “Caesar” the Salad Dog Juvenile Fern Hound.

Associated Risks
There are certainly people out there who don’t care what their pets are named, and still only use their two favorites.

There are also people out there who are already using all of their pets despite the chore, and they have legitimate concerns about the state of pets in general.

However, I believe that if this proposal is implemented, we will see a much wider variety of pets being used for various situations- leading to opening up gameplay possibilities with existing pet mechanics. (regardless of if they need a bit of tweaking in general or not).

Ision.3207:

AEFA.9035:

I like this guy. Most of these Rangers posts under the impression that the class is just pure useless when they post in CDI. Been reading your post, good stuff. Though LB 4 CD increased to compensate I dont agree on, this is our only gap increaser in game. If LB auto is changed sure. Was thinking ANet should lower CD from this skill actually. I love point blank, using this after your auto animation is just too good plus the the knock back. I do agree this should be on a 1200 range though. Good stuff

I like this guy too.

Ltomato’s proposed changes are far simpler and direct than most of the “re-invent the wheel” suggestions regarding LB. And btw, to me, the whole, “more damage the farther you are concept” is IMO nuts.

LB 1 does not need (or should have) an added CC component, but rather, and as suggested, a slightly faster reliable-consistent-and flat damage component. Also, the much maligned LB 2 is actually near perfect – it does not need to be re-invented, the problem is the channel time and CD. I also like Ltomato’s LB 3 alternate suggestion of, “In addition to current functionality, add Apply Revealed on target on hit.” The only suggestion I did not like was LB5 – personally I would love to see it have a 3-sec retaliation added so it becomes the ranged version of Axe 5.

Great suggestions Ltomato, +1

Thanks for the feedback, guys! There are definitely a lot of other alternatives out there- For example, having Hunter’s Shot remove a boon in addition to its current functionality, or your suggestion with Retaliation, Ision!

Xaylin.1860:

Ltomato.8649:

s4- Point Blank Shot: Unblockable/Unreflectable.

From a PvP/WvW perspective I’m against this change. If someone makes the effort to counter hard CC he should be able to. Making it unblockable would make it the ultimate troll skill.

Definitely. It makes the skill extremely powerful. At the same time though, if you combo it using Hunter’s Shot’s stealth first (as is), it’s still fairly easy to get a free knockback. It already has a extremely quick cast time/tell, which is great. However, the issue I have is that being a ranged skill, the effort required to counter the skill is almost minimal for many classes. Just pop any reflection/missile deflection/prepared blocking. It will block all longbow attacks (barring barrage- hence my 2nd alternative to add an immobilize), which makes it less of counterplay against hard CC, and more of counterplay against ranged attacks in general. It’s definitely a tricky area. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be wise to add something that won’t have much counterplay. On the other, rangers need to be able to counter some things as well.

Another note- I don’t want to see every single one of my suggestions added- that would definitely be overbuffing the longbow. For example, immobilize on barrage and unblockable Hunter’s Shot should probably be exclusive, as together they would provide insane CC unheard of since hambow warriors (if even that much!)

There are tons of options to explore here! Thanks for the feedback!

Flytrap.8075:

I know some people are attached to Longbow, but I personally feel like Longbow and Greatsword are our most awkward, ill-defined weapons.

Haha! Where you you see awkward and ill-defined, I see “versatile” and “fun”! Longbow/Greatsword is my main weapon set that I use for general play. It’s definitely not the best for use in WvW, but I’ve had my share of contributions and epic fights!
The weapons might not have as much of a well defined role, but they have some really cool combinations together.

For greatsword, I’d definitely suggest a damage boost though. I understand that it’s a more defensive sustained damage type of weapon, but as it is, you’re literally better off in a lot of cases picking up a warrior’s banner for team support and more damage (I suggest Discipline, Tactics, or Warbanner for added Fury, Regen, or stability!). There’s a point when sustained damage becomes “damage outhealed by passive healing”, and outside of Maul, greatsword is still mostly under that level.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Flytrap.8075:

Ltomato.8649:

I may be alone in this…

I honestly think you are.

Longbow is currently super clunky and doesn’t really do that great of a job of fulfilling its niche; the proposed changes would help address these issues.

No, I like the Longbow as the concept stands currently. I just think it could fill the role of “long range weapon” better for us if it had more punch to its attacks which are supposed to have teeth.

Yep! I made post a bit farther up this page in which I detail a few ideas to give longbow skills some more bite! Give it a +1 if you like em!

With this chapter of Living Story events coming to a close, I just wanted to say thanks to the teams that are producing the content.

You guys are doing a great job of iterating each release over the next- learning from and innovating based on responses and feedback.

A lot of the teamwork and cooperation seen now in the Escape from Lion’s Arch and Battle From Lion’s Arch events are products of some really neat design choices. These events and the reactions are a fantastic improvement from the old Scarlet invasions from 6 months ago.

Thanks a bunch!

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Potential Longbow Skill Changes (non-overhaul)

Goal of Proposal
Many players feel that the Longbow is an underwhelming weapon. I am offering some non-overhaul skill tweaks, since I (as someone who has put waaaay too much time into longbow ranger) believe that the basic design mechanics of the longbow are sound, unique, and engaging.

Proposal Functionality
s1- Long Range Shot: Increase projectile speed to allow more reliable hits against enemies, as this is a targeted skill and very easy to walk out of the way of at > 1200 range. Doesn’t need to be undodge-able, just more reliable.
: Alternatively- Decrease channel time. The skill would feel more reactive and less “clunky”.

s2- Rapid Fire: Decrease channel time by 1 second while maintaining the damage output. This would make the skill a bit more of a burst of damage, as well as maintaining a higher concentration of vulnerability. (Low cooldown and still comparatively long channel time to damage still allows this to be considered “sustained damage”)

s3-Hunter’s Shot: In addition to current functionality, add 1/2 second of evade on use. This would give the skill more of a use of an escape, providing a better feeling of reactionary dodging.
: Alternatively- In addition to current functionality, add Apply Revealed on target on hit. This would allow Rangers to effectively counter stealth.

s4- Point Blank Shot: Unblockable/Unreflectable. Makes this skill more of a failsafe, and actually effective against enemies that are looming in upon the ranger that may be reflecting projectiles or have some sort of block. Cooldown could be increased to 15 seconds to counteract a very powerful skill.
:Alternatively- Increase base range to 1200. Makes a little less sense since it’s no longer “point-blank”, but maintains the range as other longbow attacks, making it less clunky to use.

s5- Barrage: Buff into more of a projectile storm than an AoE, ala Ice Bow’s skill 4. This would increase damage and enemies affected, which seems fitting for its long cooldown and rooted channel.
:Alternatively- Allow movement while channeling. Evens out the risk/reward balance for using the skill.
:Alternatively- Immobilizes enemies hit by the first barrage or entering the AoE for 1 second. Makes the skill more useful even if the entire channel isn’t launched.

Associated Risks
The skill additions I’m suggesting are very strong. The Longbow is currently still underestimated, and too much tweaking could easily push it over the edge. Just two or three of these suggested skill additions would improve longbow ranger quality of life greatly.

All of them might be a bit much, but very, very fun.

These would also impact PvP and WvW, especially s3 alternative and my suggestions for s5.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Ltomato.8649:

What I’m really trying to get across is how turning a longbow into a longer-range shortbow clone won’t help at all. It doesn’t prevent stacking, and if anything, makes it less useful when stacking.

It wont solve stacking and it wont turn the weapon into a speedrun-weapon. But it would help alot in WvW since every class can close the distance in splitseconds.

The same is true for all single-target targeted ranged weapons. I’ve done fine in WvW with longbow- I don’t play WvW and PvP as often as PvE, but I’ve played a bit of both. (Got my season 1 WvW chest pretty much solo, and have a handful of general PvP matches won on Ranger)

There’s a lot that Longbow rangers can do, and there are more creative and fun ways to solve the issues with them than just turning it into a cripple/immo kiter.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

As you may have noticed, the LB is dealing its full damage only at max. range.
In WvW or PvP the ranger isn’t capable of holding his distance to utilising the LB.
In structured PvE, the meta is “stacking and zerging”, so we aren’t able to use the LB either. That’s a maldevelopment we are trying to solve. While I don’t agree with many proposals made so far, I do agree that the LB needs help.

It deals full damage at max range only on s1. In PvE, I use the longbow perfectly fine. I’ve smashed my share of level 50 fractals, and dungeoned regularly. There are many fights where stacking is the best, yes, but that limits all classes from many ranged weapons- not just ranger. With Piercing Arrows, s3 + s2 + s5 can do quite a bit of damage even in a stack (not to mention stacking some vulnerability). Then you can just swap weapons, get a fury buff from skirmishing 15, and melee stuff.

Longbow can use some help, sure. I made a post a while back in the Profession Balance forum detailing why Longbow is lacking (lack of unique trait bonuses)

What I’m really trying to get across is how turning a longbow into a longer-range shortbow clone won’t help at all. It doesn’t prevent stacking, and if anything, makes it less useful when stacking.

Flytrap.8075:

Ltomato.8649:

I may be alone in this…

I honestly think you are.

Longbow is currently super clunky and doesn’t really do that great of a job of fulfilling it’s niche; the proposed changes would help address these issues.

I don’t see how it’s clunky. s2, s3, and s4 work very smoothly together. s3 + s4 can act as a mini-burst, since they fire faster and have a faster projectile speed than the s1 normal attack, and followed up by s2, if you traited into remorseless, you can stack 15 vuln on a target. 10 more with the initial opening strikes from you and your pet.

Or you can open with s2, smackign 15 vuln on to start, then knockback, then s3 stealth and run, putting aggro onto your pet.

Or open with s3, send your pet in, then use s2 for damage.

Or you can open with s5, crippling enemies, or use s5 to barrage a point as an opener, then follow up with the rest of the skills.

I like the versatility of it, and the dynamic, multi-faceted play it allows.

Turning it into a long-range shortbow clone would directly make it a better kiting weapon, sure, but it would also remove all of its uniqueness and versatility.
It would be completely focused on maintaining range from a target. One sided. Not interesting at all, not to mention much less useful with the loss of vulnerability stacking.

I’d say the most clunky aspects would be the precast/slow arrow speed on s1, long channel time on s2, and being rooted for s5.

Sure, there may be issues with maintaining range in say, PvP, but that’s why we have two weapon sets.

The “niche” of long ranged damage doesn’t get fixed by being able to maintain that range. It could be fixed by increasing projectile speed so it’s not as easy to sidestep, or improving traits that specially affect the longbow, or lowering the channel time on s2 so that it becomes more of a damage burst.

Allie Murdock.8152:

1. Remove spirits. They clutter up the map and provide less strategic value with target changes.
   1. Instead, apply an aura to the pet that does the same thing spirits currently do.
      1. Obviously, this would be a huge rework and would require changes to spirit traits.

This is a neat concept that’s been brought up often in Ranger threads, and I really like it. It doesn’t require the Ranger to group up, only that the pet stays alive, which can be achieved through good pet management/switching at range.

Of course there’s always the issue of pet swapping removing all pet boons/effects (see “Protect Me” or “Rampage as One”), which would end up being really silly.

Another option with spirits could be to buff their active effects, but make them die on use with a shorter cooldown like engineer turret selfdestructs (but with a shorter cooldown!). That would provide a more active/strategic component to their use, as well as eliminating the annoyance that is waiting for your frost spirit to die/or cooldown on the active so you can swap skills and insta-kill your spirit.
(i.e. 60 second cooldown on activate, 20 second cooldown + buffed aoe effect if you explode it)

EDIT:
I may be alone in this, but I really enjoy the longbow kit as it is- I don’t feel that the skills need any major changes as they are. Stealth+knockback+opening strike is really fun to use, and while Rapid Fire isn’t as bursty as I’d like, it’s still pretty cool. The proposed changes turn it into some sort of long-range power-based shortbow. I disagree with those changes 100%. Should they be implemented, I’d likely quit ranger altogether, as Longbow is currently my favorite weapon and shortbow my least favorite.

Allie Murdock.8152:

1. XII. Remorseless – Next attack applies 3 stacks of vulnerability for 6s. 16 sec cooldown

This is currently worse than what it is right now from a longbow user’s point of view. Right now, longbow traited gives 5 stacks of vuln for 6s on a 10 second cooldown of Hunter’s Shot. 3 stacks for only 6 seconds every 16 seconds wouldn’t be worth taking a grandmaster trait for, I think.

The way Remorseless is now, people underestimate how often Opening strike refreshes and re-procs in AoE situations.

Allie Murdock.8152:

X. Eagle Eye – Include shortbow. Provides 200 range and +5% damage on longbow and harpoon gun. (no range bonus for shortbow)

Why the change from the current 300 range to 200? Thieves can already steal as far, and engineers can throw grenades as far. This doesn’t make sense.

I’d say we’d want to see more consistency in the10% damage buff major/minor traits.
As it is, if you take all 3, Marksmanship I, Steady Focus; Skirmishing 25, Hunter’s Tactics; and Wilderness Survival, 25, Peak Strength, you lose 30% of your damage if you mistime a single roll (losing Steady Focus) and get hit (losing Peak Strength) in melee (losing Hunter’s Tactics).

That’s totally nuts.
Steady Focus was already hit by the Natural Vigor drop, resulting in less uptime.
Hunter’s Tactics is pretty neat, but Rangers often do not have the burst or means to take advantage of this trait, which seems more suited for thieves.
Peak Strength is interesting, but it clashes entirely with Steady Focus.

Perhaps changing Steady Focus to only lose the bonus if the player has under 50% endurance, lowering the price on dodging.
Adding bonus damage if attacking from behind as well as flanking would be cool for Hunter’s Tactics.
And maybe lower the health threshold on Peak Strength, so that players can get some better use out of it.

PS: Skirmishing minor trait 15 is still bugged- giving half the fury duration that the tooltip states!

TurtleDragon.3108:

Overall, I just feel ranger utility is “fine”, and would benefit greatly from bug fixes and QoL adjustments (which can include trait flexibility).

Yep. There are plenty of ways to approach fixing rangers. Lots of small ways, and a few big ways, many of which have been posted in other threads.

But with no replies regarding any of them, we can only keep speculating and throwing things at the wall until maybe something sticks.

TurtleDragon.3108:

Running the right build is important on any class. (ie. Guardians/Mesmers “need” to trait their reflects kinda like how we “need” to trait our frost spirits). As a result, there’s only 1-3 “viable” meta builds for every class. Here’s a list that Nike maintains: http://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars2Builds/comments/1pdukv/behold_a_list_of_the_current_meta_builds_28102013/
There isn’t much room for build diversity in general. Like, I think a banner-less warrior or reflection-less mesmer is useless, but they won’t get as much hate as the ranger in PUGs becasue they don’t have the bearbow stigma and the general player base is uninformed. Any class needs to trait and bring the right utilities.

Reflects are “worth” traiting into because they can take some skill or knowledge when to use at the right time.
The traits also do more per utility skill than spiritual knowledge. Guardian consecrations don’t all have similar utility effects, Mesmer focus is used often for illusionary warden which does good damage along with reflection, as well as temporal curtain.

To that effect, a ranger who traits into into spiritual knowledge gains nothing by not running a spirit. Perhaps if the other spirits (other than frost) had their effects made more useful in pve? But they are already very strong in PvP. So a buff to spirits is unlikely. Spirits are also a quite passive utility that don’t take much planning or consideration to use. Drop, pop, swap for shorter cooldown, repeat.

All a warrior, guardian, or mesmer needs to do to not be “useless” is swap out to a utility that sees active use. This gives them much more flexibility in build choices. If you’re trying to be optimal, there’ll certainly be an optimal build to take.
But the problem with Ranger is that the line between Useful and Optimal is so narrow that there isn’t much wiggle room.

I will admit that one of the strengths of rangers is that our traitlines are so overcrowded that it is relatively easy to change “builds” by swapping out piercing arrows or eagle eye or signet of the beastmaster or remorseless for Spotter if necessary. But at the same time, you lose out on those valuable traits.

TurtleDragon.3108:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bonfire
Torch, It’s great for out of combat fire fields or if you group with a LH ele.
Drakes usually open with their Tail Swipe too, so its predictable at least. And ofc, Mighty Roar has a tendency to fail occasionally. Only problem is that you can’t Tail Swipe out of combat.

So if you take torch and warhorn… That’s 2 weapon slots devoted just to stacking might, both on quite long cooldowns (25 seconds on bonfire, 35 seconds on call of the wild). Isn’t that still jumping through hoops to get on par with other sources?

There are also other reasons for a guardian to use a staff, or a warrior to use a longbow outside of stacking might.

And if you want to provide more than that, you need to take healing spring, trait 10 points & use a utility for spirits, 20 for spotter, or 40 for shout regen/swiftness.

I’m frustrated because despite what I wanted to believe, it seems that playing a ranger well in an organized setting is more of just taking the right build than playing and timing well.

I’m frustrated because despite how Guild Wars 2 was presented, and how the balance team says that they want to encourage build diversity, Rangers do not have much build diversity.

solrik.6028:

I support my party by giving them 12 stacks of might, fury, swiftness, fire shield (for those hordes), frost armor, healing.

This is with guild party though.

My point is that we do not have only 2 ways of party support.

Might, fury, and swiftness are by no means rare.
Rangers also have to go way out of their way to get these things.

Let me put it this way:

In order to get 12 stacks of might on party you need:
Fire trap (requires hostile npc to trigger)
Drake AI blast finisher (not on command)
Jungle Stalker Active
Warhorn Blast finisher

If you’re a guardian, you need:
A staff.

In order for a warrior to get 12 stacks of might on a party, they need:
Longbow fire field (requires full adrenaline, which can be accomplished out of combat using heal)
Longbow blast finisher
For Great Justice
and a Banner which provides so much more than just 2 blast finishers.

For reference, Banner of Discipline gives 170 Precision and 15% critical damage at level 80. Banner of Discipline can always be up, can be used to blast finish fields at least once by everyone in the party, give swiftness, and give 8 seconds of fury to the party on a 10 second cool down.
On a Utility skill that has 100% up time, is mobile, and can be traited to do even more!
It’s also a significant damage and team utility boost over Ranger Greatsword. (Seriously. you can provide 80% fury uptime to your party, blast finish on command, and your 1 attack does about 175% more damage)
Yet if you run with a warrior who doesn’t take this, he doesn’t get instantly booted from the team.

Rangers need to spend 20 trait points to just get 150 precision for the party.

The Ranger loses so much in order to be even close to on par with other classes in terms of support while other classes can just pop a utility and reflect missiles, or stealth, or portal.

The Ranger must trait to bring their unique bonuses, which narrows build options and emphasizes good “builds” over good play.

Perhaps the new “critical damage changes” will change things for the better, but given that Berserker based ranger builds are already considered underpowered, I’m not optimistic.

Changes to Rangers don’t even have to affect this particular area of utility! There are so many ways to support a party in GW2, but it just so happens that Ranger is under par in all of them. And their most significant contributions are Spotter and traited Frost Spirit.

Awesome! Thanks for doing this! I’m really looking forward to the rune and sigil rework details!

My question is one that has probably been asked a lot in the past: Are there any plans for large-scale changes for Rangers?

This would be good to know so that we can keep in mind what level of discussions we should have.

Thanks!

I meant fights like the harpy in grawl fractal, or the boss of the frost fractal. Where meleeing in any class would be very difficult.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Atherakhia.4086:

YOU’RE IN MELEE RANGE (you better be in melee range!) and you can’t tell your pet to run away.

Well you can, if you decide to waste a slot skill on the most horrid skill in the game – Guard.

I really find it funny that it has a 1 second channel time. It’s more like “Guuaaaaaaaaaaaaard!” -waves arms in direction pet should go-

To be fair also, a ranger using Rampage as One and River Drake/Marsh Drake can easily stack might and fury on themselves, even at max range.

TurtleDragon.3108:

Also, I wouldn’t want spotter only on the pet. Certain fights are problematic for pet survival and losing Spotter when you make a mistake and let your pet die would suck as well.

I like that though, since it adds a skill element to managing your pet- knowing when to swap pets to keep them alive can be important. There are certainly fights where no amount of pet-swapping can keep them alive, but in those fights, most players would be attacking by range, anyway.

Well, an idea like that could be having Spotter be centered around the ranger’s pet, rather than the ranger.

That way the ranger can stay at range, but the team can still enjoy the buff.

That’s just one idea, though. Obviously there are cases when ranged attacking is inappropriate, but that is up to the player to learn, not an issue with the class.

Hey guys, there are plenty of other threads to discuss other aspects of ranger balance, but I’d like this one to stay focused on Longbow. Thanks.

Spicyhash.7605:

Let’s do some math.

x = condition damage
500 burning tick = (4.1)(80) + (0.25)x

in other words, your friend has 688 condition damage. This means that, in order to get 1000 damage bleeds, he would need to get 13 stacks of bleeding. The grenade kit 2 skill does 1 stack of bleeding per grenade, which comes to a total of 3. Even with the firearms trait of bleeding this isn’t even possible.

Thanks for the correction!
I was relaying what my friend told me. I believe the 1000 bleeding could include might stacks and and quickness.

Regardless, the base damage is still higher, in an aoe, and at any range.
EDIT: Perhaps she meant 1000 damage bleed over all. That makes a bit more sense, looking at the numbers, yea?

After reading through all these posts, I’ve come to a conclusion, which can be foudn int the post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvE-The-State-of-Ranger-Utility-in-Dungeons/first#post3499740

Hopefully that thread will be cleaner and more focused!