Guild Wars 2

Lunaire.5827:

I support this, and also want to add to it —

Also require the Dev who designed this to record and display each and every time they fail, and how frustrated they get while playing it. Maybe then they will learn that video games are meant for fun.

They sure have a way of putting the F-U, N fun.

Overall a fun solo experience if you plan on farming mobs all day, but ultimately a lack of end game vision and is still hampered by an under performing mechanic that may just be too late to fix. If your plan is endgame dungeons, I can’t recommend a ranger at all outside of the fringe cases where your are already in an elite group going up against a very specific type of boss fight. Rangers are not as pug friendly as other classes.

If you plan to do PvP, there’s some promise there if the devs don’t get around to nerfing every last one of our emergent builds. Apparently PvP is where all the action is, so says the balancing team.

I’m pretty salty, yes. But I will say that is still and enjoyable class for those capable to over perform on an under performing class. If you want a true bow class where all ranged combat feels great, you’ll have to wait a long time as the focus seems to be putting more melee into ones hands.

The problem is they don’t have a benchmark in mind when they make challenging content. They throw it out there and say if ANY class can do it that they should all be able to. I want to know if they think all challenges should be equally difficult for each class. If so, they need to do some work.

Get Robert out there on his ranger, I’m sure he’d be glad to school us all.

I want a definitive answer on whether these same bosses and rewards will be in place once the gauntlet comes around for a second time. By then I should have my warrior leveled up, and ready to pile drive through content. I’m all for challenging achievements, just not one off time limited achievements.

But when it comes right down to it, I really really urge them to consider what they think challenging content should take the form of. Look at something like Tomb of the Vulture Lord in Warhammer Online; that’s very hard with traps and interesting and punishing mechanics without the use of gimicky one offs outside the control of a player. Also, a good dose of class perspective goes a long way when designing fights.

The biggest problem in GW2 right now in terms of overall difficulty is PACING. This goes both ways. Too focused on straight dps leaves players wanting more from encounters and punishes those who don’t gear like that. I believe that pacing, more than anything else should be first and foremost controlled by the player. It’s not the fact that things occur most of the times that get people mad, it’s the pace at which it happens.

“Game design is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” Then let’s not cut corners on our challenging content then. I want the only thing without a doubt in a player’s mind to be, “I messed up there,” not “a bug caused this.” Challenging content should be ran through with a fine toothed comb, not pushed out within two weeks.

I don’t see how beating something excuses it from being bug ridden.

Here’s the short:

PvP: Yes.

PvE: Elite grouped: meh, only if you go full on cheese mode with sword.

Other: no.

I personally think that the fundamental design is flawed. Pets work in traditional keybind heavy games because it assumes a player with a higher skill cap that can afford to micromanage successfully. This in turn rewards players with a responsive pet worthy of tagging along. I’ve previously been a Squig Herder in warhammer online for around three years and it is still one of my favorite pet classes of all time; it’s because for that game, pets just worked.

Adding pets in a reactive based action combat mmo like GW2 is bad from the start. Pets intrinsically can’t have the amount of AI required by content to avoid these unfortunate situations. Adding more control is also a hard thing to do because of action mmos wanting a relatively low skill cap to start with.

I think ArenaNet is realizing this all too late or too slowly, and are just in a bad spot when it comes to finding a solution that doesn’t either remove something from the game, or change the core focus around completely.

Honestly, I don’t know what the answer is.

I renamed my pets to Dead Pet Walking and Bearly Living some time ago. The problem is that with no matter of skilled play, pets become 100% useless in many, many situations.

Yes, the most helpful hint i can give is stay away from the edges. Try to be more in the middle of the arena. Kiting too large of a circle makes you lose firing angle, and staying to the middle is much better.

I got this first time with my shortbow ranger; sadly the final encounter is nigh ridiculous.

so…

/15char

Artificial Difficulty is fun says the man holding the bag of money.

I get the feeling like sometimes the right people are too proud to admit when they need help, thus rejecting it.

Yup, it’s one of the many bugs still there.

- Double spawning bosses.
- Infinitely pulling orbs.
- Orbs unable to be hit by ranged weapons due to their center of mass being under the grating resulting in an obstructed.
- Oozes spawning inside others arenas and/or on the balcony.

Yep, having the same problem and it’s very annoying.

As it is now, the center of mass where all projectiles fly through is located below the grating itself; meaning, in order for the projectile to hit it must go through the grating – something that is impossible; thus the obstructed.

My ranger would like to have a word with some arena net devs.

I think the most important thing to remember is that due to the very nature of an mmo such as this, not all classes will have the same difficulty curve when facing new content. What is trivial or mentally stimulating to one could be a point a potent frustration for another. Requiring a player to switch classes to do content should not be supported. Challenging content is required and encouraged, but we’re currently getting too much of the same: instant-death punishing mechanics, lack of usefulness of pets/minions in the grand scheme, and over consideration for heavy armor classes.

You want challenging mechanics? Ok that’s fine, but we need to pay abundant attention to detail when we make a challenge. Things like being a norn or wearing a backpack skin and having to deal with a not so good camera issue isn’t tolerable anymore.

I agree. Instead of getting the lovely Tara Strong to voice act, maybe they should have hired some QA testers to give feedback.

Still love GW2, but they seriously need to be mindful of this two week development cycle with small closed groups.

I’m putting my agreement here as well. Equally challenging my kitten .

Is this an intended function? Arrows get the obstructed message everytime they go to hit one of these orbs.

My ranger says thanks for the added difficulty.

Yes please; if nothing else put in some placeholder npcs and a check box for PvE culling.

Also, what’s with the spell effects lasting way longer than their timers on a screen? In heavy events you’ll often see spell effects still firing off way after a mob has been downed.

jcbroe.4329:

Just my two cents on it. Arenas wise, it is the most viable build given the meta, capable of covering more ground than what most of our other tools can accomplish, which really is only indicative that other utilities and build options need to be worked on a bit (power builds still aren’t viable in top end competitive play).

I like your view on it; very balanced and cautious attitude about things without pretending like every new build is the next best thing (only to get nerfed each patch after its discovery). Power builds really do still need some love.

My biggest concern with ranger thus far, and moving forward is the surprisingly sparse use of bows in PvE. Also: MM trait consolidation.

Well, ain’t this just a jolly little thread.

I was going to buy the magitech armor, but they had to change the cool steel toed boots to high heels that don’t really even match the rest of the set.

I was going to buy the magitech armor, but they had to change the boots from cool steel toed boots to high heels that don’t really match the rest of the outfit.

darkace.8925:

Chopps.5047:

[snip]

I’m afraid if you can’t understand why this is better, you should probably learn more about games, game design, and game mechanics.

Oh, I see. I disagreed with you, therefore I must not understand the game, the game’s design, or the game’s mechanics. Typical.

Yes, stop telling them how they should play their game, and play like they play instead. Duh.

We definitely need more bow love from Anet, that’s for sure. Especially for a master of bows to use melee weapons mostly.

Star Ace.5207:

ilr.9675:

Star Ace.5207:

I also disagree with your views about damage etc. in PvE, which gives me the impression all you care about is direct damage, in which case we are very different, and that’s also fine-but we’ll never agree.

That’s not * me * disagreeing there. I’d actually PREFER it if damage wasn’t the only thing that mattered. You’re disagreeing with the game itself and the way nearly all encounters operate at optimal levels. IOW: you’re disagreeing with Anet’s current designs. Their current designs have no use for Stealth in PvE and in some cases such as those where you have to keep an NPC alive, it WORKS AGAISNT YOU. I’m not attacking you, I’m attacking your position with regards to how shortsighted and un-observant it is.

Stop knighting, and start actually playing the rest of the game where this stuff is impossible to miss.

Do you think ANet sees things the way you do? That they find stealth useless on PvE as you do? You have chosen to attack, attack, attack, while other options are given to you. Ask them if they think the game is all about DPS (I remember they even thought that conditions were indeed too weak against inanimate objects-which they are-and “were looking into it.”)

I think this is a player base issue, and that ANet should indeed make it harder for all direct damage players to roll over the game with DPS. But there are indeed occasions in which all DPS won’t necessarily help you (and CoF1 is not representative of GW2… I deem it a failed Dungeon that they never dared fix because they were afraid of player’s negative reactions to the gold mine being closed.) It’s a pity that people tend to be attracted to the path of least resistance, but it doesn’t mean that the game is all about DPS, because many players don’t play that way and do great too.

I am not a “knighter” at all, I want to be fair to all sides involved. If there are limitations on GW2 being too easy for DPS lovers, there are also some problems with people who only copycat cookie-cutter DPS builds for easy wins. I also respect everyone’s right to love DPS (it’s their right) but also believe that it’s OK to choose any other playstyle as well, and detest when people are shunned out because of NOT being all DPS due to silly bias about how GW2 “should be played” that ANet doesn’t even really believe in.

This is not personal, though, and many other players believe as you do.

This is a game design problem, not rewarding anything but dps. I’m a primary dpser mainly because I like to keep on my toes and get punished when I don’t. That’s my playstyle and it shouldn’t be denied. The problem is what we are given just isn’t as competitive in game meta right now. I’d love for condition shortbow make a nice comeback in pve, but until things change in a big way it won’t happen.

I agree completely, we still lack a overall vision, and these updates aren’t helping any.

We need some serious consolidation.

They want bows to be relegated to secondary defensive weapons, which is sad. I like playing primary ranged single target dps, and we’re currently lacking that in a big way in GW2.

I’ve had similar problems with the shortbow, especially the number 2 skill. In particular, if you have autofire on and you use quickening zephyr and immediately follow it up with the number 2 skill, it cancels itself making it go on cooldown. A nagging problem to say the least.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Looks decent for single target, provided they have no form of condition removal. Anything over one person and I think it will lose effectiveness drastically.

That’s what I’m thinking. There is soo much condition removal out there in the forms of on shout, aoe pools, healing skills, signets, and traits. I’ve always liked entertaining the idea, but I personally think it’s way too single focused.

Perhaps if there was a better way to weave conditions.

Lorelei.3918:

<3 the new hunter shot.

Sorry PvE’ers but honestly Ranger was never a great pve class. Our pets are insta gibbed and our max dps isn’t that great.

In WvW though it is amazing. I don’t care about vulnerability, it gets cleansed too quick to matter.

Instead of attacking you or telling you how wrong you are…let me say this

Your complaining makes me feel threatened my new skill might be changed. Stop it or I will be forced to argue with you.

It’s really too bad that people who want to use bows in pve or pvp have to be forced between a defensive power bow or condition shortbow, neither of which lend greatly to maximizing dps. That’s why we are seeing so many pure melee rangers now.

Daemon.4295:

Miflett.3472:

darkace.8925:

Just in case the devs are ignoring the other threads relating to the longbow changes, I want to toss my hat in the “I hate these changes” pile. Why? Allow me to explain.

As a PvE player, stealth on a longbow does me absolutely no good. My pet tanks for me while I attack from long range. And I have an area of effect cripple. And I have a knock back. Stealth simply brings nothing to the table for a PvE longbow user. So Hunter’s Shot is now a dead spot on my already limited skill bar.

Expanding on that, Rapid Fire now applies 10 stacks of vulnerability. But it does so gradually, one at a time. So it will never benefit from the full 10 stacks, whereas it could with the old Hunter’s Shot. And because Rapid Fire is now a condition applier, it’s role has changed. It used to be something held in reserve for when targets made it inside the Long Range Shot’s damage drop-off (1000).

Where I used to open a fight with 20 stacks of vulnerability with Hunter’s Shot and Opening Strike from me and my pet and held Rapid Fire for close-ranged enemies I now open with 10 vulnerability and have a completely useless weapon skill.

If the idea was to get people to use the longbow with Remorseless, I don’t think that’s going to work. Between Eagle Eye, Piercing Arrows, Spotter, Steady Focus, and the signet traits, there’s just too many good traits competing for too few slots to justify resetting Opening Strike once every 12 seconds.

tl;dr – I hate the change. I implore to change the longbow back and add a stealth skill whenever you roll out your new skills and traits system latter this you if you feel you must give the longbow a stealth skill.

I’ll throw my hat in that pile as well. Stand strong because there are a lot of opinions out there that can’t see past pvp.

Guys, the longbow is an extremely powerful weapon in PvE, almost too strong. Due to the pet mechanic you can sit back and fire away to your heart’s content while your pet holds aggro. In PvP it’s a really poor weapon due to the impossibility of maintaining range. This change took a very small amount of damage off a strong PvE weapon, but made a very weak PvP weapon a lot more playable. And personally I’m finding the stealth useful in PvE as well. So when you talk about PvE vs PvP, you have to acknowledge that the benefits to the longbow in PvP far outweigh the marginal dps loss in PvE.

The greatsword change on the other hand is far more annoying, it’s a sugarcoated nerf that takes a lot more dps out of my PvE cycle than the LB fix.

They made a boring weapon to play in PvE even more boring in my opinion with the addition of stealth. I like fast paced gameplay and proper switching of pets to maintain aggro control while flanking. I guess I wouldn’t be so kitten if I could say shortbow was a great power weapon over melee.

If it’s here to stay, which I guess I can live with it unhappily, we’re going to need a MM trait consolidation. Taking power + bows in pve is too trait intensive and for a master of bows, most rangers are now using melee as a main source of dps.

Agreed with the greatsword.

Inc fix in 6 months.

Conan.8046:

Setun.4368:

Conan.8046:

swiftpaw.6397:

To those who want damage- Try melee.

Enjoy.

Rotation = 1111111111111111111111111111111111111

You mean like how shortbow users play? Got it.

Pretty much, but if your want my advice don’t use a short bow for PVE too many classes with bleeds..it doesn’t work too well. I don’t know much about PVE but i wouldn’t use a shortbow.

It’s coming down to “don’t use a bow at all in PvE,” and that’s disturbing.

jcbroe.4329:

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

That’s a really good idea, though personally I would just scrap the function of Moment of Clarity entirely. The +% increase to dazes and stuns is nice, but the weapons they are on (besides the greatsword) really lack any way to burst off of landing a stun/daze. It’s a nice utility, but the secondary function of Moment of Clarity really just doesn’t do enough to be a Grandmaster trait.

Scrap it and put something better while possibly retaining concepts from the original function.

Torment on interrupt would be cool; it’d also lend nicely to tight circle kiting.

Both bows would get some love: LB with its stealth and hopeful future improvements, and SB with an actual mechanic.

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

The real question is how practical the new longbow is without the new remorseless/30 into MM.

I guess what I will say is that if this new 3 is here to stay in its current form, I will expect them to clean up the MM trait line and not make picking the LB entirely dependent on 30 into MM.

Hopefully, once again if this is here to stay, the other longbow skills will be open to improvements such as AA minimum range decrease for damage, a slight AA damage buff to make it a more clear power choice over SB, and a slight precast time shave from barrage.

The only problem I have is when some accidently assume that if someone doesn’t share my same playstyle then they are either doing it wrong, or are not proficient at the game.

Criminal.5627:

WatchTheShow.7203:

FranBunnyFFXII.3508:

darkace.8925:

jonnjo.2594:

I am in complete agreement with OP. I found the new mechanic refreshing. I also love stacking vulnerability. Oh and thinks for the raven tip. Never occurred to me.

If you love stacking vulnerability with a longbow, then why don’t you deplore the change? The new version of Hunter’s Shot requires twice the work and one subpar trait to get the same effect the old Hunter’s Shot got with one push of the button.

^This.

This x1,000

In WvW especially. Try rapid fire on any enemy player and you will get “obstructed”, “miss” “miss” “miss” 1,356 “miss” “miss”. It’s called dodge rolling twice. Anyone can dodge roll twice through rapid fire and now your precious vulnerability has only stacked 4 times instead of our old guaranteed 10.

this argument can also be applied if someone dodged the old hunters shot only then you would get 0 stacks of vuln which most people usually dodge the first shot you fired at them anyways since it is telegraphed much more

And then that’s the problem they should have fixed, instead of adding something else which compromised a playstyle.

Criminal.5627:

Miflett.3472:

Criminal.5627:

Miflett.3472:

All I want is a power build that doesn’t involve mainly using a melee weapon and is effective for using with a bow. Right now rangers have a choice of condition sb which leaves much to be desired, or a power longbow which is most often relegated to the offhand. Sadly, this will never happen.

right now lb is not in a bad place the stealth gave it a lot more survivability. it is just lacking in the utilities to make it a spike build though.

That was my main problem, I didn’t need more survivibility (in pve!!!!!!) and I rather grew accustomed to the extra thought that it took to swap between aggro and dps pets while maintaining range. I wanted the longbow to be the go to ranged power weapon, and arena net apparently did not want that as it clashed with their pvp ideals.

Don’t get me wrong its a great change for pvp, but I think it did so at a cost to rangers who wanted a main ranged power bow.

and the stealth can help in pvp pets cant hold agro if you dump a lot of dmg in a very short period of time. it would be nice to kill something after it breaks off of you pet and runs to you with a heavy burst cd that we don’t really have atm though

I would have rather there had been a channeled cripple added to the longbow 2, the vulnerability on 3 spread out over two shots, a minimum range decrease on the AA and a reduction in the precast of barrage, but I guess that wouldn’t have looked as pretty on their nice patch notes.

Criminal.5627:

darkace.8925:

Criminal.5627:

4. rappid fire does not require every hit to get the 10 stacks of vuln (I didn’t actually keep trake it is something like 2 stacks every hit?) also the vuln from rappid fire lasts 13 sec not 10 sec

It’s 13 because you have +30% Condition Duration from the Marskman trait line. It was the same with the old version of Hunter’s Shot. That wasn’t the only thing wrong with your post, but at this point I’d just be beating the dead horse to go through the rest of it line by line.

people use LB with no marks? didn’t know players were that stupid with a power based weapon

I find that it’s always best to talk with base numbers when doing comparisons, and while making assumptions, making them painfully clear.

Sentry.3691:

The simple fact of the matter is that the change to longbow is very minor. PVE players just seem to be complaining because they have to change their skill rotation.

Yes, the longbow still needs a damage buff, and I wish rapid shot had simply been removed as a skill and replaced by something like the Sniper Shot from the Snowball Mayhem minigame. It could still happen. (Honestly, I wish the ranger class played more like the scout class in that mini-game. The devs now seem to be moving in this direction and I love it.)

The Ranger trait lines need a ton of work still as well. Too many hugely useful longbow skills are crammed into the Marksmanship trait line; they need to be merged or moved elsewhere.

I have also never understood the overall design of the Skirmishing trait line. It is all over the place. Why are trap traits there at all when the trait line provides no bonus to condition damage? They should be in Wilderness Survival. And why is the sword and great sword trait in Wilderness Survival instead of Skirmishing? It doesn’t make any sense.

I’m more upset about what this means for the future of longbow more than anything. The last thing that I want out of ranger is to be pushed into a melee build just because I want to build for power. That skill could have easily been developed with that in mind, but instead decided to stick something defensive in there.

It already needed help in the dps department, now it seems by doing this that they have written off any and all dps increases for it.

It’s fine to stay if remorseless could be less painful to take in the MM tree and I really believe that the balancing first and foremost should be in the consolidation of traits rather than messing with playstyles at this point.

Criminal.5627:

Miflett.3472:

All I want is a power build that doesn’t involve mainly using a melee weapon and is effective for using with a bow. Right now rangers have a choice of condition sb which leaves much to be desired, or a power longbow which is most often relegated to the offhand. Sadly, this will never happen.

right now lb is not in a bad place the stealth gave it a lot more survivability. it is just lacking in the utilities to make it a spike build though.

That was my main problem, I didn’t need more survivibility (in pve!!!!!!) and I rather grew accustomed to the extra thought that it took to swap between aggro and dps pets while maintaining range. I wanted the longbow to be the go to ranged power weapon, and arena net apparently did not want that as it clashed with their pvp ideals.

Don’t get me wrong its a great change for pvp, but I think it did so at a cost to rangers who wanted a main ranged power bow.

All I want is a power build that doesn’t involve mainly using a melee weapon and is effective for using with a bow. Right now rangers have a choice of condition sb which leaves much to be desired, or a power longbow which is most often relegated to the second slot. Sadly, this will never happen.

Seetoo.9316:

There is just as much that can’t see past pve.

All this crap comes up because there are just too many variables in each setting and not enough options to choose from.

Everyone is clueless when it comes to why people are upset about longbow. IT’S BECAUSE PvE POWER RANGERS AND WvW RANGERS HAVE TO SHARE THE SAME BOW, AND WANT DIFFERENT THINGS OUT OF IT.

The argument about one being more correct over the other is bullkitten.

Yea let’s make a game where we kitten on PvE builds for the sake of our terrible class design in which the “skill” should have been on how effectively you can control the pet.