Guild Wars 2

Changes looking gooood!

Well if other professions is getting something extra on their F-keys, and rangers only get a fast key for stowing the pet, I’m going to be very disappointed. I’ve honestly never felt the need to be able to stow the pet. Never.

Maybe the can get rid of amulets and let people put points into the stats they want instead.

Tragic Positive.9356:

<snip>

Hey! Never said it was a good build or anything, def. not I’m running in pve since the game doesn’t make it necessary. And yeah, burning down mobs fast to prevent their attacks from taking place in the first place is the best defense.

But still, if you want to play the support role for whatever reason, a ranger sure as hell can help their partymembers through lots and lots of healing.

:-)

Sube Dai.8496:

Also invigorating bond is one of the worst GM traits in the game. A 2k heal every 20 seconds is pathetic. Natures Voice by comparison offers a 3k heal every 13 seconds, and swiftness, for your entire group…

Depends!

For a healing support build, if anyone feels they want to play one, it’s decent.

Look at the healing potential of this build, if that’s your kind of playstyle (pve):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRBHhx+1JPi0Lo9rgvKQ0iBOEKWBw7sYZva39QQUzV82D-ThxGABA8EAy9gAso6PMp8To9HoTJIA-e

I’d say that’s a whole freaking lot of HPS you can dish out! The fern hound alone will heal for at least ~4.5k every 20 seconds (counting the regen), the moa for even more but not at once since harmonic cry isn’t on demand.

If anyone wanna do the theoretical maths on that build when it comes to healing, be my guest.

Also, your pets will hit hard.

Ehecatl.9172:

Your pet will also be stacking conditions that will override your own much stronger conditions, so instead of doing 1,000 damage a tick with a bleed stack your enemy would go through stretches of time where they take maybe a couple hundred damage a tick instead. You’re actually lowering your damage output by setting your pet up for condition damage.

Is this really how it works?

Substance E.4852:

They absolutely need to make thrown traps the default mode with they are going to buff necro wells…

I’m one of the odd ones that rather place the trap fast, quick and easily right by my feet, so I hope not, but I guess it will happen, just like wells.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Vigor is not useless, it may perhaps fulfil Bountiful Hunter.

Perhaps, perhaps not. The wiki isn’t clear on that:
“You and your pet deal more damage while you have a boon.”

Does that “you” mean you the ranger, or does it mean either the ranger or the pet?

Anyway, since pets can’t use vigor, it’s a useless boon for them.

Rangers lack when it comes to gap closers. We have it pretty decent when it comes to keeping the distance from a foe, but closing in on them is another story.

Mobility for condition builds suffer even more because of what ppl normally use when it comes to runes and utilities.

I guess you could ditch the krait runes, ofc with a major loss to condition damage, and go for traveler runes or pack runes, just to get that mobility up.

I absolutely can’t stand running around without some form of speed increase. If nothing else I’ll take Signet of the Hunt.

Ok, so that fella Tron Jeremy got me inspired to try the thief profession (cool youtube vids!). I’ve had this game since release, but still haven’t tried all professions in this game, shame on me.

Anyways, after two nights of fast leveling a thief to 80 in pve, I took my thief to spvp…

OMFG do I suck at this profession! Well, didn’t expect anything else ofc after so little time spent with the profession, but still… I had to turn the chat off – didn’t want to read all the nasty comments about my utter incompetence playing this class.

So reason for posting this? Well, I might have said something bad about thieves in my days in GW2, and… well… sorry.

Now back to pve for my little thief. It might be a good idea to at least play it for, let’s say a week or two, to at the very least learn the basics of every skill. It might also be a good idea to try out a few more weapons besides sword/dagger and shortbow…

Take care all thieves out there!

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Wondrouswall.7169:

There are some pretty good suggestions on these forums. Below is a compilation of the more reasonable and realistic (low-hanging fruit) QoL improvements the Ranger community seem to agree on (for the most part). No specific numbers, overhauls, or anything like that. Just general and small QoL suggestions.

• Hornet’s Sting: Reduce or remove the cast time for a more reliable dodge.
• Spirit Passives: Benefits are guaranteed instead of a %.
• Pet Survivability: Damage reduction against AOE attacks in PvE & WvW only.
• Fortifying Bond: Stability is shared.
• Greatsword: Auto-attack damage increase.
• “Guard!”: Remove the cast time.
• Maul: Becomes a Blast Finisher.
• Stability Training: Pets also grant Stability to nearby allies when activated.
• Beastmaster’s Bond: Resets when the Ranger is downed or defeated instead.
• Forage: Items are automatically equipped instead of lying on the floor.

Notable Suggestions:

• Concussion Shot: Applies Confusion on interrupt.
• Hunter’s Shot: Also grants the pet stealth or the pet shadowsteps to the target.
• Pet Evade: Dodging grants the pet evasion frames. Does not apply when weapon skills and utilities are used that grant evasion.

Any to add or that were missed?

Spirit Passives could be made 50% chance, base, and then 100% with trait, then if Spirits Unbound also gave -30% damage to them they would be in a decent place.

Remove all durations from Fortifying Bond and make it copy all boons exactly as they are on the Ranger. Why does my pet only get 4s of fury when I got 25s?

Beastmaster’s Bond should be a stack on the Ranger, not on the pet, like bloodlust.

Would be a great list to have fixed

• Empathic Bond – Addition: Pets have -25% duration on conditions applied to them
• Companion´s Defense – Pet gain aegis when you dodge

As for for fortifying bond, I like it the way it is. It’s perfect for might stacking. Fury could use a longer duration though, and stability should be shared as well – remove the useless sharing of vigor.

Some sort of shadowstep for our pets would be most welcome. If not on a weapon skill, then add it to guard. I’d also like to see a “swap location with your pet” ability, could be added to guard as well, as a secondary function of that skill. Powerful? Yes. Fun? HELL YES!

:)

SotW + QZ… pick that sweet moment!

Pets… Use that god kitten ability when the kitten I TELL YOU TO!!! kittening stupid pet class, how can this class be so kittening bad????

Ranked: pugs vs premade
Unranked: read above
Hot join: Letting ppl pick teams

*

Since release, I’m still waiting for a true random game. Why this isn’t the case in at least hot join I’ll never understand. From one round to the next, ppl are waiting to see which team that “good player” are going to join, and they these ppl simply sit and wait by pressing “join red/blue”. Why?

Join random should be the only choice in hot join, because it is so obvious when players are trying to top a team.

All in all, Anet have failed miserably in this game when it comes to match making.

Hot join – remove the ability to pick teams, or at the very least, add another, true casual friendly game mode in pvp.

And for unranked/ranked games, allow a “solo play only” que, with NO possibility for a premade.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I have no idea where do you come up with such ridiculous numbers as you say, but I haven’t witnessed anything similar in sPvP for ages.

Possible with Signet of the Wild?

Q: How do rangers running moa’s compare when it comes to healing?

The big issue of course is that harmonic cry isn’t on demand. Well, unless you have them on passive and activate them when you need the healing – 3 pulses for 1340 health each = 4020 health.
Don’t know it the values are affected by the owners own healing power, they are not affected by compassion training, that’s for sure.

You can get 2×4020 health within seconds if you swap pets. Normal cd of harmonic cry is 40 seconds, with speed training that’s down to 36 seconds. Add invigorating bond for another ‘burst’ heal of 1816 health (base) when you use F2. All aoe healing.

For aoe healing support within melee range, I’d say this is pretty decent. I’m not really sure if harmonic cry triggers on low health on other characters than the pet or its master though.

Sarision.6347:

I’m glad more people are realizing EB is bad.

The other option(s) not always available. I agree though, it’s a bad trait for sure.

Thanks guys.

My experience so far (quite limited):

• Piercing arrows for mid pressure works wonders – if you’re good at positioning, you’ll hurt your target +1 more, most of the time
• Crippling from Intimidation training works in the span from decently to really good, ofc depending on the opponent. Anyway, damage from birds are, at this stage, way better than any other pet. I guess their inherent ability to ‘swoop’ makes them hit far more often, and far harder, than any other pet out there – and let’s face it, how often do you really manage to set up your pet for burst?
  The higher you go in the ranking arena, it’s way more common that your opponents will manage to dodghe your pets, almost to the degree it won’t matter how many skills you’ll try to put down to make your pet’s effort worth it.
  RaO for all then benefits that one brings, and SofW both for the passive, as well as for the active when it comes to stomp.
  As for stats – you could hardly beg for more than this in pvp – you got lots of everything, if you just want to see it. Yes, there are more specialized runes you could go with, but for overall pressure, I don’t think you can be mistaken with this build.

I’d like opinions on this build please:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjEq0yaFLGsw1agAha5AEAtvh89FeGtVbJLoL-TZhFwAAuAAKeCAf2fIxBBwZZAA

I’m still evaluating, but ideas for why/why not are from others are always welcome.

jcbroe.4329:

On which weapon set? My first thought is on the Axe set, but is it worth the loss of Leeching (which is about a 1k damage/heal)?
I personally only tend to run hydromancy on the Greatsword, but I can see the value in running it on Axe for guaranteed splitblades, I’m just not sure that’s how you meant the suggestion.

Both. It messes up most attackers when they get close to you, it’s aoe chill that can crit on weapon swap, what’s not to like?

Perfect for getting out of trouble while also damaging opponents.

Put sigil of hydromancy in there. Never leave home without it – it’s a game changing sigil imho.

Need some advice here how to go about fighting them when they’re on point. Unless I take out their turrets, they’ll last forever. I use river drake F2 to hit the turrets as well as barrage, and try a combination of direct damage and condition damage.
It’s still a struggle, and they can remain on point for a long time. If I go on point for more close combat, I find it really tough.

So, please give me your best advice how you deal with them 1vs1.

Pets. If they dont want to fix them, dont make us rely on them.

Shanks.2907:

• Move it from the #5 skill to the #2 skill

Why?

Puck.9612:

1 of the things I ran differently was I used HS instead of TU so that I could blast and leap the water field. It ended up working really well in a fight at mid because we were able to blast up to full health several times.

Gotta love when you got a team that understands to blast fields…

Loxsus.3841:

Wayland.3528:

The bug/change needs to be at least acknowledged.

It has been acknowledged.

WHEN it will get fixed compared to other things is up in there air.

Where?

I wonder what code they touched that messed this up?

solrik.6028:

Shirk.6421:

It would be awesome if we could get this option additionaly “only attack my target”. Would be awesome vs mesmers for example, not attacking clones, and not having to press “attack” everytime after the mesmer gets out of stealth.

If you press “attack” on the mesmer once and he goes invisible, the pet will start attacking whatever you hit next. When the mesmer reappears, the pet will automatically attack the mesmer unless you specifically gave the pet any command while the mesmer was invisible.

This. Lock that pet of yours to a target of your choice with F1.

To get maximum use out of it, and by that I mean being able to use the trait as often as possible, you need to equip a longbow and make use of stealth. Also, considering the changes to Hide in plain sight, you might want to take that trait as well.

For pve/wvw, you can also use the trapper runes (and speaking of trapper runes, remember this “Spike Trap is able to trigger before the rune’s effects are triggered”).

Now if they would only allow “Guard” to work the same way for pets…

You can also macro a key, so that while you have that key (or mouse button) pressed, it “channels” the #1 attack of sword, and the moment you let go it will instantly stop. An alternative to hammering the #1 key manually.

Gotejjeken.1267:

I don’t think I would mind being able to cancel the chain, however I think it could be hard to program around. I am not sure if there are specific cancel windows built in now, or if certain skills are cancellable by happenstance.

In this case, there would need to be a very small window of time in which to be able to cancel the attack, as after that window you would need to be locked in to preserve the chasedown functionality.

If you consider the fact that a weapon swap will instantly break the chain, there must be some sort of “cancel current action” implemented into that piece of code.
If they were to grab that piece of code, and put that into the code for dodging, I see how it would be possible. There are of course lots of solutions to this problem though.

Nothing is impossible when it comes to coding, and fixing this issue with dodge overriding any action is of course indeed possible.

It’s only a matter if Anet wants to do it or not, and for the time being, they don’t.

A trait to “fix” the issues with sword is a horrible idea.

Omg. HOW is this even possible?!? How in the world is it possible to mess pets up so that they are even WORSE than their previous crappy and buggy state? HOW???

The trait sucks.

Here we go again!

To drop targets the easy way, bind a key of your choice to “Lock Autotarget” – done. Far easier than any other method ppl tend to recommend.

Nah, you know, it’s easier to create fluff items for the gem store than provide QoL improvements like this.
This has been requested since forever. We ask for too much. Bad player base! Now get back to the gem store and make yourself useful!

To OP – if you’re a ranger, and find fighting thieves confusing, try use that pet of yours and lock it on the thief with F1. This will turn the pet into a ‘homing missile’ if you will, meaning that the instant the thief leaves stealth, the pet will set off to reengage him/her.

Use that to your advantage if you have a hard time keeping track of thieves. Even if you lose track of the thief, the pet doesn’t, IF you have locked it onto the target. This same little tip is also quite handy when fighting mesmers.

Skeletor.9360:

Blah blah blah

Rofl. Seriously. ROFL!

Mogar.9216:

I never understood why stealth do not break on a failed attack…

Anet logic

Blackhat.4016:

a) This is mainly an AI problem -> I don’t think they’ll ever fix this since improving the AI is extremely difficult

Depends. They can ‘cheat’ and improve pets a lot:

1. Increase attack range of pets
2. Shorten the time it takes for pets to use their special abilities
3. Make them move faster
4. Implement evade mechanics to F3
5. Shorten delay between attacks, so that when they actually do land their attacks, they get a chance to land more attacks within the same timespan.

…to name but a few. There are lots of things they could do, that doesn’t really have anything to do with ai programming. I’m not sure I would say that pets have any ai at all – they’re more like another form of weapon, with the ability to track their targets, and that’s it. They can’t make any real decisions, with the exception of using some of their abilities depending on their own health.

Bots in Quake used ai of sorts – they reacted to what the player did. Pets in this game are not like that, at all.

For PVE, if you’re not used to how a particular boss-fight plays, go with the GS ‘til you learn. Once you know what’s going on, use sword/x instead. Sword is not a reactionary weapon, when you need to get out of the way NOW, sword is unfortunately too slow.

I’d say we have too few utility slots in GW2 for traps to be fine. Running with only two traps feels weak. Running with three traps and you have no reliable stunbreaks.

Cufufalating.8479:

All nice improvements but nothing that will actually change anything. In other words, nice little buffs to people who already use these things but nothing good enough to make people who don’t want to.

This.

This game stopped evolving pretty much at release. Nothing seems to happen really, we’re still here, two plus years later with the same old skills and the same old mechanic.

GW1 had so many variations compared to this game. Here, we’re trying to tweak extremely limited build options to the extreme, but in the end nothing really makes any difference.
GW1 was the ultimate game when it came to trying out builds. GW2 is a pale shadow of its much more glorious past. It’s sad.

Anet, go back to your roots. Combine what made GW1 so succesful, with the improved gameplay and open world nature of this game. I guess it is to late for GW2, here’s hoping for perfection in GW3…

Low priority, like the rest of this game these days.

A full on spirit team would be, if not the most effective, most interesting, especially in a scenario where they could all stay together. 1 600 health/second from Spirit of Nature alone, now that could make for some very interesting scenarios. Each ranger brings the hyena as well.

Timed properly that would bring 20 spirits and 10 pets in one small location. I would LOVE to see that someday, just for the fun of it!

oxtred.7658:

And this ladies and gentlemen is why rangers have a bad reputation of not understanding defiance and using point blank shot for no reason.

Actually, I would say the majority of players in this game doesn’t understand defiance, so don’t come here saying this is a ranger specific issue.

Thing is, this is never thought to players in a way they can understand/remember.

Fault of the player? Sure, if you’re not the type of player reading up on wikis and such, you could argue that.
But seriously, the typical player, playing these games, don’t ever read up on these things. I would say this is a flaw in game design, more than anything.

Just by being here, reading this, means you’re not the typical, casual player type. It’s means you’re in the minority of more or less hardcore players (Without a ‘real life’ besides gaming, one could argue, but I won’t go there. Not this time).

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

rather not have the forage on instant pick up , you won’t beable to counter a Aoe spike if the opponents burst you while using that f2 , atleast currently you can prepair it and pick it up in a safe situation by ether CCing or KB#ing / entangling the target/ targets so you can pick it up.

making the pick up instant removes any counter play you can do and gives the opponents huge counter play by just waiting for the pig to start digging as soon as that happens it takes 0.5 to eat it or longer to use the gunk versions leaving you open to huge bursts / damage, the current way is much better.

Huh? This doesn’t make sense. Having the item replace F2 to allow activation when you want and still be able to use your weapon skills while waiting for the right moment to use it would be superior to current mechanic in every thinkable way.

Atherakhia.4086:

Any pet with any ability, including the F2, that has more than a half-second cast time needs to be reduced to a half-second.

Any pet with any ability that is channeled, including the F2, needs to follow the player to remain in the firing arc just like a player would if he let go of their mouse and used a skill.

Any pet that drops a useable item should no longer drop said item and instead should just replace the F2 skill with that item so a player no longer needs to weapon swap or pick it up. The F2 ability can still be centered on the player instead of the pet when cast.

That cover most of the mechanical problems?

+1
A change to forage alone would make a big difference in their usefulness. The mechanic is already in the game (thieves).

I would suggest dropping autotarget.

If I remember correctly, if you’ve locked your pet to a target with F1, it will stay locked to that target.

Kirkkis.8270:

The most troublesome for me are thieves that are constantly stealthing, which resets my pet back to me and some mesmers. Usually any bursty class, I can take the damage from if played correctly.

Make sure you lock your pets on any stealth abusing enemy with F1. That way your pet will try to reengage as soon as your foe leaves stealth. Faster than only having the pet assist you. Same goes for deceptive mesmers.

Chase.8415:

You can always just press escape to clear target.

Or you could have just used google and found this forum topic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Clear-Target-Key

“Set a key bind to Lock Auto target. The way the key works, it needs to be held down to function. When released, it clears target. So it basically is the clear target key.”

This.

Bind a key of your choice to “Lock autotarget”. Press the key and instantly drop your target. Profit.