Guild Wars 2

Red Jay.2516:

fishergrip.4082:

@ Agadar.4931

It does not reflect projectiles, it only blocks them. There is a big difference.

Wrong.

It does reflect projectiles. Try it yourself. The skill tooltip is just misleading.

Yes, tested and confirmed. A good skill that would be very good if we were allowed to move around when using it. If not, increase damage in melee range so that we’re not sitting ducks when using it!

I mostly agree with all you said.
3 – I like 3 in its current form, perhaps dealing a bit more damage like you said.
4 – a slight increase in kd time
Would like to add being able to move when using #5 – I hate skills that makes you unable to move in general, so there are more out there that needs that fix (looking at you, whirling defense

Causic.3798:

Plus when you F1 at a thief, and he goes in stealth the pet resets and wont continue to fight him :/
Why cant they make pets like mesmers Phantasms that will attack the thief as soon as he comes back out, quite annoying having to recast F1 everytime (considering im aiming to kill other people, I just sick my pet at them to scare them off).

Yeah, this truly sucks. Some classes (read: thieves) have it so kitten easy, and we have to work so hard to be on the same level. Mr Peters really ought to step it up and fix stuff like this, pets should automatically be all over that thief the moment (s)he comes out of stealth. Instead, we should be glad if our pets gets to land any attacks before the thief goes back into stealth.

In so many ways, phantasms/illusions and thief elite “Thieves Guild” are working better than our pet, and that is the biggest joke of the day. Ranger pet should be no#1 compared to all other classes’ pets/minions/whatever – there shouldn’t even be any question about it.

aesu.6145:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Don’t mess with coreparking by messing with the registry. Go here for a better option!

http://bitsum.com/prolasso.php

What can you do by installing this program? Seems like some sort of process explorer…

A whole lot. The main purpose of the program is keeping the computer responsive at all times by lowering priority of (background)processes that takes up a lot of cpu cycles. Just read up on the page what it can do for you – I truly recommend this program to everyone.

I don’t know how many downed duels i’ve lost due to our stupid pet just standing next to us, doing absolutely nothing. It truly, utterly sucks. FIX IT!

Sword #1 would be fine if:

• dodge would override the sequence
• pressing F to stomp would override the sequence

If they fix those two things, I think it sword #1 would be perfect.

Have you guys tried the “switch seats” thing, to see if this is indeed account related, or if it is something with your computers? Would be most interesting to know.

Yes it works. Been discussed and tested before.

I suggest reading up on what a DNS server is, then show me some examples where changing a DNS server in any way improved latency in any noticeable way.

imz.8593:

Expansive.3716:

You havn’t seen the pet heal you when it was dead?

I’ve had that happen several times now

Actually now i have seen in it a couple of times, always under water. My pet was healing me and kept doing it after he died. It needs to be fixed.

Working as intended. Same with “Search and Rescue” – even if pet is downed (they don’t really die – ever), they can still use these abilities. This was even stated by a dev, but now I can’t find that post.

If they take away that ability, downed skill 3 will be utterly useless, as will Search and Rescue, a skill which I’d say is almost exclusively used in dungeons – 9 times out of 10, my pet are in downed state or soon will be, when sent in for a search and rescue attempt.

Lick wounds and search and rescue were both horribly bad before the last patch, now they both work decently, when they work (they are both buggy as hell).

Add a stomp-like ability underwater – problem solved, without nerfing these skills back to their previous useless state.

Hm, what exactly do people think a DNS server has to do with latency in online games?

Flying mounts is all I want!

Loved flying around in Vanguard, that was truly awesome!

Madmardagan.7945:

i5 is better than i7.. difference in performance is very small vs the cost

Cheaper yes, better no.

Some nice tips there for sure.

I’d like to add that 15 points into nature magic, for boon sharing, is pretty nice to have for people that wants their pets to be all that they can be, works very well in synergy with some pet abilities, for example the Jungle Stalker’s Mighty Roar ability; 5 stacks of might to you and your pet, and since you got 5 stacks, you’re sharing those with the pet so it gets another 5 stacks of might for a total of 10.

Sigils and runes that works well with the Fortifying Bond trait are for example Rune of Lyssa, Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Battle.

In a group, the best thing with longbow (imho) is #3 – Hunter’s Shot. 10 stacks of vulnerability = 10% more incoming damage to the mob from the entire group.
This skill alone blows the shortbow out of the water when it comes to total dps for your group.
With Sigil of Peril and the Quick Draw trait, you can almost keep it up nonstop. There’s no way the shortbow can make up for that in a group scenario, unless you have other classes stack vulnerability.

SolarNova.1052:

Therefor 4.6ghz is roughly equivalent to a 3770k at 4.5ghz and thats what GW2 needs to stay above 30 fps.

Ehm, no?

I7 920 @ 3.7 GHz, 460 GTX sli, no issues with framrates at all. No need to oc that high to stay above 30 fps. But then again, if your cpu can handle it – go for it!

Very nice writeup!

I like the idea behind forage, but I think the implementation leaves a lot to wish for – it’s a clumsy mechanic tbh.

If they’re going to keep it this way, I think the duration of some of the items picked up needs to be longer, and the cooldown of their F2 ability needs to be shorter.

I’d rather see either that you and your pet automatically gets a buff when using the skill (if it is a buff), and/or groupwide buff. If it is something that’s used offensively, it should be used automatically.

OR, third option – don’t force us to pick up the item, but rather replace the F2 ability of the pet with whatever it picked up, and let us trigger it that way.

I see a lot of room for improvements to their F2 skills to make them easier to use.

Angriff.1935:

They could just implement the cast bar like GW1 had.

Actually, I like that idea for many reasons, even though the days of oldshcool interrupting are long gone

But, it would be a welcome addition imho.

Don’t mess with coreparking by messing with the registry. Go here for a better option!

http://bitsum.com/prolasso.php

awe extender.1908:

Or as someone else mentioned in some other thread:

When you swap pets, they both stay active for a short period of time.
eg. You swap out your spider with the drake but the spider remains active in battle for 60 sec while the drake also has joined you in the battle.

So you get two pets for a short period of time at every swap.

That would be a nice option for grandmaster trait, but 60 seconds with two pets are too long with the game in its current state. 10-15 seconds would be enough.

Agree with op, too much burst in this game atm.

Eagerly awaiting a new report from VincentDW.9376 to see if these issues are indeed account-related, with some accounts being set to lower priority than others.

At this point, I’m also thinking about servers not being up to par when it comes to population, and some accounts are being down throttled in priority. Could explain why I have 30-90% packetloss on the most popular areas, but have zero issues in low level areas with very few ppl in them. A theory anyway.

COF dungeon at 50-90% packetloss this evening!

Have my ISP checking into this, but considering the huge amount of people, from all over the world, I’d say this is not an issue with our connections, but something with their servers that only affects some of us.

This would be very cool!

This wouldn’t be an issue if the stomp mechanic was implemented in water as well. Lick wounds was broken before, now it works just right, it’s the lack of stomp that makes it somewhat op underwater now. However, it’s not anymore op than the ever evading thief.

Implement stomp underwater – issue solved.

VincentDW.9376:

My suspicion is that somehow her account is being served at a consistently lower priority than mine, since this problem never occurs in reverse – I’m never the one lagged while she’s doing fine. The next time this happens, I’m going to have us switch seats and each log in from the other’s machine to see if the problem tracks the machine or the account.

This is something I’ve been suspecting ever since I started to see these lag issues. It’s very interesting to read your post here. Also, your suggestion to “switch seats” to see what happens then would also be very, very interesting to read.
I’m going to have to remember to check back on this thread with your report!

Most likely related to what I wrote in my last post in the Network lag thread, check it out:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Network-Lag-Merged/page/17#post1088482

(To check which ip the current zone/map you’re in at the moment, just type /ip in the chat-window).

*

I’ve been running pingplotter to diagnose the lag spikes I’ve been experiencing the last couple of weeks.
The last few days, I’ve set it up to diagnose the Citadel of Flame dungeon – ip 206.127.159.242.
During the day, ping is excellent, and no packetloss. Starting at about 17.00, the server starts to show increasingly amounts of packetloss, starting at 10%, and then later in the evening, it can be as high as 60% packetloss – totally insane!

Note, I don’t even run my game, I can watch through pingplotter all areas that are out of the question to even consider playing.

I’m running pingplotter on three different computers, and they all show the same thing. I’ve tried with and without the router, makes no difference. In short, these issues have nothing to do with my computer(s) and ingame settings, since as I said, I can see directly through pingplotter if an area is playable or not.

As I write this, I’m monitoring the Citadel of Flame server – it’s at 50% packetloss!

If I switch to another area to monitor, for example the dungeon Twilight Arbor, it’s showing 0% packetloss, with an occasional spike of 10%. Other areas, like Lions Arch, shows 0% packetloss.
A difference from perfect in one area, to totally unplayable in another area – at the same time!

How can this be? Why are different areas in the game so incredibly different when it comes to network performance?
And once again, I monitor this without even running the game, so the game itself has nothing to do with it!

The last steps in pingplotter for me, before reaching the plaync.com servers, goes through a couple of Level3.net servers.

For the rest of you experiencing these issues, if you run pingplotter, what are the last few servers you go through before reaching the plaync.com ones? Would be interesting to know.

Also, the packetloss I experience are sometimes directly related to me being kicked out of the game with an error 7.×.×.x…

first fix thieves and mesmers – burst and stealth, THEN you can come talk about nerfing ranger pets.

Fynd.4890:

No amount of monthly, iterative, baby-steps buffing/nerfing balance changes are going to fix the fundamental problems with this game: stealth.

This.

A game mechanic, broken to the core the way it’s implemented. Should never have made it to the game in the first place, but unfortunately, it’s not going to change.

I kinda like the “send out the dogs” style of Guard atm, it kind of fits the idea of a pet-class!

After they fix this, they should also fix the never ending evading thief, thank you very much.

cupachabra.3510:

This ends the discussion unfortunately and leaves the problem at the users door.

This is where they need to step up and go further in their troubleshooting.
According to friends, issues quite similar to ours happened with WoW a few years back. The issue then was apparently a misconfigured/failing router/switch somewhere, and Blizzard took the time to examine and help fix the thing- their customers simply wouldn’t accept to get blamed for having lousy computers/isps.
If I remember correctly, it wasn’t something wrong with their hardware, nor the ISPs, but somewhere between. Of course, wow-players pay a monthly subscription fee and we don’t, so here it comes down to goodwill-effort from Anet if they want to really try and help us out.
Leaving this to the customer to resolve isn’t an option really, it is they as a company that will have to try and fix this for us.
It used to work just fine for me, now I can check different areas with pingplotter to determine beforehand if it is even worth logging in, or if the PL are way out of hand to be able to play at all.

Agree with all you said. I laughed when I read what you said about trying to stomp someone close or on a friendly downed player, I don’t know how many times I’ve began to res instead of landing that stomp, loosing cruical seconds and going down myself because of that.
All of these issues, bundled with all the lag/disconnects and other terrible mechanics…

GW2 was released too early.

I’ve been collecting a lot of data lately regarding the issues so many of us here have with lag spikes in this game. I’ll post a new thread about it soon, but here’s some info for now:

1. Each map/area is a different server, virtual or real, with different ip-adresses (check by typing /ip in the chat window ingame). Personally I can play just fine on one map, and lag like hell on another. Goes for every game mode in the game. Also, to make things worse to troubleshoot, one area that works just fine during the day, may be almost unplayable during the evening.

2. Speaking with friends why this only affects some of us, it’s very likely a misconfigured or failing router/switch somewhere between us and their servers. Otherwise, everyone would be affected the same, or something’s up on their servers that only affect some accounts.
Running pingplotter, I can see there’s a huge difference in packetloss between their different servers.

3. If it was something with our computers, we would have the same issues all the time, everywhere. At least for me, that’s not the case. So, point 2 above is most likely the reason this is happening.

This is not something that can be fixed on our part. Anet will have to look into this for us, and try figuring out what’s up. I hope they’re doing just that, if not – shame on them!

saVdoom.2067:

The signet effects should be effects to the PLAYER. And perhaps if you trait 20 points somewhere else it would also mirror the effects to the pet. Anything unlike that is stupid since our pet is completely unreliable… and spending 30 points just to be in pair with the signet of other classes that require no traits is just stupid.

This.

Agree. I’ve also found this trait to be rather useless, one of many.

In fact, all of the BM special traits should be combined into one (with special abilities still applied to specific types of pets), and new traits should be added. Current implementation makes it not optimal to combine different types of pets = less diversity = less fun gameplay.
It feels like they went out of time and/or ideas before release by letting these very specialized traits through. A complete trait overhaul is probably planned though (for all classes), but it may take at least 6 months before they change anything.

kRiza krimos.1637:

OGDeadHead.8326:

30% more critical damage works.

30% faster runspeed – nah, not really.

30% speed works, ive tested it last night. It doesnt stack with sigil of hunt or swiftness but if you have only pet 30% speed you can notice your pet moves faster!

It moves faster, but according to the bug list, it’s not 30% faster but ~14%. May have been fixed at some point that I’m not aware of.

Will bump this one as well, and I agree fully with Atherakhia – these types of traits are indeed awful, and rangers seem to have most of them:

Keen Edge, Predator’s Instinct, Beastmaster’s Bond, Enlargement, Circle of Life…

Remove Magic Find, stupid stat that should never have been implemented to begin with. Anet sure have made many strange decisions in this game.

Never had disconnects (error 7:xxx) before, but have had quite a few lately. Started with Wintersday update.

Calavero.3420:

It’s just so irritating having played through game after game finally getting things right, and having seemingly every new game that comes out try to reinvent the wheel regarding things like… pet scaling, resistances and ability to not be destroyed by AoE.

WoW eventually figured out that AI controlled pets will never reliably not stand in the fire. Eventually, after years of patches, they made them (for every class) take drastically reduced damage from AoE. RIFT (after a while) did the same thing, by building AOE resistance into the pet classes’ talent trees.

Both games have pet AI, pathing and and control vastly superior to GW2’s. So… how long will we have to wait before ANet finally bows to the inevitable, realizes they’ve created the same problem the same way every other game with pets has, and finally decides to implement the same solution?

QFT!

Can add more games to that list (Vanguard is just one more example) that made serious improvements to pets ability to deal with AOE.

It needs to be done, it will be done, in some way, shape or form – I can’t in my wildest dreams believe that the Anet developers are that ignorant that they don’t see this as a major issue.
Pets/minions in this game don’t really have ai to begin with – they can run from point A to B, follow an opponent and use their abilities. Heck, even the old, old reaperbots for Quake 1 had a much more sofisticated ai than what’s seen in this game!

Here’s just a small extract from their (reaperbots) abilities, back in the day:

• Picks the best weapon
• Strafes
• Circles or charges
• Goes for health if needed

30% more critical damage works.

30% faster runspeed – nah, not really.

NaturalPortman.9562:

Too much talk about ranger being op. I AM SCARED GUYS.

Irony, or you’re just here trolling again – as usual. Hard to tell irony from a serious post on a forum, but with no I’d go with trolling.

JonPeters.5630:

I made some changes to improve pets hitting moving targets in this upcoming build. I wouldn’t expect those changes to light the world on fire, but they have improved. There is more to be done in this area still but feedback on how much this upcoming change helped, once it is in, would be great.

The situation has improved somewhat, but more needs to be done. Vs many opponents, pets hits once in a lifetime. They still tend to stop before actually attacking, loosing their opportunity to land the attack if the opponent moves ever so little. Even with the new buff to SoH + the traited +30% speed they have a hard time catching up to people.

Some good suggestions can be found in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Pet-overhaul/first

Topic. Any way to cleanse conditions from pets?

If not, both the signet and our grandmaster trait could use buffing to include pets.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Same old here.

Works perfect during the day. Now in the evening, it’s back to lag-mayhem, with 10-30 seconds of lag.

Anet, do you have any tools to check what’s causing this for us that experience this?

This all started with the introduction of “The lost shores”.

Sounds like you are on an ADSL RIM, that happens to be congested.

I got 100/10 fibre connection (actually 100/100 right now, courtesy of my ISP who is trying everything at their end to help me with this).
Other games play just fine, and we play a lot of them in my home – BF3, Vanguard, COD, TF and many, many others. Every single game works perfect when it comes to network latency. GW2 used to work perfect as well, but not anymore.

Just went ahead and jumped into GW1 – it lags in there as well, classic rubberbanding. Are the servers for GW1 and GW2 even located at the same place, or?

Same old here.

Works perfect during the day. Now in the evening, it’s back to lag-mayhem, with 10-30 seconds of lag.

Anet, do you have any tools to check what’s causing this for us that experience this?

This all started with the introduction of “The lost shores”.