Guild Wars 2

So, how do you deal with ppl running boon builds in pvp, with long lasting retaliation (60 seconds+) and protection?

I’ve met a few engineers that run boon-builds, and the only boon stripping I can bring is a weapon that strips one boon on a succesful roll on crit (60% chance when crit, 10 seconds cd). It’s just not good enough, so as a ranger, boon-builds like this are very hard to counter.

I use my pet, and to some extent switch to traps and such, but if I can’t directly attack my enemy, it’s rather difficult winning these encounters.

I’ve tried battleping, doesn’t help. I’ve tried the thing Raider posted above, doesn’t help either. Sometimes the game just lags no matter what, other times it’s running just fine. Ping is always steady and low. One spvp server may run perfectly, the another one lags like hell.

I can’t see what else I can do here on my end to try and sort this out.

Got a brand new router (Asus RT-AC66U), bought this because of crappy wireless performance on my previous router.

My computer is connected to the router with a cable. Pingplotter shows 0% packetloss to 206.127.146.73. Still, I experience the 10-30 seconds of delay from time to time.

- Was running solo in Orr, no lag at all.
- Joined a group to run CoF, path 1 – massive lag
- Went back outside, running some general pve – no lag
- Joined some spvp – lag spikes back

Lag seems far worse with other players around, but not even this is always the case.

I’m wondering if Anet have any way to analyze what’s actually going on for us that experience the lag, since I sure as hell don’t know anything more I can do.

BTW, 206.127.157.86 always shows higher latency compared to the other plaync-servers.

awe extender.1908:

- Investing 30 points (almost half of your total trait points!) in Beastmastery and gain only +30 in pet attribute is a mean joke! By investing 30 points in BM you have sacrificed either ranger damage or health. And what have you gained instead? A pet that does +30 more damage and still has major mechanic failures.

Tooltip is wrong, you get +10 attribute points to each pet attribute for each point invested in this traitline, so +300 to all attributes with 30 BM.

awe extender.1908:

And I am not accepting suggestions from players who say that you can call the pet back. This is not a valid fix.

This is the truth. Managing your pet is one thing (which I do just fine thank you), it’s not that hard most of the time. But when we pull our pets out of a fight, we cut our effectiveness in half.

We are supposed to be balanced with an active pet. With a pet on passive, pulled out of a fight, or dead, we are subpar compared to every other class – it really is that simple.

Dahkeus.8243:

Important Talents:
- Wilderness Knowledge: Lightning Reflexes is particularly important since it allows higher might stacking on pets (from pounce on the sword), so talents that reduce the cooldown are important.

Hm, what do you mean with this? How does LR impact might stacking on your pet from pounce? Do you mean you use LR to jump back, then leap back into melee range with sword 1 for one extra might? Sword 1 stacks might anyway since pounce is part of the chain, so if this what you mean, I think it’s a waste of use on LR.

Please elaborate!

Freezenox.8534:

They finally fixed opening strike!

Actually, this was fixed last patch, but didn’t make it to the patchnotes then. Been using it ever since in regular pve. But good they at least mentioned it this time!

Leuca.5732:

I would be more ok with the charge up time if the pet followed its target during the actual animation. With how it is now, you can have your River Drake (which has an AMAZING damage f2) fully charge up the skill and then have it go on full CD because the opponent got behind the pet without even realizing what the pet was doing.

That’s a really good suggestion imho!

I have dodge bound to mouse 3 (scrollwheel click), and have never experienced this bug. Worth a try for those of you having this issue?

Edit: Oh, now I’ve seen the bug as well. Following the example in the first post triggers this bug every single time. Ranger, greatsword.

Dahkeus.8243:

It’s frustrating, but is fair considering how much defensive stats drakes have and how hard their F2 hits.

…well, I will consider it fair once drakes are fixed to actually use their auto-use skills.

Hits hard compared to what – other pets, or other classes?

The F2 abilities are balanced considering their long cooldowns (30 secs untraited). Having an attack that is so hard to land on anything but stationary targets is, if anything, unbalanced.
In spvp, you need to be very lucky or play against really bad players to actually land their F2 attacks on anything. Heck, it’s hard to even get it to hit mesmer illusions/necro minions due to the very long activation time, lol!

Taym.8326:

I don’t understand the people expressing negative thoughts about keen edge. Other than the splitblade bug this ability will apply 5 bleeds for 6 seconds each (+condi duration) which at a base level is 1500 damage, which is not bad at all. For a condition spec’d player this damage would increase to 4280 damage over 8 seconds. Although it may not be a strong ability for a straight power build it is a strong ability for the condi lines.

It’s a decent trait in it’s current form, but since the trait belongs in the pool of abilities that you have no real control over, that’s the reason for my suggested buff. How does it compare to steady focus in your opinion?

Current system is almost as awkward as when you tried using interrupt skills for your pets in GW1 – it worked, but it wasn’t reliable, and trying to interrupt that 0.5 cast skill with your pet… well yeah, good luck with that.

Should be instant. Press F2, override any current action, and use that damn ability NOW!

BroScientist.9875:

I think a lot are forgetting this feature would be OPTIONAL.

If being able to set this to optional, I see no reason why it couldn’t be implemented. I would probably never use it myself though.

By the same idea, could also add a function, optional as well ofc, to autoswap pets on cooldown.

Nice to see some discussion about the proposed changes, all I ever wanted really!

Now, a few comments on your comments!

*

Taym:
The main reason for the suggestions when it comes to the opening strikes traits, is that these are mostly only really useful in regular pve vs trash mobs. It’s a decent opener in pvp, and worthless vs champion and boss mobs that have lots of health. A one trick thing, then if you’re specked with remorseless, you have en entire trait line that you have no use for at all really, when fighting tougher mobs. One/two opening strike(s) in a fight that lasts perhaps 5 minutes or more doesn’t really make much of a difference at all.

I agree on steady focus, when endurance is above 50% would be good.

Keen edge, I don’t think it would be overpowered. You don’t get it on demand since I believe you don’t normally try and get your health below 50% in the first place. See it as a “strike back” ability with a little more sting in it, compared to current implementation. Perhaps add quickness to the pet instead, but if so, it should last longer considering the limitations of pets.

Signet of the beastmaster could be very strong indeed with the suggested change. How about a longer internal cooldown, say 240 seconds?

*
AIMonster:
I think you missed to read at the very beginning of my post, where I said “These suggestions all take into account a possible change that active effect of signets apply to the ranger instead of the pet, or to both the ranger and the pet”!

The suggestion to “Predator’s Instinct” was to allow for easier “catching up” to a fleeing target, which I guess is one of the main reason this skill exists? Or for that matter, making it easier to get away from your target, even though the former is probably more common reason to use it.

I agree on your comment on piercing arrows, so scrap that idea altogether!

Beastmaster’s Might, yeah probably op. How about aegis for you and your pet only?

Just some food for thought.

Trait overhaul – Marksmanship
(These suggestions all take into account a possible change that active effect of signets apply to the ranger instead of the pet, or to both the ranger and the pet)

*

Minor traits:

Adept
Current: You have opening strike
Suggestion: You and your pet have opening strike

Master
Current: Pets have opening strike
Suggestion: When you swap pets, you and your pet regain opening strike

Grandmaster
Current: Opening strike always critical hits
Suggestion: Opening strike always critical hits, and you regain opening strike for you and your pet when you kill a foe.

*

Major traits:

Steady focus
Current: Damage increases by 10% when endurance is full
Suggestion: No change

Malicious Training
Current: Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets by 50%
Suggestion: Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets by 100%

Keen Edge
Current: Use Sharpening Stone when your health reaches 75%
Suggestion: Use Sharpening Stone when your health reaches 50% and gain quickness, duration 3 seconds (internal cooldown 30 seconds)

Signet Mastery
Current: Signets recharge 20% faster
Suggestion: Signets recharge 25% faster. Activating a signet grants 2 stacks of might for 5 seconds for you and your pet.

Predator’s Instinct
Current: Apply cripple (for 2 seconds) to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (15-second cooldown).
Suggestion: Apply cripple (for 2 seconds) to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (15-second cooldown). You and your pet gain swiftness for 5 seconds.

Beastmaster’s Bond
Current: Gain fury and might (3 stacks) when your pet’s health reaches 25% (for 9 seconds)
Suggestion: Gain fury and might (3 stacks) when your pet’s health reaches 25% (for 15 seconds)

Spotter
Current: Increases precision of nearby allies by up to 70 points
Suggestion: Increases power and precision for you, your pet and nearby allies by up to 35 points

Piercing Arrows
Current: All arrow attacks pierce targets
Suggestion: All ranged weapon attacks pierce targets

Beastmaster’s Might
Current: Activating a signet grants might (1 stack for 5 seconds).
Suggestion: Activating a signet grants you and nearby allies aegis for 10 seconds.

Eagle Eye
Current: Increases longbow and harpoon gun range. Increases longbow and harpoon gun damage by 5%
Suggestion: Increases longbow and harpoon gun range. Increases projectile speed by 25%

Signet of the Beastmaster
Current: Active effects of signets also affect you.
Suggestion: All of your signets are recharged when you swap pets (internal cooldown 45 seconds)

Remorseless
Current: Regain Opening Strikes when you kill a foe.
Current: You and your pet adds en extra stack of vulnerability when using opening strike, and the effect lasts longer (10 seconds, up from 5)

FlyingCrackers.5620:

Another thing I’ve noticed lately, is if I call my pet back sometimes it doesn’t run straight to me but it instead dodges or gets out of the way of an enemy.

I noticed my Moa Bird do it a couple times, I hit f4 and he went away from me and dodged this champion’s big attack. It may just be coincidence but if the AI was coded to do that more it would be great. Maybe even if it did on its own without pressing f4.

It is easier to call them back when you’re playing a ranged weapon as you can see everything the enemies are doing. I wish there is at least a button to make the pet dodge or something.

Can’t say I’ve noticed that. It’s been suggested before, that calling you pet back should make the pet dodge (maybe twice in a row) towards you, and then start running back. Seems like an easy fix, they don’t even need a special animation for it imho, just the dodge-mechanic applied to them.

Dahkeus.8243:

Rangers have some of the best abilities to snare enemies in the game, so it doesn’t matter really what run speed your enemy has if you’ve hit them with chill from your axe, crip shot from your short bow, kick from your sword, immobilize/cripple from muddy terrain, barrage from long bow, crippling talon from dagger, frost trap, spike trap, or any of the many, many abilities that pets have which also snare targets.

It’s a little misleading posting things like this, since we can’t have them all at once!

I love my pets, and I manage them very well, and know of both the drawbacks and advantages with pets and pet classes. I see no myth busted here, nothing new under the sun really.

However, I wanted to give two big thumbs up to Shiren – you, my friend, got everything right in your posts. What you wrote are the current truth about ranger pets.

Such a simple thing as being able to res a pet if you choose to, and/or pets being able to rally when the opponent goes down? Of course that’s how things should work.

So many ways Anet could make “quality of life” improvements for the ranger, if they just wanted to.

baba.7603:

We, the rangers, are like homeless children. Someone came by and gave us a candy then we got all so excited thinking someone actually care about us. Once we came to realize that everyone else get candies too, we are all back to square one.

It is all just talk so far. I will see with my own eyes on Friday about the patch. We shouldn’t even get our hopes up that high according to previous patches.

Lol, what did I tell ya?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Signet-of-the-Hunt-is-still-useless/first#post966317

*

If you think about what mr. Peters have told us so far, the “buffs to the ranger” are all (more or less) general buffs to the game.

Improved arrowspeed – would most likely apply to all classes using bows
Improved movement speed – several classes are getting this, perhaps all?
Improvemets to pets – quite likely to apply to minions as well (assumption)

So, actually, we have yet to see any specific ranger-only buffs I guess, but hey, on the 14:th we’ll know for sure. Still like the improvements he talked about, but as I said, none of them seems to be ranger specific tbh.

The only actual class specific buff I’ve read about so far, is that thieves are getting a damage buff to pistols.

I think we just have to be patient and see what else, if anything, might be coming our way!

Vick.6805:

so that each profession’s main mechanics can suffer the same ‘shutdown’ effects.

Well, you can kill our pet, that’s our “main mechanic”. We however, can’t take away yours!

I find the idea interesting, in some way, shape or form.

Works fine during the day for me, but in the evenings it’s the same story all over again. Don’t even know why I bother posting here anymore, hoping to get some help is futile

Yes!

I fully agree on your suggestions as well, and have been meaning to post similar suggestions for quite some time.
Especially the mousepointer issue should be rather easy to solve I guess, I hope they’ll consider these suggestions!

djtool.8372:

They should have separate tabs in the hotjoin menu.

Yes please. 5vs5 is more kittenn anyway!

Agree. At least three setups that you can easily swap between would be very nice. I for one like to run one setup for general pve, one for dungeons and one for wvw. If you could implement this somehow, it would be most welcome.

plasmacutter.2709:

EDIT:

I will try this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/FPS-TIP-Quickly-increase-your-FPS-on-multicore-CPU

and see what it does to help this issue.

A better option: http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

And while you’re there, get Process Lasso as well.

Question, that might already been asked:
If you weren’t able to log in at all during the event because of login issues, what’s your policy about us? I’d love to been part of the event, but it wasn’t possible to login on the last part of the event for me, and I’m sure others as well.

Nurse.1085:

A 8x channel would be a buff if it still equaled out to the same damage a 10x would be.

All for a change like this. Heck, they could make it 5x for all i care, if damage would be equal. Same damage as now, in half the time.

OGDeadHead.8326:

By recommendation from my IPS, I’ll bypass my router and try playing directly connected to the fibre connection.
I’ll try this this coming weekend. If things seems to work better then, I’ll go grab a new router (it’s time to upgrade that one anyway).
If not, then I know for sure that these aren’t issues that I can solve on my end.

Just ran some tests without the router, lag is just as bad with or without it. Thing is, it doesn’t always lag, but tonight was really crappy.
If only I could do anything here on my end to fix this somehow.

By recommendation from my IPS, I’ll bypass my router and try playing directly connected to the fibre connection.
I’ll try this this coming weekend. If things seems to work better then, I’ll go grab a new router (it’s time to upgrade that one anyway).
If not, then I know for sure that these aren’t issues that I can solve on my end.

racta.4250:

the new Sig of the hunt is going to be very hard not to use.

Also for you people saying the speed out of combat is a waste, it is amazing in WvW. If you can create a little separation and break out of combat you can get away from anything. This makes it incredibly easy to outrun zergs and small groups when you are solo. It’s also permanent, so when the horn buff wears off your still moving.

It’s also great at catching people. No longer will anything get away from us since if they get far enough away, we go to super speed and catch up.

That is, unless they buff the speedbuffs of every class, something we do not know yet!

Core parking can have an impact on some games for some odd reason. I’d like to recommend this little gem, truly state of the art for keeping your system running to the best of its ability:

http://www.bitsum.com/prolasso.php

The only balanced class in the game is ranger. A ranger can’t burst anyone down in a matter of seconds, and we sure can’t play a true bunker build either, and there are better roamers than us as well.

So if Anet truly wants to go for balance, they should drag other classes down to the level where the ranger currently stands. Ooh, just imagine the amount of qq that would bring, lol!

The minor traits for rangers under Marksmaship are decent if combined with grandmaster trait “Remorseless” – in regular pve!

However, vs boss mobs, it’s perhaps the weakest traitline in the whole game out of all classes, since we get an opening strike with crit in the beginning of the fight, and that’s it for maybe 10-20 minutes, depending on the mob.

I’d like to suggest that in addition to regaining opening strikes either when out of combat, or when killing a mob (through remorseless), a ranger and the pet should regain opening strikes at least every 30 seconds or so, so that you get a timed component as well. Or some other method of regaining opening strikes.
“Remorseless: Regain opening strikes when you kill an enemy or when you swap pet.”

1. When going down and thereby respawning, you get that scoreboard totally “in your face”. Please, for the love of god – don’t! Don’t put that scoreboard in my face when all I want to do is get back out there and return the favor.

2. Many, many times, in the heat of the battle, I for some reason loose the target of choice, so suddenly, my char stops attacking, even when autoattack is enabled.
This, in conjunction with numerous issues with this class, makes it more than a little frustrating. I can’t believe the amount of games i’ve lost onlkpy due to this very bug.

3. When playing, keeping the right mouse button pressed, when you get to the point that u cactually need the mousepointer, it’s gone.
This is especially an issue with multi monitors and more than one screen. Suggestion: Make the mousepointer “flash” when reaching a certaing amount of “darkness”.

Get your kitten together, and start doing some serious fixes – tyvm.

This is a good “fix”, but it won’t be enough. Not even by a long shot.

Server 206.127.146.73 is at a more or less constant 30% packet loss for me, and is always the only server in the chain that shows any pl whatsoever.

The lag is back today, sorry to say. Been good a couple of days, but today I get ~20 second lagspikes from time to time, and the Black Lion Trading company times out completly.

JonPeters.5630:

Agreed. Signet of the hunt needs to and will go to 25%.

That’s good news!

While you’re at it, you might wanna take a look at active effects of signets, since I think you somehow got them mixed up.

They should of course apply to the ranger first, and if you trait for it – apply to the pet as well. Now it is, you know, the other way around, which clearly could not have been intended from the beginning!

;)

Greiger.7092:

Horribad at PvP? My pvp build IS spirits, and I run around WvW with them. They are terrible for dungeons not PvP. 2nd the extra health trait and follow trait can be taken together.

We talked about pvp here. WvW is not “real” pvp. For pvp, they suck – bad.

krojack.4920:

Edit: ArenaNet should take a lesson from John Smedley over at Sony. https://twitter.com/j_smedley It’s awesome how he gets involved with the community.

OT, but a response to this:

Having played Vanguard, which is one of their titles, I beg to differ. A lot.

AlexRD.7914:

Volume IV is out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFnXVxvAet4
Thanks for Aliatis for identifying this bug

Thank you very much for posting these videos AlexRD. These are issues that can be hard to describe only with words on a forum.

I keep wondering about our “hunter’s call” skill – clearly it can’t be intended, that to make this skill work fully, you have to keep your target in sight during the entire duration of the effect? Bugged as he** if you ask me!

Opening strikes are still good traits, with remorseless and longbow – in pve! Guaranteed crit from you and pet, plus easily stack 20% vuln. for 20% more incoming damage, that’s pretty huge imho. A little difficult to build around for regular spvp though.

moonstarmac.4603:

Traits:
10/10/20/5/25
Marksmanship: III / VII / XII
Wilderness Surv: VI / VII
Beast: II

The only reason I added 5 into Nature Magic was for the regen @ 75%. I’ve found this does come in very handy in a tough fight and procs ever so often while under 75% HP.

Afaik, it triggers once when you get below 75%??

I’d drop the 5 i nature magic, and put them into BM for natural healing. Constant ‘regen’ for both you and your pet.

Feel free to remove quickness from other classes, just leave it for rangers. We can’t burst anyone down in 2-3 seconds anyway, even with quickness.

For pve (only traits listed):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQBggY9YP95PdBvHxS9t3LA

Since they fixed opening strikes, I find this build a good combination for both high damage through vulnerability, and good survival through passive regen (with signet, dolyak runes and natural healing). Weapons I tend to use the most are longbow and sword/horn, axe/horn or shortbow.

Natural vigor – do any ranger ever play without this trait, lol?

Turning of autoattack on sword 1 makes for much more fun gameplay with that weapon btw!

Sarlack.4096:

Runes of the Dolyak

This!

Remember buying 6 superior runes for 50 silver each or something, now they’re up at 3,50 gold or something, lol!

Sleepy.2647:

That depends, if your target can mitigate, block, evade or do anything to avoid your burst then the burst was completely used/wasted where as sustained DPS will always be there so no, burst is not always the best for PvP…

That’s true of course, but I’d say it’s mostly the case anyway!

From a pvp perspective, burst damage is far more important than consistent damage over time.
Let’s say class A can hit for 20,000 in one shot, the follow up with normal attacks of 100 damage/hit, it’s that big, burst attack that’s interesting, and what’s going to count.

If class B is hitting for 1,000 damage/hit and have no real burst ability, they’re eventually going to land on the same dps within a set amount of time (if the cooldown on the burst ability for class A is balanced enough).

If you can use an attack every second, it would look like this between class A (burst) and class B:

1 second:
A: 20,000 dps
B: 1,000 dps

10 seconds:
A: 2,090 dps
B: 1,000 dps

20 seconds:
A: 1,095 dps
B: 1,000 dps

60 seconds:
A: ~431 dps
B: 1,000 dps

So, imho, burst damage is far, far superior and much more important in pvp, compared to regular measurements of dps.

Vs a big boss mob in pve with millions of hp, that’s a whole other story. For that, you’d want as high dps as possible.

Akisame.9508:

I’m happy to see this thread reopen. It’s true that, as Rummy just said along with others, the conditions/situation is not ‘real WvW/PvP reality’ it still exposes a fault in the system.

Exactly.

Especially pets – sometimes it feels they land their attacks once in a lifetime. Mesmer clones/illusions, to some degree necro minions and even the thief elite “Thieves Guild” many times (most of the time) pose a much bigger threat than our pets.

To be fair, the pets should cause so much concern to the opponent, that they simply can’t ignore them, they should have to deal with them or suffer the consequences. Ignoring them should be rather painful.

As for the issue with arrows – just take a look at video 2 again folks. That video truly speaks for itself about how incredibly flawed the current system really is. Even if normal gameplay very rarely is this extreme, it happens far too many times during the course of a spvp game to not be a serious issue, and it’s hurting the class with most flaws the most.

Eagerly awaiting to see you heading out solo on your ranger next, now that would be impressive!