Guild Wars 2

Tumult.2578:

Even a smaller guild with just 2 rangers could add up to 90 pets. What about the 40 some aquatic pets? Where would they go?
Personally, I would rather see them in the personal home Instance, but maybe both could work.

Just limit it to one of each type. As for the aquatic pets – a giant fish tank should do the trick. Make the pets fight each other every now and then as well – would bring more life to the guild hall / home instance.

It’s a shame they nerfed Go for the Eyes. In the old days, with an eagle or a hawk, that would for sure be a very solid trait for duels (blind every sixth second, prefearbly in combination with traited glyphs).

Rose Solane.1027:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Rose Solane.1027:

I think the main problem with this fight is that it is not an interesting one.

Won’t argue against that.

Rose Solane.1027:

We think the fight is doable with 5 to 10 deaths. We are all very experienced players, some of us even complete raids (not my thing). I think we are amongst the better players in the game (top 10% I guess). I think a story instance where experienced players die 5 to 10 times is too difficult.

So you say you’re probably among the top 10% in this game, and yet you on average die 5-10 times in this encounter. I mean – really?

Yes Maybe I underestimate the level that players have.

I did the encounter once. I probably will not die as much if I did it again. But, why should I? As I said, it isn’t an interesting fight. And I don’t think that repeating a rather uninteresting fight just to learn from it is fun, or something I should do in the game.

One of the my guild mates did it as an elementalist. That made the fight easier (according to her) so I was surprised to hear that she also died a few times.

To be positive: This fight isn’t the worst boss fight in the history of GW2. I think it is amongst the better ones. I simply don’t like most boss fights much

I won’t argue against anything in your reply here. I will however argue against people complaining about this fight, saying it’s ‘ridiculously hard’. It’s not, in fact it’s very easy, but players in this game are so used to the very easy and forgiving gameplay in this game, that they will complain as soon as something semi-challenging shows up, that they will more or less demand that Anet should be dumbing down the content to suit their needs.

Everything i GW2 is easy. Coming from Vanguard (the best mmo noone ever heard of), this game is THE epitome of a casual mmo, if there ever was one.

I truly hope Anet will continue to push more challenging content even for solo players like myself, and not only cater to the category of players that wants everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Prahasta.1748:

Elementalists are much better healers

Like hell they are!?! If a druid goes for full out healing, your elementalist arent’t even in the same league. Healing druids that knows what they’re doing, with a group that understands how a druid healing works, no other class comes even close to health healed per second. Not even close.

Personally, for duels, I’d probably replace Guard for Glyph of Equality. I would maybe replace CS for VE, and possibly add another glyph in there (I love glyphs, what can I say).

As a ranger main (for life!) I expect nothing but nerfs, and no fixes at all for the thing that defines this class – our pets.
No worries though – we’re used to it, and we always find a way to stand strong, even though we have most of the community and apparently most of the devs working against us.
Flippin numbers around in a spreadsheet and call that ‘balance’ is a joke, just so you know.

Khisanth.2948:

OGDeadHead.8326:

My general tip for this game, not only when it comes to this specific topic, would be:

Always try to find alternative (easier/faster) way to do things.

That depends. For me if I actually did that the optimization becomes the game and that always results in a bad ending.

Well, to each his/her own. I just give my suggestion, which you can apply to your life outside of gaming just as well (as long as you don’t hurt anyone else in the process).

Why make things more complicated than they are/need to be?

Justine.6351:

No I’m trying to be real. Claiming hot pets are magically more survivable, when 3 of the most survivable pets are core pets, is a joke. If anyone can point out which 3 specific pets, all 3 from different families, I am talking about then you know more about ranger pets than myself, everyone else on this forum and the devs.

Well, let’s see now.

#1: Armor Fish (or any ranged pet)
#2: Bear/Smokescale
#3: Drakes/Devourer

Actually, a list like this is flawed to begin with. All the ranged pets are @ #1 depending on encounter/scenario. In pvp, if your ranged pet is placed out of harms way, they are all #1, for example, and for that, Bristleback is definitely #1 (unless the AI move them close to fire off Rain of Spikes, haven’t done enough testing to verify if they do).

Care to object to this list, Justine?

anduriell.6280:

that demands some dodging or kitting rekt idiots.

In my experience, depending on how you play, you don’t have to dodge a single time in this fight.

If you do the running around and range him, you can do that without having to dodge at all. If you go melee you’ll have to be a bit more careful.

The adds are not a problem either, I ignore them completely. If the jade pops, I tend to take it out, but I don’t think that’s really necessary either. Beware of confusion stacks.

I mostly try to stand behind the mob when in melee vs the more dangerous ones. Even if I’m the only one in melee range, I always move and try to position myself behind the mob. Many times that’s quite enough for avoiding a lot of damage (most hard hitting mobs have attacks with a ‘wind up’ time, so in general this will work almost everywhere).
In short – move, move, move!

Oh, and stunbreakers are always good to have, and rangers have a lot of them – just pick one or two that you think works for you. Many, if not all skills in GW2 today have more than one purpose/effect (which is a good thing!), and with that said, my two favourite stunbreakers are Quickening Zephyr (superspeed is supernice) and Glyph of Equality.

Ah, nwm, found out what it was on the wiki page

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seraph_Morale

(Killing 25 enemies will summon a Shining Blade assassin.)

Sometimes when I play in Lake Doric, a npc spawns that helps fighting mobs. The npc is tagged with our guild name as well, and has a blue “name”.

Anyone know how and why these helper npcs pop up?

Tsumiju.3071:

Each zone brings us a new portal scroll, which I find a handy way to get around the new areas and shared account slots are a worthwhile way to make use of these. However it would be of huge benefit to be able to “stack” these and create a combined item that offers a destination choice when used!

Hopefully others will agree and the devs will take note

+1 for this suggestion

They just need to be careful with certain things. For example, if every mob and their grandmother has access to blocks, it will be tedious more than challenging, since your unblockable skills only lasts so long and will be on cooldown.

Same thing with mobs spamming immobilize, stuns or things like that – your condi clear/stunbreakers will be on cd.

They for sure can make harder content, just as long as they think things through. There’s a fine balance between hard and tedious – I for sure wouldn’t want an area where every single trash mob would be like fighting a veteran class mob that takes ages to burn down (unless you’re in a zerg).

My general tip for this game, not only when it comes to this specific topic, would be:

Always try to find alternative (easier/faster) way to do things.

Where are you playing in order to “get absolutely rekt in a matter of seconds”? I’ve yet to find content in this game that is so punishing as you describe it.

Maria Murtor.7253 has already explained with a very good animated gif from where you jump and glide, why aren’t people reading when offered the solution? Seems like there are so many people complaining about everything these days.

So, I’ll link her image in this thread as well. Credits to Maria Murtor.7253

Here’s a bunch of screens showing where to glide from. Good luck.

Is this the location OP is talking about? If so, this is not even a jumping puzzle. You simply glide onto the platform and that’s that.

I must ask the ranger community – do you find the final fight of “The head of the snake” LS, Caudecus, hard?

The general consensus on the forums seems to be that the the encounter is way to hard, and players die left and right.

I’ve tried it three times by now; ranged kiting, ranged kiting with pet on passive (as in inactive during the whole fight) and melee with sword & dagger, and have yet to die in this fight.
Is it simply a matter of our class carrying us hard through this so that this fight is easy for rangers, or are players simply building too glassy while not mastering their glassy builds (I’m running my lazy “works everywhere” choice – celestial armor with a mix of trinkets)?

The room where the fight takes place leaves a lot to wish for, but other than that, it’s a pretty straightforward fight with easy mechanics. So, what’s the deal here?

Rose Solane.1027:

I think the main problem with this fight is that it is not an interesting one.

Won’t argue against that.

Rose Solane.1027:

We think the fight is doable with 5 to 10 deaths. We are all very experienced players, some of us even complete raids (not my thing). I think we are amongst the better players in the game (top 10% I guess). I think a story instance where experienced players die 5 to 10 times is too difficult.

So you say you’re probably among the top 10% in this game, and yet you on average die 5-10 times in this encounter. I mean – really?

Going melee (sword & dagger) is also very much doable in this encounter (and a lot faster than my previous tactic). Evading thief build shouldn’t have much problem in this fight I guess.

I think many players get overwhelmed by the numerous aoe circles, and focus too much on them – simply don’t.

Don’t run a too glassy build here if you’re not 100% comfortable with it, and you should all be good to go really.

Redid this fight again on my ranger, this time with my pet on passive during the whole encounter.
While the fight of course took longer since ranger damage without pet is absolutely horrid, it was still the very same tactic – run around in circles, grab the shards and throw them at him, attack in between, and COUNTER THAT MAGIC.
As soon as the jade add shows up, keep following the same tactic, but take out the jade.

There are lots of aoe rings in this fight. Know what? Simply run over them, they are more or less harmless. Keep a stunbreak skill if you happen to miss one counter magic.

Practice on your straferunning technique. Heck, this is an encounter where you don’t even have to dodge, at least not when fighting from range.

So I stand by my first statement – this is one of the easier boss fights. Perhaps you don’t even have to run around in circles like i did, will give it a go in melee range next to see how that goes.

Ashantara.8731:

So please, people, refrain from “It was one of the easiest boss fights!” posts when you don’t have the comparisson.

I compare with other boss fights I’ve been in, what’s your problem? It’s the truth for me. But I’ll head back there now with pet on passive to get a better feel for how other classes finds this fight (which will put my ranger at an even bigger disadvantage, since I’ll be dealing incredibly low damage without my pet).

I’ll report back.

Ashantara.8731:

OGDeadHead.8326:

I never got the chance to play the original version, but this one wasn’t even an effort – maybe the easiest “boss-fight” so far. I simply ran in circles in the room, didn’t even need to dodge, picked up the shards and threw at him, counter magic as soon as the icon lit up. Seriously, what was the big issue with this fight?

So you had your pet or minions deal the damage while you were simply running in circles? Nice, but what about professions that don’t have pets nor minions (or not even decent ranged damage skills)?

Ranger here, so yes, I had my pet on him the entire time, and used my staff for personal damage, so, not high. Will give the encounter another shot with pet on passive to see how things go then.

I never got the chance to play the original version, but this one wasn’t even an effort – maybe the easiest “boss-fight” so far. I simply ran in circles in the room, didn’t even need to dodge, picked up the shards and threw at him, counter magic as soon as the icon lit up. Seriously, what was the big issue with this fight?

Was the previous one really that hard?

I don’t really like twitch, care to post some videos on youtube? I’m always interested in good play!

It’s too late now. They won’t ever really improve the core issues at this stage. Some band-aid fixes slapped on is what we can hope for at most, but I doubt even that will happen.

I agree. Even with the damage buff, giving back the ability to hit three targets would not be OP – at all. I’ve never heard ANYONE complain about axe being too strong.

What about traited water spirit and Lingering Light? Not direct healing per se, but still should have potential for high numbers in wvw zergs (if the water spirit can survive). Regen from traited water spirit?

(You can also add healing from pets like fern hound and moas, and possibly Invigorating Bond)

I’ve had decent success sorting lag issues by contacting my ISP.
Granted, my ISP is small, so they’re easier to work with, but they solved it for me.

Edit: Also, when I had these lag issues, it was only on certain maps for some odd reason. By using pingplotter on the IP of the map, I could easily see which maps were a no go to play on (lots of packet loss to some maps).

Also, make sure it’s not overheating. You can even downclock your card for a while and see if things improve.

I would def not follow the suggestions made by OP. I’m running a R9 280X Toxic. About a year ago, I had problems with mainly GW2, and mostly there were issues with artifacts and corrupted graphics, all solved by updating the gpu bios.
My son runs the same type of card, had similar problems in other games. A gpu bios upgrade solved all of his issues as well.

Not saying you’re having issues with the gpu bios, but suggesting a downgrade to Win 7/8 from Win10, and make a clean install to make it work is not a good suggestion at all. So for anyone reading this – find another solution if you’re having issues.

godz raiden.2631:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Decent ideas nothelseth.

Something needs to be done. The time for action is now anet. Lets work together with anet and find 3 ways to nerf thief to save gw2

Alright, cool! Let’s nerf thief in three ways that the GW2 community can all agree upon!

1) Give stealth a 10 second cooldown for thief. 10 seconds of reveal whether or not the thief uses an attack to break stealth, that way the thief is much easier to track at all times.

2) Make Shadowstep a 600 range teleport without a stunbreak. Also remove the shadow return aspect of it. Shadowstep should only be a one way trip. This also means the condition removal is gone as well. Cooldown increased to 100 seconds.

3) Make Headshot cost 8 Initiative, thereby making it impossible for a thief to get multiple interrupts in quick succession. Just to be sure though, also add a 10 second ICD to Pulmonary Impact. I know, this is two nerfs, but they go hand-in-hand so well that I just couldn’t stop myself!

Sounds perfect, spot on!

Pets, and their functionality (or lack thereof) are core issues. A new e-spec should never be about finally making our pets worthwhile, that would be the biggest mistake ever done to any class in this game.

With the exception of the transformations (which I loathe), and while I think the general combination of an e-spec that combines the best from thieves and necros as described here feels OP, I like to read ideas like these shared by the community, so keep’em coming (but please – leave the transformation/shapeshifting ideas at home).

Ider.1276:

The only solutions of the problem I see:
1) someone else gets a better healing spec. Thus that unlucky profession will be forced into it as rangers are now.
2) destroying the concept of dedicated healer. Reconcept druid as condi cleanser-GotL buffer-some other utility DPS. Nerf avatar heal to the ground, give it other utilities instead (cleanses, stability, protection or block, choose any).

1. Then rangers (druids) will be left out yet again
2. So, a guardian?

Spirit rangers were never OP, they were at most annoying to some folks.

The nerfs were undeserved, and they effectively removed all spirit skills and their traits from pvp, never to be seen again. Now they only have a place in raids and some of the harder pve content.

Another fine example of Anet “balancing” things.

GussJr.1643:

Sorry, I am just used to playing like that I guess.

Hey, no need to apologize – if it works for you, go with it!

:)

How do you manage to keep track of your surroundings when zoomed in like that? It’s hard to even watch this.

Very nice vid!

F1 is also comes in handy vs enemies that stealths, or vs mesmers for example. F1 on the real mesmer, and your pet will always attack the ‘real’ mesmer and won’t get confused by clones like a player many times will be.
Lock on to a thief that stealths with F1, and the moment the thief becomes visible again, your pet will instantly seek out said thief (if within range), revealing where they are even if you don’t see where they ran to.

You can also get your pet to use its F2 skill on an enemy you previously locked it to, even if you yourself are attacking someone else. Just drop your target briefly, and make sure autotargeting is off, press F2 and your pet will use its ability on the target it’s attacking, instead of running to you and use it on your target instead.

Whether people think stuff like these are useful or not depends a lot on playstyle, and how they like to utilize their pets. I for sure would miss F1, since it opens up plenty more options for how you can best use them.

Before, when the leash range wasn’t so pathetic as it is now, it was great to let your pet chase the enemy that fled from a point and keep pressuring that enemy, while you stayed and helped your team with the fight on point (or send it to take out the enemy treb/harass the the enemy player trebbing while you helped out with the fight on mid).

None of all this would be possible without F1.

Also…

borya.2964:

3- When your pet he’s in “Avoid Combat” mod and you activates “Guard” mod, your pet attacks your target

Only if you yourself attacks the target. Only switching from one mode to the other won’t make the pet attack. May be easily misinterpreted when you word it like that.

borya.2964:

- You have 3 different ways to make your pet to attack your target (2 and 3) so the F1 is ABSOLUTLY USELESS and NEVER USED

While it is true that you can use different methods to get your pet to attack your target by other means than F1 (F2, out of range attacking, cancel attacking, Sic’em), I still find plenty of use for F1 so I wouldn’t want to miss out on that function. Out of range attacking or cancel attacks won’t work with pet in Avoid Combat mode.

F1 is also the only way to get your pet to switch to another target in combat (and stick to it), without you having to do so (other than to quickly target the other enemy and ‘tag’ it with F1).

So no, the functionality of F1 is far from useless.

trianglecubed.3750:

However if you wanted to make them even better, make it so that if a pet is on passive mobs simply don’t even “see” them, won’t attack them, won’t go after them, won’t target them, etc.

That’s how they work currently.

Since Anet refuses to fix the kitten pets, I would suggest to only go with ranged pets in wvw. Other than that, not a clue, it’s a hard limitation of this class as you’re well aware.
In wvw zerg blobs, aoe is king, and rangers suck at aoe. Find a different role.

yLoon.5289:

Remorseless should rephrase to only works for Greatsword Maul or any other particular skills, so it wont be wasted on any stupid AA. ><

While I agree to some extent, it would be pretty bad for most other weapons, even though the other weapons don’t synergize well with remorseless anyway (autoattack on longbow and axe 4 are decent at best).
I would suggest turning off autoattack on Greatsword when running remorseless builds.

Improving the visual feedback when you gain Opening Strike in combat would be nice as well.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Yes, it does.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

Oh that’s nice. I didn’t think it’d work if you already had the buff. So if you fire off Rage as One, you’ll get Opening strike several times since it pulses Fury?

Yes, you’ll gain three Opening Strikes from Strength of the Pack through Remorseless (as will your pet). You may also be interested in Rune of Evasion (5 out of 6 runes), that grants fury when you dodge (icd 10 seconds).

Fluffball.8307:

For rando-pugs that need the boons, if you keep your inventory open and care enough to go through the effort, you can use torch bonfire, manually change torch for warhorn to blast, then change to axe for the encounter. That used to be a thing way back in the day for dungeons/fractals, but I doubt the clicking is worth it considering how trivial everything has become with power creep.

Would be great to have weapon sets available in the ui, kinda like what existed in GW1. And some quickslots where you could drag things like food, showels for chestfarms in SW etc.

jcbroe.4329:

and reflects are a rare-ish commodity that other classes have to give up a lot more utility to run, whereas Ranger/Druid gets a really decent reflect on its best DPS set

In regards to the reflect aspect of axe #5, it’s a shame they reduced the duration from five seconds to ~3. Other than that, the changes were good.

Someone here, don’t remember who, suggested way back when druid was introduced, to have some sort of toggable health bars for allies, and that you even could have a slider to set at which health % the health bars should be visible.
For example, when an ally was down to 75% health (or lower) – display a healthbar under their name.

I’m not sure. Due to the nature of the clusterkitten that are zergs in this game and the constant and fast moving around, it would still be very hard to pick out fellow players in need of healing outside of raids and small group content.

Also, in order to make CA #1 a more viable option to actually heal people in a game with so much moving around, it needs to change, and I find it amazing it remains the same today as it was at launch of HoT (except for some number changes last year). The radius in combination with the delay makes this skill one of the worst designed in the whole game.

Edit: Go and read about the feedback in the “Beta Weekend Druid Feedback” and be amazed at how things, especially when it comes to Cosmic Ray, have simply been ignored. This company sure continues to keep true that player feedback are in fact only player venting – they never seem to care, or respond to, issues like these. It’s really sad.