Guild Wars 2

CETheLucid.3964:

Dadnir.5038:

anduriell.6280:

Who in their sane mind would go to HoT with a carrion devourer as pets.. WHO!!!!

I’d do it… to be honest I have done it… the carrion devourer is one of my favourit pet… Sorry…

Devourers used to be one of the best pets pre-HoT for PvE. They’re still alright. Not the best, but the judgey ones would still have hated you either way.

If there’s ever an update that normalizes pets and legitimately fixes the powercreep from HoT pets (Bristleback and Smokescale), the sheer variety of pets we’d see used would be awesome.

(And by fix, I mean make all pets as viable as these two.

Plz do not nerf Smokescale and Bristleback. This would result in a profound sadness and the primordial anger of many rangers.)

Best pets for PvE? Best in what way?

Thanks for the info guys.

Soilder.3607:

I think, if anything, Lingering Light should have it’s cooldown lowered to 10s, the time the effect remains on you increased to 4s, and either the base healing or healing scale increased. Remember, the trait used to have a 3s cooldown (which also affects players individually e.g if player one receives healing and the trait player two can too even before player ones CD is up) which honestly was far too low. The nerf quadrupled the cooldown but did not increase the healing to compensate.

If not this, then redesign it.

I’m not even sure how the trait works, since I almost never used it. Is the cooldown per ally healed, or will the cd trigger ‘on me’ as soon as I heal a single ally?

Also, what counts as heals in this game is not very straight forward. Will the healing from solarbeam trigger this trait? Will the trait Cultivated Synergy trigger this trait?

There’s so many things said on this subject already it’s just repeating the same things over and over again. Anyway:

• Increase melee range across the board, like they did to moas some time ago

• All pets should be able to cleave, if not, how about:
  Low dps pets are able to cleave 3-5 targets
  Medium dps pets are able to cleave 2 targets
  High dps pets are single target only

• CD’s needs some serious balancing

• Forage reworked to be like Thieves steal ability (as in – replace F2 with current object)

And on and on and on…

ArchonWing.9480:

You know, I’ve heard complaints about being ripped off, but it’s really rare to hear about the company not ripping off people.

Lol yeah! Some posts on this forum makes you look twice – did (s)he actually write that!??

Jim Hunter.6821:

GinghamLion.3614:

I would really like it to be changed. Immobilize is such a wonky thing in GW2, anyway. As far as I know, stun breaks don’t actually break immobilize. Or they bug often. Or it has something to do with how this trait pulses immobilize, which I think should be changed.

Why would a stun break cleanse a condition?

I’d like stunbreaks to break/cleanse immobilize as well, condition or not. But hey, that’s just mho.

Fluffball.8307:

You can blast a smokescale field OOC for 9 seconds which should be plenty to do about anything you want. Warhorn, CA, and staff. Prolly get like 6 seconds of usuable stealth.

I’ve never been able to reach 9 seconds by the time I’ve used all of these abilities, since it takes time to execute them all.

AnariiUK.7409:

Durzlla.6295:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Razor.9872:

Durzlla.6295:

If we get some more pet tweaks like last balance pass I’d be ecstatic. And I’m going to be amazed if Druid isn’t needed again, but please anet, make the astral wisp more interesting, maybe have it remove a specific condi or something on its travel path, or make it spin faster, or apply like a stack of poison idk.

I wish it would either:

Transfer conditions from touched allies to the circled enemy

or

Transfer boons from the circled enemy to touched allies.

Or deal damage to the enemy each time the wisp heals an ally (in addition to the first damage dealt).

Oh, and Glyph of Unity (non-celestial) desperately needs attention. At the very least, double the duration and go from there.

Glyph of unity really needs work outside of the avatar state, what would be cool is if condi damage also triggered it, or if you transfered condis from us to our afflicted victims like every 2-3 seconds or something.

Even the celestial version of Glyph of Unity is pitiful. It has a cheeky 1 second ICD, so you can’t even use it to burst heal allies up in times of need. The seed it drops from the verdant etching trait literally does more healing.

Yeah, it may be the worst elite in the game right now. I really hope they take a good look at it.
It’s actually so bad, most have probably forgotten this skill even exist.

Razor.9872:

Durzlla.6295:

If we get some more pet tweaks like last balance pass I’d be ecstatic. And I’m going to be amazed if Druid isn’t needed again, but please anet, make the astral wisp more interesting, maybe have it remove a specific condi or something on its travel path, or make it spin faster, or apply like a stack of poison idk.

I wish it would either:

Transfer conditions from touched allies to the circled enemy

or

Transfer boons from the circled enemy to touched allies.

Or deal damage to the enemy each time the wisp heals an ally (in addition to the first damage dealt).

Oh, and Glyph of Unity (non-celestial) desperately needs attention. At the very least, double the duration and go from there.

Dirame.8521:

but they should nerf the stealth trait by giving it a longer cooldown. What good druids usually do now is they intentionally don’t use all their Celestial force so they can go into it again, moments later, only to come out of it and stealth again.

Since CA has a cd of 10 seconds, so does Celestial Shadow in a best case scenario IF you’re able to fill the bar within that time. You can also be locked out of CA for far longer than that, which means you’re also locked out of Celestial Shadow.

What do you suggest? More “out of sync” trait cooldowns that don’t follow the natural flow of the mechanics? No thank you, way too many of those plague this game already, both traits and skills.

I find staff to be the fastest and easiest to tag with tbh.

AnariiUK.7409:

Grace of the land is applied separately to the heals, so you can still give the buff to players that are at full HP. You can also give the grace of the land stacks to entirely different players than those that are being healed, due to the heals overflowing.

Ty!

Q: Allies you heal with celestial avatar abilities gain increased damage (Grace of the land)

So, if they don’t get healed (if already at max health), they don’t get the buff, right?

Swagger.1459:

How about we nerf Engi because the Druid couldn’t kills you right? I mean, even with all those things you want to nerf on Druid, that player couldn’t get the job done solo and obviously would need back up… See how that works out?

I’ve already tried that argument. Logic is only a oneway street to some…

I find it difficult to keep track of in the heat of battle tbh. I would love for remorseless/opening strike to get some sort of effect added so that you the moment you get it without having to keep track of tiny icons. This goes for all the icons tbh.

Sorry this didn’t answer your question.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m not asking for game breaking nerfs to Druids. Just some adjustments to pull them back down to a nice balance.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

• Remove Stealth. That’s a Mesmer and Thief skill
• Reduce outgoing healing by 25%

Very nice vid as usual, keep’em coming!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Dolyak runes are indeed strong because of the added Toughness and Vitality. If it helps a Druid sustain a 1 v 1 with an Engi for 10 minutes, then something seriously needs to be looked at.

Indeed, engi should be nerfed if they can sustain a 1v1 vs a druid for 10 minutes.

Fluffball.8307:

I was aware of all of these 5 tips in concept, however since I don’t play mesmer they were mostly new to me.

Lol yeah, especially tip #5 is a real pro tip!

Ninski.5680:

remove dolyak rune problem solved

Lol!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

We had this similar discussion last year with Eles. Even if a Druid hits like a wet noodle, their long lasting sustain will constantly contest points. Healing Power and Vitality from an Ammy, plus Toughness bunker runes = unstoppable.

Druids do go down, but that’s usually in the beginning mid fight, where you can have 4 guys focus him. But as the match goes on, if a Druid sneaks behind the fight and decaps your Home, good luck getting that back 1 v 1.

Some ideas on how to balance Druids:

• Remove Stealth. That’s a Mesmer and Thief skill
• Reduce outgoing healing by 25%

You really like to provoke with your posts don’t you? The druid was introduced as an elite spec that was ALL about healing. That’s how it was put forth by the devs. Then come someone like you and throw out the most ridiculous numbers taken out of your kitten . Reduce healing by 25%? What a joke. So bad it’s not even funny, just annoying.

I agree with everything on that list. Everything makes sense, except for the Anet devs. It’s a long time since I lost my trust in them.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Flip side to your argument is we shouldn’t be talking about skill if you couldn’t dodge in time using the old animation.

Old behavior you couldn’t dodge by reaction (in time), only by prediction since you were locked in the animation (with aa on autocast enabled).

I would like to have range indicators both in the gameworld and perhaps even on the minimap when having my mouse pointer hovering over a skill, for example on the ranger skill “search and rescue”.

Wondrouswall.7169:

and possibly lowering the amount of conditions removed from DC from 13 to a lower number, or worse, losing 1 condition at 3s intervals while in Celestial Form as “compensation”.

That would be both a nerf (mostly and nerf!) and a buff at the same time, depending on the situation.

Justine.6351:

I suppose if I were to change it I would 5sec reveal, 25 vulnerability 5sec and remove the pet buffs. Probably wouldn’t go over too well though.

Sounds like a nerf to me? Why do you want to lower the reveal effect, just like you wanted to lower taunt duration?

I’d appreciate it if ANet stopped their current balancing policy, meaning bringing up class x1, x2 and x3 to top tier to “shake up the meta” every big balance patch they release.
It’s truly an awful way to do just that – shake up the meta.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Justine means, have Beastly Warden work like Wilting Strike where it will Taunt an enemy up to once that is affected by its F2 skill for 1s as well as have the 240 radius.

Either way, the Pet will only be able to taunt an enemy once, but it allows pets that have single target F2s like Birds, Spiders, BB to be able to Taunt multiple foes due to the AOE and affect on F2.

So in the case of the BB for example, it will taunt in a 240 radius like how it works currently, but also be able to taunt from range when landing their F2 attacks? And lightning breath from a river drake would be able to taunt outside the 240 radius due to bouncing effect and increased range?

Justine.6351:

Lower the taunt to 1 sec and keep its current aoe on activation but also allow it to taunt once per enemy struck aswell.

Probably would be good for the other 2 traits aswell.

Gogo blackbear!

Care to elaborate more on this? Do you mean as in Taunt 1 sec on F2 → Pet attack hits enemy → Trigger taunt again?

Justine.6351:

The numbers have been this way for some time as a similar thread was made over 6 months ago with the conclusion that anet would likely nerf the pvp version if the issue was pressed to make the numbers the same.

No reason for that, but yeah that’s the most probable scenario.

Guardius.6528:

Haven’t checked this personally but it’s probably balanced differently for SPvP than it is for PvE and WvW.

I think it’s an oversight from the devs. There’s no reason whatsoever that this skill should deal less damage in pve vs pvp! Up the damage in pve.

I’d classify this one as yet another bug.

Personally, I’m far too slow for this playstyle, which is why I really like to see videos of ppl mastering it – nice work, Nila!

Topic – which one would benefit a “general” build more (as in – not maxed out for either condi or power, but more of a hybrid build)?

When do you guys pick one over the other?

Fix forum bug…….

Sabway! 55 monk (the original Protective Bond version)!

Oooh the memories!

Sword 2 is perfectly fine as it is with one exception – the evade part on Hornet Sting needs to be applied right when I press the kitten button and not half a second later, if you ever want this skill to allow you to react to things and evade them.

They could also add another second to the time window you have before you have to use Monarch’s Leap – not really necessary, but a small, nice qol change.

I would absolutely despise having directional arrows, since imho all forms of ground targeting are slower AND clunkier to use.

Bring hexes back!

Wondrouswall.7169:

Did some testing on Precision and Critical Hit Chance for Pets. Curiosity got the better of me and here are the results.

[LINK]

Updated it with more Pig results because… bacon.

Awesome, ty! +1

Wondrouswall.7169:

Before anyone takes “pretty certain” as certain: Stalk (or being stealthed) does not guarantee the Jaguar strikes to be 100% critical hits.

I was able to have it land non-critical strikes within the first minute. Tested more with Spotter, Beastmastery, Fury, and a combination with 1 or 2 of those not applied to the Pet.

Stalk used to be a 100% crit chance guarantee back in the day, it’s not the case anymore.

However, I would think that Stalk, granting 25% increased crit chance, in combination with Fury and Spotter should place it way over 100% crit chance. Keyword here being should.

I’m not convinced crit chance is working as we think it should work when it comes to pets.

I’d love to see someone run a test, similar as the one OP did, with/without 100% uptime of fury applied to the pet, and compare the results. That would be quite interesting. If I get time to do it myself, I’ll post the results here.

Jerus.4350:

Healing power depends from skill to skill
<snip>

Very good post, +1

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

UnitedChaos.8364:

Most pets have a difficult time hitting moving foes, with the exception if moas..

Moa’s // hit moving targets better than most other pets?

I’ve been using Pink Moa a lot lately (WvW) and really like the daze. I don’t usually pay much attention to my pets damage unless I’m using Beastmastery so I hadn’t noticed whether the Moa was hitting often or not.

Just wanted to ask if it’s commonly known that Moa’s // hit moving targets better?

Well they did increase the attack range from 130 to 170 which seems to have helped. Now they can go change this for all pets.

Staff 1 – good damage? Ok…

anduriell.6280:

Wondrouswall.7169:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Do you know the formula, and how much base crit chance the pets have (well, felines in this case) @ lvl 80?

Unfortunately, I do not. Spent a good hour this morning while having my coffee trying to at least ball-park it. Only Anet knows and if they state Pets are using the same precision formula as Players, I’m ready to call BS as tests prove otherwise.

Or maybe they do and are bugged. I recall in the old Ranger Bugs compilation thread last year where a handful of us were testing Pet precision. If it’s the case that Precision is bugged for Pets (and possibly all NPCs), then we are just SOL until a fix.

nah don’t bother.

in my experience probably the devs gave the pets some “fictionary” numbers to give the players some idea about the pet’s streghts and weakness.

but ultimately the pets still have internally a fixed stats that do not correspond with the stats listed, although close i don’t think they relate directly one to the another.

That’s kind of my impression of it as well… Like I said, a permanent 20% higher crit chance for tigers should reflect in the dps chart.

anduriell.6280:

i agree. a lot of ranger trait lines, skills and weapons need a serious rework instead buff numbers

But, but… it’s so much easier changing some numbers in a database than to actually put in the effort to actually program things…

Wondrouswall.7169:

Pets benefit from Fury and additional precision (Spotter, Banner of Discipline), but their critical chance formula is different than ours. If we were to have matching precision with Felines, their formula leaves them with a lower critical hit chance.

Do you know the formula, and how much base crit chance the pets have (well, felines in this case) @ lvl 80?

Durzlla.6295:

With beast mastery the Jaguars CD is like 19s

30 seconds cd according to wiki, that should translate to 24 seconds when traited, not 19, unless the wiki is wrong.

Durzlla.6295:

i never see my jaguar NOT crit while stalking, so I’d imagine it’s just the crit damage and how high it’s crit becomes pushes it over the edge.

Hm yeah, those six seconds with +25% crit DAMAGE seems to compensate quite well. But on the other hand, if a jaguar gains +25% crit CHANCE during stalk and crits more or less on every single attack during that time, a tiger should crit more or less on every single attack due to constantly having +20% crit chance. What’s the base chance to crit for cats?
Also, Furious Pounce deals a lot of damage, which should compensate quite a bit compared to the ferocity gain the jaguar gains during Stalk.

Anyone care to do some maths? I’m just wondering if pets actually benefits from fury?
Easiest way to test that I guess is in the testing arena with/without permanent fury buff applied to the pet.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Jaguar – 1117
Tiger – 1110 DPS

How come Tiger doesn’t outdamage the other cats since it should have more or less permanent 20% higher chance to crit compared to the others (well, jaguar gains +25% critical chance and +25% critical damage when using stalk, but that only lasts for six seconds out of 24 seconds).

Having different range on the same weapon depending on what skill you use is bad, and is something that shouldn’t exist on any weapon set. About as bad as all the different radius on other skills.

Durzlla.6295:

The wyverns do good damage against a completely stationary target and bring a lot of CC…. but the problem is… i said COMPLETELY STATIONARY, and unless this is PvE that aint happening.

They don’t deal good damage even vs stationary targets. They are trash.

Please edit your post, seems the comments are in the wrong places, and some are wrong?

“Ranger’s Axe Ricochet
Only good part is 250 ferocity and the Might stacking from the AA. The ’’buff’’ was nice, but it’s still low. It doesn’t make any punch.”

Ricochet doesn’t give you 250 ferocity?

*

“Axe Winter’s Bite
Pitiful base damage of 168. Can barelly aim it correctly and easily get lost in the fight. Maybe make it a ground AoE ? Also, buff the damage.”

What do you mean with the aiming issues?