Guild Wars 2

staff skills 1,2 and 4 all deal damage and you should have a weapon on swap. celestial form is meant to be temporary not permanent.

at this point I don’t think pet AI is going to see any significant changes or improvements due to the sheer amount of work it would take and the fact that they have an expansion ready to drop along with living world updates, raids, guild stuff etc to monitor and continue balancing. how about suggesting simple things that would improve pets like increase all melee pet hit ranges to 300 like birds, or flat increase all melee pet hit ranges to 450-600 like a player.

a flat increase to pet stats would go a long way as well. like an additional flat 150 stat points and another additional 150 if specced into BM. pets are still far too squishy and it’s not right that a significant portion of only our dps can just die.

if spirits are going to remain immobile they should be invulnerable and on a similar timer to warrior banners. the passive skills need a significant buff to make them even slightly relevent in the current meta game for pvp or pve. the actives are garbage, plus the buff range and active ability range are different so if a spirit is placed out of harms way to stay alive you lose any usefulness you could get from the activated ability.

overall our utilities are poor excluding survival utilities.

Druid was a welcome change in my opinion. it gives us a new role to play and we don’t know yet how relevent healing is even going to be in the coming content. Druid needs a dps increase even at the expense of some healing. every class has access to personal heals or regeneration. revenant will have quite a bit of healing as well. The amount of healing on Druid will likely be overkill but damage is needed not just to see pretty numbers on screen but to get credit for completing ANY of the older content. it’s needed in all of the older dungeons where healing won’t be needed at all. it will also be needed in any world content that has been released or will be in the future. that is the one area i think druid is lacking.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Curious: I’m still at work. Have you guys played with WHaO yet since the change? I’ll be trotting out my Ranger tonight, but I wondered if you’re basing your thoughts on statistics — which I can respect — or on playtime — which also is valuable.

Both. I’ve played for a bit on my ranger with the old functionality and again since the change.

ProtoMarcus.7649:

Tweak the base durations please. Please. Near-useless for most.

Suggestions:

‘We Heal as One!’

The boon copy effect is very interesting, but with the new flat duration, you can’t even ‘feel’ the boons. Little tweaks could give a bit of punch without breaking the game;

• Quickness – From 2 to 4s
• Protection – From 2 to 4s
• Resistance – From 2 to 4s
• Fury – From 3 to 8s
• Stability – From 3 to 6s (it’s just 1 stack after all… A change that wasn’t mentioned as it would copy all stacks of stability before the sept 30 patch)
• Swiftness – From 3 to 8s
• Vigor – From 3 to 8s
• Aegis – From 5s to 8s
• Regeneration – from 5 to 8s
• Retaliation – 5s is perfect
• Might – For this one, either keep its 3 stacks limit but make it 15s or lower its duration to 8s but remove the stack limit.

Best suggestion i’ve seen. +1 although I feel like the current change was far too heavy handed. the might stack limit should be removed, this is a self stacking ability and does nothing to “break” the overall game. also the skill only works when the pet is in range, alive, and has received boons. WHaO is so dependent on a very rigid set of conditions that nerfing it into uselessness just doesn’t make sense. the builds that would benefit from it most would be ones using suboptimal runes, suboptimal sigils and a build that does not focus on dps therefore not making the best use of the boons.

Edit: another option would be to return WHaO to its original form and make invigorating bond baseline.

Rising Dusk.2408:

\ People are now discussing Ranger as being equal to a Warrior in terms of value to a group. Think about that for a minute.

Mind Blown****

Works as intended and not at all OP.

thank goodness for Irenio finally making some changes to the core ranger that will, hopefully, dramatically affect gameplay and viability in the future.

Drakes are probably the best general PVE pet. Decent damage, decent survivability and they are (I think) the only pet with a cleave attack to hit multiple mobs. also a lot of their f2 skills will hit multiple targets. cats are probably the best pet once you get to dungeons, I usually have a cat and a drake on swap in dungeons for some of the harder content.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Everyone else: “Their wings will blot out the sun!”
Rangers: “Then we will fight in the shade!”

someone just won the internets

Solandri.9640:

Khadez.4958:

This could be a way to do it but it would reduce this skill’s potential in PvE quite a bit.

The issue isn’t the skill’s potential in PvP or PvE. The problem is much more fundamental.

When Anet makes a skill, it has several variables to control its strength, it’s impact on the game (PvE, PvP, and WvV). One is obviously the effect. Then there’s the duration. Finally there’s the cooldown. The latter two combine to form a percent uptime, which you can multiply by the magnitude of the effect to get its time-weighted effect.

The current mechanic with WHaO completely screws that up. I’m trying to avoid a mathematical explanation, but I can’t think of a way around it. In the math of infinite series, there are divergent series and convergent series. A convergent series approaches a fixed value. 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + … which each subsequent number being half the previous converges on 2. A convergent series is well-behaved, and you can easily modify it. 2 * (1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + … ) = 4.

A divergent series blows up to infinity. 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + … approaches infinity (very slowly, but it does). And obviously infinite anything can be very unbalancing.

The current mechanic of WHaO takes well-behaved skills which act like a convergent series, and under certain reasonably easy-to-attain circumstances makes them blow up like a divergent series. The only reason we’re not seeing more unbalancing effects from WHaO is because it eventually runs into the boon stacking and duration limits.

Not only is that horribly unbalancing. but it makes it extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to balance other skills. Anet could balance (say) Guard – they’re happy with its effect, duration, and uptime. Something else like Resounding Timbre act as a mere multiplier – by reducing cooldown 20%, you increase the uptime of Guard’s effect (percent of time the pet has protection up) by 25%.

Now you throw in WHaO, and it can cause the effect to blow up to permanent uptime. In some cases there’s no way to fix it (the effect will always blow up to permanent uptime). In others, you can fix it, but only by nerfing Guard so badly that the skill without WHaO is effectively useless.

This isn’t how you design good game mechanics. You want all the skill effects to be controlled and predictable. Even permanent uptime in itself is acceptable if the work needed to maintain it occupies enough of the player’s time that it reduces their damage output. But WHaO’s mechanic is such that beyond a certain duration, the increase in duration with each application grows exponentially, making it horribly broken.

Capping the duration of each boon WHaO copies would stop the divergent/exponential duration growth and bring it back under control, making it compatible with a well-balanced game again.

Compare that effect to a PS Warrior that can spread might to his entire party and very easily maintain 25 stacks of might.

WHaO is not OP. It effects the ranger only and does not spread boons to allies. finally we have a method of self sustaining might in PVE and actually making use of celestial type builds in PVP. For once we have options! With the change I have found myself fluctuating between quickdraw and MDG!

no more knee-jerk reactions please!

i’m mostly happy

or

needs more damage

Personally I have waited to pre-purchase HoT. I was waiting to find out about guild content, “challenging content” and the one character I have spent the majority of almost 3 years playing. I am VERY happy with the Druid reveal and looking forward to testing it in the next BWE. I’m not sure about anyone else but Irenio it was your work that got my purchase.

Rizo.9534:

online.1278:

As comparing to similar skill which is Warrior’s Fear me, this ranger guys spams unblockable-taunt and that occurs at almost every 10~20sec while fear me only can activate one time per 46s. it just op. it doesn’t make any sense based on balance perspective.

at least make it blockable since it can be spammed.

GTHOOH!
Compare it with Skullcracker warrior now. You have CC from every button, so go back on your forum and cry there plz.

Ty.

exactly!, they shouldn’t have even made it blockable. it’s supposed to function like fear, necro shroud has a fear on 20s cd plus other sources of fears.

i’ve been debating on getting celestial or cleric trinkets with zerk gear but I don’t think healing power will be a mandatory trait. as others have said, with so many heals and the way most healing skills scale having a little won’t do much at all and having a lot will probably overheal.

celestial might be the optimal way to go, still bringing a balance of good damage and healing to the encounter

he was wearing no amulet during the stream, almost every healing ability had some type of damage component with it or cc/condition.

glad to see the zerk meta die personally, i think it’ll still hold for most of the pre-HoT content because that would require changing a ton of mechanics but I would expect anything for the future to see much more build diversity and profession diversity.

amen! and glad to hear him say in the stream that he’s read the forums and that he’s going to address base ranger bugs/changes. This stream just got me to buy HoT.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Ranger already is one of the highest DPS classes in PvE.

And if you watched the glyphs and traits – it’s going to be massive for PvP as well as WvW.

Also, Rangers currently have the potential to become the reason why ZerkMeta stays alive and all people might end up loving you.

I don’t see a single reason how can you guyz get disappointed! We already have all the offensive possibilities on live. This was what we needed for CC, Condi Clear, Defensive support.

We
Got
Everything
We asked of druid!

Come on! What’s wrong with you? If you want an offensive Ranger – you have access to it already. If you want any other one – you just got access to all of it with druid.

THIS. I for one really love the druid reveal it looks incredible. yea we get a ton of healing but the Druid also does very good dps. if no one noticed the numbers where on par with the damage we do now and he had no amulet on! so we got good base damage, TEAM SUPPORT and buffs. throw on the proper armor and runes/sigils and ranger is the new ele now. stop complaining before we even test it.

anduriell.6280:

Druid MELEE staff master race is REAL!!!
We already have LB for pewpew, i need a reliable melee weapon to cast the vines of destruction.

I can see it, we melee staff rangers leaving a highway of mordrem corpses (or player corpers in WvW) on our way…

Nah i’m going to be disappointed…

Yassss! i’m really hoping for a mid-range melee weapon, sort of like d/d ele 600 or so range with some casting animations. really, really hoping for this!

Ryou.2398:

How did some of you make sense having an asura ranger?

Do you mean in an RP way? my idea was that my asura ranger rejects the advanced tech of asuran(sp?) society and prefers to take a natural path.

Ryou.2398:

One last question what story choice should I go for to fit closer to rangers and should I choose the weather device?

I chose the weather device, fidling with the weather and the disasters that could happen is what brought him to find a natural path. I don’t really RP though, it’s what I thought of while creating him.

I have an Asura ranger and i enjoy it, the only drawback imo is that skins tend to not look as good on asura, nothing but cultural really fits them well. I’ve though about making a human or norn ranger just to fit more thematically and better looking armor skins.

JSmooth.7654:

Fluffball.8307:

For PvE? RF Barrage RF, Maul Maul Maul, RF Barrage RF, Maul Maul Maul. S/A is a little better damage than GS though.

For PvP there is no rotation.

Pretty much this ^

From the research I’ve done, most people recommend Rapid Fire, Barrage, Rapid Fire and then weapon swap until Barrage is available again.

Keep in mind though, that combat in GW2 is (supposed to be) more reactionary than mindlessly going through your skill “rotations.” It’s good to have a general idea of your max damage skill sequence. But, be ready to drop everything and adapt in the middle of a fight.

This. I’m also pretty sure S/A+GS is better than LB now so keep a LB in your bags for bosses that need to be ranged.

here’s a good build guide. DPS rotation is at about 11:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-joFbUe4qY

so OP it’s not worth discussing lol

Nike.2631:

Scrapper the better Beastmaster?

Fear not! No profession or Espec will ever be better at being strangled by its own class mechanics.

Nike pops into the ranger forum for one great comment lol

and yea we’ve seen these threads every reveal. i’m a bit ticked that we’re last but at this point it’s w/e. from an outsiders perspective it looks like almost every profession got something new(ish) and needed other than maybe tempest. Ele is so strong in every way i’m not sure how much more you could add. bonus points for earthbending though, flavor wise it looks awesome. dragonhunter is the only reveal i dislike, i’d rather be on ranger for LB and/or traps.

can you imagine a thief using trapper runes in pvp? I think that’s why they may not make it into pvp.

LtW in open world stuff, pve and pvp if i’m using LB. the piercing is too good to give up in those situations.

Predator’s in dungeons and fractals, mobs almost always have some type of movement condition on them so you get the dps increase often and piercing is less of a need.

no more long range weapons please. keep us in buff range ~600 and support or AOE damage. Even control+dmg would be nice but no more single target stuff, rangers too focused on single target dps we need more AOE fields.

“challenging group content” and an elite specialization that i’ll enjoy playing for the next 3 years. that’s what it’ll take for me to buy HoT.

The first part is now there. I liked what I saw with the first raids they will be implementing. Level of actual difficulty won’t be determined until we actually get into the expansion.

Daredevil and Reaper look interesting. the thing is, and i’m sure some can agree with me, whenever i switch classes to something more “meta” i eventually want to get back on my ranger because it’s just more fun to me. That’s why i’m holding out hope for Druid. even with all the bugs and problems I enjoy playing on my ranger more than anything else. i’ve learned how to fight through the bad design choices and bugs and i’ve rarely been kicked from a dungeon or fractal group. it’s not ease of play that most ranger players are looking for. it’s an end to always being a subpar choice. we don’t need to be #1 or OP, just a solid choice like bringing an ele, warrior or guardian.

Chronomancer puts mesmer there, Daredevil seems to potentially bring even more DPS to thieves, Reaper looked decent, Revenent looks like it could be very strong and very supporty. we’ll see what the druid reveal brings whenever that finally happens.

sinister and zerk are about equal in terms of dps, HoT might bring something different but it seems like condition damaging is moving up in the world. Plus if you apply burns/bleeds/etc they’ll keep ticking while your dodging or running away from locusts. you won’t have the built in evades from sword but the axe bounce will keep damage up on the locusts and still hit Lupi.

you could go with gs on swap for a more defensive weapon instead of a/t but burn damage is so op right now it’s hard to stay away.

I guess that tentonhammer article really hit a nerve

are you running a condi or power build? I’d probably run a sinister condi build with a/a+a/t quickdraw. you’ll get to quickdraw your reflects and bonfire and you won’t have the drawback of being locked in sword aa.

d/d ele will come out on top, too much healing built into the class even when wearing zerk amulet.

I will say though just in a ranger vs ranger tournament the more skilled ranger will end up being the winner. You’ll have to pay more attention and better time your dodges and blocks since you’ll both have a handicap.

I like the change to Sic Em although I would like to see pet stats brought up at least in pve or increase the dps burst from a skill like this to 50-75%. this would synergize well with quickness on swap or QZ and give ranger some burst potential.

I don’t care for the change to Guard, cripple is fairly weak in pvp, maybe 3s weakness on attack or something. also I don’t think we need anymore one time use skills. a short cripple on a long cd wouldn’t get used anymore than it does now.

Protect Me – Aegis is unnecessary, the pet should be able to absorb all damage for a few seconds and not die. unless your running a squishy pet and then you expect it.

Search & Rescue – This shouldn’t have any added effect but it would be nice if it wouldn’t go on cooldown if the pet can’t find someone to heal.

Heal as One – resistance please

Resounding Timbre – I really like this change

Finally Rangers getting some of the attention it needed. Hopefully this spurs them to some kind of action to fix things and give us a good elite spec as well. Otherwise they’ll just drown us in bugs for another 3 years

let’s see if ranger comes out this week lol

general response of the pvp community when ranger get’s something decent:

TAKE IT AWAY!

you do realize there are more sources of aoe taunt incoming with revenant and it functions the opposite of fear, a lot of necro fears have no tells either. where is the big difference? oh yea, ranger.

Puck.9612:

Kaz.5430:

There is nothing at all wrong with using a bow and a bear if that’s what you enjoy playing. If anyone has a problem, then it’s ‘their’ problem, and they probably were not worth playing with anyway.

This is the worst kind of attitude. You are being extremely selfish and trying to make it sound like you’re somehow the victim in that scenario.

@Op
Open world PvE- play whatever you want, it is stupid easy. I could play weaponless and naked and get by without a problem in the open world.

Dungeons- you want to try and run a build that will compliment your party. The best thing you can bring as a ranger is spotter, frost spirit and a melee weapon. Sitting at range is not only a dps loss, it also hurts your party because you are causing the mobs to spread out making the fights take longer.

PvP- The main thing you need to understand is holding the points is way more important than getting kills. Ignore your personal score, if you see someone from your team capping an empty point don’t jump on with him, move on and help out your teammates somewhere else. This is a solid an pretty safe build to start out with http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjEqQDLWyCusAVLGyEKPxTgG/n8I/x7kNAOgCWVA-TJBFABCcJAEvMgc7PAwTAAA

WvW Roaming- You need to balance your build around being able to quickly flip camps, be strong in a fight, and be able to escape when you need to. You can get by fine with the PvP build, it’s strong in a fight but it’s not great for disengaging. I personally run this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA9Ci9rAusActgh/gaf9FIA+04HOaefz3N4gVfeA-TVTBABWqOSh6AEVlgHuAAmpEMijAwVKz8UFDsUagnmAq2fYhDBAAPAACBYeMA-w

WvW Zerging- Organized guild groups will have a build they want you to run, or they may need you to run a different profession completely. For pug zergs you might want to run lead the wind for piercing arrows, but you have to be careful with that because you could end up killing yourself to retaliation when using barrage or rapid fire. This is how I would tweak my build for the pug zerg http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA9Ci9rAusActgBChaL9Aoq/voG65eeXhU4gVfeA-TVTBABWqOSh6AEVlgHuAAmpEMijAwVKz8UFDsUagnmAq2fYhDBAAPAACBYeMA-w

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki is great starting place for builds for every profession . Take a look at what they have and then adjust them to suit your needs and playstyle.

Completely Agree. There are times when having a tankier pet on swap is a good thing, like some fractal or dungeon bosses, in those cases you can usually use a drake and your DPS doesn’t completely suffer.

The class is called a Ranger but that doesn’t mean it must stay at range. Actually staying at max range is worse for you and your party than being with 600 range of the group. buffs only have that much range so you lose out on what they are providing and they lose out on your help.

I use Longbow in dungeons and fractals. Some bosses need to be ranged but most of the time it’s used as an opener with Rapid Fire and Barrage then swapped to melee for almost the whole fight.

I use bears in dungeons and fractals. If I get stuck with a horrible pug where everyones dead for most of the fight i’ll throw on “Search and Rescue” and a bear pet so I can revive people constantly. otherwise I’ve usually got a Drake and Cat on my bar.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

snip

Honestly i’m not worried about it. Most likely i’ll buy HoT and continue playing this game because i’ve really enjoyed it and the people i’ve met through playing it. What I most likely won’t do is continue playing Ranger at all if Druid doesn’t address the areas that we are lacking.

Chronomancer and Daredevil look more and more attractive.

TurtleDragon.3108:

Sinister hands down for Dungeons and Fractals.

This

jcbroe.4329:

Thz.7569:

I don’t really care about which direction they go with the Druid as long as it’s actually effective. Druid likely being the last reveal means a lot less BWE feedback we’ll be able to give which is what worries me the most.

Hits my sentiments right on the head.

That about sums up my stance as well

release date 10/23…..still think there’s gonna be BWE3 or 4?

Do frost spirit buffs still stack if one person is using a traited spirit and the other isn’t?

This did work at one time and allow both rangers to run spirits but I haven’t checked since the patch and trait changes. 9/10 i’m the only ranger in a party anyway.

@Skitz – that’s what I mean, Druid would have to be groundbreaking and perfectly made to not need more feedback than 1 BWE if they even have it.

I know the article doesn’t state that there will only be 2 but think about this, if release is going to be ‘IN 2015’ as they stated then it stands to reason that it would be a pre-christmas release. most of their sales are going to come through the holidays and even more if they can give us a set release date by november. BWE 2 will be in September, it’ll take at least 2 months to announce the other two classes and content.

That would put BWE 3 at November which would be 4 weeks shy of release? I just don’t see it.

Thanks Khani.4786 that was the article I was referring to. I’m not trying to stir anything up really but I really hope the devs do see this and other threads popping up.

Ranger doesn’t get the attention that most of the other classes do and even if there is a third beta event it would be really close to release time since they said it would be released in 2015. and as was said we would have the least amount of feedback given. It really just doesn’t seem very fair.

OK, I think this is the first time I’ve been really disappointed in the development of this game.

We were told that we are only getting two beta events and who gets left off the roster of specializations that will be tested??? Ranger and Engi are both getting the shaft it seems. We can see from each beta event that classes where improved or balanced somewhat better after Anet got feedback on a class and we’re not going to get the same treatment.

Whatever get’s slapped together is what we’re going to be stuck with for a long time coming because if you’ve played ranger for any length of time you’d know how hard it’s been to get any changes made and they’re usually half-efforts at best.

Overall I love the game, and over the course of almost 3 years I’ve really enjoyed my ranger but I think it might be time to play chronomancer or start over with Revenant……

if you’re looking for a legendary for your ranger I would go for sword, GS or LB. Those will most likely always be viable and staples for pve. staff potentially if Druid is something you like, when they release it. What I have found is that if you don’t use it on one toon, you can always use it on another.

it’s bugged at the moment, it’s not healing pets or allies. if it was working the instant heal is for you and pet when you place it.

what you should be running in dungeons is S/A+GS. swap to GS for the burst and back to sword for the AA. This would be other than cases where range is necessary or sword AA would get you killed. but like it’s been said many times in this thread GS is viable, run it if you want to, if some bad group kicks you for running GS make your own.

Ranger is not terrible, things have improved slightly but there’s still a lot of work to be done. run birds and horrible pet AI matters a bit less, they have the furthest melee range of all pets.

personally i’d probably run s/d+SB…..i think i may try that after work today lol

There really isn’t a shot rotation like you would have in WoW or other MMO’s. Rapid Fire is your damage, if you’re running a quickdraw build you want to use that on weapon swap so you can shorten the cooldown. Barrage is also a high damage skill but since it’s channeled it can be interrupted. PBS is a good defensive skill and can be used for interrupts. Hunter’s shot is great for securing stomps in pvp.

Each skill is situational you just have to learn when and how to use them.