Guild Wars 2

Reborn.2934:

XacTactX.6709:

I have all classes:

• acceptable 1v1 and 1vX
• swiftness to allies for running dolyaks
• enough AoE to flip camps fast
• doesn’t need to swap weps (because I’m lazy)

only thief can do those 3 in bold . i am explaining in the next quote .

the only classes that dont change weapons are eng and ele. but they lack of stealth to save dollies . only stealth can save dollies . nothing else.

Straegen.2938:

Best roaming classes are mesmers and thieves mainly because they can easily reset a fight, escape from an out matched fight (such as a zerg) and do very well in 1vX situations.

I personally like the thief over the mesmer since it is faster. An alternative is the jogging warrior or celestial D/D ele. While they generally lack consistent stealth, they are very mobile classes and when played well can hold their own or better.

…..

i agree for thieves but not for stealth .

shortbow , d/p thief with thrill of the crime in traits and with rune of the pack rune can run almost in full stealth and with swiftness a dolly from camp to any destination

when i want to run dollies i am switching to my thief . he is dedicated to run dollies . on friday reset is the most important that can do a roamer to help his server for the first upgrades

Shout regen ranger with elite spirit > thief at dolly running. Yes, with some Rng, we can even stealth the dolly while providing perma swiftness and regen (spirit + boon = 642hp/second with apothecary). If ranger runs Axe Dagger, Sword Torch, enemy attackers (especially thieves and engies) will die from condi spam, trying to kill dolly. Tried and tested build, it works and like most ranger builds, only weak to stunlocks.

Instead of daze on attack, ill rather take daze on being hit. We need defensive tools, NOT offensive. Our offensive power is quite high, our defensive tools is lacking.

Some kind of signet/trait effect that dazes the next 2-3 attackers, preferably with a reasonably long ICD.

Also, why cannot people get it out of their head that if something else is stronger, the best solution is to buff the weak, rather then adjust the strong so it becomes a bit weaker. This is why i say rangers are fine, except pets they got a lot of issues, however, if you want ranger viable as you call it, the main competitors need to be toned down. Currently the ranger have two competitors, thief and ele. Ele has 4 competitors, ranger, warrior, guardian and engineer. While engineer is the closest competitor in terms of flexibility, the
Others lose out in ONE single aspect. Sustain under pressure. Warriors doesn’t have the tools to carry them while under pressure like ele does. Guard doesnt have the counter pressure to force a small breathing room even in a 1v2. Ranger cannot heal up burst damage effectively enough to compete.
On their own, warrior, ranger and guard is close to balanced. So who needs adjustments? The ele, because it can take the role of several professions in one build. What needs to be done is shaving the healing poer coefficients of healing mist, cleansing wave and healing ripple by about 10-15%. By doing so, the ele should be brought down to a level were it’s sustain is not so overwhelmingly strong that others cannot compete.
The thief has 3 competitors. Ranger, mesmer and warrior. The closest competitor is ranger, it can do as much damage, it can contest a point for a long time, but the ranger loses out in mobility and ghe ability to escape. Warrior can match the mobility, but will be heavily restricted by the weapon choices in terms of build. The mesmer is slow outside combat and need time to set up its burst, therefore it loses out in the “surprise category” and mobility.
So what can be done with this ? Reduce distance covered by infiltrators shot and heartseeker. This way, given the small size of pvp maps, thief will be very mobile, but less overwhelmingly so compared to it’s nearest competitors.

These changes ar for PvP only.

PS, might stacking is great for ranger, and easy. It is seriously strong when running with spiders and a few points into BM (2-3). It also boosts condition builds quite a lot. It is nit hard to maintain 12 stacj on ranger and 25 on pet. While might stacking is not very effective for power builds, it is excessively so with condi bm. Just look what happens with pet AA when you add another 875 power to it.

Conditions also serve as a way to indirectly apply pressure. It allows you to take a more defensive approach, without having to completely lose your offensive power. Now, luckily, conditions are for the most part single target, so they cannot wipe whole groups with ease. There is exceptions to this though.

A minor that boosts movement with bows and mainhand axe. If we get that, a lot of our mobility in non gs/sword builds would be covered. 25% movement, non stackable.

As for most of the stuff outlined in this thread. I agree that the proposed stuff is neat and somewhat justified, however unlike some, i do not see the need to always look at profession design and balance when a lot (not all) of the stuff people (in general) complain about falls under the “get good or get rekt” category. Needless to say, i am not so good that i do not struggle with things, so i too gotta get better, or get rekt.

Call me delusional all you want, I’ll still believe that skill should matter more then ease of play.

@dancingmonkey
Tell me, please, how to counter mist form stomp, distortion stomp, teleport stomp, obsidian flesh stomp?

But first, let us look at how these skills work:
Mist Form – Morph into an invulnerable, vaporous mist for a brief time.
Obsidian Flesh – Envelop yourself in stony armor, making yourself invulnerable.
Distortion – Unlike Blur, the Distortion effect actually grants Invulnerability, so it will not count towards Daily Dodge achievements.
Renewed Focus – Focus, making yourself invulnerable and recharging your virtues.
Elixir S – Drink Elixir S to shrink yourself, recover from stun, and evade attacks. (This skill can be used while finishing opponents. )

From the Wiki:
Invulnerability is an effect that prevents the target from taking damage, receiving conditions, or being affected by control effects. It does not prevent damage from existing conditions, fall damage, or environmental traps. The effect is characterized by an “Invulnerable” message whenever a character would take damage from an attack

And now to teleport stomp:
Shadowstep – Shadowstep to target area. Becomes Shadow Return, which returns you to your starting area and cures three conditions.
Breaks Stun
Range: 1,200

Time and time again, there is a common factor here: an effect that prevents the target from taking damage, receiving conditions, or being affected by control effects.

While Shadowstep or stealth does not PREVENT these effects, it allow you to reposition so that the downed/allies CAN NOT HIT YOU. Now, Fyi, i do this on my longbow ranger all the time. Is it cheap? yes, sure it is. However iv’e stopped caring about being a gentleman and not using it because i think its cheap. I want it gone.
Reason i want it gone is because stealth NEGATES ALL BUT TWO PROFESSIONS: Guardian (AOE KB) and Engineer (AOE KB).

No other profession can with 100% certainty negate fear. You can say rangers can do it with Wolf F2, but that depends on three factors.
1 – pet is alive
2 – pet is nearby and decides to not run across the map before doing the command
3 – pet is not blinded or target does not have aegis

@Dancingmonkey
Mesmer got 3-4 sources of stealth, an elite is NOT needed.

Stability makes you visible and attackable.

While it is by NO MEANS a small feat, one can corrupt/steal/remove stability and quickly CC. This is possible. Very hard to coordinate, but possible.

Stealth, invuln (mist form/renewed focus/obsidian flesh and others), teleporting outside range and back. These are forms of stomping that makes it nigh impossible for teams to counter. You litterally got to lock down the enemy PRIOR to a stomp. However several of these unstoppable stomps either come with stunbreaker or another way of circumventing control effects.

There should, at all times be counterplay. The downed system was put in place to give players a slight chance at making a second try. Mist Form, Renewed Focus, Teleports and Stealth completely hard counters every possible way of stopping the player that is downed, or his/her teammates from ever getting that person up.

While blinds, aegis and stability makes it HARD to counter the stomp, it is still not nigh impossible. If it is not impossible, then it is balanced.

Impossible to stop IS NOT balanced. It simply is another “i win” button. One of many that people complain about all the time, yet this specific button everyone just silently go unnoticed. Like it was not a problem for anyone.

the only way to “Bring teamwork” to this game, is to find someone willing to play with you.

In short, make friends, play together, enjoy the game together and finally, succeed together. It is the only way to get teamwork.

Well, there is a “shortcut”. It’s called “Teamspeak”. And even in pug groups, it goes a long way in improving even the worst of individual players.

@Sol
How to put this. Ranger is viable, but not preferred?

We can fill a slot for other professions, and the whole “poor mobility” argument is just plain wrong. Rangers got very good mobility, however you gotta use the right weapons (GS or Sword). If you do not, their mobility is indeed quite meh. Now, we do not have spammable teleports like a thief, so no we cannot beat a thief at mobility, what we got going for us is range, while the thief is fast, it needs to close the gap almost to melee range, while we can engage further out, this applies to all our weapons, even the GS has a 1200 range ranged attack (GS4, throw blade. Does quite decent damage if using opening strikes. Seen it crit for 3.5k).

We cannot provide the unique support of a mesmer (mass invis/portal), but we can grant reliable boosters in the form of spirits. While spirits are being hard countered by hambow, it is capable of holding it’s own against other builds, perhaps not the old spirit build, but ive seen rangers using spirits even with celestial.

Now, certain professions just do things better then rangers, engineer and guard will always hold a point better, DD Ele is better at contesting, Hambow is a better “sidekick”. Still this does not exclude us, it limits us, but there is still builds out there, builds that you most likely have not tried yet.

It is no secret that our bleedstacking build has been around since 2012, but it was only “meta” after ROM played a ranger with that build. So what does that mean? It means that our strongest builds are just not publicly recognized. What’s the next build to be called meta? Who knows, probably won’t be known before some big name plays it.
Still does that mean that our builds are not “good enough”? Just because a top rank player hasn’t tried or recognized it? No. It only means it has yet to become “mainstream”.

So yeah, for the time being, we are perfectly " viable ", but we are not preferred. Mostly because people are unsure how to integrate a ranger into their team, partially because of prejudice towards rangers and their “lame kitten pewpewpew builds”.

As for what i play, in TeamQ.
Staff support Ele
Hambow/Banner Regen Bunker(just a build i am testing for lulz but i like it)
Power/Condi/Trap Ranger
DPS Mediguard (havent been playing this for a while though)
and most recently i’ve started trying to learn Celestial Rifle engi (not been having much progress with that one yet)

shortbow bleedstack ranger:
Can you kill enemy with just SB? Yes
Can you survive with just SB? Yes (Ultra Hard Mode)
Can you take camps, 2v1’s, and 1v1’s with SB? Yes (again, Ultra Hard Mode)

How much condi pressure can you apply?
With Sigil of Earth and Sigil of Torment, in addition to Sun Spirit, you can apply 20 stacks of bleeds, 1-2 stacks of AOE torment and have high burning uptime, almost at all times. you can also do AOE blind, “cleave” poison, AOE immobilize and much more.

What is the counter?
Builds that churn out a lot of hard CC, like hammer warrior, rifle engi and DP or SP thief.

sorrychief.2563:

ranger has highest undodgable/unblockable AOE burst that can do over 9,000 damage in under 1 second.

Even with Quickness it is possible to dodge 30-40% of that burst. This is coming from a ranger that DOES play the DPS build and DOES have to deal with mesmers, thieves, warriors, guards and engineers reflecting my own burst.

Helly.2597:

Kicast.1459:

Are european servers in Europe Anet?
When I “whois” the server the server is identified as located in Austin….

I believe the EU servers are located in Germany. Last I heard the login has to do with the Austin servers that is why that comes up. But just due to the latency difference you get between the two regions I’d believe the US are here in US and EU are in Germany.

Game server is in Germany, but every NA/EU player is tied to the login servers in austin, texas.
When login servers/transam cable or satlink goes down, then every EU player will get booted outta the german game servers, eventually. I am not 100% sure about the interval in which the login server asks for “recheck if person X is still person X”.

This is also PART of the reason why EU players got mass disconnects during the DDOS on NA servers (NA game servers is in same place as login verification).

Anyone from Anet could verify or correct me, but last time i spoke with a QA anet employee ingame, this was how it was explained to me

There is no pet that is overused. It is only pets that are more versatile then others. The most common pets are canines and bears, closely followed by felines

@sol
Moment of clarity requires you to interrupt an enemy attack to get the +50 % damage for the ranger. Hilt bash (gs5) still give +50% dmg to pet, regardless of trait.

Ranger is currently viable in TPvP, but it is dependent on group comp. It can sub out a thief or second ele, but cannot sub out warrior, DD cele ele or mesmer without compromising team flexibility.

Lopez.7369:

No. Some items should be exclusive to PvE, just like the Balthazar Backpack and Glorius Armor are exclusive to PvP.

Agreed, even if i dun like fractals, i still think fractal stuff belongs in fractals. If you could get the skins in some other fashion, fractals would soon die out i guess.

Blackmoa.3186:

So basicaly the highest a zerker necro could do in spvp in ~6 seconds should be around 180000 on paper. You would need someone to attack who has all conditions ion the game on him though and no armor, and who also is below 50% and has 3 boons and all your attacks have to crit and sigil procs need to be perfect. A zerker ele would deal about 77000 dmg in the first second of the fight under same conditions, no idea what most perfect follow up to that would be.

Only one prob with that necro burst. Enemy must be a ambient creature for that to work, the ele would do 77k, even if enemy was moving, let alone thinking.

Atherakhia.4086:

The numbers are the coefficients stacked. It’s easier to get a rough idea of the damage you’re trying to compare than go through the whole process. And no one is claiming Ranger burst isn’t great. It’s just not better than Thief.

First off, for max damage, % boosters and stat % bosters is more important.
Second we should look at the point of when burst is performed, comparing sustained (low cd) to single occurence burst.

In one shot burst, ranger tops thief due to instant self might stacking, and instant 22 stacks of vuln. But over the scope of time, thief can burst more often, so it levels out.

insanemaniac.2456:

5 lich form crits is what… 50k damage?

gl matching that. too bad for necro that lich form is on a 3 min cd.

Ok, say you stand right next to boss. Point blank. Then animation + cast time and aftercast will allow 1 attack/second. Say you crit for 7, 5k on average. 6 second burst = 45k

In comparison ele will do 25-30k in 2 seconds. After that it has 4 seconds of massive dps from conjure hammer/bow/gs

Ranger will do 40-50k from barrage> rapid fire> path of scars combo in 3.25 seconds, pet will do 4 attacks in that time due to quickness, average jag crits is around 2, 5-3k. Meaning total burst for ranger is closer to 55 to 60k total in 3-4 seconds.

Thief can do 40k just from CnD +BS alone.

Warrior does around 45-55k damage doing 100b + evis, that’s just 4 seconds to execute….

As you can see, even if marks/wells add another 15k ontop of lich, the necro is heavily outbursted, it’s sustained damage is so low that we need not mention it.

Simple fact is, just cuz you make huge numbers, doesn’t matter if you do not make them fast enough.

Ps. Ranger alone produces 22 stacks of vuln in 2 seconds, so its damage will always be ridiculously high if looking at 10 second fights.

Atherakhia.4086:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Atherakhia.4086:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

DeceiverX.8361:

5 seconds is a long time.

So I will agree with LF berserker necro, as it will undeniably yield the highest damage throughput in that long of a period.

Otherwise, FA ele followed by D/D stab thief.

A d/d thief does not have higher burst than a ranger in 5 secs.

In 5 seconds a Thief will backstab twice, cloak and dagger, and go through 2 dagger cycles. If that’s right, it comes out to 10.32.

Ranger will RF, 1x Sword Cycle, and a Path of Scars + a pet F2? That’s 6.85 + whatever for the pet. And that’s not repeatable.

Even if you don’t want to factor in a second backstab, it still wins.

No sword auto on ranger or you lose damage. You start with barrage, rapid fire after, and instant path of scars. Jaguar does not have a “special ability”, its just an instant stealth for 6 secs where it has +25% crit.

That’s only 9.75 and I’m pretty sure no one would consider this burst or even practical :/

That “impractical” burst of yours is part of the PvE meta good sir. If you dun trust me, check out Brazil’s yt channel or the DnT page.
With quickness, the cast time for ranger skills is halved, in addition to this, Path of scars have 2x coeff, because it does full damage on both ways. The coeff of that skill is 2x not (2x).

You also gotta add in the fact that barrage triggers pred onslaught for the pet right away. Granting pet 40% damage (wild + spirit + trait) in addition to one stack of might on every crit, and one stack pr attack from RaO. and +72-75% for ranger throughout RF and PoS. This kind of boost is massive, and once the sword rotation starts, pet gets 3x might (sword 3 companions might + RaO). Building tremendous amount of damage boosting in less then 3 seconds

Any Ele burst build comes out on top AFAIK.
Followed by Ranger with LB and Sword Axe.
Rapid Fire does 20k+ damage in 1.5 seconds, followed by 2x 4-9k bursts from axe all while sword and pet AA does 2-5k Autos every 0.5 seconds….

Thief burst is, unfortunately, limited by revealed timer.

Bring one shout heal warrior with trooper runes and a warhorn. If you still have issues with condies after that, then unfortunately for you, there aint much you can do.

People think diamond skin ele is stronh against conditions, however they are way too easy to get below 90%.
Only build i know, that is a threat even when solo, that litterally make conditions useless is survival bleedstack ranger with empathic bond and survival of the fittest.
Ironically it is one of the builds that can apply lethal amounts of conditions faster then anyone can cleanse them (even if looking over time)

This is the ranger build i use atm.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjEq0xaLLWsQ1aADhqdLEslArAwd8+CX9JXJarA-TVSFABrpbYhDCAAPAA2uAARq+DUK/EUJYCHBgU2fIAACwO3Z6sODO6RP6RP6R7oH9oH9oHtUAQMNC-w

Edit
Realized i posted my wvw build. PvP build is, depending on enemy having heavy hitters or pure condi, cele amulet for pure condi, rabid for heavy hitters. If mix of burst and condi, rabid with blood sigil on SB

josh.7390:

How about they way Dota2 handels it? When you have a dc on your team the guy disconnected has 5minutes time to reconnect, after that the game wont get into statistics and is free to leave. Since Dota matches take 3x as long as a GW2 match, I’d set it to 3 mins (even then you have huge disadvantage).

Addiontaly instead of giving dishonored to dc’ed players (it’s not always intentional), they can only queue unranked matches and their next 3 matches wont give them any rewards (rank/track progression) and they musn’t leave in these 3 matches…

Dota is a MOBA, the whole Dota match is in most cases “won or lost” during character selection due to how the hard counter system of Dota works. I used to play Dota, and unfortunately, even if you were to display near god like skill, certain toons will smash you, even if the player playing them is just average.
Guild Wars is not designed in such a way, nor could the game handle being paused several times (like in Dota), or for extended periods of time, because that would seriously mess up the match-up Queuing time.

You got to look at it this way; active Dota players is around 1-2.5 millions globally (probably much higher these days), active Guild Wars 2 PVP players online in any region (EU/NA/China) at any given time is a few thousand at the very very best.
Now segregate these few thousands by MMR ranking, and you start splitting them into smaller and smaller groups, then split them into “hotjoin heroes, SoloQ and TeamQ” by doing this you active target group, as to which you need 10 players for a match, is down to a two-three hundred players during peak hours. If you were to pause matches, the already not too quick match-up queuing would be even slower and possibly also less accurate.

Justin ODell.9517:

No, nothing Dec 2nd, other than all the ways we are trying to prevent the 4v5. What ways would you guys like to see this?

I believe some people suggested queuing respawns to compensate, others suggested adjusting the prediction rules. What ever we do, if anything, would need to be exploit free, which makes the problem a lot harder.

simple solution:
If match ends in 4v5 – result of game does not affect leaderboard ratings or MMR. The whole game “did not happen”.

That’s it. Simple as that. Xv5 is now “balanced”. It sucks, but it isn’t going to negatively affect you.

Yes i know, sometimes the 4 man team step up their game and win, but this happens less then once every 20 4v5’s from my experience.

EDIT:
A lot of people are suggesting elaborate calculations that compensates for the loss of a match. However, in the interest of our well being (our ranking) and the developers well being (workload). Making a system that simply voids all scores tied to a game ending in Xv5 is simpler, easier to set up, even more “gentle” to the side with the DC’ing player, least of all. It does not further punish the DC’ing player.

Given the random instabilities of the PvP servers (yesterday i had random freezes lasting up to 18 seconds followed by errors, and for once i can say it was NOT my internet causing this) we should not further punish players that may or may not be at fault. Arenanet does have plenty of stability and optimization issues they need to sort out. A DC should not be a punishable offense, it is in more cases then not (except WvW) an unfortunate event outside player control.

Cenile.8340:

When ranger pets are dead/no health, it still heals the ranger but you can’t even knock it away. If you do knock it back before it loses all its health, it just runs back and continues to res the ranger. Is this working as intended?

What are your thoughts?

actually this is wrong. The pet does not heal the ranger, the pet heals itself rapidly (if pet was almost revived then yes it will start healing very soon).

The pet acts like a stubborn player. It will keep trying to heal its master until the pet itself is dead, swapped, ordered to do something or master is dead.

They fixed the “invuln pet healing dead player” bug A LONG time ago, and ever since, it’s been horrible to go down as a ranger. Mostly cuz we need to target enemies for our downed skills to work…

Hey hey hey, revolutionary thought:
Is it perhaps the professions USING the runes that is broken?

Lets see… what enemies usually use Perplexity runes? Oh i know, DP thief. What does DP thief have that makes perplexity runes work so well? An incredibly spammable daze skill (Pistol 4, Head Shot). Then there is mesmers, who also have a few sources of interrupts, alongside their own confusion (they mostly use the runes for the duration bonus). Then there is warriors, they use it for interrupts and to boost a trait called “Distracting Strikes”. Engineers use it due to several interrupts in a single build, in addition to having 2-3 sources of confusion themselves.
Necromancers use it because well, their king of condi and fear is now an interrupt.

So, the reason it is being used is more because classes have SEVERAL sources of triggering the #6 bonus.

So what makes the #6 bonus so easy to trigger? YOUR PLAYSTYLE, or should i say, the playstyle of most players out there. Many people (usually the ones who come here to complain, but there are others too), just use every skill they got on their skill-bar and hope the enemy goes down when they finish “their rotation of epicness”.
Now, a lot of people also happen to use weapons with longer wind-ups like hammers, longbows, maces, staffs and scepters. This further causes them to be easy targets.

So how do i counter perplexity? I bring condition cleanses, and most critically, i do not panic. If i notice i have 5-10 stacks of confusion, i simply do not take out my shortbow and spam 111111. Because that will hurt me. Instead, i stay in a more defensive set and changes my pace. That’s right, i use slower attacks, and spend more time griding my enemy down carefully rather then going head first and hacking away as fast as i can. However, i also play a ranger, so i can let my pet deal with the enemy while i am somewhat reduced in offensive capability.

People that complain about conditions also need to get it out of their head that they MUST BE free of conditions at any given time. Ive seen people blow 20-40 second cooldowns over 4-5 bleed stacks that hardly tick for 400 damage. These bleed stacks (in my builds case) only last 5 second. So they will not instantly murder you. It will take a small chunk of your HP, but not flat out kill you. Many also spend cleanses on conditions that originate from power builds.
For the longest of time, i played a cleric regen ranger. My pet deals some bleeds every now and then. Bleeds last 10 seconds, but they do less then 70 damage/stack per second. Therefore, even if pet’s CD’s all line up and pet manages to stack 8 stacks, it still will not kill you. It will barely dent you. Yet people use cleansing skills that is also stunbreakers, because of low damage bleeds.

YET, when i load em up with poison for over a minute in duration, that has been amplified by Poison Master, ticking for 350+/second, they dun do jack about it, cuz poison is NP.

Evasion regen ranger. It will outheal most if not all the damage it cannot evade

problematic.9623:

Luvpie.8350:

unrelated but awesome … Speaking of patterns. SoS only server that ever ‘crashed’ all the way to T4 and rebuilt to stable T2… rest ET/HoD/SBI/SoR etc all collapsed and were never the same.

And have the right to remind people of the accomplishment. Everyone believed it couldn’t be done.

Been done by 2-3 EU servers, more then once. Desolation has crashed 3-4 tiers on 3 occasions and crawled back up. So SoS id nothing special in this sense.

nekretaal.6485:

As you are new, both ranger and necromancer are good/great classes to play.

Both are intuitive and easy to control, easy to master, the necromancer is tanky and the ranger can spike somebody down quickly from range.

At high levels, the necromancer doesn’t have enough mobility, but this is not your concern until you get to high levels. The ranger is better on maps that are big and flat and less good on maps with lots of line of sight issues.

Tl;DR

Both are great choices.

Saying a ranger is easy to master is a seriously wrong statement. It is by far easy to play, even not that hard to be good with. However mastering it means having perfect pet selection and control in any build. Now tell me how to make a semi broken AI to do exactly what you tell it to do, when you tell it to do it and I shall acknowledge that you have mastered the class. Ive spent 2 years on a ranger myself and pet controls (or rather the lack of) alongside pet responsiveness is still what hold me, and many others, back. The aril patch helped a long way with pet response, but every patch since, it has gotten progressively worse and bugs out more often then before.

Certain ranger builds is easy to master, however most of these builds use the pet for situational utility rather then a constant source of damage/CC to pressure enemies. Thus you circumvent this by outright ignoring 30-60% of the classes performance potential.

kromi.7682:

It’s been two weeks since you acknowledged the bug and said a fix is in the works, is anyone REALLY working on fixing it?? I don’t feel like even trying to do the achievements or try the story with another character to get the other shoulder skins before I know I won’t have to spend ages whittling down the annoying boss or restarting again and again.

Arenanet please, you already released the next chapter, how about trying to fix the previous one.

Have to agree. That shoulder skin was the only reason i bothered to play the story of the recent LS anyway.
Which should give people a hint of how little excited i am for the next chapter.

A shallow story ontop of bugged mega long boss fights. Sorry, but that ain’t a good sign. Not gonna rave about quitting the game, but feedback is needed.

Faenar.8036:

Hello, I am missing two things in the “report dialogue window”, where fair-play customers can report non-fair-play customers. ( For more info why I am missing them, feel free to read this topic about hacking accident which happened yesterday here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/WvW-walljump-hack-into-Stonemist-Castle/first#post4561929 )

At this moment, report dialogue window have only these options:
1)botting
2)inappropriate character name
3)spamming
4)verbal abuse
5)scamming
6)selling gold
7)LFG system abuse

First suggestion:
It would be good to add at least these two other options:
8)hacking/exploiting
9)other abuse (which is not specially mentioned above)

Second suggestion:
In many online games I played, there is also a second section in report dialogue window, where you can write a small description (usually with character limit 1000 letters) where you can further describe any usefull information about the reported activity (for example exact location or improved description of abusive activity). I think it would be a good improvement if GW2 report dialogue window have this text section too.

This. That would fix everything

Iason Evan.3806:

I get your point, but Bethesda who made Skyrim did not make ESO. Not a big deal, because it isn’t your point, but ZeniMax Studios made ESO. ZeniMax is the parent company of Bethesda.

explains A LOT. because bethesda never fix a bug. Their second lowest only after Microsoft. Purely because Bethesda knows when to quit and makes a new game instead of fixing stuff their unable to fix. Microsoft on the other hand…. they let severe security breaches and system weaknesses go untouced for DECADES…. God knows how many people have had their computers damaged/infected through MS’s negligence

DD Ele and a hambow. Those two alone can almost lock down a point forever in a 2v2 or 2v3.

After that the most sensible is to have one max-DPS burst, something to annoy the enemy (mesmer/engi), and support guard/another ele.

Last night, i had a random roll in teamQ that worked quite well.

Bleedstack Trapper ranger (me)
Rifle + thumper turret Engi (he had supply crate too)
Hambow
DD Cele Ele
Longbow Ranger

Most of the tips here only work on your bad to average player. An experienced ranger will dodge your leaps, save the knockbacks for later and fight you in melee range with a LB, as easily as they would at max range.

There is a world of difference between builds too.
Most roll the yolo 66020. Which means max DPS at cost of having only a signet and one or two stunbreaks to save their rear end.
Some roll the “safe” 60260. Which means they got condi cleanse, is harder to kill, and have a heavy emphasis on hard CC.
Then there is the select few (myself included) that realized that just dumping 6 into Wilderness Survival is enough to make you facetank as well as a Cele Engi, yet hit just as hard as a zerker DD thief.

Simon.3794:

So i was like hey why not have two greatsword equiped and show people how awesome i am..

but then i found out that you use skills on greatsword A, you switch to greatsword B it will also have the CD…

Plox fix this , i need to be the greatsword king.

well, imagine this.
Condition BM ranger with SD SD…..
Running poison master and geomancy sigils

you would never hit the ranger due to 100% evasion/dodge uptime. But he WOULD hit you

oxtred.7658:

viable =/= optimal. You’re obviously not experienced enough to comment on the game pve balance.

true.

Also, “Viable” is almost exclusively subjective. It is therefore not a proper way to describe performance in any way.

Zerker is fine in say, 70% of content. But in fractals, it won’t be nearly as good as other combinations. In some dungeons, you get rekt in milliseconds using it. In Orr, unless just running through, you should have ‘some’ vitality, unless you dun mind wasting time waypointing and running. In Dry Top/The Silverwastes it is totally “viable”, if you do not mind being a massive liability to your fellow PvE players seeing as they gotta revive you A LOT during boss fights. In Silverwastes, even a normal NPC can wreck you easily due to no toughness.

Also depending on role, zerker is far from good. PVT is the only universally strong gear. It does good damage, tanks fairly well and costs little. HTP (Cleric) is the only universally strong healer gear (PvE only. PvP/WvW got better combos).

The reason you PvE players does not go down all the time when fighting the Queen in Dry Top or the bosses in The Silverwastes is because somewhere, someone, is running his/her shout warrior with healing power or healway guard. A char that is probably being used mostly in WvW, where healing power means the difference between wiping due to insufficient healing, or staying alive.

Foghladha.2506:

Black Frog.9274:

It is incredibly easy and fast to level up. You can get to 18 in an hour or two of focused play. Especially if you’ve got higher level friends to help you out.

Prissie.6582:

Last night an long missing guild mate joined GW2 and we told him to get through the tutorial and he could come and WVW with us. Much to our surprise he could not due to the fact that he was not level 18. When did this happen? Why did this happen? One of the greatest thing about the game was being able to do WVW or PVE with the guild at any level. Not a new player friendly change.

Because people were abusing it to create troll siege and do other annoying things

So the person would spend 19.99 or 39.99 to build troll siege? This limit is only for new accounts. If they had a toon already they wouldn’t be limited. I find it hard to believe someone would spend that much real world cash to be a moron. But then again we also have peopleofwalmart.com….

I would think ArenaNet would just add a right click option to siege to allow people to report troll siege and store the name of the person who placed it. Thus allowing them to lock out accounts who perform such actions. If enough people report it the siege destroys itself. Would be a much more community friendly solution that this.

No, you see that during LEAGUES arena net almost ALWAYS had a “try out GW2 for a month for free” trail going just before or at the start of the tourney. This meant that people could create FREE accounts that they used to troll with. Said accounts was disabled once their trail period was up, thus they just made a new one. This circle went on and on and on. It was/is also one of the driving forces behind WHY arenanet is struggling to stop the siege trolling. Because A LOT if not most of the trolls are using trail accounts.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Shockwave.1230:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

it is working as intended.

the pet revive action can be interrupted by the way.

Except when they do the revive while invulnerable

are you referring to signet of stone being activated before the ranger is downed?
the pet is still susceptible to conditions and control effects.

Anet also fixed the “ded pet ressing ded player” bug that made ranger downed state totally god mode in the past

NeXeD.3042:

Let the dot a player fight a lockdown mesmer.

I got a better one. AH shout guard guard vs regen ranger. Slow paced combat for however long you want.

BlackBeard.2873:

Blackjack.5621:

ranger followed by necro for Eu meta, since we play conquest and not deathmatch

Shots fired….

Although you can’t deny that a WELL-PLAYED necro is an absolute monster in conquest. I think that is the problem with many in EU…

Same goes for a well played ranger that is using it’s evades properly.

Ragnar.3916:

Prysin.8542:

I was kinda missing these non-objective and totally uninformed topics that OP tends to make.

So what is your argument this time Ragnar?

“Engi feel stronger”….

Well, i “feel stronger” when i get drunk, but i aint getting any stronger by drinking. So your feelings have little to do with balance i am afraid.

and i was missing my wvw boy speaking about tpvp when not even playing in this game area <3

Been playing pvp exclusively for 5-6 months. Granted, I play it less (hour wise pr session) then I did WvW

I was kinda missing these non-objective and totally uninformed topics that OP tends to make.

So what is your argument this time Ragnar?

“Engi feel stronger”….

Well, i “feel stronger” when i get drunk, but i aint getting any stronger by drinking. So your feelings have little to do with balance i am afraid.

No ranger pet has strong direct dmg skills. Bone and rock can deal 4-500dmg with zerk, but not more

Guang is outdated due to rangers getting pred onslaught and frost spirit fixed to provide 70% chance of 10% more dmg on each attack

eyestrain.3056:

All the npcs are semi worthless as examples of the class, but they do fight back with knockbacks/condis etc in ways the svanir/chieftain npcs dont. At least the ranger can actually kill glass who don’t know how to gap close, and provide a way to test how to get past rapid fire for newer players. I know because i’ve watched people in the builds and classes they usually play get killed by rapid fire lb ranger npc. It is really weird it doesnt have a pet though, considering the pet is already AI…

except the Ranger NPC they used were using THE OLD and much much slower rapid fire. So you learned absolutely nothing from that NPC other then “this is how hard it can hit if i facetank it”

PLAYERS PLAYING PVP RUINS BALANCE. Please nerf players.

Sincerely
Professions

really? Now this too?
Hey, lets remove dyes too while we are at it. Because it is totally gamebreaking for me to see people with cooler colors then me. We should all be wearing gear with only team colors. So you can choose between blue or red but not a mix.

Oh, and let us remove traits, they complicate things and give advantages.

Oh and please remove healing skills too

And thiefs

then remove guardians

Then ranger

then ele, engi, necro and mesmer.

Hey lets all roll PVT warrior cuz then we all know the counterplay and all know how to play.

Please just let the ranger NPC be gone.
It doesnt even come close to portray how a ranger works. Which means, it is a USELESS thing to fight.
The only thing you can learn from it is “this is how a terribad ranger plays, this is how easy it is to roflstomp it”.

So for the love of the six, Arenanet, please do not add it back. I love playing a Ranger myself, but that NPC (doesnt even have a pet) is a disgrace to the whole class.

You could re-add the underwater section though, it was refreshing to take a dip after a hard day practicing with the golems.

Justine.6351:

Yeah remove mesmers’ illusionary wave too. That’s about 5x worse but thankfully mesmers are rare.

Or warriors hammer whirly knockback skill.

Or guardians hammer launch, so annoying when trying to stomp.

Or necros fear mark.

or any of engis million random sources of knockback

Atherakhia.4086:

- snip -

Let me address things in order;
1: If you do not play a build, you will never understand how it actually works. How you gotta play it (mechanical skill part of it), how it is countered (game mechanics) nor how to circumvent or reduce the number of counters.
You do not play conditions, you know they hurt, you have at multiple occasions admitted that you struggle against condition builds which further tells me (and most others) that you do not really know how they work. You do not know their cooldowns good enough to plan 2-3 steps ahead. This means that players equally skilled as you, will beat you unless some special circumstances are applied (luck, game lagging, enemy making mistakes etc…).

2: People see what they want to see – fact:
Why do i “claim” that people are ignorant about rangers? Well because they pretty much are.
Point in case: Remember warrior healing signet before it was nerfed? Remember how everyone and their mother claimed that warrior had the best self regen in the game?
That was proven to be false quite fast (not by me, someone else). Rangers had infact 150-200 hp/second more, even when accounting for Adrenal Health and both ranger and warrior having maxed out their healing power stat. But i guess warrior still had better self regen solely because it is a warrior.
People claimed necros had the longest fear – false, rangers does when using moment of clarity trait and skull + wolf F2 (can also add in norn wolf form for more). Simply put and intended/unintended effect of the grandmaster trait doubled the duration of fear (pre fear being made an interrupt).
People claimed spirits was OP and unstoppable – Ranger community gave tonns of advice how to beat spirits (I did so too), yet the PvP/WvW community did not listen and spirits was nerfed 3 times in a row to the point of being borderline lackluster again (mainly because now they are much weaker and there exist 3 hardcounter meta builds out there. GG anet).
PEOPLE STILL CLAIM longbow glasscannon ranger is OP, despite the ranger community telling people how to counter the entire build. The community DID somewhat listen this time (atleast PvP). So far only one minor shave has happened, and this one is deserved/fair.

Considering that one must repeatedly tell people “rangers CAN do that better then others” leads me to conclude that people ARE oblivious to what rangers can and cannot do. They do not care to see what happens with the class, and only a change that is so fundamentally game changing as giving rangers a skill that actually hurts made them notice.

3:
Please read this line again -

Through what can only be described as a test duel, I could not determine your actual skilllevel, however forum ppostsand ingame conversations suggest that you lack knowledge of mechanical functions, and their limitations, of several builds across several professions.
With this in mind, I would advise against making definitive/absolute statements in the way you so often do.

Now at which one point do i say you are:
A – a skill-less noob
B – show you my build

Now, for starters, calling yourself a skill-less noob is fine by me, but crediting me for saying it is not. I merely said you are not half as knowledgeable about builds and how they work to make definitive and absolute statements, which is what you do.
You say “rangers suck”. But your only argument for why? 2 years? is – pets does not work in blobs. GvG guilds do not want my ranger.
To that i can only say:
Mesmer clones does not work in zergs
Necromancer minions doesnt work in zergs
Guardian spirit weapons – don’t get me started
Ele elementals – dead in a flash.
Engi turrets – will live 15 seconds if fully traited with all turret traits + toolkit wrench spam.

AI does not work in zergs. This is a design flaw of ALL AI, not native to rangers, nor native to ONE specific profession mechanic. It affects everyone equally.

oh and GvG is a community driven, UNOFFICIAL and UNSUPPORTED “game mode”. Created, administrated and run by PLAYERS. It is by no means backed by ArenaNet, they may back it in the future by releasing arenas specifically for GvG, but i would not hold my breath. In the meantime, these “pr0” guilds keep alienating pugs and smaller non-GvG guilds alike with their excessively elitist and hostile attitude. They also force you to play builds/classes you may or may not be comfortable with solely because they are unable to incorporate and or variate their 10-20 man composition.
GvG is a massive kitten competition. All you win is bragging rights. And these bragging rights ain’t worth a single copper to the average player.

Atm I run celestial survival condi. But ive also run rabid SB bleedstack, zerker with emphasis on sustain rather then maxing all dps. In short, more pewew, less #yolo #ehrmagawdzomgcondiesop

Atherakhia.4086:

The arguments for and against greater defense, utility, and responsive are all reasonable. But the simple fact still remains that what the Ranger currently provides the game simply doesn’t need and the players don’t want. If you think the Ranger’s damage/range is too high to add more defense so teams will want to use it? Then draw down the damage/range some. Same for utility.

The class is still a laughing stock in PvP and WvW though and if it needs adjustments in one area to compensate it in another so this game has a niche for them to fill in an area that needs filling so be it.

You really gotta learn to play and face reality. Rangers are only a real laughingstock in GvG, an unofficial elitist community thing, and among dungeon PUGs. Every other part of the game, the ranger has as good a place as any other prof.
Just so happens that it aint used by top players in pvp that much, but that is more likely then not a personal preference/team comp issue rather then the ranger itself.

Just like a dungeon group, if prof x + y bring a+b, you do not need prof z to bring a+b too.

Edit. I would also like to add in, that your personal bias towards non-power builds is what causes you to only see a one-dimensional image of the ranger class. You have, through several conversations with you, admitted that you do not wish to invest in the pet mechanic, nor that you wish to play any build, on any prof, that involves conditions as main source of DPS.
With such an attitude, you are essentially building your ranger with barely 50% efficiency, and still hope to fight professions that is running heavily optimized builds.
Through what can only be described as a test duel, I could not determine your actual skilllevel, however forum ppostsand ingame conversations suggest that you lack knowledge of mechanical functions, and their limitations, of several builds across several professions.
With this in mind, I would advise against making definitive/absolute statements in the way you so often do.