Look, I play a shout build with trooper runes. Ever since the runes were changed to Trooper runes from Soldier runes, the effect has been limited to those affected by the base effect. When I noticed this, way back, I was shocked. I would appreciate it if you’d test it before telling me I’m wrong, for I have tested this many times, last time as writing this comment to check if they had changed it. Nearby allies are not affected by Trooper runes when using ranger shouts.
I tested and you are right, that is still a bug though and not how they should work it doesn’t work for any of the ranger shouts but it works for all warrior ones even though the ranger ones (traited) do affect friendly allies while the warrior ones (untraited) don’t.
So do they still work in PvP since those are still soldier runes?
I personally find ranger to be a lot more fun to play and I would definitely choose it for the last slot if you do WvW roaming at all, but if all you do is PvP and you only have 1 slot you should go thief.
Thieves bring better burst for +1’ing a fight, they are way more mobile for decapping, and they are better at disengaging. If you ever start running with a team you will be a lot more useful as a thief.
The best choice would be to buy a couple more character slots and have 1 of every profession. The more experienced you are with each class the easier they are to fight against.
if you say that people did not stay in your traps, then you play it wrong!
You have to combine trap spike damage with pet’s taunt.
After you forced target to spend he’s stunbrakes, you 100% win the fight.
in 3sec taunt you’ll apply 17-23bleed stacks(depends on spikeTrap came from CD or not) and 12-18burn stacks. totally it’s about 7-9k damage in second. and only necromancer and warrior in Sentinel gear will stay alive for 1-2sec after taunt ends. all other classes wil melt down till the taunt end.
And yes, you can do these spike burst every 15sec if you do it right.
And yes, target can’t dodge or get out from your trap when taunted.
ppl think that trapper are faceroll and weak ranger.
It’s easy to play, but really hard to master. And if you’ll master it, you’ll become worst nightmare.
1 condi cleanse from the initial spike trap or 1 stun break out of your taunt and your entire plan is done. It looks good on paper right? go try it in a ranked match with proper teams and let me know how it works for you. You aren’t stacking that much bleed / burn on anyone unless they are afk dude….
It might work on bad players in soloQ sure.
It won’t work on higher ranks in sPvP here dude…you won’t become anyones nightmare lol.. not to mention if you go into a team fight on node, you will get bursted down FAST without being able to do anything..because you only have choice of 1 utility skill because traps take up other 2…
you will be on your heels and back peddling by the time you drop both of your traps because you have no good passive or active defenses
^Exactly. Traps can be fun but you aren’t really “fighting” unless your opponent is terrible. I use them occasionally to troll unranked or WvW but it’s all hit and run play. Trap a point and watch a thief blow up when he tries to decap, trap a doorway in front of a tower, drop traps on a downed player to melt people trying to rez, etc.
The problem is once players know what you are running they will just dodge roll over the point to activate the traps, focus you down in group fights since you are an easy target, and avoid the spots where they saw you popping a squat.
If it was turned into an elite kit you would be able to bring that damage without going full yolo mode. This would be a huge boost to rangers and help them break into the meta, and personally I think this would be a fair change since we can no longer use ground targeting with our traps.
The thought of their ”rework” is kind of terrifying.
Please anet don’t add a bunch of stupid pve mechanics, the only rework I want to see is the removal of all the random animal npc’s and a fix for buggy spots on the map.
Someone should start a new thread after every patch tuesday listing “You had time to do this in sPvP/PvE, but not that in WvW”. I mean we get that they are busy, but still.
Like:
You had time to program ambient occlusion in the graphics engine, but you cant make garrison inner south door upgreadeable.
You had people work hard to fix the entire personal story, but no one can remove the constant particle effect in the water south of garrison.
You had Lions Arch rebuilt, but cant move spawn invoulnerability zones 4 meters to prevent exploits.
I always assumed garri’s inner south door was like that on purpose since it’s such a bad choke.
It would be nice if they would fix hills in the blue bl so you could +5 it after capping it, or fix bali trajectory so the 1 skill hits when 2 and 3 hit, adjust ac trajectory so you can’t drop one next to a wall and hit everywhere inside a keep or tower, remove the level up knock back, fix the immobilized in the air bug, change the rally mechanic, remove hard ressing in combat, etc…….
Traps as kits sounds good. Sounds good. Just like healing spring as trap sounded good. Scraping flame/frost trap and merging spike and viper nest leaves only one trap. Could it stay utility? Ya.
The reason traps as elite kit would flop is because no one even cares to use more than 3 traps even if they could. Lots don’t even care to have more than 2. Having 5 traps available with 2-3 not seeing use beyond “they are there” is not something people will give up entangle or rampage as one for.
That’s just part of the issue with traps as elite kit. I could go on further if you would like.
I disagree, I would absolutely love being able to use 5 traps, especially if they didn’t use up my very valuable utility slots. The reason why a lot of people choose to only run 2 traps is because running without a stun break is a death sentence in a lot of situations.
And when you are self-locking out of your weapon skills that have utility on them aswell…
I will try making my point, go play around with engi and use the bomb kit. If you make it for 1hr in spvp or wvw then maybe the idea has merit. And that’s as a utility skill, not an elite.
Ummm sure. I got a little burnt out on engi but it was my second most played class for about a year. You aren’t locked out of anything when you swap to a kit… you can swap back.
Traps as kits sounds good. Sounds good. Just like healing spring as trap sounded good. Scraping flame/frost trap and merging spike and viper nest leaves only one trap. Could it stay utility? Ya.
The reason traps as elite kit would flop is because no one even cares to use more than 3 traps even if they could. Lots don’t even care to have more than 2. Having 5 traps available with 2-3 not seeing use beyond “they are there” is not something people will give up entangle or rampage as one for.
That’s just part of the issue with traps as elite kit. I could go on further if you would like.
I disagree, I would absolutely love being able to use 5 traps, especially if they didn’t use up my very valuable utility slots. The reason why a lot of people choose to only run 2 traps is because running without a stun break is a death sentence in a lot of situations.
Rangers are so OP, with their 1 second dazes, especially those delivered by a stealthy rainbow-kittenting unicorn. Anet should replace both SB and LB with actual nerf bows with 400 range auto attacks slotted for every weapon skill. That should bring Rangers down to OP’s level.
Just to recap on what Jon Peters touched up on when the Ranger main-hand sword was being discussed back in December about a year ago. These were his responses (in order).
1st Post
Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.
P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.
No more posts about sword afterwards.
Ugh….. why didn’t they just give us main hand dagger instead of staff so we could have a useful main hand melee option….
I’m in the small camp that believe traps and trapper runes are OP in the small scale WvW meta of play. Doesn’t mean I’m right by any means but they work for me.
They aren’t OP unless your opponent is an idiot. The only time I would argue that they are strong is if you are running with a small group that can draw your opponents attention.
In any other situation running traps leaves you with crappy condi removal, leaves you extremely vulnerable to cc, and the fact that the pet doesn’t stealth when using stealth runes makes the runes mediocre at best.
I agree with Heimskarl, traps should become an elite kit. If they do wise up and make it a kit they should revert healing spring back to normal.
We’ve seen a concentration of talent as hardcore players from most worlds have migrated upwards through the tiers looking for new experiences and greater challenge. Because this talent tends to be concentrated at the top, MMR has correctly kept the most dedicated teams locked in near perpetual stand off against the same opponents week after week.
Talent does not equal paying to transfer to a stacked server, and kitten you for claiming otherwise.
Natural Healing;“If you have less Health than your pet, you gain 125 Health per second. If your pet has less Health than you, it gains 1% total health per second.”
I really like that idea just not the % idea it might get a little op
I don’t know, it sounds pretty fair to me. It won’t save the pet if it’s focused but it should help it survive cleave/aoe
Yeah, would be OP in some aspects. EB wouldn’t be so bad currently if maybe a -% condition duration or damage was tacked on it, but that’s a band-aid fix.
Good fix for EB would be for the pet to gain 2-3s of Resistance per condition pulled.
I still think EB should either cleanse conditions from you and the pet, or have the pet transfer a condition from you and the pet to your opponent on a successful attack, give it a 3 second cooldown.
An alternative might be to give pets a condition cap of 1 stack. Then the pet would still have to deal with the conditions it receives, but not to a degree that could kill it.
I really like this idea. This allows pets to still take cc conditions like cripple, chill, immobilize, etc. without them getting absolutely wrecked by the damaging conditions. If they get loaded up they can still take around 1k a second which is a lot more reasonable considering their lack of cleansing options and dumb ai
Before the change when condi’s were less bursty I would have never considered this but now….
It’s just kind of ridiculous that even running SoR passively can be a death sentence for your pet because all of a sudden you have a burning stack transfer and your pet is loaded up with 8-10 stacks of burning.
SoR removes condis from the pet too on passive it’s only the activated skill that pulls them to pet, that’s why I always run it together with empathic bond when I do it makes a huge diffrence for the pet I find.
Well kitten , you are absolutely right. I’ve been playing since the betas and always assumed it transferred the condition like so many of our other “condi clears”
Pack are really solid, I used them before switching to wurm. I would recomend them those most.
Holbrek and strength runes are really good if you plan to use brutish seals and SoTP.
Ogre are also a very good power stat and have increased damage like rune of rage
Dolyak would give you insane regen
Another support based idea but you could take soliders runes; taking resounding timber and wilderness survival would allow you to have full bar of condi clear.
Trooper and soldiers are the same rune they just have different names for the PvP/WvW versions.
@OP I run trooper on mine, it helps keep the pets alive since WK does nothing for the pets and EB is a death sentence for them. It’s also pretty great party support when using guard and we heal as one. But any of your choices would work well.
Yeah, would be OP in some aspects. EB wouldn’t be so bad currently if maybe a -% condition duration or damage was tacked on it, but that’s a band-aid fix.
I had been thinking that as well but then I realized even if condi duration was cut in half on pets it’s still pretty much an instant death because condi’s are hitting harder for a shorter duration and if you are running SoR or EB the pets are taking twice as much damage once your coni’s are transfered. Burning alone will easily tick on a pet for 5k+, if you have enough condi’s on you the pet is pretty much being 1 shot when you transfer.
Before the change when condi’s were less bursty I would have never considered this but now….
It’s just kind of ridiculous that even running SoR passively can be a death sentence for your pet because all of a sudden you have a burning stack transfer and your pet is loaded up with 8-10 stacks of burning.
Just had a random thought. What if pets were immune to condition damage?
Think about it, right now condi’s are a death sentence for pets because the terrible lack of control makes it extremely difficult to keep them out of fire fields and aoe condi damage.
The only way to reliably clear condi’s on a pet (if swap is on cool down) is to run shouts with trooper runes, or run a brown bear.
A pet makes up a percentage of our damage yet they can die extremely fast when fighting vs a condi build. Condi builds are already harder to kill because they can gear full into toughness/vitality without losing any damage.
This would also solve the problem of EB being useless, and make pets a little more reliable in large scale WvW fights.
That would be great if they hadn’t made the stupid decision to make upgrades automatic….
Some amazing improvements I’d like to see them work on would be
-fix the immobilize in the air bug
-fix bali trajectory so the first shot reliably hits
-remove the level up knock back
-fix ac trajectory so you can’t build one next to a wall and wipe every bit of defensive siege
The gameplay is slow, the opponents are average at best and it is all in the WvW environment. Wish there were VODs of the actual good rangers playing PvP like some you see in SoloQ on EU and NA. That would give people some perspective.
I enjoyed the video nonetheless.
This arrogant ”PvP is superior” attitude is getting old. I’ve found great fighters in WvW and pvp, I’ve also found terrible players in both. Neither mode makes you a superior fighter.
The reason why sPvP is superior to WvW is because it is standardized. I find that a lot of WvW folk are carried by food, oil, guard stacks, etc. In WvW, players aren’t limited by the variety of runes which gives them the opportunity to use runes like Rune of Perplexity (although I’m sure not many run exclusive runes). Even some have full ascended with mighty infusions, yielding about 5 permanent might stacks (considering they use versatile mighty infusions), in addition to the small bonuses to weapon damage and armor rating.
WvW players aren’t carried by their stats anymore than pvp players are. The dumbed downed stats of the pvp system is a large part of the reason why cele ele’s are kitten ed near unkillable in pvp.
The gameplay is slow, the opponents are average at best and it is all in the WvW environment. Wish there were VODs of the actual good rangers playing PvP like some you see in SoloQ on EU and NA. That would give people some perspective.
I enjoyed the video nonetheless.
This arrogant ”PvP is superior” attitude is getting old. I’ve found great fighters in WvW and pvp, I’ve also found terrible players in both. Neither mode makes you a superior fighter.
Except it did also heal the ranger… It worked that way for years. The pet would get regen every second and the ranger would get it every 3 seconds.
Well, it’s true I haven’t really checked the combat log or pay attention to what heals me periodically. But I’m pretty sure I don’t remember the green numbers apart from regeneration.
If that’s so, this would be my bad.
Yeah it’s one of those things you had to know about since the tool tip didn’t mention it and since it only ticked every 3 seconds in combat. It was very easy to miss.
Honestly I don’t see a reason not to add it back. The heal was pretty weak, it came out to about 60hp a sec. Even for regen builds it wouldn’t be worth taking over wilting strikes but at least people might consider using it.
Exactly, this trait was never designed to heal the Ranger.
If it is not healing the Ranger, it’s working as intended.
Did they ever actually say that? I know the tool tip never said anything about healing the ranger but the tool tips in this game are pretty unreliable.
It’s a trait that never did it in the 1st place. Never said it should and only got merged with pet getting more Healing Power.
That’s it. A trait that never did this has no reason to start doing it without even saying so.
Except it did also heal the ranger… It worked that way for years. The pet would get regen every second and the ranger would get it every 3 seconds.
Exactly, this trait was never designed to heal the Ranger.
If it is not healing the Ranger, it’s working as intended.
Did they ever actually say that? I know the tool tip never said anything about healing the ranger but the tool tips in this game are pretty unreliable.
I’ll trade my RF with your Hundred Blades any day of the week.
L2P Sonnn.
Ranger means ranger, aka wanderer or rover. The whole misconception that it derives from ranged combat is just that.. a misconception.
Not a misconception. I think Anet defines what the class entails:
“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”
Never mind the fact that the ranger archetype in fantasy rpg’s (not pen and paper) are almost always archers or heavily focused on bows, nearly all minion classes tend to be ranged because why bother if all are in melee, and the Ranger is one of the few if not the only class that has an entire trait line named after a very specific style of combat (Markmanship).
God… who cares? Why the hell does this come up in 90% of the discussions. The class should be balanced around the other classes and the game, not around whether Ranger means ranged combat or not.
We just received a crap load of nerfs because anet wanted to focus on what thematically fits the ranger in their minds instead of actually trying to balance the class. All this stupid RANGEr discussion does is encourage that kind of behavior.
I would agree with the rather lackluster effort from anet to balance different classes. But the title of thread did suggest the nature of the combat, which is range combat.
If you insist to use merriam webster to define a ranger’s role in gw2, then I genuinely don’t know what to say to you.
first of all it wasent a balance patch and secound Anet has already stated that balance will come AFTER HoT meaning we will prob only see bug fixes until then AND fixed traits that currently arent working since there are LOADS of those
You say this like it’s perfectly reasonable for the game to be left in such a sorry state for god knows how long. They don’t even have a release date for HoT….
I don’t remember them ever saying the ranger was supposed to get healing from the trait, as far as we know it could have just been a bug that was left in the game for 3 years.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love for this trait to be reverted. The only way I would ever consider taking it over the other traits is if it affected the ranger as well, but more than anything I would just like to see a dev pop in and say whether it is working as intended or not.
You know how to avoid being hit by rapid fire when you are in stealth? Go into stealth before the ranger starts using rapid fire. If they can’t target you the channel won’t follow you.
Every channeled skill works this way, stop treating stealth like it’s invulnerability.
I wonder if you wouldn’t get more out of Rage runes. You have plenty of vitality and the slight crit loss seems like a fair trade for the extra 5% damage. Both sets of runes are pretty cheap, might be worth trying out.
My server it’s experiencing the exact same thing. I’m not sure if we just lost a lot of our fairweather pugs because the WvW guilds blew off golem week, or if people got so fed up with the crap decisions and lack of communication that they just quit. Either way we took a big hit and have dropped 2 ranks because of this bull kitten.
In my experience, the only weapon that gets you shunned in a PUG is the shortbow.
I’m not a big fan of pve but I recently started hopping in dungeons to help out guildies and make some gold. Yesterday we had a shortbow ranger that kept screwing up every fight by jumping out of the stack to get behind the mobs so he could stack bleeds….
Something like that goes beyond not being effective, he was hindering the group.
Every skill that “rules” over your mobility has been nerfed as well as buffed.
All these skills have a base travel value that cannot be modified by Swiftness or traits, but can’t be hindered by cripple and chill, either.
It’s a tweak they made for all the classes. Not just Ranger.
He’s talking about the fact that the range of all our offhand skills got increased, except for stalker’s strike.
They also screwed up the cooldown on throw torch, it’s not being affected by the trait. Hopefully they will fix both of these problems.
I just figured this was another of their thematic changes. We have the bear, snake , eagle, etc. animations attached to skills. Stalker’s strike is us flopping around like a limp fish. I really hope they get around to adding the fish animation.
anet can’t do anything right anymore its seems, it’s laughable at this point how incompetent they’ve been lately
What on earth is wrong with this change?
it’s a nerf to power-based builds/professions that never needed to happen. people are quick to applaud this as they see it as a nerf to mesmer but it affects guardian, thief, ranger, and engineer in ways that are completely unnecessary.
if you can honestly say there is any justification in nerfing any of those profession’s damage output you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Have to agree with this, several of those classes recently lost damage modifiers with the trait changes. I don’t mind fire/air taking a hit but anet needs to put their HoT work on hold and start working on a balance patch. I for one won’t be buying an expansion while the current game is in such a sorry state.
The stuns and shatters are avoidable. IT JUST REQUIRES A BIT OF GAME SKILL It’s time to learn to play.
If you had “learnt to play”, then it would be obvious that an instant 1200 range stun that can be applied from stealth, multiple times per minute is not avoidable in any meaningful sense.
This sort of design would be less obnoxious (though still pretty cheesy) in a game with healers, but with the limited support classes give in GW2 it simply doesn’t work, it is just one more example of why PvP in this game is such a massive success.
Sure, it can be avoided. If you use the Force or were blessed with precognition.
You could also just randomly dodge when you see them go into stealth and hope you get lucky!
Ah Mesmer. When you absolutely, positively HAVE to kill someone in less than a second using only a few buttons… Accept no substitute.
The best part is Ithilwen is one of the players that cried for months about how OP longbow rangers are lol.
Last time I went against a 4 thief team we thrashed them.
^Everytime I’ve gone against a 4 thief team we’ve thrashed them. But in the ops defense this map is broken and holding the points don’t really matter. The guardian just needs to be able to run and the thieves can act as a gank squad.
I run s/d and longbow for roaming. Those are my stats. Very strong all around build that has hp, armor, power, crit rate, and crit dmg.
My stats looked really close to that pre patch but now I’ve traded a good bit of the defensive stats for higher ferocity. I find that everyone is so much more bursty than before and it is a lot easier to completely avoid damage thanks to quickdraw.
What shouldn’t happen? Spirit watch being included in a rotation for conquest when it’s some weird conquest/capture the flag abomination? I absolutely agree, they should remove that and courtyard from the rotation and give them their own queues.
I personally give GS the slight edge in dueling scenarios against most things, but only because smart players will realize you have Sword/Dagger (or whatever) swap set and try to “force” you into it and then reset knowing that all you can really do in that set is evade and autoattack, which can make the build lose a lot of pressure/threat (GS tends to make people feel “unsafe” and waste cooldowns when you swap to GS).
Sword/Dagger on the other hand makes certain matchups infinitely easier. In general, other LB rangers and Shatter mesmers become much more simple because you can use your evades and time them to completely counter their damage, and really anything that has telegraphs or “predictable” sustained damage.
At the end of the day though, the weapons are functionally different enough that I’d have to say that the neither option is more optimal than the other. They both have strengths and weaknesses, and really, whichever set you perform better with and whichever set you feel matches you better is what you should go with.
That’s funny, I always found GS to be much stronger against other longbow rangers. The block completely counters their rapid fire and swoop gives you a nice evade and gap closer.
Don’t get me wrong, sword/x definitely works, I just think GS makes the job a little easier.
I’ve also played in every tier. I currently still have accounts in T2, T5/6. Some guilds have better drivers, some servers work better together, but the only real difference between the servers, what gives them the win at the end of the week, is numbers and coverage. If you believe anything other than that you are a fool.
