With alot of healing power and using staff constantly for regen you can keep them up indefinitely now, I’ve had 4 I think was the most at once. That is really hard to do seeing as the regen only affects a certain number of targets, but since they cut down its bleed-out damage if you’re in a situation where the mobs/players don’t aoe (lol, never) the little buggers can actually stack bleeds pretty nicely. Of course the amount of times the stars align for situations like that is extremely rare, the skill definitely needs a buff..they shouldn’t even bleed out at all.
Stats already affect pets? I always thought that wasn’t the case but I noticed it when putting on new weapons armor. Try it out. Look at the pet window and their primary attack. Take off gear and look again, it will be lower. I dunno if this is a UI bug or a change they snuck in but the damage values change from power at least. Tried it on multiple pets.
Putting lots of points in BM and wilderness survival trees greatly increases your durability. Bark skin and the protection on dodge traits are really nice, and signet of the wild+natural regen trait and some healing gear makes you and pet passively regen quite a staggering amount actually. Then it really depends on what weapons you like, if you want to go condition or power or full on pet build etc.
Devourers seem to be far better tanks in my experience than bears if you are heavily BM spec and have some healing gear. Signet of the wild tics for massive heals along with natural regen and the heal on crit trait, nothing except a nuclear blast kills that scuttling little kitten. The massive toughness keeps him going while bears get rocked in the same circumstance against champions and tougher veterans like karkas or abominations.
If you already have an 80 warrior and thief I doubt you will get much satisfaction from necromancer. Unless you enjoy working about 5x as hard for slightly worse results than said classes, killing things slower, and having far fewer viable build options. The main reason myself and I’m sure most people even make necromancers, the pets, are a freaking joke. They’ve got to be the most ill-conceived and worst implemented necromancer summons in any mmo that has ever had them =/ If however you don’t mind being pigeon-holed into the condition spec and don’t want to use minions, you can have success and as Thresher said, a well timed epidemic can make you smile as the screen fills up with little ticking numbers. For about 2 seconds before they’re all cleansed. But I digress!
I totally agree, doing the quests with Sieran made me forget it was an mmo for a few minutes, like Bioware single player game quality character and acting right there. Then you have nothing else to look forward to but bland, boring run of the mill npcs and that god-awful Trahearne…who does nothing except boss you around and take all the credit and glory for everything you do. I seriously hate that guy, I hope one of the dragons corrupts him and he becomes a boss we get to kill.
My kingdom for the original, crocodilian marsh drake from beta (now scaled drakes in the wild). And wargs. And some herbivores, like stags or dolyaks or something, that would be fun.
I got a laugh, seems like something they’d do. Also featured in that patch, minion health reduced 25% and they are invisible to the player because that allowed too much control, thats ranger territory!
other times just attack everything in sight drawing unnecessary argro…
Fixed in the last patch, please don’t spread misinformation. Thanks.
Not really, its much better but its by no means totally fixed. Good old flesh golem now just seems to have a smaller murder radius but I’ve seen him prance off to fight stuff on his own since the patch.
Are you guys serious? The whole herd of minions dies even to story mode trash mob aoes, saying they are fine most of the time just simply isnt true. Hell they even die to ettins and abominations and anything else with a big windup attack, just regular open world randon mob stuff. And lets not even get started on spiders, destroyers or anything else with poison/fire/etc. Yes they are good for soloing, and possibly 1v1 situations. Anything other than that and they go right down the crapper. Any kind of fight with poison or red circles on the ground, boom all dead. Any boss that does a cleave or aoe (virtually ALL bosses). All dead. Any kind of pvp with multiple people casting aoes and cleaves (virtually ALL pvp in other words). They get smoked. I want so badly for them to work and be viable and useful, minions are the only reason I even play the class, but any time the content gets challenging they simply can’t keep up. I’ve tried everything, use every minion trait, even tried a full set of apothecary exotic for max healing power to get mark of blood regen up to over 300 a tic and it’s just not enough to keep them alive against anything tough =/
I’ve solod those before using a devourer, it never gets hit, just plugs along wailing him with damage from a distance while I run around in circles trying not to get hit and plinking away with the bow, or a rapid shot if I open up enough space between us.
You can channel rapid fire while moving. It’s barrage which forces you to stand still. (Also I don’t think the target can avoid it by moving like you can the autoattack – it has to be dodged or evaded.)
Yeah thought about that, even started a Warrior (Ranger), blah can’t use shortbow, and the longbow is so pedestrian, and got a bit bored after a few levels, really wanted a short bow for PVE. (Warrior can use a longbow but not a shortbow, dur) Although as a Beastmaster cough I do use a longbow for WvW.
Thief, well I’m guessing a thief can’t use a longbow (Correct me if I’m wrong).
So if you want to be a Ranger (Archer) you have to be a Ranger, there are no alternatives.
At this point I fear part of the problem is that the concept of a ranger is just popular – most people who know nothing about the game and just bought it want to make a ranger. And so to prevent the class from outnumbering the others, they have to deliberately make it weaker to discourage some of those people. i.e. Achieving numerical balance requires a mechanical imbalance.
Oh I realize that, I just meant I can’t rapid fire with my back to the thing running away, so I’d wait til I opened up a good bit of space between us to channel it before I got hit and built up the frenzy. And maybe you’re right, the ranger archetype is always one of, if not the highest played classes in most mmos, maybe they are going with the ‘start small then work them up to par’ method so the huge influx at launch all didnt go ranger, who knows =/
It’s the revenge of the marsh drake. Until they put the old crocodile-looking models back from beta the drakes are all plagued with bugs. Free the original marsh drake kitten
The whole ‘oh we can’t control them because rangers can’ bit is stupid and makes no sense. Almost every mmo has multiple pet classes that can at the very least make pets attack and return, because an AI, as we can see in gw2’s case, doesn’t get the job done. Rangers have a massive selection of pets they can customize their playstyle with, and can make them passively follow, guard a spot, etc. That’s plenty unique to me, its ridiculous that we can’t have a simple attack and retreat function. Is it part of ranger class mechanic? Sure. But a fear is part of our class mechanic, other classes get that. A teleport to target spell is part of our class mechanic, others get that. Engineers have their kits but elementalist can summon weapons too. Thieves have that steal ability as their mechanic but ranger pigs can forage many of the same items. On and on and on. There’s plenty of crossover in other classes mechanics that the ‘rangers have it’ excuse is wearing pretty kitten thin.
“Well, let’s see if we can address those issues. Did you send the pet in for a few hits then call it back to safety on about a 10s cycle? Try sending/calling your pet and practice doing that a few times before coming back to the forums. Also, in my opinion, you should have equipped pets like raven (blind) or owl (chill). Birds are great for landing a quick utility on a boss and then flying back. If I can keep duel birds alive during boss fights (I do this every day) then I know you can keep your pets alive.
Also, trait into beastmastery.”
Yeah wonderful, lets see, the pets dead as a doorstop before it gets there, limps back, wait for pet swap cooldown, because even if the pet recovers to 85% health it still ain’t gonna do anything.
No it’s just wrong, we have enough to do without trying to micro manage a dead pet, and we’ve had all the send the pet in call it back rubbish before, it just don’t work, the pet is trash.
I’m going to do a ranger training session next weekend. Keep your eye’s peeled for the post; I’ll teach you the techniques I use to make effective use of my pets. Remember, as another person wrote, you can’t just “fire and forget” the pet. In case you don’t have time to train with me I’ll leave you with this: if you’re not calling/sending your pet on roughly a 5 or 10s loop, then you’re going to lose your pet on a boss battle. If no profession can perpetually tank a boss, then why should you expect your pet to? You have to always be aware of your pets location and health. If you don’t know where your pet is or if your pet died, 9 times out of 10, it’s because you made a mistake.
No thanks, I don’t want you telling me “how” to play.
I have played a Ranger since the 3 day head start, I have played a Ranger in many other games, I played a Ranger for 6 years in GW1, I think it’s a bit late for you to show me HTP.
You can see from my other posts, I don’t like the pet, I don’t want the pet, and I don’t want to have to micro-manage the pet.
I want to play a Ranger how I see the Ranger, not be forced to play how Anet want me to play.
This is not a Ranger it’s a beastmaster.
If you just wanted to be an archer why didnt you pick warrior or thief? Since you’ve played ranger since head start surely you realized the entire class revolves around the pet? Why put yourself through the annoyance of playing something you dont enjoy?
People hate pets. My necromancer is a minion master build and ranger is 30 BM, and almost every dungeon run I’ve ever gone on someone has to kitten about the pets. The pets pull adds, the pets mess up boss tactics, the pets are gimp, on and on and on. Its to the point where I hate even doing dungeons at all. Yes I could just play a different style of necro or ranger but being a pet class is whats fun to me, people shouldn’t have to change just because Anet designed dungeons to unfairly punish anyone with pets, having bosses that 1 hit ko them that they can’t dodge and aoes they can’t get out of. Other classes can do dungeons with non-optimal builds and don’t suffer near the hate that pet classes get =/ I think its just ingrained in peoples minds from years of other mmos that pets=kitten, and anet isn’t helping much with their implementation.
I’ve solod those before using a devourer, it never gets hit, just plugs along wailing him with damage from a distance while I run around in circles trying not to get hit and plinking away with the bow, or a rapid shot if I open up enough space between us. Thats with 30 in BM. So it can be done other ways, you can’t complain about the pet when you refuse to put any points into it, and refuse to micro manage it. Thats like saying traps are awful because you don’t want to pick the right trap or put it in the right spot. Or have all your traits in bow abilities then complain about GS or something.
Thats really not a bad idea. If they refuse to give our minions any kind of aoe resistance or survivability to not be insta killed by bosses and aoe’s, at least lower the cooldowns dramatically and make them pop back up automatically. Or make the CD start when they are summoned not when they die. Something, ANYTHING.
But necromancer and elementalist get it too, which just feels weird. It seems like a ranger/thief thing. Instead of giving casters some better form of defense they just said ‘eh we’ll give them the speed thing too and call it a day’. Just seems kind of lazy, and my main is a necromancer too. Don’t get me wrong I happily use it it just doesnt really fit the theme of the class.
You have to go there to get passion flowers. Ugh. And by ‘get passion flowers’ I mean, farm passiflora for days-weeks-months on end maybe get ONE passion flower. Of the 500 or whatever you need for a full set of jewelry. Sigh. God I hate those things. Come on Anet, give people some other way to acquire them or up the drop rate already.
An AoE dmg reduction for pets and minions is definitely in order, they shouldn’t be totally immune but every other mmo out there has had this problem and nearly all of them fixed it by giving pet classes an option to have 50-90% AoE reduction traits. I don’t see why that’s so hard to do.
It would be fine if going 100% pet build for ranger or necromancer meant you could actually have functional, viable pets that don’t get slaughtered by bosses or aoe no matter what you do. You should be able to gimp yourself if you want to have great pets, make it even out that way. But thats not the case, melee pets get butchered no matter what, and ranged ones dont fare much better because every boss and their dog has to have lol100redcirclesonthegroundlol attacks. You can’t design a game around dodging big attacks and staying out of AoE, then design 2 classes to where their main source of damage/defense/utility….is kittening incapable of dodging big attacks and staying out of AoE. Its the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. Sigh.
Why not give minions own skillbar and skills like in some f2p games? You could choose if you go full pet, hybrid or normal build.
Because that would make them OP, and we would essentially be rangers with magic instead of arrows. The pet skill bar is the inherent trait of rangers. We have Death Shroud and Life Force. It’s not happening.
That is correct! Making Necromancer a better pet class than Ranger is forbidden. All those gold-farmers would drop Ranger in a heartbeat.
Nice sarcasm there :p. But the statement still holds true. A necro with Death shroud and a pet skill bar allowing us full control over multiple pets would be considerably OP. One of the reasons for them being a utility skill is that they are like Guardian Spirit weapons. They are add-ons not essential parts of your skill set.
How in gods name would a simple ‘attack’ and ‘retreat’ button for pets be in any way OP?? Saying because we have DS makes no sense, the two have nothing to do with one another. Thats like saying ranger traps should be placed randomly and only go off sometimes when they should be triggered because their mechanic is already a pet bar, so having both things that work properly would be OP. People just want functional, useful minions that dont get instagibbed by boss AoE and actually attack what they’re supposed to. Thats not too much to ask for, considering even mmos from 10 years or more back could do this. Anet needs either fix the kitten things or rename the class, seeing as most people who sign up to play necromancers figure they’re going to get good undead pets.
Misleading title…I come here hoping for discussion on when it will be morphin’ time and instead its an actual conversation about power based ranger builds..so disappointed =(
That halloween scythe skin was the most legendary one of all for my necromancer, the bifrost looks stupid on anyone but an elementalist. So until they add in more legendary staffs I’m totally content with it at the moment. There are indeed quite alot of neat looking things you can make in the mystic forge, if they made the whole forging process a bit less obtuse and a bit more user friendly I bet alot more people would take advantage of it. You basically have to look online to even figure out how to work the kitten thing in the beginning.
Necromancer staff auto-attack pierces by default and has aggrod many a distant mob way behind what I’m fighting, its nice to be able to toggle it with my ranger. As awesome as default piercing rapid fire and stuff would be it does have its drawbacks. Maybe lower it in the tree to a first tier thing so people could use it in a greater variety of builds instead?
Rangers have tons of combo finishers, stealth on knockdown, stealth on percent life damage, stealth from Juvenile Siamoth, as well as plenty of BLINDS and evades.
You lost legitimately to a good ranger BUT IT MUST BE CULLING! Lol, sorry, but you lost plain and simple
No. Sorry. All rangers have that can stealth are:
“Hide in Plain Sight”, which is on a 30-second CD.
Jaguar Pet’s special skill, which is also on a 30-second CD.
This guy was disappearing every 5-6 seconds, often for as long as 5 seconds at a time.
You forget: I play a L80 ranger.
You do know the siamoth pet gives you 2 different stealths right? As well as infiltrator runes as someone already said. And the trait to stealth when incapacitated. Its conceivable that a ranger could have a stealth every 20-25seconds. Not saying this guy isnt hacking or something but if in the heat of battle you thought it was more frequent than it was that might be an explanation. Hit troll unguent then siamoth stealth, come back full health. Repeat with hide in plain sight next time he got knocked down or something. Then do the trolls/siamoth stealth again. Then if you almost kill him the runes would kick in for more stealth, etc. Could even switch to one of the other pigs that could forage an extra heal and a short invuln buff to make it seem even more hax-ish.
Fix pets and you’d have a ton less complaining, many many many people rolled this class with the intention of it having useful, functional pets. You know, like necromancers in every other game that has ever existed. To be told sorry, you get to summon wet paper bags that die when something looks at them and deal mediocre damage even when alive – oh and you can’t even control them one iota to get them out of boss 1 hit ko’s, poison, red circles, etc – is just a slap in the face. Give pets more health, some kind of aoe dmg resistance, something, to let people who enjoy minions actually use them. There’s 1 or 2 builds that are ‘competitive’ now, that you have to try 10x as hard as a warrior or thief to do almost as good as them. That just isn’t right.
The bone fiend will get aggrod first almost every fight, but has the hp and defense of a wet paper bag, even fully traited. If you want something to tank for you its not gonna be him. None of our pets really will aggro and keep a mob on them for long with you attacking too, like a ranger pet. That being said, the flesh golem and shadow fiend are definitely the toughest, and the wurm can take quite a beating too like others have said. Surprisingly, good old Mr. Wiggles the floating meatbag, aka blood fiend is usually the last pet to die, they upped his defense awhile back and he usually lasts quite awhile.
We have 1 or 2 decent builds, thats the problem, thats why everyone and their dog complains. Can you be competitive with conditions? Sure. The problem is a large majority of people who signed up to be necromancers actually want to, you know, summon the dead to do their bidding and BE NECROMANCERS. Not some watered down warlock/dark sorcerer whatever thing we are right now. Seeing as in every game since the dawn of time that featured necromancers has them being a primary pet class I don’t think that’s an unfair assumption by people, and they have every right to complain and be disgruntled at the current state of the class.
Maybe we don’t want to just go play something else? Maybe the only reason some people even got GW2 is to play pet classes? If a game’s pet classes suck I don’t stick around long, I’m giving anet some time to fix things because I think this game can be really special if/when they get the kinks and bugs out, but I just don’t enjoy playing non pet classes, thats a deal breaker. Luckily there’s no subscription so I can play other stuff until they make minions and ranger pets more viable (hopefully).
Keep Summon: Flesh Golem, but make him generate an aura that gives himself and all other active minions in-combat regeneration like turrets and ranger pets can get, and huge AoE damage reduction. Ahhh its nice to dream…
It would be easy to fix though, almost every other MMO on the market, WoW, Rift, etc has had this problem and added in some “reduced AoE dmg to pets by 90%” or whatever passive skill or trait. Or give pets a 2 second evade buff every time the master dodges or something. I don’t see why Anet can’t just do the same and make rangers and necromancers happy, there’s no detriment whatsoever and people who like pet classes can play pet classes.
Its a reasonable suggestion and probably wouldn’t take them 5 minutes to implement, I think most people would rather they spent those 5 minutes on one of the myriad other ranger problems instead. I wouldn’t mind, like you said what if someone is deaf or listening to music or something, it’d be easy to see at a glance I suppose then. But please random devs reading this, fix pets and shouts and signets and weapon skills first please
You don’t have to look at anything. Don’t you hear your character yell “MY PET’S DOWN!!” or whatever your race says? Then you don’t have to even glance at the pet bar to know its toast.
I am not sure why so much hate with necro’s. I love my necro when they are played the way they are suppose to be played. They are not powerhouses or tanky. When you play them the correct way, they are a lot of fun. I use a well build in WvW. I feel like I help a lot with my zerg in all aspects. In 1v1, I can win against most classes, except ele’s, I can’t figure out how to beat them. In PVE, I feel really OP. I can take down champions with any issues, it just take a long time. If people are having an issue with necro’s I suggest check you build and play style. It might not be the profession for you. If you like glass cannons, heavy burst damage play a thief of a warrior. Necro’s are all about sustained damage and long lasting with our double health bar.
The hate is because most people who play a necromancer expect it to have good, functional, beneficial pets. Like in every other game that has featured necromancers since the freaking dawn of time. If they called it warlock, plaguebringer, dark magician or something else I dont think you’d have as much outrage over the state of the class. I know I certainly never would have rolled one if there was a disclaimer at character creation stating that at lvl 80 your pets would be a useless detriment for anything other than casual soloing even if you take every single pet trait there is.
You know I seem to have slightly better results with drakes tanking, even devourers when the buggers will sit still for a minute, the toughness seems to offset their lower vitality by alot. The bears seem to just get rocked for some reason, crits are much bigger against them.
It’s so mind bogglingly stupid of Anet to design pets this way. Necromancers are in the same boat, I mean the vast majority of people who pick that class want to use their minions and they can’t because, as most people have said, they are a liability in dungeons just like most ranger pets. What genius decided to base multiple classes around the idea of having pets and then designed all the boss encounters to annihilate said pets because they can’t freaking dodge. Its so frustrating how a game could even be designed that way. They need to give ALL pets a blanket aoe dmg reduction like every nearly every mmo out there has.
All I want is for them to fix minion AI and either beef them up considerably in the health/armor department or give all minions/pets/clones etc some kind of blanket AOE dmg reduction. Its so beyond stupid that in a game designed around dodging and not standing in red circles they kitten over so many builds by making that impossible for pets.
While we’re all dreaming here, making healing power affect all our life steals would be great. Almost every other class gets some kind of passive regen signet or ability that totally outstrips all our vaunted ‘vampiric’ traits.
Necromancers are in the same boat, there is exactly ONE build you have to use to get all the pet traits and not have them just die if a stiff breeze comes along, and even then they still die if a really stiff breeze comes along. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Anet doesn’t give pets some kind of aoe dmg reduction like in every other mmo. Especially since 90% of their boss fights are either: a) lol100millionredcirclesonthegroundlol or b) boss who spins/charges and one shots anyone who gets hit. What are you supposed to do? Pets can’t freaking dodge and they don’t get out of the lava/poison/etc. For a game built on the premise that you must dodge 1 hit ko’s and must not stand in the lava this seems like a ridiculous oversight. At least rangers can call their pet back in time sometimes before they are completely toast.
Drake pets only using their default attack and no other skills =/ Also the marsh drake using the wrong skin, it should look like its icon! I guess thats two but oh well
2) How do you push out armies with a ranger? Teach me.
Point Blank Shot on the longbow with the piercing arrows trait. Makes all arrows penetrate, so you can knockback huge groups with one shot on only like 12s cd if traited right. Can follow it up with Barrage so they all have to slog through the AoE damage and cripple on the way back too. Of course by this time some thief has murdered you in the face but in theory it works great.
A MM necro or turret engineer has the same problem, the majority of their damage (in theory, everyone knows minions and turrets suck right now but thats not the point) come from their pets as well. It’d be nice if they made any kind of change for it to affect them as well.
I can recall a karka from last night doing the insta-respawn… one in particular that sticks in my memory.
From Lion’s Point, you head out and come across the first karka ahead of you. When you take care of him, if you look a little to the right there’s the upslope that heads up to the floaty dudes… at the base of that, on a sandy area immediately across the water, are a couple karka. The closest one to you (from the perspective of the first karka) did an immediate respawn. I believe it was the third one I killed on the way to the upslope.
Hopefully that helps a little… I didn’t really mind and made it go dead as well.
I was going to mention this as well, I’ve killed a karka and been attacked by the respawn literally before the 1st one’s death animation is complete. This has happened many many times, as I pretty much do a round of southsun every day hoping (futilely) to find some passion flowers.
I want the old marsh drakes back from beta T_T The crocodile looking ones. I still don’t understand why they took them out and made them untamable, and gave us the lame color swapped green salamander drakes instead. I mean you can look up beta video of rangers using the croc ones, even the ICON is still a picture of the croc looking ones. Boggles the mind. My kingdom for a real marsh drake.
Yeah this has always bugged me too. Its not a big deal with all the other things they could work on but it’d be nice for them to fix just for aesthetic reasons. Looks stupid being the only one missing the background.
