Guild Wars 2

Sadly, that’s probably going to happen just because of this sPvP complaint. So I say in advance, gg on our future nerf.

Paradox.5498:

Where have you even seen this skin? Can’t find a picture of it and I’m curious…

Picture to help with that!

I too am in serious need of this. <3

I have a question that could turn this entire thing upside-down…did they ever mention or explain who was the first born among the firstborn Sylvari? If it’s Scarlet, she could very well be the physical embodiment of the Pale Tree’s curiosity and learning, taken root (pun intended). Which could explain more than a few of her screwy actions and how she got this far.

Kiayin.3427:

Here are some of the things I’ve observed/my suggestions ><.

Continuity and characterization:

• 1.a Instead of always adding new threats and characters, work sometimes on expanding what’s already there in a meaningful way. Tyria is a beautiful world, full of interesting characters you have already established, yet most of them are relegated to cameo roles.
• 2.a People care about characters. Characters drive stories. Those short-stories on the site are nice, but they can’t be our only reliable source of lore and character development!

Disconnection:

• 2.b The pc so far has been very marginally involved with what has been happening. People do not feel connected to the story.
• 3. Involve your community! Community events [with the living story as their main theme, such as the diorama contest last year] help people forge a deeper connection with their games and usually make for a very positive and creative atmosphere. Take the living story outside of the game and make the players live it! The rewards do not need to be anything grand.

Awareness, continuity and communication:

• 1.b Right now it very much feels like every two weeks some random event pops up somewhere random in the world. I believe this week’s LS (The Tower of Nightmares) had a nice lead up, but too much of it was still left to chance. I would have never known that something weird was going on in Kessex Hills beforehand if I hadn’t looked at the forum/official site. Why not add some npcs talking about it (even very vaguely) in the main cities, for example? We do not need a herald, just some clues here and there.
• 4. The living stories themselves are often lacking in clarity and direction. Why is looking at the achievement panel the only way to understand what is going on, most of the times? It’s either that or some bright gold star in the world map. There needs to be a middle ground.

Pacing and quality:

• 5. It has been said so many times I lost count, but the current pace is simply stressful and kills the fun. Quality and replay value over quantity. Instead of being stuck doing the very same thing dressed up in a different skin week after week, releasing a LS update once a month should give you enough time to truly come up with some unique, different ideas. [Example: People have been clamouring for the home instance to have a use, so you put a quartz node in front of the orphanage in Salma District? Just… why?]

Gem Store:

• 6. Time-gated rng weapon sets is a business practice that puts off a lot of people and has been giving Anet a bad image. It leaves a sour taste in the community that overrides most of the positive impressions.

This poster right here has every complaint and fix to this I can think of. I back his feedback 100%.

The skill is pretty weak, and easily outdone by Healing Spring for us Rangers. However, this can also be used underwater, which gives it a small advantage for those areas. I can picture this working well in some PvE instances (Twilight Assault), but in all other fields it’ll be pretty lackluster.

+1 to you OP. I agree with everything.

coglin.1867:

If we didn’t have two week content, we would have twice as many threads complaining that they were not adding content fast enough.

This man gets it. It’s why we changed from a 1 month thing (Frost and Flame) to a bunch of 2 week things. There were too many complaints that it was taking too long. Well guess what people, YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.

To note for everybody, the skill works UNDERWATER. Meaning everybody finally has a group underwater healing skill for use in some circumstances.

Seras.5702:

Vorch.2985:

You can always just continue to DPS until they are dead instead of using a finisher…

Don’t they get an “Invulnerable” icon though when downed?

A 1 sec invulnerable, like players do when they get downed.

I’m hoping they start shifting towards home instances being…transformable or shifting it from the home nations to certain areas if you desired. Maybe beach house, snowy lodge, jungle tree house, subterranean hovel, etc. Hell, give us a letter from the Lion’s Arch Council (and Kiel) stating that because you’ve done so much for Tyria, the council agreed to help fund you a house of your choosing at certain set locations around the world.

Plus give us the option to customize the place. It doesn’t have to be anything horribly big or mindboggling, but a few customizable things around the place to start with, and maybe even allowing certain personal story NPCs to live there or visit. I wouldn’t mind having my honorless gladium of a father live there with me, or having a visit from my warband.

I think this is why they gave us the Antitoxin Spray as a healing skill, so they can throw torment at us all the time.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Khisanth.2948:

Uh … why does helping people require spamming map chat?

He probably did not spam. The anti spam system is just out of control.

You’re correct. 4 messages, not even in a row, in about a 2-3 minute span gave me a chat ban. Was weird too, since lots of other people were talking as well. I think they need to have another look at the anti-spam system.

Nilkemia.8507:

While the effort Kasmeer and Marjory make still isn’t much, I was surprised by them dodging/blinking around and actually using more than just basic attack skills, more effort than even Destiny’s Edge tends to give.

Incoming Ally AI buff for dungeons and instances confirmed?

One of the coming soon things seemed to have scarlet standing in front of something that seemed similar to a krait, albeit seemingly larger and more monstrous looking. It’s possible we’ll be seeing a prophet.

A NPC ingame explains that the only reason the krait would ever ally themselves with somebody like this is if they get something BIG in return. She also implied the fact that this even alliance exists means that something really bad is coming.

I love this addition. Makes it feel like you’re actually fighting enemies you need to pay attention to.

I have a feeling we weren’t supposed to get it before using the book. Odds are they meant to lock the skill until you get the book, then it would be an account-wide unlock of the skill. After this living story left, they probably planned on unlocking it for the rest of the accounts.

I do like a lot of the changes here, though my personal nitpick is that we’d have to choose between Trapper’s Expertise or Bark Skin for the Grandmaster for Wilderness Survival. Lose that survivability at low health and gain the throwing of traps, or lose the throwing of traps but can survive a little longer…lose-lose IMO, at least for me.

My problem with Scarlet is that she has nobody to balance out her crazy. Imagine if she had somebody just as brilliant but serious all the time as her partner in crime. She makes the jokes, her partner is the straight man.

I also think she’d be more worthy of our attention if for every plot, we THINK we win, only for her to win something in exchange. For example, thinking we win at the Queen’s Jubilee, only for us to find out it was all a diversion so she could cover up the fact that she busted out some of the most vicious thugs from Divinity’s Reach to build up her army. We enter her hideout, thinking we destroyed it, only to find out that she left the toxin in the air, a toxin that was extremely contagious and would only show signs of the disease after a single month.

Things like that, things that make her WORTHY of our attention because even when we think we won, we lost. Basically I want Xanatos Gambits, I want a Magnificent kitten, etc. I want a villain I can LOVE to hate.

I understand Sol, I feel the same way about us in PvE. I really hope they do something to just fix it for all modes at the same time. I’d prefer if they found some middle ground that just fixed everything. Sadly I don’t think that’ll happen, but we can dream.

Again Sol, PvP does not equal WvW nor PvE. The current traitlines work in both of those fields. I don’t know whether or not you play WvW or even touch PvE, but those are the fields I want us to work well in, especially since it’s what most of the playerbase touches. I don’t want to say “tough luck” to the PvP players, but I don’t think we can ever really call PvP balanced until there is more than just Capture mode, since for Capture mode it’s impossible for most builds to be declared useful in just that mode.

Durz, I’ve never seen a loss due to kills. Then again, I admit I never really PvP for more than 1 hour whenever it comes up in Living Story.

I use Dire equipment on my Ranger, despite being 10/30/30/0/0. I focus on survival and conditions for the main equipment, because that is where my build is based. I have a set of Berserker’s as my accessories, amulet, rings, and whatnot, because I do not go full out into one build, I also boost the parts where my traits do not boost (save for healing power, which I find useless in general, sadly). I do this so my build isn’t pigeon-holed into just conditions or bust, it can kill things you cannot use conditions against well.

Also, I could list a bunch of different builds easily made with my suggestion, but it wouldn’t mean you’d take it into consideration. I think at this point we can agree to disagree.

Eurantien.4632:

The only thing that hurts the current trap spec is losing 20 points in skirmishing line. You will still have a very high crit chance so you will get criticals to proc sharpened edges and sigil of earth and since those both have an internal cooldown you are being inefficient with the extra precision making my suggested change a buff. You say that getting the extra 20 points to move around isn’t worth it but it is because pet does more DPS, you survive longer, and you kill things faster which all seems like buffs to the current trap spec (especially since you aren’t losing much DPS because of Internal cooldowns on sigil of earth and sharpened edges). If you think that extra precision helps you can STILL trait into that line…. So again, buffs all around. Buffs to PvE (increased damage and/or survivability), WvW for same reasons, and PvP for same reasons.

So where are these nerfs? I’m still not seeing them.

If you’re not seeing them, then you really don’t understand Trap rangers as well as you THINK you do. It’s the closest build we have to perfect, and you want to mess with how it works. I know it sounds like I’m overreacting, but here’s the thing, the suggestions may sound good on paper, but they could open up a whole new amount of problems for the Ranger class.

The only real suggestions I could make to help with Trap build would be merging the trap traits into the 20 point trait. That would give us 10 more points to work with, and would adjust it so instead of just 10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/10/0 or any other variation of that, it could adjust it so we could have 20/20/30/0/0, 10/20/30/10/0, etc. Basically it adjusts it so we have 10 more points to spend on something else. I think that would help more than anything.

Sol, in PvE and WvW, pets are useless, PERIOD. I don’t care about sPvP because it’s only capture mode, which makes anything not able to capture points and keep them worthless (and where the kills don’t really matter in the long run). I strictly speak about PvE and WvW because those are the modes the majority of the playerbase plays, and because it’s harder for something that’s OP in PvE to be OP in WvW, and vice versa.

You’re nerfing trap build because we use the criticals to help proc anything that activates on a critical. You could add more bleeds, cause an AoE Fire, cure your own conditions, remove the opponent’s boons, etc. The precision is better for trap build than the points in BM (which is a horrible traitline btw since it’s only helping the AI aspect survive longer, which really doesn’t help condition builds), Nature Magic (while a good traitline for just buffing health, a lot of the traits are pretty subpar), or Marksmanship (which is just to kill things faster, it does nothing for conditions or traps).

Face it, the idea is horrible for PvE and WvW, and those are the two parts of the game that the majority plays. I understand you want to make it better for PvP, but you have to remember, PvP is the least played part of the game, and it’s only a single mode, Capture. You can’t properly balance for PvP when anything that doesn’t help capture and keep points is worthless.

I’d prefer if the active wiped conditions from you and players nearby, but DIDN’T transfer them to the pet.

Oh I can dodge well, you forget we don’t have infinite dodge. You have to choose what you dodge, namely the heavy hitting moves. Everything else WILL connect, and I really shake my head at anybody who realistically believes we can dodge everything.

You also have to remember that this doesn’t fix our main problem…that we have to COMPLETELY trait in a line to get the best results. All you’ve done is changed the traitlines, and nerfed several builds, ACROSS THE kitten BOARD. You haven’t fixed a kitten thing, and only seem to want us to have more useless traits, along with making our lives harder in PvE and WvW. Just stop what you’re doing and stop suggesting things that hurt us more than help us. We’re already bottom of the barrel in PvE, and are hurting badly in WvW. Compared to which we’re just fine in PvP. You’re stabbing somebody to divert pain from a broken ankle.

No Desert, Bark Skin isn’t useless in PvE. 70% of the time when you die, it’s not due to conditions, it’s due to direct damage. At least it’s that way for me. I find the skill too good not to take. Empathetic Bond is borderline useless because it requires your pet to be alive and then it kills it with the conditions. A worthless trait because it gimps your pet, and won’t work unless the pet is dead. If Empathetic Bond had the pet take the condition and then cured it, I wouldn’t bash it. But since most of our passive condition cures put it on the pet, they’re worthless.

Ahh yes, the thing that PASSIVELY removes a condition every 10 seconds, and the active basically destroys the pet, and only works if it’s alive. That one is about as useful as Search and Rescue…which isn’t

Eurantien.4632:

RyuDragnier.9476:

You want this traitline change because YOU’RE IN PVP. Do you know how badly this would hurt us in PvE and WvW? So my answer is NO. We do not need anymore nerfs caused by the one mode most players don’t even touch.

And before you even throw out “oh they can change it just for sPvP”, remember, how many times has Anet NOT done this for the Ranger class? How many times have they nerfed us across the board because of complaints for only PvP?

How are you getting nerfed by this change? Only nerf is you cannot grab Empathic bond. But I said this would be accompanied with some active condition removal somewhere else to compensate. So I do not understand, how you would be getting nerfed by this suggested change. Please, enlighten me.

I have to choose between various traits that help group support and survival or sacrifice it all for the traps. That’s nerfing the trap build in WvW and PvE, because as it stands now we can trait for traps and be able to group support at the same time.

For the other suggested traits, we have maybe 3 moves that can interrupt the enemy, so that trait would be worthless. We have 1 trait and 1 skill that give us quickness. That would be worthless too. We can’t pull on 20 stacks of vulnerability easily. That trait is worthless.

The only idea I like here is the Healer’s Celerity merge. Oakheart Salve…I agree that one is worthless, but it could be changed to where the condition duration of those is lowered by 50%.

Basically, you’d be getting rid of a few good traits and just giving us worthless crap that no Ranger will ever use. We need LESS bad traits, not more of them!

I hope this is put on the utility list, and not the healing list. I’d gladly drop a trap just to be able to have active condition removal for the entire party. Hell, this would be the first step to have actual group support we can control (that isn’t passive).

I’d prefer if it was a utility slot VonKreep. Being able to use it AND Healing Spring? Marry me now, I can finally do more group support.

You want this traitline change because YOU’RE IN PVP. Do you know how badly this would hurt us in PvE and WvW? So my answer is NO. We do not need anymore nerfs caused by the one mode most players don’t even touch.

And before you even throw out “oh they can change it just for sPvP”, remember, how many times has Anet NOT done this for the Ranger class? How many times have they nerfed us across the board because of complaints for only PvP?

Bark skin gives us a passive protection when we hit 25%, that stacks WITH PROTECTION. Meaning we can have a 66% damage reduction while under 25% health. You can’t beat that, you can NEVER beat that. Plus in PvP, I’m not dying to conditions, I’m dying to the regular attacks. WvW, I’m dying to regular attacks. The conditions help, but it’s easier to survive the conditions than the actual direct damage.

webtoehobbit.4201:

RyuDragnier.9476:

You lost me at expansion. I ain’t paying $60 for additions to this game when they’re giving them out for free.

I have never understood these type of comments, “Well I’m not paying for expansion” or “I can’t afford that” Really?! Look at other game series, like Call of Duty, or Madden, heck, even Mass Effect. The first couple series I mentioned come out with new games almost yearly it seems, at least Madden does, and people don’t whine and say, “Oh I can’t afford that” they keep making games and people keep buying them. And as far as Mass Effect goes, it’s like saying, well I played the first Mass Effect and then I will never play the rest of the series cause I can’t afford it…. People WILL buy expansions for GW2 specially if it includes a new region, a new elder dragon, so keep whining but you are not the majority of the player base.

There’s a difference between a sequel and an expansion. An expansion just adds stuff while keeping the majority of the game there. A sequel is from the ground up different in areas, locations, etc. An example of an actual expansion is the Shivering Isles expansion of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Everything else in the game was still there, it just added new areas, enemies, and equipment. I will accept an expansion for a single player game, because hey, I can wait for it to drop in price, and really miss nothing.

But for MMOs, you’re playing a game with multiple people. How would you like it if the living story required going to areas you can’t enter or you can’t do things with your friends because they’re in other areas you can’t reach because you don’t have the expansion? That’s the difference, it’s unfair in a multiplayer game for people to be unable to do things with others just because they never bought the expansion. I will not be a part of games that do that, I never have been, I never will.

They won’t kill her. It’s obvious at this point that she’s a Dragon Minion, possibly a champion. Meaning they’ll leave her alive to serve as the “villain” of the next arc of the personal story.

Oh we’re going to get it Durz. Probably just on a Devourer or Spider, and MAYBE on the Viper’s Nest (dear god I’d love for it to be there). But we really do need it, it would help us out in the long run.

But Durz, it’s AoE heal. Meaning it’ll effect the pet.

I’m surprised you’re giving that argument, considering you could make one of every class using the same race, and make the same argument. They’re universal because odds are this tech was made by the Orders of Tyria to combat a new threat, and passed out equally amongst all the armies.

Interesting thoughts. If this is true, we’re about to see those areas near the Brisban Wildlands open up.

I use Healing Spring, but the condition curing of it is passive after activation, and only if you stand in it. I’m talking about skills you use, and then immediately removes multiple conditions, no wait time.

The universal healing skill makes me happy. FINALLY Rangers can have an active condition cure instead of all these passives. Also, I have a feeling Toxin will be across the board, in all forms. I just hope that Toxin isn’t that abundant…like maybe 1 thing that can give it for certain classes (like how Torment is).

Xsorus.2507:

I’m not understanding the whole push to move Traps over to Wilderness Survival.

Skirmishing Line is actually a fairly good line for Traps, as the second you add things like sigil of earth and sharpened edges to your build, you increase all your Traps effectiveness making Rabid a Fairly nice set for Traps.

Wilderness Ends up being your Defensive Tree (if you moved Trap Traits over for example, you instantly lose the ability to get Offhand Training and EB like you said)

None of the suggestions actually fix what Trap Spec Rangers have trouble with, and that’s high CC builds, and the reason they have trouble with it, is because they have to invest 3 utility slots into the actual spec itself. Leaving out for example, Stun Breakers and Immunities.

This is exactly how I feel about it. Plus our main problem with conditions is that we have almost 0 active condition cleansing abilities on the class in general, it’s all passive. Which is the main reason why I do not take them, as I find the condition removal to take too long, usually with my pet getting killed before it procs for most of it (Signet of Renewal is the only one I’ll accept).

I really hope that when they add new weapons, we get a staff that acts as support, probably with abilities that help remove conditions and heal. I’d gladly put my Axe and warhorn out to pasture if such a thing occurred.

The second you mentioned sPvP Sol, I facepalmed hard. Sure, let’s make MORE changes around the least popular part of the game, just like the infamous pet damage nerf, the SB range nerf, the pet leash nerf…need I go on? Why people suggest changes around sPvP to hit THE ENTIRE GAME makes no sense to me, when it’ll only hurt our entire profession worse than it is now.

As a warning Tyler, expect a storm of bugs…Rangers have a lot of them, mostly dealing with our pets and certain traits and skills dealing with them.

Dante.1508:

Red Falcon.8257:

Problem is, CC, conditions and bunker (vit+def) are useless in PvE.
CC is hard countered by defiant, Conditions by 25cap, bunker by one-shot mechanics.

DPS gear is not the problem, the problem is other specs simply do not work in PvE.

I agree as of now CC does nothing, Conditions just put another icon on a boss and seriously do very little, they are just there for show imo..

I’d love to see how long it would take to kill these bosses with conditions alone, the are so useless..

They need to pull off what most MMOs do, where it has multiple sources of everything counted on an enemy. For example, 5 players use burn on a boss, it’s not stacking, it’s 5 different burns activating at the same time on him. Same with every condition. For dungeons, it’s easy to just do this and measure how the bosses are effected by all of it.

For open World PvE, I’d say a hard ‘different’ cap of each type to 10 different sources of each thing. For example, 50 players hitting the boss? Only 10 different stacks of each condition will be counted on the boss, with the others just doing direct damage for what they would have done normally if not cured. That’s IF they could pull it off.

Choose the build you want, and don’t let anybody tell you different. Play how you want, but know that open world PvE is not indicative of how it’ll be in dungeons, in World versus World, or PvP. While it’s often easy in open world PvE, it’s a different ballgame in the other sections. Just be sure to have fun!

No to everything. The second you said that traps leave Rangers with no defense, you proved you don’t know what you’re talking about to me. Traps ARE our defense. Spike Trap, Frost Trap, Muddy Terrain (while not a trap, it feels the same as one to me), and Entangle all prevent the enemy from getting to us. The only other defensive ability we have as a Ranger for slot skills is Lightning Reflexes.

Plus getting rid of Bark Skin? Do you know how often that thing saves my life?

I still don’t understand that Stooperdale. Ambush gives you a NPC thief who is very powerful, and Caltrops can be used WHILE in stealth and doesn’t take you out of it even when the enemies run into them. Leveling up my thief, I don’t see why they haven’t been using traps, they’re too good.