Guild Wars 2

They already said they’re going to add permanent areas next year. Meaning we’re getting that for free.

LastK.6158:

RyuDragnier.9476:

This sadly would never happen. Only way I can really see a fix to the zerker nature of people is to either eliminate the zerker armor (never gonna happen), or give the mobs undodgeable attacks that scale with that particular player’s Power and Precision, with Toughness and Vitality preventing the brunt of the attack. Full zerker spec? Grats, you’ll be downed in 1-2 hits. Tank spec? It’ll take 7-8 hits.

This too will probably never happen though. But we do need something to fix the zerker mindset. Nothing short of giving mobs some undodgeable attacks or nerfing the zerker builds will do this, I’m afraid.

just because you’re bad at this game and has the inability to press dodge, so you want gw2 to become a turn based game while you and the mob afk hits each other until one dies?

Read the other posts after that.

The Jungle Dragon I feel is Nature. Scarlet most definitely works for him in my scenario, as do the Nightmare Court (without realizing it). In said theory, both Scarlet and Faolain are both champions of the Jungle Dragon.

chemiclord.3978:

To me, the answer is two fold:

1) I don’t necessarily mind the one-hit kill mechanics regardless of your build. It forces you to be alert and conscious of your own position at all times. That’s a GOOD thing, believe it or not.

2) But ADD a smaller, faster, steadier stream of damage… something that won’t outright KILL a zerker geared player, but something that makes his conscious of having to step back to range, heal, and have to slow down their own damage… this would also give the option of tough and vit builds being able to stay in melee range longer (and the higher damage that inherently comes with it).

Those two mechanics combined would give people some options and variety. Would there be a “better” one? Sure. There always will be, but there’s room to tweak fights so that EVERY boss and trash encounter isn’t best done by a single stat type.

This…is the best suggestion I’ve ever heard for this problem. Bravo good sir/madam. Bravo.

I have a theory. Each of the Elder dragons is part of the creator of Tyria, and this particular world within the Mists. Each is also said creators “rage” dealing with some ancient incident that caused it to split into many pieces, each representing a different part of the world, and start terrorizing the populace, probably wiping most of life, then going to sleep. Examples of this theme are shown with Death (Zhaitan), Ice (Jormag), Fire (Primordus), Earth (Kralkatorrik), and Water (Bubbles).

Said theory also holds that our characters, are in fact the Champion of whatever dragon represents Life, possibly the only one still sane and knowing the “rage” needs to be quelled. Thus our characters are the only ones who can pull this off because they are the only ones (other than the other dragons and their champions) that can slay the dragons. We killed Zhaitan, purifying the rage of Death, and his power over death returned to the creator, as will all the dragons and their powers eventually. We will find this out much much later through some complicated story with a ton of loopholes that make no sense.

Yeah, crazy man theory~

Harper.4173:

RyuDragnier.9476:

I say this because I’ve seen far too many bad players with tanky setups die faster than good players with any other setup. The game penalizes you PERIOD if you don’t know how to play well, especially at endgame. This isn’t like the normal MMOs like WoW where even a bad player can do well with good gear, if you can’t play well at all in this game, you will die 90% of the time.

This is exactly why this game is awesome.
Because in GW2 Skill STILL matters more than gear. Less than it was in GW1 but still – it is here. That’s the whole point of the GW game franchise – a place where if you suck as a player you will keep sucking no matter how good your gear is.

That aside – I’ve seen PLENTY of runs done with tanky gear by people who had NO idea what they were doing but would just tank/heal through it ( with 2-3 guardians).

Why change the meta so we can replace zerker with knight’s or valk? There’s no point.
Players will still be elistit, and will still play the optimal gear.

Also – regarding “making it so that the differences between certain build performances is so minimal that other builds have a chance to shine (I’d prefer this).”

That’s basically asking that the builds that require more skill be rewarded less so that the builds that require less skill are rewarded more in comparison.
You’re asking to take stuff ( the ability to clear content faster and get more rewards) away from the good players because the bad players are having a tough day. How about no.

If you’re playing a bad/ suboptimal build then you should take longer and get less rewards. If you NEED more healing/toughness stats to stay alive you should take longer to get rewards. The game already has handouts in the form of PVE zerging where gear doesn’t even matter.

If the differences were made insignificant then what’s the point of having builds? or different types of gear?

The whole idea is that if you can handle higher risk/reward gear then you should be able to do it – and it should provide advantages. It creates incentive and motivation for players to get better.
If any build was " just as good " why would players even need to improve or learn new stuff?

The certain build performances, which I really should have clarified on and gone into specifics with since they change the interpretation of what I said from the beginning (sorry I spaced on specifics here people), I meant to be the varying optimal setup builds for conditions and zerker. How is it that zerker does majorly more damage than condition builds, when if you’re really spec’d that far into conditions, you should be doing equal damage from that spectrum?

It’s one of the things that really irritates me about this game, how conditions have almost always been weaker than direct damage. The times you have conditions being better than direct damage is few and far inbetween (see Aetherblade Retreat’s Frizz for an example of a battle where conditions were useful). Nobody denies that tanks should be doing less damage, as are people spec’d completely into just survival. My problem here is how the zerker just outshines conditions to the point where conditions just feel so kitten useless.

We need a change to this, again whether by changing the mobs, nerfing the zerker stats (again, not an option to me), or changing how powerful the conditions themselves are. In my opinion, if a full optimal zerker setup does 12K in 5 seconds (guess here, not sure how much a zerker can actually pull in that time), a full optimal condition build should be able to pull off that same amount of damage in 8 seconds. I know, this doesn’t sound like much of a change at all, zerkers would still technically be top, but it brings conditions close enough to where they’re not so kitten useless.

Unfortunately, I see it as requiring a pretty big change to how conditions are handled by the system. Maybe a complete removal of the condition cap for dungeons, or changing it in some way to where it’s easier for conditions to pull off that same kind of crazy damage. I’d prefer this for PvE only, btw, conditions already rule in PvP and WvW.

Thanguard, it counts the Daily achievements that are for the Halloween as part of the Meta. You actually don’t have to touch PvP at all to complete the meta event.

I hope it does that Mattargul. I wouldn’t mind being able to throw down with people from all servers.

Aerlen, he’s right about 1 and 2. You don’t HAVE to do PvP unless you want every achievement point, and Hotjoin is where I got all my kills when I actually wanted to PvP for the AP.

Ahh, didn’t see that one skullmount. I only saw the one where you had to fight any world boss.

looks at my trap build and the numerous enemies I have killed

Yes, they’re viable.

I have a feeling we’re going to see something when we get our next race, who will probably be the ones bringing it to the world. For example, I expect we’ll see a Samurai type class soon, or a martial artist type class. I’d prefer the martial artist because that means we could get claw and bare fist type weapons and abilities!

If you want that fixed runeblade, you’re going to have to ask for collision detection so multiple players cannot touch the same spots.

It’s exactly that Ayrilana. I got it from killing Fire Elemental, whose pre-event pops every 30 minutes or so. Far easier to go see FE and get it done than attempt to do Teq.

NargofWoV.4267:

I’m with Sandpit, make it traitable.

I think everybody here agrees with him on that.

Harper.4173:

You didn’t understand a word I said. Or chose to ignore it.

I don’t know where you got the " want content to be harder " . I don’t want that – there are VERY few people in the game who want content to be harder – and they usually do level 60+fractals.

The only way I would want harder content is if it came with BETTER rewards. And rewards that are properly scaled with the difficulty of the content.
Say a " hard mode " for dungeons that give twice the bonus gold at the end. That would be nice.
Harder content with no reward means I wouldn’t even bother.

The game IS balanced as it is.

Bad player + tanky gear = success.
Good player + zerker gear = success.
Bad player + zerker gear = dead.

Zerker and clearing faster is the reward you get for learning how to dodge, where and when to be in a fight, how to avoid damage and so on.
If you can’t do those things the game penalizes you by making you have to get tankier gear and taking longer in a run.
It’s all fair and square.

You got that wrong.

Bad player + Any build = dead
Good player + any build = success

I say this because I’ve seen far too many bad players with tanky setups die faster than good players with any other setup. The game penalizes you PERIOD if you don’t know how to play well, especially at endgame. This isn’t like the normal MMOs like WoW where even a bad player can do well with good gear, if you can’t play well at all in this game, you will die 90% of the time.

Also I did read what you said. I did play zerker and it was faceroll easy for me. My mindset isn’t really a problem considering I’ve blown off the zerker mentality for the longest time, and pretty much don’t care if they play zerker or not. And I agree that most players will play what is most effective.

What I’m asking for here is either a complete change in meta by something else being the highpoint for a while (I’d rather not have it this way if I could help it), or making it so that the differences between certain build performances is so minimal that other builds have a chance to shine (I’d prefer this).

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

I played through the new TA path, all of the AC paths, CM, and all of several other dungeons using zerker on my ranger. I rarely got downed, rarely died, I killed things fast enough to where I rarely got hit on normal mobs (survived bosses due to the group killing them too fast), and overall I found it pretty boring as one. The ability to kill things too fast makes most games a cakewalk, especially MMOs. List any game where you can kill the enemy fast, and you encounter the problem with zerker builds, they trivialize the content and make things too easy.

Also, I have no problems with zerkers whatsoever, I run dungeons with multiple guildies who love to zerk. But if you guys really want the game to be balanced or the content to be harder, you have to admit, it’s time for the zerker to not be as effective for certain areas or places. Whether that means nerfing it (rather not for the people who use it), making it less effective through boss tactics (Aetherblade Retreat’s Mai Lin was infamous for this), or just buffing all other builds plus the mobs to make it the same as everything else.

I’m hoping they take the people asking for class balances seriously, and start fixing the core parts of each particular class that need to be fixed. Ranger pets in general really need to be looked at and re-evaluated.

I like that idea, quite a bit.

Oxxy.7068:

RyuDragnier.9476:

This sadly would never happen. Only way I can really see a fix to the zerker nature of people is to either eliminate the zerker armor (never gonna happen), or give the mobs undodgeable attacks that scale with that particular player’s Power and Precision, with Toughness and Vitality preventing the brunt of the attack. Full zerker spec? Grats, you’ll be downed in 1-2 hits. Tank spec? It’ll take 7-8 hits.

This too will probably never happen though. But we do need something to fix the zerker mindset. Nothing short of giving mobs some undodgeable attacks or nerfing the zerker builds will do this, I’m afraid.

Oxxy.7068:

Edit: also, most people theory crafting and brainstorming about this should just buy another game to be honest, not because “i don’t want’em on my game!” or nothing like that, but mostly because they want a completely different game from what we have right now.

Seriously, undodgeable attacks is just an item check, and every other mmo out there already has item checks. GW2, for once, has a skill check (even if it’s a “low” one).

Sadly skill means nothing if you can kill a boss faster than it can use its abilities. There’s no skill to pulling that off, anybody can do it easily.

Ahlen.7591:

And none of this should ever happen.

Why would your opinions on how it should be played be more important than zerker peoples opinions? We’re basically trading an optional playstyle for a FORCED PLAYSTYLE.

You’re trying to dictate how zerker players play worse than zerker players dictate to others – because at least the zerk people aren’t trying to design you out of the game.

I’m giving suggestions so everybody isn’t so enticed to play zerker all the time. I love playing condition build, I prefer it over zerker just because it feels right to me. But let’s face it, zerking takes no real skill and makes everything faceroll easy and boring. It even encourages elitism and makes everything else look pointless to use. Easiest way to fix it so the board is even? You gotta make zerker builds less enticing.

This sadly would never happen. Only way I can really see a fix to the zerker nature of people is to either eliminate the zerker armor (never gonna happen), or give the mobs undodgeable attacks that scale with that particular player’s Power and Precision, with Toughness and Vitality preventing the brunt of the attack. Full zerker spec? Grats, you’ll be downed in 1-2 hits. Tank spec? It’ll take 7-8 hits.

This too will probably never happen though. But we do need something to fix the zerker mindset. Nothing short of giving mobs some undodgeable attacks or nerfing the zerker builds will do this, I’m afraid.

Neoheart.2750:

Then don’t call it impossible just because YOU couldn’t beat it. Your OP had nothing to do with bugs.

Actually, it might be a bug. We had the same problem on Ehmry Bay the other day. Everybody stacked on him, but we couldn’t get his health down at all. Everybody on the map was there, but we couldn’t move his health at all. We called it off, killed the other gates that had appeared, and tried again about an hour later. With the same numbers, this time we won, despite doing the same thing we did before.

Yaro.3251:

JPs are losing most of their appeal once they are beaten and rest of it vanishes when they are mastered (ie beaten several times). The only question is, if these 10% (or whatever it is, only Anet knows) are worth of investment into new content.

I wouldn’t mind a portion of the Heart of the Mists made exclusively to relive old events and the like, just for some rewards and that sort of thing. Imagine it, Mad King Clocktower whenever you wanted~

It’s funny, that achievement isn’t even that hard to do in PvP at all. Hotjoin a game, run around with people on your team, help down enemy players and then use the finisher on them. I did it, and it only took maybe 30 minutes of my time.

From what I remember reading, apparently they hardcoded the Ranger pet so deep into the game that a single change to the pet in any way, from AI to health, will effect all game modes. Meaning we’re screwed as long as they keep taking sPvP as an indication of how the Ranger pet should be. -_-

When did that nerf happen? Because I got wrecked by a D/D elementalist in PvP the other day who kept curing my conditions. And then when I switched trait builds to power (still with a full toughness traitline) I still got wrecked by one.

Chokolata.1870:

used it against thieves. Not impressed . They can just teleport out .

The smart ones can. The perma stealth Easy Mode thieves will die far too easily.

Done and…done.

PvE:

1. Class balancing
2. Class pet/minion/summon AI fixing
3. Conditions

The easiest way to get rid of zerkers in dungeons? Give enemies undodgable attacks they like spamming often. There, zerkers become worthless because they can’t survive.

STRanger.5120:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Galtrix.7369:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm because they can be very powerful in the right hands?

No…. they can’t.

Evidently they can because my D/D bunker ele is almost unkillable in PvE.

You know that the PvE is not PvP, right?

You know that build is also almost unkillable in PvP depending on the classes involved, right?

Shiren, I just had a thought. What if the Antitoxin Spray is in fact for the new map/dungeon they’re adding? What if the krait are trying to turn everybody in Divinity’s Reach into Krait with their magic, and the Antitoxin Spray is the only way to resist it?

To be honest, I always stick with Bark Skin. Most of the time I PvE, and when I do I’m partying up so I don’t worry about conditions so much. Plus my pet dies so often Empathetic Bond is often proven worthless. <_<

First 2 problems we all have.

3rd one, they’re in skirmishing because it fits the idea of a skirmisher. Plus would we REALLY want to have to choose between that and Empathetic Bond or Bark Skin? The condition ranger builds would effectively be dead.

4rd one, look at our NATURE SPIRITS. We do things that fit with nature, and Rifles do not fit nature.

The other thing is always watch for him to start throwing the candy, dodge the first set, start moving forward when he launches the second set, run backwards for the next, etc. It’s easy enough to dodge as is.

nEmM.3076:

So I am re-installing gw2 after being gone for 8 months and have no clue what big or subtle changes happened during that time. Could someone point me in the right direction when it comes to ranger builds that are viable right now? Mainly for WvW or PVE. Thanks in advance.

Pet damage got nerfed, pet HP got buffed, Spirit HP got massively buffed, odds of a spirit’s ability kicking in got doubled, Healing Spring got lowered to 10 seconds but pulses every 2 now, Greatsword got buffed with Maul, Longbow #3 now gives stealth, Longbow #2 now gives a stack of Vulnerability with each hit (up to 10), Axes got buffed, Shortbow got a range nerf down to 900 but #2-5 buffed in damage, Sic ‘Em can now give people 4 sec Reveal (must not be in stealth, doesn’t stack), the quickness trait from Beastmaster traitline got moved to a minor Grandmaster skill, Quickness as a whole got nerfed, etc.

As for builds, Trap (as always), Regen, and Chill are the current high rankings for PvE and WvW. Beastmaster got hit pretty hard by the pet damage nerf.

The Mad King comes off to me as being like Sheogorath from the Elder Scrolls games. He’s a bit random and chaotic, and loves to keep things interesting.

Speaking of the Mad King…does he sound like Sheogorath from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Shivering Isles Expansion? Or is it just me? Because if it IS Sheogorath’s voice…I have a new favorite in this game.

Also, I saw the Prince’s face and I was “somebody call the Joker, this guy’s trying to steal his face.”

Aridia.3042:

Fairly bad patch content and execution wise. No offence, but you guys can’t seem to handle big patches, there are so many bugs and anemic changes.

I’m thinking you’re better off doing smaller bi weekly changes. Doing small piece meal changes every few months and hoping for a new meta to emerge is not a good way to balance things, when there are so many things that’s broken since launch.

I’d change that to bi-monthly. If they need to make sure they didn’t break something with the code or test something, that gives 2 weeks to test it, followed by a patch that fixes it if it needs fixing.

Wait…people don’t use devourers? They grab aggro more than the Ranger does, making them perfect for diversions, not to mention their long range makes certain that they’re going to die far less than the other pets if they’re not able to grab aggro. They can even take hits. I’m actually surprised more Rangers don’t use them. Also, Moas are there if you’re running for group support and don’t care about the damage output of the pet. And if you’re like me, you don’t care about the pet’s damage output 99% of the time.

Suddenflame.2601:

Fastest and easiest fix for this is:

1. Split traits between land and water traits.
2. Full armor change. A set of armor for land use and water use
3. More under water types of gear

These 3 things would vastly improve underwater combat.

I’ll take #2 only if they give my Charr a wetsuit he can wear underwater. I’m a diver irl…don’t judge me.

Disappointed. Still no real fixes for our pet AI problems, or even just the ratio between pet and Ranger DPS. My pessimism grows more…

Locuz.2651:

xephire.8324:

Seriously why not ranger?They are one of the best class.Why no love?

I have 5 profs at 80 atm including ranger. And i dare to say ranger is by far my least favourite. It was my first main and it was imo so boring that i stopped playing and whent back to wow due to it. Especially the long and shortbow playstyle is so zzzzz.

There was your problem. LB and SB are really easy weapons to use to the point where it gets boring just using them. Try using the melee weapons (which will keep you on your toes), or do things with traps. Those take more depth and skill to use well and survive with.

Necromancer starts off a bit hard to survive at first, but once you get more skills and traits, they become easier to use and kick butt with.

Velcro Raptor.5064:

Jeeze what did they do to the other classes? o_o

I am gonna roll an alt due to a couple friends picking up the game and wanting me to play with them.

PvE in general we still have the same “tiers” for the longest time. Warriors, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Guardians are still top picks for most parties, with Rangers, Thieves, Engineers, and Necromancers at the bottom of the list. This is mostly due to various things, but usually due to berzerker builds still being the king of dungeons and whatnot. Don’t let it get you down though, play what you want. I’ve seen those “top tier” classes fail harder than the other classes most of the time. Remember, play what you want if you enjoy it.

For me, the choice is dependent on what you like. If you like the idea of being group support most of the time with a lot of your skills (I’m not joking, most are), go Guardian. If you prefer conditions to hit the enemies most of the time and really mess with them with most of your skills (again, not joking), go Necromancer.

You need a target.

chemiclord.3978:

I also like the idea of bringing back Preparations as an alternative to the Pets, but I can see how that would be a balancing nightmare just within the class itself, much less in the game as a whole. It would be a much longer term solution that would take quite a bit of time to implement properly.

The best suggestion I have is giving a cooldown time between passive and active for the pet (like 10 seconds), but in return whenever the pet is on passive, they turn into a spirit and cannot attack anything while becoming immune to everything and untargetable. F1, F2, and F3 will then change to different buffs you can give the party depending on the pet type (each on 30 second cooldown), while also giving the Ranger a buff that increases their power and condition damage by a set amount. Basically a “support mode” for a Ranger. It gives us that party support we so desperately need, while making the pet more useful.

Examples of supports for Bird types:
One With the Wind: Gives Swiftness to up to 5 allies for 7 seconds.
Rage of the Birds: Gives Fury to up to 5 allies for 7 seconds.
Cool Breeze: Does a 1K AoE heal with 7 second Regen and 5 second Vigor to up to 5 allies.

There is a counterplay to that phys. Stop making zerker stealth builds and actually start wearing equipment that allows you to take hits.

Kaon.7192:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kaon.7192:

Pet’s dying is caused by taking damage. This affects all entities in the game, players or pets. It’s by no means a counter to Pets specifically.

I’m not saying pets are well designed in this game, but the state of pets has little relevance in this discussion.

EVERYTHING is the counter to our pet. But yet you thieves are QQing that you have a single counter ON A 40 SECOND COOLDOWN! Jesus you guys are such carebears, QQing because you can’t play easy mode as easily as you could before in WvW. Get the hell over it.

I assume by “EVERYTHING” you mean taking damage. Taking enough damage to die will take anything out of play. It’s not a hard counter specifically to your pet mechanic, and you have plenty of opportunity for counter-play in terms of mitigating, healing, and outright negating damage through pet swap on 15s cooldown.

If you want to talk complain about your pets being useless or too easy to kill, feel free to do it in another thread. But until another class gets a button to disable your pet and pet swap completely and instantly for 4s, this thread is not the place to discuss it.

Every class has that ability to do that to Rangers, Kaon. But ours can be shut off for an entire minute easily. And that’s not all, immobilize makes our pets useless, cripple makes them useless, chill makes them useless, anything that prevents them from hitting their target makes them useless. Every class can do that to the Ranger pet, every class can effectively shut off our pet’s usefulness entirely for more than 4 seconds.

But yet thieves are complaining that their stealth can get shut off for 4 seconds? No, I have no sympathy, go level a Ranger to 80, do every dungeon and instance multiple times, play through sPvP for weeks, and WvW for weeks, and THEN come back and tell me you’re willing to complain about stealth being shut off for 4 seconds. You won’t be, I guarantee it.