Guild Wars 2

Every time I see a thread like this, I can’t help but laugh. I’m curious OP, did you bother checking how the sets cultural armor for male Norn look like? Because so it happens that some of the male outfits show quite a bit of skin too. And if you’re one of those that think that when a female is portrayed wearing clothing showing her skin off it is wrong, but when a male is portrayed like that everything is perfectly ok, then I have some bad news for you…

For the Norn wearing skimpy outfits is a cultural thing. They’re highly resistant to cold and consequently the climate of Shiverpeaks doesn’t force them to cover their bodies extensively, of what they take full advantage. It is even said in-game that when they wear furs at all, they do it solely to honor the spirits, and not to protect themselves from the weather. When it comes to armor itself, wearing less protection is equivalent to showing that they they are fearless and too strong, tough, awesome or whatever to be forced to rely on some puny protection. It’s also to intimidate the enemy. For all any Norn cares, he or she could wrestle whole horde of Jotun naked, if the sheer fact of him or her being naked would make his or her saga more impressive (and it most likely would). And that is what every Norn cares about the most after all.

Besides, it’s not like the Norn cultural gear includes the only skimpy armor in this game. Quite on the contrary, there are equally, or even more skin-showing outfits available to Humans and Sylvari. Cultural gear alone, when it comes to light armor – sylvari t1 and t2, human t3, when it comes to medium armor – sylvari t1, human t3.

The only races that are truly different in this aspect are Asura and Charr. But both are different for a very simple reason – they only have 1 armor model for both genders. Which actually makes quite a large portion of Asura playerbase unhappy from what I’ve heard.

Xsorus.2507:

Searban.5984:

In the case of both the spirit variant and the BM variant, wouldn’t it be better to replace celestial gear with some combination of such stat combinations as cleric, apothecary, carrion or soldier? Because without points in Skirmishing your crit chance becomes rather low, while the build lacks access to fury and bleeds applied on critical hits.

If you drop Skirmishing your crit chance will decrease, but it won’t be completely worthless, The Biggie of course is you’re basically sacrificing a lot for a Burn, which actually probably does equal out on a lot of the Damage you would normally do (I think Losing Sharpened Edges would be the biggest beef I have with it)

You would be a bit beefier I suppose though with the extra vit and boon duration (May Rampage as one would make up for the loss)

But yea the difference between 22% crit chance and 37% crit chance is actually fairly minor damage wise same with the Crit Damage increase.

But lets say if I decided to swap all those Celestial Stats out for lets say Rabid

My Condition damage will go up by 300, but I’ll lose 300 Power, and i’ll also lose a whole lot of Crit Damage for a very minor increase on my Condition damage front

What about Soldier’s

Its not a huge loss

I mean you gain a Metric ton of Power by doing it, you lose very little Condition Damage (you’re still sitting at 800 which isn’t bad by any means)

Healing Power drops a bit which kind of sucks, and Crit Chance is non existent with that setup (talking 7% chance) with low crit damage

Carrion I wouldn’t use simply cause it doesn’t have toughness though

Apothecary I can’t use because it has no Power what so ever.

I was thinking more about combining pieces of gear, like cleric, soldier and carrion in 1 setup. Because celestial itself is surprisingly powerful when it comes to crit damage, but I’m still not entirely convinced whether GS attacks aren’t too slow to really benefit from 22% crit chance. I may be completely wrong though.

One last question – assuming that the crit chance is worth it, have you considered using the Superior Sigil of Perception instead of Bloodlust, for extra ~ 10% crit chance, or is it again not enough to justify dropping 250 power?

Castaliea.3156:

jubskie.3152:

Following this subforum’s cynicism, any patch without a nerf is a good patch :P

No the correct response is this;

SEE!!! I SAID ANET NO CARE BOUT US! AGAIN THEY DO NOTHING BOUT DES TERRIBLE CLASS!! Y THY NO JUS DELETE?!

Actually, an average response on these forums should be a combination of both of those, plus rant about both people complaining about the state of this class and about people not complaining about it.

Personally, I’m not surprised with lack of changes in this patch, and I’m not actually expecting anything major from the 1st patch post-PAX, it may take the next one to cause any disturbance in the class balance.

Atherakhia.4086:

God I hope they have a patch planned right after this tournament is over. Going to be a hard fight winning people back from FF

I still can’t help but wonder, why is it exactly that people believe that FF is going to change so much on the MMO market. Has everyone already forgotten that this game had already been released once? And that it easily took one of the top spots on the list of “greatest failures on the MMO market ever”?

I’m not saying it’s not going to be good, but before it achieves any major success its first challenge is to convince people who already had “pleasure” of playing this game those 3 years ago.

In the case of both the spirit variant and the BM variant, wouldn’t it be better to replace celestial gear with some combination of such stat combinations as cleric, apothecary, carrion or soldier? Because without points in Skirmishing your crit chance becomes rather low, while the build lacks access to fury and bleeds applied on critical hits.

The build looks very promising, I’ll have to try it out myself at some point. Especially since it is build around GS, which still remains my favorite melee weapon for rangers.

Getting all those celestials will be annoying though…

It’s great that you’ve found a way for this build to work on non-asura characters. Especially that I wouldn’t be suprised if Anet decided to nerf Technobabble at some point…

One question though: I understand that Signet of the Hunt is part of the skillbar primarily because this build doesn’t have access to swiftness. I know that some rangers compensate for that by using GS #3 for movement. Do you consider SoH to be mandatory (even with your ranged pets) or have you considered other options, such as additional stun breaker?

Knight’s gear is Toughness / Precision / Power, so it offers more protection than zerker, at the expense of power and critical damage. You could also try to mix Knight with Valkyrie’s, sacrificing some of the precision, but gaining vitality and critical damage.

Or you could try mixing your current gear with a bit of Knight, Valkyrie, Soldier, Sentinel or even Cleric. A lot depends on your current build, and whether you want to continue using it, or consider tweaking it towards better survivability.

Durzlla.6295:

Searban.5984:

Durzlla.6295:

Xhean.3452:

Hey!
The question is in the topic, what build do you use for high level fractals?
Really need some help here

I know my friend runs Spirits + Clerics gear, but that’s 100% NOT the “Meta” build nor one you’ll PUG those levels with…. I’d imagine something along the lines of a zerker 30/25/0/15/0 or 30/30/10/0/0 would be what the meta one is…

Out of curiosity, do you know the general outline of that spirit build in terms of skills and traits? I’ve been experimenting with spirits in pve myself recently, but I’m still working on it and looking for various ideas.

I don’t know what it is exactly, but I know he has sun, storm, stone, has 30 in NM and is a power based build, I think he’s got 10 in WS for Healers Clerity since he talks about being “the Rez kitten” and then I’m -guessing- the rest are in marksman so between him and the MM they’ll have perma 25 vuln, but I’m not positive on that.

So it would mean that the only reason for him to stack the healing power is the healing spring. I was curious whether he decided to keep Signet of the Wild for extra survivability. Interesting… I’ll have to experiment with this further.

Thanks for the answer Durzlla ;]

hyjaxxx.1584:

you know, they have amphibious pets…why not amphibious weapons?

Although the only weapon i want to see on the ranger is the Whip..it would be hands down, the most awesome looking weapon in the game. Then i could Make another Asura Ranger named Dr. Jones!

One major reason Anet may not want to make amphibious weapons is the fact that giving something like that to the ranger would set up a precedence. And then they would have to do the same with underwater weapons of all other classes. They may not consider whole thing worth the effort, sadly.

But as far as pole weapons go, I would prefer to see pole axes over spears. Would make it more interesting.

As for the whip, I can support this idea only if it comes with a skill that allows you to swing from one place to another using some environmental elements. Although that would probably be OP in jumping puzzles… ;p

Durzlla.6295:

Xhean.3452:

Hey!
The question is in the topic, what build do you use for high level fractals?
Really need some help here

I know my friend runs Spirits + Clerics gear, but that’s 100% NOT the “Meta” build nor one you’ll PUG those levels with…. I’d imagine something along the lines of a zerker 30/25/0/15/0 or 30/30/10/0/0 would be what the meta one is…

Out of curiosity, do you know the general outline of that spirit build in terms of skills and traits? I’ve been experimenting with spirits in pve myself recently, but I’m still working on it and looking for various ideas.

To be completely honest, I don’t consider the ascended gear that huge risk to the game balance. Sure, the question about how will our damage and survivability scale with it, and whether the pet will be taken into consideration here is important though

However, we all knew t those pieces are scheduled to be introduced at some point before the end of the 2013. Unfortunately, it would be really difficult to validate a claim that introduction of new pieces of gear should be postponed because of issues of one class. Although I would prefer if they could finally add those missing stats combinations to already existing categories of the ascended equipment first.

And I’m not nearly as worried about potential effects on the game balance the ascended gear may have, as I’m concerned about the idea of adding more traits and utility skills to the game, when they are still unable to provide decent balance between those that are already in.

While modern day hunters use rifles, I see 2 problems here. First, rifles in Tyria are generally not as advanced as modern day RL weapons, and one could have some doubts regarding their resistance to, let’s say, long periods of exposure to rough, humid environment forests and jungles generally are. Second, GW ranger, very much unlike the modern day hunter, is not only a hunter, but also a person close with the nature, practically spending his life in forest, surrounded by animals. Ever heard the rule “do not make noise in the forest”? Rifles are noisy, and therefore can potentially cause disturbance within the ecosystem.

While I don’t really have strong opinion on the issue of rifles for rangers, I can see where the doubts regarding this idea come from

bigsal.7061:

Would love to see a rifle and crossbow for rangers. Dual swords too.
GS is plane old silly IMO for a ranger.
And no I don’t think of the ranger as a strictly ranged class but being “in tune” with nature has nothing to do with using the technology available if its so commonplace with charr and asura technology.

By the gods, no. Not one of the most kittened ideas fantasy genre has ever come up with, the dual swords. Not to mention that last thing this game needs are Drizzt-wannabe rangers.

As for GS, the way I see it Anet has followed the concept of berserker in fantasy here. A fighter in lighter armor, fighting with animal-like ferocity, using huge weapon, and so on. Whether it was a good idea, that’s up to personal taste really.

I’ve been playing around with a similar concept, but with more emphasize on boons and boon duration through runes.

I’m curious though, what approach to the ascended gear you guys have? At the moment, when it comes to ascended trinkets, there are 2 variations of power / precision / toughness combination, 1 is typical knight gear with toughness as the leading stat, while the other has precision as the leading one.

With 5 trinkets it’s essentially a difference between 514 toughness / 382 precision in the 1st case and 382 toughness / 514 precision in the 2nd case. Is it worth it to drop 132 point of toughness for additional precision, which is equivalent, if I’m not mistaken, to a bit more than 6% crit chance increase?

In my opinion, Guard is fine, even if a bit clunky when used solely to stack regeneration and swiftness. But protection + stealth is great as it is. I like the idea of shadowstepping though… One may always dream. ;p

As for Sick’em, the key problem has already been mentioned countless times, it’s the effect being overridden by various actions. Beyond that, I think I would prefer for it to apply regular boons, rather than this special mechanic it has at the moment. Especially since shouts seem to be at least partially tied to NM trait line now.

To be honest, I think Protect Me needs more attention than Guard, as it is a bit lackluster now. It basically does what the signet of stone does better when traited.

However, what I would like to see the most is something else – turning shouts into skills that affect both the pet and the ranger. Shouts weren’t really popular so far, because their effects are relatively narrow in terms of who they affect, especially if you compare it with shouts other classes have access to. Nature’s Voice was a step in the right direction, but I don’t think it was enough.

But if Guard and Sick’em could give boons to the ranger himself, that would be something. Such solution could be introduced either as a default effect of the shouts, or as a trait somewhere in either BM or NM line.

Jonathan Sharp has claimed in the last SotG that Anet considers it a problem that Rangers are being forced into precision / condi style of gameplay. Why not buff that one type of skills that can actually support other builds?

Quarktastic.1027:

I’ll say it again. Allow pets to rally when you kill an enemy.

It’s not a bad idea, but I can see one major problem. It’s not going to address the issue of pet’s survivability during boss fights in dungeons, when the only enemy to kill will be the boss himself.

Diehard.1432:

Searban.5984:

Ok, now you’ve made me laugh. I probably should ignore this, but I simply can’t.

l2p issue? Really? What, now it’s “I’m a pro player and you’re not, because I mash 1 and you only press it once”?

Thing is, the root that Sword 1 involves is a bug. It has been acknowledged as such by Anet long ago. Therefore we can, and we should, expect it to be fixed.

On the other hand, for those who has adapted the sword mechanics, we can also demand it to stay; Not saying I am pro or and you are not.

Its all up to Anet now i guess.

Saying that Sword 1 is not bugged and it’s only l2p issue kind of suggest that the person saying something considers himself or herself better at the game. It wasn’t you who wrote that, but it still has been said in this thread.

As for the people who have adapted. The thing is, or at least I see it this way, that Anet should not change the general mechanics of Sword 1. Only work on eliminating the root it involves. They’ve already improved the situation once, so why not continue on that?

jubskie.3152:

Searban.5984:

All things aside, you must have quite an interesting way of defining what is, and what isn’t civil. So far, the way you write your posts suggests that in fact you have problem not with people being uncivil, but that they complain at all.

I decided to browse the whole thread again for that, and most of the posters is not “verbally abusive” towards the devs, nor are their posts “vicious attacks”. They are sarcastic at worst, and honestly, considering the history of relations between the devs and the community so far, sarcasm is not exactly surprising.

What most of the people do however is voicing doubts regarding competences of the balancing team. Questioning ones competences can be perceived as abusive only if there is absolutely no ground for such accusations. Otherwise its no more than challenging people to provide a proof that they are, in fact, competent.

For example can believe that fixing issues ranger’s pets are plagued with is harder than it seems and therefore takes so much time. But if I’m accept such explanation, I would really appreciate some explanation as to what exactly is going on and why. That would be enough to be a proof of competence for me.

By all the gods available, I honestly hope I’ll never have to live in the world where doubting ones competences will be considered a personal attack.

Your assessment is incorrect, sir. I have a problem with the posters here because they are infact, uncivil and immature. And it’s not limited to just this thread. If you browse the threads from the past week you will see just what I mean.

I have no issues with voicing complaints per se, as I have raised a few myself, but these posters add a malicious tone with theirs and that is what troubles me. Not only are they demoralizing the entire subforum by posting outrages opinions which they claim as fact, they also give out a negative vibe that echoes throughout the entire player base. That kind of stigma sticks and rangers getting kicked in groups becomes the norm. When going to this subforum, you’re more likely to see QQ threads instead of discussion threads.

So forgive me for being too emotional and escalating sarcasm into “verbal abuse.” I hate the state of this subforum is in and I’m doing what I can to make people see what non-constructive complaints and sarcasm is doing to the class and its players.

I can agree with you. State of this subforum is horrible, and it had been rather “meh” for some time even before the 25.06 patch came. What I’m pointing out though is that such state has not been caused solely by the players themselves.

Community is not the only side at fault here. The atmosphere can only be fixed if devs start communicating with the community to try to tackle the issues we’re facing. But “communicating” is something vastly different from “throwing a witty and ultimately annoying one-liners”.

meep.2601:

you guys got your once-every-3-months obligatory dev post, you should be happy

Shouldn’t you be moa racing right now? ;p

Ok, now you’ve made me laugh. I probably should ignore this, but I simply can’t.

l2p issue? Really? What, now it’s “I’m a pro player and you’re not, because I mash 1 and you only press it once”?

Thing is, the root that Sword 1 involves is a bug. It has been acknowledged as such by Anet long ago. Therefore we can, and we should, expect it to be fixed.

Three things I would like to know:

Is there anything major in the works following the discussion on pets between Robert Hrouda and the ranger community? Specifically, is there anything in the works regarding either increasing resistance to AoE pets have or giving pets the ability to dodge?

Is Anet working on any major solution to the issues pets still have with hitting moving targets?

Are there plans to finally eliminate root from sword 1 in the nearest future?

jubskie.3152:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I already told you. The difference being is this: you don’t pay me squat nor do you have any say on my career. You’re not my customer. You don’t ensure the checks keep coming.

We did civil. It had no effect. I’m not saying uncivil will work either. Obviously. But there’s no need to go off the deep end either.

Please notice I again did answer your question in a civil manner. Your attempt to get a rise out of me failed. But you hung yourself doing so. There’s a difference between your question and my response.

I suggest you look into it.

No, this post is civil, the one before it is not.

Paychecks have nothing to do it, its basic human decency to respect other people. Complaints in this thread are far from respectful.

And yes, I agree we don’t have to go the deep end, but judging from the posts here, I can already say we’re long past the deep end.

Meh infraction. If the community doesn’t lighten up I’m not gonna stick around here anyway. I come to this forum to talk about ranger builds, combos and strategies. Not to talk about respect and baby sit QQers.

All things aside, you must have quite an interesting way of defining what is, and what isn’t civil. So far, the way you write your posts suggests that in fact you have problem not with people being uncivil, but that they complain at all.

I decided to browse the whole thread again for that, and most of the posters is not “verbally abusive” towards the devs, nor are their posts “vicious attacks”. They are sarcastic at worst, and honestly, considering the history of relations between the devs and the community so far, sarcasm is not exactly surprising.

What most of the people do however is voicing doubts regarding competences of the balancing team. Questioning ones competences can be perceived as abusive only if there is absolutely no ground for such accusations. Otherwise its no more than challenging people to provide a proof that they are, in fact, competent.

For example can believe that fixing issues ranger’s pets are plagued with is harder than it seems and therefore takes so much time. But if I’m accept such explanation, I would really appreciate some explanation as to what exactly is going on and why. That would be enough to be a proof of competence for me.

By all the gods available, I honestly hope I’ll never have to live in the world where doubting ones competences will be considered a personal attack.

jubskie.3152:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

jubskie.3152:

Keep it up guys! The best way to motivate the ANet balance team is to insult them into buffing rangers! Forget about meaningful discussion, who needs that crap, amirite?

/rolleyes

Sadly, we have that other thread with a TON of helpful suggestions and meaningful discussion to improve the class. We even had manager or developer interaction. Please point out where any of those suggestion saw use in the game.

We’ll wait.

At this point, the community isn’t in the mood to be nice. While I’ll freely admit I’m loving certain changes, which shall not be mentioned because I want them to stay, I completely understand why some of our peers are a bit . . . peeved.

So, we have spirit ranger made useless, bleed rangers made useless, and now this newest nerf.

Honestly, you’re asking the the community, the people who pay for the product, to motivate the people selling the product into making a better business?

Please think about what you’re asking.

So not getting what you want gives you the right to verbally abuse them?

Seriously, if all that hate was directed at you, would you be motivated to work at all?

Poor management of a product, which in turn affects the way you use that product, the product for which you’ve paid, gives you the right to voice discontent. And when you know that voicing discontent through feedback and through rant will get you similar result, you are going to choose the easier option. And when the the poor management continues despite discontent being voiced for months, then yes, verbal abuse will happen, regardless of the fact that it should not have place here.

jubskie.3152:

Keep it up guys! The best way to motivate the ANet balance team is to insult them into buffing rangers! Forget about meaningful discussion, who needs that crap, amirite?

/rolleyes

As much as I value constructive feedback and meaningful discussion, I can see why people ignore such options at this point. Especially when a dev comes to a thread and posts something that from perspective of the general atmosphere on these forums may simply be hard to be perceived as anything else than cheap trolling.

And to be completely honest, what has the constructive feedback achieved us so far during the course of the last 9 months? To be fair, even if such an assumption is false. Anet has given the ranger players plenty of reason to believe that mindless rant and constructive feedback have more or less the same chance to improve anything.

rchu.8945:

Searban.5984:

However, if it’s not the case of ill will, then I can’t help but start having doubts regarding competences and consistency of some people working on the development team, as well as whether they have any general idea what they want the ranger to be.

look, anyone works in a programming related field should know the importance of having a test server (or in my web development job, a QA/staging server to test codes before push them live), but up until now, Anet still doesn’t have one. Doesn’t that show the competence level of the developers and the team managing the game? How many times have they patch something and end up breaking something else?

As far as I’m aware they have a test server, it’s simply not a public test server. And after my experience with MMOs, I’m rather skeptical about the influence on the quality of patches PTS can have. Take SW:TOR as an example. That game has a PTS, which so far failed to prevent a few patches that broke the game completely from being released and only fixed afterwards.

To be fair, lack of PTS doesn’t really have much to do with the issue at hand either. Issues Ranger faces are not related to some bugs that were caused by recent patch, but to certain flawed design decisions and mistakes, some of which date back to the beta phase. Sure, PTS could give players a chance to voice their discontent with balancing changes before they went live, but that’s it. No guarantee voicing such discontent would actually get us anything.

However, the fact that I’m skeptical about the usefulness of PTS doesn’t change the fact that I started having doubts regarding whether people responsible for this profession are really right for their job.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Yes, we care about the forums. We also care about all the classes equally.

I’m inclined to believe this. An assumption that there is an amount of ill will against the ranger among the devs is basically a conspiracy theory, and I’ve never considered those appealing.

However, if it’s not the case of ill will, then I can’t help but start having doubts regarding competences and consistency of some people working on the development team, as well as whether they have any general idea what they want the ranger to be.

It’s not even about the nerf to pet damage. I can live with that, even if it has been done on the basis of complaint of bad players, who don’t know anything about movement on the battlefield. I can even live with the nerf to shotrbow’s range. But why do you try to fix certain parts of our skill set without working at the core of the issues?

The new trait, Nature’s Voice, is nice, and it actually makes shouts worth something. But why do we have to invest 30 points to make shouts useful at all? Not to mention how clunky it is, even if effective, to stack regen and swiftness with Guard.

Same goes for spirits. You nerfed them to the ground during the beta, because you judged them as OP. But you carried the nerf out in a way that completely broke the whole mechanic. And yet you keep buffing the spirits time and time again, despite the fact that simple buffs help very little with the squishiness and unreliability of those skills.

And of course, there are certain issues outside of the skill set itself, such as still existing root in the Sword 1 (still a big turn off for some, even if the weapon itself is pretty good), or the lack of pets survivability in dungeons and most importantly, the problems pets have with hitting moving targets. My issue here is that you’ve known about and acknowledged those problems back in 2012, and we’re still waiting for you to fix them. I can understand that they’re probably harder to fix than one might expect. But if you can’t, at least avoid creating new content in a way that adds insult to injury.

Myself, I’ve been maining a ranger since day one. I don’t really have alts, as I’ve never been much an alt player in any MMO I’ve ever played. And nowadays I have less time for gaming than I used to anyway. But I’ve invested a lot in my ranger, and I’ve enjoyed my time spent doing that. I rarely had thoughts about switching to another class. After 25.06, I simply adapted my build to new conditions.

And then I decided to run tha Aetherblade Retreat yesterday with a couple of friends. We’ve completed it, having a team of Guardian, Ele, Mesmer and 2 Rangers. I even had my “moment of glory” when due to my hight survivability I was the one who had to kill last 2 golems in the fight against Frizz (shame I realized so quickly that any class could’ve done it, and probably faster). But the dungeon as a whole left me incredibly frustrated. Why did you go for the same solution again? This kittened spam of AoEs? Any idea on how was I supposed to keep the pet alive during Frizz or Mai Trin and Horrik encounters? How was I supposed to make the pets actually hit the constantly moving enemies? Or how was I supposed to place the new, improved spirits to make them work there?

If you still can’t fix basic issues that plague the Ranger profession, at least try to avoid creating content that is punishing players for having broken class mechanics. I think I’ll start to play some alts seriously. I think I may add a Norn Ele or Necro (probably Ele) to my Norn Ranger. Wanted to roll a Norn caster eventually anyway, really like the look of their cultural light armor…