Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why I can’t interrupt the second and third auto-attack on the Sword auto-attack when an engineer can use their Elixir gun’s [Acid Leap] which should leap them backwards 550 distance, but if they immediately weapon swap out of that kit after casting it, it interrupts the leap and they just get the Acid. They use this little trick all the time in order to get that extra damage without risking having mobs chase them out of the pile they clumped them up in for PvE.

Mesmers cancel the end of the Greatsword auto-attack animation after the 3rd tick in order to get a faster attack speed.

There are all sorts of little tricks like this where the weapon (or kit) was programmed to be responsive and allow for these various tricks. What we’re asking for isn’t even a trick, it’s to simply be able to interrupt my action in order to dodge roll.

On no other class am I aware of any attack that prevents you from interrupting it in order to dodge roll. I’d be okay with this “uniqueness” if we gained something from it, but we don’t.

It doesn’t even provide a higher skill cap … it makes it a lower skill cap given that the person trying to dodge and the person obliviously spamming 111111 get the same result (no dodge; smacked in the face).

We shouldn’t have to lose the leap in order to be able to interrupt it … as shown by the Engineer Elixir Gun trick; amongst others.

Trust me, I’m with the rest of you about the leap … I want it to stay. Just, given the evidence of interruptable leaps, I don’t see why the one on our auto-attack isn’t interruptable with a dodge roll in a game where dodge rolls are a required part of gameplay in both PvP and PvE.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Template:Prefix_attributes
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

For condition damage as your primary, you can look at either of the above links and see that you have the following options:

Sinister: Condition Damage, Power, Precision

• This will be glassy, but you’ll have the most direct damage of any of the other options as well since you have both power and crit chance. The crits will help proc on-crit effects.

Carrion: Condition Damage, Power, Virtality

• Carrion will be less glassy than Sinister, but more glassy than the other builds as Vitality without more toughness isn’t going to make you take that much more to kill. It will do almost the same amount of direct damage, but a bit less since it doesn’t have precision. It will also not be proccing on-crit effects for you

Rabid: Condition Damage, Precision, Toughness

• Rabid is what you take to be tankier than Carrion & Sinister but less Tanky than Dire and Apostate. The only real reason to take Rabid is if you need the critical chance to proc on-crit effects from traits, sigils, etc. … though be warned that your crits can proc benefits for your opponents as well.

Dire: Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality
Apostate: Condition Damage, Toughness, Healing

• Dire competes with Apostate for “tankiest” of the options. Depending on your build, you’ll be better served by Dire or Apostate. That is, if you have good up-time on regen and/or any other sources of healing and can keep poison off you, then you’ll be better off with +healing instead of +vitality. Otherwise, Vitality will give you a larger health pool.

Personally, I prefer +Healing. Vitality is nice, but once that health is gone, it isn’t doing you any favors. I personally feel Healing scales better with Toughness than Vitality does, but, as I said, that’s only beneficial if you are going to have plenty of sources of healing.

To give an example:
If the +Toughness means that you’d take 20% less damage, than every 1,000 extra health from vitality will actually count as 1,200 extra health.

Similarly, if +Healing means that you’ll heal an extra 300 health per tick of regeneration, that toughness will translate that to effective 360 health per tick. Give me 4 seconds into a fight with that regeneration and I’ll have overcome the initial +1,200 health while that 1,200 health is gone as soon as it’s gone … only benefit being if your opponent somehow lets you top your health off mid-fight.

NOTE: conditions ignore your toughness, so they won’t be making Vitality nor Healing better against them.

I’ve personally never used Apostate as I already have a full set of Apothecary from back when Karka were “new”, but it has served me quite well. I won’t get into Apoth and other such sets any more though as then I’ll have to cover all sets that have condition damage as a secondary. I trust you to be able to look them up if you’re so inclined :-)

One of the things I love about my Ranger is that I can be tanky yet my pet can stay a vicious, man-eating monster due to their stats being independent of mine.

<edit>
Of special note is: Giver’s.
Instead of +condition damage, you get +condition duration. This can be quite nice, particularly if you opponents doesn’t have the condition cleanses to keep up as each additional tick of a condition is additional damage as well. On top of that, it benefits you in that cripple, chill, etc. last longer. Poison likes to stay on an opponent longer to keep those heals diminished ;-)

For optimizing it, do the math on your conditions your build can apply and try to find a +% condition duration that will give you full ticks. going from 9.0s to 9.9s duration won’t give you any extra damage, but gonig from 9.0s to 10.s will give you that extra damage.

I found Giver’s quite nice when I was running my “chill you for days” build. I posted it somewhere in here over a year ago :-p

In my opinion Chill is a condition that is underrated by most. Increasing the cooldowns of your opponent’s skills is awesome and hindering their movement speed is always welcome as well :-p
</edit>

Summary:
Don’t blindly follow builds you see top-players using in tournaments. You should look at why they use them. Often times you’ll see them tweak those builds for solo queue or when facing particular opponents. There are decisions that are made and it is best to understand those decisions and how best to make them rather than simply copying the resulting builds.

Just to be clear in case this wasn’t already known … your pets’ conditions’ damage is based off of your pets’ stats. You could be tanky, power, condition, etc. and your pets’ attacks and conditions’ would do the same damage.

One thing to think about when looking at conditions is:

• Do I want to stack more of the same condition(s)
• Do I want to stack more types of conditions(s)

For example: The Ranger isn’t known for their ability to apply confusion, but we do have the Reef Drake which can apply it for us.

The reason you want to ask this is this. If you are applying burning, poison, and bleed and your pets only apply those as well, then a condition cleanse that removes 3 will leave your opponent with 0 conditions. If you took the Reef Drake, then you’d possibly have 4 conditions on your opponent meaning that they’d still have one of those conditions on them even after the cleanse.

So, just something to keep in mind.
Canines are nice for their sweet CC.
I’d rank Spiders after Canines simply because I think Knockdown > Immobilize and I prioritize that CC over the Poison that spiders also bring to the table.

Do note that even something like the vulnerability applied by a Feline pet can be useful. That vulnerability can “shield” some of your other conditions from cleanses … though it can also be turned into protection by cleanses that convert conditions into boons.

Play around with various combinations based on what you want and I’m sure you’ll find a good balance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_pet_skills

Have fun :-)

Malchior.1928:

I actually really like the skill cap for sword main hand. Please don’t fix what isn’t broken.

I think where we differ in opinion is in our definitions.

I don’t think allowing players to cancel the 2nd and 3rd attacks in the Ranger Sword Auto-attack chain with a dodge roll, sheathing your weapon, and/or other means would lower the skill cap for the sword.

In fact, if you look at several of the tricks posted by “pros” (see: in the paid tournaments), they make use of canceling animations, etc. via these various means in order to improve their capabilities.

The fact that the Ranger Sword does not allow this prevents it from being used in these ways so I believe it actually lowers the potential skill cap of the ability.

Additionally, it makes using it in PvE rather annoying.

Given that I see the results of its current incarnation are…

• Lower potential skill cap
• Annoying in particular situations
  … and they are only negative results, I believe it would be much improved if we were allowed to interrupt any of the 3 attacks in our auto-attack chain instead of only 1/3 of them.

To give an even more basic example:

• GoodPlayer is using his Sword Auto-Attack chain. He needs to dodge but can’t because he on the 2nd or 3rd attack and it won’t let him. So he gets hit
• BadPlayer is using his Sword Auto-Attack and just doesn’t even try to dodge. So he gets hit.
  There is no difference. One player wanted to play well and dodge, but the game didn’t allow it for seemingly no reason at all so he ended up with the same result as the player who was just obliviously auto-attacking.

Sure, you can turn off auto-attack, but now you:

• Still can’t cancel mid-animation.
• Are lowering your DPS with the weapon.

I fail to see anything good about any of this.

I certainly don’t see anything with the current incarnation that provides a higher skill cap.

Let’s be clear about one thing, it doesn’t make much sense to complain that if something makes Mesmer better it is bad because that makes us a “higher priority target”.

You either continue to not have good things and be a “lower priority target” because you’re not much of a threat …

… or you become a “higher priority target” because you offer something the competitions finds worth trying to eliminate ASAP.

You either want meaningful capabilities and have to live with the consequences of possibly being targeted more …

… or you don’t do anything meaningful and are possibly targeted less because of it.

I personally prefer the former. I’ll take the pressure if it’s because I have a more meaningful role in the game.

@Photoloss: Thanks, I’ll have to do that. I’m sure you’re all right, but I almost always prefer to also double-check things.

As far as procs go, with Illusionary Elasticity “double-tapping” you get 2 hits per cast.

If what others are saying here (and what the wiki pages currently say) is true about staff being ~1.3s and Greatsword being ~1.4 then you have:

• Staff = 2 / 1.3 = 1.54 hits per second
• Greatsword = 3 / 1.4 = 2.14 hits per second
  So, yes, Greatsword would be better at proccing too.

Now, if Staff would only take the 0.75 that is on its tooltip, you’d have a different story because it would be:

• 2 / 0.75 = 2.66 hits per second

I’m currently a big peeved to be learning about this 1.3. I see no logical reason for it … seems like another such illogical thing to have to swallow on my Mesmer :-/

@Photoloss: Good points. So if ArenaNet ever figured out how to make condition damage not suck in groups when you have more than one person applying them, do you think this would be less than an issue?

@Mak
The aftercast for Staff #1 is bumping it up from 0.75s to 1.3s ? That’s a whopping +73% to the cast time. Are you sure?
<edit>Bah, the wiki says the sameThat changes quite a bit … also another one of those “Why?” moments I have for ArenaNet.</edit>

Greatsword #1, when canceled, is 1.4? This sounds right, but I like confirmation :-)
<edit>Wiki says the same.</edit>

@You both: Thank you.

Anyone have a good suggestion for timing the animations? I’ve seen some people before just use whatever recording software but then some timer. I’ve always assumed the timer part was a manual process but figured I’d ask.

Play around with pets and see what ability they use when you swap to them while in combat.

Example #1: Drakes will to their Tail attack when first summoned. If you have down a healing spring, this will give you a nice blast finisher for some extra healing.

Example #2: Canines will do their knockdown. Use this to get a predictable CC on a target.

Also, if you like to stay at range, ranged pets like Devourers and Spiders can be nice in that they stay at range too thereby making it easier for you to position them between you and non-piercing projectiles. [You] — [Pet] — [Ranged Mob]. Works well :-)

@Rome:
I agree that ArenaNet should look at current trends of classes in competitive play and make adjustments. Looking at tournaments, there is an abundance of a small subset of the available classes that should be an obvious indicator that some changes are warranted.

However, I disagree with “It’s time to balance PvP in favor of Mesmers”. I prefer balance. I believe most do. Also, Mesmers have had times where PvP has favored them … though never in largescale fights (except maybe glamor builds pre-nerf) … but we can be quite the monster in small-scale fights … if there isn’t a Thief on the opposing side ;-)

Quick history lesson:

Deceptive Evasion used to be the Minor Master trait in the Dueling traitline.

Many people loved it because it cost let trait points to get it.

However, because back then clones overwriting phantasms was worse than it is now, Phantasm Mesmers were not happy with being forced to take this trait if they wanted to put more points into Dueling which has some nice traits for phantasm builds.

Rather than make it a Major Adept trait, ArenaNet decided it should be a Major Master trait.

So here we are today.

Would it help with build diversity? Probably. It could hurt phantasm builds somewhat still, as the situations where you have 3 phantasms would get annoying when forced to dodge … but not as bad as before where the next dodge would replace another phantasm instead of the one clone out of the 3 illusions.

I don’t think it would help that much though as we are talking about a single trait point and our Minor Grandmaster traits aren’t much to write home about except when synergizing with multiple other traits … so not very flexible.

So I’ve been away from GW2 for a bit and recently came back and see many people saying that "the direct damage of staff is bad "

Now, I understand that Staff doesn’t have the same burst potential as Greatsword’s [Mirror Blade] + [Mind Stab] combo, this is common knowledge.

I’m more specifically talking about the auto-attacks … sustained damage … though you should, of course, factor in non-AA attacks as they’ll be part of your “rotation”.

With Illusionary Elasticity, Staff has the potential to hit [target]—>[something_else] —>[target]. So, especially in a 1v1, you get two hits on your target per auto-attack. If you look at the cast/channel time for Greatsword #1 versus Staff #1, Greatsword is 1.5s while Staff is 0.75. So you can get 2 Staff auto-attacks per 1 Greatsword auto-attack.

Now, if you look, Staff #1 does a little less than 1/2 the power damage of Greatsword #1 when Greatsword is at >900 range. However, it does more than 1/3 the power damage. So if you are getting 2 hits per AA and attacking twice with Staff per one attack with Greatsword, you are getting in 4 hits per 1 full greatsword channel.

All that is said to say … why are people still saying that Staff is not good power damage?

Is it just the lack of burst on a short cooldown or just the lack of anything like Mirror Blade which is an obvious boost to damage?

Is it because Greatsword can’t be stopped by anti-projectile mechanics?

Is it because people are canceling the Greatsword animation to speed up their attack rate with it?

Is it because you have to be closer than 1,200 range with staff in order to get the “double-tap” from each attack?

I’m just curious and figured I’d start a discussion :-)

While it is likely to hurt my Mesmer, if you look at the new WvW maps, this is likely necessary. Otherwise a single Mesmer could hold a bridge with a null field and focus.

That being said, even with this change, I could combo those two to throw several off a bridge … I just have to be quick about it :-)

Wanted to add some more …

What has damaged your faith in the devs?

Temportal Curtain not even stacking with Swiftness.
We used to be able to run through it multiple times to stack swiftness, but that was nerfed. Guardians used to not be able to just stand in their symbol to stack swiftness, but now they can. Why?

Veil not stacking stealth
Veil is now a measly 2s stealth that can’t be stacked by running through it multiple times. Other classes can stack stealth via blast finishers, refuge, etc. … much more stealth … and not just Thieves. Why?

Mantras have a horrible issue if you will be going in/out of water. Charge your mantra(s) then go in water. Now come back out of water. You will have no Mantra charges and your Mantra(s) will be on cooldown.

Illusionary Membrane was given a 15s ICD
With 3 trait points in Chaos and 3 points in Inspiration, we could keep regen on ourselves from our phantasms and thus also protection. For some reason Mesmers are not allowed to do this, but other classes (ex: Elementalist) are. We’ll ignore that this was providing build diversity as it gave a good reason to put almost half our trait points in the two least used trait lines.

Restorative Illusions is Weak
I get the same amount of healing for a 3 illusion shatter with Restorative Illusions as an Elementalist gets from using any 6 abilities with their healing Signet … including just auto-attacking nothing. It is more work (and cooldowns) to summon 3 illusions and shatter them (and they have to survive). It also requires a target to summon those illusions and shatter them. It’s also a Grandmaster trait. Why is it so lackluster?

Downed State
This still only tricks ignorant players. There is a Red icon above my head. There is not a red icon above my clone’s head. This is a simple fix. Either put a red icon above the clone’s head or don’t put one above my head. So why has it never been fixed? This has been around for a while. We’ll ignore that it can actually put you in a worse spot than you were before the random teleport. Why can’t that teleport be non-random?

Illusion of Life
The one rez utility that doesn’t actually rez people yet it still has a long cooldown like the other rez utilities.

Traited Temporal Curtain
Most people know that this wall is a bit “short” at times.
If you have an opponent attack from a higher elevation, their projectiles can often go over your Temporal Curtain and still hit you. Have a Guardian drop their wall of reflection and watch that same elevated opponent still have their projectiles reflected back at them.

Ultimately, most game developers will tell you that one way they look at balance/design is to see:

• What is seemingly always used
• What is seemingly never used
• What has a disproportionate % of success
• What has a disproportionate % of failure

It doesn’t feel like this is what is being done.
The inconsistencies don’t help with this (see above for some).

It used to be that most tournament teams featured at least one Mesmer. Now we a rarely seeing Mesmers on tournament teams. While we’re not the only class in this boat, it should be a strong sign to the developers where they should be paying attention.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining?
I had completely lost faith in ArenaNet and quit the game for a while. As I stated before, I only came back because the current MMOs out failed worse and ArenaNet addressed some of my issues in their interviews about changes in the expansion (we’ll see if words are more than just words).

As far as what has damaged my faith in the devs:
(1) They seem to ignore what the Mesmer community says they would absolutely love to have. We’ve been asking for another mainhand weapon since beta (often for a mainhand pistol) … when they got an opportunity to add it when they decided the expansion would give a new weapon to each class … they gave Mesmers a shield. Now, the shield could rock our worlds and we all just love it to death … but imagine the level of excitement there would be if it had been the weapon that’s been requested for years … instead of all the threads saying “let’s try to be positive while we wait”. Also imagine the possible variety of builds if we have 3 mainhands and 4 offhands instead of 2 mainhands and 5 offhands.

There have been several other good suggestions and I just don’t see them. I remember when the Mesmer community had all sorts of great, well-known streamers, theorycrafters, etc. and things were quite positive despite the bugs and issues we had at that time. Coming back I see even less of them (though I see some of you have stuck around! woot to that! and some new faces) and the overall community seems much less positive … and I can’t say I blame them (so some of it is exaggerated … like in all the forums … but only some).

(2) Nerfing things that were only seen as “OP” by players at low skill levels (not even average levels)

• Example: Confusion. When applied to you, there is an effect on your character, your screen changes hues, there is a condition icon on your screen, and each time you attack you see a damage number with the confusion icon and your health goes down. There were all these “clues” that you had confusion on you, yet players would just kitten on with their auto-attack and kill theirselves. Obviously they couldn’t be expected to pay attention to any of these plethora of visual cues and it was deemed “OP” and nerfed.

If they applied the same logic across the board, why are Reflection abilities still in the game … plenty of bad Longbow Rangers, etc. kill themselves every day … and reflection isn’t limited in the number of players it can affect … and reflection can’t be cleansed.

(3) Wanting to have e-sports, but still having abilities in the game that have no visual animation for players to react to. Counterplay is a big part of e-sports. If my only options for countering something include “Guess when it will happen” and/or “Pray …” then there is an issue.

(4) Skill changes. Arcane Thievery and Mimic are a great example. Mesmers already had Arcane Thievery which was great. It had a long cooldown but you could use it to strip a boon stacker or throw back conditions on a condition build (we’ll ignore that Necros have this on weapons with much lower cooldowns).

For whatever reason, Arcane Thievery, with its long cooldown, needed to be nerfed …
For whatever reason, Mimic’s reflection and/or it’s re-use of the first projectile it absorbed was too much (PvE I guess).
For whatever reason, Mimic was changed to give Mesmers another way to get boons off our target … though only a hostile target …

It doesn’t make much sense.

What would have to happen to earn back your trust?
Changes that make sense.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?
Either make illusions far less apt to die to AOE and other mechanics we can’t do anything about … or give us some sort of recompense effect for when those mechanics prematurely end our illusions’ lives.

Otherwise, start moving us away from our dependence on them … and not by making them suck … by giving us something good to replace them. Two bads doesn’t make a good :-p

You’re both derailing and not really providing good points … please take to PM or another thread. Have a discussion; not an argument.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM?
Ways to operate in environments where shattering isn’t viable nor is keeping phantasms alive.

Our dependence on our illusions surviving running to the target (or even being able to run to it) and/or our illusions ability to survive AOEs in order to provide the same damage, utility, etc. as other classes has us in a sometimes bad spot. Even with Signet and Traits for more HP for our illusions, they are not hardy enough. Something to help would be appreciated.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most?
WvW Utility (portals, reflection, stealth, time warp, etc.)
Small skirmishes (~5 per side) that don’t include Thieves on the opposing side … Thieves ruin us.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the least?
Fights where illusions can’t survive long enough for a good shatter nor can phantasms survive enough to keep pummeling a target. This sadly happens everywhere except sPvP … but Thieves are in abundance in sPvP … good Thieves are Mesmer kryptonite.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?
Less dependence on the survival of our Illusions or somehow compensating us when our illusions are prematurely killed … heck, tick a second off my illusion-generating cooldowns when they are killed in some way that isn’t a shatter … or give me a buff in these cases. Or make it less likely for my poor illusions to die to a stiff breeze so my weapons depending on them isn’t such a liability.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?
I did stop playing Mesmer for a while and starting having all sorts of alts because of that (though I always come back to my Mesmer … that Utility is nice).

Good Thieves have always been monsters, but being the class that is largely helpeless against one of the best top-level PvP classes can be rage-inducing.

Combine that with the fact that it is largely abilities with no “tell” for me to see to react to (you know … counterplay), and it can get quite frustrating. This is a good bit of why I get off my Mesmer … too many Thieves running around? Change to an alt and start stomping said Thieves.

In all honesty. If any of the new MMOs I had tried weren’t such failures, I probably wouldn’t have come back. Though I am sad I missed the Living Story Part 1 … bit peeved no one thought about replay of it until Part 2 came out.

Do you find it helps this build a bit on surviving a pack of elite mobs if your pet has more toughness/vitality than a Cat so that the AI is more likely to target your pet in melee than you?

I run with more casual crowds in dungeons so I’m usually the only one in melee unless we have a Guardian (then it’s just the Guardian and I), and with most/all of the group in Berzerker gear (roughly same toughness/vitality as me) that leaves the AI with looking at the closest person usually … which ends up being my big Norn butt.

Was curious. Thanks

I disagree on a few points here.

Thieves don’t get stealth when they miss with Cloak and Dagger, so I don’t believe it’d be fair for Ranger’s to stealth despite missing with our own ranged attack.

I see that you want to merge longbow traits, but I don’t see anything about merging things like Martial Mastery which is just a flat -20% cooldown reduction. Most (if not all) other classes now have at least some stat bonus tied in with their weapon cooldown reduction traits.

I imagine many beastmaster rangers would not be happy with an ICD on the Might from Axe auto-attacks given that they are quite happy with using 3 trait points to share that Might with their Pet. Combine with traited pet Might on crits and Sigil of Battle and your pet quickly gets 25 stacks of might … especially when the axe gets to bounce.

I’d prefer merging Piercing Arrows with something that isn’t longbow specific since Piercing Arrows can also be beneficial for Shortbow.

What is wrong with the burns from bonfire?

More reliable condition removal (without a grandmaster trait and/or gimping your pet) would be nice … though we do have some non-GM traits for removing specific conditions, a bear for removing more, and Healing Spring.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on the mechanic changing.

When they showed the Ranger as a Druid with a staff, they still had their same class mechanic (Ranger pet)

Though that would be an awesome replacement for the current incarnation of Mimic :-)

Looking at current GW2 shield abilities: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield

Guardian

• Shield of Judgement: Create a shielding wave in front of you that damages foes and gives protection to yourself and up to five allies. [protection]
• Shield of Absorption: Create a dome around you that pushes foes back and absorbs projectiles. [push][projectile-absorb]
• Shield of Absorption 2: Detonate the dome to heal nearby allies. [heal]

Warrior

• Shield Bash: Bash your foe with your shield and stun them. [stun]
• Shield Stance: Block attacks. [block]

Engineer

• Magnetic Shield: Create a magnetic field that reflects projectiles and can be released to push back foes. [projectile-reflect]
• Magnetic Inversion: Release the magnetic field to push back nearby foes. [push]
• Static Shield: Electrify your shield, preparing to throw it at foes. If you are hit, the shield discharges, stunning your nearby attacker. [stun]
• Throw Shield: Throw your charged shield. Dazes foes it hits on the way out and back. [daze]

We can see that the effects are:

• [protection]
• [heal]
• [push] x2
• [projectile-absorb]
• [projectile-reflect]
• [stun] x2
• [daze]

Basically, a defensive / CC weapon … but on a class that can LOS, kite, etc. while their illusions continue to deal damage. This is something that separates the Mesmer from these other three classes that can currently use a Shield.

Thus, while I’m disappointed that it’s not a ranged power weapon for my main-hand, I am curious what it will do for Mesmers.

Rather than that guard mode, I’d prefer to just be able to set the Passive/Aggressive button to a hotkey. I hate having to click it … any other class have a class mechanic they have to click the button for? Nope :-p

Hotkey, please.

As far as pets, weapons, etc. … yes, you need to pick the correct pet for the job. If knocking opponents around, a ranged pet might serve you better … especially spider given its extra immobilize as well as the poison field for firing arrows through.

If needing help kiting, that dog on passive till you want him on your target is your friend.

Personally, when I’m on my Mesmer, the Ranger pet is the most aggravating part for me about fighting a Ranger. It keeps me from having my leisurely pace where I try to wear them down … now I have this pet nipping at me causing me to have a sort of “time limit”. Not to mention it’s a giant “here’s the real one!” if the Ranger was smart enough to tell it to attack me before I started to “be Mesmer” :-p

Nice, but then you have to ask yourself, “Do I really want to pay 6 trait points for this?”.

You also have to ask yourself, “Why is this beast-centric trait in Skirmishing?”.

Now, if you were to add something like that as part of the current Beastmastery Grandmaster trait, “Natural Healing” … yes, please. That’s 6 trait points invested in buffing a pet and so it would make sense that you wanted to keep it alive … possibly even make Beastmaster viable for WvW at that point (that’d be a nice change).

sendaf.8375:

They could use this as the trait to fix Ranger WvW

Ranger and Pet recieve 20% damage reduction vs AOE while wielding a melee weapon

Boom…. useful

That’s not a bad idea either.

I’d, selfishly, want it to be higher (primarily for the pet). I’ve always thought that if people didn’t want to die from a pet missile that they need to target the pet … not run into the nearest concentration of allied AOE spam.

20% (or less, even) for me while 50% (or more) for my pet.

The problem with that Kai is then you have to deal with prolonged combat.

How is the thief when they get the jump on someone?
How is the thief when they are jumped?
How is the thief when they failed to get the jump?
How is the thief in a prolonged fight?

In my opinion, it’s much harder to balance around a thief with perma-stealth.

I’m not following your logic here with where the problem is.

The only change unload got was … Unload: Increased the speed of this skill by 20%.

So it hits faster. That doesn’t make it hit any less. In fact, that’s a DPS increase as same damage in less time means higher DPS.

If it is finishing quicker, that means it got that same damage as before out quicker so now you can AA (or something else) and then Unload again when you have enough initiative.

You’re still able to get out the same number of Unloads per second as before. If you weren’t restricted by Initiative, you’d be able to get more Unloads per second.

Once a thief is on top of any glass cannon, they are dead (or at least should be … if not, it’s the thief’s fault :-p)

I haven’t experienced #1. Do you have video of this happening?

This is a decent point in that if the Ranger is close to you the travel time is almost non-existant so you eat 1 arrow every 0.25s (10 shots in 2.5 sec channel). That’s going to be 2 to 3 arrows then.

For #3, get on a Ranger and look at AA versus the knockback. I’m at work right now, but I’m pretty sure I recall there being an animation difference.

I do agree that there are some “perches” that Rangers can hang out on to snipe at people and this can be aggravating … but there is counterplay. Mesmer is a great example; especially with Traited Focus as they can pull them off a perch as well as reflect. I don’t know if the perches are necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps they can shift the meta a bit.

While ranged is less risky than melee, there are also more counters to ranged damage than there are to melee and many melee skills have higher DPS than rapid fire so they are still being compensated.

Run around in circles with mobs chasing you while you drop bombs … Engineer OP! (j/k!) :-p

DeceiverX … I <3 you.
I feel we’re on the exact same wavelength.

Wait … you’re “looking at the health” instead of the actual damage numbers coming from the skill? How is that more accurate? It’s not…

How do you not have time to react to a 2.5 second channeled ability? The average human reaction time is 1/6 of a second. That’s 0.16… seconds … that’s roughly 1/15 of the channel time. Even with lag you have time to react.

It fires 10 arrows in 2.5 seconds, so that is one arrow each 0.25 seconds. You should have plenty of time to react unless you have a bad reaction time.

In the video you linked … he shows how he goes and kills them … pretty darn successfully. Additionally, when he’s standing still, a good chunk of that damage comes from the fact that he just stands there and lets the pet beat on him too while being shot with rapid fire.

Yes, direct damage does more to lightly armored characters. That’s nothing new. Some of the targets in the video you originally linked were light armor and didn’t take that much damage.

Lastly, when you are berserker in WvW against other berserker builds in WvW, whoever hits with burst wins. I do more damage with Mesmer shatter combo on a group of players than a Ranger can on a single target with Rapid Fire.

There are many other examples of extremely high damage from berserker builds. If you want to complain about something in berserker vs berserker … go look at what Engineers can (and have been) doing with Static Discharge and various toolbelt skills.

If a Ranger has long range, arrows that are harder to strafe, and 8s cooldown on their longbow, then they are extremely squishy. You should not have trouble killing them if you are able to land your hits. They will crumple.

Plenty of people are killing these FotM rangers … including the Mesmer in the video you just linked. The difference between those that have trouble with them and those that don’t is a measure of skill.

Unload is melee range?

• Unload has a base range of 900.
  • Unload can be traited to have a range of 1,050 via Ricochet which also gives its shots a 50% chance to bounce 3 times.
• Unload does its damage in 1.75 seconds instead of 2.5. A difference of 0.75s or 30% less.
• Unload can be used once every 5 seconds without any additional initiative gain. That is twice per untraited Rapid Fire.
  • You can also drastically increase initiative gain of a Thief build … much more than shaving 2 seconds off the Rapid Fire build… and such that the gains are immediate for more additional Unloads in a short period of time.
• Unload (and all Pistol attacks) can be traited to have a chance to Cripple on critical hits. Given that it hits 8 times, this is a high chance to cripple.

Now, having pointed these things out … no one is running around calling this OP (nor do I think they should).

If people attack my pet … more power to them.

Also, if you are sharing boons with your pet … OH axe gives you retaliation … which you can share with your pet. Just saying :-p

Have an overzealous melee attacking you with both you and your pet right there? OH Axe for some great damage and you and pet will be slapping him with retal as he cleaves both of you … just make sure you can hand whatever is cleaving you.

… and Unload can be used more often … 5 initiative cost means it can be used at least once every 5 seconds … before any of the plethora of ways of gaining initiative.

I’m aware of the discrepancies in range. I just fought Sir Vincent the other night who was saying that Ranger Longbow and Greatsword are OP, especially to Thieves. He went Ranger and I went Thief (which I don’t play that much) and I shut him out on kills.

Daze was quite helpful. You can Head Shot every 4s with base initiative regen as it costs 4 and you regen 1 per second.

I’m interested in what you said about when you daze it though. Are you sure that if you interrupt a channeled ability it won’t go on its full cooldown? That’s honestly something I’ve never tested. Do you have a video of this for any channeled ability that has a cooldown? (that would save me time).

If you’re a thief and just running at a Ranger across an open plain … you’re either kitteny, dumb, or know something about the situation that the rest of us don’t :-p

Thief mobility is good enough to stay on a Ranger.

Now, if that Ranger starts using traps too … sorry. I’ve personally found that is a very effective counter to most melee-only Thief builds. Drop trap, stand on trap, shoot at thief.

Thankfully for thieves, though, you can’t chase someone while standing on a trap. So I find that works best for controlling a point … not roaming.

We’ll have to agree to disagree there.

I have a 20% chance to proc on hit versus procs every kittens.

Over time, you’ll get the same number of procs with 20%, but sometimes it’ll be more and sometimes it’ll be less and you have no control over it.

With every kittens, you could have it proc at a particular time … perhaps as part of a rotation even.

You have more control over if/when it happens than you do with % chance.

Now, whether you prefer one or the other is something that is personal preference … but you have more control over a counter than you do a % chance.

Lol, very good points.

I think they want their opponents to just stand still and not fight back … perhaps they should just attack golems in the Mists :-p

In many game forums discussions I’ve mentioned that instead of critical hits being RNG with a crit chance, having them be every X hits would be more skill-based.

I’d be all for changes that take away Y% chance and replace it with every X something. Lower skill levels won’t notice a difference but the higher skill levels will take advantage of the additional control they now have that was previous taken from them by RNG.

@BlackBeard
Your argument is that nightmare runes offer no counterplay.

Others argument is that it offers the same level of counterplay as other passive traits/runes/sigils … in fact, more than some others that just simply do extra damage when a hit happens as opposed to this CC you can CC break in order to avoid giving your opponent a free 2s to do damage.

Everywhere Warrior is in the title? Check post history and then Warrior sub-forum.

Exaggerations to try to make a point? Good try.

If you read the Warrior sub-forum posts that I have actually posted in, you’ll see my stance is…

• Losing adrenaline when you miss a burst skill is a move in the correct direction … as long as ANet continues to make these sorts of changes to classes so that people are actually punished for missing, it’s a move in the right direction
• Adrenaline Drain (and, by association, Gain) rates should probably be looked at now … but I see no one talking about how long it takes to gain a single bar of adrenaline … just griping.

I like Warriors. Love them in groups (where I think they shine the most). If you think I"m biased against them, it’s because you are getting an attitude over the fact that I don’t agree with you currently … because I don’t have a bias against them.

Heck, go check where I discussed Mace and would like to see the improvements suggested.

Stop making baseless claims. The forums are full of them enough as it is already.

Squee Squashington.5189:

I’ve been running Phantasm build with Fighter Runes, Zerker neck, Sigil of Force & Energy. It’s fairly viable vs minion or condi builds. I just join w/e team has the most Rangers/Warriors and usually win.

Really? I join the team that has the Guardians on it and we actually hold points. I just shatter on the glass Rangers while the Guardians hold the points like the good little buff tanks they are. I get sad when a faster Thief beats me to a FotM Ranger though … darn speedy ninjas.

I’m amused by you aiming for Rangers & Warriors on your team. If you read the forums … they say Warriors have been neutered / suck / etc.

The forums are always so “wise” … especially post-patch. :-p

Multiple Thieves would cause more single-target havoc … and continue to do it from stealth.

Multiple Warriors would stunlock to death a group without stability … just like multiple Ranger’s can single-out a single target that doesn’t have any sort of reflect, block, invuln, projectile block, etc.

Multiple Mesmers … you can’t reflect our greatswords’ beams nor our phantasmal berserkers … enjoy! … we’ll strip you too … of boons, of course ;-)

If you get focused by a group with some coordination and don’t have some sort of defense … yeah, you’re going to die. This isn’t exclusive to groups of Rangers.

Why do you see so many? Because it is one button that seems to completely confound the abundance of very poorly skilled players running around World vs World.

My favorite thing to see is someone that doesn’t just run at me or run away but seems to change their mind a few times and just dies … even more amusing since I’m using shortbow and was only 900 away from them.

As far as the damage … in that video video:

• 0:12 – 0:13 you can see a full Rapid Fire did 6177 damage … 6177 < 11k
• 0:55 – 0:56 you can see a full Rapid Fire did 7660 damage … 7660 < 11k
• 1:02 – 1:03 you can see a full Rapid Fire did 9170 damage … 9170 < 11k
• 1:05 – 1:06 you can see a Rapid Fire does only 3092 damage … because the target wasn’t stupid enough to eat a full 2.5s channel from a berserker build.
• 1:14 – 1:15 you can see a Rapid Fire does only 4945 damage
• 1:23 – 1:24 you can see a full Rapid Fire did 6100 damage

Apparently, according to you, the hand of God is all over that video as I didn’t see 11k in that less than 2 minutes before I got tired of watching WvW.

If there are some after that that actually hit 11k, let me know and I’ll look again.

Now back to your “points” …

Why aren’t the myriad of options worthing putting? Why aren’t they viable? Interrupts? Line-of-Sight? Reflects? Projectile blocks? Blocks? Distortion? Maneuvering so illusions are in between you and the Ranger? These are all quite viable.

As for being dead just because a Rapid Fire got you? Your video just showed that’s not the case. You linked the video and it shows the Ranger doing much more than a single Rapid Fire. Heck, they often pulled out their Greatsword in just the 2 minutes before I got bored.

You can say that it’s not BS because otherwise you wouldn’t bother … but here we are. Mesmers do have a ton of options, and I’ve looked at the video you posted and it doesn’t show what you’re saying about a single Rapid Fire dropping a player.

There is this thing called “confirmation bias”.

I imagine you aren’t really taking note of the non-rangers that are doing a great deal of damage to you; possibly even killing you. However, every time you get hit by a Ranger, you suddenly take note and remember it.

Mirror … cancel it before it completes casting … much shorter cooldown. Now it’s ready before their 10 (8s traited) cooldown on rapid fire.

Welcome to using Mirror.

Also, traited Focus is superb. Temporal Curtain and PHantasmal Warden don’t care if your enemy is ranged or melee … they affect both.

Temporal Curtain swiftness for you, cripple for them, light aura if you leap through, and can use it to pull as well (off cliffs for maximum effect).

Phantasmal Warden is solid damage and loves to eat projectiles for you. If a melee doesn’t want to stand in the Warden … you should stand in it and make chicken noises at him.

That would be great for fighting melee that cleaves … it’d be like Mesmer on-clone-death traits … but even better because it’s a bloody CC and doesn’t require trait point investment.

Let’s not do that :-p

I do play one, just not as much as my Mesmer and Ranger … like the rest of my characters.

Yes, it inflicts more burning if you shotgun them … like shortbow’s #2. I’m aware.

Many Warriors like to use pin down to land those … it nice. Also, people don’t just use abilities because they are off cooldown. There is nothing wrong with Longbow’s AA especially given its ability to gain adrenaline quite quickly … which goes well with its Burst Skill … which then works really well with the two arrows shot per AA.

Now that I think about it … Warrior has access to a 1,000 (1,200 traited) range longbow and a 1,200 range rifle … while Ranger, who people like you would call a “Ranged Class”, has access to a 1,200 (1,500 traited) range longbow, a 900 range shortbow, and a 900 range axe.

Looks like calling either of them “Ranged” or “Melee” is dumb.

Also, you can gripe about Rifle all you want, but there are threads popping up (that I’m not even in … just noticed them while reading today) that are noting similarities between Warrior Rifle damage and Ranger Longbow damage.

Perhaps you should get out of your little box and try out things and not designate restrictions like “Melee/Ranged” class … especially when they provide no purpose other than to give you a useless definition to then try to use as a fact to make an argument.

Javonovich.5280: This is simple, but I’ll walk you through it as that is apparently necessary.

Here you mention how the Ranger changes don’t add any skill or intrigue to the game and that they aren’t “balanced”. You reference Warrior Healing Signet and PU Mesmer as other instances of changes you feel are like this.

Javonovich.5280:

Have to agree with the OP on this. These LB buffs do absolutely nothing to add skill or intrigue to the game. It’s typical ANET b.s.—give a suffering class a one-shot wonder move/trait and call it “balance.” We saw this happen to Mesmers with the PU changes, Warriors with the healing sig changes, etc.

Here I mention how I don’t think Healing Signet and PU Mesmer are as powerful as people make them out to be, and how I think that Longbow Rangers are even easier to deal with.

Warrior Healing Signet? It loves my Ranger’s poison.

PU Mesmer? They love my Ranger’s pet … traps too … poison and other conditions as well.

Longbow Rangers? They are even easier to kill than PU Mesmers and Warriors. I’m much more wary facing a Mesmer/Warrior than I am a longbow Ranger

Also, note that when I talk about Ranger capabilities that help handle Healing Signet and PU Mesmers, I mention poison, traps, etc. … not longbow.

You then reply that you somehow read that has “Rangers counter Warriors and Mesmers, but are easier to kill than both of those classes” … and that you think warriors have been neutered /eyeroll

Remember how I noted using Poison, Traps, etc. earlier against Healing Signet and PU Mesmers? Not longbow… How I only mentioned longbow in how I found the new longbow Rangers easier to kill?

If rangers counter Warrs and Mesmers, but Rangers are easier to kill than both of those classes, then I’d LOVE to know what amazing class you play.

Still, I’m not convinced you know what you’re talking about. Warriors have essentially been neutered by the Adren nerf. No one is afraid of them anymore (except you).

I then mention that I never said that Ranger counters Warrior/Mesmer … though if we look at your post … you used that exact word when you said “If rangers counter Warrs and Mesmers”

@Javonovich.5280:
I didn’t say Ranger hard counters them, but Ranger is far from helpless against them and does have methods for dealing with both those builds … as I pointed out. Reading comprehension ftw.

Now you come back saying that you never said Ranger couldn’t handle them … neither did I.

Now you come back saying that you don’t know why I mentioned counters … you mentioned counters in your post.

Very simple. Very straightforward.

That aside, I do agree that having additional game modes would change the feel for what is/isn’t powerful … though then people would just argue that X is powerful because in game mode A while others would argue it isn’t because of game mode B.

Substance E.4852:

Sebrent.3625:

Beastmaster in dungeon? I’d be interesting to see how that goes. If one of you does that, please record (if you can).

I always appreciate seeing new things be tried out with an actual effort behind them.

No matter how much you could buff the pet to even out damage a zerk meta ranger, the fact that so much pve content relies on dodges means the dps pets won’t last long and F4’ing the pets wipes might and bond stacks.

There might be some fights where it works but I’m pretty sure most content would have you rotating pets due to aoe’s too much for it to out dps a player focused build.

You may very well be right, but I’d still enjoy seeing a skilled player try it. I’ve been away from dungeons too long to be a good measure of it myself. Maybe after I get back into them I’ll experiment with it.

Here are the facts:

• People have learned to handle being feared by this and still win
• There exist other passives from traits/runes/sigils that don’t require a player to explicitly do anything … they are procs with ICDs too … but you don’t have a problem with them … despite some of them being CC as well.
• CC-locking is nothing new in this game and Nightmare Runes are often not involved at all with it. They most certainly are not necessary for it.
• CC-locking can be countered by CC-breaks and/or stability.

Your last post here can be summarized as:
“None of you agreed with me so I’m going to call it names and then try to sound like only I care about competitive PvP. I don’t like Nightmare Runes.”
… No points/facts … just immaturity.

@BurrTheKing: Aye, I don’t think anyone disagrees that these should work. I’d “love” to see someone try to argue that they should stay broken though :-p Would bring forum stupidity to a new level.

@Stand The Wall: I agree. I dislike abilities that work even if the target is behind them. Hopefully, through iterations of patches, they can remove that so that all skills are more skill-based. I wouldn’t hold my breath though. That would take quite a while at best.

Jzaku.9765:

You are arguing with someone who even has evidently anti-warrior sentiments he feels the need to plaster all over the forums in his signature. I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere.

Also
>Mentioning Rifle like it’s viable in PvP
>Warrior not a Melee class when Longbow is a Mid/close-range weapon

This is a thread from a Warrior about Warrior bugs. I don’t see how your spite has anything to do with the thread.

LMAO.
If you think pointing out that a mechanic now works similarly to how another mechanic has worked for quite a while is “anti-warrior” then I can only pity you.

If you read my posts, you’ll see I’m far from that. Heck, look in this very thread.

As far as Longbow being medium range … it has a base range of 1,000. That’s not the Ranger’s 1,500 traited longbow, but it’s a solid range and can be traited to match most of what I assume you would call “long range” weapons … which are only 1,200. Do you know how small 200 range is in GW2?

I’ll make it easy for you
(1) Read
(2) Comprehend
(3) Remove stick from rear